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FOUR GREAT TEACHERS 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, THOMAS CARLYLE, 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON, and 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH FORSTER. 
 
 ' Ever their phantoms rise before us, 
 Our nobler brothers^ but one in blood: 
 At bed and table they lord it o'er us. 
 With looks of beauty and -words of good.' 
 
 <, 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, 
 
 SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, 
 
 AND 
 
 8, BELL YARD, TEMPLE BAR, LONDON, 
 
 1890. 
 
 QRiiAi' tiKhAh>i. 
 
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
pTSW 
 
 f- 
 
 NOTE BY THE PUBLISHER. 
 
 Only one of these Lectures has appeared before in 
 print, and this has been considerably added to. 
 
 ivi62'1411 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 John Buskin 1 
 
 Thomas Carlyle 37 
 
 Ealph Waldo Emerson 71 
 
 Robert Browning 103 
 
FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 I. 
 
 JOHN KUSKIN. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 John Ruskin is the son of a London mercliant, 
 and was born in tlie year 1819. He thus writes 
 of himself : '' Who am I, that I should challenge 
 you," the squires of England, " do you ask ? My 
 mother was a sailor's daughter, and, please you, 
 one of my aunts was a baker's wife, the other a 
 tanner's ; and I don't know much more about my 
 family, except that there used to be a green- 
 grocer of the name in a small shop near the 
 Crystal Palace. Something of my early and 
 vulgar life, if it interests you, I will tell in next 
 ' Fors ' ; in this one it is indeed my business, 
 poor gipsy herald as I am, to bring you such a 
 challenge, though you should hunt and hang me 
 for it." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's father came over the Border 
 in search of fortune. '' He came up to London, 
 
 1 
 
2 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 was a clerk in a mercliant's office for nine years 
 without a holiday, then began business on his 
 own account, paid his father's debts, and married 
 
 his exemplary Croydon cousin." 
 
 ****** 
 
 '' My father began business as a wine merchant, 
 with no capital, and a considerable amount of 
 debts bequeathed him by my grandfather. He 
 accepted the bequest, and paid them all before 
 he began to lay by anything for himself, for 
 which his best friends called him a fool ; and I, 
 without expressing any opinion as to his wisdom, 
 which I knew in such matters to be at least 
 equal to mine, have written on the granite slab 
 over his grave that he was ^ an entirely honest 
 merchant.' As days went on he was able to 
 take a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, 
 No. 54 (the windows of it, fortunately for me, 
 commanded a view of a marvellous iron post, out 
 of which the water-carts were filled through beau- 
 tiful little trap-doors, by pipes like boa-con- 
 strictors, and I was never weary of contemplating 
 that mystery, and the delicious dripping conse- 
 quent) ; and as years went on he could command 
 a post-chaise and pair for two months in the 
 summer, by help of which, with my mother and 
 me, he went the round of his country customers 
 (who liked to see the 2^i*iiicipal of^ the house his 
 own traveller) ; so that at a jog-trot pace, and 
 through the panoramic opening of the four 
 
I. JOHN KUSKIN. 3 
 
 windows of a post-chaise, made more panoramic 
 still to me because my seat was a little bracket 
 in front, I saw all the liigli-roads and most of 
 the cross ones of England and Wales, and a great 
 part of lowland Scotland, as far as Perth, where 
 every other year we spent the whole summer." 
 
 This* is how the boy learnt to love art, which, 
 as he so finely said, " is a translation of nature." 
 '' It happened also — which was the real cause of 
 the bias of my after life — that my father had a rare 
 love of pictures. I use the word advisedly, having 
 never met with another instance of so innate a 
 faculty for the discernment of true art up to the 
 point possible without actual practice. Accord- 
 ingly, wherever there was a gallery to be seen 
 we stopped at the nearest town for the night ; 
 and in reverentest manner I thus saw nearly all 
 the noblemen's houses in England, not, indeed, 
 myself at that age caring for pictures, but much 
 for castles and ruins, feeling more and more, as I 
 grew older, the healthy delight of uncovetous 
 admiration, and perceiving, as soon as I could 
 perceive any political truth at all, that it was 
 probably much happier to live in a small house 
 and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, 
 than to live in Warwick Castle and have nothing 
 to be astonished at ; but that, at all events, it 
 would not make Brunswick Square in the least 
 more pleasantly habitable to pull Warwick Castle 
 down. And to this day, though I have kind 
 
4 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 invitations enongli to visit America, I could not, 
 even for a couple of months, live in a country so 
 miserable as to possess no castles." 
 
 MR. RUSKIN's early READING. 
 
 "I had Walter Scott's novels and the ^ Iliad,' 
 Pope's translation, for my only reading when I 
 was a child on week-days: on Sundays their effect 
 was tempered by ^ Robinson Crusoe ' and the 
 ^ Pilgrim's Progress '; my mother having it deeply 
 in her heart to make an Evangelical clergyman of 
 me. Fortunately, I had an aunt more Evangelical 
 than my mother ; and my aunt gave me cold 
 mutton for my Sunday's dinner, which — as I 
 much preferred it hot — greatly diminished the 
 influence of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and the 
 end of the matter was that I got all the noble 
 imaginative teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and 
 yet — am not an Evangelical clergyman. I had, 
 however, still better teaching than theirs, and that 
 compulsorily, and every day of the week. Walter 
 Scott and Pope's Homer were reading of my own 
 election, but my mother forced me, by steady 
 daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by 
 heart, as well as to read it every syllable through, 
 aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the 
 Apocalypse, about once a year ; and to that dis- 
 cipline — patient, accurate, and resolute — I owe, 
 not only a knowledge of the book, which I find 
 occasionally serviceable, but much of my general 
 
I. JOHN EUSKIN. 5 
 
 power of taking pains, aod the best part of my 
 taste in literature." 
 
 The above deeply interesting passage, from 
 " Fors I.," only refers incidentally to Walter Scott; 
 but the following letter contains Mr. Ruskin's 
 matured and fixed' opinion on the genius and 
 character of Scott's novels. 
 
 " CoNiSTON, Whit Tuesday, 1887. 
 
 " My dear Sir,— 
 
 "You hear a great deal of the worst nonsense 
 ever uttered since men were born on earth. Best 
 hundred books ! Have you ever yet read one 
 good book well ? For a Scotsman, next to his 
 Bible, there is but one book — his native land; but 
 one language — his native tongue ; the sweetest, 
 richest, subtlest, most musical of all the living 
 dialects of Europe. Study your Burns, Scott, 
 and Carlyle. Scott, in his Scottish novels only, 
 and of those only the cheerful ones; with the 
 ' Heart of Midlothian,' but not the ^ Bride of 
 Lammermoor,' nor the ' Legend of Montrose,' 
 nor the ' Pirate.' Here is a right list : ' Waver- 
 ley,' ^ Guy Mannering,' ' The Antiquary,' ' Rob 
 Roy,' ^Old Mortality,' ^The Monastery,' ^ The 
 Abbot,' ' Redgauntlet,' ' Heart of Midlothian.' 
 Get any of them you can in the old large-print 
 edition when you have a chance, and study every 
 sentence in them. They are models of every 
 
6 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 virtue in tlieir order of literature, and exhaustive 
 codes of Christian wisdom and ethics. I have 
 written this note with care. I should be glad 
 that you sent a copy of it to any ■ paper read 
 generally by the students of the University of 
 Edinburgh, and remain, always faithfully yours, 
 
 '' John Ruskin." 
 
 I cannot comprehend the ground of Mr. Rus- 
 kin's exclusion of, perhaps, the greatest and most 
 thrilling romance in any language, " The Bride 
 of Lammermoor," which has been the theme and 
 inspiration of painter and musician. With that 
 exception, I most heartily agree with Mr. Ruskin's 
 noble tribute to the elevated morality and splendid 
 power of the greatest story-teller that ever lived. 
 
 In the articles entitled " Fiction: Fair and Foul," 
 which appeared first in the Nineteenth Century 
 magazine, and have since been published, with 
 other matter, in three volumes, entitled " On the 
 Old Road," Mr. Ruskin carefully and lovingly 
 analyses some of Scott's novels, and does the 
 fullest justice to the manly dignity, the robust 
 morality, the exquisite purity, the delicate refine- 
 ment, and the almost Shakespearian humour which 
 flood and float every work of the Great Wizard 
 of the North. 
 
 From Hunter Street Mr. Ruskin's father re- 
 moved to Heme Hill, and from there to a larger 
 house at Denmark Hill. 
 
I. JOHN KUSKIN. I 
 
 Before I deal with the great and original 
 teachings of John Ruskin, I think I ought to 
 give a slight sketch of his life. He was born in 
 London in 1819, and educated at Christ Church, 
 Oxford, where he gained the Newdigate prize 
 for poetry Q' Salsette and Elephanta ") in 1839. 
 When a youth he s,tudied under Copley Fielding 
 and Harding, and soon became enamoured 
 of Turner's glorious works, then but little 
 appreciated. 
 
 Turner's splendid ''■ Antwerp " was first sold for 
 £300. It sold not long ago at 6,500 guineas. 
 Ruskin's advocacy of the claims of Turner to the 
 admiration of the world began by a letter he 
 wrote in his defence to Blackwood's Magazine. 
 This developed into the first volume of " Modern 
 Painters," which was a great success, and was 
 also bitterly attacked. He resided some time in 
 Italy, and published the remaining volumes of 
 ''Modern Painters" between 1846 and 1860. 
 He had previously written the " Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture" (1849) and the " Stones of Venice" 
 (1851 and 1853). He was appointed Rede Lec- 
 turer at Cambridge (1867), and Slade Professor 
 of Fine Art at Oxford (1872), but he retired from 
 this position in 1878 in consequence of illness. 
 He again accepted the chair in 1883, and finally 
 vacated it in 1885, owing to the action of the 
 University on the question of vivisection. Besides 
 publishing a great many miscellaneous works— 
 
8 , FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 including " Notes on the Construction of Sheep- 
 folds," which a simple-nainded farmer bought for 
 practical instruction on the subject, and was very 
 disappointed and bewildered by its contents — he 
 gave to the world " Political Economy in Art," 
 '' Two Paths," " Unto this Last," " Sesame and 
 Lilies," " Ethics of the Dust," " Queen of the 
 Air," " Crown of Wild Olive," and '' Ariadne 
 Florentina." In 1871 he commenced his priceless 
 series of letters entitled ^' Fors Clavigera," which 
 he explained meant " Deed, Patience, and Love." 
 
 These beautiful letters deal in a strikingly 
 original and exquisitely beautiful way with nearly 
 every subject interesting to people of thought, 
 culture, and refinement. This publication, con- 
 sisting of ninety-six numbers, was finally closed 
 in December 1884. Mr. Euskin is now engaged 
 on his Autobiography, to the completion of which 
 the civilised world looks forward with eager 
 interest. 
 
 I will now endeavour to deal with some of the 
 salient characteristics of Mr. Euskin's teaching. 
 To understand Ruskin it is, I think, necessary to 
 understand Wordsworth. The same loving study 
 and reverent worship of nature animated both 
 writers. Ruskin is simply saturated with Words- 
 worth. The difference between them is one of 
 temper. One was calm, philosophical, withdrawn 
 from the cantankerous controversies of politics 
 and the little details of daily life. John Ruskin, 
 
I. JOHN BUSKIN. 9 
 
 witli a chivalrous disregard of the wear-and-tear 
 consequent upon mingling in the dusty daily fray, 
 breaks out here with a letter, and there with a 
 lecture, dealing directly with the topic of the hour. 
 He is constantly tapped by the foolishest people. 
 There is, I must admit, a decided note of feminity 
 in his genius ; a want of manly strength and 
 repose — a quality in which Wordsworth was 
 nearly as great as Goethe. The voice is piercing 
 sweet, but it is a falsetto now and then; a head 
 and not a chest voice; and reminds me occasion- 
 ally of the unnatural soprani of Handel's time. 
 Mr. Euskin appears to me now and then to lose 
 his balance, his common sense. I do not consider 
 that he is always a safe teacher to ordinary men 
 and women ; but to those who can weigh, measure, 
 and discriminate between his opinions, and as a 
 noble and chivalrous denouncer of the infinite 
 vulgarity and stupid greed of the age, his 
 teachings are of unspeakable value. 
 
 The following passage from Wordsworth's 
 " Excursion " will, I hope, support my opinion 
 of the similarity of Ruskin's teaching to that of 
 Wordsworth : — 
 
 " How beautiful this dome of sky ! 
 And the vast hills, in fluctuation fixed 
 At thy command, how awful ! Shall the Soul, 
 Human and rational, report of thee 
 Even less than these ? — Be mute who will, who can 
 Yet I will praise thee with impassioned voice : 
 
10 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 My lips, that may forget thee in the crowd, 
 
 Cannot forget thee here ; where thou hast built 
 
 For thy own glory, in the wilderness ! 
 
 Me didst thou constitute a priest of thine. 
 
 In such a temple as we now behold 
 
 Beared for thy presence : therefore^ am I bound 
 
 To worship, here, and everywhere — as one 
 
 Not doomed to ignorance, though forced to tread. 
 
 From childhood up, the ways of poverty ; 
 
 From unreflecting ignorance preserved, 
 
 And from debasement rescued. — By thy grace 
 
 The particle divine remained unquenched ; 
 
 And, 'mid the wild weeds of a rugged soil, 
 
 Thy bounty caused to flourish deathless flowers, 
 
 From paradise transplanted : wintry age 
 
 Impends : the frost will gather round my heart ; 
 
 If the flowers wither, I am worse than dead ! — 
 
 Come, labour, when the worn-out frame requires 
 
 Perpetual Sabbath ; come, disease and want, 
 
 And sad exclusion through decay of sense ; 
 
 But leave me unabated trust in thee. 
 
 And let thy favour, to the end of life, 
 
 Inspire me with ability to seek 
 
 Repose and hope among eternal things — 
 
 Father of heaven and earth ! and I am rich, 
 
 And will possess my portion in content ! " 
 
 The sublime spirit pervading the above lines, 
 worthy of Milton himself, shines through all 
 John Ruslvin's best work. 
 
 A little further on the same great poet, 
 scorning self, sings : — 
 
 " But, above all, the victory is most sure 
 For him who, seeking faith by virtue, strives 
 To yield entire submission to the law 
 Of conscience — conscience reverenced and obeyed, 
 
I. JOHN RUSKIN. 11 
 
 As God's most intimate presence in the soul, 
 And his most perfect image in the world. 
 Endeavour thus to live ; these rules regard ; 
 These helps solicit ; and a steadfast seat 
 Shall then be yours among the happy few 
 Who dwell on earth, yet breathe empyreal air — 
 Sons of the morning." 
 
 Jolin Ruskin has breathed " empyreal air." 
 He is, if ever man was, a ^' son of the morning." 
 
 A great deal has been said and written about 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, with its manly scorn of con- 
 ventional cant and shallow pretence in art. 
 Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Burne Jones 
 put their original and daring ideas in glowing 
 colours before the jaded public, and John Ruskin, 
 in words not less glowing and opalescent, fouglit 
 their battle as he only can fight. 
 
 This band of earnest and devoted men of genius 
 led a revolt against the tea-trays gone wrong of 
 the Royal Academy. They believed that "the 
 open secret of nature " must be stiulied on the 
 spot ; that an artist was not a man who slavishly 
 imitated the method of some successful painter ; 
 but one who with devoted love pursued the glow, 
 the glitter, or the sad solemnity of nature with a 
 never-failing energy and perseverance. According 
 to a man's insight into nature and his power to 
 make us feel by his picture what he felt when 
 he looked at and loved the scene portrayed, is 
 the value of his genius. That is not done by 
 making a worse copy of a bad picture ; or painting 
 
12 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 — as Dor6 used to paint — from drawings and a 
 fertile imagination. 
 
 Reynolds told his pupils to generalise, and not 
 to degrade art by details. But, thank heaven ! 
 his practice contradicted his teachings, and in 
 spite of a vicious theory, his pictures proved him 
 a great genius, drawing his inspiration from the 
 bottomless well of nature. This is Mr. Ruskin's 
 own definition of Pre-Raphaelitism : — 
 
 '' Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that 
 of absolute, uncomjjromising truth in all that it 
 does, obtained by working everything, down to 
 the most minute detail, from nature, and from 
 nature only; or, where imagination is necessarily 
 trusted to, always endeavouring to conceive a fact 
 as it really was likely to have happened. Every 
 Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted, 
 to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing 
 itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however 
 studied in expression, is a true portrait of some 
 living person. Every minute accessory is painted 
 in the same manner. This is the main Pre- 
 Raphaelite principle." 
 
 I don't think any one can doubt that the 
 influence of this teaching has been good. It 
 brought the artist back to the direct study of the 
 all-mother, Nature ; and that is always good and 
 wholesome. 
 
 *' But art is not nature, or it would not be art." 
 And those of us who have seen some of the best 
 
I. JOHN RUSKIN. 13 
 
 pictures of the school, painted with all the glow 
 of youthful enthusiasm, must admit that many 
 of them were hard and unpleasing. Art must 
 please first, I think, and refine and elevate the 
 mind and heart too. A man may think he has a 
 mission to teach ; but he must also prove, if he 
 wishes to be regarded by a busy world, that 
 he can teach in a pleasing, graceful way. Mere 
 scolding at large will not do. That leads me to 
 the exquisite beauty, finish, and grace of John 
 Ruskin's literary style. One would, I think, 
 rather read the melodious scoldings of Ruskin 
 than the praise of most other writers. His very 
 faults are better than their puny literary virtues. 
 
 I will now venture to quote a few passages 
 from this great writer and teacher. In speaking of 
 Reynolds, Ruskin writes : " Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 threw himself at the feet of the great masters of 
 Italy, and arose to share their throne. ... He 
 had a strong, unaided, unerring instinct for all 
 that was true, pure, and noble." 
 
 In speaking of Turner's " Slave Ship," he 
 wrote : '^ Its daring conception, ideal in the 
 highest sense of the word, is based on the purest 
 truth, and wrought out with the concentrated 
 knowledge of a life. The whole picture is 
 dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and 
 impressions — the power, majesty, and deathful- 
 ness of the open, deep, illimitable sea." 
 
 Again, he writes : " Fine Art is that in which 
 
14 FOUK GREAT TEACHEES. 
 
 the hand, the head, and the heart go together. 
 Greatness of art consists, first, in earnest and 
 intense seizing of natural facts ; then in ordering 
 these facts by strength of human intellect, so 
 as to make them, for all who look upon them, to 
 the utmost serviceable, memorable, and beautiful. 
 And thus great art is nothing else than the type 
 of strong and noble life; for as the ignoble person, 
 in the dealing with all that occurs in the world 
 about him, sees nothing clearly — looks nothing 
 firmly in the face, and then allows himself to be 
 swept away by the torrent and inexorable force 
 of the things that he would not foresee and could 
 not understand, — so the noble person, looking the 
 facts of the world full in the face, and fathoming 
 them with deep faculty, then deals with them, in 
 unalarmed intelligence and unhurried strength, 
 and becomes, with his human intellect and will, 
 no unconscious nor insignificant agent in com- 
 municating their good and restraining their evil. 
 " Homer sang what he saw ; Phidias carved 
 what he saw ; Baphael painted the men and 
 women in their own caps and mantles ; and every 
 man who has arisen to eminence in modern times 
 has done so by working in their way and doing 
 the things he saw. Base Academy teaching, in 
 spite of which these men have risen, I say in 
 spite of the entire method and aim of our art 
 teaching : it destroys the greater number ; it 
 hinders and paralyses the greatest." 
 
I. JOHN EUSKIN. 15 
 
 MR. EUSKIN ON CLOUDS. 
 
 Wlio can gauge the priceless, the unspeakable 
 value of the following passage, opening as it does 
 a world of exquisite and ever-varying beauty to 
 the eye of every human being willing to raise 
 his or her eyes from the dead pavement to the 
 glorious panorama of the ''brave o'erhanging 
 firmament " ! 
 
 " It is a strange thing how little in general 
 people know about the sky. It is the part of 
 creation in which nature has done more for the 
 sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and 
 evident purpose of talking to him and teaching 
 him, than in any other of her works, and it is just 
 the part in which we least attend to her. There 
 are not many of her other works in which some 
 more material or essential purpose than the mere 
 pleasing of man is not answered by every part of 
 their organization ; but every essential purpose 
 of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, 
 if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly^ 
 black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, 
 and everything well watered, and so all left blue 
 again till next time, with perhaps a film of 
 morning and evening mist for dew^ And instead 
 of this, there is not a moment in any day of 
 our lives, when nature is not producing scene 
 after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, 
 
16 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 and working still upon such exquisite and constant 
 principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is 
 quite certain it is all done for us, and intended 
 for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, 
 wherever placed, however far from other sources 
 of interest or of beauty, has this doing for 
 him constantly^ The noblest scenes of the earth 
 can be seen and known but by few ; it is not 
 intended that man should live always in the 
 midst of them ; he injures them by his presence, 
 he ceases to feel them if he be always with them : 
 but the sky is for all ; bright as it is, it is not 
 
 ' Too bright or good 
 For human nature's daily food ' ; 
 
 it is fitted in all its functions for the perj^etual 
 comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing- 
 it and purifying it from its dross and dust* Some- 
 times gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes 
 awful, never the same for two moments together ; 
 almost human in its passions, almost spiritual inits 
 tenderness, almost Divine in its infinity, its appeal 
 to whatever is immortal in us is as distinct, as its 
 ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what 
 is mortal is essential/ And yet we never attend 
 to it, we never make it a subject of thought, but 
 as it has to do with our animal sensations : we 
 look upon all by which it speaks to us more 
 clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears 
 witness to the intention of the Supreme that we 
 
I. JOHN BUSKIN. 17 
 
 are to receive more from the covering vault than 
 the light and the dew which we share with the weed 
 and the worm, only as a succession of meaning- 
 less and monotonous accident, too common and 
 too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchful- 
 ness or a glance of admiration. If in our moments 
 of utter idleness or insipidity, we turn to the sky 
 as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we 
 speak of ? One says it has been wet ; and another, 
 it has been windy ; and another, it has been warm. 
 Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell 
 me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of 
 tall white mountains that girded the horizon at 
 noon yesterday ? Who saw the narrow sunbeam 
 that came out of the south and smote upon their 
 summits until they melted and mouldered away 
 in a dust of blue rain j? Who saw the dance of 
 the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last 
 night, and the west wind blew them before it like 
 withered leaves ? All has passed unregretted as 
 unseen ; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, even 
 for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or 
 what is extraordinary ; and yet it is not in the 
 broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental 
 energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift 
 of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of 
 the sublime are developed. God is not in the 
 earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small 
 voicBy. They are but the blunt and the low faculties 
 of our nature, which can only be addressed through 
 
 2 
 
18 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 lampblack and lightning, It is in quiet and 
 subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the 
 deej), and the calm, and the perpetual ; that which 
 must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is 
 understood ; things which the angels work out 
 for us daily and yet very eternally : which are 
 never wanting, and never repeated ; which are to 
 be found always, yet each found but once ; it is 
 through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly 
 taught, and the blessing of beauty given. These 
 are what the artist of highest aim must study ; 
 it is these, by the combination of which his ideal 
 is to be created ; these, of which so little notice 
 is ordinarily taken by common observers, that 
 I fully believe, little as people in general are 
 concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky 
 are derived from pictures than from reality ; and 
 that if we could examine the conception formed 
 in the minds of most educated persons when we 
 talk of clouds, it would frequently be found com- 
 posed of fragments of blue and white reminiscences 
 of the old masters." — " Modern PainterSj^ vol. i., 
 sec. iii., cap. i. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 " Man's use and function are to be the witness 
 of the glory of God, and to advance that glory 
 by his reasonable obedience and resultant happi- 
 ness. Better not to live, than that we should 
 disappoint the purpose of existence." 
 
I. JOHN KUSKIN. 19 
 
 The following passage is very characteristic of 
 Mr. Riiskin : '' Many people appear to believe 
 that homes and lands, and food and raiment 
 were alone useful, and as if sight, thought, and 
 admiration were all profitless. Men who think, 
 ais far as such men can think, that the meat is 
 more than the life, and the raiment than the 
 body, who look to the world as a stable, and to 
 its fruit as fodder ; vine dressers and husband- 
 men, who love the corn they grind, and the grapes 
 they crush, better than the gardens of the angels 
 upon the slopes of Eden ; hewers of wood and 
 drawers of water, who think that it is to give 
 them wood to hew and water to draw that the 
 pine forests cover the mountains like the shadow 
 of God, and the great rivers move like His 
 Eternity. . . . The Nebuchadnezzar curse, that 
 sends men to grass like oxen, seems to follow too 
 closely on the excess or continuance of national 
 power and peace." 
 
 TF TP "TF T^ 7P ^ 
 
 '' When the honour of God is thought to con- 
 sist in the poverty of His temple — when we 
 ravage without a pause of remorse all the loveli- 
 ness of creation which God in giving pronounced 
 Good— there is need, bitter need, to bring back 
 to men's minds, that to live is nothing, unless to 
 live be to know Him by whom we live, and that 
 He is not to be known by marring His fair works, 
 and blotting out the evidence of His influences 
 
20 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 upon His creations ; not amidst the hurry of 
 crowds and crash of innovation, but in solitary 
 places, and out of the glowing intelligences which 
 He gave to men of old." 
 
 And, may I add, to such men as John Ruskin, 
 Thomas Carlyle, Emerson, and Browning of our 
 own day ? 
 
 " The true sign of good breeding is sympathy : 
 a vulgar man is kind in a hard way on principle ; 
 whereas a highly bred man, even when cruel, 
 will be cruel in a softer way, understanding and 
 feeling what he inflicts, and pitying his victim." 
 
 " Impossible to be open, except to men of his 
 own kind. To them he can open himself, by a 
 word or glance ; but to men not of his own kind 
 he cannot open himself though he tried it through 
 an eternity of clear grammatical speech. By the 
 very acuteness of his sympathy he knows how 
 much he can give to anybody, and he gives that 
 
 frankly." 
 
 ****** 
 
 " We have among mankind in general the three 
 orders of beings : the lowest, sordid and selfish, 
 which neither sees nor feels ; the second, noble 
 and sympathetic, but which sees and feels with- 
 out concluding or acting ; the third and highest, 
 which loses sight in resolution, and feeling in 
 work. For one who is blinded to the works of 
 
I. JOHN EUSKIN. 21 
 
 « 
 
 God by profound abstraction or lofty purpose, 
 tens of thousands have their eyes sealed by vulgar 
 selfishness, and their intelligence crushed by 
 impious care." 
 
 The following passage is exquisitely beautiful 
 and true : " A man of genius remains in great 
 part a child, seeing with the large eyes of children, 
 in perpetual wonder, not conscious of much know- 
 ledge — conscious, rather, of infinite ignorance, 
 and yet infinite power ; a fountain of eternal 
 admiration, delight, and creative force within him 
 meeting the ocean of visible and governable things 
 around him." 
 
 What a thrill of love pervades and pulses 
 through this : " All things are literally better, 
 lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections 
 which have been divinely appointed, that the law 
 of human life may be Effort, and the law of 
 human judgment — Mercy." 
 
 How closely that passage applies to the criticism 
 I have ventured to make on Mr. Ruskin (page 9) ! 
 
 His very faults truly increase our love for him. 
 
 ****** 
 
 " Justice, mercy, and truth, and no mention of 
 any doctrinal point whatsoever occurring in either 
 piece of Divine teaching, viz., Book of Job and 
 the Sermon on the Mount." 
 
 The following powerful passage is well worthy 
 of deep consideration in this noisy day of rant 
 
22 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 and cant : ^' It is not accident, it is not Heaven- 
 commanded calamity, it is not the original and 
 inevitable evil of man's nature, wliicli fill your 
 streets with lamentation, and your graves with 
 prey. It is only that, when there should have 
 been labour, there has been lasciviousness ; and 
 wilfulness, when there should have been sub- 
 ordination." 
 
 To return to art, Mr. Ruskin in a magnificent 
 passage, writes, "The gifts which distinctly 
 mark the artist — without which he must be 
 feeble in life, forgotten in death, with which he 
 may become one of the shakers of the earth and 
 one of the signal lights of heaven — are those of 
 sympathy and imagination. 
 
 " Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable 
 thing, but the expression of the mind of a God- 
 made great man : teach, or preach, or labour as 
 you will, everlasting difference is set between one 
 man's capacity and another's ; and the God-given 
 supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as 
 rare in the world at one time as another. 
 
 " I believe that the first test of a truly great 
 man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, 
 doubt of his power, or hesitation in speaking his 
 oj)inions ; but a right understanding of the rela- 
 tion between what he can do or say, and the rest 
 of the world's sayings and doings. All great 
 men not only know their own business, but 
 usually that they know it, and are not only right 
 
I. JOHN EUSKIN. 23 
 
 in their main opinions, but usually know that 
 they are right in them ; only they do not think 
 much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo 
 knows that he can build a good dome at Florence. 
 
 " Albert Durer writes calmly to one who had 
 found fault with his work, ' It cannot be better 
 done ' ; Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked 
 out a problem or two that would have puzzled any- 
 body else ; only they do not expect their fellow- 
 men therefore to fall down and worship them ; 
 they have a curious undersense of powerlessness, 
 feeling that the greatness is not in them, but 
 through them ; they could not do or be any- 
 thing else than God made them. And they see 
 something Divine and God-made in every other 
 man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, 
 incredibly merciful." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, in the following passage, divides 
 men into three ranks and four classes : '' Three 
 ranks — 1st, the man who perceives rightly 
 because he does not feel ; 2nd, the man who 
 perceives wrongly because he feels ; and then, 
 lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in 
 spite of his feeling. There are four classes : the 
 men who feel nothing and therefore see truly; 
 the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see 
 untruly (2nd order of poets) ; and the men who 
 feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (1st 
 order of poets) ; and the men who, strong as 
 human creatures can be, are yet submitted to 
 
24 FOUE GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 influences stronger than they, and see in a sort 
 untruly, because what they see is inconceivably 
 above them. This last is the usual condition of 
 prophetic inspiration." 
 
 The following passage on women and their 
 influence occurs in Mr. Ruskin's lecture on 
 Classic and Gothic Art, delivered at Oxford : 
 '' Although in an ideal state of society the women 
 will be the guiding and purifying power, in 
 savage and undeveloped countries they are openly 
 oppressed as beasts of burden, in corrupted and 
 fallen countries more secretly and terribly. 
 There is a surplus of women, an apparent glut of 
 them ; but of the useful women, the best kind 
 of women, the supply, small to begin with, is 
 diminished by death and misguidance. The 
 experience of most thoughtful persons will con- 
 firm me in saying that extremely good girls 
 usually die young. Little Nells and May Queens 
 fly from the smoke and stir of this dim spot 
 which men call earth to the regions mild of calm 
 and serene air. Most persons of afi'ectionate 
 temper have lost their own May Queens or Little 
 Nells in their time, and I could count the like 
 among my best-loved friends with a rosary of 
 tears. A country paying this enforced tax of its 
 good girls annually to heaven, ought at least to 
 take great care of those it has left. Passing by 
 those who go into convents, or become sick nurses. 
 and do much good, there is a kind of girl just as 
 
I. JOHN RUSKIN. 25 
 
 good, but with a less strong will, who is more 
 or less spoilable and mismanageable ; and these 
 are almost sure to come to grief by the faults 
 of others or merely by the general fortunes and 
 chances of the world." Mr. Ruskin tells, in his 
 own exquisite way^ a pathetic story of a sea 
 captain's daughter ; " the most beautiful girl of 
 the pure English Greek type, finely pencilled 
 dark brows, rather dark hair, and bright pure 
 colour, who, after refusing many lovers, fell in 
 love with a youth whom, with foolish pride, she 
 treated worse than all the others, so that he lost 
 hope, and socn after died. After his death she 
 realized the depth and value of the love she had 
 lost, and never recovered from the blow. She 
 wandered about sadly and listlessly for some 
 years, and then died of a rapid decline." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's opinions on love are as original 
 and daring as his views on other subjects. In 
 his opinion a father is a girl's proper confidant 
 rather than her mother. ^' What she is not 
 inclined to tell her father should be told to no 
 one, and in nine cases out of ten not thought 
 of by herself. I believe that few fathers, how- 
 ever wrong-headed or hard-hearted, would fail 
 of answering the habitual and patient confidence 
 of their child with true care for her." Then 
 Mr. Ruskin, in his emphatic manlier, lays down 
 the following ideal law of courtship, which, I ven- 
 ture to believe, is as little likely to be followed 
 
26 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 as his suggestion that a girl should confide in her 
 father in preference to her mother. 
 
 " When a youth is fully in love with a girl, and 
 feels that he is wise in loving her, he should at 
 once tell her so plainly and take his chance 
 bravely with other suitors. No lover should 
 have the insolence to think of being accepted 
 at once, nor should any girl have the cruelty to 
 refuse at once without severe reasons. If she 
 simply doesn't like him, she may send him away 
 for seven years or so, he vowing to live on cresses 
 and wear sackcloth meanwhile, or the like 
 penance ; if she likes him a little, or thinks she 
 might come to like him in time, she may let him 
 stay near her, putting him always on sharp trial 
 to see what stuff he is made of, and requiring 
 figuratively as many lion-skins or giants' heads 
 as she thinks herself worth. The whole meanino' 
 and power of true courtship is probation, and it 
 ought not to be shorter than three years at least ; 
 seven is, to my mind, the orthodox time. And 
 these relations between the young people should 
 be openly and simply known, not to their friends 
 only, but to everybody who has the least interest 
 in them ; and a girl worth anything ought always 
 to have half a dozen or so suitors under love for 
 her." 
 
 This is simply lovely in its pure Arcadian 
 simplicity. It is like reading the almost Divine 
 " Faerie Queen " of Spenser. What Mr. Ruskin 
 
I. JOHN EUSKIN. 27 
 
 asks for belongs to that fairyland, a place some- 
 where between earth and heaven. 
 
 A little farther on Mr. Riiskin attacks in his 
 most trenchant way the vulgar " mob courtship " 
 of to-day. 
 
 " There are no words strong enough to ex- 
 press the general danger and degradation of the 
 manners of mob courtship, as distinct from these 
 which have become the fashion, almost the law? 
 in modern times : when, in a miserable confusion 
 of candle-light, moonlight, and lime-light — and 
 anything but daylight — in indecently attractive 
 and insanely expensive dresses, in snatched 
 moments, in hidden corners, in accidental im- 
 pulses and dismal ignorances, young people smirk 
 and ogle and whisper and whimper and sneak and 
 stumble and flutter and fumble and blunder into 
 what they call love, expect to get whatever they 
 like the moment they fancy it, and are continually 
 in the danger of losing all the honour of life for 
 a folly, and all the joy of it by an accident." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin speaks with pathetic power of 
 '' lost jewels," girls with " little power of ruling 
 and every provocation of mis-ruling their fates, 
 who have from their births much against them, 
 few to help, and virtually none to guide them. 
 If there be fire and genius in these neglected 
 ones, and they chance to have beauty also, God 
 save them and all of us ! What do these bright 
 reverses of their best human treasures not cost 
 
28 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 the economical British race or the cheerful French 
 — this casting away of things precious, the pro- 
 fanation of things pure, the pain of things 
 capable of happiness, — to what sum incalculable 
 do these amount to ? " 
 
 Mr. Rusldn sadly ponders on these terrible 
 facts as he looks down on ^'all the south and 
 east of Lancashire and Yorkshire, black with the 
 fume of their fever-fretted cities, rolling itself 
 along the dales and mixed with the torrent 
 mists." 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's defence from ignorant and pre- 
 judiced attacks is most valuable and interesting. 
 
 "It is quite possible for the simplest work- 
 man or labourer for whom I write to understand 
 what the feelings of a gentleman are, and share 
 them, if he will ; but the crisis and horror of 
 this present time are that its desire of money, 
 and the fulness of luxury dishonestly attainable 
 by common persons, are gradually making churls 
 of all men ; and the nobler passions are not 
 merely disbelieved, but even the conception of 
 them seems ludicrous to the impotent churl 
 mind ; so that, to take only so poor an instance 
 of them as my own life— because I have passed 
 it in almsgiving, not in fortune-hunting ; be- 
 cause I have laboured always for the honour of 
 others, not my own, and have chosen rather to 
 make men look to Turner and Luini, than to 
 form or exhibit the skill of my own hand ; be- 
 
I. JOHN KUSKIN. 29 
 
 cause I have lowered my rents, and assured the 
 comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead of 
 taking from them all I could force for the roofs 
 they needed ; because I love a wood walk better 
 than a London street ; and would rather watch 
 a seagull fly than shoot it, and rather hear a 
 thrush sing than eat it ; finally, because I never 
 disobeyed my mother, because I have honoured 
 all women with solemn worship, and have been 
 kind even to the unthankful and the evil ; there- 
 fore the hacks of English art and literature wag 
 their heads at me, and the poor j wretch who 
 pawns the dirty linen of his soul for a bottle of 
 sour wine and a cigar talks of the effeminate 
 sentimentality of Ruskin." — " Fors^^ IV. 
 
 A few words on the St. George's Society, 
 formed by Mr. Ruskin with the intention of 
 grappling with some of the evils which he de- 
 scribes with unequalled eloquence and power. 
 
 I will again quote the great teacher on^the 
 aim of the Society : — 
 
 " The highest possible education of English 
 men and women living by agriculture in their 
 native land, I do not care where the land is nor 
 of what quality. I would rather it should be 
 poor, for I want space more than food. I will 
 make the best of it that I can at once by wage 
 labour, under the best agricultural ^ advice. I 
 should like a bit of marsh land of small value, 
 which I would trench with alternate ridge and 
 
30 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 canal, changing it all into solid land, and deep 
 water to be farmed in fish. If, instead, I got a 
 rocky piece, I should arrange reservoirs for rain, 
 then put what earth is sprinkled on it into work- 
 able masses ; and ascertaining in either case how 
 many mouths the gained spaces of ground will 
 easily feed, put upon them families chosen for 
 me by old landlords who know their people and 
 can send me cheerful and honest ones, accustomed 
 to obey orders and live in the fear of God. If 
 any young couples of the higher classes choose 
 to accept such rough life, I would rather have 
 them for tenants than any others. Tenants, I 
 say, and at long leases if they behave well, with 
 power eventually to purchase the piece of land 
 they live on for themselves, if they can save the 
 price of it ; the rent they pay meanwhile being 
 the tithe of the annual produce to St. George's 
 Fund. The modes of cultivation of the land to 
 be under the control of the overseer of the whole 
 estate, appointed by the trustees of the fund ; 
 but the tenants shall build their own houses to 
 their own minds, under certain conditions as to 
 materials and strength; and have for themselves 
 the entire produce of the land, except the tithe 
 aforesaid. The children will be required to 
 attend training schools for bodily exercise and 
 music, with such education as I have already 
 described. Every household will have its library 
 given it from the fund, and consisting of a fixed 
 
I. JOHN BUSKIN. 31 
 
 number of volumes, some constant, the others 
 chosen by each family out of a list of permitted 
 books, from which they afterwards may increase 
 the library if they choose. The formation of 
 this library, for choice, by a republication of 
 classical authors in standard forms, has long 
 been a main object with me. No newspapers, 
 nor any books but those named in the annually 
 renewed lists, are to be allowed in any house- 
 hold. In time I hope to get a journal published 
 containing notice of any really important matters 
 taking place in this or other countries, or the 
 closely sifted truth of them." 
 
 Part III. 
 
 I ONCE heard Mr. Ruskin lecture at the Working 
 Men's College, Great Ormond Street. That 
 must have been twenty-five years ago. Mr. 
 Ruskin's manner as a lecturer was charming — 
 so easy, so unaffected, and yet, every now and 
 then, soaring easily upwards to a noble pitch of 
 earnest eloquence. The lecture was on a British 
 penny, which he compared with a Greek coin, 
 pointing out, with fine wit and satire, the gro- 
 velling vulgarity of the one, and the exquisite 
 purity of line and harmony of design in the 
 other. He was very earnest on that occasion, 
 and, I think, on every occasion, in pointing out 
 
32 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 to his hearers the terrible social dangers by 
 which we are surrounded and may be over- 
 whelmed. 
 
 In fact, the lecture was full of deep feeling, 
 the subtlest art criticism, and was illuminated 
 now and again by fine caustic wit and masterly 
 irony. 
 
 The following graphic sketch of Mr. Ruskin 
 will, I am sure, be appreciated by my readers : — 
 
 '^ Mr. Ruskin rises early, and writes for three 
 hours before his guests are down. Breakfast 
 over, he retires to his study to answer letters 
 or complete some piece of unfinished work, or 
 will go out on the hill, perhaps, and make a 
 delicately finished- study of rock and grass for 
 the engraver's hand to copy. 
 
 '' Between one and six o'clock, the tourist at the 
 Lakes may see a slight figure dressed in a grey 
 frock-coat, and wearing the bright blue tie so 
 familiar to audiences at Oxford and elsewhere, 
 walking about the quiet lanes, sitting down by 
 the harbour's side, or rowing on the water. The 
 back is somewhat bent, the light brown hair 
 straight and long, the whiskers scarcely show 
 signs of eight-and-fifty summers numbered, and 
 the spectator need not be surprised at the deter- 
 mined energy with which a boat is brought to 
 shore or pushed out into the lake. 
 
 " Sometimes a friend breaks on this peaceful 
 time, and is met with both hands outstretched, 
 
I. JOHN KUSKIN. 33 
 
 while the gentle look in the clear blue eyes and 
 a few low-voiced words give him full assurance 
 that he is entirely welcome. To such the place 
 is gladly shown ; and a walk is taken up the 
 grass paths cut through the woods, with seats 
 placed where the views are best, to look out over 
 mountain and lake, and be taught, maybe, in the 
 rich colours and fleecy clouds, the utter rightness 
 of Turner ; til], ascending higher, an admiring 
 eye must be cast on a bit of rough ground, 
 red with heather, which, lying just beyond the 
 boundaries of Brantwood, is the Professor's 
 Naboth's Vineyard. 
 
 '' Mr. Ruskin's sensitive nature is singularly 
 affected by changes of weather, and a bright day 
 makes him as joyful as a dull one makes him 
 sad. But courtesy and kindness to those around 
 him are characteristics he never loses ; insincerity 
 is a fault of which he is thoroughly devoid ; and 
 those who know him best delight in an unaffected 
 simplicity of manner, which in men of acknow- 
 ledged genius is as valuable as it is often 
 rare." 
 
 In this slight sketch of Mr. Ruskin I have, by 
 a careful selection of quotations, endeavoured to 
 bring out clearly the light and shade of his cha- 
 racter and genius. I shall conclude my article 
 by two quotations which, I think, for power, 
 scope, and elevation, are unsurpassed and un- 
 surpassable : they place Ruskin by the side of 
 
 3 
 
34 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Carlyle and Emerson, as one of the greatest and 
 most stimulating teachers of the century. 
 
 ^^ Whatever may be the inability in this present 
 life to mingle the full enjoyment of the Divine 
 works with the fall discharge of every practical 
 duty — and confessedly in many cases this must 
 be — let us not attribute the inconsistency to any 
 indigency of the faculty of contemplation, but to 
 the sin and suffering of the fallen state, and the 
 change of order from the keeping of the garden 
 to the tilling of the ground. We cannot say 
 how far it is right or agreeable with God's will, 
 while men are perishing round about us, while 
 grief, and pain, and wrath, and impiety, and death, 
 and all the powers of the air are working wildly 
 and evermore, and the cry of blood going up to 
 heaven, that any of us should take hand from 
 the plough ; but this we know, that there will 
 come a time when the service of God shall be 
 the beholding of Him ; and though in these 
 stormy seas, where we are now driven up and 
 down. His Spirit is dimly seen on the face of the 
 waters, and we are left to cast anchors out of the 
 stern and wish for the day — that day will come — 
 when, with the evangelists on the crystal and 
 stable sea, all the creatures of God shall be full 
 of eyes within, and there shall be ' no more 
 curse, but His servants shall serve Him, and 
 shall see His face.'" 
 
 The following sublime passage, which, I think, 
 
I. JOHN RirSKIN. 35 
 
 sums up all the beauty, intellectual and moral, 
 contained in all Mr. Ruskin's works, shall ter- 
 minate my article : — 
 
 " Here is a short piece of precious word revela- 
 tion, for instance— ' God is love.' Love! yes. 
 But what is that ? The revelation does not tell 
 you that, I think. Look into the mirror, and you 
 will see. Out of your own heart you may know 
 what love is. In no other possible way, by no 
 other help or sign. All the words and sounds 
 ever uttered, all the revelations of cloud, or flame, 
 or crystal, are utterly powerless. They cannot 
 tell you, in the smallest point, what love means. 
 Only the broken mirror (the soul) can. Here is 
 more revelation. God is just. Just ! What 
 is that? The revelation cannot help you to 
 discover. You say it is dealing equitably or 
 equally. But how do you discover the equality ? 
 Not by inequality of mind, not by a mind in- 
 capable of weighing, judging, or distributing. If 
 the lengths seem unequal in the broken mirror, 
 for you they are unequal ; but if they seem equal, 
 then the mirror is true. So far as you recognize 
 equality, and your conscience tells you what is 
 just, so far your mind is the image of God's ; and 
 so far as you do not discern the nature of justice 
 or equality, the words ' God is just ' bring no 
 revelation to you. 
 
 " But His thoughts are not as our thoughts. 
 No ; the sea is not a standing pool by the wayside. 
 
36 FOUR GEEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Yet when the breeze crisps the pool you may see 
 the image of the breakers and a likeness of the 
 foam. Nay, in some sort, the same foam. If the 
 sea is for ever invisible to you, something you 
 may learn from the pool. Nothing assuredly, 
 any otherwise. But this poor miserable Me ! 
 Is this, then, all the book I have got to read God 
 in ? Yes ! truly so. No other book, or fragment 
 of a book, than that will you ever find. No velvet- 
 bound missal, nor frankincensed manuscript ; 
 nothing hieroglyphic nor cuneiform ; papyrus and 
 pyramid are alike silent on this matter ; nothing 
 in the clouds above or the earth beneath. That 
 flesh-bound volume is the only revelation that is, 
 that was, or that can be. In that is the image 
 of God painted ; in that is the law of God written ; 
 in that is the promise of God revealed. Know 
 thyself, for through thyself only canst thou know 
 God. In the glass darkly. But except through 
 the glass, in no wise. 
 
 " A tremendous crystal, waved in water, poured 
 out upon the ground ; you may defile it, despise 
 it, pollute it, at your pleasure and at your peril ; 
 for on the peace of those weak waves must all 
 the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen ; and 
 through such purity as you can ensure for those 
 dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun 
 of righteousness be bent down by faint refraction. 
 Cleanse them and calm them, as you love your 
 life. 
 
I. JOHN RUSKIN. 37 
 
 " Therefore is it that all the power of nature 
 depends in subjection to the human soul. Man 
 is the sun of the world, more than the real sun. 
 The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light 
 and heat worth gauge and measure. 
 
 " Where he is, is the tropics. Where he is not, 
 the ice world." 
 
 '' OncG read thy own breast right, 
 Atid thou hast doae with fears. 
 Man gets no other light, 
 
 Search he a thousand years." 
 
 " Sink in thy&elf ; there ask what ails thee, at that shrine." 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The Birmingham, Daily Fast, October 29th, 1887, 
 referring to my paper on " John Ruskin," said, " We note 
 one curious little point. The writer devotes a page or 
 two to Wordsworth, because, as he says, to understand 
 Ruskin it is necessary to understand Wordsworth, adding, 
 ' Ruskin is simply saturated with Wordsworth.' Now, 
 within the few last weeks a little book has appeared 
 with the title, 'Books that have Influenced Me,' and 
 Mr. Ruskin is one of the men of mark who supply auto- 
 biographic information on this point. Mr. Ruskin gives 
 Horace, Pindar, Dante, Scott, Pope, Byron, Coleridge, 
 Keats, Burns, Moliere, etc., but he does not, either in his 
 list or in a supplementary letter, so much as allude to 
 Wordsworth." 
 
38 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 In the Century of January 1888, an interesting, although, 
 in my opinion, very unfair article on John Ruskin appeared, 
 written by Mr. W. J. Stillman, who at one time was on 
 very intimate terms with his subject. Curious to say, the 
 article contained a complete confirmation of my opinion as 
 to Ruskin's loving appreciation of and affinity with "Words- 
 worth, in the form of a letter from the great teacher and 
 art critic to Mr. Stillman, published for the first time in 
 the article referred to, in which, with characteristic zeal, 
 Mr. Ruskin recommends certain books. "You should 
 read much — and generally old books ; but above all avoid 
 German books — and all Germanists except Carlyle, whom 
 read as much as you can or like ; read George Herbert 
 and Spenser, and Wordsworth and Homer, all constantly." 
 
II. 
 
 THOMAS CAELYLB. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle was born on tlie 4tli December, 
 1795, in /the parish of Middlebie, near Eccle- 
 fechan, Dumfriessliire. His father was '' earnest, 
 energetic, of quick intellect, and in earlier life 
 somewhat passionate and pugnacious. He was 
 not just the man to be popular among his rustic 
 neighbours- of Annandale ; but they respected his 
 pronounced individuality, felt his strong will, and 
 his terse, epigrammatic sayings were remembered 
 and repeated many years after his death (1833). 
 In the latter years of his life he became a more 
 decidedly religious character, and the natural 
 asperities of his disposition and manner were 
 much softened." 
 
 The above vivid portrait of Carlyle's father was 
 drawn by an aged Scotch minister who knew him 
 well, and was quoted by Mr. Moncure D. Conway 
 in his' admirable article on Thomas Carlyle in 
 Harper'' s Magazine. 
 
 On one occasion the old Spartan father was 
 very ill during harvest time. No work in the 
 fields for him ; nothing but water-gruel, doctor's 
 
40 FOUK GKEAT TEACHEBS. 
 
 stuff, and special prayers. Not a bit of it ! He 
 crawled to the fields in tlie early morning. The 
 corn was ripe for the sickle. He stamped on 
 the ground, and said, '' Til gar myseV work at 
 t^ harvest y And he did it. A reverend gentleman 
 once favoured the congregation of Mr. Carlyle's 
 church with a graphic description of the horrors 
 of eternal punishment. James Carlyle listened 
 to him till he had finished ; but then came out 
 of his pew, and placing himself before the 
 clergyman said, ^' Ay, ye may thump and stare 
 till yer een start fra their sockets, but ye'll na 
 gar me believe such stuff as that." So much 
 for Carlyle's very vertebrate father. Now a 
 few words on his mother. Here again I quote 
 Carlyle's words to Mr. Conway, the friend and 
 not the Froude of Carlyle. 
 
 " My mother stands in my memory as beautiful 
 in all that makes the excellence of woman. 
 Pious and gentle she was, with an unweariable 
 devotedness to her family; a loftiness of moral 
 aim and religious conviction which gave her 
 presence and her humble home a sort of gracious- 
 ness, and, even as I see it now, dignity; and with 
 it, too, a good deal of wit and originality of mind. 
 No man had better opportunities than I for com- 
 prehending, were they comprehensible, the great 
 depths of a mother's love for her children. 
 Nearly my first profound impressions in this 
 world are connected with the death of an infant 
 
v II. THOMAS CARLYLE. 41 
 
 sister — an event whose sorrowfulness was made 
 known to me in the inconsolable grief of my 
 mother. For a long time she seemed to dissolve 
 in tears — only tears. For several months not one 
 night passed but she dreamed of holding her babe 
 in her arms and clasping it to her breast. At 
 length, one morning she related a change in her 
 dream : while she held the child in her arms it 
 had seemed to break up into small fragments, 
 and so crumbled away and vanished. From that 
 night her vision of the babe and dream of clasping 
 it never returned. 
 
 ^' The only fault I can remember in my mother 
 was her being too mild and peaceful for the 
 planet she lived in. [Let us thank Heaven her 
 son did not sin in that way /] When I was sent 
 to school, she piously enjoined upon me that I 
 should, under no conceivable circumstances, fight 
 with any boy, nor resist any evil done to me ; 
 and her instructions were so solemn that for a 
 long time I was accustomed to submit to every 
 kind of injustice simply for her sake. It was a 
 sad mistake. When it was practically discovered 
 that I would not defend myself, every kind of 
 indignity was put upon me, and my life was made 
 utterly miserable. 
 
 '' Fortunately the strain was too great. One 
 day a big boy was annoying me, when it occurred 
 to my mind that existence under such conditions 
 was insupportable ; so I slipped off my wooden 
 
42 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 shoe, and there witli suddenly gave that boy a blow- 
 on the seat of honour, which sent him sprawling 
 on face and stomach in a convenient mass of mud 
 and water. I shall never forget the burden that 
 rolled off me at that moment. I never had a 
 more heartfelt satisfaction than in witnessing the 
 consternation of that contemporary. It proved 
 to be a measure of peace also. From that time 
 I was troubled by the boys no more." 
 
 Carlyle's mother died in 1853. Up to that 
 time she carefully read all her great son's works, 
 even his translation of " Wilhelm Meister," ex- 
 pressing, of course, decided disapproval of some 
 of the very shady characters to be found in that 
 extraordinary work. The " French Revolution " 
 she read and re-read till she understood every 
 line. As Carlyle resisted his mother's teaching 
 of non-resistance, so he also disobeyed his father's 
 rigid commands as to the books he should and 
 should not read. He used to run away to the 
 fields to enjoy Smollett's ^' Roderick Random." 
 His delight in Smollett's works lasted to his 
 last day. He said that nothing, even in Dante 
 or out, excelled that passage in "■ Humphrey 
 Clinker," where Humi)hrey goes into the smithy 
 made for him in the old house, and whilst he 
 is heating the iron, the poor woman w^ho has 
 lost her husband and is deranged, comes and 
 talks to him as to her husband. " John, they 
 told me vou were dead. How glad I am you have 
 
II. THOMAS CARLYLE. 43 
 
 come ! " And Humphrey's tears fall down and 
 bubble on the hot iron. 
 
 You will all remember that Sir Walter Scott 
 had the same intense admiration for the broad 
 humour and full-blooded humanity of Smollett, 
 and that he read " Humphrey Clinker " almost 
 on his death-bed. 
 
 Such were the parents of Carlyle. He often 
 said that no noble man was born of a bad stock ; 
 and would instance the Burns family, of whose 
 attainments we are all aware. 
 
 Carlyle refused to enter the Church. He felt 
 that his opinions, so broad and deep, could not 
 be confined within the orthodox barriers. His 
 grand mind and heart could not be controlled by 
 theological cobwebs. He could not make up his 
 mind to believe one thing and teach another. 
 In matters of that kind, as he once said, '' he 
 supposed a man must be honest." 
 
 He wrote sixteen articles for the Edinburgh 
 Encyclopaedia^ edited by his friend David 
 Brewster. These articles I have read : the one 
 on Montaigne is particularly good. They are 
 written in quite ordinary diction, and contain 
 nothing of his later mannerisms. They were 
 written between the years 1820 and 1824. Th^e 
 translation of " Wilhelm Meister " appeared 
 soon after. Jeffrey, the acute but very limited 
 critic, who said that Wordsworth '' would not 
 do," wrote of this great work " that it was 
 
44 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, and 
 affected. . . . Almost from beginning to end 
 one flagrant offence against every principle of 
 taste and every rule of composition." But then 
 the great critic of the Edinburgh Review — a 
 highly respectable quarterly, but always a little 
 behind the time — kindly patronises the trans- 
 lator, '•" as one who has proved himself by his 
 preface to be a person of talents, and by every 
 part of the work to be no ordinary master of at 
 least one of the languages with which he has to 
 deal." The review finishes thus : '' Many of 
 the passages to which we have now alluded are 
 executed with great talent, and we are very sen- 
 sible are better worth extracting than those we 
 have cited. But it is too late now to change our 
 selections, and we can still less afford to add to 
 them. On the whole, we close the book with 
 some feeling of mollification toward its faults, 
 and a disposition to abate, if possible, some part 
 of the censure we were imi3elled to bestow on it 
 at the beginning." This is the kind of absurdity 
 men of talent produce — for Jeffrey was a man of 
 talent— when they sit in judgment on a man of 
 genius : where talent ends, genius begins. 
 
 Carlyle's delightful '' Life of Schiller," one of 
 the most fascinating biographies ever written, 
 was translated by Goethe into German. It was 
 published about the same time as " Wilhelm 
 Meister." Carlyle, with iron resolution, 
 
II. THOMAS CAKLYLE. 45 
 
 continued his fight against fortune. He became 
 tutor to Charles Buller. This was the turn of 
 the tide. 
 
 We will now take up the thread of Carlyle's 
 life after his marriage with Jane Welch, when 
 they were settled at Craigenputtock Hill, where 
 Emerson visited them. Of him Carlyle said : 
 '' W^ords cannot tell how I prize the old friend- 
 ship formed here on Craigenputtock Hill, or 
 how deeply I have felt in all he has written the 
 same aspiring intelligence which shone about us 
 when he came as a young man, and left with us 
 a memory always cherished." 
 
 I will drop the thread of Emerson for a tune 
 in order to refer to one of the most striking- 
 tributes ever paid by one distinguished man to 
 another : I mean that offered by John Tyndall 
 to Thomas Carlyle, when the latter's statue was 
 unveiled on the Chelsea Embankment. The 
 professor began by a personal reminiscence. At 
 the time of the Preston Guild of 1842 (Mr. 
 Tyndall then being attached to the Ordnance 
 Survey of that town) great distress existed, and 
 in Lime Street the suffering operatives attacked 
 the bakers' shops, and were fired upon by the 
 military. Carlyle, then residing at Cheyne Row, 
 was at work on " Past and Present," and the 
 cry of the famishing weavers, coming to him 
 from the North, brought forth the memorable 
 appeal to Exeter Hall ; the appeal in which it 
 
46 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 was demanded that when Qnashee over the seas 
 was provided for, some attention should be paid 
 to the " hunger-stricken, pallid, yellow-coloured, 
 free labourers of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Bucking- 
 hamshire, and all other shires." 
 
 These were the first words of Carlyle, copied, 
 as it were, into the Preston papers, which Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall ever read, and, as he told his 
 audience : '' After the rattle of musketry and 
 spatter of bullets among the weavers and spinners 
 in Lime Street, they rang, I confess, with strange 
 impressions in my ears." The professor, in 
 glancing at the leading attributes of his charac- 
 ter, said that Carlyle's defects — if such they 
 were — could only have reference to the distribu- 
 tion of his sympathy^ not to its amount. His pity 
 was vast, and only his division of it between black 
 and white could be called in question. 
 
 Carlyle he went on to describe as one who, 
 day and night, for years brooded upon the con- 
 dition of his toiling fellow-countrymen ; who 
 saw the vanity of expecting political wisdom 
 from intellectual ignorance ; whose influence 
 went far beyond the sphere of politics ; who 
 threw resolution and moral elevation into the 
 hearts of the young ; who asserted the claims of 
 duty and the dignity of work ; who was dynamic, 
 not didactic — a spiritual force, " which warmed, 
 moved, and invigorated, but which refused to be 
 clipped into precepts " ; and as one who hated 
 
II. THOMAS CARLYLB. 4/ 
 
 sham, but whose spirit leaped to recognize true 
 merit and manfuhiess. 
 
 Mr. Tyndall admitted that the bias of Carlyle's 
 mind was certainly towards what might be called 
 the military virtues, thinking, as he did, that 
 they could not be dispensed with in the present 
 temper of the world ; but added that though 
 he bore about him the image and superscription 
 of a great military commander, had he been a 
 statesman, he would, at any moment, have ac- 
 cepted as the weapons of his warfare, instead 
 of the sword and spear, the ploughshare and tlie 
 pruning-hook of peaceful civic life. 
 
 Upon the subject of Carlyle's ethics the professor 
 said : " Taking all that Science has done in the 
 past, all that she has achieved in the present, 
 and all that-shejs likely to compass in the future, 
 will she at length have told us everything, ren- 
 dering our knowledge of this universe- rounded 
 and complete ? The answer is clear. After 
 Science has completed her mission upon earth, 
 the finite known will still be embraced by the 
 infinite unknown. And this boundless contiguity 
 of shade, by which our knowledge is hemmed in, 
 will always tempt the exercise of belief and 
 imagination. The human mind, in its structural 
 and poetic capacity, can never be prevented from 
 building its castles — on the rock or in the air, 
 as the case maybe — in this ultra-scientific region. 
 Certainly the mind of Carlyle could not have 
 
48 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 been prevented from doing so. Out of pure un- 
 intelligence lie lield that intelligence never could 
 have sprung, and so, at the heart of things, he 
 placed an intelligence — an energy which, to avoid 
 circuitous paraphrase, we call God. 
 
 '' I am here repeating his own words to myself. 
 Every reader of his works will have recognized 
 the burning intensity of his conviction that this 
 universe is ruled by veracity and justice, which 
 are sure in the end to scorch and dissipate all 
 falsehood and wrong." 
 
 As to the charge so frequently made against 
 Carlyle, that he was the Apostle of Might, Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall quoted the extract from '' Chartism," 
 in which the author pointed out that " might and 
 right do differ frightfully from hour to hour ; but 
 give them centuries to try it in, and they are found 
 in the end to be identical ; " and he concluded by an 
 expression of confidence that when all temporary 
 dust of misapprehension regarding Carlyle had 
 passed away, his massive figure will stand erect 
 and clear. 
 
 Before unveiling the statue, Mr. Tyndall ex- 
 pressed a wish that somewhere on the Thames 
 Embankment a memorial might be raised to a 
 man who loved Carlyle, and was by him beloved 
 to the end— "the loftiest, purest, and most 
 penetrating spirit that ever shone in American 
 literature — Ralph Waldo Emerson." 
 
 Before following this new link in my chain. 
 
II. THOMAS CARLYLE. 49 
 
 let me here introduce to your notice the following- 
 exquisite lines, which embody the religious ideas 
 of Carlyle so beautifully and clearly presented by 
 Professor Tyndall :— 
 
 " There is no unbelief : 
 Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod, 
 And waits to see it push away the clod, 
 
 He trusts in God. 
 
 " Whoever says, when clouds are in the sky, 
 ' Be patient, heart, light breaketh by-and-by,' 
 Trusts the Most High. 
 
 " Whoever sees, 'neath winter's field of snow, 
 The silent harvest of the future grow, — 
 God's power must know. 
 
 " The heart that looks on when the eyelids close, 
 And dares to live when life has only woes, 
 God's comfort knows. 
 
 " There is no unbelief : 
 And day by day, and night, unconsciously, 
 The heart lives by that faith the lips deny ; 
 
 God knoweth why." 
 
 I think the judgment, the calm, analytical 
 judgment, of a Tyndall on a Carlyle, to be 
 priceless. No man was more capable of feeling 
 the rough, vehement one-sidedness of Carlyle's 
 judgment on some matters, which he never con- 
 descended to study, than Mr. Tyndall ; but with 
 splendid receptivity, which I consider to be his 
 great strength and the source of his intellectual 
 
 4 
 
50 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 greatness, lie felt to his heart's core the sublime 
 eloquence, the marvellous power of word-painting, 
 the infinite humour ; in short, the tremendous 
 and unique individuality of that literary Titan — 
 
 Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Now, we will at last turn to that most vivid 
 description Emerson gives us in " English Traits " 
 of his first interview, the germ of a lifelong 
 friendship, with Carlyle. This is the passage : 
 ^^From Edinburgh I went to the Highlands. 
 On my return, I came from Glasgow to Dum- 
 fries, and being intent on delivering a letter 
 which I had brought from Rome, inquired for 
 Craigenputtock. It was a farm in Mthsdale, 
 in the parish of Dunscore, sixteen miles distant.- 
 No public coach passed near it, so I took a 
 private carriage from the inn. I found the 
 house amid desolate heathery hills, where the 
 lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart. 
 
 '^ Carlyle was a man from his youth, an author 
 who did not need to hide from his readers, and 
 as absolute a man of the world, unknown and 
 exiled on that hill farm, as if holding on his own 
 terms what is best in London. He was tall and 
 gaunt, with a clifi'-like brow, self-possessed, and 
 holding his extraordinary powers of conversation 
 in easy command ; clinging to his northern accent 
 with evident relish ; full of lively anecdote, and 
 with a streaming humour, which floated every- 
 thing he looked upon. His talk, playfully exalting 
 
II. THOMAS CAELYLE. 51 
 
 the familiar objects, put the companion at once 
 into an acquaintance with his Lars and Lemurs, 
 and it was very pleasant to learn what was pre- 
 destined to be a pretty mythology. Few were 
 the objects and lonely the man, — ' not a person 
 to speak to within sixteen miles except the 
 minister of Dunscop ' ; so that books inevitably 
 made his topics. ^ He had names of his own for 
 all matters familiar to his discourse. Blackwood ^s 
 was the ' sand magazine' ; Fraser's nearer approach 
 to possibility of life was the ^ mud magazine ' ; 
 a piece of road near by, that marked some foiled 
 enterprise, was ' the grave of the last sixpence.' 
 When too much praise of any genius annoyed 
 him, he professed hugely to admire the talent 
 shown by his pig. He had spent much time 
 and contrivance in confining the poor beast to 
 one enclosure in his pen, but pig, by great strokes 
 of judgment, had found out how to let a board 
 down, and had foiled him. 
 
 " For all that, he still thought man the most 
 plastic little fellow in the planet. He worships 
 a man that will manifest any truth to him. 
 
 " At one time he had inquired and read a good 
 deal about America. Landor's principle was mere 
 rebellion, and that, he feared, was the American 
 principle. The best thing he knew of that 
 country was, that in it a man can have meat for 
 his labour. He had read in Stewart's book that 
 when he inquired in a New York hotel for the 
 
52 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 boots, lie had been sliown across the street, and 
 had found Miingo in his own house dining on 
 roast turkey. 
 
 " We talked on books. Plato he does not read, 
 and he disparaged Socrates ; and, when pressed, 
 persisted in making Mirabeau a hero. Gibbon 
 he called the splendid bridge from the old world 
 to the new. His own reading had been multi- 
 farious. ^ Tristram Shandy ' was one of his first 
 books after ' Robinson Crusoe,' and Robertson's 
 ^ America ' an early favourite. Rousseau's ' Con- 
 fessions ' had discovered to him that he was not 
 a dunce ; and it was now ten years since he had 
 learned German, by the advice of a man who 
 had told him he would find in that language 
 what he wanted. 
 
 " He took despairing or satirical views of 
 literature at this moment ; recounted the in- 
 credible sums paid in one year by the great 
 booksellers for puffing. [Emerson forgot to tell 
 us how unknown that great art was in America.] 
 Hence it comes that no newspaper is trusted 
 now, no books are bought, and the booksellers 
 are on the eve of bankruptcy. He still returned 
 to English pauperism, the crowded coimtry, the 
 selfish abdication by public men of all that 
 public persons should perform. ' Government 
 should direct poor men what to do. Poor Irish 
 folk come wandering over these moors. My 
 dame makes it a rule to give to every son of 
 
II. THOMAS CAKLYLE. 53 
 
 Adam bread to eat, and supplies his wants to 
 the next house. But here are thousands of acres 
 which might give them all meat, and nobody to 
 bid these poor Irish go to the moor and till it. 
 They burned the stacks, and so found a way to 
 force the rich people to attend to them. 
 
 " We went out to walk over long hills, and 
 looked at Criifel, then without his cap, and down 
 into Wordsworth's country. There we sat down, 
 and talked of the immortality of the soul. It 
 was not Carlyle's fault that we talked on that 
 subject, for he had the natural disinclination of 
 every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, 
 and did not like to place himself where no step 
 can be taken. But he was honest and true, and 
 cognizant of the subtle links that bind ages 
 together, and saw how every event affects all the 
 future. 
 
 " ' Christ died on the tre(; ; that built Dunscore 
 kirk yonder ; that brought you and me together. 
 Time has only a relative existence.' 
 
 " He was already turning his eyes towards 
 London with a scholar's appreciation. ' London 
 is the heart of the world,' he said, ^wonderful 
 only from the mass of human beings.' He liked 
 the huge machine. Each keeps its own round. 
 The baker's boy brings muffins to the window 
 at a fixed hour every day, and that is all the 
 Londoner knows or wishes to know on the 
 subject. But it turned out good men," 
 
64 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 I consider that one of the most interesting and 
 suggestive passages in literature. How these 
 giants enjoyed their intellectual wrestlings one 
 with the other ! And this was the beginning of 
 an intimate friendship which never tired. And 
 if, as we must admit, Carlyle's rugged vehemence 
 of temper introduced discord into their relations, 
 we must remember Mrs. Carlyle's pertinent 
 remark to some one who complimented her on 
 her husband's greatness : " Eh, man, what would 
 he have been if he had had a digestion ? " There 
 is the key to Carlyle's faults of temper and 
 bitter prejudices. His powers of expression 
 were so tremendous that he said in the heat 
 of conversational inspiration things that he 
 himself regretted deeply in his calmer moments. 
 Was it the act of a friend to put the worst things 
 said in the worst light ? 
 
 Carlyle, as you are aware, was born on December 
 4th, 1795, and died at Cheyne Row on February 
 6th, 1881. The May number (1881) of Scribners 
 Magazine contained a paper read partly by the 
 venerable sage Emerson on " Impressions of 
 Thomas Carlyle in 1848." This was the last 
 tribute paid by Emerson to Carlyle, and is filled 
 with all that wisdom, wit, and subtle discrimina- 
 tion so characteristic of the greatest man America 
 has produced. 
 
 It must have been a very touching picture to 
 see Emerson, who was shortly to join his old 
 
II. THOMAS CARLYLE. 55 
 
 friend, referring to his daughter as to what he 
 shonkl read of the loose MSS. on his desk. It 
 was a sight never to be forgotten by those present. 
 
 I must just submit a few passages of this 
 swan-song of the great teacher. 
 
 " Nor can that decorum which is the idol of 
 the Englishman, and in attaining which the 
 Englishman exceeds all nations, win from Carlyle 
 any obeisance. He is eaten up with indignation 
 against such as desire to make a fair show in the 
 flesh. 
 
 " Combined with this warfare on respectabili- 
 ties, and, indeed, pointing all his satire, is the 
 severity of his moral sentiment. In proportion 
 to the peals of laughter amid which he strips 
 the plumes of a pretender, and shows the lean 
 hypocrisy to every vantage of ridicule, does he 
 worship whatever enthusiasm, fortitude, love, or 
 other sign of good nature is in man. 
 
 "There is nothing deeper in his constitution 
 than his humour, than the considerate, conde- 
 scending good nature with which he looks at 
 every object in existence, as a man might look at 
 a mouse. He feels that the perfection of health 
 is sportiveness, and will not look grave even at 
 dulness or tragedy. 
 
 " His guiding genius is his moral sense, his per- 
 ception of the sole importance of truth and justice; 
 but that is truth of character and not of catechisms, 
 
 " He says, ' There is properly no religion in 
 
66 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 England. These idle nobles at Tattersall's — there 
 is no word or work of serious purpose in them; 
 they have this great lying Church ; and life is 
 a humbug.' He prefers Cambridge to Oxford, 
 but he thinks Oxford and Cambridge education 
 indurates the young men, as the Styx hardened 
 Achilles, so that when they come forth of them 
 they say, ^ Now we are proof : we have gone 
 through all the degrees, and are case-hardened 
 against the veracities of the Universe ; nor man 
 
 nor God can penetrate us." 
 
 ****** 
 
 A little further on, Emerson said : " He was 
 very serious about the bad times ; he had seen 
 this evil coming, but thought it would not come 
 in his time. But now 'tis coming, and the only 
 good he sees in it is the visible appearance of 
 the Gods. He thinks it is the only question for 
 wise men, instead of art, and fine fancies, and 
 poetry, and such things, — to address themselves 
 to the problem of society. This confusion is the 
 inevitable end of such falsehood and nonsense as 
 they have been embroiled with. 
 
 " Carlyle has, best of all men in England, kept 
 the manly attitude in his time. He has stood 
 for scholars, asking no scholar what he should 
 say. Holding an honoured place in the best 
 society, he has stood for the people, for the 
 Chartist, for the pauper, intrepidly and scornfully 
 teaching the nobles their peremptory duties. 
 
IT. THOMAS CAELYLE. 57 
 
 ^^ His errors of opinion are as nothing in com- 
 parison with tliis merit in my judgment. This 
 aplomb cannot be mimicked ; it is the speaking 
 to the heart of the thing. And in England, where 
 the morgue of aristocracy has very slowly admitted 
 scholars in society, — a very few houses in the high 
 circles being ever opened to them, — he has carried 
 himself erect, made himself a power confessed by 
 all men, and taught scholars their lofty duty. He 
 never feared tJieface of manr 
 
 " Storm-god of the northern foam, 
 Strong, wrought of rock that breasts and breaks the sea, 
 And thunders back its thunder rhyme for rhyme, 
 Answering as though to outroar the tides of time." 
 
 Now we will let Carlyle speak for himself. . 
 My purpose is to select salient passages from his 
 writings, passages lighting up the dark depths of 
 his genius. 
 
 Carlyle's interest in and love for humanity was "^ 
 deep and undeviating. This can be proved by 
 hundreds of passages from his works. His very 
 scolding and apparent cynicism originated in the 
 disappointment he felt when he saw the concrete 
 man, and compared him with his dream of what 
 man could and should be. He never spared him- 
 self, and he was " cruel to be kind " to others. 
 You will all remember this passage in which he 
 describes the workhouse of St. Ives: — 
 
 " I saw sitting on wooden benches, in front of 
 
 J 
 
68 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 tlieir Bastille, and within their ring-wall and its 
 railing's, some half-hnndred or more of these 
 men. Tall, robust figures, young mostly, or of 
 middle age; of honest countenance, many of them 
 thoughtful and even intelligent-looking men. 
 They sat there, near by one another, but in a J^ind 
 of torpor, and especially in a silence which was 
 very striking. In silence; for, alas ! what word 
 was to be said ? An earth all lying round crying. 
 Come and till me, come and reap me ; yet we sit 
 here enchanted ! In the eyes and brows of these 
 men hung the gloomiest expression, not of anger, 
 but grief and shame, and manifold inarticulate 
 distress and weariness. They returned my glance 
 with a glance that seemed to say, ' Do not look at 
 us; we sit here enchanted, we know not why. 
 The sun shines and the earth calls, and by the 
 governing powers and impotences of this England 
 we are forbidden to obey. It is impossible, they 
 tell us ! ' There was something that reminded me 
 of Dante's hell in the look of all this; and I rode 
 swiftly away." 
 
 That strikes me as one of the most important 
 passages of modern literature. He there places 
 a problem before so-called statesmen, which they 
 must either solve or be crushed by. 
 
 Then that unspeakably beautiful passage from 
 the "Everlasting Yea," of which I can only quote 
 a portion : — 
 
 " Foreshadows, call them rather fore-splen- 
 
II. THOMAS CAKLYLE. 69 
 
 donrs, of that Truth, and Beginning of Truth, fell 
 mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than Day- 
 spring to the shipwrecked in Nova Zembla ; ah ! 
 like the mother's voice to her little child that 
 strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults ; 
 like soft streamings of celestial music to my too- 
 exasperated heart, came that Evangel ! The Uni- 
 verse is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel-house 
 with spectres ; but Godlike, and my Father's ! 
 
 " With other eyes, too, could I now look upon 
 my fellow-man : with an infinite Love, an infinite 
 Pity. Poor, wandering, wayward man ! Art 
 thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, even as I 
 am ? Ever, whether thou bear the royal mantle 
 or the beggar's gaberdine, art thou not so weary, 
 so heavy-laden ; and thy bed of rest is but a 
 grave ? my brother, my brother, why cannot I 
 shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all tears 
 from thy eyes ! 
 
 ^' Truly, the din of many- voiced life, which in 
 this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could hear, 
 was no longer a maddening discord, but a melt- 
 ing one ; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of 
 a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are 
 prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, 
 was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Step- 
 dame ; Man, with his so mad wants and so mean 
 endeavours, had become dearer to me ; and even 
 for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named 
 him Brother. Thus was I standing in the porch 
 
60 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 of that ' Sanctuary of Sorrow ' ; by strange, steep 
 ways had I too been guided thither ; and ere long- 
 its sacred gates would open, and the ^Divine 
 Depth of Sorrow' lie disclosed to me." 
 
 In that passage Carlyle opened to us the very 
 deepest depth of his soul. And what a soul ! 
 What pity, deeper than tears, what thrilling, 
 soul-piercing tenderness, pulses through it ! 
 
 There is not an adagio of Mozart's or Beeth- 
 oven's more unearthly in its sadness and solemn 
 beauty. 
 
 Now let us touch another key, my object 
 being to endeavour to show the compass of this 
 extraordinary man, the deepest thinker and 
 most loving heart of his time, in spite of the 
 flabby twaddle and spiteful attacks of dilettante 
 lotos-eaters and disappointed, snarling, would-be 
 Carlyles. 
 
 ^' The Dandiacal Household : the Home of 
 THE Clothes-horse. 
 
 " A dressing-room splendidly furnished ; violet 
 coloured curtains, chairs and ottomans of the 
 same hue. Two full-length mirrors are placed, 
 one on each side of a table, which supports the 
 luxuries of a toilet. Several bottles of perfumes, 
 arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a 
 smaller table of mother-of-pearl ; opposite to 
 these are placed the appurtenances of lavation 
 
II. THOMAS CARLYLE. 61 
 
 richly wrought in frosted silver. A wardrobe of 
 Buhl is on the left, the doors of which, being 
 partly open, discover a profusion of clothes ; 
 shoes of a singularly small size monopolise the 
 lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe a door 
 ajar gives some slight glimpse of a bath-room. 
 Folding doors in th^ background. 
 
 " Enter the Author, obsequiously preceded by 
 a French valet, in white silk jacket and cambric 
 apron." 
 
 So much for the Dandy, the ^' clothes-horse." 
 Now for the '' Poor Irish Slave Household." 
 ^' The furniture of this Caravansera consisted 
 of a large iron pot, two oaken tables, two benches, 
 two chairs, and a potheen noggin. There was a 
 loft above (attainable by a ladder), in which the 
 inmates slept ; and the space below was divided by 
 a hurdle into two apartments ; the one for their 
 cow and pig, the other for themselves and guests. 
 On entering the house we discovered the family, 
 eleven in number, at dinner : the father sitting 
 at the top, the mother- at the bottom, the children 
 on each side, of a large oaken board, which was 
 scooped out in the middle, like a trough, to 
 receive the contents of their pot of potatoes. 
 Little holes were cut at equal distances to contain 
 salt ; and a bowl of milk stood on the table : all 
 the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and 
 dishes were dispensed with. 
 
62 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 " The poor slave himself was broad-backed, 
 black-browed, of great personal strength, and 
 month from ear to ear. His wife was sun-browned, 
 but a well-featured woman ; and his young ones, 
 bare and chubby, had the appetites of ravens. 
 Of their philosophical or religious tenets or 
 observances, no notice or hint. 
 
 ^' Such," continues Carlyle, " are the two sects 
 which, at this moment, divide the most unsettled 
 portion of the British People ; and agitate that 
 over-vexed country. To the eye of the political 
 seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with the 
 elements of discord and hostility, is far from con- 
 soling. These two principles of Dandiacal Self- 
 Worship or Demon- Worship, and Poor-Slavish or 
 Drudgical Earth- Worship, or whatever the same 
 Drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest 
 themselves under distant and nowise considerable 
 shapes : nevertheless, in their roots and subter- 
 ranean ramifications, they extend through the 
 entire structure of Society, and work unweariedly 
 in the secret depths of English national existence; 
 striving to separate and isolate it into two con- 
 tradictory, uncommunicating masses." 
 
 I cannot pursue this passage to the end, but 
 will conclude with the following summing up : — 
 
 " I might call them two boundless, and indeed 
 unexampled electric machines (turned by the 
 ' Machinery of Society '), with batteries of opposite 
 quality ; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the 
 
II. THOMAS CAKLYLE. 63 
 
 Positive : one attracts hourly towards it and 
 appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the 
 nation (namely, the Money thereof) ; the other 
 is equally busy with the Negative (that is to say, 
 the Hunger), which is equally potent. Hitherto 
 you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters ; 
 but wait a little, tilj the entire nation is in an 
 electric state — till your whole vital Electricity, 
 no longer healthfully neutral, is cut into insulated 
 portions, of Positive and Negative (of Money and 
 Hunger), and stands there bottled up in two 
 World Batteries ! The stirring of a child's finger 
 brings the two together ; and then — What then ? 
 The earth is hut shivered into impalpable smoke 
 by that DoowHs thunder-peal ; the Sun misses one of 
 his Planets in space, and thenceforth there are no 
 eclipses of the Moon.^^ 
 
 That passage recalls Carlyle's weighty words : 
 '' One should see before one pretends to oversee." 
 
 How many shallow people, who, if they de- 
 voted the whole of their small minds and smaller 
 hearts — for to understand a real genius it is as 
 necessary to use the heart as the brain — would 
 only be able to comprehend the mere fringe of a 
 profound writer like Carlyle, yet give their ad- 
 verse verdict about him with the most fatuous 
 complacency. Why, half a dozen of Carlyle's 
 ideas would crack their egg-shells of heads ! 
 The passage just quoted, on Dandies and Drudges, 
 as you will doubtless remember, appeared in 
 
b4 FOUR GEEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 *' Sartor Resartus," published in 1831, nearly 
 sixty years ago. And it lias taken all that 
 time to enable ordinary people to just obtain a 
 glimmering notion of what Carlyle boldly and 
 trenchantly stated more than half a century ago. 
 
 Now we will turn to the sweet middle tones of 
 Carlyle' s genius. 
 
 The following passage on musical or rhythmical 
 utterance is, in my humble opinion, exquisite 
 and strong : — 
 
 " Nevertheless, you will say, there must be a 
 difference between true Poetry and true speech 
 not poetical : what is the difference ? On this 
 point many things have been written, especially 
 by late German Critics, some of which are not 
 very intelligible at first. They say, for example, 
 that the Poet has an injirdtude in him ; com- 
 municates an Une/ndlickkeitj a certain character 
 of infinitude^ to whatsoever he delineates. 
 
 '' This, though not very precise, yet on so vague 
 a matter is worth remembering: if well meditated, 
 some meaning will gradually be found in it. 
 For my own part, I find considerable meaning 
 in the old vulgar distinction of Poetry being 
 metrical^ having music in it, being a Song. 
 
 " Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might 
 say this as soon as anything else. If your 
 delineation be authentically musical — musical not 
 in word only, but in heart and substance, in all 
 the thoughts and utterances of it, in the whole 
 
II. THOMAS CAKLYLE. 65 
 
 conception of it — then it will be poetical ; if not, 
 not. Musical : how much lies in that ! A 
 musical thought is one spoken by a mind that 
 has penetrated into the inmost heart of the 
 thing ; detected the inmost mystery of it, namely 
 the melody that lies hidden in it ; the inward 
 harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby 
 it exists, and has a right to be here in this world. 
 All inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; 
 naturally utter themselves in song. The meaning 
 of song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical 
 words, can express the effect music has on us? 
 A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, 
 which leads to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us 
 for moments gaze into that ! Nay, all speech, 
 even the commonest speech, has something of 
 song in it ; not a parish in the world but has 
 its parish-accent — the rhythm or tune to which 
 the people there 8ing what they have to say ! 
 Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent 
 of their own, though they only notice that of others. 
 '' Observe, too, how all passionate language 
 does of itself become musical, — with a finer 
 music than the mere accent ; the speech of a 
 man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a 
 song. All deep things are Song. It seems 
 somehow the very central essence of us. Song ; 
 as if all the rest were but wrappings and 
 hulls : the primal element of us ; of us, and 
 of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere- 
 
 5 
 
66 FOUK GEE AT TEACHEES. 
 
 Harmonies : it was the feeling they had of the 
 inner structure of Nature ; that the soul of all 
 her voices and utterances was perfect music. 
 Poetry, therefore, we call Musical Thought. The 
 Poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom, 
 it turns still on power of intellect ; it is a man's 
 sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a 
 Poet. See deep enough, and you see musically ; 
 the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if 
 you can only reach it." 
 
 That passage conducts one step by step to the 
 starry heights of poetry. What clearness, and 
 what beauty ! It reminds one of Mendelssohn 
 saying, " If music could be described by words, 
 I would not compose." It suggests more than 
 it utters. 
 
 Carlyle never rests on the surface of any 
 subject; that is why superficial people don't like 
 him. His method is to penetrate to the depths, 
 to what he calls the tap-root. And when he is 
 there, he sees the connection of one root with 
 another. Where talent sees differences genius 
 sees connection. The talented man talks about 
 this link of the chain or the other ; the man of 
 genius welds them together, making a beautiful 
 chain, in which every link is placed in proportion 
 to its importance. Men of talent very naturally 
 dislike men of genius ; they don't like to have 
 their rushlights extinguished by the burning, 
 solar rays of genius. 
 
IT. THOMAS CARLYLE. 67 
 
 After tlie passage last quoted, we cannot de- 
 scend to anything less exalted and beautiful. 
 We will now hear what our great seer and teacher 
 said on the poetry of poetry — Religion. 
 
 " There is no Church, sayest thou ? The voice 
 of prophecy has gone dumb ? This is even what 
 I dispute : but in gjiy case, hast thou not still 
 preaching enough ? A preaching Friar settles 
 himself in every village, and builds a pulpit, 
 which he calls a newspaper. Therefrom he 
 preaches what most momentous doctrine is in 
 him, for man's salvation ; and dost not thou 
 listen, and believe ?. Look well, thou seest every- 
 where a new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders 
 some barefoot, some almost barebacked, fashion 
 itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously 
 enough, for copper alms and the love of God. 
 These break in pieces the ancient idols ; and, 
 though themselves too often reprobate, as idol- 
 breakers are wont to be, make out the site for 
 new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that 
 are to follow, may find audience, and minister. 
 Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the 
 new had formed itself beneath it ? 
 
 '^ But is there no Religion ? reiterates the 
 Professor. Fool ! I tell thee, there is. Hast 
 thou well considered all that lies jn this immense 
 froth ocean we name Literature ? Fragments of 
 genuine Church Homiletic lie scattered there, 
 which time will assort : nay, fractions even of a 
 
68 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Liturgy could I point out. And knowest thou 
 no Prophetj even in the vesture, environment, 
 and dialect of this age ? None to whom the 
 Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest 
 and highest forms of the common ; and by him 
 had been again prophetically revealed : in whose 
 inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and 
 rag-burning days, Man's Life again begins, were 
 it but afar off, to be Divine ? Knowest thou 
 none such ? I know him, and name him — 
 Goethe. 
 
 " But thou as yet standest in no Temple ; 
 joinest in no Psalm-worship ; feelest well that, 
 where is no ministering Priest, the people perish ? 
 Be of comfort ! Thou art not alone, if thou have 
 Faith. Spake we not of a Communion of 
 Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying 
 and brotherlike embracing thee, so thou be 
 worthy ? 
 
 " Their heroic sufferings rise up melodiously 
 together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out 
 of all times, as a sacred Miserere ; their heroic 
 Actions also, as a boundless everlasting Psalm 
 of Triumph. Neither say that thou hast now no 
 Symbol of the Godlike. Is not God's universe 
 a Symbol of the Godlike ? Is not Immensity a 
 Temple ? Is not Man's History a perpetual 
 Evangel ? 
 
 '^Listen, and for organ music thou wilt ever, 
 as of old, hear the Morning Stars sing together. 
 
II. THOMAS CAKLYLE. 6S 
 
 " Master, who savedst others, that thyself 
 Thou couldst not save by some is made thy crime, — 
 Oh, not by us ! For we were call'd by thee, 
 And from thy strife a battle-cry arose 
 Which pierced thy heart, but temper'd ours, and made 
 Us live new lives as soldiers, conquerors, men. 
 
 " Shall we arraign the strife, and name defeat 
 Repulses, wounds, that were our victory ? 
 Nay, master, nay ! Thy maims, thy scars, thy cries. 
 Though they distort thee, sacred are to us. 
 As bitter losses which thou mad'st our gain. 
 
 " Round thy dishonour'd grave we come, we press. 
 And oUr the stains which traitorous hands laid bare 
 Our tears are flowing ; and where once was heard 
 The slanderers tongue, a low deep murmur sounds 
 Thy blessing, Carlyle, in unnumbered hearts." 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Carlyle thus described Disraeli in 1867, before the 
 purchase of the Suez Canal shares, before the Afghan 
 and Zulu wars, before annexing the Transvaal and taking 
 Cyprus, before establishing the Dual Control, before he 
 got £6,000,000 to prepare for war with Russia, and before 
 he egged on France to take Tunis. I don't want to be 
 hard on the dear — very dear — departed, so I will stop 
 here. But this is how Carlyle painted the great medicine- 
 man : — 
 
 " A superlative Hebrew conjuror, spell-binding all the 
 great lords, great parties, great interests of England, to 
 his hand in this manner, and leading them by the nose, 
 like helpless, mesmerised somnambulant cattle. This, 
 too, I suppose we have deserved. The end of our poor 
 old England to be, not a tearful tragedy, but an 
 ignominious farce as well ! " 
 
70 FOUR GEEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 In contrast to that, listen to what the once mighty 
 Times said of the same great man after the extraordinary 
 absurdity of Primrose Day : — 
 
 " Benjamin Disraeli was the most delightful little 
 fellow in the world when he had barely emerged from 
 infancy ; and he never became otherwise." 
 
 He was, according to that great authority, the Time.% 
 a gentle, simple, get-into-the-shade sort of a human 
 primrose. 
 
 THE EARL AND THE PRIMROSE. 
 
 " Little rustic flower, in thee 
 . Emblem true of Ben we see, 
 
 Artless, modest (such was he). 
 
 Full of sweet simplicity. 
 
 Softly, innocently wild. 
 
 Nature's unassuming child. 
 
 Hadst thou not before been known, 
 
 By his tomb thou must have grown, 
 
 And some new Ovid sing of this 
 
 Lovely metamorphosis. 
 
 Fragrant, humble, tender blossom. 
 
 Fit for every Tory bosom." 
 
 Now listen to what Carlyle said of Mr. Gladstone, in 
 a letter to Emerson, dated February 8th, 1839 : — 
 
 " One of the strangest things about the ' New England 
 Orations ' (Emerson's) is a fact I have heard, that a certain 
 Mr. Gladstone, an Oxford crack scholar, Tory M.P., and 
 devout Churchman, of great talent and hope, has con- 
 trived to insert a piece of you in a work of his own on 
 Church and State, which makes some figure at present ! 
 I know him for a solid, serious, silent-minded man ; but 
 how, with his Coleridge shovel-hattism, he has contrived 
 to relate himself to you— there is the mystery. True 
 men of all creeds, it would seem, are brothers." 
 
III. 
 
 EALPH WALDO EMEESON. 
 
 When so clear and far-shining a star as Emerson 
 fades out, one, at first, feels numbed : it takes 
 some time to realise tlie loss sustained. 
 
 We forget in the whirl of vulgar cares and 
 interests the great intellectual benefactors of 
 humanity. Some of us have absorbed more 
 or less of their teaching, and feel a vague 
 love and reverence for the teacher. Then one 
 morning one reads in the newspaper that the 
 great and good man is ill — that the bright 
 light is becoming dim ; and a few days later 
 one is shocked to learn that it has gone out 
 for ever — that the intellectual fire which lit the 
 world with its lambent fiame is extinguished. 
 We know how difficult it is for ordinary people 
 to keep alive a spark of inner light, and yet 
 this sublime old man, in spite of the obstacles, 
 worries, and peddling cares of poor human 
 nature, not only kept bright the inner light of 
 his own soul, but assisted millions to do the 
 same. 
 
 What we admire in Emerson is not only the 
 
72 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 intellectual elevation, but the moral purity and 
 simple childlike goodness and sweetness of the 
 man. Success did not spoil him, although it came 
 very early. When I say success, I don't mean' 
 what the vulgar call success. The success valued 
 by a man like Emerson was an extended power to 
 do good. It did not consist in possessing houses, 
 carriages, and servants. But when he knew that 
 the intellectual and moral light which emanated 
 from him was lighting up the best hearts, brains, 
 and consciences of the English-speaking people, 
 he had his exceeding great reward. And this 
 gifted man looked upon every other man, woman 
 and child as interesting and lovable. He lis- 
 tened with an unfailing courtesy to the stuttering 
 speech of uncultivated people, hoping beneath 
 the stumbling words to find some idea worthy of 
 attention. And I believe he was often rewarded. 
 For education, in which 1 have a most potent 
 belief, although it develops the large brain, 
 often crushes the small grain of originality 
 which exists in the small one. The small 
 jewel will not bear much cutting, the large one 
 will. You make the most of the latter, the 
 former you reduce to dust. 
 
 All my readers have enjoyed the raciness and 
 wit of Emerson ; and, I believe, a great part of 
 those rare qualities were gained by his power of 
 opening the hearts and mouths of the people : 
 the rough, the uncouth, but, in this sophisticated 
 
III. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 73 
 
 age, when ordinary respectable people are, on the 
 surface, nearly as mucli alike as Birmingham 
 buttons, the study of the people, to a man who 
 wishes to understand the real grit and power of 
 human nature, is altogether priceless. 
 
 Emerson lived a beautifully simple life. He 
 was ready to listea to everybody ; and did so 
 with infinite benefit to his head and heart, not to 
 mention ours. Nothing is so easy for a cultivated 
 man to do as to freeze into silence uncultivated 
 people. But I don't think you will find any 
 author worth reading who adopted that form of 
 intellectual and moral suicide. 
 
 The peculiar note of Emerson's style is its 
 elevation and simplicity. He did not think of 
 pleasing or displeasing any one ; and therefore 
 succeeded in delighting every one worth pleasing. 
 I need scarcely say that so soon as a man of 
 genius begins to think of pleasing this editor 
 or the other by what he writes, it is alj 
 over with him as a teacher : and a good thing 
 too. I want to know, and you want to know, 
 and every one with any intellectual or moral 
 earnestness wants to know, exactly what a man 
 of genius thinks and feels about this, that, and 
 the other ; and not what some publisher or editor, 
 who usually is not a man of genius, thinks will 
 please the vulgar public. 
 
 A man who thinks of the success of his 
 writing, and not of his writing only, may gain 
 
74 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 a superficial success. He may be noticed by tbe 
 Times, and even worse papers, but lie never gains, 
 and never deserves to gain, a hold on the brains 
 and hearts of mankind. 
 
 It is not by pleasing the vulgar that a man 
 succeeds. It is by pleasing the wise and dis- 
 criminating, who dictate to the vulgar what to 
 admire. 
 
 Genius can only be thoroughly appreciated by 
 genius. A man can only be really judged by 
 his peers. But still we little people may pick 
 up some little thoughts and ideas, suitable to our 
 size, and, if we are strong enough, carry them 
 away. But when some puny whipster, who can 
 scarcely reach to the knees of an intellectual 
 giant like Emerson, attempts to measure, weigh, 
 and dissect him, one would be very angry, were 
 it not too preposterously absurd, and the anger 
 ends in a hearty laugh. The flea finding fault 
 with the lion, on which it lives, is too absurd. 
 
 " A lion was once slightly bit by a flea : 
 'Twas the flea's way of saying, * Take notice of me ! ' " 
 
 But as a rule lions don't take notice ; asses in 
 lions' skins do. But I will do this justice to the 
 critics : they appear to have given Emerson a 
 wide berth. 
 
 They looked upon him as too far gone. Not 
 even their wonderful teaching powers could bene- 
 fit such a hopeless case. With him they lost 
 
III. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 76 
 
 their Latin. Wliat a blessing ! " The lion never 
 lost so much time as when he took lessons from 
 the aper Emerson, I think, never lost much 
 time in that way. He went on his own solitary 
 intellectual path — the higher the path the more 
 solitary— disregarding the praise or the blame 
 of foolish people. That wise conduct was the 
 root of his power and strength. 
 
 Now I must say a word about one of the most 
 salient features in Emerson's character. I mean 
 his unfailing goodness. No man was less goody, 
 and no man was more truly good. Thackeray 
 once said, although a better man than he never 
 lived, that it was a great pity good people were 
 so stupid. Now, I think it is a great blessing 
 that bad people are so stupid. A bad heart, in 
 my humble opinion, is often accompanied by a 
 worse head. I think Carlyle was of opinion that 
 the grand quality in literature and art is the 
 moral quality. I think it is the salt of literature 
 and art. People must love the truth and the 
 right very ardently to find their way to them 
 through the labyrinth of sophistries and lies 
 which hide them from the lukewarm. 
 
 And, although we may not think so, a love of ) 
 truth for its own sake is very^rare. I think 
 that was the particul ar and in dividual note of 
 Emerson's genius. He did not trouble himself 
 as to the effect of what he said on theological 
 dogmas, or on social and political opinion ; but 
 
76 FOUR GEEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 said exactly, and in a clear and beautiful way, 
 what he thought and felt on matters which 
 appeared to him to be important. I think you 
 will agree with me, that that is the one priceless 
 quality in a teacher. Mnety-nine writers out of 
 a hundred, highly respectable and talented men, 
 writers of those wonderful productions called 
 leading articles — though why they are called 
 leading articles I am at a loss to understand — 
 don't appear to me to care one farthing for the 
 truth of what they write, but, according to the 
 politics of their paper, attack or praise this man 
 and the other. The same kind of thing obtains 
 in many other cases, where the writing is larger 
 in bulk, but where the same want of earnestness 
 is felt. If a man speaks to you, and utters the 
 inmost feelings of his nature, there is something 
 to be learnt from him. But if he repeats to you, 
 in a lame and impotent way, a lame and impotent 
 leading article or speech, what help is there in 
 that ? 
 
 So that if the speech of an ordinary man, if 
 earnest and true, is worth listening to, what 
 must the speech of a man of the intellectual and 
 moral calibre of Emerson be worth ? Who can 
 say ? I believe it to be beyond the power of 
 words to utter. 
 
 He looked into his heart and wrote. But he 
 was always, by study and observation, enriching 
 his heart and brain. Because, in my humble 
 
III. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 77 
 
 opinion, if a man is to speak or write much, he 
 must study and think more, or his speech and 
 writing soon tire. Dr. Johnson, in his bhuit way, 
 once said, " I despise the man who talks more 
 than he reads." Dr. Johnson talked much, but 
 he talked well, because he read and thought more. 
 
 And that, I thiok, accounts, in great measure, 
 for what is called the fickleness of the public. 
 An author produces a work that gives great 
 promise of future excellence. The public is 
 eager to see this promise fulfilled. A new work 
 is produced in a great hurry ; the public is 
 disappointed, and the book fails. Whose fault 
 is that ? I think the careless author's. Emerson 
 was never in a hurry to publish. He never tired 
 of taking pains ; and the public, therefore, never 
 tired of him. You all know Sheridan said that 
 easy writing is hard reading. 
 
 Emerson had the instincts, if T may use the 
 term, of the writer and the orator. He could 
 not help being picturesque and striking. It was 
 as natural for Emerson to be brilliant and 
 eloquent as for Dr. Dryasdust to be dull and 
 pedantic. He was a man of the greatest candour 
 and simplicity, but as a writer and speaker he 
 had the most extraordinary tact and subtlety. 
 No one capable of understanding him could fail 
 to be carried away by the personal fascination of 
 his style and manner. 
 
 Style is the man, a witty Frenchman said. 
 
78 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 The only bad style is the dull style ; and it is 
 perfectly natnral to a dull man. But, after all, the 
 only style worth anything is that which grows 
 out of a man's nature, as individual and peculiar 
 as his nose and fingers. When a man imitates 
 another man's style he commits suicide as a 
 writer. When one reads a friend's writing one 
 ought to be able to say, No one could do that but 
 so-and-so ; his individuality stamps every line. 
 Compare for one moment the style of Emerson 
 with that of Wendell Holmes. The style of one 
 represents him as much as the style of the other 
 represents that other. The style of Emerson is 
 manly, clear, deep, and direct ; full of vei^ve and 
 poetical energy : it reflects the writer. The style 
 of Wendell Holmes is subtle, charming, full of 
 opalescent colour, witty, brilliant, and caustic : 
 it also reflects the author. 
 
 The best thing I ever heard about style is 
 this : understand thoroughly what you want to 
 say, and say it in the fewest possible words. I 
 apprehend that Emerson was of that opinion. 
 We are not all bound to speak and write in one 
 style. In fact, we are bound not to do so. In 
 addition, we can't. But if we have anything to 
 say, we are bound to respect the public suffi- 
 ciently to say what we think and feel to the best 
 of our poor ability. The public will very soon let 
 a man know whether his intellectual wares suit 
 the market or not. 
 
III. KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 79 
 
 Now I have given you my opinion on Emerson's 
 character and genius, I will endeavour to prove 
 from his works that my opinion is endorsed 
 by them ; and I will not only quote his prose 
 — which, I think, is winged prose — but will 
 also quote two or three of his most delicate, 
 musical, and profoundly philosophical poems. 
 
 My only desire is to make you all love and 
 reverence one of the noblest, purest, and loftiest 
 men who ever lived for the purpose, it seems to 
 me, of teaching man that he was made in the 
 image of his Maker ! 
 
 As we are naturally interested in ourselves, 
 let me first quote some passages from " English 
 Traits." 
 
 You, of course, have read that wise and witty 
 book, but those who have studied it most will 
 most enjoy hearing quotations from it. And if 
 there are any of my readers who have not read 
 it, perhaps my selections may induce them to 
 do so. I expect, then, to be ever afterwards 
 remembered as the man who first made them 
 read Emerson. 
 
 George Dawson introduced me to Emerson's 
 works. I admired and loved George Dawson, 
 to whom I owe a great debt for intellectual 
 stimulus ; and not the least part of that debt 
 arises from the fact that it was through him that 
 I first studied Emerson. 
 
 I ought to mention here that Emerson was 
 
80 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 born at Boston in 1803 ; that he graduated at 
 Harvard in 1821 ; that he published "Literary 
 Ethics "in 1838 ; '^ Man, the Reformer " in 1841 ; 
 " Representative Men " and '^ English Traits " in 
 1856 ; the " Conduct of Life " in 1860 ; that he 
 was a very tall man, with a fine, intellectual 
 fa^e ; that he thoroughly believed in himself, and 
 that he had the power of making others do the 
 same, which is, after all, the one crucial test 
 of genius. 
 
 The following is Emerson's definition of the 
 English character : — 
 
 "The English composite character betrays a 
 mixed origin. Everything English is a fusion of 
 distant and antagonistic elements. The language 
 is mixed ; the names of men are of different 
 nations, — three languages, three or four nations ; — 
 the currents of thought are counter : contempla- 
 tion and practical skill ; active intellect and dead 
 conservatism ; worldwide enterprise and devoted 
 use and wont ; aggressive freedom and hospitable 
 law, with bitter class legislation ; a people scat- 
 tered by their wars and affairs over the whole 
 earth, and homesick to a man ; a country of ex- 
 tremes,— dukes and chartists. Bishops of Durham 
 and naked heathen colliers ; — nothing can be 
 praised in it without damning, and nothing 
 denounced without salvos of cordial praise." 
 
 That is tolerably clear and to the point for a 
 writer of intellectual moonshine, as Emerson has 
 
III. KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 81 
 
 been described by writers who know as mucli 
 about him as a donkey knows about Beethoven. 
 The opinion of a donkey is valuable — on thistles. 
 
 Now for another passage from the same work : 
 
 " They [the English] are rather manly than 
 warlike. When the war is over, the mask falls 
 from the affectionate and domestic tastes, which 
 makes them women in kindness. This union of 
 qualities is fabled in their national legend of 
 ' Beauty and the Beast ' ; or, long before, in the 
 Greek legend of ^ Hermaphrodite.' 
 
 " The two sexes are co-present in the English 
 mind. I apply to Britannia, queen of seas and 
 colonies, the words in which her latest novelist 
 portrays his heroine : ^ She is as mild as she is 
 game, and as game as she is mild.' The English 
 delight in the antagonism which combines in one 
 person the extremes of courage and tenderness. 
 Nelson, dying at Trafalgar, sends his love to 
 Lord Collingwood, and, like an innocent school- 
 boy that goes to bed, says, ' Kiss me. Hardy,' 
 and turns to sleep. Lord Collingwood, his com- 
 rade, was of a nature the most affectionate and 
 domestic. Admiral Eodney's figure approached 
 to delicacy and effeminacy, and he declared him- 
 self very sensible to fear, which he surmounted 
 only by considerations of honour and public duty. 
 
 " Clarendon says the Duke of Buckingham 
 was so modest and gentle, that some courtiers 
 attempted to put affronts on him, until they found 
 
 6 
 
82 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 that this modesty and effeminacy was only a 
 mask for the most terrible determination. And 
 Sir James Parry said, the other day, of Sir John 
 Franklin, that ' if he found Wellington Sound 
 open, he explored it ; for he was a man who never 
 turned his back on a danger, yet of that tender- 
 ness, that he would not brush away a mosquito.' 
 Even for their highwaymen the same virtue is 
 claimed ; and Robin Hood comes described to us 
 as mitisshnus prcedonu7n, the gentlest thief. 
 
 ^^ But they know where their war-dogs lie. 
 Cromwell, Blake, Marlborough, Chatham, Nelson, 
 and Wellington are not to be trifled with, and 
 the brutal strength which lies at the bottom of 
 society, the animal ferocity of the quays and 
 cockpits, the bullies and the costermongers of 
 Shoreditch, Seven Dials, and Spitalflelds, 'they 
 know how to wake up.' " 
 
 That passage is written by a man with some 
 of the bull-dog tenacity and force of the old sea- 
 dogs in his nature, I think. Not much '' bottled 
 moonshine " about that, I apprehend. 
 
 " The island (England) was renowned in an- 
 tiquity for its breed of mastiffs, so fierce that, 
 when their teeth were set, you must cut their 
 heads off to part them. 
 
 " The man was like his dog. The people have 
 that nervous bilious temperament, which is known 
 by medical men to resist every means employed 
 to make its possessor subservient to the will of 
 
III. KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 83 
 
 others. Tlie EDglisli game is main force to main 
 force, the planting of foot to foot, fair play and 
 open field, — a rough tug without trick or dodging, 
 till one or both come to pieces. King Ethel wald 
 spoke the language of his race when he planted 
 himself at Wimborne, and said, ^He would 
 do one of two things, or there live, or there lie' 
 They hate craft and subtlety. They neither 
 waylay, nor assassinate ; and, when they have 
 pounded each other to a poultice, they will 
 shake hands and be friends for the remainder 
 of their lives." 
 
 I consider that passage is as vigorous and 
 Teutonic in tone as anything in Ben Jonson, 
 Fielding, Smollett, or Carlyle. 
 
 '' The Normans came out of France into England 
 worse men than they went into it, one hundred 
 and sixty years before. They had lost their own 
 language, and learned the Romance or barbarous 
 Latin of the Gauls ; and had acquired, with the 
 language, all the vices it had names for. The 
 Conquest has obtained in the chronicles the name 
 of the ' Memory of Sorrow.' Twenty thousand 
 thieves landed at Hastings. These founders of 
 the House of Lords were greedy and ferocious 
 pirates. They were all alike : they took everything 
 they could carry ; they burned, harried, violated, 
 tortured, and killed, until everything English was 
 brought to the verge of ruin. Such, however, is 
 the illusion of antiquity and wealth, that decent 
 
6i. 
 
 84 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 and dignified men now existing boast their descent, 
 from these filthy thieves, who showed a far jnster 
 conviction of their own merits, by assuming for 
 their types the swine, goat, jackal, leopard, wolf, 
 and snake, which they severally resembled." 
 
 I think that will do for a specimen of the 
 holy indignation that burned in the heart of 
 Emerson against aristocratic pretensions and 
 absurd pride. 
 
 I have given the deep bass of Emerson's 
 harmony ; I will now proceed with the treble 
 melody. 
 
 Emerso n taught no exact system of philosophy, 
 hank heaven ! But if philosophy means a love 
 of wisdom, he was a philosopher. Emerson saw, 
 felt, and thought ; and, from time to time, gave 
 the public the results. He did not try to be 
 consistent. He only endeavoured to be true. 
 What he thought on Monday he wrote or said. 
 But that did not prevent him telling you, next 
 Saturday, that he thought, through new know- 
 ledge, something quite diff'erent. How many men 
 dare to utter their real thoughts ? Emerson did 
 not try to think for you ; he endeavoured to make 
 you think for yourself. He had no cut-and-dried 
 formulae ; he did not believe in them. He did 
 for the mind what the sea air does for the body — 
 braced it. Emerson raised you, or tried to raise 
 you, to a height from which you could look 
 down upon the intellectual fog in which most 
 
III. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 85 
 
 of US live ; and enabled yon to see, and tried 
 to make yon love, the pnre white light of first 
 principles. 
 
 " Divine philosophy ! not harsh an(i crabbed, 
 As dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute ; 
 And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, where no 
 dull surfeit waits." 
 
 The first passage I will quote is from Emerson's 
 essay on Natnre : — 
 
 "To go into solitude a man needs to retire as 
 much from his chamber as from society. I am 
 not solitary while I read and write, though 
 nobody is with me. But if a man would be 
 alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that 
 come from those heavenly worlds will separate 
 between him and vulgar things. One might 
 think the atmosphere was made transparent with 
 this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, 
 the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in 
 the streets of cities, how great they are ! If the 
 stars should appear one night in a thousand years, 
 how men would believe and adore, and preserve 
 for many generations the remembrance of the city 
 of God which had been shown ! But every night 
 come out those preachers of beauty, and light the 
 imiverse with their admonishing smile. 
 
 " The stars awaken a certain reverence, because, 
 though always present, they are always inacces- 
 sible ; but all natural objects make a kindred 
 
00 FOUR GBEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 impression when 'the mind is open to their in- 
 fluence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. 
 Neither does the wisest man extort all her secret, 
 and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfec- 
 tion. Nature never becomes a toy to a wise spirit. 
 The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected 
 all the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they 
 had delighted the simplicity of his childhood. 
 To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. 
 Most persons do not see the sun ; at least, they 
 have a very superficial seeing. The sun illumi- 
 nates only the eye of the man, but shines into 
 the eye and heart of the child. The lover of 
 Nature is he whose inward and outward senses 
 are still truly adjusted to each other ; and who 
 has retained the spirit of infancy even into the 
 era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven 
 and earth becomes part of his daily food. In 
 the presence of Nature a wild delight runs 
 through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature 
 says — He is my creature ; and maugre all his 
 impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. 
 
 " Not the sun or the summer alone, but every 
 hour and season, yields its tribute of delight ; 
 for every hour and change corresponds to and 
 authorises a difi'erent state of the mind, from 
 breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature 
 is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a 
 mourning piece. In good health the air is a 
 cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare 
 
III. EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 87 
 
 common, in snow pnddles, at twilight, under a 
 clouded sky, without having in my thoughts an 
 occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed 
 a perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think 
 how glad I am. In the woods, too, he casts oif 
 his years as the snake his slough, and, at what 
 period soever of lifp, is always a child. In the 
 woods is perpetual youth. Within these planta- 
 tions of God decorum and sanctity reign ; a 
 perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees 
 not how he should tire of them in a thousand 
 years. In the woods we return to reason and 
 faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me 
 in life, — no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me 
 my eyes), which IN'ature cannot repair. Standing 
 on the bare ground, my head bathed by the 
 blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all 
 mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent 
 eyeball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents 
 of the Universal Being circulate through me ; I 
 am part and particle of God. The name of the 
 nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental. 
 To be brothers, to be acquaintances, master or 
 servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am 
 the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. 
 In the wilderness I find something more dear 
 and connate than in streets and villages. In the 
 tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant 
 line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as 
 beautiful as his own nature," 
 
88 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 The following passage on " Beauty " is from 
 tlie same essay : — 
 
 " The presence of a higher, namely, of the 
 spiritual element, is essential to its perfection. 
 The high and Divine beauty which can be loved 
 without effeminacy, is that which is found in 
 combination with the human will, and never 
 separate. Beauty is the mark God sets upon 
 virtue. [Goethe said, " The Beautiful contained 
 the Good."] Every natural action is graceful. 
 Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the 
 place and the bystanders to shine. We are 
 taught by great actions that the universe is 
 the property of every individual in it. Every 
 rational creature has all nature for his dowry 
 and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest 
 himself of it ; he may creep into a corner, and 
 abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is 
 entitled to the world by his constitution. In 
 proportion to the energy of his thought and will, 
 he takes up the world into himself. ' All these 
 things for which we plough, build, or sail, obey 
 virtue,' said an ancient historian. ' The winds 
 and waves,' said Gibbon, ' are always on the 
 side of the ablest navigators.' So are the sun 
 and moon and all the stars of heaven. When a 
 noble act is done, — perchance in. a scene of great 
 natural beauty, — when Leonidas and his three 
 hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and 
 sun and moon come each and look at them once 
 
III. KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 89 
 
 in the steep defile of TliermopylaB ; when Arnold 
 Winckelried, intlie liigli Alps, under the shadow 
 of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of 
 Austrian spears to break the line for his com- 
 rades, — are not these heroes entitled to add the 
 beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed ? 
 When the bark of Columbus nears the shores 
 of America, — before it, the beach lined with 
 savages, fleeing out of all their huts of cane, the 
 sea behind, and all the purple mountains of the 
 Indian Archipelago around, — can we separate the 
 man from the living picture ? Does not the New 
 World clothe his form with her palm groves and 
 savannahs as fit drapery ? Ever does natural 
 beauty steal in like air, and envelop great actions. 
 When Sir Harry Yane was dragged up the 
 Tower Hill, sitting on a sled, ^o suffer death, 
 as the champion of the English laws, one of the 
 multitude cried out to him, ' You never sat on so 
 glorious a seat.' 
 
 "Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of 
 London, caused the patriot. Lord Kussell, to be 
 drawn in an open coach, through the principal 
 streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. 
 * But,' to use the simple narrative of his bio- 
 grapher, ^ the multitude thought they saw Liberty 
 and Yirtue sitting by his side.' 
 
 " In private places, among sordid objects, an act 
 of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to 
 itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. 
 
90 FOUB GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Nature stretches forth her arms to embrace man, 
 only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. 
 Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose 
 and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur 
 and grace to the decoration of her darling child. 
 Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the 
 frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is 
 in unison with her works, and makes the central 
 figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pindar, 
 Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves fitly in 
 our memory with the whole geography and 
 climate of Greece. The visible heavens and 
 earth sympathise with Jesus. And in common 
 life, whosoever has seen a person of powerful 
 character and happy genius, will have remarked 
 how easily he took all things along with him, — 
 the persons, the opinions, and the day, and Nature 
 became ancillary to a man. 
 
 '' The problem of restoring to the world original 
 and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption 
 of the soul. The rain or the blank that we see 
 when we look at Nature is in our own eye. The 
 axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of 
 things, and so they appear not transparent, but 
 opaque. The reason why the world lacks unity, 
 and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is 
 disunited with himself." 
 
 One other profound passage from this master- 
 piece : — 
 
 " There are innocent men who worship God 
 
III. KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 91 
 
 after the tradition of tlieir fathers, but their 
 sense of duty has not 5^et extended to the use of 
 all their faculties. And there are naturalists, but 
 they freeze their subject under the wintry light 
 of the understanding." 
 
 Such writing as that is above ordinary criticism. 
 It either raises the reader to a height of intellec- 
 tual exaltation or it does not. No man should dare 
 to patronise Emerson : not even a Shakespeare. 
 
 I make no apology for introducing here Mr. 
 Lowell's parallel between Emerson and Carlyle, 
 which is as wise, witty, and discriminating as 
 anything written by that weighty and brilliant 
 writer. 
 
 *' There are persons mole-blind to the soul's make and 
 style, 
 Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle. 
 To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer : 
 Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer. 
 He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier. 
 If C.'s as original, E.'s more peculiar. 
 That he's more of a man, you might say of the one ; 
 Of the other, he's more of an Emerson. 
 C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb ; 
 E.'s the clear- eyed Olympian, rapid and slim ; 
 The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, 
 Where the one's most abounding, the other's to seek ; 
 C.'s generals require to be seen in the mass, 
 E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass ; 
 C. gives Nature and God his own fits of the blues, 
 And rims common-sense things with mystical hues ; 
 E. sits in a mystery calm and intense. 
 And looks coolly round him with sharp common -sense ; 
 
92 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 C. shows you how everyday matters unite 
 
 With the dim trans-diurnal recesses of night ; 
 
 While E,, in a plain, preternatural way, 
 
 Makes mysteries matters of mere every day. 
 
 C. draws all his characters quite a la Fuseli, — 
 
 He don't sketch their bundles of muscles and thews illy, 
 
 But he paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, 
 
 They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews ; 
 
 E. is rather like Flaxman, lines straight and severe, 
 
 And a colourless outline, but full, round, and clear ; — 
 
 To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords 
 
 The design of a white marble statue in words. 
 
 C. labours to get at the centre, and then 
 
 Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men ; 
 
 E. calmly assumes the said centre is granted, 
 
 And, given himself, has whatever is wanted." 
 
 I trust my quotations are not tiring you. My 
 great difficulty has been to choose them, and 
 my greatest trouble to curtail them. I have 
 been unable to touch, in this paper, on his 
 grand work, '' Representative Men," which, in 
 my humble opinion, is, for its power of intel- 
 lectual stimulation, of the greatest possible value. 
 I cannot withhold the following powerful passage 
 on the thinker. 
 
 In speaking of the duties of a thinker, Emerson 
 said : — 
 
 " T hey are such as become Man— Thinking. 
 They may all be comprised in self-trust. The 
 office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to 
 guide men, by showing them facts and appear- 
 ances. He plies the slow, unhonoured, and 
 
III. EALPH WALDO EMERSON. 93 
 
 unpaid task of observation. Flamsteed and 
 Herschel, in their glazed observatories, may 
 catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, 
 and, the results being splendid and useful, 
 honour is sure. But he, in his private obser- 
 vatory, — cataloguing obscure and nebulous stars 
 of the human mind, which as yet no man has 
 thought of as such ; watching days and months, 
 sometimes, for a few facts ; correcting still his old 
 records, — must relinquish display and immediate 
 fame. In the long period of his preparation he 
 must betray often an ignorance and shiftlessness 
 in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the able, 
 who shoulder him aside. Long must he stammer 
 in his speech ; often forego the living for the 
 dead. Worse yet, he must accept — how often ! — 
 poverty and solitude. For the ease and pleasure 
 of treading in the old road, accepting the fashions, 
 the education, the religion of society, he takes 
 the cross of making his own, and, of course, the 
 self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent un- 
 certainty and loss of time, which are the nettles 
 and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying 
 and self-directed ; and the state of virtual hostility 
 in which he seems to stand to society, and 
 especially to educated society. 
 
 " For all this loss and scorn, what offset ? He 
 is to find consolation in exercising the highest 
 
 functions of human nature. He is one who raises 
 
 ^ / 
 
 himself from private considerations, and breathes 
 
94 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 andj[ives on public and illustrious thoughts. He 
 is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. 
 He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retro- 
 grades ever to barbarism, by preserving and com- 
 municating heroic sentiments, noble biographies, 
 melodious verse, and the conclusions of history. 
 Whatsoever oracles the human heart in all emer- 
 gencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its 
 commentary on the world of action — these he 
 shall receive and impart. And whatsoever new 
 verdict Reason, from her inviolable seat, pro- 
 nounces on the passing men and events of to-day 
 — this he shall hear and promulgate. These being 
 his functions, it becomes him to feel all confidence 
 in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. 
 He, and he only, knows the world. The world of 
 any moment is the merest appearance. Some 
 great decorum, some fetish of a government, some 
 ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by 
 half mankind, and cried down by the other half, 
 as if all depended on this particular up or down. 
 The odds are that the whole question is not worth 
 the poorest thought which the scholar has lost 
 in listening to the controversy. Let him not quit 
 his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the 
 ancient and honourable of the earth affirm it to 
 be the crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, 
 in severe abstraction, let him hold by himself ; 
 add observation to observation, patient of neglect, 
 patient of reproach ; and bide his own' time, — 
 
III. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 95 
 
 happy enough, if lie can satisfy himself alone, 
 that this clay he has done something truly. 
 Success treads on every right step. For the 
 instinct is sure that prompts him to tell his 
 brother what he thinks. 
 
 '' He then learns that in going down into the 
 secrets of his own mind he has descended into 
 the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who 
 has mastered any law in his private thoughts is 
 master to that extent of all men whose language 
 he speaks, and of all into whose language his 
 own can be translated. The poet, in utter solitude 
 remembering his spontaneous thoughts and re- 
 cording them, is found to have recorded that 
 which men ^ in cities vast ' find true for them 
 also. The orator distrusts at first the fitness of 
 his frank confessions, — his want of knowledge of 
 the persons he addresses, — until he finds that he 
 is the complement of his hearers ; that they 
 drink his words because he fulfils for them their 
 own nature ; the deeper he dives into his 
 privatest, secretest presentiment, to his wonder 
 he finds, this is the most acceptable, most public, 
 and universally true. The people delight in it ; 
 the better part of every man feels : This is my 
 music ; this is myself. 
 
 " For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than 
 can be fathomed — darker than can be enlightened. 
 
 " I might not carry with me the feeling of my 
 audience in stating my own belief. But I have 
 
96 FOUK GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 already shown tlie ground of my hope in ad- 
 verting to the doctrine that man is one. I 
 believe man has been wronged ; he has wronged 
 himself. He has almost lost the light that can 
 lead him back to his prerogatives. Men are 
 become of no account. Men in history, men in 
 the world of to-day, are beetles, are spawn, and 
 are called ' the mass,' and ' the herd.' [Novalis : 
 Man is the temple of the living God.] 
 
 " In a century, in a millennium, one or two men ; 
 that is to say, one or two approximations to the 
 right state of every man. All the rest behold in 
 the hero or the poet their own green and crude 
 being, — ripened ; yes, and are content to be less, 
 so that he may attain to his full stature. What 
 a testimony — full of grandeur, full of pity— is 
 borne to the demands of his own nature, by the 
 poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in 
 the glory of his chief ! The poor and low find 
 some amends, in their immense moral capacity, 
 for their acquiescence in a political and social 
 inferiority. They are content to be brushed like 
 flies from the path of a' great person, so that 
 justice shall be done by him to that common 
 nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see 
 enlarged and glorified. They sun themselves in 
 the great man's light, and feel it to be their own 
 element. They cast the dignity of man from 
 their, downtrod selves upon the shoulders of a 
 hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood to 
 
III. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 97 
 
 make that great heart beat, those giant sinews 
 combat and conquer. He lives for us, and we 
 live for him." 
 
 I will now, before concluding, quote some of 
 Emerson's poems. 
 
 The first one shall be the intensely patriotic 
 " Boston Hymn," read by Emerson himself in 
 the Music Hall, on January 1st, 1863. 
 
 BOSTON HYMN. 
 
 The word of the Lord by night 
 To the watching Pilgrims came, 
 As they sat by the seaside, 
 And filled their hearts with flame. 
 
 God said, I am tired of kings, 
 I suffer them no more ; 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor. 
 
 Think ye I made this ball 
 A field of havoc and war, 
 Where tyrants great and tyrants small 
 Might harry the weak and poor ? 
 
 My angel, his name is Freedom, — 
 Choose him to be your king ; 
 He shall cut pathways east and west, 
 And 'fend you with his wing. 
 
 Lo ! I uncover the land 
 Which I hid of old time in the west, 
 As the sculptor uncovers the statue 
 When he has wrought his best ; 
 
 7 
 
98 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 I show Columbia, of the rocks 
 Which dip their foot in the seas, 
 And soar to the air- born flocks 
 Of clouds, and the boreal fleece. 
 
 I will divide my goods ; 
 Call in the wretch and slave ; 
 None shall rule but the humble, 
 And none but Toil shall have. 
 
 I will have never a noble, 
 No lineage counted great ; 
 Fishers and choppers and ploughmen 
 Shall constitute a state. 
 
 Go, cut down trees in the forest. 
 And trim the straightest boughs ; 
 Cut down the trees in the forest, 
 And build me a wooden house. 
 
 Call the people together, 
 The young men and the sires, 
 The digger in the harvest field, 
 Hireling, and him that hires ; 
 
 And here in a pine state-house 
 They shall choose men to rule 
 In every needful faculty, 
 
 In church, and state, and school. 
 
 Lo, now ! if these poor men 
 Can govern the land and sea, 
 And make just laws below the sun, 
 As planets faithful be. 
 
 And ye shall succour men : 
 'Tis nobleness to serve ; 
 Help them who cannot help again ; 
 Beware from right to swerve. 
 
III. KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 99 
 
 I break your bonds and masterships, 
 And I unchain the slave ; 
 Free be his heart and hand henceforth 
 As wind and wandering wave. 
 
 I cause from every creature 
 His proper good to flow : 
 As much as he is and doeth, 
 So much he shall bestow. 
 
 But laying hands on another 
 To coin his labour and sweat, 
 He goes in pawn to his victim 
 For eternal years in debt. 
 
 To-day unbind the captive — 
 So only are ye unbound ; 
 Lift up a people from the dust, 
 Trumpet of rescue sound ! 
 
 Pay ransom to the owner. 
 And fill the bag to the brim. 
 Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, 
 And ever was. Fay him. 
 
 O North ! give him beauty for rags, 
 And honour, O South ! for his shame. 
 Nevada ! coin thy golden crags 
 With Freedom's image and name. 
 
 Up ! and the dusky race 
 That sat in darkness long. 
 Be swift their feet as antelopes. 
 And as Behemoth strong. 
 
 Come, East and West and North, 
 By races, as snowflakes. 
 And carry my purpose forth, 
 Which neither halts nor shakes. 
 
100 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 My will fulfilled shall be, 
 For, in daylight or in dark, 
 My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
 His way home to the mark. 
 
 I will now quote an exquisitely lovely and 
 suggestive poem on 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 Was never form and never face 
 So sweet to Seyd as only grace. 
 
 Which did not slumber like a stone, 
 But hover'd gleaming and was gone. 
 
 Beauty chased he everywhere, 
 
 In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
 
 He smote the lake to feed his eye 
 
 With the beryl beam of the broken wave ; 
 
 He flung in pebbles well to hear 
 The moment's music which they gave. 
 
 Oft peal'd for him a lofty tone 
 From nodding pole and belting zone. 
 
 He heard a voice none else could hear 
 From central and from errant sphere. 
 
 The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
 Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 
 
 In dens of passion, and pits of woe. 
 He saw strong Eros struggling through, 
 
 To sun the dark and solve the curse. 
 And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
 
III. KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 101 
 
 While thus to love he gave his days 
 In loyal worship, scorning praise, 
 
 How spread their lures for him in vain 
 Thieving Ambition and paltering Gain ! 
 
 He thought it happier to be dead, 
 To die for beauty than live for bread. 
 
 The last poem I shall ask your deep admiration 
 for is 
 
 NEMESIS. 
 
 Already blushes in thy cheek 
 
 The bosom-thought which thou must speak ; 
 
 The bird, how far it haply roam 
 
 By cloud or isle, is flying home ; 
 
 The maiden fears, and fearing runs 
 
 Into the charmed snare she shuns ; 
 
 And every man, in love or pride. 
 
 Of his fate is never wide. 
 
 Will a woman's fan the ocean smooth ? 
 Or prayers the stony Parcae soothe. 
 Or coax the thunder from its mark ? 
 Or tapers light the Chaos dark ? 
 In spite of Virtue and the Muse, 
 Nemesis will have her dues, 
 And all our struggles and our toils 
 Tighter wind the giant coils. 
 
 Now, I will not add any weak words of mine to 
 the exquisite music of Emerson's muse. 
 
 If I have said anything that will induce any 
 of my readers to study him more thoroughly, I 
 
102 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 shall be quite satisfied with the result of my little 
 sketch. 
 
 The eye sees what it brings the capacity to see. 
 That is especially true of the mind's eye. There- 
 fore the more we study, think, and feel, the 
 better able we shall be to comprehend and love 
 the spiritual and heaven-scaling genius of the 
 American Plato. 
 
lY. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 Robert Browning was born at Camber well on 
 May 7tli, IdlS, ^^^ died at Venice on December 
 13th, 18^. His father was, like so many others, 
 a writer of a great deal of mipublished verse of 
 rather an old-fashioned didactic character. Robert 
 began to write poetry at a very early age, and 
 was also fond of drawing. He did not become a 
 painter ; but, as we all know, developed into one 
 of the greatest poets and subtlest and strongest 
 thinkers of the century. He ardently studied the 
 works of Keats, Shelley, Scott, Byron, Words- 
 worth, and Coleridge. We all know how intensely 
 he admired and loved the glorious Shelley. Fortu- 
 nately his father withheld his youthful effusions 
 from the public ; but in after years some of the 
 manuscripts fell into the great poet's hands, and 
 he discovered that he had been an ardent admirer 
 and imitator of Byron, and that his verse was 
 " full and melodious." From the worship of 
 Byron the boy naturally soared to a love of 
 Shelley directly he accidentally became possessor 
 of a piratical copy of his exquisite poems. Even 
 
104 FOUR GEEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 three years after Shelley's death it was very 
 difficult to obtain a copy of his works. No 
 respectable bookseller would even acknowledge 
 that he was acquainted with his name. Mrs. 
 Browning at last obtained from Messrs. Oilier, 
 the publishers, the original editions of both 
 -Shelley and Kgat^,^ and presented them to her 
 son. Let us pause for a moment and try, in some 
 degree, to imagine the rapture of delight ex- 
 perienced by the boy-poet as he turned the leaves 
 containing the poems of these glorious master 
 singers ! But, although he loved and admired 
 them both so profoundly, he never imitated either. 
 In 1826 young Browning went to schooT^t 
 Dulwich, and later to University College, London. 
 Six years after, in 1832, he wrote " Pauling" and 
 published it in 1833, when twenty-one. The 
 poem is dated Richmond, October 22nd, 1832. In 
 the same year Tennyson published " The Miller's 
 Daughter," ''The Dream of Fair Women," " The 
 Palace of Art," and other of his most beautiful 
 and popular poems. " Pauline " was almost un- 
 noticed ; but it was so greatly admired by Dante 
 Gabriel Rossetti, then a very young man, that 
 he copied the whole of the poem from the book 
 in the British Museum. John Stuart Mill, too, 
 desired to review it in Taifs Magazine ; but it 
 had already been dismissed by that periodical 
 with contempt. Fortunately the poet was not 
 dependent for fame and fortune or vulgar bread 
 
IV. ROBERT BROWNING. 105 
 
 and cheese upon the wisdom and critical powers 
 of the editor of that luminous periodical or of any 
 other ! If he had been, the result would have 
 been starvation. Genius is certain to conquer in 
 the end ; but in the meantime the poet is face to 
 face with famine. We must admit that out of 
 one hundred volumes of verse published, ninety- 
 nine are very likely to be bad or indifferent ; but 
 the man of real critical power and insight should 
 be on the look out for the exception, and should, 
 in addition, feel a pleasure in introducing it to 
 a public eager to welcome originality and real 
 power — " there are so many echoes and so few 
 voices." 
 
 In 1834 Mr. Browning set out on his travels, 
 which extended to Russia. A year before he wrote 
 "Porphyria's Lover" and "Joannes Agricola." 
 These and other short poems were printed in 
 a Unitarian magazine, The Monthly Repository^ 
 edited by Mr. W. Johnson Fox, afterwards mem- 
 ber of Parliament for Oldham. " Paracelsus " 
 was published in 1835. In this poem Browning 
 showed his daring originality, his utter disregard 
 and apparent contempt for the conventional forms 
 of fashionable poetry; and in the long soliloquies 
 he displayed the germ of that profound insight 
 into the workings of the heart and conscience so 
 wonderfully manifested in his "Bishop Blougram," 
 " Andrea del Sarto," and other masterpieces in 
 " Men and Women." Macready's admiration for 
 
 y 
 
106 FOUR GEEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 this poem, " Paracelsus," led to the meeting of the 
 great poet and actor. The latter hoped he had 
 found a real dramatic genius ; and those hopes 
 led to the production on the stage of Strafford^ 
 which took place on May 1st, 1837, the poet then 
 being only twenty-five. Miss Helen Faucit per- 
 formed with grace and charm the part of Lady 
 Carlisle ; Macready sustained the character of 
 Strafford. The play was withdrawn after the 
 fifth night ; it was not a financial success. But 
 what a splendid masterpiece for a young man of 
 twenty-five to write ! The wonder to me is not 
 that it did not run over five nights, but that such 
 a play, so full of genius, poetry, and exalted 
 thought and passion, should see the footlights 
 at all ! Let us again thank Heaven that Browning 
 was independent, and that he could, in spite of 
 every possible discouragement and disappoint- 
 ment, pursue the course marked out by his splendid 
 genius, without heeding the cackle of blame or 
 the sneers of envy and mediocrity ! He wrote more 
 plays, which managers and publishers returned 
 with and without thanks. In 1840 he published his 
 most daringly enigmatic poem, " Sordello," as if 
 in defiance of his critics ; and we must admit that 
 even his most enthusiastic admirers have been 
 conquered by the inextricable jungle of thought 
 contained in this unique poem. Between 1841 
 and 1846 he published, in pamphlet form, " Bells 
 and Pomegranates." These were issued cheaply 
 
IV. ROBERT BROWNING. 107 
 
 for, as the author said, " a pit audience " ; but, 
 unfortunately, the pit audience did not arise from 
 that deep place to welcome them. The first of 
 the series was that lovely and powerful and tragic 
 dramatic poem, " Pippa Passes," which alone, 
 marks with triumphant certainty Robert Browning 
 as a poet for all time. This was followed by 
 ^' KingViator and King Charles," and that master- 
 piece of marvellous word-painting, wit, humour, 
 and poetry, " The Pied Piper," originally written 
 to please Macready's son. Lucky boy ! The 
 rest of the series are nearly all included in " Men 
 and Women." However people may differ about 
 the merits or demerits of '' Paracelsus " and ''Bor- 
 dello," no one, with the slenderest pretension to 
 a love of literature in its highest form, can 
 possibly differ about the beauty, the variety, the 
 insight into the heart and conscience of many- 
 sided, suffering, hoping, and struggling humanity, 
 displayed in this splendid work of a man of 
 genius whose name will live as long as a love of 
 English literature exists in our minds and hearts. 
 While Mr. Browning was writing " Bells and 
 Pomegranates," he was dragged down into the 
 miserable intrigues and petty jealousies which 
 beset the stage. There were quarrels with Mac- 
 ready, who was notoriously a man of overbearing 
 temper, and who seems in his relations with the 
 poet to have lacked candour and directness. The 
 Blot in the Scutcheon was produced, and the 
 
108 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 play drew fairly well until Macready closed his 
 theatre. 
 
 In 1846, September 12th, Mr. Browning married 
 the already famous poet, Elizabeth Barrett. They 
 started for Italy, which became their home for 
 many years. 
 
 In September 1855 the poet dedicated " Men 
 and Women " to his wife, in the following 
 exquisite lines : — 
 
 " This to you — yourself, my moon of poets ! 
 Ah ! but that's the world's side, there's the wonder ; 
 Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you ! 
 There, in turn, I stand with them and praise you. 
 Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 
 But the best is when I glide from out them. 
 Cross a step or two of dubious twilight, 
 Come out on the other side, the novel 
 Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 
 When I hush and bless myself with silence." 
 
 Italy continued to be Mr. Browning's home 
 until the death of his beloved wife, which terrible 
 loss occurred in 1861. The poet published in 
 1871 " Balaustion's Adventure," a transcript from 
 Euripides, which is one of the most delightful 
 productions of his genius. This was preceded by 
 " Dramatis Personam," which contains some of his 
 noblest work, '' Abt Vogler " being especially 
 beautiful and sublime ; and his longest dramatic 
 poem, '' The Ring and the Book," which is as full 
 of marvellous mastery of knowledge and detail as 
 the best work of Carlyle. His great analytical 
 
IV. EOBEET BROWNING. 109 
 
 power and imaginative insight into character are 
 trimnphantly displayed in this most characteristic 
 work of the great poet. 
 
 As proved by his poems " Christmas Eve " 
 and " Easter Day," Mr Browning was a man of 
 deep religious conviction. He was a Nonconform- 
 ist, and for many years he attended the sermons 
 of the Rev. Thomas Jones, at the Congregational 
 Chapel, Charrington Street, Oakley Square. 
 After the death of Mr. Jones, the poet wrote a 
 preface to his published sermons. 
 
 The following letter was written by Browning 
 in 1876 to a lady, who, believing herself to be 
 dying, wrote to thank him for the help she had 
 derived from his poems, mentioning particularly 
 " Rabbi ben Ezra " and " Abt Vogler." 
 
 "19, Waewick Crescent, W., 
 " May IWi, 76. 
 
 " Dear Friend, — It would ill become me to 
 waste a word on my own feelings, except inasmuch 
 as they can be common to us both in such a situa- 
 tion as you describe yours to be — and which, by 
 sympathy, I can make mine by the anticipation 
 of a few years at most. It is a great thing — the 
 greatest — that a human being should have passed 
 the probation of life, and sum up its experience in 
 a witness to the power and love of God. I dare 
 congratulate you. All the help I can offer, in my 
 poor degree, is the assurance that I see ever more 
 
110 FOUB GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 reason to hold by the same hope — and that by no 
 means in ignorance of what has been advanced to 
 the contrary ; and for your sake I would wish it 
 to be true that I had so much of ^ genius ' as to 
 permit the testimony of an especially privileged 
 insight to come in aid of the ordinary argument. 
 For I know I myself have been aware of the 
 communication of something more subtle than 
 a ratiocinative process, when the convictions of 
 ' genius ' have thrilled my soul to its depths, as 
 when Napoleon, shutting up the New Testament, 
 said of Christ : ^ Do you know that I am an 
 understander of men ? Well, He was no man I ' 
 (^ Savez-vous queje me connais en hommes ? Eh 
 Men, Celui-ld ne fut pas un homme.'') Or as 
 when Charles Lamb, in a gay fancy with some 
 friends as to how he and they would feel if the 
 greatest of the dead were to appear suddenly in 
 flesh and blood once more — on the final sugges- 
 tion, ^ And if Christ entered this room ? ' changed 
 his manner at once, and stuttered out — as his 
 manner was when moved, ' You see — if Shake- 
 speare entered, we should all rise; if ^e appeared, 
 we must kneel.' Or, not to multiply instances, 
 as when Dante wrote what I will transcribe from 
 my wife's Testament — wherein I recorded it 
 fourteen years ago, ' Thus I believe, thus I affirm, 
 thus I am certain it is, that from this life I shall 
 pass to another better, there, where that Lady 
 lives, of whom my soul was enamoured.' Dear 
 
IV. ROBERT BROWNING. Ill 
 
 Friend, I may have wearied you in spite of your 
 good will. God bless you, sustain, and receive 
 you ! Reciprocate this blessing with 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 " Robert Browning." 
 
 In private life Mr. Browning was cordial and 
 sympathetic, his conversation being full of in- 
 telligence, naturalness, and humour. He was 
 passionately fond of music, and his fine head and 
 noble leonine countenance were often to be seen 
 at the Monday Popular Concerts. 
 
 " Asolando : Fancies and Facts " was published 
 a few days before the death of the author. He 
 lived long enough to hear of its success. 
 
 Listen to the following lines written by a poet 
 of seventy-seven, yet full of the brightest wit 
 and sweetest melody : — 
 
 " Ah ! the bird-like fluting 
 
 Through the ash- tops yonder — 
 BuUfinch-bubblings, soft sounds suiting 
 
 What sweet thoughts, I wonder ? 
 Fine-pearled notes that surely 
 
 Gather, dewdrop-fashion, 
 Deep-down in some heart which purely 
 
 Secretes globuled passion — 
 Passion insuppressive — 
 
 Such is piped, for certain ; 
 Love, no doubt, nay, love excessive 
 
 'Tis, your ash-tops curtain." 
 
 In the unconquerable spirit of faith, youth, and 
 
v 
 
 112 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 love, Robert Browning reminds me of Victor 
 Hugo ; and also for his Titanic strength and 
 exquisite tenderness. 
 
 The following lines from the last gift of the 
 poet to the world are full of the rarest insight 
 and delicacy : — 
 
 " What girl but, having gathered flowers, 
 Stript the beds and spoilt the bowers, 
 From the lapful light she carries 
 Drops a careless bud ? — nor tarries 
 To regain the waif and stray : 
 ' Store enough for home ' — she'll say. 
 
 " So say I too : give your lover 
 Heaps of loving — under, over. 
 Whelm him — make the one the wealthy ! 
 Am I all so poor who — stealthy 
 Work it was ! — picked up what fell : 
 Not the worst bud — who can tell ? " 
 
 My object will be to present what I consider 
 the best of Robert Browning's work in all its 
 splendid variety and glorious, many-sided beauty. 
 
 But before quoting further from the great 
 poet, I think it would be interesting to cite 
 Mr. Russell Lowell's — who has many points of 
 genius in which he resembles Robert Browning- 
 speech on the poet made at a meeting of the 
 Browning Society. "'^-^ 
 
 Mr. Lowell, before" concluding, said — 
 
 ^' The fashion of this world passed away, but 
 the fashion of those things which belonged to 
 
IV. ROBERT BROWNING. 113 
 
 the world of imagination — and it was most em- 
 phatically in that world that Mr. Browning had 
 worked — endured and never passed. In 1848 
 Mr. Browning said, in a preface to a collection of 
 his poems, that many of them were out of print, 
 and of the rest a great number had been with- 
 drawn from circulation — which implied that even 
 at that time the size of his public was very small. 
 But he had fully demonstrated that he stood in 
 no need of a Browning Society to reinforce his 
 native vigour; for, in spite of the indifference of 
 the public, he had constantly gone on from that 
 time to this producing and deepening the impres- 
 sion which he had made upon all thinking minds. 
 It had been said that he had no sense of form, 
 but that question depended on the meaning to be 
 attached to the word. One thing he thought 
 was certain, and that was that men who had 
 discussed form most, as for instance Goethe, had 
 not always been the most successful in producing 
 examples of it. Certainly no one with any sense 
 of form could call Faust other than formless. If 
 form meant the use of adequate and harmonious 
 means to produce a certain artistic end, then he 
 knew no one who had given truer examples of it 
 than the great poet after whom that Society took 
 its name. . . . Every one who read Browning with 
 attention, and who loved him, must at the same 
 time admit that he was occasionally whirled away i^ 
 by the sweep and torrent of his abundance. But 
 
 8 
 
\y 
 
 114 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 after making these deductions, there was no poet 
 who had given us a greater variety, or who had 
 shown more originality. Mr. Browning abode 
 with them. He was not a fashion, nor did he 
 belong to any one period of their lives. What 
 they felt more clearly than anything else was 
 his strength. He was of all others a masculine, 
 a virile poet." 
 
 I would submit to you my opinion that Brown- 
 ing's sweetness was equal to his strength, and 
 his intellectual subtlety and extraordinary dia- 
 lectical power greater than either ; and as for 
 his humour, I think it almost Shakespearian in 
 its sunny glow and genial breadth of toleration 
 and sympathy with every possibility of human 
 nature. 
 
 The rest of this paper will be devoted to an 
 attempt to prove to the reader the truth of this 
 opinion. 
 
IV. ROBERT BROWNING. 115 
 
 PROSPIGE. 
 
 Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
 
 I am nearing the place, 
 The power of the night, the press of the storm, 
 
 The post of the foe : 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, 
 
 Yet the strongest man must go : 
 For the journey is done and the summit attained, 
 
 And the barriers fall. 
 Though a battle's to fight e'er the guerdon be 
 gained, 
 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 
 
 The best and the last 1 
 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and 
 forebore, 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my 
 peers, 
 The heroes of old. 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's 
 arrears 
 Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 
 
 The black minute's at end. 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave, 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
 
116 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Shall change, shall become .first a peace out of 
 pain, 
 Then a joy, then a light, then thy breast, 
 thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee 
 again, 
 And with God be the rest ! 
 
 That glorious, soul-inspiring poem is beyond 
 the reach of praise : it shines like a fixed star. 
 
IV. EGBERT BROWNING. 117 
 
 The following is from 
 
 EABBI BEN EZRA. 
 
 Not on the vulgar mass 
 
 Called " work " shall sentence pass — 
 Things done, that tpok the eye and had the price, 
 
 O'er which, from level stand, 
 
 The low world laid its hand, 
 Found straightway to its mind, could value in a 
 trice : 
 
 But all, the world's coarse thumb 
 
 And finger could not plumb. 
 So passed in making up the main account : 
 
 Though hardly to be packed 
 
 Into a narrow act^ 
 Fancies that broke through language and escaped; 
 
 All I could never be. 
 
 All, men ignored in me. 
 This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the 
 pitcher shaped. 
 
 Ay, note the Potter's wheel. 
 
 That metaphor ! and feel 
 Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay, — 
 
 Thou, to whom fools propound. 
 
 When the wine makes its round, 
 ^* Since life fleets, all is change ; the past gone, 
 seize to-day ! " 
 
 Fool ! All that is, at all. 
 
 Lasts ever, past recall ; 
 
118 FOUR GEEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Eartli changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: 
 
 What entered into thee, 
 
 That was, is, and shall be : 
 Time's wheel runs back or stops ; Potter and 
 clay endure. 
 
 He fixed thee mid this dance 
 
 Of plastic circumstance. 
 This present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest : 
 
 Machinery just meant 
 
 To give the soul its bent. 
 Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently im- 
 pressed. 
 
 What though the earlier grooves 
 
 Which ran the laughing loves 
 Around thy base, no longer pause and press ? 
 
 What though, about thy rim 
 
 Skull things, in order grim, 
 Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner 
 stress ? 
 
 Look not thou down, but up ! 
 
 To uses of a cup. 
 The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal. 
 
 The new wine's foaming flow, 
 
 The Master's lips aglow ! 
 Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what wouldst thou 
 with earth's wheel ? 
 
IV. EGBERT BEOWNING. 119 
 
 ABT VOGLER. 
 
 {After he has been extemporising upon the musical 
 instrument of his invention.) 
 
 Would that the structure brave, the manifold 
 music I build, 
 Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to the 
 work, 
 Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as 
 when Solomon willed 
 Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons 
 that lurk, 
 Man, brute, reptile, fly, alien of end and of 
 aim, 
 Adverse each from the other, heaven-high, 
 hell-deep removed, 
 Should rush into sight at once as he named the 
 ineffable Name, 
 And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the 
 princess he loved. 
 
 Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful 
 building of mine. 
 This which my keys in a crowd pressed and 
 importuned to raise ! 
 Ah ! one and all, how they helped, would dispart 
 now and now combine. 
 Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their 
 master his praise I 
 
120 FOUK GEE AT TEACHEKS. 
 
 And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge 
 down to hell, 
 Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of 
 things. 
 Then up again swim into sight, having based me 
 my palace well, 
 Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether 
 springs. 
 
 And another would mount and march, like the 
 excellent minion he was. 
 Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but 
 with many a crest, 
 Raising my rampired walls of- gold as transparent 
 as glass, 
 Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the 
 rest : 
 For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with 
 fire, 
 When a great illumination surprises a festal 
 night — 
 Outlining round and round Rome's dome from 
 space to spire), 
 Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride 
 of my soul was in sight. 
 
 In sight ? Not half ! for it seemed, it was certain 
 to match man's birth. 
 Nature in turn conceived, obeying . an impulse 
 as I ; 
 
IV. EGBERT BEOWNING. 121 
 
 And the emulous heaven yearned down, made 
 effort to reach the earth, 
 As the earth had done her best, in my passion, 
 to reach the sky: 
 Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and 
 dwelt with mine, 
 Not a point or peak but found and fixed its 
 wandering star; 
 Meteor moons, balls of blaze; and they did not 
 pale nor pine. 
 For earth had attained to heaven, there was 
 no more near nor far. 
 
 Nay, more ; for there wanted not, who walked in 
 the glare and glow. 
 Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from 
 the Protoplast, 
 Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind 
 should blow. 
 Lured now to begin and live, in a house to 
 their liking at last; 
 Or else the wonderful Dead, who have passed 
 through the body and gone. 
 But were back once more to breathe in an old 
 world worth their new: 
 What never had been, was now ; what was, as it 
 shall be soon ; 
 And what is, — shall I say matched both ? for 
 I was made perfect too. 
 
122 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 All through my keys that gave their sounds to a 
 wish of my soul, 
 All through my soul that praised as its wish 
 flowed visibly forth, 
 All through music and me ! For think, had I 
 painted the whole. 
 Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the pro- 
 cess so wonder worth : 
 Had I written the same, made verse — still, effect 
 proceeds from cause, 
 Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how 
 the tale is told ; 
 It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience 
 to laws. 
 Painter and poet are proud in the artist list 
 enrolled ; — 
 
 But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will 
 that can, 
 Existent behind all laws, that made them — 
 and, lo, they are ! 
 And I know not if, save in this, such a gift be 
 allowed to man, 
 That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth 
 sound, but a star. 
 Consider it well : each tone of the scale in itself 
 is nought ; 
 It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, and 
 all is said : 
 
IV. EGBERT BROWNING. 123 
 
 Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in my 
 thought ; 
 And, there ! Ye have heard and seen : con- 
 sider and bow the head ! 
 Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I 
 reared ! 
 Gone ! and the good tears start, the praises 
 that come too slow ; 
 For one is assured at first, one scarce can say 
 that he feared. 
 That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing 
 was to go. 
 Never to be again ! But many more of the 
 kind 
 As good, nay, better perchance. Is this your 
 comfort to me, — 
 To me, who must be saved because I cling with 
 my mind 
 To the same, same self, same love, same God ? 
 Ay, what was, shall be. 
 
 Therefore, to whom turn I, but to Thee, the 
 ineifable Name ? 
 Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made 
 with hands ! 
 What, have fear of change from Thee who art 
 ever the same ? 
 Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that 
 Thy power expands ? 
 
124 FOUK GKEAT TEACHERS. 
 
 There shall never be one lost good ! What was, 
 shall live as before. 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying 
 sound ; 
 What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so 
 much good more ; 
 On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, 
 the perfect round. 
 
 All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good 
 shall exist ; 
 Not its semblance, but itself ; no beauty, nor 
 good, nor power, 
 Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives 
 for the melodist. 
 When eternity affirms the conception of an 
 hour. 
 The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
 earth too hard. 
 The passion that left the ground to lose itself 
 in the sky. 
 Are music sent up to God by the lover and the 
 bard ; 
 Enough that he heard it once ; we shall hear 
 it by-and-by. 
 
 And what is our failure here but a triumph's 
 evidence 
 For the fulness of the days ? Have we 
 withered or agonized ? 
 
IV. EGBERT BROWNING. 125 
 
 Why else was the pause prolonged, but that 
 singing might issue thence ? 
 Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony 
 should be prized ? 
 Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to 
 clear, 
 Each sufferer says, his say, his scheme of the 
 weal and woe : 
 But God has a few of us whom He whispers in 
 the ear ; 
 The rest may reason and welcome : 'tis we 
 musicians know. 
 
 If the Shakespeare of music, Beethoven, had 
 written a poem, it would have been similar to 
 " Abt Vogler." 
 
126 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Now to show the lighter and humorous, with 
 a subtle touch of sadness, side of Browning's 
 genius. 
 
 YOUTH AND AET. 
 
 It once might have been — once only : 
 We lodged in a street together : 
 
 You a spari'ow on the housetop lonely, 
 I, a lone she-bird of his feather. 
 
 Your trade was with sticks and clay, 
 You thumbed, thrust, patted, and polished. 
 
 Then laughed, " They will see some day 
 Smith made, and Gibson demolished." 
 
 My business was song, song, song ; 
 I chirped, cheeped, trilled, and twittered, 
 
 '' Kate Brown's on the boards ere long 
 And Grisi's existence embittered ! " 
 
 I earned no more by a warble 
 Than you by a sketch in plaster ; 
 
 You wanted a piece of marble, 
 I needed a music master. 
 
 We studied hard in our styles. 
 Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos ; 
 
 For air, looked out on the tiles ; 
 For fun, watched each other's windows. 
 
IV. ROBERT BROWNING. 127 
 
 Yon lounged, like a boy of the South, 
 Cap and blouse — nay, a bit of a beard too ; 
 
 Or you got it, rubbing your mouth 
 With fingers the clay adhered to. 
 
 And I soon managed to find 
 Weak points in the flower-fence facing, 
 
 Was forced to-put up a blind. 
 And be safe in my corset-lacing. 
 
 No harm ! It was not my fault 
 If you never turned your eyes' tail up, 
 
 As I shook upon E in alt.^ 
 Or ran the chromatic scale up : 
 
 For spring bade the sparrows pair. 
 And the boys and girls gave guesses. 
 
 And stalls in our street looked rare 
 With bulrush and watercresses. 
 
 Why did not you pinch a flower 
 In a pellet of clay and fling it ? 
 
 Why did not I put a power 
 Of thanks in a look, or sing it ? 
 
 I did look, sharp as a lynx 
 (And yet the memory rankles), 
 
 When models arrived, some minx 
 Tripped upstairs, she and her ankles. 
 
 But I think I gave you as good ! 
 " That foreign fellow, — who can know 
 
 How she pays, in a playful mood, 
 For his tuning her that piano ? " 
 
128 FOUE GKEAT TEACHEBS. 
 
 Could you say so, and never say, 
 " Suppose we join hands and fortunes, 
 
 And I fetch her from over the way. 
 Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes ? " 
 
 No, no, you would not be rash, 
 Nor I rasher and something over. 
 
 You've to settle your Gibson's hash. 
 And Grisi yet lives in clover. 
 
 But you met the prince at the Board, 
 I'm queen myself at bals-pare, 
 
 I've married a rich old lord, 
 And you're dubbed Knight and an R.A. 
 
 Each life unfulfilled, you see ; 
 It hangs still, patchy and scrappy : 
 
 We have not sighed deep, laughed free. 
 Starved, feasted, despaired, — been happy. 
 
 And nobody calls you a dunce. 
 And people suppose me clever : 
 
 This could but have happened once. 
 And we missed it, lost it for ever. 
 
 That little poem is a masterpiece of wit, 
 humour, and pathos. 
 
IV. EOBEKT BROWNING. 129 
 
 The following poem is sublime in its scorn of 
 vulgar popularity and cheap success : — 
 
 THE LOST LEADER. 
 
 Just for a handful of silver he left us, 
 
 Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
 Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, 
 
 Lost all the others she lets us devote. 
 They, with the gold to give, doled him out 
 silver. 
 
 So much was theirs who so little allowed : 
 How all our copper had gone for his service ! 
 
 Rags — were they purple, his heart had- been 
 proud ! 
 
 We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured 
 him. 
 Lived in his mild and magnificent eye. 
 Learned his great language, caught his clear 
 accents, 
 Made him our pattern to live and to die \ 
 Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 
 Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch 
 from their graves ! 
 He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
 He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! 
 
 We shall march prospering, — not through his 
 presence ; 
 Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre ; 
 
 9 
 
130 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 Deeds will be done, — while lie boasts his quies- 
 cence, 
 Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade 
 aspire : 
 
 Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul 
 more. 
 One task more declined, one more footpath 
 untrod. 
 One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, 
 One more wrong to man, one more insult to 
 God! 
 
 Life's night begins : let him never come back 
 to us ! 
 There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain. 
 Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of 
 twilight. 
 Never glad confident morning again ! 
 
 But fight on well, for we taught him — strike 
 gallantly. 
 Menace our heart ere we master his own ; 
 Then let him receive the new knowledge and 
 wait us. 
 Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 
 
IV. ROBEKT BROWNING. 131 
 
 The next poem, ^'Evelyn Hope," is full of 
 the poet's most subtle suggestion and exquisite 
 charm. 
 
 EVELYN HOPE. 
 
 Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 
 
 Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
 That is her bookshelf, this her bed ; 
 
 She plucked that piece of geranium-flower. 
 Beginning to die, too, in the glass. 
 
 Little has yet been changed, I think : 
 The shutters are shut, no light may pass 
 
 Save two long rays through the hinge's 
 chink. 
 
 Sixteen years old when she died ! 
 
 Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name ; 
 It was not her time to love ; beside. 
 
 Her life had many a hope and aim. 
 Duties enough and little cares, 
 
 And now was quiet, now astir. 
 Till God's hand beckoned unawares. 
 
 And the sweet white brow is all of her. 
 
 Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope ? 
 
 What, your soul was pure and true. 
 The good stars met in your horoscope. 
 
 Made you of spirit, fire, and dew — 
 
132 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 And, just because I was thrice as old, 
 
 And our paths in the world diverged so 
 wide. 
 
 Each was nought to each, must I be told ? 
 We were fellow-mortals, nought beside ? 
 
 No, indeed ! for God above 
 
 Is great to grant, as mighty to make. 
 And creates the love to reward the love : 
 
 I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
 Delayed it may be for more lives yet. 
 
 Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few : 
 Much is to learn and much to forget 
 
 Ere the time be come for taking you. 
 
 But the time will come, — at last it will. 
 
 When, Evelyn Hope, what mean (I shall 
 say) 
 In the lower earth, in the years long still. 
 
 That body and soul so pure and gay ? 
 Why your hair was amber I shall divine, 
 
 And your mouth of your own geranium's 
 red — 
 And what you would do with me, in fine, 
 
 In the new life come in the old one's stead. 
 
 I have lived (I shall say) so much since then. 
 
 Given up myself so many times, 
 Gained me the gains of various men. 
 
 Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes ; 
 
IV. EGBERT BROWNING. 133 
 
 Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 
 Either I missed or itself missed me : 
 
 And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 
 What is the issue ? Let us see ! 
 
 I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 
 
 My heart seemed full as it could hold-^ 
 There was place and to spare for the frank young 
 smile 
 
 And the red young mouth, and the hair's young 
 gold. 
 So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep : 
 
 See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand I 
 There, that is our secret : go to sleep ! 
 
 You will wake, and remember, and understand. 
 
134 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 The following little poem shows Browning's 
 profound knowledge of human nature. It opens 
 the very core of a woman's heart : — 
 
 A WOMAN'S LAST WORD. 
 
 Let's contend no more, Love, 
 
 Strive nor weep ; 
 All be as before, Love, 
 
 Only sleep ! 
 
 What so wild as words are ? 
 
 I and thou 
 In debate, as birds are, 
 
 Hawk on bough ! 
 
 See the creature stalking 
 
 While we speak ! 
 Hush and hide the talking. 
 
 Cheek on cheek ! 
 
 What so false as truth is. 
 
 False to thee ? 
 Where the serpent's tooth is. 
 
 Shun the tree ; 
 
 Where the apple reddens 
 
 Never pry — 
 Lest we lose our Edens, 
 
 Eve and I. 
 
IV. EGBERT BROWNING. 135 
 
 Be a god, and hold me 
 
 With a charm ! 
 Be a man, and fold me 
 
 With thine arm ! 
 
 Teach me, only teach. Love ! 
 
 As I ought 
 I will speak thy speech. Love, 
 
 Think thy thought- 
 Meet, if thou require it. 
 
 Both demands. 
 Laying flesh and spirit 
 
 In thy hands. 
 
 That shall be to-morrow, 
 
 Not to-night. 
 I must bury sorrow 
 
 Out of sight : 
 
 Must a little weep. Love 
 
 (Foolish me !), 
 And so fall asleep. Love, 
 
 Loved by thee. 
 
136 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 MY STAR. 
 
 All that I know 
 Of a certain star 
 
 Is, it can throw 
 (Like the angled spar) 
 
 Now a dart of red, 
 Now a dart of bhie ; 
 
 Till my friends have said 
 They would fain see, too, 
 My star that dartles the red and the blue ! 
 Then it stoops like a bird ; like a flower hangs 
 furled : 
 They must solace themselves with the Saturn 
 above it. 
 What matter to me if their star is a world ? 
 Mine has opened its soul to me ; therefore I 
 love it. 
 
 In that exquisite gem the English Dante cele- 
 brates his lost Beatrice. 
 
 By the poems quoted, I think I have proved 
 the universality of Browning's genius ; the 
 breadth of humour, the tender, exquisite pathos, 
 the all-penetrating insight he had into the 
 heights and depths of human thought, aspiration, 
 and passion ; and, above all, the passionate love 
 of truth, the manly honesty and directness of 
 his nature, with its intense scorn for all the 
 
IV. EOBEKT BROWNING. 137 
 
 tricks of the charlatan and shallow pretender. 
 I don't think I can conclude my paper better 
 than by quoting the lines of the great poet's wife 
 which were so exquisitely sung at the funeral at 
 Westminster Abbey, when England proved not 
 inadequately, I think, her love and veneration 
 for Robert Browning's genius and character. 
 
 '• What would we give to our beloved ? 
 The hero's heart to be unmoved, 
 
 The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep, 
 The patriot's voice to teach and rouse, 
 The monarch's crown to light the brows ? — 
 '' He giveth His beloved sleep." 
 
 " earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
 men, with wailing in your voices ! 
 
 O delved gold, the waller's heap ! 
 strife, O curse, that o'er it fall ! 
 God strikes a silence through you all, 
 
 And "giveth His beloved sleep." 
 
 " His dews drop mutely on the hill. 
 His cloud above it saileth still. 
 
 Though on its slopes men sow and reap. 
 More softly than the dew is shed, 
 Or cloud is floated overhead, 
 
 " He giveth His beloved sleep." 
 
 The poems from Mi\ Rolert Browning'' s nwrks included in 
 this sketch are printed hy special arrangement with Messrs. 
 Smith, Elder Sf Co. 
 
138 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The February number of the Argosy contains a very- 
 interesting article on Robert Browning. The writer, 
 Mrs. E. F. Bridell-Fox, is the daughter of the Rev. W. J. 
 Fox, afterwards member of Parliament for Oldham, who 
 was the first to heartily recognise the genius of Robert 
 Browning. Mr. Fox was then editor of the Monthly 
 Repository. Browning's " Pauline," his first poem, was 
 published in 1833, and Mr. Fox gave it the most un- 
 stinted praise. Robert Browning never forgot the cordial 
 praise and discriminating criticism his first work received 
 from Mr. Fox. Several of his shorter poems appeared 
 in the Monthly Repository. Mrs. Bridell-Fox quotes 
 several letters from Robert Browning to her father, 
 and from them I shall quote some passages. 
 
 In 1833 Browning wrote as follows to his friend and 
 critic :— 
 
 " I can only offer you my simple thanks, but they 
 are of the sort that we can only give once or twice in 
 a life. All things considered, I think you are almost 
 repaid if you imagine what I feel. As for the book, 
 I hope ere long to better it." 
 
 In the same year, the poet wrote again to his friend, 
 and from that letter I quote the following : — 
 
 " I shall never write a line without thinking of the 
 source of my first praise, be assured. . . ." 
 
 I regret I can only quote the following sentences from 
 another letter to Mr. Fox. 
 
IV. ROBERT BROWNING. 139 
 
 " Casa Guidi, January 1857. 
 
 " I wish from my heart we could get closer together 
 again, as in those old days, and what times we would 
 have together. ... I would, you know I would, always 
 would, choose you out of the whole English world to 
 judge and correct what I write myself. My wife shall 
 read this, and let it stand, if I have told her so, these 
 twelve years ; and certainly I have not grown intellectu- 
 ally one inch over the good and kind hand you extended 
 over my head, how many years ago ! " 
 
 The great poet's own lines alone do justice to the 
 cordial recognition so generously accorded to the first 
 work of Robert Browning, by Mr. W. J. Fox : — 
 
 " Stand still, true poet that you are, 
 
 I know you ; let me try and draw you. 
 Some night you'll fail us. When afar 
 
 You rise, remember one man saw you, 
 Knew you, and named a star." 
 
 In addition to the very interesting letter quoted, there 
 is a most vivid face-to-face portrait of the poet, when a 
 young man, drawn with great skill by the hand of Mrs. 
 Bridell-Fox, whose talent in artistic portraiture is well 
 known, on the occasion of his calling at her father's 
 house at Bayswater : — 
 
 " I remember that I was trying to copy Retsch's design 
 of a young knight surrounded by Undines, who seek 
 to entice him down with them into the waves, when 
 Mr. Browning entered the little drawing-room, with a 
 quick, light step, and on hearing from me that my 
 father was out — and, in fact, that nobody was at home 
 except myself— he said : ' It's my birthday to-day ; I'll 
 wait till they come in,' and sitting down to the piano, 
 he added : * If it won't disturb you, I'll play till they 
 return.' And as he turned to the instrument, the bells of 
 
140 FOUR GREAT TEACHERS. 
 
 some neighbouring church suddenly burst forth with a 
 frantic, merry peal. It seemed to my childish fancy 
 as if in response to his remark that it was his birthday. 
 He was then slim and dark, and very handsome ; and — 
 may I just hint it ? — just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to 
 lemon-coloured kid gloves, and such things, quite the 
 glass of fashion and the mould of form ! But full of 
 ambition, eager for success, eager for fame, and what's 
 more, determined to conquer and achieve success." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and A-ylesbtiry. 
 
Mr. Joseph Forster's Lectures 
 
 OM" 
 
 GREAT WRITERS AND SPEAKERS 
 English, French, German, and Spanish. 
 
 IIAUSTBATED BY 
 
 Vivid Biographical and Analytical Sf<etches of the following Authors :— 
 
 CARLYLE, EMERSON, RUSKIN, BROWNING, BURNS, 
 
 DICKENS, THACKERAY, HOOD, SHELLEY, 
 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 (Bcrman Mriters* 
 
 GOETHE (4 LECTURES), SCHILLER. LESSING, 
 RICHTER, HEINE. 
 
 afrcncb "Mriters. 
 
 MARIVAUX, VOLTAIRE, DIDEROT, ROUSSEAU, 
 
 BEAU-MARCHAIS, BERANGER, MIRABEAU, DANTON 
 
 AND ROBESPIERRE, VICTOR HUGO, 
 
 AND MR. FORSTER'S VERSION OF COMTE ALFRED 
 
 DE VIGNYS TRAGEDY, " CHATTERTON." 
 
 Spanisb Mriters. 
 
 LOPE DE VEGA, CALDERON, CERVANTES. 
 
 [For Press Notices see Following Pages.] 
 
A FEW PRESS NOTICES. 
 
 " London Society contains a lively chat on Beaumarchais, though it omits the 
 wittiest thing that was said in connection with the famous lawsuit. Beaumar- 
 chais had been • bldm6 ' by the Covirt, the consequences of ' bldm6 ' resembling 
 those of ' civil death.' Public sympathy being with him, however, he paraded 
 his stigma a little too ostentatiously, till an acquaintance dryly observed to him 
 • Monsieur, ce n'est pas assez que d'etre Udm4; ilfaut etre modeste.' "St. James' 
 Gazette and Budget, August 6th, 1887. 
 
 "Mr. Joseph Forster contributes a well-written sketch of the life of the 
 celebrated litterateur Diderot, from which is taken the following extract: — 
 ' The most tragic event in Diderot's life was the treachery of the rascally printer, 
 who, after Diderot had corrected the proofs for the remaining volumes of the 
 Encyclopaedia, which were to be launched simultaneously, cut out all the best 
 parts of the articles on his ignorant estimate of the danger there would be in 
 their publication, and, to the infinite grief and mad despair of Diderot, the grand 
 work of his life was truncated and nearly spoiled by an ignorant rascal of a 
 printer. Still, even in its present form, the Kncyclopsedia exists, a montmient to 
 the industry, the genius, and the courage of the great man who conceived the 
 idea, and worked with unflagging ardour and dauntless coxirage to give that idea 
 form and substance."'— Manchester Guardian, November 10th, 1886. 
 
 "Mr. Joseph Forster has a highly appreciative article on Thackeray, in which 
 the goodness of heart of the great novelist is justly extolled."— Morramg' Post, 
 February 2nd, 1888. 
 
 " Mr. Joseph Forster contributes a notice of ' Thackeray,' in which he is a little 
 too contemptuous of the ' Philistines ' who fail to recognise an immeasurable 
 genius, and persist in saying they cannot shut their eyes to a strain of cynicism, 
 in that very powerful novelist and satirist."— PicforiaZ World, February 9th, 1888. 
 
 "An article on Thackeray, by Joseph Forster, will be read with satisfaction."— 
 Tht Queen, February 11th, 1888. 
 
 " • William Makepeace Thackeray,' by Joseph Forster, is written with sincere and 
 loving appreciation of the distinguished satirist, and contains many illustra- 
 tions of the 'nobility, beauty, and tenderness of his genius.'" — Life, February 
 2nd, 1888. 
 
 '•There is a pleasant paper on Thackeray in London Society. The writer, Mr. 
 Forster, defends him from the charge of being a cynic. I am always reading 
 such defences as these, but I never met a person of any education who thought 
 Thackeray cymcal."— England, February llth, 1888. 
 
 "About the best article in the number {Time, of November) is one by Mr. 
 Joseph Forster on Diderot."— Birmingham Daily Post, November 2nd, 1886. 
 
 "A curious and significant sight was witnessed at the LimehouseTown Hall last 
 night, when a crowded meeting, largely composed of the poorest of the labouring 
 classes of the district, listened with appreciation and delight to a lecture by Mr. 
 
PHESS NOTICES— continued. 
 
 ■Joseph Forster on Victor Hiigo. The Common Council, we know, does not 
 approve of the great Frenchman, or care to pay him the honom: that it is com- 
 monly so forward to oflfer to moneyed or titled insignificance. But among the 
 workmen of London, whose approbation he would certainly have valued far more, 
 Victor Hugo is held in high esteem. The genuineness of this feeling is shown by 
 the fact that so many of the metropolitan candidates found it worth while 
 to be present at, or in some way associate their names with, the meeting of last 
 night. . . . The meeting was a thorough success, and should be a reproach to those 
 who accuse the English workman of insularity and of a soul that cannot rise 
 above his own material interests. Here is an undoubted case of enthusiasm for 
 a great man, and that man a foreigner, piu-ely on the ground of his intellectual 
 and moral gifts."— Pait Mall Gazette, July 24th, 1885. 
 
 "An admirable sketch of Rusktn, with choice passages from his writings." — 
 Leeds Mercury, November 3rd, 1887. 
 
 ..." And, what will be of infinite interest to all readers, the first part of a 
 series of articles on John Ruskin. Mr. Joseph Forster, who is responsible for 
 these papers, illustrates the ' Master's ' character by copious extracts from his 
 writings. But he is not backward in expressing an independent opinion. This Is 
 what Mr. Forster says about him :— 
 
 " John Ruskin, with a chivalrous disregard of the wear-and-tear consequent upon 
 mingling in the dusty daily fray, breaks out here with a letter, and there with a 
 lecture, dealing directly with the topic of the horn-. He is constantly tapped by 
 the foolishest people. ... To those who can weigh, measure, and discriminate 
 between his opinions, and as a noble and chivalrous denouncer of the infinite 
 vulgarity and stupid greed of the age, his teachings are of unspeakable value.' " 
 —Sheffield Daily Telegraph, October 27th, 1887. 
 
 "The best of the miscellaneous articles is Mr. Joseph Forster's account of 
 Ruskin's life and work." — Morning Post, November 2nd, 1887. 
 
 " Mr. Joseph Forster contributes an article of much interest about 'John 
 Ruskin,' whose numerous admirers will, we think, not complain of the estimate 
 formed of their hero."— The Queen, November 19th, 1887. 
 
 " To some doubtless the best thing in the number [London Society, November] 
 will be Mr. Joseph Forster's capital account of Mr. Ruskin, in which we have 
 much information as to Mr. Ruskin's ways."— PwbMc Opinion, November 4th, 1887. 
 
 " There is one paper on 'John Ruskin.' It is mainly composed of extracts, very 
 carefully and judiciously selected, in order to bring out the light and shade of his 
 character and genius. We note one curious little point. The writer (Mr. J. 
 Forster) devotes a page or two to "Wordsworth, because, as he says, to understand 
 Ruskin it is necessary to understand Wordsworth, adding, ' Ruskin is simply 
 saturated with Wordsworth.' Now, within the last few weeks a little book has 
 appeared with the title, ' Books that Have Influenced Me,' and Mr. Ruskin is 
 one of ten men of mark who supply autobiographic information on this point. 
 Mr. Ruskin gives Horace, Pindar, Dante, Scott, Byron, Pope, Coleridge, Keats, 
 Bums, Moli^re, etc., but he does not, either in his list or in a supplementary 
 letter, so much as allude to Wordsworth."— JSiV?ni«sr/iajft Daily Post, October 
 20th, 1887. 
 
 " • John Ruskin,' by Joseph Forster, will have many grateful readers, choice 
 illustrations being given of the beauty, intellectual and moral, contained in 
 Mr. Ruskin's writings."— Cam&ndsre Chronicle, November 11th, 1887. 
 
PRESS NOTICES— continued. 
 
 " Mr. Joseph Fobster on ' Thomas Cahlyle.'— Oq Tuesday night Mr. Joseph 
 Forster delivered a powerful lecture on ' Thomas Carlyle : his Life, Works, and 
 Character," at the Clapham Assembly Rooms. Dr. Eugene Oswald, M.A., 
 President of the Carlyle Society, presided. Mr. Forster in his lecture gave a 
 vivid sketch of Carlyle's father, and spoke of his attending a sermon when a 
 preacher painted the horrors of eternal punishment. Mr. Carlyle let him finish, 
 then left his pew, and planting himself before the clergyman, said, ' Ay, ye may 
 stump and stare till yer een start frae their sockets, but ye'U na gar me to believe 
 such stuff as that.' 'So much,' said the lecturer, 'for the very vertebrate 
 father of Carlyle.' Mr. Forster then painted, from Carlyle's own words, an 
 exquisite portrait of his mother. ' My mother stands in my memory as beautiful 
 in all that makes the excellence of woman. Pious and gentle she was, with an 
 unwearied devotedness to her family, a loftiness of moral aim and religious con- 
 viction which gave her presence and her humble home a sort of graciousness, and, 
 even as I see it now, dignity, and with it, too, a good deal of wit and originality of 
 mind. No man had better opportunities than I for comprehending, were they 
 comprehensible, the great depths of a mother's love for her children.' Mr. 
 Forster referred to Carlyle's literary struggle, and spoke of his contributions to 
 the Edinburgh Encyclopcedia, and his translation of ' Wilheim Meister,' which 
 Lord Jeffrey, the man who said that Wordsworth would not do, condemned as 
 'eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, and affected." . . . 'Almost from 
 beginning to end one flagrant offence against every rule of composition.' 'That,' 
 said the lecturer, ' is the kind of absurdity men of talent produce when they sit 
 in judgment on a man of genius." Mr. Forster then referred to Carlyle's ' Life of 
 Schiller,' which he considered one of the most fascinating biographies ever 
 written, and which Goethe himself translated into German. Mr. Forster gave 
 some fine selections from Carlyle's works in confirmation of his opinion of his 
 character and genius. At the conclusion of the lecture, Mr. Forster proposed a 
 vot(5 of thanks to Dr. Oswald for doing him the honour of presiding. This was 
 very cordially carried. Dr. Oswald, in returning thanks for the compliment, said 
 that two new books were coming out which would dispel the cloud of prejudice 
 which had gathered round the genius of Carlyle ; one was his early letters, and 
 the other the letters of Goethe and Carlyle.— -S'om(A London Presn, December 
 11th, 1886. 
 
 " Mr. Joseph Forster's lecture on ' Emerson,' delivered at the Crystal Palace, on 
 Friday last, proved very interesting. In speaking of Emerson's self-tmst, the 
 lecturer said :— ' A man who thinks of the success of his writing, and not of 
 his writing only, may gain a superficial success ; he may be noticed in the Times, 
 and even worse papers, but he never gains, and never deserves to gain, a hold on 
 the brains and hearts of mankind. It is not by pleasing the vulgar that a man 
 succeeds ; it is by pleasing the wise and discriminating, who dictate to the vulgar 
 what to admire. Genius can only be thoroughly appreciated by genius. A man 
 can only really be judged by his peers. But still we little people may pick up 
 some thoughts and ideas suitable to our size, and, if we are strong enough, carry 
 them away." Mr. Forster, in the course of his lecture, introduced, with great 
 effect, Mr. Lowell's parallel between Carlyle and Emerson, one of the wittiest, 
 wisest, and brightest things of that most genial writer and man."— Society, 
 March 22nd, 1884. 
 
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