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 CJc/HOEVER possesses or 
 hopes to possess more than 
 he needs . . . more than a 
 house, a garden, a room full 
 of books ... is doomed to 
 keeping static the order in 
 which he lives. 
 
 — Ludwig Lewisohn 
 
 ^hilip "TDurham-j
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 The Vital Study of Literature and 
 Other Essays
 
 THE VITAL STUDY OF 
 LITERATURE 
 
 and OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 William Norman Guthrie 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 CHARLES H. SERGEL & COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1912. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM NORMAN GUTHRIE
 
 PR 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword 7 
 
 The Vital Study of Literature 15 
 
 Translation : A Method for the Vital Study 
 of Literature. 41 
 
 The Utility of Beauty 107 
 
 A Theory and Vindication of tlie Comic 129 
 
 The Religious Poetry of Schiller 150 
 
 Goethe as Poet-Prophet 188 
 
 Untranscendental Optimism and the Poetry 
 of George Meredith 224 
 
 William Blake— Poet and Artist 2G8 
 
 William Blake— Mystic 29G 
 
 Walt Whitman, the Poetic Artist 322 
 
 Two Contemporary Mystics : Maeterlinck and 
 Alden 344 
 
 Appendix < 377
 
 FOREWORD. 
 
 The present volume cannot claim to be a real 
 book. A real book is the product of long and great 
 love for some one inspiring idea. The creative 
 toil may have been intermittent, yet some single 
 preconceived plan has secured in advance the or- 
 ganic unity of the finished work. Now this, that 
 lies before the reader, is but a loose aggregation 
 of lectures committed to paper after the white 
 heat of delivery had cooled, together with several 
 more or less painstaking and extensive reviews, 
 written because of particular concern in a con- 
 temporary publication or for the promotion of an 
 espoused cause, each separately composed without 
 any regard whatever to the possible or actual ex- 
 istence of one another. When, however, these de- 
 tached lectures and essays came to be collected, — 
 all but one of which appeared at the time of their 
 production in some periodical — what surprised 
 not a little their compiler and reviewer was the 
 inherent unity of design and tendency they ex- 
 hibit. To group them was no difficult task. First 
 were naturally placed four papers in which cer- 
 tain beliefs held and abided by as teacher and 
 lecturer are advocated not unseldom with what 
 may, to the precise and frigid, seem quite inordi- 
 nate zeal. In year-long struggle for the recogni- 
 tion of certain values aesthetic and intellectual.
 
 8 FOREWORD 
 
 tlie writer had become unconsciously a special 
 pleader; lie had grown paradoxical in method of 
 statement, to keep his audience duly attentive 
 to the ignored obvious, and to the subtly elusive; 
 oracular, lest admitting exceptions, the rule be 
 disesteemed; ardent, emphatic, even vehement, to 
 kindle interest if possible in the indifferent and 
 temperamentally non-committal. 
 
 The second third of this volume consists of three 
 studies devoted to what may be called orphic 
 poetry, by manifest allusion to the spell-power 
 and the mystic unintelligibility of that singer, who 
 set the trees deep-rooted in the soil of convention, 
 a-dancing, and caused the brute beast of greed and 
 carnal desire to wax human and divinely sane. 
 That myth has long been to the writer a solace 
 and a confession of faith. In bringing out his 
 collection of verse: ''Orpheus To-day," it had 
 been given precedence of every other theme. In 
 his view, the great poet was always a prophet of 
 glories to come. Even a Leopardi, in his direst 
 lyrical pessimisms, fills the reader with pride of 
 breed, akin, as he feels himself, to so sincere and 
 fervent a disallower of things as they are. 
 
 The likelihood, indeed, seems to be that great 
 poets shall be great men also, even if not always 
 so good as the self-righteous Ben Jonson affirmed, 
 who pictures himself as bearing Ms "own inno- 
 cency about" him, reckless of the hazard it ran 
 thus of soil or dent! If great men, the great 
 poets will doubtless experience a large vital sym-
 
 FOREWORD d 
 
 patby with their fellows. Furthermore, they will 
 
 be organic and original, that is spontaneous, in 
 
 thought, and wonted to free initiative as regards 
 
 expression. Hardly can they be suckled at the 
 
 breasts of contemporaneous institutions, and 
 
 thrive for long on the pure milk of an orthodox 
 
 tradition. They will cry with Emerson : 
 
 "We drink diluted wine, 
 We eat ashes foi* bread." 
 
 They are, at all cost of anxiety and distress to 
 themselves and those they hold dear, fated to as- 
 cend (or, as the case may appear to be, descend,) 
 until they have explored what they deem veritable 
 sources. There alone can they brook to drink 
 themselves of the water of life freely; and hav- 
 ing quenched their thirst, they will catch perforce 
 a little thereof in some poetic vessel, and gra- 
 ciously store it for the elect of mankind, to 
 awake in them the ambition of a similar quest. 
 
 The great poets are not when at their worthiest, 
 professing teachers. A stated message, so-called, 
 they rarely intend to convey. Didactic verses, at 
 all events, they abhor, except in their dotage, or 
 in a drowsy hour when all things lapse to aesthetic 
 confusion. Pedagogues and mystigogues, dema- 
 gogues, and peripatetic venders of panaceas, the 
 great poets are never ! But in their own spiritual 
 initiations, secrets were revealed to them that 
 must gain utterance, all the more prophetic when 
 unaware, not because the doctrine, as such, has to 
 be imparted, but that its emotional concomitants
 
 10 FOREWORD 
 
 of wonder and worship press for aesthetic con- 
 straint and communication. They have what 
 seems to them the life-giving truth; and the pas- 
 sionate love thereof, and the joy of its possession, 
 incite to lyric ecstasies, which break forth of 
 themselves and inevitably into lyric numbers. 
 These duly fashioned by wonted technique to love- 
 liness, capture us quite apart from pedantical 
 question of agreement with their implicit doctrine. 
 So, the three papers discussing the religious 
 burden of Schiller, Goethe and Meredith were 
 written very much in the same spirit as most of 
 the essays, constituting a book now out of print, 
 entitled: ''Modern Poet-Prophets", which met 
 with many kind welcomes from reviewers, alike 
 those who accepted and those who rejected our 
 presuppositions. For surely it must be of no in- 
 considerable value to ascertain exactly what the 
 great poets thought, as poets, of the soul, of im- 
 mortality, of righteousness, of God? When the 
 great poets confront for themselves, and as poets, 
 the religious, ethical and aesthetical ultimates, and 
 give a luminous and persuasive account of what 
 they behold and believe, their \dsion and faiths 
 have at least the authority inherent in their su- 
 pra-normal sensibility, their richer organic re- 
 sponse to ideas, their conscious need for truly 
 adorable ideals, and their imaginative ability to 
 juxtapose all values for a relative reappraise- 
 ment. What a poet, as a poet, thinks and sings of 
 the soul, of immortality, of good, and of God, may
 
 FOREWORD 11 
 
 not perhaps determine his distinctive and aesthetic 
 contribution; but surely it must greatly qualify 
 and tend to define his relation with lettered as 
 well as unlettered mankind. A Sophocles, a Dante, 
 a Milton, an Omar, without just their special and 
 admitted attitudes toward things human and di- 
 vine, might conceivably be as great, nay greater, 
 artists in verse, and in their several poetic genres; 
 but they would indubitably make quite another 
 and very likely a less significant and perennial 
 appeal. 
 
 Such, then, is the only needed justification for 
 inquiries of this kind; and one, we fancy, which 
 even the 'Art-for-Art's-sake' partisan may be in- 
 duced to admit; however much he himself, quite 
 properly, prefers to examine and commend other 
 aspects of poetic performance. 
 
 The remaining papers in this compilation, two 
 on Blake, one on Whitman, and one on Maeterlinck 
 and Henry ^lills Alden as literary mystics, may 
 vex a few readers who are moved perhaps to ap- 
 proval and sympathy by the earlier portions of 
 our volume. Absurd enough, indeed, seems Em- 
 erson's claim for Swedenborg, when he set him 
 with Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe, as 
 a poet, on the vertiginous summit of Parnassus. 
 A mystic, who, God-intoxicated, sees wondrous 
 visions but cannot indue them with beautiful form 
 for the enraptured eye and ear, is no wise a poet, 
 however meritorious a teacher, and effective a re- 
 ligious inspirer. But if a mystic should somehow.
 
 12 FOREWORD 
 
 by special grace divine, compass a modicum of 
 Art, he is likely to obtain a place so high as to 
 dwell far above the perfect technicians, who ut- 
 ter no paljDitating words, and he will come thus 
 to rank only a little lower than the Archangels 
 of Sublimest Art ; in some instances, winning more 
 ardent devotion than his poetic betters from sucli 
 as intimately know and esteem his work. It is 
 strangely interesting to note how from anthology 
 to anthology William Blake grows in representa- 
 tion, — until he, knowoi but little a while ago only 
 for his ''Tiger, Tiger" and his "Little Lamb", 
 is, in a recent one, allowed twice as many poems 
 as Robert Burns ! 
 
 To the writer of these papers, however, uncon- 
 scious of any partiality to mysticism, per se, 
 Blake and Goethe, Whitman and Sophocles, must 
 approve themselves at the same bar of criticism : — 
 to serve man best as Poets, and in Blakean phrase 
 "the best, most", — being the assumed safest 
 token of abiding greatness. Blake, with the Eos- 
 settis, Swinbourne, Richard Garnett, ay, and Stop- 
 ford Brooke, for spon-sors, has surely achieved a 
 place of his own among our lyrical poets, whatever 
 Professor Basil de Lelincourt, as devil's advocate, 
 may academically adduce to the contrary. Whit- 
 man may comport himself after all as no more 
 than an ancestor; but, even then, he would be 
 worthier of consideration than an effete scion of 
 ancient lineage. And oh, to think of the future 
 society of Daughters Pre-Adamite and Sons of
 
 FOREWORD 13 
 
 Calamus! If Whitman's aesthetic theories be er- 
 roneous, so were assuredly those of Wordsworth 
 and Browning. Of few poets can more than a 
 fractional portion of their entire output deserve 
 to be called poetry, and included in the "World's 
 Larger Bible"; and if the fraction be propor- 
 tionately large, then the total published j^roduct 
 no doubt has been exceedingly exiguous! Let of 
 Whitman much or little be reckoned amiss, and 
 mercifully dropped in the poke of oblivion, yet 
 notwithstanding, enough will remain to elicit ad- 
 miration and give delight, whatever else may hap- 
 pen incidentally to our hostile canons and sorely 
 perplexed categories of literary excellence. 
 
 Not flaunting any perverse or specious hetero- 
 doxy, nor acknowledging any extravagant cult, 
 the latter papers are included without any sense 
 of apologj^ due. The same attitude was in their 
 instance adopted, as in those on Goethe and Schil- 
 ler, universally accepted classics. Always th^ 
 negative had the burden of the proof; always a 
 personal sympathy was granted the benefit of the 
 doubt in controversy with temperamental an- 
 tipathy. If Maeterlinck should seem to be excep- 
 tionally dealt with, the comparison was not insti- 
 tuted to extol Mr. Alden's work by the method of 
 unfair contrast, but merely to call attention to our 
 current misconceptions, with regard to the philo- 
 sophic and religous implications of the famous 
 Fleming's plays and essays. Many have beheld 
 his mysteries, and, duly mystified, have ever after-
 
 14 FOREWORD 
 
 ward adopted a tone of pious hushed awe in the 
 discussion of the same. That Maeterlinck ex- 
 ploits our instinctive respect for mysticism, and 
 our religious reverences for a novel shudder or 
 tremulous revery; that he obscures and confuses 
 moral values in his predilection for silvery twi- 
 lights and purple gloamings of sensibility; that 
 his transcendentalism is pessimistic, rather than, 
 as commonly assumed, an elevation quite super- 
 human, indicative of a vital need to pass beyond 
 the seen into the unseen; so much could be more 
 effectively affirmed by comparison with the atti- 
 tude of the American's work; which, if it be held 
 inferior for grace and magnetic charm, is on the 
 other hand, most evidently symptomatic of a much 
 sounder moral and spiritual constitution. 
 
 Such are the three parts of this volume; modest 
 by-products of a teacher's and lecturer's activi- 
 ties. Now, to whom should the whole be fitly dedi- 
 cated, if not to those who followed the lecturer 
 from year to year, or who were his fellow students 
 in the classroom? To them, therefore, in grati- 
 tude, the fate of this publication is committed, 
 without begging of favor, or contrite fears of ill- 
 desert. And to them left nameless, for various 
 ■ and manifest reasons, herewith be the volume in- 
 scribed. 
 
 William Norman Guthrie. 
 
 Sewanee, Tennessee, July, 1911.
 
 THE VITAL STUDY OF LITERATURE. 
 
 I. 
 
 Self-complacent illiteracy in educated adults 
 is supposed to be an incurable disease. '*I don't 
 like poetry," the sagacious man will tell you, is 
 quite as final a verdict as *'I don't like young 
 onions." To be sure, it is useless to argue about 
 tastes. Yet one may appeal from Philip drunk to 
 Philip sober. If your arrogant damner of art 
 can be brought to realize that his anathemas hurt 
 none but himself, he may try what a few beati- 
 tudes, devoutly uttered, might do to improve the 
 situation. If he comes back with a disagreeable 
 impression from the paradise of so many gi-eat 
 souls, whom he hypocritically admits to be greater 
 than himself, may it not be the bad company he 
 has traveled with? or his absent-minded absorp- 
 tion, or his undue haste, that are to blame? or 
 perchance the green goggles he habitually wore 
 to prevent his seeing things rose-colored, like 
 happy young folk? or perhaps that he never \ds- 
 ited the country at all, and wrongs his own judg- 
 ment and healthy power of perception by the 
 promulgation of hearsay? 
 
 How many an adult of literary disposition and 
 inborn aptitude for appreciating the noblest works 
 of poetic art will admit that he never, since he 
 
 15
 
 16 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 left school, read any work on English literature 
 but Taine's ''History" in Van Laun's transla- 
 tion! And what other handbook should he have 
 read? If he picked up any by the pedagogues and 
 critics of international repute, an intuition, self- 
 preservative and tyrannous, made him quickly 
 lay it down. And well for him, doubtless, that he 
 obeyed. It might have extinguished what flame of 
 aesthetic fire did vet flicker in his secret soul. 
 
 The truth about the matter is, literature cannot 
 be directly taught. It is not a science. Nor is it, 
 so far as academic instruction goes, an art. Lit- 
 erature is a collective name for masterpieces of 
 literary art. The art might and doubtless should 
 be taught creatively as are other arts, not to 
 increase the quantity of production — but secure 
 a proper diffusion of humility, and teach genius 
 to put up long at a certain inn — whose swinging 
 sign is a poke or waste basket of vast pro- 
 portions. But, for the unprofessional, master- 
 pieces of literary art should be objects of enjoy- 
 ment, rather than of study. The teaching required 
 is a personal preparation for enjoyment. The 
 understanding of a poem, as a piece of writing, 
 versifying, thinking, feeling, is not identical with 
 the enjoyment of it; and its raison d' etre is not 
 the former but the latter. The latter does imply 
 the former ; and yet is it not true that the former 
 (the understanding) is not to be got so much from 
 a vivisection of the poem (sure to become an 
 autopsy before the student knows it), as from the
 
 OF LITERATURE 17 
 
 proper education of the student in certain ele- 
 mentary arts and sciences, or even more probably 
 by his lessons in life's school of experience? For 
 one who gets a love of Milton's epic from parsing 
 a speech of Satan, or the old-fashioned, primitive 
 memorizations, there are thousands who ever after 
 secretly congratulate themselves that they do not 
 write like Milton. Fortunately for them, his fame 
 is such that they may safely neglect to read his 
 works. Dore will suffice — and the school memo- 
 ries of syntactic involution! Besides, well-bred 
 people never discuss the classics — only writings 
 warranted ephemeral and interesting! 
 
 It is not that adults lack time, ''habits of 
 study," or capacity for continuous attention, for 
 self-compulsion. No. They cheerfully labor at 
 their callings in and out of season. They will 
 acquire a science or an art as a personal accom- 
 plishment. But then some definite use is in view: 
 an increase of power, a display of personal excel- 
 lence. Now, why then is literature so rarely the di- 
 version of the busy man's leisure hours — his 
 opiate, his stimulant, his food of the spirit? Those 
 of us who know what literature has been to leaders 
 of men in the past ; how, directly or indirectly, from 
 it, the preserver and transmitter of our racial 
 achievement, all of character almost and conduct do 
 as a matter of fact ultimately derive ; those of us 
 who have, not just professionally as teachers, 
 critics, litterateurs, but personally as men and 
 women, drunk freely of those waters of life, and
 
 18 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 been refreshed, intoxicated — nay, renewed — as 
 though, indeed, they were love-philters drawn from 
 the fount of eternal youth; — how can we help la- 
 menting that so many about us refuse to drink 
 with us to their health and our happiness of this 
 well at the world's end and the soul's new begin- 
 ning? 
 
 How can we not wish to do something to cure 
 their self-complacent, willful illiteracy ? And who 
 is to blame for the disease, if such it be! AVho, if 
 not the teacher, the critic, the litterateur! Their 
 sins of commission and their sins of omission are 
 indeed grievous. What was done at school for the 
 adult of to-day! "What were his text-books! Is 
 their memory fragrant! And since he has been 
 out of school, what book about English literature 
 has been put into his hands which, vitally inter- 
 esting in its conception and execution, showed to 
 him the value of its subject ; made him realize his 
 need of acquaintance with the best that has been 
 written! Ah! the truth is, it is just here that he 
 has been irritated. The best! Who was to decide 
 about that! Dead men, or men as good as dead, 
 or himself! And so he concluded, that because 
 he could not accept traditional estimates, he was 
 a peculiar man, — probably blessedly so ; one, at all 
 events, that didn't care for poetry except, per- 
 haps, the "Psalm of Life," and of course Shakes- 
 peare — in unverified theory. 
 
 Literature is for life, not life for literature. 
 This any man is quite clear about who hasn't a
 
 OF LITERATURE 19 
 
 professorial chair in a classic hall. I have to live 
 — earn my living, fulfill my human obligations, 
 and enjoy myself. If you can show me that the 
 study requisite for the enjoyment of literature 
 will help me to enjoy myself, to make myself en- 
 joyable; that literature is capable of liberating 
 new energies in me, communicating to me an else 
 impossible ecstasy; fit me, indeed, for greater 
 efficiency as son, lover, husband, father — nay, as 
 laborer, journeyman, manufacturer, citizen, — be- 
 cause quickening me as man in hitherto undreamed 
 of ways ; then it is quite probable that I shall make 
 some effort to verify my dogma (that I do not 
 like poetry), and see whether perhaps I am not 
 mistaken after all. But be it understood, I must 
 be shown all this, not told about it. I must be given 
 at least a vicarious experience for provisional 
 faith, till right Imowledge can be got for myself 
 with the personal experience of what literature, 
 with proper self-preparation, can do for me. Most 
 likely I read little else than the newspaper, or the 
 cheap magazine made up in large part of illustra- 
 tions ; occasionally a novel that is forced upon me 
 by the clamors of my friends and neighbors, and 
 more in self-defense than out of curiosity, be it 
 confessed. At school, at college, I never really 
 received pleasure from any literature. I heard a 
 great deal of praise of what I did not like. It has, 
 however, occurred to me that with the advent of 
 maturer years I might perhaps lie able to agree 
 with some of those then apparently quite extrava-
 
 20 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 gant estimates. Masterpieces, naturally enougli, 
 make demands of me proportional to their great- 
 ness. I am prepared for that. Nothing worth 
 having is got without effort. You can't climb a 
 mountain as easily as you can fall to the earth 
 from a balloon. AVhat is the line of least resist- 
 ance for me, the easiest and quickest ascent? I 
 want a guidebook; not an omniscient "Murray," 
 but a plain, practical ''Baedecker." Yes, but then 
 my mind is not wholly made up. The "Bae- 
 decker" is dry reading. Besides, I can't make 
 my own itinerary, and who is going to be my 
 ''Cook?" 
 
 II. 
 
 Well, there are books of travel, the experiences 
 and opinions of men who have seen for them- 
 selves. Ah, yes, the essayists ! Of course, if they 
 do not merely repeat the traditions of the elders, 
 their authority is that of private judgment. If 
 only they are honest with me, however, and allow 
 me to understand what manner of men they them- 
 selves are, I can make needful allowance for dif- 
 ference in point of view. But the "ipse dixit" of 
 an Arnold is not likely to satisfy me. The meth- 
 ods of the wine taster applied to landscape or 
 poetry are likely to arouse good-humored mirth 
 at a critic's expense, even if he be in his own right 
 a poet of distinction. "Is Niagara great? Call 
 to mind that sunrise you saw in the Alps. Do 
 they affect you similarly? If so, Niagara, though
 
 6P LITERATURE 21 
 
 So recent an addition to the list of nature's won- 
 ders, is classic!" Besides, I cannot, as a man of 
 the world, help calling into question a man's 
 loves. There is the craze and the fad. Men want 
 a thing not because it is good (though it may be 
 so), but for the reason that others want it; such 
 are the sheep. Or men want a thing to be singu- 
 lar, just because others don't want it; such are 
 the goats. So I, who have a partiality for neither 
 sheep nor goats ; who am a man, or try to be one, 
 and pity the sheepish craze, and despise the capri- 
 cious fad, cannot help being doubtful of literary 
 exhorters, special pleaders, apologetes, even when 
 I am confident they are not mere exploiters of 
 good subjects. True enough that whatever a liv- 
 ing man praises must have contributed something 
 to his life, but does he give me a fair account of 
 the ''good it has done him" to adopt Matthew 
 Arnold's witticism? At all events, because the 
 essayist had a confined subject, I have little 
 chance for ascertaining how much of craze or fad 
 there is involved in his estimate. 
 
 As for a man's hates, they are of course far less 
 reliable than his loves. What he loves he may be 
 quite right about, as nine times out of ten he is; 
 what he hates he is sure to be wrong in, ten times 
 out of nine. There is ignorance, prejudice, mis- 
 taken theory of its object's inconsistency with 
 what he loves, incompatibility of temper, tempera- 
 mental incapacity; yes, there is so much that will 
 account for the hatred more easily than the vice
 
 22 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 or defect of the hated, that, as a man of the world, 
 I pay little heed to polemics, diatribe, denuncia- 
 tion. Let Swinburne talk of Byron's "dirty, 
 draggle-tail drab of a muse," and I will laugh at 
 Swinburne, even though I should never read my 
 Byron. 
 
 I turn again to the "manuals of literature." 
 They will give me Pisgah-sights of the promised 
 land. Alas! these handbooks turn out upon in- 
 spection to be not manuals of literature at all, 
 though in their way erudite and meritorious. 
 (1) They are histories of literary production, 
 rather than histories of literature. They show 
 how certain times were marked by the making of 
 certain sorts of works in prose or verse. They 
 show how the intellectual history of the nation 
 can be learned by a careful scrutiny of these 
 works in chronological order. (2) Or our hand- 
 books are biographical dictionaries of authors 
 arranged in order of birth. I am shown how the 
 men, being what they were (literary gossip), wrote 
 certain works (symptoms) ; or vice versa, gossip 
 was wrong; by their fruits ye shall know them, 
 the knowledge of the dead wood being the reason 
 for tasting the preserved fruit, rather than appe- 
 tite or gormandise. (3) Or our handbooks are 
 scrupulous studies of the development of literary 
 forms — how, for instance, the drama came to be 
 what it was in Shakespeare's hands, and there- 
 fore how it can or can't become this or that in the 
 future; as though we should study the bottles,
 
 OF LITERATURE 23 
 
 their origin and destiny, rather than drink the 
 good wines contained. (4) Or our handbooks are 
 attempts to show by structural and stylistic criti- 
 cism that there never really were any literary 
 masterpieces; that men of genius are, however, 
 alive to-day who doubtless could (and would but 
 for lack of time and inclination) create substi- 
 tutes for the much discredited classics! 
 
 More probably our handbooks are all of these 
 things at once. Better, surely, for my purposes 
 (poor academic outcast that I am) would have 
 been the old-fashioned cemetery, where the epi- 
 taphs on dead authors' monuments were strictly 
 anonjTiious, and a glimpse of the dry bones (called 
 ''beauties") given through a becoming crack in 
 each tomb. At least, such manuals suggested 
 wholesome meditations on the vanity of fame and 
 modern progress in the embalmer's art. 
 
 The truth is, I, the unpedantical ordinary man, 
 want vital criticism based on principles for which 
 the justification is in me. It is I, the consumer, 
 that am to be considered, not the jDroducer. It is 
 not Milton's fame that is to be fostered, but my 
 life that is to be made more abundant. What can 
 I (not you, pedant, pensioner of the Muses, 
 but I) get from such and such masterpieces? 
 That is the question I want answered. ^Yliat are 
 they really about, those masterpieces you are i:)aid 
 to commend and bewilderingly annote? What do 
 I need to know, in what mood must I be, to enjoy 
 them by myself, without your intruded company?
 
 U THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 Quick, wliat attitude must I take toward themf 
 for if I expect a funeral oration, a jest will affect 
 me as unseemly. Don't tell me what tliose mas- 
 terpieces are not, but wliat they are. Please don't 
 compile a list of works I needn't read, telling me 
 why I needn't or oughtn't to; but furnish me a 
 descriptive catalogue of works which, if I love my 
 soul, I must read. Which will be likely to liberate 
 energy? which to produce ecstasy? Which will 
 conduct my passions innocuously out of reality 
 into the safe world of day-dream and vision? 
 which excite me, save me from lethargy, paraly- 
 sis, coma ? Which will produce that quiet felicity, 
 that reasonless jubilation for which there are no 
 words? that panic at the presence of the divine? 
 Ah! and while you do all this, dear mentor, or 
 part of this, for me — making allowance for varie- 
 ties of temperament, for difference of age, pre- 
 scribing the favorable conditions — I absolutely 
 insist on being entertained. My informer, to be 
 trustworthy when his report is "of beauty," must 
 make me believe he has blood in his veins like 
 myself, not ink or midnight oil; solid flesh under 
 sensitive skin, not paper pulp bound in cloth, calf, 
 sheep, or morocco. In plain words, he must know 
 whereof he speaks, and love it with the love that 
 passes knowledge ; know me and love me, who am 
 to listen with a passion appropriate to my righte- 
 ous self-love; know how to speak, and love to 
 speak. If not, pray let him be silent. He is a 
 thief, with designs on my pocketbook, and I should 
 be foolish indeed were I to lend him mine ears.
 
 OF LITERATURE S5 
 
 As for the principles governing the selection of 
 suhjects for presentation and judicious yet en- 
 thusiastic praise, shall they be esoteric, the secrets 
 of academic hierophants; shall they be always 
 substantiated only by references to the ''lost 
 VedasT' Must they not, if they are to win my 
 provisional confidence, be such as I can verify in 
 myself and my common world of men? principles 
 of large application, axiomatic, or at least corol- 
 laries to theorems which, upon some reflection, 
 common sense adorns with a cheerful Q. E. D.? 
 For whether literature be or be not the criticism 
 of life, life most assuredly is and must be the 
 criticism of literature. I will not live in a tomb, 
 not even a Pharaoh's of the most famous dynasty, 
 though a pyramid commanding the attention of 
 the entire tourist world. I prefer my hovel of 
 mud-plastered logs, my children about my knees, 
 and my wife laughing at their nonsensical prat- 
 tle and mischievous i)ranks. It is in my living 
 human nature and that of my fellows that the 
 data for the critic's judgments must be found, if 
 I am to lend them provisional credence. Only 
 such a handbook as does this, and declares itself 
 frankly, can help me to recant manfully, and 
 admit that under certain conditions I do love, 
 should, could, or at least would love poetry if I 
 could. 
 
 But what are, in the opinion of the writer of 
 this paper, these principles, and where are they to 
 be studied? Manifestly at the book shop, the
 
 26 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 news stand, the office of tlie public library. Ob- 
 serve how mankind selects among books of con- 
 temporary authorship, for which no ancient fame 
 imposes artificial reverence. Every one has no- 
 ticed that the book of which but a few years ago, 
 joerhaps, several hundred thousand copies were 
 sold is never to-day in demand. No one speaks of 
 it; no one insists that you 7mist read it. Every- 
 body seems to have forgotten that it was once on 
 every table, in every mouth. How is this? My 
 bookseller tells me that more recent books have 
 taken the popular fancy. So I discover at once 
 the law of death. Other things being equal, the 
 newest novel is the best. Old books are good not 
 because of their age, but in spite of it. Their 
 survival is a proof that new books are not their 
 equals in some important res^Dects ; for only if the 
 old gives what the new cannot supply does it con- 
 tinue to find readers. The greater the output of 
 novels the higher the mortality rate. A work of 
 fiction which in these days of excessive produc- 
 tion and publication retains a respectable body of 
 readers is not without singular merit of some 
 sort. Now, I, the common man, begin to under- 
 stand why the classics are prohahly great. If 
 they are not now mere fossils stored in glass 
 cases of scholarly museums, if they are really liv- 
 ing creatures still, great and wonderful must be, 
 indeed, in them the spirit of life. 
 
 But what is it that causes certain books to 
 retain attention even when novelty is worn off?
 
 OF LITERATURE 27 
 
 Why can they successfully compete with each 
 annual generation hegotten and born and reared 
 to commercial importance expressly for the lucra- 
 tive diversion of the injudicious public? Why is 
 it that as a rule the public preserves just those 
 books that were not written for its sake? Is it 
 that, after all, the i:>ublic is deeper, truer, sincerer 
 than it seems? that what is not deep, true, and 
 sincere in it is essentially capricious? that what 
 therefore only satisfies the peculiar cra\dng of 
 to-day cloys, palls — nay, nauseates — on the mor- 
 row? And that some of the books, written from a 
 necessity to write, may have come from the deep, 
 true, and sincere in their authors, and therefore 
 appeal to what is permanent in man, and obtain — 
 not the loud hysterical applause, — but the praise 
 of the still small voice which speaks in divers 
 accents, but always to the same jDurpose: — the 
 best good of what is best in man? 
 
 III. 
 
 The fact, then, seems to be that a novel (taking 
 the most alive of literary species as our instance) 
 subserves confessedly many uses as an article of 
 commerce quite distinct from its value as a work 
 of art. It is a patch of color on the shelf or table ; 
 a paper-weight for perfumed billet-doux; if not 
 too heavy, something to hold in the hand in lieu of 
 a fan; a symbol of leisure and gilded ennui; an 
 excuse for a bookplate and the display of a pur- 
 chased coat of aims ; an economical holiday gift ;
 
 28 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 a subject for cultured chitchat; an occasion for 
 the display of the nil-admirari spirit; something 
 to reconunend, like a favorite drug to an acquaint- 
 ance as inexpensive proof of sincere good will; 
 a means of enforcing Shakespeare's maxim, 
 ''Never a lender, but a borrower be!" These 
 uses (and we are too civilized, urbane and genial 
 to deny their importance) are not assuredly liter- 
 ary uses of books. They may increase the de- 
 mand for the publisher's wares — nay, affect the 
 supply thereof — but they have little to do with 
 the law of selection, perpetually at work, the law 
 of death. The illiterate often fancy that only de- 
 funct books are called classics, as for many and 
 sufficient reasons only the safely departed are 
 canonized. But the truth is that only living books 
 desei-ve and usually obtain the coveted designa- 
 tion, as only those men who live in the hearts of 
 mankind as an inspiration are the saints to whom 
 churches are dedicated and for whom asylums and 
 hospitals are named. But why, then, does the 
 novel fresh from the press often obtain a reading 
 in preference to the tried and tested predecessor? 
 Is it that, like Emerson, we are always on the 
 lookout for a gi'eat man, and suspect that some 
 hero's heart is beating under every little boy's 
 tight-buttoned waistcoat f I think not. Eather is 
 it to satisfy our curiosity, and give us a calmly 
 joyful sense of being up to date. Xow note that 
 a book cannot under any circumstances do this 
 more often than once in one season. If a book
 
 OF LITERATURE 29 
 
 does this and this only, or nothing else peculiarly- 
 well, it is promptly consigned to oblivion. And 
 that, thank heaven, is the death warrant of most 
 publications. 
 
 But a book gives me something besides. I expe- 
 rience as I toboggan down its steeps a delicious 
 excitement, a thrill, a quite extraordinary experi- 
 ence. In daily life I know always what to expect. 
 I am therefore thankful for the suspense, the 
 agony, the surprise. Besides, the dime museum 
 of monstrosities gives me as an after effect a pro- 
 found satisfaction with myself the normal man, 
 leading a normal life, in which premises lead to 
 conclusion, causes imply consequences, on a planet 
 where no ironic or freakish fate pulls" the wires 
 for the production of too ingenious coincidences. 
 If a book, however, does this and this only, or 
 nothing else peculiarly well, it will be soon super- 
 seded, because a sensation is relatively easy to 
 produce, and there are many who wield the pen 
 for a livelihood not without skill or courage. 
 
 Furthermore, perhaps a book mirrors some 
 phase of me to myself — exactly my present 
 thoughts, my present feelings. Ila, go to, I, even 
 I, am in print ! Eeally, then, I must be of public 
 interest. My vanity is nourished with lickerish 
 tidbits. But alas for this sycophant of a book, I 
 am fickle! Just because it flatters me to-day, it 
 will soem tedious, superficial, insipid next year. 
 Unless I have ceased to grow, I shall soon have 
 found its gannent of praise a shameful misfit.
 
 30 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 If, then, a book reflects the features of my opinion, 
 the complexion of my mood, and has won favor on 
 that sole account, doing me no nobler service, its 
 author may charge me with ingratitude; j'et I 
 shall soon hold his work in derision, or smile in- 
 dulgently at best on its disappointed pretenses to 
 further consideration. 
 
 But maybe the book in question does more than 
 this: it champions some cause to which I am 
 wedded, and I love him for my bride's sake. It 
 promotes my vested interests and has a clear title 
 to a commission. It inculcates my dogma of social 
 salvation as an active proselyter, subtly didactic, 
 persuasive, an incarnate homily; and I disburse 
 the price of the book as gladly as I contribute to 
 the support of foreign missionaries, or pay my 
 assessment toward a political campaign fund. 
 But note: Many will find themselves called to 
 preach lucratively, and the talent required for 
 respectable success as pedagogue or advocate is 
 by no means uncommon. The very fact that I 
 purchase this book, recommend it to my friends — 
 nay, present an entire edition of it to such as are 
 likely converts, and such things have happened in 
 the memory of living man — ay, this very consid- 
 eration will make it worth somebody's while to 
 supersede my skilful and valiant defender and 
 spreader of the faith with a more up-to-date 
 knight of the moon. 
 
 Finally a book does all or none of the above 
 adventitious delightsome things, but inexpen-
 
 OF LITERATURE 31 
 
 sively equips me with a convenient gallery of 
 caricatures. All the people I meet are there. It 
 furnishes me whimsical names wherewith I may 
 designate them behind their backs. My vocabu- 
 lary of urbane abuse is appreciably enlarged. In 
 other words, my gossip-passion is gratified — it 
 leads me to believe that I know my neighbor so 
 much better than he knows me. If a book does 
 this and this only, and nothing else peculiarly 
 well, it may live for a time. The cartoonist, how- 
 ever, is born anew in every generation. Surely I 
 shall find my children preferring another book, 
 and only yawning respectfully when I expatiate 
 on its truth, its humor, its wit, its wisdom. Gos- 
 sip stales. The affectations and mannerisms of 
 one age are unfortunately not those of another. 
 Our own seem charming, or at all events excusable, 
 but who will condone those of other times? Local 
 color, so called, has its dangers. It may be too 
 local. Besides, it will not be gossip any more 
 when the folk of whom it tells too distinctly are 
 dead! Unless, therefore, these likenesses have 
 independent value as portraits, who will admit 
 them to his gallery, even should it be explained to 
 him that they were sat for by the eminent mater- 
 nal great uncle, or the ladylike paternal great 
 aunt of his whilom next-door neighbor? 
 
 Now who is so bold or so ignorant as to deny 
 that a large share in the "success" of any novel 
 is due to novelty, surprise, flattery, doctrinal mes- 
 sage, and hitting off people? Yet surely these
 
 32 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 attributes and powers altogether never secured 
 longevity for a book, and certainly not what is 
 facetiously termed immortality. In judging ol 
 literature my desired handbook must, therefore, 
 be careful to exclude all books contemporary or 
 of the past, wdiicli have no better claims to consid- 
 eration. 
 
 But how shall we arrive at some positive prin- 
 ciples of selection! Examine the works that have 
 lived and compare them with works, contempor- 
 ary to them, that have perished 1 Yes. Of course. 
 What else would you do? Verify, however, your 
 conclusions by the psychology of readers — read- 
 ers fcr pleasure, aesthetic and vital profit — your- 
 self if you choose, the victim of your vivisections ; 
 but let it be yourself as private reader, not as pro- 
 fessional assenter or dissenter, as rattler of dead 
 bones, collector of curios, or as intellectual pres- 
 tidigitator and moral contortionist. If the exami- 
 nation is made patiently, without prejudice, fear, 
 or favor, something like the following principles 
 will be finally set forth as a critical working 
 hypothesis. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Well, then let us boldly italicize and itemize: 
 Characteristics Promoting Literary Longevity. — 
 First, the stuff (subject, idea) must be thoroughly 
 mastered, understood, grasped. If not, every Sat- 
 urn breeds his Jove. The work advertises the 
 stuff, subject, and idea, and ere long it will find
 
 OF LITERATURE 33 
 
 another .student wlio can present his truer view 
 as attractively. 
 
 Secondly, the composition of the elements or 
 parts of the stuff (subject or idea) must be signifi- 
 cant, interesting, lovely, beautiful, or sublime. 
 Such a juxtaposition of elements must be devised, 
 such a combination of foreground and back- 
 ground, such a fusion of various interests ef- 
 fected, that the whole shall satisfy, give delight, 
 haunt the memory, require fresh vision from time 
 to time. 
 
 These two attributes of a literaiy work (mas- 
 tery of the stuff, and proper composition) are 
 prior to the actual writing — belong to the mental 
 and passional, not to the verbal poem, drama, 
 novel, essay. 
 
 Thirdly, the construction of the written work, 
 its plan, plot, argument, scheme, must be such 
 that, however complex, it shows certain grand 
 simple lines which secure a sense of unity for it, 
 a pleasure to the reader in its retrospective con- 
 templation as a whole. The interest must be con- 
 tinuous, not diverted or dispersed. The center of 
 gravity must be safely within the base of the 
 structure. And this, because it will thus be best 
 remembered when its details are forgotten. It 
 will hold its own in memory, bo cherished so, 
 spoken of, and purposively recalled. Perfect 
 construction would imply that every character, 
 incident, descriptive touch, digression of senti- 
 ment or passion, should be directly contributory
 
 34 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 to the idea, plan, plot, argument, or scheme of the 
 whole. 
 
 Fourthly, the style of the book, that is to live 
 long, must be such as yields a characteristic de- 
 light. ]Mere transparency is no merit, nor opaque- 
 ness for the matter of that, either. Individuality, 
 appropriateness to subject, mood, structure of the 
 work, charms not exhausted at the first perusal, 
 reserve force, riches stowed underground to reward 
 delving, violets under wayside hedges to which 
 vague fragrance draws the leisurely passer-by; 
 all significant of lavish love, of exuberant creative 
 energy. For such style contributes to survival 
 because it tantalizes in memory, cries for a re- 
 reading and obtains it sooner or later. Strange 
 how Carlyle's idiosyncratic dialect adds to the 
 greatness of "Sartor Eesartus" and detracts 
 from his history of the French Revolution! Yet, 
 not strange. In the first case the style suits the 
 theme; in the second case we are not so sure that 
 it does. 
 
 The works of literary art that have come down 
 to us with the greatest fame possess these four 
 characteristics all in some degree, or if some one 
 is conspicuously absent then the ''lack" is made 
 up for by ''luck," and the others are conspicu- 
 ously present. Yet these four principles will not 
 be found altogether sufficient to explain the selec- 
 tion that has actually taken place in the past, or to 
 serve as a safe and sane criterion of contemporary 
 literature.
 
 OF LITERATURE 35 
 
 Fifthly, then we must make mention of the fact 
 that (deplorable to some) in the progress of man- 
 kind certain moral changes do take place. What 
 was once foible is now vice. To give direct of- 
 fense to me morally is to render me in that degree 
 aesthetically insensible. Pain neutralizes pleasure. 
 Or perchance the change of custom and manner is 
 such that antiquarian research is requisite for 
 intelligent appreciation. Then, whatever its other 
 merits, it becomes literature exclusively for pro- 
 fessional or amateur antiquarians. So, a Hamlet 
 is to-day more to us than an Othello, though the 
 latter masterwork is perhaps the greater of the 
 two structurally, and in the other three respects 
 its equal. Jealousy is no longer, in its extreme 
 manifestation, sympathetic to us. We are for 
 lago, with all his villainy, rather than for the 
 Moor in his brutal violence. So also a Flaubert 
 elaborately produces a historic novel, "Salamm- 
 bo;" and, attempting the recreation of the past 
 in its singularity and obsolete detail, runs great 
 risk of not recreating his cultured reader, which 
 was incontestably his first duty. 
 
 Ha, but who shall predict the course of human 
 progress! There are occasional revivals. His- 
 tory repeats itself? True. Yet certain steps are 
 taken finally for the great majoritj^ of readers. 
 Therefore certain otherwise excellent works must 
 alas ! suffer partial or total neglect. What will it 
 avail, for instance, to praise composition, con- 
 struction, style of a play by Terence which takes
 
 36 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 for granted the innocence of what is to us mon- 
 strous, and reciuires admiring sympathy for a 
 criminal in his very most abhorrent and loath- 
 some crime ? But this the learned erudite special- 
 ist protests is not just to Terence! Ay, ay, but 
 who cares egregiously for Terence and his claims, 
 said estimable plaj^wright having had his full due 
 long since! It is not just to me, the living man, 
 to recommend that fundamentally indecent play 
 as a work of beauty. True, the morality and the 
 beauty are in theory distinct; but I, the living 
 reader, am not built on the compartment plan — 
 I cannot cease to be the moral man while I am 
 the aesthete. Justice to the living and oblivion, 
 if need were, to the dead! Only those works of 
 the dead that live and have a right to live shall be 
 part of our educational curriculum. Such will be 
 our jDrineiple of criticism in this respect, offend 
 whom it may. 
 
 Yet clearly here we find ourselves ill prepared 
 to administer the law to contemporary works. 
 We are much too blind to our special vanities, af- 
 fectations, sing-ularities, prejudices to resent them 
 unless grossly obtruded. How much of our be- 
 loved Browning, Ibsen, Meredith, Hugo, Balzac, 
 which is else most justifiable, will perish on this 
 count? How much will cease to be read, simply 
 because the ship of culture must at all cost be 
 lightened, even if some treasures go overboard? 
 Yet what cause for pride when even masterpieces 
 can thus be sacrificed! The seas are ever
 
 OF LITERATURE 37 
 
 smoother, the ship is not in peril. No, it means 
 that so much that is excellent has been since pro- 
 duced. So much! What a grand suggestion of 
 the vitality of the race! Genius, like the sun, 
 darts rays into planetless void — reckless, for it 
 needs not to reckon. ''Bring forth weight and 
 measure in a year of dearth," cries the inspired 
 Blake. Overboard then with whatever we dare 
 dispense with — and fear not, for below deck new 
 and greater poets will be born — with or without 
 consent of the literary Cerberus ! 
 
 Sixthly, we ought to admit there is an adventi- 
 tioiis value — usually the creation of humanity, 
 not consciously at all events of the author. We 
 have read something so long into a work, that 
 now we read it out of it. How long shall we con- 
 tinue to do so! That is the question. Forever, 
 doubtless, if there is any reasonable excuse for so 
 doing. What makes us love Don Quixote? Its 
 interest as a burlesque! Hardly. A good burles- 
 que, in so far as it slays its enemy, commits hara- 
 kiri promptly thereafter. What is a burlesque 
 without the popularity of its victim! Does it 
 charm, as a story, by sheer interest in the hap- 
 penings of the human agents as persons: Don 
 Quixote of the sorrowful countenance, or even 
 Sancho of the paunch? Hardly. Ah! but as a 
 symbolic expression of the two parts of man, the 
 idealistic element, the materialistic element; the 
 brave, loyal love of principle so usually blind to 
 facts and incapable of learning from painful
 
 38 THE VITAL STUDY 
 
 experience; the cowardly, sensual love of self, 
 shrewd, gifted with mother wit, but needing 
 sorely elevation by constant commerce with the 
 nobler element : how as an externalization of our 
 spiritual life, as our own self-knowledge writ 
 large — ah; how it does appeal to us, how its 
 "echoes roll from soul to soul!" passing far be- 
 yond the bookish circle, filling the great round 
 world! Yet, who of Pindian weather prophets 
 could have foreseen all this? Cervantes in the 
 first part of his immortal romance meant to kill a 
 craze, and in the second to kill a hero imprudently 
 left alive for the use of others less skillful than 
 our author! 
 
 Summing up what we have said, it is clear that 
 our ascertained canons of criticism, (1) grasp of 
 stuff, (2) composition, (3) construction, (4) style, 
 (5) modernity, (6) symbolic suggestiveness, are 
 not all applicable with equal ease or certainty. 
 The best care, sanity and sweet aesthetic savour, 
 will not avoid errors altogether. 
 
 At all events, our manual is to care nothing for 
 historic, biographic, traditional estimates ; to set 
 down everything according to its possession in 
 greater or less degree of these attributes condu- 
 cive to literary longevity. Yet shall not the com- 
 piler of our handbook dare, not merely to pass 
 over in silence a Butler's "Hudibras," a Young's 
 "Night Thoughts," the rhjnued romances of By- 
 ron ; but, on the other hand, attempt a bold adver- 
 tisement of certain forgotten masterpieces that
 
 OF LITERATURE 39 
 
 died not by demerit, for lack of the qualities that 
 endear when known, but by the ill chance which 
 failed to accord them a reasonable initial public- 
 ity? Assuredly our descriptive catalogue of great 
 works, when perfected, will need supersession, and 
 shortly, too, by a better and wiser one ; but will it 
 not be something to have served for a day or two 
 the best interest of possible culture? Is it not 
 glory enough to provoke emulation, to compel into 
 existence those that will be more powerful than 
 we? We have toiled, invited Minerva, and lo, 
 from the sea springeth the Cyprian maid herself ! 
 This, the reward of all noble literary failure, is 
 the reward for all noble, vital criticism, however 
 brief its terms of authority and credit. 
 
 V. 
 
 But, in conclusion, it may be objected, a hand- 
 book of literature on the lines suggested is only 
 for the adult? The schoolboy, the youth at col- 
 lege, needs what? To be inoculated with a hatred 
 of literature? Yet, wherefore so dogmatically 
 browbeat and impose upon the young? Besides, 
 one cannot really do so. One can only make of 
 them adults who look back at their text-book 
 maker angrily, as the schoolroom tyrant who suc- 
 ceeded in spoiling some part of their golden age, 
 for whom may certain agelong fires be stoked ! 
 
 If the six principles here set down as an analy- 
 sis of the main attributes which tend to secure
 
 40 THE VITAL STUDY OF LITERATURE 
 
 the survival of literature because, adapting them 
 to what is permanent, or fairly so, in human na- 
 ture, and which, therefore, govern the natural se- 
 lection in books; if these six principles be found 
 reasonably correct; if the survival of literary 
 works is in the main that of the fittest ; if works 
 that show the six above attributes, or a goodly 
 number of them, to a remarkable degree, ought to 
 be regarded as worthy of dignified yet wide- 
 awake advertisement, because probably fit for re- 
 vival, the mere victims of minor accidents; — then 
 surely a manual of English literature for adults 
 needs to be written on such lines, and manuals for 
 school and college also, remembering to allow for 
 age and temperament; descriptive catalogues — 
 that is to say, claiming besides to be no more, and 
 able therefore to quicken the desire for diligent 
 reading, and proportionate understanding and en- 
 joyment! And is it mere Quixotism to break a 
 lance in such a cause? Is it mad optimism to be- 
 lieve that when such works, successful perhaps 
 only after repeated failure, have come into gen- 
 eral use the race of educated illiterates will be- 
 come so well-nigh extinct as to justify the preser- 
 vation of some specimens in every well-supplied 
 zoological collection?
 
 TRANSLATION: A METHOD FOR THE 
 VITAL STUDY OF LITERATURE. 
 
 I. The Pedagogical. Problem. 
 
 Not only is the poet born such, but the lover of 
 poetry likewise cannot, in popular opinion, be cre- 
 ated by any educational method hitherto discov- 
 ered. This much truth there seems to be in the 
 hopeless view of them that love not the Muses: 
 that just as the poet requires for his prime endow- 
 ment a kindled imagination, so the would-be lover 
 of poetry needs to have his imagination kindled, 
 either by the haphazard of personal experience at 
 the due time of susceptibility, or rather by the 
 transmission from another of the kindling sacred 
 fire. No teacher, however accomplished and pains- 
 taking, will succeed in the matter of creating the 
 love of great poetry, or bringing even to a per- 
 sonal consciousness of the worth for the pupil of 
 high literary art, unless there be occasions art- 
 fully found or created for the transmission of the 
 divine fire of worship. 
 
 Just, however, as the scholar starts out with the 
 assumption that the truth can be known, so the 
 teacher should profoundly believe that his "sub- 
 ject" can be taught; and in the case of the teacher 
 of literature, his "subject" is really the "appre- 
 
 41
 
 42 TRANSLATION 
 
 ciation of an Art, and its products" or — and we 
 tremble at the portentous suggestion, — better still, 
 ''the pursuit of the art in efforts at production." 
 It will be at once objected by the facetious, that we 
 have poets, litterateurs and amateurs in a sufficient 
 number to cause anxiety — a case already of over- 
 production! The solemn reply to a jest is proof 
 of dullness. The real superfluity we endure is in 
 talent untrained, or in talent overtrained because 
 mistakenly self-trained by methods that exhaust 
 inspiration in pedantry; or else our superfluity 
 consists in talent prostituted, at least \nilgarized, 
 bv the demand of those who can read and write 
 and reckon, but are none the less of the profane. 
 
 It should be possible to do at all events for Lit- 
 erary Art, what is done for the formal and deco- 
 rative arts in countless studios, schools and insti- 
 tutes. What of the great expenditures of talent, 
 enthusiasm, and funds in the teaching of the most 
 spiritual of the arts — music ! It is foolish to keep 
 on quoting by rote "poeta nascitur non fit." What 
 of artists in the other arts not less divine? Ap- 
 parently no such absurd overstatement of the ne- 
 cessity of inspiration is made to serve as a sui- 
 cidal pedagogic assumption in the case of those 
 other arts. Aspirants after excellent perform- 
 ance, or merely appreciation sane and inspiring, 
 are procured the conditions of aiDprenticeship, 
 based on the needs of the artistic temperament in 
 the average instance as ascertained from experi- 
 ence. Why should literary art continue to be con-
 
 TRANSLATION 43 
 
 sidered an absolute exception, in that, those desir- 
 ous of its service are condemned to costly autodi- 
 dactic experimentation? Because genius does oc- 
 casionally win against enormous odds sensational 
 victory on behalf of the race, shall we be cursed 
 — not with "mute inglorious Miltons" but — with 
 the pathetic wrong-headedness of misdirected am- 
 bition, the morose mediocrity of exhausted talent, 
 the commercialized cleverness of improvisations, 
 which are so clearly due, in large measure, to an 
 inadequate culture and improper apprenticeship 
 in his youth of the aspirant to fame? 
 
 In a previous paper have been stated, perhaps 
 too tartly, what seem to be the characteristics of 
 the Classic ; and what, therefore, are the qualities 
 to be sought for his product by the literary crafts- 
 man. But the problem still remains, how to elimi- 
 nate the conceit and vanity — the self-conscious idi- 
 osyncrasy of the student — and secure his schol- 
 arly and business-like application to the mastery 
 of his technique. Since, however, no teacher of lit- 
 erature at any college avows the deliberate pur- 
 pose to-day of producing literary creators, — only 
 at best refined appreciators, or may be pedantic 
 water-witches, duly Ph.D'd, divining subterra- 
 nean sources — it would be expedient if we stated 
 frankly that the literary creator and the literary 
 appreciator are not so far removed from one an- 
 other as at first glance may appear. 
 
 If I am to enjoy a written poem to the fullest 
 possible degree, it must be that, through the me-
 
 44 TRANSLATION 
 
 diiim of suggestive rhythms, rhymes and tone 
 color, through collocations of word-meanings, and 
 usage associations, I am stirred to re-create the 
 poet's creation, to visualize,thrillingly realize, com- 
 pose, construct, give enchanting verbal and tonal 
 expressions to the central idea; except that the 
 process is not thus analyzed, or followed in strict 
 logical sequence, or in any necessary close con- 
 formity with that of the original poet himself. 
 The same poem gives me each time a different 
 complex happiness, so that clearly all sorts of va- 
 riety is allowed in the process of re-creation, where- 
 by the poem of the poet becomes my poem, and I 
 its second poet for the nonce. The first poet dif- 
 fers from me, his sympathetic reader and the sec- 
 ond poet, only in the fact that he was first to dis- 
 cover, to initiate, combine, devise, experience sur- 
 prise, and thrill with inspiration. Besides, the 
 sense of origination, of aesthetic pioneership, gave 
 him a consciousness of unconscious power, for 
 which I, his reader, must substitute worshij? of his 
 vicarious genius, if I am to compass the gross 
 equivalent for his large delight. If re-creation be 
 then but secondary creation, we need merely dis- 
 tinguish between primary and secondary crea- 
 tion ; and, while not presuming to produce or train 
 genius as such, we can study how to teach ** crea- 
 tion," without regard to originative genius. So, 
 then, the genius will thereby obtain help for his 
 work of origination, and the man of less extraor- 
 dinary ability will be brought to understand po-
 
 TRANSLATION 45 
 
 etic art from the poet's point of vie^v. The latter 
 will be better fitted to enjoy his earned place as 
 appreciator and patron of the art, not less right- 
 fully his art in virtue of his ability to reproduce 
 into glorious fullness for himself the beauty of 
 the original work of his contemporary, with calm 
 confidence in his own spontaneous yet trained 
 sympathy as superior to any post-mortem health 
 certificate called a favorable critical judgment; 
 since from the nature of the case such a critical 
 judgment absolutely precludes and renders super- 
 fluous any fraternal assistance on the part of the 
 man of taste to the living artist, his brother of 
 more temperament and vital propulsion! 
 
 Supposing it to be granted by our reader, for 
 argument 's sake at least, that the teacher of liter- 
 ature should make it his chief aim to impart such 
 training as will subserve the needs alike of the 
 primary and the secondary creator, we are then 
 face to face, only, with a practical question of ped- 
 agogical method. It might be shown how after a 
 careful scrutiny of the field of masterpieces, cases 
 rare, yet sufficiently numerous, offer themselves, 
 for our purpose, of poems in the making. AVe have 
 Chaucer's two versions of his ''Prologue to the 
 Legend of Good AVomen", of which the second so 
 vastly improves on the first, by transposition chief- 
 ly of paragraphs. AVe have similarly the extraordi- 
 nary example of AA'ordsworth's intruded eighth 
 stanza to his ''Ode to Duty"; of Keats' rejected 
 first stanza to the "Ode on Melancholy". We
 
 46 TRANSLATION 
 
 have Wordsworth's divers treatment of practi- 
 cally the same material in the agreeable record of a 
 poetic experience entitled: "To a Highland Girl", 
 and in the magnificent lyric poem, full of rhyth- 
 mic spell power, and inexhaustible suggestiveness, 
 called: "The Solitary Reaper." Such opportuni- 
 ties for intimate glimpses into the holy place of 
 the muses, and into the workshop of their priests, 
 are not so scarce, but what a good teacher, who 
 loves and reasonably well knows the world's great 
 poetry, can keep a class most usefully and delight- 
 fully employed for the several years of a Univer- 
 sity course. The evil, however, of this method, 
 taken by itself, lies in the difficulty of applying 
 any but mechanical, or purely personal tests to the 
 industry, proficiency and good will of the student. 
 Besides, the imaginatively indolent student will 
 content himself with his teacher's analysis, or 
 with his own ; and wholly fail to exercise the very 
 faculties it is desired to train, through the means 
 of the merely rational expositions, namely, the 
 imagination, the visual power, and the emotional 
 understanding. 
 
 Now, for the student of literature who is so un- 
 fortunate as to know one language only, there is 
 no help in the ancient method, which we propose 
 by this paper to advocate and extol. He will have 
 to combine the close observation of literary mas- 
 terpieces, the memorization of particular Arnold- 
 ian tidbits ; the exploitation of fortunate instances 
 which are, as aforesaid, after all not so few but
 
 TRANSLATION 47 
 
 that, with the good student, they will richly suffice 
 to give him an aesthetic comprehension, although 
 perhaps they might leave him unstimulated to 
 realize imaginatively, unless he have imparted to 
 him the personal enthusiasm of his teacher. ^But 
 the student of literature who has at least the rudi- 
 ments of another language; who understands, 
 therefore, the relations which always exist be- 
 tween thought and feeling on the one hand, and 
 sounds and words on the other, bound by the arbi- 
 trary laws of a particular grammar and syntax, 
 that is to say, of folk-temperament and intellec- 
 tual or emotional bent and habit ; for him becomes 
 available to the full the wondrous pedagogical ex- 
 pedient of translation. 
 
 It has been argued from time to time by the fa- 
 natic of language-study that literature cannot be 
 taught at all, imless it be literature in a foreign 
 tongue. Only with the difficulties incident to the 
 foreign tongue could that attentive observation 
 of linguistic details be exacted, which is so funda- 
 mental to the aesthetic perfection of the artist's 
 great work, and, therefore, to its complete appre- 
 ciation. This, I fear me, is a desperate plea of the 
 philologian with an accomplishment for sale, in an 
 age that depreciates his divine wares. A^Tiile the 
 present writer himself is polyglot by birth and 
 rearing, and naturally enough believes, therefore, 
 at least in the cloven tongue, he cannot sincerely 
 allow this argument to be taken for more than its 
 real value. Pedagogical difBculty does not con-
 
 48 TRANSLATION 
 
 stitute for the good teacher a baffling impossibil-. 
 ity. Besides, Spencer, Shakespeare, and Milton 
 have been found in actual exiDerience quite suffi- 
 ciently foreign for the ordinary college student to 
 require the use of the glossary in a right whole- 
 some frequency, and to parse to his heart's dis- 
 tress for an intelligent report of the particular 
 poems' content and intent. If Chaucer, Brown- 
 ing, Eossetti and Meredith be invoked to the teach- 
 er's further aid, in the interest of thoroughness, 
 we do not seriously fear the student will glide 
 along so smoothly through a diction and a syntax 
 too exceedingly familiar, but what his faculties 
 will be kept in a walking alertness ! 
 
 It is, indeed, too late to praise translation with 
 the hope of being thought original! Down from 
 classic time it was deemed the best expedient. 
 
 Practically all culture revivals have begun 
 with translation. But too often in the classroom 
 it has been used as an exercise merely unto the 
 close study of the foreign original, rather than 
 as a means of exigent discipline in the mother- 
 tongue itself. 
 
 But furthermore, translations can be collected 
 and criticized, and in some instances produced by 
 teacher and pupil, from the mother-tongue into 
 some foreign language. When Shelley's ''Ode to 
 the West Wind" is carefully read and scrutinized 
 in German, French, and Italian translations, much 
 is learned as to the untransmissible glories of the 
 original. When Shakespeare is pondered in
 
 TRANSLATION 49 
 
 Schiller's, Sclilegel's or Tieck's German, or 
 Hugo's French, one has novel, very singular and 
 most excitingly profita])Ie experience. Freili- 
 grath's Burns or Byron, ay, and his Tennyson, 
 too, are not to be passed over slightingly ; and his 
 "Ancient Mariner" of Coleridge is more instruc- 
 tive for us than Coleridge's ''Wallenstein" of 
 Schiller. The collection, collation, and sympa- 
 thetic examination of versions of given English 
 masterpieces into kindred languages, is then a 
 pedagogical device of great value for deepening 
 and rendering more aesthetically acute and deli- 
 cate the study of the masterpiece in question. 
 
 This use of translation, although approving 
 itself by the very first conscientious experiment, 
 is still, however, not of such a nature as necessar- 
 ily to stimulate the student's creative imagina- 
 tion. He may make the superiority of his orig- 
 inal the basis of a Chauvinistic preference for his 
 mother-tongue. He may study his original word 
 for word, phrase by phrase, and j^et keep the crit- 
 ic's attitude only, never himself wrestling with 
 the angel for the divine name. Delille's ''Para- 
 dise Lost" may deserve for a silly depreciation of 
 Alexandrine couplets only, as compared with Mil- 
 tonic blank verse, or to strengthen a preposter- 
 ous provincial prejudice endorsed by the petty 
 Emersonian line: 
 
 "France where poet never grew;" — 
 
 a line, the truth of which is so evident to such as 
 are not masters enough of French to revel in the 
 magical music of French verse !
 
 50 TRANSLATION 
 
 Translations, however, into the student's lan- 
 guage of foreign classics, which he can also study 
 in the original, serve to correct this unfortunate 
 tendency. It soon appears that all languages are 
 rich and poor by turn. Always the poet knows in- 
 tuitively or by training the special resources of 
 his instrument, and takes advantage of its native 
 and acquired possibilities, so that, from the na- 
 ture of the case, no poem is susceptible of a word 
 for word, or phrase by phrase, or even sentence by 
 sentence translation. A boast for instance like 
 that of Mr. Dennis Florence McCarthy that 
 ** every speech and fragment of a speech are rep- 
 resented in English by the exact number of lines 
 of the original," and furthermore, as the title- 
 page advertises ''in the metre of the original," 
 cannot in the case of Calderon promise success. 
 Conception rather by conception has to be ren- 
 dered, and not phrase by phrase ; and it is purely 
 a matter of coincidence, in rhythmic and metric 
 resources, if a rendering even of line for line is 
 possible. Verbal identities are only sought by 
 the pedant. The man of taste will be happy if he 
 can find equivalences achieved for him, and his 
 experience will have shown him how difficult is 
 the attainment even of reasonably fair equiva- 
 lences.^ For, let the familiar truth be spoken once 
 again. If there be, as Archbishop Trench plead,- 
 an "intimate coherence between a poem's form 
 and its spirit," and that '^one cannot be altered 
 
 * Preface to Calderon's Dramas. 
 
 * Calderon, His Life and Genius, with Specimens of his Plays, 
 by Richard Chevenix Trench,
 
 TRANSLATION 61 
 
 without at the same time most seriously affecting 
 the other," this is, indeed, due in large part to the 
 fact that the form is not "as a garment", but ''the 
 flesh and blood which the inner soul of it has 
 woven for itself;" which amounts to saying that 
 the experienced possibilities of expression have 
 reacted more or less unconsciously on the poet's 
 particular mode of conception. Had there not of- 
 fered itself such a fortunate word, such an allur- 
 ing rhyme, well, the composition might have been 
 altogether other than it is. To insist, then, as the 
 ''only principle of all true translation," upon 
 ''adherence to the form as well as to the essence 
 of the original," is to ask of a translator more 
 than the poet could himself have originally done 
 in any but his own particular language, no matter 
 what his skill in any other. 
 
 Just at this point nothing could be more in- 
 structive than to compare the "Youth and Lord- 
 ship" of Dante Gabriel Rossetti with the Italian 
 original, which his brother positively asserts to 
 have been also his own composition, as made evi- 
 dent by corrected manuscript. It was impossible 
 to translate such brief lines closely, with adher- 
 ence to metre, and rhyme system ; and even apart 
 from that consideration, with a feeling for good 
 taste. What is playful in Italian may be coarse 
 in English. Surely any other poet would proceed 
 like Rosetti, in the translation of his own work to 
 re-visualize and to render conception by concep- 
 tion, and where necessary take from the vision in
 
 52 TRANSLATION 
 
 the second instance, what would suit the language 
 into which he now renders it, although he might 
 have neglected before to express these newly- 
 chosen elements, and expressed rather some oth- 
 ers belonging to the same essential composition. 
 
 Pointing to a similar conclusion, we note the 
 striking fact that Eossetti translated into Eng- 
 lish neither his "Barcarola,"^ nor his "Bambino 
 Faciato;" the first depending so largely on a most 
 fortunate rhyme ''tomba-rimbomba," which could 
 not be paralleled in English; and the latter little 
 poem upon a quite praiseworthy and charming 
 frankness, nay, naivete, incident to Italian speech 
 on the subject of paternity and maternity, which 
 could not be comj^assed by a language bearing 
 still, as doth ours, the scars of the Puritan Move- 
 ment on its body, and the starch and bluing of a 
 factitious holiness in the singing robes thereof! 
 
 Clearly, some theory of translation must be 
 formulated by our students of literature who 
 adopt this pedagogical expedient, which shall be 
 modest enough to make a fair result seem within 
 the regions of the possible. Lord Woodhouselee's 
 well-known Essay^ (1797) might help in dignifying 
 with classic authority and copious, however old- 
 fashioned, precedent, both good and bad, the 
 Translator's art. Matthew Arnold's still better 
 
 ^Oltre tomba Bevond the tomb. 
 
 Qualche cosa? Is there aught? 
 
 Eche lie dicif And what sav you of it? 
 
 Saremo feUcif Shall we be happy? 
 
 Terra mai posa. The Earth never resteth, 
 
 Emar rimbomba And the sea, echoing, roareth. 
 
 * Reprinted, J. M. Dent, "Everynnan's Library."
 
 TRANSLATION 63 
 
 known Essay ''On Translating Homer" would 
 serve to correct what in the former may seem 
 eighteenth century predilection for "polite "para- 
 phrase. At all events, once a reasonable theory 
 adopted, which takes into account (to repeat our 
 contention) the indisputable fact, that any poet in 
 his original yielded unwittingly yet really to the 
 demands, or the allurements of his native speech; 
 and would, were he his own translator, do again 
 likewise, only a trifle more consciously, when 
 confronted with the commands and charms of the 
 English muse, to the neglect of any detailed re- 
 semblance between his first and his second pro- 
 duction; — once then, such an accommodation be- 
 tween the translator and the paraphrast attained 
 in theory, wiiat an astounding education becomes 
 possible in practice for the student of Literature ! 
 
 Always will the language of the translator seem 
 the more restricted, the less subtle, the less instinct 
 with poetic facility, and felicitous correspondence 
 of sound with sense. How will he not have to 
 study the grand organ, on which, bounden captive 
 of a foreign muse, he must if possible transpose 
 the composition scored for a whole orchestra of 
 strange instruments! And when he has come to 
 perform such feats with reasonable ease, suppos- 
 ing he has a creative imagination at all, how will 
 he not, when deeply stirred, find it easy to impro- 
 vise on his own account, as the spirit gives him 
 conception and urges him to utterance! 
 
 It will be asserted, perhaps, that verse is pos-
 
 54 TRANSLATION 
 
 sible only to the jooet ; and, that our college classes 
 are not composed of poets. To this we reply: 
 verse is an accomplishment, possible with fair per- 
 fection for any person of reasonable intelligence, 
 if the training be begun early enough in life. 
 There are those who have no ear for pitch, no 
 sense of time, no eye for color. There are, to be 
 sure, defectives, degenerates, idiots. But it will 
 be found that on the whole, a goodly percentage 
 of healthy students do promptly master the art 
 of versification with a fair enough degree of skill 
 to make translation an available pedagogical 
 method. 
 
 It may again be asserted, that we shall thus tend 
 to produce countless pretenders, who, invita Mi- 
 nerva, will have to pay out of their slender in- 
 comes for the appearance from time to time of 
 innocuous volumes of verse which make the 
 trained reviewer smile superciliously as they coy- 
 ly look up to him from his book-thronged desk. 
 Far be such a malign fate from us ! To have ac- 
 quired the accomplishment of verse, and the prac- 
 tice of translating great poetry, would, if any- 
 thing, tend to deliver us of poor, therefore, quite 
 useless rhymesters, and bequeath to us in their 
 stead, good and perhaps excellent translators, and 
 benefactors so of such of their fellow-men as can- 
 not ''read every language under the sun, — and 
 think and speak and write in none!"
 
 TRANSLATION 65 
 
 II. Paraphrast and Translator. 
 
 Now it might not be amiss, while considering the 
 problem of translation, to make clear once again 
 by illustrations some of the most elementary but 
 therefore often overlooked problems. In attempt- 
 ing of late to teach the Poetry of the Bible, merely 
 as poetry, the present writer was confronted with 
 the serious difficulty, that translations, for in- 
 stance, of the Psalms, had been made for all pur- 
 poses rather than that of exhibiting the rhetorical 
 or rather poetic principle on which the effect of 
 the original so largely depends. Coverdale's 
 English is much praised and not without allege- 
 able excuse. But respect for the integral imagi- 
 native unity was not in his philosophy, or in that 
 of any scholar of his times. Dr. S. E. Driver's' 
 New Version helped much; the virile Dr. T. K. 
 Cheyne more f and Dr. Charles Augustus Briggs^ 
 occasionally; Mr. Horace Howard Furness (fol- 
 lowing Wellhausen) more often.^ Always, how- 
 ever, it was found that the new translators were 
 hindered from producing the desired total impact 
 on an unlearned reader, because the word for word, 
 or even line by line rendering, however idiomatic 
 —on account of the enormous difference of lan- 
 guage, implied associations, obsolete religious 
 suggest ions,— most grievously under-represent- 
 
 •Clarendon Press, 1904. 
 
 •Book of Psalms, Kegan, Paul. Trench & Co. ISSO. 
 
 Wn«J''«^"U^o.°"^ ^o *^® International Critical Commentary. The 
 Book of Psalms. 2 vols. Scnbner's. 1906. 
 
 »Haupfs Polychrome Bible. Dodd, Mead & Co. 1898.
 
 56 TRANSLATION 
 
 ed, to a positive poverty, the original 
 poem. More than half their real translations 
 were, besides, in the notes; or implicit in their 
 orientally polite presupposition of an, alas, non- 
 extant Hebraic element in our diffused culture. 
 Xo doubt the revisers of the Authorized Version 
 sujoposed that the Bible is sui generis, and must 
 be translated without regard to the general prin- 
 ciple of prime reverence for idiom in the trans- 
 lator's speech. Since by the felonious practices 
 of the unscholarly theologian, a translation is 
 treated as an infallible, divine document, it be- 
 comes, therefore (in the opinion of many), more 
 important to permit of no improper inference 
 from the wording of the translation, than to pro- 
 duce the emotional and imaginative stimulations, 
 and after-glows of feeling, on which, when all is 
 said, the Bible must in the long run depend for 
 its acceptance as literature at all, sacred or pro- 
 fane. To be rendered literally, and set every de- 
 cent literary tooth on edge, — how conducive to the 
 right devotional spirit! AYell, the Revisers were 
 children of their age, and servants, furthermore, 
 not of the Blessed Muses, but of a half-hearted 
 Modernism. So their labors were found far less 
 helpful to the present writer than those of Drs. 
 Cheyne, Driver, Briggs, and the elegant Mr. Fur- 
 ness, whatever the respective demerits of their 
 versions in eyes wonted to the ecclesiastical twi- 
 light of the Gods. 
 
 The necessity of paraphrase was what bore 
 itself in upon the teacher more and more forcibly.
 
 TRANSLATION 57 
 
 Nothing, to be sure, must be set down in the free 
 translation that did not, upon careful inspection, 
 seem implied or suggested for any intelligent 
 reader of the Hebrew at the approximate time of 
 the Psalms' composition and living use in temple 
 or synagogue worship. But such implicit elements 
 of the composition as could not to-day be obtained 
 from a close English translation were then to be 
 explicitly supplied, and the whole cast into a loose 
 anapestic verse, such as should, at least, re- 
 mind us that Hebrew poetry did actually possess 
 an accentual rhythm of its own, however in some 
 respects unlike that adopted by the translator- 
 paraphrast as most suitable for his didactic pur- 
 pose. 
 
 PSALM cxxx 
 
 Out of the deeps (as of the sea) 
 
 I cry to Thee, O God, who art forever; 
 God, my Master, heed my voice, 
 Let thine ears be exceeding eager 
 For my voice in its beseechings. 
 
 If transgressions Thou straitly reckon 
 
 O Thou, who art alone God, 
 Who, O Master, shall stand upright before Thee! 
 But with Thee, ay Thee, there is mercy, 
 That men truly may worship Thee! 
 
 I hang upon Him that is forever; 
 
 My life doth hang upon God; 
 On His name I stay my faith. 
 My life more yearneth for God my Master 
 Than they who watch for the daybreak. 
 
 [Interrupting Chorus: Watchmen (we) for the breaking day!] 
 
 Let Israel trust in Yahweh! 
 
 For He, that is forever, is kind. 
 And multitudes find in Him their freedom. 
 And He, even He buyeth Israel 
 From all their transgressions, free!
 
 68 TRANSLATION 
 
 The translator's modest contribution here lies 
 in the recovery of the original unifying idea. The 
 psalmist is speaking of himself and his people un- 
 der the figure of bond-slaves of Yahweh, God, that 
 is to say, revealed as the unconditionally existent 
 and self-consistentj who, however, condescends to 
 necessarily reciprocal relations with them, as mas- 
 ter of his slaves. Furthermore, he is such a mas- 
 ter as makes himself adored and desired even as 
 the dawn by the sleepless watchers of the night. 
 He is one, besides, who will redeem not only the 
 psalmist and his people to the relative liberty 
 which his service constitutes, as compared with 
 that of the Egypt or Babylon of their transgres- 
 sion (ay, and the only true liberty) ; but he is dis- 
 posed and ready to redeem many more if they will 
 but desire it, as many, indeed, as covet such a re- 
 demption. In this as in every other psalm, to be 
 sure, the names of God are as critically important 
 for the poetic translator as for the theologian. 
 The awful mystery of the manifold meanings must 
 be made specifically significant by regard to con- 
 text, but more especially in view of the poem's or- 
 ganic conception. In this particular case, it is the 
 marvel of Yahweh 's being Adonai that constitutes 
 the very essence of the composition. So far, then, 
 in one crucial matter, our translation must have 
 improved, we dare to affirm it, at least in princi- 
 ple if not in performance, on that of the "Great 
 Bible" or the ''Authorized and Revised Version." 
 Then, too, there is no doubt that the supposed 
 gloss — the redundant "I say, before the morning
 
 TRANSLATION 59 
 
 watch" — becomes a real beauty when conceived 
 as a ritual — or rather, a musical ''repeat." "We 
 venture here to denominate it *'an interrupting 
 chorus." In sympathetic inclusiveness or catho- 
 licity of spirit the psalm has, nay, it would seem, 
 must have gained not a little by our emphasis on 
 the composition and on the construction. 
 
 Nevertheless, alas, for our own self-satisfaction, 
 we also are human, and confess to grave disap- 
 pointment. Our version is not the psalm we have 
 chanted! ''Out of the deep have I called unto 
 thee, Lord, hear my voice" — "My soul fleeth 
 unto the Lord, before the morning watch." These 
 assuredly were incantations to quicken the dead 
 soul, vehicles of aspiring devotion not easily sur- 
 passed. We had felt the "deep" as merely meta- 
 phorical, an abysmal anguish, it was a proud mem- 
 ory to have experienced; we had imagined our- 
 selves on its account anticipating death, and flee- 
 ing on the wings of the morning unto the very 
 bosom of God! True, the "Authorized Version" 
 had only "My soul waiteth for the Lord;" but at 
 least the "plenteous redemption" imparted 
 soothingly a sense of infinite pardon for our pe- 
 culiar needs ; and perhaj^s unconsciously we have 
 indulged a voluptuous sense of monopoly in the 
 feeling that God should be feared by our enemies 
 for the very reason that there was mercy in him 
 for the petty foibles of the faithful. It was all so 
 deliciously egoistic, purely comforting, and 0, so 
 privately pious!
 
 60 TRANSLATION 
 
 True, then, the conscientious translator and par- 
 aphrast in this case admit humiliation; but they 
 must record at the same time the cause. Slavery 
 is no longer a living institution. It does not de- 
 light us to consider the Eternal God as our indulg- 
 ent Slave-Master, who has bought us from some 
 cruel exploiter of soul and body. Indeed, we take 
 for granted that He is merciful. It can appear to 
 us no joyful discovery that keeping books against 
 us is not God's chief divine prerogative and most 
 commendable perfection! The poem, then, is too 
 obsolete in its organic image for great emotional 
 reactions, unless we first, by historical imagina- 
 tion, restore some quite fortunately unthinkable 
 social relations ; but even so it will fail to occasion 
 a very vivid sense of relief. Losing the overlaid 
 poetry of godly paraphrasts through by-gone 
 days, we sustain in this instance so egregious a 
 loss, therefore, because what can be restored, in- 
 stead of what must be removed, is of no verv 
 thrilling present-day worth. 
 
 Quite otherwise do we fare when we undertake 
 the restoration and careful translation, with but 
 little aid from the paraphrast, of the forty-fifth 
 Psalm, although even more violent liberties were 
 taken with it, and for a long time, by such as suf- 
 fered from hermeneutical hallucinations and pi- 
 ously super-induced exegetical dementia!
 
 TRANSLATION 61 
 
 PSALM XLV 
 
 r 
 
 Deep-stirred Is my spirit: | how goodly it is! 
 
 Song-speech Is upon me, | wrought fair for a King. 
 
 My tongue the swift pen | of him wisdom constraineth. 
 
 More beauteous art thou, ( than the sons be of man, 
 Graciousness also | hath been shed on thy lips; — 
 So the mighty God | hath blessed thee forever! 
 
 II 
 
 Gird thy sword on thy thigh, | most potent War-Lord, 
 Thy hallowed glory | yea, and thy majesty. 
 
 Tread down, press forward | ride forth to battle, 
 For steadfast truth | and meekness, even justice, 
 And awful marvels | thy right hand shall show thee! 
 
 Thy darts are made keen, | the peoples fall before thee, 
 Stricken in spirit [ be the foes of the King. 
 
 Thy throne is, O Might of God, | from of old and for aye. 
 
 An upright sceptre | the rod of thy rule; 
 
 Loved hast thou justice | and abhorred ungodliness: 
 
 So, the mighty God, | thy God, did anoint thee 
 With a chrism of gladness [ above all kings! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Myrrh-aloes and cassia | they be thy vesture. 
 From ivory king-halls | where thou takest delight; 
 Daughters of kings | be among thy jewels. 
 At thy right a King's bride | all Or of Ophir. 
 
 Harken O daughter | and bend low thine ear. 
 
 Remember not thy people | nor the house of thy father, 
 
 And the King shall long | {fair as Eve!) \ for thy beauty, 
 
 He thy Lord is and God, | O bow thee before him. 
 
 And the daughter of the mightiest \ shall come with a gift. 
 
 Of thy face shall sue favor | the wealth-lords of the people. 
 
 Altogether is she glorious | the King's daughter in thy pres- 
 ence. 
 Close-woven broideries | of gold her raiment, 
 In many-hued tissue | is she led to the King.
 
 62 TRANSLATION 
 
 Virgin-trains of her comrades ] shall be brought unto thee, 
 
 O be they led | exulting and gladsome, 
 
 O may they enter | the high hall of the King. 
 
 In the stead of thy fathers | shall stand up thy sons, 
 Whom thou shalt appoint thee | o'er all the earth chiefs! 
 
 Made-memorable be thy name thro' me | from age unto age 
 Where peoples shall praise thee | from of old and for aye! 
 
 First, let us note the elements of paraphrase. 
 The ''ready scribe" with which ends the third line 
 can convey no poetic joy to us as a metaphor. 
 We recall only too well "scribes, pharisees, hypo- 
 crites." To modernize it as "ready writer" only 
 makes matters a little worse. We have here in 
 our poem a lost institution, a forgotten calling; 
 and "him wisdom constraineth," describing his 
 dignity and supposed function, is the best we were 
 able to do towards the literary salvage of the 
 opening lines. The intruded "fair as Eve" in the 
 seventh line of the third stanza is the restoration 
 of an ancient pun which the rhythmic utterance, 
 and surely the context, would keep present here in 
 a Hebrew poet's mind, convinced reverently as ho 
 was of the significance at all times of personal 
 names, and the gravity of the most trivial double 
 ententes. To "desire" for the Hebrew was "to 
 Eve"; and "Eve" was she whom God fashioned 
 to utter in flesh the desire of man's eyes, and of 
 liis soul. So, to the king of the forty-fifth Psalm, 
 the bride is the desire of his eyes and of his soul, 
 created on purpose for his divine delectation. 
 Apart from this particular pun, the paraphrast 
 has had in this case a sinecure. What we offer is
 
 TRANSLATION 63 
 
 altogether the work of the conscientious trans- 
 lator, assisted in difficult places by the textual 
 emender. When we alter the picture of the king 
 as Rameses the Great, slaughtering his foes, to the 
 extent of making them be more humanely 
 *' stricken in spirit;" we do but recall ancient 
 physiological psychologj^ which located the pas- 
 sions in the liver; pity and envy in the bowels; 
 intellect and spiritual energy in the breast — par- 
 ticularly the heart — leaving the brain without as- 
 certainable use to man. The same word is used 
 here by the Psalmist as in the first line which we 
 rendered "deep stirred is my spirit." But how 
 revolutionary is not the change our translator has 
 here wrought I We have now a true encomiastic 
 epithalamial ode ; and if it be taken messianically, 
 it must be on the score only of the theme : — a king 
 greeted, in the hope of his realizing the oriental 
 ideal of kingship, — rather than on the score of any 
 quotable theological phrases. If ''anointed" with 
 a "chrism" of gladness, — which saves him, at 
 least verbally, from our modern disgust at the 
 fate of Aaron's priestly beard; — ^he is not yet the 
 Anointed, the "Christ," by many tokens royal 
 alike and human. He has "sons" in the stead of 
 fathers "for his honor;" and requires the poet's 
 praise to immortalize his name. If he be in the 
 place of God— "He thy Lord is and God,"— this 
 is alone mystically, for love's sake, to the bride; 
 and if he be the very "Might of God," it is as 
 occupant of a theocratic seat, for the cause sake
 
 64 TRANSLATION 
 
 which he espouses : — justice, compact of steadfast 
 truth and meekness; and lastly, for his passion- 
 ate and proud self-appropriation of the "mighty 
 God" as indeed his very own. Still, as substanti- 
 ating an oriental King-ideal, who would deny the 
 hero of the forty-fifth Psalm an active and honor- 
 able part in fashioning the popular conception of 
 the Messiah? 
 
 It is not the translator's fault if the historical 
 critic uses the quite questionable reading ''the 
 daughter of Tyre" to identify the bride with the 
 abominable Jezabel; and the praised King with 
 the cruel Ahab; neither is he responsible for any 
 possible agreement with the hopes entertained by 
 the disaffected, in connection with the accession 
 of Jehu, the prophet-anointed usurper. Such defi- 
 nite and doubtful localizations hinder the poem's 
 breadth of application and depth of emotional ap- 
 peal; and are, from the poetical critic's point of 
 view, irrelevant, nay, noxious gossip ; from which, 
 following St. Jerome's reading in his third critical 
 Psalm Version,^ we venture to deliver the pres- 
 ent reader! 
 
 But there are cases in which century-long adop- 
 tions of a particular interpretation have to be 
 fought, if we are to restore the integrity of the 
 poetic conception. Of such cases let Psalm twen- 
 ty-three prove a painful instance. All through 
 the poem we deal, according to our judgment, only 
 with the sheep and the shepherd. The preceding 
 
 1 From the Hebrew text, not from the Septuagint ; Quincuplex 
 Palterium 1508, text edited by Paul de Legarde. 1874.
 
 TRANSLATION 65 
 
 and concluding chorus imply, in the natural view 
 of the poem, the same figure as do the first two 
 stanzas. The third must be more or less attracted 
 to the remainder, despite *' pasture's" possible 
 meaning of ''feast," or "stretch" as ''recline" at 
 a banquet. But granted the proposed audacity, 
 and again we have no more what the commenta- 
 tors gave us: the conventional feeding unto re- 
 pleteness and imbibing unto drunkenness at a 
 board of divine plenty, with mysterious enemies 
 inexplicably behind shields, or across the conven- 
 iently intervening tables. We have, instead, a 
 most thrilling adventure : — on the high table-lands 
 the panthers and wolves are kept off by the shep- 
 herd, and the pasture has been cleared of poison- 
 ous weeds; the silly sheep, straying to the edge 
 of the wilderness, is rescued from the prowling 
 wild beast in wait for estrays ; and his wounds are 
 tenderly salved ; too faint, however, to be driven to 
 the brook for refreshment, the divine shepherd has 
 given him to drink, from his own very flask in his 
 very own cup, exhilarating now more than wine! 
 
 PARAPHRASE OF PSALM XXIII 
 
 Who unto his own ever cometh' | he, my shepherd, nourisheth 
 
 me 
 Wherefore (his very own sheep) | I shall fail of no goodly 
 
 thing. 
 
 In the green homes of sprouting young grass [ he biddeth me 
 
 stretch in noon-plenty. 
 To wells of rest and refreshment | he leadeth me by gentle 
 
 degrees. 
 He quickeneth in me once again | the delight and desire of 
 
 life, 
 
 'The divine name's eternity is viewed here dynamically, and 
 in motion toward both himself and those he loves.
 
 66 TRANSLATION 
 
 He goeth before to guide me | in straight paths — true to his 
 
 name! 
 
 Yea, although to the hill-pass^ I wend | though gorges by day 
 
 of death-gloom, 
 I will harbor no fear at all | lest anywise harm may befall me; 
 For thou, that art even thyself, | art verily nigh unto me, 
 Thy staff-of-sway and thy crook | when I pant, upstay me with 
 
 cheer. 
 
 Thou spreadest abroad before me | my pasture (as were I 
 
 thy guest) 
 Meetly in th' immediate sight | of such as would harry and 
 
 slay me; 
 Thou hast soothed with healing ointment | my cruelly-bruised 
 
 head, 
 And my cup (thine own, in my faintness) | overfloweth with 
 
 gladness of heart. 
 
 Goodness and mercy (his sheep-dogs twain) | my life-long 
 
 surely shall drive me. 
 And I will return all my days to Tits fold, | who cometh to his 
 
 own forever! 
 
 Vividly conscious we are of the bracketed temer-. 
 ity in the last chorus: "goodness and mercy" 
 visualized as sheep-dogs, driving the sheep to the 
 fold again and again ! But so the text is explained 
 that says the sheep returns forever and not 
 *' abides forever" in the Lord's house, shed, stable 
 or fold; and the vocable for "drive" (translated 
 in the most authoritative dictionary "to dog") 
 gets its full hitherto uncomprehended force. But, 
 granted the temerity, who would not rather see in 
 "goodness and mercy" the shepherd's sheep-dogs 
 than flunkies (as some prominent scholars would 
 have them be) mysteriously driving the guests 
 frantic with their officious attentions! If, how- 
 ever, the scandalized reader prefers (unallured 
 by the antivivisection text so obtained) he may 
 
 ^A. V: Valley of the Shadow of Death,
 
 TRANSLATION 67 
 
 drop at will the paraphrastic suggestion and our 
 parenthesis, and rejoice in the figure of the third 
 stanza as merely implied with quiet innocuous 
 delicacy. 
 
 There are, on the other hand, psalms in which 
 the translator needs but verbal help from the par- 
 aphrast, like the eighth, which we here offer for 
 inspection. True, the second and third stanzas 
 get a fresh significance in the contrast of vital 
 and inorganic manifestations of God's power; 
 true, the line about the Leviathan, hitherto mere 
 tautology, is a delightful surprise; and the ren- 
 derings of man in his glory and in his humility 
 (that is, of the two Hebrew terms for man, para- 
 phrased and contrasted) constitute mentionable 
 restorations; true, also, the ''lacking little to the 
 stature of might that is God" has a Swinburnian 
 rhythmic splendor, such as that poet so liberally 
 drew himself from the Bible, and which we compel 
 him to restore, for the nonce; true, the "making 
 sweet sabbath of rest" to the hero of the vendetta 
 helps much in comprehending the influence of the 
 divine revelation through the babes at the moth- 
 er's breast. But it is in no rendering of a note- 
 worthy re-discovery, or textual emendation, or 
 elucidation, that our service in this case consists. 
 After all, if the quoted parajohrase is uplifting 
 and imaginatively seizing, this is due to the strict 
 dominance of every phrase, hemistich, line, stanza, 
 by the same one thought, as was not the case in 
 either the Authorized or in the Prayer Book Ver- 
 sion.
 
 68 TRANSLATION 
 
 PARAPHRASE OF PSALM VIII 
 
 Choric Refrain: 
 
 O Thou who alone art forever, | O Lord of us, thine own; 
 How high exalted Thy name and the truth thereof | through 
 
 the compass of the world: 
 
 Thou, who hast upreared Thy war-splendor divine | far over 
 
 the heavens 
 Forth of the mouths of babes, ay, sucklings, | hast founded 
 
 Thy strength of life. 
 
 So answering such as be fain | with hate to bind down and 
 
 beset Thee, 
 So making sweet Sabbath of rest | to the foe and his kins- 
 man's avenger; — 
 
 When I cast up my eyes to Thy heaven ] wrought of old with 
 
 thy fashioning fingers; 
 The moon and the stars whose pathways | Thou, changeless, 
 
 hast established unchanging, 
 
 Lo! what is man, the loftiest who with his breath ceaseth, 
 
 I that thou in thy thoughts shouldest cherish him? 
 
 What is man, the lowliest child of the soil, | woman-born, very 
 
 man, that Thou should'st draw nigh him with solace? 
 
 Thou hast made him such that he lacketh but little | to the 
 
 stature of might that is God's, 
 
 And with weight of worth, and adornment of grace, [ Thou 
 hast Shielded, crowned, and enwreathed him. 
 
 Thou hast caused him to rule | over all Thou hast wrought 
 
 with thy fashioning master-hand, 
 The whole hast thou bounded and fixed in its station | as foot- 
 stool under his feet: — 
 
 Sheep, ay, and kine, | all the flocks and the herds thereof, 
 And likewise the wild beasts also ( that prowl in the gaping 
 
 waste, 
 The birds that fly through the heaven, | and the fish that swim 
 
 through the sea. 
 And the nameless vast swift-treading the highways | he cleav- 
 
 eth him through the great seas. 
 
 Choric Refrain: 
 
 O Thou who alone art forever ] O Lord of us, thine own, 
 How high exalted Thy name and the truth thereof; | throu.^h- 
 
 out the whole world!
 
 TRANSLATION G9 
 
 But in some instances, moreover, by the simple 
 procedure above exemplified, an enormous result 
 is effected poetically. "Voice of Adonai" is the 
 regular Hebrew phrase for thunder. ''Voice of 
 Yahweh" then carries the meaning of thunder, 
 along with the awfulness of the greater divine 
 name. Merely insert, line after line, "the thun- 
 der-voice of Yahweh" and hear the result! Be- 
 sides, there are two lines rejected from the text 
 by some editors as spurious (like the supposedly 
 redundant "I say the morning watch" in the be- 
 fore quoted Psalm CXXX). View these rather 
 as interrupting semi-choruses, not perhaps inte- 
 gral parts of the original composition, but in- 
 tended and introduced by the ritual editor for aes- 
 thetic relief and contrast : the God of Glory thun- 
 dering, yet eternally serene, above the tempest; 
 the thunder-voice stripping the forests, yet the 
 still small voice of His praise in the secret spirit 
 of man, and in the inherent silences of the uni- 
 verse, and now, from provoking glosses, our two 
 intrusive lines are transfigured into h^rico-dra- 
 matic beauties of no mean order. 
 
 PSALM XXIX 
 Orand Chorus: 
 
 Praise Yahweh, who is forever, | O ye sons of the Powers 
 
 divine. 
 Praise Yahweh, who is, indeed, | for weight of worth, strength 
 
 of heart. 
 Praise Yahweh, whose yea is yea, | in worship His Name 
 
 begetteth. 
 Bow low to Yahweh, alone very God, | in holy apparel of 
 
 beauty! 
 
 The thunder-voice of Yahweh is | upon the waters above the 
 
 firmament,
 
 70 TRANSLATION 
 
 (Interrupting semi-cliorus) : 
 
 [God, the God of glory | uttereth the thunder] 
 Yea, Yahweh Himself upholdeth Him | above the encompass- 
 ing great waters. 
 The thunder-voice of Yahweh | uttereth His creative might, 
 The thunder-voice of Yahweh | giveth forth His awful beauty, 
 
 The thunder-voice of Yahweh | shattereth the cedar trees, 
 Yahweh, and He alone, | doth shiver the cedars of Lebanon, 
 
 Lebanon He maketh in sheet-lightning | to leap like a young 
 
 unicorn, 
 Yea.Sirion also | like a lusty, fleet bull of the wilds. 
 
 The thunder-voice of Yahweh | heweth the scarped rocks, 
 Yahweh, He alone heweth | the rocks with forked flames. 
 
 The thunder-voice of Yahweh | doth make the barren waste to 
 
 dance, 
 Yahweh alone doth whirl about | the barren waste of Kadesh! 
 
 The thunder-voice of Yahweh | causeth the terebinth-trees to 
 
 writhe, 
 Yahweh, and He alone, | rippeth and strippeth the forests 
 
 bare," 
 
 (Interrupting semi-chorus) : 
 
 [Yet in the mansion of His Majesty | all things say softly: 
 
 Glory!] 
 
 Grand Chorus: 
 
 Yahweh at the flood of yore | did set aloft His throne, 
 Yahweh thereon is enthroned ] as King in judgment forever, 
 
 Yahweh, His strength divine | upon His own bestoweth, 
 Yahweh bestoweth His blessing | upon His people, ay, Peace! 
 
 In the forty-fifth Psalm the translator exhibited 
 to the attentive scrutinizer of his typography a 
 somewhat interesting aesthetic phenomenon, in the 
 waxing stanza not unanalogous to the gradual 
 swelling or cumulative tripartite "Song of Mir- 
 iam." The artful stanzas consist, namely, of sub- 
 stanzas respectively: the first, — of three lines, two 
 
 " A. v. : The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to bring 
 forth young, and discovereth the thick bushes.
 
 TRANSLATION 71 
 
 lines, and a chorus of one line ; the second, — of two 
 lines, three lines, two, three (a noteworthy doub- 
 ling the first stanza), and a chorus of two lines 
 (similarly doubling the first chorus) ; the third, — 
 of four lines, of six lines (doubling the first stanza 
 in a different fashion), and then one of three, an- 
 other of three, one of two and a chorus again as 
 before of two lines. So strong is this impression 
 of orderly unfoldment and strengthening by 
 mathematical progression, that one becomes averse 
 on this ground alone, if none other, to the ingeni- 
 ous detection and removal of glosses. Let the 
 anxious observe what Dr. Briggs has left of the 
 forty-fifth Psalm, and then ask if the present 
 translator is an iconoclast! Perhaps he may be 
 a redresser rather of icons on idolatrous pedes- 
 tals; but that is not so bad, if the holy icons re- 
 dressed are actually in the text of the original, 
 which text is, whatever its faults, the best we are 
 ever likely to possess on earth. 
 
 Carefully noting, then, this system of stanzas 
 within stanza, we may sometimes be able to re- 
 store a lost line to its place, and produce a start- 
 ling and legitimate beauty. Psalms forty-two and 
 forty-three are by universal consent one poem. 
 There is, also, obviously even for the reader of 
 the authorized version, a refrain after each stanza. 
 Strange to say, in the second and third instance, 
 although separated by an unfortunate editorial 
 divorce, the refrain of the stanzas is identical; 
 while in the first instance the Hebrew text shows
 
 72 TRANSLATION 
 
 a small, but all-important variation. Perhaps the 
 second stanza opening with "0 my God" caused 
 some scribe to omit God from the last place in the 
 just preceding refrain. But if so, why was it not 
 later on restored! The omission is so singular as 
 to suggest its being intentional. Besides, when 
 we note the text as it stands, a most audacious 
 Joblike meaning begins to permeate the first 
 stanza by retrospect from the refrain, which 
 spreads irresistibly to the following stanzas. The 
 Psalmist is faithful but unhappy, with a sense of 
 fatal separation from his God. In the North in 
 the snowy Hermon summits, to the East in the 
 fertile Jordan valley, ay, and in the heart of the 
 South, on the little hill of Zion," God seems far 
 off, and some one taunts him (within his soul, or 
 without) nay, many men taunt him: ''Where is 
 now thy God?" View the troublesome lines in the 
 second stanza as an interrupting chorus (say, of 
 children) ; observe the system of sub-stanzas with- 
 in the stanzas; supply the missing taunt, which 
 is cardinal to the composition, and so complete 
 the rhythmic construction of the third stanza, and 
 observe the amazing force given by contrast to the 
 line following; and read then the translation in 
 which there are hardly any liberties of the para- 
 phrast beyond the renderings of latent meanings 
 to the divine name, and let the honest literary 
 reader report whether or not there be gain in a 
 purely literary translation of a literary master- 
 
 *^ Usually considered an unintelligible line !
 
 TRANSLATION 73 
 
 piece, for the religious, ay, or even for the theo- 
 logical reader. 
 
 PSALMS XLII-XLIII 
 
 I 
 
 As a hind that panteth and yearneth | after the swift-running 
 
 waters 
 Even so panteth my soul and yearneth | after the God of great 
 
 might! 
 My soul is athirst for th' omnipotent God | for God the deep 
 
 well-spring of life; 
 How long ere I go up and behold | the countenance of God? 
 
 My own secret tears are become | my stay, yea my bread day 
 
 and night, 
 
 The while all day long one taunteth me: ) "Where, pray, is 
 
 thy God of great might?" 
 
 These things am I fain to remember | and shed forth my soul 
 
 upon me: 
 How I led the multitude solemnly | to the abode of the mighty 
 
 God, 
 With jubilant shout and thanksgiving | in the blithsome 
 
 throng at the feast. 
 
 Chorus: 
 
 Wherefore art thou thus bowed low, O my soul, [ and makest 
 
 thy moan over me? 
 
 Abide thou God's time, Who forever is, | seeing surely I shall 
 
 yet give him praise 
 
 For the marvelous manifold salvation | of his countenance, 
 
 even God's! 
 
 II 
 
 my God, my soul is bowed low | that I needs must remember 
 
 thee 
 From the land of Jordan and the Hermon-peaks | yea, even 
 
 from thy lowly hill: 
 Abyss above shouteth to abyss below | at the cry of thy poured- 
 
 forth cataracts; 
 All thy breaking billows and rolling waves | upon 7ne do they 
 
 pass over! 
 
 (Interrupting voices, prohahly of children): 
 
 [Day by day, He that is Yahweh | giveth charge to his 
 
 loving-kindness,
 
 74 TRANSLATION 
 
 And in the night-season the spirit of song, | even His, is 
 
 with me.] 
 
 A prayer, lo, my prayer [ to the mighty God, the fount of my 
 
 life: 
 I will say to my strong God, my Rock, | why hast thou 
 
 stricken me from remembrance? 
 
 Why in sackcloth and ashes go I | in the midst of the en- 
 compassing foe? 
 And with sneers that shatter my bones | my opponents scorn- 
 fully gibe me; 
 While all the day long men taunt me: | "Where, pray, is thy 
 
 God of great might?" 
 
 Chorus: 
 
 Wherefore art thou thus bowed low, O my soul | and makest 
 
 thy moan over me? 
 Abide thou God's time, Who forever is, | seeing surely I shall 
 
 yet give him praise 
 For the marvelous manifold salvation | of thy countenance, 
 
 and my God! 
 Ill 
 
 My judge be thou, and plead my plea [ against a cruel and 
 
 impious people, 
 From a man without scruple and iniquitous | O do thou help 
 
 me escape; 
 For thou, thou art the God of my might. [ Why cast me off as 
 
 abominable? 
 Why in sackcloth and ashes roam I hither and thither j in 
 
 the midst of the encompassing foe? 
 
 (While all the day long men taunt me: | "Where, pray, is thy 
 
 God of great might?") 
 O stretch forth thy light and thy troth | that they may guide 
 
 me and ward me! 
 
 To thy holy hill let them bring me, [ to the abiding place of 
 
 That I may go in to the altar of God, ] yea, God the joy of 
 
 my joy. 
 And I with the harp will bless thee, | O omnipotent God, my 
 
 God. 
 
 Chorus: 
 
 Wherefore art thou thus bowed low, O my soul, | and makest 
 
 thy moan over me? 
 Abide thou God's time, who forever is, | seeing surely I shall 
 
 yet give Him praise
 
 TRANSLATION 75 
 
 For the marvelous manifold salvation \ of my countenance, and 
 
 my God! 
 
 Of course, our versions would have to be out- 
 fitted with an elaborate system of footnotes, fol- 
 lowed by an excursus for each stanza, and a 
 score of appendices duly bespattered all over with 
 Hebrew and Greek letters for their justification to 
 the erudite. In our defence we will onlj'' adduce 
 a line of Emanuel Geibel, who at the conclusion 
 of his ^^Distichen aus Griechenlmid" enumerates 
 all that a poet should be, and finishes with the 
 line: 
 
 "A'her der Thor nur verlangt dass ein Gelehrter er set. 
 (But only a fool requires that a learned pedant he be.) 
 
 At many points, quite as many as any trans- 
 lator, he had to resolve ambiguities, select be- 
 tween possible alternatives, restore for probable 
 corruptions of text; doubtless, although he had 
 in the present examples of his industry the help 
 of a scholarly colleague,^^ he was no doubt quite 
 often in error; but chiefly from all sorts of other 
 points of view than his own! Be all this as it 
 may. It is boldly claimed here that a student of 
 literature will, equipped with such paraphrases 
 as the above, go to other translations more literal, 
 greatly helped by having experienced the shock 
 of a particular interpretation of his originals, in 
 swift rhvthmic movement, and with sufficient em- 
 bodied commentary to make an immediate emo- 
 tional understanding of the poetic compositions 
 as wholes possible, na}', likelj^ To be sure, the 
 
 "Professor Wm. Haskell DuBose, M.A.
 
 76 TRANSLATION 
 
 paraphrases are prolix beside the terse originals. 
 That is a quite evident loss, which has to be sus- 
 tained: the sense of fiercely compressed energy. 
 But this loss, let it be boldly affirmed, is not al- 
 ways to be taken seriously as a defect. Only by 
 occasional paraphrase can a translator proceed at 
 all, however closely he strives to adhere to his 
 text. 
 
 III. A Practical Theory. 
 
 A little above we quoted for criticism as typical 
 of a certain school the impossible theory of trans- 
 lation brought forward by Dr. Trench half a cen- 
 tury ago, in connection with his still serviceable 
 essay, introductory to the study of Calderon. It 
 was not, however, without amusement that we 
 read in Mr. Edward Fitzgerald's complete works 
 a passage quoted from a letter to Dr. Trench: **I 
 remember that you regretted having tried the 
 asonante, and you now decide that prose is best 
 for English translation."^ Action and reaction! 
 From the strictest sect to the loosest! Yet such 
 is human nature, and we need not marvel at his 
 antipodal change of heart. The reader has but 
 to compare Shelley and Fitzgerald with Trench 
 and MacCarthy in the "Magico Prodigioso;" 
 Fitzgerald alone with MacCarthy and Trench in 
 the "Vida es Sueno/' to decide whether it is bet- 
 ter we should deal with a poet as a poet, and be 
 an English Pegasus unto his Spanish poetship; 
 or prefer the role of the pack ass, transporting 
 
 » Dated 1880 ; the translations, 1856.
 
 TRANSLATION 77 
 
 his exotic provisions and camp outfit, nay, and his 
 corpse to boot, while leaving his spirit to soar in 
 spaces Empyrean beyond our English ken! So 
 hopelessly bad as we may seem to imply, the case 
 verily is not. But a little hyperbole sometimes, 
 picturesquely jocose, clears the atmosphere, as the 
 damnatory psalms and the British commination 
 service did for our near and dear forefathers of 
 blessed memory. *'I am persuaded," says Fitz- 
 gerald, "that to keep life in the Work (as drama 
 must), the translator, however inferior to his 
 original, must recast that original into his own 
 likeness, more or less."^ 
 
 Surely, he is right, and let us remark inci- 
 dentally : it is not only Drama that needs to have 
 life kept in it! Fitzgerald's ''Omar" has won 
 both its author and translator great fame; and 
 the famous translation of "Omar" was done on 
 the same principle as the adaptations of Calderon, 
 only far more idiosyncratically applied. Since, we 
 have had many closer renderings of the Persian 
 astronomer-poet's stanzas, but I fancy we shall, 
 to the last man and woman of us, still hold on to 
 the skirts of Fitzgerald, for all the insinuations of 
 the "Variorum," or the praiseworthy improve- 
 ments of Mr. George Eoe.^ It may be "impu- 
 dence" to "meddle in so free and easy a way 
 with a great man's masterpieces,""' but Fitzger- 
 ald did not fail, as he feared; for he actually "con- 
 
 'A letter to James Russell Lowell, 1878. 
 
 ^ Ruhaiyat of Omar Kli&yyam, etc. A. C. McClurg, 1906. 
 
 * Letter to R. C. Trench 1S65.
 
 78 TRANSLATION 
 
 ciliated English or modern sympathy," and per- 
 formed the miracle of making Calderon and Omar 
 into English and modern poets, for whom we shall 
 thenceforth care to suffer, with stoic delight, the 
 labors even of literal translators : word for word- 
 ers, verse for versers, rhyme for rhymers, pun 
 for punners, unto the verbal contortionists and 
 prestidigitators in the nethermost pit of unidio- 
 matic infamy! 
 
 Quite apart from the doctrine and practice of 
 this King of Paraj^hrasts, and his follower afar 
 off (Mr. Richard Le Gallienne, Hafiz in tow), even 
 the greatest of translators, is, as we have now 
 stated several times, by moments at least, how- 
 ever, unavowedly of his school. Let the student 
 copy out side by side Shelley's, Anster's, Ha- 
 ven's,'^ Swanwick's, Martin's, Taylor's, Latham's 
 and Bowring's renderings of the ''Songs of the 
 Archangels," with which opens the Prologue in 
 Heaven to Goethe's ^^ Faust. "^ Which of them is 
 Goethe's poem? Or for greater brevity, let the 
 reader take the untranslatable last eight lines of 
 the Second Part of ^' Faust" and compare the re- 
 sults of translations, and decide whether he will 
 insist on an identical rhjTne-system in lines so 
 brief as to exclude wholly the element of para- 
 phrase. 
 
 ^ Select Minor Poems, translated from the German of Goethe 
 and Schiller, with notes. John S. Dwight, Boston. 39. 
 
 " In mentioning archangels, "Mr." and "Miss" become otiose 
 gloriep, that scream for discreet omission — and so the euphonic 
 protest against Arnoldian urbanity has been heeded here.
 
 TRANSLATION 79 
 
 TRANSLATION OF A POEM FROM GOETHE 
 
 i(l) Alles Vergdngliche 
 
 1st nur ein Gleichniss ; 
 Das UnzuUingliche 
 Hier loird's Ereigniss; 
 Das unbeschreibliche 
 Hier ist est gethan 
 Dast Ewig Weibliche 
 Zieht uns hinan. 
 
 (2) All we see before us passing 
 Sign and symbol is alone; 
 
 Here, what thought can never reach to 
 Is by semblances made known; 
 What man's words may never alter, 
 Done in act — in symbol shown. 
 Love, whose perfect type is woman 
 The divine and human blending. 
 Love, forever and forever, 
 Draws us onward, still ascending. 
 
 (Anster, '35) 
 
 (3) All of mere transient date 
 As symbol showeth; 
 
 Here the inadequate 
 
 To fulness groweth; 
 
 Here the ineffable 
 
 Wrought is in love; 
 
 The ever-womanly 
 
 Draws us above. (Swanwick, '49) 
 
 (4) Each thing of mortal birth 
 Is but a type; 
 
 What was of feeble worth 
 
 Here becomes ripe! 
 
 What was a mystery 
 
 Here meets the eye; 
 
 The everwomanly 
 
 Draws us on high. (Bowring, '53) 
 
 (5) All in earth's fleeting state 
 As symbol is still meant; 
 Here the inadequate 
 Grows to fulfillment, 
 
 Here is wrought the inscrutable. 
 
 To silence that awes us; 
 
 Love, eternal, immutable, 
 
 On, ever on, draws us. (Martin, '65)
 
 80 TRANSLATION 
 
 (6) All things transitory 
 But as symbols are sent; 
 Earth's insufficiency 
 Here grows to event: 
 The Indescribable 
 Here it is done; 
 
 The woman-soul leadeth us 
 
 Upward and on! (Taylor, 70) 
 
 (7) Mortal that perishes 
 Types the ideal, 
 
 All that fault cherishes 
 
 Thus becomes real. 
 
 Wrought superhumanly 
 
 Here it is gone — 
 
 The ever-womanly 
 
 Draweth us on. (F. H. Hedge^) 
 
 (8) All things corruptible 
 Are but reflection; 
 Earth's insufficiency 
 Here finds perfection; 
 Here the ineffable 
 Wrought is with love; 
 The Eternal-Womanly 
 
 Draws us above. (Latham, '02) 
 
 (9) All things that perish here 
 Shadow the ideal; 
 
 Vain longings we cherish here, 
 
 Lo, they wax real; 
 
 Behold superhumanly 
 
 Th' ineffable done! 
 
 The evermore womanly 
 
 Draweth upward and on. (W. N. G.) 
 
 Let, however, one specimen here adduced make 
 clear beyond a doubt and cavil how hard be the 
 ways of the translator in this respect. 
 
 The theme is that of George Meredith's * 'Wood- 
 land Peace," but the whole comprised in eight 
 lines of such spontaneity and simplicity as to 
 baflfle analysis. Let Longfellow's translation be 
 
 *In Crowell'3 edition of Swanwick's Faust.
 
 TRANSLATION 81 
 
 offered the reader first in deference to the en- 
 gaging importer of poetic cosmopolitanism: 
 
 O'er all the hill tops 
 
 Is quiet now, 
 In all the tree-tops 
 
 Hearest thou 
 Hardly a breath; 
 
 The birds are asleep in the trees; 
 Wait; soon like these 
 
 Thou, too, Shalt rest. 
 
 Spilrest du — Kaum ernen Hmicli is rendered 
 with word-for-word fidelity — except that '^hear- 
 est" applies only to the ear, whereas spilrest in- 
 cludes every other sense. Furthermore there is 
 the very different emotional value of the second 
 person singular of verb and pronoun in the two 
 languages; affectionately familiar in German, 
 stiltedly formal and obsolete in English. "In the 
 trees" for iin Walde repeats the word of the third 
 line, adding no value of its own. "Like these** 
 makes explicit a comparison purposely left more 
 delicately implicit by Goethe; and rhyming as it 
 does with "trees," "these" might be mistakenly 
 referred to them. 
 
 But the worst defect appears in the use of "hill- 
 tops" as equivalent for Gipfel; which, meaning 
 "summit," could have a s^nnbolic as well as a 
 literal sense, whereas "hilltop," alas, is strictly 
 topographic ! 
 
 Now let us see what Aytoun and ^Martin have 
 done. Two heads being so obviously better than 
 one, our expectation is raised for all the fame of
 
 82 TRANSLATION 
 
 the singer of ''Miles Standish" and the "Vacant 
 Chair." 
 
 Peace breathes along the shade 
 
 Of every hill, 
 The tree-tops of the glade 
 
 Are hushed and still; 
 All woodland murmurs cease, 
 
 The birds to roost within the brake are gone. 
 Be patient, weary heart, anon 
 
 Thou, too, Shalt be at peace. 
 
 The same objection as before can be urged 
 against "hill." "All woodland murmurs cease" 
 merely repeats line four without substantial gain 
 by the prolixity, save a rhyme. "The birds to 
 roost" is for us Americans quite out of tune. 
 Let us hope this line is Aytoun's and not Mar- 
 tin's, lest Oehlenschlager's and Heine's often so 
 felicitous translator suffer hurt in reputation ! 
 
 Next let us see what Sir Edgar Alfred Bowring 
 has done for us. He who Englished so much of 
 Schiller and Goethe surely will do better than 
 others with this elusive poem ! 
 
 Hushed on the hill 
 
 Is the breeze; 
 Scarce by the zephyr 
 
 The trees 
 
 Softly are pressed; 
 The woodbird's asleep on the bough. 
 Wait, then, and thou 
 
 Soon will find rest. 
 
 "On the bough " not being an equivalent for 
 Wald, forest, the Voglein have become the wood- 
 bird. This may pass. "Zephyr" idly repeats 
 "breeze;" and "pressed," for all it be negatived, 
 leaves behind it a most vexing suggestion that 
 comes nigh to annulling the whole intent of the
 
 TRANSLATION 83 
 
 poem — that of making us realize ** peace." But 
 more than all, how has the large relevancy of 
 Ueber alien Gipfeln 1st Riih been specifically con- 
 tracted in the would-be equivalent ''Hushed on 
 the hill Is the breeze!" 
 
 The very title Em Gleiches baffled our trans- 
 lators. Aytoun and Martin called the piece 
 "Evening," as did also Sir Edgar Alfred Bow- 
 ring. Longfellow headed it ''The Same," 
 properly referring to the title of the previous 
 piece of kindred feeling. "Without the preceding 
 piece "the same" becomes preposterous. And 
 what pray does that mean? "What is the Same? 
 Here Eossetti helped their audacious follower to 
 a title that should render Ei7i Gleiches, and make 
 it equivalent to "Ein Gleiches" in reference to 
 the matter of the poem itself. Of course every one 
 should know that its actual reference is to the title 
 of the poem that precedes it in the original edi- 
 tion of Goethe's Poems, namelv: Wanderer's 
 Nachtlied — W^ayfarer's Evensong. His caption 
 therefore should be : "Evenso." 
 
 EVENSO 
 
 Hovereth o'er every height 
 
 Peace visible; 
 And every treetop — light 
 
 Breathings do lull 
 Of dreamless sleep; 
 
 Birds hush them in the brake. 
 
 'Bide thee, thou too ere long shaic take 
 Thy rest — still, deep. 
 
 Confessedlv there is considerable libertv taken 
 
 * • 
 
 with the original in the last version. But notli-
 
 84 TRANSLATION 
 
 ing is wantonly added, not even ''dreamless 
 sleep," which helps to repeat the sentiment of 
 "peace." And the ambiguous feeling (rather 
 than sense) of the first line is at all events pre- 
 served in: — "Hovereth o'er every height, Peace 
 visible," mayhap as cloud, as blue sky, as euthana- 
 sia an theophany, as the symbolic dove by Jor- 
 dan's bank. Peace "in bodily shape" somehow 
 "hovereth" and is above and nigh and felt as 
 Peace; and the height — is the mere mountain or 
 the morally sublime ! For Spiirest du Katun einen 
 HaucJi — "Breathings do lull Of dreamless sleep" 
 ' — is a free amplification to avoid at a critical 
 place the difficult second person singular, and se- 
 cure a surer and more definite psychological al- 
 lusion for the "waver of tree tops." 
 
 Has the present writer then preserved the senti- 
 ment of the original ; though he has sacrificed the 
 simple direct familiarity of style? Does the cad- 
 ence: "Thy rest— still, deep" atone for the obso- 
 lete : ' ' Bide thee, thou too " ! 
 
 The little lyric "Ueher alien Gipfeln"is here ad- 
 duced, and its best known translation cruelly criti- 
 cized, all on the score of the exiguous metric lim- 
 its and the difficult rhyme system of the original, 
 which preclude paraphrase and natural idiomatic 
 translation. We venture to offer for the read- 
 er's proper humiliation — if he cherish the heresy 
 of absolute metric fidelity, etc., eleven more gay 
 experim.ents of our domestic Muse, tossing in air
 
 TRANSLATION 85 
 
 the Bohemian glass of an impossible little lyric 
 by the great Goethe at his best. 
 
 (1) Ueher alien Gipfeln 
 
 1st liuh, 
 In alleii Wipfeln 
 Spurest du 
 Eaum einen Hauch; 
 Die Voglein schweigen im Walde 
 Warte nur — halde 
 RuJiest du auch. 
 
 (2) Above every height, lo. 
 
 Is calm; 
 In treetops light, low 
 Breatheth the balm 
 Of dreamless sleep; 
 Woodbirds are dumb: be still too; 
 Soon thou Shalt have thy fill too 
 Of peace, calm, deep. 
 
 (3) Above every summit. 
 
 Peace broods; 
 What hush hath o'ercome it — 
 The gloam of the woods, — 
 Scarce a breath aloft; 
 The wee birds be silent also; 
 Soon peace shall befall so 
 Thee, too, dream-soft. 
 
 (4) O'er all summits, what quiet 
 
 For aye! 
 No breath doth sigh at 
 The topmost spray, — 
 No murmur to hear; 
 Hushed are the woodland thrushes: 
 How deep the spirit's hush is, — 
 Thy rest draweth near. 
 
 (5) Peace hovers forever 
 
 O'er the height; 
 In treetops no waver 
 To-night, 
 No breath; Ah, me! 
 The birds in the woods be silent; 
 Abide but a little while, and 
 Peace visiteth thee.
 
 ^6 TRANSLATION 
 
 (6) Over all high places- 
 
 Repose! 
 In leafy laces 
 
 Comes and goes 
 To the topmost spray, 
 No breath even; the woodbirds are dumb now. 
 Wait, soon to thee will come now 
 Repose for aye. 
 
 (7) Above all high places 
 
 Calm bides; 
 In leafy green spaces 
 Aloft, there glides 
 Scarce a breath of air; 
 The woodbirds are still: Refrain thee; 
 Like calm shall gain thee 
 Soon aware. 
 
 (8) O'er all heights that are highest 
 
 All's still; 
 In treetops no shyest 
 Waking thrill, 
 No breath as in dream; 
 Birds in the brake are dumb too: — 
 Ah, wait, — thou soon wilt come to 
 Thy rest supreme, 
 
 (9) O'er the heights, forever 
 
 Is rest; 
 Not a breath, not a quiver 
 The tranqulllest. 
 In the treetops high; 
 No note of woodthrush or plover; — 
 Be quiet, — the day is over — 
 Thy rest draws nigh. 
 
 (10) On every sheer height Is 
 
 Deep peace; 
 The breath so light Is 
 Nigh to cease, — 
 In the tree tops, see! 
 Woodwarblers of song are bereaven; 
 Soon peace cometh even 
 To thee and me. 
 
 (11) O'er the summits thou soarest. 
 
 Still Peace; 
 To the tops of the forest 
 Wavers cease.
 
 TRANSLATION 87 
 
 Scarce a breath! The song 
 Of the woodbirds is fled. Ah, whither? 
 Like peace stealeth hither 
 
 For thee, ere long. 
 
 (12) O'er the heights hov'reth 
 Deep rest; 
 Not a quiver discov'reth 
 Wind-caressed, 
 In the treetops a breath; 
 The woodbirds hush thena; Ah, bide thee. 
 Rest steals beside thee. 
 And beckoneth! 
 
 But if it be still contended that a translated 
 poem shall preserve the exact form of the original, 
 number of lines, metrical system, rime-enlacing, 
 kind of rime etc., etc., how shall this be in a piece 
 like the one in question? Feminine rimes are 
 scarce in English, and likely to be forced and gro- 
 tesque. Admittedly no such word as ^Gipfel' ex- 
 ists in the English, 'Ruh' is not exactly converti- 
 ble with either rest, calm or peace. For 'gipfel,' 
 'summit,' 'high places,' 'sheer height,' the 
 'heights' are only equivalents. Of these again 
 'summit' has no available rimes; and even 
 'places' is very difficult, requiring a verbal round- 
 about, unless 'green spaces' can be pressed into 
 service to describe the massed leafage of the trees, 
 what French so collectively and with poetic deli- 
 cacy describes as to "Za ramee/' So our twelve 
 efforts at rendering this difficult little poem are 
 printed here, to make evident that rigid adher- 
 ence to the form of the original is theoretically 
 possible, provided always somewhere paraphrase 
 be permitted; and what is far more serious, the 
 employment of forced rimes, and occasionally
 
 88 TRANSLATION 
 
 doubtful uses of words (as 'glides' in tlie seventh, 
 or 'wavers' in the eleventh version), and broken 
 constructions (as in the third, fourth, tenth and 
 twelfth) be allowed to pass muster, where the 
 original is a fluid indivisible whole. 
 
 Now the most serious defect apparent alike in 
 all these twelve translations may as well be frank- 
 ly confessed, anticipating our readers' head shake. 
 Where the original is simple, inevitable, with all 
 the air of an improvisation, the twelve versions 
 are more or less stilted, difficult, self-conscious and 
 devoid of singing lilt. But how can ease and 
 naivete of expression be obtained, and a foreign 
 rime system be adhered to unaltered; while we 
 are constrained to move, besides, within such nar- 
 row metrical limits as to allow of practically no 
 inversion and no paraphrase, that is, with grace 
 and charm? 
 
 Clearly, the theory of rigid adhesion to the form 
 of the original must allow for exceptions numer- 
 ous and glaring in proportion to the lack of kin- 
 ship between the languages in question and the 
 singular felicity and inimitable fragility of lyric 
 rime, rhythm, verbal euphony and spell-power. 
 
 IV. A Geeat Teanslatoe. 
 
 But it may very well be argued that the writer's 
 skill and gift is not such as to establish any argu- 
 ment, whatever his laudable assiduity may be. 
 Let us, then, turn from his admittedly doubtful 
 experiments above quoted to the work beyond
 
 TRANSLATION 89 
 
 cavil of perhaps tlie Kupreme English translator: 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 
 It was, indeed, a great gift to our literature, 
 that wondrous volume of ''Dante and His Cir- 
 cle," enabling us all to estimate the value of the 
 poetry our most inspired forefathers loved, and 
 endeavored to emulate, from Chaucer to Sidney 
 and Spenser. Considerable as may have been at 
 times the influence of old France, that of Italian 
 poetry was uninterraittent and greatly for good. 
 Not blindly adoring would we seem, but deeply 
 thankful. We are, indeed, enabled at times to 
 criticize Rossetti 's work, enjoying the advantage 
 of comparison with other translations. Compare, 
 for instance, Dante's ''Sonnet to Guido Cova- 
 clanti" in Shelley's version with Rossetti 's. The 
 last lines of the octave trouble both translators. 
 
 Ami vivendo sempre in un talento 
 
 Di star insieme crescesse il desio. 
 
 But we, observing old companionship. 
 
 To be companions still should long thereby. 
 
 Surely Shelley wins the honors with 
 
 That even satiety should still enhance 
 Between our hearts their strict community. 
 
 But most striking is Rossetti 's rendering of the 
 second line in the sestet: 
 
 And her the thirtieth on my roll, 
 
 marring, for English readers with unintelligible 
 fidelity, the poem as such. Shelley paraphrases 
 this obscure reference to a list of bvffone beauties, 
 "and my gentle love" erring, only in the person
 
 do TRANSLATION 
 
 of the possessive pronoun ''my" for "thy." On 
 
 the other hand, 
 
 E quivi ragionar sempre d'amore, 
 
 is certainly better rendered: 
 
 And not to talk of anything but love, 
 
 by Eossetti; than by Shelley in his pointless 
 phrase ''with passionate talk." Yet again, the 
 last line: 
 
 Siccome io credo che sariamo noi, 
 
 is more lyrically fluid in Shelley's: 
 
 As I believe that thou and I should be, 
 
 than in Eossetti 's — 
 
 As we should be, I think, If this were thus. 
 
 How one wishes that Eossetti had followed up 
 this generous gift of ' ' Dante and His Circle ' ' with 
 a Divine Comedy, that should forever naturalize 
 the mature genius of the great Dante in Eng- 
 land's and America's Helicon! That this is no 
 mere pious wish founded on devout ignorance of 
 rival claims, let a comparison attest in the crucial 
 passage (lines 112 to 142) of Canto V in the ''In- 
 ferno." It is the well-known narrative concern- 
 ing Paolo and Francesco's love and death and 
 doom. And here, to save space, let us fix our at- 
 tention exclusively on the four most remarkable 
 and famous morsels from the great passage: 
 
 lasso! 
 (1) Quanti dolci pensier, quanta desio 
 
 Meno costoro al doloroso passo! 
 Alas, how many sweet thoughts, how great desire, led these 
 unto the woeful pass. (Norton's prose.)
 
 TRANSLATION 91 
 
 Ah, me! what sweet thoughts, what longing led them to the 
 woeful pass! (Gollancz, prose by terzets.) 
 
 Alas! by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire 
 Must they at length to that ill pass have reached! 
 
 (Carey, blank verse.) 
 
 Alas! 
 How many pleasant thoughts, how much desire 
 Conducted them unto the dolorous pass! 
 
 (Longfellow, blank verse.) 
 
 Alas! unto such HI 
 How many sweet thoughts, what strong ecstasies 
 Led these their evil fortune to fulfil! 
 
 (Byron, "terza rima.") 
 
 Alas! 
 All their sweet thoughts then, all the steps that led 
 To love, but brought them to this dolorous pass. 
 
 (Leigh Hunt, terza rima) 
 
 Ah, Woe! 
 What sweet fond thoughts, what passionate desire 
 Led to the pass whence such great sorrows flow! 
 
 ( Plump tre, terza rima) 
 
 Alas! 
 How many sweet thoughts and how much desire 
 Led those two onward to the dolorous pass! 
 
 (Rossettl) 
 
 (2) Ma dimmi, al tempo de' dolcl sosplrl 
 A che e come concedette amore 
 Che conosceste 1 dubbiosi desiri. 
 But tell me at the time of the sweet sighs by what and how 
 did love concede to you to k7iow the dubious desires? 
 
 (Norton) 
 
 But tell me: in the time of the sweet sighs by what and how 
 love granted you to know the dubious desires? (Gollancz) 
 
 But tell me In the time of your sweet sighs, 
 
 By what, and how love granted that ye knew 
 
 Your yet uncertain wishes? (Carey) 
 
 But tell me at the time of those sweet sighs 
 
 By what and in wiiat manner love conceded. 
 
 That you should know your dubious desires. (Longfellow)
 
 92 TRANSLATION 
 
 But tell me, in the season of sweet sighs, 
 
 By what and how thy love to passion rose, 
 
 So as his dim desires to recognize? (Byron) 
 
 But tell me, at the time when sighs were sweet, 
 
 What made thee strive no longer; — hurried thee 
 
 To the last step where bliss and sorrow meet? (Hunt) 
 
 But tell me in the time of those sweet sighs, 
 The hour, the mode in which love led you on 
 Doubtful desires to know with open eyes. (Plumptre) 
 
 But tell me the season of sweet sighs, 
 
 When and what way did love instruct you so 
 
 That he in your vague longings made you wise? (Rossetti) 
 
 (3) Nessunmaggior dolore 
 Che ricordarsi del tempo felice 
 Nella miseria; e cio sa il tuo dottore. 
 
 There is no greater woe than in misery to remember the 
 happy time, and that thy teacher knows. (Norton) 
 
 There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time In 
 wretchedness: and this thy teacher knows. (Gollancz) 
 
 No greater grief than to remember days 
 
 Of joy, when misery is at hand. That kens 
 
 Thy learn'd instructor. (Carey) 
 
 There is no greater sorrow 
 
 Than to be mindful of the happy time 
 
 In misery, and that thy teacher knows. (Longfellow) 
 
 The greatest of all woes 
 Is to remind us of our happy days 
 In misery, and that thy teacher knows. (Byron) 
 
 There is no greater sorrow (answered she) 
 
 And this thy teacher here knoweth full well, 
 
 Than calling to mind joy in misery. (Hunt) 
 
 A greater grief is none 
 Than to remember happier seasons past 
 In anguish; this thy teacher well hath known. (Plumptre) 
 
 There is no greater woe 
 Than the remembrance brings of hi-^py (\"Z'Z 
 In misery; and this thy guide doth know. (Rossetti)
 
 TRANSLATION 93 
 
 (4) Quando legemmo il disiato riso 
 Esser baciato da cotanto amante, 
 Questi, che mai de me non fia diviso, 
 La bocca mi bacid tutto tremante. 
 
 When we read of the longed-for smile being kissed by such 
 a lover, this one, never from me shall be divided, kissed 
 my mouth all trembling. (Norton) 
 
 When we read how the fond smile was kissed by siich a 
 lover, he who shall never be divided from me, kissed my 
 mouth all trembling. (Gollancz) 
 
 When of that smile we read, 
 
 The wished smile so rapturously kissed 
 
 By one so deep in love, then he, who ne'er 
 
 From me shall separate, at once my lips 
 
 All trembling kissed. (Carey) 
 
 When as we read of the much longed-for smile 
 
 Being by such a noble lover kissed 
 
 This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, 
 
 Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. (Longfellow) 
 
 When we read the long-sigh' d-f or smile of her, 
 To be thus kiss'd by such devoted lover, 
 He who from me can be divided ne'er 
 Kiss'd my mouth, trembling in the act all over. 
 
 (Byron) 
 
 'Twas where the lover, mothlike in his flame 
 
 Drawn by her stveet smile, kissed it. O then he 
 
 Whose lot and mine are now for aye the same 
 
 All in a Tremble on the mouth kissed me. (Hunt) 
 
 When as we read how smile long sought for flushed 
 
 Fair face at kiss of lover so renowned, 
 
 He kissed me on my lips, as impulse rushed. 
 
 All trembling; now with me for aye is bound. (Plumptre) 
 
 For when we read of that great lover, how 
 
 He kissed the smile which he had longed to ivin. 
 
 Then he whom naught can sever from me now 
 
 Forever, kissed my mouth all quivering. (RossettI) 
 
 How (ioes not the closeness of the prose suggest 
 at times the strait-jacket? How does not Hunt, 
 the irresponsible, paraphrase altogether at times
 
 94 TRANSLATION 
 
 too recklessly? How does not the stalwart Plum- 
 tre fail utterly in the fourth? And how always 
 adequate and frequently brilliant is not Rossettil 
 But it may be contended that Rossetti was so 
 peculiarly consecrated to the service of Dante as 
 to make such a comparison unfair. Let us turn, 
 then, to his version from Villon, and note the co- 
 incidence here, also, and in greater degree of 
 translator and paraphrast ; the latter, always only 
 appearing for desperate rescue of the former, or 
 for the divine miracle that transfigures, through 
 revisualization of the first poet's inspiring vision, 
 the mere translation into a new original poem by 
 the original poet in the translator's language. So 
 we glance first at ''The Ballade of Dead Ladies" 
 where we have three other good translations con- 
 veniently to hand for comparison: Miss Castel- 
 lo's, Mr. John Payne's and Mr. Andrew Lang's.^ 
 First let us consider the refrain, that most critical 
 of all lines in a ballade: 
 
 Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan! 
 
 Where is fled the South wind's snow? (Castello) 
 
 But what is become of last year's snow? (Payne) 
 
 But where is the last year's snow? (Lang) 
 
 But where are the snows of yesteryear? (Rossetti) 
 
 What a felicity is not this last! Next, let us 
 view the opening lines, only less critical for the 
 beauty of the ballade : 
 
 Dictes-moi ou, n'en quel pays 
 Est Flora, la belle Romaine. 
 
 *L.. S. Castello's specimens of the Early Poetry of France, 
 London, 1885, freely quoted in Longfellow's "Poets and Poetry 
 of Europe." 
 
 "Ballades and Verses Vain." Andrew Lang, Scribner 1884. 
 
 "The Poems of Master Frangois Villon," John Payne, Thomas 
 Mosher, 1900.
 
 TRANSLATION 95 
 
 Tell me to what region flown 
 
 Is Flora, the fair Roman gone. (Castello) 
 
 Tell me where, in what land of shade. 
 
 Bides fair Flora of Rome, and where. (Payne) 
 
 Nay, tell me now in what strange air 
 
 The Roman Flora dwells to-day. (Lang) 
 
 Tell me now in what hidden way Is 
 
 Lady Flora, the lovely Roman? (Rossetti) 
 
 Often has this opening been deservedly praised. 
 But let the student persevere in the comparison, 
 and it is a temptation too strong for us to bring 
 out, here and now, the difficult lines concerning 
 the *' beatified maid:" 
 
 Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine, 
 Ou 'Anglois bruslerent a Rouen; 
 Oil sont lis, Vierge Souveralne? 
 
 Where is Joan, whom English flame 
 
 Gave, at Rouen, death and fame? 
 
 Where are all? Does any know? (Castello) 
 
 And Joan the Maid, 
 The good Lorralner, the English bare 
 Captive to Rouen and burned her there; 
 
 Where are they, Virgin debonair? (Payne) 
 
 Good Joan, whom English did betray 
 In Rouen town and burned her? No, 
 Maiden and Queen, no man may say: (Lang) 
 
 And that good Joan whom Englishmen 
 
 At Rouen doomed and burned her there, — 
 
 Mother of God, where are they then? (Rossetti) 
 
 Once again it may be objected that this particu- 
 lar piece of translation is an original inspiration 
 of Rossetti 's. Very well, and so be it. The point 
 of the present writer is exactly that Eossetti had 
 just such inspirations in an almost continuous se-
 
 96 TRANSLATION 
 
 Ties. The ballade made by Villon at his mother's 
 request troubles Rossetti no little by such ultra 
 orthodox terms as ''sin" and "sinner," which he 
 periphrastically avoids, as suggestive in English 
 of a nasal tone. There is a difficulty, too, in the 
 poem's stress on trans-substantiation, and the 
 Virgin birth, which to an English ear seems 
 strange, and perchance {mirabile dictu) indeli- 
 cate : Hence, a reconception of the last four lines 
 in the second stanza ; which is, we cannot but think, 
 more effective than a direct translation must al- 
 ways turn out to be in this particular case : 
 
 Preservez moy, que point je ne face ce; 
 Vierge portant, sans rompure encourir, 
 Le sacrement qu'on celebre a la messe. 
 En ceste foi je vueil vivre et mourir. 
 
 Assoilzie me, that I may have no teen. 
 
 Maid, that without breach of Virginity 
 
 Didst bear our Lord that in the Host is seen. 
 
 In this belief I will to live and die. (Payne) 
 
 Oh, help me lest in vain for me should pass 
 
 (Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!) 
 
 The blessed Host, and sacring of the Mass. 
 
 Even in this faith I choose to live and die, (Rossetti)' 
 
 Let, however, in all candor, the comparison of 
 the entire ballade be instituted, and there can re- 
 main little doubt of Mr. Rossetti 's superiority, al- 
 though Mr. Payne knows his old French better, 
 and strives honestly enough for archaic atmos- 
 phere in English, and fails not to achieve, on the 
 whole, a level of craftsmanship surpassed only 
 perhaps by two or three English translators of 
 very modern times. 
 
 ' In translating Villon, Swinburne alone seems to be Rossettl's 
 peer.
 
 TRANSLATION 97 
 
 But wliat we have been at such great pains to 
 exhibit, namely: Dante Gabriel Rossetti's great 
 eminence as a translator has for us at present 
 only this primary importance, namely, that he, 
 our greatest translator, is paraplirast not for con- 
 venience sake, but from linguistic and aesthetic 
 necessity, a goodly part of the time ; and that par- 
 aphrase, if poetically legitimate, does not consti- 
 tute a mere detached periphrasis of an untrans- 
 latable phrase, but is the result of fresh visuali- 
 zation of the original poet's vision, so that the al- 
 tered expression is as legitimate a product of tho 
 first vital idea of the poem, as that for which it 
 becomes an inevitable substitute. 
 
 V. A Curious Instance. 
 
 Now, for the proof of this proposition, we have 
 a most interesting illustration, which will, for 
 readers steeped in mere textual criticism long 
 wonted to the quite mechanical hanging of master- 
 pieces on mere circumstantial evidence, border on 
 the incredible and occult! Antoine-Vincent Ar- 
 nault^« wrote after the Battle of Waterloo a lit- 
 tle elegy in parable form to the Princess Hor- 
 tense, in which Napoleon is the oak, storm- 
 stricken; Arnault the wind-driven leaf, and, at 
 the end, the laurel leaf; Hortense the petal of 
 the rose. Leopardi liked the little poem, but 
 either was not aware of the original allusions, or 
 ignored them wilfully. Be that as it may, he omit- 
 
 "1766-1834.
 
 98 TRANSLATION 
 
 ted, in translating, the three passages italicized in 
 the French and introduced the words and phrases 
 italicized in the Italian, entitling his derivative 
 poem, ^^Imitazione." 
 
 LA FEUILLE. 
 
 De ta tige detach^e, 
 
 Pauvre feuille dessecMe. 
 
 Ou vas-tu? Je n'en sais rien. 
 
 L'orage a hrise le chdne 
 
 Qui seul 6tait mon soutien. 
 
 De son inconstante haletne, 
 
 Le zephyr ou V quilon 
 
 Depuis ce jour me promene 
 
 De la foret h la plaine, 
 
 De la montagne au vallon. 
 
 Je vais od le vent me m6ne, 
 
 Sans me plaindre ou m'effrayer: 
 
 Je vais ou va toute chose. 
 
 Oil va la feuille de rose 
 
 Et la feuille de laurier. (Arnault. '15) 
 
 IMITAZIONE 
 
 Lungi dal proprio ramo, 
 
 Povera foglia frale, 
 
 Dove vai tu? Dal faggio 
 
 La dov'io nacqui, mi divise 11 vento. 
 
 Esse, tornando, a volo 
 
 Dal bosco alia campagna, 
 
 Dalla valle mi porta alia montagna. 
 
 Vo pellagrina. e tutto Valtro ignoro. 
 
 Vo dove ogni altra cosa, 
 
 Dove naturalmente 
 
 Va la folgia di rosa, 
 
 E la folgia d'alloro. (Leopardi. '31-'35) 
 
 Now it is most noteworthy that *'frale" (frag- 
 ile) for dessechee" (withered), "pellegrina" (a 
 pilgrim, wanderer) and^'porta" (carries) for ''me 
 promene" (drives me), increase the universal pa- 
 thetic applicability with a deepened sense of 
 frailty and fatality. The loss of the storm, on the
 
 TRANSLATION 09 
 
 contrary, that breaks the oak/^ the substitution of 
 the brief "tornado" (turning) for ''inconstantc 
 haleine, le zephyr ou I'aquilon " (intermittent 
 breath, the zepliyr or the winter wind), makes the 
 objective reality less vivid and dramatic. The 
 most important change, however, is the substitu- 
 tion of ''tutto I'altro ignoro" (all else I know 
 not), intimating an agnostic desi:)air, instead of 
 *'Je n'en sais rien," at the beginning of the leaf's 
 reply, which merely denied knowledge of its des- 
 tined direction. "Sans me plaindre on me'ef- 
 frayer" insinuated a militant, stoic feeling, which 
 is out of keeping with Leopardi's sentimental doc- 
 trine of humanitarianism, based on pessimism: 
 and "Seco perpetuamente" (forever with the 
 wind) and "naturalmente" (by course of nature's 
 law) added to the whither of all things, makes the 
 pessimism absolute and philosophically neces- 
 sary. 
 
 Rightly, to be sure, did Leopardi omit any ref- 
 erence to Arnault's jooem in the title of his piece. 
 Too great and true a poet was he to suppose his 
 Iniitazione any fair equivalent of La Feuille. 
 
 Now, it so happened that Dante Gabriel Ros- 
 setti read and was drawn to Leopardi's poem. 
 It set him to musing, and finally, to versifying, 
 with the result of "The Leaf;" which we print 
 with all departures from the Italian italicized: 
 
 i-In Leopardi chine become faggio (beech) instead of querela, 
 probably because of difference in sentiment (pathos, instead of 
 stoic valor) ; and the English love of the oak restored the orig- 
 inal tree chosen as Jove's, and therefore Napoleon's.
 
 100 TRANSLATION 
 
 THE LEAF 
 
 Tom from your parent bough, 
 Poor leaf all withered now. 
 
 Where go you? "/ cannot tell. 
 Storm stricken is the oak-tree 
 
 Where I grew, whence I fell. 
 Changeful continually, 
 
 The zephyr and hurricane 
 Since that day bid me flee 
 From deepest woods to the lea, 
 
 From highest hills to the plain. 
 Where the wind carries me 
 
 I go tvithout fear or grief: 
 I go whither each one goes; 
 Thither the leaf of the rose, 
 
 And thither the laurel-leaf." ('69-73) 
 
 IMITAZIONE 
 
 Lungi dal proprio ramo, 
 
 Povera foglia frale, 
 
 Dove vai tu? Dal faggio 
 
 La dov'io nacqui, mi divise il vento. 
 
 Esso, tornando, a volo 
 
 Dal bosco alia campagna, 
 
 Dalla valle mi porta alia montagna. 
 
 Vo pellagrina, e tutto I'altro ignoro. 
 
 Vo dove ogni altra cosa, 
 
 Dove naturalmente 
 
 Va la foglia de rosa, 
 
 E la foglia d'alloro. (Leopard!) 
 
 Note that **Dov' io nacqui" (where I was born) 
 is represented above by "parent," inapplicable, 
 of course, to Napoleon. * ' Perpetuamente " (per- 
 petually) is properly transferred from the flight 
 to the changefulness of the wind, as ''continu- 
 ally." The feeling of "pellegrina" (pilgrim) is 
 excluded. Tlie agnosticism of ** tutto I'altro ig- 
 noro" disappears; and also the scientific fatalism 
 of ''naturalmente." On the other hand, the cir- 
 cumstances of the storm reappears, and along 
 with it the stoic refusal to complain or cherish 
 fear.
 
 TRANSLATION 101 
 
 THE LEAF 
 
 Torn from your parent bough. 
 Poor leaf all withered now, 
 
 Where go you? "/ cannot tell. 
 Storm stricken is the oak-tree 
 
 Where I grew, whence I fell. 
 Changeful continually. 
 
 The zephyr and hurricane 
 Since that day bid me flee 
 From deepest woods to the lea. 
 
 From highest hills to the plain. 
 Where the wind carries me 
 
 I go without fear or grief: 
 I go whither each one goes; 
 Thither the leaf of the rose. 
 
 And thither the laurel-leaf." 
 
 LA FEUILLE 
 
 Da ta tige detach§e, 
 Pauvre feuille dess6ch6. 
 Ou vas-tu? Je n'en sais rien. 
 L'orage a hrisd le ch^ne 
 Qui seul 6tait mon soutien. 
 De son inconstante haleine 
 Le zephyr ou Vaquilon 
 Depuis ce jour me promdne 
 Da la foret h la plaine 
 De la montagne au vallon. 
 Je vais oil le vent me mfene. 
 Sans me plaindre on m'effrayer: 
 Je vais oO va toute chose 
 Oil va la feuille de rose 
 Et la feuille de laurier. 
 
 Corroborative evidence for our interesting con- 
 tention may be had by comparing German trans- 
 lations respectively of "La Feuille'* and of "Imi- 
 tazione." But the English reader may be grate- 
 ful to us if we subjoin for his convenience a trans- 
 lation somewhat loose of Leopardi's poem by 
 Frederick Townsend, for comparison with Ros- 
 setti^s resuscitation of the original.
 
 102 TRANSLATION 
 
 IMITATION " 
 
 Wandering from the parent bough, 
 
 Little, trembling leaf. 
 
 Whither goest thou? 
 
 "From the beech where I was bom. 
 
 By the north wind was I torn. 
 
 Him I follow in his flight, 
 
 Over mountain, over vale, 
 
 From the forest to the plain. 
 
 Up the hill, and down again, 
 
 With him ever on the way. 
 
 More than that I cannot say. 
 
 Where I go must all things go. 
 
 Gentle, simple, high and low, 
 
 Leaves of laurel, leaves of rose; 
 
 Whither, Heaven only knows!" ('87) 
 
 Now we hesitated to utilize this extraordinary 
 instance of a peep into the translator's workshop, 
 merely on the evidence of editions, or the explicit 
 note even of the editor of the authorized edition. 
 In reply to an inquiry, a valuable communication 
 was obtained from Mr. William Michael Eossetti, 
 which we print in an appendix. He substantiated 
 what had been gathered from the authorized edi- 
 tion, but seemed somewhat alarmed at the refer- 
 ence in the letter of inquiry to his brother's gift 
 of visualization. These are days of strange doc- 
 trine. No wonder Mr. Eossetti waxed suspicious, 
 reading the cabalistic words ''gift of visualiza- 
 tion!" True, both he and his brother honored 
 "William Blake, but that was ere Blavatzkiism, 
 Babism, Eddyism and popular misapplications of 
 Psychic Eesearch had made the atmosphere un- 
 pleasant for merely literary and disinterested 
 mystics. 
 
 ''-Poems of Giacomo Leopardi. Translated by Fred. Townsend. 
 Putnams, 1887. Thirty-eight Poems.
 
 TRANSLATION 103 
 
 Well, if the letter which we reprint in full bears 
 conclusive testimony, there is but one theory be- 
 fore us; namely, that Rossetti did with Leopardi's 
 poem just what Leopardi had done with Ar 
 nault's; this difference only obtaining, that Leo- 
 pardi philosophized. Consequently, in every case 
 of change from Leopardi 's poem, Rossetti returned 
 unconsciously to Arnault's apologue; not certainly 
 because of any supernatural persistence of the 
 original poem, mystically suggesting itself ghost- 
 wise to the third poet ; but simply because the ele- 
 ments Rossetti omitted were philosophic and un- 
 dramatic, and those he introduced into his sup- 
 posed original were dramatic and sensuously im- 
 aginative and natural to the primary conception. 
 
 Now Rossetti did not totally restore the original 
 poem. Slight vestiges remain of Leopardi in 
 * ' parent, " " carries me, " ' ' changeful. " * ' Each one 
 goes'' is an infelicity, due to the difficulty of 
 poeticaly rendering *'ogni altra cosa" (every- 
 thing besides) which rationally particularized a 
 little in Leopardi on the *'toute chose" (every- 
 thing) of the original. 
 
 Clearly Rossetti did not know the story of Ar- 
 nault's poem at the time he made his translation, 
 whatever may have been the case at some later 
 date. For certainly he could not have credited 
 Leopardi with furnishing him the original, had he 
 known Arnault's poem; and much less, had he 
 known it, could he have thought it a translation 
 of the Italian, when he found himself persistently
 
 104 TRANSLATION 
 
 preferring the supposed translation to the sup- 
 posed original, in every departure from the 
 same. Turn the matter over and over again, how- 
 ever the reader sceptical in matters aesthetic may 
 do, the stubborn fact remains that Rossetti re- 
 stored almost absolutely from a translation an 
 original poem which he did not Jcnoiv existed, 
 merely because, when translating, Rossetti ren- 
 dered conception by conception, not phrase by 
 phrase; nay, in fact, before he rendered any cou- 
 ception whatever, reconceived and recomposed 
 and livingly reconstructed the whole in his mind, 
 and then alone addressed himself to translating 
 conception by conception with such liberties as the 
 visualized whole seemed to warrant or suggest. 
 And this we would maintain is but a most striking 
 exemplification of the process of true transla- 
 tion.^^ 
 
 VI. THE MAIN CONTENTION. 
 
 If the point we have endeavored to establish 
 (for which we make no claims to original discov- 
 ery) be accepted in good faith, then it will indeed 
 be difficult to refuse acceptance of the further 
 contention of this paper, namely : that translation 
 offers a pedagogical method for the teaching of 
 literature as an art. 
 
 " The second letter of Mr. Rossetti, In response to further 
 more explicit Inquiry, does much to support the views here ex- 
 pressed, and those implied as their background, although it takes 
 issue with us mistakenly, we cannot but think, in the matter of 
 the detail analysis of Rossetti's Leaf. Mr. Rossetti, however, 
 had only a letter and not this present detailed statement before 
 him of the three poems and their relations.
 
 TRANSLATION 105 
 
 It is indeed pleasant to reflect that in urging the 
 formation of graduate schools for teaching the 
 Art of Translation at our Universities, we should 
 be carrying out the suggestions of that first great 
 American teacher of Literature, Henry "Wads- 
 worth Longfellow, who, in his "Poets and Poetry 
 of Europe," pointed us the way to a cosmopoli- 
 tan culture, and what is more, set us the brave ex- 
 ample, seeking not originality and priority of de- 
 vising, like a Poe, or a Whitman ; ambitious mere- 
 ly of a sane, large-hearted recreation of things 
 positively known to be beautiful ; and the produc- 
 tion, then, of such things, as should bear lovely 
 likeness to them, out of materials that offer them- 
 selves to the cultured artist on our continent, and 
 at home in our special civilization and nation.^* 
 
 Yes, the poetry of Longfellow may suffer from 
 the limitations of his individual genius, from his 
 involvement in an ephemeral phase of the Ro- 
 mantic movement, from his appearance too early 
 in our cultivation of aesthetic self-confidence ; but 
 the gracious catholicity of his spirit, his modest 
 avocation to the translator's self-denying but 
 most cultivating and satisfying art, — these, at all 
 events (whatsoever may befall his poetic fame), 
 are to be our inheritance forever as a people, and 
 
 " We would not be supposed wholly unappreclative of Poe's 
 verse technique, much less of WTiitman's very important, though 
 not clearly understood, discoveries in poetic composition. The 
 Intention is only to vindicate Longfellow from the silly charges 
 of plagiarism, and the unfortunate but natural reaction from an 
 enthusiastic overpraise which made a sane German critic de- 
 nominate him the American Goethe!
 
 106 TRANSLATION 
 
 a compelling power unto a new birth of our 
 American Literature. 
 
 For not to no purpose, must we believe, are 
 we thus, by origin, of many nations and lan- 
 guages ; and if America shall become in truth the 
 cultural fulfillment of Europe's prophetic hope, 
 she will not be a New England but a New Eu- 
 rope. Then the preachers and promoters of her 
 larger National life, unto the appearance of her 
 original seers and world-poets, will be the Trans- 
 lators, who make live for us, together in a social 
 whole, the several great and noble ispirits pf 
 every people, physically or spiritually ancestral 
 to our own that is to be! Shakespeare and Mil- 
 ton shall have to welcome on equal terms, in this 
 their new Empire, Dante, Moliere, Goethe and a 
 score more of their peers, "bards of passion and 
 of mirth." And unto this consummation let the 
 present paper be only, for aught we care — if our 
 disallower would so phrase it — the raucous crow 
 of a cockerel on a rail fence, in the sublime face 
 of the vast **Kose of Dawn!"
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 *'A thing of beauty is a joy forever " is the 
 rapturous utterance of a very young man. Only 
 too soon do we discover that the "law of diminish- 
 ing returns" is operative in the realm of the £es- 
 thetic and spiritual quite as surely, though more 
 slowly, than in the realm of sensation. As with 
 the drug the dose has to be increased, as in every 
 sensational experience, if protracted, the stimulus 
 has to become more emphatic or subtly penetrant; 
 so we find that for sensitiveness to things spiritual 
 and lovely, the appeal, if protracted or continuous, 
 requires some sort of rebirth of us, the subject, — 
 some refreshment, dipping into the fount of youth 
 — if our rapture, our ecstasy, nay, our pleasurable 
 excitement, is to continue increasing or constant. 
 
 Relative novelty, then, must always remain an 
 element of importance in our judgments, though 
 we freely admit that the best test of things artis- 
 tic is, nevertheless: can they endure familiarity 
 without a resulting indifference or contempt on 
 our part? It is not that the old things are worse, 
 but that our powers fail us, and that we need vari- 
 ety in the appeal, however willing we may be to 
 compel some measure thereto of attention. How 
 
 107
 
 108 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 much more is this the case if we desire to create a 
 profound emotional interest? Coleridge's ''Ode 
 to Dejection" is not the morbid record of a merely 
 personal degeneracy. Beauty, while it has un- 
 doubtedly its objective follies, if one might so say, 
 is as a psychic experience dependent upon a cer- 
 tain resiliency and superabundance of spirit in 
 us. "Joy is the beauty-making jDower" and "we 
 in ourselves rejoice." Should we become disap- 
 pointed with self and this fount therefore of inner 
 delight run dry, we shall, like Coleridge, "see, not 
 feel, how beautiful they are:" — those clouds pil- 
 ing golden about the setting sun; those seas 
 stretching before us cold to the dawn ; those moun- 
 tains reaching wistfully into the blue ; those lovely 
 valleys filled with idyllic hopes and delicious, deli- 
 cate eccentricities of coloring and form; those 
 marvelous intricate aspirations in stone, the 
 Gothic cathedrals; those quiet, serene, because 
 self-controlled, perfections of the Greek sculptor; 
 those epics and dramas that have fed the higher 
 soul of our civilization for many centuries with- 
 out indications of failing power to provide and 
 bless. 
 
 Now, is there any escape from this dying out in 
 us of that experience which as we grow older we 
 need but more and more sorely? The adolescent 
 in very deed do have their world in them; they 
 suffice unto themselves. Their eyes are closed by 
 a spell save to their own reflections in the univer- 
 sal looking-glass. They do not seem to need even
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 109 
 
 God. They do not require the support of art. 
 Only a few temperamentally melancholy, super- 
 sensitive, subtly unsocial among them, seem to 
 desire anything besides food and shelter and ex- 
 penditure of energ}% noisy companionship, and 
 wherever cheaply to be had — a circle of adoring 
 elders! The hunger and thirst for righteousness 
 does not become an ache until we have known sin 
 face to face — fought it hand to hand. The yearn- 
 ing for beauty, likewise, does not become a com- 
 pelling passion until we have experienced ugli- 
 ness. When the days of splendid self-enthrone- 
 ment are over — when we awake — when we cry out 
 godless for a God, hideous for art, besmirched for 
 purity, — then we are already jaded, stand disillu- 
 sioned and clear-sighted with Coleridge — forever 
 this side Jordan! But right here do we get a 
 suggestion, offered us by the mother who lives her 
 life over again in her daughter whom she is intro- 
 ducing to society; by the father who is making a 
 place in the business world for his son. When we, 
 on our own account, cease to respond, for any rea- 
 son whatever, to a given stimulus, we can indi- 
 rectly, through sympathy, obtain a reaction there- 
 to in ourself, by imparting to another the experi- 
 ence of the joy we once had ourself; and that per- 
 haps is why I take my favorite book from the 
 shelf most often when my friend is with me. I 
 know what it contains ; I know it is noble, lovely, 
 exquisite, holy; I fear to discover that I am dull 
 of sight, hard of hearing, and I leave the book un- 
 opened when alone.
 
 110 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 So, to use theological language, ''faith" leads 
 to "works" because ''works" preserve and re- 
 store "faith." The very self -preservative instinct 
 of "faith" impels the faithful to "works." It is 
 after all, then, no altruistic impulse in us which 
 makes us artist, preacher, proselytizer, teacher, 
 special pleader for things divine. 
 
 In Browning's "Pauline," the gifted youth who 
 refuses to embody his ideas in definite language 
 (because he prefers to admire his shifting day- 
 dream world and adore himself as its creator) 
 will suffer that decline of his image-making power, 
 so subtly analyzed by Browning later in the pite- 
 ous case of Sordello. He who refuses his en- 
 deavor to glorify his God by obtaining for Him 
 the praise of others will sooner or later forfeit 
 the bliss of worship, which, to save himself from 
 odious comparisons of present with past and con- 
 sequent despair, he shall have to secure some- 
 how. 
 
 Quite apart from any pride in creation, any am- 
 bitious longings for fame or fortune, every sin- 
 cere lover of beauty sooner or later will find stir- 
 ring in himself this missionary zeal. Hence, the 
 enduring of poetic birth-pains, of hopes deferred, 
 of remorse at failures, of shame incident to dis- 
 paragement and misunderstanding; and all ever- 
 more solely, however unawares, for the one and 
 selfsame "cause:" an ever fresh revelation to 
 himself, in all her virgin loveliness, of Lady 
 Beauty.
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 111 
 
 II. 
 
 To obtain a definition of art is no easy matter, 
 and the reason perhaps is that every artist sets 
 forth from the particulars of his special art, and 
 therefore arrives at a conclusion insufficiently gen- 
 eral to satisfy his brethren who worship Lady 
 Beauty according to another rite. When Moliere 
 humorously presents us with the oft-mentioned pic- 
 ture of that naif enfant terrible, his Bourgeois, 
 crying out, ''And when I say 'fetch my slippers,' 
 is that prose? Have I been talking prose all my 
 life without knowing it?" it is of course the pe- 
 dantic rhetorician who is coming in for good- 
 natured criticism, quite as much as the Bour- 
 geois. Prose, if we mean by it an art-form, is 
 not stumbled into by most of us. To be natural 
 is not always to be gracious, noble, or even inter- 
 esting. The masters of prose are fewer in num- 
 ber than the masters of verse. Just because the 
 rules of the technique of prose-expression are 
 more unseizable and manifold, because the range 
 is greater and the shadings more delicate, it 
 would be less likely for a man to stumble into 
 prose than into verse. Language having its daily, 
 hourly utilities as a medium of haphazard human 
 intercourse is one thing; and quite another thing 
 is language seized upon by the holy spirit of man 
 for the ennoblement of things expressed, for the 
 enlargement of the hearer and reader, to the van- 
 ishing of horizon limits, to the intensive realiza-
 
 112 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 tion of the life of the body and the soul. And it 
 is so with all other materials, not merely with lan- 
 guage. But perhaps no art suffers so much as 
 literary art by the inevitable confusion of terms. 
 Cyclopaedias are not literature. Newspaper writ- 
 ing very rarely makes even an effort to be liter- 
 ature. Most of the fiction devoured by the read- 
 ers who have learned the three R's, but never 
 served their apprenticeship, never applied for a 
 novitiate, are mere panderings, mere pretenses — 
 utilities that hardly rank with cabbage leaf to- 
 bacco, cereal coffee, but — surely they are in no 
 sense ''art." For, as not all verbal expression is 
 art, — prose or verse, — so not all drawing, all 
 sculpting, all thrumming and strumming is art. 
 Expression, to be sure, it is; but only expression 
 that arrests attention, conveys intention, and pro- 
 duces distention, can rightly be considered art. It 
 is only such expression as impresses with the 
 worth of what is expressed by the manner of the 
 expression, that deserves the name; and to be 
 true art, the impression of worth must be in due 
 proportion to the presumed importance of what is 
 expressed. 
 
 The question, of course, may be raised, ''Why 
 art at alH" to which we should answer, "Why ex- 
 pression at all of any sort?" "Speech is silver 
 and silence is golden." Why not then the 
 golden standard forever and aye, "Aum and 
 ecstasy?" We should be disposed to reply: Be- 
 cause "Aum and ecstasy" are reasonably possi-
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 113 
 
 ble only to the cross-logged Yogi with milleniums 
 of rice diet. To us carnivorous folk who do and 
 die, who are essentially active and not contem- 
 plative, to whom rest is incident to work, for whom 
 the night is the interval between day and day, what 
 we need is not *'Aum and ecstasy," not golden 
 silence, but noble and ennobling speech. If we are 
 racially compelled to utterance, if we can never 
 say die while alive, and if living to us means do- 
 ing, then art becomes a temperamental religious 
 necessity, a sine qua non of exaltation and ideal 
 apotheosis for the men of our European and 
 American stocks. 
 
 The highest intelligent man of our race may not 
 be blessed like William Blake with fourfold vision ; 
 Beulah may for him be a promised land ; and much 
 more so that realm unpromised where one 
 beholds the unseen, the unthinkable. But to him 
 at least is granted twofold vision always : things- 
 as-they-are, and things-as-they-might-be and are 
 not; as they are not, though they were such per- 
 haps, and are to be such again some time. He 
 may endeavor to give his ideal world a home in 
 the mystic past: some golden age of innocency, 
 some Eden-life unfallen, some time when the Gods 
 walked joatently with man. Or, like the modern 
 evolutionist, he may project his ideal world for- 
 ward into the ages to come. In either case the 
 contrast remains : the world-as-it-is, the world-as- 
 it-can-be-thought. 
 
 To the world-as-it-is the practical man is closely
 
 114 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 related. In the world-as-it-might-be the man of 
 the spirit claims his citizenship. Now thmgs-as- 
 they-are compel us to see them, and things-as- 
 they-were-or-are-to-be must seem therefore rela- 
 tively unreal. The body makes its hunger felt, 
 when the spirit will starve without a murmur. We 
 live in the present, and we can not afford to be 
 absent-minded or absent-hearted. If, however, the 
 present be sordid, base, ignoble, mean, shall not 
 we ourselves be assimilated to it, and become sor- 
 did, base, ignoble, mean? The seer in the sty? 
 The poet in the garret ? Young love in a cottage ? 
 True, and when we ai»e seers, all anointed inev- 
 itably; when we are poets of unfailing aspiration 
 and inspiration; when we are immortal lovers 
 having bathed in Morris's Well at the World's 
 End ; then can we safely inhabit cottage, attic, or 
 sty. When, in other words, we have the child's 
 power of touching our environment with the fairy- 
 wand, and making the garbage-barrel in the back 
 yard become a pile of multi-colored precious 
 things strewn with diamonds ; then it may be safe 
 for us. When pumpkin will do for carriage, and 
 rats for coachmen, we do not need art, because we 
 have not yet the need of twofold vision. We do 
 do not see things-as-they-are at all; we only 
 see things-as-they-might-be. But then, on the 
 other hand, our social value to the world is well 
 nigh lost. We are hermits, harmless egomaniacs, 
 or children grown up, (that most awful thing) — 
 the littlQ babe by increase of dimension become the
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 115 
 
 simpering idiot. But, even for idealism's sake, 
 we must live in the world of tliings-as-tliey-are and 
 we must take cognizance of the relations of things 
 in that world; for if ever the world of things-as- 
 they-are is to realize in part our vision of things- 
 as-they-might-be, it will not he through hocus 
 pocus, self-deception, not through Eddyite denials 
 of the obvious ; but through honest recognition of 
 facts and courageous affirmations in long pro- 
 tracted toil, that will result in bringing our two 
 discrepant worlds at least to partial reconcilia- 
 tion, and the soul to some degree of merited peace. 
 For so long as these worlds are wholly apart and 
 hostile, we ourselves must suffer a species of dich- 
 otomy. To say the least, our amphibious life be- 
 comes distressing, and we tend to ignore or deny 
 that world which will most brook ignoring or de- 
 nial. At best we will drift with the current 
 only, instead of outspeeding it by oar or sail. 
 Now it is expressly to save us from thus being 
 drifted with the current that art is summoned 
 to our aid. 
 
 We may arrive then at some notion of what art 
 is by clearly recognizing its human service. To 
 make us see things-as-they-are-not with some 
 measure of distinctness, and make us believe in 
 that vision it has granted us; to make us discern 
 intellectual realities as vividly as we are often 
 compelled to suffer the grosser realities of sense; 
 this is the function of art. Not that every ideal 
 is better than the actual. There may be ideals in-
 
 116 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 finitely worse than the actual. Only the ideal, that 
 which ought- (as we say) -to be, is among the things 
 that are not; and, in order really to discern the 
 worth of that particular possibility, we must ap- 
 peal to sense and emotion. If it be found worthy, 
 we may then anticipate development and contrib- 
 ute therefore ''to the shortening of the times." 
 If it be found unworthy, we shall have, by our 
 own imaginative experience of it, forever per- 
 chance, quenched to the soul's profit, a false and 
 vicious hope. 
 
 Progress is at the risk of degeneracy, and the 
 visions of things ideal, the art prophetic and po- 
 etic, may serve Ahriman as well as Ormuzd. This 
 proviso we frankly make, and proceed to restate 
 what we deem to be the office of art: to create 
 an appearance that can compete with actuality, 
 not by delusion causing a hallucinatory error, 
 but by illusion ; an association, that is to say, with 
 what is real, establishing some arbitrary point of 
 contact between the sense-world and the world 
 of ideas, a form forced upon stone, a meaning in- 
 jected into words, an incantation made into sounds 
 competent to call up some specific emotion. And 
 all this that we may see things-as-they-are-not, 
 knowing that they are not actually, but are in a 
 deeper sense for us already real, real as tree in 
 acorn, real as rose in slip, and that they may and 
 must indeed come to be actual for us or in us, or 
 for and in our offspring, the men that yet shall be.
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 117 
 
 ni. 
 
 Let us revert again to what we mean by ideal- 
 ization. We have heard so much of realism and 
 naturalism that many suppose to idealize is to be 
 wilfully fantastic, absurd, maudlin, to reveal a 
 childish or senile incompetency of some sort. The 
 fact is that the extremest theoretical realist or 
 naturalist never for one instant in his practice ex- 
 pects to take the world haphazard as he finds it. 
 "Wlien my landscapist friend says that everything 
 "has an interesting aspect", and that therefore 
 one need have no care for selection of subjects 
 for art, he tucks awa}-^ into his word ** aspect" 
 that process of selection so essential to art, and 
 which he is unaware of, because it is instinctive. 
 Even the photographer must "compose." He 
 must not only dispose his matter with reference to 
 his point of view, but he must relate the parts of 
 his subject with reference to a united significant 
 effect; he must, in other words, extricate the to 
 him essential from the insignificant details. If 
 our artist works in terms of time rather than of 
 space, as epic or dramatic poet, he must show a 
 consciousness of the cause in the effect; insin- 
 uate what is possible in the mere appearance of 
 what is; make the latent, patent, so to say; the 
 generic, vital; and the meaning, inherent. He 
 must emphasize and individualize; seize and eter- 
 nalize the moment or sequence of moments in the
 
 118 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 progress of events; isolate aspects of things; in 
 a word, anticipate evolution. 
 
 And all this the artist does; not of a set pur- 
 pose, perhaps, but most persistently because he 
 desires that his presentation, interpretation, or 
 creation shall give us joy; that we shall feel a 
 passion for it, a fear and awe of it, a tender devo- 
 tion to it. These purposes he cannot achieve ex- 
 cept by economizing our energy, directing us 
 aright, saving us from the haphazards and bad 
 luck, by the best road, or the well-defined grassy 
 pathway ; leaving us free only where we are safe, 
 giving us just enough to do that we may share 
 his joy of creation, and imagine that it is we 
 who have discovered the meaning, that by us the 
 value has been assigned to the vision, and that of 
 us it obtains its symbolic worth, its sacramental 
 halo. 
 
 Is there, however, no need of ethical criticism? 
 Shall the artist make us hells as well as heavens 1 
 Shall he create for us the Witch of Horsel with 
 as guileless an innocency as the Venus Urania? 
 Ah, it is only he who has not been fully initiated 
 into the mysteries of art who fears for us the 
 results of aesthetic freedom. Only what appeals 
 to us in our highest, that does not incur the con- 
 demnation of our noblest, will maintain itself for 
 long. The abominations of the fashion plate are 
 misbegotten and born amiss into the world by the 
 Trade-spirit ; and the unholy monster straightway 
 devours his own offspring. It is so of every other
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 119 
 
 abomination or mere virtuosity wliich is meaning- 
 less or abhorrent to the noble that abides withheld 
 from vicious mutilation or self-murder in the veri- 
 est essence of man. False ideals, degrading experi- 
 ences, can be bravely set forth in art ; and though 
 they may not be for all men, yet their very artis- 
 tic treatment, if such they have received, will serve 
 to disinfect and neutralize their inherent natural 
 poison. Surely the ''City of Dreadful Night" 
 will minister to a mind diseased the aesthetic anti- 
 dote, rather than encourage melancholia. The 
 ''Laus Veneris" may have been abused; but it has 
 corrupted as yet probably no man or woman. The 
 ''Fleurs du Mai" whatever may be said against 
 them in so far as they are art, have done the world 
 no conspicuous harm. Whereas, to decree eth- 
 ically what shall or shall not be endeavored by the 
 artist, would mean the death of the art spirit. Let 
 us not forget that every great prophet has been 
 called dangerous and immoral and subversive of 
 order by his contemporaries. Every great moral 
 innovator must make experiments, and perhaps in 
 his own person. If he is to discover new truth he 
 should be at liberty to set aside all pre-judgments 
 however right they may be, repeal all laws hoW' 
 ever prudent, and thereby ascertain afresh for 
 himself and us what the veritable facts may be. 
 Thus St. Paul assures us that insomuch as sin 
 abounded, so much the more did grace abound. 
 And Shelley, Byron and Goethe, and Heine, not 
 assuredly unimpeachable in their private lives,
 
 120 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 have served to advance in definiteness the moral 
 ideal of the race; the error and weakness of the 
 artist has served not less truly (nay more per- 
 haps) than his success or virtue. The Bible has its 
 obscene passages. Shakespeare might be wrested 
 to a soul's destruction. Men have committed sui- 
 cide after reading the ** Sorrows of Werther," — 
 but so did the swine choke in the sea of Gennesa- 
 reth ! 
 
 Without freedom of the artist, no art; and 
 without art, if you include in the term all those 
 means to set before us the world-as-it-is-not-but- 
 as-it-might-be, we are mere animals living to in- 
 dividual and associate animal ends. To be en- 
 dowed with the power to compare, invent, and 
 discover, to have all our activities leading to defi- 
 nitions of truth and good, and these being de- 
 prived of all real actualization here and now, in 
 so far as they are felt to be the substance of our 
 human life, — such a condition must cause that 
 bitter despondency, an awful despair to super- 
 vene, which will throw us back upon our merely 
 animal selves. What is truth? Where is good? 
 Have these no reality save in idea? Are they 
 malign ghosts haunting our sensual feast? So 
 we doubt and disbelieve and suffer until art says 
 yea to our hopes, and the ideal is real ; and we are 
 bid behold and worship. So art saves our faith 
 in God, because it saves our faith in man as man. 
 
 The province then of art, we repeat, is to ren- 
 der sensible what we would have so. The Zeus?
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 121 
 
 The Apollo? Behold the Man. But the LaocoonI 
 Ay? And CEdipus, Job, and Lear? The painful 
 and the criminal even are by deeper understand- 
 ing of life to be redeemed for us. We are to be 
 carried in the chariot of fire unto the farther side 
 of disillusion, beyond despondency. But the 
 Satyr? The Pan? Here also art has the same of- 
 fice. Aristophanes, Moliere, and George Mere- 
 dith, — what do they endeavor to do but save us 
 from our cynicism, from criticism reacting acidly 
 upon our self? Is the world not good enough for 
 us? Is there failure, inconsistency, absurdity? So 
 much the better. The exception proves the rule. 
 This perverse and absurd world could not main- 
 tain itself here at all, but that it is founded on the 
 unshakable, and surrounded of the serene. If our 
 intellect is confounded, it is but that we may be 
 compelled to live with the Gods, and behold all 
 things very good from the superhuman point of 
 view. So in the true presentation of the ideal, in 
 the redemption of the hideous and grotesque, in 
 the reinterpretation of the pen^erse and con- 
 temptible (working idyllically, tragically, comical- 
 ly, humorously or satirically), art is always per- 
 forming the same holy office : making us realize the 
 world of vision in and through the world of sense.
 
 122 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 IV. 
 
 But the practical man, the man who has spent 
 perhaps the best years of his life in the midst of 
 things-as-they-are, refuses altogether to recognize 
 consciously and pay his devotions to the world of 
 things-as-they-might-be. He will not read poetry 
 except for information. Literature and sculpture 
 and painting must for him immortalize incidents 
 and events, subtly present him with usable psych- 
 ology, be the weather prophet unto his shifty cli- 
 mate. He must have his little moral Q. E. D. 
 tacked to the fable, or fancy he obtains a magic 
 spell to improve his luck. If song and dance and 
 procession are allowed, it is not for their loveli- 
 ness but for their vanities and lubricity, their ad- 
 vertising value in pomp and show. He must have 
 shelter that will make known his bank balance. 
 He would have comfort, amusement, distraction, 
 excitement for the miserable little leisure that his 
 business leaves. If art will do these things he 
 will accept of art. He recognizes the necessity of 
 decorating the banquet hall, publishing his patri- 
 otism with bunting, receiving the president with 
 illuminations and the diamond-studded shirt- 
 bosom, because these things keep up faith in an 
 era of prosperity ! So your practical man always 
 and always insists upon an immediate utilitarian 
 service, if he is to invest even stolen goods in art. 
 And the artist is apt to speak harshly of the prac- 
 tical man, consider him an out and out savage,
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 123 
 
 deserving only to be electrocuted — when artists 
 shall control the government ! 
 
 Fortunately for us the republic of Plato is not 
 likely to be set up for a while. The poets will 
 not be banished the land, neither will the philos- 
 ophers make or administer the laws. The prac- 
 tical man, whatever his shortcomings, by his very 
 contact with the world of things-as-they-are is 
 trained to demand of art that one thing without 
 which art cannot maintain itself true for any 
 length of time. It is altogether too easy for the 
 artist to build a Chinese wall about himself, — co- 
 teries, cliques, mutual admiration societies, — and 
 circumscribe the realm of his goddess, Beauty, and 
 render her worship impotent for social good. The 
 practical man says, ''show me the use of art, bring 
 the world of things-as-they-might-be into specific 
 and immediate touch with the world of things-as- 
 they-are, at one point surely, at every point if pos- 
 sible." Now, whatever we think of him, we shall 
 have to recognize the plain fact that the practical 
 man will more and more inconsiderately urge upon 
 us these demands. We, special pleaders for art, 
 have really no choice but to conciliate the selfish 
 nature in him, avoiding thus its hostilities which 
 would neutralize for him all the spiritual efficacy 
 of art; we must preoccupy the conscious mind of 
 him whom we would cause to worship, so as to 
 contract its circle of vigilance, distract it from the 
 scrutiny of what it cannot comprehend, and thus 
 effectively reach it as an irresistible suggestion
 
 124 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 through the deeper, inner man. "Here is the use- 
 ful, practical friend. I recommend art to you 
 only — as useful !" And before he knows, the prac- 
 tical man finds his faith reviving, his will forti- 
 fied, his love fanned to a blaze, and all these things 
 seem to be a discovery of his own, an inspiration 
 of his own, coming as they do to him out of him- 
 self. This is good pedagogic psychology. If art 
 desires to convince, it must first then understand 
 that for every man the most truly delightful is 
 likely to be, in his present untutored state, part 
 of what is to him uninteresting, tiresome, pro- 
 voking, or positively repulsive. If we are to 
 wheedle our prospective convert out of his preju- 
 dices, and if we be not proselyters, we are no 
 teachers and deep impassioned lovers, we shall ac- 
 complish our design best by that highest art, a to- 
 tal concealment of art, that art which we are not 
 always conscious of as admirers and adorers, be- 
 cause the producers thereof had themselves ceased 
 to be conscious as producers, it being the product 
 of long devoted habit, study, resolute addiction, 
 blessed occurrences and inspirations, When art 
 becomes deliberately and self-magnifyingly didac- 
 tic; when art talks too self-oglingly of its ''mis- 
 sion" and of its ''message" with overmuch unc- 
 tion, when it struts about fantastically, crowns it- 
 self with laurel, and deports itself unseemly, art 
 is, we doubt not, in imminent danger of perishing. 
 So the demands of the practical man turn out to 
 be but reinforcements of the highest demands of
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 125 
 
 the very poetic spirit in man. The practical man 
 demands selflessness in poet and seer. And what 
 is that but the one safe warrant of the effective 
 working in and through him (the artist) of that 
 higher self, that racial consciousness, Zeit-geist, 
 muses, Holy Spirit, — call it what you please! 
 Without it, true art has never come to being and 
 power in the recorded past. 
 
 V. 
 
 It is for these reasons that the Arts and Crafts 
 movement is to be held as salutary in spite of tem- 
 porary aberrations, and the inevitable occasional 
 exploitations of the general programme by canny 
 Fras, and others of their industrious ilk. William 
 Morris was more of a prophet as craftsman and 
 salesman, than on the socialist platform. I want 
 a chair for comfort. It shall serve my body first. 
 My body only! Shall it serve me as it could serve 
 an ape! ''No," says the chair. "See when you 
 are at leisure to see: I am rightly, honestly built, 
 graceful and strong. I am honest; I am gener- 
 ous. I am for thee then not only as ape, but as 
 normal man. If thou hast time and will to con- 
 sider, he who made me was not a slave, a machine. 
 He was as thou, my owner, or he could never have 
 understood thy wants and made me for thee. 
 When thou art with me, thou art also with the 
 spirit of a friend and brother, and when thou hast 
 leisure let me further whisper into thine ear: I
 
 126 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 am not only for thee as thou art, but for thee as 
 thou mightest be. Before thee were men, else 
 were not I such; and after thee I am ready for 
 thy children's children. My maker has antici- 
 pated their consciousness; what is dim in thee, 
 and what thou therefore canst not see but dimly 
 in me, shall be bright in them, and shall for them 
 shine out brightly from me. I see the immortality 
 of thy race, the immortality of the individual 
 spirit, if there be further evolution for thee after 
 death. I am of the noble past. I am for the nobler 
 future." So it is that the beautiful chair becomes 
 a prophet unto the weary and despondent worker, 
 a cheerer, a comforter, a friend of the spirit. So 
 it is that art takes our inner life and compels it 
 to its higher possibilities, nay, rather impels and 
 persuades, establishes the dominion of the for- 
 tunate moment, perennializes the instant of surest 
 and sanest vision. 
 
 Thou hast been on the mount, flushed seer, 
 blessed singer, weaver of musical fancies, and 
 thou hast beheld the ordinarily unseen? Very 
 well indeed. Descend forthwith into the vallev. 
 Yet ere thou goest down, take with thee this shin- 
 ing stone, this flower, as tokens that thou hast 
 been here communing with God. Thou sayest, 
 ^'Why, am I not full enough of the vision!" True, 
 thou art now full of the vision, but at the foot of 
 the mount is the demoniac boy, and the multitudes 
 of little faith. Take down with thee a tale, a 
 sketch, a song, a dance, a little daub, a foolisb
 
 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 127 
 
 modeling, the plan of a structure; nay, not only 
 to testify that thou hast seen, but to give unto 
 others the desire to climb the mount whence thou 
 sawest what thou canst but ill report ! 
 
 To the present writer at all events it seems clear 
 that without public glory there could not long be 
 patriotism or civic pride; that order and self- 
 subordination cannot be maintained on any large 
 scale without a sense of worth in the whole of 
 which we may be but an insignificant part; and 
 that this sense of worth, in the whole which we 
 must serve, needs must be set forth for us visibly, 
 audibly, palpably in monument and building, in 
 music and poetry and pageant; must be made to 
 appeal to the carnal eye and ear and touch, if it 
 is to conquer the rebellious lusts of the individual, 
 and make him a joyous servant of society without 
 other reward than his knightly joy. Not that art 
 will suffice to do all this alone, but that all this 
 cannot be done at all without art. How shall in 
 fact the masses sustain and increase their faith 
 in God without psalms, and temples, and eloquence 
 of story and parable, and harp and organ, and 
 voice ; without procession and dance, spectacle and 
 drama? Without art and such induced spiritual 
 sight, faith in God, which is but higher faith in 
 man, has never long remained the creative evi- 
 dence of things unseen. Hence, we dare to affirm 
 the sublime social, political, moral, religious util- 
 ity of art to the civilized man in chief of our 
 practical American society. And what needs to
 
 128 THE UTILITY OF BEAUTY 
 
 be done that we may obtain the loyal and gener- 
 ous obedience of our men of affairs, as also of our 
 leaders of the people to the behests of art? Wliy, 
 dear impracticable lover of thy goddess, convince 
 them of the utility of Beauty. Assure them that 
 beauty is not ashamed to be useful, to reach mod- 
 estly and indirectly, — proud rather that she can 
 never be true to herself without subserving the 
 humblest as well as the loftiest uses of man.
 
 A THEORY AND VINDICATION OF THE 
 
 COMIC. 
 
 To write of the spirit of comedy in all serious- 
 ness seems droll enough, which is perhaps the rea- 
 son there is in English no satisfactory treatise on 
 the subject. The first effort with us at a state- 
 ment of the nature of comedy is, so far as I know, 
 Meredith's essay on ''The Comic Spirit," of value 
 assuredly to whoever is able to read it; yet, is 
 one ever quite sure one has got out of it exactly 
 what Meredith put into it? At all events it has 
 not been i:)opular, nor very generally illuminative. 
 For my part I was obliged to do some thinking 
 of my own (because, probably, I did not fully un- 
 derstand Mr. Meredith), and to present succinctly 
 the results of that process is the purpose of this 
 paper. 
 
 Comedy does not necessarily manifest itself in 
 any one particular literary form. The word 
 "comedy," therefore, as used in this paper, desig- 
 nates a spirit, a mood, an intellectual and emo- 
 tional attitude which has, to be sure, manifested 
 itself chiefly in drama, but had long ere that em- 
 ployed the fable, the epic, the ballad, or even the 
 lyric poem, each in its way a congenial form. 
 
 The comic spirit follows close in the wake of 
 
 129
 
 130 THE COMIC 
 
 the tragic, because it proceeds in part from it. 
 Wliat seems to me the psychological view of the 
 origin of comedy can be stated as follows : There 
 is an instinct in every species for the preserva- 
 tion of the type. The barnyard fowl, distinguished 
 by a coat of paint, is not envied. Considered sin- 
 gular, he is jocosely eliminated. It is the instinct 
 of the species to preserve itself from whimsical 
 variations. Monstrosities, produced naturally or 
 artificially, are removed. A most fortunate in- 
 stinct, only it operates less happily with man. 
 Of animals the survivor is the most competent to 
 meet the needs of his physical life. No variation 
 can maintain itself unless distinctly in the direc- 
 tion of greater strength, speed, cunning, courage, 
 love. But schoolyard and barnyard are in this 
 respect unlike. With humanity the ''fittest," us- 
 ing the word in its best sense, that of subserving 
 the greater interests of the race, is not always by 
 any means he who is best armed for defense, most 
 competent to find the means of subsistence, most 
 formidable in aggression. "Wherefore it is an 
 early discovery that when we have reached man 
 this instinct requires some check. 
 
 Wliile on the whole the brave man fares bet- 
 ter than the coward, the bravest dies first, and al- 
 ways and inevitably must die first. It were, there- 
 fore, very well to be brave, yet not too brave, else 
 one would be eliminated, without a chance to pass 
 on one's special temperament and disposition, 
 either by continuously obtruded example, or by
 
 THE COMIC 131 
 
 actual procreation and rearing of offspring. Now, 
 therefore, the hero-song appears more or less a 
 calamity song, the calamity gloried in as proving 
 the hero to the uttermost, and the tragic spirit is the 
 soul of this song which first assumes some such 
 form as the popular ballad, the lay, the epic, 
 yet ultimately finds its proper body in the well- 
 knit drama. It compensates the hero for his life 
 cut short, and it raises up offspring for him by 
 setting forth his example when he is not there to 
 do it in person. Thus tragedy may be termed a 
 device to advance the species, obviating the dan- 
 ger first apparent in man's breed, of the ''best," 
 the most redoubtable, the most beautiful, inev- 
 itably perishing. So taught, we call him who per- 
 ishes, because the best, a ''fool," to be sure, but 
 piteously add an epithet which changes every- 
 thing, and as "God's fool" he imposes on us and 
 exacts worship. 
 
 Now tragedy does not deter men from following 
 in the footsteps of the "God's fool." On the con- 
 trary, it encourages, incites to rivalry, for, thanks 
 to human courage, death allures, provided it be a 
 death to some pui'ioose. The death of the hero 
 has worth then as a display of courage and an 
 appeal to courage. ^Moreover, it assigns new work 
 to its cause; it indicates the high purchase price 
 of virtue, and is the main origin of moral values. 
 Thus the hero's calamitous career does not dis- 
 hearten; the death of the hero is not a punish- 
 ment of his deserving, but a revelation, a precious
 
 132 THE COMIC 
 
 privilege, an ecstatic reward, an allurement of 
 glory. Such is tlie vis tragica and tlie ars tragica : 
 to set forth and further commend by an ap- 
 peal to the aesthetic sense the reasons for such 
 a death; to make it fascinate supernaturally be- 
 cause it leads without fail to some God, or some 
 God-like perfection of man. 
 
 Now, when tragedy is well established, and has 
 come to dominate the finer intellectual life of 
 men, certain specious errors gain more or less 
 general acceptance. First, since the hero is a sin- 
 gular person, all singular persons are, suppos- 
 edly, heroes. The old instinct, tending to elim- 
 inate the peculiar, odd and strange, is quite re- 
 versed. Artistic dime museums are temples of a 
 new religion, and set up therein, for popular wor- 
 ship, any person who is sufficiently singular ! Every 
 "monster" supposititiously a hero, godman, or 
 avatar, is to be fostered and fended, lionized and 
 aped! Second, and worse, as peace more and 
 more settles down on the cultured community, the 
 hero's role is perceived to be interesting, with 
 peculiar immunities and perquisites; a role that 
 can be affected with profit after some preliminary 
 study. The ''sham hero" then appears and 
 breeds this kind prolifically. Now these two, the 
 protected ''monster" and the cunning "sham 
 hero," result from the ascendency of the tragic 
 sj^irit over the mind of civilized man. 
 
 A corrective is required which is instinctively 
 and inevitably produced somewhat in this wise:
 
 THE COMIC 133 
 
 First, the tragedy, wbieli has grown in intensity 
 (each artist endeavoring to outhid his predeces- 
 sor for popular favor), becomes so grossly exag- 
 gerated, makes so excessive a demand on the cred- 
 ulity of an ordinary person, that all honest awe 
 passes away, and the common man, suddenly 
 aware of his advantage, takes his revenge on the 
 *'hero," against whom, deep down in his soul, he 
 has always cherished a grudge, because so arro- 
 gantly greater than himself. Putting it another 
 way: by the natural, instinctive self-love of the 
 **hero" the growth and development of tragedy 
 along the line of least resistance occurs and accel- 
 erates. When it has traveled too far in the direc- 
 tion of melodrama, it is overtaken by the literarj^ 
 reaction, namely, the first attempt at artistic 
 comedy, probably more or less of the nature of 
 parody or burlesque. It exposes the ''monster," 
 and does so by a more heavy overcharging of all 
 that the tragic artist has been doing or misdoing, 
 till the product is quite incredible and preposter- 
 ous, and supplies the occasion for an instant re- 
 versal of judgment and feeling. Soon the ' ' sham 
 hero,*' when burlesque has had its little turn, is 
 directly attacked, without regard to tragedy, lurid 
 and overcharged, and often the attack is con- 
 ducted very subtly and cunningly. TVe have seen 
 the ''hero" and know just what he does in ad- 
 versity (having always been in adversity, at least 
 when officially presented to us), and so we are 
 quite armed, if we be the "sham hero", for all
 
 134 THE COMIC 
 
 contingencies — except prosperity. Just as in the 
 tragedy, therefore, the hero meets calamity, in 
 comedy the cunning ' ' sham hero ' ' is embarrassed 
 by not meeting the calamity when it fell due, and 
 the ''sham hero" openly convicts himself; or the 
 calamity is held in such malign suspense that the 
 honest "would-be-hero's" watchings have wearied 
 him, until he betrays the fact that he is not alto- 
 gether so well prepared for actual calamity as he 
 had believed ; that he had only been ready for the 
 appearance of calamity, and not for the appear- 
 ance of calamity! But, of course, the exposure of 
 the "monster" and the "sham hero" and the 
 foolish "would-be-hero" is the truest vindication 
 of the real "hero"; wherefore we see comedy has 
 but come to the rescue of tragedy at its critical 
 hour, and is not its foe, but its loyal fellow and 
 friend. 
 
 It is strange that history,in a frolicsome mo- 
 ment, when naming her first great comic artist 
 should have perpetrated a pun. As his name ety- 
 mologically affirms (or can be made to affirm by 
 some violence to its integrity), Aristo-phanes was 
 in his works a "display of the best," — the best 
 for his breed and race. What tragic artists like 
 ^schylus and Sophocles had displayed by suffer- 
 ing, he displays and champions with laughter. 
 The God of Life is still very good; and ecstasy 
 (the stand out of and above self), his holiest boon; 
 and enthusiasm, the sense of his divinity within, 
 the pledge of his favor. But to illustrate the in-
 
 THE COMIC 135 
 
 timate connection between comedy and tragedy 
 let just a few examples be suggested. The sol- 
 emn balderdash of scholastics in theology and 
 law without true literary expression; then Ra- 
 belais. Later, for similar reasons, Erasmus. The 
 mediaeval romantic lay in verse, then volubly in 
 multiple volumes, — and Don Quixote with Sanclio 
 of the Paunch ride forth. The first part of the 
 *'Tale of the Sorrowful Knight" was to kill a 
 craze ; the second, to kill his hero for fear others 
 might live by exploiting him if he were left alive. 
 Yet the result — a profound, world-moving com- 
 edy of the mad idealist and the gross man of the 
 senses. Richardson, sweetish-sentimental, self- 
 consciously chaste, and Fielding's "Joseph An- 
 drews" and "Tom Jones." Or further back, the 
 early tragedy of Marlowe, then comedy with 
 Jonson and Shakespeare. Then tragedy once 
 more. Shakespeare, Webster, Ford, and through 
 Fletcher and Massinger to riotous comedy. Not 
 that each mood always finds its worthy artist, but 
 the sequence of moods and their interdependence 
 remains for the historian to record, and the stu- 
 dent of aesthetics to ponder. 
 
 n. 
 
 Now what is the psychology of the comic spirit? 
 Why do we laugh? Should we go to the psycholo- 
 gist for counsel and the solution of our problem; 
 he is so solemn a personage that he probably could 
 not catch laughter in his laboratory to isolate and
 
 136 THE COMIC 
 
 analyze. Hence, we shall have to dispense with 
 his aid as best we can. Two things suggest them- 
 selves without the aid of his profounder special- 
 ist wisdom, as indispensable conditions of the gen- 
 esis of laughter. 
 
 First, a perception. That is the flattering trait 
 of comedy, that in consequence of this prerequi- 
 site it is only for more or less intelligent people, 
 such as we. A perception? Ah, yes, a percep- 
 tion of unreason. And that is not to be had, God 
 willing, of any but reasonable individuals. A per- 
 ception of illogicalness, incongruity, unfitness of 
 means to ends ! Hence, no comic perception with- 
 out some knowledge of the world. And comedy 
 notably does not belong to the young, nor appears 
 to rejoice a wholly unsophisticated period. It 
 comes most buxomly welcome to a period of ac- 
 cumulated experience, knowing what ought to hap- 
 pen, and therefore schooled to detect absurdity, 
 should the opposite occur and soberly present its 
 credentials. A perception, then, first and fore- 
 most. 
 
 Next, something else and more. To see things 
 unreasonable and illogical, to realize the incon- 
 gruities and the mesalliances of life, is not, I 
 think, the essence of good cheer. Usually it might 
 be expected to entail a fit of melancholy, spleenful 
 disgust with life, or lachrymose despair of good. 
 But when such a perception is preceded, ushered, 
 guarded, and decorously followed up by an in- 
 veterate, stnlwart, omnipresent optimism (often
 
 THE COMIC 137 
 
 true child of a good digestion) ; when it is com- 
 pelled to hobnob with a vital, vigorous conviction 
 as to the rightness of things, or their indefinite 
 capacity for righting themselves or being righted ; 
 the faith that the universal order, odd to relate, 
 w411 somehow continue quite well without even 
 ourself to superintend evolution, and that God 
 ^'manages," none knows how, in His Heaven after 
 all, and on His earth much more than half the 
 time at the worst ; why, then, the above-mentioned 
 perception of the incongruity, absurdity, pervers- 
 ity — inside-outness or upside-downness — results in 
 another and totally different emotion than the 
 classic blues of Burton and his bilious confrater- 
 nity of all ages. This secondary emotion (dispel- 
 ling the primary, should it have chanced to outrun 
 faith a little and ventured into the open of con- 
 sciousness) is the Comic. I cannot describe it, nor 
 define it. I can only assert that it arises without 
 fail from the perception aforesaid, if concurrent 
 with that quick, essential ' ' faith. ' ' Then you have 
 the flash from the two poles, the meeting kiss of 
 extremes. 
 
 But someone objects: there is also a laughter 
 that proceeds not from faith? To be sure. Yet 
 such laughter is of quite a different nature from 
 that above called ''comic." It is rather what we 
 denote by ''cynical," or, more picturesquely still, 
 by ''devilish laughter." It is due to a perception 
 of incongruity and a perverse theory apparently 
 demonstrated by it. The malignant joy arises
 
 138 THE COMIC 
 
 from vanity gratified, superior intelligence adver- 
 tised, and the chance of the company which envi- 
 ous misery loves. It is an odious, dogmatic un- 
 faith bred of ''the dog in the manger," and fed 
 on the shadows of ''sour grapes;" a diet so un- 
 nutritious as to explain its ravenous hunger for 
 any lickerish morsel of veritable mishap. The 
 degrees of the sincerity of such a faith in evil and 
 death will measure the hideousness of the laugh- 
 ter. A cynical moment may sometimes give the 
 zest needed by comedy, — the zero point for vital 
 temperatures, the minus to offset the plus ; but a 
 cynical piece of art is a contradiction in terms, as 
 an art work must, to be such, please nobly, and no 
 noble pleasure can be had (save by inhuman 
 ghoul) from mere insults hurled by fiend's laugh- 
 ter at truth, good, and beauty, at man and God. It 
 is most unfortunate that a careless use of the 
 words has often caused the "cynical" and the 
 "comic" to be confounded to the serious prejudice 
 and misvaluation of the latter. 
 
 A brief summary may here be apposite. Comic 
 emotion originates from the co-existence of a per- 
 ception of incongruity and a persistent conviction, 
 (not probably more than half conscious and in 
 all likelihood quite unexplicit), that in despite of 
 such incongruity things are right. The error, the 
 failure, the insanity, if you please, of the partic- 
 ular life-form under consideration, only serves to 
 emphasize the success of life on the whole, an in- 
 stance of the exception cited for the more effect- 
 ive proof of the rule.
 
 THE COMIC 139 
 
 If we turn now to the victim of our comic per- 
 ception, to the mask, type, role realized for the 
 nonce in a living individual as a person, we find 
 ourselves obliged to recognize a distinction cre- 
 ated by the mood in which we envisage him and 
 his predicament. If the victim is regarded as 
 responsible morally for what he misdoes and suf- 
 fers, if his errors, sins, shames, are all held to be 
 of his own wilful, stupid making, then we are per- 
 haps aware of a certain antipathy for him, or in- 
 dignation; and our laughter is of the sort known 
 as ''satiric." The satire may become so virulent 
 as to lapse into invective and irate diatribe, till it 
 lose every vestige of artistic form and charm. On 
 the other hand, if the victim is plainly not respon- 
 sible, or if we feel kindly towards him, moved of 
 our common kinship and kind, and endeavor to 
 make out to ourselves that he is not really re- 
 sponsible, — ^but some fate, genius, imp of ill luck, 
 sprite of goodhap, whim of dame fortune, — we 
 look at everything the victim does and says quite 
 differently. The laughter is gentle-natured, and 
 the comedy of the variety called ''humor" may 
 range to "farce" and vulgar "horse play," when 
 it waxes uproariously rollicking, thus easily stray- 
 ing beyond the limits of art. 
 
 Out of sympathy and antipathy, then, for the 
 "victim" of the comic perception arises the dis- 
 tinction we denominate "humor" and "satire"; 
 and should that personal feeling caper too madly 
 for the restraints of good breeding and artistic
 
 140 THE COMIC 
 
 form, they degenerate; and this degeneration is 
 shown in a coarsening of the caricature which 
 most inevitably characterizes such comic work. 
 
 If, however, the ''victim" is considered neither 
 responsible nor irresponsible, or as both at the 
 same time for divers reasons, we have the shake 
 of the brain rather than of the belly, betraying it- 
 self in the unwicked twinkle of the eye, and the 
 gracious waver of the mouth-corners; the dis- 
 passionate laughter of the gods on Olympus, 
 whence the inspiration for impartial, divine com- 
 edy (in a truer sense than Dante's), as playful 
 on pure surfaces, disinfectantly severe to fester- 
 ing deeps like the rays of the all-seeing sun, yet 
 ever uninvolved, unembittered, not forfeiting dig- 
 nity, reposeful, serene, aloof. This supreme sort 
 of comedy, neither humorous nor satiric, per- 
 chance an equal blend of both, — a chemical com- 
 bination, not a mechanical mixture, — is difficult 
 of production, and still more difficult of general 
 understanding; the reason, simply that most 
 folk are not habitually dwellers on Olympus, 
 nor prepared to laugh sanely and sublimely with 
 the immortals. So the comic artist, however seri- 
 ous and high his intention and stringent his self- 
 imposed abidance by the subtlest laws of his art, 
 asks frankly the assistance of humorous antic or 
 satiric scowl ; setting himself up now as a judge, 
 again condescending as a fellow to the fool; now 
 wit, now wag, now prophet, now clown, so as to 
 sustain by digression the interest in his main work
 
 THE COMIC 141 
 
 of such as cannot for long relish the fine flavors of 
 nectar and ambrosia; whose comic sense is situ- 
 ate in the major part of them, the belly rather 
 than the brain, to borrow Meredith's epigram. 
 Such is an explanation of the paucity of master- 
 pieces in pure comic art, and the adequate apol- 
 ogy for the usual blending of genres. 
 
 ni. 
 
 Now the imposed brevity* of this paper forbids 
 all specifications, illustrative suggestions, rebuttals 
 of charges fair and foul. "We cannot call for help 
 on the great Moliere, king once of the united king- 
 doms and scattered principalities of the comic, 
 or his latest royal scion, Iving George, surnamed 
 Meredith, no doubt on purpose that the populace 
 might even to-day ascribe to him the authorship 
 of "Lucile," and be caught unawares in a jest. 
 The Daudet of "Numa Eoumestan" and the Dau- 
 det, also, of the 'Tope's Mule" and of "Tartarin 
 de Tarascon"; Juvenal, austere and dire, and 
 Ben Jonson, exquisite in ''Volpone,*' brutally 
 realistic in ** Bartholomew Fair." Ah, for allow- 
 ance, the girth a Falstaffian book might grant, to 
 call up the shades — nay, materialize the men! 
 Aristophanes of the ''Birds" and the "Frogs"; 
 Lucian of the "Trip to the :Moon" and the Olym- 
 pian and philosophic topsy-turvy-doms ; La Fon- 
 taine of the "Fables," ay, and of the "Contes" 
 
 •For further suggestions, sop Studies in Comic Literature, A Syl- 
 labus. University of Clucago Press, 1906.
 
 142 THE COMIC 
 
 (let us mention them sotto voce) ; Le Sage with 
 his beloved ne'er-do-weel of a "Gil Bias," or 
 Beaumarchais with the deviceful barber who loves 
 ''close shaves"; Rabelais, the ogre omnivorous 
 and alas, obscene ; Fielding, in eighteenth century 
 costume, yet betrayed by his speech, lineage, and 
 blood; Heine of the augustly droll "Atta Troll," 
 of the North Sea with its salt winds of satire ; By- 
 ron of the cutting ''Don Juan"; Hugo of "les 
 Chatiments"; Swift with his awful "Gulliver"; 
 Nietzsche with his brillant ' ' Zarathustra ' '—enthu- 
 siasts all (each in his way) for a diviner breed of 
 men; Dickens or Thackeray; the sentimental 
 Shakespeare of "As You Like It" and the serious 
 Shakespeare of "Measure for Measure"; the sav- 
 age ironies of the Bible, both Old and New Testa- 
 ment; the grim "bonhomie" of such a paternal 
 "father" as Tertulian; the exquisite malice of such 
 an anti-reformer and lover of monks as Erasmus ! 
 How one would like to put them each and all in the 
 witness box, and proceed to swear them in ! It is 
 only right to state that whatever in this essay has 
 been put with oracular dogmatism was gained by 
 wholesome commerce with these worthies, now a 
 bit and then a bit, and would not ever have been 
 reduced to order, save for that need of defense 
 felt by all of their friends and lovers against the 
 advocates of an unjoyful, iniquitous, soporific 
 gravity and gloom, who stalk abroad lugubriously 
 devout in broadcloth or in sackcloth, to the shame 
 of the earth and the despair of heaven.
 
 THE COMIC 143 
 
 Youth, for all its natural excess of happiness, 
 nay, perchance because of it the rather, is wont 
 at times to take itself with becoming seriousness 
 and solemnity (not to say unction), with a flauntel 
 yet blushful self-pity for its gifts of head an 1 
 heart and their disproportionate terrestrial rec- 
 ognition. Its self-consciousness and naive ego- 
 tism induce it to cherish the doleful domino, and 
 hug philosophically the shadowed side of every 
 street. The mature man, who has suffered much 
 and survived more, knowing few hurts mortal, 
 and fewer still, alas, immortal, walks out freely 
 in the open, if such there be, and deems the road 
 not ill. In our teens the gruesome elegies, and in 
 the forties or ripe fifties the pyrotechnics of the 
 boy ! The truth is, perhaps, that what we contrib- 
 ute to our life is what we value most; in youth 
 our melancholy, and later on our gaiety. Only 
 what the spirit has created for itself will it make 
 much of ; and therefore it is the older man who is 
 glad that the worst things are usually ready to 
 hand, and the best things scarce, that he may ad- 
 dress himself bravely to the production of these, 
 and take a creator's joy in the process. If wilful 
 optimism be the saddest pessimism as some main- 
 tain, we suppose a willess pessimism must be hilari- 
 ous! Heine, at all events, is well aware that the 
 future ages would scarce be edified to learn that 
 he loved Agnes, — some Agnes or other, once upon 
 a time, — any Agnes for the matter of that, saint 
 or sinner, — if he should be permitted to write his
 
 144 THE COMIC 
 
 little legend across the firmamental blue, with a 
 Norway spruce for a pen and the fire of ^tna for 
 indelible red ink! He is romantic no more, and 
 has wooed the comic muse. Figaro, on the other 
 hand, has acquired the habit of instantaneous 
 laughter at every turn of events, because of the 
 long experience of misery. He laughs at once lest 
 he should catch himself weeping; and he is sure 
 one comes out better in the end by using one's 
 wits, than by an inopportune abuse of the lachry- 
 mal ducts. Such his ''brave philosophy"; and it 
 wins the reader — and the day. 
 
 Moliere, the sick man, mocks the physician of 
 his times, and the sick man likewise, and then feels 
 almost well ; cheated husband and lover, he makes 
 no end of mirth at the exj^ense of male egotists 
 who deem they hold securely human hearts in the 
 hollow of either hand, or in the still hollower pre- 
 tenses of their moral codes. Moliere, the deeply 
 religious man, exposes the pious hypocrite; im- 
 practical, often baffled enthusiast that he is, for 
 sincerity and truth, he mercilessly assails in "Don 
 Juan" the man who purposes always to be him- 
 self by indulging every whim, and in "Alceste" 
 the consciously moral man who makes of his mo- 
 rality an anti-social force. "Wliom, then, has Moli- 
 ere been all the while victimizing, if not himself, 
 or at least what was closest kin to him? 
 
 Is it fine to die in battle? Is it not as fine and 
 finer may be to die for years by inches, and wit- 
 tily, as Heine? If William Blake falls asleep
 
 THE COMIC 145 
 
 singing in songs of his own improvising tlie glory 
 of his God, and triumplis over the world, the devil, 
 and the flesh ; what of Scarron, the tortured knot 
 of nerves that flinches not nor wails, expiring in a 
 jest that makes his friends about him riot with 
 laughter for the last time! 
 
 Much, I fear, ought still to be said on this and 
 many points, but, in conclusion, let me vindicate 
 (or rather concisely suggest modes of vindica- 
 tion for) our inherent right to laugh with the mas- 
 ters and the gods ; nay, if needs were at the very 
 gods even, and the masters, or laugh (if such a 
 thing as yet be thinkable) at what must normally 
 seem greater to us than they — our own very selves. 
 
 FmsT. Is laughter irreligious? On the con- 
 trary, laughter is religious, since it involves faith. 
 Not necessarily a theological but a religious faith 
 is at the core of it, a faith that if I perish the 
 world will go on nevertheless; and perhaps if I 
 should fall it may advantage the world, hard as 
 that may be to believe ! The Greeks went to the 
 length of laughing at their god of laughter, not 
 because he was 'per se ridiculous (for he is most 
 deeply serious and worshipful), but because in 
 laughing at the misconception of the god of 
 laughter, they could summon him the sooner into 
 their midst. 
 
 Second. Is laughter unpliilosopliicalf Most as- 
 suredly. The comic artist always hates the phi- 
 losopher and there is a reason for this. If Aris- 
 tophanes pillories KSocrates, it is not the fault of
 
 146 THE COMIC 
 
 Aristophanes, but of Socrates. Socrates is, after 
 all, a sophist. He seeks to further the contemplat- 
 ive life. He would have us stop to think. But he 
 who stops to think will never even start to do 
 anything in this world. You do not want to stop 
 for discussion, you want to go on and do, and dis- 
 cuss when you have done it, provided you are 
 lucky and survive the deed, if not, some one else 
 will, doubtless, have the leisure — and the pleasure. 
 Socrates is, therefore, the natural enemy of Aris- 
 tophanes, who stands for the active life, and be- 
 lieves in wwconsciousness, knowing that nothing 
 can really satisfy which proceeds from self-con- 
 sciousness, and therefore gaily offers men the 
 ecstasy of self-oblivious laughter. Stop laughing, 
 by all means, if you want to be a philosopher.* 
 
 Third. Is it immoral? That is a very impor- 
 tant objection urged against comedy from genera- 
 tion to generation. It is not only not immoral, 
 but it is the preservation of morals to cultivate 
 by use, a faculty for all sorts of laughter. It is 
 the hallucination of prevalent evil which drives 
 men to despair. Now, evil always seems to be 
 prevalent when you scrutinize it, for scrutiny in- 
 volves confined attention to what lies immediately 
 under the lens in the focused light. Being wher- 
 ever we see, we surmise, nay, affirm it to be every- 
 where. But were it really everywhere, you and I 
 could not be here to express such an opinion. 
 
 •Perhaps here (seriously speaking) we have the reason for the 
 little help the philosophers give us for the understanding of our 
 present subject!
 
 THE COMIC 147 
 
 Clearly, the thing to do, then, is to belittle tlie evil 
 by fair means and foul, to undignify it, and so rob 
 it of its horrors that we shall not lose wits or 
 heart. By laughing at the evil, we get rid of the 
 false impression of its omnipotence; we get a 
 little courage, and our despair turns a somersault 
 up into glory from the swinging trapeze of faith. 
 
 Fourth. Is laughter superficialf Of course it 
 is superficial. In one sense, however, and not in 
 another. But then some people prefer to be 
 driven as a plummet to the bottom of the sea, rather 
 than float as a boat on the surface. The child 
 comes into the world with the art of wailing per- 
 fect ; the art of laughing has to be learned. Ig- 
 norance is bliss, and as we must have some bliss, 
 we must have some ignorance, which would bet- 
 ter be of the wilful sort, lest it be too summarily 
 surprised by our city cousin's worldly wisdom. 
 Distinguish, pray, between ignorance and igno- 
 rance ! If you call that ''being superficial," let us 
 be superficial, by all means. 
 
 Fifth. Is laughter unsympathetic? This is an- 
 other great objection raised against comedy. Of 
 course it is unsympathetic; but, ought one to be 
 always and ever>^iere sympathetic? Some peo- 
 ple say one ought. ''Laugh and the world laughs 
 with you; weep and you weep alone." How sad! 
 Thank God, when you weep everybody does not 
 weep, that there is some limit to the spread of in- 
 fection. Sympathy has value in life, great value, 
 and it should be cultivated, but ought it to be
 
 m THE COMIC 
 
 understood as '^ vicarious sensation," sensation 
 for another through the imagination; and this 
 sympathy can at most only tell me what is amiss, 
 not what I should do to remedy the ill. There- 
 fore, I shall not expect to be saved by sympathy. 
 It is not sympathy that we require for social sal- 
 vation, but good, simple common sense, the comic 
 sense, which, neutralizing morbid egoism, does 
 away with both alter and ego — leaves us a plain 
 perspective — the gay bird's eye view of the gods. 
 Sixth. Is the philosophy of laughter unheroicf 
 I do not believe it. Let me compare briefly two 
 men, Corneille and Moliere, chosen because they 
 stand in their characteristic attitudes for a com- 
 plete contrast. Corneille is tragic; he tells us 
 how to do and die, and live in the offspring of 
 others we have inspired. Moliere tells us how to 
 be less intensively, extensively more, how to live 
 and not die, how to rear offspring of our own for 
 ourselves, and offspring, also, incidentally, for 
 the departed heroes! Wliich is the nobler func- 
 tion! The hero sacrifices his social qualities to 
 his individual perfection of a particular sort, 
 whatever that may be ; while the common man sac- 
 rifices his individuality to his social obligations, 
 as he conceives them. The hero becomes a kind 
 of specialist, while the poor common man has 
 meaner but more manifold qualities. The reward 
 of the hero is thoroughness and worship, which 
 is a fine reward. The reward of the other is some 
 love, perhaps, for his amiability. Then, you may
 
 THE COMIC 149 
 
 say, tliat one is an instance of a particular, definite 
 perfection of life for which the world is not alto- 
 gether ready; the other, an instance of the vital 
 compromise which it demands. Which is the more 
 heroic, in the sense of the courageous, of the 
 twain? Think of it! Death unto life is the hero's 
 way, the tragic method — surrender of society, sur- 
 render of love ; and the way of the common man 
 is, — the surrender of distinction, the surrender 
 of worship, of ecstasy, of self-admiration, — in or- 
 der to engage in the ordinary business of life. 
 Which is really, all things reckoned, the greater 
 man, the complete common man, or the complete 
 hero? It may not be for us to choose which we 
 shall endeavor to become, and our function is no 
 doubt quite definitely settled for us already. Still, 
 if it be settled in the paths of the common man, 
 let us take this comfort: society needs us more, 
 perhaps, even than she does the most harrowing 
 heroes ; and our high priest, the Comic Artist, is 
 not without his special service, dignity and re- 
 ward.
 
 THE EELIGIOUS POETEY OF SCHILLEE. 
 
 Five years ago an anniversary celebration of 
 an "utterance into larger life" profoundly stirred 
 tlie German world. In America it had its remote 
 echo: the essay by Dr. Paul Carus, entitled 
 ' ' Friedrich Schiller, A Sketch of His Life, and an 
 Appreciation of His Poetry," quoting passages 
 and entire poems in translation from Bowring and 
 Bulwer-Lytton. 
 
 Touching, to me, was the great "Volksangs- 
 gabe" or popular edition, containing, in 188 pages 
 of double columns, fairly spaced and legible, the 
 poems and the plays of the beloved singer of Ger- 
 man ideals. A truly serviceable memorial, this, 
 giving the poorest workingman at a nominal price 
 enough to encourage and cheer, refine and charm 
 any honest soul for a natural lifetime. A pathetic 
 witness, too, our big honest, inexpensive quarto, 
 to the pious love Schiller sang into the hearts of 
 his countrymen. A great German poet all must 
 admit him now ; too rhetorical perhaps to endure 
 translation so well as Goethe, having (but for 
 Coleridge) never engaged the interest of a first- 
 rate translator, almost limited therefore in ap- 
 peal to his ''speech-brethren" by his over-depend- 
 ence on verbal melody and suggestive resonance 
 
 150
 
 SCHILLER 151 
 
 of phrases and the sad lack of some Fitzgerald; 
 still, of the European singers and poets of the 
 nineteenth century, he seems to-day only less uni- 
 versal than Heine and Leopardi; while none but 
 Byron surpass him in cosmopolitan authority. De 
 Musset appears by his side provincial, Tennyson 
 dilettante, Carducci pedantic. Over-praised at 
 first, and then impudently patronized, he survives 
 for us as the incarnation of the spirit of Teutonic 
 Philosophy; sublime hope beyond disillusion, ex- 
 alted withdrawal to the hallowed privacy of the 
 virile soul, stoic courage unto perfect self-mastery, 
 when the lack of Welt-politik tempted his people 
 to indulge in an inglorious hysterical Welt- 
 Sclimerz. 
 
 Who lives in glass houses should be gracious 
 from prudential motives. And what translator 
 does not dread a smooth pebble of the brook from 
 the scrip of some ruddy shepherd boy? Yet here 
 we are still dependent in the main on Edgar A. 
 Bowring (nay, your pardon. Sir Edgar) for our 
 diffused (or rather indiffused) English knowledge 
 of Schiller. And, alas, what inconceivable igno- 
 rance of German was not his at critical moments I 
 Particularly when we deal with the subtle poems 
 of thought and spiritual insight does this failure 
 to 'Understand secondaiy meanings of the words 
 and idiomatic turns of phrase become disastrous, 
 if not irritatingly droll. "When, for instance, be- 
 cause of ''Schein's" several meanings, a ''bond's 
 falling due" is metamorphosed into the "fading
 
 152 SCHILLER 
 
 of a dream, "we hardly know in so serious a poem 
 as ''Resignation," — how we should becomingly 
 take the unintended practical joke. Would that 
 such things happened to us in life! And, alas, 
 more miracles occur of this sort when least ex- 
 pected. For instance, in "Fortune" (Das Gliick) 
 the secret birth of Venus out of the infinite sea 
 becomes an "ill-defined form," and poor Minerva 
 is forced into an antithesis of sudden maturity; 
 whereas the poet had intended both the gracious 
 and the severe goddesses to illustrate the same 
 principle of veiled beginnings for all things di- 
 vinely great. 
 
 To our rescue came, eight years ago, a conscien- 
 tious piece of translating that at times makes us 
 long for a more elegant paraphrase — such as Fitz- 
 gerald gave us of Calderon — but, nevertheless, 
 does manfully assist us to the straightforward 
 sense for the most part, and to some intimation 
 occasionally of the eloquent fervor. 
 
 But of such like irritating blunders enough. 
 Must Schiller endure popularization among Eng- 
 lish lovers of poetry — through such a much- 
 stained and smoked glass, lest the reader's eye 
 be not compelled to see darkly enough for ethical 
 enthusiasm and mystic glamours? 
 
 And yet of the two above indicated passages the 
 latter only is well rendered by Arnold-Forster,^ 
 whereas the former follows Bowring into the 
 same misunderstanding of the troublesome idiom. 
 
 ^The Poems of Schiller — E. P. Arnold-Forster.
 
 SCHILLER 153 
 
 Years of earnest battling with problems intel- 
 lectual, as they affected the real life-struggles of 
 self and fellowman, have perhaps tended with 
 some lovers of poetry, to an unconscious over- 
 stress of the didactic. Tndul)itably it was some 
 such bias that induced Matthew Arnold to esti- 
 mate so extravagantly the merits of Wordsworth 
 and Byron, and to dis-esteem Percy Bysshe Shel- 
 ley so pitifully. He could not, doubtless, perceive 
 just how the subjective idealism of our most etlie- 
 rial singer might be turned to practical account 
 in a British struggle for spiritual existence ! So, 
 aware of this peril, most of us at times are dis- 
 posed, by reaction, to question our own longest 
 and deepest loves for poetic oracles. Sophocles 
 and Shakespeare and their admitted peers we 
 will not hestitate to enthrone above tempera- 
 mental disputes. But Leopardi, Hugo, Schiller 
 (not to mention Arnold himself, Browning, Em- 
 erson, Tennyson and Rossetti), do modestly fetch 
 a blush to our critical countenance, and haunt our 
 proselyting courage with apologetic strains ! 
 
 What shall a man say for himself when he re- 
 members his boyish dotage on Longfellow; his 
 unearthly thrills in the solitude of wood and 
 mountain, when Scliiller took him up astride his 
 private Pegasus beyond the ** intense inane"? 
 Sweet memories, holy prejudices ! Must we turn 
 and rend the inspirers of our boyish years? Yet, 
 on the other hand, shall we impose outgrown idol- 
 atries on those spirits of to-day who are born to
 
 154 SCHILLER 
 
 larger freedom of outlook, and a chaster, more 
 educated taste? 
 
 Ever since that centennial celebration of the 
 poet's death, I for one have been re-reading every 
 little while my Schiller, blessing (with mental res- 
 ervations) Sir Edgar and Bulwer-Lytton^ — shak- 
 ing my head at Arnold-Forster ominously and pon- 
 dering an onslaught on them who superciliously 
 venture to ignore the claims of Germany's darling 
 bard. 
 
 A Burns, a Chatterton, a Keats in one; to these 
 add a Wordsworth and a Landor ; fail not to as- 
 sume the ** mighty line" of Marlowe, and some- 
 what of the youthful rebellion and melancholy of 
 Byron — and then perhaps for him, who knows not 
 Schiller in the original, a notion of the German 
 adoration may gently dawu on his bewildered eye. 
 
 The ballads gave to Schiller the hearts of the 
 plain people; the plays secured the more sophis- 
 ticated; and on these two performances must rest 
 no doubt his reputation. ''The Eing of Poly- 
 crates," "The Cranes of Ibycus," "The Fight 
 "With the Dragon" and "The Diver" — are, by com- 
 mon consent, achievements of the very first order. 
 Even to-day "Maria Stuart" and "Wilhelm Tell" 
 appear gracious warm creations, that bind us with 
 a spell of dramatic eloquence, which we are too 
 grateful to disavow. Yet for those of us who believe 
 in the prophetic office of the poet ; who suspect that 
 the test of life's aching needs is some warrant of 
 
 ^The Poems and Ballads of Schiller — Sir Edward Bulwer- 
 Lytton.
 
 SCHILLER 155 
 
 moral truth in the preacher's deliverance ; and that 
 the jBsthetic suasion of his form, coercing the sen- 
 sitive poet, assists to correct spiritual extrava- 
 gance, to render sweet and sane the religious 
 quest ; for those who, while they would not bring 
 ethical and dogmatic criticism to bear directly on 
 the creations of the poet — to gyve his feet or clip 
 his pinions, — yet cannot but believe that (other 
 things being equal) a poem gains much by its abil- 
 ity to feed our ''moral being" and sustain our as- 
 piration ; for us and the like of us, surely, an in- 
 ventory of Schiller's lyric and epigrammatic poems 
 of moral and religious thought will not prove 
 wholly valueless. For them, however, who reck 
 nothing of such adventitious desert in things of 
 beauty, we have no irate rebuke, — only a cour- 
 teous dismissal to the exquisite company of the 
 *'art for art's sake" guides into Elysian fields. 
 
 n. 
 
 From the poems of Schiller's ''first period" lit- 
 tle falls within the scheme we have proposed. The 
 afflatus of the ''Eobbers" is not to be denied. 
 Lovers of the ''Gothic romance," so-called, may 
 rejoice therein. Anne Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, Bul- 
 wer-Lytton, Edgar Allen Poe & Co., should never 
 be without a literary progeny. Yet, to have sur- 
 vived and outlived a "Storm and Stress" period 
 of perfervid adolescence is, for a poet, no small 
 luck and praise.
 
 156 SCHILLER 
 
 So we note, only in passing, the manful self-as- 
 sertion that expressed itself in Burns' immortal 
 song, ''A Man's a Man for a' That," and much 
 less worthily, we regret to say, in Schiller's piece 
 of verse-strutting "Mannerwiirde" and his hon- 
 est rebuke to a pompous Pharisee: 
 
 A man am I. Who's more a man? 
 
 Who claims to be? Go, spring 
 Freely under God's shining sun, 
 And lustily leap and sing! 
 * » * # • 
 
 Well, if through ice of the sophistic mind 
 The warm blood hath a little gladlier purled; 
 
 What may not be achieved of human kind 
 Leave thou to denizens of a better world. 
 
 My earthly fellow doth the spirit immure, 
 Though heaven-begotten; and behold, I can 
 
 Nowise become a holy angel pure: 
 So let me follow him, and be a man! 
 
 Far more profoundly are we moved, however, by 
 certain poems of the second period, especially the 
 three: ''Der Kampf" (The Conflict), "Eesigna- 
 tion," and ^^Die Gotter Griechenlands" (The 
 Gods of Greece). The first stanza of his ''Hymn of 
 Joy" (An die Freude) had the signal honor to be- 
 come part of Beethoven's Choral Symphony. The 
 Goddess of Joy makes all her votaries kin. And 
 youth feels itself made solely to possess her for- 
 ever! The moments when the human race tri- 
 umphed signally we may therefore assimilate in 
 our young enthusiasm, delighting in the personal 
 value we assign to them as self-expression. 
 " A-ffiavit deus, et dissipati sunt/' the vessels of 
 our foe are scattered over the vasty deep. What 
 vouthful heart does not beat hi^li?
 
 SCHILLER 157 
 
 But, however fancy and imagination may so 
 transport us, we return ever in due time to our 
 own single self; and there in our life we front 
 quite another spectacle: 
 
 No, r will fi<xlit, this giant fight no longer, 
 
 The fight of duty und sacrifice. 
 If the heart's hot rage to soothe, thou be no stronger, 
 
 Virtue, ask not of me such cruel price. 
 
 Sworn have I, most bindingly have sworn it. 
 
 To wrestle with myself for mastery; 
 Have back thy victor's wreath; though I have worn it, 
 
 I'll wear it never. To sin let me be free! 
 
 What biographically the immediate nature of 
 the fight may have been is of no jDoetic conse- 
 quence. Indeed, the last stanza profits by its very 
 ambiguity, thereby getting reaches of significance 
 that belong to the uttermost of man's aspiration: 
 
 Fair and dear soul, trust not this angel-seeming. 
 For crime thy piteous kindness arms me now. 
 
 In the infinite realms with life's fair marvels teaming 
 Is there another fairer prize than thou? 
 
 Or than the very crime I flee from, ever? 
 
 O fate most tyrannous; — 
 The prize to crown my virtuous will 's endeavor 
 
 Doth slay my virtue — thus! 
 
 Howbeit, only on condition of ascetic self-de- 
 nial may higher quests enjoy their fair fruition. 
 Not that any mystic merit of the sacrifice secures 
 our reward. Not that there has been providen- 
 tial malice in the universal order requiring our 
 deliberate purchase with pain of the more endur- 
 ing pleasure. Merely, that to no one may all at 
 once be granted. "With our inevitable quite inno- 
 cent limits of time and space and vitality, choice
 
 158 SCHILLER 
 
 must be exercised as discretely as may be, and the 
 consequences abided by. This simple fact, when 
 first intimately realized, causes each soul in turn 
 acutest suffering ; and hence to mankind the prom- 
 ises of compensation in some life-to-come have 
 been reiterated pathetically, and cherished in 
 sheer despair of egoism. On these Schiller will 
 not place reliance : 
 
 I also in Arcadia was bom; 
 
 And in my childish years 
 Nature to grant me happiness hath sworn. 
 I also in Arcadia was born, 
 
 Yet my short springtide yielded only — tearsl 
 
 Enumerating his sacrifices, his illusions, and 
 disillusionments, shrinking from the cynical on- 
 looker who recks not of invisible treasures, dis- 
 quieted, disconsolate, all but remorseful for the 
 irrevokable worthy choice, he obtains this oracle : 
 
 "I love with one love all my children," cried 
 
 A genius veiled from sight. 
 "Children of men, hearken: two flowers abide 
 The prudent seeker, blowing side by side, 
 
 Hope and immediate Delight." 
 
 Who hath one blossom culled of the twain, 
 
 Let him not crave her sister-bloom. 
 Who hath not faith — enjoy! This lore's refrain 
 Old as the world: whoso hath faith, — abstain! 
 
 The world's recorded life — its Day of doom, 
 
 Hope hath been thine; then hast thou gained thy due. 
 
 Thy faith — the grace awarded thee! 
 Thou shouldst have asked thy wise men, for they knew: 
 What might not of the moment's flight accrue, 
 
 Shall be restored not of eternity! 
 
 Schiller's famous Elegy on departed Hellenic 
 Polytheism — ''The Gods of Greece" — has been 
 fluently rendered by Mr. Arnold-Forster. That
 
 SCHILLER 159 
 
 most pregnant epigram, however, with which the 
 poem ends, is not Englished with sufficient pung- 
 ency : 
 
 And Fancy, crushed by life's stern pressure, 
 Lives but in poetry sublime, 
 
 is more elegant, but not so direct as Bowring's, — 
 
 All that is to live in endless song 
 Must in life-time first be drowned, 
 
 although it was not Schiller who specified a 
 watery gravel 
 
 Again our subject is the question of a definite 
 choice. Immortal life in song (that is, long-contin- 
 ued influence through the better part of man, his 
 imagination and craving for the ideal) must first 
 make itself known, ay more, deliver its creden- 
 tials by tragic catastrophe : 
 
 Wass unsterblich im Gesang soil leben, 
 Muss im Leben untergehn. 
 
 All that in Poesy shall live forever 
 Must perish first in actual life. 
 
 With this insight, the poet, Schiller, conscious 
 of his divine call, could himself forego pleasure, 
 and refrain from passion, not without intimations 
 perhaps of his own early end. He, too, must ac- 
 cept his destiny, and serve as an incentive, and live 
 so that the spell of his verse should be reinforced 
 by the idealization of his personal career. Surely 
 a fate desendng from happier men no unworthy 
 pity! 
 
 Not that the young poet will fail at moments 
 to regret the days of unreasonable expectations 
 and hush melodious complaints which are them-
 
 ieO SCHILLER 
 
 selves consolatory. So the elegy called ''Ideals" 
 makes an irresistible appeal to all who can love 
 the palpitant life of youth in retrospect : 
 
 Ah, cruel, must thou then depart 
 
 And leave me joyless and alone, 
 Forgetful of what joy and smart 
 
 In close communion we have known! 
 Can nothing thy departure stay, 
 
 Thou golden stage of earthly time? 
 Tis vain: thy billows roll away 
 
 To the eternal sea sublime. (A-F., p. 113.) 
 
 For eight more stanzas Schiller reviews the 
 losses and bewails them, ending as the undefeated 
 man, whose vocation, and the fellowship it earns 
 for him, suffice to keep him erect, with countenance 
 of resolute cheer, face forward: 
 
 Of all that merry company, — 
 
 Which stood beside me to the last? 
 Which comforted my parting sigh? 
 
 Which will abide when all is past ? 
 Friendship, 'tis thou, whose healing balm 
 
 Is lightly spread o'er every wound, 
 Sharing our ills with loving calm; 
 
 Thou whom I early sought and found. 
 
 And, Labor, thou, who, hand in hand 
 
 With her, can exercise the soul; 
 Who canst all weariness withstand; 
 
 Whose solid tasks with time unroll. 
 Although thou travail, grain by grain, 
 
 To rear Eternity sublime; 
 Years, minutes, days, thou canst detain 
 
 From the tremendous debt of Time. (p. 113.) 
 
 In two at least of the ballads we seem to hear 
 echoes of that oracle that came to him, so unam- 
 biguous and not to be denied : ''Whoso hath faith 
 — abstain!" 
 
 The classical allegory of the divine envy serves 
 to illustrate the principle that not all can be had
 
 SCHILLER 161 
 
 which the heart desires; nay, what is more, that 
 all should not be had, even if accorded of a partial 
 fate. Polycrates, after exhibitions of incredible 
 good fortune is, admonished by his friend: 
 
 Wouldst thou immunity from grieff 
 Then pray the Gods, in kind relief, 
 
 To shade thy luck with sorrow's tone. 
 No man true happiness has gained 
 On whom the generous Gods have rained 
 
 Untempered benefits alone. (A.-F., p. 156.) 
 
 In the "Cranes of Ibycus," by the operation of 
 an .^Eschylean Chorus of the Furies, two murder- 
 ers of the expected winner of poetic laurels stand 
 self-confessed. The awe is realized with great 
 dramatic force, and we feel that somehow it was 
 with Schiller a very real experience. He was 
 not cold-bloodedly constructing a ballad to illus- 
 trate Kant's conception of the "categorical im- 
 perative"; he was imparting to us, by a tale, some- 
 thing of his own shudder at the mystery of con- 
 science : 
 
 And between truth and wonderment 
 
 Each quaking heart with doubt is rent, 
 
 And worships the tremendous might 
 
 Which, all unseen, protects the right; 
 
 Unfathomable, unexplained, 
 
 By which the threads of Fate are spun, 
 
 Deep in the human heart contained, — 
 
 Yet ever hiding from the sun.* (A.-F.. p. 162.) 
 
 But our quest of truth has ever been at the ex- 
 pense of conscience. Always the old was settled 
 in rightful possession. The new appeared as 
 rebel, as invader. The youth, therefore, who 
 
 'Agrain here our complaint is that the translation seems to nar- 
 row the broad statements somewhat more to the particular situa- 
 tion than do the resonant lines of the original stanza.
 
 162 SCHILLER 
 
 would unveil the Image of Truth at Sais was in- 
 deed to Schiller more than the hero of a legend. 
 
 Far heavier than thou deemest 
 Is this thin gauze, my son. Light to thy hand 
 It may be — ^but most weighty to thy conscience. 
 
 (Bowring, p. 191.) 
 
 He lifted the veil. He saw. And never did he 
 publish his vision: — only lived to warn all ques- 
 tioners : 
 
 ** Woe— woe to him who treads through guilt to TRUTH.'" 
 
 The Truth even can be approached no other- 
 wise than as God's law doth allow.^ But the 
 poets with all other artists have their custody of 
 more than truth: 
 
 Ye hold in trust the honor of mankind. 
 
 Guard it! With yours 'tis closely intertwined. 
 
 The charm of poetry we rightly deem 
 
 Part of creation's well-appointed scheme. 
 
 Let it roll on and melt into the sea 
 
 Of a divinely blended harmony. 
 
 When Truth is taunted by its proper age. 
 
 Let her appeal to the poetic page 
 
 And seek a refuge in the Muse's choir. 
 
 Her real claims more readily inspire 
 
 Eespect, that they are shrouded o'er with grace. 
 
 May she in song forever find a place, 
 
 And on her dastard enemies shall rain 
 
 Avenging paean in triumphal strain. 
 
 Ye freeborn scions of a mother free, 
 Press onward firmly with exalted eyes; 
 
 Perfected beauty only may ye see, 
 
 And lesser crowns ye need not stoop to prizel 
 
 The sister missing in this present sphere 
 Clasped to her mother's bosom ye shall find; 
 
 What lofty souls as beautiful revere 
 
 *Bulwer-Lytton's version. 
 
 "The two ballads of Cassandra and the Diver each relate them- 
 selves to the same thought : To know what the Gods would con- 
 ceal shall avail no man ; to explore it instinctively tempting God — 
 shall end in destruction.
 
 SCHILLER 1G3 
 
 Must noble be, and perfect of its kind. 
 Poised high above your life-appointed span, 
 
 Let your ecstatic pinions freely swell. 
 The dawning image in your mirror scan, 
 
 And the approaching century foretell. 
 By thousand paths and many devious ways 
 
 Through every varied turning ye shall glide 
 To welcome in the fulness of her days 
 
 Harmonious concord, your delight and guide. 
 
 (A.-R, p. 97.) 
 
 With so deep a conviction, then, of his vocation, 
 and with so exalted a faith in the divine function 
 thus allowed him, why should the poet refuse to 
 be deprived (by his great ministry of delight) of 
 what the common lot offers to mankind? Having 
 friendship and work, knowing the tragic law of 
 higher life through death, apprehending the oracle 
 of necessary choice, — why should not the poet be 
 of good cheer, even though Zeus seems to have 
 divided out the earth already, reserving for him no 
 equitable portion? His high-priesthood was, to be 
 sure, foreseen : 
 
 "Part of creation's well-appointed scheme." 
 
 And so, it could not have been, after all, an over- 
 sight, albeit the ballad so has it, entitled ''The 
 Partition of the World": 
 
 "If thou to dwell in dreamland hast elected," 
 Keplied the God, "lay not the blame on me. 
 Where wast thou when the sharing was effected?" 
 "I was," the Poet said, "by thee. 
 
 Mine eye upon thy countenance was dwelling, 
 Thy heavenly harmony entranced mine ear; 
 
 Forgive the mind, thine influence compelling 
 Eendered oblivious of this sphere!" 
 
 "What can T do?" said Zeus. "For all is given; 
 The harvest, sport, the markets, all are seized. 
 But, an thou choose to live with me in heaven. 
 
 Come when thou willst, and I shall be well pleased." 
 
 (A.-F., p. 221.)
 
 164 SCHILLER 
 
 So much for the prophetic revelation Schiller 
 had as poet: a double assurance of the worth of 
 intelligent sacrifice of the less excellent for the 
 more perfect; the hallowed privilege of special 
 self-immolation when granted a place near to the 
 gods, and an influence on the lives of his fellow 
 men beyond the span of his own personal life. 
 
 III. 
 
 Now, in one single poem more than any other 
 (and in this statement we are not ashamed to 
 agree with much critical tradition) Schiller has 
 expressed his philosophic counsel of flight from 
 the actual world into the ''kingdom of imagina- 
 tion". Therefore, we will here reprint Mr. Ar- 
 nold-Forster's version of ''The Ideal and Life", 
 suggesting that the reader compare it, stanza by 
 stanza, with the far less fluent cue by Bowring. 
 We are sincerely sorry that the publisher chal- 
 lenges comparison for his translator's art with 
 Bayard Taylor's. That quoted anonymous eulo- 
 gist, "among the highest authorities on German 
 Literature in America," probably disdained to 
 make a close study of any one of the didactic 
 pieces where accuracy counts, line by line, original 
 in hand, Bulwer-Lytton and Bowring to right and 
 left of him. Only so could he have ascertained 
 how, by this latest rendering, the crucial difficul- 
 ties are glided over smoothly with an irritating
 
 SCHILLER 165 
 
 insouciance, letting the thought-sequence take 
 care of itself as best it may. Bayard Taylor (so 
 far as our reasonably close inspection through 
 many years of his Faust may be a warrant for 
 praise) never fails to grasp the most intimate 
 sense of the text before him, and to wrestle man- 
 fully with English for equivalents. He is not al- 
 ways successful in his quest of the right word, 
 and at times one must plead guilty for him to 
 erratic obscurities and wrenched idioms. But, at 
 least, Taylor does not smile in facile rimes his 
 easy satisfaction at having avoided close issue 
 with the subtle meanings of a pregnant phrase 
 in his original. Let the reader study with care 
 the tuneful poem made by Mr. Arnold-Forster out 
 of Schiller's close metaphysic and sententious or- 
 acular eloquence. 
 
 THE IDEAL AND LIFE 
 
 (1) 
 
 Calm and transparent, as a mirror bright, 
 Flows Life along, with Zephyr wings bedight, 
 
 Where dwell the blest in their Olympian state. 
 Moons may decay, and generations wane; 
 The roses of their godlike youth remain 
 
 Immutable amid the general fate. 
 A timid choice is granted to mankind 
 
 'Twixt sensual happiness and peace of soul. 
 Only upon celestial brows are joined 
 
 The two, united under one control. 
 
 (?) 
 
 Wouldst thou on earth aspire a God to be, 
 And of the regions of the dead be free, 
 
 See that thou pluck not of the garden's fruit! 
 Enough upon its sheen to feast thine eyes, 
 For all too soon some new desire will rise 
 
 Possession's transient pleasures to confute.
 
 166 SCHILLER 
 
 Why, Styx himself, who ninefold trammels bound 
 About her, could not Ceres' daughter stay; 
 
 She grasped the apple, and thenceforth was bound 
 The will of dismal Orcus to obey. 
 
 (3) 
 
 The body leans upon those powers alone 
 
 Which influence Fate's darkest zone; 
 
 But, free from pressure of the passing storm, 
 
 The playfellow of Nature at its best, 
 Meanders in the precincts of the blest, 
 
 Divine 'mid deities — Ideal Form. 
 If thou wouldst rise upon celestial wings, 
 
 The little pains of earth thou must ignore; 
 Abandon count of mere terrestrial things, 
 
 And to the realms of the Ideal soar! 
 
 (4) 
 
 Young ever, and from earthly blemish free. 
 In light of perfect uniformity. 
 
 Here is man 's image by the Gods designed. 
 As silent phantom forms which lived of yore 
 Gleam when they wander on the Stygian shore, 
 
 So these, within the heavenly frame enshrined, 
 Once had their place, before th' immortal fell 
 
 Down to the dark sarcophagus of earth. 
 If in the world the scales uncertain dwell, 
 
 'Tis there that victory proclaims its birth. 
 
 (5) 
 
 'Tis not your limbs from battle to excuse, 
 Nor in the weary courage to infuse. 
 
 That the victorious banner flutters here. 
 Implacable, although you fain would rest, 
 Life hurries you along upon its breast. 
 
 And Time involves you in its wild career. 
 And should the pinioned ardour of the soul 
 
 Shrink from the threatened limits to its flight, 
 Look down at last upon your well-earned goal 
 
 From Beauty's calm and enviable height. 
 
 (6) 
 
 If it be worth to govern and protect, 
 One champion 'gainst another to project, 
 
 Fortune and honor in the lists to gain. 
 There may audacity be wrecked on force, 
 And as the chariots thunder in their course, 
 
 They mingle helpless on the dusty plain.
 
 SCHILLER 167 
 
 He only can obtain the victor's meed 
 
 Whose courage presses to th' arena's prize. 
 
 Only the strong to conquer fate succeed, 
 The weakling in disparaged odour lies. 
 
 (7) 
 
 While rugged rocks the stream of life enclose, 
 In boiling leaps tumultuous it flows; 
 
 Yet how pacific wells that very stream 
 Through Beauty's shadowy pastures as it purls, 
 And on its silvered mirror-face unfurls 
 
 Now Hesperus, and now Aurora's beam. 
 Here mutual love a tender balm inspires. 
 
 And weaves a bond of sympathetic grace; 
 In peace repose inimical desires, 
 
 And the arch-foe no longer finds a place. 
 
 (8) 
 
 When Genius burns impatient, by his skill 
 Th' inanimate with being to instill — 
 
 His very self with matter to unite — 
 Then is the moment every nerve to strain, 
 That noble Thought victorious may reign 
 
 Over mere element 's obstructive might. 
 To him alone who never seeks repose 
 
 The rippling fount can be revealed, 
 And to th' artistic chisel's mastering blows 
 
 Alone will adamantine marble yield. 
 
 (9) 
 
 But, penetrating even Beauty's sphere. 
 Toil must attend, and 'mid the dust adhere 
 
 To matter which with glory it invests. 
 Not from the mass laboriously run. 
 But light, as though, from merest essence sprung, 
 
 Th' enchanting image every eye arrests. 
 All doubts and difficulties pass away 
 
 As victory unfolds its certain plan, 
 And there remains no symptom to betray 
 
 Th' indigence of mortal man. 
 
 (10) 
 
 When, in mankind's ignoble trappings dressed, 
 Before the bar divine ye stand impressed, 
 
 And guilt approaches the immortal throne. 
 No wonder that thy vaunted merits pale 
 In face of Truth; that dubious actions quail 
 
 When the Ideal makes its power known: —
 
 168 SCHILLER 
 
 Perfection is for no created thing. 
 
 And over this impenetrable deep 
 No vessel plies, no kindly bridge may spring, 
 
 In it no anchor can its holding keep. 
 
 (11) 
 
 Be not alone by narrow Eeason taught, 
 But freely rise to the domain of Thought, 
 
 So dark illusions soon will be outgrown, 
 Abysses will no obstacle present. 
 Thy spirit and the Deity's cement, 
 
 And God half way will meet thee from His throne. 
 The rigid law's unyielding fetters bind 
 
 Only the slave who treats them with disdain j 
 Against the dull resistance of mankind 
 
 The very majesty of God is vain! 
 
 (12) 
 
 Torn by the pangs to which mankind is heir. 
 Like some Laocoon, who, in despair, 
 
 Struggles against the horrid serpent brood, 
 No wonder man revolts, and that his cries 
 Ascend to the reverberating skies, 
 
 And bend the hearer to a melting moodi 
 Victorious echo, Nature 's awful voice 1 #*' 
 
 Let pallor blanch the too-exalted brow, 4;" 
 
 And your immortal element rejoice ^ 
 
 Before a sacred sympathy to bowl ^ti 
 
 (13) 
 
 But in that light, exhilarating sphere 
 
 Where Beauty's form is focused sharp and clear. 
 
 The storm no longer howls amid the boles; 
 Th' emancipated spirit knows no pain. 
 Tears flow no longer, and uncurbed remain 
 
 The natural yearnings of impulsive souls. 
 Fair, as when Iris' many- tinted bow 
 
 Transforms the weeping cloud to sparkling dew, 
 So on the murky veil of sorrow glow 
 
 Consoling flashes of celestial blue. 
 
 (14) 
 
 Alcides once, obeying the behest 
 
 Of an unworthy master, went in quest 
 
 Of all the perils which on life attend; 
 Strangled the lion, laid the hydra stark. 
 Nor feared to enter Charon's dreadful bark. 
 
 While yet in life to liberate his friend.
 
 SCHILLER 169 
 
 And all the miseries of mankind which rack 
 
 The unforgiving Goddess loved to place 
 Upon her enemy's long-suffering back 
 
 Until completed was his earthly race. 
 
 (15) 
 
 Until the God, shedding his worldly guise, 
 Renounces man, and seeks the flaming skies, 
 
 Quaffing th' entrancing ether at its birth, 
 Eejoicing in his new-born power of flight, 
 Upward he mounts, and up, till lost to sight 
 
 Is every vision which recalls the earth. 
 His ears, transfigured, revel in the strains 
 
 Which from the portals of Olympus roll, 
 And with a just relief once more he drains 
 
 The heavenly nectar from a heavenly bowl. 
 
 (A.-F., pp. 224-228.) 
 
 Since this paper is written chiefly for such as 
 have little or no German at their command, and 
 considering the very great importance to the 
 lover of poetry and moral science which all stu- 
 dents claim for the piece under discussion, it 
 seems only right to offer a quite untechnical eluci- 
 datory paraphrase, which he who scorns such aids 
 may easily omit. 
 
 The Ideal, axd Life. 
 
 I. Because of the limits set us by our organism, 
 we are constantly forced to a sore decision be- 
 tween alternatives, which are both in their way 
 desirable. 
 
 II. Let us then resolutely elect the better, how- 
 ever dear it may cost us to forego the less excel- 
 lent. 
 
 III. Yet man can even now (by creative 
 thought) escape his impotence and insignificance,
 
 170 SCHILLER 
 
 and dwell in a world not unlike that of Plato's 
 eternal ideas: the world of philosophers, sages, 
 poets and mystics. 
 
 IV. Borne thither, we are privileged to behold 
 the Ideal Man, and, for our spiritual welfare, the 
 Victory of our Cause. 
 
 V. Nor is this entrance into a "Kingdom of 
 the Spirit" meant to relax our efforts on earth, 
 but rather to renew our courage and increase our 
 strength. 
 
 VI. In the practical world, whether in sport or 
 in earnest, none can succeed but in proportion to 
 strength, skill and courage ; and it is well so, else 
 should weakness, incompetency and cowardice pre- 
 vail. 
 
 VII. Yet the strong, capable and brave stand 
 often in the greatest need of rest ; of realizing the 
 stillness and sweetness that characterize the 
 largest life. 
 
 VIII. Let no artist presume on his easier ac- 
 cess to the world of the imagination; if he would 
 glorify the ideal he beholds, he too must endure 
 hardship. 
 
 IX. Should he, however, lose vision and confi- 
 dence, he may behold his work, perfect already in 
 divine pre-existence, and so be enabled to toil on 
 for its partial realization here below. 
 
 X. [All men are in a true sense artists and 
 poets (endeavoring to create a poem: — their life 
 and character)] and awful indeed is for them the
 
 SCHILLER 171 
 
 discovery of the inevitable discrepancy between 
 principle and performance. 
 
 XI. Yet a species of [Neo-Lutheran] salvation 
 by faith not altogether unlike the Doctrine of the 
 Theologia Germanica and the preaching of Tau- 
 ler, can afford comfort and consolation; for by 
 atonement with God man may within himself 
 adore his God, and share in some degree His bliss. 
 
 XII. Notwithstanding, we are not God, and 
 must feel the woes and iniquities of our fellow- 
 men ; so that at times we rebel, till our very desire 
 to be at one with God will fail us. 
 
 XIII. Yet we learn in due time, that out of 
 human sin and woe proceed the highest good, pur- 
 ity and bliss; and we permit suffering and an- 
 guish to be transfigured [as in hero and martyr] 
 to a thing divine ; [in which God claims His human 
 share] . 
 
 XrV. So at least the old Hellenic Myth would 
 teach us; the divine man was persecuted only to 
 challenge the God in him to fuller manifestation. 
 
 XV. Which, when it had fully taken place, rec- 
 onciled mankind to his passion and their own. 
 
 Now lest this merely utilitarian prose account 
 should not suffice, and the translation of Arnold- 
 Forster appear too Swinburnian in its somnolent 
 mellifluous drift nowhither, between silvery wil- 
 lows awave in twilight mist ; a harder, less musical 
 rendering is offered the patient reader, which has 
 been attempted on purpose for his possible profit, 
 although we fear quite doubtful delectation. Who-
 
 172 SCHILLER 
 
 ever enjoys the German has courteous leave to 
 make merry at its infirmities, or to pass by on the 
 other side. It "claims" nevertheless to be reso- 
 lutely close to the original, even if not rarely it 
 must entrust the associative values of a noun to 
 epithets nowise in the text; and seek equivalents 
 for Teutonic idioms that will not be Englished 
 without too great violence to usage and the trained 
 ear. 
 
 LIFE AND THE IDEAL 
 
 Forever crystal-fair and zephyr-soft 
 
 Life glideth calmly by, where throned aloft 
 
 The blessed Gods on heights Olympian; 
 Moons wax and wane, — folk-kindreds come and go — 
 But still the roses of their youth do blow 
 
 Changeless 'mid wrack of worlds. Ah me, and man 
 Knows the choice merely, dubious and sad. 
 
 Betwixt a thrill of sense and peace of soul! 
 The brows of the high Gods alone are glad 
 
 Of the twain wedded to a joyous whole. 
 
 II 
 
 Would ye, 6 sons of men, already be 
 
 Like to the Gods in Death's dominion — free? 
 
 Then pluck not of his garden's luring fruit. 
 On the fair show of things delight your eye; 
 Possession yieldeth joys that straightway die, 
 
 Yea, slayeth sweet desire in swift pursuit. 
 Even Styx, Demeter's child with black folds nine 
 
 Of fathomless stagnant water, could not hold; 
 She grasped the apple and therefore must she pine. 
 
 Chained to the grisly law of Orcus cold. 
 
 in 
 
 Howbeit the powers, that weave our darkling fate, 
 Beyond the body cannot wreak their hate; 
 
 Free from all tyrannies of time and space, 
 Playmate of hapny sprites, o'er fields of day, 
 Familiar of the Gods, divine as they. 
 
 Form moves enhaloed of immortal grace.
 
 ^CHILLER 173 
 
 Would ye soar thither, wafted of her wings, 
 
 Ev'n now? Forthwith, earth's fears beneath you hurled. 
 
 Breaking the clutch of narrow dismal things. 
 Escape from life into the Ideal world! 
 
 IV 
 
 Young always yonder bideth, without flaw 
 Or blemish earthly — in radiance and awe 
 
 Of perfect bloom — the form of Man divine; 
 As fared the shades by Stygian marges dumb 
 In quiet sheen through a fabled Elysium; 
 
 Rather, as stood — the azure for his shrine — 
 The eternal Soul ere to the fleshly tomb 
 
 She made descent out of her glorious place, 
 When tremble in life the battle's scales with doom, 
 There victory, smiling, greets thee face to face.' 
 
 V 
 
 Not craven limbs to rescue from the strife. 
 But to refresh the fainting with new life, 
 
 Doth victory wave her fragrant garland thus! 
 Implacable, howe'er ye yearn for rest. 
 Life hurtleth you on her steep-billowy breast 
 
 And swift time swirleth 'rormd ui)roariou3, 
 But should your courage waver — her quivering wings 
 
 Adroop for the dread sense of limits dire — 
 Look up unto the heights, where beauty brings 
 
 Your spirits to their goal, and dare aspire! 
 
 VI 
 
 When war is waged for lordship or defense — 
 Champion eyes champion, grappling might immense 
 
 With defter might — at fortune's call or fame's — 
 Bare courage copeth ill with armed force; 
 Likewise where chariots o'er the dust-choked course 
 
 Shatter each other in th' heroic games: 
 
 "Dr. Paul Carus.to whom this version was submitted and some 
 of whose suggestions were accepted, takes decided issue here as 
 to the interpretation. The German use of the adjective without 
 Its noun renders a delightful ambiguity possible, which the trans- 
 lator is obliged to resolve, supplying the noun he supposes to 
 have been understood. TTonce natural differences of opinion. His 
 emendation runs as follows : 
 
 Life's phantoms thus by Stygian marges dumb 
 In quiet sheen live in Eiysium. 
 
 Thus, too, stood she — the azure for her shrine 
 
 The Eternal Goddess ere to Pluto's tomb 
 
 She made descent out of celestial light. 
 Doubtful in life r-ma ns our bn'tl*^'s doom 
 
 While victory here is always within sight.
 
 174 SCHILLER 
 
 Valor alone can wrest him prize and praise 
 That beckon from the goal attained; alone 
 
 The strong shall master fate, and all his days 
 The dastard weakling fall and fail and moan. 
 
 VII 
 
 Yet see, the river of life, tho' hurling fierce 
 Torrents of foam where crags close-hem and pierce 
 
 His stream, doth flow — smooth, gentle, sinuous — 
 Thro' visionary calms of Beauty's vale, 
 Glassing upon his silver edges pale 
 
 Aurora blithe, or twinkling Hesperus. 
 Dissolved in gracious mutual love, and bound 
 
 Together freely in bands of comeliness, 
 Here impulse hath and passion respite found; 
 
 And foes ban ire, sweet fellowship to bless. 
 
 VIII 
 
 When fashioning genius would a soul create 
 In what before was lifeless — fain to mate 
 
 Pure form with substance at his urgent will — 
 Bid manful diligence strain every nerve, 
 Bid courage vanquish matter, till it serve. 
 
 And the whole purpose of the Thought fulfill: 
 Only stern toil, and stubborn quest shall hear 
 
 The murmured runes from deep, hid wells of truth; 
 Only the chisel's valiant stroke lays bare 
 
 What lurks within marble block uncouth. 
 
 IX 
 
 But if to Beauty's realm thou penetrate. 
 Below thee tarrieth sloth and leaden weight 
 
 Amid the dust, and the heavy clod it sways. 
 Wrung with no aching toil from the crude mass 
 Behold, there, — sprung from nothing, come to pass 
 
 Even to herself — thy Vision beyond praise! 
 Quelled be thy struggles, all thy doubts allayed 
 
 In a serene content at mastery won; 
 For lo, no trace remains of what betrayed 
 
 A human frailty in the work begun! 
 
 Whenso in man's poor nakedness ye face 
 The majesty of law, your pride abase; 
 
 Guilt even to the holy One draws nigh. 
 Well may stout virtue quail before the rays 
 Of steadfast truth, and with averted gaze
 
 SCHILLER 175 
 
 Your deeds avoid perfection's searching eye. 
 For never mortal but his aim did miss. 
 
 No boat rnay ferry, and no bridge may bear 
 Over yon frightful sundering abyss; 
 
 Nor soundeth anchor its swallowing despair." 
 
 XI 
 
 Take ye then sanctuary from imprisoning sense 
 In the far freedoms of high thought, and hence 
 
 Hath every fear-begotten phantom flown; 
 The gap 'twixt purpose and achievement fills: — 
 Yea, draw the Godhead close into your wills, 
 
 And he forsakes for you his cosmic throne. 
 None but the slave's mind feels a fettering sway. 
 
 Who scorneth of the law its chastening rod; 
 For lo, with man's resistance passed away 
 
 The awful sovereignty likewise of God. 
 
 XII 
 
 When the great anguish of the human race 
 Doth harrow you, and Laocoon's tortured face 
 
 Of dumb woe, choked in the enclasping snakes. 
 Ye front; 'tis just your manhood should rebel. 
 And unto heaven proclaim the griefs of hell 
 
 Until your heart for ruthful sorrow breaks. 
 'Tls well that Nature's dreadful voice prevail. 
 
 And youth grief-pallid weep with blinded eyes; 
 That pangs of death your deathless Self assail, 
 
 Whilst ye for fellow-feeling agonize. 
 
 XIII 
 
 But nevermore In yon sun-happy realm. 
 Where the pure Forms abide, shall overwhelm 
 
 The mind such turbid wash of human woe. 
 Not here may pain the soul with grief transpierce, 
 Nor blighting tears be shed. The anguish fierce 
 
 Now lives but in the spirit's battle glow; 
 Lovely, as hover shimmering rainbow hues 
 
 Over the thunderous rack with sprightly glee; 
 So thro' cloud-veils of moody gloom transfuse 
 
 Bright skies of cheer, and still felicity! 
 
 "> The metaphor is In the last line resolved by the translator 
 Into its moral consolation. 
 
 "Nor ever anchor soundoth bottom there" 
 Is a more literal rendering. So in the next stanza (line 4) 
 "twixt purpose and achievement " are supplied to malte the sense 
 clearer — at the cost no doubt of some mysterious shudders.
 
 176 SCHILLER 
 
 XIV 
 
 This lore the ancient myth to all made plain; — 
 How Zeus of yore did Herakles constrain 
 
 To serve the coward and bear his rule unjust; 
 Humbled he went life's footsore ways, and fought 
 Unceasing; lion and hydra slew, and wrought 
 
 With his own hands huge labors; yea, and thrust 
 His body quick in Charon's doleful bark 
 
 To loose dear friends. Dire plagues and burdens great 
 Hera devised, and grievous care and cark — 
 
 But ev'r his fortitude outsped her hate: 
 
 XV 
 
 Until his course was run; until in fire 
 Stripping the earthly raiment, on the pyre 
 
 The God breathed freely Empyrean airs; 
 Blithe-hearted at his new-got power of flight. 
 Upward he soared from joyful height to height, 
 
 And down as an ill dream sank earth's dull cares. 
 Olympian harmonies the Man enfold. 
 
 Transfigured in the shining hall of Zeus. 
 With smile and blush the Goddess, see, doth hold 
 
 To his lips at last the cup of heavenly bliss.*^ 
 
 The poem thus concludes with a noble picture of 
 Herakles (not forgetful, doubtless, of the sig- 
 nificant fact that he is, in the Enchiridion, the 
 mythological type which Christian editors of that 
 Stoic tract replaced by the name of Jesus). We 
 are shown how that human son of Zeus fought his 
 way with stubborn courage against the persecu- 
 tion of the Queen of Heaven, until whatever in 
 him was earthly perished on the sacred pyre; 
 whereupon the goddess (perchance Hera herself 
 taking Hebe's room) offered him the cup brim- 
 ming with the nectar of the gods. 
 
 " Should the rhyme "Zeus" — "bliss" give offence, we offer an 
 alternate rendering: 
 
 Olympian harmony the Man enfolds 
 
 In th' hall of Zeus transfigured ; ay, and I see 
 To his lips with smile and blush the Goddess holds 
 Her nectar cup of immortality !
 
 SCHILLER 177 
 
 So we conclude, in our case also, if heaven op- 
 pose, it is but a challenge, a veiled invitation to 
 join the immortals themselves. Let Herakles en- 
 courage the victim of outrageous fate, to attain his 
 destiny. And even now — whatever may beyond 
 death await him — there is instantaneous admis- 
 sion to an Olympian peace — the kingdom of imag- 
 ination, the ** realm of pure form" where he may 
 dwell as freeman, — aye, as king, — while enduring, 
 perchance, servitude in the flesh and ignominious 
 moral defeat. 
 
 What the prosaic summation of this remark- 
 able poem's doctrines may be, each competent 
 reader can discern now for himself. For the sake, 
 however, of his integrity of thought, let us pro- 
 test in advance against any amiable overhaste, be- 
 cause of Schiller's noble attitude, to denominate 
 him a Christian poet ; unless, as the loose manner 
 of some is, any moral worth and spiritual exalta- 
 tion shall be accorded that dubiously honest 
 courtesy by our liberal Christendom. 
 
 The most Schiller has to say of immortality is — 
 that we seem born for something better : 
 
 It is no vain, deluding thought 
 
 Which from disordered fancy springe; 
 
 By hope our hearts are plainly taught 
 That we arc born for better things. 
 
 That inAvard voice, if we believe. 
 The hoping soul will not deceive. 
 
 (Hope, A,-F., p. 265.) 
 
 There, too, in the fourteenth stanza of the poem 
 ^' Resignation, " we are distinctly told that no dea 1 
 has ever returned to bear witness (cf. st. 10, 1. 8,
 
 178 SCHILLER 
 
 ''Ideal and Life") : exactly the opposite of what is 
 claimed by the Christian Scriptures. And, be it 
 noted, the "better things that we are born to" 
 clearly signifies a Stoic elevation here and now 
 by force of soul above the chaos of fate, from 
 which we are at liberty to select what is akin to 
 our destiny and profits and ennobles our living 
 spirit. 
 
 This is a doctrine only meet for such as be very 
 valiant: prepared for abstinences, inured to dis- 
 ciplines, resolved, if need were, to self-immolation ; 
 who dare to become companions in deed and truth 
 of Herakles, passing with him from their sacri- 
 ficial labors into the heaven of triumphant thought, 
 upborne by the very flames they kindled of the 
 world's consuming fire* 
 
 IV. 
 
 The "Walk" gives an account, in chatty hex- 
 ameters, of the charm exercised on the poet by 
 nature; then we see the rise of the city, the de- 
 velopment of human solidarity, the successive ap- 
 pearance of industry, commerce, art and science, 
 followed by the terrible avatar of Liberty, which, 
 alas! seems to imply demoralization. Then we 
 feel the dissolution of human society is threat- 
 ened, and Schiller takes refuge again in nature, 
 which becomes a sacrament of chaste self-restraint 
 
 *Cf. Symbolism of Elijah's chariot, and the bolt of Zeus upbear- 
 ing CEdlpus in Sophocles' CEdipus Coloneus.
 
 SCHILLER 179 
 
 and restores man to primitive individual inno- 
 cence and social health. 
 
 Much more has been made of this poem than 
 we think, in spite of the beautiful close, is its real 
 desert. So the "Song of the Bell" also appears 
 to have been much overrated as philosophical 
 poetry. Far more significant seem to us the series 
 "Nenia," "The Child at Play," "The Sexes," 
 "The Dance," "Fortune," "Genius" and "The 
 Philosophical Egoist," of which, as poetry, we 
 should prefer the three that seem to continue each 
 other's thought: "The Dance," "Fortune" and 
 "Genius". "Nenia" bids us think it no poor fate 
 to be an elegy in the mouth of love; "The Child 
 at Play" suggests how the child often admon- 
 ishes stern duty for her lack of joy and vital cour- 
 age; "The Sexes" set forth the organic mystery of 
 twofold procreation as a symbol leading to a com- 
 prehension of divine love;* "The Dance" illus- 
 trates in most melodious verse that perfect re- 
 pose which is the ordered motion of beautiful 
 form, the explanation of which mystery is the 
 gracious miracle involved in the dominion of 
 "Measure", which dominion man, alas! in his 
 play will acknowledge, and yet perversely disown, 
 — nay, even resist, — in his serious avocations. 
 Singularly beautiful is the noble plea in "For- 
 tune" that we recognize the favorites of the gods 
 without envy, — accepting them as partial revela- 
 tions of the divine mind and heart. "Genius" 
 
 •Woman's Worth, A. F., p. 262.
 
 180 SCHILLER 
 
 celebrates that fortunate man whose very whim is 
 wisdom, whose irresjDonsible play turns out to be 
 supreme achievement, for whom patient science 
 and our proud moral disciplines have no contribu- 
 tion. Here, in the close of the poem, do we come 
 nearest to that chief Christian conception of a 
 'SSon of God" — the divine Child, perfect restorer 
 of the race to a more than Paradisaic glory. ''The 
 Philosophic Egoist" serves as epilogue to our 
 series, showing that nature, by turn both mother 
 and child, cannot possibly yield her inmost secret 
 to that philosopher who will grant no rational 
 value or loveliness to unselfish impulses. 
 
 This remarkable sequence of poems in unrhymed 
 elegiacs offers little difficulty to the reader who 
 does not let himself be lulled into unintelligence 
 by the melody of rhythm. They do not (except 
 toward the close of "Genius" and now and then 
 in "Fortune", and by gradual ascent throughout 
 to the end of "The Dance") rise to any very lofty 
 mood of poetic fury. For that very reason, per- 
 chance, they will serve as grateful comment on the 
 more oracular lyrics in which the white heat of 
 divine passion has fused into musical phrase the 
 hard definiteness of Schiller's thought. There re- 
 main two more pieces that must be painstakingly 
 studied by any who would form a correct view of 
 Schiller's position, namely, the "Words of Faith" 
 and the "Words of Error," which we reproduce 
 here:
 
 SCHILLER 181 
 
 THE WORDS OF FAITH 
 
 Three words of significant import I name, 
 And the lips to each other impart; 
 
 From no indiscriminate sources they came, 
 But their origin have in the heart; 
 
 And unless these words form part of his creed, 
 
 Man is a pitiful creature, indeed. 
 
 Man was created, and man is free, 
 
 No matter if born in chains; 
 Let the cry of the rabble pass over thee, 
 
 And the howl of extravagant swains! 
 Of no free man stand thou in fear, 
 Nor of slave who has conquered a free career. 
 
 S. 
 
 And Virtue is more than an echoing call, 
 
 For it serves man day by day; 
 And, though he may blunder and stumble and fall, 
 
 He can aim at the virtuous way; 
 And what from the wiseacre oft is concealed 
 Is as oft to the soul of the simple revealed. 
 
 4. 
 
 And a God there is, whose will compels 
 
 The wavering mind of man; 
 
 And thought of the loftier order swells 
 
 Beyond time's wildest ken. 
 Though the world in eternal vicissitude roll. 
 There is ever repose for the peaceable soul. 
 
 Preserve these three great words that I name. 
 
 One lip to another impart; 
 Though not from extraneous sources they came. 
 
 But their origin have in the heart. 
 So long as these words form part of his creed, 
 Man is a creature of worth, indeed.
 
 182 SCHILLER 
 
 THE WOEDS OF EREOB 
 
 1. 
 
 Three words of significant meaning there are 
 In the mouths of the wisest and best, 
 
 Yet vainly they echo, like tones from afar, 
 And yield no assistance or rest. 
 
 Man forfeits the fruits he could lightly attain 
 
 If after impalpable shadows he strain. 
 
 So long as he pictures a glorious age, 
 
 Rejoicing in honor and right — 
 Those gifts will assuredly combat engage 
 
 With a foe who forever will fight. 
 Thou must at him in air, for a contact with earth 
 Supplies to his force a regenerate birth. 
 
 3. 
 
 So long as he thinks that success will attend 
 
 On nobility's conduct and aims — 
 He will find that she looks upon wrong as a friend, 
 
 That the world what is worthy disclaims. 
 A wanderer he, and his duty to roam. 
 To discover elsewhere an immutable home. 
 
 So long as he dreams that the reason of man 
 
 Can with absolute verities close — 
 
 He will find an abyss which no mortal can span; 
 
 We can but assume and suppose. 
 In a word, it is true, thou canst prison the mind, 
 But it surges away on the wings of the wind. 
 
 Then hasten thy soul from illusions to wean, 
 
 And a higher religion endue! 
 What the ear never heard, and the eye has not seen, 
 
 Remains what is lovely and true! 
 It is not abroad, as the foolish contends; 
 'Tis within, and upon thine own ardor depends. 
 
 The "Words of Faith" affirm that: freedom 
 of the quick mind, unwearied struggling for the 
 divine in the simple spirit of the little child, and
 
 SCHILLER 183 
 
 to hold steadfast above him ever as "truly exist- 
 ent" the "highest thought" he can think; these 
 are the fiats of the sane and saving faith. Hav- 
 ing firm hold of such faith, one will be able surely 
 to abstain from gross joy, and rest content in the 
 stillness above the tumult of desire. The ' * Words 
 of Folly" (rather than Error) are the supposi- 
 tion of a bygone or future golden age; of luck 
 apportioned providentially in this (or any other) 
 world according to desert (poetic justice, so 
 called) ; and last (if not least) the arrogant as- 
 sumption that any human theory will at any time 
 compass the exactitude of a theometry (to quote 
 Eossetti's clever coinage in "Soothsay") ; for only 
 the unseen and the unheard is the lovely and the 
 true. 
 
 "It is not without, for the fool seeks it there; 
 Within thee it flourishes, constant and fair.' 
 
 • 
 
 Now, then, the remainder of the lyric poems are, 
 for our purposes, relatively negligible. Except the 
 following two epigrams from the "Votive Tab- 
 lets" they are unnecessary for a clear perspective. 
 These we will quote : 
 
 All may share thy thoughts: thine own is only thy feeling, 
 Wouldst thou own him, feel, do not imagine, thy God. 
 
 (A.-F., p. 310.) 
 
 Otherwise rendered, for greater faithfulness' 
 sake: 
 
 What thou thinkest is common to all; thine own is thy feeling. 
 Wouldst thou make him thy own — feel then the God thou 
 hast thought. 
 
 •Bowring's version of the closing couplet of "Words of Error."
 
 184 SCHILLER 
 
 After this first, which speaks for itself, con- 
 sider the following: 
 
 What religion I own? thou askest: — None of thy naming. 
 Why? thou askest again: — Why, for religion itaelf. (A-P., p. 
 313.) 
 
 Less gracefully, perhaps : 
 
 What religion do I embrace? Well, none thou hast men- 
 tioned. 
 Wherefore, none of them all? Even for religion's sake. 
 
 From these two epigrams we gather, if we take 
 them seriously, that, whatever dogma Schiller 
 might have put forth, he himself would have found 
 his very own merely in the quite incommunicable 
 states of feeling associated therewith — half vi- 
 brant overtones and undertones — mystic seolian 
 harmonies ; further, that for the sake of the spon- 
 taneous reality of his religion, he could not ac- 
 cept even his very own, if presented to him in the 
 hard objective form s;iipplied by a scholastic elab- 
 oration, or a series of historical experiments by 
 the method of trial and failure such as the Chuj'ch 
 has set forth through her counciliar decrees. 
 
 And this have all the poet-prophets from the 
 beginning declared with a singular unanimity, 
 differing in all else. Here invariably do they part 
 company (not at times sans sorrow) with the posi- 
 tive dogmatist (orthodox alike and heterodox) ; 
 to ally themselves to the mystics, however dis- 
 reputable, who, whatever their self-supposed con- 
 victions of a communicable sort, by making God 
 one with their will, find him in experience conde- 
 scending to unity with their conscious spirit ; and
 
 SCHILLER 185 
 
 who make no effort to render a rational account 
 of what bef alleth their spirits rapt into tlie heaven 
 of adoring vision and direct knowing of God. 
 
 For Schiller the "highest thought" was the in- 
 tellectual symbol; and the "little child" or the 
 "genius" the human symbol of deity. For Schil- 
 ler, such a rapture of faith as his was more than 
 compensation for all sacrifices required, from the 
 neophyte's, even to the initiate's into the supreme 
 mysteries of life. For Schiller, Science and mor- 
 ality were but scaffoldings necessary for the re- 
 ligious man in his irreligious hours that he may 
 then also approach the stuff of his life and aid in 
 its taking the divine form. 
 
 But there is for Schiller no one pattern. Each 
 must yearn to "the whole;" — and each, if he 
 would resemble the highest, must strive to become 
 completely himself,* and establish straightway his 
 present freedom in the ideal,** ere fate makes 
 him adventure into the future dark of death. 
 
 V. 
 
 How easy for the reader to cry * ' and is this all 1 ' ' 
 What new thing has your seer beheld, that his 
 poems should by a whole people be felt to have 
 the authority almost of Scripture? Here then do 
 we come again upon what constitutes the very 
 essential preciousness of religious poetry, mean- 
 
 •Votlve Tablets. Duty of all and a problem, pp. 309-319. 
 ••Die Idealische Freihelt.
 
 186 SCHILLER 
 
 ing thereby such poetry as proceeds from a spon- 
 taneous individually experienced religion. 
 
 The man is always more than the sum of his 
 deeds, of his sayings, and of the accidents that 
 befell him. The hero outlives many on account of 
 his service, many a poetic or dogmatic apotheosis 
 of his person. So likewise the poem. It has a 
 right to be accredited also with all that its power 
 of suggestion may yet legitimately bring to any 
 human spirit. With no one reader even does any 
 reading, however deeply felt, exhaust for all time 
 its content. Other readings at other seasons will 
 overshadow him, to his delighted surprise, with 
 hitherto undivined hallowings of soul. 
 
 What then ? Will you undertake to confute the 
 poet-prophet ? If you do, he but eludes you. You 
 meet him even in the precincts you thought he, 
 heretic that he is, might not be allowed to pro- 
 fane. Behold him there throned as the very sym- 
 bol of the deity you intended to adore in your 
 self-righteous solitude and uniqueness! 
 
 And perhaps Schiller's greatness consists after 
 all in just that power of uttering himself with a 
 thrilling earnestness, while yet always reserving 
 for his words a breadth of possible application, — 
 never quite narrowing his stated principles to the 
 suggestive text or the particular dramatic sym- 
 bol; — ^leaving them to adopt for the reader in his 
 own meditation other more sympathetic expres- 
 sions, confident that they must in the end return 
 for the happiest local instance and poetic present-
 
 SCHILLER 187 
 
 ment to the text or dramatic symbol Schiller 
 adopted. 
 
 Hence, after four generations of reading, Schil- 
 ler has lost no freshness; and even to such of us 
 as would in cold blood disagree with his doctrine, 
 his lyric utterance continues to have human poig- 
 nancy, and the most convincing and persuasive 
 power. Blessed surely are the Germans who love 
 Schiller, and who have the world's only Schiller 
 to love!
 
 GOETHE AS POET-PROPHET.* 
 
 After Matthew Arnold, who will record his 
 private opinions and feelings unwarily on so mon- 
 opolized a topic as Translation? Yet an ordinary 
 lover of literature will be pardoned for having his 
 fling at the long-eared, grey-felled, surefooted 
 word-for-worders? Browning, somewhat sensitive 
 and not without reason, took keen delight in quot- 
 ing a classical criticism of the criminal ^schylean 
 obscurity? But as a schoolboy, having patiently 
 employed dear old Robert's transyllabification as 
 a crib, methinks it were not amiss to make the 
 punishment fit the crime, if King Minos should 
 doom ^schylus for so grievous a sin of obscurity, 
 by way of all-sufficient atonement, to use his own 
 "Agamenmon" once only as a crib to Robert 
 Browning's! 
 
 And now Goethe — quite generally admitted to 
 be fourth among the immortals — must be En- 
 glished, and this German God of poetry is not al- 
 ways instantly transpicuous. 
 
 Thank heaven, so far no Browning has offered 
 himself for the adventure. But our own Bayard 
 Taylor — traveler and pleasant singer — for all his 
 American optimism deeming it possible that Eng- 
 
 •Cf. Poetry and Life; a Reading List. Univ. of Chi. Press, '06. 
 
 188
 
 GOETHE 189 
 
 lish should follow foot by foot the metaphysical 
 postures and verbal contortions of New High Ger- 
 man, for all his eager ingenuity and fine crafts- 
 man's mastery of diction and rhythm — how has 
 our brave Bayard fared in the fray? 
 
 Eemembering my trials as devoted initiator 
 into the Faustian mysteries, I dare to put a lead- 
 ing question: — would the student (of little Ger- 
 man usually, and perhaps less English) make ex- 
 alted sense at critical spots out of the scholarly 
 version of our faithful verse-for-verser and foot- 
 for-footer, did not the aforesaid student have at 
 his elbow that gay scapegrace of a paraphrast, 
 Dr. John Anster, who skips irresponsibly from 
 dizzy height to height, and that spinsterly correct 
 Miss Swanwick reared to breathe the common air 
 lOn the homelier sea-level of well-bred discourse? 
 
 How difficult the task of rendering Goethe's 
 easy yet tense, precise yet suggestive, idiomatic 
 yet elegant verse into English that shall have the 
 poetic cadence and verbal association, together 
 ■\^^th the accurate sense and equivalent sentiment ! 
 Who, more cheerfully ready to affirm this than 
 one who has himself attempted the undertaking? 
 
 Without further apologies, therefore, let the re- 
 mainder of our space be occujoied by a few haz- 
 arded translations which will, taken together and 
 in their order, provide a sur^^'ey of the world and 
 man and God from Goethe's own chosen point of 
 view. 
 
 As no lines lie ever penned have impressed the
 
 190 GOETHE 
 
 world more than the last two of *' Faust," nor 
 caused more controversy, we shall assume that 
 they meant more than meets the ear. For why in 
 the name of sense or justice should the "woman 
 soul ' ' be credited with so much, and equally nota- 
 ble Ewig Mdnnliclie, as Nietzsche mischievously 
 puts it, be so cruelly bereft of honor due? Since, 
 however, Das Ewig Weibliche has actually served 
 to test the poetic soul of the man; he betraying 
 his own deepest self in his manner of envisaging 
 that portentous miracle— the ''eternal feminine" 
 —we shall do well to quote, in full, Goethe's 
 ''Wanderer" with "The Wayfarer" for caption. 
 Indeed the poem is his Madonna. From among 
 the ruins of a glorious past, babe at breast, she 
 appears to rest and refresh him, full of grace, 
 with her simple girlish naturalness; and to offer 
 him unasked the bread of life: faith, that is to 
 say, in the external fitness of nature's inhuman 
 ways of dealing with her noblest product — man. 
 
 DER WANDERER 
 The Wayfarer 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Hail, and God bless thee, 
 
 Young mother, and the little one, 
 
 The son at thy breast! 
 
 Let me drop at the rock-wall here 
 
 In the elm tree's shadow 
 
 My burden down. 
 
 And rest me beside thee. 
 
 Young Mofher — 
 
 What craft can drive thee 
 Thro ' the heat of the day thus 
 Up the dusty path hither? 
 Bearest wares from the town 
 Through the country-side?
 
 GOETHE 191 
 
 Thou sniilost, stranger, 
 At this my question ? 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 No wares from the town have I brought. 
 Cool now grows the evening. 
 Show me to the well-spring 
 Whereat thou drinkest, 
 Gracious new-wed wife! 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 This way, up the rock-path. 
 Go before me! It leadeth 
 Through the shrubberies thick 
 Unto the well-spring 
 Whereof I drink. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Tokens of ordering human hands 
 Betwixt the bushes appear. 
 These stones be not of thy building, 
 Prodigal-handed Nature! 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Up further, and on! 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Lo, covered with moss, an architrave I 
 
 I know thee, fashioning mind 
 
 Again, — thy seal in the hewn rock deep-set. 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Press onward, stranger! 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Inscriptions whereon I trample, 
 
 Alas, illegible! 
 
 Away are ye flown, 
 
 Deep graven words, — 
 
 Ye that to thousand generations 
 
 Should your master's worship shoTf. 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Starest thou, wondering 
 At this stone, stranger! 
 Farther up about my cot 
 Full many stones lie. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 Yonder t
 
 192 GOETHE 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Close at thy left 
 
 Up thro' the thick bushes,—* 
 
 Herel 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Ye muses and graces! 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 This is my cottage. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Ruins of a temple! 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Down the slope this way 
 Up-welleth the spring 
 Whereof I drink. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Aglow still hoverest thou 
 Over thy grave-mound, 
 Genius; albeit on thee 
 Hath crashed and crumbled 
 Thy masterwork, 
 Undying spirit! 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Stay, the while I fetch the cup 
 That thou mayest drink. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Ivy hath clothed about 
 
 Thy godlike structure tall. 
 
 How ye yearn upward 
 
 Out of the wreckage, 
 
 Ye pillars twain .... 
 
 And thou, too, lonesome sister! 
 
 How ye together. 
 
 Mournful moss on your hallowed heads, 
 
 In grief majestical look down. 
 
 Beholding the prostrate pillars 
 
 At your feet broken, 
 
 Your kith and kin! 
 
 Of the tangled bramble-bushes shadowed, 
 
 Eubbish and earth half hide them; 
 
 And the gaunt grass stalks over them! 
 
 Dost thou thus scorn, O Nature, 
 
 Thy noblest creature's noblest work! 
 
 Shatterest thou so 
 
 Thy holy of holies, to plant there 
 
 The dock and the darnel?
 
 GOETHE 193 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 How he sleeps, my baby boy! 
 Wilt rest thee, stranger, 
 In our cottage! 
 Or wouldst rather 
 Here in the open tarry? 
 Cool it is. Take thou the boy 
 The while I fetch thee water. 
 Sleep, my darling, sleep! 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Sweet is thy rest! 
 
 On heavenly seas of health 
 
 Afloat, tranquil he breathes! 
 
 Thou, born among the remnants 
 
 Of a holy long-gone past, 
 
 May its spirit breathe on thee! 
 
 For whom it halloweth, he, 
 
 As the gods in self-knowledge, shall thrill 
 
 With the gladness of day after day. 
 
 Unfold, thou swelling bud! 
 
 Loveliest gem adorning 
 
 White-shimmery spring, 
 
 Outshine thy fellows; 
 
 Then may the full fruit rise 
 
 Out of thy bosom 
 
 And ripen to sunward! 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 God bless him! Still he sleepeth? 
 Naught have I more than homely bread 
 To offer thee, with the cool spring-water. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 My heartfelt thanks. 
 
 How all about doth put forth bloom and leaf I 
 
 W^hat verdure! 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Soon from the field 
 
 My husband homo 
 
 Will come. O, staj^ friend, stay, 
 
 And share with us the evening meal. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 And here — ye dwell? 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Yonder among the toppled walls 
 My father lived to build the cottage 
 Of tiles and of the ruin's stones.
 
 194 GOETHE 
 
 Here — do we dwell. 
 
 To a husband he gave me, and breathed 
 
 His last soon in our arms . . . 
 
 Hast slept thy fill, sweetheart? 
 
 How merry, see, and fond of play! 
 
 Wee rogue! 
 
 "Wayfarer — 
 
 Nature, forever budding, each 
 
 Hast fashioned to the joy of life, 
 
 Purveying as mother true 
 
 To every child a home for heritage. 
 
 High buildeth the swallow 
 
 Under the eaves, unwitting 
 
 "What chiselled grace she bedaubs; — 
 
 About the golden bough her brood's 
 
 Winter abode, the canker worm 
 
 Spinneth; and thou, 'mid ruins august 
 
 Of the long-gone past, man, 
 
 For thy bare needs 
 
 Buildest thy patch-work cot; — 
 
 And hast over graves — thy joy! 
 
 Farewell, happy wife. 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Thou wilt not tarry? 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 God keep you twain 
 And bless your boy. 
 
 Young Mother — 
 God speed thee. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 Whither o'er yonder hUl 
 Will the path take me? 
 
 Young Mother — 
 To Cuma. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 
 And how far thither? 
 
 Young Mother — 
 
 Three miles or more. 
 
 Wayfarer — 
 Farewell. 
 
 Oh, lead my steps, 
 Nature, — the stranger's
 
 GOETHE 195 
 
 Wayfaring foot, 
 
 Which o'er the graves 
 
 Of a hallowed long-gone age 
 
 Wendeth care free, — 
 
 To a place of safety 
 
 From north winds sheltered, 
 
 By a poplar copse 
 
 From the noon-sun screened; — 
 
 And, when homeward I turn 
 
 At eventide 
 
 To my hut in the last ray golden — 
 
 May such a wife there bid me welcome, 
 
 Our infant son in her arms! 
 
 We have now seen (and we trust with Goethe's 
 **eye serene") ''the very pulse of the machine" 
 and thereby known it to be spirit and not as 
 "Wordsworth makidroitly for rhyme's sake puts it 
 — mechanism. Therefore, like Wordsworth's 
 more fortunate highland girl, she haunts us ever 
 — and becomes unwittingly symbol and worship. 
 
 From Die Nektar Tropfen, the first portion of 
 Der Deutsche Parnass and his great Zueignung 
 (for which let the English reader eke out his 
 Bowring to his heart's content — or othei-wise) 
 we can gather how noble a vocation and grace of 
 God art seems to our Olympian. 
 
 Art — that noblest gift of all 
 
 »*»»«♦ 
 
 Words as poet 's arms are made, — 
 
 When the god will bo obeyed, 
 Follow fast his darts erelong 
 
 »«»♦»» 
 
 That blest one will be safe from every ill, 
 Who takes this gift with soul of purity: 
 The veil of minstrelsy from truth's own hand. 
 
 But right here let us note how it is the Poetry 
 not of irresponsible fiction, but of insight, intelli- 
 gent memoiy and relevant fancy which he would
 
 19G GOETHE 
 
 give us; and that he would have this poetry ra- 
 tionally employed to supplement the natural goods 
 of life. 
 
 Come, then, my friends, and whensoe'er ye find 
 Upon your way increase life's heavy load; 
 
 If by fresh-wakened blessings flowers are twined 
 Around your path, and golden fruits bestowed, 
 
 We'll seek the coming day with joyous mind! 
 
 For though he unflinchingly fronts the evil, no 
 pessimist is Goethe. Old, solitary — but for his 
 daughter-in-law Ottilie and her offspring — he 
 ''loved" still, at fourscore, "the sweet habit of 
 living and doing things" and declared that life 
 was "like the Sybilline books — the fewer the 
 leaves left, the more precious." 
 
 His optimism, however, is not due to disceraing 
 goods that escape the pessimist's view, but to 
 his own deliberate and successful contribution of 
 mind and heart unto that whole of which he is a 
 creative part. The world and fate are but half 
 human. It is man should harmonize them for 
 himself. And this humanizing of the world and 
 fate by man is Art. 
 
 Now, artist though he is, owing no fealty to 
 moral law as pious tradition or social convention, 
 Goethe comes nevertheless to know it and honor 
 it as inherent in the Artist's work, and vital to 
 the Artist's noblest manhood. 
 
 NATUE UND KUNST 
 Art and Nature 
 
 Nature and Art still shun each other's sight, 
 Yet mate as fellows, ere one wotteth well. 
 
 My stubborn mood hath long since left me quite; 
 So, which most draweth me I scarce may tell.
 
 GOETHE 107 
 
 Thero ncfrls must be a strait and true endeavor: 
 But, the full dole once paid — of life we owe, 
 
 Bound mind and will as thralls of Art forever, 
 Fiercely at heart as erst may Nature glow! 
 
 Like token markoth every high emprise. 
 
 All spirits imdisciplined strove in vain to stand 
 Where heights of pure perfection reach the skies. 
 
 Who great things would, shall hold his soul in hand. 
 
 Only self-mastered may man master be, 
 And law fulfilled, alone can speak us free! 
 
 Artist, Vv'illi this resolute devotion, Goetlie must 
 go on to ciiscover the law of life from a more gen- 
 eral sui^vey than his own individual life and lot 
 permit. Hence, for his times most comprehensive 
 and audacious scientific studies, which made of 
 him the first Poet of Evolution, Imowing in him- 
 self whereof he spake and sang. Die Metamor- 
 pJiose der Pflanzen and Die Metamorphose der 
 Thiere set forth his notions of species, and their 
 relation, and the wider law underlying their dis- 
 tinctness and affinity. The first of these didactic 
 pieces was translated by Bowring and so we will 
 extract from the second the broad principle 
 Goethe discerned. 
 
 Nevertheless within, the might of the worthier creatures 
 FJndeth itself close girt by a round of living formation; 
 Borders no God may enlarge, which Nature revereth: 
 For, such limits alone make possible any perfection! 
 
 • »♦»»• 
 
 May this noble conception of might and restraint and of self- 
 will 
 
 And law, and of freedom and bounds, and of order in motion, 
 
 Lack and advantage, — rejoice thee; for hearken, the holy 
 
 Muse doth teach it thee thus with gentle insistence. 
 
 Higher conception no ethical thinker attnineth; 
 
 None the man of affairs, at his craft no fashioning artist. 
 
 Rulers thence, worthy of rule, the pleasure draw of their 
 sceptre!
 
 198 GOETHE 
 
 Highest Creation of Nature, rejoice that thou feelest thee able 
 Thinking, her loftiest thought to o'ertake, whereto in creating 
 She herself upsoared; there plant thee, and thence let thy 
 
 glances 
 Backward sweep, make proof, and compare, and take from the 
 
 Muse 's 
 Mouth (that thou see, nor be drunken,) this full truth, certain 
 
 and gracious! 
 
 In such wise, then, Goethe, the artist and scien- 
 tist, became the moralist — the attainment of one's 
 own completest life and lot requiring impartially 
 of every aspirant for perfection much more than 
 the external law had required for the sake of 
 others (less, however, the sense of humiliated ac- 
 ceptance of coercion from without) — since he dis- 
 covered the law himself and on his own behalf, as 
 innate in the actual constitution and vital neces- 
 sity and his very being. 
 
 in. 
 
 So little was Goethe inclined to waste creative 
 energy in criticism that the religious protest of his 
 soul, though ethically vigorous, got scanty ex- 
 pression. He began a dramatic poem ** Prome- 
 theus" — ^which for some reason or other remained 
 a fragment. Perhaps the torso was in this case 
 more satisfying than the completed statue prom- 
 ised to be. He was too cultivated and self-scep- 
 tical to mistake the bow of Iris and Noah's post- 
 diluvian discovery for a substantial modern Bi- 
 frost over which across the sundering gap he 
 might lead his people, even such as they were, 
 into a new Walhalla. He was, by a rational habit
 
 GOETHE 199 
 
 of soul, and a wide acquaintance with the philo- 
 sophic and iDoetic past, wholly unable to mount 
 like Shelley, and whirl us along with him in a 
 cloud of phrase and rhythm through nebulous 
 luminosity into the ''intense inane" and then mis- 
 take the mystic individual rapture, however in- 
 fectious, for an effective social salvation! So, 
 Prometheus, the rebel, was the utmost the theme 
 could yield to Goethe. 
 
 What does man owe to God — God as a being 
 and consciousness apart from man's own? Noth- 
 ing. That external non-human God — if, indeed, 
 he be at all — is strangely ineffective and non- 
 committal. If that God then be, in very truth, he 
 is ever like man, fashioned by omnipotent time 
 and by eternal fate — subject to the same univer- 
 sal laws. So let man thank not that unhelpful 
 hypothetical Being — ^but himself — his virtue, his 
 natural strength, his imagination, reason and 
 will! Finely is this human protest uttered (and 
 we should be tempted to say finally) in Goethe's 
 ''Prometheus," Nor does Bowring's translation 
 call seriously for much amendment. If, however, 
 *'God" be taken as the collective expression for 
 "the gods" — the natural powers without and 
 within man — they do not have any claim on man's 
 love. Let him fear them — use them and never 
 cease to consider their devious ways. The chorus 
 put in the mouths of the Parcas at the end of the 
 fourth act of Iphigenia, for which Miss Swan- 
 wick's translation is clearly the best extant, sets
 
 200 GOETHE 
 
 forth magnificently their utter inhumanity. If 
 ethics be theirs, then is the principle of their 
 ethics for man totally undiscoverable and un- 
 worthy of respect : — 
 
 Whom they have exalted 
 Let him fear them most. 
 
 God as a transcendental omnipotent providential 
 Father, and God as a gracious divine fellowship 
 of kindly disposed patrons, are bravely denied 
 then to exist ; and what is in their stead to the eye 
 critically schooled cannot have any just right to 
 man's veneration and grateful self-subjection. 
 
 Ah, ye Gods, ye mighty Gods 
 In the wide heaven over us. 
 Would ye grant us here on earth 
 Stalwart mind and cheerful heart, 
 Gladly would we leave to you, 
 O, ye good, your heaven above! 
 
 And this little ironical piece he entitles Men- 
 schengefilhl — a human feeling (perhaps all too 
 human, in Nietzsche's phrase). For, though Goe- 
 the would not be called an atheist even with re- 
 gard to these above-mentioned ''notions of God,*' 
 he is quite content to remain agnostic. What 
 have such Gods to do with us? And if so, then 
 what have we to do with them I 
 
 Now, in religious affirmation, Goethe was more 
 joyously at home by temperament, and therefore 
 more convincingly eloquent. To such as will as- 
 sume for the nonce his unconcern with extra-hu- 
 man and extra-mundane deities, these chaunts 
 breathe the very life of piety and the fervor of 
 idealism. They are poetry, not metaphysical defi-
 
 GOETHE 201 
 
 niiion; elation of spirit, not dogma. But to ren- 
 der them more easily comprehended, and there- 
 fore i^erhaps more heartily acceptable in their 
 noble self-restraint and rational enthusiasm, it 
 may be well to emphasize the arbitrary sequence 
 in which we here produce them. 
 
 Man's consciousness and character apjoearing to 
 him and for him, and disappearing in due time 
 with equal mysteriousness; the mystery also for 
 him in the particular course allowed them by the 
 world in which they find themselves; these are 
 sung 
 
 O life of Man 's soul 
 How like unto water! 
 O weird of Man 's life 
 How like unto wind. 
 
 Then we are asked to meditate on the limitations 
 of man's power of body and mind. Only through 
 successive generations does man ever appear to 
 escape them. But the generations are '*a chain 
 link in link" and cannot flee from their own law 
 of being and order. They repeat rather the limi- 
 tations of the ''petty round" than pass forth in 
 free spiral or parabola. 
 
 But what are in fact these Gods men have 
 ever yearned to know and dwell with in heaven? 
 They are ideals man must realize on earth. Their 
 only source is man's groping endeavor. They 
 are projections outward of inner aspirations. If 
 they ever are to be actual reality, we shall have to 
 bring them into being by act ; and then we may by 
 metathesis turn our final end into a cnu=-o. and
 
 202 GOETHE 
 
 call ourselves the children of God!* Strictly 
 spoken — the Gods shall yet be children of man. 
 Albeit, to those unknown, unreckonable potencies 
 of the Universe let us pay the worship due — for 
 that, indeed, is their only human use: — to aid 
 man to adore and yearn. They are helps to the 
 exercise of man's highest and noblest powers, or 
 they are nothing to him. 
 
 Yet there be Gods — in the sense of functions, 
 faculties and attributes within — whom it behooves 
 us to cultivate, at all events to grant full freedom 
 of play unto greater achievements. And of these 
 mental and sentimental powers Goethe cherishes 
 most Phantasy and Hope — for they set man in 
 human pre-eminence above the animal. 
 
 To them, "the moment's cramped mindless ex- 
 istence." To man — ^prospect and retrospect; free 
 of "mere want and need," to make-believe and to 
 enjoy; to find mastery and courage and refresh- 
 ment in the spirit. And beware lest Wisdom wax 
 overbearing, and cramp Phantasy with petty rules 
 of prudence ; or lest in our devotion to Phantasy 
 we disparage the vital Hope through which Phan- 
 tasy leads on to her own vindication in "high 
 enterprise," and obtains consolation, however 
 often it may fail of deserv^ed fruition in a world 
 that ignores us, furthering or thwarting blindly 
 our intent. 
 
 After so much more or less superfluous com- 
 
 'The "Word" is die That; for the deed alone includes idea, energy 
 and will, and through it only is mind truly made manifest
 
 GOETHE 203 
 
 ment, let the noble poems themselves address the 
 reader in the best version we were able to make 
 for him, hoping that he, too, will accept their chal- 
 lenge and do better if he can ! 
 
 GESANG DEE GEISTER UEBER DEN WASSERN 
 
 Chant of the Spirits Over the Waters 
 
 The Soul of Man 
 Is like unto Water: 
 From heaven it falleth, 
 To heaven ariseth, 
 And thence to earthward 
 In endless round 
 Again returneth! 
 
 When from sheer crag quick-gusheth 
 The flashing stream, 
 It breaketh in shimmer 
 And glister, and flitteth 
 To the smooth sheen rocks 
 Below; whence softly 
 Updrawn, as a mist-veil 
 Forthfluttereth.its mysteries 
 Flit lisping and whispering 
 Adown the still deepl 
 
 If rough boulders upfling them 
 Its onrush to stem, 
 Lo, it frotheth and roareth 
 From ledge to ledge weltering 
 To the bottomless pit; 
 Thro' level green valleys 
 It dallyeth wistfully — 
 And the stars do number 
 In wide pools unwrinkled 
 Their twinkling array. 
 
 The wind is the lusty 
 Lover of waters, 
 Who the foamcrested billows 
 Upstirreth and mingleth. 
 
 O, Life of Man's soul, '^ 
 
 How like unto water! 
 O, Weird of man's life, 
 How like unto wind!
 
 204 GOETHE 
 
 DIE GEENZEN DER MENSCHHEIT 
 
 Human Limitations 
 
 When far scattereth the Ancient 
 
 Of days and most holy 
 
 Allfather, freehanded 
 
 From billowing cloudrack, 
 
 The seeds over earth 
 
 Of beneficent lightning — 
 
 I kiss me his vesture's 
 
 Uttermost border, 
 
 The little child's reverent 
 
 Fear in my heart. 
 
 For let not the mightiest 
 Meet him as fellow 
 With beings divine. 
 Aloft doth man hurl him 
 With proud front to smite 
 The heavens — and lo, helpless 
 His foot findeth nowhere 
 Safe stead, while the welkin 
 And wind with him sport. 
 
 Or, with stout thew astrain 
 If he rear him up, stalwart, 
 On the fast-founded earth 
 Everlasting, — behold, 
 Tho' haughty of stature, 
 Shall to skyward his reach be 
 With the gnarled oak's likened. 
 Or the clambering vine's? 
 
 What sundereth mankind 
 
 From the Gods thus forever! 
 
 Innumerous the waves fare 
 
 On and on following — 
 
 A flow inexhaustible 
 
 Before them; while us — 
 
 One surge lifteth and swalloweth, 
 
 That we sink into nought. 
 
 A petty round close 
 Engirdeth our life; 
 And the frequent generations 
 Outstretch link in link 
 The chain never ending 
 Of human existence.
 
 GOETHE 205 
 
 DAS GOTTLICHE 
 The Divine 
 
 Iligh-hcartod be Man, 
 Kindly and good. 
 Seeing thereby only 
 Preferred is he 
 Before all beings 
 To mortals known. 
 
 Hail the loftier Unknown 
 Beings whom in awe 
 We forefeel! Let man be 
 After their likeness; 
 In them his ensample 
 Teach trust and beliefl 
 
 For, without feeling 
 Is Nature; on wicked 
 And good forthshineth 
 The sun; ay, the mean 
 Alike and the worthiest 
 Behold the still beauty 
 Of moon and of stars. 
 
 Whirlwind and flood. 
 Thunder and hail-storm, 
 Eoar on their way, 
 And, hurtling past them, 
 Whelm in destruction 
 All in their turn. 
 
 Even so, blindly gropeth 
 Luck 'mid the many; 
 Now catching the curls 
 Of the guileless youngling, 
 And now the bald pate 
 Of the hoary in guilt. 
 
 Girded of laws 
 Everduring, adamantine, 
 Vast,_all, all 
 Must draw to its close 
 Their round of existence. 
 
 Man only can bring 
 To pass the impossible; — 
 'Tis he who discorneth. 
 Who doemoth and doometh; 
 And the vanishing moment 
 By his grace may endure.
 
 206 GOETHE 
 
 To man only is granted 
 Boon for the worthy, 
 Bane for the wicked; 
 He healeth, he saveth; 
 The astray and wide-strown 
 He atoneth in use. 
 
 And immortals we worship 
 As tho' human they were; 
 Wrought in the vast, 
 What in narrower room 
 The worthiest doeth, 
 Or fain would do. 
 
 Be the high-hearted man, then, 
 Both kindly and good! 
 Fashioning, unwearied, 
 The Useful, the Right; 
 In truth so foreshadowing 
 You beings we divine. 
 
 MEINE G6TTIN 
 
 My Goddess 
 
 To which of the deathless 
 Shall the highest praise be? 
 I contend not with any. 
 Yet proffer my worship 
 To the quick-varying 
 Ever-young and light-hearted 
 Wondrous daughter 
 Of Zeus, his darling 
 Child — Phantasy! 
 
 For unto her freely 
 Made he allotment 
 Of all moods and whimsies, 
 Else sacredly warded 
 For his Godhead alone; 
 And greatly he taketh 
 Delight in the anticks 
 Of his wayward wanton: — 
 
 Whether her listeth 
 
 With crown of red rose-buds 
 
 And white lily-sceptre 
 
 To trip it thro' valleys 
 
 Abloom, and queen it 
 
 O'er summery song-birds
 
 GOETHE 207 
 
 And butterflies, sipping 
 The sweet dew, bee-like, 
 From the heart of the flowers; 
 
 Or whether her listeth, 
 With loose locks streaming 
 And look melancholy, 
 In the winds to fling her 
 Over beetling crags; 
 Or with hues myriad-glinting 
 As the morn and the even, — 
 With ever new aspect 
 As the smiles of the morn, 
 To reveal her to mortals. 
 
 Wherefore laud and thank 
 Let us proffer the Ancient 
 Of Days, high-exalted. 
 The Father, who so lovely 
 Never-fading a consort 
 Hath accorded us, perishing 
 Children of men! 
 
 For unto us only 
 
 Hath he lovingly plighted hor 
 
 With the troth-ring of heaven, — 
 
 And straitly charged her 
 
 In good days and evil 
 
 As true-hearted helpmeet 
 
 Never to forsake us. 
 
 All other poor kindreds — 
 Offspring of Earth 
 Living Mother of lives, — 
 Roam, raven and feed, 
 In the gross joys sordid, 
 And the dull brutish anguish 
 Of the moment's cramped 
 Mindless existence; — 
 Low bowed by the yoke 
 Of want and of need! 
 
 Howbeit unto us (O 
 Joy!)^ he hath granted 
 His subtlest, much-fondled 
 And daintiest daughter. 
 Come, graciously meet her 
 As best beloved; 
 Tntreat her to wield 
 The sway of our household.
 
 208 GOETHE 
 
 And beware lest step-dame 
 Wisdom unwittingly 
 KufHe her sensitive, 
 Tender child's spirit. 
 
 Albeit, fellowship 
 Lief, with her elder, 
 Soberer sister 
 Long have I cherished; 
 
 O may she not leave me 
 Ere the last ray of life; 
 She, to high emprise urger, 
 Soul-consoler — kind Hope! 
 
 IV. 
 
 And now, after these odes which any reader of 
 poetry must enjoy, whatever his convictions, we 
 would present for his consideration three pieces 
 of a wholly different order. In sixteen stanzas 
 compact, precise, suggestive — that puzzle, pro- 
 voke, yet allure to repeated trials of strength with 
 their Delphic obscurity — Goethe expresses his 
 maturest views of man, the world and God. 
 
 They were none of them translated by Sir Ed- 
 gar Alfred Bowring, C. B., doubtless ''because" 
 in his opinion ''the few other pieces included by 
 Goethe under the title of Religion and the World 
 are polemical and devoid of interest to the Eng- 
 lish reader!" If Bowring has judged rightly, the 
 American reader we fancy is not wholly like his 
 cousin! It was doubtless, however, after sore 
 wrestlings with these pieces that Sir Edgar at 
 break of day discovered they were only of contro- 
 versial and local interest! For difficult as they 
 are in the original, they become even more so in
 
 GOETHE 209 
 
 any version that endeavors to preserve poetic 
 dignity. Too easily would the translator give us 
 arid abstracts without tlie hypnotic spell-power 
 and the oracular manifoldness of meaning that 
 doth '4ease us out of thought" and constitutes 
 ori)hic poetry. We should have rhymed meta- 
 physics devoid of interest for any except some 
 mind in complete metaphysical agreement with 
 the author. Our task was undertaken with fear 
 and trembling and executed ^'ith perspiring dili- 
 gence and frenetic rapture. Had there not been 
 for us a personal motive, it is to be feared the 
 reader would not now have his opportunity to ex- 
 ult over our failure. But there was one eager 
 student of Goethe that knows no German, and 
 for whom the work had to be done as well or ill 
 as the Muses and Minerva would permit. 
 
 So without effort at self-vindication, we shall 
 proceed to give these sixteen stanzas, eleven pre- 
 faced each in turn by prose comment which, if he 
 resent as an impertinence, the offended reader 
 will kindly cross out with editorial blue pencil, and 
 read and re-read the translations all the oftenor — 
 with the originals if he can, and is so minded — 
 that he may be tempted to supersede these ef- 
 forts, doubtless more laudable for their good in- 
 tent than for the eventual excellence. 
 
 Yet, let the reader once more impress on him- 
 self, be he Christian Dogmatist, or Atheistic Dog- 
 matist, that wo have neither of these twain sorts 
 of cocksure folk in our poet. He is agnostic, but
 
 210 GOETHE 
 
 reverently disposed towards any transcendental 
 God; profoundly trustful and devout in attitude 
 towards an immanent God ; and indulgent toward 
 all idols — *' God-notions" presumed ultimate, ex- 
 ternally alive, effective and dominant; for they 
 are but man's intellectual moral, emotional and 
 physical ''bests" or ideals, projected illusively 
 for more ardent and loyal service and adoration. 
 Let us peruse, then, the Proemion as Englished 
 by John Addington Symonds. 
 
 PEOEMION TO GOD AND THE WOELD. 
 
 To Him who from eternity, self-stirred, 
 Himself hath made by his creative word; 
 To Him, who seek to name him as we will. 
 Unknown within himself abideth still: 
 To Him supreme who maketh faith to be. 
 Trust, hope, love, power, and endless energy. 
 
 Strain ear and eye till sight and sound be dim, 
 
 Thou'lt find but faint similitudes of Him; 
 
 Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame 
 
 Still tries to gauge the symbol and the name: — 
 
 Charmed and compelled thou climbs't from height to height 
 
 And round thy path the world shines wondrous bright; 
 
 Time, space and size and distance cease to be. 
 
 And every step Is fresh Infinity. 
 
 What were the God who sat outside to see 
 
 The spheres beneath His finger circling free? 
 
 God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds; 
 
 Himself and nature In one form enfolds: 
 
 Thus all that lives In Him and breathes and Is, 
 
 Shall ne'er His presence, ne'er His Spirit mIsB. 
 
 The soul of man, too, is an universe; 
 
 Whence follows It that race with race concurs 
 
 In naming all It knows of good and true, 
 
 God — yea, its own God — and with honor due 
 
 Surrenders to His sway both earth and heaven. 
 
 Fears Him, and loves, where place for love Is given.
 
 GOETHE 211 
 
 Eins und Alles, **A11 and the One" and Ver- 
 macMniss, "My Legacy," are in the same stanza- 
 form, and are knit together by common lines, the 
 first stanza of the latter taking up the conclusion 
 reached in the last sextet of the former. 
 
 Urivorte, ** Oracular Words" (to which the poet 
 wrote some helpful prose comments), relates in 
 more generic, and by the use of myth and obso- 
 lete theory, more imaginative form, the same 
 great doctrine of life, spiritual but not transcen- 
 dental ; deliberately self-limited to the hither bank 
 of the Styx. Being yet unghosted, if he should 
 take a trip with Charon at all, Goethe insists on 
 returning to the familiar side of body and form, 
 of sense and reason. 
 
 **A11 and the One," ''My Legacy" and ''Orac- 
 ular Words" form in the mind's eye a little book 
 of parchment in black letter with golden capitals 
 and cherry-red rubrics — for the pocket of the de- 
 vout Naturalist. And, any such book of devotion 
 (of hard sayings, hard because,to the sayer, final) 
 must be prized by every man, whatever his own 
 philosophic label or ecclesiastical niche. 
 
 ALL AND THE ONE 
 
 On the one hand, the individual as a self-con- 
 scious repellent entity; and on the other hand, 
 the many others which for the fonuer in their rel- 
 ative vagueness of particularization (as contrast- 
 ed with his own vivid, emphatic, unique certainty
 
 212 GOETHE 
 
 to himself) vaguely integrate in a manifold gen- 
 eral; and these twain in eternal antithesis and 
 conflict: Who of ardent sensitive souls does not 
 at times weary of them, and long for total fusion, 
 unity, the absolute of conscious bliss realized in 
 the lapse from separate consciousness? No func- 
 tion is well performed while we are aware of the 
 process. Acute consciousness is for fresh experi- 
 ments. For the well-tried and mastered — uncon- 
 scious performance or rather performance con- 
 scious of body ease and soul ease, perfect function 
 and complete life. So this mystic self- surrender 
 seems a finding of the true Self. 
 
 SELF-SUEEENDER. 
 
 Ay, self to find in the boundless Vast 
 Gladly the One were lost at last, 
 
 All chafe and coil dissolved away; 
 No heat of lust, wild will grim set, 
 Irksome demand, stern duty's threat; 
 
 Self — yielded up — what ecstasy? 
 
 But if it be no illusion that in this experience 
 some Soul of the Whole takes possession of the 
 part, the self-surrender is not for its own sake 
 surely, but for a taking possession in our turn 
 of the thought which that Soul of the Whole 
 tliinks in its very self. Interpenetration, if real, 
 is mutual. And indeed, so have the sages taught. 
 Each brings back to the plane some token of his 
 divine intercourse on the mount, which in turn 
 shall lead his disciples to climb for themselves the 
 steep ascent.
 
 GOETHE 213 
 
 ATONEMENT. 
 
 Soul of the world, come thrill us through! 
 To wrest from the world-mind the True 
 
 Were chiefest use, then, of our strength. 
 Kind spirits beckon and profTer aid; 
 To Ilim who maketh all, and made, — 
 
 The foremost masters lead at length. 
 
 And what do we see from the divine height? 
 A perpetual process of creation! Tlie formless, 
 formed; and form reformed. A perpetual on- 
 ward, that whatever it aims at — if it aim at all 
 with manlike intelligence and volition — at all 
 events refuses to be arrested at any stage, how- 
 ever noble, of the eternal process. 
 
 CKEATION. 
 
 To shape again the fashioned shape — 
 Lest, stiff, it rear and ramp agape, — 
 
 Is wrought by th ' onward Thrust of life. 
 What was not, now would come to birth 
 In clear bright sun, or motley earth, — 
 
 But never to rest from change and strife. 
 
 And whence this ''onward Thrust of life?'* 
 Apparently, not from without. An inherent ne- 
 cessity! Yet the type is recurrent through the 
 ever-changing forms. And that type would break 
 asunder, and the All become nothing, if anywhere 
 at any time any part should persist in self-iden- 
 tity. For the type is a moving type — a mode 
 itself of motion, which can only continue true to 
 
 itself in change. 
 
 EVOLUTION. 
 
 Live shall they, and press with fashioning strain. 
 The self -framed shape transformed amain; 
 
 But seldom seem they stayed and still. 
 The Abiding gocth forth in all; 
 For the All to utter Nought must fall 
 
 If held to being with stark self-will.
 
 214 GOETHE 
 
 MY LEGACY 
 
 Vermdchtniss, * ' My Legacy ' ' ; my will and testa- 
 ment ; whereby I empower you to become child of 
 my spirit; bearing therein my witness to life, 
 and transmitting to you my holiest wisdom; the 
 net result of that hazardous ethical experiment 
 in living I conducted, with as complete a freedom 
 as sane mind and sound heart allow a civilized 
 and cultured man. Wherefore accept my legacy, 
 and use it, for what may be to you its vital worth. 
 
 If all is thus in flux — why fear? That which 
 thou lovest about thee if it be as real as thou 
 must float with thee down the self-same stream. 
 Set thy heart on things that verily be, and know 
 that the ''Eternal" is in the transient; vanished 
 spring returns and the set star rises again. Thou 
 hast no true cause for alarm. 
 
 EXISTENCE 
 
 What is — to Nought can nowise fall. 
 The Abiding goeth forth in all. 
 
 Thy bliss in being then have and hold; 
 For Being abideth ever; and laws 
 Thy living hoard shall keep, because 
 
 The All decked him therewith of old. 
 
 And truth, be sure, is never new — though new 
 to thee. What thou findest to be true, call it by 
 whatsoever name thou please, is what from the 
 beginning made human life possible ; and has for 
 primal source — that which ordered suns and 
 planetary orbits — and holds them what they are.
 
 GOETHE 215 
 
 EEASON 
 
 Time out of mind, the truth was found, — 
 And the high fellowship of souls close-bound. 
 
 Hold fast the eldest Truth, and thank, 
 O child of earth, for wisdom — One 
 Who bade earth wing her 'round the sun, 
 
 Hosting her brethren rank on rank. 
 
 As thou hast no right to conceit of the intellect, 
 neither hast thou right to irresponsible wilfulness 
 in conduct. In every being works its organic law. 
 In thee, too, it may be discerned by thee ; and so 
 from the oracle within shalt thou get thee guid- 
 ance for the hour of bewilderment and gloom. 
 
 CONSCIENCE 
 
 Now straightway to within thee turn; 
 That midmost spot wilt thou discern 
 
 No man of worth can dare gainsay. 
 Hast lack there of no rule or 'hest: 
 For love — self-gotten — of the best 
 
 Is sun unto thy duty's day. 
 
 Das Selhstdndige Gewissen — the self-dependent 
 consciousness of one's true nature and interest — 
 will guide thy life so far as the organic and indi- 
 vidual being constitute it; but there is a partner 
 to thy life: — the outer world thou must come to 
 know, and estimate through sense and critical in- 
 telligence. Observe closely, scrutinize, classify — 
 and use. 
 
 So guided by conscience and science, the world 
 is thy patrimony — and no ghoul or demon shall 
 say thee nay. 
 
 UNDERSTANDING 
 
 In th' body's wits put childlike faith; 
 They cheat not ever with lie or wraith 
 Whom the quick mind shall ward from sleep
 
 216 GOETHE 
 
 With keen glad eye go mark and learn; 
 Fare safe, howso thy path may turn, 
 
 Through a world of wealth far-strown and deep. 
 
 Yet beware ! The world is thine. But let it not 
 wrest thee from thy true interest. Thy life of ret- 
 rospect must not be marred. Store thy mind with 
 assimilable memories only. Surfeits and excesses 
 — however at the time they may be insolently joy- 
 ful — are loathsome afterward, and need to be for- 
 gotten. Thou wilt have to lose some of thy mem- 
 ories to endure the present; and the obstinate 
 ghosts of retrosi^ect will flee to rearward, only to 
 meet thee in prospect and bar the way with night- 
 mare hideousness. Wherefore, so live the actual 
 life that thy mental life shall be a continuous 
 sweetly, sanely memorable whole; — that, like a 
 symphony, its end shall be an encore of pious 
 gratitude. 
 
 PRUDENCE 
 
 In plenty and weal, taste — and forbear, 
 Be Heed still bidden, and well aware 
 
 When life of life hath cheer and glee; 
 So shall the bygone day abide, 
 And time forefeel the unborn tide, 
 
 And the brief Now — forever be! 
 
 Yet such living is an art acquired only by prac- 
 tice. Some accidental discords will need resolv- 
 ing. And through these experiments, thou wilt 
 discover the only standard of truth and value : — 
 good and blessed consequences. So, thou wilt 
 learn how dispassionately to observe mankind, 
 that lives no such life as thou fain wouldest: — 
 their conventional choices — their perpetual da
 
 GOETHE 217 
 
 capos of folly and futility — and slialt be well con- 
 tent with the intimate company of those few, who, 
 like thee, would make their lives, so much as in 
 them lieth, things of beautiful use : — 
 
 WISDOM 
 
 And hast thou got thee skill herein, 
 Throughly to feel, and surely ween: 
 
 "What fruiteth well alone is true" — 
 Behold thou long the common sway — 
 What dooms it deemeth on for aye — 
 
 And fellow thee unto the few. 
 
 Yet if thou wouldest help them forward, do so 
 not by attempted violence. Like philosophers and 
 poets, take the privilege of directing the currents 
 of their psychic experience into good channels. 
 Surely, no more satisfying function, no more de- 
 lightful expense of vital energy is possible ! 
 
 VOCATION 
 
 And, as of j^ore alone and still 
 Some work love-born of their own will 
 
 The men of lore and song-craft 'gat, — 
 Thou winnest gift most fair: to fashion 
 High souls with thine own thought and passion! 
 
 What call or task shall better that? 
 
 For lo ! thou hast exercised the prophetic office 
 — anticipated their thought and feeling — because 
 thou hast thereto incited them with thine ; uncon- 
 sciously, they have accepted thy patterns, seen by 
 thee in **thy mount"; and as thou aspiredst and 
 didst create — so shall they come to he in deed, and 
 therefore, also, in truth.
 
 2lS GOETHE 
 
 ¥, 
 
 URWOETE, ORPHISCH 
 
 Oracular Words in Orphic Manner 
 
 And now having made the above ' ' will and tes- 
 tament" to the children of his spirit, Goethe shall 
 say farewell to ns so far as this paper is concerned 
 in his "Oracular "Words in Orphic Manner:" In- 
 dividuality, Environment, Passion, Necessity, and 
 Aspiration; for which the reader needs now no 
 comment. Of course. Astrology, the myth of Pri- 
 mal Eros, and the myth of the three Sisters and 
 their Weird (taken in its Hellenic form) help to 
 give impassioned expression to the philosophy 
 of our non-transcendental Idealist, our glad- 
 hearted, keen-witted Naturalist — the poet of 
 *' Faust," parts first and second, of **Egmont" 
 and of "Iphigenia in Tauris," in which the life- 
 passion, heroism, and sincerity of the modem 
 soul, have their loftiest poetic expression hitherto 
 vouchsafed the creative spirit of man. 
 
 DaMON 
 The Oenius, Individuality, Innate Character 
 
 Yea, as the Bun (what day thy life was leant 
 
 The world) did stand each planet's sphere to greet — 
 
 So throv'st thou erst, obedient to thy bent, 
 By that same law which hither sped thy feet. 
 
 Such must thou be. None yet his Self outwent, 
 This rede sybil and seer of old repeat; 
 
 For never time nor might could break asunder 
 
 The shape seed-hidden, whose life unfolds its wonder.
 
 GOETHE 219 
 
 DAS ZUFaLLIGE 
 Luck, Environment 
 
 Yet Somewhat doth with gracious tread outgo 
 The straitest bound, and with and round us move. 
 
 Not lonely long; with fellows dost thou grow, 
 As oth'r well do, doth thee to do behoove. 
 
 Now for and now against thee falls the throw! 
 Thy life a game whose chances thou must prove. 
 
 The years, unnoted, have their ring united, 
 
 And now, the lamp doth lack the flame to light it. 
 
 LIEBE 
 
 Passion, Love. 
 
 Not long it tarrieth. From heaven He flings 
 Whereto He soared out of the primal Void. 
 
 Lo, hither he hovereth on airy wings 
 
 In Springtide about brow and breast light-buoyed, 
 
 Feigning to flee, with subtle home-flutterings. 
 Then weal is woe — panic with sweetness cloyed. 
 
 Some hearts waste in the many their emotion; 
 
 The noblest to one only vow'th devotion. 
 
 NOTHIGUNG 
 Necessity, Fate 
 
 Then once more 'tis — even as the stars deem just: 
 Condition and law and the will of all — be will 
 
 For that alone in sooth we ought and must! 
 Each wilful wish before that "Will hushed still. 
 
 What most we prize from the heart's core we thrust. 
 Mood, will and whim the hard "thou shalt" fulfill. 
 
 So fare we yet, in seeming freedom, yearly 
 
 More close beset than erst and hemmed more nearly. 
 
 HOFFNUNG 
 Hope, Aspiration 
 
 But from such metes and bounds, such walls of brass 
 The stubborn gates unbolt them and unbar, 
 
 Tho ' ancient as the hills their rocklike mass. 
 A Spirit light-flitteth, untrammelled; lo, we are 
 
 From cloudrack, reek and rain upcaught, and pass 
 Breathless with her, given wings of her, afar. 
 
 Ye know her well. No realm her revel may banish. 
 
 One wing beat — and the worlds behind us vanish!
 
 220 GOETHE 
 
 After considering this lofty poem, — which in 
 the view of the present writer almost bears to 
 Goethe's work the relation borne by Das Ideal 
 Und Das Lthen to Schiller's, — one is hardly am- 
 bitious to invite a sudden anti-climax. Yet, per- 
 haps, it is not altogether well if we let some read- 
 ers ascend vertiginously into the upper air, 
 without providing them betimes with a licensed 
 parachute. Goethe at least mingled sober, imagi- 
 native, earnest, and gracious or pungent jest in 
 the treatment of the very loftiest themes. For in- 
 stance the materialistically inclined physicist is 
 forcibly told : 
 
 "Is not Nature's Inmost core 
 In the heart of men?" 
 
 Again, Parmenides is made to tell his question- 
 ers that if, when they mystically withdraw into 
 their inmost self, they fail to find themselves con- 
 fronted on the spot with the infinity of sjDirit 
 (or wit) and wisdom, it is surely nowise the fault 
 of the philosopher's doctrine! Such a great va- 
 riety of poems offer themselves indeed to the ex- 
 positor of Goethe, who would let himself down 
 from the heights of breathless awe, that in our 
 embarras de richesse we will settle upon two 
 pieces which have a special message for such read- 
 ers as desire the creation of an American Litera- 
 ture. 
 
 On his seventy-fifth birthday (August the 28th, 
 1824) Goethe addressed the future poets of the 
 world concerning what, in a foregoing essay on
 
 GOETHE 221 
 
 Translation, we ventured to lay down as the prin- 
 cipal law of the true Translator. First the poet 
 shall live and then write; first ^'dichten" (com- 
 pose the imaginative whole) and then '*malcn'* 
 (paint, represent the mental color with visible 
 pigment of word and phrase). The serious st^ie, 
 Matthew Arnold's style of high seriousness, the 
 ultimate secret of the eternity ascribed to imper- 
 ishable forms, — is got of writing directly out of 
 one's very head and heart. He reminds them how 
 it had been only by a providential gift from the 
 gods, that is, a stormy burst of growth, German 
 poetry escaped its fate in a hothouse of the eru- 
 dite and artificial, carrying the hothouse gaily 
 along with it into the skies. But when his e^^elids 
 will close forever, a soft, yet jDcrsuasive refracted 
 light, emanating from his works and those of his 
 peers, shall reach, he hopes, the future poets, by 
 which Germany's latest scion of the Muse may 
 be taught to report eventually in higher proi^hetic 
 judgments yet nobler truths concerning God and 
 Man than were given to him for speech and song. 
 Similarly he admitted, nay welcomed, the need 
 for each new age of its own ending to his Faust. 
 We have here indeed a worthy pride joined to a 
 devout modesty, that may commend Goethe to our 
 aspirants after poetic fame. But how will they 
 enjoy his farther admonishment? 
 
 America thy Fate Is better 
 Than ours on this old continent; 
 No ruined keeps thy fancy fetter. 
 No basalt of eruptions spent. 
 So, in the living active present
 
 222 GOETHE 
 
 Inly art thou not perplexed 
 
 By memories, vain, however pleasant, — 
 
 Nor by bygone conflicts vexed. 
 
 In thy use of the present, God speed thee; 
 
 But if ever child of thine boasts 
 
 Of the Muse, kind Fate, I reed thee. 
 
 Save him from robbers, knights, ghosts! 
 
 Alas, alas, Longfellow? Poe? Hawthorne? 
 We hang our heads in sorrow, and dire misgiving 
 causes the knees of our spirit to totter. But shall 
 such a hard saying be taken to prophecy and ap- 
 prove the aesthetic spread-eagle, whilom a-yawp 
 in post-bellum Manhattan, or more tunefullv even 
 now, if less vitally, upon the sun-ruddied Coast- 
 range of the Pacific, reminicently dubbed by Cin- 
 cinnatus, alias Joaquin Miller, the Sierras? 
 
 We are loth to quote the great Goethe in au- 
 thoritative furtherance of any cause, however 
 near our heart, unless the quotation be ascertain- 
 ably fair and true to its context of intention. We 
 are not of those who would willingly be jibed at 
 of the great Olympian : 
 
 Da loben sie den Faust 
 
 Und was noch sunsten. 
 In meinen Schriften braust 
 
 Zu Ihren Gunsten; 
 
 which rendered impromptu, — or rather prompted 
 by the imp of doggerel— might be Englished as 
 follows : 
 
 So my Faust they loudly laud, 
 And all thoughts else and emotions 
 
 Which through my writings roar abroad 
 In unison — with their notions! 
 
 Indeed, so great and manifold was the imagi- 
 native power, the serious depth, the lightness of
 
 GOETHE 223 
 
 heart, the flashes of wit, the sheer mischief and 
 childish play of Goethe, that one could quite plaus- 
 ibly quote him on any side of every controversy, 
 arrogate for him good standing in all the several 
 sects whatsoever, or curse him with bell, book, 
 and candle in mediaeval fervor, for every heresy, 
 possible and impossible, since Adam. Suffice it 
 this once then, if we have effectively testified to 
 his religious and philosophic integrity, moral ele- 
 vation and piety, having also shown him, in con- 
 clusion, most kindly disposed towards us of the 
 new dispensation, which began, be it known unto 
 all men, with the notorious Tea-Party on Boston 
 Bay.
 
 UNTRANSCENDENTAL OPTIMISM AND 
 THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH. 
 
 The reading public as a whole were never much 
 addicted to early rising. They are deaf, usually, 
 to the persistent crowing of literary cocks. For 
 them the lifting of heavy eyelids constitutes sun- 
 rise. It has happened sundry times, therefore, 
 that long after the strutting fowl of the barnyard 
 had ceased to make any further vocal efforts at 
 arousing the somnolent, a poet's genius did not 
 appear as it should have done, dutifully meek at 
 the horizon, but has most disagreeably flashed all 
 at once from the zenith, as if expressly created 
 there on the spot out of nothing by some piece 
 of critical legerdemain! Then, to have the star- 
 tled public assure one that this particular orb 
 of genius is unbecomingly sudden in its celestial 
 debut, and not very considerate of eyes unused to 
 high light, is apt to divert not a little the mali- 
 cious on-looker. 
 
 The public^ — so far as Meredith is concerned — • 
 are at last aroused. They have rubbed — nay, 
 opened — their eyes; they have yawned and 
 stretched, and lo ! a new star in the border sky of 
 Great Britain! An edition of select poems for 
 readers equally select is the commercial conse- 
 
 224
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 225 
 
 quence.* Perhaps, however, one of those critics 
 who crowed himself hoarse all but in vain a little 
 while ago may claim that the publication in ques- 
 tion was the rude punch in the comfortal)le ribs 
 that finally awoke the snorer. Be that, however, 
 as it may. Let them fight it out together — half- 
 awake public and throatsore critics. It may serve 
 to put the contestants in full possession of their 
 wits, and obviate any fatal relapse into the arms 
 of Morpheus. 
 
 It is surely a good while, at all events, since 
 the student of Meredith's unique novels became 
 aware that his master, philosopher though he 
 might be termed — psychologist and moralist in 
 any case — is essentially a child of the Muse; a 
 perverse one, it may be, lost in the far country 
 of abstruse reasoning, but none the less beloved 
 of her. Who ever read of Richard and Lucy and 
 their young love, and failed to know the poet? 
 Just as Browning presumed that ''care for a man 
 and his work" should assist the reader in over- 
 coming what "defects of expression" might in- 
 here in his poem, and refused such a revison of 
 his first conception as should make it a different 
 thing, so Meredith was no producer of wares for 
 the bookseller. He, too, did his best, and was 
 content to abide the issue of the mute controversy 
 between him and the public that would not read 
 him. 
 
 No advantage will be gained by the advocate of 
 
 •This paper was written on the occasion of the appearance of 
 'Selected Poems of George Meredith," Scribner's, '97.
 
 226 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Meredith's cause as a great writer if lie claims 
 for his style simplicity in the sense of perspicu- 
 ousness. Far more helpful will it be to offer a 
 few suggestions as to the nature and cause of its 
 obscurity than to spend breath in denial, futile, 
 however sincere. And surely it were well worth 
 while to prove that, if 'defects of expression" 
 are admittedly his, they are such as might be rea- 
 sonably expected in a poet who should at the 
 same time be an acute thinker, in one who is im- 
 pelled to clothe original thought with a body of 
 original diction prepared expressly for it. What 
 is to be conveyed and the verbal vehicle are equal- 
 ly unfamiliar. Now, the ordinary reader likes 
 commonplace thought in novel language, or start- 
 ling conceptions in conventional words; and no 
 one surely should blame such as cannot swim for 
 refusing to venture out of their depth without a 
 life-preserver. 
 
 I. Style. 
 
 Some of Meredith's poems are not understood 
 even by a scrupulous student till he has reached 
 for the sixth or seventh time the last word. It 
 may be that we moderns have lost and not re-dis- 
 covered the ''art of reading," or it may be that 
 our poet's modes of utterance are peculiar. A 
 waggish acquaintance of the present writer de- 
 manded of his bookseller a special discount when 
 purchasing "A Reading of the Earth" on the 
 score of the omitted words he should have to sup- 
 ply for himself. Yet, since the compositor is paid
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 227 
 
 at no higher rate for the visible type than for 
 the clear space after each line of verse, on the 
 principle, doubtless, that the suggestively vague 
 is fully as much prized by the poetic connoisseur 
 as the precisely defined, it was evidently unrea- 
 sonable to imagine that economic reasons had in- 
 duced this writer to practice such cruel excision. 
 Certain it is, however, that stolen articles and 
 particles, missing pronouns, verbs, and nouns, are 
 often solely resj^onsible for our initial despair I 
 In many cases a freer distribution even of com- 
 mas, parentheses or dashes, a charity of coppers 
 in a good stylist, would help the average reader's 
 poverty of wit not a little, and at all events pre- 
 serve him from precipitate suicide. In my own 
 case (and no one should presume to speak for 
 another) it is not the strictly x^hilosophical pas- 
 sages that have occasioned most perplexity. It 
 was, as a rule, when describing common phenom- 
 ena of nature that our poet forced me to count 
 my readings of a passage by the score. It would 
 seem as if a frantic dread of the commonplace 
 had made our author flee into remote fastnesses 
 of unintelligible metaphor, impregnably fortified 
 besides by hitherto inconceivable syntax. 
 
 May one venture on a figurative account of what 
 not rarely happens? Mr. George Meredith in the 
 sanctuary of Lis poetical consciousness, remote 
 from the vulgar world, lawfully affiances and mar- 
 ries a feeling or an idea to an image. They are 
 in his sight thenceforth one flesh. For better, for
 
 228 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 worse, for richer, for poorer, till death them do 
 part, they are inseparable, nay — cannot even for a 
 moment be imagined otherwise than together. 
 Consequently, he feels that he has done his full 
 duty by us non-initiates when he sets but one 
 striking word in a verse of his poem that has 
 reference to some particular feature, say, of the 
 image, the bride. If you are shrewd enough to 
 see before you, as you undoubtedly should, the 
 image in its entirety, the bride in all her beauty, 
 with the one feature, definitely represented by a 
 word in the verse especially prominent, it is yet 
 by no means certain that you will be visited at 
 once by a mental vision also of the lawful hus- 
 band of the image — the feeling or idea. In spite 
 of all Platonic fictions, it were unsafe to infer the 
 nature of the groom from your acquaintance with 
 the bride. The fate which presides over human 
 matings is proverbially ironical. In the case of 
 the marriages between word images and feelings 
 or ideas, at which, as poetic high 23riest, Mr. Mere- 
 dith officiates, the secret of their mutual fitness, 
 and of the due performance of the binding rites, 
 also, is too often his and theirs alone. However, 
 after patiently studying the master and his un- 
 doubtedly peculiar ways, one becomes so used to 
 expecting the unexpected as to be seldom disap- 
 pointed. 
 
 In a word, then, the first source of the reader's 
 perplexity is undoubtedly found in our poet's
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 229 
 
 vivid metapliors, though those are in themselves, 
 one must admit, very beautiful or very strong. 
 
 I gazed, unawaro 
 
 How a shaft of the blossoming tree 
 
 Was shot from the yew wood 's core. 
 
 ("The Trial of Faith." P. 360.*) 
 
 The wild cherry tree was startlingly outlined by 
 the somber background of the yew. It sug- 
 gested the bow. The rays of light from the bloom 
 were the arrows. Yes, this is a wonderful figure, 
 in itself a poem ; for the yew in turn becomes the 
 sjTnbol of the poet's battle with tempestuous sor- 
 row, the gloom of bereavement needed to set off 
 the joy of spiritual life into divine relief. Such 
 an involution of soul into a bit of landscape does 
 more than amaze. Nor is it uncommon in the 
 philosophic poems of our author, though not al- 
 ways as fortunate in its aesthetic result as this 
 oft-quoted instance: 
 
 strange. 
 When it strikes to within, is the known; 
 Richer than newness revealed. (p. 359.) 
 
 Indeed, he makes familiar aspects of nature 
 *' strike within us," and we are grateful to him. 
 
 Another and less legitimate source of perplex- 
 ity must, however, be pointed out. Often the less 
 obvious, the more delightful a metaphor in the 
 end. But most of us have come to think it a mat- 
 ter of good breeding in metaphors to present 
 themselves singly. In Meredith's poems they 
 
 ♦References are by page to "Poems," Scrlbner's, '98.
 
 230 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 come hand in hand, and close on one another's 
 heels. 
 
 The fact is, analysis has gone so far with Mere- 
 dith that the sentence is no longer the poetic unit. 
 If, therefore, one figure should, in his expression 
 of a simiDle thought, best fit the subject, while 
 quite another is most suited to the predicate, he 
 will not scruple to do separate justice to subject 
 and predicate by arraying each in its most becom- 
 ing garb, even if the sentence as a whole shall 
 go motley. 
 
 Naught else are we wheii sailing brave 
 
 Save husks to raise and bid it burn. (p. 330.) 
 
 In previous lines he had called the ''rapture of 
 the forward view" the "freight" of his senses, 
 which are a "shii^" "driving shoreward" and 
 doomed to split. The "thought" survives the 
 wreck; "what I am," the senses, must perish. 
 Then follow those two verses which abruptly shift 
 the scenery. "We see the ships transformed to 
 "husks," the "thought" cargo to a germ. But 
 the germ's life will rise in due time like a tongue 
 of green flame, and it is therefore said to "bum" 
 before our eves. 
 
 Glimpse of its livingness will wave 
 A light the senses can discern 
 Across the river of the death, 
 Their close. 
 
 Here we have once more a sudden shift of the 
 scene. The senses are neither "ship" nor 
 "husk." Behold, thev are foot-sore wavfarers. 
 At the river of death they stop dismayed. It is
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 231 
 
 the close of their journey. But ere they drown 
 in their hopeless effort to ford tlie cold stream, 
 from the other bank, wliich tliey may never reach, 
 a ''light" they can just discern is "waved" by 
 the ''thought" that was before a sliip's cargo, 
 and more recently a germ. Now, taken as a 
 whole, this is a tolerably clear case. "We can dis- 
 entangle the knotted threads of metaphor and en- 
 joy each by itself. 
 
 Sometimes, however, though they form only a 
 mechanical and not a chemical compound, it is 
 more difficult to isolate the figurative elements. 
 
 They have not struck the roots which meet the fires 
 Beneath, and bind us fast with Earth. (p. 341.) 
 
 Such a crowding of metaphors mutually exclu- 
 sive into one single statement makes severe de- 
 mands on the reader. If he is to see what the 
 poet saw, and feel what he felt, he will have to 
 restate imaginatively the complete thought as 
 many separate times as there are figures sug- 
 gested; and, after appreciating the individual 
 effect in turn of all these modes of expression, 
 fuse the effects together in one general impres- 
 sion. Only thus can the abstract, emotive, or in- 
 tellectual results of the series of poetic visualiza- 
 tions be obtained — a perhaps less poetic result 
 than one large single vision, which should con- 
 tinue in the reader's memory to embody the whole 
 thought or feeling — but one in which we may per- 
 haps have gained as much in life as we have lost 
 in aesthetic repose.
 
 232 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 A common delight will drain 
 
 The rank individual fens 
 
 Of a wound refusing to heal 
 
 While the old worm slavers its root. (p. 366.) 
 
 Here we are made first to think of fens of sorrow 
 drained by dutiful service to reason; tlien of a 
 wound of sorrow healed by that service; then of 
 the old worm, self, slavering the root of the sor- 
 row — unless, indeed, the slavering worm of self is 
 to be understood as sorrow's root. 
 
 It is easy to see how such a method works con- 
 fusion. We have here really the ''catalogue" of 
 "Walt Whitman concealed by a violent, merely 
 formal sentence-structure. Subject and predicate 
 do not in their poetic guise recognize each other. 
 A critic might be pardoned if he should declare 
 that Mr. Meredith's sentences in his philosophical 
 poems are frequently algebraic expressions in 
 need of factoring ere they can be intelligently 
 dealt with, and that he sometimes chuckles au- 
 dibly at the reader's discomfiture when the method 
 of factoring is far from obvious. You have to 
 meet with passages like this : 
 
 On the thread of the pasture you trace, 
 By the river, their milk, for miles, 
 Spotted once with the English tent, 
 In days of the tocsin 's alarms, 
 To tower of the tallest of piles 
 The country's surveyor breast high. 
 
 The general sense is clear, but who is expert al- 
 gebraist enough to factor it at sight? 
 
 Of course, the studious reader experiences a 
 certain intellectual satisfaction when he has con- 
 scientiously performed his task and proved sue-
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 233 
 
 cessful at it; but, to be frank, it is not exactly 
 the kind of satisfaction lie has been led to expect 
 from poetry by the past masters of the art. 
 
 All this is said by one who fully appreciates 
 what Mr. Meredith has done; who could not pos- 
 sibly content himself with ''Modem Love" or a 
 selection; who insists on the value of the philo- 
 sophic poems. Forewarned is forearmed. If you 
 know the nature of the difficulties, they will not 
 appear so formidable. Besides, you will not then 
 court the humiliation of defeat bv attackinor the 
 philosophic poems in an hour of mental weakness, 
 when really in need of the rest cure which Henry 
 "Wadsworth Longfellow and other mild-mannered 
 physicians of the muse are ready, nay, eager 
 enough to offer. 
 
 IL "Man." 
 
 Now, the object of this paper is to unfold in the 
 poet's own words his philosophy of life. It is 
 the same philosoiDhy that generates the whole- 
 some atmosphere of the novels. From it, as moral 
 deductions, proceed those judgments on the crea- 
 tures of his imagination, which the reader may 
 take, if unacquainted with his poems, for spon- 
 taneous and special oracles, when he does not, 
 indeed, resent them as irrelevant or captious. 
 
 If the difficulties of style that have been frank- 
 ly admitted keep any from acquainting themselves 
 with these philosophical poems, we shall be tempt- 
 ed to fling at them his own words about the 
 thrush r
 
 234 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Heed him not, the loss is yours!' 
 
 And if, indeed, as he intimates, he be only 
 
 A herald of a million bills, 
 
 and their song is to be like his, as presumably it 
 shall (else why should he be at pains to announce 
 them?), does it not seem the part of the wisely 
 valiant man to make terms with tliis shrill-piping 
 herald, ere the whole army arrives in the arro- 
 gance of numbers ? 
 
 Mine are these new fruitings, rich, 
 The simple to the common brings; 
 
 I keep the youth of souls who pitch 
 Their joy in this old heart of things. 
 
 Who feel the Coming, young as aye, 
 
 Thrice hopeful on the ground we plow; 
 
 Alive for life, awake to die; 
 
 One voice to cheer the seedling Now.' 
 
 I say but that this love of Earth reveals 
 A soul beside our own to quicken, quell. 
 Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift." 
 
 Such is his own account of the special prophetic 
 burden with which he has swung himself into the 
 saddle of his lyric Pegasus. "We wish him better 
 luck than that of the grim rider from the North- 
 land, who scared Europe with ghosts after break- 
 ing the back of his good steed. 
 
 Should we translate into more prosaic terms 
 the resolution which Mr. Meredith has ventured 
 not only to frame like a brave picture for our con- 
 templation, but actually to send forth into the 
 world of accomplished deeds — we might say that 
 his verse shows such beauties in our common 
 
 »"The Thrush in February," p. 327, st. 2. 
 'Ih.. sts. 15, 16. 
 «"My Theme," p. 207.
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 235 
 
 earth, and common human life, as are revealed 
 to the man who is active, courageous, unselfish, 
 hopeful, simple of heart and mind; not as they 
 seem to them who substitute fiction for fact, mak- 
 ing **the truth" "according to their thirst;"* nor 
 as they seem to those ''sons of facts," ''swinish 
 grunters" who look on the earth as their "stye;" 
 for our poet sees in earth the mother of man, 
 whom to love is the joy of life, and whom to know, 
 for potentially all that man actually is, consti- 
 tutes the wisdom which renders this passionate 
 loyal son's love of her reasonable. 
 
 As a poet Mr. Meredith does not, we dare as- 
 sert, use his rather large terminology with ab- 
 solute strictness. Yet, in a general way, we have 
 a right to suppose that one who is constantly 
 writing of flesh, blood, senses, lusts, heart, self, 
 personality, bent, instincts, brain, mind, wits, rea- 
 son, soul and spirit means something more or less 
 definite by each term. There may be duplicates 
 in the full list. There may be ambiguous uses of 
 some. "Senses" means now the organs and their 
 action; and then the pleasures incident to their 
 action, hence becoming synonjTiious with flesh, 
 blood, and lusts. "Self" and "personality" may 
 be collective terms for lusts when invading higher 
 domains of our being. "Bent" in the brute may 
 be "instinct" in the man. "Brain," "mind," 
 "wits" may be interchangeable terms. "Rea- 
 son" might connote a distinct faculty, or it might 
 
 >"A Ballad of Fair Ladles In Revolt," st. 16.
 
 236 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 indicate the mode of the mind's proper action in 
 fellowship with the sensations. ''Soul" may des- 
 ignate the purified affections, which, in their 
 crude state, are called the ''heart." "Spirit" is 
 now a term for our love of law, our moral core; 
 and then it stands for that mystical imagination 
 which dreams through man "the better than 
 man. ' ' 
 
 In any case, we shall not forget that Meredith, 
 the poet, uses words to content his ear and his 
 fancy quite as often as to gratify Meredith, the 
 psychologist. 
 
 From flesh unto spirit man grows, 
 
 Even here on the sod under sun. (p. 367.) 
 
 This is the first article of his creed. Note each 
 word: "Growth," not miraculous change ; "here," 
 not hereafter, thanks to the "sod" that supports 
 and the "sun" that gives vital heat. But he is 
 not content with this statement of fact. Some 
 might admit that it "grows" when it chooses. 
 Not so; 
 
 Flesh unto spirit must grow. 
 
 There is no choice, no escape from the beauti- 
 ful fatality ; for contend we shall have to for sheer 
 existence, and 
 
 Contention is the vital force 
 
 Whence pluck we brain. (p. 320.) 
 
 If we look out abroad at humanity in our day 
 with the eye of the true seer, it is "the soul" wo 
 perceive "unfold" through "blood and tears"
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 237 
 
 (p. 348). If we look Lack and follow history to 
 our time, we behold 
 
 The tidal multitude, and blind 
 
 From bestial to the higher breed 
 
 By fighting (p. 331.) 
 
 slowly rise, and introspection reveals that 
 
 We battle 
 
 For the smallest grain of our worth (p. 364.) 
 
 as well as for the best and most priceless of our 
 treasures : 
 
 Wisdom is won of its fight, 
 
 The combat incessant. (p. 366.) 
 
 Nay, more than this, the highest faculty, which 
 is self of our self, it also. 
 
 Spirit, is wrought . . . through strife! (p. 187.) 
 
 The faculties are related. They derive from one 
 another. 
 
 Rose in brain from rose in blood. (p. 80.) 
 
 They are friendly when kept for mutual service 
 in the right order of subjection. 
 
 Just reason based on valiant blood. (p. 331.) 
 
 Woe to reason, if it fancies justice possible with- 
 out physical valor! Woe to the blood, if it dares 
 be unjust ! 
 
 ''Sensation is a gracious gift" (p. 345); but 
 *' sensation insurgent" is "haunted of broods" 
 of questions (p. 368) that only confuse sensa- 
 tion. **Brain" is the *'sky of the senses" (p. 
 320) ; they are earth to that sky. Changing the 
 figure, ''the senses are the vessel of the thought" 
 (p. 330), and they should be steered by "brain"
 
 238 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 (pp. 320-1). But, mark you, what were a helms- 
 man without a ship ? In the service of brain * ' the 
 senses must traverse" the **Eoad of the Eeal" 
 ''fresh" — not blinded by preconceptions and 
 "with a love" for the road itself that '*no scourge 
 shall abate" (p. 364) — if we are ever 
 
 To reach the lone heights where we scan 
 
 In the mind's rarer vision this flesh. (p. 364.) 
 
 For while there are "holies from sense withheld," 
 to which only "reason" can guide (p. 365), we 
 shall want feet as well as a knowledge of the way. 
 
 Furthermore, ' ' mind of man and bent of brute ' ' 
 "equally have root" in earth (p. 86). Instinct 
 is not to be despised, for it is thus akin to mind. 
 Indeed, "just reason" would be content if it could 
 match "the instinct bred afield" (p. 331); and 
 we are warned 
 
 Not one instinct to efface 
 
 Ere reason ripens for the vacant place. (p. 197.) 
 
 For "reason" is not yet ripe — only "man's" 
 germinant "fruit" (p. 365) ; yet, even now, by it 
 is the "reason hourly fed" (p. 332). 
 
 In its turn the "strong brain" is the "station 
 for the flight of soul" (p. 321) in those who have 
 
 Out of the sensual hive 
 Grown to the flower of brain. 
 
 But the soul depends not only on the brain; "the 
 heart, obedient to brain, prompts the soul" (p. 
 362). Yet the reason cannot dispense with service 
 of what is higher than it. "No branch of Eea- 
 son's growing" is to be "lopped." Let, therefore,
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 239 
 
 ** spirit but bo lord of mind to guide our eyes,'* 
 and the noblest truths shall in time be ours. 
 
 Now, it is clear that all the exhortations of the 
 poet would be quite impertinent were nothing 
 amiss with man. It is a fact that something pre- 
 vents man's ''mind bursting the chrysalis of the 
 blind" (p. 149) and seeing truly with the aid of 
 spirit. It is the ''distempered devil of self," the 
 *' glutton" of earth's "fruits." 
 
 Clearly enough, never 
 
 'Till our lord of sensations at war, 
 
 The rebel, the heart, yields place 
 
 To brain; (p. 362.) 
 
 never till we are one of those "who in harness 
 the mind subser\^e," "having mastered sensa- 
 tion" (p. 3G7), which always, "at a stroke on 
 the terrified nerve," proves "inane," and would 
 counsel some coward's folly; never till then shall 
 we have "earned" our "title" to ''read" the 
 truth of which the earth is but a glyph. For with- 
 out the spirit we cannot, and 
 
 The spirit comes to light 
 
 Through conquest of the inner beast. (p. 320.) 
 
 Now, though this doctrine gives some place to 
 asceticism, it refuses to view the "beast" that 
 must be conquered, the "sensation" that must be 
 mastered, the "heart" that must be forced to 
 submission, as in themselves evil. They are part 
 of our complete glory. It is only their insubordi- 
 nation that is harmful. !Men are indeed to "at- 
 tain" the "statute of the gods," "not forfeiting 
 the beast*' (p. 378). "Mind and body" shall
 
 240 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 * ' lute "a * * perfect concord. ' ' Again and again we 
 are given to understand that it is a calamity when 
 even for a moment ''the nature" is ''divided in 
 three"— "heart," "brain," "soul" (p. 357). 
 The highest of us must cherish the lowest of us in 
 its place and for its function. The "mind" must 
 be solidly built on her "foundation of earth's 
 bed" (p. 359), for then, and then only, 
 
 Never is earth misread by brain. (p. 320.) 
 
 If reason has any pre-eminent dignity, it is that 
 she is "our bond with the numbers." She classes 
 us; she insists on fair division; she limits our 
 claim to our share; she 
 
 Wrestles with our old worm 
 
 Self in the narrow and wide. 
 
 Relentless quencher of lies, 
 
 With laughter she pierces the brute. 
 
 Not that she would slay — she has no hate, there- 
 fore no murderous intent — only she means to 
 "scour" the "loathed recess of his dens" with 
 that "laughter" which is light. She means to 
 "scatter his monstrous bed" of comfortable sloth, 
 and "hound him to harrow and plow;" for the 
 "self" has work to do. Speculation is not his 
 business. He cannot be allowed to bias the mind 
 by his roars or howls of greed or pain. This 
 ' ' self, ' ' this blind craving, was the driving power. 
 It is that still. But it drives man to ruin unless it 
 remains in gentle control. The steam that can 
 hurry tons of freight upon its way must yet heed 
 the pressure of the engineer's hand, and bide its 
 time.
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 241 
 
 If one. would be blissful, one must learn to 
 *'look on with the soul"* only, and therefore to 
 ''desire" only ''with the soul" (p. 75), to love 
 with "the love over I and me" (p. 77), so that at 
 length for us the 
 
 Proud letter I 
 Drops prone iiiul void as any thoughtless dash, (p. 195.) 
 
 Then shall we, indeed, "spread light" and "feel 
 celestially,"** for we shall "crave nothing" (p. 
 43) but to sing a "song" like that of the lark, 
 
 Boraphically free 
 
 Of taint of personality. (p. 114.) 
 
 Even a Callistes, who has seen the Great Moth- 
 er herself, and in whom "whatsoever to men is 
 of use" will unwittingly spring "worship of them 
 who bestow" (p. 110), ceases, for all his wisdom 
 and gratitude, to be "sane in his song" "where 
 the cravings begin." For only he in whom the 
 "dragon self" is not slain, but silenced, can be- 
 come 
 
 The voice of one for millions, 
 In whom the millions rejoice 
 For giving their one spirit voice. (p. 114.) 
 
 III. The Earth. 
 
 But if, indeed, man realizes his derivation from 
 lower forms of life, how shall he regard the heav- 
 enly home which has witnessed his evolution ? Is 
 the earth friend or foe to him? To the man whom 
 Mr. Meredith would have us be, her aspect and her 
 office are a mother's that nobly loves the best 
 
 *The Woods of Westerman. 
 ♦♦The lark ascending.
 
 242 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 in us, whose tenderness conceals itself in her 
 pride. 
 
 From the earliest times true ''souls of love," 
 filled with an ardor for their species, have in- 
 variably ''divined" a "higher breed," and striv- 
 en to lead the "tidal multitude" to it from their 
 "bestial" and "blind" condition. They readily 
 recognized in this their ideal, the only explanation 
 of the Mother's else incomprehensible dealings 
 with her child. Hers also was the "thought to 
 speed the race." "Her mystic secret" was so 
 dear to her that, rather than reveal it, she would 
 brook being misunderstood. Yet who capable 
 of sympathizing with "her passion for old giant 
 kind", for "champions of the race," "warriors of 
 the sighting brain" who "give worn humanity 
 new youth," could fail to apprehend her purpose? 
 If she has always "scourged" or been "her off- 
 spring's executioner," it was surely for the sake 
 of her holy vow to produce the "stouter stock." 
 
 Life is at her grindstone set, 
 
 That she may give us edging keen. (p. 320.) 
 
 Behold the life at ease: it drifts. 
 
 The sharpened life commands its course. (p. 320.) 
 
 From the very beginning of man 
 
 Pain and Pleasure on each hand 
 
 Led our wild steps from slimy rock 
 
 To yonder sweeps of garden land, (p. 332.) 
 
 which it may take ages yet to attain and possess. 
 "Earth yields the milk," to be sure, for the hu- 
 man suckling, but "she will soothe" tenderlj^ his
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 243 
 
 "need" only, ''not his desire." For her heart 
 is full of a fury of prophetic love. 
 
 Sons of strength have been 
 
 Her cherished offspring ever. (p. 333.) 
 
 As in the past, so now; as now, so always here- 
 after; and well she knows that wheresoever ''bat- 
 tle urges," there "spring heroes many." 
 
 She who dotes over ripeness at play, 
 
 Bosiness fondles and feeds, 
 
 Guides it with shepherding hook 
 
 To her sports and her pastures alway. (p. 363.) 
 
 She who "loves laughter" and the "kindly lusts" 
 when the "weak" "wail," "the wail animal in- 
 fant," she has only a deaf ear and an iron heart. 
 
 Weep, bleed, rave, writhe, be distraught — 
 
 She is moveless. (p. 363.) 
 
 Not she gives the tear for the tear. (p. 363.) 
 
 The child that misreads her purpose she will 
 not spare, for it is he who needs her severity. 
 She is proud of his very fire of hate. But of them 
 who are her children indeed, after the spirit as 
 well as according to the flesh, of them is she jus- 
 tified. He 
 
 Whom the century tempests call son. 
 
 Having striven to rend him in vain, (p. 356.) 
 
 who has not got thew and brawn only in the con- 
 flict, but has been in the end able to "pluck 
 brain" also, the veritable "man's mind" that 
 knows itself the "child of her keen rod," rich in 
 the "hard wisdom" which his mother earth gave 
 him, he assuredly understands that if she seem to 
 be of "us atomies of life alive unheeding," it is
 
 244 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 not that she hates life, but is "bent on life to 
 come." It is clear to him that "in her clods" is 
 the "footway to the God of gods" along which we 
 must pass, while for the sake of her holy hope she 
 drives us, using, as need may be, "the spur and 
 the curb." 
 
 She does not willfully leave us in darkness; 
 but she gives us no more light than we can bear. 
 "If we will, "we may be "wise" "of her prompt- 
 ings"; for surely she never ceases to whisj^er the 
 suggestive words in our ears. The "woodcutter 
 Death, ' ' who is he, if not a disguise of our Mother ? 
 We fear him, we hate him? Yet 
 
 For use he hews 
 To make awake 
 The spirit of what stuff we be, (p. 383.) 
 
 As he "clears" our globe, we may be satisfied 
 it is, "though wood be good," for "braver" 
 human forests. AAliatever we may think, however 
 we may feel, certain it is beyond doubt that for 
 all of us "the end is one." ""We do but wax for 
 service." We must actively or passively be a 
 party to the slaying of our fellows, and some day 
 to the slaying of us, that "our ground" "may 
 speed the seed of younger" growths, and in due 
 time be more royally "crowned" with life.* 
 
 Does this seem a monstrous doctrine? Shall 
 we rebel at the thought that "we breathe but to 
 be sword or block!" Is not death a mere word 
 after all? a mere mark and disguise? "The fuel, 
 
 •Woodman and Echo.
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 245 
 
 decay, brightens the fire of renewal," If "we 
 wot of life" it is "through death." Constantly 
 among the living we "spy" "how each feeds 
 each." Here there is no exception. We are all 
 "fed" "by Death as by Life." How if "the 
 two" fountains of our nourishment were "one 
 spring" — twin breasts of the same mother? 
 "Life and Death in one" — "whichever is, the 
 other is" — what if indeed it were so — "one — as 
 our breath in and out!" At all events, the birds, 
 when they pipe 
 
 The young Earth's bacchic rout, 
 The race, and the prize of the race, 
 Earth's lustihead pressing to sprout, (p. 356.) 
 
 are really quite as much singing of death. Death 
 is not the opposite of life, but of birth; and both 
 birth and death are but names for the single proc- 
 ess of life, "the springing to be," "the coming" 
 which is "young as aye," at all times the same 
 "seedling Now." 
 
 When, at length, then, we have understood the 
 conduct of our Mother, proved her "loving" and 
 "reasonable," only more ideally and constantly 
 so than we, it remains for us to imitate her exam- 
 ple. From our double discovery as premises we 
 must draw the ethical and sj^iritual conclusions 
 with perfect courage. They who "read aright 
 her meaning" cannot but '^devoutly serve," for 
 the "task" of their Mother "devolves on them." 
 They must catch her "passion." Nor is it as 
 though they might refuse service.
 
 246 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 This breath, her gift, has only choice 
 
 Of service — breathe we in or out. (p. 332.) 
 
 It is only a choice between unwillful and devout 
 service, the slave's or the son's. 
 
 From the noble thought, then, of the Mother's 
 ** loving" and ''reasonable" temper comes our 
 first moral maxim of work, its own reward in the 
 play of our powers and their normal increase, 
 ** Thrice hopeful on the ground we plow" deem- 
 ing it ** enough if we have sped the plow a sea- 
 son." 
 
 A cold thing, however, will our morality be if it 
 is not fired with love; and only that which lives 
 can be most satisfyingly loved. We shall begin, 
 then, our religious life with the dogma that she is 
 a "thing alive to the living," that ''her aspects 
 mutably swerve," but **her laws immutably 
 reign." For 
 
 Till we conceive her living we go distraught, 
 
 Seeing she lives, and of her joy of life 
 
 Creatively has given us blood and breath, (p. 187.) 
 
 But more ; not mere animation is hers. "We must 
 come to "know" the "life of her" for "spirit." 
 Of the stars, sisters of earth, it is true that "the 
 fire is in them whereof we are born," else how 
 came we from one of them? When by the mani- 
 fold sacraments of earth and sky and stellar 
 heavens we have come to realize that everywhere 
 "life glistens on the river of the death," and we 
 see about us among our fellow-beings "battle," 
 "loss," "ache," we shall "know" it for earth's 
 "pledge of vitality" inexhaustible, and with our
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 247 
 
 "spirit wrought of her through strife'* we shall 
 "read her own" spirit; and because of our "love 
 of earth," which the singing lark instills, "^n<s^ 
 her down to death," even for "the love that lends 
 her grace among the starry fold. ' ' 
 
 IV. The Invisible. 
 
 To many this view of man and the earth may 
 seem atheistic. If so, it will be because they can- 
 not believe in a "credible God." To them there 
 is war in heaven. Seen is arrayed against un- 
 seen. Having used their eyes to little or no pur- 
 pose, they tliink ill of the visible, and imagine, 
 naturally enough, an Invisible to their liking. 
 Such, at all events, is a succinct statement of Mr. 
 Meredith's scrupulous apology, which took the 
 shape of a synoptic philosophy of history in some- 
 what unlovely verse, classified, surely not for 
 music's sake, with "Songs and Lyrics of the Joy 
 of the Earth." 
 
 That such an apology should have been written 
 was to be expected. The poet could not remain 
 long unaware how offensive to many must be the 
 burden of his manly prophecy. To his worthy 
 British public a "credible God" would hardly 
 seem divine. Efforts to make our faiths produce 
 into the unknown the lines of our actual knowl- 
 edge, and attach our religious emotions to the 
 common and normal rather than to the peculiar 
 and unnatural, they would resent as gross mater-
 
 248 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ialism and irreverent impiety. Only one hope 
 with this public: an appeal to precedent. 
 
 In Mr. Meredith's loveliest idyl, ''A Day with 
 the Daughters of Hades," the sweet girl goddess 
 Skiagenia, born of gloom, convinces the reader 
 that the wholesome Hellenic attitude of mingling 
 love and awe toward the Great Mother is the very 
 same suggested to-day by evolutional science 
 when envisaging what is at once most homelike 
 and most strange about this human star of ours, 
 that encircles with perpetual worship her solar 
 God of light and heat and life, concealing all the 
 while an undefined, vast death and cold and dark- 
 ness at the core. But what cares the British pub- 
 lic for such a precedent? Has it not been led to 
 believe that the Greeks were a spiritually shallow 
 people, thanks to flagrant neglect of almost all 
 that was deep in them? 
 
 So there was left for Mr. Meredith no possible 
 way of obtaining a patient hearing for a theory 
 which, while so obviously close at hand, found 
 through the ages so few consistent friends, but 
 that of apology. He must account for the general 
 acceptance of the more fanciful h>i3othesis. It 
 will not suffice to point out its fallacious charac- 
 ter; he must also expose the nature of its insidi- 
 ous fascination, the source of its plausibility. In 
 the following paragraphs the attempt shall be 
 made, using his own words as often as possible, to 
 state Mr. Meredith's view of the genesis of trans- 
 cendentalism.
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 249 
 
 In the experience of the most undeveloped man 
 there is mueli i^ain and little pleasure. lie child-' 
 ishly ascribes to natui-e his own motives. He tor- 
 tures his enemy. What then are his sufferings 
 but the malice of a foe? But infrequent though 
 they be, he has pleasures also. Now and then he 
 is warmed, sheltered, and fed, his flesh thrilled 
 with delight. Can there be one spring for bitter 
 and sweet waters? Old men, discouraged and re- 
 sentful, suggest that it is so. Pleasures are ac- 
 corded by the same cruel power — a device of re- 
 fined savagery to prevent the sufferer's becoming 
 inured to his misery. 
 
 Young men, however, cannot accept this view. 
 They observe that the old themselves continue to 
 feed the flame of life, to fan it sedulously, to shield 
 it from every whiff of dangerous wind. They 
 have been occasionally thrilled by joys too intense 
 to be held in memory as mere malevolent delu- 
 sions. If Nature then must be viewed as hostile 
 and wicked because inflicting hardship, peril, 
 pain, they will explain their actual desire to live 
 as an endurance of the now and the nigh because 
 of a faith in some fictitious hereafter and afar; 
 and lo, we have the visible devil and the invisible 
 God of every sensational theology — the original 
 points of departure for all transcendental sys- 
 tems of thoaight. 
 
 Put thus, it all seems absurd — nay, repulsive 
 enough. But the "old men" with their "sentence 
 of inverted wit'* it is impossible to tolerate. Mr.
 
 250 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Meredith bids us, ere we take their testimony to 
 life, inquire how they have lived. Nature clearly 
 shows her dislike of the aged. She tolerates them 
 only when they are sunsets to noble days. 
 
 As soon now as man's religion has come to con- 
 sist of an unnatural passion for the Invisible a 
 strange phenomenon appears. When he is weak, 
 defeated, despondent, when his ** senses" are 
 ** pricked by fright," when he indulges in 
 a ''ventral dream of peace," the hope of 
 a stye somewhere for slothful feeding, he 
 becomes religious. The moment he is strong 
 and successful, he is amused or horrified 
 to discover that he is simply irreligious. Still 
 he knows that strength and success may not 
 last. It is well to provide for relapses, failures. 
 Hence he will continue to attach a large theoretic 
 value to ''the legends that sweep" nature 
 "aside." He will extol the great merits— for 
 others, and incidentally for himself (should he be 
 unfortunate enough to require them) — of 
 
 Assurance, symbols, saws, 
 
 Kevelations in legends, light 
 
 To eyes rolling in darkness. (p. 363.) 
 
 But in due time man begins to reflect on life, to 
 obser\^e and generalize. He cannot but perceive 
 how small the effect of these precious comforts in 
 man's hours of need. Doubt begins, then doubt of 
 his doubt. 
 
 Nature, of course, is unnatural — that is to say, 
 inhuman — that much remains sure. The crudest 
 man will in the end be moved by contortions and
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 251 
 
 tears. There is in the order of things *'an answer 
 to thoughts or deeds." But those who "cry aloud 
 for an opiate hoon" receive small comfort from 
 '*a mother whom no cry can melt," who ''will 
 shear" the ''woolly beast" that bleats too pite- 
 ously. Yet man has ceased to be content with his 
 original dualism. Somehow he must fit nature to 
 his thought of the "Invisible." Hence futile 
 metaphysics — inquiries that are doubts disguised, 
 questions "that sew not nor spin," idle, vexatious, 
 working only the total confusion of him who har- 
 bors them. For of course 
 
 A mind in a desolate mood, 
 
 With the "whither" whose echo is "whence," (p. 371.) 
 
 will become in times of distress the victim of con- 
 tending passions. 
 
 Now to the Invisible he raves 
 To rend him from her 
 
 his unacknowledged Mother; then, his cry unan- 
 swered, he "craves her calm, her care," falling 
 back on despised material solaces and distractions. 
 But, so appealed to, the Mother, who else is lavish 
 of her boons, becomes obdurate. 
 
 For the flesh in revolt at her laws 
 
 Neither song, nor smile in ruth. 
 
 Nor promise of things to reveal, 
 
 Has she, nor a word she saith: 
 
 We are asking her wheels to pause. 
 
 Well knows she the cry of unfaith. (p. 363.) 
 
 Then, of course, there Is nothing left to do but to 
 turn "afresh to the Invisible," which he is pleased 
 to imagine "can raise him high with vows of living 
 faith," Ho asks no more for relief. He has be-
 
 252 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 come modest in his demands. He wishes merely fo 
 have his belief affirmed by some "little sign" of 
 ''slaughtered Nature," some miracle that shall 
 definitely prove that the power of Nature over him 
 and his destiny has its limits. But his cry is in 
 vain. No miracle comes. For a while he m'ay con- 
 tent himself with ''Legends." He may indeed 
 lash himself to a frenzy and "conjure hnages." 
 Yet in the end, sooner or later, he will be con- 
 fronted by the fact that his "cry to heaven is a 
 cry" to the earth "he would evade," his prayer to 
 the Invisible being really addressed to nature and 
 obtaining from nature such an answer as it is en- 
 titled to receive. At no time, then, in man's his- 
 tory has he conceived of the manly religion suited 
 to his hours of strength and success. Let us not 
 be dupes of professions. The British people vocif- 
 erously sing, 
 
 O Paradise, O Paradise, 
 
 Who doth not crave for rest? 
 
 Who would not seek that happy land, etc., 
 
 while in fact they build up an empire with im- 
 mense toil, showing that they mean to possess as 
 much of the earth as they can, even if they jeop- 
 ardize their heavenly inheritance by a lack of 
 meekness ! Actions speak louder than words. As 
 a matter of history, who were the kind of men that 
 have been worshiped as heroes? Those who in- 
 dulged in slavish howls? who complained, pleaded 
 for mercy? who offered a price for ease and hap- 
 piness! Nothing of the sort. Always the hero,
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 253 
 
 lie, whom men approved and wished to resemble, 
 was 
 
 A creature matched with strife 
 To meet it as a bride 
 
 ** through self-forgetfulness divine." Surely al- 
 ways, whatever our theological dualism and phil- 
 osophical pessimism, it was men whose ''love of 
 earth was deep" that we set apart for the prac- 
 tical worship of imitation. They always were un- 
 speculative men, who could join in the song of the 
 woodland sprites: 
 
 We question not, nor ask 
 
 The silent to give sound, 
 
 The hidden to unmask, 
 
 The distant to draw near. (p, 344.) 
 
 They despised — even when they did not under- 
 stand — 
 
 Our sensual dreams 
 Of the yearning to touch, to feel 
 
 The dark impalpable sure, 
 To have the unveiled appear. (p. 363.) 
 
 They assumed themselves, with a magnificent hu- 
 mility, to be revelations and incarnations of the 
 spirit of earth. They refused worship, were un- 
 ostentatious, took their virtue for granted, con- 
 tent to ''serve and pass reward." In their heart 
 of hearts, whatever their external religious con- 
 formity, they pitied him who "will not read" 
 nature; who, "good or wise", preferring "with 
 passion self-obscured" to see her distorted 
 through a subjective medium, 
 
 The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live. 
 Through terror, through distrust;
 
 254 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Even at the present day, then, though transcen- 
 dentalists in the closet, and theoretically disloyal 
 to earth, in their hero-worship men prove that 
 there is a deeper, saner, devouter religion deep 
 in their hearts. In their hours of strength and 
 success they feel it ; but they are prevented from 
 taking it seriously, because it seems so inconsis- 
 tent with what they have been taught to regard as 
 sacred. Yet in it is the bitter tonic which we need 
 in our sentimental hours when we cry for the opi- 
 ates. Mr. Meredith believes, then, that the re- 
 ligion of man in nature, the worship of strength, 
 beauty, courage, magnanimity, is not so unfamil- 
 iar to us. Can we not join the hymn of the heroes? 
 
 Let our trust be firm in Good, 
 
 Though we be of the fasting; 
 Our questions are a mortal brood, 
 
 Our work is everlasting. 
 We children of Beneficence 
 
 Are in its being sharers; 
 And "whither" vainer sounds than "whence" 
 
 For word with such wayfarers. (p. 346.) 
 
 It is hardly necessary to weary the reader show- 
 ing by quotations in what way this tonic will do 
 the work of the coveted opiate ; how, in Mr. Mere- 
 dith 's view, it comforts, makes strong, and there- 
 fore consoles more effectively than the senti- 
 mental fictions of transcendentalists.
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 255 
 
 y. 
 
 When the preceding pages were written the 
 growing fame of George Meredith had come to 
 justify commercially the appearance of his col- 
 lected poems, as well as a volume of selections 
 much needed to win him new friends among the 
 more timid lovers of poetry. Up till then few but 
 the youthfully rash or the inordinately brave had 
 adventured and persevered. True, all had heard 
 the report how that in the *' Woods of Wester- 
 man" one might chance to meet face to face the 
 good physician Melampus, or that at its farther 
 edges maybe the ''Skylark Ascending" might 
 make the devout hearer ''feel celestially", bark- 
 ening 
 
 "The song seraphlcally free 
 Of taint of personality" 
 
 until he should become indeed 
 
 "Through self-forgetfulness divine." 
 
 True, many had shared with Skiageneia and 
 Callistes their single blessed day of mutual reve- 
 lation. True, many had made their pilgrimage 
 to the Valley where innocent love abideth; or be- 
 held on the heights, one breathless time at least, 
 the Dawn of Color, and its hallowed meanings; 
 or shuddered with a delicious horror recalling the 
 tale of Attila's bridal night; — which several ex- 
 periences had, by the way, apparently been en- 
 joyed without special prior training or serious 
 peril to life and limb. Notwithstanding the pub-
 
 256 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 lished volume of selections was a reassurance and 
 a more alluring invitation. For there were not 
 lacking such as feared our poet; one who could 
 mock, for instance, the Empedocles of an Arnold, 
 for insufficiently considering the aesthetic aspects 
 of his final exit: — ''The last of him was heels in 
 air"; one who could expose to healthy contempt 
 the ''bile-and-buskin attitude" of Byron's Man- 
 fred; one who could villainously destroy the 
 moonshine mood of our poetic "teens" with a 
 cry to Hugo's high-strung Hernani: 
 
 "O the horn, the horn, 
 The horn of the old gentleman." 
 
 Surely our poet is not to be met after dark, if 
 one carry about him any treasure of false senti- 
 ment. And many no doubt had cause to fear. 
 Some few perhaps on the publication of the Se- 
 lections perversely regretted that their singular 
 cult might run the odious risk of profanation; 
 but all sincere lovers of Meredith's poetry re- 
 joiced, we believe, that their modest propaganda 
 had the practical assistance at length of the 
 needed publications. 
 
 A word of George Meredith's last volume, "A 
 Reading of Life." To cherishers of the poems of 
 ''The Joy of the Earth" and of the deep and 
 subtle "Reading of Earth" it brought no new mes- 
 sage. Of course, the book was perused with 
 breathless excitement. Had some ray of further 
 light pierced the darkness for our seer? Or did 
 he behold still the same faithful vision of a God
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 257 
 
 witliiu things as tliey are for the heroic will to 
 avow and serve? 
 
 Nothing new in thought. Little new even in 
 method of expression. Only a larger, more imme- 
 diately intelligihle statement of the eternal ques- 
 tion of pleasure and self-mastery; the prenatal 
 history of man's spiritual life in the mother-womb 
 of ever-gracious nature ; the hopes to the race ma- 
 turing in the loyal individuals who accept their 
 vicarious function and priestly office. 
 
 The eightieth birthday of George Meredith 
 made apparent to the dullest observer the claims 
 long since past due of this the greatest literary 
 man of his day. The tributes to him were on all 
 hands generally reverent and affectionate. Ten- 
 nyson, Browning, Arnold, and Fitz-Gerald, Ros- 
 setti and Morris were gone. Each had obtained 
 his mead of well-earned praise. Meredith and 
 Swinburne alone remained of the greater Vic- 
 torian poets, and the former of the two had lived 
 long enough to come into his own at last (surely 
 matter for congratulation) ; and glad we were 
 and surprised to realize how many we numbered, 
 we hitherto silent reverers and lovers of our poet- 
 sage. And now we have heard how this our wisest 
 among the true sons of the Muse hath fallen on 
 sleep, we do not doubt that many and curious will 
 be the searchings of heart. To be sure, the obitu- 
 ary eulogies have not shown more than moderate 
 contrition for the hitherto deafness of many an 
 adder that refused to be charmed. A kind of irri-
 
 258 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 tation invariably befalls the self-deemed astute, 
 when they are compelled to admit they can see 
 but as thro' a glass darkly. The difficulties of 
 Shakespeare, the inscrutable mysteries of phrase 
 and cadence in Tennyson, where more is meant 
 than meets the mind; the vast meaninglessness, 
 made up of countless little meanings, of a Swin- 
 burne, these give none offence. We remember the 
 dramatic action, extol the dreamy atmosphere, take 
 refuge in the obfuscations of an art-for-art's sake 
 teclmique. But the fact that Meredith has baffled 
 our wits is remembered against him even in 
 death. Ah, but after, comes the saner re-appre- 
 ciation! We have settled down in the midst of 
 such many-columned black-bordered exploitation 
 of our half-knowledge to a vigorous, and what 
 bodes best, a modester study of the Master; so 
 that ere long we shall doubtless forget whatever 
 we wrote in our pique, and reconsider, and recog- 
 nize George Meredith's real greatness in sheer 
 self-vindication. 
 
 Browning has suffered from the misguided 
 praise of his worst work by Browningites in quest 
 of oracles; Tennyson somewhat less from an un- 
 discriminating glorification of all his verse, — good, 
 bad, and indifferent, — because of its imiform 
 stylistic excellence; Morris has suffered more 
 than either by a natural preference today for 
 "Arts and Crafts" — reform, and the loud hero- 
 ism of Socialistic agitation, over the divinest of 
 poetic paradises; and Arnold, even, in some de-
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 2.19 
 
 gree has suffered as a poet by his successfully con- 
 ducted controversies theological and aesthetic. 
 George Meredith was most fortunate then in be- 
 ing generally known only for a few novels of 
 peculiar, psychological, and imaginative interest, 
 but caviare to the multitude of readers; too evi- 
 dently heterodox to bring grist to the preacher's 
 mill, as did Browning, and merit therefore homi- 
 letic exploitation ; too conservative also of all no- 
 ble traditions to raise the shout of radicals-on- 
 principle, and be singled out for eccentric idol- 
 worship by the seekers after new gods. 
 
 These novels, moreover, on which his wider repu- 
 tation rested, are not novels as any hitherto. The 
 story is implied, rather than told. The characters 
 are considered, rather than dramatically por- 
 trayed. The ideas are intimated and viewed from 
 many fantastic angles, rather than set forth for 
 acceptance. It is all play of the mind — but for 
 the mind that is wide awake, alert, agile, sophis- 
 ticated to the point of a new simplicity born of 
 reaction, sick of artifice, and interested in the re- 
 habilitation of the commonplace by its subtler 
 manifestations of the rare and fair. Nevertheless 
 it is honest play, always honest play, that com- 
 ments on wholesome bygone work, and prepares 
 for vital predicaments to come. "Wlio has played 
 thus with Meredith in his novels — his intellect 
 a-tingle, his heart enlarged to a beni^gner inclu- 
 sion of affairs hitherto alien, his imaginative 
 senses; rejoiced yet chastened — surely he has had
 
 2G0 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 but little difficulty in recognizing the Spirit of the 
 Poet, as one and the same with that of the thau- 
 maturgist in prose fiction. The same attitude 
 courageously rational, yet ever nobly reverent of 
 the flesh ; the same aspiration for a self-conscious- 
 ness that shall duly pass by subtle degrees from a 
 narrow ignorant to a larger disciplined oblivion 
 of individual concerns ; the same perception of an 
 immanent cosmic wisdom in ignorancy, instinct, 
 ay, and in the very follies incident to social life. 
 
 And what a range besides in this extraordinary 
 fiction! From the perfect little tale of sentiment 
 in which a Chloe is sainted, or from the burlesque, 
 Arabesque lyrico-ludicrous extravaganza of Shag- 
 pat to that Supreme Modern Comedy of the 
 Egoist, and the amazing maze of glosses and foot- 
 notes to the Book of Life with which he bade us 
 his whimsically smiling farewell ! Yet, from book 
 to book migrates the same Meredithian spirit 
 whom we know in more exquisite intimacy as the 
 singer of those athletic songs which exalt fact, plus 
 the fiat of man's soul, as the worshipfully divine. 
 
 Neither were the novels, so-called, chariots of 
 ease for the defeated, the wounded, the way- 
 weary. Each was a challenge to know the battle- 
 thrill in concerns intellectual and in the affairs 
 of the social spirit. 
 
 But so, too, some of us believe his poetry would 
 gain but little in the end had it been more win- 
 some than it is. Such as love our poet do not con- 
 done the difficulties and vaunted obscurity of his
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 201 
 
 ])Ocms, but smile, recalling virile initiations under- 
 gone of themselves in strenuous solitude ere tliey 
 understood and presumed to enjoy. The very diffi- 
 culties have '^ teased" them out of thought into a 
 larger faith, elevated, mystic, yet without stultifi- 
 cation. 
 
 For, such as love our poet, love in chief his very 
 inmost personality. As they live with his best 
 pieces, these draw nearer, and as they draw nearer 
 wax dearer. Yet no one is found among his ad- 
 mirers and reverers to extol perversely his fail- 
 ures in craft, his baffling eccentricities of style. 
 The great and beautiful pieces distinguish them- 
 selves almost at first glance for what they are, 
 and the remainder we cherish for whatever kin- 
 ship they possess with his masterpieces, and what 
 l^recious secrets of their maker's spirit they may 
 chance betray. For such as estimate the rank of 
 a poet by the amount only of his work that exhib- 
 its the very highest quality, its singular rarity in 
 kind, and the peculiar indispensableness of the 
 contribution it makes to mind and heart, so huge a 
 difference in rank will not seem to obtain after all 
 between Tennyson and Meredith. The great tech- 
 nical dexterity of the former brings almost his en- 
 tire production to a certain level of merit ; yet the 
 real masterpieces are none too numerous. Mere- 
 dith can claim a dozen or at most a score of mas- 
 terpieces, and the remainder of his verse is de- 
 ficient in that artistic perfection without which the 
 best thought and passion will not, however inter-
 
 262 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 esting in themselves, constitute great poetry. To 
 him who dispenses relative praise then by the 
 amount of good work, Tennyson is a great and 
 Meredith a minor poet. To him who considers 
 only the very best work of either, — which must be 
 a part, forever, in any antholog}^ of English poetry, 
 — Meredith appears to be quite the peer of Tenny- 
 son and Browning ; and. because of the exceeding 
 rarity and preciousness of his best work, safely 
 along with them in the number of England 's greater 
 poets. The reason why Tennyson was almost im- 
 mediately accepted, Browning only after a long 
 struggle, and Meredith hardly as yet to-day, lies 
 in their several degrees of individual originality, 
 and independence from familiar models of poetic 
 method and style. Whoever loved Keats, Shelley, 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth, was prepared to enjoy 
 Tennyson. He recognized, at sight, common and 
 therefore familiar elements. Seeking j^recedents 
 for Browning, one must go back at least to Sidney, 
 John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Fran- 
 cis Quarles, and Shakespeare in his passages of 
 reasoned passion and passionate metaphysic. Ar- 
 nold's poetry had the authority of Goethe, Leo- 
 pard!, and Heine, besides the precedents of Sopho- 
 cles, Wordsworth, Byron, and Keats. Neverthe- 
 less, he had to abide patiently his turn. Our fore- 
 fathers were obliged to learn the ''great lan- 
 guage" of W^ordsworth as if it had been a foreign 
 tongue. No wonder then we have seen the appre- 
 ciation of Meredith grow but slowly, and the rec-
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 2G3 
 
 ognition of his great merit uttered with cautious, 
 nay timorous reserve. Hence, too, the justifica- 
 tion of critical studies and popular handbooks, 
 which assist the beginner to get his bearings ere 
 his courage fail or his strength be prematurely 
 exhausted. Mr. Richard le Gallienne^ and Mr. 
 George Macaulay Trevelyan^ seem to have done 
 their pioneering well ; particularly the latter. Mrs. 
 Henderson^ betrays a little amusing irritation 
 with the public's natural preference for Mere- 
 dith's more obvious and sensational work; but in 
 the main she does honest, if not brilliant service. 
 As for Mr. Basil de Lelincourt, whose aid Mrs. 
 Henderson has invoked, one can justly say of him 
 that he appears more solicitous of his own reputa- 
 tion as connoisseur and wine-taster to god Apollo 
 than of the presentation and espousal of his cause. 
 
 Now it ought to be obvious, a universally ac- 
 cepted truism, that all criticism which consists in 
 the application of formal principles got by induc- 
 tion from previously examined literature, must 
 beg the question adversely in the case of produc- 
 tions anywise novel in form. To the extent nat- 
 urally enough of his aesthetic innovations in the 
 structure and style of his novels, or in the manner 
 of his poetic conception and utterance, academic 
 criticism governed by precedents, and deficient in 
 sympathetic audacity ; beholding art so to say from 
 
 » Richard le Gallionne. George Meredith : Some of his Char- 
 acteristics. 1900. 
 
 'George Macaulay Trevelyan. The Poetry and Philosophy of 
 George Meredith. 
 
 ' Mrs. M. Sturge Henderson and Mr. Basil de Lelincourt. 
 George Meredith : Novelist, Poet, Reformer.
 
 264 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the consumer's rather than from the producer's 
 viewpoint; cannot but judicially condemn, or de- 
 fer at least any award of unmitigated praise to 
 a more convenient season, after the death of all 
 persons concerned. True, our poet has entered 
 into the beyond; but the set standard still lives 
 that condemns a priori, and no great generally 
 acknowedged poet is now left to speak brave words 
 in his behalf. To attempt an estimate is not so 
 likely to be profitable at present, as to offer an ap- 
 preciation. Hence Mr. Trevelyan seems so much 
 better a guide to the student of Meredith's poems 
 than Mr. Basil de Lelincourt. The former has 
 the divination of sympathy, the audacity of en- 
 thusiasm, and the sanity of one who would keep a 
 good conscience always, but would err, if err he 
 must (and who doth not?) on the affirmative side. 
 Who is there will dare predict to what extent the 
 greater mental agility of future generations will 
 reduce the much-advertised difficulties of George 
 Meredith's style? The suggestive fact remains 
 that to those who have long loved their Meredith, 
 such poems even as a ''Faith on Trial" and the 
 "Thrush in February" begin to justify them- 
 selves poetically. Old readers would not now want 
 a greater clearness at the expense of the inherent 
 vital energj'; more rhythm, lilt, or verbal charm, 
 if thereby the spiritual suggestiveness were in any 
 degree lessened. 
 
 In other words, a process of assimilation goes 
 on between readers and poet. Who to-day among
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 265 
 
 lovers of poetry finds tlie ''Dark Tower" of 
 Browning unapproachable, or his ''Nympholep- 
 tos" a metapliysical reljus? So, it is not yet time, 
 till sympathetic advocacy has done its part in as- 
 sisting the process of assimilation, to close def- 
 initely the inventory of our poet's masterpieces, 
 because of our own personal insusceptibility to 
 the charm of the remainder. At all events, ' ' Love 
 in a Valley", "The Romance of Youth", and 
 "Modern Love", the tragedy of adult disillusion; 
 "Hard Weather" and "South Wester", as inter- 
 pretations of the hostile and gracious aspects of 
 Nature; "The Woods of Westerman" and the 
 "Lark Ascending", as the lyric praise of natural 
 faith and human selfishness; "Melampus", laud- 
 ing the good physician because of his abounding 
 love, and the "Hymn to Color", setting forth the 
 mystic oneness of life and death; the "Day of the 
 Daughter of Hades", singing the mystery of life 
 as twin mystery to that of death, and the "Woods- 
 man and Echo", an almost too onomatopoeic Tyr- 
 taean rhyme, persuading to a courageous setting- 
 aside of the present which belongs to us, for the 
 better future's sake, that shall belong to others; 
 and its fairer fellow, "Woodland Peace", — not to 
 forget the grim and eloquent tolling of the "Nup- 
 tials of Attila", — these at least constitute a list 
 of things no reader who has come to know them 
 at all, could afford not to reread from time to 
 time, for their combined ethical, intellectual, and 
 aesthetic spell. So much without suspicion of over-
 
 266 GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 excited advocacy may be affirmed, and cannot 
 easily be denied. 
 
 In conclusion, let the ''Song in the Songless" 
 bear testimony to the tremendous suggestive 
 power of Meredith at his best. The modern ma- 
 terialists, wrapping their omniscience in the re- 
 spectable robe of agnosticism, have performed a 
 marvelous feat. First they have abstracted man 
 from the Universe, and scrutinized the remnant 
 closely, assuming all the while that they had got 
 out of it themselves, and really were beholding the 
 world as it would be if man were not. So having 
 reduced all but man to mass and motion, they turn 
 about upon man in turn, and explain him in terms 
 of that world supposedly construed without him. 
 That the whole procedure is reliable, who shall 
 contend? To Meredith, as to all poets, mystics 
 and philosophic idealists, it appears a quite illegit- 
 imate procedure. What prestidigitation to no ef- 
 fect! Our logic may be flawless, but have we 
 played fair with the premises? 
 
 "They have no song, the sedges dry, 
 And still they sing. . . ." 
 
 It is no meaningless, soulless sound; it is song, 
 articulate, melodiously human. For after all, the 
 sedges and I are akin. 
 
 "It is within my breast they sing, 
 As I pass by." 
 
 If another hears no song, only senseless sound, it 
 may be, no doubt, due to the nature of the hearer, 
 whoever he be; of course, all meaning must be
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH 267 
 
 subjectively recreated, and for the deaf there is no 
 
 sound, and for the unmusical no song. 
 
 "Within my breast they touch a string, — 
 They wake a sigh." 
 
 Yes, frankly, it is in me, — the meaning and the 
 human value of the meaning, — but were we not 
 akin somehow, they could not elicit any such re- 
 sponse. 
 
 "There is but sound of sedges dry." 
 
 Apart from the co-operation of my soul, to be 
 sure, there are only vibrations of the ether ; it is 
 
 "In me, they sing." 
 
 But on the other hand what occurs in me is no 
 spontaneous activity of my own. It is consciously 
 a response to their initiative. They after all it is 
 who sing, although it be only in me they should so 
 sing. Man and Nature are one. As expressed 
 elsewhere by our poet with immediate reference 
 
 to the stars : 
 
 "The fire is in them whereof we are bom," 
 
 "We, 
 To them are everlastingly allied." 
 
 Any view of Nature by man from which he has 
 illegitimately excluded man, must be untrue, and 
 an offence to the Life of Man. Therefore, Mere- 
 dith, in reply to materialistic dogmatizing, lilts his 
 
 little lay of Humanism : 
 
 "They have no song, the sedges dry, 
 And still they sing. 
 It is within my breast they sing 
 
 As I pass by. 
 Within my breast they touch a string, 
 
 They wake a sigh; 
 There is but sound of sedges dry — 
 In me they sing." 
 
 Sewanee, June 25, 1909.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE— POET AND ARTIST.* 
 
 To write popularly of a man who has remained 
 obscure to the general reading public for three- 
 score years and ten since his death were not a 
 mean achievement. By an instinct no host of crit- 
 ics with battle-axes of opprobrium can withstand, 
 the public presses forward into its promised coun- 
 try. Some leader bids the sun stop in midheaven 
 while the critics are being routed in fine style. 
 "What we want comes to us. We are drawn to 
 what we want. We may not know what we want, 
 it may not know we shall want it, but apparently 
 there is that knows; the conjunction takes place. 
 With due juxtaposition a sort of occult chemical 
 process soon disposes of wanted and wanter, and 
 you shall have, whether you will or no, a new 
 compound. The x)ublic finds a Browning-poet, and 
 the result is, a public that wants — say, a Mere- 
 dith-novelist ; or, put it vice versa. At all events, 
 having found either of these men, with their won- 
 drous work, the public will never be the same 
 
 ♦These two papers were written, and appeared as a Review of the 
 Ellis and Yeats' Edition of William Blalce's worlds, published by 
 Quaritch, and are reprinted for what they endeavored to be : a 
 sympathetic impression and exposition assuming with Blake the 
 subjective truth of his psychopathic experience analogous to those 
 of all religious originators and renovators. Since the Ellis and 
 Yeats Edition, the most important publication is the Variorum Edi- 
 tion of The Poetical Works of William Blake, edited by John 
 Sampson. The Clarendon Press. A lovely reprint of the Songs of 
 Innocence and of Experience, Alderbrlnk Press, Chicago. 
 
 268
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 269 
 
 again. And as for the works of Browning and 
 Meredith — to be found by the public, involves for 
 them a change also, not exactly a beautiful ** sea- 
 change," either! What is absorbed into the com- 
 mon consciousness becomes commonplace. Is 
 there anything more repulsive than the truism ut- 
 tered with oracular pomp, as though yet likely to 
 shock us with novelty? Who knows how much of 
 what we deem true gold in the ore of Browning 
 and Meredith may not come to seem dross? It is 
 the unassimilable that alone remains the same for 
 all our gastric enterprise. And, so, perhaps, the 
 didactic elements we now so eagerly absorb will 
 be pardonable only for the sake of what goes 
 along with them, which will remain new to future 
 generations, and which, teasing them out of 
 thought, will yet have a flavor the palate has not 
 been cloyed with; or, maybe, the message will be 
 forgiven for the sake of the obtrusive style — the 
 very thing we are all but unanimous in barely con- 
 doning. 
 
 Now, if, after a hundred years, the public has 
 not found a book, and copies have become precious 
 to bibliophiles, who revel solely in books that must 
 by no means be read in order to serve sublimor 
 ends, as a species of masculine bric-a-brac, if such 
 has been the deplorable doom of a book, it were 
 hardly of much use to attempt its popularization 
 by writing popularly about it. You may got a 
 hearing; it will not. Still there are now and then 
 exceptions to every rule.
 
 270 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 Blake's works were not i^ublished as a whole till 
 six years ago.^ Before then we had selections. 
 Oh ! the damnation of being known by tidbits ! the 
 double damnation of being known through "pic- 
 turesque literature" of dilettante litterateurs ! the 
 treble damnation of being bruited abroad as a 
 posthumous genius, half mad or wholly so, em- 
 balmed in anecdotes, spirited away by critics, 
 praised as unintelligible, patronized, carefully doc- 
 tored by editors, schooled in one's art, shown 
 where one did decidedly amiss, where one might 
 have done better, perhaps, and what by all means 
 to do in the future should one be courageous 
 enough to try again, and all this when one has 
 been dead from two-score to three-score years and 
 ten. Poor Blake ! Do not number me among your 
 stabbers, right-handed or left-handed. Call me a 
 foolish lover who is not ashamed of his devotion, 
 and is quite ready to admit that the chief reason 
 he loves you so much is that you have hitherto 
 baffled him and promise to do so for quite a while 
 to come. Who can love what he can account for, 
 critically set apart, and then with prosaic glue of 
 a guarded commendation knit tightly together 
 again? You can treat your chairs and your tables 
 so if your carpenter's cunning be sufficient; but 
 your friends, your flaming leaders, your martyrs 
 of the spirit, never ! For them devout enthusiasm 
 and worship. Nothing but what is at least right 
 reverently agnostic ! If you presume to expound, 
 
 'Even then at the unpopular price, "net $25.00!"
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 271 
 
 it must be with much the feeling of him who fought 
 with beasts at Ephesus. 
 
 Some people admire the work of a fool, 
 For it's sure to keep your judgment cool. 
 It doesn't reproach you with want of wit; 
 It is not like a lawyer serving a writ. 
 
 So much for those of you who don't care about 
 the Blakes of this world! No doubt, of course, 
 you keep **cool" what ''judgment" you have, not 
 to say just a wee bit icy; and as for your "want 
 of wit", you shall be blissfully ignorant thereof 
 till the crack of doom. 
 
 I know there are those who, of another class 
 from the delectable persons addressed in Blake's 
 doggerel epigram (in which, gentle reader, I have 
 only included you for rhetorical effect) — yes, there 
 are those who pretend to understand the incom- 
 prehensible, who put on an owly stare of wonder- 
 ment at our stupidity, and think they delude us 
 into suj)posing the wise of all the ages have given 
 them a knowing wink, as much as to say, ''You, 
 too, are of us." But of such I will boldly affirm 
 that they never impose on any but themselves — 
 and their like. Of these I honestly believe are 
 few among Blake's admirers. Some, no doubt, 
 but I repeat it, few. To understand the prophet 
 Ezekiel may be to one's credit, and worth a little 
 schooling in stage art, grimaces before a cracked 
 looking-glass, and a year's bruises to attain the 
 proper grace in falling. To understand Blake has 
 not yet become a sign of intellectual superiority. 
 Among his admirers and his expounders there
 
 272 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 are, at all events, no hypocrites, unless the gods, 
 to ruin them, have verily made them mad. 
 
 One of the reasons so many have come to Blake 
 from the four quarters of the earth and inter- 
 preted him so diversely is, that if he put glass 
 over darkness a man must behold his own face, 
 do he what he please. Nor will he behold it dark- 
 ly. But, forgetting straightway what manner of 
 man he is, he will stoutly declare, "It is Blake," 
 when honestly he should have cried, "It is I ! " 
 
 Who has read Mr. Gilchrist's beautiful biogra- 
 phy and not enjoyed it? To be sure, Messrs. Ellis 
 and Yeats have demonstrated beyond a doubt that 
 Blake, when he parted company with the Swedish 
 sage and his first biographer, was not so mad as 
 the latter 's great book would insinuate. We are 
 never over just to heretics; and the newer our 
 doctrine the fiercer the fury we visit on apostates. 
 Even so mild, so sweet, so just a man as Mr. Alex- 
 ander Gilchrist could create false impressions by 
 skilful omissions of words necessary to the sense. 
 Take, for instance, the case of Blake's being mis- 
 quoted from Crabb Robinson's Diary, saying that 
 "Christ took much after his mother,"^ when he 
 actually said that He ' ' took much after his mother, 
 the Law," as his last editors have shown us.^ 
 This is one of many alterations by suppression. 
 Yet there have been shown to be not a few altera- 
 
 'Life of William Blake, "pictor ignotus" by Alexander Gilchrist, 
 Vol. I., p. 354, (1863.) 
 
 'The works of William Blake, edited by E. J. Ellis and W. B. 
 Yeats, Vol. I., p. 148, Quaritch, London, 1893.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 273 
 
 tions by substitution of words. Surely, not a crit- 
 ical way of proceeding! It may be that Gilchrist 
 saw no difference between the readings referred 
 to above. Perhaps he thought that Christ's 
 mother was so obviously not Mary, but the Law, 
 that the latter words produced a tautological effect ! 
 What Blake actually said amounts to a statement 
 that too much Judaism had survived in Christian- 
 ity; that its Founder, as teacher, was toward the 
 Mosaic doctrine, his w^as to fulfill and replace (and 
 whose child it might in poetic language be very 
 properly called), far too gentle, and conservatively 
 tender. Quite another thing from suggesting that 
 bis maternal heredity was bad! Yet when you 
 have read New Church Publications, in which the 
 God-man's double psychology is carefully account- 
 ed for by a double heritage, due to an anomalous 
 conception, Mr. Gilchrist's reason as a new church- 
 man for the omission is clear. As for Frederick 
 Tatham, the Irvingite Angel, his interpretations 
 were drastic. AVhat ages did the pious man spend 
 poking the heretical piles of Blakean manuscripts 
 as they curled, blackened, and burned in his in- 
 quisitorial grate. One thing is certain, we can 
 never be sure he was wrong, or expose his uncrit- 
 ical misinterpretations, so thorough did he make 
 his commentary, thanks to orthodox heat and the 
 omnipresent egotistic oxygen. 
 
 Hardly less respectful or scholarly were the two 
 brothers, of whom to speak otherwise than grate- 
 fully as students of Blake were ungenerous, yet
 
 274 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 whom it is not dishonest to censure as Blake's 
 latest editors have done. Let us be honest first, 
 and then generous. To take finished poems that 
 seem obscure, and, by playing a patient chess- 
 game with the stanzas, make poems that suit one's 
 fancy better, being capable of a pretty interpre- 
 tation quite modern and germane to one 's peculiar 
 thinking, is reprehensible enough, even though the 
 proceeding be inspired by misguided enthusiasm. 
 But then, if one believes in a ''mad chink of 
 Blake's mind,"^ it is, of course, easier to dispose 
 of what one does not like or understand. Much 
 trouble and ingenuity is spared. One can then 
 praise warmly, and one's warmth will do one's 
 magnanimity credit, while saving one's critical 
 faculty from any charges of aberration. Not that 
 we have not much to enjoy in Mr. W. M. Rossetti's 
 biographical sketch and critique, and in his great 
 poet-brother's selection of poems for the second 
 volume of Gilchrist's posthumously published bi- 
 ography of Blake. Still one must object in the 
 name of fairness to the high-handed fashion 
 of his reckless improvement of the original. 
 Against any such event as a really sympathetic 
 critique that should ' ' piece together ' ' the ' ' myths, 
 trace their connection, reason out their system," 
 and declare the works ''at the end of the process, 
 altogether right and fine, or even absolutely free 
 from a tinge of something other than sanity," 
 against such an enterprise as that of Messrs. Ellis 
 
 ^Prefatory Memoir to W. M. Rossetti's edition of The Poetical 
 Works of William Blake (1874) (Aldine Edition), pp. xxxviii-xc.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 275 
 
 and Yeats, Mr. Eossotti armed himself boforobanc], 
 it would seem, in tbe cbain mail of a prejudg- 
 ment.^ Sucb editors would bave arrived at a con- 
 clusion different from his! A consummation de- 
 voutly to be wisbed, some years ago, and now to bo 
 grateful for witb proportionate devoutness. 
 
 Professed finders of tbe ''key" (like Faust's, 
 that takes one to tbe Mothers of awful name), 
 Messrs. Ellis and Yeats have, at all events, turned 
 it in tbe lock back and forth and made it lift the 
 wards; they have not first picked the lock and 
 then pretended to use their key witb preternatural 
 ease. Besides, we bave the lock to look at, and 
 take to pieces, and put together again. And tbe 
 key we can try at our leisure. 
 
 It is rather delightful to witness witb bow much 
 vigor and rigor, with how much righteous indig- 
 nation, Mr. Story2 and Dr. Garnett^ throw away 
 tbe proffered key. They will have none of it. Ex- 
 cept to flourish it in the air while a fine sarcastic 
 smile plays on their countenances, and to exhibit 
 by contrast their own far simpler way of dealing 
 with the obstinate door, they bave no use for it. 
 According to them, it would seem that the door 
 consists of many separate pieces, each with its 
 particular hinge and bolt or lock. Those witb 
 bolts open, by all means, even should tbe bolts 
 
 »(Id.) p. cxxii. 
 
 'WiUiam Blake, iJis Life, Character and Genius, by A. T. Story. 
 Macmillan & Co. 1893. 
 
 'WiUiam Blake, Painter and Port. By Richard Garnott. LL.D. 
 Macmillan & Co., 1895. Published in The Portfolio, a very valua- 
 ble, cheap, and profusely illustrated monograph.
 
 276 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 shriek for rust; those with locks settle with the 
 critical sledge-hammer of imputations of insanity 
 or senselessness. In you must. What you do not 
 understand, term wild and inane. In Crabb Rob- 
 inson fashion, though with much superior intelli- 
 gence, far greater symi^athy, ''their want of wit" 
 they will ascribe to Blake, and the 'lawyer's writ" 
 they will escape by crossing a frontier beyond 
 which the fugitive is safe for lack of a compre- 
 hensive treaty of extradition. 
 
 Still it were untrue to say that these men have 
 not done, each in his way, well; particularly the 
 learned Doctor. Mr. Story should have, to our 
 mind, been more wary of a weakness for adorn- 
 ing his tale with anecdote. He positively ends in 
 making Blake ridiculous. Think of the solemn- 
 eyed seer impersonating Adam, with Kate for 
 Eve, without the embarrassing fig-leaf skirts, and 
 of the surprised Adam inviting the dumbfounded 
 Mr. Butts in to judge of the dramatic perform- 
 ance! What a tale to tell! And here do we not 
 catch the disease by quoting it? To take the 
 stories, true or untrue, remembered for singular 
 eccentricity, and without the context of usual com- 
 mon sense, from which they rose as the Andes 
 from the sea, leaving the extravagant morsels to 
 pass for samples of the whole career, is certainly 
 unfair treatment of any man, however uninten- 
 tional the unfairness mav have been. 
 
 And last, let us turn to Mr. Swinburne. Ah, 
 for once, let me confess, I enjoyed that past-mas-
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 111 
 
 ter in verbal jugglery. What eloquence! A\Tiat 
 "sound and fury" in so just a cause! What posi- 
 tive good will! ''One-eyed among the blind," 
 Messrs. Ellis and Yeats call him. Had he pos- 
 sessed "two" such eyes there would have been 
 surely nothing left for any one else to discover. 
 At all events, let us earnestly hope he will soon 
 come forth reprinted,^ leaving the edition now 
 quoted at extravagant prices for rarity's sake to 
 the bibliophile, and giving the lover of English 
 that masterpiece of criticism by a "one-eyed" 
 critic. For Mr. Swinburne does not rave in this 
 instance as of Hugo, or condescend to low lan- 
 guage of abuse as in the case of Byron. He main- 
 tains a gentle oscillation between enthusiasm and 
 criticism, and the oscillating is done in masterful 
 English. One need not care for Blake to care for 
 Mr. Swinburne's essay; but one will not first care 
 for the latter without afterward respecting the 
 former.- One-eyed no doubt he is. He has a won- 
 derful tenderness for Blake's rebellion against law 
 and established order; in Blake's anger at the 
 vaunted virtues of mere abstinence he revels. 
 Hardly, however, does he make us perceive with 
 enough clearness that Blake scorned the lower 
 virtue, born of a slavish sense of duty, only for a 
 far higher, more ethereal virtue, inspired by en- 
 thusiasm for the beauty of holiness, quite spon- 
 taneous and unconscious, the righteousness (to 
 
 'The essay may now be had in a new edition. 
 
 ^WiUiam Blake. A Critical Essay by A. C. Swinburne. John Cam- 
 den Hotten. London, 1S68.
 
 278 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 use the Pauline phrase) ''not of man," but **of 
 God." 
 
 ''Translated into crude, practical language^ his 
 creed was about this : As long as a man believes 
 all things he may do anything; scepticism (not 
 sin) is alone damnable, being the one thing purely 
 barren and negative ; do what you will with your 
 body as long as you refuse it leave to disprove or 
 deny the life inherent in your soul. ' '^ 
 
 Mr. Swinburne fails to remind us that you can- 
 not will to do anything with your body that is im- 
 pure or selfish, if the life in your soul, that your 
 spiritual faith produces, is such as Blake's. St. 
 Paul was opponent of law and apostle of faith; 
 but his object, quite as much as that of the Phar- 
 isee sect he left, was "righteousness." By faith 
 it was to be attained really. Faith was the better 
 means. The perfect knowledge of the law, he de- 
 clared, only made a man aware of his sin, his fail- 
 ures to obey it ; while perfect faith was not a dis- 
 coverer merely (nay, perhaps a concealer), but it 
 was instead a gradual remover of sin. It ren- 
 dered wilful sin impossible. Even Blake's most 
 violent and virulent antinomianism, his most ful- 
 gurant rebellion, in the "Marriage of Heaven and 
 Hell", is not a protest against righteousness, but 
 against a mechanical, conscious system of pro- 
 ducing it, which usually substitutes a hypocritical 
 "good form" for the Holy Spirit and divine en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
 'Id., p. 96.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 279 
 
 Mr. Swinburne gives us a valuable hint when 
 
 he says:* "The one inlet left us for spiritual 
 perception — that, namely, of the senses — is but 
 
 one and the least of many inlets and channels of 
 communication now destroj'-ed or perverted, * * * 
 a tenet which, once well grasjoed and digested by 
 the disciple, will further his understanding of 
 Blake more than anything else." Now, the vin- 
 dicator of other avenues of knowledge than sen- 
 sation and reasoning about sensation, he most un- 
 doubtedly was. He prayed to be delivered from 
 ** single vision and Newton's sleep."* 
 
 If the sun and moon should doubt. 
 They'd immediately go out,' 
 
 and further, 
 
 This life's five windows of the soul 
 Distort the heavens from pole to pole, 
 And lead you to believe a lie, 
 When you see with not through the eye.' 
 
 for such a proceeding leads you to imagine the 
 soul insignificant, and material mechanism of im- 
 mense significance; and surely such 
 
 Humility is only doubt. 
 
 And does the sun and moon blot out. 
 
 But to this matter of Mr. Swinburne's one-sided 
 presentation of Blake T shall return later on. 
 
 It is well to remember that to vindicate Blake 
 by quotations from the New Testament is fair. 
 He believed himself to be a Christian. He thought 
 
 •Id., p. 242. 
 
 i"Los the Terrible"! last lino. W. B. Yeats' edition of Blake's 
 Poems, p. 138. Charles Scribner's Sons. New York. 1893. 
 '"Proverbs," id. p. 99. 
 •"The Everlasting Gospel," id. p. 113.
 
 280 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 lilmself a most loyal disciple of the Master. To 
 be sure he threw the prevailing theology to the 
 vv^inds. It was to him profanely michristian. The 
 doctrine for instance, at its core, of a "vicarious 
 atonement" he denounced as immoral. \Ye have 
 this on unquestionable evidence — the Diary of Mr. 
 Eobinson. In such a unique idea of the Christ as 
 should exclude the rest of the race from a po- 
 tential realization of the same degree of God- 
 consciousness and God-power, he, most evidently, 
 did not believe. Still he did not sympathize in 
 religious matters with his friend, Mr. Thomas 
 Paine, and the rest of the radical men of his day. 
 He thought it better to believe as the common 
 people did, in the divine exclusively in one man, 
 than to believe in the divine in no man. Better 
 yet, of course, it were, according to Blake, to be- 
 lieve in God as the very Self of all. No wonder, 
 however, Mr. Crabb Eobinson, orthodox and un- 
 spiritual, was shocked, and thought Mr. Blake 
 had an insane fit when he declared Jesus was the 
 only God! yet added [may we infer a pause, 
 significant of different degrees of divine realiza- 
 tion?] ''and so am I, and so are you!" 
 
 Mr. Swinburne's one eye is excellent. The eye 
 he lacked for the task of understanding Blake's 
 message as a whole was the eye of sympathy with 
 the spirit of the New Testament and the mysti- 
 cism of the Christian centuries; this eye was put 
 out by his own paganism and positivism, so that 
 the Blake he sees is a mere Titan storming the
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 281 
 
 Olympus of Moral Codes; a liurler of lightning- 
 bolts, clutched from the relaxed hand of a slain 
 Jove, into the stronghold of traditional thinking; 
 a sort of air-clearing thunderstorm of terrific ve- 
 hemence — leaving a man to obey the spirit — 
 which, unfortunately for lack of the other eye, 
 Mr. Swinburne interprets, not as the Holy One, 
 but as one's own sweet private will! 
 
 For the labors of all these men we are deeply 
 in their debt. The student will read them all 
 again and again till he understand them (and in 
 the case of Mr. Swinburne's Essay the task 
 will be no light one), and then, obedient to each, 
 he will forget all the other critics for Blake him- 
 self, if not in the complete edition (rather high 
 priced for the proverbial poverty-stricken student 
 and poet lover) at least in Mr. Yeats' beautiful 
 little volume which contains the poems and co- 
 pious selections from the ''Prophetic Books." 
 The Aldine edition and such a volume — too cheap 
 to be good — as !Mr. Joseph Skipsey's Selections'* 
 (alas, so far, most of the people I have met read 
 Blake in these only!) he will conscientiously 
 avoid as liable to produce entirely false impres- 
 sions. He will leave (alas, many who dipcuss 
 Blake do not!) the selections of Mr. Carr^ and ^Ir. 
 Miles^ to satisfy the undergraduate and the dUet- 
 
 ■<The Poems, with Specimens of the Prose Writitigs of William 
 Blnke with a prefatory notice by Joseph Skipsey, Walter Scott, 
 London. 18 S3. 
 
 'Mr. J. Comyns Carr in Vol. Ill of The English Poets, edited by 
 T. H. Ward. Macmillan & Co. 
 
 'In The Poets and Poetry of the Century, edited by A. H. Miles. 
 Vol. I, Hutchins & Co., London.
 
 282 WILLIAM ILAKE 
 
 tante ; though surely the latter should be thanked 
 for giving Blake his mere due, as "anticipating 
 the Lake Poets," and treating him sweetly as well 
 as seriously, even if one may be permitted to 
 smile when he expresses his preference, both for 
 ''lyrical gift" as well as for ''literary finish," of 
 the "Poetical Sketches" to the poet's maturer 
 works ! 
 
 Before I plunge deeper into my subject let me 
 remind the reader that I nowise profess to un- 
 derstand fully all the mystical explanations of 
 Messrs. Ellis and Yeats. What it has taken them 
 years and years to write, it may be supposed will 
 take a reader like me years and years and years 
 to understand. I will write merely as one much 
 aided by them, feeling free to appropriate what- 
 ever has helped him to enjoy Blake more. 
 
 "I dreamt a dream! What can it mean!" 
 
 says Blake, as he begins "The Angel. "^ Un- 
 doubtedly all his dreams have meaning. Only we 
 must beware of such a slavish interpretation as 
 will claim to have a definite sense for every min- 
 ute part of every poem. The parallelism between 
 the things of the flesh and the things of the spirit 
 is never so perfect as to permit the construction 
 of a flawless allegory. The poet has the choice to 
 make between perpetual significance, with fre- 
 quent preposterousness of the tale as tale, and 
 unity, grace, charm in the poem, with occasional 
 lapses from sense. The gold of meaning has t(^ 
 
 «W. B. Yeats' edition, p. 73.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 283 
 
 suffer alloy for the sake of the formal hardness 
 that will fit it to pass current as coin. That there 
 should be meaningless i)hrases only enhances the 
 delight when one discovers the meaning of the 
 rest; shine is relieved by shade. Besides these 
 meaningless details suggest that no mere mean- 
 ing is sufficient, that no view of any seer is ade- 
 quate to the truth. The vaguely vast suggests 
 the illimitable, the indefinite, the infinite; the 
 senseless, what is too much for sense. But with 
 Blake the first thing requisite is to realize that his 
 trope is not simile or metaphor, but symbol. It is 
 not on likeness, jiicturesque or abstract, that his 
 rhetorical figure is based. It is not because of a 
 common attribute or element that two things are 
 brought together, or substituted for one another. 
 It is because the mutual relations of two sets of 
 objects are the same, that any member of either 
 series is substituted for the corresponding mem- 
 ber. To one who read the Bible by the light of 
 the Swodenborgian doctrine of correspondence, 
 a symbolic style was natural. The Lord, Israel, 
 idolatry, punishment for it, atonement; the pa- 
 triarchal husband who owned his wife, the slave- 
 wife, unfaithfulness, repudiation, recondliation, 
 constitute unfailing features of Hebrew prophecy. 
 There is no resemblance between the two series, 
 term by term. Is the Lord a married man? Is- 
 rael a buxom bride? Idolatry wifely infidelity? 
 Punishment for sin ejection from an irate hus- 
 bimd's tent? Atonement the settlement of a con-
 
 284 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 jugal difficulty to the satisfaction of the husband, 
 and the return to bed and board of a repudiated 
 wifel Yet, manifestly, while there is no sort of 
 resemblance term bv term, the relation of the 
 terms in each series is the same as of those in the 
 other. Now it is clear how powerful and familiar 
 a figure is the symbol. Into current language 
 many a one has passed from the Hebrew sacred 
 writings, so that doubtless there are those who 
 fancy it is a simile when we declare ''we are all as 
 sheep gone astray!" 
 
 Now, of course all was grist to Blake's sym- 
 bolical mill — the man he knew or heard of, the his- 
 torical characters he read about, lolots in popular 
 tales. Is an event any less fit to be a significant 
 symbol because historical! Shall not Washington 
 be ''patriotism!" To say that one has felt dem- 
 ocratic and patriotic, is not to speak half so in- 
 telligibly as to declare that one has been favored 
 by George Washington with an interview! Why 
 should not London and Canterbuiy serve as well 
 as Sodom or Babylon, or Jerusalem, provided of 
 course the reader does not take the poet too lit- 
 erally? "Persons served" in Blake's writing 
 "for adjectives and substantives" at the same 
 time, while their actions replaced verbs and their 
 grouping propositions. ^ Now this was not with 
 him a trick of rhetoric. It was native to the stjde 
 of his writing, because native to the man. He 
 was obliged, as the statuary and the painter are, 
 
 'Ellis and Yeats' Memoir, Blake's Works, Vol. 1, p. 114.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 285 
 
 to personify all abstracts in order to give them 
 visibility and make them matter for his art. AVhen 
 persons were ready to offer themselves to him, 
 why create imaginary persons'? Thus in Blake's 
 writing mythical beings of the substantiality of 
 Ossian's mist-men and women mingle with per- 
 sonages from actual life. Things "happened for 
 an allegory" to him as to St. Paul. Not that they 
 did not happen, only they ''happened for an alle- 
 gory," and their having "happened" is quite a 
 secondary consideration by the side of their being 
 pregnant with meaning. 
 
 But this manner of thinking in terms of "men," 
 "things," and "events"^ might pass merely for 
 a strange fantasticalness in the man; the result 
 of a man born to be sculptor or painter writing 
 poetry and art-criticism. We have, however, to 
 deal with another element of his stvle in his great- 
 est works, that tries the patience of the prosaic 
 reader so successfully as to constitute the ordeal 
 that bars him forever from initiation into the 
 Blakean mysteries. His stories are stationary. 
 Time is left out of reckoning. Or, to say the same 
 thing in other terms, there is a recurrence of the 
 similar, with as little consciousness that it might 
 seem tedious as there is in the sea's repeated 
 nmibling upon the beach. He was a bom musi- 
 cian. With fine ear and melodic imagination, he 
 would improvise "songs." His last earthly hours 
 
 =This habit of dealing with contemporaries has led to dangerous 
 misinterpretations, such as those of Rossettl concerning, c. ff., tho 
 relations of Blalte and the poet, Hayley.
 
 286 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 were spent "making the rafters ring" (to quote 
 his friend Tatham), with "songs to melodies, both 
 the inspiration of the moment," as Gilchrist has 
 it.i 
 
 Undoubtedly his method is a good one. Men's 
 stupidity when confronted with a spiritual truth 
 is proverbial. Iteration is not a useless expedient 
 in the class room ; and in the world, if the matter 
 be weighty, iteration and reiteration are abso- 
 lutely necessary would one gain an intelligent 
 hearing. Particularly, should the poet use sym- 
 bols which are likely to be misapprehended, it is 
 by repetitions with variation (as a melody is 
 treated in a symphonic composition) that we shall 
 be prevented from rushing on with the plot of the 
 tale into the meaningless, where the fancy dis- 
 ports itself like a lion's cub, and be brought back 
 again and again to the theme, our mind kept sta- 
 tionary, so to say, before the actual sense. 
 
 This characteristic of his style has affinity to 
 the method of the Hebrew prophets. No chrono- 
 logical, no logical sequence can always be estab- 
 lished. A unity of intention is all that we can 
 clearly perceive, which alone is enough to vouch 
 for the sanity of the poet and the worth of his 
 work. In this respect also there is a kinship be- 
 tween Blake's style and TVliitman's (though to 
 me, who love both, it seems as if the resemblance 
 of style ceases here, and has been greatly exag- 
 gerated) ; unity of mood is substituted by Whit- 
 
 ^Gilchrist's Life of Blake, Vol. I, p. 361.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 287 
 
 man for unity of plot, place, and time. The 
 ''Mood" acts as does our optical egotism, which 
 arranges all the independent elements of the land- 
 scape into an illusory whole ordered with respect 
 to our eye. Suppose, however, that ordering to 
 be unchangeably fixed with respect to one partic- 
 ular point of view — not automatically self-read- 
 justing as in the case of landscape and eye — what 
 chaos would not appear to the man for whom it 
 should be out of focus ! No wonder prosaic read- 
 ers sometimes fancy Blake and Whitman mad. 
 
 Yet even this could be to some extent condoned 
 — a certain monotony and recurrence of incident 
 — if the biographers had not quoted contempo- 
 rary suspicions of lunacy, and thus given such 
 ample evidence for a successful relegation hence- 
 forward of all Blake's works to the Bedlam of lit- 
 erature. 
 
 He saw visions! a priori that condemns him; 
 though one may feel a little uneasy, if one has a 
 bone of consistency in one's body, as to the men- 
 tal status of the Paul of the third heaven, and of 
 the John of Patmos. If a priori it condemns 
 Blake, it condemns them also. One remembers that 
 the master of these ''inspired madmen" was pub- 
 licly railed at by the intellectual aristocracy of 
 his time (not without provocation, to be sure), as 
 "having a devdl" — in plain English, as being sub- 
 ject to insane hallucinations and fixed ideas. Of 
 course, Swedenborg because he was a statesman 
 and a practical scientist was sane ; but because he
 
 288 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 was a prophet was insane ; sane and insane at the 
 same time — probably rapid interchanges of both 
 mental conditions like expiration and inspiration 
 of the lungs ! Any theory, never so absurd, rath- 
 er than to any extent accredit his seershipl 
 Boehme, without a doubt, was a harmless lunatic. 
 Insanity would not interfere with cobbling. He 
 was not born in apostolic days, nor was he a He- 
 brew prophet; how, then, could he be both sane 
 and a habitual seer of \^sions? And the rest of 
 the prophetic fraternity we shall, as sensible men, 
 find cells for, and straight-jackets if there be any 
 indications of incipient prophetic fury! Heavens, 
 how would it fare with Isaiah, First and Second, 
 Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Twelve 
 in our generation! As for the terribly efficacious 
 Elijah who left no literary or any other sort of 
 remains, and Elisha, who got double portion of 
 his master's spirit, what we should do with them 
 had they the bad taste to trouble us, is clearest 
 when left unspoken! Visions? Let us stop to 
 consider. 
 
 Not materializations of the seance-room, \isible 
 and tangible; nor ghosts or phantoms vampire- 
 like borrowing vital energy (or, in more accept- 
 able language, subsisting for us only in virtue of 
 disease, excitement, fear), and apparently objec- 
 tive, visible if not tangible; not hallucinations 
 like those of drunkard or maniac that seem to be 
 part and parcel of the objective world, taking 
 their place among things and people, of the same
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 289 
 
 order of reality to all semblance as they, and 
 therefore inspiring terror; hut visions all the 
 same, obeying the nod of the magician (when he 
 became master of himself), retreating into the 
 caverns of his brain to dwell as babes in limbo, 
 until wanted once more by the seer. 
 
 In unmistakable language Blake declared his 
 visions subjective.^ Yet he believed them to be 
 uot his creations. Though proceeding from his 
 mind, they were due to "influences set going by 
 the characters of men'' of whom he drew his "pic- 
 torial opinions," to quote Messrs. Ellis and Yeats.2 
 The thought-world is essentially one. Thoughts 
 are men, he was wont to say. To think of Ezekiel 
 is to summon his sj^irit from the "vasty deep." 
 Not that you and I see Ezekiel. "We see nothing 
 at all. If the word brings any image, it is that 
 of a book to most of us unintelligible, tedious, ex- 
 travagant in style. But Blake saw Ezekiel, or 
 rather Blake's "idea of Ezekiel," so much of 
 Ezekiel as Blake was. Blake saw the "Ezekiel in 
 Blake!" So it is with us. AVe do not see our 
 friend, but so much of him as corresponds to our 
 capacity for apprehension. Xo wonder no man is 
 to us as solid as ourself ! We get our whole self 
 and at best a fragment of ourself when we try to 
 get another! The difference between us and 
 Blake is that, accustomed to think in terms of sen- 
 sible forai, he saw what we, in his place, should 
 have merely thought. So our relations to our 
 
 'Cf. Ellis and Yeats' Worlds of Blake, Vol. I. pp. 95-96. 
 »Cf. Id. p. 123.
 
 290 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 tlioug'lits were in his case objective fellowship 
 with imaginary persons. 
 
 Now Blake desired every man to verify his 
 visions, to see for himself. All men, he thought, 
 had the same gift — only they had not cultivated 
 it as he had. The imagination makes ' ' forms more 
 real than living man," to quote Shelley. Of course. 
 For let us again consider. The inventor sits with 
 closed eyes. He sees his machine. Not as you and 
 I should, were his idea to take on iron (for flesh), 
 and deafen the ear, and trouble the eye with gy- 
 rating wheels and spinning balls and shuttling 
 rods, until we were giddy. We could then see the 
 outside. The machinist would see all the hidden 
 anatomy, so to say. For him the heart would be 
 pumping the blood visibly. We should have to 
 stop the mechanism to take it apart; dissect the 
 body for science' sake. He can let it live, yet 
 know it; and know it better because he knows 
 its life. Such is the power of vizualization. With 
 most of us it is rudimentary. You lie down in 
 an orchard in spring-tide robe of blossoms, and 
 you behold your first love, snatched back from the 
 grave; no ghost, beautiful, vital. You dare not 
 move, not even in thought, or the vision vanishes. 
 Blake would have summoned the vision, engaged 
 her in conversation, and kissed her for aught I 
 know, all the while in the snowfall of the apple 
 blossoms shaken about him by the wind. Why 
 not, pray? You would if you could. Don't be 
 jealous of him because he can. His "accomplish-
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 291 
 
 ment'* will not interfere with you. Should he 
 even kiss his vision of vour first love, it is noth- 
 ing surely taken from you that was yours; it is 
 the tribute the seen pays to the seer — the tribute 
 rendered cheerfully by the objective world from 
 day to day to the least of us ordinary human crea- 
 tures for a respectful recognition! 
 
 But you and I at our day-dreams — nay our 
 night-dreams — fasting, or after a plentiful meal 
 alike — are the sjDort of our tricksy visions ; so was 
 Blake for a season. In time, however, he asserted 
 his suzerainty over the underlords of the debat- 
 able territory; and the visions asked leave to 
 come and go, and appeared and bowed themselves 
 out as courtiers in the royal presence. No tres- 
 passing on his work-time was allowed to translu- 
 nary visitors. Never so ethereal, they had to mind 
 the rules of his daily schedule of duties. But for 
 years he struggled. It was very hard to co-ordi- 
 nate the two states of consciousness so unlike; 
 to be both seer and recorder or artist at one and 
 the same time; to use the spiritual sense to take 
 in the vision and the carnal to verify what pen or 
 graver or brush had done toward translating it 
 for the spiritually blind, into the language of mor- 
 tals. But he succeeded so well that doubtless he 
 might ask Helena of Troy to favor him with a 
 three-quarters profile, if he preferred it to her 
 less classic full-face, let us say; and she would 
 have obeyed him with the most bewitching smile, 
 and a flash of acquiescence let loose from under
 
 292 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 cloud-white brows that would brand the blue of 
 her eye forever in memory. 
 
 But Blake hated ''Memory." Not daughters of 
 Memory were the true Muses ! unless memory be 
 understood in that transcendental sense of Pla- 
 tonizers, when souls are said to come "trailing 
 clouds of glory" from "heaven" their "home." 
 Memorv as the storehouse of sense-knowledge he 
 feared, and therefore hated. If overwhelmed with 
 sensual experience, the spirit could not be free. 
 Faith in unseen spirit might be slain by faith in 
 oft-seen flesh too well remembered. It never oc- 
 curred to him that the memories (the ghosts, so 
 to say, of old sensations) could have any contrib- 
 utory value, when a new perception was possible 
 to him, better than the old ! It is the ancient con- 
 troversy between the adherents of tradition and 
 dogma, and immediate inspiration; of majority 
 rule and of the Holy Spirit; of the remembered 
 individual past and the imagined general future; 
 of the actual, rather, and of the ideal that is be- 
 ing steadily realized, but is not yet. 
 
 Still, it is hardly fair to say that in his art he 
 wilfully ignored the model. He studied his own 
 body and his wife's. ^NHiether Butts saw them or 
 not in the garden bower, we see them again and 
 again on his illumined pages. To say that he 
 hated drawing and painting from the model is 
 one thing; that he hated the knowledge of 
 human anatomy, as something that has 
 become unconscious, and only serves to
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 293 
 
 guard the hand of the artist from me- 
 chanical error, while not interfering with the 
 freedom of his mental eye, were to say another. 
 That he did not believe Titian or Rubens to be 
 artists as divine as Angelo, Raphael, and Diirer 
 we can grant. That to him to ''feel the model" 
 in a painter's work seemed reprehensible, we do 
 not wonder. Look at your model, my artist, if 
 you please, but let her be merely your anatomical 
 text-book, not your artist's bible, comprising all 
 your inspiration between head and heels as be- 
 tween cover and cover; climb hills of meaner sort 
 to practice muscles and joints before you attempt 
 Ploreb or Sinai or Pisgah! See your models be- 
 fore 5'ou paint your visions. But on the Holy 
 Mount you will have too much to think of things 
 divine, to remember your athletic feats on ordi- 
 nary hills! Titian and Rubens, Blake thought, 
 painted men and women, and gave mythological 
 names to account for nudity and lascivious atti- 
 tudes; Angelo, Raphael, and Diirer saw divine 
 beauty, and sought for means in the sensual 
 world whereby to express it in part at least. The 
 "Satanic" twain apotheosized the flesh; the 
 "Christian" three brought heaven down. So he 
 might have put the matter. 
 
 But why the "Christian" three? Why speak of 
 "imagination" in the three, and "plagiarism" or 
 "memory" in the twain? Because art is to im- 
 press the spiritual on the sensible, to inject the 
 ideal into the actual world, and realize it for men.
 
 294 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 Hence to him evangelization and art- work are one 
 calling; Christ and His apostles were the chief 
 of artists.^ Did they not make spiritual men out 
 of natural men? beautiful characters out of ugly 
 nondescript human material? 
 
 Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff 
 Be Art — and further, to evoke a soul 
 From form be nothing? 
 
 (Browning's "Pippa Passes".) 
 
 Of course not! Art of the highest sort! Blake 
 himself was prophet as well as poet and painter. 
 To sing, to draw, to color, and to preach were 
 kindred ways of doing one and the same thing. 
 But, master of two arts, it was impossible that he 
 should say the same thing simultaneously in text 
 and marginal illumination. Indeed, he never draws 
 out of the text what is there, even when he illus- 
 trates the literary works of masters like Dante^ 
 or Milton. Some measure of faithfulness to their 
 'Conceptions there must of course be, for those are 
 dictators in two republics of letters. As for Young 
 and Blair, they can be safely left in their literary 
 Hades, while the illustrator ascends the heavens 
 from first to seventh. In his own work, however, 
 it was possible to carry out his theory to the full. 
 The illustrator should give not what the text sup- 
 plies, but what it does not and can not give. Why 
 play the melody on the instrument when the sing- 
 
 'Cf. Swinburne's Essay, pp. 86-99 for a wholly un-Blakean vindi- 
 cation of Blake's work from charges of Immorality. On the "art 
 for art's sake" heresy, he would have us excuse what as a matter 
 of fact is in need (when understood) of no apology. 
 
 *Three valuable articles on William Blake and his Illustrations to 
 the Divine Comedy have appeared in numbers of the Savoy (July — 
 September, 1896,) from the pen of Mr. W. B. Yeats, with illustra- 
 tions.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 295 
 
 er gives it better? Can you not furnish hannon- 
 ies? Supply allusions, illustrations, comment! 
 Can you not follow out suggestions, develop the 
 latent? Run in sympathetic parallel, ^ in brilliant 
 paradoxical contrast? So does the true accom- 
 panist. So does the true illustrator. It is noth- 
 ing against this method that Anne Radcliffe should 
 furnish a suggestion for the Preludium to "Eu- 
 rope, a Prophecy.""' Surely she may furnish a 
 highwayman, if our national history yields a pic- 
 torial symbol for patriotism. All, as we said be- 
 fore, was grist to Blake's symbolic wind-mill. 
 Why tvind-miWl AVell, because we prefer it to 
 water-mill, bad as it is. Wind and water are 
 themselves diverse symbols. The latter signifies 
 instinct, as the former does the affections. Un- 
 fortunately for us we have no mill whose mechan- 
 ism is driven by sunlight; for sunlight signifies 
 with Blake, both brilliancy and heat, the intellect 
 fired by the divdne. Ilis mill of sjTnbolism was 
 then not even a ivind-miW, but, let us venture it, a 
 ''light-imW 
 
 And so I have stumbled upon Blake's symbolic 
 system such as we know it from his extant works, 
 but I shall reserve what I have to say about it 
 for another paper. 
 
 'It is surprising to find in Vala, for Instance, words descriptive of 
 illustrations to earlier prophetic books, and this not once, but re- 
 peatedly. Rather suggestive of the consistent unity of Blake's 
 myth, one might think? 
 
 «Cf. Swinburne's Essay, pp. 238-239.
 
 296 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE— MYSTIC. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 So far as I understand it, Blake's gospel is a 
 purely psychological one. Man is, ronglily speak- 
 ing, constituted of intelligence, affections, in- 
 stincts, and vital energy; brain, breast, stomach 
 and bones, let us say, though we are not accus- 
 tomed to assigning the latter twain a pseudo-anat- 
 omical abiding place. If there is something wrong 
 with man, it can only be that he lacks other ele- 
 ments, or that the elements he has do not co-oper- 
 ate harmoniously. Perhaps both diagnoses of his 
 dis-*'ease" are right. Blake might put it, that 
 man's four constituent elements work ill together 
 because he lacks a fifth. If he could get this fifth, 
 the other four would so co-operate as to be one — 
 no longer distinguishable. The machine has parts, 
 the organism members. If we have parts, it is 
 because we lack the organizing principle. The or- 
 ganizing principle is the consciousness (perpet- 
 ual, normal, serene) of God. The ideal man does 
 not, according to Blake, think, feel, become aware 
 of unintelligent prompting, bid his body do this or 
 that. He does not distinguish truth, because he 
 knows nought false; he does not distinguish good 
 because he knows no evil : he does not distinguish 
 beauty, because he knows no ugliness; he simply
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 297 
 
 is truth, good, beauty ; they are his attributes ; he 
 knows them directly as himself. To "understand" 
 involves contrast, discord. One has to eat of the 
 tree of the knowledge of good and of evil to have 
 a conscious morality or a conscience. The per- 
 fect man has no conscience. He has knowledge of 
 God as his Self; knowledge of himself as God's. 
 Even between himself and God the distinction is 
 due to his own incomplete development only, to 
 his partial realization as yet of God. When he is 
 perfected, he will not distmgmsh God. The time 
 will have come of which St. Paul writes, when God 
 shall be all in all.^ He will he Ilim. His last 
 properly human word will be a "declaration" not 
 of human dependence or devilish self-dependence, 
 but of a conscious divine identity. Blake, in a 
 word, is a Mystic. 
 
 The ideal man is given visions of ideals. His 
 intelligence is crystal-clear. It obtrudes none of 
 its substance between the visions and the rest of 
 the man. It does not assert its existence by re- 
 fracting the light. It is mere transparency. It is 
 self-denying. 
 
 The light passes through the crystal mind, fo- 
 cussed. A spot of fierce heat falls on the affec- 
 tions. They burst aflame. It is not their heat, 
 but the fire of the beam that ignites them. They 
 are fuel to it. They do not declare themselves 
 independent (as the combustible heart does!) nor 
 
 » 1 Cor. XV, 28.
 
 298 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 do they claim, as planets do, the light for their 
 own. They yield themselves entirely. 
 
 The flaming affections, kindled by the transmit- 
 ted ideal, set the instincts to seething. They do 
 not like polar waters persist in icy self-identity. 
 They bubble, they steam. The cauldron of their 
 sea-bed and topaz sky becomes too clear for the 
 vaporized waters. They are furious for work. 
 And lo! the steam issues — torrential energy de- 
 velops in the mechanism of the body that awaits 
 it. Not like the self-assertive flesh of the corpse. 
 It is pliant, obedient. Its resistance is for the 
 sake of completer obedience. Inertia becomes mo- 
 mentum. It works. And lo! the ideal finds ex- 
 pression in glorious looks, gestures, words, deeds, 
 and heaven sees itself mirrored on earth! For 
 the looks, gestures, words, deeds, there is no mo- 
 tive that belongs to the man. He is inspired. 
 God looks, gesticulates, speaks, acts through him. 
 He is not "moral"; he has no standard of good, 
 no choice to make. The choice was made long ago. 
 He has no righteousness, for he takes no credit, 
 nor will receive any glory of another;^ at all 
 events he is *'not good" nor will he let himself be 
 called good.2 He is "holy"; that is to say he is 
 God! Not he, but God in him, who worketh in 
 him both to will and to do l^ To God he ascribes 
 the praise if what is miscalled his ''Light'' shine; 
 for it is his, as a lantern might arrogate to itself 
 
 'John, V 44. 
 
 •Matt., xix. 17, and Mark, x, 18. 
 
 » Phil., V. 13, cf. Eph., ill, 20, et aeq.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 299 
 
 its luminousness emitted by the flame; and men, 
 who see him '* glorify God" and ''his father," not 
 him; and by so doing they rejoice him greatly, 
 whose blissful business it is to set forth His glory 
 alone !'' 
 
 Such we might say is the ideal man. Such are 
 not we. Why not? Accepting a ''fall," let us 
 give a strict psychological account of it. Under- 
 standing the "fall," we shall see our way clear to 
 a "rise." All we shall have to do will be to re- 
 verse the process. 
 
 Now, if as an evolutionist, the word "fall" 
 vexes your spirit, say instead of it "failure to 
 realize intended perfection" — perfection dreamed 
 of by Nature, and towards which she strives. It 
 is anthropomorphic language I will admit, but if 
 you talk of "affinity" and "energy" you are 
 surely not aware of how much more of that sort of 
 language you could consistently endure if you 
 tried! The plan and the building are very dis- 
 crepant. What a "fall" when you look, for in- 
 stance, from the completed architect's cathedral 
 to the foundations! Yet that "fall" is the be- 
 ginning of the real "rise" — of the realization, vis- 
 ible above the vast city some day that wots at 
 present only of her topmost towers of trade! 
 
 *John, xll, 28, and the entire seventeenth chapter.
 
 300 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 II. 
 
 Now it is exactly with this whole matter that 
 William Blake deals. Only he deals with it not 
 theologically, but poetically and pictorially. All 
 abstracts are concreted by symbolism. Urizen 
 [your and reason (?)] is intelligence; Luvah 
 [love and ah! (?)] is the affectional man; Thar- 
 mas^ is the sum of our instincts and our sense- 
 nature; Urthona (earthen, with sonorous vowel 
 changes?) is the living body or rather the vital 
 energy of that body — that which constructs, pre- 
 serves, and controls it — the physical soul if one 
 may so speak. 
 
 Now if these four elements of man were func- 
 tioning as they should, according to the previously 
 indicated ideal method, intellect would be sover- 
 eign in man as man, and immediately in touch 
 with God, the poetic genius (as Blake calls Him, 
 meaning to suggest One who makes not, but causes 
 self-making — does not give ideas, but causes men 
 to get them, i. e., inspires^). The affections would 
 mediate between intelligence and the instinctive 
 
 'All sorts of derivations have been suggested by ingenious stu- 
 dents. Mythology, biblical nomenclature, Rabbinical lore, Ossian, 
 the Kabbala, Hebrew, Greek and German roots, have been tortured 
 to yield etymologies (e. g.) ur and eisen, original iron, is suggested, 
 for Urizen. Ur and Thon, original clay, for Urthonia. Messrs. Ellis 
 and Yeats prefer "luv," Hebrew for heart, to "love" in deriving 
 Luvah. As for Tharmas, no one seems to have made a probable 
 guess. To derive the name from another personage, whose concep- 
 tion was most likely subsequent, seems hardlv prudent. Enithar- 
 mon from (z)enith and harmon(y) is intelligible; but Tharmas 
 "docked" from Enitharmon is hardly perspicuous, nor is "Tham- 
 muz" a convincing etymology. 
 
 'Cf. "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," W. B. Teats' Edition, pp. 
 171-172, and the invaluable (for the student) "There is no Natural 
 Religion." I, pp. 229-230 — (the first seven "Principles").
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 301 
 
 sensational soul; and that again between the af- 
 fections and the physical energy. These relative 
 offices are personified and named. Not the office 
 makes the man, but the man the office. Therefore 
 the true functions are said to have proceeded or 
 emanated from the respective elements, faculties, 
 or souls of man; and are symbolized by four Ti- 
 tanesses, emanations and rightful spouses respect- 
 ively of the four lords of human nature. Thus 
 Urizen (a state)- is wedded to Ahania (a space) ; 
 Luvah to Vala; Tharmas to Enion; Urthona to 
 Enitharmon. Here we have, so far, eight person- 
 ages for a symbolical myth. In terms of them 
 we can state much abstruse psychological doc- 
 trine, and never for one minute become un- 
 poetical or unpicturesque. It remains to say 
 that when the man is distraught, the faculties, or 
 souls, and their normal functions are separated, 
 miscouplcd, and assume unnatural aspects. If a 
 faculty or soul separates from its emanation or 
 function, they become mutually destructive; the 
 faculty cannot do other work properly, the func- 
 tion cannot be performed properly by another fac- 
 ulty. Adulterous discontent turns into conjugal 
 hatred. Urizen, for instance, becomes a ''spec- 
 tre" and longs for the destruction of Ahania, who 
 is herself no longer an "emanation" but a mere 
 dismal "shadow" — empty; while only in their re- 
 union can either find satisfaction. If the intellect 
 
 'Messrs. Ellis and Yoats' terminology developing a hint of 
 Blake's : the "state," standing for the "soul" ; the "space," for Its 
 "function" or relative position, so to speak, in the normal man 
 (the divine man).
 
 302 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 busies itself exclusively with things of sense de- 
 nying the spiritual, the spiritual aspiration of the 
 man must perish, or be improperly satisfied with 
 emotional nostrums. 
 
 Luvah, the affections, when the intellect, Urizen, 
 refuses to mediate divine ideals and strives to 
 reduce man to a mechanical system — i. e., to rule 
 affections by prohibitions, instincts by their de- 
 nial, physical energies by ascetic practice — Lu- 
 vah becomes rebellious, terrible, maniacal. His 
 new unnatural aspect, due to Urizen 's unnatural 
 functioning, constitutes another myth-personage: 
 Ore (=rock, or=cor). He is what the affections 
 become under carnal impulsion and rational re- 
 pression. Urthona similarly becomes Los (:=sol, 
 or sun) when viewed as causing the destruction 
 of systems of thought and conduct illegitimately 
 foisted on man by the materialized intellect. The 
 vital energies constantly break through, and hence 
 acquire a protestant, prophetic character. 
 
 Remembering further that none of the faculties 
 or souls could possibly act on the others, and co- 
 operate with them, unless it had affinities with all, 
 every lawful couple (soul and emanation) have 
 four sons (elements) with their four daughters 
 (emanations or functions of these sons or ele- 
 ments). This subdivision or filiation might be 
 carried on indefinitely. Again any number of 
 these ''sons and daughters" may be at any mo- 
 ment regarded, from some particular point of 
 view, collectively, and the synthesis personified,
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 303 
 
 and the person newly named. Of such a nature 
 are Urizen's daughters Ona, Elith and Uvith, ac- 
 cording to Messrs. Ellis and Yeats. Mnetha, the 
 ancient mother, is such a collective personage for 
 all the four souls and their emanations; liar 
 (Adam) for Urizen and Ahania, Luvah and Vain; 
 Heva (Eve) for Tharmas and Enion, Urthona and 
 Enitharmon. But into the intricacies of what 
 Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, after the most patient in- 
 vestigation and sjTnpathetic reconstruction, be- 
 lieve to be the genealogical tree of Blake's myth- 
 deities, we cannot now penetrate. Let the inter- 
 ested reader purchase or borrow their voluminous 
 work and study the matter out for himself. 
 
 Now, of course, Blake's personages must inhabit 
 a world of some sort. On no little earth of canal 
 and cabbage-field, commercial city and seaside re- 
 sort, do they live, and move, and have their be- 
 ing. Still, it is an earth much like ours. The 
 continents are there at all events. But all is 
 charged with meaning. The sunrise shall speak 
 of Luvah ; and let what happen to Luvah (or Ore) 
 and Vala, the East stands fast as the region of 
 their rightful habitation. The sun at noon, the 
 zenith, the south, towards which the summer sun 
 inclines, are Urizen's in his primal power. If the 
 conscious life begins with the affections, is at 
 full in the inspired intellect, it is last traceable in 
 our instincts and sensations. There we enter 
 through a region of twilight the hemisphere of the 
 unconscious dark. So in the sunset and the "West
 
 304 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 is the home of Tharmas, from England, as point 
 of view, the Oceanic world; while Urthona pos- 
 sesses midnight, the nadir when the sun is in the 
 zenith, the north towards which the snn, when 
 impotent in winter-time, inclines. It is quite no- 
 ticeable that the life of inspiration, so like, be- 
 cause of its trance-like remoteness from the world 
 of sense and sentiment, is never viewed by Blake 
 (as so often in mystical systems), as a ''forget- 
 ting," a sleep, an unconsciousness, or a death. 
 Only positive terms does Blake employ. To an 
 idealist like him, as to Shelley (on whom his man- 
 tle fell from the fire-chariot, all unconscious 
 though Shelley was of the spiritual inheritance), 
 unconsciousness were annihilation ; and it is safer 
 far to speak of an intenser, transcendent con- 
 sciousness, at the risk of saying what is meaning- 
 less to one's audience, than, from excessive zeal 
 for the supersedence of present conditions of 
 soul-life by those compared with which they are 
 as a death, to indulge in expressions so ambiguous 
 as to suggest a Nirvana of non-existence as the 
 goal of evolution. 
 
 We have suggested before, in passing, that the 
 sun, fire (light and heat) and the sense of color; 
 air, winds and clouds, and odors ; seas, lakes, riv- 
 ers, wells, and the senses of touch and taste; the 
 solid earth and the sense of hearing, are also re- 
 spectively assigned as symbolic provinces to 
 Urizen, Luvah, Tharmas, and Urthona as their 
 birthright. 
 
 Now, what could not find expression? Yegeta-
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 305 
 
 tion, of course, belongs to Tharmas. Tlie animals 
 are Urtbona's; particularly tbose tbat bauut caves 
 and prowl at nigbt, tbat burrow under ground 
 and dread tlie day. Tbe animals tbat love green 
 meadows and full sunsbine are on tbe limits, so 
 to say, of Urtbona's animal kingdom towards 
 Tbarmas' realm. But Tbarmas, lord of waters, 
 bas tbe fisbes and tbe great mammals of tbe deep 
 on bis side of tbe common frontier. Luvali bas 
 tbe birds of tbe air. Tbose like tbe eagle tbat 
 eyes tbe blazing sun, tbe lark tbat carols bis 
 praises liigb in rarefied air, are tbe affections tbat 
 upsoar and become instinct witli celestial intelli- 
 gence ; tbe nigbtingale stands for tbe essential af- 
 fections, wbicb voice tbemselves in ecstatic song; 
 tbe dove tbat coos monotonously sweet in wood- 
 land dense suggests tbe affections so belj^less, so 
 foolisb, so tender, wbicb take refuge in instinct; 
 tbe tame fowls of tbe barnyard are affections tbat 
 bave been perversely taugbt to abandon tbe air, 
 tbeir natural element, to live on refuse and offal, 
 smacking of tbe mere bodily energy; affections 
 tbat bave degenerated into lusts, nor bave even 
 tbe glory of lust, wbicb, as in lion and tiger, is 
 defiance of limitation, migbty assertion of sav- 
 age self-dependence. As for tbe bat, a tbing of 
 eartb, yet claiming to fly, it miglit serve to ren- 
 der gbastly clear tbe lust of mere body tbat pro- 
 tends to be an affection, but flits about only in tbe 
 dusk, wbon tbe sun of conscious intelligence bas 
 forsaken tbe east, tbe zenitb, toward tbe soutb,
 
 306 WILLIAM BLAKS' 
 
 and is speeding into the earth's shadow, the mid- 
 night at the nadir, the frore north. 
 
 One need only add that the colors have also been 
 divided by Blake among his myth-children. Green 
 and pink are the colors of life ; respectively vege- 
 table life, instincts; and human life, imaginative 
 and spiritually minded. Eed and yellow, the col- 
 ors of fire and of warm sunshine, seem to be re- 
 spectively Ore's and Luvah's, passions and loves. 
 Blue, nearest to darkness of all colors, that of the 
 sky, the illusion that seems to shut us in as deni- 
 zens of a pitiful world,^ veiling the face of the 
 universe and its God, belongs to Urthona. White 
 and black, which are not colors at all, are signifi- 
 cant of abnormal states of the soul; respectively 
 the intellect that admits no place to love, that lives 
 in the arctic snows, at war with Luvah ; and the in- 
 tellect that loses its intuitive light in the material- 
 ism of the sense-life, Urizen at war with Urthona. 
 The color of Urizen redeemed is the golden blaze 
 of the sun, both vivid light and heat. 
 
 What could not even you and I write in terms 
 of such a magnificent earth-swallowing hiero- 
 glyphic alphabet ? What a superb freedom of ut- 
 terance? What hues of meaning — for which no 
 words do, or ever will exist — cannot be subtly 
 insinuated, so that the myth should defy a ren- 
 dering altogether into the rigidly abstract, unpo- 
 etic, unpictorial dialect of psychology and meta- 
 physic I 
 
 iHence his saying "the sky is Satan," and that he had "touched 
 the sky with his stick at the end of a lane,"
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 307 
 
 III. 
 
 "What are the chief doctrines of Blake? They 
 are readily inferred. But were it not better in an 
 article meant to stimulate curiosity rather than 
 to satisfy, if we said little of a definite sort about 
 Blake's message? Let us give, however, one obvi- 
 ous caution to the student-reader. Do not expect 
 Blake, or anyone, to utter his whole message at 
 once or to keep it before you entire at any mo- 
 ment. One thing at a time, said with all his 
 might; another on another occasion with equal 
 stress of enthusiasm. Each in its turn empha- 
 sized by isolation. So all he says must go to- 
 gether. You will often be perplexed by paradox. 
 It is that the truth dwells unutterable, save by s^Tn- 
 bol, between half-truths. Every thinker, in the 
 dearth of words, has to give peculiar meanings to 
 familiar phrases.^ Only by thinking his thought, 
 do we come to understand his terminology. 
 Blake's is at all events calculated to stir the 
 imagination, even if its precise intelligible value 
 has not been revealed to you. It never im- 
 presses you as a mere cryptic alphabet, because 
 it is always in some manner suggestive, making a 
 primary appeal to the inner senses. There is his 
 advantage over other prophets, unpoetic and un- 
 pictorial. Only, it were surely a pity to rest con- 
 tent with this superficial sense. For the fullest 
 
 >rf. James Thompson, quoted by W. M. Roesettl, in his Memoir 
 of Blake, pp. cxviii-cxix.
 
 308 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 possible enjoyment of Blake one must at least 
 imaginatively (for the nonce) accej^t his philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 But why is it so difficult to ascertain Blake's 
 meaning? Why such opposite interpretations? 
 Because, as in the case, for instance, of Christian 
 theology, he was wont to assume attitudes in ap- 
 pearance mutually exclusive. ''It must be re- 
 membered," says Mr. Swinburne, "that Blake 
 uses the current terms of religion, now as types 
 of his own peculiar faith, and now in the sense of 
 ordinary preachers: impugning therefore at one 
 time what at another he will seem to vindicate."^ 
 But it were fair also to add that Blake was firmly 
 convinced that "his own peculiar faith" ivas the 
 real significance of what the "ordinary preach- 
 ers" grossly misunderstood. Therefore he felt 
 justified in calling himself a Christian, and justi- 
 fied in being bitterly hostile to the current theol- 
 ogy. Having to reckon with the usual corruptions 
 (as he deemed them) of doctrines he as surely 
 deemed divine, Blake felt bound to uphold and 
 tear down; and it was not always possible, not 
 really necessary, to state definitely every time in 
 which sense he was using a theological phrase. 
 Sometimes an epithet would make his sense clear. 
 In "creeping Jesus," as Mr. Swinburne long ago 
 pointed out, we see of course, the sort of "Jesus" 
 men have tried to exalt. Blake abhors him. The 
 
 ^Swinburne, loc. cit., p. 212. E. g., Denier of the vicarious atone- 
 ment, he yet says : "The death of Jesus set me free," "To Tirzah." 
 W. B. Yeats' edition, p. 84.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 309 
 
 Jesus that ''takes after liis mother, the law" — 
 the hybrid conception of Christianity — a religion 
 that declares the law a curse, yet would judge its 
 adherents by it, rather than by holy enthusiasm 
 and inspiration, the test of apostolic days^ — he 
 feels duty-bound to oppose with might and main. 
 
 "The vision of Christ that thou dost see 
 Is my vision's greatest enemy." 
 
 His Christ is the great vindicator of a natural 
 life, who preaches to men to be as lily, as sparrow, 
 as little child, as fruitful tree. Faith in the ideal, 
 and hope of manifesting it in one's final perfec- 
 tion — not self-schooling by a set of laws ; forgive- 
 ness of sins — not the endless legal or illegal ven- 
 detta, which were futile; spontaneous virtue — not 
 artificial righteouness ; a life from within out- 
 ward, seeing that the beginnings be right — not 
 from without inward; the setting of desire on 
 things above — not the dangerous starving and im- 
 possible killing of desire; indifference to the let- 
 ter, when sure of the spirit, to the deed, when sure 
 of the will ; the essential unity of man and God- 
 not their everlasting antithesis; the radical good- 
 ness therefore (not depravity) of human nature, 
 needing only to draw its sap from its true root 
 to become lovely in appearance; as teacher and 
 demonstrator of such doctrine, as preacher of the 
 sermon on the IMount, and utterer of the great 
 prayer of atonement in the garden of Gethsemane, 
 
 'Cf. e. g., 1 Ep. St. John. Hi, 24. and Iv, 13.
 
 310 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 tlie Christ was to him the Saviour, and in a pecu- 
 liar sense ''the very God." 
 
 "If thou humblest thyself thou humblest Me. 
 Thou also dwellest in eternity. 
 Thou art a man. God is no more. 
 Thine own humanity learn to adore; 
 For that is My spirit of life." 
 
 So said the Father to the would-be humble Jesus ; 
 and Blake adds: 
 
 "I was standing by when Jesus died. 
 
 What they called humility, I called pride." 
 
 For he saw the sublime arrogance of that humility 
 of the Christ (the humility according to Blake, 
 that Christ would have his disciples learn of him, 
 being humble as he was meek and lowly) which, 
 professing to be nothing, professes God Himself 
 to be all of him. Blake hated that false humility 
 which is meant (consciously or not) only to bid 
 God and man heap on us praises which we eagerly 
 want, and pretend not to claim only in order to ob- 
 tain more plentifully from less zealous hands '.^ 
 
 How wonderfully Blake did preach ! In an ar- 
 ticle, however, like this, without illustrations, or 
 space for plentiful quotation, his clearest teach- 
 ing can hardly be indicated. 
 
 Vast stalks of wheat droop pitifully, heavy for 
 very fullness of ear, in a graceful S-like curve; 
 two naked women, their backs turned to us, with 
 a fury of motion, daughters of whirlwind, within 
 the loop of the vast stalks, leaping on air, blow 
 out of spiral trumpets great blasts of foul blight, 
 
 'Cf. vrhltman's doctrine of "divine pride" necessary to democ- 
 racy, and to tlie higliest religion.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 311 
 
 which settle about tlie pendant ears and descend 
 in a liberal fall, hesitant, clinging, defiling, like 
 flakes of pitchy snow. 
 
 Can you not understand ? The fruit-yielding in- 
 stincts of humanity, no more erect, snaky in curve 
 because of the hurricane of ill-pent passion, ren- 
 dered foul and barren by imputations of their in- 
 herent sinfulness, that cling to ear and stalk till 
 both rot into the ground ! 
 
 An old man — hoary hair driven flame-like over 
 his forehead, garments fluttering forward, knees 
 barely able to resist the fury of the wind behind — 
 who peers into the gloom of a vault through a 
 door ajar, fain to take refuge from the storm- 
 black sky, lit only now by lurid cloud-edges ; yet 
 afraid of the unexplored mystery, and leaning 
 still, as best he can, on some old staff of tradition. 
 But above, unseen of him, out of the vault, burst- 
 ing the mason's work, branches a stout tree, with 
 all its suggestions of perpetual self-renewal, birds 
 that build nests of love, and sing the glories of the 
 risen sun! 
 
 How clear again. Life out of death — nay death, 
 only life; nor in a sense other — for is not the 
 tree, that has its roots in the grave, like any tree? 
 And further, the reason, a dotard (because he has 
 not sought the beatific vision that constitutes life 
 eternal), may enter the tomb of materialism, but 
 be sure the instincts will spring the arch and get 
 into the perfect day. 
 
 Another illumined page shadows vividly the
 
 312 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 gruesome condition, at present, of the soul. 
 Around tlie engraved text, calm below, wind- 
 roughened above, is sea. Below lies outstretched 
 the pitiful corpse of a youth, and snakes wind 
 about the abandoned limbs, and voracious hyenas 
 of the deep grin at it ready to devour. Above, on 
 a rock of the beaten shore, lies a maiden; head 
 and hair and arms hanging lifeless backward ; one 
 shining leg still kissed by the salt crests; her 
 breasts lifted shamelessly, poor corpse, appealing 
 to Heaven for pity, while an eagle, with vast 
 sweep of wings to prevent Heaven's eyes filling 
 with tears at the sight, rends greedily with terri- 
 ble beak her loins. 
 
 How suggestive ! The intellect, lost in the phys- 
 ical, devoured by lusts that wriggle and writhe on 
 their livid bellies, as they emerge from ooze and 
 slime; and by instincts, ideally intended to obey 
 it, but now masters of it, and its mortal foes. The 
 affections, also dead, resting on the vital-energy 
 (where the instincts, agitated by their own unruly 
 elements, war with them) torn by the sublim- 
 est of all, the eagle-affection for the divine, that 
 should be soaring aloft in the heaven of divine 
 imagination. But the intellect is not there, Jove- 
 like, to receive the bird, and therefore it descends 
 to lacerate and glut itself on the dead affections 
 themselves. Prostituted intellect and religious 
 fanaticism battening on the heart I What a ter- 
 rible two-fold doom! 
 
 Father and daughter embracing — white flowing
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 3l3 
 
 locks that mingle with golden — both, as it were, 
 released from a prison, and being upcaught to 
 heaven in a luminous cloud, enraptured by their 
 reunion of perfect love. That is it. Let not head 
 find fault with heart, nor heart with head. Let 
 them embrace. Let each resume its function. All 
 will be then forgotten ; all will be well with both. 
 
 A ram asleep; two naked children, one lying 
 beside it, her face hid in the short grass; the 
 other leaning over the ram, his cheek making a 
 pillow for noon-sleep of its white fleece, shadowed 
 only by his golden hair ; over them droops a tree 
 as a weeping willow of the churchyard, not for 
 shadow but for grace; in its branches, birds. 
 
 If ever a symbol of sorrow, the tree is that no 
 more. It is the sweet melancholy of perfect 
 drowsihead; and on the branches sit birds sing- 
 ing, to show that what instinctive sadness the 
 pure have, is only a nest-home and song-home for 
 the joys of love and aspiration. Reborn by their 
 mutual forgiveness it is as if old father and 
 daughter had become little children once more. 
 For them, body and sense are pure. In their un- 
 consciousness of self, which is sleep, they confi- 
 dently lay their heads on dewy grass and woolly 
 ram — and all the while in their dreams the song 
 of their purified being thrills and throbs under the 
 inflow of the divine light and heat that comes to 
 them in their ''wise passiveness." Intellect and 
 affections do not have to toil and spin. They have
 
 314 WILLIAM DLAKE 
 
 no anxieties. They are — that is enough. God is. 
 That is their bliss. 
 
 Let us take one more illustrated page. 
 
 Below, the dragon-snake twists along at furious 
 rate; his great wise head with long heedful ears 
 turned rearward, his eyes looking back to see if 
 his precious freight be safe. Above, a bank of 
 peerless cloud floats, with the new moon and one 
 star. Eiding the dragon-snake are a maiden and 
 two children. High above, in the region over the 
 clouds, flies a swan with straining neck and furi- 
 ous sweep of pinion, bestridden by a youth who 
 — between the wings, under his hair, flying in the 
 wind, that seem to beckon as it were to all that 
 is behind to follow — looks back into the traversed 
 spaces. 
 
 What should this signify, if not the intellect on 
 the wings of inspiration; affections, instinct, 
 sense, and bodily energy, creeping along in the 
 actual world; both, however, bent for the same 
 goal if by different ways and means; the har- 
 monious operation of the king and the kingdom 
 of man towards the hastening of the "one divine 
 event?" 
 
 How do I know this is what these illumined 
 pages actually signify? It is what they signify 
 to me. Other meanings besides they doubtless 
 have. These are at all events such meanings as 
 they have for one who has come to know the main 
 tenets of Blake. For the deeper student they will 
 have more. Blake himself had to study his work
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 315 
 
 as we, and often no doubt interpreted it with dif- 
 ficulty. We have this on his own admission. He 
 trusted in the law of correspondence; ''three- 
 fold vision" was usual, "fourfold" not uncom- 
 mon. 
 
 For double the vision my eyes do see, 
 And a double vision is always with me. 
 (With my inward eye, 'tis an old man grey; 
 With my outward a thistle across the way.) 
 
 • ■ • • • • • 
 
 Now I a four-fold vision see, 
 And a four-fold vision is given to me, 
 'Tis four-fold in my supreme delight, 
 And three-fold in soft Beulah's night, 
 And two-fold always. May God us keep 
 From single vision, and Newton's sleep!' 
 
 A threefold sense to his symbols there usually is 
 — one on the plane of human social intercourse, 
 one on the plane of psychology, one on the uni- 
 versal, because as man so the Kosmos. On the 
 divine plane, no doubt, at times there are senses 
 of his myths, glimpsed in utmost glory of his ** su- 
 preme delight" which eluded even Blake him- 
 self. That is the penalty we pay for inspiration. 
 "VYe build better than we knoiv. Let us also trust 
 the law of correspondence (law, or theory, or 
 working hypothesis, or poetic fancy — be it what 
 you please to call it!) which is simply the 
 thought of order and symmetry of structure in 
 the whole. All that is, has organic unity; analogies 
 are therefore to be expected; not similarities of 
 beings, and facts, but of the relations of these. 
 If all this be not so in ''reality" (as we say), it 
 is at all events a sublime poetic dream; and as 
 
 i"L03, the Terrible," pp. 136-138, W. B. Teats' edition.
 
 316 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 we would it were indeed realized in actuality (who 
 could help but ''wish it true!") let us give Blake 
 love and honor, then, for having realized it in 
 art. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Having hinted at his message through hazarded 
 interpretations of six pages of his prophetic 
 books, let us close this paper with an attempt at 
 interpreting one of the most accessible but diffi- 
 cult poems of Blake. I shall do this merely with 
 the intention of furnishing an example of the 
 method of procedure, not pretending to give an 
 instance of its indisputable success. 
 
 The "Songs of Experience" begin with some 
 manifestlv difficult stanzas. I shall furnish the 
 reader with glosses which he is earnestly requested 
 to treat as no part of the authoritative text ! Never 
 make Moses responsible for the calculations of an 
 Usher, orthodox arch-bishop though he be, and 
 Irish ecclesiastic to boot ! 
 
 Hear the voice of the Bard, 
 
 Who present, past, and future, sees; 
 
 Whose ears have heard 
 
 The Holy Word 
 
 That walked among the ancient trees; 
 
 Calling the lapsed soul. 
 
 And weeping in the evening dew; 
 
 That might control the starry pole, 
 
 And fallen, fallen light renew! 
 
 The Bard (=inspired poet) addresses the earth; 
 not the planet, but collective liumanity symbolized 
 by the planet. The bard has the jntellsct open:
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 317 
 
 he sees not only the present but the joast, not only 
 the past but the future; for he understands the 
 cyclic law of development, and apprehends every 
 condition and event in the light of cause and con- 
 sequence; his ears (=sense signifying the life en- 
 ergy of the bodily man) have received the mes- 
 sage of that Divine One that is wont to pervade 
 (in the days of human innocency) the instincts 
 and even the sensual life of man; and who calls 
 now through the bard to the '^ lapsed soul," which 
 might, if it chose, be master of the flesh (=starry 
 pole — the nadir) and rejoice anew in the old light 
 of inspired intellect. Tlie Bard cries his message, 
 infected instinctively (=the dew) with grief 
 (=weeping) because in sympathy he realizes as 
 his own the woeful obscuration of the intellect 
 (=evening) in the ''lapsed soul," of whom he 
 desires to speak to mankind (=the Earth). 
 
 O Earth, O Earth, return! 
 
 Arise from out the dewy grass! 
 
 Night is worn, 
 
 And the morn 
 
 Eises from the slumberous mass. 
 
 Turn away no more; 
 
 "Why wilt thou turn awayf 
 
 The starry floor, 
 
 The watery shore, 
 
 Is given thee till the break of day! 
 
 The dominion of the flesh (=night) is all but over; 
 from the carnal man, dormant in instincts (=dewy 
 grass), the intellect (=the sun) is about to burst 
 forth to sovereign inspiration (=the zenith) 
 through the free affections (=East) ;^ till when 
 
 'N. B. the mom. .the sun, rising In the east, and mounting toward 
 the zenith.
 
 318 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 thou art given, mankind, thy wholesome bodily 
 energies (^the starry floor, i. e., the sky that is 
 floor of the spiritual temple) and thy yet pure 
 instincts where they border on, and batter against 
 the flesh, perpetually eroding it (=the watery 
 shore) as trustworthy, requiring no reform; and 
 indicating by that which they need to complement 
 them, what the affections and intellect should be, 
 and shall become when the hour of thy illumina- 
 tion has struck (=the break of day). 
 
 Let the reader proceed to try the general indi- 
 cations given in this paper (and largely borrowed 
 from Messrs. Ellis and Yeats, who should not, 
 however, be held responsible for any degree of 
 wilful or inevitable misapprehension of their 
 meaning by the present writer) upon such easy 
 poems as the ''Little Black Boy," or the ''Little 
 Girl Lost and the Little Girl Found"; then upon 
 the longer and more perplexing pieces contained 
 in the complete edition; then let him attempt 
 "Thel," and the Prophetic books. 
 
 Now, in conclusion, let me say that the best 
 theory of Blake's system of symbology is that 
 which can deal most successfully without violence, 
 with the greatest number of difficulties. If it be 
 true, as Dr. Garnett would have us think, that 
 Messrs. Ellis and Yeats' labors have been all but 
 in vain,* we can only say: "So much the worse 
 for Blake!" For my part I find Dr. Garnett 's 
 
 'A pity that Mr. Story (Essay, p. 158,) who can himself so little 
 Interpret as a whole Blalte's writings, should feci obliged to reject 
 Messrs. Ellis and Yeats' expository methods !
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 31 'J 
 
 own account unsatisfactory in the extreme. He 
 tliinks Blake did not talk ''aimless nonsense ex- 
 actly" (something very near it, though, the Doc- 
 tor seems to imply) ; for all there is to be con- 
 scious of in his works is ''a general drift of 
 thought in some particular direction which seems 
 to us to offer a general affinity to the thought of 
 the Gnostics." Since, however, the doctrine of 
 the Gnostics (as to its intention) is all but un- 
 known; read of mainly in the distortions of hos- 
 tile refutations; we may judge of the helpful lu- 
 cidity of Dr. Garnett's suggestion! His criticism 
 of Messrs. Ellis and Yeats' interpretation of Thel 
 is to say the very least captious. 
 
 ''In understanding Blake's myth, the first thing 
 is to read him through. "^ The second qualifica- 
 tion is to be thoroughly in sympathy with Blake's 
 general view — to have mastered by sympathetic 
 study the literature that influenced him. Few of 
 Blake's critics have really shown that they had 
 these two prerequisites for successful indGi:)endent 
 interpretation. While I myself cannot honestly 
 claim either (for surely "reading him through" 
 means something like "thorough reading" — and 
 "thorough" is an exacting word) I shall hold on 
 to the skirts of the editors who have so valiantly 
 vindicated Blake and given us, from inchoate 
 manuscripts, that incomparable Book of Vala 
 ("which they fondly deem to be now in proper 
 order")' — could any one have read it and not 
 
 »B. and T. Works of Blake. Vol. I, p. 336. 
 >Wm. Blake, by Dr. R. G., p. 30.
 
 320 WILLIAM BLAKE 
 
 fondly hoped the editor's fond deeming to he 
 just? — of which let the one who would approach 
 the Prophetic Books try the ninth ''night" en- 
 titled the ''Last Judgment," and if it does not 
 raise in him a great tide of enthusiasm (solar or 
 lunar, who cares?) he can safely conclude, I fancy, 
 that for him the poetry of mysticism — poetry that 
 is rhythmic, poetic and pictorial, and yet sur- 
 charged with spiritual energy — has no attractions. 
 
 With a quotation from it let us end our lucubra- 
 tions, preparatory we trust, to solid studies. 
 
 "If gods combine against Man, setting their dominion above 
 The Human Form Divine,* thrown down from their high sta- 
 tion, 
 In the eternal heavens of Human Imagination, buried beneath 
 In dark oblivion, with incessant pangs, ages on ages, 
 In enmity and war first weakened, then in stern repentance, 
 They must renew their brightness, and their disorganized 
 
 functions 
 Again reorganize till they resume the image of the human. 
 Co-operating in the bliss of many obeying his will, 
 Servants to the infinite and eternal of the Human Form." 
 
 Such does Blake declare, he, the prophet of the 
 "Poetic Genius," to be the final judgment on all 
 religious ideals, dogmas, gods. If they proceed 
 to be enforced for their own sake, are exaggerated 
 for the purpose of making them "strong," they 
 will be cast out by the spiritual imagination of 
 the race, forgotten, till they lose their absolute- 
 ness, appeal humbly for a hearing, urged only for 
 the sake of what they can contribute to man's 
 blissful growth towards that type of manhood, 
 "the measure of the stature of the fullness of 
 
 'Cf. "The Divine Image," in Songs of Innocence. W. B. Teats' 
 edition, pp. 54-55, and "Thie Human Abstract," in Songs of Experi- 
 ence. W. B. Yeats' edition, p. 78.
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE 321 
 
 Christ," which is what man, when he understands 
 his thought, discovers that he really means all 
 along by ''God." 
 
 After the superb unrolling of dooms, which are 
 restorations, the ''Book of Vala" ends with the 
 noble prophecy.^ 
 
 "Dark religions are departed, and sweet science reigns!" 
 
 The science of God, to be sure, not the prostra- 
 tion to a man-made mystery, called myster}' be- 
 cause of its incredible senselessness, masked by 
 false reverence: 
 
 The good of the land is before you, for mystery is no more.' 
 
 The science of God, as the goal of human evolu- 
 tion; viz: to know God as one with man, as 
 identical with the eternal man ; whom we become 
 day by day if we grow at all. whom to worshii") is 
 equivalent to hatred for all things unmanly and 
 therefore also ungodly; such was the final vision 
 of the prophet, who passed into tlie unseen on a 
 chariot of fiery songs in praise of his Maker, in 
 the seventieth year of Swedenborg's New Age, 
 and the 1827th of our Era. 
 
 «Eph., Iv. 13. 
 
 •Book of Vala. Night 11. l\. 361-370. 
 
 3Cf. Bools of Vala. Night Ix. 11. 650-676.
 
 WALT WHITMAN THE POETIC AETIST.* 
 
 No doubt from time to time one meets some nat- 
 ural unspoiled ear that finds the rhythms of Whit- 
 man obvious and sufficient. Such an ear is twin 
 sister to a voice, equally natural and unspoiled, 
 and both are obedient to a soul in perfect sym- 
 pathy with the master. For the majority of the 
 duly sophisticated readers of Whitman, however, 
 who have also been students of the great poets 
 of the past, Whitman's rhythms are somewhat of 
 a mystery, savor of the occult and need comment 
 or suppression by some anti-cruelty society on 
 Pindus. They will have no doubt pondered the 
 lines in Vocalism that declare: 
 
 All waits for the right voices; 
 
 Where is the practic'd and perfect organ? where is the devel- 
 op 'd soul? 
 
 For I see every word utter 'd thence has deeper, sweeter, newer 
 sounds impossible on less terms. 
 
 No doubt being only sophisticated and afflicted 
 with the fair mind, they will have postponed all 
 criticism of a final sort, out of regard for them- 
 selves, desiring to ''keep vista" and allow for a 
 little possible development in ''soul" and "or- 
 
 *This paper appeared in the Conservator (Horace Traubel's organ 
 of Whltmanism) in response to a common request of readers wlio 
 had pondered my volume on Whitman as an Ethical and Religious 
 Teacher (long since out of print). It aims only to suggest to the 
 classically trained what angle of vision he might adopt towards 
 Whitman for his own greater edification. 
 
 322
 
 WALT WHITMAN 323 
 
 gan;" but they have been occasionally not a little 
 impatient, and who knows perhaps even a little 
 skeptical ? 
 
 It appears to me that a few prefatory words, 
 with which AVilliam Blake would fain have per- 
 suaded a public — deaf as the proverbial adder to 
 the voice of this and many another charmer — to 
 thank him for his wholly inopportune gift of Jeru- 
 salem, are quite suggestive when read by the per- 
 plexed student of Whitman's chants: 
 
 ''AYlien this verse was first dictated to me T con- 
 sidered a monotonous cadence like that used by 
 ]\[ilton and Shakespeare and all writers of Eng- 
 lish blank verse, derived from the modem bond- 
 age of rhjiiiing, to be a necessary and indispensa- 
 ble part of verse. But I soon found that in the 
 mouth of a true orator such monotonv was not 
 only awlvward, but as much a bondage as rhjTiie 
 itself. I therefore have produced a variety in 
 every line both of cadences and numbers of sylla- 
 bles. Every word and every letter is studied and 
 put into its place: the terrific numbers are re- 
 served for terrific parts, the mild and gentle for 
 the mild and gentle parts, and tlie prosaic for 
 the inferior parts; all are necessary to each 
 
 OTHER." 
 
 As we let this little paragraph settle in the 
 mind for a moment or two, we perceive several 
 ideas coming to the surface. The accusation of 
 "monotonous cadence" blasphemously launched 
 against Shakespeare and Milton amounts to noth-
 
 324 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 ing more than the observation that their rhythm 
 demands a strained, unnatural utterance, such as 
 *'a true orator," desiring to give speech its full 
 meaning and full passion, would find awkward, 
 and as serious a bondage as "rhjTue." There is, 
 no doubt, a delight in this unnatural utterance, 
 but it is not such delight as is obtained from those 
 living, unconscious rhythms which flow from the 
 mouth of the masterful, ingenuous speaker, caus- 
 ing all to follow him. 
 
 As tlie water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, any- 
 where about the globe. 
 
 Now, it is not a question of better or worse. It 
 is merely a different sort of delight. Shake- 
 speare and Milton strove to compel their thought 
 and passion to obey pre-existing laws of utter- 
 ance. The repression of their energy gave them, 
 and gives us, a joy of ''will," and a sense of 
 ''security." "Whatever the spirit might intend, 
 a body was prepared for it, apparently from the 
 foundation of the world. The boldest, most dread- 
 ful thoughts, the most agonizing or fatal pas- 
 sions, found an aesthetic lord able to keep them 
 in check — a tyrant of rhythm — that would wisely 
 yield them much scope, yet hold its own in the 
 end as vicegerent of the supreme will and pleas- 
 ure of man. That the tyrant gave them scope, 
 proves not his weakness but rather his sense of 
 abundant power. He played with rebellious 
 thoughts and wrangling passions; he gave them 
 some show of freedom; but he knew himself all
 
 WALT WHITMAN 325 
 
 the while to be that fate to which even the gods 
 bow gracefully, and before whom the titans 
 cringe. He left them the foreground of the stage, 
 and smiled from behind the scenes at the uncriti- 
 cal public. 
 
 Blake and Whitman, however, do not desire to 
 compel — but to expel. Their inspiration is their 
 absolute and sometimes whimsical lord. They 
 cheerfully yield their souls into his hands. Not 
 compression therefore — there is no independent 
 aesthetic will to exercise any dominion — but ex- 
 pression, is what they desire. Their thought and 
 passion create rhythms that shall not disguise, 
 but reveal them in absolute nakedness ; nay, more, 
 that shall set them in the most promulgatory 
 light. The beauty — if beauty there is to be — 
 must be such as the thought and passion inher- 
 ently possess, or it will exist in the beauty of their 
 unconscious groupings or contests. The unity 
 will be that of despotic inspiration; that which 
 arises in nature everywhere at the fortunate mo- 
 ment, through the triumph of the strongest, the 
 fairest, the proudest. Out of chaos comes cos- 
 mos, out of the furious multitude arises the dic- 
 tator; and when no one theme, no one feeling, 
 produces an organic whole out of conflicting ele- 
 ments, even then there is the one impression, as 
 of the sea, produced by the million waves beating 
 against one shore in the end, affecting the single 
 soul of the reader, and compelled thereby to sub- 
 stantial or dynamic unity.
 
 326 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 If the traditional aesthetic procures us the sense 
 of security, a subtle assurance that the will of 
 man is lord over the tumultuous titans of pas- 
 sion and the younger gods of thought, the revo- 
 lutionary aesthetic gives us the sense of abund- 
 ant resource, of inexhaustible supply, immortal, 
 victorious thoughts, mutually independent, pas- 
 sions in tyrannous, unsubjugated multitudes. 
 Here we get a glimpse of that abyss yawning be- 
 tween so-called aristocratic and so-called demo- 
 cratic art. 
 
 Have you thought there could be but a single supreme? 
 
 There can be any number of supremes — one does not counter- 
 vail another any more than one eye's sight countervails 
 another, or one life countervails another. 
 
 Yet there is not chaos after all. For the order 
 which we fancy due to laws imposed from with- 
 out, is really due to the equilibrium, at each mo- 
 ment, of the contending forces, and stability is but 
 an illusion arising from succession too swift for 
 ocular analysis. To this law of unity we shall 
 again revert. 
 
 The rhythms, witH what for brevity without sus- 
 picion of disparagement, we shall denominate the 
 old aesthetic, must always finally recur to a defi- 
 nite type. In the new aesthetic they acknowl- 
 edge no type, preexistent, to which they might re- 
 turn. The rhythms are free, picturesque, taking 
 their suggestions afresh every moment, fearless 
 of discords, duly resolving them, allowing for 
 long suspense; yielding a voluntary homage to 
 some leading and especially representative mood
 
 WALT WHITMAN 327 
 
 or thought, so that a theme may come again and 
 again, though never unchanged; disporting them- 
 selves in wistful or wilful variations on it, teas- 
 ing with suhtle reminders, rendering breathless 
 with impatient suggestions; sometimes abreast 
 with, sometimes lagging behind, sometimes audac- 
 iously outspeeding the thought or feeling, like an 
 accompanying light of the eye, or a smile that out- 
 lingers its cause, or a gesture that comes quicker 
 than the words. In the fullest sense, to be sure, 
 this description applies only to AMiitman's work 
 at its best. Still in Blake there are many pre- 
 monitions and occasional illustrations of the meth- 
 ods that belong to the ''democratic'* aesthetic of 
 the Camden sage. 
 
 Now the second thought in Blake's quoted 
 paragraph that startles the reader is the an- 
 nouncement that provision must be made for ^'pro- 
 saic" strains to utter the ''inferior parts" — be- 
 cause, forsooth, "all are necessary to each other." 
 The "inferior parts" are wanted, if not for them- 
 selves, yet to give height to the terrific parts by 
 their flatness. To conceal their inferiority by 
 a sort of rhythmic leveling, or by building up si- 
 erras of cloud on the plain, so as to rival the ice 
 mountains on the horizon — were not only a spe- 
 cious fraud, which the reader would detect, and, 
 in our age of "scientific conscience," resent (and 
 who must not resent, now and then, a passage of 
 Shakespearian rant, or occasional hollow boom- 
 ings and rattlings of phrase in Milton?), but
 
 328 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 worse, far worse (aesthetically speaking) it were 
 to lose the power of contrast — the leap of the ec- 
 static line out of the abyss of prose rhythm, to al- 
 titudes where it passed out of the region of the 
 earth's attraction, to fall with accelerated veloc- 
 ity into the sun — a jubilant spiritual energy, that 
 hurries the soul to God. 
 
 II. 
 
 Whatever his most hostile critic may affirm, 
 fairness will require that he admit how far from 
 indifferent was Whitman to rhythm. Let any- 
 one compare the changes made in such passages 
 of the famous 1855 preface when utilized as ''ma- 
 terial" for the poems ''The Answerer" and "By 
 Blue Ontario's Shore." Sometimes a score of 
 words or so are transferred unchanged — but then 
 they were already far too picturesquely rhyth- 
 mical for prose. More usually changes commend 
 themselves, whereby concision is obtained and 
 greater musicalness of diction. His perpetual re- 
 visions of poems from edition to edition were due 
 to open air tests, declaiming, chanting, nay, sing- 
 ing them, his ear rendered fastidious by long ab- 
 sorption of sunrise and sunset solos of birds^ or 
 the orchestral performances of wind in the trees 
 and bushes and grass, or the everlasting sea. 
 "Ilis rh3^thm and uniformity," to qiiote his own 
 words (In He AYalt Whitman, p. 16), "he will con- 
 ceal in the roots of his verse not to be seen of
 
 WALT WHITMAN 329 
 
 themselves.'* In the thought and tlie passion real- 
 ized is the secret of the discovery of liis "rhythm" 
 and "uniformity." Once think and feel with the 
 poet, he as it were hypnotized by him, and speak 
 out his soul, and the "rhjihm" that satisfied the 
 ear of Whitman will delight yours, and the "uni- 
 formity" he saw will flash upon your eye like a 
 vision. In fact, when the "roots" are in you, 
 the rhythm and uniformity will, to quote his own 
 words again, "break forth loosely" out of them 
 "as lilacs on a bush" (only give the bush time to 
 grow and bud!) "and take shapes compact as the 
 shapes of melons or chestnuts or pears." 
 
 The more abstruse question of Whitman's "uni- 
 formity" is not one I feel disposed to write upon 
 now. Tlie analysis of such an easy poem as "War- 
 ble for Lilac-time," for instance, will suffice to re- 
 veal what is the structural principle of Whit- 
 man's poems. He has there set himself the task 
 of celebrating "lilac-time," the "bush" he loves, 
 "with dark green heart-shaped leaves." What 
 will he do? To him the true poem is better than 
 anything he could feign. But the true poem that 
 is his remembered and passionately loved experi- 
 ence is, after all, a piece of untransferable na- 
 ture. It is not only rooted in definite space, but 
 it refuses to come save at fixed seasons. Besides 
 it comes again and again, here and there. The 
 poet has lived through many lilac times. He has 
 loved many lilac bushes. All these experiences 
 are the concrete material out of which his con-
 
 330 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 cepts, ' nilac-time, " *' lilac-bush," are distilled. 
 These extracts, or rather abstracts, are not val- 
 ues themselves. They are mere representatives 
 of value. They are counters for the easier trans- 
 action of intellectual business. Whitman's poem 
 on lilac-time and lilac-bush will be not the dis- 
 tillation doubly distilled and beautifully bottled 
 in a fashion that shall gratify the eye, but the im- 
 aginative recreation of the concrete experiences 
 whence were abstracted the concepts; the repro- 
 duction to the sense almost of the realities whose 
 values they are taken to represent. Prose deals 
 with the abstract tokens of value. Poetry causes 
 us to visualize the values themselves. So the 
 poem of Walt Whitman will give us a list of 
 ** things, facts, events, days, qualities," enlarging 
 on some, allowing but one epithet for others, until 
 he will give us the very feeling of springtime, 
 *Hhe restlessness after I know not what" — all in 
 fact that suggests itself to his mind, "exhaustless 
 and copious" almost as nature itself, at the men- 
 tion of the abstracts "lilac-time," *' lilac-bush. " 
 The law of order whereby they are strung as 
 *' shells" by ''children" is not the order of time, 
 or the order of actual experience, or proximity of 
 space, or logical concatenation. It will be the 
 order of ''recollection." That is, the order will 
 be neither temporal, local, logical nor biographi- 
 cal, but psychological. By association — that is, 
 resemblance and contrast — along the lines of least 
 mnemonic resistance will a whole be created. He
 
 WALT WHITMAN 331 
 
 will pass from the mention of the sparrow to 
 that of swallow and high hole — the golden wings 
 of the latter suggest ''sunny haze" that recalls 
 smoke and vapor, and the shimmer of waters 
 through them; the waters, in turn, ''all that is 
 jocund and sparkling" — brooks and maple-woods 
 whose leaves twinkle, and make a music like them ; 
 from the maples to sugar making, and the crisp 
 February days; from those to the robin, the first 
 songster of the year; through him to the sprout- 
 ing of trees, and thence to the sprouting of the 
 soul — the wish to be as a bird gliding through 
 the air — nay, as "a ship o'er the water." When 
 the poem is finished you and I have lived through 
 all the springs of Whitman, and we know the 
 meaning, nay, the manifold, physical and spiritual 
 meanings of "lilac-time" and "lilac-bush"; we 
 have concreted the abstracts, we have realized 
 their values, we have had the "true words" that 
 are realities, not signs. 
 
 On the same principle are constructed all his 
 poems, more or less, although it must be confessed 
 Walt Whitman, for all his conscious rebellions, 
 protests by far too much, and not so rarely is 
 blithesomely inconsistent, ay, I dread to say it, 
 very conventional and wholesomely old-fashioned. 
 But, where this new structural principle is least 
 obvious there it creates the greatest amazement to 
 its discoverer in the end. AMien one takes a larger 
 poem, to study out the "uniformity" or vital or- 
 ganic unity, as, for instance, "By Blue Ontario's
 
 332 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 Shore," after carefully rereading the materials in 
 the preface (as before suggested for a test of 
 rhythm) one is more than amazed. One is ready 
 to regard the law of composition ** concealed'* in 
 such a poem as the '*Song of Myself" with some 
 degree of reverence. One will not hazard even — 
 without much thought — an absolute '* anathema" 
 upon the ''catalogues," no matter how long and 
 terrific. One will be inclined to concede to Whit- 
 man's biographer (or to Anne Gilchrist and the 
 rest) that they would be delightful to us, if we 
 had the poiver to concrete each concept in turn, 
 for ourself, to get our poet's vision at each ver- 
 bal suggestion. For most of Whitman's readers, 
 however, the poetic madness is lacking — and to 
 them the catalogues must remain horrible indi- 
 cations of Whitman's stupendous energy of soul 
 and imaginative explosiveness ready to devastate 
 a world of commonplace at a touch from a mere 
 word which to us is perfectly unaggressive, unex- 
 citing, nay, as dead as an obsolete term whose 
 obsequies have been duly performed by the lexi- 
 cographers. 
 
 ni. 
 
 But our modest purpose in this paper is to 
 offer a few suggestions to the bewildered student 
 of Whitman's rhythms. 
 
 Ehythm in English verse arises from the ar- 
 rangement of stressed syllables with respect to 
 one another, and with respect to the unstressed
 
 WALT WHITMAN 333 
 
 syllables. If one knows what are the stressed syl- 
 lables, and reads according to such knowledge, the 
 rhythm becomes audible to the most unerudite and 
 inexpert listeners, the source of a pleasure more 
 or less intense according to his self-abandonment 
 thereto. Now in our language the difficulties in 
 immediately recognizing the stressed syllables 
 (unless the rhythm be very obvious and mechani- 
 cal) are not always few or easily disposed of at 
 the first reading. Of course in the case of poly- 
 syllables the main accent is fixed by use. Yet 
 there are even then not infrequently conflict- 
 ing usages. The poet may choose the one the 
 reader is not accustomed to, and the reader, ig- 
 norant of the fact, may find the rhythm painful to 
 his ear. In a language like ours, spoken over the 
 whole globe, in conflict with other tongues, sub- 
 jected to the affections of vocal organs by various 
 climates, the varieties of pronunciation are apt 
 to be many. In Rome we do as Rome does. "With 
 "Whitman we pronounce according to Whitman, 
 not according to Webster, far less, according to 
 Walker. 
 
 Further, anyone who has an ear discovers 
 that the same word is liable to diverse pronuncia- 
 tion in the mouth of the same man under the con- 
 trol of different moods or with a different inten- 
 tion. We say ^^ unknown/'* yet in the line. 
 
 By mc the hemispheres rounded and tied, the unknown to the 
 known, 
 
 •Throughout this paper Italics indicate the syllable that has the 
 stress.
 
 334 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 the necessity of rendering the antithesis in the 
 words sufficiently emphatic suggests quite una- 
 wares to us the pronunciation unknown, or at 
 least un-known. In fact, any syllable of a word 
 may recover its accentual importance if that por- 
 tion of the meaning of the whole word, which it 
 stands for, is emphasized by thought or passion. 
 Compound words are naturally more liable to such 
 restorations of syllables to their full independent 
 worth, when the elements are both still current 
 as separate words in usual speech, and, for in- 
 stance, in the first strophe of the second part 
 of ^'This Compost" occur ''apple-buds," ''apple- 
 branches," "willow-tree," "mulberry-tree," "he- 
 birds, " " she-birds, " " new-born, " " maize-stalks, * ' 
 "dooryards." The question presents itself at 
 once, shall they all be given only one word accent 
 apiece, or shall both component words receive 
 separate stress, the major stress of course on the 
 distinctive syllables? For my own part, I should 
 give them each two word accents. This I say after 
 reflection and careful experiment. They occur in 
 a series of vernal pictures. There is a delightful 
 superabundance of light syllables, to suggest the 
 "rising" and "laughing" of life. There is a ca- 
 ressing tone in these compound words. Usually 
 "apple" gets the main accent, to distinguish 
 apple trees from pear trees, etc., and apple buds 
 from pear buds. Here, however, the attention is 
 called to the "buds" being on the "trees." Hence, 
 either the usual accent will have to be superseded,
 
 WALT WHITMAN 335 
 
 or it will have to be accompanied by another 
 stress : — 
 
 The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree. 
 
 Not, however, over these alone. All trees in 
 turn shall share in the new life. ''Trees," there- 
 fore, should have a stress as well as ''willow" or 
 "mulberry." The same reason applies to "he- 
 birds" and "she-birds." The separate sex func- 
 tion of birds of the same species — the conception 
 of them as one yet twain — demands the double ac- 
 cent. Analogy would settle the case of "maize- 
 stalk" and "dooryard," since appearing together 
 in one verse, as do the other couples of compound 
 words. "New-born" follows the same rule, as it 
 here has the function of a noun — making "l)orn" 
 emphatic — while "new" is the key of the word 
 of the whole strophe. Let us print then the whole 
 strophe, italicizing the stressed syllables for the 
 reader's convenience: 
 
 "Behold this compost\\ heholdit well! 
 
 Perhaps | ei'cry mite j has once form'd part \ of a sick person | — 
 
 yet I behold. 
 The grass of spring \ covers the prairies, 
 
 The bean bursts \ noiselessly through the mould | in the garden, 
 The de/ioato spear of the onion | pierces upward, 
 The apple buds | cluster together \ on the a7)ple branches, 
 The resurrection of the wheat appears \ with pale visage | out of 
 
 its graves. 
 The tinge aivakes over the u'lHow-^ree and the mulhcrry-trce, 
 The he-birds carol \ mornings and evenings | while the she-birds sit 
 
 on their nests, 
 The younq of poultry \ break through the hatch'd eggs. 
 The new-born of onimals appear, | the calf is dropp'd from the cow, | 
 
 the colt from the mare. 
 Out of its little hill | faithhiWy rise | the potato's dark green leaves. 
 Out of its hill I rises the j/eflow maite-stalk, \ the Zilars bloom in the 
 
 dooryards. 
 The summer growth is innoeent and disdainful above all those 
 
 strata of sour dead.* 
 
 •In the above piece an upright bar has marked the rhythmJc 
 pauses.
 
 336 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 But several points of importance have been 
 taken for granted. When a verb in English has a 
 preposition that is part of its meaning separated 
 from it, it loses its own accent, becomes practically 
 an auxiliary verb, while the preposition does 
 duty as verb. In "to go over to the enemy's 
 camp," evidently *'go" has no accent. Should 
 you separate it from its preposition by an adverb, 
 as in *'to go immediately over to the enemy's 
 camp," the case with ''go" would not be altered. 
 Wlien, however, verbs which are independent in 
 their ordinary use are by the poet treated as 
 compounded with some preposition, they should 
 be so treated by the reader, except that probably 
 the verb will not wholly abdicate its function, nor 
 utterly lose its accent. To ''rise out," for in- 
 stance, in the case of the potato and the maize 
 stalk, is treated as separately accented. To 
 "break through," similarly uttered, makes the 
 rhythm of the line particularly striking, as it cor- 
 responds to the " hatch 'd eggs," which evidently 
 Whitman was afraid would be pronounced "hatch- 
 ed eggs" by some tinkerer of his verse, for he 
 carefully, as usual, eliminated the "e," which he 
 did not want artificially revived. The last two 
 words of the strophe just rhythmically analyzed 
 must come in as two sharp staccato notes. Only 
 then do they answer to the lines in the previous 
 strophes : 
 
 7s not eT;ery continent work'd \ over and over [ with sour deadf 
 Where have you drawn off | all the foul liquid and meatf | 
 I am sure I shall expose | sorne of the foul meat.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 337 
 
 In these lines we note a resemblance not mere- 
 ly of topic and words but of harshness, ugliness 
 in the rhythm. 
 
 The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above [ all those 
 strata of sour dead. 
 
 The first part of the line by its light syllables 
 is shockingly contrasted with the last ,whose sylla- 
 bles are heavier. But a staccato utterance alone 
 brings out the full force of the disgust and fear, 
 that want to get rid of each word as quickly as 
 possible. Now this at once forces us to consider 
 the matter of other stresses besides the usual 
 word accents of polysyllables and compounds 
 that are semi-independent. In strophe eight of 
 ''When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom 'd" we 
 find ourselves confronted with a line wholly made 
 up of monosyllables : 
 
 Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd 
 
 Clearly many ways of uttering these words of- 
 fer themselves. The logical, the emotional, and 
 the syntactical stresses, according to our under- 
 standing and feeling, and parsing of this line, will 
 offer a great variety of rhythmical interpreta- 
 tions. Without discussing discarded readings, let 
 me give my own: 
 
 Xow I knoro what \ you must have meant | as | a month since \ I 
 xcalk'd. 
 
 The poet compares his present knowledge to 
 his former ignorance, nouK 
 
 His knowledge is not mere information, but the 
 fruit of a great personal sorrow: know.
 
 338 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 The mystery, now known, was long a problem, 
 one that even kept him awake (for something, | I 
 know not U'hat, | kept me from sleep), and re- 
 ceives, therefore, an emotional stress: what. 
 
 The western star signifies that mystery and, as 
 the following lines indicate, strove to express it- 
 self in a most personal way : you. 
 
 We give no stress to ''must," as it does not here 
 mean ''compelled," but acts as a mere auxiliary 
 to the verb: meant. 
 
 *'A month since" is an adverbial phrase sepa- 
 rating the conjunction "as" from its clause, "I 
 walk'd." In order to make the words intelligible 
 we are obliged to pause after "as," and give it 
 besides a sort of stress so that its full binding 
 force shall be felt at once, creating a rhythmical 
 suspense: hence it gets what I have ventured to 
 term the syntactical stress : as. 
 
 The rest of our interpretation is obvious. Now 
 this line, as interpreted, is undoubtedly harsh. 
 One may grant it is more significant than such an 
 utterance of it as this: 
 
 Now I know I what you must have meant \ as a month since \ I 
 walk'd. 
 
 The latter is undoubtedly more musical. If it 
 stood alone we should have no hesitancy in set- 
 tling on it. But the reason we can justify our 
 choice of a harsh, deeply passionate interjoreta- 
 tion is not only that it is forced upon us by the 
 meaning and feeling of what follows but that its 
 discords are resolved, and wanted to justify the
 
 WALT WHITMAN 339 
 
 resolutions which the poet has provided. Let me 
 give the entire somewhat difficult strophe: 
 
 O Western orb | saiVing the heaven, 
 
 Now 1 know what | you must have meant as | a month since | I 
 
 walk'd. 
 As I xoalk'd in silence | the transparent shadowy night, 
 As I saio you had something to tell \ as you bent to mo | night after 
 
 nvjht, I 
 As you droop'd from the sky \ low down as i/ to my side \ (while 
 
 the other stars \ all look'd on,) 
 As we wander'd together the solemn night, \ (for something | I 
 
 know not what | kept me from sleep,) 
 As the night advanc'd, | and I saw on the rim of the west | how /u/Z 
 
 you were of u'oe, 
 As I stood on the rising ground in the 6ree»e | in the cool transparent 
 
 night. 
 As I v;atch'd where you pass'd \ and was lost in the ne</ierward 
 
 black oi the night. 
 As my soul | in its irouMe dissatisfied | sank, as where \ you sad orb. 
 Concluded, \ dropt in the night, | and was gone. 
 
 It is quite noticeable in this strophe that the 
 two parentheses are rhythmically as well as 
 otherwise interruptions. Kead the strophe with- 
 out them and the rhytlim would become over mo- 
 notonous. They suspend the sense, and they sus- 
 pend similarly the rhythm. Towards the end sev- 
 eral lines repeat almost the identical movement, 
 till the last line but one returns to the heavy 
 movement of the second verse and of the first 
 parenthesis, to let the strophe end with the three 
 rhythmic beats of the last verse. 
 
 The so-called new aesthetic, as it has no 
 "rhythmic accent" (that is, a syllable otherwise 
 light made heavy, for the nonce, by the exigencies 
 of the verse), recognizes no ''rhythmic pauses" 
 which are not also grammatical or rhetorical 
 pauses. When the burden of the thought or feel-
 
 340 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 ing is best implied by silence, or the suspense tliat 
 fears to know at once definitely, or the exhaustion 
 that renders breathless, demand it, a somewhat 
 longer pause will naturally be made. This pause 
 Whitman takes into rhythmic account, as, for in- 
 stance, in the line already twice quoted: 
 
 The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above | . . . [all 
 those strata of sour dead. 
 
 In "Out in the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," the 
 fifth strophe furnishes another handy instance: 
 
 Till I of a sudden, 
 
 Mayoe kill'd, ( xmknown to her mate. 
 
 One {ovenoon \ the she-bird crouch' d not on her nest, 
 
 "biov return' d \\ that afternoon \\ nor the next, \\ 
 
 Nor ever appear'd again. 
 
 If, in the last line but one, there be not made 
 special long pauses (indicated by two bars), the 
 strophe will not give the ear a sense of rest at 
 the full stop. All through the bird's song, quoted 
 in this rich poem, pauses are needed. 
 
 Soothe! 1 1 soothe/ j | soothe! 
 
 Close on its wave f soothes the wave \ behind. 
 
 And again | another behind | embracing and lapping, \ every one 
 
 close. 
 But my I love \ \ soothes \ not me, 1 1 not me. 
 
 Who can fail to appreciate the exquisite mel- 
 ody, verbal and rhythmic, of these lines: 
 
 Over the sterile sands | and the fields beyond, | where the child | 
 leaving his bed | wander'd alone, ( bsre-headed \ barefoot. 
 
 For more than once \ dimly, down to the beach | gliding j 
 
 iStlent, I at'otc?ing the moonbeams, | blending myself with the 
 shadows, 
 
 I, with bare feet, \ a child, \ the wind wafting my hair, 
 
 Again : — 
 
 Listened [ long || and long. 
 
 The boy \ ecstatic, \ with his bare feet the waves, | with his hair the 
 aimosphere dallying.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 341 
 
 How (leliciously does he vary the same refrain- 
 like verses ! 
 
 From under that yellow half-moon \ late-risen | and swoHcii as if 
 
 with tears. 
 O under that moon | whoro she droops \ almost down into the sea. \ 
 The yellow halj-moon \ enlarged, | sagging dovm, | drooping, \ the 
 
 face of the sea almost touching. 
 
 Let me transcribe the closing portion of the 
 poem as a help to the troubled reader in weighing 
 the value of these suggestions towards an appre- 
 ciation of the technique of Whitman. Surely, if 
 ever a poem in its entirety will attest his genius 
 as rhytlunist, even to the beginner, it is this poem 
 (unless, perhaps, he prefer the ''Prayer of Colum- 
 bus," which is equally marvelous in its simple and 
 affecting modulations). 
 
 Demon or bird! | (said the boy's soul,) 
 
 Is it indeed \ toward your mate \ you sinfjf \ or is it really to mef 
 
 For /, II that ivas a child, \ my tongue's use sleeping, || now I have 
 
 heard you, 
 Now I in a moment I know \ what I am for, I I awake, || 
 And already a thousand singers, \ a thousand songs, \ clearer 
 
 louder \ and more sorrowful than yours, 
 A thousand warbHng echoes \ have started to life within me, | nei-er 
 
 to die. 
 
 O you singer \ soZitary, j singing by yoursf//, | pro;Vding me, | 
 
 solitary me \ listening 1 1 never more shall I cease perpc/uating you, 
 
 Never more shall I escape, | nct-er more the rcrerberations. 
 
 Never more the cries \ of unsatisfied love \ be ateent from me. 
 
 Never again \ leave me to be | the peaceful child I was \ before what 
 
 there \\ in the night. 
 By the sea | wnder the yellow and sagging moon. 
 The messenger there | aroj/.s'rf || the fire, \\ the sweet hell withtn, | 
 The unknown want, \ the destiny of me. 
 
 O give me the clew.' j (it lurks in the night here somewhere,) 
 O if I am to have so much, \ \ let mc ha\e moref 
 
 A word then, \ (for I will conquer it,) 
 
 The ivord j jfinal, I superior to all. 
 
 Subtle, I sent up ] \ — what is it? — 1| I /Men; | 
 
 Are you ic/iispering it, \ and have been all the time, j you sea-toavesf 
 
 Is that it I from your iu/uid rims | and wet sandsf\
 
 342 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 Whereto answ^nng, | the sea, 
 
 Delaying not, \ hurrying not, | 
 
 Whisper'd me through the night, \ and very plainly before day 
 
 break, 
 Lisp'd to me the low and deZicious word | ] death. 
 And again || death, | death, || death, \ death, \ 
 Hissing melodious, | neither like the bird | nor like my aroits'd 
 
 child's heart. 
 But erff/ing near, | as privately for me \ rustling at my feet. 
 Creeping thence \ steadily \ up to my ear \ and Zaring me softly | all 
 
 over, 
 Death, | death, \\ death, \ death, || death. | 
 
 Which 1 1 I do not forget. 
 
 But fuse the song | of my dusky demon and brother. 
 
 That he sang to me | in the moonlight \ on Paumanok's gray beach, 
 
 With the i^ousand responsive songs \ at random, 
 
 My own songs \ awaked from that hour, 
 
 And with them the /ce?/, | the word | up from the waves, | 
 
 The word \ of the st^eef est song and a/Z songs, 
 
 That strong and deZicious word | which, \ creeping to my /ecf, 
 
 (Or I like some old crone \ rocking the cradle | swathed in 
 
 swee< garments, | lending aside,) 
 The sea whispered me. 
 
 I conceive it to be quite probable that I should 
 not have given Whitman's own utterance in the 
 case of some words in the quoted portions. If 
 so, my experience with ''Leaves of Grass" will 
 force me to say that I have not caught his meaning 
 or his feeling to the full, and have also sacrificed 
 rhythmic pleasure by my ignorant mistake. For 
 of course the only test of correctness in any read- 
 er's rhythmic interpretation of Walt Whitman 
 will be that, besides satisfying the ear, the meaning 
 and feeling are brought out to the full. I am not 
 going to institute comparisons between the "old" 
 aristocratic aesthetic of Shakespeare and Mil- 
 ton and the "new" democratic aesthetic of Blake 
 and Whitman. Some of us are content to enjoy 
 both, and this guilelessly and making no apology
 
 WALT WHITMAN 313 
 
 to such as can only get joy after the New OljTn- 
 piau Academy have issued a license, duly stami)ed 
 by the Zeus of tomorrow. Let the lover of 
 Tennyson then beware lest he deprive himself of 
 some part of his legitimate birthright by his doc- 
 trinaire refusals to respond to Whitman's really 
 potent spells. And, let the lover of AMiitman at 
 his best cease from bringing undeserved ridicule 
 upon his master by odiously extravagant com- 
 parisons. Whitman himself enjoyed Tenny- 
 son's work as much as any man of his genera- 
 tion. Yet Whitman believed in himself, and his 
 work was his very life, and he did not hesitate 
 to speak boldly and to write on behalf of his 
 aesthetic ideals.
 
 TWO CONTEMPOEAEY MYSTICS. 
 
 Mysticism, in its good sense, is an attempt to 
 realize the unknown. Passing beyond the facts 
 and their classification into the realm of pure 
 theory, one then returns and utters in language of 
 the feelings what the abstract ideas vaguely ap- 
 prehended may import for man and his immedi- 
 ate life. 
 
 There are two motives that lead a man to con- 
 sider the unknown. Either what he knows is dear 
 to him, and, perceiving its end, he craves to know 
 it once again. EnjojTiient has only fanned the 
 flame of desire. He hopes the apparent end is but 
 a new beginning. He dreams of what he believes 
 may have begun as in some sense akin to what 
 ended. Or, profoundly discouraged and nause- 
 ated, yet not desperate enough to be satisfied with 
 any doctrine of annihilation, he looks forward to 
 another and different world of which he constructs 
 a picture to the imagination in a series of denials 
 of all that this world seems. Mystics accordingly 
 fall into two classes. "We have of late received 
 two studies of death from different pens. Both 
 authors have been spiritually nurtured by Chris- 
 tianity. Both declare their debt on every page. 
 One is a pessimist; the other, an optimist.* 
 
 844
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 345 
 
 I. 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck's "Tresor des Humbles"* 
 
 Few books are more easy to read and more 
 difificult to analyze than Maurice Maeterlinck's 
 "Tresor des Humbles." The elusiveness, easy 
 meandering, and graceful discontinuity of the 
 style, is in the original sense of the word truly 
 amazing. Many readings and breedings are nec- 
 essary before the mind wins that inner certitude 
 of having comprehended the author's design. 
 Still we have a guide in the very structure of the 
 book. We can obtain, besides, a commentary 
 from his poems and dramas. Out of these, name- 
 ly, it would be easy work to make excerpts which 
 should present the reader with another version of 
 "Le Tresor des Humbles." 
 
 The dramas are discovered to be only oppor- 
 tunities for giving a personal utterance to favor- 
 ite psychological observations, and to such theo- 
 ries as they might be fancied to support. He has 
 attempted the creation of what he calls himself 
 
 •since the appearance of this paper other volumes of prose b> 
 Maeterlinck have appeared and been translated. The popularity nf 
 the author In America Is to be approved. We have enough latent 
 Puritanism not to be relaxed by the Belgian, even If as Covontry 
 Patmore cleverly puts it, most of your exoteric mysticism tends to 
 Its ultimate expression in "conscientious wenching." Havini? en- 
 joyed Maeterlinck, both as dramatist and essayist. I mav add that 
 none of his later books ("Wisdom and Destiny." "The Buriod Tom- 
 pie," "The Double Garden," "The Life of the Bee," "Our Friend the 
 Dog." "The Pleasure of the Hours") — while varvlng the modo of 
 expression, offer any change in phllo.dophic viewpoint. The social- 
 istic suggestions of the "Life of the Bee" were probably more in the 
 material than in the charming author's Intention.
 
 346 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 a ''statical theater" (p. 188). ^ His poems en- 
 titled *'Les Series Chaudes" (Hot Houses) utter 
 a sense of tedium, a languid remorse, a fearful 
 disgust of life, and a feverish craving for release. 
 
 The essays are, in manner, impersonal, disen- 
 gaged, critical, and deal directly with the inner 
 world, not the outer-world calamities of souls half 
 awake in another (as in the dramas), or the hide- 
 ousness of this world to those whom it confines 
 (as in the poems). This, however, constitutes a 
 difference only of literary method, not of real sub- 
 stance. To be sure it has sufficed to create in 
 many a belief that there are three (or at least 
 two) Maeterlincks, champions respectively of 
 three (or at least two) incompatible views of life. 
 This mistake was made easier by the terminology. 
 Such words as "soul," for instance, are difficult 
 of definition. "Life," "goodness," "beauty," 
 "profundity" are capable of equivocal use. The 
 dictionary will not help the critic. It is important 
 to explore the "mood" whence their use pro- 
 ceeds. Any artist will of course employ the most 
 attractive phrases, those already bound up with 
 what is dear and holy to the reader. A keen, al- 
 most cruel, eye must he have who will see through 
 the folds of verbal draperies the naked thought 
 itself. It is the interpreter's business, however, 
 to do this for the reader as well as he can. The 
 critic presumes to judge. In so doing of course 
 he judges himself. The reader is at liberty to take 
 
 'References are by page to "Le TrSsor des Humbles," 7th edition. 
 The versions are always by the writer.
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 347 
 
 issue with him — nay, to reverse his verdict — if he 
 pleases. If it seems to the present writer, for 
 instance, that M. Maeterlinck is not the exponent 
 of vital Christianity, at all events his work as 
 interpreter will be of use, and his criticism will 
 aid the counter-critic as well as any who chance 
 to agree with him. 
 
 M. Maeterlinck has given us a ** brotherly 
 warning" that he has read many abstruse books 
 (p. 103). Again and again he shows us where he 
 has culled this flower and that. We can easily 
 conceive the "we" to be editorial, rather than 
 dramatic, when he disclaims any such thing for 
 "us" as central spontaneity — that is to say, the 
 power to evolve, with external aid, systems of 
 mystic philosophy (p. 109). 
 
 Plotinus is to him the prince of transcendental 
 metaphysicians. He holds him to be wiser than 
 Plato for rushing in where the latter, fearing to 
 tread, drops on his knees (p. 113). Euysbroeck, 
 the Flemish recluse, whose chief work he trans- 
 lated to the confusion of the French reading pub- 
 lic, leaves even Plotinus behind and Maeterlinck 
 dares to follow I Ruysbroeck confines himself, 
 the disciple tells us, to thoughts of the unthink- 
 able (p. 102) ; (prudently, we may add, for what 
 critics would dare assail him? as soon threaten 
 the man in the moon with your fist!) In the 
 works of Ruysbroeck the disciple professes "to 
 have glimpsed the bluest peaks of the soul" (p. 
 155), whilst in Emerson he saw only "the hum-
 
 348 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 bier hillocks of the human heart rounding away 
 irregularly," mere foot-hills to Ruysbroeck's su- 
 perb Sierras I We respect him for his honesty, 
 loyalty, and — courage! He has chosen his mas- 
 ters; and whether ours or not, we can afford to 
 confess that he has done them credit. 
 
 M. Maeterlinck does not disguise from himself 
 the fact that he is at bottom a pessimist. After 
 saying, for instance, graceful things of the "new 
 optimism" of the "good optimist," Emerson, he 
 carefully classes him with the "forerunners of a 
 new, mysterious, and perhaps very pure pessi- 
 mism," which he evidently looks forward to, 
 "for," says he, "there is nothing more discour- 
 aging than a self -compelled optimism" (p. 202). 
 He thinks that if a transplanetary visitor came 
 to us, we should give him, as samples of human- 
 ity, not Balzac, George Meredith (or even Shake- 
 speare and Racine, for the matter of that) but the 
 treasures of Pascal, Emerson, or Hello, so that 
 at least we should not be mistaken for "satisfied 
 inhabitants of this earth" (p. 175). 
 
 The great question of course for every reader 
 is : What exactly does Mr. Maeterlinck mean by 
 the "soul?" To answer this none is competent 
 but M. Maeterlinck himself. We shall at all 
 events conjure up before the reader the "mood" 
 which governs its shade of meaning, and then he 
 will be able to decide whether or not we are cor- 
 rect in our view. 
 
 "So soon as we express anything vre strangely
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 349 
 
 reduce its dimensions" (p. 65). ''When we 
 formulate what in us is mysterious, we are pro- 
 founder than all that has been written, and great- 
 er than all that exists" (p. 121). A malicious 
 critic might ascribe the ''diminished size" and 
 sudden shallowness to the exclusion of a flatter- 
 ing imagination which took indefiniteness for im- 
 mensity — nay, infinity. "There is a part of life 
 — and it is the best, purest, and greatest — which 
 does not mingle in our ordinary life" (p. G(J). 
 Some day, perhaps, "our souls shall perceive one 
 another without the mediation of the senses" (p. 
 29). A "new psychology" is announced which 
 shall be "transcendental," busying itself exclu- 
 sively with the "direct relations among men sus- 
 tained bv soul to soul, and the sensibilitv as well 
 as the extraordinary manifestations of the soul" 
 (p. 38). 
 
 Any book that like liuysbroeck's reveals the 
 "true life" which is inexplicable (p. 31) will yield 
 its key only to him who "deserves it by turning 
 away from life" (p. 117). We shall in fact never 
 wholly understand it "till we see the objects them- 
 selves" which he describes or alludes to "on the 
 other side of life" (p. 125). The approbation of 
 the dying is prized, for they, as also he who suf- 
 fers the extreme pressure of a great sorrow, are 
 "clairvoyant." 
 
 In the first essay entitled ' ' Silence, ' ' we are made 
 to feel that there is much in us besides what our 
 consciousness reveals. The agreeable hypothesis
 
 350 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 is hazarded that what we do not know of our- 
 selves is better than what we know. "Speech" is 
 the symbol and expression of the conscious life 
 of thought and passion. The unconscious life 
 cannot, of course, utter itself in words. "Silence" 
 then is symbolic of it, since its expression, if ex- 
 pression it have, is voiceless. Now, what lives 
 that life in us, of which we are not directly aware, 
 is the soul. The relations of "souls" are neces- 
 sarily "above the reservoirs of thought" (p. 19). 
 In the element of silence "souls freely possess 
 one another" (p. 17). "Silence" is then a nega- 
 tive term for a positive notion, for "silences" dif- 
 fer not only in occasion, as the silence of calamity 
 and love (p. 24), but they differ in quality accord- 
 ing to the souls they proceed from (p. 11), and 
 when shared by two souls may be hostile or friend- 
 ly (p. 19). 
 
 In the second essay we are told that the "soul" 
 sleeps and stirs periodically in individuals, na- 
 tions, and races. It "probably came near to the 
 surface of life" in Egyi^t and certainly in prehis- 
 toric India (p. 31). There were minor agitations 
 in Persia and Alexandria and the "two mystic 
 medieval centuries." In times "when intelli- 
 gence and beauty appear at their best," the soul 
 did not deign to show itself. Greece, Eome, the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of France, 
 for instance, were devoid of "soul." The Eliza- 
 bethans too were practically without it, "though 
 underneath King Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet" (p.
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 351 
 
 ISO), as also in certain Greek masterpieces (p. 
 189), the soul vaguely quickened as in an antena- 
 tal dream. When the natural man flourishes the 
 soul languishes. The soul and the natural man 
 are, we infer, contrary powers, and their perfec- 
 tion in any age varies inversely. The soul clearly 
 is something unnatural. That we are now en- 
 tering a period of ''soul" is the purport of the 
 second essay, and the symptoms thereof are many. 
 
 In the third essay the strange ''organic warn- 
 ing" (p. 82) of such as are destined to an early 
 death, and the fact that they seem to be marked 
 out from the others, are considered. 
 
 "There are things more impervious and deeper 
 than thought" (p. 53), for in spite of ourselves, 
 maybe, we have divined their case. Were they 
 "born to affirm that life had no purpose?" (p. 
 52) asks M. Maeterlinck. "Who can tell what is 
 the motive power of events, and whether they are 
 ourselves or we are they? Are they born of us, 
 or we of them? Do we attract them, or they us? 
 Do they transform us, or we them? Do they 
 never mistake their course!" (p. 54). That is to 
 say, does the soul create the fate for a man, or 
 does fate create the soul? As both are inaccessi- 
 ble, unknown quantities, neither question is an- 
 swerable. One thing, however, seems clear : that 
 in such as have a clear sense of impending catas- 
 trophe the "soul" is more nearly awake than in 
 others. 
 
 Now follow two essays that set forth in care-
 
 352 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 ful fashion the spiritual indifference of conduct, 
 good or bad, and of intellectual development. 
 Women as viewed in the latter essay are admit- 
 tedly inferior, yet somehow in the deeps equal to 
 men — nay, superior, just because of their patent 
 inferiority, since they rely more on the "soul!" 
 Woman sits at the very feet of fate, and is wiser, 
 though a pretty simpleton in her resignation, than 
 the man who lives in and by his potent wits! A 
 vindication of their equality with men in the "in- 
 visible" that will hardly content, I fear, the wom- 
 en of English speech ! 
 
 Then we reach three critical essays — on Euys- 
 broeck, in whom a new philosophic faculty (p. 112) 
 is discovered; on Emerson, who absolves us from 
 any necessity of heroical hours (such as Carlyle 
 would have us obtain for the sake of self-respect), 
 pointing out that the hero needs the approval of 
 the ordinary man, while the ordinary man does 
 not ask for the hero's approval (p. 149), bidding 
 us revere our common hours (p. 152) ; the last on 
 Novalis and his doctrine of the deeper self (p. 
 163) that "there is something other than mind," 
 and that it is not mind which allies us to the uni- 
 verse — but of course the "soul" that transcends 
 mind — even "when mind is becoming unconscious, 
 as it is about to become divine" (p. 159). 
 
 After these three essays that deal with three 
 sages, the first characteristically a master of the 
 soul, the second of the affections, the third of the 
 mind (according to M. Maeterlinck), we have only
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 353 
 
 two more essays to traverse ere we arrive at the 
 last three, published first, and to which the other 
 ten serve only as approach. **Le Tragique Quo- 
 tidien" sets before us the fact that not in circum- 
 stances of the outer man, but in the suffering itself 
 common to all, lies the tragic sublime — above will; 
 and in ''L'Etoile" we are made to consider the 
 destinies of lives as of divine origin, at least pro- 
 ceeding from the ''soul," and responding to it. 
 
 The last three essays (''Invisible Goodness," 
 the "Profound Life," and "Interior Beauty") 
 are really one. In the first the goodness is not 
 morality, but a sort of gracious complacency or 
 piety, which is a symptom of the incessant stir 
 of the soul (p. 247) ; in the second we confront the 
 means of sanctification ; in the last, the bliss itself 
 of the perfect realization of the "soul." 
 
 From this survey there should surely result a 
 provisional definition at least of what M. Maeter- 
 linck means by "soul." Theoretically it is an un- 
 known kernel-self, so to speak — we are veils of 
 ourselves. T\lien we die, it, which is our true self, 
 lives. When the shell is broken the kernel is ex- 
 posed. Sickness, sorrow, love-sickness, and life- 
 nausea are cracks of that shell usually called life. 
 
 But this kernel-self could have no interest for 
 the living man, since revealed only to the dead. 
 Ecstasies, trances, vivid transports, however, are 
 glimpses of it, here and now. "Soul," for us who 
 live and are not mystics of that extreme t5'pe, 
 turns out to be a state of consciousness, as unre-
 
 354 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 lated as possible with sensations, passions, 
 thoughts, a species of doze which delivers one 
 from the outside world; a sort of waking sleep 
 that floats one out of the region of responsibility. 
 It is producible by contemplation, or by the ex- 
 treme emotions occasioned by calamity or love. 
 Whether the theoretical and the practical senses 
 of ''soul" in M. Maeterlinck are really the came, 
 or constitute an equivocation, remains for the 
 reader to judge. 
 
 Let us now run rapidly through the gamut of M. 
 Maeterlinck's main ideas: "Fate was only once 
 adored without rival. She was then for the very 
 gods a terrifying mystery" (p. 206). Now fate 
 is double : that of ancestors and that of offspring. 
 We thought love a free act of individuals. It 
 turns out to be the effect on consciousness of the 
 desire for life in the unborn (p. 225)! ''There 
 is no joyful destiny, there is no happy star. The 
 star you fancy happy is one that awaits its hour" 
 (p. 207). There is, however, to-day "a new no- 
 bility in the ache of living" (p. 209). More im- 
 portant than to know the character of your friend 
 is "to perceive his exact situation with reference 
 to the unknown about him, the habit of chance in 
 its dealings toward him" (p. 198). 
 
 These "habits of chance" (p. 220) bear some 
 relation to individuals; "events seem drawn by 
 certain thoughts and certain souls" (p. 220). 
 Are there not great chances asleep on the horizon 
 which some too sudden motion might awake (p.
 
 MAETERLINCK AXD ALDEN 355 
 
 222) ? Some dare affinn {he does not expressly) 
 ''that a beautiful soul transfigures the saddest 
 fate to beauty" (p. 222). In the battles of the 
 individual \nth destiny ''the will cannot inter- 
 fere" (p. 217). The "will itself is the ripest fruit 
 of destiny" (p. 219). "The ancient will itself, 
 the old will so well known and so logical, is trans- 
 formed in turn, and experiences the immediate 
 contact of great, inexplicable, profound laws" (p. 
 44). 
 
 In such case as this, little stress can be placed 
 upon morality. The sins of the flesh and of hot 
 blood are felt to be less important than we sup- 
 pose (pp. 67-69). We suspect that "there are 
 deeper laws than those that preside over our acts 
 and our thoughts" (p. 72). "Will the lowest idea 
 or the noblest leave any trace on the diamond 
 pivot" (the soul) (p. 72)? "God must smile on 
 our gravest sins as we at the gambol of puppies" 
 (p. 73). At bottom the soul does not know of 
 any sin it could commit which should be its sin 
 (p. 74), and the real law being unknown, sin is it- 
 self unknown, yet the soul feels guilty (p. 75). 
 Perhaps the only real sins are to have resisted 
 one's intuitions, to have "ceased to love" (p. 76). 
 
 Our real life of soul is only lived by chance, in 
 spite of ourselves, from sheer absent-mindedness 
 (p. 59). 
 
 "Perhaps we should know too much if we knew 
 all that we know" (p. 58). We reach God every 
 moment without knowing it (p. 143). Smiles, as
 
 356 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 well as tears, open the doors of the other world 
 (p. 272). ''Those who have not been very un- 
 happy" can "live with souls," if they have ex- 
 perienced the ''silences of love" (p. 24). 
 
 The sage does not require shocks; trifles suffice 
 him (p. 258). "Quiet, when one thinks of it, is 
 terrible" (p. 182). 
 
 Now the sage is distinguished not by any will 
 to shape himself. To be sure "it is useful to 
 strive for the elevation of one's life, and one ought 
 to tend toward summits where an incapacity for 
 doing ill is attained" (p. 276). 
 
 "Let us strive to be more beautiful than we 
 are; we shall never outstrip our soul" (p. 292). 
 "No soul can tell what is the power of a soul that 
 strives to live in an atmosphere of beauty, and 
 that is actively beautiful within" (p. 295). "But 
 after all it is of less importance to transform one's 
 life than to become conscious of it ; for as soon as 
 it has been seen it transforms itself" (p. 267). 
 We require only "attention" (p. 259), "waiting 
 for fortunate moments." We live, all of us, in 
 the sublime. What we lack is not occasions of 
 living in heaven, but attention and concentration 
 and a little "soul-intoxication" (p. 262). "What 
 we want is not a chance, but a habit" (p. 266). 
 "One must be efficaciously attentive" (p. 268). 
 "It is not enough to possess a truth; the truth 
 must possess us" (p. 269). 
 
 We have thus reached the true use of the will — 
 ruling the future by transmuting the past into a
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 357 
 
 sad smile (p. 222) — by intense meditation, a spe- 
 cies of self-hypnosis, attaining to the trance, ec- 
 stasy, the blissful ex[)erience which is supposed to 
 be the realization of a deeper self (p. 1G3). For 
 we are invisible beings (p. 170) ; man beginning 
 truly only where he seems to end (p. 172), and the 
 ''true birth" of ''soul" being ''the first feeling 
 that there lurks something grave and unexpected 
 in life" (p. 255) — an experience which can be re- 
 peated (p. 25G), and in any case the "soul" is 
 never lost if once got (p. 15). 
 
 Giving it the sense of soul-consciousness (a 
 something so different from ordinary conscious- 
 ness as to be, with reference to it, tenned uncon- 
 sciousness) we understand why M. Maeterlinck- 
 puts so great a value on consciousness. To know 
 is the only way to become. We become not by ef- 
 fort, but by a recognition of the forces which wait 
 to make us. Hence the value of dramatic poems. 
 Misery is their basis (p. 211). We want to meet 
 our sorrows half-way (p. 207), because they in- 
 crease our consciousness — which is the only region 
 in which we feel ourselves living (p. 227). 
 
 Of course life is not the passions nor violent 
 action. "Hamlet" has the time to live because 
 he does not act (p. 187). 
 
 Love, however, has a part to play; but of course 
 it is a love "of the soul" ' (p. 246). It 
 is construed as a haunting memory of 
 primal unity (p. 245). The truest loves of 
 the soul never declare themselves — thev wait
 
 358 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 for another life (pp. 59, 60). A common ex- 
 perience of secret goodness will often assume the 
 character of love. At all events, a strange sense 
 of fellowship results (p. 250). As a matter of 
 fact, when we love it is not character we take 
 note of in the beloved. We laugh at open vices. 
 We believe in unseen virtues (p. 250). Those 
 who love are always thwarted. Hialmar and 
 Maleine, Peleas and Melisande, Marcellus and 
 Ursula, Palomides and Alladine — all alike die or 
 yearn for death. Love itself, should fate prove 
 favorable, is perverse. It finds nourishment in 
 mutual pain. It exacts proofs of love in the be- 
 loved. Hence it asks not death, but prolonged 
 torture uncomplainingly — nay, passionately — 
 borne (p. 237). Golaud cannot let Melisande die 
 in peace. To love without reserve, with complete 
 abandonment (p. 297), is to be to another as to 
 God (p. ?07) ; and to think of nothing, as we saw, 
 was to think of God (p. 377). 
 
 Love benumbs — love is an ache and anesthetic 
 at the same time. To love is to lose one's faculty 
 for noting ugliness (p. 305), to become unable to 
 distinguish between beauty that creates love and 
 the beauty love creates (p. 307). One grows uu- 
 exacting; one judges not; one loves not one's 
 neighbor, but what is eternal in him (p. 274). One 
 goes deeper than character into the substance of 
 the lover (p. 25) — the ''soul" which is beyond 
 the reach of taint.
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 359 
 
 11. 
 
 "We fear very much that, whatever M. Maeter- 
 linck's good intentions may be, he will not win 
 his way to the sort of readers he has in view. 
 
 There are those who, in ease and plenty, culti- 
 vate an artificial discontent. The fast life of 
 their forbears or their own has exhausted their 
 vitality. They want quiet for life, isolation for 
 pride, a little fasting for appetite's sake after sur- 
 feits, after the exhaustion of the power of condi- 
 ments and stimulants. There are for these per- 
 sons, nowadays, no monasteries and convents. 
 Besides, the irrevocableness of vows would de- 
 mand a sincere disgust of life or heroic self-abne- 
 gation, and they only toy with tedium and satia- 
 tion. 
 
 To such person the essays of M. Maeterlinck 
 offer a peculiar dissipation. The}^ *^keep open" 
 the path from the seen to the unseen, to be sure, 
 but besides they rest a man for paths that lead 
 back to the seen from the "intense inane." After 
 some pessimistic sentiment of a sweetishly pious 
 sort one obtains a new relish for the world, the 
 flesh, and the devil. 
 
 Life is no more a spontaneous joy. To live is 
 not enough. One demands, forsooth, pleasure, 
 ease, sinecures and curesins! These are scarce, 
 uncertain, and soon spent. A new pleasure and 
 ease can, however, be wrung from pain and dis-
 
 360 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 ease. Not the joy of ''seeing how much one can 
 stand," with the virile Camden sage; but the joy 
 of maudlin self-preoccupation, of continual noting 
 of symptoms, recording pulse beats and tempera- 
 ture, and an hourly diagnosis, with plentiful self- 
 condolences, tear-bottles of Etruscan model, and 
 pathetic obituary speeches, self-uttered over one's 
 own fancy-corpse! To such persons we fear the 
 "Tresor des Humbles" will be only too welcome. 
 For, with it in hand, they will imagine themselves 
 spiritual saints in the bud — nay, in full bloom per- 
 haps — and cease to feel anything like an honest, 
 conscious pang; sending up the stench of their 
 corruption as a ''sweet-smelling savor" to a most 
 amiable God, who only smiles on their actual sins, 
 as on the gambols of little puppies ! 
 
 The source of its immorality is not difficult to 
 seek. It is in the antithesis, mind, matter; soul, 
 body. It is in the subtle Manicheism. 
 
 If what is conscious and physical count for 
 nothing when good, it must do so also when evil. 
 You cannot transcend good without also trans- 
 cending evil. 
 
 If flesh be viewed as the expression of spirit, 
 deed of will, then at once they one and all acquire 
 value. The body as the temple of the Holy Ghost, 
 works as the fruit of faith, had their dignity in 
 St. Paul's thought. 
 
 True, for argument's sake, let us admit, is the 
 notion that there is a kernel-self, and that the 
 shell hides it. True that the shell is corruptible,
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 361 
 
 and that the kernel contains eternal life. True 
 that in time the shell must break and rot. But 
 nil this does not yet necessarily imply any real 
 disparagement of the shell. 
 
 If the kernel is life, its business is to make 
 shells. If the shell is gone, it will go to work 
 through a long vital process and reproduce itself 
 (nut — shell and kernel) once more. 
 
 This is what the Hindus called the ''wheel of 
 life," the perpetual tendency of life to incarnate. 
 Believing this to be true, their pessimistic thought 
 set about finding some fanciful expedient for 
 counteracting this tendency to body forth. Body 
 being evil, life which produced body was evil. 
 The ''soul" was the terrible su])erstition, and the 
 manliest school of Buddha's faith quietly denied 
 its existence, ingeniously saving morality as a 
 means to stop the process of embodiment. 
 
 And here is exactly the glory of the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 It has through centuries held up the doctrine of 
 the "resurrection of the flesh," the most noble 
 and forcible utterance of the glory of life, and 
 the everlasting worth of body. "Whatever Scho- 
 penhauer may say, the core of Christianity is 
 optimism. It has cherished doctrines which in 
 pessimistically inclined periods all the artillery of 
 doubt has been directed against in vain — doc- 
 trines of the resurrection and the ascension, of 
 the Church as the bodv of Christ, and the flesh as 
 the temple of the Holy Ghost. In fact, the glory
 
 362 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 of sober Christianity is that it has vitally as- 
 similated the truth of both pessimism and op- 
 timism, noting the evil to the full, perceiving its 
 purpose, and crowning it with good. Redemption 
 and salvation are processes dependent on out- 
 ward sacraments, institutions, doctrines. It mat- 
 ters greatly what we do, feel, think. The Holy 
 Ghost operates through outward means. In order 
 to hold fast these practical truths, it has been will- 
 ing to leave such purely metaphysical problems as 
 the one and the many, time and eternity, the finite 
 and the infinite, unsolved — or rather it has de- 
 clared them not real problems at all, mere puz- 
 zles of a sophistic sort having nothing whatever 
 to do with life ! In this how much wiser unto sal- 
 vation has organized Christianity been than all 
 the philosophical sects of Hindustan ! If we want 
 a Christian metaphysics, we shall undoubtedly 
 yet have one. The Hindus have had metaphysics, 
 and have starved spiritually. We fear that M. 
 Maeterlinck's philosophy, gleaned a little here, 
 a little there, has no mission for the living. It 
 might possibly reassure the dying, but even then 
 it would need the practical test of years. It is 
 surely significant that the Church has never for 
 any length of time committed itself to the pessi- 
 mistic mystics, for all their sweetness and grace. 
 The fact is, such mysticism is an anesthetic, and 
 the world needs stimulants. The fact is, it has 
 proved of little or no use in helping the world 
 forward. Fenelon is very charming, but a mad
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 363 
 
 Savonarola is more potent. A Molinos has his 
 mission, but a Luther is more effective in the long 
 run. The practical experiment, the service of 
 life, is and must be the test of religious theories. 
 Do they, not wean us from earth to heaven, but 
 make earth heavenly? not disembody man, but 
 embody the God-man? 
 
 III. 
 
 Henry Mill Alden's ^' Study of Death." 
 
 Now optimistic mysticism has a remarkable ex- 
 ponent in our own country, of whom I fear we 
 are not so proud as we should be. The title of 
 this second work, written in the same spirit and 
 style as his first anonymous publication, "God in 
 His World," perhaps discourages the average 
 reader. One thing, however, one soon feels on 
 opening the book — it is not written by an amateur 
 mystic. A profound earnestness is felt on every 
 page. A personal fervor of devotion pulses in 
 almost every sentence. The dedication startles 
 us: to his wife, on her death-bed. Never were 
 tenderer, more reverent words spoken; if not as 
 rapturous as those of Robert to Elizabeth Brown- 
 ing, they are as sincere and full of holy love. 
 
 ** Modern religious mysticism, . . . dis- 
 posed to sacrifice nature to the supernatural, . 
 . . falls into the slough of pessimism. Only 
 the blood that leaps into the quick and full pulsa-
 
 364 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 tions of earthly life can have an elastic rebound 
 to its eternal font" (p. 49). That is his protest 
 and fundamental conviction in one sentence. 
 ''Faith in life — such faith as to give no credence 
 to apparent diminution as signs of weakness, see- 
 ing in them rather the intimations of some mighty 
 transformation" (pp. 47, 48). ''The Angel of 
 Life, who out of the rich darkness puts forth the 
 blade and bud and babe; all the fresh and tender 
 luxuriance of growth is but the imagery of his 
 abundance" (pp. 45, 46). 
 
 The work itself is written in an exquisitely 
 compact style. It bears several readings not be- 
 cause it "amazes" by incoherency, by the lack of 
 distinct classification of matter and firm procedure 
 of thought, but because the style has a richness of 
 suggestion — "more is meant than meets the ear." 
 Surprises encounter us constantly. 
 
 "To all manifest existence we apply the term 
 nature (natura), which means forever being born; 
 and on its vanishing side it is moritiira or 'forever 
 dying' " (p. 17). Apart from such felicitous use 
 of philology, words are constantly employed in 
 their primary senses. 
 
 Eepentance, absolution, forgiveness, turn out 
 to have new values which are the old. So, ab- 
 stract words and ideas are knit back to their 
 picturesque, material sources, to the evident sat- 
 isfaction of our genial author, who, though highly 
 spiritual, is reverently carnal also. "The priest 
 forged the thunderbolts of heaven for the enforce-
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 365 
 
 inent of the civil edict" (p. 151). How delight- 
 fully delicate is the insinuation! Hardly ever 
 does he err. "But" is repeated within seven 
 words of itself (p. 113); ''might," within nine 
 (p. 120) ; an infinitive is split — ''to . . . cheer- 
 fully receive" (p. 171); with "little" as subject 
 we have "enter" in the plural. His antitheses 
 are pointed by the use of similar words, and this, 
 occasionally, is done oftener than the reader may 
 enjoy; strain and restraint (p. 210), assistance, 
 resistance, etc. But this is no doubt due to a de- 
 sire for clearness. Such blemishes are trifles. A 
 revision would remove them. As to the learning, 
 it is used in a most unpedantic way. Sometimes 
 he quotes from memory, one would think, and the 
 memory is proverbially deceitful. St. Paul is 
 credited with a verse of St. James (p. 271). See 
 James i. 27. "Eesist not him that is evil," is 
 read, "resist not evil," a possible but rather un- 
 likely reading (p. 231). 
 
 We make these trivial suggestions not because 
 we are disposed to carp, but just for the reasor 
 that we love the book, and desire to tell the readei 
 that a very close perusal will reveal at most hali 
 a dozen slight infelicities, or inaccuracies, which 
 in so large a work is surely remarkable. 
 
 AVriters of English never seem to be impeccable 
 stylists, as the French; it is probably because we 
 are less fastidious readers, and have more rever- 
 ence for deeds than words. Still, perfection, 
 whenever attainable, is to be desired even in
 
 366 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 English. Not that we should wholly anathema- 
 tize a Carlyle or a Whitman ; for literary barbar- 
 ians are picturesque in their way. A literary 
 gentleman cannot do with grace even once what 
 they can do day by day sans peur et sans re- 
 proche. 
 
 Now, as to the structure of the book. The 
 proem is a symbolic interpretation of the story of 
 the temptation, ''The Dove and the Serpent." 
 First, the denial of evil, from sheer ignorance or 
 reckless joy in good ; then good and evil, a broken 
 world, a divided will; then good from evil — the 
 reunion in the complete man of what in ''human 
 thought had been put asunder" (p. 5). The proem 
 is indeed a poem, stating the real problem which 
 *'The Study of Death" addresses itself to solve. 
 
 In the first book two visions of death are con- 
 trasted. He tells us that "the operations of na- 
 ture, . . . being forever recurrent, cultivate 
 in us the habit of expectation, so that we refuse 
 to accept finality" (p. 9). Fronting the corpse 
 **we are in no presence; it is the brutal fact of ab- 
 sence that stares us in the face" (p. 10). In- 
 stead of "a new synthesis," "we shall see disso- 
 lution, a sinking analytic motion" (p. 11). But 
 the mystic's eye sees farther. "Life came upon 
 the wing of death, and so departs." The 
 "trope," — that is to say, a movement that returns 
 upon itself, to start afresh — is universal. "It is 
 proper to life itself" (p. 15), "as proper to life 
 as life" (p. 17). "The idea of life as transcend-
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 367 
 
 ing any individual embodiment is as germane to 
 science as it is to faith" (p. 17). ''Sleep is the 
 hierophant of a minor mystery, folding us in his 
 mantle of darkness, renewing the world's desire, 
 recovering time. Death within the veil instan- 
 taneously and every instant transforms life from 
 its very source, recovering eternity. Sleep is re- 
 creation. Death is the mighty negative, whereby 
 all worlds vanish into that nothing from which all 
 worlds are made, the vast in-breathing of the 
 Spirit of God for his ever-repeated fiat of crea- 
 tion. Sleep suspends the individuality within its 
 embodiment. Death shows the inmost personal- 
 ity in a divine presence — that angel of each one of 
 us which forever beholds the face of the Father'* 
 (p. 21). 
 
 In the second book we have a most fascinating 
 reconstruction of the primitive world of men: 
 "Native impressions," He finely says that when 
 we speak of the old superstitions ''we juggle with 
 the dry twigs of what was the green tree of life" 
 (p. 34). AVe must be careful to preserv^e the 
 sympathetic attitude if we would understand what 
 the "superstitions" really signified to those who 
 believed in them. 
 
 "Among primitive peoples we find no allusion 
 to a future state" (p. 35). "The domain to which 
 death introduces the soul was thought of as a past 
 rather than a future" (p. 37). Then, "not only 
 were the springs of life mere divine, but its whole 
 procedure so entirely divine tliat to think of it as
 
 368 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 a probation or an experiment would have seemed 
 blasphemous" (p. 37). *' Death" was thought of 
 *'as divinisation," a "restoration of latent powers 
 through descent, and by way of darkness" (p. 
 39). *'The dead were mightier than the living" 
 (p. 39). S,oon, however, with the advance of 
 civilization (p. 44), man forgot **the earth" (p. 
 36), **God removed from this world to his 
 heaven," and ''death became the dread descent 
 into that shadowy realm of impotence and insig- 
 nificance" (p. 43). The Eumenides became the 
 avenging furies (p. 44). 
 
 The ''denunciation of selfhood" had no place 
 in primitive mysticism (p. 50). "We say that a 
 man is born alone and that he dies alone; but he 
 is born of his kind, and to his kind he dies" (p. 
 50). Only in fellowship can he find himself (p. 
 51). Man loves not the world, nor self, until he 
 has loved his kind (p. 51). "Individuation is for 
 love. Even crime will compel solidarity" (p. 51). 
 Selfhood is but the reflex of fellowship (p. 51). 
 "A subjective mysticism contemplating as possi- 
 ble the exclusion of selfhood by an influx of di- 
 vine life, is irrational — it is expansion of self- 
 hood — that provides a great chamber for the 
 Lord" (p. 52). 
 
 "He who denies resurrection as fresh embodi- 
 ment sets his face against the mortal hope" (p. 
 54). "The ultimate mysticism will be that of 
 science vitalized by the Christian faith, and of 
 that faith illuminated in all its outward range by
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 369 
 
 science. . . . Christianity will again accept 
 nature, as indeed it did in its prime, holding it to 
 be one with the Lord" (p. 54), 
 
 Mr. Alden points out how the Greeks turned 
 from **the Olympian dynasty of gods, hopelessly 
 immortal ... to gods that could die and 
 grieve" (p. 57). ''The primitive faith accepted 
 death and evil as it accepted darkness and frost, 
 and at the same time regarded them as parts of 
 Love's cycle. Thus it emphasized the limitless 
 divine bounty and indulgence" (p. 58). ''Science 
 itself," he says, "brings the human reason back 
 to the recognition of evil — or what we call evil — 
 as a reaction proper to life in all its manifesta- 
 tions, divine or human" (p. 62). Christianity, he 
 believes, will complete its cycle, in a return to that 
 principle (p. 62). 
 
 But the third book is the great section of the 
 "Study of Death." 
 
 The "Prodigal Son" is viewed as cosmic para- 
 ble, and there are a dozen poems in this part. To 
 give an adequate notion of its depth and beauty by 
 excerpts is impossible. The planet being the 
 prodigal, the sun, the father in the solar system 
 (pp. 70-72, 286-288), is as sublime a thing by it- 
 self as one will easily find anj^wHere in literature. 
 
 Mr. Alden, a devout student of all the scientist 
 has to offer, does not by any means accept always 
 the dominant theory. In the first chapter he pro- 
 tests that from homogeneity there is no way out 
 (p. 85). God is always in his world, and always
 
 370 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 working the great miracle of creation (p. 90). Every 
 synthesis is a manifestation of a new set of prop- 
 erties — in chemistry, in biological development (p. 
 94). These do not appear as additions from with- 
 out, but as liberations from within (p. 93). Death 
 appears hand in hand with love, upon the appear- 
 ance of the specialization called sex, which is for 
 life's sake (pp. 101, 102). Structure is for life, 
 not life for structure, is the leading thought. 
 When we study structure, death, the decay of 
 structure seems a calamity. Really it is a return 
 of the dynamic to the static; it is a storing up 
 for spending, a withdrawing for new appearance. 
 
 Life is viewed as transcending structure (p. 
 110). He notes that life has a tendency toward 
 difficulty rather than toward facility (p. Ill) ; life 
 as creative — that is to say — not the creation that 
 reveals life to us. Fortunate environment leads 
 to degeneracy (p. 112). Neither safety nor ease 
 is an ultimate objective aim of nature; ''she em- 
 phasizes discontinuity rather than continuity, run- 
 ning toward death in her progression, burning all 
 bridges behind her as she advances. In the largest 
 view stability is an illusion, uniformity a disguise, 
 the persistence of type not an eternal concern" 
 (p. 112). 
 
 ''In the very essence of life is that which gives 
 the meaning to our terms 'one and many,' but not 
 to the one apart from the other" (p. 129). The 
 planetary man ignores that he is still in the sun.
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 371 
 
 The solar man (p. 131), however, is within him 
 and knows. 
 
 In the second chapter, the ''Moral Order," he 
 shows how came to bloom, very gradually, the 
 *'thornless rose of Merit" (pp. 151, 152). ''The 
 original sacrament of kinship" is declared to be 
 *'the fountain of primitive piety Godward or man- 
 ward." By the expansion of kinship "arose a 
 spiritual idea — the idea of the all-Father, the per- 
 fect realization of which is the kingdom of heaven, 
 whose iniquities, whether of pain or of bliss, are 
 as impartial as those of nature — a kingdom more 
 of living righteousness rather than of formal rec- 
 titude" (p. 161). 
 
 The most startling insight of this chapter is 
 that we are concerned not with logic, but with life 
 (p. 168). "What men think it is right for them 
 to do they regard also as the righteousness of 
 God" (p. 165). Moral order expressed a vital 
 requirement (p. 169). It would seem more ra- 
 tional, therefore, to derive religious doctrine from 
 it than to do the reverse. 
 
 Now we perceive that "in every social organiza- 
 tion less inclusive than that of a universal brother- 
 hood," the simple creed of a universal Father 
 must be denied (p. 166). Yet in this necessary 
 inconsistency he sees no evil at all. 
 
 •'Conscious restraint or rational control, re- 
 garded as a moral merit, is but a specialized form 
 of that inliil)ition which, unconscious and un- 
 trained, is yet a more potent and surer bond in all
 
 372 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 natural operations. There is no such temper- 
 ance attainable as that which nature has spon- 
 taneously — no positive purity like that of passion" 
 (p. 170). 
 
 Morality at most is of the structure not of the 
 constructing life. All organization has its history 
 and is for life. "All indurations are walls about 
 the free play of life within" (p. 175). So the so- 
 cial order, which, hardening, hurts the individual, 
 really serves to ''secure the inviolability 
 of the individual and domestic seclusion" 
 (p. 175). "The hard envelope about the 
 seed must be broken for the seed's germina- 
 tion." "Its death contributes to fresh 
 growth." "The systems, like generations, 
 pass away, not because of their imperfections, but 
 rather because they have reached such perfect- 
 ness" (p. 176). The contradiction of principles is 
 merely the contrast between life and structure. 
 "The moral order is that cycle of human expe- 
 rience which, beginning in a flesh-and-blood kin- 
 ship, is completed in a kinship which embraces 
 the universe" (p. 180). That is to say, it is a de- 
 velopment in man. Actually, the kinship exists. 
 It is not recognized as yet. It cannot be — nay, 
 perhaps it must not yet be. For then the cycle 
 would be completed and we should have to begin 
 afresh. For so soon as the resistance of structure 
 ceased there would be liberation of the life and 
 new creation. 
 
 The next chapter pursues the line of argument
 
 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 373 
 
 suggested, "AVhat matters it if the ])lossoms are 
 swept away by the wind and rain, so the fruit is 
 set; if the walls of the temple fall, so the Pres- 
 ence that filled the temple is glorified; or even if 
 the entire structure of a civilization is destroyed, 
 so the race is reborn" (p. 212)? 
 
 ''There is indeed no problem save of our own 
 making. The issues of life have their spontaneous 
 reconcilement, because life itself is eternal. There 
 is in that life a principle which is creative ; which 
 is as unmoral as is childhood, because it trans- 
 cends morality which makes not for mere rectitude 
 but for righteousness, not for betterment merely 
 but for renewal; which does not mend the prod- 
 igal's rags, but brings, him, home" (p. 221). 
 
 In the fourth book, in four chapters, the claims 
 of Christianity to be the religion of eternal life 
 are investigated, and death is finally dismissed 
 as but another name for life — of life when gath- 
 ered upon itself, resting in a "Sabbath" from the 
 labors of what we call a life. 
 
 The inconsistencies and vicissitudes of historic 
 Christianity are dwelt upon tenderly, honestly. 
 He does not make the mistake so common with 
 literary men — that of judging spiritual and relig- 
 ious movements entirely by their literature or 
 their creeds and catchwords. He does not fail 
 to take into account that natural unconscious in- 
 consistency, that vital hypocrisy (if so one may 
 term it), which always neutralizes dogmatic acids. 
 He is not in love with that consistency which is
 
 374 MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 mechanical and impossible. History, as a matter 
 of fact, invariably dissappoints the theorist who 
 ventures into the field of prophecy. The literary 
 critic, too, even when so keen and piercing as 
 Friedrich Nietzsche, assumes something ''consist- 
 ent" to have been historic, which any one know- 
 ing human nature ought to be convinced never can 
 be. "Competitions and antagonisms are neces- 
 sary to outward integration and development." 
 The law of love must perpetually reconcile them, 
 yet they must continue to propagate. There is 
 the paradox. 
 
 It is this calm resting of man's case on life, not 
 on logic—this acceptance of the apparent contra- 
 diction — which above all else characterizes, it 
 seems to me, the sane mysticism of Mr. Alden's 
 book. He is a real optimist. If he cries for more 
 and argues for more, it is because what he has 
 seen and known he has loved. He cries, ''again," 
 "forever!" He thanks the Father for what is; 
 evil and hell — sin itself — he accepts as God ac- 
 cepts them, needful to the whole, a form of life 
 itself. Life rejoices in that play of war against 
 itself, the division for contest, which ends in re- 
 conciliation. What we call life is the contest; 
 what we call death is the reconciliation. Eeally 
 both are one: night and day, night for day, day 
 for night. If we live, it is to die. If we die, it 
 is to live. Not because when alive we prefer 
 death, or vice versa, but because one is spending, 
 the other hoarding, and both are glorious, of God, 
 eternally self-repeating.
 
 MAETERLINCK AXD ALDEN 375 
 
 In his beautiful dedication he says that ''love 
 never denied death," and so he believes "death 
 will not deny love." New fellowships, perha})s, 
 shall be with the same souls. Not recognitions, 
 but cognitions. Cognitions are but recognitions. 
 In our death we may know all our lives, and build 
 our dream of them; in our lives we forget death 
 and the loves that there found rest. 
 
 But we must leave the reader to the books. Let 
 him weigh "Le Tresor des Humbles" against 
 ''The Study of Death." Let him ask himself 
 which most subserves the purpose of intenser and 
 higher life. Let him choose. In any case we will 
 do well to honor our American mystic whose gen- 
 ial good sense and ripe scholarship never forsake 
 him, who is both poet and philosopher — in fact, 
 never the one without at the same time being the 
 other; who loves life and makes us love him. It 
 is no fool's paradise he introduces us to. But 
 even were it one — we ask once more in the name 
 of common sense — ''where ignorance is bliss, 
 'twere follv to be wise" — and is the dweller in 
 a fool's paradise such a fool after all, if it be a 
 paradise that can last out his life? Perhaps it 
 comforts the pessimist to consider himself "the 
 only wise." So be it. He may have his wisdom 
 — may it bury him! Only let him not be angry 
 with us when we declare him a nuisance and a 
 bore should he speak too plainly, and if we should 
 ask him to demonstrate his view of the universe 
 by bo^ving himself out as soon as possible I To 
 Mr. Alden long life I
 
 om 
 
 7G MAETERLINCK AND ALDEN 
 
 To M. Maeterlinck, at least, our literary re- 
 spect — if not our allegiance. At all events, we 
 will thank him most cordially for never having 
 bored us with a long countenance. Such grave ro- 
 tundity, embonpoint, and good fellowship, we fear, 
 belong to an amateur pessimist only; a delightful 
 dilettante exploiter for aesthetes of mystic agon- 
 ies, and we accept him as a needful piece of self- 
 contradiction, doubtless having his uses in the uni- 
 verse and assuredly on our center tables and on 
 our library-shelves.
 
 APPENDIX TO ESSAY II. 
 
 At the University of the South a course In Poetics has been 
 undertaken that may be of interest to some of our readers: — 
 
 The art of poetry taught not merely analytically, but as the 
 creative art which it is, by methods analosous to those found 
 effective in the teaching of the other fine arts, that is to say: 
 
 (a) By the copying of master-pieces to make personal dis- 
 covery of the creative principles involved {i.e., translation.) 
 
 (b) By efforts at original production, such as involve a close 
 study of master-pieces kindred in theme, and an application 
 of the principles discovered by such study. 
 
 To eliminate then the personal factor, and bring the work of 
 the student to a severe objective test, the art of poetry — com- 
 position, structure, diction, cadence, rhythm, rhyme, stanzaic 
 division, etc. — will be taught experimentally: 
 
 (1) Through the translation by the several students Into 
 English verse of selected foreign poems, of recognized ex- 
 cellence (i.e. a suitable substitution is effected of a secondary 
 "written" poem to convey unaltered the "psychic" or intel- 
 lectual and emotional poem.) 
 
 (2) Through the recomposition of the matter from some 
 master-piece (unknown to the student), and the subsequent 
 comparison of his product with the master-piece, (i.e., a 
 comparison is instituted of new with old "psychic" poem.) 
 
 (3) Through the recomposition and reconstruction, for 
 poetic expression, of materials drawn, (with the knowledge of 
 the student), from famous English prose. The propo.-el 
 "psychic" poem will be criticised by the instructor, and dis- 
 cussed by the class. Thereupon, the student will proceed to 
 versify the resulting composition, and again submit it, first to 
 the class for further criticism, and lastly to elected judges of 
 recognized competence, (i. e. by experiment, the difference is 
 ascertained which exists between versified prose conceptions, 
 and a poetic conception first expressed in prose, and then In 
 verse.) 
 
 877
 
 378 APPENDIX 
 
 APPENDIX TO DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AS TRANS- 
 LATOR: TWO LETTERS 
 
 The writer ventured to address Mr. Rossetti for definite and 
 irrefutable testimony on certain points in hiis proposed treat- 
 ment of Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a Translator. The result 
 was two helpful letters, which being free to use as he pleased,* 
 he first quoted from, in his text and footnotes; but, upon 
 second thought, considered it fairer and more courteous to 
 print entire, italicizing the particular parts that bear on his 
 paper, and let the reader judge for himself, and share the 
 writer's gratitude for Mr. Rossettl's courtesy. 
 
 3 St. Edmund's Teebace. 
 Regent's Park, N. "W., May 14, 1909. 
 Deab Sie: There can not be any reasonable doubt that my 
 brother saw in an edition of Leopardi, or a selection from his 
 works, those lines, printed as being by Leopardi, and such they 
 were as a matter of translation; and my brother, knowing 
 nothing about the French original by Arnault, translated the 
 lines from Leopardi's Italian, and assigned them to Leopardi. 
 So far as I remember, he did not at any later date ascertain 
 the fact about Arnault. 
 
 In editions of my brother's poems, published by me with 
 notes, the fact about Arnault is mentioned. 
 
 I am not entirely sure what is signified by my brother's 
 gift of visualization. In this present instance the only visual- 
 ization which he exercised (so far as I perceive) was that he 
 saw and read a poem printed as being Leopardi's, and not 
 being aware of anything to the contrary, he translated it, and 
 brought out his translation as being done from Leopardi. 
 
 Believe me, dear Sir, 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 William M. Rossetti. 
 
 *I have had the pleasure of receiving your letter of May 25, 
 and I have written down, as within, a few observations bear- 
 ing upon what you say. They are at your service, for any 
 use to which you may care to put them. 
 
 Yours very faithfully, 
 
 W. M. Rossetti.
 
 APPENDIX 379 
 
 W. M. RossETTi's Notes. 
 
 A poet who is said to "visualize" a thing or an event is 
 thereby (as I understand it) said to have before his mind's 
 eye a clear concrete image of the thing or event. I have not 
 the slightest doubt that Dante Rossetti possessed and con- 
 stantly exercised this faculty, and all the more so as being a 
 painter as well as a poet. I think he must have exercised the 
 faculty in relation to poems which he translated just as much 
 as in relation to poems of his own original composition. To 
 take an instance: When he set about translating Dante's 
 canzone (in the Vita Nova), narrating his vision of the death 
 of Beatrice, I think Rossetti must have had before his mind's 
 eye a perfectly clear presentment of the personages and cir- 
 cumstances as set forth by Dante — a presentment of them 
 not the less distinct than when he later on undertook to show 
 the same subject-matter in a picture. Beyond this, he must 
 have visualized, i. e., realized to himself — Dante's attitude of 
 mind and feeling in writing the canzone; but, if it is suggested 
 that he realized to himself something developing Dante's mind 
 and feeling beyond what is embodied in the Italian canzone, 
 I am not prepared to adopt that view. To my thinking, it re- 
 mains in the region of the uncertain and the nebulous. 
 
 Rossetti began writing original verse towards the age of 
 six — of course, then and for some years ensuing very childish 
 or boyish stuff. By the age of eighteen he wrote original 
 verse of exceptional force and artistic beauty — witness "My 
 Sister's Sleep" and more especially "The Blessed Damozel." 
 Before this age he had made some verse translations, all or 
 most from the German: the opening books of the Xibelungen 
 Lied. Biirger's "Lenore," and (possibly before "The Blessed 
 Damozel," Der Arme Heinrich whom he called "Henry the 
 Leper"). His translations from the Italian (from Dante and 
 from poets preceding or nearly contemporaneous with him) 
 began early; much about the same time as "The Blessed Dam- 
 ozel" or before the summer of 1847. For some years ensu- 
 ing, original composition and translating proceeded pari pas- 
 su: the latter hotcever "being much the larger in quantity. 
 After 1853, or so, he did but little translating. The transla- 
 tions from Villon, and the one from verses which he found In
 
 380 APPENDIX 
 
 Leopardi, may have been done in 1869-70. I am quite satis- 
 fied that, when he was doing the Leopardi, he had no knowl- 
 edge of any French original by Arnault; and I am unable to 
 follow the suggestion that he in any way divined points in 
 Arnault's poem not reproduced in Leopardi's version. I have 
 found evidence to show, at a later date, he knew about Ar- 
 nault; but this does not affect any question relating to the 
 translation which Rossetti made. 
 
 As to "the relation between his activity as a translator and, 
 the nature of his original creation as a poet," I can say this 
 much. In his original poetry we all, I suppose, recognize a 
 large amount of pictorial or picturesque coloring, and a tone 
 of mind and of expression at once romantic and introspective. 
 In his translations the same qualities do unquestionably ap- 
 pear. He gets into the translations more of these qualities 
 than he finds in the poems translated from. I have lately had 
 occasion to put this point to the test; for an edition has been 
 published containing the text of those early Italian poems, 
 along with his versions of them, and I went through the book 
 with a good deal of pains. My primary object was to trace 
 the instances in which he had misapprehended the sense of 
 the Italian, or had departed very widely from an exact render- 
 ing of it; and I wrote out those details, and also noted some 
 of the more conspicuous cases in which he had infused into 
 the compositions a more pictorial or romantic hue. I sent my 
 notes to the publisher of the volume, and they will, I believe, 
 be published in it, in the event of a second edition. 
 
 Rossetti's original writings are there to speak for them- 
 selves and any intelligent inquirer can form his own opinions 
 as to the tone and faculties of mind traceable in them. / don't 
 think that in his letters, etc., he has left much that would tend 
 to elucidate such a point. In Hall Caine's Recollections of 
 D. G. Rossetti a letter of his is quoted (p. 134), speaking of 
 how he wrote his prose tale Hand and Soul in one night, and 
 of the peculiar sensations proper to nightly composition. In 
 his Family-Letters (p. 384), he says as to a conjecture of his 
 on an unimportant subject: "But this is all mere mental 
 drama.'' There is another letter of his, but I cannot at the 
 moment remember where it is to be found, in which he speaks 
 of "doing a deal of mental cartooning," or some sucn phrase 
 
 William M, Rossetti,
 
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