i 
 
THE 
 
 WORKS OF CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 VOLUME XX. 
 
 LITERARY AND GENERAL 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
THE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 VOLUME XX. 
 
 LITERARY AND GENERAL 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
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LIBRARY 
 
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 LITERARY AND GENERAL 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
LITERARY AND GENERAL 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 ^0nbort : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1880. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, 
 CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. 
 
COliTTEIi^TS. 
 
 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE 
 
 THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON ... 35 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE . . 61 
 
 TENNYSON 103 
 
 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL 127 
 
 THE POETRY OP SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART . 187 
 
 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
 
 ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 245 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGI 
 
 y GROTS AND GROVES 26^ 
 
 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS 29^ 
 
 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. In Memoriam . . 331 
 
 PHAETHON; OR, LOOSE THOUGHTS FOR LOOSE 
 
 THINKERS. 1852 353 
 
LITERARY AND GENERAL 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS. 
 
THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 
 
 L. G. 
 
 ~)1 
 

 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE.* 
 
 Let us think for a wliile upon what the Stage was once, 
 in a republic of the past — what it may be again, I some- 
 times dream, in some republic of the future. In order 
 to do this, let me take you back in fancy some 2314 
 years — 440 years before the Christian era, and try to 
 sketch for you — alas ! how clumsily — a great, though 
 tiny people, in one of their greatest moments — in one 
 of the greatest moments, it may be, of the human 
 race. For surely it is a great and a rare moment for 
 humanity, when all that is loftiest in it — when reverence 
 for the Unseen powers, reverence for the heroic dead, 
 reverence for the fatherland, and that reverence, too, 
 for self, which is expressed in stateliness and self- 
 restraint, in grace and courtesy ; when all these, 
 I say, can lend themselves, even for a day, to the 
 richest enjoyment of life — to the enjoyment of beauty 
 
 * This Lecture was given at Harrow in 1873, and in America in 
 1874.. 
 
4 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [r. 
 
 in form and sound, and of relaxation, not brutalising, 
 but ennobling. 
 
 Eare, alas ! have sucli seasons been in tbe history 
 of poor humanity. But when they have come, they 
 have lifted it up one stage higher thenceforth. Men, 
 having been such once, may become such again ; and 
 the work which such times have left behind them 
 becomes immortal. 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. 
 
 Let me take you to the then still unfurnished 
 theatre of Athens, hewn out of the limestone rock on 
 the south-east slope of the Acropolis. 
 
 Above are the new marble buildings of the Par- 
 thenon, rich with the statues and bas-reliefs of Phidias 
 and his scholars, gleaming white against the blue sky, 
 with the huge bronze statue of Athene Promachos, 
 fifty feet in height, towering up among the temples 
 and colonnades. In front, and far below, gleams the 
 blue sea, and Salamis beyond. 
 
 And there are gathered the people of Athens — fifty 
 thousand of them, possibly, when the theatre was com- 
 plete and full. If it be fine, they all wear garlands 
 on their heads. If the sun be too hot, they wear 
 wide-brimmed straw hats. And if a storm comes on, 
 they will take refuge in the porticoes beneath ; not 
 without wine and cakes, for what they have come to 
 see will last for many an hour, and they intend to 
 feast their eyes and ears from sunrise to sunset. On 
 the highest seats are slaves and freedmen, below them 
 the free citizens ; and on the lowest seats of all are 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 5 
 
 tlie dignitaries of the republic — the priests, the magis- 
 trateSj and the other /caXol K.aya6i — the fair and good 
 men — as the citizens of the highest rank were called, 
 and with them foreign ambassadors and distinguished 
 strangers. What an audience ! the rapidest, subtlest, 
 wittiest, down to the very cobblers and tinkers, the 
 world has ever seen. And what noble figures on 
 those front seats ; Pericles, with Aspasia beside him, 
 and all his friends — Anaxagoras the sage, Phidias the 
 sculptor, and many another immortal artist ; and 
 somewhere among the free citizens, perhaps beside 
 his father Sophroniscus the sculptor, a short, square, 
 pug-nosed boy of ten years old, looking at it all with 
 strange eyes — ''who will be one day,^^ so said the 
 Pythoness at Delphi, '' the wisest man in Greece " 
 — sage, metaphysician, humorist, warrior, patriot, 
 martyr — for his name is Socrates. 
 
 All are in their dresses of office ; for this is not 
 merely a day of amusement, but of religious ceremony; 
 sacre to Dionysos — Bacchus, the inspiring god, who 
 raises men above themselves, for good — or for evil. 
 
 The evil, or at least the mere animal aspect of that 
 inspiration, was to be seen in forms grotesque and 
 sensuous enough in those very festivals, when the gayer 
 and coarser part of the population, in town and country, 
 broke out into frantic masquerade — of which the silly 
 carnival of Home is perhaps the last paltry and un- 
 meaning relic — '' when,^^ as the learned 0. Miiller 
 says, " the desire of escaping from self into something 
 new and strange, of living in an imaginary world, broke 
 forth in a thousand ways ; not merely in revelry and 
 
6 THE STAGE AS IT WAS OXCE. [i. 
 
 solemn though fantastic songs, but in a hundred dis- 
 guises, imitating the subordinate beings — satyrs, pans, 
 and nymphs, by whom the god was surrounded, and 
 through whom life seemed to pass from him into vege- 
 tation, and branch off into a variety of beautiful or 
 grotesque forms — beings who were ever present to the 
 fancy of the Greeks, as a convenient step by which 
 they could approach more nearly to the presence of the 
 Divinity.-" But even out of that seemingly bare chaos, 
 Athenian genius was learning how to construct, under 
 Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, that elder school of 
 comedy, which remains not only unsurpassed, but un- 
 approachable, save by Eabelais alone, as the ideal 
 cloudland of masquerading wisdom, in which the whole 
 universe goes mad — but with a subtle method in its 
 madness. 
 
 Yes, so it has been, under some form or other, in 
 every race and clime — ever since Eve ate of the magic 
 fruit, that she might be as a god, knowing good and 
 evil, and found, jaoor thing, as most have since, that 
 it was far easier and more pleasant to know the evil 
 than to know the good. But that theatre was built 
 that men might know therein the good as well as the 
 evil. To learn the evil, indeed, according to their 
 light, and the sure vengeance of Ate and the Furies 
 which tracks up the evil-doer. But to learn also the 
 good — lessons of piety, patriotism, heroism, justice, 
 mercy, self-sacrifice, and all that comes out of the 
 hearts of men and women not dragged heloiv, but raised 
 above themselves ; and behind all — at least in the nobler 
 and earlier tragedies of ^schylus and Sophocles, 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. *'* /^> 7 
 
 before Euripides liad introduced tlie tragedy of mere ' 
 human passion ; that sensation tragedy, which is the . . 
 only one the world knows now, and of which the world ( 
 is growing rapidly tired — behind all, I say, lessons of 
 the awful and unfathomable mystery of human existence 
 — of unseen destiny ; of that seemingly capricious dis- 
 tribution of weal and woe, to which we can find no 
 solution on this side the grave, for which the old Greek 
 could find no solution whatsoever. 
 
 Therefore there was a central object in the old 
 Greek theatre, most important to it, but which did 
 not exist in the old Roman, and does not exist in our 
 theatres, because our tragedies, like the Eoman, are 
 mere plays concerning love, mvirder, and so forth, while 
 the Greek were concerning the deepest relations of man 
 to the Unseen. 
 
 The almost circular orchestra, or pit, between the 
 benches and the stage, was empty of what we call 
 spectators — because it was destined for the true and 
 ideal spectators — the representatives of humanity ; in 
 its centre was a round platform, the 6v\iiki] — originally 
 the altar of Bacchus — from which the leader of these 
 representatives, the leader of the Chorus, could con- 
 verse with the actors on the stage and take his part in 
 the drama ; and round this thymele the Chorus ranged 
 with measured dance and song, chanting, to the sound 
 of a simple flute, odes such as the woi'ld had never 
 heard before or since, save perhaps in the temple-wor- 
 ship at Jerusalem. A chorus now, as you know, means 
 merely any number of persons singing in full harmony 
 on any subject. The Chorus was then in tragedy, and 
 
8 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [r. 
 
 indeed iu the higher comedy, what Schlegel well calls 
 " the ideal spectator " — a personified reflection on the 
 action going on, the incorporation into the representa- 
 tion itself of the sentiments of the poet, as the spokes- 
 man of the whole human race. He goes on to say (and I 
 think truly), " that the Chorus always retained among 
 the Greeks a peculiar national signification, publicity 
 being, according to their republican notions, essential 
 to the completeness of every important transaction/^ 
 Thus the Chorus represented idealised public opinion ; 
 not, of course, the shifting hasty public opinion of the 
 moment — to that it was a conservative check, and it 
 calmed it to soberness and charity — for it was the 
 matured public opinion of centuries; the experience, 
 and usually the sad experience, of many generations ; 
 the very spirit of the Greek race. 
 
 The Chorus might be composed of what the poet 
 would. Of ancient citizens, waiting for their sons to 
 come back from the war, as in the " Agamemnon " of 
 ^schylus ; of sea-nymphs, as in his " Prometheus 
 Bound ; " even of the very Furies who hunt the matri- 
 cide, as in his " Eumenides ; " of senators, as in the 
 " Antigone '' of Sophocles ; or of village farmers, as in 
 his "ffidipus at Colonos" — and now I have named five 
 of the greatest poems, as I hold, written by mortal 
 man till Dante rose. Or it may be the Chorus was 
 composed — as in the comedies of Aristophanes, the 
 greatest humorist the world has ever seen — of birds, 
 or of frogs, or even of clouds. It may rise to the level 
 of Don Quixote, or sink to that of Sancho Panza ; for 
 it is always the incarnation of such wisdom, heavenly 
 
1.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS OXCE. 9 
 
 or earthly^ as tlic poet wislies the people to bring to 
 bear on the subject-matter. 
 
 But let the poets themselves^ rather than me, speak 
 awhile. Allow me to give you a few specimens of 
 these choruses — the first as an example of that practical 
 and yet surely not un-divine wisdom, by which they 
 supplied the place of our modern preacher, or essayist, 
 or didactic poet. 
 
 Listen to this of the old men's chorus in the 
 "Agamemnon," in the spirited translation of my 
 friend Professor Blackie : 
 
 'Twas said of old, and 'tis said to-day, 
 That wealth to prosperous stature grown 
 
 Begets a birth of its own : 
 That a surfeit of evil by good is prepared. 
 And sons must bear what allotment of woe 
 
 Their sires were spared. 
 But this I refuse to believe : I know 
 
 That impious deeds conspire 
 To beget an offspring of impious deeds 
 
 Too like their ugly sire. 
 But whoso is just, though his wealth like a river 
 Flow down, shall be scathless : his house shall rejoice 
 In an offspring of beauty for ever. 
 
 The heart of the haughty delights to beget 
 A haughty heart. Fi'om time to time 
 In children's children recurrent appears 
 The ancestral crime. 
 
 When the dark hour comes that the gods have decreed 
 
 And the Fury burns with wi'athful fires, 
 A demon unholy, with ire unabated. 
 Lies like black night on the halls of the fated ; 
 And the recreant Son plunges guiltily on 
 To perfect the guilt of his Sires. 
 
10 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [i. 
 
 But Justice sliines in a lowly cell; 
 
 In the hemes of poverty, smoke-begrimed, 
 
 With the sober-minded she loves to dwell. 
 
 But she turns aside 
 From the rich man's house with averted eye, 
 The golden-fretted halls of pride 
 Where hands with lucre are foul, and the praise 
 Of counterfeit goodness smoothly sways ; 
 And wisely she guides in the strong man's despite 
 
 All things to an issue of eight. 
 
 Let me now give you auotlier passage from the 
 " Eumeuides " — or " Furies " — of ^schylus. 
 
 OresteSj Prince of Argos, you must remember, lias 
 avenged on his mother Clytemnestra the murder of 
 his father, King Agamemnon, on his return from Troy. 
 Pursued by the Furies, he takes refuge in the temple 
 of Apollo at Delphi, and then, still Fury-haunted, 
 goes to Athens, vs^here Pallas Athene, the warrior- 
 maiden, the tutelary goddess of Athens, bids him 
 refer his cause to the Areopagus, the highest court of 
 Athens, Apollo acting as his advocate, and she sitting 
 as umpire in the midst. The white and black balls 
 are thrown into the urn, and are equal; and Orestes 
 is only delivered by the decision of Athene — as the 
 representative of the nearer race of gods, the Olym- 
 pians, the friends of man, in whose likeness man is 
 made. The Furies are the representatives of the 
 older and darker creed — which yet has a depth of 
 truth in it — of the irreversible dooms which underlie 
 all nature; and which represent the Law, and not 
 the Gospel, the consequence of the mere act, 
 independent of the spirit which has prompted it. 
 
 They break out in fury against the overbearing 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 11 
 
 arrogance of these younger gods. Atliene bears tlieir 
 rage with equanimity, addresses them in the language 
 of kindness, even of veneration, till these so in- 
 domitable beings are unable to withstand the charm 
 of her mild eloquence. They are to have a sanctuary 
 in the Athenian land, and to be called no more Furies 
 (Erinnys), but Eumenides — the well-conditioned — the 
 kindly goddesses. And all ends with a solemn pro- 
 cession round the orchestra, with hymns of blessing, 
 while the terrible Chorus of the Furies, clothed in 
 black, with blood-stained girdles, and serpents in their 
 hair, in masks having perhaps somewhat of the terrific 
 beauty of Medusa-masks, are convoyed to their new 
 sanctuary by a procession of children, women, and old. 
 men in purple robes with torches in their hands, after 
 Athene and the Furies have sung, in response to each 
 other, a chorus from which I must beg leave to give 
 you an extract or two : 
 
 Eldest Fury {Leader of the Chorus). 
 Far from tliy dwelling, and far from thy border, 
 By the grace of my godhead benignant I order 
 The lilight which may blacken the bloom of the trees. 
 Far from thy border, and far from thy dwelling. 
 Be the hot blast which shrivels the bud in its swelling, 
 The seed-rotting taint, and the creeping disease. 
 Thy flocks be still doubled, thy seasons be steady, 
 And when Hermes is near thee, thy hand be still ready 
 
 The Heaven-dropt bounty to seize. 
 
 Athene. 
 Hear her words, my city's warders — • 
 Fraught with blessings, she prevaileth 
 With Olympians and Infernals, 
 Dread Erinnys much revered. 
 
12 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [: 
 
 Mortal faith she guideth plainly 
 To what goal she pleaseth, sending 
 Songs to some, to others days 
 With tearful sorrows dulled. 
 
 Furies. 
 
 Far fi'om thy border 
 
 The lawless disorder 
 That sateless of evil shall reign ; 
 
 Far from thy dwelling, 
 
 The dear blood welling. 
 That taints thine own hearth with the slaiu. 
 
 When slaughter from slaughter 
 
 Shall flow like the water, 
 And rancour from rancour shall grow. 
 
 But joy with joy blending, 
 
 Live, each to all lending ; 
 And hating one-hearted the foe. 
 
 When bliss hath departed ; 
 
 From love single-hearted, 
 A fountain of healing shall flow. 
 
 Athene. 
 Wisely now the tongue of kindness 
 Thou hast found, the way of love. 
 And these terror-speaking faces 
 Now look wealth to me and mine. 
 Her so willing, ye more willing, 
 Now receive. This land and city. 
 On ancient right securely throned. 
 Shall shine for evermoi'e. 
 
 Furies. 
 Hail, and all bail, mighty people, be greeted, 
 On the sous of Athena shines sunshine the clearest. 
 Blest people, near Jove the Olympian seated. 
 And dear to the maiden his daughter the dearest. 
 Timely wise 'neath the wings of the daughter ye gather. 
 And mildly looks down on her children the Father. 
 
r.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 13 
 
 Those of you here who love your country as well 
 as the old Athenians loved theirs, will feel at once the 
 gi-and political significance of such a scene, in which 
 patriotism and religion become one — and feel, too, the 
 exquisite dramatic effect of the innocent, the weak, 
 the unwarlike, welcoming among them, without fear, 
 because without guilt, those ancient snaky-haired 
 sisters, emblems of all that is most terrible and most 
 inscrutable, in the destiny of nations, of families, and 
 of men : 
 
 To their hallowed habitations 
 
 'Neath Ogygian earth's foundations 
 
 In that darksome hall 
 
 Sacrifice and supplication 
 
 Shall not fail. In adoration 
 
 Silent worship all. 
 
 Listen again, to the gentler patriotism of a gentler 
 poet, Sophocles himself. The village of Colonos, a 
 mile from Athens, was his birthplace; and in his 
 ^'CEdipus Colonens,'' he makes his Chorus of village 
 officials sing thus of their consecrated olive grove : 
 
 In good hap, stranger, to these rural seats 
 
 Thou comest, to this region's blest retreats. 
 
 Where white Colonos lifts his head, 
 
 And glories in the bounding steed. 
 AVhere sadly sweet the frequent nightingale 
 
 Impassioned pours his evening song, 
 And charms with varied notes each verdant vale, 
 
 The ivy's dark-green boughs among. 
 
 Or sheltered 'neath the clustering vine 
 
 Which, high above him forms a bower. 
 
 Safe from the sun or stormy shower, 
 
 Where frolic Bacchus often roves. 
 And visits with his fostering nymphs the groves. 
 
14 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [i. 
 
 Bathed in the clew of heaven each morn, 
 
 Fresh is the fair Narcissus born, 
 
 Of those great gods the crown of old ; 
 
 The crocus glitters, robed in gold. 
 Here restless fountains ever murmuring glide, 
 
 And as their crisped streamlets play. 
 To feed, Cephisus, thine unfailing tide. 
 
 Fresh verdure marks their winding way. 
 
 Here oft to raise the tuneful song 
 
 The virgin band of Muses deigns, 
 And car-borne Aphrodite guides her golden reins. 
 
 Then they go on^ this band of village elders, to 
 praise the gods for their special gifts to that small 
 Athenian land. They praise Pallas Athene, who gave 
 their forefathers the olive ; then Poseidon — Neptune, 
 as the Romans call him — who gave their forefathers 
 the horse ; and something more — the ship — the horse 
 of the sea, as they, like the old Norse Vikings after 
 them, delighted to call it : 
 
 Our highest vaunt is this — Thy grace, 
 
 Poseidon, we behold, 
 The ruling curb, embossed with gold. 
 Controls the courser's managed pace. 
 Though loud, oh king, thy billows roar. 
 Our sti'ong hands grasp the labouring oar, 
 And while the Nereids round it play, 
 Light cuts our bounding bark its way. 
 
 What a combination of fine humanities ! Dance and 
 song, patriotism and religion, so often parted among* 
 us, have flowed together into one in these stately 
 villagers; each a small farmer; each a trained soldier, 
 and probably a trained seaman also; each a self- 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS OXCE. 15 
 
 governed citizen ; and each a cultured gentleman, if 
 ever there were gentlemen on earth. 
 
 But what drama, doing, or action — for such is the 
 meaning of the word — is going on upon the stage, to 
 be commented on by the sympathising Chorus ? 
 
 One drama, at least, was acted in Athens in that 
 year — 440 B.C. — which you, I doubt not, know well — 
 "Antigone,'^ that of Sophocles, which Mendelssohn has 
 resuscitated in our own generation, by setting it to 
 music, divine indeed, though very different from the 
 music to which it was set, probably by Sophocles 
 himself, at its first, and for aught we know, its only 
 representation ; for pieces had not then, as now, a 
 run of a hundred nights and more. The Athenian 
 genius was so fertile, and the Athenian audience so 
 eager for novelty, that new pieces were demanded, and 
 were forthcoming, for each of the great festivals, and 
 if a piece was represented a second time it was usually 
 after an interval of some years. They did not, more- 
 over, like the moderns, run every night to some theatre 
 or other, as a part of the day's amusement. Tragedy, 
 and even comedy, were serious subjects, calling out, 
 not a passing sigh, or passing laugh, but all the higher 
 faculties and emotions. And as serious subjects were 
 to be expressed in verse and music, which gave state- 
 liuess, doubtless, even to the richest burlesques of 
 Aristophanes, and lifted them out of mere street- 
 buffoonery into an ideal fairyland of the grotesque, 
 how much more stateliness must verse and music have 
 added to their tragedy ! And how much have we lost, 
 toward a true appreciation of their dramatic art, by 
 losing almost utterly not only the laws of their melody 
 
16 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [i. 
 
 and liai'mony, but even the true metric time of tlieir 
 odes! — music and metre, which must have surely been 
 as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their archi- 
 tecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form 
 and of proportion. One thing we can understand- — 
 how this musical form of the drama, which still remains 
 to us in lower shapes, in the oratorio, in the opera, 
 must have helped to raise their tragedies into that 
 ideal sphere in which they all, like the ^'Antigone," live 
 and move. So ideal and yet so human ; nay rather, 
 truly ideal, because truly human. The gods, the heroes, 
 the kings, the princesses of Greek tragedy were dear 
 to the hearts of Greek republicans, not merely as the 
 founders of their states, not merely as the tutelary 
 deities, many of them, of their country : but as men 
 and women like themselves, only more vast; with 
 mightier wills, mightier virtues, mightier sorrows, and 
 often mightier crimes ; their inward free-will battling, 
 as Schlegel has well seen, against outward circumstance 
 and overruling fate, as every man should battle, unless 
 he sink to be a brute. " In tragedy," says Schlegel — 
 uttering thus a deep and momentous truth — " the gods 
 themselves either come forward as the servants of 
 destiny and mediate executors of its decrees, or approve 
 themselves godlike only by asserting their liberty of 
 action and entering upon the same struggles with fate 
 which man himself has to encounter.'* And I believe 
 this, that this Greek tragedy, with its godlike men and 
 manlike gods, and heroes who had become gods by the 
 very vastness of their humanity, was a preparation, and 
 it may be a necessary preparation, for the true Christian 
 faith in a Son of Man, who is at once utterly human 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 17 
 
 and utterly divine. That man is made in the Hkeness 
 of God — is the root idea, only half-conscious^ only half- 
 expressed, but instinctive, without which neither the 
 Greek Tragedies nor the Homeric Poems, six hundred 
 years before them, could havebeen composed. Doubtless 
 the idea that man was like a god degenerated too often 
 into the idea that the gods were like men, and as 
 wicked. But that travestie of a great truth is not 
 confined to those old Greeks. Some so-called Christian 
 theories — as I hold — have sinned in that direction as 
 deeply as the Athenians of old. 
 
 Meanwhile, I say, that this long acquiescence in 
 the conception of godlike struggle, godlike daring, 
 godlike suffering, godlike martyrdom ; the very con- 
 ception which was so foreign to the mythologies of any 
 other race — save that of the Jews, and perhaps of our 
 own Teutonic forefathers — did prepare, must have pre- 
 pared men to receive as most rational and probable, 
 as the satisfaction of their highest instincts, the idea 
 of a Being in whom all those partial rays culminated 
 in clear, pure light ; of a Being at once utterly human 
 and utterly divine ; who by struggle, suffering, self- 
 sacrifice, without a parallel, achieved a victory over 
 circumstance and all the dark powers which beleaguer 
 man without a parallel likewise. 
 
 Take, as an example, the figure which you know 
 best — the figure of Antigone herself — devoting herself 
 to be entombed alive, for the sake of love and duty. 
 Love of a brother, which she can only prove, alas ! by 
 burying his corpse. Duty to the dead, an instinct 
 depending on no written law, but springing out of the 
 very depth of those blind and yet sacred monitions 
 
 L. G. c 
 
18 THE STAGE AS IT WAS OXCE. [i. 
 
 whicli prove that the true man is not an animal^ but a 
 spirit; fulfilling her holy purpose, unchecked by fear^ 
 unswayed by her sisters' entreaties. Hardening her 
 heart magnificently till her fate is sealed; and then 
 after proving her godlike courage, proving the tender- 
 ness of her womanhood by that melodious wail over 
 her own untimely death and the loss of marriage joys, 
 which some of you must know from the music of 
 Mendelssohn, and which the late Dean Milman has put 
 into English thus : 
 
 Come, fellow-citizens, and see 
 
 The desolate Antigone. 
 
 On tlie last patli her steps shall tread, 
 
 Set forth, the journey of the dead, 
 
 Watching, with vainly lingering gaze, 
 
 Her last, last snn's expiring rays. 
 
 Never to see it, never more. 
 
 For down to Acheron's dread shore, 
 
 A living victim am I led 
 
 To Hades' universal bed. 
 
 To my dark lot no bridal joys 
 
 Belong, nor e'er the jocund noise 
 
 Of hymeneal chant shall sound for me, 
 
 But death, cold death, my only spouse shall be. 
 
 Oh tomb ! Oh bridal chamber ! Oh deep-delved 
 And strongly-guarded mansion ! I descend 
 To meet in your dread chambers all my kindred. 
 Who in dark multitudes have crowded down 
 Where Proserpine received the dead. But I, 
 The last — and oh how few more miserable ! — 
 Go down, or ere my sands of life are run. 
 
 And let me ask you whether the contemplation of such 
 a self-sacrifice should draw you, should have drawn 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 19 
 
 those who heard the tale nearer to, or farther from, a 
 certain cross which stood on Calvary some 1800 years 
 ago ? May not the tale of Antigone heard from 
 mother or fi'om nurse have nerved ere now some 
 martyr-maiden to dare and suffer in an even holier 
 cause ? 
 
 But to return. This set purpose of the Athenian 
 dramatists of the best school to set before men a 
 magnified humanity, explains much in their dramas 
 which seems to us at first not only strange but faulty. 
 The masks which gave one grand but unvarying type 
 of countenance to each well-known historic personage, 
 and thus excluded the play of feature, animated 
 gesture, and almost all which we now consider as 
 " acting " proper ; the thick-soled cothurni which gave 
 the actor a more than human stature ; the poverty 
 (according to our notions) of the scenery, which 
 usually represented merely the front of a palace or 
 other public place, and was often though not always 
 unchanged during the whole performance ; the total 
 absence, in fact, of anything like that scenic illusion 
 which most managers of theatres seem now to consider 
 as their highest achievement ; the small number of the 
 actors, two, or at most three only, being present on the 
 stage at once, — the simplicity of the action, in which 
 intrigue (in the playhouse sense) and any complication 
 of plot are utterly absent; all this must have con- 
 centrated not the eye of the spectator on the scene, but 
 his ear upon the voice, and his emotions on the person- 
 ages who stood out before him without a background, 
 sharp-cut and clear as a group of statuary, which is the 
 ■same, place it where you will, complete in itself — a 
 
20 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [i. 
 
 world of beauty, independent of all other things and 
 beings save on tlie ground on wbicb it needs must 
 stand. It was the personage ratber than bis surround- 
 ings, wbicb was to be impressed by every word on tbe 
 spectator's heart and intellect ; and the very essence of 
 Greek tragedy is expressed in the still famous words of 
 Medea : 
 
 Che resta ? lo. 
 
 Contrast this with the European drama — especially 
 with the highest form of it — our own Elizabethan. It 
 resembles, as has been often said in better words than 
 mine, not statuary but painting. These dramas affect 
 colour, light, and shadow, background whether of 
 town or country, description of scenery where scenic 
 machinery is inadequate, all, in fact, which can blend 
 the action and the actors with the surrounding circum- 
 stances, without letting them altogether melt into the 
 circumstances; which can show them a part of the great 
 whole, by harmony or discord with the whole universe, 
 down to the flowers beneath their feet. This, too, had 
 to be done : how it became possible for even the genius 
 of a Shakespeare to get it done, I may with your leave 
 hint to you hereafter. Why it was not given to the 
 Greeks to do it, I know not. 
 
 Let us at least thank them for what they did. One 
 work was given them, and that one they fulfilled as it 
 had never been fulfilled before ; as it will never need 
 to be fulfilled again; for the Greeks^ work was done 
 not for themselves alone but for all races in all times ; 
 and Greek Art is the heirloom of the whole human 
 race; and that work was to assert in drama, lyric. 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 21 
 
 sculpture^ music, gymnastic, tlie dignity of man — tlie 
 dignity of man wHch tliey perceived for the most part 
 with, tlieir intense sestlietic sense, tlirougL the beautiful 
 in man. Man with them was divine, inasmuch as 
 he could perceive beauty and be beautiful himself. 
 Beauty might be physical, resthetic, intellectual, moral. 
 But in proportion as a thing was perfect it revealed its 
 own perfection by its beauty. Goodness itself was a 
 form — though the highest form — of beauty. KaXd? 
 meant both the physically beautiful and the morally 
 good ; ala-xpos both the ugly and the bad. 
 
 Out of this root-idea sprang the whole of that 
 Greek sculpture, which is still, and perhaps ever will 
 be, one of the unrivalled wonders of the world. 
 
 Their first statues, remember, were statues of the 
 gods. This is an historic fact. Before B.C. 580 there 
 were probably no statues in Greece save those of 
 deities. But of what form ? We all know that the 
 usual tendency of man has been to represent his gods 
 as more or less monstrous. Their monstrosity may 
 have been meant, as it was certainly with the Mexican 
 idols, and probably those of the Semitic races of 
 Syria and Palestine, to symbolise the ferocious pas- 
 sions which they attributed to those objects of their 
 dread, appeasable alone by human sacrifice. Or the 
 monstrosity, as with the hawk-headed or cat-headed 
 Egyptian idols, the winged bulls of Nineveh and 
 Babylon, the many-handed deities of Hindostan — 
 merely symbolised powers which could not, so the 
 priest and the sculptor held, belong to mere humanity. 
 Now, of such monstrous forms of idols, the records in 
 Greece are very few and very ancient — relics of an 
 
22 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [i.. 
 
 oldei' worship, and most probably of au older race. 
 From the earliest historic period, the Greek was dis- 
 cerning more and more that the divine could be best 
 represented by the human; the tendency of his 
 statuary was more and more to honour that divine, by 
 embodying it in the highest human beauty. 
 
 In lonely mountain shrines there still might linger, 
 feared and honoured, dolls like those black virgins, of 
 unknown antiquity, which still work wonders on the 
 European continent. In the mysterious cavern of 
 Phigalia, for instance, on the Eleatic shore of Pelo- 
 ponnese, there may have been in remote times — so 
 the legend ran — an old black wooden image, a woman 
 with a horse's head and mane, and serpents growing 
 round her head, who held a dolphin in one hand and 
 a dove in the other. And this image may have been 
 connected with old nature-myths about the marriage 
 of Demeter and Poseidon — that is, of encroachments 
 of the sea upon the land; and the other myths of 
 Demeter, the earth-mother, may have clustered round 
 the place, till the Phigalians were glad — for it was 
 profitable as well as honourable— to believe that, in 
 their cavern Demeter sat mourning for the loss of 
 Proserpine, whom Pluto had carried down to Hades, 
 and all the earth was barren till Zeus sent the Fates, 
 or Iris, to call her forth, and restore fertility to the 
 world. And it may be true— the legend as Pausanias 
 tells it 600 years after— that the old wooden idol 
 having been burnt, and the worship of Demeter 
 neglected till a famine ensued, the Phigalians, warned 
 by the Oracle of Delphi, hired Onatas, a contem- 
 porary of Polygnotus and Phidias, to make them a 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 23 
 
 bronze replica of the old idol, from some old copy 
 and from a dream of his own. The story may be true. 
 When Pausanias went thither, in the second century 
 after Christ, the cave and the fountain, and the sacred 
 grove of oaks, and the altar outside, which was to be 
 polluted with the blood of no victim — the only offerings 
 being fruits and honey, and undressed wool — were still 
 there. The statue was gone. Some said it had been 
 destroyed by the fall of the cliff ; some were not sure 
 that it had ever been there at all. And meanwhile 
 Praxiteles had already brought to perfection (Pans. 1, 
 2, sec. 4) the ideal of Demeter, mother-like, as Here 
 — whom we still call Juno now — but softer-featured, 
 and her eyes more closed. 
 
 And so for mother earth, as for the rest, the best 
 representation of the divine was the human. Now, 
 conceive such an idea taking hold, however slowly, 
 of a people of rare physical beauty, of acutest eye for 
 pi'oportion and grace, with opportunities of studying 
 the human figure such as exist nowhere now, save 
 among tropic savages, and gifted, moreover, in that 
 as in all other matters, with that innate diligence, of 
 which Mr. Carlyle has said, " that genius is only an 
 infinite capacity of taking pains,^^ and we can under- 
 stand somewhat of the causes which produced those 
 statues, human and divine, which awe and shame the 
 artificiality and degeneracy of our modern so-called 
 civilisation — we can understand somewhat of the 
 reverence for the human form, of the careful study of 
 every line, the storing up for use each scattered frag- 
 ment of beauty of which the artist caught sight, even 
 in his daily walks, and consecrating it in his memory 
 
24 THE STAGE AS IT WAS OXCE. [i. 
 
 to the service of laim or her whom he was trying to 
 embody in marble or in bronze. And when the fashion 
 came in of making statues of victors in the games, and 
 other distinguished persons, a new element was in- 
 troduced, which had large social as well as artistic 
 results. The sculptor carried his usual reverence into 
 his careful delineation of the victor's form, while he 
 obtained in him a model, usually of the very highest 
 type, for perfecting hi? idea of some divinity. The 
 possibility of gaining the right to a statue gave a 
 fresh impulse to all competitors in the public games, 
 and through them to the gymnastic training through- 
 out all the states of Greece, which made the Greeks 
 the most physically able and graceful, as well as 
 the most beautiful people known to the history of 
 the human race, — a people who, reverencing beauty, 
 reverenced likewise grace or acted beauty, so utterly 
 and honestly, that nothing was too humble for a free 
 man to do, if it were not done awkwardly and ill. As 
 an instance, Sophocles himself — over and above his 
 poetic genius, one of the most cultivated gentlemen, 
 as well as one of the most exquisite musicians, dancers, 
 and gymnasts, and one of the most just, pious, and 
 gentle of all Greece — could not, by reason of the 
 weakness of his voice, act in his own plays, as poets 
 were wont to do, and had to perform only the office of 
 stage-manager. Twice he took part in the action, 
 once as the blind old Thamyris playing on the harp, 
 and once in his own lost tragedy, the "Nausicaa.'' 
 There in the scene in which the Princess, as she does 
 in Homer's " Odyssey," comes down to the sea-shore 
 with her maidens to wash the household clothes, and 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONOE. ■ 25 
 
 then to play at ball — Sopliocles himself, a man then of 
 middle age, did the one thing he could do better than 
 any there — and, dressed in women^s clothes, among the 
 lads who represented the maidens, played at ball before 
 the Athenian people. 
 
 Just sixty years after the representation of the 
 "Antigone,^^ 10,000 Greeks,far on the plains of Babylon, 
 cut through the whole Persian army, as the railway 
 train cuts through a herd of buffalo, and then losing 
 all their generals by treacherous warfare, fought their 
 way north from Babylon to Trebizond on the Black 
 Sea, under the guidance of a young Athenian, a pupil 
 of Socrates, who had never served in the army before. 
 The retreat of Xenophon and his 10,000 will remain 
 for ever as one of the grandest triumphs of civilisation 
 over brute force : but what made it jDossible ? That 
 these men, and their ancestors before them, had been 
 for at least 100 years in training, physical, intel- 
 lectual, and moral, which made their bodies and their 
 minds able to dare and suffer like those old heroes of 
 whom their tragedy had taught them, and whose 
 spirits they still believed would help the valiant Greek. 
 And yet that feat, which looks to us so splendid, 
 attracted, as far as I am aware, no special admiration 
 at the time. So was the cultivated Greek expected 
 to behave whenever he came in contact with the 
 uncultivated barbarian. 
 
 But from what had sprung in that little state, this 
 exuberance of splendid life, physical, aesthetic, intel- 
 lectual, which made, and will make the name of 
 Athens and of the whole cluster of Greek republics 
 for ever admirable to civilised man ? Had it sprung 
 
 /? 
 
26 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [i. 
 
 from long years of peaceful prosperity ? From infinite 
 making of money and comfort, according to tlie laws 
 of so-called political economy, and the dictates of 
 enlightened selfishness ? Not so. But rather out of 
 terror and agony, and all but utter ruin — and out of a 
 magnificent want of economy, and the divine daring 
 and folly of self-sacrifice. 
 
 In Salamis across the strait a trophy stood, and 
 round that trophy, forty years before, Sophocles, the 
 author of ''Antigone," then sixteen years of age, the 
 loveliest and most cultivated lad in Athens, undraped 
 like a faun, with lyre in hand, was leading the Chorus 
 of Athenian youths, and singing to Athene, the 
 tutelary goddess, a hymn of triumph for a glorious 
 victory — the very symbol of Greece and Athens, 
 springing up into a joyous second youth after invasion 
 and desolation, as the grass springs up after the 
 prairie fire has passed. But the fire had been terrible. 
 It had burnt Athens at least, down to the very roots. 
 True, while Sophocles was dancing, Xerxes, the great 
 king of the East, foiled at Salamis, as his father Darius 
 had been foiled at Marathon ten years before, was 
 fleeing back to Persia, leaving his innumerable hosts 
 of slaves and mercenaries to be destroyed piecemeal, 
 by land at Platea, by sea at Mycale. The bold hope 
 was over, in which the Persian, ever since the days of 
 Cyrus, had indulged — that he, the despot of the East, 
 should be the despot of the West likewise. It seemed 
 to them as possible, though not as easy, to subdue 
 the Aryan Greek, as it had been to subdue the 
 Semite and the Turanian, the Babylonian and the 
 Syrian ; to rifle his temples, to destroy his idols, carry 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 27 
 
 off his women and children as colonists into distant 
 lands, as they had been doing with all the nations of 
 the East. And they had succeeded with isolated 
 colonies, isolated islands of Grreeks, and the shores of 
 Asia Minor. But when they dared, at last, to attack 
 the Greek in his own sacred land of Hellas, they found 
 they had bearded a lion in his den. Nay rather — as 
 those old Greeks would have said — they had dared to 
 attack Pallas Athene, the eldest daughter of Zeus — 
 emblem of that serene and pure divine wisdom, of 
 whom Solomon sang of old : " The Lord possessed 
 me in the beginning of His way, before His works of 
 old. When He prepared the heavens, I was there, 
 when He appointed the foundation of the earth, then 
 was I by him, as one brought up with Him, and I 
 was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him : 
 rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth ; and my 
 delight was with the sons of men " — to attack Athene 
 and her brother Apollo, Lord of light, and beauty, and 
 culture, and grace, and inspiration — to attack them, 
 not in the name of Ormuzd, nor of any other deity, 
 but in the name of mere brute force and lust of 
 conquest. The old Persian spirit was gone out of 
 them. They were the symbols now of nothing save 
 despotism and self-will, wealth and self-indulgence. 
 They, once the children of Ormuzd or light, had 
 become the children of Ahriman or darkness ; and 
 therefore it was, as I believe, that Xerxes' 1000 ships, 
 and the two million (or, as some have it, five million) 
 human beings availed naught against the little fleets 
 and little battalions of men who believed with a living 
 belief in Athene and Apollo, and therefore — ponder it 
 
28 THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. [i. 
 
 ■well, for it is true — with a living belief, under wliat- 
 soever confusions and divisions of personality, in a 
 God who loved, taught, inspired men, a just God 
 ■who befriended the righteous cause, the cause of freedom 
 and patriotism, a Deity, the echo of whose mind and 
 ■will to man was the song of Athene on Olympus, 
 when she 
 
 Chanted of order and right, and of foresight, and order of 
 
 peoples ; 
 Chanted of labour and craft, wealth in the port and the 
 
 garner ; 
 Chanted of valour and fame, and the man who can fall with 
 
 the foremost, 
 Fighting for children and wife, and the field which his father 
 
 bequeathed him. 
 Sweetly and cunningly sang she, and planned new lessons for 
 
 mortals. 
 Happy who hearing obey her, the wise unsullied Athene. 
 
 Ah, that they had always obeyed her, those old 
 Greeks. But meanwhile, as I said, the agony had 
 been extreme. If Athens had sinned, she had been 
 purged as by fire ; and the fire — surely of God — had 
 been terrible. Northern Greece had either been laid 
 waste with fire and sword, or had gone over to the 
 Persian, traitors in their despair. Attica, almost the 
 only loyal state, had been overrun ; the old men, 
 women, and children had fled to the neighbouring 
 islands, or to the Peloponnese. Athens itself had been 
 destroyed; and while young Sophocles "was dancing 
 round the trophy at Salamis, the Acropolis was still a 
 heap of blackened ruins. 
 
 But over and above their valour, over and above 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 29 
 
 their loyalty, over and above their exquisite sesthetic 
 faculty, these Athenians had a resilience of self- 
 reliant energy, like that of the French — like that 
 of the American people after the fire of Chicago ; 
 and Athens rose from her ashes to be awhile, not 
 only, as she had nobly earned by suifering and 
 endurance, the leading state in Greece, but a mighty 
 fortress, a rich commercial port, a living centre of art,, 
 poetry, philosophy, such as this earth has never seen 
 before or since. 
 
 On the plateau of that little crag of the Acropolis 
 some eight hundred feet in length, by four hundred in 
 breadth — about the size and shape of the Castle Rock 
 at Edinburgh — was gathered, within forty years of 
 the battle of Salamis, more and more noble beauty 
 than ever stood together on any other spot of like 
 size. 
 
 The sudden relief from crushing pressure, and the 
 joyous consciousness of well-earned honours, made 
 the whole spirit-nature of the people blossom out, as 
 it were, into manifold forms of activity, beauty, re- 
 search, and raised, in raising Greece, the whole human 
 race thenceforth. 
 
 What might they not have done — looking at what 
 they actually did — for the whole race of man ? 
 
 But no — they fell, even more rapidly than they 
 rose, till their grace and their cultivation, for them 
 they could not lose, made them the willing ministers 
 to the luxury, the frivolity, the sentimentality, the 
 vice of the whole old world — the Scapia or Figaro of 
 the old world — infinitely able, but with all his ability 
 consecrated to the service of his own base self. The 
 
30 THE STAGE AS IT WAS OXCE. [i. 
 
 Greekling — as Juvenal has it — iu want of a dinner, 
 would climb someliow to heaven itself, at tlie bidding 
 of bis Roman master. 
 
 Ah what a fall ! And what was the inherent 
 weakness which caused that fall ? 
 
 I say at once — want of honesty. The Greek was 
 not to be depended on; if it suited him, he would 
 lie, betray, overreach, change sides, and think it no 
 sin. He was the sharpest of men. Sharp practice, in 
 our modern sense of the word, was the very element 
 in which he floated. Any scholar knows it. In 
 the grand times of Marathon and Salamis, down to 
 the disastrous times of the Peloponnesian war and 
 the thirty tyi'ants, no public man^s hands were 
 clean, with the exception, perhaps, of Aristides, who 
 was banished because men were tired of hearing him 
 called the Just. The exciting cause of the Pelopon- 
 nesian war, and the consequent downfall of Athens, 
 was not merely the tyranny she exercised over the 
 states allied to her, it was the sharp practice of the 
 Athenians, in misappropriating the tribute paid by 
 the allies to the decoration of Athens. And in laying 
 the foundations of the Parthenon was sown, by a 
 just judgment, the seed of ruin for the state which 
 gloried in it. And if the rulers were such, what were 
 the people ? If the free were such, what were the 
 slaves ? 
 
 Hence, weakness at home and abroad, mistrust 
 of generals and admirals, paralysing all bold and 
 clear action, peculations and corruptions at home, 
 internecine wars between factions inside states, and 
 between states or groups of states, revolutions followed 
 
I.] THE STAGE AS IT WAS ONCE. 31 
 
 by despotism, and final exhaustion and slavery — 
 slavery to a people who were coming across the 
 western sea, hard-headed, hard-hearted, caring nothing 
 for art, or science, whose pleasures were coarse and 
 cruel, but with a certain rough honesty, reverence 
 for country, for law, and for the ties of a family 
 — men of a somewhat old English type, who had 
 over and above, like the English, the inspiring belief 
 that they could conquer the whole world, and who 
 very nearly succeeded in that — as we have, to our 
 great blessing, not succeeded — I mean, of course, the 
 Komans. 
 
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. 
 
THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON.* 
 
 The poets, who forty years ago proclaimed tlieir inten- 
 tion of working a revolution in English literature, and 
 who have succeeded in their purpose, recommended 
 especially a more simple and truthful view of nature. 
 The established canons of poetry were to be discarded 
 as artificial ; as to the matter, the poet was to represent 
 mere nature as he saw her ; as to form, he was to be 
 his own law. Freedom and nature were to be his 
 watchwords. 
 
 No theory could be more in harmony with the 
 spirit of the age, and the impulse which had been 
 given to it by , the bui^ning words of Jean Jacques 
 Rousseau. The school which arose expressed fairly 
 the unrest and unruliness of the time, its weariness of 
 artificial restraint and unmeaning laws, its craving 
 after a nobler and a more earnest life, its sense of 
 a glory and mystery in the physical universe, hidden 
 from the poets of the two preceding centuries, and 
 now revealed by science. So far all was hopeful. But 
 * Fraser's Magazine, November, 1853. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. [ii. 
 
 it soon became apparent, that eacli poet's practical 
 success in carrying out the theory was, paradoxically 
 enough, in inverse proportion to his belief in it ; that 
 those who like Wordsworth, Southey, and Keats, 
 talked most about naturalness and freedom, and most 
 openly reprobated the school of Pope, were, after all, 
 least natural and least free ; that the balance of those 
 excellences inclined much more to those who, like 
 Campbell, Eogers, Crabbe, and Moore, troubled their 
 heads with no theories, but followed the best old 
 models which they knew; and that the rightful 
 sovereign of the new Parnassus, Lord Byron, pro- 
 tested against the new movement, while he followed it; 
 upheld to the last the models which it was the fashion 
 to decry, confessed to the last, in poetry as in morals, 
 "Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,'^ and 
 uttered again and again prophecies of the downfall of 
 English poetry and English taste, which seem to be 
 on the eve of realisation. 
 
 Now no one will, we presume, be silly enough to 
 say that humanity has gained nothing by all the very 
 beautiful poetry which has been poured out on it 
 during the last thirty years in England. Nevertheless, 
 when we see poetry dying down among us year by 
 year, although the age is becoming year by year more 
 marvellous and inspiring, we have a right to look for 
 some false principle in a school which has had so 
 little enduring vitality, which seems now to be able to 
 perpetuate nothing of itself but its vices. 
 
 The answer so easy twenty years ago, that the new 
 poetry was spoiled by an influx of German bad taste, 
 will hardly hold good now, except with a very few 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BTROX. 37 
 
 very ignorant people. It is now known, of course, 
 tliat whatsoever quarrel Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe 
 may have had with Pope, it was not on account of his 
 being too severe an artist, but too loose a one j not for 
 being too classical, but not classical enough ; that 
 English poets borrowed from them nothing but their 
 most boyish and immature types of thought, and that 
 these were reproduced, and laughed at here, while the 
 men themselves were writing works of a purity, and 
 loftiness, and completeness, unknown to the world — 
 except in the writings of Milton — for nearly two 
 centuries. This feature, however, of the new German 
 poetry, was exactly the one which no English poet 
 deigned to imitate, save Byron alone; on whom, 
 accordingly, Goethe always looked with admiration and 
 affection. But the rest went their way unheeding; 
 and if they have defects, those defects are their own ; 
 for when they did copy the German taste, they, for the 
 most part, deliberately chose the evil, and refused the 
 good ; and have their reward in a fame which we 
 believe will prove itself a very short-lived one. 
 
 We cannot deny, however, that, in spite of all faults, 
 these men had a strength. They have exercised an in- 
 fluence. And they have done so by virtue of seeing a fact 
 which more complete, and in some cases more manly 
 poets, did not see. Strangely enough, Shelley, the man 
 who was the greatest sinner of them all against the 
 canons of good taste, was the man who saw that new 
 fact, if not most clearly, still most intensely, and who 
 proclaimed it most boldly. His influence, therefore, is 
 outliving that of his compeers, and growing and 
 spreading, for good and for evil; and will grow 
 
38 THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. [n. 
 
 and spread for years to come, as long as the 
 present great unrest goes on smouldering in men's 
 hearts, till the hollow settlement of 1815 is burst 
 asunder anew, and men feel that they are no longer in 
 the beginning of the end, but in the end itself, and 
 that this long thirty years' prologue, to the recon- 
 struction of rotten Europe is played out at last, and 
 the drama itself begun. 
 
 Such is the way of Providence; the race is not to 
 the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor the pro- 
 phecy to the wise. The Spirit bloweth where He 
 listeth, and sends on His errands— those who deny Him, 
 rebel against Him — profligates, madmen, and hyste- 
 rical Rousseaus, hysterical Shelleys, uttering words 
 like the east wind. He uses strange tools in His 
 cosmogony : but He does not use them in vain. By 
 bad men if not by good, by fools if not by wise, God's 
 work is done, and done right well. 
 
 There was, then, a strength and a truth in all these 
 men ; and it was this — that more or less clearly, they 
 all felt that they were standing between two worlds ; 
 amid the ruins of an older age ; upon the threshold of 
 a new one. To Byron's mind, the decay and rotten- 
 ness of the old was, perhaps, the most palpable; to 
 Shelley's, the possible glory of the new. Wordsworth 
 declared — a little too noisily, we think, as if he had 
 been the first to discover the truth — the dignity and 
 divineness of the most simple human facts and rela- 
 tionships. Coleridge declares that the new can only 
 assume living form by growing organically out of the 
 old institutions. Keats gives a sad and yet a whole- 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BYRON. 39 
 
 some answer to tliem both, as, young and passionate, 
 lie goes down witli Faust " to the Mothers " — 
 
 To the rich warm youth of the nations, 
 Childlike iu virtue and faith, though childlike in passion and 
 
 pleasure, 
 Childlike still, still near to the gods, while the sunset of Eden 
 Lingered in rose-red rays on the jseaks of Ionian mountains. 
 
 And there, amid the old classic forms, he cries : 
 " These things, too, are eternal — 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. 
 
 These, or things even fairer than they, must have their 
 place in the new world, if it is to be really a home for 
 the human race.^^ So he sings, as best he can, the 
 half-educated and consumptive stable-keeper's son, 
 from his prison-house of London brick, and in one 
 mighty yearn after that beauty from which he is 
 debarred, breaks his young heart, and dies, leaving a 
 name not ''writ in water,'' as he dreamed, but on all 
 fair things, all lovers' hearts, for evermore. 
 
 Here, then, to return, is the reason why the hearts 
 of the present generation have been influenced so 
 mightily by these men, rather than by those of whom 
 Byron wrote, with perfect sincerity : 
 
 Scott, Kogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try 
 'Gainst you the question with posterity. 
 
 These lines, writt^en in 1818, were meant to apply 
 only to Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey. Whether 
 
40 THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AXD BYROX. [ir. 
 
 they be altogether just or unjust is not now the 
 question. It must seem somewhat strange to our 
 young poets that Shelley's name is not among those 
 who are to try the question of immortality against the 
 Lake School; and yet many of his most beautiful 
 poems had been already written. "Were, then, ''The 
 Revolt of Islam'' and "Alastor " not destined, it seems, 
 in Byron's opinion, to live as long as the " Lady of 
 the Lake " and the " Mai'iners of England ?" Perhaps 
 not. At least the omission of Shelley's name is note- 
 worthy. But still more noteworthy are these words of 
 his to Mr. Murray, dated January 23, 1819 : 
 
 ''Read Pope — most of you don't — but do ... . 
 and the -inevitable consequence would be, that you 
 would burn all that I have ever written, and all your 
 other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and 
 Crabbe) into the bargain." 
 
 And here arises a new question — Is Shelley, then, 
 among the Claudians ? It is a hard saying. The 
 present generation will receive it with shouts of 
 laughter. Some future one, which studies and imitates 
 Shakespeare instead of anatomising him, and which 
 gradually awakens to the now forgotten fact, that a 
 certain man named Edmund Spenser once wrote a poem, 
 the like of which the earth never saw before, and perhaps 
 may never see again, may be inclined to acquiesce in the 
 verdict, and believe that Byron had a discrimination in 
 this matter, as in a hundred more, far more acute than 
 any of his compeers, and had not eaten in vain, poor 
 fellow, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 
 In the meanwhile, we may perceive in the poetry of 
 the two men deep and radical differences, indicating a 
 
ITb 
 
 "fv ^-^ 
 
 II.] SHELLEY AND BYR0N'.^> J y , , 41 
 
 spiritual difference between theip e^^a more deep, 
 whicli may explain the little notice "Vhicli BffJ&ftt^'^es.^ . 
 of Shelley's poetry, and the fact that the two men had ' 
 no deep sympathy for each other, and could not in any 
 wise ''pull together" during the sojourn in Italy. 
 Doubtless, there were plain outward faults of temper 
 and character on both sides ; neither was in a state of 
 mind which could trust itself, or be trusted by those 
 who loved them best. Friendship can only consist 
 with the calm and self-restraint and self-respect of 
 moral and intellectual health ; and both were diseased, 
 fevered, ready to take offence, ready, unwittingly, to 
 give it. But the diseases of the two were different, as 
 their natures were ; and Shelley's fever was not Byron's. 
 Now it is worth remarking, that it is Shelley's form 
 of fever, rather than Byron's, which has been of late 
 years the prevailing epidemic. Since Shelley's poems 
 have become known in England, and a timid public, 
 after approaching in fear and trembling the fountain 
 which was understood to be poisoned, has begun first 
 to sip, and then, finding the magic water at all events 
 sweet enough, to quench its thirst with unlimited 
 di'aughts, Byron's fiercer wine has lost favour. "Well — 
 at least the taste of the age is more refined, if that be 
 matter of congratulation. And there is an excuse 
 for preferring champagne to waterside porter, heady 
 with grains of paradise and quassia, salt and cocculus 
 indicus. Nevertheless, worse ingredients than oenan- 
 thic acid may lurk in the delicate draught, and the 
 Devil's Elixir may be made fragrant, and sweet, and 
 transparent enough, as French moralists well know, 
 for the most fastidious palate. The private sipping 
 
42 THOUGHTS OX SHELLEY AND BYRON. [ii. 
 
 of eau-de-cologue, say the London pliysicians, has 
 increased mightily of late ; and so has the reading of 
 Shelley. It is not surprising. Byron's Corsairs and 
 Laras have been, on the whole, impossible during the 
 thirty years' peace ! and piracy and profligacy are at 
 all times, and especially nowadays, expensive amuse- 
 ments, and often require a good private fortune — 
 rare among poets. They have, therefore, been wisely 
 abandoned as ideals, except among a few young persons, 
 who used to wear turn-down collars, and are now 
 attempting moustaches and Mazzini hats. But even 
 among them, and among their betters — rather their 
 more-respectables — nine-tenths of the bad influence 
 which is laid at Byron's door really is owing to Shelley. 
 Among the many good-going gentlemen and ladies, 
 Byron is generally spoken of with horror — he is '' so 
 wicked," forsooth ; while poor Shelley, *''■ poor dear 
 Shelley," is ''very wrong, of course," but "so refined," 
 ^'so beautiful," "so tender" — a fallen angel, while 
 Byron is a satyr and a devil. We boldly deny the 
 verdict. Neither of the two are devils ; as for angels, 
 when we have seen one, we shall be better able to give 
 an opinion ; at present, Shelley is in our eyes far less 
 like one of those old Hebrew and Miltonic angels, 
 fallen or unfallen, than Byron is. And as for the 
 satyr ; the less that is said for Shelley, on that point, 
 the better. If Byron sinned more desperately and 
 flagrantly than he, it was done under the temptations 
 of rank, wealth, disappointed love, and under the 
 impulses of an animal nature, to which Shelley's 
 passions were 
 
 As moonlif^bt unto siiuliorht, aud as water unto wine. 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BYEON. 43 
 
 At all eventS; Byron never set to work to con- 
 secrate his own sin into a religion and proclaim the . 
 worship of nncleanness as the last and highest ethical 
 development of '''pure''^ humanity. No — Byron may 
 be brutal; but he never cants. If at moments he 
 finds himself in hell^ he never turns round to the 
 world and melodiously informs them that it is heaven^ 
 if they could but see it in its true light. 
 
 The truth is, that what has put Byron out of favour 
 with the public of late has been not his faults but his 
 excellences. His artistic good taste, his classical polish, 
 his sound shrewd sense, his hatred of cant, his insight 
 into humbug above all, his shallow, pitiable habit of 
 being always intelligible- — these are the sins which 
 condemn him in the eyes of a mesmerising, table-turn- 
 ing, spirit-rapping, spiritualising, Komanising genera- 
 tion, who read Shelley in secret, and delight in his 
 bad taste, mysticism, extravagance, and vague and 
 pompous sentimentalism. The age is an effeminate 
 one, and it can well afford to pardon the lewdness of 
 the gentle and sensitive vegetarian, while it has no 
 mercy for that of the sturdy peer proud of his bull 
 neck and his boxing, who kept bears and bull-dogs, 
 drilled Greek ruffians at Missolonghi, and "had no 
 objection to a pot of beer; " and who might, if he had 
 reformed, have made a gallant English gentleman ; 
 while Shelley, if once his intense self-opinion had 
 deserted him, would have probably ended in Rome as 
 an Oratorian or a Passionist. 
 
 We would that it were only for this count that 
 Byron has had to make way for Shelley. There is, as 
 we said before, a deeper moral difference between the 
 
44 THOUGHTS OX SHELLEY AND BYROX. [ii. 
 
 men J wliich makes tlie weaker, rather tkan the stronger, 
 find favour in young men's eyes. For Byron has the 
 most intense and awful sense of moral law — of law 
 external to himself. Shelley has little or none ; less, 
 perhaps, than any known writer who has ever meddled 
 with moral questions. Byron's cry is, I am miserable 
 because law exists ; and I have broken it, broken it so 
 habitually, that now I cannot help breaking it. I 
 have tried to eradicate the sense of it by speculation, 
 by action ; but I cannot — 
 
 The tr^e of knowledge is not the tree of life. 
 
 There is a moral law independent of us, and yet the 
 very marrow of our life, which punishes and rewards 
 us by no arbitrary external penalties, but by our own. 
 consciousness of being what we are : 
 
 The mind which is immortal, makes itself 
 Eequital for its good or evil thoughts ; 
 Is its own origin of ill, and end — 
 And its own place and time — its innate sense 
 When stript of this mortality derives 
 jSTo colour from the fleeting things about, 
 But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy, 
 Born from the knowledge of its own desert. 
 
 This idea, confused, intermitted, obscured by all forms 
 of evil — for it was not discovered, but only in the pro- 
 cess of discovery — is the one which comes out with 
 greater and greater strength, through all Corsairs, 
 Laras, and Parasinas, till it reaches its completion in 
 " Cain" and in "Manfred," of both of which we do boldly 
 say, that if any sceptical poetry at all be right, which 
 we often question, they are right and not wrong; that in 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BYRON. 45 
 
 ^''Cain,'^ as in ^^Manfred/^ the awful problem wliicli, per- 
 liaps, had better not have been put at all^ is never- 
 theless fairly put, and the solution, as far as it is seen, 
 fairly confessed ; namely, that there is an absolute and 
 eternal law in the heart of man which sophistries of 
 his own or of other beings may make him forget, 
 deny, blaspheme ; but which exists eternally, and will 
 assert itself. If this be not the meajiing of ^' Manfred,^' 
 especially of that great scene in the chamois hunter^s 
 cottage, what is? — If this be not the meaning of " Cain,'^ 
 and his awful awakening after the murder, not to any 
 mere dread of external punishment, but to an over- 
 whelming, instinctive, inarticulate sense of having done 
 wrong, what is ? 
 
 Yes ; that law exists, let it never be forgotten, is 
 the real meaning of Byron, down to that last terrible 
 "Don Juan,^^ in which he sits himself down, in artificial 
 calm, to trace the gradual rotting and degradation of a 
 man without law, the slave of his own pleasures; a 
 picture happily never finished, because he who painted 
 it was taken away before he had learnt, perhaps when 
 he was beginning to turn back from — the lower depth 
 within the lowest deep. 
 
 Now to this whole form of consciousness, poor 
 Shelley's mind is altogether antipodal. His whole life 
 through was a denial of external law, and a substitu- 
 tion in its place of internal sentiment. Byron's cry is : 
 There is a law, and therefore I am misei-able. Why 
 cannot I keep the law ? Shelley's is: There is a law, 
 and therefore I am miserable. Why should not the 
 law be abolished? — Away with it, for it interferes with 
 my sentiments — Away with marriage, 
 
46 THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. [ii. 
 
 faith, the foulest birth of time." — We do not wish to 
 follow him down into the fearful sins which he defended 
 with the small powers of reasoning — and they were 
 peculiarly small — which he possessed. Let any one 
 who wishes to satisfy himself of the real difference 
 between Byron^s mind and Shelley's, compare the 
 wi'itings in which each of them treats the same subject 
 — namely, that frightful question about the relation 
 of the sexes, which forms, evidently, Manfred's crime; 
 and see if the result is not simply this, that Shelley 
 glorifies what Byron damns. . "Lawless love" is 
 Shelley's expressed ideal of the relation of the sexes ; 
 and his justice, his benevolence, his pity, are all equally 
 lawless. "Follow your instincts," is his one moral 
 rule, confounding the very lowest animal instincts with 
 those lofty ideas of right, which it was the will of 
 Heaven that he should retain, ay, and love, to the very 
 last, and so reducing them all to the level of sentiments. 
 "Follow your instincts" — But what if our instincts 
 lead us to eat animal food ? " Then you must follow 
 the instincts of me, Percy Bysshe Shelley. I think 
 it horrible, cruel ; it offends my taste." What if our 
 instincts lead us to tyrannise over our fellow-men ? 
 " Then you must repress those instincts. I, Shelley, 
 think that, too, horrible and cruel." Whether it be 
 vegetarianism or liberty, the rule is practically the 
 same — sentiment : which, in his case, as in the case of 
 all sentimentalists, turns out to mean at last, not the 
 sentiments of mankind in general, but the private 
 sentiments of the writer. This is Shelley; a senti- 
 mentalist pure and simple ; incapable of anything like 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BYRON. 47 
 
 inductive reasoning ; unable to take cognisance of any 
 facts but those wliicli please his taste, or to draw any 
 conclusion from them but such as also pleases his 
 taste ; as, for example, in that eighth stanza of the 
 " Ode to Liberty,^^ which,, had it been written by any other 
 man but Shelley, possessing the same knowledge as he, 
 one would have called a wicked and deliberate lie — 
 but in his case, is to be simply passed over with a 
 sigh, like a young lady's proofs of table-turning and 
 rapping spirits. She wished to see it so — and there- 
 fore so she saw it. 
 
 For Shelley's nature is utterly womanish. Not 
 merely his weak points, but his strong ones, are those 
 of a woman. Tender and pitiful as a woman ; and yet, 
 when angry, shrieking, railing, hysterical as a woman. 
 The physical distaste for meat and fermented liquors, 
 coupled with the hankering after physical horrors, are 
 especially feminine. The nature of a woman looks out 
 of that wild, beautiful, girlish face — the nature : but 
 not the spirit ; not 
 
 The reason firm, the temperate will, 
 Endurance, foresight, strength and skill. 
 
 The lawlessness of the man, with the sensibility of the 
 woman. . . . Alas for him ! He, too, might have dis- 
 covered what Byron did; for were not his errors avenged 
 upon him within, more terribly even than without ? 
 His cries are like the wails of a child, inarticulate, 
 peevish, irrational ; and yet his pain fills his whole 
 being, blackens the very face of nature to him : but he 
 will not confess himself in the wrong. Once only, if 
 
48 THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYRON. [ii. 
 
 we recollect rightly, tlie tvuth fiaslies across liim for a 
 moment, amid the clouds of selfish sorrow : 
 
 Alas, I have nor hope nor healtli, 
 Nor peace within, nor calm around ; 
 
 JSTor that content surpassing wealth 
 The sage in meditation found, 
 
 And walked with inward glory ci'owned. 
 
 "■Nor'' — alas for the spiritual bathos, which 
 follows that short gleam of liealthy feeling, and 
 coming to liimself — 
 
 — fame nor power, nor love, nor leisure, 
 Others I see whom these sm^round. 
 Smiling they live and call life pleasure, 
 To me that cup has been dealt in another measure ! 
 
 Poor Shelley ! As if the peace within, and tlie 
 calm around, and the content surpassing wealth, were 
 things which were to be put in the same categoiy witli 
 fame, and power, and love, and leisure. As if they 
 were things which could be " dealt " to any man ; 
 instead of depending (as Byron, who, amid all his 
 fearful sins, was a man, knew well enough) upon a 
 man's self, a man's own will, and that will exerted to 
 do a will exterior to itself, to know and to obey a 
 law. But no, the cloud of sentiment must close over 
 again, and 
 
 Yet now despair itself is mild 
 
 Even as the winds and waters are ; 
 
 I could lie down like a tired child. 
 And weep away this life of care, 
 
 Which I have borne, and still must bear, 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BYKON. 49 
 
 Till deatli like sleep miglit seize on me, 
 And I might feel in the warm air, 
 
 My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
 Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony ! 
 
 Too beautiful to laugh at^ however empty and sen- 
 timental. True : but wliy beautiful ? Because thei'e 
 is a certain sincerity in it, whicli breeds coherence 
 and melody, which, in short, makes it poetry. But 
 what if such a tone of mind be consciously encouraged, 
 even insincerely affected as the ideal state for a poet's 
 mind, as his followers have done ? 
 
 The mischief which such a man would do is con- 
 ceivable enough. He stands out, both by his excellences 
 and his defects, as the spokesman and ideal of all the 
 unrest and unhealth of sensitive young men for many 
 a year after. His unfulfilled prophecies only help to 
 increase that unrest. Who shall blame either him for 
 uttering those prophecies, or them for longing for their 
 fulfilment ? Must we not thank the man who gives us 
 fresh hope that this earth will not be always as it is 
 now ? His notion of what it will be may be, as 
 Shelley's was, vague, even in some things wrong and 
 undesirable. Still, we must accept his hope and faith 
 in the spirit, not in the letter. So have thousands of 
 young men felt, who would have shrunk with disgust 
 from some of poor Shelley's details of the " good time 
 coming." And shame on him who should wish to rob 
 them of such a hope, even if it interfered with his 
 favourite " scheme of unfulfilled prophecy." So men 
 have felt Shelley's spell a wondrous one — perhaps, 
 they think, a life-giving regenerative one. And yet 
 what dream at once more shallow and more impossible? 
 
 L. G. E 
 
50 THOUGHTS OX SHELLEY AND BYRON. [n. 
 
 Get rid of kings and priests ; marriage may stay, 
 pending discussions on tlie rights of women. Let tlie 
 poet speak — wliat lie is to say being, of course, a matter 
 of utterly secondary import, provided only tliat lie 
 be a poet ; and then tbe millennium will appear of 
 itself, and the devil be exorcised witb a kiss from all 
 hearts — except, of course, those of " pale priests" and 
 " tyrants with their sneer of cold command '' (who, it 
 seems, have not been got rid of after all), and the 
 Cossacks and Croats whom they may choose to call 
 to their rescue. And on the appearance of the said 
 Cossacks and Croats, the poet^s vision stops short, and 
 all is blank beyond. A recipe for the production of 
 millenniums which has this one advantage, that it is 
 small enough to be comprehended by the very smallest 
 minds, and reproduced thereby, with a difference, in 
 such spasmodic melodies as seem to those small minds 
 to be imitations of Shelley^s nightingale notes. 
 
 For nightingale notes they truly are. In spite of 
 all his faults — and there are few poetic faults in which 
 he does not indulge, to their very highest power — in 
 spite of his " interfluous " and " innumerous," and the 
 rest of his bad English — in spite of bombast, horrors, 
 maundering, sheer stuff and nonsense of all kinds, 
 there is a plaintive natural melody about this man, 
 such as no other English poet has ever uttered, except 
 Shakespeare in some few immortal songs. Who that 
 has read Shelley does not recollect scraps worthy to 
 stand by Ai'iel's song — chaste, simple, unutterably 
 musical ? Yes, when he will be himself — Shelley the 
 scholar and the gentleman and the singer — and leave 
 philosophy and politics, which he does not understand. 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BYRON. 51 
 
 and shriekings and cursings, wliicK are unfit for any 
 civilised and self-respecting man, lie is perfect. Like 
 the American mocking-bird, lie is liarsli only when 
 aping other men's tunes — his true power lies in his 
 own "native wood-notes wild." 
 
 But it is not this faculty of his which has been 
 imitated by his scholars ; for it is not this faculty 
 which made him their ideal, however it may have 
 attracted them. All which sensible men deplore in 
 him is that which poetasters have exalted in him. His 
 morbidity and his doubt have become in their eyes 
 his differential energy, because too often, it was all 
 in him with which they had wit to sympathise. They 
 found it easy to curse and complain, instead of helping 
 to mend. So had he. They found it pleasant to 
 confound institutions with the abuses which defaced 
 them. So had he. They found it pleasant to give 
 way to their spleen. So had he. They found it 
 pleasant to believe that the poet was to regenerate the 
 world, without having settled with what he was to re- 
 generate it. So had he. They found it more pleasant 
 to obey sentiment than inductive laws. So had he. 
 They found it more pleasant to hurl about enormoas 
 words and startling figures than to examine reverently 
 the awful depths of beauty which lie in the simplest 
 words and the severest figures. So had he. 
 
 And thus arose a spasmodic, vague extravagant, 
 effeminate, school of poetry, which has been too often 
 hastily and unfairly fathered upon Byron. Doubtless 
 Byron has helped to its formation ; but only in as far as 
 his poems possess, or rather seem to possess, elemeuts 
 in common with Shelley's. For that conscious struggle 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THOUGHTS OX SHELLEY AND BYRON. [ir. 
 
 against law, by whicli law is discovered, may easily 
 enough be confounded witli the utter repudiation of it. 
 Both forms of mind will discuss the same questions ; 
 both will discuss them freely, with a certain plainness 
 and daring, which may range through all grades, from 
 the bluntness of Socrates down to reckless immodesty 
 and profaneness. The world will hardly distinguish 
 between the two ; it did not in Socrates' case, mistaking 
 his reverent ii-reverence for Atheism, and martyred 
 him accordingly, as it has since martyred Luther's 
 memory. Probably, too, if a living struggle is going 
 on in the writer's mind, he will not have distinguished 
 the two elements in himself ; he will be profane when 
 he fancies himself only arguing for truth ; he will be 
 only arguing for truth, where he seems to the respectable 
 undoubting to be profane. And in the meanwhile, 
 whether the respectable understand him or not, the 
 young and the inquiring, much more the distempered, 
 who would be glad to throw off moral law, will sympa- 
 thise with him often more than he sympathises with 
 himself. Words thrown off in the heat of passion ; 
 shameful self-revealings which he has written with his 
 very heart's blood : ay, even fallacies which he has put 
 into the mouths of dramatic characters for the very 
 purpose of refuting them, or at least of calling on all 
 who read to help him to refute them, and to deliver 
 him from the ugly dream — all these will, by the lazy, 
 the frivolous, the feverish, the discontented, be taken 
 for integral parts and noble traits of the man to whom 
 they are attracted, by finding that he, too, has the 
 same doubts and struggles as themselves, that he has 
 a voice and art to be their spokesman. And hence 
 
11.] SHELLEY AND BYRON. 53 
 
 arises confusion on confusion, misconception on mis- 
 conception. The man is honoured for his dishonour. 
 Chronic disease is taken for a new type of health ; and 
 Byron is admired and imitated for that which Byron is 
 trying to tear out of his own heart, and trample under 
 foot as his curse and bane, something which is not 
 Byron^s self, but Byron^s house-fiend, and tyrant, and 
 shame. And in the meanwhile that which calls itself 
 respectability and orthodoxy, and is — unless Augustine 
 lied — neither of them, stands by ; and instead of echo- 
 ing the voice of Him who said: "Come to me ye that 
 are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,^' 
 mumbles proudly to itself, with the Pharisees of old : 
 " This people, which knoweth not the law, is accursed.'^ 
 "We do not seek to excuse Byron any more than we 
 do Shelley. They both sinned. They both paid bitter 
 penalty for their sin. How far they were guilty, or 
 which of them was the more guilty, we know not. We 
 can judge no man. It is as poets and teachers, not as 
 men and responsible spirits ; not in their inward 
 beings, known only to Him who made them, not even 
 to themselves, but in their outward utterance, that 
 we have a right to compare them. Both have done 
 harm. Neither have, we firmly believe, harmed any 
 human being who had not already the harm within 
 himself. It is not by introducing evil, but by calling 
 into consciousness and more active life evil which was 
 already lurking in the heart, that any writer makes 
 men worse. Thousands doubtless have read Byron 
 and Shelley^ and worse books, and have risen from 
 them as pure as when they sat down. In evil as well 
 as in good, the eye only sees that which it brings with 
 
54 THOUGHTS OX SHELLEY AND BYEON, [ii. 
 
 it the power of seeing — say ratlier^ the wish to see. 
 But it is because^ in spite of all our self-glorifying 
 paeans, our taste has become worse and not better, that 
 Shelley, the man who conceitedly despises and denies 
 law, is taking the place of Byron, the man who only 
 struggles against it, and who shows his honesty and his 
 greatness most by confessing that his struggles are 
 ineffectual ; that. Titan as he may look to the world, 
 his strength is misdirected, a mere furious weakness, 
 which proclaims him a slave in fetters, while prurient 
 young gentlemen are fancying him heaping hills on 
 hills, and scaling Olympus itself. They are tired of 
 that notion, however, now. They have begun to sus- 
 pect that Byron did not scale Olympus after all. How 
 much more pleasant a leader, then, must Shelley be, 
 who unquestionably did scale his little Olympus — 
 having made it himself first to fit his own stature. The 
 man who has built the hay-rick will doubtless climb it 
 again, if need be, as often as desired, and whistle on 
 the top, after the fashion of the rick-building- guild, 
 triumphantly enough. For after all Shelley^s range of 
 vision is very narrow, his subjects few, his reflections 
 still fewer, when compared, not only with such a poet 
 as Spenser, but with his own contemporaries; above 
 all with Byron. He has a deep heart, but not a wide 
 one; an intense eye, but not a catholic one. And, 
 therefore, he never wrote a real drama ; for in spite of 
 all that has been said to the contrary, Beatrice Cenci 
 is really none other than Percy Bysshe Shelley himself 
 in petticoats. 
 
 But we will let them both be. Perhaps they know 
 better now. 
 
II.] SHELLEY AND BYEOX. 55 
 
 One very ugly superstition, neYert]ieless_, we must 
 mention, of whicli these two men have been, in 
 England at least, the great hierophants; namely, 
 the right of " genius '' to be " eccentric.'^ Doubt- 
 less there are excuses for such a notion; but it is 
 one against which every wise man must set his face 
 like a flint ; and at the risk of being called a 
 "Philister^'' and a "flunky,^^ take part boldly with 
 respectability and this wicked world, and declare 
 them to be for once utterly in the right. Still there 
 are excuses for it. A poet, especially one who wishes 
 to be not merely a describer of pretty things, but a 
 " Vates ^' and seer of new truth, must often say things 
 which other people do not like to say, and do things 
 which others do not like to do. And, moreover, he 
 will be generally gifted, for the very purpose of enabling 
 him to say and do these strange things, with a sensi- 
 bility more delicate than common, often painful enough 
 to himself. How easy for such a man to think that he 
 has a right not to be as other men are; to despise little 
 conventionalities, courtesies, even decencies ; to offend 
 boldly and carelessly, conscious that he has something 
 right and valuable within himself which not only atones 
 for such defects, but allows him to indulge in them, as 
 badges of his own superiority ! 
 
 This has been the notion of artistic genius which 
 has spread among us of late years, just in propor- 
 tion as the real amount of artistic genius has 
 diminished ; till we see men, on the mere ground of 
 being literary men, too refined to keep accounts, or 
 pay their butchers' bills; affecting the pettiest ab- 
 surdities in dress, in manner, in food; giving them- 
 
56 THOUGHTS ON SHELLEY AND BYEON. [ir. 
 
 selves credit for being unable to bear a noise, keep 
 their temper, educate their own cliildren, associate 
 witb tbeir fellow-men ; and a thousand other paltry 
 weaknesses, morosenesses, self-indulgences, fastidious- 
 nesses, vulgarities — for all this is essentially vulgar, 
 and demands, not honour and sympathy, but a chapter 
 in Mr. Thackeray^s '''Book of Snobs." Non sic 
 itur ad astra. Self-indulgence and exclusiveness 
 can only be a proof of weakness. It may accompany 
 talent, but it proves that talent to be partial and de- 
 fective. The brain may be large, but the manhood, 
 the '*^ virtus,'^ is small, where such things are allowed, 
 much more where they are gloried in. A poet such a 
 man may be, but a world poet never. He is sectarian, 
 a poetical Quaker, a Puritan, who, forgetting that the 
 truth which he possesses is equally the right and in- 
 heritance of every man he meets, takes up a peculiar 
 dress or phraseology, as symbols of his fancied differ- 
 ence from his human brothers. All great poets, till 
 Shelley and Byron, as far as we can discern, have been 
 men especially free from eccentricities; careful not 
 merely of the chivalries and the respectabilities, but 
 also of the courtesies and the petty conventionalities, 
 of the age in which they lived ; altogether well-bred 
 men of the world. The answer, that they learnt the 
 ways of courts, does not avail ; for if they had had no 
 innate good-breeding, reticence, respect for forms and 
 customs, they would never have come near courts at 
 all. It is not a question of rank and fashion, but of 
 good feeling, common sense, unselfishness. Goethe, 
 Milton, Spenser, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Ariosto, were 
 none of them high-born men ; several of them low- 
 
n.] SHELLEY AND BYEON. 57 
 
 born ; wlio only rose to tlie society of higli-'born men 
 because tliey were themselves innately liigh-bred, 
 polished, complete, without exaggerations, affectations, 
 deformities, weaknesses of mind and taste, whatever 
 may have been their weaknesses on certain points of 
 morals. The man of all men most bepraised by the 
 present generation of poets, is perhaps Wolfgang von 
 Goethe. Why is it, then, that of all men he is the one 
 whom they strive to be most unlike ? 
 
 And if this be good counsel for the man who merely 
 wishes — and no blame to him — to sing about beautiful 
 things in a beautiful way, it applies with tenfold force 
 to the poet who desires honestly to proclaim great 
 truths. If he has to offend the prejudices of the world 
 in important things, that is all the more reason for his 
 bowing to those prejudices in little things, and being 
 content to be like his neighbours in outward matters, 
 in order that he may make them like himself in inward 
 ones. Shall such a man dare to hinder his own message, 
 to drive away the very hearers to whom he believes 
 himself to be sent, for the sake of his own nerves, 
 laziness, antipathies, much more of his own vanity and 
 pride ? If he does so, he is unfaithful to that very 
 genius on which he prides himself. He denies its 
 divinity, by treating it as his own possession, to be 
 displayed or hidden as he chooses, for his own enjoy- 
 ment, his own self-glorification. Well for such a man 
 if a day comes to him in which he will look back with 
 shame and self-reproach, not merely on every scandal 
 which he may have caused by breaking the moral and 
 social laws of humanity, by neglecting to restrain his 
 appetites, pay his bills, and keep his engagements ; 
 
58 THOUGHTS OX SHELLEY AND BYEON. [ii. 
 
 but also on every conceited word and lookj every 
 gaucherie and rudeness^ every self-indulgent morose- 
 ness and fastidiousness^ as sins against the sacred 
 charge which has been committed to him ; and 
 determine with that Jew of old^ who, to judge from 
 his letter to Philemon, was one of the most perfect 
 gentlemen of God^s making' who ever walked this 
 earth, to become " all things to all men, if by any 
 means he may save some." 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER 
 . POPE. 
 
ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER 
 POPE. 
 
 Ox reading this little book,* and considering all the 
 exaggerated praise and exaggerated blame which have 
 been lavished on it, we could not help falling into 
 many thoughts about the history of English poetry for 
 the last forty years, and about its future destiny. 
 Great poets, even true poets, are becoming more and 
 more rare among us. There are those even who say 
 that we have none ; an assertion which, as long as 
 Mr. Tennyson lives, we shall take the liberty of deny- 
 ing. But were he, which Heaven forbid, taken from us, 
 whom have we to succeed him ? And he, too, is rather 
 a poet of the sunset than of the dawn — of the autumn 
 than of the spring. His gorgeousness is that of the 
 solemn and fading year ; not of its youth, full of hope, 
 freshness, gay and unconscious life. Like some stately 
 hollyhock or dahlia of this month's gardens, he 
 endures while all other flowers are dying; but all 
 
 * " Poems," by Alexander Smith. London : Bogue. 1853. 
 Fraser's Magazine, October, 1853. 
 
62 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [m. 
 
 around is winter — a mild one^, perhaps, wherein a few 
 annuals or pretty field weeds still linger on ; but, like 
 all mild winters, especially prolific in fungi, which, 
 too, are not without their gaudiness, even their beauty, 
 although bred only from the decay of higher organisms, 
 the plagiarists of the vegetable world. Such is poetry 
 in England ; while in America the case is not much 
 better. What more enormous scope for new poetic 
 thought than that which the New World gives ? Yet 
 the American poets, even the best of them, look 
 lingeringly and longingly back to Europe and her 
 legends ; to her models, and not to the best of them 
 — to her criticism, and not to the best of that — and 
 bestow but a very small portion of such genius as they 
 have on America and her new forms of life. If they 
 be nearer to the spring than we, they are still deep 
 enough in the winter. A few early flowers may be 
 budding among them, but the autumn crop is still in 
 somewhat shabby and rain-bedrabbled bloom. And 
 for us, where are our spring flowers ? What sign of 
 a new poetic school ? Still more, what sign of the 
 healthy resuscitation of any old one ? 
 
 " What matter, after all ? " one says to oneself in 
 despair, re-echoing Mr. Carlyle. '' Man was not sent 
 into the world to write poetry. What we want is truth. 
 Of the former we have enough in all conscience just 
 now. Let the latter need be provided for by honest 
 and righteous history, and as for poets, let the dead 
 bury their dead.'" And yet, after all, man will write 
 poetry, in spite of Mr. Carlyle : nay, beings who 
 are not men, but mere forked radishes, will write it. 
 Man is a poetry-writing animal. Perhaps he y\ 
 
III.] ALEXANDER SMITH. 63 
 
 meant to be one. At all events^ he can no more be 
 kept from it tban from eating. It is better, witb 
 Mr, Carlyle's leave, to believe tbat the existence of 
 poetry indicates some universal human hunger, whether 
 after '''the beautiful/' or after ''iame/' or after the 
 means of paying butchers' bills ; and accepting it as 
 a necessary evil which must be committed,, to see that 
 it be committed as well, or at least as little ill, as pos- 
 sible. In excuse of which we may quote Mr. Carlyle 
 against himself, reminding him of a saying of Goethe 
 once bepraised by him in print : " We must take 
 care of the beautiful, for the useful will take care of 
 itself." 
 
 And never, certainly, since Pope wrote his Danciad, 
 did the beautiful require more taking care of, or evince 
 less capacity for taking care of itself ; and never, we 
 must add, was less capacity for taking care of it evinced 
 by its accredited guardians of the press than at this 
 present time, if the reception given to Mr. Smith's 
 poems is to be taken as a fair expression of " the 
 public taste." 
 
 Now, let it be fairly understood, Mr. Alexander 
 Smith is not the object of our reproaches : but Mr. 
 Alexander Smith's models and flatterers. Against 
 him we have nothing whatsoever to say ; for him, very 
 much indeed. 
 
 Very young, as is said, self-educated, drudging for 
 his daily bread in some dreary Glasgow prison-house of 
 brick and mortar, he has seen the sky, the sun and 
 moon — and, moreover, the sea, report says, for one 
 day in his whole life ; and this is nearly the whole of 
 his experience in natural objects. And he has felt, too 
 
64 ALEXANDER SMITH AXD ALEXAISTDER POPE. [in. 
 
 painfully for his peace of mind, tlie contrast between 
 his environment and that of others — his means of 
 culture and that of others — and, still more painfully, 
 the contrast between his environment and culture, and 
 that sense of beauty and power of melody which he 
 does not deny that he has found in himself, and which 
 no one can deny who reads his poems fairly ; who 
 reads even merely the opening page and key-note of 
 the whole : 
 
 For as a torrid sunset burns -with gold 
 
 Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul 
 
 A passion burns from basement unto cope. 
 
 Poesy, poesy, I'd give to thee 
 
 As passionately my rich laden years, 
 
 My bubble pleasures, and my awful joys, 
 
 As Hero gave her tremhling sighs to find 
 
 Delicious death on wet Leander's lip. 
 
 Bare, bald, and tawdry, as a fingered moth 
 
 Is my poor life ; but with one smile thou canst 
 
 Clothe me with kingdoms. "Wilt thou smile on me ? 
 
 Wilt bid me die for thee ? Oh fair and cold ! 
 
 As well may some wild maiden waste her love 
 
 Upon the calm front of a marble Jove. 
 
 Now this scrap is by no means a fair average 
 specimen of Mr. Smith's verse. But is not the self- 
 educated man who could teach himself, amid Glasgow 
 smoke and noise, to write such a distich as that 
 exquisite one which we have given in italics, to be 
 judged lovingly and hopefully ? 
 
 What if he has often copied ? What if, in this very 
 scrap, chosen almost at random, there should be a touch 
 from Tennyson's " Two Voices ? " And what if imita- 
 tions, nay, caricatures, be found in almost every page ? 
 
III.] ALEXANDER SMITH. 6d 
 
 Is not the explanation simple enough, and rather 
 creditable than discreditable to Mr. Smith ? He takes 
 as his models Shelley, Keats, and their followers. Who 
 is to blame for that ? The Glasgow youth, or the 
 public taste, which has been exalting these authors 
 more and more for the last twenty years as the great 
 poets of the nineteenth century ? If they are the 
 proper ideals of the day, who will blame him for 
 following them as closely as possible — for saturating 
 his memory so thoroughly with their words and 
 thoughts that he reproduces them unconsciously to 
 himself ? Who will blame him for even consciously 
 copying their images, if they have said better than he 
 the thing which he wants to say, in the only poetical 
 dialect which he knows ? He does no more than all 
 schools have done, copy their own masters ; as the 
 Greek epicists and Virgil copied Homer ; as all suc- 
 ceeding Latin epicists copied Virgil ; as Italians copied 
 Ariosto and Tasso ; as every one who can copies 
 Shakespeare ; as the French school copied, or thought 
 they copied, " The Classics," and as a matter of duty 
 used to justify any bold image in their notes, not by 
 its originality, but by its being already in Claudian, or 
 Lucan, or Virgil, or Ovid; as every poetaster, and a 
 great many who were more than poetasters, twenty 
 years ago, used to copy Scott and Byron, and as all 
 poetasters now are copying the very same models as 
 Mr. Smith, and failing while he succeeds. 
 
 We by no means agree in the modern outcry for 
 " originality." Is it absolutely demanded that no poet 
 shall say anything whatsoever that any other poet has 
 said ? If so, Mr. Smith may well submit to a blame 
 
 L. G. F 
 
6Cy ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [in. 
 
 wMcTi he will bear in common witli Shakespeare, 
 Chaucer, Pope, and many another great name ; and 
 especially with Raphael himself, who made no scruple 
 of adopting not merely points of style, but single 
 motives and incidents, from contemporaries and pre- 
 decessors. Who can look at any of his earlier pictures, 
 the Crucifixion for instance, at present in Lord Ward's 
 gallery at the Egyptian Hall, without seeing that 
 he has not merely felt the influence of Perugino, but 
 copied him ; tried deliberately to be as like his master 
 as he could ? Was this plagiarism ? If so, all educa- 
 tion, it would seem, must be a mere training in 
 plagiarism. For how is the student to learn, except 
 by copying his master's models ? Is the young painter 
 or sculptor a plagiarist because he spends the first, 
 often the best, years of his life in copying Greek 
 statues ; or the schoolboy, for toiling at the repro- 
 duction of Latin metres and images, in what are 
 honestly and fittingly called '" copies " of verses ? 
 And what if the young artist shall choose, as Mr. 
 Smith has done, to put a few drawings into the exhi- 
 bition, or to carve and sell a few statuettes ? What 
 if the schoolboy, grown into a gownsman, shall contri- 
 bute his share to a set of " Arundines Cami " or '^^ Pro- 
 lusiones Etonienses ? " Will any one who really knows 
 what art or education means complain of them for 
 having imitated their models, however servilely ? Will 
 he not rather hail such an imitation as a fair proof, 
 first of the student's reverence for authority — a more 
 important element of " genius" than most young folks 
 fancy — and next, of his possessing any artistic power 
 whatsoever ? For, surely, if the greater contains the 
 
III.] ALEXANDER SMITH. 67 
 
 lesSj tlie power of creating must contain that of imi- 
 tating. A young author's power of accurate imitation 
 is, after all, the primary and indispensable test of his 
 having even the capabihty of becoming a poet. He 
 who cannot write in a style which he does know, will 
 certainly not be able to invent a new style for himself. 
 The first and simplest form in which any metrical ear, 
 or fancy, or imagination, can show itself, must needs 
 be in imitating existing models. Innate good taste — 
 that is, true poetic genius — will of course choose the 
 best models in the long run. But not necessarily at 
 first. What shall be the student's earliest ideal must 
 needs be determined for him by circumstance, by the 
 books to which he has access, by the public opinion 
 which he hears expressed. Enough if he chooses, as 
 Eaphael did, the best models which he knows, and 
 tries to exhaust them, and learn all he can from them, 
 ready to quit them hereafter when he comes across 
 better ones, yet without throwing away what he has 
 learnt. " Be faithful in a few things, and thou shalt 
 become ruler over many things,'' is one of those eternal 
 moral laws which^ hke many others, holds as true of 
 art as it does of virtue. 
 
 And on the whole, judging Mr. Alexander Smith by 
 this rule, he has been faithful over a few things, and 
 therefore we have fair hope of him for the future. For 
 Mr. Smith does succeed, not in copying one poet, but 
 in copying all, and very often in improving on his 
 models. Of the many conceits which he has borrowed 
 from Mr. Bailey, there is hardly one which he has not 
 made more true, more pointed and more sweet; nay, 
 in one or two places, he has dared to mend John Keats 
 
 p 2 
 
68 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [iii. 
 
 Jbimself. But Ms whole merit is by no means confined 
 to the faculty of imitatiou. Though the "Life Drama" 
 itself is the merest cento of reflections and images, 
 without coherence or organisation, dramatic or logical^ 
 yet single scenes, like that with the peasant and that 
 with the fallen outcast, have firm self-consistency and 
 clearness of conception ; and these, as a natural con- 
 sequence, are comparatively free from those tawdry 
 spangles which deface the greater part of the poem. 
 And, moreover, in the episode of " The Indian and the 
 Lady," there is throughout a "keeping in the tone," as 
 painters say, sultry and languid, yet rich and full of 
 life, like a gorgeous Venetian picture, which augurs 
 even better for Mr. SmitVs future success than the 
 two scenes just mentioned ; for consistency of thought 
 may come with time and training ; but clearness of in- 
 ward vision, the faculty of imagination, can be no more 
 learnt than it can be dispensed with. In this, and this 
 only it is true that poeta nascitur non fit ; just as no 
 musical learning or practice can make a composer, 
 unless he first possess an innate ear for harmony and 
 melody. And it must be said that it is just in the 
 passages where Mr. Smith is not copying, where he 
 forgets for awhile Shelley, Keats, and the rest, and is 
 content to be simply himself, that he is best; terse, 
 vivid, sound, manly, simple. May he turn round some 
 day, and deliberately pulling out all borrowed feathers, 
 look at himself honestly and boldly in the glass, and we 
 will warrant him, on the strength of the least gaudy, 
 and as yet unpraised passages in his poems, that he will 
 find himself after all more eagle than daw, and quite 
 well plumed enough by nature to fly at a higher. 
 
ni.] ALEXANDER SMITH. 69 
 
 because for him a moi'e natural, pitcli than he has yet 
 done. 
 
 True, he has wiitten a great deal of nonsense; 
 nonsense in matter as well as in manner. But therein, 
 too, he has only followed the reigning school. As 
 for manner, he does sometimes, in imitating his models, 
 out-Herod Herod. But why not? If Herod be a 
 worthy king, let him be by all means out-Heroded, if 
 any man can do it. One cannot have too much of a 
 good thing. If it be right to bedizen verses with 
 metaphors and similes which have no reference, either 
 in tone or in subject, to the matter in hand, let there 
 be as many of them as possible. If a saddle is a proper 
 place for jewels, then let the seat be paved with 
 diamonds and emeralds, and Bunjeet Singh^s harness- 
 maker be considered as a lofty artist, for whose barbaric 
 splendour Mr. Peat and his Melton customers are to 
 forswear pigskin and severe simj)licity — not to say 
 utility and comfort. If poetic diction be different in 
 species from plain English, then let us have it as 
 poetical as possible, and as unlike English; as ungram- 
 matical, abrupt, involved, transposed, as the clumsiness, 
 carelessness, or caprice of man can make it. If it be 
 correct to express human thought by writing whole 
 pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and then 
 trying to explain them by concrete concetti, which bear 
 an entirely accidental and mystical likeness to the 
 notion which they are to illustrate, then let the meta- 
 physic be as abstract as possible, the concetti as fanciful 
 and far-fetched as possible. If Marino and Cowley be 
 greater poets than Ariosto aud Milton, let young poets 
 imitate the former with might and main, and avoid 
 
70 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [in. 
 
 spoiling their style by any perusal of the too-intelligible 
 common sense of the latter. If Byron^s moral (which 
 used to be thought execrable) be really his great excel- 
 lence, and his style (which used to be thought almost 
 perfect) unworthy of this age of progress, then let us 
 have his moral without his style, his matter without 
 his form ; or — that we may be sure of never falling for 
 a moment into his besetting sins of terseness, grace, 
 and completeness — without any form at all. If poetry, 
 in order to be worthy of the nineteenth century^ ought 
 to be as unlike as possible to Homer or Sophocles, 
 Virgil or Horace, Shakespeare or Spenser, Dante or 
 Tasso, let those too-idolised names be rased hence- 
 forth from the calendar; let the '^Ars Poetica^' be 
 consigned to flames, and Martinus Scriblerus's " Art 
 of Sinking^' placed forthwith on the list of the Com- 
 mittee of Council for Education, that not a working 
 man in England may be ignorant that, whatsoever 
 superstitions about art may have haunted the benighted 
 heathens who built the Parthenon, nous avons change 
 tout cela. In one word, if it be best and most fitting 
 to wi'ite poetry in the style in which almost every one 
 has been trying to write it since Pope and plain sense 
 went out, and Shelley and the seventh heaven came in, 
 let it be so written ; and let him who most perfectly so 
 " sets the age to music,^^ be presented by the assembled 
 guild of critics, not with the obsolete and too classic 
 laurel, but with an electro-plated brass medal, bearing 
 the due inscription, "Ars est nescire artem/^ And 
 when, in twelve months' time, he finds himself forgot- 
 ten, perhaps decried, for the sake of the next aspirant, 
 let him reconsider himself, try whether, after all, th& 
 
III.] ALEXANDER POPE. 71 
 
 common sense of tlie many will not prove a juster and 
 a firmer standing- ground than tlie sentimentality and 
 bad taste of tlie few, and read Alexander Pope. 
 
 In Pope^s writings, whatsoever he may not find, he 
 will find the very excellences after which our young- 
 poets strive in vain, produced by their seeming oppo- 
 sites, which are now despised and discarded ; natural- 
 ness produced by studious art; sublimity by strict 
 self-restraint; depth by clear simplicity; pathos by 
 easy grace ; and a morality infinitely more merciful, as 
 well as more righteous, than the one now in vogue 
 among the poetasters, by honest faith in God. If he be 
 shocked by certain peculiarities of diction, and by the 
 fondness for perpetual antitheses, let him remember, 
 that what seems strange to our day was natural 
 and habitual in Pope^s; and that, in the eyes of our 
 grandchildren, Keats^s and Shelley^s peculiarities will 
 seem as monstrous as Pope's or Johnson's do in ours. 
 But if, misled by the popular contempt for Pope, he 
 should be inclined to answer this advice with a shrug 
 and a smile, we entreat him and all young poets, to 
 consider, line by line, word by word, sound by sound, 
 only those once well-known lines, which many a brave 
 and wise man of fifty years ago would have been unable 
 to read without honourable tears : 
 
 In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half -hung, 
 The floor of plaster, and the walls of dung. 
 On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw, 
 "With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw, 
 The George and Garter, dangling from that bed, 
 Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, 
 Great Yilliers lies. Alas ! how changed from him. 
 That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim ! 
 
72 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [iii- 
 
 Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, 
 
 The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love ; 
 
 Or just as gay, at Council, in a ring 
 
 Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king, 
 
 Xo wit to flatter, left of all his store ! 
 
 Xo fool to laugh at, which he valued more. 
 
 There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, 
 
 And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends. 
 
 Yes ; Pope knew, as well as ^Vordswortli and our 
 " Naturalist!/' that no physical fact was so mean or 
 coarse as to be below the dignity of poetry — when in 
 its right place. He could draw a pathos and sublimity 
 out of the dirty inn chamber, such as Wordsworth 
 never elicited from tubs and daffodils — because he 
 could use them according to the rules of art, which are 
 the rules of sound reason and of true taste. 
 
 The answer to all this is ready nowadays. We 
 are told that Pope could easily be great in what he 
 attempted, because he never attempted any but small 
 matters ; easily self -restraining, because his paces were 
 naturally so slow ; above all, easily clear, because he 
 is always shallow; easily full of faith in what he did 
 believe, because he believed so very little. On the 
 two former counts we may have something to say here- 
 after. On the two latter, we will say at once, that if 
 it be argued, as it often is, that the reason of our 
 modern poetical obscurity and vagueness lies in the 
 greater depth of the questions which are now agitating 
 thoughtful minds, we do utterly deny it. Human 
 nature, human temptations, human problems, are radi- 
 cally the same in every age, by whatsoever outward 
 difference of words they may seem distinguished. 
 
HI.] ALEXANDER POPE. 73 
 
 Where is deeper pliilosopliic tliouglit^ true or false, 
 expressed in verse, than in Dante, or in Spenser^s two 
 cantos of " Mutabilities " ? Yet if they are difficult to 
 understand, their darkness is that of the deep blue sea. 
 Vague they never are, obscure they never are, because 
 they see clearly what they want to say, and how to say 
 it. There is always a sound and cohei'ent meaning in 
 them, to be found if it be searched for. 
 
 The real cause of this modern vagueness is rather to 
 be found in shallow and unsound culture, and in that 
 inability, or carelessness about seeing any object 
 clearly, which besets our poets just now ; as the cause 
 of antique clearness lies in the nobler and healthier 
 manhood, in the severer and more methodic habits of 
 thought, the sounder philosophic and critical training, 
 which enabled Spenser and Milton to draw up a state 
 paper, or to discourse deep metaphysics, with the same 
 manful possession of their subject which gives grace 
 and completeness to the ^' Penseroso " or the " Epithala- 
 niion." And if our poets have their doubts, they should 
 remember, that those to whom doubt and inquiry are 
 real and stern, are not inclined to sing about them till 
 they can sing poems of triumph over them. There has 
 no temptation taken our modern poets save that which 
 is common to man — the temptation of wishing to make 
 the laws of the universe and of ai't fit them, as they 
 do not feel inclined to make themselves fit the laws, or 
 care to find them out. 
 
 What ! Do you wish, asks some one, a little con- 
 temptuously, to measure the great growing nineteenth 
 century by the thumb-rule of Alexander Pope ? No, 
 But to measure the men who write in the nineteenth 
 
74 ALEXANDEE SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [in. 
 
 century by a man wlio wrote in the eigliteentli ; to 
 compare tlieir advantages witli liis, tlieir circumstances 
 witli liis : and then, if possible, to make tliem ashamed 
 of their unmanliness. Have you young poets of this 
 day^ your struggles, your chagrins ? Do you think the 
 hump-backed dwarf, every moment conscious at once 
 of his deformity and his genius — conscious, probably, 
 of far worse physical shame than any deformity can 
 bi'ing, '' sewed up in buckram every morning, and re- 
 quiring a nurse like a child '^ — caricatured, lampooned, 
 slandered, utterly without fault of his own — insulted 
 and rejected by the fine lady whom he had dared to 
 court in reality, after being allowed and allured to flirt 
 with her in rhyme — do you suppose that this man 
 had nothing to madden him — to convert him into a 
 sneering snarling misanthrope? Yet was there one 
 noble soul who met him who did not love him, or whom 
 he did not love? Have you your doubts? Do you 
 find it difficult to make your own speculations, even 
 your own honest convictions, square with the popular 
 superstitions ? What were your doubts, your inward 
 contradictions, to those of a man who, bred a Papist, 
 and yet burning with the most intense scorn and hatred 
 of lies and shams, bigotries and priestcrafts, could 
 write that " Essay on Man '^ ? Eead that, young 
 gentlemen of the Job's-wife school, who fancy it a fine 
 thing to tell your readers to curse God and die, or, at 
 least, to show the world in print how you could curse 
 God by divine right of genius, if you chose, and be 
 ashamed of your cowardly wailings. 
 
 Alexander Pope went through doubt, contradiction, 
 confusion, to which yours are simple and light ; and 
 
m.] ALEXANDER POPE. 75 
 
 conquered. He was a man of like passions with your- 
 selves ; infected with, the peculiar vices of his day ; 
 narrowj for his age was narrow ; shallow, for his age 
 was shallow ; a bon-vivant, for his age was a gluttonous 
 and drunken one; bitter, furious, and personal, for 
 men round him were such; foul-mouthed often, and 
 indecent, as the rest were. Nay, his very power, when 
 he abuses it for his own ends of selfish spite and 
 injured vanity, makes him, as all great men can be (in 
 words at least, for in life he was far better than the 
 men around him), worse than his age. He can out- 
 rival Dennis in ferocity, and Congreve in filth. So 
 much the worse for him in that account which he has 
 long ago rendered up. But in all times and places, as 
 far as we can judge, the man was heart-whole, more 
 and not less righteous than his fellows. With his 
 whole soul he hates what is evil, as far as he can re- 
 cognise it. With his whole soul he loves what is good, 
 as far as he can recognise that. With his soul believes 
 that there is a righteous and good God, whose order 
 no human folly or crime can destroy ; and he will say 
 so ; and does say it, clearly, simply, valiantly, reve- 
 rently, in his '^ Essay on Man." His theodicy is 
 narrow ; shallow, as was the philosophy of his age. 
 But as far as it goes, it is sound — faithful to God, and 
 to what he sees and knows. Man is made in God^s 
 image. Man's justice is God's justice ; man's mercy 
 is God's mercy ; man's science, man's critic taste, are 
 insights into the laws of God himself. He does not 
 pretend to solve the great problem. But he believes 
 that it is solved from all eternity; that God knows, 
 God loves, and God rules ; that the righteous and 
 
76 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [in. 
 
 faithful man may know enough, of the sohition to know 
 his dutjj to see his way, to justify God; and as much 
 as he knows he tells. There were in that diseased 
 sensitive cripple no vain repinings, no moon-struck 
 howls, no impious cries against God: '^^ Why hast thou 
 made me thus ? " To him God is a righteous God, 
 a God of order. Science, philosophy, politics, criti- 
 cism, poetry, are parts of His order — they are parts of 
 the appointed onward path for mankind; there are 
 eternal laws for them. There is a beautiful and fit 
 order, in poetry, which is part of God's order, which 
 men have learnt ages ago,forthey,too,had their teaching 
 from above; to offend against which is absolutely wrong, 
 an offence to be put down mildly in those who offend 
 ignorantly ; but those who offend from dulness, from 
 the incapacity to see the beautiful, or from careless- 
 ness about it, when praise or gain tempts them the 
 other way, have some moral defect in them ; they are 
 what Solomon calls fools : they are the enemies of 
 man ; and he will " hate them right sore, even as 
 though they were his own enemies " — which indeed 
 they were. He knows by painful experience that they 
 deserve no quarter ; that there is no use giving them 
 any; to spare them is to make them insolent; to fondle 
 the reptile is to be bitten by it. True poetry, as the 
 messenger of heavenly beauty, is decaying; true refine- 
 ment, true loftiness of thought, even true morality, are 
 at stake. And so he writes his "Dunciad.^^ And 
 would that he were here, to wi'ite it over again, and 
 write it better ! 
 
 For write it again he surely would. And write it 
 better he would also. With the greater cleanliness of 
 
III.] ALEXANDER POPE. 77 
 
 our timej with all tlie additional experience of history, 
 witli the greater classical, sestlietic, and theological 
 knowledge of our day, the sins of our poets are as 
 much less excusable than those of Busden, Blackmore, 
 Gibber, and the rest, as Pope's " Dunciad " on them 
 would be more righteously severe. What, for instance? 
 would the author of the ^^ Essay on Man" say to anyone 
 who now wrote p. 137 (for it really is not to be quoted) 
 of the '' Life Drama" as the thoughts of his hero, with- 
 out any after atonement for the wanton insult it conveys 
 toward him whom he dares in the same breath to call 
 " Father," simply because he wants to be something 
 very fine and famous and self-glorifying, and Provi- 
 dence keeps him waiting awhile ? Has Pope not said it 
 already ? 
 
 Persist, by all divine in man unawed, 
 
 But learn, ye dunces, not to scorn your God ! 
 
 And yet no ; the gentle goddess would now lay no 
 such restriction on her children, for in Pope's day no 
 man had discovered the new poetic plan for making the 
 divine in man an excuse for scorning God, and finding 
 in the dignity of " heaven-born genius " free licence to 
 upbraid, on the very slightest grounds, the Being from 
 whom the said genius pretends to derive his dignity. In 
 one of his immortal saws he has cautioned us against 
 '^making God in man's image." But it never entered 
 into his simple head that man would complain of God 
 for being made in a lower image than even his own. 
 Atheism he could conceive of ; the deeper absurdity of 
 Authotheism was left for our more enlightened times 
 and more spiritual muses. 
 
78 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [iii. 
 
 It will be answered tliat all this blasphemy is not 
 to be attributed to the author;, but to the man whose 
 spiritual development he intends to sketch. To which 
 we reply that no man has a right to bring his hero 
 through such a state without showing how he came 
 out of the slough as carefully as how he came into it, 
 especially when the said hero is set forth as a marvel- 
 lously clever person ; and the last scene, though full 
 of beautiful womanly touches, and of a higher morality 
 than the rest of the book, contains no amende honor- 
 able, not even an explanation of the abominable stuff 
 which the hero has been talking a few pages back. 
 He leaps from the abyss to the seventh heaven ; but, 
 unfortunately for the spectators, he leaps behind the 
 scenes, and they are none the wiser. And next ; 
 people have no more right, even for dramatic purposes, 
 to put such language into print for any purpose what- 
 soever, than they have to print the grossest indecencies, 
 or the most disgusting details of torture and cruelty. 
 No one can accuse this magazine of any fondness for 
 sanctimonious cant or lip-reverence ; but if there be a 
 " Father in Heaven,^^ as Mr. Smith confesses that there 
 is, or even merely a personal Deity at all, some sort of 
 common decency in speaking of Him should surely be 
 preserved. No one would print pages of silly calumny 
 and vulgar insult against his earthly father, or even 
 against a person for whom he had no special dislike, 
 and then excuse it by, " Of course, I don't think so : 
 but if anyone did think so, this would be a very smart 
 way of saying what he thought. '' Old Aristotle would 
 call such an act " banauson " — in plain English, black- 
 guard; and we do not see how it can be called anything 
 
III.] ALEXANDER SMITH. 79 
 
 else^ unless in tlie case of some utter brute in human 
 f orm^ to whom " there is no ccenum, and therefore no 
 obscoenum ; no fanum, and therefore no profanum." 
 The common sense of mankind in all ages has con- 
 demned this sort of shamelessness, even more than it 
 has insults to parental and social ties, and to all which 
 raises man above the brute. Let Mr. Smith take 
 note of this, and let him, if he loves himself, mend 
 speedily ; for of all styles wherein to become stereo- 
 typed the one which he has chosen is the worst, because 
 in it the greatest amount of insincerity is possible. 
 There is a Tartarus in front of him as well as an 
 Olympus ; a hideous possibility very near him of 
 insincere impiety merely for the purpose of startling ; 
 of lawless fancy merely for the purpose of glittering ; 
 and a still more hideous possibility of a revulsion to 
 insincere cant, combined with the same lawless fancy, 
 for the purpose of keeping well with the public, in 
 which to all appearances one of our most popular 
 novelists, not to mention the poet whose writings are 
 most analogous to Mr. Smithes, now lies wallowing. 
 
 Whether he shall hereafter obey his evil angel, and 
 follow him, or his good angel, and become a great 
 poet, depends upon himself ; and above all upon his 
 having courage to be himself, and to forget himself, 
 two virtues which, paradoxical as it may seem, are 
 correlatives. For the " subjective " poet — in plain 
 words, the egotist — is always comparing himself with 
 every man he meets, and therefore momentarily tempted 
 to steal bits of their finery wherewith to patch his own 
 rents ; while the man who is content to be simply what 
 God has made him, goes on from strength to strength 
 
80 ALEXANDEE SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [iir, 
 
 developing almost unconsciously under a divine educa- 
 tion, by wliich liis real personality and the salient 
 points by wMcli he is distinguished from his fellows, 
 become apparent -with more and more distinctness of 
 form, and brilliance of light and shadow, as those well 
 know who have watched human character attain its 
 clearest and grandest as well as its loveliest outlines, 
 not among hankerers after fame and power, but on 
 lonely sickbeds, and during long unknown martyrdoms 
 of humble self-sacrifice and loving drudgery. 
 
 But whether or not Mr. Smith shall purify himself 
 — and he can do so, if he will, right nobly — the world 
 must be purified of his style of poetry, if men are ever, 
 as he hopes, to " set his age to music ; " much more if 
 they are once more to stir the hearts of the many by 
 Tyrttean strains, such as may be needed before our hairs 
 are gray. The ''poetry of doubt,'^ however pretty, 
 would stand us in little stead if we were threatened 
 with a second Armada. It will conduce little to the 
 valour, " virtus," manhood of any Englishman to be 
 informed by any poet, even in the most melodious 
 verse, illustrated by the most startling and pancosmic 
 metaphors. " See what a highly -organised and peculiar 
 stomach-ache I have had ! Does it not prove indis- 
 putably that I am not as other men are ? " What 
 gospel there can be in such a message to any honest 
 man Who has either to till the earth, plan a railroad, 
 colonise Australia, or fight his country^s enemies, is 
 hard to discover. Hard indeed to discover how this 
 most practical, and therefore most poetical, of ages, is 
 to be " set to music," when all those who talk about 
 so doing persist obstinately in poring, with intro- 
 
II.] WANT OF FAIT^ l/\y. . >* ^ij" 
 
 verted eyes^ over the state of their owipi diges^^Ji — or A t, 
 creed. v -f/ ' ^^ y, 
 
 What man wants, what art wants, perhaps wkajb^the q 
 Maker of them both wants, is a poet who shall biegi^i 
 by confessing that he is as other men are, and sing i 
 about things which concern all men, in language which 
 all men can understand. This is the only road to that 
 gift of prophecy which most young poets are nowa- 
 days in such a hurry to arrogate to themselves. We 
 can only tell what man will be by fair induction, by 
 knowing what he is, what he has been. 
 
 And it is most noteworthy that in this age, in 
 which there is more knowledge than there ever was of 
 what man has been, and more knowledge, through 
 innumerable novelists, and those most subtle and 
 finished ones, of what man is, that poetry should so 
 carefully avoid drawing from this fresh stock of infor- 
 mation in her so-confident horoscopes of what man 
 will be. 
 
 There is just now as wide a divorce between poetry 
 and the common-sense of all time, as there is between 
 poetry and modern knowledge. Our poets are not 
 merely vague and confused, they are altogether frag- 
 mentary — disjecta membra poetarum ; they need some 
 uniting idea. And what idea ? 
 
 Our answer will probably be greeted with a laugh. 
 Nevertheless we answer simply, What our poets want 
 is faith. 
 
 There is little or no faith nowadays. And without 
 faith there can be no real art, for ai^t is the outward 
 expression of firm coherent belief. And a poetry of 
 doubt, even a sceptical poetry, in its true sense, can 
 
 L. G. G 
 
82 ALEXAIS'DEE SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [iir. 
 
 never possess clear and sound form, even organic fonn 
 at all. How can you put into form tliat thouglit whicli 
 is by its very nature formless ? How can you group 
 words round a central idea wlien you do not possess a 
 central idea ? Shakespeare in Ms one sceptic tragedy 
 lias to desert the pure tragic form, and Hamlet remains 
 the beau-ideal of " the poetry of doubt." But what 
 would a tragedy be in which the actors were all 
 Hamlets, or rather scraps of Hamlets ? A drama of 
 Hamlet is only possible because the one sceptic is 
 surrounded by characters who have some positive 
 faith, who do their work for good or evil undoubtingly 
 while he is speculating about his. And both Ophelia, 
 and Laertes, Fortinbras, the king, yea the very grave- 
 digger, know well enough what they want, whether 
 Hamlet does or not. The whole play is, in fact, 
 Shakespeare's subtle reductio ad absurdum of that very 
 diseased type of mind which has been for the last 
 forty years identified with " genius " — with one differ- 
 ence, namely, that Shakespeare, with his usual clear- 
 ness of conception, exhibits the said intellectual type 
 pure and simple, while modern poets degrade and 
 confuse it, and all the questions dependent on it, 
 by mixing it up unnecessarily with all manner of 
 moral weaknesses, and very often moral crimes. 
 
 But the poet is to have a faith nowadays of course 
 — a " faith in nature." This article of Wordsworth's 
 poetical creed is to be assumed as the only necessary 
 one, and we are to ignore altogether the somewhat im- 
 portant fact that he had faith in a great deal besides 
 nature, and to make that faith in nature his sole diffe- 
 rentia and source of inspiration. Kow we beg leave to- 
 
III.] FAITH IN NATURE. 83 
 
 express not merely our want of faitli in this same ''faith 
 in nature/^ but even our ignorance of what it means. 
 Nature is certain phenomena, appearances. Faith in 
 them is simply to believe that a red thing is red, and a 
 square thing square; a sine qua non doubtless in poetry, 
 as in carpentry, but which will produce no poetry, but 
 only Dutch painting and gardeners^ catalogues — in a 
 word, that lowest form of art, the merely descriptive ; 
 and into this very style the modern naturalist poets, 
 from the times of Southey and Wordsworth, have been 
 continually falling, and falling therefore into baldness 
 and vulgarity. For mere description cannot represent 
 even the outlines of a whole scene at once, as the 
 daguerreotype does ; they must describe it piecemeal. 
 Much less can it represent that whole scene at once in 
 all its glories of colour, glow, fragrance, life, motion. 
 In short, it cannot give life and spirit. All merely 
 descriptive poetry can do is to give a dead catalogue — 
 to kill the butterfly, and then write a monograph on it. 
 And, therefore, there comes a natural revulsion from 
 the baldness and puerility into which Wordsworth too 
 often fell by indulging his false theories on these 
 matters. 
 
 But a revulsion to w^hat ? To the laws of course 
 which underlie the phenomena. But again — to which 
 laws ? Not merely to the physical ones, else Turner's 
 " Chemistry " and Watson's " Practice of Medicine " 
 are great poems. 
 
 True, we have heard Professor Forbes's book on 
 Glaciers called an epic poem, and not without reason : 
 but what gives that noble book its epic character is 
 neither the glaciers nor the laws of them, but the 
 
 Q 2 
 
Si ALEXANDER SMITH AXD ALEXANDER POPE. [in. 
 
 discovery of tliose laws : the metliodic, truthf ul/valiant, 
 patient battle between man and nature, liis final victory, 
 his wresting from lier the secret which had been locked 
 for ages in the ice-caves of the Alps, guarded by cold 
 and fatigue, danger and superstitious dread. For 
 Nature will be permanently interesting to the poet, and 
 appear to him in a truly poetic aspect, only in as far 
 as she is connected by him with spiritual and personal 
 beings, and becomes in his eyes either a person herself, 
 or the dwelling and organ of persons. The shortest 
 scrap of word-painting, as Thomson's '^ Seasons " will 
 sufficiently prove, is wearisome and dead, unless there 
 be a living figure in the landscape, or unless, failing a 
 living figure, the scene is deliberately described with 
 reference to the poet or the reader, not as something 
 in itself, but as something seen by him, and grouped 
 and subordinated exactly as it would strike his eye and 
 mind. But even this is insufficient. The heart of 
 man demands more, and so arises a craving after the 
 old nature-mythology of Greece, the old fairy legends of 
 the Middle Age. The great poets of the Eenaissance 
 both in England and in Italy had a similar craving. 
 But the aspect under which these ancient dreams are re- 
 garded by them is most significantly different. With 
 Spenser and Ariosto, fairies and elves, gods and demons, 
 are regarded in their fancied connection with man. 
 Even in the age of Pope, when the gods and the Rosi- 
 crucian Sylphs havebecome alike "poetical machinery," 
 this is their work. But among the moderns it is as 
 connected with Nature, and giving a soul and a per- 
 sonality to her, that they are most valued. The most 
 pure utterance of this feeling is perhaps Schiller's 
 
111.] GEEEK NATUEE— MYTHOLOGY. 85 
 
 " Gods of Greece/' where the loss of the Olympians is 
 distinctly deplored, because it has unpeopled, not 
 heaven, but earth. But the same tone runs through 
 Goethe's classical " Walpurgis Night," where the old 
 human " twelve gods," the antitypes and the friends 
 of men, in whom our forefathers delighted, have 
 vanished utterly, and given place to semi-physical 
 Nereides, Tritons, Telchines, Psylli, and Seismos 
 himself. 
 
 Keats, in his wonderful "Endymion," contrived to 
 unite the two aspects of Greek mythology as they 
 never had been united before, except by Spenser in his 
 '^ Garden of Adonis." But the pantheistic notion, as 
 he himself says in *' Lamia," was the one which lay 
 nearest his heart; and in his "Hyperion" he begins to 
 deal wholly with the Nature gods, and after magni- 
 ficent success, leaves the poem unfinished, most pro- 
 bably because he had become, as his readers must, 
 weary of its utter want of human interest. For that, 
 after all, is what is wanted in a poetical view of 
 Nature ; and that is what the poet, in proportion to his 
 want of dramatic faculty, must draw from himself. He 
 must — he does in these days — colour Nature with the 
 records of his own mind, and bestow a factitious life 
 and interest on her by making her reflect his own joy 
 or sorrow. If he be out of humour, she must frown ; 
 if he sigh, she must roar; if he be — what he very 
 seldom is — tolerably comfortable, the birds have liberty 
 to sing, and the sun to shine. But by the time that 
 he has arrived at this stage of his development, or 
 degradation, the poet is hardly to be called a strong 
 man. He who is so much the slave of his own moods 
 
86 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [in. 
 
 that lie must needs see no object save througli tliem, 
 is not very likely to be able to resist tlie awe wliicli 
 nature's grandeur and inscrutability brings with, it, 
 and to say firmly^, and yet reverently : 
 
 Si fractiis illabatur orbis, 
 Impavidum ferient ruinaa. 
 
 He feels, in spite of bis conceit, that nature is not 
 going bis way, or looking bis looks, but going wbat be 
 calls ber own way, wbat we call God's way. At all 
 events, be feels tbat be is lying, wben be represents 
 tbe great universe as turned to bis small set of Pan's 
 pipes, and all tbe more because be feels tbat, conceal 
 it as be will, tbose same Pan's pipes are out of tune 
 witb eacb otber. And so arises tbe babit of imper- 
 sonating nature, not after tbe manner of Spenser 
 (wbose purity of metaphor and philosophic method, 
 when he deals with nature, is generally even more 
 marvellous than the richness of bis fancy), as an 
 organic whole, but in her single and accidental pheno- 
 mena ; and of ascribing not merely animal passions or 
 animal enjoyment, but human discursive intellect and 
 moral sense, to inanimate objects, and talking as if a 
 stick or a stone were more of a man than tbe poet is — 
 as indeed they very often may be. 
 
 These, like everything else, are perfectly right in 
 their own place — where they express passion, either 
 pleasurable or painful, passion, tbat is, not so intense 
 as to sink into exhaustion, or to be compelled to self- 
 control by the fear of madness. In these two cases, as 
 great dramatists know well enough, the very violence 
 of tbe emotion produces perfect simplicity, as the bur- 
 
III.] MODERN POETICAL CONCEITS. 87 
 
 ricane blows tlie sea smooth. But where fanciful 
 language is employed to express the extreme of 
 passion, it is felt to be absurd, and is accordingly- 
 called rant and bombast : and where it is not used to 
 express passion at all, but merely the quiet and normal 
 state of the poet's mind, or of his characters, with 
 regard to external nature ; when it is considered, as 
 it is by most of our modern poets, the staple of 
 poetry, indeed poetic diction itself, so that the more 
 numerous and the stranger conceits an author can 
 cram into his verses, the finer poet he is ; then, also, 
 it is called rant and bombast, but of the most arti- 
 ficial, insincere, and (in every sense of the word) 
 monstrous kind ; the offspring of an effeminate nature- 
 worship, without self-respect, without true manhood, 
 because it exhibits the poet as the puppet of his own 
 momentary sensations, and not as a man superior to 
 nature, claiming his likeness to the Author of nature, 
 by confessing and expressing the permanent laws of 
 Nature, undisturbed by fleeting appearances without, 
 or fleeting tempers within. Hence it is that, as 
 in all insincere and effete times, the poetry of the 
 day deals more and more with conceits, and less and 
 less with true metaphors. In fact, hinc illse lachrym^. 
 This is, after all, the primary symptom of disease 
 in the public taste, which has set us on writing this 
 review — that critics all round are crying : " An ill- 
 constructed whole, no doubt ; but full of beautiful pas- 
 sages '' — the word " passages'' turning out to mean, 
 in plain English, conceits. The simplest distinction, 
 perhaps, between an image and a conceit is this — that 
 while both are analogies, the image is founded on an 
 
88 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [iii. 
 
 analogy between tlie essential properties of two things 
 — the conceit on an analogy between its accidents. 
 Images, therefore, whether metaphors or similes, deal 
 with laws ; conceits with private judgments. Images 
 belong to the imagination, the power which sees things 
 according to their real essence and inward life, and 
 conceits to the fancy or phantasy, which only see things 
 as they appear. 
 
 To give an example or two from the "Life Drama : " 
 
 His lieart holds a deep liope, 
 As holds the wretched West the sunset's corse — 
 Spit on, insulted by the brutal rains. 
 
 The passion-panting sea 
 Watches the unveiled beauty of the stars 
 Like a great hungry soul. 
 
 Great spirits, 
 Who left upon the mountain-tops of Death 
 A light that made them lovely. 
 
 The moon. 
 Arising from dark waves which plucked at her. 
 
 And hundreds, nay, thousands more in this book, 
 whereof it must be said, that beautiful or not, in the 
 eyes of the present generation — and many of them are 
 put into very beautiful language, and refer to very 
 beautiful natural objects — they are not beautiful really 
 and in themselves, because they are mere conceits; 
 the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not 
 on the nature of the things themselves, but on the 
 private fancy of the writer, having no more real and 
 logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun ; in plain 
 English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos j 
 
III.] COXCEITS AND IMAGES. 89 
 
 while their self-possession^ almost their reasou, is in 
 temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or 
 sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite fitness of 
 Juliet's " Gallop apace, ye fiery-footed steeds/^ etc., for 
 one of her character, in her circumstances : every one, 
 we trust, and Mr. Smith among the number, will some 
 day feel the exquisite unfitness of iising such conceits 
 as we have just quoted, or any other, page after page, 
 for all characters and chances. For the West is not 
 wretched ; the rains never were brutal yet, and do not 
 insult the sun's corpse, being some millions of miles 
 nearer us than the sun, but only have happened once 
 to seem to do so in the poet's eyes. The sea does not 
 pant with passion, does not hunger after the beauty of 
 the stars ; Death has no mountain-tops, or any property 
 which can be compared thereto ; and "'the dark waves" 
 — in that most beautiful conceit which follows, and 
 which Mr. Smith has borrowed from Mr. Bailey, im- 
 proving it marvellously nevertheless — do not "pluck 
 at the moon," but only seem to do so. And what con- 
 stitutes the beauty of this very conceit — far the best 
 of those we have chosen — but that it looks so very 
 like an image, so very like a law, from being so very 
 common and customary an ocular deception to one 
 standing on a low shore at night ? 
 
 Or, again, in a passage which has been already 
 often quoted as exquisite, and in its way is so : 
 
 The bridegroom sea 
 Is toying -tvitli the shore, his wedded bride ; 
 And in the fulness of his marriage joy 
 He decorates her tawny brow with shells, 
 Eetires a pace, to see how fair she looks. 
 Then prp ud, runs up to kiss her. 
 
90 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE, [iii. 
 
 Exquisite ? Yes ; but only exquisitely pretty. It 
 is untrue — a false explanation of tlie rush and recoil of 
 tlie waves. We learn nothing by these lines ; we gain 
 no fresh analogy between the physical and the spiritual 
 world, not even between two different parts of the 
 physical world. If the poetry of this age has a pecuhar 
 mission, it is to declare that such an analogy exists 
 throughout the two worlds ; then let poetry declare it. 
 Let it set forth a real intercommunion between man and 
 nature, grounded on a communion between man and 
 God, who made nature. Let it accept nature^s laws as 
 the laws of God. Truth, scientific truth, is the only 
 real beauty. '^ Let God be true, and every man a 
 liar.^^ 
 
 Now, be it remembered that by far the greater 
 proportion of this book consists of such thoughts as 
 these ; and that these are what are called its beauties ; 
 these are what young poets try more and more daily to 
 invent — conceits, false analogies. Be it remembered, 
 that the affectation of such conceits has always marked 
 the decay and approaching death of a reigning school of 
 poetry; that when, for instance, the primeval forest of 
 the Elizabethan poets dwindled down into a barren 
 scrub of Vanghans, and Cowleys, and Herberts, and 
 Crashawes, this was the very form in which the deadly 
 blight appeared. In vain did the poetasters, frightened 
 now and then at their own nonsense, try to keep up 
 the decaying dignity of poetry by drawing their 
 conceits, as poetasters do now^ from suns and galaxies, 
 earthquakes, echpses, and the portentous, and huge 
 and gaudy in Nature ; the lawlessness and irreverence 
 for Nature, involved in the very worship of conceits. 
 
III.] PURITAN COMMON SENSE. 91 
 
 went on degrading the tone of the conceits themselves, 
 till the very sense of true beauty and fitness seemed 
 lost; and a pious and refined gentleman like George 
 Herbert could actually dare to indite solemn con- 
 undrums to the Supreme Being, and believe that he 
 was writing devout poetry, and "looking through 
 nature up to nature's God,'^ when he delivered himself 
 thus in one of his least offensive poems (for the most 
 sacred and most offensive of them we dare not quote, 
 lest we incur the same blame which we have bestowed 
 on Mr. Smith, and sing of Church festivals as — ) • 
 
 Marrow of time, eternity in brief, 
 Compendiums epitomised, tlie chief 
 Contents, the indices, the title-pages 
 Of all past, present, and succeeding ages, 
 Sublimate graces, antedated glories ; 
 
 The cream of holiness. 
 The inventories 
 
 Of future blessedness, 
 The florilegia of celestial stories. 
 Spirit of Joys, the relishes and closes 
 Of angels' music, pearls dissolved, roses 
 Perfumed, sugar'd honeycombs. 
 
 That manner, happily for art, was silenced by the 
 stem truth-loving common sense of the Puritans. 
 Whatsoever else, in their crusade against shams, they 
 were too hasty in sweeping away, they were right, at 
 least, in sweeping away such a sham as that. And 
 now, when a school has betaken itself to use the very 
 same method in the cause of blasphemy, instead of in 
 that of cant, the Pope himself, with his Index 
 Prohibitus, might be a welcome guest, if he would but 
 
92 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [in, 
 
 stop tlie noise, and compel our doting Muses to sit 
 awliile in silence, and reconsider themselves. 
 
 In the meanwhile, poets write about poets, and 
 poetrj, and guiding the age, and curbing the world, and 
 waking it, and thrilling it, and making it start, and 
 weepj and tremble, and self-conceit only knows what 
 else; and yet the age is not guided, or the world 
 curbed, or thrilled, or waked, or anything else, by 
 them. Why should it be ? Curb and thrill the 
 world ? The world is just now a most practical world; 
 and these men are utterly unpractical. The age is 
 given up to physical science ; these men disregard and 
 outrage it in every page by their false analogies. If 
 they intend, as they say, to link heaven and earth by 
 preaching the analogy of matter and spirit, let them, 
 in the name of common prudence, observe the laws of 
 matter, about which the world does know something, 
 and show their coincidence with the laws of spirit — if 
 indeed they know anything about the said laws. 
 Loose conceits, fancies of the private judgment, were 
 excusable enough in the Elizabethan poets. In their 
 day, nature was still unconquered by science; medieval 
 superstitions still lingered in the minds of men ; 
 and the magical notions of nature which they had 
 inherited from the Middle Age received a corroboration 
 from those neoplatonist dreamers, whom they con- 
 founded with the true Greek philosophers. But, now 
 that Bacon has spoken, and that Europe has obeyed 
 him, surely, among the most practical, common sense, 
 and scientific nation of the earth, severely scientific 
 imagery, imagery drawn from the inner laws of nature, 
 is necessary to touch the hearts of men. They know 
 
III.J 
 
 
 ECCENTRICITIES OP GENIUS. ' ' ' ' '9^' Op 
 
 that the universe is not such as poets paint it ; they 
 know that these pretty thoughts are only pretty 
 thoughts^ springing from the caprice^ the vanity, very 
 often from the indigestion of the gentlemen who take 
 the trouble to sing to them ; and they listen, as they 
 would to a band of street musicians, and give them 
 sixpence for their tune, and go on with their work. 
 The tune outside has nothing to do with the work 
 inside. It will not help them to be wiser, abler, more 
 valiant — certainly not more cheei^ful and hopeful men, 
 and therefore they care no more for it than they do for 
 an opera or a pantomime, if as much. Whereupon the 
 poets get disgusted with the same hard-hearted prosaic 
 world — which is ti*ying to get its living like an indus- 
 trious animal as it is — and demand homage — for what ? 
 For making a noise, pleasant or otherwise ? For not 
 being as other men are ? For pleading '^ the eccen- 
 tricities of genius ^' as an excuse for sitting like 
 naughty children in the middle of the schoolroom floor, 
 in everybody's way, shouting and playing on penny 
 trumpets, and when begged to be quiet, that other 
 people may learn their lessons, considering themselves 
 insulted, and pleading " genius ''? Genius! — hapless 
 byword, which, like charity, covers nowadays the 
 multitude of sins, all the seven deadly ones included ! 
 Is there any form of human folly which one has not 
 heard excused by '' He is a genius, you know — one must 
 not judge him by common rules." Poor genius, to 
 have come to this ! To be, when confessed, not a reason 
 for being more of a man than others, but an excuse 
 for being less of a man, less amenable than the herd to 
 the common laws of humanity, and therefore less able 
 
94 ALEXANDER SMITH AXD ALEXANDER POPE. [in. 
 
 than they to compreliend its common duties, common 
 temptations, common sins, common virtues, common 
 destinies. Of old the wise singer did by virtue of 
 feeling with all, and obeying with all, learn to see for 
 all, to see eternal laws, eternal analogies, eternal con- 
 sequences, and so became a seer, vates, prophet ; but 
 now he is become a genius, a poetical pharisee, a 
 reviler of common laws and duties, the slave of his 
 own private judgment, who prophesies out of his own 
 heart, and hath seen nothing but only the appear- 
 ances of things distorted and coloured by "genius." 
 Heaven send the word, with many more, a speedy 
 burial ! 
 
 And what becomes of artistic form in the hands of 
 such a school ? Just what was to be expected. It is 
 impossible to give outward form to that which is in its 
 very natm'e formless, like doubt and discontent. For 
 on such subjects thought itself is not defined ; it has 
 no limit, no self-coherence, not even method or organic 
 law. And in a poem, as in all else, the body must be 
 formed according to the law of the inner life; the utter- 
 ance must be the expression, the outward and visible 
 autotype of the spirit which animates it. But where 
 the thought is defined by no limits, it cannot express 
 itself in form, for form is that which has limits. Where 
 it has no inward unity it cannot have any outward one. 
 If the spirit be impatient of all moral rule, its utter- 
 ance will be equally impatient of all artistic rule ; and 
 thus, as we are now beginning to discover from ex- 
 perience, the poetry of doubt will find itself unable to 
 use those forms of verse which have been always held 
 to be the highest — tragedy, epic, the ballad, and lastly, 
 
III.] CONTEAST BETWEEN OLD AND NEW. 95 
 
 even the subjective lyrical ode. For tliey, too, to 
 judge by every great lyric which remains to us, require 
 a groundwork of consistent self-coherent belief; and 
 they require also an appreciation of melody even more 
 delicate, and a verbal polish even more complete than 
 any other form of poetic utterance. But where there 
 is no melody within, there will be no melody without. 
 It is in vain to attempt the setting of spiritual dis- 
 cords to physical music. The mere practical patience 
 and self-restraint requisite to work out rhythm when 
 fixed on, will be wanting ; nay, the fitting rhythm will' 
 never be found, the subject itself being arhythmic ; 
 and thus we shall have, or, rather, alas ! do have, a 
 wider and wider divorce of sound and sense, a greater 
 and greater carelessness for polish, and for the charm 
 of musical utterance, and watch the clear and spirit- 
 stirring melodies of the older poets swept away by a 
 deluge of half-metrical prose-run-mad, diffuse, un- 
 finished, unmusical, to which any other metre than that 
 in which it happens to have been written would have 
 been equally appropriate, because all are equally inap- 
 propriate. Where men have nothing to sing, it is 
 not of the slightest consequence how they sing it. 
 
 While poets persist in thinking and writing thus, it 
 is in vain for them to talk loud about the poet's divine 
 mission, as the prophet of mankind, the swayer of the 
 universe, and so forth. Not that we believe the poet 
 simply by virtue of being a singer to have any such 
 power. While young gentlemen are talking about 
 governing heaven and earth by verse, Wellingtons and 
 Peels, Arkwrights and Stephensous, Frys, and Chis- 
 holms, are doing it by plain practical prose; and even of 
 
96 ALEXANDER SMITH AXD ALEXANDER POPE. [iir. 
 
 tliose who liave moved and led tlie hearts of men. by 
 verse, every one, as far as we know, has produced his 
 magical effects by poetry of the very opposite form to 
 that which is now in fashion. What poet ever had more 
 influence than Homer ? What poet is more utterly 
 antipodal to our modern schools ? There are certain 
 Hebrew psalms, too, which will be confessed, even by 
 those who differ most from them, to have exercised 
 some slight influence on human thought and action, 
 and to be likely to exercise the same for some time to 
 come. Are they any more like our modern poetic forms 
 than they are like our modern poetic matter ? Ay, 
 even in our own time, what has been the form, what 
 the temper, of all poetry, from Korner and Heine, 
 which has made the German heart leap up, but 
 simplicity, manhood, clearness, finished melody, the 
 very opposite, in a word, of our new school ? And to 
 look at home, what is the modern poetry which lives on 
 the lips and in the hearts of Englishmen, Scotchmen, 
 Irishmen ? It is not only simple in form and language, 
 but much of it fitted, by a severe exercise of artistic 
 patience, to tunes already existing. Who does not 
 remember how the " Marseillaise " was born, or how 
 Burns^s " Scots whaha' wi^ Wallace bled,^^ or the story 
 of Moore's taking the old "Red Fox March,^' and giving 
 it a new immortality as " Let Erin remember the days 
 of old," while poor Emmett sprang up and ci'ied, " Oh, 
 that I had twenty thousand Irishmen marching to that 
 tune ! " So it is, even to this day, and let those who 
 hanker after poetic fame take note of it ; not a poem 
 which is now really living but has gained its immor- 
 tality by virtue of simplicity and positive faith. 
 
m.] HOOD'S POEMS. 97 
 
 Let the poets of the new scliool consider carefully 
 Wolfe's " Sir John Moore/' Campbell's " Hohenlin- 
 deu/' " Mariners of England/' and " Rule Britannia/' 
 Hood's '^Song of the Shirt" and " Bridge of Sighs/' 
 and then ask themselves, as men who would be poets : 
 "Were it not better to have written any one of those 
 glorious lyrics than all which John Keats has left behind 
 him ? And let them be sure that, howsoever they may 
 answer the question to themselves, the sound heart of 
 the English people has already made its choice ; and 
 that when that beautiful '' Hero and Leander/' in 
 which Hood has outrivalled the conceit-mongers at 
 their own weapons, by virtue of the very terseness, 
 clearness, and manliness which they neglect, has been 
 gathered to the limbo of the Crashawes and Marines, 
 his " Song of the Shirt" and his "Bridge of Sighs " 
 will be esteemed by great new English nations far 
 beyond the seas, for what they are — two of the most 
 noble lyric poems ever written by an English pen. If 
 our poetasters talk with Wordsworth of the dignity 
 and pathos of the commonest human things, they will 
 find them there in perfection; if they talk about 
 the cravings of the new time, they will find them 
 there. If they want the truly sublime and the 
 awful, they will find them there also. But they will 
 find none of their own favourite concetti ; hardly even 
 a metaphor ; no taint of this new poetic diction into 
 which we have now fallen, after all our abuse of the 
 far more manly and sincere "poetic diction" of the 
 eighteenth century; they will find no loitering by the 
 way to argue and moralise, and grumble at Providence, 
 and show off the author's own genius and sensibility; 
 
98 ALEXANDER SMITH AND ALEXANDER POPE. [ni. 
 
 they will find^ in short, two real works of art, earnest, 
 melodious, self -forgetful, knowing clearly what they 
 want to say, and saying it in the shortest, the simplest, 
 the calmest, the most finished words. Saying it ! — 
 rather taught to say it. For if that " divine inspira- 
 tion of poets,^' of which the poetasters make such rash 
 and irreverent boastings, have indeed, as all ages have 
 held, any reality corresponding to it, it will rather be 
 bestowed on such works as these, appeals from 
 unrighteous man to a righteous God, than on men 
 whose only claim to celestial help seems to be that 
 mere passionate sensibility, which our modern Draco 
 once described when speaking of poor John Keats, as 
 " an infinite hunger after all manner of pleasant things, 
 crying to the universe : ' Oh that thou wert one great 
 lump of sugar, that I might suck thee \' '' 
 
 Our task is ended. We have given as plainly as we 
 can our reasons for the opinion which this magazine has 
 expressed several times already, that with the excep- 
 tion of Mr. AUingham, our young poets are a very hope- 
 less generation, and will so continue unless they utterly 
 repent and amend. If they do not choose to awaken 
 themselves from within, all that is left for us is to hope 
 that they may be awakened from without, or by some 
 radical revulsion in public taste be shown their own real 
 value and durability, and compelled to be true and manly 
 under pain of being laughed at and forgotten. A 
 general war might, amid all its inevitable horrors, sweep 
 away at once the dyspeptic unbelief, the insincere 
 bigotry, the effeminate frivolity which now paralyses 
 our poetry as much as it does our action, and strike 
 from England's heart a lightning flash of noble deeds, a 
 
III.] THE HEEOIC ELEMENT. 99 
 
 tliunder peal of noble song. Sucli a case is neitlier an 
 impossible nor a far-fetched one ; let us not doubt that 
 by some other means if not by that^ the immense 
 volume of thought and power which is still among us 
 will soon find its utterance, and justify itself to after 
 ages by showing in harmonious and self-restrained 
 poetry its kinship to the heroic and the beautiful of 
 every age and clime. And till then, till the sunshine 
 and the thaw shall come, and the spring flowers burst 
 into bud and bloom, heralding a new golden year in 
 the world's life, let us even be content with our pea- 
 green and orange fungi ; nay, even admire them as 
 not without their own tawdry beauty, their clumsy 
 fi.tness; for after all, they are products of nature, 
 though only of her dyspepsia ; and grow and breed — 
 as indeed cutaneous disorders do — by an organic law 
 of their own; fulfilling their little destiny, and then 
 making, according to Professor Way, by no means bad 
 manure. And so we take our leave of Mr. Alexander 
 Smith, entreating him, if these pages meet his eye, to 
 consider three things, namely, that in as far as he has 
 written poetry, he is on the road to ruin by reason of 
 following the worst possible models. That in as far 
 as the prevailing taste has put these models before 
 him, he is neither to take much blame to himself, nor 
 to be in anywise disheartened for the future. That in 
 as far as he shall utterly reverse his whole poetic 
 method, whether in morals or in aesthetics, leave 
 undone all that he has done, and do all that he has not 
 done, he will become, what he evidently, by grace of 
 God, can become if he will, namely, a lasting and a 
 good poet. 
 
 H 2 
 
TENNYSON. 
 
TEKNYSOK.-^-' 
 
 Ceitics cannot in general be too punctilious in their 
 respect for an incognito. If an author intended us to 
 know Ms name; lie would put it on his title-page. If 
 he does not choose to do that, we have no more right 
 to pry into his secret than we have to discuss his family- 
 affairs or open his letters. But every rule has its ex- 
 ceptional cases ; and the book which stands first upon 
 our list is surely such. All the worlds somehow or 
 other, knows the author. His name has been mentioned 
 unhesitatingly by several reviews already, whether 
 from private information, or from the certainty which 
 every well-read person must feel that there is but one 
 man in Eugland possessed at once of poetic talent and 
 artistic experience sufiicient for so noble a creation. 
 We hope, therefore, that we shall not be considered 
 impertinent if we ignore an incognito which all England 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, September, 1850. — "In Memoriam." 
 Moxon, Dover Street. 1850. — "The Princess, a Medley :" by Alfred 
 Tennyson. Third Edition. 1850. — " Poems : " by Alfred Tennyson. 
 1852. 
 
104 TENNYSON. [iv. 
 
 has ignored before us, and attribute " In Memoi;iam " 
 to tlie pen of tlie author of " The Princess/^ 
 
 Such a course will probably be the more useful one 
 to our readers ; for this last work of our only living 
 great poet seems to us at once the culmination of all 
 his efforts and the key to many difficulties in his former 
 writings. Heaven forbid that we should say that it 
 completes the circle of his powers. On the contrary, 
 it gives us hope of broader effort in new fields of 
 thought and forms of art. But it brings the develop- 
 ment of his Muse and of his Creed to a positive and 
 definite point. It enables us to claim one who has 
 been hitherto regarded as belonging to a merely specu- 
 lative and peirastic school as the willing and deliberate 
 champion of vital Christianity, and of an orthodoxy the 
 more sincere because it has worked upward through 
 the abyss of doubt ; the more mighty for good because 
 it justifies and consecrates the aesthetics and the philo- 
 sophy of the present age. We are sure, moreover, that 
 the author, whatever right reasons he may have had 
 for concealing his own name, would have no quarrel 
 against us for alluding to it, were he aware of the 
 idolatry with which every utterance of his is regarded 
 by the cultivated young men of our day, especially at 
 the universities, and of the infinite service of which 
 this " In Memoriam " may be to them, if they are taught 
 by it that their superiors are not ashamed of faith, and 
 that they will rise instead of falling, fulfil instead of 
 denyiug the cravings of their hearts and intellects, if 
 they will pass upwards with their teacher from the 
 vague though noble expectations of " Locksley Hall," 
 to the assured and everlasting facts of the proem 
 
IT.] TENNYSON'S EARLY POEMS. 105 
 
 to " lu Memoriam '^ — in our eyes tlie noblest 
 cliristian poem whicli England lias produced for two 
 centuries. 
 
 To explain our meaning, it will be necessary, per- 
 haps, to go back to Mr. Tennyson^s earlier writings, of 
 wbicli he is said to be somewhat ashamed now — a 
 fastidiousness with which we will not quarrel ; for it 
 should be the rule of the poet, forgetting those things 
 which are behind, to press on to those things which are 
 before, and "to count not himself to have apprehended 
 
 but " no, we will not finish the quotation ; let the 
 
 readers of " In Memoriam ^^ finish it for themselves, 
 and see how, after all, the poet, if he would reach per- 
 fection, must be found by Him who found St. Paul of 
 old. In the meantime, as a true poet must necessarily 
 be in advance of his age, Mr. Tennyson's earlier poems, 
 rather than these latter ones, coincide with the tastes 
 and speculations of the young men of this day. And 
 in proportion, we believe, as they thoroughly appre- 
 ciate the distinctive peculiarities of those poems, will 
 they be able to follow the author of them on his upward 
 path. 
 
 Some of our readers, we would fain hope, remember 
 as an era in their lives the first day on which they read 
 those earlier poems ; how, fifteen years ago, Mariana 
 in the Moated Grange, "The Dying Swan,'' "The 
 Lady of Shalott," came to them as revelations. They 
 seemed to themselves to have found at last a poet who 
 promised not only to combine the cunning melody of 
 Moore, the rich fulness of Keats, and the simplicity of 
 Wordsworth, but one who was introducing a method 
 of observing nature different from that of all the three 
 
106 TEXXYSOX. [iv. 
 
 and yet succeeding in everytliing wliicli they had 
 attempted, often in vain. Both Keats and Moore had 
 an eye for the beauty which lay in trivial and daily 
 objects. But in both of them there was a want of deep 
 religious reverence, which kept Moore playing gracefully 
 upon the surface of phenomena without ever daring to 
 dive into their laws or inner meaning ; and made poor 
 Keats fancy that he was rather to render nature poetical 
 by bespangling her with florid ornament, than simply to 
 confess that she was abeady, by the grace of God, far 
 beyond the need of his paint and gilding. Even Words- 
 worth himself had not full faith in the great dicta which 
 he laid down in his famous Introductory Essay. Deep 
 as was his conviction that nature bore upon her simplest 
 forms the finger-mark of God, he did not always 
 dare simply to describe her as she was, and leave her 
 to reveal her own mystery. We do not say this in 
 depreciation of one who stands now far above human 
 praise or blame. The wonder is, not that Wordsworth 
 rose no higher, but that, considering the level on which 
 his taste was formed, he had power to rise to the height 
 above his age which he did attain. He did a mighty 
 work. He has left the marks of his teaching upon 
 every poet who has written verses worth reading for the 
 last twenty years. The idea by which he conquered 
 was, as Coleridge well sets forth, the very one which, 
 in its practical results on his own poetry, procured 
 him loud and deserved ridicule. This, which will be 
 the root idea of the whole poetry of this generation, 
 was the dignity of nature in all her manifestations, 
 and not merely in those which may happen to suit the 
 fastidiousness or Manicheeism of any particular age.. 
 
IV.] WORDSWORTH'S PRINCIPLE. 107 
 
 He may have been at times fanatical on liis idea, and 
 have misused it, till it became self -contradictory, because 
 lie could not see the correlative truths which should 
 have limited it. But it is by fanatics, by men of one 
 great thought, that great works are done; and it is 
 good for the time that a man arose in it of fearless 
 honesty enough to write Peter Bell and the Idiot Boy, 
 to shake all the old methods of nature-painting to their 
 roots, and set every man seriously to ask himself what 
 he meant, or whether he meant anything real, reverent, 
 or honest, when he talked about " poetic diction,^^ or 
 "the beauties of nature." And after all, like all 
 fanatics, Wordsworth was better than his own creed. 
 As Coleridge thoroughly shows in the second volume 
 of the "'Biographia Literaria," and as may be seen 
 nowhere more strikingly than in his grand posthu- 
 mous work, his noblest poems and noblest stanzas are 
 those in which his true poetic genius, unconsciously 
 to himself, sets at naught his own pseudo-naturalist 
 dogmas. 
 
 Now Mr. Tennyson, while fully adopting Words- 
 worth's principle from the very first, seemed by instinc- 
 tive taste to have escaped the snares which had proved 
 too subtle both for Keats and Wordsworth. Doubtless 
 there are slight niaiseries, after the manner of both 
 those poets, in the first editions of his earlier poems. 
 He seems, like most other great artists, to have first 
 tried imitations of various styles which already existed, 
 before he learnt the art of incorporating them into his 
 own, and learning from all his predecessors, without 
 losing his own individual peculiarities. But there are 
 descriptive passages in them also which neither Keats 
 
108 TENNYSON. [iv. 
 
 nor Wordswortli could have written, combining the 
 honest sensuous observation which is common to them 
 both, with a self-restrained simplicity which Keats 
 did not live long enough to attain, and a stately and 
 accurate melody, an earnest songfulness (to coin a 
 word) which Wordsworth seldom attained, and from his 
 inaccurate and uncertain ear, still seldomer preserved 
 without the occurrence of a jar or a rattle, a false 
 quantity, a false rapture, or a bathos. And above all, 
 or rather beneath all — for we suspect that this has been 
 throughout the very secret of Mr. Tennyson's power 
 — there was a hush and a reverent awe, a sense of the 
 mystery, the infinitude, the awf ulness, as well as of the 
 mere beauty of wayside things, which invested these 
 poems as wholes with a peculiar richness, depth, and 
 majesty of tone, beside which both Keats's and Words- 
 worth's methods of handling pastoral subjects looked 
 hke the colouring of Julio Romano or Watteau by the 
 side of Correggio or Titian. 
 
 This deep simple faith in the divineness of Nature 
 as she appears, which, in our eyes, is Mr. Tennyson's 
 differentia, is really the natural accompaniment of a 
 quality at first sight its very opposite, and for which 
 he is often blamed by a prosaic world; namely, his 
 subjective and transcendental mysticism. It is the 
 mystic, after all, who will describe Nature most 
 simply, because he sees most in her ; because he is 
 most ready to believe that she will reveal to others the 
 same message which she has revealed to him. Men like 
 Behmen, Novalis, and Fourier, who can soar into the 
 inner cloud-world of man's spirit, even though they 
 lose their way there, dazzled by excess of wonder — 
 
IV.] TENNYSON'S MYSTICISM. 109 
 
 men wtoj like Wordsworth, can give utterance to such 
 subtle anthropologic wisdom as the " Ode on the Inti- 
 mations of Immortality/^ will for that very reason most 
 humbly and patiently " consider the lilies of the field, 
 how they grow." And even so it is just because Mr. 
 Tennyson is, far more than Wordsworth, mystical, and 
 what an ignorant and money-getting generation, 
 idolatrous of mere sensuous activity, calls '^dreamy," 
 that he has become the greatest naturalistic poet 
 which England has seen for several centuries. The same 
 faculty which enabled him to draw such subtle sub- 
 jective pictures of womanhood as Adeline, Isabel, and 
 Eleanor, enabled him to see, and therefore simply to 
 describe, in one of the most distinctive and successful 
 of his earlier poems, how 
 
 The creeping mosses and clambering weeds, 
 And tlie willow branches hoar and dank, 
 
 And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds, 
 
 And the wave-worn horns of the echoing bank, 
 
 And the silvery marish flowers that throng 
 
 The desolate creeks and pools among, 
 
 "Were flooded over with eddying song. 
 
 No doubt there are in the earlier poems exceptions 
 to this style — attempts to adorn nature, and dazzle 
 with a barbaric splendour akiu to that of Keats — as, 
 for instance, in the " Eecollections of the Arabian 
 Nights.^' But how cold and gaudy, in spite of indi- 
 vidual beauties, is that poem by the side of either of 
 the Marianas, and especially of the one in which the 
 scenery is drawn, simply and faithfully, from those 
 counties which the world considers the quintessence of 
 the prosaic — the English fens. _^ 
 
no TEXXYSON. [rv. 
 
 Upon the middle of the night 
 
 "Waking she heard the night -fowl crow ; 
 
 The cock sang out an hour ere light : 
 From the dark fen the oxen's low 
 
 Came to her : without hope of change, 
 In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn, 
 Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn 
 
 About the lonely moated grange. 
 
 About a stone-cast from the wall 
 
 A sluice with blackened waters slept, 
 And o'er it many, round and small, 
 
 The cluster'd mai'ish-mosses crept. 
 Hard by a poplar shook alway, 
 
 All silver-green with gnarled bark, 
 
 For leagues no other tree did mark 
 The level waste, the rounding gray, 
 * * * * 
 
 Tkrougliout all tkese exquisite lines occurs but one 
 instance of what tlie vulgar call '' poetic diction." All 
 is simple description, in short and Saxon words, and 
 yet -who can deny the effect to be perfect — superior to 
 any similar passage in Wordsworth ? And why ? 
 Because the passage quoted, and indeed the whole 
 poem, is perfect in what artists call tone — tone in the 
 metre and in the sound of the words, as well as in the 
 images and the feelings expressed. The weariness, 
 the dreariness, the dark mysterious waste, exist alike 
 within and without, in the slow monotonous pace of the 
 metre and the words, as well as in the boundless fen, 
 and the heart of her who, " without hope of change, in 
 sleep did seem to walk forlorn." 
 
 The same faith in Nature, the same instinctive cor- 
 rectness in melody, springing from that correct insight 
 
IV.] OLD BALLADS AND NEW. Ill 
 
 into Nature, ran througli tlie poems inspired by 
 medieval legends. The very spirit of tlie old ballad 
 writers, with their combinations of mysticism and 
 objectivity, their freedom from any self-conscious 
 attempt at reflective epithets or figures, runs through 
 them all. We are never jarred in them, as we are in 
 all the attempts at ballad-writing and ballad-restor- 
 ing before Mr. Tennyson's time, by discordant touches 
 of the reflective in thought, the picturesque in Nature, 
 or the theatric in action. To illustrate our meaning, 
 readers may remember the ballad of "Fair Emmeline,'^ 
 in Bishop Percy's '''Reliques.'" The bishop confesses, 
 if we mistake not, to have patched one end of the 
 ballad. He need not have informed us of that fact, 
 while such lines as these following meet our eyes : 
 
 The Baron turned aside, 
 And wiped away the rising tears 
 He proudly strove to hide. 
 
 No old ballad writer would have used such a com- 
 plicated concetto. Another, and even a worse 
 instance is to be found in the difference between 
 the old and new versions of the grand ballad of 
 ^' Glasgerion." In the original, we hear how the elfin 
 harper could 
 
 Harp fish out of the water, 
 
 And water out of a stone, 
 And milk out of a maiden's breast 
 That bairn had never none. 
 
 For which some benighted "restorer'' substitutes — 
 
 Ob, there was magic in his touch, 
 And sorcery in his string ! 
 
112 TENNYSON. [it. 
 
 No doubt fhere was. But wliile the new poetaster 
 informs you of the abstract notion, the ancient poet 
 gives you the concrete fact ; as Mr. Tennyson has done 
 with wonderful art in his exquisite ''St. Agnes/' where 
 the saint's subjective mysticism appears only as 
 embodied in objective pictures : 
 
 Break up the lieavens, oh Lord ! and far 
 
 Through all yon starlight keen 
 Draw me, thy bride, a glittering star, 
 In raiment white and clean. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott's ballads fail just on the same 
 point. Even Campbell cannot avoid an occasional 
 false note of sentiment. In Mr. Tennyson alone, as 
 we think, the spirit of the Middle Age is perfectly 
 reflected ; its delight, not in the " sublime and 
 picturesque,'' but in the green leaves and spring 
 flowers for their own sake — the spirit of Chaucer 
 and of the "Eobin Hood Garland" — the naturalism 
 which revels as much in the hedgerow and garden 
 as in Alps, and cataracts, and Italian skies, and the 
 other strong stimulants to the faculty of admiration 
 which the palled taste of an unhealthy age, from Keats 
 and Byron down to Browning, has rushed abroad to 
 seek. It is enough for Mr. Tennyson's truly English 
 spirit to see how 
 
 On either side the river lie 
 Long fields of barley and of rye, 
 That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 
 And through the field the road runs by 
 To many-tower'd Camelot. 
 
IV.] ENGLISH SCENERY. 113 
 
 Or how 
 
 In the stormy east wind straining, 
 The pale yellow woods were waning, 
 The broad stream in his banks complaining. 
 Heavily the low sky raining 
 Over to wer'd Camelot. 
 
 Give him but such scenery as that which he can 
 see in every parish in England, and he will find it a fit 
 scene for an ideal myth, subtler than a casuist's 
 questionings, deep as the deepest heart of woman. 
 
 But in this earlier volume the poet has not yet 
 arrived at the art of combining his new speculations on 
 man with his new mode of viewing Nature. His 
 objective pieces are too exclusively objective, his sub- 
 jective too exclusively subjective ; and where he deals 
 with natural imagery in these latter, he is too apt, as 
 in " Eleanore," to fall back upon the old and received 
 method of poetic diction, though he never indulges in 
 a commonplace or a stock epithet. But in the interval 
 between 1830 and 1842 the needful interfusion of the 
 two elements has taken place. And in " Locksley 
 Hall " and the " Two Voices " we find the new doubts 
 and questions of the time embodied naturally and 
 organically, in his own method of simple natural 
 expression. For instance, from the Search for Truth 
 in the "Two Voices'' — 
 
 Cry, faint not, climb : the summits lope 
 Beyond the furthest flights of hope, 
 Wrapt in dense cloud from base to cope. 
 
 Sometimes a little corner shines, 
 
 As over rainy mist inclines 
 
 A gleaming ci'ag with belts of pines. 
 
114 TENNYSON. [iv, 
 
 " I will go forward," sayest thou ; 
 " I shall not fail to find her now. 
 Look up, the fold is on her brow." 
 
 Or again, in " Locksley Hall/' tlie poemwMcli, as we 
 think deservedly, has had most influence on the minds 
 of the young men of our day ; 
 
 Eager-hearted as a boy when first he leaves his father's field, 
 And at night along the dusky highway near and nearer drawn, 
 Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a dreary dawn; 
 And his spirit leaps within him to be gone before him then, 
 Undei'neath the light he looks at, in among the throngs of men ; 
 Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something 
 
 new : 
 That which they have done but earnest of the things which 
 
 they shall do : 
 
 and all the grand prophetic passage following, which is 
 said, we know not how truly, to have won for the poet 
 the respect of that great statesman whose loss all good 
 men deplore. 
 
 In saying that "Locksley Hall" has deservedly had 
 so great an influence over the minds of the young, we 
 shall, we are afraid, have offended some who are accus- 
 tomed to consider that poem as Werterian and un- 
 healthy. But, in reality, the spirit of the poem is 
 simply anti-Werterian. It is man rising out of sickness 
 into health — not conquered by Werterism, but con- 
 quering his selfish sorrow, and the moral andintellectual 
 paralysis which it produces, by faith and hope — faith 
 in the progress of science and civilisation, hope in the 
 final triumph of good. Doubtless, that is not the 
 highest deliverance — not a permanent deliverance at 
 all. Faith in God and hope in Christ alone can deliver 
 
i\-.] THE IDYLLIC FACULTY. 115 
 
 a man once and for all from Werterismj or any other 
 moral disease; that truth was reserved for "In 
 Memoriam : " but as far as " Locksley Hall" goes^ it is a 
 step forward — a whole moral £eon beyond Byron and 
 Shelley; and a step^ too, in the right direction, just 
 because it is a step forward — because the path of de- 
 liverance is, as " Locksley Hall " sets forth, not back- 
 wards towards a fancied paradise of childhood — not 
 backward to grope af teran unconsciousness which is now 
 impossible, an implicit faith which would be unworthy 
 of the man, but forward on the road on which God has 
 been leading him, carrying upward with him the aspi- 
 rations of childhood, and the bitter experience of youth, 
 to help the organised and trustful labour of manhood. 
 There are, in fact, only two deliverances from Wer- 
 terism possible in the nineteenth century ; one is into 
 Popery, and the other is — 
 
 Forward, forward, let us range ; 
 Let the peoples spin, for ever down the ringing grooves of change ; 
 Through the shadow of the world we sweep into the younger 
 
 day : 
 Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. 
 
 But such a combination of powers as Mr. Tennyson's 
 naturally develop themselves into a high idyllic faculty; 
 for it is the very essence of the idyl to set forth the 
 poetry which lies in the simpler manifestations of 
 Man and Nature ; yet not explicitly, by a reflective 
 moralising on them, as almost all our idyllists — Cowper, 
 Gray, Crabbe, and Wordsworth — have been in the 
 habit of doing, but implicitly, by investing them all 
 with a rich and delightful tone of colouring, perfect 
 
 I 2 
 
116 TEXNYSON. [iv. 
 
 grace of manner, perfect melody of rliytlim, which, 
 like a gorgeous summer atmosphere, shall glorify with- 
 out altering the most trivial and homely sights. And 
 it is this very power, as exhibited in the "Lord of 
 Burleigh,^^ " Audley Court,^^ and the " Gardener's 
 Daughter,'' which has made Mr. Tennyson, not merely 
 the only English rival of Theocritus and Bion, but, 
 in our opinion, as much their superior as modern 
 England is superior to ancient Grreece. 
 
 Yet in "The Princess," perhaps, Mr. Tennyson rises 
 higher still. The idylKc manner alternates with the 
 satiric, the pathetic, even the sublime, by such imper- 
 ceptible gradations, and continual delicate variations of 
 key, that the harmonious medley of his style becomes 
 the fit outward expression of the bizarre and yet har- 
 monious fairyland in which his fancy ranges. In this 
 work, too, Mr. Tennyson shows himself more than ever 
 the poet of the day. In it more than ever the old is 
 interpenetrated with the new — the domestic and scien- 
 tific with the ideal and sentimental. He dares, in 
 every page, to make use of modern words and notions, 
 from which the mingled clumsiness and archaism of 
 his compeers shrinks, as unpoetical. Though, as we 
 just said, his stage is an ideal fairyland, yet he has 
 reached the ideal by the only true method — by bring- 
 ing the Middle Age forward to the Present one, and 
 not by ignoring the Present to fall back on a cold and 
 galvanised Medievalism ; and thus he makes his 
 "Medley" a mirror of the nineteenth century, pos- 
 sessed of its own new art and science, its own new 
 temptations and aspirations, and yet grounded on, and 
 continually striving to reproduce, the forms and ex- 
 
IV.] THE IDEAL OF "ANGELIC LIFE." 117 
 
 periences of all past time. The idea^ too, of " The 
 Princess ^^ is an essentially modern one. In every age 
 women have been tempted, by the possession of 
 superior beauty, intellect, or strength of will, to deny 
 their own womanhood, and attempt to stand alone as 
 men, whether on the ground of political intrigue, ascetic 
 saintship, or philosophic pride. Cleopatra and St. 
 Hedwiga, Madame de Staeland the Pi-incess, are merely 
 different manifestations of the same self-willed and 
 jDroud longing of woman to unsex herself, and realise, 
 single and self-sustained, some distorted and partial 
 notion of her own as to what the "angelic life"^ should 
 be. Cleopatra acted out the pagan ideal of an angel; St. 
 Hedwiga, the medieval one; Madame de Stael hers, with 
 the peculiar notions of her time as to what " spirituel" 
 might mean; and in "'The Princess" Mr. Tennyson 
 has embodied the ideal of that nobler, wider, purer, yet 
 equally fallacious, because equally unnatural, analogue, 
 which we may meet too often up and down England 
 now. He shows us the woman, when she takes her 
 stand on the false masculine ground of intellect, work- 
 ing out her own moral punishment, by destroying in 
 herself the tender heart of flesh : not even her vast 
 purposes of philanthropy can preserve her, for they are 
 built up, not on the womanhood which God has given 
 her, but on her own self-will ; they change, they fall, 
 they become inconsistent, even as she does herself, till, 
 at last, she loses all feminine sensibility ; scornfully 
 and stupidly she rejects and misunderstands the heart 
 of man ; and then falling from pride to sternness, from 
 sternness to sheer inhumanity, she punishes sistei'ly 
 love as a crime, robs the mother of her child, and 
 
118 TENNYSON. [iv. 
 
 becomes all but a vengeful fuiy^ with all tbe peculiar 
 faults of womau^ and none of tbe peculiar excellences 
 of man. 
 
 The poem being, as its title imports, a medley of 
 jest and earnest, allows a metrical licence, of which 
 we are often tempted to wish that its author had not 
 availed himself ; yet the most unmetrical and appa- 
 rently careless passages flow with a grace, a lightness, 
 a colloquial ease and frolic, which perhaps only heighten 
 the effect of the serious parts, and serve as a foil to 
 set off the unrivalled finish and melody of these latter. 
 In these come out all Mr. Tennyson's instinctive choice 
 of tone, his mastery of language, which always fits the 
 right word to the right thing, and that word always 
 the simplest one, and the perfect ear for melody which 
 makes it superfluous to set to music poetry which, 
 read by the veriest schoolboy, makes music of itself. 
 The poem, we are glad to say, is so well known that it 
 seems unnecessary to quote from it ; yet there are 
 here and there gems of sound and expression of which, 
 however well our readers may know them, we cannot 
 forbear reminding them again. For instance, the end 
 of the idyl in book vii. beginning " Come down, O 
 maid " (the whole of which is perhaps one of the most 
 perfect fruits of the poet's genius) : 
 
 Myriads of rivulets hurrying tlirougli the lawn, 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And miirmuring of innumerable bees. 
 
 Who, after three such lines, will talk of English as 
 a harsh and clumsy language, and seek in the effemi- 
 nate and monotonous Italian for expressive melody of 
 
IT.] THE SONGS OF "THE PRINCESS." 119 
 
 sound ? Wlio cannot hear in tliem tlie rapid rippling 
 of the water_, the stately calmness of the wood-dove^s 
 note, and, in the repetition of short syllables and soft 
 liquids in the last line, the 
 
 Murmuring of innumerable bees ? 
 
 Or again, what combination of richness with sim- 
 plicity in such a passage as this : 
 
 Breathe upon my brows ; 
 In that fine air I tremble, all the past 
 Melts mist-like into this bright hour, aud this 
 I scarce believe, and all the rich to come 
 Eeels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels 
 Athwart the smoke of burnins leaves. 
 
 How Mr. Tennyson can have attained the prodigal 
 fulness of thought and imagery which distinguishes 
 this poem, and especially the last canto, without his 
 style ever becoming overloaded, seldom even confused, 
 is perhaps one of the greatest marvels of the whole 
 production. The songs themselves, which have been 
 inserted between the cantos in the last edition of the 
 book, seem, perfect as they are, wasted and smothered 
 among the surrounding fertility; till we discover that 
 they stand there, not merely for the sake of their 
 intrinsic beauty, but serve to call back the reader^ s 
 mind, at every pause in the tale of the Princess's folly, 
 to that very healthy ideal of womanhood which she has 
 spurned. 
 
 At the end of the first canto, fresh from the 
 .description of the female college, with its prof essoresses. 
 
120 TENNYSOX. [iv. 
 
 and hostleresses, and other Utopian monsters, we turn 
 the page, and — 
 
 As through the land at eve we went, 
 
 And iDluck'd the riijen'd ears. 
 We fell out, my wife and I, 
 
 And kissed again with tears : 
 
 And blessings on the falling-out 
 
 That all the more endears. 
 When we fall out with those we love. 
 
 And kiss again with tears ! 
 
 For when we came where lies the child 
 
 We lost in other years, 
 There above the little grave. 
 
 We kissed again with tears. 
 
 Between the next two cantos intervenes the well- 
 known cradle-song, perhaps the best of all; and at the 
 next interval is the equally well-known bugle-song, the 
 idea of which is that of twin-labour and twin-fame, in 
 a pair of lovers : 
 
 Our echoes roll from soul to soul. 
 And grow for ever and for ever. 
 
 In the next, the memory of wife and child inspirits 
 the soldier in the field ; in the next, the sight of the 
 fallen hero's child opens the sluices of his widow's 
 tears ; and in the last, and perhaps the most beautiful 
 of all, the poet has succeeded, in the new edition, in 
 superadding a new form of emotion to a canto in which 
 he seemed to have exhausted every resource of pathos 
 which his subject allowed; and prepares us for the 
 triumph of that art by which he makes us, after all, 
 love the heroine whom he at first taught us to hate 
 
IV.] "IN MEMORIAM." 121 *^ -»- 
 
 and despise^ till we see that tlie nauglitin^s is'aftei^aJirr \' ( » 
 one tliat must be kissed and not whipped out of her, 
 and look on smiling while she repents, with Prince 
 Harry of old, " not in sackcloth and ashes, but in new 
 silk and old sack : " 
 
 Ask me no more : the moon may draw the sea; 
 
 The cloud may stoop from Heaven and take the shape, 
 
 "With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape ; 
 But, too fond, when have I answered thee ? 
 Ask me no more. 
 
 Ask me no more : what answer should I give ? 
 
 I love not hollow cheek or faded eye : 
 
 Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die ! 
 Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; 
 Ask me no more. 
 
 Ask me no more : thy fate and mine are seal'd : 
 
 I strove against the stream and all in vain : 
 
 Let the great river take me to the main : 
 ISfo more, dear love, for at a touch I yield ; 
 Ask me no more. 
 
 We now come to " In Memoriam ; '' a collection of 
 poems on a vast variety of subjects, but all united, as 
 their name implies, to the memory of a departed friend. 
 We know not whether to envy more — the poet the 
 object of his admiration, or that object the monument 
 which has been consecrated to his nobleness. For in 
 this latest and highest volume, written at various 
 intervals during a long series of years, all the poet^s 
 peculiar excellences, with all that he has acquired 
 from others, seem to have been fused down into a 
 perfect unity, and brought to bear on his subject with 
 that care and finish which only a labour of love can 
 
122 TENNYSON. [iv. 
 
 inspire. We only now know tlie whole man^ all liis art, 
 all liis insiglit, all his faculty of discerning the pm 
 nelF uno, and the iino nelV inu. As he says himself : 
 
 My love has talked witli rocks and trees, 
 He finds on misty mountain-ground, 
 His own vast shadow glory-crowned ; 
 
 He sees himself in all he sees. 
 
 Everything reminds him of the dead. Every joy or 
 sorrow of man, every aspect of nature, from 
 
 to 
 
 The forest crack'd, the waters cui'l'd, 
 The cattle huddled on the lea. 
 
 The thousand waves of wheat 
 
 That ripple round the lonely grange. 
 
 In every place where in old days they had met and 
 conversed ; in every dark wrestling of the spu'it with 
 the douhts and fears of manhood, throughout the whole 
 outward universe of Nature, and the whole inward 
 universe of spirit, the soul of his dead friend broods — 
 at first a memory shrouded in blank despair, then 
 a living presence, a ministering spirit, answering 
 doubts, calming fears, stirring up noble aspira- 
 tions, utter humility, leading the poet upward, step 
 by step, to faith, and peace, and hope. Not that there 
 runs throughout the book a conscious or organic methocl. 
 The poems seem often merely to be united by the 
 identity of their metre, so exquisitely chosen, that while 
 the major rhyme in the second and third lines of each 
 stanza gives the solidity and self-restraint required by 
 such deep themes, the mournful minor rhyme of each 
 first and fourth line always leads the ear to expect 
 
j\\2 "IN MEMORIAM." 123 
 
 sometliing beyond^ and enables the poet^s thougbts to 
 wander sadly on, from stanza to stanza and poem to 
 poem, in an endless cbain of 
 
 Linked sweetness long drawn out. 
 
 There are records of risings and fallings again, of 
 alternate cloud and sunsbine, tbrougbout tbe book ; 
 earnest and passionate, yet never bitter ; bumble, yet 
 never abject; witb a deptb andvebemence of affection 
 " passing tbe love of woman,'' yet without a taint of 
 sentimentality ; self -restrained and dignified, without 
 ever narrowing into artificial coldness; altogether 
 rivalling the sonnets of Shakespeare; and all knit 
 together into one spiritual unity by the proem at the 
 opening of the volume — in our eyes, the noblest English 
 Christian poem which several centuries have seen. 
 
 '^ We shall not quote the very poems which we should 
 most wish to sink into men's hearts. Let each man 
 find for himself those which suit him best, and medi- 
 tate on them in silence. They are fit only to be read 
 solemnly in our purest and most thoughtful moods, in 
 the solitude of our chamber, or by the side of those 
 we love, with thanks to the great heart who has 
 taken courage to bestow on us the record of his own 
 friendship, doubt, and triumph. 
 
 It has been often asked why Mr. Tennyson's great 
 and varied powers had never been concentrated on one 
 immortal work. The epic, the lyric, the idyllic facul- 
 ties, perhaps the dramatic also, seemed to be all there, 
 and yet all sundered, scattered about in small frag- 
 mentary poems. '' In Memoriam," as we think, explains 
 the paradox. Mr. Tennyson had been employed on 
 higher, more truly divine, and yet more truly human 
 
124 TENNYSOX. [iv. 
 
 work than either epos or drama. Within the unseen 
 and alone truly Eeal world which underlies and explains 
 this mere time-shadow, which men miscall the Real, he 
 had been going down into the depths, and ascending 
 into the heights, led, like Dante of old, by the guiding 
 of a mighty spirit. And in this volume, the record of 
 seventeen years, we have the result of those spiritual 
 experiences in a form calculated, as we believe, to be 
 a priceless benefit to many an earnest seeker in this 
 generation, and perhaps to stir up some who are priding 
 themselves on a cold dilettantism and barren epicurism, 
 into something like a living faith and hope. Blessed 
 and delightful it is to find, that even in these new ages 
 the creeds which so many fancy to be at their last gasp, 
 are still the final and highest succour, not merely of 
 the peasant and the outcast, but of the subtle artist 
 and the daring speculator. Blessed it is to find the 
 most cunning poet of our day able to combine the 
 complicated rhythm and melody of modern times with 
 the old truths which gave heart to martyrs at the 
 stake ; and to see in the science and the history of the 
 nineteenth century new and living fulfilments of the 
 words which we learnt at our mother's knee. Blessed, 
 thrice blessed, to find that hero-worship is not yet 
 passed away ; that the heart of man still beats young 
 and fresh ; that the old tales of David and Jonathan, 
 Damon and Pythias, Socrates and Alcibiades, Shake- 
 speare and his nameless friend, of " love passing the 
 love of woman,'' ennobled by its own humility, deeper 
 than death, and mightier than the grave, can still 
 blossom out, if it be but in one heart here and there, 
 to show men still how, sooner or later, " he that loveth 
 knoweth God, for God is love." I 
 
BUKNS AND HIS SCHOOL. 
 
BUMS km HIS SCHOOL.* 
 
 Four faces among the portraits of modern men_, great 
 or sniall^ strike us as supremely beautiful ; not merely 
 in expression^ but in tlie form and proportion and 
 harmony of features : Shakespeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, 
 Burns. One would expect it to be so ; for the mind 
 makes the body, not the body the mind ; and the 
 inward beauty seldom fails to express itself in the out- 
 ward, as a visible sign of the invisible grace or disgrace 
 of the wearer. Not that it is so always. A Paul, 
 Apostle of the Gentiles, may be ordained to be " in 
 presence weak, in speech contemptible,'' ' hampered by 
 some thorn in the flesh — to interfere apparently with 
 
 * North British Eeview, No. XXXI,— 1.—" Elliott's Poems." 
 London, 1833.— 2. " Poems of Robert Nicoll." Third Edition. Edin- 
 bui-gb, 1843. — 3. " Life and Poems of John Bethune." London, 
 18-11. — 4. "Memoirs of Alexander Bethune." By W. M'Combie. 
 Aberdeen, 1845. — 5. "Rhymes and Recollections of a Handloom 
 Weaver." By William Thorn, of Invex'ury. Second Edition, London, 
 1845. — 6. " The Purgatory of Suicides." By Thomas Cooper. 
 London, 1845. — 7. " The Book of Scottish Song." By Alexander 
 Whitelaw. Edinburgh, 1848. 
 
128 BUEXS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 tlie success of liis mission^ perhaps for the sarae wise 
 purpose of Providence whicli sent Socrates to the 
 Athenians^ the worshippers of physical beauty, in the 
 ugliest of human bodies, that they, or rather those of 
 them to whom eyes to see had been given, might learn 
 that soul is after all independent of matter, and not its 
 creature and its slave. But, in the generality of cases, 
 physiognomy is a sound and faithful science, and tells 
 us, if not, alas ! what the man might have been, still 
 what he has become. Yet even this former problem, 
 what he might have been, may often be solved for us 
 by youthful portraits, before sin and sorrow and weak- 
 ness have had their will upon the features; and, there- 
 fore, when we spoke of these four beautiful faces, we 
 alluded, in each case, to the earliest portraits of each 
 genius which we could recollect. Placing them side by 
 side, we must be allowed to demand for that of Robert 
 Burns an honourable station among them. Of Shake- 
 speare's we do not speak, for it seems to us to combine 
 in itself the elements of all the other three ; but of the 
 rest, we question whether Burns be not, after all, if 
 not the noblest, still the most lovable — the most 
 like what we should wish that of a teacher of men to 
 be. Eaffaelle — the most striking portrait of him, 
 perhaps, is the full-face pencil sketch by his own hand 
 in the Taylor Gallery at Oxford — though without a 
 taint of littleness or effeminacy, is soft, melancholy, 
 formed entirely to receive and to elaborate in silence. 
 His is a face to be kissed, not worshipped. Goethe, 
 even in his earliest portraits, looks as if his expression 
 depended too much on his own will. There is a self- 
 conscious power, and purpose, and self-restraint, and 
 
T.] EAELY PORTEAITS OF BUENS. 129 
 
 all but scorn, upon tliose glorious lineaments, whicli 
 might win worship, and did ; but not love, except as 
 the child of enthusiasm or of relationship. But Burns^s 
 face, to judge of it by the early portrait of him by 
 Nasmyth, must have been a face like that of Joseph of 
 old, of whom the Eabbis relate, that he was mobbed 
 by the Egyptian ladies whenever he Avalked the streets. 
 The magic of that countenance, making Burns at once 
 tempter and tempted, may explain many a sad story. 
 The features certainly are not perfectly regular ; there 
 is no superabundance of the charm of mere animal health 
 in the outline or colour : but the marks of intellectual 
 beauty in the face are of the highest order, capable of 
 being but too triumphant among a people of deep 
 thought and feeling. The lips, ripe, yet not coarse or 
 loose, full of passion and the faculty of enjoyment, are 
 parted, as if forced to speak by the inner fulness of the 
 heart ; the features are rounded, rich, and tender, and 
 yet the bones show thought massively and manfully 
 everywhere ; the eyes laugh out upon you with bound- 
 less good humour and sweetness, with simple, eager, 
 gentle surprise — a gleam as of the morning star, look- 
 ing forth upon the wonder of a new-born world — 
 altogether 
 
 A station like the herald Mercury, 
 New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill. 
 
 Bestow on such a man the wittiest and most win- 
 ning eloquence — a rich flow of spirits and fulness of 
 health and life — a deep sense of wonder and beauty in 
 the earth and man — an instinct of the dynamic and 
 supernatural laws which underlie and vivify this mate- 
 
 L. G. K 
 
130 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [y. 
 
 rial universe and its appearances, liealtliy, yet irregular 
 and unscientific, all but superstitious — turn him loose 
 in any country in Europe, during tlie latter half of the 
 eighteenth century, and it will not be difficult, alas ! to 
 cast his horoscope. 
 
 And what an age in which to be turned loose ! — for 
 loose he must go, to solve the problem of existence for 
 himself. The grand simple old Scottish education 
 which he got from his parents must prove narrow and 
 unsatisfying for so rich and manifold a character ; not 
 because it was in itself imperfect ; not because it did 
 not contain implicitly all things necessary for his " sal- 
 vation '^ — in every sense, all laws which he might re- 
 quire for his after-life guidance ; but because it con- 
 tained so much of them as yet only implicitly ; because 
 it was not yet conscious of its own breadth and depth, 
 and power of satisfying the new doubts and cravings of 
 such minds and such times as Burns's. It may be that 
 Burns was the devoted victim by whose fall it was to 
 be taught that it must awaken and expand and renew 
 its youth in shapes equally sound, but more complex 
 and scientific. But it had not done so then. And 
 when Burns found himself gradually growing beyond 
 his father's teaching in one direction, and tempted 
 beyond it in another and a lower one, what was there in 
 those times to take up his education at the point where 
 it had been left unfinished ? He saw around him in 
 plenty animal good-nature and courage, barbaric 
 honesty and hospitality — more, perhaps, than he would 
 see now ; for the upward progress into civilised excel- 
 lences is sure to be balanced by some loss of savage 
 ones — but reckless, shallow, above all, drunken. It 
 
v.] INFLUENCE OF THE AGE ON BURNS. 131 
 
 was a liar d- drinking, coarse, materialist age. The 
 liiglier culture, of Scotland especially, was all but 
 exclusively Frencli — not a good kind, while Voltaire 
 and Volney still remained unanswered, and "Les 
 Liaisons Dangereuses ^^ were accepted by all young 
 gentlemen, and a great many young ladies who could 
 read French, as the best account of the relation of the 
 sexes. 
 
 Besides, the philosophy of that day, like its criticism, 
 was altogether mechanical, nay, as it now seems, mate- 
 rialist in its ultimate and logical results. Criticism 
 was outward, and of the form merely. The world was 
 not believed to be already, and in itself, mysterious and 
 supernatural, and the poet was not defined as the man 
 who could see and proclaim that supernatural element. 
 Before it was admired, it was to be raised above nature 
 into the region of "the picturesque," or whatnot; and 
 the poet was the man who gave it this factitious and 
 superinduced beauty, by a certain "kompsologia'' and 
 " meteoroepeia,^'' called "poetic diction," now happily 
 becoming extinct, mainly, we believe, under the in- 
 fluence of Burns, although he himself thought it his 
 duty to bedizen his verses therewith, and though it 
 was destined to flourish for many a year more in the 
 temple of the father of lies, like a jar of paper flowers 
 on a Popish altar. 
 
 No wonder that in such a time, a genius like Burns 
 should receive not only no guidance, but no finer 
 appreciation. True; he was admired, petted, flattered; 
 for that the man was wondei'ful no one could doubt. 
 But we question whether he was understood ; whether, 
 if that very flowery and magniloquent style which we 
 
 K 2 
 
132 BUEXS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v, 
 
 now consider his great failing had been away, lie would 
 not liave been passed over by the many as a writer of 
 vulgar doggrel. True, the old simple ballad-muse of 
 Scotland still dropped a gem from her treasures, here 
 and there, even in the eighteenth century itself — witness 
 "Auld Eobiu Gray/' But who suspected that they were 
 gems, of which Scotland, fifty years afterwards, would 
 be prouder and more greedy than of all the second- 
 hand French culture which seemed to her then the 
 highest earthly attainment ? The Review of Burns in 
 an early number of the '' Edinburgh Eeview/' said to 
 be from the pen of the lute Lord Jeffrey, shows, as 
 clearly as anything can, the utterly inconsistent and 
 bewildered feeling with which the world must have 
 regarded such a phenomenon. Alas ! there was incon- 
 sistency and bewilderment enough in the phenomenon 
 itself, but that only made confusion worse confounded ; 
 the confusion was already there, even in the mind of 
 the more practical literary men, who ought, one would 
 have thought, also to have been the most deep-sighted. 
 But no. The reviewer turns the strange thing over 
 and over, and inside out — and some fifteen years after 
 it has vanished out of the world, having said out its 
 say and done all that it had to do, he still finds it too 
 utterly abnormal to make up his mind about in any 
 clear or consistent way, and gets thoroughly cross with 
 it, and calls it hard names, because it will not fit into 
 any established pigeon-hole or drawer of the then 
 existing anthropological museum. Burns is ''a literary 
 prodigy," and yet it is "a derogation'' to him to consider 
 him as one. And that we find, not as we should have 
 expected, because he possessed genius, which would have 
 
v.] JEFFREY'S ESTIMATE OF BURNS. 133 
 
 made success a matter of course in any rank, but 
 because lie was so well educated — " having acquired a 
 competent knowledge of French, together with the 
 elements of Latin and Geometry/' and before he had 
 composed a single stanza, was '' far more intimately 
 acquainted with Pope, Shakespeare, and Thomson, than 
 nine- tenths of the youths who leave school for the 
 university,^' etc. etc. — in short, because he was so well 
 educated, that his becoming Robert Burns, the im- 
 mortal poet, was a matter of course and necessity. 
 And yet, a page or two on, the great reason why it was 
 more easy for Robert Burns the cottar to become an 
 original and vigorous poet, rather than for any one of 
 " the herd of scholars and academical literati," who are 
 depressed and discouraged by '^ perusing the most 
 celebrated writers, and conversing with the most in- 
 telligent judges,'' is found to be, that '^the literature 
 and refinement of the age do not exist for a rustic and 
 illiterate individual ; and consequently the present 
 time is to him what the rude times of old were to the 
 vigorous writerwho adorned them." In short the great 
 reason of Robert Burns's success was that he did not 
 possess that education the possession of which proves 
 him to be no prodigy, though the review begins by 
 calling him one, and coupling him with Stephen Duck 
 and Thomas Dermody. 
 
 Now if the best critic of the age, writing fifteen 
 years after Burns's death, found himself between the 
 horns of such a dilemma — which indeed, like those of 
 an old Arnee bull, meet at the points, and form a com- 
 plete circle of contradictions — what must have been 
 the bewilderment of lesser folk during the prodigy's 
 
134 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v, 
 
 very lifetime ? what must, indeed, have been his own 
 bewilderment at himself, however manfully he may 
 have kept it down ? No wonder that he was unguided, 
 either by himself or by others. We do not blame 
 them ; him we must deeply blame ; yet not as we 
 ought to blame ourselves, did we yield in the least to 
 those temptations under which Bui*ns fell. 
 
 Biographies of Burns, and those good ones, accord- 
 ing to the standard of biographies in these days, are 
 said to exist ; we cannot say that we have as yet cared 
 to read them. There are several other biographies^ 
 even more important, to be read first, when they are 
 written. Shakespeare has found as yet no biographer ; 
 has not even left behind him materials for a biography, 
 such at least as are considered worth using. Indeed, 
 we question whether such a biography would be of any 
 use whatever to the world; for the man who cannot, by 
 studying his dramas in some tolerably accurate chro- 
 nological order, and using as a running accompani- 
 ment and closet commentary those awe-inspiring son- 
 nets of his, attain to some clear notion of what sort of 
 life William Shakespeare must have led, would not see 
 him much the clearer for many folios of anecdote. 
 For after all, the best biography of every sincere man. 
 is sure to be his own woi^ks; here he has set down,. 
 '' transferred as in a figure,^' all that has happened to 
 him, inward or outward, or rather, all which has 
 formed him, produced a permanent effect upon his 
 mind and heart ; and knowing that, you know all you 
 need know, and are content, being glad to escape the 
 personality and gossip of names and places, and of 
 dates even, except in as far as they enable you to place 
 
v.] UNCONSCIOUS AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 135 
 
 one step of Ms mental growth before or after another. 
 Of the honest man this holds true always ; and almost 
 always of the dishonest man, the man of cant, affecta- 
 tion, hypocrisy; for even if he pretend in his novel or 
 his poem to be what he is not, he still shows you thereby 
 what he thinks he ought to have been, or at least what 
 he thinks that the world thinks he ought to have been, 
 and confesses to you, in the most naive and confiden- 
 tial way, like one who talks in his sleep, what learning 
 he has or has not had ; what society he has or has not 
 seen, and that in the very act of trying to prove the 
 contrary. Nay, the smaller the man or woman, and 
 the less worth deciphering his biography, the more 
 surely will he show you, if you have eyes to see and 
 time to look, what sort of people offended him twenty 
 years ago ; what meanness he would have liked " to 
 indulge in," if he had dared, when young, and for 
 what other meanness he relinquished it, as he grew 
 up ; of what periodical he stood in awe when he took 
 pen in hand, and so forth. Whether his books treat 
 of love or political economy, theology or geology, it 
 is there, the history of the man legibly printed, for 
 those who care to read it. In these poems and letters 
 of Burns, we apprehend, is to be found a truer history 
 than any anecdote can supply, of the things which 
 happened to himself, and moreover of the most 
 notable things which went on in Scotland between 
 1759 and 1796. 
 
 This latter assertion may seem startling, when we 
 consider that we find in these poems no mention what- 
 soever of the discoveries of steamboats and spinning- 
 jennies, the rise of the great manufacturing cities, the 
 
136 BUENS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 revolution in ScottisTi agriculture, or even in Scottisli 
 metaphysics. But after all, the history of a nation is 
 the history of the men, and not of the things thereof ; 
 and the history of those men is the history of their 
 hearts, and not of their purses, or even of their heads ; 
 and the history of one man who has felt in himself 
 the heart experiences of his generation, and antici- 
 pated many belonging to the next generation, is so far 
 the collective history of that generation, and of much. 
 — no man can say how much — of the next generation ; 
 and such a man, bearing within his single soul two 
 generations of working-men, we take Robert Burns to 
 have been ; and his poems, as such, a contemporaneous 
 history of Scotland, the equal to which we are not likely 
 to see written for this generation, or several to come. 
 
 Such a man sent out into such an age, would 
 naturally have a hard and a confused battle to fight, 
 would probably, unless he fell under the guidance of 
 some master-mind, end se ipso minor, stunted and sadly 
 deformed, as Burns did. His works are after all only 
 the disjecta membra poetse ; full of hints of a great 
 might-have-been. Hints of the keenest and most 
 dramatic appreciation of human action and thought. 
 Hints of an unbounded fancy, playing gracefully in the 
 excess of its strength, with the vastest images, as in 
 that robe of the Scottish Muse, in which 
 
 Deep lights and shades, bold minglmg, threw 
 A lustre grand, 
 
 And seem'd to my astonished view 
 
 A well-known land. 
 
 The image, and the next few stanzas which dilate 
 
%\] BUENS'S VERSATILITY. 137 
 
 it, might be a translation from Dante's " Paradiso/' so 
 broadj terse, vivid, the painter's touch. Hints, too, 
 of a humour, which, like that of Shakespeare, rises at 
 times by sheer depth of insight into the sublime ; as 
 when 
 
 Hornie did the Laigli Kirk watch. 
 
 Just like a winking baudrons. 
 
 Hints of a power of verbal wit, which, had it been 
 sharpened in such a perpetual word-battle as that 
 amid which Shakespeare lived from the age of twenty, 
 might have rivalled Shakespeare's own ; which even 
 now asserts its force by a hundred little never-to-be- 
 forgotten phrases scattered through his poems, which 
 stick, like barbed arrows, in the memory of every 
 reader. And as for his tenderness — the quality with- 
 out which all other poetic excellence is barren — it 
 gushes forth toward every creature, animate and in- 
 animate, with one exception, namely, the hypocrite, 
 ever alike " spiacente a Dio e ai nemici sui ; " and there- 
 fore intolerable to Robert Barns's honesty, whether he 
 be fighting for or against the cause of right. Again 
 we say, there are evidences of a versatile and mani- 
 fold faculty in this man, which, with a stronger will 
 and a larger education, might have placed him as 
 an equal by the side of those great names which we 
 mentioned together with his at the commencement of 
 this article. 
 
 But one thing Bui'us wanted ; and of that one thing 
 his age helped to deprive him — the education which 
 comes by reverence. Looking round in such a time, 
 with his keen power of insight, his keen sense of 
 
138 BUE^'S AXD HIS SCHOOL. [v, 
 
 humour^ what was there to worship ? Lord Jeffrey, 
 or whosoever was the author of the review in the 
 " Edinburgh j^^ says disparagingly, that Bums had as 
 much education as Shakespeare. So he very probably 
 had, if education mean book-learning. Nay, more, 
 of the practical education of the fireside, the sober, 
 industrious. God-fearing education, and " di*awing 
 out " of the manhood, by act and example. Burns may 
 have had more under his good father than Shakespeare 
 under his ; though the family life of the small EngHsh 
 burgher in Elizabeth's time would have generally pre- 
 sented, as we suspect, the very same aspect of staid 
 manfulness and godliness which a Scotch farmer's did 
 fifty years ago. But let that be as it may. Bums was 
 not born into an Ehzabethan age. He did not see 
 around him Raleighs and Sidneys, Cecils and Hookers, 
 Drakes and Frobishers, Spensers and Jonsons, South- 
 amptons and Willonghbys, with an Elizabeth, guiding 
 and moulding the great whole, a crowned Titaness, 
 terrible, and strong, and wise — a woman who, whether 
 right or wrong, bowed the proudest, if not to love, yet 
 still to obey. 
 
 That was the secret of Shakespeare's power. 
 Heroic himself, he was bom into an age of heroes. 
 You see it in his works. Not a play but gives patent 
 evidence that to him all forms of human magnanimity 
 were common and wayside flowers — among the 
 humours of men which he and Ben Jonson used to 
 wander forth together to observe. And thus he could 
 give living action and speech to the ancient noblenesses 
 of Eome and the Middle Age ; for he had walked and 
 conversed with them, imchanged in everything but in 
 
T.] HEEOIC AND UXHEEOIC SUR^UXDIKGe) P 13^ "R Y 
 
 the dress. Had lie known Greek literature he could 
 have recalled to imperishable life subh ihan ♦a^ -OHiibii 
 and Aristides^ such deeds as Marathon and Salamis. 
 For had we not had our own Salamife acted within 
 a few years of his birth ; and were notf the heroes of it 
 still walking among men ? It was surely this con- 
 tinual presence of ''men of worship/^ this atmosphere 
 of admiration and respect and trust, in which Shake- 
 speare must have lived, which tamed down the wild 
 selfwill of the deer-stealing fugitive from Stratford, 
 into the calm large-eyed philosopher, tolerant and 
 loving, and full of faith in a species made in the like- 
 ness of God. Not so with Burns. One feels painfully 
 in his poems the want of great characters; and still 
 more painfully that he has not drawn them, simply 
 because they were not there to draw. That he has a 
 true eye for what is noble, when he sees it, let his 
 " Lament for Glencairn " testify, and the stanzas in 
 his " Vision,^^ in which, with a high-bred grace which 
 many a courtly poet of his day might have envied, he 
 alludes to one and another Scottish worthy of his time. 
 There is no vein of saucy and envious " banausia " in 
 the man ; even in his most graceless sneer, his fault — 
 if fault it be — is, that he cannot and will not pretend 
 to respect that which he knows to be unworthy of 
 respect. He sees around him and above him, as well 
 as below him, an average of men and things dishonest, 
 sensual, ungodly, shallow, ridiculous by reason of their 
 own lusts and passions, and he will not apply to the 
 shams of dignity and worth, the words which were 
 meant for their realities. After all, he does but say 
 what every one round him was feeling and thinking ; 
 
140 BUENS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 but lie said it ; and hypocritical respectability sLrank 
 shrieking from the mirror of her own inner heart. But 
 it was all the worse for him. In the sins of others he 
 saw an excuse for his own. Losing respect for and 
 faith in his brother-men, he lost, as a matter of course, 
 respect for himself, faith in himself. The hypocrisy 
 which persecutes in the name of law, whether political 
 or mox-al, while in private it transgresses the very law 
 which is for ever on its tongue, is turned by his pas- 
 sionate and sorely-tempted character into a too easy 
 excuse for disbelieving in the obligation of any law 
 whatsoever. He ceases to worship, and therefore to 
 be himself worshipful — and we know the rest. 
 
 " He might have still worshipped God ? " He 
 might, and surely amid all his sins, doubts, and con- 
 fusions, the remembrance of the old faith learned at 
 his parent's knee, does haunt him still as a beautiful 
 regret — and sometimes, in his bitterest hours, shine 
 out before his poor broken heart as an everlasting/ 
 Pharos, lighting him homewards after all. Whether 
 he reached that home or not, none on earth can tell. 
 But his writings show, if anything can, that the vestal- 
 fire of conscience still burned within, though choked 
 again and again with bitter ashes and foul smoke. 
 Consider the time in which he lived, when it was " as 
 with the people, so with the priest," and the grand 
 old life-tree of the Scottish Kirk, now green and vigorous ' 
 with fresh leaves and flowers, was all crusted with foul 
 scurf and moss, and seemed to have ceased growing. 
 and to be crumbling down into decay; consider the 
 terrible contradiction between faith and practice which 
 must have met the eyes of the man, before he could 
 
v.] EDINBURGH EEYIEWERS. 141 
 
 write witL. the same pen — and one as honestly as the 
 other— '^ The Cottar's Saturday Night/' and "Holy 
 Willie's Prayer." But those times are past, and the 
 men who acted in them gone to another tribunal. Let 
 the dead bury their dead; and^ in the meantime, instead 
 of cursing the misguided genius, let us consider whether 
 we have not also something for which to thank him ; 
 whether, as competent judges of him aver from their 
 own experience, those very seeming blasphemies of his 
 have not produced more good than evil ; whether, 
 though " a savour of death unto death," to conceited 
 and rebellious spirits, they may not have helped to 
 open the eyes of the wise to the extent to which the 
 general eighteenth-century rottenness had infected 
 Scotland, and to make intolerable a state of things 
 which ought to have been intolerable, even if Burns 
 had never written. 
 
 We are not attacking the reviewer, far less the 
 " Edinburgh Review," which some years after this not 
 only made the amende honorable to Burns, but showed 
 a frank impartiality only too rare in the reviews of 
 these days, by publishing in its pages the noble article 
 on Burns which has since appeared separately in 
 Mr. Carlyle's "Miscellanies." We only wish to show, 
 from the reviewer's own words, the element in which 
 Burns had to work, the judges before whom he had to 
 plead, and the change which, as we think, very much 
 by the influence of his own poems, has joassed upon the 
 minds of men. How few are there who would pen now 
 about him such a sentence as this : " He is " (that is, 
 was, having gone to his account fifteen years before) 
 "perpetually making a parade of his own inflammability 
 
142 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 and imprudence, and talking with mucli self-compla- 
 cency and exultation of the offence he has occasioned to 
 the sober and correct part of mankind " — a very small 
 part of mankind, one would have thought, in the British 
 Isles at least, about the end of the last century. But, 
 it was the fashion then, as usual, to substitut3 the 
 praise of virtues for the practice of them ; and three- 
 bottle and ten-tumbler men had a very good right, of 
 course, to admire sobriety and correctness, and to 
 denounce any two-bottle and six-tumbler man who was 
 not ashamed to confess in print the weaknesses which 
 they confessed only by word of mouth. Just, and yet 
 not just. True, Burns does make a parade of his 
 thoughtlessness, and worse ; but why ? because he 
 gloried in it? He must be a very skin-deep critic 
 who cannot see, even in the most insolent of those 
 blameworthy utterances, an inward shame and self- 
 reproach, which if any man had ever felt in himself, 
 he would be in nowise inclined to laugh at it in others. 
 Why, it is the very shame which wrings those poems 
 out of him. They are the attempt of the strong man 
 fettered to laugh at his own consciousness of slavery — 
 to deny the existence of his chains — to pretend to him- 
 self that he likes them. To us, some of those wildest 
 " Rob the Eanter '^ bursts of blackguardism are most 
 deeply mournful, hardly needing that the sympathies 
 which they stir up should be heightened by the little 
 scraps of prayer and bitter repentance, which lie up and 
 down among their uglier brethren, the disjecta membra 
 of a great " De Profundis,^^ perhaps not all unheard. 
 These latter pieces are most significant. The very 
 doggT-el of them, the total absence of any attempt at 
 
v.] BURNS'S POLITICS. 143 
 
 ornament in diction or polisli in metre, is proof com- 
 plete of tlieir deep lieart-wrnng sincerity. They are 
 like the wail of a lost child, rather than the remorse of 
 a Titan. The heart of the man was so young to the 
 last ; the boy-vein in him, as perhaps in all great poets, 
 beating on through manhood for good and for evil. 
 No ! there was parade there, as of the lost woman, who 
 tries to hide her self-disgust by staring you out of 
 countenance, but of complacency and exultation none. 
 On one point, namely politics, Burns^s higher sym- 
 pathies seem to have been awakened. It had been 
 better for him, in a worldly point of view, that they had 
 not. In an intellectual, and even in a moral point of 
 view, far worse. A fellow-feeling with the French Re- 
 volution, in the mind of a young man of that day, was 
 a sigiu of moral health, which we should have been 
 sorry to miss in him. Unable to foresee the out- 
 come of the great struggle, having lost faith in those 
 everlasting truths, religious and political, which it was 
 madly setting- at naught, what could it appear to him 
 but an awakening from the dead, a return to young and 
 genial health, a purifying thunderstorm. Such was 
 his dream, the dream of thousands more, and not so 
 wrong a one after all. For that, since that feai'ful out- 
 burst of the nether pit, all Europe has arisen and 
 awakened into manifold and beautiful new life, who can 
 deny ? We are not what we were, but better, or 
 rather, with boundless means of being better if we 
 will. We have entered a fresh era of time for good 
 and evil ; the fact is patent in every sermon we hear, 
 in every book we read, in every invention, even 
 the most paltry, which we see registered. Shall 
 
14.J. Buii:^'s a:s'd his school. \y. 
 
 we tkmk Iiardlj of tlie man wko saw tke dawn 
 of our own day, and welcomed ifc cheerfullj and 
 iiopefully, even tiioagli Ke fancied the mist -spectres 
 to be elements of the true sunrise, and knew not — and 
 who knows ? — ^the purposes of Him whose paths are in 
 the great deep, and His ways past finding out ? At 
 least, the greater part of his influence on the times 
 which haye followed him, is to be ascribed to that very 
 " Radicalism " which in the eyes of the respectable 
 around him, had sealed his doom, and consigned him 
 to ignoble obKvion. It has been, with the working 
 men who read him, a passport for the rest of his 
 writings ; it has alLnred them to listen to him, when he 
 spoke of high and holy things, which but for him, they 
 might have long ago tossed away as worthless, in the 
 recklessness of ignorance and discontent. They could 
 trust his " Cottar's Saturday Jifight ; " they could 
 believe that he spoke from his heart, when in deep 
 anguish he cries to the God whom he had forgotten, 
 while they would have turned with a distrustful sneer 
 from the sermon of the sleek and comfortable minister, 
 who in their eyes, however humbly bom, had deserted 
 his class, and gone over to the camp of the enemy, and 
 the flesh-pots of Egjrpt. 
 
 After the time of Burns, as was to be expecteil 
 Scottish song multiplies itself tenfold. The nation 
 becomes awakened to the treasures of its own old 
 literature, and attempts, what after all, alas ! is but a 
 revival ; and like most revivals, not altogether a suc- 
 cessful one. Of the twelve hundred songs contained 
 in Mr. Whitelaw's excellent collection, whereof more 
 than a hundred and fifty are either wholly or partly 
 
v.] TRUE TEST OF SONG. 145 
 
 Burns's, the small proportion written before him are 
 decidedly far superior in value to those written after 
 him ; a discouraging fact, though not difficult to 
 explain, if we consider the great social changes which 
 have been proceeding, the sterner subjects of thought 
 which have been arising, during the last half-century. 
 True song requires for its atmosphere a state rather of 
 careless Arcadianprosperity,than of struggle and doubt, 
 of earnest looking forward to an unknown future, and 
 pardonable regret for a dying past ; and in that state 
 the mind of the masses, throughout North Britain, has 
 been weltering confusedly for the last few years. The 
 new and more complex era into which we are passing 
 has not yet sufficiently opened itself to be sung about ; 
 men hardly know what it is, much less what it will be; 
 and while they are hard at work creating it, they have 
 no breath to spare in talking of it. One thing they do 
 see and feel, painfully enough at times, namely, that 
 the old Scottish pastoral life is passing away, before 
 the combined influence of manufactures and the large- 
 farm system ; to be replaced, doubtless, hereafter, by 
 something better, but in the meanwhile dragging down 
 with it in its decay but too much that can ill be spared 
 of that old society which inspired Eamsay and Buras. 
 Hence the later Scottish song-writers seldom really 
 sing ; their proses want the unconscious lilt and flash of 
 their old models ; they will hardly go (the true test of a 
 song) without music. The true test, we say again, of a 
 song. Who needs music, however fitting and beautiful 
 the accustomed air may happen to be, to " Eoy's Wife 
 of Aldivalloch,^' or " The Bride cam' out o' the byre,^^ 
 or either of the casts of " The Flowers of the Forest." 
 
146 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [t. 
 
 or to " Auld Lang Syne " itself ? They bubble right 
 up out of tlie hearty and by virtue of their inner and 
 unconscious melody^ which all that is true to the heart 
 has in it, shape themselves into a song, and are not 
 shaped by any notes whatsoever. So with many, most 
 indeed, of Burns's ; and a few of Allan Cunningham's; 
 the " Wet sheet and a flowing sail,'^ for instance. But 
 the great majority of these later songs seem, if the 
 truth is to be spoken, inspirations at second hand, of 
 people writing about things which they would like to 
 feel, and which they ought to feel, because others used 
 to feel them in old times ; but which they do not feel 
 as their forefathers felt — a sort of poetical Tract- 
 arianism, in short. Their metre betrays them, as well 
 as their words ; in both they are continually wander- 
 ing, unconsciously to themselves, into the elegiac — 
 except when on one subject, whereon the muse of 
 Scotia still warbles at first hand, and from the depths 
 of her heart — namely, alas ! the barley bree : and yet 
 never, even on this beloved theme, has she risen again 
 to the height of Burns's bacchanalian songs. 
 
 But when sober, there is a sadness about the Scottish 
 muse nowadays — as perhaps there ought to be — and 
 the utterances of hers which ring the truest are laments. 
 We question whether in all Mr. Whitelaw's collection 
 there is a single modern poem (placing Burns as the 
 transition point between the old and new) which rises 
 so high^ or pierces so deep, with all its pastoral sim- 
 plicity, as Smibert's " Widow's Lament." 
 
 Afore the Lammas tide 
 
 Had dwin'd the birkeu tree, 
 lu a' our water-side, 
 
 Nae wife was blest like me : 
 
; THE WIDOW'S LAMENT. 147 
 
 A kind gudeman, and twa ' -' ■ ^ ^ > i i . \ I 
 
 Sweet bairns were round me here ; 
 But they're a' ta'en awa', ij LT K 1 V E K !S J T ' 
 
 Sin' the fa' o' the year. !| 
 
 i. ^ ' ^ T - 
 Sair trouble cam' our gate, 
 
 And made me, when it cam', 
 A bird without a mate, 
 
 A ewe without a lamb. 
 Our hay was yet to maw, 
 
 And our corn was yet to shear ; 
 "When they a' dwined awa', 
 
 In the fa' o' the year. 
 
 I daurna look a-field. 
 
 For aye I trow to see. 
 The form that was a bield 
 
 To my wee bairns and me. 
 But wind, and weet, and snaw, 
 
 They never mair can fear. 
 Sin' they a' got the ca'j 
 
 In the fa' o' the year. 
 
 Aft on the hill at e'ens, 
 
 I see him 'mang the ferns, 
 The lover o' my teens. 
 
 The father o' my bairns : 
 For there his plaid I saw. 
 
 As gloamin' aye drew near — 
 But my a's now awa', 
 
 Sin' the fa' o' the year. 
 
 Our bonnie rigs theirsel', 
 
 Reca' my waes to mind, 
 Our puir dumb beasties tell 
 
 0' a' that I ha'e tyned ; 
 For whae our wheat will saw. 
 
 And whae our sheep will shear, 
 Sin' my a' gaed awa', 
 
 In the fa' o' the year ? 
 
 L 2 
 
148 BUEXS AXD HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 My heart is growing caiild, 
 
 And will be caulder still. 
 And sair sair in the fauld, 
 
 Will be the wintei-'s chill ; 
 For peats were yet to ca', 
 
 Our sheep they were to smear. 
 When my a' dwined awa', 
 
 In the fa' o' the year. 
 
 I ettle whiles to spin, 
 
 But wee wee patterin' feet. 
 Come rinnin' out aud in, 
 
 And then I first maun greet : 
 I ken its fancy a' 
 
 And faster rows the tear, 
 That my a' dwined awa', 
 
 In the fa' o' the year. 
 
 Be kind, heaVn abune ! 
 
 To ane sae wae and lane. 
 An' tak' her hamewards sune, 
 
 In pity o' her mane : 
 Lang ere the March winds blaw. 
 
 May she, far far frae here, 
 Meet them a' that's awa'. 
 
 Sin' the fa' o' the year. 
 
 It seems strange why the man who could write this, 
 who shows, in the minor key of metre^ which he has so 
 skilfully chosen, such an instinct for the true music of 
 words, could not have wi'itten much more. And yet, 
 perhaps, we have ourselves given the reason already. 
 There was not much more to sing about. The fashion 
 of imitating old Jacobite songs is past, the mine now 
 being exhausted, to the great comfort of sincerity aud 
 common sense. The peasantry, whose courtship, rich 
 in animal health, yet not over pure and refined, Allan 
 
y.2 THE AGE OP TRANSITION. 149 
 
 Ramsay sang a hundred years ago, are learning to 
 think, and act, and emigrate, as well as to make lore. 
 The age of Theocritus and Bion has given place to — 
 shall we say the age of the Csesars, or the irruption of 
 the barbarians? — and the love-singers of the North are 
 beginning to feel, that if that passion is to retain any 
 longer its rightful place in their popular poetry, it 
 must be spoken of henceforth in words as lofty and 
 refined as those in which the most educated and the 
 most gifted speak of it. Hence, in the transition 
 between the old animalism and the new spiritualism, a 
 jumble of the two elements, not always felicitous ; 
 attempts at ambitious description, after Burns's worst 
 manner; at subjective sentiment, after the worst 
 manner of the world in general ; and yet, all the 
 while, a consciousness that there was something worth 
 keeping in the simple objective style of the old school, 
 without which the new thoughtfulness would be 
 hollow, and barren, and windy ; and so the two are 
 patched together, " new cloth into an old garment, 
 making the rent worse." Accordingly, these new 
 songs are universally troubled with the disease of 
 epithets. Eyan's exquisite " Lass wi' the Bonny Blue 
 Een," is utterly spoiled by two offences of this kind. 
 
 She'll steal out to meet her loved Donald again, 
 and — 
 
 The world's false and vanishing scene ; 
 
 as Allan Cunningham's still more exquisite '' Lass of 
 Preston Mill" is by one subjective figure : 
 
 Six hills are woolly with ray sheep, 
 Six vales are lowing with my kye. 
 
150 EUEN3 AXD HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 Bams doubtless committed the same fault again and 
 again; but in his time it was the fashion; and the 
 older models (for models they are and will remain for 
 ever) had not been studied and analysed as they have 
 been since. Boms, indeed, actually spoiled one or two 
 of his own songs by altering them from their first cast 
 to suit the sentimental taste of his time. The first 
 version, for instance, of the " Banks and Braes o' 
 Bonnie Doon,^' is far superior to the second and more 
 popular one, because it dares to go without epithets. 
 Compare the second stanza of each : 
 
 Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird, 
 
 That sings upon the bough ; 
 Thou minds me o' the happy days 
 
 When my fauae love was true. 
 * * * * 
 
 Thou'lt break my heart, thou warbling bird, 
 
 That wantons through the flowery thorn ; 
 Thou minds me o' departed joys, 
 
 Departed never to return. 
 
 What is said in the latter stanza which has not 
 been said in the former, and said more dramatically, 
 more as the images would really present themselves to 
 the speaker's mind ? It would be enough for him that 
 the bird was bonnie, and singing ; and his very sorrow 
 would lead him to analyse and describe as little as 
 possible a thing which so painfully contrasted with his 
 own feelings ; whether the thorn was flowery or not, 
 would not have mattered to him, unless he had some 
 distinct association with the thorn-flowers, in which 
 case he would have brought out the image full and 
 separate, and not merely thrown it in as a make-weight 
 
▼.] USE or EPITHETS. 151 
 
 to "* tliom " — and this is the great reason why epithets 
 are, nine times out of ten, mistakes in song and ballad 
 poetry; he nerer would have thought of "departed'^ 
 before he thought of '^ joys/"^ A very little considera- 
 tion of the actual processes of thought in such a case, 
 will show the truth of our observation, and the in- 
 stinctive wisdom of the older song- writers, in putting the 
 epithet aa often as possible after the noun, instead of 
 before it, even at the expense of grammar. They are 
 bad things at all times in song poetry, these epithets ; 
 and, accordingly, we find that the best German writers, 
 Kke Uhland and Heine, get rid of them as much as 
 possible, and succeed thereby, every word striking and 
 ringing down with full force, no cushion of an epithet 
 intruding between the reader's brain-anvil and the 
 poet's hammer to break the blow. In Uhland's "Three 
 Burschen,"-" if we recollect right, there are but two 
 epithets, and those of the simplest descriptive kind : 
 ^' Thy fair daughter " and a " black pall.''' Were there 
 more, we question whether the poet would have 
 succeeded, as he has done, in making our flesh creep as 
 he leads us on from line to line and verse to verse- 
 So Tennyson, the greatest of our living poets, eschews 
 as much as possible, in his later writings, these same 
 epithets, except in cases where they are themselves 
 objective and pictorial — in short, the very things 
 which he wants you to look at, as, for instance : 
 
 And into silver arrows break 
 The sailing moon in creek and cove. 
 
 This is fair enough; but, indeed, after laying down 
 our rule, we must confess that it is very difficult to 
 
152 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 keep always true to it, in a language wiiicli does not, 
 like the Latin and GermaUj allow us to put our 
 adjectives very mucL. where we choose. Nevertheless, 
 whether we can avoid it or not, every time we place 
 before the noun an epithet which, like ^' departed 
 joys," relates to our consciousness concerning the 
 object, and not merely to the object itself; or an 
 epithet which, like " flowery thorn," gives us, before 
 we get to the object itself, those accidents of the object 
 which we only discern by a second look, by analysis 
 and reflection — (for the thorn, if in the flower, would 
 look to us, at the first glance, not ''flowery," but 
 '^ white," '' snowy,^' or what you will which expresses 
 colour, and not scientific fact) — every time, we repeat, 
 this is done, the poet descends from the objective 
 and dramatic domain of song, into the subjective and 
 reflective one of elegy. 
 
 But the field in which Burns's influence has been, 
 as was to be expected, most important and most 
 widely felt, is in the poems of working men. He first 
 proved that it was possible to become a poet and a 
 cultivated man, without deserting his class, either in 
 station or in sympathies ; nay, that the healthiest 
 and noblest elements of a lowly-born poet's mind 
 might be, perhaps must be, the very feelings and 
 thoughts which he brought up with him from below, 
 not those which he received from above, in the course 
 of liis artificial culture. From the example of Burns, 
 therefore, many a working man, who would otherwise 
 have " died and given no sign," has taken courage, 
 and spoken out the thought within him, in verse or 
 prose, not always wisely and well, but in all cases, as 
 
v.] WORKING MEN'S POEMS. 153 
 
 it seems to us, in the belief that he had a sort of divine 
 right to speak and be heard, since Burns had broken 
 down the artificial ice-wall of centuries, and asserted, 
 bj act as well as song, that '' a man's a man for a' 
 that.-" Almost every volume of working men's poetry 
 which we have read, seems to re-echo poor Nicoll's 
 spirited, though somewhat over-strained address to the 
 Scottish genius : 
 
 This is the natal day of him 
 
 Who, born in want and poverty, 
 Burst from his fetters and arose, 
 
 The freest of the free. 
 
 Arose to tell the watching earth 
 What lowly men could feel and do. 
 
 To show that mighty heaven-like souls 
 In cottage hamlets grew. 
 
 Burns ! thou hast given us a name 
 To shield us from the taunts of scorn: 
 
 The plant that creeps amid the soil 
 A glorious flower has borne. 
 
 Before the proudest of the earth 
 We stand with an iiplifted brow ; 
 
 Like us, thou wast a toil-worn man, 
 And we are noble now ! 
 
 The critic, looking calmly on, may indeed question 
 whether this new fashion of verse-writing among work- 
 ing men has been always conducive to their own hap- 
 piness. As for absolute success as poets, that was not 
 to be expected of one in a hundred, so that we must 
 not be disappointed if among the volumes of working- 
 men's poetry, of which we give a list at the head of our 
 article, only two should be found, on perusal, to con- 
 
154 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 tain any writing of a very high order, althougli these 
 volumes form a very small portion of tlie verses which 
 have been written^ during the last forty years, by men 
 engaged in the rudest a.nd most monotonous toil. To 
 every man so writing, the art, doubtless, is an ennobling 
 one. The habit of expressing thought in verse not 
 only indicates culture, but is a culture in itself of a 
 very high order. It teaches the writer to think tersely 
 and definitely ; it evokes in him the humanising sense 
 of grace and melody, not merely by enticing him to 
 study good models, but by the very act of composition. 
 It gives him a vent for sorrows, doubts, and aspirations, 
 which might otherwise fret and canker within, breed- 
 ing, as they too often do in the utterly dumb English 
 peasant, seli-devouring meditation, dogged melancholy, 
 and fierce fanaticism. And if the effect of verse- 
 writing had stopped there, all had been well ; but bad 
 models have had their effect, as well as good ones, on the 
 half-tutored taste of the working men, and engendered 
 in them but too often a fondness for frothy magnilo- 
 quence and ferocious raving, neither morally nor 
 gesthetically profitable to themselves or their readers. 
 There are excuses for the fault ; the young of all ranks 
 naturally enough mistake noise for awfulness, and 
 violence for strength ; and there is generally but too 
 much, in the biographies of these working poets, to 
 explain, if not to excuse, a vein of bitterness, which 
 they certainly did not learn from their master, Burns. 
 The two poets who have done them most harm, in 
 teaching the evil trick of cursing and swearing, are 
 Shelley and the Corn-Law Khymer ; and one can well 
 imagine how seducing two such models must be, to 
 
v.] THE CORN-LAW EHYMER. 155 
 
 men struggling to utter their own complaints. Of 
 Shelley this is not the place to speak. But of the 
 Corn-Law Rhymer we may say here, that howsoever 
 he may have been indebted to Burns's example for the 
 notion of writing at all, he has profited very little by 
 Burns's own poems. Instead of the genial loving tone 
 of the great Scotchman, we find in Elliott a tone of 
 deliberate savageness, all the more ugly, because evi- 
 dently intentional. He tries to curse ; " he delights " 
 — may we be forgiven if we misjudge the man — " in 
 cursing ; " he makes a science of it ; he defiles, of malice 
 prepense, the loveliest and sweetest thoughts and scenes 
 (and he can be most sweet) by giving some sudden 
 sickening revulsion to his reader's feelings ; and he 
 does it generally with a power which makes it at once 
 as painful to the calmer reader as alluring to those who 
 are struggling with the same temptations as the poet. 
 Now and then, his trick drags him down into sheer 
 fustian and bombast; but not always. There is a 
 terrible Dantean vividness of imagination about him, 
 perhaps unequalled in England, in his generation. His 
 poems are like his countenance, coarse and ungoverned, 
 yet with an intensity of eye, a rugged massiveness of 
 feature, which would be grand but for the seeming 
 deficiency of love and of humour — love's twin and 
 inseparable brother. Therefore it is, that although 
 single passages may be found in his writings, of which 
 Milton himself need not have been ashamed, his efforts 
 at dramatic poetry are utter failures, dark, monstrous, 
 unreHeved by any really human vein of feeling or 
 character. As in feature, so in mind, he has not even 
 the delicate and graceful organisation which made up 
 
156 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v, 
 
 in Milton for the want of tenderness, and so enabled 
 him to write, if not a drama, yet still the sweetest of 
 masques and idyls, 
 
 Eather belonging to the same school than to that 
 of Burns, though never degrading itself by Elliott's 
 ferocity, is that exti^aordinary poem, " The Purgatory 
 of Suicides,^' by Thomas Cooper. As he is still in the 
 prime of life, and capable of doing more and better 
 than he yet has done, we will not comment on it as 
 freely as we have on Elliott, except to regret a similar 
 want of softness and sweetness, and also of a clearness 
 and logical connection of thought, in which Elliott 
 seldom fails, except when cursing. The imagination 
 is hardly as vivid as Elliott's, though the fancy and in- 
 vention, the polish of the style, and the indications of 
 profound thought on all subjects within the poet's 
 reach, are superior in every way to those of the Corn- 
 Law B-hymer ; and when we consider that the man who 
 wrote it had to gather his huge store of classic and 
 historic anecdote while earning his living, first as a 
 shoemaker, and then as a Wesleyan country preacher, 
 we can only praise and excuse, and hope that the day 
 may come when talents of so high an order will find 
 some healthier channel for their energies than that in 
 which they now are flowing. 
 
 Our readers may wonder at not seeing the Ettrick 
 Shepherd's poems among the list at the head of the 
 article. It seems to us, however, that we have done 
 right in omitting them. Doubtless, he too was 
 awakened into song by the example of Burns ; but he 
 seems to us to owe little to his great predecessor, 
 beyond the general consciousness that thei'e was a virgin 
 
v.] THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD. 157 
 
 field of poetry in Scotcli scenery, manners, and legends 
 — a debt wliich. Walter Scott himself probably owed to 
 the Ayrshire peasant just as much as Hogg did. 
 Indeed, we perhaps are right in saying, that had Burns 
 not lived, neither Wilson, Gait, Allan Cunningham, or 
 the crowd of lesser writers who have found material for 
 their fancy in Scotch peculiarities, would have written 
 as they have. The three first names, Wilson's above 
 all, must have been in any case distinguished ; yet it is 
 surely no derogation to some of the most exquisite 
 rural sketches in " Christopher North's Eecreations," 
 to claim them as the intellectual foster-children of 
 " The Cottar's Saturday Night." In this respect, cer- 
 tainly, the Ettrick Shepherd has a place in Burns's 
 school, and, in our own opinion, one which has been 
 very much overrated. But the deeper elements of 
 Bui-ns's mind, those which have especially endeared him 
 to the working man, reappear very little, or not at all, 
 in Hogg. He left his class too much below him ; 
 became too much of the mere assthetic prodigy, and 
 member of a literary clique ; frittered away his great 
 talents in brilliant talk and insincere Jacobite songs, 
 and, in fine, woi'ked no deliverance on the earth. It is 
 sad to have to say this : but we had it forced upon us 
 painfully enough a few days ago, when re-reading 
 " Kilmeny." There may be beautiful passages in it ; 
 but it is not coherent, not natural, not honest. It is 
 throughout an affectation of the Manichjsan senti- 
 mental-sublime, which God never yet put into the 
 heart of any brawny, long-headed, practical Borderer, 
 and which he therefore probably put into his own 
 head, or, as we call it, affected, for the time being ; a 
 
158 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 metliod of poetry writing wliicli comes fortli out of 
 nothing, and into nothing must return. 
 
 This is unf ortunate, perhaps, for the world ; for we 
 question whether a man of talents in anywise to be 
 compared with those of the Ettrick Shepherd has fol- 
 lowed in the footsteps of Burns. Poor Tannahill, 
 whose sad story is but too well known, perished early, 
 at the age of thirty-six, leaving behind him a good 
 many pretty love-songs of no great intrinsic value, if the 
 specimens of them given in Mr. Whitelaw's collection 
 are to be accepted as the best. Like all Burns's suc- 
 cessors, including even Walter Scott and Hogg, we 
 have but to compare him with his original to see how 
 altogether unrivalled on his own ground the Ayrshire 
 farmer was. In one feature only TannahilPs poems, 
 and those later than him, except where pedantically 
 archaist, like many of Motherwell's, are an improve- 
 ment on Burns : namely, in the more easy and complete 
 interfusion of the two dialects, the Norse Scotch and 
 the Romanesque English, which Allan Ramsay at- 
 tempted in vain to unite ; while Burns, though not 
 succeeding by any means perfectly, welded them 
 together into something of continuity and harmony — 
 thus doing for the language of his own country very 
 much what Chaucer did for that of England — a 
 happy union, in the opinion of those who, as we do, 
 look on the vernacular Norse Scotch as no barbaric 
 dialect, but as an independent tongue, possessing 
 a copiousness, melody, terseness, and pictures queness 
 which makes it, both in prose and verse, a far better 
 vehicle than the popular English for many forms of 
 thought. 
 
v.] EGBERT NICOLL. 159- 
 
 Perhaps tlie young peasant wlio most expressly 
 stands out as the pupil and successor of Burns, is 
 Robert Nicoll. He is a lesser poet, doubtless, than his 
 master, and a lesser man, if the size and number of his 
 capabilities be looked at ; but he is a greater man, in 
 that, from the beginning to the end of his career, he 
 seems to have kept that very wholeness of heart and 
 head which poor Burns lost. Nicoll's story is, mutatis 
 mutandis, that of the Bethunes, and many a noble 
 young Scotsman more. Parents holding a farm between 
 Perth and Dunkeld, they and theirs before them for 
 generations inhabitants of the neighbourhood, "decent, 
 honest. God-fearing people.-" The farm is lost by re- 
 verses, and manfully Robert NicolFs father becomes a 
 day-labourer on the fields which he lately rented : and 
 there begins, for the boy, from his earliest recollections, 
 a life of steady sturdy drudgeiy. But they must have 
 been grand old folk, these parents, and in no wise 
 addicted to wringing their hands over " the great 
 might-have-been." Like true Scots Bible lovers, they 
 do believe in a God, and in a will of God, underlying*, 
 absolute, loving, and believe that the might-have-been 
 ought not to have been, simply because it has not 
 been; and so they put their shoulders to the new collar 
 patiently, cheerfully, hopefully, and teach the boys to 
 do the same. The mother especially, as so many great 
 men's mothers do, stands out large and heroic, from 
 the time when, the farm being gone, she, " the ardent 
 book-woman," finds her time too precious to be spent 
 in reading, and sets little Robert to read to her as she 
 works — what a picture ! — to the last sad day, when, 
 wanting money to come up to Leeds to see her dying- 
 
160 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [y. 
 
 darling, she " sliore for tlie siller/' rather than borrow 
 it. And her son's life is like her own — a most pure, 
 joyous, valiant little epic. Robert does not even take 
 to work as something beyond himself, uninteresting and 
 painful, which, however, must be done courageously : 
 he lives in it, enjoys it as his proper element, one 
 which is no more a burden and an exertion to him than 
 the rush of the strid is to the trout who plays and 
 feels in it day and night, unconscious of the amount 
 of muscular strength which he puts forth in merely 
 keeping his place in the stream. Whether carrying 
 " Kenilworth " in his plaid to the woods, to read while 
 herding, or selling currants and whisky as the Perth 
 storekeeper's apprentice, or keeping his little circu- 
 lating library in Dundee, tormenting his pure heart 
 with the thought of the twenty pounds which his 
 mother has borrowed wherewith to start him, or 
 editing Tlie Leeds Times, or lying on his early death- 
 bed, just as life seems to be opening clear and broad 
 before him, he 
 
 Bates not a jot of liearfc or hope, 
 
 but steers right onward, singing over his work, with- 
 out bluster or self-gratulation, for very joy at having 
 work to do. There is a keen practical insight about 
 him, rarely combined, in these days, with his single- 
 minded determination to do good in his generation. 
 His eye is single, and his whole body full of light. 
 
 It would indeed (writes the grocer's boy, encouraging his 
 despondent and somewhat "Werterean friend) be hangman's 
 work to write articles one day to be forgotten to-morrow, if 
 that were all ; but you forget the comfort — the repayment. If 
 
v.] Is^ICOLL'S EDUCATION?'. /-, , 161 ' ^ U )' 
 
 one prejudice is overtlirown, one error rendered unteh^bfe;/ '/' i. 
 if but one step in advance be the consequence oft jpnr. articles O / 
 
 and mine — the consequences of the labour of all true tAetf-^-^'^ > i . 
 we not deeply repaid ? * ' ■ N / ^ \ 
 
 Or again, in a riglit noble letter to his noble 
 mother : 
 
 That money of E.'s hangs like a millstone about my neck. 
 If I had paid it, I would never borrow again from mortal man. 
 But do not mistake me, mother ; I am not one of those men 
 who faint and falter in the great battle of life. God has given 
 me too strong a heart for that. I look upon earth as a place 
 where every man is set to struggle and to Avork, that he may 
 be made humble and pure-hearted, and fit for that better land 
 for which earth is a preparation — to which earth is the gate. 
 . ... If men would but consider how little of real evil there 
 is in all the ills of which they are so much afraid — poverty 
 included — there would be more virtue and happiness, and less 
 world and Mammon-worship on earth than is. I think, mother, 
 that to me has been given talent ; and if so, that talent was 
 given to make it useful to man. 
 
 And yet there is a quiet self-respect about him 
 withal : 
 
 In my short course through life (says he in confidence to a 
 friend at one-and-twenty), I have never feared an enemy, or 
 failed a friend ; and I live in the hope I never shall. For the 
 rest, I have written my heart in my poems; and rude and 
 unfinished and hasty as they are, it can be read there- 
 
 From seven years of age to this very hour, I have been 
 dependent only on my own head and hands for everything — 
 for very l:)read. Long years ago — ay, even in childhood — 
 adversity made me think, and feel, and suffer; and would 
 pride allow me, I could tell the world many a deep tragedy 
 enacted in the heart of a poor, forgotten, uncared-for boy. 
 L. G. M 
 
162 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 .... But I thank God, that though I felt and suffered, the 
 scathing blast neither blunted my perceptions of natural and 
 moral beauty, nor, by withering the affections of my heart, 
 made me a selfish man. Often when I look back I wonder 
 how I bore the burden — how I did not end the evil day at 
 once and for ever. 
 
 Siicli is tlie man, iu liis normal state ; and as was to 
 be expected, God's blessing rests on liim. Whatever 
 lie sets Ms band to succeeds. Witbin a few weeks of 
 bis taking tbe editorship of The Leeds Times its cir- 
 culation begins to rise rapidly, as was to be expected 
 with an honest man to guide it. For NicoU's political 
 creed, though perhaps neither very deep nor wide, lies 
 clear and single before him, as everything else which 
 he does. He believes naturally enough in ultra-Radi- 
 calism according to the fashions of the Eef orm Bill era. 
 That is the right thing; and for that he will work day 
 and night, body and soul, and if needs be, die. There, 
 in the editor's den at Leeds, he '^'^ begins to see the 
 truth of what you told me about the world's unworthi- 
 ness ; but stop a little. I am not sad as yet. ... If 
 I am hindered from feeling the soul of poetry among 
 woods and fields, I yet trust I am struggling for some- 
 thing worth prizing — something of which I am not 
 ashamed, and need not be. If there be aught on earth 
 worth aspiring to, it is the lot of him who is enabled 
 to do something for his miserable and suffering fellow- 
 men ; and this you and I will try to do at least." 
 
 His friend is put to work a ministerial paper, with 
 orders " not to be rash, but to elevate the population 
 gradually ; " and finding those orders to imply a consi- 
 derable leaning towards the By-ends, Lukewarm, and 
 
v.] NICOLL'S SIMPLICITY AND PURITY. 163 
 
 Faciug-botli-ways school^, kicks over the traceS; wisely, 
 in NicoU's eyes, and breaks loose. 
 
 Keep up your spirits (says liouest Nicoll). You are higher 
 at this moment iu my estimation, in your own, and that of 
 every honest man, than you ever were before. Tait's advice 
 was just such as I should have expected of him ; honest as 
 honesty itself. You must never again accept a paper but 
 whei'e you can tell the whole truth without fear or favour. 
 .... Tell E. (the broken-loose editor's lady-love), from me 
 to estimate as she ought the nobility and determination of the 
 man who has dared to act as you have done. Prudent men 
 will say that you are hasty : but you have done right, whatever 
 may be the consequences. 
 
 This is the spirit of Robert Nicoll ; the spirit which 
 is the fruit of early purity and self-restraint, of living 
 " on bread-and-cheese and water," that he may buy 
 books ; of walking out to the Inch of Perth at four 
 o'clock on summer mornings, to vn?ite and read in peace 
 before he returns to the currants and the whisky. The 
 nervous simplicity of the man come out, in the very 
 nervous simplicity of the prose he writes ; and though 
 there be nothing very new or elevated in it, or indeed 
 in his poems themselves, we call on our readers to 
 admire a phenomenon so rare, in the " upper classes ■" 
 at least, in these days, and taking a lesson from the 
 peasant's son, rejoice with us that "a man is born into 
 the world." 
 
 For Nicoll, as few do, practises what he preaches. 
 It seems to him, once on a time, right and necessary 
 that Sir William Molesworth should be returned for 
 Leeds; and Nicoll having so determined, "throws 
 himself, body and soul, into the contest, with such 
 
 M 2 
 
164 BUEXS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v, 
 
 ardour^ that liis wife afterwards said (and we can well 
 believe it) that if Sir William had failed, Eobert would 
 have died on the instant ! '^ — why not ? Having once 
 made up his mind that that was the just and right 
 thing, the thing which was absolutely good for Leeds, 
 and the human beings who lived in it, was it not 
 a thing to die for, even if it had been but the election 
 of a new beadle ? The advanced sentry is set to guard 
 some obscure worthless dike -end — obscure and worth- 
 less in itself, but to him a centre of infinite duty. 
 True, the fate of the camp does not depend on its being 
 taken ; if the enemy round it, there are plenty behind 
 to blow them out again. But that is no reason what- 
 soever why he, before any odds, should throw his 
 musket over his shoulder, and retreat gracefully to the 
 lines. He was set there to stand by that, whether 
 dike- end or representation of Leeds ; that is the right 
 thing for him ; and for that right he will fight, and if 
 he be killed, die. So have all brave men felt, and so 
 have all brave deeds been done, since man walked the 
 earth. It is because that spirit, the spirit of faith, has 
 died out among us, that so few brave deeds are done 
 now, except on battle-fields and in hovels, whereof 
 none but God and the angels know. 
 
 So the man prospers. Several years of honourable 
 and self -restraining love bring him a wife, beautiful, 
 loving, worshipping his talents ; a help meet for him, 
 such as God will send at times to those whom he loves. 
 Kind men meet and love and help him — " The John- 
 stones, Mr. Tait, William and Mary Howitt;" Sir 
 William Molesworth, hearing of his last illness, sends 
 him unsolicited fifty pounds, which, as we understand 
 
-;.] EARLY DEATH. 165 
 
 it, Nicoll accepts without foolisli bluster about iude- 
 penclence. Wliy not ? — man sbould help man, and be 
 helped by bnn. Would lie not have done as much for 
 Sh' William ? Nothing to us proves Nicoll's heart- 
 wholeness more than the way in which he talks of his 
 benefactors, in a tone of simple gratitude and affection, 
 without fawning and without vapouring. The man 
 has too much self-respect to consider hiuiself lowered 
 by accepting a favour. 
 
 Bat he must go after all. The editor's den at Leeds 
 is not the place for lungs bred on Perthshire breezes ; 
 and work rises before him, huger and heavier as he 
 goes on, till^e drops under the ever- increasing load. 
 He will not believe it at first. In sweet childlike 
 playful letters, he tells his mother that it is nothing. 
 It has done him good — "opened the grave before 
 his eyes, and taught him to think of death.''^ " He 
 trusts that he has not borne this, and suffered, and 
 thought in vain." This too, he hopes, is to be a fresh 
 lesson-page of experience for his work. Alas ! a few 
 months more of bitter suffering, and of generous 
 kindness and love from all around him — and it is over 
 with him at the age of twenty-three. Shall we regret 
 him ? — shall we not rather believe that God knew 
 best ; and considering the unhealthy moral atmosphere 
 of the second-class press, and the strange confused 
 ways into which old ultra-Radicalism, finding itself 
 too narrow for the new problems of the day, has 
 stumbled and floundered during the last fifteen years, 
 believe that he might have been a worse man had he 
 been a longer-lived one, and thank heaven that '' the 
 righteous is taken away from the evil to come ? •'•' 
 
166 BUKNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 As it is, he ends as lie began. The first poem in 
 his book is " The Ha' Bible ; " and the last, written a 
 few days before his death, is still the death-song of a 
 man — without fear, without repining, without boasting, 
 blessing and loving the earth which he leaves, yet with 
 a clear joyful eye upwards and outwards and home- 
 wards. And so ends his little epic, as we called it. 
 May Scotland see many such another ! 
 
 The actual poetic value of his verses is not first- 
 rate by any means. He is far inferior to Burns in 
 range of subject, as he is in humour and pathos. 
 Indeed, there is very little of these latter qualities in 
 him anywhere — rather playfulness, flashes of childlike 
 fun, as in " The Provost,'' and " Bonnie Bessie Lee.''* 
 But he has attained a mastery over English, a sim- 
 plicity and quiet which Burns never did ; and also, we 
 need not say, a moral purity. His " Poems illustrative 
 of the Scotch peasantry " are charming throughout 
 — alive and bright with touches of real humanity, 
 and sympathy with characters apparently antipodal to 
 his own. 
 
 His more earnest poems are somewhat tainted with 
 that cardinal fault of his school, of which he steered so 
 clear in prose — fine words; yet he never, like the 
 Corn-Law Ehymer, falls a cursing. He is evidently 
 not a good hater even of '' priests and kings, and 
 aristocrats, and superstition ; " or perhaps he worked 
 all that froth safely over and off in debating- club 
 speeches and leading articles, and left us, in these 
 poems, the genuine metheglin of his inner heart, 
 sweet, clear, and strong ; for there is no form of 
 lovable or right thing which this man has come across. 
 
v.] THE PEOPLE'S ANTHEM. 167 
 
 wliich he does not seem to have appreciated. Besides 
 pure love and the beauties of nature — those on which 
 every man of poetic power, and a great many of none, 
 as a matter of course, have a word to say — he can feel 
 for and with the drunken beggar, and the warriors of 
 the ruined manor-house, and the monks of the abbey, 
 and the old mailed Normans with their " priest with 
 cross and counted beads in the little Saxon chapel" — 
 things which a Radical editor might have been excused 
 for passing by with a sneer. 
 
 His verses to his wife are a delicious little glimpse 
 of Eden; and his "People's Anthem " rises into some- 
 what of true grandeur by virtue of simplicity : 
 
 Lord, from Thy blessed throne, 
 Sorrow look down upon ! 
 
 God save the Poor ! 
 Teach them true liberty — • 
 Make them from tyrants fr'ee — 
 Let their homes happy be ! 
 
 God save the Poor ! 
 
 The arms of wicked men 
 
 Do Thou with might restrain — 
 
 God save the Poor ! 
 Eaise Thou their lowliness — 
 Succour Thou their distress — 
 Thou whom the meanest bless ! 
 
 God save the Poor ! 
 
 Give them stanch honesty — 
 Let their pride manly be — 
 
 God save the Poor ! 
 Help them to hold the right ; 
 Give them both truth and might. 
 Lord of all Life and Light ! 
 
 God save the Poor ! 
 
168 BUENS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 And so we leave Eobert Nicoll, with the parting re- 
 mark;, that if the " Poems illustrative of the feelings of 
 the intelligent and religious among the working-classes 
 of Scotland '^ be fair samples of that which they profess 
 to be^ Scotland may thank God^ that in spite of tem- 
 porary manufacturing rot-heaps^ she is still whole at 
 heart ; and that the influence of her great peasant 
 poet, though it may seem at first likely to be adverse 
 to Christianity, has helped, as we have already hinted, 
 to purify and not to taint ; to destroy the fungus, but 
 not to toiTch the heart, of the grand old Covenant-kirk 
 life-tree. 
 
 Still sweeter, and, alas ! still sadder, is the story of 
 the two Bethunes. If Nicoll's life, as we have said, 
 be a solitary melody, and short though triumphant 
 strain of work-music, theirs is a harmony and true 
 concert of fellow-joys, fellow-sorrows, fellow-drudgery, 
 fellow-authorship, mutual throughout, lovely in their 
 joint-life, and in their deaths not far divided. Alexander 
 survives his brother John only long enough to write 
 his "Memoirs,''' and then follows; and we have his story 
 given us by Mr. M'Combie, in a simple unassuming 
 little volume — not to be read without many thoughts, 
 perhaps not rightly without tears. Mr. M''Combie 
 has been wise enough not to attempt panegyric. He 
 is all but prolix in details, filling up some half of 
 his volume with letters of preternatural length from 
 Alexander to his publishers and critics, and from 
 the said publishers and critics to Alexander, alto- 
 gether of an unromantic and business-like cast, but 
 entirely successful in doing that which a book should 
 do — namely, in showing the world that here was a 
 
v.] THE TWO BETHUNES. 169 
 
 man of like passions with ourselves, wlio bore from 
 boyhood to the grave hunger, cold, vs^et, rags, brutalising 
 and health-destroying toil, and all the storms of the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil, and conquered them 
 every one. 
 
 Alexander is set at fourteen to throw earth out of a 
 ditch so deep, that it requires the full strength of a 
 grown man, and loses flesh and health under the exer- 
 tion; he is twice blown up with his own blast in 
 quarrying, and left for dead, recovers slowly, maimed 
 and scarred, with the loss of an eye. John, when not 
 thirteen, is set to stone-breaking on the roads during 
 intense cold, and has to keep himself from being frost- 
 bitten and heart-broken by monkey gambols ; takes to 
 the weaving tirade, and having helped his family by the 
 m.ost desperate economy to save ten pounds wherewith 
 to buy looms, begins to work them, with his brother as 
 an apprentice, and finds the whole outlay rendered use- 
 less the very same year by the failures of 1826-26. So 
 the two return to day-labour at fourteenpence a-day. 
 John, in a struggle to do task- work honestly, over-exerts 
 himself, and ruins his digestion for life. Next year he 
 is set in November to clean out a watercourse knee- 
 deep in water ; then to take marl from a pit ; and 
 then to drain standing water off a swamp during an 
 intense December frost ; and finds himself laid down 
 with a three months^ cough, and all but sleepless illness, 
 laying the foundation of the consumption which de- 
 stroyed him. But the two brothers will not give in. 
 Poetry they will write ; and they write it to the 
 best of their powers, on scraps of paper, after the 
 drudgery of the day, in a cabin pervious to every 
 
170 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 sliower, teacliing themselves tlie right spelling of the 
 words from some " Christian Remembrancer^' or 
 other — apparently not our meek and unbiassed con- 
 temporary of that name; and all this without neg- 
 lecting their work a day or even an hour, when 
 the weather permitted — the '^only thing which tempted 
 them to fret," being — hear it, readers, and perpend ! — 
 " the being kept at home by rain and snow/' Then an 
 additional malady (apparently some calculousone) comes 
 on John, and stops by him for the six remaining years 
 of his life. Yet between 1826 and 1832, John had 
 saved fourteen pounds out of his miserable earnings, 
 to be expended to the last farthing on his brother's 
 recovery from the second quarry accident. Surely the 
 devil is trying hard to spoil these men. But no. They 
 are made perfect by sufferings. In the house with one 
 long narrow room, and a small vacant space at the end 
 of it, lighted by a single pane of glass, they write and 
 write untiring, during the long summer evenings, 
 poetry, "Tales of the Scottish Peasant Life,'' which at 
 last bring them in somewhat ; and a work on practical 
 economy, which is bepraised and corrected by kind 
 critics in Edinburgh, and at last published — without a 
 sale. Perhaps one cause of its failure might be found 
 in those very corrections. There were too many violent 
 political allusions in it, complains their good Mentor 
 of Edinburgh; and persuades them, seemingly the 
 most meek and teachable of heroes, to omit them; 
 though Alexander, while submitting, pleads fairly 
 enough for retaining them, in a passage which we 
 will give, as a specimen of the sort of English possible 
 to be acquired by a Scotch day-labourer, self-educated, 
 
T.] POLITICS OF A DAY-LABOURER. 171 
 
 all but tlie rudiments of reading and writing, and a 
 few lectures on popular poetry from " a young student 
 of Aberdeen/^ now tbe Eev. Mr. Adamson, wlio must 
 look back on the friendship wkicb he bore these two 
 young men as one of the noblest pages in his life. 
 
 Talk to the many of religion, and they will put on a long 
 face, confess that it is a thing of the greatest importance to all 
 — and go away and forget the whole. Talk to them of educa- 
 tion ; they will readily acknowledge that it's " a braw thing 
 to be weel learned," and begin a lamentation, which is only 
 shorter than the lamentations of Jeremiah because they cannot 
 make it as long, on the ignorance of the age in which they 
 live ; but they neither stir hand nor foot in the matter. But 
 speak to them of politics, and their excited countenances and 
 kindling eye show in a moment how deeply they are interested. 
 Politics are therefore an important feature, and an almost in- 
 dispensable element in such a work as mine. Had it consisted 
 solely of exhortations to industry and rules of economy, it 
 would have been dismissed with an " Ou ay, it's braw for him 
 to crack that way : but if he were whaur we are, 'deed he wad 
 just hae to do as we do." But by mixing up the science with 
 politics, and giving it an occasional political impetus, a dif- 
 ferent result may be reasonably expected. In these days no 
 man can be considered a patriot or friend of the poor, who is 
 not also a politician. 
 
 It is amusing, by-the-bye, to see how the world 
 changes its codes of respectability, and how, what is 
 anathema in one generation, becomes trite orthodoxy 
 in the next. The political sins in the work were, that 
 " my brother had attacked the corn-laws with some 
 severity; and I have attempted to level a battery 
 against that sort of servile homage which the poor pay 
 to the rich ! " 
 
 There is no use pursuing the story much farther. 
 
172 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 They again save a little money, and need it ; for tlie 
 estate on wliicli tliey liave lived from cliildhood 
 changing hands, they are, with their aged father, 
 expelled from the dear old dog-kennel to find house- 
 room where they can. Why not ? — " it was not in the 
 bond/' The house did not belong to them ; nothing 
 of it, at least, which could be specified in any known 
 lease. True, there may have been associations : but 
 what associations can men be expected to cultivate on 
 fourteenpence a-day ? So they must forth, with their 
 two aged parents, and build with their own hands a 
 new house elsewhere, having saved some thirty pounds 
 from the sale of their writings. The house, as we under- 
 stand, stands to this day — hereafter to become a sort 
 of artisan's caaba and pilgrim's station, only second to 
 Burns's grave. That, at least, it will become, when- 
 ever the meaning of the words "worth " and "worship" 
 shall become rightly understood among us. 
 
 For what are these men, if they are not heroes and 
 saints ? Not of the Popish sort, abject and effeminate, 
 but of the true, human, evangelic sort, masculine and 
 grand — like the figures in Raffaelle's Cartoons com- 
 pared with those of Fra Bartoiomeo. Not from super- 
 stition, not from selfish prudence, but from devotion to 
 their aged parents, and the righteous dread of depend- 
 ence, they die voluntary celibates, although their 
 writings show that they, too, could have loved as 
 nobly as they did all other things. The extreme of 
 endurance, self-restraint, of " conquest of the flesh," 
 outwaxd as well as inward, is the life-long lot of these 
 men ; and they go through it. They have their share 
 of injustice, tyranny, disappointment ; one by one 
 each bright boy's dream of success and renown is 
 
v.] HEEOES AND SAINTS. 173 
 
 scourged out of their minds^ and sternly and lovingly 
 tlieir Father in heaven teaches them the lesson of all 
 lessons. By what hours of misery and blank despair 
 that faith was purchased, we can only guess; the 
 simple strong men give us the result, but never dream 
 of sitting down and analysing the process for the 
 world's amusement or their own glorification. We 
 question, indeed, whether they could have told us; 
 whether the mere fact of a man's being able to dissect 
 himself, in public or in private, is not proof-patent 
 that he is no man, bat only a shell of a man, with 
 works inside, which can of course be exhibited and 
 taken to pieces — a rather more difiicult matter with 
 flesh and blood. If we believe that God is educating, 
 the when, the where, and the how are not only 
 unimportant, but, considering who is the teacher, 
 unfathomable to us, and it is enough to be able to 
 believe with John Bethune that the Lord of all things 
 is influencing us through all things ; whether sacra- 
 ments, or sabbaths, or sun-gleams, or showers — all 
 things are ours, for all are His, and we are His, and 
 He is ours — and for the rest, to say with the same 
 John Bethune : 
 
 Oh God of glory ! thou hast treasured up 
 
 For me my little portion of distress ; 
 But with each draught — in every bitter cup 
 
 Thy hand hath mixed, to make its soreness less, 
 Some cordial drop, for which thy name I bless. 
 And offer up my mite of thankf nhiess. 
 
 Thou hast chastised my frame with dire disease, 
 Long, obdurate, and painful ; and thy hand 
 
 Hath wrung cold sweat-drops from my brow; for these 
 I thank thee too. Though pangs at thy command 
 Have compassed me about, still, with the blow, 
 Patience siTstained my soul amid its woe. 
 
174 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 Of the actual literary merit of these men^s writings 
 there is less to be said. However extraordinary, con- 
 sidering the circumstances under which they were 
 written, may be the j)olish and melody of John's verse, 
 or the genuine spiritual health, deep death-and-devil- 
 defying earnestness, and shrewd practical wisdom, which 
 shines through all that either brother writes, they do 
 not possess any of that fertile originality, which alone 
 would have enabled them, as it did Burns, to compete 
 with the literary savants, who, though for the most part 
 of inferior genius, have the help of information and 
 appliances, from which they were shut out. Judging 
 them, as the true critic, like the true moralist, is bound 
 to do, " according to what they had, not according to 
 what they had not,'' they are men who, with average 
 advantages, might have been famous in their day. God 
 thought it better for them to " hide them in his 
 tabernacle from the strife of tongues j " and — seldom 
 believed truism — He knows best. Alexander shall not, 
 according to his early dreams, ^'earn nine hundred 
 pounds by writing a book, like Burns," even though 
 his ideal method of spending be to buy all the boys in 
 the parish " new shoes with iron tackets and heels," 
 and send them home with shillings for their mothers, 
 and feed their fathers on wheat bread and milk, with 
 tea and bannocks for Sabbath-days, and build a house 
 for the poor old toil- stiffened man whom he once saw 
 draining the hill field, "with a yard full of gooseberries, 
 and an apple-tree ! " — not that, nor even, as the world 
 judges, better than that, shall he be allowed to do. 
 The poor, for whom he writes his '^'^Practical Economy," 
 shall not even care to read it ; and he shall go down to 
 
v.] THOM OP INVEEURY. 115 
 
 the grave a failure and a lost thing in the eyes of 
 men : but not in the eyes of grand God-fearing old 
 Alison Christie, his mother, as he brings her, scrap by 
 scrap, the proofs of their dead idoPs poems, which she 
 has prayed to be spared just to see once in print, and, 
 when the last half-sheet is read, loses her sight for 
 ever — not in her eyes, nor in those of God who 
 saw him, in the cold winter mornings, wearing John's 
 clothes, to warm them for the dying man before he 
 got up. 
 
 His grief at his brother's death is inconsolable. He 
 feels for the first time in his life, what a lot is his — for 
 he feels for the first time that — 
 
 Parent and friend and brother gone, 
 I stand upon tlie eartli alone. 
 
 Four years he lingers ; friends begin to arise from one 
 quarter and another, but he, not altogether wisely or 
 well, refuses all pecuniary help. At last Mr. Hugh 
 Miller recommends him to be editor of a projected 
 "Non-Intrusion " paper in Dumfries, with a salary, to 
 him boundless, of 1001. a-year. Too late ! The iron 
 has entered too deeply into his soul ; in a few weeks 
 more he is lying in his brother's grave — '' Lovely and 
 pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths not divided." 
 " William Thom of Inverury " is a poet altogether 
 of the same school. His " Ehymes and Recollections 
 of a Handloom Weaver" are superior to those of either 
 Nicoll or the Bethunes, the little love-songs in the 
 volume reminding us of Burus's best manner, and the 
 two languages in which he writes being better amalga- 
 
176 BUEXS AST) HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 mated, as it seems to ns^ than in any Scotcli song- 
 writer. Moreover, there is a terseness, strength, and 
 grace about some of these little songs, which would put 
 to shame many a volume of vague and windy verse, 
 which the press sees yearly sent forth by men, who, 
 instead of working at the loom, have been pampered 
 from their childhood with all the means and appliances 
 of good taste and classic cultivation. TVe have room 
 only for one specimen of his verse, not the most highly 
 finished, but of a beauty which can speak for itself. 
 
 deea:mtn'gs of the beeeaved. 
 
 The morning breaks bonny o'er mountain and stream,. 
 An' troubles tbe hallowed breath of my dream. 
 The gowd light of morning is sweet to the e'e, 
 But ghost-gathering midnight, thou'rt dearer to me. 
 The daU common world then sinks from my sight, 
 And fairer creations arise to the night ; 
 "When drowsy oppression has sleep-sealed my e"e. 
 Then bright are the visions awakened to me ! 
 
 Oh, come, spirit-mother ! discourse of the hours 
 Hy young bosom beat all its beating to yours, 
 When heart-woven wishes in soft counsel fell 
 On ears— how unheedful, proved sorrow might tell ! 
 That deathless affection nae sorrow could break ; 
 "When all else forsook me, ye would na forsake ; 
 Then come, oh my mother ! come often to me, 
 An' soon an' for ever lil come unto thee : 
 
 An' then, shrouded loveliness I soul-winning Jean, 
 How cold was thy hand on my bosom yestreen ! 
 Twas kind — for the love that your e'e kindled there 
 Will bum, ay an' burn, till that breast beat nae mair — 
 Otir bairnies sleep round me, oh bless ye their sleep I 
 Tour ain dark-eyed Willie will wauken and weep I 
 But blythe through his weepin', hell tell me how you. 
 His heaven-hamed mammie, was dauting his brow. 
 
v.] FACTORY LIFE IN ABERDEEN. 177 
 
 Though dark be our dwelHn', our happin' tho' bare, 
 And night closes round us in cauldness and care, 
 Affection will warm us— and bright are the beams 
 That halo our hame in yon dear land o' dreams : 
 Then weel may I welcome the night's deathly reign, 
 Wi' souls of the dearest I mingle me then ; 
 The gowd light of morning is lightless to me. 
 But, oh for the night with its ghost revelrie ! 
 
 But even more interesting tlian the poems them- 
 selves, is the autobiographical account prefixed, with its 
 vivid sketches of factory life in Aberdeen, of the old 
 regime of 1770 ; when "four days did the weaver's work 
 — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, were of course jubilee. 
 Lawn frills gorged (?) freely from under the wrists of 
 his fine blue gilt-buttoned coat. He dusted his head 
 with white flour on Sunday, smirked and wore a cane ; 
 walked in clean slippers on Monday ; Tuesday heard 
 him talk war bravado, quote Volney, and get drunk : 
 weaving commenced gradually on Wednesday. Then 
 were little children pirn-fillers, and such were taught 
 to steal warily past the gate-keeper, concealing the 
 bottle. These wee smugglers had a drop for their 
 services, over and above their chances of profiting by 
 the elegant and edifying discussions uttered in their 
 hearing. Infidelity was then getting fashionable.''' 
 But by the time Thorn enters on his seventeen years' 
 weaving, in 1814, the Nemesis has come. " Wages are 
 six shillings a-week where they had been forty ; but 
 the weaver of forty shillings, with money instead of wit, 
 had bequeathed his vices to the weaver of six shillings, 
 with wit instead of money." The introduction of 
 machinery works evil rather than good, on account of 
 the reckless way in which it is used, and the reckless 
 
 L. G. N 
 
178 BUEXS AXD HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 material wliicli it uses. "Vacancies in the factory, 
 daily made, were daily filled by male and female 
 workers ; often queer enough people, and from all parts 
 — none too coarse for using. The pickpocket, trained to 
 the loom six months in Bridewell, came forth a journey- 
 man weaver; and his precious experiences were infused 
 into the common moral puddle, and in due time did 
 their work.^' No wonder that " the distinctive 
 character of all sunk away. Man became less manly — 
 woman unlovely and rude.'' No wonder that the 
 factory, like too many more, though a thriving concern 
 to its owners, becomes " a prime nursery of vice and 
 sorrow.'' " Virtue perished utterly within its walls, and 
 was dreamed of no more; or, if remembered at all, 
 only in a deep and woful sense of self-debasement — a 
 struggling to forget, where it was hopeless to obtain." 
 But to us, almost the most interesting passage in his 
 book, and certainly the one which bears most directly 
 on the general purpose of this article, is one in which 
 he speaks of the effects of song on himself and his 
 fellow factory-workers. 
 
 Moore was doiug all he could for love-sick boys and girls, 
 yet tliey had never enough ! Nearer and dearer to hearts like 
 ours was the Ettrick Shepherd, then in his full tide of song 
 and story ; but nearer and dearer still than he, or any living 
 songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor 
 weaver chiel ! what we owe to you ! — your " Braes of Bal- 
 quidder," and " Ton Burnside," and " Gloomy Winter," and 
 the " IMinstrel's " wailing ditty, and the noble " Gleneiffer." 
 Oh ! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles ! 
 Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song 
 spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to loom, minis- 
 tering to the low-hearted ; and when the breast was filled with 
 everything but hope and happiness, let only break out the 
 
T.] THE POWER OF SOXG. 179 
 
 healthy and vigorous chorus, "A man's a man for a' that," and 
 the fagged weaver brightens up Who dare measure 
 
 the restraining influences of these very songs ? To us they 
 were all instead of sermons. Had one of us been bold enough 
 to enter a church, he must have been ejected for the sake of 
 decency. His forlorn and curiously patched habiliments would 
 have contested the point of attraction with the ordinary elo- 
 quence of that jDeriod. Church bells rang not for us. Poets 
 were indeed our priests : but for those, the last relic of moral 
 existence would have passed away. Song was the dewdrop 
 which gathered during the long dark night of despondency, 
 and was sure to glitter in the very fh-st blink of the sun. You 
 might have seen " Auld Eobin Gray '' wet the eyes that could 
 be tearless amid cold and hunger, and weariness and pain. 
 Surely, surely, then there was to that heart one passage left. 
 
 Making all allowance for natural and pardonable 
 high-colouring, we recommend this most weighty and 
 significant passage to the attention of all readers, and 
 draw an argumentum a fortiori^ from the high esti- 
 mation in which Thom holds those very songs of 
 Tannahill's, of which we just now spoke somewhat 
 depreciatingly, for the extreme importance which we 
 attach to popular poetry, as an agent of incalculable 
 power in moulding the minds of nations. 
 
 The popular poetry of Germany has held that great 
 nation together, united and heart-whole for centuries, 
 in spite of every disadvantage of internal division, and 
 the bad influence of foreign taste ; and the greatest of 
 their poets have not thought it beneath them to add 
 then* contributions, and their very best, to the common 
 treasure, meant not only for the luxurious and learned, 
 but for the workman and the child at school. In Great 
 Britain, on the contrary, the people have been left to 
 form their own tastes, and choose their own modes of 
 
 N 2 
 
ISO BUEXS AXD HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 utterance, with great results, both for good and evil ; 
 and there has sprung up before the new impulse which 
 Burns gave to popular poetry, a considerable literature 
 — considerable not only from, its truth and real artistic 
 merit, but far more so from its being addressed princi- 
 pally to the working classes. Even more important is 
 this people's literature question, in our eyes, than the 
 more palpable factors of the education question, about 
 which we now hear such ado. It does seem to us, 
 that to take every possible precaution about the 
 spiritual truth which children are taught in school, 
 and then leave to chance the more impressive and 
 abiding teaching which popular literature, songs 
 especially, give them out of doors, is as great a 
 niaiserie as that of the Tractarians who insisted on 
 getting into the pulpit in their surplices, as a sigu 
 that the clergy only had the right of preaching to the 
 people, while they forgot that, by means of a fi'ee 
 press (of the licence of which they, too, were not 
 slack to avail themselves), every penny-a-liner was 
 preaching to the people daily, and would do so, maugre 
 their surplices, to the end of time. The man who makes 
 the people^s songs is a true popular preacher. What- 
 soever, true or false, he sends forth, will not be carried 
 home, as a sermon often is, merely in heads, to be for- 
 gotten before the week is out : it will ring in the ears, 
 and cling round the imagination, and follow the pupil 
 to the workshop, and the tavern, and the fireside; 
 even to the deathbed, such power is in the magic of 
 rhyme. The emigrant, deep in Australian forests, 
 may take down Chalmerses sermons on Sabbath even- 
 ings from the scanty shelf : but the songs of Burns 
 
r.] POETRY FOR THE WORKING CLIsS^S. 181 
 
 have been haunting his lips, and ch^eHtifif his heai^t/' 
 and moulding him, unconsciously to himself /in,''elearing 
 and in pasture all the weary week. True, if he' be 
 what a Scotchman should be, more than one old 
 Hebrew psalm has brought its message to him during 
 these week-days ; but there are feelings of his nature 
 on which those psalms, not from defect, but from 
 their very purpose, do not touch : how is he to express 
 them, but in the songs which echo them ? These will 
 keep alive, and intensify in him, and in the children 
 who learn them from his lips, all which is like them- 
 selves. Is it, we ask again, to be left to chance what 
 sort of songs these shall be ? 
 
 As for poetry written for the working classes by the 
 tipper, such attempts at it as we yet have seen, may be 
 considered nil. The upper must learn to know more 
 of the lower, and to make the lower know more of 
 them — a frankness of which we honestly believe they 
 will never have to repent. Moreover, they must read 
 Burns a little more, and cavaliers and Jacobites a 
 little less. As it is, their efforts have been as yet 
 exactly in that direction which would most safely secure 
 the blessings of undisturbed obscurity. Whether 
 " secular " or " spiritual,^^ they have thought proper 
 to adopt a certain Tommy-good-child tone, which, 
 whether to Glasgow artisans or Dorsetshire labourers, 
 or indeed for any human being who is "'grinding 
 among the iron facts of life," is, to say the least, 
 nauseous ; and the only use of their poematicula has 
 been to demonstrate practically the existence of a 
 great and fearful gulf between those who have, and 
 those who have not, in thought as well as in purse. 
 
 \ \ 
 
182 BURXS AXD HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 whicli must be^ in the former article at least, bridged 
 over as soon as possible,, if we are to remain one people 
 much, longer. The attempts at verse for children are 
 somewhat more successful — a certain little "Moral 
 Songs " especially, said to emanate from the Tractarian 
 School, yet full of a health, spirit, and wild sweetness, 
 which makes its authoress, in our eyes, " wiser than 
 her teachers." But this is our way. We are too apt 
 to be afraid of the men, and take to the children as our 
 ins-aller, covering our despair of dealing with the 
 majority, the adult population, in a pompous display 
 of machinery for influencing that very small fraction, 
 the childi-en. "Oh, but the destinies of the empire 
 depend on the rising generation ! "Who has told us so ? 
 — how do we know that they do not depend on the 
 risen generation ? Who are likely to do more work 
 during our lifetime, for good and evil, — those who are 
 now between fifteen and five-and-forty, or those who 
 are between five and fifteen ? Yet for those former, 
 the many, and the working, and the powerful, aU 
 we seem to be inclined to do is to parody Scripture, 
 and say : " He that is unjust, let him be unjust still ; 
 and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still.-'-' 
 
 Not that we ask any one to sit down, and, out of mere 
 benevolence, to write songs for the people. Wooden 
 out of a wooden birthplace, would such go forth, to feed 
 fires, not spirits. .But if any man shall read these 
 pages, to whom God has given a truly poetic tempera- 
 ment, a gallant heart, a melodious ear, a quick and 
 sympathetic eye for all forms of human joy, and sorrow, 
 and humour, and grandeur ; an insight which can dis- 
 cern the outlines of the butterfly, when clothed in the 
 
•v.] PRACTICAL AND POPULAR SOXG. 183 
 
 roughest and most rugged clirysalis-liide ; i£ the 
 teachers of his heart and purposes^ and not merely of 
 his taste and sentiments, have been the great songs of 
 his own and of every land and age ; if he can see in 
 the divine poetry of David and Solomon, of Isaiah and 
 Jeremiah, and, above all, in the parables of Him who 
 spake as never man spake, the models and elemental 
 laws of a people's poetry, alike according to the will of 
 God and the heart of man ; if he can welcome gallantly 
 and hopefully the future, and yet know that it must 
 be, unless it would be a monster and a machine, the 
 loving and obedient child of the past ; if he can speak 
 of the subjects which alone will interest the many, on 
 love, marriage, the sorrows of the poor, their hopes, 
 political and social, their wrongs, as well as their sins 
 and duties ; and that with a fervour and passion akin 
 to the spirit of Burns and Elliott, yet with more calm- 
 ness, more purity, more wisdom, and therefore with 
 more hope, as one who stands upon a vantage-ground 
 of education and culture, sympathising none the less 
 with those who struggle behind him in the valley of the 
 shadow of death, yet seeing from the mountain peaks 
 the coming dawn, invisible as yet to them : then let 
 that man think it no fall, but rather a noble rise, to leave 
 awhile the barren glacier ranges of pure art, for the 
 fertile gardens of practical and popular song, and write 
 for the many, and with the many, in words such as 
 they can understand ; remembering that that which is 
 simplest is always deepest ; that the many contain in 
 themselves the few ; and that when he speaks to the 
 wanderer and the drudge, he speaks to the elemental 
 and primeval man, and in him speaks to all who have 
 
184 BURNS AND HIS SCHOOL. [v. 
 
 risen out of him.. Let him try, undiscouraged "by 
 inevitable failures ; and if at last lie succeeds in giving 
 vent to one song which will cheer hard- worn hearts at 
 the loom and the forge, or wake one pauper's heart 
 with the hope that his children are destined not to die 
 as he died, or recall, amid Canadian forests or Austra- 
 lian sheep-walks, one thrill of love for the old country, 
 her liberties, and her laws, and her religion, to the 
 settler's heart — let that man know that he has earned 
 a higher place among the spirits of the wise and good, 
 by doing, in spite of the unpleasantness of self-denial, 
 the duty which lay nearest him, than if he had out- 
 rivalled Goethe on his own classic ground, and made 
 all the cultivated and the comfortable of the earth 
 desert, for the exquisite creations of his fancy, Faust_, 
 and Tasso, and Iphigenie. 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. 
 
THE POETRY OF 
 SACRED AKD LEGENDARY ART.'' 
 
 Much attention lias been excited this year by the 
 alleged fulfilment of a proj)liecy that the Papal power 
 was to receive its death-blow — in temporal matters^ at 
 least — during the past year 1848. For ourselves, we 
 have no more faith in Mr. Fleming, the obsolete author, 
 who has so suddenly revived in the public esteem, than 
 we have in many other interpreters of prophecy. Their 
 shallow and bigoted views of past history are enough 
 to damp our faith in their discernment of the future. 
 It does seem that people ought to understand what has 
 been, before they predict what will be. History is 
 " the track of God's footsteps through time ; " it is in 
 His dealings with our forefathers that we may expect 
 to fijid the laws by which He will deal with us. Not 
 that Mr. Fleming's conjecture must be false; among 
 a thousand guesses there ought surely to be one right 
 one. And it is almost impossible for earnest men to 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, iUarcli, 1849. — " Sacred and Legendary Art." 
 By Mrs. Jameson. 2 vols. London. 1848. Longman and Co. 
 
188 THE POETEY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 Lend their whole minds^ however clumsily^ to one 
 branch of study without arriving at some truth or other. 
 The interpreters of prophecy therefore, like all other 
 interpreters, have our best wishes, though not our 
 sanguine hopes. But, in the meantime, there are surely 
 signs of the approaching ruin of Popery, more certain 
 than any speculations on the mystic numbers of the 
 Kevelation. We should point to recent books — not to 
 books which merely expose Rome, that has been done 
 long ago, usque ad nauseam — but to books which do 
 her justice: to Mr. Maitland^s "Dark Ages;'' Lord 
 Lindsay's " Christian Art ; " and last, but not least, to 
 the very charming work of Mrs. Jameson, whose 
 title heads this review. In them, and in a host of 
 similar works in Grermany, which Dr. Wiseman's party 
 hail as signs of coming triumph, we fancy we see the 
 death-warrant of Romanism ; because they prove that 
 Rome has nearly done her work — that the Protestants 
 are learning the lesson for the sake of which Provi- 
 dence has so long borne with that monstrous system. 
 When Popery has no more truth to teach us, but not 
 till then, will it vanish away into its native night. 
 
 We entreat Protestant readers not to be alarmed at 
 us. We have not the slightest tendency toward the 
 stimulants of Popery, either in their Roman unmixed 
 state, or in their diluted Oxford form. We are, with 
 ail humility, more Protestant than Protestantism itself; 
 our fastidious nostril, more sensitive of Jesuits than 
 even those of the author of " Hawkstone,'' has led 
 us at moments to fancy that we scent indulgences 
 in Conduit-street Chapel, and discern inquisitors in 
 Exeter Hall itself. Seriously, none believe more 
 
VI.] EOMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 189 
 
 firmly than ourselves that the cause of Protestantism 
 is the cause of liberty, of civilisation, of truth ; the 
 cause of man and God. And because we think 
 Mrs. Jameson^s book especially Protestant, both in 
 manner and intention, and likely to do service to 
 the good cause, we are setting to work herein to 
 praise and recommend it. For the time, we think, for 
 calling Popery ill names is past ; though to abstain 
 is certainly sometimes a sore restraint for English 
 spirits, as Mrs. Jameson herself, we suspect, has 
 found ; but Romanism has been exposed and refuted 
 triumphantly, every month for centuries, and yet the 
 Romish nations are not converted ; and too many 
 English families of late have found, by sad experience, 
 that such arguments as are in vogue are powerless to 
 dissuade the young from rushing headlong into the very 
 superstitions which they have been taught from their 
 childhood to deride. The truth is. Protestantism may 
 well cry: "Save me from my friends!'^ We have 
 attacked Rome too often on shallow grounds, and 
 finding our arguments weak, have found it necessaiy to 
 overstate them. We have got angry, and caught up 
 the first weapon which came to hand, and have only cut 
 our own fingers. We have very nearly burnt the 
 Church of England over our heads, in our hurry 
 to make a bonfire of the Pope. We have been too 
 proud to make ourselves acquainted with the very 
 tenets which we exposed, and have made a merit of 
 reading no Popish books but such as we were sure 
 would give us a handle for attack, and not even them 
 without the precaution of getting into a safe passion 
 beforehand. We have dealt in exaggerations, in special 
 
190 THE POETRY OF SACRED AXD LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 pleadings, in vile and reckless imputations of motive, 
 in suppressions of all palliating facts. We have out- 
 raged the common feelings of humanity by remaining 
 blind to the virtues of noble and holy men because 
 they were Papists, as if a good deed was not good in 
 Italy as well as in England. We have talked as if 
 God had doomed to hopeless vileness in this world and 
 reprobation in the nest millions of Christian people, 
 simply because they were born of Romish and not of 
 Protestant fathers. And we have our reward ; we have 
 fared like the old woman who would not tell the 
 children what a well was for fear they should fall into 
 one. We see educated and pious Englishmen joining 
 the Romish communion simply from ignorance of 
 Rome, and have no talisman wherewith to disenchant 
 them. Our medicines produce no effect on them, and 
 all we can do is, like quacks, to increase the dose. Of 
 course, if ten boxes of Morison^s pills have kUled a 
 man, it only proves that — he ought to have taken 
 twelve of them. We are jesting, but, as an Ulster 
 Orangeman would say, " it is in good Protestant 
 earnest.''^ 
 
 In the meantime some of the deepest cravings of 
 the human heart have been left utterly unsatisfied. 
 And be it remembered, that such universal cravings are 
 more than fancies; they are indications of deep spiritual 
 wants, which, unless we supply them with the good 
 food which God has made for them, will supply them- 
 selves with poison — indications of spiritual faculties, 
 which it is as wicked to stunt or distort by mis- 
 education as it is to maim our own limbs or stupefy our 
 understanding. Our humanity is an awful and divine 
 
Ti.] CEAVINGS OF THE IMAGINATION. 191 
 
 gift; our business is to educate it tlirougliout — God 
 alone must judge wliicli part of it shall preponderate 
 over the rest. But in the last generation — and, alas ! 
 in this also — little or no proper care has been taken 
 of the love for all which is romantic, marvellous, heroic, 
 which exists in every ingenuous child. Schoolboys, 
 indeed, might, if they chose, in play-hours, gloat over the 
 " Seven Champions of Christendom,^' or Lempriere's 
 gods and goddesses ; girls might, perhaps, be allowed 
 to devour by stealth a few fairy tales, or the "Arabian 
 Nights ; " but it was only by connivance that their 
 longings were satisfied from the scraps of Moslemism, 
 Paganism — anywhere but from Christianity. Pro- 
 testantism had nothing to do with the imagination — 
 in fact, it was a question whether reasonable people 
 had any; whether the devil was not the original maker 
 of that troublesome faculty in man, woman, and child. 
 Poetry itself was, with most parents, a dram, to be 
 given, like Dalby's Carminative, as a pis-aller, when 
 children could not possibly be kept quiet by Miss 
 Edgeworth or Mrs. Mangnall. Then, as the children 
 grew up, and began to know something of history 
 and art, two still higher cravings began to seize on 
 many of them, if they were at all of deep and earnest 
 character : a desire to associate with religion their new 
 love for the beautiful, and a reverence for antiquity ; a 
 wish to find some bond of union between themselves 
 and the fifteen centuries of Christianity which elapsed 
 before the Reformation. They applied to Protestant 
 teachers and Protestant books, and received too often 
 the answer that the Gospel had nothing to do with 
 art — art was either Pagan or Popish ; and as for the 
 
192 THE POETEY OP SACEED AND LEGENDAEY AET. [vi. 
 
 centuries before the Reformation, they and all in tliem 
 belonged utterly to darkness and the pit. As for the 
 heroes of early Christianity, they were madmen or 
 humbugs ; their legends, devilish and filthy puerilities. 
 They went to the artists and literary men, and received 
 the same answer. The medieval writers were fools. 
 Classical art was the only art ; all painters before the 
 age of Raphael superstitious bunglers. To be sure, 
 as Fuseli said, Christianity had helped art a little ; but 
 then it was the Christianity of Julio and Leone — in 
 short, of the worst age of Popery. 
 
 These falsehoods have worked out their own punish- 
 ment. The young are examining for themselves, and 
 finding that we have deceived them, a revulsion in 
 their feelings has taken place, similar to that which 
 took place in Germany some half-century ago. They 
 are reading the histories of the Middle Ages, and if we 
 call them barbarous — they will grant it, and then quote 
 instances of individual heroism and piety, which they 
 defy us or any honest man not to admire. They are 
 reading the old legends, and when we call them super- 
 stitious — they grant it, and then produce passages in 
 which the highest doctrines of Christianity are em- 
 bodied in the most pathetic and noble stories. They 
 are looking for themselves at the ante-Raphaellic 
 artists, and when we tell them that Fra Angelico^s 
 pictures are weak, affected, ill-drawn, ill-coloured — 
 they grant it, and then ask us if we can deny the 
 sweetness, the purity, the rapt devotion, the saintly 
 virtue, which shines forth from his faces. They ask 
 us how beautiful and holy words or figures can be 
 inspired by an evil spirit. They ask us why they are 
 
VI.] THE TRUE DOMAIN OF ART. 193 
 
 to deny the excellence of tales and pictures which 
 make men more pure and humble, more earnest and 
 noble. They tell us truly that all beauty is Grod^s 
 stamp, and that all beauty ought to be consecrated to 
 his service. And then they ask us : '^ If Protestantism 
 denies that she can consecrate the beautiful, how can 
 you wonder if we love the Eomanism which can ? You 
 say that Popery created these glorious schools of art ; 
 how can you wonder if, like Ovei'beck, *' we take the 
 faith for the sake of the art which it inspired ? " 
 
 To all which, be it true or false (and it is both), 
 are we to answer merely by shutting our eyes and ears 
 tight, and yelling ''No Popery! '^ or are we to say 
 boldly to them: '' We confess ourselves in fault; we 
 sympathise with your longings ; we confess that 
 Pi-otestantism has not satisfied them ; but we assert 
 that the only cause is, that Protestantism has not been 
 true to herself ; that Art, like every other product of 
 the free human spii'it, is her domain and not Popery's ; 
 that these legends, these pictures, are beautiful just in 
 as far as they contain in them the germs of those 
 eternal truths about man, nature, and God, which the 
 Reformation delivered from bondage ; that you can 
 admire them, and yet remain thorough Protestants ; 
 and more, that unless you do remain Protestants, you 
 will never enter into their full beauty and significance, 
 because you will lose sight of those very facts and ideas 
 from which they derive all their healthy power over 
 you? 
 
 These thoughts are not our own ; they are uttered 
 all over England, thank God ! just now, by many 
 voices and in many forms; if they had been boldly 
 
 L. G. 
 
194 THE POETRY OP SACRED AXD LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 spoken during the last fifteen years, many a noble 
 spirit^ we believe, migbt Have remained in tlie Churcli 
 of its fathers which has now taken refuge in Romanism 
 from the fruits of miseducation. One great reason 
 why Romanism has been suffered to drag on its 
 existence is, we humbly think, that it might force us 
 at last to say this : We have been long learning the 
 lesson; till we have learnt it thoroughly Romanism 
 will exist, and we shall never be safe from its 
 allurements. 
 
 These thoughts may help to explain our opening 
 sentences, as well as the extreme pleasure with which 
 we hail the appearance of Mrs. Jameson's work. 
 
 The authoress has been struck, during her examina- 
 tion of the works of Christian artists, with the extreme 
 ignorance which prevails in England on the subjects 
 which they portray. 
 
 We have had (she says, in an introduction, every 
 word of which we recommend as replete with the 
 truest Christian philosophy) — 
 
 Inquiries into the Principles of Taste, treatises on the Sublime 
 and Beautiful, Anecdotes of Painting, and we abound in anti- 
 quarian essays on disputed pictures and mutilated statues ; but 
 up to a late period any inquiry into the true spirit and signifi- 
 cance of works of art, as connected with the history of religion 
 and civilisation, would have appeared ridiculous or, perhaps, 
 dangerous. We should have had another cry of "No Popery!" 
 and Acts of Parliament prohibiting the importation of saints 
 and Madonnas. — P. xxi. 
 
 And what should we have gained by it, but more 
 ignorance of the excuses for Popery, and, therefore, 
 of its real dangers ? If Protestantism be the truth, 
 
Ti.] FREE SPIRIT OF PROTESTANtlg^.^ V' / 195 
 
 knowledge of whatsoever kind can only further it. 
 We have found it so in the case of classical literature. 
 Why should we strain at a gnat and swallow a camel ? 
 Our boys have not taken to worshipping Jupiter and 
 Juno by reading about them. We never feared that 
 they would. We knew that we should not make them 
 pagans by teaching them justly to admire the poetry, 
 the philosophy, the personal virtues of pagans. And, 
 in fact, the few who since the revival of letters have 
 deserted Christianity for what they called philosophic 
 heathenism, have in almost every case sympathised, 
 not with the excellences, but with the worst vices of 
 the Greek and Koman. They have been men like 
 Leo X. or the Medici, who, ready to be profligates 
 under any religion, found in heathenism only an excuse 
 for their darling sins. The same will be the fruits of 
 a real understanding of the medieval religion. It will 
 only endanger those who carried already the danger in 
 themselves, and would have fallen into some other snai'e 
 if this had been away. Why should we fancy that 
 Protestantism, like the Eomanism which it opposes, is 
 a plant that will not bear the light, and can only be 
 protected at the expense of the knowledge of facts ? 
 Why will we forget the great spiritual law which Mrs. 
 Jameson and others in these days are fully recognising, 
 that " we cannot safely combat the errors of any man 
 or system without first giving them full credit for what- 
 ever excellences they may retain " ? Such a course is 
 the true fruit of that free spirit of Protestantism which 
 ought to delight in recognising good to whatever party 
 it may belong ; which asserts that every good gift and 
 perfect gift comes directly from above, and not through 
 
 2 
 
190 THE rOETET OF SACRED AND LEGEXDAEY ART. [vi. 
 
 the cliaunel of pai'ticular formularies or priestlioods ; 
 which, because it loves faith and virtue, for their own 
 sakes, and not as mere parts of a " Catholic system/' 
 can recognise them and delight in them wherever it 
 finds them. 
 
 Upon these creations of ancient art (as Mrs. Jameson says) 
 Ave cannot look as those did for whom they were created ; we 
 cannot annihilate the centuries which lie between us and 
 t]:em ; we cannot in simplicity of heart, forget the artist in. 
 the image he has placed before us, nor supply what may be 
 deficient in his work through a reverentially excited fancy. 
 We are critical, not credulous. We no longer accept this 
 polytheistic form of Christianity ; and there is little danger, I 
 suppose, of our falling again into the strange excesses of 
 superstition to which it led. But if I have not much sympathy 
 with modern imitations of medieval art, still less can I sympa- 
 thise with that narrow puritanical jealousy which holds 
 the monuments of a real and earnest faith in contempt : all 
 that God has permitted to exist once in the past should be 
 considered as the possession of the present; sacred for example 
 or warning, and held as the foundation on which to build up 
 what is better and purer. — Introd. p. xx. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson hei'e speaks in the name of a large and 
 rapidly-increasing class. The craving for religious art, 
 of which we spoke above, is spreading far and wide ; 
 even in dissenting chapels we see occasional attempts 
 at architectural splendour, which would have been con- 
 sidered twenty years ago heretical or idolatrous. And 
 yet with all this there is, as Mrs. Jameson says, a 
 curious ignorance with regard to the subject of me- 
 dieval art, even though it has now become a reigning 
 fashion among us. 
 
 We have learned, perhaps, after running through half the 
 galleries and churches in Europe, to distinguish a few of the 
 
vr.] IGNORAiJCE OF MEDIEVAL ART. 197 
 
 attributes and cbaracteristic figures whicli meet us at every 
 turn, yet -without any clear idea of their meaning, derivation, 
 or relative propriety. The palm of victory, we know, designates 
 the martyr, triumphant in death. We so far emulate the 
 critical sagacity of the gardener in " Zeluco," that we have 
 learned to distinguish St. Laurence by his gridiron, and St. 
 Catherine by her wheel. We are not at a loss to recognise the 
 Magdalene's " loose hair and lifted eye," even when without 
 her skull and her vase of ointment. We learn to know St. 
 Francis by his brown habit, and shaven crown, and wasted 
 ardent features ; but how do we distinguish him from St« 
 Anthony, or St. Domiuick.^ As for St. George and the Dragon 
 — from the St. George of the Louvi'e — Eaphael's — who sits his 
 liorse with the elegant tranquillity of one assured of celestial 
 aid, down to him " who swings on a sign-post at mine hostess's 
 door " — he is our familiar acquaintance. But who is that 
 lovely being in the first blush of youth, who, bearing aloft the 
 symbolic cross, stands with one foot on the vanquished dragon? 
 "That is a copy after Eaphael." And who is that majestic 
 creature holding her palm-branch, while the unicorn crouches 
 at her feet ? " That is the famous Moretto at Vienna." Are 
 we satisfied ? Not in the least ! but we try to look wiser and 
 pass on. 
 
 In the old times, the painters of these legendary scenes 
 and subjects could always reckon securely on certain associa- 
 tions and certain sympathies in the minds of the spectators. 
 We have outgrown these associations, we repudiate these 
 sympathies. We have taken these works from their con- 
 secrated localities, in which they once held each their dedicated 
 place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms and our 
 dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our sideboards, and now 
 what do they say to us ? That Magdalene weeping amid her 
 hair, who once spoke comfort to the soul of the fallen sinner, 
 — that Sebastian, arrow-pierced, whose upward ardent glance, 
 spoke of courage and hope to the tyrant-ridden serf — that 
 poor tortured slave to whose aid St. Mark comes sweeping 
 down from above— can they speak to us of nothing save 
 flowing lines, and correct drawing, and gorgeous colour .P 
 Must wc be told tliat one is a Titian, the other a Guido, the 
 
19S THE POETRY OF SACKED A>:D LEGENDARY ^iRT. [vi. 
 
 third a Tintoret, before we dare to melt into compassion or 
 admiration ? or the moment we refer to their ancient religious 
 signification and inlluence, must it be with disdain or with pity? 
 This, as it appears to me, is to take not a rational, but rather 
 a most irrational, as well as a most ii-reverent, view of the 
 question : it is to confine the pleasure and improvement to be 
 derived from works of art within very narrow bounds; it is to 
 seal up a fountain of the richest poetry, and to shut out athousaud 
 ennobling and inspiring thoughts. Happily there is a growing 
 appreciation of these larger principles of criticism as applied 
 to the study of art. People look at the pictures which hang 
 round then- walls, and have an awakening suspicion that there 
 is more in them than meets the eye — more than mere con- 
 noisseurship can interpret ; and that they have another, a 
 deeper significance than has been dreamed of by picture dealers 
 and picture collectors, or even picture critics. — Introd. xxiii. 
 
 On these grouuds Mrs. Jamesou treats of the Poetiy 
 of Sacred aud Legendary Art. Her first volume con- 
 tains a general sketch of the legends connected with 
 angels, with the scriptural personages, and the primitive 
 fathers. Her second, the histories of most of " those 
 sainted personages who lived, or are supposed to have 
 lived, in the first ages of Christianity, and whose real 
 history, founded on fact or tradition, has been so 
 disfigured by poetical embroidery that they have in 
 some sort the air of ideal beings." Each story is 
 followed by a series of short but brilliant criticisms 
 on those pictures in which the story has been embodied 
 b^ painters of various schools and periods, aud illus- 
 trated by numerous spirited etchings and woodcuts, 
 which add greatly to the value and intelligibility of 
 the work. A future volume is promised which shall 
 contain the " legends of the monastic orders, and the 
 history of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, con- 
 
VI.] MEDIEVAL MAEIOLATRY. 199 
 
 sidcrcd merely in tlieir connection witli the revival and 
 the development of the fine arts in the thirteenth and 
 fourteenth centuries " — a work whichj if it equal the 
 one before us, will doubtless bo hailed by those con- 
 versant with that wonderful phase of human history 
 as a valuable addition to our psychologic and a3stlietic 
 literature. 
 
 We ought to petition, also, for a volume which 
 should contain the life of the Saviour, and the legends 
 of the Virgin Mary ; though this latter subject, we 
 are afraid, will be too difhcultfor even Mrs. Jamcson^s 
 tact and delicacy to make tolerable to English readers, 
 so thoroughly has the Virgin Mary, as especial 
 patroness of purity, been intermixed in her legends 
 with every form of prudish and prurient foulminded- 
 ness.* 
 
 The authoress has wisely abstained from all contro- 
 versial matters. In her preface she begs that it may 
 be clearly understood, " that she has taken throughout 
 the a3sthetic and not the religious view of those pro- 
 ductions of art ; which, in as far as they are informed 
 with a true and earnest feeling, and steeped in that 
 beauty which emanates from Genius inspired by Faith, 
 may cease to be religion, but cannot cease to be poetry ; 
 and as poetry only,^^ she says, '' I have considered 
 them." In a word, Mrs. Jameson has done for them 
 what schoolmasters and schoolboys, bishops and Royal 
 Academicians, have been doing for centuries, by Greek 
 plays and Greek statues, without having incurred, as 
 
 * Since this was written, Mrs. Jameson's volume on the Legends 
 of the Madonna has succeeded excellently in giving us, if not a com- 
 plete, yet still a readable and modest picture of medieval Mariolatry. 
 
200 THE POETET OF SACKED AXD LEGENDARY AET. [vi. 
 
 we said above, the slightest suspicion of wanting to 
 worship heathen gods and goddesses. 
 
 Not that she views these stories with the cold un- 
 believing eye of a Goethe, merely as studies of " artistic 
 effect ; " she often transgresses her rule of impartiality, 
 and just where we should wish her to do so. Her 
 geniality cannot avoid an occasional burst of feeling, 
 such as concludes her notice of the stories about the 
 Magdalene and the other '^ beatified penitents.'" 
 
 Poets have sung, and moralists and sages have taught, that 
 for the frail woman there was nothing left but to die ; or if 
 more remained for her to suffer, there was at least nothing left 
 for her to be or do — no choice between sackcloth and ashes 
 and the livery of sin. The beatified penitents of the early 
 Christian Church spoke another lesson — spoke divinely of 
 hope for the fallen, hope without self-abasement or defiance. 
 We, in these days, acknowledge no such saints ; we have 
 even done our best to dethrone Mary Magdalene ; but we have 
 martyrs — " by the pang without the palm "—and one, at least, 
 among these who has not died without lifting up a voice of 
 eloquent and solemn warning ; who has borne her palm on 
 earth, and whose starry crown may be seen on high even now 
 amid the constellations of Genius. — Yob ii. p. 386. 
 
 To whom the authoress may allude in this touching 
 passage our simplicity cannot guess in the least. We 
 may, therefore, without the suspicion of partiality, say 
 to the noble spirit of pui'ity, compassion, and true 
 liberality which breathes throughout this whole 
 chapter, " Go on and conquer.^^ 
 
 Nor again can Mrs. Jameson^s English honesty 
 avoid an occasional slip of delicate sarcasm ; for 
 instance, in the story of St. Filomena, a brand-new 
 saint, whose discovery at Rome, in 1802, produced 
 
VI.] THE NOBLE ARMY OF MAETYRS. 201 
 
 there an excitement whicli we sliould suspect was very 
 mucli wanted, whicli we recommend to all our readers 
 as an instance of the state into which the virtues of 
 honesty and common sense seem to have fallen in the 
 Eternal City — of humbugs. 
 
 No doubt there are many such cases of imposture 
 among the list of saints and martyrs ; yet, granting 
 all which have been exposed, and more, there still 
 remains a list of authentic stories, sadder and stranger 
 than any romance of man^s invention, to read which 
 without deep sympathy and admiration our hearts 
 must be callous or bigoted indeed. As Mrs. Jameson 
 herself well says (vol. ii. p. 137) : 
 
 Wheu in the daily service of our Church we repeat these 
 words of the sublime hymn (" The noble army of martyrs praise 
 Thee ! "), I wonder sometimes whether it be with a full ajapve- 
 ciation of their meaning ? whether we do really reflect on all 
 that this noble army of martyrs has conquered for us ? Did 
 they indeed glorify God through their courage, and seal their 
 faith in their Redeemer with their blood ? And if it be so, 
 how is it that we Christians have learned to look coldly upon 
 the effigies of those who sowed the seed of the harvest which 
 we have reaped ? — Sanguis martyrum semen Christianoi'um! 
 We may admit that the reverence paid to them in former days 
 was unreasonable and excessive; that credulity and ignorance 
 have in many instances falsified the actions imputed to them ; 
 that enthusiasm has magnified their numbers beyond all 
 belief; that Avhen the communion with martyrs was associated 
 with the presence of their material remains, the passion for 
 relics led to a thousand abuses, and the belief in their inter- 
 cession to a thousand superstitions. But why, in uprooting 
 the false, uproot also the beautiful and the true ? 
 
 Thoroughly and practically convinced as we are of 
 the truth of these words, it gave us some pain when, in 
 
202 THE POETKY OF SACKED AND LEGENDARY AET. [vi. 
 
 tlie work of a very worthy persou, '' The Churcli in tlie 
 Catacombs/' by Dr. Maitland (not tlie author of " The 
 Dark Ages"), we found, as far as we could perceive, a 
 wish " to advance the Protestant cause/' by throwing 
 general doubt on the old martyrologies and their monu- 
 ments in the Roman catacombs. If we shall have 
 judged hastily, we shall be ready to apologise. None, 
 as we have said before, more firmly believe that the 
 Protestant cause is the good cause; none are more 
 reverentially inclined toward all honest critical investi- 
 gations, more anxious to see all truth, the Bible itself, 
 sifted and tested in every possible method ; but we 
 must protest against what certainly seems too con- 
 temptuous a rejection of a mass of historic evidence 
 hitherto undoubted, except by the school of Voltaire ; 
 and of the hasty denial of the meaning of Christian 
 and martyrologic symbols, as well known to antiquaries 
 as Stonehenge or Magna Charta. 
 
 At the same time, Dr. Maitland's book seems the 
 work of a righteous and earnest man, and it is not its 
 object, but its method, of which we complain. The 
 whole question of martyrology, a far more important 
 one than historians generally fancy, requires a thorough 
 investigation, critical and historical; it has to be done, 
 and especially just now. The Germans, the civil 
 engineers of the intellectual world, ought to do it 
 for us, and no doubt will. But those who undertake 
 it must bring to the work, not only impartiality, but 
 enthusiasm ; it is the spirit only, after all, which can 
 quicken the eye, which can free the understanding 
 from the idols of laziness, prejudice, and hasty in- 
 duction. To talk philosophically of such matters a 
 
VI.] WOMEN AND CRITICISM. 203 
 
 man must love tliein; lie must set to work with a 
 Christian sympathy^ and a manly admiration for those 
 old spiritual heroes to whose virtue and endurance 
 Europe owes it that she is not now a den of heathen 
 savages. He must be ready to assume everything 
 about them to be true which is neither absurd, 
 immoral, nor unsupported by the same amount of 
 evidence which he would require for any other historic 
 fact. And, just because this very tone of mind — 
 enthusiastic but not idolatrous, discriminating but 
 not captious — runs through Mrs. Jameson's work, we 
 hail it with especial pleasure, as a fresh move in a 
 truly philosophic and Christian direction. Indeed, for 
 that branch of the subject which she has taken in 
 hand, not the history, but the poetry of legends and 
 of the art which they awakened, she derives a peculiar 
 fitness, not merely from her own literary talents and 
 acquaintance with continental art, but also from the 
 very fact of her being an English wife and mother. 
 Women ought, perhaps, always to make the best 
 critics — at once more quicksighted, more tasteful, 
 more sympathetic than ourselves, whose proper 
 business is creation. Perhaps in Utopia they will take 
 the reviewer's business entirely off our hands, as they 
 are said to be doing already, by-the-bye, in one lead- 
 ing pei'iodical. But of all critics an English matron 
 ought to be the best — open as she should be, by her 
 womanhood, to all tender and admiring sympathies, 
 accustomed by her Protestant education to unsullied 
 purity of thought, and inheriting from her race, not 
 only freedom of mind and reverence for antiquity, 
 but the far higher birthright of Euglish honesty. 
 
sot THE POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 And sucli a genial and honest spirit, we think, runs 
 througli this book. 
 
 Another difl&cult task, perhaps the most difficult of 
 all, the authoress has well performed. We mean the 
 handling of stories whose facts • she partly or wholly 
 disbelieves, while she admires and loves their spirit and 
 moral; or doctrines, to pronounce on whose truth or 
 falsehood is beyond her subject. This difficulty Mr. 
 Newman, in the "Lives of the English Saints,^' edited 
 and partly written by him, turned with wonderful 
 astuteness to the advantage of Romanism ; but others, 
 more honest, have not been so victorious. Witness the 
 painfully uncertain impression left by some parts of one 
 or two of those masterly articles on Romish heroes 
 which appeared in the " Quarterly Review ; " an uncer- 
 tainty which we have the fullest reason to believe was 
 most foreign to the reviewer's mind and conscience. 
 Even Mr. Macaulay's brilliant history here and there 
 falls into the same snare. No one but those who have 
 tried it can be aware of the extreme difficulty of pre- 
 venting the dramatic historian from degenerating into 
 an apologist or heating into a sneerer ; or understand 
 the ease with which an earnest author, in a case like 
 the present, becomes frantically reckless, under the cer- 
 tainty that, say what he will, he will be called a Jesuit 
 by the Protestants, an Infidel by the Papists, a Pan- 
 theist by the Ultra-High- Church, and a Rogue by all 
 three. 
 
 Now, we certainly shall not say that Mrs. Jameson 
 is greater than the writers just mentioned ; but we must 
 say, that female tact and deep devotional feeling cut the 
 Gordian knot which has puzzled more cunning heads. 
 
VI.] CHRISTIAN FAIRY-TALES. 205- 
 
 Not that Mrs. Jameson is faultless; we want something- 
 yet, in the telling of a Christian fairy-tale, and know 
 not what we want : but never were legends narrated 
 with more discernment and simplicity than these. 
 
 As an instance, take the legend of St. Dorothea 
 (vol. ii. p. 184), which is especially one of those stories 
 of " sainted personages who," as Mrs. Jameson says, 
 " lived, or are supposed to have lived, in the first ages 
 of Christianity : and whose real history, founded on 
 fact or tradition, has been so disguised by poetical em- 
 broidery, that they have in some sort the air of ideal 
 beings ; " and which may, therefore, be taken as a 
 complete test of the authoresses tact and honesty : 
 
 In tlie province of Cappadocia and in the city of Ceesarea, 
 dwelt a noble virgin, whose name was Dorothea. In the 
 whole city there was none to be compared to her in beauty 
 and grace of person. She was a Christian, and served God 
 day and night with prayers, with fasting, and with alms. 
 
 The governor of the city, by name Sapritius (or Fabricius), 
 was a very terrible persecutor of the Christians, and hearing 
 of the maiden, and of her great beauty, he ordered her to be 
 l^rought before him. She came, with her mantle folded on 
 her bosom, and her eyes meekly cast down. The governor asked 
 " Who art thou ? " and she replied : " I am Dorothea, a virgin, 
 and a servant of Jesus Christ." He said : " Thou must serve 
 our gods, or die." She answered mildly : " Be it so ; the 
 sooner shall I stand in the presence of Him whom I most 
 desire to behold." Then the governor asked her: '""Whom 
 meanest thou ? " She replied : '* I meau the Son of God,. 
 Christ, mine espoused ! his dwelling is paradise ; by his side 
 are joys eternal; and in his garden grow celestial fruits and 
 roses that never fade." Then Sapritius, overcome by her 
 eloquence and beauty, ordered her to be carried back to her 
 dungeon. And he sent to her two sisters, whose names were 
 Calista and Christeta, who had once been Christians, but who, 
 from terror of the torments with which they were threatened. 
 
206 THE POETRY OF SACRED AXD LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 had renounced their faith in Christ. To these women the 
 goTemor promised large rewards if they would induce Dorothea 
 to follow their evil example ; and they, nothing doubting of 
 success, boldly undertook the task. The result, however, was 
 far different ; for Dorothea, full of courage and constancy, 
 reproved them as one having authority, and drew such a 
 picture of the joys they had forfeited through their falsehood 
 and cowardice, that they fell at her feet, saying : " blessed 
 Dorothea, pray for us, that, through thy intercession, our sins 
 may be forgiven and our penitence accepted ! " And she did 
 so. And when they had left the dungeon they proclaimed 
 aloud that they were servants of Christ. 
 
 Then the governor, furious, commanded that they should 
 be burned, and that Dorothea should witness their torments. 
 And she stood l^y, bravely encouraging them, and saying : " 
 my sisters, fear not ! suffer to the end ! for these transient 
 pangs shall be followed by the joys of eternal life ! " Thus 
 they died : and Dorothea herself was condemned to be tortured 
 cruelly, and then beheaded. The first part of her sentence she 
 endured with invincible fortitude. She was then led forth to 
 death ; and, as she went, a young man, a lawyer of the city 
 named Theophilus, who had been present when she was first 
 brought iDcfore the governor, called to her mockingly : " Ha ! 
 fair maiden, goest thou to join thy bridegroom ? Send 
 m^, I pray thee, of the fruits and flowers of that same garden 
 of which thou hast spoken : I would fain taste of them ! " 
 And Dorothea looking on him iiiclined her head with a gentle 
 smile, and said : " Thy request, Theophilus, is granted ! " 
 Whereat he laughed aloud with his companions ; but she 
 went on cheerfully to death. 
 
 When she came to the place of execution, she knelt down 
 and prayed; and suddenly appeared at her side a beautiful boy, 
 with hair bright as sunbeams : 
 
 A smooth-faced glorious thing. 
 
 With thousand blessings dancing in his eyes. 
 
 In his hand he held a basket containing three apples, and 
 three fresh-gathered and fragrant roses. She said to him : 
 " Carry these to Theophilus ; say that Dorothea hath sent 
 
Yi.] LEGEND OF ST. DOROTHEA, 207 
 
 them, and that I go before him to the garden whence tlioy 
 came, and await him there." With these words she bent her 
 neck, and received the death-stroke. 
 
 Meantime the angel (for it was an angel) went to seek 
 Theophilns, and found him still laughing in merry mood over 
 the idea of the promised gift. The angel placed before him 
 the basket of celestial fruit and flowers, saying ; " Dorothea 
 sends thee this," and vanished. What words can express the 
 wonder of Theophilus ? Struck by the prodigy operated in 
 his favour, his heart melted within him ; he tasted of the 
 celestial fruit, and a new life was his ; he proclaimed himself 
 a servant of Christ, and, following the example of Dorothea, 
 suffered with like constancy in the cause of truth, and obtained 
 the crown of martyrdom. 
 
 We liave chosen this legend just because it is in 
 itself as superstitious aud fantastic as any in the book. 
 We happen to hold the dream of '' The Spiritual Mar- 
 riage/^ as there set forth^ in especial abhorrence, and 
 we have no doubt Mrs. Jameson does so also. We are 
 well aware of the pernicious effect which this doctrine 
 has exercised on matrimonial purity among the southern 
 nations ; that by making chastity synonymous with 
 celibacy, it degraded married faithfulness into a restric- 
 tion which there were penalties for breaking, but no 
 rewards for keeping. We see clearly enough the 
 cowardice, the shortsightedness, of fancying that man 
 can insure the safety of his soul by fleeing from the 
 world — in plain English, deserting the post to which 
 God has called him, like the monks and nuns of old. 
 We believe that the numbers of the early martyrs have 
 been exaggerated. We believe that they were like 
 ourselves, imperfect and inconsistent human beings ; 
 that, on the showing of the legends and fathers them- 
 selves, their testimony for the truth was too often 
 
20S THE POETRY OF SACEED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 impaired by superstition, fanaticism, or passion. But 
 granting all this, we must still say, in the words of one 
 who cannot be suspected of Romanising — the great 
 Dr. Arnold — 
 
 Divide the sum total of reported martyrs by twenty ; by 
 fifty, if you will ; after all, you have a number of persons of 
 all ages and sexes suffering cruel torments and deaths for 
 conscience' sake, and for Christ's ; and. by their sufferings, 
 manifestly with God's blessing, insuring the triumph of 
 Christ's Gospel. !N'either do I think that we cousider the 
 excellence of this martyr spirit half enough. 
 
 Indeed we do not. Let all the abatements mentioned 
 above, and more, be granted ; yet, even then, when we 
 remember that the world from which Jerome or Anthony 
 fled was even worse than that denounced by Juvenal 
 and Persius — that the nuptials which, as legends say, 
 were often offered the virgin martyrs as alternatives for 
 death, were such as employed the foul pens of Petro- 
 nius and Martial — that the tyrants whom they spurned 
 were such as live in the pages of Suetonius, and the 
 AugusttB Historiee Scriptores — that the gods whom 
 they were commanded to worship, the rites in which 
 they were to join, were those over which Ovid and 
 Apuleius had gloated, which Lucian had held up to the 
 contempt of heathendom itself — that the tortures which 
 they preferred to apostacy and to foul crimes were, by 
 the confessions of the heathens themselves, too horrible 
 for pen to tell — it does raise a flush of indignation 
 to hear some sleek bigot-sceptic, bred up in the safety 
 and luxury of modern England, among Habeas Corpus 
 Acts and endowed churches, trying from his warm fire- 
 side to sneer away the awful responsibilities and the 
 
Ti.] WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 209 
 
 heroic fortitude of valiant men and tender girls, to 
 whose piety and courage he owes the very enlighten- 
 ment, the very civilisation, of which he boasts. 
 
 It is an error, doubtless, and a fearful one, to wor- 
 ship even such as them. But the error, when it arose, 
 was at worst the caricature of a blessed truth. Even 
 for the sinful, surely it was better to admire holiness 
 than to worship their own sin. Shame on those who, 
 calling themselves Christians, repine that a Cecilia or a 
 Magdalen replaced an Isis and a Venus ; or who can 
 fancy that they are serving Protestantism by tracing 
 malevolent likenesses between even the idolatry of a 
 saint and the idolatry of a devil ! True, there was 
 idolatry in both, as gross in one as the other. And 
 what wonder ? What wonder if, amid a world of 
 courtesans, the nun was worshipped ? At least God 
 allowed it ; and will man be wiser than God ? " The 
 times of that ignorance He winked at.^^ The lie that 
 was in it He did not interfere to punish. He did 
 more ; He let it work out, as all lies will, their own 
 punishment. We may see that in the miserable 
 century which preceded the glorious Eeformation ; we 
 may see it in the present state of Spain and Italy, 
 The crust of lies, we say, punished itself ; to the germ 
 of truth within it we partly owe that we are Christian 
 men this day. 
 
 But granting, or rather boldly asserting all this, 
 and smiling as much as we choose at the tale of St. 
 Dorothea's celestial basket, is it not absolutely, and in 
 spite of all, an exquisite story ? Is it likely to make 
 people better or worse ? We might believe the whole 
 of it, and yet we need not, therefore, turn idolaters and 
 
 L. G, p 
 
210 THE POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [ri. 
 
 worship sweet Dorotliea for a goddess. But if^ as we 
 trust in God is the case^ we are too wise to believe it all 
 — if even we see no reason (and there is not much) for 
 believing one single word of it — yet still we askj Is it not 
 an exquisite story ? Is there not heroism in it greater 
 than of all the Ajaxes and Achilles who ever blustered 
 on this earth ? Is there not power greater than of 
 kings — God's strength made perfect in woman's weak- 
 ness ? Tender forgiveness, the Saviour's own likeness ; 
 glimpses, brilliant and true at the core, however dis- 
 torted and miscoloured, of that spiritual world where 
 the wicked cease from troubling, where the meek 
 alone shall inherit the earth, where, as Protestants too 
 believe, all that is spotless and beautiful in nature as 
 well as in man shall bloom for ever perfect ? 
 
 It is especially in her descriptions of paintings 
 that Mrs. Jameson's great talents are displayed. No- 
 where do we recollect criticisms more genial, brilliant, 
 picturesque than those which are scattered through 
 these pages. Often they have deeper merits, and 
 descend to those fundamental laws of beauty and of 
 religion by which all Christian art must ultimately be 
 tested. Mrs. Jameson has certainly a powerful inductive 
 faculty ; she comprehends at once the idea* and central 
 
 * We are sorry to see, however, that Mrs. Jameson has been so 
 far untrue to her own faculty as to join in the common mistake of 
 naming Raphael's well-known cartoon at Hampton Court, " Eljmas 
 the Sorcerer struck Blind." On the supposition that this is its sub- 
 ject, its method of arrangement is quite unworthy of the rest, as the 
 action would be split into the opposite corners of the picture, and 
 the post of honour in the centre occupied by a figure of secondary 
 importance ; besides, the picture would lose its significance as one of 
 this great series on "Religious Conviction and Conversion." But; 
 
Ti.] ANGEL PAINTINGS. 211 
 
 law of a work of art,, and sketches it in a few vivid and 
 masterly touches ; and really^ to use a hack quotation 
 honestly for once, '^in thoughts which breathe, and 
 words which burn." As an instance, we must be 
 allowed to quote at length this charming passage on 
 angel paintings, so valuable does it seem not only as 
 information, but as a specimen of what criticism 
 should be : 
 
 On the revival of art, we find the Byzantine idea of angels 
 everywhere prevailing. The angels in Cimabue's famous 
 " Virgin and Child enthroned " are gi'and creatures, rather 
 stern, but this arose, I think, from his inability to express 
 beauty. The colossal angels at Assisi, solemn sceptred 
 kingly forms, all alike in action and attitude, appeared to me 
 magnificent. 
 
 In the angels of Giotto we see the commencement of a 
 softer grace and a purer taste, further developed by some of 
 his scholars. Benozzo Gozzoli and Orcagna have left in the 
 Campo Santo examples of the most graceful and fanciful 
 treatment. Of Benozzo's angels in the Ricardi Palace I have 
 spoken at length. His master, Angelico (worthy the name !), 
 never reached the same power of expressing the rapturous 
 rejoicing of celestial beings, but his conception of the angelic 
 nature remains unapproached, unapproachable : it is only his, 
 for it was the gentle, passionless, refined nature of the recluse 
 which stamped itself there. Angelico's angels are unearthly, 
 not so much in form as in sentiment ; and superhuman, not in 
 
 strange to say, Raphael has all the while especially guarded against 
 this very error, by labelling the picture with a description of its 
 subject. Directly under the central figure is written, " Sergius 
 Panlus, Proconsul, embraces the Chi-istian faith at the preaching of 
 Paul." Taking which simple hint, and looking at the face of the 
 proconsul (himself a miracle of psychology) as the centre to which 
 all is to be referred, the whole composition, down to the miuutesfc 
 details, arranges itself at once in that marvellous unity which is 
 Raphael's especial glory. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 THE POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 power but in purity. In other hands, any imitation of his soft 
 ethereal grace would become feeble and insipid. With their 
 long robes falling round their feet, and drooping many- 
 coloured wings, they seem not to fly or to walk, but to float 
 along, " smooth sliding without step." Blessed blessed 
 creatures ! love us, only love us ! for we dare not task your 
 soft serene beatitude, by asking you to help us ! 
 
 There is more sympathy with humanity in Francia's angels : 
 they look as if they could weep as well as love and sing. 
 
 Correggio's angels are grand and lovely, but they are like 
 children enlarged and sublimated, not like spirits taking the 
 form of children ; where they smile it is truly — as Annibal 
 Caracci expresses it— con una naturalezza et simplicita che 
 innamora e sforza a ridere con loro : but the smile in many of 
 Correggio's angel heads has something sublime and spiritual, 
 as well as simple and natural. 
 
 And Titian's angels impress me in a similar manner — I 
 mean those in the glorious "Assumption" at "Venice — with their 
 childish forms and features, but an expression caught from 
 beholding the face of " our Father that is in heaven : " it is 
 glorified in fancy. I remember standing before this picture, 
 contemplating those lovely spirits, one after another, until a 
 thrill came over me like that which I felt when Mendelssohn 
 played the organ — I became music while I listened. The face 
 of one of those angels is to the face of a child just what that of 
 the Virgin in the same picture is compared with the fairest of 
 the daughters of earth : it is not here superiority of beauty, 
 but rhind, and music, and love kneaded, as it were, into form 
 and colour. 
 
 But Raphael, excelling in all things, is here excellent above 
 all ; his angels combine in a higher degree than any other, the 
 various faculties and attributes in which the fancy loves to 
 clothe these pure, immortal, beatified creatures. The angels 
 of Giotti, of Benozzo, of Fiesole, are, if not female, feminine ; 
 those of Filippo Lippi and of Andrea, masculine; but you 
 cannot say of those of Eaphael, that they are mascuhne or 
 feminine. The idea of sex is wholly lost in the blending of 
 power, intelligence, and grace. In his early pictures, grace is 
 
Ti.] EAPHAEL'S ANGELS. 213 
 
 the predomiuaut characteristic, as in the dancing and singing 
 angels in his "Coronation of the Virgin." In his later pictures 
 the sentiment in his ministering angels is more spiritnal, more 
 dignified. As a perfect example of grand and poetical feeling, 
 I may cite the angels as " Regents of the Planets," in the 
 Capella Chigiana. The cupola represents in a circle the 
 creation of the solar system, according to the theological 
 and astronomical (or rather astrological) notions which then 
 prevailed — a hundred years before " the starry Galileo and his 
 woes." In the centre is the Creator; around, in eight com- 
 partments, we have, first, the angel of the celestial sphere, who 
 seems to be listening to the divine mandate : " Let there be 
 light in the firmament of heaven ; " then follow in their order, 
 the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 
 The name of each planet is expressed by its mythological 
 representative ; the Sun by Apollo, the Moon by Diana : and 
 over each presides a grand colossal-winged spirit, seated or 
 reclining on a portion of the zodiac as on a throne. I have 
 selected two angels to give an idea of this peculiar and poetical 
 treatment. The union of the theological and the mythological 
 attributes is in the classical taste of the time, and quite 
 Miltonic. In Raphael's child-angels, the expression of power 
 and intelligence, as well as innocence, is quite wonderful ; for 
 instance, look at the two angel-boys, in the Dresden Madonna 
 di San Sisto, and the angels, or celestial genii, who bear along 
 the Almighty when he appears to Noah. No one has expressed 
 like Raphael the action of flight, except perhaps Rembrandt. 
 The angel who descends to crown Santa Felicita cleaves the 
 air with the action of a swallow: and the angel in Rembrandt's 
 Tobit soars like a lark with upward motion, spurning the 
 earth. 
 
 Michael Angelo rarely gave wings to his angels ; I scarcely 
 recollect an instance, except the angel in the "Annunciation : " 
 and his exaggerated human forms, his colossal creatures, in 
 which the idea of power is conveyed through attitude and 
 muscular action, are, to my taste, worse than unpleasing. My 
 admiration for this wonderful man is so profound that I can 
 afford to say this. His angels are superhuman, but hardly 
 angelic : and while in Raphael's angels we do not feel the want 
 of wings, we feel while looking at those of Michael Angelo that 
 
214 THE POETRY OF SACEED AXD LEGEXDAET AET. [vi. 
 
 not even the " sail-broad vans " with which Satan laboured 
 through the surging abyss of chaos could sufl&ce to lift those 
 Titanic forms from earth, and sustain them in mid-air. The 
 group of angels over the "Last Judgment," flinging their mighty 
 limbs about, and those that surround the descending figure of 
 Christ in the " Conversion of St. Paul," maybe referred to here 
 as characteristic examples. The angels, blowing their trumpets, 
 puff and strain like so many troopers. Surely this is not 
 angelic : there may be power — great, imaginative, and artistic 
 power — exhibited in the conception of form, but in the beings 
 themselves there is more of effort than of power : serenity, 
 tranquillity, beatitude, ethereal purity, spiritual grace, are out 
 of the question. 
 
 In tliis passage we may remark an excellence in 
 Mrs. Jameson^s mode of thought which has become 
 lately somewhat rare. We mean a freedom from that 
 bigoted and fantastic habit of mind which leads nowa- 
 days the worshippers of high art to exalt the early 
 schools to the disadvantage of all others^, and to talk 
 as if Christian painting had expired with Perugino. 
 We were much struck with our authoress's power of 
 finding spiritual truth and beauty in Titian's ^''Assump- 
 tion/' one of the very pictures in which the "high-art" 
 party are wont to see nothing but '''' coarseness " and 
 "earthliness" of conception. She, having, we suppose, 
 a more acute as well as a more healthy eye for the 
 beautiful and the spiritual, and therefore able to 
 perceive its slightest traces wherever they exist, sees 
 in those "earthly" faces of the great masters, "an 
 expression caught fi'om beholding the face of our 
 Father that is in heaven/' The face of one of those 
 " angels," she continues, " is to the face of a child 
 just what that of the Vii'gin in the same picture is 
 compared with the fairest of the daughters of earth : 
 
v-i.] KIO'S MANICHEAN THEORY. 215 
 
 at is not here superiority of beauty^ but miud, and 
 musiC; and love, kneaded, as it were, into foi'm and 
 colour/^ 
 
 Mrs. Jameson acknowledges lier great obligations 
 to M. Rio ; and all students of art must be thankful 
 to him for the taste, learning, and earnest religious 
 feeling which he has expended on the history of the 
 earlier schools of painting. An honest man, doubtless, 
 he is ; but it does not follow, alas ! in this piecemeal 
 world, that he should write an honest book. And his 
 bigotry stands in painful contrast to the genial and 
 comprehensive spirit by which Mrs. Jameson seems 
 able to appreciate the specific beauties of all schools 
 and masters. M. E,io's theory (and he is the spokes- 
 man of a large party) is, unless we much misjudge 
 him, this — that the ante-Raphaelic is the only Christian 
 art ; and that all the excellences of these early painters 
 came from their Romanism ; all their faults from his 
 two great bugbears — Byzantinism and Paganism. In 
 his eyes, the Byzantine idea of art was Manichean ; in 
 which we fully coincide, but add, that the idea of the 
 early Italian painters was almost equally so : and that 
 almost all in them that was not Manichean they owe 
 not to their Romanism or their asceticism, but to their 
 healthy layman's common sense, and to the influence 
 of that very classical art which they are said to have 
 been pious enough to despise. Bigoted and ascetic 
 Romanists have been, in all ages, in a hurry to call 
 people Manicheans, all the more fiercely because their 
 own consciences must have hinted to them that they 
 were somewhat Manichean themselves. When a man 
 suspects his own honesty, he is, of course, inclined to 
 
21G THE POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 pi'ove himself blameless by shouting- the loudest against 
 the dishonesty of others. Now M. Rio sees clearly 
 and philosophically enough what is the root of Ma- 
 nicheanism — the denial that that which is natural, 
 beautiful^ human, belongs to God. He imputes it 
 justly to those Byzantine artists who fancied it carnal 
 to attribute beauty to the Saviour or to the Virgin 
 Mary, and tried to prove their own spirituality by 
 representing their sacred personages in the extreme of 
 ugliness and emaciation, though some of the specimens 
 of their painting which Mrs. Jameson gives proves 
 that this abhorrence of beauty was not so universal as 
 M. Rio would have us believe. We agree with him that 
 this absurdity was learned from them by earlier and 
 semi-barbarous Italian artists, that these latter rapidly 
 escaped from it, and began rightly to embody their 
 conceptions in beautiful forms ; and yet we must urge 
 against them, too, the charge of Manicheanism, and of 
 a spiritual eclecticism also, far deeper and more per- 
 nicious than the mere outward eclecticism of manner 
 which has drawn down hard names on the school of 
 the Caracci. 
 
 For an eclectic, if it mean anything, means this — 
 one who, in any branch of art or science, refuses to 
 acknowledge Bacon's great law, " that nature is only 
 conquered by obeying her;'' who will not take a full 
 and reverent view of the whole mass of facts with 
 which he has to deal, and from them deducing the 
 fundamental laws of his subject, obey them whither- 
 soever they may lead ; but who picks and chooses out 
 of them just so many as may be pleasant to his private 
 taste, and then constructs a partial system which differs 
 
Ti.] EARLY ASCETIC PAINTEBS. 217 
 
 from the essential ideas of nature, in proportion to tlie 
 number of facts which he has determined to discard. 
 And such a course was pursued in the art by the ascetic 
 painters between the time of Giotto and Raphael. 
 Their idea of beauty was a partial and a Manichean 
 one ; in their adoration for a fictitious '^angelic nature/' 
 made up from all which is negative in humanity, they 
 were prone to despise all by which man is brought in 
 contact with this earth — the beauties of sex, of strength, 
 of activity, of grandeur of form ; all, that is, in which 
 Greek art excels : their ideal of beauty was altogether 
 effeminate. They prudishly despised the anatomic 
 study of the human figure, of landscape and chiaroscuro. 
 Spiritual expression with them was everything ; but 
 it was only the expression of the passive spiritual 
 faculties of innocence, devotion, meekness, resignation 
 — all good, but not the whole of humanity. Not that 
 they could be quite consistent in then' theory. They 
 were forced to paint their very angels as human beings; 
 and a standard of human beauty they had to find some- 
 where; and they found one, strange to say, exactly 
 like that of the old Pagan statues {wings and all — for 
 the wings of Christian angels are copied exactly from 
 those of Greek Genii), and only diifering in that ascetic 
 and emasculate tone, which was peculiar to themselves. 
 Here is a dilemma which the worshippers of high art 
 have slurred over. Where did Augelico de Fiesole 
 get the idea of beauty which dictated his exquisite 
 angels ? We shall not, I suppose, agree with those 
 who attribute it to direct inspiration, and speak of 
 it as the reward of the prayer and fasting by which 
 the good monk used to prepare himself for painting. 
 
218 THE POETRY OP SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 Must we tlien confess tliat lie borrowed liis beauties 
 from the faces of the prettiest nuns with whom he was 
 acquainted ? That would be sad naturalism ; and sad 
 eclecticism too, considering that he must have seen 
 among his Italian sisters a great many beauties of a 
 very different type from that which he has chosen to 
 copy; though, we suppose, of God's making equally 
 with that of his favourites. Or did he, in spite of 
 himself, steal a side-glance now and then at some of 
 the unrivalled antique statues of his country, and copy 
 on the sly any feature or proportion in them which 
 was emasculate enough to be woi'ked into his pictures ? 
 Thatj too, is likely enough ; nay, it is certain. We are 
 perfectly astonished how any draughtsman, at least 
 how such a critic as M. Rio, can look at the early 
 Italian painters without tracing everywhere in them 
 the classic touch, the peculiar tendency to niathematic 
 curves in the outlines, which is the distinctive pecu- 
 liarity of Greek art. Is not Giotto, the father of 
 Italian art, full of it in every line ? Is not Perugiuo ? 
 Is not the angel of Lorenzo Credi in Mrs. Jameson's 
 woodcut? Is not Francia, except just where he is 
 stiff, and soft, and clumsy ? Is not Fra Angelico him- 
 self ? Is it not just the absence of this Greek tendency 
 to mathematical forms in the German painters before 
 Albert Dilrer, which makes the specific difference, 
 evident to every boy, between the drawing of the 
 Teutonic and Italian schools ? 
 
 But if so, what becomes of the theory which calls 
 Pagan art by all manner of hard names ? which dates 
 the downfall of Christian art from the moment when 
 painters first lent an eye to its pernicious seductions ? 
 
Ti.] LEssoxs OF THE'Asdfre sdnj^L,^ » , 2ia ■>y 
 
 How can those escape the chkr^ .'O:^ eclecticism, who, // 
 without going to the root-idea of Greek art, filch 0^4 /,■ 
 from its outside just as much as sui,te(i th,eir purpose ? 
 And how, lastly, can M. Kio's school of criti6s esca^je 
 the charge of Manichean contempt for God's world 
 and man, not as ascetics have fancied him, but as God 
 has made him, when they think it a sufiicient condem- 
 nation of a picture to call it naturalistic ; when they 
 talk and act about art as if the domain of the beautiful 
 were the deviFs kingdom, from which some few species 
 of form and elements were to be stolen by Christian 
 painters, and twisted from their original evil destination 
 into the service of religion ? 
 
 On the other hand, we owe much to those early 
 ascetic painters ; their works are a possession for ever. 
 No future school of religious art will be able to rise to 
 eminence without taking full cognisance of them, and 
 learning from them their secret. They taught artists, 
 and priests, and laymen too, that beauty is only worthy 
 of admiration when it is the outward sacrament of the 
 beauty of the soul within; they helped to deliver 
 men from that idolatry to merely animal strength and 
 loveliness into which they were in danger of falling in 
 ferocious ages, and among the relics of Eoman luxury; 
 they asserted the superiority of the spirit over the 
 flesh; according to their light, they were faithful 
 preachere of the great Christian truth, that devoted 
 faith, and not fierce self-will, is man's glory. Well did 
 their pictures tell to brutal peasant, and to still more 
 brutal warrior, that God's might was best shown forth, 
 not in the elephantine pride of a Hercules, or the 
 Titanic struggles of a Laocoou, but in the weakness of 
 
220 THE POETEY OF SACRED AXD LEGENDARY ART. [yj. 
 
 martyred women, and of warriors who were content 
 meekly to endure shame and death, for the sake of 
 Him who conquered by sufferings, and bore all human 
 weaknesses ; who " was led as a lamb to the slaughter, 
 and, like a sheep dumb before the shearer, opened not 
 his mouth/^ 
 
 We must conclude with a few words on one point 
 on which we differ somewhat from Mrs. Jameson — the 
 allegoric origin of certain legendary stories. She calls 
 the story of the fiend, under the form of a dragon, 
 devouring St. Margaret, and then bursting at the sign 
 of the cross while the saint escaped unhurt, " another 
 form of the familiar allegory — the power of Sin over- 
 come by the power of the Cross. ^^ 
 
 And again, vol. ii. p. 4 : 
 
 The legend of St. George came to us from the East ; where,, 
 under various forms, as Apollo and the Python, as Bellerophou 
 and the Chimeera, as Perseus and the Sea-monster, we see 
 perpetually recurring the mythic allegory by which was figured 
 the conquest achieved by beneficent Power over the tyranny 
 of Wickedness, and which reappears in Christian art in the 
 legends of St. Michael and half a hundred other saints. 
 
 To us these stories seem to have had by no means 
 an allegorical, but rather a strictly historic foundation ; 
 and our reasons for this opinion may possibly interest 
 some readers. 
 
 Allegory, strictly so called, is the offspring of an 
 advanced, and not of a semi-barbarous state of society. 
 Its home is in the East — not the East of barbarous 
 Pontine countries peopled by men of our own race, 
 where the legend of St. George is allowed to have 
 sprung up, but of the civilised, metaphysical, dark- 
 
VI.] ALLEGORY OF EASTERN ORIGIN. 221 
 
 liaired races of Egypt^ Syria, and Hindostan. The 
 " objectivity " of the Gothic mind has never had any 
 sympathy with it. The Teutonic races, like the earlier 
 Greeks, before they were tinctured with Eastern 
 thought, had always wanted historic facts, dates^ names, 
 and places. They even found it necessai-y to import 
 their saints ; to locate Mary Magdalene at Marseilles, 
 Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury, the three Magi 
 at Cologne, before they could thoroughly love or under- 
 stand them. Englishmen especially cannot write alle- 
 gories. John Bunyan alone succeeded tolerably, but 
 only because his characters and language were such as 
 he had encountered daily at every fireside and in every 
 meeting-house. But Spenser wandered perpetually 
 away, or rather, rose up from his plan into mere 
 dramatic narrative. His work and other English alle- 
 gories, are hardly allegoric at all, but rather symbolic ; 
 spiritual laws in them are not expressed by arbitrary 
 ciphers, but embodied in imaginary examples, suffi- 
 ciently startling or simple to form a plain key to other 
 and deeper instances of the same law. They are ana- 
 logous to those symbolic devotional pictures in which 
 the Madonna and saints of all ages are grouped together 
 with the painter's own contemporaries — no allegories 
 at all, but the plain embodiment of a fact in which the 
 artist believed; not only " the communion of all saints," 
 but also their habit of assisting, often in visible form, 
 the Christians of his own time. 
 
 These distinctions may seem over-subtle, but our 
 meaning will surely be plain to anyone who will 
 compare "The Faerie Queen,'' or the legend of St. 
 •George, with the Gnostic or Hindoo reveries, and the 
 
222 THE POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 fantastic and truly Eastern interpretation of Scripture, 
 ■wliicli the European monks borrowed from Egypt. 
 Our opinion is, tliat in the old legends the moral did not 
 create the story, but the story the moral ; and that 
 the story had generally a nucleus of fact within all 
 its distortions and exaggerations. This holds good of 
 the Odinic and Grecian myths ; all are now more or 
 less inclined to believe that the deities of Zeus's or 
 Odin^s dynasties were real conquerors or civilisers of 
 flesh and bloody like the Manco Oapac of the Peruvians, 
 and that it was around records of their real victories 
 over barbarous aborigines, and over the brute powers 
 of nature, that extravagant myths grew up, till more 
 civilised generations began to say : '' These tales must 
 have some meaning — they must be either allegories or 
 nonsense/' and then fancied that in the remaining 
 thread of fact they found a clue to the mystic sense of 
 the whole. 
 
 Such, we suspect, has been the history of St. 
 George and the Dragon, as well as of Apollo and the 
 Python. It is very hard to have to give up the dear 
 old dragon who haunted our nursery dreams, especially 
 when there is no reason for it. We have no patience 
 with antiquaries who tell us that the dragons who 
 guarded princesses were merely "the winding walls 
 or moats of their castles." What use then, pray, was 
 there in the famous nether garment with which 
 Eegnar Lodbrog (shaggy-trousers) choked the dragon 
 who guarded his lady-love ? And Regnar was a real 
 piece of flesh and blood, as King ^lla and our Saxon 
 forefathers found to their cost ; his awful death-dirge, 
 and the effect which it produced^ are well known to 
 
Ti.] DEAGON WOESHIP. 223 
 
 liistorians. We cannot give up Eeguar's trousers, for 
 ■we suspect the key to the whole dragon- question is in 
 the pocket of them. 
 
 Seriously, Why should not these dragons have been 
 simply -what the Greek word dragon means — what the 
 earliest romances, the Norse myths, and the super- 
 stitions of the peasantry in many parts of England to 
 this day assert them to have been — "mighty worms,^' 
 huge snakes ? All will agree that the Python, the 
 representative in the old world of the Boa-constrictor 
 of the new, lingered in the Homeric age, if not later, 
 both in Greece and in Italy. It existed on the opposite 
 coast of Africa .(where it is now extinct) in the time of 
 Regulus j we believe, from the traditions of all nations, 
 that it existed to a far later date in more remote and 
 barbarous parts of Europe. There is every reason to 
 suppose that it still lingered in England after the 
 invasion of the Cymri — say not earlier than B.C. 600 — 
 for it was among them an object of worship ; and we 
 question whether they would have been likely to have 
 adored a foreign animal, and, as at Abury, built enor- 
 mous temples in imitation of its windings, and called 
 them by its name. 
 
 The only answer to these traditions has as yet been, 
 that no reptile of that bulk is known in cold climates. 
 Yet the Python still lingers in the Hungarian marshes. 
 A few years ago a huge snake, as large as the 
 Pythons of Hindostan, spread havoc among the flocks 
 and terror among the peasantry. Had it been Ariosto's 
 " Ore,'' an a priori ai'gument from science would have 
 had weight. A marsupiate sea-monster is horribly 
 unorthodox ; and the dragon, too, has doubtless been 
 
224 THE POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 made a monster of, but most unjustly: his legs have 
 been patched on by crocodile -slaying crusaders, while 
 his wings — where did they come from ? From the 
 traditions of " flying serpents/' which have so strangely 
 haunted the deserts of Upper Egypt from the time of 
 the old Hebrew prophets, and which may not, after 
 all, be such lies as folk fancy. How scientific prigs 
 shook with laughter at the notion of a flying dragon ! 
 till one day geology revealed to them, in the Ptero- 
 dactylus, that a real flying dragon, on the model of 
 Carlo Crivelli's in Mrs. Jameson's book, with wings 
 before and legs behind, only more monstrous than 
 that, and than all the dreams of Seba and Aldrovandus 
 (though some of theirs, to be sure, have seven heads), 
 got its living once on a time in this very island of 
 England ! But such is the way of this wise world ! 
 When Le Yaillant, in the last century, assured the 
 Parisians that he had shot a giraffe at the Cape, he 
 was politely informed that the giraffe was fabulous, 
 extinct — in short, that he lied ; and now, behold ! the 
 respectable old unicorn (and good Tories ought to 
 rejoice to hear it) has been discovered at last by a 
 German naturalist. Von Miiller, in Abyssinia, just 
 where our fathers told us to look for it ! And why 
 should we not find the flying serpent too ? The interior 
 of Africa is as yet an unknown world of wonders ; 
 and we may yet discover there, for aught we know, 
 the descendants of the very satyr who chatted with 
 St. Anthony. 
 
 No doubt the discovery of huge fossil animals, as 
 Mrs. Jameson says, on the high authority of Professor 
 Owen, may have modified our ancestors' notions of 
 
VI.] SNAKE-GODS. 225 
 
 di'agons : but in the old serpent worsliip we believe tbe 
 real explanation of these stories is to be found. There 
 is no doubt that human victims^ and even young 
 maidens, were offered to these snake-gods ; even the 
 sunny mythology of Greece retains horrible traces 
 of such customs, which lingered in Arcadia, the moun- 
 tain fastness of the old and conquered race. Similar 
 cruelties existed among the Mexicans; and there are 
 but too many traces of it throughout the history of 
 heathendom. 
 
 The same superstition may, as the legends assert, 
 have lingered on, or been at least revived during the 
 later ages of the empire, in remote provinces, left in 
 their primeval barbarism, at the same time that they 
 were brutalised by the fiendish exhibitions of the 
 Circus, which the Eoman governors found it their 
 interest to introduce everywhere. Thus the serpent 
 became naturally regarded as the manifestation of 
 the evil spirit by Christians as well as by the old 
 Hebrews ; thus, also, it became the presiding genius 
 of the malaria and fever which arose from the fens 
 haunted by it — a superstition which gave rise to the 
 theory that the tales of Hercules and the Hydra, 
 Apollo and the mud-Python, St. George and the 
 Dragon, were sanitary-reform allegories, and the 
 monsters whose poisonous breath destroyed cattle and 
 young maidens only typhus and consumption. We see 
 no reason why early Christian heroes should not have 
 actually met with such snake-gods, and felt themselves 
 bound, like Southey's Madoc, or Daniel in the old 
 rabbinical story, whose truth has never been disproved, 
 to destroy the monsters at all risk. We see no reason, 
 
 L. G. Q 
 
226 THE POETEY OF SACKED AND LEGENDARY ART. [vi. 
 
 either, wliy tlieir rigliteous daring may not have been 
 crowned with victory ; and suspect that on such events 
 were gradually built up the dragon-slaying legends 
 which charmed all Europe, and grew in extravagances 
 and absurdities, till they began to degenerate into the 
 bombast of the '' Seven Champions,^^ and expired in 
 the immortal ballad of the '' Dragon of Wantley," in 
 which More of More Hall, on the morning of his 
 battle with the monster, invoked the saints no more, 
 
 but— 
 
 To make Iiim strong and mighty — 
 
 He drank by the tale 
 
 Six pots of ale 
 And a quart of aqna-vitffi. 
 
 So ended the sublime sport of dragon-slaying. 
 Its only remna^nt may now be seen in Borneo, whither 
 that noble Christian man. Bishop Macdougall, took 
 out the other day a six-chambered rifle, on the ground 
 that " while the alligators ate his school-children 
 at Sarawak, it was his duty as a bishop to shoot the 
 alligators." 
 
ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 
 
 Q 2 
 
ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. 
 
 Introductory Lectures given at Queen's College, London, 1.848. 
 
 An introductory lecture ou English composition is, 
 I think, as much needed as one on any other subject 
 taught in this College. For in the first place, I am 
 not sure whether we all mean the same thing when 
 we speak of English composition ; and in the next 
 place, I believe that pupils themselves are very often 
 best able to tell their teachers what sort of instruction 
 they require. I purpose therefore to-day, not only 
 to explain freely my intentions with regard to this 
 course of lectures, but to ask you to explain freely 
 your own wants. 
 
 I must suppose, however, that the ladies who 
 attend here wish to be taught how to write English 
 better. Now the art of writing English is, I should 
 say, the art of speaking English, and speech may be 
 used for any one of three purposes : to conceal thought, 
 as the French diplomatist defined its use ; to conceal 
 the want of thought, as the majority of popular writers 
 and orators seem nowadays to employ it ; or, again, to 
 express thought, which would seem to have been the 
 
230 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [vii- 
 
 original destination of the gift of language. I am 
 therefore, I suppose, in duty bound to take for granted 
 that you come here to be taught to express your 
 thoughts better. 
 
 The whole matter then will very much depend on 
 what thoughts you have to express. For the form of 
 the symbol must depend on the form of the thing 
 symbolised, as the medal does upon its die ; and thus 
 style and language are the sacraments of thoughts, 
 the outward and visible signs of the inward and 
 spiritual grace, or want of grace, in the writer. And 
 even where language is employed to conceal either 
 thought, or want thereof, it generally tells a truer tale 
 than it was meant to do. Out of the abundance of the 
 heart the mouth must speak, and the hollowness or 
 foolishness of the spirit will show itself, in spite of all 
 cunning sleights, in unconscious peculiarities or defects 
 of style. 
 
 Hence I say style, as the expression of thought, 
 will depend entirely on what there is within to be 
 expressed, on the character of the writer^s mind and 
 heart. We all allow this implicitly in the epithets 
 which we apply to different styles. We talk of a 
 vigorous, a soft, a weak, a frigid, an obscure style, 
 not meaning that the words and sentences in them- 
 selves are vigorous, soft, weak, or even obscure (for 
 the words and their arrangement may be simple 
 enough all the while). No, you speak of the quality 
 of the thoughts conveyed in the words ; that a style 
 is powerful, because the writer is feeling and thinking 
 strongly and clearly ; weak or frigid, because his 
 feelings on the subject have been weak or cold ;. 
 
VII.] THOUGHT AND SPEECH. 231 
 
 obscure to you, because liis thouglits have been 
 obscure to liimself — because, iu short, lie has not 
 clearly imagined to himself the notion which he 
 wishes to embody. The meaning of the very words 
 " expression " and " composition,^^ prove the truth of 
 my assertion. Expression is literally the pressing out 
 into palpable form that which is already within us, and 
 composition, in the same way, is the composing or 
 putting together of materials already existing — the 
 form and method of the composition depend mainly 
 on the form and quality of the materials. You cannot 
 compose a rope of sand, or a round globe of square 
 stones — and my friend Mr. Strettell will tell you, in 
 his lectures on grammar, that words are just as stub- 
 born and intractable materials as sand or stone, and 
 that we cannot alter their meaning or value a single 
 shade, for they derive that meaning from a higher 
 fountain than the soul of man, from the Word of God, 
 the fount of utterance, who inspires all true and noble 
 thought and speech — who vindicated language as 
 His own gift, and man^s invention, in that miracle of 
 the day of Pentecost. And I am bound to follow up 
 Mr, StrettelFs teaching by telling you that what holds 
 true of words, and of their grammatic and logical 
 composition, holds true also of their testhetic and 
 artistic composition, of style, of rhythm, of poetry, 
 and oratory. Every principle of these which is true 
 and good, that is, which produces beauty, is to be 
 taken as an inspu'ation from above, as depending not 
 on the will of man but of God ; not on any abstract 
 rules, of pedant's invention, but on the eternal 
 necessities and harmony, on the being of God Himself. 
 
232 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [vir. 
 
 Tliese may seem lofty wordS;, but I do not tliink 
 they ai-e likely to make us lofty-minded. I think 
 that the belief of them will tend to make us all more 
 reverent and earnest in examining the utterances of 
 others, more simple and truthful in giving vent to our 
 own, fearing equally all prejudiced and hasty criticism, 
 all self-willed mannerism, all display of fine words, as 
 sins against the divine dignity of language. From 
 these assertions I think we may conclude what is the 
 true method of studying style. The critical examina- 
 tion of good authors, looking at language as an in- 
 spiration, and its laws as things independent of us, 
 eternal and divine, we must search into them as we 
 would into any other set of facts, in nature, or the 
 Bible, by patient induction. We must not be content 
 with any traditional maxims, or abstract rules, such as 
 have been put forth in Blair and Lord Kaimes, for 
 these are merely worked out by the head, and can give 
 us no insight into the magic which touches the heart. 
 All abstract rules of criticism, indeed, are very barren. 
 We may read whole folios of them without getting 
 one step farther than we were at first, viz. that what 
 is beautiful is beautiful. Indeed, these abstract 
 rules generally tend to narrow our notions of what is 
 beautiful, in their attempt to explain spiritual things 
 by the carnal understanding. All they do is to explain 
 them away, and so those who depend on them are 
 tempted to deny the beauty of every thing which 
 cannot be thus analysed and explained away, according 
 to the established rule and method. I shall have to 
 point out this again to you, when we come to speak 
 of the Pope and Johnson school of critics, and the way 
 
Til.] IDOLATRY OF ABSTRACT RULES. 233 
 
 in wliicli tliey wrote whole folios ou Shakespeai-e, 
 without ever penetrating a single step deeper towards 
 the secret of his sublimity. It was just this idolatry 
 of abstract rules which made Johnson call Bishop 
 Percy's invaluable collection of ancient ballads " stuff 
 and nonsense.'' It was this which made Voltaire talk of 
 " Hamlet " as the ravings of a drunken savage, because 
 forsooth it could not be crammed into the artificial 
 rules of French tragedy. It is this which, even at 
 this day, makes some men of highly-cultivated taste 
 declare that they can see no poetry in the writings of 
 Mr. Tennyson ; the cause, little as they are aware of 
 it, simply being that neither his excellences nor his 
 faults are after the model of the Etonian classical 
 school which reigned in England fifty years ago. 
 When these critics speak of that with which they 
 sympathise they are admirable. They become childish 
 only when they resolve to bind all by maxims which 
 may suit themselves. 
 
 We must then, I think, absolutely eschew any 
 abstract rules as starting-points. What rules we may 
 require, we must neither borrow nor invent, but discover, 
 dui-ing the course of our reading. We must take 
 passages whose power and beauty is universally 
 acknowledged, and try by reverently and patiently 
 dissecting them to see into the secret of their charm, 
 to see why and how they are the best possible ex- 
 pressions of the author's mind. Then for the wider 
 laws of art, we may proceed to examine whole works, 
 single elegies, essays, and dramas. 
 
 In carrying out all this, it Avill be safest, as always, 
 to follow the course of nature, and begin where God 
 
234 OX ENGLISH COilPOSITIOX. [vii. 
 
 Ijegins with us. For as every one of us is truly a 
 microcosm, a wliole miniature world within ourselves, 
 so is the history of each individual more or less the- 
 history of the whole human race, and there are few of 
 us but pass through the same course of intellectual 
 growth, through which the whole English nation has 
 passed, with an exactness and perfection proportionate, 
 of course, to the richness and vigour of each person's 
 character. Now as in the nation, so in the individual, 
 poetry springs up before prose. Look at the history of 
 English hterature, how completely it is the history of 
 our own childhood and adolescence, in its successive 
 fashions. First, fairy tales — then ballads of adventure, 
 love, and war — then a new tinge of foreign thought 
 and feeling, generally French, as it was with the 
 English nation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — 
 then elegiac and reflective poetry — then classic art 
 begins to influence our ripening youth, as it did the 
 youth of our nation in the sixteenth century, and 
 dehght in dramatic poetry follows as a natural con- 
 sequence — and last, but not least, as the fruit of all 
 these changes, a vigorous and matured prose. For 
 indeed, as elocution is the highest melody, so is true 
 prose the highest poetry. Consider how in an air, the 
 melody is limited to a few arbitrary notes, and recurs 
 at arbitrary periods, while the more scientific the 
 melody becomes, the more numerous and neai'ly allied 
 are the notes employed, and the more complex and 
 uncertain is their recurrence — in short, the nearer does 
 the melody of the air approach to the melody of elocu- 
 tion, in which the notes of the voice ought continually 
 to be passing into each other, by imperceptible grada- 
 
VII.] PERFECT PROSE THE HIGHEST. 235 
 
 tions, and tlieir recurrence to depend entirely on tlie 
 emotions conveyed in the subject words. Just so, 
 poetry employs a confined and arbitrary metre, and a 
 periodic recurrence of sounds which disappear gradually 
 in its higher forms of the ode and the drama, till the 
 poetry at last passes into prose, a free and ever- 
 shifting flow of every imaginable rhythm and metre, 
 determined by no arbitrary rules, but only by the 
 spiritual intent of the subject. The same will hold 
 good of whole prose compositions, when compared 
 with whole poems. 
 
 Prose then is highest. To write a perfect prose 
 must be your ultimate object in attending these 
 lectures ; but we must walk before we can run, and 
 walk with leading-strings before we can walk alone, 
 and such leading-strings are verse and rhyme. Some 
 tradition of this is still kept up in the practice of 
 making boys write Latin and Greek verses at school, 
 which is of real service to the intellect, even when 
 most carelessly employed, and which, when earnestly 
 carried out, is one great cause of the public school and 
 University man^s superiority in style to most self- 
 educated authors. And why should women^s writings 
 be in any respect inferior to that of men, if they 
 are only willing to follow out the same method of 
 self-education ? 
 
 Do not fancy, when I say that we must learn 
 poetry before we learn prose, that I am only advancing 
 a paradox ; mere talking is no more prose than mere 
 rhyme is poetry. Monsieur Jourdain, in Moliure's 
 comedy, makes, I suspect, a very great mistake, when 
 he tells his master : " If that means prose, Tve been 
 
236 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [vn. 
 
 talking prose all my life/' I fancy tlie good man 
 liad been no more talking prose, than an awkward 
 country boy has been really walking all his life, 
 because he has been contriving somehow to put one 
 leg before the other. To see what walking is, we 
 must look at the perfectly-drilled soldier, or at the 
 perfectly-accomplished lady, who has been taught to 
 dance in order that she may know how to walk. 
 Dancing has been well called the poetry of motion ; 
 but the tender grace, the easy dignity in every gesture 
 of daily life which the perfect dancer exhibits answers 
 exactly to that highly-organised prose which ought 
 to be the offspring of a critical acquaintance with 
 poetry, Milton's matchless prose style, for instance, 
 grows naturally from his matchless power over I'hyme 
 and metre. Practice in versification might be unneces- 
 sary if we were all born world-geniuses ; so would 
 practice in dancing, if every lady had the figure of a 
 Venus and the garden of Eden for a playground. But 
 even the ancient Greeks amid every advantage of 
 climate, dress, and physical beauty, considered a 
 thorough instruction in all athletic and graceful 
 exercises as indispensably necessary, not only to a 
 boy's but also to a girl's education, and in like manner, 
 I think the exquisite models of prose with which 
 English literature abounds will not supersede the 
 necessity of a careful training in versification, nay, 
 will rather make such a training all the more requisite 
 for those who wish to imitate such excellence. Pray 
 understand me, by using the wor-d " imitate," I do not 
 mean that I wish you to ape the style of any favourite 
 author. Your aim will not be to write like this man 
 
vii.] ONE-XESS OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY, 237 
 
 or that "woman, but to write like yourselves, being of 
 course responsible for what yourselves are like. Do 
 not be afraid to let the peculiarities of your different 
 characters show yourselves in your styles. Your prose 
 may be the rougher for it, but it will be at least 
 honest; and all mannerism is dishonesty, an attempt 
 to gain beauty at the expense of truthful expression 
 which invariably defeats its own ends, and produces an 
 unpleasing effect, so necessarily one are truth and 
 beauty. So far then from wishing to foster in you 
 any artificial mannerism, mannerism is that foul 
 enchanter from whom, above all others, I am sworn 
 " en preux chevalier " to deliver you. As Professor 
 Maurice warned me when I undertook this lectureship, 
 my object in teaching you about " styles " should be 
 that you may have no style at all. But mannerism 
 can be only avoided by the most thorough practice and 
 knowledge. Half-educated writers are always man- 
 nerists; while, as the ancient canon says, "the 
 perfection of art is to conceal art " — to depart from 
 uncultivated and therefore defective nature, to rise 
 again through art to a more organised and therefore 
 more simple naturalness. Just as, to carry on the 
 analogy which I employed just now, it is only the 
 perfect dancer who arrives at that height of art at 
 which her movements seem dictated not by conscious 
 science, but unconscious nature. 
 
 I do hope then that the study, and still more the 
 practice of versification, may produce in you the same 
 good effects which they do in young men ; that they 
 may give you a habit of portioning out your thoughts 
 distinctly and authentically in a more simple, con- 
 
238 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [tii. 
 
 densedj and expressive style; that tliey may teacli you 
 what elevation of language, what class of sounds, what 
 flow of words may best suit your tone of thought and 
 feeling, that they may prevent in you that tendency to 
 monotonous repetition, and vain wordiness, which is 
 the bosom sin of most uneducated prose writers, not 
 only of the ladies of the nineteenth century, but of the 
 Middle Age monks, who, having in general no poetry 
 on which to form their taste, except the effeminate and 
 bombastic productions of the dying Roman empire, fell 
 into a certain washy prolixity, which has made monk 
 Latin a byword, and puts one sadly in mind of what 
 is too truly called " young ladies^ English.-'^ 
 
 I should like then to begin with two or three of the 
 early ballads, and carefully analyse them with you. I 
 am convinced that in them we may discover many of 
 the great primary laws of composition, as well as the 
 secrets of sublimity and pathos in their very simplest 
 manifestations. It may be that there are some here 
 to whom the study of old ballads may be a little dis- 
 tasteful, who are in an age when the only poetry which 
 has charms is the subjective and self-conscious '^^poetry 
 of the heart ^^ — to whom a stanza of " Childe Harolde " 
 may seem worth all the ballads that ever were written : 
 but let me remind them that woman is by her sex an 
 educator, that every one here must expect, ay hope, 
 to be employed at some time or other in training the 
 minds of children ; then let me ask them to recall the 
 years in which objective poems, those which dealt with 
 events, ballads, fairy tales, down to nursery rhymes, 
 were their favourite intellectual food, and let me ask 
 them whether it will not be worth while, for the sake 
 
VII.] BALLADS, AND ELEGIAC POETRY. 239 
 
 of the children ■whom they may hereafter influence, to 
 bestow a little thought on this earlier form of verse. 
 
 I must add too, that without some understanding 
 of these same ballads, we shall never arrive at a critical 
 appreciation of Shakespeare. For the English drama 
 springs from an intermarriage between this same 
 ballad poetry, the poetry of incidents, and that sub- 
 jective elegiac poetry which deals with the feeling's and 
 consciousnesses of man. They are the two poles, by 
 whose union our drama is formed, and some critical 
 knowledge of both of them will be, as I said, necessary 
 before we can study it. 
 
 After the ballads, we ought, I think, to know a 
 little about the early Norman poetry, whose fusion 
 with the pure north Saxon ballad school produced 
 Chaucer and the poets previous to the Keformation. 
 We shall proceed to Chaucer himself ; then to the rise 
 of the drama; then to the poets of the Elizabethan 
 age. I shall analyse a few of Shakespeare's master- 
 pieces ; then speak of Milton and Spenser ; thence 
 pass to the prose of Sidney, Hooker, Bacon, Taylor, 
 and our later great authors. Thus our Composition 
 lectures will follow an historical method, parallel with, 
 and I hope illustrative of, the lectures on English 
 History. 
 
 But it will not be enough, I am afraid, to study the 
 style of others without attempting something your- 
 selves. No criticism teaches so much as the criticism 
 of our own works. And I hope therefore that you will 
 not think that I ask too much of you when I propose 
 that weekly prose and verse compositions, on set sub- 
 jects, be sent in by the class. To the examination of 
 
240 ON ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [vir. 
 
 these the hitter half of each lecture may be devoted, 
 and the first half-hour to the study of various authors : 
 and in order that I may be able to speak my mind 
 freely on them I should propose that they be anony- 
 mous. I hope that you will all trust me when I tell 
 you that those who have themselves experienced what 
 labour attends the task of composition, are generally 
 most tender and charitable in judging of the work of 
 others, and that whatever remarks I may make will be 
 such only as a man has a right to make on a woman's 
 composition. 
 
 And if I may seem to be asking anything new or 
 troublesome, I beg you to remember, that it is the 
 primary idea of this College to vindicate women's right 
 to an education in all points equal to that of men ; the 
 difference between them being determined not by any 
 fancied inferiority of mind, but simply by the distinct 
 offices and character of the sexes. And surely when 
 you recollect the long drudgery at Greek and Latin 
 verses which is required of every highly-educated man, 
 and the high importance which has attached to them 
 for centuries in the opinion of Englishmen, you cannot 
 think that I am too exigeant in asking you for a few sets 
 of English verses. Believe me, that you ought to find 
 their beneficial effect in producing, as I said before, a 
 measured deliberate style of expression, a habit of 
 calling up clear and distinct images on all subjects, a 
 power of condensing and arranging your thoughts, 
 such as no practice in prose themes can ever give. If 
 you are disappointed of these results it will not be the 
 fault of this long-proved method of teaching, but of 
 my own inability to carry it out. Indeed I cannot too 
 
VII.] "THE WORD." 241 
 
 strongly confess my own ignorance or fear my own 
 inability. I stand agliast when I compare my means 
 and my idea, but I believe that ''by teaching thou 
 shalt learn/' is a rule of which I too shall take the 
 benefit, and having begun these lectures in the name 
 of Him who is The Word, and with the firm intention 
 of asserting throughout His claims as the inspirer of 
 all language and of all art, I may perhaps hope for 
 the fulfilment of His own promise : " Be not anxious 
 what you shall speak, for it shall be given you in that 
 day and in that hour what you shall speak.'' 
 
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. 
 
 Introductory Lecture given at; Queen's College, London, 1848. 
 
 An iutroductoiy lecture must, I suppose, be considered 
 as a sort of art-exhibition, or advertisement of the 
 wares hereafter to be furnished by the lecturer. If 
 these, on actual use, should prove to fall far short of 
 the promise conveyed in the programme, hearers must 
 remember that the lecturer is bound, even to his own 
 shame, to set forth in all commencements the most 
 perfect method of teaching which he can devise, in 
 order that human frailty may have something at which 
 to aim ; at the same time begging all to consider that 
 in this piecemeal world, it is sufficient not so much to 
 have realised one^s ideal, as earnestly to have tried to 
 realise it, according to the measure of each man's gifts. 
 Besides, what may not be fulfilled in a first course, or 
 in a first generation of teachers, may still be effected 
 by those who follow them. It is but fair to expect 
 that if this Institution shall prove, as I pray God it 
 may, a centre of female education worthy of the wants 
 of the coming age, the method and the practice of the 
 College will be developing, as years bring experience 
 
246 ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE. . [vni. 
 
 and wider eye-range, till we become truly able to teacli 
 the English woman o£ the nineteenth century to bear 
 her part in an era, which, as I believe, more and more 
 bids fair to eclij)se, in faith and in art, in science and in 
 polity, any and every period of glory which Christendom 
 has yet beheld. 
 
 The first requisite, I think, for a modern course of 
 English Literature is, that it be a whole course or none. 
 The literary education of woman has too often fallen 
 into the fault of our "Elegant Extra cts,^^ and "Beauties 
 of British Poetry." It has neither begun at the 
 beginning nor ended at the end. The young have 
 been taught to admire the laurels of Parnassus, but 
 only after they have been clipped and pollarded like a 
 Dutch shrubbery. The roots which connect them with 
 mythic antiquity, and the fresh leaves and flowers of 
 the growing present, have been genei-ally cut off with 
 care, and the middle part only has been allowed to be 
 used — too often, of course, a sufficiently tough and dry 
 stem. This method is no doubt easy, because it saves 
 teachers the trouble of investigating antiquity, and 
 saves them too the still more delicate task of judging 
 contemporaneous authors — but like all half measures, 
 it has bred less good than evil. If we could silence a 
 free press, and the very free tongues of modern society ; 
 if we could clip the busy, imaginative, craving mind of 
 youth on the Procrustean bed of use and wont, the 
 method might succeed; but we can do neither — the 
 young will read and ivill hear ; and the consequence 
 is, a general complaint that the minds of young women 
 are outgrowing their mothers' guidance, that they are 
 reading books which their mothers never dreamt of 
 
Tin.] WANT OF EDUCATION. 217 
 
 reading, of many of which they never heard, many at 
 least whose good and evil they have had no means of 
 investigating; that the authors which really interest 
 and influence the minds of the young are just the ones 
 which have formed no part of their education, and 
 therefore those forjudging of which they have received 
 no adequate rules ; that, in short, in literature as in 
 many things, education in England is far behind the 
 wants of the age. 
 
 Now this is all wrong and niinous. The mother's 
 mind should be the lodestar of the daughter's. Any 
 thing which loosens the bond of filial reverence., of 
 filial resignation, is even more destructive, if possible, 
 to womanhood than to manhood — the certain bane of 
 both. And the evil fruits are evident enough — self- 
 will and self-conceit in the less gentle, restlessness and 
 dissatisfaction in many of the meekest and gentlest ; 
 talents seem with most a curse instead of a blessing ; 
 clever and earnest young women, like young men, are 
 beginning to wander up and down in all sorts of eclec- 
 ticisms and dilettanteisms — one year they find out that 
 the dark ages were not altogether barbarous, and by a 
 revulsion of feehng natural to youth, they begin to 
 adore them as a very galaxy of light, beauty, and holi- 
 ness. Then they begin to crave naturally enough for 
 some real understanding of this strange ever-developing 
 nineteenth century, some real sympathy with its new 
 wonders, some real sphere of labour in it ; and this 
 drives them to devour the very newest authors — any 
 book whatever which seems to open for them the riddle 
 of the mighty and mysterious present, which is forcing 
 itself on theii* attention through every sense. And so 
 
248 ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. [viii. 
 
 up and down, amid confusions and oscillations from 
 pole to pole, and equally eclectic at either pole, from 
 St. Augustin and Mr, Pugin to Goethe and George 
 Sand, and all intensified and coloured by that tender 
 enthusiasm, that craving for something to worship, 
 which is a woman's highest grace, or her bitterest 
 curse — wander these poor Noah's doves, without 
 either ark of shelter or rest for the sole of their 
 foot, sometimes, alas ! over strange ocean-wastes, into 
 gulfs of error — too sad to speak of here — and ivill 
 wander more and more till teachers begin boldly to face 
 reality, and interpret to them both the old and the new, 
 lest they misinterpret them for themselves. The edu- 
 cators of the present generation must meet the cravings 
 of the young spirit with the bread of life, or they will 
 gorge themselves with poison. Telling them that they 
 ought not to be hungry, will not stop their hunger ; 
 shutting our eyes to facts, will only make us stumble 
 over them the sooner ; hiding our eyes in the sand, 
 like the hunted ostrich, will not hide us from the iron 
 necessity of circumstances, or from the Almighty will 
 of Him, who is saying in these days to society, in 
 language unmistakable : '' Educate, or fall to pieces ! 
 Speak the ivhole truth to the young, or take the 
 consequences of your cowardice ! " 
 
 On these grounds I should wish to see established 
 in this College a really entire course of English 
 Literature, such as shall give correct, reverent, and 
 loving views of every period, from the earliest legends 
 and poetry of the Middle Age, up to the latest of our 
 modern authors, and in the case of the higher classes, 
 if it should hereafter be found practicable, lectures 
 

 ^^> 
 
 Till.] A COUKSE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE-. , 249 * /,i 
 
 devoted to the criticism of sucli authors as may be ex-/ . , 
 ercisiug any real influence upon the minds of English 
 women. This, I thinks should be our ideal. It must be 
 attempted cautiously and step by step. It will not be 
 attained at the first trial, certainly not by the first 
 lecturer. Sufficient, if each succeeding teacher shall 
 leave something more taught, some fresh extension 
 of the range of knowledge which is thought fit for his 
 scholars. 
 
 I said that the ages of history were analogous to 
 the ages of man, and that each age of literature was 
 the truest picture of the history of its day ; and for 
 this very reason English literature is the best per- 
 haps, the only teacher of English history, to women 
 especially. For it seems to me that it is principally 
 by the help of such an extended literary course, that 
 we can cultivate a just and enlarged taste, which will 
 connect education with the deepest feelings of the heart. 
 It seems hardly fair, or reasonable either, to confine the 
 reading of the young to any certain fancied Augustan 
 age of authors, I mean those of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries; especially wheii that age requires, 
 in order to appreciate it, a far more developed mind, 
 a far greater experience of mankind and of the world, 
 than falls to the lot of one young woman out of a 
 thousand. Strong meat for men, and milk for babes. 
 But why are we to force on any age spiritual food 
 unfitted for it ? If we do we shall be likely only to 
 engender a lasting disgust for that by which our 
 pupils might have fully profited, had they only been 
 introduced to it when they were ready for it. And 
 this actually happens with English literature: by having 
 
250 OX ENGLISH LITERATURE. [viii. 
 
 the so-called standard works thrust upon tliem too 
 early, and then only in a fragmentary form, not fresh 
 and whole, but cut up into the very driest hay, the 
 young too often neglect in after-life the very books 
 which then might become the guides of their taste. 
 Hence proceed in the minds of the young sudden and 
 irregular revulsions of affection for different schools of 
 writing : and all revolutions in the individual as well 
 as in the nation are sure to be accompanied by some 
 dead loss of what has been already gained, some 
 disruption of feelings, some renunciation of principles, 
 which ought to have been preserved; something which 
 might have borne fruit is sure to be crushed in the 
 earthquake. Many before me must surely have felt this. 
 Do none here remember how, when they first escaped 
 from the dry class- drudgery of Pope and Johnson, 
 they snatched greedily at the forbidden fruit of Byron, 
 perhaps of Shelley, and sentimental novel-writers 
 innumerable ? How when the luscious melancholy of 
 their morbid self-consciousness began to pall on the 
 appetite, they fled for refuge as suddenly to mere 
 poetry of description and action, to Southey, Scott, 
 the ballad-literature of all ages ? How when the 
 craving returned (perhaps unconsciously to themselves) 
 to understand the wondrous heart of man, they tried 
 to satisfy it with deep draughts of Wordsworth's 
 celestial and pure simplicity ? How again, they tired 
 of that too gentle and unworldly strain, and sought 
 in Shakespeare something more exciting, more genial, 
 more rich in the facts and passions of daily life ? How 
 even his all-embracing genius failed to satisfy them, 
 because he did not palpably connect for them their 
 
VIII.] EAELY ENGLISH LITERATURE. 251 
 
 fancy and tlieir passions witli tlieir religious faith — 
 and so tliey wandered out again over the sea of 
 literature, heaven only knows whither, in search of a 
 school of authors yet, alas ! unborn. For the true 
 literature of the nineteenth century, the literature 
 which shall set forth in worthy strains the relation of 
 the two greatest facts, namely, of the universe and 
 of Christ, which shall transfigure all our enlarged 
 knowledge of science and of society, of nature, of 
 art, and man, with the eternal truths of the gospel, 
 that poetry of the future is not yet here : but it is 
 coming, ay even at the doors, when this great era 
 shall become conscious of its high vocation, and the 
 author too shall claim his priestly calling, and the 
 poets of the world, like the kingdoms of the world, 
 shall become the poets of God and of His Christ. 
 
 But to return. Should we not rather in education 
 follow that method which Providence has already 
 mapped out for us ? If we are bound, as of course we 
 are, to teach our pupils to breathe freely on the 
 highest mountain-peaks of Shakespeare's art, how can 
 we more certainly train them to do so, than by leading 
 them along the same upward path by which Shake- 
 speare himseK rose — through the various changes of 
 taste, the gradual developments of literature, through 
 which the English mind had been passing before 
 Shakespeare's time ? For there was a literature before 
 Shakespeare. Had there not been, neither would 
 there have been a Shakespeare. Critics are now 
 beginning to see that the old fancy which made 
 Shakespeare spring up at once, a self -perfected poet, 
 like Minerva full-armed from the head of Jove, was a 
 
252 ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. [viii. 
 
 superstition of pedants^ wlio neitlier knew tlie ages 
 before the great poet, nor the man himself, except 
 that Httle of him which seemed to square with their 
 shallow mechanical taste. The old fairy superstition, 
 the old legends and ballads, the old chronicles of 
 feudal war and chivalry, the earHer moralities and 
 mysteries, and tragi-comic attempts — these were the 
 roots of his poetic tree — they must be the roots of 
 any literary education which can teach us to appreciate 
 him. These fed Shakespeare^s youth; why should 
 they not feed our children's ? Why indeed ? That 
 inborn delight of the young in all that is marvellous 
 and fantastic — has that a merely evil root ? No 
 surely ! It is a most pure part of their spiritual 
 nature ; a part of " the heaven which lies about us in 
 our infancy ; " angel- wings with which the free child 
 leaps the prison-walls of sense and custom, and the 
 drudgery of earthly life — like the wild dreams of 
 childhood, it is a God-appointed means for keeping 
 alive what noble Wordsworth calls 
 
 those obstinate questionings 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
 Blank misgivings of a creature 
 Moving about in worlds not realised ; 
 ***** 
 by which 
 
 Though inland far we be. 
 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 
 Which brought us hither : 
 
 Can in a, moment travel thither, 
 And see the children sporting on the shore, 
 And hear the mightj- waters rolling evermore. 
 
vm.] EAELY LEGENDS AND BALLADS. 253 
 
 And tliose old di-eams of our ancestors in the cliildliood 
 of England^ tliey are fantastic enough, no doubt, and 
 unreal, but yet they are most true and most practical, 
 if we but use them as parables and symbols of human 
 feeliug and everlasting truth. AVhat, after all, is any 
 event of earth, palpable as it may seem, but, like them, 
 a shadow and a ghostly dream, till it has touched our 
 hearts, till we have found out and obeyed its spiritual 
 lesson ? Be sure that one really pure legend or ballad 
 may bring God's truth and heaven's beauty more 
 directly home to the young spirit than whole volumes 
 of dry abstract didactic morality. Outward things, 
 beauty, action, nature, are the great problems for the 
 young. God has put them in a visible world, that by 
 what they see they may learn to know the unseen ; 
 and we must begin to feed their minds with that 
 literature which deals most with visible things, with 
 passion manifested in action, which we shall find in the 
 early writing of our Middle Ages ; for then the collec- 
 tive mind of our nation was passing through its 
 natural stages of childhood and budding youth, as 
 every nation and every single individual must at some 
 time or other do ; a true " young England," always 
 significant and precious to the young. I said there 
 was a literary art before Shakespeare — an art more 
 simple, more childlike, more girlish as it were, and 
 therefore all the more adapted for young minds. But 
 also an art most vigorous and pure in point of style : 
 thoroughly fitted to give its readers the first elements 
 of taste, which must lie at the root of even the most 
 complex Eesthetics. I know no higher specimens of 
 poetic style, considering the subject, and the belief of 
 
254 OX ENGLISH LITERATURE. [nn. 
 
 the time about tliem^ than may be found in many of 
 our old ballads. How many poets are there in 
 England novr, who could have written "The Twa 
 Bairns/' or " Sir Patrick Spens ? '' How many such 
 histories as old William of Malmesbury, in spite of all 
 his foolish monk miracles ? As few now as there were 
 then ; and as for lying legends — they had their super- 
 stitions, and we have ours; and the next generation 
 will stare at our strange doings as much as we stare at 
 our forefathers. For our forefathers they were ; we 
 owe them filial reverence, thoughtful attention, and 
 more — we must know them ere we can know our- 
 selves. The only key to the present is the pas^. 
 
 But I must go farther still, and after premising 
 that the English classics, so called, of the sixteenth and 
 eighteenth centuries will of course form the bulk of the 
 lectures, I must plead for some instruction in the works 
 of recent and living authors. I cannot see why we 
 are to teach the young about the past and not about 
 the present. After all, they have to live now, and at 
 no other time ,• in this same nineteenth century lies their 
 work : it may be unfortunate, but we cannot help it. 
 I do not see why we should wish to help it. I know 
 no century which the world has yet seen so well worth 
 Kving in. Let us thank God that we are here now, 
 and joyfully try to understand where we are, and what 
 our work is here. As for all superstitions about " the 
 good old times," and fancies that they belonged to 
 God, while this age belongs only to man, blind 
 chance, and the Evil One, let us cast them from us as 
 the suggestions of an evil lying spirit, as the natural 
 parents of laziness, pedantry, popery, and unbelief. 
 
VIII.] INFLUENCE OF LIVING AUTHORS. 255 
 
 And therefore let us not fear to tell our cliildren the 
 meaning of this present day, and of all its different 
 voices. Let us not be content to say to them, as we 
 have been doing : " We will see you well instructed in 
 the past, but you must make out the present for your- 
 selves.''^ Why, if the past is worth explaining, far 
 more is the present — the pressing, noisy, complex 
 present, where our work -field lies, the most intricate 
 of all states of society, and of all schools of literature 
 yet known, and therefore the very one requiring- most 
 explanation. 
 
 How rich in strange and touching utterances have 
 been the last fifty years of English literature. Do you 
 think that God has been teaching us nothing in them ? 
 Will He not make our children listen to that teaching, 
 whether we like or not ? And suppose our most modern 
 writers had added nothing to the stock of national 
 knowledge, which I most fervently deny, yet are they 
 not actually influencing the minds of the young ? and 
 can we prevent their doing so either directly or in- 
 directly ? If we do not find them right teaching about 
 their own day, will they not be sure to find self-chosen 
 teachers about it themselves, who will be almost 
 certainly the first who may come to hand, and there- 
 fore as likely as not to be had teachers ? And do we 
 not see every day that it is just the most tender, the 
 most enthusiastic, the most precious spirits, who are 
 most likely to be misled, because their honest disgust at 
 the follies of the day has most utterly outgrown their 
 critical training ? And that lazy wholesale disappro- 
 bation of living writers, so common and convenient, 
 what does it do but injure all reverence for parents 
 
256 OX ENGLISH LITERATUEE. [vm. 
 
 and teacliers, when tlie young find out that the poet, 
 who, as they were told, was a bungler and a charlatan, 
 somehow continues to touch the purest and noblest 
 nerves of their souls, and that the author who was said 
 to be dangerous and unchristian, somehow makes them 
 more dutiful, more earnest, more industrious, more 
 loving to the poor ? I speak of actual cases. Would 
 to God they were not daily ones ! 
 
 Is it not then the wiser, because the more simple 
 and trustful method, both to God and our childi-en, to 
 say : " You shall read living authors, and we will teach 
 you how to read them ; you, like every child that is 
 born into the world, must eat the fruit of the tree of 
 knowledge of good and evil ; we will see that you have 
 your senses exercised to discern between that good and 
 that evil. You shall have the writers for whom you 
 long, as far as consists with common prudence and 
 morality, and more, you shall be taught them : all we 
 ask of you is to be patient and humble ; believe us, 
 you will never really appreciate these writers, you will 
 not even rationally enjoy their beauties, unless you 
 submit to a course of intellectual training like that 
 through which most of them have passed, and through 
 which certainly this nation which produced them has 
 passed, in the successive stages of its growth.'" 
 
 The best method, I think, of working out these 
 principles would be to devote a few lectures in the last 
 term of every complete course, to the examination of 
 some select works of recent wx'iters, chosen under the 
 sanction of the Educational Committee. But I must 
 plead for whole works. " Extracts " and '' Select 
 Beauties " are about as practical as the worthy in the 
 
VIII.] TRUE HISTORY. 257 
 
 old storjj wliO;, wishing to sell his house^ brought one 
 of the bricks to market as a specimen. It is equally- 
 unfair on the author and on the pupil ; for it is 
 impossible to show the merits or demerits of a work 
 of artj even to explain the truth or falsehood of any- 
 particular passage, except by viewing the book as an 
 oi'ganic whole. And as for the fear of raising a desire 
 to read more of an author than may be proper — when 
 a work has once been pointed out as really hurtful, the 
 rest must be left to the best safeguard which I have 
 yet discovered, in man or woman — the pupiPs own 
 honour. 
 
 Such a knowledge of English literature would tend 
 no less, I think, to the spread of healthy historic views 
 among us. The literature of every nation is its auto- 
 biography. Even in its most complex and artistic 
 forms, it is still a wonderfully artless and unconscious 
 record of its doubts and its faith, its sorrows and its 
 triumphs, at each era of its existence. Wonderfully 
 artless and correct — because all utterances which 
 were not faithful to their time, which did not touch 
 some sympathetic chord in their heart's souls, are pretty 
 sure to have been swept out into wholesome oblivion, 
 and only the most genuine and earnest left behind for 
 posterity. The history of England indeed is the 
 literature of England — but one very different from any 
 school history or other now in vogue. You will find it 
 neither a mere list of acts of parliament and record- 
 office, like some ; nor yet an antiquarian gallery of 
 costumes and armour, like others ; nor a mere war- 
 gazette and report of killed and wounded from time to 
 time; least of all not a "Debrett's Peerage/^ and cata- 
 
 L. G, s 
 
258 ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. [vm, 
 
 logue of kings and queens (wliose names are given, 
 while their souls are ignored), but a true spiritual 
 history of England — a picture of the spirits of our 
 old forefathers, who worked, and fought, and sorrowed, 
 and died for us ; on whose accumulated labours we now- 
 here stand. That I call a history — not of one class of 
 offices or events, but of the living human souls of 
 English men and English women. And therefore one 
 most adapted to the mind of woman ; one which will 
 call into fullest exercise her blessedfaculty of sympathy, 
 that pure and tender heart of flesh, which teaches her 
 always to find her highest interest in mankind, simply 
 as mankind ; to see the Divine most completely in the 
 human ; to prefer the incarnate to the disembodied, 
 the personal to the abstract, the pathetic to the intel- 
 lectual ; to see, and truly, in the most common tale of 
 village love or sorrow, a mystery deeper and more 
 divine than lies in all the theories of politicians or the 
 fixed ideas of the sage. 
 
 Such a course of history would quicken women's 
 inborn ^erso?ia^ interest in the actors of this life-drama, 
 and be quickened by it in return, as indeed it ought : 
 for it is thus that God intended woman to look 
 instinctively at the world. Would to God that she 
 would teach us men to look at it thus likewise ! Would 
 to God that she would in these days claim and fulfil to 
 the uttermost her vocation as the priestess of charity ! 
 — that woman's heart would help to deliver man from 
 bondage to his own tyrannous and all-too-exclusive 
 brain — from our idolatry of mere dead laws and 
 printed books — from our daily sin of looking at men, 
 not as our struggling and suffering brothers, but as 
 
Till.] EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE. 259 
 
 mere symbols of certain formulae, incarnations of sets 
 of opinions^ wheels in some iron liberty-grinding 
 or Christianity-spinning machine, which we miscall 
 society, or civilisation, or, worst misnomer of all, the 
 Church ! 
 
 This I take to be one of the highest aims of woman 
 — to preach charity, love, and brotherhood : but in 
 this nineteenth century, hunting everywhere for law 
 and organisation, refusing loyalty to anything which 
 cannot range itself under its theories, she will never 
 get a hearing, till her knowledge of the past becomes 
 more organised and methodic. As it is now, for want 
 of large many-sided views of the past, her admiration 
 is too apt to attach itself to some two or three 
 characters only in the hero-list of all the ages. Then 
 comes the temptation to thrust aside all which inter- 
 feres with her favourite idols, and so the very heart 
 given her for universal sympathy becomes the organ 
 of an exclusive bigotry, and she who should have 
 taught man to love, too often only embitters his hate. 
 
 I claim, therefore, as necessary for the education 
 of the future, that woman should be initiated into the 
 thoughts and feelings of her countrymen in every age, 
 fi'om the wildest legends of the past to the most 
 palpable naturalism of the present ; and that not 
 merely in a chronological order, sometimes not in 
 chronological order at all ; but in a true spiritual 
 sequence -, that knowing the hearts of many, she may 
 in after life be able to comfort the hearts of all. 
 
 But there is yet another advantage in an extended 
 study of English literature — I mean the more national 
 tone which it ought to give the thoughts of the rising 
 
260 ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. [vm. 
 
 generation. Of course to repress the reading of foreign 
 books, to strive after any national exclusiveness, or 
 mere Jolin-Bullism of mind, in an age of railroads and 
 free press, would be simply absurd — and more, it 
 would be fighting against tbe will of God revealed in 
 events. He has put the literary treasures of the Conti- 
 nent into our hands ; we must joyfully accept them, 
 and earnestly exhaust them. This age is craving for 
 what it calls catholicity ; for more complete inter- 
 change and brotherhood of thought between all the 
 nations of the earth. This spirit is stirring in the 
 young especially, and I believe that God Himself has 
 inspired it, because I see that He has first revealed the 
 means of gratifying the desire, at that very time in 
 which it has arisen. 
 
 But every observant person must be aware that 
 this tendency has produced its evils as well as its 
 good. There is a general complaint that the minds of 
 young women are becoming un-English ; that their 
 foreign reading does not merely supply the deficiencies 
 of their English studies, but too often completely 
 supersedes them ; that the whole tone of their thoughts 
 is too often taken from French or German writings ; 
 that by some means or other, the standard works of 
 English literature are becoming very much undervalued 
 and neglected by the young people of this day ; and 
 that selfwill and irregular eclecticism are the natural 
 results. 
 
 I must say that I consider the greater part of these 
 evils as the natural consequence of past miseducation ; 
 as the just punishment of the old system, which attached 
 the most disproportionate importance to mei'e acquire- 
 
VIII.] THE ENGLISH STANDARD. 261 
 
 ments, and those mostly o£ foreign languages^ foreign 
 music, and' so forth, while the ''well of English un- 
 defiled/^ and not only that, but English literature, 
 history, patriotism, too often English religion, have 
 been made quite minor considerations. Therefore so 
 few of the young have any healthy and firm English 
 standard whereby to try and judge foreign thought. 
 Therefore they fancy, when they meet with anything 
 deep and attractive in foreign works, that because they 
 have no such thoughts put before them in English 
 authors, no such thoughts exist in them. 
 
 But happily we may do much towards mending this 
 state of things, by making our pupils thoroughly con- 
 versant with the [esthetic treasures of English literature. 
 From them I firmly believe they may derive sufficient 
 rules whereby to separate in foreign books the true 
 from the false, the necessary from the accidental, the 
 eternal truth from its peculiar national vesture. Above 
 all, we shall give them a better chance of seeing things 
 from that side from which God intended English 
 women to see them : for as surely as there is an 
 English view of everything, so surely God intends us 
 to take that view ; and He who gave us our English 
 character intends us to develop its peculiarities, as He 
 intends the French woman to develop hers, that so 
 each nation by learning to understand itself, may learn 
 to understand, and therefore to profit, by its neighbour. 
 He who has not cultivated his own plot of ground 
 will hardly know much about the tillage of his neigh- 
 bour's land. And she who does not appreciate the 
 mind of her own countrymen will never form any 
 true judgment of the mind of foreigners. Let English 
 
262 OX ENGLISH LITERATUEE. [viiu 
 
 women be sure tliat tlie best way to understand the 
 heroines of tlie Continent is not by mimicking tliem, 
 however noble tliey may be_, not by trying to become a 
 sham Rahel^ or a sham De Sevigne, but a real Elizabeth 
 Fry, Felicia Hemans, or Hannah More. What indeed 
 entitles either Madame de Sevigne or Rahel to fame, 
 but their veiy nationality — that intensely local style 
 of language and feeling which clothes their genius with 
 a living body instead of leaving it in the abstractions 
 of a dreary cosmopolitism ? The one I suppose would 
 be called the very beau-ideal, not of woman, but of 
 the French woman — the other the ideal, not even of the 
 Jewess, but of the German Jewess. We may admire 
 wherever we find worth ; but if we try to imitate, we 
 only caricature. Excellence grows in all climes, trans- 
 plants to none : the palm luxuriates only in the tropics, 
 the Alp-rose only beside eternal snows. Only by 
 standing on our own native earth can we enjoy or even 
 see aright the distant stars : if we try to reach them, 
 we shall at once lose sight of them, and drop helpless 
 in a new element, unfitted for our limbs. 
 
 Teach, then, the young, by an extended knowledge 
 of English literature, thoroughly to comprehend the 
 English spirit, thoroughly to see that the English mind 
 has its pecuhar calling on God^s earth, which alone,, 
 and no other, it can fulfil. Teach them thoroughly to 
 appreciate the artistic and intellectual excellences of 
 their own country; but by no means in a spirit of 
 narrow bigotry : tell them fairly our national faults — 
 teach them to unravel those faults from our national 
 virtues; and then there will be no danger of the 
 prejudiced English woman becoming by a sudden re- 
 
VIII.] OUR SAXON ANCESTORS. 26» 
 
 vulsion an equally prejudiced cosmopolite and eclectic, 
 as soon as she discovers that her own nation does not 
 monopolise all human perfections ; and so trying to 
 become German, Italian, French woman, all at once — 
 a heterogeneous chaos of imitations, very probably 
 with the faults of all three characters, and the graces 
 of none. God has given us our own prophets, our own 
 heroines. To recognise those prophets, to imitate those 
 heroines, is the duty which lies nearest to the English 
 woman, and therefore the duty which God intends her 
 to fulfil. 
 
 I should wish therefore in the first few lectures on 
 English litei^ature to glance at the character of our old 
 Saxon ancestors, and the legends connected with their 
 first invasion of the country; and above all at the 
 magnificent fables of King Arthur and his times 
 which exercised so great an influence on the English 
 mind, and were in fact, although originally Celtic, so 
 thoroughly adopted and naturalised by the Saxon, as 
 to reappear under different forms in every age, and 
 form the keynote of most of our fictions, from Geoffrey 
 of Monmouth and the medieval ballads, up to Chaucer, 
 Spenser, Shakespeare, and at last Milton and Black- 
 more. This series of legends will, I think, as we 
 trace its development, bring us in contact one by one 
 wnth the corresponding developments of the English 
 character ; and, unless I am much mistaken, enable us 
 to explain many of its peculiarities. 
 
 Of course nothing more than sketches can be 
 given ; but I think nothing more is required for any 
 one but the professed historian. For young people 
 especially, it is sufficient to understand the tone of 
 
264 ON ENGLISH LITERATURE. [yin. 
 
 human feeling expressed by legends, rather than to 
 enter into any critical dissertations on their historic 
 truth. They need, after all, princiiDles rather than 
 facts. To educate them truly we must give them in- 
 ductive habits of thought, and teach them to deduce 
 from a few facts a law which makes plain all similar 
 ones, and so acquire the habit of extracting from 
 every story somewhat of its kernel of spiritual 
 meaning. But again, to educate them truly we 
 must ourselves have faith; we must believe that in 
 every one there is a spiritual eye which can perceive 
 those great principles when they are once fairly 
 presented to it, that in all there are some noble 
 instincts, some pure yearnings after wisdom, and 
 taste, and usefulness, which, if we only appeal to them 
 trustfully through the examples of the past, and the 
 excitements of the present, will wake into conscious 
 life. Above all, both pupils and teachers must never 
 forget that all these things were written for their 
 examples ; that though circumstances and creeds, 
 schools and tastes, may alter, yet the heart of man, 
 and the duty of man, remain unchanged; and that 
 
 while 
 
 The old order changes, giving place to the new, 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways — 
 
 yet again 
 
 Through the ages one imaltered purpose runs — 
 
 and the principles of truth and beauty are the same as 
 when the everlasting Spirit from whom they come 
 "brooded upon the face^^ of the primeval seas. 
 
 But once more, we must and will by God^s help try 
 
VIII.] WOMAN'S DIVINE VOCATION. 265 
 
 to realise the purpose of tliis College, by boldly facing 
 the facts of the age and of our own office. And 
 therefore we shall not shrink from the task, however 
 delicate and difficult, of speaking to our hearers as to 
 women. Our teaching must be no sexless, heartless 
 abstx-action. We must try to make all which we tell 
 them bear on the great purpose of unfolding to woman 
 her own calling in all ages — her especial calling in this 
 one. We must incite them to realise the chivalrous 
 belief of our old forefathers among their Saxon foi'ests, 
 that something Divine dwelt in the counsels of woman; 
 but, on the other hand, we must continually remind 
 them that they will attain that divine instinct, not by 
 renouncing their sex, but by fulfilling it; by becoming 
 true women, and not bad imitations of men ; by 
 educating their heads for the sake of their hearts, not 
 their hearts for the sake of their heads ; by claiming 
 woman^s divine vocation, as the priestess of purity, of 
 beauty, and of love ; by educating themselves to 
 become, with God's blessing, worthy wives and 
 mothers of a mighty nation of workers, in an age when 
 the voice of the ever-working God is proclaiming 
 through the thunder of falling dynasties, and crumb- 
 ling idols: "He that will not work, neither shall he 
 eat.'' 
 
GROTS AND GEOVES. 
 
GROTS AND GROVES/^' 
 
 This lecture is intended to be suggestive ratlier than 
 didactic ; to set you thinking and inquiring for your- 
 selves, rather than learning at second-hand from me. 
 Some among my audiencO;, I doubt not, will neither 
 need to be taught by me, nor to be stirred up to 
 inquiry for themselves. They are already, probably, 
 antiquarians ; already better acquainted with the 
 subject than I am. But they will, I hope, remember 
 that I am only trying to excite a general interest in 
 that very architecture in which they delight, and so to 
 make the public do justice to their labours. They will 
 therefore, I trust — 
 
 Be to my faults a little blind, 
 Be to my virtues very kind — 
 
 and if my architectural theories do not seem to them 
 correct in all details — well-founded I believe them 
 myself to be — remember that if it be a light matter to 
 me, or to the audience, whether any special and pet 
 
 * This Lecture was given at Chester in 1871. 
 
270 GROTS AND GEOVES. [ix. 
 
 fancy of mine should be exactly true or not; yet it 
 is not a light matter that my hearers should he 
 awakened — and too many just now need an actual 
 awakening — to a rights pure, and wholesome judgment 
 on questions of art, especially when the soundness 
 of that judgment depends, as in this case, on sound 
 judgments about human history, as well as about 
 natural objects. 
 
 Now, it befell me that, fresh from the tropic 
 forests, and with their forms hanging always as it 
 were in the background of my eye, I was impressed 
 more and more vividly the longer I looked, with the 
 likeness of those forest forms to the forms of our 
 own Cathedral of Chester. The grand and graceful 
 Chapter-house transformed itself into one of those green 
 bowers, which, once seen, and never to be seen again, 
 make one at once richer and poorer for the rest of life. 
 The fans of groining sprang from the short columns, 
 just as do the feathered boughs of the far more 
 beautiful Maximiliana palm, and just of the same size 
 and shape; and met overhead, as I have seen them 
 meet, in aisles longer by far than our cathedral nave. 
 The free upright shafts, which give such strength, and 
 yet such lightness, to the mullions of each window, 
 pierced upward through those curving lines, as do the 
 stems of young trees through the fronds of palm; and, 
 like them, carried the eye and the fancy up into 
 the infinite, and took off a sense of oppression and 
 captivity which the weight of the roof might have 
 produced. In the nave, in the choir, the same vision of 
 the tropic forest haunted me. The fluted columns not 
 only resembled, but seemed copied from the fluted 
 
:x.] GROTS AND GROVES. 271 
 
 stems beneath wliicli I had ridden in the primeval 
 woods ; their bases, their capitals, seemed copied from 
 the bulgings at the collar of the root, and at the spring 
 of the boughs, produced by a check of the redundant 
 sap ; and were garlanded often enough, like the 
 capitals of the columns, with delicate tracery of 
 parasite leaves and flowers ; the mouldings of the 
 arches seemed copied from the parallel bundles of the 
 curving bamboo shoots ; and even the flatter roof of 
 the nave and transepts had its antitype in that highest 
 level of the forest aisles where the trees, having 
 climbed at last to the light-food which they seek, 
 care no longer to grow upward, but spread out in huge 
 limbs, almost horizontal, reminding the eye of the four- 
 centred arch which marks the period of perpendicular 
 Gothic. 
 
 Nay, to this day there is one point in our cathedral 
 which, to me, keeps up the illusion still. As I enter 
 the choir, and look upward toward the left, I cannot 
 help seeing, in the tabernacle work of the stalls, the 
 slender and aspiring forms of the " rastrajo ; " the deli- 
 cate second growth which, as it were, rushes upward 
 from the earth wherever the forest is cleared; and 
 above it, in the tall lines of the north-west pier of the 
 tower — even though defaced, along the inner face of 
 the western arch, by ugly and needless perpendicular 
 panelling — I seem to see the stems of huge cedars, or 
 balatas, or ceibas, curving over, as they would do, 
 into the great beams of the transept roof, some seventy 
 feet above the ground. 
 
 Nay, so far will the fancy lead, that I have seemed 
 to see, in the stained glass between the tracery of the 
 
272 GROTS AND GROVES. [ix, 
 
 windows, sucli gorgeous sheets of colour as sometimes 
 flash on the eye^ when^ far aloft, between high stems 
 and boughs, you catch sight of some gi'eat tree ablaze 
 with flowers, either its own or those of a parasite; 
 yellow or crimson, white or purple ; and over them 
 again the cloudless blue. 
 
 Now, I know well that all these dreams are dreams ; 
 that the men who built our northern cathedrals never 
 saw these forest forms ; and that the likeness of their 
 work to those of tropic nature is at most only a corro- 
 boration of Mr. Ruskin^s dictum, that " the Gothic did 
 not arise out of, but developed itself into, a resemblance 
 
 to vegetation It was no chance suggestion of 
 
 the form of an arch from the bending of a bough, but 
 the gradual and continual discovery of a beauty in 
 natural forms which could be more and more trans- 
 ferred into those of stone, which influenced at once the 
 hearts of the people and the form of the edifice. ^^ So 
 true is this, that by a pure and noble copying of the 
 vegetable beauty which they had seen in their own 
 clime, the medieval craftsmen went so far — as I have 
 shown you — as to anticipate forms of vegetable beauty 
 peculiar to tropic climes, which they had not seen ; a 
 fresh proof, if proof were needed, that beauty is some- 
 thing absolute and independent of man ; and not, as 
 some think, only relative, and what happens to be 
 pleasant to the eye of this man or that. 
 
 But thinking over this matter, and reading over, 
 too, that which Mr. Ruskin has written thereon in his 
 " Stones of Venice,^' vol. ii. cap. vi., on the nature of 
 Goth c, I came to certain further conclusions — or at 
 least surmises — which I put before you to-night, in 
 
IX.] GROTS AXD GEOVES. 273 
 
 hopes that if tliey have no other effect ou you, they 
 will at least stir some of you up to read Mr. Euskin^s 
 works. 
 
 Now Mr. Ruskin says : '' That the original con- 
 ception of Gothic architecture has been derived from 
 vegetation, from the symmetry of avenues and the 
 interlacing of branches, is a strange and vain supposi- 
 tion. It is a theory which never could have existed 
 for a moment in the mind of any person acquainted 
 with early Gothic ; but, however idle as a theory, it is 
 most valuable as a testimony to the character of the 
 perfected style.''^ 
 
 Doubtless so. But you must remember always that 
 the subject of my lecture is Grots and Groves; that 
 I am speaking not of Gothic architecture in general, 
 but of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture ; and more, 
 almost exclusively of the ecclesiastical architecture of 
 the Teutonic or northern nations ; because in them, as 
 I think, the resemblance between the temple and the 
 forest reached the fullest exactness. 
 
 Now the original idea of a Christian church was 
 that of a grot — a cave. That is a historic fact. The 
 Christianity which was passed on to us began to 
 worship, hidden and persecuted, in the catacombs of 
 Rome, it may be often around the martyrs' tombs, by 
 the dim light of candle or of torch. The candles on 
 the Roman altars, whatever they have been made 
 to symbolise since then, are the hereditary memorials 
 of that fact. Throughout the North, in these isles as 
 much as in any land, the idea of the grot was, in like 
 wise, the idea of a church. The saint or hermit built 
 himself a cell; dark, massive, intended to e: :lude 
 L. G. r 
 
274 GROTS AND GEO YES. [ix. 
 
 liglit as well as weatlier ; or took refuge in a care. 
 There he prayed and worshipped, and gathered others 
 to pray and worship round him, during his life. There 
 he, often enough, became an object of worship in his 
 turn, after his death. In after ages his cave was 
 ornamented, like that of the hermit of Montmajour 
 by Aries ; or his cell-chapel enlarged, as those of the 
 Scotch and Irish saints have been, again and again ; 
 till at last a stately minster rose above it. StiU^ the 
 idea that the church was to be a grot haunted the 
 minds of builders. 
 
 But side by side with the Christian grot there was 
 throughout the North another form of temple, dedi- 
 cated to very different gods, namely, the trees from 
 whose mighty stems hung the heads of the victims o£ 
 Odin or of Thor — the horse, the goat, and, in time of 
 calamity or pestilence, of men. Trees and not grots 
 were the temples of our forefathers. 
 
 Scholars know well — but they must excuse my 
 quoting it for the sake of those who are not scholars — 
 the famous passage of Tacitus which tells how our 
 forefathers ''held it beneath the dignity of the gods to 
 coop them within walls, or liken them to any human 
 countenance; but consecrated groves and woods, and 
 called by the name of gods that mystery which they 
 held by faith alone ; " and the equally famous passage 
 of Claudian, about ''the vast silence of the Black 
 Forest, and gi'oves awful with ancient superstition ; 
 and oaks, barbarian deities;'' and Lucan's "groves 
 inviolate from all antiquity, and altars stained with 
 human blood." 
 
 To worship in such spots was an abomination to 
 
^/ 
 
 - P r 
 
 GEOTS AND GROVES. *^ /p5 . 
 
 tlie early Christian. It was as mucli 4 .'test of 
 lieathendom as the eating of horse-fleshy sacred to 
 Odin, and therefore unclean to Christian men. The 
 Lombard laws and others forbid expressly the lingering- 
 remnants of grove worship. St. Boniface and other 
 early missionaries hewed down in defiance the sacred 
 oaksj and paid sometimes for their valour with their 
 lives. 
 
 It is no wonder, then, if long centuries elapsed ere 
 the likeness of vegetable forms began to reappear in 
 the Christian churches of the North. And yet both 
 grot and grove were equally the natural temples which 
 the religious instinct of all deep-hearted peoples, con- 
 scious of sin, and conscious, too, of yearnings after a 
 perfection not to be found on earth, chooses from the 
 earliest stage of awakening civilisation. In them, 
 alone, before he had strength and skill to build nobly 
 for himself, could man find darkness, the mother of 
 mystery and awe, in which he is reminded perforce of 
 his own ignorance and weakness ; in which he learns 
 first to remember unseen powers, sometimes to his 
 comfort and elevation, sometimes only to his terror 
 and debasement ; darkness ; and with it silence and 
 solitude, in which he can collect himself, and shut out 
 the noise and glare, the meanness and the coarse- 
 ness of the world ; and bo alone awhile with his own 
 thoughts, his own fancy, his own conscience, his own 
 soul. 
 
 But for awhile, as I have said, that darkness, soli- 
 tude, and silence were to be sought in the grot, not in 
 the grove. 
 
 Then Christianity conquered the Empire. It adapted, 
 
276 GROTS AND GROVES. [ix. 
 
 not merely its arcliitecture, but its very buildings^ to 
 its worsliip. The Roman Basilica became the Christian 
 church ; a noble form of building enough^ though one 
 in which was neither darkness, solitude, nor silence, 
 but crowded congregations, clapping — or otherwise — 
 the popular preacher ; or fighting about the election 
 of a bishop or a pope, till the holy place ran with 
 Chi'istian blood. The deep-hearted Northern turned 
 away, in weariness and disgust, from those vast halls, 
 fitted only for the feverish superstition of a profligate 
 and worn-out civilisation ; and took himself, amid his 
 own rocks and forests, moors and shores, to a simpler 
 and sterner architecture, which should express a creed, 
 sterner, and at heart far simpler, though dogmatically 
 the same. 
 
 And this is, to my mind, the difference, and the 
 noble difference, between the so-called Norman archi- 
 tecture, which came hither about the time of the 
 Conquest ; and that of Romanised Italy. 
 
 But the Normans were a conquering race ; and one 
 which conquered, be it always remembered, in England 
 at least, in the name and by the authority of Rome. 
 Their ecclesiastics, like the ecclesiastics on the Conti- 
 nent, were the representatives of Roman civilisation, of 
 Rome^s right, intellectual and spiritual, to rule the 
 world. 
 
 Therefore their architecture, like their creed, was 
 Roman. They took the massive towering Roman 
 forms, which expressed domination ; and piled them 
 one on the other, to express the domination of Christian 
 Rome over the souls, as they had represented the domi- 
 nation of heathen Rome over the bodies of men. And 
 
uc.J GROTS AND GROVES. 217 
 
 SO side by side with the towers of the Norman keep 
 rose the towers of the Norman cathedral — the two signs 
 of a double seiwitude. 
 
 But with the thirteenth centuiy there dawned an 
 age in Northern Europe which I may boldly call an 
 heroic age — heroic in its virtues and in its crimes ; an 
 age of rich passionate youth, or rather of early man- 
 hood; full of aspirations of chivalry, of self-sacrifice 
 as strange and terrible as it was beautiful and noble, 
 even when most misguided. The Teutonic nations of 
 Europe — our own forefathers most of all — having ab- 
 sorbed all that heathen Eome could teach them, at 
 least for the time being, began to think for themselves; 
 to have poets, philosophers, historians, architects, of 
 their own. The thirteenth century was especially an 
 age of aspiration ; and its architects expressed, in 
 building, quite unlike those of the preceding centuries, 
 the aspirations of the time. 
 
 The Pointed Arch had been introduced half a cen- 
 tury before. It may be that the Crusaders saw it in 
 the East and brought it home. It may be that it 
 originated from the quadripartite vaulting of the 
 Normans, the segmental groins of which, crossing 
 diagonally, produced to appearance the pointed arch. 
 It may be that it was derived from that mystical figure 
 of a pointed oval form, the vesica piscis. It may be, 
 lastly, that it was suggested simply by the intersection 
 of semicircular arches, so frequently found in orna- 
 mental arcades. The last cause may perhaps be the 
 true one; but it matters little whence the pointed arch 
 came. It matters much what it meant to those who 
 introduced it. And at the beginning of the Transition 
 
278 GROTS AND GROVES. [ix. 
 
 or semi-Norman period, it seems to liave meant nothing. 
 It was not till tlie thirteentli century that it had 
 gradually received, as it were, a soul, and had become 
 the exponent of a great idea. As the Norman archi- 
 tecture and its forms had signified domination, so the 
 Early English, as we call it, signified aspiration — an 
 idea which was perfected, as far as it could be, in what 
 we call the Decorated style. 
 
 There is an evident gap, I had almost said a gulf, 
 between the architectural mind of the eleventh and 
 that of the thirteenth century. A vertical tendency, a 
 longing after lightness and freedom appears ; and with 
 them a longing to reproduce the graces of nature and 
 art. And here I ask you to look for yourselves at the 
 buildings of this new era — there is a beautiful specimen 
 in yonder arcade* — and judge for yourselves whether 
 they, and even more than they the Decorated style 
 into which they developed, do not remind you of the 
 forest shapes ? 
 
 And if they remind you, must they not have re- 
 minded those who shaped them ? Can it have been 
 otherwise ? We know that the men who built were 
 earnest. The carefulness, the reverence, of their work 
 have given a subject for some of Mr. Ruskin's noblest 
 chapters, a text for some of his noblest sermons. We 
 know that they were students of vegetable form. That 
 is proved by the flowers, the leaves, even the birds, 
 with which they enwi-eathed their capitals and enriched 
 their mouldings. Look up there, and see. 
 
 You cannot look at any good church-work from the 
 thirteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century, with- 
 * An arcade in the King's School, Chester. 
 
IX.] GROTS AND GROVES. 279 
 
 out seeing tliat leaves and flowers were perpetually in 
 the workman's mind. Do you fancy that stems and 
 boughs were never in his mind ? He kept^ doubtless, 
 in remembrance the fundamental idea, that the 
 Christian church should symbolise a grot or cave. He 
 could do no less ; while he again and again saw 
 hermits around him dwelling and worshipping in 
 €aves, as they had done ages before in Egypt and 
 Syria ; while he fixed, again and again, the site of his 
 convent and his minster in some secluded valley 
 guarded by cliffs and rocks, like Vale Crucis in North 
 Wales. But his minster stood often not among rocks 
 only, but amid trees; in some clearing in the primeval 
 forest, as Yale Crucis was then. At least he could not 
 pass from minster to minster, from town to town, 
 without journeying through long miles of forest. Do 
 you think that the awful shapes and shadows of that 
 forest never haunted his imagination as he built ? He 
 would have cut down ruthlessly, as his predecessors the 
 early missionaries did, the sacred trees amid which 
 Thor and Odin had been worshipped by the heathen 
 Saxons ; amid which still darker deities were still 
 worshipped by the heathen tribes of Eastern Europe. 
 But he was the descendant of men who had worshipped 
 in those groves, and the glamour of them was upon 
 him still. He peopled the wild forest with demons and 
 fairies ; but that did not surely prevent his feeling its 
 ennobling grandeur, its chastening loneliness. His 
 ancestors had held the oaks for trees of God, even as 
 the Jews held the cedar, and the Hindoos likewise; 
 for the Deodara pine is not only, botanists tell us, the 
 same as the cedar of Lebanon, but its very name — 
 
280 GROTS AXD GEOTES. [ix. 
 
 the Deodara — signifies naught else but ''the tree oi 
 God/' 
 
 His ancestors^ I say, had held the oaks for trees of 
 God. It may be that as the monk sat beneath their 
 shade -with his bible on his knee, like good St. Boniface 
 in the Fulda forest, he found that his ancestors were 
 right. 
 
 To understand what sort of trees they -were from 
 which he got his inspiration, you must look, not at an 
 average English wood, perpetually thinned out as the 
 trees arrive at middle age. Still less must you look at 
 the pines, oaks, beeches, of an English park, where 
 each tree has had space to develop itself freely into a 
 more or less rounded form. You must not even look 
 at the tropic forests. For there, from the immense 
 diversity of forms, twenty varieties of tree will grow 
 beneath each other, forming a close-packed heap of 
 boughs and leaves, from the ground to a hundred feet 
 and more aloft. 
 
 You should look at the North American forests of 
 social trees — especially of pines and firs, where trees 
 of one species, crowded together, and competing with 
 equal advantages for the air and light, form themselves 
 into one wilderness of straight smooth shafts, sur- 
 mounted by a flat sheet of foliage, held up by boughs 
 like the ribs of a groined roof, while underneath the 
 ground is bare as a cathedral floor. 
 
 You all know, surely, the Hemlock spruce of 
 America ; which, while growing by itself in open 
 ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the 
 most graceful, of all the firs ; imitating the shape, not 
 of its kindred, but of an enormous tuft of fern. 
 
IX.] GROTS AND GROVES. 281 
 
 Yet if you look at the same tree, wlien it has 
 struggled long for life from its youth amid other trees 
 of its own kind and its own age, you find that the 
 lower boughs have died off from want of light, leaving 
 not a scar behind. The upper boughs have reached at 
 once the light and their natural term of years. They 
 are content to live, and little more. The central trunk 
 no longer sends up each year a fresh perpendicular 
 shoot to aspire above the rest, but, as weary of 
 struggling ambition as they are, is content to become 
 more and more their equal as the years pass by. And 
 this is a law of social forest trees, which you must 
 bear in mind whenever I speak of the influence of 
 tree-forms on Gothic architecture. 
 
 Such forms as these are rare enough in Europe 
 now. 
 
 I never understood how possible, how common 
 they must have been in medieval Europe, till I saw in 
 the forest of Fontainebleau a few oaks, like the oak of 
 Charlemagne and the Bouquet du Eoi, at whose age I 
 dare not guess, but whose size and shape showed them 
 to have once formed part of a continuous wood, the like 
 whereof remains not in these isles — perhaps not east 
 of the Carpathian mountains. In them a clear shaft 
 of at least sixty, it may be eighty feet, carries a flat 
 head of boughs, each in itself a tree. In such a grove, 
 I thought, the heathen Gaul, even the heathen Frank, 
 worshipped beneath ''trees of God.^^ Such trees, I 
 thought, centuries after, inspired the genius of every 
 'builder of Gothic aisles and roofs. 
 
 Thus, at least, we can explain that rigidity, which 
 Mr. Euskin tells us, "is a special element of Gothic 
 
282 OROTS AND GROVES. [[x. 
 
 architecture. Greek and Egyptian buildings/^ lie says 
 — and I sliould have added^ Roman building also, in 
 proportion to their age, i.e. to the amount of the 
 Roman elements in them — ^^ stand for the most part 
 by their own weight and mass, one stone passively 
 incumbent on another : but in the Gothic vaults and 
 traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the 
 bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree ; an elastic tension 
 and communication of force from part to part ; and also 
 a studious expression of this throughout every part of 
 the building." In a word, Gothic vaulting and tracery 
 have been studiously made like to boughs of trees. 
 Were those boughs present to the mind of the archi- 
 tect ? Or is the coincidence merely fortuitous ? You 
 know already how I should answer. The cusped arch, 
 too, was it actually not intended to imitate vegetation? 
 Mr. Ruskin seems to think so. He says that it is 
 merely the special application to the arch of the great 
 ornamental system of foliation, which, '''whether simple 
 as in the cusped arch, or complicated as in tracery, 
 arose out of the love of leafage. Not that the form of 
 the arch is intended to imitate a leaf,^' but to be invested 
 with the same characters of beauty which the designer 
 had discovered in the leaf.^^ Now I differ from Mr. 
 Ruskin with extreme hesitation. I agree that the 
 cusped arch is not meant to imitate a leaf. I think 
 with Mr. Ruskin, that it was probably first adopted on 
 account of its superior strength ; and that it afterwards 
 took the form of a bough. But I cannot as yet believe 
 that it was not at last intended to imitate a bough ; a' 
 bough of a very common form, and one in which "active 
 rigidity " is peculiarly shown. I mean a bough which 
 
IX.] GEOTS AND GROVES. 283 
 
 has forked. If the lower fork has died off, for want of 
 light, we obtain something like the simply cusped arch. 
 If it he still living — but short and stunted in com- 
 parison with the higher fork — we obtain, it seems to 
 me, something like the foliated cusp ; both likenesses 
 being near enough to those of common objects to make 
 it possible that those objects may have suggested them. 
 And thus, more and more boldly, the medieval archi- 
 tect learnt to copy boughs, stems, and at last, the 
 whole effect, as far always as stone would allow, of a 
 combination of rock and tree, of grot and grove. 
 
 So he formed his minsters, as I believe, upon the 
 model of those leafy minsters in which he walked to 
 meditate, amid the aisles which God, not man, has 
 built. He sent their columns aloft like the boles of 
 ancient trees. He wreathed their capitals, sometimes 
 their very shafts, with flowers and creeping shoots. 
 He threw their arches out, and interwove the groinings 
 of their vaults, like the bough-roofage overhead. He 
 decked with foliage and fruit the bosses above and the 
 corbels below. He sent up out of those corbels upright 
 shafts along the walls, in the likeness of the trees 
 which sprang out of the rocks above his head. He 
 raised those walls into great cliffs. He pierced them 
 with the arches of the triforium, as with hermits' cells. 
 He represented in the horizontal sills of his windows, 
 and in his horizontal string-courses, the horizontal 
 strata of the rocks. He opened the windows into high 
 and lofty glades, broken, as in the forest, by the tracery 
 of stems and boughs, through which was seen, not 
 merely the outer, but the upper world. For he craved, 
 as all true artists crave, for light and colour; and had 
 
284 GROTS AND GROVES. [ix. 
 
 tlie sky above been one perpetual blue^ lie might have 
 been content with it, and left his glass transparent. 
 But in that dark, dank, northern clime, rain and snow- 
 storm, black cloud and gray mist, were all that he was 
 like to see outside for nine months in the year. So he 
 took such lig'ht and colour as nature gave in her few 
 gayer moods ; and set aloft his stained-glass windows, 
 the hues of the noonday and the rainbow, and the sun- 
 rise and the sunset, and the purple of the heather, and 
 the gold of the gorse, and the azure of the bugloss, 
 and the crimson of the poppy ; and among them, in 
 gorgeous robes, the angels and the saints of heaven, and 
 the memories of heroic virtues and heroic sufferings, 
 that he might lift up his own eyes and heart for ever 
 out of the dark, dank, sad world of the cold north, 
 with all its coarsenesses and its crimes, toward a realm 
 of perpetual holiness, amid a perpetual summer of 
 beauty and of light ; as one who — for he was true to 
 nature, even in that — from between the black jaws 
 of a narrow glen, or from beneath the black shade of 
 gnarled trees, catches a glimpse of far lands gay with 
 gardens and cottages, and purple mountain ranges, and 
 the far-off sea, and the hazy horizon melting into the 
 hazy sky; and finds his heart carried out into an 
 infinite at once of freedom and of repose. 
 
 And so out of the cliffs and the forests he shaped 
 the inside of his church. And how did he shape the 
 outside? Look for yourselves, and judge. But look, 
 not at Chester, but at Salisbury. Look at those 
 churches which carry not mere towers, but spires, or at 
 least pinnacled towers approaching the pyramidal form. 
 The outside form of every Gothic cathedral must be 
 
IX.] GllOTS AND GROVES. 285 
 
 considered imperfect if it does not culminate in some- 
 thing pyramidal. 
 
 The especial want of all Greek and Roman buildings 
 with, which we are acquainted is the absence — save in 
 a few and unimportant cases — of the pyramidal form. 
 The Egyptians knew at least the worth of the obelisk ; 
 but the Greeks and Romans hardly knew even that : 
 their buildings are flat-topped. Their builders were 
 contented with the earth as it was. There was a great 
 truth involved in that ; which I am the last to deny. 
 
 But religious which, like the Buddhist or the 
 Christian, nurse a noble self-discontent, are sure to 
 adopt sooner or later an upward and aspiring form 
 of building. It is not merely that, fancying heaven 
 to be above earth, they point towards heaven. There 
 is a deeper natural language in the pyramidal form of 
 a growing tree. It symbolises growth, or the desire 
 of growth. The Norman tower does nothing of the 
 kind. It does not aspire to grow. Look — I mention 
 an instance with which I am most familiar — at the 
 Norman tower of Bury St. Edmund^s. It is graceful 
 — awful, if you will — but there is no aspiration in it. 
 It is stately, but self-content. Its hoi-izontal courses, 
 circular arches, above all, its flat sky-line, seem to 
 have risen enough, and wish to rise no higher. For 
 it has no touch of that unrest of soul which is ex- 
 pressed by the spire, and still more by the compound 
 spire, with its pinnacles, crockets, finials— which are 
 finials only in name ; for they do not finish, and are 
 really terminal buds, as it were, longing to open and 
 grow upward, even as the crockets are bracts and leaves 
 thrown off as the shoot has grown. 
 
286 GROTS AND GROVES. [ix. 
 
 You feel; surely, the truth of these last words. You 
 cannot look at the canopy work or the pinnacle work of 
 this cathedral without seeing that they do not merely 
 suggest buds and leaves, but that the buds and leaves 
 are there carven before your eyes. I myself cannot 
 look at the tabernacle work of our stalls without being 
 reminded of the young pine forests which clothe the 
 Hampshire moors. But if the details are copied from 
 vegetable forms, why not the whole ? Is not a spire 
 like a growing tree, a tabernacle like a fir-tree, a 
 compound spire like a group of firs ? And if we can 
 see that, do you fancy that the man who planned the 
 spire did not see it as clearly as we do ; and perhaps 
 more clearly still ? 
 
 I am aware, of course, that Norman architecture had 
 sometimes its pinnacle, a mere conical or polygonal 
 capping. I am aware that this form, only more and 
 more slender, lasted on in England during the thir- 
 teenth and the early part of the fourteenth century ; 
 and on the Continent under many modifications, one 
 English kind whereof is usually called a " broach,^^ of 
 which you have a beautiful specimen in the new church 
 at Hoole. 
 
 Now, no one will deny that that broach is beautiful. 
 But it would be difi&cult to prove that its form was 
 taken from a North European tree. The cypress was 
 unknown, probably, to our northern architects. The 
 Lombardy poplar — which has wandered hither, I know 
 not when, all the way from Cashmere — had not wan- 
 dered then, I believe, farther than North Italy. The 
 form is rather that of mere stone ; of the obelisk or of 
 the mountain-peak ; and they, in fact, may have at 
 
IX.] GROTS AND GROVES. 287 
 
 first suggested the spire. The grandeur of an isolated 
 mountain, even of a dolmen or single upright stone, is 
 evident to all. 
 
 But it is the grandeur not of aspiration, but of 
 defiance ; not of the Christian, not even of the Stoic, 
 but rather of the Epicurean. It says — I cannot rise. 
 I do not care to rise. I will be contentedly and 
 valiantly that which I am; and face circumstances, 
 though I cannot conquer them. But it is defiance 
 under defeat. The mountain-peak does not grow, but 
 only decays. Fretted by rains, peeled by frost, splintered 
 by lightning, it must down at last ; and crumble into 
 earth, were it as old, as hard, as lofty as the Matter- 
 horn itself. And while it stands, it wants not only 
 aspiration, it wants tenderness ; it wants humility ; it 
 wants the unrest which tenderness and humility must 
 breed, and which Mr. Euskin so clearly recognises in 
 the best Gothic art. And, meanwhile, it wants natu- 
 ralness. The mere smooth spire or broach — I had 
 almost said, even the spire of Salisbury — is like no 
 tall or commanding object in nature. It is merely the 
 caricature of one — it may be of the mountain-peak. 
 The outline must be broken, must be softened, before 
 it can express the soul of a creed which in the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries, far more than now, 
 was one of penitence as well as of aspiration, of pas- 
 sionate emotion as well as of lofty faith. But a shape 
 which will express that soul must be sought, not among 
 mineral, but among vegetable, forms. And remember 
 always, if we feel thus even now, how much more must 
 those medieval men of genius have felt thus, whose 
 work we now dare only cojoy line by line ? 
 
288 GROTS AND GEOVES. [ix. 
 
 So — as it seems to me — they sought among vege- 
 table forms for what they needed : and they found it at 
 once in the pine, or rather the fir — the spruce and silver 
 firs of their own forests. They are not, of course, indi- 
 genous to England. But they are so common through 
 all the rest of Europe, that not only would the form 
 suggest itself to a continental architect, but to any 
 English clerk who travelled, as all did who could, 
 across the Alps to Rome. The fir-ti'ee, not growing on 
 level ground, like the oaks of Fontainebleau, into one 
 flat roof of foliage, but clinging to the hillside and 
 the crag, old above young, spire above spire, whorl 
 above whorl — for the young shoots of each whorl of 
 boughs point upward in the spring ; and now and then 
 a whole bough breaking away, as it were, into free 
 space, turns upward altogether, and forms a secondary 
 spire on the same tree — this surely was the form which 
 the medieval architect seized, to clothe with it the 
 sides and roof of the stone mountain which he had 
 built ; piling up pinnacles and spires, each crocheted 
 at the angles ; that, like a group of firs upon an isolated 
 rock, every point of the building might seem in act to 
 grow toward heaven, till his idea culminated in that 
 glorious Minster of Cologne, which, if it ever be com- 
 pleted, will be the likeness of one forest-clothed group 
 of cliffs, surrounded by three enormous pines. 
 
 One feature of the Norman temple he could keep ; for 
 it was copied from the same Nature which he was trying 
 to copy — namely, the high-pitched roof and gables. 
 Mr. Ruskin lays it down as a law, that the acute angle 
 in roofs, gables, spires, is the distinguishing mark of 
 northern Gothic. It was adopted, most probably, at 
 
IX.] GROTS AND GROVES. 289 
 
 fii-st from domestic buildings. A nortliern house or 
 barn must liave a liigli-pitclied roof, or the snow will 
 not slip off it. But that fact was not discovered by- 
 man ; it was copied by him from the rocks around. 
 He saw the mountain-peak jut black and bare above 
 the snows of winter ; he saw those snows slip down in 
 sheets, rush down in torrents under the sun, from the 
 steep slabs of rock which coped the hillside ; and he 
 copied, in his roofs, the rocks above his town. But as 
 the love for decorations arose, he would deck his roofs 
 as nature had decked hers, till the gray sheets of the 
 cathedral slates should stand out amid pinnacles and 
 turrets rich with foliage, as the gray mountain- sides 
 stood out amid knolls of feathery birch and towering 
 pine. 
 
 He failed, though he failed nobly. He never 
 succeeded in attaining a perfectly natural style. 
 
 The medieval architects were crippled to the last by 
 the tradition of artificial Eoman forms. They began 
 improving them into naturalness, without any clear 
 notion of what they wanted ; and when that notion 
 became clear, it was too late. Take, as an instance, 
 the tracery of their windows. It is true, as Mr. Ruskin 
 says, that they began by piercing holes in a wall of the 
 form of a leaf, which developed, in the rose window, 
 into the form of a star inside, and of a flower outside. 
 Look at such aloft there. Then, by introducing mul- 
 lions and traceries into the lower part of the window, 
 they added stem and bough forms to those flower forms. 
 But the two did not fit. Look at the west window of 
 our choir, and you will see what I mean. The upright 
 mullions break off into bough curves graceful enough : 
 L. G. u 
 
290 GEOTS AND GROVES. [ix. 
 
 but tliese are cut sliort — as I hold, spoiled — by circular 
 and triangular forms of rose and trefoil resting on tbem 
 as such forms never rest in nature; and the whole;^ 
 though beautiful,, is only half beautiful. It is frag- 
 mentary, unmeaning — barbaric, because unnatural. 
 
 They failed too, it may be, from the very paucity 
 of the vegetable forms they could find to copy among 
 the flora of this colder clime ; and so, stopped short in 
 drawing from nature, ran off into mere purposeless 
 luxuriance. Had they been able to add to their stock 
 of memories a hundred forms which they would have 
 seen in the tropics, they might have gone on for 
 centuries copying nature without exhausting her. 
 
 And yet, did they exhaust even the few forms of 
 beauty which they saw around them ? It must be con- 
 fessed that they did not. I believe that they could 
 not, because they dared not. The unnaturalness of the 
 creed which they expressed always hampered them. 
 It forbade them to look Nature freely and lovingly in 
 the face. It forbade them — as one glaring example 
 — to know anything truly of the most beautiful of all 
 natural objects — the human form. They were tempted 
 perpetually to take Nature as ornament, not as basis ; 
 and they yielded at last to the temptation ; till, in the 
 age of Perpendicular architecture, their very ornament 
 became unnatural again ; because conventional, untrue, 
 meaningless. 
 
 But the creed for which they worked was dying by 
 that time, and therefore the art which expressed it 
 must needs die too. And even that death, or rather 
 the approach of it, was symbolised truly in the flatter 
 roof, the four-centred arch, the flat-topped tower of the 
 
ix.j GllOTS AND GROVES. 291 
 
 fifteenth- century clmrch. The creed had ceased to 
 asph'e : so did the architecture. It had ceased to grow: 
 no did the temple. And the arch sank -lower j and the 
 rafters grew more horizontal ; and the likeness to the 
 old ti'eOj content to grow no more^ took the place of the 
 likeness to the young tree sti-uggling toward the sky. 
 
 And now — unless you are tired of listening to me 
 — a few practical words. 
 
 We are restoring our old cathedral stone by stone 
 after its ancient model. We ai-e also trying to build a 
 new church. We are building it — as most new churches 
 in England are now built — in a pure Gothic style. 
 
 Are we doing right ? I do not mean morally right. 
 It is always morally right to build a new church, if 
 needed, whatever be its architecture. It is always 
 morally right to restore an old church, if it be beautiful 
 and noble, as an heirloom handed down to us by our 
 ancestors, which we have no right — I say no right — 
 for the sake of our children, and of our children's 
 children, to leave to ruin. 
 
 But are we artistically, gesthctically right ^ Is the 
 best Gothic fit for our worship ? Does it express our 
 belief ? Or shall we choose some other style ? 
 
 I say that it is; and that it is so because it is a 
 style which, if not founded on Nature, has taken into 
 itself more of nature, of nature beautiful and healthy, 
 than any other style. 
 
 AVith greater knowledge of nature, both geogra- 
 phical and scientific, fresh stylos of architecture may 
 and will arise, as much more beautiful, and as much 
 more natural, than the Gothic, as Gothic is more 
 beautiful and natural than the Norman. Till then we 
 
292 CtEOTS and GROVES. [ix. 
 
 must take the best models wliicli we liave; use tliem ; 
 and, as it were, use tliem up and exliaust them. By 
 that time we may have learnt to improve on them ; and 
 to build churches more Gothic than Gothic itself, more 
 like grot and grove than even a northern cathedral. 
 
 That is the direction in which we must work. And 
 if any shall say to us, as it has been said ere now — 
 '' After all, your new Gothic churches are but imita- 
 tions, shams, borrowed symbols, which to you symbolise 
 nothing. They are Romish churches, meant to express 
 Romish doctrine, built for a Protestant creed which 
 they do not express, and for a Protestant worship 
 which they will not fit/^ Then we shall answer 
 • — Not so. The objection might be true if we built 
 Norman or Romanesque churches ; for we should then 
 be returning to that very foreign and unnatural style 
 which Rome taught our forefathers, and from which 
 they escaped gradually into the comparative freedom, 
 the comparative naturalness, of that true Gothic of 
 which Mr. Ruskin says so well : 
 
 It is gladdening to remember that, in its utmost noble- 
 ness, the very temper which has been thought most adverse to 
 it, the Protestant temper of self-dependence and inquiry, -were 
 expressed in every case. Faith and aspiration there were in 
 every Chi-istian ecclesiastical building from the first century 
 to the fifteenth : but the moral habits to which England in this 
 age owes the kind of greatness which she has^the habits of 
 philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of domestic 
 seclusion and independence, of stern self-reliance, and sincere 
 upright searching into religious truth — were onlj- traceable in 
 the features which were the distinctive creations of the Gothic 
 schools, in the varied foliage and thorny fretwork, and shadowy 
 niche, and buttressed pier, and fearless height of subtle pin- 
 nacle and crested tower, sent " like an unperplexed question up 
 to heaven." 
 
IX.] GEOTS AND GKOVES. 293 
 
 So says Mr. Enskin. I^ for one, endorse his gallant 
 words. And I think that a strong proof of their truth 
 is to be found in two facts, which seem at first para- 
 doxical. First, that the new Roman Catholic churches 
 on the Continent — I speak especially of France, which 
 is the most highly-cultivated Eomanist country — are 
 like those which the Jesuits built in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, less and less Gothic. The 
 former were sham-classic; the latter are rather of a 
 new fantastic Romanesque, or rather Byzantinesque 
 style, which is a real retrogression from Gothic towards 
 earlier and less natui-al schools. Next, that the Puritan 
 communions, the Kirk of Scotland and the English 
 Nonconformists, as they are becoming more cultivated 
 — and there are now many highly-cultivated men 
 among them — are introducing Gothic architecture more 
 and more into their churches. There are elements in 
 it, it seems, which do not contradict their Puritanism; 
 elements which they can adapt to their own worship; 
 namely, the very elements which Mr. Ruskin has 
 discerned. 
 
 But if they can do so, how much more can we of the 
 Church of England? As long as we go on where our 
 medieval forefathers left off ; as long as we keep to the 
 most perfect types of their work, in waiting for the 
 day when we shall be able to surpass them, by making 
 our work even more naturalistic than theirs, more 
 truly expressive of the highest aspirations of humanity; 
 so long we are reverencing them, and that latent 
 Protestantism in them, which produced at last the 
 Reformation. 
 
 And if any should say : " Nevertheless your Pro- 
 testant Gothic Church, though you made it ten times 
 
291 GROTS AND GROVES. [ix. 
 
 more beautiful, and more symbolic than Cologne 
 Minster itself, would still be a sham. For where would 
 be your images ? And still more, where would be your 
 Host ? Do you not know that in the medieval church 
 the vistas of its arcades, the alternation of its lights 
 and shadows, the gradations of its colouring, and all 
 its carefully subordinated wealth of art, pointed to, 
 were coucenti^ated round, one sacred spot, as a curve, 
 however vast its sweep through space, tends at every 
 moment toward a single focus ? And that spot, that 
 focus was, and is still in every Romish church, the 
 body of God, present upon the altar in the form of 
 bread ? Without Him, what is all your building ? 
 Your church is empty ; your altar bare ; a throne 
 without a king ; an eye-socket without an eye." 
 
 My friends, if we be true children of those old 
 worthies, whom Tacitus saw worshipping beneath the 
 German oaks, we shall have but one answer to that 
 scoS: 
 
 " We know it ; and we glory in the fact. We glory 
 in it, as the old Jews gloried in it, when the Roman 
 soldiers, bursting through the Temple and into the 
 Holy of Holies itself, paused in wonder and in awe 
 when they beheld neither God, nor image of God, but 
 — blank vet all-suggestive — the empty mercy-seat. 
 
 Like theirs, our altar is an empty throne ; for it 
 symbolises our worship of Him who dwelleth not in 
 temples made with hands; whom the heaven and the 
 heaven of heavens cannot contain. Our eye-socket 
 holds no eye. For it symbolises our worship of that 
 Eye which is over all the earth ; which is about our 
 path, and about our bed, and spies out all our ways. 
 
IX.] GROTS AND GROVES. 295 
 
 We need no artificial and material presence of Deity. 
 For we believe in That One Eternal and Universal 
 Eeal Presence — of which it is written ' He is not far 
 from anyone of us ; for in God we live and move and 
 have our being- ; ' and again : ' Lo, I am with yoii 
 even to the end of the world ; ' and again : ' Where- 
 soever two or three are gathered together in My Name 
 there am I in the midst of them/ 
 
 He is the God of nature, as well as the God of 
 grace. Forever He looks down on all things which He 
 has made, and behold, they are very good. And, there- 
 foi'e, we dare offer to Him, in our churches, the most 
 perfect works of naturalistic art, and shape them into 
 copies of whatever beauty He has shown us, in man or 
 woman, in cove or mountain-peak, in tree or flower, 
 even in bird or butterfly. 
 
 But Himself ? — Who can see Him ? Except the 
 humble and the contrite heart, to whom He reveals 
 Himself as a Spirit to be worshipped in spirit and in 
 truth, and not in bread, nor wood, nor stone, nor gold, 
 nor quintessential diamond.^^ 
 
 So we shall obey the sound instinct of our Christian 
 forefathers, when they shaped their churches into forest 
 aisles, and decked them with the boughs of the wood- 
 land and the flowers of the field : but we shall obey 
 too, that sounder instinct of theirs, which made them 
 at last cast out of their own temples, as misplaced and 
 unnatural things, the idols Avhich they had inherited 
 from Rome. 
 
 So we shall obey the sound instinct of our heathen 
 forefathers when they Avorshipped the unknown God 
 beneath the oaks of the primeval forests : but we shall 
 
296 GEOTS AND GK0VE8. [ix. 
 
 obey, too, tliat sounder instinct of theirs, wliicli taugLt 
 tliem this, at least, concerning God — That it was 
 beneath His dignity to coop Him within walls ; and 
 that the grandest forms of nature, as well as the 
 deepest consciousness of their own souls, revealed to 
 them a mysterious Being, who was to be beheld by 
 faith alone. 
 
HOUES AVITH THE MYSTICS, 
 

 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS.^' 
 
 Few readers of this magazine probably know any- 
 thing about " Mystics ; " know even what the term 
 means : but as it is plainly connected with the adjective 
 '' mystical/^ they probably suppose it to denote some 
 sort of vague, dreamy, sentimental, and therefore use- 
 less and undesirable personage. Nor can we blame 
 them if they do so; for mysticism is a form of thought 
 and feeling now all but extinct in England. There are 
 probably not ten thorough mystics among all our mil- 
 lions ; the mystic philosophers are very little read by 
 our scholars, and read not for, but in spite of, their 
 mysticism; and our popular theology has so completely 
 rid itself of any mystic elements, that our divines look 
 with utter disfavour upon it, use the word always as a 
 term of opprobrium, and interpret the mystic expressions 
 in our liturgy — which mostly occur in the Collects — 
 according to the philosophy of Locke, really ignorant, 
 
 * Fraser's Magazine, Septcmbei', 1850. — " Hours with the 
 ]\Iystics." By Robert Alfred Vaughan, B.A. Two Vohimes. Lon- 
 ■doa : Jolin W. Parker and Son. 1856. 
 
300 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x, 
 
 it would seem, that tliey were written by Platonist 
 mystics. 
 
 We do not blame them either^, save in as far as 
 teachers of men are blameworthy for being ignorant 
 of any form of thought which has ever had a living 
 hold upon good and earnest men, and may therefore 
 take hold of them again. But the English are not now 
 a mystic people, any more than the old Romans were ; 
 their habit of mind, their destiny in the world, are like 
 those of the Romans, altogether practical; and who can 
 be surpi-ised if they do not think about what they are 
 not called upon to think about ? 
 
 Nevertheless, it is quite a mistake to suppose that 
 mysticism is by its own nature unpractical. The 
 greatest and most prosperous races of antiquity — the 
 Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindoos, Grreeks — had the 
 mystic element as strong and living in them as the 
 Germans have now; and certainly we cannot call them 
 impractical peoples. They fell and came to ruin — as 
 the Germans may do — when their mysticism became 
 unpractical : but their thou ght remained, to be translated 
 into practice by sounder-hearted races than themselves. 
 Rome learnt from Greece, and did in some confused 
 imperfect way that which Greece only dreamed ; just 
 as future nations may act hereafter, nobly and usefully, 
 on the truths which Germans discover, only to put in a 
 book and smoke over. For they are terribly practical 
 people, these mystics, quiet students and devotees as 
 they may seem. They go, or seem to go, down to the 
 roots of things, after a way of their own; and lay foun- 
 dations on which — be they sound or unsound — those 
 who come after them cannot choose but build : as we 
 
A-J ^lYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 301 
 
 are building now. For our forefathers were mystics 
 for generations ; they were mystics in the forests of 
 Germany and in the dales of Norway ; they were mystics 
 in the convents and the universities of the Middle Ages; 
 they were mystics, all the deepest and noblest minds of 
 them, during the Elizabethan era. 
 
 Even now the few mystic writers of this island are 
 exercising more influence on thought than any other 
 men, for good or for evil. Coleridge, and Alexander 
 Knox have changed the minds, and with them the acts, 
 of thousands; and when they are accused of having 
 originated, unknowingly, the whole " Tractarian " 
 movement, those Avho have watched English thought 
 carefully can only answer, that on the confession of 
 the elder Tractarians themselves, the allegation is true*: 
 but that they originated a dozen other " movements ^' 
 iDcside in the most opposite directions, and that free- 
 thinking Emersonians will be as ready as Eomish 
 perverts and good plain English churchmen to confess 
 that the critical point of their life was determined by 
 the writings of the fakeer of Highgate. At this veiy 
 time too, the only real mystic of any genius who is 
 writing and teaching is exercising more practical in- 
 fluence, infusing more vigorous life into the minds of 
 thousands of men and women, than all the other 
 teachers of England put together ; and has set rolling 
 a ball which may in the next half century gather into 
 an avalanche, perhaps utterly different in form, material, 
 and direction, from all which he expects. 
 
 So much for mystics being unpractical. If we look 
 faithfully into the meaning of their name, we shall see 
 why, for good or for evil, they cannot be unpractical ; 
 
302 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 ■why thej, let them be the most self-absorbed of re- 
 cluses, are the very men who sow the seeds of great 
 schools, great national and political movements, even 
 great religions. 
 
 A mystic — according to the Greek etymology — 
 should signify one who is initiated into mysteries, one 
 whose eyes are opened to see things which other people 
 cannot see. And the true mystic in all ages and 
 countries, has believed that this was the case with him. 
 He believes that there is an invisible world as well as 
 a visible one — so do most men : but the mystic believes 
 also that this same invisible world is not merely a 
 supernumerary one world more, over and above the 
 earth on which he lives, and the stars over his head, 
 but that it is the cause of them and the cfround of them - 
 that it was the cause of them at first, and is the cause 
 of them now, even to the budding of every flower, and 
 the falling of every pebble to the ground ; and there- 
 fore, that having been before this visible world, it will 
 be after it, and endure just as real, living, and eternal, 
 though matter were annihilated to-morrow. 
 
 '' But, on this showing, every Christian, nay, every 
 religious man, is a mystic; for he believes in an invisible 
 world ? " The answer is found in the plain fact, that 
 good Christians here in England do not think so them- 
 selves ; that they dislike and dread mysticism ; would 
 not understand it if it were preached to them ; are more 
 puzzled by those utterances of St. John, which mystics 
 have always claimed as justifying their theories, than 
 by any part of their bibles. There is a positive and 
 conscious difference between popular metaphysics and 
 mysticism ; and it seems to lie in this : the invisible 
 
X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 303^ 
 
 world in whicli Englishmen in general believe, is one 
 which happens to be invisible now, but which will not be 
 so hereafter. When they speak of the other world they 
 mean a place which their bodily eyes will see some day, 
 and could see now if they were allowed ; when they 
 speak of spirits they mean ghosts who could, and per- 
 haps do, make themselves visible to men's bodily eyes. 
 We are not inquiring here whether they be right or 
 wrong; we are only specifying a common form of 
 human thought. 
 
 The mystic, on the other hand, believes that the in- 
 visible world is so by its very nature, and must be so 
 for ever. He lives therein now, he holds, and will live 
 in it through eternity : but he will see it never with 
 any bodily eyes, not even with the eyes of any future 
 " glorified ^' body. It is ipso facto not to be seen, only 
 to be believed in ; never for him will " faith be changed 
 for sight,^"" as the popular theologians say that it 
 will ; for this invisible world is only to be " spiritually 
 discerned.^' 
 
 This is the mystic idea, pure and simple ; of course 
 there are various grades of it, as thei'e are of the 
 popular one ; for no man holds his own creed and 
 nothing more ; and it is good for him, in this piecemeal 
 and shortsighted world, that he should not. Were he 
 over-true to his own idea, he would become a fanatic, 
 perhaps a madman. And so the modern evangelical of 
 the Venn and Xewton school, to whom mysticism is 
 neology and nehushtan, when he speaks of '' spiritual 
 experiences,'* uses the adjective in its purely mystic 
 sense; while Bernard of Cluny, in his once famous 
 hymn, "Hie breve vivitur,'' mingles the two con- 
 
30 i HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 ceptions of tlie unseen world in inextricable confusion. 
 Between these two extreme poles, in fact, we have every 
 variety of thought ; and it is good for us that we should 
 have them ; for no one man or school of men can grasp 
 the whole truth, and every intermediate modification 
 supplies some link in the great cycle of facts which its 
 neighbours have overlooked. 
 
 In the minds who have held this belief, that the 
 unseen world is the only real and eternal one, there has 
 generally existed a belief, more or less confused, that 
 the visible world is in some mysterious way a pattern 
 or symbol of the invisible one ; that its physical laws 
 are the analogues of the spiritual laws of the eternal 
 world : a belief of which Mr. Vaughan seems to think 
 lightly ; though if it be untrue we can hardly see how 
 that metaphoric illustration in which he indulges so 
 freely, and which he often uses in a masterly and grace- 
 ful way, can be anything but useless trifling. For what 
 is a metaphor or a simile but a mere paralogism — having 
 nothing to do with the matter in hand, and not to be 
 allowed for a moment to influence the reader^s judg- 
 ment, unless there be some real and objective analogy 
 — homology we should call it — between the physical 
 phenomenon from which the symbol is taken, and the 
 spiintual truth which it is meant to illustrate ? What 
 divineness, what logical weight, in our Lord's parables, 
 unless He was by them trying to show his hearers that 
 the laws which they saw at work in the lilies of the 
 field, in the most common occupations of men, were 
 but lower manifestations of the laws by which are 
 governed the inmost workings of the human spirit ? 
 What triflers, on any other ground, were Socrates and 
 
X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 305 
 
 Plato. What triflers, too, Shakespeare and Spenser. 
 Indeed, we should say that it is the belief, conscious or 
 unconscious, of the eternal correlation of the physical 
 and spiritual worlds, which alone constitutes the essence 
 of a poet. 
 
 Of course this idea led, and would necessarily lead, 
 to follies and fancies enough, as long as the phenomena 
 of nature were not carefully studied, and her laws 
 scientifically investigated ; and all the dreams of Para- 
 celsus or Van Helmont, Cardan or Crollius, Baptista 
 Porta or Behmen, are but the natural and pardonable 
 errors of minds which, while they felt deeply the 
 sanctity and mystery of Nature, had no Baconian 
 philosophy to tell them what Nature actually was, 
 and what she actually said. But their idea lives still, 
 and will live as long as the belief in a one God lives. 
 The physical and spiritual worlds cannot be separated 
 by an impassable gulf. They must, in some way or 
 other, reflect each other, even in their minutest phe- 
 nomena, for so only can they both reflect that absolute 
 primeval unity, in whom they both live and move 
 and have their being. Mr. Vaughan's object, however, 
 has not been to work out in his book such jjroblems as 
 these. Had he done so, he would have made his readers 
 understand better what Mysticism is ; he would have 
 avoided several hasty epithets, by the use of which he 
 has, we think, deceived himself into the notion that 
 he has settled a matter by calling it a hard name ; he 
 would have explained, perhaps, to himself and to us, 
 many strange and seemingly contradictory facts in the 
 annals of Mysticism. But he would also not have 
 written so readable a book. On the whole he has 
 
30G HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [\. 
 
 taken tlie right course, tliougli one wishes that he had 
 carried it out more methodically. 
 
 A few friendS;, literate and comfortable men, and 
 right-hearted Christians withal, meet together to talk 
 over these same mystics, and to read papers and extracts 
 which will give a general notion of the subject from 
 the earliest historic times. The gentlemen talk about 
 and about a little too much ; they are a little too fond 
 of illustrations of the popular pulpit style ; they are 
 often apt to say each his say, with very little care of 
 what the previous speaker has uttered ; in fact these 
 conversations are, as conversations, not good, but as 
 centres of thought they are excellent. There is not a 
 page nor a paragraph in which there is not something 
 well worth recollecting, and often reflections very wise 
 and weighty indeed, which show that whether or not Mr. 
 Vaughan has thoroughly grasped the subject of Mys- 
 ticism, he has grasped and made part of his own mind 
 and heart many things far more practically important 
 than Mysticism, or any other form of thought ; and no 
 one ought to rise up from the perusal of his book with- 
 out finding himself if not a better^ at least a more 
 thoughtful man, and perhaps a humble one also, as 
 he leai'ns how many more struggles and doubts^ dis- 
 coveries, sorrows and joys, the human race has passed 
 through, than are contained in his own private 
 experience. 
 
 The true value of the book is, that though not ex- 
 haustive of the subject, it is suggestive. It affords the 
 best, indeed the only general, sketch of the subject 
 which we have in England, and gives therein bound- 
 less food for future thought and reading; and the 
 
X.] 3IYST1CISM AND MYSTICS. 307 
 
 country parson, or the thoughtful professional man, 
 Avho has no time to follow out the question for himself, 
 much less to hunt out and examine original documents, 
 may learn from these pages a thousand curious and in- 
 teresting hints about men of like passions with himself, 
 and about old times, the history of which — as of all 
 times — was not the history of their kings and queens, 
 but of the creeds and deeds of the "masses^' who 
 worked, and failed, and sorrowed, and rejoiced again, 
 unknown to fame. Whatsoever, meanwhile, their own 
 conclusions may be on the subject-matter of the book, 
 they will hardly fail to admire the extraordinary variety 
 and fulness of Mr. Vaughan's reading, and wonder 
 when they heai- — unless we are wrongly informed — 
 that he is quite a young man — 
 
 How one small head could compass all he knew. 
 
 He begins with the mysticism of the Hindoo Yogis. 
 And to this, as we shall hereafter show, he hardly does 
 justice; but we wish now to point out in detail the 
 extended range of subjects, of each of which the book 
 gives some general notion. From the Hindoos he 
 passes to Philo and the neo-Platonists ; from them to 
 the pseudo-Dionysius, and the Mysticism of the early 
 Eastern Church. He then traces, shrewdly enough, 
 the influence of the pseudo-Areopagite and the Easterns 
 on the bolder and more practical minds of the Western 
 Latins, and gives a sketch of Bernard and his Abbey 
 of Clairvaux, which brings pleasantly enough before us 
 the ways and works of a long-dead world, which was 
 all but inconceivable to us till Mr. Carlyle disinterred 
 
308 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x.. 
 
 it in his picture of Abbot Sampson, the hero of " Past 
 aud Present." 
 
 We are next introduced to the mystic schoolmen — 
 Hugo and Richard of St. Victor; and then to a far 
 more interesting class of men^ and one with which 
 Mr. Vaughan has more sympathy than with any of his 
 characters, perhaps because he knows more about them. 
 His chapters on the German Mysticism of the foui'- 
 teenth century ; his imaginary, yet fruitful chronicle of 
 Adolf of Arnstein, with its glimpses of Meister Eckart, 
 Suso, the ^'Nameless Wild,^^ Ruysbroek, and Tauler 
 himself, are admirable, if merely as historic studies, and 
 should be, and we doubt not will be, read by many as 
 practical commentaries on the "Theologia Germanica,''^ 
 and on the selection from Tauler's "" Sermons,'^ now in 
 course of publication. Had all the book been written 
 as these chapters are, we should not have had a word 
 of complaint to make, save when we find the author 
 passing over without a word of comment, utterances 
 which, right or wrong, contain the very keynote and 
 central idea of the men whom he is holding up to ad- 
 miration, and as we think, of Mysticism itself. There- 
 is, for instance, a paragraph attributed to Ruysbroek, in 
 p. 275, vol. i., which, whether true or false — and we- 
 believe it to be essentially true — is so inexpressibly 
 important, both in the subject which it treats, and in 
 the way in which it treats it, that twenty pages of 
 comment on it would not have been misdevoted. Yet 
 it is passed by without a word. 
 
 Going forward to the age of the Reformation, the- 
 book then gives us a spirited glimpse of JohnBokelson 
 and the Munster Anabaptists, of Carlstadt and th& 
 
X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 309 
 
 Zui'ichian prophets, and tlien dwells at some lengtli on 
 the attempt of that day to combine physical and spii'i- 
 tual science in occult philosophy. We have enough to 
 make us wish to hear more of Cornelius Agrippa, 
 Paracelsus, and Behmen, with their alchemy, ''true 
 magic,^' doctrines of sympathies,* signatures of things, 
 Cabbala, and Gamahea, and the rest of that (now fallen) 
 inverted pyramid of pseudo-science. His estimate of 
 Behmen and his writings, we may observe in passing, 
 is both sound and charitable, and speaks as much for 
 Mr. Vaughan's heart as for his head. Then we have a 
 little about the Rosicrucians and the Comte de Gabalis, 
 and the theory of the Rabbis, from whom the Rosicru- 
 cians borrowed so much, all told iu the same lively 
 manner, all utterly new to ninety-nine readers out of a 
 hundred, all indicating, we are bound to say, a much 
 more extensive reading than appears on the page itself. 
 
 From these he passes to the Mysticism of the 
 counter-Reformation, especially to the two great 
 f^panish mystics, St. Theresa and St. John of the 
 Cross. Here again he is new and interesting; but 
 we must regret that he has not been as merciful to 
 Theresa as he has to poor little John. 
 
 He then devotes some eighty pages — and very well 
 employed they are — in detailing the strange and sad 
 story of Madame Guyon and the "Quietisf movement 
 
 * Why has Mr. Vaughan omitted to give us a few racy lines on 
 Sir Matthew Hale's "Divine Contemplations of the Magnet," Sir 
 Kenelm Digby's " Weapon- Salve," and Valentine Greatrake's " Mag. 
 nctic Cures"? He should have told the world a little, too, about 
 the strange phenomenon of the Jesuit Kircher, in whom Topery 
 attempted to recover the very ground which Behmen and the Pro- 
 t'Gstant Xature-mystics were conquering from them. 
 
310 HOUES WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 cit Louis Quatorze's Court, Much of tbis he has taken, 
 with all due acknowledgment, from TJpham ; but he 
 has told the story most pleasantly, in his own way, and 
 these pages will give a better notion of Fenelon, and 
 of the ''Eagle" (for eagle read vulture) ''of Meaux,'* 
 old Bossuet, than they are likely to find elsewhere in 
 the same compass. 
 
 Following chronological order as nearly as he can, 
 he next passes to George Fox and the early Quakers, 
 introducing a curious — and in our own case quite novel 
 — ^little episode concerning " The History of Hai Ebn 
 Yokhdan,^^ a medieval Arabian romance, which old Bar- 
 clay seems to have got hold of and pressed into the 
 service of his sect, taking it for literal truth. 
 
 The twelfth book is devoted to Swedenborg, and a 
 very valuable httle sketch it is, and one which g-oes far 
 to clear up the moral character, and the reputation for 
 sanity also, of that much-calumniated philosopher, 
 whom the world knows only as a dreaming false prophet, 
 forgetting that even if he was that, he was also a soun^ 
 and severe scientific labourer, to whom our modern 
 physical science is most deeply indebted. 
 
 This is a short sketch of the contents of a book 
 which is a really valuable addition to English literature, 
 and which is as interesting as it is instructive. But 
 Mr. Vaughan must forgive us if we tell him frankly 
 that he has not exhausted the subject ; that he has 
 hardly defined Mysticism at all — at least, has defined 
 it by its outward results, and that without classifying 
 them ; and that he has not grasped the central idea of 
 the subject. There were more things in these same 
 mystics than are dreamt of in his philosophy ; and he 
 
X.J MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 311 
 
 lias missed seeing them, because lie lias put himself 
 rather in the attitude of a judge than of an inquirer. 
 
 He has not had respect and trust enough for the 
 men and women of whom he writes ; and is too much 
 inclined to laugh at them, and treat them de haul en 
 has. He has trusted too much to his own great power 
 of logical analysis, and his equally great power of 
 illustration, and is therefore apt to mistake the being 
 able to put a man's thoughts into words for him, for the 
 being really able to understand him. To understand 
 any man we must have sympathy for him, even affec- 
 tion. No intellectual acuteness, no amount even of 
 mere pity for his errors, will enable us to see the man 
 from within, and put our own souls into the place of his 
 aoul. To do that, one must feel and confess within 
 oneself the seed of the same errors which one reproves 
 in him ; one must have passed more or less through 
 his temptations, doubts, hunger of heart and brain ; 
 and one cannot help questioning, as one reads 
 Mr. Vaughan's book, whether he has really done this in 
 the case of those of whom he writes. He should have 
 remembered too how little any young man can have 
 experienced of the terrible sorrows which branded into 
 the hearts of these old devotees the truths to which they 
 clung more than to life, while they too often warped 
 their hearts into morbidity, and caused alike their folly 
 and their wisdom. Gently indeed should we speak 
 even of the dreams of some self-imagined " Bride of 
 Christ,'' when we picture to ourselves the bitter agonies 
 which must have been endured ere a human soul could 
 develop so fantastically diseased a growth. " She was 
 only a hystei'ical nun," Well, and what more tragical 
 
312 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 object, to tliose wlio will look patiently and lovingly 
 at human nature, than a hysterical nun ? She may 
 have been driven into a convent by some disappoint- 
 ment in love. And has not disappointed affection 
 been confessed, in all climes and ages, to enshroud 
 its victim ever after in a sanctuary of reverent pity ? 
 If sorrow " broke her brains," as well as broke her 
 heart, shall we do aught but love her the more for 
 her capacity of love ? Or she may have entered the 
 convent, as thousands did, in girlish simplicity, to 
 escape from a world she had not tried, before she had 
 discovered that the world could give her something 
 which the convent could not. What more tragical than 
 her discovery in herself of a capacity for love which 
 could never be satisfied within that prison ? And 
 when that capacity began to vindicate itself in strange 
 forms of disease, seemingly to her supei'uatural, often 
 agonising, often degrading, and at the same time 
 (strange contradiction) mixed itself up with her noblest 
 thoughts, to ennoble them still more, and inspire her not 
 only with a desire of physical self-torture, which would 
 seem holy both in her own eyes and her priest's, but 
 with a love for all that is fair and lofty, for self-devotion 
 and self-saci'ifice — shall we blame her — shall we even 
 smile at her if, after the dreadful question : ^' Is this the 
 possession of a demon?"' had alternated with, '^Is this 
 the inspiration of a god ? " she settled down, as the only 
 escape from madness and suicide, into the latter thought^ 
 and believed that she found in the ideal and perfect man- 
 hood of One whom she was told to revere and love as a 
 God, and who had sacrificed His own life for her, a sub- 
 
X.] MYSTICISZil AND MYSTICS. 313 
 
 stitute for that merely liuman affection from which she 
 was for ever debarred ? Why blame her for not num- 
 bering' that which was wanting, or making straight that 
 which was crooked ? Let God judge her, not we : and 
 the fit critics of her conduct are not the easy gentleman- 
 like scholars, like Mr. Yaughan's Athertons and Gowers, 
 discussing the "aberrations of fanaticism" over wine and 
 walnuts; or the gay girl, Kate; hardly even the happy 
 mother, Mrs. Atherton ; but those whose hairs are gray 
 with sorrow ; who have been softened at once and 
 hardened in the fire of God ; who have cried out of the 
 bottomless deep like David, while lover and friend were 
 hid away from them, and laid amid the corpses of 
 their dead hopes, dead health, dead joy, as on a ghastly 
 battle-field, '' stript among the dead, like those who 
 are wounded, and cut away from God's hands ; " who 
 have struggled drowning in the horrible mire of doubt, 
 and have felt all God's billows and waves sweep over 
 them, till they were weary of crying, and their sight 
 failed for waiting so long upon God ; and all the faith 
 and prayer which was left was " Thou wilt not leave 
 my soul in hell, nor suffer thy Holy One to see corrup- 
 tion.'' Be it understood, however, for fear of any 
 mistake, that we hold Mr. Vaughan to be simply and 
 altogether right in his main idea. His one test for all 
 these people, and all which they said or did, is — Were 
 they made practically better men and women thereby? 
 He sees clearly that the " spiritual " is none other than 
 the "moral" — that which has to do with right and 
 wrong; and he has a righteous contempt for every- 
 thing and anything, however graceful and reverent. 
 
314 HOUES WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 and artistic and devout, and celestial and super- 
 celestial, except in as far as he finds it making better 
 men and women do better work at every-day life. 
 
 But even on this ground we must protest against 
 such a sketch as this; even of one of the least honourable 
 of the Middle-age saints : 
 
 Atuertox. Angela de Foligui, -wlio made herself miserable 
 — I must say something the converse of flourished — about the 
 beginning of the fourteenth century, was a fine model pupil of 
 this sort, a genuine daughter of St. Francis. Her mother, hex* 
 husband, her children dead, she is alone and sorrowful. She 
 betakes herself to violent devotion — falls ill — suffers incessant 
 anguish from a complication of disorders — has rapturous con- 
 solations and terrific temptations — is dashed in a moment from 
 a seat of glory above the empyrean . . . 
 
 Very amusing, is it not ? To have one's mother, 
 husband, children die — the most commonplace sort 
 of things — what (over one's wine and walnuts) one 
 describes as being "alone and sorrowful." Men who 
 having tasted the blessings conveyed in those few words,, 
 have also found the horror conveyed in them, have 
 no epithets for the state of mind in which such a fate 
 would leave them. They simply pray that if that hour 
 came, they might just have faith enough left not to 
 curse God and die. Amusing, too, her falling ill, and 
 suffering under a complication of disorders, especially 
 if those disorders were the fruit of combined grief and 
 widowhood. Amusing also her betaking herself to 
 violent devotion ! In the first place, if devotion be a 
 good thing, could she have too much of it ? If it be 
 the way to m^ike people good (as is commonly held hy 
 all Christian sects), could she become too good? The 
 
x-j MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 315 
 
 more important question whicli springs out of the fact 
 we will ask presently. " She has rapturous consolations 
 and terrific temptations.'^ Did the consolations come 
 first, and were the temptations a revulsion from 
 " spiritual '' exaltation into '' spiritual '■' collapse and 
 melancholy ? or did the temptations come first, and the 
 consolations come after, to save her from madness and 
 despair ? Either may be the case; perhaps both were: 
 but somewhat more of care should have been taken in 
 expressing so important a spiritual sequence as either 
 case exhibits. 
 
 It is twelve years and more since we studied the 
 history of the '^B. Angela de Foligni,'' and many 
 another kindred saint ; and we cannot recollect what 
 were the terrific temptations, what was the floor of hell 
 which the poor thing sawyawning beneath her feet. But 
 we must ask Mr. Vaughan, has he ever read Boccaccio, 
 or any of the Italian novelists up to the seventeenth 
 century ? And if so, can he not understand how 
 Angela de Foligni, the lovely Italian widow of the 
 fourteenth century, had her terrific temptations, to 
 which, if she had yielded, she might have fallen to the 
 lowest pit of hell, let that word mean what it may ; 
 and temptations all the more terrific because she saw 
 every widow round her considering them no tempta- 
 tions at all, but yielding .to them, going out to invite 
 them in the most business-like, nay, duty-like, way ? 
 What if she had " rapturous consolations" ? What if 
 she did pour out to One who was worthy not of less 
 but of more afi:"ection than she ofi:ered in her passionate 
 southern heart, in language which in our colder 
 northerns would be mere hypocrisy, yet which she had 
 
31G HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 been tauglit to believe lawful by tliat interpretation 
 of the Canticles which (be it always remembered) is 
 common to Evangelicals and to Romanists ? What if 
 even, in reward for her righteous belief, that what she 
 saw all widows round her doing was abominable and 
 to be avoided at all risks, she were permitted to enjoy a 
 passionate affection, which after all was not misplaced? 
 There are mysteries in religion as in all things, where 
 it is better not to intrude behind the veil. Wisdom is 
 justified of all her children : and folly may be justified 
 of some of her children also. 
 
 Equally unfair it seems to us is the notice of St. 
 Brigitta — in our eyes a beautiful and noble figure. A 
 widow she, too — and what worlds of sorrow are there 
 in that word, especially when applied to the pure 
 deep-hearted Northern woman, as she was — she leaves 
 her Scandinavian pine-forests to worship and to give 
 wherever she can, till she arrives at Rome, the centre of 
 the universe, the seat of Christ's vicegerent, the city of 
 God, the gate of Paradise. Thousands of weary miles 
 she travels, through danger and sorrow — and when she 
 finds it, behold it is a lie and a sham ! not the gate of 
 Paradise, but the gate of Sodom and of hell. Was not 
 that enough to madden her, if mad she became ? What 
 matter after that her " angel dictated discourses on the 
 Blessed Virgin," "bombastic invocations to the Saviour's 
 eyes, ears, hair ? " — they were at least the best objects 
 of worship which the age gave her. In one thing she 
 was right, and kept her first love. " What was not 
 quite so bad, she gives to the world a series of revela- 
 tions, in which the vices of popes and prelates are 
 lashed unsparingly and threatened with speedy judg- 
 
X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. ;U7 
 
 ment." Not quite so bad ? To us the whole pheno- 
 menon wears an utterly different aspect. At the risk 
 of her life, at the risk of being burned alive — did any- 
 one ever consider what that means ? — the noble Norse- 
 woman, like an Alruna maid of old, hurls out her divine 
 hereditary hatred of sin and filth and lies. At last she 
 falls back on Christ Himself, as the only home for a 
 homeless soul in such an evil time. And she is not 
 burnt alive. The hand of One mightier than she is 
 over her, and she is safe under the shadow of His 
 wings till her weary work is done and she goes home_, 
 her righteousness accepted for His sake : her folly, 
 hysterics, dreams — call them by what base name we 
 will — forgiven and forgotten for the sake of her many 
 sorrows and her faithfulness to the end. 
 
 But whatever fault we can find with these sketches, 
 we can find noneAvith Mr.Vaughan^s reflections on them ; 
 
 What a condemning comment on the pretended tender 
 mercies of the Church are those narratives Avliich Eomc 
 delights to parade of the sufferings, mental and bodily, which 
 her devotees -were instructed to inflict upon themselves ! I 
 am reminded of the thirsting mule, which has, in some 
 countries, to strike with his hoof among the spines of the 
 cactus, and drink, with lamed foot and bleeding lips, the few 
 drops of milk which ooze from the broken tliorns. Atfectionater 
 suffering natures came to Kome for comfort ; but lier scanty 
 kindness is only to be drawn with anguish from the cruel 
 sharpness of asceticism. The worldly, tlie audacious, escape 
 easily; but these pliant excitable temperaments, so anxiously 
 in earnest, may be made useful. The more dangerous, 
 frightful, or unnatural their performances, the more profit for 
 their keepers. Men and women are trained by torturing 
 processes to deny their nature, and then they arc exliibited 
 to bring grist to the mill — like birds and beasts forced to 
 
318 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 postures and services against the laws o£ their being — like 
 those who must perform perilous feats on ropes or with lions, 
 nightly hazarding their lives to fill the jiockets of a manager. 
 The self-devotedncss of which Rome boasts so much is a self- 
 devotion she has always thus made the most of for herself. 
 Calculating men who have thought only of the interest of the 
 priesthood, have known well how best to stimulate and to 
 disjilay the sjiasmodic movements of a brainsick disin- 
 terestedness. I have not the shadow of a doubt that, once 
 and again, some jDriest might have been seen, with cold gray 
 eye, endeavouring to do a stroke of diplomacy by means of 
 the enthusiastic Catherine, making the fancied ambassadress 
 of Heaven in reality the tool of a schemer. Such unquestion- 
 able virtues as these visionaries may some of them have 
 possessed cannot be fairly set down to the credit of the 
 Church, which has used them all for mercenary or ambitious 
 purposes, and infected them everywhere with a morbid 
 character. Some of these mystics, floating down the great 
 ecclesiastical current of the Middle Age, appear to me like the 
 trees carried away by the inundation of some mighty tropical 
 river. They drift along the stream, passive, lifeless, broken ; 
 yet they are covered with gay verdure, the aquatic plants 
 hang and twine about the sodden timber and the draggled 
 leaves, the trunk is a sailing garden of flowers. But the 
 adornment is that of Nature — it is the decoration of another 
 and a strange element : the roots are in the air ; the boughs 
 which should be full of birds, are in the flood, covered by its 
 alien products, swimming side by side with the alligator. So 
 has this priestcraft swept its victims from their natui-al place 
 and independent gi'owth, to clothe them in their helplessness 
 with a false spiritual adornment, neither scriptural nor human, 
 but ecclesiastical — the native product of that overwhelming 
 superstition which has subverted and enslaved their nature. 
 The Church of Eome takes care that while simple souls think 
 they are cultivating Christian graces they shall be forging 
 their OAvn chains; that their attempts to honour God shall 
 always dishonour, because they disenfranchise themselves. 
 To be humble, to be obedient, to be charitable, under such 
 direction, is to be contentedly ignorant, pitiably abject, and 
 notoriously swindled. 
 
3;.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. ;n9 
 
 ICr. Vaiighan cannot be too severe upon the Romish 
 priesthood. But it is one thing to dismiss with 
 summary contempt men, who, as they do, keep the 
 keys of knowledge, and neither enter in themselves 
 nor suffer others to enter, and quite another thiug to 
 apply the same summary jui-isdiction to men who, 
 under whatsoever confusions, are feeling earnestly 
 and honestly after truth. And therefore we regret 
 exceedingly the mock trial which he has introduced 
 into his Introduction. We regret it for his own sake; 
 for it will drive away from the book — indeed it has 
 driven — thoughtful and reverent people who, having 
 a strong though vague inclination toward the Mystics, 
 might be very profitably taught by the after pages to 
 separate the evil from the good in the Bernards and 
 Guyons whom they admire, they scarce know why ; 
 and will shock, too, scholars, to whom Hindoo and 
 Persian thoughts on these subjects are matters not of 
 ridicule but of solemn and earnest investigation. 
 
 Besides, the question is not so easily settled. Put- 
 ting aside the flippancy of the jDassage, it involves 
 something very like a petitio principii to ask offhand : 
 " Does the man mean a living union of heart to Christ, 
 a spiritual fellowship or converse with the Father, when 
 he talks of the union of the believer with God — parti- 
 cipation in the Divine nature ? " For first, what we 
 want to know is, the meaning of the words — what 
 means "living"? what "'union'"? what "heart"? They 
 are terms common to the Mystic and to the popular 
 religionist, only differently interpreted; and in the 
 meanings attributed to them lies nothing less than the 
 whole world-old disputebetweenNominalist andEealist; 
 
320 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 not yet to be settled iu two lines by two gentlemen 
 over tbeir wine, much less ignored as a thing settled 
 beyond all dispute already. If by ^'living union of heart 
 ■with" — Mr.Vaughan meant "identity of morals with" — 
 he should have said so : but he should have borne in 
 mind that all the great evangelicals have meant much 
 more than this by those words; that on the whole^ instead 
 of considering — as he seems to do, and we do — the moral 
 and the spiritual as identical, they have put them in 
 antithesis to each other^ and looked down upon " mere 
 morality^' just because it did not seem to them to in- 
 volve that supernatural, transcendental, " mystic " ele- 
 ment which they considered that they found in Scrip- 
 ture. From Luther to Owen and Baxter, from them 
 to Wesley, Cecil, and Venn, Newton, Bridges, the great 
 evangelical authorities would (not very clearly or con- 
 sistently, for they were but poor metaphysicians, but 
 honestly and earnestly) have accepted some modified 
 form of the Mystic's theory, even to the " discerning 
 in particular thoughts, frames, impulses, and inward 
 witnessings, immediate communications from heaven." 
 Surely Mr. Vaughan must be aware that the majority of 
 ''vital Christians " on this ground are among his mystic 
 offenders ; and that those who deny such possibilities 
 are but too liable to be stigmatised as " Pelagians," 
 and "Rationalists.'" His friend Atherton is bound to 
 show cause why those names are not to be applied to 
 him, as he is bound to show what he means by " living 
 union with Christ,'' and why he complains of the Mystic 
 for desiring " participation in the Divine nature." If 
 he does so, he only desires what the New Testament 
 formally, and word for word, promises him ; whatsoever 
 
X.] AIYSTICIS:\I AND 3IYSTICS. 321 
 
 be the meaning of the term, he is not to be blamed for 
 using it. Mr. Vaughan cannot have forgotten the 
 many expressions, both of St. Paul and St. John, 
 which do at first sight go far to justify the Mystic, 
 though they are but seldom heard, and more seldom 
 boldly commented on, in modern pulpits — -of Christ 
 being formed in men, dwelling in men ; of God dwell- 
 ing- in man and man in God; of Christ being the life 
 of men ; of men living, and moving, and having their 
 being in God ; and many another passage. If these be 
 mere metaphors let the fact be stated, with due reason 
 for it. But there is no sin or shame in interpi-eting 
 them in that literal and realist sense in which they 
 seem at first sight to have been written. The first 
 duty of a scholar who sets before himself to investigate 
 the phenomena of ''Mysticism,^' so called, should be to 
 answer these questions : Can there be a direct com- 
 munication, above and beyond sense or consciousness, 
 between the human spirit and God the Spirit ? And 
 if so, what are its conditions, where its limits, to 
 transcend which is to fall into " mysticism " ? 
 
 And it is just this which Mr. Vaughan fails in doing. 
 In his sketch, for instance, of the Mysticism of India, 
 he gives us a very clear and (save in two points) sound 
 summary of that " round of notions, occui-ring to minds 
 of similar make under similar circumstances,^' which is 
 " common to Mystics in ancient India and in modern 
 Christendom. '^ 
 
 Summarily, I would say this Hindoo mysticism — 
 
 (1) Lays claim to disinterested love as opposed to a 
 mercenary religion ; 
 
 (2) Eeacts against the ceremonial prescription and 
 pedantic literalism of the Yedas ; 
 
 L. G. Y 
 
322 HOUES WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 (3) Identifies, in its pantheism, subject and object, 
 AYOrshipper and worshipped ; 
 
 (4) Aims at ultimate absorption in the Infinite; 
 
 (5) Inculcates, as the ivay to this dissolution, absolute 
 passivity, withdrawal into the inmost self, cessation of all the 
 powers : giving recipes for procuring this beatific torpor or 
 trance ; 
 
 (6) Believes that eternity may thus be realised in time ; 
 
 (7) Has its mythical miraculous pretensions, i.e. its 
 theurgic department ; 
 
 (8) And, finally, advises the learner in this kind of religion 
 to submit himself implicitly to a spiritual guide — his Guru. 
 
 Against the two latter articles Tve except. The 
 theurgic department of Mysticism — unfortunately but 
 too common — seems to us always to have been (as it 
 certainly was in neo-Platonism) the despaii*ing return 
 to that ceremonialism which it had begun by shaking 
 off, when it was disappointed in reaching its high aim 
 by its proper method. The use of the Guru, or Father 
 Confessor (which Mr. Vaughan confesses to be incon- 
 sistent with Mysticism), is to be explained in the same 
 way — he is a last refuge after disappointment. 
 
 But as for the first six counts. Is the Hindoo 
 mystic a worse or a better man for holding them ? Are 
 they on the whole right or wrong ? Is not disinterested 
 love nobler than a mercenary religion ? Is it not 
 right to protest against ceremonial prescriptions, and 
 to say, with the later prophets and psalmists of the 
 Jews : " Thinkest thou that He will eat bull's flesh, and 
 drink the blood of goats. Sacrifice and burnt-offering 
 Thou wouldst not. ... I come to do thy will, O 
 God ! '' What is, even, if he will look calmly into it, 
 the "pantheistic identification of subject and object, 
 worshipper and worshipped,'^ but the clumsy yet honest 
 
'fn 
 
 X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS^' / \- j. 323 
 
 effort of the liuman mind to say to itself : '' Doing God s 
 will is tlie real end and aim of man ? " The Yogi looks 
 round upon his fellow-men, and sees that all their 
 misery and shame come from self-will ; he looks within, 
 and finds that all which makes him miserable, angry, 
 lustful, greedy after this and that, comes from the same 
 self-will. And he asks himself: How shall I escape 
 from this torment of self ? — how shall I tame mj way- 
 ward will, till it shall become one with the harmonious, 
 beautiful, and absolute Will which made all things ? 
 At least I will try to do it, whatever it shall cost me. 
 I will give up all for which men live — wife and child, 
 the sights, scents, sounds of this fair earth, all things, 
 whatever they be, which men call enjoyment ; I will 
 make this life one long torture, if need be ; but this 
 rebel will of mine I will conquer. I ask for no reward. 
 That may come in some future life. But what care I ? 
 I am now miserable by reason of the lusts which war 
 in my members ; the peace which I shall gain in being 
 freed from them will be its own reward. After all I 
 give up little. All these things round me — the 
 primeval forest, and the sacred stream of Ganga, the 
 mighty Himalaya, mount of God, ay, the illimitable 
 vault of heaven above me, sun and stars — what are 
 they but " such stuff as dreams are made of " ? Brahm 
 thought, and they became something and somewhere. 
 He may think again, and they will become nothing 
 and nowhere. Are these eternal, greater than I, worth 
 troubling my mind about ? Nothing is eternal, but 
 the Thought which made them, and will unmake them. 
 They are only venerable in my eyes, because each of 
 them is a thought of Brahm's. And I too have 
 
324 HOUES WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 tliouglit ; I alone of all tlie kinds of living tilings. Am 
 I not, then, akin to God ? wkat better for me than to 
 sit down and think, as Brahni thinks, and so enjoy my 
 eternal heritage, leaving for those who cannot think 
 the passions and pleasures which they share in common 
 with the beasts of the field ? So I shall become more 
 and more like Brahm — will his will^ think his thoughts, 
 till I lose utterly this house-fiend of self, and become 
 one with God. 
 
 Is this a man to be despised ? Is he a sickly dreamer, 
 or a too valiant hero ? and if any one be shocked at 
 this last utterance, let him consider carefully the words 
 which he may hear on Sunday : " Then we dwell in 
 Christ, and Christ in us ; we are one with Christ, and 
 Christ with us." That belief is surely not a false one. 
 Shall we abhor the Yogi because he has seen, sitting 
 alone there amid idolatry and licentiousness, despotism 
 and priestcraft, that the ideal goal of man is what we 
 confess it to be in the communion service ? Shall we 
 not rather wonder and rejoice over the magnificent 
 utterance in that Bhagavat-Gita which Mr. Vaughan 
 takes for the text-book of Hindoo Mysticism, where 
 Krishna, the teacher human, and yet God himself, 
 speaks thus : 
 
 There is nothing greater than I ; all things hang on me, as 
 precious gems npon a string. ... I am life in all things, and 
 zeal in the zealous. I am the eternal seed of nature : I ani 
 the understanding o£ the wise, the glory of the proud, the 
 strength of the strong, free from lust and anger. . . . Those 
 >vho trust in me know Brahm, the supreme and incorruptible. 
 ... In this body I am the teacher of worship. He who 
 thinks of me will find me. Se who finds me returns not again 
 to mortal birth. ... I am the sacrifice, I am the worshiji. 
 
X.] ilTSTICISM AND ]SIYSTIC3. 325 
 
 I am the incense, I am the fire, I am the victim, I am the 
 father and mother of the -world ; I am the road of the good, 
 the comforter, the creator, the witness, the asylum, and the 
 fi-iend. They who serve other Gods with a firm belief, in- 
 voluntarily worship me. I am the same to all mankind. 
 They who serve mo in adoration are in me. If one whose ways 
 ai-e ever so evil serve me alone, he becometh of a virtuous 
 spirit and obtaineth eternal happiness. Even women, and 
 the tribes of Visya and Soodra, shall go the supreme journey 
 if they take sanctuary with me ; how much more my holy 
 servants the Brahmins and the Eagarshees ! Consider this 
 world as a finite and joyless place, and serve me. 
 
 Tliere may be confused words scattered up and down 
 here; there are still more confused words — not im- 
 moral ones — round them, which we have omitted ; but 
 we ask, once and for all, is this true, or is it not ? Is 
 there a being who answers to this description, or is 
 there not ? And if there be, was it not a light price 
 to pay for the discovery of Him "to sit upon the sacred 
 grass called koos, with his mind fixed on one object 
 alone ; keeping his head, neck, and body steady, with- 
 out motion ; his eyes fixed upon the point of his nose, 
 looking at no other place around ^^ — or any other simple, 
 even childish, practical means of getting rid of the dis- 
 turbing bustle and noise of the outward time-world, 
 that he might see the eternal world which underlies it ? 
 What if the discovery be imperfect, the figure in many 
 features erroneous ? Is not the wonder to us, the 
 honour to him, that the figure should be there at 
 all ? Inexplicable to us on any ground, save that one 
 common to the Bhagavat-Gita, to the gospel. ''He who 
 seeks me shall find me.^' What if he knew but in part, 
 and saw through a glass darkly ? Was there not an 
 
32G HOUES WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 inspired apostle, wlio could but say tlie very same 
 tiling of himself, and look forward to a future life in 
 ■whicli lie would " know even as he was known " ? 
 
 It is well wortk observing too, that so far from the 
 moral of this Bhagavat-Gita issuing in mere contem- 
 plative Quietism, its purpose is essentially practical. It 
 arises out of Arjoun's doubt whether he shall join in 
 the battle which he sees raging below him ; it results 
 in his being commanded to join in it, and fight like a 
 man. We cannot see, as Mr. Yaughan does, an " un- 
 holy indifference" in the moral. Arjoun shrinks from 
 fighting because friends and relatives are engaged on 
 both sides, and he dreads hell if he kills one of them. 
 The answer to his doubt is, after all, the only one 
 which makes war permissible to a Christian, who looks 
 on all men as his brothers : 
 
 " You are a Ksahtree, a soldier ; your duty is to 
 fight. Do your duty, and leave the consequences of 
 it to him who commanded the duty. You cannot kill 
 these men^s souls any more than they can yours. You 
 can only kill their mortal bodies; the fate of their souls 
 and yours depends on their moral state. Kill their 
 bodies, then, if it be your duty, instead of tormenting 
 yourself with scruples, which are not really scruples of 
 conscience, only selfish fears of harm to yourself, and 
 leave their souls to the care of Him who made them, 
 and knows them, and cares more for them than you do." 
 
 This seems to be the plain outcome of the teaching. 
 What is it, mutatis mutandis, but the sermon " cold- 
 blooded " or not, which every righteous soldier has to 
 preach to himself, day by day, as long as his duty 
 commands him to kill his human brothers ? 
 
X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 327 
 
 Yet the fact is undeniable that Hindoo Mysticism 
 has failed of practical result — that it has died down 
 into brutal fakeerism. We look in vain, however, in 
 Mr. Vaughan^s chapter for an explanation of this fact, 
 save his assertion, which we deny, that Hindoo Mysti- 
 cism was in essence and at its root wrong and rotten. 
 Mr. Maurice (" Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy,^' 
 p. 46) seems to point to a more charitable solution. 
 ^' The Hindoo,^' he says, " whatsoever vast discovery 
 he may have made at an early period of a mysterious 
 Teacher near him, working on his spirit, who is at the 
 same time Lord over nature, began the search from 
 himself — he had no other point from whence to begin 
 — and therefore it ended in himself. The purification 
 of his individual soul became practically his highest 
 conceivable end ; to carry out that he must separate 
 from society. Yet the more he tries to escape self 
 the more he finds self; for what are his thoughts 
 about Brahm, his thoughts about Krishna, save his 
 own thoughts ? Is Brahm a projection of his own 
 soul ? To sink in him, does it mean to be nothing ? 
 Am I, after all, my own law ? And hence the down- 
 ward career into stupid indifferentism, even into 
 Autinomian profligacy.'" 
 
 The Hebrew, on the other hand, begins from the 
 belief of an objective external God, but One who cares 
 for more than his individual soul ; as One who is the 
 ever-present guide, and teacher, and ruler of his whole 
 nation ; who regards that nation as a whole, a one 
 person, and that not merely one present generation, 
 but all, past or future, as a one " Israel'^ — lawgivers, 
 prophets, priests, warriors. All classes are His ministers. 
 
328 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [s. 
 
 He is essentially a political deity^ wlio cares infinitely 
 for the polity of a nation^ and therefore bestows one 
 upon the7n — ''a law of Jehovah/-' Gradually, under 
 this teaching, the Hebrew rises to the very idea 
 of an inward teacher, which the Yogi had, and to 
 a far purer and clearer form of that idea ; but 
 he is not tempted by it to selfish individualism, or con- 
 templative isolation, as long as he is true to the old 
 Mosaic belief, that this being is the Political Deity, 
 '' the King of Kings." The Pharisee becomes a selfish 
 individualist just because he has forgotten this; the 
 Essene, a selfish '' mystic ^^ for the same reason ; Philo 
 and the Jewish mystics of Alexandria lose in like 
 manner all notion that Jehovah is the lawgiver, and 
 ruler, and archetype of family and of national life. 
 Christianity retained the idea; it brought out the 
 meaning of the old Jewish polity in its highest form ; 
 for that very reason it was able to bring out the 
 meaning of the " mystic " idea in its highest form also, 
 without injury to men's work as members of families, 
 as citizens, as practical men of the world ; and so to 
 conquer at last that Manichseau hatred of marriage 
 and parentage, which from the first to the sixteenth 
 century shed its Upas shade over the Church. 
 
 And here let us say boldly to J\Ir. Vaughan and to 
 our readers : As long as " the salvation of a man's own 
 soul ■" is set forth in all pulpits as the first and last end 
 and aim of mortal existence ; as long as Christianity is 
 dwelt on merely as influencing individuals each apart 
 —as " brands plucked, one here and another there, 
 from the general burning" — so long will Mysticism, in 
 its highest form be the refuge of the strongest spirits,. 
 
X.] :,IYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 32i) 
 
 and in its more base and diseased forms the refuge of 
 the weak and sentimental spirits. They will say, each 
 in his own way : " You confess that there can be a 
 direct relation, communion, inspiration, from God to 
 my soul, as I sit alone in my chamber. You do not 
 think that there is such between God and what you 
 call the world ; between Him and nations as wholes — 
 families, churches, schools of thought, as wholes ; that 
 He does not take a special interest, or exercise a special 
 influence, over the ways and works of men — over 
 science, commerce, civilisation, colonisation, all which 
 affects the earthly destinies of the race. All these you 
 call secular ; to admit His influence over them for their 
 own sake (though of course He overrules them for the 
 sake of His elect) savours of Pantheism. Is it so ? 
 Then we will give up the world. We will cling to the 
 one fact which you confess to be certain about us — that 
 we can take refuge in God, each in the loneliness of 
 his chamber, from all the vain turmoil of a race which 
 is hastening heedless into endless misery. You may 
 call us Mystics, or what you will. We will possess our 
 souls in patience, and turn away our eyes from vanity. 
 We will commune with our own hearts in solitude, and 
 be still. We will not even mingle in your religious 
 world, the world which you have invented for your- 
 selves, after denying that God's human world is sacred; 
 for it seems to us as full of intrigue, ambition, party- 
 spirit, falsehood, bitterness, and ignorance, as the poli- 
 tical world, or the fashionable world, or the scientific 
 world ; and we will have none of it. Leave us alone 
 with God,'' 
 
 This has been the true reason of mvstical isolation. 
 
330 HOURS WITH THE 3IYSTICS. [x. 
 
 in every age aiid country. So tliouglit Macarius and 
 tlie Christian fakeers of the Thebaid, So thought the 
 medieval monks and nuns. So thought the German 
 ■Quietists when they revolted from the fierce degrada- 
 tion of decaying Lutheranism. So are hundreds think- 
 ing now ; so may thousands think ere long. If the 
 individualising phase of Christianity which is now domi- 
 nant shall long retain its ascendancy, and the creed of 
 Dr. Cumming and Mr. Spurgeon become that of the 
 British people, our purest and noblest spirits will act 
 here, with regard to religion, as the purest and noblest 
 in Amei'ica have acted with regard to politics. They 
 will withdraw each into the sanctuary of his own heart, 
 and leave the battle-field to rival demagogues. They 
 will do wrong, it may be. Isolation involves laziness, 
 pride, cowardice; but if sober England, during the next 
 half-century, should be astonished by an outburst of 
 Mysticism, as grand in some respects, as fantastic in 
 others, as that of the thirteenth or the seventeenth 
 centuries, the blame, if blame there be, will lie with 
 those leaders of the public conscience who, after having 
 debased alike the Church of England and the dissent- 
 ing sects with a selfish individualism which was as 
 foreign to the old Cromwellite Ironside as to the High 
 Church divine, have tried to debar their disciples from 
 that peaceful and graceful Mysticism which is the only 
 excusable or tolerable form of religion beginning and 
 ending in self. 
 
 Let it be always borne in mind, that Quakerism was 
 not a protest against, or a revulsion from, the Church 
 of England, but from Calvinism. The steeple-houses, 
 against which George Fox testified, were not served by 
 
X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 331 
 
 Henry Mores, Cndwortlis, or Norrises : not even by- 
 dogmatist Higli-Cliurclnnenj but by Calvinist ministers, 
 wlio had ejected tliem. George Fox developed his own 
 scheme, such as it was, because the popular Protes- 
 tantism of his day failed to meet the deepest wants of 
 his heart ; because, as he used to say, it gave him " a 
 dead Christ," and he required '' a, living Christ." 
 Doctrines about who Christ is, he held, are not Christ 
 Himself. Doctrines about what He has done for man, 
 are not He himself. Fox held, that if Christ be a living 
 person, He must act (when He acted) directly on the 
 inost inward and central personality of him, George 
 Fox ; and his desire was satisfied by the discovery of 
 the indwelling Logos, or rather by its re-discovery, 
 after it had fallen into oblivion for centuries. Whether 
 he were right or wrong, he is a fresh instance of a 
 man's arriving, alone and unassisted, at the same idea 
 at which Mystics of all ages and countries have arrived: 
 a fresh corroboration of our belief, that there must be 
 some reality corresponding to a notion which has mani- 
 fested itself so variously, and among so many thousands 
 of every creed, and has yet arrived, by whatsoever 
 different paths, at one and the same result. 
 
 That he was more or less right — that there is 
 nothing in the essence of Mysticism contrary to practical 
 morality, Mr. Vaughan himself fully confesses. In his 
 fair and liberal chapters on Fox and the Early Quakers, 
 he does full justice to their intense practical benevo- 
 lence; to the important fact that Fox only lived to do 
 good, of any and every kind, as often as a sorrow to be 
 soothed, or an evil to be remedied, crossed his path. 
 "We only wish that he had also brought in the curious 
 
332 HOURS WITH THE MYSTICS. [x- 
 
 and affecting account of Fox's interview witli Cromwell, 
 in wliich lie tells us (and we will take Fox's word 
 against any man) that the Protector gave him to under- 
 stand, almost with tears, that there was that in Fox's 
 faith which he Avas seeking- in vain from the "ministers" 
 around him. 
 
 All we ask of ]\Ir. Vaughan is, not to be afraid of 
 his own evident liking for Fox; of his own evident 
 liking for Tauler and his school ; not to put aside the 
 question which their doctrines involve, with such half- 
 utterances as — 
 
 The Quakers are wrong, I think, in separating particular 
 movements and monitions as Divine, But, at the same time, 
 the " Tsdtness of the Spirit," as regards our state before God, 
 is something moi"e, I believe, than the mere attestation to the 
 wi'itten -word. 
 
 As for the former of these two sentences, he may be 
 quite right, for aught we know. But it must be said 
 on the other hand, that not merely Quakers, but decent 
 men of every creed and age, have — we may dare to say» 
 in proportion to their devoutness — believed in such 
 monitions ; and that it is hard to see how any man 
 could have arrived at the belief that a living person was 
 working on him, and not a mere unpersonal principle, 
 law, or afflatus — (spirit of the universe, or other me- 
 taphor for hiding materialism) — unless by believing,, 
 rightly or wrongly, in such monitions. For our only 
 inductive conception of a living person demands that 
 that person shall make himself felt by separate acts. 
 
 But against the second sentence we must protest. 
 The question in hand is not whether this " witness of 
 
X.] MYSTICISM AND MYSTICS. 333 
 
 the Spirit " " is sometliing more ^' tliau anything- else, 
 but whether it exists at all, and what it is. Why was 
 the book written, save to help toward the solution of 
 this very matter ? The question all through has been : 
 Can an immediate influence be exercised by the 
 Spirit of God on the spirit of man ? Mr. Vaughau 
 assents, and says (we cannot see why) that there is no 
 mysticism in such a belief. Be that as it may, what 
 that influence is, and how exercised, is all through the 
 de quo agitur of Mysticism. Mr. Vaughan, however, 
 seems here for awhile to be talking realism through an 
 admirable page, well worth perusal (pp. 204, 265). Yet 
 his grasp is not sure. We soon find him saying what 
 More and Fox would alike deny, that " The story of 
 Christ's life and death is our souFs food." No ; Christ 
 Himself is — would the Catholic Church and the Mystic 
 alike answer. And here again the whole matter in 
 dispute is (unconsciously to Mr. Vaughan) opened up 
 in one word. And if this sentence does not bear 
 directly on that problem, on what does it bear ? It was 
 therefore with extreme disappointment that on reading 
 this, and saying to ourselves : " Now we shall hear at 
 last what Mr. Vaughan himself thinks on the matter,'^ 
 we found that he literally turned the subject off, as if 
 not worth investigation, by making the next speaker 
 answer, apropos of nothing, that " the traditional 
 ascetism of the Friends is their fatal defect as a body.'' 
 Why, too, has Mr. Vaughan devoted a few lines 
 only to the great English Platonists, More, Norris, 
 Smith of Jesus, Gale, and Cudworth ? He says, 
 indeed, that they are scarcely Mystics, except in as far 
 as Platonism is always in a measure mystical. In our 
 
334 HOUES WITH THE MYSTICS. [x. 
 
 sense of tlie word they were all of them Mystics, aiici 
 of a very lofty type ; but surely Henry More is a 
 Mystic in Mr. Vaughan's sense also. If the author of 
 " Conjectura Cabbalistica " be not a mystical writer 
 {he himself uses the term without shame), who is ? 
 
 We hope to see much in this book condensed, much 
 modified, much worked out, instead of being left frag- 
 mentary and embryotic ; but whether our hope be 
 fulfilled or not, a useful and honourable future is before 
 the man who could write such a book as this is, in spite 
 of all defects. 
 
 >{; H< >!< ^ 5i; 
 
 Since the above was written, Mr. Vaughan's pre- 
 mature death has robbed us of a man who might have 
 done brave work, by lessening, through his own learn- 
 ing, the intellectual gulf which now exists between 
 English Churchmen and Dissenters. Dis alitor visum. 
 But Mr. Vaughan's death does not, I think, render it 
 necessary for me to alter any of the opinions expressed 
 here ; and least of all that in the last sentence, fulfilled 
 now more perfectly than I could have foreseen. 
 
FEEDERICK DENISON MAURICE. 
 IX MEMOEDVIM. 
 
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. 
 
 11^ MEMORIAM. 
 
 On Friday, tlie fifth of April, a notewortliy assemblage 
 gathered round an open vault in a corner of Highgate 
 Cemetery. Some hundreds of persons, closely packed 
 up the steep banks among the trees and shrubs, had 
 found in that grave a common bond of brotherhood. 
 I say, in that grave. They were no sect, clique, or 
 school of disciples, held together by community of 
 opinions. They were simply men and women, held 
 together, for the moment at least, by love of a man, 
 and that man, as they had believed, a man of God. 
 All shades of opinion, almost of creed, were represented 
 there; though the majority were members of the 
 Church of England — many probably reconciled to that 
 Church by him who lay below. All sorts and con- 
 ditions of men, and indeed of women, were there ; for 
 he had had a word for all sorts and conditions of men. 
 Most of them had never seen each other before — 
 would never see each other again. But each felt that 
 the man, however unknown to him who stood next 
 
 * Macmillan's Magazine, May 1872. 
 
33S FllEDERICK DEXISON MAURICE. [xf. 
 
 him, was indeed a brother in loyalty to that beautiful 
 soul, beautiful face, beautiful smile, beautiful voice, 
 from which, in public or in secret, each had received 
 noble impulses, tender consolation, loving correction, 
 and clearer and juster conceptions of God, of duty, of 
 the meaning of themselves and of the universe. And 
 ■when they turned and left his body there, the world — 
 as one said who served him gallantly and long — seemed 
 darker now he had left it; but he had stayed here 
 long enough to do the work for which he was fitted. 
 He had wasted no time, but died, like a valiant man, 
 at his work, and of his work. 
 
 He might have been buried in Westminster Abbey. 
 There was no lack of men of mark who held that such 
 a public recognition of his worth was due, not only to 
 the man himself, but to the honour of the Church of 
 England. His life had been one of rare sanctity ; he 
 was a philosopher of learning and acuteness, un- 
 surpassed by any man of his generation ; he had done 
 more than any man of that generation to defend the 
 Church's doctrines ; to recommend her to highly- 
 cultivated men and women ; to bring within her pale 
 those who had been born outside it, or had wandered 
 from it ; to reconcile the revolutionary party among 
 the workmen of the great cities with Christianity, 
 order, law; to make all ranks understand that if 
 Christianity meant anything, it meant that a man 
 should not merely strive to save his own soul after 
 death, but that he should live here the life of a true 
 citizen, virtuous, earnest, helpful to his human brethren. 
 He had been the originator of, or at least the chief 
 mover in, working-men's colleges, schemes for the 
 
si.J FKEDEKICK DEXISOX MAUEICE. 339 
 
 higher education of womeu, for the protection of the 
 weak and the oppressed. He had been the champion, 
 the organiser, the helper with his own money and 
 time, of that co-operative movement — the veiy germ 
 of the economy of the future — which seems now 
 destined to spread, and with right good results, to far 
 other classes, and in far other forms, than those of 
 which Mr. Maurice was thinking five-and-twenty years 
 ago. His whole life had been one of unceasing labour 
 for that which he believed to be truth and right, 
 and for the practical amelioration of his fellow- 
 creatures. He had not an enemy, unless it were here 
 and there a bigot or a dishonest man — two classes 
 who could not abide him, because they knew well that 
 he could not abide them. But for the rest, those from 
 whom he had differed most, with whom he had engaged, 
 ere now, in the sharpest controversy, had learned to 
 admire his sanctity, charity, courtesy — for he was the 
 most perfect of gentlemen — as well as to respect his 
 genius and learning. He had been welcomed to 
 Cambridge, by all the finer spii'its of the University, 
 as Professor of Moral Philosophy ; and as such, and 
 as the parish priest of St. Edward^s, he had done his 
 work — as far as failing health allowed — as none but 
 he could do it. Nothing save his own too-scrupulous 
 sense of honour had prevented him from accepting 
 some higher ecclesiastical preferment — which he would 
 have used, alas ! not for literary leisure, nor for the 
 physical rest whicli he absolutely required, but merely 
 as an excuse for greater and more arduous toil. If such 
 a man was not the man whom the Church of England 
 would delight to honour, who was the man ? But he 
 
 z 2 
 
340 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. [xu 
 
 was gone ; and a grave among England's worthies was 
 all that could be offered him now ; and it was offered. 
 But those whose will on such a point was law, judged 
 it to be more in keeping with the exquisite modesty 
 and humility of Frederick Denison Maurice, that he 
 should be laid out of sights though not out of mind, 
 by the side of his father and his mother. Well : be it 
 so. At least that green nook at Highgate will be a 
 sacred spot to hundreds — it may be to thousands — who 
 owe him more than they will care to tell to any created 
 being. 
 
 It was, after all, in this — in his personal influence 
 — that Mr. Maurice was greatest. True, he was a 
 great and rare thinker. Those who wish to satisfy 
 themselves of this should measure the capaciousness 
 of his intellect by studying — not by merely reading — 
 his Boyle Lectures on the Eeligions of the world ; and 
 that Kingdom of Christ, the ablest " Apology '' for the 
 Catholic Faith which England has seen for more than 
 two hundred years. The ablest, and perhaps practically 
 the most successful ; for it has made the Catholic Faith 
 look living, rational, practical, and practicable, to 
 hundreds who could rest neither in modified Puritanism 
 nor modified Romanism, and still less in scepticism, 
 however earnest. The fact that it is written from a 
 Realist j)oint of view, as all Mr. Maurice's books are, 
 will make it obscure to many readers. Nominalism is 
 just now so utterly in the ascendant, that most persons 
 seem to have lost the power of thinking, as well as of 
 talking, by any other method. But when the tide of 
 thought shall turn, this, and the rest of Mr. Maurice's 
 works, will become not only precious but luminous, to 
 
XI.] FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. 341 
 
 a generation wliicH will have recollected tliat substance 
 does not mean matter, tliat a person is not tlie net 
 result of his circumstances, and that the real is not the 
 visible Actual, but the invisible Ideal. 
 
 If anyone, again, would test Mr. Maurice^s faculty 
 as an interpreter of Scripture, let him study the two 
 volumes on the Gospel and the Epistles of St. John ; 
 and study, too, the two volumes on the Old Testament, 
 which have been (as a fact) the means of delivering 
 more than one or two from both the Eationalist and 
 the Mythicist theories of interpretation. I mention 
 these only as peculiar examples of Mr. Maurice^s power. 
 To those who have read nothing of his, I would say : 
 " Take up what book you will, you will be sure to find 
 in it something new to you, something noble, some- 
 thing which, if you can act on it, will make you a better 
 man.''^ And if anyone, on making the trial, should 
 say : " But I do not understand the book. It is to me 
 a new world;'' then it must be answered: ''^If you 
 wish to read only books which you can understand at 
 first sight, confine yourself to periodical literature. As 
 for finding yourself in a new world, is it not good 
 sometimes to do that ?— to discover how vast the 
 universe of mind, as well as of matter, is; that it 
 contains many worlds ; and that wise and beautiful 
 souls may and do live in more worlds than your own?'' 
 Much has been said of the obscurity of Mr. Maurice's 
 style. It is a question whether any great thinker will 
 be anything but obscure at times ; simply because he 
 is possessed by conceptions beyond his powers of ex- 
 pression. But the conceptions may be clear enough ; 
 and it may be worth the wise man's while to search for 
 
342 FREDEEICK DENISOX MAUEICE. [xi, 
 
 tliem under the imperfect words. Only tlius — to take 
 an illustrious instance — has St. Paul, often the most 
 ohscure of writers, become luminous to students ; and 
 there are those who will hold that St. Paul is by no 
 means understood yet ; and that the Calvinistic system 
 which has been built upon his Epistles, has been built 
 up upon a total ignoring of the gx-eater part of them, 
 and a total misunderstanding of the remainder : yet, 
 for all that, no Christian man will lightly shut up 
 St. Paul as too obscure for use. Really, when one con- 
 siders what worthless verbiage which men have ere 
 now, and do still, take infinite pains to make them- 
 selves fancy that they understand, one is tempted to 
 impatience when men confess that they will not take 
 the trouble of trying to understand Mr. Maurice. 
 
 Yet after all, I know no woi'k which gives a fairer 
 measure of Mr. Maurice's intellect, both political and 
 exegetic, and a fairer measure likewise, of the plain 
 downright common sense which he brought to bear on 
 each of so many subjects, than his Commentary on the 
 very book which is supposed to have least connection 
 with common sense, and on which common sense has 
 as yet been seldom employed — namely, the Apo- 
 calypse of St. John. That his method of interpretation 
 is the right one can hardly be doubted by those who 
 perceive that it is the one and only method on which 
 any fair exegesis is possible — namely, to ask : What 
 must these words have meant to those to whom they 
 were actually spoken ? That Mr. Maurice is more 
 reverent, by being more accurate, more spiritual, by 
 being more practical, in his interpretation than com- 
 mentators on this book have usually been, will be 
 
XI.] FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. 343 
 
 seen the more the book is studied, and found to 
 be what any and every commentary on the Reve- 
 lation ought to be — a mine of political wisdom. 
 Sayings will be found which will escape the 
 grasp of most readers, as indeed they do mine, so 
 pregnant are they, and swift revealing, like the 
 lightning-flash at night, a whole vision : but only for a 
 mementos space. The reader may find also details of 
 interpretation which are open to doubt ; if so, he will 
 remember that no man would have shrunk with more 
 horror than Mr. Maurice from the assumption of 
 infallibility. Meanwhile, that the author's manly con- 
 fidence in the reasonableness of his method will be 
 justified hereafter, I must hope, if the Book of Reve- 
 lation is to remain, as God grant it may, the political 
 text-book of the Christian Church. 
 
 On one matter, however, Mr. Maurice is never 
 obscure — on questions of right and wrong. As with 
 St. Paul, his theology, however seemingly abstruse, 
 always results in some lesson of plain practical 
 morality. To do the right and eschew the wrong-, 
 and that not from hope of reward or fear of punish- 
 ment — in which case the right ceases to be right — but 
 because a man loves the right and hates the wrong; 
 about this there is no hesitation or evasion in Mr. 
 Maurice's writings. If any man is in search of a 
 mere philosophy, like the neo-Platouists of old, or of a 
 mere system of dogmas, by assenting to which he will 
 gain a right to look down on the unorthodox, while he 
 is absolved from the duty of becoming a better man 
 than he is and as good a man as he can be — then 
 let him beware of Mr. Maurice's books, lest, while 
 
344 FKEDEEICK DENISON MAUEICE. [xi. 
 
 searching merely for "tliouglits tliat breathe," he should 
 stumble upon " words that burn/^ and were meant to 
 burn. His books, like himself, are full of that 6vfi6s, 
 that capacity of indignation, which Plato says is the 
 root of all virtues. " There was something," it has 
 been well said, "so awful, and j^et so Christ-like in its 
 awful sternness, in the expression which came over 
 that beautiful face when he heard of anything base or 
 cruel or wicked, that it brought home to the bystander 
 our Lord's judgment of sin." 
 
 And here, perhaps, lay the secret of the extraordinary 
 personal influence which he exercised ; namely, in that 
 truly formidable element which underlaid a character 
 which (as one said of him) "combined all that was 
 noblest in man and woman ; all the tenderness and all 
 the strength, all the sensitiveness and all the fire, of 
 both ; and with that a humility which made men feel 
 the utter baseness, meanness, of all pretension." For 
 can there be true love without wholesome fear ? And 
 does not the old Elizabethan "My dear dread" express 
 the noblest voluntary relation in which two human 
 souls can stand to each other ? Perfect love casteth 
 out fear. Yes : but where is love perfect among im- 
 perfect beings, save a mother's for her child ? For all 
 the rest, it is through fear that love is made perfect ; 
 fear which bridles and guides the lover with awe — 
 even though misplaced — of the beloved one's per- 
 fections; with dread — never misplaced — of the beloved 
 one's contempt. And therefore it is that souls who 
 have the germ of nobleness within, are drawn to souls 
 more noble than themselves, just because, needing 
 guidance, they cling to one before whom they dare 
 
XI.] PREDEEICK DEXISON MAURICE. ^ '/•;,, 345 
 
 not say or do, or even think, an ignoble tii^g-. , And 
 if these higher souls are — as they usually are — not 
 merely formidable, but tender likewise, and true, then 
 the influence which they may gain is unbounded, for 
 good — or, alas ! for evil — both to themselves and to 
 those that worship them. Woe to the man who, find- 
 ing that God has given him influence over human 
 beings for their good, begins to use it after awhile, 
 first only to carry out through them his own little 
 system of the Universe, and found a school or sect ; 
 and at last by steady and necessary degradation, 
 mainly to feed his own vanity and his own animal 
 sense of power. 
 
 But Mr. Maurice, above all men whom I have ever 
 met, conquered both these temptations. For, first, he 
 had no system of the Universe. To have founded a 
 sect, or even a school, would be, he once said, a sure 
 sign that he was wrong and was leading others 
 wrong. He was a Catholic and a Theologian, and 
 he wished all men to be such likewise. To be so, he 
 held, they must know God in Christ. If they knew 
 God, then with them, as with himself, they would 
 have the key which would unlock all knowledge, 
 ecclesiastical, eschatological (religious, as it is com- 
 monly called), historic, political, social. Nay even, so 
 he hoped, that knowledge of God would prove at last 
 to be the key to the right understanding of that 
 physical science of which he, unfortunately for the 
 world, knew but too little, but which he accepted with 
 a loyal trust in God, and in fact as the voice of God, 
 which won him respect and love from men of science 
 to whom his theology was a foreign world. If ho 
 
346 FREDERICK DEXISON MAURICE. [xi. 
 
 could make men know God, and therefore if lie could 
 make men know that God was teacliing tliem ; that 
 no man could see a thing unless God first showed it to 
 him — then all would go well^ and they might follow 
 the LogoSj with old Socrates, whithersoever he led. 
 Therefore he tried not so much to alter men^s convic- 
 tions, as, like Socrates, to make them respect their 
 own convictions, to be true to their own deepest 
 instincts, true to the very words which they used so 
 carelessly, ignorant alike of their meaning and their 
 wealth. He wished all men, all churches, all nations,, 
 to be true to the light which they had already, to 
 whatsoever was godlike, and therefore God-given, in 
 their own thoughts ; and so to rise from their partial 
 apprehensions, their scattered gleams of light, toward 
 that full knowledge and light which was contained — 
 so he said, even with his dying lips — in the orthodox 
 Catholic faith. This was the ideal of the man and his 
 work ; and it left him neither courage nor time to 
 found a school or promulgate a system. God had His 
 own system : a system vaster than Augustine's, vaster 
 than Dante's, vaster than all the thoughts of all 
 thinkers, orthodox and heterodox, put together; for 
 God was His own system, and by Him all things con- 
 sisted, and in Him they lived and moved and had their 
 being ; and He was here, living and working, and we 
 Avere living and working in Him, and had, instead of 
 building systems of our own, to find out His eternal: 
 laws for men, for nations, for churches ; for only in 
 obedience to them is Life. Yes, a man who held this 
 could found no system. " Other foundation," he used 
 to say, " can no man lay, save that which is laid, even. 
 
XI.] FREDERICK DENISOX MAURICE. 317 
 
 Jesus Christ." And as lie said it, liis voice and eye 
 told those who heard him that it was to him the most 
 potent, the most inevitable, the most terrible, and yet 
 the most hopeful, of all facts. 
 
 As for temptations to vanity, and love of power — 
 he may have had to jSght with them in the heyday of 
 youth, and genius, and perhaps ambition. But the 
 stories of his childhood are stories of the same gene- 
 rosity, courtesy, unselfishness, which graced his later 
 years. At least, if he had been tempted, he had con- 
 quered. In more than five-and-twenty years, I have 
 known no being so utterly unselfish, so utterly humble, 
 so utterly careless of power or influence, for the mere 
 enjoyment — and a terrible enjoyment it is — of using 
 them. Staunch to his own opinion only when it 
 seemed to involve some moral principle, he was almost 
 too ready to yield it, in all practical matters, to anyone 
 whom he supposed to possess more practical knowledge 
 than he. To distrust himself, to accuse himself, to 
 confess his proneness to hard judgments, while, to the 
 eye of those who knew him and the facts, he was 
 exercising a splendid charity and magnanimity; to 
 hold himself up as a warning of " wasted time," while 
 he was, but too litei'ally, working himself to death — 
 this was the childlike temper which made some lower 
 spirits now and then glad to escape from their con- 
 sciousness of his superiority by patronising and pitying* 
 him; causing in him — for he was, as all such great 
 men are like to be, instinct with genial humour — a 
 certain quiet good-natured amusement, but nothing 
 more. 
 
 Bat it was that very humility, that very self- 
 
348 FEEDERICK DEXISON MAUEICE. [xi. 
 
 xlistrust, combined so strangely witli manful strengtli 
 and sternness, which drew to him humble souls, 
 self-distrustful souls, who, like him, were full of 
 the " Divine discontent ; " who lived — as perhaps all 
 men should live — angry with themselves, ashamed 
 ■of themselves, and more and more angry and 
 ashamed as their own ideal grew, and with it 
 their consciousness of defection from that ideal. To 
 him, as to David in the wilderness, gathered those 
 who were spu'itually discontented and spiritually in 
 debt ; and he was a captain over them, because, like 
 David, he talked to them, not of his own genius or his 
 own doctrines, but of the Living God, who had helped 
 their forefathers, and would help them likewise. How 
 great his influence was ; what an amount of teaching, 
 consolation, reproof, instruction in righteousness, that 
 •man found time to pour into heart after heart, with a 
 •fit word for man and for woman ; how wide his sym- 
 •pathies, how deep his understanding of the human 
 heart ; how many sorrows he has lightened ; how many 
 w^andering feet set right, will never be known till the 
 •day when the secrets of all hearts ai-e disclosed. His 
 forthcoming biography, if, as is hoped, it contains a 
 selection from his vast correspondence, will tell some- 
 thing of all this : but how little ! The most valuable 
 of his letters will be those which were meant for no 
 eye but the recipient's, and which no recipient would 
 give to the world — hardly to an ideal Church; and what 
 he has done will have to be estimated by wise men 
 hereafter, when (as in the case of most great geniuses) 
 a hundred indirect influences, subtle, various, often 
 
XI.] FEEDERICK DENISON MAUIUCE. 349' 
 
 seemingly contradictory^ will be found to have had 
 tlieir origin in Frederick Maurice. 
 
 And thus I end what little I have dared to say. 
 There is much behind^ even more worth saying, which 
 must not be said. Perhaps some far wiser men than 
 I will think that I have said too much already, and 
 be inclined to answer me as Elisha of old answered 
 the over-meddling sons of the prophets : 
 
 " Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy 
 master from thy head to-day ? '^ 
 
 " Yea, I know it : hold ye your peace.^' 
 
PHAETHON ; 
 
 OR, 
 
 LOOSE THOrOHTS FOR LOOSE THINKERS. 
 
PHAETHOSf ; 
 
 LOOSE THOUGHTS FOR LOOSE THIOTvEES. 
 
 Templeton and I were lounging by tlie clear limestone 
 stream which crossed his park and wound away round 
 wooded hills toward the distant Severn, A lovelier 
 fishing morning sportsman never saw. A soft gray 
 under-roof of cloud slid on before a soft west wind, 
 and here and there a stray gleam of sunlight shot into 
 the vale across the purple mountain-tops, and awoke 
 into busy life the denizens of the water, already 
 quickened by the mysterious electric influences of the 
 last night's thunder-shower. The long-winged cin- 
 namon-flies spun and fluttered over the pools; the 
 sand-bees hummed merrily round their burrows in the 
 marly bank ; and delicate iridescent ephemerse rose by 
 hundreds from the depths, and, dropping their shells, 
 floated away, each a tiny Venus Anadyomene, down 
 the glassy ripples of the reaches. Every moment a 
 heavy splash beneath some overhanging tuft of milfoil 
 or water hemlock proclaimed the death-doom of a 
 
354 PHAETHON. [xir. 
 
 hapless beetle who had dropped into the stream 
 beneath ; yet still we fished and fished, and caught 
 nothing, and seemed utterly careless about catching 
 anything; till the old keeper who followed us, sighing 
 and shrugging his shoulders, broke forth into open 
 remonstrance : 
 
 "Excuse my liberty, gentlemen, but what ever is 
 the matter with you and master, sir ? I never did see 
 you miss so many honest rises before." 
 
 " It is too true," said Tempieton to me with a 
 laugh. " I must confess I have been dreaming instead 
 of fishing the Avhole morning. But what has happened 
 to you, who are not as apt as I am to do "nothing by 
 trying to do two things at once ? " 
 
 " My hand may well be somewhat unsteady ; for 
 to tell the truth, I sat up all last night writing.^ ^ 
 
 "A hopeful preparation for a day^s fishing in lime- 
 stone water ! But what can have set you on writing- 
 all night after so busy and talkative an evening as the 
 last, ending too, as it did, somewhere about half-past 
 twelve ? " 
 
 ^'Perhaps the said talkative evening itself; and I 
 suspect, if you will confess the truth, you will say 
 that your morning's meditations are running very 
 much in the same channel.^' 
 
 " Lewis," said he, after a pause, " go up to the 
 hall, and bring some luncheon for us down to the 
 lower waterfall." 
 
 " And a wheelbarrow to carry home the fish, sir ? '' 
 
 " If you wish to warm yourself, certainly. And 
 now, my good fellow," said he, as the old keeper 
 toddled away up the park, " I will open my heart — a 
 
xii.l THAETHON. 355 
 
 process for whicli I have but few opportunities here — 
 to an old college friend. I am disturbed and saddened 
 by last uig-lit^s talk and by last night's guest." 
 
 " By the American professor ? How, in the 
 name of English exclusiveness, did such a rampantly 
 heterodox spiritual guerilla invade the respectabilities 
 and conservatisms of Herefordshire ? " 
 
 " He was returning from a tour through Wales, and 
 had introductions to me from some Manchester friends 
 of mine, to avail himself of which I found he had 
 gone some thirty miles out of his way.'^ 
 
 " Complimentary to you, at least.'' 
 
 " To Lady Jane, I suspect, rather than to me; for 
 he told me broadly enough that all the flattering at- 
 tentions which he had received in Manchester — where, 
 you know, all such prophets are received with open 
 arms, their only credentials being that, whatsoever 
 they believe, they shall not believe the Bible — had 
 not given him the pleasure which he had received 
 fi-om that one introduction to what he called ' the 
 inner hearth-life of the English landed aristocracy.' 
 But what did you think of him ? " 
 
 " Do you really wish to know ? " 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " Then, honestly, I never heard so much magnilo- 
 quent unwisdom talked in the same space of time. It 
 was the sense of shame for my race which kept me 
 silent all the evening. I could not trust myself to 
 argue with a gray-haired Saxon man, whose fifty years 
 of life seemed to have left him a child in all but the 
 childlike heart which alone can enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven." 
 
356 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 "You are severe/' said Templeton, smilingly 
 though, as if his estimate were not very different from 
 mine. 
 
 " Can one help being severe when one hears 
 irreverence poured forth from reverend lips ? I do not 
 mean merely irreverence for the Catholic Creeds ; that to 
 my mind — God forgive me if I misjudge him — seemed 
 to me only one fruit of a deep root of irreverence for all 
 things as they are, even for all things as they seem. 
 Did you not remark the audacious contempt for all ages 
 but ''our glorious nineteenth century/ and the still 
 deeper contempt for all in the said glorious time who 
 dared to believe that there was any ascertained truth 
 independent of the private fancy and opinion of — for 
 I am afraid it came to that — him, Professor Windrush, 
 and his circle of elect souls ? ' You may believe 
 nothing if you like, and welcome ; but if you do take 
 to that unnecessary act, you are a fool if you believe 
 anything but what I believe — though I do not choose 
 to state what that is/ Is not that, now, a pretty 
 fair formulisation of his doctrine ? " 
 
 " But, my dear raver,'' said Templeton, laughing, 
 *' the man believed at least in physical scieiice. I am 
 sure we heard enough about its triumphs." 
 
 *' It may be so. But to me his very ' spiritualism ' 
 seemed more materialistic than his physics. His notion 
 seemed to be, though heaven forbid that I should say 
 that he ever put it formally before himself " 
 
 " Or anything else," said Templeton, sotto voce. 
 
 " — that it is the spiritual world which is governed 
 by physical laws, and the physical by spiritual ones ; 
 that while men and women are merely the puppets of 
 
XII.] PHAETHON. 357 
 
 cerebrations and mentations, and attractions and re- 
 pulsions, it is the trees, and stones, and gases, who 
 have the wills and the energies, and the faiths and the . 
 virtues and the personalities/^ 
 
 *' You are caricaturing.'' 
 
 " How so ? How can I judge otherwise, when I 
 hear a man talking, as he did, of God in terms which, 
 every one of them involved what we call the essential 
 properties of matter — space, time, passibility, motion ; 
 setting forth phrenology and mesmerism as the great 
 organs of education, even of the regeneration of man- 
 kind; apologising for the earlier ravings of the 
 Poughkeepsie seer, and considering his later eclectico- 
 pautheist farragos as great utterances : while, when- 
 ever he talked of Nature, he showed the most credulous 
 craving after everything which we, the countrymen of 
 Bacon, have been taught to consider unscientific — 
 Homoeopathy, Electro-biology, Loves of the Plants 
 ti la Darwin, Vestiges of Creation, Vegetarianisms, 
 Teetotalisms — never mind what, provided it was un- 
 accredited or condemned by regularly educated men of 
 science ? " 
 
 "But you don't mean to assert that there is 
 nothing in any of these theories V 
 
 '^ Of course not. I can no more prove a universal 
 negative about them than I can about the existence 
 of life on the moon. But I do say that this contempt 
 for that which has been already discovex*ed — this care- 
 lessness about induction from the normal phenomena, 
 coupled with this hankering after theories built upon 
 exceptional ones — this craving for 'signs and wonders,' 
 which is the sure accompaniment of a dying faith in 
 
358 PHAETHOX. [xir. 
 
 God, and in nature as God^s work — are symptoms 
 wliicli make me tremble for tlie fate of pliysical as well 
 as of spiritual science, botli in America and in tlie 
 Americanists liere at home. As the Professor talked 
 on, I could not help thinking of the neo-Platonists of 
 Alexandria, and their exactly similar course — down- 
 ward from a spiritualism of notions and emotions, 
 which in every term confessed its own materialism, to 
 the fearful discovery that consciousness does not 
 reveal God, not even matter, but only its own existence; 
 and then onward, in desperate search after something- 
 external wherein to trust, towards theurgic fetish 
 worship, and the secret virtues of gems and flowers 
 and stars; and, last of all, to the lowest depth of 
 bowing statues and winking pictures. The sixth 
 century saw that career, Templeton; the nineteenth 
 may see it re-enacted, with only these differences, that 
 the Nature-worship which seems coming will be all the 
 more crushing and slavish, because we know so much 
 better how vast and glorious Nature is ; and that the 
 superstitions will be more clumsy and foolish in pro- 
 portion as our Saxon brain is less acute and discursive, 
 and our education less severely scientific, than those 
 of the old Greeks." 
 
 " Silence, raver ! " cried Templeton, throwing* 
 himself on the grass in fits of laughter. "So the 
 Professor's grandchildren will have either turned 
 Papists, or be bowing down before rusty locomotives 
 and broken electric telegraphs ? But, my good friend, 
 you surely do not take Professor Windrush for a fair 
 sample of the great American people ? " 
 
 " God forbid that so unpractical a talker should be 
 
xu.] PHAETHON. 359 
 
 a sample of tlie most practical people upon eartli. 
 The Americans have their engineers, their geographers, 
 their astronomers, their scientific chemists ; few indeed, 
 but such as bid fair to rival those of any nation upon 
 earth. But these, like other true workers, hold their 
 tongues and do their business." 
 
 " And they have a few indigenous authors too : 
 you must have read the ' Biglow Papers,^ and the 
 'Fable for Critics,^ and last but not least, 'Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin^?" 
 
 " Yes ; and I have had far less fear for Americans 
 since I read that book ; for it showed me that there 
 was right healthy power, artistic as well as intellectual, 
 among them even now — ready, when their present 
 borrowed peacocks' feathers have fallen off, to come 
 forth and prove that the Yankee Eagle is a right 
 gallant bird, if he will but trust to his own natural 
 plumage." 
 
 " And they have a few statesmen also." 
 
 "But they are curt, plain-spoken, practical — in 
 everything antipodal to the knot of hapless men, who, 
 unable from some defect or morbidity to help on the 
 real movement of their nation, are fain to get their 
 bread with tongue and pen, by retailing to ' silly 
 women,' ' ever learning and never coming to the 
 knowledge of the truth,' second-hand German eclec- 
 ticisms, now exploded even in the country where they 
 arose, and the very froth and scum of the Medea's 
 caldron, in which the disjecta membra of old Calvinism 
 are pitiably seething." 
 
 " Ah ! It has been always the plan, you know, in 
 England, as well as in America, courteously to avoid 
 
360 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 taking up a German theory till tlie Germans liad quite 
 done witli it^ and thrown it away for something new. 
 But what are we to say of those who are trying to 
 introduce into England these very Americanised 
 Germanisms, as the only teaching which can suit the 
 needs of the old world ? '■' 
 
 " We will, if we are in a vulgar humour, apply to 
 them a certain old proverb about teaching one's 
 grandmother a certain simple operation on the q^^ of 
 the domestic fowl ; but we will no less take shame to 
 ourselves, as sons of Alma Mater, that such nonsense 
 can get even a day^s hearing, either among the 
 daughters of Manchester manufactui^ers, or among 
 London working men. Had we taught them what we 
 were taught in the schools, Templeton " 
 
 '' Alas, my friend, we must ourselves have leaimt it 
 first. I have no right to throw stones at the poor 
 Professor, for I could not answer him.'' 
 
 " Do not suppose that I can either. All I say is — • 
 mankind has not lived in vain. Least of all has it 
 lived in vain during the last eighteen hundred years. 
 It has gained something of eternal truth in every age, 
 and that which it has gained is as fresh and young 
 now as ever ; and I will not throw away the bird in 
 the hand for any number of birds in the bush.'^ 
 
 " Especially when you suspect most of them to be 
 only wooden pheasants, set up to delude poachers. 
 Well, you are far more of a Philister and a Conservative 
 than I thought you." 
 
 " The New is coming, I doubt not ; but it must 
 gi'ow organically out of the Old — not root the old up, 
 and stick itself full-grown into the place thereof, like 
 
xii.J PHAETHOX. 361 
 
 a Frencli tree of liberty — sure of mucli tlie same fate. 
 Other foundation can no man lay than that which is 
 laid already, in spiritual things or in physical ; as the 
 Professor and his school will surely find/^ 
 
 *'You recollect to whom the Bible applies that 
 text ? " 
 
 '' I do/^ 
 
 " And yet you say you cannot answer the Pro- 
 fessor ? " 
 
 " I do not care to do so. There are certain root- 
 truths which I know, .because they have been dis- 
 covered and settled for ages ; and instead of accepting 
 the challenge of every I-know-not-whom to re-examine 
 them, and begin the world's work all over again, I will 
 test his theories by them ; and if they fail to coincide, 
 I will hear no more speech about the details of the 
 branches and flowers, for I shall know the root is 
 rotten. '^ 
 
 " But he, too, acknowledged certain of those root- 
 truths,'^ said Templeton, who seemed to have a linger- 
 ing sympathy with my victim ; " he insisted most 
 strongly, and spoke, you will not deny, eloquently and 
 nobly on the Unity of the Deity." 
 
 " On the non-Trinity of it, rather ; for I will not 
 degrade the word ' Him,' by applying it here. But, 
 tell me honestly — cest le timbre qui fait la ■musirjiie — ■ 
 did his ' Unity of the Deity ' sound in your English 
 Bible-bred heart at all like that ancient, human, 
 personal ' Hear, O Israel ! the Lord thy God is one 
 Lord'?" 
 
 " Much more like ' The Something our Nothing is 
 one Something.' " 
 
362 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 " May we not suspect, then, that his notion of the 
 ' Unity of the Deity ' does not quite coincide with the 
 foundation ah-eady laid, whosesoever else may ? " 
 
 " You are assuming rather hastily/^ 
 
 "Perhaps I may prove also, some day or other. 
 Do you think, moreover, that the theory which he so 
 boldly started, when his nerves and his manners were 
 relieved from the unwonted pressure by Lady Jane 
 and the ladies going upstairs, was part of the same old 
 foundation ? " 
 
 " Which, then ? " 
 
 " That, if a man does but believe a thing, he has a 
 right to speak it and act on it, right or wrong. Have 
 you forgotten his vindication of your friend, the 
 radical voter, and his ' spirit of truth ' ? " 
 
 " What, the worthy who, when I canvassed him as 
 
 the Liberal candidate for , and promised to support 
 
 complete freedom of religious opinion, tested me by 
 breaking out into such blasphemous ribaldry as made 
 me run out of the house, and then weut and voted 
 against me as a bigot ? '' 
 
 " I mean him, of course. The Professor really 
 seemed to admire the man, as a more brave and con- 
 scientious hero than himself. I am not squeamish, as 
 you know ; but I am afraid that I was quite rude to 
 him when he went as far as that.^^ 
 
 " What — when you told him that you thought that, 
 after all, the old theory of the Divine Eight of Kings 
 was as plausible as the new theory of the Divine Right 
 of Blasphemy ? My dear fellow, do not fret yourself 
 on that point. He seemed to take it rather as a com- 
 pliment to his own audacity, and whispered to me that 
 
XII.] PHAETHOK 363 
 
 ' The Divine Right of Blaspliemj ' was an expression 
 of which Theodore Parker himself need not have been 
 ashamed.'" 
 
 " He was pleased to be complimentary. But, tell 
 me, what was it in his oratory which has so vexed the 
 soul of the country squire ? " 
 
 "That very argument of his, among many things. 
 I saw, or rather felt, that he was wrong ; and yet, as 
 I have said already, I could not answer him ; and, had 
 he not been my guest, should have got thoroughly 
 cross with him, as a pis-all er.'^ 
 
 " I saw it. But, my friend, used we not to read 
 Plato together, and enjoy him together, in old Cam- 
 "bridge days ? Do you not think that Socrates might 
 at all events have driven the Professor into a corner ? " 
 
 " He might : but I cannot. Is that, then, what 
 you were writing about all last night ? '' 
 
 " It was. I could not help, when I went out on 
 the terrace to smoke my last cigar, fancying to myself 
 how Socrates might have seemed to set you, and the 
 Professor, and that warm -hearted, right-headed, wrong- 
 tongued High-Church Curate, all together by the ears, 
 and made confusion worse confounded for the time 
 being, and yet have left for each of you some hint 
 whereby you might see the darling truth for which 
 you were barking, all the more cleai-ly in the light of 
 the one which you were howling down.^^ 
 
 " And so you sat up, and — I thought the corridor 
 smelt somewhat of smoke,''^ 
 
 " Forgive, and I will confess. I wrote a dialogue ; 
 — and here it is, if you choose to hear it. If there 
 are a few passages, or even many, which Plato would 
 
364 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 not have written, you will consider my age and inex- 
 perience, and forgive/^ 
 
 " My dear fellow, you forget that I, like yon, liave 
 been ten years away from dear old Alma-Mater, Plato, 
 the boats, and Potton Wood. My authorities now are 
 'Morton on Soils,' and 'Miles on the Horse's Foot.' 
 Read on, fearless .of my criticisms. Here is the water- 
 fall ; we will settle ourselves on Jane's favourite seat. 
 You shall discourse, and I, till Lewis brings the 
 luncheon, will smoke my cigar ; and if I seem to be- 
 looking at the mountain, don't fancy that I am only 
 counting how many young grouse those heath-burning 
 worthies will have left me by the twelfth." 
 
 So we sat down, and I began : 
 
 PHAETHON. 
 
 Alcibiades and I walked into the Pnyx early the 
 other morning, before the people assembled. There 
 we saw Socrates standing, having his face turned 
 toward the rising sun. Approaching him, we per- 
 ceived that he was praying ; and that so ardently, that 
 we touched him on the shoulder before he became^ 
 aware of our presence. 
 
 "You seem like a man filled with the God, 
 Socrates," said Alcibiades. 
 
 " Would that were true," answered he, " both of 
 me and of all who will counsel here this day. In fact, 
 I was praying for that very thing ; namely, that they 
 
^n.] PHAETHOX. 365 
 
 might have light to see the truth, in whatsoever matter 
 might be discussed hei'e." 
 
 " And for me also ? " said Alcibiades ; '' but I 
 have prepared my speech already/' 
 
 " And for you also, if you desire it — even though 
 some of your periods should be spoiled thereby. But 
 ■why are you both here so early, before any business 
 is stirring ? '' 
 
 " We were discussing-,'^ said I, " that very thing 
 for which we found you praying — namely, truth, and 
 what it might be." 
 
 " Perhaps you went a worse way toward discover- 
 ing it than I did. But let us hear. Whence did the 
 discussion arise ? " 
 
 " From something," said Alcibiades, " which 
 Protagoras said in his lecture yesterday — How truth 
 was what each man troweth, or believeth, to be true. 
 * So that,' he said, ' one thing is true to me, if I believe 
 it true, and another opposite thing to you, if you be- 
 lieve that opposite. For,' continued he, ' there is an 
 objective and a subjective truth ; the former, doubt- 
 less, one and absolute, and contained in the nature of 
 each thing ; but the other manifold and relative, 
 varying with the faculties of each percciver thereof.' 
 But as each man's faculties, he said, were different 
 from his neighbour's, and all more or less imperfect, 
 it was impossible that the absolute objective truth of 
 anything could be seen by any mortal, but only some 
 partial approximation, and, as it were, sketch of it, 
 according as the object was represented with more or 
 less refraction on the mirror of his subjectivity. And 
 therefore, as the true incjuirer deals only with the 
 
366 PHAETHON. [xir. 
 
 possible, and lets the impossible go, it was tbe business 
 of the wise man, shunning the search after absolute 
 truth as an impious attempt of the Titans to scale 
 Olympus, to busy himself humbly and practically with 
 subjective truth, and with those methods — rhetoric, 
 for instance — by which he can make the subjective 
 opinions of others either similar to his own, or, leaving 
 them as they are — for it may be very often unnecessary 
 to change them — useful to his own ends/^ 
 
 Then Socrates, laughing : 
 
 " My fine fellow, you will have made more than 
 one oration in the Pnyx to-day. And indeed, I 
 myself felt quite exalted, and rapt aloft, like Bel- 
 lerophon on Pegasus, upon the eloquence of Protagoras 
 and you. But yet forgive me this one thing ; for 
 my mother bare me, as you know, a man-midwife, 
 after her own trade, and not a sage.^' 
 
 Alcibiades. " What then ? " 
 
 Socrates. " This, my astonishing friend — for really 
 I am altogether astonished and struck dumb, as I 
 always am whensoever I hear a brilliant talker like 
 you discourse concerning objectivities and subjec- 
 tivities, and such mysterious words ; at such moments 
 I am like an old war-horse, who, though he will rush 
 on levelled lances, shudders and sweats with terror at 
 a boy rattling pebbles in a bladder ; and I feel alto- 
 gether dizzy, and dread lest I should suffer some such 
 transformation as Scylla, when I hear awful words, 
 like incantations, pronounced over me, of which I, 
 being no sage, understand nothing. But tell me now, 
 Alcibiades, did the opinion of Protagoras altogether 
 please you ? " 
 
XII.] PHAETHOX. 367 
 
 A. " Why not ? Is it not certain that two equally 
 honest men may differ in their opinions on the same 
 matter ? " 
 
 S. "Undeniable/' 
 
 A. " But if each is equally sincere in speaking 
 what he believes, is not each equally moved by the 
 spirit of truth ? " 
 
 S. "You seem to have been lately initiated, and 
 that not at Eleusis merely, nor in the Cabiria, but 
 rather in some Persian or Babylonian mysteries, when 
 you discourse thus of spirits. But you, Phaethon " 
 (turning to me), " how did you like the periods of 
 Protagoras ? '^ 
 
 " Do not ask me, Socrates,'^ said I, " for indeed 
 we have fought a weary battle together ever since 
 sundown last night, and all that I had to say I learnt 
 from you/' 
 
 S. "From me, good fellow ? " 
 
 Phaethon. "Yes, indeed. I seemed to have heard 
 from you that ti'uth is simply ' facts as they are.' But 
 wdien I urged this on Alcibiades, his arguments 
 seemed superior to mine." 
 
 A. " But I have been telling him, drunk and 
 sober, that it is my opinion also as to what truth is. 
 Only I, with Protagoras, distinguish between objective 
 fact and subjective opinion." 
 
 S. " Doing rightly, too, fair youth. But how comes 
 it then that you and Phaethon cannot agree ? " 
 
 " That," said I, "you know better than either of us." 
 
 " You seem both of you," said Socrates, " to be, 
 as usual, in the family way. Shall I exercise my 
 profession on you ? " 
 
368 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 " No, by Zeus ! " answered AlcibiadeSj laughing ; 
 "I fear thee, thou juggler, lest I suffer once again 
 the same fate with the woman in the myth, and after 
 I have conceived a fair man-child, and, as I fancy, 
 brought it forth, thou hold up to the people some dead 
 puppy, or log, or what not, and cry : 'Look what 
 Alcibiades has produced ! ' " 
 
 S. " But, beautiful youth, before I can do that, 
 you will have spoken your oration on the bema, and 
 all the people will be ready and able to say ' Absurd ! 
 Nothing but what is fair can come from so fair a body/ 
 Come, let us consider the question together." 
 
 I assented willingly ; and Alcibiades, mincing and 
 pouting, after his fashion, still was loath to refuse. 
 
 S. "Let us see, then. Alcibiades distinguishes, 
 he says, between objective fact and subjective 
 opinion ? " 
 
 A. " Of course I do." 
 
 S. " But not, I presume, between objective truth 
 and subjective truth, whereof Protagoras spoke ? " 
 
 A. " What trap are you laying now ? I distinguish 
 between them also, of course." 
 
 S. " Tell me, then, dear youth, of your indulgence, 
 what they are ; for I am shamefully ignorant on the 
 matter." 
 
 A. "Why, do they not call a thing objectively 
 true, when it is true absolutely in itself; but 
 subjectively true, when it is true in the belief of a 
 particular person ? " 
 
 S. " — Though not necessarily true objectively, 
 that is, absolutely and in itself ? " 
 
 A. "No." 
 
xu.] PHAETHOX. 369 
 
 S. " But possibly true so ?" 
 
 A. ''' Of course/'' 
 
 S. " Now, tell me — a thing is objectively true, is it 
 not, wlien it is a fact as it is ? '' 
 
 A. '-'Yes.'' 
 
 S. " And when it is a fact as it is not, it is ob- 
 jectively false ; for such a fact would not be true 
 absolutely, and in itself, woidd it ? " 
 
 A. " Of coarse not." 
 
 S. " Such a fact would be, therefore, no fact, and 
 nothing.'"' 
 
 A. ^^•' Why so ? " 
 
 S. ••' Because, if a thing exists, it can only exist as 
 it is, not as it is not ; at least my opinion inclines that 
 way/"' 
 
 '*' Certainly not,'^ said I ; ^'why do you haggle so, 
 Alcibiades ? " 
 
 S. "Fair and softly, Phaethon ! How do you 
 know that he is not fighting for wife and child, and 
 the altars of his gods ? But if he will agree with you 
 and me, he will confess that a thing which is objectively 
 false does not exist at all, and Ls nothing/' 
 
 A. " I suppose it is necessary to do so. But I 
 know whither you are struggling." 
 
 S. "To this, dear youth, that, therefore, if a thing 
 subjectively true be also objectively false, it does not 
 exist, and is nothing." 
 
 " It is so,'' said L 
 
 S. " Let us, then, let nothing go its own way, while 
 we go on ours with that which is only objectively true, 
 lest coming to a river over which it is subjectively true 
 to us that there is a bridge, and trying to walk over 
 
370 PHAETHON. [xii- 
 
 that work of our own mind, but no one's hands, the 
 bridge prove to be objectively false, and we, walking 
 over the bank into the water, be set free from that 
 which is subjectively on the farther bank of Styx/' 
 
 Then I, laughing : " This hardly coincides, Alci- 
 biades, with Protagoras's opinion, that subjective truth 
 was alone useful/' 
 
 " But rather proves," said Socrates, " that undiluted 
 draughts of it are of a hurtful and poisonous nature, 
 and require to be tempered with somewhat of objective 
 truth, before it is safe to use them — at least in the 
 case of bridges." 
 
 " Did I not tell you," interrupted Alcibiades, "how 
 the old deceiver would try to put me to bed of some 
 dead puppy or log ? Or do you not see how, in order, 
 after his custom, to raise a laugh about the whole 
 question by vulgar examples, he is blinking what he 
 knows as well as I ? " 
 
 S. " What then, fair youth ? " 
 
 A. "That Protagoras was not speaking about 
 bridges, or any other merely physical things, on which 
 no difference of opinion need occur, because every one 
 can satisfy himself by simply using his senses ; but 
 concerning moral and intellectual matters, which are 
 not cognisable by the senses, and therefore permit, 
 without blame, a greater diversity of opinion. Error 
 on such points, he told us — on the subject of religion, 
 for example — was both pardonable and harmless ; for 
 no blame could be imputed to the man who acted 
 faithfully up to his own belief, whatsoever that might 
 be." 
 
 S. "Bravely spoken of him, and worthily of a free 
 
XII.] PHAETHON. 371 
 
 state. But tell me, Alcibiades, witli wliat matters does 
 religion deal ? " 
 
 A. " With the Gods." 
 
 S. " Then it is not hurtful to speak false things of 
 the Gods ? '' 
 
 A. " Not unless you know them to be false." 
 
 S. " But answer me this, Alcibiades. If you made 
 a mistake concerning numbers, as that twice two made 
 five, might it not be hurtful to you ? " 
 
 A. " Certainly ; for I might pay away five obols 
 instead of four." 
 
 S. ''And so be punished, not by any anger of two 
 and two against you, but by those very necessary laws 
 of number, which you had mistaken ? " 
 
 A. "Yes." 
 
 S. " Or if you made a mistake concerning music, 
 as that two consecutive notes could produce harmony, 
 that opinion also, if you acted upon it, would be hui'tful 
 to you ? " 
 
 A. " Certainly; for I should make a discord, and 
 pain my own ears, and my hearers'." 
 
 S. '' And in this case also, be punished, not by 
 any anger of the lyre against you, but by those very 
 necessary laws of music which you had mistaken ? " 
 
 A. "Yes." 
 
 S. "Or if you mistook concerning a brave man, 
 believing him to be a coward, might not this also be 
 hurtful to you ? If, for instance, you attacked him 
 carelessly, expecting him to run away, and he defended 
 himself valiantly, and conquered you ; or if you neg- 
 lected to call for his help in need, expecting him 
 
 falsely, as in the former case, to run away ; would not 
 
 o „ -o 
 
 w ii ^ 
 
372 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 sucli a mistake be liurtful to you, and punisli you, not 
 by any anger of the man against you, but by your 
 mistake itself ? " 
 
 A. " It is evident/^ 
 
 S. ^' We may assume, then, that sucb. mistakes 
 at least are burtful, and tbat tbey are liable to be 
 punished by the very laws of that concerning which 
 we mistake ? " 
 
 A. " We may so assume." 
 
 S. "Suppose, then, we were to say: ''What 
 argument is this of yours, Protagoras ? — that con- 
 cerning lesser things, both intellectual and moral, 
 such as concerning number, music, or the character 
 of a man, mistakes are hurtful, and liable to bring 
 punishment, in proportion to our need of using those 
 things : but concerning the Gods, the very authors 
 and lawgivers of number, music, human character, 
 and all other things whatsoever, mistakes are of no 
 consequence, nor in any way hurtful to man, who 
 stands in need of their help, not only in stress of 
 battle, once or twice in his life, as he might of the brave 
 man, but always and in all things both outward and 
 inward ? Does it not seem strange to you, for it does 
 to me, that to make mistakes concerning such beings 
 should not bring an altogether infinite and daily 
 punishment, not by any resentment of theirs, but, 
 as in the case of music or numbers, by the very fact 
 of our having mistaken the laws of their being-, on 
 which the whole universe depends ? ' — What do you 
 suppose Protagoi-as would be able to answer, if he 
 faced the question boldly ? " 
 
 A. " I cannot tell/' 
 
xii] PHAETHON. 373 
 
 S. "Noi' I either. Yet one thing more it may 
 be worth our while to examine. If one should mistake 
 concerning God, will his error be one of excess, or 
 defect ?^^ 
 
 A. " How can I tell ? " 
 
 S. ''Let us see. Is not Zeus more perfect than 
 all other beings ? " 
 
 A. " Certainly, if it be true that, as they say, 
 the perfection of each kind of being is derived from 
 him ; he must therefore be himself more perfect than 
 any one of those perfections." 
 
 S. "Well argued. Therefore, if he conceived of 
 himself, his conception of himself would be more 
 perfect than that of any man concerning him ? " 
 
 A. " Assuredly ; if he have that faculty, he must 
 needs have it in perfection." 
 
 S. " Suppose, then, that he conceived of one of 
 his own properties, such as his justice ; how large 
 would that pei'fect conception of his be ? " 
 
 A. " But how can I tell, Socrates ? " 
 
 S. "My good friend, would it not be exactly 
 commensurate with that justice of his ? " 
 
 A. "How then?" 
 
 S. " AVherein consists the perfection of any con- 
 ception, save in this, that it be the exact copy of that 
 whereof it is conceived, and neither greater nor 
 less?" 
 
 A. " I see now." 
 
 S. "Without the Pythia^s help, I should say. 
 But, tell me — We agree that Zeus's conception of 
 his own justice will be exactly commensurate with his 
 justice ? " 
 
374 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 A. '^Wedo." 
 
 S, "But man's conception thereof^ it lias been 
 agreed, would be certainly less perfect than Zeus^s ? " 
 
 A. "It would." 
 
 S. "Man, then, it seems, would always conceive 
 God to be less just tban God conceives himself to be ? " 
 
 A. "Hewould/^ 
 
 S. "And therefore to be less just, according to 
 the argument, than he really is ? " 
 
 A. "True.'' 
 
 S. " And therefore his error concerning Zeus, would 
 be in this case an error of defect ? " 
 
 A. " It would.'' 
 
 S. "And so on of each of his other properties ? " 
 
 A. " The same argument would likewise, as far 
 as I can see, apply to them." 
 
 S. "So that, on the whole, man, by the un- 
 assisted power of his own faculty, will always con- 
 ceive Zeus to be less just, wise, good, and beautiful 
 than he is ? " 
 
 A. " It seems probable." 
 
 S. "But does not that seem to you hurtful ? " 
 
 A. "Why so?" 
 
 S. "As if, for instance, a man believing that 
 Zeus loves him less than he really does, should be- 
 come superstitious and self-tormenting. Or, believing 
 that Zeus will guide him less than he really will, he 
 should go his own way through life without looking 
 for that guidance: or if, believing that Zeus cares 
 about his conquering his passions less than he really 
 does, he should become careless and despairing in the 
 struggle : or if, believiug that Zeus is less interested 
 
XII.] PHAETHON. 375 
 
 in the welfare of mankind than he really is, he should 
 himself neglect to assist them, and so lose the glory 
 of being called a benefactor of his country : would not 
 all these mistakes be hurtful ones ? " 
 
 " Certainly/' said I : but Alcibiades was silent. 
 S, " And would not these mistakes, by the hypo- 
 thesis, themselves punish him who made them, without 
 any resentment whatsoevei-, or Nemesis of the Gods 
 being required for his chastisement ? " 
 " It seems so,'' said I. 
 
 S. " But can we say of such mistakes, and of the 
 harm which may accrue from them, anything but that 
 they must both be infinite; seeing that they are 
 mistakes concerning an infinite Being, and his infinite 
 properties, on every one of which, and on all together, 
 our daily existence depends ? " 
 P. " It seems so." 
 
 S. " So that, until such a man's error concerning 
 Zeus, the source of all things, is cleared up, either in 
 this life or in some future one, we cannot but fear for 
 him infinite confusion, misery, and harm, in all matters 
 which he may take in hand ? " 
 
 Then Alcibiades, angrily : " What ugly mask is 
 this you have put on, Socrates ? You speak rather 
 like a priest trying to frighten rustics into paying 
 their first-fruits, than a philosopher inquirmg after 
 that which is beautiful. But you shall never terrify 
 me into believing that it is not a noble thing to speak 
 out whatsoever a man believes, and to go forward 
 boldly in the spii'it of truth." 
 
 S. " Feeling first, I hope, with your stafP, as would 
 be but reasonable in the case of the bridge, Avhether 
 
376 PHAETHOISr. [xii. 
 
 your belief was objectively or only subjectively true, 
 lest you sbould fall through your subjective bridge into 
 objective water. Nevertheless, leaving the bridge and 
 the water, let us examine a little what this said spirit 
 of truth may be. How do you define it ? " 
 
 A. " I assert that whosoever says honestly what 
 he believes, does so by the spirit of truth.'' 
 
 S. " Then if Lyce, patting those soft cheeks of 
 yours, were to say : ' Alcibiades, thou art the fairest 
 youth in Athens,' she would speak by the spirit of 
 truth ? ^' 
 
 A. " They say so." 
 
 S. '^ And they say rightly. But if Lyce, as is her 
 custom,wished, by so saying, to cheat youinto believing 
 that she loved you, and thereby to wheedle you out of 
 a new shawl, she would still speak by the spirit of 
 truth ? " 
 
 A. " I suppose so." 
 
 S. '' But if, again, she said the same thing to 
 Phaethon, she would still speak by the spirit of truth?" 
 
 " By no means, Socrates," said I, laughing. 
 
 S. " Be silent, fair boy ; you are out of court 
 as an interested party. Alcibiades shall answer. If 
 Lyce, being really mad with love, like Sappho, were 
 to believe Phaethon to be fairer than you, and say so, 
 she would still speak by the spirit of truth ? " 
 
 A. " I suppose so." 
 
 S. "Do not frown ; your beauty is in no question. 
 Only she would then be saying what is not true ? " 
 
 " I must answer for him after all," said I. 
 
 S. " Then it seems, from what has been agreed, 
 that it is indiiferent to the spirit of truth, whether it 
 
All.] PHAETHOX. 377 
 
 speak truth or not. The sph-it seems to be of an enviable 
 serenity. But suppose again, that I believed that 
 Alcibiades had an ulcer on his leg, and were to pro- 
 claim the same now to the people, when they come 
 into the Pnyx, should I not be speaking by the spirit 
 of truth ? " 
 
 A. ''^But that would be a shameful and blackguardly 
 action." 
 
 S. "Be it so. It seems, therefore, that it is in- 
 different to the spirit of truth whether that which it 
 affirms be honourable or blackguardly. Is it not so ? " 
 
 A. " It seems so, most certainly, in that case at 
 least.'' 
 
 S. "And in others, as I think. But tell me — Is 
 not the man who does what he believes, as much 
 moved by this your spirit of truth as he who says 
 what he believes ? " 
 
 A. " Certainly he is." 
 
 S. " Then if I believed it right to lie or steal, I, in 
 lying or stealing, should lie or steal by the spirit of 
 truth ? " 
 
 A. " Certainly : but that is impossible." 
 
 S. " My fine fellow, and wherefore ? I have heard 
 of a nation among the Indians who hold it a sacred 
 duty to murder every one not of their own tribe, 
 whom they can waylay : and when they are taken and 
 punished by the rulers of that country, die joyfully 
 under the greatest torments, believing themselves 
 certain of an entrance into the Elysian fields, in 
 proportion to the number of murders which they have 
 ■committed.'' 
 
 A. " They must be impious wretches." 
 
378 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 S. '' Be it SO. Bat believing themselves to be 
 right, they commit murder by the spirit of trath.'' 
 
 A. '' It seems to follow from the argument." 
 
 S. "Then it is indifferent to the spirit of trath 
 whether the action which it jDrompts be right or 
 wrong ? " 
 
 A. " It must be confessed." 
 
 S. "It is therefore not a moral faculty, this spirit 
 of truth. Let us see now whether it be an intellectual 
 one. How are intellectual things defined, Phaethon ? 
 Tell me, for you are cunning in such matters." 
 
 P. " Those things which have to do with processes 
 of the mind." 
 
 S. " With right processes, or with wrong ? " 
 
 P. " With right, of course." 
 
 S. " And processes for what purpose ? " 
 
 P. " For the discovery of facts." 
 
 S. "Of facts as they are, or as they are not ? " 
 
 P. " As they are." 
 
 S. " And he who discovers facts as they are, dis- 
 covers truth ; while he who discovers facts as they are 
 not, discovers falsehood ? " 
 
 P. " He discovers nothing, Socrates.'''' 
 
 S. " Ti'ue ; but it has been agreed already that the 
 spirit of truth is indifferent to the question whether 
 facts be true or false, but only concerns itself with the 
 sincere affirmation of them, whatsoever they may be. 
 Much more then must it be indifferent to those 
 processes by which they are discovered." 
 
 P. "How so?" 
 
 S. "Because it only concerns itself with aflirma- 
 
xu.] PHAETHOX. 379 
 
 tion coucerning facts ; but these processes are anterior 
 to that affirmation/^ 
 
 P. "I comprehend.'^ 
 
 S. "And much more is it indifferent to whether 
 those are right processes or not/' 
 
 P. " Much more so." 
 
 S. '^ It is therefore not intellectual. It remains^ 
 therefore, that it must be some merely physical 
 faculty, like that of fearing, hungering, or enjoying" 
 the sexual appetite.'' 
 
 A. " Absurd, Socrates ! " 
 
 S. '' That is the argument's concern, not ours : let 
 us follow manfully whithersoever it may lead us." 
 
 A. " Lead on, thou sophist ! " 
 
 S. "It was agreed, then, that he who does what 
 he thinks right, does so by the spirit of truth — was it 
 not ? " 
 
 A. "It was." 
 
 S. "Then he who eats when he thinks that he 
 ought to eat, does so by the spirit of truth ? " 
 
 A. "What next?" 
 
 S. " This next, that he who blows his nose when 
 he thinks that it wants blowing, blows his nose by the 
 spirit of truth." 
 
 A. "What next?" 
 
 S. "Do not frown, friend. Believe me, in such 
 days as these, I honour even the man who is honest 
 enough to blow his nose because he finds that he 
 ought to do so. But tell me — a horse, when he shies 
 at a beggar, does not he also do so by the spirit of 
 truth ? For he believes sincerely the beggar to be 
 
380 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 sometbing formidable, aucT honestly acts upon his 
 conviction/' 
 
 " Not a doubt of it/' said I, laughing, in spite of 
 myself, at Alcibiades's countenance. 
 
 S. ''It is in danger, then, of proving to be some- 
 thing quite brutish and doggish, this spirit of truth. 
 I should not wonder, therefore, if we found it proper 
 to be restrained." 
 
 A, " How so, thou hair-splitter ? " 
 
 S. " Have we not proved it to be common to man 
 and animals; but are not those passions which we 
 have in common with animals to be restrained ? " 
 
 P. '' Restrain the spirit of truth, Socrates ? " 
 
 S. " If it be doggishly inclined. As, for instance, 
 if a man knew that his father had committed a 
 shameful act, and were to publish it, he would do so 
 by the spirit of truth. Yet such an act would be 
 blackguardly, and to be restrained." 
 
 P. "Of course." 
 
 S. ''But much more, if he accused his father 
 only on his own private suspicion, not having seen 
 him commit the act ; while many others, who had 
 watched his father's character more than he did, 
 assured him that he was mistaken." 
 
 P. " Such an act would be to be restrained, not 
 merely as blackguardly, but as impious." 
 
 S. " Or if a man believed things derogatory to the 
 character of the Gods, not having seen them do wrong 
 himself, while all those who had given themselves to 
 the study of divine things assured him that he was mis- 
 taken, would he not be bound to restrain an inclination 
 to speak such things, even if he believed them ? " 
 
XII.] PHAETHOX. 381 
 
 P. " Surely, Socrates ; and that even if lie be- 
 lieved that the Gods did not exist at all. For there 
 would be far more chance that he alone was wrong, 
 and the many right, than that the many were wrong, 
 and he alone right. He would therefore commit an 
 insolent and conceited action, and, moreover, a cruel 
 and shameless one ; for he would certainly make 
 miserable, if he were believed, the hearts of many 
 virtuous persons who had never harmed him, for no 
 immediate or demonstrable purpose except that of 
 pleasing his own self-will ; and that much more, were 
 he wrong in his assertion.'^ 
 
 S. " Here, then, is another case in which it seems 
 proper to restrain the spirit of truth, whatsoever it 
 may be ? " 
 
 P. " What, then, are we to say of those who 
 speak fearlessly and openly their own opinions on 
 every subject ? for, in spite of all this, one cannot but 
 admire them, whether rationally or irrationally.^^ 
 
 S. "We will allow them at least the honour 
 which we do to the wild boar, who rushes fiercely 
 through thorns and brambles upon the dogs, not to be 
 turned aside by spears or tree-trunks, and indeed 
 charges forward the more valiantly the more tightly 
 he shuts his eyes. That praise we can bestow on him, 
 but, I fear, no higher one. It is expedient, neverthe- 
 less, to have such a temperament as it is to have a 
 good memory, or a loud voice, or a straight nose, 
 unlike mine ; only, like other animal passions, it must 
 be restrained and regulated by reason and the law of 
 right, so as to employ itself only on such matters and 
 to such a degree as they prescribe.' ' 
 
382 PHAETHO^^ 'xn. 
 
 " It may seem so in the argument/' said I. " Yet 
 no argument, even of yours, Socrates, witli your 
 pardon, shall convince me that the spirit of truth is 
 not fair and good, ay, the noblest possession of all ; 
 throwing away which, a man throws away his shield, 
 and becomes unworthy of the company of gods or 
 men/'' 
 
 S. " Or of beasts either, as it seems to me and 
 the argument. Nevertheless, to this point has the 
 argument, in its cunning and malice, brought us by 
 crooked paths. Can we find no escape ? " 
 
 P. '' I know none." 
 
 S. "But may it not be possible that we, not 
 having been initiated, like Alcibiades, into the Baby- 
 lonian mysteries, have somewhat mistaken the meaning 
 of that expression, ' spirit of truth ' ? For truth we 
 defined to be * facts as they are.' The spirit of truth 
 then should mean, should it not, the spirit of facts as 
 they are ? " 
 
 P. " It should." 
 
 S. " But what shall we say that this expression, in 
 its turn, means ? The spirit which makes facts as they 
 are ? " 
 
 A. '• Surely not. That would be the supreme 
 Demiurgus himself.^' 
 
 S. '•' Of whom you were not speaking, when you 
 spoke of the spirit of truth ? " 
 
 A. •' Certainly not. I was speaking of a spirit in 
 man."' 
 
 S. '' And belonging to him ?" 
 
 A. "Yes." 
 
 S. " And doing — what, with resrard to facts as 
 
XII.] PHAETHON. 383 
 
 they are? for this is just the thing which puzzles 
 me/' 
 
 A. " Telling facts as they are." 
 
 S. " Without seeing them as they are ? " 
 
 A. " How you bore one ! of course not. It sees 
 facts as they are, and therefore tells them.'^ 
 
 S. " But perhaps it might see them as they are, 
 iind find it expedient^ being of the same temperament 
 as I, to hold its tongue about them ? Would it then 
 be still the spirit of truth ? " 
 
 A. " It would, of course.^^ 
 
 S. " The man then who possesses the spirit of 
 truth will see facts as they are ? " 
 
 A. "He will.'' 
 
 S. " And conversely ? " 
 
 A. "Yes.'' 
 
 S. "But if he sees anything only as it seems to 
 him, and is not in fact, he will not, with regard to 
 that thing, see it by the spirit of truth ? " 
 
 A. " I suppose not." 
 
 S. " Neither then will he be able to speak of it by 
 the spirit of truth." 
 
 A. "Why?" 
 
 S. " Because, by what we agreed before, it will 
 not bo there to speak of, my wondrous friend. For 
 it appeared to us, if I recollect right, that facts can 
 only exist as they are, and not as they are not, and 
 that therefore the spirit of truth had nothing to do 
 with any facts but those which are." 
 
 " But," I interrupted, " O dear Socrates, I fear 
 much that if the spirit of truth be such as this, it 
 must be beyond the reach of man." 
 
384 PHAETHON. [xiu 
 
 P. " Because the immortal gods only can see things 
 as they really are^ having alone made all things^ and 
 ruling them all according to the laws of each. They 
 therefore^, I much fear, will be alone able to behold 
 them, how they are really in their inner nature and 
 properties, and not merely from the outside, and by 
 guess, as we do. How then can we obtain such a 
 spirit ourselves ? " 
 
 S. " Dear boy, you seem to wish that I should, as 
 usual, put you off with a myth, when you begin to ask 
 me about those who know far more about me than I do 
 about them. Nevertheless, shall I tell you a myth ? " 
 
 P. " If you have nothing better." 
 
 S. "They say, then, that Prometheus, when he 
 grew to man's estate, found mankind, though they 
 were like him in form, utterly brutish and ignorant, 
 so that, as iEschylus says : 
 
 Seeing they saw in vain, 
 Hearing they heard not ; but were like the shapes 
 Of dreams, and long time did confuse all things 
 At random : 
 
 being, as I suppose, led, hke the animals, only by their 
 private judgments of things as they seemed to each 
 man, and enslaved to that subjective truth, which we 
 found to be utterly careless and ignorant of facts as 
 they are. But Prometheus, taking pity on them, 
 determined in his mind to free them from that slavery 
 and to teach them to rise above the beasts, by seeing 
 things as they are. He therefore made them acquainted 
 with the secrets of nature, and taught them to build 
 
xii.j PHAETHOX. 385 
 
 houses, to work in wood and metals, to observe tlie 
 courses of the stars, and all other such arts and 
 sciences, which if any man attempts to follow according 
 to his private opinion, and not according to the rules 
 of that art, which are independent of him and of his 
 opinions, being discovered from the unchangeable 
 laws of things as they are, he will fail. But yet, as 
 the myth relates, they became only a more cunning 
 sort of animals ; not being wholly freed from their 
 original slavery to a certain subjective opinion about 
 themselves, that each man should, by means of those 
 arts and sciences, please and help himself only. 
 Fearing, therefore, lest their increased strength 
 and cunning should only enable them to prey upon 
 each other all the more fiercely, he stole fire from 
 heaven, and gave to each man a share thereof for his 
 hearth, and to each community for their common altar. 
 And by the light of this celestial fire they learnt 
 to see those celestial and eternal bonds between 
 man and man, as of husband to wife, of father 
 to child, of citizen to his country, and of master 
 to servant, without which man is but a biped with- 
 out feathers, and which are in themselves, being inde- 
 pendent of the flux of matter and time, most truly 
 facts as they are. And since that time, whatsoever 
 household or nation has allowed these fires to become 
 extinguished, has sunk down again to the level of the 
 brutes : Avhile those who have passed them down to 
 their children burning bright and strong, become par- 
 takers of the bliss of the Heroes, in the Happy Islands. 
 It seems to me then, Phaethon and Alcibiades, that if 
 we find ourselves in anywise destitute of this heavenly 
 
 L. G. 2 G 
 
3S6 PHAETHON. [xii, 
 
 fire, we sliould pray for tlie coming of that day, when 
 Prometheus shall be unbound from Caucasus, if by 
 any means he may take pity on us and on our children, 
 and again bring us down from heaven that fire which 
 is the spirit of truth, that we may see facts as they 
 are. For which, if he were to ask Zeus humbly and 
 filially, I cannot believe that He would refuse it; And 
 indeed, I think that the poets, as is their custom, 
 corrupt the minds of young men by telling them that 
 Zeus chained Prometheus to Caucasus for his theft ; 
 seeing that it befits such a ruler, as I take the Father 
 of gods and men to be, to know that his subjects can 
 only do well by means of his bounty, and therefore to 
 bestow it freely, as the kings of Persia do, on all who 
 are willing to use it in the service of their sovereign/^ 
 
 " So then,^^ said Alcibiades, laughing, " till Prome- 
 theus be unbound from Caucasus, we who have lost, 
 as you seem to hint, this heavenly fire, must needs go 
 on upon our own subjective opinions, having nothing 
 better to which to trust. Truly, thou sophist, thy con- 
 clusion seems to me after all not to differ much from 
 that of Protagoras.'' 
 
 S. "Ah dear boy! know you not that to those 
 who have been initiated, and, as they say in the 
 mysteries, twice born, Prometheus is always unbound, 
 and stands ready to assist them ; while to those who 
 are self-willed and conceited of their own opinions, he 
 is removed to an inaccessible distance, and chained in 
 icy fetters on untrodden mountain-peaks, where the 
 vulture ever devours his fair heart, which sympathises 
 continually with the follies and the sorrows of man- 
 kind ? Of what punishment, then, must not those be 
 
xii.] PHAETHON. 387 
 
 worthy^ who by tlieir own wilfulness and self-confidence 
 bind again to Caucasus tlie fair Titan, the friend of 
 men ? " 
 
 " By Apollo ! " said Alcibiades, " this language is 
 more fit for the tripod in Delphos, than for the bema 
 in the Pnyx. So fare-thee-well, thou Pythoness ! I 
 must go and con over my oration, at least if thy 
 prophesying has not altogether addled my thoughts/^ 
 
 But I, as soon as Alcibiades was gone, for I was 
 ashamed to speak before, turning to Socrates said to 
 him, all but weeping : 
 
 " Oh Socrates, what cruel words are these which you 
 have spoken ? Are you not ashamed to talk thus 
 contemptuously to one like me, even though he be 
 younger and less cunning in argument than yourself ; 
 knowing as you do, how, when I might have grown 
 rich in my native city of Ehodes, and marrying there, 
 as my father purposed, a wealthy merchant's heiress, 
 so have passed my life delicately, receiving the profits 
 of many ships and warehouses, I yet preferred Truth 
 beyond riches ; and leaving my father's house, came 
 to Athens in search of wisdom, dissipating my patri- 
 mony upon one sophist after another, listening greedily 
 to Hippias, and Polus, and Gorgias, and Protagoras, 
 and last of all to you, hard-hearted man that you are ? 
 For from my yoiath I loved and longed after nothing 
 so much as Truth, whatsoever it may be; thinking 
 nothing so noble as to know that which is Right, and 
 knowing it, to do it. And that longing, or love of mine, 
 which is what I suppose Protagoras meant by the spirit 
 of ti'uth, I cherished as the fairest and most divine 
 possession, and that for which alone it was worth while 
 
 2 c 2 
 
388 PHAETHON. [xii, 
 
 to live. For it seemed to me, that even i£ in my 
 searcli I never attained to truth, still it were better to 
 die seeking, than not to seek ; and that even if acting 
 by what I considered to be the spirit of truth, and 
 doing honestly in every case that which seemed right, 
 I should often, acting on a false conviction, offend in 
 ignorance against the absolute righteousness of the 
 gods, yet that such an offence was deserving, if not of 
 praise for its sincerity, yet at least of pity and forgive- 
 ness ; but by no means to be classed, as you class 
 it, with the appetites of brutes; much less to be 
 threatened, as you threaten it, with infinite and eternal 
 misery by I know not what necessary laws of Zeus, 
 and to be put off at last with some myth or other 
 about Prometheus. Surely your mother bare you a 
 scoffer and pitiless, Socrates, and not, as you boast, a 
 man-midwife fit for fair youths.'^ 
 
 Then, smiling sweetly, " Dear boy,'^ said he, " were 
 I such as you fancy, how should I be here now, dis- 
 coursing with you concerning truth, instead of conning 
 my speech for the Pnyx, like Alcibiades, that I may 
 become a demagogue, deceiving the mob with flattery, 
 and win for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and 
 slave-girls, and fame, and power, even to a tyranny 
 itself ? For in this way I might have made my tongue 
 a profitable member of my body; but now, being 
 hurried up and down in barren places, like one mad of 
 love, from my louging after fair youths, I waste my 
 speech on them ; receiving, as is the wont of true 
 lovers, only curses and ingratitude from their arro- 
 gance. But tell me, thou proud Adonis — This spirit 
 of truth in thee, which thou thoughtest, and rightly. 
 
XII.] PHAETHOX. 389 
 
 tliy most noble possession — did it desire truth, or 
 not ? '' 
 
 P. " But;, Socrates, I told you that very thing, and 
 said that it was a longing after truth, which I could 
 not restrain or disobey/'' 
 
 S. " Tell me now, does one long for that which one 
 possesses, or for that which one does not possess ? " 
 
 P. " For that which one does not possess/^ 
 
 S. "And is one in love with that which is oneself, 
 or with that which is not ? '' 
 
 P. " With that which is not oneself, thou mocker. 
 We are not all^ surely, like Narcissus ? " 
 
 S. " No, by the dog ! not quite all. But see now : 
 it appears that when any one is in love with a thing, 
 and longs for it, as thou didst for truth, it must be 
 something which is not himself, and which he does not 
 possess ? " 
 
 P. "True." 
 
 S. " You, then, while you were loving facts as they 
 are, and longing to see them as they are, yet did not 
 possess that which you longed for ? " 
 
 P. " True, indeed ; else why should I have been 
 driven forth by the anger of the gods, like Bellerophon, 
 to pace the Aleian plain, eating my own soul, if I had 
 possessed that for which I longed ? " 
 
 S. "Well said, dear boy. But see again. This 
 truth which you loved, and which was not yourself 
 or part of yourself, was certainly also nothing of your 
 own making ? — Though they say that Pygmalion was 
 enamoured of the statue which he himself had carved." 
 
 P. " But he was miserable, Socrates, till the statue 
 became alive." 
 
390 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 S. " Tliev say so ; but -what has tLat to do Tvith 
 the argument ? '' 
 
 P. *' I know not. But it seems to me horrible, as 
 it did to Pygmalion, to be enamoured of anything 
 which cannot return your love, but is, as it were, your 
 puppet. Should we not think it a shameful thing, if 
 a mistress were to be enamoured of one of her own 
 slaves ? " 
 
 S. " We should ; and that, I suppose, because the 
 slave would have no free choice whether to refuse or 
 to return his mistresses love ; but would be compelled, 
 being a slave, to submit to her, even if she were old, 
 or ugly, or hateful to him ? '^ 
 
 P. " Of course/' 
 
 S. " And should we not say, Phaethon, that there 
 was no true enjoyment in such love, even on the part 
 of the mistress ; nay, that it was not worthy of the 
 name of love at all, but was merely something base> 
 such as happens to animals ? ■" 
 
 P. " We should say so rightly.'^ 
 
 S. "Tell me, then, Phaethon — for a strange doubt 
 has entered my mind on account of your words. This 
 truth of which you were enamoured, seems, from what 
 has been agreed, not to be a part of yourself, nor a 
 creation of your own, like Pygmalion's statue — how 
 then has it not happened to you to be even more 
 miserable than Pygmalion till you were sure that truth 
 loved you in return ? — and, moreover, till you were 
 sure that truth had free choice as to whether it should 
 return or refuse your love ? For, otherwise, you would 
 be in danger of being found sufferins: the same base 
 
XII.] PHAETHON. 391 
 
 passfou as a mistress enamom-ed of a slave who caBnot 
 resist lier.^^ 
 
 P. ^' I am puzzled, Socrates/^ 
 
 S. '^ Shall we rather say, then, that you were 
 enamoured, not of truth itself, but of the spirit of 
 truth ? For we have been all along defining truth to 
 be ' facts as they are,' have we not ? " 
 
 P. ''We have/' 
 
 S. '' But there are many facts as they are, whereof 
 to be enamoured would be base, for they cannot return 
 your love. As, for instance, that one and one make 
 two, or that a horse has four legs. With respect to 
 such facts, you would be, would you not, in the same 
 position as a mistress towards her slave ? " 
 
 P. " Certainly. It seems, then, better to assume 
 the other alternative." 
 
 S. ''It does. But does it not follow, that when 
 you were enamoured of this spirit, you did not possess 
 it?" 
 
 P. " I fear so, by the argument." 
 
 S. " And I fear, too, that we agreed that he only 
 who possessed the spirit of truth saw facts as they 
 are ; for that was involved in our definition of the 
 spirit of truth." 
 
 P. " But, Socrates, I knew, at least, that one and 
 one made two, and that a horse had four legs. I must 
 then have seen some facts as they are." 
 
 S. " Doubtless, fair boy ; but not all." 
 
 P. " I do not pretend to that." 
 
 S. " But if you had possessed the spirit of truth, 
 you would have seen all facts whatsoever as they are. 
 
392 PHAETHON. [xii 
 
 For lie wlio possesses a thing can surely employ ii 
 freely for all purposes which are not contrary to the 
 nature of that thing ; can he not ? '^ 
 
 P. " Of course he can. But if I did not possess the 
 spirit of truth, how could I see any truth whatsoever V 
 
 S. " Suppose, dear boy, that instead of your pos- 
 sessing it, it were possible for it to possess you ; and 
 possessing you, to show you as much of itself, or as 
 little, as it might choose, and concerning such things 
 only as it might choose : would not that explain the 
 dilemma ? ■" 
 
 P. " It would assuredly/^ 
 
 S. " Let us see, then, whether this spirit of truth 
 may not be something which is capable of possessing 
 you, and employing you, rather than of being possessed 
 and employed by you. To me, indeed, this spirit 
 seems likely to be some demon or deity, and that one 
 of the greatest.^' 
 
 P. " Why then ? ^^ 
 
 S. " Can lifeless and material things see ? " 
 
 P. " Certainly not ; only live ones." 
 
 S. '^This spirit, then, seems to be living; for it 
 sees things as they are.''^ 
 
 P. "Yes." 
 
 S, " And it is also intellectual ; for intellectual facts 
 can be only seen by an intellectual being." 
 
 P. "True." 
 
 S. "And also moral; for moral facts can only be 
 seen by a moral being.-" 
 
 P. "True also." 
 
 S. "But this spirit is evidently not a man; it 
 remains therefore, that it must be some demon. ^' 
 
r "■'»,. 
 
 sii.] PHAETHON. '^' /•■ . . 393 
 
 P. " But why one of the greatest f " \ / . 
 
 S. " Tell me, Pliaethon, is not God to be numbered 
 among facts as they are ? " 
 
 P. " Assuredly ; for he is before all others and 
 more eternal and absolute than all." 
 
 S. " Then this spirit of truth must also be able to 
 see God as he is." 
 
 P. 'at is probable." 
 
 S. "And certain, if, as we agreed, it be the very 
 spirit which sees all facts whatsoever as they are. 
 Now tell me, can the less see the greater as it is ? '' 
 
 P. " I think not ; for an animal cannot see a man 
 as he is, but only that part of him in which he is like 
 an animal, namely, his outward figure and his animal 
 passions ; but not his moral sense or reason, for of 
 them it has itself no share.''^ 
 
 S. "True; and in like wise, a man of less intellect 
 could not see a man of greater intellect than himself 
 as he is, but only a part of his intellect." 
 
 P. "Certainly." 
 
 S. "And does not the same thing follow from what 
 we said just now, that God's conceptions of himself 
 must be the only perfect conceptions of him ? For if 
 any being could see God as he is, the same would be 
 able to conceive of him as he is : which we agreed 
 was impossible." 
 
 P. "True." 
 
 S. " Then surely this spirit which sees God as he 
 is, must be equal with God." 
 
 P. " It seems probable ; but none is equal to God 
 except himself." 
 
 S. " Most true, Phaethon. But what shall we say 
 
394 • PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 BOW, but that this spirit of truth, whereof thou hast 
 been enamoured, is, according to the argument, none 
 other than Zeus, who alone comprehends all things,, 
 and sees them as they are, because he alone has given 
 to each its inward and necessary laws ? " 
 
 P. " But, Socrates, there seems something impious 
 in the thought/' 
 
 S. " Impious, truly, if we held that this spirit of 
 truth was a part of your own self. But we agreed 
 that it was not a part of you, but something utterly 
 independent of you." 
 
 P. " Noble would the news be, Socrates, were it 
 true ; yet it seems to me beyond belief." 
 
 S. " Did we not prove just now concerning Zeus, 
 that all mistakes concerning him were certain to be 
 mistakes of defect ? " 
 
 P. '^ We did, indeed." 
 
 S. " How do you know, then, that you have not 
 fallen into some such error, and have suspected Zeus 
 to be less condescending towards you than he really is ? " 
 
 P. " Would that it were so ! But I fear it is too 
 fair a hope." 
 
 S. ''Do I seem to thee now, dear boy, more insolent 
 and unfeeling than Protagoras, when he tried to turn 
 thee away from the search after absolute truth, by 
 saying sophistically that it was an attempt of the 
 Titans to scale heaven, and bade thee be content with 
 asserting shamelessly and brutishly thine own sub- 
 jective opinions? For I do not bid thee scale the 
 throne of Zeus, into whose presence none could arrive, 
 as it seems to me, unless he himself willed it; but to 
 believe that he has given thee from thy childhood a 
 
XII.] PHAETHOX. 395 
 
 glimpse of his own excellence, that so thy heart, con- 
 jecturing, as in the case of a veiled statue, from one 
 part the beauty of the rest, might Lecome enamoured 
 thereof, and long for that sight of him which is the 
 highest and only good, that so his splendour may give 
 thee light to see facts as they are/^ 
 
 P. " Oh Socrates ! and how is this blessedness to 
 be attained ? " 
 
 S. '^Even as the myths relate, the nymphs ob- 
 tained the embraces of the gods; by pleasing him 
 and obeying him in all things, lifting up daily pure 
 hands and a thankful heart, if by any means he may 
 condescend to purge thine eyes, that thou mayest see 
 clearly, and without those motes, and specks, and dis- 
 tortions of thine own organs of vision, which flit before 
 the eyeballs of those who have been drunk over-night, 
 and which are called by sophists subjective truth j 
 watching everywhere anxiously and reverently for 
 those glimpses of his beauty, which he will vouch- 
 safe to thee more and more as thou provest thyself 
 worthy of them, and will reward thy love by making 
 thee more and more partaker of his own spirit of 
 truth; whereby, seeing facts as they are, thou wilt see 
 him who has made them according to his own ideas, 
 that they may be a mirror of his unspeakable splendour. 
 Is not this a fairer hope for thee, oh Phaethon, than 
 that which Protagoras held out to thee — that neither 
 seeing Zeus, nor seeing facts as they are, nor affirming 
 any truth whatsoever, nor depending for thy know- 
 ledge on any one but thine own ignorant self, thou 
 mightest nevertheless be so fortunate as to escape 
 punishment : not knowing, as it seems to me, that 
 
896 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 such a state of ignorance and blindfold rashness^ even 
 if Tartarus were a dream of the poets or the priests, is in 
 itself the most fearful of punishments ?" 
 
 P. "It is, indeed, my dear Socrates. Yet what 
 are we to say of those who, sincerely loving and long- 
 ing after knowledge, yet arrive at false conclusions, 
 which are proved to be false by contradicting each 
 other ? " 
 
 S. " We are to say, Phaethon, that they have not 
 loved knowledge enough to desire utterly to see facts 
 as they are, but only to see them as they would wish 
 them to be ; and loving themselves rather than Zeus, 
 have wished to remodel in some things or other his 
 universe, according to their own subjective opinions. 
 By this, or by some other act of self-will, or seK- 
 conceit, or self-dependence, they have compelled Zeus, 
 not, as I think, without pity and kindness to them, 
 to withdraw from them in some degree the sight of 
 his own beauty. We must, therefore, I fear, liken 
 them to Acharis, the painter of Lemnos, who, intend- 
 ing to represent Phoebus, painted from a mirror a 
 copy of his own defects and deformities ; or perhaps 
 to that Nymph, who finding herself beloved by 
 Phoebus, instead of reverently and silently returning 
 the affection, boasted of it to all her neighbours, as a 
 token of her own beauty, and despised the god ; so 
 that he, being angry, changed her into a chattering 
 magpie ; or again to Arachne, who having been taught 
 the art of weaving by Athene, pretended to compete 
 with her own instructress, and being metamorphosed 
 by her into a spider, was condemned, like the sophists, 
 to spin out of her own entrails endless ugly webs. 
 
.xii] PHAETHON. 397 
 
 which are destroyed, as soon as finished, by every 
 slave-girl^s broom.'' 
 
 P. "But sliall we despise and hate such. Oh 
 Socrates?'' 
 
 S. ^'No, dearest boy, we will rather pity and 
 instruct them lovingly ; remembering always that we 
 shall become such as they the moment we begin to 
 fancy that truth is our own possession, and not the 
 very beauty of Zeus himself, which he shows to those 
 whom he will, and in such measure as he finds them 
 worthy to behold. But to me, considering how great 
 must be the condescension of Zeus in unveiling to any 
 man, even the worthiest, the least portion of his own 
 loveliness, there has come at times a sort of dream^ 
 that the divine splendour will at last pierce through 
 and illumine all dark souls, even in the house of Hades, 
 showing them, as by a great sunrise, both what they 
 themselves, and what all other things are, really and 
 in the sight of Zeus ; which if it happened, even to 
 Ixion, I believe that bis wheel would stop, and his 
 fetters drop off of themselves, and that he would return 
 freely to the upper air, for as long as he himself might 
 choose." 
 
 Just then the peojole began to throng into the 
 Pnyx ; and we took our places with the rest to hear 
 the business of the day, after Socrates had privately 
 uttered this prayer : 
 
 " Oh Zeus, give to me and to all who shall counsel 
 here this day, that spirit of truth by which we may 
 behold that whereof we deliberate, as it is in thy 
 sight ! " 
 
 " As I expected," said Templeton, with a smile, as 
 
398 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 I folded up my manuscript. " My friend the parson 
 could not demolish the poor Professor's bad logic 
 without a little professional touch by way of finish." 
 
 " What do you mean ? '' 
 
 " Oh — never mind. Only I owe you little thanks 
 for sweeping away any one of my lingering sym- 
 pathies with Mr. Windrush, if all you can offer me 
 instead is the confounded old nostrum of religion over 
 again,^' 
 
 " Heydey, friend ! What next ? " 
 
 " Eeally, my dear fellow, I beg your pardon. I 
 forgot that I was speaking to a clergyman.'" 
 
 " Pray don't beg my pardon on that ground. If 
 what you say be right, a clergyman above all others 
 ought to hear it ; and if it be wrong, and a symptom of 
 spiritual disease, he ought to hear it all the more. 
 But I cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, till 
 I know what you mean by religion ; for there is a 
 great deal of very truly confounded and confounding 
 religion abroad in the world just now, as there has 
 been in all ages ; and perhaps you may be alluding to 
 that." 
 
 Templeton sat silent for a few minutes, playing 
 with the tackle in his fly-book, and then murmured to 
 himself the well-known lines of Lucretius : 
 
 " Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret 
 In terris oppressa gravi sub Relligione 
 Qua3 caput a cooli regionibus ostendebat, 
 Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans. 
 
 There ! — blasphemous reprobate fellow, am I not ? " 
 " On the contrary,'' I said, '' I think that in the 
 
XII.] PHAETHON. 399 
 
 r>ense iu wliicli Lucretius intended that the lines 
 sliould be taken, they contain a great deal of truth. 
 He had seen the basest and foullest crimes spring from 
 that which he calls Relligio, and he had a full right to 
 state that fact. I am not aware that one blasphemes 
 the Catholic and Apostolic Faith by saying that the 
 devilries of the Spanish Inquisition were the direct 
 offspring of that ' religious sentiment ' which Mr. 
 Windrush's school — though they are at all events 
 right in saying that its source is in man himself, and 
 not in the ' regionibus Coeli ' — are now glorifying, as 
 something which enables man to save his own soul 
 without the interference of ' The Deity ' — indeed, 
 whether 'The Deity ^ chooses or not/' 
 
 " Do leave these poor Emersonians alone for a few 
 minutes, and tell me how you can reconcile what you 
 have just said with your own dialogut." 
 ''Why not ?^' 
 
 " Is not Lucretius glorying in the notion that the 
 gods do not trouble themselves with mortals, while 
 you have been asserting that ' The Deity ' troubles 
 Himself even with the souls of heathens ? " 
 
 " Certainly. But that is quite a distinct matter 
 from his dislike of what he calls Relligio. In that 
 dislike I can sympathise fully : but on his method of 
 escape Mr. Windrush will probably look with more 
 complaisance than I do, who call it by the ugly name 
 of Atheism." 
 
 " Then I fear you would call me an Atheist, if you 
 knew all. So we had better say no more about it." 
 
 " A most curious speech, certainly, to make to a 
 parson, or soul-curer by profession ! " 
 
400 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 " Wliy, what on eartli have you to do but to abhor 
 and flee me ? '' asked he, with a laugh, though by no 
 means a merry one. 
 
 " Would your having a headache be a reason for 
 the medical man^s running away from you, or coming 
 to visit you ? " 
 
 " Ah, but this, you know, is my ' fault,' and 
 my ' crime," and my ' sin/ Eh ? " and he laughed 
 again. 
 
 "Would the doctor visit you the less, because it 
 was your own fault that your head ached ? " 
 
 '' Ah, but suppose I professed openly no faith in 
 his powers of curing, and had a great hankering after 
 unaccredited Homoeopathies, like Mr. Windrush's ; 
 would not that be a fair cause for interdiction from 
 fire and water, sacraments and Christian burial ? " 
 
 " Come, come, Templeton,"" I said ; " you shall 
 not thus jest away serious thoughts with an old friend. 
 I know you are ill at ease. AVhy not talk over the 
 matter with me fairly and soberly ? How do you 
 know till you have tried, whether I can help you 
 or not ? '' 
 
 " Because I know that your arguments will have 
 no force with me ; they will demand of me, or assume 
 in me, certain faculties, sentiments, notions, experiences 
 — call them what you like ; I am beginning to suspect 
 sometimes with Cabanis that they are ' a product of 
 the small intestines' — which I never have had, and 
 never could make myseK have, and now don't care 
 whether 1 have them or not." 
 
 " On my honour, I will address you only as what 
 you are, and know yourself to be. But what are these 
 
xiu] PHAETHON. 401 
 
 f;icultics_, so strangely beyond my fi^end Templeton^s 
 reacli ? He used to be distinguislied at college for a 
 very clear liead, and a very kind heart, and the nicest 
 sense of honour which I ever saw in living man ; and 
 I have not heard that they have failed him since he 
 became Templeton of Templeton. And as for his 
 Churchmanship, were not the county papers ringing- 
 last month with the accounts of the beautiful new 
 church which he had built^ and the stained glass which 
 he brought from Belgium, and the marble font which 
 he brought from Italy ; and how he had even given 
 for an altar-piece his own pet Luini, the gem of 
 Templeton House ? " 
 
 : ^' Eifeminate picture ! " he said. " It was part and 
 parcel of the idea " 
 
 Before I could ask him what he meant, he looked 
 up suddenly at me, with deep sadness on his usuall}' 
 nonchalant face. 
 
 " Well, my dear fellow, I suppose I must tell you 
 all, as I have told you so much without your shaking 
 the dust off your feet against me, and consulting 
 Bradshaw for the earliest train to Shrewsbury, You 
 knew my dear mother ? " 
 
 "■ I did. The best of women." 
 
 " The best of women, and the best of mothers. 
 But, if you recollect, she was a great Low- Church 
 saint.'^ 
 
 ^' Why ' but ' ? How does that derogate in any 
 wise from her excellence ? " 
 
 '^ Not from her excellence ; God forbid ! or from 
 the excellence of the people of her own party, whom 
 she used to have round her, and who were, some of 
 L. G. 2d 
 
402 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 them, I do believe, as really earnest, and pious, find 
 charitable, and all that, as human beings could be. 
 But it did take away very much indeed from her 
 influence on me." 
 
 " Surely she did not neglect to teach jon.'' 
 
 '^ It is a strange thing to say, but she rather taught 
 me too much. I don't deny that it may have been my 
 own fault. I don't blame her, or any one. But you 
 know what I was at college — no worse than other 
 men, I dare say ; but no better. I had no reason for 
 being better," 
 
 " No reason ? Surely she gave you reasons." 
 
 " There — you have touched the ailing nerve now. 
 The reasons were what you would call paralogisms. 
 They had no more to do with me than with those 
 trout." 
 
 " You mistake, friend, you mistake, indeed," said I. 
 
 " I don't mistake at all about this ; that whether 
 or not the reasons in themselves had to do with me, 
 the way in which she put them made them practically 
 so much Hebrew. She demanded of me, as the only 
 grounds on which I was to consider myself safe from 
 hell, certain fears and hopes which I did not feel, and 
 experiences which I did not experience; and it was 
 my fault, and a sign of my being in a wrong state — 
 to use no harder term — that I did not feel them; and 
 yet it was only God's grace which could make me feei 
 them : and so I grew up with a dark secret notion that 
 I was a very bad boy ; but that it was God's fault and 
 not mine that I was so." 
 
 "You were ripe indeed then," said I sadly, '^ like 
 hundreds more, for Professor Windrush's teaching." 
 
xii.] PHAETHON. 403 
 
 " I will come to that presently. But iu the mean- 
 time — was it my fault ? I was never what you call a 
 devout person. My ' organ of veneration/ as the 
 phrenologists would say, was never very large. I was 
 a shrewd dashing boy, enjoying life to the finger-tips, 
 and enjoying above all, I will say, pleasing my mother 
 in every way, except in the understanding what she 
 told me — and what I felt I could not understand. But 
 as I grew older, and watched hei*, and the men round 
 her, I began to suspect that religion and effeminacy 
 had a good deal to do with each other. For the 
 women, whatsoever their temperaments, or even their 
 tastes might be, took to this to me incomprehensible 
 religion naturally and instinctively; while the very 
 few men who were in their clique were — I don't deny 
 some of them were good men enough — if they had 
 been men at all : if they had been well-read, or well- 
 bred, or gallant, or clear-headed, or liberal-minded, or, 
 in short, anything but the silky, smooth-tongued hunt- 
 the-slippers nine out of ten of them were. I recollect 
 well asking my mother once, whether there would not 
 be five times more women than men in heaven — and 
 her answering me sadly and seriously, that she feared 
 there would be. And in the meantime she brought 
 me up to pray and hope that I might some day be 
 
 converted, and become a child of God And one 
 
 could not help wishing to enjoy oneself as much as 
 possible before that event happened.^' 
 
 " Before that event happened, my dear fellow ? 
 Pardon me, but your tone is somewhat irreverent." 
 
 " Very likely. I had no reason put before me for 
 regarding such a change as anything but an unpleasant 
 
 2 D 2 
 
404 PHAETHON. [xir. 
 
 doom, whicli would cut me off, or ought to do so, from 
 field sports, from poetry, from art, from science, from 
 politics — for Christians, I was told, had nothing to do 
 with the politics of this world — from man and all 
 man's civilisation, in short ; and leave to me, as the 
 only two lawful indulgences, those of living in a good 
 house, and begetting a family of children." 
 
 "And did you throw off the old Creeds for the 
 sake of the civilisation which you fancied that they 
 forbid ? " 
 
 " No. I am a Churchman, you know ; princi- 
 pally on political grounds, or from custom, or from — 
 the devil knows what, perhaps — I do not.'' 
 
 " Probably it is God, and not the devil, who knows 
 why, Templeton." 
 
 " Be it so Frightful as it is to have to say 
 
 it I do not so much care I suppose it is 
 
 all right : if it is not, it will all come right at last. 
 And in the meantime, I compromise, like the rest of 
 the world ; and hear Jane making the children every 
 week-day pray that they may become God's children, 
 and then teaching them every Sunday evening the 
 Catechism, which says that they are so already. I 
 don't understand it I suppose if it was im- 
 portant, one would understand it. One knows right 
 from wrong, you know, and other fundamentals. If 
 that were necessaiy, one would know that too." 
 
 " But can you submit quietly to such a barefaced 
 contradiction ? " 
 
 " I ? I am only a plain country squire. Of course 
 I should call such dealing with an Act of Parliament a 
 lie and a sham But about these things, I fancy, 
 
xu.] PHAETHOX. 4C5 
 
 tlie women know best. Jane is ten thousand times as 
 
 good as I am you don^t know half lier worth 
 
 And I haven^t the heart to contradict her — nor the 
 right either; for I have no reasons to give her; no 
 faith to substitute for hers/^ 
 
 " Our friend, the High-Church curate, could have 
 given you a few plain reasons, I should think." 
 
 " Of course he could. And I believe in my heart 
 the man is in the right in calling Jane wrong. He has 
 honesty and common sense on his side, just as he has 
 when he calls the present state of Convocation, in the 
 face of that prayer for God^s Spirit on its deliberations, 
 a blasphemous lie and sham. Of course it is. Any 
 ensign in a marching regiment could tell us that from 
 his mere sense of soldier's honour. But then — if she 
 is wrong, is he right ? How do I know ? I want 
 reasons : he gives me historic authorities." 
 
 " And very good things too ; for they are fair 
 phenomena for induction.'' 
 
 " But how will proving to me that certain people 
 once thought a thing right prove to me that it is 
 right ? Good people think differently every day. 
 Good people have thought differently about those very 
 matters in every age. I want some proof which will 
 coincide with the little which I do know about science 
 and philosophy. They must fight out their own 
 battle, if they choose to fight it on mere authority. If 
 one could but have the implicit faith of a child, it 
 would be all very well : but one can't. If one has 
 once been fool enough to think about these things, 
 one must have reasons, or something better than mere 
 ipse dixits, or one can't believe them. I should be 
 
406 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 glad enougli to believe ; do you suppose that I don't 
 envy pooi* dear Jane from morning to nigM ? — but I 
 
 can't. And so " 
 
 " And so what ? " asked I. 
 
 "And so, I believe, I am growing to have no 
 religion at all, and no substitute for it either ; for I 
 feel I have no ground or reason for admiring or 
 working out any subject. I have tired of philosophy. 
 Perhaps it's all wrong — at least I can't see what it has 
 to do with Grod, and Christianity, and all which, if it 
 is true, must be more impoi-tant than anything else. 
 I have tired of art for the same reason. How can I 
 be anything but a wretched dilettante, when I have 
 no principles to ground my criticism on, beyond bosh 
 about ' The Beautiful ' ? I did pluck up heart and 
 read Mr. Euskin's books greedily when they came 
 out, because I heard he was a good Christian. But I 
 fell upon a little tract of his, ' Notes on Sheepfolds,' 
 and gave him up again, when I found that he had a 
 leaning to that ' Clapham sect.' I have dropped 
 politics : for I have no reason, no ground, no principle 
 in them, but expediency. When they asked me this 
 summer to represent the interests of the county 
 in Parliament, I asked them how they came to make 
 such a mistake as to fancy that I knew what was their 
 interest, or anyone else's ? I am becoming more and 
 more of an animal; fragmentary, inconsistent, seeing 
 to the root of nothing, unable to unite things in my 
 own mind. I just do the duty which lies nearest, and 
 looks simplest. I try to make the boys grow up 
 plucky and knowing — though what's the use of it ? 
 They will go to college with even less principles than 
 
xii.] PHAETHON. 407 
 
 I liad, and will get into proportionably worse scrapes. 
 I expect to be mined by their debts before I die. 
 And for the rest, I read nothing but " The Edinburgh " 
 and "The Agricultural Gazette.^' My talk is of bullocks. 
 I just know right from wrong enough to see that the 
 fai-ius are in good order, pay my labourers living 
 wages, keep the old people out of the workhouse, and 
 see that my cottages and schools are all right ; for I 
 suppose I was put here for some purpose of that kind 
 
 — though what it is I can't very clearly define 
 
 And there's an end of my long story." 
 
 " Not quite an animal yet, it seems ? " said I with 
 a smile, half to hide my own sadness at a set of 
 experiences which are, alas ! already far too common, 
 and will soon be more common still. 
 
 " Nearer it than you fancy. I am getting fonder 
 and fonder of a good dinner and a second bottle of 
 claret — about their meaning there is no mistake. 
 And my principal reason for taking the hounds two 
 years ago was, I do believe, to have something to do 
 in the winter v/hich required no thought, and to have 
 an excuse for falling asleep after dinner, instead of 
 arguing with Jane about her scurrilous religious 
 
 newspapers There is a great gulf opening, I see, 
 
 between me and her And as I can't bridge it 
 
 over I may as well forget it. Pah ! I am boring you, 
 and over-talking myself. Have a cigar, and let us 
 say no more about it. There is more here, old fellow, 
 than you will cure by doses of Socratic Dialectics." 
 
 *' I am not so sure of that," I replied. " On the 
 contrary, I should recommend you in your present 
 state of mind to look out your old Plato as quickly as 
 
408 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 possible, and see if lie and his master Socrates cannot 
 give you, if not altogether a solution for your puzzle, 
 at least a naethod whereby you may solve it yourself. 
 But tell me first — What has all this to do with your 
 evident sympathy for a man so unlike yourself as 
 Professor Windrush ? '' 
 
 " Perhaps I feel for him principally because he has 
 broken loose from it all in desperation, just as I have. 
 But, to tell you the truth, I have been reading more 
 than one book of his school lately ; and, as I said, I 
 owe you no thanks for demolishing the little comfort 
 which I seemed to find in them.^' 
 " And what was that then ? " 
 
 " Why — in the first place, you can't deny that 
 however incoherent they may be they do say a great 
 many clever things, and noble things too, about man, 
 and society, and art, and nature/' 
 " No doubt of it.'' 
 
 " And moreover, they seem to connect all they say 
 with — with — I suppose you will laugh at me — with 
 God, and spiritual truths, and eternal Divine laws ; in 
 short, to consecrate common matters in that very way, 
 which I could not find in my poor mother's teaching." 
 " No doubt of that either. And therein is one real 
 value of them, as protests in behalf of something 
 nobler and more unselfish than the mere dollar-getting 
 spirit of their country." 
 
 " Well, then, can you not see how pleasant it was 
 to me to find someone who would give me a peep into 
 the unseen world, without requiring as an entrance-fee 
 any religious emotions and experiences ? Here I had 
 been for years, shut out ; told that I had no business 
 
/ 
 
 xii.] PHAETHON. . ' liOf 
 
 with anything eternal, and pureyand liolDle, 'and good ; 
 that to all intents and purposes I was nothing better 
 than a very cunning animal who could be damned j 
 because I was still ''carnal/ and had not been through 
 all Janets mysterious sorrows and joys. And it was 
 really good news to me to hear that they were not 
 required after all, and that all I need do was to be a 
 good man, and leave devotion to those who were 
 inclined to it by temperament." 
 
 " Not to be a good man," said I, " but only a good 
 specimen o£ some sort o£ man. That, I think, would be 
 the outcome of Emerson^s * Eepresentative Men,' or of 
 those most tragic ^ Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.' " 
 
 " How then, hair-splitter ? What is the mights- 
 difference ? " 
 
 ''Would you call Dick Turpin a good man, because 
 he was a good highwayman ? " 
 
 " What now ? " 
 
 "That he would be an excellent representative 
 man of his class; and therefore, on Mr. Emerson's 
 grounds, a fit subject for a laudatory lecture." 
 
 "I hate reductiones ad absurdum. Let Turpin 
 take care of himself. I suppose I do not belong to 
 such a very bad sort of men, but that it may be worth 
 my while to become a good specimen of it ? " 
 
 " Certainly not ; only I think, contrary to Mr, 
 Emerson's opinion, that you will not become even that, 
 unless you first become something better still, namely, 
 a good man." 
 
 " There you are too refined for me. But can you 
 not understand, now, the causes of my sympathy even 
 with Windrush and his 'spirit of truth' ? " 
 
410 PHAETHOX. [xii, 
 
 " I can, and those of many more. It seems tliat 
 jou tLouglit you found in that school a wider creed 
 than the one to which you had been accustomed ?" 
 
 ''There was a more comprehensive view of humanity 
 about them, and that pleased me." 
 
 " Doubtless, one can be easily comprehensive if 
 one comprehends good and bad, true and false, under 
 one category, by denying the absolute existence of 
 either goodness or badness, truth or falsehood. But 
 let the view be as comprehensive as it will, I am afraid 
 that the creed founded thereon will not be very 
 comprehensive.''^ 
 
 ''Why then ?^^ 
 
 " Because it will comprehend so few people ; fevrer 
 even than the sect of those who will believe, with Mr. 
 Emerson, that Harvey and Newton made their dis- 
 coveries by the ' Ai-istotelian method.^ The sect of 
 those who believe that there is no absolute right and 
 wrong, no absolute truth external to himself, dis- 
 coverable by man, will, it seems to me, be a very narrow 
 one to the end of time; owing to a certain primeval 
 superstition of our race, who, even in barbarous 
 countries, have always been Platonists enough to 
 have some sort of instinct and hope that there was a 
 right and a wrong, and truths independent of their 
 own sentiments and faculties. So that, though this 
 school may enable you to fancy that you understand 
 Lady Jane somewhat more, by the simple expedient 
 of putting on her religious experiences an arbitrary 
 interpretation of your own, which she would indig- 
 nantly and justly deny, it will enable her to understand 
 
XII.] PHAETHOX. 411 
 
 you all the less^ and widen the gulf between you 
 immeasurably." 
 
 "" You are severe/' 
 
 " I only wish you to face one result of a theory, 
 which, while it pretends to offer the most comprehen- 
 sive liberality, will be found to lead in practice to the 
 most narrow and sectarian Epicurism for a cultivated 
 few. But for the many, struggling with the innate 
 consciousness of evil, in them and around them — an 
 instinctive consciousness which no argumentation 
 about ' evil being a lower form of good ' will ever 
 explain away to those who ' grind among the iron 
 facts of life, and have no time for self-deception' — 
 what good news for them is there in Mr. Emerson's 
 cosy and tolerant Epicurism ? They ci-y for deliverance 
 from their natures ; they know that they are not that 
 which they were intended to be, because they follow 
 their natures ; and he answers them with : ' Follow 
 your natures, and be that which you were intended to 
 be.' You began this argument by stipulating that I 
 should argue with you simply as a man. Does Mr. 
 Emerson's argument look like doing that, or only 
 arguing as with an individual of that kind of man, or 
 rather animal, to which some iron Fate has compelled 
 you to belong ? " 
 
 " But, I say, these books have made me a better 
 man." 
 
 "I do not doubt it. An earnest cultivated man, 
 speaking- his whole mind to an earnest cultivated man, 
 Avill hardly fail of telling him something he did not 
 know before. But if you had not been a cultivated 
 
412 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 man, Templeton, a man with few sorrows, and few 
 trials, and few unsatisfied desires — if you liad been tlie 
 village shopkeeper, with his bad debts, and his temp- 
 tations to make those who can pay for those who 
 cannot, — if you had been one of your own labourers, 
 environed with the struggle for daily bread, and the 
 alehouse, and hungry children, and a sick wife, and a 
 dull taste, and a duller head — in short, if you had 
 been a man sueh as nine out of ten are — what would 
 his school have taught you then ? You want some 
 truths which are common to men as men, which will 
 help and teach them, let their temperament or their 
 circumstances be what they will — do you not ? If 
 you do not, your complaint of Lady Jane's exclusive 
 Creed is a mere selfish competition on your part, 
 l)etween a Creed which will fit her peculiarities, and a 
 Creed which will fit your j)eculiarities. Do you not 
 see that ? '' 
 
 " I do— go on/^ 
 
 " Then I say you will not find that in Professor 
 Windrush's school. I say you will find it in Lady 
 Jane's Creed/' 
 
 " What ? In the very Creed which excludes me?" 
 
 " Whether that Creed excludes you or not is a 
 
 question of the true meaning of its words. And that 
 
 again is a question of Dialectics. I say it includes you 
 
 and all mankind." 
 
 " You must mistake her doctrines, then." 
 
 " I do not, I assure you. I know what they are ; 
 
 and I know, also, the misreading of them to which 
 
 your dear mother's school has accustomed her, and 
 
 which has taught her that these Creeds only belong to 
 
XII.] PHAETHOX. il3 
 
 the few who have discovered their own share in them. 
 Bat whether the Creeds really do that or not — whether 
 Lady Jane does not implicitly confess that they do 
 not by her own words and deeds of every day, that, I 
 say, is a question of Dialectics, in the Platonic sense 
 of that word, as the science which discovers the true 
 and false in thought, by discovering the true and false 
 concerning the meanings of words, which represent 
 thought.'^ 
 
 " Be it so. I should be glad to hold what Jane 
 holds, for the sake of the marvellous practical effect 
 on her character — sweet creature that she is ! — whicli 
 it has produced in the last seven years." 
 
 '^ And which effect, I presume, was not increased 
 by her denying to you any share iu the same ? '^ 
 
 " Alas, no ! It is only when she falls ou that — 
 when she begins denouncing and excluding — that all 
 the old faults, few and light as they are, seem to leap 
 into ugly life again for the moment.-'-' 
 
 " Few and light, indeed ! Ah, my dear Templeton, 
 the gulf between you and happiness looks wide ; but 
 only because it is magnified in mist.^' 
 
 " Which you would have me disperse by lightning- 
 flashes of Dialectics, eh ? Well, every man has his 
 nostrum.'^ 
 
 " I have not. My method is not my own, but 
 Plato's.'' 
 
 " But, my good fellow, the Windrush school admire 
 Plato as much as you do, and yet certainly arrive at 
 somewhat different conclusions." 
 
 '' They do Plato the honour of patronising him, as 
 ^ Representative Man ; but their real text-book, you 
 
414 PHAETHOX. [xiu 
 
 will findj is Proclus. That liapless philosopliaster's 
 a priori method, even his very verbiage, is dear to their 
 souls ; for they copy it through wet and dry, through 
 sense and nonsense. But as for Plato — when I find 
 them using Plato^s weapons, I shall believe in their 
 understanding and love of him." 
 
 '' And in the meanwhile claim him as a new verger 
 for the Reformed Church Catholic ? " 
 
 "Not a new verger, Templeton. Augustine said,, 
 fourteen hundred years ago, that Socrates was the 
 philosopher of the Catholic Faith. If he has not 
 seemed so of late years, it is, I suspect, because we da 
 not understand quite the same thing as Augustine did, 
 when we talk of the Catholic Faith and Christianity." 
 
 " But you forget, in your hurry of clerical confi- 
 dence, that the question still remains, whether these 
 Creeds are true.^' 
 
 " That, too, as I take it, is a question of Dialectics^ 
 unless you choose to reduce the whole to a balance-of- 
 probabilities argument — rather too narrow a basis 
 for a World-faith to stand upon. Try all ' mythic '' 
 theories, Straussite and others, by honest Dialectics. 
 Try your own thoughts and experiences, and the 
 accredited thoughts and experiences of wise men, by 
 the same method. Mesmerism and ' The Development 
 of Species ' may wait till they have settled themselves 
 somewhat more into sciences ; at present it does not 
 much matter what agrees or disagrees with them. 
 But using this weapon fearlessly and honestly, you 
 will, unless Socrates and Plato were fools, arrive at 
 absolute eternal truths, which are equally true for all 
 men, good or bad, conscious or unconscious; and I tell 
 
xii.] PHAETHOX. 415- 
 
 yon — of course you need uot believe me till you have 
 made trial — that those truths will coincide with the 
 plain honest meaning of the Catholic Creeds, as deter- 
 mined by the same method — the only one, indeed, by 
 which they or anything else can be determined." 
 
 " Yon forget Baconian induction, of which you are 
 so fond/^ 
 
 "And pray what are Dialectics, but strict 
 Baconian induction applied to words, as the pheno- 
 mena of mind, instead of to things, the phenomena 
 of " 
 
 " What ? ^' 
 
 "I can't tell you; or, rather, I will not. I have 
 my own opinion about what those trees and stones 
 are ; but it will require a few years^ more verification 
 before I tell." 
 
 " Really, you and your Dialectics seem in a hopeful 
 and valiant state of mind." 
 
 '' Why not ? Can truth do anything but 
 conquer ? " 
 
 " Of course — assuming, as every one does, that the 
 truth is with you." 
 
 '^ My dear fellow, I have seldom met a man who' 
 could not be a far better dialectician than I shall ever 
 be, if he would but use his Common Sense." 
 
 " Common Sense ? That really sounds something 
 like a bathos, after the great big Greek word which 
 you have been propounding to me as the cure for all 
 my doubts." 
 
 " What ? Are you about to ' gib ' after all, just as 
 I was flattering myself that I had broken you in to go 
 quietly in harness ? " 
 
il6 PHAETHOX. [xii. 
 
 " I am very mucli minded to do so. The trutli is, 
 I cannot bring myself to believe that the universal 
 panacea lies in an obscure and ancient scientific 
 method/' 
 
 " Obscure and ancient ? Did I not just say that 
 any man might be a dialectician ? Did Socrates ever 
 appeal to any faculty but the Common Sense of man 
 as man, which exists just as much in England now, I 
 presume, as it did in Athens in his day ? Does he not, 
 in pursuance of that method of his, draw his argu- 
 ments and illustrations, to the horror of the big- 
 worded Sophists, from dogs, kettles, fishwives, and 
 what not which is vulgar and commonplace ? Or did 
 I, in my clumsy attempt to imitate him, make use of a 
 single argument which does not lie, developed or 
 undeveloped, in the Common Sense of every clown; 
 in that human Reason of his, which is part of God's 
 image in him, and in every man ? And has not my 
 complaint against Mr. Windrush's school been, that 
 they will not do this; that they will not accept the 
 ground which is common to men as men, but disregard 
 that part of the 'Vox Populi' which is truly 'Vox 
 Dei,' for that which is ' Vox Diaboli ' — for private 
 sentiments, fancies, and aspirations ; and so casting 
 away the common sense of mankind, build up each 
 man, on the pin's point of his own private judgment, 
 his own inverted pyramid ? " 
 
 ''But are you not asking me to do just the same, 
 when you propose to me to start as a Scientific 
 Dialectician ? " 
 
 " Why, what are Dialectics, or any other scientific 
 method, but conscious common sense ? And what is 
 
XII.] • PHAETHON. 417 
 
 common sense, but unconscious scientific method? 
 Every man is a dialectician, be lie scholar or boor, in 
 as far as he tries to use no words which he does not 
 understand, and to sift his own thoughts, and his 
 expression of them, by that Eeason which is at once 
 common to men, and independent of them/^ 
 
 "As M. Jourdain talked prose all his life with- 
 out knowing it. Well 1 prefer the unconscious 
 
 method. I have as little faith as Mr. Carlyle would 
 have in saying : ' Go to, let us make ' — an induction 
 about words, or anything else. It seems to me no 
 very hopeful method of finding out facts as they are.^^ 
 
 " Certainly ; provided you mean any particular 
 induction, and not a general inductive and severely- 
 inquiring habit of mind ; that very 'Go to ^ being a 
 fair sign that you have settled beforehand what the 
 induction shall be ; in plain English, that you have 
 come to your conclusion already, and are now looking 
 about for facts to prove it. But is it any wiser to say : 
 ' Go to, I will be conscious of being unconscious of 
 being conscious of my own forms of thought ' ? For 
 that is what you do say, when, having read Plato, 
 and knowing his method, and its coincidence with 
 Common Sense, you determine to ignore it on common- 
 sense questions.^^ 
 
 " But why not ignore it, if mother- wit does as 
 weU ? " 
 
 " Because you cannot ignore it. You have learnt 
 it more or less, and cannot forget it, try as you will, 
 and must either follow it, or break it and talk nonsense. 
 And moreover, you ought not to ignore it. For it 
 seems to me, that you were sent to Cambridge by One 
 
 L. G. 2 E 
 
418 PHAETHON. ' [xn. 
 
 greater tlian your parents, in order that you might 
 learn it, and bring it home hither for the use of the 
 M. Jourdains round you here, who have no doubt been 
 talking prose all their life, but may have been also 
 talking it very hs.dlj." 
 
 " You speak riddles." 
 
 '' My dear fellow, may not a man employ Reason, 
 or any other common human faculty, all his life, and 
 yet employ them very clumsily and defectively ? " 
 
 '*■ I should say so, from the gross amount of human 
 unwisdom/' 
 
 "And that, in the case of uneducated persons, 
 happens because they are not conscious of those 
 faculties, or of their right laws, but use them blindly 
 and capriciously, by fits and starts, talking sense on 
 one point and nonsense on another ? " 
 
 " Too true. Heaven knows." 
 
 ''But the educated man, if education mean any- 
 thing, is the man who has become conscious of those 
 common human faculties and their laws, and has learnt 
 to use them continuously and accurately, on all matters 
 alike." 
 
 " True, O Socraticule ! " 
 
 " Then is it not his especial business to teach the 
 right use of them to the less educated ? — unless you 
 agree with the old Sophists, that the purpose of 
 education is to enable us to deceive or coerce the 
 uneducated for our own aggrandisement.' ' 
 
 " I am therefore, it seems, to get up Platonic 
 Dialectics simply in order to teach my ploughmen to 
 use their common sense ? " 
 
 " Exactly so. Teach yourself first, and every one 
 
XII.] PHAETHON. 419 
 
 around you afterwards, not the doctrines, nor tlie 
 formulae — though he had none — but the habit of mind 
 which Socrates tried in vain to teach the Athenian 
 youth. Teach them to face all questions patiently 
 and fearlessly : to begin always by asking every word, 
 great or small, from ' Predestination ' to ' Protection,^ 
 what it really means. Teach them that ^By your 
 words you shall be justified, and by your words you 
 shall be condemned,^ is no barren pulpit-text, but a 
 tremendous practical law for every day, and for every 
 matter. Teach them to be sure that man can find out 
 truth, because Grod his Father and Archetype will 
 show it to those who hunger after it. Try to make 
 them see clearly the Divine truths which are implied, 
 not only in their creeds, but in their simplest house- 
 hold words ; and " 
 
 '^And fail as Socrates failed, or rather worse; 
 for he did teach himself : but I shall not even do 
 that.'^ 
 
 " Do not despair in haste. In the first place, I 
 deny that Socrates taught himself, for I believe that 
 One taught him, who has promised to teach every 
 man who desires wisdom; and in the next place, I 
 have no fear but that the sound practical intellect 
 which that same One has bestowed on the Englishman, 
 will give you a far better auditory in any harvest field, 
 than Socrates could find among the mercurial Athenians 
 of a fallen age." 
 
 " Well, that is, at all events, a comfort for poor 
 me. I will really take to my Plato again, till the 
 hunting begins.-" 
 
 " And even then, you know, you don^t keep two 
 
420 PHAETHON. [xii. 
 
 packs ; so you will have three days out of the six 
 wherein to study him/^ 
 
 " Four, you mean — for I have long given up read- 
 ing Sunday books on Sunday/^ 
 
 " Then you read your Bible and Prayer-book ; or 
 even borrow some of Lady Janets devotional treatises ; 
 and try, after you have translated the latter into plain 
 English, to make out what they one and all really do 
 mean, by the light which old Socrates has given you 
 during the week. You will find them wiser than you 
 fancy, and simpler also." 
 
 " So be it, my dear Soul-doctor. Here come Lewis 
 and the luncheon." 
 
 And so ended our conversation. 
 
 CHA.BLE3 DICKENS AND EVANS, CEXSTAL PALACE PHESS. 
 
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 HEALTH AND EDUCATION. 
 
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