THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Blake R. Nevius 
 
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 K 
 
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ESSAYS ON 
 POETRY AND POETS 
 
ES SAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 POETRY AND POETS 
 
 HON. RODEN NOEL 
 
 author of 
 
 'a little child's monument," "songs of the heights and deeps,' 
 " house of ravensburg," etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1886 
 
(The rights of translation and o/ reproduction are rese>''t:d.) 
 

 TO MY FRIEND 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, 
 
 POET, ESSAYIST, HISTORIAN, 
 
 IN MEMORY OF "AUI.D LANG SYNF.," 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These Essays, with all their faults, were carefully composed, 
 but, since a (cw of them were written some time ago, all 
 have been scrupulously revised, the information involved, 
 moreover, being brought, as far as possible, up to date : 
 those that are republished have also been occasionally 
 altered, in accordance with modified conviction on the 
 part of the writer ; others are recent, and published now 
 for the first time. 
 
 All deal with modern, romantic poetry. The keynote 
 of more than one of them is to be found in my opening 
 essay on the " Poetic Interpretation of Nature," for a very 
 marked characteristic of the best poetry of our century 
 is the worship, and faithful, though idealized, delineation of 
 external nature. In the last paper I print an experience 
 of English travel, because, though hardly indeed covered 
 by the book's designation, it forms a kind of return to this 
 " dominant theme," being an attempt of my own at some 
 measure of that descriptive interpretation, the general 
 principles of which I have discussed in my first paper ; 
 this is a record of the experience on which was partly 
 founded my poem " Thalatta," in " Songs of the Heights 
 and Deeps." 
 
 The only poet not of our centur)- included in the present 
 
viii I'REFACE. 
 
 volume is Chatterton. My brief essay on him appeared 
 many years ago, but I quite agree with Mr. Theodore 
 Watts, who has an excellent (and comparatively recent) 
 introductory article on him in Ward's " British Poets," 
 that, young as he was, Chatterton may be regarded as the 
 father of that revived romantic poetry, now established 
 amongst us. 
 
 The other more pronounced characteristics of the poets 
 here discussed are, I think, generally speaking, broad and 
 deep human sympathies, a salient and original personality, 
 strength and sincerity of feeling and conviction, as well as 
 some poetic distinction of utterance, or style, whether that 
 be rugged and robust, or subtle, delicate, and refined. 
 Between Chatterton and Byron, I could have wished to 
 say a word on Blake, and Burns, poets, each in his way, 
 so genuine, simple, sincere, and distinguished ; nor ought 
 Coleridge, and Mrs. Browning to have been forgotten. 
 But, alas ! " Hell is paved with good intentions." 
 
 My thanks are due to the proprietors of the Contem- 
 porary, Fortnightly, Britisii Quarterly, and Indian Rnnezus, 
 as also to those of the Spectator, JSI acniillan s,2lX\^ Gentleman's 
 Magazines, ior permission to reprint essays, which, however, 
 while originally appearing in their columns, have been 
 very considerably altered, not only as regards form, but 
 also in respect of substance. 
 
 R. X. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 On the Poetic Interpretation of Nature ... ... i 
 
 ClIATTERTON ... ... ... ... ... ... 36 
 
 Lord Byron and his Times ... ... ... ... 50 
 
 Shelley ... ... ... ... .. ... 114 
 
 Wordsworth ... ... ... ... ... ... 132 
 
 Keats ... ... ... ... ... ... 150 
 
 Victor Hugo ... ... ... ... ... ... 172 
 
 The Poetry of Tennyson .. ... ... ... 223 
 
 Robert Browning ... ... ... ... ... 256 
 
 Robert Buchanan's Poetry ... ... ... ... 283 
 
 A Study of Walt Whitman ... ... ... ... 304 
 
 Rambles By Cornish Seas ... ... ... ... 342 
 
ESSAYS ON POETRY AND 
 POETS. 
 
 ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION 
 OF NATURE. 
 
 I CANNOT follow that fine poet and critic, Matthew 
 Arnold, in his apparent depreciation of Nature-poetry, 
 when he dismisses Shelley as the poet of clouds and sun- 
 sets, and says he had not got hold of the right subject- 
 matter for poetry. It is distinctively a modern subject, no 
 doubt ; but, I should have thought, one newly reclaimed for 
 beneficent poetic ends, — so much more fertile possession 
 made over to the Muse, in addition to that purely human 
 interest which has been hers from of old. 
 
 I believe that Rousseau, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, 
 Keats, Coleridge, were verily prophets, to whom a new 
 revelation was entrusted. In a time when all secrets were 
 at length supposed to be laid bare before man's microscopic 
 understanding, all superstitions exploded, all mysteries 
 explained ; when the universe emptied of ancient awe 
 seemed no longer venerable, but a hideous lazar-house 
 rather, made visible to all human eyes in every ghastly 
 corner of it ; before the Circe-wand of materialism. Love 
 metamorphosed into a sensation, Man shrivelled to a 
 handful of dust, the Body of God's own breathing world 
 
ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 with familiar irreverence laid upon the board of some near- 
 sighted professor to be dissected ; when the angels of Faith 
 and Hope seemed to be deserting for ever the desecrated 
 shrines of mankind — then it was that these Prophet-Poets, 
 as very ministers of Heaven, pointed men to the World- 
 Soul, commanding them once more to veil their faces 
 before the swift subtle splendour of Universal Life. The 
 moods of Nature do mysteriously respond to the moods of 
 Man. To the sensitive spirit the sea, the mountains, and 
 the stars are ver>' types and symbols of permanence, order, 
 eternity. Nature and man are elder sister and younger 
 brother ; she wakes intelligence and will in him ; he knows 
 himself in knowing her. She seems to him a dumb and 
 blind elder sister, whose laws inexorably bind him, while 
 he imposes himself upon her, reading spiritual meanings in 
 her face. The chaos of our own soul, individual human 
 degradation, of which we in the midst can but dimly divine 
 the issue, receives a mystic interpretation from what seems 
 the unconscious innocence of a sphere which yet manifests 
 evil and good, strength and weakness — though, withal, the 
 grand universality of a Kosmos. Thence we can look up 
 with greater trust than before even for the worms that 
 " sting one another in the dust." 
 
 Why do the Arab in the desert, the Persian on his 
 mountain, bow before the all-beholding sun? In him is 
 no sin, no vanity, falsehood, or vain ambition, himself the 
 veritable incarnation of one invisible Sun. He who loses 
 his own personality in Nature, who lays down before her, 
 the universal mother and tomb of humanity, his own 
 private wrongs and griefs and fevered aspirations, hereby 
 redresses the balance so unduly weighted with the self-will 
 and momentary longings of one restless man. For she is 
 one who toils not nor dreams, errs not nor supposes, raves 
 not nor repents, but calmly fulfils herself for ever. 
 
 In her general aspects. Nature, if we do not peer too 
 closely into the minutiae of her painful strife and struggle. 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 3 
 
 looks inevitable and calm, not in perpetual spiritual 
 conflict like ourselves ; and hence she seems to offer rest 
 to those who love her. The harmony of inviolable laws 
 appears in her cooperant to an end. But I think that this 
 inevitablencss of a universal order implicitly involves the 
 idea of rightness, that of some fulfilled obligation tinged 
 with morality, or what is akin to it. I know this cannot 
 be proved, but I think it may be felt. 
 
 The individual, in so far as he can assert himself 
 against, or regard himself as out of relation with, the whole 
 Kosmos, is wrong, evil ; but in harmony with all he is 
 right. And though, indeed, external nature may be really 
 composed of individuals, yet if it be so, we are not, except 
 in some small degree as respects the animal world, in the 
 secret of their subjectivity, and therefore cannot know 
 them for such. Intelligences who should be unable to put 
 themselves in conscious communication with ours might 
 well regard human bodies as part of a fixed order of 
 inflexible laws, without private volition or caprice, just as 
 we now regard the inorganic. For even by ourselves 
 private volitions are capable of being reduced to a law of 
 averages through statistical science, which points to a real 
 eternal order beyond and beneath our discords, resolving 
 them into harmony. And however this be, to merge our 
 personality in quiet or rapturous contemplation of a 
 universal natural order proves indeed heavenly relief from 
 the too often intolerable burden of an isolated self-life. 
 
 AH that is profound, eternal, impersonal in us, goes 
 forth to wed with the profound, eternal, impersonal Heart 
 of all. It is beyond our good and right, more than our 
 ideal, yet justifies, sanctions, transcends, absorbs it. Uni- 
 versal Nature, who is one with us, constitutes, nourishes, 
 creates us ; while we in her constitute, nourish, create our- 
 selves, one another, and her. If it be true that we form her 
 in our image, it is also true that from her we derive the 
 power so to form her ; we are her creatures, living in and 
 
ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 by her. Verily, it is our privilege to know conflict, and 
 bewilderingly to realize some fundamental inner freedom, 
 which is more than mere inanimate law ; but the seemingly 
 inanimate order is a revelation of still higher privilege — 
 that of inevitable Will, at one with unhesitating Wisdom ; 
 and this surely is the inmost verity of things, our defect 
 and disharmony being but an isolated chord in the grand 
 music. 
 
 Therefore, I repeat : " the light that never was on sea 
 or land, the consecration and the poet's dream," is indeed a 
 new revelation, made peculiarly in the modern poetry of 
 true spiritual insight, and of this Poetry of Nature Words- 
 worth is the High Priest. Not only does it pour fresh 
 illuminating light upon Nature herself, but it also deepens 
 and enlarges our comprehension of man. By means of 
 their analogues in Nature, the human heart and mind may 
 be more profoundly understood. Human emotions win a 
 double dearness, or an added sorrow from their fellowship 
 and association with outward scenes. While Nature can 
 be fathomed only through her analogies with the desires, 
 fears, and aspirations of the human soul, these again can 
 scarcely become defined and articulate save through the 
 mystic and multifoim appearances of Nature. We have 
 here then a new poetic product of priceless value ; neither 
 the external scene alone, nor man alone, but rather some 
 spiritual child of their espousals. 
 
 It is really almost puerile nowadays to suppose that 
 there is an absolute Nature, which science and the land- 
 surveyor are alone competent correctly to know — while 
 poetry invents a world of her own wherewith to amuse 
 herself and other people. Spiritual imagination alone 
 knows Nature ; I don't say adeqiiately, even she — but with 
 any approach to adequacy ; though, of course, the common 
 constitution of our senses and understanding presents to us 
 an external world which, so far as superficial characteristics 
 are concerned, is pretty well the same for all, and which 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 5 
 
 quite sufficiently serves the purposes alike of science, of 
 common intercourse, and of practical utility. But since 
 Berkeley, Kant, and modern physiolo<;y, it is no longer 
 permissible to doubt that even these superficial qualities, 
 and what we call " laws of nature," are merely the interpre- 
 tation which our sensible and mental constitution enables 
 us to put upon the language of the Kosmos, wherein a 
 great deal more is meant than meets the ear. Of course, 
 one must be insane to deny that the sea is a vast quantity 
 of salt water, or that a primrose is indeed a yellow primrose, 
 as Peter Bell with his plain common sense assumes it to be. 
 But it is quite compatible with sanity to believe that both 
 sea and primrose are a great deal more also. Only one 
 must have other faculties, or faculties more highly trained, 
 to discern the more. Poetry does not tell pretty lies for 
 the sake of amusement, but penetrates to the heart of 
 things. Therefore, I cannot altogether agree with Mr. 
 Ruskin about " pathetic fallacy," — although no doubt there 
 2S a " false " way of looking at things as well as a true. 
 The nimble fancy may suggest mere points of superficial 
 resemblance, hardly vital or essential to the objects, which 
 the poet endows with animation and soul, rather perhaps 
 conveying an erroneous conception of their proper and 
 peculiar character. So far I can agree ; but what I urge 
 is, that to endow them with animation and soul is not 
 necessarily to falsify ; may rather be to see more to the 
 very root of them. I don't pretend that the poet speaks 
 with precise accuracy in his metaphors and similes, but he 
 suggests an inner truth of things, to which the unimagina- 
 tive are simply blind. Indeed, precise accuracy belongs to 
 the region of the understanding, which is b}- itself incapable 
 of the higher truth. So that when Mr. Arnold tells us to 
 conceive dogmas in the light of poetr}-, if he means with 
 elasticity, in no hard and fast, cast-iron fashion, I can 
 follow ; but if he means as mere graceful, unveracious fables, 
 I cannot. 
 
6 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 For instance, nothing could be more realistically de- 
 scriptive than Wordsworth's magnificent lines on the Yew- 
 trees of Borrowdale : — 
 
 " each particular trunk a growth 
 Of intertwisted fibres serpentine 
 Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved ; " 
 
 but the imaginative touches are equally true ; nay, penetrate 
 more to the heart of things : — 
 
 " Nor uninformed with phantasy, and looks 
 That threaten the profane ; " 
 
 Then those wonderful personifications — less fanciful than 
 Shelley's in " Adonais," but more imaginative — how deep 
 they go, how grand and solemn the mystery they unveil ! — 
 
 ' ' beneath whose sable roof 
 
 ghostly shapes 
 
 May meet at noontide ; Fear and trembling Hope, 
 Silence and Foresight : Death the skeleton, 
 And Time the shadow." 
 
 To meditative imagination, in the umbrageous atmosphere 
 of the yew-trees, these august Presences verily abide — more 
 actually than their ancient boughs with coral berries. The 
 cuckoo is no mere cuckoo, but " a wandering voice ; " a 
 voice of dear memories, and coming summer. "Yellow 
 bees in the ivy bloom " are to the poet " forms more real 
 than living man, nurslings of immortality." Nay, those 
 outer things are because these inner realities are ; the 
 former would not be without the latter — they are images 
 and shadows only ; the leaping lamb is on earth because 
 the Lamb of God is in Heaven, in the inner Holy of Holies 
 of Humanity. Light is in the sense, in outer space, be- 
 cause Light is in the spirit, in the understanding. The 
 perishing bread that sustains the body is by virtue of the 
 Bread of Life. To the opened inner eye there is indeed a 
 Real Presence in the elements of the Eucharist. 
 
 I do not mean to say that the animism of savages is a 
 correct creed, for they simply deify phenomena without 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 7 
 
 analysis, or suspicion that these are largely subjective ; nor 
 even do I say that the Pagan poets were correct in their 
 mythological beliefs ; or the mediaevals in their fairy-lore ; 
 yet I think they were not far from the truth when they 
 formulated their conviction that our spiritual kinship with 
 Nature testifies to some spiritual beings like ourselves 
 behind the phenomena of Nature — the elements, and so- 
 called inanimate objects, being only their expression, body, 
 or vesture. Nor do I deem such a belief at all incompatible 
 with a full recognition of that ever-widening kingdom of 
 physical law, to which modern Science introduces us : only 
 let Science " stick to her own last ! " Quite certainly the 
 ancients were never guilty of deliberately, in cold blood, 
 inventing a quasi-poetic, or metaphorical diction, which the 
 vulgar were so foolish as to take for literal fact, as our 
 pseudo-scientific insincerity of unbelief, and incapacity for 
 comprehending other modes of thought and feeling, now 
 complacently assume. On the contrary, modern Nature- 
 poetry is reverting, though in its own fashion, and in 
 accordance with other altered convictions of our age, to 
 this primal conception of the ancients. For as Science — 
 though furnishing in her fairy tales new material for poetry 
 — affords no help to the poetic feeling of life and spirit in 
 Nature, so neither does a theology which teaches that there 
 is a God external to the world, who once made, and still 
 possibly sustains it. Poetry demands God immanent in 
 Man and Nature. So that the author of Ecclesiastical 
 Sonnets, the High Priest of this special poetry, yet hesi- 
 tating and bewildered by his dogmatic creed, as by his 
 habit of inherited thought, startles us out of our propriety 
 by exclaiming : — 
 
 " Great God ! I'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn I " 
 
8 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 But the philosophy of idealism supplies for the logical 
 faculty the conception needed to lift it into some harmony 
 with the vision of children, poets, and the more primitive, 
 less sophisticated races. Wordsworth, however, and Cole- 
 ridge seem scarcely to dare credit what to the inmost core 
 of them they feel true. You will remember the strange 
 passage, in one of Coleridge's philosophical poems, where 
 he apologizes to his wife for giving utterance to his con- 
 viction ! Schiller, in his " Gods of Greece," makes a melan- 
 choly lament over their extinction. And I confess that, 
 dearly as I love Mrs. Browning, her poem in reply to 
 Schiller appears to me in all respects the least felicitous 
 of her works. Pan is not dead — save in this sense — that 
 God manifest in Nature is now, since the revelation of our 
 Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, felt to be less worshipful than 
 God manifest in Divine Humanity. There would seem to 
 be three elements, which, combined, create the world as we 
 know it — the God in Man, the God in Nature, and the 
 Defect in both. We and the world have a common reason, 
 and a common heart, or we could not know the world. 
 The richer and deeper our own life, the more can we enter 
 into the life of the world ; and the more fully we enter into 
 that, the more universal and profound becomes our own. 
 Not only is our mental life developed through perception, 
 but physiology shows the close correlation of our external 
 and internal lives, so that without the nourishment and 
 sustainment of our bodies by earth and sun, our soul-life 
 in its present form would be impossible. Yet the Divine 
 Reality is deeper than plummet of human understanding 
 ever sounded : eye hath not seen, nor ear heard. The 
 outer world is but symbol and parable, the imperfect self- 
 manifestation to our defective apprehension of eternal 
 Ideas, which are substantial. That is a truth familiar to 
 mystics of all ages, which in recent times has been virtually 
 re-stated by two notable teachers, one a man of science, 
 James Hinton, the other a theologian, Cardinal Newman. 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 9 
 
 The world, says Hinton, seems to us dead, only on account 
 of our own deadness. And therefore, in proportion as we 
 are made alive, will the life of the world become manifest 
 to us. Therefore also I conceive Wordsworth's position 
 in the immortal "Ode on Immortality" to be thoroughly 
 justified. Fresh from the Fountain of his being, the Child- 
 spirit sees most truly. The gleam of the sanctuary is upon 
 him, and around 
 
 "Meadow, grove, and stream, 
 
 The earth, and every common sight. 
 
 To him do seem. 
 
 Apparelled in celestial light, 
 The glory and the freshness of a dream." 
 
 " Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 Upon the growing Boy. 
 
 The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 And by the vision splendid 
 Is on his way attended ; 
 At length the Man perceives it die away. 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 But— 
 
 " The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Doth take a sober colouring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; 
 ***** 
 
 Thanks to the human heart l)y which we live. 
 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 The Child-spirit is alone immortal ; yet the Divine 
 Child in his eternal youth looks often forth from the sadder 
 and wiser eyes of man. The old mystics believed that 
 when Adam and Eve sinned, the gods or angels they 
 talked with became hidden from them, and appeared to 
 them as trees and flowers, and common earth or sky, 
 ■ — beautiful indeed, but hardly animate, and they quite 
 unable to hold intelligent converse with them as before. 
 
10 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS, 
 
 To Blake the sun was no mere ball of fiery vapours, 
 but a glorious company of the Heavenly Host praising 
 God. Yet to me it appears that James Hinton was wrong 
 in his assumption that Man alone is fallen or defective, 
 while Nature remains perfect. The impression one derives 
 is rather that we have shared in her fall, or she in ours. 
 Between us there can be no such chasm. Nay, she is " red 
 in tooth and claw with ravine." A formidable indictment, 
 indeed, has been drawn up against her in the outraged 
 names of justice and of love ! She has her moods as we 
 have — good and evil, grave and gay, desolate and happy, 
 cruel and kind, terrible and gentle, while we respond to 
 her varying humour according to our own. Hence it is 
 that poets interpret her differently, according to their own 
 characters. The grand and gloomy, the Titanic and diabolic, 
 find their expression in Byron, but the tranquil and tender 
 chiefly in Wordsworth. I really do not think there is much 
 " pathetic fallacy " in the ascription by poets of their own 
 moods to Nature. It is rather that in these dominant 
 moods of theirs they are able to feel the corresponding 
 note in Nature. There is indeed in her, as there is also 
 in ourselves, a deep foundation of tranquillity and calm 
 under all the roaring and unrest of her loud waves — a 
 region of repose, an inner haven of peace ; and the pro- 
 foundest poet abides, or is anchored there, however he 
 may be tossed to and fro on the upper surge. And very 
 often have her loud paeans of rejoicing been felt by the 
 sorrowful to be out of harmony with their sorrow. Or 
 again, the overflowing, multitudinous joy of her springs and 
 summers may carry consolation and conviction that all is 
 well, into the arid recesses of a mourner's heart. Or once 
 again, the dreariness and desolation of her dark seas and 
 shores, her mountains and barren plains, may unbearably 
 overwhelm an already overburdened soul. 
 
 I have admitted with Mr. Ruskin that there is a false 
 and vicious metaphorical diction used by poetasters, in- 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. II 
 
 sincerely, as a kind of " current coin ; " frigid conceits, cold 
 artifices of mere talent, or mere jingling babble for effect, 
 from which precisely Wordsworth came to deliver us. 
 
 A true poet is ever a loving and faithful observer of the 
 external features and deportment of his mistress. But just 
 because his look is the long look of a lover — no passing 
 glance — he sees more than that. Real feeling, I hold, 
 must put us into some vital relation with the actuality of 
 things, though the expression of it may be but a tentative 
 striving to body forth the truth about them. Thus, when 
 Kingslcy, in his beautiful ballad, " The Sands of Dee," calls 
 the foam of the wave that drowned Mary " cruel," though, 
 indeed, the foam itself may not be cruel, he gives utterance 
 to a feeling that is inevitable, and therefore, in all proba- 
 bility, justified ; for behind those engulfing seas there surely 
 must be some pitiless and murderous power, some prince, 
 or princes, of a world that " lieth in the wicked," however 
 that power may be directed and overruled by a Paternal 
 Master-Love. And when Keats, in describing the slow 
 movement of spent shredding foam along the back of a 
 heavy wave, characterizes it by the phrase " wayward in- 
 dolence," he fixes and determines the idiosyncrasy of this 
 movement in a manner simply impossible to a poet who 
 should cither fail to perceive, or else resolve not to allow 
 himself the language of analogy. There is some occult 
 identity between spent foam and our " wayward in- 
 dolence." 
 
 The heart of Wordsworth beats in S}'mpathy with the 
 sea's when he sings — 
 
 " Listen ! the mighty being is awake, 
 And doth with his eternal motion make 
 A sound like thunder everlastingly." 
 
 The great Apocalypse of Dante is one colossal translation 
 of the inner truths of heart and soul into the corresponding 
 imagery and environment of sense. When Milton calls the 
 boat that wrecked Lycidas — 
 
12 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 " That fatal and perfidious bark, 
 Built in the eclipse and rigg'd with curses dark, 
 That sunk so low that sacred head of thine." 
 
 how unlitcral, inaccurate, and true to the inmost fact is he ! 
 " Stone him with hardened hearts, harder than stones," sings 
 Shakespeare in " Lucrece." Stones are hard because hearts 
 are, not hearts hard because stones are, though that is not 
 the common opinion. To arrive at the true spiritual order, 
 you must reverse the order of experience. Metaphor is 
 the interpretation of one thing through another. And 
 one thing is through another. Seeing it as isolated, we 
 see it, through our own defect, imperfectly. It ever fulfils 
 itself by analogy, developed and discerned, as by passing 
 on into some other phase or form of existence. Every- 
 thing is a Proteus. But as Keats attributes the bright mail 
 of fish to the kisses of lovers, Wordsworth assigns to Duty 
 the guardianship of the Ancient Heavens, and the laughter 
 of fragrant flowers. Nor is this graceful falsehood, but 
 vital truth. 
 
 We have in " The Thorn " — not, on the whole, a very in- 
 spired poem — some minute, faithful description, character- 
 istic of Wordsworth. His graphic delineations of landscape 
 place a vivid imagery before the sense, which must ever be 
 dear to true lovers of Nature, dearer than the often vaguer 
 and more confused reminiscences, or too phantasmal, nebu- 
 lous, and unarticulated, however gorgeous, inventions of 
 Shelley. But still the imaginative touch in that poem goes 
 deeper than all the realism — 
 
 "And she is known to every s*ar, 
 And every wind that blows." 
 
 Yet if that is false, if it hints not, in the only or best way 
 possible, at a vital reality, why should it give peculiar de- 
 light ? Can what is known to be the most utterly fantastic 
 and irrational element in the whole composition boast such 
 a prerogative ? Surely not, though it be quite unnecessary 
 to define this imaginative truth more precisely. Again, 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 1 3 
 
 do we not thank our poet when he calls the Wye " thou 
 wanderer through the woods," and tells us of the Than:ies 
 " wandering at its own sweet will ? " 
 
 Shelley is hardly so close an observer as Wordsworth ; 
 or, when he is so, his observation is more limited in range. 
 It is a dissolving view of cloud, and wood, and water, and 
 flower. While Wordsworth spiritualizes the results of 
 loving observation, Shelley rather etherealizes vague im- 
 pressions, as of trance or dream. The former is like an 
 inductive philosopher, setting in order — indeed, often trans- 
 figuring into sacred glory — common experience ; the latter 
 like a schoolman of the Middle Ages, expatiating in phe- 
 nomena deduced a priori from his inner consciousness. 
 
 While Shelley volatilizes sense, Wordsworth conducts us 
 through its homely portal into a heavenlier and more abiding 
 realm. Wordsworth and Byron, Anta^us-like, win new 
 strength from contact with Mother Earth. I love Shelley 
 too well to compare him with Icarus, or with Phaeton ; for, 
 if he does not soar with us to the highest, he flies with us 
 through a very lovely, however insubstantial, dreamland of 
 his own fair vision.* 
 
 How should the uncertain motion of mist about a 
 mountain be defined better than by the lines of Words- 
 worth ? — 
 
 " Sucli gentle mists as glide, 
 Curling -mth unconfirmed intent 
 On that green mountain-side." 
 
 Whatever corresponds to that " unconfirmed intent," the 
 kinship there is in the mist to the more vital and essential 
 characteristics of the human soul, this surely is as much 
 there as mechanical laws of motion in space, which are 
 themselves but systematized perceptions of our sensuous 
 understanding, though doubtless corresponding to some 
 
 * But I have just read Mr. Stopford Brooke's introduction to Shellej', 
 which, so far as I know, is assuredly the most pregnant and illuminating 
 criticism of him extant. The comparison of his nature-poetry with that of 
 Wordsworth deserves careful study. 
 
14 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 reality of sensuous perception outside ; but the very 
 essence of those material qualities is that they are distantly 
 akin, that they are mysteriously symbolical of more human, 
 more intellectual, more ethical behaviour. For, as Schelling 
 and Coleridge pointed out, a symbol is itself the superior 
 being under inferior conditions : it is the higher essence, 
 one may say, deprived of its ethereal vesture, and become 
 incarnate, yet radiant still, and redolent of veiled Divinity. 
 
 As regards the dramatic interpretation of Man and 
 Nature through mutual influence upon one another, what 
 would the Leechgatherer in Wordsworth's poem be without 
 the " lonely moor .'' " They coalesce to one moving image. 
 In the meditative imagination of the poet the poor con- 
 tented old man becomes transfigured, and appears as a 
 heavenly minister, an angel from God, sent to console him, 
 upon whom weighed "the weary burden, and the mystery 
 of all this unintelligible world." Often indeed does the 
 meditative rapture of Shelley and Wordsworth pass into a 
 kind of mystic disembodiment before the face of Nature ; 
 they are caught up into some third heaven, where sense- 
 limits are confounded, and our poor earth -language falters 
 " with the burden of an honour unto which she was not 
 born." What would the wonderful pathos of "Michael " be 
 without the unfinished sheepfold, or the equally wonderful 
 pathos of " Margaret" without the neglected garden, once so 
 trim, the red stains and tufts of wool on the corner-stone 
 of the cottage porch, where the sheep were now permitted 
 to come and "couch unheeded .'* " 
 
 In that loveliest of lyrics, "Three }-ears she grew," we 
 have the picture of Lucy, to whom Nature was " law and 
 impulse," "an overseeing power to kindle or restrain," to 
 whom the cloud lent state, and the willow grace ; into whose 
 face from the rivulets passed " beauty, born of murmuring 
 sound," to whom belonged " the silence and the calm of 
 mute insensate things." Remember too that beautiful 
 passage in " The Excursion," M-here the old man corrects the 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURK. 15 
 
 wanderer's despondency by pointing him to the spear-grass 
 on the wall, with the dew on it, as testifying to the clear- 
 hearted peace that abides in the bosom of things. 
 
 There is the magical poem about the boy, into whose 
 heart a voice of mountain torrents was borne, in those 
 intervals of blowing mimic hootings to the owls, under the 
 starlight, by the lake ; there is the dancing of the poet's 
 heart with the daffodils, and that picture in " Nutting," 
 wherein "the green and mossy bower, deformed and sullied, 
 patiently gave up its quiet being." The voices of sea, 
 mountain torrent, and forest, are indeed the voice of Liberty, 
 as Coleridge in the Ode, Wordsworth in the Sonnet, and 
 Longfellow in the "Slave's Dream" declare. Every flower 
 "enjoys the air it breathes ; " the budding twigs spread out 
 their fan " to catch the breezy air," and can we doubt that 
 there is pleasure .'' We ought indeed " to move among the 
 shades with gentleness of heart, and with gentle hand 
 touch, for there is a spirit in the woods." In all sobriety, 
 it is true that what the poet saw in the Simplon Pass was 
 " like the workings of one mind, features of one face, 
 characters of the great Apocalypse ; " in all sobriety it is 
 true that Nature 
 
 "can so inform 
 The mind that is within us, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
 Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
 Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
 Is full of blessings. 
 
 " While with an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
 Now if there be a great fundamental principle, the slow 
 recognition of which by modern art we owe to Mr. Ruskin, 
 it is this, that " nothing can be good or useful or ultimately 
 
1 6 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 pleasurable which i.s untrue." (Modern Painters, vol. iii. p. 
 1 60.) Yet here, he proceeds, in metaphor and pathetic 
 fallacy, " is something pleasurable in written poetry which 
 is nevertheless untrue." For, according to him, these forms 
 of thought result from the " extraordinary or false appear- 
 ances of things to us, when we are under the influence of 
 emotion or contemplative fancy — false appearances, as 
 being entirely unconnected with any real power or character 
 in the object, and only imputed to it by us" (p. 159). Mr. 
 Ruskin further adds, that " the greatest poets do not often 
 admit this kind of falseness — that it is only the second 
 order of poets who much delight in it." Yet he admits 
 that " if we think over our favourite poetry we shall find it 
 full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more 
 for being so." Now there is here a contradiction which is 
 well worthy of attentive examination. This attribution 
 by metaphor of spiritual qualities to material objects is 
 eminently characteristic of modern poetry — notably of 
 Tennyson's — and has been made a ground of serious objec- 
 tion to it, as fatal to any claim it might put forward to be 
 accounted first-rate, by more than one critic following in 
 the wake of Mr. Ruskin. And so far as such criticism has 
 been a protest against the undiscriminating admiration for 
 mere pretty disconnected freaks of fancy, which at one time 
 threatened to break up our poetry into so many foam- 
 wreaths of loose luxuriant images, the effect of it has been 
 beneficial. There is danger, on the other hand, that this 
 criticism may beget a blind dogmatism, very injurious to 
 the natural and healthy development of the poetic art 
 which may be proper to our own present age. For the 
 intellectual and aesthetic developments of each different 
 race and age will have a characteristic individuality of their 
 own. And criticism ought to point us to the great models 
 of the past, not that we may become their cold and servile 
 imitators, but that we may nourish on them our own 
 creative genius. The classification of artists as first, second, 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 1 7 
 
 and third rate, must always be somewhat arbitrary ; but the 
 criticism which disposes of a quahty that is essential to such 
 poetry as Tennyson's, by calling it a weakness and a " note " 
 of inferiority, may itself be suspected of shallowness. 
 
 Let us examine a little more closely that instance of 
 mct.iphor which Mr. Ruskin takes from Keats : — 
 
 "Down whose green back the .shortlived foam, all hoar, 
 Bursts gradual with a 7iiay7varci indolence ," 
 
 Now, salt water cannot be either wayward or indolent ; on 
 this plain fact the charge of falsehood in the metaphor is 
 grounded. Yet this expression is precisely the most ex- 
 quisite bit in the picture. Can plain falsehood then be truly 
 poetic and beautiful? Many people will reply, "certainly," 
 believing that poetry is essentially pleasing by the number 
 of pretty falsehoods told or suggested. I believe with 
 Mr. Ruskin that poetry is only good in proportion to its 
 truth. Now, we must first inquire what the poet is here 
 intending to describe. If a scientific man were to explain 
 to us the nature of foam by telling us that it is a wayward 
 and indolent thing, this would clearly be a falsehood. But 
 does the poet profess to explain what the man of science 
 would profess to explain, or something else ? What are 
 the physical laws according to which water becomes foam, 
 and foam falls along the back of a wave — that is one 
 question ; and what impression does this condition of things 
 produce on a mind that observes closely, and feels with 
 exquisite delicacy of sense the beauty in the movement of 
 the foam, and its subtle relations to other material things, 
 as well as to certain analogues in the sphere of spirit, to 
 functions and states of the human spirit — this is a totally 
 different question. I submit that the office of tJic poet in 
 this connection is to answer the latter question, and that of 
 the scientific man to answer the former. But observe that 
 this is not granting licence of scientific ignorance or wanton 
 inaccuracy to the poet which some critics are disposed to 
 grant. For if the poet ignorantly or wantonly contradicts 
 
 C 
 
1 8 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 such results of scientific inquiry as are generally familiar to 
 the cultivated minds of his age, he puts himself out of 
 harmony with them, and does not announce truth, which 
 can commend itself to them as such. But the poetic aspects 
 of a circumstance do not disappear when the circumstance 
 is regarded according to the fresh light scientific inquiry has 
 thrown upon it. Such poetic aspects are increased as know- 
 ledge increases. Keats, in this instance, contradicts no 
 legitimate scientific conclusion. The poet who does so 
 wantonly, shows little of the true poet's reverence for Nature. 
 The poet undertakes to teach what the man of science does 
 not undertake to teach : their provinces are different ; but 
 if they contradict one another, they are so far bunglers in 
 their respective trades. 
 
 One source of error in this matter is, that in the popular 
 use of the words, we " fancy " and " imagine " what is not 
 the fact. I can here only afford room to refer the reader to 
 Mr. Ruskin's own fine dissertations on the respective func- 
 tions of true imagination and fancy — one of his definitions 
 of imagination being that it is the faculty of " taking things 
 by the heart," and as such, certainly not a faculty of seeing 
 things falsely. The question is, does the metaphor of 
 Keats express the poetic truth forcibly to kindred imagi- 
 native minds, or does it not .' If, as is the case with so 
 many fine-sounding metaphorical expressions, this expres- 
 sion when examined should prove inaccurate, far-fetched, 
 affected, disturbing, and degrading, not intensifying and 
 ennobling to the harmonious presentment of that which 
 the poet intended to represent, then is the metaphor false, 
 and because false, therefore bad as art. Yet poetry is 
 groundlessly accused of mixing and confusing incongruous 
 metaphors, by men of cold prosaic temperament, when 
 several vital characteristics of an object are hinted at by 
 more than one metaphor, which is permissible even in the 
 same sentence. But there is a vicious, because a cold and 
 insincere mixing of metaphors. Wisdom is justified of 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 1 9 
 
 her children. The inspired poets — men like Pindar, Shake- 
 speare, ^schylus, and Shelley — constantly blend their 
 metaphors in the legitimate fashion that justifies itself to 
 kindred spirits by the result attained. But you might 
 multiply vague epithets for ever, and not hit it off — not 
 transfix the core of a thing's individuality — as you can do 
 by a single happy metaphor. There are correspondences 
 between spirit and matter, and it is in seizing these that 
 we find each analogue in spirit and matter becoming 
 suddenly luminous, intelligible, real. It would not, as is 
 assumed, be more accurate to say, " the foam falls gradually." 
 These terms arc too abstract : other things also fall gradu- 
 ally ; and therefore they do not give the individuality of 
 the phenomenon in question. There is, indeed, some error 
 involved in the use of Keats' metaphor ; but this error is 
 allowed for, and it is the most accurate expression possible 
 of the fact ; for the error of poverty and vagueness which 
 the more abstract epithets would involve is a far more 
 radical error ; so that they are erroneously supposed to be 
 more scientific and exact. The commonest terms in use 
 for expressing mental and moral qualities are derived from 
 conditions and qualities of matter — that is, are used meta- 
 phorically ; and yet we do not call them " fallacies." We 
 talk of an " upright man " in the moral sense as readily as 
 we talk of an upright man in the bodily. Our most graphic 
 and vigorous prose must share the fate of our best poetry 
 if metaphor be simply falsehood. How are you to avoid 
 speaking of a tortuous, crooked policy ? The splendid 
 vigour of Mr. Ruskin's own prose-poetry is largely due to 
 his felicitous use of metaphor. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, indeed, remarks justly that Homer "would 
 never have written, never have thought of" such a meta- 
 phor as this of Keats'. He will call the waves " over-roofed," 
 " full-charged," " monstrous," " compact-black," " wine- 
 coloured," and so on. These terms are as accurate, as 
 incisive, as terms can be, but they never show the slightest 
 
20 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 feeling of anything animated in the ocean. Now, this 
 faculty of seeing and giving the external appearance of a 
 thing precisely is eminently Homeric, and is one without 
 which a man can hardly be a poet at all. The " ideal " on 
 which poetasters pique themselves, means but a feeble, in- 
 secure grasp of reality ; they do not know that to find the 
 ideal they must first hold fast and see into the common 
 external thing which they deem so despicable. But the 
 fellowship of the external thing with certain spiritual things 
 is an additional though latent quality in it, the perception 
 of which may result from a keen gaze into that external 
 appearance. Does Keats, then, see more than Homer ? 
 Mr. Ruskin replies that Homer had a faith in the anima- 
 tion of the sea much stronger than Keats'. But " all this 
 sense of something living in it he separates in his mind 
 into a great abstract image of a sea power. He never says 
 the waves rage or are idle. But he says there is somewhat 
 in, and greater than, the waves, which rages and is idle, and 
 that he calls a god " (vol. iii. p. 174). 
 
 We must remark upon this that the early poets of a 
 people have seldom displayed so great a care for the beau- 
 ties of external Nature in general as their later poets have 
 done. Compare Homer and Theocritus, Chaucer and 
 Tennyson. The earlier poetry will deal chiefly with the 
 outward, active life of man— his wars, hunting, passion for 
 women and other excitements, with all the intrigues and 
 adventures to which this may give rise ; and the noblest 
 songs have been sung about these simple universally 
 interesting themes. But the criticism which insists on the 
 poetry of a later age being squared on the model of that 
 of an earlier may surely be reminded that the earlier 
 poetry is so great and good precisely because it is sponta- 
 neous, the perfect expression of the age in which it was 
 produced. As men come to lead more artificial, quiet lives, 
 they reflect more on themselves and on the nature around 
 them, they stand in new relationships to external things, 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 2 1 
 
 they acquire new habits of fcehng, acting, thinking, and 
 external Nature becomes the mirror of their own more 
 highly organized existence ; so that the earlier poet cannot 
 see those subtle meanings in the face of Nature which the 
 later poet sees. If the external features of Nature remain 
 the same, the spirit of men in relation with them changes 
 ever. Even the senses, or some of them, become more 
 subtle, as Mr. Gladstone has shown in his essay on the 
 colour-sense of Homer and the Greeks. But if we admitted, 
 with Mr. Ruskin, that Homer was as sensitively alive to the 
 delicate play of expression on the mobile countenance of 
 Nature as Keats was, only that he ascribed it to some god, 
 and that Keats did not, we should be constrained to ask, 
 does Mr. Ruskin mean that Homer's was a more correct 
 mode of embodying that animation than was the meta- 
 phorical mode of Keats ? Are we to believe in the Pagan 
 nature-divinities } I am not denying it. But if not, and if 
 yet Mr. Ruskin admits the animation in question, it is hard 
 to see why he praises Homer, and deems the metaphor of 
 Keats a pleasant falsehood, a characteristic of the vicious 
 modern manner. Surely we owe the restoration of our faith 
 in the glorious animation of Nature very largely to Mr. 
 Ruskin's own teaching, which makes his inconsistent doctrine 
 on this subject of metaphor the more to be regretted. What 
 renders the language of our poets often incorrect, confused, 
 affected, is that while they cannot help feeling that there 
 is a life and a spirit in Nature, they are instructed by our 
 teachers of authority that this feeling is but a pretty super- 
 stition, allowable, indeed, in poetry, yet not to be mistaken 
 for a true belief. Poetry, therefore, becomes an " elegant 
 pastime," by no means the expression of our deepest and 
 most earnest insight. The result last century was that in 
 our poetry " mountains nodded drowsy heads," and " flowers 
 sweated beneath the night dew." For if images of this 
 kind be delusions, with no basis in truth, the elegance of 
 them resolves itself into a mere matter of taste. And 
 
22 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 people at that time (drinking cockneys especially) thought 
 those ideas very lovely and poetic indeed. Even now, 
 many of our most intelligent minds believe that, as Clough 
 
 sings, 
 
 " Earth goes by chemic forces, Heaven's 
 A mecanique celeste. 
 And heart and mind of human kind 
 A watch work as the rest." 
 
 Others of us believe that there is a deity indeed, but one 
 who, having made all this, only watches it go, and occasion- 
 ally interferes with the order of it to prove to us that it did 
 not make itself, and to remind us of his own existence. 
 But of the God of St. Paul, " in whom we (and all other 
 things) live, move, and have our being," we hear very little. 
 If, however, it were permitted in so enlightened an age as 
 the present to broach so old-world an idea, we might yet 
 believe with Homer that there is a great Sea-power, a 
 Divinity in the sea, as well as a deal of salt-water ; then 
 we might still believe with the great modern poet, with 
 whom it was no pretty lie, but a profound faith, that — 
 
 " There is a spirit in the pathless woods, 
 A presence tliat disturbs us with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air. 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 I think it especially important to examine the position 
 which Mr. Ruskin has taken up on this question in his third 
 volume of" Modern Painters," because it tends to neutralize 
 the noble teaching of the second, to which our art owes 
 incalculable benefit. We have only to turn to the chapter 
 on " Imagination Penetrative" (vol. ii. p. 163) to be assured 
 of the inconsistency of his doctrine on this subject. As an 
 
ON THE I'OETIC 1NTER1'K1:TATI0N OE NATURI'.. 23 
 
 instance of what he means by Imagination Penetrative, 
 he quotes from Milton — 
 
 " Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, 
 With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, 
 And every flower tliat sad embroidery wears." 
 
 How can a primrose be forsaken, or cowslips hang pensive 
 heads ? According to the chapter on " Pathetic Fallacy," 
 only a poet of the secondary order would indulge in such 
 pretty fallacies, illusions ; though I must confess that these 
 particular images hardly seem to me quite in harmony with 
 spring, or with the gladsome cowslip. He goes on, how- 
 ever, to quote Shakespeare's image of "pale primroses dying 
 unmarried, before they can behold bright Phoebus in his 
 strength ; " yet what is his comment here ? " Observe 
 how the imagination goes into the very inmost soul of 
 every flower," and " never stops on their spots or bodily 
 shape," which last remark implies a half-censure of Milton 
 for describing " the pansy freaked with jet," which being 
 merely a touch of inferior fancy, mingles with, and mars 
 the work of imagination. Again, " the imagination sees 
 the heart and inner natui"e, and makes them felt, but is 
 often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted in its giving of 
 outer detail." Even in the case of elaborate imaginative 
 structures, such as those of Dante and Milton, the poet's 
 work, I would contend, is the product of sheer insight, 
 whose keen, long, ardent gaze into the eyes of Nature, 
 human and material, has drawn the very soul out of her. 
 From that central point to which the seer has pierced, all 
 parts are seen in their own relative proportion, harmony, 
 hidden meaning, and purpose ; while the several parts that 
 are chosen and united in his work form a perfect organic 
 whole, because married, not according to the accidental 
 juxtaposition in which the vulgar eye may chance to behold 
 them at the surface, but according to the eternal affinities 
 they have in nature for one another. The parts of such a 
 work are not pieced arbitrarily together ; they have vital 
 
24 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND I'ol IS. 
 
 unison ; and they grow up into a grand symphony in the 
 creative mind of the poet, which process is just a repro- 
 duction in small of the vast organic evolution of the 
 universe. Men see things in isolated, broken pieces ; 
 but the poet, like the comparative anatomist, brings to- 
 gether the fragments that indeed belong to one another, 
 and so forms for us living models of the universal 
 kosmos. In this manner, true artists have positively 
 created new individualities — or at least gone to the verge 
 of creating them. If the idea of an imaginary living 
 creature were perfectly sufficient and self-consistent, it 
 would actually live. Meanwhile, great imaginations ap- 
 proach such a goal. There is the Dragon of Turner in the 
 Jason of his Liber Studiorum ; the terrible Lombard Griffin, 
 so intensely pourtrayed by Ruskin ; the Satan of Milton ; 
 the Caliban of Shakespeare ; the Mephistopheles of Goethe ; 
 the Quasimodo of Hugo. These may have actually breathed, 
 or may actually breathe some day, they seem so real, so 
 possible. This doctrine that all true poetry tells the most 
 fundamental truth about things, instead of being merely a 
 play of pretty or pathetic fallacies, an elegant relaxation 
 for after dinner, as modern critics seem to conceive, I 
 venture to propound as having the sanction of no mean 
 critic — Aristotle. For Aristotle, while defining poetry 
 " viewed generally " as /iifxi'img, yet explains that he does 
 not mean such imitation as modern photography might 
 make. " Poetry," he explains, " represents actions less 
 ordinary and interchanged, and endows them with more 
 rareness," than is found in Nature. The poet's business is 
 " not to tell events as they have actually happened, but as 
 they might possibly happen." " Poetry is more sublime 
 and more philosophical than history." I contend, then, 
 for Aristotle's definition of poetry as fiifxiiaig, the imitative 
 or, as one might prefer to paraphrase it, the reproductive 
 art, as on the whole best and most helpful. And I have 
 merely wished here in passing to strengthen my argu- 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 25 
 
 mcnt by showing that the principles I apply to defend the 
 use of metaphor arc of universal application in all depart- 
 ments of poetry. Thus I might proceed to point out that 
 there is more essential truth in the few lines embodying 
 Spenser's symbolic impersonations of the vices (envy, 
 gluttony, jealousy, etc.), than could be expressed in as 
 many pages of abstract dissertation. 
 
 It is unfortunate that Wordsworth, in the course of those 
 few discussions of his on the principles of Poetry, which are 
 worth their weight in gold (considering how little scientific 
 standard criticism our language can boast, in comparison 
 with the portentous amount of smart, conceited, futile 
 Babel-utterances, with which the weekly and daily press 
 teems to our bewilderment and confusion) — it is unfortunate 
 that Wordsworth himself should have used some unguarded 
 language, relative to the question we are here discussing. 
 He says that imagination "confers additional properties on 
 an object, or abstracts from it some of those which it 
 actually possesses." (Preface to Edition of 181 5, of Poetical 
 Works.) He gives several instances of this, w^hich it may 
 be well for us to examine. First, from Milton — 
 
 " As when far off at sea a fleet descried 
 Hangs in the clouds." 
 
 No fleet hangs in the clouds. But the poet, professing to 
 describe the appearance of a fleet far out at sea, describes 
 it exactly by these terms, and adds nothing to the picture 
 that does not belong to the actual appearance. Words- 
 worth next quotes from his own perfect descriptive poetry, 
 *' Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods." The 
 word "broods," Wordsworth himself remarks, conveys the 
 manner in which the bird reiterates and prolongs the soft 
 note, as if participating in a still and quiet satisfaction, like 
 that which may be supposed inseparable from the con- 
 tinuous process of incubation. Now it is probably true, 
 scientifically as well as poetically, that the bird delights in, 
 
26 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 and broods over its own note, while his mate is sitting near 
 upon their eggs. Again — 
 
 " O cuckoo, shall I call thee bird, 
 Or but a wandering voice ?" 
 
 If the poet, looking up at the grey cuckoo in the tree, were 
 to address it as a voice rather than a bird, the thought 
 would not be pleasing, but absurd, because untrue and 
 affected. But we may conceive him wandering medita- 
 tively about Rydal, as was his wont, lying upon the fresh 
 green grass, and listening to that beloved voice of the 
 spring, with all its old, sweet, sad associations. Has not 
 that cuckoo-voice become part of ourselves, a link of our 
 hearts to some long and lovely past ? Has not that quiet, 
 happy voice, falling into the hearts of lovers, beating very 
 close to one another, thrilled them into yet dearer union ? 
 And when such lovers have been parted, has not this gentle 
 voice united them in spirit again as they listened ? Is not 
 the cuckoo voice indeed all this, the very spirit of our English 
 spring, the voice of our childhood, as of the well-beloved 
 sister, or child, or mother, who used to hear it with us, and 
 is no more — all this quite as much, nay, how very much 
 more, than the love-call of one individual cuckoo ? The poet 
 has told us one truth, and the naturalist may tell us another. 
 The one "lies" and "alters Nature" quite as little as the 
 other. Wordsworth's genius steals like moonlight, silent and 
 unaware, into many a hidden nook that seemed barren and 
 formless before, but now teems with shy and rare loveliness, 
 as of herb and flower ; yet the moonlight only reveals 
 what is already there. Creative, indeed, are these isolated 
 images and metaphors, having a vital truth and coherence 
 of their own, quite as real as that of the vaster completed 
 works of mighty art ; and while in the highest work these 
 inferior features will have their meaning in strict sub- 
 ordination to the whole, yet criticism is wrong to ignore 
 and decry beauty of detail, which, if genuine, is itself the 
 offspring of the same quickening, creative spark, fusing 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 2/ 
 
 diverse elements into one. Though Keats was no weakling 
 of the Kirke White stamp, to be " snuffed out by an article," 
 one pain more might have been spared him on his con- 
 sumptive deathbed, could his critic have been less malig- 
 nant, and intelligent enough to comprehend that if unity 
 of plan were all in all, and the character of the details of 
 no importance, then a symmetrical periwig, or a sensation 
 story, or a smart review, would be nobler than " Endy- 
 mion," — which is absurd. 
 
 Again, take more particularly that instance from 
 Kingslcy of what Mr. Ruskin calls " pathetic fallacy." Of 
 Mary, who was drowned in calling the cattle home across 
 the sands of Dee, he sings — 
 
 " They rowed her in across the rolling foam, 
 The cruel crawling foam." 
 
 Now, how can foam be cruel ? Mr. Ruskin admits there is 
 a dramatic propriety in the expression ; I mean, that the 
 feeling with which a spectator would regard the foam in 
 these circumstances is correctly expressed ; but he contends 
 that the reason in this condition is unhinged by grief: 
 foam is not cruel, whether we fancy it so or not. He 
 admits that a person feeling it so will probably be higher 
 in nature than one who should feel nothing of the kind, but 
 contends that there is a third order of natures, higher than 
 either — natures which control such fallacious feelings by the 
 force of their intellects. Such men know and feel too 
 much of the past and future, and all things beside and 
 around that which immediately affects them, to be shaken 
 by it. Thus the high creative poet might be thought 
 impassive (shallow people think Dante stern) because he 
 has a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which 
 he stands serene, and watches the feeling, as it were, from 
 far off. I must admit that there is much truth in this 
 fine criticism ; but must remark that it is one thing to be 
 washed awav from our anchorage of reason — which, how- 
 
28 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 ever, as Mr. Ruskin admits, there are circumstances wherein 
 we should not think it a proof of men's nobleness not to 
 be — and another to be tossed up and down on the strong 
 billows of feeling, holding yet fast to the anchor of reason, 
 I mean that the influence of feeling on our intellects need 
 not necessarily be a distorting influence ; feeling may 
 teach us what we could not learn without it. Love, e.g.^ 
 may often blind us to the defects of a beloved person, and 
 so far confuse our judgment ; yet since love puts us en 
 rapport, in sympathy with that person, it imparts insight, 
 giving wider and more essential data for the exercise of 
 the understanding. The man to whom a primrose is " a 
 yellow primrose and nothing more," by no means knows it 
 correctly, because he does not feel any love for it or interest 
 in it. He knows nothing at all about it except the name. 
 A "dispassionate" judgment means too often a blind, 
 undiscriminating judgment formed by men who want 
 those fine inner organs of sensibility, without which the 
 data for a true judgment are necessarily wanting ; and 
 the stupid judgment of a cynic is infinitely more mis- 
 chievous than that of a warm partizan, because it has 
 the credit of exceptional " impartiality," and freedom from 
 " prejudice." 
 
 Let us examine this special instance of pathetic fallacy 
 from Kingsley. What and whence is this impression of 
 cruelty in the foam .'' Is it not the appropriate expression of a 
 sense that comes over us in such-like terrible circumstances 
 that there is on the outside of our weak wills and impotent 
 understandings some mysterious Destiny manifesting itself, 
 especially in that fixed and iron-bound order of Nature so 
 implacable toward men if, in often innocent ignorance, they 
 happen to be caught into the blind whirl of its relentless 
 machinery } For then it whirls on and crushes, not the 
 living flesh and blood only itself has wrought so cunningly, 
 but too often, alas ! as it seems, very human reason — the 
 tenderest and holiest of human sensibilities. In the coolest 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETyVTION OE NATURE. 29 
 
 blood regarding such a spectacle, I ask how shall vvc express 
 the fact of it ? The ancients had their cruel gods and their 
 blind fate. Our faith, on the other hand, if faith we have 
 at all, is in a Supreme Being, whose nature we can best 
 conceive by naming Him Love. And yet he who does not 
 feel the weary burden and the mystery of all this unin- 
 telligible world — he who does not confess what a feeble 
 glimmer is all our boasted light — that he is an infant 
 crying in the dark, and with no language but a cry — he 
 has not had the data upon which to form a real philosophy. 
 What, then, is it worth ? As men, as wise men, we must 
 feel these terrible realities in the core of our beings. If we 
 still retain our faith, after this, well and good. But how 
 shall we express the bewildered anguish of the spirit in such 
 seasons of calamity .■' To me it seems as inevitable, and 
 therefore as proper as it is natural, that we should upbraid 
 the instrument — the second cause — the cruel, crawling sea- 
 foam, that swallowed up the innocent we loved. Let 
 the philosopher at least furnish us with correcter formulai 
 for the expression of the feeling due from us as human 
 beings on such an occasion as this. Behind those engulfing 
 seas is there not, indeed, some pitiless, murderous power, 
 some prince, or princes of a world that lieth in the wicked, 
 however that power may be overruled by a supreme Maternal 
 Love ? 
 
 Mr. Ruskin again quotes a very affecting ballad from 
 Casimir de la Vigne, as an instance of what he thinks the 
 highest manner, where the poet refuses to let himself be 
 carried away by the horror of the incident he relates, and 
 simply pictures the dreadful, naked, physical fact of it 
 without any comment, impressing us far more than if he 
 had indulged in any pathetic fancies of his own about it. 
 There is to be a ball at the French ambassador's, and a 
 fair young girl is dressing for it. All the little nothings 
 she babbles to her maid while beautifying herself — she is 
 to meet her lover — are told just as she would say them, 
 
30 ESSAYS ON rOETRV AND POETS. 
 
 when a spark catches her dress, and she is burnt to death. 
 What is the result ? The poet only tell us — 
 
 " On disait, pauvre Constance ! 
 Et on dansait jusqu'au jour 
 Chez I'ambassadeur de France." 
 
 Now I do not believe with Mr. Ruskin that dark fallacious 
 thoughts occurred to the poet here, and that he resolutely 
 put them by because he philosophically held them to be 
 false. I do not believe that the highest poet is " unpartici- 
 pating in the passions " he depicts, as Coleridge affirms of 
 Shakespeare ; he is by turns in the situations of the cha- 
 racters he represents ; and here the emotion is so genuine, 
 that the poet's philosophy would have been torn to tatters 
 by it, for indeed such a philosophy would only have waited 
 the rending of reality. 
 
 But in cases of sudden, intense emotion, metaphor, which 
 implies some degree of reflection on the circumstance, is 
 for the most part out of place. Thought is overwhelmed 
 by feeling — the bare, fearful fact, that alone we see and 
 know, we can but relate that. We are dazed, crushed, 
 annihilated by the shock of a great fall, of a great woe. 
 But Time, the healer, comes, and though we may not thank 
 him, now the anguish tinges every experience, every move- 
 ment, later it seems a pregnant necessity, and yet some relief, 
 to remember, to reflect, to utter forth our sorrow. The 
 poet here feels and relates just as a witness fresh from the 
 incident would do. This bare relation is the most appro- 
 priate to the incident related. But when meditation upon 
 an afflicting circumstance is possible and natural, then 
 metaphor and brief comment may be most appropriate 
 to the fullest impression derivable from the circumstance. 
 Wordsworth, therefore, comments a good deal on what he 
 relates (sometimes unduly, but usually with efi'ect), because 
 he docs not love violent passion, rapid action, stirring, over- 
 whelming situations. And yet it is true that the most 
 exalted and maddened feeling does sometimes burst forth 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 3 1 
 
 into wild and tremendous hyperbole — which justifies Shake- 
 speare, but I think only in a measure ; surely this is apt 
 to be overdone, and exaggerated by the Elizabethans, as 
 even by our greatest poet. Partly, however, the dramatic 
 poet gives his own interpretation in words of what the 
 person may only vaguely feel — but is it an appropriate one .-* 
 — that is the question. 
 
 One more striking instance where what seems to be 
 merely fallacy may be argued to be philosophically true — 
 though to the poet himself the revelation was made rather 
 through feeling and imagination than through reasoning — 
 we may take from Keats. Instead of treating our true 
 poets as amusing liars, I would often rather go to them for 
 solid intellectual food than to the professed dealers in that 
 article. In the " Endymion," Keats says — 
 
 " For I have ever thought that (love) might bless 
 The world with benefits unknowingly." 
 
 And again — 
 
 " Who of men can tell 
 That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell 
 To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, 
 The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, 
 The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, 
 The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones. 
 Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, 
 If human souls did never kiss and greet ? " 
 
 Now I will only briefly indicate the principle that it 
 is our human love, our power of loving, that gives these 
 beautiful things a being as we know them ; for their being, 
 though partly external to us, is also partly engendered by 
 contact with human minds and hearts. Are not the forces 
 which seem to constitute material things, with all their 
 strength, healthfulness, and beauty, forces cognate to Love, 
 which is the affinity and attraction of diverse spirits for 
 one another ? Physical attraction, which implies also dif- 
 ference and repulsion, is love in its lowest stage of develop- 
 ment. And what is the order, the law, according to which 
 
32 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 the highest human love is developed? We pass upward 
 from cohesion to chemical affinities, but it is in the first 
 faint fringes of the organic world that love dawns in her 
 own proper form. There are sexes in plants, and often the 
 pistil of one flower needs to be fertilized by the pollen 
 from another before it can become productive ; in animals, 
 the lower love is literally present, till in man it becomes 
 transfigured into its own proper spiritual and heavenly 
 being ; and without this for an end and aim, where would 
 cohesion and all the lower forces be ? The poet says this 
 in a different way. Looking at things as they are in life, 
 in the concrete, his quick .sympathetic insight has discerned 
 this essential truth. Philosophical analysis may reach it in 
 another manner. When, therefore, we attribute to Nature 
 a sympathy with our moods, whether of joy or sorrow, we 
 are not under an amiable delusion ; the intuition is true, 
 although the shape it assumes may not always be scienti- 
 fically correct. Nature, like man, has her bright, rich, 
 joyous, and her desolate, decaying phases ; in joy we feel 
 the former most, in sorrow we feel and discern more espe- 
 cially the latter. We may indulge these feelings to a 
 morbid degree, and see things too brightly or too gloomily ; 
 but the sense of a sympathy in Nature has its basis in fact. 
 In concluding, I must touch for a moment on Mr. 
 Ruskin's assertion that metaphor and pathetic fallacy arc 
 characteristic rather of the secondary than of the primary 
 order of poets — an assertion which I do not think the 
 facts of the case will bear out. I have already given a 
 reason for the rarity of such forms of thought in very early 
 poetry ; but for their rarity in classical poetry another reason 
 may be given. In Oriental poetry they are v^ery usual, 
 because such modes of conceiving are much more appro- 
 priate to the Oriental genius. Look at the profound and 
 mystic symbolism of Egyptian, Persian, Phoenician, or In- 
 dian mythology ; to those races the material ever appeared 
 as a film floating upon the deeps of spirit — a film not merely 
 
ON THE POETIC INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 33 
 
 transparent, but itself very spirit, only cooled as it were, 
 solidified, and become gross. The bold hyperbole of 
 Hebrew, Arabic, Persian love and war poetry is essential 
 to the i^enius of the Oriental nature. But in the classical 
 temper there is little sense of the infinite, vague, mysterious : 
 the diftcrent subject-matters on which intelligence can be 
 exercised are viewed apart, not in their occult relationships : 
 all delight is in the sunny actual life, in that which is 
 pleasant, symmetrical, clear, definite. What palpable, com- 
 plete, satisfying symmetry ! what bright beauty of material 
 and structure in those consummate temples, fragments 
 though they be, on and about the Acropolis at Athens ! 
 How full is the sunlight blaze] upon their golden peristyles, 
 under the blue sky, overlooking the blue sea ! how black 
 and sharp-cut the shadows beside them ! There is sorrow 
 or fate with the Greeks, as with others ; but it stands by 
 itself, quite apart from joy. In a Gothic cathedral all is 
 dusk, sublime, mysterious, teeming with vague symbol — 
 at once secretion and food of the imagination. Light and 
 shadow are married and mingled ; the light is dim and 
 religious ; derives a spiritual glory from its very fellowship 
 with darkness ; counterfeits a gloom ; while the dark be- 
 comes half luminous and opalescent from its fellowship 
 with light. "Our sweetest songs," the modern poet sings, 
 "are those that tell of saddest thought," And yet, with 
 respect to Homer, does not even Homer take the heart- 
 broken old man, when he leaves the tent of Agamemnon 
 empty-handed, back by the shore of the iroXv(p\oi(TJioio 
 OaXaamig? Has this magnificent epithet for the sea no 
 reference to the lonely, stormful, sorrowful spirit of the old 
 man as he walked by the long, lone surges of it ? This 
 surely is not a purely physically-descriptive epithet, like 
 oh'OTra Trovrov. But go on to v^Ischylus, and what will 
 Mr. Ruskin say to his av^ipiOfiov ytXacriua, the innumerable 
 smile or laughter of the sea ? In Theocritus, again, assuredl}' 
 metaphor and pathetic fallacy may be found (notabl)- in 
 
 D 
 
34 ESSAYS 0\ I'OETKV AND POETS. 
 
 the first idyl). The pathetic fallacy in Shakespeare's ex- 
 quisite poem, "Venus and Adonis," "No grass, herb, leaf, 
 or weed but stole his blood and seemed with him to bleed ; 
 this solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth," etc., is adapted 
 directly from the Sicilian poet Bion's " Lament for Adonis." 
 Again, that beautiful lament of Moschus — the " Epitaph of 
 Bion " — (third idyl) abounds in similar pathetic fallacy. Are 
 not Virgil and Catullus (no mean poets, surely) rich in 
 graphic and appropriate poetic metaphors? Mr. Tenny- 
 son's "dividing the swift mind in act to throw," in " Morte 
 d'Arthur," is of course from Virgil. Let us pass to Chris- 
 tian poetry. I have shown that we shall be more likely 
 to find these types of idea in modern than in classical 
 poetry, and that by no means because modern taste is 
 more vicious, but because the very conditions of life and 
 thought are changed. In the early mediaeval poets, indeed, 
 we have more allegory, and elaborate symbolism than 
 metaphor and pathetic fallacy. But science, and popular 
 theology alike setting themselves in opposition to poetic 
 insight and aspiration, our poets, striving to link the two 
 spheres of the universe together, do it in a confused, halting 
 manner, like children stealing a forbidden pleasure, when 
 the eye of the governing intellect is for a moment turned 
 away. Yet the stupendous poem of Dante forms, we may 
 say, one grand sustained metaphor. And realistic Chaucer 
 too, has he not written " The House of Fame," " The Flower 
 and the Leaf," " The Romaunt of the Rose ? " But Pe- 
 trarch, and Lorenzo de Medici are full of metaphor and 
 - pathetic fallacy proper, as, had I space, I might prove. 
 Coming on to Shakespeare, in him these tendencies of 
 thought and feeling already assume their modern expres- 
 sion. Confining myself to his sonnets and poems, I 
 open them almost at random ; and in " The Rape of Lu- 
 crecc " I find " a voice dammed up with woe ; " " sorrow 
 ebbs, being blown with wind of words." In the description 
 of the hare-hunt in " Venus and Adonis," — as incisive, as 
 
ON THE rOETIC INTEUrRETATION OF NATURE. 35 
 
 clear-cut in its workmanship as any gem intaglio, — the 
 phrase occurs, " Each envious briar." In the sonnets we 
 have " The earth doth weep the sun being set." Endless 
 instances might be quoted from Ben Jonson, Eletcher, 
 Drayton, Drummond, and the lesser Elizabethans. But in 
 some of these, legitimate outgrowth of metaphor degene- 
 rates into parasitic conceit, as it did too often in our own 
 so-called "spasmodic" poets; and yet in neither case did 
 our literature touch the base and frigid affectations of such 
 writers as are lashed in the " Dunciad " of Pope. It seems, 
 however, as if our criticism had of late too much con- 
 founded legitimate and genuine metaphor, illustrative of 
 the poet's main design, with mere arbitrary quirks of a 
 nimble, ingenious fancy. But we have only to compare two 
 poems, alike sensuous and rich in imagery, to feel the 
 difference — the "Venus and Adonis" of Shakespeare, and 
 the "Hero and Lcander" of Marlowe, beautiful as Mar- 
 lowe's portion of that may be. 
 
CHATTERTON. 
 
 It is to be hoped that, since the publication of the Rev. 
 Walter Skeat's edition, people may now read Chatterton ; 
 for he has long been to the majority a mere name. The 
 Rowley poems ought to be read, and they are now very easy 
 reading. Mr. Skeat has preserved their peculiar flavour by 
 retaining enough of their antique phraseology, but where 
 rhythm and rhyme arc not involved he has often modern- 
 ized it, while the Rowleian words are translated at the 
 bottom of the page. I advisedly adopt Mr. Skeat's phrase, 
 " Rowleian," because he has made it, in his preliminary 
 essay, if possible more certain than before that the poems 
 are not written in fifteenth-century English ; that they are 
 not by the pseudo-monk Rowley, but by " the marvellous 
 boy" himself. Mr. Skeat makes one very important re- 
 mark. It is a most significant fact that Chatterton 's words 
 in the foot-notes frequently suit the scansion of the line 
 better than his words in the Rowley text, and this made 
 the re-writing of the poems more easy. But why is the 
 fact so? Because they were first written in modern English. 
 That a boy of fifteen or sixteen should have produced 
 such poems is certainly startling, but that any one should 
 have produced the works of Shakespeare is also start- 
 ling. This is a question of what genius can or cannot do ; 
 but that these poems should have been written in the 
 fifteenth century involves many more inconceivable diffi- 
 culties, of a different kind altogether. In fact, the only 
 
CHATTERTON. 37 
 
 plausible ari^umcnt on this side was the alleged inferiority 
 of Chatterton's acknowledged poems. But this — partly 
 from a certain glamour cast over the Rowley series by their 
 supposed origin and archaic form, and partly from a spirit 
 of partisanship introduced into the controversy — has been 
 very greatly exaggerated. They are not so good as the 
 others, taken as a whole ; but if they had stood alone, 
 they would have proved the child who wrote them — who 
 poured them forth in profusion, partly under the pres- 
 sure of want — to be a unique literary phenomenon. We 
 have lines like these, — on a good organist : — 
 
 " He keeps the passions with the sound in jilay, 
 And the soul trembles with the tremljling key." 
 
 Again : — 
 
 " Conscience, the soul-chameleon's varying hue, 
 Rellects all notions, to no notion true." 
 
 But what strikes one most of all through these acknow- 
 ledged poems is the boy's almost ghastly precocity, though 
 there is also doubtless a good deal of swagger and hobbede- 
 hoyish assumption of worldly wisdom and immoral know- 
 ledge. Professor Masson, in his brief but beautiful memoir 
 (which we always associate with that other little gem of 
 poetical biography. Lord Houghton's " Life of Keats "), well 
 describes the impetuous young fellow, who had just come 
 off the Bristol coach, leaving his luggage at Mrs. Ballance's 
 in Shoreditch (where he first lodged), and setting off 
 instantly, though it was between five and six on a cold, 
 dusk April evening, to call on no less than four publishers, 
 who lived a long way off and in different directions ; seeing 
 them all, moreover, and " going through each interview 
 without any unnecessary degree of bashfulness." The 
 " Revenge," his little burletta which was written for Mary- 
 lebone Gardens, and probably performed there after his 
 death, is perfectly charming for gaiety and sprightliness ; 
 and the satirical humour of two pieces where he ridicules 
 the affected dilettante of Strawberry Hill is of the highest 
 
38 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND I'OETS. 
 
 promise (" The Woman of Spirit " and " Memoirs of a Sad 
 
 Dog"). 
 
 It has been well observed that Chatterton lived two 
 distinct lives, and produced literary work accordingly. He 
 had two distinct moods : in the graver, more imaginative 
 mood most of the Rowley series, prose and verse, are 
 written ; nevertheless, there arc humour and sprightliness 
 in them too, which have not been sufficiently remarked. 
 How excellent the humour of " The De Bergham Pedigree," 
 with which he hoaxed Bergum, the pewterer, whose arms 
 were supposed to include " two cat-a-mountains ermine," 
 etc. ! Yet the pewterer, like Oliver Twist, positively "asked 
 for more," and straightway Chatterton brought it. But 
 what I wish to make clear is that in the finer serious pas- 
 sages of the modern series, the same manner is distinctly 
 discernible as in corresponding passages of the ancient ; 
 there is notably the strong Spenserian tendency \.o personi- 
 fication. Thus we have — 
 
 " Self-frighted Fear creeps silent through the gloom, 
 Starts at the rustling leaf and rolls his eyes ; " 
 
 " Pale rugged Winter, bending o'er his tread. 
 His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew, 
 His eyes a dusky light congealed and dead, 
 His robe a tinge of bright ethereal blue, — 
 
 ** His train a motleyed, sanguine, sable cloud. 
 He limps along the russet dreary moor, 
 \Vhilst rising whirlwinds, blasting keen, and loud 
 Roll the white surges to the sounding shore." 
 
 How do the s's hiss in the last couplet, as the sense de- 
 mands ! How large and open the vowel-sounds ! 
 
 The elegy on the death of his great friend, Phillips, is 
 full of these personifications. Very beautiful are the follow- 
 ing lines ! — 
 
 " The darksome ruins of some sacred cell, 
 Where erst the sons of Superstition trod, 
 Tottering upon the mossy meadow, tell 
 We better know, but less adore our God. 
 
 and- 
 
CIIATTKRTON. 39 
 
 " Now as T mournful tread the gloomy nave, 
 
 Through the wide window, once with mysteries dight, 
 The distant forest, and the darkened wave 
 Of the swohi Avon ravishes my sight." 
 
 Again, the noble " Elegy at Stanton Drew," in which there 
 is a stately majesty of thought, imagery, and language, if it 
 had been translated into the Rowley dialect, would have 
 been hailed as among the best of that series, and seems 
 even now to be out of place among the juvenile, alloyed, 
 and insincere verses which (finding they paid better) the 
 boy wrote, chiefly at the later period, when he had lost his 
 faith in God and man, and had felt more of the muddy 
 passions, venal aspirations, and dreary disappointments of 
 life. Alas ! how young was he for such experience ; but, 
 notev/orthy fact, in this elegy he touches upon that ancient 
 world which he loved. He is in a ruin, and he beholds the 
 Druid beside the altar. The " African Eclogues " also con- 
 tain beautiful poetry. 
 
 As to the Rowley series, I do not hesitate to say that 
 they contain some of the finest poetry in our language, 
 though they arc unequal, just as the modern poems are. 
 They are jewels set in the prose-romance of ancient Bristol 
 as imagined by Chatterton ; though Canynge, the old 
 mayor, who is the central figure, was an actual person of 
 importance. Let us for a moment glance at the earlier 
 history of the boy-poet who conceived all this. For, 
 splendid as his poetry often is, there is no doubt that it 
 derives much of its interest for us from our knowledge 
 of the marvellous child who wrote it. There is a per- 
 sonal fascination [^about this prodigy of genius, and his 
 strange, grim, half-humorous, half-awful history. Even 
 some full-grown writers will always be associated with their 
 writings in our imagination ; their magic influence seems 
 to flash as much out of their lives as out of their works ; 
 such a one was Dante; such another Johnson; such another 
 Byron ; but of the child Chatterton it is, of course, more 
 
40 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 eminently true. Until he was six years old he was sup- 
 posed to be deficient in intellect, for he would sit alone for 
 "hours, crying and moody. The utter inability of those at 
 home, and even of his acquaintances at Bristol, to appreciate 
 him, deepened his natural reserve, as Professor Wilson 
 observes, into habitual secretiveness ; and that love of 
 mystery and mystifying which he displayed is to some degree 
 thus accounted for. As to his literary patrons at Bristol, 
 the Catcotts and Barretts, etc., they were such a curious 
 compound of literary or bibliomaniacal taste, consummate 
 vanity, and portentous duncehood, that one can feel, if one 
 gets to know the boy at all, what a rare, grim, lonely bit of 
 fun it must have been to mystify them. Suddenly, however, 
 the illuminated capitals of an old musical folio of his father's, 
 which his mother was tearing up, attracted the child, and 
 he straightway fell in love with them ; henceforth he began 
 to learn, and she taught him to read out of an old black- 
 letter Bible, "so that he only turned in later years from 
 mediaeval illumination and antique typography, to the 
 unfamiliar aspect of contemporary literature." The corner 
 rounded, he devoured knowledge with insatiable voracity, 
 studying all day and all night up till quite early in the 
 morning, as his bedfellow in Shoreditch told Croft. Then 
 he shut himself up in an attic with a great piece of ochre, 
 pounce-bags full of charcoal-dust, and parchments (which 
 he mostly used for copying old heraldic devices, and other 
 architectural antique drawings). 
 
 He was the descendant of a long line of sextons, who 
 had in former times paced along the old aisles of St. Mary 
 Redcliffe, jangling its ponderous keys, and talking with 
 stony effigies of knights and saints buried below ; his father 
 was a wild, clever, drunken sub-chaunter, who died before 
 Thomas was born. The child, therefore, living close to the 
 church as he did (both at his mother's, and Colston's School 
 — the Bristol Bluecoat School, to which he went at seven 
 years old), would have constant access to it ; and as a 
 
CHATTERTON. 4 I 
 
 matter of fact, it was the master-spell that dominated his 
 passionate imagination ; it was the nucleus of the whole 
 Rowley romance. There was one spot in Redcliffe meadows, 
 in full view of the church, where a companion tells us he 
 delighted to lie ; and after fixing his eyes on the church in 
 a kind of trance, he would at last break out with " that 
 steeple was struck by lightning ; that was the place where 
 they formerly acted plays." The poems arc full of allusions 
 to the church : — 
 
 " Thou seest this maestrie of a human hand, 
 The pride of Bristovve and the Western land." 
 
 And to any one who has seen the church, its weird effect 
 upon this wonderful child who loved to haunt it will not 
 appear surprising. It is one of the most glorious old 
 churches in Europe ; the airy, solemn harmony of its nave, 
 aisles, pierced arches, groined roof, stained windows, and 
 monumental effigies of old worthies lying upon their tombs 
 is certainly unsurpassed. It is specially interesting now, 
 since unhappy genius has breathed life into these stone 
 figures and bidden them arise. Chatterton, in one of his 
 poems, says, if you prayed long enough, surely a crusader 
 or other worthy in the attitude of prayer would move, 
 and repeat the Ave Mary. I knew a child to whom 
 an imaginary history of his own creation was for many 
 years quite as real as the actual events of his life. So 
 it was with Chatterton. Only with him these conceptions 
 formed a whole of transcendent poetic beauty. To ac- 
 knowledge to himself and others that the monk Rowley 
 did not write the poems would have broken the spell that 
 entranced him in his magical, beautiful world. As to the 
 manufacture of parchments, he never produced more than 
 one or two, when very much pressed by the dunderheads, 
 who would not believe him, even when he confessed to 
 writing some of the poems. Over the north porch of St. 
 Mary's there is a room called the muniment-room, in which 
 the celebrated old chests, full of parchments and deeds 
 
42 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 relating to the church, were placed ; they had been ran- 
 sacked, and all that was valuable removed before the poet's 
 birth, his father having appropriated much of what remained 
 as mere waste -paper. Some of the mouldering chests are 
 still there ; and the spot appears to the present writer a 
 sacred one, well worthy of a pilgrimage. Through the 
 mullions you see the old tower, with its beautiful tracery ; 
 birds cawing about it ; the sunshine streaming out of the 
 blue sky, over antique chests, and dim, dusty floor ; if you 
 pause, reverent and silent, the boy Chatterton himself 
 seems to muse once more there beside you. 
 
 Chatterton's mother's house was full of the old parch- 
 ments, and certainly some of these may have been actually 
 engrossed by old dead lawyers who lived in the time of 
 the Wars of the Roses. That Chatterton even got some 
 of his names out of them seems to me probable, perhaps 
 the very name of Rowley ; did he get any information, 
 any history? Possibly. It was in this media;val world of 
 his imagination, at any rate, that he breathed most freely — 
 all that was noblest, most reverent, most tender, and most 
 beauty-loving in his soul assumed as by instinct the garb of 
 a long-past age ; like this dim and venerable church, it was 
 aloof from the vulgarity, meanness, trivialit}', and grossness 
 of his contemporary life. Johnson stood in that muniment- 
 room, a little while after the suicide, with Bozzy, and with 
 that pewterer, who sold the Rowley poems which he had got 
 from Chatterton, partly by free gift, partly by paltry doles 
 of pocket-money, for ^50 ; the man who, though the poet's 
 mother was in great indigence, put her off with the sum of 
 five guineas. The account of the coroner's inquest furnished 
 by Mr. Gutch seems of doubtful authenticity, though Masson 
 accepts it ; but it is a curiously poetical invention, if it be 
 not the truth. When he came into Mrs. Angell's, in Brooke 
 Street, on the last evening of his weary wanderings in 
 London, after buying the arsenic from Cross and walking 
 about all day with his hands in his pocket, no one knows 
 
CIIATTERTON. 43 
 
 where, he would not cat, but sat moping by the fire wilh 
 his chin on liis knees, muttering rhymes in some old un- 
 known language. He then kissed Mrs. Angell — he had 
 never done so before — and went upstairs to his garret, 
 stamping on every stair as he went slowly up, as though he 
 would break it, locking the door of his room behind him. 
 If this account be true, the proof that his reason had failed 
 seems complete ; but even then, here he was turning back 
 at the last moment to the old home of his imagination, to a 
 bygone England peopled with figures of noble stature, and 
 St. Mary Rcdcliffc in the midst. At any rate, it is note- 
 worthy that here in Brooke Street about a month before 
 his death, he wrote one of the finest of the Rowley poems, 
 "The Ballad of Charity."* It is overshadowed with his own 
 deepening doom ; but it is in his highest region of pure, 
 tender, stately solemnity, abounding with the most graphic 
 touches of natural description he ever penned. It seems to 
 me perhaps his most Jiniforuily excellent poetical work, and 
 speaks volumes for the stupendous height to which his 
 genius might have attained, seeing that it showed no signs 
 of declining, but rather maturing mastery, even at the last, 
 notwithstanding all the disadvantages, moral, intellectual, 
 and physical, which threatened and assailed it. But the editor 
 of the magazine to whom he sent this Rowley poem would 
 not take it ; slipshod scurrilities or ephemeral stories were 
 more to the taste of himself and his readers. A notice 
 appeared in the magazine after Chatterton had gi\en up the 
 battle of life in disgust, addressed to him (its anonymous 
 contributor) to the effect that the poem " might have been 
 improved." And to think of the vapid, stilted stuff that 
 was thought fine poetry then ! 
 
 * This essay was written in 1872. But only the other day I read Mr. 
 Theodore Watts's subtle and suggestive preface to Chatterton in Ward's 
 "British Poets," and must advert, with entire agreement, to his contention 
 that Chatterton may be named father of the romantic movement in England, 
 both in point of matter and manner. He points out the remarkable com- 
 binations of iambic and anapKst in the " Ballad of Charity," a metre adopted 
 subsequently by Coleridge in " Christabel," and stolen from him by Scott. 
 
44 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND I'OETS. 
 
 In looking back along the line of our very foremost poets 
 after Milton, we see Pope arise, and after Pope who but the 
 boy Chatterton deserves the laurel-wreath of highest poet, 
 until Burns has risen above the horizon ? But after him 
 we have a galaxy of no less than seven between whom 
 the kingdom has to be divided — Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Keats, Scott, Landor — even if we put Crabbc, 
 Campbell, Moore, and Hood into the secondary rank.* In 
 fact, Goldsmith, Collins, Thomson, Gray, and Cowper were 
 the only considerable contemporary poets ; and Chatterton 
 at sixteen was more than their equal, promising very un- 
 mistakably to rise much higher still. "/Ella" is a drama 
 worthy of the Elizabethans ; there is, of course, no intricate 
 knowledge of human nature, such as only a longer ex- 
 perience could have given ; nevertheless, there is a great 
 dramatic faculty unmistakably announced; the plot is good, 
 the movement is unembarrassed, and carries you along. 
 The character of Bertha is slightl}-, but tenderly and dis- 
 tinctly drawn ; those of /Ella and Celmonde are vigorously 
 conceived and discriminated, while the working out is 
 specifically /<7^/zV. The often-quoted song, " Oh ! sing unto 
 my roundelay," though very touching, is too obviously 
 borrowed from Ophelia's lovely ditty; but there are two 
 other airy, sprightly songs sung by " the minstrels." A girl 
 says to her lover — 
 
 " Once I heard my grandame say 
 Youthful damsels should not be 
 In the pleasant month of May 
 
 Withyoung men by the greenwood tree." 
 
 " Goddwyn," which is a mere fragment, is a splendid torso, 
 for it contains " The Ode to Freedom." But fancy a 
 sonorous Pindaric ode in the reign of Henry VI. ! Else- 
 where Rowley writes in blank verse, anticipating Lord 
 Surrey. There is a passage in Byron's " Childe Harold " that 
 has been much admired, a personification of war ; but this 
 
 * I am not blinil, however, to the merit of Parnell, Young, Shenstone, 
 Dyer, and Falconer. 
 
CIIATTERTON. 45 
 
 ode appears to me the orij^inal of it, and at any rate is finer. 
 Again, in this fragment a most Shakespearian dramatic 
 genius appears to be rising. King Edward the Confessor, 
 Harold, and Goddwyn are touched in by the hand of one 
 who had read history to some purpose, having a dramatic 
 imagination of his own. In the "Battle of Hastings" we 
 find many passages of the highest merit for distinctness of 
 vision, and nervous appropriateness of language ; they arc 
 resonant with the din of battle. There is often a direct 
 Homeric force that startles one as with a blow, and withal 
 a sublime heroic atmosphere tempers the long, and some- 
 times tedious series of physical encounters described. There 
 is a brief, but graphic description of Stonehenge. (Chat- 
 terton was hardly ever over-luxuriant — in that too very 
 mature.) We find true poetry in the third eclogue, and in 
 " The Parliament of Sprytes," where we hear the ghosts 
 of former " Bristowans " longing to be alive that they may 
 better see St. Mary's, which, however, they gaze upon on 
 misty moonlight nights, and describe as it is at service- 
 time, together with the dresses of canons and singers, " in 
 crimson chapeaux and scarfs of woaden blue." But one of 
 Chatterton's masterpieces is the " Song to yElla, Lord of the 
 Castle of Bristol." There seems to me a something in- 
 definite, but very grand about it ; the poet addresses the 
 spirit of /Ella in stately and sonorous language — 
 
 " Drawn by thy weapon fell, 
 Down to the depth of hell 
 Thousands of Dacians went. . . . 
 
 O thou ! where'er — thy bones at rest — 
 
 Thy sprite to haunt delighteth best, — 
 
 Whether upon the blood-enibrued plain, 
 
 Or where thou kenst from far 
 
 The dismal cry of war ; 
 
 Or seest some mountain made of corse of slain. . . . 
 
 Or in black armour stalk around 
 
 Embattled Bristowe, once thy ground, 
 
 And glow ardurous on the Castle stair ; 
 
 Or fiery round the Minster glare, 
 
 Let Bristowe still be made thy care ; 
 
46 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Guard it from foemen and consuming fire, 
 
 Like Avon's stream encirc it round. 
 
 Nor let a flame enharm the ground, 
 
 Till in one flame all the whole world expire." 
 
 As for Horace Walpole, he was only a link in the chain 
 of ignoble circumstances that led up to the suicide — for 
 which act, however, it is absurd to make any one so respon- 
 sible as the boy himself. Why should this conceited literary 
 sybarite have been so very forward to befriend a sucking 
 author who had hoaxed him ? It is all fair for a nobleman 
 to amuse himself by elaborately concocting a scries of 
 gossipy letters to be passed off as the offspring of unpre- 
 meditated friendly intercourse — and to tell lies about a 
 trumpery " Otranto," writing when he is detected, "the 
 author flatters himself he shall appear excusable " — but 
 when a poor attorney's clerk plays similar pranks in a work 
 of stupendous genius, then the noble "forger" bethinks 
 him that " all of the house of forgery are relations," and 
 \\\7i.\. his younger brother in "forgery" " viiist be a eoiisiun- 
 inate villain." {! !) 
 
 However, the publishers who profited by the boy's inex- 
 perience and obscurity in London were the more immediate 
 authors of his loss to the world. They paid him little doles 
 now and then ; but for much of his work he was never paid 
 at all, though his pieces kept coming out in the magazines 
 of these gentlemen long after the boy had been crammed 
 like a dead dog into a pauper's shell. " Hamilton," he said 
 one day, "was using him very badly." And to think with 
 what an ardent spirit he came to London ; going to the 
 coffee-houses among the celebrated wits, buying better 
 clothes, and sending home little presents of teacups and 
 fans and snuff to a mother and sister (of whom he was de- 
 votedly fond) out of his scanty earnings ! I fancy his few 
 letters home are among the most graphic, and cheerful, and 
 melancholy in all the world ; we are with him on the coach 
 journey in the snow over Marlborough Down ; we are his 
 
ClIATTERTON. 47 
 
 fcllow-passcnf^crs ; and how vivid the letter about his catch- 
 ing a cold looking out of his garret window at a drunkx-n 
 woman and a man with a movable fish-stall one night in 
 lirooke Street ! His political letters are not a quarter so 
 interesting to us now, though they served his turn well 
 enough. 
 
 Was he mad or not when he killed himself? If there 
 was a predisposition — his sister had been in a madhouse 
 — circumstances were very favourable to its fruition. He 
 worked his brain — a brain truly of almost abnormal capacity 
 — without mercy ; and he did not take sufficient nourish- 
 ment. Even before he was compelled to live on next to 
 nothing in London because the fat booksellers would not 
 pay him, all agree that he starved on bread and water and 
 tea. Whether he burnt the candle at both ends, and was 
 profligate in morals, we do not know ; but I suspect that at 
 any rate he devoted very little time to profligacy ; cer- 
 tainly he never drank. His anxieties, when he once began 
 to despond, must have been of the gravest ; for he was 
 doggedly determined never to write to Bristol for assistance, 
 lest his acquaintance there should triumph, seeing how 
 much he had boasted of what he could do, and what a great 
 name he would make. Ninetcen-twentieths of his composi- 
 tion consisted ol pride, as he says in his letter to Mr. Clay- 
 field ; we have it in his own handwriting in the British 
 Museum, and the word is underlined. He had evidently 
 the consciousness of his transcendent genius, and had come 
 into contact with no equal. Cross, the apothecary, says 
 that latterly his memory seemed to fail him when talking 
 rapidly. Cross once persuaded Chatterton to dine with 
 him, and then he devoured some oysters voraciously, so 
 that he was evidently starving ; but for the most part he 
 would accept even a morsel of bread from no one. How- 
 ever, he had always been dallying with the idea of suicide ; 
 men did at that time if they had no religious belief, and 
 the boy had lost his. In Bristol he was on the verge of 
 
48 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 committing it, and wrote a half-serious, half-burlesque will, 
 which so scared Lambert, the attorne)', that he turned the 
 boy out of his office. The mistaken idea that it is de- 
 grading to receive help from others — an idea due partly 
 to the exaggerated individualism of the time — is pretty 
 well enough to account for his conduct, whereas a man 
 or woman ought to be ready to accept help with dignity, 
 and with no sense of subserviency, as also to give it in a 
 brotherly spirit and kindly, with no arriere pensce of estab- 
 lishing a claim thereby. Whether, however, there was not 
 some madness in the dogged refusal to accept the smallest 
 favour from any one at the last is a difficult question ; only 
 wc do not knew how far such favours were offi:red, and 
 he was too proud to beg for them. It is strange that the 
 landlady, Mrs. Angell, would never show herself to Croft 
 when he went to inquire about Chatterton. But anyhow 
 this is the boy " who," according to Walpolc, " might have 
 been led to those more facile imitations of prose, promis- 
 sory notes ! " Well, England, after having spurned from 
 her one of her greatest geniuses (as other nations, by the 
 agency of their blockheads, have spurned theirs, the follies 
 and sins of genius itself conspiring to help them), had many 
 years after the misfortune to lose Horace Walpole also ; 
 and indignant denunciations seem absurd after so long, 
 considering, too, how much fair-minded people always have 
 to say on the other side of every question ! There is some 
 evidence that our great boy-poet was not carted away with 
 other sour bodies when the graves at Shoe Lane Workhouse 
 were filled up to make room for Farringdon Market, but 
 that his mother had him sent down to Bristol, and privately 
 buried in Redcliffc churchyard, where now he rests. Is 
 there any authentic portrait of the poet ? Sir H. Taylor 
 has a very striking one, which he tells me he considers 
 authentic. The boy is described as having magnificent grey 
 eyes. Even Barrett said that " he used to send for him and 
 differ from him on purpose to make them flash fire ; fire 
 
CHATTERTON. 49 
 
 seemed to roll at the bottom of them." And Mrs. Ballance 
 remarked that when he stared you in the face without 
 appearing to see you "it was something awful." Of all 
 the poetical tributes to him, perhaps Shelley's few lines are 
 the finest. He comes forward in the realms of death to 
 meet Keats : — 
 
 "The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
 Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 
 Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
 Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
 Yet faded from him. " 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TllMES.* 
 
 " Sorrow seems half of his immortality." — Cain. 
 
 Byron is not an exhausted subject. For he, though one of 
 our greatest poets, has of late years been under- estimated 
 and neglected in England — a new school of poetry being 
 in the ascendant, mainly an outgrowth from Keats, Words- 
 worth, Shelley, and foreign schools, Italian or French. It 
 is remarkable that, whereas on the Continent neither of 
 these last-named poets (except in some small degree 
 Shelley) has to any extent influenced literature, while Byron 
 has influenced it more than any other English poet except 
 Shakespeare and Pope, among his own Anglo-Saxon people 
 the reverse is true ; for I know not any artist of note, 
 English or American, unless it be Edgar Poe, Bulwer 
 Lytton, Disraeli, Joaquin Miller, Mr. Alfred Austin, whom 
 we may affiliate upon Byron ; and these very partially. Of 
 course he has had scores of imitators ; but imitators, how- 
 ever popular for a moment, soon perish. I speak of original 
 poets who are generally nurtured in some degree upon their 
 predecessors. Hugo, Heine, de Musset, Beranger, and 
 Lamartine occur at once as instances. But the Slavonic 
 races also have heard his fiery tones, and responded in their 
 poetry. Thus " the Russian poet, Puschkin, has stirred the 
 ardent youth of Russia with a lyre attuned to that of Byron, 
 and the most important Spanish poet of recent times has been 
 
 * By far the best thing I know on Byron (except Moore's Life) is Professor 
 J. Nichol's book in the English Men of Letters series. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 51 
 
 termed the Spanish Byron." In England, however, such 
 Byronic growths as may be traced in htcrature (and there 
 are few) have taken their nourishment from the more 
 morbid elements in him. Notwithstanding his inordinately 
 inorganic form, Mr. Dobell is a very genuine poet ; but in 
 the spasmodic school to which he belongs, a strange, half- 
 tragic, half-grotesque figure seems always painfully pro- 
 minent — the poet namely — at once admiring and bemoan- 
 ing himself, torn asunder by his own passions, and loudly 
 arraigning his Maker, as it were in the market-place, for 
 making him so very disagreeable a person both to himself 
 and to his neighbours. 
 
 There is little response in our literature, as there is in 
 that of the Continent, to what is strongest and highest in 
 Byron. He is pre-eminently the poet of revolution, and of 
 what the Germans call " world-sorrow." But England is 
 not a congenial home of revolution. There is implied in 
 the Puritanism and Protestantism which dominated our two 
 English rebellions a most conservative and law-abiding 
 principle — one of obedience to authority. If the principle 
 of private judgment as vindicated by Luther, Wyclif, 
 Cranmer, and the Reformers, opened the door to what is 
 now termed Rationalism, yet between them and the later 
 rationalists there is a great gulf fixed ; the former only 
 shifted and restored the fulcrum of that lever which they 
 held to have been displaced by human corruption, the lever 
 of Supernatural authority ; the latter threw away that lever 
 altogether. In England, religion and the political con- 
 stitution have been slowly and gradually liberalized ; the 
 Bible, however, remained (how far may we say, remains ?) 
 the fulcrum of authority, the rule of faith and conduct. In 
 France, in Italy, in Spain, both religious and political re- 
 forms have met with less success, have been crushed in the 
 bud ; hence the tendency is to violent explosions in ex- 
 tremes of theory and practice, to what we moderns mean 
 by the principle of revolution. 
 
52 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 With respect to Welt-Schmcrtz, Goethe affirms that 
 Byron introduced it into literature ; but I think that is say- 
 ing too much. Rousseau rather is the father of it, though 
 I am not sure we should not say Shakespeare in " Hamlet." 
 Goethe himself in " Werther " and in " Faust " may likewise 
 be regarded as one main source of the same spirit ; Jean 
 Paul also, and other contemporaries of Goethe. But there 
 has been so much of it since Byron, in France and Ger- 
 many, that it is difficult now to recognize Byron as a grand 
 fountain thereof in our more recent English literature. It is 
 in Shelley, in Novalis, Obermann, Heine, Musset, Leopardi, 
 George Sand. In Carlyle, Clough, Matthew Arnold, and 
 Tennyson's " In Memoriam," how different a semblance it 
 wears! In these it is a. reflecting, brooding, rcclusc-like 
 sorrow, serene Wordsworth even traceable therein ; we be- 
 hold the half-bewildering, half-apocalyptic suggestions of an 
 ever developing natural science seething in strange specu- 
 lations ! Access since Byron has also been attained to the 
 great systematic metaphysicians of Germany, whose thought 
 has penetrated, at least by infiltration, through their German 
 and French popularizers, to the stolid, practical, but rather 
 obtuse English mind— these metaphysicians, together with 
 Schiller, Goethe, and the German critics, constituting the 
 Teutonic element in that vast intellectual and moral 
 upheaval, which characterized the opening of the grand 
 European era we name Revolutionary ; and as German 
 ideas permeated France and England, so, thank Heaven ! 
 are French and English principles of social change now 
 conquering Germany, in spite of Bismarcks, Moltkes, and 
 Emperors William. Moreover, Orientalists have made 
 known to us the great religious philosophies of the East. 
 Carlyle is a prophet of welt-schmertz and of individualism 
 too, though he is most severe on Byron because of his 
 lamentations. Yet Mr. Morley, with some reason, calls 
 Carlyle " Byron with shaggy breast." He has been one of 
 the strongest and most purifying prophets of our age, to 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 53 
 
 whom the gratitude of any t^cncrous pupil must be unfail- 
 ing. Ikit his stern and solitary Stoic pride passed into 
 something of crabbed harshness. He has ever held up to 
 us Goethe as the great modern hero in life and in literature 
 While of Byron, hear what he says: — "A strong man of 
 recent time fights little for any good cause anywhere, works 
 weakly as an English lord, weakly delivers himself from 
 such working, with weak despondency endures the cackling 
 of plucked geese at St. James', and sitting in sunny Italy 
 in his coach and four, writes over many reams of paper 
 the following sentence with variations, ' Saw ever the world 
 one greater or unhappier ? ' This was a sham strong man." 
 Now, if Byron's actual career be remembered — and I 
 shall presently remind my readers of it — this will seem 
 nothing but a marvellous and most unwarranted caricature. 
 Yet even when Byron is most absorbed in his own sorrow — 
 and very surely he is not always so absorbed— he is un- 
 consciously and by force of genius the mouthpiece and 
 representative of those who (like our own selves, how often 
 in this epoch of weary individualism !) feel " the weight and 
 burden of all this unintelligible world " pressing upon their 
 heart. He is the Human Soul, with infinite longings, that 
 nothing finite can satisfy, yet finding nought that it can 
 recognize as indeed infinite to rest upon. Cease your vain 
 whinings after enjoyment ! says Carlyle ; if you suffer, like 
 the Spartan boy conceal the ravening agony and say no- 
 thing. What right hast thou to happiness, even to being ? 
 Possess thy soul in patience and work ! This is noble and 
 well ; so far as it goes better than Byron But this in 
 Carlyle rests on a faith, such a faith as Byron had not. 
 And there are, perhaps, objections to this too stoical re- 
 pudiation of happiness. May it not tend to some undue 
 acquiescence in the unhappiness of others ? May it not 
 tend to repress that " enthusiasm of humanity," which must 
 at least include the desire of imparting happiness to all ? It 
 at any rate rather suggests fox and grapes. This ascetic 
 
54 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 independence of human sympathy and approbation, as of 
 all innumerable nature-provided external springs of enjoy- 
 ment, this haughty, assiduous self-culture, may possibly 
 result in a certain lonely callousness of heart, ungladdened 
 and ungraced with tenderly humane sensibilities, in a 
 certain stern self-satisfaction which may not really be more 
 noble than the self-loathing of a Manfred. " Thus I 
 trample on the pride of Plato," said Diogenes, treading on 
 the philosopher's purple robe. " With greater pride, 
 Diogenes," replied the sage. 
 
 In Carlyle, surely the bitter wailings over man's present 
 condition are even deeper than Byron's — and fully as mis- 
 anthropic — while he hardly manifests the same generous 
 ardour of sympathy toward the efforts of mankind, however 
 ineffectual, to free themselves from oppression, and enter 
 upon the heritage of their manhood. Byron was a miserable 
 man amongst miserable men, but their helpful brother in the 
 blind groping toward light. This latter, indeed, Carlyle 
 strives and means to be ; and he is miserable enough ; but 
 perhaps he too much ignores the common and irrepressible 
 instincts of human nature, calling man to impossible heights 
 of renunciation and self-centred contentment, refusing to 
 aid them in attaining humbler human happiness more with- 
 in their reach, and the general development of those human 
 faculties, which they have a right to claim. A school- 
 master's rod for the foolish, naughty masses of men ! 
 Surely the moral dragonnades of Carlyle's fierce invectives 
 against the criminal classes (in " Latter-Day Pamphlets ") 
 are almost inhuman in their undiscriminating pitilessness — 
 further from Christ's " God be merciful to me, a sinner ! " 
 than anything of Byron's. But happiness is, though not 
 the ivhole of our being's end and aim, an integral part of it. 
 What Byron lacked was a sane mind in a sane body. He 
 thirsted unduly after pure enjoyment, without that neces- 
 sary shadow of pain which must accompany it ; and he 
 did not, as Carlyle justly points out, face that pain so 
 
LORD 15YRON AND HIS TIMES. 55 
 
 couraL,reou.sly as he should have done. Yet a more iron 
 nature must allow for the acute sensibilities of such a 
 man ; he was one nerve for pleasure or for pain to travel 
 over — and surely such a nature is not without its rare uses 
 in the world. But the truth is (as we have lately learned) 
 that Carlyle did most of his cursing- and swearing in 
 private, and Byron a good deal of his in public. That 
 was, on the whole, the difference between them. Besides, 
 albeit too ostentatiously, and with too much weeping, 
 he did defy and endure his anguish after all, as do his 
 heroes ; he, in addition, silencing it altogether at the last, 
 in order to set right the time " out of joint " (which 
 necessity, laid on him by Duty, this contemplative man, 
 like Hamlet, must have felt to be " a cursed spite "), 
 actually laying down the pen and taking up the sword — 
 nay, more than the sword, for which he had some love, the 
 prosaic entanglement of practical politics also, for which he 
 had none, and showing therein admirable good sense. I 
 do not find that Goethe, for instance, had the smallest 
 inclination to do anything of the sort — showed any keen 
 interest even in the piteous struggles of his fellow-men — 
 that he left to his great rival, Schiller, to Fichte, and 
 Theodor Korner ; though indeed Goethe, in his most im- 
 mortal work, " Faust," as in " Werther," and his best drama, 
 " Goetz," is not the serene Olympian, the pure artist, which 
 is apparently what Mr. Carlyle admires in him. 
 
 But Byron knew not moderation or self-restraint ; he was 
 so spiritually infirm as to gratify every whim ; thus came 
 satiety and remorse. Mazzini, the illustrious Duty-loving 
 apostle of these latter days, whose life was one long sacrifice 
 for human welfare, and who yet never pandered for his 
 own advantage to popular errors, takes a far juster view of 
 Byron, and in spite of all his faults reverences in him not 
 only the great poet, but the noble man. Of his characters, 
 Mazzini says, " They are gifted with ability they know not 
 how to use ; with a power and energy they know not how 
 
56 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 to apply ; with a life whose purpose and aim they com- 
 prehend not. They arc alone ; this is the secret of their 
 wretchedness and impotence. They thirst for good, but 
 cannot achieve it ; for they have no mission, no belief, no 
 comprehension of the world around them. They have 
 never realized the conception of Jinmanity ; the continuity 
 of labour that unites all the generations into one whole ; 
 the common end and aim only to be realized by the com- 
 mon effort. The emptiness of the life and death of solitary 
 individuality has never been so powerfully and efficaciously 
 summed up as in the pages of Byron. His intuition of the 
 death of a form of society, men call wounded self-love ; 
 his sorrow for all, is misinterpreted as cowardly egotism. 
 Whilst Byron withered and suffered under a sense of the 
 wrong and evil around him, Goethe attained the calm — I 
 cannot say of victory — but of indifference. * Religion and 
 politics,' said he, ' are a troubled element for art. I have 
 always kept myself aloof from them as much as possible.' 
 The day will come when democracy will remember what it 
 owes to Byron. I know no more beautiful symbol of the 
 future destiny and mission of Art than the death of Byron 
 in Greece. The holy alliance of poetry with the cause of 
 the people — the union, still so rare, of thought and action — 
 the grand solidarity of all nations in the conquest of the 
 rights ordained by God for all his children — all that is 
 now the religion and the hope of the party of progress in 
 Europe, is gloriously typified in this image." 
 
 Indirectly, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Locke, 
 and Bacon ; more directly, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Pope ; 
 later still, Helvetius, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, 
 and the Encyclopaedists, had, as spokesmen of their time, 
 rudely shaken the venerable but decrepit fabrics of religion 
 and society — because in truth the Divine Life once in 
 them was no longer there, was secretly creating for itself 
 newer and sounder habitations. The structure was unsound 
 at heart, eaten to the core, though it still micrht stand 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 57 
 
 externally whole and fair^ Religion took the side of evil, 
 the side of the powerful oppressor, of the tyrant ; she 
 imposed dogmas, moreover, upon men, that daily grew 
 more incredible with the progress of discovery, and hoped 
 still to stunt the intellect and conscience of mankind with 
 bands and swaddling-clothes belonging to their infancy. 
 Europe felt the shock of revolution, and trembled. Never- 
 theless, when the allied nations had overthrown the mighty 
 dictator. Napoleon — that Titan sprung from the loins of 
 revolution, governing in the name of the people, and at 
 least ostensibly in their interest, disposing of Europe in his 
 own anarchic fashion, with little regard to the consecrated 
 pretensions of ancient priests or ancient kings — there came 
 a reaction, and lo ! the old orthodox spirit returned with 
 seven others more oppressive than itself. "The Holy 
 Alliance considered it not unholy to leave unfulfilled the 
 promise given to nations in the hour of trial, to beat down 
 by force of arms their right to self-government, which had 
 been bought at the price of much precious blood, and to 
 treat nations at their congresses like herds of cattle." 
 " When the Holy Alliance (says Gervinus) believed that it 
 had arrested for ever the aberrations of the spirit of revolu- 
 tion by the subjugation of France, then this English poet 
 knit again the thread, which a million of soldiers had been 
 called forth to sever for ever." The state of the world was 
 one great dissonance, and Byron, who possessed the special 
 organ of its expression, became the poet of this crisis. 
 That he had sacrificed his life for Greece and freedom, 
 surrounded his name with a halo of glory : this martyr- 
 death became an inspiring theme for poetry and passion. 
 And what, after all, if in this and other acts of his life, there 
 was some imaginative taste for artistic effect, some desire, 
 it may be, of applause } Is that so very shocking .'' Human 
 motives are mixed, and by mixed motives human progress 
 is secured. There are aspects of human affairs other than 
 the moral. 
 
58 KSSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Byron stood prominently before mankind, a man of high 
 social position, and even with aristocratic proclivities — in 
 this, too, meeting his time half-way, for the reformers of 
 the Continent were often aristocratic like himself — with 
 romantic and fascinating personality, a man of the world 
 as well as a cosmopolitan poet, obtruding his defiant revolt 
 and uncompromising individuality no less in life than in 
 poetry. An exile from England, Byron openly assisted 
 the Carbonari of Italy, and in every way proved himself 
 the friend of human freedom all over the world. No 
 wonder that the liberal youth of the Continent were stirred 
 profoundly by his words and example. Italy and Greece 
 arc free. But how disappointing often were the results 
 of youthful enthusiasm and aspirations ! More fruit was 
 expected from sweeping political changes than could in the 
 slow growth of human history possibly result — even if the 
 changes themselves were found practicable or beneficial, 
 and even if an ideal state could be created by any external 
 arrangement whatsoever. The kingdom of God is within. 
 A king may be a pauper in spirit, and a pauper may be 
 a king of men. Healthy desire for self-government was 
 repressed under tyrannical rulers where these retained or 
 regained the power, and here intelligent youth was forced 
 to champ the bit, resorting perforce to more animal, selfish, 
 and sordid outlets of activity. The boundless spirit of 
 discontent let loose over the world caused more unhappi- 
 ness than the former submissive acquiescence in any lot, 
 however degraded. The old world was passing from under 
 men's feet — but where was the promised land .'* Shouting 
 " freedom," men but " wore the name engraven on a heavier 
 chain. The sensual and the dark rebel in vain." 
 
 The right of private judgment, as vindicated by the 
 Renaissance and Reformation, was pushed to such an 
 extreme, that not so much the higher individual, with his 
 own special, rational idea, in essential harmony with all 
 others, was enthroned, but rather the capricious, anti-social, 
 
LORD BYRON AND 1 1 IS TIMES. 59 
 
 disorganiziiif^ individual — which exaggeration by inevitable 
 reaction leads to the riveting of new dogmatic chains upon 
 the limbs of unemancipatcd humanity, and so to renewed 
 triumph of corrupt hierarchies. In proportion to a man's 
 enlargement of intellect and intensity of sympathy was his 
 sorrow ; man was — nay, still is — a discord and burden to 
 himself — that is, if he be more than a mere animal, or selfish 
 member of the privileged classes — if his mind march in 
 harmony with the progress of the " world-spirit." So far 
 as in Byron's day the general conclusions of modern science, 
 born in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, shone for all, 
 they only served to flicker dim distrust from afar upon 
 time-honoured convictions and serviceable beliefs. For 
 Byron all is still doubt, negation, and despair. Nor can 
 he whistle, and chatter, and grin more or less complacently 
 and comfortably over the human welter, like a Voltaire or 
 a Diderot : in fact, the storm has burst since then ; one can 
 no longer nestle in old cosy nooks of courts that one is 
 helping to shake about the ears of one's children; "After 
 us, the deluge," but the deluge has come. " Let us eat and 
 drink, for to-morrow we die," will not quite satisfy Rousseau 
 and Byron. 
 
 Yet negation and despair have never in any general 
 sense been so unmixed in England as they were with 
 Byron.* Since German criticism, and the development of 
 modern science, our scepticism is more profound and 
 common than before ; still it is more philosophical, quiet, 
 and discriminating than his, feeling its way, in however 
 tentative a manner, to a reconstruction of religion, not on 
 the whole attempting to shatter it altogether. Shelley, Cole- 
 ridge, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, for instance, poets of 
 faith, though they were ignored as long as possible, have now 
 
 * Those most distinguished poets, James Thomson, and Edgar Poe, are 
 distinctly exceptional in their tone. But we have become much more pessi- 
 mistic, dogmatic in denial, blank in agnosticism of late years. Idiosyncrasy 
 of temper, habit, and circumstance, however, explains much in the cases of 
 Leopardi, Schopenhauer, Poe, and Thomson. 
 
6o ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 more influence over our spiritual life than Byron. Byron's 
 mocking, half-earnest, half-eighteenth-century temper is ill 
 in accordance with our present attitude ; scepticism is 
 reverent in an age, which has produced such earnest and 
 illustrious Christians as Newman and Maurice. But the 
 English public of Byron's own day were less tolerant of his 
 irreligion than the same public is now. The legal authori- 
 ties were on the point of refusing to protect his publisher's 
 copyright in the case of " Cain " and the " Vision of Judg- 
 ment." If Christianity is by our leading thinkers politely 
 ignored, at least it is ignored politely. Our tendency to 
 vindicate the glory and dignity of the body as against 
 orthodox asceticism is, ho\\ever, a return in Byron's direc- 
 tion. And there are symptoms of reaction against that 
 elaborate, artificial affectation of poetic style, which is 
 characteristic of an age in England that calls \X.sq\.{ practical 
 — fairly domestic, devoted heart and soul to those material 
 gains, which involve, on the one hand, a population of 
 grimy native helots, who, being degraded from their higher 
 humanity, murmur, yet forbear from violence, and, on the 
 other, a population of Judases, ready to sell their very 
 Master (in the " dearest market ") for thirty pieces of silver, 
 or less — each individual, and the w^hole nation being careless 
 of the rights or wrongs of any neighbour. From this sort 
 of public life our poets withdraw themselves into studies 
 and studios, there by the help of culture, criticism, and re- 
 vived antiquity, elaborating their native tongue, as a recent 
 critic in the Quarterly observes, into the most celestial of 
 Chinese ; in which I think we partly discern, indeed, the 
 result of richer thought and more complex imaginative 
 feeling, but chiefly that of deficient interest in action, and 
 deficient variety of true passion. Feeling and thought lose 
 themselves in tortuous labyrinths of wordy filigree, osten- 
 sibly provided for their habitat ; one sickly sentiment is 
 diluted homoeopathically in oceans of what is called 
 "exquisite expression." The literary influences at work to 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 6l 
 
 produce this result may be traced up to the sources I in- 
 dicated at the beginning. Though Lord Tennyson's lyrics 
 are among the most beautiful in the language, and he 
 himself is a master of true expression — for he has much to 
 express — indeed, his sovereignty over language and metre 
 is wonderful — yet he has an occasional mannerism which 
 is dangerously catching, and which inferior writers are sure 
 to exaggerate. His high Miltonic standard, both of poetic 
 substance and artistic workmanship, however, has raised the 
 whole general tone of English writers and readers, and to 
 him we owe all grateful allegiance. But Byron had formed 
 his style on Pope and Drydcn, two great models of clear, 
 nervous English ; and it would certainly be well if we 
 studied them more, together with Milton, Wordsworth, 
 Scott, and Byron himself 
 
 Another word as to this element of welt-schmertz, 
 which the continental critics justly conceive to be so 
 eminently characteristic of Byron. Nearly all great writing, 
 we must remember, nearly all great art, has been sorrowful 
 or tragic. Even the favoured youthful Greeks, with their 
 healthful unconsciousness and exquisite instinct, in harmony 
 with their surroundings, once out of Homer's heroic age 
 (and there is high tragedy in Homer), have their great 
 dramatists composing terrible dramas of relentless, over- 
 whelming Fate. Turn to the grand Hebrew poets. What 
 of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Solomon .? Then, if we except our 
 own early poet, Chaucer, and examine the most illustrious 
 of Christian poets, we shall be led to the same conclusion. 
 Take Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton — Shakespeare, with 
 all his rich humanity, and buoyant humour, how profoundly 
 sorrowful, how terribly tragic ! " Wo du das genie erblickst 
 erblickst du aiicJi die martyr kroner It was the Olympian 
 Goethe who said that. But our gods are not the pagan 
 Olympians. Our God is the Man of Sorrows ; and we 
 hold His life and death to be more godlike than any Greek 
 contentment with any present lot, however enviable. We 
 
62 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 ourselves suffer more ; new ideas, new imaginings, new 
 endeavours entail a heritage of more complex pain, bewil- 
 derment, and disappointment ; we can no longer lead the 
 gay, healthful life of a Greek ; and if we were ever so 
 favoured, how, since Christ, shall we be happy when so vast 
 a proportion of our brethren are miserable, for has not 
 Christ taught us that even helots and barbarians are our 
 brethren ? " Une immense espt^rance a traverse la terre " — 
 henceforth unrest is the law of our existence ; and what if 
 the Star of Hope have set ? It is here, we believe ; but for 
 Byron, labouring in the deep trough of a dark billow of the 
 world-ocean, the huge travelling wave of sorrow had blotted 
 it away ! And how, asks Mr. Symonds, in his brilliant 
 poet's book on the Greek poets, shall a race in its maturity, 
 with centuries of sad history behind it, be joyful } Yet is 
 there much of glory and joy in this history. Nor are we 
 in our old age. For see how in Byron's day Nelson and 
 Wellington fought ; how we have taken and held India, 
 and colonized the world ; how Livingstone and our great 
 explorers penetrate the heart of mysterious continents ; 
 while ghostly ramparts of the old world's seclusion fall at 
 our mere presence, as those strong walls of Jericho fell before 
 the trumpet-blast of Israel ! * But in advanced civilizations, 
 with over-swollen luxury of the few, and contrasted misery 
 of the many, the noblest must be saddest — especially 
 students, who live that unhealthy life which exaggerated 
 division of labour, and a sedentary habit, has entailed upon 
 them. To this must be added a peculiar, wild, melancholy 
 characteristic of Northern peoples in their damp, chill 
 atmosphere, and dark, romantic scenery — that melancholy 
 which we feel in solemn purple mountains, umbrageous 
 forests, turbulent grey seas, and which has passed alike 
 into the primitive national songs, into the glory of Gothic 
 cathedrals, into the taciturn, rugged character of our common 
 
 * Franklin, Gordon, Lawrence, Havelock, Edwardes, Watt, Stevenson, 
 these also are names for a nation to be proud of ! 
 
LORD liVRUN AND HIS TIMKS, 63 
 
 people. Moreover, in Byron there was a lingering belief 
 in that very distinctive orthodoxy which he denied — even 
 in the doctrine of everlasting punishment, and a revengeful 
 God, which he denounced so vehemently — those Pagan 
 monstrosities which the world will be well rid of at what- 
 ever cost. Good service as he has done us herein, these 
 dogmas still manifestly haunted him. Nor had Byron the 
 power of thought necessary for shaping for himself our 
 eternal Christianity anew ; but in the form of some illogical 
 semi-theistic fatalism, Calvinism still appears in his writings, 
 in his conversations, in his conduct. 
 
 The concentrated gloom of many Puritan generations 
 on the one hand, and many half-insane lonely barbaric 
 nobles on the other, haunted his brain like some phantom 
 mist, waiting only to be summoned into palpable Horror 
 by individual experiences of the man — which assuredly 
 were not wanting ! In the very face of his unbelief, nay, 
 in the very face of his personally unsensitive conscience as 
 to those carnal excesses which Christianity brands with 
 severest reprobation, his sense of guilt is in some moods 
 manifestly overwhelming ; almost equal to that of St. Paul 
 — or, if you prefer it, reminding one of Judas. 
 
 Of Byron personally we have but to remember that 
 his own early youth was nourished by stern, dark influences 
 of Northern sea and sky, and heath-clad rocky mountain, 
 in a land haunted by weird legend ; pride of race was 
 in his blood — pride of the old Barons Byron, and the yet 
 more illustrious ancestry of his impoverished mother ; she 
 who taught the sullen, brooding child to be so conscious 
 of his high position, and to resent the disproportion between 
 his fallen fortunes and the greatness of his house ; she who, 
 while injudiciously fond, yet taunted him with his lameness 
 when angry — a lameness that so treated might well help 
 to make him bitter. What an education was this boy's, 
 who needed such extrajudicious and kindly moral training ! 
 But fierce and ungovernable as his mother's moods were, 
 
64 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 his grandfather's had been the same— he who killed his 
 neighbour in a savage duel by candle-light, and lived after- 
 wards, grimly secluded in the old abbey at Newstead, 
 shunned and gloomy, and accused of half-insane eccentri- 
 cities (himself a very Lara), as the boy heard when he and 
 his mother arrived at their ancestral abode, so ancient, 
 lonely, and ruinous. With dim traditions and ghost-tales 
 of old monks hovering about the place, and emblazoned 
 arms of warriors on the windows, what wonder if this boy 
 poet imbibed an air of mystery and mediaeval romance ? 
 / A very exquisite description has he given of his early 
 home in " Don Juan," showing how profoundly it had im- 
 pressed him. As for his father, he was a handsome roue, 
 like Don Juan himself. How must the modern revolu- 
 tionary spirit have contended in this man for mastery with 
 the temper of a haughty English aristocrat — the haughtier 
 for his poverty — with the epicurean tastes, moreover, of a 
 beautiful dandy, and petted child of high society 1 * But 
 he needed the stimulus of insult, of rejection, of opprobrium, 
 to rouse the slumbering lion, to develop his m-ighty genius 
 in the direction proper to it. 
 
 The " Hours of Idleness " are melancholy and querulous, 
 but they have no concentrated bitterness or agony. He 
 
 * There was indeed the feudal independence of a lawless baron piercing 
 through his post-revolutionary humanitarianism, both in conduct and in poetry. 
 It is true that he hated the stupid traditional orthodoxy of Legitimists, but he 
 sincerely liked those imposing despotisms that are on one side the modern 
 offspring of old tyrannies. He admired Napoleon ; loved to imitate and be 
 compared with him ; also Ali Pacha, and thought of setting up a Pachalik 
 himself on some Greek island ; if he had been offered the crown of Greece at 
 the congress of Salona, to attend which he was on the point of setting out 
 when he died, Trelawny and Dr. Elze both think he would have accepted it. 
 He burst out crying from flattered vanity when his name was first read out 
 with " Dominus " before it at Harrow — and hated people to call him by his name 
 without the "Lord." He quarrelled with our ambassador at Constantinople 
 on a point of precedence — would not land at Malta because he expected 
 a salute from the forts, and finally sneaked into La Valetta without it, as Gait 
 relates with a chuckle. The pomp of his travelling arrangements after the 
 separation was excessive and worse than absurd, for the meanest thing he ever 
 did was to use his wife's fortune after that event. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 65 
 
 says himself, he should " never have worn the motley 
 mantle of the poet, if some one had not told him to forego 
 it." The taste of his true quality comes out first in the 
 " English Bards ; " though even that is chiefly noticeable 
 for wounded vanity, and talent in the region of sarcasm. 
 After this he travelled, on his return publishing successively 
 the " Tales," and " Childe Harold." In these he put him- 
 self forward under thin literary disguises as a melancholy 
 hero of romance, and a roiu^ : the result being, that he 
 " woke one morning and found himself famous." Never 
 was there such sudden and general popularity, partly due, 
 no doubt, to the fact that he was a peer, and a^ parti who 
 mixed freely in society, with the special recommendations 
 of beautiful face and figure, " interesting " genius, spirituel 
 conversation, and the vague reputation of being charmingly 
 wicked ; so he got as much petting as any reigning belle, 
 and gave himself airs accordingly. But he was soon to 
 pay the penalty of good fortune. He had been over- 
 praised for the work actually performed, and he had, 
 moreover, made enemies among men and women by his 
 successes, and his affectations, though chiefly, no doubt, 
 by his sterling merits, which men, and especially literary 
 men, were not likely to forgive. He had married a truly 
 excellent and noble lady, who perhaps wished to reform 
 him, but soon retired in disgust from a task vvdiich she 
 found so far beyond her powers. This marriage, with little 
 affection, and with no mutual comprehension or toleration, 
 was soon broken up ; and then, no one knows exactly how, 
 the darkest rumours gathered about the husband, bursting 
 anon over his head in a tempest of most virtuous execra- 
 tion, wherein the notoriously sensitive holiness of English 
 society in the days of the Regency showed itself, like 
 Hamlet's father, " much offended." Byron, indeed, fancied 
 there might be some cant in all that, having himself seen 
 something of this holiness when it sat knee to knee with 
 him, cheek by jowl with him, drinking, and ogling — though 
 
 F 
 
66 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Mrs. Stowc appears to believe in it. The fact is, he had 
 no business to be a genius, and to sin out of the regular 
 grooves in which it is proper and respectable for good 
 .society to sin. So villainous fashionable seducers, and 
 fraudulent tradesmen, " compounded for sins they were 
 inclined to, by damning those they had no mind to," waving 
 him aside as less pious than themselves. And he who 
 confessed that the meanest thing's blame gave him more 
 pain than the highest man's praise gave him pleasure — 
 how must he have winced under the insult and oppro- 
 brium that raged around him, even though in his heart 
 he contemned most of the amateur inquisitors who 
 inflicted punishment. The finest skins are the most sensi- 
 tive — what a triumph for vermin ! No doubt there are 
 men of cold, serene, self-possessed temperament, who are 
 as thoroughly independent of their fellows as Byron pro- 
 fessed to be, but, as has been said, these do not print so 
 many passionate cantos to inform their fellows of the fact. 
 Why, he winced even when a nameless jackass donned the 
 lion's-skin of some ephemerally popular review, and brayed 
 at his poetr>' from under it. He could not be content with 
 enduring fame, and the consciousness of good work done ; 
 but must needs clutch at immense and immediate reputa- 
 tion, though that was to be shared with him by jugglers 
 and acrobats, literary or otherwise. Hence in part the 
 blot of sensationalism, to catch the uneducated taste for 
 gaudiness of effect, in his work. 
 
 Byron, moreover, burnt the candle at both ends. Think 
 what an amount of intellectual labour — and that of a 
 creative kind — of a fierce, emotional, imaginative kind — 
 this man went through before he was thirty-seven ! How 
 bulky are his works ; and in addition we have the long 
 destroyed memoirs, the innumerable letters sparkling with 
 wit, teeming with observation. Besides, he lived always, 
 and lived moreover in early youth, the life of a roi//. These 
 conditions alone are sufficient, when we take into account 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 6/ 
 
 his hifrhly nervous, excitable, delicate organization, and 
 the deleterious amount of spirits he drank, to explain his 
 fits of depression, his moments of anguish. He was subject, 
 moreover, to constant fevers, than which nothing is more 
 depressing. So that on the whole, considering the utterly 
 different nature and circumstances of the two men, it does 
 not seem as if Mr. Carlyle's reiterated reproach to Byron, 
 that he was no stoic, amounted to very much. 
 
 I own I think the " Tales " are underrated by modern 
 critics. All their defects may be granted — they are frag- 
 mentary, the plots are ill-constructed, sometimes almost 
 nil, they are monotonous, and, above all, there is a certain 
 theatrical hollowness about them, which is indeed the 
 vulnerable Achilles'-heel of Byron for his modern detractors. 
 Nevertheless, the episodes, even if they be only episodes, 
 are in themselves wonderfully astir with wild life and 
 turbulent passion ; the verse is generally musical and rapid, 
 while often we have a pause of softer lyrical beauty with an 
 exquisite perfume of its own, to which Scott far more 
 rarely attains. Thus almost all the passages (though they 
 can be detached and recited as separate lyrics) in the 
 " Giaour " are beautiful, and how lovely are the opening 
 lines about the lovers in " Parisina " as well as that incident 
 of the page bending over dying Lara ! The " Corsair," on 
 the whole, seems to me the finest and most spirited of this 
 series ; it has in it all the freshness of youth and buoyant 
 enjoyment, as well as the very spirit of romance and 
 troubadour love ; it has women, charming, beautiful, tender, 
 and passionate, pathetic passages, and some of the finest 
 lines that have ever been written about the sea, even by 
 Byron, the bounding clarion notes of the pirate's opening 
 song — " O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea." By 
 some able modern critics, indeed, accustomed to our 
 thoughtful, metaphysical, academic, or domestic strains, all 
 except one phase of Byron's mighty genius (that of " Don 
 Juan," and " Vision of Judgment ") has been abandoned, 
 
68 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 on the ground that it is theatrical, and conventional ; that 
 his heroes are not heroic. Now this has a great deal of 
 truth in it, and Byron acknowledges himself that these 
 early works were too sentimental and stagey. Still, for all 
 that, something may be said even in favour of their general 
 conception, in favour of that central ideal which gave them 
 such unity as they possess. 
 
 It does not follow, because a myriad dunces have 
 mouthed, and still mouth in the trappings of a great actor, 
 and we weary of these trappings, that he was not a great 
 actor. What astonished Walter Scott was this — that Byron, 
 though in " Childe Harold," and we may even say in "Cain" 
 and " Manfred," as well as in the " Tales," he continued to 
 represent only one human figure as the centre of all, could 
 still succeed in forcibly arresting men's attention. In truth, 
 he wears the tragic mask of an actor in old Greek tragedy 
 — set to one monotonous, terrible, or sorrowful expression : 
 his heroes are ideals of human misfortune, sin, woe, and 
 passionate power, that partly recall those of Greek drama. 
 This gloomy Byronic hero is now the favourite type of low 
 melodrama in cheap fiction and on the stage — a capital sub- 
 ject, moreover, for burlesque. Nevertheless, he was at that 
 time a perfectly legitimate and fascinating hero of romance, 
 by virtue of certain obvious and indestructible tendencies to 
 admire, very common in human nature. He was, in fact, 
 a personage of the same order as Hamlet, Timon, Faust, 
 Wagner's Tannhauser, and Fouque's magical creation, Sin- 
 tram. He must be accepted as a modern descendant of 
 mediaeval Barons and Minstrels — truly an evil modern 
 Knight, with conscience restless from remorse, with high 
 gifts of intellect and imagination, thirsting for joy and for 
 pure love, yet clogged with satiety, withered with disap- 
 pointment, endowed, however, with many knightly virtues, 
 in all the pride of blasted beauty and high lineage degraded ; 
 even in the bosom of Nature, the Healer whom he adores 
 as Divine, haunted by melancholy wrecks of his own spiritual 
 
LORD HYRON AND HIS TIMES. 69 
 
 life. This semi-knight, and semi-Miltonic Satan, is an em- 
 bodiment of rebellion against God and man ; yet of recon- 
 ciliation with both through love of Mercy and Justice ; half 
 in harmony with the modern spirit, half in harmony with the 
 ancient that is passing away ; it has, moreover, even a 
 moral beauty of its own, as of a human ruin stern and 
 lonely in proud decay, festooned with some of Nature's 
 fairest perennial flowers. But it is eminently romantic 
 and picturesque — Gothic, fantastic, all light and shadow, 
 mystery, and vast space, flushed here with gorgeous colours, 
 there grey and severe — neither "classical," nor flippant, 
 courtly, and didactic, like poetry of the eighteenth century ; 
 nor moralized, and beginning to be reconciled in its own 
 fashion with the old faith, like Lord Tennyson's and some 
 of our best poetry now — a transition poetry of tumult and 
 revolt, of volcanic, aggressive individualism, half reverting 
 to the lawlessness and anarchy of primaeval societies ; to 
 the Ishmaelite whose hand is against every man ; the child 
 of Nature asserting himself against the decadence of an 
 artificial, decrepit, tyrannical civilization, wrongfully usurp- 
 ing the titles and thunders of the Most High. This is as 
 truly romantic as Spenser, Walter Scott, Ariosto, or the 
 Minnesingers. " Faust," and " Manfred " are in fact the 
 legitimate descendants of this mediaeval poetry — even of 
 the early Mysteries and Miracle-Plays. Moreover, Spenser, 
 and the Italian romantic poets, are quite as luscious in 
 description as Byron ; tJiat element they owe in common 
 to the study of later classical literature — Theocritus, Virgil, 
 Ovid — and some of it to that of the East, Byron personally 
 having a good deal of the soft, luxurious Eastern in him, 
 developed by personal experience in eastern climes. It 
 must be recollected further that the old heroes of romance, 
 for the most part sans pcur, were very seldom satts 7-cprocJie. 
 But the elements of moral mystery, tragical destiny, high 
 gifts rendered abortive and a curse to the possessor, and 
 what may be termed the more superficial graces of these 
 
70 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 heroes, all these, wrought up with the skill of a Byron, 
 whose " own " the " song " was, form a fine subject for 
 artistic presentation in the romantic region of art ; they 
 appeal to the imagination of mankind, to such imaginations 
 as those of Goethe, Shelley, Coleridge, and Scott ; although, 
 indeed, the perpetual repetition of such portraitures showed 
 the narrow range at that period of the poet's power. His, 
 indeed, were not self-possessed, self-sacrificing heroes of the 
 highest type, like Schiller's William Tell, But it is not 
 necessary to hold them up as models for imitation, even 
 though Byron may have a vain, self-conscious weakness for 
 these violent, ill-regulated, selfish characters. At any rate, 
 however low morally his poetic ideal might be (and one of 
 his ideals was Washington, as he tells us in a splendid 
 stanza of " Childe Harold," and as we might know by his 
 life), the question for criticism is how far his figures are 
 portrayed with the hand of a master ; and it was certainly 
 because he could identify himself with them in some moods 
 that he portrayed them so well. Whatever an artist can 
 render artistically interesting by art, that is a proper subject 
 for art ; it becomes imaginative truth ; but the error of 
 certain writers has been to distort some lower elements 
 of human nature by making them relatively too prominent, 
 and not duly contrasting them with other elements. Byron 
 made himself in " Childe Harold," not too obtrusively, the 
 centre of his graphic and imaginative descriptions of coun- 
 tries over which centuries of stirring and splendid history 
 expand wings of dusky glory, and surely the brooding, 
 melancholy figure was no inappropriate centre ; a beautiful 
 genius of death, of sorrow, and of unrest. Ever he held up 
 before the world a vast and lurid Human Image, but too 
 thoroughly aware of its own dignity, and contemning others 
 — herein reverting to the philosophic pride of elect spirits 
 as inculcated by Paganism, and adapted thence by doctors 
 of theology into Christianity, under the guise of religious 
 Pharisaism (but retrograding from the true Christian ideal 
 
LORD BYRON AND I IIS TIMES. 7 1 
 
 of election to universal service), and now reappearing in 
 Academic halls under the name of" Culture," as intellectual 
 pride — scarcely malignant, yet formed to be the ruin of all 
 who approached ; like Job, deserted in his calamity, yet 
 justifying himself in the face of Heaven as against hypo- 
 critical moral verdicts of his fellows ; communing alone in 
 whirlwind and cloud with phantoms of departed heroes, 
 and vanished empires — Harold, in starlit palaces of the 
 Caesars, among ivied rents of ruin, or upon the solitary 
 seashore — Manfred upon some desolate Alp, conversing 
 familiarly with spirits of the elements ; for whom the very 
 countenance of Love herself has been contorted into the 
 Gorgon-face of Crime — Crime with fury features and snaky 
 hair. In what terrible harmony is this figure, half-man, 
 half-demon, with these blasted crags that surround him, 
 born of old in throes of earthquake and in fire, snowed 
 upon out of the slow centuries, shrouded in oceans of 
 implacable ice! So looms this awful Image out of the 
 storm-cloud, as though stricken with the curse of a hateful 
 immortality ; wandering through all lands, bearing the 
 burden of a world's sorrow, wailing the wail of human 
 misery, like Prometheus on Caucasus, scarred with Heaven's 
 lightning, and blistered with His frost, agonizing for sins 
 inherited and imposed ; but, alas ! bearing no message for 
 human redemption ; no conscious martyr-conqueror of 
 sacred fire from divine altars, wherewithal to regenerate 
 the race ; only lifting ever a red right hand with Cain, and 
 huge scowling armies of the outcast — rebel leader of all 
 who are miserable, fate-stricken, and oppressed — testifying 
 in the face of God and men that all is not well, as the com- 
 fortable have decreed, though they feast with a smile over 
 buried bodies of their victims. 
 
 It seems to me uncritical to draw too broad a line of 
 demarcation between the early and later works of Byron, 
 though it is unquestionably right to prefer the later ; but 
 the same identical, intense, passionate, susceptible, scornful 
 
72 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 soul appears in all. And it is part of the very essence of 
 this strange shroud of romantic, half-chivalrous mystery 
 wherewith Byron loves to invest his characters, and through 
 them indirectly his own personality, that there should glow, 
 as it were, doubtfully through the folds thereof a certain 
 deadly lurid light of guilt unnameable, whose inborn fatality 
 overwhelms the soul with despair, and leaves the man no 
 rest. This is especially the element that is now inveighed 
 against as poisonous and satanic — now indicated as clap- 
 trap and humbug. 
 
 But it may be argued that as Byron has used the blood- 
 red hue, it is a perfectly legitimate, as well as effective, 
 element of tragic interest in his work of art. Toned down 
 to harmony with other features of the picture, represented 
 as in some sense a mysterious doom — guilt, and the misery 
 which it works in a soul not destitute of virtue and aspira- 
 tions after a higher life — these elements in Byron appear to 
 me neither immoral, nor inartistic, nor ridiculous. Is it 
 the duty of the artist always to hold up before us models 
 of excellence for imitation ? If so, of course we must con- 
 demn Byron, and enthrone Miss Edgeworth or Mr. Tupper. 
 But then, what of Othello and lago, Macbeth, Lady Mac- 
 beth, the Duchess of Malfi, and most of those other mixed 
 humanities of Elizabethan drama ? What of GEdipus and 
 Medea? indeed, of all the greatest masters in imaginative 
 creation } Byron's representations do not, I think, ignore 
 the dijference between good and evil, any more than those 
 of Shakespeare do, though they may indicate laxity in his 
 own estimate of what is right and wrong, in certain respects. 
 I do not see, for instance, that he violates the conditions 
 under which evil may be represented, even as laid down in 
 the essays of Mr. R. H. Hutton ; only that Mr. Hutton 
 perhaps insists too much (by implication) on the moral 
 aspect of a subject being always prominently presented 
 That Byron dzvells too much on the passionate, and so far 
 weak class of characters, and that these arc not sufficiently 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 73 
 
 balanced by other types may be admitted. Merein he proves 
 himself an artist inferior to the greatest. But his heroes may 
 point a moral while they adorn a tale. There certainly arose 
 at that time — Byron and Rousseau contributing much to the 
 phenomenon — a kind of priesthood, which, claiming to 
 displace the old, showed itself scarcely more tolerant and 
 tender in its bearing toward the common people, in favour 
 of whose rights its members had ostensibly arisen, than 
 that traditional priesthood against whose tyranny they so 
 iconoclastically declaimed. Every "man of genius" became 
 a sort of supreme pontiff without a faith, whose whims, and 
 weaknesses, and peculiar fancies were to be held as sacred 
 — a pretension perhaps more dangerous than those of a 
 regular priesthood, since these were at least defined and 
 confirmed by venerable authorities in the world's face. 
 Sensitive young persons, moreover, persuaded themselves 
 too easily that they were within this privileged indefinable 
 circle, being naturally eager to claim a right of participating 
 in such agreeable immunities ; so that the ranks of this new 
 priesthood did not want for candidates, whose credentials 
 there existed unfortunately no recognized bishop once for 
 all to verify. Doubtless, then, too much emphasis was laid 
 by Rousseau, Byron, and Shelley, upon mere sentiment, 
 impulse, and passion, as distinguished from conscience, 
 reason, and deliberate self-control. So far as Byronism is 
 to be regarded as an ideal, it is certainly a low one ; though, 
 at the same time, it is unquestionably a higher than that of 
 the average Mammon-worshipping Briton, and on the whole 
 advantageous as a corrective of his ; while Byron sets before 
 the Englishman, assuredly, certain high qualities for which 
 the elite of his nation have been deservedly celebrated, and 
 not least that aristocracy to which the poet belonged. Nor 
 is it amiss that the average man should learn to reverence 
 genius and superiority, and the glories of external Nature. 
 If Byron lays undue stress on such advantages as those 
 of rank and high lineage — on those of beauty, strength, 
 
74 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 prowess, or refinement — methinks his work is full of counter- 
 balancing influences ; and these things themselves may not 
 be quite so despicable as commonplace, levelling-down 
 democracy supposes. Science is teaching us not unduly to 
 despise race, as instinct had taught us before ; moreover, 
 since soul and body are but reverse faces of the same living 
 man or woman, I doubt beauty of body being so execrable 
 a thing as ill-favoured Methodism would persuade us. 
 Then, again, though the protest is a healthy one which 
 vigorous moralists, like Mr. Kingsley, have made against 
 that foolish, mischievous notion, that men of genius are 
 privileged in their errors and weaknesses, instead of possess- 
 ing their high gifts for purposes of human service, we must 
 not altogether forget that virtue is not knowledge or sensi- 
 bility, but rather, a due balance of the faculties under a 
 moral sense. Artistic genius is, on the other hand, a very 
 uncommon sensibility and corresponding faculty dominating 
 the possessor : it would certainly be well if with this were 
 always associated that balance and moral sense we call 
 virtue. But is it always so, and is it likely to be generally 
 so .-' In proportion as sympathies and susceptibilities are 
 acute in one direction, must there be danger of undue pre- 
 dominance ; and in proportion to their variety will be the 
 probability of some one interfering now and again with the 
 claims of another. When a man feels a multitude of con- 
 flicting impulses, aspirations, and longings, he must be 
 endowed with an exceptionally virtuous spirit in order for 
 him to keep the middle path of virtue as securely and 
 invariably as another. But it does not follow that he must 
 be so endowed. He sees life, and a special phase of life 
 haloed with the aureole of imagination ; the reality disap- 
 points him : he then revolts against his condition, and seeks 
 some other, not always with due regard for the claims of a 
 partner, nor with the tender long-suffering he owes her. 
 His mobility of temperament, and ardour of imagination 
 are in arms against his constancy and duty. 
 
LORD BYRON AND IILS TIMES. 75 
 
 That men of genius have, for the most part, been un- 
 happy in their domestic relations has been often affirmed 
 and explained, and perhaps cannot well be denied. Happy 
 are they who have proved exceptions ! happy in the noble, 
 gentle partners God gave them, and possibly in their own 
 highly gifted moral natures. But I do not see why sinners 
 of genius should be inveighed against as ipso facto greater 
 sinners than average men. Shakespeare, for instance, gives 
 one the notion of complete sanity, and balanced universality 
 in genius ; yet what we know of his history, and what 
 we read in the Sonnets does not favour the idea of a 
 perfectly proper person, who could have written perfectly 
 proper articles in the Saturday Review. There is no use 
 blinking the fact, moreover, that riot, self-indulgence, and 
 the irregular life Byron lived made him just the great 
 specific poetic personality he was — the very interpreter of 
 his time. He drew more than any poet from personal ex- 
 perience, and his strongly marked passionate, wandering 
 career gave him the materials of his strongest and intensest 
 poetry. What would this man have done if he had " lived 
 at home and at ease ? " if he had gone out shooting all his 
 life with Sir Ralph Milbanke, and only listened over his 
 wine to " that damnable monologue which elderly gentle- 
 men are pleased to call conversation } " He might have 
 gone to church at Kirkby Mallory on Sunday, fulfilling in 
 every way the decalogue, and the whole duty of an English- 
 man ; but he would not have written the concluding cantos 
 of " Childe Harold," " Cain," " Manfred," or " Don Juan ; " 
 he would not have been Byron ; for Sorrow and Sin trod 
 his spirit as their wine-press, and lo ! the blood-red wine of 
 Genius, with omnipotent aroma, expressed in bitter anguish 
 and boundless despair. " They learn in sorrow what they 
 teach in song." All honour to " deaneries," and " angels " 
 in bal morals, and clerical lawns for croquet. But volcanoes 
 and earthquakes too are needed, or they would not de. 
 " Wrong " we may brand the volcano, with its devastation 
 
^6 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 of human cereals, dwelling-houses, and properties in general 
 — very wrong indeed ; still " stormy wind," as well as gentle 
 breeze, " fulfillcth His word." All are not fitted for the 
 domestic ideal, though only fools or knaves fail to feel that, 
 when fulfilled by high human natures, it is the very noblest, 
 as, surely with one dear woman and sweet children, it 
 is happiest ; the obvious and true ideal of our civilized 
 majority. But in some there remains the wild blood of 
 the nomade, and dweller in tents of Ishmael ; these, whether 
 they be artists or explorers, soldiers or sailors, have their 
 true Bohemian function elsewhere, and are simply thrown 
 away upon drawing-rooms and deaneries, however decorous. 
 There are, too, for that matter, women who must be single, 
 and are better so ; Aspasias here and there it may be ; 
 students and devotees of knowledge, monks, ascetics, and 
 such-like abnormal persons ; hero-martyrs on occasion of 
 some ideal cause ; none of them fitted for the honourable 
 encumbrance of a family ; yet it may easily happen that 
 some of these will mistake their vocation, or perish in the 
 vain attempt to reconcile vocations that prove incompatible. 
 Let not, however, what one has called our " unlovely 
 temple of comfort " be regarded as though it were the very 
 temple of God ! 
 
 But it must have been with some sense of triumphant 
 humour that Byron (he was a wag, and this must always 
 be borne in mind) proceeded to dispose his magician's robe 
 of stormful misanthropy in becoming folds around him, 
 and, positively by flaunting it all sulphurous with the crime 
 he had been banished for in the face of implacable society, 
 brought this stern stepmother to his feet dissolved in re- 
 pentant tears ! Now, I am far from believing that this 
 remorseful guilt was merely invented for purposes of art ; 
 it is so essential to the personality he generally delineates, 
 which is substantially his own. Byron is chiefly a lyrical 
 poet ; and I cannot think that he was either immaculate, 
 or the fiend which Mrs. Stowe, and other virtuous writers 
 
LORD BYRON AND Ills TIMES. TJ 
 
 have delineated. But an artist differs from others, in that 
 he Hvcs a double life of experience and imagination, the 
 first proving so much material for the second. 
 
 When a man's life is so much before us, as he evidently 
 intended it should be, when he has deliberately put his life 
 into his poetry, we cannot ignore it. If the editor of 
 Macmillaji's Magazine had not expressed himself so happy 
 to introduce Mrs. Stowe's " strange story " to the British 
 public, that might have been left alone ; but Dr. Elzc, and 
 even Saturday Reviewers have discussed it ; so I shall here 
 allude to it in passing. 
 
 Byron avers that he never seduced a woman, by which 
 I understand that he never took advantage of a young 
 girl's innocence, deceiving her to her injury. But it is 
 conceivable that he did not feel, any more than Shelley, 
 precisely the same instinctive attractions and repulsions 
 as the majority of mankind in sexual regions. Shelley 
 deliberately defends incest, and Byron certainly does some- 
 thing of the same sort in " Cain." I think with Mr. Rossetti 
 that the evidence on this head is so conflicting that we 
 cannot condemn him. Mrs. Stowe says Lady Byron told 
 her that he confessed and justified the crime to her. I 
 cannot help thinking that Lady Byron unwittingly exag- 
 gerated this and many other circumstances of their unfortu- 
 nate union, in talking matters over with intimate friends, and 
 brooding over her wrongs. So admirable a man of genius, 
 our national glory, and a noble lady of such rare excellence, 
 with so many admirable gifts, as all who knew her agree 
 (who but fool or knave dare deny them .?), alas ! what an 
 irony of Fate to bring just these two together ! Ascetic 
 purity face to face with sensuality incarnate ! If she 
 " wanted one sweet weakness, to forgive," how much self- 
 restraint, and chivalrous, affectionate service did he not 
 want ? His ideas and actions were revolting to her, his 
 very passionate impulsiveness was so ; when he broke a 
 valuable watch out of vexation at their pecuniary embar- 
 
78 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 rassmcnt, this seemed to her one symptom of madness, as 
 did his other eccentricities also ; he, because she persistently 
 rubbed his fur the wrong way, and was so rigidly implacable, 
 became exasperated, painted himself to her in the blackest 
 of colours, and delighted the more to shock her. The 
 Guiccioli allows that he confessed to an unusual warmth of 
 manner towards his sister even in the presence of Lady 
 Byron, which familiarity is, it will be noticed, the ox\\y proof 
 Lady Byron gave to Mrs. Stowe (for the nonsense about a 
 child, since so amply refuted, I cannot but suppose Mrs. 
 Stowe must have misunderstood). This unusual warmth 
 in a fiery nature like his, where the ordinary demarcations 
 of affection and passion arc not so definitely marked as in 
 most men, is conceivable, and would perfectly explain Lady 
 Byron's charge, especially as there were arguments between 
 them, and he would be likely obstinately to justify himself — 
 even accuse himself of actions he had not committed. His 
 own heated imagination even may have magnified his 
 offence — especially when he viewed it under the influence 
 of Lady Byron, he himself not clearly distinguishing his 
 strong affection from passion under the lurid horror re- 
 flected from the conscience of society. For Lady Byron 
 evidently did possess influence over him ; he respected her 
 greatly, and it is probable even that he drew her likeness 
 in one of the most exquisite descriptions ever penned of a 
 pure woman, that of Aurora Raby in " Don Juan." He 
 was eminently mobile and susceptible, and had there not 
 been too much mutual repulsion in these two natures, had 
 there been true love, she might have permanently influ- 
 enced him ; but she had her own reasons for giving up the 
 task so soon. He seems to have been often cold and cruel 
 to her — at any rate her own instinctive aversions, and 
 perhaps fear for her daughter, worked powerfully upon her ; 
 but when her influence was upon him, he would feel as she 
 did. This, and the execration of society, if only unbridled 
 imagination had ever transgressed normal limits, would 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 79 
 
 suffice to fill him with very hcU-fiic of anguish and remorse, 
 especially as he never succeeded in shaking off that orthodox 
 creed against which he rebelled. Thus in " Manfred " we 
 have the most absorbing love (what can be more intense 
 than the passionate invocation of Manfred to the spirit of 
 his sister Astarte ?) steeped in self-accusing despair unutter- 
 able for the injury he may have done her, for the doom he 
 may have brought upon her in the other life, yea, for her 
 very love which he may have forfeited, that human love 
 which is his all in all ! His infinite is the finite, and on 
 the bosom of the finite he falls with infinite yearning — a 
 bosom that crumbles in his embrace, so that he falls, falls 
 ever in the void ! But, in sooth, the mere accusation and 
 ban of civilized society might be sufficient to inflame Byron's 
 imagination with the idea of such a situation ; while his 
 own morbid pleasure in self-accusations of uncommon guilt 
 might have been almost enough originally to rivet such 
 charges upon himself, till he at last deluded even himself 
 into believing them. Mrs. Stowe's version of his reasons 
 for circulating stories about the separation only among his 
 intimates is surely very uncharitable. He might be too in- 
 continent to suppress these altogether, and yet might, out 
 of lingering regard for his wife, wish to imitate her quasi- 
 reticence, which, after all, was a ^;/(?j-/- reticence chiefly ; 
 when he worked himself into a fury about his " wrongs," he 
 would, indeed, say anything, but, knowing he exaggerated, 
 with caution. He was a libertine — and such men are not 
 as delicate as they should be — a literary libertine, who 
 habitually made reprehensible confidences about his own 
 most private affairs. At times, from his fear of further 
 public ignominy if these charges became still more definite 
 than they were, knowing what Lady Byron believed, whether 
 truly or falsely, and had told to some persons, he might even 
 act in the spirit of such a threat as that which he is reported 
 to have used, alluding to " Caleb Williams," that she should 
 bear all the blame of their separation. Yet, on the other 
 
8o ESSAYS ON rOETRY AND POETS. 
 
 hand, he constantly affirmed that she was not to blame ; 
 but he naturally shrank from such definite charges as would 
 have been brought against him in a public court, knowing 
 that it might be difllicult to refute them beyond controversy. 
 Here, as everywhere, he was made up of contradictions 
 insufficiently harmonized : he was a child of impulse, yet 
 could often give impulse and emotion a calculated turn. 
 What could be more inconsistent than to poison the public 
 mind by dark innuendoes against himself, in order to make 
 people stare, and be " interesting," and then to rant, and 
 rave, and lament in the most eloquent poetry when the 
 public took him at his word ? " Self-torturing sophist" he 
 was, like Rousseau. How he longed for love and tran- 
 quillity, and profound affection, and home, and children, 
 and how the demons within him drove him ever out of 
 sight of shore ! Such spiritual weakness arising from want 
 of harmony and balance must ever produce misery. A 
 recent writer has said that what proves him a thoroughly 
 bad man is his abusing one mistress to another ; but these 
 intrigues must not be judged like profound affairs of the 
 heart ; a libertine's mistress is not likely to spare her lover 
 after the connection is over, any more than her lover to 
 spare her. Byron was not spared in " Glenarvon," for 
 instance. 
 
 Byron somewhere enumerates the crimes of which 
 rumour had accused him, wonderful to say, with a curious 
 mixture of complacency, amusement, and yet by no means 
 affected indignation ; among others he mentions those of 
 Tiberius, and Heliogabalus. Assuredly some of his own 
 expressions, taken together with certain incidents of his 
 career, may quite as easily have exposed him to scandal 
 and exaggerations of this nature also. A cynical, unsocial 
 person is never very leniently regarded by his neighbours, 
 and genius seems " something uncanny " to the million. All 
 his friendships, he affirms, were passionate. The " Hours of 
 Idleness " abound with passionate addresses to his friends. 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 8 1 
 
 "Shall fair Euryalus pass by unsung?" 
 " Thy mind, in union with thy beauteous form, 
 Was gentle, but unfit to stem the storm," etc. 
 
 Of Lord Clare, who spent whole summer afternoons 
 with him on the tomb in Harrow churchyard, he writes 
 in 1 82 1, "I never hear the word Clare without a beating 
 of the heart even now ; " and his record of their unexpected 
 meeting on the road between Imola and Bologna that year 
 may well be unintelligible to persons of less intense and 
 fiery temperament. At Cambridge he was deeply attached 
 to a young chorister, and wore a cornelian heart which the 
 boy had given him. At Newstead, also, he felt more than 
 usually warm friendship for the son of one of his tenants ; 
 and on his second visit to Athens we hear nothing of the 
 " maid," his " life," but his heart went forth to a poor youth 
 named Nicolo Giraud, the son of a widow ; while there are 
 some curious expressions in a letter of Shelley about his 
 life at Venice. We can imagine what malevolent gossip 
 might make of all this ; but is there any proof that it in- 
 dicates more than the extravagances of a nature far more 
 impulsive and comprehensive in its range of emotions, than 
 is to be met with every day ? Then again, while on the 
 one hand, he was brave and manly, much addicted to, and 
 skilled in physical exercises, devoted to outdoor and athletic 
 pursuits, on the other, he had a very feminine element in 
 his character, as in his person. Hunt sneers at the rings 
 he loved to display upon his fingers, and Ali Pacha pleased 
 him by praising his curling hair, together with the aristo- 
 cratic delicacy of his small ears and white hands. He was 
 once taken for a woman in disguise, and in " Don Juan " 
 he draws an attractive picture of the beautiful hero dressed 
 as an Eastern princess. Not only women, but even men 
 could not escape the magic of his fascination, and Lord 
 Holland's little son called him " the gentleman with the 
 beautiful voice." His countenance, like his spirit, was extra- 
 femininely mobile, says a lady, and he could look positively 
 
 G 
 
82 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 beautiful one moment, but positively ugly the next ; surely 
 herein his face was a reflex of his soul ! 
 
 I fancy the English were a little unreasonable to cry 
 out when Countess Guiccioli took up the cudgels for Byron, 
 just after such very damaging statements about him had 
 been published, ostensibly on the authority of his wife. If 
 he turned different sides of himself to the two ladies, it 
 seems hard if both may not be shown. The Guiccioli in 
 her old age, having married an Anglophobe marquis, writes 
 that she found Byron a perfect angel during the six years 
 he was with her ; and Lady Byron herself, while analyzing 
 his character somewhat sternly and harshly to one of her 
 friends (she even says he only feigned enthusiasm, in 
 which case he ought to have been a great dramatist, for 
 he feigned enthusiasm to the life) wept when she heard of 
 his death, owning there was an angel in him. But alas ! 
 the Guiccioli loved him, and he loved her, as well, at least, 
 as so libertine and disillusioned a nature could love. The 
 picture is a touching one of him at Ravenna, when she had 
 returned with her husband to Bologna, visiting her garden 
 and rooms at their wonted hour of meeting, reading in her 
 favourite books, and bursting into tears before the fountain 
 in the garden, as he reflected what evil his love might 
 bring upon her. This lady reclaimed him from his de- 
 baucheries — as long as he lived he was faithful to her — 
 and I think the charge against him of making no provision 
 for her is one quite susceptible of a favourable explanation. 
 Byron loved two — Mary Chaworth, and the Guiccioli. 
 Would that he could have married his first love ! In that 
 beautiful poem, " The Dream," he confesses that her image 
 was in his soul, even when he stood at the altar with 
 another — that was the crime of his life in the sight of 
 Heaven, and a black one, however shocking his fleshly 
 vagaries may appear to us ; but that is a crime against 
 which civilized society has no conscience. Yet an ideal 
 marriage demands a constancy and stability of soul, of 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 83 
 
 which, alas ! men like Byron and Shelley possess little, 
 chivalrous protectiveness, generosity, magnanimity, memory 
 of the past, faith in the future. And what if Love dies, 
 killed by the fading of early rose-colour, intrusion of fret- 
 ting trivialities, familiarity that breeds contempt, habitual 
 failure in mutual duties, great or small, ever-increasing 
 divergence of temperament, irritability. Love's own inani- 
 tion ? Even sadder than the death of an adored child is 
 the death of Love. Yet surely Love, if he be Love, may 
 sleep, may feign death, but cannot die. I verily believe it ! 
 In two of Mr. Robert Browning's works, he attacks 
 Byron with a strange fury, that seems to me far less psycho- 
 logically discriminating than might have been expected 
 from him. He pokes fun at Byron's slip of " lay " for 
 " lie " in the deservedly celebrated passage of Childe 
 Harold about the sea — a slip which Shelley also makes 
 in his splendid lines on the " Apennine." We have heard 
 a good deal about this in the newspapers, and it is all 
 very well there ; for Byron was apt to be careless and 
 rude in diction, as well as in rhythm ; but it seems a httle 
 strange for Mr. Browning (of whose genius I am a very 
 warm admirer) to pitch into him on this score, his own 
 language being as difficult to construe as the French of 
 Rabelais, the German of Hegel, or Bohme. However, 
 the substance of the passage is his grand object of attack. 
 In " Hohenstiel-Schwangau " he denies apparently that 
 Byron was a worshipper of Nature at all ; in " Fifine " he 
 argues that to exalt Nature so highly as Byron does is 
 false philosophy. He affirms, however, that in his admira- 
 tion for the sea and mountains Byron was insincere, and 
 only meant to attract attention to himself as an admirer 
 of the sea more than other men, using the sea merely as 
 convenient for " hitching into a stanza." In the latter work 
 he argues (if I rightly comprehend him) that the sea and 
 mountains, etc., are themselves constituted by what we men 
 please to think and feel about them. However, even on Mr. 
 
84 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Browning's own showing, Byron was hardly the " flatfish," 
 and " the cackling goose " he ventures to call him. For if 
 the sea be sublime only because a man thinks so, then, as 
 the average tourist who crosses from Dover to Calais, even 
 when not sick, thinks nothing of the sort, Byron, who made 
 the sea sublime by feeling and expressing its sublimity, 
 must be so far superior to the average man, and quite as 
 distinguished a person as he supposed himself. In fact, 
 however conceited, he would hardly have known himself in 
 this tremendous role of Creator, which his philosophical 
 antagonist by implication assigns to him. 
 
 But really it is news that Byron was a humbug also in 
 this Nature-worship, of which we had all supposed him one 
 of the principal founders and priests ! — whose burning words 
 of passionate adoration kindled one's own soul in boyhood 
 to behold and worship ; whose magnificent music, sonorous 
 with storm and ocean and all that is free, illimitable, and 
 enduring, thrilled the very heart of Europe, compelling it 
 as at a god's command to bow down once more, when the 
 angels of Faith and Hope seemed to be deserting for ever 
 the desecrated shrines of mankind. Byron felt his own 
 soul akin to all that was wild and stormful and immense, 
 the moods of Nature solemnly and mysteriously responding 
 to the moods in man. What though the soul be higher 
 than the sea ? To the sensitive and reflective spirit, the 
 sea, the mountains, and the stars are very types and 
 symbols of permanence, order, eternity. Nature and man 
 are elder sister and younger brother ; she wakes intelligence 
 and will in him ; he knows himself in knowing her ; she is 
 a dumb and blind elder sister, whose laws inexorably bind 
 him, while he imposes his spirit upon her, and reads spiritual 
 meanings in her face. Man and his own soul were a chaos 
 to Byron ; yet in heroes and good women, but above all in 
 the order of everlasting Nature, he found again the grandeur 
 and divinity of a Kosmos. Individual human degradation, 
 of which we in the midst can but dimly see the issue. 
 
LORD RYRON AND HIS TIMES. 85 
 
 receives a mystic interpretation from the unconscious inno- 
 cence of a Divine Sphere, that seems evil and good, 
 strong and weak, not individual but universal, and which 
 is a veiled Humanity. Thence one can look up with 
 greater trust than before even for the worms that sting one 
 another in the dust. Why do the Arab in the desert, the 
 Persian on his mountain, bow before the all-beholding 
 Sun.-* In him is no sin, no vanity, folly, falsehood, or vain 
 ambition ; he gives life and light to all ; himself the veritable 
 incarnation of one Invisible Sun. 
 
 Surely for Byron and such as he, in the absence of 
 revelation and philosophy, this was the best school of 
 morality. He who loses his own personality in Nature, 
 who lays down before her, the universal mother and tomb 
 of humanity, his own private wrongs and griefs and fevered 
 aspirations, hereby redresses the balance so unduly weighted 
 with the self-will and momentary longings of one restless, 
 passionate man. For she is one who toils not nor dreams, 
 errs not nor supposes, raves not nor repents, but calmly 
 fulfils herself for ever.* Mr. Browning would be impossible 
 in those vast primeval realms where Nature still proudly 
 asserts her dominion — where she oppresses men with 
 creatures " burning bright in the forests of the night," 
 shakes them from their bubble habitations in her delirium, 
 decimates them with the breath of pestilence and famine, 
 overwhelms them in torrents of devastating fire ! 
 
 In a time when all secrets were at length supposed to 
 be laid bare before man's microscopic understanding, all 
 superstitions exploded, all mysteries explained ; when the 
 universe emptied of ancient awe seemed no longer vener- 
 able, but a hideous lazar-house rather, made visible to all 
 human eyes in every ghastly corner of it ; before the Circe- 
 wand of materialism, Love metamorphosed into a sensa- 
 
 * I have ventured here to repeat a passage in my essay on " the inter- 
 pretation of Nature," because it is peculiarly applicable to Byron and Words 
 worth. 
 
86 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 tion, and Man shrivelled to a handful of dust ; when the 
 Body of God's own breathing world was laid with familiar 
 irreverence upon the board of a near-sighted professor to 
 be dissected — then the Prophet- poets, Rousseau and Byron, 
 pointed men to the World-Soul, commanding them once 
 more to veil their faces before the swift, subtle splendour of 
 Life ; this they named Nature ; we may name it God ! 
 
 The reaction in favour of Nature, and common humanity 
 
 was indeed commenced in the generation preceding Byron — 
 
 by the three great poets, Chatterton, Burns, and Blake; by the 
 
 genuine poets, Shenstone, Goldsmith, Gray, Thomson, and 
 
 Cowper. It was developed in its distinctively modern form 
 
 equally by Byron's contemporaries, Shelley, Wordsworth, 
 
 Coleridge, and Keats. Still none of Byron's contemporaries 
 
 filled the European role as Nature-poets that Byron filled, 
 
 though the four I have named are equally eminent in 
 
 this capacity, and in some respects even his superiors. 
 
 Thus Byron has not, like Wordsworth, distilled for us the 
 
 very essence of Nature's gentler moods ; has not listened 
 
 at her very heart, and beheld all the subtle changes of her 
 
 countenance in sunshine or other tranquil joy ; has not 
 
 associated these with gentle women walking along life's 
 
 cool, sequestered vale, and fading quietly heavenward, nor 
 
 the stern, strong power of northern mountains (which this 
 
 great poet equally felt) with calm, faithful, heroic men, 
 
 in however humble a guise ; while there was less in Byron 
 
 of the mystical clement so hard to define, which was present 
 
 with magical effect in all those I have named, and is equally 
 
 present in Tennyson — though with "^Manfred " and "Heaven 
 
 and Earth " before me, I cannot say that in its own form it 
 
 was altogether absent. But in Wordsworth, on the other 
 
 hand, there is an absence of the Titanic, diabolic element ; 
 
 there is a certain hardness, or obstinate dulness, a sober, 
 
 cautious rationality, a serene self-complacency begotten of 
 
 good inherited physical and moral constitution, together 
 
 with general comfortableness of condition, that prevented 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 87 
 
 his responding fully to the mighty impulses of his time, 
 so wise, and unwise. The people about him were con- 
 tentedly orthodox, and he was as their fatherly minister : 
 he viewed his own venerable image in the lakes, and smiled 
 benignant ; very pleasant also seemed to him the stately 
 park of Lord Lonsdale, and he thanked Providence for all 
 Lonsdales, and stately parks. " Strong passions mean weak 
 will," sings Mr. Patmorc ; but these are axioms that, like 
 certain toys, will stand equally well on either end. Strong 
 will may mean weak passions — mere fluttering impulses of 
 a student, hardly needing the rock-built citadel of virtue to 
 withstand them ; there is a real giant strength in a Byron, 
 though it be ill-regulated. Nevertheless, so high-souled a 
 poet as Wordsworth must needs break forth, ever and 
 anon, into " a sadder and a wiser man ; " his genius was too 
 real not to be sorrowful, too reflective not to give its own 
 poetic, and distinctively modern colouring to the accepted 
 creed ; while in his reconstruction of the hollow conven- 
 tional poetic diction, as also in his resolute turning, with 
 Crabbe, toward " the humble annals of the poor," he showed 
 himself also in his measure a child of the Revolution, 
 though his political sympathies might be conservative. But 
 this Diabolic (not Revolutionary) element is far more pro- 
 nounced in Tennyson than in Wordsworth. His range is 
 a wide one, whatever poetlings, and criticasters may say ; 
 witness those haunting and terrible poems, " The Vision of 
 Sin," " Lucretius," and " Rizpah," to say nothing of " Maud." 
 In Byron, again, there is less of what we feel in so much 
 of Shelley, wherever Shelley is at his best — harmonious 
 marriage of consummate feeling, imagery, and expression ; 
 perfect poetic music, equal to that of Shakespeare, and 
 Milton in their highest flights. We seldom feel in B3'ron's 
 as in Shelley's lyrics, the very quintessence of ethereal 
 spiritualization, the very soul of absolutely faultless verbal 
 melodies, rising, falling, way\^'ard, and untameable as a 
 fountain blown ever by the wind, subject to no law but the 
 
ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 law of their own lawless and superhuman loveliness. At 
 the same time, Shelley's Protean, impalpable, superabundant 
 splendours of imagery and diction are on the verge of 
 vanishing into a spray of mere verbal effects, and some- 
 times his poetry unsuccessfully usurps the function of music 
 proper. There was a certain absence in Shelley of that 
 sustained architectonic creative faculty, which is akin to 
 Reason ; an absence which, were it not for his transcendent 
 excellence in other respects, might even militate against 
 his claim to be considered one of our country's greatest 
 poets. There is, however, a rare transfused fragrance, a 
 pervading air or tone, that gives a certain unity to his 
 brilliant compositions ; but in Byron's best work, it is a 
 complex organic whole, with members of differentiated 
 function, that emerges — no mere roods of floating prismatic 
 substance, with every part, as in low organizations, equally 
 fulfilling the function of every other. Yet he never gives an 
 impression of mostly mechanical ingenuity, as does Southey ; 
 his work is nourished upon passionate rational insight. 
 Herein he is akin to the great creators ; he is clear, luminous, 
 incisive, coherent in his descriptions ; healthy vision of a 
 sane human creature never deserts him ; his strokes are 
 few, yet sharp as those of a graving-tool, while Shelley's 
 vision seems often blurred and confused. But it is only 
 the general character of an object Byron gives ; and where 
 he tries to be delicate and feathery in his touches, like 
 Wordsworth, Keats, or Shelley, he frequently becomes 
 merely tame and conventional. Moreover, in justice to 
 Wordsworth, it must be allowed that there are tedious 
 lengths of somewhat commonplace verse even in the early 
 tales, as likewise in the early parts of Childe Harold — 
 plenty of them assuredly in the dramas. 
 
 In seeking for a tiote of this peculiar modern Nature- 
 worship, I think we must set down as a principal one. 
 Pantheism, either overt or implicit. For it is a worship — 
 precisely as the Scandinavian and Greek Mythologies are 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 89 
 
 worships — only in a modern form ; and there was less of 
 this in Spenser, Shakespeare, the Fletchers, Browne, Drayton, 
 or Milton, although in these poets delight in external 
 nature was most fresh and genuine. But no less in Byron, 
 Wordsworth, and Coleridge than in Shelley, there was 
 worship of the creature ; though in Byron, because he had 
 less metaphysical grasp of thought, in Wordsworth because 
 by conviction he was a theist, the Pantheism was implicit ; 
 while in Shelley, as in Goethe, it was overt. In Tennyson, 
 a theist, it is again implicit. Goldsmith, and his genera- 
 tion, have not more of it than Chaucer. The fifth great 
 nature-worshipper, Keats, is so far not pantheistic, because 
 he is to all intents and purposes a polytheistic Greek myth- 
 maker, born out of due time. He personified Nature — as, 
 indeed, to a large extent did Spenser, and the other Eliza- 
 bethans, and Chatterton ; where he does not, he endows 
 her with animation akin to the human, which again reveals 
 in him implicit pantheism. But Goldsmith (like the lesser 
 Georgian poets, Rogers, Milman, etc.) regards the external 
 world as the creation of a personal God, simply recording 
 what he sees, and the pleasure it gives him, together with 
 its remoter associations ; always putting Nature well outside 
 himself, humanity, and God, as something just created to 
 be perceived, and give us emotions — or food and raiment. 
 
 Byron's tales are delightfully steeped in a sunny Eastern 
 atmosphere — though, perhaps, they are hardly equal in this 
 respect to the few wonderful lines depicting Eastern travel 
 in his own " Dream," to Eothen, or Beckford's " Vathek." 
 Byron's later story, " The Island," is, however, deliciously 
 suffused with the tropical glow, though the versification and 
 diction of it are in his most curiously careless, and objec- 
 tionable manner. 
 
 Like the best lyrics of Heine, Burns, and Scott, Byron's 
 are more alive with warm humanity, go more to the heart of 
 mankind, than those lovely dissolving phantasmal ones of 
 Shelley ; though it is to be admitted that there is a vein 
 
go ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 of coarse earthliness and commonness about Byron that 
 makes many of his lyrics poor and wooden, as Shelley's 
 never are. But his best are rich with a masculine sorrow, 
 often graceful, and tenderly musical in the highest degree. 
 One need name only " Bright be the place of thy soul," 
 " When we two Parted," " The Wild Gazelle," the poems to 
 his sister, and Thyrza, Yet the most original and dis- 
 tinguished of Byron's lyrical work is certainly that in which 
 his manifold wrath, his passion for wild life, and his ardour 
 for human freedom, are embodied. How glorious the 
 " Isles of Greece," how fine " Sennacherib," and "The Song 
 of Saul ;" how powerful the " Ode on Bonaparte," and the 
 "Ode from the French ! " The most concentrated venom 
 of hate is distilled into the lyric, " When the Moon is on 
 the Wave," in " Manfred." But his odes, on the whole, are 
 not equal to Shelley's, whose passion for human liberty 
 was quite as ardent, and more spiritual than Byron's ; 
 purified by his longing for a reign of Love and Peace ; so 
 that he breaks ever and anon into heavenly seraphic strains, 
 as in " Hellas," and " Prometheus," borne aloft upon the 
 strong wings of varied l}'rical measures that never fail him. 
 Shelley's fury of indignation in face of armed oppression 
 is at white-heat and tremendous ; but there is a want of 
 steadfast distinctness of thought, and aim, and feeling, even 
 here. . Byron may droop his pinion and flounder ; but he 
 never lacks this manful grasp of his theme ; rejoicing, more- 
 over, like AntJEus, in the touch of his mother earth, in the 
 coarse common human effort, and mixed stormy strife by 
 which deliverance and the age of gold must be fought for 
 sternly, inch by inch. Hence, men in general will always feel 
 his poetry more germane to them and to the real world. 
 Shelley, the Peri, like his own skylark, sings to us from 
 the sky. 
 
 The finest of the " Tales," to my mind (it belongs to his 
 later period), is " The Prisoner of Chillon ; " that is 
 in perfect harmony, and unutterably beautiful, with its 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 9I 
 
 solemn organ-peal of the " Sonnet to Liberty " as overture. 
 There is all Scott's unity of effect here, and more than his 
 aroma of poetry indefinable. For Scott, it should be 
 remembered, deliberately gave up the field of verse-poetry 
 to his younger rival ; he felt, and felt rightly, that they had 
 much in common as poets, but that there was a je ne sais 
 qtioi about Byron's metrical work that made it for the most 
 part rarer and higher in quality ; they were both romantic 
 poets, delighting in themes of love, and strife, and pageantry 
 — with the supernatural, mysterious element toning down 
 the brilliancy of their work here and there. Scott had 
 more of the plot-constructing faculty than Byron, and far 
 more dramatic power : accordingly, he became the greatest 
 writer of prose fiction in the English language. For I can- 
 not think (with all our abundant talent in this region) that, 
 regarding him as a spontanco7is creative poet, in the wider 
 sense of that word, any English man or woman has ever 
 rivalled him — except the man who surpasses all, Shakes- 
 peare — though Dickens and Charlotte Bronte have their 
 own place apart, and Thackeray runs Scott very near. In 
 the " Bride of Lammermoor," by the way, Scott has 
 achieved, I think, a finer work of art than Byron himself, 
 in Byron's own literary vein. Moreover, Scott's feeling 
 of the supernatural in Nature comes out especially in 
 his novels, notably in the " Monastery." This is very real 
 and magical, and quite the feeling of mediaeval romance, 
 allowing for the difference of intellectual belief; but all 
 that was in his blood, and the traditions upon which he 
 had been nourished. It is quite akin to Pagan Poly- 
 theism, and is just the Nature-worship that could not be 
 expelled altogether by the crude carpenter-theory, which 
 the established religion had made orthodox. The old 
 gods might be devils and witches, as had been decreed ; 
 but, anyhow, they would not be expelled altogether ; there 
 they were mysteriously animating or inhabiting certain 
 elements of Nature. The clouds were full of angels or 
 
92 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 demons, the white light was God's throne, while fairies 
 peopled the woods and streams. This feeling of physical 
 elements as a Jiabitat for spiritual beings is always associated 
 with an instinctive fancy (or rather intuition) that they are 
 a natiiral/y fit habitation for them ; such spirits are virtually 
 the souls corresponding to the bodies of these elements, the 
 ideas, or spiritual essences of them personified — a concep- 
 tion justified even by Science, when she teaches that man 
 is a final cause and consummation, a more perfectly developed 
 truth, as it were, implicit in physical agencies ; this 
 Humanity repeating in a higher sphere the life of Nature, 
 which is under one aspect that higher life in the forming, 
 and repeating more emphatically in some personalities than 
 in others the special type of certain physical agencies — 
 flowing stream in one man, stolid mountain in another. 
 But the Polytheistic feeling that these agencies are distinct 
 though living powers, in communion with man, and influ- 
 encing him, seems more essentially true. Thus in Dante's 
 colossal poem, all the material imagery is informed with 
 spiritual significance ; it is the elaborate embodiment of 
 great moral and spiritual ideas ; and Dante evidently looked 
 with his earnest eyes upon the visible universe as God's 
 grand symbol ; though, of course, his creed was Catholic 
 and Theistic. 
 
 In " Childe Harold " there are passages which must hold 
 their own for ever in the ranks of English poetry : — 
 
 "Once more upon the waters ! yet once more ! 
 And the waves bound beneath me as a steed 
 That knows his rider ! Welcome to their roar ! 
 Swift be their guidance wheresoe'er they lead ! 
 Though the strained mast should quiver as a reed, 
 And the rent canvas fluttering strew the gale, 
 Still must I on, for I am as a weed 
 Flung from the rock on ocean's foam to sail, 
 Where'er the surge may sweep, the tempest's breath prevail ! " 
 
 The exquisite lines that refer to Waterloo can hardly 
 be forgotten, nor those sweet, peaceful ones about Lake 
 
LORD BVRON AND HIS TIMES. 93 
 
 Lcman, that breathe the twin influence of Leman and of 
 Shelley, nor the magnificent reverberation in clanging 
 words of an Alpine thunderstorm : — 
 
 " Lausanne ! and Feiney 1 ye have been the abodes 
 Of names vvhicli unto you bequeathed a name ! " 
 
 Ay, and what of Rousseau's Clarens ; of Geneva, the city 
 of Calvin, that other great Genevese reformer, and now of 
 De Stael's Coppet and Byron's Diodati ? These all, with 
 Bonnivard, are a felt presence by Leman — consecrating 
 her shores and her waters. I went to Diodati lately. It 
 was deserted, and we wandered through the rooms and 
 about the garden where Byron and Shelley had sat con- 
 versing — where Milton too had set his foot in days gone 
 by ! When Byron returned to Diodati, after sitting late 
 into the night with Shelley on the opposite shore, the 
 Shelleys from their chamber used to hear his rich voice 
 singing across the water in his boat. Like Julie and 
 St. Preux, he and Shelley were once nearly wrecked 
 in a boat off Meillerie. This was the period at which 
 one loves to think of the two poets together, and after- 
 wards at Venice, when they rode daily on the Lido. The 
 fourth Canto, however, is grandest of all, has some of the 
 finest descriptive poetry in our language. It opens wor- 
 thily with Venice in her sad glory. How^ splendidly is 
 the poet Tasso contrasted with his princely oppressor, 
 Alphonso of Ferrara ! How the thunder and lightning 
 of Terni's Cataract have passed into the shouting stanzas ! 
 All the noble verses concerning Rome and her departed 
 glories, her ruins and her triumphs of art, are worthy of 
 the great subject. But what misery ! — 
 
 " P'or all are meteors with a different name ; 
 And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame ! " 
 
 With that " Marah of misanthropy and despair within," 
 whom couldst thou trust, who could trust thee ? Not even 
 God to trust in, or the Divine All, which is self-reconciled, 
 
94 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 and of which thou wast one Age's world-agonizing Spirit ! 
 After a stately and most pathetic lamentation over Princess 
 Charlotte, there grow upon the soul and resound those 
 ocean murmurs, which are the conclusion and crowning 
 poetry of a poem that will be forgotten only with its native 
 tongue. Vanishes here the " Pilgrim of Eternity" : — 
 
 " B^ SaKewf irapa ffivd iro\v\oli0oio BaKaffaris." 
 
 But since Byron, let us remember that the Age is 
 awakening to new life — " The age of ruins is past." It is 
 full of Devil and Mammon worship, death, agony, and 
 vulgar fever ; but he is no great poet who daintily hides 
 himself from it in the study or the studio. The people are 
 awake ; each must enter into the life of the rude giant ; 
 he only who does so dare pretend to see beyond. There 
 are great wars, and national movements, wonderful inven- 
 tions, terrible conflict of principles ; the world is recreated 
 at the breath of science ; our explorers visit all countries, 
 and Columbus-like discover new continents : " Pioneers ! 
 O Pioneers ! " 
 
 Byron, in " Don Juan " especially, has shown a boundless 
 creative imagination of the realistic order. Where men and 
 women of a certain type are concerned —and that type is by 
 no means so limited as Macaulay and some other critics 
 have maintained — where the grander elements of Nature are 
 in question, as also, in the evocation of high thoughts and 
 feelings of a definite range in connection with these, he is 
 first-rate, as frequently in tenderness. But for the creation 
 of ideal worlds and their denizens, governed by lofty, reflec- 
 tive, imaginative purpose, and requiring sustained flights in 
 high spiritual atmospheres, we must turn to Dante, Milton, 
 or Shakespeare. In Byron fine typical personifications are 
 rare, such as we find in Spenser, or Chatterton — Byron's 
 " War," in " Childe Harold," being adapted from a finer 
 personification in the " Marvellous Boy." Yet the strangely 
 beautiful "dramatic mystery," " Heaven and Earth," might 
 
f.ORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 95 
 
 almost be excepted from this criticism, for here the gloom of 
 coming Deluge and its deepening terrors are palpably, yet 
 with appropriate indistinctness of visionary imagery, rolled 
 around mystic loves of " woman wailing for her demon 
 lover." Here there is much of the fine sweep of a great 
 idealistic artist's brush : still even this required imagination 
 of a far less idealistic order than the construction of a Pan- 
 demonium, a Hell, or a Purgatory. Bring that sea, and 
 those mountains, which the poet knew so well, together — 
 the great spectacular phenomena of mountain, cloud, and 
 ocean — and there looms the Deluge. Byron's wonted range 
 of subject and treatment is hardly here self-surpassed. His 
 personages, even his immortals, are still embodiments of 
 the same feelings, thoughts, and desires. Yet the dim out- 
 lines of those exulting demons in the twilight ; those angel- 
 forms, and the women who call them, Aholibamah, and 
 tender Anah ; the good men, Japhet and Noah ; Raphael 
 appearing to summon the new rebel angels to their duty ; 
 the welter of common mortals struggling with doom — all 
 this forms a magnificent lurid picture of a " world before 
 the flood," that is almost worthy of our loftier spiritual 
 masters. Still there is little here of sustained imaginative 
 incarnation, and realization of spiritual things, with wizard 
 flashings of weird, yet appropriate detail, helping to impress 
 the Daedal individualities sprung from the brain of their 
 creator upon us. The Melancholia of Durer, Sin and 
 Death, Caliban, those apocalyptic souls in the Doom- 
 circles of the Florentine, the regions wherein they dwell 
 awfully aware with populous imagery, whereunto they 
 appear as native — think of these ! and again of fantastic 
 dream-worlds, self-involved and subtly infinite like the rose 
 — " Midsummer Night's Dream," " The Tempest," Shelley's 
 " Prometheus," visions of Calderon, Keats, and Coleridge. 
 Nevertheless, there is a harmonious lyrical atmosphere 
 pervading this grand shadowy creation, which sets it by 
 itself as a great ideal work of a master, who is perhaps 
 
96 ESSAYS ON rOETRY AND POETS. 
 
 greatest as a realistic poet. There is also one magnificent 
 verse in the " Vision of Judgment " describing Satan, which, 
 if it were not somewhat a reminiscence of Milton, one might 
 pronounce Miltonic. 
 
 But although I hold with Shelley, Goethe, Scott, and 
 Wilson, that " Cain " is one of the finest poems in our 
 language, the early portion of the poem, wherein Byron 
 may be said to enter into direct competition with Milton, 
 is surely a failure. There is no soul-overwhelming gran- 
 deur at all in those queer regions of space to which he 
 conducts Lucifer and Cain, while the verse halts terribly. 
 In the long discourse of Lucifer with Cain we discern little 
 difference between them, while we do painfully feel here, 
 as elsewhere in Byron where thought is wanted, that if 
 Byron had been a thinker like Dante, or Milton, or Goethe, 
 he might have sat beside the three greatest poets of Europe 
 — Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare ; but the lucubrations of 
 Cain and Lucifer lack vigour and point, as those of Faust 
 and Mephistopheles never do. It is in the human element, 
 however, that Cain is so magnificent, as a great dramatic 
 picture. And I cannot but think that though Byron is not 
 a great dramatist, he is a great dramatic painter. I believe 
 it is Wilson who says, that his groups and personages are 
 as statuesque bronzes cast in the fire. It is to be recol- 
 lected that Goethe, who ought to be an authority, most 
 highly praised his dramas. Certainly he has not the won- 
 derful skill in dramatic dialogue of Landor ; nor in dramatic 
 monologue of Mr. Browning. But where Byron is effective 
 in drama, it is by lyrically pouring the quintessence of his 
 characters into the mould of one supreme situation, capable 
 of realizing them with the utmost intensity. This seems 
 to be somewhat true of Hugo also, though Hugo has more 
 plot-constructing faculty — arranges and dovetails his inci- 
 dents with all the skill of Calderon — and heightens his 
 effects by varying, as it were, and multiplying with tremen- 
 dous prodigality of power such great effective situations. 
 
LORD BVRON AND HIS TIMES. 97 
 
 Rut there is little Shakespearian development of character 
 in Byron, yet I should maintain, as against the ordinary 
 criticism, that Byron can realize characters of a type 
 opposite to that one type most congenial to his genius, 
 sufficiently to present these as truly and vitally influ- 
 encing one another, especially in certain supreme scenes 
 or situations. That is not so in " Manfred," which is a 
 mere monologue ; but it is so in " Cain," " Marino Faliero," 
 and " Sardanapalus." From the third act onward, Cain 
 becomes and continues magnificent — from where Cain 
 mutters forebodings over little Enoch, his own and his 
 sister Adah's child, while she gently remonstrates, to where 
 Cain is contrasted with Abel, as the spirit of revolt and 
 denial with that of tranquil faith, rising to utmost heights 
 of moral dignity and wrath, where Abel confronts the 
 blasphemer who would overthrow the chosen altar of Jeho- 
 vah, his own proud offering lying unaccepted, his own altar 
 smitten to the dust. There is nothing in English poetry 
 finer for tragic intensity and pathos, than the supreme scene 
 where Cain strikes his brother dead with a brand snatched 
 from the altar, then bows in horrified remorse over the 
 corpse — he who so sullenly arraigned the fated Doom, fated 
 through his own passions, half-righteous and half-evil, to 
 bring himself that dreaded Doom into the world ; Eve, the 
 mother of all, cursing with terrific energy her own eldest- 
 born, slayer of her well-beloved son ; gentle Zillah, Abel's 
 wife, lamenting over him ; and Adah, one of the most 
 perfect types of holy womanhood in literature — Adah, 
 when the dark smitten murderer bids her leave him alone, 
 only answering with troubled wonder, " Why, all have left 
 thee ! " Then Cain, the brand upon his brow, wanders 
 forth with Adah into the wilderness, she leading their little 
 Enoch by the hand, kissing Abel's cold clay, and praying 
 " Peace be with him ! " to which Cain in the last words of 
 this great poem responds, " But with vie ! " Byron's Cain 
 is by no means a very wicked man ; he is surprised as it 
 
 H 
 
98 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 were into the murder, and, as matters are here represented, 
 we feel that he did well to be angry. He with becoming 
 dignity makes an offering appropriate to him, according to 
 his light, which he may well hope that the all-seeing, just 
 God will accept ; he is throughout half-doubtful about his 
 God, half-defiant of what seems to himself evil in that God. 
 His very objection to the sacrifice of innocent animals 
 proves him to be humane, and a foe to all cruel oppression, 
 as also his abhorrence of human vengeance, even in Deity, 
 if it were true that Deity needed to be propitiated by 
 bloody sacrifice. Need Christians any longer think this 
 poem very blasphemous? That there are ";/^ ideas" in 
 Byron, moreover, Mr. Arnold in the face of this poem 
 should scarcely maintain ; and Goethe goes a little too far 
 when he says, " He is a child when he begins to reflect." 
 I conceive " Cain " to be the philosophico-imaginative con- 
 summation to which the " Tales," " Manfred," and " Childe 
 Harold " tended. Together with " Manfred," moreover, it 
 proves Mr. Browning's objection as to Byron's unduly 
 exalting Nature over men, a somewhat unfortunate one. 
 If you must judge a poet as you would a didactic philo- 
 sopher, I should say that Byron's error is, on the contrary, 
 in unduly exalting the individual human spirit ; in a lack 
 of humility and resignation. Cain, like Faust, is insatiably 
 curious, and chafes against the limitations of human know- 
 ledge ; yet he represents a faithless, desultory time, which 
 ours still is, moreover ; for in this region of the intellect, 
 he rather seems angry at not knowing without being at the 
 trouble of learning ; he takes no laborious pains reverently 
 to seek truth. In that, too, Byronism represents an age 
 of rather shallow scepticism, that sneers and sighs over the 
 insolubility of problems, which it is too weak and idle man- 
 fully to grasp — but with a doom overshadowing himself, 
 his beloved ones, and all mankind, which seems to him 
 unintelligible and unjust, he refuses to be meekly happy 
 and content, even though he loves Adah and hi? child. He 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 99 
 
 is the genius of speculative yearning, oppressed and over- 
 cliargcd with evil within, the curse of hereditary sin ; mor- 
 bidly sensitive to evil without ; overclouding- all past, 
 present, and prospective good with the gloom of his own 
 sullen frown, out of which must inevitably spring the 
 lightning of his crime ; even by the side of his own true 
 wife and his own sweet boy, alone! In a fine sonorous 
 invective Lucifer avers that God Himself, however powerful, 
 must be most miserable of all — for He is the most alone. 
 Could He but annihilate Himself and all ; but alas for His 
 and our imniortality ! Of such a God — proud, capricious, re- 
 vengeful, apart — had Byron heard from accredited teachers. 
 Cain finds too that " the tree of knoivledge is not that of life." 
 Byron's is the wail of baffled human understanding, with- 
 out faith, hope, resignation, self-control, inward harmony. 
 But if in " Cain " he defies heaven, in " Manfred " he defies 
 hell, and denies the power of any evil spirits over him, 
 asserting proudly, and with truly sublime daring, his own 
 spiritual independence and dignity. He is a Pagan, not 
 a Christian, though with some genuine Christian sympa- 
 thies, and a Hebrew creed still hanging about him. But 
 he never holds up self-sacrifice, humility, or patience ; is 
 always haughty and aggressive ; he endures, indeed, but 
 somewhat less than a Pagan — he more actively despairs 
 and rebels. 
 
 Christianity has taught him discontent with this life, 
 but he cannot accept the solutions of her theologians ; so 
 with tenfold more bitterness than Atrides exclaiming to 
 Zeus, when his sword broke in his hand, " There is no God 
 more evil-minded than thou " — than the Neapolitan fisher- 
 man beating the image of his Saint, who sends storms 
 instead of fine weather — Byron defies and rails against his 
 Deity. But of course he had only a lingering notion that 
 the popular representation might be true, and that there 
 was really a Creator, who, having created immortal spirits, 
 tyrannically forbids them, as Lucifer finely phrases it, " A' 
 
lOO ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 ?isi' tJicir immortality^' their reason, their conscience, and 
 their heart. It is against this God, formed in the image 
 of priests and kings, that Lucifer and Cain rebel, rather 
 than against the true Author and Essence of Things. Of 
 this true Author and Essence of Things Byron had un- 
 fortunately, from the circumstances of his time, and his 
 own want of philosophic grasp, very little idea ; yet he 
 believed in a God ; and very naturally, however irrationally, 
 confounded the true God with the current orthodox con- 
 ception of Him, against which he inveighed — if vaguely, 
 still with enlightened soul, knowing that God was by 
 theology caricatured, and that the vulgar conception was 
 monstrous, and to be fought against. But after all, this 
 was a dominant conception, one that had always been 
 dominant more or less ; the force of education, authority, 
 universal conviction, practically moulding all the relations 
 of society, together with the poet's own ineffectual habit 
 of thought, forced the idea on him as a kind of reality ; 
 but his better, yet audacious self, dared to wrestle with it, 
 even on this basis of its dubious reality ; so Job ventures 
 to argue with the Lord. In fact, a half-truth this belief 
 must be, and for long it has been to mankind as a whole 
 truth ; " the times of this ignorance God winked at ; " but 
 the idea of Him must be slowly purified. Acquiescence 
 in evil is not altogether desirable, and to pronounce evil 
 good, because divinely appointed, may be to fetter our- 
 selves, the human race, and its destiny of progress. The 
 established fact, the conventional morality, the existing 
 order of society — none of these are final. Good at one 
 time, they may become evil at another. Then God is no 
 longer in them, but rather in rebellion against them. 
 There might even be an evil Demiurgus, God of this world, 
 as some Gnostics believed ; if so, Byron will not worship 
 him. Byron holds the human spirit, or at least the elect 
 human spirit, with its eternal reason and sense of justice, 
 essentially equal to any gods or devils whatsoever, however 
 
LORD HVRON AND HIS TIMIiS. lOI 
 
 powerful these may be. And here he is right. A God 
 who should gag and degrade our reason and conscience by 
 mere externally imposed authority cannot be the true, or 
 the fully revealed God. He is within — the substantial 
 reason and conscience of Humanity — most manifest in 
 Christ, the Human God, the Divine Man. So is brought to 
 light a higher eternal self in conscious solidarity with the 
 Divine universal will. Both Manfred and Cain hurl defiance 
 at the very skies. What makes Cain sound blasphemous is 
 that Cain believes in Jehovah, yet defies him ; this is pre- 
 cisely as Shelley's Prometheus defies Zeus ; but we have 
 been brought up to call this apparent wrong of theology 
 right, because we are assured that it is divinely revealed, 
 whereas we should have asked ourselves, hoiv can doctrines 
 be revealed unless by an anti-Christ or tisurping God, if they 
 are irratioiial or immoral? Lucifer and Cain, like Pro- 
 metheus, are champions of human liberty. The ultimate 
 arbiter. Fate, will dethrone the unjust Zeus in the end. 
 To this true God they virtually appeal, and they cannot be 
 disappointed ; or in other words, they really appeal from 
 God in His partial, to God in His fuller revelation of Him- 
 self, which He is indeed making through themselves. Yet 
 their shallow presumption and irreverence He disapproves 
 and punishes ; still it is He, the incarnate World-Spirit, 
 striving in them to free Himself, though he justifies also the 
 humble, holy Abels. If the evil cannot be destroyed, it can 
 be chained down ; the good, and just, and rational is lord 
 over the evil and inane ; that is a slave, a drudge, essential 
 indeed, yet subordinate and to be subordinated. One can 
 indeed only sympathize /^/'//y with this revolt ; it is in part 
 directed against the very nature of things, against the true 
 Sovereign God, who must be beyond our right and wrong — 
 right in a manner and degree to which our rectitude cannot 
 attain. Neither Byron nor Shelley were possessed with 
 that aive which becomes a mortal before the unfathomable 
 mystery. Even in his beloved storms Byron felt little 
 
102 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 spiritual awe, was chiefly "sharer in their fierce and far de- 
 light," or recklessly contemptuous of humanity's weakness- 
 Cain's sullen hatred of effort and labour, his want of patient 
 faith, his obstinate self-will, his ignorance of how to conquer 
 Fate by calmly accepting it, or circumventing it by fertility 
 of resource, this is truly evil and folly, and miserable weak- 
 ness ; such, for instance, are some recent insane develop- 
 ments of anarchic irreligion. Like the later pessimists, 
 Leopardi and Schopenhauer, Byron cannot see that the 
 higher blessedness may be — so far as we know can only be 
 — born out of sorrow and pain, even out of experience of 
 moral evil. 
 
 Macaulay says Byron can only paint one man, and one 
 woman — a gross exaggeration ; for Don Juan, and Sardana- 
 palus are so different from Cain that they cannot be con- 
 founded ; and as to women, it is mere confusion of thought 
 to confound Adah, Angiolina, Zarina, Donna Julia, Haidee, 
 Gulnare, and IMyrrha, wonderfully realized, and thoroughly 
 feminine types all of them. Gulnare is the passionate, fierce 
 beautiful southern woman, of which type Byron has given 
 us many brilliant portraitures. Haidee is a loving, passionate 
 girl, but a thoroughly innocent, albeit fieiy-natured one — 
 she might indeed become Gulnare, but she is something 
 totally distinct. Adah is not to be surpassed for heavenly, 
 yet human, tender, unsullied perfection of womanliness — a 
 perfect sister, mother, wife ; she is not surpassed in Shakes- 
 peare, Victor Hugo, George Sand, Walter Scott ; even the 
 Marguerite of Goethe is only equal to her. Then we have 
 Zarina in " Sardanapalus," Angiolina in " Marino Faliero," 
 skilfully painted women of a totally different order — noble 
 women too — both evidently intended for idealized por- 
 traitures of Lady Byron — self-possessed, stately, somewhat 
 cold, yet excellent and affectionate. In " Don Juan," how 
 marvellously good is Donna Julia — and her letter, how 
 immortally inimitable ! We have again Lady Adelaide 
 Amundeville, a very clever sketch of an English lady of 
 
LORD BYRON AND MIS TIMES. IO3 
 
 fashion, and the sweet seraphic Aurora Raby, a sort of 
 English Adah. 
 
 " Aurora Raby, a young star who shone 
 O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass, 
 A lovely being scarcely formed or moulded, 
 A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded. 
 She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew. 
 As seeking not to know it ; silent, lone. 
 As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, 
 And kept her heart secure within its zone. 
 There was awe in the homage which she drew ; 
 Her spirit seemed as seated on a throne 
 Apart from the surrounding world, and strong 
 In its own strength." 
 
 Myrrha in " Sardanapalus " is a heroine of the antique 
 type, beautiful and splendid-souled, rousing the luxurious 
 monarch to lofty action. 
 
 If Byron had possessed the instincts of a great dramatist 
 (but remember he was still young, and developing when he 
 died), he could never have surrendered himself to the bondage 
 of the so-called " unities." Yet on the whole he may instinc- 
 tively have felt that these laws furnished him with certain 
 artificial restraints, helpful to his desultory though intense 
 genius ; serving as a kind of blowpipe to concentrate its 
 flame upon one supreme moment. It is indeed difficult to 
 deliver a verdict on the dramas. For " Sardanapalus " is a 
 very fine play, and " Marino Faliero " shows real dramatic 
 power, yet is scarcely a good drama ; while the " Two 
 Foscari " is dull and wooden, and " Werner " a mere 
 plagiarism. The blank verse of Byron's dramas is probably 
 the v/orst ever written by a great poet ; the lines end in the 
 awkwardest of monosyllabic parts of speech, "ands""ofs," etc. 
 There is no harmonious flexibility and resonance in the 
 metre at all ; and there is a quantity of tedious prose cut 
 up into lengths. His ear was indeed most uncertain. The 
 motive in " Marino Faliero " strikes one as inadequate to 
 support the play's action, as Byron has represented that 
 motive ; he has not skilfully made us feel the mixed half- 
 
104 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 unconscious influences that probably prompted the old 
 Doge. Yet the fiery old man is finely drawn, and the 
 scene where he reveals himself to the conspirators in their 
 midnight meeting is full of stormy power, and thoroughly 
 true to nature, the conflict of feelings in the Doge as an 
 aristocrat in such a position being subtly realized. Here 
 again Byron draws from within. The concluding scene 
 (the execution) is eminently picturesque. But " Sardana- 
 palus " is certainly a very fine play — a great dramatic 
 success, though it is, perhaps, hardly equal to Otway, " The 
 Cenci," Sheridan, or to a great English play of recent 
 times. Sir Henry Taylor's "Philip van Artevelde." In 
 " Sardanapalus " however, we behold (so far as the " unities " 
 allow) the march of tragic historic events, and these have a 
 palpable influence in developing the character of a luxurious, 
 .effeminate, yet amiable, generous, and ultimately heroic 
 monarch. Myrrha, moreover, the grand Greek maiden, 
 together with Salemenes, the stern, honest warrior, who, 
 though but a sketch, is lifelike and well-realized, have 
 a noble influence upon the king, who can appreciate their 
 elevated characters. There is a weak side to the play, no 
 doubt, as Bishop Hebcr pointed out — in the group of 
 Arbaces, and Beleses the priest, who arc not dramatically 
 represented in their mutual relations with one another. 
 Admirable, however, is the scene wherein Sardanapalus 
 surprised feasting in his summer pavilion by those rebels, 
 whom with indolent good-nature he has half-pardoned, 
 starts forth, worthy of his ancestors, an avenging warrior, 
 though too late ; calling, in his vanity, for a mirror while 
 arming, and for his most bejewelled helmet, as lighter, 
 more becoming to his delicate beauty, and also more 
 conspicuous to friends and foes, even though it expose him 
 to a death which he half-recklessly courts. Excellent too 
 are the battle scenes, full of lusty movement and all the 
 din of onset. Nowhere has Byron so fully dramatized 
 himself as here, I suspect, though the gloomy phase of his 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 105 
 
 character is suppressed ; but the hero is a half-sceptical 
 epicurean, masculine and brave, yet with many a feminine 
 trait. 
 
 Whatever our verdict on Byron as dramatist, it remains to 
 be remarked that he was one of the greatest satirists England 
 has produced — three only (if so many) can be elevated to 
 stand beside him — Swift, Pope, and Butler. Thackeray 
 can hardly be placed so high, nor Dryden — though as 
 wit he has no doubt other rivals, and as a humorist he is 
 surpassed by Shakespeare and Dickens. But in scathing, 
 savage, half-playful banter — playful as a tiger — in master- 
 ful, annihilating strokes of witty indignation — he has again 
 a song, as Goethe says, " all his own " — in spite of Pulci and 
 Whistlecraft ; he is Apollo discharging his arrows at the 
 Python, Michael with his proud foot upon the body of 
 Satan. The scornful wit of the " Vision of Judgment" is 
 Titanic — as where "Turncoat Southey" offers to Satan to 
 write his life, and Satan declining with a bow, Southey glibly 
 appeals to Michael the Archangel with the same tempting 
 offer. Here is George III. — " a]id amidst them an old man 
 with an old soul, and both extremely blinds Then what 
 terrific lines those are on the Prince Regent, on occasion of 
 his presence at the opening of the coffins of Charles I. and 
 Henry VHI. ! 
 
 But I admit that " Don Juan " is on the whole Byron's 
 greatest work. Byron had a good deal of the eighteenth 
 century, and also of the Restoration period about him, 
 after all. The era of the Regency was, for scoffing profli- 
 gacy, not at all unlike that of the Restoration, and the con- 
 genial literary influence on him, not only of Pope, Dryden, 
 and their bitter personal animosities, but of licentious 
 Restoration dramatists, and of light, cynical men, such as 
 Rochefoucauld, Grammont, and Horace Walpole, is very 
 palpable. He was moulded also by English writers like 
 Smollett and Fielding ; certain libertine French novels too 
 reappear in his works. Yet I own " Don Juan " seems to 
 
I06 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 mc morality itself compared to a rotten whitcd sepulchre of 
 a book like " Chesterfield's Letters." Still the immoral 
 laxity of tone is not to be denied. If Byron had not led 
 the dissipated life he did, and moved for some time in 
 "good society" also, he could certainly not have written 
 this " man of the world's " poem, which is that, though 
 something more. But whatever advantage he and Moore 
 may have derived from " knowing life," it was not a moral 
 one, and there is an odour by no means of sanctity, a 
 rather sulphurous odour indeed, a certain conventional 
 humbug and hollowness and disbelief in good, that clings 
 both to the man and to his writings, simply because, while 
 he spurned the whole lot of enamelled corpses as poet, free- 
 man,_ and idealist, yet as aristocrat and man of fashion he 
 was half one of them, and even looked up with envy to 
 creatures like Beau Brummell, and " the first gentleman in 
 Europe." This taint has made Byron distasteful to some 
 who should have taken a more comprehensive view ; but 
 assuredly Byron has not quite shaken off the polite cere- 
 ments he spurns. In Burns and Shelley you breathe a 
 purer atmosphere. Shelley is a sort of volatile seraph ; 
 Burns is inconstant, but ever a true passionate man, as 
 Walter Scott is also. If Byron's head was of gold, his feet 
 were of cla}-. 
 
 For all this, " Don Juan " is one of the world's great 
 poems. Byron himself claimed that he had therein pro- 
 duced a true epic ; and I have always thought with some 
 reason. Is it not the epic of that transition period in 
 Europe } The poem reflects faithfully that age's varying 
 moods, grave and gay, moods of stirring strife and battle, of 
 enterprize and revelry — its appetite for pleasure, its cynical, 
 epicurean scepticism, denial, and mockery — together with 
 the opposite mood of sentiment, pathos, bitter despair, as 
 well as nature-worship — reverence for feudalism, refine- 
 ment, and tradition — revolt in favour of simplicity, plain 
 goodness, and common humanity. It revels in war, yet 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMES. 107 
 
 inveighs against the tyranny and barbarism thereof ; it 
 reverences the ideal, yet refuses to behold it in life — chiefly 
 on account of its own wanton pcrverseness, and half blasc^, 
 half childish irreverence of soul. Even in the poem's very 
 want of artistic proportion, of beginning, middle, or ending 
 proper, in its daringoriginality of form, metre, and language, 
 it is faithful to the spirit of the time. For Auerbach justly 
 remarks that World- Sorrow, and we should add Negation, 
 or Heine's " Weltsvernichtung," cannot produce the perfect 
 work of art. Byron in fact never did. But Don Juan was 
 a well-known modern European Type, of which Byron 
 made his own use : the poet had pitched at last upon the 
 very subject and very manner perfectly adapted to develop 
 his transcendent powers : — 
 
 " I rattle on exactly as I'd talk 
 With anybody in a ride or walk. " 
 
 He needed not here to be always up on the heroic stilts, 
 whether raised aloft by his theme or no ; and in his graver 
 work the small critics often caught him getting off the high 
 horse in those inevitable intervals of flight when Pegasus 
 desires to crop the earthly grass. And then they assembled 
 shouting that this was a poet with a " bad ear," a careless, 
 uncertain poet, with inadequate powers of expression ; for 
 in moments of less lofty emotion a flrst-rate poet, they tell 
 us, should make mouths and beat the air, and s^iy pudding, 
 prunes, and prism, and many " blessed words " like " Meso- 
 potamia" to make the vulgar believe that he is always at 
 the boiling-point of inspiration. If he cannot be ever 
 moving, he can at least blow the steam off ostentatiously 
 when he stops. But what perfect English is " Don Juan ! " 
 — it has always the right word ready. Alas ! how^ icw 
 poets write English now ! In " Don Juan " the measure and 
 language seem to shape themselves out of the sense and 
 intent of the narrative ; here the style is to the matter what 
 the foam and impetus and tumult are to the wave. " Don 
 
I08 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Juan " is diffuse ; its egotistic, half-chaffy gossip is often 
 empty enough, occasionally even a little tiresome ; but we 
 have always to admire its facile masterfulness of rhyme and 
 metre, while it is always relieved by endless versatility of 
 matter, and changeableness of mood. Cynical it is certainly, 
 and world-weary ; but half its paradox is chaff There is a 
 vein of rollicking buffoonery through the whole, which by 
 ponderous moralists is always missed. " I rattle on exactly 
 as I'd talk " — ^just so, and we know the half-grave, half-gay 
 nonsense Byron talked. The man was half an Aristophanes, 
 half a Rabelais. His buffoonery at Newstead with the 
 monk's skull for drinking cup, and monk's robes of sack- 
 cloth — his dressing up the statues of Neville's Court at 
 Trinity with surplices — his popping with his pistol at 
 those stone ornaments on the house-roof opposite his own 
 at Missolonghi, till all the old women came howling out to 
 remonstrate with this eccentric Milordo, who had arrived to 
 deliver Greece, and leave his weary life in their fever jungles 
 — his hilarious practical jokes — all showed the grown-up 
 schoolboy. 
 
 If you weep too much over this man, fair ladies and sad 
 young gentlemen, even though he bid you weep, he will 
 look up laughing in your faces, and overwhelm you with 
 mockery : you must not take all he sings for gospel ; in the 
 very heart of this there is a hollowness and a jeer ; and 
 surely he who has laid his hand upon the very heart of 
 God's universe must be, like Byron, both a weeping, and a 
 laughing philosopher ! Writers have become indeed more 
 radically miserable since Byron. I can hear no merriment 
 in the ghastly " Contes Drolatiques" of Balzac, none in 
 the hollow spectral mockery of Heine, none in the despair 
 of Leopardi. After all, Byron is no hysteric young French- 
 man to be manipulated by a mistress, and shoot himself! 
 His intellectual and emotional range is vast ; he can thunder 
 and rave and laugh like the sea. For the rest, as he says 
 himself, if he laughs, it is often that he may not weep. 
 
LORD BYRON AND I IIS TIMES. IO9 
 
 And there is indeed much of bitterness and disappointment 
 in his hilarity ; he is still misanthropic, and incredulous of 
 human excellence ; but he will try now to disburthen 
 himself of his sorrow by a jest or an epigram. Reckless dis- 
 sipation, and carnal excesses, may have dimmed his ideal, 
 and he comes before us more as a roii(! man of the world, 
 or light-hearted sceptic ; but after all he cannot always 
 keep the mask on, and when he removes it we behold a 
 great and true man in tears — " Childe Harold " himself, 
 but less egotistic in his thoughts and aims and interests, 
 less inclined to "pose," with maturer digested knowledge 
 of men and things than before ; on one side of his face, 
 indeed, a hoary, world-weary sinner, but on the other a 
 still generous, adventurous, high-spirited boy. Nowhere 
 in Byron can I, for my part, discern, the " fiend gloating 
 triumphantly over human frailties," which some profess to 
 see. Rousseau, let alone the Bible, would have taught him 
 better than that, and did teach him better. 
 
 In clear, graphic, realistic narrative power, as well as in 
 humour, Byron in " Don Juan " reminds one of Chaucer 
 and Boccaccio, while his descriptions of human loveliness 
 have all the luscious, luminous colouring of Ovid, or Cor- 
 reggio ; nay, there never were, and never will be such 
 descriptions. The harem scenes are in this respect un- 
 rivalled. Is there anything quite equal to that lovely idyl 
 of Haidee and Juan's love after the shipwreck on the 
 beautiful island ? Such incidents as those of the shipwreck, 
 the siege of Ismail, and the intrigue with Donna Julia, have 
 all the verve and narrative power of Homer, all his direct 
 reality and breathing life ; though there is not here, as in 
 the Iliad, one great action dominating all the incidents. 
 But there are certainly traces of development and change 
 in the charming dandy — events and persons are transforming 
 him slowly into the man of the world, though the bloom of 
 generous youth is still on him ; he is consummately life- 
 like. Granted that type of character, mobile, eager, super- 
 
no ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 ficial, events and persons would have just the kind, and 
 amount of influence they have over him.* Here, moreover, 
 there is no longer any question of delineating a proud, 
 morose, melancholy genius : all men, if not all women, can 
 sympathize with this hero ; he is one of themselves, idealized 
 indeed, but only with the more ordinary popular qualities 
 furbished up and augmented ; commonplace, not more than 
 usually intellectual, emotional, or imaginative. This is one 
 of the notable merits of the poem, as a work of art. What 
 though Byron found this petted, spoiled personage in him- 
 self .-• Yet no other qualities of his own very heterogeneous 
 personalty, none of those he is accused of being able alone 
 to represent, has he attributed to this pleasant, handsome 
 boy. He never makes Juan moralise, or mock, or moan ; 
 though he drops him occasionally, and does that himself. 
 The fact is, that genius must akvays be, in some mysterious 
 manner, whatever it represents to the life. Goethe only 
 makes his women, and one or two types of man live ; the 
 rest he skilfully imitates. Shakespeare, on the other hand, 
 was an intellectual and moral miracle. He lives in innu- 
 merable human types. But we cannot pause to speak of 
 the inexhaustible wit, the pointed epigrams, the scathing 
 scorn, the numerous pithy couplets such as this, in the 
 cantos about English society : — 
 
 " There was the Honourable Mrs. Sleep, 
 Who seemed a white lamb, and was a black sheep." 
 
 In our intellectual, competitive-examination, tradesman- 
 like, priggish age, it is perhaps possible a little to underrate 
 this Alcibiades kind of hero — natural, adventurous, subtle 
 and supple as a Greek, beautiful, daring, courteous, athletic, 
 tender, half-feminine, fascinating — who enjoys life in a 
 buoyant, dare-devil way ; is not too wise, self-conscious, or 
 
 * Macaulay's dictum that Juan is a poor copy of the page in " Figaro" 
 seems to be absurd, though hints from there, and from "Faublas" are not 
 wanting. 
 
LORD r.YRON AND HIS I'IMES. Ill 
 
 scrupulous, to kiss any sweet mouth, which beauty, youth, 
 health, and i^ood fortune may raise to his own ; nor so 
 afflicted with metaphysical hypochondria, as to lament very 
 long or very loud, when Dame Fortune for a change turns 
 capricious and smites him.* 
 
 I am far from sure that it is all loss for ordinary men 
 that they should be got to look for a moment at the world 
 — at life, other countries and other persons, all the nooks 
 and corners of this wonderful young world of ours — through 
 so magical and exhilarating an atmosphere as this of 
 Byron's — should unlearn for awhile the commonness, cant, 
 ennui, and grey, sordid vapidity of their own poor selves — 
 even of what is ostensibly highest and holiest in their 
 existence, yet often circumscribed, dead, and conventional, 
 after all ; though, of course, I acknowledge the danger of 
 so much explosive material being stored where youthful 
 blood is burning. But, at any rate, a poet who could throw 
 himself so thoroughly into this youthful gaiety of tem- 
 perament cannot have been, even at this time, the played- 
 out, ruined devil, which excellent and reverend persons made 
 out — even if he had not proved the contrary by writing the 
 most ideal cantos of Childe Harold, and many other of his 
 most ideal works, at the same time ; and those profoundly 
 pathetic verses on his birthday, only a few days before he 
 died for human freedom. 
 
 * This commonness, or somewhat theatrical attractiveness of Byron's heroes 
 does in some measure, as has been truly remarked, account for their so swift 
 and unparalleled universal popularity ; these heroes appealed, in some de"-ree, 
 to the less-elevated instincts of admiration among men — as did Schiller's 
 Robbers. The British public, in fact, with its accustomed generosity and dis- 
 crimination, are ready to condone Byron's merits for the sake of his faults. 
 Nevertheless, viewed with any seriousness, the tragic heroes of Byron have a 
 moral and spiritual significance quite as deep as that of Wallenstein, Macbeth, 
 or Coriolanus. After all, however, his tragic figures are rather ideal types 
 than real men, more like Moliere's than like Shakespeare's. And while Harold, 
 Manfred, and Cain are embodied types of fate-stricken human passion, and 
 illimitable imaginative yearning, Pen Juan represents "omnivorous appetite 
 for pleasure," which must soon end in satiety and despair. 
 
I F 2 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 On the whole, then, Byron is probably a greater English 
 poet than any of his great contemporaries, except Shelley, 
 Keats, and Wordsworth ; though I do not know that it is 
 profitable, or even really possible, to make such comparisons. 
 I have no patience with people who, because they admire 
 Byron, cannot, or say they cannot, admire Tennyson, and vice 
 versa. Tennyson, by no means wanting in passion, glowing, 
 rich, rare, intellectual, has given us much Byron did not 
 give. But, assuredly, Shakespeare only towers above Byron. 
 Mr. Browning, who believes in Shelley, might remember 
 that Shelley would not have called Byron a " flat-fish," or 
 " cackling goose ; " and Mr. Carlyle, who believes in Goethe, 
 might have remembered that Goethe said, — " Byron alone I 
 place by my side ; Scott is nothing to him." (If we take in 
 Scott's prose, however, then Scott must stand by our very 
 highest below Shakespeare.) " There were giants in those 
 days." Byron, though he had small sympathy with his 
 countrymen, and their foreign politics, for they took the 
 Legitimist orthodox side in continental strife, was still an 
 illustrious " Roman," and proud of being the citizen of no 
 mean city. He inveighed against "Villainton" and his 
 battles ; but yet the brilliant and gigantic struggles in 
 Europe and in India, out of which his country emerged 
 splendidly victorious, doubtless helped to mould his poetry 
 of warlike strife and fiery action. On his tra\'cls, and in 
 his foreign abodes, moreover, he was constantly in the very 
 focus of civil and international commotion. Byron was 
 English, however, in many respects, notably in his frag- 
 mentariness and self-contradiction, in his illogical intellect, 
 in his unsystematic, unfinished ruggedness both of mind 
 and style ; I do not think he will ever be long out of favour 
 with us. He is a rude mountain-mass, tropically gorgeous, 
 not perfectly symmetrical, a mighty ocean ever and anon 
 bursting through the dykes of our proprieties, and devas- 
 tating our plains ; superfine academic critics will always 
 prefer the dainty finish of men who are lesser poets, 
 
LORD BYRON AND HIS TIMKS. II3 
 
 though defter craftsincn. Perhaps most of what Byron 
 thought, wrote, and did, was, hkc his beauty, mutilated ; 
 but he was a glorious torso, worth a milh'on smirking, 
 wTiy^QW petits-t)iatt res ; he has the splendid imperfection of an 
 yEschylus, a Shakespeare, a Dante, and a Hugo. Of what 
 strange and variously mingled elements was this man 
 formed ! the breath of Genius descending from on high 
 upon him, angels and demons perchance having also some 
 unguessed concurrence in so vast a personality. I am often 
 reminded of Chatterton. For was not that child one of the 
 first I'^nglish prophets of " world-sorrow," after all } Study 
 his modern poems, and those " antiques," with the modern 
 wail piercing through so many of them ! conceived as they 
 were in the mystic shadow of old St. Mary's Church. 
 Consider his awful supernatural life of seventeen years — 
 can it be that the sub-chaunter's boy of Bristol did not 
 altogether disappear from earth after that dark mad agony 
 of Brooke Street ? Dear Chatterton ! the only great 
 dramatic poet since Massinger, save Otway. 
 
 Wandering one day in the cemetery of Ferrara, Byron 
 found two epitaphs that struck him forcibly. 
 
 " Martini Luigi 
 Imploia Pace." 
 
 " Lucrezia Picini 
 Iniplora eteina quiele." 
 
 These few words, he comments in a letter, say all that can 
 be said or sought : the dead have had enough of life ; all 
 they want is rest, and this they implore. Here is all the 
 helplessness, and humble hope, and death-like prayer that 
 can arise from the grave. " I hope," he continues, " that 
 whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the 
 foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress 
 of the Adriatic, will have those two words and no more 
 put over me — ' Implora Pace ! ' " May he now find what 
 he sought — not the sleep of the grave, but the " peace which 
 passeth understanding " ! 
 
 I 
 
SHELLEY. 
 
 Shelley has been termed the most poetical of poets, and 
 with some reason. He more seldom probably than any 
 poet, except Shakespeare, lapses into prose. A living, 
 original poetic diction seems to flow perennially from him ; 
 metaphor and imagery never fail him ; his ear for melody 
 and harmony of measure, not too obtrusive and artificial, 
 but spontaneous, varied, and charming, was unsurpassed ; 
 he is one of the great modern brotherhood of prophets, 
 or interpreters of Nature ; and the substance of his message 
 to us as seer concerning truth and life is of high value, 
 whatever may be its error and limitation. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, indeed, has lately pronounced a 
 severe judgment on Shelley, even venturing to affirm that 
 he will be remembered by his prose rather than his poetry. 
 In an essay, with which otherwise I often gravely disagreed, 
 Mr. Swinburne replied that few critical reputations could 
 survive such a judgment. But Mr. Arnold appeared to 
 found his indictment against Shelley on the fact that he 
 was the poet of clouds and sunsets rather than of man. 
 Considering Shelley's ardent aspirations for human good, 
 and for a more ideal condition of society, in which the 
 majority should enjoy fuller opportunities of developing 
 our common humanity, to say nothing of one of the most 
 intense dramas of modern days, " The Cenci," that assertion 
 is very questionable. Man, indeed, not men, Shelley cared 
 
SHELLEY, 115 
 
 for. His men and women are mostly thin shadows, appari- 
 tions of dream or reverie, somewhat hectic and hysterical ; 
 they are usually idealized self-portraitures. Mis was a 
 recluse and solitary soul. No doubt Shelley is the poet 
 of clouds and sunsets — the poet of Nature — more distinc- 
 tively. But docs not he who makes this a reproach to a 
 poet fail to comprehend a characteristic note of all the 
 best and most movinf^ modern poetry? 
 
 I shall venture to repeat here and elsewhere the sub- 
 stance of a few sentences from my first essay, since that 
 gives, as it were, the keynote and leading motif oi my book ; 
 but some of the remarks in it apply more specifically to 
 particular poets. 
 
 Certainly man has always been a great subject-matter 
 for the muse ; but what if a new field has been added to 
 her triumphs, a new realm reclaimed from chaos for her 
 achievements ? That I believe is a fact. This is an age 
 of material science, as former ages were not. It is also 
 the age of Nature-poetry. That is indeed the note of all 
 great recent verse — of Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, 
 and Tennyson, quite as much as of Shelley. It is the 
 right and duty of modern men to interrogate and inter- 
 pret Nature. Science has furnished much material ; but her 
 own province as interpreter of Nature is quite distinct ; she 
 is minister for abstract knowledge, and practical utility ; 
 whereas poetry communes with Nature as living, and in 
 living fellowship with humanity — as spiritual symbol, the 
 key to which lies hidden in the heart and imagination of 
 man, in the analogies that blend and unify the twin spheres 
 of thought and sense. But the poetic soul is not more 
 needed thus to find the clue to external nature than is 
 external nature needed to reverberate light (with a new 
 measure and manner of it added) upon the inmost recesses 
 of intellect and emotion. " Stone him with hardened hearts 
 harder than stones," sings Shakespeare in " Lucrece." How 
 is the hardness of the callous heart understood a thousand- 
 
Il6 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 fold by that image of the lesser hardness, the derived, the 
 merely phantasmal hardness in the stone ! 
 
 I look upon a few lines in Shelley's " Mont Blanc " as 
 some of the finest he ever wrote : — 
 
 " Thou hast a voice, great mountain, to repeal 
 Large codes of fraud and woe. " 
 
 This is the outcome of a deep penetration into the very 
 heart and essence of that magnificent calm of the snow- 
 spirit communing with eternal constellations, that journey 
 " oJuic hast, und ohne rastT The pageant of imagery is 
 but as avenues of sounding glory, whereby we approach 
 the king. The yellow primrose that was only a yellow 
 primrose and nothing more to Peter Bell, was, as I 
 have said, less truly seen by Peter Bell than by Words- 
 worth, to whom it was also a yellow primrose, more accu- 
 rately perceived, indeed, by more delicate and cultivated 
 senses, but also a very infinitude beyond, only to be realized 
 by emotion, thought, and imagination. There is no more 
 reason that I can discover why those higher faculties should 
 be excluded from their share and function in the revelation 
 of truth than there is why the senses and the understanding 
 should be so excluded. The man of science, the practical 
 agriculturist, the engineer, have to tell us one thing, very 
 good in its way ; but the poet has to tell us something 
 quite different, and also good in its way. Hence, I cannot 
 enter into Mr. Ruskin's preference of Scott over Shelley 
 as a poet, which is founded on this distinction between 
 them. Scott (our great humanist, and romance-writer — 
 as such next to Shakespeare) certainly had the eye of a 
 painter, an eye for picturesque presentation of the externals 
 of a landscape ; but to him, as to most of the elder poets, 
 it was a background and no more ; while even Thomson 
 fails to spiritualize it ; that is, to feel, and make us feel 
 its spirituality through the material veil, which is also a 
 symbol, as do Wordsworth and Shelley. Railroads and 
 machines, and the goods they manufacture, arc well, ccr- 
 
SllKLLKY. I 17 
 
 tainly ; but mental and emotional furniture is perhaps 
 worth even a little more than the decorative furniture 
 of drawing-rooms. Emotion may help us to discern in 
 Nature features, analogies, moods that are indeed hers, 
 though not all can discern them ; yet, of course, I fully 
 admit that such characteristics may be more superficial 
 and transitory, or more essential, vital, and abiding. The 
 imagination, as distinguished by Ruskin himself, will take 
 hold of the heart of things, while the fancy will glance 
 from one surface similitude to the other — may even dis- 
 tort truth by seizing only on these, leading away from 
 profounder analogies, and structural homologues, more 
 essential. But he who uses the so-called poetic diction 
 which he has picked up by reading, without personal 
 feeling, who deals, moreover, in frigid conceits and artifices 
 that attract attention only to his own technical skill, has 
 touched the lowest deep, and is no seer, but a mere 
 clever writer of verses. As to the value of this modern 
 poetry of Nature as a revelation, not of Nature only, but also 
 of man, I have already asked what Wordsworth's Leech- 
 gatherer would be without the lonely moor, and the lonely 
 moor without the Leech -gatherer ; they form together one 
 vital unity. The Leech-gatherer is no common old man, but 
 a very messenger of God to the poet, revealing to him the 
 beauty of resignation and contentment. But he is dis- 
 embodied, as it were, in the poet's meditative imagination ; 
 he becomes a spiritual being of high order. That is not 
 the way Shakespeare, or Moliere, or Homer would have 
 represented him ; but it may be a true, and not a false 
 way notwithstanding ; it may illuminate to the depths of 
 him as no other method could do, and shew him as he 
 essentially is. What would Margaret in the " Excursion " be 
 without the cottage on the moor, and her neglected garden 
 once so trim and tidy ? What would Shelley's Alastor 
 be without the magnificent scenery of mountain and stream 
 amid which he moves onward to the close ? They are 
 
Il8 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 one. They have joined hands, and interpret one another. 
 The result of the poet's meditation is neither man alone, 
 nor Nature alone, but some fair, spiritual child of their 
 espousals. This, I maintain, is somewhat distinctively new 
 and precious added to our intellectual and emotional 
 treasure ; we cannot afford to lose it ; we are ungrateful 
 not to thank the poet who procures it. 
 
 The imaginative abstractions of Shelley are often grand, 
 worthy of a poet of the first order, to be placed beside 
 Milton's magnificent abstraction, "Far off His coming 
 shone." What can be finer in this line than the periphrasis 
 for, and personification of, earthquake in " Mont Blanc " .•* 
 
 " Is this the scene 
 Where the old earthquake demon taught her young 
 Ruin ? " 
 
 How lovely is the personification in " Adonais ! " a passage 
 worthy to be placed beside the " Stone him with har- 
 dened hearts," which I quoted from Shakespeare. 
 
 " Out of her secret paradise she sped, 
 Through camps and cities, rough with stone and steel 
 And human hearts, which, to her aeiy tread 
 Yielding not, wountled the invisible 
 Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell ; 
 And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they 
 Rent the soft form they never could repel, 
 Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 
 Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way." 
 
 Could dissertations, or sermons say so well how love is 
 wounded by want of love, and the spectacle of hard in- 
 difference or cruclt}' .■* 
 
 But yet we have to note something on the other side, 
 that may be justly urged against Shelley as poet. His 
 perennial afHucnce of imagery, metaphor, beautiful phrase, 
 and lovely rhythm, sometimes prevails to the injury of his 
 substance, which is in danger of vanishing in a mere spray 
 of verbal effects. His meaning is apt to be beaten out 
 very thin. A peculiarity in him is that, whereas his power 
 
SJIELLKY. 119 
 
 of interpreting, and making us feel the life in Nature — 
 often through personifications — is so remarkable (as in 
 "The Cloud," the "Ode to the West Wind," and the 
 " Hymn to Pan "), he sometimes endeavours to give a 
 semblance of independent vitality to abstractions, which 
 do not lend themselves readily to such endeavour. Thus, 
 greatly as I admire " Adonais," the elegy on the .death of 
 Keats, I do think there is a certain frigidity and unreality 
 in parts ; I will not say a want of sincerity, because there is 
 an atmosphere of true poetry in the very subtlest and most 
 impalpable of the Shelleyan abstractions. He breathed in 
 rare atmospheres, where none but himself could breathe ; 
 he delighted in disporting himself in a region between 
 heaven and earth, in what occultism terms the astral region, 
 or ether, among the phantasmal shadows, or more refined 
 volatilizations of mundane solidities. At such times, as in 
 " The Witch of Atlas " (which is an exquisite iridescence of 
 the fancy, and no more), he did not penetrate to the heart 
 of things, but played, as it were, with the ghosts or wraiths 
 of them only ; more beautiful, indeed, or as beautiful as any 
 earthly appearance to sense, but not more spirit-sustaining 
 or substantial. He dwells often in some nebulous region 
 of rainbows, which corresponds not to the laws of Nature 
 as known by sense, or understanding ; nor to the deeper 
 spiritual laws in which these have their being. Thus when 
 he sings of Dawn — 
 
 " On the brink of the night and the morning 
 My coursers are wont to respire ; 
 But the earth has just whispered a warning 
 That their flight must be swifter than fire." 
 
 this seems a mere gambol of fantasy, not true to the actual 
 fact, and not suggesting anything more essential than the 
 outward fact. In "Adonais" I think most of us refuse to 
 realize the personification of the Dreams and Splendours, 
 winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, Desires and 
 Adorations, adapted from Bion, but which, with the Sicilian 
 
I20 ESSAYS ON I'OETRV AND POETS. 
 
 poet, were pretty, and ver}' conceivable Cupids. Compare 
 and contrast Wordsworth's wonderfully imaginative per- 
 .sonifications in the " Yew Trees," that solemnize and sub- 
 due the soul. 
 
 But then to Shelle}' thoughts easily took palpable form, 
 got themselves incarnated in some concrete image, more or 
 less distinct, and thus he leaves his readers behind. He 
 smv his thoughts. And, indeed, if we would pierce to the 
 reality, w'e must remain in, or rather return to, the concrete, 
 for that alone is real. It is a lovely realm of faery, all- 
 harmonious in itself, that the poet bodies forth. But the 
 stanzas about Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Echo lament- 
 ing Adonais, seem almost extravagant in their sentiment, 
 however beautiful. Only it was rather the ideal poet 
 that Shelley was thinking of; Keats had become one 
 with him. What lover of poetry has not wandered spell- 
 bound in the lush bowers of " Prometheus," all woven of 
 luxuriant trailers, and flushed over with rarest bloom ? 
 Most exquisite inventions of Paradisal loveliness ! Think 
 of the childlike spirit of the Earth asleep, in the light of his 
 own smiles, and pillowed on his alabaster arms ! The 
 martyrdom of the demi-god, Prometheus, benefactor of man, 
 is the noble central motive ; but it is overgrown with 
 entangled episode, imagery, and musical song. The poetry 
 of Shelley wanders away at its own sweet will ; there is an 
 absence of concentrating, architectonic, moulding power, 
 giving unity ; although we find, generally, unity of mood, 
 and l)Tical feeling. The poet fades away down every lovely 
 avenue of fresh suggestion opened out to him by his posi- 
 tion of the moment. And so we arc affected with a 
 cloying excess of sweetness and profusion. But " fe// me 
 zvhere the senses mix" sings Tenn^'son. Shelley can. His 
 metaphors, his epithets and similitudes, make you feel their 
 essential kinship and unity ; how they melt into and blend 
 with one another, like odours of many flowers in the 
 still ijarden of the soul. But in such odes as the "Ode 
 
SIIELLEV. 121 
 
 to Liberty," I do think there is no little confusion of 
 imaj^cry, and substitution of sounding words for definite 
 thought, or representation, an error so fatally reproduced 
 and intensified in some of the poet's disciples. Even the 
 music is not always present. But what faults are not 
 atoned for by such beauties as those in the utterances of 
 Panthca ? 
 
 And while Shelley is bold and extravagant, it is an 
 .^schylean extravagance, that of genius, often magnificent. 
 All through "Prometheus" he displays the mythopoeic faculty 
 of the world's primaeval poets, a faculty shared with him by 
 Keats. That passage about the orb which typifies the Earth, 
 and the childlike spirit asleep in it, the lovely picture of 
 the Chariot of the Hours, the Songs of the Earth and Moon, 
 are instances ; also his visions of the fairies, or nature- 
 spirits, as sung by the fawns, with the delicious nightingale 
 passage, all which Mr. Brooke has called " Music of the 
 woods." The " Mother of the months " is " borne in her 
 thin boat, floating up from her interlunar cave," " that orbed 
 maiden, with white fire laden, whom mortals name the 
 moon." One might almost be looking, as I have done, at 
 those sacred pictures in the temple-tombs of Thebes, 
 painted so many thousands of years ago. He tells us 
 stories about the sun, moon, and stars ; he narrates their 
 adventures. Of course I don't vouch for the strict accuracy 
 of all that ; still I fancy it is much more true than to 
 regard them as dead machines. We are told, indeed, 
 by prosaists, and Dryasdusts, that all religion, including 
 Nature-worship, arises from the mistake savages make in 
 taking dreams of their dead friends for ghosts of them, 
 which ghosts are afterwards stupidly supposed to animate 
 natural objects. Well, I wonder what Shelley and Keats 
 would have said to that ? But we need not discuss it here 
 and now ! The truth is, that Nature is animate to the child, 
 the primaeval man, and the true poet. She was animate 
 to Hesiod, and Homer, though they had their own way of 
 
122 ESSAYS UN POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 expressing their conviction ; and we have ours. Certainly 
 the new birth of inductive science, and our modern habit 
 of observing details minutely, enable us to regard Nature 
 more truly, as more aloof from man, more as she is in her- 
 self. Shelley saw trance-visions with shut eyes ; they are 
 ideal landscapes that he mostly paints us, hardly the land- 
 scapes of earth ; these he beheld with inward eye, as he saw 
 the vision of the child in the bay of Lerici, when his out- 
 ward eye was open — the child, who may have been his own 
 little William, beckoning him from the sea ; and shortly 
 after, we know how his beloved friend, the sea, received 
 him into her bosom. But in the pageantry of sky and 
 cloud and sea and forest and flowers he is at home, in 
 these he revels, the very Turner of poetry. "The Sensitive 
 Plant " reveals the essential soul of flowers. All the 
 feminine sensitiveness of the poet, his gentleness, his almost 
 irresponsible muvetc' of incontrollably childlike impulse, 
 made him feel with the pure, cool, passive, meek-blooded 
 world of flowers, as with the world of infancy and animal 
 life. Well did he call himself Ariel. He was a kind of 
 elf, but semi-human — an yEolian lyre, breathed upon by 
 every wandering wind, and yielding sweetest melody. As 
 an instance at once of his strong, clangorous, inspiring 
 verbal music, so germane to the song of glorious aspiration 
 for humanity that lifts him, and of many other excellences 
 too, I need refer only to the chorus from " Hellas," where 
 note especially the fine phrase, "fed with morning,'' 
 applied to the eagle. 
 
 Then, as an example of sonorous blank verse, and of 
 the happy employment of sounding geographical names — 
 one of the notes of great contemplative poets, for instance, 
 of Milton — we may take many passages from " Alastor," and 
 again, others from that poem to show the poet's tender 
 gentleness with all his brothers and sisters, the lower 
 animals. The lines about Ethiopia powerfully appeal to 
 one who has seen the temple of Dendcrah in Egypt : — 
 
SHELLEY. 123 
 
 "His waiulcrirg step, 
 Obedient to liigh thoughts, has visited 
 The awful ruins of the days of old, 
 Athens, and Tyre, and Baalbek, and the waste 
 Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 
 Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 
 Memphis, and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange, 
 Sculptured on alabaster obelisk. 
 Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx. 
 Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills 
 Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, 
 Stupendous columns, and wild images 
 Of more than man, where marble demons watch 
 The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men 
 Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around. 
 He lingered, poring on memorials 
 Of the world's youth ; through the long burning day 
 Gazed on those speechless shapes ; nor when the moon 
 Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades. 
 Suspended be the task, but ever gazed 
 And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind 
 Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw 
 The thrilling secrets of the birth of time." 
 
 A good example of Shelley's grand mountain land- 
 scapes we may find in " Prometheus," where he paints the 
 Alps at dawn. He loves the sublime, grandiose, vague ; 
 but in depicting clouds, and wood, and sky, and flower, he 
 was exquisitely minute, and true to fact. The noble lines 
 written among the Eugancan Hills are too long to quote ; 
 but these, as also "Julian and Maddalo," contain great 
 pictures of sunset. The brief lyrics, which after all are 
 perhaps the most inestimable of Shelley's gifts to us, merely 
 as poetry, for perfection of form, and exquisite feeling, 
 express for the most part indefinable unsatisfied longing, 
 inconsolable regret, tender but poignant sorrow for the 
 transitoriness of earthly things, beauty, love, and all 
 delight ; also an oppressive sense of the perversity and 
 hard-heartedncss of men. They are as the low outweeping 
 of a heart overweighted with the misery of the world. 
 The delicate evanescent grace of them is like nothing else 
 in literature : — 
 
124 ESSAYS OX POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 " WTien the lamp is shattered, 
 The light in the dust lies dead ; 
 When the cloud is scattered, 
 The rainbow's glory is shed ; 
 When the lute is broken, 
 Sweet notes are remembered not ; 
 When the lips have spoken, 
 Loved accents are soon forgot. 
 
 "As music and splendour 
 Survive not the lamp and the lute, 
 The heart's echoes render 
 No song when the spirit is mute : 
 No song but sad dirges, 
 Like the wind in a ruined cell. 
 Or the mournful surges 
 That ring the dead seaman's knell. 
 
 " When hearts have once mingled, 
 Love first leaves the well-built nest ; 
 The weak one is singled 
 To endure what it once possessed. 
 O Love, who bewailest 
 The frailty of all things here, 
 Why choose you the frailest 
 For your cradle, your home, and your bier?" 
 
 Now I can say but a word on the poet's philosophy. 
 That we get in many poems — in " Epipsychidion," " Mont 
 Blanc," " The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty ; " also in 
 " Prometheus," " Hellas," and " Adonais." The negative 
 and materialistic stage of " Queen Mab," written when he 
 was a boy, was soon transcended and left behind. Shelley 
 is an idealist in philosophy. The world is a phantasma- 
 goria of impressions and ideal, belonging to the soul, or 
 spirit ; and Love, or Ideal Beauty, the essential nature of 
 that spirit, the pervading principle of the universe. But 
 all is one, and diversity, variety, are but passing manifesta- 
 tions of that One. This, briefly and meagrely, is the idea 
 that runs through the poctr}\ He deifies impulse, in- 
 stinct, and resents constraint or law imposed ab extra by 
 the State, or even by conscience within. He would urge 
 that the law of Love is the highest law ; yet it is pretty 
 
SHELLEY. 125 
 
 well impossible in our present condition to merge the sense 
 of Duty altogether in that, though in the ideal and future 
 existence even the sense of Duty may be transcended. 
 But swift transition was the keynote of Shelley's impres- 
 sionable nature, and it has been truly said that he thirsted 
 for rapture, highly-strung enjoyment, the only condition of 
 which is change. So no one laments the fading of our 
 joys more pathetically. On the whole, Shelley was, and is, 
 our most inspired and possessed poet, the most spontaneous 
 and demonic — best example of that madness which Plato 
 ascribes to the true bard. He is carried out of himself 
 indeed, and reflects the world ; yet his is an intense and 
 rich personality ; it is in one very distinct personality that 
 the world is thus reflected ; the poet is full of elaborate 
 self-pourtrayals, though idealized, and therefore represen- 
 tative. Yet I think he had not strength and grip enough, 
 condensation and fusion enough, to make him grasp the 
 idea of will, of personality, of individual identity, nor does 
 he make us feel it. That is to me the defect of his idealism ; 
 for ideas and phenomena can only be in thinking persons 
 of given character ; and that leaves him the poet of some 
 delicious thrill or shimmer of ever-varying impressions or 
 appearances, as also of impermanence and inconstancy. 
 
 And, indeed. Nature-worship is related to impulse, pas- 
 sion, instinct, though there is a Nature beyond and beneath 
 nature, beyond mere appearance. There is a nature for 
 sense and feeling, as well as a Nature for conscience, affec- 
 tion, and reason. The fawn and the satyr, the nymph, the 
 naiad, and the elf, laugh and play there. But beyond 
 and behind them are angels, children, spirits of the just 
 made perfect, and God Himself. There was a certain lack 
 of stability, backbone, and prehensile grasp in what Shelley 
 wrote, even as in what he did. Love can only be in lovers ; 
 if you are to have noble constancy and permanence, }'ou 
 must be individual, as well as universal and impersonal. 
 Perhaps the most beautiful expression of Shelley's idealism 
 
126 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 is put into the mouth of the mysterious Ahasuerus in 
 " Hellas." 
 
 " Adonais," besides philosophy, sublimated by imagina- 
 tion and feeling into poetry, contains a strange longing 
 prophesy of the manner of the poet's own death. 
 
 " Made one with nature ! " he sings, concerning the 
 dead ; and who does not know that those we call dead 
 may be made one with man — be felt as a presence in the 
 home and abroad, to strengthen and sustain, to elevate and 
 to bless — may even look out with their own dear eyes 
 from eyes we name living ? 
 
 " Adonais " is not more about Keats than about Shelley. 
 It is altogether in that sphere of the ideal and beautiful 
 into which the poet ever lifted any special subject and 
 person when he touched them. And thus, too, " Epipsy- 
 chidion " hardly concerns Emilia Viviani, but rather that 
 supernal, celestial loveliness for which his spirit thirsted, 
 and with which, for a moment, he identified that particular 
 lady. 
 
 Shelley was, indeed, as Mrs. Browning named him, 
 " in his white ideal, statue-blind." He would exhaust and 
 drain all to the dregs, which must end in satiet)' and dis- 
 illusion ; if you will worship your idol in its passing, 
 momentary aspect, then you will assuredly have to break 
 it. As one critic observes, Shelley would leave no veils 
 on, brook no reticences. Psyche will behold Cupid with 
 her bodily eyes, and retain him in all his visible beauty. 
 But the god will not have it so, and vanishes from her. 
 For Shelley the ideal is naked, but he invests it with the 
 rosy hue and glory of imagination ; (there is no poet less 
 gross or sensual, all is shadowy and ethereal ;) and so, when 
 the reality mocks the dream, like a wilful babe, in petu- 
 lant disappointment, he flings the toy away. Poor Emilia 
 Viviani ! poor Harriett ! But that rosy hue and glory 
 belong not to the phenomenon — to the passing appearance 
 and temporary semblance ; they belong to the eternal idea 
 
SlIKLLKY. 127 
 
 and reality underlyincr these. Now, in order to arrive there 
 it behoves mortals to respect modesties, mysteries, con- 
 cealments. ^^ Noli Jiie tangcre !" "/ ascend to the Father." 
 Take not the part for the whole ; be willing to renounce 
 the arc, that you may follow after and dwell in the full orb. 
 The raptures of " Epipsychidion " (a poem of wonder- 
 ful beauty) seem presumptuously to overleap eternal 
 boundaries, and violate those awful penetralia of indivi- 
 duality, aspiring to lose distinction in a unit, which would 
 be neither unity, nor possession, nor knowledge through 
 love and sympathy, but rather the blank chaos and non- 
 being of an unorganized, inharmonious, and essentially 
 unrealizable absorption. 
 
 Such, too, was his theory of government. Men in the 
 ideal condition were to be tribeless, classless, unobedient to 
 law ; and yet he too could anathematize impulses, when they 
 did not tend in the direction of his personal taste (see the 
 " Witch of Atlas"). But this removal of all distinctions, and 
 differentiations would not of itself furnish any higher form 
 of society — beautiful, organized body politic, or civitas Dei. 
 It is hardly wise to break abruptly with that past, which, 
 entering into our very blood and constitution, encompasses 
 us as an atmosphere — even though Nature herself may 
 always contrive to grow something out of whatever ruins 
 man may take upon him to sow with salt. 
 
 A poet, however, is not bound to suggest details ; rather, 
 his function is to see, feel, and body forth ideals. Otherwise, 
 one might be disposed to remark that universal love, and 
 the mere abolition of all forms of government are prescrip- 
 tions sufficiently vague and unfruitful, perhaps mainly avail- 
 able for the founding of constitutions in cloud-cuckoo-land. 
 There is, indeed, little of practical suggestion about Shelley. 
 Nor need }'ou ask a poet for it ; only his more thorough- 
 going admirers tell us that we may look to him for that, 
 as well as everything else. And if you do not insist on 
 casting all his burning exhortations and asseverations in 
 
128 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 sober prose, reducing them to dogmas and propositions for 
 the understanding, then are they pregnant, and vivifying 
 enough for the initiated. It has been disputed whether a 
 poet (but let me explain, once for all, that I never mean by 
 this term a mere writer of verse) is, or is not in advance of 
 his time. There seems little evidence that he is so in 
 respect of remoulding and anticipating future institutions, 
 or particular discoveries, such flashes of insight as that of 
 Goethe concerning colour being rare enough to start forth 
 as exceptions. Dante was an indifferent political prophet, 
 judging by the " De Monarchia ; " yet it is true that a 
 poet has often profounder insight into principles, human 
 character, or Nature, than a dry philosophical reasoner, or 
 hard prosaic observer ; and he throws all into living words 
 for us. But as to details, though he may be in advance of his 
 time — in which case he will be unpopular, and only appre- 
 ciated later — he is more often interpreter of the dominant 
 ideas of his generation, and not rarely flings himself back 
 passionately upon the past, vindicating what has been for 
 the moment forgotten, but will have to be vivified again 
 in a fairer growth of more comprehensive .synthesis. 
 
 Shelley was indeed a standard-bearer in the van of free- 
 dom, a pioneer in the emancipated front of human thought. 
 But as regards detail, he was only the organ of his day's 
 iconoclasm. All will be perfect when you have pulled down 
 kings, and priests, and existing institutions. And yet these 
 are the outgrowth of human nature. Perhaps, therefore, it 
 might be well to improve and reform that also ; then 
 possibly it may grow better institutions. Still, outworn 
 institutions assuredly are hindrances to free and healthy 
 growth. 
 
 The " Divine Comedy " was rather behind than in ad- 
 vance of the dawning religious philosophies of that age. 
 And yet Dante's "Apocalypse" is in substance for all time. 
 Remember the magnificent symbolism of the white, and 
 dark, and blood-red steps of Purgatory ! 
 
SHELLEY. 129 
 
 With respect to Shelley's celebrated teaching in " Epipsy- 
 chidion," that in love "to divide is not to take away," I 
 quite believe that this is the true ideal to be aimed at. It 
 ought to be, and will be thus ; in varied friendships, in 
 general kindness and mutual help, approximations should 
 be made thereto. Yet one must confess that Shelley 
 himself was scarcely successful in his own life realizations. 
 To divide, with him, zvas apparently to take away ; at least 
 one would be glad to hear poor Harriett Wcstbrook's 
 opinion on the subject. 
 
 I cannot agree with Kingslcy that genius should be 
 expected to be more moral than talent. It is possession, 
 absorption, dominant sensibility, and power of expression ; 
 does what it must do, and has its own individual manner 
 of doing. In some respects, that is more allied to weakness 
 than to strength. We " have this treasure in earthen 
 vessels." It is an organ of the universal soul. But if wq 
 pardon the errors of genius for what it gives — even ad- 
 mitting that it could hardly be without them — allow the 
 dcfaiits de ses qiialitc^s, let us not proceed to confound the 
 errors with the virtues, and confuse good and evil in one 
 blind hysterical indiscriminate worship. Shelley has been 
 by some admirers compared to Christ. But the grand 
 distinction of Christ is calm patience, chivalrous generosity, 
 the sublime forbearance of a magnanimity that forgives 
 and still believes ; charity that creates a spirit under the 
 ribs of death, engenders and sustains life by divining it yet 
 warm and dormant where all but love assumes it absent, 
 pours forth freely of its own life till, by inbreathing and 
 blood transfusion, a living soul is roused, and dead Lazarus 
 comes forth. The love and ardour of Pygmalion called 
 a warm Galatea from cold marble. And so would a greater 
 and stronger have found the ideal in that kind and homely, 
 but weak child, Harriett, whom once the poet loved, and 
 who loved him. Fate and circumstance had thrown this girl 
 upon his protection ; nay, eagerly and voluntarily had he 
 
 K 
 
130 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 assumed the responsibility ; whatever her faults, it was not 
 one to be shaken off with a light heart. But suddenly he 
 left her, for days even uninformed of his whereabouts, and 
 with inadequate means, until she learned that, having 
 found his " affinity," he would return to her no more. 
 That was like the conduct of Lady Byron, whether better 
 or worse, Shelley being a man who professed, and certainly 
 felt, profound sympathy with human wrong, burning indig- 
 nation with human injustice, I will not take upon myself 
 to determine. But I do think that to condone such an 
 action, is to condone the worst kind of aristocratic arro- 
 gance — the intolerant arrogance of intellectual superiority. 
 Are the intellectual commonalty indeed but as an orange 
 for their superiors to suck and throw away ? It is not 
 men of the first order who think so, though that appears 
 to have been the opinion of Goethe. I do not believe it 
 was that of our own " glorious Willy," any more than of 
 Sakya-muni. And it could scarcely have been the delibe- 
 rate conviction of a sincere and genuine democrat like 
 Shelley. His life does- not suggest it ; and yet a curious 
 light is thrown upon the poet's democratic principles by 
 what he said to Trelawney on board the Greek man-of-war, 
 when the latter asked him, " Is this your idea of Hellas ? " 
 and he answered, " No ; but it is of hell," because, forsooth, 
 the loud rough swearing sea-dogs of modern Greece offended 
 the fastidious delicacy of his private taste. And yet these 
 were the men who fought and died at Missolonghi. But 
 the poet could not see through to the ideal in them, that 
 burst forth later. However, this may have been only from 
 an almost womanly shyness and refinement. An Ariel, an 
 angel, an inspired babe, full of sweet impulses, rather than 
 a man ! By all means let us reverence and pardon our 
 dear poet, but not call his follies and human lapses supreme 
 wisdom and virtue, because they are his ! That his be- 
 haviour to Harriett was chivalric and manly, not all the 
 pretty tremors, or shrill shrieks of " uncircumcised Philistine " 
 
SHELLEY. 131 
 
 from the nco-Israelite camp of aesthetic culture, upon the 
 evidence now before us, can make me ever admit. The 
 young and weak girl he took from her father, and from 
 school, and swore to cherish, he soon abandoned for a 
 prey to some cruel domination of hereditary foes within, 
 and yet more cruel mercy of a callous world without. Nor 
 does it appear that the deed weighed too heavily upon him. 
 His very personal poems reveal little of a Manfred's or a 
 Cain's remorse. His own example, therefore, proves that 
 humanity is hardly yet lifted high enough for " love " to 
 be " an unerring light, and joy its own security." 
 
 The indictment of Mr, Jeaffreson, though readable, 
 minute, and careful, is rather conventional, and malignant. 
 Rut one awaits with anxious interest the further and 
 authorized revelations of Professor Dowden. 
 
WORDSWORTH. 
 
 It is doubtful if Wordsworth is as much read and pon- 
 dered as he ought to be. He is commonly regarded as 
 a describer and interpreter of Nature. And of course 
 that he is. But on studying carefully the chief part of 
 his best work, one certainly derives the impression rather 
 of what Matthew Arnold especially calls attention to — 
 his fertile application of ideas to human life. The mass 
 and main weight of impression is, I think, ethical. You 
 are braced in the mountain atmosphere of this poet. You 
 become stronger, more hopeful, encouraged to do your own 
 work vigorously and well. It is an air of faith — stimu- 
 lating, healthful, with no miasma of luxurious languor, 
 oppression, or despair. There is an outlook from it, as 
 from a snow-peak or a strong tower, upon fair infinite 
 horizons, however veiled in vapour and dim with distance. 
 It is a Puritan poetry, breathing comfort and courage, yet 
 I think, with little of the Puritan intolerance, and blas- 
 phemy of the good God. Being of old a lover of Words, 
 worth, yet having laid him aside for some years, I had 
 somehow thought of him as a serene recluse, withdrawn 
 from the terrible world, and refusing to face its deadly 
 problems — living by preference among virtuous Dalesmen, 
 cheerful, frugal, prosperous, content. Now this view has 
 assuredly a measure of truth. This was the life he did 
 elect to live, and his outlook on human nature had con- 
 sequently limitations : — 
 
WORDSWORTH. 133 
 
 " The moving; accident is not my trade ; 
 
 To freeze the blood I have no ready arts ; 
 'Tis my dehght alone in summer shade 
 To pipe a simj)le song for thinking hearts." 
 
 The male characters he depicts arc very much his own, 
 and those he found at his own doors. He, and Byron, who 
 was equally limited in his way, could not understand each 
 other, and Wordsworth never even appreciated Keats. 
 But we may turn to other poets for other treasures. And 
 this view has only a degree of truth ; for you may find 
 a deal of human nature in your own soul, in your own 
 house, and at your own door, if you know how to look 
 for it. Charlotte Bronte did ; and Wordsworth is full of 
 s}'mpathy with sorrow. There is no pathos profounder 
 than his. Some one speaks of the iron pathos of Crabbe. 
 The phrase seems to apply to Wordsworth. It is a kind 
 of inarticulate, still-life pathos. That of the episode of 
 Margaret in the " Excursion " would be crushing but for 
 the old narrator's own calm faith. Our poet is austere, 
 self-restrained : the storm and whirlwind of passion are 
 not for him, as they are for Byron — nor fierce negation 
 and revolt, which are the birth-pangs of the Time-spirit, 
 labouring to engender a new and larger life, casting off an 
 old form as the snake sloughs his skin. 
 
 Certainly Wordsworth is one of our very great poets, 
 for he can both soar with dignity, and stoop with grace. 
 His good and enduring work is not only ample in quantity, 
 but varied in scope. I say this in spite of recent detraction 
 from writers who might have been expected to know better, 
 but who have elected to make themselves the mouthpiece 
 of ignorant prejudice. Wordsworth could hardly hope to 
 escape the universal depreciation of Carlyle, but to Mr. 
 Ruskin he might have exclaimed: '^ Et tn, Brute !" One 
 may be sorry indeed, but one ought hardly to be surprised 
 that Mr. Rossetti should have told his biographer that he 
 grudged Wordsworth " every vote he got." For, although 
 
134 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 he himself has done some ver>' fine work, yet he was the 
 head of a school which is the natural enemy of Words- 
 worth, and which would seem to have aspired to force us 
 back into those old bad paths whence Wordsworth came 
 to deliver us — one which can have little in common with 
 a poet whose mission, as he conceived it, was to " console 
 the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the 
 happy happier, to teach the young and the gracious of 
 every age to see, to think, to feel, and therefore become 
 more actively and securely virtuous." The beautiful 
 lines on the "Feast of Brougham Castle" describe him 
 perfectly : — 
 
 " Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, 
 His daily teachers had been woods and rills, 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills." 
 
 But Wordsworth expresses the conviction that his 
 poetry "will co-operate with the benign tendencies of 
 human nature and society, and will in its degree be 
 efficacious in making men better, wiser, and happier." 
 Cheerful wisdom, and a prevailing inward happiness, be- 
 long to him, very stimulating and refreshing in these days 
 when languor, pessimism, despondency, and doubt have 
 invaded so many hearts, and so much literature. Once 
 he contrasts the nightingale, that " creature of a fiery 
 heart," with the stockdove, rather to the disadvantage of 
 the former : — 
 
 " She sang of love with quiet blending, 
 Slow to begin, and never ending. 
 Of serious faith, and inward glee ; 
 That wxs the song, the song for me ! " 
 
 How enviable the disposition of that man who could 
 .say, sweet-natured through all harsh judgment and neglect — 
 
 "I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 With coldness still returning ; 
 Alas, the gratitude of men 
 
 Hath oftener left me mourning ! " 
 
WORDSWORTH. 1 35 
 
 Politically otic may regret that the excesses and failures 
 of the Revolution should have thrown back this " lost 
 leader" so far into the arms of blind reaction and dull 
 convention. Still it is not to be denied that the relic^ious, 
 reverential, ancestral elements needed a poetic champion 
 and interpreter. For the profane, all-dissolving understand- 
 ing would tear remorselessly away all our mosses and 
 lichens, all our herbage and flowers, laying us bare to the 
 very stones ; nay, threatens to take the solid earth from 
 under our feet, if that were possible ! Scott and Words- 
 worth were formidably matched with Shelley and Byron ; 
 and all these powers alike had a great work to do. More- 
 over, Wordsworth was himself essentially a child and pro- 
 duct of the Revolution. For he glorified, or rather taught 
 us to recognize the glory in so-called ordinary persons and 
 ordinary things, forbidding us to call anything common 
 or unclean. Think of Michael, Margaret, the Old Leech- 
 gatherer, the Brothers, the Old Cumberland Beggar, 
 Matthew, Ruth, Lucy Gray, the Mad Mother, the woman 
 in " The Thorn," — figures chosen from the crowd, ennobled 
 by misfortune or simple virtues, not refined or cultured 
 with conventional refinement or culture, elementary and 
 grand, dumbly pathetic in their pain, or innocent, sweet, 
 and true, transfigured in the solemn light of imaginative 
 charity, and deep pitiful contemplation. Herein, as in his 
 interpretation of Nature, he proved himself a poet of the 
 utmost originality, although the honour of this glorification 
 of our common humanity must be shared with him by 
 Burns. Nor is it fair to ascribe the revival of our poetry 
 from the degradation entailed on it by Pope's school ex- 
 clusively to these. For we remember Goldsmith, Gray, 
 Covvper, Chattcrton, Blake ; even Shenstone, Dyer, and 
 Parnell. Still there was a distinctly new element in Words- 
 worth's interpretation of Nature, upon which I shall speak 
 later. 
 
 Mr. Myers, in his admirable study of Wordsworth, well 
 
 -i 
 
136 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 says : " The maxims of Wordsworth's form of natural 
 religion were uttered before Wordsworth only in the sense 
 in which the maxims of Christianity were uttered before 
 Christ. The essential spirit of the lines on Tintern Abbey 
 was for practical purposes as new to mankind as the 
 essential spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Not the 
 isolated expression of ideas, but the fusion into a whole 
 in one memorable personality is that which connects them 
 for ever with a single name." This is excellent. My only 
 doubt would be how far Rousseau must share with him 
 this honour. But I repeat that the range of Wordsworth 
 is wide, for, besides those fine narrative sketches already 
 spoken of — austere statues hewn out of grey granite — 
 we have delicate lyrics of childhood and dumb animals, 
 occasional lyrics of rare perfume, also some of the noblest 
 reflective sonnets in the language, together with the most 
 faithful, yet spiritualized descriptive verse, added to philo- 
 sophical poetry of very high order ; though of the latter 
 there is perhaps only a little of supreme excellence. In the 
 fullest sense Wordsworth lacked dramatic power, but he 
 did throw himself, into, and graphically present the essen- 
 tials of certain characters. As to the intrusion of his own 
 personality — must not every great lyric meditative poet 
 intrude his personality, and has he not done so ? Do not 
 Byron, Shelley, Burns, Leopardi, Tennyson, Victor Hugo ? 
 But it is a typical, a more or less representative personality 
 which he " obtrudes " — one that feels more intensely the 
 common feelings, one that sees more clearly and deeply 
 the common visions, expressing these more perfectly in 
 the supreme, royal, melodious utterance of song. And be- 
 yond this, he may be endowed with a prophet's revealing 
 power. 
 
 That Wordsworth may on rare occasions have mis- 
 taken his own superficial, transient idiosyncrasy for that 
 personality which is of eternal worth is probably true. And 
 this seems partly due to Wordsworth's very excellence 
 
WORDSWORTH. 1 37 
 
 The spectacle of this poet, Hving on and greatcninf,^, se- 
 renely confident, unshaken, unsourcd, benignant, amid per- 
 sistent neglect, ridicule, defamation, is noble and unique. 
 Yet he must have known that he, like all original men of 
 genius, could only be addressing an audience " fit though 
 few," and that he had necessarily to mould his own public. 
 Still not many artists have been so little sensitive to 
 external sympathy or the want of it. There must have 
 been some happy domination of calm and balanced tempera- 
 ment ; over his House of Life presided chaste and peace- 
 ful stars ; while within him lived a deep well-spring of 
 religious faith. He was fortunate in his domestic surround- 
 ings, but none of these can avail a genius of inharmonious 
 nature, harassed by ill-health. But this temper, together 
 with his own immovable self-approval, his seclusion from 
 the world, and the slight response vouchsafed by it to the 
 deep accents of his soul, are perchance responsible for a 
 certain opinionative hardness, and undue accentuation of 
 his less amiable peculiarities ; he was thrown too much 
 upon himself, and the standards of his immediate circle, and 
 so wrote with scarce sufficient reference to universal human 
 feeling, emphasizing unduly the petty details of his ex- 
 perience ; caring chiefly to satisfy the desire for self-expres- 
 sion, even that engendered by casual moods of merely 
 passing interest. 
 
 We feel this in the grave sonnets commencing "Jones, 
 as from Calais," and " Spade, with which Wilkinson ; " also 
 in the earnest copy of verse addressed to the landlady of 
 his lodgings. But we feel it equally in the bald and 
 pompous metrical prose he poured forth so abundantly, 
 quite unconscious of its demerit ; nor can it be denied that 
 some of his pieces are trivial, though I am disposed to agree 
 with Mrs. Owen when she contends in her paper read be- 
 fore the Wordsworth Society that there is far less trivial 
 verse in Wordsworth than is commonly supposed. Even 
 the " Idiot Boy," and " Peter Bell," have fine motives ; there 
 
138 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 is, I think, a certain triviality about these poems ; but that 
 is rather because the materials are imperfectly fused in the 
 poet's imagination, insufficiently penetrated by it, than 
 because the subjects are trivial. 
 
 There is truth, however, in the criticism that Words- 
 worth poured forth verse too incessantly, and on too slender 
 a provocation. It will not do even for a great poet to 
 break into verse on every possible occasion, from the sing- 
 ing of a tea-kettle to the opening of a Mechanics' Institute, 
 or the marriage of a princess, however excellent and 
 respectable such occurrences may be. In other words, 
 a poet must be strongly moved to write if he would write 
 well. There is something in the Demonic inspiration, in 
 the Divine Afflatus after all, nor will that always breathe 
 when it is whistled for. You may summon spirits from the 
 vasty deep — but will they come ? 
 
 Then no doubt there are occasional jars ; gratings of 
 harsh or inharmonious ideas, and pedestrian words. Words- 
 worth was not a perfect artist, but perhaps he was some- 
 thing better! Remember Browning's " Andea del Sarto, 
 the faultless painter." Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley 
 were far greater poets than man}- a more faultless one. 
 What, again, of Shakespeare ? 
 
 But after all I deny that the so-called faultless ones arc 
 faultless. Gray, and Campbell wrote vcr>^ little, and yet 
 a good deal that they wrote is very indifferent poetry in- 
 deed, however correct and "elegant " as mere diction it may 
 be. Of " Don Juan " Byron writes to Murray : " You may 
 think yourself lucky if half of it is good. What poem is all 
 good?" Dare we tell the truth about Dante or Milton.^ 
 If so one may be bold enough to aver that there is almost 
 as much dull and dry reading in the " Divina Commcdia," or 
 in " Paradise Lost" and " Regained," as there is in the " Pre- 
 lude" and the "Excursion :" but there is also much magnifi- 
 cent poetry ; and I believe there is a great deal of that in 
 Wordsworth. As regards triviality, there are few subjects 
 
WORDSWORTH. 1 39 
 
 that remain trivial after a true poet has laid his hand upon 
 the heart of them. When he breathes over them words 
 of consecration, the ijreat transubstantiation takes place. 
 Nay, rather, he has just opened our eyes to what they arc. 
 Instead of trivial, for all their simplicity of theme and 
 treatment, the poems about Lucy, the " Reverie of Poor 
 Susan," "We are Seven," the "Blind Highland Boy," the 
 " Childless Father," and many another like them are perfect 
 poetry. 
 
 In his ballad-anecdotes, and narrative poems, Words- 
 worth deliberately elected to write in homely phrase, and in 
 simple, direct, inornate language. In revolting against the 
 tawdry frippery, the cold, insincere, uninspired, conventional 
 diction then in vogue, appealing to no heart and no vision 
 whatsoever, perchance he went a little too far : but " The 
 Waggoner," for instance, would have been the worse, not 
 the better, for ornamental, inappropriate phrasemongery 
 There Wordsworth made too much of mere insignificant 
 details of every day. Good expression, a fine style, is that 
 best adapted to heighten, and interpret the substance of 
 what is said or sung ; and this may be either dignified, 
 elaborate, metaphorical, or homely and direct. Words- 
 worth commanded both styles. I maintain that for inter- 
 penetration of form and matter, which is style, he has no 
 superior. That is true of the " Ode on Immortality," " Yew 
 Trees," " There was a Boy," " Tintern," and equally so of 
 " Michael," " Margaret," " We are Seven." In proof of it listen 
 to this, but listen to it also for proof that the poet's heart, 
 to whatever party he professed to belong, beat in deep 
 sympathy with human rights. It is addressed to Toussaint, 
 the defeated slave, imprisoned by the tyrant Napoleon : — 
 
 ' ' Thou hast left behind 
 Powers that will work for thee, earth, air, and skies : 
 There's not a breathing of the common wind 
 That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; 
 Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
 And love, and man's unconquerable mind." 
 
140 ESSAYS ON POETRV AND POETS. 
 
 This is superb in matter and form, severe, majestic and 
 unlaboured. Other bards have been equal to writing 
 antique poems like " Dion " and " Laodamia," fine as they 
 are ; these have perhaps some of the inevitable academic 
 coldness of all such verse, or I should instance them also. 
 But what can be greater than the bald simplicity of the 
 larger part of " Michael " — " a baldness as of mountain tops," 
 as Matthew Arnold well says ? What can be more pro- 
 found in pathos ? The story is briefly that Michael and his 
 wife, having been well-to-do mountaineers, suffered reverses 
 of fortune, and at last, with much heart-sorrow, resolved to 
 send their boy, Luke, adored by them both, away to seek 
 his fortune in the great city where others had prospered 
 before him. He had been his father's constant companion 
 on the hills, learning from him the shepherd's trade. And 
 before he goes, his father wishes him to lay the first stone 
 of the new sheepfold they were to have built together, ere 
 the necessity arose for sending the boy away : — 
 
 " But lay one stone — 
 Here, lay it for me, Luke, with thine own hands. 
 Nay, boy, be of good hope ; -we both may live 
 To see a better day. 
 
 * » * « * 
 
 Now fare thee well — 
 When thou returnest, thou in this place wilt see 
 A work which is not here : a covenant 
 'Twill be between us. But, whatever fate 
 Befall thee, I shall love thee to the last, 
 And bear thy memory with me to the grave. " 
 
 The boy went wrong, and the father's heart broke ; but he 
 worked still at the unfinished sheepfold, only now alone. 
 
 " 'Tis believed by all 
 That many and many a day he thither went, 
 And never lifted up a single stone." 
 
 I do not envy the heart that cannot feel the marvellous 
 pathos of the conclusion. Akin to it, for the deep humanity 
 of its interest, is " The Leech-gatherer ; " but here you have 
 
WORDSWORTH. 141 
 
 a style replete with dignity, because it is a meditative 
 poem, dealing with general principles, only illustrated by 
 the Leech-gatherer himself as he is contemplated by the 
 poet. Note here too the strange other-world abstraction 
 into which Wordsworth sometimes fell, while in face of the 
 homely external fact, which from opaque becomes a trans- 
 parent medium for him, letting in the too dazzling sun — a 
 loophole, a portal opening upon the mysteries of eternity. 
 The ordinary old man grows disembodied for him, and 
 appears as God's angel, like the beggar leper in the legend 
 for her who received him. 
 
 Then note the serene faith of the conclusion, the lesson 
 preached here unconsciously by the aged man's example, as 
 by the old Cumberland beggar ; the same lesson that is 
 preached consciously by a similarly simple intellectual 
 nature, though one very rich in moral and spiritual gifts, 
 in the conclusion of " Margaret." 
 
 Next, I come to some of the poems referring to the 
 period of childhood — " We are Seven," and one of the 
 poems on Lucy. With these two I shall connect the great 
 " Ode on Immortality," for these three all refer, not only to 
 childhood, but to death. They are simply perfect, each in 
 its own delightful way. Most sad, but wonderful verses : — 
 
 " A slumber did my spirit seal ; 
 I had no human fears : 
 She seemed a thing that could not feel 
 The touch of earthly years. 
 
 " No motion has she now, no force, 
 She neither hears nor sees, 
 Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, 
 With rocks, and stones, and trees." 
 
 Here the terrible outward appearance of death mesme- 
 rises with strong eyes, and clasps to its own cold breast, as 
 in a death-trance, with no outlook beyond, the sensitive 
 soul of this poet, as it often did that of Shakespeare before 
 him. Contrast this with " We are Seven," where the child 
 over whom the glory of its immortality " broods like the 
 
142 ESSAYS ON rOETRY AND POETS. 
 
 day," feeling her life in every limb, knows not, understands 
 not, calmly overlooks death, while cheerily sitting on the 
 green mound of the very grave ; — herein related to the 
 spiritual man or woman, who sees through and dwells not 
 on the appearance, but builds a wondrous fabric of divine 
 significance on the assumption of an immortality, which he 
 stays not, nor condescends to prove. 
 
 Let me now quote one short passage from the magnifi- 
 cent " Ode : "— 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting 
 And Cometh from afar. 
 Not in entire forgetfulness. 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God, who is our home : 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! " 
 
 .What can be more stately in expression .-' How well 
 married are sense, phrase, and sound ! 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, found fighting often so nobly, 
 against the prejudices of to-day, yet in this instance per- 
 chance partaking the repugnance of his Zeit-Geist, of the 
 spirit of his generation to Divine Philosophy, looks askance 
 at the Ode, as at other philosophical poetry of Wordsworth. 
 But, as Milton tells us, " divine philosophy is not harsh and 
 crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's 
 lute " — musical especially when the cold lyre of it is played 
 upon by lambent flames from a poet's heart ; by such 
 ^olian airs as wander from his soul. Too often indeed it 
 is far otherwise, when not so transformed, in the mere 
 uninspired verse even of Wordsworth ; as more recently 
 also in the harsh, too crabbed, metrical dissertations of 
 another philosophical poet, who at his best is yet powerful 
 and profoundly poetic. There is, no doubt, a good deal 
 of polemical, prosy, quasi-clerical moralizing in Wordsworth, 
 justifying Mr. Arnold's amusing allusion to " the bold bad 
 
WORDSWORTH. [43 
 
 men and women who haunt social science congresses," and 
 quote therefrom only for the correctness of the sentiments. 
 But I venture to think the great "Ode on Immortah'ty" a 
 transcendent expression of profound primary truths, of 
 highest import for all. Wherever the child came from 
 immediately before birth, the auroral freshness of his dewy 
 joy, so innocent and so pure, his guileless unquestioning 
 trust, the glory that all things wear to him, the confiding 
 humbleness, all prove that "their angels behold the face 
 of the Father," that the gleam of the sanctuary is upon him 
 — though the glory may return even more glorious when 
 dark experience grows as fuel in the fire, when the Divine 
 Child looks forth in his eternal youth from the sadder and 
 wiser eyes of man. The child-spirit is alone in the highest 
 sense immortal. " Except ye be converted and become as 
 
 little children " we know the rest. But the philosophy 
 
 of imagination suffers detriment when translated into the 
 language of understanding. In the sonnets we read : — 
 
 " Plain living, and high thinking are no more ; 
 The homely beanty of the good old cause 
 Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence, 
 And pure religion breathing household laws. "' 
 
 And now wc come finally to the poetry of external 
 Nature. But in doing so we do not take leave, you will 
 find, of the human and philosophical poetry. They are 
 intermingled in Wordsworth. His rendering of Nature 
 is a spiritualized rendering, the presentment of some 
 spiritual offspring which she engenders in a poetic soul ; 
 of the light — 
 
 " That never was on sea or land, 
 
 The consecration, and the poet's dream." 
 
 Our poet, indeed, has been accused of too great minute- 
 ness in his delineations of Nature. No doubt there may be 
 too much minuteness, if the general impression is interfered 
 with by the laborious attention required for the appreciation 
 of detail ; but this will be only, I think, when there is a 
 
144 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 want of unity in the mood or emotion with which the scene 
 is contemplated by the poet. The objection probably owes 
 its origin to a criticism of Lessing's, which I have never 
 thought well-founded, though it has met with very marked 
 approval. Substantially it is, that word-painting of co- 
 existing details is inadmissible, because, whereas in a land- 
 scape or picture the eye takes in the whole effect at once, 
 words being only successively pronounced and understood, 
 there cannot be the simultaneity of effect in a verbal 
 description ; you have to piece the parts together, as you 
 would in a puzzle. That of course is true ; but then it is 
 not true that in a landscape or picture, either the eye or the 
 mind can take in the whole effect at once : on the contrary, 
 you must travel over and realize the parts in succession, 
 though this may doubtless be done in a painting with more 
 rapidity, and in the former case you have to translate the 
 sound symbols of one sense into their visual equivalents. 
 The difficulty is that most persons only observe external 
 nature occasionally and vaguely. To them, as to Peter 
 Bell, "a primrose is a yellow primrose, and nothing more." 
 It is, therefore, very difficult for them to realize a scene 
 from the verbal description of it. But in any case the 
 intelligence, the sensibility, the sympathy must be there ; 
 we must be able to synthesize, to recreate the whole for our 
 own selves. Neither Nature, nor painter, nor poet, can save 
 us the trouble of doing that. 
 
 But the poet can express, or suggest the analogies and 
 affinities that add so much charm to the visible scene. 
 The painter and the landscape leave much more to be done 
 by the spectator himself. He must furnish a much larger 
 contribution from his own spiritual stores, in order to arrive 
 at the same rich result ; for the poet can relate the past 
 history of natural objects, and, ministering to all the inlets 
 of sensation, can blend space and colour with odour and 
 with sound, all being obedient to his so potent Art. Is the 
 ordinary man sure to have in readiness these materials for 
 
WORDSWORTH. 1 45 
 
 use in the interpretation of landscape or picture? If not, 
 he may resort with advantage to the poet. Even then, 
 however, trained faculties are implied. Neither Nature, nor 
 painter, nor poet, can speak with profit to the lazy, the 
 worldly-minded, or the unprepared. There is, indeed, a 
 " wise passiveness," but it must be responsive and ready, 
 if it is to reap what Wordsworth beautifully terms " the 
 harvest of a quiet eye." We see what we bring the power 
 to see. And hence descriptive poetry of an elevated order 
 is unpopular. 
 
 People do care for scenery in a general way. Therefore, 
 Scott's descriptions are not unpopular, nor were those of 
 Thomson before him. As a rule, they describe the surface 
 and general look of things with accuracy, and in Scott's 
 case with a good eye for broad effects. There is even an 
 unrealized influence of scenery upon the uncultured, espe- 
 cially on mountaineers. But the great majority, who give 
 a passing glance at the landscape, can scarcely understand 
 that rapt contemplation of Nature, which is as the long look 
 of a lover. And when these are called on to translate 
 elaborate word-pictures, not only into their visual equiva- 
 lents, but even into some spiritual imagery begotten in the 
 poet from his intimate familiarity with Nature, it is as if 
 a man born blind were called upon to realize a scene. 
 
 And how can this be poetry for after dinner, or for 
 reading in an express train ? The man makes you think 
 too in all sorts of ways ! He has a meaning — thoughts 
 of his own — and his own way of putting them, moreover. 
 It is a kind of thing that " no fellow " of either sex can 
 be expected to put up with, or care for ! Away with a 
 poet who makes upon us such demands ! We turn, with 
 what relief, to the last exciting novel from Mudie's. But 
 to the elect, how dear in all ages will such a poet be ! 
 The shy, subtle, delicate emotion, the ever-varying play 
 of fine evanescent expression on the face of Nature, few, 
 indeed, have noted with the same loving fidelity. Byron 
 
 L 
 
146 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 is great when he interprets her large, massive effects, her 
 sublime and stormy language, in harmony with his own 
 moods, but his touch is coarse, and his colour crude in 
 comparison with those of his rival. Coleridge came near him, 
 and the landscapes of Shelley and Keats, but they are 
 hardly of the earth. 
 
 " Such gentle mists as glide 
 
 Curling with iinconjirincd intent 
 On that green mountain side." 
 
 " Over his own sweet voice the stockdove btoods." 
 
 " The swan on still St. Mary's lake 
 Floats double, swan and shadow." 
 
 " His voice is buried among trees, 
 But to be come at by the breeze." 
 
 And those exquisite lines on the green linnet : — 
 
 " There ! ^Vhere the flutter of his wings 
 Upon his back and body flings 
 Shadows and sunny glimmerings, 
 
 That cover him all over. 
 While thus before my eyes he gleams, 
 A brother of the leaves he seems." 
 
 But when I say that Wordsworth spiritualizes Nature, 
 do not suppose I mean that he puts into her what is not 
 there ! A lover is the only person who sees his mistress 
 trul}-. When he is disappointed, it is because cloudy 
 storms have drifted over her true self, and that is hidden 
 from view, or because his own eye is dulled. Only a loving 
 eye can see. Transfiguration by love ! What is it but 
 revelation of the hidden truth .-• As I have already said, 
 the meditative rapture of Wordsworth and Shelley passes 
 at times into a kind of mystic disembodiment. The poet 
 seems caught up into some third heaven, where the boun- 
 daries of sense are confounded, and our poor earth-language 
 
 falters — 
 
 "With the burden of an honour, 
 Unto which she was not born." 
 
 There is nothing of this in Chaucer, Goldsmith, or Gray, 
 
WORDSWORTH. 1 47 
 
 and less of it even in the great imaginations of Shakespeare 
 or Milton. This difference belongs rather to the age than 
 to the man. Landscape of old was a background, hardly a 
 friend, still less, one passionately adored, or an apocalyptic 
 symbol. In our recent great poets of Nature, there is an 
 element we may call Pantheism. The soul of Nature is as 
 distinctly felt and recognized as it was in the old-world 
 religions of Polytheism, though, in accordance with our 
 modified religion and philosophy, the expression of this 
 takes a different form. With Keats the gods verily live 
 again. He is a mythopoeist. And even the Tory author 
 of " Ecclesiastical Sonnets " passionately exclaims that he 
 " would rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, if 
 he might have glimpses that should make him less forlorn ; 
 and hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." With the 
 shattering of the hard orthodox conceptions of an un- 
 spiritual Christianity at the Renaissance, which culminated 
 in the Revolution, and the substitution for them of a 
 pseudo-scientific and soulless materialism, there heaved in 
 poetic souls a revulsion toward more ancient faiths, which 
 had discerned a Divinity not apart from, but pervading, 
 the very life and substance, alike of humanity, and ex- 
 ternal Nature. And though Wordsworth was more or 
 less orthodox in creed, yet in the presence of Nature, aye, 
 and of the great facts of human life, his spirit refuses to be 
 fettered by any rigid dogmas whatsoever. He felt, he saw 
 — he little cared to understand. In such "access of high 
 moods," even " the imperfect offices of prayer and praise " 
 were transcended; "thought was not; in enjoyment it 
 expired." 
 
 I have said that Wordsworth represents chiefly the 
 effect and influence of Nature on poetic souls. Of course 
 he must. But that is not altogether so. In " Peter Bell " 
 a rude nature begins to be regenerated by the external 
 scene it had formerly despised. There is always a danger 
 of a poet's imputing himself to others. But nothing can 
 
148 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 be more lovely and true than the poem commencing " Three 
 years she grew," where the insensible influence of Nature 
 in moulding a beautiful, innocent young girl's character is 
 celebrated in such sweet song : — 
 
 " Beauty born of murmuring sound 
 Shall pass into her face. 
 
 " She shall be sportive as the fawn 
 That, wild with glee, across the lawn 
 
 Or up the mountain springs ; 
 And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
 And hers the silence and the calm 
 
 Of mute insensate things. 
 
 " The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her, for her the willow bend, 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 Even in the motions of the storm 
 Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 
 By silent sympathy." 
 
 There are many " silent poets," only " lacking the art 
 and accomplishment of verse." Those who possess that 
 indeed often lack the far more essential poet's heart ; and 
 these are far less truly poets than are those "silent ones." 
 The " finest natures," Wordsworth tells us, " are often those 
 of whom the noisy world hears least." What happy sym- 
 pathies and sensibilities are implied in such words as 
 these : — 
 
 " It is my faith that every flower 
 Enjoys the air it breathes. 
 
 " The budding twigs spread out their fan, 
 To catch the breezy air, 
 And I must think, do all I can. 
 That there was pleasure there." 
 
 " Then dearest maiden, move among these shades 
 In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand 
 Touch — for there is a spirit in the woods." 
 
 If such refinement of feeling adds to pain as well as to 
 pleasure, at all events it unbrutalizes and uplifts. In the 
 Margaret of " The Excursion " we find first noted the 
 
WORDSWORTH. 1 49 
 
 tokens of sympathy which Nature may give with a deep 
 human sorrow, in the neglect and disorder that befell the 
 once trim cottage garden of the poor woman, whose loving 
 and beloved husband, her sole stay and support, has left 
 her to enlist as a soldier, in consequence of overwhelming 
 misfortune that befell both, and of whom, after long dreary 
 suspense, she can gain no tidings ; a fellow-feeling to be 
 noted also in the circumstance that those very sheep which 
 fed upon the common now seemed to come unheeded and 
 couch at her very threshold, for dull red stains and tufts 
 of wool discoloured the corner stones of the cot ; but finally, 
 when the listlessness and languor of hope long deferred 
 have bowed their victim to the grave, we hear of the en- 
 couragement this same Nature may infuse in correction 
 of a too hopeless despondency, for the poet traces " with 
 interest more mild " — 
 
 "That secret spirit of humanity 
 Which 'mid the calm obhvious tendencies 
 Of nature, 'mid her plants and weeds and flowers 
 And silent overgrowings, still survived." 
 
 Having incidentally spoken much of Wordsworth in 
 my first essay and elsewhere, I shall not say more here. 
 
KEATS. 
 
 Our theme is Adonais, one who deserves the name of 
 
 " marvellous boy," fully as well as Chatterton, to whom 
 
 Coleridge gave it, whose glorious extinguished youth may 
 
 almost be characterized in that terribly pathetic sentence 
 
 of an old dramatist — 
 
 " 'Tis not a life — 
 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." 
 
 who desired that there might be inscribed on his grave — 
 " Here lies one whose name was writ in water." 
 
 Yet, as Shelley beautifully says — 
 
 " Ere the breath that could erase it blew, 
 Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter, 
 Death the immortalizing winter flew 
 Athwart the stream, and time's monthless torrent grew 
 A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name 
 Of Adonais." 
 
 Having re-read twice the little " Study " of my dear 
 friend, the late Mrs. John Owen, on Keats, I have become 
 convinced that she is, to a great extent at least, right ; and 
 to her certainly belongs the credit of being the first to see 
 the deeper meaning that underlies the young poet's work, 
 though, as she herself admits, but half-consciously. I have 
 no doubt that the spiritual significance was but dimly 
 present to the poet in " Endymion." It was characteristic 
 of his youth at least, that he allowed his luxuriant fancy 
 to overlay the central conception, whether that was fair 
 
KEATS. 151 
 
 mythologic story only, or allegory also, with lush wreaths 
 of episode and image, that assuredly make it almost 
 impossible for a reader to determine it. Had this been 
 otherwise, indeed, so many competent lovers of Keats 
 would not have failed to recognize the unity, and main 
 thought of the poem. It is entanglement within entangle- 
 ment, very delicious, like tendriled mazes of a creeper, 
 but wandering mazes, nevertheless. Certainly, there is 
 much more articulated structure, and bony framework in 
 " Hyperion," than in the earlier poems ; a far more distinct 
 vision, both spiritual and inventive. Mrs. Owen, indeed, 
 admits that Keats was less consciously a teacher than 
 Wordsworth. In fact, he saw imaginatively rather than 
 intellectually. His vision was of concrete images, or living 
 creatures, rather than abstractions. Only these are preg- 
 nant with a life more real and profound than that of the 
 senses ; yet because they are of the senses also, we may 
 easily miss the soul in the body of them. This, however, 
 is the distinctively poetic manner of vision. 
 
 He might, or might not have modified that profession 
 of faith which has become celebrated, that " Beauty is 
 Truth, and Truth Beauty." But he would hardly have 
 thus expressed himself at all, if he had not been uttering 
 a deliberate intellectual conviction. And the saying is 
 capable of ample vindication. It is Platonic, if only you 
 take into your conception elements not in themselves 
 beautiful, but capable of being eventually harmonized 
 with others into a higher ideal of beauty than were at all 
 realizable without them. In fact, the full truth is concrete 
 rather than abstract. It must be that which corresponds 
 to all our faculties, not to one or two of them only. Hence, 
 fuller vision is vision of the more rich, full, concrete, and 
 alive. The perfectly developed spiritual Individualities 
 are the truth, and this is the justification of our Lord's 
 saying, " I am the Truth." But that the sensuous element 
 was the most consummate in Keats can hardly be denied. 
 
152 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Mrs. Owen says, " the sensuous faculties are the first to be 
 developed ; and in Keats they were developed to an un- 
 usual extent, probably by reason of the large scale of his 
 whole nature ; for it must never be forgotten that his life 
 was an arrested one, that his poetry remains to us a Titanic 
 fragment of that which might have been the unrivalled 
 work of genius of our age, and that the three small volumes 
 of verse which he left us with the memory of his twenty- 
 five years of life, are but a prelude to the music which 
 never was played." 
 
 I shall indicate what, as it seems to me now, Mrs. Owen 
 has justly discovered to be the leading thought in " Endy- 
 mion," before passing to the particular beauties of detail 
 in the poetry — which are assuredly the most characteristic 
 feature of it — after a word on the mythology of " Hyperion." 
 
 Mrs. Owen dwelt particularly on a letter, which she 
 quotes in full, from Keats to his friend, Mr. Reynolds, in 
 1818, as proving that Keats, like all greater poets, was seer 
 as well as singer. And in the early verses, entitled " Sleep 
 and Poetry," he clearly indicates that his own conception 
 of what was needed for high poetry was, indeed, in accord- 
 ance with that of his commentator. 
 
 The leading thought, then, of " Endymion " is the unity 
 of life. Cynthia is the ideal mistress, Love and Beauty, 
 whom Endymion, through so many wanderings, adventures, 
 and vicissitudes, seeks and, at last, finds — 
 
 " He ne'er is crowned with immortality, 
 Who fears to follow where airy voices lead." 
 
 The prophesying is of the ideal beauty, which shall com- 
 prise not only the beauty already realized, but even the 
 seeming ugliness and loss, and which will have had fused 
 into its glowing splendour all reality. Through suffering 
 only, and through sympathy with suffering, can this per- 
 fection of vision be attained. Endymion, in the deep 
 ocean-world, rouses the dead lovers ; and by this Mrs. 
 
KEATS. 153 
 
 Owen understands that he lays the spell of his trust in 
 eternal love and beauty on the cold, dead hearts, and shut 
 eyes of his brothers and sisters ; then is heard the voice 
 of harmony ; then do they spring to one another, whose 
 love has been not dead, but sleeping. Yet now he finds 
 a new love, a dark princess, and in finding her Endymion 
 loses sight of his ideal, contenting himself with a limited 
 apprehension of real beauty, and becoming blind to all 
 beyond. The soul that is absorbed in the external, or in 
 one phase of an object, becomes untrue to higher aspira- 
 tions, and a great bewildering unrest fills it. The ideal 
 fades, and disbelief in that supernal loveliness succeeds : 
 " I have clung to nothing, nothing seen, or felt but a great 
 dream." 
 
 " There never lived a mortal man, who bent 
 His appetite beyond his natural sphere, 
 But starved and died. Caverns lone, farewell ! 
 And air of visions, and the monstrous swell 
 Of visionary seas ! No, never nxore 
 Shall airy voices cheat me to the shore 
 Of tangled wonder ! " 
 
 But if he contents himself with life as it is, he is lost. Yet, 
 at the end of all, the Indian Princess herself turns to him 
 with the very face and aspect of Cynthia, his soul's beloved 
 — for in reverting to the ideal love, even the lower beauty 
 of the senses shall ultimately find true fulfilment and reali- 
 zation, since the higher involves, is, and constitutes the 
 lower, however that may seem to be lost and sacrificed for 
 awhile. But is it not, then, also necessary to know and 
 love that lower princess, I wonder .<* 
 
 If " Endymion " be a parable of the development of 
 the individual soul, " Hyperion " refers to the evolution 
 and progress of the world. Hyperion, the Titan god of 
 the sun, must be dethroned by Apollo, the Olympian, as 
 exceeding him in worth and beauty ; " yet he himself 
 should live in his very successor, should indeed be fulfilled 
 and perfected in him, his ethereal presence passing into 
 
154 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 other forms, and living eternally, though heaven and 
 earth might pass away." The very fine speech of Oceanus 
 in the council of the gods is really conclusive proof that 
 we have all mistaken in holding Keats to have no grasp 
 of philosophical problems, young as he was, and not to 
 have embodied some solution of them in his poetry : — 
 
 " So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, 
 A power more strong in beauty born of us. 
 And fated to excel us, as we pass 
 In glory that old darkness." 
 
 What profound practical wisdom is summed in the lines : 
 
 " Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain. 
 O folly ! for to bear all naked truths. 
 That is the top of sovereignty. " 
 
 Again, " Receive the truth, and let it be your balm." Rut 
 there is also a passage in " Endymion," which I had noted 
 long since, and which might have convinced me that my 
 friend was right, and we had all been wrong. It contains 
 vital truth, indeed, perhaps the very last word to be said 
 in philosophy, though expressed in poetic language. The 
 beauty and use in Nature is here declared to be dependent 
 on the kisses of human lovers. 
 
 After illustrating yet a little further the conception of 
 " Hyperion," and the original myth, I shall turn to individual 
 beauties of the two longer poems, and then touch some of 
 the shorter. The " Hymn to Pan " affords evidence of the 
 freshness of individual conviction with which Keats recon- 
 structed and vivified anew the conceptions of Greek mytho- 
 logy, even though he could not read the original Greek. 
 But Nature to him was so verily alive and spiritual that, 
 when he read about the worship of Nature in Greek poets, 
 he understood them, and with enthusiasm embraced their 
 idea ; for him, indeed, Proteus did rise from the sea, and 
 Triton did blow his wreathed horn. Scientific modes of 
 thinking have provisional value ; they teach the reign 
 of order, the beauty of law ; but Keats pretty plainly 
 
KKATS. 155 
 
 expressed what he thought of these, when they were taken 
 to be the ultimate truth of things, in his " Lamia : " — 
 
 " Do not all cliarms fly 
 At the mere touch of coUl philosophy ? 
 There was an awful rainbow once in heaven ; 
 We know her woof, her texture ; she is given 
 In the dull catalogue of common things." 
 
 It is with the imagination, he says in a letter, that we grasp 
 truth ; in other words, the ideal is truth ; the emotions, 
 moral, aesthetic, and affectional, are concerned in the com- 
 prehension of the universe quite as much as the senses and 
 understanding : while as communicating the sublimest, 
 most delicious, and enchanting feelings to the human heart 
 adapted to receive them, Nature surely must herself be 
 spiritual, not material, or rather the material must be spiritual 
 if truly apprehended. Indeed the material may be proved 
 philosophically to be only an ideal construction in and 
 through the spirit comprehending it ; it is also a symbol of 
 profoundcr and more vital reality ; so that Nature, as ex- 
 ternal to us, must be spiritual power, or powers. And is not 
 that very much what the Greeks meant by gods ? But man, 
 though not necessarily higher in the scale of creation than 
 the powers of Nature, when adequately comprehended, is 
 assuredly higher than those powers, regarded either as 
 " fetish," vaguely alive, with the infantile savage, or as 
 mechanical forces with the modern man of science. The 
 change and succession in the dynasties of gods, according 
 to the Greek, and other mythologies, may therefore repre- 
 sent a progress in our — in the human — conception of 
 Divinity. Nature, as it appears to most of us, is inferior 
 to man ; man is the more worshipful. And, therefore, to 
 assimilate the Divine powers at the root of Nature, to the 
 Greek, or Olympian type of manhood, is to advance on 
 the conception of them as Titanic, comparatively blind, 
 elemental, dim, vast, and shadowy, however potent. But 
 does not man make this advance in proportion as he himself 
 
156 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 makes progress in moral, emotional, and intellectual cha- 
 racter ? Moreover, man seems to be manifested on the stage 
 of the world chronologically later than external Nature — 
 presents himself, indeed (so our men of science now say), 
 as evolved from inorganic elements, from earth, water, fire, 
 through lower vegetable and animal lives, his more imme- 
 diate progenitors. And may not this correspond to another 
 and primary evolution in the heavenlies, or unseen sphere? 
 Some such idea seems to be expressed in the noble speech 
 of Oceanus. After all, humanity is the highest we know ; 
 we can know nothing else. Our notion of animal and 
 vegetable, even of the inorganic realm, is but formed, if you 
 will consider closely, by a subtraction from the human 
 True, we can dimly imagine something higher than man as 
 he is now, but only by taking hints from men and women 
 as they are in their highest and best moments, in their 
 noblest and most illustrious examples. And that is but to 
 conceive an ideal of the highest possibilities of Divine 
 humanity. Hence, the Greek conception was not final. 
 Physical loveliness, courage, serene tranquillity, sensuous 
 life, scorn, pride, power, are but transitional characteristics, 
 comparative virtues, of a grand superior race ; as of Epicu- 
 rean gods, also, whom those races worship. Yet this 
 religion was a justifiable Anthropomorphism, if indeed the 
 very essence of Nature herself must be human ; but if this 
 were not so, we could have no knowledge, comprehension, 
 or sympathy with Nature at all. Whereas, she is, indeed, 
 our mother, and we her children ; she is the all-con- 
 taining, all-nourishing parent. Certainly, then, she is 
 human, as well as divine. 
 
 The idea of Christ, however, was more divine than that 
 of Pan, or Apollo, as the Olympian was more divine than 
 the Titan. Hence the cry went forth in the hearing of 
 those mariners in the ^gean, " Pan is dead ! great Pan is 
 dead ! " Yet Pan, or universal Nature, still lived ; the idea 
 of her was, indeed, much nearer consummation in Jesus 
 
KEATS. 1 57 
 
 Christ, His Divine Humanity being far nearer to the very 
 fact of Nature ; though the pagan thought — toward which 
 there was so eager a recoil in JuHan, and Hypatia, at the 
 mcdiaival Renaissance, and now again in the nco-pagan- 
 ism of our own Nature-worship, and care for bodily beauty 
 — may need and receive conciliation with the Christian in 
 a yet profounder apocalypse, or coming again of the Christ, 
 or Divine Word ; for Nature is infinite, as well as sacred, 
 ever removing boundaries, and inspiring her votaries through 
 genius. It may be that low, inferior orders of intelligence 
 — part and parcel of the Kosmic system — are really 
 dethroned from human allegiance, while higher orders suc- 
 ceed them in authority over us, as we ourselves advance 
 ethically and intellectually ; but they themselves are not 
 unconcerned in securing for the human race such advance- 
 ment. The Orb of Day is a grand, sensible phenomenon, 
 producing innumerable benefits, nay, the very life and heart 
 of our visible system ; but to the spiritual mystery thereof 
 who has penetrated ? The Sun is the outward body, wor- 
 shipped by many races and epochs ; but he expresses to 
 them a very different influence and idea according to their 
 own intellectual and moral condition. That is true, indeed, 
 of every visible religious symbol, or worshipped personality. 
 The Mary, or Christ, of the Abruzzi brigand, of the in- 
 quisitor, is not the Mary, or Christ, of Madame Guyon, the 
 Cure d'Ars, Fletcher of Madeley, or Melancthon. What 
 divine character we are capable of apprehending and living 
 up to, that is the vital question ; not what name we may 
 chance to give some mean religious conception, which is but 
 an idol after all. Now and again Apollo dethrones the Titan, 
 who becomes henceforth a Satan, an evil adversary. So the 
 Christians called the pagan divinities devils. However, it 
 seems probable that these wars of the gods point also to 
 the wars of rival races, severally under the protection of 
 rival gods : for instance, those of Zeus and the Titans 
 may indicate the strife of the Hellenes with those ancient 
 
I5ii ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 inhabitants, who built the Cyclopean walls of Tir^ns and 
 Mycenae ; but, then, this may indeed have involved an actual 
 contest between principalities and powers — invisible tute- 
 lary deities, and guardians of these races. For evidently 
 the nation is gathered round the altar of the tribal god. 
 This may indeed be some ancestor, or hero. But are such 
 essentially different from gods of nature, if such there be ? 
 Not necessarily, if Shelley was justified in affirming, " he 
 is made one with Nature ; " and do not souls come forth 
 from what we name Nature into human birth ? 
 
 Verily " we receive but what we give." Nature is ever 
 formed in our image. And in proportion to our own stature 
 does the stature of Nature appear to us. The music of 
 universal reason can only utter itself according to the organ 
 and the chord. The green, teeming, blossoming mother 
 Earth is verily Cybelc, Demeter, Isis, Hertha ; the warm, 
 radiant, creative, overflowing, orgiastic energy of the world 
 is Dionysos, Pan, and the corresponding receptive feminine 
 element is Aphrodite ; the Orb of Day is Hyperion, Apollo ; 
 that innumerable sea-smile is from the glad heart of Oceanus, 
 or Oceanides ; Oread and Hamadryad whisper in woodland 
 leaves ; ruffled lakes are lustrous with luminous looks of 
 nymph or naiad ; the Corybantic, Dithyrambic impulse 
 of Bacchic Maenad is crossed, bound in law, and wrought 
 to harmony by the grave innocence, high wisdom, severe 
 serenity of holy natures, represented by Ourania, Mel- 
 pomene, or Athena. 
 
 For an idealist ought to believe that these ideas or 
 aspects are not really abstractions, at least, in their essen- 
 tial nature, but may well be distinctively and peculiarly 
 characteristic of certain concrete spiritual individualities 
 with wider scope and influence than our own, concealed 
 from us, yet involving, ensphering, dominating both our- 
 selves and the world, even as the cells of our body are 
 ordered and dominated by the Idea of our human organism. 
 I have sometimes thought the truth may be a hierarchy 
 
KEATS. 159 
 
 of spirit, one higher and wider sphere comprehending 
 another, Hke Chinese ivory balls, if only these were able 
 to interpenetrate and communicate. We ourselves help to 
 form the order of Nature by our innate moulds of thought 
 and sense ; but there is something in her beyond this, 
 external to ourselves ; only that cannot be blind, dead 
 matter. It must be conscious spirit in harmony with ours. 
 What is this, then, but gods, or angels, who have the rule 
 over, and peculiar commerce with certain departments, or 
 elements we name Nature, whose thought, emotion, imagi- 
 nation, sense, together with our own human reason, verily 
 and indeed constitute these kingdoms } For what are 
 they, if not thought ? Even the idiosyncrasy of men 
 is in more special harmony with certain animals, and 
 certain natural elements or kingdoms than with others, 
 as Jacob Behmcn has already observed, some with water, 
 some with air, some with earth, some with fire, and some 
 with ether, or stars, according to temperament or com- 
 plexion. So also there arc " principalities and powers " of 
 light and love, balanced by principalities and powers of 
 hate and darkness, the higher heavenly Eros, and the 
 wanton Cupid, Uranian and Pandemian Aphrodite, angel 
 and devil, the one very shadow, mocking mimic, and 
 impish counterpart of the other. All Avatars are double, 
 say the Druses. Thus Jesus evokes His adversary, Satan, 
 Eros his Anteros ; so that the latter typifies, exists through, 
 and is even capable of transformation into the other. Thus 
 it is equally credible that gods, or angels, or saints, inferior 
 dignities, have authority also over the various departments 
 of human affairs, and over particular races ; neither 
 necessarily to the prejudice of our own liberty, unless we, 
 or our ancestors have either yielded it, or have not }'et 
 attained thereto from a condition of moral nonage, or moral 
 infancy, nor to that order of fixed law, which natural and 
 psychological science has discovered. For such an order 
 of fixed law is always an order of thought and reason, 
 
l6o ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 whether in our own minds, or in the external world of 
 objects. Now, the laws of reason are in the nature of 
 things permanent, necessary, and harmonious throughout 
 the many and various provinces of intelligent existence, 
 having their root and substance in the eternal, spiritual 
 intuition of that Divine Being, who is one with all. So 
 much, perhaps too digressively, has been said concerning 
 the general idea involved in the myth of " Hyperion," hewn 
 into so grand a torso-poem by Keats. 
 
 And now turn to some individual beauties. The open- 
 ing lines of " Endymion," " A thing of beauty is a joy for 
 ever," I need scarcely quote, they are so well known, their 
 beauty so unquestionable and allowed. 
 
 In the succeeding paragraph we may note the poet's 
 
 skill in clothing with concrete beauty the most abstract 
 
 idea, here, that of distance : — 
 
 "And now as deep into a wood as we 
 Might mark a lynx's eye, there glimmered light, 
 Fair faces, and a rush of garments white." 
 
 The suggestion of the lynx's eye being eminently in har- 
 mony with the objects actually visible, and the wood in 
 which they became so. 
 
 Thus again, in " Lamia " we have — 
 
 " On the moth-time of that evening dim." 
 
 And once more — 
 
 " There she stood. 
 About a young bird's flutter from a wood." 
 
 Of the paragraph succeeding, the opening is especially 
 happy for variety of pause, choice of phrase, and felicitous 
 arrangement of vowel-sound : — 
 
 " Leading the way, young damsels danced along, 
 Bearing the burden of a shepherd's song, 
 Each having a white wicker, overbrimmed 
 With April's tender younglings ; next, well trimmed, 
 A crowd of shepherds, with as sunburnt looks 
 As may be read of in Arcadian books." 
 
 Passing over the exquisite description of Adonis in his 
 
KEATS. l6l 
 
 bower, where he has been put to sleep by Venus, and is 
 carefully tended by the little loves (Adonis the Sun, and 
 his sleep Winter), we come to the waking of Adonis by 
 the descent of Venus — (or Love awakening Nature ; here 
 Adonis is rather the beautiful Earth, young with spring- 
 time) — Venus in her car drawn by doves, " with silken traces 
 lightened in descent" — first, her silver car-wheels spinning 
 off a drizzling dew, that " fell chill on soft Adonis' shoulders, 
 making him nestle, and turn uneasily about ; " then the 
 goddess " leaning downward open-armed " — 
 
 *' Her shadow fell upon his breast, and charmed 
 A tumult to his heart, and a new life 
 Into his eyes." 
 
 What a delightful description of Spring ! — 
 
 " Then there was a hum 
 Of sudden voices, echoing, Come, come ! 
 Arise, awake, clear summer has forth walked 
 Unto the clover sward, and she has talked 
 Full soothingly to every nested finch." 
 
 The short description of Cybele is also most pictorial ; 
 
 nor am I going to defend this from the criticism of Lessing, 
 
 that poetry should not be pictorial, for I have spoken of 
 
 this elsewhere. I am strongly convinced that all great 
 
 poetry has been so, and will be. There is another beautiful 
 
 expression a little further — 
 
 " To his capable ears 
 Silence was music from the golden spheres." 
 
 And this, as describing the bottom of the sea, or some 
 shadowy sea-cave — 
 
 " One faint eternal eventide of gems." 
 
 It must, however, be confessed that there is a great deal 
 in this poem most crude, even affected, and in bad taste ; there 
 are conceits, occasional ugliness of expression, and wanton 
 liberties taken with the language. What can be worse than 
 where Endymion calls his lady love's lips " slippery blisses ? " 
 All this belonged to the " cockney school " of Leigh Hunt, 
 
 M 
 
l62 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 though it was soon left behind. So far the abominable 
 creatures who embittered the already too short and bitter 
 daysof Keats were not entirely without justification, as, indeed, 
 what abuse, or abomination, is altogether wanting in fair 
 excuses ? In Keats' early poems there was much that ought 
 not to have passed unreprehended by a judicious and sym- 
 pathetic censor. But, then, these bloodhounds either were, 
 or pretended to be, blind to all the positive and salient 
 original merits of the boy-poet ; his originality, however, 
 was almost their justification — for mediocrity must ever 
 mi.sapprehend that ; it has no palate or discernment of its 
 own ; merit for it must be labelled legibly with the appro- 
 bation of past times, or present, publicly proclaimed " meri- 
 torious" by the general voice, or, better still, by the shrill 
 consent of their own puny clique, before these Laura Bridge- 
 mans of SEsthctic can distinguish its savour from demerit ; 
 and yet such are too frequently the afflicted creatures who 
 offer themselves as caterers, and literary tasters for the 
 public ! Read the " Cobwebs of Criticism " by Mr. Hall 
 Caine, if }'ou wish to know what the most pretentious 
 censors of their day said, and refrained from saying (the 
 "conspiracy of silence") about all the poets without 
 exception, around whose brow posterity has entwined the 
 bay, and how they beslavered pretentious nonentities long 
 since consigned to everlasting obscurity. 
 
 These things tried, after their kind, to stifle one full throat 
 of song, as if song were too common. Let their memories 
 be dragged for a moment from that darkness, which is only 
 not a sink of infamy, because it is a pit of oblivion, for one 
 passing spurn from the foot of scorn, and then non ragionavi 
 di lor\ ma gttarda, c passa ! We do but haul them from 
 their grave, to kick them into it again. Posterity reversed 
 their verdict, and though they could deprive the poet of 
 his " porridge," they could not cancel the fact that he did 
 " fish the murex up," and that was the essential for hivi. 
 
 A noble, picturesque lyric is the " Triumph of Bacchus ; " 
 
KEATS. 163 
 
 the scene is all before you — worthy of a place beside that 
 glorious lyric of Redi, " Bacchus in Tuscany." But now 
 let us turn again to " Hyperion." Byron said it was 
 " inspired by the Titans, and sublime as yEschylus." " Hy- 
 perion " assuredly is one of the grandest word-torsos in 
 the language. In it blank verse has attained consummate 
 dignity, though certainly it owes something to Milton, as 
 " I£ndymion " does to Spenser, Browne of the " Pastorals " 
 and Elizabethan Masques. 
 
 But what poet does not owe much to his predecessors ? 
 Keats was, however, one of the truly original generative 
 powers of that great harvest-time of English poetry. The 
 debt of Tennyson to him is incalculable. The invention and 
 imagination of " Hyperion " are of the highest order. The 
 opening picture is noble, and strikes the key-note worthily: — 
 
 " Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, 
 Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, 
 Still as the silence round about his lair ; 
 Forest on forest hung about his head. 
 Like cloud on cloud. . . . 
 Along the margin-sand large footmarks went 
 No further than to where his feet had strayed, 
 And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 
 His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
 Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed, 
 While his bow'd head seemed listening to the earth, 
 His ancient mother, for some comfort yet." 
 
 Note the splendid phrase " realmless," as supremely ima- 
 ginative, and expressing the whole situation in a word. 
 A few lines on occurs the line, which has been elevated to 
 the dignity of proverbial quotation — 
 
 " O how frail 
 To that large utterance of the early gods ! " 
 
 Then there is the extremely beautiful forest similitude 
 which haunts us ever after in all forest depths — 
 
 " As when upon a tranced summer night, 
 Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, 
 
1 64 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Tall oaks, branch -charmed by the earnest stars, 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir. 
 Save from one gradual solitary gust, 
 Which comes upon the silence and dies ofif. 
 As if the ebbing air had but one wave." 
 
 Worthy of the greatest poets is the vague suggestion of 
 awful portents in the sun-palace of Hyperion before his 
 fall. And how fine the characterization of Saturn's address 
 commencing with the sonorous lines — 
 
 " There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines, 
 When Winter lifts his voice " — 
 
 a line further on repeated with great effect, the r's, and the 
 large open vowel-sounds giving some of the audible effect 
 of wind among pines. 
 
 That picture of the dethroned, and forlorn Titans is also 
 great — 
 
 " Scarce images of life, one here, one there. 
 Lay vast and edgeways ; like a dismal cirque 
 Of Druid stones upon a forlorn moor. 
 When the chill rain begins at shut of eve 
 In dull November, and their chancel vault. 
 The heaven itself, is blinded throughout night." 
 
 But the opening of Book III., concerning the coming 
 of Apollo, or rather his awakening to a consciousness of 
 his own native dignity and lordly function as very destined 
 sun-god, alone worthy to assume royal insignia, and wield 
 imperial thunder, is perhaps most beautiful of all. There 
 is here an indefinable, unfathomable magic, and witchery 
 of words. They are indeed, as Leigh Hunt says, " Swan- 
 like, in love with the progress of their own beauty." The 
 cadence of them, the vowel-harmony, pauses, felicitous 
 phrase, clear, luminous picture, with all its beauty of god- 
 like form, and delicious concordant scene, combine to poetry 
 most exquisite indeed. The reticence and reserve, too, of 
 the passage as compared to the treatment in Endymion, 
 show that the poet, though so young, was already mature: — 
 
 " Throughout all the isle 
 There was no covert, no retired cave 
 
KEATS. 165 
 
 Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves, 
 Though scarcely heard in many a green recess. 
 He Hslened and he wept, and his bright tears 
 Went triciiling down the golden bow he held. 
 Thus with half-shut, suffused eyes he stood, 
 While from beneath some cumbrous boughs hard by, 
 With solemn step an awful goddess came." 
 
 " And there was purport in her look for him, 
 Which he with eager guess began to read, 
 Perplcx'd, the while melodiously he said, 
 ' How earnest thou over the unfooted sea ? ' " 
 
 Note the happy word "purport" here, and the accurately 
 pictorial " cumbrous boughs." Delicious the mere sound 
 of the lines commencing " Perplex'd, the while." 
 
 These gods and goddesses are so realized through the 
 poet's sensitive perception and spiritual interpretation of 
 Nature herself, of whom they are the animate and appro- 
 priate expression, that we are almost bound to believe in 
 them ; they are so much the soul, essence, and inevitable 
 denizens of the scenes and surroundings in the midst of 
 which we find them. Keats was the born mythopoeist 
 of these later days, Landor being rather a colder, though, 
 indeed, as to external form, a more classical reproducer of 
 ancient tales, and fair humanities of old religion. But 
 Keats was the more unfettered in this function from the 
 fact of his attitude being one of comparative detachment 
 from the distinctive religious beliefs, as also equally from 
 the negations of his day and generation. He had a posi- 
 tive faith, but very little formulated creed, or formulated 
 antagonism to the established creed. The other great 
 poets, his contemporaries, were Nature-worshippers also ; 
 only with him this cult presented itself invested with the 
 beautiful and delicate forms of Greek mythology. I do 
 not say that his own belief was precisely that of Greece ; 
 yet, when he was poetically inspired, it was not essentially 
 different, allowing for the difference of his age and educa- 
 tion, and for that melancholy yearning toward the infinite, 
 which is Christian and modern. The Greeks were mere 
 
1 66 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 charming story-tellers, not allegorical, and moral at all ; 
 and so far, no doubt, our Keats was not Greek. 
 
 Through strange suffering, wonder, bewilderment, and 
 convulsion, which makes " Quiver all the immortal fairness 
 of his limbs," does Apollo (" most like the struggle at the 
 gate of death "), grow into his inheritance of glory, and 
 then the wondrous fragment breaks off abruptly. 
 
 Now turn to the lesser poems. " Lamia " and " Isabella " 
 are admirably-told stories, and there is no excess in the 
 manner over the matter, all which promised excellently for 
 a future that never arrived — at least, on this earth of ours. 
 "Lamia" is clearly allegorical, or at least representative of 
 wider issues. It means passion, or impulse versus reason, 
 or philosophy. And here, again, we have the extraordinary 
 power of realizing the primitive mythological modes of 
 thought and feeling, notably in the transformation of the 
 serpent into the woman. These fairy, or " astral " regions, 
 are as palpable to Keats as the solid, visible world is to 
 any of us ; tinged they are indeed with the Gothic, or 
 mediaeval romance-feeling, that weird inflexion, which is 
 notable also in Coleridge, in the " Ancient Mariner," and 
 " Christabel." In " Isabella " we have the charming fancy — 
 
 " Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun covint 
 His dewy rosary on the eglantine ! " 
 
 And this brief imaginative touch of genius in a phrase, 
 which shows the great poet — 
 
 " So the two brothers and their murdered man 
 Rode past fair Florence." 
 
 " Murdered " already, so inevitably had Death branded him 
 for slaughter. And then the pathos of the line — 
 
 " There in that forest did his great love cease." 
 
 The lamentation of the poor lover's ghost, who appears to 
 Isabella in vision, is exquisitely pathetic too. 
 
 The lovely poem, " Eve of St. Agnes," is one of those 
 
KEATS. 167 
 
 best known. What a Shakespearian, and startlin^f unex- 
 pectedness of phrase is here : — 
 
 "Sudden a thought came lilce a full-blown rose, 
 Flushing his brow, and in his pained heart 
 Made purple riot." 
 
 For magic of epithet, so utterly alien to the cold inge- 
 nuities and conceits of the false and vicious fantastic school, 
 it is not easy to rival Keats out of Shakespeare, once he 
 has outgrown the bad taste which disfigured the lush prodi- 
 gality of " Endymion." His vocabulary is extraordinarily 
 wealthy and varied for so very young a man. The luscious 
 richness of his description cannot be better illustrated 
 than by those two stanzas from this poem, wherein the 
 lover, Porphyro, views the beloved maiden in her chamber. 
 The poem ends with just a touch of that pathos, so full 
 of human-heartedness, which is also one of the traits that 
 makes Keats beloved : — 
 
 " And they are gone ; aye, ages, long ago, 
 These lovers fled away into the storm." 
 
 It is really impossible to exaggerate the debt of Tennyson's 
 style to this poem. 
 
 The " Ode to Psyche " shows excellently well that so 
 characteristic trait, the soul of the Greek turning as naturally 
 to that bright and beautiful mythology in the young son of 
 the London livery-stableman as in any fair poet of Hellas, 
 nurtured in her delicate air. Thus Chatterton, too, lived in 
 the illumined world of mediaeval romance, how much more 
 truly than in those dingy streets of modern Bristol ! Only 
 here there is a tender regret for the old days. Exquisite 
 are the personifications in the " Ode to Autumn," and these 
 are precisely what we should expect from so mythopoeic 
 a soul. Of all the poems of Mrs. Browning, delightful as 
 many of them are to me, the one I care for least is her 
 answer to Schiller's " Gotter Griechen-lands," commencing 
 " Gods of Hellas." It seems to me that the mistaken 
 sentiment of that poem finds for itself a righteous Nemesis 
 
1 68 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 in the slovenly rhymes of it — " Gods of Hellas, will you 
 tell us ?" But then she wrote another poem called " Pan," 
 later in life, whose beauty, and truth of mythological per- 
 sonification almost atone for the one called "The Dead 
 Pan." 
 
 Remember that crowned personification of the " Ode to 
 Melancholy " — 
 
 " And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips, 
 Bidding adieu." 
 
 In his " Sleep and Poetry," an early work, Keats tells 
 us what in his view was the chief end of poetry — 
 
 " Forgetting the great end 
 Of Poesy, that it should be a friend 
 To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man." 
 
 While, a few lines further, he says — 
 
 " They shall be accounted poet -kings. 
 Who simply tell the most heart-easing things." 
 
 Not a pessimist this Keats, nor a mere sensualist either. 
 And he concludes the clause with the line so fraught v.ith 
 sadness to us who know the event — 
 
 " O may these joys be ripe before I die ! " 
 
 There is a beautiful sonnet to the sea, and one contain- 
 ing a strange — to me, very fascinating — image concerning 
 the sea : — 
 
 " Tiie moving waters at their priest-like task 
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores." 
 
 Of " La Belle Dame sans merci " Mr. Watts has well 
 spoken ; to it Mr. G. Rossetti is largely indebted. It is 
 mediaeval. Some noble sonnets were also written by the 
 young poet. "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" 
 is one of the finest. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, we pass to the two loveliest of 
 Keats' shorter poems — two that have their calm celestial 
 
KEATS. 169 
 
 faces set steadily toward immortality — the " Ode on a 
 Grecian Urn," and the " Ode to a Nightingale." 
 
 The " Ode on a Grecian Urn " wonderfully enshrines the 
 poet's kinship with Greece, and with the spirit of her wor- 
 ship. There is all the Greek measure and moderation about 
 it also ; a calm and classic grace, with severe loveliness of 
 outline. In form it is perfect. There is an cxquisiteness 
 of expression — not that which is often mistakenly so de- 
 signated, but a translucence, as of silver air, or limpid water, 
 that both reveals and glorifies all fair plants, or pebbles, 
 or bathing lights. 
 
 In the " Ode to a Nightingale," how admirable are those 
 abstractions of the second stanza ! — 
 
 " O for a draught of vintage that hath been 
 Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, 
 Tasting of Flora, and the country-green, 
 Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth ! 
 O for a beaker full of the warm South, 
 Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
 With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
 And purpled-stained mouth. 
 
 " That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
 And with thee fide away into the forest dim." 
 
 What poetic genius is implied in the choice of such 
 epithets ; how bold, yet felicitous the " tasting " of these 
 things that yet cannot be "tasted" — but so blended are 
 all sensations with memory, imagination, and the higher 
 faculties, that we may scarcely discriminate what is appro- 
 priate to each when association sets off one image, and 
 notion, and feeling after another, and fuses all into one ! 
 And then "sun-burnt mirth" — how easih- would an inferior 
 talent pass the line of the ridiculous in attempting such 
 periphrases ! But as Nelson, with the instinct of genius, 
 at the battle of the Nile, knew that it was only just not 
 impossible to pass between the enemy's line of battleships 
 and the shore, so here also, the not impossible in descrip- 
 tion has been divined and dared. Not that the best poet 
 
I70 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 can remain always at this altitude ; sometimes even his 
 often unerring intuition will fail him. 
 
 Whenever I enter a forest, this line haunts me — 
 
 " And with thee fade away into the forest dim." 
 
 It is night, and the particular flower or fruit unseen that 
 breathes so delicate an aroma, and so we have the beautiful 
 generic " incense " — 
 
 "Nor what soft incense hangs upon tlie boughs." 
 
 Again, note — 
 
 "To cease upon the midnight with no pain." 
 
 Such periphrases, which are apt to brand a mere versifier 
 indelibly with the brand of inferiority, if coined in cold 
 blood, and with palpable design of drawing attention to 
 the writer's own cleverness, are in Keats true inspirations 
 of infinite delight. 
 
 " The same that oft times hath 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn." 
 
 Here we seem altogether lost in some ethereal supermun- 
 dane region of the phantasy, where all is intangible, 
 indefinite, but wonderfully lovely — phrase, cadence, and 
 image. But the inspiration of " Ruth amid the alien corn',' 
 has a touch of human pathos, that causes the dim and 
 fleeting generations to link hand with hand, and makes that 
 delightful story of the Bible very near. 
 
 Yet with all this immense sense of the beauty and 
 glory of life, of the world and its wonderful shows, he had 
 known many a disappointment, and suffered much — love 
 unfulfilled, malignant scorn, cold indifference, painful death 
 near, and work half done ; there was ever a melancholy 
 yearning after some unrealized, unrealizable ideal ; his 
 vision of the infinite, beyond and beneath sense, deepened 
 toward the close — 
 
KEATS. I 7 I 
 
 " I know this being's lease ; 
 My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads ; 
 Yet would I on this very midnight cease, 
 And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds. 
 Verse, form, and beauty are intense indeed, 
 But Death intenser — Death is Life's high meed." 
 
 How we love young Severn, his painter friend, who 
 nursed him like a woman in his last lingering illness and 
 agony ! 
 
 In Shelley's noble words — 
 
 " He lives, he wakes ; 'tis death is dead, not he ! " 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 Is he whom Tennyson calls " Victor in song, Victor in 
 romance," indeed only a clever, but eccentric, and voluminous 
 creator of monsters ? That, though not the opinion of poets, 
 seems to be the opinion of some critics, English and foreign. 
 In the Spectator, a journal which, when it happens to be in 
 sympathy with the work criticized, unquestionably shows 
 insight, Hugo was lately characterized as colossal, but not 
 great ; and the dictum was hazarded that some reflective 
 lines of " In Memoriam " were worth all he had written put 
 together. That the present writer feels completely at fault 
 when such statements are made, he freely confesses. He 
 hears them as empty wind, without meaning ; for, though 
 not blind to the great poet's faults, and to all objections 
 that may be urged against him, he is nevertheless disposed 
 to regard Hugo as the greatest European poet of our 
 century. The latest romance of this veteran of literature, 
 " Ouatre-vingt-treize," is surely enough to prove it. That a 
 poet of Hugo's years should retain all the fire and intensity 
 of youthful genius, while conquering for himself also the 
 moderation and artistic restraint of maturity, is a phe- 
 nomenon rare enough to be remarkable. We have not in 
 "Ouatre-vingt-treize" the lurid, concentrated, and often 
 grotesque horror of some of the dramas, or of " L'Homme 
 qui rit." Nor, on the other hand, have we the episodical 
 and digressive voluminousness of that magnificent romance 
 " Les Misdrables." 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 173 
 
 It may be well, however, to premise that I have spoken 
 advisedly of Hugo as a poet. Those among us who appear 
 to regard poetry as rhythmic sound of a special and very 
 elaborate sort, into which (unfortunately) some semblance 
 of idea and feeling has, if possible, also to find its hinder- 
 ing way, such persons may demur to Hugo being called 
 a poet. For I hold that some of his greatest poetic crea- 
 tions are in prose ; and that if you want dainty devices of 
 epithet and sound, you must rather go to mediaeval trouba- 
 dours and tnmveres, to men like Marini or Baudelaire, or 
 again, to sundry infusorial homologucs of these in England 
 and America. That the French language does not admit of 
 melodious poetry indeed is a dictum of some critics to which 
 I, who love Berangcr, Dc Musset, and Ronsard, cannot 
 subscribe. There is beauty, too, in the verse of Lamartine ; 
 it abounds, moreover, in that of Hugo. But by poets I mean 
 imaginative creators, expressors of great imaginative types, 
 or ideas in appropriate verbal form ; or, again, singers with 
 the heart's true lyrical cry. To those who hold the Art for 
 Art theory Hugo can hardly seem a poet. He is one who, 
 like Homer, Shakespeare, .^schylus, Dante, Milton, is lifted 
 high in the sphere of art by stress and storm of great ideas 
 and aspirations ; he is in full sympathy with all the noblest 
 ideals and tendencies of his time ; to him there is in man 
 and Nature nothing common or unclean ; he is no bloodless 
 spectre of study or studio, inventing, or adapting quaint 
 feiix d' artifices of syllabic euphony. He cannot understand 
 that an artist must be indifferent to humanity, to religion, 
 to politics, to moral and metaphysical problems ; that an 
 artist must work regardless of eternal distinctions in Nature, 
 of high and low, good and bad, hideous and beautiful ; or 
 that art, which may distinguish between beautiful and ugly 
 in the region of sense, must lose all such discrimination in 
 dealing with the higher sphere of spirit. To him such a 
 creed, whatever might be its adv^antages, would seem 
 inhuman, inartistic, degraded, and absurd. 
 
174 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Let us then proceed to examine one or two of tlie chefs- 
 (Voetivres of this poet. In " Quatre-vingt-treize " all is, on 
 the whole, restrained within the classic limits of highest art. 
 But some seem to suppose that for art to be classical it 
 must be cold and pale. Hugo is certainly never that. And 
 neither are any of the world's masterpieces. Not those of 
 Homer, ^schylus, Sophocles, Sappho, Chaucer, Dante, 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Byron, Scott, Hawthorne, 
 Charlotte Bronte, George Sand, Tennyson. If these poets 
 had not high genius, they would be justly reproached as 
 " sensational." Cold and pale works are either pseudo- 
 classical imitations, or utterly insignificant as literature. 
 Racine was a true poet with fine sense of form ; but so far 
 as he was cold and pale, he was not classical. David is 
 cold, and pseudo-classical. Raphael, Michael Angclo, and 
 Titian radiate life, fire, and colour from their canvas, true 
 classics of pictorial art. Poor modern statues are very dead 
 and cold ; Apollo Belvedere, and Diana in the Louvre, are 
 gods that breathe, and ever do undying deeds in stone. 
 Death is pale, and cold, and rigid ; but the touch of art 
 makes alive ! And life is all varying complexity of subtle 
 curve and colour. 
 
 All this, of course, does not mean that there are not 
 certain general laws valid for, and to be found in great 
 art, whatever the variety of shapes it may assume. There 
 is a more complex and subtle, but as real a pervading 
 unity in a perfect Gothic cathedral like Salisbury as in the 
 Pagan Parthenon of Athens. The vital variety and rich- 
 ness of detail may sometimes overpower the sense of unity ; 
 but this is a fault less grave than that the unity should be 
 mechanical, dead, and barren, without vital variety to 
 inform it. Indeed, while there is hope of perfection in the 
 first case, there is no such hope in the last. Moreover, 
 these beautiful artistic creations of detail, episode, and 
 phrase, have organic unity of their own, or they would not 
 be beautiful at all, although there be still wanting the 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 175 
 
 Divine breath to mould them into one consummate spirit. 
 But the carving.s and festoonings of marble and jasper, and 
 oaken fruit or flower, the flamboyance of mullion, jewelled, 
 dim radiance of .silver lamp-lit shrine or altar, the high, 
 solemn interflucnce of dark pillared arches — all these 
 may form high poetry, though the style of the whole 
 cathedral be not absolutely one and harmonious. We admit 
 the turbid, yet glorious faultiness of Hugo, as of Shake- 
 speare, the rich, wavering, incompleted ascent of Gothic 
 genius toward the twilight of infinity. But theirs is a 
 splendid cathedral for all its imperfection. And however 
 imperfect, however erring the worship, it is a fane dedicated 
 to the true God ; to Jesus Christ, His Son, our Lord. 
 There men may worship the Father in spirit and in truth, 
 according to the more or less light that is always vouch- 
 safed to those who sincerely seek it. There may be per- 
 chance grotesque images of superstition ; there may even 
 be altars to the Unknown ; but on the whole, the atmo- 
 sphere and the ritual are Christian, elevated, advanced, and 
 ennobling. There is nothing overtly, deliberately, debasing 
 or impure ; all the fair lines of the high arches ascend and 
 marry far above our heads ; the spaces are large and ample ; 
 we behold man in his heaven-helped progress toward the 
 higher ideal of our Lord and Saviour, toward the coming 
 of His kingdom, toward human brotherhood in One — the 
 spirit of these ideas informs the highest art of Christian 
 time, whether the artist's formal creed be strictly orthodox 
 or not. Nay, it informs the iconoclasm of Hugo and 
 Ivamennais more than it does the orthodoxy of Chateau- 
 briand, or Boileau. " Other foundation can no man lay 
 than that is laid." But the poetry of despair, and material- 
 ism is in a temporary side-eddy merely ; for the craze of 
 scientific materialism is only that. In one .sense it is 
 doubtless part of the main stream ; still the grand current 
 trends elsewhere. And the Ezvigkeit-gcist views tranquilly 
 these inevitable vagaries of the Time-spirit, his daughter. 
 
1/6 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Victor Hugo has written some splendid verse-poetry. 
 But in this region he is perhaps more unequal, and falls 
 more below himself, than in any other. Much of it is 
 merely declamatory and rhetorical, as French verse is so 
 apt to be. That is especially true of " L'Annee Terrible." 
 Yet you are never long without startling thrusts of genius 
 in felicitous condensed epithet or line, that almost take 
 away your breath with their memorable, incisive appro- 
 priateness and force. In " L'Annee Terrible " we have 
 these concluding lines respecting the surrender at Sedan : — 
 
 " Alors la Gaule, alors la France, alors la gloire, 
 Alors Brennus, I'audace, et Clovis, la victoire. . . . 
 Et tons les chefs de guerre, — Heristal, Charlemagne, 
 Charles Martel, Turenne, effroi de TAllemagne, 
 Napoleon, plus grand que Cesar et Pompee, 
 Par la main d'un bandit rendirent leurs epees." 
 
 And here we have also that exquisite poem about Hugo's 
 little grandchild — "La Petite Jeanne" — written during the 
 siege of Paris : — 
 
 " Et vous venez, et moi je m'en vais, et j'adore, 
 N'ayant droit qu'a la nuit, votre droit a Taurore. 
 Votre blond frere George et vous, vous suffisez 
 A mon ame, et je vois vos jeux, et c'est assez ; 
 Et je ne veux, apres mes epreuves sans nombres, 
 Qu'un tombeau, sur lequel se decoupera I'ombre 
 De vos berceaux dores par le soleil levant. 
 
 " Oh ! quand je vous entends, Jeanne, et quand je vous vois 
 Chanter, et me parlant avec votre humble voix, 
 Tendre vos douces mains au dessus de nos tetes, 
 II me semble que I'ombre ou grondent les tempetes 
 Tremble, et s'eloigne avec des rugissements sourds, 
 Et que Dieu fait donner a la ville aux cents tours, 
 Desemparee ainsi qu'un navire qui sombre, . . . 
 A I'univers qui penche, et que Paris defend, 
 Sa benediction par un petit enfant." 
 
 There are beautiful things about children, too, in the 
 great old poet's last volume of verse, " L'Art d'etre Grand- 
 pere," notably "Jeanne endormie," and " Le Jardin des 
 Plantes." In fact, he is never higher and more wonderful 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 177 
 
 than when writing about little children. The glory of the 
 man's large, loving heart overflows whenever he beholds 
 those innocents, whom the Lord took in His arms, and 
 blessed with most peculiar blessing. And this is the writer 
 of the scathing " Chatimcnts." " J'ai fait pair mix petits 
 hommes" he says in " L'Art d'etre Grandp^re, ^^ jamais aux 
 petits enfants^ 
 
 The design of the " L^gende des Si6cles " is grandiose, 
 and there are some grand representative pictures in it, 
 notably " Canute " and " Eviradnus." Certainly the can- 
 vases and designs of this master are colossal. He seems 
 to demand vast spaces for the free sweep of his magic 
 brush, nor can we always claim for] him perfect delicacy 
 of touch, and perfect refinement of taste. Still his vast 
 pictures are akin rather to the colossal works of Michael 
 Angelo, Tintoret, and Orcagna, than to the colossal works 
 of Haydon, Cornelius, or Horace Vernet ; for in the prose 
 romances there is little, enormous as they are, that is not 
 stamped with the impress of the master. And yet the 
 execution in small things is sometimes delicate, with all 
 the rare felicity of Heine, or De Musset. But the felicity 
 is rather the unforeseen felicity of Nature, as in Burns and 
 Beranger. This is the song of the dying and half-wandering 
 girl, Fantine, longing to see her child before she dies, in 
 " Les Mis6rables " — a cradle-song, that comes to her, dying, 
 which she used to sing in happier days to her baby : — 
 
 " Nous acheterons de bien belles choses, 
 En nous promenant le long des faubourgs ! 
 Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses, 
 Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours. 
 La vierge Marie aupres de mon poele 
 Est venue hier en nianteau brode, 
 Et ni'a dit : voici, cache sous mon voile, 
 Le petit qu'un jour tu m'as demande ! 
 Courez ^ la ville, ayez de la toile, 
 Achetez du fil, achetez un de ! 
 Nous acheterons de bien belles choses. 
 En nous promenant le long des faubourgs ! 
 
 N 
 
178 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 " Bonne sainte vierge, aupres de mon poele 
 J'ai mis un berceau de rubans orne ; 
 Dieu me donnerait sa plus belle etoile, 
 J'aime mieux I'enfant que tu m'as donne. 
 Madame, que faire avec cette toile ? 
 Faites un trousseau pour mon nouveau ne. 
 
 Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses, 
 Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours, 
 
 " Lavez cette toile — ou ? Dans la riviere 
 
 Faites en, sans rien gater ni salir, 
 
 Une belle jupe avec sa brassiere. 
 
 Que je veux broder et de fleurs emplir. . . . 
 
 L'enfant n'cst plus la ; Madame, qu'en faire ? 
 
 Faites en un drap pour m'ensevelir ! 
 
 Nous acheterons de bien belles choses 
 En nous promenant le long des faubourgs ! 
 Les bleuets sont bleus, les roses sont roses, 
 Les bleuets sont bleus, j'aime mes amours." 
 
 Still, the Cyclopean scale on which the master loves to 
 work is most characteristic ; the breadth of his touch, the 
 rapidity and profusion of his style — a profusion as of starry 
 worlds ; a style resembling waves of the sea, sometimes, 
 indeed, weltering dark, opaque, and massive, but ever and 
 anon flashing with the foamy light of genius. The finish, 
 and rich accurate perfection of our own great living poet, 
 Tennyson, are absent. Hugo is far more akin to Byron, 
 but his range is vaster than Byron's, He has Byron's 
 fierce satire, and more than Byron's humour, though it is 
 the fashion to generalize, and say that the French have 
 none. To this point we shall return. He is both a lyrical 
 and epic poet. He is a greater dramatist than Byron ; and 
 whether in the dramas, or in the prose romances, he shows 
 that vast sympathy with, and knowledge of, human nature, 
 which neither Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, nor Wordsworth 
 had. Scott could be his only rival. For in France they 
 have lived dramatic lives for the last ninety years : we have 
 lived much more quietly in England. And in France there 
 is a real living drama. 
 
 We need not repeat the old story of Hugo's long battle 
 
VICTOR HUCO. 179 
 
 as champion of so-called Romanticism against the pseudo- 
 classical Philistinism of academic prigs. In that battle 
 he simply incarnated the genius of his age, emancipating 
 itself from the fetters of simpering incapacity, masquerad- 
 ing in the guise of " correct taste." No capable person 
 can deny the genius of Racine, Corncille, Voltaire, Beau- 
 marchais. Still, Corneille was greater than Racine ; yet 
 the self-laureled, mumbling, official imbeciles of criticism, 
 or puppies fresh from school, whom they hired as their 
 bravoes, looked askance at Corneille, in proportion as his 
 great limbs could not be confined within old-fashioned 
 court uniforms, then officially prescribed for poets. 
 
 Voltaire was a power by the cold, keen, sparkling edge 
 of his supple raillery and denial ; Beaumarchais by the 
 salt of life, and grace of humour that belonged to him. 
 But none of these men travailed with the rich and sor- 
 rowful humanity of an art, whose creators had passed 
 through tremendous fires of an epoch-marking age. In 
 Germany, Goethe and Schiller, in France, two men and 
 one woman, have since stood forth as far greater art- 
 creators than either of them — namely, Victor Hugo, Balzac, 
 George Sand. One solitary figure indeed, by sheer force 
 of native genius, rose to equality with these, and with 
 the greatest of all time — Molierc. And one great writer 
 before them foreshadowed the future — Rousseau. But 
 these spirits of our epoch, like Byron, Shelley, Scott, Keats, 
 and Wordsworth, in England, having fresh, original things 
 to say, necessarily made for themselves a more or less 
 original way of saying them. And such things originating 
 in a deepened, broadened current of human life, as in a 
 fuller comprehension of mankind than was possible to men 
 of the corrupt, artificial, and exclusive, however nationally- 
 stirring time of Louis-Quatorze — also in a heightened 
 appreciation of external Nature — the new creators found 
 themselves drinking at the deep, ever fresh, though ancient 
 wells of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Moreover, 
 
I So ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 they felt and saw in Greek poetry what they brought the 
 power to feel and see ; that which their predecessors had 
 no faculty for perceiving. Hence the imperious need to 
 them, wrestling with great problems, palpitating with 
 strange new prophecies and perceptions, of the large, free 
 Shakespearian form in art. 
 
 We shall quote one or two instances of the master's 
 satire from that tremendous book, " Les Chatiments." 
 Here is a poem called " Confrontations : " — 
 
 "O cadavres, parlez ! quels sont vos assassins? 
 Quelles mains ont plonge ces stylets dans vos seins ? 
 Toi d'abord que je vois dans cette ombre apparaltre, 
 Ton nom ? — Religion — Ton meurtrier? — Le pretre. 
 Vous, vos noms ? — Probite, Pudeur, Raison, Vertu. 
 Et qui vous egorgez? L'Eglise — Toi, qu'es-tu ? 
 Je suis la Foi publique — et qui t'a poignardee ? 
 Le Serment — Toi, qui dors de ton sang inondee? 
 Mon nom etait Justice — et quel est ton bourreau ? 
 Le juge — et toi, geant, sans glaive en ton fourreau, 
 Et dont la boue eteint I'aureole enflammee? 
 Je m'appelle Austerlitz. Qui ta tue ? L'armee. 
 
 "Ad majorem Dei gloriam " is fierce, .scathing, annihilating 
 as Swift, Juvenal, or Byron. It is an arraignment of the 
 Church of Rome and her priests: — 
 
 " Nous garroterons I'ame au fond d'une caverne. . , . 
 Alors dans I'ame humaine obscurite profonde ! 
 Sur le neant des cceurs le vrai pouvoir se fonde ! 
 Tout ce que nous voudrons, nous le ferons sans bruit. 
 Pas un souffle de voix, pas un battement d'aile 
 Ne remuera dans I'ombre, et notre citadelle 
 Sera comme une tour plus noire que la nuit. 
 
 " Nous regnerons. La tourbe obeit comme I'onde. 
 Nous serons tout-puissants, nous regirons le monde 
 Nous possederons tout, force, gloire, et bonheur ; 
 Et nous ne craindrons rien, n'ayant ni foi, ni regies. . . . 
 Quand vous habiteriez la montagne des aigles, 
 Je vous arracherais de la, dit le Seigneur ! 
 
 To the dead of the fourth of December, he cries : — 
 
 "Grace au quatre Decembre, aujourdhui, sans pensee, 
 Vous gisez etendus dans la fosse glacee. 
 Sous les linceuls epais. 
 
VICTOR HUGO. l8l 
 
 O morts, I'herbe sans bruit croit sur vos catacombes ; 
 Dormez dans vos cercueils ! taisez-vous dans vos tombes ! 
 ' L'Empire, c'est la paix.' " 
 
 And again, every word of " Le Te Deum " is a thunderbolt. 
 These are the two last verses, addressed to the priest who 
 chanted the Te Deum of ist January, 1852 : — 
 
 "Ton diacre est Trahison, et ton sous-diacre est Vol : 
 Vends ton Uieu, vends ton ame 1 
 Allons, coifFe ta mitre, allons, mets ton licol, 
 Chante, vieux pretre infame I 
 
 " Le Meurtre h. tes cotes suit I'ofifice divin, 
 Criant : feu sur qui bouge ! 
 Satan tient la burette, et ce n'est pas de vin 
 Que ton ciboire est rouge." 
 
 " A un martyr " shows the poet's perfect reverence for our 
 Saviour, while he slings syllables of fire at the Church, which 
 accepted "the bandit "for its patron. It is, we think, in 
 these brief eagle-swoops of fierce song that the sound of the 
 poet's verse is most striking. It has the resonant, quick 
 tramp of irresistible battalions. In "L'Homme a ri," and 
 elsewhere, he reveals how he believes in the power, and 
 survival for great ends of his own verse. And to those who 
 fancy Hugo is always over- verbose, or invertebrate, we 
 commend the " Chatiments," and the dramas. The former 
 are short, swift, concentrated, and deadly as a flash of light- 
 ning. See the teiTific sev^erity, where every word tells, and 
 none is merely for effect — a stern brief severity as of Con- 
 science herself speaking — in " Sacer esto." But it is the 
 loftiest moral indignation that burns and scalds in this 
 poetry ; no feigned false fire of artificial rhyme-mongery. 
 Warm, generous human blood is in this poet. Read " A un 
 qui veut se detacher ! " 
 
 In the dramas, however, you have also complete vital 
 concentration. That they are justly open to other charges 
 we think is true. They are sometimes French, rather than 
 human — seeking too ostentatiously striking melodramatic 
 situations, sometimes laying bare a horror that is too raw 
 
1 82 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 and thrilling, sometimes revealing a Dora's love of the mon- 
 strous and grotesque. From this point of view some excep- 
 tion might be taken to " Marie Tudor," even to " Ruy Bias," 
 " Hernani," and " Lucretia Borgia," three of the most 
 powerful dramas. But the finest in my judgment arc " Le 
 Roi s'amuse " and " Marion Dclorme." Yet the impression 
 left by " Le Roi s'amuse " is too thrillingly horrible, like that 
 of " Lucretia Borgia." Its power and fascination, however, 
 can hardly be surpassed : indeed, the unity of motive and 
 action in all Hugo's plays is generally perfect, and they are 
 admirably fitted for the modern stage, their movement 
 being rapid and stirring, the most minute directions also 
 being given by the author for the inise en scene, with an 
 admirable eye to pictorial and scenic effects. For reading, 
 truly, the many startling surprises seem often too calcu- 
 latedly theatrical. There is very little so-called "poetic 
 diction " in the dramas ; that is to be remarked : in the eyes 
 of our neo-fantastic ornate school of decadence in England 
 they must seem too natural, too direct, too human. All the 
 personages do not talk the same sonorous euphuism. Hugo 
 dares to write what penny-a-liners call " bald," when he sees 
 it to be appropriate. Perhaps it may be partly owing to 
 this that the naked realism of his horror sometimes shocks, 
 as an equal horror does not in Shakespeare, whose fault, 
 however, as Matthew Arnold has dared to say, is, though 
 not of course to the same extent as in our modern writers, 
 a somewhat indiscriminate euphuism of diction. For the 
 most part, indeed, Shakespeare varies rhythm and diction 
 with the situation, and sense. But there is a helpless 
 wounding sense of cruel, overwhelming destiny for the good, 
 and rampant, triumphant e\il, in " Le Roi s'amuse," which 
 prevents its attaining rank among the highest works of art. 
 For we will not admit the new-fangled doctrine, that, so 
 long as the form is good, the substance is of no consequence, 
 and that art may say anything, however absurd, false, or 
 atrocious, provided she says it prettily. Art falls below 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 183 
 
 herself, and unduly narrows her own scope, if she become a 
 prude ; yet if she distort Nature, or the grand spiritual 
 laws that underlie and form Nature, she is no longer Art at 
 all, but at best a harlot masquerading in the guise of Art. 
 She may not so one-sidedly and persistently misrepresent 
 things as virtually, even if not by set phrase, to become 
 pander for " the ape and tiger " in humanity. The Divine 
 Artist, who speaks through conscience and the human 
 heart, does not ignore morality ; he who does so remains 
 for ever outside the domain of high art, however swiftly his 
 deft fingers may travel over the whole gamut of men's lusts, 
 hatreds, and chicaneries. Nor may she, like the later 
 Realism, fix our stare, as by some photographic head-rest, 
 too persistently on loathsome, or sordid details of life, bid- 
 ding us look only at these, as if they, forsooth, were all the 
 world — nor stifle us through her own near-sightedness, and 
 mad monstrous appetite for offal, with the hopeless and 
 desperate sense that this low dank vault of theirs, without 
 egress, lit only by some occasional corpse-candle, wherein 
 they have confined us, is indeed the universe, beyond 
 which there is nothing at all. Yet I admit the great 
 imaginative power of Zola. Art is a handmaid of heaven ; 
 and however solicitous her professed friends may be to 
 obtain for her the situation, she respectfully declines to 
 become procuress of hell. All this does not touch Hugo, 
 though it was indirectly suggested by " Le Roi s'amuse." 
 The subject of that play is briefly as follows. The gallant 
 and handsome Francis I. has seduced the daughter of an 
 old nobleman, and the hideous court dwarf, Triboulet, has 
 encouraged this, as well as the rest of his master's vices, 
 mocking openly the father's agony and tears. He is 
 deformed in body and soul, and thus avenges himself on 
 the more favoured fellow-mortals who cast him out. The 
 father curses Triboulet ; and it happens that he has one 
 tender place, one link indeed to virtue and salvation, his 
 own daughter. Now the king, who spares none, spares not 
 
1 84 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 her. Triboulct keeps her carefully concealed from the king, 
 but the latter finds her out, and corrupts her also. Then 
 Triboulet burns with hatred against his master, and plots 
 his destruction. He is to be lured into a coupe-gorge and 
 murdered. The sister of the bravo, however, takes pity on 
 the sleeping king, persuading her brother to murder the 
 first comer instead, and to hand the body to Triboulet in 
 a sack, as the object of his revenge. Now Triboulet's 
 daughter loves her seducer, and overhearing this, she 
 resolves to save the king at the cost of her own life. She 
 is killed, and handed over to her father, who gloats over 
 what he supposes to be the corpse of his child's betrayer. 
 But a flash of lightning reveals to him the corpse of his 
 child ; and his maddened agony now, as before his bitter- 
 ness, misery, fiendish rage, and satiate revenge are wonder- 
 fully depicted — as also the beautiful light cruelty of Francis. 
 Yet we have a pained sense of innocence made victim, of 
 the prosperous tyrant laughing on, of the consummation of 
 nature's hatred wreaked on this deformed man, who might 
 be redeemed, one had hoped, through this one love. True, 
 the retribution on him for having scoffed at the other father 
 is just, and one's hatred changes to pity. There is nothing 
 really immoral here. This is the effect the poet intended ; 
 there is indeed hope even for this Triboulet, while there is 
 retribution also. Certainly what is called " poetical justice " 
 is an utterly mistaken contrivance ; substituting our own 
 shallow justice for God's — though even that has its justifi- 
 cation in a healthy artistic as well as moral instinct. More- 
 over, it may be said there is the same oppressive sense of 
 doom in " King Lear," or " Hamlet." Yet in Shakespeare 
 there is, I think, a certain large air, a light and heat of 
 essential poetry, that clears this atmosphere of oppression, 
 we scarce know how. There is a palpable suggestion of 
 infinite horizons beyond the slaughter-house of this world ; 
 a feeling conveyed, however indistinctly, of a holy Mystery 
 that surrounds and sanctifies — this mortal scene beingf but 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 185 
 
 the antechamber of God's eternity. The rest is silence ; 
 but an awe falls upon us, and we put our shoes from our 
 feet, for we stand upon holy ground. Around the sublime 
 anguish of Lear and Cordelia there abides a dim, tranquil 
 aureole, as around those piteous natural casts of distorted 
 Pompeian corpses, when lately brought to light, there 
 brooded the blue heaven, and warm, hazy horizons of 
 Southern landscape. Such an impression, somehow, though 
 nothing be overtly stated, can supreme genius give, so truly 
 does it see even the bare fact. Over its nudity is cast the 
 royal robe of Art. Hugo too often concludes with a ter- 
 rible mad shriek of helpless anguish — a discord : the agony 
 is too crude, too harrowing, too poignant. The emotions 
 are hardly " purified ; " they are only lacerated through 
 " pity and terror." I can just endure the horror of Lear and 
 Othello, but hardly that of Marlowe's Edward II L Those 
 other inferior, though still potent Elizabethans, they likewise 
 do not rise to these Shakesperian, Sophoclean heights of 
 moving, yet tranquilizing tragedy — not even Webster, nor 
 Marlowe. Whatever the great world-poet's creed, and 
 whatever the fierce writhings of his strong nature in doubt 
 and revolt, he had faif/i in the Divine order : the greatest 
 Greeks had it also ; and so has Hugo. But the breath of 
 faith does not seem here to dominate his art. Yet there is 
 necessary for high art some kind of " Katharsis," some kind 
 of reconciliation of moral elements, or upward tendency, to 
 give that restful sense of harmony which art demands. We 
 cannot bear to finish upon a discord. If there be no 
 " morality " indeed, the whole work is apt to seem one long 
 series of discords, and there can only be harmony in the 
 strange sense that between a series of discords there must 
 of course be some kind of agreement. Here is no permanent 
 material out of which to frame a permanently satisfying 
 work of art. We have at best an elaborate structure with 
 sugar, or with cards, rife with all bias toward disintegration. 
 Lower elements are certainly needed to give variety and 
 
1 86 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 movement ; but the binding, transforming power is still 
 more needed. We cannot dispense with the loftiest, most 
 satisfying harmony man is capable of conceiving. As reli- 
 gion and philosophy, practically and dogmatically, so art 
 imaginatively, supplements the bewildering moral mysteries 
 of life. This is not, of course, to endorse the strange opinion 
 of some German critics, that Shakespeare had a series of 
 copybook maxims in his head, which he wrote his plays to 
 illustrate. Yet the more reflective, analytical, philosophical 
 bias of our own day will necessarily influence our greatest 
 poets, and perhaps not altogether to their advantage as 
 artists. You may learn from the artist, albeit indirectly ; 
 the image, the story, and the type, or teaching, grow up 
 together as one vital unity in his soul. 
 
 " Marion Delorme," however, seems to me among the 
 greatest of extant dramas. Marion is a woman of light 
 love, a celebrated courtezan. A young man of high and 
 austere character meeting her, without knowing who she is, 
 but taking her for a chaste maiden, indeed creating around 
 her the ideal of young love, believes in and adores her. 
 She is at first half amused, half astonished ; the experience 
 is something new to her, but she conceals from him her 
 real character ; in fact, without being aware of it, for the 
 first time she loves. That love is her salvation ; but 
 through what anguish and difficulty must she pass ! When 
 a work of this order is objected to as " immoral," the artist 
 may well refuse to be judged by the prurient incompetence 
 of literary prudes. The heroine is a woman originally of 
 loose character — therefore, forsooth, the work is immoral ! 
 Mary Magdalene, however, was also such. But Marion 
 should not, nay, she could not repent, or it would interest 
 us in her too much if she did. Cynics, or Pharisees may 
 say so ; but if the grace of God, and the story of the Mag- 
 dalene be not fables, we dare not say so. Let it not be 
 averred, however, that we admire this work because it 
 chimes in with our theology, or our deepest convictions — 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 187 
 
 there may be thousands of books which do so, without 
 being works of art at all. Still, we prefer to see a great 
 subject greatly treated to seeing a mean subject ever so 
 skilfully handled. The former requires greater faculties, 
 greater character, greater genius in the artist. Is Denner, 
 the painter of wrinkles, though wrinkles imply no de- 
 gradation, really equal to Leonardo, the painter of Christ 
 and His apostles at the Last Supper .? Art " gives form ; " 
 but whether she gives form to excrement, or gold can 
 hardly be pronounced indifferent, especially since her 
 materials themselves are spiritual, belonging to the artist's 
 own nature, and that of the persons to whom his work 
 appeals. Art " gives pleasure." But there is pleasure in 
 brothels — and clseivJiere. 
 
 The play opens with a scene in which a young gallant, 
 Saverny, is talking lightly to Marion, and reproaching her 
 with having a new lover. She, in fear and trembling, en- 
 treats him to go, without telling him the truth about her 
 pure lover, Didier (an enfant tronvc- — adopted and brought 
 up by a good woman of the people). Saverny goes, and 
 Didier enters ; but the former is attacked in the dim lamp- 
 lit street by murderers, and Didier hastens to the rescue. 
 Saverny, returning to thank him, too boldly gazes at 
 Marion. This Didier resents, and later takes the first 
 opportunity of picking a quarrel with Saverny, who fights 
 (nearly in the dark) without recognizing his rescuer. Now, 
 duels have been forbidden on pain of death by Richelieu, 
 the master of France, and of the weak King Louis XI IL 
 Marion, by her cries, inadvertently attracts police-agents to 
 the place, who arrest Didier, Saverny feigning death. 
 Marion, however, contrives to deliver him from prison, and 
 they join a band of strolling players. The transition of 
 Marion's feelings from light to true love, traversed as they 
 are by the dread of discovery on the part of Didier — t he 
 horror of pain, bewilderment, and fear with which she be- 
 holds the light of his pure avowals, and lofty sentiments 
 
188 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Streaming into her impure spirit, revealing her own un- 
 worthiness of him — how she shrinks from his chaste and 
 loyal offer of marriage — to her, a courtezan, who dare 
 not tell him her name — all this is given with exquisite 
 subtlety and truth. One day he sees a book on her table, 
 gallant verses written to " Marion Delorme," and he up- 
 braids her for reading it, bursting forth into invective 
 against the vile woman of whom he has heard. He sup- 
 poses that she rejects him because of his mean birth and 
 fortune, which makes him bitter. When they are with the 
 strolling players, he bids her leave him, and not bring upon 
 herself his miserable fate ; but discovery is at hand. The 
 development of the plot here is somewhat involved and 
 improbable. Suffice it that both Didier, and Saverny are 
 re-arrested by a stratagem of Laffemas, the infamous 
 " lieutenant-criminal " of Richelieu, and that, without intend- 
 ing it, Saverny betrays the identity of Marion to her 
 lover. His disappointment and rage — together with his 
 fierce, cutting rebuffs to her affectionate attentions, so 
 shocking to her before she knows she is discovered — are 
 well given. But she resolves to save him again, and for 
 this purpose makes her way into the presence of the king, 
 Louis the Chaste, as his courtiers nickname him. He 
 refuses to grant her request ; but this leads to scenes that 
 admirably portray the king's pitiably weak, vacillating 
 character, as mere puppet in the hands of the proud and 
 cruel cardinal-minister, yet secretly chafing under his un- 
 worthy condition of tutelage. He lets the feeling escape 
 him in private converse with the fool, D'Angely, and the 
 Due de Bellegarde, an old courtier. The venerable pro- 
 vincial baron, who comes to plead for Saverny, his nephew, 
 and the courtier duke, are excellently drawn. The wily 
 courtier, invited by the king (who knows how Richelieu is 
 hated by the nobles) to give his frank opinion of the 
 cardinal, dares not do so openly even then, well aware of 
 the king's unreliable character ; but while Louis rails 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 189 
 
 against his minister, Bellegarde lashes him into rage by 
 insinuating the shame of the king's position, though overtly 
 justifying and praising the priest. With profound know- 
 ledge of human nature, the poet afterwards makes the 
 irritated king reject the old baron's prayer for his nephew, 
 to a great extent through anger at the baron's having 
 brought an armed escort into the royal presence, which the 
 baron, imprudently asserting his feudal privileges at such 
 a moment, has proceeded to justify. The king, being 
 governed by Richelieu, is proportionately tenacious of his 
 rights with others — even sullenly threatening Bellegarde to 
 repeat their private conversation to the cardinal. Later, 
 the fool, D'Angely, partly by an amusing stratagem 
 depending on the king's prudery, partly also by touching 
 Louis' weakness for the chase, and averring the duel was 
 caused by a dispute about falconry, induces him to pardon 
 the two prisoners. The conclusion shows them in prison. 
 Marion, on her way with the pardon, meets Laffemas, who 
 actually holds a revocation of it in his hand, which he 
 has wrung the moment after from the poor royal tool. 
 Laffemas will only allow Marion to save her lover (by him- 
 self conniving at the escape) on one infamous condition. 
 After a desperate moral struggle, she yields, for time presses. 
 The execution is to take place at once. But Didier 
 refuses to go with her. He upbraids her with the bitterest 
 vehemence for deceiving him, and divines that, in order to 
 get at him, she must have prostituted her person. Before 
 she knows he has discovered her secret, with all a woman's 
 affectionate wiles she entreats him to fly, reminding him of 
 old times, and of his protestations of love to her.* The 
 loveliness of this poor creature's regenerated and self- 
 devoting soul is given with utmost fulness and beauty. 
 She wonders, dismayed, at his hardness ; she feels that, if 
 he will not come at once, he is lost, and she implores : 
 " Parle mot, voyoiis, park, appelle moi Marie ! " Then he 
 interrupts — " Marie, ou Marion ? " — upon which she falls 
 
I90 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 horror-stricken to the ground. And yet in her despair, 
 urging him to tread on her, confessing her sin and un- 
 worthiness, she reminds him he once asked her to be his 
 wife. Then they hear the cannon, the death-signal ! But 
 he still loves her after all. As he is going, and taking leave 
 of his friend, she entreats him to kiss and forgive her. At 
 last he melts into tears, and falls into her arms. He for- 
 gives, and recognizing all the nobility of her soul, the truth 
 of her love, he asks her to forgive him. There is one hope 
 more — the cardinal. He is coming to see the execution. 
 As he passes in his litter, she throws herself before it, en- 
 treating grace. But a voice comes from between the closed 
 red curtains, " Pas de grace ! " Senseless, she lets the crowd 
 and the victims pass by her, and in the end stands alone, 
 half-mad, upon the stage, pointing to the cardinal's retreat- 
 ing litter : " Regarded tons! Voila riiovinic rouge qui passe!'' 
 One feels, horrible as it is, that Didier's pure love, and this 
 earthly hell have saved her soul. Though the plot is in 
 parts somewhat crude and involved (for it is an early 
 work), yet the tremendous passion, the tragic situations, 
 the movement of the action through contrasted develop- 
 ment of characters mutually influencing one another, all 
 this makes a tragedy of the first order. Is the creator of 
 Louis Xni., of the light, hare-brained, gallant French 
 nobleman, Saverny, of the wonderful Marion, of Bellegarde 
 the courtier, of the noble Didier — is this man merely an 
 eccentric creator of monsters ? We had one dramatist 
 living in England, and only one, who could be compared to 
 Hugo, and that was Richard Hengist Home. But his plays 
 are of course too good to be much known, or read, or acted 
 in this country. He indeed has written some noble poetic 
 dramas, that are both poetry and drama. We need name 
 only " Cosmo dei Medici," and the " Death of Marlowe." 
 And to find an English dramatist of the same order before 
 him you must go back to Sheridan, if not to Otway ; 
 though the " Blot on the Scutcheon," and one or two early 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 191 
 
 pieces of Browning, may perchance make us hesitate before 
 we speak so sweepingly. 
 
 Still Victor Hugo has written three magnificent ro- 
 mances, that transcend the dramas, and all the other 
 works. All his romances indeed display the genius of 
 the master. " L'Homme qui rit " is about the perversest 
 and strangest, though there are passages in it of extra- 
 ordinary power. But his detailed, persistent, dogmatic 
 errors about England, and things English are what has 
 attracted most attention here. This betrays, no doubt, an 
 amusing weakness. And touching upon his weak points 
 — (though we feci, in the presence of such a man, that it is 
 somewhat irreverent to do so, and too much like one who, 
 brought in front of Salisbury Cathedral, and remaining 
 awhile in open-mouthed contemplation, observed at last 
 to the enthusiastic but disappointed friend who brouglit 
 him, that he thought he saw a window broken high up 
 among the clerestories) — we may admit that often his 
 political speeches seem to an English taste strangely 
 high-flown and bombastic. He is not without his sins 
 either as a French politician, I sympathize strongly 
 with his enlightened liberalism, but not with his flattery of 
 the national vanity, and shallow love of military " glory." 
 He is blinded by Napoleon's genius, and condones the 
 infinite mischief he wrought, far greater than that of his 
 nephew, and " monkey " in the crooked paths of crime. 
 Yet the career of the old exile of Guernsey is a grand one. 
 Exiled to those melancholy seas of the islands for his un- 
 dying hostility to the crime of December ; beloved there 
 by all the poor, especially by little children ; refusing to 
 return to his dear land with those who were amnestied 
 in the latter time of Louis Napoleon's reign — returning only 
 when the enemy invaded France, and Bonaparte fell ; at 
 Paris during the terrible days of the siege ; in his old age — 
 his deep, affectionate heart suffering irreparable domestic 
 losses — consoling himself with tiny innocent grandchildren! 
 
192 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 " L'Histoire cl'un Crime," is the story of the Coup d'etat 
 by one who may with pride say, Quorum pars magna fui. 
 These minute details concerning one of the foulest crimes 
 in history, disgracefully condoned in England because 
 successful, came very opportunely when France seemed, 
 how lately ! to be on the verge of the same dark experience. 
 The circulation of this work there has been enormous. 
 There is a good deal about the vexata qucestio of passive 
 obedience in the army, when the army is called on by 
 Presidents in jackboots to commit treason against the 
 State, and cut the throats of fellow-citizens. It does 
 seem fortunate, on the whole, that the great French poet 
 has not been sitting for the last seventy years like an idol 
 with its arms folded, " holding no form of creed, but con- 
 templating all." What with the " Chatiments," " Napoldon 
 le Petit," and this book, posterity will be able to form a 
 good notion of M. Louis Bonaparte. However, it may 
 modify the impression, if it pleases, after the fancy portraits 
 drawn by Mr. Browning, and Mr. B. Jerrold. The auto- 
 biographic value of this work is at all events great. Hugo 
 did all the most reckless and energetic personal daring 
 could do to overthrow the military dictatorship set up by 
 Bonaparte on the bloodstained ruins of the French Re- 
 public, and his pen at any rate has had no small share in 
 actually overthrowing that dictatorship. There can be no 
 doubt, moreover, that now and again his " so potent art " 
 has paralyzed other Ultramontane " saviours of society," in 
 their impious hope of adding another to the black catalogue 
 of crimes perpetrated in the name of the long-suffering 
 Prince of Peace. 
 
 " L'Homme qui rit " is a monster, no doubt. So are 
 Quasimodo in " Notre Dame," Triboulet in " Le Roi 
 s'amuse," and Lucretia Borgia. But after all, Hugo is not 
 always making characters of this kind. And when he 
 makes them, does he make them from a pure love of the 
 monstrous .? Emphatically, no. On the contrary. He 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 193 
 
 has intense sympathy with the oppressed, rejected, and 
 outcast of humanity. He behcvcs there is even in them 
 a certain Divine brotherhood with Christ. And some of 
 our great theologians have thought the same, have seen it 
 in the Bible, in the utterances of our Lord Himself. In 
 Jean Valjean the convict, in Triboulct, in Lucrctia Borgia, 
 in Quasimodo, in the fallen woman, Marion, the poet shows 
 you the Divine discipline of circumstances leading these 
 dark, despised, damaged sinners up to higher life and light, 
 albeit through fiery waves of terrible suffering, the dis- 
 cipline laying hold of one clue, one hidden thread of holier 
 natural feeling, and by this drawing them out of the dark- 
 ness of their spiritual catacomb. Then Hugo, great dramatic 
 interpreter of human nature, as in duty bound, if only for 
 the sake of contrast, and the play of moral forces, paints 
 all ; but he puts all in its own place ; he does not insist on 
 the evil from dislike of, or personal incapacity for believing, 
 discerning, and sympathizing with the good : he puts it 
 beneath, in its own place, not above ; nor represents it as if 
 it stood alone. Evil, surely, is too prominent in the mar- 
 vellous realism of Balzac (" sacraments of adultery and 
 divorce," Carlyle says), as in the neo-paganism of other 
 inferior, though clever modern writers. But Hugo has painted 
 Josiane in " L'Hommc qui rit," and a portrait of richest 
 colour it is. 
 
 Still our poet is doubtless an idealist. I do not, in 
 fact, just now remember more than three great portrayers 
 of humanity who are not — to wit, Fielding, Balzac, and 
 Thackeray; for writers like Smollett cannot "be ranked 
 among the highest. Hugo represents men as they usually 
 are ; but sometimes also men as they might be. Indeed, of 
 Fielding, Balzac, and Thackera)', that they are realists in 
 art, is only true in a limited sense. For no true artist 
 reproduces individuals. But it will be asked. Does he not 
 create them ? Yes, certainly ; and the only question there- 
 fore is. Whether his individuals are more or less like the 
 
 O 
 
194 ESSAYS OF POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 ordinary people one meets about ? Is an artist bound to 
 confine himself to these? or may he not rather create indi- 
 viduals of a rarer, more ideal type, persons who might 
 be, who may have been, who will be ? so carrying us away 
 from the vulgar levels of cvcry-day existence, interesting 
 •our imaginations in remote mysterious regions, bearing us 
 toward grander, stranger, or higher possibilities, by means 
 of these very creations, one day to become realities ? May 
 not these be the more " real " after all ? 
 
 " Forms more real than living man, 
 Nurslings of immortality ? " 
 
 What we have a right to demand is that art-creations 
 shall be self -consistent, living with their own proper, native 
 harmony of life. Then these are indeed shadows of the 
 types, according to which men and the worlds are ever 
 created by the Divine Artist. The Hamlet of Shakespeare's 
 spirit is himself a living spirit, whether in Shakespeare, or 
 in those who make friends with the offspring of Shake- 
 speare. It is remarked, indeed, how often an artist differs 
 from his own ideals. Fundamentally, perhaps, he differs 
 not, but for the nonce and superficially he does differ. 
 Pcrugino paints saintly pictures, and is apparently not a 
 saintly person. Arc not, then, other spirits uttering them- 
 selves through his spirit ? He is inspired ; even as Balaam, 
 who came to curse, was constrained to bless. For the rest, 
 what we insist on as specially 'Weal" is, in fact, contingent 
 phenomenon of sense, is least real of all. Such grand 
 creations as CEdipus, Agamemnon, Achilles, Clytemnestra, 
 Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Othello, Jean Valjean, Gilliatt, 
 Consuclo, Faust, stand towering above mortals, like colossal 
 images on cloud cast by veritable forms of gods standing 
 high upon the temple-wall of their own eternal habitation. 
 As for those characters that first strike us as types, rather 
 than as individuals, they are impersonations of particular 
 qualities, and only a genius like Moliere's can make them 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 195 
 
 tolerable. The abstracting intellect is too much at work 
 here. 
 
 Some say, however, that Valjcan is not self -consistent ; 
 the illiterate, rude convict could never become the Made- 
 leine of later times. Yet those who know something of the 
 history of " conversions " will never admit this. There was 
 a desperately bad character, coarse, violent, brutal, ap- 
 parently lost to all good feeling, in the Home of Mrs. 
 Vickers at Brighton — Miss Ellice Hopkins has written 
 about her — no love, no preaching seemed to affect her. 
 But she is now the most trusted and most trustworthy of 
 the matrons there. Tant pis pour les faits, a theorist or a 
 cynic may say. We say, Tant pis pour les theories! The 
 very point, moreover, of Valjean's history is that he was 
 made bad by the radically unjust, undiscriminating punish- 
 ment of society. He stole a bit of bread in a mad moment 
 of poignant anxiety, not for himself, but for those dear to 
 him, who were reduced to the last extremity through no 
 fault of his. Fate pressed this outcast hard from the 
 beginning ; he was one of the " Mis^rables ; " then, sorely 
 tempted, rightly, or wrongly, he stole. His punishment was 
 to be confined and herded with the worst of criminals. 
 The sense of doom, of injustice, rankled in him ; associated 
 with the worst and most desperate of his fellow-men, 
 he became bad. Released at length from prison, he was 
 the sullen foe of well-to-do, comfortable society. A good 
 old bishop houses him, and, though he knows his story, 
 treats him with the utmost confidence, as if his character 
 were undamaged, leaving silver candlesticks within his 
 reach, and placing him in a guest-chamber near his own. 
 He is astonished ; but in the middle of the night he is 
 tempted to make off with the candlesticks : and one of the 
 most powerful scenes of the book is where he passes with 
 them through the bishop's room, and sees the moonlight 
 resting on the placid face of his kind and saintly host, 
 whom, had he wakened, Valjean might ha\e murdered. 
 
196 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 He is arrested and brought back (not by the bishop's 
 order), and, to screen him, the bishop says that he has 
 given him the candlesticks. (Here, no doubt, the writers 
 of virtuous EngHsh novels may raise a point of casuistry.) 
 He dismisses Valjean with the solemn words, " Jean Val- 
 jean, mon frcre, vous n'appartcnez plus au mal, mais au 
 bien. C'est votre ame que jc vous achete ; je la retire au 
 pensees noires, et a I'esprit de perdition, et je la donne a 
 Dieu ! " But after this he met a little Savoyard, as he was 
 tramping along, who dropped a piece of money in the 
 gathering twilight. Valjean instinctively, and savagely 
 put his foot on it, refusing to give it up, though the boy 
 scolded and cried. So the child went off sobbing. Yet 
 this brutality was the beast's expiring effort in Valjean, 
 and the tears of the boy, together with the Christ-like 
 conduct of the bishop toward him, did their holy work. 
 So years after we meet him as M. Madeleine, the self- 
 educated, upright, benevolent mayor of a country town, 
 beloved and trusted by all. He has dropped the old name 
 with the old nature. There is no verisimilitude in this, we 
 have been told. In whose eyes, we reply .'* Not, we believe, 
 in the eyes of those unblinded by theory, who know most 
 of the history and profound secrets of human nature. Is 
 he represented, however, as perfect, as having no stain, as 
 free from all necessity to struggle with sin ? Not at all. 
 The very contrar)-. One of the most powerful passages in 
 all literature is the chapter called " Une tempete sous un 
 crane " — wherein, another man having been arrested as 
 Valjean for the robbery of the Savoyard, Madeleine debates 
 all one night whether he shall giv^e himself up or not, so 
 relinquishing the excellent and needful work he is doing as 
 mayor, leaving, moreover, the poor lost woman, Fantine, 
 who is expecting him to bring her child, Cosette, to her on 
 her death-bed, and whom he has already influenced for 
 good. But he must go the very next morning to Arras, if 
 he decides to surrender himself, where the man's trial will 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 197 
 
 be taking place: he might even now be too late. But shall 
 he, must he go back to the horrible convict life, losing the 
 respect and love of men, now so dear to him in his new 
 existence ? 
 
 He decides to go. The accidents of his journey, the 
 delays, his entry into the judgment hall of Arras, where he 
 can only make his way through the crowd by sending a 
 message to the judge that the (well-known) Mayor Made- 
 leine requests he may have a seat on the bench ; his hesi- 
 tation when alone in the corridors leading thither as to 
 whether he shall push the old door or not ; his emergence into 
 the dirty, crowded hall, badly lighted by guttering candles ; 
 his bewildered observation of the scene ; the judge's bow 
 to him ; his own voice startling even himself, as he announces 
 himself to the incredulous court for the true Jean Valjcan ; 
 Javert's — the police-officer's — recognition of him — all is told 
 with a marvellous imaginative realism of detail, that lays 
 hold upon the soul and never lets it go. This Javert, a 
 very incarnation of the French detective police, is a portrait 
 painted with such solidity and perfection that one seems to 
 have known him in the flesh, as one does the original of a 
 portrait by Titian. He is at once type and individual, as 
 Othello is. He is the implacable foe of Valjean throughout 
 — embodiment of formal law blindly carrying out the 
 (roughly moral and necessarj^) edict of human society upon 
 a branded criminal, who is indeed criminal no longer — 
 right from its own limited point of view, yet wrong and 
 blundering in this instance — as in many — fulfilling, how- 
 ever, in the end, grand purposes of God by inflicting life- 
 suffering on this upward-tending human spirit. The figure 
 of poor Fantine, too, another victim of society and hard 
 circumstances, is quite imperishable. She dies, singing that 
 song of yearning for her child, whom in this world, alas ! 
 she is not to see. Still more exquisite and imperishable, 
 if possible, is Cosette, the young girl whose life and fate are 
 bound up so incxtricabl}- with those of Valjean. The 
 
198 ESSAYS ON rOETRY AND POETS. 
 
 latter, again a convict, his chains having been struck off, 
 saves a drowning man in the harbour of Toulon, by an 
 extraordinary exertion of strength, courage, and agility ; 
 but he himself never reappears to the authorities, and is 
 supposed to be drowned. He has really dived, and swum 
 a long way under cover of darkness ; and we meet him far 
 off, seeking for the child Cosette, whom Fantine had 
 entreated him to seek out at the Thenardiers', where she 
 had placed the girl. They are publicans, and there the 
 poor child has been sadly ill-treated. The Thenardiers 
 seem to start out of the book as repulsive, mean, veritably 
 living persons. They are both bad, man and wife, but how 
 well-contrasted in their diverse, mutually reacting villainy ! 
 Ngt a trace of exaggeration or caricature is there, though 
 Hugo is by some supposed always to exaggerate. The 
 effect is produced by depicting subtle nuances of word, 
 gesture, and action — not by the author's reflective analysis, 
 as in George Eliot, or by that reflective analysis often 
 inappropriately put into the character's own mouth, as 
 in Mr. Browning. Hugo's is certainly the more dramatic 
 method, though he can analyze when he pleases with all 
 the psychological subtlety of either author. The misery of 
 the poor, neglected, overworked child, and all her ways in 
 that family, arc described with unrivalled force and pathos 
 — as she sits in the chimney corner of the cabaret, with 
 nervous, lifelong fear expressed in every lineament and 
 gesture, ragged, ugly, pale, thin. Thenardier is a small 
 man, popularly supposed to be ruled by his big, loud- 
 spoken wife ; but the contrary is true. The woman has one 
 good point— she is fond of her own little girls. But she 
 " has not time " to teach Cosette to pray, or to take her 
 to church. One evening these little girls are playing with 
 the cat, and every one's attention being diverted, Cosette 
 ventures to drop the leaden sword she habitually nurses 
 for a doll, and furtively takes up the real one, belonging to 
 the other children. It is twilight, and she is in the shadow, 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 199 
 
 sitting on the floor ; but the firelight happening to fall upon 
 a rosy leg of the wax doll, the children, looking round at 
 the moment, see what she has dared to do. They make an 
 exclamation ; and then the woman calls to her in a voice 
 of thunder, threatening to beat her. Jean Valjean (in his 
 soiled, tattered clothes) is sitting there, and he, who has 
 come in with the child and asked for lodgings, thereupon 
 walks out, returning soon with a wonderful doll, which 
 Cosette had been admiring open-mouthed in a shop window 
 when Mother Thenardier sent her that very evening to the 
 spring in the wood for water with a bucket. There Valjean 
 first met her. The shop-window lighted up had seemed 
 Paradise to the poor neglected child, with that large, lovely 
 lady doll in the midst ; and now, to the indignant astonish- 
 ment of all, Valjean presents Cosette with this very doll ! 
 The child's despair at having to leave the town alone in 
 the chill evening, and enter the wood, is terribly felt and 
 rendered. When she enters the dark forest, she fancies 
 ghosts pursuing her, and at last, with beating heart, she 
 sits down exhausted at the spring. " A cote d'elle I'eau 
 agitde faisait des cercles, qui ressemblaient des serpents 
 de feu bleu. Au dessus de sa tete le ciel 6tait couvert de 
 vastes nuages noirs, qui etaient comme des pans de fumee, 
 Le tragique masque de I'ombre semblait se pencher vague- 
 ment sur cet enfant. Jupiter se couchait dans les profon- 
 deurs. L'enfant regardait d'un ceil egare cette grosse etoile 
 qu'elle ne connaissait pas, et qui lui faisait peur. La 
 planete en ce moment etait pres de I'horizon, et traversait 
 une ^paisse couche de brume, qui lui donnait une rongeur 
 horrible. La brume lugubrement empourpree elargissait 
 I'astre." Then he describes the fearful branches of the trees, 
 and the dismal sounds of the chilly wind in them — pro- 
 ceeding with his own extraordinary power to enlarge on 
 the strange weird living horrors of the twilit forest. Every 
 touch tells, though the mind is almost oppressed with the 
 multiplicity of detail. But he, and Charles Dickens have a 
 
200 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 similar faculty of feeling and expressing the dim, veiled, 
 spiritual life in Nature, which we can only discern through 
 a glass darkly, but which is there, and has so deep a 
 spiritual influence upon men. (Elsewhere, though not here, 
 Hugo injures his impressivencss by ov^erloading his canvas, 
 and unduly multiplying epithets ; by a want of self- 
 restraint ; by the volubility, and sometimes alloyed appro- 
 priateness of his adjectives or similes ; by an almost artificial, 
 strained grotesqueness, and passion for lurid effects.) 
 " Cette penetration des tenebres est inexprimablement 
 sinistra dans un enfant. Les forets sont des apocalypses ; 
 et le battement d'aile d'une petite ame fait un bruit d'agonie 
 sous leur voiitc monstrueuse." At last she takes courage to 
 fill the bucket, and goes, counting " one, two, three," to 
 dissipate her horror, with the heavy iron bucket freezing 
 her hands, spilling its water on them, and her poor naked 
 legs. " C'etait un enfant de huit ans ; il n'y avait que Dieu 
 en ce moment qui voyait cette chose triste. Et sans doute 
 la mere helas ! Car il est des choses qui font ouvrir les 
 yeux aux mortes dans leur tombeau. Elle soufflait avcc 
 une sorte de ralement douloureux ; des sanglots lui serraient 
 la gorge." And she reflected the Thenardiers would beat 
 her when she got back ! She often stops to rest. The 
 misery is almost too terrible here. " Cependant le pauvre 
 petit etre diisespere ne put s'empecher de s'^crier : O mon 
 Dieu ! mon Dieu ! En ce moment elle sentit tout a coup 
 que le seau ne pesait plus ricn ! " Valjean had come behind, 
 and was carrying the bucket for her ! 
 
 Valjean again takes another name, and lives retired in 
 Paris with Cosctte. But he is tracked by his old enemy, 
 Javert, and the story of his escape with Cosette up a water- 
 pipe, with Cosette on his back, by help of a rope, into the 
 garden of a convent, is one of the sensational parts of the 
 book, reminding one of Dumas the Elder, or Eugene Sue, 
 and equally good as their admirable writing about such things. 
 There is a dash of the boy, of the gamin, about this great 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 201 
 
 poet, and he is not above a spice of adventure, excitement, 
 and romance. Let the reverend seniors shake their heads at 
 him then ! For his part the present writer hkes it. Of this 
 sort, too, is Valjean's extraordinary exit from the convent 
 garden in a coffin, by the help of an old sexton, who only 
 knew him as Madeleine, in order that he may re-enter it to 
 put Cosette to school there. Another similar episode is his 
 bearing the senseless young Marius on his back through 
 the sewers of Paris, after he (Marius) has been shot on the 
 barricades of 1832. Extremely fascinating is his account 
 of this convent and its inmates. Here, as elsewhere, he 
 shows a perfect dramatic ability to understand and sym- 
 pathize with characters or modes of thought diametrically 
 opposed to his own, and to do them justice. There is, 
 moreover, one of the curious episodical dissertations here 
 with which the book abounds, and which no doubt interferes 
 with its technical perfection as a work of art, by breaking 
 up the unity of its impression ; but these could just be 
 bodily removed elsewhere, as wantonly stuck on, though 
 admirable enough in themselves, and then there would 
 stand forth one of the masterpieces of human genius in all 
 its own sublimely massive integrity. He has in this part a 
 chapter on prayer, which is refutation sufficient of bigots 
 or ignoramuses who have charged him, forsooth ! with 
 " atheism." He contends, on the contrary, for a personal 
 God, and for the necessity of prayer to Him. Nothing can 
 be further from the blind and bigoted sciolism that hurls 
 itself foaming against, or makes mouths of a monkey at, or 
 dismisses with a gesture of conceited contempt, the pro- 
 foundest and most universal religious convictions of man- 
 kind. His poetic humanity is too broad and deep for that. 
 But then he has the first requisite of the poet — though one 
 scarcely necessary to the versifier, or the critic— namely, 
 manhood. Before being poet, one must be man. " II y a 
 une philosophic qui nie I'infini. II y a aussi une classee 
 pathologiquement qui nie le soleil ; cette philosophic 
 
202 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 s'appcllc a'citt'. Erigcr un sens qui nous manque en 
 source de verity c'est un bel aplomb d'aveugle." Speaking 
 of the self-satisfied airs of atheists, he says : " On croit 
 entendre une taupe s'ecricr ; ils me font pitie avec leur 
 solcil ! " 
 
 We have also a most brilliant account of Waterloo, and 
 Napoleon — apropos of Marius and Thenardier — and a 
 detailed dissertation about the Paris sewers ! In that part 
 there is, indeed, an almost morbid propensity to enlarge 
 unduly on the horrible. But though the political history 
 of events preceding 1832 is too long, the story of the bar- 
 ricades and their defenders, Enjolras, Gavroche, etc., is 
 admirable, and a quite legitimate episode from the point 
 of view of perfect art. The characters here are lightly 
 sketched, are connected with the main personages, and 
 by their side-eddies give relief to the intense strain of the 
 grand current. The sketch of the little Paris gamin, Gav- 
 roche, is a master-sketch for all time. Behold him finding 
 the poor little lost children in the Luxembourg gardens, 
 talking to them patronizingly, and taking them home with 
 him to sleep in his hole under an old broken statue of an 
 elephant ; making them comfortable ; a mite full of impu- 
 dence, and resource, and premature knowledge ; pure and 
 kindl}', in spite of his bad human surroundings ! See the 
 awe of the small, gentle, carefully protected children in his 
 presence ! The humour of the talk between these three 
 is equal to any humour whatsoever. And here we stop to 
 note what absurd general statements are made upon insuf- 
 ficient data : e.g. that the French have no humour, only 
 wit. This, and much else in Hugo, shows most genuine 
 humour, and fills us with astonishment at the immense 
 range of his gifts. And those two lost boys in the Luxem- 
 bourg Gardens, before they met their powerful protector. 
 Master Gavroche ! There was a bourgeois with his little 
 boy feeding swans in the pond. \\' hen they left, the other 
 lost boys approached, and the elder reached a bit of bread, 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 203 
 
 which the ripple of water (made by the swans swimming 
 to it) had pushed within reach ; this he gave to his 
 hungry brother of five years old. Meanwhile, the noise of 
 distant fighting at the barricades is borne towards them. 
 As for Gavroche, he dies on the barricades, receiving first 
 one bullet, then another ; gaily singing light songs between 
 each wound, and making " vulgar signs," as Thackeray calls 
 them, after his kind, at the soldiers. 
 
 When Cosette leaves the convent, she lives quietly with 
 Valjean, and grows up into a woman. All this part is 
 literature of the very highest quality — the girl's opening 
 nature is subtly and delicately unfolded — nothing here is 
 heavy, or laboured, or difficult, but the tender touches are 
 worthy of so tender and sweet a rose. Except Juliet, in 
 Shakespeare, and Marguerite, in Goethe, we know of no 
 similar portrait to equal this. The love of Cosette for the 
 old man, and his infinitely greater love for her, wlio is the 
 only human object he has to love ; the ennobling, strength- 
 ening effect of this love upon him when his old nature 
 threatens to rule him again, feeling as he does the chaos, 
 flie injustice, and blindness of society, the miserable spec- 
 tacle of human mistakes, and sins, and disappointments : 
 all this is unique, and intensely original, the climax being 
 when another love comes in between him and this child as 
 she grows up, her love for a young man, Marius Pontmercy, 
 and his love for her. Then begins in earnest again the 
 struggle of good and evil in this great chastised nature. 
 How can he yield her to another, who is the very channel 
 of God's grace to him, as well as his only little flower, 
 bringing sweetness and colour into his life? See then, 
 reader, that Valjean is no monster of perfection ! They 
 were living in an old retired house together ; and here, by 
 the side of his misery, obscurity, hateful memory of the 
 past, and dread lest she should know it, feeling himself 
 ever liable to be tracked and recaptured, Cosette grew from 
 a plain child into a pretty girl. She only began to be 
 
204 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 aware of her beauty when she heard some passer say, 
 " Jolic, mais mal mise." Though she could not fancy he 
 meant her, she began to look in the glass, and attend to 
 her dress after that. Valjcan was sorry when she became 
 pretty ; " a mother would have been glad." Before, she 
 had been content with their retired life together ; now 
 she began to want to go out in the streets, and to need 
 some amusements. A slight sense of separation grows up 
 insensibly between them. Then Marius appears on the 
 scene — a good-looking, but untidy and studious youth, 
 reading on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens, as Cosette 
 and the old man pass of a morning. Marius and she only 
 gradually begin to take notice of one another. When 
 Cosette began to care about him, it was only as a kind 
 of charming distant vision ; and the girl really thought she 
 was expressing all she felt in saying to Valjean, " Quel 
 delicieux jardin que le Luxembourg ! " There is also much 
 humour in the account of Marius's budding love — his put- 
 ting on a new coat and gloves, but always pretending to 
 read as the couple passed. Jean Valjean cordially detests 
 him, as a possible lover, and says to Cosette one day, " Que 
 ce jeune homme a I'air pedant ! " to which she replies with 
 supreme calm, " Ce jeune homme la ? " as if she had noticed 
 him for the first time in her life. Then, " How stupid I 
 am ! " thought Valjean : " she had not remarked him. C'est 
 moi qui le lui montre! O! simplicite dcs \'ieux ! profon- 
 deur dcs enfants ! " At length he determines to remove ; 
 and she, albeit very tender to him whom she regards as her 
 father, seems silent and sorrowful, though (educated in a 
 convent) she scarce knows yet that she indeed loves Marius. 
 One morning the girl and Valjean go out to see the sun 
 rise. " Elle regardait les papillons sur Ics fleurs, mais ne 
 les prenait pas ; les mansuetudes, et les attcndrissements 
 naissent avec I'amour, et la jeune fille qui a en elle un ideal 
 tremblante et fragile a pitie de I'aile d'un papillon." At 
 last she meets Marius, and he avows his love. Then follows 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 205 
 
 an cxciuisite idyl, and here with equal perfection are de- 
 scribed the young loves of their fresh souls, and the spring- 
 tide of the beautiful garden, so harmonious with them, 
 where they used to steal their brief meetings. " Foliis ac 
 Frondibus " is unsurpassed for tenderness of natural de- 
 scription : every feature and tint and tone in the spiritual 
 and the natural are here soft echoes of one another. But 
 Marius, one of the republicans, has to go to the barricades, 
 and Valjean goes also, though only to attend to the 
 wounded. As related, he saves Marius's life, and moreover 
 Javert's, who becomes his prisoner. But Marius was all the 
 time insensible, and does not know who his deliverer is. 
 Valjean consents to the marriage of the lovers, but his 
 heart is broken, for he feels he ought to reveal his true 
 history and position to them, separating himself from them 
 for ever. Yet this resolution causes him a fearful struggle. 
 This combat of the flesh and spirit could not be more 
 religiously described. " Combicn de fois, terrassee par la 
 lumi^re, lui avait il crid grace ! Cette lumiere implacable, 
 allumee en lui et sur lui par I'evcque, I'avait il ebloui de 
 force, lorsqu'il souhaitait etre aveugle ! Combien de fois 
 s'etait il releve sanglant, meurtri, brise, eclaire, le desespoir 
 au coeur, la st^renite dans I'ame ! Et vaincu il se sentait 
 vainqueur ! et sa conscience lui disait : maintenant va en 
 paix ! " 
 
 The prose epithalamium on the first bridal night of 
 Marius and Cosette is a piece of chaste and lovely poetry. 
 But the climax of all modern poetry, as it seems to the 
 present writer, is in the chapter where Valjean leaves the 
 happy wedding supper, and goes alone to the old house 
 where the girl and he had lived so long. There he locks 
 himself into Cosette's empty room, and by candlelight un- 
 fastens an old box that he had always preserved, contain- 
 ing the childish frocks and stockings and trinkets that he 
 had given her when he took her away from the Thenardiers 
 at Montfermeil. These he arranges on her bed, one by 
 
206 ESSAYS ON TOETRV AND TOETS. 
 
 one, calling to mind the far-away night when he found her 
 first ; and then their walk together through the wood on 
 leaving Montfermeil. The trees were without leaves, the 
 sky without sun or birds, but ah ! " Elle netait pas plus 
 haute que cela, elle avait sa grande poupde dans ses bras, 
 elle avait mis son louis d'or dans la poche de ce tablier : 
 elle riait ; ils marchaient tous les deux se tenant la main, 
 elle n'avait que lui au mondc ! Alors sa vendrable tete 
 blanche tomba sur le lit, ce vieux cceur stoique se brisa, sa 
 face s'abima dans les vetements de Cosette, et si quelqu'nn 
 cut passd dans I'escalier, on cut entendu d'effrayants sang- 
 lots." And here all night in the cold, with his head on 
 the bed, kissing the little child's things, he debates with 
 himself whether he dare do as the young husband and wife 
 have both entreated, go and live with them, and so run the 
 risk of inflicting his infamy upon them, should he be dis- 
 covered. This agony the poet calls, " Le septieme cercle, 
 ct le huitieme ciel." Finally he denounces himself to 
 Marius. "Vous demandez pourquoi je parle ! je ne suis 
 ni denoncd, ni poursuivi, ni traque. Si ! par qui ? par moi ! 
 II faut si on veut etre heureux, monsieur, ne jamais com- 
 prendre le devoir ; car des qu'on la compris, il est implac- 
 able ; on dirait qu'il vous punit de le comprendre, mais 
 non ; il vous recompense, car il vous met dans un enfer, ou 
 Ton sent a cote de soi Dieu." But Marius, though he 
 shrinks from him at first, feels his grandeur, and Thenar- 
 dier, while trying to injure him in the eyes of Marius, 
 unintentionally reveals Valjean as the heroic deliverer he 
 has longed to discover. All the heroism of his life and 
 character becomes little by little as clear to the husband 
 as it is to Cosette ; but the end is near. Now that his 
 angel child is taken from him, he sinks in his lonely dwell- 
 ing, so full of memories of her. There is nothing in 
 Shakespeare, or Sophocles, more intensely pathetic than 
 his death, with Marius and Cosette, whom he has sent for, 
 kneeling b}- the bedside. This may stand as a companion 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 207 
 
 picture to the death of Lear, or that of CEdipus. As 
 Madeleine, the mayor, he saved a Httle money, made by 
 discovery of a process of manufacture, which he, in broken 
 phrases, explains to the lovers : this money will be theirs. 
 He has placed a crucifix near him. To that he points. 
 "Behold," he says, "the Great Martyr!" Other tender, 
 loving, and beautiful things he speaks brokenly to his 
 children. " Cosette et Marius tombcrent a genoux, dper- 
 dus, etouffcs de larmes, chacun sur une des mains de Jean 
 Valjean. Ces mains augustes ne remuaient plus. La nuit 
 (ftait sans etoiles, ct profonddment obscure. Sans doute 
 dans I'ombre quelquc ange immense etait debout, les ailes 
 deployees, attendant I'ame." That angel, the poet suggests, 
 may have been the bishop. " La mort, c'est I'entree dans 
 la grande lucur." Truly God hath chosen the weak, and 
 foolish, and despised things of this world to confound the wise 
 and powerful ; and things that are not, to bring to nought 
 those that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. 
 Here is no less than the story of the human soul, travelling 
 from darkness and through darkness up to light eternal, 
 "kept by the power of God unto salvation." And tJiougJi 
 it has the misfortune to be elevating and ennobling, we 
 believe that it may almost be described as (^pace a recent 
 school of critics) " a work of art." 
 
 We must not be tempted to linger over that other great 
 romance, the " Travaillcurs de la Mer." Here is man in 
 presence of Nature, wrestling with her, as Jacob wrestled 
 with the angel, and overcoming. The colossal will and 
 energy of GilHatt, the hero, are striving against the tre- 
 mendous and overwhelming infinitude of Nature's indignant 
 and infuriated legions. Baffled, thrown back, working on 
 to achieve the impossible, he at last achieves it. May not 
 this poem be described as the distinctively modern epic 
 desiderated by Carl)'le } It celebrates " tools and tJie ;//<?//," 
 the dignity of labour. Yet one reward, beyond the reward 
 of great work ach^e^•cd, he sought ; that had been his 
 
208 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 original motive-force — love — the love of a simple girl. 
 When he returns, his work achieved, he finds the girl loves 
 another, though to him she had been promised by her 
 father, in case he should do what seemed beyond human 
 power to do. The other is good and beautiful — lovable 
 by a girl. Gilliatt is only heroic. He might marry her ; 
 the other has her love ; so he yields them to one another. 
 The ship that bears them away on a calm sea passes in the 
 evening close to the rock where he is sitting ; and, himself 
 unseen, he sees the lovers toying together in their young 
 joy. He docs not move. The tide rises ; still he does not 
 move. The sea, that he has conquered, works her will on 
 him now unresistingly. This magnificent work has with 
 truth been compared to the " Prometheus " of zEschylus. 
 To that it bears much analogy. A ship has been wedged 
 high up between two rocks, partly by human treachery, 
 partly by the tempest. Gilliatt undertakes to float her, 
 unaided, and for this purpose he must live alone on these 
 barren rocks (the Douvres), in the midst of the raging 
 and melancholy northern seas. The poet's long exile in 
 Guernsey stood him in good stead here. The rocky 
 Channel islets, with their marvellous submarine habitations 
 and inhabitants, are most vividly described ; but the book 
 is in one aspect a long poem of the sea. The sea is repre- 
 sented in all her moods ; grave, sombre, terrific, in tem- 
 pestuous frenzy, gay, smiling, serene. The very salt breath 
 of turbulent storm blows and raves through these wonderful 
 pages, and the poet shows himself no less a master in 
 dealing with grand and awful, or tender and subtle forces 
 of external Nature, than with grand and awful, or tender 
 and subtle powers and emotions of man. Here he is 
 modern. The conscious and definite influence of external 
 Nature upon man, as also the increase of his power over 
 her, his study of her laws for his own purposes, this is 
 peculiarly modern. And this element accordingly is very 
 pronounced in the great modern romantic poet. But this 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 209 
 
 element does not in him overpower the human. Nature, 
 in fact, here almost occupies the very place of the gods 
 in the older mythologies, which indeed is her right place. 
 The gods are Nature ; Nature is the gods. She is in some 
 sense stronger than man ; yet he is in some sense stronger 
 than she. He is greater than what seems to him material 
 nature, in so far as she is or seems material, though in this 
 character she lays the yoke of her Ananke upon him, 
 which now he overcomes, and which now overcomes him. 
 But as obeying the Divine law of her inmost being she is 
 greater than man ; he must bow to the Divine necessity of 
 her Order. Then there is that awful irony of Fate or cir- 
 cumstance, which is so pronounced in the work of Sophocles 
 and Shakespeare, as it is likewise in that of Victor Hugo, 
 Man is crossed and thwarted, after all his plans and pre- 
 parations, life-long exertions and fondest hopes ; some- 
 thing altogether different being determined as final outcome 
 and result, Gilliatt on the rock drowning, and his love 
 gliding to happiness with another. This is the end of the 
 life-toil ; yet he cannot have laboured or loved in vain. — 
 " Behind the veil ! Behind the veil ! " 
 
 Hugo's intense realistic imagination of the terrible is of 
 course peculiarly manifest in Gilliatt's encounter with the 
 Pieuvre, or immense devil-fish, in the lovely sea-cavern, so 
 charmingly described. That this is exaggerated is not true, 
 for enormous creatures of the kind exist, at all events, in 
 tropical seas,* This is St, George and the Dragon over 
 again ; and you might as well blame Ariosto, or Dante, or 
 great mediaeval painters and sculptors, for their innumer- 
 able elaborate creations of such monstrous objects, as blame 
 the modern, who has, by his study of modern science, seen 
 
 * Hugo told me, when I had the honour of being presented to him in 
 Paris, and described my swims in and about the Gouliot caves in Sark, and 
 conversations with the boatmen there concerning the octopus, that he had 
 himself seen either in those caves, or in the Boutiques, an immense octopus 
 pursuing a bather. 
 
 P 
 
2IO ESSAYS OX POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 and restored much that our ancestors conceived. The 
 Pieuvre, moreover, is an ugly symbol of the evil spiritual 
 powers, with which man contends. For the rest, Hugo 
 may revel in his strength of creation in this region, as 
 Ariosto and Dante revelled before him ; as the builders too 
 of our great Gothic cathedrals revelled in their gargoyles 
 and hobgoblins. But before we quit this romance, observe 
 the perfect unity of it as a work of art. The same is true 
 of " Notre Dame de Paris." In that I can only draw 
 attention to the splendid portrait of the supple, brilliant 
 gipsy girl, Esmeralda, and her goat, which I think must 
 have suggested Fedalma to George Eliot, as the wonderful 
 Anzoletto of George Sand must have suggested Tito. 
 
 In conclusion, we come to the recently-published ro- 
 mance of the Revolution — " Quatre-vingt-treize." Nothing, 
 I have said already, can have more perfect artistic unity 
 than this. And remember that it may not be so easy to 
 rein in Pegasus as to drive a hackney-coach-horse with 
 perfect propriety along a well-worn high road, which hack- 
 ney-coachmen of the gentle, and ungentle crafts should 
 remember. Respectable people, nay, and " poetical," senti- 
 mental, superfine, academical people, with pouncet boxes, 
 and faultless " taste," who have successfully embanked 
 the tame waters of their canal, seem to claim the right, 
 therefore, of abusing Enceladus for not keeping his Etna- 
 fires in like prim order. A suburban villa garden making 
 mouths at a forest ! Is that very edifying ? Now here 
 there is near the commencement a powerful, though doubt- 
 less somewhat grotesque description of a carronade that 
 got loose on a ship, and behaved like a living demon, in 
 the end causing the destruction of the ship and her crew. 
 This has at once been pounced upon by the funny tribe of 
 criticasters, poetlings, parodists, and punsters, whom the 
 public pays to tickle, or sadden it with strange antics. 
 And the English people are too often only in a position 
 to judge the great Frenchman from such silly reproductions 
 
VICTOR MU(JO. 211 
 
 of, or strictures upon, his occasional tricks of manner — say 
 the casual warts upon one of his fingers. That there is 
 anything very absurd in this description of the carronade's 
 behaviour, we for our part are not ready to admit. He 
 endows it with a terrible grotesque weird life of its own 
 indeed. But are the poctlings and criticasters prepared to 
 swear that these things are really dead ? that he who 
 should deem otherwise must necessarily be a fool ? Do 
 they know so much about it as all that ? Possibly Hugo 
 may know as much as they do. We do not attach great 
 importance to the mouths made by people to whom a 
 primrose is "a yellow primrose and nothing more" at 
 those to whom it is a deal more. And, after all, are these 
 people sure that, even from the most mechanical, prosaic 
 view of the matter, if a heavy iron carronade gets loose 
 upon a ship in a storm, it will not play the very deuce, as 
 this one did ? But here you have dapper pigmies standing 
 by a colossus, and spitting at him, because they can see 
 nothing more of him than a few casual stains and irregu- 
 larities, that are level with their own noses. Or rather, 
 they have a dim, uneasy sense of something towering, and 
 soaring away from them ; so the painful feeling of their 
 own dwarfed impotence makes them prefer to fix their 
 attention, and direct that of the passers, to these palpable 
 roughnesses on the base of the mighty Memnon, whose 
 solemn sounds are ringing in the pure dawn above. 
 
 What shall be said of the opening chapter, where the 
 republican sergeant, Radoub, and his soldiers, marching 
 through a wood, find a poor ragged woman with two 
 children in a thicket, where she has taken refuge from the 
 civil war that has desolated her home .-■ The conversation 
 between this poor peasant, the vivandiere of the regiment, 
 and the rough, rollicking, but generous-hearted and gallant 
 sergeant, reads just like life — as if it were a transcript. 
 The keen political partizanship of these hot Parisian 
 warriors is contrasted with the vacant and ignorant replies 
 
212 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 of the poor Breton mother, who takes no side, and does 
 not understand either side, but just naYvely and inevitably 
 lets out her superstitious, unquestioning reverence for things 
 established, in her replies, in spite of all she has suffered 
 from the feudal lord and from the priest. This at first 
 enrages her rough querists ; but the common humanity of 
 the parties asserts itself at last, and the regiment ends 
 by adopting the poor children, and taking the mother with 
 them. The rapid, broad mastery of the strokes bringing 
 out the figures of these poor illiterate people, is in the 
 manner of Scott, or Shakespeare, rather than in the elabo- 
 rate, analytic manner of Browning, or George Eliot. The 
 perfect fairness and truth, moreover, with which both parties 
 to this great and terrible modern controversy are given, not- 
 withstanding the poet's own strong bias toward Liberalism, 
 is most remakable, and evidence enough, surely, of his first- 
 rate dramatic capability. 
 
 Here you have the epic of the Revolution ; and you see 
 that one need not be cold and impassive, without personal 
 convictions, or passionate humanity, in order to be a great 
 artist. One need not take a merely artistic, aesthetic interest 
 in the world and its doings — " sitting as God, holding no 
 form of creed, but contemplating all." Indeed, this is to be 
 a Brummagem god merely ; a stock, or a stone : he is most 
 like God, who is most human. Goethe was, in fact, an 
 exception, instead of being the rule, as minor aesthetic per- 
 sons appear to suppose. And, save in "Faust," which, as he 
 said himself, " is incommensurable," and assuredly one of 
 the world's masterpieces, I cannot think that Goethe, any 
 more than Schiller — though he too was a great dramatist — 
 attained the same degree of human truth, intensity, and 
 grandeur, as Victor Hugo. Schiller, however, died young. 
 Compare, for instance, Goethe's peasants and illiterate 
 people with Hugo's. The latter talk argot ; but it is not 
 the argot merely that makes Gavroche so living. This is 
 no exceedingly clever study by a catholic-minded litterateur. 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 213 
 
 The man Hugo lives in Gavroche, Thenardicr, Michelle 
 Flechard, or Radoub, as that other man, Shakespeare, lived 
 in Falstaff, lago, Malvolio, or the grave-digger — lives more 
 even, we fancy, in his children, than that other lived in 
 Arthur, or Macduff's little son. (If Shakespeare practised 
 all the trades he shows a knowledge of, as the critics seem 
 to think he did, we wonder, by the way, how many trades 
 Hugo has practised. He certainly has rather the weakness 
 of seeming omniscient ; and his technical terms, together 
 with his argot, make him very hard reading for a foreigner.) 
 Mephistophcles and Faust are indeed great representative 
 figures ; but as for Werther, the Saint Preux of Rousseau 
 anticipates him. Do you not see Goethe's temperament in 
 the comparative pallor of his pictures ? Shakespeare's in 
 the depth and richness of his ? 
 
 The old Breton marquis, Lantenac, represents the royalist 
 and conservative party. He is appointed commander-in- 
 chief of the royalist armies in La Vendee — a stern, indeed 
 cruel old man, imbued with all ancient prejudices, and all 
 the unbending haughtiness of his illustrious race, reserved, 
 cold and sarcastic, brave, energetic, a grand seigneur of the 
 old school, a born soldier, full of resource and capability. 
 This is a magnificent full-length picture, without a tinge of 
 caricature, felt and represented with utter fidelity. To him 
 are opposed Gauvain, his grand-nephew, and Cimourdain, 
 an ex-priest, tutor of Gauvain. Both these again are splen- 
 didly portrayed. The corvette in which Lantenac has 
 embarked for Brittany, through fault of the man whose 
 business it had been to secure the carronades, becomes (as 
 already mentioned) unmanageable. This gives the repub- 
 lican fleet opportunity to close in upon the corvette, she 
 having the Minquiers rocks, and the choice of wreck on 
 them, behind her. The same man, by a daring act, manages 
 to secure the carronade in its place again, but the mischief 
 is done. Lantenac therefore decorates him for his bravery, 
 and has him shot for his carelessness. There is only one 
 
214 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 chance of Lantenac's escaping — if somebody who knows 
 the coast will row him away from the doomed vessel in a 
 boat, and land him alone. One volunteers to do this. In 
 the open sea this man, however, informs Lantenac that he 
 is brother to that other person who has just been shot by 
 the marquis's order ; so he bids the marquis prepare to die. 
 Then follows a very powerful scene, wherein Lantenac 
 dominates the boatman, whose hand is on the trigger of his 
 pistol, by sheer force of character, by skilful ap*peal also to 
 their common beliefs and aspirations, political as well as 
 religious. This man (Halmalo) becomes his most devoted 
 adherent, to whom he gives commissions of the utmost im- 
 portance. Landed, he pursues his way alone, but finds 
 that his descent has been anticipated, and a price put upon 
 his head. An old beggar, named Telmarch,one of the people 
 of his own estate, conceals Lantenac in his strange wild den 
 under the roots of a tree, till all immediate danger is past. 
 Ultimately, Lantenac puts himself at the head of the 
 peasants. All these his adventures, and the crises of his 
 fate, are told with the utmost graphic power of keeping our 
 interest alive ; complicating and involving, then unravelling 
 the web of circumstances, so carrying the reader on through 
 the story, a faculty essential to the novelist's art, but which 
 those skilful in character-drawing do not always possess. 
 As general, Lantenac, to attain his political ends, shrinks 
 from no severity. Victorious, he has prisoners and women 
 shot. Among others, the mother of the children adopted 
 by the republican battalion is shot, while the children are 
 carried away as hostages. Telmarch, creeping out of his 
 den, finds the neighbouring village on fire, and corpses of 
 massacred persons in the street. Then he regrets having 
 saved Lantenac. But the mother is not quite dead. He 
 takes and cures her of her wounds. Yet she only revives 
 to find her children gone. Her scant-worded, brooding 
 despair, as she slowly recovers, is terribly given. At last 
 she sets off to seek the children. A passer informs her that 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 21 q 
 
 they have probably been taken to La Tourgue. Gauvain, in 
 fact, defeats Lantenac in several battles (one of these in the 
 town of Dol is described with extraordinary power), and 
 forces him to find refuge at length with only a few faithful 
 followers in the old feudal tower or castle, La Tourgue, which 
 is the hereditary seat of their family. This Gauvain and 
 Cimourdain besiege. The illiterate peasant mother of these 
 children is a most admirable figure throughout. There is 
 no single trait or word inconsistent with her simple, rude, 
 almost savage concentration of yearning, devoted, suffering, 
 all-braving maternity. How grotesque would she have 
 seemed, rendered in the microscopic-psychology fashion of 
 Mr. Browning, analyzing her own self in Mr. Browning's 
 own peculiar, uncouth, involved, and learned diction ! But 
 how remote from the poet's own immediate personality is 
 such a figure, and what great dramatic genius is implied by 
 the transference of many such to his canvas ! 
 
 Through the character of Cimourdain there is the best 
 truthful and sympathetic explanation extant of the terrible 
 violence of revolutionary idealists like Robespierre ; while 
 there is interpretation even of wretches like Marat as instru- 
 ments of providential purpose, as reaction too from the long 
 grinding tyranny of centuries ; such tyranny being incident- 
 ally indicated, partly by a minute description of the feudal 
 fortress. La Tourgue, with its horrors of dungeon and tor- 
 ture (a description likewise necessary to a due compre- 
 hension of the siege, which involves the catastrophe of the 
 whole piece, and occupies all the third volume), partly also 
 by what the mother, Flechard, relates to the Parisian 
 soldiers in that opening scene of all. In this arrangement 
 the reader will note there is consummate art. Cimourdain is 
 possessed with an idea — the republican. He is possessed 
 with poignant, indignant pity for the sufferings of the 
 people. All the old Bastilles, all institutions founded upon 
 prejudice and selfish privilege of caste, which keep the 
 people in slavery, all these must fall ; and with them the 
 
2l6 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 castes themselves, the persons who are their inveterate, im- 
 placable supporters. Blood must be let in torrents at such 
 a crisis. The king, priests, and nobles must be slain ; nay, 
 even the women and children of these castes may not be 
 spared. All royal and aristocratic Europe must be " terri- 
 fied." No quarter shall be given. Even the imbruted, 
 priest-ridden peasant prisoners must be killed. This is a 
 Brutus. On either side, in great struggles of races and 
 principles, there have always appeared those terrible fanatics 
 — Lantenacs, Cimourdains, Cromwells, Ziskas, Alvas. But 
 on the other hand you have leaders like Gauvain, Paoli, or 
 Garibaldi, equally full of love for the people, but clement, 
 generous, more far-sighted through love. Now the terrible 
 Cimourdain loves Gauvain like his own youngest and 
 dearest child. The spirit of liberty and sympathy with the 
 oppressed has passed from the tutor into the pupil ; but 
 here appears again the sad tragic irony of circumstance. 
 The two inevitably clash upon this irreconcilable rock of 
 difference in their natures. Gauvain is the frank, gallant, 
 idealistic, beautiful young soldier ; Cimourdain, the sombre, 
 thin-lipped priest, hating his old creed and caste, self- 
 devoted even to martyrdom, doing things for the miserable 
 all others shrank from doing, yet still full of the fierce, 
 fanatical, sacerdotal spirit of tyranny, enforcing his new 
 creed with sanguinary violence. The Committee of Public 
 Safety in Paris has deputed Cimourdain to watch Gauvain, 
 as general of the Republican army in La Vendee, because 
 Gauvain, being a noble, is suspected, and it is thought well 
 to set an ex-priest to watch an ex-noble. We have a 
 glimpse of the Convention, and of the principal figures that 
 swayed the destinies of France at that terrible time. 
 Robespierre, Danton, and Marat quarrel, and take counsel 
 together. We see enough of them. But if there is impar- 
 tiality in the representation of the several characters, there 
 is not so much of it in the political dissertation of this part. 
 Some rather wild and extravagant statements are made 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 217 
 
 such as Victor Hugo has not unwarrantably been accused 
 of making when his imagination is much inflamed on a 
 particular side ; as, for instance, when he talks about Paris 
 being "centre of the universe." He calls the Convention 
 " the summit of history, the Avatar of peoples." But this is 
 to ignore the pre-Christian republics ; Buddhism in India ; 
 Switzerland ; the Italian free states ; the Netherlands ; the 
 Reformation in Germany; the revival of learning; especially 
 our own long, steady campaign in favour of universal 
 liberty, and progress of free, sound reason. Where tyranny 
 has for ages eaten into the vitals of a race, when the yoke 
 is thrown off there will too often appear excess, licence, ex- 
 travagance, unreason, misnamed reason, social disorganiza- 
 tion, Utopia, cruelty, the reign of the brute in man, the 
 denial of the angel in him. There is good and right in 
 such upheavings ; they are necessary ; they are helpful, as 
 the cyclone and whirlwind are ; they constitute a stride in 
 the true line of progress. Good fruit will be borne ; but 
 there are sure to be superstitious reaction and retrogression, 
 besides the loss of much that is all-important to human 
 society. Violence begets violence. Civil stability and 
 national sobriety are endangered. The calm, reverent, truly 
 conservative progress of peoples is a higher and surer pro- 
 gress. Therefore this claim of the great Frenchman for his 
 great revolution is immoderate. 
 
 The grand volume is the last. There is nothing more 
 magnificent in modern literature. The two children, who 
 have been taken as hostages by Lantenac, have been placed 
 in the second story of the castle in an old library. And 
 LTmanus, the cruel, unscrupulous lieutenant of Lantenac, 
 has proclaimed to the besiegers from the top of the tower, 
 that unless the besieged be allowed to leave it safe and 
 sound, he will fire the castle, and the children shall be 
 burned. This condition, however, is refused, for Lantenac 
 must not escape. The progress of the siege is elaborately 
 described. The hand-to-hand, fierce, uproarious death- 
 
21 8 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 combats by torchlight in each successively-defended vaulted 
 chamber, and on the narrow spiral staircase of the tower, 
 amid smoke and grime of gunpowder, these have all the 
 verve and movement of Homer or Walter Scott. We hold 
 our breaths, as the besiegers gain little by little upon the 
 desperate defence ; while, as a relief to the storm of rage 
 and slaughter, the innocent play and prattle of those two 
 little children in the library are elaborately recorded. It is 
 a wonderful contrast. And never has the poet written more 
 exquisitely of children than here. They talk, they laugh, 
 they eat the simple food provided for them ; they mimic 
 the awful battle sounds faintly heard through the thick 
 walls. They even smile at the terrible dawn of hell-fires 
 that are to consume them ; and then they slumber together 
 in their cot, their rosy limbs and curly heads illumined by 
 flame. But Gauvain has sent for a ladder, that every effort 
 may be made to save them. Something like it is seen 
 arriving ; but, alas ! no ladder ! it is the guillotine for 
 Lantenac. The sinister guillotine on the plateau opposite 
 the castle rock, and the sinister old tower are thus brought 
 face to face. Feudal privilege, darkness, superstition ; 
 cruelty, and the savage vengeance of revolution. Sergeant 
 Radoub appears again. He climbs like a cat by a breach 
 in the wall from the rez-de-chaiiss^e to the first story. 
 Here there is a wounded man of the garrison. The en- 
 counter between these two is most vividly described — 
 Radoub, while fighting, jesting half-savagely in barrack- 
 room, saiis-culotte slang. The grim humour of this to-the- 
 life relation artistically relieves the horror and gravity of 
 the event. He finds up there arms laid ready for the 
 besieged when they shall be driven to this story. Of them 
 he makes the best use, till the besieged suppose that the 
 enemy have somehow taken this chamber of the first floor ; 
 so they abandon it, together with that below, and rush 
 up to the second story. Here the defenders barricade 
 themselves, and receive absolution from their priest, thinking 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 219 
 
 their last hour arrived. Suddenly a great stone in the wall 
 turns, and reveals a secret passage. Halmalo, the boat- 
 man, who alone had known of it, had used the knowledge 
 to deliver them. He appears, and they are saved. But 
 one person must remain to keep the foe in check, while the 
 rest escape. L'Imanus remains. He kills many who try 
 to force their way up, until through an aperture Radoub 
 plunges a sword into his stomach, and springs into the 
 chamber alone, surprised to find it apparently untenanted. 
 L'Imdnus, dying, has crept to the train of combustible 
 materials his infernal ingenuity has laid, communicating 
 with that more modern part of the building where the 
 children are, and set it alight. Radoub in the twilight 
 does not see any one ; but a shot fired by the prostrate 
 L'Imanus, grazing him, he says, " Mais si ! il y a quelqu'un ! 
 Qui est ce qui a la bonte de me faire cette politesse ? " 
 
 Now the mother, Michelle Flechard, has been wandering 
 on for many a league, to find her children at La Tourgue. 
 The behaviour of the rough strange woman, driven to 
 desperation among the frightened people of the country, 
 who hardly dare assist her ; her determined tramp onward, 
 though she is nearly dying from weakness and fatigue ; 
 her first sight of the sombre tower reddened with sunset ; 
 all is inimitably real. She arrives at the summit of a roll- 
 ing plateau that faces the castle, that faces, indeed, the 
 library w^here her children are, though there is a profound, 
 but very narrow ravine between this plateau and the rock 
 on which the castle is built. As soon as she arrives there, 
 the lower story of the castle begins to smoke, and a tongue 
 of fire rushes out of the window. And by the glare of 
 this flame she distinguishes in the library (for she can see 
 into it) — her children — asleep ! and the flames mounting 
 toward them. " EUe jeta un cri effrayant. Ce cri de 
 Michelle Flechard fut un hurlcment. Hecube aboya, dit 
 Homere." Now Lantenac (his companions having dis- 
 persed by his orders), issuing out of the secret passage, sees 
 
220 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 between the trees this conflagration illumining the tower, 
 and the poor woman, Jiagard et lamentable, bending over 
 the ravine. He hears also her crj'. " Cette figure, ce n'^tait 
 plus Michelle Flechard ! c'etait Gorgone. Les misdrables 
 sont les formidables. La paysanne s'etait transfiguree en 
 Eum^nide. Elle se dressait la, au bord de ce ravin, devant 
 cet embrasement, devant ce crime, comme une puissance 
 sepulcrale ; elle avait le cri de la bete, et le geste de la 
 d^esse : sa face, dont tombaient des imprecations semblait 
 un masque de flamboicment. Rien de souverain comme 
 r^clair de ses yeux noy^s de larmes ; son regard foudroyait 
 I'incendie." Then he tells us what fell from this mother. 
 And all I can say is that if one would have his mind set 
 at rest] as to what is the true language of tragedy in 
 supreme situations, the simple, or the ornate and recondite, 
 let him read this and learn — for here it is. There is, indeed, 
 one awful short phrase, and one only, in all her long prayer 
 and zxy of agony, that descends to terrible depths, or rises 
 into sublime heights of imagination : " O ! s'ils devaient 
 mourir comme cela, je tuerais Dieu ! " One only means 
 there is of saving them — a huge iron door of communication 
 between the second stor}- of the tower, and the second 
 story of the modern castle, built upon arches thrown across 
 the ravine, where the children are. It cannot be stove in. 
 And one alone has the key of it — Lantenac ! Now Lan- 
 tenac heard and saw the mother's awful despair — he 
 thought of the little children — he re-entered the secret 
 passage, and appeared among the astonished victors in the 
 tower, who were vainly thundering at the iron door. He 
 calmly opened it, and passed into the flames, the floor 
 crumbling to ashes behind him. The children, awake, were 
 admiring the ruddy glow, but feeling the great heat, were 
 calling " Maman ! " out of window, seeing her, while she 
 frantically shrieked their names. Lantenac brought a 
 ladder (kept in the castle) and reached it out of one of the 
 windows — Raboub and the besiegers mounting to forma 
 
VICTOR HUGO. 22 1 
 
 human chain up the rungs of the ladder. To the first of 
 them the marquis hands one child ; then he hands another. 
 Of the youngest, Georgette, two years old only, he inquires 
 her name. She answers with a lisp and a smile : the fierce 
 old man kisses her. Then Lantenac slowly and majestically 
 descends the ladder amid the flames. (Hugo has an eye 
 always to picturesque, grandiose external effect.) Arrived 
 at the bottom, Cimourdain arrests him, and confines him 
 in his own dungeon. But Gauvain meditates that night, 
 pacing to and fro before the prison. The sense of family 
 ties comes over him ; he is full of admiration and surprised 
 delight that, even in Lantenac, the light of love has dawned, 
 so as to cause him to sacrifice himself for these little ones ; 
 he cannot bear that this act should bring him to death. 
 Shall the righteous republic be so implacable ? Long he 
 debates with himself, feeling also how much there is to be 
 said in favour of severity in this particular case ; but finally 
 he enters the prison, intending to remain there in place of 
 his relative. The marquis, on first seeing him, speaks at 
 great length to him with bitter upbraiding frankness about 
 existing complications and events, both public and private. 
 You can hear the cold, half-jesting, sarcastic, yet indignantly 
 eloquent, proud nobleman of the old school in every word. 
 All is a perfect revelation of the character, and of the 
 aristocratic idea. Hugo himself, be it remembered, has been 
 in early life a royalist, and is of noble fam.ily. Before 
 Lantenac half understands what his nephew is about, he 
 finds himself pushed into the open air, disguised as Gauvain. 
 Then, when the moment for Lantenac's trial comes on, 
 Gauvain appears before the tribunal, to be judged in his 
 place. Cimourdain trembles, and turns pale. He cannot 
 believe Gauvain's own confession. But Gauvain has come 
 to see that he was wrong ; he has released a mortal enemy 
 of his country ; and he asks to expiate his fault, and make 
 atonement, by himself submitting to the penalty of the 
 guillotine. Radoub delivers a generous speech in his 
 
222 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 favour ; the blunt old sergeant, in his half-humorous, half- 
 earnest way, declares Lantenac and Gauvain have both 
 done right, and that Gauvain ought to be promoted to the 
 highest rank in the republic rather than be executed. His 
 strange, rude protestations, garnished with extraordinary 
 oaths, make one smile in the' midst of tears. But Cimour- 
 dain gives the casting vote of president in favour of death. 
 Before the execution, he has a last interview with his dear 
 child and pupil, whom he loves best in the world. But he 
 has sworn to the Committee of Public Safety that, in such 
 an event as the present, he would show no mercy. He is 
 Brutus. Yet the two men converse on great principles by 
 night in the dungeon — Gauvain quite calm, and reconciled 
 to his fate. What Gauvain enounces for his own noble, 
 hopeful beliefs, are doubtless those of the poet. The army 
 that adores him would fain grant him pardon, but Cimour- 
 dain is inexorable. At the moment when the axe of the 
 guillotine falls, the report of a pistol is heard ; and Cimour- 
 dain, who has been watching, cold and rigid as fate or 
 death, falls dead himself He has done his duty, but he 
 cannot survive his darling child. " Et ces deux ^mes, sceurs 
 tragiques, s'envolerent ensemble, I'ombre de I'une melee a 
 la lumiere de I'autre." 
 
 Since I wrote this, now some years ago, the great poet 
 of Europe too has entered into what he once called " la 
 grandc lueur." 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 
 
 It is perhaps difficult for men of middle age to estimate 
 Tennyson aright. For we who love poetry were brought 
 up, as it were, at his feet, and he cast the magic of his 
 fascination over our youth. We have gone away, we have 
 travelled in other lands, absorbed in other preoccupations, 
 often revolving problems different from those concerning 
 which we took counsel with him ; and we hear new voices, 
 claiming authority, who aver that our old master has been 
 superseded, that he has no message for a new generation, 
 that his voice is no longer a talisman of power. Then we 
 return to the country of our early love, and what shall our 
 report be ? Each one must answer for himself ; but my 
 report will be entirely loyal to those early and dear im- 
 pressions. I am of those who believe that Tennyson has 
 still a message for the world. Men become impatient with 
 hearing Aristides so often called just, but is that the fault 
 of Aristides .'' They are impatient also with a reputation, 
 which necessarily is what all great reputations must so 
 largely be — the empty echo of living voices from blank 
 walls. " Now again " — not the people, but certain critics — 
 " call it but a weed." Yet how strange these fashions in 
 poetry are ! I well remember Lord Broughton, Byron's 
 friend, expressing to me, when I was a boy, his astonish- 
 ment that the bust of Tennyson by Woolner should have 
 been thought worthy of a place near that of Lord Byron 
 in Trinity College, Cambridge. " Lord Byron was a great 
 
224 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 poet ; but Mr. Tennyson, though he had written pretty 
 verses," and so on. For one thing, the men of that gene- 
 ration deemed Tennyson terribly obscure, " In Memoriam," 
 it was held, nobody could possibly understand. The poet, 
 being original, had to make his own public. Men nurtured 
 on Scott and Byron could not comprehend him. Now we 
 hear no more of his obscurity. Moreover, he spoke as the 
 mouthpiece of his own time. Doubts, aspirations, visions 
 unfamiliar to the aging, breathed melodiously through him. 
 Again, how contemptuously do Broad-church psychologists 
 like George Macdonald, and writers for the Spectator, as 
 well as literary persons belonging to what I may term the 
 finikin school, on the other hand, now talk of our equally 
 great poet Byron. How detestable must the North be, 
 if the South be so admirable ! But while Tennyson spoke 
 to me in youth, Byron spoke to me in boyhood, and I still 
 love both. 
 
 Whatever may have to be discounted from the popu- 
 larity of Tennyson on account of fashion and a well-known 
 name, or on account of his harmony with the (more or less 
 provincial) ideas of the large majority of Englishmen, his 
 popularity is a fact of real benefit to the public, and highly 
 creditable to them at the same time. The establishment 
 of his name in popular favour is but very partially ac- 
 counted for by the circumstance that, when he won his 
 spurs, he was among younger singers the only serious 
 champion in the field, since, if I mistake not, he was at 
 one time a less " popular " poet than ]\Ir. Robert Mont- 
 gomery. Vox populi is not always vox Dei, but it may be 
 so accidentally, and then the people reap benefit from their 
 happy blunder. The great poet who won the laurel before 
 Tennyson has never been " popular " at all, and Tennyson 
 is the only true English poet who has pleased the " public " 
 since Byron, Walter Scott, Tom Moore, and Mrs. Hcmans. 
 But he had to conquer their suffrages, for his utterance, 
 whatever he may have owed to Keats, was original, and 
 
THE rOETRY OF TENNYSON. 225 
 
 his substance the outcome of an opulent and profound 
 pcrsonaHty. These were serious obstacles to success, for 
 he neither went " deep " into " the general heart " like Burns, 
 nor appealed to superficial sentiments in easy language like 
 Scott, Moore, Byron, and since, Longfellow. In his earliest 
 volume indeed there was a preponderance of manner over 
 matter ; it was characterized by a certain dainty prettiness 
 of style, that scarcely gave promise of the high spiritual 
 vision and rich complexity of human insight to which he 
 has since attained, though it did manifest a delicate feeling 
 for Nature in association with human moods, an extra- 
 ordinarily subtle sensibility of all senses, and a luscious 
 pictorial power. Not Endymion had been more luxuriant. 
 All was steeped in golden languors. There were faults 
 in plenty, and of course the critics, faithful to the instincts 
 of their kind, were jubilant to nose them. To adapt 
 Coleridge's funny verses, not " the Church of St. Geryon," 
 nor the legendary Rhine, but the " stinks and stenches " of 
 Kolntown do such offal-feeders love to enumerate, and 
 distinguish. But the poet in his verses on " Musty Chris- 
 topher " gave one of these people a Roland for his Oliver. 
 Stuart Mill, as Mr. Mathews, in his lately published and 
 very instructive lecture on Tennyson, points out, was the 
 one critic in a million who remembered Pope's precept — 
 
 " Be thou the first true merit to befriend, 
 His praise is lost who v.aits till all commend." 
 
 Yet it is only natural that the mediocrities, who for a 
 moment keep the door of Fame, should scrutinize with 
 somewhat jaundiced eye the credentials of new aspirants, 
 since every entry adds fresh bitterness to their own ex- 
 clusion. 
 
 But really it is well for us, the poet's elect lovers, to 
 remember that he once had faults, however few he may 
 now retain ; for the perverse generation who dance not 
 when the poet pipes to them, nor mourn when he weeps, 
 
 Q 
 
226 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 have turned upon Tennyson with the cry that he " is all 
 fault who has no fault at all " — they would have us regard 
 him as a kind of Andrea del Sarto, a " blameless " artistic 
 " monster," a poet of unimpeachable technical skill, but 
 keeping a certain dead level of moderate merit. It is as 
 well to be reminded that this at all events is false. The 
 dawn of his young art was beautiful ; but the artist had 
 all the generous faults of youthful genius — excess, vision 
 confused with gorgeous colour and predominant sense, too 
 palpable artifice of diction, indistinctness of articulation 
 in the outline, intricately-woven cross-lights flooding the 
 canvas, defect of living interest ; while Coleridge said that 
 he began to write poetry without an ear for metre. Neither 
 Adeline, Madeline, nor Eleanore are living portraits, though 
 Eleanore is gorgeously painted. " The Ode to Memory " 
 has isolated images of rare beauty, but it is kaleidoscopic 
 in effect ; the fancy is playing with loose foam-wreaths, 
 rather than the imagination " taking things by the heart." 
 But our great poet has gone beyond these. He has himself 
 rejected twenty-six out of the fifty-eight poems published 
 in his first volume ; while some of those even in the second 
 have been altogether rewritten. Such defects are eminently 
 present in the lately republished poem written in youth, 
 " The Lover's Tale," though this too has been altered. As 
 a storehouse of fine imagery, metaphor, and deftly moulded 
 phrase, of blank verse also whose sonorous rhythm must 
 surely be a fabric of adult architecture, the piece can hardly 
 be surpassed ; but the talc as tale lingers and lapses, over- 
 weighted with the too gorgeous trappings under which it 
 so laboriously moves. And such expression as the follow- 
 ing, though not un- Shakespearian, is hardly quarried from 
 the soundest material in Shakespeare — for, after all, Shake- 
 speare was a euphuist now and then — 
 
 " Why fed we from one fountain? drew one sun ? 
 Why were our mothers branches of one stem. 
 If that same nearness 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 22/ 
 
 Were father to this distance, and that one 
 Vaunt courier to this double, if affection 
 Living slew love, and sympathy hewed out 
 The bosom-sepulchre of sympathy ? " 
 
 Yet " Mariana " had the virtue, which the poet has 
 displayed so pre-eminently since, of concentration. Every 
 subtle touch enhances the effect he intends to produce, that 
 of the desolation of the deserted woman, whose hope is 
 nearly extinguished ; Nature hammering a fresh nail into 
 her coffin with every innocent aspect or movement. Beau- 
 tiful too, are " Love and Death " and " The Poet's Mind ; " 
 while in "The Poet" we have the oft-quoted line: "Dowered 
 with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." 
 
 Mr. G. Brimley was the first, I believe, to point out the 
 distinctive peculiarity of Lord Tennyson's treatment of 
 landscape. It is treated by him dramatically ; that is to 
 say, the details of it are selected so as to be interpretative 
 of the particular mood or emotion he wishes to represent. 
 Thus, in the two Marianas, they arc painted with the 
 minute distinctness appropriate to the morbid and sicken- 
 ing observation of the lonely woman, whose attention is 
 distracted by no cares, pleasures, or satisfied affections. 
 That is a pregnant remark, a key to unlock a good deal of 
 Tennyson's work with. Byron and Shelley, though they 
 are carried out of themselves in contemplating Nature, do 
 not, I think, often take her as interpreter of moods alien 
 to their own. In Wordsworth's " Excursion," it is true, 
 Margaret's lonely grief is thus delineated through the 
 neglect of her garden and the surroundings of her cottage ; 
 yet this is not so characteristic a note of his Nature-poetry. 
 In the " Miller's Daughter " and the " Gardener's Daughter " 
 the lovers would be little indeed without the associated 
 scene so germane to the incidents narrated, both as con- 
 genial setting of the picture for a spectator, and as virtually 
 fused with the emotion of the lovers ; while never was 
 more lovely landscape-painting of the gentle order than in 
 
228 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 the " Gardener's Daughter." Lessing, who says that poetry 
 ought never to be pictorial, would, I suppose, much object 
 to Tennyson's ; but to me, I confess, this mellow, lucid, 
 luminous word-painting of his is entirely delightful. It 
 refutes the criticism that words cannot convey a picture by 
 perfectly conveying it. Solvitiir ajubulaiido ; the Gardener's 
 Daughter standing by her rose-bush, " a sight to make an 
 old man young," remaining in our vision to confound all 
 crabbed pedants with pet theories. 
 
 In his second volume, indeed, the poet's art was well 
 mastered, for here we find " The Lotos-eaters," " CEnone," 
 " The Palace of Art," " A Dream of Fair Women," the 
 tender " May-Queen," and the " Lady of Shalott." Perhaps 
 the first four of these are among the very finest works of 
 Tennyson. In the mouth of the love-lorn nymph, CEnone, 
 he places the complaint concerning Paris into which there 
 enters so much delightful picture of the scenery around 
 Mount Ida, and of those fair immortals who came to be 
 judged by the beardless apple-arbiter. How deliciously 
 flows the verse ! — though probably it flows still more 
 entrancingly in " The Lotos-eaters,'' wandering there like 
 clouds of fragrant incense, or some slow heavy honey, or 
 a rare amber unguent poured out. How wonderfully har- 
 monious with the dream-mood of the dreamers are phrase, 
 image, and measure ! But we need not quote the lovely 
 choric song wherein occur the lines — 
 
 " Music that gentlier on the spirit Ues 
 Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes." 
 
 SO entirely restful and happy in their simplicity. If Art 
 would always blossom so, she might be forgiven if she 
 blossomed only for her own sake ; yet this controversy 
 regarding Art for Art need hardly have arisen, since Art 
 may certainly bloom for her own sake, if only she consent 
 to assimilate in her blooming, and so exhale for her votaries, 
 in due proportion, all elements essential to Nature, and 
 Humanity ; for in the highest artist all faculties are trans- 
 
THE rOETRY OF TENNYSON. 229 
 
 figured into one supreme organ ; while among forms her 
 form is the most consummate, among fruits her fruit offers 
 the most satisfying refreshment. What a delicately true 
 picture have we here — 
 
 " And like a downward smoke, the slender stream 
 Along the clilTto fall, and pause, and fall did seem." 
 
 where we feel also the poet's remarkable faculty of making 
 word and rhythm an echo and au.xiliary of the sense. Not 
 only have we the three caesuras respectively after " fall," 
 and " pause" and "fall," but the length, and soft amplitude 
 of the vowel sounds, with liquid consonant, said in the 
 realization of the picture, reminding of Milton's beautiful 
 " From morn to noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
 a summer's day." The same faculty is notable in the 
 rippling lilt of the charming little " Brook " song, and 
 indeed everywhere. In the " Dream of Fair Women " we 
 have a series of cabinet portraits, presenting a situation of 
 human interest with a few animating touches, but still 
 chiefly through suggestive surroundings. There occurs the 
 magnificent phrase of Cleopatra : " Wc drank the Lybian 
 sun to sleep, and lit Lamps which outburned Canopus." 
 The force of expression could be carried no further than 
 throughout this poem, and by " expression " of course I do 
 not mean pretty words, or power-words for their own sweet 
 sake, for these, expressing nothing, whatever else they may 
 be, are not " expression ; " but I mean the forcible or 
 felicitous presentment of thought, image, feeling, or inci- 
 dent, through pregnant and beautiful language in harmony 
 with them ; though the subtle and indirect suggestion of 
 language is unquestionably an element to be taken into 
 account by poetry. The " Palace of Art " is perhaps equal 
 to the former poem for lucid splendour of description, 
 in this instance pointing a moral, allegorizing a truth. 
 Scornful pride, intellectual arrogance, selfish absorption in 
 aesthetic enjoyment, is imaged forth in this vision of the 
 
230 ESSAYS ON rOETRY AND POETS. 
 
 queen's world-reflecting palace, and its various treasures — 
 the end being a sense of unendurable isolation, engendering 
 madness, but at last repentance, and reconcilement with 
 the scouted commonalty of mankind. 
 
 The dominant note of Tennyson's poetry is assuredly 
 the delineation of human moods modulated by Nature, 
 and through a system of Nature-symbolism. Thus, in 
 " Elaine," when Lancelot has sent a courtier to the queen, 
 asking her to grant him audience, that he may present 
 the diamonds won for her in tourney, she receives the 
 messenger with unmoved dignity ; but he, bending low 
 and reverently before her, saw " with a sidelong eye " 
 
 " The shadow of some piece of pointed lace 
 In the queen's shadow vibrate on tlie walls, 
 And parted, laughing in his courtly heart." 
 
 The " Morte d'Arthur " affords a striking instance of this 
 peculiarly Tennysonian method. That is another of the 
 very finest pieces. Such poetry may suggest labour, but 
 not more than does the poetry of Virgil or Milton. Every 
 word is the right word, and each in the right place. 
 Sir H. Taylor, indeed, warns poets against " wanting to 
 make every word beautiful." And yet here it must be 
 owned that the result of such an effort is successful, so 
 delicate has become the artistic tact of this poet in his 
 maturity.* For, good expression being the happy adapta- 
 tion of language to meaning, it follows that sometimes 
 good expression will be perfectly simple, even ordinary 
 in character, and sometimes it will be ornate, elaborate, 
 dignified. He who can thus vary his language is the best 
 verbal artist, and Tennyson can thus vary it. In this 
 
 * But the loveliest lyrics of Tennyson do not suggest labour. I do not 
 say that, like Beethoven's music, or Heine's songs, they may not be the 
 result of it. But they, like all supreme artistic work, " conceal," not obtrude 
 Art ; if they are not spontaneous, they produce the effect of spontaneity, not 
 artifice. They impress the reader also with the power, for which no technical 
 skill can be a substitute, of sincere feeling, and profound realization of their 
 subject-matter. 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON, 23 1 
 
 poem, the " Morte d'Arthur," too, we have "deep-chested 
 music." Except in some of Wordsworth and Shelley, or 
 in the magnificent " Hyperion " of Keats, we have had no 
 such stately, sonorous organ-music in English verse since 
 Milton as in this poem, or in " Tithonus," " Ulysses," 
 " Lucretius," and " Guinevere." From the majestic over- 
 ture — 
 
 " So all day long the noise of battle rolled 
 Among the mountains by the winter sea," 
 
 onward to the end, the same high elevation is main- 
 tained. 
 
 But this very picturesqucncss of treatment has been 
 urged against Tennyson as a fault in his narrative pieces 
 generally, from its alleged over-luxuriance, and tendency 
 to absorb, rather than enhance, the higher human interest 
 of character and action. However this be (and I think it 
 is an objection that does apply, for instance, to " The 
 Princess "), here in this poem picturcsqueness must be 
 counted as a merit, because congenial to the semi-mythical, 
 ideal, and parabolic nature of Arthurian legend, full of 
 portent and supernatural suggestion. Such Ossianic hero- 
 forms are nearly as much akin to the elements as to man. 
 And the same answer holds largely in the case of the 
 other Arthurian Idylls. It has been noted how well- 
 chosen is the epithet " water " applied to a lake in the lines, 
 " On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great water, 
 and the moon was full." Why is this so happy .'' For as 
 a rule the concrete rather than the abstract is poetical, 
 because the former brings with it an image, and the former 
 involves no vision. But now in the night all Sir Bedevere 
 could observe, or care to observe, was that there was " some 
 great water." We do not — he did not — want to know 
 exactly what it was. Other thoughts, other cares, pre- 
 occupy him and us. Again, of dying Arthur, we are told 
 that " all his greaves and cuisses were dashed with drops 
 of onset." "Onset" is a very generic term, poetic because 
 
232 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 removed from all vulgar associations of common parlance, 
 and vaguely suggestive not only of war's pomp and cir- 
 cumstance, but of high deeds also, and heroic hearts, since 
 onset belongs to mettle and daring ; the word for vast and 
 shadowy connotation is akin to Milton's grand abstraction, 
 " Far off His coining shone," or Shelley's, " Where the 
 Earthquake Demon taught her young Rnin!' 
 
 It has been noted also how cunningly Tennyson can 
 gild and furbish up the most commonplace detail — as when 
 he calls Arthur's moustache " the knightly growth that 
 fringed his lips," or condescends to glorify a pigeon-pic, 
 or paints the clown's astonishment by this detail, " the 
 brawny spearman let his check Bulge with the unswallowed 
 piece, and turning stared ; " or thus characterizes a pun, 
 " and took the word, and play'd upon it, and made it of 
 two colours." This kind of ingenuity, indeed, belongs 
 rather to talent than to genius ; it is exercised in cold 
 blood ; but talent may be a valuable auxiliary of genius, 
 perfecting skill in the technical departments of art. Yet 
 such a gift is not without danger to the possessor. It may 
 tempt him to make his work too much like a delicate 
 mosaic of costly stone, too hard and unblended, from 
 excessive elaboration of detail. One may even prefer to 
 art thus highly wrought a more glowing and careless 
 strain, that lifts us off our feet, and carries us away as on 
 a more rapid, if more turbid torrent of inspiration, such 
 as we find in Byron, Shelley, or Victor Hugo. Here you 
 are compelled to pause at every step, and admire the 
 design of the costly tesselated pavement under your feet. 
 Perhaps there is a jewelled glitter, a Pre-Raphaelite or 
 Japanese minuteness of finish here and there in Tennyson, 
 that takes away from the feeling of aerial perspective and 
 remote distance, leaving little to the imagination ; not 
 suggesting and whetting the appetite, but rather satiating 
 it : his loving observation of minute particulars is so 
 faithful, his knowledge of what others, even men of science, 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 233 
 
 have observed so accurate, his fancy so nimble in the 
 detection of similitudes. But every master has his own 
 manner, and his reverent disciples would be sorry if he 
 could be without it. We love the little idiosyncrasies of 
 our friends, 
 
 I have said the objection in question does seem to He 
 against "The Princess." It contains some of the most 
 beautiful poetic pearls the poet has ever dropped ; but the 
 manner appears rather disproportionate to the matter, at 
 least to the subject as he has chosen to regard it. For it 
 is regarded by him only semi-seriously ; so lightly and 
 sportively is the whole topic viewed at the outset, that the 
 effect is almost that of burlesque ; yet there is a very serious 
 conclusion, and a very weighty moral is drawn from the 
 story, the w'orkmanship being laboured to a degree, and 
 almost encumbered with ornamentation. But the poet 
 himself admits the ingrained incongruity of the poem. 
 The fine comparison of the Princess Ida in the battle to a 
 beacon glaring ruin over raging seas, for instance, seems 
 too grand for the occasion. How differently, and in what 
 burning earnest has a great poet-woman, Mrs. Browning, 
 treated this grave modern question of the civil and political 
 position of women in " Aurora Leigh ! " Tennyson's is 
 essentially a man's view, and the frequent talk about 
 women's beauty must be very aggravating to the " Blues." 
 It is this poem especially that gives people with a limited 
 knowledge of Tennyson the idea of a " pretty " poet ; the 
 prettiness, though very genuine, seems to play too patron- 
 izingly with a momentous theme. The Princess herself, and 
 the other figures are indeed dramatically realized, but the 
 splendour of invention, and the dainty detail, rather dazzle 
 the eye away from their humanity. Here, however, are 
 some of the loveliest songs that this poet, one of our 
 supreme lyrists, ever sung : " Tears, idle tears ! " " The 
 splendour falls," " Sweet and low," " Home they brought," 
 " Ask me no more," and the exquisite melody, " For Love 
 
234 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 is of the valley." Moreover, the grand Hnes toward the 
 close are full of wisdom — 
 
 " For woman is not undeveloped man, 
 But diverse : could we make her as the man 
 Sweet love were slain," etc. 
 
 I feel myself a somewhat similar incongruity in the 
 poet's treatment of his more homely, modern, half-humorous 
 themes, such as the introduction to the " Morte d'Arthur," 
 and " Will Waterproof ; " not at all in the humorous poems, 
 like the " Northern Farmer," which are all of a piece, and 
 perfect in their own vein. In this introduction we have 
 "The host and I sat round the wassail bowl, then half-way 
 ebb'd ; " but this metaphorical style is not (fortunately) 
 sustained, and so, as good luck would have it, a metaphor 
 not being ready to hand, we have the honcster and homelier 
 line, " Till I tired out with cutting eights that day upon the 
 pond ; " yet this homespun hardly agrees with the above 
 stage-king costume. And so again I often venture to 
 wish that the Poet-Laureate would not say " flowed " when 
 he only means " said." Still, this may be hypercriticism. 
 For I did not personally agree with the critic who objected 
 to Enoch Arden's fish-basket being called " ocean-smelling 
 osier." There is no doubt, however, that " Stokes, and 
 Nokes, and Yokes " have exaggerated the poet's manner, 
 till the " murcx fished up " by Keats and Tennyson has 
 become one universal flare of purple. Beautiful as some 
 of Mr. Rossetti's work is, his expression in the sonnets surely 
 became obscure from over-involution, and Q-Kcess'wcfioriture 
 of diction. But then Rossetti's style is no doubt formed 
 considerably upon that of the Italian poets. One is glad, 
 however, that, this time, at all events, the right man has 
 " got the porridge." 
 
 In connection with "Morte d'Arthur," I may draw 
 attention again to Lord Tennyson's singular skill in pro- 
 ducing a rhythmical response to the sense : — 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 235 
 
 "The great brand 
 Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon, 
 And (lashing round and round, and whirled in an arch." 
 
 Here the anapest instead of the iambic in the last place 
 happily imitates the sword Excalibur's own gyration in the 
 air. Then what admirable wisdom does the legend, opening 
 out into parable, disclose toward the end ! When Sir 
 Bedevere laments the passing away of the Round Table, 
 and Arthur's noble peerage, gone down in doubt, distrust, 
 treachery, and blood, after that last great battle in the 
 West, when, amid the death-white mist, " confusion fell 
 even upon Arthur," and " friend slew friend, not knowing 
 whom he slew," how grandly comes the answer of Arthur 
 from the mystic barge, that bears him from the visible 
 world to " some far island valley of Avilion," " The old 
 order changeth, yielding place to new. And God fulfils 
 Himself in many ways. Lest one good custom should cor- 
 rupt the w^orld ! " The new commencement of this poem, 
 called in the idyls "The Passing of Arthur," is well worthy 
 of the conclusion. How weirdly expressive is that last 
 battle in the mist of those hours of spiritual perplexity, 
 which overcloud even strongest natures and firmest faith, 
 overshadowing whole communities, when we know not 
 friend from foe, the holiest hope seems doomed to disap- 
 pointment, all the great aim and work of life have failed ; 
 even loyalty to the highest is no more ; the fair polity built 
 laboriously by some god-like spirit dissolves, and " all his 
 realm reels back into the beast ; " while men " falling down 
 in death " look up to heaven only to find cloud, and the 
 great-toned ocean, as it were Destiny without love and 
 without mind, with voice of days of old and days to be, 
 shakes the world, wastes the narrow kingdom, yea, beats 
 upon the faces of our dead ! The world-sorrow pierces 
 here through the strain of a poet usually calm and con- 
 tented. Yet " Arthur shall come again, aye, twice as fair ; " 
 for the spirit of man is young immortalh'. 
 
236 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Who, moreover, has moulded for us phrases of more 
 transcendent dignity, of more feHcitous grace and import, 
 phrases, epithets, and hncs that have ah-eady become 
 memorable household words ? More magnificent expres- 
 sion I cannot conceive than that of such poems as " Lucre- 
 tius," " Tithonus," " Ulysses." These all for versification, 
 language, luminous picture, harmony of structure have 
 never been surpassed. What pregnant brevity, weight, 
 and majesty of expression in the lines where Lucretius 
 characterizes the death of his namesake, Lucretia, ending 
 " and from it sprang the commonwealth, which breaks, as 
 I am breaking now ! " Here is masterly power in poetically 
 embodying a materialistic philosophy, congenial to modern 
 science, yet in absolute dramatic keeping with the actual 
 thought of the Roman poet, and at the same time, strong 
 grasp of the terrible conflict of passion with reason, two 
 natures in one, significant for all epochs I In "Tithonus" 
 and "Ulysses" we find embodiments in high-born verse 
 and illustrious word of ideal moods, adventurous peril- 
 affronting Enterprise contemptuously tolerant of tame 
 household virtues in " Ulysses," and the bane of a burden- 
 some immortality, become incapable even of love, in 
 " Tithonus." Any personification more exquisite than that 
 of Aurora in the latter were inconceivable. 
 
 M. Taine, in his " Littcrature Anglaise," represents 
 Tennyson as an id}'llic poet (a charming one), comfortably 
 settled among his rhododendrons on an English lawn, and 
 viewing the world through the somewhat insular medium 
 of a prosperous, domestic, and virtuous member of the 
 English comfortable classes, as also of a man of letters who 
 has fully succeeded. Again, either M. Taine, M. Scherer, 
 or some other writer in the " Revue des Deux IMondes," 
 pictures him, like his own Lady of Shalott, viewing life 
 not as it really is, but reflected in the magic mirror of his 
 own recluse fantasy. Now, whatever measure of truth 
 there may formerly have been in such conceptions, they 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 237 
 
 have assuredly now proved quite one-sided and inadequate. 
 We have only to remember " Maud," the stormier poems 
 of the " Idyls," " Lucretius," " Rizpah," the " Vision of 
 Sin." The recent poem " Rizpah " perhaps marks the high- 
 water mark of the Laureate's genius, and proves hence- 
 forward beyond all dispute his wide range, his command 
 over the deeper-toned and stormier themes of human music, 
 as well as over the gentler and more serene. It proves also 
 that the venerable master's hand has not lost its cunning, 
 rather that he has been even growing until now, having 
 become more profoundly sympathetic with the world of 
 action, and the common growth of human sorrows. 
 " Rizpah " is certainly one of the strongest, most intensely 
 felt, and graphically realized dramatic poems in the lan- 
 guage ; its pathos is almost overwhelming. There is nothing 
 more tragic in " Qidipus," " Antigone," or " Lear." And 
 what a strong Saxon homespun language has the veteran 
 poet found for these terrible lamentations of half-demented 
 agony, " My Baby ! the bones that had sucked me, the 
 bones that had laughed and had cried, Theirs ! O no ! They 
 are mine, not theirs — they had moved in my side." Then 
 the heart-gripping phrase breaking forth ever and anon in 
 some imaginative metaphorical utterance of wild emotion, 
 to which the sons and daughters of the people are often 
 moved, eloquent beyond all eloquence, white-hot from the 
 heart ! " Dust to dust low down ! let us hide ! but they 
 set him so high, That all the ships of the world could stare 
 at him passing by." In this last book of ballads the style 
 bears the same relation to the earlier and daintier that the 
 style of " Samson Agonistes " bears to that of " Comus." 
 " The Revenge " is equally masculine, simple, and sinewy 
 in appropriate strength of expression, a most spirited 
 rendering of a heroic naval action — worthy of a place, as 
 is also the grand ode on the death of Wellington, beside 
 the war odes of Campbell, the " Agincourt " of Drayton, 
 and the " Rule Britannia " of Thomson. The irregular 
 
238 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 metre of the " Ballad of the Fleet " is most remarkable as 
 a vehicle of the sense, resonant with din of battle, full- 
 voiced with rising and bursting storm toward the close, like 
 the equally spirited concluding scenes of " Harold,'' that 
 depict the battle of Senlac. The dramatic characterizations 
 in " Harold," " Queen Mary," and " Becket," are excellent 
 — Mary, Harold, the Conqueror, the Confessor, Pole, Edith, 
 Stigand, and other subordinate sketches, being striking and 
 successful portraits ; while " Harold " is full also of incident 
 and action — a really memorable modern play ; and there 
 are scenes of great power in " Becket ; " but the main 
 motive of "Queen Mary" fails in tragic dignity and in- 
 terest, though there is about it a certain grim subdued 
 pathos, as of still life, and there are some notable scenes. 
 Tennyson is admirably dramatic in the portrayal of indi- 
 vidual moods, of men or women in certain given situations. 
 His plays are fine, and of real historic interest, but not 
 nearly so remarkable as the dramatic poems I have named, 
 as the earlier " St. Simeon Stylites," "Ulysses," "Tithonus," 
 or as the " Northern Farmers," " Cobblers," and " Village 
 Wife," among his later works. These last are perfectly 
 marvellous in their fidelity and humorous photographic 
 realism. That the poet of " CEnone," " The Lotus-eaters," 
 and the Arthur cycle should have done these also is won- 
 derful. The humour of them is delightful, and the rough 
 homely diction perfect. One wishes indeed that the 
 " dramatic fragments " collected by Lamb, like gold-dust 
 out of the rather dreary sand-expanse of Elizabethan play- 
 wrights, were so little fragmentary as these. Tennj'son's 
 short dramatic poems are quintessential ; in a brief glimpse 
 he contrives to reveal the whole man or woman. You 
 would know the old " Northern Farmer," with his reproach 
 to " God Amoighty " for not " letting him aloan," and the 
 odious farmer of the new style, with his " Proputty ! Pro- 
 putty ! " wherever you met them. But " Dora," the 
 " Grandmother," " Lady Clare," " Edward Gray," " Lord of 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 239 
 
 Burleigh," had long since proved that Tennyson had more 
 than one style at command ; that he was master not only 
 of a flamboyant, a Corinthian, but also of a sweet, simple, 
 limpid English, worthy of Goldsmith or Cowper at their 
 best. 
 
 Reverting, however, to the question of Tennyson's ability 
 to fathom the darker recesses of our nature, what shall be 
 said of the " Vision of Sin ? " For myself I can only avow 
 that, whenever I read it, I feel as if some horrible grey 
 fungus of the grave were growing over my heart, and over 
 all the world around me. As for passion, I know few more 
 profoundly passionate poems than " Love and Duty." It 
 paints with glowing concentrated power the conflict of duty 
 with yearning passionate love, stronger than death. The 
 " Sisters," and " Fatima," too, are fiercely passionate, as also 
 is " Maud." I should be surprised to hear that a lover 
 could read " Maud," and not feel the spring and mid-noon 
 of passionate affection in it to the very core of him, so pro- 
 foundly felt and gloriously expressed are they by the poet. 
 Much of its power, again, is derived from that peculiarly 
 Tennysonian ability to make Nature herself reflect, redouble, 
 and interpret the human feeling. That is the power also 
 of such supreme lyrics as " Break, break ! " and " In the 
 Valley of Cauterets " : such chaste and consummate ren- 
 dering of a noble woman's self-sacrifice as " Godiva," 
 wherein " shameless gargoyles " stare, but " the still air 
 scarcely breathes for fear ; " and likewise of " Come into 
 the garden, Maud," an invocation that palpitates with rapture 
 of young love, in which the sweet choir of flowers bear their 
 part, and sing antiphony. The same feeling pervades the 
 delicious passage commencing, " Is that enchanted moon ? " 
 and " Go not, happy day." All this may be what Mr. 
 Ruskin condemns as " pathetic fallacy," but it is inevitable 
 and right. For " in our life doth Nature live, ours is her 
 wedding garment, ours her shroud." The same Divine 
 Spirit pervades man and Nature ; she, like ourselves, has 
 
240 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 her transient moods, as well as her tranquil, immovable 
 deeps. In her, too, is a passing as well as an eternal, while 
 we apprehend either according to our own capacity, together 
 with the emotional bias that dominates us at the moment. 
 The vital and permanent in us holds the vital and permanent 
 in her, while the temporary in us mirrors the transitory in 
 her. I cannot think, indeed, that the more troubled and 
 jarring moods of disharmony and fury are touched with quite 
 the same degree of mastery in " Maud " as are the sunnier 
 and happier. Tennyson hitherto had basked by preference 
 in the brighter regions of his art, and the turbid Byronic 
 vein appeared rather unexpectedly in him. The tame, 
 sleek, daintily feeding gourmets of criticism yelped, indeed, 
 their displeasure at these " hysterics," as they termed the 
 " Sturm und Drang " elements that appeared in " Maud," 
 especially since the poet dared appropriately to body these 
 forth in somewhat harsh, abrupt language, and irregular 
 metres. Such elements, in truth, hardly seemed so con- 
 genial to him as to Byron or Hugo. Yet they were welcome, 
 as proving that our chief poet was not altogether irresponsive 
 to the terrible social problems around him, to the corrup- 
 tions, and ever-festering vices of the body politic, to the 
 doubt, denial, and grim symptoms of upheaval at his very 
 doors. For on the whole some of us had felt that the Poet- 
 Laureate was almost too well contented with the general 
 framework of things, with the prescriptive rights of long- 
 unchallenged rule, and hoar comfortable custom, especially 
 in England, as though these were in very deed divine, and 
 no subterranean thunder were ever heard, even in this 
 favoured isle, threatening Church and State, and the very 
 fabric of society. But the temper of his class and time 
 spoke through him. Did not all men rejoice greatl}' when 
 Prince Albert opened the Exhibition of 185 1 ; when Cobden 
 and the Manchester school won the battle of free-trade ; 
 when steam-engines and the electric telegraph were invented ; 
 when Wordsworth's " glorious time " came, and the Revised 
 
tiil; roKTRV of tennyson. 241 
 
 Code passed into law ; when science first told her enchant- 
 ing fairy tales ? Yet the Millennium tarries, and there is 
 an exceeding " bitter cry." 
 
 l^ut in " Maud," as, indeed, before in that fine sonorous 
 chant, " Locksley Hall," and later in " Aylmcr's Field," the 
 poet's emphasis of appreciation is certainly reserved for the 
 heroes, men who have inherited a strain of gloom, or ances- 
 tral disharmony moral and physical, within whom the 
 morbific social humours break forth inevitably into plague- 
 spots ; the injustice and irony of circumstance lash them 
 into revolt, wrath, and madness. Mr. R. H. Hutton remarks 
 that " ' Maud ' was written to reprobate hysterics." But I 
 fear — nay, I hope and believe — that we cannot credit the 
 poet with any such virtuous or didactic intention in the 
 present instance, though of course the pregnant lines begin- 
 ning " Of old sat Freedom on the heights," the royal verses, 
 the recent play so forcibly objected to by Lord Queens- 
 berry, together with various allusions to the " red fool-fury 
 of the Seine," and " blind hysterics of the Celt," do indicate 
 a very Conservative and law-abiding attitude. But other 
 lines prove that after all what he mostly deprecates is " the 
 falsehood of extremes," the blind and hasty plunge into 
 measures of mere destruction ; for he praises the statesmen 
 who " take occasion by the hand," and make " the bounds 
 of freedom wider yet," and even gracefully anticipates " the 
 golden year." 
 
 The same principle on which I have throughout insisted 
 as the key to most of Tennyson's best poetry is the key 
 also to the moving tale " Enoch Arden," where the tropical 
 island around the solitary shipwrecked mariner is gor- 
 geously depicted, the picture being as full-Venetian, and 
 resplendent in colour, as those of the " Day-Dream " and 
 " Arabian Nights." But the conclusion of the tale is pro- 
 foundly moving and pathetic, and relates a noble act of 
 self-renouncement. Parts of " A}'lmer's Field," too, are 
 powerful. 
 
 R 
 
242 ESSAYS 0\ TOETRV AND POETS. 
 
 And now \vc come to the " Idyls," around which no 
 little critical controversy has raged. It has been charged 
 against them that they are more picturesque, scenic, and 
 daintily wrought than human in their interest. But though 
 assuredly the poet's love for the picturesque is in this noble 
 epic — for epic the Idyls in their completed state may 
 be accounted — amply indulged, I think it is seldom to 
 the detriment of the human interest, and the remark I 
 made about one of them, the " Morte d'Arthur," really 
 applies to all. The Arthur cycle is not historical, as 
 " Harold " or " Queen Mary " is, where the style is often 
 simple almost to baldness ; the whole of it belongs to the 
 reign of myth, legend, fairy story, and parable. Ornament, 
 image, and picture are as much appropriate here as in 
 Spenser's " Fairy Queen," of which, indeed, Tennyson's 
 poem often reminds me. But " the light that never was 
 on sea or land, the consecration and the poet's dream," are 
 a new revelation, made peculiarly in modern poetry of true 
 spiritual insight. And this not only throws fresh illumi- 
 nating light into Nature, but deepens also and enlarges our 
 comprehension of man. If Nature be known for a symbol 
 and embodiment of the soul's life, by means of their analo- 
 gies in Nature, the human heart and mind may be more 
 profoundly understood ; while human emotions win a 
 double dearness, or an added sorrow, from their fellowship 
 and association with outward scenes. Nature can only be 
 fathomed through her consanguinity with our own desires, 
 aspirations, and fears, while these again become defined 
 and articulate by means of her related appearances. A 
 poet, then, who is sensitive to such analogies confers a two- 
 fold benefit upon us. 
 
 I cannot at all assent to the criticism passed upon 
 the Idyls by Mr. John Morley, who has indeed, as it 
 appears to me, somewhat imperilled his critical reputation 
 by the observation that they are " such little pictures as 
 might adorn a lady's school." When we think of 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 243 
 
 " Guinevere," " Vivien," the " Holy Grail," the " Passing of 
 Arthur," this dictum seems to lack point and penetration. 
 Indeed, had it proceeded only from some rhyming criti- 
 caster, alternating with the feeble puncture of his sting the 
 worrying iteration of his own doleful drone, it might have 
 been passed over as simply an impertinence.* But while 
 the poem is in part purely a fairy romance tinctured with 
 humanity, Tennyson has certainly intended to treat the 
 subject in part also as a grave spiritual parable. Arthur, 
 Guinevere, Lancelot, Elaine, Galahad, Vivien, are types, 
 gracious or hateful. My own feeling, therefore, would 
 rather be that there is too much human nature in the 
 Idyls, than that there is too little ; or at any rate that, 
 while Arthur remains a mighty Shadow, whose coming 
 and going are attended with supernatural portents, a 
 worthy symbol of the Spirit of divine humanity, Vivien, 
 for instance, is a too real and unlovely harlot, too gross and 
 veritably breathing, to be in proportionate harmony with 
 the general design. Lancelot and Guinevere, again, being 
 far fuller of life and colour than Arthur, the situation be- 
 tween these three, as invented, or at least as recast from 
 the old legends in his own fashion by the poet, does not 
 seem artistically felicitous, if regarded as a representation 
 of an actual occurrence in human life. But so vivid and 
 human are many of the stories that we can hardly fail so to 
 regard them. And if the common facts of life are made the 
 vehicle of a parable, they must not be distorted. It is 
 chiefly, I think, because Arthur and Merlin are only seen, 
 as it were, through the luminous haze appropriate to 
 romance and myth, that the main motive of the epic, the 
 loves of Lancelot and Guinevere, appears scarcely strong 
 enough to bear the weight of momentous consequence im- 
 posed on it, which is no less than the retributive ruin of 
 
 * Mr. Alfred Austin, himself a true poet and critic, has long ago repented 
 of ///.f juvenile escapade in criticism, and made ample amends to the Poet- 
 Laureate in a very able article puMished not long since in Macmillaii's Magazine. 
 
244 ESSAYS OX I'OETRV AND POETS. 
 
 Arthur's commonwealth. Now, if Art elects to appeal to 
 ethical instinct, as great, human, undegraded Art con- 
 tinually must, she is even more bound, in pursuance of her 
 own proper end, to satisfy the demand for moral beauty, 
 than to gratify the taste for beauty intellectual or aesthetic. 
 And of course, while you might flatter a poetaster, you 
 would only insult a poet by refusing to consider what he 
 says, and simply professing a concern for how he says it. 
 Therefore if the poet choose to lay all the blame of the 
 dissolution and failure of Arthur's polity upon the illicit 
 loves of Lancelot and Guinevere, it seems to me that he 
 committed a serious error in his invention of the early 
 circumstances of their meeting ; nothing of the kind being 
 discoverable either in Malory, or the old chronicle of 
 Merlin. Great stress, no doubt, is laid by Sir Thomas 
 Malory on this illicit love as the fruitful source of much 
 calamity ; but then Malory relates that Arthur had met 
 and loved Guinevere long before he asked for her in 
 marriage ; whereas, according to Tennyson, he sent Lance- 
 lot to meet the betrothed maiden, and she, never having 
 seen Arthur, loved Lancelot, as Lancelot Guinevere, at first 
 sight. That circumstance, gratuitously invented (or adapted 
 from " Tristram and Iseult "), surely makes the degree of the 
 lovers' guilt a problem somewhat needlessly difficult to deter- 
 mine,if it was intended to brand their guilt as heinous enough 
 to deserve the ruin of a realm, and the failure of Arthur's 
 humane life-purpose. Guinevere, seeing Lancelot before 
 Arthur, and recognizing in him (as the sweet and pure 
 Elaine, remember, did after her), the type of all that is 
 noble and knightly in man, loves the messenger, and con- 
 tinues to love him after she has met her destined husband, 
 whom she judges (and the reader of the Idyls can hardly 
 fail to coincide with her judgment) somewhat cold, colour- 
 less, and aloof, however impeccable and grave ; a kind of 
 moral phantom, or imaginative symbol of the conscience, 
 whom Guinevere, as typif}'ing the human soul, ought indeed 
 
THE POETRY OK TENNYSON. 245 
 
 to love best ("not Lancelot, nor another"), but whom, 
 as a particular living man, Arthur, one quite fails to see 
 why Guinevere, a living woman with her own idiosyncrasies, 
 should be bound to love rather than Lancelot. For if 
 Guinevere, as woman, ought to love " the highest " man 
 " when she sees him," it docs not appear why that obligation 
 should not equally bind all the women of her Court also ! 
 And then what becomes of the monogamic moral ? If 
 the whole burden of the catastrophe was to belaid upon the 
 conception of a punishment deserved by the great guilt of 
 particular persons, that guilt ought certainly to have been 
 so described as to appear heinous and inexcusable to all 
 beyond question. The story need not have been thus 
 moralized ; but the Poet-Laureate chose to emphasize the 
 breach of a definite moral obligation as unpardonable, and 
 pregnant with evil issues. That being so, I submit that 
 the moral sense is left hesitating and bewildered, rather 
 than satisfied and acquiescent, which interferes with a 
 thorough enjoyment of the work even as art. The sacra- 
 ment of marriage is high and holy ; yet we feel disposed 
 to demand whether here it may not be rather the letter 
 and mere convention than the spirit of constant affection 
 and true marriage that is magnified. And if so, though 
 popularity with the English public may be secured by this 
 vindication of their domestic ideal, higher interests are 
 hardly so well subserved. Doubtless the treachery to 
 husband and friend on the part of the lovers was black and 
 detestable. Doubtless their indulged love was far from 
 innocent. But then why invent so complicated a problem, 
 and yet write as if it were perfectly simple and easy of 
 solution ? What I complain of is, that this love has a 
 certain air of grievous fatality and excuse about it, while 
 yet the poet treats it as mere unmitigated guilt, fully 
 justifying all the disaster entailed thereb}', not only on the 
 sinners themselves, but on the State, and the cause of 
 human welfare. Nor can we feel quite sure, as the subject 
 
246 ESSAYS OX rOKTRY AND POETS. 
 
 is here envisaged, that, justice apart, it is quite according 
 to probability for the knowledge of this constant illicit 
 affection to engender a universal infidelity of the Round 
 Table Knights to vows which not only their lips, as in the 
 case of Guinevere, but also their hearts have sworn ; in- 
 fidelity to their own true affection, and disloyalty to their 
 own genuine aspiration after the fulfilment of chivalrous 
 duty in championing the oppressed — all because a rich- 
 natured woman like Guinevere proves faithful to her 
 affection for a rich kindred humanity in Lancelot ! How 
 this comes about is at any rate not sufficiently explained 
 in the poet's narrative ; and if so, he must be held to have 
 failed both as artist and as ethical teacher, which in these 
 Idylls he has certainly aspired to be. Then comes the 
 further question, not altogether an easy one to answer, 
 whether it is really true that even widespread sexual excess 
 inevitably entails deterioration in other respects, a lowered 
 standard of integrity and honour ? The chivalry of the 
 Middle Ages was sans pciir, but seldom sans rcproche. 
 History, on being interrogated, gives an answer ambiguous 
 as a Greek oracle. Was England, for instance, less great 
 under the Regency, or under Elizabeth, than under Crom- 
 well ? But at all events, the old legends make the process 
 of disintegration in Arthur's kingdom much clearer than it 
 is made by Tennyson. In Malory, for instance, Arthur is 
 by no means the sinless being of the Idyls. Rightly 
 or wrongly, he is resolved to punish Guinevere for her 
 infidelity by burning, and Lancelot is equally resolved to 
 rescue her, which accordingly he does from the very stake, 
 carrying her off with him to his castle of Joyous Gard. 
 Then Arthur and Sir Gawain make war upon him ; and 
 thus, the great knightly heads of the Round Table at 
 variance, the fellowship is inevitably dissolved, for Modred 
 takes advantage of their dissension to seize upon ihe 
 throne. But in the old legends, who is Modred ? The 
 son of Arthur and his sister. According to them, assuredly 
 
THE rOETRY OF TENNYSON. 247 
 
 the origin of the doom or curse upon the kingdom is the 
 unwitting incest, yet deliberate adultery of Arthur, or 
 perhaps the still earlier and deeply-dyed sin of his father, 
 Uther. Yet, Mr. Swinburne's contention, that Lord 
 Tennyson should have emphasized the sin of Arthur as 
 resixmsiblc for the doom that came upon himself and his 
 kingdom, although plausible, appears to mc hardly to meet 
 all the exigencies of the case. Mr. Hutton says in reply 
 that then the supernatural elements of the story could have 
 found no place in the poem ; no strange portents could 
 have been described as accompanying the birth and death 
 of Arthur. A Greek tragedian, he adds, would never have 
 dreamt of surrounding CEdipus with such portents. But 
 surely the latter remark demonstrates the unsoundness of 
 the former. Has Mr. Hutton forgotten what is perhaps 
 one of the sublimest scenes in any literature, the super- 
 natural passing of this very deeply-dyed sinner, CEdipus, to 
 his divine repose at Colonos, in the grove of those very 
 ladies of divine vengeance, by whose awful ministry he had 
 been at length assoiled of sin ? the mysterious stairs ; 
 Antigone and Ismene expectant above ; he " shading his 
 eyes before a sight intolerable ; " after drinking to the dregs 
 the cup of sin and sorrow, rapt from the v;orld, even he, to 
 be tutelary deity of that land .-' Neither Elijah, nor Moses 
 was a sinless man ; yet Moses, after enduring righteous 
 punishment, was not, for God took him, and angels buried 
 him ; it was he who led Israel out of Egypt, and com- 
 muned with Jehovah on Sinai ; while Elijah rose from earth 
 in a chariot of fire ; both appearing with Jesus on the 
 Mount of Transfiguration. But I would suggest that the 
 poet might have represented suffering and disappointment, 
 not as penalty apportioned to particular transgressions, 
 rather as integral elements in that mysterious destiny 
 which determines the lot of man in his present condition 
 of defect, moral, physical, and intellectual, involved in his 
 " Hamartia," or failure to realize that fulness of being 
 
248 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 which yet ideally belongs to him as divine. Roth these 
 ideas — the idea of Doom or destiny, and that of Nemesis, 
 on account of voluntary transgression — are alike present in 
 due equipoise in the great conceptions of Greek drama, as 
 Mr. J. A. Symonds has conclusively proved in his brilliant, 
 philosophic, and poetic work on the Greek poetry, against 
 the more one-sided contention of Schlegel. I feel through- 
 out Shakespeare this same idea of mystic inevitable destiny 
 dominating the lives of men ; you may call it, if you 
 please, the will of God. Yet if it dooms us to error, 
 ignorance, and crime, at all events this awful will cannot 
 resemble the wills of good mortal men. Othello expiates 
 his foolish credulity, and jealous readiness to suspect 
 her who had given him no cause to doubt her love. But 
 there was the old fool, Brabantio, and the devil lago ; 
 there were his race, his temperament, his circumstances 
 in general, and the circumstances of the hour, — all these 
 were toils woven about him by Fate. Now, if the idea 
 of Destiny be the more accentuated (and a tragedian 
 surely should make us feel both this, and the free-will 
 of man), then, as it seems to me, in the interests of Art, 
 which loves life and harmony, not pure pain, loss, discord, 
 or negation, there ought to be a purifying or idealizing 
 process manifest in the ordeal to which the victims are 
 subjected, if not for the protagonists, at all events for some 
 of those concerned in the action. We must at least be 
 permitted to behold the spectacle of constancy and forti- 
 tude, or devotion, as we do in Desdemona, Cordelia, 
 Antigone, Iphigenia, Romeo and Juliet. But the ethical 
 element of free-will is almost exclusively accentuated by 
 Tennyson ; and in such a case we desire to be fully per- 
 suaded that the " poetical justice " dealt out by the poet 
 is really and radically justice, not a mere provincial or 
 conventional semblance thereof 
 
 Yet if you confine your attention to the individual 
 Idyls themselves, they are undoubtedly most beautiful 
 
THE rOKTRY OF TENNYSON. 249 
 
 models of sinewy strength, touched to consummate grace. 
 There can be nothing more exquisite than the tender 
 flower-Hke humanity of dear Elaine, nor more perfect in 
 pathetic dignity than the Idyl of Guinevere. Vivien is 
 very powerful ; but, as I said, the courtezan appears to mc 
 too coarsely and graphically realized for perfect keeping 
 with the general tone of this faery epic. The " Holy 
 Grail " is a wonderful creation in the realm of the super- 
 natural ; all instinct with high spiritual significance, though 
 much of the invention in this, as in the other Idyls, be- 
 longs to Sir Thomas Malory. The adventures of the 
 knights, notably of Galahad, Percivale, and Lancelot, in 
 their quest for the Grail, are splendidly described. What, 
 again, can be nobler than the parting of Arthur and Guine- 
 vere at Almesbury, where the King forgives and blesses 
 her, she grovelling repentant before him, the gleaming 
 " dragon of the great Pendragonship " making a vaporous 
 halo in the night, as Arthur leaves her, " moving ghost-like 
 to his doom" ? Here the scenic element blends incorporate 
 with the human, but assuredly does not overpower it, as 
 has been pretended. Then how excellent dramatically are 
 the subordinate figures of the little nun at Almesbury, 
 and the rustic old monk, with whom Percivale converses in 
 the Holy Grail ; while, if we were to notice such similes 
 (Homeric in their elaboration, though modern in their 
 minute fidelity to nature) as that in Enid, which concerns 
 the man startling the fish in clear water by holding up 
 " a shining hand against the sun," or the happy comparison 
 of standing muscle on an arm to a brook " running too 
 vehemently " over a stone " to break upon it," our task 
 would be interminable. The Arthur Idyls are full too of 
 elevating exemplars for the conduct of life, of such chival- 
 rous traits as courage, generosity, courtesy, forbearance, 
 consecration, devotion of life for loyalty and love, service 
 of the weak and oppressed ; abounding also with excellent 
 gnomic sayings inculcating these virtues. What admirable 
 
250 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 and delightful ladies are Enid, Elaine, Guinevere ! Of the 
 Laureate's longer works, this poem and " In Memoriam " 
 are his greatest, though both of these are composed of 
 many brief song-flights. 
 
 It may not be unprofitable to inquire what idea Tenny- 
 son probably intended to symbolize by the " Holy Grail," 
 and the quest for it. Is it that of mere supernatural por- 
 tent ? Certainly not. The whole treatment suggests far 
 more. I used to think it signified the m)-stical blood of 
 Christ, the spirit of self-devotion, or, as Malory defines it, 
 " the secret of Jesus." But it scarcely seems possible that 
 Tennyson means precisely that, for then his ideal man, 
 Arthur, would not discourage the quest. Does it not rather 
 stand for that secret of the higher life as sought in any 
 form of supernatural religion, involving acts of worship 
 or asceticism, and religious contemplation .'' Yet Arthur 
 deprecates not the religious life as such — rather that life 
 in so far as it is not the auxiliary of human service. It 
 is while pursuing the quest that Pcrcivale (in the " Holy 
 Grail ") finds all common life, even the most sacred rela- 
 tions of it, as well as the most ordinary and vulgar, turn to 
 dust when he touches them ; and to a religious fanatic 
 that is indeed the issue — this life is less than dust to him ; 
 he exists for the future and " supernatural " only ; his soul 
 is already in another region than this homely work-a-day 
 world of ours ; and because it is another, he is only too 
 ready to think it must be higher. What to him are our 
 politics, our bewilderments, our fair humanities, our art and 
 science, or schemes of social amelioration ? Less than 
 nothing. What he has to do is to save first his own soul, 
 and then some few souls of others, if he can. But while, 
 as Arthur himself complained, such a one waits for the 
 beatific vision, or follows "wandering fires" of superstition, 
 how often, for men with strength to right the wronged, 
 will "the chance of noble deeds come and go unchal- 
 lenged " ! Arthur even dares to call the Holy Grail " a 
 
THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. 251 
 
 sign to maim this order which I made." " Many of you, 
 yea most, return no more." But, as the Oucen laments, 
 " this madness has come on us for our sins." Percivale 
 turns monk, Galahad passes away to the spiritual city, Sir 
 Bors meets Lancelot ridinc( madly all abroad, and shoutinj,^, 
 " Stay me not ; I have been the sluggard, and I ride apace, 
 for now there is a lion in the path ! " Lancelot rides on 
 the quest in order that, through the vision of the Grail, the 
 sin of which his conscience accuses him may be rooted out 
 of his heart. And so it was partly the sin — the infidelity 
 to their vows — that had crept in amongst the knights, 
 which drove the best of them to expiation, to religious 
 fervours, whereby their sin might be purged, thus com- 
 pleting the disintegration of that holy human brotherhood, 
 which had been welded together by Arthur for activities 
 of righteous and loving endeavour after human welfare. 
 Magnificent is the picture of the terrible, difficult quest 
 of Lancelot, whose ineradicable sin hinders him from full 
 enjoyment of the spiritual vision after which he longs. 
 Nor will Arthur unduly discourage those who have thus 
 in mortal peril half attained. " Blessed are Bors, Lancelot, 
 and Percivale, for these have seen according to their sight." 
 Into his mouth the poet also puts some beautiful lines on 
 prayer. More indeed may be wrought for the world by 
 the silent spiritual life, by the truth-seeking student, by the 
 beauty-loving artist, than is commonly believed. In wor- 
 shipping the ideal they bless men. Arthur rebukes Gawain 
 for light infidel profanity, born only of blind contented 
 immersion in the slime of sense ; while for the others, there 
 was little indeed of the true religious spirit in their quest. 
 " They followed but the leader's bell, for one hath seen, 
 and all the blind will see." With them it is mere fashion, 
 and hollow-lip service, or superstitious fear ; a very devil- 
 worship indeed, standing to them too often in the place 
 of justice, mercy, and plain human duty. Nay, what 
 terrible crimes have been committed against humanity in 
 
-5- 
 
 ESSAVS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 the name of this very religion ! Even Fcrcivale only 
 attained to spiritual vision through the vision of Galahad, 
 whose power of strong faith came upon him, for he lacked 
 humility, a heavenly virtue too often lacking in the luico 
 guid, as likewise in those raised above their fellows through 
 any uncommon gifts, whether of body or mind. In the 
 old legends, the sin of Lancelot himself is represented as 
 consisting quite as much in personal ambition, over-self- 
 confidence, and pride on the score of his prowess, as in his 
 adultery with the Queen. Yet the "pure religion and un- 
 defiled " of Galahad, and St. Agnes had been long since 
 celebrated by our poet in two of his loveliest poems. But 
 these sweet children were not left long to battle for good- 
 ness and truth upon the earth ; heaven was waiting for 
 them ; though, while he remained, Galahad, who saw the 
 vision because he was pure in heart, " rode shattering evil 
 customs everywhere " in the strength of that purity and 
 that vision. Arthur, however, avers he could not himself 
 have joined in the quest, because his mission was to mould 
 and guard his kingdom, although, that done, " let visions 
 come and welcome ; " nay, to him the common earth and 
 air are all vision ; and yet he knows himself no vision, nor 
 God, nor the Divine Man. To the spiritual, indeed, all is 
 religious, sacred, sacramental, for they look through the 
 appearance to the reality, half hidden and half revealed 
 under it. This avowal reminds me of Wordsworth's grand 
 passage in the " Ode on Immortality" concerning " creatures 
 moving about in worlds not realized." But for men not so 
 far advanced, revelations of the Holy Grail, sacramental 
 observances, and stated acts of worship, are indeed of 
 highest import and utility. Yet good, straightforward, 
 modest Sir Bors, who is not over-anxious about the vision, 
 to him it is for a moment vouchsafed, though Lancelot and 
 Percivale attain to it with difficulty, and selfish, super- 
 stitious worldlings, with their worse than profitless head- 
 knowledge, bad hearts, hollow worship of Convention and 
 
THE i'Oi:try of tennyson. 253 
 
 the Dead Letter, get no inkling of it at all. This whole- 
 some conviction I trace through many of the Laureate's 
 writings. Stylites is not intended to be a flattering, though 
 it is certainly a veracious portrait of the sanctimonious, 
 self-depreciating, yet self-worshipping ascetic. The same 
 feeling runs through " Queen Mary ; " and Harold, the 
 honest warrior of unpretending virtue, is well contrasted 
 with the devout, yet un-English and only half-kingly con- 
 fessor, upon whose piety Stigand passes no very compli- 
 mentary remarks. So that the recent play which Lord 
 Qucensberry objected to surprises me ; for in " Despair " 
 it is theological caricature of the divine character, which 
 is made responsible for the catastrophe, quite as much as 
 Agnosticism, a mere reaction from false belief Besides, 
 has not Tennyson sung "There lives more faith in honest 
 doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds," and " Power 
 was with him in the night, which makes the darkness and 
 the light, and dwells not in the light alone " .'' 
 
 Turning now to the philosophical and elegiac poetry of 
 Tennyson, one would pronounce the poet to be in the 
 best sense a religious mystic of deep insight, though fully 
 alive to the claims of activity, culture, science, and art. 
 It would not be easy to find more striking philosophical 
 poetry than the lines on "Will," the "Higher Pantheism," 
 " Wages," " Flower in the Crannied Wall," the " Two 
 Voices," and especially " In Memoriam." As to " Wages," 
 it is surely true that Virtue, even if she seek no rest (and 
 that is a hard saying), does seek the " wages of going on 
 and still to be." An able writer in To-day objects to 
 this doctrine. And of course an Agnostic may be, often 
 is, a much more human person — larger, kinder, sounder — 
 than a believer. But the truth is, the very feeling that 
 Love and Virtue are noblest and best inv^olves the implicit 
 intuition of their permanence, however the understanding 
 may doubt or deny. Again, I find myself thoroughl}- at 
 one with the profound teaching of the " Higher Pantheism." 
 
254 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 As for " In IMemoriam," where is the elegiac poetry equal 
 to it in our language ? Gravely the solemn verse confronts 
 problems which, mournful or ghastly, yet with some far- 
 away light in their eyes, look us men of this generation 
 in the face, visiting us with dread misgiving or pathetic 
 hope. From the conference, from the agony, from the 
 battle. Faith emerges, aged, maimed, and scarred, yet 
 triumphing and serene. Like every greater poet, Tennyson 
 wears the prophet's mantle, as he wears the singer's bay. 
 Mourners will ever thank him for such words as, "'Tis 
 better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at 
 all ; " and " Let love clasp grief, lest both be drowned ; " 
 and, " Our wills are ours, we know not how ; our wills are 
 ours, to make them Thine ; " as for the lines that distin- 
 guish Wisdom and Knowledge, commending Wisdom as 
 mistress, and Knowledge but as handmaid. Every mourner 
 has his favourite section, or particular chapel of the temple- 
 poem, where he prefers to kneel for worship of the In- 
 visible. Yes, for into the furnace men may be cast bound, 
 and come forth free, having found for companion One 
 whose form was like the Son of God. Our poet's con- 
 clusion may be foolish and superstitious, as some would 
 now persuade us ; but if he errs, it is in good company, for 
 he errs with him who sang, " In la sua voluntadc e nostra 
 pace," and with Him who prayed, " Father, not My will, 
 but Thine." 
 
 The range, then, of this poet in all the achievements of 
 his long life is vast — lyrical, dramatic,* narrative, allegoric, 
 
 ♦ " The Cup," and " The Falcon " (from Boccaccio — no poet of equal rank 
 was ever more indebted to his predecessors ; but nihil (digit quod non oniavit), 
 are, like all his best things, brief: "dramatic fragments," one may even 
 call them. "The Cup "was admirably interpreted, and scenically rendered 
 under the auspices of Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry ; but it is itself a 
 precious addition to the stores of English tragedy — all movement and action, 
 intense, heroic, steadily rising to a most impressive climax, that makes a 
 memorable picture on the stage. Camma, though painted only with a few 
 telling strokes, is a splendid heroine of antique virtue, fortitude, and self- 
 devolion. "The Falcon" is a truly graceful and charming acquisition to the 
 repertory of lighter English drama. 
 
Till-: roirruY of tennyson. 255 
 
 philosophical. Even strong^ and barbed satire is not want- 
 ing, as in "Sea-Dreams," the fierce verses to Bulwer, "The 
 Spiteful Letter." Of the most varied measures he is 
 master, as of the richest and most copious vocabulary. 
 Only in the sonnet form, perhaps, does his genius not move 
 with so royal a port, so assured a superiority over all rivals, 
 I have seen sonnets even by other living English writers 
 that appeared to me more striking ; notably, fine sonnets by 
 Mr. J. A. Symonds, Mr. Theodore Watts, Mrs. Pfeififer, Miss 
 Blind. But surely Tennyson must have written very little 
 indifferent poetry when you think of the fuss made by his 
 detractors over the rather poor verses beginning " I stood 
 on a tower in the wet," and the somewhat insignificant 
 series entitled " The Window." For " The Victim " appears 
 to me exceedingly good. Talk of daintiness and pretti- 
 ness ! Yes ; but it is the lambent, water-waved damascen- 
 ing on a Saladin's blade ; it is the rich enchasement on a 
 Coeur de Lion's armour. That distinguished poet and 
 essayist, the lamented James Thomson, has somewhere 
 said something to this effect : Apollo may be stronger 
 than Hercules, though his white symmetry does not 
 obtrude the strength. Amid the soul-subduing spaces, and 
 tall forested piers of that cathedral by the Rhine, there are 
 long jewelled flames for window, and embalmed kings lie 
 shrined in gold, with gems all over it like eyes. While 
 Tennyson must loyally be recognized as the Arthur or 
 Lancelot of modern English verse, even by those among 
 us who believe that their own work in poetry cannot fairly 
 be damned as " minor," while he need fear the enthronement 
 of no younger rival near him, the poetic standard he has 
 established is in all respects so high that poets who love 
 their art must needs glory in such a leader and such an 
 example, though pretenders may verily be shamed into 
 silence, and Marsyas cease henceforward to contend with 
 Apollo. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 It is not wonderful in an age of obtrusive artifice in art, 
 and sham sentiment like the present, that Mr. Browning 
 should have written long with little appreciation ; it is 
 rather wonderful that the public appreciation of so intensely 
 sincere a poet as he is should be now steadily growing. 
 
 Our necessarily brief study of Browning may appro- 
 priately be prefaced by some recent words of Matthew 
 Arnold, where he tells us to conceive of poetry more 
 worthily than it has hitherto been the custom to conceive 
 it. " More and more," he says, " mankind will discover that 
 we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console 
 and sustain us. Science will appear incomplete without it, 
 for well does Wordsworth call poetry the impassioned ex- 
 pression which is in the countenance of all science, the 
 breath and finer spirit of all knowledge." But Aristotle 
 had long since observed that the superiority of poetry over 
 history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher 
 seriousness. How opposed this view is to current and 
 fashionable theories need not be pointed out. An elegant 
 amusement for the leisure of a cultured class, a dainty trifle, 
 the taste for which is mostly outgrown with youth, that is 
 what some reckon it. Critics inculcate that the form is 
 all, and the substance nothing. This theory is assuredly 
 fathered by men themselves impotent in respect of thought, 
 in the interest of a metre-mongering school equally sterile. 
 It is a theory misbegotten by critical wind upon mere 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 257 
 
 versified vacuity.* And accordingly we have incontinent 
 garrulity, grotesquely complicated by a kind of literary 
 aphasia, or ingenuities of verse-mongery innocent of all 
 significance, elaborate metrical manufactures, destitute of 
 inspiration, the sense sliding from one empty verbal abstrac- 
 tion to another, as on thin, tinkling ice, often melodious 
 indeed, but affording no foothold or grasp upon definite 
 thought, or distinct image, or sincere human feeling. This 
 may be a harmless amusement for idle persons, but hardly 
 worthy the attention of strenuous men in so serious a life 
 as human life is bound for most of us to be. At the very 
 antipodes of all this stands Browning. Moreover, what we 
 look for in good poetry, likely to endure beyond the hour's 
 passing fashion, is originality, a term much abused, but 
 rightly implying a distinctive personality, a man thinking, 
 seeing, and feeling, in his own way behind the words ; 
 whereas there is a great deal of cultivated verse, which is 
 merely a fair echo of other men's voices. Now, in Brown- 
 ing, we have most marked originality — marked, I will say, 
 to the verge of mannerism. 
 
 From careful renewed study I derive the impression, not 
 so much of a lyrist or singer (though he is this sometimes), 
 as of a seer of vital truth in the concrete forms of human 
 life, an interpreter of it, with eminent capacity also for pre- 
 senting it dramatically. I have never fully felt the happi- 
 ness of Mr. Arnold's definition of poetry as a criticism of 
 life, for after all is said, poetry and criticism as a rule are 
 precisely opposed. It is less the function of poetry to 
 analyse and discriminate than to synthesize and create ; 
 yet this phrase does happily describe a good deal of Mr. 
 Browning's work. He delights in subtle psychological 
 analysis of motive. And in his best poems, he usually tells 
 
 * I need hardly say that nothing of all this could possibly apply to the 
 limpid and graceful society verse of a writer like Austin Dobson. His skilfully- 
 adapted French measures are particularly germane to those air)' and charming 
 fancies, so like beautiful butterflies. Some of Andrew Lang's Ballades, too, 
 are similarly happy. 
 
 S 
 
2;8 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 the stoi'}', or presents his dramatic situations, palpably to 
 enforce some idea with which they arc pregnant. 
 
 There is a school with considerable influence just now, 
 called the " Art-for-Art " school — and its votaries tell us 
 that the moral is nothing in art. Certainly Mr. Browning 
 differs from them ; the moral is a great deal to him. But 
 then there arc morals and morals. The significance of life 
 is more to him than it is to good people who write tracts. 
 Human life is an infinitely complex Divine mystery, rich, 
 ineffable, to be prisoned in no philosophical formulae, or 
 code of moral rules. One is a little shy, therefore, of the 
 excellent lessons appreciative disciples will find us in a 
 favourite author : one is apt to suspect the clever conjuror 
 of him.self putting in what he so ingeniously drags out. 
 True works of art, like works of Nature, are so incommen- 
 surable. So many lessons lie dormant there, which the 
 very genius who created them did not even himself suspect 
 — or at least beheld but dimly — and we rather resent being 
 pinned down to ojie lesson, as it may chance to strike the 
 amiable and ingenious disciple. Still, of course, the mean- 
 ing deduced will be valuable according to the folly or 
 wisdom of the critic. Yet, when we are told by the more 
 airy and academic of our instructors that true art only 
 blossoms for the beauty and pleasantness of blooming, we 
 hesitate a little. There is beauty and beauty, pleasure and 
 pleasure. What if the highest kind of beauty and pleasure! 
 involve ugliness and pain — aye, moral approval and dis-' 
 approval — this hateful element of profit, as well as that 
 more favourite one of amusement? The great dramatic 
 poet, while he unravels before us the tangled skein of life's 
 so intricate mystery, in the very act of creating, also illumi- 
 nates, wath his own profound spiritual insight, the heights 
 and depths of life, with significance we could never have 
 discovered for ourselves. And how are you to obtain that 
 highest kosmic unity which tragic art demands, without 
 such intuition of central universal truth underlying the 
 
ROHKRT BROWNING. 259 
 
 common facts of life as they appear to ordinary eyes ? 
 Historic chronicles, realistic tales, but no tragic poetry 
 without this. Every great work of yEschylus, Sophocles, 
 and Shakespeare, is thus universal in significance, repre- 
 sentative of some grand law of human destiny, some abiding 
 relations of humanity with God. The heroic personages 
 of the Oresteia, Prometheus, Hamlet, Romeo, Juliet, Faust, 
 arc not our neighbours over the way, but in their breathing 
 individuality are eternal ideals also. In proportion there- 
 fore to a man's own spiritual and intellectual calibre, I do 
 not say for practical, but for prophetic and imaginative 
 purposes — and this apart from the question of inspiration — 
 will be the degree of abiding value in the poetry he creates. 
 So that for critics to commend us to poets without moral 
 sense is more ridiculous than for them to commend us to 
 painters afflicted with colour-blindness, or musicians without 
 ear. If a man is to represent more than the mere surface 
 of life, he must see it truly, or else distort it — must dis- 
 criminate light from shadow, spiritual beauty from de- 
 formity, variety of moral as well as mental shape, and tone, 
 and tint, all the soul-notes that contrasted and combined 
 make human music, the inevitable consequences that 
 Nature has assigned to moral good and evil. Else you 
 will have reiterated photographs of low passions and mean 
 motives, which, except as a foil to the higher aspects of 
 life, and either as assisting to develop, or, at least, as 
 antagonistic to the nobler elements of our nature, palpably 
 corrupting and disintegrating, can only be repulsive to sane 
 people, and therefore bad as art. Would you call a man a 
 great painter if he (though never so skilfully) could paint 
 you only varieties of leprosy and skin disease .-' Besides, 
 without a clear vision of what conscience reveals, of its 
 compensations and reproaches, of the dreadful desolating 
 dragon-brood engendered by sin and sin's congeners, no 
 tragedy, no true moving picture of life is possible. Now, 
 Browning presents you with thoroughly sound and whole- 
 
260 ESSAYS ON POETRV AND POETS. 
 
 some views of life — even if at times he stirs up the rotten- 
 ness of it a little too curiously. But he does not persistently 
 obtrude disease upon you. If you have Guido, in the " Ring 
 and the Book," you have also the holy child Pompilia, and 
 Caponsacchi, the frivolous but generous soul, capable of 
 regeneration through the combined effect of Pompilia's 
 virtues, wrongs, and the diabolical depths to which selfish- 
 ness has descended in Guido, her husband. The poet's 
 outlook upon life is large and liberal, but deep also and 
 sane, so that we are braced by his revelations of what he 
 sees, better able to live and enjoy our own life, bear our 
 own sorrows and disappointments, die our own death " in 
 sure and certain hope." And although I cannot agree with 
 the ultra-Browningitcs that the defectiveness and obscurity 
 of his style is a positive merit — because, forsooth, a treasure 
 is valuable in proportion to the trouble it costs to find — yet 
 I do thijik the rough shell is well worth breaking open, if 
 there be so true a pearl as there is in this case within. 
 
 " Grand rough old Martin Luther 
 Bloomed fables, flowers on furze," 
 
 as our poet says. 
 
 Though he has written little pure drama, yet, on the 
 whole, he is the most eminent dramatic poet of modern 
 England ; while as lyrist, as singer, he cannot compete with 
 Tennyson, whose form is as felicitous as his subject-matter 
 IS richly sensuous, intellectual, and spiritual. But I do not 
 think any post-Elizabethan dramas of our literature have 
 surpassed, and only one or two have rivalled, the " Blot in 
 the 'Scutcheon," and " Colombe's Birthday." These are 
 full of movement, of action, of various passion ; they pulsate 
 with life and emotion ; the plot is noble and elevated ; they 
 abound in characters delineated by a master's hand ; w^hile 
 " Colombe's Birthday " is not directly, but indirectly stimu- 
 lating, and humanizing in the highest degree. Pompilia, 
 indeed, in the " Ring and the Book," who, at the beginning, 
 comes very near Goethe's Margaret for gracious maiden- 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 261 
 
 hood, grows too intellectual and Browningcsquc towards 
 the end. It is far otherwise with Colombe, who, budding a 
 pure, high-born maiden in the opening scenes, rejoicing in 
 her own fair world and little regarding others, blossoms 
 amid the storms of adversity, under the lovelight of a lover 
 of noble nature, though of low birth, into the highest type 
 of womanhood, renouncing the grandest prizes of the world, 
 and devoting herself, through the consecrating influence of 
 this one love, to alleviation and amelioration of the lot 
 of those in need. I know not any drama showing more 
 delicate insight into the shy maturing of a woman's affec- 
 tion, checked and chilled by the cold breath of convention, 
 yet ripened by the vision of a heroic soul's devotion, ever 
 itself deepening and broadening in purity and self-renounce- 
 ment through his love for her. These plays abound in 
 beautiful poetry, appropriate to the place in which it occurs, 
 while indiscriminately euphuistic diction in season and out 
 is entirely, and most righteously, abjured by Browning. 
 But assuredly this utterly dramatic Shakespearian manner 
 of unrolling the royal robe of human life before us seamless 
 and unrent is not that ordinarily congenial to him. Usually 
 the inventor prefers to pull his mechanism to pieces, and 
 show us how it works ; the gardener plucks up his growing 
 flower to display the roots and manner of organization. 
 There is probably implied here less sure vision into the 
 objective manifestations of character, into how it must 
 inevitably unfold itself in collision with its fellows. Thus 
 Browning does not always afford us clearly constructed 
 plots ; his narratives do not develop themselves smoothly ; 
 he is not interested in the progress of the events themselves. 
 The enormously voluminous " Ring and the Book " shows 
 w^ondcrfully acute and varied knowledge of life ; but it is 
 revealed through monologues, wherein many persons com- 
 ment from their special point of view on a few incidents 
 only. His play of" Strafford " deals with a grand national 
 theme ; and in Pym we have the strongl}' delineated figure 
 
262 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 of one of our ^rcat national heroes admirably contrasted 
 with poor Strafford, and the weak, unreliable King Charles ; 
 but the plot seems rather confused, and the movement of 
 the whole action somewhat indistinct. It contains, how- 
 ever, a noble passage of poetry at the close, wherein the 
 poet, while impartially just to Strafford, scetns to show, in 
 the final utterance of Pym, that his own sympathy is with 
 England in her liberal career of progress. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the delineation of a popular 
 agitator in " A Soul's Tragedy " is almost cynical, and not 
 very happy, while " Hohenstiel Schwangau " seems a quite 
 unveraciously lenient, as well as rather unpoetical portrait 
 of the man, whom the greatest European poet of our genera- 
 tion, Victor Hugo, chastised with scorpions in his "Chati- 
 ments," and the " Histoire dun Crime." The " Patriot," 
 however, is an excellent satire on the fickleness of mobs. 
 
 " Pippa Passes," again, is but a series of dramatic scenes, 
 linked together as by God's own sunshine, sweet child- 
 Pippa, the innocent bird-song of whose young heart falls, 
 without her knowledge, though with momentous effect, upon 
 some ears of guilty, worldly souls who hear. The episode of 
 Ottima and Sebald with their adulterous loves, after the 
 murder by Qttima of her old husband, is one of the most 
 tremendous things in English drama, as, in a livid flash of 
 lightning, the whole ghastly scene starts out upon you ; you 
 hear the blood-stained couple talk, and see them move. It 
 is of Shakespearian power. 
 
 Now, there are distinctly two schools of epic and dra- 
 matic art — one synthetic, objective, the other analytic, re- 
 flective, didactic. Certainly the former is the more perfectly 
 dramatic ; but great poets have always blended the two 
 manners, though belonging distinctively to one or other 
 school. The way of /Eschylus and Sophocles is not that 
 of Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Scott, Thackeray, Balzac, 
 Byron ; but more akin to that of the greatest modern 
 artists in general, Victor Hugo, Shelley, Wordsworth, 
 
ROHERT BROWNING. 263 
 
 George Sand, Browning, Wagner, Goethe. But, of course, 
 that is not to say that an artist never writes in the 
 manner less characteristic of him. For good or evil, 
 the age has grown self-conscious, analytic, metaphysical, 
 scientific. And the most important artists will assuredly 
 reflect this temper of their age. Does it not seem silly, 
 as well as unthankful, to resent this ? to condemn such 
 work because it is unlike the old ? It is a product sni 
 generis ; it is so much added to the old work, for which 
 let us be thankful. Browning peers microscopically into 
 far-away influencing causes, and remote, intricately- 
 mingled motives ; these interest him almost more than 
 the conduct to which they lead. And why not .-• But 
 the work is proportionately less dramatic. For character 
 is here presented in its more isolated and passive aspects. 
 In this kind of work it is nearly impossible that the analyst 
 should not colour the representation very manifestly from 
 looking through his own special glasses ; his lens will not 
 be quite achromatic. In dramatic poetry proper the creator 
 is a centre, radiating alien individuality, rather than diffusing 
 his own peculiar subjective idiosyncrasy among the works 
 of his hand. His characters possess him, rather than he 
 them. Curiously enough, in the volume called " Pachia- 
 rotto," Mr. Browning seems to disclaim all self-revelation. 
 Now, if this be a merit, is it true of him ; and if it be true 
 of him, is it a merit } To both questions I answer. No. 
 You don't want a mere impassive mirror, reflecting surfaces, 
 but a man, selecting vital characteristics. Even Shakes- 
 peare reveals himself in the manner of his representation of 
 life ; all genius must. Far more is this true of Browning, 
 even if he had not written many poems obviously self- 
 revealing. But every dramatist is self-revealing by the 
 emphasis and tone of his delineations ; while Browning 
 comments like a chorus upon the action, both personally, 
 and through one pretty obviously his mouthpiece; only he 
 is so many-sided that he can throw himself into many 
 
264 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 attitudes of mind as regards the same action, or cir- 
 cumstance. 
 
 The old truths remain, but their body and appearance 
 change. They return, indeed, enriched with the result of 
 their own denial, with the doubt thrown upon them, which 
 has caused them to be remoulded, and recast more per- 
 fectly. And so when science cried, " Overturn ! overturn ! " 
 and the old creeds suffered obscuration, arose prophets and 
 poets of denial and despair, with their divinely appointed 
 work to do. For who can give us a complete philosophy 
 of life ? We must gather together the special vital aspects 
 of the whole, each artist was gifted to see. Shelley, Byron, 
 Carlyle, Leopardi passed ; we have Victor Hugo, Tennyson, 
 Browning, Hegel, Fichte, Coleridge, Wordsworth, James 
 Hinton. Is this a strange doctrine, that great poets think ? 
 Did not Dante, Milton, Lucretius } They do think, but 
 with all their faculties fused into one organ, instead of with 
 a wrongfully isolated, and, therefore crippled function, the 
 logical understanding only. Milton and Dante have power- 
 fully helped to mould theology ; and in this spiritual crisis, 
 produced mainly by scientific discovery, men will look 
 more and more, I think, to poets who are prophets also- 
 And so I shall presently inquire briefly what salient lessons 
 Browning has taught us. 
 
 But we have first to note his peculiar skill in psycholo- 
 gical analysis, and especially in a region which he has made 
 quite his own, wherein he has enriched our literature with 
 such subtle studies as no other writer has given us — the 
 twilight land of moral sophistry, where it is hard indeed to 
 discriminate between true and false, religious and worldly, 
 vulgar and ideal, good and evil or mean motives, where 
 they are ever passing into one another, the Protean soul 
 ever eluding her own self-knowledge, and the knowledge of 
 others, by assuming infinite masks and shapes. Nor is this 
 region so unfamiliar to the accustomed inward life of most 
 of us, after all ; for how mixed are motives even in our 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 265 
 
 very religion, and the most ostensibly distinterested actions 
 of life ! To this class of work belong " Paracelsus," "Sludge," 
 "Blougram " — and wonderfully clever studies they are, espe- 
 cially the two last ; though these are hardly poetry, while 
 " Paracelsus " is. The pictures of casuistically and scholas- 
 tically trained Roman Catholic ecclesiastics ; shrewd, ambi- 
 tious, worldly, like Ognibcn in the " Soul's Tragedy ; " 
 sensual and superstitious, as Fra Lippo Lippi, the monk of 
 the Spanish cloister, and the old dying bishop, who orders 
 his tomb at St. Praxed's church ; or semi-sceptical, out- 
 wardly conforming men of the world, like Blougram ; these 
 are quite unique and inimitable. Browning seems positively 
 to revel, as though for the mere mental gladiatorship, sup- 
 pleness of soul's wrist, swift dazing play of intellectual 
 fence, in these labyrinthine convolutions of juggling 
 sophistry, wherein some unseen adversary is confounded 
 by sheer devilry of the understanding, and the worse often 
 made to appear the better reason. He is many-sided in 
 sympathy, sees all round and far away, and, therefore, 
 perhaps, is unable to take one side very pronouncedly. 
 He even sees what may be said for an error, a bad cause, 
 or a bad man, their redeeming or modifying qualities, 
 and what a bad man has to say for himself So far he 
 becomes his apologist, finds a soul of good in things evil. 
 That is notably so in the "Ring and the Book," in " Sludge," 
 and " Blougram." Guido and Blougram are in perfect 
 dramatic keeping ; all they say is a perfectly natural self- 
 revelation of their native unloveliness ; it must be con- 
 fessed that the studies are somewhat unsavourj' from their 
 merciless realism, where not a wart or a wen is left out. 
 
 Another of these persons, but a secular person in this 
 case, is the elder man, the lord in the " Inn Album " — 
 a powerful narrative — for the two other people, the upright 
 and just, though somewhat stern, soured, and merciless 
 woman, and the young millionaire whom she saves, are 
 absolutely veracious portraits ; but the tempter has no 
 
266 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 redeeming quality whatever, he is a moral monster ; and 
 do we want lago so minutely vivisected over and over again ? 
 
 But Sludge is, though very clever, I think, one of 
 Browning's less perfectly dramatic studies. His favourite 
 method is to make these people analyze themselves in their 
 own fashion, in a monologue addressed to some imaginary 
 interlocutor. But in a sketch like Sludge, you too much 
 see Browning looking into his subject, and giving his own 
 version of what he sees, though ostensibly in the voice of 
 the self-apologist. He is talking inside a lay figure. The 
 author's acute glance discerns all the influences that would 
 mould, mar, and corrupt such a man as he takes Sludge to 
 be, and makes him comment on these ; though to him 
 probably the process of his own degeneration would not 
 have been at all such as he could be so fully aware of, and 
 be able to trace thus distinctly with his finger. Moreover, 
 he displays a wealth of far-reaching speculation, and opu- 
 lence of intellectual resource, a fertility and cleverness in 
 special pleading, which we can scarcely attribute to the 
 poor creature, whom here and there the author lets us see 
 he intends to represent. Assuredly long monologues, lay- 
 ing bare the interminable inner processes of one over- 
 intellectualized, and self-conscious mind, are apt to be 
 wearisome. Besides which, the writer's very marked and 
 mannered idiosyncrasy of expression is usually lent to his 
 different characters. And you feel at times as if they were 
 too much made mouthpieces for the abstruse, though inter- 
 esting, reflections which the writer desires to utter on 
 various topics. 
 
 Though I yield to no one in very warm admiration for 
 a great deal of Browning's work, especially the earlier work, 
 yet I confess I do feel that verse is not always the fitting 
 and inevitable medium for many of these utterances. And 
 I judge by the canon he himself has furnished in the verses 
 he entitles " Transcendentalism," — where he tells a brother 
 in the craft not to take a harp into his hands, and after 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 267 
 
 much preluding " speak bare words across the chords," 
 however excellent, but to drape his ideas in sights and 
 sounds. There is too much mere arguing, not enough 
 appeal to the intuitions, emotions, perceptions, imagination. 
 And the style accordingly wants proportionate poetic 
 distinction, wants dignity ; but if sound substance be neces- 
 sary to the best poetry, a noble form is equally required. 
 Browning's is not a zvinniitg style — the mere witchery of 
 words is too often absent — we are under no spell of enchant- 
 ment. His lines are not " in love with the progress of 
 their own beauty ; " it is rather our bare intellect that is 
 strained to understand the literary conundrums proposed 
 to us. Perfect poetry involves the perfect harmony of 
 word, meaning, mood, and sound, with dignity or loveliness 
 either of subject, or interpretation ; though an obtrusively 
 artificial is to a noble style as the deportment of a dancing 
 master to the unaffected demeanour of a gentleman. 
 But we want the volatile thought, or feeling preserved for 
 us in the crystal of pellucid expression, made a world- 
 heritage in the amber of a happy phrase. That is eminently 
 the characteristic of Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, and also 
 of Tennyson — occasionally too of lesser lights, like Gray 
 Campbell^ and George Herbert. 
 
 Of course, fine philosophical poetry,* which is the ima- 
 ginative expression of profound thought in symbol and 
 metaphor, or phrase of high degree, demands corresponding 
 attention and capacity on the part of the reader ; and good 
 poetry in general, indeed, demands this. But unnecessary 
 intellectual strain the reader usually loves to be spared in 
 poetry by a careful and captivating manner on the part of 
 the poet — in the best poetry the very images and phrases 
 
 * There is little of this in Browning. We find, indeed, much nakedly 
 argumentative, ratiocinative verse, but that is not, strictly speaking, poetry at 
 all. Parts of Tennyson's " In Memoriam," of Mr. Buchanan's " Balder," of 
 Mr. Swinburne's "Songs Before Sunrise," are better examples of a type very 
 rare in English poetry. There is little of it in Coleridge, and Wordsworth, 
 but somewhat more in Shelley. 
 
268 ESSAYS OX POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 lead him captive as with a chain of flowers, with " strains of 
 Hnked sweetness long drawn out," by the mere instinctive 
 selection of harmonious ideas, images, and words, whose 
 very sound, and subtle associations prolong and rivet the 
 charm. While in Browning, not only is the grammatical 
 construction difficult — from long parentheses, and side 
 eddies of comment on subjects not in close relationship 
 with the main theme, inversions of the parts of speech, and 
 strange elisions — but the metre appears seldom as an out- 
 growth from the sense, rather as an extraneous piece of 
 adopted ingenuity, the grotesque cleverness of which, indeed, 
 is more diverting and confusing than helpful — the words 
 themselves seem chosen for their direct meaning only, irre- 
 spective of beautiful appropriateness ; their intrinsic ugli- 
 ness, harshness, and disagreeableness of image, or suggestion, 
 being altogether disregarded.* 
 
 Browning, moreover — who often reminds me, both in 
 his admirable qualities and in his defects, of Ben Jonson — 
 is an exceedingly learned man, familiar with all manner of 
 technical terms belonging to the various arts, sciences, 
 even the trades and professions of daily life — a most 
 remarkable combination of speculative poet, and shrewd 
 experienced man of the world, familiar with it in all its 
 aspects, whether elevated or vulgar. Now these learned 
 details he is apt somewhat mercilessly to obtrude on the 
 reader, taking for granted a familiarity with them which is 
 uncommon. But if in poetry we are pulled up short by 
 many terms unfamiliar, the effect is disturbing to that 
 continuity of mood or sentiment which the enjoyment of 
 poetry demands ; and there are so many blanks and barren 
 spaces left in our imagination ; it is in that respect just like 
 musical verse with a minimum of meaning, which we strive 
 uncomfortably and in vain to arrive at. But here, though 
 we have a thoughtful poet, we have not one who always 
 
 * I cannot comment on Sordello, for I have never been able to master the 
 construction. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 269 
 
 helps US by sweet cadences. In " Christmas Eve and Easter 
 Day," he gives us a half-humorous account of how some of 
 his metres occur to him, and this passage furnishes a fair 
 specimen of such metres : — 
 
 " A tune was born in my head last week 
 Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek 
 Of the train, as I came by it up from Manchester, 
 And when next week I take it back again, 
 My head will sing to the engine's clack again, 
 While it only makes my neighbour's haunches stir, 
 Finding no dormant musical sprout 
 In him, as in me, to be jolted out." 
 
 Great dramatic poets have always much humour, and 
 this is a marked feature in Browning. I cannot but think 
 that the bizarre surprises of his rhythm are often contrived 
 out of sheer fun, with a sort of Rabelaisian or Aristophanic 
 chuckle over the discomfiture they must cause to delicately 
 constituted ears. For assuredly, the ingenuity of the 
 rhymes is infinite. Not in " Hudibras," " Beppo," or " Don 
 Juan " is it more fertile. And this is often perfectly appro- 
 priate to the subject-matter, and so agreeable — as in " Era 
 Lippo Lippi," for instance, that thoroughly dramatic, most 
 breathing portrait. Even in " Christmas Eve " the humour 
 of some of the pictures is equal to Dickens, And what can 
 exceed the tragi-comedy humour of the " Bishop Orders his 
 Tomb," the " Spanish Cloister," and " Holy Cross Day " ? 
 
 These pieces are as sharply outlined and veracious as 
 possible. In " The Monk's Soliloquy in the Spanish 
 Cloister," you have a malicious, bad, but grossly supersti- 
 tious and self-righteous monk, apparently looking out from 
 his cell window at another, who is attending to his favourite 
 flowers in the monastery garden, a placid, innocent sort of 
 person, but not so scrupulous in his religious obser\^ances. 
 The wicked old bigot detests the blameless insipidity of his 
 neighbour. Though full of grim fun, the picture is terrible 
 too. This is wiiat a bigot can be. 
 
 But there is no such extravagant, and out-of-the-way 
 
270 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 word in the language that Browning will not find you a 
 rhyme for, if not with one word, then with two, three, or 
 even four, and if not in one language, then in another. Of 
 these treble and quadruple rhymes he is fond. One or two 
 strange freaks in this direction I will quote from " Old 
 Pictures in Florence : " — 
 
 " I that have haunted the dim San Spirito — 
 Or was it rather the Ognissanti ? 
 Patient on altar steps planting a weary toe ; 
 Nay, I shall have it yet, detur amanti ! 
 My Koh-i-noor, or if that's a platitude, 
 Jewel of Giamschid, the Persian Soft's eye ! 
 So in anticipative gratitude, 
 What if I take up my hope and prophesy ? " 
 
 Then in the same page we have bag em hot rhyming to 
 IVitanagemot, the Latin word A;ife to Dan fe, perorate to zero 
 rate, ach licks to republics. And " Master Hughes of Saxe 
 Gotha " is a still more extraordinary instance of wanton bar- 
 barisms in rhyming. Here we have vociferance and stiffer 
 hence, and corrosive and o sieve I But even in his treatment 
 of a grave tragic subject it is characteristic of our author to 
 .show a certain quaint humour, and the phrases used are 
 frequently rude and colloquial. This, indeed, bestows a 
 cachet of individuality. And though not infrequently such 
 a method gives a somewhat grotesque and inharmonious 
 effect to Browning's serious poetry, yet how far better is it 
 than the finical lackadaisical unreality, as of Osric, or 
 Piercie Shafton, so in vogue now, that fears to call a spade 
 a spade, and faints and screams with the delicate titillating 
 delight of calling it an effodiator, or something equally silly ! 
 
 The obscurity complained of comes sometimes from the 
 monologue method, for the one person who is alone before 
 the reader is talking at, questioning, and replying to other 
 interlocutors, whom the author has in his mind, but the 
 reader only guesses at ; and what they are supposed to 
 say the reader must divine from the only words he has 
 before him. 
 
ROr.KRT BROWNING. 2" I 
 
 Enough of all this, however. It needs pointing out, 
 if you wish to do as Matthew Arnold bids you, estimate 
 your classic fairly, and recognize where he comes short, 
 only in order that you may the more fully and intelligently 
 appreciate what is truly admirable in him and others. 
 For, let me say distinctl}', with whatever abatements. 
 Browning is a great English writer, to whom wc are very 
 deeply indebted. A fissured volcano rolls you out ashes, 
 stones, and smoke, along with its flame and burning lava. 
 And he who never descends into the deeps shall never 
 ascend upon the heights. A dapper dandy, with little 
 mind and little heart, but perfect self-possession — there is 
 not very much of him to possess — hands you his neat little 
 gift well polished, say, a new silk hat nicely brushed. An 
 uncouth great man, with big mind and big heart, possesses 
 himself not so thoroughly — there is more of him to possess 
 — and he presents you with his gift ; say, a huge vase of 
 gems ; but the vase may have a flaw in it, and what then ? 
 One can only pity the fastidious person with the weak 
 digestion, whose gorge so rises at some trivial fault, as he 
 deems it, in the cookery that he cannot enjoy, and be 
 nourished by good wholesome food, when it is offered. 
 Perhaps because it lacks olives or truffles, he is for throwing 
 it all away. And as Mr. Browning's style is sometimes 
 perfectly clear, full of Saxon force and dignity, his lines 
 and phrases here and there memorable for their strong 
 incisive felicity, seldomer, though now and then, even for 
 delicate grace, so his metres are frequently original, appro- 
 priate, vigorous, and perfectly germane to the sense. That 
 is so in the fine stirring ballads of" Herve Riel," " Gismond," 
 the " Ride from Ghent to Aix," and in the whole of that 
 spirited tale, the "Flight of the Duchess." This is told by 
 an old huntsman retainer who had assisted the Duchess in 
 her flight ; and the easy jovial familiar canter of it is 
 inimitably adapted to the speaker, and to his charming 
 story. The " Pied Piper of Hamelin," again, the child's 
 
2/2 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 stor}^ for its light humour, and flexible dancing measure 
 corresponding, could not be surpassed. In " Cavalier 
 Tunes " you hear the gallop of cavalry, and the clank of 
 the sabre. What can be finer in sound than the " Lost 
 Leader," so elevated and human in sentiment also ? What 
 more exhilarating and interpretative of the sense than the 
 rapid rush of the well-known " How they brought the Good 
 News from Ghent to Aix ? " 
 
 But " Saul " is probably the finest poem Browning ever 
 wrote, and it has the note of immortality. I know not any 
 modern poem more glorious for substance and form both ; 
 here they interpenetrate ; they are one as soul and body, 
 character and deed, lofty aim and heroic countenance. The 
 glory of the lilt of it, the long billowy roll of the cadence, 
 entirely corresponds to the splendour of clear imagination 
 that burns in upon the soul, as with sunlight, the whole 
 beautiful succession of scenes, all harmonious with unity of 
 purpose and highly human aim, rising luminous before us 
 to the sweet song of David the Shepherd Boy, while he 
 sings, and singing wrestles with the Kingdom of Darkness, 
 that holds captive Saul's kingly spirit, beloved by him, 
 until his deep, loving insight culminates in one sublime 
 vision of Divine Love, whence his own, and all the universe 
 have proceeded ; Divine Love condescending to human 
 weakness and death for our deliverance, ever giving itself, 
 indeed, but most fully in young David's descendant, Jesus 
 the Christ, the Redeemer, the elder brother of mankind. 
 
 I have said that we must certainly regard Browning as 
 teacher; and so let us briefly note, in conclusion, a few of 
 the salient impressions as to his message, conveyed by a 
 general study of his works. And yet he is hardly a 
 prophet — because he throws himself with so much appre- 
 ciative sympathy into all the possible opposed aspects of 
 life, and attitudes of the human actors. I think it is 
 Mr. Hutton who has well called him a great imaginative 
 interpreter of the approaches to action. Moreover, he is 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 273 
 
 rather an acute psychologist than a profound metaphysician. 
 His own convinced contribution to the solution of the 
 world-problem is less remarkable than his keen, intelligent 
 appreciation of what others, often mutually antagonistic, 
 have contributed. We have inevitably touched on one at 
 least of the lessons to be learned from him in describing 
 " Saul." He seems to believe in Divine Love, and human 
 Love, as the best and most substantial realities. He 
 sings : — 
 
 " If any two creatures grew into one, 
 They would do more than the world has done ; 
 Though each apart were never so weak, 
 Yet vainly through the world should ye seek 
 For the knowledge and the might 
 Which in such union grew their right." 
 
 Some of his lines and phrases are miracles of condensa- 
 tion. Thus out of the passionate fragment, " In a Balcony," 
 I take— 
 
 " Look on through years ! we cannot kiss a second day like this, 
 Else were this earth no earth." 
 
 Usually he deals with Scenery ?i% did the elder poets and 
 Scott ; it is only a background to him for his figures. But 
 he often paints with graphic force, especially his favourite 
 Italian scenes. How vivid the lunar rainbow and fiery 
 sky in "Christmas Eve," and the charming Venetian poem, 
 so full of rich, ripe passion, and love-languor, " In a Gon- 
 dola." Similarly beautiful is the episode of Jules and 
 Phene ; and there is quite a Keatsian lusciousness of sensu- 
 ous enjoyment in the " Bishop Orders his Tomb." 
 
 Nature, however, is not to Browning a grand spiritual 
 symbol, moving to meditative rapture, as she moves Words- 
 worth, Shelley, Byron, Coleridge. He never gives himself 
 up to her, but asserts himself against her inquisitorially, as 
 it were. Yet the vital function of Nature in her secret, 
 unconfessed influence over human emotion, even when 
 ostensibly concerned only with other human beings, is dealt 
 with strikingly here and there, notably in these fine lines 
 
 T 
 
274 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 from " By the Fireside," where apparently, as in " One 
 Word More," Mr. Browning's wife, our greatest EngHsh 
 poetess, is referred to — the poet is speaking of the supreme 
 moment, as he always describes it, of love given and 
 returned. There cannot be lovelier lines : — 
 
 " We two stood there with never a third, 
 But each by each, as each knew well ; 
 The sights we saw and the sounds we heard, 
 The lights and the shades made up a spell, 
 Till the trouble grew and stirred. 
 Oh the little more, and how much it is ! 
 And the little less, and what worlds away ! 
 How a sound shall quicken content to bliss. 
 Or a breath suspend the blood's best play. 
 And life be a proof of this ! 
 A moment after, and hands unseen 
 Were hanging the night around us fast. 
 But we knew that a bar was broken between 
 Life and life ; we were mixed at last, 
 In spite of the mortal screen. 
 The forests had done it, there they stood ; 
 We caught for a second the powers at play ; 
 They had mingled us so for once and for good, 
 Their work was done, we might go or stay ; 
 They relapsed to their ancient mood." 
 
 There is a similar thought in " Lc Byron de nos jours." 
 But God the Creator, and the human individual with his 
 free will, stand face to face, if I rightly apprehend his 
 teaching on this score ; and external Nature (except as 
 educating man) is of comparatively little importance : he is 
 furious, indeed, with Byron (whom he detests) for teaching 
 differently. Browning is no Pantheist, and no mystic. 
 Personally, I regret it, so far as he is to be regarded as 
 teacher. 
 
 I note that in the " Return of the Druses," " Paracelsus," 
 " Sludge," " Blougram," he deals with the same favourite 
 topic, a man pretending to supernatural power, partly for 
 ambitious ends, but partly also for the sake of what he 
 honestly believes to be the good of mankind, to engender 
 a salutary confidence in them, to give them strength and 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 275 
 
 comfort. But there is always a conflict within the man as 
 to whether this is really justifiable or not. The insincerity 
 will not let conscience rest. This is the point of view of 
 pious fraud ; but in neither case is there more than the 
 merest passing shadow of a conviction of the genuineness 
 of the miraculous claim preferred. Now I cannot help 
 thinking that the subject becomes /r^? tanfoless intrinsically 
 poetical, as well as probably less true to fact. Most likely 
 Browning does not conceive of such men as believing in 
 their own abnormal magical faculty (except, indeed, slightly 
 by an almost avowed process of self-sophistication), because 
 he is so far at one with the scientific scepticism of his age 
 as not himself to admit the possibility of any such pre- 
 tensions being in any measure well founded. Now, some 
 of us have learned to regard this question with very dif- 
 ferently instructed eyes, the result being that our conclusions 
 are different also. But yet the mystical, supernatural 
 element does colour some of his most notable poems — 
 namely, those which deal with Christianity. 
 
 It is sufficiently remarkable in this age of scepticism, 
 that our two indisputably most eminent poets, and precisely 
 those most eminent for intellectual power, should be on 
 the side oi faith, and moreover of Christian faith, though 
 claiming liberty to interpret the articles of that faith for 
 themselves. One of Browning's most characteristic and 
 arresting poems is the " Experience of Karshish, an Arab 
 Physician." He, visiting Bethany in the course of his 
 travels, encounters there Lazarus, and writes concerning 
 him to a friend and fellow-physician far away. In this 
 wonderfully graphic letter he is palpably dominated by 
 some strange impression as of a real experience in the case, 
 though he is bound professionally to regard and write of it 
 contemptuously, as one of mere trance and "hallucination." 
 Indeed, he is angry with himself and surprised because he 
 cannot treat the matter as lightly as his understanding 
 assures him it ought to be treated. So that, amid his 
 
276 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 description of new remedies, gum-tragacanth, mottled 
 spiders, the Aleppo sort of blue-flowering borage, and what 
 not, he returns, though apologetically, to this singular 
 condition of Lazarus, whom he describes as living in the 
 light of another world, a stranger here, at cross-purposes 
 with all men's ordinary views of life, with firm adoring 
 trust in the benevolent Nazarene physician, who, as he 
 thinks, raised him from the dead, and on whose claim to be 
 Divine he implicitly relies. Karshish writes : — 
 
 " I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills, 
 Like an old lion's cheek-teeth : out there came 
 A moon made like a face, with certain spots 
 Multiform, manifold, and menacing ; 
 Then a wind rose behind me ; so we met 
 In this old sleepy town at unawares. 
 The man and I." 
 
 What a picture ! why is it not painted by a kindred 
 genius ? Again : — 
 
 " He holds on firmly to some thread of life 
 (It is the life to lead perforcedly) 
 Which runs across some vast distracting orb 
 Of glory on either side that meagre thread. 
 Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet, 
 The spiritual life around the earthly life I 
 So is the man perplext with impulses, 
 Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on. 
 Proclaiming what is right and wrong across. 
 And not along this black thread thro' the blaze, 
 // should be baulked by here it cannot be." 
 
 Then he apologizes for devoting so much valuable space 
 to a madman, and resumes professional talk. Rut in a 
 postscript he can't help adding : — 
 
 " The very God ! think Abib ! dost thou think ? 
 So the All-great were the all-loving too — 
 So through the thunder comes a human voice, 
 Saying, O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
 Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
 Thou hast no power, nor may'st conceive of mine, 
 But love I gave thee, with myself to love ; 
 And thou must love me who have died for thee. 
 .... The madman saith he said so : it is strange." 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 277 
 
 Now, a man could scarcely have written this marvellous 
 poem, every word of which will repay study, had he not 
 himself believed in the story of Lazarus, and in the so-called 
 supernatural elements which it implies : this gives the 
 astonishing force and reality to it ; else the poet would 
 hardly represent the ideas involved as so dominating the 
 learned stranger. 
 
 " Caliban upon Setebos " is also remarkably powerful — 
 it is, in vividly realized grotesque imaginative symbol, a 
 terrible satire upon the low anthropomorphic notions men 
 have made to themselves concerning God, and which have 
 become formulated in some current popular theologies. Not 
 from the best and deepest, but from the more degraded and 
 superficial character of human nature, have our religious 
 ideas been too much derived. So that Browning, though a 
 Christian, might not be considered by all strictly orthodox. 
 Caliban, Shakespeare's monster, kicks his feet in the slush 
 of the isle, where Prospero and Miranda keep him for a 
 drudge, and soliloquizes about his deity, Sebetos, at whose 
 arbitrary tyrannic power he gibes and jeers — until a storm 
 bursts, and then he cowers, abjectly worshipping. This is 
 a strong, weird poem — not liable to the objection that there 
 is too much naked argument, which is true of " Christmas 
 Eve," and especially of " St. John in the Desert." 
 
 " Christmas Eve and Easter Day " is an elaborate argu- 
 ment, set in imaginative framework, to prove the funda- 
 mental postulate of Christianity, and so is " St. John in the 
 Desert." The argument of " Christmas Eve" is that, if man 
 had invented the idea of God suffering with us and for us to 
 redeem us, he would be more loving, and therefore really 
 higher than God. And in " Easter Day " the sole punish- 
 ment of the lost soul allotted by the Judge is, that, since he 
 has chosen for his portion, and has been fully satisfied with 
 the fair prizes this world can offer to his senses and his 
 ambition, he shall keep them for ever, and attain to no 
 more, excluded by the very nature of the case from those 
 
278 ESSAYS OX POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 yet diviner possibilities, the more spiritual and less earth- 
 bound aspired to reach. And here we touch upon the idea 
 which recurs with reiterated emphasis in Browning — that 
 earth's perfect is not the absolute perfect — that what we 
 count full-orbed and consummate success is not so from a 
 higher point of view, but that rather the apparent failures 
 are the more full of promise and potency ; they point to a 
 yet richer completeness to be attained hereafter ; they are 
 germs still to be developed ; the more slowly they ripen, 
 the more sweet and enduring the fruit. In "Saul" Mr. 
 Browning says : — 
 
 " 'Tis not what man does that exalts him, 
 But what man would do." 
 
 This doctrine is proclaimed unceasingly, and of course 
 implies strong faith on the proclaimer's part that the Uni- 
 verse is sound at heart, not " a suck and a sell," which, alas ! 
 is so dolefully and wailfully, and with more or less tunefully 
 sensual caterwaulings, the encouraging strain of our latest 
 bardlets ; but in all sober seriousness there is abroad now 
 some dread paralyzing fear, that lays a cold, dead hand 
 upon the purest and most generous hearts among us. And 
 God knows — who permits Nature, Satan, and Man, his 
 mimic, to commit such horrible atrocities as are committed 
 every day and night upon this earth — there is excuse 
 enough for agony and doubt ! But in Browning we find no 
 despair ; he preaches energy at our life-task, doing our 
 chosen work with all our might ; he tells us to pierce below 
 custom and convention, and lay hold of what is true, satis- 
 fying, and abiding in our spirits ; yea, even when we fail in 
 the eyes of the world, he assures us that we may trust God, 
 the Father of our spirits, to perfect the good honest work 
 we have begun, in His own best manner, and to renew our 
 youth like the eagle's, if not here, then hereafter. Shock- 
 ingly unscientific ! Still, unless I completely misunderstand 
 him, so Browning believes. " Andrea del Sarto," a very 
 beautiful sketch, proclaims the imperfection of a perfection. 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 2/9 
 
 that has no trace of inabihty to grasp, hold, and express 
 some infinitude of aspiration beyond the work actually 
 accomplished. 
 
 " Ah ! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
 Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey, 
 Placid and perfect with my art — the worse." 
 
 He notes how he could correct some wrong drawing of 
 an arm in a painting by Raphael ; but feels how far the 
 young painter soars above him, notwithstanding — (this may 
 throw a side-light on our poet's own defective form). It is 
 better to fail in technique than in more essential things, 
 though good workmanship of course is infinitely to be de- 
 sired. The great painter-poet, Blake, will occur to us, 
 whose technique in painting, and rhythm in poetry were 
 often defective. And so also with Byron, and Wordsworth, 
 The " Grammarian's Funeral," again, vindicates the nar- 
 row limited life-work of a special student by the conception 
 that he is justified in God's light, because he has eternity 
 wherein to grow complete, and learn all other things. The 
 full-orbed Divine idea is, indeed, by the imperfections of the 
 isolated fragments of the curving line — by the letting go 
 the straight line ; so by the restraint of chemical affinities 
 is the nutrition for organization, and the performance of 
 living functions possible. Things are not in their mo- 
 mentary appearances, however fair and complete these may 
 seem ; they are fulfilled in their disappearance even, and 
 their living again in richer form, wherein their old state is 
 verily more its own true self than before ; for each is in and 
 by others —must pass away to live : " That which thou 
 sowest is not quickened except it die : and God giveth it a 
 body as it hath pleased Him." So a rather discredited old 
 book says. Three great writers see and teach this very 
 distinctly — -Hegel, Hinton, and Browning. Browning again 
 and again expresses his strong belief in our personal immor- 
 tality. You find that in " Evelyn Hope," " La Saisiaz," 
 and elsewhere. He believes in compensation, the righting 
 
280 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 of all wrong, the satisfaction of our highest and holiest 
 
 aspirations, the eternal permanence of righteousness and 
 
 love, the supplementing of utmost human weakness by that 
 
 Divine Power, which is the very basis and essence of all 
 
 endeavour, yea, of all life, however feeble, though to the 
 
 confused judgment of sense it appear for ever lost and 
 
 annihilated. Note the fine poem " Instans Tyrannus," 
 
 where the poor mean victim of persecution becomes terrible 
 
 to the tyrant \vhen he prays, and God is seen standing by 
 
 his side. 
 
 " Earth being so good, would Heaven seem best ? 
 Now Heaven and she are beyond this ride," 
 
 the baffled, but still loyal lover sings of the " Last Ride " 
 his lady and he enjoyed together. This doctrine is best 
 illustrated in the two noble philosophical poems, " Abt 
 Vogler," and " Rabbi Ben Ezra," the former unique as a 
 chant in praise of music, that youngest and most spiritual 
 of the arts. 
 
 Notice next how strenuously Browning urges upon us 
 determination, strength of will. Strong character may be 
 warped, but twisted back again to good purpose, and even 
 the warping, he holds, has a use. But namby-pamby nega- 
 tion of all character, what force and help is there in that } 
 In this light we are to regard the " Statue and the Bust." 
 Again, he will have no leaving of ill-savoured, inextricable 
 entanglements of conduct to take care of themselves, and 
 go on breeding low, deteriorated, corrupting growths. This 
 is the idea in that terrible and most graphic narrative in his 
 latest volume, " Ivan Ivanovitch," about the woman who, 
 under whatever temptations, saved her own life at the ex- 
 pense of that of her children when pursued by wolves, and 
 whom, after he has heard her apology, a strong man slays 
 with his own private hand, the narrator approving. While 
 in the " Inn Album," again, the young man does Heaven's 
 justice, as if inevitably, with his own hands, on the old 
 villain. In the grand ballad, " Gismond," the traitor's lie 
 
ROBERT BROWNING. 28 1 
 
 can only be adequately refuted by the death of the traitor 
 at the hands of the lady's avenger. And " Forgiveness " in 
 " Pacchiarotto " has a similar issue. It is the teaching also 
 of " Before," where the speaker advises the two men to fight 
 it out, if the wrong-doer will not confess and ask pardon. 
 But in " After," the view widens — 
 
 " Take the cloak from his face, and at first 
 Let the corpse do its worst. 
 .... How he Hes in his rights of a man ! 
 Death has done all death can. 
 And absorbed in the new life he leads, 
 He recks not, he heeds 
 
 Nor his wrong, nor my vengeance ; both strike 
 On his senses alike, 
 
 And are lost in the solemn and strange 
 Surprise of the change. 
 Ha ! what avails death to erase 
 His offence, my disgrace ? 
 I would we were boys as of old, 
 In the field, by the fold ! 
 His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn 
 Were so easily borne ! 
 I stand here now ; he lies in his place — 
 Cover the face." 
 
 Next, we have many poems whose practical message is 
 — break through customs and conventions, away from 
 earthly greeds and mundane vanities, to learn that love is 
 best, and free development of your own capacities, so far as 
 that may be in this life ! I read this lesson in " Respect- 
 ability," and notably in the " Flight of the Duchess," who, 
 finding a true human heart beat under an old gipsy 
 woman's forbidding garb and aspect, and initiated by her 
 into a fair, liberal life, adapted to draw forth and satisfy the 
 human cravings in her soul, stunted and withered among 
 the heartless, starched Court puppets with whom her lot is 
 cast, breaks away from the world of pageant to find a real 
 one elsewhere. 
 
 Least notable of all, perhaps, are the poet's pure lyrics. 
 For these are seldom an expression of personal feeling, so 
 embodied as to be representative, as in supreme singers like 
 
282 ESSAYS ON PoETRV AN'D POETS. 
 
 Burns, Heine, Leopardi, Shelley ; they are the result of a 
 merely conceived alien mood, being often hard and harsh 
 in sound. Yet one would not willingly have missed three 
 or four beautiful ones, foremost among them being " Pros- 
 pice," " May and Death," and " April in England." They 
 have sincerity, pathos, deep human feeling, and music, while 
 the first-named is also remarkable for the writer's character- 
 istic virile fortitude, and daring courage. 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY.* 
 
 Except by a clique, and perhaps by here and there a small 
 literary buccaneer, who admires nobody but himself and 
 the manes, or rather names, of departed greatness, whose 
 hand is against every man and every man's against him, 
 the merit of Mr. Buchanan's poetry is, I suppose, now 
 pretty generally acknowledged. 
 
 Refined critics certainly objected in the first instance to 
 Mr. Buchanan's choice of vulgar everyday subjects. But 
 now they have been driven out of this position, and the 
 new ground taken up against him by a certain school is 
 that he has treated these subjects unpoetically. It is 
 difficult to answer this except by saying that he hasn't — 
 " Meg Blane " being one of the finest poems of the kind in 
 the language — though occasionally, no doubt, he may be 
 open to the charge. In the " Poems and Ballads of Life " 
 the treatment is indeed somewhat slight ; but if it were not 
 so, dramatic propriety would be violated, because the poet's 
 method is usually to relate his story through a third person 
 who is in the same rather humble class of life as those 
 whose fortunes he narrates. Now in a poem like " Widow 
 Mysie," I think it may be conceded there is a certain com- 
 
 * Since this was written Mr. Buchanan has pubHshed a poem of wonderful 
 beauty and noble significance, "Balder," also "Julia Cytherea," and "Phil 
 Blood's Leap," a most spirited ballad. Of this order there are several very 
 remarkable in his last volume, " Ballads of Love and Humour." I do not 
 here allude to the grand prose romances, " The Shadow of the Sword," or 
 "God and the Man." 
 
284 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 monncss, even vulgarity of flavour, chiefly because the 
 heroine is a commonplace person in commonplace circum- 
 stances ; and while there is no tragic intensity in these, the 
 humour is not subtle enough to redeem the superficial 
 vulgarity of the subject. For poetry, surely the level of 
 these lines, which gave the key-note of the whole, is low : — 
 
 " Tarn Love, a man preparer! for friend or foe, 
 Whiskered, \vell-featured, tight from top to toe." 
 
 But on the whole, Mr. Buchanan in his narrative poems 
 probably makes his people talk more naturally than any 
 other verse-writer of the day. Ought girls of the lower 
 class, like Nell and Liz, to speak in language concocted by 
 a poet out of his own creditably familiar knowledge of the 
 classics, the Italian poets, and Elizabethan English } It is 
 averred by critics that they have no objection to Nell and 
 Liz being heard in verse — they will condescend to listen to 
 them even — but — but what? How does Shakespeare make 
 his clowns, and hinds, and common soldiers, and Dog- 
 berries, and even Falstafifs talk ? How does Tennyson his 
 "Northern Farmer"? or his Tib and Joan in "Queen 
 Mary " ? By no means euphuistically. To my mind the 
 pathetic simplicity of language in one of the most beautiful 
 of these poems, " Liz," is one of its chief merits, and on the 
 whole the form of the poem is fully as excellent as the 
 substance : if it were more remarkable, the poem of course 
 would not be a quarter so good. Ought Scott to have 
 made Halbert Glendinning or Mary Avcnel use the same 
 language as Sir Piercie Shafton ? 
 
 Some finical, fastidious gentleman objected to the word 
 " costermonger " in " Liz." It made him stop his ears and 
 give a little scream ; but it was appropriate where it stood, 
 and I am sorry Mr. Buchanan has altered it. He has 
 " Joe Purvis " instead, and I am sure the gentleman will 
 object to that equally. It should have been " Reginald 
 Maulcverer," so as not to offend ears polite. Speaking of 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 285 
 
 his indiai'ubbcr ball, the little boy said to his governess : 
 " If you prick it, it will go squash ! " " Oh shocking, my 
 dear!" said the prim lady; "you should have said, 'If 
 you puncture it, it will collapse.' " But Mr. Buchanan 
 won't, I trust, make gravcdiggers call spades cffodiators, 
 or housemaids call coal-scuttles Pandoras (though, perhaps, 
 they will soon in real life), for all his governesses may say 
 to him. A poet may leave fine language of that kind to 
 advertising tradesmen. The " Last of the Hangmen," 
 however, seems to me too merely coarse and grotesque — 
 not sufficiently spiritualized. He might do in a Dutch 
 picture ; but he is hardly elaborately realized enough for a 
 poetic study even of the Dutch order. 
 
 It has been urged again that these poems are too 
 sentimental : so that what seems to be desiderated is this — 
 that costermongers and street women should say very hard, 
 harsh, and commonplace things — perhaps blaspheme .-' — 
 only in turgid^ euplinistic English. Perhaps somebody was 
 right when he said that Mr. Buchanan makes his towns- 
 people and peasants talk a little too much about external 
 nature — but there is generally something in their circum- 
 stances that affords a clue to that. Liz, in a very fine 
 passage, expresses her horror of the country, which she had 
 once visited. How would the critics set about presenting 
 such people poetically at all — except by the aid of artificial 
 euphuism .-• What Mr. Buchanan does is to take such men 
 and women at moments and in moods when some circum- 
 stance of their lives brings out the finer and more human 
 traits in them. Over them he sheds the mild light of 
 sorrow, or the stormy glare of tragedy. And he rightly 
 believes that there is this humanity of infinite worth in 
 them all — desiring to clear them from the rags and grime 
 that hide them from persons with pouncet boxes. So in 
 death, common features may seem grand, and assume the 
 semblance of some fairer, nobler relation. Well then, the 
 poet does not make them leave out their h's, and does not 
 
286 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 make them talk argot — that is another count in the very 
 self-consistent indictment — but that may not be essential 
 to them ; he just indicates their rank by the speech ; he 
 makes it " poetical " enough not to be displeasing ; not too 
 " poetical " to be out of character altogether. I do not 
 indeed say he might not do what is suggested, and yet 
 leave them poetical enough, as Tennyson, Bret Harte, Col. 
 John Hay, and others have done recently. Indeed he has 
 done so in many pieces. 
 
 Picturesque the "dim common populations" are in some 
 aspects, rugged, full of movement and colour, with none of 
 their angles rubbed down in the social mill. And is it not 
 well that a poet should take us with him into the heart of 
 great cities, or into rude huts on the mountain side and on 
 the shore, setting us face to face, heart to heart, with men 
 and women — " fate-stricken " persons, often braving hunger 
 and want, danger and despair, toiling ever to render easier 
 life possible for us — making us know more wisely, because 
 more lovingly, the very waifs, outcasts, and lost children of 
 our human family "i They who lounge at club windows, or 
 write leaders for gentlemen, may like to shut out all that 
 from them ; it is an offence and a puzzle to them ; only 
 " false sentiment," " philanthropy," or something equally 
 odious and de inaiivais ton notices these things. " Odi pro- 
 fanum ! " But let these persons be more tolerant of other 
 tastes ; let them cease to suppose that they in their cloisters 
 or clubs are mouthpieces of what is soundest and most 
 enduring in the heart of this nation. Why should they 
 fancy, moreover, that they know so much more of these 
 people than this poet who professes to have suffered and 
 struggled with them — to have sprung from them — and to 
 have experienced that there is a soul of good even in 
 things evil ; who, on the whole, with Walt Whitman, from 
 whom he has learnt much, refuses to call anything — 
 except the " fleshly school " — common or unclean ? The 
 people, in moments of emotion, have poetry of thought 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 287 
 
 and expression far more <^enuine than that of the genteel, 
 and they are able to feel — if they have leisure, even to dwell 
 upon their feelings — though they may not dwell so much 
 upon them as we, nor make a luxury of the practice in 
 their hard hand-to-hand fight with stern gross wants. I 
 would not deny that these poems may be too uniformly 
 tearful and sad ; nevertheless, the poet has humour very 
 salt and genuine too : I wish he would use that faculty 
 oftener. Poets have it seldom nowadays. Herein, as in 
 other ways, Buchanan sometimes reminds one of Burns. 
 
 No doubt such metrical stories have been written before. 
 We have Shenstone, Crabbe, Clare, E. Elliot, and, above 
 all, Wordsworth. But such idyls have not been written, 
 I think, about the inhabitants of cities. To our great 
 novelist, Charles Dickens, we chiefly owe an interest about 
 and knowledge of modern cities, and while Nell a little 
 reminds us of Oliver Twist, Angus Blane in one respect 
 reminds us of Barnaby Rudge. But Mr. Buchanan's best 
 things are essentially poems, and not novels. Though he 
 has been influenced by his great master — and by that 
 other great master, Wordsworth, who in " Michael " and 
 the " Excursion " led us to feel the nobility and pathos of 
 common life — yet he is thoroughly original. As to Crabbe, 
 though in him there is " iron pathos," and grim realistic 
 tragedy, yet, as a rule, I cannot feel in him the consecration 
 of the " light that never was on sea or land." And there 
 is surely very little verbal music in Crabbe. It is photo- 
 graphy. The details are not selected. 
 
 " John," " Kittie Kemble," and " De Berny," all seem 
 to belong to Mr. Buchanan's inferior work — in them the 
 motif \s too slight, and the metre hardly seems to have 
 sufficient raison d'etre, while neither that nor the diction is 
 for its own sake striking. Such sketches are clever, but 
 one can hardly accept them as poems. Mr. Buchanan 
 writes a great deal, and perhaps no one's work is less 
 equal ; but great inequality may be predicated of the best 
 
288 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 poets. As B}Ton sa)'s to ]\Iurray, " What poem is good 
 all through ? You may think yourself lucky if half ' Don 
 Juan ' be good." It may be said that most of Gray and 
 Campbell is good ; but are Gray and Campbell in the first 
 order of poets ? And are tJiey good all through ? Certainly 
 not, unless mere " correct," or tumid, bombastic diction 
 makes good poetry — without fire, without emotion, without 
 vision. Yet, Campbell's odes, and Gray's " Elegy " are 
 admirable beyond question. Mr. Swinburne says of 
 Byron that you are never secure in him from some hideous 
 dislocation of pinion when he is in full flight. I think 
 that may be true. But you have, unfortunately, to choose 
 between this and a poet who, while remaining on the 
 ground, flaps and beats his wings as if he were flying, or 
 else plays tricks, as of a tumbler pigeon, in mid-air. What 
 poet always soars, and never collapses, or plays fantastic 
 tricks? "Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus." And if 
 so, what of the rest ? 
 
 In estimating a poet's position I fancy we must ask — 
 not. What bad things has he done } or, What defects are 
 there in his work t but. How good are his best things ? and, 
 perhaps, How many good things has he done ? To me it 
 seems that there are in Sydney Dobell, and Alexander 
 Smith, a few passages, even lyrics, of such transcendent 
 excellence as almost to counterbalance the marvellous 
 want of organic unity in their productions ; yet, these being 
 only passages, one hesitates where to place them — though 
 indeed "the Roman" is good all through. In Buchanan, 
 however, }-ou have poems good, not passages merely. 
 And the question is, therefore, Hoiu good are those poems ? 
 
 What is especially striking about " Nell " is the intensity 
 of its passion ; every word sinks home ; its brevity gives 
 it high tragic power. " Poetic diction," and ingenious 
 metrical effects would simply ruin that poem. The lines — 
 
 " I stopped, and had some coffee at a stall, 
 Because I felt so chill," 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 289 
 
 in their place are intensely poetical, exactly because there 
 is no " poetic diction " about them. These women are as 
 noble too as Chaucer's Patient Griseld is. 
 
 I hardly know any one who can draw such telling 
 pictures in a few words, or set before you a group of 
 figures with their background so distinctly, as if by a 
 flash of liglitning issuing out of the darkness of stormy 
 night. 
 
 Before proceeding to notice more particularly " Meg 
 Blane," I would express regret at not seeing in this collec- 
 tion " Attorney Sneak," an exceedingly humorous piece ; 
 but I am glad to see " Tim O'Hara," and the " Starling," of 
 the same order. 
 
 Meg Blane was a kind of sailor woman, rough and 
 gaunt, yet with a woman's nature. She had lived with a 
 man as his wife : he had gone to sea, and she knew not 
 what was become of him. With her, in her hut by the 
 shore, abode her full-grown, half-witted son, and the love 
 these two bore one another is described with much beauty. 
 Of the boldest was Meg Blane in perilous adventures by 
 sea, but she yearned ever, like a true woman, after the 
 absent. One night there was a great storm, which is 
 depicted with intense power. Meg Blane gets some men 
 to go with her in a boat out to a wreck, which breaks up 
 before they reach it ; but one man was drifted on shore 
 alive, and borne to a cottage, where Meg afterwards goes to 
 see him while he lies asleep and exhausted. She recognizes 
 in this man her old lover ; and most powerful is the picture 
 of this. She withdraws, and returns later — but troubled, 
 and wondering to herself that the joy seems less absolute 
 than she had fancied all these years it would be. Intensely 
 dramatic and moving is the representation of the interview 
 wherein she learns, on presenting to him the half-witted 
 Angus as their " bairn," that he is married and has children 1 
 Some of the most lovely l}M-ical lines in the language 
 follow : — 
 
290 ESSAYS ON POETKV AND POETS. 
 
 " Lord, with how small a thing 
 Thou canst prop up a heart against the grave ! 
 A little glimmering 
 Is all we crave ; 
 
 The lustre of a love that hath no being ; 
 The pale point of a little star above, 
 Flashing and fleeing, 
 Contents our seeing. 
 
 The house that never will be built ; the gold 
 That never will be told ; 
 The task we leave undone when we are cold ; 
 The dear face that returns not, but is lying 
 Licked by the leopard in an Indian cave ; 
 The coming rest that cometh not, till sighing, 
 We turn o^r tremulous gaze upon the grave ! 
 And Lord ! how shall we dare 
 Thither in peace to fall. 
 But for a feeble glimmering even there. 
 Falsest perchance of all ? 
 We are as children in Thy hands indeed 1 
 And thou hast easy comfort for our need : 
 The shining of a lamp, the tinkling of a bell. 
 Content us well. 
 
 '* In poverty, in pain. 
 For weary years and long. 
 One faith, one fear, had comforted Meg Blanc, 
 Yea, made her brave and strong ; 
 A faith so faint, it seemed not faith at all : 
 Rather a trouble, and a dreamy fear, 
 A hearkening for a voice, for a footfall, 
 She never hoped in sober heart to hear. 
 This had been all her cheer : 
 Y'et with this balm 
 Her soul might have slept calm 
 For many another year." 
 
 But after this hope failed her she lost her courage at sea, 
 
 her heart for toil on land ; poor Angus, who depended on her, 
 
 suffered, and was sad as partaking of her sorrow ; and this 
 
 was bitter to her — the stern woman became hard toward 
 
 men, and fretful, and knew she had not long to live. 
 
 " ' O bairn, when I am dead. 
 How shall ye keep frae harm ? 
 What hand will gie ye bread ? 
 What fire will keep ye warm ? 
 How shall ye dwell on earth awa' frae me ? ' 
 * O mither, dinna dee ! ' 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 29I 
 
 " ' O bairn, it is but closing up tiic een, 
 And lying down never to rise again : 
 Many a strong man's sleeping hae I seen ; 
 There is nae pain. 
 
 I'm weary, weary, and I scarce ken why ; 
 My summer has gone by ; 
 
 And sweet were sleep but for the sake o' thee ! ' 
 ' O mither, dinna dee ! ' 
 
 " When summer scents and sounds were on the sea, 
 And all night long the silvern surge plashed cool, 
 Outside the hut she sat upon a stool, 
 And with thin fingers fashion'd carefully, 
 While Angus leant his head against her knee, 
 A long white dress of wool. 
 
 ' O mither,' cried the man, ' what make ye there ? 
 A blanket for our bed ! 
 O mither ! it is like the shroud folk wear 
 When they are drown'd and dead ! ' 
 And Meg said naught, liut kissed him on the lips. 
 And looked with dull eye seaward, where the moon 
 Blackened the white sails of the passing ships. 
 Into the Land where she was going soon." 
 
 The man soon followed her. There is a most extra- 
 ordinary Celtic glamour about this poem, penetrating 
 through the intense and rugged realism of it. And this it 
 is which the author truly conceives to be one great charac- 
 teristic of his work — though he insists upon the " mysticism " 
 of it almost too strenuously — which exasperates all those 
 (the majority even of intelligent people) who detest 
 " mysticism " — does not Mr. Swinburne call philosophy " a 
 pestilential and holy jungle"? — besides indicating a tendency 
 which, I fancy, might become prejudicial to his remarkable 
 realistic human faculty in poetry. Thus Mr. Buchanan 
 himself has perceived that his long " Drama of Kings " was, 
 on the whole, a failure ; and I cannot help thinking that 
 the mystical element here unduly prevailed over the human. 
 I shall hardly be suspected of undervaluing philosoph)-, or 
 the mysterious spiritual element in poetry ; but in his 
 presentation of the Napoleons and Bismarck, Mr. Buchanan 
 did not give one the impression of so firm a grasp upon 
 
292 ESSAYS ON PUETRV AND POETS. 
 
 individualities as he does in his portraits from low life. 
 There is much more complexity in characters of this kind, 
 and they are, before all, men of action — their ends being 
 chiefly tangible and practical, however large, and therefore 
 to some extent ideal. Celebrated statesmen may be 
 prominent instruments in the carrying out of certain uni- 
 versal laws, which thinkers may be able to detect ; but 
 very seldom are such laws uppermost in their thoughts, 
 even if consciously grasped by their understanding at all. 
 " With how little wisdom is the world governed ! " and yet 
 might it not be worse governed with more? It is in the 
 delineation of simpler, ruder natures, swayed by deep 
 emotions, and but half-consciously influenced by the grand 
 wild natural elements around, that Mr. Buchanan excels — 
 what can be finer, for instance, than his " Tiger Bay," and 
 his picture of the tigerish would-be murderess watching the 
 sleeping sailor in some low lodging of Ratcliffe Highway 
 — not of the whole scene merely, but of the subtle play, 
 and shifting of emotions in the wild woman's mind, till the 
 better prevail — with that companion picture of an actual 
 tiger in a jungle } 
 
 The great Napoleon is, indeed, depicted with some 
 dramatic skill ; but the very fragmentary glimpse of him 
 we get in his dispute with the queen and cardinal somehow 
 fails to satisfy ; and his solitary broodings, though striking, 
 and possibly appropriate, do not seem sufficient to fill up 
 the portrait of him quite characteristically. We have the 
 same feeling as regards the portraiture of Bismarck, and 
 the Third Napoleon ; though one is rather more satisfied 
 with the latter, who indeed seems to have been a brooding, 
 irresolute, somewhat shallow and pretentious person. But 
 here more elaboration, more distinction of poetic language 
 and metre, might have been efficacious in raising the work 
 to a higher poetic level. In fact, one wants here a real 
 drama with movement and development. There is an 
 absence, moreover, of Mr. Buchanan's special merit — con- 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 293 
 
 densation, terseness, intensity. The choruses and semi- 
 choruses are unequal, and too numerous ; nor does their 
 moral and intellectual generality seem to harmonize with 
 the fragmentary realistic glimpses of actual passing events 
 — too familiar, because too little spiritualized ; less still 
 do I like the imitation of Goethe's supernatural Faust 
 machinery. Out of Shelley (not to say, in Shelley), one 
 can scarcely read choruses and semi-choruses ad libitmn, 
 and not rebel. The whole thing in Shelley is sublimated ; 
 it passes in an aethereal region of unearthly and seraphic 
 loveliness. 
 
 There is, perhaps, a danger lest " the mystic " should 
 not accept life in all its variety and interaction ; and too 
 arbitrarily selecting from his own standpoint what seems 
 to him individually most significant and lofty, the dramatist 
 or narrator may thus too easily become the preacher or 
 moraliser, sliding into turgid and nebulous generalities — far 
 removed from the living order of Shakespeare's creations — 
 or at least into monotonous mannerism of treatment ; and 
 this, even though he may not be ready to swallow whole 
 merely conventional views of virtue. There is always, 
 moreover, a danger of a man posing as mystic or prophet, 
 and contemplating himself in that character — a danger 
 to his insight and art of the same kind as would arise from 
 his considering too much what will make him immediately 
 popular with the many, or with a clique. 
 
 Still there are passages of much excellence in this long 
 book, and the author here reprints some of the best of the 
 lyrical ones under the title of " Political Mystics " and 
 "Songs of the Terrible Year." • "Titan and Avatar" is in 
 parts particularly fine, Titan being the People, or the Spirit 
 of Man, and Avatar the great Napoleon. The curse on 
 him pronounced by Titan, whom he has misled with false 
 though specious promises, lured by false fires for his own 
 ends, on whom he has brought so much misery and deso- 
 lation, is especially striking. The great anarch is doomed 
 
294 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 to wither away on the lonely rock of St. Helena — as 
 ITa\'don has painted him — 
 
 " Till like a wave, worn out with silent breaking, 
 Or like a wind blown weary, thou forsaking 
 Thy tenement of clay, 
 Shalt wear and waste away, 
 And grow a portion of the ever-waking 
 Tumult of cloud and sea. Feature by feature 
 Losing the likeness of the living creature. 
 Returning back thy form 
 To its elements of storm. 
 Thou shalt dissolve in the great wreck of Nature ! " 
 
 A sweeping resonant l}Tic, too, is the " Song of the 
 Sword," supposed to be sung by the Germans on the 
 coronation of their Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at 
 Versailles. 
 
 "Artist and Model" is a poem which I should fancy 
 might commend itself even to the most euphuistic of 
 persons with pouncet boxes, who refuse to let common 
 things and common words come between the wind and 
 their nobility — who invent felicitous, periphrastic disguises 
 for the nakedness of all vulgar little ands or buts — who 
 white the sepulchre, and, like certain tribes, cover the face 
 decorously, leaving other parts exposed. But probably the 
 diction of this poem would seem to them too simple, direct, 
 and exquisitely compliant to the delicate mould and subtle 
 movement of suggested thought or tender emotion. This 
 is just, however, what fulfils my Philistine idea of good 
 expression, and good form, which I also, in my poor way, 
 value. 
 
 I shall now say a word about the " Book of Orm." The 
 more it is read, the more it grows on you. On the whole, 
 I cannot sufficiently express my admiration. Its loose 
 rhythms are usually most skilful, musical, and fascinating. 
 These, harmonizing well with the whole conception, which 
 is Celtic in character, impress you with a sense of origi- 
 nality, as the varied metres of the " Drama of Kings " 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN S POETRY. 295 
 
 somehow did not. The poem is no less than a contribution 
 in poetic cypher toward the solution of some universal prob- 
 lems — ambitious this ! — yet the poet has fairly grasped 
 some of the best thought of the time, even if he have not 
 quite mastered the world's foremost thinkers. But what 
 is distinctively his own, and of the highest artistic import 
 here, is the manner in which he has seen and successfully 
 presented a few very striking ideas, invested with vivid, 
 noble, and appropriate forms, rising out of the depths 
 of a personal, boldly creative, and profoundly emotional 
 imagination. 
 
 " The Vision of the World without Death " is a most 
 admirable attempt to show the use, and ev^en consoling 
 influence of visible death, as also of resting-places for mortal 
 ashes. I am sorry for any who fail to feel the marvellous 
 beauty of this part. In its magical pathos the picture of 
 the mother losing her children without seeing them die is 
 unsurpassable. All this shows a very high and rare imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 "And stilly in the starlight came I backward 
 
 To the forest where I missed him, and no voices 
 
 Brake the stillness as I stooped down in the starlight, 
 
 And saw two little shoes filled up with dew, 
 
 And no mark of little footsteps any further. 
 
 And knew my little daughter had gone also." 
 
 In "Songs of Seeking" the author shows his very 
 
 characteristic grasp of the great truth which so few can 
 
 feel, that wickedness is not absolute — not final, therefore ; 
 
 nor Doom — that there is " a soul of good in things evil ; " 
 
 that "God hath made even the wicked to praise Him," in 
 
 a far profounder sense than that in which the doctrine of 
 
 everlasting damnation teaches it. Very beautiful, in their 
 
 spontaneous informal melody, are the stanzas named 
 
 " Quest" and the " Lamb of God." 
 
 "As in the snowy stillness, 
 Where the stars shine greenly 
 In a mirror of ice, 
 The reindeer abideth aloiie. 
 
296 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 And speedeth swiftly 
 From her following shadow 
 In the moon, 
 I speed for ever 
 From the mystic shape 
 That my life projects, 
 And my soul perceives, 
 And I loom for ever 
 Through desolate regions 
 Of wondrous thought, 
 And I fear the thing 
 That follows me. 
 Doth thy winged lightning 
 Strike, O Master! 
 The timid reindeer, 
 Flying her shade ? 
 Will thy wrath pursue me, 
 Because I cannot 
 Escape the shadow 
 Of the thing I am ? " 
 
 " God's Dream " is really a profound poem. " The 
 Lifting of the Veil " is a vivid, imaginative picture of what 
 would happen to men and women if they did know the 
 whole mystery of God, which they mourn they cannot 
 know. The " Seeds," too, is a most notable lyric of the 
 development of life, consciousness, power, and pain. The 
 "Devil's Mystics" are surely somewhat obscure, especially 
 " Roses : " I was glad to see the Spectator s exposition, which 
 Mr. Buchanan reprints and accepts. His Devil is the in- 
 carnation of Evil regarded as Defect. This very familiar 
 metaphysical conception does not lend itself easily, how- 
 ever, to personal symbolism. This mystic " Devil " becomes 
 necessarily a kind of beneficent being, and so loses his very 
 distinctive nature as Devil : as a spirit of evil. To try to 
 render this idea concrete is to fail. Nevertheless, the last 
 lines are extremely suggestive, and might be taken by the 
 author as his motto : — 
 
 " The voice cried out, ' Rejoice, rejoice ! 
 There shall be sleep for evil ! ' 
 And all the sweetness of God's Voice 
 Passed strangely through the Devil. " 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 297 
 
 The " SorifT of Deicides " is extremely vigorous and 
 clever ; but the " Vision of the Man Accurst " is a truly- 
 grand imaginative effort, and embodies the central truth of 
 Christianity, that utter self-sacrificing love is divine, and is 
 alone capable of prevailing over evil — which truth has been 
 embodied in a supreme manner by Victor Hugo in his 
 " Miserables." If it were not that, perhaps, the shadowy, 
 phantom-like genius of the whole poem demands it, one 
 might complain of a certain want of complex detail and 
 coherence in the imagery here — but it is Ossianic, and fine 
 in its own large, vague Brocken-spectre style. One " man 
 accurst" alone is not saved from sin, though all beside are 
 saved. He is cast out from Heaven, and blasphemes in 
 a wild region of ice. At length God asks if any will go 
 forth and voluntarily share his doom. At last his mother 
 and his wife go forth from bliss to the loathsome thing, and 
 "kiss his bloody hands." "The one he slew in anger — the 
 other he stript, with ravenous claws, of raiment and of 
 food." " Nevertheless," says the wife — 
 
 " ' I will go forth with him whom ye call curst ; 
 I have kis't his lips ; 1 have lain upon his breast ; 
 I bare him children, and I closed his eyes ; 
 I will go forth with him.' . . . 
 .... A piteous human cry, a sob forlorn 
 Thrilled to the heart of Heaven. The man wept ; 
 And in a voice of most exceeding peace 
 The Lord said, while against the breast divine 
 The waters of life leapt gleaming, gladdening, 
 ' The man is saved : let the man enter in ! ' " 
 
 Still one feels inclined to congratulate Mr. Buchanan 
 on his having dropped the prophet in his anonymous 
 works, " St. Abe," and " White Rose." He has gained 
 variety of human interest by dropping it. In these works 
 he shows, besides matured humour and satirical faculty, 
 dramatic genius also, as journals hostile to Mr. Buchanan 
 (either from personal reasons, or because their editors were 
 dominated, one supposes, by certain cliques, wedded to a 
 
298 ESSAYS 0\ POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 particular school), observed only too truly and naively, not 
 know ins,^ unfortunately, of whom they thus wrote ! The pro- 
 saic baldness, triviality, bad taste, and over-blankncss, which 
 certainly do disfigure some of his earlier work, have in 
 these narratives entirely disappeared ; while the narratives 
 arc much more rich and complex as studies of character, 
 of persons in their mutual life-influence on one another, 
 than anything which has preceded. Thoroughly sincere 
 and graphic studies of external Nature also occur. Notable 
 here, as usually in the author's work, are its artistic totality 
 and clearness of outline ; also the racy, nervous, direct 
 Anglo-Saxon strength of its language, for which we must 
 go otherwise at the present day to Tennyson, or to Profes- 
 sor J. Nichol's admirable " Hannibal," and " Themistocles," 
 to J. A. Symonds, and Sir H. Taylor's dramas ; or back 
 to Byron, Wordsworth, Pope, and Chaucer — notable, too, 
 its absence of affectation, artifice, and general excess. 
 There is no poverty of matter, or extravagance of manner. 
 All this used to be thought essential in the time of Aristotle, 
 and even since. It used to be thought " classical." But 
 academies have changed their minds. Of course, one may 
 lay too much stress on self-restrained symmetry, and clear- 
 ness. " Endymion " is beautiful poetry, and Gifford's 
 " Baviad " is nothing of the sort. Gold ore is better than 
 polished brass snuffers. Still these qualities are something ; 
 for they are essential to the greatest artists^for instance, 
 to /Eschylus, Sophocles, and Homer. 
 
 Yet in the early work, fine as it often was for intensity, 
 and severity of outline, the colouring was almost fatiguing 
 in its lurid and fiery brilliancy ; one longed for a little 
 more repose, more delicate complexity of subtly varying 
 hues, more gradations, more half-notes, more tendernesses 
 of shadow, more development of character, such as one 
 finds in life, and in external Nature. Here we have much 
 of all this, without losing breadth and decision of touch, 
 or depth and lustre of tint. Splendidly vivid is the Boss's 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY, 299 
 
 tale in " St. Abe;" admirably huinorous are the feminine 
 whispers in church during Hrigham's sermon ; the sketch 
 of Abe Clevvson's seven wives; and the close analysis of 
 his own character, partly contained in his last epistle to 
 the polygamists of Utah, in which he relates how he fell 
 in love with his own wife — his last and youngest, who also 
 loved him — and how they fled together, he seriously de- 
 scribing himself }'-ears after as not saintly enough for 
 Mormonism. 
 
 But " White Rose and Red " is in some respects Mr. 
 Buchanan's greatest poem. I never read a criticism I 
 thought more ludicrously at sea than that in the Spectator, 
 which declared that this poem was remarkable, not for its 
 humanity, but for its descriptions of Nature. These, indeed, 
 are as good as possible, whether luscious tropical descrip- 
 tions at the beginning, or those of the Great Snow, or that 
 of Drowsietown. But it is the human pictures that one 
 most prizes here. Magnificent is the portrayal of the 
 hunter's capture by bathing Indian women ; as also of 
 Red Rose, the wild Indian girl, who fell in love with 
 Eureka Hart, the tall, handsome " beaver-minded " white 
 hunter, while he roamed in his youth through a tropical 
 forest — splendid the relation of her tropical love for him, 
 and its transfiguration, not of him, alas ! but of his image 
 in her soul. Yet no one without keen humour touched 
 with pity could have done this. While he begins to dream 
 of civilization and proprieties, and her fierce love begins 
 to bore him, she imagines, looking in his fine face, he is 
 brooding over all kinds of Divine projects — the beaver ! 
 Then he says he must go, but he will return — and he 
 means it. He gives her a paper scrawled in blood with 
 his name and address. He comes not ; she follows him 
 over many weary lands through the Great Snow. She 
 arrives at a cottage door at last with his child — a mighty 
 storm is raging — his wife opens ! — a white little wife — to 
 whom before fainting she shows this paper ! That White 
 
300 ESSAYS ON POETRV AND POETS. 
 
 Rose, Phcebe, is admirably painted, in contrast to Red 
 Rose, and all the alternations of her feeling when she 
 knows the truth : she is proper, somewhat cold, civilized, 
 not too much in love, yet kind and good. The man enters ; 
 Red Rose clings to him, still full of faith ! The humour 
 of the situation almost predominates over the pathos here. 
 Poor treacherous beaver ! He does not know what to do 
 between the two women. He had got back ; he wanted 
 to " settle down ; " perhaps Red Rose would forget him, 
 in time ; and what would Parson Pendon say to his marry- 
 ing a red squaw — not a Christian ? Shocking ! And then 
 he fell in love — for the first time in love — with Phoebe 
 Anna — so they were married. Noble in the extreme and 
 graphic is the account of Red Rose's terrible journey to 
 find him. Soon after arriving she dies — nursed by White 
 Rose, with Eureka Hart by ; she still believing in him, 
 and that they shall meet in those happy prairies which are 
 the Indian's Heaven. Alas ! alas ! White Rose pardons 
 him — and he, did he forget Red Rose .-' Never ! 
 
 "Often, while 
 He sat and piiff'd his pipe with easy smile, 
 Surveying fields and orchards from the porch, 
 And far away the little village church, 
 While all seemed peaceful, earth and air and sky, 
 A twinkle came into his fish-like eye : 
 ' Poor critter ! ' sigh'd he, as a cloud he blew, 
 ' She was a splendid figure, and that's true ! ' " 
 
 Grim tragi-comed\' ! The metres are sparkling and facile ; 
 everybody talks, not in poetic diction or heroics, but as 
 everybody would ; and the poet's humour plays like a 
 lambent flame over all. There is a good deal of Chaucer, 
 Burns, and Byron here ; yet the poem is thoroughly 
 original — queer, sensuous, tender, serious, wonderful, like 
 life ; as I said, the more so that the poet is for the nonce 
 no prophet, and forgets how angry he has been with the 
 " fleshly school ! " The writer's power of painting external 
 Nature has greatly matured. There are no more admirable 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 30I 
 
 descriptions extant than in his prose-work on the Hebrides, 
 where also we find one of his most magically affecting 
 tales, " Eiradh of Canna." 
 
 Mr. Buchanan has written some very noble sonnets ; 
 " Faces on the Wall," and those called " Coruisken," that 
 open the " Book of Orm," and most powerfully mirror the 
 sublime, desolate scenery of Loch Coruisk, embodying also 
 corresponding moods of desolate doubt and dim aspiration. 
 He occasionally gives us delicate fancies, breathing an 
 aroma of evanescent emotion, such as " Clari in the Well," 
 and " Charmian." But in the moralized weird and mystical, 
 and in the spiritualized real, is he most at home. A 
 wonderful piece of work of that kind is the " Ballad of 
 Judas Iscariot," with its high moral. The " Dead Mother," 
 and " Lord Roland's Wife " too are steeped in a similar 
 magical atmosphere, but have a more tenderly human pathos. 
 
 The following strange, arresting lines among others 
 express the writer's central idea most forcibly : — 
 
 " O Pan ! O Pan ! thou art not dead : 
 Ghost-like, O Pan ! thou glimmerest still, 
 A spectral face with sad dumb stare ; 
 On rainy nights thy breath blows chill 
 In the street-walker's dripping hair ! " . . . . 
 By lonely meres thou dosl not wait ; 
 But here, 'mid living waves of Fate, 
 We feel thee go and come. " 
 
 So, accordingly, the poet gives us beautiful lyrics, like a 
 " Spring Song in the City," the " City Asleep," and " Two 
 Sons," as well as powerful sketches like " Barbara Gray." 
 His utterance here is bold to a degree ; he looks beyond 
 what the conventional world, religious or worldly, may say 
 is right, to that which is more absolutely right ; even as it 
 is also in accordance with the best instincts of this plain, 
 but not loveless woman's heart. The man wronged and 
 left her ; she went astray with him ; but none else had 
 brought love into her narrow and unlovely life : so, as he 
 lies dead in the grim London room, deformed and un- 
 
302 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 beautiful himself, she forgives, kisses him, and loves on. 
 Of course the " Art for art " school will say that a poet 
 has no business to teach even by implication, to have or 
 express any moral convictions of his own. That I deny. 
 What do they make of Shelley, and Dante ? I say this 
 poem is an artistic glorification of the meanest possible 
 subject, and as such a triumph of art. It is more elevating 
 than the skilful presentation of natures, however brilliant, 
 in lower or more evil moods. That may be done most 
 artistically ; but it does not open out to the soul the same 
 infinite vistas, tinged with light from above. If there be 
 nobler spiritual elements, and a moral law with sanctions 
 in our nature, the highest art cannot afford to ignore these 
 in dealing with man : the art that does so distorts, or is 
 most contracted in scope. High art will either create high 
 types, contrasting them with low, or look for hidden larger 
 issues and relations in the low. The highest art docs not 
 treat man as if he were but an insignificant member of his 
 own generative organ. 
 
 Skill in portrayal is essential, and that includes style ; 
 but the point of view selected, and the kind of insight 
 displayed mark the difference between high and low art. 
 This seems not to be understood by a certain school of 
 critics. According to their teaching, the skilful painter of 
 a plum should be equal to the skilful painter of a Last 
 Judgment, or a Cornaro family — the late Mr. Hunt to 
 Michael Angelo, or Titian. But however skilful Teniers 
 may be, Raphael, who showed equal skill in higher spiritual 
 regions, is a greater painter. Homer, too, is greater — yet 
 jiot a more skilful — poet than Horace, or Theocritus. A 
 very skilful cook or cobbler — is he as great an artist as 
 a very skilful architect .-• The real difficulty, of course, is to 
 balance greater insight, feeling, and organizing imagination 
 in the one case against greater technical excellence in the 
 other, where these qualities do not exist equally propor- 
 tioned in two writers. According to the bias of individual 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POETRY. 303 
 
 judgments, there must always be variation in the verdicts. 
 That technical skill is essential is so certain, that no fool 
 ever disputed it. The only difference and question in this 
 connection which arises is — what is skill in dealing with a 
 given subject, and tv/io shows it ^ 
 
 Merely didactic, expository, or analytic verse is not 
 poetry — large portions, therefore, of Lucretius, of Mr. 
 Browning, and of that really magnificent poem by Mr. 
 Domett, " Ranolf and Amohia," are not. But in Pope 
 always, in Dryden sometimes, we have wit playing through 
 all, like a spiritual flame ; in other similar poems we have 
 humour. All original poets flush the lives or objects they 
 behold with emotional light from the depths of their own 
 souls ; but this light is a revealing, not a misleading one, 
 whether it shine specially upon sensuous and aesthetic, or 
 upon moral and intellectual aspects ; others partaking of 
 the same human sympathies arc enabled thereby to see as 
 the poet sees : this is the true transfiguring light of art. 
 Some, however, not gifted with the requisite human ele- 
 ments, how clever and cultivated soever, can only mock 
 and decry. And " criticism," as commonly understood, 
 means the mockery of malice, or incompetence. But 
 general, as well as concrete truth has been, and may yet be 
 poetically presented. 
 
 Some poets again are more in harmony with their own 
 age's most advanced standpoint than others — but a man 
 may be either superficially, or more profoundly, and less 
 apparently in harmony with it. While low clouds are 
 moving one way, high clouds may be moving another ; yet 
 the movement of nether mists may be most evident to 
 careless glances of the many — everybody can see which way 
 the straws blow ; but because I believe Mr. Buchanan to 
 have given adequate expression in imaginative rhythmical 
 form to some of the deepest special perceptions and ideal 
 aims of the time, I believe him to be one of our foremost 
 living poets, and destined to become (directly or indirectly) 
 one of our most influential. 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITxMAN. 
 
 To me, I will begin by owning at the outset, Walt Whitman 
 appears as one of the largest and most important figures of 
 the time. Of those who have publicly expressed a some- 
 what similar conviction, may be mentioned Mr. Rossetti, 
 Mr. Conway, Mr. Robert Buchanan, Professor Dowden, 
 and Mr. Emerson. 
 
 I think that what delights and arrests one most is the 
 general impression he gives of nature, strength, health, in- 
 dividuality — his relish of all life is so keen, intense, catholic 
 — the grasp of his faith is so nervous and tremendous — as 
 he says, " My feet are tenon'd and mortis'd in granite." 
 One of the notes of a man of genius is, that through life he 
 remains a child ; and there is something eminently child- 
 like in Whitman. He is full of naif wonder and delight — 
 each thing, every time he looks upon it, flashes upon him 
 with a sense of eternal freshness and surprise ; nor is any- 
 thing to him common or unclean ; but an aerial glory, as 
 of morning, utterly insensible to vulgar eyes, bathes and 
 suffuses all. He is tall, colossal, luxuriant, unpruncd, like 
 some giant tree in a primaeval forest, whose feet root pro- 
 foundly in a virgin soil. He springs out of the vast 
 American continent full-charged with all that is special 
 and national in it, in a super-eminent degree representative 
 of all that is richest and most fresh (as well as of somewhat 
 that is unlovely) in the American life which, more fully 
 than an}' other, embodies the present age's own indi- 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 305 
 
 viduality ; yet in that very continent there flutter also some 
 of the feeblest, most contemptible, and emasculate of poeti- 
 cules, and criticasters — faint echoes of an echo, pale, feeble, 
 ineffectual copies of European literature, with all the native 
 marrow, and all the vital sap and savour gone out of them. 
 America is the land of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, 
 Longfellow, Lowell ; but also of the mocking-bird. Whit- 
 man is very far from being hopeless and disdainful of his 
 time ; he does not, as many really great writers of his 
 country have done, prefer distant lands, enriched with long 
 and eventful histories, for his theme ; he takes his own 
 country and his own time, however ignoble they may seem 
 to some fastidious tastes ; he is by no means himself 
 uninfluenced by the special errors and special weaknesses 
 of these ; but he is withal magnificently pregnant with a 
 seer's half-articulate previsions, with a prophet's triumphant 
 anticipations of that larger and more generous human 
 future, which is surely about to issue out of these travailing 
 loins, and from these ominous birthpangs of the present. 
 He is American democracy incarnate ; and however much 
 that leaves to be desired, yet it is great. He is, indeed, 
 more prophet than artist. He very seldom retires to create 
 deliberate imaginative wholes, in whose many diverse 
 forms may be incarnated the truths he sees and must utter, 
 the mastering emotions which dominate his soul. You 
 never cease to see the man Walt Whitman. But then it is 
 a very noble, and I contend a very poetic, personality you 
 see — one in which, as in a magic crystal, all these men and 
 women of the world, all the sights of city and of landscape, 
 find themselves mirrored with most astonishing distinctness. 
 He is too eager, too excited, to linger and to weave artistic 
 poems out of his materials ; yet in the flash of the dark- 
 lantern he turns upon them for a moment as he passes, 
 though they too often appear isolated and disjunct, they 
 dart out upon you with all the marvellous solidity and 
 reality which their images have in nature. It is certainly 
 
 X 
 
306 ESSAYS ON rOETKV AND POETS. 
 
 2i poet's glance which has been poured upon them — piercing, 
 remaking them ; not the glance of an analyst, a practical 
 man, or one apathetic and indifferent. It is always one of 
 intense enjoyment, from complete vision of the essence 
 and heart of a thing. This atmosphere of keen buoyant 
 personal sympathy and pleasure is more marked in Whit- 
 man than in any one else ; it is wonderfully bracing and 
 refreshing to breathe. All the stale heaps of common, 
 familiar things seem to leap up into their proper vitality 
 as he passes : they glow like dingy metal filings in some 
 brilliant light. And if he were otherwise, more of an ordi- 
 nary artist, we should lose this refreshing novel sense of 
 intense yet catholic and impersonal personality, which is so 
 eminently characteristic of Walt Whitman. He seems to 
 revel in his own life, and equally in that of every man, 
 woman, and child he meets or can imagine. Now that 
 so many people say and sing that they are weary and tired 
 and despairing, that the world is worn out, and that you 
 must go back to the classics, or mediaeval themes for any 
 objects of warm poetic interest, that life now is " a suck 
 and a sell, and its end a bit of threadbare crape," this spec- 
 tacle of a poet and a man, like a very child, rejoicing in all 
 the teeming forces and energies of this vulgar world of ours 
 — this surely is something at least novel and " sensational." 
 True it is, however, that Whitman comes of the people ; 
 his past life has been active, adventurous, healthy, varied, 
 and broadly human in experience. He dare not set him- 
 self above them, above the meanest of them, and look down 
 from a height serenely benevolent upon them ; he claims 
 to be one with them ; and what he sees more vividly than 
 they, glories in more supremely, is — that he is, not an elect, 
 a very intellectual or refined man, but a man, and has men 
 and women for brothers and sisters. This honest and un- 
 feigned use of greatness in rendering service rather than in 
 exacting it — in pouring self out for the enrichment of man- 
 kind rather than in cunningly playing upon the weaknesses 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITiMAN. 307 
 
 of mankind for one's own glory — this is after the ancient 
 type of heroism, aftcrChrist," friend of publicans and sinners," 
 the Divinest Son of Man, who "drew all men to Himself;" 
 and one can well understand the personal fascination and 
 influence which we are informed Whitman is exercising 
 upon so many of the youth of America. The life familiar 
 to him is the picturesque, free, unconventional life of the 
 people — not the pale, monotonous, artificial life of literary 
 student, aristocrat, or plutocrat. He enters profoundly into 
 all their difficulties, enjoyments, sorrows, and eager aspira- 
 tions. Then, too, he has been in the great civil war, and 
 been keenly penetrated with the noblest (as well as the 
 less noble, but still powerfully human) of its principles and 
 ideas. And in that war he was present personally in the 
 sublimest and most heroic of capacities — he ministered 
 constantly to the wounded on both sides, on the field and 
 in the hospital. Such a man, therefore, has had exceptional 
 advantages as man — and the raw material being heroic 
 such is the result. We who stay at home in the old country, 
 with old traditions, vices, and prejudices rank in our ancient 
 blood, nurtured under the grand, yet somewhat chilling 
 shadow of " time-honoured institutions " — we cannot pre- 
 tend to call ourselves men of the age as that man can call 
 himself man of the age. But of book-learning, of refined, 
 inherited culture-inculcated accents, words, and ways, 
 Whitman has probably little — so far, he has not, perhaps, 
 had all advantages, though, whether they would not have 
 cramped and injured Idm, is to me very questionable. 
 
 There are those, I know, who affirm that a poet can 
 never (except quite indirectly) be a teacher or a prophet. 
 This is again a critical dictum so removed from me that I 
 do not pretend to understand it. I should have thought it 
 depended on hozv he taught and prophesied — whether in 
 doing so his whole nature was afire or not, his imagination 
 and his heart all aglow about the chariot way of his reason ; 
 for otherwise Isaiah and Jeremiah, Lucretius and Shelle\\ 
 
308 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 would be no poets, which on the whole I rather take leave 
 to doubt. But it resolves itself, of course, into a dispute 
 about words. 
 
 If, again, a poet must necessarily mean a metrist after 
 our established English models, certainly Whitman is none. 
 His expression, indeed, must be admitted to be often slovenly, 
 inadequate, clumsy, and harsh ; sometimes even stilted, 
 bombastic, and inflated. But it is very far from uniformly 
 or generally this. I read indeed in a leading review how 
 it was now an axiom unquestioned by any judicious person 
 that subject-matter in poetry was nothing, and style, ex- 
 pression, was everything. I felt terribly disconcerted at 
 always having to believe exactly the opposite of all that 
 is so categorically, and without argument laid down by 
 our infallible oracles ; but really that did seem startling 
 to the uninitiated mind. Whether a poet has anything 
 to say, to bring out, to express, is of no consequence 
 whatsoever. Whether it be nothing or something, whether 
 it be nonsense or wisdom, empty wind or inspired reve- 
 lations, gibberings of an idiot, pulings of a sentimentalist, 
 or utterances of sublime imagination and divine passion 
 — all this is of absolutely no account ; if only there 
 be alliterations, and labials, and rotundities of sound in the 
 slipping of any, or of either of these things off the tongue, 
 he who gives vent to them is a poet, in either case equally 
 a poet ; but if there be not quite enough of these sounds, 
 whatever else there be, by no means, and on no account a 
 poet. Well, then, must not musical glasses be a poet ? 
 And since it would certainly be possible to weave intricacies 
 of sound more exquisite and more varied by discarding 
 altogether that old-fashioned hampering obligation of con- 
 ceiving, imagining, and feeling with strength sustained 
 enough to keep coherence, harmony, and distinctness among 
 the ideal links we forge, would it not on these principles 
 be well to lay down ex cathedra the grand, if novel axiom, 
 that true poetry can only, and shall only consist of nonsense 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 309 
 
 verses ? On the contrary, I venture to believe that ex- 
 pression implies meanings to be expressed, and that the 
 most perfect expression is that which most transparently 
 and impressively fits, and shows off the meaning. 
 
 The charm of " Don Juan " is surely in its wonderful 
 adaptation of measure to all clear, luscious beauty of the 
 pictures, all free, incommoded movements of the story, all 
 sparkling turns of satire, humour, and wit ; there is here 
 no deliberate concoction of " blessed words like Mesopo- 
 tamia," no triumphant exultation in the invention of novel 
 tricks for saying ordinary things that must be said in a 
 roundabout, coxcombical, and unintelligible manner, which 
 now (as in the days of Euphues, Donne, and the Delia 
 Cruscans), appears to be considered the one essential of 
 great poetry. Wordsworth hoped vainly that he had 
 refuted that. I refuse to call him a great master of expres- 
 sion with whom words, whether in prose or verse, are not 
 before all a medium of meaning ; if they are employed with 
 all manner of tricks and artifice, primarily for their own 
 sakes, and the meaning has very much to take its chance 
 of sanity and wholeness among them (the effect being that 
 of a kaleidoscope, where bright broken fragments of ideas 
 keep shifting their combinations in an endless and be- 
 wildering fashion), whatever the music of the sound be, 
 it is not good expression, but the very worst. Poetry in 
 this case usurps the place of music, for words can never be 
 mere sound, but always must remain symbolic sound with 
 a determined meaning. 
 
 Shelley himself, for example, wonderful poet as he is, 
 was often carried into totally inadequate expression by his 
 exquisite ear for melodious sound, though his melody and 
 harmony are glorious when they rise spontaneously into 
 heaven, immediately responsive to the soaring and ex- 
 pansive impulse within, wholly obedient to the burst of 
 impetuous imagination, to the divine stress and swell of 
 immense human sympathies. 
 
310 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 But of a poet — a maker, a seer, a singer — must first of 
 all be demanded if he can make and feel and see ; then 
 afterwards, if he can sing. Yet the chances are that if he 
 answer "yes" to the first question, you are almost safe in 
 leaving the other unasked. It is the very meaning and 
 essence of poetry that a man who can make in the region of 
 the ideal, who can feel and imagine (unless he be by nature 
 impelled to some other than verbal form of plastic expres- 
 sion), will necessarily be driven to some form of rhythmical 
 utterance. I do not depreciate the most gifted in the 
 region of melodious metrical expression. I magnify them. 
 If they have other things yet more essential, they are by 
 far the most perfect of our poets ; only Byron and Words- 
 worth, whose melody was less perfect than that of Shelley 
 or Coleridge, cannot on that account be placed below the 
 latter as poets ; for they have abundantly filled for us vast 
 spaces in the area of poetry whch could not have been 
 filled without them. They have ideal treasures not to be 
 found in their contemporaries. What were the early 
 rhapsodists, the story-tellers, ballad-intoners, bards, of an 
 infant people.^ It is generally conceded that poetry among 
 these is of the purest and freshest. Yet what do they 
 know of our elaborate involutions of phrasemongery ? 
 Therefore, especially do I welcome W'hitman. In spite 
 of all his faults, he brings us back to the matrix, to com- 
 mon sense and common nature, and makes us feel what 
 poetry originally, what at the root of the matter poetry 
 even now really means, and ought to mean. He is not 
 himself, indeed, always an artist, a poet ; but he is often 
 a very great poet ; and when he is, he shows himself to be 
 one, because he must be, not because he wouW like to be, 
 and can mimic those who are. lie chants, declaims ; 
 when his soul and subject bid him, he sings, quite in his 
 own fashion, as the poets of a primitive people do. 
 
 After all, it is rarely that you find all poetic gifts 
 perfectly balancing one another in any poet whatever. 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 31I 
 
 Nor can I concede for a moment that deficiency in the 
 region of large vivid insight, affluent imagination, broad 
 human sympathy, or rush and fire of passion, can be more 
 perfectly atoned for by verbal daintiness and skill, or by 
 a fine ear for verbal music, than some defect in these last 
 gifts can be by possession on the part of a poet of those 
 ideal gifts in ampler measure. Indeed, I distinctly believe 
 that the contrary rather is true. There is more hope 
 that a poet may be cured of hesitating utterance than 
 that a mere voluble versifier may sober and strengthen 
 into a poet. 
 
 We did want some infusion of robuster and healthier 
 blood among the pallid civilized brotherhood of our poets. 
 If admirers arise who strive to imitate Whitman's gait and 
 form, they will probably make themselves ridiculous, puff 
 themselves out and collapse ; yet will he certainly give our 
 jaded literature the prick and fiillip that it needed. He at 
 any rate is no closet-warbler, trilling delicately after the 
 music of other singers, having merely a few thin thoughts 
 and emotions only a quarter his own, and a clever aptitude 
 for catching the tricks of another man's manner. 
 
 He bears, however, a wonderful resemblance (I often 
 think) to Oriental prophets. He is in manner of life, as 
 well as manner of thought, feeling, temperament, marvel- 
 lously like a reincarnation over there in the West of that 
 special principle of personality which has been so much 
 more frequently manifested in the East — in Derwishes, for 
 instance, and Sufis. He has so thoroughly assimilated 
 Bible poetry on account of his profound personal identity 
 with the writers of it. Yet is he very un-Hebrew after all. 
 He is more Egyptian, Persian, Indian. Pantheist is he to 
 the backbone ; a Nature-worshipper, seeing God every- 
 where — God in all, even the meanest thing, a God-intoxi- 
 cated man, more truly than Spinoza, of whom Novalis 
 said it, for Spinoza, whatever else he was, was assuredly 
 never intoxicated. He bows before good and evil as in- 
 
312 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 tegral and correlative elements in the universal scheme 
 of things, all going (as Hegel demonstrates) by the prin- 
 ciple of identity in contraries. He is a desperate and 
 shameless assertor of the sacredness of the flesh, the body, 
 beauty of form and colour, and the fleshly instincts. This 
 he is (let us freely admit and regret) wantonly, inartistically 
 coarse in asserting ; unutterably shocking of course to 
 those who are unutterably shocked with Nature for making 
 us of flesh at all, and who hold that the only way to remedy 
 her immodest mistake is to hush the fact up altogether. 
 And there is a certain want in our author of moral, as 
 there is too of aerial perspective : all is too much on a 
 level, with the same rather fatiguing, and over-emphasized 
 glare upon it ; there are no subtle, reposeful shades, 
 and semitones. The flesh is well, if subordinated, but not 
 if exalted to an equality with the spirit. It is for a hand- 
 maid, not for a consort, or a queen. Art, moreover, 
 demands the higher and lower, rule and subordination, 
 light and shadow. But though Whitman is sometimes 
 coarse, he is never prurient. 
 
 The passages most capable of giving deep and perma- 
 nent delight to lovers of poetry in all ages are certainly 
 those in which a profound soul-moving spiritual signifi- 
 cation rises without let or hindrance into that perfect 
 rhythmic cadence which is proper to it. Here, doubtless, 
 a careful training of the organ of expression has its place, 
 as well as a fine original instinct for expression, and a 
 genius for grandeur of sound. In proportion to the per- 
 fection, or delicate subtlety, magical suggcstiveness, and 
 peculiar beauty^ of cadence, concordant with idea and feeling, 
 will be the penetration, and lingeringly-inhercnt power of 
 the poem. But the condition implied is that the sound be 
 verily an echo, a reduplication of the sense. In that won- 
 derful music of Coleridge's " Ode to France " there is all 
 the still floating of cloud, the long roll of wave, the solemn 
 music of wind, and swinging pine by night. In " Lewti," 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 313 
 
 the delicious, how the mellow ripple of verse in its own 
 " meandering mazes " reflects, and multiplies for ever 
 that gleam of river-swans and river ! A marvellous and 
 mysterious fellowship among sights and sounds makes 
 such a marrying of them attainable. Not only is the word 
 thundemex^t of kin to the very reverberating roll in heaven, 
 but very twins also are blita, and the flash that blinds. 
 The name gleaming gently soothes the ear, even as soft 
 tender light does the eye. And when the whole subject 
 has a pervading tone, a characteristic movement, be it 
 rapid tumultuous rush, solemn imperial march, pathetic 
 pause, or tripping buoyancy of the dance, then must the 
 true poet's measure breathe antiphonal response in the 
 music. Take Shelley's wonderfully lovely prophetic 
 chorus in " Hellas," or the splendid rhythm of his eagle- 
 chorus in the same ; from Byron the stern, sad warrior- 
 lilt of "Isles of Greece;" from Burns the abrupt exulting 
 tramp, the clarion and the battle-shout of " Scots, wha 
 hae." 
 
 But in no case can I find that any great poets made 
 poetry to consist in mere ingenious allurements for the ear, 
 busied themselves first of all about this, and let the spiritual 
 fire fall into the midst of their word-altar if it would, or if 
 it could. Alas ! how often it will not, though the priests 
 of Ashtaroth cry aloud, and leap, and cut themselves with 
 knives ! 
 
 Coleridge's " Kubla Khan," exquisite for music, is far 
 too shadowy a vision from opium-land to be permanently 
 remembered, as " Christabel " or the " Mariner " may be. 
 To my mind, that sweetest little bit, called the " Knight's 
 Grave," is, for atmosphere of tender sentiment undefined, 
 yet far-reaching and profound, suffusing picture, thought, 
 and melody alike (surely, the melody is magical to a 
 degree), worth many " Kubla Khans " and similar pieces, 
 arresting only, or almost only from the music of the 
 syllables. 
 
314 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 So much I thought it well to premise, because in a day 
 \vhich has seen really beautiful artificial melodies in poetry 
 brought to a pitch of rare perfection, the rough untutored 
 guise of Walt Whitman's muse is likely to prove the most 
 serious obstacle of all to any cardinal justice being done 
 to his high poetic genius. 
 
 Yet in Whitman we shall often recognize that nobler 
 kind of harmony which is bound up with a poet's language 
 as a more thorough and effectual expression of thought, 
 image, and feeling. Irregular measures do not make so 
 imperious a demand upon us, putting a pistol to one's 
 ear, with an " Admire me, or your life ! See how exquisitely 
 made up I am, and how wonderfully I move ! " What 
 a relief to turn from brazen blare of trombone or trumpet, 
 clash and clangour of cymbal, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, 
 and all kinds of music to some pastoral pipe of shepherd 
 boy in the hills, some low song of thrush or nightin- 
 gale in the wood, or gurgle of rills among the summer 
 leaves ! Musset, Heine, Burns, Blake, how sweetly they 
 sing ! or in " the Land of the Leal," what repose is there ! 
 
 Turn, first, to this lovely lament for the death of 
 Lincoln, " When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed : " — 
 
 " Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, 
 To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still. 
 
 ""And the singer so shy to the rest received me, 
 
 The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three, 
 
 And he sang what seemed the song of Death, and a verse for him I love. 
 
 " Come, lovely and soothing Death ! 
 
 Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving. 
 In the day, in the night, to all to each, 
 Sooner or later, delicate Death ! 
 
 " Praised be the fathomless universe 
 For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, 
 And for love, sweet love. But praise ! O praise and praise 
 For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death ! 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 315 
 
 " Yet each I keep and all, 
 
 The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown Ijird, 
 
 And the tallying chant, the echo aroused in my soul, 
 
 With (he lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe, 
 
 With the lilac tall, and its blossoms of mastering odour. 
 
 " For the dead I loved so well. 
 For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands . . . 
 
 And this for his dear sake. 
 Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul. 
 With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird 
 There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim." 
 
 Note hei-e, too, the creation of a simple, beautiful whole 
 — a few ordinary sights, scents, and sounds, flowing quietly 
 as by accident into the soul, and there taking a solemn 
 tinge from the sublime atmosphere of a manly grief, ready 
 to kindle into the gladness of a triumphant faith — but 
 nothing forced, nothing strained, nothing made up ; these 
 messengers from without just taking on an aspect of 
 hallowed sympathy with the tone and temper of the soul 
 they visit. I note this particularly as one instance out of 
 many in Whitman, because what is most noticeable on 
 the surface of him is a certain fragmcntariness, a certain 
 tendency to rush rapidly through a whole world of isolated 
 details with an intensity of exhilaration, indeed, which is 
 itself poetic, but which yet fails of compassing the work of 
 art, because there is no organic whole, no sufficiently 
 pervading idea or purpose to impart unity. It is not with 
 him a question of painting a particular scene or even 
 object with extraordinary lovingness and minuteness of 
 touch, the whole being poetical because every touch helps 
 to create, or indeed more strictly develop, a spiritual ideal 
 of scene or thing by flashing upon the bare matter, as it 
 appears to the cold unloving sense, a thousand tints and 
 tones from kindred things with which it has latent fellow- 
 ship and sympathy. With Whitman rather, in such pas- 
 sages as ofiend many readers, it is a kind of rapid excited, 
 stride through brilliant, but heterogenous stalls of a great 
 
3l6 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 exhibition or bazaar, cataloguing objects with bare names 
 as he goes. 
 
 But still, however barren, or even stammering and inade- 
 quate his naming and picturing, he does contrive to flash 
 upon all a wonderful light of freshness, and glory, and 
 triumph in mere existence, as he shoulders along, the 
 great sane man, enjoying, praising, filled to the very brim, 
 in an age of nervous hesitation, question, and lamenta- 
 tion, with a faith as tremendous and unquenchable in the 
 ultimate excellence and right of things as ever burned 
 in prophet or saint of old. A faith not received by in- 
 heritance as an heirloom, and conventionally valued as a 
 property, a propriety, a matter of course — but a faith grown 
 out of the very roots and breadths of his own personality, 
 and that the personality of a man who, with all reverence 
 for the past, yet lives in, and assimilates the fresh results 
 yielded by the present, sharing, according to the fuller 
 measure of genius and unwonted human sympathy, the 
 hopes and aspirations of his fellows for the future. His 
 bright and large views of life may indeed be fairly attri- 
 buted in some measure to his splendid health and physique, 
 as Mr. Rossetti remarks. And I think this rapid, often 
 unsatisfactory, nakedly prosaic cataloguing of innumerable 
 isolated details, may be attributed largely also to the poet's 
 exhilaration in the open air ; he can hardly stop to 
 meditate, and get the precise character of the object opened 
 out to him, he enjoys it so, and then so many other things 
 everywhere press themselves on him to be noticed and 
 enjoyed. In this respect, his fellowship with ordinary out- 
 door, healthy men, his habit of loafing about and basking, 
 does a serious injury to his artistic expression. 
 
 For it should be well understood that accuracy of detail 
 may be either naked, cold, and mechanical, or intensely 
 poetic, because thoroughly spiritualized. It is unjust to 
 apply the phrase ''photographic" to this last kind of work. 
 Coleridge and Keats always saw Nature thus : and what I 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 317 
 
 mean by the poetic vision is a more real and intense, by no 
 means a less true, sight. 
 
 But generally Whitman's description appears to me 
 thoroughly masterful. His epithets are (cw, yet precise 
 and characteristic of the broad general image which a thing, 
 a scene, casts upon a quick, passing, but piercing and 
 sympathetic, observer. Thus : — 
 
 " In lower latitudes, in warmer air in the Carolinas, the large black buzzard 
 
 floating slowly, high beyond the tree-tops ; 
 Below the red cedar festooned with tylandia ; the pines and cypresses 
 Growing out of the white sand, that spreads far and flat ; 
 The waving drapery on the live oak, trailing long and low, noiselessly waved 
 
 by the wind." 
 
 But if Whitman be sometimes remarkable for incisive 
 luminous distinctness of vision, and keenness of all sensa- 
 tion, at other times he is no less remarkable for a certain 
 magical, mysterious, half-Oriental, half-German mood that 
 anon possesses him, vague and dim, tender, mournful, 
 mystical. 
 
 " The Song of the Broad-axe," and " Drum-taps " are 
 poems that are almost all organic wholes — exquisite pictures 
 drawn with a few broad telling touches, and exhaling the pro- 
 foundest pathos, yet seldom morbid — a wind, as of bracing 
 faith, blowing through all the sorrow and the horror ; a 
 bracing atmosphere of personal unselfish heroic endeavour, 
 and most sterling human sympathy pervades them. On 
 the " Drum-taps " Whitman might be content to rest his 
 fame with future generations. There is little philosophy or 
 mysticism ; there are few of those peculiarities in form, or 
 boldnesses of speech which shock people most — the art is 
 certainly more perfect. There is here a definite theme 
 through all the poems — the subject is large, grand, full of 
 energy and strife, one for which Whitman's genius, as well 
 as personal experience, eminently fits him. Have there 
 ever been such a series of war poems written ? I do not 
 know of any. Here, however, not only the tender, loving, 
 
3l8 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 pathetic, as well as realistic and idyllic power of Whitman 
 appears, but also his own ardent personal convictions, 
 tastes, and aspirations, so that ever and anon he breaks 
 into passages of tremendous lyric fire. And, except in that 
 other great poetic figure of the day, Victor Hugo, I hardly 
 know where we shall look in Europe for the like ; for our 
 verse does not excel nowadays in verje, and fire, and 
 rapid rush.* In that line is not the following magnificent? — 
 
 •' Beat ! beat ! drums. Blow ! bugles ! blow ! 
 Make no parley — stop for no expostulation. 
 Mind not the timid, mind not the weeper or prayer. 
 Mind not the old man beseeching the young man. 
 Let not the child's voice be heard nor the mother's entreaties. 
 Make even the trestles to shake the dead, where tliey lie awaiting the hearses. 
 So strong you thump, O terrible drums ; so loud you bugles blow ! " 
 
 And in " The Uprising," you can hear the surge, and 
 whirl, and shriek of the wind ; the tremendous upheaval 
 and welter of the sea ; the gathering, overwhelming roar 
 of a roused and maddening multitude ; Deep calling unto 
 Deep. Then " The Song of the Banner " is all alive with 
 spirit of battle. In the few lines, " The Flag," there is a 
 wild, fierce delight, electrically communicated, from the 
 mere arousing of a people en masse to fight, it scarcely 
 matters why or for what. 
 
 " What we believe in invites no man, promises nothing, 
 sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows 
 no discouragement, waiting patiently, waiting its time ! " 
 That to me is grand ; he cannot define, will not pretend to 
 explain precisely, the inevitable and Divine issue of all our 
 strife, and hallowed endeavour, and success, or failure — 
 but It is there, in the Future, in the For ever ; patient, 
 silent, great, adorable, inevitably to be. 
 
 The short, so perfect, pathetic pictures I spoke of in 
 " Drum-taps " are well worthy of study. " A Letter from 
 
 * Since I wrote this, years ago, I have read Mr. Swinburne's " Songs before 
 Sunrise," many of which are all alive with resonant lyric fervour inspired by 
 great and sincere human emotions. 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 319 
 
 Camp," is the simple relation of an affecting incident, with- 
 out over-elaborate phrase, or prim precision of ornament, 
 after the manner of idyls which become a little wearisome, 
 but has the rare merit, for all its plain speech, of dropping 
 directly into our hearts and remaining there. 
 
 " Vigil on the Field " is exquisite for tenderness, sad- 
 ness, and large, clear delineation of incident and scene. 
 There is a rare freshness of personal feeling about that : 
 the charm of it seems to me unutterable. He watches by 
 a dying comrade whom he loved — a boy — on the field of 
 battle, returns to find him dead, buries him in a blanket in 
 a rude dug grave there. " The Wounded " is another 
 graphic picture. " O tan-faced prairie-boy " and " A Grave " 
 are exquisite little sketches. " Camps of Green," too, is 
 beautiful— the camps of the dead. So is the " Dirge for 
 Two Veterans " and the " Hymn of Dead Soldiers : " — 
 
 " Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living, sweet are the_ musical voices 
 sounding ; 
 But sweet, ah ! sweet are the dead, with their silent eyes." 
 
 And what shall we say of this, called " Reconcilia- 
 tion " ?— 
 
 " Word over all, beautiful as the sky, 
 
 Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, 
 That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, 
 
 and ever again this soiled world ; 
 For my enemy is dead — a man divine as myself is dead. 
 I look where he lies, white-faced and still, in the coffin ; I draw near, 
 I bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin." 
 
 Or of this .? — He walks out in the dim gray daybreak, and 
 sees three forms on stretchers, covered with gray heavy 
 blankets. " Curious I halt, and silent stand " — then he lifts 
 one blanket : — 
 
 " Who are you, elderly man, so gaunt and grim, with well-grayed hair, and 
 flesh all sunken about the eyes ? Who are you, my dear comrade ? 
 
 Then to the second I step — and who are you, my child and darling ? Who 
 are you, sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming ? 
 
 Then to the third — a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful 
 yellow- white ivory, 
 
320 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Young man, I tliink I know you. I think this face of yours is the face of 
 
 the Christ himself; 
 Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies." 
 
 I would now, before passing to consider shortly the 
 general character of Whitman's philosophy and teaching, 
 draw closer attention to the nature of his music. I take 
 another instance from the poem, " When lilacs last in the 
 door-yard bloomed : " — 
 
 " O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved ? 
 And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone ? 
 And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love ? 
 
 " Seawinds blown from east and west. 
 Blown from the eastern sea, and blown from the western sea, till there on 
 
 the prairies meeting : 
 These, and with these and the breath of my chant, 
 I perfume the grave of him I love. 
 
 " O what shall I hang on the chamber walls ? 
 And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, 
 To adorn the burial-house of him I love ? " 
 
 But of all our author's poems, surely the loveliest is " A 
 Song out of the Sea." I only wish I could quote it whole, 
 but it is too long. I hesitate not to say that to me there is 
 no lyric in the language like it — out of Shelley. 
 
 There is a wonderful natural music running through this 
 and similar poems of Whitman's ; an outbreathing as in 
 primitive times, and among a primitive people, that can 
 come from nowhere but from the very depths of a poet's, 
 a singer's soul. It is all his own — creation of spirit, body, 
 vesture. He is intensely original ; has not been imbued 
 with the world's rich inheritance of treasured poetry ; works 
 under no strong (however flexible) traditions of art, speaks 
 because he must, sings because he must ; yet, with all his 
 rare personal mass and intensity, sings only sometimes — 
 would certainly sing more constantly did he condescend to 
 condense and concentrate more ; in which some respect for 
 established forms would largely assist him. And yet in 
 the links of poems, where there is confessedly no intensity 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN, 32 1 
 
 of firc possible, if at least wc require that it shall be 
 germane to the subject, it is more than doubtful whether 
 the desert spaces should be scattered over with sham 
 flowers instead of real ones ; as the established practice, or at 
 least the standard poetry by which the present generation 
 judges, appears to require. So you get either fine sound 
 with no meaning whatever, or epithets ingeniously con- 
 structed in cold blood, which in either case seriously inter- 
 feres with the natural and life-like development of the 
 poem. Pure honest prose, where prose is really proper, 
 would be infinitely better. 
 
 However all this be, here, in the " Song of the Sea," and 
 in similar passages from Whitman, you do assuredly find, 
 if you are sensitive and competent, a certain artless 
 harmony of sound that flows like a spell upon jaded ears, 
 somewhat sated with cloying artificial harmonies from the 
 study. One is reminded of some dreamy nocturne, or 
 slumbrous mystic voluntary breathed in twilight within 
 a vast cathedral, or weird natural sounds we know not 
 whence, wandering phantasmal over lowland wildernesses 
 by night. 
 
 In " A Song out of the Sea," the strain is like the very 
 voice of Ocean himself; thereinto has passed the very 
 plaint and murmur of winds over barren sand and briny 
 briar ; rising alternately and falling ; harsh, interrupted, 
 disturbed ; caught up unaware, smooth, and soothing ; 
 stealing upon us forlorn and melodious, from unfooted 
 wastes, and shadowy realms of some spirit land that is 
 very far. 
 
 Just two personification-pictures, eminently rich in 
 colour, firm in outline, distinct and pregnant with symbol, 
 yet small in compass and condensed. One is from " Old 
 Ireland : "• — 
 
 " Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty, 
 Crouching over a grave, an ancient sorrowful mother, 
 Once a queen, now lean and tattered, seated on the ground ; 
 
 Y 
 
322 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Her old while hair drooping dishevelled round her shoulders 
 
 At her feet an unused royal harp, 
 
 Long silent— she too long silent — mourning her shrouded hope and heir : 
 
 Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love." 
 
 The Other is from "A Broadway Pageant," written on 
 occasion of the reception of a Japanese embassy : — 
 
 " The Originatress comes, 
 The land of Paradise — land of the Caucasus — the nest of birth, 
 The nest of languages, the bequeather of poems, the race of Eld, 
 Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with passion. 
 Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments, 
 With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and glittering eyes. 
 The race of Brahma comes ! " 
 
 We will now consider briefly Walt Whitman's position 
 as prophet and teacher. 
 
 Of the very extraordinary and powerful poem called 
 " Walt Whitman " Mr. Buchanan says : " Whitman is 
 here for the time being, and for poetical purposes, the 
 cosmical man, an entity, a representative of the great 
 forces." And here he expresses with immense power the 
 infinite culminating worth of personality — how all natural 
 influences have been, and are ever working up to constitute 
 and develop a man, a woman, a person. It is the broad 
 dignity of a man, as a man, he preaches ; very little the 
 special privileges of distinguished men, or favoured classes 
 of men. This is the very spirit and truth of democracy : — 
 
 " Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me ; 
 Afar down I see the first huge nothing — I know I was even then ; 
 
 ' ' I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, 
 And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. 
 
 " Immense have been the preparations for me. 
 Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me ; 
 
 ' ' Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen ; 
 
 " For room to me, stars kept aside in their own rings. 
 They sent influences to look after what was to hold me ; 
 Before I was bom out of my mother generations guided me ; 
 My embrj-o has never been torpid — nothing could overlay it ; 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 323 
 
 " For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
 The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 
 Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 
 
 Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with 
 care ; 
 
 "All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me ; 
 Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul." 
 
 In a poem of extraordinary vigour, though one of those 
 where he puts down innumerable items — yet here for a 
 great and distinct pervading purpose — " Salut au Monde," 
 after passing in rapid review, and addressing with graphic 
 characteristic epithet or two almost all conceivable inhabit- 
 ants of the globe — great, refined, small, vulgar, bad, good — 
 he says : — 
 
 " Each of us inevitable, 
 Each of us limitless, each of us with his or her right upon the earth ; 
 
 " Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth, 
 Each of us here as divinely as any is here. 
 
 " My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole 
 earth ; 
 I have) looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all 
 lands." 
 
 And, in " Starting from Paumanok," he says : — 
 
 " Creeds and schools in abeyance, 
 I harbour for good or bad — I permit to speak at every hazard — 
 Nature now without check, with primal energy . . . 
 . . . And sexual organs and acts ! do you concentrate in me ; 
 For I am determined to tell you with courageous clear voice, to prove you 
 illustrious ..." 
 
 This last determination he carries out in a series of 
 poems (not reprinted by Mr. Rossetti) called " Children 
 of Adam." Again he resolves : — 
 
 " I will sing the song of companionship, 
 I will write the evangel poem of comrades and love, 
 For who but I should understand love, with all its sorrow and joy. 
 And who but I should be the poet of comrades ? " 
 
 And this he does (as I think most nobly, and with real 
 originality) in a series called " Calamus." Some of these. 
 
324 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 under a different heading, Mr. Rossetti reproduces. Thus 
 we have " The Friend," "Meeting Again," "Parting Friends," 
 "Envy," "The City of Friends," "TheLoveof Comrades:" — 
 
 " Come, I will make the continent indissoluble ; 
 I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon ! 
 I will make divine magnetic lands 
 AVith the love of comrades, 
 \Vith the life-long love of comrades. 
 
 "I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, 
 and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies ; 
 I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks, 
 By the love of comrades, 
 By the manly love of comrades." 
 
 " Fit Audience " is another of these, and the charming 
 " Singing in Spring." One is called " Out of the Crowd : " — 
 
 " Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me, 
 \Vhispering / love you ; before long I die ! 
 I have travelled a long ivay merely to look on you, to touch you. 
 For I could not die till I once looked on you. 
 For I feared I might aftencard lose you. 
 
 " Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe, 
 Return in peace to the ocean, my love ; 
 I too am part of the ocean, my love ; 
 Behold the great rondure — the cohesion of all, how perfect ! " 
 
 Many will admire this ideal of manly friendship — warm, 
 faithful, founded in mutual love as well as mutual esteem 
 — and will believe with him, that if there were more of it, 
 States and peoples would be nobler and stronger. Of 
 course it must be regulated, as intercourse with the opposite 
 sex also, by moderation, good taste, and, above all, mutual 
 reverence. But I think many Pagan ideas need reincor- 
 poration in our ideal, only with a difference, sublimated ; 
 they have been rightly dropped for a time, to be resumed 
 later ; yet even the higher Greeks, such as Socrates, depre- 
 cated excess. 
 
 Atomism, solitary, self-supporting, self-seeking, com- 
 peting, contending isolation — each for himself — such is our 
 ideal ; our ideal in private life, as well as in political 
 
A STUDY OV WALT WHITMAN. 325 
 
 economy. It is not the ideal of Christianity, as understood 
 by Christ and His disciples, or the early Church. But — 
 
 "John P. 
 Robinson, he 
 Sez they dichi't know evcrylhing down in Jiidee." 
 
 And the most orthodox Christians now, though ready to 
 roast any honest person who says it, seem practically very 
 much to agree with him. One's wife and children, indeed, 
 as part of one's family, as belonging to one's self ; and some- 
 times even a poor relation, as coming within the enchanted 
 circle — these may be regared (in a married man's case) as 
 one or two satellites revolving round that great centre of 
 an Englishman's solar system — himself 
 
 " To Working Men " is a very characteristic poem. 
 The great catholic, all-yearning heart of the man who 
 shrinks from no one, however deceived and degraded ; 
 who longs to take each and all into his fraternal heart, 
 solace and succour, and bring him nearer, not to his, the 
 lover's, individual standard, but to the beloved person's 
 own ideal idiosyncrasy — comes out finely here. Does it 
 not breathe the very spirit of Christ .'' — - 
 
 " If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake ; 
 If you remember your foolish and outlawed deeds, do you think I 
 Cannot remember my own foolish and outlawed deeds ? 
 If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table." 
 
 Then he continues to expound his central conviction of 
 the supreme worth of manhood — personality : — 
 
 " We consider Bibles and religions divine — I do not say they are not divine ; 
 I say that they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you still ; 
 It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life. 
 
 " Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, then they 
 are shed out of you. 
 , . , The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are, 
 The President is there in the White House for you ; it is not you who are 
 here for him. 
 
326 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 " All doctrines, all politics, civilizations exurge from you ; 
 If you were not breathing and walking here, where would they all he? 
 The most renowned poems would be ashes, orations, and plays would be 
 vacuums. 
 
 " All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it ; 
 All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instru- 
 ments." 
 
 If we seek for some one to lament over his age, how base, 
 how lethargic, how vulgar and prosaic it is, and how no 
 one can possibly get the materials of poetry out of it, 
 evidently we must not go to Walt Whitman. If we have 
 not great poetry, he would probably ascribe it, not to the 
 fault of the age, but to that of the versemongers who despise 
 and despair of it. There are low and grovelling and un- 
 beautiful tendencies enough, God knows ; but we need 
 men to see what is good and great in us, and to urge us 
 on to nobler and richer life — hardly to stand by and curse 
 us unhelpfully, as Shimci did David. And though it is 
 quite true that Whitman is not an artist primarily — he is 
 too indifferent in shaping beautiful works of art out of his 
 rich materials ; he docs not care for art at all for art's sake 
 — yet he does abundantly prove the spirit in which a poet 
 may look even at this present age, and lift it up into the 
 regions of art, if he only will. Faith, Hope, need not be 
 extinct among us ; there is a Future ; let us help to shape 
 it. Whitman intimates that he looks to a wider, fuller life 
 for all men, for average men and average women ; when 
 love and justice shall prevail, and yet individualities shall 
 be allowed fuller play ; when each shall be reverenced and 
 respected for what he is, his place in the harmonious 
 community admitted ; a richer community, made up from 
 many types of person ; when the dignity of flesh and its 
 impulses shall be acknowledged, under due restraint from 
 those principles which are yet higher in our nature — as, 
 for instance, the sympathetic principle ; when men shall 
 reverence one another for what they are — not on delusive, 
 artificial grounds, that afford no true reason for reverence. 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 327 
 
 but serve only to confuse our truer instincts of veneration, 
 to render us superstitious and idolatrous. 
 
 Robert Buchanan among Englishmen has produced 
 some noble poetry out of these same unpromising materials, 
 though high life below stairs, and gentlemen's gentlemen, 
 or urban and courtly persons may shudder at it as vulgar. 
 And since Pope produced poems unsurpassable of their 
 kind out of the analytic, and critical tendencies of his time, 
 more unpromising than any, who shall pronounce, d priori^ 
 that Clough, and Arnold must fail because t/iey try to 
 draw music from the mingled forebodings, foreshadowings, 
 hopes, despairs, and speculations of our own ? Surely this 
 wondrous, mysterious twilight over a world that has fissures 
 opening into Hell, and vistas that invite to Heaven, surely 
 this twilight may have music of its own — music that shall 
 be no frigid imitation of one that is no more. 
 
 Nothing, of course, can be easier than to say certain 
 subjects are unpoctical, unfit for art. Railroads are, 
 manufactures are, mysticism of any kind and philosophy — 
 anxious questionings, wonderings, tremulous fears and 
 hopes — these are. For they are not in Homer, or Pope, or 
 Herrick, or some one else. I say it depends entirely on 
 how they are touched, in what spirit they are taken up and 
 treated, whether they are poetical or not ; that we must 
 judge honestly by poetical results, not judge the works 
 given forth by preconceived theories, and mere private 
 idiosyncrasies ; not even by the ipse dixits of a fraternity of 
 critics ; all that passes — good work remains, and another 
 generation acknowledges it to be good. There is a valet 
 way of looking at every present epoch ; only the old poets 
 and prophets had a way of their own. Men and women 
 still live and love, and toil and suffer. Explorers and 
 pioneers open up new continents, bring the people of to-day 
 face to face with wonderful races of the past, isolated yet 
 alive, or mummied in their tombs ; vast human problems 
 press for solution : science enlarges her kingdom, and opens 
 
328 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 out new worlds to imagination : Nature is eternal around 
 us: and while we wait expectant, as yet uncertain by what 
 Word the eruptive forces we hear rumbling, as they gather 
 anew deep down in the very depths of our humanity, shall 
 become articulate in human language, we can turn to Her, 
 ever undisturbed, ever young, ever calm, and read in Her 
 countenance inexhaustible meanings by the glimmers of 
 light shed ever freshly upon her out of restless, ever-compli- 
 cating labyrinths of our own human spirits. Enough if 
 there be among us an undercurrent of sterling life — a 
 thankfulness for victories achieved, a looking for victories 
 to come, a keen relish for life as it is, or a strong desire to 
 make it nobler. 
 
 Now look a moment at the poem " Whosoever." Perhaps 
 none serves to bring out Whitman's central doctrine of all 
 personal worth so thoroughly as this : — 
 
 " None but would subordinate you — I only am he who will never consent to 
 subordinate you ; 
 
 I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, god, beyond 
 what waits intrinsically in yourself. 
 
 Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all ; 
 
 From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light. 
 
 But I paint myriads of heads ; but paint no head without its nimbus of gold- 
 coloured light. 
 
 . . . The mockeries are not you. 
 
 Underneath them and within them I see you lurk ; 
 
 I pursue you where none else has pursued you. 
 
 . . . The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these 
 baulk others they do not baulk me. 
 
 "... There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in you ; 
 No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you. 
 ... I sing the songs of the glory of none — not God — sooner than I sing 
 
 the songs of the glory of you. 
 Whoever you are, claim your own at any hazard ! " 
 
 All this is very striking, and is a vigorous proclamation of a 
 fundamental truth, of the great truth which the time is be- 
 ginning to see more and more clearly. Yet in this, as in the 
 preceding passages quoted to illustrate Whitman's teaching 
 on this score, there is (as is wont to be the case in the pro- 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 329 
 
 clamations of most prophets), a certain one-sidedncss, exag- 
 geration, looseness o( thought. When he says above that 
 all doctrines, politics, civilization, sculpture, poems, histories, 
 " exurge from j'o/t " (the average man, any man), the truth 
 underlying this is that all these come out of human nature 
 — out of individuals, indeed, but out of individuals who 
 could not have existed as they were without the help of all 
 previous human and other history, without the moulding of 
 their age, as of the average men and women from whom 
 they spring, and who take their part in educating these 
 more distinguished spirits. These last are the mouthpieces 
 of their time, and help to mould the future man, even the 
 present average man. But his nature, too, has a root 
 identity with theirs, has germs and rudiments of the same 
 faculties ; and the life of all great works derives continuous 
 vitality from kindred spirits who comprehend them, while 
 kindred creations are roused through the contemplation of 
 them. Now Whitman thus proclaims that men are "of one 
 blood," are kindred amid all their differences ; so that a 
 man, any man, may claim fellowship with the best and 
 mightiest of his race, may therefore enfold within himself 
 the principles of sublimest heroic and intellectual man- 
 hood ; is anyhow and at worst a person with personal 
 rights in a higher sense than any other creatures are, and 
 may claim from all his fellows to be acknowledged and 
 reverenced as such ; from his society, and all functionaries 
 of his society (however powerful and dignified), may claim 
 such possible facilities as shall enable him to make the best 
 of himself and his special capabilities. Though, indeed, 
 one would have fancied that something of this kind was 
 precisely what our Lord Jesus Christ had proclaimed with 
 some force more than one thousand eight hundred years 
 ago. Only such truths take a good deal of proclaiming. 
 His followers did not quite like them, and thought it, on 
 the whole, for the advantage of the brute mass (and of 
 themselves), if they could make out that He had in fact 
 
330 ESSAYS ON POETRV AND POETS. 
 
 proclaimed precisely the opposite of such truths. They 
 need, therefore, reasserting, and in a modern fashion. But 
 the big people, and the good people will not like them any 
 better. What a chorus of pious horror, when some one said 
 that Christ was the first Socialist ! Yet for all that magna 
 est Veritas et prcevalebit. 
 
 Notwithstanding, I do think, when we are making a 
 study of these doctrines, we ought to point out where they 
 seem to need considerable guarding and qualification. 
 
 Men are not individual only, but members of a commu- 
 nity, of a body politic. And Whitman accordingly would 
 supplement this bold, uncompromising assertion of indi- 
 vidual dignity by the inculcation of love, of the most ardent 
 and self-sacrificing spirit of fraternity. " Liberty, equality, 
 fraternity." Here again he is Christian enough. But is 
 equality a truth in the manner in which he asserts it .'' I 
 believe not ; and if not, it must be so far mischievous to 
 assert it. That common manhood is a greater, more car- 
 dinal fact than any distinctions among men which raise one 
 above another I most firmly believe. Still these distinctions 
 do exist, and so palpable a fact cannot be ignored without 
 very serious injury. If great men could not have been 
 without average men, and owe most to the grand aggregate 
 soul of the ideal unit, humanity — which is a pregnant truth 
 — yet, on the other hand, this grand aggregate soul could 
 never have been what it is, could never have been enriched 
 with the treasures it now enjoys, without those most per- 
 sonal of all personalities — prophets, heroes, men of genius. 
 Out of the unknown, invisible, mystic sphere they issue, reve- 
 lations, incommensurable, incalculable, unforeseen, bringers 
 of new germinal life, like those imagined meteoric stones 
 of the philosopher, or the Divine Spirit that brooded 
 upon the face of primaeval waters. If these men need to be 
 reminded, as they do, of the rock whence they are hewn, 
 there is yet a danger of average men mistaking such a 
 message as that of modern democracy through so powerful 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 33 1 
 
 a spokesman as Whitman, and insisting upon paring down 
 the ideal superiority of their great ones too much to the 
 level of their own inorganic uniformity, rather than acknow- 
 ledging and venerating what is verily superior in these ; 
 taking them for leaders in regions where they are appointed 
 by Nature to lead, and generally aiming to raise themselves 
 so far as possible to the standard of a higher excellence 
 thus set before them. 
 
 In order to satisfy this law of inequality among men, I 
 do not believe that the mere proclamation of friendly love 
 as between comrades (any more than of sexual love and 
 equal union between man and woman) is at all sufficient. 
 Veneration, reverence, also must be proclaimed, as likewise 
 necessary ; and the great point we ought to aim at, in help- 
 ing to solve the momentous question of the social future, 
 seems in that respect to be this — that mankind be taught, 
 and gradually accustomed, to place their reverence where 
 reverence is indeed due, and not upon mere idols of popular 
 superstition. It is said (and, alas ! with some truth) that if 
 you tear people from before one false shrine, they may only 
 grovel before a baser. But I say this should be tlie end 
 kept steadily in view — to stir up that which is noblest in 
 ourselves, in order that we may be able to venerate what 
 is most venerable in others, and may ourselves be raised 
 more near to their standard. That every man, whatever 
 he be nozv, is to be supremely satisfied with himself as 
 he is now, is of course not in the least what Whitman 
 means ; but there is a danger of his sometimes va|;:ue and 
 unguarded language being so understood by the natural 
 average man, who is already well disposed to be satisfied 
 with his lower habitual self, and make himself the measure 
 of the standard to which the Universe on the whole will do 
 well to conform. This may too readily result in the tyranny 
 of a blind and prejudiced and ignorant majority ; by no 
 means selecting men in any department of the State, or of 
 private occupations for their special fitness to guide and 
 
S3- ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 govern in such particular positions, and to introduce a 
 higher ideal of life or of work, but rather jealous, hostile, or 
 indifferent to these, basely suspicious and envious of their 
 higher manly worth, their larger knowledge, and their vaster 
 power. We jnusf ziwrsJiip soiiictJiiug ; and what we most 
 tend to worship is any larger and more successful incar- 
 nation of our meaner, less noble selves. The average 
 Briton, for instance, and, it is credibly reported, the average 
 American also, have a sort of self-complacent air about 
 them, as if they were quite sure, not only that the Deity is 
 like an average Anglo-Saxon, but even that He ought to 
 feel very thankful for it. Utter individual freedom and 
 self-assertion, unbalanced by any counterbalancing prin- 
 ciple of deference, humility, and reverence, has far too 
 much tendency to resolve itself into this, which just makes 
 real progress impossible, and might throw humanity far 
 back awhile, even in the very midst of democracy, and 
 perfect political freedom. But what Whitman does see so 
 clearly is that, even when men have themselves elected a 
 ruler, or been concerned in the choice of a form of govern- 
 ment, there is a sort of glamour of the imagination which 
 immediately invests any actual depositary of power, and 
 bows them in a kind of unreasonable stupor before it. He 
 therefore reminds them — Government exists for you, not 
 you for government. Obey it intelligently ; modify it 
 when reason requires. 
 
 Wealth, honour, and rank have the same way of casting 
 a glamour over the imagination, so that men do not con- 
 cern themselves with inquiring what the source of such 
 wealth may be, or how far wealth and rank may involve 
 personal qualities which are, indeed, worthy of some rever- 
 ence. But we are apt to be enslaved by the accom- 
 plished fact, because we have not been educated to enshrine 
 a true God in the place of these usurpers — usurpers, that is, 
 if they assume the highest place, as they so generally do. 
 
 It behoves, therefore, to look a little closer at such 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 333 
 
 broad statements as those we have quoted from Whitman. 
 Architecture, sculpture, reHgions, are a great deal more 
 than what the average man does to them when he thinks 
 about them. They were much more in the creative genius 
 of those who invented them, or at least gave the final and 
 complete form they took. And as to their being ashes 
 and vacuums now but for the average man, this is far more 
 than any one may presume to say. They are in God ; and, 
 moreover, they are the eternal inheritance of those who 
 created them : in them they are for ever. There may be 
 some persons who do comprehend them nearly as they 
 were — one or two even may cause them to take on now a 
 profounder, and more general significance than they wore 
 of old, though they are never again precisely the living, 
 foremost bloom, or foam-flower, of the moving World-spirit, 
 which they were then. But, at any rate, their significance 
 must be quite infinite, and in proportion, moreover, to the 
 place that they then filled in the history of the world. The 
 pulsations that they caused may no longer be visible in 
 the shape of circling waves, but their effect can never 
 cease. That is a law in physics, and shall it be less a law 
 in the higher spiritual sphere .-* Assuredly not. It is well 
 to remind men that they may enter into all these things if 
 they will claim their privileges ; still it will be well to 
 remember also that every man does not, will not, and this 
 verily because he cannot, enter into them. It is, after all, 
 and ever will be, the privilege of some. Each has his 
 function, each is excellent, viewed from a higher stand- 
 point ; even the cruel and the base are. But certainly we 
 must not suppose that we can all have the same place, and 
 fill equally well the functions of everybody else. Such a 
 principle can only lead to endless confusion and mistake. 
 Rather does the true principle of human dignity consist 
 in learning and acknowledging the worth and necessity of 
 every function, so that no one shall henceforth be ashamed 
 of his post, however humble, and that no one shall foolishly 
 
334 ESSAYS ON rOETRY AND rOElS. 
 
 look down upon him for filling it — look down on him only 
 if he refuse to fill it, or fill it unworthily and carclessl}'. 
 Society must sec to it, indeed, that each man at his post 
 be regarded as man, his other human claims not being dis- 
 regarded. But his position as worker in any capacity is 
 to be esteemed honourable ; nor need everybody be in 
 such a desperate hurry to become something which he is 
 not, and which all assuredly cannot be, to the detriment 
 and ill-being of those who do not succeed in this general 
 scramble for pelf and consideration, but remain, as they 
 must, a vast majority of condemned pariahs on the lower 
 rungs of the social ladder. To wear a black coat, and win 
 the inestimable privilege of making one's workmen fight as 
 fiercely with one's self for bread as one fought with one's 
 own master before ! — that is what political economy says 
 we must all make haste and do. In such a light, this un- 
 guarded proclamation of the absolute equality of man 
 appears to be somewhat doubtful and confounding. An 
 ideal social scheme would rather consist in every man 
 claiming his own, and acknowledging the special aptitudes 
 of his neighbour. Yet I think that Whitman is valuable 
 precisely on this account, that he corrects the prevalent tend- 
 ing of advanced thought to rely on more or less question- 
 able social Utopias, leaving the nature of individuals un- 
 changed ; teaching that each is honourable in his own 
 position and calling. Nevertheless, some external circum- 
 stances and callings are intolerable, and degrading to 
 manhood ; wherefore social obstructions do need removal. 
 On the other hand, Whitman is defective in not granting 
 more unreserved]}* the need of spiritual regeneration, and of 
 that heavenlier Civil Constitution, or City of God, which the 
 noblest have ever anticipated and aspired to as slow and 
 sure consummation of such regeneration, social and indi- 
 vidual. There is danger in too unreservedly preaching the 
 body, moreover, lest the cruel anarchy, and dire confusion 
 of those kingdoms of fair glamour and sweet illusion prevail 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 335 
 
 over that of organized human order, and all our realm " reel 
 back into the beast." liut " God fulfils himself in many 
 ways." How noble is the picture of Whitman himself in his 
 honourable poverty, and old age of lonely suffering, as 
 presented to us in the glowing pages, recently published, of 
 Dr. Bucke ! still cheerful, uncomplaining, beautifully 
 patient, a lovelier spectacle even than in the prime of 
 magnificent manhood. Perhaps this Walt Whitman may 
 be so morally well-knit, and sweet-natured that he may not 
 need that repentance and renewal, which the Tannhaiisers 
 amongst us, and the average men, do so sadly, and 
 unquestionably require. 
 
 But it is fair to admit that Whitman does now and then 
 distinctly acknowledge the claims of greatness to lead man- 
 kind, insisting on the supreme worth of ideal manhood, 
 strong mastering personality ; and these passages are to be 
 set against the others. In the " Song of the Broad Axe " 
 he docs this finely. And nothing can be finer or more 
 complete than his description of an ideal great city or 
 state. In it he goes dead against the too prevalent wor- 
 ship of material resources and material power. It is where 
 the most virtuous, most loving, most independent citizens 
 are ; where we find the fullest life of intellect, heart, and 
 soul ; where the happiness and good of each stands sacred 
 and secure, so far as the community can secure it. 
 
 From a poem called " Greatnesses " we may quote — 
 
 " Great is Justice ! 
 Justice is not settled by legislators and laws — it is in the soul ; 
 It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, gravity ; 
 It is i»t mutable — it does tiot depend on majorities — majorities or 
 IV/iat not come at last be/ore the same passionless and exact tribunal." 
 
 So that we see the truth is, Whitman believes the ideal 
 manhood to be whole in each man, only waiting, hidden 
 in some ; he calls men up to this, out of their baser 
 everyday selves. In this again, he does not surely differ 
 much from the loftiest Christian teaching. Only Mhile 
 
336 ESSAYS ox POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Whitman says that the ideal is in every man, Christian 
 teachers more platonically^ assert rather that every indi- 
 vidual is in the ideal Man. Is that a difference between 
 tweedledum and tweedledee ? Not altogether, perhaps, 
 because it does make a difference whether we are to look 
 into ourselves, and ourselves only, for spiritual elevation 
 above the ordinary, or whether we are to look out of our- 
 selves to a possible Source of higher manhood, which yet 
 at present is by no means manifest in us. 
 
 One more word. Whitman not obscurely intimates 
 more than once that he believes in personal immortality, 
 though that conviction comes out with even more solemn 
 force in the prose " Democratic Vistas." 
 
 In " Nearing Departure " he says : — 
 
 " A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me. 
 O book and chant ! must all then amount to but this? 
 And yet it is enough, O Soul ! 
 O soul ! we have positively appeared — that is enough." 
 
 In " Wherefore," too, he says, yielding for awhile to sad- 
 ness, doubt, despondency, about the poor results achieved 
 through incessant, apparently useless struggle : — 
 
 " What good amid these, O me, O life ?" 
 
 Then he answers : — 
 
 ' ' That you are here, that life exists, and identity. 
 That \\\G. powerful play goes on and you loill contribute a verse." 
 
 Such, indeed, is that of which at least we are certain. The 
 least may know that the eternities centre in him. Now, 
 he is — they could not possibly be without him, even as he 
 is — and they diverge from him again ; a .seed is he of all 
 Divine futurity. Surely, this is something to know ; while 
 we may make our liv^es a conscious contribution, after our 
 measure, to the sacred cause of humanity, we may live out 
 of the bounds of our own little selves, and so inherit the 
 ages. But in truth none can cease to be ; for the essence 
 of each individual is eternal in God. 
 
A STUDY OF WAI/r WHITMAN. 337 
 
 Ac^ain, in a wonderful little bit, " To one shortly to Die," 
 he sings : — 
 
 " The sun hiiisls thicmt^h in unlooked-for directions ; 
 Strong thoughts fdl you, and confidence — you smile ! 
 You forget you are sick, as I forget you are sick ; 
 You do not see the medicines — you do not mind the weeping friends — I am 
 
 with you, 
 I exclude others from yoH — there is nothing to he commiserated ; 
 f do tiot commiserate — I congratulate you.'''' 
 
 Again, elsewhere, he says : — 
 
 " You are hencefortli secure "whatever comes and goes. ''^ 
 
 And why ? Surely any one may say it. 
 
 In Mr. Lincoln's Funeral Hymn, Whitman sings : — 
 
 " Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, 
 For fresh as the morning^thus would I chant a song for you, 
 
 O SANE AND SACRED DEATH." 
 
 I suppose what will shock the majority most is Whit- 
 man's admitting evil and misfortune as part of the neces- 
 sary order, entering as integral elements into the Square 
 Deific. Wherein he follows the small shoemaker, and great 
 philosopher, Jacob Bchmen. Yet, after all that has been 
 said about it, thus it is. And " if it be so, so it is, you 
 know." Evil affords, as imperfection, the necessary step- 
 ping-stone to spiritual and moral progress ; affords the 
 opposition necessary to call out goodness, wisdom, love, 
 patient virtuous strife, and ultimate victory. All goes in 
 this universe by a play of contraries, or where would be the 
 life, advance, conquest, the infinite and harmonious variety ? 
 
 Without Satan, where would be the Saviour? 
 
 Still one does feel that Walt Wliitman virtually throws 
 men and women, as they seem to themselves and others 
 now, in their passing appearance, and usually unbeautiful 
 life on earth, as well as all the crude and isolated pheno- 
 mena of external Nature, boldly, so to speak, into the 
 absolute, affirming their equal excellence and perfection 
 even from such a standpoint. That certainly is not right ; 
 
 z 
 
33^ KSSAYS ON POKTKY AND POETS. 
 
 the real, in its momentary manifestation, is often ul,^]}-, 
 defective, ev^il, not ideal at all, and only ideal in its gradual, 
 slow, final efflorescence or development, as it will be, not as 
 it is. Hence a certain confusion, a want of proportion and 
 perspective, jarring to the spiritual, moral, and reasonable, 
 as well as to the aesthetic, and artistic in us. It is chaotic 
 and confounding thus to gather good and bad men, strong 
 and weak men, under one common blessing. I like a good 
 hater. Some acts, and some characters — the cruel and 
 tyrannous for instance — ought to rouse a wholesome and 
 healthy indignation. Only so do abuses get reformed, 
 and wrongs redressed ; only so does society advance ; 
 and yet, who is it that sends His rain on the just and 
 unjust? Besides, after all, this poet has an ideal of 
 what men and women ought to be — a great and compre- 
 hensive and fresh one, that includes the body. And 
 he can with strong, pungent eloquence, denounce what 
 he thinks wicked, false, mean, injurious.* 
 
 * Especially in his later writings does he express full surrowful recognition 
 and bitter burning denunciation of what is base, degrading, corrupt in the 
 great American Commonwealth, as in private persons. Particularly notable is 
 that in his noble prose manifesto, " Democratic Vistas," where he insists also 
 in fine vigorous English upon the pre-eminence of the spiritual and moral in 
 human nature. Grand here is his proclamation of idealism, in which what 
 seems real has but a relative (though indeed a very serviceable and admirable) 
 validity (on p. 66 of the author's own edition of his works, 1876, a copy of 
 which he gave me). I grant that this view has become more prominent with 
 maturity and illness, as is natural. Again what graphic scenes, beheld by keen 
 sympathetic human eyes, and written down as with red blood from a great 
 human heart, in " Memoranda during the War ! " But ordinary critics, like 
 flies (doubtless under supreme direction of some editorial Beelzebub, lord of 
 flies I), so very much prefer sore and galled places to sound and healthy, remain 
 so singularly unaware of the latter, display so marked a predilection (can it be, 
 after all, I wonder, from some secret affinity?) for settling upon the former, 
 though professing, indeed, only a virtuous and consuming Z(;al for literary puri- 
 fication. Vet to the pure all things are pure — at least, they pass over, as little 
 concerning them, what is poor and what is ugly, being attracted rather, in a 
 spirit of catholic generosity, by those qualities that have personal flavour, and 
 originality, that contribute to richer and fuller life, or fresh and subtle discern- 
 ment. Whatsoever things are true, beautiful, and noble, they love to think 
 on these things. But there is, of course, a certain pleasure felt by some little 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 339 
 
 Whitman's own humanity, his kindly insight, is so rich, 
 so deep, so all-embracing, that he sees and feels a sacred 
 significance in the very worst and lowest, divines the god 
 in the worm, a latent and potentially healthy, beautiful hero 
 in some poor, vile, degraded leper, a noble statue in the 
 rough stone ; and do not the saints also do that ? Did not 
 Christ ? All is good to him because he sees the whole in 
 the part, the future in the present, the eternal in the tem- 
 porary : all to him is transfigured in the light of love. As 
 an excellent critic has said, even repulsive, sordid, or 
 common elements in the beloved are lovely or very toler- 
 able to a lover ; body as well as soul, too, he loves. Now 
 Whitman is a lover of all men and women, not of abstract 
 humanity only ; and so, even evil, suffering, and depravity 
 appear necessary to their full development. The macro- 
 cosm is indeed in the microcosm ; if one could only discern 
 it, how happy would this make us ! 
 
 But the special note of Whitman is that he introduces 
 the Bacchic, dithyrambic, unconventional, enthusiastic strain 
 
 minds in "cheeking," tormenting, or patronizing their superiors. And then it 
 takes a measure of greatness to recognize greatness. The little natures perhaps 
 honestly regard themselves as superiors of the greater nature they love to 
 bespatter, simply because they are able to find, or else to fancy many faults in 
 it. That is a comjilete mistake ; but a common, and perhaps a natural one. 
 It would in fact not be difficult to be greater than a mere spasm, or grimace of 
 virtuous disgust ! And yet the conspiracy of silence by wliich it is hoped that 
 the vital air of sympathy, almost necessary to the breath of art, may be with- 
 held from her, and so another voice of song be silenced, that is almost more 
 disgraceful even than dull, malignant, or smart, facetious abuse. Only, provi- 
 dentially, genius has bread to eat that these know not of, though no mortal 
 man may have brought it anything at all. And as for popularity, one thinks of 
 what the cynical orator said to a friend when the mob cheered him vociferously : 
 " Have I, then, said anything so very foolish ? " But in the end, wisdom is 
 justified of her children. And since such is the rule in the world's dealing 
 with genius, it must be well for all concerned that it should be so. 
 
 *' Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, 
 Nor in the glistering foil 
 
 Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, 
 But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, 
 And perfect witness cf all-judging Jove." 
 
340 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 into modern poetry. For all his egotism, he is extra- 
 ordinarily possessed, carried out of self into Nature, the 
 joyous, immoral, reckless, palpitating nature of fawn, satyr, 
 nymph, and primaeval animal-innocence ; only that Cory- 
 bantic mood is tinged with a mystical tone ; wine and 
 appetite and bodily strength are sacramental, imply the 
 possibility of other and profounder fervours, of more seraphic 
 ardours, as they are to the Oriental poets, Saadi, and Hafiz, 
 and Omar Khayam. JVAat spiritual kingdom shall absorb 
 and render us captive when we surrender ourselves, and 
 cease to will ? It may be the dark kingdom, or the light. 
 Therefore, let self-control lie hidden somewhere in the 
 background. " Im ganzen, guten, Schonen resolut zu leben," 
 was Goethe's motto. But in Whitman there is none of the 
 cold, hard glitter, fair, modulated, subtle, reasonable, self- 
 seeking grace of indifference to other claims in the pursuit 
 of pleasure, characteristic of Greece ; still less of deliberate 
 resolve to sacrifice every splendid, irrational. Quixotic, or 
 affectionate impulse to life-long self-culture, which is the 
 note of Goethe. Nay, but we find in him an abundant 
 measure of the Christ-spirit, pouring itself abroad with a 
 cheerful spontaneity, because it must flow over every 
 human, or other creature who needs him, holding nothing 
 for common or unclean. The suffering and dying, with 
 film)' eye and faltering lip, bless Walt, and entreat him to 
 return soon, not more for the womanly tenderness of his 
 nursing and cherishing touch, than for the healing magnet- 
 ism of human strength and sympathy that goes forth from 
 him. Here is a cosmopolitan, who is yet a patriot ; a 
 childlike gentleness that seeks, and is sought by little 
 children ; a rich, well-knit, and balanced humanity, with no 
 curst inheritance of vengeful, sour, rancorous, proud, man- 
 severing blood. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, a soul 
 equally simple and genuine, " Well, he looks like a man ! " 
 
 I conclude with some weighty sentences from the vener- 
 able bard himself " Great is emotional love. But if we 
 
A STUDY OF WALT WHITMAN. 34 1 
 
 must make gradations, I am clear that there is something 
 greater." " Noiseless, with flowing steps, the lord, the sun, 
 the last Ideal comes. By the names Right, Justice, Truth, 
 we suggest, but do not describe it. To the world of men it 
 remains a dream. ]?ut no dream is it to the wise — but the 
 proudest, almost only solid, lasting thing of all." 
 
RAMBLES BY CORNISH SEAS. 
 
 When I wrote this, Cornwall was a new land to me. 
 Since, I have come to love it well, and know it better, 
 visiting Tintagel, as well as the magnificent cliff scenery 
 near New Quay, and Bedruthen, exploring caverns and blow- 
 holes innumerable. My delight in what I saw could hardly 
 have been greater had Cornwall been a hitherto unvisited 
 country. I was, in fact, not more happy when Mr. Cyril 
 Graham and I, first of Europeans, we believe, reached the 
 oasis of Kurkur, in the Libyan desert, or when Jaun and 
 I crossed the Renfer Joch, after climbing the Engelhorner, 
 above Rosenlaui; at my first glimpse of Palmyra in the 
 desert, or swimming in the Gouliot caves of Sark. 
 
 Porthcurnow was my head-quarters for a few days, where 
 there is, or was, a comfortable little lodging-house, kept by 
 Mr. and Mrs. Roberts, particularly agreeable people. You 
 cannot do better than stay either here or at Porthgwarra, 
 the neighbouring fishing village, where there is also accom- 
 modation of the same kind. Before the weather broke up 
 a friend and I walked from the little inn on the Land's 
 End, where we had slept, to Porthcurnow, on a fine, calm 
 day. The evening before, after wandering about at the 
 Land's End, I lay out under shelter of a rock as the sun 
 sank over the sea. Wild, now rarely blossoming, thrift in 
 clefts of granite sang in the breeze ; there was a fringe 
 of foam, as ever, round that fantastic and splendid granite 
 
RAMBLKS BY CORNISH SEAS, 343 
 
 pile, a short distance from land, which is called the "Armed 
 Knight," a natural fortress, with wave-ruined buttress, 
 pinnacle, and spire. The sun was immediately behind the 
 great Longships Lighthouse, more than a mile from shore, 
 throwing it into deep black shadow, making a long path 
 of light upon the grey water ; then, westward travelling, 
 he left the lighthouse visible, sinking, slowly crimsoning, 
 into the wave. 
 
 Later, the stars came forth in all their glory, the orange 
 moon having risen ; but soon she passed under a cloud, 
 and sank again below the sea. But while the constellations 
 journeyed over. Ocean's grand voice sounding ever in my 
 cans, infinitely restless beyond dark headlands, what a sense 
 of the wonder, and yet nothingness of man was borne in 
 upon me here at the Land's End, where great seas con- 
 found their waters ! I thought of that strange suggestion 
 of one (James Hinton) who has lately passed from us — 
 that, as atoms we name inorganic are compelled, by some 
 unknown power, to resist the law of chemical afifinity, and 
 combine into vital organisms — into human bodies, where- 
 unto pertains consciousness and thought — so those world- 
 atoms of the void yonder, together with this our own 
 world-atom, may form greater living organisms endued 
 with grander thought. Then should we ourselves be to 
 these as the living monads of our own blood, as the 
 parasites of our own tissues are to us. And then I thought 
 further of recent investigations into the nature of ultimate 
 elementary atoms by Thomson, Clerk-Maxwell, and Clif- 
 ford ; how these hypothetic entities pulsate and radiate, 
 whirl and travel, just like planets and suns.. May not these 
 too be worlds with life and thought on them, if one could 
 only comprehend ? The infinitely small baffies no less than 
 the infinitely great ; yet, as planets and suns are themselves 
 inorganic, so still would be those atoms of ox}-gen, h)-dro- 
 een, carbon, that form animal and human frames. What 
 rational, vital unity then pervades solid granite rocks, the 
 
344 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 Atlantic that rebels against their boundary, solar systems 
 yonder, and ourselves who wonder ! 
 
 Later, in rough weather, I came here from Penzance 
 (a warm, pretty place, with an excellent library), and never 
 saw an}'thing more magnificent than the Atlantic in his 
 equinoctial wrath, as displayed at "dark Bolcrium, place of 
 storms." The white surges rose bodily and slowly, as with 
 some awful deliberation, up the rock on which the light- 
 house stands, and along the high rock-married structure, 
 swallowing the whole solid mass, more than a hundred 
 feet of granite, shrouding it from sight, the phantom 
 armour of white water (not spray, solid water !) meeting 
 above the lanthorn in a pointed flame, and redescending. 
 You should climb to the very extreme point, and stand on 
 a ledge of granite, if the direction of the wind permit the 
 water to be carried somewhat away, — then will you behold 
 solid moving mountains of dark bulk, of uncertain waver- 
 ing ridge, following one another, their emerald crests 
 smoking, heavily arching ov^er in loud ruin upon where 
 shadow grows in hollows under their altitudes impending ! 
 What Niagaras, and Mosioa-tunyas thundering upwards 
 against sable island fortresses will you witness ! — all under 
 low drifting storm-rack, in a dun rush of blown rain, wind, 
 and ocean confounding their tremendous sound together. 
 But under these raging waves, they say, lies the fair land 
 of Lyonesse, where fell King Arthur when — 
 
 "All day long the noise of battle rolled 
 Among the mountains by the winter sea." 
 
 In one place there is a tract of pale sand left in the midst 
 of the sea at low tide, around which the water, emerald 
 green in sunlight, paler beryl in misty weather, slowly 
 sweeps. Through the mist one dimly discerns vast languid 
 wreaths of spent foam, floating " many a rood " on the 
 leaden wilderness. 
 
 How different the aspect of all when we strolled along 
 
RAMBLES BV CORNISH SEAS. 345 
 
 the coast to Porthcurnow on that fine day in late .summer, 
 and looked down from many a bectlint^ crag ! The emerald 
 clearness of those deep waters, undisturbed by storm, is 
 delicious, and you long to be ever plunging for a swim. 
 The " innumerable laughter " flashes through wave-worn 
 archways ; or misty shadow dims some precipice embayed, 
 where weather-worn semi-columnar granite resembles vast 
 organ-pipes, ocean making music, the " mighty harmonist ! " 
 " In some places the granite has the appearance of sable 
 drapery hanging in folds." Turner, the greatest of all 
 landscape painters, has painted these cliffs between Par- 
 denick and Tol Pedn Penwith, than which there are prob- 
 ably none finer in Great Britain. Tol Pedn is the western 
 boundary of Mount's Bay. You suddenly come upon two 
 conical beacons on the down, one red, one black and white, 
 and below there is a round weird fissure of immense depth in 
 the green elastic turf of close thick seathrift, looking down 
 into which you behold a mighty cave, where the sea boils 
 at high tide. 
 
 I came once from Porthcurnow, on a rougher day, later 
 in the year, and got a little boat from Porthgwarra, though 
 the fishermen refused at first to go with me, saying the cave 
 was dangerous in rough weather. But a stalwart fisherboy 
 thought otherwise, and I got him to land me on a boulder 
 in this grand cavern by taking advantage of an inflowing 
 wave, he backing the boat out instantly to wait for me ; so 
 I clambered in till I stood under the fissure. A sea-portal 
 of giants, grim and grand ! You need no great imagination 
 to behold a monstrous guardian Genius leaning against the 
 rock to watch you. The mighty boulders are red, black 
 with schorl, and rich brown, rolled smooth as pebble play- 
 things of the giant surge. Dark green cormorants sat upon 
 the rocks close to us as we passed in the boat, and never 
 stirred. Glorious was the swirl of seething emerald between 
 foam-fringed reefs and iron-bound coast ; my boy knew 
 every inch of the way, though our cockle of a boat got well 
 
346 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND I'OETS. 
 
 buffeted, and we well wetted. But from the sea these chffs 
 are utterly magnificent. Castellated piles with pinnacle 
 and spire, built sheer up two hundred feet above the wave, 
 rich-toned, and often royally robed in cloth of gold, lichen 
 of richest yellow gleam. Such is the pile called " Chair 
 Ledder." The fishermen at Porthgwarra, like Cornish 
 fishermen in general, are very fine-looking, bearded fellows, 
 in blue woollen jerseys. These Cornishmen, no longer 
 wreckers, have done many a gallant deed with the lifeboat ; 
 but, rather to my horror, on this and another occasion, 
 when there was some possibility of an upset in the course 
 of my Cornish wanderings, the strong, bold fellow who took 
 me out quietly told me he could not swim ; so I felt rather 
 guilty for having urged him to go. It is really a di.sgrace 
 that the seafaring countrymen of Captain Webb should not 
 regularly be trained to become good swimmers. 
 
 It was getting dark one day when a poor woman, who 
 keeps one of the little lodging-houses of Porthgwarra, 
 kindly gave me some tea before I went on to my destination 
 in the rain, having put her baby to bed — a sickly child, who 
 was crying in the cradle when I arrived. She told me it 
 had been born after the death of her husband, a splendid 
 young fisherman, who was drowned, not many months 
 before, a very little way from shore, in her very sight. She 
 and others were watching when the brown-sailed craft dis- 
 appeared. Bitterly she cried as she spoke ; and all the 
 while, through chill twilight, the bell on the Rundlestone, a 
 mile away at sea, was solemnly tolling, like a passing bell, 
 as the wild waves leapt up to ring it. This is a romantic 
 little place, with its rock-tunnel and its windlass high in 
 the rock for drawing up the boats. Travelling from the 
 Land's End, you come next to the small church of St. 
 Levan, solitary, grey, and sad, where there are quaint oak 
 carvings, a grey Celtic stone cross, and old lich-stones for 
 resting coffins on at the churchyard gate. Beneath it is 
 Porthchapel, a little shelly cove, where I often swam ; like 
 
RAMBLES BY CORNISH SKAS. 347 
 
 Porthcurnow, one of the most fairy- like spots imaginable. 
 These two coves are filled with shells instead of sand — 
 millions of minute shells of loveliest form, some perfect, 
 some triturated, each rc[)resentini^ an innocent, happy life ; 
 tiny fairy-like pink and orant^^c pcctens, palmer shells, little 
 pearly cowries, frail white shining; shells, like shed flower 
 petals, smooth patellas, streaked with turquoise, and other 
 microscopic " miracles of desic^n." tinted as Bohemian glass, 
 and variegated. 
 
 There can be no stain in a wave that breaks upon such 
 a shore — it shelves down speedily ; there is usually bright 
 silver foam around the blushing felspar, and a heave of the 
 billow here ; looking downward, you see .shadowy fish 
 moving in the crystal, and as you 'float or swim, the green 
 wave-line shifts against blue air ; you note a shell-floor 
 gleaming restless beneath ; not a dint is there on the pale, 
 smooth yellow strand, all unfooted unless by elves, only 
 rippled into loose lines by feet of toying wavelets. Then 
 there are limpid pools, wMth acorn-shells and sea-anemones 
 in clefts of the rock where you may wash your feet free from 
 shelliness, near which too you may dry yourself in the sun 
 — tints of the lavcr, corallines, and free-floating feathery 
 seaweed, amber, green, purple being often therein beautiful. 
 It is a pleasure to be tumbled in the sand by these billows, 
 with their sun-gleaming, arching necks, their blown crests 
 like cirrus, their murmurous, laughing lace-like foam. 
 Between Porthcurnow and Porthchapel there is a charming 
 cave, hung with leafy lichen, and adorned with pretty fern, 
 Aspleniuni inarinnui. It is not very difficult of access. 
 
 There is now an electric-cable telegraph station at 
 Porthcurnow, and quite a large colony of officials. But 
 one of the finest sweeps of coast I know is the portion 
 from Porthcurnow to Treryn Dinas, a headland, and "Cliff 
 Castle," with the Logan Rock upon it. As you walk along 
 the cliffs toward Treryn Dinas, you have a marvellous 
 amphitheatre of coast before \'ou, its prevailing tint being 
 
348 ESSAYS ON rOETRV AND POETS. 
 
 rich dark brown, its elevation above the sea considerable, 
 the headlands extremely noble in form. But Treryn, the 
 strange, rhomboidally - weathered, porphyritic cliff- castle, 
 shaggy with byssus, should be seen in storm, or when 
 Atlantic mists are driving wildly over the moors. Startling 
 and weird is then the huge block called "Giant's Quoit;" 
 and all the headlands, with the great rock-peninsula itself, 
 loom like phantoms, their sombre skirts and iron feet only 
 unshrouded, lashed by great long ridges of surging surf. 
 I climbed to the summit of the Castle Rock, and on return- 
 ing the crystal-cloven granite head of it seemed strangely 
 like a monstrous crocodile's, gazing straight up among low, 
 scudding storm-clouds. In truth, you are always coming 
 upon some monstrous animal in stone here — toad, frog, 
 huge saurian, "dragons of the prime." The so-called 
 " Giant's Chairs " on this pile, thought by Borlase to be 
 Druidical, are probably the work of weather only, but may 
 have been made use of in Druid rites for all that. Strikingly 
 in keeping with the character of the county are the rude 
 cromlechs, stone circles, stone pillars, kistvaens, old grey 
 crosses, and sepulchral earns. Indeed, it is hardly possible 
 to be sure which is man's work and which is Nature's, so 
 ruinous and rude are primitive monuments here, so imitative 
 of human work the sculpture of everlasting elements. One 
 calls these erupted volcanic masses the huge tombstones of 
 those Titans who once ruled earth — fiery Vapours — before 
 life in herb or animal yet was. 
 
 This is the cradle-land of our giants, of our nursery 
 stories, of Jack the Giant-killer, Tregeagle, and all the 
 brood. Two giants lived at the Logan Rock, and pitched 
 about great boulders at one another ; one stepped from St. 
 Michael's Mount to Tol Pedn. How healthful and ex- 
 hilarating are briny wind and savour of turbulent sea, when 
 rain and spray blow in your face, as you watch the billows 
 bursting ! At such times there is a strange sound often 
 mingled with voice of wind and water, as of shrill, alarmed 
 
RAMBLES BY CORNISH SEAS. 349 
 
 ([uasi-humaii cries, borne fitfully on the f^ust as if they 
 warned of dant^cr. I do not know what it is, but I con- 
 stantly hear it when alone, oftenest while swimniinj:^. Can 
 this be what makes the fishermen think that the drowned 
 haunt these stormy cliffs? for they have at nit^ht some 
 dread of passing along them. Yet wind sings a wild song 
 among the boulders, and white whirled sea-gulls cry. What 
 thunderous bellowing, what muffled explosions in recesses 
 and caves unseen ! Far away around the coast waves climb 
 silently, white and ghostly — the cannon-smoke of ocean- 
 war — loud reports accompanying discharges near at hand. 
 When the billows leap over bluff islets detached from .shore, 
 they seem beautiful snowy plumes growing to overshadow 
 them. 
 
 I also took up my quarters for nearly ten days at the 
 Lizard, at Mr. Hill's comfortable little hotel, whence I 
 issued forth every morning for a tramp, generally with 
 David Roberts, an excellent, intelligent guide, and a 
 thorough good fellow. Anything more beautiful and 
 unique than Kynance Cave is, of course, not to be found 
 — but that is a truism ; only I suppose fewer Englishmen 
 know Kynance, Clovelly, and Lynton than know the Rhine, 
 which, at least in the hurried, conventional way they see 
 it, is hardly so beautiful. A very palace of the sea-fairies 
 is Kynance, the material of which it is a perfect luxury to 
 behold — crimson fire burning in the heart of it, mottled 
 green of many shades, often streaked, and veined with a 
 porcelain-like substance called steatite, or flecked with 
 brown diallage, and jade. These marbles (which appear 
 to me almost more beautiful than any I have seen in Italy 
 or elsewhere, and which ought to be a thousand times more 
 used for ornament and architecture) you find wrought into 
 fantastic grots, with soft floor of yellow sand, where lie 
 shadows and penumbras, from whose recesses you look upon 
 flashing green billows heaving against gem-like isolated 
 pillars of serpentine, or portals, and rude tumbled masses 
 
350 ESSAYS ON POETRY A\D TOETS. 
 
 of the same. What tjlorious prodigality of costly ruin 
 fallen from beautiful cliffs ! I duly examined the " Devil's 
 Bellows," where mingled air and spray are vehemently 
 expelled from a small hole in Asparagus Island by the 
 influx of a wave into a cavern on the opposite side ; the 
 noise is precisely like the noise you often hear on a 
 steamer when she is rolling heavily. Then I ascended and 
 descended to the " Devil's Throat," rather difficult of 
 access, though Mr. VVilkie Collins's very graphic account 
 of the place is a trifle sensational, if extremely amusing. 
 You look down into a ghastly black pit, and far beneath 
 in the darkness a dun-grey water wanders imprisoned, 
 and bellows foaming like a caged beast. By peering in 
 you can just make out a spark of light, where the sea 
 enters a long way off A dismal infernal region ! On 
 coming down from Asparagus Island I had a splendid 
 swim, much against the alarmed remonstrances of Roberts, 
 who, though a much better climber than myself, and a 
 brave lifeboat volunteer, as usual with these fine Cornish 
 coast people, knew comparatively little about swimming. 
 The breakers were indeed somewhat formidable, for it was 
 a rough day, and the wa\'es arc compressed into a narrow 
 space here, clashing together from opposite cliffs, so that 
 the walls of water toppling over one's head are somewhat 
 heavy, and provocative of headache ; for near in shore you 
 cannot completely dodge them by diving through ; but 
 once out at sea, I was all right, only that, owing to the 
 tide, I was longer getting back than I bargained for, being 
 a good deal drifted ; but Roberts shouted directions to me 
 where to make for, since I could not very well see the little 
 cove of sand, which was hidden b}- high waves. I had a 
 party of tourists for amused spectators. 
 
 Next day I proposed to Roberts to take me up the 
 Gull Rock, \\ hich is a fine bold mass of serpentine beyond 
 Asparagus Island. Here strangers seldom go, though some 
 of the young men of the place think little of the climb. 
 
RAMBLES nV CORNISH SEAS. 35 I 
 
 There is a chasm dividing the two islands. It is quite 
 narrow, and in fine weather nothing can be easier than to 
 spring across ; but I never got one cahn day at the Lizard, 
 and the seas come boiling in between these rocks from 
 both openings of the strait, completely sweeping over the 
 spots where you have to jump from and to, the interval of 
 time wherein the space is left clear being very limited. Of 
 course the tide must be low. But a young man was 
 drowned here not loilg ago getting over. However, we 
 got across all right, and began our climb. I availed myself 
 of Roberts's help considerably, for it is a really difficult 
 one ; at one place you have to trust to adhering hands and 
 knees, there being no cracks wliatever. I moreover igno- 
 miniously stopped short of the final peak, we not having 
 ropes with us ; but with ropes and two guides the summit 
 would be practicable enough even to us humbler members 
 of the Alpine Club. However, I was not in training, and 
 had been till lately incapacitated by illness from climbing 
 at all. Roberts went to the top, and threw me down a 
 gull's nest. Yet from the ledge below the top, the view is 
 simply magnificent — of the romantic cave in Asparagus 
 Island that occasions the Devil's Blowhole ; of the grand 
 Lion Rock, Innis Vean ; Old Lizard Head, and the Rill 
 promontory. There is, moreover, just below you the most 
 splendid of all "blow-holes," which in rough weather is 
 absolutely like a geyser. The sea spouts forth in a glorious 
 fountain of water, froth, and steam, right over the opposite 
 rock, with tremendous explosive uproar. On Gull Rock 
 there is abundance of samphire, sea-beet, tree-mallow, etc. 
 When we got down again the tide was flowing fast, and it 
 was not easy to find the chasm clear enough for our leap. 
 We were several times baffled ; at last Roberts went, 
 and directly I got a chance I followed. A huge wave 
 gave me a bath up to the knee, but Roberts pulled me up 
 quickly. 
 
 After getting my indispensable swim, and refreshments 
 
352 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 at the Kynancc lodging, kept by Roberts's mother, we went 
 on to " Pigeon's Hugo," a very fine wild cave, now only 
 accessible by water ; yet you can get down by a rude track 
 cut in the precipice to within some yards of it. It is a 
 grand, gloomy-looking place, the black hornblende preci- 
 pices being here perpendicular, two hundred and fifty 
 feet high. Thence I proposed that Roberts should take 
 me to the " Smugglers' Cave," if he happened to know it. 
 This cave is described by the Rev. C. Johns in his charm- 
 ing little book, "A Week at the Lizard," and it has very 
 seldom been visited. But Mr. Johns's account whets one's 
 appetite ; especially as he says that in later years he never 
 could get any one to tell him where the cave was, and could 
 not find it himself, though a gentleman (lieutenant of the 
 coastguard then stationed at Cadgewith) had formerly 
 taken him into it. 
 
 Some time before, the lieutenant was directed to proceed 
 with his men to this spot, where (it had been ascertained 
 by some fishermen, who from the water had witnessed the 
 mysterious disappearance of a fox among the cliffs) there 
 was a cave with scarcely visible entrance ; for here, it was 
 believed, smuggled goods were concealed, and a gang of 
 sheep-stealers had taken up their abode. Arrived at the 
 little hole of an aperture, he asked who would enter first, 
 to which no one responded ; for one man armed could have 
 defended the robber's den against an army ; the oflficer, 
 however, led (as he had indeed intended to do), but no one 
 was within : the party only found shecps' bones and leather, 
 for one of the gang had carried on here the trade of a shoe- 
 maker. This cave is close to the Rill on the Kynance side. 
 Roberts told me he did not think any one in the place 
 except himself and his brother (who lately died) knew its 
 whereabouts. But this brother had taken a young gentle- 
 man of Penzance in. We scrambled down the cliff, the 
 footing being insecure enough, and wriggled ourselves into 
 the cave feet-foremost with the utmost difficulty ; but, 
 
RAMBLES BY CORNISH SEAS. 353 
 
 having no candles, we came again next day ; for Roberts 
 said the cave had never been completely explored (and see 
 Mr. Johns's book). Gigantic perpendicular, smooth faces 
 of serpentine, precisely like the verd-antique Italian marble, 
 veined with steatite, and great masses of crimson rock, 
 rolled from above, all piled in confusion near the wash of 
 restless seas, render the scene here a splendid one. Mr. 
 Johns in his last edition (1874) states that he was told the 
 cave was only accessible by water. That is a mistake ; but 
 when he was in it, it was well lighted by the rays of the 
 sun, which were streaming in through a narrow fissure 
 extending many feet along the roof, whereas now all is 
 pitch-dark, and the roof has sunk lower. Roberts was in 
 the cave in 1872, and told me there was a pillar supporting 
 the roof where it gets loftier — this, however, we found fallen ; 
 and soon you will have to be as slim as a launce fish before 
 you can get in at all. On a stone we found a paper, almost 
 illegible from damp, with the names of the young gentle- 
 man alluded to, and Roberts's brother, together with two 
 small bones placed there by them. Roberts and I, having 
 wriggled ourselves into every crevice of the cave, sat down 
 on a stone in the further chamber ; and he startled me by 
 telling me that, though these two young men were in the 
 cave only a few months previously, both were now dead, 
 the young gentleman having destroyed himself We found 
 distinct traces of otters here ; on some sand in the shelving 
 corners of the floor, evidently communicating with the sea, 
 fresh excrement and footmarks. Also we found any amount 
 of sheeps' bones, and heard very strange shrill cries now 
 and then, which neither of us could account for. Water 
 trickled down the serpentine walls. Roberts, a dark, fine- 
 looking man, was very picturesque in the light of the taper 
 we held, as he sat on a stone near me telling tales of the 
 cave and its occupants. Two of the gang came to a tragic 
 end. Having ventured to show themselves at Lizard Town, 
 they were pursued by the police, who were on the look-out ; 
 
 2 A 
 
354 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 SO they made for Gue Graze, and took to the water there, 
 as is supposed, intending to swim to their old haunt, or 
 secrete themselves in some creek. But the constables 
 summoning- them to surrender, they refused ; and being 
 kept in sight, they actually swam till both sank from 
 exhaustion. Two of the same gang had also been con- 
 cerned in a dastardly murder. 
 
 Another day I drove to Gunwalloe Church, and walked 
 back along the cliffs to Lizard Town, having visited Mullion 
 Cave on my way to Gunwalloe. On this walk, I had the 
 good fortune to see a chough, hovering with black shiny 
 wings over the cliffs, and making its peculiar cry. Choughs, 
 thanks to the destructive instincts of Englishmen, are rare 
 enough now. Mullion Cave is a very large, and extremely 
 impressive one. At the entrance the red serpentine is 
 polished by constantly trickling water, and of a very beauti- 
 ful plum colour. At the extreme end of the cave it is well 
 to wait till your eye becomes accustomed to the twilight — 
 that is far better than burning furze, I think. But there 
 was faint smoke hanging about walls and lofty roof, arising 
 from the fires lighted by a party who had preceded me, 
 which produced a very weird effect among the natural 
 buttresses and recesses of this rocky architecture. There 
 seemed to be strange phantoms haunting the gloom, with 
 everlasting stilly sounds of murmurous water in the moun- 
 tain heart, and solemn lowthunder of muffled surge, as though 
 " the mighty Being " breathed at rhythmic intervals without. 
 Seals sometimes inhabit this fine rock-temple — in the 
 winter the floor is all boulders ; now it is paved with sand. 
 The light on the polished walls as we emerged reminded 
 me of where light thus shines on black marble processions 
 of gods and goddesses, and old-world princes in bas-relief, 
 as one sees them who emerges from the gloom of sacred 
 passage or chamber in Egyptian temple, half buried in 
 desert sand. Perhaps, however, the colouring of a cave at 
 Polpeer, which may be visited at low water, is still more 
 
RAMBLES BY CORNISH SEAS. 355 
 
 beautiful : that seems draped in rich purple velvet. Mr. 
 Johns describes " Dolor Hugo" also as thus tinted ; but the 
 weather was so rough that I could neither carry out my 
 cherished project of swimming in as far as possible with a 
 couple of tapers attached to my hat (as I had done into 
 a Sark cave), nor even get very far into it in a boat, 
 Roberts and I rowed a little way in ; but so dangerous 
 was the dark swirling water which heaved foaming into 
 its black portal, that we should have been stove in against 
 the rocky abutments had we attempted to proceed further. 
 That day we got the boat from Cadgewith, and were 
 foolish enough to put to sea without looking if there was 
 a plug ! So we had the satisfaction of finding ourselves 
 fast filling. I stuffed my handkerchief into the hole, while 
 Roberts pulled as hard as he could to a pilchard-boat lying 
 a short way off, and waiting for a look-out party on shore 
 to give welcome warning of the near presence of a shoal, 
 according to Cornish pilchard-fishery usage. The fishermen 
 furnishing us with a bit of wood, we plugged our hole, and 
 baled vigorously. The rocks along here look black and 
 bold from the sea ; yet from the shore they are not near so 
 fine this Cadgewith side of the Lizard Lights as they are 
 the other, the Mullion Rocks being really grand ; but 
 Cadgewith is a romantic little fishing village, with a seem- 
 ingly good small inn, where (being wet one day) I got some 
 hot toddy, and pleasant talk with the host and hostess in 
 the kitchen. The " Frying Pan " is a curious natural arch- 
 way near Cadgewith, where I found asbestos. There are 
 caves in the grand section of coast between Lynmouth 
 and Lynmouth Foreland (North Devon), and near Ilfra- 
 combe, where I think I remember purple velvet robing 
 similar to that of Polpeer and Dolor Hugo. 
 
 On the moors here grows the pretty white Cornish 
 heather. Erica vagans, and here only I believe. The moors 
 are otherwise desolate enough ; yet Landewednack is a 
 very pretty little seaside village, with a pretty old Norman 
 
356 ESSAYS ON POETRY AND POETS. 
 
 church embosomed in tamarisk, which grows freely here, 
 and at St. Michael's Mount. But in autumn and winter 
 you have to wade through sheer marshes on the moors. 
 
 When A joined me, I had to take her to Kynance in 
 
 a carriage, walking in the water being for her out of the 
 question. 
 
 I shall conclude with a moonlight scene I witnessed in 
 the course of my solitary stroll one ev^ening. I came round 
 to Polpeer from Old Lizard Head when it was far too dark 
 to be quite pleasant walking on the edge of the cliffs. The 
 brilliant beacons of the two lighthouses were burning yellow 
 and steady against lowering purple cloud ; and very near, 
 though somewhat south of these, presently rose the moon, 
 out of the same solid cloud-continent — pale, and veiled in 
 mist — some celestial Ophelia, forlorn and crazed with grief, 
 she seemed, as though vainly mourning for all the life once 
 in her bosom ; an extinguished orb, a dream-world wanly 
 wandering, with no heart to move, her vacant face faintly 
 lustrous with the sun ; a somnambulist, a wraith ; strange 
 fleeting colours appearing dimly in the fleecy fleeting mists 
 around her, as she rose from clouds, like one rising from 
 the grave, paling rocks of the little bay, and changing by 
 her alchemy the rufiled water to coppery silver — a fluctuat- 
 ing tract, now narrower, now wider, and duskier at the 
 marges. Grey cloud interposing, this darkened, leaving 
 only a region of mystic light on far horizons — the travelling 
 wave was as a black wall, ruining over in brassy shifting 
 light, like some mail of bright fish or serpents. Rain now 
 fell ; and I, turning, beheld opposite to the moon, once more 
 untrammelled of any palpable vapour, a ghostly rainbow 
 relieved against dull cloud, a pale, misty semblance, a lunar 
 rainbow, colourless — the shadowy cliffs, and dim, solid- 
 seeming sea moaning. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LO.SDON AND BECCLES. 
 
SELECTIONS FROM THE NOTICES 
 
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 RODEN NOEL'S POEMS. 
 
 " Our survey of Mr. Noel's work has necessarily been desultory and incomplete, 
 and therefore inadequate ; but we have probably said enough to indicate that there 
 is in it that which may well command the attention of all lovers of poetry. Recog- 
 nition may come slowly, but when it comes it will be enduring, because his work 
 has the qualities of endurance. Whatever may be said of his large utterance — 
 which, in its breadth of sympathy, its force of satire, its affluence of music, reminds 
 us of the utterance of Victor Hugo — this, at least, cannot be said of it, that it is a 
 voice and nothing more. For Mr. Noel, the cant of 'art for Art's sake,' has never 
 had a charm ; his cry would rather be ' art for man's sake ' — for the sake of purity, 
 nobleness, heroism, devotion, faith, all the things which make life worth living — 
 which enable us to prize it as a good, not an evil, thing. To him, as to Carlyle, 
 the true poet is the seer, the sayer, and therefore it is beyond all things indis- 
 pensable that he should have seen something, that he should have something to 
 say. He gives the reader of his best ; what he has toiled and waited for while we 
 slept — teaching what we scarcely desired to know, but what once known we cannot 
 do without. He is not a mere singer of sense, but is alive to the mystic and invisible 
 world. His subjects are worthy and commanding ; he loves better to paint the 
 snowy, cloud-visited Alp than the low-lying pestilent morass ; and last, though 
 hardly least in importance, he possesses the gift of poetic form on its artistic and 
 tuneful sides — his poems have structure and his verses melody. Many are the 
 spells of the singers of the day which are not Mr. Noel's, but he has his own 
 enchantments ; and we have endeavoured to draw within his circle those who, with 
 us, are prepared to welcome any poetry that by virtue of its imaginative force, 
 directness, and breadth, stimulates thought, deepens sympathy, and uplifts and 
 upholds aspiration." — October, 1883. 
 
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 A LITTLE CHILD'S MONUMENT. 
 
 Third Edition, small crown 8vo, cloth, 3^. 6rf. 
 
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 de toute pose dans I'expression de la plus intense douleur on la trouve k un degr6 
 peu commun dans 'A Little Child's Monument." . . . Lament qui dans sa sim- 
 plicity presque sacr^e, mais ddchirante, est d'une incomparable beauty de forme. 
 ... La m^lodie, la musique du vers est presque toujours d'une grande beautd chez 
 M. Roden Noel. ... A cotd du pere et du poete, toutefois, il y a le philosophe. 
 Le chercheur, le savant, a sans doute 6t6 conduit par la souffrance b. essayer du 
 moins de pdn^trer k nouveau le myst^re des choses. ... II faut lire ' Southern 
 Spring Carol ' pour comprendre comment il salt penetrer jusqu'i I'ame mCme des 
 choses." — From Le Parletnent, Paris, June 10, 1882. 
 
 " We do not know where, in all the range of English Poetry, to look for so 
 forcible an expression of utter grief as is presented in some of the poems." — 
 Scotsman. 
 
 " Mr. Noel's poetry is always well worth reading. He is not nearly as well 
 known as he ought to be." — Westminster Review. 
 
 "One of the few remarkably gifted poets of our time. ... As a poem of 
 the affections, the 'Child's Monument' has hardly ever been surpassed." — Daily 
 Review. 
 
 "The wonderful variety of melodies which form this remarkable 'In Memo- 
 riam.' . . . Since Edward Irving embalmed in strange, portentous, wondrous words 
 the memory of his little boy, we have not seen such a pathetic monody." — British 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 " Few poets have reared so pathetic a monument to a little child as Mr. Roden 
 Noel has done in this fine volume of verse." — Glasgow Herald. 
 
 "Very lovely in form are many of the poems . . . while all are exquisite in 
 feeling." "... much profound philosophy, and a great deal of happy descriptive 
 power." — Contemporary Review. 
 
 " It is rare to meet with poetry so spontaneous and genuine as that which Mr. 
 Roden Noel has just published. ... In form and melody these poems are perhaps 
 the most perfect Mr. Noel has yet produced." — Academy. 
 
 " It may fairly take its place beside ' In Memoriam ' as a book of consolation 
 for the bereaved."— Leeds Mercury. 
 
 " Sweetness and pathos, a keen sense of the beauty of naturet made more intense 
 by the moving contrast between it and human sorrow." — Spectator. 
 
Press Notices of the lion. Rodcn Noel's Works. 
 
 BEATRICE, 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 Fcap. 8vo, -]!. 
 
 " . . . La distinction de votre Muse, soil qu'elle se d(5veloppe dans des drames 
 touchants, soit qu'elle sc complaisc i. de charmants paysages et i des pieces ex- 
 quiscs commc les June Roses. Vous sentez tendrement la nature et vous la rendez 
 d'une niani6re bien vive. II y a dans votre volume un morceau k part et que des 
 amis ^ qui je I'ai montrd pr6f6rent i tout, c'est ce petit chef-d'oeuvre de 'Ganymede.'" 
 — Sa in te- Be live . 
 
 "We have italicized two wonderful bits, but the whole passage should be 
 italicized. The slenderness of the subject conceded, writing more exquisite it 
 would not be easy to find in contemporary poetry. . . . For a companion picture 
 nearly as delicious, and perhaps more compressed, we should have to go back to 
 Coleridge. Out of Coleridge, moreover, it would not be easy to find any philo- 
 sophical poetry finer than certain portions of Mr. Noel's ' Pan ' — a poem very 
 striking and quite original — forming a sort of grandiose pantheistic hymn to 
 Nature. ... As mere blank verse it is very striking, resonant, grandiose, and full 
 of emotion. Some of the lyrics, all of a very fragile intellectual beauty, are very 
 musical indeed. In moods like these — in a softly tinted sentiment, closely akin to 
 his delicately sensuous feeling for natural colour — Mr. Noel has no rival. . . . 
 Although these peculiarities are as yet too indefinitely manifested to warrant any 
 final judgment as to the powers of the writer, it is nevertheless clear that his powers 
 are those of genius, and, what is better, of genius specifically poetic. ..." Gany- 
 mede,' an idyl thoroughly Greek, a bit of work which reads like Theocritus in 
 the original. Artistically a finished gem, it remains in the eye like a small Turner." 
 — A the I! cc inn. 
 
 " It is impossible to read ' Beatrice" through without being powerfully moved, 
 There are passages in it which for intensity and tenderness, clear and vivid vision, 
 spontaneous and delicate s)'mpathy, may be compared with the best efforts of our 
 best living writers." — Spectator. 
 
 ' ' ' Beatrice ' is in many respects a noble poem : it displays a splendour of land- 
 scape painting, a strong definite precision of highly coloured description, which has 
 not often been surpassed. The most intense and tender feelings are realized, and 
 some of the more exquisite and evanescent moments of emotion are seized and 
 represented by the poet with felicity. ... In ' Ganymede ' there is no less faculty 
 of poetic vision than in ' Pan.' So vivid is the representative imagination in this 
 poem that we seem, while reading it, to be looking intently at an old engraving — 
 say of Marc Antonio, after Michael .\ngelo. In the severity and decision of its 
 outline this picture is classical, but the outline is filled in with modern brilliancy of 
 colouring." — Palt Mall Gazette. 
 
 ' ' ' Beatrice ' is the heroine of a true love story of great delicacy, power, and 
 passion, in which the author shows his entire mastery of many different kinds of 
 verse, and his intimate acquaintance with the broader workings of human nature. 
 It is a story of power and beauty, told as a poet only can tell it," — Standard. 
 
Press .Yotices of the Hon. Koden XoeVs Works. 
 
 "If, as we hope and believe, the Hon. Roden Noel is far from iiaving attained 
 his full poetical development, he may hereafter accomplish really great things in the 
 world of imagination. Even at present he must be recognized as endowed with 
 that power of receiving and imparting ideal impressions which are marks of the 
 born poet. The following lines from a poem called ' Summer Clouds and a Swan ' 
 are, in their own vein, probably as exquisite as any word-picture in the English 
 language. . . . This really splendid passage, in which the subtle harmonies of 
 sense and thought find a worthy expression in clear transparent words, is charac- 
 teristic. Me excels in delicate colour, floating suggestiveness, and dreamy 
 imaginative beauty. . . . But whatever are his occasional shortcomings or trans- 
 gressions, it must be frankly allowed that he has powers, which, if rightly directed 
 and cultivated, may raise him to a permanently high rank among our poets." — 
 Guardian. 
 
 THE RED FLAG, 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 Small 8vo, ks. 
 
 ' ' There are poetry and power of a high order in the volume before us. ' The 
 Red Flag' is a terrible and thunderous poem. There are fine sympathies with the 
 sorrows of London life and wonderful knowledge of them. Perhaps one of the most 
 solemn, awful poems of the present century is ' The Vision of the Desert.' . . . 
 Let his imagination and metaphysical faculty be well yoked and guided by his own 
 cultivated taste, and we must all admit the advent of a great poet." — British 
 Quarterly Review. 
 
 " Mr. Noel's new volume marks a decided advance both in clearness of form and 
 in melody of expression upon his earlier collection. He has succeeded in working 
 out more unity of style, in harmonizing his thought and feeling, and in producing 
 more sustained effects of music in verse without sacrificing individuality. . , . It is 
 probably upon the compositions of the third and fourth sections that the reputation 
 of Mr. Noel as a poet of marked originality will ultimately rest. The situation of 
 ' The Red Flag ' is finely conceived and powerfully presented. The sincerity of the 
 poet, his intense feeling for the terrible, the realism with which he has wrought 
 every detail of his picture, and his passionate sympathy with the oppressed, make 
 the general effect of this poem very impressive. In ' Palingenesis ' and ' Richmond 
 Hill ' and the ' Sea Symphony ' Mr. Noel exhibits a rarer quality of artistic pro- 
 duction. These poems are steeped in thought and feeling : Nature is represented 
 with the most minute and patient accuracy, yet each description is pervaded with a 
 sense of the divine mysterious life that throbs within the world. We need to travel 
 back to the Bhagavadgita or to take Walt Whitman from the shelf if we seek to 
 match the pantheistic enthusiasm of the climax to ' Palingenesis.' The promise of 
 Mr. Noel's earlier poem in this style, ' Pan,' is here fulfilled." — Academy. 
 
 "There is much unpalatable truth in this satire, sometimes very cleverly put. 
 . . . We do not think any lover of poetry can read 'The Water Nymph and the 
 Boy,' ' Allerheiligen,' or 'Palingenesis,' without enjoying and admiring the ex- 
 quisitely coloured word-pictures they contain." — Scotsman, 
 
Press Notices of the Hon. Roden NoePs Works. 5 
 
 " A volume of very remarkable poems. There are a richness of thought, a 
 power of language, a wild, rushing, cataract-like movement of melody, and an 
 originality of purpose almost unique among the rising poets of the age, in this 
 volume. It will be Mr. Noel's own fault if he does not take the very highest rank 
 among his contemporary poets." — G. Gilfillan, in Dundee Advertiser. 
 
 " The writer has more than that love of nature which spends itself on the 
 beauty of form and colour ; he is alive to that more spiritual emotion which con- 
 nects the aspects of outward nature with the aspirations of the human soul. . . . 
 In spite of these faults, he is capable on occasions of writing noble passages." — 
 Sjiec/aior. 
 
 " In striking contrast to the tone and manner and rhythm of the opening poem 
 is the succeeding one, entitled ' April Gleams.' It is dainty as gossamer, fanciful, 
 dreamy, suggestive of summer melodies and woodland brooks." — Morning Post. 
 
 LIVINGSTONE IN AFRICA. 
 
 Small 8vo, limp cloth extra, 2S. 6d. 
 
 " We should say that if any one wants to imbue himself, as far as the medium 
 of language will enable him to do so, with the moral and physical nature of this 
 great unknown world, he can hardly do better than study Mr. Noel's poem." — 
 Speciaior. 
 
 " Without tumult, but with epic fulness, and definiteness of articulation and 
 relief, and choice of what is most significant in incident or circumstance, the poem 
 moves harmoniously to its close ; what is to be noted in its own place being not so 
 much the careful, comprehensive reading upon which this must have been built, as 
 the manner in which it is subordinated to poetic spontaneity. Naturally the descrip- 
 tions in detail, both of scene and incident, give scope to Mr. Noel's dramatic vigour 
 and luxuriance of imagination. Certainly the purest, and perhaps the most brilliant 
 of modern poetical colourists, he presents us in these transcripts of polymorphous 
 African life with passages of tropical beauty, of tropical grandeur. — Scotsman. 
 
 " Mr. Noel has vividly realized all this, and has written a poem of undoubted 
 strength ; he has given voice to the thought and sentiment which Africa most 
 powerfully stirs in the modern mind. . . . We have read the poem with delight, 
 admiring the versatility and grace and dramatic skill which are everywhere apparent 
 in it." — Nonconfortnist. 
 
 "Any one who knows 'The Vision of the Desert' — one of the most weird, 
 solemn, and awe-inspiring pieces we have read for many a day. . . . All we can 
 say is that his style both of thought and expression is large and grand, and that 
 he has passages containing bursts of emotion, embodiments of ideal conception, 
 pictures of actual fact and broodings of tender sentiment, which would not be 
 unworthy poets of the first order." — Edinburgh Daily Review. 
 
 " His qualities as a poet appear to be a passionate and catholic sympathy with 
 human life, a power of seeing the romance of contemporary history, a faculty for 
 describing grandiose effects of tropical scenery, and a peculiar skill in the employ- 
 
6 Press Notices of the Hon. Roden NoeVs Works. 
 
 ment of strange and sonorous local names. . . . Few poets have used scientific 
 guesses or discoveries more felicitously than Mr. Noel in this passage. . . . This 
 is surely st.ately and admirable verse, and it would be easy to find many passages 
 to match it in the long soliloquy in which Livingstone reviews his life, his hopes, 
 his love of humanity, of mystery, and adventure. . . . Pictures of the greatest 
 originality. The account of a savage execution has the verve and colour of Henri 
 Regnault's best-known work." — A.ndrew Lang, in the Academy. 
 
 " There is a lofty spring in the style, and an elaboration in the music of these 
 cantos, which ought to give the poem a high place in modern poetry." — British 
 Quarterly Revieiv. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF RAVENSBURG : 
 
 A DRAMA. 
 
 ■ ' This story is much more powerful than appears in the foregoing narrative, 
 and in its presentation of vague terror recalls the famous verses of Dobell — 
 ' O Keith of Ravelston, the sorrows of thy line.' 
 
 Portions of the treatment are fine, we might almost say splendid, from the poetical 
 standpoint." — Athenceum, 
 
 "Taken as a whole, the picture of Sigismund, both before and after death — 
 Mr. Noel assumes Shakespeare's licence, and brings Sigismund back to us from 
 the other world, and, even bolder than Shakespeare, undertakes to show us his 
 character still undergoing change in that world — seems to us one of very consider- 
 able power. The following passage, for instance, spoken by Sigismund the disem- 
 bodied, and presenting the central idea of the play with great fire, seems to us a 
 noble one. . . . Again, there are one or two beautiful songs, and at least one very 
 fine picture of a mountain sunset. . . . That is very fine verse, and the readers of 
 this imperfect but powerfully conceived drama will find much in it which is equally 
 fine, and much, too, of far higher meaning." — Spectator. 
 
 " ' The House of Ravensburg ' is the first production of its kind we have had 
 from Mr. Noel. It is more complete than any other of his larger poems, and may 
 be taken to indicate a new range in his versatile genius. In point of dramatic 
 power it will compare with any contemporary efforts. . . . The characters of the 
 play are massed very strongly in light and shade, and the piece abounds in rapid 
 transitions, recalling those of Wagner, to whom Mr. Noel has various points of 
 resemblance. Mr. Nod has the faculty, most remarkable in a metaphysical poet, 
 of appealing impressively to the senses, and, as in such situations as the dungeon 
 scene, of putting in the touches with all a painter's instinct for scenic effect." — 
 Scotsman. 
 
 "From the pen of one of the first lyrists of our time." — Edinburgh Daily 
 Review. 
 
 " The scheme of his poems, his line of thought, the rhythm of his verse, are all 
 his own, the direct working out of his own bent." — Examiner. 
 
Press Notices of the Hon. Roden Noel's Works. 
 
 SONGS OF THE HEIGHTS AND DEEPS. 
 
 " He is clearly as natural in his utterance as a morlern poet can be. He has 
 something of Byron's impatience of technical restraint, something of his fervent 
 flow of words. He has already won a deserved place among the few who write 
 verse to express emotion, stirred by the sufferings of man and the terrible riddle of 
 his destiny. . . . He has words to say and they are words of cheer. . . . The 
 ' City of Dreadful Night,' is scarcely more terrible than this awful picture of the 
 modern Babylon, 'A Lay of Civilization.' " — Academy. 
 
 "These are signs that Mr. Noel is doing what Wordsworth and even Tennyson 
 were compelled to do — he is creating his own audience. This volume contains 
 poetry too monumental and memorable not to stamp an enduring impression upon 
 the mind of every reader. . . . Mr. Noel has all the notes of a true poet ; he has 
 many of the notes of a great poet. . . . Those qualities in his verse which we 
 naturally associate with greatness have been the very qualities which have largely 
 helped to make his work ' caviare to the general.' . . . His imaginative instinct 
 naturally draws him to the large, the sublime, to those conceptions which in virtue 
 of their grandeur, terror, or solemnity, impress powerfully the simple and primitive 
 emotions. . . . The two sea-pieces ' Thalatta ' and ' Suspiria ' which, with the 
 sonorous music of their buoyant and bounding verse fill our ears with the eager 
 onset of the wave, and make us free of the wonder and mystery of the ocean. . , . 
 We could readily forgive even more serious defects in a volume containing the mag- 
 nificent ' Temple of Sorrow.' " — Manchester Examiner. 
 
 "There is no such thing in it as an empty aimless phrase. Thought is packed, 
 sometimes even crowded into the rich, magnificent lines. Epithet follows image 
 with such tireless haste that the reader's brain is dazzled with the maiscb of treasure 
 that are poured out around him. Now sorrow, desolation, and doubt, and anon 
 faith, triumph in acquiescence form the burden of the song." — Literary World. 
 
 "II nous plait aussi d'entendre se prolonger . . . les chants de I'ancienne lyre, 
 de celle ou si longternps, de I'Edda i Shakespeare et k Byron, et de Byron d Brown- 
 ing et k M. Roden Noel, vibrerent et vibrent encore ces trois cordes alternantes, a 
 notes profondes ou suaves, sentiment du sublime, sentiment du tragique, senti- 
 ment de la Nature. En ces trois termes tient le nouveau volume de M. Noel. ' A 
 Lay of Civilization' est une terrifiante peinture de la Babylone Anglaise. Plus 
 loin se dresse le ' Temple of Sorrow ' immense nef symbolique et douloureuse batie 
 des angoissies de tous les d^chir^s d'ici-bas. La piece intitul^e ' Beethoven," une 
 des plus belles que je sache dans la po^sie Anglaise contemporaine, r^pond comme 
 un chant d'orgue au colossal appel des symphonies du maitre, et les resume en 
 larges vers a^riens, et grandioses. . . . M. Roden Noel n'en est pas moins un 
 remarquable po6te, et qui vient imm^diatement au-dessous des trois maitres sus- 
 nomm^s " (Tennyson, M. et Madame Browning). — Revue Contemporaine, April, 
 1885. 
 
V 
 
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