Hio graphical and Critical Studies James Thomson (E.I-'.] THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES v, \/ yd*\^J ' t< BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES JAMES THOMSON ("B. V.") AUTHOR OF "THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT," ETC. LONDON REEVES AND TURNER WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND AND BERTRAM DOBELL 77 CHARING CROSS ROAD 1896 PrinlKi h BAI.LANTVNK, HANSOM & Co. A I /*/ Ballantynt Prttt College Library PREFACE WHEN publishing, last year, the first collected edition of the poems of James Thomson, I expressed a hope that it might soon be followed by a collection of his prose writings. I hoped then that there would have been a somewhat more general welcome accorded to the poems than has proved to be the case, for though the zeal of Thomson's admirers leaves nothing to be desired, it must yet be confessed that their number is at present rather limited. It is, moreover, rather un- fortunate that to the general public he is still known almost exclusively as the author of "The City of Dreadful Night," so that it is difficult to gain a hearing for him except as a poet, notwithstanding the remark- able excellence of his prose writings. It is the desire, however, of his publishers to issue a collected edition of his prose works which shall comprise all that seems to be of permanent value in his remains. Such an edition, if carried out as intended, will extend to four volumes of original matter, and another containing his translations from Leopardi and Novalis. The book now issued is intended to form the first volume 1221535 vi PREFACE of the proposed collection. But it must be under- stood that it will depend upon the reception of the present volume whether the publication of the re- mainder is proceeded with. The publishers, who, sixteen years ago, gave Thomson his first chance of appealing to the book-buying public, are anxious to see their work crowned during their lifetimes by a definitive edition of his works; but if it should prove that there is no corresponding desire on the part of the reading public for such an edition, they can hardly be censured if they do not proceed with their enterprise. If not now, the work will some day be accomplished ; and it will matter little, so the work be done, by whom it is carried to completion. The contents of the present volume consist chiefly of writings which have not hitherto been collected. The only articles included here which have previously appeared in book-form are the essays on " The Poetry of William Blake " and on Shelley. I have included these, not only because I think they show Thomson at his best as a critic, but also because I was anxious to bracket them and the article on Garth Wilkinson ("A Strange Book") together. The three essays, though written at wide intervals of time, will be found to be linked together, not only because they deal with the fundamental questions of poetical criticism, but because they unfold with a fair degree of complete- ness the views of a true poet upon the methods and PREFACE Vll aims of his art. It will be well, however, to remember that the essay on Shelley was written when the author was still in his early manhood, and it may therefore require some slight allowance to be made on that account.* But the essays, taken together, are not more remarkable for their eloquent expression than for their entire sanity of judgment and sureness of appreciation of the distinctive qualities of the three poets, so like in some respects, and yet so entirely different in others. The article on Garth Wilkinson will be found to be of peculiar interest, since it is, so far as I know, the only article dealing with that remarkable writer which is in any degree adequate or satisfactory. As to the other contents of this volume, it will be well for the reader to bear in mind that the articles on Rabelais, Saint-Amant, Ben Jonson, John Wilson, and James Hogg, are reprinted from Cope's Tobacco Plant. This will account for the rather frequent references in those articles to the subjects which would naturally interest the readers of that periodical. Almost one-half of the article on Ben Jonson, indeed, is devoted to the references in that author's writings to the practices of smoking and snuff-taking. Possibly this portion of the essay might have been omitted * Thomson would not in later life have spoken of Carlyle's "French Revolution" as "the unapproached model of history," nor would he have spoken in quite such enthusiastic terms of Ruskin and Emerson as he employs in this early essay. vili PREFACE without much loss; but looking at the curiosity of the subject, and its illustrations of Jonson's character and manner of workmanship, I was very unwilling to sacrifice it All smokers will be interested by it ; and as they far out-number (amongst the male sex, at the least) non-smokers, I need make no further apology for its retention. I have experienced no small degree of pleasure in editing this volume; and now that my task is com- pleted, I feel assured that the book is one which will receive a warm welcome from its fit audience few or many, as the case may be. So much good English, good sense, good criticism, and keen thinking is not often to be found within the covers of a single book. I will not assert that it contains Thomson's finest work in prose; for, no doubt, the volume called " Essays and Phantasies," which was published during his lifetime, is his greatest achievement outside his verse. Nevertheless, it contains some things as fine as he ever accomplished ; and if here and there a suspicion may arise that some passages were not so much the outcome of the author's peculiar tempera- ment as of the struggle for subsistence, the candid and generous critic will hasten to make the proper allowances for them. But such passages are, after all, very few; and Thomson's task-work, however distasteful it may have been to him, was always honestly and conscientiously performed. PREFACE IX I have already enumerated the articles in this volume which appeared originally in Copers Tobacco Plant. As for the rest, the articles on Shelley (with the exception of the review of Symonds' " Life of Shelley," which appeared in Cope) and on William Blake first appeared in the National Reformer ; the " Notes on the Genius of Robert Browning " in the Transactions of the Browning Society, Part I. ; the article on "The Ring and the Book" in the Gentleman's Magazine ; and the notice of " Pacchia- rotto " in the Secularist. I have to thank the editors or proprietors of these various papers and periodi- cals for the permission kindly given to reproduce the various articles. BERTRAM DOBELL. CONTENTS RABELAIS I SAINT-AMANT 47 BEN JONSON 80 THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 240 SHELLEY 27O SHELLEY'S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS 283 NOTICE OF "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY" .... 289 A STRANGE BOOK 298 JOHN WILSON AND THE " NOCTES AMBROSIAN^E " . 372 JAMES HOGG, THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD .... 398 NOTES ON THE GENIUS OF ROBERT BROWNING . . 437 "THE RING AND THE BOOK" 458 BROWNING'S " PACCHIAROTTO " 478 BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES RABELAIS FRANCOIS RABELAIS was born about 1483 (the date is not certain), at Chinon, in Touraine, that fat and quiet province of subtle-witted, easy-going people, whose character has been so sympathetically de- scribed by the great Balzac (as in L'lllustre Gaudis- sarf) ; for Balzac, like Descartes and Paul Louis Courier, was a son of the same soil, and, like Rabelais and Paul Louis, copiously illustrated his native pro- vince. Rabelais calls Touraine the garden of France, and Chinon a most famous, noble, and ancient town, the first in the world; and in Book v., chap. xxxv. of his great work, we read : " This made me say to Pantagruel that this entry put me in mind of the painted cellar, in the oldest city in the world, where such paintings are to be seen, and in as cool a place. ' Which is the oldest city in the world ? ' asked Pan- tagruel. ' It is Chinon, sir, or Cainon, in Touraine,' said I. 'I know,' returned Pantagruel, ' where Chinon A 2 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES lies, and the painted cellar also, having myself drunk there many a glass of cool wine ; neither do I doubt but that Chinon is an ancient town witness its blazon. I own it is said twice or thrice " Chinon, Little town, Great renown, On old stone Long has stood ; There's the Vienne, if you look down ; If you look up, there's the wood." But how,' continued he, 'can you make out that it is the oldest city in the world ? Where did you find this written ? ' ' I have found it in the Sacred Writ,' said I, ' that Cain was the first that built a town ; we may then reasonably conjecture that he the first from his own name named it Cainon ; as, following his example, all other founders of cities have named them after themselves.' " An etymology as clear as Swift's tracing of bees and cobblers to the Hivites and the Shuites. The father kept an hotel called the " Lamprey," in which was the painted cellar (or cellar of pints, in one reading) so lovingly referred to, and had also a vineyard famous for its white wine; so that the jollicst of men was born amidst congenial surroundings. Being the youngest of several sons, he was destined for the Church, and his education was begun in the Benedictine abbey of Seville or Seuilld, close at hand. He was afterwards removed to the convent of l-i Basmcttc at Angers, where he rapidly progressed in learning, and made friends who were to stand him in good stead throughout his life, including Andre Tiraqueau, afterwards lieutenant- RABELAIS 3 general of the bailiwick of Fontenay-le-Comte ; Geoffroi d'Estissac, who became Bishop of Maille- zais ; and the four brothers du Bellay, who rose to high rank in the Church and State, one of them being made cardinal. When old enough for the novitiate, he unfortunately left the learned Benedictines for the ignorant and bigoted Franciscans, entering their convent of Fontenay-le-Comte in Lower Poitou, where he took priest's orders in 1511. He carried on his studies with the passionate ardour which dis- tinguished the great scholars of the Renaissance, having but one friend in the convent, Pierre Amy, who shared them with him, and who, like himself, corresponded in Greek with Budseus. The other monks regarded with profound distrust and anta- gonism this devotion to profane learning, and espe- cially to the diabolical Greek ; and at last the superiors made a visit of inquisition to the cells of the two students, and the chapter confiscated their Greek books and manuscripts. Then, it is said, Amy was frightened or won over to be the accuser of Rabelais, though of what he accused his old friend is not recorded perhaps of heresies uttered confidentially. It is certain that soon afterwards Rabelais was put in pace that is to say, condemned to imprisonment for life in an underground dungeon of the monas- tery, on a diet of bread and water : the Church had always such honey-sweet names for its most atrocious cruelties ! Thus, when an heresiarch like Giordano Bruno was handed over to the secular power to be burnt alive, the ecclesiastical formula ran : " To be punished as gently as possible, and without effusion of blood." Many reasons have been given for the 4 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES terrible sentence passed on Rabelais, in addition to whatever may have been betrayed by Amy ; but they are all legendary rather than historical, and seem to have been suggested by the drolleries of his great work, not begun till long afterwards, rather than by anything known of him during these years of solitary and strenuous study. Thus, he is said to have mingled with the wine of the monks certain anti- aphrodisiacs, or, on the contrary, certain aphrodisiacs ; to have got drunk at a village festival and preached debauchery to the peasants, giving them a fearful example by songs and dances and lewd antics ; to have posed himself in the place of the statue of St. Francis in the porch of the church of the convent, and by suddenly laughing and gesticulating, made the poor people kneeling before him cry out, "A miracle ! " " On ajoute quil poussa I 1 irreverence et le sacrilege jusyu' & les asperger cTunc eau qui n'etait rien nioins quc benite? He was rescued from this living burial by some of his powerful friends, particularly Andr Tiraqueau, who by his office had a certain authority over the convent, and who had to force the gates in order to release him. By the mediation of the same staunch friends he obtained, in 1524, an indulgence from Clement VII., permitting him to pass into the order of St. Benedict, to enter the Abbey of Maillezais under his friend Geoffroi d'Estissac, to assume the habit of a regular canon, and, notwithstanding his previous vow of poverty, to hold any Church livings he might obtain as a Benedictine. He was now forty years of age, and the best years of his life, all his young manhood, had been immured amongst the RABELAIS 5 most superstitious, fanatical, unlettered, and inert of monks. One shudders to think of what that great intellect and genial heart must have endured in such society. Only his unquenchable thirst for knowledge and his marvellous animal spirits could have sus- tained him. We shall not be surprised to read in his books the most bitter contempt and abhorrence for monks and monkery. Released thus, at length, he soon threw off the regular habit and assumed that of a secular priest, attaching himself to d'Estissac, who allotted him the income of a secretaryship, and undertook to provide him with a benefice when occasion should offer. He could now pursue his studies in peace (not in pace), with the advantages of a select society of liberal scholars and scholarly men of the world. He soon made the acquaintance of the leading thinkers and writers more or less in sympathy with the Reformation, or in revolt against the old orthodoxy, such as Calvin, Clement Marot, and Bonaventure des Periers. He could not long remain on good terms with Calvin, who was just as bigoted and dogmatical, in his own way, as any of the most narrow-minded doctors of the Church. Rabelais was not the man to free himself from one set of dogmas in order to involve himself in another as stringent. He was essentially a sceptic and free- thinker, enthusiastic for all erudition and science, hating all intolerance. Henry Etienne, the famous printer and scholar, echoing Calvin, said : " Though Rabelais seems to be one of us, he often flings stones into our garden." Father de St. Romuald reports : "Some said he turned Lutheran, others that he turned Atheist." And Mr. Besant, in his article on 6 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Rabelais in the " French Humourists," well remarks : " The controversies of the time, the endless disputes of the schools, the differences of churches what were they to men who could feed on Plato, and roam over the flowery fields of ancient philosophy ? What was it to them whether the bigot of Geneva, or the bigot of Rome, conquered ? . . . The spirit of priest- hood that had been the enemy of philosophy in old times, and was its enemy in the new times ; its fanaticism, its blind fear of knowledge, were their natural foes; the long chain of custom, the fetter which bound men's souls to decaying forms, was what they would fain, but could not, remove. Life might be cheered by the intercourse of scholars; but life with the common herd, with the so-called religious or so-called learned, was intolerable, ludi- crous, stupid. As for the doctrines of the Church well, they are good for the common people. Mean- while, the great God reigns : He is like a sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference no- where. The ministers of religion are its worst enemies : he who is wise will be tied by as few dogmas as may be, but he will possess his soul in patience." And again : " Some men there are who seem too great for creeds. If they remain in the Church wherein they were born, it is because in no other would they find relief from the fetters of doc- trine, and because the main things which underlie Articles are common to all Churches, in which the dogmas are the accidents of time and circumstance." After six free and happy years, divided between his native town of Chinon, where he had his home and the excellent vineyard of La Deviniere, and the RABELAIS 7 Chateau de Leguge of his patron and friend d'Estissac, where he had his little chamber for study, Rabelais found it advisable to make a move. The clergy had prevailed on the Parliament of Paris to order rigorous measures against those holding, or suspected of hold- ing, the new doctrines. Clement Marot, accused specifically of eating lard in Lent, and generally of want of faith, was imprisoned in the chatelet, which in one of his poems he describes as a hell, and a very foul one. Bonaventure des Periers was denounced as an atheist by an Abbe Sagon, for words spoken, in chat with other gentlemen, of Marguerite of Navarre, and narrowly escaped. Louis de Berquin, accused by the Sorbonne headed by Beda, in spite of the favour of the king and the vigorous defence of Buda, was condemned as a relapsed heretic, and first strangled in consideration of his noble birth, and then burnt along with his books in the Place de Greve, in 1529. Rabelais went off to Montpellier to pursue his studies in medicine, which he had already by himself carried much further than most doctors of the age, Montpellier being then the most famous medical school in Europe. Thus, a contemporary of Rabelais, Andrew Boorde, writes : " At last I dyd stay at Muntpilior, which is the noblest universite of the world for phisicions and surgeons." (English Text Society; Extra Series, x.) He inscribed him- self on the register, i6th September 1530, being then forty-seven years old, and, on account of the vast knowledge he brought with him, was received bachelor on the ist November following. He lectured to large audiences on Hippocrates and Galen, correcting the Latin version in use by colla- 8 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES tion with a Greek MS. of his own. He had his amusements with his fellow-bachelors. In "Panta- gruel " (Hi., xxxiv.), Panurge says to Carpalim : "I have not seen you since you played at Montpellier, with our old friends, Anthony Saporta, Guy Bourg- nier, Balthazar Noyer, Tolet, John Quentin, Francis Robinet, John Perdrier, and Francis Rabelais, the moral comedy of him who married a dumb wife." And Epistemon having sketched the plot, which was worked up by Moliere in his Mededn Malgre ui, adds : " I never laughed so much in my life as at that buffoonery" (patelinage, from the celebrated farce of Patelin, to which Rabelais frequently alludes). Some of those who acted with him became among the most eminent doctors of the university. Though but a bachelor, he was selected to plead with Chan- cellor Duprat for the privileges of Montpellier, which had been restricted. Arriving at Paris, he could not obtain an audience of the great man. Clothing him- self in a long green gown and an Armenian bonnet, with spectacles attached to it, and with a huge ink- stand at his girdle, he marched solemnly up and down in front of the Chancellor's residence. A crowd soon gathered, and the attention of Duprat was called to the outlandish masquerader. One of the household was sent to ask him who he was, and he answered, " I am the flayer of calves." A page was sent out to ask him what brought him to Paris ; he replied in Latin. One of the gentlemen who knew Latin being brought, Rabelais answered him in Greek ; and so with one after another, in Spanish, Italian, German, English, Hebrew, &c., just as he has made Panurge do in " Pantagruel," ii. 9. At length the Chancellor RABELAIS 9 ordered that he should be brought in, when he spoke so eloquently and wisely on the subject of his mission that all he asked for Montpellier was granted. His memory has been conserved there by a custom said to be still observed. They kept his collegiate dress, a gown of red cloth, with large sleeves and black vel- vet collar, bearing his initials embroidered in gold ; and the bachelors put on this robe to pass their fifth examination, and when they took it off each retained a small piece as a relic. At the beginning of the seventeenth century it had become so short that it only reached to the waist, and a fresh one was substi- tuted in 1610, which was again renewed in 1720. Early in 1532 he quitted Montpellier without tak- ing his doctor's degree, although he was thoroughly qualified, and afterward practised, and went to Lyons, where he assisted Etienne Dolet in bringing out various classical works. Here he published the second volume of the medical letters of Manardi, as well as a revised and corrected edition of the Latin version of various treatises of Hippocrates and Galen, and two forged Latin documents, by which he was deceived. Tradition says that he was incited to begin his burlesque "Gargantua" by the complaints of his bookseller that the medical books would not sell ; but this is very doubtful, as it is recorded that they were several times re-published. At any rate, the first edition, or, rather, version of the " Gargantua " (for the second had important and, indeed, radical varia- tions) appeared in 1532, under the imposing title of " The great and inestimable Chronicles of the great and enormous giant Gargantua, containing the gene- alogy, the greatness and strength of his body; also IO BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES the marvellous deeds of arms he wrought for King Arthur, as you will see in the sequel ; newly printed." Three hundred years elapsed before this book was definitively recognised for the first draft of the " Gar- gantua," as it appears in his works. The author called himself Alcofribas Nasier, an anagram of Frangois Rabelais, Abstracter of Quintessence ; a pseudonym still preserved in the heading of the first and second books. Like " Don Quixote," his great work was begun simply as an extravagant burlesque of the romances of chivalry, very popular under Francis I., and. as with the masterpiece of Cervantes, the scope and intention of the book continually widened as it proceeded. This first part became at once immensely popular ; as he tells us himself in the prologue to Book ii., more copies had been sold in a couple of months than would be bought of the Bible in nine years. As to the manner in which it was written, he says : " In the composition of this lordly book I never wasted or employed any more or any other time than that allotted to my bodily refection, that is, to my drinking and eating." Early in 1533 appeared the first edition (also unknown to bibliographers until 1834) of what is now the second book, under the title of " Pantagruel : the horrible and terrific deeds and prowesses of the most renowned Pantagruel, King of Dipsodes, son of the great giant Gargantua. Newly composed by Master Alcofribas Nasier." At least three editions of this were published at Lyons in the same year, to one of which he added the " Pantagrueline prognostication, certain, verit- able, and infallible, for the year 1533," burlesqueing the judicial astrology which had then multitudes of RABELAIS II believers. This he followed up by an Almanac for the same year, written with the same intent, and to which he put his own name, calling himself doctor of medicine and professor of astrology. He com- posed other Prognostications and Almanacs for subsequent years, of which but a few fragments are known. In January 1534, Jean du Bellay, then Bishop of Paris, passed through Lyons on his way to Rome, having been called from England, where he was ambassador, in order to attempt a reconciliation be- tween Henry VIII. and the Pope. He offered to take Rabelais as his physician, and the offer was joy- fully accepted, Rabelais having long desired to see Italy and Rome, and being specially glad to go there in the suite of his old friend and college-mate, one of the most able and liberal-minded prelates of the period. Many doubtful stories are told of Rabelais' sayings and doings at Rome, and, indeed, no man has had more drolleries fathered on him. One of the many is, probably, grounded on fact. Cle- ment VII. having promised to grant him any petition, he begged to be excommunicated, thus explaining the motive of his strange request : " Holy Father, I am French, and of a small town named Chinon, con- sidered very subject to the faggot ; they have already burnt there many worthy people, relatives of mine. Now, if your Holiness will excommunicate me, I shall never burn, and for this reason : In coming to Rome we stopped, on account of the cold, in a wretched hut ; an old woman who tried to kindle a faggot for us and could not succeed, said it must have been excommunicated by the Pope's own mouth, 12 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES since it would not burn." He remained but six months in Rome, being recalled, as he states, by the king, perhaps as the bearer of some important communica- tion from the ambassador. But during his short stay he had managed to learn the Arabic from a bishop, and to make considerable progress in collecting materials for a work on the topography and monu- ments of ancient Rome. On his return, it is related that he was brought to a stop at an inn at Lyons, for want of money to pay his bill and proceed, a sort of embarrassment which has become proverbial as the quarter of an hour of Rabelais. Wishing to remain unknown, in the interest of his errand, he disguised himself, and caused it to be declared to the chief doctors of the town that an eminent physician, having returned from long travels, desired to communicate his observations. Many came, to whom he discoursed long and learnedly. All at once, with a mysterious air, he secured the doors, and announced that he would reveal his great secret. " Here," said he, " is a most subtle poison that I have procured in Italy to deliver you from that tyrant the king and his family." He was seized, placed in a litter with a strong guard, and marched off to Paris treated liberally on the way, at the public expense, as a prisoner of the highest importance. Led before Francis I., he threw off his disguise, resuming his natural voice and expression, and was immediately recognised by the king, who, thanking the Lyons notables for their zeal, graciously dismissed them, and kept Rabelais to supper, where he drank heartily to the health of the king and the prosperity of the loyal city of Lyons. RABELAIS 13 II Rabelais soon returned to Lyons, which he called the seat of his studies. Here, in 1534, he issued an edition of Marliani's " Topography of Ancient Rome," abandoning his own projected work on the subject. It was his last publication of simple and serious scholarship; thenceforward he devoted his pen al- together to the sublime mysteries of Pantagruelism. He was appointed physician to the Grand Hopital, and pursued his studies in astronomy and anatomy, on one occasion dissecting and lecturing upon the corpse of a criminal before a large number of persons. In 1535 he brought out another satirical "Almanack and Pantagruelian Prognostication," and, of far more importance, the third and definite redaction of " Gar- gantua," in which he retained nothing of the first except the names, some few events, and a score of comic phrases or ideas. It was now entitled, " The inestimable Life of the great Gargantua, father of Pantagruel, composed of yore by the Abstracter of Quintessence; book full of Pantagruelism." What Pantagruelism is he tells us in the New Prologue to Book iv. : " Oest certaine gay etc (Fesperit confide en mepris des choses fortuites" which the English version renders : " a certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune." It has been thought that Rabelais founded a secret society of Pantagruelists, with the twofold object of spreading the Reformation among the common people, and Epicureanism among the higher classes; while an eminent French scholar thinks that he was 14 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Lutheran in the first book, and Epicurean only in the fifth, published after his death. If he did found a secret society, it was probably only as a club for wit and revelry, not for propagandism of any kind. It must be remembered that he was now over fifty years of age, and had outlived all his illusions, and the belief in such a propaganda would be a very youthful illusion indeed. The abbey of The'leme, so magnificently described in the last "Gargantua" (Book i., as we have it now), and in which all the arrangements are in direct contradiction to those of ordinary convents, is supposed to represent this new philosophy as conceived by Rabelais, Etienne Dolet, Bonaventure des Periers, Clement Marot, Maurice Seve, Lyon Jamet, and the most eminent men of the time. It is certain that Rabelais was very intimate with Dolet and Marot ; but they were soon separated. Placards blaspheming the sacrifice of the Mass were posted about Paris in the night, and an image of the Virgin at the corner of a street was profaned. Fran- cis I. declared that he would cut off his own arm if he knew that it was gangrened with heresy, and ordered the Parliament to proceed with vigour and rigour against all of dubious faith. Six Lutherans were burnt alive, in presence of the king and all the court. Marot heard that his papers and books had been sei/ed in his rooms at Paris, and forthwith fled to Beam, to the protection of the sister of Francis, his Marguerite des Marguerites, or Pearl of Pearls, the noble Marguerite of Navarre, patroness and pro- tectress of all liberal thinkers and writers. Not feeling safe even with her, he went to Ferrara, and then to Venice; and, indeed, she did not pass un- RABELAIS 15 attacked herself, for Brantome says, " The Constable de Montmorency, when in the greatest favour, speaking one day with the king, did not scruple to tell him that if he really meant to exterminate the heretics from his realm, he must begin with his court and those nearest him, naming the queen his sister." Dolet was imprisoned at Lyons until released by the influence of his protector, Pierre Duchatel, Bishop of Tulle. Rabelais, who had satirised the monks and Catholicism in the last " Gargantua," hurried off to Italy in 1536. In Mr. Besant's words : " He chose the safest place in Europe for a man of heretical opinions Rome." Jean du Bellay was still there on business of the king, and in high favour with the new Pope, Paul III., who had made him a cardinal ; and Rabelais was again attached to his household, as physician, reader, secretary, and librarian. Rabelais, by the advice of his friends, addressed to the Pope a supplication for apostasy, in which, after confessing his sins against the Church, and particularly his flight from the convent of Maillezais, he besought full absolution for the past, with permission to resume the Benedictine habit and re-enter the monastery, and also to practise medicine wherever he pleased, but for charity, not payment, and using neither fire nor iron. By the intervention of some Roman cardinals, who loved his wit and learning more than they hated his heresies, he got all he asked for, and thus pro- tected by the bulls of the Pope, could defy even the Sorbonne. However, he did not at once return to France, where the persecution was still hot, but remained at Rome till March 1537, when he was recalled to both Paris and Montpellier to Paris to 16 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES occupy a benefice which Cardinal du Bellay had assigned him in the Abbey de St. Maur des Fosse's, to Montpellier to take his degree of Doctor of Medi- cine. Sixteen letters, written by him during this sojourn to the Bishop of Maillezais, are extant, and appear in the English edition of his works (Bohn's ; the translation by Sir Thomas Urquhart and Motteux), having been first published a hundred years after his death. He went direct to Montpellier, where he took his degree in May, being fifty-four years old, and gave public lectures on anatomy, &c., for about a year, although he was not a professor. L. Jacob, Bibliophile (Paul Lacroix), to whose very full Memoir, prefixed to his edition of Rabelais, I am much in- debted, says, on the authority of Kuhnholtz : " The faculty, nevertheless, placed his portrait among those of the professors, and this original portrait, which was painted about this time, represents Rabelais with a bearing noble and majestic, regular features, fresh and ruddy complexion, fine beard of a pale gold, intelligent (spirituclle) expression, eyes full of both fire and sweetness, air gracious though grave and thoughtful." Rabelais seems to have then gone to Paris, where he practised medicine, but did not fulfil the other conditions of the Papal brief which gave him security, not renouncing the secular habit nor submitting to conventual discipline. The Cardinal du Bellay had returned to France, and obtained a well-deserved pre- ponderance in the Royal Council, and he enjoined Rabelais to enter upon the functions of the canonry, in the convent of St. Maur des Fosse's, to which he had teen appointed. The other canons opposed his RABELAIS 17 admission, on the ground that he remained under the censure of the Church for apostasy, the bulls of abso- lution being cancelled by his non-compliance with their conditions. Accordingly, he had to address another application to the Pope, which, like the first, is extant, for confirmation of the previous absolution and indulgences. As it was recommended by the cardinal, and supported by friends in Rome, it seems to have been granted without difficulty ; and Rabelais, assuming the Benedictine habit, installed himself, with his books and scientific instruments, in the said convent of St. Maur, where, more than a century after his death, his room was still shown to strangers, as was also, at Montpellier, the house he had lived in. He loved this residence, which, in his epistle to Car- dinal de Chastillon, he terms " Paradise of salubrity, amenity, serenity, commodity, delights, and all honest pleasures of agriculture and country life." The Car- dinal du Bellay, who also liked the place, equally favourable for study and health, erected a magnificent mansion there in the Italian style, adorned with sculptures and surrounded by gardens; and Rabe- lais was always a welcome guest. But he was not the man to confine himself to the convent when the Papal brief gave him permission to practise medicine, as a work of charity, wherever he pleased. He kept travel- ling about, sojourning now in one town, now in another ; he visited the friends of his youth, Antoine Ardillon at Fontenay-le-Comte, Geoffroi d'Estissac at Leguge or 1'Ermenaud, Jean Bouchet at Poitiers, Andre Tiraqueau at Bordeaux, where he had been appointed Councillor to the Parliament. He frequently stayed a while at Chinon, where he still had relatives. 18 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES The vineyard he seems to have lost at the death of his father, but the hotel of the Lamprey remained to him, and he reserved in it a modest room for himself, which was respected long after his death. In the editions of Le Duchat, we are told, there are several engravings showing the hotel and the room as they were at the end of the seventeenth century. But he lived most of all with one or other of the brothers Du Bellay, his old and leal comrades of the convent of La Basmette, and all distinguished men. Besides the cardinal, there were Martin du Bellay, Lieutenant- General of Normandy (and real King of Yvetot, by his marriage with Elizabeth Chenu, proprietor of that principality), who was then writing memoirs of his negotiations and campaigns; Rene du Bellay, Bishop of Mans, the youngest, an ardent student of the phy- sical sciences ; and Guillaume du Bellay, Seigneur de Langey, a great captain and diplomatist, who also was writing memoirs in Latin. In this work it has been supposed that he was assisted by Rabelais, who in his own name printed a work on the same subject (of which not a copy is known to exist), as appears by a quoted title : " Stratagems, that is to say Prowesses and Ruses of War of the Valiant and very Celebrated Chevalier Langey, &c. Translated from the Latin of Fr. Rabelais by Claude Massuan. (Lyons, 1542.)" Jean du Bellay, the cardinal, was not only a real statesman and powerful orator, but an elegant poet in Latin, and a large-minded man, interested in all matters of literature, science, and philosophy, and so liberal in his ideas that, Churchman and cardinal as he was, he corresponded with Melancthon on the most cordial terms. The beneficent genius of Panta- RABELAIS 19 gruelism was right bountiful to Rabelais when it secured him such life-long friends as these. He was staying with Guillaume du Bellay, at the end of 1542, when the veteran, who was lieutenant- general of the armies of the king in Piedmont, being warned by his spies of a secret intrigue of Charles V. against Francis I., did not hesitate to start at once, in spite of his great age, his infirmities, and the rigour of the season, to acquaint the king with what was passing. On leaving Lyons, carried in a litter, since he was not able to ride on horseback, he soon felt so ill that he was compelled to stop, and knew that his end was at hand. His death and the circumstances attending it made a profound impression on Rabelais, who loved and esteemed him; it is spoken of three times in " Pantagruel," and always with an unmistakable seri- ousness. In Book iv., chap, xxvi., Epistemon says : " We have had experience of this lately at the death of that valiant and learned knight, Guillaume du Bellay, during whose life France enjoyed so much happiness that all the world had her in envy, all the world sought her friendship, all the world feared her. From the day of his death it has been the scorn of all the world for a very long time." And in chap, xxvii., Pantagruel himself first speaking : " ' This we saw several days before the departure of that so illustrious, generous, and heroic soul of the learned and valiant chevalier of Langey, of whom you have spoken.' ' I remember it,' said Epistemon, 'and still my heart shudders and trembles within its membrane when I think of the prodigies, so various and horrific, which we saw plainly five or six days before his departure ; so that the lords D'Assier, Chemant, Mailly the one- 20 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES eyed, Saint Ayl, Villeneufue la Guyart, Master Gabriel, physician of Savillan, Rabelais, Cohnau, Massuan, Maiorici, Bullon, Ceren, called Bourgemaistre, Fran- 9oys Proust, Ferron, Charles Girard, Franc,oys Bourre", and many more friends, followers, and servants of the deceased, all dismayed, regarded each other in silence, without saying a word, but all indeed reflecting and foreseeing in their minds that soon France would be deprived of a chevalier so perfect and necessary to her glory and protection, and that the heavens claimed him as due to them by natural propriety.' " Mark the long array of honourable witnesses, all well known, and all named for legacies in the will of Du Bellay, Rabe- lais himself having fifty livres a year till such time as he should hold livings worth at least three hundred livres per annum. And again, in Book iii., chap, xxi., the noble Pantagruel, speaking here also : " I will but remind you of the learned and valiant Chevalier Guillaume du Bellay, late Lord of Langey, who died on the hill of Tarana, the loth of January, in the cli- macteric year of his age [the sixty-third], and of our computation 1543, according to the Roman reckon- ing. The three or four hours before his death he employed in vigorous speech, tranquil and serene in mind, predicting to us what in part we have since seen come to pass, and in part we expect to come ; although at the time these prophecies seemed to us somewhat incredible and strange, as we discerned no present cause or sign portending what he foretold." These serious testimonies of a writer who was anything but superstitious, and who burlesqued the astrologers with infinite scorn, are certainly trustworthy. He perhaps wrote the epitaph RABELAIS 21 " Ci gtt Langey, dont la plume et 1'epee Ont surmonte Ciceron et Pompee." We know that he was on the most friendly terms with the noblemen and gentlemen he names, both before and after the death of their lord. The bequest to him seems to show either that a canonry at St. Maur was worth very little, or that he was not then drawing its income. It appears that Rene" du Bellay gave him a living that of St. Christophe de Jambert whose duties he performed by deputy. Meanwhile the public was impatient for the long- promised continuation of " Pantagruel." It is pro- bable that his friends dissuaded him from bringing it out, in view of the terrible judgments given by the Parliament of Paris against heretical books and their authors. Clement Marot, whose return from exile had been procured by Marguerite of Navarre, had to take refuge in Geneva in 1543, the Sorbonne scenting heresy in his popular version of the Psalms, long used in the Calvinistic Churches. It was the translation to which Browning makes Ronsard allude " And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David the Psalmist." Des Periers is said to have committed suicide about 1544, rather than fall into the hands of the Church. Etienne Dolet in 1546 was condemned, as a relapsed atheist, to be put to the torture, then hanged, then burned together with his books, with the thought- ful proviso that if he made any scandal, or uttered any blasphemy, at the place of execution, his tongue should be cut out and burned first. Yet in this very year Rabelais ventured to publish his third book, with 22 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES its mordant satire of theologians and legists. At first sight the act appears audacious to the verge of frenzy, when it was criminal to render the Gospels and Psalms into the vernacular; when praying to God in French was a crime punished with the gibbet and the stake ; when Francis I. had declared that he would cut off his own arm if he knew it to be gangrened with heresy. It is true that he had power- ful protectors, but so had Berquin, and likewise the special favour of Francis ; yet all had not availed to save him. But, most wonderful of all, the friends of Rabelais actually succeeded in getting the royal authority and privilege for this third book valid for ten years from its date, which license we can still read. He is supposed to have been chiefly indebted for it, in addition to the Du Bellays and D'Estissac, to Pierre du Chatel, Bishop of Tulle, almoner and reader to the king, and a secret supporter of the Protestants, and to Odet, Cardinal de Chastillon (brother of Admiral de Coligny), who subsequently avowed himself a Huguenot, and married in his pontifical robes. To crown his hardihood, Rabelais put his own name to this book, calling himself Doctor of Medicine and calloier (reverend father) des isles HiereSy adding : " The above-named author begs his benevolent readers to reserve their laughter till the seventy-eighth book." In this book he abandons the romances of chivalry, the giants with their horrible and dreadful deeds, and his native Touraine. The burlesque has become satire ; for local allusions we have general. He passes in review the leading pro- fessions embodied in typical personages the theo- logian, the physician, the legist, the philosopher, RABELAIS 23 delivering themselves on the great question whether Panurge ought to marry or not. With all the fun these are not mere caricatures, but admirable intel- lectual studies by the greatest and best-informed intellect of the age. He introduces it by some lines to the spirit of Marguerite of Navarre, although she did not die until two years later. In the Prologue he challenges his enemies with infinite scorn : " Back with you, bigots ! To your sheep, mastiffs ! Out of this, hypocrites, in the devil's name, hay ! Are you still there? I renounce my part of Papimanie if I grip you. Grr, grrr, grrrrrr." There was a furious outcry against him from the monks and the theo- logians. Council was held at the Sorbonne, the book was strictly examined, and enough was found in it to condemn the author twenty times over. Especially in chapters xxii. and xxiii., the word asne (dne), "a jackass," was found three times for asme (dme), " soul." The first passage reads : " May his jackass go to thirty thousand basketfuls of devils;" the second : " May his jackass go to thirty thousand cartloads of devils ; " the third : " At any rate, if he loses body and life, let him not damn his jackass." Rabelais, in the Epistle to Monseigneur Odet, Cardinal de Chastillon, dated January 1552, pre- fixed to the fourth book, coolly declares that the one word was thus put for the other three times running through the fault and negligence of the printers ! Many an author's burden has been re- jected on that long-suffering class, but never more audaciously than in this instance. As the book was protected by the royal authority, the Sorbonne could not impeach it without the permission of the king, 24 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES which they accordingly requested. Francis had not read the book ; " but now," as Rabelais tells us in the above-mentioned epistle, "having, by the voice and pronunciation of the most learned and faithful reader of this kingdom [Pierre du Chatel, already named] heard and listened to the distinct reading of these books of mine (I say mine, because some false and infamous ones have been maliciously laid to my charge), he found no suspicious passage ; and he had in horror some eater of serpents who founded mortal heresy on an n put for an m by the fault and negligence of the printers. And so had his son, our so gracious, virtuous, and blessed King Henry, whom may God long preserve to us ! So that, for me, he granted you privilege and particular protection against my calumniators." Ill In 1547 or 1548 he published, by itself, a Prologue to a fourth book of " Pantagruel," now known as the Old Prologue, for he wrote a new one for the book when issued. In this first Prologue, which is not given in the English version, he thanks his friends and admirers, " the most illustrious tipplers," for a present they had made him, being a richly ornamented flask of silver in the form of a breviary, with indications what wines he should drink at the several hours of prayer, this being his favourite style of devotion. These friends were probably the Pan- tagruelists of the court for, as an old writer says, everybody began to cultivate Pantagruelism and, RABELAIS 25 doubtless, comprised the famous Pleiad of poets, Ronsard, Ban", and the rest, who, in the celebrated orgie of Arcueil, renewed the antique rites of Bacchus, offering to Jodelle, whose classical tragedy of " Cleo- patra " had been acted with success before Henry II. and his court at Rheims, a he-goat crowned with flowers, chanting Evohe, reciting dithyrambs, and pouring libations of wine in honour of all the deities of Olympus. Meanwhile, more was expected of him than drolleries and satires : the philosophers hoped for a serious work, sceptical or atheistic ; the reformers for a solemn declaration in their favour. However, the Calvinists joined the Romanists in denouncing his books with true theological rancour. He soon afterwards went to Rome a third time with the Cardinal du Bellay, who, having lost his credit by the death of Francis I. and accession of Henry II., resigned his offices, which fell to the Cardinal of Lorraine. Beroalde de Verville, in his facetious Moyen de Parvenir, or " Way to get on in the World," tells us a story of this time, which I give for what it is worth : many think it true. " The Cardinal du Bellay, to whom Rabelais was physician, being ill of a hypochondriac humour, it was decided by the learned doctors in consultation, that an aperitive de- coction must be made for monseigneur. Whereupon Rabelais goes out, leaving these gentlemen to finish their babbling to better use up money. He makes place in the middle of the court a tripod on a large fire, and on this a cauldron full of water, into which he threw all the keys he could find, and stirred the keys with a stick to make them boil well. The doctors having come down, and asking what he was 26 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES about, he replied : ' Gentlemen, I carry out your prescription, for nothing can be more aperitive than keys ; and, if you are not content, I will send to the arsenal for some pieces of cannon to make the last opening.'" Besides being physician, he seems to have been astrologer, great as was his contempt for the judicial astrology. Catherine de Medicis had introduced this pretended science into France, and it had become the fashion for every one who could afford it to have his horoscope drawn, and every great personage had an astrologer in his suite. It is certain that he published, though no exemplar is known to exist, an "Almanack and Ephemerides for the Year of Our Lord 1550, composed and calculated for all Europe, by Master Frangois Rabelais, physician- in-ordinary to Monseigneur the Most Reverend Car- dinal du Bellay. Here are found, at the end of each month, the planets of infants, both male and female, and to which they are subject." It is evident from this title that he treated the matter with apparent seriousness, however ironically. The cardinal and the French ambassador gave a grand mimic siege, followed by a Gargantuan banquet, in honour of the birth of a son to their king, and also of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, very appro- priately represented by the chaste goddess after whom she was named. Rabelais took part in this, probably assisting in its invention, and wrote an account of it, which was sent to Charles de Lorraine, Cardinal de Guise, the favourite minister of Diane, who had it printed. She was grateful for the flattery, but the one cardinal feared the other too much to permit his return. Rabelais, however, reaped his reward in a RABELAIS 27 privilege of the king, dated 1550, protecting not only the books already published but also the sequel to " Pantagruel," yet to see the light. This privilege distinctly states that Rabelais had also published several works in Greek, Latin, French, and Tuscan ; but of these, other than those already mentioned, nothing is known. Thus secured against religious persecution, he was recalled to France, and was thenceforward in great measure attached to the powerful house of Lorraine, while faithful to his old protectors, the Du Bellays, who remained his stead- fast friends. The Cardinal de Guise had just bought from the Duchess d'Etampes, who had been mistress of Francis I., the fine estate of Meudon, where, it being near Paris, he could reside with his brother, Henri de Lorraine, Duke de Guise, without remitting attendance at the court and council of the king. Cardinal du Bellay, as Bishop of Paris, had the vicarage (cure) of Meudon in his gift, and hastened to appoint to it Rabelais, thus gratifying the Lor- raines as well as himself; the vicar (cure) in posses- sion, of course, resigning at a hint from such great men, and being presumably indemnified with some other benefice. Accordingly, on the igth January 1551, Rabelais was inducted vicar of the parish church of St. Martin de Meudon by the Bishop of Treves, vicar-general of the Cardinal du Bellay ; and, as Mr. Besant remarks, he has since been generally known as Cure of Meudon, though he was this but two years out of a life of seventy, he being sixty- eight when appointed. He now resolved or ventured to publish the fourth book of " Pantagruel," more daring in its satire and scepticism than any of the 28 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES preceding. In his Dedicatory Epistle to his old pro- tector, the Cardinal de Chastillon, dated Paris, 28th January 1552, he declares, with that coolness of con- summate audacity which must have largely helped to save him when weaker men were lost : " But the calumny of certain cannibals, misanthropes, and laughterless fools (agelastes) had been so atrocious and unreasonable against me, that it had vanquished my patience, and I had intended not to write a jot more. For one of the least of their slanders was that all my books are stuffed with heresies, though they could not show a single one in any passage. Of joyous fooleries, free from offence to God and the king, yes : they are the unique subject and theme of these books ; of heresies, no ; if not perversely, and against all usage of reason and common lan- guage, interpreted into what I would rather suffer a thousand deaths, were it possible, than have thought ; as who should interpret bread, stone ; fish, serpent ; egg, scorpion." Yet, in this fourth book, he not only mercilessly derided the monks as before, but also the fasts of the Church, the Court of Rome, the Council of Trent, the authority of the Pope, and even (chap, xxvii.) the immortality of the soul, and (chap, xxviii.) the Divinity of Christ. Ac- cordingly, this book had scarcely appeared when it was condemned by the Faculty of Theology, which procured a decree of the Parliament of Paris, dated ist March 1552, suspending the sale, and sum- moning the printer to appear before it. Paul La- croix, indeed, argues with probability that the first edition was suppressed, that which we have being the second, and the Epistle dedicatory to the Car- RABELAIS 29 dinal de Chastillon really thanking him for having, in conjunction with other friends, procured the royal permission for the republication of the work. At any rate, the king did intervene ; and the Faculty of Theology and the Parliament left Rabelais and his book to their own wicked devices, unchecked. He was only made to resign one of the two livings he held; and in January 1553, he resigned that of St. Christophe de Jambet, being the farther from Paris. It is doubtful whether he had ever visited it. The vogue of this fourth book was such that the Paris printer almost immediately issued a new edition, revised and corrected by the author; and piratical editions abounded throughout France. Our worthy cure of Meudon lived in his parish in peace, troubled only by a quarrel with Ronsard, who had taken up the cause of his friend and master, Pierre Ramus, the anti-Aristotelian, with whom Rabe- lais had a literary feud. Ronsard vented his rancour in a long epitaph on his old friend. Rabelais was a frequent guest of his " good parishioners " the Duke and Duchess of Guise, and was visited by the most distinguished scholars and nobles of Paris. He had grown so virtuously discreet, now that he was verging on the threescore and ten, that he would allow no woman to enter his manse ! He assiduously fulfilled the duties of his office improving his church, in- structing his choristers, and teaching the poor to read. People flocked from all the surrounding country to see him in the character of a decorous cure, and hear him preach. Meudon thus became a regular resort of the Parisians, who continued to go there long after his death, in accordance with the proverbial saying, 3O BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES still popular in the seventeenth century, " Let us go to Meudon ; there we shall see the castle, the terrace, the grottos, and M. le cur'e^ the man in all the world of the most agreeable countenance, the most pleasant humour, the best to welcome his friends and all honest folk, and the best of talkers." The date and place of decease and the place of burial are uncer- tain. It is rather tradition than history that he died at Paris, April 9, 1553, in a house in the Rue des Jardins, and was interred in the cemetery of the parish of St. Paul, at the foot of a large tree, which stood for more than a century. The accounts of his last moments are most contradictory : his friends reported that his end was what is called edifying; his foes that he proved by his conduct and mockeries in the face of death that he had no belief in another life. For my own part, I confess that I do not think Rabelais a likely subject for repentance. He who had always mocked life might well mock death. The chief stories concerning his end are well known. The first is given among the "Apophthegms" of Lord Bacon, who terms Rabelais the grand jester of France. When he had received Extreme Unction he declared that they had greased his boots for the long journey. When the attending priest asked him whether he believed in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the wafer given him for the Communion, he answered, with a respectful air : " I believe in it, and it rejoices me ; for I seem to see my God as when He entered Jerusalem, triumphant and borne by an ass." When he was near the point of death they passed over him his Benedictine robe, and he still had the spirit to pun in allusion to it : " Beati qui moriuntur in RABELAIS 31 Domino" ( " Blessed are they who die in the Lord, or in a domino." ) He is said to have dictated the magnificent and munificent will : " I have nothing, I owe much; the rest I give to the poor." Whatever doubt there may be as to the genuineness of the pre- ceding, I think there can be little or none as to that of the two following ; they are so eminently charac- teristic. A page was introduced, sent by his friend Cardinal du Bellay, or Cardinal de Chastillon, to inquire as to his state. He beckoned the youth to his bedside, and murmured faintly : " Tell mon- seigneur in what gallant humour you find me ; I go to seek a great Perhaps." Finally, before expiring, he gathered all his strength to exclaim, with a laugh : " Draw the curtain : the farce is over." What adds to the presumption of the essential truth of these stories is the fact that the priest who confessed him and administered to him the sacrament spread the report that he died drunk, proving the priestly dis- gust at his end ; while we may assume that the absolution and sacrament would have been withheld had the same priest at the time not considered him to be in a fit state to receive them. All the poets of the time made epitaphs on him in French or Latin verse, most of them celebrating less his marvellous genius than his inexhaustible jollity. Thus his friend Baif, one of the Pleiad, writes : " Oh Pluto, receive Rabelais, that thou, who art the king of those who never laugh, mayst henceforth have a laugher ! " "O ! Pluton, Rabelais re9oi, Afin que toi qui es le roi De ceux qui ne rient jamais, Tu aies un rieur desormais ! " 32 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Ronsard, as I have said, was rancorous, and in his epitaph represents him as simply a glutton and a drunkard, as if mere drinking and guzzling could have gathered together his immensity of manifold learning, could have written " Pantagruel," could have secured the friendship of such men as the Du Bellay brothers. Eleven years after his death, in 1564, the year of Shakespeare's birth, was published, neither printer's name nor place being given, "The Fifth and last Book of the Heroic Deeds and Words of the Good Pantagruel." He is reported to have left other works in manuscript which never got printed. Although the Council of Trent had prohibited the whole work, and it had been placed upon the Index Expurga- /orius, no practical measures seem to have been taken to stop its circulation, and its popularity was prodigious. This fifth book was in some respects the most daring of any, particularly in its intensely contemptuous attacks on the great Pope-hawk with all his host of cardinal-hawks, bishop-hawks, priest- hawks ; and also upon the Furred Law-Cats of all kinds. Yet the Faculty of Theology did not censure it, nor the Parliament of Paris arrest its sale. This book conducts Pantagruel and his companions to the great Oracle of the Holy Bottle, whence they receive the ultimate word of all wisdom, the luminous con- densation of the whole Pantagruelian philosophy, in the sublime word DRINK. RABELAIS t 33 IV " Then I went in-doors, brought out a loaf, Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis ; Lay on the grass, and forgot the oaf, Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais." ROBERT BROWNING : Sibrandus Schafnaburgensis. Having sketched the life of Rabelais, it remains for me to venture a few remarks on his genius and his great work. Lord Bacon called him the grand jester of France, and this view of his character was the common one amongst us, so far as I am aware, until Coleridge challenged it in a famous passage, brief enough for citation here : " Beyond a doubt, Rabelais was among the deepest as well as boldest thinkers of his age. His buffoonery was not merely Brutus's rough stick, which contained a rod of gold : it was necessary as an amulet against the monks and legates. Never was there a more plausible, and seldom, I am persuaded, a less appropriate line, than the thousand times quoted ' Rabelais laughing in his easy-chair,' of Mr. Pope. The caricature of his filth and zanyism show \sic\ how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which he stood. I could write a treatise in praise of the moral elevation of Rabelais' work, which would make the Church stare and the conventicle groan, and yet would be truth, and nothing but the truth. I class Rabelais with the great creative minds of the world Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c." I may note, in passing, that "the thousand times quoted" line of Pope is quoted incorrectly (as verse usually c 34 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES is when quoted from memory), and on the face of it is imperfect; the real line, as we have it in the "Dunciad," i. 22, in the apostrophe to Swift, runs thus : "Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy-chair." As if over-anxious to distinguish himself from the purblind vulgar, Coleridge not seldom appears re- solved to see more in a writer than the writer actually contains, reading himself into the book, in the manner marked by Gothe (First Epistle in the Poems) : " Yet each only reads himself out of the book, and if he is powerful he reads himself into the book;" but his authority as a most subtle critic is rightly so great that no one since has ventured to treat Rabelais as a mere jester and buffoon. Strangely enough, in the very beginning of the Prologue to the first book, which is nearly all simple nonsense and extravagance, Rabelais makes the same claim for himself which Coleridge makes for him : " Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's which is entitled the 'Banquet,' setting forth the praises of his teacher, Socrates, beyond all question the prince of philosophers, said among other things that he resembled the silent. Sileni of old were little boxes, such as we now see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such pictures, caricatured at pleasure to excite people to laughter, as did Silenus himself, master of the god Bacchus ; but within they conserved fine drugs, as balm, ambergris, amomon, RABELAIS 35 musk, civet, jewels, and other precious things." He goes on to say that his book, like these silent and Socrates, conceals things of the utmost value within a rude and absurd exterior; and then gives another illustration : " But did you ever see a dog meeting with a marrow-bone? He is, as Plato says ('Re- public,' Book ii.), the most philosophical beast in the -world. If you have seen him, you have been able to note with what devotion he watches it, with what care he guards it, with what fervour he holds it, with what prudence he manages it, with what affec- tion he breaks it, and with what diligence he sucks it. What moves him to do all this ? What is the hope of his labour ? At what good does he aim ? Nothing but a little marrow. It is true that this little is more delicious than much of anything else, because marrow is a nourishment elaborated to perfection by nature, as Galen says (iii. Facult. Nat. et xi., de Usu Par- tiuni). After the example of this dog, it becomes you to be wise, to smell, feel, and esteem these goodly books of high conception, easy in the pursuit, diffi- cult in the encounter. Then, by sedulous reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck the substantial marrow, that is to say, what I mean by these Pythagorical symbols, with assured hope to be made discreet and valiant by the said study ; for in this you shall find quite another taste, and a more abstruse doctrine, which will reveal to you most high sacraments and horrific mysteries, as well in what concerns our religion as in matters of public state and the life economical." Yet, immediately after, he ridicules these serious pretensions : " Do you believe, on your conscience, that Homer, writing the 'Iliad' 36 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES and ' Odyssey,' thought of the allegories which have been squeezed out of him by Plutarch, Heraclides Pon- ticus, Eustathius, Cornatus, and which Politian filched again from them ? If you believe it, with neither feet nor hands do you approach my opinion, which judges them to have been as little dreamed of by Homer as were by Ovid, in his c Metamorphoses,' the Sacraments of the Church, which a wolfish friar, a true bacon- picker, has tried to prove, if, perchance, he could meet with others as foolish as himself, and (as the proverb says) a lid worthy of the saucepan." Now, while agreeing with Coleridge that Rabelais was among the deepest, as well as boldest, thinkers of his time, and even considering him, so far as I can judge, quite the boldest and deepest of all; while further agreeing that he is to be classed with the great creative minds of the world Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, &c. ; and, while yet further agreeing that his filth and zanyism show how fully he both knew and felt the danger in which he stood, I must still think Pope's line not only plausible but also appro- priate. Profound thought and creative genius may wear a riant not less than a tragic face, or, in some instances, the one and the other in alternation ; and there are even instances in which one-half the mask has been of Thalia and the other of Melpomene ; for wisdom and genius are not necessarily, though they are more frequently, grave. Democritus the laugher seems to have been a philosopher yet more subtle than Heraclitus the weeper, and our fore- most scientific men are reviving his theories after more than two millenniums; and Aristophanes, I suppose, had at least as much imaginative genius as RABELAIS 37 Euripides. Now, Rabelais is essentially a laughing philosopher, endowed with the inestimable boon of high animal spirits, ardent and quenchless, not varied by fits of deep and gloomy depression, as in so many cases; his wisdom is always steeped in drollery, his imagination revels in riotous burlesque. If he felt bitterness against any class and institution in the world, it was against monks and monkery ; and well might he feel bitter against these after the fifteen years, closing with the in pace, immured among the ignorant and bigoted Franciscans of Fontenay-le- Comte. Yet compare even this bitterness, kept acrid by such memories of personal wrong, with the double- distilled gall and wormwood of Swift on subjects in which he had no personal interest, and you will see how sweet-natured was the illustrious Tourangean. Both see with a vision that cannot be muffled through all the hypocrisies and falsehoods, all the faults and follies of mankind ; but the scorn of Rabelais rolls out in jolly laughter, while the scorn of Swift is a sceva indignatio the one is vented in wine, the other in vitriol. Both are prodigal in dirt, having an immense and varied assortment always on hand, to be supplied at the shortest notice. But the dirt of Swift, in spite of all that has been said against it, is in most cases distinctly moral, being heaped on immorality and vileness in order to render them the more repulsive ; and it can therefore be vindicated on the same grounds as the grossness and obscenity of the Hebrew prophets, for to high thought and intense moral earnestness nothing that will serve a purpose can be common or unclean. The dirt of Rabelais, on the other hand, when he does not intentionally 38 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES besmear himself with it in order to appear a buffoon when most audaciously sarcastic and heterodox, has nothing to do with morality or immorality, but is simply the dirt of a child, such as he has described in the infancy of Gargantua, in Book i., chap. xi. As Mr. Besant, in his "French Humourists," re- marks, "The filth and dirt of Rabelais do not take hold of the mind a little cold water washes all off." We find the same in Chaucer and other early writers, though not so abundantly as in Rabelais, who had to use much for mere disguise, like one crouching in a foul ditch in order to escape his enemies ; and though offensive to us now, it is perfectly innocent compared with certain recent French and English novels, more read by fine ladies than by any other class, wherein the vilest obscenity, mingled with spurious senti- mentalism and other sweet nastiness, is served up in choice language a luscious and poisonous com- pound, as revolting to the really pure-minded as that hideous Thais of Dante (Inferno, xviii.) in that cesspool of Malebolge "quella sozza scapigliata fante, Che la si graffia con 1" unghie merdose, Et or s' accoscia, ct ora & in piede stantc. Taida e la put tana." We may be sure that the rude and rigorous Dante, even the ineffably tender and ardent Dante of the Vita Nuova and the imparadised Beatrice, would have painted just such a picture of some lovely and fascinating countess of, say, Dumas fits an exquisite and delicate creature, redolent of the costliest per- fumes, and redolent of the impurest passions in the purest French. RABELAIS 39 Coleridge says : " It is impossible to read Rabelais without an admiration mixed with wonder at the depth and extent of his learning, his multifarious knowledge and original observation, beyond what books could in that age have supplied him with;" and Mr. Besant remarks that he knew more than any other man of the time. This learning and general knowledge he pours forth with the most careless prodigality on every page, d propos of everything and nothing, so as to suggest that his stores are really inexhaustible. The book-learning and the command over many languages are astonishing enough, espe- cially to one who, like myself, is no scholar ; but yet more astonishing is the other knowledge of which Coleridge speaks, the knowledge books could not furnish, and in which perhaps only Shakespeare can parallel him : in our day Robert Browning comes nearest to this quasi-omniscience. Rabelais' long medical studies may account for much of his acquaint- ance with natural history, which is such as to recall the precepts of Gargantua in that magnanimous letter to his son (ii. 8) : " Now, in matter of the know- ledge of the works of nature, I would have thee to study that exactly; that so there be no sea, river, nor fountain of which thou dost not know the fishes ; all the fowls of the air ; all the several kinds of shrubs and trees, whether in forests or orchards ; all the sorts of herbs and flowers that grow upon the ground ; all the various metals hidden within the bowels of the earth ; the precious stones of all the Orient and the South let nothing of all these be unknown to thee." But how and when and where did he gather, how did he find room in his head to store up that prodigious 40 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES knowledge, always ready to his want, of what I must call things in general local customs, traditions, pro- verbs, rhymes, unwritten dialects, costumes, various trades and professions, with their implements and modes of working and technical terms, and so forth, and so forth ? Such instances as Rabelais and Shakespeare make us incline to Plato's theory that all knowledge is but reminiscence, that we have all got thoroughly acquainted with our world in previous existences, and are only ignorant in so far as our memories are asleep or inert; or they suggest that a few privileged minds are as mirrors, wherein, with- out any effort on their part, all objects that come before them spontaneously image themselves, and that these images remain for ever clear and well- ordered, still without any effort on the part of the mirroring mind. Speaking of Rabelais' knowledge of herbs, we cannot but deeply regret that, through no fault of his own, he had to die in ignorance of the noblest of all, the herb of herbs, which is tobacco. Had time and fortune but made him acquainted with it, we may be sure that tobacco, and not vile hemp, would have been recognised by him as the herb Panta- gruelion ; and the last four chapters of Book iii., which are now devoted to the glorification of this herb of the hangman, would have been devoted to a far more enthusiastic eulogy of tobacco. How he would have described and anatomised it, this learned physician and naturalist 1 How he would have dilated on its countless efficacies and virtues, and on its marvellous affinities with good wine, this supreme philosopher, this royal reveller ! Alas ! that our peerless Pantagruelist was cut off from the know- RABELAIS 41 ledge of our peerless Pantagruelion ! It is a case doleful and disastrous as when, two who were meant to be lovers, two souls complemental to each other, are by some error or oversight of nature born in different ages ! His style is as multifarious, or rather omnifarious, as his knowledge. The beautiful, child-like Old French of the Romances was gone, the modern French was slowly forming and still in a half-chaotic state, every one doing with it that which was right in his own eyes. Rabelais' exuberance of mere words and phrases is overwhelming ; and he often pours them out one on top of another interminably, rioting in their exhaustless rush and flow. The vocabulary of his age is far too poor for him; he presses into his service every patois, he invents the wildest quirks and the most extravagant compounds, he lays ancient and modern tongues under tribute, stamping their coins with French inflections. In this enormous wealth and prodigal volubility of language, he is again to be compared only to our Shakespeare. I remember reading somewhere of two Oxford or Cam- bridge professors discussing whether Shakespeare or Milton had the greater command of language, when one remarked conclusively : " Why, in half-an-hour Shakespeare would have slanged Milton into a ditch ! " I take it that Rabelais would have slanged Racine into a ditch in about five minutes. Despite his own chartered libertinism, Rabelais had a strong respect for the purity of his native tongue, as we see (ii. 6) by Pantagruel's treatment of the Limosin scholar who Pindarised or Latinised the plain honest French. And whenever he would be serious and 42 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES not humoristic, he proves that he has a most noble natural style of his own, rich without excess, as in the epistle of Gargantua already cited, the descrip- tion of the Temple of the Holy Bottle at the close of Book v., and that at the close of Book i. of Friar John's glorious abbey of Theleme, where all was in direct contradiction to what obtains in the monas- teries and nunneries of the Church, where brave men and beautiful women freely mingled, where marriage was honourable, where the only regulation was to have no regulation at all : "In their rule there was but this clause 'DO WHAT THOU WILT.'" It may be here remarked that though his immense learning, his infinity of allusions to matters abstruse and obscure, and of recondite and lawless words, render him by far the most difficult of French authors to translate, he has been Englished more happily and thoroughly than almost any other of the French classics, who, indeed, with the notable exception of Montaigne by Cotton, have been usually treated scurvily by hacks, or else neglected altogether. The case of Rabelais is not so surprising as it at first appears. Of a common French writer there may be a thousand or ten thousand English who could give a commonplace version. Of an unique writer there will be only half-a-dozen qualified to attempt the translation ; but these will be well qualified, having strong affinities for the original in humour and predilections. I do not say that the version of Sir Thomas Urquhart and Motteux is by any means perfect, but it gives a better notion of Rabelais than I should have thought, before seeing it, could have been given in our language. Bohn's edition, in two RABELAIS 43 vols., is enriched with an abundance of notes on words, things, and events, gathered from the best commentators, and constituting a real treasure-house of Rabelaisian information. The cheap and handy edition of L. Jacob, Bibliophile (Paul Lacroix), pub- lished by Charpentier, Paris, has the advantage of the Memoir to which I have already acknowledged my indebtedness and of glossarial and other notes at the bottom of each page, thus sparing the reader the great nuisance of continual reference to a glossary at the end of the work, a nuisance so great that most readers soon give up referring at all. Mr. Besant, in his bright book, " The French Humourists," says : " It is not impossible that England will yet learn to appreciate more largely this glorious wit and satirist. There may be found some man who has the leisure, and to whom it would be a labour of love to edit for modern readers the life and voyages of Pantagruel. The necessary omissions could be made without very great difficulty, and the parts to be left out are not inwoven with the web of the whole." For myself, although I detest castrated editions, I have no objection to see such an experi- ment tried with Rabelais ; but I doubt whether the general reader, who may be supposed not to care for him in his complete form, would care for him thus mutilated. Mr. Besant goes on : " Considering him as a moral teacher, we must remember what things he taught, and that he was the first to teach them in the vernacular. Many of his precepts are now commonplaces, texts for the copy-book; but they were not so then. In that time, when only a few had learning, and the old mediaeval darkness was 44 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES still over the minds of men, we must remember what things perfectly new and previously unsuspected he poured into men's ears." And he proceeds to enumerate some of them; yet in concluding his essay he writes : " A great moral teacher. Yes. But it would have been better for France if his book, tied to a millstone, had been hurled into the sea. . . . He destroyed effectually, perhaps for centuries yet to come, earnestness in France. He found men craving for a better faith, believing that it was to be found, and left them doubting whether any system in the world could give it. Great and noble as are many of the passages in Rabelais, profoundly wise as he was, I do believe that no writer who ever lived has inflicted such lasting injury on his country." Now, assuredly Mr. Besant is no Philistine ; yet I cannot but think that when writing the last passage he was labouring under an attack of Philistinism. Perhaps he was de- pressed with a bad cigar, or bilious with a bad glass of wine ; perhaps his good manners were corrupted for the moment by evil communications with men from Gaza, Gath, or Ascalon. Moreover, he is clearly inconsis- tent. If Rabelais has inflicted such unequalled and lasting injury on his own country, how can Mr. Besant hope that he will yet be more largely appreciated, that is to say more extensively studied, here? Does he want earnestness effectually destroyed in England ? Again, how can a great moral teacher, profoundly wise, inflict lasting injury on his country ? How can it be better for said country that the book of such a teacher should be tied to a millstone and hurled into the sea? If this is how Mr. Besant would treat the books of great moral teachers, what a' dreadfully RABELAIS 45 wicked man he must be ! Finally, I challenge al- together this charge against the French of want of earnestness. It is a common, narrow-minded English cant, quite unworthy of an accomplished gentleman like Mr. Besant. The great French people are no more to be judged by a few third-rate Parisian littera- teurs than the English by the popular lady novelists of the day. And if there is light life in Paris (as well as profoundly serious), how much of it is encouraged by foreigners, including the virtuous English and Americans the two people who, as we are aware, have the monopoly of virtue on this terrestrial globe ? Were Pascal and his friends not earnest? Was not Fenelon? In our own day, Victor Hugo, Michelet, Quinet? The mass of the people sober, frugal, in- dustrious ? The men of the Revolutions, leaders of liberty in Europe, with their burning faith in humanity and progress, equality and fraternity? The French can laugh and enjoy themselves more gaily and grace- fully than we, without getting stolidly besotted; therefore they are frivolous ! They have had many pleasant humorists, therefore they are not earnest ! It might as well be argued from their jolly old songs and the glorious humour of Burns (whose laughter is rich and deep-chested as Rabelais') that the Scotch are without earnestness ! On the whole, while conscious that I have neither the knowledge nor the intellect required for judging so large a question, I am inclined to look up to Rabelais as the greatest genius in French literature. Perhaps the very finest work in that literature has been done by Pascal, but Pascal's finest work is a series of fragments ; and while as profound, he is 46 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES narrow as an artesian well, in comparison with the oceanic amplitude and energy, as well as depth, of Rabelais. Of the humour I say nothing it is pro- verbial ; a frank, jolly laughter, unrestrained, diluvian, immense, inextinguishable as the laughter of the gods. His enormous erudition and knowledge are mere toys for his playtime ; but throughout his whole work, or play, he gives you the sense of easiest power and mastery at home in everything, rising with its theme as readily as it falls, never strained or fatigued, able to do what it likes, equal and more than equal to far more arduous things if it cared to undertake them ; in short, with an indefinite reserve of capacity in all directions : and this I take to be the impres- sion which only a supreme and Titanic genius can produce. SAINT-AMANT THIS most jolly and genial smoker, toper, rover, soldier, and poet, after deservedly enjoying great cele- brity during his lifetime, was almost forgotten, even in France, until Philarete Chasles called attention to him by a brilliant article in the Revue des Deux Afondes, 1839, under the title, "The Victims of Boileau : I. The Guzzlers (Goinfres). Marc-Antoine de Gerard de Saint-Amant." This was followed, in 1844, by Thdophile Gautier's sympathetic and pic- turesque sketch in Les Grotesques^ a series of ten portraits of half or wholly forgotten French humorous and humoristic poets, from Villon to Scarron, includ- ing Theophile Viau and Cyrano de Bergerac, also men of real genius. Finally, in 1855, C. L. Livet edited, with a careful prefatory memoir, a complete edition of his works, including many pieces never before published, in two vols., in the Bibliotheque Elzevirienne (P. Janet, Paris), so that all the world might again read what all the world had of old admired. In English the only notice of him that I have met occurs in that bright and pleasant book, "The French Humourists from the i2th to the igth Century," by Walter Besant, author of "Studies in 47 48 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Early French Poetry." The above have mainly fur- nished the materials for the following article. Marc-Antoine de Ge'rard, Sieur de Saint-Amant, was born, in 1594, at Rouen, near the famous abbey of Saint-Amant, whence he took the name by which he is generally known, and died at Paris on the 2gth December, 1661. The details for his biography are but scanty, and chiefly drawn from scattered state- ments and allusions in his own writings. His father was a distinguished naval officer, two-and-twenty years in the service of our Elizabeth, in which he attained the command of a squadron. At one period of his life he fell into the hands of the Turks, and was for three years a prisoner in the Black Tower at Constantinople. His two brothers perished fighting against the Turks the one at the mouth of the Red Sea, the other, who had served under Gustavus Adolphus, at Candia, where he commanded a French regiment in the Vene- tian service. Two of his cousins-german also fell fighting the Turks, and one of his uncles had been in slavery amongst them. Thus our poet had plenty of family reasons for detesting those infidels ; and his natural love and reverence for wine may have been intensified by the fact that it was forbidden by the Prophet. His education was considerably neglected, as his father could not attend to it, and his mother seems to have died when he was young. Thus he learnt neither Greek nor Latin ; but, as he tells us himself, the familiar conversation of people in good society, and the diversity of wonderful things he saw in his travels, afterwards remedied the defects in his early training. He also mastered Spanish, Italian, and English; was an excellent musician and elocu- SAINT-AMANT 49 tionist, reciting his own compositions so well that an epigram, attributed to Gombaud, remonstrates " Your verse is fine when you declaim, But, when I read it, very tame : You can't continually recite ; So such as I can read, pray write." But we must not accept an epigram au pied de la lettre, as our neighbours say. We are told that three times in his youth he was nearly drowned in the Seine; and he certainly had a holy horror of fresh water ever after. While yet quite young he became distinguished as a passionate lover of good eating, and yet more of good drinking ; and his society was much sought after by the jolly nobles of Louis XIII., not yet cowed by the stern discipline of Richelieu. Although he was very free in his speech, he never abused their familiarity, and they held him in singular esteem. He was soon attached to the household of one of the greatest of these, the Duke de Retz, with whom he retired to the domain of Belle-Isle, which the duke's father, backed by his relative, Catherine de Medici, with whom he had come from Florence, had forced the monks to sell to him at a low price. Here Saint-Amant lived truly in clover, as, indeed, he managed, without any management or forethought, to live nearly all his life. M. Livet cites a letter, to which I shall have to refer again when I come to speak of the poems, from a M. Roger, Commissary of the Navy at Belle-Isle, to Desforges-Maillard. The writer had in his family old relatives, to whom one of his ancestors, seneschal of the isle, had communicated the following details : " The poet lived at Belle-Isle several years. He there composed a great part of his D 50 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES works, and especially his ' Solitude,' which is the best of all. His sonnet which commences, Assis sur un fagot, une pipe a la main (' Seated upon a faggot, pipe in hand '), was written in a wine shop (cabaret), in the borough of Sauzon, in Belle-Isle, kept by a man named La Plante, whose posterity still exist. Saint-Amant was a debauchee. Nature alone had made him a poet ; wine gave him enthusiasm. Often the marshal of Belle-Isle and he mounted to an old buttery-hatch (credence), where they had a table loaded with bottles of wine. There, each on his chair, they made sittings of four-and-twenty hours. The Duke de Retz came to see them from time to time in this attitude. Sometimes the table, the pots, the glasses, the chairs, the topers all rolled down together from the top to the bottom." So that these truly Gargan- tuan orgies of full twenty-four hours at a time are not so fabulous as Mr. Besant seems to imply, and not the Marquis but the marshal of Belle-Isle was the boon companion of our poet. Sometime after 1620 he returned to Paris, where he charmed again with his high spirits, his lute, and his poems, all the prodigal friends whom he names so tenderly in his various pieces : the Baron de St. Brice, Chassaingrimont, Maricourt, Butte, La Motte, Chateaupers, Marigny-Mallenoe. It was a wild time, when men revelled and made love and fought duels at a rate which may well make our puny and decorous generations incredulous with astonishment. It was a riot of social lawlessness, soon to be scared and repressed by Richelieu, and then to be chained and gagged, stark and dumb, by the morose despotism of Louis XIV., which, in its turn, prepared the way for SAINT-AMANT 51 the Great Revolution. For the quick French ever vibrate between the extremes of anarchy and tyranny : the golden mean, loved of our duller wits, is mean indeed in their logic. The cabaret in those days, like the coffee-house with us in Queen Anne's time, and like no place now that I know of in either France or England, was the really social resort of wit and genius, rank and fashion. There Racan long lodged while young and poor ; there the severe Boileau got help lessly drunk in preaching sobriety to the incorrigible Chapelle ; there Liniere lampooned this same Boileau, while spending rapidly the money Boileau had just lent him ; there Mezeray composed all his writings ; there the pious Racine, even in 1666, went two or three times a day; there Perron, before he was a cardinal, quarrelled with a stranger, whom he stabbed ; and there, above all, our Saint-Amant was king and high-priest, Abbot of Unreason, Lord of Misrule, rotund, rubicund, and Rabelaisian. Men vaunted him as their Master of the Revels, and boasted of drinking with him. Thus Vion Dalibray, the bitter epigrammatist, cries " Thou who, like Bacchus, hast drunk through all the world, Teach me, Saint-Amant." And again " I will make myself famous, at least in the cabaret ; They shall speak of me as they speak of Faret. What matters it, friend, whence our glory may swell ? I can acquire it with trouble scant, For, thanks to my God, I already drink well, And I have been on the spree with Saint-Amant." " See him at the cabaret," writes M. Livet, "draped in his careless security. It is there that he finds that 52 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES genius which Boileau accords him for works of de- bauch and extravagant satire. Considering, in effect, the time and the place in which the 'Cabarets' and the ' Chamber of the Debauchee ' were composed, these poems are the masterpieces of their kind. When he wrote them, like the drunken poet of Martial, or like Master Adam, on a wall, with a bit of charcoal, by fits and starts, amidst bursts of laughter, jests, and the clinking of glasses, the poet scarcely thought of Boileau, and still less of the advice which the satirist after- wards gave to authors 'Add sometimes, and erase often.' He wrote without pausing, never corrected, and took good care not to efface; and, when the inspiration was exhausted, you should have heard the wild re- marks of his friends, no less voluble than himself! You should have seen their jovial grimaces ! A fresh pitcher paid his efforts, a fresh pipe rekindled his ideas ; and all at the same time, without listening to or hearing each other, read again, declaimed, criti- cised, varied whatever verses had tickled their joyous imaginations." Yes, our friend was always guzzling in the cabaret, excepting, be it understood, during the hours of Church service ; for mine host caught har- bouring guests during those hours would have been liable to be sent to the galleys. This cruel restriction had, however, the advantage of giving tipplers set times during which they could partially sober them- selves at church, in saintly preparation for another bout at the tavern. In 1631, Saint- Amant made a journey to England, where all that I learn of him is that he celebrated the SAINT-AMANT 53 loves of their majesties Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, "in a very indiscreet style," and that he was faithful to his own love, the bottle. In 1633 he went to Rome with the fleet of the Marquis de Crequi. On the foundation of the French Academy he was made one of its first members. Pellisson, in his " History of the Academy," records that at the meeting on January 2, 1635, three of the members excused themselves from making the pre- scribed discourse, though very capable, viz., Serizay, Balzac, and Saint-Amant. Our hero, in lieu of a discourse, which would have been much too dry for his taste, promised to gather for the famous Diction- ary all the burlesque or grotesque locutions in the language ; and surely no one living was master of a richer store of them than he. But it does not appear whether he fulfilled his promise. It is not likely that he cared much for the Academy, that arena of the gladiateurs du bien dire, to whose society he in- finitely preferred that of ' ' les honnetes y vrognes Aux coeurs sans fard, aux nobles trognes, Tours les goziers voluptueux, Tous les debauchez vertueux, / Qui parmi leurs propos de table, Joignent 1'utile au delectable." In 1637 he accompanied Henri de Lorraine, Comte d'Harcourt, who was appointed to command the fleet against Spain. This nobleman, sur named Cadet la perle, because he was of the younger branch of the great house of Lorraine-Elbeuf, and wore a pearl in his ear, was born in 1601, and died in 1666. He distinguished himself very early as a valiant and 54 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES skilful soldier, and then in peace as a wild young rake and desperate duellist. His excesses were so outrageous and notorious, that when Richelieu sent for him and said, "M. le Comte, the king wills that you leave the country," he considered himself banished, and replied : " I am ready to obey." The great Cardinal, however, continued, "But it is to command the naval expedition." So was virtue rewarded; and, strange to say, the choice was fully justified by events. As our poet was much with him after this time, a short summary of his career may be given. With the Mediterranean fleet he captured Oristani, in Sardinia, and the isles of St. Honorat and Marguerite. In 1639 he took command of the French army in Piedmont ; and with 8000 men attacked and defeated 20,000 Spaniards. After this battle it is recorded that the Marquis de Leganez, the Spanish commander, sent the message to D'Harcourt : " If I were the King of France, I would have you beheaded for attacking with so inferior a force ; " to which D'Harcourt responded : " And if I were the King of Spain, I would have you beheaded for getting beaten with a force so superior." Then came the remarkable leaguer of Turin : French in the citadel being besieged by Prince Thomas of Savoy, himself besieged by d'Harcourt, himself invested by Leganez. D'Harcourt managed to take the city in three months. In 1643 he went as ambassador to England, and made a vain attempt to reconcile the Parliament and the king. In 1645 he commanded in Catalonia, con- quering at Llorenz, but repulsed from Lerida. Sent to Flanders in 1649, he defeated the Spaniards near Valenciennes, and captured the town of Condd In SAINT-AMANT 55 the troubles of the Fronde he took the part of Anne of Austria, conducted the young king Louis XIV. into Normandy, and maintained his authority there, in despite of the Duchess de Longueville. He forced the Prince de Cond to raise the siege of Cognac in 1651, and kept Guienne quiet. Then he threw up his command, finding his services ill rewarded, and stung by the epigram of Conde, thus translated by Mr. Besant " That soldier fat and short, Renowned in story, The noble Count d'Harcourt, Brimful of glory, Who raised Cazal and took Turin, Is bailiff now to Mazarin." At the head of foreign troops he invaded Alsace and took several towns, but had to retire, beaten by the Duke de la Ferte". He then made his peace with the court, and was appointed Governor of Anjou. He died of apoplexy, in the abbey of Royaumont. He was generous and great-hearted as he was brave. When our poet went with him, in 1637, his secre- tary was Faret. (Why does Mr. Besant throughout write him Fwret? Always in the French I find him Faret, rhyming as inevitably to cabaret as la gloire to la victoire, love to dove, or quaffed to laughed.) Duty apart, the three were inseparable, and etiquette was banished. Among themselves, the Comte d'Harcourt was the Round, Saint-Amant the Fat, and Faret the Old. Nor was this familiar intimacy a secret to any one. The poet, in his preface to the piece in which he describes the Passage of Gibraltar, tells us that he composed it " beneath the stars which looked on 56 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES us drinking, with the glass, not the pen, in hand. And in the piece itself he sings of Harcourt " Already aloft on the poop, To pledge me he takes his cup, Where sparkles and laughs the nectar ; And crying Masse ! to the troop, His voice alarms Gibraltar." Masse/ being the summons to drink all together. In 1638 Saint- Amant returned to Paris for a time, and while there addressed to the Chancellor Seguier a petition for the privilege of conducting a glass- factory. This was readily granted ; and in his poem on Cider he has vaunted the miracles accomplished under his direction in this new enterprise. It should be remarked that this employment, and even the work- ing in the factory, was not considered derogatory to a gentleman ; the injurious and often dangerous nature of the work, as well as the beauty of the product, being held to lift it from among menial labours. At this time Adam Billault, jolly Master Adam, who, according to Baillet, does more credit to carpenters than to poets, visiting Paris, would first of all be pre- sented to Saint Amant. The next year he rejoined d'Harcourt, then in Piedmont ; and he seems to have taken a gallant part in all the fighting, wielding pen and sword and glass with equal vigour and address. Early in 1643 he was again in Rome, where he com- posed La Rome Ridicule, a work which has been often imitated. It appeared at Paris the same year, without name of either author or printer, who were prudent in not revealing themselves, for the publisher was imprisoned, and ran some danger of being put to SAINT-AMANT 57 death. The publisher of the Custode de la Reine, a satire of that time, was hanged, and the printer would have been hanged too, if caught. It is a pity that, in what are pleasantly termed civilised nations, poor poets can no longer hope to see such extreme justice done to those concerned in bringing out their works ! II In this same year of 1 643, our poet went with the Comte d'Harcourt to England, on the mission already mentioned. Looking up to Charles I. with the un- perturbed reverence of those who had not yet thought of doubting the perfection of kings, and, as a French- man, devotedly loyal to Henrietta Maria, he had not only no sympathy with the Parliamentarians, he had not even comprehension of the sanity of the thoughts working in those " malign Roundheads," as he very roundly terms them. Cromwell was not then full to the front, and so escaped his wrath ; but it is delicious for us in these times to read his Epigramme En- diablee sur Fairfax, his Bedevilled or Devilish (how translate ?) Epigram, on that really conscientious and able, if not great, leader. Can you try to imagine why, in 1643, this good Lord Fairfax was still left on earth? You might guess many times before you guessed the real reason that is to say, the reason of our good friend Saint- Amant. This reason is that the devil, his Satanic Majesty, who, of course, has a fellow-feeling for other kings, and especially for kings in bad estate, fears that the said Fairfax, by some attempt at assassination (attentat\ or by some 58 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES oblique means, would, at least, revolutionise hell or make it a republic. Wherefore our friend can con- clude convincingly : " You see now what has made the devil hesitate, even to this hour, to carry him off." This historical judgment of a really bright intelligence on contemporary matters which he had unusually good opportunities of judging, gives us some idea of the value of judgments contemporary and posterior of intelligences usually anything but bright ; the which judgments, elaborated in schools which know nothing at all practically of the subjects in question, are imposed upon us, the unread, and generally accepted by us, as that sublime thing, " the verdict of history." But Saint-Amant had personal reasons for discontent with England as he found it, and as it found him. He tells us, in a stanza really admirable for rhythmic power and energy : " I lose all in England hair, clothes, and liberty ; I lose here my time and my health, which is worth all the gold of the 'earth ; I lose here my heart, stolen by a beautiful eye, beyond hope of recovery ; and I believe, God not aiding, that at last I shall lose here all my wits." These are broad general charges, but he has emphasised one of them in another poem. Having on a certain occasion drunk freely, with the noble trust in Providence of a Hafiz or a Burns, he was overcome with sleep, and while he slept some mis- creant robbed him. He lifts up his voice : " Gods, who look on while they rob me asleep, In which of you now can men have any faith, Now that Bacchus has betrayed Saint-Amant ? " What a nobly pathetic indignation ! Bacchus has SAINT-AMANT 59 betrayed Saint- Amant! The god has rendered his most ardent worshipper into the hands of his foes ! It is ineffably humiliating, not so much even for the god as for the mortal with his firm faith in the god. M. Ch. Livet ejaculates, Horresco referens ! as for my- self, I can only avow that in my humble opinion the JEt tu Brute of Caesar is scarcely so magnanimous and touching. To end this tragic episode, it may be added that he promptly summed up his experiences of our nation in a poem entitled, " Albion : heroic-comic caprice." Either because this was too virulent, even for that time, or because France was growing rightly afraid of an England waging war against its king, the publication was not hazarded. That it was written con amore, which in this case means con odio, the conclusion sufficiently attests. With the date i2th February, 1644, we read the grandiose epigraph, Cest fait, " It is done ; " as if he would say, with the -most savage energy, "I have finished and anni- hilated this infamous England, in which they not only rebel against their anointed sovereign, but also sacrilegiously rob Saint-Amant when he is divinely drunk." In 1645 we find him again at Paris, Montreuil hav- ing succeeded d'Harcourt as ambassador to England. This brings us to his connection with the famous Marie de Gonzague, daughter of the Duke of Mantua, who became so singularly the wife of two successive kings of Poland, these being brothers. It is not here the place to recount her life ; but it may be remarked that she was beautiful, witty, and adventurous, and was more or less involved in the conspiracy against Richelieu headed by her lover, Cinq-Mars. In 1645 6O BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES she accepted the hand of Ladislas Sigismund, King of Poland, who died shortly afterwards. His brother, the ex- Jesuit and Cardinal Casimir, succeeded to the throne, and in 1649 married this queen-dowager, his sister-in-law. The Abb de Villeloin, Sieur de Marolles, who then enjoyed an immense reputation, was in high favour with the new queen, and exercised great influence over her, having been her tutor. Another great favourite was her secretary, M. des Noyers. Both of these were warm friends of Saint- Amant, and exerted themselves so efficiently in his service that we read, in the " Memoirs of Marolles," under the date of 1645 : "The Queen of Poland, in consideration of my constant praise of the poems of Saint-Amant and because she had listened to some of his serious pieces with much pleasure, appointed him one of the gentlemen of her household, with a pension of three thousand livres, which she assured to him by warrant, and which she caused to be sent to him expressly." Saint-Amant, according to his wont, paid abundantly in verse the debt of gratitude he owed to all three. In a sonnet to the Queen he celebrates the love she has inspired in "the greatest king of the pole," but naturally says nothing of the nocturnal visits paid her before by Cinq-Mars, or of those letters she had written to him, whose discovery brought her into serious danger after his death. To Des Noyers he wrote a miscellaneous epistle (Epltre diversified) from Coillure, the port of Roussillon, where he was staying with his dear friend, the Gover- nor Tilly. He is constantly staying with dear friends, the best fellows, and jolliest souls on earth, all de- lighted to secure the boon-companionship of such SAINT-AMANT 6l a cordial joy-inspirer. Having duly thanked Des Noyers for his good offices, he proceeds to recount his various enjoyments, a theme of which he never tires. He was not the man to be ashamed of his pleasures, or to demurely conceal them ; on the con- trary, he riots in their celebration as heartily as he rioted in the pleasures themselves. Then comes an abrupt transition. He remarks " Whatever's the custom in any nation Is always sure of approbation." And to prove this he shows the real and manifold absurdity of the fashion then prevailing in France. The elaborate description of costume is a master- piece of graphic satire, full of the most piquant details. Having commenced his " Moses Saved," which he terms the Idyll heroic, he set out for Warsaw to show it to the Queen of Poland, to whom it was to be dedicated ; but, as he tells the Queen in the letter of dedication, he was arrested at St. Omer. " Doubt- less, had I not said at once that I had the honour to be one of your gentlemen of the chamber, and had I not been shielded by such beautiful and power- ful arms, I should not have been able to parry the stroke of misfortune. I ran risk of my life, and the ' Moses Saved ' would have been Moses lost." He goes on to tell how he tried to refashion and complete the work en voyage : " But I found that the muses of the Seine are so delicate that they could not accom- pany me in this long journey; that the fatigues of travel affrighted them, and that absolutely I must retire to some solitary retreat in the country where these 64 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES for liberty, insane for rigorous discipline, the freest of men enamoured of fetters. Boileau was not con- tented with judging the poems of Saint-Amant ; he went beyond his jurisdiction to deal with the private life; and his judgment, which would have been signally mean, even if true, is most ignobly base, seeing that it is false. In his first Satire, dating about six years after Saint-Amant's death, he writes : " Saint-Amant n'eut du ciel que sa veine en partage : L'habit qu'il cut sur lui fut son seul heritage ; Un lit et deux placets composaient tout son bien, Ou, pour en mieux parler, Saint-Amant n'avait rien. Mais, quoi ! las de trainer une vie importune, II engagea ce rien pour chercher la fortune ; Et tout charge de vers qu'il devait mettre au jour, Conduit d'un vain espoir il parut a la cour." Ask me not to try to translate. You remember Byron's very just characterisation of this species of verse ("Childe Harold," iv. 38) : " And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth monotony in wire ! " This general accusation of indigence is sufficiently refuted by what I have already told of the fortunes of Saint-Amant : at the utmost it could only be applicable to the last years of his life. In the words of M. Livet : " Perhaps it would have been becoming to respect, and not to mock the poverty, happily only imagined, of a poet who had redeemed by seven or eight years of serious piety the wild errors of his youth. . . . Meanwhile, with the revenue of the glass factory of which he had the privilege, with the pension he SAINT-AMANT 65 received from the Queen of Poland, with the profits of his works, which were highly esteemed before Boi- leau's time, with the friendship of the Due d'Arpajon, the various members of the family De Retz, and many other great lords, we find it hard to believe that he was in that deep indigence generally attributed to him by several satires." We know that he re-issued his works in 1651, a pretty sure sign of their continued popularity. About 1656, following the fashion of the time, he undertook a " Map of the Land of Reason." In 1658 appeared La Genereuse, a poem. It is said that the glass- works failed, but we know not when. It is also said that some years before his death the troubles in Poland stopped his pension from the queen. He left some fragments of a poem, " Joseph and his Brothers in Egypt." There is a story that " he founded his hopes of the future " on a poem in honour of the king. He had certainly once promised, in his most modest fashion, to write such a poem, com- paring the exploits of the king to those of Samson, " wherein I will display as much strength of genius as he had vigour in his arms." Is not that in the truly great style ! But the story in question relates that the poem in question was entitled, " The Speak- ing Moon " (La Lune Parlante) ; that it was written in honour of the birth of the Dauphin ; that it com- plimented Louis XIV. on his swimming ; that the king could not endure the reading of it ; and that the author did not long survive this disgrace. Now the Dauphin was born ist November 1661, and Saint- Amant died on the 2pth December, so that the death certainly came soon after the birth. But, on the one E 64 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES for liberty, insane for rigorous discipline, the freest of men enamoured of fetters. Boileau was not con- tented with judging the poems of Saint-Amant; he went beyond his jurisdiction to deal with the private life; and his judgment, which would have been signally mean, even if true, is most ignobly base, seeing that it is false. In his first Satire, dating about six years after Saint-Amant's death, he writes : " Saint-Amant n'eut du ciel que sa veine en partage : L'habit qu'il cut sur lui fut son seul heritage ; Un lit et deux placets composaient tout son bien, Ou, pour en mieux parler, Saint-Amant n'avait rien. Mais, quoi ! las de trainer une vie importune, II engages ce rien pour chercher la fortune ; Et tout charge de vers qu'il devait mettre au jour, Conduit d'un vain espoir 51 parut a la cour." Ask me not to try to translate. You remember Byron's very just characterisation of this species of verse ("Childe Harold," iv. 38) : "And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That whetstone of the teeth monotony in wire ! " This general accusation of indigence is sufficiently refuted by what I have already told of the fortunes of Saint-Amant : at the utmost it could only be applicable to the last years of his life. In the words of M. Livet : " Perhaps it would have been becoming to respect, and not to mock the poverty, happily only imagined, of a poet who had redeemed by seven or eight years of serious piety the wild errors of his youth. . . . Meanwhile, with the revenue of the glass factory of which he had the privilege, with the pension he SAINT-AMANT 65 received from the Queen of Poland, with the profits of his works, which were highly esteemed before Boi- leau's time, with the friendship of the Due d'Arpajon, the various members of the family De Retz, and many other great lords, we find it hard to believe that he was in that deep indigence generally attributed to him by several satires." We know that he re-issued his works in 1651, a pretty sure sign of their continued popularity. About 1656, following the fashion of the time, he undertook a "Map of the Land of Reason." In 1658 appeared La Genereuse, a poem. It is said that the glass- works failed, but we know not when. It is also said that some years before his death the troubles in Poland stopped his pension from the queen. He left some fragments of a poem, " Joseph and his Brothers in Egypt." There is a story that " he founded his hopes of the future " on a poem in honour of the king. He had certainly once promised, in his most modest fashion, to write such a poem, com- paring the exploits of the king to those of Samson, " wherein I will display as much strength of genius as he had vigour in his arms." Is not that in the truly great style ! But the story in question relates that the poem in question was entitled, " The Speak- ing Moon " (La Lune Parlante) ; that it was written in honour of the birth of the Dauphin ; that it com- plimented Louis XIV. on his swimming; that the king could not endure the reading of it ; and that the author did not long survive this disgrace. Now the Dauphin was born ist November 1661, and Saint- Amant died on the 2Qth December, so that the death certainly came soon after the birth. But, on the one E 66 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES hand, is it credible that the most joyous of men, a veteran of sixty-seven, after all his various experiences of life, would be broken-hearted because one par- ticular poem failed of success? and, on the other, is it credible that a man perishing in neglect and misery would have access to the king, and to such a king as Louis XIV. had become in 1661? This story is told by Brossette, and only one contempo- rary repeats the tale. The story of Brossette and the story of Boileau are to one another as the two cats of Kilkenny. According to the Chevrceana, he passed his last days in a humble hotel of the Rue de Seine. He led there a tranquil and penitent life, far from the agita- tions of earlier times, endeavouring to redeem his old wicked poems by pious verses ', which were unfortunately not so good as the others. That last touch is exceed- ingly characteristic. In fact, Saint-Amant was never irreligious. Born a Huguenot, he became a Catholic ; and one of his earliest poems, written in the Belle- Isle days which is, perhaps, the finest of his serious pieces "The Contemplator," was addressed to the Bishop of Nantes, Philippe Cospeau, a man of great talent and profound piety, who took extreme interest in the young poet and gave him much excellent advice. We are apt to sneer at the ease with which Continental Roman Catholics conciliate devout faith with im- morality ; yet I think I have heard of Calvinists and Methodists (not to speak of other sectarians amongst us) who managed to unite the loosest rascality in conduct with the strictest orthodoxy in doctrine. For there is a good deal of human nature in man (and certainly not less in woman), whether Catholic SAINT-AMANT 67 or Protestant, Christian or heathen ; and where all live in glass houses none should throw stones. It is recorded that his landlord, who had long known and loved him, never spoke to him about the rent. And then we read : "The Thursday, 2gth December 1661, day of St. Thomas of Canterbury, died in the house of M. Monglas, long his host, who had died eight days before, the Sieur Saint-Amant, aged 73 or 75 [probably 67], after an illness of two days. He received the sacraments, and died a little before noon. M. 1'Abbe de Villeloin [Marolles] attended him in his last moments, and administered to him the last rites. He is buried at [incomplete]." That was not such a bad end ! Only two days' ill- ness ; in the house of a dear friendly host, who had never asked for rent; an old friend at his bedside with the consolations of religion. Even blameless men may sigh, May our last end be like his ! As Mr. Besant says, in his " French Humourists " (p. 25), after citing Rutebeuf, La Fontaine, Henry Miirger, Marot, Villon : " They are all alike. When the last hour comes, they send for the priest and patch up a hasty peace with the Church. Good, easy-going French Church ! She receives all these sinners on the easiest terms, gives them the kiss of a mother who only laughs at the follies of her children, and promises them, before they go to bed, forgiveness and a whole holiday for the morrow." 68 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES III Philarete Chasles, preluding the series of essays of which that on our poet is the first, says : " The sacred battalion of the poets of caprice is about to defile before us, led by some great lords, accompanied by one or two female adventurers; it contains no more charming personage than the smoker, the snuff- taker, drinker, rake, vagabond, brave and vauntful personage, the good fat Saint-Amant (le bon gros Saint- Amant) for he had the paunch ,of Falstaff, as he had his wit. Payen, Megrin, Butte, Gilot, Desgranges, Dufour, Chasteaupers, all illustrious for having tippled with this great man, come after him, and are celebrated in his songs. The viveurs of good society, the Comte d'Harcourt, Retz-le-Bonhomme, De Gevres, De Tilly, Du Maurier, De Nerveze, Puy- laurens, form the main body ; then the adventurous princesses, Christina of Sweden and Marie de Gon- zague, wandering stars whose rays illumine this troop of voluptuaries. It draws with it the Abbe de Marolles and the song-writer Faret, all the brothers in de- bauchery, chiefs or soldiers of the boisterous society which, from 1630 to 1650, alarmed and annoyed Louis XIV." But, while Saint-Amant's rank as the first of good fellows is thus acknowledged and confirmed, what of his rank as a poet? M. Chasles thus commences the essay : " This was a poet, alas ! and a poet lost for the future. He had genius (de f esprit)^ a genius ardent and subtle : he versified with wonderful ability. The language of poetry was pliant and flexible under SAiNT-AMANT 69 his pen, as the fusible matter which twists and curls at the breath of the glass-blower : he knew much of men and things." And Theophile Gautier, a com- petent judge in this matter, if ever there was one, writes : " Saint- Amant is assuredly a very great and very original poet, worthy to be named among the best of whom France can boast. His rhyme is ex- tremely rich, abundant, unexpected, and often beyond hope ; his rhythm is manifold (nombreux\ ably sus- tained, and varied ; his style is very diversified, very picturesque, full of images, sometimes without taste, but always interesting and fresh." And again, in his sketch of Theophile de Viau : " He seems to me, Regnier dead and Corneille not yet arrived, the most remarkable poet of this period. . . . Saint-Amant is the only one, in my opinion, who can advantageously compare with him ; but Saint-Amant also is a great poet, of a magnificent bad taste, and of a verve warm and luxuriant, who hides many jewels in his dung- heap; but he has not the elevation and the melan- choly of The'ophile, balancing these with a grotesque and a rushing energy with which The'ophile was not endowed. The one writes the poetry of a fat man, the other the poetry of a lean man : such is the differ- ence." After these testimonies I need say nothing myself as to Saint-Amant's real poetical merits, except that I would rather have ten pages of Saint-Amant than a hundred of Boileau ; and would rather read a hundred pages of Saint-Amant than ten of Boileau at any time, save when desperately in want of sleep? Let us glance at a few of the poems. The first, generally considered the best of the serious pieces, is said to date certainly anterior to 1624, and to have 70 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES probably been composed in a grotto (at Belle-Isle), which more than a century after was still called the grotto of Saint-Amant, and "to which he retired when he was sick with too much wine." Gautier says : " It is a very fine piece, and of the strangest novelty for the epoch in which it appeared. It con- tains in germ almost all the literary revolution which afterwards broke out. In it, nature is studied im- mediately, and not through the works of previous masters. You find nothing in the poets called classi- cal of that time which has this freshness of colouring, this transparency of light, this vagrant and melancholy reverie, this calm and sweet style, which give so great a charm to the ode on ' Solitude.' " His friend Faret's eulogium must be cited for its ingenious quaintness, in the style of the time. He assures us that if all those who admired it had followed their first impulse after reading it, "Solitude" would have been destroyed by its own praise ! Three lines have been specially and most justly admired ; they are so beautiful that they must be given in the original : " J'escoute a demy transported Le bruit des aisles du Silence, Qui vole dans I'obscuriteV' By-the-bye this poem was translated into I^atin by Etienne Bachot, a famous doctor, who wrote also (is that other famous doctor, John Brown, of Edin- burgh, aware of the fact ?) Hora; SubsecivcE. I have already mentioned the " Contemplator," which, with M. Livet, I am inclined to regard as even more profound and tender than the "Solitude." In Le Soldi Levant ("The Sunrise") there is a charming SAINT-AMANT ?I touch of fancy, not unworthy of young Heine himself, which shows what delicate chords vibrated in this stout reveller (the original is much daintier than my rather free version) : "The pretty butterfly comes then, Its tremulous pinions rise, And seeing the sun shines again, From flower to flower it flies, To tell the good news of the time That day returns to bless our clime. There in our gardens rich and bright, Where many a rare thing grows, It carries from the lily white A kiss unto the rose ; And seems, a messenger discreet, To tell her some love-message sweet." I need scarcely say that the lily is masculine and the rose feminine, in French. In La Pluye he sings " Falling on the foliage green, What a pleasant sound rain stirs 1 How should I charm every ear, If the sweetness whispering here Could be breathed into my verse ! " And surely he strikes some fine tones in La Nuit: " Peaceful and lonely night, Without or moon or stars, With thy most sombre veils Enshroud the day that jars ; Come quickly, goddess, grant this boon to me ; I love one dark like thee. 72 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES The winds no longer blow, The rain has ceased to dash, The thunder sleeps ; I hear Only the fountain's plash, And some delicious lutes, whose notes arise, Languid with lovers' sighs." In Lajouyssance he exclaims " But dare I hope, O wonder of the skies ! To be as surely in your soul As I can see myself within your eyes?" As a transition from his love of nature to his love of nature's best fruit, we have in La Pluye, from which I have already quoted : "The heavens are black from base to top, And their influence benign Pours so much water on the vine, That we need never drink a drop." In La Debauche, partly translated by Mr. Besant (" French Humourists," p. 1 86), he invokes Bacchus, among other charms " By this pipe from which I wave All the incense thou dost crave." And Mr. Besant also translates a good part of what he terms "the liveliest, brightest letter possible" to Faret, entitled Lfs Cabarets. The conclusion is worth giving as it stands in the original : " Et de 1'air dont tu te gouvernes, I.cs moindres cscots dcs tavcrnes Te plaiscnt plus cent mille fois Que nc font les echos des bois. ET A MOV AUSSI." SAINT-AMANT 73 He loves these energetic conclusions. Thus, in Le Fromage (like the real Pantagruelist he is, he cele- brates cheese, ham, sausage, and all excitants to thirst, with only less rapture than the wine that slakes it), he concludes : " O of Bacchus thou sweet lure ! Cheese, thou art a treasure sure ! So may but of thee to think Spur me evermore to drink ! FILL LACKEYS ! " The " Orgye " is of befitting dithyrambic irregularity. As it is brief (I mean the poem, not the debauch), it may be given entire : ' ' Bring wine ! bring wine ! the freshest, sparkling red ! Pour, waiter, pour, till to the brim it fills, For I would drink a toast in mighty swills Here's to the health of all alive and dead ! Pour me yet of this rich red wine, For it alone makes my red blood run ; It is my fire, my blood, and my sun. Oh, but it's sweet ! it ravishes my soul ; No such pleasure in life as the bowl, No such pleasure in life as to drink ; Keep pace with me, my dear friend Faret, Or you shall be, ere you can wink, Stripped of the name that rhymes with cabaret ! " In Le Enamoure he cites touching proofs of his devotion to his mistress : " Since to good ham I prefer The visage of a damsel fair, I can smoke not as of yore, And in wine exceed no more : 74 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Now ten pints a day suffice ; Even this, you lovely droll, Who enslave me with your eyes, Is to drink your health, my soul ! " But our poet was not always either tender or jolly ; with him, also, at times, indignation made verses, as witness this horrible " Imprecation " : " If to Evreux I e'er go, May I burn with fever slow ! May I turn into a dog ! May I turn into a frog ! Let me be cut off from wine, Nor get trust when I would dine ; May for ever civil brawls Trouble those accursed walls ; May the sweet sun, glad and bright, Never bless it with its light ; May it rain there swords and spears ; May all ills which in old years Bards have prophesied, all those Horrors, outrages, and woes, Poison, murder, streams of blood, Pest and famine, fire and flood, Be right soon accomplished there, Filling it with black despair. This is what just anger heated Him to cry, at table seated, Furiously excited thus 'Gainst that city infamous, Him of all men most benign, Who in these days drink good wine. O good tipplers ! Dear Farct ! With just cause you scorn that lair More than thirty churches there, And not one poor cabaret." SAINT-AMANT 75 One shudders to think of the maledictions our friend would have launched had he found himself, not in a single city, but in a whole state subject to the Maine Law ! The last lines pleasantly recall those of my honoured namesake, that most valiant and jolly Norwegian song-smith, as we find them in Laing's translation of that glorious series of sagas, "The Heimskringla " : " A hundred miles through Eida wood, And the devil an alehouse, bad or good." We now come to a matter of special interest to Nicotians. On Vol. i., p. 182, of M. Liver's edition, stand these two sonnets : ' ' Assis sur un fagot, une pipe a la main, Tristement accoude centre une cheminee, Les yeux fixes vers terre, et 1'ame mutine'e, Je songe aux cruautes de mon sort inhumain, L'espoir, qui me rem'et du jour au lendemain, Essaye a gaigner temps sur ma peine obstinee, Et me venant promettre une autre destinee, Me fait monter plus haut qu'un empereur romain. Mais a peine cette herbe est-elle mise en cendre, Qu'en mon premier estat il me convient descendre. Et passer mes ennuis a redire souvent : Non, je ne trouve point beaucoup de difference De prendre du Tabac a vivre d'esperance, Car 1'un n'est que fumee, et 1'autre n'est que vent." " Voicy le rendezvous des enfarits sans soucy, Que pour me divertir quelquefois je frequente. Le maistre a bien raison de se nommer la Plante Car il gaigne son bien par une plante aussy. Vous y voyez Bilot pasle, morne et transy, Vomir par les nazeaux une vapeur errante ; Vous y voyez Sallard chatouiller la servante, Qui rit du bout du mez en portrait raccourcy, /6 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Que ce borgne * a bien plus Fortune pour amie Qu'un de ces curieux qui, soufflant 1'alchimie, De sage devient fol, et de riche indigent ! Cestuy-la sent enfin sa vigueur consumed, Et voit tout son argent se resoudre en fume"e ; Mais lui, de la fume il tire de 1'argent." As will appear directly, I have no need to try my hand at the first. I give the following version of the second in default of a better : " Of careless souls this is the meeting-place, Which sometimes I frequent for my delight, The master calls himself La Plante with right, For to a plant his fortune he can trace. You see there Bilot pale as in sad case, From both whose nostrils vapour takes its flight, While Sallard tickles at the servant light, Who laughs with nose up and foreshortened face. How much this one-eyed better friends must be With Fortune than those alchemists we see From wise Incoming mad, from rich quite poor ! They find at length their health and strength decay, Their money all in smoke consumed away ; But he from smoke gets money more and more." Of a truth, it may be remarked, parenthetically, save in the fact that he was singular with respect to eyes, this La Plante was the very fore-ordained prototype of Cope, with his opulent Tobacco Plant of the two- fold leaves, literary and nicotian ! Now, in the Tobacco Plant for August 1874, under the heading, " Who wrote it ? " Mr. Besant's transla- tion of the first of these sonnets is cited from the " French Humourists " (p. 1 84), together with a sonnet * La Plante was " un cabaretier borgne qui lenait vn cabaret borgne" the one-eyed host of a low wine-shop, or, as we should say, pot-house. SAINT-AMANT 77 on Tobacco by Sir Robert Aytoun, so closely re- sembling it that it was clear that either Sir Robert imitated Saint-Amant or Saint-Amant imitated Sir Robert; whence the question, Whose was the original? Sir Robert was born 1570, and died February 163^, as is recorded on his monument in Westminster Abbey. He studied civil law at the University of Paris, and was on the Continent from 1590 till 1603, when a Latin poem to King James brought him into favour with that monarch. He was an accomplished courtier, was private secretary to Queen Anne, and afterwards to Henrietta Maria, and received many a good gift from royalty. His English and Latin poems (he wrote others in Greek and French, but these have not been preserved) were privately printed in 1871, by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D., Historiographer to the Historical Society, from the collation of two MSS., and the comparison with such of the pieces as appear in Watson's Collection. The sonnet on Tobacco is not in that collection. Aytoun's verses are smooth and graceful, and sometimes something more. Dryden said they were among the best of that age ; Burns altered, without improving, his " For- saken Mistress " (" I do confess thou art sae fair ") ; the first " Old-Long-Syne " is attributed to him ; and the " Invocation of his Mistress," which Dr. Rogers prints in his volume, has been ascribed to Raleigh. It is that containing the well-known stanza : "Silence in love bewrays more woe Than words, though ne'er so witty ; A beggar that is dumb, you know, Doth merit double pity." He was, therefore, quite capable of writing the sonnet 78 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES in question ; and, as Saint-Amant visited England in 1631, Sir Robert might then have shown him it in MS. But, on the other hand, Saint-Amant published his first volume of poems in 1627 or 1629 (I find both dates given, and have no means of deciding) ; and these two sonnets seem to have been included in it, both referring to his Belle-Isle period. Then there is the direct and specific evidence of the letter cited by M. Livet, which I have given in the first part. Again, we have the two sonnets together in Saint- Amant, while there is no other such piece in Sir Robert. Furthermore, we know that Saint-Amant was a great smoker, while it is not at all probable that Sir Robert, as a favourite of James, indulged in the weed. Lastly, I don't believe that Sir Robert ever sat on a faggot in his life, being far too courtly a gentleman ; whereas Saint-Amant may have done so countless times in one and the other cabaret borgne. Wherefore, although, as a leal Scot, I would fain claim the honour for my countryman of writing this, " one of the earliest sonnets extant in praise of tobacco," as Mr. Besant says, 1 am constrained to yield to Saint-Amant the credit of being the original. And now to finish with our jolly friend. Mr. Besant says : " Though he is a dependant, he is never a parasite. A gentleman he is born, a gentle- man he remains." This is quite true. Strange as it may seem, he was thoroughly independent in every- thing, and could be haughty if his self-respect were touched. As a poet, he says : " If I read the works of another, it is simply to guard myself from repeating his thoughts." One day, says Tallemant, dining at the table of the coadjutor (the celebrated De Retz, SAINT-AMANT 79 afterwards cardinal), he could exclaim before an assemblage of valets : " I have fifty years of liberty on my head." "You have written pretty verses," said Esprit, his colleague at the Academy, to him, at the table of Chapelain. " Deuce take your pretty," he cried angrily, and could scarcely be persuaded to stay. On another occasion he shouted : " Shut the doors ! let no one enter ; no valets here ! I have trouble enough to recite before their masters." He called himself the fat Virgil, and the Norman Democritus. I must not omit to mention one of the best jokes of his life : it is said that in his latter days he had hopes of an abbey, or even a bishopric. Surely he would have been a noble priest, after the order of Saint Rabelais ; for of him, as of Chaucer's Monk, it could have safely been said : " Now certeinly he was a fair prelat ; He was not pale as a for-pyned goost." And as of Chaucer's Frere : " Ful sweetly herde he confessioun, And plesaunt was his absolucioun. He was an esy man to geve penance. He knew wel the tavernes in every toun, And every ostiller or gay tapstere." BEN JONSON IT is now threescore years since Gifford brought out and dedicated to Canning his edition of the works of Ben Jonson, with the text carefully revised and annotated, and elaborate introductory Memoirs. These Memoirs made a new era in the posthumous history of Rare Ben, tearing to shreds and tatters all the slanders against him, whether woven of errors or of malignant inventions, which had been handed down from one careless writer to another, and particularly all the foul calumnies of his envying and traducing Shakespeare, which the commentators on the latter Malone, Steevens, and the rest had fabricated out of the flimsiest and most incongruous yarns of suspicion and prejudice. It was a work well suited to Gifford's mind and temper keen, vigilant, honest, and some- what acrid ; and he is quite at his best in it, inspired with a generous passion to redeem a great^and vener- able name from unmerited obloquy. I don't know whether his version of Juvenal still survives ; I fancy very few of this generation have read his " Baviad " and " Maeviad," which young Byron termed the first satires of the day, calling aloud, " Why slumbers Gifford ? " and, " Arouse thee, Gifford ! " but if his 80 BEN JONSON 8l name lives not by itself, it will at any rate go down to remote posterity honourably associated with that of Massinger, associated more honourably yet with that of Ben Jonson. So thoroughly, indeed, has he wrought his labour of love that, so far as I am aware, he has left nothing of any importance, as regards either the life or the text, to be done by those who come after him. About four years ago Hotten pub- lished a cheap and handy reprint (why undated?), in three volumes, of Gifford's edition, under the care of that excellent editor, the late Lieut.-Col. Francis Cunningham (son of Allan), who made a few slight corrections, added a very few notes, together with some short pieces discovered since Gifford's time; and included a copy of the complete transcript, also unknown to Gifford, of Drummond of Hawthornden's celebrated notes of Ben Jonson's conversations with him, which was found by Mr. David Laing in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. This latest edition I use for the present article. Benjamin, or (as he usually styled himself) Ben Jonson, was born about a month after his father's death, early in 1573, in the city of Westminster. He told Drummond that "his Grandfather came from Carlisle, and, he thought, from Annandale to it; he served King Henry VIIL, and was a gentleman ; " whence we may presume that he was one of the Johnstones who abound in Annandale. " His Father losed all his estate under Queen Marie, having been cast in prisson and forfaitted ; at last turned minister : so he was a minister's son." His mother seems soon to have made a second marriage with a master brick- layer. Ben was first sent to a private school in the F 82 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and afterwards, at the expense of the famous Camden, who was then the second master, to Westminster School. Camden's great work, the " Britannia," was published in 1586, during the time he was befriending Jonson, and passed through eight editions before 1590. Jonson was ever grateful for his generosity and instruction. " Every Man in his Humour " is dedicated to him ; he is mentioned with honour in two of the " Masques," and to him No. 14 of the "Epigrams" is addressed, well worth citing for the sake of both : " CAMDEN ! most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in arts, all that I know ; (How nothing's that !) to whom my country owes The great renown and name with which she goes ! Than thee the age sees not that thing more grave, More high, more holy, that she more would crave. What name, what skill, what faith hast thou in things ! What sight in searching the most antique springs ! What weight, and what authority in thy speech 1 Men scarce can make that doubt, but thou canst teach. Pardon free truth, and let thy modesty, Which conquers all, be once o'ercome by thee. Many of thine this better could than I ; But for their powers, accept my piety." It is said that from Westminster he went to Cam- bridge, an exhibition having been procured for him ; but there is no clear evidence on the point If he did go, he did not matriculate, for he told Drummond that he was Master of Arts in both the Universities by their favour, not his study. When he returned home his stepfather took him into his own business, and many a mean sneer was afterwards flung at Ben for his bricklaying, by those of his contemporaries with whom he was at feud. He seems to have kept, BEN JONSON 83 or been kept, to the trade only about a twelvemonth, for he could not endure it ; and, when eighteen, went off as a volunteer to the English army in Flanders. Though he served but one campaign, he was always proud of his soldiering. Drummond reports from his own lips : " In his service in the Low Countries, he had, in the face of both the campes, killed ane enemie and taken opima spolia from him." As Gifford remarks, in those days, when great battles were rarely fought, and armies lay for half a cam- paign in sight of each other, it was not unusual for champions to advance into the midst and challenge their adversaries; and he thinks it probable that at that particular time such challenges were encouraged by Vere, the English general, who was undertaking the most daring enterprises, in order to animate the troops, dispirited by the tame surrender of a fort by Stanley. In his Epigram 108, "To True Soldiers," Ben writes loftily : " I swear by your true friend, my Muse, I love Your great profession, which I once did prove ; And did not shame it with my actions then, No more than I dare now do with my pen." It is probable that Jonson returned to England be- cause of his stepfather's death. He says that on his return he resumed his wonted studies. His story at this time is very obscure; but he appears, like so many of his educated contemporaries, to have resorted to writing for the stage. It is said that he also tried acting and failed, but there is no evidence for this save Decker's " Satiromastix," which, as a rabid attack on Jonson, cannot be trusted in anything that concerns him. He had at least one qualification 84 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES for the stage, according to the Duchess of Newcastle, who says in her " Letters " (Charles Lamb's delight) : * " I never heard any man read well but my husband, and I have heard him say that he never heard any man read well but Ben Jonson, and yet he hath heard many in his time ; " as well he might, his house for half-a-century being open to every man of genius or learning. It was then the custom of managers to hire authors to write new pieces or re-write old, advancing them money on the credit of their talents, or in proportion to the progress of the work; and they encouraged young authors to write in conjunction with those already in possession of the stage. Jonson's earliest efforts were made in this manner, but it is not known in what dramas he took part. The first we are sure of, and this is by him alone, is " Every Man in his Humour," which was popular in 1596, having been acted eleven times between November of that year and May of the year following. It is remarkably mature for a writer but little over twenty. Before this was pro- duced he had married, and must have been in con- siderable straits. Drummond reports : " He maried a * "But what moved thee, wayward and spiteful K.,'to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Margaret Newcastle? knowing at the time, and knowing that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio ; what but the mere spirit of contra- diction, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend ? Then, worst cut of all ! to transport it with thee to the Gallican Land " Unworthy land to harbour such a sweetness, A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwell, Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder." ELI A, on The Two Races of Men. BEN JONSON 85 wyfe who was a shrew, yet honest [chaste] ; five yeers he had not bedded with her, but remayned with my Lord Aulbanie." This was Esme, Lord Aubigny, afterwards Duke of Lenox, to whom " Sejanus " was dedicated, and Epigram 127 addressed, beginning " Is there a hope that man would thankful be, If I should fail in gratitude to thee, To whom I am so bound, loved AUBIGNY ? " By this marriage he had several children, of whom none is known to have survived him. There is a record, which may refer to him, of another marriage in 1623. In 1597 there are memorandums of ad- vances by Henslowe and his son-in-law, Alleyn (the founder of Dulwich College), to Ben Jonson, on account of works in progress, which, however, are not specified : 4 twice, twenty shillings, and as low as five shillings. One of these notes calls him " player," so that there is some foundation for the story that he tried acting at first. The scene of " Every Man in his Humour" was at first laid in Italy, and as the manners were almost wholly English, there were of course many incongruities. Jonson was, therefore, well advised when he transferred the action to London, turned the Italian names into English, made all altera- tions necessary, and introduced circumstances appro- priate to the new scene. According to the custom of the times, these numerous changes made the revised piece his own, although he had sold it in its first form right out, reserving no interest in it whatever; and in 1598 this revised piece was acted for the first time at the Black Friars Theatre (Henslowe and Alleyn had the Rose), and at the head of the list of the prin- cipal performers in it stands the name of Shakespeare, 86 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES whose first acquaintance with Ben Jonson is com- monly assigned to this period. This fine comedy established the author's reputation, and placed him at once, though only twenty-five, among the foremost dramatists of the age. From this period, says Gifford, he perceptibly grew into acquaintance and familiarity with the wise and great ; and from this period he was pursued by the envious detraction of some of the less fortunate playwrights with whom he had been accus- tomed to work, particularly Decker and Marston. Poor as he was when the first version was brought out (probably in 1595), the Prologue is remarkable for the high freedom of its strain, commencing " Thougli need make many poets, and some such As art and nature have not bettered much ; Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage, As he dare serve the ill customs of the age, Or purchase your delight at such a rate, As, for it, he himself must justly hate." And near the end was a very lofty passage, not in the current version, but retained by Gifford in a note " You see How abjectly your poetry is ranked, In general opinion. . . . I can refell opinion, and approve The state of poesy, such as it is, Blessed, eternal, and most true divine : Indeed, if you will look on poesy, As she appears in many, poor and lame, Patched up in remnants and old worn-out rags, Half-starved for want of her peculiar food, Sacred invention then I must confirm Both your conceit and censure of her merit : But view her in her glorious ornaments, Attired in the majesty of art, BEN JONSON 87 Set high in spirit with the precious taste Of sweet philosophy ; and, which is most, Crowned with the rich traditions of a soul, That hates to have her dignity prophaned With any relish of an earthly thought, Oh ! then how proud a presence doth she bear ! Then is she like herself, fit to be seen Of none but grave and consecrated eyes." In the words of Gifford : " These lines, which were probably written before he had attained his twenty- second [twenty-third] year, do not discredit him ; and let it be added to his honour, that he invariably sup- ported, through every period of his chequered life, the lofty character with which his youthful fancy had invested the Muse." It may be noticed also, with regard to the " sacred invention," poesy's " peculiar food," that he always insisted on this, calling " versers," not poets, such as had not manifested this high faculty, whatever their merits. Keats thought in like manner. When about the same age as Jonson he wrote thus : " Besides, a long poem is a test of Invention, which I take to be the polar- star of poetry, as Fancy is the sails, and Imagination the rudder. . . . This same Invention seems, indeed, of late years to have been forgotten as a poetical excellence." This year, 1598, in which he made his first decisive step towards fame and fortune, had almost brought his career to an abrupt close. He informed Drummond that, " being appealed to the fields, he had killed his adversarie, which had hurt him in the arme, and whose sword was 10 inches longer than his; for the which he was emprissoned, and almost at the gallowes. Then took he his religion by trust, of a priest who visited him in prisson. Thereafter he was 12 yeares 88 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES a Papist. ... In the tyme of his close imprisonment under Queen Elizabeth, his judges could get nothing of him to all their demands but I [Ay] and No. They placed two damn'd villains to catch advantage of him, with him, but he was advertized by his keeper: of the Spies he hath ane epigrame." Which is No. 59: " Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff, Who, when you've burnt yourselves down to the snuff, Stink, and are thrown away. End fair enough." Gifford antedates these events about three years, while exposing "maggoty-pated" Aubrey, who writes : " He killed Mr. Marlowe, the poet, on Bunhill, coming from the Green Curtain playhouse [a low- class theatre in Shoreditch] ; " Marlowe, whom Jonson highly esteemed, witness his " Marlowe's mighty line," having been killed in a tavern brawl at Deptford, in May 1593: a tragical loss to English poetry, only surpassed by the drowning of Shelley at nearly the same age. Col. Cunningham, however, quotes from Collier's " Life of Alleyn," a letter of Henslowe, dated 26th September 1598: "Sence you weare with me I have lost one of my company which hurteth me greatley, that is Gabrell, for he is slayen in Hogesden fylldes by the hands of bergemen [bengemen, for Benjamin? Henslowe spelling the name thus else- where] Jonson, bricklayer." The " bricklayer " was probably added in bitterness of spirit for the loss of a friend and actor not easy to replace ; perhaps, also, in spleen, because Jonson had taken the revised, " Every Man in his Humour," to another house. The spies, we may presume, were set upon him simply because of his communication with the priest. BEN JONSON 89 Plots against the life of the Queen abounded, as did spies to counteract them; several Romish priests educated abroad were convicted of attempting to poison her, and executed ; and new converts, such as Jonson then was, were among the most zealous and daring tools of the Jesuits. It is not known how long he was kept in prison on this occasion, nor how he procured his release. The facts that he was the challenged and not the challenging party, and that his adversary acted unfairly in using a sword so much the longer, must have weighed in his favour. In 1599 his Comical Satire, "Every Man out of his Humour," was first acted at the Globe on the Bank Side, by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, who, being licensed by King James soon after his accession, took the title of His Majesty's Servants. All the principal members of the company, except Shake- speare, had parts in this piece. When published, in the following year, Jonson dedicated it to "The noblest Nurseries of Humanity and Liberty in the Kingdom, the Inns of Court," stating : " When I wrote this poem I had friendship with divers in your societies ; who, as they were great names in learning, so they were no less examples of living." In the introductory dialogue, which is substituted for the ordinary prologue, Jonson, under the name of Asper, is fiercely passionate in his denunciation of prevalent vices. Thus he exclaims "my soul Was never ground into such oily colours, To flatter vice, and daub iniquity : But, with an armed and resolved hand, I'll strip the ragged follies of the time Naked as at their birth." 90 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES And again : " I fear no mood stamped in a private brow When I am pleased t' unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries : No broker's, usurer's, or lawyer's gripe, Were I disposed to say, they are all corrupt. I fear no courtier's frown should I applaud The easy flexure of his supple hams." And, when he turns to the audience, he addresses them thus, courtly, yet careful to reserve his inde- pendence and self-esteem : " Gracious and kind spectators, you are welcome ; Apollo and the Muses feast your eyes With graceful objects, and may our Minerva Answer your hopes, unto their largest strain! Yet here mistake me not, judicious friends ; I do not this to beg your patience, Or servilely to fawn on your applause, Like some dry brain, despairing in his merit. Let me be censured by the austerest brow, Where I want art or judgment tax me freely : Let envious censors, with their broadest eyes, Look through and through me : |I pursue no favour ; Only vouchsafe me your attentions, And I will give you music worth your ears." "Every Man out of his Humour" was well re- ceived. "Queen Elizabeth, drawn by its fame, honoured the play with her presence ; and Jonson, to pay a respectful compliment to his sovereign, altered the conclusion of his play into an elegant panegyric. Mr. Collins, the poet," Gifford cites from Davies, " Dram. Miscel.," " first pointed out to me the peculiar beauties of this address." This stands BEN JONSON 91 now as the epilogue at the presentation before the Queen, who was one of the first encouragers of the youthful poet: "Three distinct notices of Jonson appear in Mr. Henslowe's memorandum-book for the year 1599. The sum of forty shillings was advanced to him and Decker, for a play which they were writing in conjunction ; a like sum for another, in which Chettle was joined with them ; and a third sum of twenty shillings for a tragedy ('The Scotts Tragedy') which he was probably writing alone. None of these are now extant, but ' Cynthia's Revels,' on which he was at this time employed, was brought out in the following year." When one reads of such small advances, even allowing for the greater value of money at that time, one understands why some of the dramatists were so exceedingly prolific ; for a man could not have sustained life on slow, careful, play-writing, unless eked out by acting or a share in a theatre ; and one agrees with Gifford that Jonson must have written much more than has come down to us with his name, and mended many plays, in order to support his family. It is true that he was assisted by patrons, such as the Lord Aubigny already mentioned, and the Earl of Pembroke, who, as he told Drummond, every first day of the new year sent him -20 to buy books ; it is also true that Drummond reports : " Sundry tymes he hath devoured his bookes, *.//, except the superstitious credulity common to his age? Mad Abel Drugger! mouton enrage, peaceablest of living BEN JONSON 2O5 creatures gone rabid, as Carlyle glosses with his immense chuckle ! The angry boys are called the terrible boys in the "Silent Woman," Act i., Sc. i. Upton quotes from Wilson's " Life of King James " : "The king minding his sports, many riotous de- meanours crept into the kingdom ; divers sects of vicious persons, going under the title of roaring-boys, bravadoes, roysters, &c., commit many insolencies; the streets swarm, night and day, with bloody quar- rels, private duels fomented," &c. Gifford adds : " These pestilent miscreants continued under various names to disturb the peace of the capital down to the accession of the present royal family;" but methinks we have read of beating the watchmen or Charlies, and other such gentlemanlike rowdyisms, as occurring long after the royal Germans, with their kin and followers, kindly came for our goot and our goots. All quiet smokers, who have the leisure and take the trouble to read beyond their Bible and the precious leaves of their Tobacco Plant, must remem- ber how fiercely Milton denounced those sons of Belial, and how Swift tomahawked the Mohawks. How bumptious is Kastril, because he, too, can take tobacco ! In our age he would have smoked when ten years younger. Gifford says : "It has been already mentioned [see preceding Section] that Abel's shop was frequented by the adept as well as the tyro in the mystery of 'taking tobacco.' Here the latter was duly qualified for his appearance at ordinaries, taverns, and other places of fashionable resort. Here he practised the 'Cuban ebolitio, the euripus, the whiffe,' and many other modes of sup- pressing or emitting smoke with the requisite grace, 206 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES under Cavalier Shift and other eminent masters, whose names have not reached the present times carent quia vate sacro." The dialogue proceeds ; Face, as the eminently disinterested friend of truth, extolling the little less than omniscience and omni- potence of the doctor with such effect that we read: " Kas. Pray thee, tobacco-boy, go fetch my suster ; I'll see this learned boy before I go ; And so shall she. Face. Sir, he is busy now ; But if you have a sister to fetch hither, Perhaps your own pains may command her sooner ; And he by that time may be free. Kas. I go. [Exit. Face. Drugger, she's thine : the damask ! [Exit ABEL.] Subtle and I Must wrestle for her. [Aside.] " Surly, disguised as a wealthy Spanish Don ignorant of English, penetrates into the house to expose the cheaters, and has the opportunity of telling Dame Pliant, whom he hopes to win for himself, into what hands she has fallen, 'mongst what a nest of villains. Discovering himself when Subtle enters, he jeers and strikes down that venerable doctor ; and when Subtle cries, " Help ! Murder ! " retorts balefully : " There's no such thing intended : a good cart And a clean whip shall ease you of that fear." Face comes at the cry ; sees how matters stand, slips out, and returns with Kastril : " Face. Why, now's the time, if ever you will quarrel Well, as they say, and be a true-born child : The doctor and your sister both arc abused. BEN JONSON 2O7 Kas. Where is he ? Which is he ? He is a slave, Whate'er he is, and the son of a whore. Are you The man, sir, I would know? Sur. I should be loth, sir, To confess so much. Kas. Then you lie in your throat. Sur. How ! Face. [To KASTRIL.] A very errant rogue, sir, and a cheater, Employed here by another conjuror That does not love the doctor, and would cross him If he knew how. Sur. Sir, you are abused. Kas. You lie : And 'tis no matter. Enter DRUGGER with a piece of damask. Face. Nay, here's an honest fellow, too, that knows him, And all his tricks. Make good what I say, Abel, This cheater would have cozened thee o' the widow. [Aside to DRUGGER. He owes this honest Drugger here seven pound, He has had on him in twopenny'orths of tobacco. Drug. Yes, sir. And he has dammed himself three terms to pay me. Face. And what does he owe for lotium ? Drug. Thirty shillings, sir ; And for six syringes. Sur. Hydra of villainy ! Face. [To KASTRIL.] Nay sir, you must quarrel him out o' the house. Kas. I will : Sir, if you get not out o' doors, you lie ; And you are a pimp. Sur. Why, this is madness, sir, Not valour in you ; I must laugh at this. Kas. It is my humour : you are a pimp and a trig, And an Amadis de Gaul, or a Don Quixote. Drug. Or a knight o' the curious coxcomb, do you see ? " Drugger himself, we see, grows witty at the expense of his rival ; as for his fibbing against him, all is fair 208 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES in love and war. It will be remarked that Kastril has not yet mastered the nice gradations of the gentle- manly quarrel, and can but blurt out grossly at the very beginning, " You lie" which should be the climax. It will also be remarked that his munition of invec- tive is neither abundant nor formidable. For the sake of his sister, Surly does not want to quarrel with him, but sees clearly through his vapouring, and tells him that he is valiant in company ; for all present save Dame Pliant, always passively neutral are dead against the gamester, who for once is playing an honest game. Even Ananias, entering, has his zeal mightily kindled against Surly's Spanish slops : "Ana. They are profane, Lewd, superstitious, and idolatrous breeches. Sur. New rascals ! K 'as. Will you be gone, sir ? Ana. Avoid, Sathan ! Thou art not of the light ! That ruff of pride About thy neck, betrays thee ; and is the same With that which the unclean birds, in seventy-seven, Were seen to prank it with on divers coasts : Thou look'st like antichrist in that lewd hat. Sur. I must give way " The " unclean birds of seventy-seven " may refer to the number of Spanish troops poured about that year, 1577, into the Netherlands under Alva. During the early part of James's reign Spanish influence and fashions were paramount at court; but the people remembered the Armada, and loved not Pope or Inquisition, and always welcomed any stage ridicule of their old enemies. The huge Spanish ruffs, with their deep sets or plaits, often came in for mockery ; BEN JONSON 2O9 and in the present piece, Act iv., Sc. i, Subtle ex- claims, when Surly first enters disguised " He looks in that deep ruff like a head in a platter Served in by a short cloak upon two trestles." Surly being at length got rid of for the time, Face and Drugger are left on one side, Subtle and Ananias on the other : "Face. Drugger, this rogue prevented us, for thee : We had determined that thou should'st have come In a Spanish suit, and have carried her so ; and he, A brokerly slave ! goes, puts it on himself. Hast brought the damask ? Drug. Yes, sir. Fact. Thou must borrow A Spanish suit : hast thou no credit with the players ? Drug. Yes, sir ; did you never see me play the Fool ? Face. I know not, Nab ; thou shalt, if I can help it. : [Aside. Hieronimo's old cloak, ruff, and hat. will serve ; I'll tell thee more when thou bringest 'em. [Exit DRUGGER." Old Hieronimo, or Jeronymo, was the title-hero of a popular play by Kyd, and of its sequel, the " Spanish Tragedy," frequently burlesqued by our poet and his contemporaries, though Jonson himself in his early hack days earned a small sum by writing additions to it. We are now at the close of the Fourth Act, and the beginning of the denouement. Lovewit, the master of the house, suddenly returns, and is descried by Dol, with forty of the neighbours about him talking. Face, the man of action, immediately assumes command in the confederacy : ' ' Face. Be silent : not a word, if he call or knock. I'll into mine old shape again and meet him, O 2IO BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Of Jeremy, the butler. In the meantime, Do you two pack up all the goods and purchase,* That we can carry in two trunks. I'll keep him Off for to-day, if I cannot longer : and then At night I'll ship you both away to Ratcliff, Where we will meet to-morrow, and there we'll share. Let Mammon's brass and pewter keep the cellar ; We'll have another time for that. But, Dol, Prithee go heat a little water quickly ; Subtle must shave me : all my captain's beard Must off, to make me appear smooth Jeremy." The neighbours tell Lovewit of the strange persons who have been flocking to his house, day and night, for weeks past, during which Jeremy has not been seen. Jeremy appears, and maintains that the house has been shut up and the keys in his pocket for the last three weeks, and that the neighbours must have had visions or been demented. These worthies waver before his assurance. Then the dupes come up, undeceived and raging; Mammon and Surly, Kastril for his sister (who is awaiting the genuine Spanish Don she has been promised for husband), Ananias and Tribulation Wholesome; Dapper cries out from within, and Subtle shouts to quieten him ; Lovewit overhears Face rebuking the latter for his noise; and finally Face, seeing that he is caught, and feeling that "nothing's more wretched than a guilty conscience" (when the guilt's found out), offers to confess in private: Whalley notes : " A cant term for goods stolen or dishonestly come by : thus Shakespeare, Henry V. 'They will steal anything, and call it purchase.' And this sense seems to be derived from Chaucer, who thus uses it in his ' Prophecy ' : ' And robbery is holde purchase.' " BEN JONSON 211 " Give me but leave to make the best of my fortune, And only pardon me the abuse of your house : It's all I beg. I'll help you to a widow, In recompense, that you shall give me thanks for, Will make you seven years younger, and a rich one. 'Tis but your putting on a Spanish cloak : I have her within." Drugger returns with Hieronimo's cloak, hat, and ruff; Face tells Subtle to take the suit, and bid him fetch a parson presently : " Say he shall marry the widow." Face goes off with the things to his master ; but Subtle thinks that he means to don the Don himself and marry Dame Pliant, and so informs Dol, who exclaims, " 'Tis direct against our articles." Subtle plans with her to get off with the plunder to Brentford instead of Ratcliff, and leave Face in the lurch, Dol beforehand getting what she can from the widow. Nab returns with the parson, and is sent back again to wash himself. Face re-enters, and finds that all the purchase is safely packed up, money and goods, including poor Abel's damask and tobacco : "Face. Give me the keys. Dol. Why you the keys ? Sub. No matter, Dol ; because We shall not open them before he comes. Face. 'Tis true, you shall not open them, indeed ; Nor have them forth, do you see ? not forth, Dol. Dol. No! Face. No, my smock-rampant. The right is, my master Knows all, has pardoned me, and he will keep them ; Doctor, 'tis true you look [astonished] for all your figures : I sent for him, indeed.* Wherefore, good partners, * A falsehood, to frighten them. 212 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Both he and she be satisfied ; for here Determines the indenture tripartite 'Twixt Subtle, Dol, and Face. All I can do Is to help you over the wall, o' the back-side, Or lend you a sheet to save your velvet gown, Dol. Here will be officers presently, bethink you Of some course sudden to 'scape the dock : For thither you will come else. [LottJ knocking.'] Hark you, thunder." They curse him, he mocks ; and they have to decamp without bag or baggage. Lovewit in the Spanish dress has been married off-hand to Dame Pliant. Mammon, Surly, Kastril, Ananias, Tribulation return with officers, and are admitted when Lovewit has cast off his disguise. He lets them know who he is, and explains that his servant, taking advantage of his absence, had let the house to a doctor and a captain, of whom he knows nothing. He had found only a gentlewoman within, whom he had married, because her Spanish count had neglected her. They search the house in vain. Mammon, who says that he has been cheated of eight score and ten pounds within these five weeks,* besides his first materials, demands at least his brass and pewter vessels, which he had sent to be turned into gold. Lovewit will not give these up unless Mammon can bring certificate that he was gulled of them. Mammon will rather lose them than so expose his folly, and retires with Surly, who bitterly regrets that, in not securing the widow when she was in his power, he must needs cheat * Yet at the opening of Act ii. he says that they had been at the work ten months. But if so, how could Subtle and Uol have been brought so low (Act i., Sc. i), when Face took them into the house but some weeks before (Act v., Sc. i)? BEN JONSON 213 himself, "with that same foolish vice of honesty." Ananias and Tribulation come to rescue the same things, which they have bought of Subtle for a hundred marks, as orphans' goods, and left with him for transmutation : Lovewit threatens to cudgel them out of the house, and they depart with anathema maranatha. Our Drugger comes, and is beaten out again. Kastril enters, dragging in his sister, and rating her in that refined style which was conserved by those staunchest of Conservatives, the country gentlemen, even till the time of Fielding and Squire Western. Lovewit confronts the puerile bully : "Love, Come, will you quarrel? I will feize [chastise] you, sirrah ; Why do you not buckle to your tools ? Kas. Od's light, This is a fine old boy as e'er I saw ! Love. What, do you change your copy now ? proceed, Here stands my dove : stoop at her if you dare. Kas. 'Slight, I must love him ! I cannot choose, i' faith, An' I should be hanged for't ! Suster, I protest, I honour thee for this match. Love. O, do you so, sir ? Kas. Yes, an' thou canst take tobacco and drink, old boy, I'll give her five hundred pound more to her marriage, Than her own state. Love. Fill a pipe full, Jeremy. Face. Yes ; but go in and take it, sir. Love. We will ; I will be ruled by thee in everything, Jeremy. Kas. 'Slight, thou art not hide-bound, thou art a jovy boy ! Come, let us in, I pray thee, and take our whiffs." Thus tobacco is vindicated at the close of the comedy, as, like your If, a great peace-maker. Oh that rich region of comedy ! Oh our poor work-a-day 214 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES world ! How many of us love wit, and can take tobacco and drink ; but who will therefore give us two thousand pounds ? Echo answers, 'Ounds ! P.S. SHAKESPEARE AND SNUFF. At the close of Section x., I promised to return to this subject, anent a note of Gifford. Consulting the " Complete Concordance to Shakespeare," New and Revised Edition, by Mrs. Mary Cowden Clarke (London : W. Kent and Co., 1874), I find only the following references to snuff and snuffing : Midsummer Night's Dream, v. I, 254. " It is already in snuff." Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2, 22. "The light, by taking it in snuff." All's Well that Ends Well, i. 2, 59." To be the snuff of younger spirits." I Henry IV., i. 3, 41. "Took it in snuff; and still he smiled." Henry VIII., iii. 2, 96. " 'Tis I must snuff it ; then out it goes." Cymbeline, i. 6, 87. "And solace i' the dungeon by a snuff?" King Lear, iii. I, 26. " In snuffs and packings of the dukes." King Lear, iv. 6, 39. " My snuff, and loathed part of nature." Hamlet, iv. 7, 116. " A kind of wick, or snuff, that will." Love's Labour's Lost, iii. I, 16. "Snuffed up love by smelling love." The numbers of the lines I have added from the Globe edition. Now, if the reader interested in this great question will look up the passages referred to, I think he will agree with me that in only a couple of them the fourth, from i Henry IV., and the last, from LovJs Labour's Lost, is there any possi- bility of allusion to the dust of tobacco. And even in these, I am afeared that a very little pondering BEN JONSON 215 will snuff out or puff away this poor possibility. The former is in Hotspur's account of the dainty lord who pestered him after Holmedon fight : " He was perfumed like a milliner ; And 'twixt his finger and his thumb he held A pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose and took't away again ; Who therewith angry when it next came there, Took it in snuff; " A pouncet-box is a box for holding perfume, such as was in use long before the blessed powder of tobacco was known in our hemisphere. " Took it in snuff," is, indeed, a pun : to take in snuff, meaning to take offence, as well as to take by snuffing up. In brief, snuff and snuffing [German, schnupfen, " to draw into the nose," in die nase ziehen\ were familiar in our language of old, and tobacco-dust and the inhaling thereof were named from them, not vice versa ; the general being made specific in honour of the most aromatic, stimulating, brain-clearing, and popular of all the triturated titillants of the olfactory nerves : snuff is the snuff, as tobacco the weed, and, as in the East, the same word means smoke and tobacco. In French, German, Spanish, and Italian alike, our snuff par excellence is distinguished as powder of tobacco, the great word "tobacco" being, with various spellings, common to all. These remarks dispose of the other passage. I am thus compelled to decide against Gif- ford, and in favour of myself, when I wrote, "Many of the characters (Shakespeare's) are continually taking snuff, but this does not appear to have been supplied by the tobacconist." 2l6 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES XIII In "Bartholomew Fair" (1614) we have a good deal of tobacco in decidedly queer company. Tom Quarlous, the gamester, declares that, rather than marry a rich old Puritanical widow for the sake of her fortune, he would submit to the most terrible tortures and privations; among others: "I would e'en desire of fate, I might dwell in a drum and take in my sustenance with an old broken tobacco-pipe and a straw." Humphrey Waspe, telling of the trouble he has had with his young, rattle-brained master, Bartholomew Cokes, an esquire of Harrow, who has been but a day and a half in town, and is fascinated by every novelty he comes across, gives as the climax : " I thought he would have run mad o' the black boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy, roguy tobacco there." Entering the Fair, we soon meet, among other estimable characters, Ursla the pig-woman, Mooncalf the tapster, and Nightingale the ballad-monger : " Urs. Fie upon't : who would wear out their youth and prime thus, in roasting of pigs, that had any cooler vocation? hell's a kind of cold cellar to't, a very fine vault o' my con- science ! What, Mooncalfl Moon. [ Within the booth,'] Here, mistress. Urs. My chair, you false faucet you ; and my morning's draught, quickly, a bottle of ale, to quench me, rascal. I am all fire and fat, Nightingale, I shall e'en melt away to the first woman, a rib again, I am afraid. . . . Fill again, you unlucky vermin ! . . . a poor vexed thing I am, I feel myself dropping already as fast as I can ; two stone of suet a day is my propor- tion. I can but hold life and soul together with this (here's to you, Nightingale), and a whiff of tobacco at most. Where's my pipe now ? not filled 1 thou arrant incubee. BEN JONSON 217 Night, Nay, Ursla, thou'lt gall between the tongue and the teeth, with fretting now. Urs. How can I hope that ever he'll discharge his place of trust, tapster, a man of reckoning under me, that remembers nothing I say to him? [Exit NIGHT] but look to't, sirrah, you were best. Threepence a pipe-full, I will have made, of all my whole half-pound of tobacco, and a quarter of a pound of colts- foot mixt with it too, to eke it out ? * I that have dealt so long in the fire, will not be to seek in smoke now. Then six and twenty shillings a barrel I will advance on my beer, and fifty shillings a hundred on my bottle-ale ; I have told you the ways how to raise it. Froth your cans well in the filling, at length, rogue, and jog your bottles o' the buttock, sirrah, then skink out the first glass ever, and drink with all companies, though you be sure to be drunk ; you'll misreckon the better, and be less ashamed on't. But your true trick, rascal, must be, to be ever busy, and mistake away the bottles and cans, in haste, before they be half drunk off, and never hear anybody call (if they should chance to mark you), till you have brought fresh, and be able to forswear them. Give me a drink of ale." Another drink of ale she surely deserved, after this pregnant exposition of the esoteric principles of (Bartholomew) fair dealing. Now enters Dan Jordan Knockem, a horse-courser and ranger of Turnbull Street, between whom and Ursla some delicate banter is exchanged : "Knock. What! my little lean Ursla! my she-bear! art thou alive yet, with thy litter of pigs to grunt out another Bartholomew Fair ? ha I * To learn how moderate this price was, mark that threepence then was equal to at least a shilling now, and that the ordinary pipe-bowls were very small. See "Tobacco: Its History and Associations," by F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A., for records and illus- trative diagrams. Tobacco, indeed, was three shillings an ounce to the father of Sir Philip Sidney (p. 70, ed. 1859) ; but there were twenty-five pipefuls in the ounce temp. James I. (p. 161). 218 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Urs. Yes, and to amble a foot, when the Fair is done, to hear you groan out of a cart up the heavy hill. . . . Well, I shall be meet with your mumbling mouth one day. Knock. What 1 thou'lt poison me with a newt in a bottle of ale, wilt thou? or a spider in a tobacco-pipe, Urse? Come, there's no malice in these fat folks, I never fear thee, an I can scape thy lean Mooncalf here. Let's drink it out, good Urse, and no vapours 1 ... Thou art such another mad, merry Urse, still ! troth I do make conscience of vexing thee, now in the dog-days, this hot weather, for fear of foundering thee in the body, and melting down a pillar of the Fair. Pray thee take thy chair again, and keep state ; and let's have a fresh bottle of ale, and a pipe of tobacco ; and no vapours. . . . Look, here's Ezekiel Edgworth \a pickpocket] ; a fine boy of his inches as any in the Fair 1 has still money in his purse, and will pay all, with a kind heart, and good vapours. Edg. That I will indeed, willingly, Master Knockem ; fetch some ale and tobacco." Nightingale returns, and arranges with Ezekiel, whose confederate he is, and Ursla the tactics for this great field-day. Nightingale will take his stand in the fullest passages, shifting often, and while singing will use his hawk's eye nimbly, and make signs to Ezekiel where the full purses are ; after each assemblage Ezekiel will hand the booty over to Nightingale, who will quickly deposit it with Ursla ; and at night they will meet and share the lot. " Urs. Enough, talk no more on't : your friendship, masters, is not now to begin. Drink your draught of indenture, your sup of covenant, and away : the Fair fills apace, company begins to come in, and I have ne'er a pig ready yet. Knock. Well said ! fill the cups, and light the tobacco ; let's give fire in the works, and noble vapours." Knockem's vapour, like the noble Nym's humour, or the blooming and awfully of our own days, can be BEN JONSON 2Ip applied in the most various senses or nonsenses ; for the rest, the horse-courser chiefly indulges in stable- slang. Winwife, a gentleman, and Quarlous come on the scene : " Knock. Master Winwife ! Master Quarlous ! will you take a pipe of tobacco with us ? Do not discredit me now, Zekiel. [Edgworth gives him a purse : Zekiel being used to pay for Dan, and Dan to roar or bully for Zekiel. Winw. Do not see him ; he is the roaring horse-courser, pray thee let's avoid him : turn down this way. Qtiar. 'Slud, I'll see him, and roar with him too, an' he roared as loud as Neptune ; pray thee go with me. . . . Knock. Welcome, Master Quarlous, and Master Winwife ; will you take any froth and smoke with us ? Quar. Yes, sir ; but you'll pardon us if we knew not of so much familiarity between us afore. Knock. As what, sir ? Quar. To be so lightly invited to smoke and froth." The new-comers and Ursla have a sharp set-to with the tongue; Knockem takes her part, and falls to fist-fighting with Quarlous ; Ursla, who has hurried off for the hot dripping-pan to baste away her anta- gonists, stumbles with it and scalds her leg, her leg, her leg, her leg ! Adam Overdo, the foolish Justice of the Peace, who has come to the Fair disguised as "mad Arthur of Bradley, that makes the orations," in order to take note of all the rogueries there abound- ing, and has been sipping a bottle of ale to cover his watching, and is bamboozled into taking deep interest in the pickpocket, as a clerkly and innocent young man fallen among debauched company, and worthy of rescue this sapient magistrate moralises : " Over. These are the fruits of bottle-ale and tobacco ! the foam of the one, and the fumes of the other ! Stay, young man, 22O BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES and despise not the wisdom of these few hairs that are grown grey in care of thee. Edg. Nightingale, stay a little. Indeed, I'll hear some of this ! " Enter now Dame Overdo his wife, with Grace Wellborn his ward, young Cokes his brother-in-law, who has this day taken out his license to marry Grace, and Coke's masterful man Waspe ; our blind justice proceeds with his moral exhortation : " Over. Thirst not after that frothy liquor, ale ; for who knows when he openeth the stopple, what may be in the bottle ? Hath not a snail, a spider, yea, a newt been found there ? [Manifest plagiarism from his excellency Dan Jordan Knockem !] thirst not after it, youth ; thirst not after iL Cokes. This is a brave fellow, Numps [Waspe], let's hear him. . . . Over. Neither do thou lust after that tawney weed tobacco. Cokes. Brave words ! Over. Whose complexion is like the Indian's that vents it. Cokes. Are they not brave words, sister ? Over. And who can tell, if before the gathering and making up thereof, the Alligarta hath not pissed thereon ? The creeping venom of which subtle serpent, as some late writers affirm, neither the cutting of the perilous plant, nor the drying of it, nor the lighting or burning, can anyway persway [mitigate] or assuage. Cokes. Good, i' faith I is it not, sister ? Over. Hence it is that the lungs of the tobacconist [smoker] are rotted, the liver spotted, the brain smoked like the backside of the pig- woman's booth here, and the whole body within, black as her pan you saw e'en now without. Cokes. A fine similitude that, sir ! did you see the pan ? Edg. Yes, sir. Over. Nay, the hole in the nose here of some tobacco-takers, or the third nostril, if I may so call it, which makes that they can vent the tobacco out, like the ace of clubs, or rather the flower-de-lis, is caused from the tobacco, the mere tobacco ! Cokes. Who would have missed this, sister ? BEN JONSON 221 Mrs. O. Not anybody but Numps. Cokes. He does not understand. Edg. \Picks CfSKX& pocktt of kis purse.] Nor you feel. [Aside. Gives the purse aside to NIGHT.] In, to Ursla, Nightingale, and carry her comfort : see it told. This fellow [the reverend Justice ! ] was sent to us by Fortune, for our first fairing. [Exit NIGHT. Over. But what speak I of the diseases of the body, children of the Fair ? Cokes. That's to us, sister. Brave, i" faith 1 Over. Hark, O you sons and daughters of Smithfield I and hear what malady it doth the mind : it causeth swearing, it causeth swaggering, it causeth snuffling and snarling, and now and then a hurt [appalling climax 1 ]. Mrs. O. He hath something of Master Overdo, methinks, brother. Cokes. So methought, sister, very much of my brother Overdo : and 'tis when he speaks. Over. Look into any angle of the town, the Streights or the Bermudas,* where the quarrelling lesson is read, and how do they entertain the time, but with bottle-ale and tobacco ? The lecturer is o' one side, and his pupils o' the other ; but the seconds are still bottle-ale and tobacco, for which the lecturer reads, and the novices pay. Thirty pound a week in bottle-ale ! forty in tobacco ! and ten more in ale again ! Then for a suit to drink in, so much, and, that being slavered, so much for another suit, and then a third suit, and a fourth suit ! and still the bottle-ale slavereth, and the tobacco stinketh I Waspe. Heart of a madman ! are you rooted here? will you never away? what can any man find out in this bawling fellow, to grow here for ? . . . * " These Streights consisted of a nest of obscure courts, alleys, and avenues, running between the bottom of St. Martin's Lane, Half-moon (now Bedford Street), and Chandos Street. In Justice Overdo's time they were the receptacle of fraudulent debtors, thieves, and prostitutes. ... At a subsequent period this clus- ter of avenues exchanged the old name of the Bermudas for that of the Caribee Islands, which the learned professors of the district corrupted, by a happy allusion to the arts cultivated there, into the Cribbee Islands, their present appellation." Gifford, in 1816. 222 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Over. I will conclude briefly Wsape. Hold your peace, you roaring rascal, I'll run my head in your chaps else." Thus the enraptured auditor of poor Overdo's oration had his pocket picked of one purse; and before he got out of the Fair the other (for gold, the former being for silver) went too : divine punishment from Diva Nicotina ! As for Overdo himself, " the wise justice is in a maze of dupery from the first scene to the last ; " naturally enough, with intellects uncleared by tobacco. As Quarlous says when next he sees our magistrate : " Look, here's the poor fool again, that was stung by the Waspe erewhile." Passing over two or three casual notices of pipes, which merely show that they were among the estab- lished favourites of the fair, we come in this same remarkable and busy scene (being the whole of Act iii.), to that most popular character, on the old stage, the " Banbury man," that is to say Puritan, Zeal-of- the-land Busy. This worthy is suitor to Dame Pure- craft, a widow, and what may be termed her Stiggins or spiritual director. Her son-in-law, John Littlewit, a proctor, thus speaks of him : "... an old elder come from Banbury, a suitor that puts in here at meal tide, to praise the painful brethren, or pray that the sweet singers may be restored ; says a grace as long as his breath lasts him ! Sometime the spirit is so strong with him, it gets quite out of him, and then my mother, or Win [his wife] are fain to fetch it again with malmsey or aqua ccelestis." Master Littlewit wanted to go to the Fair because it was the fashion, and yet more because there was to be performed a puppet-play of his own making. BEN JONSON 223 Mistress Win, or Win-the- fight, Littlewit was equally anxious to go, but feared that her mother would never consent to " such a profane motion." Then did this unscrupulous husband suggest unto his wife, who was in an interesting condition, that she should suddenly fall into a violent longing for roast pig, one of the standard delicacies of the Fair ; and he even went to the enormity of saying : " Win, long to eat of a pig, sweet Win, in the Fair, do you see, in the heart of the Fair, not at Pyecorner ! " With admirable wifely submission, all unconscious of evil, this sweet Griselda, this long-suffering Win-the-fight, did then and there commence to long so terribly for roast pig, and for pig, too, in the very heart of the fair ; that her pious mother was constrained to consult her confessor, whether in such a critical case it would not be lawful to sanction a venture even among the tents of the wicked in the Fair. Littlewit found Zeal-of-the-land Busy zealously and busily and profitably employed : "fast by the teeth in the cold turkey-pie in the cup- board, with a great white loaf on his left hand, and a glass of malmsey on his right." The saint, after arguing with fine subtlety the subtle point of casuistry, graciously sanctioned the expedition, and agreed to take part in it himself. And this is the way in which he came to commune for a time with that sinner Knockem : " Knock, Sir, I will take your counsel, and cut my hair, and leave vapours ; I see that tobacco, and bottle-ale, and pig, and Whit [a Captain, with a finely forcible appellative in the ' Dramatis Persons ' ], and very Ursla herself is all vanity. Busy. Only pig was not comprehended in my admonition, the rest were : for long hair, it is an ensign of pride, a banner ; and the world is full of these banners, very full of banners. And 224 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES bottle-ale is a drink of Satan's, a diet-drink of Satan's, devised to puff us up and make us swell in this latter age of vanity ; as the smoke of tobacco to keep us in mist and error : but the fleshly woman, which you call Ursla, is above all to be avoided, having the marks upon her of the three enemies of man : the world, as being in the Fair ; the devil, as being in the fire ; and the flesh, as being herself. . . . {Goes forward. Knock. An excellent right hypocrite ! Now his belly is full, he falls a railing and kicking, the jade. A very good vapour ! I'll in, and joy Ursla, with telling her how her pig works ; two and a half he eat to his share {Let us mercifully hope, portions, not pigs I ] ; and he has drunk a pail-full. He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth." No comment is needed on this ; and certainly none on Busy, of whom it may be simply further reported that when Lanthorn Leatherhead, the hobby-horse seller or toyman, seeks to tempt the party with a drum, among other things, his pious zeal flameth out full fiercely : " It is the broken belly of the beast, and thy bellows there are his lungs, and these pipes are his throat, those feathers are of his tail, and thy rattles the gnashing of his teeth." Pipes must have been pretty popular with the low as with the high, when a Bartholomew Fair toyman, as a matter of course, kept them in stock. There is one more passage worth quoting anent the customs of the stage, already dwelt on in Section ix. Cokes the volatile of course visits the puppet- show, whereof Master Littlewit is the dramatist, and asks : " Have you none of your pretty impudent boys now, to bring stools, fill tobacco, fetch ale, and beg money, as they have at other houses ? " BEN JONSON 225 And now we must bid farewell to this vigorous and multifarious comedy, abounding in the keenest observation and humour, leaving the ultimate destinies of the principal characters in the day's proceedings at the fair to be learnt from the play itself, which ranks only just below " The 'Fox,' the 'Alchemist,' and 'Silent Woman,' Done by Ben Jonson, and outdone by no man." Yet one word more, in the interest of our friend Zeal-of-the-land. In the epilogue to "Tartuffe," by Lord Buckhurst, may be read : " Many have been the vain attempts of wit Against the still-prevailing hypocrit : Once, and but once, a poet got the day, And vanquished Busy in a puppet-play ! But Busy rallying, filled with holy rage, Possessed the pulpit, and pulled down the stage." XIV In the renowned Bobadill, the noble Cavalier Shift, Brisk the Fastidious, honest Abel Drugger, and the worthies we have just left in Bartholomew Fair, we have Jonson's chief tobacco heroes; and in con- nection with them is the bulk of what he has to say concerning the " sovereign herb," so that it now remains for me but to gather up the fragments that are left, omitting the very small crumbs. In "The Devil is an Ass" (1616), Satan, warning the poor imp Pug, who burns to try his mischief on earth, that he will now find men further advanced p 226 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES in vice than himself, instances among many other things : "Carmen Are got into the yellow starch, and chimney-sweepers To their tobacco, and strong waters, Hum, Meath, and Obarni." The former instance is merely absurd, not vicious; as for the latter, if a fact, the poor chimney-sweepers were to be sincerely felicitated. So Barnaby Rich, in his "Honestie of this Age," published two years earlier (1614), as cited by Fairholt (p. 75, ed. 1859) : 'There is not so base a groome that comes into an ale-house to call for his pott, but he must have his pipe of tobacco ; for it is a commodity that is nowe as vendible in every taverne, wine, and ale-house, as eyther wine, ale, or beare ; and for apothecaries' shops, grocers' shops, chandlers' shops, they are (almost) never without company, that from morning till night are still taking of tobacco. What a number are there besides, that doe keepe houses, set open shoppes, that have no other trade to live by, but by the selling of tobacco." The only other mention in this play goes to confirm the first. Fitzdottrel is pretending to be bewitched, gnashing, foaming (with soap), and raving, Sir Paul Eitherside, a lawyer and justice, with others, watching him. One asks, " What does he now, sir?" " Sir P. E. Shew The taking of tobacco, with which the devil Is so delighted. Fitz. Hum ! Sir P. E. And calls for hum. You takers of strong waters and tobacco, Mark this." BEN JONSON 227 This is the second foolish justice we have had con- demning tobacco. The censure of some people is the best praise they can give, and the weed is truly honoured when denounced by the devil himself, who is the Father of Lies, and by a lawyer whose name is Eitherside, and who is so poor at that, as our cousins have it, that he is solemnly taken in by a very gull counterfeiting demoniac possession. The Induction to the "Staple of News" (1625, set. 52) introduces us to the poet in person, "rolling him- self up and down like a tun." There is no allusion to tobacco worth remarking in this comedy, but one of Gifford's notes has both a nicotian and a Jonsonian interest. Several of the characters, including ladies, dine together in the renowned Apollo of the Devil Tavern, "at brave Dick Wadloe's," the convivial throne-room or royal banqueting-hall of rare old Ben and his courtly club, he being perpetual Chairman or President. Gifford observes : " From the manner in which Marmion (an enthusiastic admirer of Jonson) speaks of his entertainment there, it may be safely concluded that an admission to it was a favour of no ordinary kind." He then quotes the following brave passage from Marmion's " Fine Companion," re- marking that " the boon Delphic god " was our poet himself: " Careless. I am full Of oracles, I am come from Apollo Emilia. From Apollo ! Careless. From the heaven Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god Drinks sack and keeps his Bacchanalia, And has his incense, and his altars smoking, And speaks in sparkling prophecies ; thence I come, 228 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour ', And heightened with conceits. From tempting beauties, From dainty music, and poetic strains, From bowls of nectar, and ambrosiac dishes, From witty varlets, fine companions, And from a mighty continent of pleasure, Sails thy brave Careless." Among the extravagant intelligence furnished to the " Staple of News " there is actually an anticipation of the fish-torpedo ! " They write here, one Cornelius-Son, Hath made the Hollanders an invisible eel To swim the haven at Dunkirk, and sink all The shipping there." It has been more or less facetiously remarked that Shakespeare's first gravedigger must have had queer notions of economy when he assured Hamlet, "A tanner will last you nine year." In Act v., Sc. 2 of this play there is an exquisite dissertation, overlong to quote now, by a miserly usurer, on the enormity of wasting sixpence but once a year. In the " New Inn," whose absurd plot is redeemed for the reader by some excellent writing, the lady who for long years incredibly counterfeits a drunken Irish nurse, says of one of the guests : " He tauk so desperate and so debausht, So baudy like a courtier and a lord, God bless him, one that tak'th tobacco." And in the rude revelry of the " militia below stairs," Jordan the chamberlain is dubbed, " Lieutenant of the ordnance, tobacco and pipes." The " Magnetic Lady ; or, Humours Reconciled " BEN JONSON 229 (1632), has, I believe, but a single mention of tobacco. At the close of Act iii., Damplay, one of the critical chorus, which Ben was fond of introducing, replies to his companion and contrast, Probee : " I care not for marking the play ; I'll damn it, talk, and do that I come for. I will not have gentlemen lose their privilege, nor I myself my prerogative, for never an overgrown or super- annuated poet of them all. He shall not give me the law : I will censure and be witty, and take my tobacco, and enjoy my Magna Charta of reprehension, as my predecessors have done before me." There are several interesting allusions in this play to the poet himself and his earlier works. Being then in his sixtieth year, he indulged in the retrospection and expansiveness of age. In the Induction, the Boy of the House (Black Friars), who is the third member of the chorus, says " The author beginning his studies of this kind with ' Every Man in his Humour ; ' and after, ' Every Man out of his Humour ; ' and since continuing in all his plays, especially those of the comic thread, whereof the ' New Inn ' was the last, some recent humours still, or manners of men, that went along with the times ; finding himself now near the close, or shutting up, of his circle, hath fancied to himself in idea this ' Magnetic Mistress ' ... to draw thither a diversity of guests, all persons of different humours, to make up his perimeter. And this he hath called 'Humours Reconciled.'" No better definition of the leading idea of the greater part of his comedies could be given than is thus furnished by old Ben himself, who always knew as thoroughly what he meant to do as how to do it, composing not by impulse, but with settled purpose and plan. 230 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES When the nature of Parson Palate has been ex- pounded by Master Compass in rhyme (as Tennyson, in one of his later poems, expounds that of the unctuous hypocrite and swindler who ever slimed his victims ere he gorged), his brother, Captain Ironside, asks, "Who made this Epigram, you?" and Compass replies, " No, a great clerk As any of his bulk, Ben Jonson made it" (Act i., Sc. i). In the interlude of the chorus between Acts i. and il, Probee asks the Boy, who has spoken of "any velvet lethargy in the house," a phrase whose import actors will keenly appreciate : " Why do you maintain your poet's quarrel so with velvet and good clothes, boy ? we have seen him in indifferent good clothes ere now." Boy. Ay, and may do in better, if it please the king his master to say Amen to it, and allow it, to whom he acknowledged all. But his clothes shall never be the best part about him though ; he will have somewhat beside either of human letters, or severe honesty, shall speak him a man, though he went naked." We remark likewise his old self-assertion, and his disdain for the mob, whether rich or poor, high or low. Thus in the Induction he says of himself, through the mouth of the Boy : " He will not woo the gentile ignorance so much. But careless of all vulgar censure, as not depending on common approba- tion, he is confident it shall super-please judicious spectators, and to them he leaves it to work with the rest, by example or otherwise." But Jonson was never quite so haughty and contemptu- ous as his friend and fellow " gnomic poet " and drama- tist, about fifteen years before him in life, only three in BEN JONSON 231 death, George Chapman. Our fiery and dauntless translator of Homer thus ends the dedication of the first of his poems, " The Shadow of Night " (1594, set. 35-6) : " So preferring thy allowance in this poor and strange trifle, to the passport of a whole City of others, I rest as resolute as Seneca, satisfying myself if but a few, if one, or if none like it." And as a postscript to the "Gloss" on the first of his two hymns, he writes: "For the rest of his own invention, figures and similes, touching their aptness and novelty, he hath not laboured to justify them, because he hopes they will be proved enough to justify themselves, and prove sufficiently authentical to such as understand them; for the rest, God help them [for the poet evidently will not, interjects Mr. Swinburne in citing this passage], I cannot do as others, make day seem a lighter woman than she is, by painting her." Again, in his dedication of " Ovid's Banquet of Sense " (1595) to the same "truly learned and very worthy Friend" Master Matthew Roydon, he declares : " The profane multitude I hate, and only consecrate my strange poems to those searching spirits, whom learning hath made noble, and nobility sacred." See also the dedi- cations of the tragedies, "The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois," and " Caesar and Pompey." * * I remarked in the second of these papers that Gifford quite loses his head and foams at the mouth when the monarchy or Church is in question. Jonson's Puritans in the "Alchemist" and " Bartholomew Fair" made fine targets for virulent invective ; but a note to this drama is about as good a brief specimen of his ravings in one of these paroxysms as I remember. Bias, a vi-politic, or sub- secretary, says (Act iii., Sc. 4) ' ' Sir, the corruption of one thing in nature Is held the generation of another " 232 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES "A Tale of a Tub" (1633) should be especially interesting to all North Londoners, the scene being Finsbury Hundred, and the dramatis persona belong- ing to Pancras, Totten-Court, Maribone, Kentish-town, Kilborn, Islington, Hamstead, Chalcot; the which places, together with Canonbury, Tyburn (already a scene of dire suspense), Highgate, Paddington, are spoken of as " all the towns about here." One of the characters says, "to Kentish Town we are got at length" riding from Totten(ham) Court ! St. John's Wood was so truly a wood that daylight brigandage could be plausibly located in its corner, a mile west through the fields from the town of Pancras ; and so with the This theory of equivocal generation had passed out of fashion be- fore Gifford' s time (see one of his notes on " Alchemist," ii. i, vol. ii. p. 27), but he could not contain himself. Thus he burst out : " There is nothing new under the sun ! This is precisely the prin- ciple on which that great philosopher Dr. Darwin [really scientific versifier of the " Loves of the Plants, "grandfather of our great author of the " Origin of Species"], and those humane admirers of the French Revolution up to a certain point, Price, Priestley, &c., justified their exultation at the wholesale murder of princes and peers by a re- generative cry of hell-hounds. The corruption of one dead king would produce a thousand worms, whose happiness, taken in the aggregate, would surpass that of the individual, and consequently prove a clear gain on the score of humanity ; while the summary ex- termination of a perverse generation of priests and nobles, though not quite agreeable to the victims themselves, would be more than compensated to the universe in a few centuries by prodigious advances towards perfectibility, in a more tractable and philosophic race of atheists and murderers." How long are the pages of Jonson to be defiled by such rabid and venomous slaver? Gifford, the editor and scholiast, commands our admiration and gratitude ; but the sooner Gifford the High Church and State man (" high as venison is high") is ejected from the society of our brave old poet the better : there is surely quite enough of him and his fellows in this kind in his own Quarterly for even the most determined followers of Mithridates, who " fed on poisons till they were become a sort of nutriment." BEN JONSON 233 cross-ways over the country between Kentish Town and Hamstead Heath. The nominal time seems to be early in the reign of Elizabeth, as one says he beheld " King Edward, our late liege and sovereign lord," ride forth in state ; but the author probably wrote in accordance with his own time and experience. Most of the personages are uneducated ; and, strangely enough, these all speak in a sort of West Country dialect, thus : "Why, 'tis thirty years, e'en as this day now, Zin Valentine's Day, of all days kursined, look you ; And the zame day o' the month as this Zin Valentine, Or I am vowly deceived." The woman of my Lady Tub, of Totten Hall, speaks of the city ladies and court ladies as if the capital were far remote. Strangely enough, moreover, we read of the new year in January, though for a con- siderable period after Jonson's time the old year did not end until Lady-day. Further, Hilts says to the intended bride, referring to the intended bridegroom, poor Clay, the tile-maker, who is sorely diddled : "it's true, you are a proper woman ; But to be cast away on such a clown-pipe As Clay I " which, if an anachronism, appears to imply that in Jonson's days (the earlier, if not the latter) clay pipes were left to the lower classes. The comedy, or comedy-farce, is full of genial fun, and I should think would prove popular even now on the stage, if fairly acted. The author himself says of it in the Prologue : 234 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES " But acts of clowns and constables to-day Stuff out the scenes of our ridiculous play. We bring you now, to show what different things The cotes of clowns are from the courts of kings." It gladdens us to find our big Ben, at threescore, laughing such kindly and jolly laughter. Lastly, for the comedies, we come to " The Case is Altered," which, however, ought probably to have been placed second or third, as it appears to have been written in 1599. The style has a freedom and ease which are somewhat deficient in his later dramas; both form and substance come nearer to those of his best contemporaries ; romance and passion are not slain outright by the keen, cold, intellectual analysis of humours and affectations and charlatanisms. On the whole, I am inclined to regret with Gifford that Jonson "did not rather labour to perfect his early style than to exchange it altogether for that more severe and masculine mode of composition which he subsequently adopted." The miser, Jaques de Prie, rich with stolen wealth, who acts the beggar for its greater security, is drawn with much power and humour : his doting ecstasies over his hidden hoard of golden crowns, his anxious suspicions that every one coming to his house must have discovered his secret, his transport of agony when he finds that his treasure has been stolen from him in turn are true to the life in an ante-banknote miser. (But surely Peter Onion and Juniper, the cobbler, must have had some difficulty in walking off impromptu with the bulk and weight of thirty thousand golden crowns !) In Charles Iamb's note BEN JONSON 235 anent this play, in the " Specimens," he says, with his usual rich appreciation : "The old poets, when they introduce a miser, make him address his gold as his mistress ; as something to be seen, felt, and hugged ; as capable of satisfying two of the senses at least. The substitution of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place of the good old tangible metal has made avarice quite a Platonic affection in comparison with the seeing, touching, and hand- ling pleasures of the old Chrysophilites. A banknote can no more satisfy the touch of a true sensualist in this passion than Creusa could return her husband's embrace in the shades. See the ' Cave of Mammon,' in Spenser ; Barabas's contemplation of his wealth, in the ' Rich Jew of Malta ' [Marlowe] ; Luke's raptures in the ' City Madam ' [Massinger] ; the idolatry and absolute gold-worship of the miser Jaques in this early comic production of Ben Jonson's. Above all, hear Guzman, in that excellent old translation of the ' Spanish Rogue,' expatiate on the ' ruddy cheeks of your golden ruddocks, your Spanish pis- tolets, your plump and full-faced Portuguese, and your clear- skinned pieces of eight of Castile,' which he and his fellows the beggars kept secret to themselves, and did privately enjoy in a plentiful manner. ' For to have them to pay them away is not to enjoy them ; to enjoy them is to have them lying by us, having no other need of them than to use them for the clearing of the eyesight and the comforting of our senses. These we did carry about with us, sewing them in some patches of our doublets near unto the heart, and as close to the skin as we could hand- somely quilt them in, holding them to be restorative.' " But our most exquisite and genial of critics has nearly made me disremember his "Plant divine, of rarest virtue," for whose sake he was ready to do anything but die. It is only once mentioned (Act ii., Sc. 3). Aurelia the sprightly rallies her melancholy sister, Phoenixella " Sister, i' faith you take too much tobacco, It makes you black within as you are without. What, true-stitch, sister ! both your sides alike ! " 236 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Jonson was then but green in judgment, and, perhaps, had not yet mastered the great art of smoking, so we will excuse him for fancying that the great plant tends to mournfulness instead of serenity. We find a certain artlessness of youth the youth both of the dramatist and the drama at the close of the sixteenth century in the way in which the catas- trophe is hurried and huddled. Paulo Firenze, after a short burst of indignation, pardons off-hand his false friend Angelo, who had abducted Paulo's true love, confided to his care. The tablet which iden- tifies Caspar as Camillo is ready at a moment's notice, Chamont having carried it about him for years, conserving it secret from his bosom friend Caspar himself. Tobacco is mentioned but two or three times in the masques, most significantly in that of the " Metamorphosed Gipsies," thrice presented to King James, 1621, of which the MS. in the author's own writing is preserved, a good fortune shared by no other of his compositions. It is very clever, graceful, and courtier-like; but we are sorry to say that, to please the counterblasting king, our poet descends to vilify tobacco. The first mention occurs in the long famous and popular song, "Cocklorel would needs have the devil his guest." The tobacco stanzas are the last three, and are not in the MS., so they must have been tacked on specially for "Solomon, the son of David." Afterwards the Patrico jingles about it in the same strain, using the same metaphor, and giving it the same accompaniments, being those of the well-known story : " Three things to which James had a dislike, and with which, he said, he would BEN JONSON 237 treat the devil were he to invite him to a dinner, were a pig, a poll of ling with mustard, and a pipe of tobacco for digesture." I wonder with what the devil has treated him since inviting him to dinner ! Well, the indignation of Diva Nicotina confounded Jonson in these acts of servile hypocrisy, so alien from his stout, honest character the first lines are doggrel, and the others mere patter, both destitute alike of wit and humour; and the metaphor with which the herb of herbs and its censer are associ- ated, is so coarse that I dare not reproduce the verses in these our dainty days. A righteous retribution, O Ben! In the rich Epigram 101, "Inviting a Friend to Supper," from which I have already quoted in Section vii., we have the following lines : " But that which most doth take my Muse and me, Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine, Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine : Of which had Horace or Anacreon tasted, Their lives, as do their lines, till now had lasted. Tobacco, nectar, or the Thespian spring, Are all but Luther's beer, to this I sing." Brave old Ben ! we know you here again ! Every man has the right to have his own particular idol, and to exalt it in hyperbole by depreciating the most precious things or most noble natures in comparison therewith. Wherefore, we quarrel not with this extreme devotion to Canary, nor with the supremacy claimed for it. Rather we welcome our glorious convivialist of the Mermaid Tavern, our boon Delphic god of the Apollo room, seeing how rightly he ranks our rich Indian vapour with nectar and the Thespian 238 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES spring. Aught more precious he could not find to name with the very darling of his heart. Brave old big Ben ! With these generous lines we must close our excerpts, although we could glean a few others of minor importance. I can scarcely better conclude this long series of papers than with some sentences from Mr. Swinburne's very fine Introduction to the works of George Chapman (London : Chatto and Windus, 1875), which has also been reprinted separately: "Even the Atlantean shoulders of Jonson, fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies, have been hardly tasked to support and transmit to our own day the fame of his great genius, overburdened as it was with the twofold load of his theories on art and his pedantries of practice.* And Chapman, though also a brother of the giant brood, had not the Herculean sinews of his younger friend and fellow-student. The weight that could but bend the back that carried the vast world of invention whose twin hemispheres are ' Volpone ' and the ' Al- chemist,' was wellnigh enough to crush the staggering strength of the lesser Titan. . . JThe learning of Jonson, doubtless far wider and sounder than that of Chapman, never allowed or allured him to exchange for a turbid and tortuous jargon the vigorous purity of his own English spirit and style. .A. But when on a fresh reading we skip over these blocks [the savour- less interludes of buffoonery, too common in even our b^st old plays, whether comedies or tragedies : gross baits for the gross * Per contra : Lamb, for whose critical genius Mr. Swinburne has a most righteous admiration, says of the " Poetaster" : "This Roman play seems written to confute those enemies of Ben, in his own day and ours, who have said that he made a pedantical use of his learning. He has here revived the whole court of Augustus by a learned spell. We are admitted to the society of the illustrious dead. Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus converse in our own tongue more finely and poetically than they were used to express them- selves in their native Latin," &c. BEN JONSON 239 groundlings] laid as if on purpose in our way through so magni- ficent a gallery of comic and poetic inventions, the monument of a mind so mighty, the palace of so gigantic a genius as Ben Jonson's, we are more than content to forget such passing and perishable impediments to our admiration of that sovereign intellect which has transported us across them into the royal presence of its ruling and informing power. . . . Here, again, we find that Jonson and Chapman stand far apart from their fellow-men of genius. The most ambitious and the most labo- rious poets of their day, conscious of high aims and large capacities, they would be content with no crown that might be shared by others ; they had each his own severe and haughty scheme of study and invention, and sought for no excellence which lay beyond or outside it ; that any could lie above, past the reach of their strong arms and skilful hands, past the scope of their keen and studious eyes, they would probably have been unable to believe or to conceive. And yet there were whole regions of high poetic air, whole worlds of human passion and divine imagination, which might be seen by humbler eyes than theirs and trodden by feebler feet, where their robust lungs were powerless to breathe, and their strenuous song fell silent." The reader will do well to study the whole of this Introduction, which is not unworthy in its sphere of the author of "Atalanta in Calydon," being the fit reverse of the golden medallion of which that is the noble obverse. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE* " I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward crea- tion, and that to me it is hindrance, and not action. ... I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would ques- tion a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it." "The angel who presided at my birth Said : Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, Go, love without the help of anything on earth." BEFORE the publication of these volumes I knew but one of Blake's poems, that on the Human Form, or Divine Image, quoted by James John Garth Wilkinson in his great work. The wisdom and the celestial simplicity of this little piece prepared one to love the author and all that he had done ; yet the selections from his poems and other writings were a revelation * " Life of William Blake, Pictor Ignotus, with Selections from his Poems and other Writings." By the late Alexander Gilchrist, author of the "Life of William Etty." Illustrated from Blake's own works, in facsimile, by W. J. I.inton, and in photolithography, with a few of Blake's original plates. In 2 vols. London : Mac- millan & Co., 1863. I give the full title, in recommending the work to all good readers. The first volume contains the Life and a noble supple- mentary chapter by Mr. D. G. Rossetti ; the second volume con- tains the Selections, admirably edited by Mr. D. G. Rossetti, with the assistance of Mr. W. M. Rossetti. There is magnificent prose as well as poetry in the selections, and the engravings in themselves arc worth more than most books. 940 THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 241 far richer than my hopes. Not only are these selec- tions most beautiful in themselves, they are also of great national interest as filling up a void in the cycle of our poetic literature. I had long felt, and probably many others had felt, that much of the poetry of the present and the last age must have had an antecedent less remote in time than the Eliza- bethan works, and less remote in resemblance than the works of Cowper and Burns ; yet, since Mac- aulay's essay on Byron appeared, Cowper and Burns and in general these two only had been continually named as the heralds of that resurrection of her poetry which makes glorious for England the crescent quarter of the nineteenth century. A third herald of that resurrection was undoubtedly William Blake; and although he was scarcely listened to at all, while his colleagues held in attention the whole kingdom, the fact may at length be recognised that by him, even more clearly than by them, was anticipated and announced both the event now already past and the event still in process of evolution. If it be objected that one who was scarcely listened to at all could not exercise much influence, the reply is that we are concerned not with the influence, but with the accuracy and period of the presage. It is written that mankind did not heed Noah, or heeded only to mock, during the six-score years in which he fore- told the Flood and built the Ark ready for it. If the Flood really came as he foretold, it attested the truth of his inspiration ; but no one now would think that his prophecies were instrumental in accomplish- ing their own fulfilment, although this opinion must have been general among those who were being sub- Q 242 CRITICAL STUDIES merged. Or we may answer, applying a metaphor which has been with good reason much used, that the mountain-peaks which in any district first reflect the rays of the dawn exercise little or no influence on the dawn's development, even in relation to the country around them ; they cast some glimmer of light into obscure valleys below (whose obscurity, on the other hand, their shadows make trebly deep when the sun is sinking) ; they prophesy very early of the coming noontide ; we may judge as to their positions and altitudes by the periods of their reflection ; but the dawn would grow and become noon, and the noon would sink and become night, just the same if they were not there. So the Spirit of the Ages, the Zeitgeist, is developed universally and independently by its own mysterious laws throughout mankind ; and the eminent men from whom it first radiates the expression of what we call a new aspect (the con- tinuous imperceptible increments of change having accumulated to an amount of change which we can clearly perceive, and which even our gross standards are fine enough to measure), the illustrious prototypes of an age, really cast but a faint reflex upon those beneath them ; and while pre-eminently interesting in biography, are of small account in history except as prominent indices of growth and progress and decay, as early effects, not efficient causes. They help us to read clearly the advance of time ; but this advance they do not cause any more than the gnomon of a sundial causes the procession of the hours which it indicates, or a tidal-rock the swelling of the seas whose oncoming is signalled in white foam around it and in shadowed waters over it. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 243 The message of Cowper has been heard (it was not a very great announcement, and he uttered it neatly and distinctly and honestly), has been laid to heart by the many for whom it was sufficient, and is now in due season passing out of mind with the fulfilment of its purpose. Very little of his poetry can be expected to survive our century. Burns will live with the language; but it must be remembered that his poetry is not blossom and promise ; it is consummate fruition ; it points to the past more than to the future ; it is the genial life, the heroism, the history, the song of his whole people for ages, gathered up and sublimated in and by one supreme man. This King of Scotland happened to come in the guise of a herald to England, but none the less was he a king, the last and greatest of a glorious line ; and no other majesty than his own was behind the messenger. Shakespeare made perfect the English drama, and there has arisen no English drama since; Burns made perfect Scottish song, and there has arisen no Scottish song since. When the genius of a nation has attained (human) perfection in any one form and mode, it leaves to ambitious mediocrity all future rivalry with that monumental perfection, itself seeking to become perfect in some new form or mode. Blake's first volume of poetry was printed (one cannot add published) in 1783, about the same time as the first volume of Cowper and a little before that of Burns; Crabbe's first popular poem, "The Village," was printed in the same year. Seventeen years afterwards, Hayley was in high repute, and 244 CRITICAL STUDIES Blake went to live near him to engrave illustrations for some of his works. The "Lyrical Ballads" of Coleridge and Wordsworth did not appear until 1798; "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" until 1805. Byron was born in 1788, Shelley in 1792, Keats in 1796. The poems in this first volume had been written by Blake in the interval, 1768-1777, between the ages of eleven and twenty years. Never, perhaps, was a book of verse printed more strange to the literature of its period; and one scarcely knows whether to account the novelty more or less wonderful because relative and not absolute, because the novelty of the long dead past come back to life rather than of a new future just born. The spirit of the great Elizabethan Age was incarnate once more, speaking through the lips of a pure and modest youth. " My Silks and Fine Array " might have been written by Shakespeare, by Beau- mont and Fletcher, or by Sir Walter Raleigh. Its sweet irregular artless cadences are not more different from the sharp measured metallic ring of the rhymes of the scholars of Pope, than is its natural sentiment from the affected sentimentalities then in the mode. Of all the other eighteenth century writers, I think Chatterton alone (as in the Dirge in "Ella") has anything kindred to it; and Chatterton was archaic consciously and with intent. The "Mad Song" immediately reminds us of the character assumed by Edgar in Lear (a common character in Shake- speare's time, else Edgar would not have assumed it), and of the old Tom o' Bedlam songs. In the fine specimen of these, preserved by the elder Disraeli in his " Curiosities of Literature," three main elements THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 245 can easily be distinguished : the grotesque but hor- rible cry of misery wrung from the heart of the poor, half-witted, cruelly treated vagabond ; the intentional fooling of the beggar and mountebank, baiting for the charity that is caught with a laugh in its mouth, maddening for his bread; the genuine lunacy of a wild and over-excited imagination, ungoverned so long that it is now quite ungovernable. The first gives us such lines as these : " In the lovely lofts of Bedlam, In stubble soft and dainty ; Brave bracelets strong, Sweet whips ding-dong, And a wholesome hunger plenty." The second such as these : " Of thirty bare years have I Twice twenty been enraged ; And of forty been Three times fifteen In durance soundly caged." The third such as these, which Edgar Allan Poe (a fine artist even in the choice of his mottoes) prefixed to his " Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfaall " ' ' With a heart of furious fancies Whereof I am commander ; With a burning spear, And a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander." Or these : " I know more than Apollo ; For oft when he lies sleeping, I behold the stars At mutual wars, And the rounded welkin weeping." 246 CRITICAL STUDIES As Tom o' Bedlams did not wander the country when Blake wrote, the elements of vagabondage and mountebankism are not in his piece; but as an expression of lunacy the government of reason overthrown, and wild imagination making the anarchy more anarchic by its reign of terror it is thoroughly of the old Elizabethan strain. Here is a stanza which Edgar might have sung in the storm by the hovel on the heath : "Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe After night I do crowd, And with night will go ; I turn my back to the East Whence comforts have increased ; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain." Mark the appalling power of the verb crowd, reveal- ing, as by a lightning-flash, the ruins of sane person- ality, haunted and multitudinous, literally beside itself. Not one poet in twenty would have dared to use the word thus, and yet (although a careless reader might think it brought in merely for the sake of the rhyme) it was the very word to use. The address " To the Muses," sweet, calm, and masterly, as if the matured utterance of a conviction well pondered and of no recent date, yet written by a mere boy, embodies the essence of all that Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley, many years afterwards, taught and sang in vindication of Pre-Drydenism. The poems in blank verse " To the Evening Star," "To Spring," and "To Summer," are perhaps even more wonderful than those in rhyme, considering the THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 247 age of the writer and the epoch of our literature in which they were produced. With the exception of the " Ode to Evening," I do not remember any blank verse of the century at all similar to them in tone. And the Ode of Collins, fine as it is, suffers greatly in the comparison with them; for it does not reach their noble breadth of conception and execution, and it is not quite free from then current affectations. These pieces are not perfect in art, but they are perfect in the spirit of their art ; they have certain laxities and redundances of rhythm, and are here and there awkward in diction, but such youthful sweet errors rather grace than spoil "that large utterance of the early gods." They have the grandeur of lofty simplicity, not of laboured pomp, a grandeur like that which invests our imaginations of the patriarchs. By a well beneath a palm tree, stands one who wears but a linen turban and a simple flowing robe, and who but watches browsing sheep and camels drink- ing; yet no modern monarch, however gorgeously arrayed and brilliantly surrounded, can compare with him in majesty. The Selections from the first volume printed by Blake include extracts from a dramatic work, " Edward the Third." It was an attempt to revive the great English Historical Drama, an attempt which failed, and of which all repetitions are pretty sure to fail; the English Historical Drama flourished in a period whose history was itself dramatic, and such a period is not likely to revolve again on our England. But one piece from this drama I must quote at length, and it is hardly rash to prophesy that this same piece will be quoted at length for many generations to 248 CRITICAL STUDIES come in all worthy books of specimens of the choicest British poetry. The time is the eve of Cressy ; the scene is the camp of Edward : a minstrel sings : " O Sons of Trojan Brutus, clothed in war, Whose voices are the thunder of the field, Your ancestors came from the fires of Troy (Like lions roused by lightning from their dens, Whose eyes do glar*e against the stormy fires), Heated with war, filled with the blood of Greeks, With helmets hewn, and shields covered with gore ; In navies black, broken with wind and tide. They landed in firm array upon the rocks Of Albion : they kissed the rocky shore : ' Be thou our mother and our nurse,' they said, ' Our children's mother ; and thou shalt be our grave, The sepulchre of ancient Troy, from whence Shall rise cities, and thrones, and awful powers.' Our fathers swarm from the ships. Giant voices Are heard from out the hills ; the enormous sons Of Ocean run from rocks and caves ; wild men Naked, and roaring like lions, hurling rocks, And wielding knotty clubs, like oaks entangled, Thick as a forest ready for the axe. Our fathers move in firm array to battle ; The savage monsters rush like roaring fire, Like as a forest roars with crackling flames When the red lightning borne by furious storm Lights on some woody shore, and the parched heavens Rain fire into the molten raging sea. Our fathers, sweating, lean on their spears and view The mighty dead : giant bodies streaming blood, Dread visages frowning in silent death. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 249 Then Brutus speaks, inspired ; our fathers sit Attentive on the melancholy shore. Hear ye the voice of Brutus : ' The flowing waves Of Time come rolling o'er my breast,' he said, ' And my heart labours with futurity. Our sons shall rule the empire of the sea, Their mighty wings shall stretch from East to West ; Their nest is in the sea, but they shall roam Like eagles for their prey. ' Our sons shall rise from thrones in joy, each one Buckling his armour on ; Morning shall be Prevented * by the gleaming of their swords, And Evening hear their songs of victory. ' Freedom shall stand upon the cliffs of Albion, Casting her blue eyes over the green ocean ; Or, towering, stand upon the roaring waves, Stretching her mighty spear o'er distant lands, While with her eagle wings she covereth Fair Albion's shore and all her families.' " This is the song of the Minstrel as given in the Selections. I have the highest esteem for the taste and judgment of Mr. Dante - G. Rossetti, and the whole reading public owes him no common debt of gratitude for his work in the second volume as well as for the supplementary chapter in the first. It is probable, it is almost certain, that he has pub- lished quite as much of Blake's poetry and prose as it was prudent to publish experimentally after the neglect of eighty years. But if the above inter- lineal points mark omissions, the omitted passages should be reinstated in the next edition ; the whole * Prevented, I need hardly say, is used here in the old sense of anticipated. 250 CRITICAL STUDIES of this song, as it stands in Blake's earliest volume or in manuscript, should be given at any rate in an appendix if not in the body of the work. For this chant belongs to the whole British people ; it is one of the most precious among the most precious heir- looms bequeathed to us by our forefathers; it is a national jewel of such magnificence that no one man, however honest and skilful, can be trusted to cut it and set it in accordance with his private opinion. We English are surely a strange people. Pictures beyond price are bequeathed to us, and our first step towards disposing of them satisfactorily is to bury them away where they cannot be seen. A song is chanted for us which should thrill and swell every native heart with patriotic pride, a song great with the grandeur of our national life and history for three millenniums of legends and annals and journals, a song heroic as Cressy, sublime as Trafalgar; and for fourscore years we leave it to that oblivion of oblivions which has never had any remembrance. The poet lives forty years after giving this glorious song to his people, devotedly loyal to his highest inspirations, pure, poor, obscure ; and when he dies, it is here and there casually remarked that a clever madman has at length reached the sanity of the grave. Again forty years come and go ere a few admirers worthy of him they admire can venture with much diffidence (surely but too well founded ! ) to bespeak the favour of his people for this song, in which he has added a great and burning light to their illustrations the most splendid, and for other songs in which he has given them the seed whose harvest is likely to be THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 251 the wealth and spiritual subsistence of generations yet unborn. When Blake wrote this, however young in years, he was undoubtedly mature ; as Keats when he wrote "Hyperion," as Shelley when he wrote "Adonais," or " The Triumph of Life." We shall all soon know it by heart, and cherish it in our hearts, with the speeches of Henry at Agincourt and the " Scots wha hae " of Burns, with Campbell's " Mariners of Eng- land," and Robert Browning's " Home Thoughts from the Sea;" and then we shall feel and know that for us it is perfect beyond criticism, except the criticism of reverend interpretation. It is Titanic, and it cleaves to its mother earth like a Titan, like a mountain, like a broad oak-tree; and the grandeur of its strength is the grandeur of a gnarled oak whose vigorous life bursts through all conventional symmetries, the grandeur of a mountain which the central fires have heaved into lines enormous and savagely irregular. Many years afterwards, in 1789, when Blake was thirty-two, the " Songs of Innocence " appeared ; and we learn from them the strange fact that he who was mature in his childhood and youth became in his manhood a little child. A little child, pure in soul as the serenest light of the morning, happy and innocent as a lamb leaping in the meadows, singing all its joy in the sweetest voice with that exquisite infantine lisp which thrills the adult heart with yearning tenderness.* The "Introduction," "The * "Let the reader try to breathe like a child, and let the auditors of the breath decide whether he succeeds or no. There is indeed in adult breath such a peopling of multitudinous 252 CRITICAL STUDIES Lamb," "The Chimney Sweeper," the "Laughing Song," "A Cradle Song," " Holy Thursday," " Infant thoughts, such a tramp of hardness and troubles, as does not cede to the attempt to act the infantine even for a moment." (Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, "The Human Body and its Connexion with Man," p. 98, note.) What is true of common breathing, is true more conspicuously of breathing idealised and harmonised, of the breathing of song in which psychical have superseded the physical rhythms. The adult cannot sing like a child ; but Blake in these Songs does so : he did not act the infantine, for he was infantine, by a regeneration as real while as mysterious as ever purest saint experienced in the religious life. And this regeneration, so far as we can learn, was effected without the throes of agony and doubt and despair, which the saints all pass through in being born again. I am merely writing a few remarks on the poet, not sketching the life and character of the man ; but I may be allowed to call the attention of readers to this wonderful life and character. Blake was always poor in world's wealth, always rich in spiritual wealth, happy and contented and assured, living with God. As to his soul's salvation, I do not believe that he ever gave it a thought, any more than a child thinks of the question whether its loving parents will continue to feed and clothe and cherish it. He had none of the feverish raptures and hypochondriac remorses which even in the best of those who are commonly called saints excite a certain contemptuous pity in the midst of love and admiration : he was a thoroughly healthy and happy religious soul, whose happi- ness was thoroughly unselfish and noble. As to the "Christian Evidences," as they are termed, of which the mass of good people are so enamoured, in trying to argue themselves and others into a sort of belief in a sort (and such a sort !) of deity, he would have no more dreamed of appealing to them than he would have tried elaborately to argue himself into belief in the existence of the sun. " I feel the warmth, I see the light and see by the light : what do you want to argue about? You may call it sun, moon, comet, star, or Will-o'-the-Wisp, if so it pleases you ; all I know and care for is this, that day by day it warms and lights me." Such would have been the sum of his reply to any questioner ; for he was emphatically a seer, and had the disdain of all seers for the pretensions of gropers and guessers who are blind. Like Swedenborg, he always relates things heard and seen ; more purely a mystic than Swedenborg, he does not condescend to dialectics and scholastic divinity. Those THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 253 Joy," "The Divine Image;" what holy and tender and beautiful babe-lullabies, babe joy-songs, are these ! The ideal Virgin Mother might have sung them to her infant ; lambs and doves and flowers might com- prehend them ; they are alone in our language, which they glorify by revealing its unsuspected treasures of heavenly innocence and purity. I transcribe one of the shortest of them, " Infant Joy ; " a sudden throb of maternal rapture which we should have thought inarticulate expressible only by kisses and caresses and wordless cradle-crooning marvellously caught up and rendered into song. " ' I have no name, I am but two days old.' who fancy that a dozen stony syllogisms seal up the perennial fountain of our deepest questionings, will affirm that Blake's belief was an illusion. But an illusion constant and self-consistent and harmonious with the world throughout the whole of a man's life, wherein does this differ from a reality? Metaphysically we are absolutely unable to prove any existence : we believe that those things really exist which we find pretty constant and consistent in their relations to us a very sound practical but very unsound philosophical belief. Blake and Swedenborg and other true mystics (Jesus among them) undoubtedly had senses other than ours ; it is as futile for us to argue against the reality of their perceptions as it would be false in us to pretend that our perceptions are the same. As, however, Blake was supremely a mystic, it is but fair to add that he (and the same may be affirmed of Jesus) was unlike common Christians as thoroughly as he was unlike common atheists ; he lived in a sphere far removed from both. In the clash of the creeds, it is always a comfort to remember that sects with their sectaries, orthodox and heterodox, could not intersect at all, if they were not in the same plane. Blake's esteem for argumentation may be read in one couplet : ' ' If the sun and moon should doubt They'd immediately go out." 254 CRITICAL STUDIES " What shall I call thee? ' I happy am, Joy is my name.' Sweet joy befall thee. Pretty joy ! Sweet joy but two days old, Sweet joy I call thee : Thou dost smile, I sing the while, Sweet joy befall thee." Five years later come the " Songs of Experience," and the singer is an older child, and even a youth, but not yet a man. The experience is that of a sensitive and thoughtful boy, troubled by the first perceptions of evil where he has believed all good, thinking the whole world cruel and false since some playmate-friend has turned unkind, seeing life all desolate and blank since some coveted object has disappointed in the possession ; in short, through very lack of experience, generalising one untoward event into a theory of life that seems more bitterly hopeless than grey-haired cynical pessimism. Even the "Garden of Love," "The Human Abstract," "The Two Songs," "To Tirzah," and "Christian Forbearance" (one of the keenest arrows of Beel- zebub shot straight back with wounding scorn at the evil-archer), are not in thought and experience beyond the capacity of meditative boyhood. " The Tiger " is a magnificent expression of boyish wonder and admiring terror ; " The Crystal Cabinet " is a fairy dream of early youth; "The Golden Net" is a fine dream of adolescence. Perhaps in only three more of his briefer poems do we find Blake mature THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 2$$ (it must be borne in mind that his second maturity unfolded itself in pictures rather than songs); "Broken Love," "Auguries of Innocence," and the Letter in verse, dated from Felpham, to his friend, Mr. Butts. These are mature as to their conception, as to the amount and quality of experience and thought in- volved in them, but occasionally very immature in execution. There is, indeed, one piece of twenty lines mature in every respect, although written so late as 1807 : I mean the verses to Queen Charlotte with his illustrations of Blair's " Grave " : " The door of death is made of gold, That mortal eyes cannot behold ; But when the mortal eyes are closed, And cold and pale the limbs reposed, The soul awakes and wondering sees In her mild hand the golden keys. The grave is Heaven's golden gate, And rich and poor around it wait : O Shepherdess of England's Fold, Behold this gate of pearl and gold ! To dedicate to England's Queen The visions that my soul hath seen, And by her kind permission bring What I have borne on solemn wing From the vast regions of the grave, Before her throne my wings I wave, Bowing before my sovereign's feet : The Grave produced these blossoms sweet In mild repose from earthly strife, The blossoms of eternal life ! " And here are a few more lines almost as majestically mature as one of his inventions for the "Books of Job " : 256 CRITICAL STUDIES "Jesus sat in Moses" chair ; They brought the trembling woman there : Moses commands she be stoned to death ; What was the sound of Jesus' breath? He laid his hands on Moses' law : The ancient heavens in silent awe, Writ with curses from pole to pole, All away began to roll : 1 To be good only, is to be A God, or else a Pharisee.' " The man who wrote this might well proclaim: "I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord." " Broken Love " needs no comment here : Mr. W. M. Rossetti has done the best that could be done by the most subtle and patient sympathy to interpret it. I subjoin half-a-dozen lines from the "Auguries of Innocence " : "A Robin red-breast in a cage Puts all Heaven in a rage ; A dove-house full of doves and pigeons Shudders Hell through all its regions ; A skylark wounded on the wing Doth make a cherub cease to sing." It has been objected (strangely enough, in Mac- millatfs Magazine) to such couplets as these, that they express a truth with such exaggerated emphasis as wholly to distort it, as to make it virtually an untruth. No objection could be more unwise, for it is the result of reading the author's intention precisely backwards. His object was not to expand a small fact into a universal truth, but to concentrate the full essence of a universal truth into a small fact. He was intent on making great laws portable, not little THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 257 events insupportable. "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered." " But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment." " For verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Re- move hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill- stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." These texts from the mouth of one of the sublimest of mystics realise the very same object in the very same manner. The sharply cut symbol leaves a distinct and enduring impression, where the abstract dogma would have perhaps made no impression at all. Briefly, in almost every couplet of this poem, Blake has attempted what all profound poets and thinkers have ever most earnestly attempted to seize a rude but striking image of some sovereign truth, and to stamp it with roughest vigour on the commonest metal for universal circulation. To such attempts we owe all the best proverbs in the world ; the abounding small currency of our intellectual commerce, more invaluably essen- tial to our ordinary daily business than nuggets of gold, than rubies, and pearls, and diamonds. As to the longer poems produced after the " Songs of Experience" "Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Europe, Jerusalem, Ahania, Urizen, &c.," the Selec- tions given by Mr. Gilchrist are not sufficient to enable R 258 CRITICAL STUDIES one to form a settled opinion. This may be said, that a careful study of the whole of them, in the order of the years in which they were written, would probably reveal that they are much less wild and incoherent than even Mr. Gilchrist supposed. Every man living in seclusion and developing an intense interior life, gradually comes to give a quite peculiar significance to certain words and phrases and emblems. Metaphors which to the common bookwrights and journalists are mere handy counters, symbols almost as abstract and unrelated in thought to the things they represent as are the x and y and z used in solving an algebraic problem, are for him burdened with rich and various freights of spiritual experience; they are ships in which he has sailed over uncharted seas to unmapped shores, with which he has struggled through wild tempests and been tranced in Divine calms, in which he has returned with treasures from all the zones ; and he loves them as the sailor loves his ship. His writings must thus appear, to any one reading them for the first time, very obscure, and often very ludicrous; the strange reader sees a battered old hull, where the writer sees a marvellous circum- navigation. But we ought not to be kept from studying these writings by any apparent obscurity and ludicrousness, if we have found in the easily comprehended vernacular writings of the same man (as in Blake's we certainly have found) sincerity and wisdom and beauty. Nor is it probable that even the most mysterious works of Blake would prove more difficult to genuine lovers of poetry than many works of the highest renown prove to nine- tenths of the reading public. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 259 " Sie haben dich, heiliger Hafis, Die mystische Zunge genannt ; Und haben, die Wortgelehrten, Den Werth des Worts nicht erkannt." For many intelligent persons Carlyle at his best is almost or quite as unintelligible as if he were using an unknown language; and the same may be asserted of Shelley and Robert Browning. (I do not select lofty old names, because in their cases the decisions of authoritative judges accumulating throughout centuries overawe our common jurymen into verdicts wise without understanding ; so that a dullard can speak securely of the sublimity of Milton, for example, although we are pretty certain that he never got through the first book of the "Paradise Lost," and that he would find himself in a Slough of Despond when twenty lines deep in the opening passages of "Samson Agonistes.") Indeed, I doubt whether it would be an exaggeration to assert that, for a very large majority of those who are accounted educated and intelligent people, poetry in itself is essentially an unknown tongue. They admire and remember a verse or a passage for its wit, its cleverness, its wisdom, its clear and brief statement of some fact, its sentiment, its applicability to some circumstance of their own life, its mention of some classic name, its allusion to some historical event; in short, for its associations and not for its poetry per se. Yet assuredly there are still men in England with an infallible sense for poetry, however disguised and however far removed from ordinary associations ; men who know Shakespeare in despite of the com- mentators, and understand Browning in contempt of 26O CRITICAL STUDIES the critics, and laugh quietly at the current censures and raptures of the Reviews : and these men would scarcely consider it a waste of time to search into the meaning of the darkest oracles of William Blake. I wish to add a few words on the relations subsist- ing between our author and succeeding English poets. In his early maturity, as a reincarnation of the mighty Elizabethan spirit, the first fruit of a constructive after a destructive period, his affinity to the great poets who flourished a few years before his death (he died in 1827) will be readily understood. Thus in the Min- strel's Song, before quoted, we at once discern that the rhythm is of the same strain as the largest utter- ance of Marlowe and Webster and Shakespeare pre- cedent, and as the noblest modern exemplar, the blank verse of " Hyperion " subsequent.* It is not, however, in this early maturity, but in his second childhood and boyhood and youth, when he was withdrawn from common life into mysticism, when moonlight was his sunlight, and water was his wine, and the roses red as blood were become all white as snow, in the "Songs of Innocence," the "Songs of Experience," and the "Auguries of Innocence" (always Innocence, mark, not Virtue) that the seeds may be traced of much which is now half-consciously struggling towards organic perfection, and which in * Keats avowed imitation of Milton in the structure of his rhythm. Similarity to the Council in Pandemonium there of course could not but be in the Council of the overthrown Titans ; but the verse of Keats (if I have any ear and intelligence for verse) is as different from the verse of Milton as with the same language and the same metrical standard it possibly could be. It is in my judgment even more beautiful and more essentially powerful and sublime than Milton's. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 26l two or three generations may be crowned with foliage and blossoms and fruit as the Tree of Life for one epoch. The essence of this poetry is mysticism, and the essence of this mysticism is simplicity. The two meanings in which this last word is commonly used the one reverential, the other kindly contemptuous are severally appropriate to the most wise and the least wise manifestations of this spirit of mysticism. It sees, and is continually rapturous with seeing, everywhere correspondence, kindred, identity, not only in the things and creatures of earth, but in all things and creatures and beings of hell and earth and heaven, up to the one father (or interiorly to the one soul) of all. It thus ignores or pays little heed to the countless complexities and distinctions of our modern civilisation and science, a knowledge of which is generally esteemed the most useful information and most valuable learning. For it "there is no great and no small;" in the large type of planets and nations, in the minute letters of dewdrops and worms, the same eternal laws are written ; and merely as a matter of convenience to the reader is this or that print preferable to the other. And the whole universe being the volume of the Scrip- tures of the living word of God, this above all is to be heeded, that man should not dwell contented on the lovely language and illustrations, but should live beyond these in the sphere of the realities which they signify. It is passionately and profoundly religious, contemplating and treating every subject religiously, in all its excursions and discursions issuing from the soul to return to the soul, alone, from the alone, to 262 CRITICAL STUDIES the alone ; and thus it is by no means strict in its theology, being Swedenborgian in one man and Pan- theistic in another, while in the East it has readily assimilated Buddhism and Brahminism and Moham- medanism. Its supreme tendency is to remain or to become again childlike, its supreme aspiration is not virtue, but innocence or guilelessness : so that we may say with truth of those whom it possesses, that the longer they live the younger they grow, as if. "passing out to God by the gate of birth, not death." These few hints may serve as points of departure for some slender lines of relation between William Blake the Second and the principal subsequent poets. It must be borne in mind that the object here is not a survey of the full circle of the powers of any of these poets ; they may be very great or very small in various other respects, while very small or very great in respect of this mystical simplicity. The heads of Da Vinci and Titian and Rembrandt, the bodies of Correggio and Rubens, would all count for nothing were we instituting a comparison between the old masters simply as painters of the sky. Wordsworth ever aspired towards this simplicity, but the ponderous pedantry of his nature soon dragged him down again when he had managed to reach it. He was a good, conscientious, awkward pedagogue, who, charmed by the charms of child- hood, endeavoured himself to play the child. Were it not rather too wicked, I could draw from ALsop another excellent illustration. He was not wrong when he proclaimed himself eminently a teacher; 'tis a pity that six days of the seven his teaching was of the Sunday-school sort THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 263 Coleridge had much of this simplicity. In the " Ancient Mariner " it is supreme ; in " Christabel " it does not lack, but already shows signs of getting maudlin ; afterwards, " Lay Sermons " with Schelling and the Noetic Pentad, almost or quite extinguished it. He was conscious of the loss, as witness the lines in his great Ode : " And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man." Scott, a thoroughly objective genius, lived and wrote altogether out of the sphere of this simplicity. He had a simplicity of his own, the simplicity of truthfulness and power in his "magnificent and masculine grasp of men and things." Expansive not intensive, he developed no interior life, but diffused himself over the exterior life. His poetry is of action, not of thought ; he is as a mighty and valiant soldier, whom we seek on the field of battle, not in the school of the prophets. Byron had it not at all. He is great, exceedingly great ; but great as the expression of intense life, and of such thought only as is the mere tool and weapon of life, never great as the expression of thought above and beneath life commanding and sustaining it. He had just ideality enough to shed a poetic glow upon powers and passions all essen- tially commonplace, but very uncommonly vigorous, overflowing with the energy of daemonic possession an energy most mysterious, but in itself most impatient of mysticism. Keats, who shall dare to judge? I doubt not that everything pure and beautiful would have had 264 CRITICAL STUDIES its season in him who, dying at twenty-four, wrote " Hyperion " a few years after " Endymion." But this plastic genius would have proceeded in trium- phant transmigrations through all fairest forms ere it could have found eternal tranquillity in the soul of all form. Had he been spared, all analogies, I think, point to this end. Shelley possessed, or rather was possessed by, this simplicity to the uttermost. Although he and Keats were twin brothers, Greeks of the race of the gods, their works do not resemble but complement each other. The very childlike lisp which we remarked in Blake is often observable in the voice of Shelley, consummate singer as he was. The lisp is, however, not always that of a child ; it is on several occasions that of a missionary seeking to translate old thoughts from his rich and exact native tongue into the dialect, poor and barbarous, of his hearers. He (while doing also very different work of his own) carries on the work begun by Blake, sinking its foundations into a deeper past, and uplifting its towers into a loftier future. Both Shelley and Keats are still so far beyond the range of our English criticism that they would not have been mentioned thus cursorily here had it been possible to omit them.* * Perhaps the astonishing difference in kind between these glorious poets and their contemporaries can best be put in clear light by thus considering them young Greeks of the race of the gods, born three thousand years after their time, in Christian England. Shelley has been called "The Eternal Child," and Keats "The Real Adonis;" and Novalis says well, "Children are ancients, and youth is antique" (Die Kinder sind Antiken. Auch die Jugend ist antik, vol. iii. p. 190). The ideas and senti- ments of the race among whom they were reared were naturally strange, and in many resects repugnant to them both. Keats, THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 265 Tennyson has no more of this simplicity than had Byron : his chief youthful fault was such a young ladyish affectation as could not exist together with it. But he is fully aware of its value, and woos it like a lover, in vain, as Byron wooed it in the latter parts of " Childe Harold" and in "Manfred." Per- haps each of them should be credited with one great exception, in addition to a few short lyrics : Tennyson with the " Lotus Eaters," Byron with the " Dream." __ Scarcely any other artist in verse of the same rank has ever lived on such scanty revenues of thought (both pure, and applied or mixed) as Tennyson. While it cannot be pretended that he is a great sculptor, he is certainly an exquisite carver of luxuries in ivory ; but we must be content to admire the caskets, for there are no jewels inside. simply ignoring the Bumbleism and Christianity, except in so far as the Bumbleism obstructed his poetic career, unperturbed save by the first throes of creative art, developed himself in the regions from which he sprang Pagan and Hellenic in his themes, his ideas, his perceptions, his objects. Shelley, on the other hand, started from the time and place of his birth to reach the old dominions of his ancestry. In this enterprise he had to conquer and destroy the terrible armies of fanaticism, asceticism, cant, hypocrisy, narrow-mindedness, lording it over England ; and at the same time the spirituality of the new religion, the liberty and equality and fraternity of the new political systems, all things lovely and true and holy of the modern life, he would bear with him for the re-inspiration of the antique. He aspired not to a New Jerusalem in the heavens, but to a new Hellenic metropolis on earth : he looked for redemption and victory, not to Christ on Calvary, but to Prometheus on Caucasus. These young Greeks could not live to old age. The gloom and chill of our English clime, physical and moral and intel- lectual, could not but be fatal to these children of the sun. England and France are so proudly in the van of civilisation that it is impossible for a great poet to live greatly to old age in either of them. 266 CRITICAL STUDIES His meditation at the best is that of a good leading- article ; he is a pensioner on the thought of his age. He is continually petty with that littleness of the second degree which makes a man brag aloud in avoiding some well - known littleness of the first degree. His nerves are so weak that any largish event a Crimean War or a Volunteer movement sets him off in hysterics. Nothing gives one a keener insight into the want of robustness in the educated English intellect of the age than the fact that nine-tenths of our best-known literary men look upon him as a profound philosopher. When wax- flowers are oracular oaks, Dodona may be discovered in the Isle of Wight, but hardly until then. Mr. Matthew Arnold's definition of "distilled thought in distilled words " was surely suggested by the pro- cesses and productions of a fashionable perfumer. A great school of the poets is dying out : it will die decently, elegantly, in the full odour of respecta- bility, with our Laureate. Robert Browning, a really great thinker, a true and splendid genius, though his vigorous and rest- less talents often overpower and run away with his genius so that some of his creations are left but half redeemed from chaos, has this simplicity in abundant measure. In the best poems of his last two works, " Men and Women " and " Dramatis Personal," its light burns so clear and steadfast through the hurrying clouds of his language (Tenny- son's style is the polished reflector of a lamp) that one can only wonder that people in general have not yet recognised it. I cannot recommend a finer study of a man possessed by the spirit of which I THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 267 am writing than the sketch of Lazarus in Browning's " Epistle of Karshish, an Arab Physician." Elizabeth Barrett Browning, also, had much of it, yet never succeeded in giving it fair expression. The long study of her sick-bed (and her constant chafing against the common estimate of the talents and genius of her sex) overcharged her works with allusions and thoughts relating to books, and made her style rugged with pedantry. She^was often in- toxicated, too, with her own vehemence. "Aurora Leigh " sets out determined to walk the world with the great Shakespearian stride, whence desperate entanglement of feminine draperies and blinding swirls of dust. The sonnets entitled "From the Portuguese " reveal better her inmost simple nature. Emerson stands closest of all in relation to Blake, his verse as well as his essays and lectures being little else than the expression of this mystical simplicity. Were he gifted with the singing voice we should not have to look to the future for its supreme bard. But whenever he has sung a few clear sweet notes, his voice breaks, and he has to recite and speak what he would fain chant. His studies, also, have somewhat injured his style with technicology, making him in his own despite look at Nature through the old church and school windows, often when he should be with her in the rustic air. In some of his shorter poems, however, and in the snatches of Orphic song prefixed to some of his essays (as "Compensation," "Art," " History," " Heroism "), any one with ears to hear may catch pregnant hints of what poetry possessed by this inspiration can accomplish, and therefore will accomplish; for no pure inspiration having once 268 CRITICAL STUDIES come down among men ever withdraws its influence until it has attained (humanly) perfect embodiment. In eighty years the influence of this spirit has swelled from the " Songs of Innocence " to the poems of Emerson a rapid increase of the tide in literature. Other signs of its increase meet us everywhere in the best books of verse published during the last few years. And perchance the increase has been even more rapid than the most of us have opportunity to learn, for we are informed by Mr. Rossetti that James John Garth Wilkinson has not only edited a collec- tion of Blake's Poems, but has himself produced a volume of poems entitled " Improvisations of the Spirit," bearing a strong family likeness to those of Blake ; and it may be that Wilkinson has the singing voice which Emerson has not. It would be a boon to the public, at any rate, to make these two volumes easily accessible. Emerson and Garth Wilkinson, the former un- doubtedly the supreme thinker of America, the latter as undoubtedly second to none in England, are surely in themselves sufficient attestation to the truth and depth of the genius of their forerunner, William Blake. He came to the desert of London town, Grey miles long ; He wandered up and he wandered down, Singing a quiet song. He came to the desert of London town, Mirk miles broad ; He wandered up and he wandered down, Ever alone with God. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM BLAKE 269 There were thousands and thousands of human kind In this desert of brick and stone : But some were deaf and some were blind, And he was there alone. At length the good hour came ; he died, As he had lived, alone: He was not missed from the desert wide, Perhaps he was found at the Throne. SHELLEY "WHEREFORE I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men : but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him, but whosoever speaketh a word against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him; neither in this world, neither in the world to come." Which glorious Scripture we may surely understand to mean, that a man may believe or disbelieve in any book, any historical or legendary personage, any dogmatic formula, and yet be in a state of salvation ; that only who rejects and violates the Holy Spirit of love and truth, the Conscience of the World, he cannot (be- cause he will not) be saved. Jesus, though absorbed in his personal mission, could speak this truth of sublime toleration ; but eighteen centuries have not taught His disciples the wisdom of believing it and acting upon it. Whom He absolved, they dare condemn. Probably no man of this century has suffered more and more severely, both in person and reputation, from this rash convictive bigotry than Percy Bysshe Shelley. Florence to the living Dante was not more cruelly unjust than England to the living Shelley. 370 SHELLEY 271' Only now, nearly forty years after his death, do we begin to discern his true glory. It is well that this glory is such as can afford to wait for recognition ; that it is one of the permanent stars of heaven, not a rocket to be ruined by a night of storm and rain. I confess that I have long been filled with astonish- ment and indignation at the manner in which he is treated by the majority of our best living writers. Emerson is serenely throned above hearing him at all; Carlyle only hears him "shriek hysterically;" Mrs. Browning discovers him "blind with his white ideal ; " Messrs. Ruskin and Kingsley treat him much as senior schoolboys treat the youngster who easily "walks over their heads" in class with reluctant tribute of admiration copiously qualified with sneers, pinches, and kicks. Even Bulwer (who, intellectually worthless as he is, now and then serves well as a straw to show how the wind blows among the higher and more educated classes), even Bulwer can venture to look down upon him with pity, to pat him patron- isingly on the back, to sneer at him in "Ernest Maltravers" with a sneer founded upon a maimed quotation. It was only the other day that a person thought it worth while to send to the Times the dis- covery that Shelley, in his mock-heroic preface to " Peter Bell," had anticipated Macaulay's famous New Zealander ! Now, I do not expect that Shelley any more than piety and lofty thought and heroic action will ever be extensively popular; I admit that to himself more than to most poets are his own grand words applicable "the jury that sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers ; it must be impannelled by 2/2 CRITICAL STUDIES time from the selectest of the wise of many genera- tions." Yet it was to be expected that men so noble as Kingsley and Ruskin could surrender themselves to generous sympathy with a most noble and generous life, could love and reverence a most loving and reverent spirit; although that life developed itself without the pale of their sanctuary and that spirit dispensed with the theological primer which they conceive necessary to education. A poet, in our restricted sense of the term, may be defined, an inspired singer; the singing, the spontaneous musical utterance, being essential to the poetical character. Great learning, profound thought, and keen moral insight may all enrich a volume, which shall yet, lacking this instinctive harmony, be no poem. Verse equally with prose may be unpoetic through this fatal want. Through it, George Herbert is almost unread, and the " Heaven and Hell " of Swedenborg is a dull map instead of a transcendent picture; through it tainting both, but in a less degree the works of the Brownings are less popular than those of Tennyson, though they in all other noble qualities are so far his superiors. In musicalness, in free and, as it were, living melody, the poems of Shelley are unsurpassed, and on the whole, I think, unequalled by any others in our literature. Compared with that of most others his language is as a river to a canal a river ever flowing "at its own sweet will," and whose music is the unpurposed result of its flowing. So subtly sweet and rich are the tones, so wonderfully are developed the perfect cadences, that the meaning of the words of the singing is lost and dissolved in the over- SHELLEY 273 whelming rapture of the impression. I have often fancied, while reading them, that his words were really transparent, or that they throbbed with living lustres. Meaning is therein firm and distinct, but " scarce visible through extreme loveliness ; " so that the mind is often dazzled from perception of the surpassing grandeur and power of his creations. I doubt not that Apollo was mightier than Hercules, though his Divine strength was veiled in the splendour of his symmetry and beauty more Divine. But when we have allowed that a man is pre- eminently a singer, the question naturally follows, What is the matter of his song ? Does his royal robe of verse envelop a real king of men, or one who is intrinsically a slave? And here may fitly be ad- duced Wordsworth's remark, that the style is less the dress than the incarnation of the thought. Noble features have been informed by ignoble natures, and beautiful language has expressed thoughts impure and passions hateful : great hearts have pulsed in unsightly bodies, and grand ideas have found but crabbed utterance : yet still it is true that generally the countenance is a legible index to the spirit, and the style to the thought. With this presumption in his favour, we enter upon four inquiries, (i.) What are the favourite subjects of Shelley's song great or small? (2.) Is his treatment of these great-minded? (3.) Is it great-hearted? And, rising to the climax, (4.) Is it such as to entitle him to the epithet inspired? (i.) The favourite subjects of Shelley's song, the speculations to which his intellect continually gravi- tates from the petty interests of the hour, are certainly s 274 CRITICAL STUDIES great and important above all others. (I omit one theme, whose treatment is common to all poets, so that we conceive it as inseparable from the poetic character the beauty and harmony of the visible universe : in the celebration of which, however, Shelley displays an intense fervour of admiration and love which almost isolates him above his compeers.) The questions concerning the existence of God, the moral law of the universe, the immortality of the soul, the independent being of what is called the material world, the perfectibility of man : these and their kindred perpetually fascinate his mind to their investigation. It may be considered by many and not without some show of reason that mere addicted- ness to discourse on great subjects is no proof of a great mind : crude painters always daub " high art ; " adolescent journalists stoop to nothing below epics ; nay, Macaulay long since told us that the very speculations of which we speak are distinctive of im- maturity both in nations and in men. Nevertheless, believing that the essence of poetry and philosophy is communication with the Infinite and the Eternal, I venture to conclude that to be strongly inclined to such communication is to be gifted with the first requisite for a poet and a philosopher. The valiant heart may prove victorious without the strong arm, but the strong arm without the valiant heart must be beaten ignominiously for ever. (2.) But have his thoughts and his conceptions a magnanimity befitting these subjects? He upholds strenuously the Manichean doctrine, that the world is the battlefield of a good and an evil spirit, each aboriginal, of whom the evil has been and still is the SHELLEY 2/5 more powerful, but the good shall ultimately triumph. Let those who scoff so liberally at this account for the existence of evil, and a devil created by an omni- potent, all-holy God. How magnificent is his con- ception of these hostile powers, symbolised in the eagle and serpent, in the opening of " The Revolt of Islam ; " how sublime is it in the " Prometheus Unbound," where they are represented by Jupiter and Prometheus ! He proclaims enthusiastically the Idealism of Plato, of Spinoza, of Berkeley, of Kant. Let those who so stolidly sneer at this, expound by what possibility spirit and matter can influence each other without one attribute in common ; or let them demonstrate the existence of matter apart from our perception ; or let them show, if there be but one existing sub- stance, that it is such as we should call matter rather than spirit. How glorious are his expositions of this philosophy in the " Ode to Heaven " and the speeches of Ahasuerus in " Hellas " ! He devoted himself heart and mind to the doctrine of the perfectibility of human nature, an intrinsic perfectibility to eventuate in a heaven on earth rea- lised by the noble endeavours of man himself; not that which is complacently patronised by many so- called Christians, who are agreed to die and accept a perfect nature as a free gift, when they can no longer live imperfect. As if the severe laws of the universe permitted partial gifts, any more than they permit gainful robberies ! Though I must consider Shelley mistaken in this belief, I yet honour and not blame him for it. For his nature must have been most pure and noble, since it could persuade his 276 CRITICAL STUDIES peculiarly introspective mind of its truth. Right or wrong, it is the very mainspring of his philosophic system. In " Queen Mab," in the " Revolt of Islam," in the " Prometheus Unbound," its ex- pression glows with the solemn inspiration of pro- phecy. As Scott was the poet of the past, and Goethe of the present, so was Shelley of the future ; the thought of whose developed triumphs always kindles him into rapture. However dissident, we cannot but reverence so sublime and unselfish an enthusiasm : perchance, were we more like him in goodness, we should be more like him in faith. Expand the stage from our earth to the universe, the time from one life to an infinite succession of lives ; let the dramatis persona be not men only but all living souls ; and this catastrophe, if catastrophe there must be, is the most righteous and lofty conclusion ever suggested for the great drama. Of his opinions concerning the right relations of the sexes, I can only say that they appear to me radically correct. And of his infidelity, that he attacked not so much Christianity as Priestianity that blind, unspiritual orthodoxy which freezes the soul and fetters the mind, vilifying the holiest essence of all religion. Space being restricted, suffice it to say that in all his thoughts one is struck by a certain loftiness and breadth characteristic of the best minds. It is as if they looked around from the crest of a mountain, with vision unbaffled by the crowd and the chimney-tops. Now, exactly as the height at which a person stands may be calculated from any one object on his horizon as well as from a hundred, so SHELLEY 277 one of these superior thoughts is in itself proof suffi- cient of an elevated mind. For quantity is the mea- sure of low things, but quality of high. Ten small apples may be worth more than one large ; but not any number of small thoughts can equal one great. Ten weak arms may be stronger than one stalwart, but what number of weak minds can equal one that is powerful? (3.) What moral emotion, pure or impure, noble or mean, generous or selfish, does Shelley effuse through his works? The question has been partly answered already, for, in a poet whose theme is concrete with man and abstract with destiny, the spirit refuses to be analysed into thought and passion, being the identity of the two. Morally, he is indeed sainted. Never yet did man thrill and glow with more love of his fellows, more self-sacrificing sympathy with all life, more hatred of fraud and cruelty yet hatred interfused with the tenderest pity, more noble independence, candour, and intrepidity, more devoted reverence for goodness and truth. In what is under- stood by the present age as a truly Christian spirit, he bears comparison with the holiest of Christians. The creeds, the rituals, the ceremonies those media which common men require to temper the else intoler- able splendour of Divine truth he did not need : his eagle-eye could gaze unblenching upon the cloudless sun ; and his life incarnated his poetry. He was his own Prometheus. That fatal per contra with which Emerson is obliged to conclude his magnifi- cent summary of Shakespeare cannot be urged against Shelley. He perceived who better ? the sym- bolism of the visible world ; he appreciated who 278 CRITICAL STUDIES more rapturously ? its Divine beauty ; but he did not rest here he lived higher to the beauty of that which is symbolised, to the beauty which is called "of holiness," to the laws of that realm which is eternal. He was not "master of the revels to mankind," but prophet and preacher. His music was as the harping of David to charm away the evil spirit from Saul. And thus we have crossed the threshold of our last inquiry is he entitled, in a high sense, to be called inspired 1 } That he was a singer who sang songs beautiful, wise, and pure may be affirmed of many a poet, though of no two with the same emphasis. What is it, then, which differentiates him from the second-class poets, and exalts him to sit with Isaiah and Dante, as one of that small choir of chief singers who are called transcendent ? It is that of which I but now spoke ; it is that of which he is so often accused under the name of mysticism. I dare affirm that no great writer is less obscure in manner, in expression than he : obscure in matter he is, and ever must be, to those in whom is not developed the faculty correlative to those ideas in whose expression he supremely delights. Were the most of us born deaf, we should reprobate as obscure and mystical those gifted men who dilated upon the ravishment of music. And to the ideal or spiritual harmonies, perfect and eternal, to whose rhythm and melody the universe is attuned, so that it is fitly named Cosmos to these we are, most of us, deaf; and whoever, with reverence and love and rapture, is devoted to their celebration be it Plato or Swedenborg, Emer- son or Shelley shall for ever to the great mass be SHELLEY 279 as one who is speaking in an unknown tongue, or who is raving of fantasies which have no foundation in reality. Therefore, the accusations of mysticism but ignor- antly affirm that he was most intensely and purely a poet. Plato, in the Ion (Shelley's translation) says : " For the authors of those great poems which we admire do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art; but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own." And again : " For a poet is, indeed, a thing ethereally light, winged, and sacred ; nor can he compose any- thing worth calling poetry until he becomes inspired, and, as it were, mad. . . . For, whilst a man retains any portion of the thing called reason, he is utterly incompetent to produce poetry or to vaticinate." This great truth has been enounced or implied by all true philosophers, though sadly abused by uninspired poetasters, and as obviously ob- noxious as the Berkeleyan Idealism to stupid and unavailing sneers. Shelley himself, in that " Defence of Poetry " which is one of the most beautiful prose- pieces in the language, and which, in serene eleva- tion of tone and expanse and sublety of thought, is worthy of Plato or Emerson, repeatedly and throughout insists upon it as the essential law of poetic creation. The only true or inspired poetry is always from within, not from without. The experience contained in it has been spiritually transmuted from lead into gold. It is severely logical, the most trivial of its adornments being subservient to and suggested by 280 CRITICAL STUDIES the dominant idea, any departure from whose dic- tates would be the "falsifying of a revelation." It is unadulterated with worldly wisdom, deference to prevailing opinions, mere talent or cleverness. Its anguish is untainted by the gall of bitterness, its joy is never selfish, its grossness is never obscene. It perceives always the profound identity underlying all surface differences. It is a living organism, not a dead aggregate, and its music is the expression of the law of its growth ; so that it could no more be set to a different melody than could a rose-tree be consummated with lilies or violets. It is most philosophic when most enthusiastic, the clearest light of its wisdom being shed from the keenest fire of its love. It is a synthesis not arithmetical, but algebraical ; that is to say, its particular subjects are universal symbols, its predicates universal laws ; hence it is infinitely suggestive. It is ever-fresh wonder at the infinite mystery, ever-young faith in the eternal soul. Whatever be its mood, we feel that it is not self-possessed but God-possessed; whether the God came down serene and stately as Jove, when, a swan, he wooed Leda ; or with overwhelming might insupportably burning, as when he consumed Semele. These distinctive marks of the highest poetry I find displayed in the works of Shelley more glori- ously than in those of any other poet in our language. As we must study Shakespeare for knowledge of idealised human nature, and Fielding for knowledge of human nature unidealised, and Carlyle's " French Revolution " as the unapproached model of history, and Currer Bell's "Villette" to learn the highest SHELLEY 28l capabilities of the novel, and Ruskin for the true philosophy of art, and Emerson for quintessential philosophy, so must we study, and so will future men more and more study Shelley for quintessential poetry. It was a good nomenclator who first called him the poet of poets. He was not thirty when he died. Had he but lived for another thirty years ? In the purity of our fervent youth, I think we all consecrate ourselves to an early death; but the gods cannot love us all with a partial love, and most of us must dwindle down through age and decrepitude into the grave. But Shelley, while singing of the millennial future, and chanting beatitudes of our free and pure and love-united posterity, knew with undeceiving pre- science that he could not live to see even the first straight steps taken towards the glorious goal. The tomb which he selected and described with almost passionate tenderness in 1821, received his ashes in 1822. And so may we trust that the prophecy of 1821 was fulfilled in 1822 : " The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven Far from the shore ; far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! I am borne darkly, fearfully afar : Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abodes where the eternal are." If this meagre essay attracts any worthy student to Shelley, it will fulfil the purpose of its publication, 282 CRITICAL STUDIES miserably as it fails to fulfil my desire to render honourable tribute of love and gratitude to this poet of poets and purest of men, whose works and life have been to me, from my youth up, a perennial source of delight and inspiration. SHELLEY'S RELIGIOUS OPINIONS* MY DEAR EIKONOKLASTES, In the National Re- former of August the 4th, you quote a few words from one G. T., in support of your own opinion that Shelley was an Atheist. Can you spare me space for a few remarks on the subject ? I have none of Shelley's letters by me, save those which are included in Mrs. Shelley's edition of his prose writings. But a man's letters do not always afford the best evidence concerning his opinions upon the most important questions put to us by life. In friendly letters one permits himself to give the reins to his mood, to throw off rough and ready sketches with little care as to the accurate shading, to be capricious and paradoxical in short, to speak not as one who is delivering testimony on oath. Of course I do not speak of serious and solemn epistles, but of the general run of corres- pondence. On the other hand, you may be sure that the public works of a man so brave, so honest, so enthusiastic as Shelley record his profoundest convictions on the most momentous subjects. I wish, therefore, to bring to your notice some passages * This letter appeared in the National Reformer, which was then edited by Charles Bradlaugh, who at that time called himself " Iconoclast," in his public capacity as editor and lecturer. 283 284 CRITICAL STUDIES of these works which tend to elucidate the question as to his creed. Let us begin by putting the "Queen Mab" out of court. It was written when he was a mere youth, and its doctrines are shortly condemned in a couple of sentences by himself, written in some after year. "This materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking." These words are from his fragment " On Life," and allude to his own early materialism. "Alastor," written in 1815, is pervaded with an indefinite Nature-worship, which you would probably call Cosmism. This reappears, much modified or developed, sometimes seemingly contradicted, in all the more important of his subsequent poems. Such physiolatry is not uncommon in young minds, being the result, not of comprehensive analytical thought, but of enthusiastic love for nature, and vague yearn- ing awe in the contemplation of the mystery of her processes and the immutability of her laws. Nor is it wholly without moral palliation. For though nature is no saint, but systematically sets most of her chil- dren to live by devouring one another massacres good and bad, wise and foolish indiscriminately with storms and earthquakes, plagues and murrains; is fond of implanting incipient scoundrels in royal wombs, and excellent brains in crazy bodies, &c.; yet the good lady has some barbaric virtues of her own is thoroughly just and independent in her own way ; and never yet, in the course of her long exist- ence, cheated the sower of wheat seed by paying him with a rye harvest. Poor man, on the contrary, with SHELLEY 285 soul, and reason, and virtue, and all sorts of fine pre- tences, is very weak and much given to roguery ; with all the cardinal virtues to help him, he is quite over- ruled in the conclave by the more numerous and strong-willed and cardinal vices. Our palace is so grand and we are such pigmies : let us fall down and worship this brave palace, though merely built for us to dwell in as kings ! We are like the parvenu leading Aristippus through his sumptuous mansion, on whom the philosopher spat, finding no other object in the place mean enough to be fouled with expectoration. In the preface to the "Revolt of Islam," written in 1817, Shelley speaks of Supreme Being and Deity, not, as heretofore, of Power. He declares that he does not speak against the Supreme Being itself, but against the erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being. In the first half of the first canto he distinctly and magnificently develops a sort of Manicheism. Two spirits, the good and the evil, are struggling for the supreme sway. The evil spirit is still predominant ; but each successive combat finds him weaker and the good stronger than heretofore. The final issue shall be the perfect triumph of the good and destruction of the evil. This philosophy is yet further expounded in the "Prometheus Unbound," written in 1819. Herein Jupiter, the representative of the Evil spirit, is cast down, and " the tyranny of heaven shall never be reassumed." Herein also Shelley (like Plato, among others, before him) declares that " Almighty God," "Merciful God," made the living world and all that it contains of good ; and the Evil spirit, now 286 CRITICAL STUDIES ruling, all the evil " madness, crime, remorse, hell, or the sharp fear of hell." Scene 3, Act ii., shows the nature-worship fading away. But the most promi- nent and pervading idea of the poem is Pantheistic. The Good spirit, which at last triumphs, is, indeed, typified in the Titan Prometheus, and not in a man ; but no faith in or worship of this deliverer is required from men who would be saved. The Universal Mind is freed and purified ; the earth and the moon grow more glorious, and fertile, and beautiful, inspired by the renewed health of the informing spirit. The poem is an apotheosis of the One Infinite Soul, self- subsisting, informing all things, one and the same in all masks of man, and beast, and worm, and plant, and slime. The conclusion of the " Sensitive Plant," written in 1820, puts forth somewhat hesitatingly a species of transcendental idealism, which there is no space here for considering. We now come to the poems written in 1821, the year before his death. "Hellas" (in the wonderful chorus commencing, " Worlds on worlds are rolling ever, from creation to decay") contains a noble recognition of the character of Jesus Christ, a recognition much more decided than that in the First Act of the Prometheus. It also contains, in the speeches of Ahasuerus to Mahmud, one of the two grandest assertions of Idealism with which I am acquainted; the other is developed in his "Ode to Heaven," written in 1819. It is pure Berkeleyan philosophy, with the Kantian extension that space and time are merely necessary forms of human thought, and have no existence separate from the human mind. Having no room for these passages SHELLEY 287 in extenso, I refrain from injuring them by fragmen- tary citation. From the " Adonais," I must quote a little, in order to show what Pantheism pervades it. He asserts of the dead Keats : " He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear ; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; And bursting, in its beauty and its might, From trees, and beasts, and men, into the Heaven's light." And, again : " The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly ; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments. Die If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! " And, finally : "That Light, whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty, in which all things work and move, That Benediction, which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love, Which through the web of being blindly wove By man, and beast, and earth, and air, and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality." Such doctrine as is expressed and implied in these lines differs little from what is called pure Theism. 288 CRITICAL STUDIES It simply dwells so continually on the Infinity of God as to overlook, or slightly regard His Personality : it is Spiritualism and Theism, but of the Greeks rather than the Hebrews. The fact is that Shelley, like every other brave Recusant, is credited with much more infidelity than he really had. Finding a vast State Church, based upon politico-theology, everywhere in the ascendant, he was naturally more occupied in negativing dominant assumptions than in affirming his own positive convictions. If a man asserts his right to crush me under his feet, it is not probable that my reply will contain an exact recognition of whatever wisdom and goodness he may really have. So much for formulas : but, of course, we are agreed that Shelley's real religious character consisted in his unquenchable love and reverence for all holi- ness, truth, and beauty. He believed so much more than the generality of us, he strove with so unusual an ardour to realise his belief in his life, that he is necessarily accounted an infidel and semi-maniac by the great majority. " I never knew that time in England, when men of truest religion were not counted sectaries. . . . Cer- tainly, if ignorance and perverseness will needs be national and universal, then they who adhere to wisdom and to truth are not therefore to be blamed for being so few as to seem a sect or faction." Which are two sentences of (John Milton's) " Eikonoklastes." Your sincere Friend, B. V. NOTICE OF "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY" By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS (" English Men of Letters " Series) WE have departed from the order in which we at first intended to notice these books,* having held back Scott that he might follow Burns, and Shelley that he might follow Spenser. The author of the "Prome- theus Unbound," like the author of the " Faerie Queene," has been acclaimed the poet of poets. Spenser was immediately accepted and rated at his true worth by all the noblest of his time, whose memories live amongst the noblest of all time. Shelley was despised and rejected by his own gene- ration and even by that which followed it, but his cyclic day was bound to come, and rapid and splendid has been its development since the first faint flush of its dawning. Men and women who in their youth, thirty, or perhaps even twenty years past, cherished a lonely enthusiasm for him lonely so far as converse and reading could make them aware, though, doubtless, there are always seven thousand in Israel who have never bowed the knee to the dominant Baal discover not without astonish- * This review formed one of a number of notices of the various works included in the " English Men of Letters " Series. 289 T 29O CRITICAL STUDIES ment that he whom they worshipped in secret is no longer execrated or contemned by their people, but is actually advanced to a lofty place in the national Pantheon, that it is no longer a distinction good or bad to burn incense at his shrine. The simple facts that he has been chosen as one of the earliest subjects in a series whose avowed chief end is popularity, and that already, as we write, the Monograph on him is advertised as in its sixth thousand, prove how enormously he has risen in public interest and estimation during this second half of our century. We ha.ve ample corroboration of this in the two critical editions of his poems, with elaborate memoir, by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in that of Mr. H. B. Forman, in the cheap reprint of " Poems and Prose Works" by Mr. R. H. Shepherd, in the various recent popular editions and selections of his poems ; in the numerous articles on him, biographical and critical, among which we may specify those by Mr. R. Garnett, the late T. L. Peacock (to whom so many of Shelley's best letters from Italy were addressed), Miss Mathilde Blind, Prof. T. Spencer Bayne, and Mr. Swinburne; and in such works as Trelawny's " Records " (the new enlarged edition of the " Recollections "), Robert Browning's introduc- tion to the Pseudo-Letters (and his superb Memora- bilia, in " Men and Women "), Mr. Garnett's " Relics, Lady Shelley's " Memorials," and the late Mr. D. F. McCarthy's " Early Life." Yet, notwithstanding all the Shelley literature thus glanced at, a clear place was left, and a distinct need existed, for such a popular booklet as the present, treating comprehensively, though succinctly, the life "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY 5 ' and work of the poet. Rossetti's " Memoir," as yet the richest collection of biographical materials from all sources, is bound up with his critical edition of the poems ; Hogg's " Life " is but a fragment, and, unfortunately, far less trustworthy than brilliant, if not in the general impression, at any rate in many of the details it gives of Shelley at Oxford, and after his expulsion; Medwin's "Life" (1847) i s sketchy and inaccurate, and not easily accessible ; Lady Shelley's " Memorials " are distinctly ancillary ; M'Carthy's " Early Life " is mainly concerned with the Dublin episode; the articles by Peacock and Garnett only discuss particular points of interest; and brave Trelawny's graphic " Recollections " relate to no more than the last half-year of Shelley's life ; while the poems are rarely accompanied by the prose works, including the magnificent "Defence of Poetry," the translations, and the letters from Italy to Peacock, of which last Mr. Symonds says : " Taken altogether, they are the most perfect specimens of descriptive prose in the English language ; " with which verdict we shall scarcely disagree, remembering that they are real letters, and not elaborate compositions like those whereby Ruskin has added glory to our glorious mother-tongue. Matters being in this state, it is evident that a cheap and handy volume, drawing from all these dispersed and fragmentary and comparatively dear contributions a clear and truthful outline of the whole life and work of Shelley, was really much wanted; and we, therefore, give hearty welcome to the present work, which undertakes, and, in our opinion, very success- fully, to satisfy this want. Mr. Symonds is well 292 CRITICAL STUDIES known as an accomplished scholar and writer, of liberal sympathies with all that is beautiful in nature and art ; and he reveals himself as an old lover of Shelley in noting that when he was a Harrow boy he picked up two uncut copies of " Laon and Cythna " (unperverted original of the "Revolt of Islam") at a Bristol book-shop. As for the spirit in which Mr. Symonds writes of Shelley, we can scarcely better praise it than by saying that it is as nearly as pos- sible directly opposed to the spirit in which Professor Shairp writes of Burns. In the limits of our space we could not, even were it desirable, accompany Mr. S. through his narrative and criticisms. We may, however, say a very few words on a very few of the still-vexed questions concerning Shelley. And here it must be remarked that while, in discussing such questions, Mr. S. usually starts with a deferential, though by no means very ardent, support of authority or the world's opinion, his natural clear-sightedness and rectitude and love of liberty generally constrain him before he is done into a virtual though unavowed vindica- tion of Shelley. i. The expulsion from Oxford for the (then un- proved) authorship of the two-paged tract, "The Necessity of Atheism ; " Shelley then in his nine- teenth year. Mr. S. begins by defending the authorities against the charges of unfair dealing in this matter. But what does he say for and of them in the course of his palliation? he himself being not only an wwexpelled University man, like many others who have argued this business against Shelley, but an Oxford man and the author of a prize poem. "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY" 293 Read pp. 36, 37 : " But it must be remembered that he despised the Oxford dons with all his heart ; and they were probably aware of this. He was a dex- terous, impassioned reasoner, whom they little cared to encounter in argument on such a topic. . . . Nor was it to be expected that the champion and apostle of atheism should be unmolested in his propaganda by the aspirants to fat livings and ecclesiastical dignities. ... At the beginning of this century the learning and the manners of the Oxford dons were at a low ebb ; and the Fellows of University College acted harshly but not altogether unjustly, ignorantly but after their kind, in this matter of Shelley's expulsion. Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa. "They are not worth speaking about ; look at them and pass on ; " the most con- temptuous line in all Dante; for the miserables in limbo who have never really lived, the neutrals re- jected by hell as by heaven, who envy even the positive tortures of the deeper damned, who are hateful to God and to the enemies of God ! Call you that backing of your friends? A plague on such backing ! they might well exclaim. We are not concerned here with Shelley's opinions ; but as mere outsiders, who have no Alma Mater to look back upon either with gratitude or contempt, we may remark that a university which has no other discipline at command for sceptical or heretical pupils than expulsion, proclaims its own utter incapacity for the duties it undertakes to fulfil in the guidance and education of youth. Try to fancy one of the old teachers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, or any other, driving away a pupil who propounded 294 CRITICAL STUDIES doubts and difficulties, instead of attempting to clear up and solve them ! Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa I 2. The relations between Shelley and his father. Mr. S. writes, p. 44 : "I agree with Shelley's last and best biographer, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, in his condemnation of the poet's behaviour as a son." But read some of his other sentences bearing on this subject : " We only know that in his early boyhood Shelley loved his father so much as to have shown unusual emotion during his illness on one occasion, but that, while at Eton, he [Shelley] had already become possessed by a dark suspicion concerning him [his father]. This is proved by the episode of Dr. Lind's visit during his fever. Then and afterwards he expected monstrous treatment at his [father's] hands, although the elder gentleman was nothing worse than a muddle-headed squire." In fact, Shelley believed that his father intended to put him in a madhouse (p. 17). Again, p. 5: "Mr. Timothy Shelley was in no sense of the word a bad man ; but he was everything which the poet's father ought not to have been. . . . His morality, in like manner, was purely conventional, as may be gathered from his telling his eldest son [Shelley] that he would never pardon a mesalliance, but that he would provide for as many illegitimate children as he chose to have." Yet young Oxford accounts Mr. Timothy in no sense of the word a bad man ; but Shelley must have felt as outraged and disgusted as was Marius in Les Miserable* at a similar hint from his well-to-do relative of Fancicn regime. After the expulsion from Oxford, the father forbade his return home, and cut "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY" off supplies, and after the mesalliance with Harriet Westbrook (a sort of compromise having been patched up in the meantime) he did the same. Afterwards (p. 53), "Mr. Timothy Shelley was anxious to bind his erratic son down to a settlement of the estates, which, on his own death, would pass into the poet's absolute control. . . . He proposed to make him an immediate allowance of ^"2000 [per annum] if Shelley would but consent to entail the land on his heirs male. This offer was indignantly refused. Shelley recognised the truth that property is a trust far more than a possession, and would do nothing to tie up so much command over labour, such incalculable potentialities of social good or evil, for an unborn being of whose opinions he knew nothing." Finally, we learn from Lady Shelley's " Memorials," that Sir Timothy proposed to relieve Shelley's widow from her poverty if she would resign her infant son, the heir to the title and estates, the present Sir Percy Florence Shelley, into his absolute charge ; which offer also was indignantly refused, she preferring to earn a hard livelihood with her pen. 3. The separation from Harriet, his first wife. Mr. S. says, p. 8 1 : "That Shelley must bear the responsi- bility of this separation seems to me quite clear." Yet in the note, previous page, he states : " Leigh Hunt, 'Autob.,' p. 236, and Medwin, however, both assert that it was by mutual assent." And on this same p. 81 : "It must be added that the Shelley family, in their memorials of the poet, and through their friend, Mr. Richard Garnett, inform us, without casting any slur on Harriet, that documents are extant which will completely vindicate the poet's 296 CRITICAL STUDIES conduct in this matter. It is, therefore, but just to await their publication before pronouncing a decided judgment." To which we may add that we are at a loss to divine why their publication is delayed so long after the death of Harriet's daughter. We wished to say something on two or three other points, as on the judgment of Lord Eldon depriving Shelley of the custody of his children by Harriet after her suicide (pp. 93, 94), and on the assumption (pp. 182, 183) that his practical career was a failure, an assumption, as we understand it, which we certainly cannot concede ; but space fails us. In conclusion, we have but to state that, in our judgment, Mr. Symonds' book fairly reaches the high-water mark of cultivated and liberal appreciation of Shelley, as poet and as man, in the present time. The ultimate appreciation cannot be yet : for Shelley's fame and influence are still crescent, his cyclic day is still far from its noon ; the poet of the distant future must culminate in the epoch to which he properly belongs. His own lofty words in the " Defence of Poetry " are decidedly applicable to himself, if not to all his illustrious predecessors and contemporaries : " Even in modern times, no living poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame ; the jury which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all time, must be composed of his peers ; it must be impanneled by time from the selectest of the wise of many generations." We may note, by way of postscript, that there are a few slight slips of the pen, which Mr. Symonds might as well correct on revision. Thus, in some of the sentences quoted, our readers will have marked "THE LIFE OF SHELLEY 297 the ambiguities of he, his, and him. On p. 7 7, there is confusion in the comparison of inner circle, centre, and middle; p. 83, "the language used by Lady Shelley and Mr. Garnettyktf/j^ us," should, of course, be justifies ; 95, two spots are named as the birthplace of the "Prometheus Unbound;" 143, " No criticisms upon Shelley's works are half so good as his own," should be No other. A STRANGE BOOK* IN order to make clear how strange is this book, I must cite at considerable length from the Note which concludes it, but really serves as a Preface : "The history of this little volume may be told in a few words. " It is written by a new method, partly explained in the title, Improvisations. " Last autumn my attention was particularly directed to the phenomena of drawing, speaking, and writing by Impression ; and I determined to make an experiment of the kind, in com- position, myself. The following poems are the result. Let me now explain more precisely what is meant by Writing by Impression, so far as my own personal experience is concerned ; for I cannot refer to any other. * " Improvisations from the Spirit" [by James John Garth Wilkinson] : 1857. Now long out of print ; only to be got. when it can be got, second-hand. [It gives me great pleasure to reprint this essay, partly because I presented the author with the copy of the "Strange Book" which he used while writing the article but chiefly because it will hence- forth be impossible for any one making any pretensions to literary culture to inquire, as the critic of a high-class periodical actually did, when reviewing a former work of Thomson's, "Who is Garth Wilkinson?" This gentleman actually cited Thomson's admira- tion for Wilkinson as a proof of his critical incompetence ! I fancy that henceforth any one who displays his ignorance of Wilkinson's writings will hardly be accepted as a competent critic of English literature. EDITOR. ] A STRANGE BOOK 2Q9 "A theme is chosen and written down. So soon as this is done, the first impression upon the mind which succeeds the act of writing the title is the beginning of the evolution of that theme, no matter how strange or alien the word or phrase may seem. That impression is written down : and then another, and another, until the piece is concluded. An Act of Faith is signalised in accepting the first mental movement, the first word that comes, as the response to the mind's desire for the unfolding of the subject. " However odd the introduction may be, I have always found it lead by an infallible instinct into the subject. " The depth of treatment is in strict proportion to the warmth of heart, elevation of mind, and purity of feeling existing at the time in other words, in proportion to the conditions of Love and Faith. " Reason and will are not primary powers in this process, but secondary ; not directive, but regulative : and imagination, instead of conceiving and constructing, only supplies words and phrases piecemeal ; or however much it receives, it is as a disc on which the subject is projected, not as an active concipient organ. Another power flows in ; and all the known faculties lend their aid to make way for it. Those faculties are indeed employed in laissezfaire in its inward intensity ; which is another name for Faith. " Laissez faire in the present state of the world, is so active a vortex, and so fiery, that few persons dare to see its conse- quences. All men will see them though, because Providence comes in with marvels wherever self succumbs itself. "In placing reason and will in the second place, it is indis- pensable for man, whose highest present faculties these are, to be well assured what is put in the first place. Hence, writing from an Influx which is really out of your self, or so far within your self, as to amount to the same thing, is either a religion or a madness. I know of no third possibilty. In allowing your faculties to be directed to ends they know not of, there is only one Being to whom you dare entrust them only the Lord. Of consequence, before writing by influx, your prayer must lie to Him, for His guidance, influx, and protection. And you must have faith that that prayer is answered, according to your worthiness, in that which flows in. The Faith is the acknow- ledgment of the gift, which becomes an ever-enlarging cup for receiving fresh gifts or fresh Influx. . . . 3OO CRITICAL STUDIES " This little volume, which I neither value nor undervalue, is one man's earliest essay to receive with upstretched palms some of these long-travelling, most-unnoticed, and yet unchange- able and immortal rays. It was given just as the reader reads it with no hesitation, without the correction of one word from beginning to end ; and how much it differs from other similar collections in process it were difficult to convey to the reader ; suffice it to say that every piece was produced without pre- meditation or preconception : had these processes stolen in, such production would have been impossible. The longest pieces in the volume occupied from thirty to forty-five minutes.* "Altogether about fifty hours of recreation, after days not un- laborious, are here put in print. The production was attended by no feeling and by no fervour, but only by an anxiety of all the circumstant faculties, to observe the unlooked-for evolution, and to know what would come of it. For the most part, the full import of what was written was not obvious until one or more days had elapsed : the process of production seemed to put that of appreciation in abeyance. " Many of the poems are written by Correspondences, as Swedenborg terms the relations which natural objects bear to spiritual life ; or to the varieties of Love, which is the grand object of all. Hence it is the readers of Swedenborg who will best understand this class of poems. " There are three important things left vague in this otherwise admirably clear account of the genesis of these poems. Dr. Wilkinson writes : " A theme is chosen and written down," but does not state whether chosen by himself or another. There are certain cases in which lines of introduction to the pieces appear to indicate that the theme was not really chosen, but was passively accepted from the " Spirit," in the same way as the piece itself. Thus, p. 20 : * The poem called "The Second Voluspa" (pronounced Voly- spou), the longest in the book, occupied from fifty to sixty minutes. As a rule it requires twice as long to copy a poem as to write one. Author's Note. A STRANGE BOOK 3OI " Lord, is there special theme this eve, That spirit-muse were well to weave ? " The birth of Adam is the first, That hath within the day been nursed : Take it unto thee ; let it burst Its spirit-bud, and watch the flower That riseth in the gauzy hour." Where the second section is the direct answer of " the Lord " to the inquiry of the first two lines. Again p. 24 : " Q. Lord, shall I other song achieve? A. Yea : the next song is BIRTH OF EVE." And again, p. 37 : " Lord, give me spirit-song to-night, And give the theme I should indite. " Thou shalt sing well, if faith be true, And LIFE the theme is given you." Certain other themes appear to be really chosen, but whether or not by the writer himself is left in- definite. Thus, p. 8 : " Lord, shew me PATIENCE from the spirit ground : That I may know its holy temper's round." Where the petition is for Divine inspiration on a specified subject. Again, p. 312 : " THE BIRTHDAY OF THE HUMAN SOUL. " Can it be given In stanzas seven ? Yea, in seven stanzas it shall roll." By far the greater number of the pieces have no such introduction ; several have for motto a Bible 3O2 CRITICAL STUDIES text; while in many cases the themes appear to be the choice of the writer, being concerned with his family and friends, or such as would be natur- ally suggested by his studies. Thus we have "W. M. W.," beginning, "Brownness of autumn is around thee, brother;" "A little message for my wife " (to whom the volume is dedicated) ; " M. J. W. : her tenth birthday;" "E. M. N. ;" "William S. ;" " Mary S. ; " and of the latter class, " Hahnemann ; " "Mesmer;" "Turner: Painter: His State;" "Tur- ner : Painter : His Art ; " " Thorvaldsen ; " " Tegne> ; " " Immanuel Kant ; " " Charles Fourier ; " " Dalton ; " " Berzelius : his Laboratory ; " " Chatterton ; " " Edgar Allan Poe ; " " Charlotte Bronte ; " " John Flaxman ; " " The tears of Swedenborg." In connection with this last title it may be remarked that several of the pieces, though not entitled "Tears," have verses affixed so specifying them. Thus, at the end of " Patience " : " Herbert's sphere Beareth here Patience tear," &c. At the end of " Sand-Eating " : " It is the sphere Of Cowper's tear." At the end of "The Proud hath said in his heart, There is no God " (Mark, The Proud ; not The Fool) : "It is the sphere Of Shelley's tear, That wanders by In fruitless sigh, And asks the wind To ease his mind." A STRANGE BOOK 303 Secondly, we are not told over what period of time the " about fifty hours " of these writings from dictation of "the spirit" were scattered. The Note, which serves as Preface, is dated June 3, 1857, and states that the writer (he would not consent to be termed the author) determined to make the experiment " last autumn ; " but we are not informed when the poems were finished, how long before the date of the Note. This point is of importance in relation to the question, Does "the spirit " require intervals of repose, like a mere human author, between the efforts of composition ? though if such intervals were required, it would be quite open to the amanuensis to attribute the need of them to his own weakness and exhaustion, and not to any weariness or fluctuation of power in the dictating " Spirit " itself. Thirdly, the Note does not tell whether the pieces are printed in the order in which they were written. This point also is of importance, as bearing upon the questions, Does the dictation of "the spirit" tend to more and more sweetness and light, or to more and more wildness and gloom, or does it continue equable? But here again, supposing mani- fest a lack of progress, or even a steadily progressive deterioration, it is quite competent to the medium to allege his own frailty and fatigue, while refusing to admit either in " the spirit ; " though in this case he is exposed to the fair inference that the longer a man practises self-abnegation and openness to the "Divine influx," the more lucid and lovely and beautiful should become his expression or communication thereof. It appears to me that most of the best pieces, the most 304 CRITICAL STUDIES limpid and spontaneous, are in the earlier part of the book, and I incline to think that they were also among the earliest written. Before proceeding to discuss the writer's account of the genesis of these poems, it may be well, in vindication of my serious and respectful treatment of this volume, to cite the verdict of an eminent and unprejudiced living poet and painter (his poems I can speak of as having read them ; his pictures I must take on trust, as unfortunately he will not exhibit). In his supplementary chapter to the then late Alexander Gilchrist's "Life of William Blake" (1863), Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti writes thus (vol. i. p. 382) : " A very singular example of the closest and most absolute resemblance to Blake's poetry may be met with (if only one could meet with it), in a phantasmal sort of little book, published, or perhaps not published but only printed [I learn at the office of the Swedenborg Society, 36 Bloomsbury Street, London, that it really was published, as the title-page and the price, 55., stamped on the back indicate], some years since, and entitled ' Improvisations of [from] the Spirit.' It bears no author's name, but was written by Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, the highly gifted editor of Swedenborg's writings, and author of a ' Life ' of him, to whom, as has been before mentioned, we owe a reprint of the poems in Blake's 'Songs of Innocence and Experience.' These improvisations profess to be written under precisely the same kind of spiritual guidance, amounting to abnegation of personal effort in the writer, which Blake supposed to have presided over the production of his 'Jerusalem,' &c. The little book has passed into the general (and in all other cases richly deserved) limbo of the modern ' spiritualist ' muse. It is a very thick little book, however unsubstantial its origin, and contains, amid much that is disjointed or hopelessly obscure (but then why be the polisher of poems for which a ghost, and not even your own ghost, is alone responsible ?), many passages of a remote and charming beauty, or sometimes of a grotesque figu- A STRANGE BOOK 305 rative relation to things of another sphere, which are startlingly akin to Blake's writings could pass, in fact, for no one's but his. Professing, as they do, the same new kind of authorship, they might afford plenty of material for comparison and bewildered speculation, if such were in any request. " With regard to the last parenthesis in the above passage, it should be observed that both Blake and Wilkinson would scornfully reject the term ghosts in connection with the sources of their inspiration, both holding steadfastly that the spiritual body is as real and in its own sphere as substantial as the natural body, that the spiritual life is far more intensely and pro- foundly (or supernally) real than the natural. Blake, with all his profusion of visions, saw but one "ghost " in his life (the famous " ghost of a flea," drawn for John Varley, water-colour painter and astrologer, was the visionary personification of the creature) ; and he, who was more familiar with " angels " and " spirits " than with his fellow-men, found this one " ghost " so horrible that he fairly fled out of the house from it ; * and Dr. Wilkinson, as the title of his book and the account of its origin show, claims to be the medium of the Spirit or the Lord; though, indeed, as in "E. B.," "A Wife's Message," "Teddy's Flower," he sometimes believes himself the transmitter of com- munications from human spirits ; but, as I have said, * Life, i. 128. " When talking on the subject of ghosts, he was wont to say they did not appear much to imaginative men, but only to common minds, who did not see the finer spirits. A ghost was a thing seen by the gross bodily eye, a vision by the mental " (Ibid. ). His one ghost appeared thus : ' ' Standing one evening at his garden door in Lambeth, and chancing to look up, he saw a horrible grim figure, ' scaly, speckled, very awful,' stalking downstairs towards him. More frightened than ever before or after, he took to his heels and ran out of the house. " U 306 CRITICAL STUDIES these are in no sense " ghostly " to him, but intensely living spirits, with bodies of spiritual or supereminent reality. In connection with the " most absolute resem- blance," amounting almost to identity, of these poems and Blake's ("startlingly akin to Blake's writings could pass, in fact, for no one's but his "), as read by so competent a student as Mr. Rossetti, it is inte- resting to consider certain passages in Dr. Wilkin- son's Preface to his edition [the first printed one, as the poor Blake had to engrave his text as well as his designs] of the "Songs of Innocence and Experi- ence : " though, as this was published so far back as 1839, when the editor was but twenty-seven years old, his estimate of Blake may have become very diffe- rent by the time the " Improvisations " were issued in 1857, and may be yet more different now, especially after the publication of the " Life and Selections," the " Essay " by Mr. Swinburne, and the Aldine edition of the Poems, with Prefatory Memoir, by Mr. W. M. Rossetti. Dr. Wilkinson, forty years back, fully appreciated the beauty of the poems he edited : why else should he have edited them ? But in my judg- ment he should have included several more in the praise he lavished on these. He writes : " The present volume contains nearly all that is excellent in Blake's poetry ; and great, rare, and manifest is the excellence that is here. The faults are equally conspicuous, and he who runs may read them. They amount to an utter want of elalx>ra- tion, and even, in many cases, to an inattention to the ordinary rules of grammar. Yet the 'Songs of Innocence,' at least, arc quite free from the dark becloudment which rolled and billowed over Blake in his later days. He here transcended Self, and escaped from the isolation which Self involves ; and, as it then A STRANGE BOOK 307 ever is, his expanding affections embraced universal man, and, without violating, beautified and hallowed even his individual peculiarities. Accordingly, many of these delicious lays belong to the Era as well as to the Author. They are remarkable for the transparent depth of thought which constitutes true simpli- city they give us glimpses of all that is holiest in the childhood of the world and the individual they abound with the sweetest touches of that pastoral life, by which the Golden Age may be still visibly represented to the Iron one they delineate full- orbed age, ripe with the seeds of a second infancy, which is ' the Kingdom of Heaven. ' The latter half of the volume, comprising the ' Songs of Experience,' consists, it is true, of darker themes ; but they, too, are well and wonderfully sung, and ought to be preserved, because, in contrastive connection with the ' Songs of Innocence,' they do convey a powerful impression of 'THE Two CONTRARY STATES OF THE HUMAN SOUL.'" But what of the later illustrated works, the colossal or monstrous chaotic " Prophetic Books," which yet contain germs of such noble grandeur and beauty that so fervid a lover and consummate a master of pure classical form as Mr. Swinburne dedicates a large portion of a volume to their exposition ? Dr. Wilkinson says that Blake " naturalised the spiritual, instead of spiritualising the natural ; " that he preferred " seeing truth under the loose garments of typical or even mythologic representation, rather than in the Divine-Human Embodiment of Christianity;" and continues in a very powerful, though in my judgment too vehement, passage, which I must cite at full length, the slender book being so little known and so scarce : "And, accordingly, his Imagination, self-divorced from a Reason which might have elevated and chastened it, and neces- sarily spurning the scientific daylight and material realism of 308 CRITICAL STUDIES the nineteenth century,* found a home in the ruins of ancient and consummated Churches, and imbued itself with the super- ficial obscurity and ghastliness, far more than with the inward grandeur of primeval times. For the true Inward is one and identical, and if Blake had been disposed to see it, he would have found that it was still (though doubtless under a multitude of wrappages) extant in the present age. On the contrary, copying the outward form of the past, he has delivered to us a multitude of new hieroglyphics, which contain no presumable reconditeness of meaning, and which we are obliged to account for, simply by the artist's having yielded himself up, more thoroughly than other men will do, to those fantastic impulses which are common to all mankind, and which saner men sub- jugate, but cannot exterminate. In so yielding himself, the Artist, not less than the man, was a loser, though it unquestion- ably gave him a certain power, as all unscrupulous pftssion must, of wildness and fierce vagary. This power is possessed, in dif- ferent degrees, by every human being, if he will but give loose and free vent to the hell that is in him ; and hence the madness, even of the meanest, is terrific. But no madness can long be considered either really Poetic or Artistical. Of the worst aspect of Blake's genius it is painful to speak. In his ' Pro- phecies of America,' his ' Visions of the Daughters of Albion,' and a host of unpublished drawings [the " Prophetic Books " have words as well as designs], earth-born might has banished the heavenlier elements of Art, and exists combined with all that is monstrous and diabolical. In the domain of Terror he here entered, the characteristic of his genius is fearful Reality. He embodies no Byronisms none of the sentimentalities of civi- lised vice but delights to draw evil things and evil beings in their naked and final state. The effect of these delineations is greatly heightened by the antiquity which is engraven on the faces of those who do and suffer in them. We have the impres- sion that we are looking down into the hells of the ancient people, the Anakim, the Nephilim, and the Rephaim. Their human forms are gigantic petrifactions, from which the fires of * Blake was born 28th (2oth, according to Mr. Swinburne) November, 1757, and died i2th August, 1827. But the mass of his " Prophetic Books " were produced in the close of the eighteenth century, and " Milton " and "Jerusalem " as early as 1804. A STRANGE BOOK 309 lust and intense selfish passion have long dissipated what was animal and vital, leaving stony limbs and countenances expres- sive of despair and stupid cruelty. "In many of the characters of his mind, Blake resembled Shelley. From the opposite extremes of Christianity and mate- rialism, they both seem, at length, to have converged towards Pantheism, or natural-spiritualism ; and it is probable that a somewhat similar self-intelligence, or Ego-theism, possessed them both.* They agreed in mistaking the forms of truth for the truth itself, and consequently, drew the materials of their works from the ages of type and shadow which preceded the * Writing in 1839, Dr. Wilkinson had to trust for his biogra- phical statements to the sketch in Allan Cunningham's " Lives of British Painters." In Gilchrist's Life (1863) there are many pas- sages counter to this opinion of the Doctor's. Thus the accounts of Blake's death (i. 361, 362) : "On the day of his death," writes Smith [J. T. , the biographer of Nollekens, and a very old friend of Blake], who had his account from the widow, " he composed and uttered songs to his Maker, so sweetly to the ear of his Catherine [his wife they had no children], that when she stood to hear him, he, looking upon her most affectionately, said, ' My beloved, they are not mine. No I they are not mine ! ' He told her they would not be parted ; he should always be about her to take care of her. ... As 4 father, mother, aunt, and brother were buried in Bunhill Row, perhaps it would be better to lie there. As to service, he should wish for that of the Church of England." . . . He lay chanting songs to melodies, both the inspiration of the moment, but no longer as of old to be noted down. To the pious songs followed, about six in the summer evening [it was a Sunday], a calm and painless withdrawal of breath, the exact moment almost unper- ceived by his wife, who sat by his side. A humble female neigh- bour, her only other companion, said afterwards : ' I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed angel.' ... On the Wednes- day evening one of the small band of his enthusiastic young disciples, in a letter asking another to the funeral, writes : ' He died on Sun- day night at six o'clock, in a most glorious manner. He said he was going to that country he had all his life wished to see, and ex- pressed himself happy, hoping for salvation through Jesus Christ. Just before he died his countenance became fair [he was on the verge of the threescore and ten], his eyes brightened, and he burst out into singing of the things he saw in heaven. In truth, he died like a saint, as a person who was standing by him observed. 1 " 3IO CRITICAL STUDIES Christian Revelation. The beauty, chasteness, and clear polish of Shelley's mind, as well as his metaphysical irreligion, took him, naturally enough, to the philosophy and theology of the Greeks, where he could at once enjoy the loose dogma of an Impersonal Creator, and have liberty to distribute Personality at will to the beautiful unliving forms of the visible creation. We appeal to the ' Prometheus Unbound,' his consummating work, in proof of this assertion. The visionary tendencies and mysti- cism of Blake, developing themselves as they did, under the shelter of a religious parentage and education, carried him, on the contrary, to the mythic fountains of an elder time, and his genius, which was too expansive to dwell in classic formalisms, entered into and inhabited the Egyptian and Asiatic perver- sions of an ancient and true religion. In consequence of these allied deformities, the works of both are sadly deficient in vital heat, and in substantial or practical truth, and fail, therefore, to satisfy the common wants, or to appeal to the universal instincts of Humanity. Self-will in each was the centre of the indivi- dual, and self-intelligence the anima mundi of the philosopher, and they both imagined that they could chop and change the universe, even to the confounding of life with death, to suit their own creative fancies." I shall have something to say in the sequel about this passage, which I have not cited as concurring with its judgments. Here I will but quote as a set- off, so far as regards Blake, a couple of preceding sentences : "They who would form a just estimate of Blake's powers as an artist have abundance of opportunities of doing so, from his exquisite illustrations to the 4 Songs of Innocence,' from his designs to Blair's ' Grave,' Young's ' Night Thoughts,' and the ' Book of Job,' in all of which there are ' glorious shapes, expressing God-like sentiments.'* These works, in the main, are * " Were I to love money, I should lose all power of thought ; desire of gain deadens the genius of man. My business is not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes, expressing God-like senti- ments " Blake's own words. So, shaking of Lawrence and other A STRANGE BOOK 3!! not more remarkable for high original genius than they are for sane self-possession, and show the occasional sovereignty of the inner man over the fantasies which obsessed the outer." The young editor, who so absolutely and violently denounced the visions and prophetic books of Blake, as to speak of ghastliness, hell, madness, monstrous and diabolical, was already an ardent votary of Swedenborg, whom he termed in this same preface, "our great modern luminary." Others have discerned, or thought they discerned, a wonderful similitude between the thus condemned and the thus exalted. For example ("Life," 15, 16), Mr. Gilchrist says : " Another still more memorable figure, and a genius singularly german to Blake's own order of mind, the ' singular boy of four- teen,' during the commencement of his apprenticeship, may, ' any day have met unwittingly in London streets, or walked beside a placid, venerable, thin man of eighty-four, of erect figure and abstracted air, wearing a full-bottomed wig, a pair of long ruffles, and a curious-hilted sword, and carrying a gold-headed cane no Vision, still flesh and blood, but himself the greatest of modern Vision-seers Emanuel Swedenborg by name, who came from Amsterdam to London in August, 1771, and died at No. 26 Great Bath Street, Coldbath Fields, on 29th of March, 1 772.' This Mr. Allingham pleasantly suggests, in a note to his fashionably prosperous artists: "They pity me, but 'tis they are the just objects of pity. I possess my visions and peace ; they have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage." In his note-book he writes : ' ' The Angel who presided at my birth Said : ' Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, Go, love without the help of anything on earth.' " One more quotation from the " Life" : " Another time, Fuseli came in, and found Blake with a little cold mutton before him for dinner, who, far from being disconcerted, asked his friend to join him. ' Ah ! by God ! ' exclaimed Fuseli, ' that is the reason you can do as you like. Now, I can't do this.' " 312 CRITICAL STUDIES delightful collection of lyrical poems, ' Nightingvale Valley (1860), in which (at last) occur a specimen or two of Blake's verse. The coincidence is not a trivial one. Of all modern men, the engraver's apprentice [Blake] was to grow up the likest to Emanuel Swedenborg ; already by constitutional endowment and temperament was so ; in faculty for theosophic dreaming, for the seeing of visions while broad awake, and in matter-of-fact hold of spiritual things. To savan and to artist alike, while yet on earth, the heavens were opened. By Swedenborg's theological writings, the first English editions of which appeared during Blake's manhood, the latter was con- siderably influenced, but in no slavish spirit. These writings, in common with those of Jacob Boehmen, and of the other select mystics of the world, had natural affinities to Blake's mind, and were eagerly assimilated. But he hardly became a proselyte or ' Swedenborgian ' proper \hardly /], though his friend Flax- man did." Now let us see what Blake writes of Swedenborg, to whom he was "the likest of all modern men." When thirty-three he brought forth an engraved volume, illustrated in colour, of which Mr. Swinburne thus speaks (" William Blake : A Critical Essay," 1868, p. 204): "In 1790 Blake produced the greatest of all his books, a work indeed which we rank as about the greatest produced by the eighteenth century in the line of high poetry and spiritual specula- tion. The 'Marriage of Heaven and Hell' gives us the high- water mark of his intellect. None of his lyrical writings show the same sustained strength and radiance of mind ; none of his other works in verse or prose give more than a hint here and a trace there of the same harmonious and humorous power, of the same choice of eloquent words, the same noble command and lil>cral music of thought ; small things he could do perfectly, and great things often imperfectly ; here for once he has written a book as perfect as his most faultless song, as great as his most imperfect rhapsody. His fire of spirit fills it from end to end, but never deforms the body, never singes the surface of the work, as too often in the still noble books of his later life. . . . The A STRANGE BOOK 313 variety and audacity of thoughts and words are incomparable, not less so their fervour and beauty. ' No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.' This proverb might serve as motto to the book ; it is one of many ' Proverbs of Hell,' as forcible and as finished." In the great work thus greatly praised, Blake inci- dentally delivers his soul on Swedenborg; but in fairness to Dr. Wilkinson, it must be remarked that he was probably unacquainted with it when he wrote the above-cited preface, as it is not mentioned therein. In one of the " Memorable Fancies " of the book, and in the chapter of Comments succeeding it ("Life," i. 85, 86; more fully, Swinburne, 219, 221), Blake, wishing for such an alacrity in sinking as Falstaff attributed to his size (the which, by the way, we should have thought tended to buoyancy), desiring indeed to sink to about the depth indicated by the illustrious Sir John's, "if the bottom were as deep as hell, I should down " ; what enormous dead weight, what irresistible plummet of myriadfold leaden ponderosity, did he take to ensure his descent ? Read : "... then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun ; here I clothed myself in white, and taking in my hand [it must have been a large one !] Swedenborg's volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to Saturn : here I stayed to rest, and then leaped into the void between Saturn and the fixed stars." So much for Swedenborg in the Fancy; now for him in the Comments : ' ' I have always found that angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise ; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning. 314 CRITICAL STUDIES " Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, though it is only the contents or index of already published books. . . . "Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new truth. " Now hear another : He has written all the old falsehoods. "And now hear another: He conversed with angels, who are all religious, and conversed not with devils, who all hate religion [angels are really devils, God is the devil, and vice vend ; popular religions are blasphemous and atheistic ; here and elsewhere in Blake] ; for he was incapable, through his con- ceited notions. "Thus Swedenborg's writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further. " Hear now another plain fact : Any man of mechanical talents may, from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's ; and from those of Dante or Shakespeare, an infinite number. But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine." This is mild and sweet with a vengeance. In the " Life " are some extracts from the Reminiscences of . Mr. Crabb Robinson (based on his Journals), who was introduced to Blake at the close of 1825. One of these notes of Blake's conversation (i. 340) modifies the passages just cited : " Incidentally, Swedenborg was mentioned : he declared him to be a divine teacher ; he had done, and would do much good ; yet he did wrong in endeavouring to explain to the reason what it could not comprehend. He seemed to consider but that was not clear the visions of Swedenborg and Dante as of the same kind. Dante was the greater poet [rather !] " The student must elect between these verdicts of the visionary poet-artist, between the judgment of the noblest work of his prime, and the conversation when he was close upon threescore and ten. A STRANGE BOOK 315 Lastly, to complete this interesting little circle of estimates and comparisons, let us hear Mr. Swinburne. He agrees with Dr. Wilkinson, as we learn from several passages in the " Essay," that there are points of strong resemblance in Blake and Shelley. But in the conclusion of his volume (p. 300, et see the power That rules the next day's hour." Almost equally beautiful, though somewhat more quaint and less limpid, is " Patience," p. 8 : ' ' Wander, and see how far Star is away from star ; Mysteriously they live, Far from each other thrive, And when their evening comes, The light of prayer outblooms. And so thy course of being, Is far from others seeing : [others'] All men are far from all, Distance doth round them fall : 'Tis the star-mantle still : The gulf of heavenly will. Moreover breadth of line Doth around being twine : To show that out of order Springeth each being's border, And that the vine of God Bears all things on its rod. And then again the way That doth round being play, Is blended with the form That wraps all nature's swarm, And multifold and free, Stands the immensity. A STRANGE BOOK 355 And thus from out of life, Rolleth the river rife, That hath the mission swift To bear all things their gift, And to confine to man The circle of his scan. So that the web and woof Which is all beings' proof, Standeth in the intent That God hath with it blent, And the fixed palm of Him Keepeth His seraphim. And from the whole of things, And from all eyes of wings, And from all thoughts of hearts, And from all error's smarts, And from all sins forgiven, Works forth the patient heaven. It is the ass Christ rode Into the state of God : And 'tis the vaulted back That never yet was slack, And did sustain intense The work of Providence. And under it doth lie The penitence on high : The angels walk its bridge ? And mortals on the ridge That it presents to hurry Drop over in their flurry. But 'tis the deepest ground That God hath planted round : And 'tis the largest thing That God hath made a king : And it holds time and space Rebuked by its face. 35 6 CRITICAL STUDIES And in it all things root, And heaven doth from out it shoot ; For tissue 'tis of love, That makes it solid prove : And angels' bodies fine Have patience in their wine. What more : that patience is The Lord of life and bliss : It is the haste to wait For bettering of state ; The quickness to forgive, And readiness to live. Weave it into thy soul ; Make of one web the whole : Bearing thy burden's sorrow ; Leaving thy soul's to-morrow. Sufficient is each day When patience is its ray." I regret that there is not space here to quote " Solitude " in full, while quotation in part would miss complete development of its central thought. Per- haps some stanzas from " The Birth of Eve," p. 24, will bear citation without their context : "It is not meet to say What love God bears to man : He spread the tent of day, As portal of his plan : He made the heavenly arch, As gable of his door, He made the sky for march Of humble souls and poor. And he made love for man, Helpmeet for man to have ; And Paradise began With love's primeval wave : A STRANGE BOOK 357 The mystery of all things Sailed chanting up to him : And inmost of all rings, His life alone was dim. And on a night he dreamed (Archangels knew his dream), That God above had beamed Upon his hearty's stream : And in his blood a car Had sailed away from him : And had become a star, Twinkling in distance dim. And then he clasp'd his hands, And sighed unto the star ; And from the golden sands Where loves primeval are, He sent a breath of hope Of such aspiring size, That the fair star did ope, E'en in those distant skies. And from its golden rim, A red rain trickled down, Thaf spilt dear red on him, And mantled all his crown : And he fell on his knees, In ecstasy of heart : And he prayed God would please To give him starry part. So straightway down it came, Down, down, in dream was long ; And left behind it flame, And shed before it song : And as its hair came near, And as its voice was heard, The sound of nature's cheer, Through all her dells was stirred. CRITICAL STUDIES And Adam knew the sign : And started from his couch : And Eve was there divine, Her blessing to avouch : And in the bower of Eden They wed the earth with sky, And marriage so was laden With loves' eternity. "And she shall have her rights, Born new from age to age : And she shall miss her plights, And she shall fire the sage, And blood and bone is man, That wars for woman's side : And in Redemption's Plan She is Redemption's Bride." The " Horse of Flesh," p. 34, is thus introduced : "This night the song that doth belong, Is state of man, when he doth plan To sing for pride, and high to ride." I quote a portion of it, as his own vindication for departing from the ordinary process of poetic com- position : "The globe of poets then, The choir of angel-men, Each sing a different song, That doth to each belong, Yet the songs one and all, Are of a single call, And make one body free, Doth with itself agree. Then in society, Rises an anthem high, 'Tis as a perfume cast From all flowers far and fast ; A STRANGE BOOK 359 And every fibre heaves With perfume in its leaves, And every part doth thrill With perfume from its will. But when men sing on earth, Song hath no heavenly birth. "Pis bred and born alone Within the bosom's stone ; Comes from the lyre of one, And not from unison ; And on the horse of pride, With vizor down doth ride. This is the horse of flesh ; Its hoof is in a mesh Of swampy wants and wishes : It hath the tail of fishes : * Cold in reality ; Hot in mere fantasy : It dreams of heavens of singing : But hell is in it springing. Now then choose well the choir That hath the numerous lyre ; The song with fellows mated, By others' songs completed : And let the horse of flesh Be lifted from the mesh ; For heaven is melody, And is society." It will be observed that the didactics do not * " Tails sig. scientific sensual principles. . . . Ap. Ex. 559, &c. " Fish sig. sensual affections which are the ultimate affections of the natural man. Also, those who are in common truths, which are also ultimates of the natural man. Also those who are in external falses. A. R. 405. . . . Fishes sig. scientifics. A.C. 42; 991. Fishes (Hab. i. 14-16) sig. those who are in faith separate from charity. A. R. 405. To make as the fishes of the sea, sig. to make altogether sensual. A. R. 991." A pretty kettle of fish for the reader's digestion. 360 CRITICAL STUDIES improve the poetry. Passing over some interesting but rather long pieces, we come to " E. B.," p. 75 : " A solemn lay comes slowly, It peals from earth to heaven, Grand is the strain and holy, That now to thee is given. Thou art a bride of spirit, A sister of our skies, The house thou shalt inherit Four square before thee lies. Its portico is marble, Its stairs are ruby red, The birds of gladness warble Their gush ings overhead. Among the golden globes * Of fruit that hang around ; The house is clad in robes Of beauty and of sound, That float about festooning All things with beauty here ; The melodies are crooning Round land and field and mere. And in that house a jewel Set fitly for thy breast : Ah ! spirit was not cruel That gave him such a rest. * " He hangs in shades the orange bright Like golden stars in a green night." Andrew Marvell. "... and bright golden globes Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven." Shelley. Was " the Spirit " reminiscent of these " stony-bosomed " singers, or merely accordant with them ? A STRANGE BOOK 361 Then walk up to the casket, Thy life is near the door, 'Twill open if you ask it, And o'er thee, spirit pour. Thou art not far from heaven, Thou art not far from love ; Thy dower is sevenfold seven, Thy hopes are fixed above. Yet earth does well to keep thee, For thy good deeds are needed : We only yet would steep thee In spirit-powers : unheeded. Thy husband oft is with thee, dear, And he has led thee on : One day thou shalt see all things clear, For home will then be won, And separation's day be done." "The Birth of Aconite," p. 77, is very powerful, both in conception and execution ; of a somewhat similar strain, though in blank verse, to Part iii. of Shelley's "Sensitive Plant." But how the doctor reconciles it with his science and theology I cannot understand. I presume he believes that God created the aconite no less than He created the olive, the palm, and the vine ; yet he writes as if it were created by the devil. This sort of loose undefined Maniche- ism, which Plato, by -the -bye, explicitly sets forth in the Ttmaus, is very common among Christians, in spite of the great monotheistic text (Isa. xlv. 5-7): " I am the Lord ; and there is none else, there is no god beside Me. ... I form the light and create dark- ness : I make peace, and create evil : I the Lord do 362 CRITICAL STUDIES all these things." They love to symbolise their Lord and the Holy Spirit by the lamb and the dove, which are among the most silly and cowardly and helpless of animals ; they are dreadfully affronted if you consider the vulture, the ape, the toad equally symbolic of their God; yet nothing can be more evident than that every thing and being created (not excluding their devil) must faithfully represent or express some portion or characteristic of the Creator. If " I am the vine " is a true text, equally true must be " I am the aconite ; " nay, our total-abstinence friends would maintain that the former has been and is far more extensively fatal to our race than the latter. So much for theology: as for science, it surely scorns the idea of classing things as in origin and essence good or evil, according as they seem beneficial or noxious to man. Spinoza is here incomparably more enlightened than this nineteenth-century man of science. We now reach "W. M. W.," p. 89, a poem ad- dressed to the writer's brother (author, I presume, of "Spirit Drawings, a Personal Narrative," 1858), followed by another to " E. W." his wife, on the death of their little son, who in a third poem, "Teddy's Flower," sends them a message of good cheer from the world of spirits, as the close informs us : "Teddy through Hood, Who has walked through Teddy's wood, And seen his garden wall, Because Hood loves the small." I am bound to add that though the message is delivered by Hood, its style and character are of A STRANGE BOOK 363 Wilkinson. I quote the " W. M. W.," as very solemn and beautiful, especially for an improvisation : "Brownness of autumn is around thee, Brother, Darkness of life has fallen on thy path ; Sadness hath been unto thee as a mother, Sadness is not another name for wrath. God gave, God takes away : His hand is on thee : Heavy its print hath been upon thy brow. Yet even that stroke a second heart hath won thee, And warmer thoughts within thy bosom glow. Thy little Teddy, like a shaft of lightning, Shears through the gloom of worldliness around ; And from his early gloomy grave a brightening Shoots forth its pillar : pierces the profound. Thy night is dying, and thy day is nearing, Wrap round thee then the mantle of the light. Leave troubling, shun dull care and duller fearing : Thy day is strong : arise : assert thy might. The spirit, strong in love to thee and thine, Commits these verses to a brother's hand. They come to earth : mixed with her bitter wine, They glow with sparklings from the heavenly strand." We are here in the heart's holy of holies, the in- most sanctuary of love and sorrow, " sorrow more beautiful than beauty's self;" where criticism the most just and righteous bows its head and is silent, feeling that this is also the inviolable sanctuary, the inexpugnable fortress, of all the fond frail super- stitions that are born of love and grief and hope, feeling that here even spiritism is sacred, though it has been prostituted by the vilest of the vile. 364 CRITICAL STUDIES Our next piece is " Saturday Night," p. 96, ending with a reminiscence of Goethe : " Week's curtain, folded round Time with a solemn sound, Life sleeps within thy folds, The past like dreams it holds. Surely 'tis God's intent That life should well be blent With sleep, when every tread Has memory overhead. So may we pass each glance, That the whole's countenance, When met on shore of heaven, May be good, true, and even." I cite a little of "The Fairies' Welcome," p. 99, because of the structure of its eight-lined stanza ; it was a wonderful tour de force to rush out sixteen such stanzas in " from thirty to forty-five minutes." " Pour forth the bells In odorous notes Of lovely light Upon the sky : Hark ! how it swells : Hark ! how it floats, In colours bright Of minstrelsy. My South is Truth, Mine East is Love, My West is Joy, My North is Light : And thus my youth Doth stand above Mine aged cloy Of former night. A STRANGE BOOK 365 All hail again Ye bands of life, Ye sons of God From fairy climes : Ye unmade men, Unknown to strife, Whose feet are shod With heavenly rhymes." Here are the first and the last stanza of "The Dance of Life," p. 105 : " 'Tis not in round of commonplace Life keepeth measure : But rhythmical her atoms trace The turf of pleasure. There is no lazy-footed tread In all creation ; But being doth with being thread Congratulation. " God weaveth, in a word, In circles fine : And His bright love is stirred Through rounded line : For this is e'en completion, And this is new beginning : And swiftness urgeth mission, And dance is mood of winning." Song, "Its Divine Birth," p. 135, is unfortunately too long for quotation here. Let us have a short piece in a very different mood, " Napoleon to Napo- leon," p. 193 ; remembering that it was written about fourteen years before Sedan : " Weird sisters set thee where thou art : Thou shall not stand : Thou seest already the fell dart Thou seest the hand. 366 CRITICAL STUDIES The hand is freedom's in a glove of sin, Peace tipped with steel : Thou feel'st its point moving within, Thy strength doth reel. Thou art a gamester where thou sittest ; Thy dice, men's bones : Thou candleman ; ne'er yet thou littest The light of thrones I I see thy funeral procession all, White chanting priests ; Thou art an ox within the priestly stall, No king of beasts Destruction fattens thee for morrow's dinner, Bastes thee with money ; The meat upon thy bones to many a sinner Shall yet be honey. Great arbiter of elegancies fine, Lord of the fashion, Within thy veins runneth no better wine Than Ego's passion. France, when full drest for her next party, Shall brush her boots of thee : And have a ruler fatter and more hearty, And with some human glee." In much the same strain of uncouth, but keen and vigorous invective, Blake-like, Orsonic, are "The Pope," "Napoleon I.: What of him?" and "The Lawyers : What of them ? " I select the last, p. 215, for citation ; just observing that " Men of the Time " informs us that Dr. Wilkinson's father was a special pleader, and author of several well-known law-books. A STRANGE BOOK 367 " Ranged on stools, there they sit, Bench of fools, full of wit : Bench of zanies keen as knives, Free of tongue, on all archives. There they sit from age to age : Leathern socs of the world's stage : And for every hour they sit, They do spoil the nation's wit. And on all sides lo ! they look With a vision like a cook, When she bastes a venison haunch, Fatly for a monarch's paunch. And the beauty of their dream, As upon their bench they seem, Is old justice, fat and flavoured, Carved for them, and by them savoured. Lo 1 the logic skeletons Serve them for their meat with stones, And for reasonings they try How the logic-stones will fry. They have ghosts of actors poor For their guardian angels sure, And their brains like dresses worn, Are sieves held for public corn. Lord, how long shall these offend ? And what is their latter end ? They shall live on bench of glee, Long as human cruelty. They shall date with quarrel, years : Time, with hypocritic tears : Long as luxury hath tether, They shall warm their arid leather. 368 CRITICAL STUDIES And as long as grasping man Tears down others' walls that ban Passage to another's goods, Lawyers shall dwell in their woods. Blame them not, but blame thyself : They are but thy dolls of pelf: Thou didst put on their fine wigs : Thou dost feed all thine own pigs." How pungent in their truth are some of these lines ! As in the first, the fourth and fifth, and the last four stanzas. We have space for but two more very short pieces. The first is " Harebells," p. 221 : "Wills that lie in coverts dim, Shaking from their bells a hymn That is meant for ears of wind alone : For the belfry of the spirit-world, Is most chiefly in the flowerets curled, And in heavenly stillness lies its tone. And the fairies only dream they hear, Voices those, with winds most thinnest ear, Which they put on for that express desire. But 'tis only in heavens very high That the sounds of flowers and the dews sigh, Are heard in waking certainty of fire." The other is called "Two Verses for E.," p. 222 : " Late in the evening, gold diffused To all the sky is given : East, West, North, South, none is refused The last good gold of heaven. A STRANGE BOOK 369 And so when death gives gold of good, From his dear bed away, More hearts than those around that stood, Feel light from death's new day." As before observed, I have cited only from the more spontaneous poems, springing directly from the native genius and mother wit, leaving aside the longer compositions whose materials were quarried by laborious studies, such as the " Hahnemann," "Fourier," "Tegnfr," " Dalton," " Swedenborg," though these likewise contain many noteworthy things I have gone upon the principle well expressed by Blake (whether correct or not in his application of it) in his " Descriptive Catalogue " : " The Greek Muses are daughters of Mnemosyne or Memory, and not of Inspiration or Imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime conceptions." And now, in conclusion, I may confess that pon- dering once more how much that is pure and wise and beautiful is contained in this almost unknown book, notwithstanding all the wilful disadvantages under which it was written, I half repent me of the severity of certain of the strictures I have passed upon portions of it; though the sharpest of these strictures were but the very same which Wilkinson had previously passed upon a genius as great, a visionary as genuine as his own over-idolised master ; upon one who had nobler fire in his spirit, a more genial heart in his breast, than the ever -placid dogmatic Swede; upon one who soared in lyric raptures of which the other was as unsusceptible as a stone; upon one who was free from that dreary, monstrous, methodic madness which kept piecing and 2 A 37O CRITICAL STUDIES patching away, year after year, for a whole generation all the shreds and tatters of Hebrew old clo's, in the desperate delusion of thus making a sufficient and everlasting garment for the illimitable Universe of Life. And, moreover, can we help being angry, do we not well to be angry when, our poor race pining for illumination, some of the most fulgent spirits obstinately refuse to be effulgent; will not let their light shine forth before men, but carefully hide it under a bushel ? The supreme warmth and light of genius and intellect are so rare, so sorely needed, yet so unaccountably wasted! I mean not in such instances as those of Swedenborg and Comte, where the long chronic monomania of the decadence followed an acute attack of mental disease in the prime; I think of a Maurice scourging himself with those "forty stripes save one," the Thirty -nine Articles, and burying his genius in the deathly vaults of the mouldering English Church ; of a Newman dis- membering himself of intellect and will, and perishing in the labyrinths of the Roman Catacombs ; of a Wilkinson immolating his splendid powers on the altar built of dead men's bones, of a demented dogma- tism more implacable than the old heathen altars of merely bodily human sacrifice. When I first read in the great preface to the "Human Body" (1851), that he hoped never again to come forth with the pen, a mournful verse from a place of most mournful frustrate life arose in my memory, and recurs now as I ponder these lives, so frustrate of their full develop- ment and happiness in usefulness, a verse of Matthew Arnold's stanzas from that sepulchre of Death-in-life, the Grande Chartreuse : A STRANGE BOOK 37! " Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb ; Silent they are though not content ; They wait to see the future come : They have the griefs men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more." JOHN WILSON AND THE NOCTES AMBROSIAN^E* THE Nodes Ambrosiana appeared in Black-wood between 1822 and 1835, arousing an excitement and taking by storm a popularity almost unique in their kinds. Many causes beyond the intrinsic merits and vigour of the dialogues contributed to these results. When the series began, the capital of Scotland was a real literary capital, with the Great Unknown for its half-veiled monarch. Party spirit was high and fierce. The Whigs with the Edin- bitrgh Review, started in the second year of the century, carried all before them in periodical litera- ture ; until, fifteen years later, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, came into the field. (The Quarterly, commenced in 1809, being of the modern Babylon, had but slight influence on the modern Athens.) The Review, which had been fractious and turbulent enough in its infancy, had now arrived at years of some discretion, and become comparatively decorous. * "The Comedy of the Nodes Ambrosiance" by Christopher North. Selected and arranged by John Skelton, advocate (author of "The Impeachment of Mary Stuart," &c.). William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1876. JOHN WILSON 373 The young Magazine rushed into the battle ramping and raging, bellowing and roaring, full of tropical ardour and savagery, neither taking nor giving quarter ; and in the dust and confusion of the fray, and the bewilderment of manifold mystifications, unscrupulous impersonations, fantastic disguises, interchanges of armour and arms, it was impossible for the spectators clearly and surely to discern who was the captain of the host and who were the warriors. If their own defiant proclamation could be trusted,* there were some strange wild beasts in this deluge of anthropo- phagi suddenly let loose upon Whigs, Radicals, Ben- thamites, Joe-Humists, Cockneys, Heretics, haverers, haverils, gouks, sumphs, e tutti quanti ; for this ram- pageous Apocalyptic menagerie had constituted them- selves the heraldic supporters of the Nobility, the bodyguard of the Throne, the watch-dogs of the quiet sanctities of the Altar around which they yelped and barked day and night. In the "Ancient Chaldee Manuscript " are specified some of the principal cham- pions of "the man in plain apparel, which had his camp in the place of Princes, whose name was as it had been the colour of ebony, and whose number was the number of a maiden, when the days of the years of her virginity have expired" (Blackwood, 17 Princes Street). " And the first which came was after the likeness of a beautiful leopard, from the valley of the palm-trees, whose going forth was comely * "Translation from an ancient Chaldee Manuscript," Black- wood, October 1817 ; quickly suppressed, so that few sets contain it ; but republished as appendix to the " Nodes," in vol. iv. of the twelve- volume edition of the Works of Professor Wilson, edited by his son-in-law, the late Professor J. F. Ferrier. (Blackwood, 1855.) 3/4 CRITICAL STUDIES as the greyhound, and his eyes like the lightning of fiery flame (Wilson, author of the ' Isle of Palms ') . . . There came also from a far country the scorpion, which delighteth to sting the faces of men (Lockhart). . . . Also the great wild boar from the forest of Lebanon, and he roused up his spirit, and I saw him whetting his dreadful tusks for the battle (Hogg, from Ettrick Forest). Also the black eagle of the desert, whose cry is as the sound of an unknown tongue, which flieth over the ruins of the ancient cities, and hath his dwelling among the tombs of the wise men (Sir William Hamilton)." The formidable catalogue included also the lynx, the griffin, the stork, the hyaena, "and the beagle and the slowhound after their kind, and all the beasts of the field, more than could be numbered, they were so many." Charged with such powerful explosives as political passion and reckless personalities, a paper or series of papers will indeed go up like a rocket, but is apt to come down like the stick. If, then, when the gun- powder has been long burnt out, and the firework blaze long since swallowed up in oblivious darkness, the "Nodes" still float in the upper air, and still shine with a certain pale or ruddy light, it must be because of some inherent buoyancy and brilliance. It is true that of the original series of seventy-one, Professor J. F. Ferrier, in his twelve-volumed edition of the works of his father-in-law, left about thirty to haunt as wan ghosts the sepulchral limbo of old sets of Blackwood ; some because they were mainly occupied with matters of merely local and temporary interest, others because Wilson had but small part in them; but the remainder (forty-one by Preface, JOHN WILSON 375 thirty-nine by Contents), dating from 1825 to 1835, being wholly Wilson's, various songs excepted, he set forth as a permanent galaxy in the starry heavens of our literature ; and who will may study or restudy the same as a systematic whole in the first four volumes of the said works. Ferrier was a subtle thinker, an accomplished scholar, an acute and independent critic ; but the father of his wife had thrown a glamour over him, as over so many others, and to his eyes every star in that constellation was of the first magni- tude. But we, who never came within the scope of Christopher North's personal influence, and whose youth was scarce touched by his written spells, cannot but discern that the cluster is far less splendid than reported, and far from well-defined that no one of its stars is of the first or even of the second degree ; that their light is provokingly intermittent, and, at the brightest, rather wavering and diffuse than intense. For his personality, beyond doubt, was exceedingly more potent than his literary genius ; and, while fully admitting and admiring the natural fascination which the former exercised on those with whom he came in contact, we must reserve and exercise our right to distinguish and separate this from the legitimate influence of the latter. In order to clearly explain this, it may be necessary to write somewhat about the man, gathering the facts from the " Memoir" byhis daughter, Mrs. Mary Gordon (two vols., Edinburgh : Edmonston and Douglas, 1862). John Wilson was born at Paisley on the i8th May 1785, his father being a wealthy gauze manufacturer; his mother, lineally descended by the female side from the great Marquis of Montrose, a stately lady, of 3/6 CRITICAL STUDIES rare intellect, wit, humour, wisdom, and grace, whose remarkable beauty was transmitted to her children. The father died in 1797, and John entered Glasgow University, where he remained until 1803. In the June of this year he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner, leaving in 1807, after a very brilliant career as a scholar, and one not less brilliant as an athlete, being a splendid all-round man rider, swimmer, walker, runner, dancer, jumper, angler, boater, wrestler, boxer. In his essay on Gymnastics (" Works," vol. v.), he gives one instance of his own prowess : " With a run and a leap on a slightly inclined plane, perhaps an inch to a yard, we have seen twenty-three feet done in great style and measured to a nicety ; but the man who did it (aged twenty-one, height five feet eleven inches, weight eleven stone) was admitted to be (Ireland excepted) the best far leaper of his day in England." As to his boxing, we are told by De Quincey, his junior by a year and contemporary at Oxford, though the two did not get personally acquainted there : " There was no man who had any talents, real or fancied, for thumping or being thumped, but he had experienced some preeing of his merits from Mr. Wilson. All other pretensions in the gymnastic arts he took a pride in humbling or in honouring ; but chiefly his examinations fell upon pugilism ; and not a man who could either ' give or take,' but boasted to have punished, or to have been punished by, Wilson of Afallen's" On one occasion a surly rough obstructed his way across a bridge. Wilson lost patience and offered to fight him. The fellow said: "You had better not fight with me ; I am such-a-one " (a well- JOHN WILSON 377 known pugilist). This announcement rather stimu- lated than daunted young Oxford : " In one minute off went his coat, and he set-to upon his antagonist in splendid style. [Mrs. Gordon has evidently a keen spark of her father's fire.] The astonished and punished rival, on recovering from the blows and surprise, accosted him thus : ' You can only be one of the two ; you are either Jack Wilson or the devil.' This encounter no doubt led, for a short time, to fraternity .and equality over a pot of porter." His athletic tastes, love of adventure, and high animal spirits led him into all sorts of queer society, such as affords the only opportunity for the study of unsophis- ticated human nature. A fellow-collegian records of him : " One of his great amusements used to be to go to the ' Angel Inn,' about midnight, when many of the up and down London coaches met ; there he used to preside at the passengers' supper-table, carving for them, inquiring all about their respective journeys, why and wherefore they were made, who they were, &c. ; and, in return, astonishing them with his wit and pleasantry, and sending them off wondering who and what HE could be ! He frequently went from the ' Angel ' to the ' Fox and Goose,' an early ' purl and gill ' house, where he found the coachmen and guards, &c., preparing for the coaches which had left London late at night ; and there he found an audience, and some- times remained till the college gates were opened, rather (I believe) than rouse the old porter, Peter, from his bed to open for him expressly. It must not be supposed that in these strange meetings he in- dulged in intemperance no such thing; he went to such places, I am convinced, to study character, in CRITICAL STUDIES which they abounded. I never saw him show the slightest appearance even of drink, notwithstanding our wine-drinking, suppers, punch, and smoking in the common-room to very late hours. I never shall forget his figure, sitting with a long earthen pipe, a great tie wig on ; those wigs had descended, I fancy, from the days of Addison (who had been a member of our College), and were worn by us all (in order, I presume, to preserve our hair and dress from tobacco- smoke) when smoking commenced after supper, and a strange appearance we made in them ! " The same gentleman says : " His pedestrian feats were marvellous. On one occasion, having been absent a day or two, we asked him, on his return to the common-room, where he had been. He said, in London. ' When did you return 1 ' ' This morning.' ' How did you come ? ' ' On foot.' As we all ex- pressed surprise, he said : ' Why, the fact is I dined yesterday with a friend in Grosvenor (I think it was) Square, and as I quitted the house a fellow who was passing was impertinent and insulted me, upon which I knocked him down ; and as I did not choose to have myself called in question for a street row, I at once started as I was, in my dinner dress, and never stopped until I got to the College gate this morning, as it was being opened.' Now this was a walk of fifty-eight miles at least, which he must have got over in eight or nine hours at most, supposing him to have left the dinner-party at nine in the evening." Here is another instance ("Memoir," i. 191, 192), when on a pedestrian tour in the Western Highlands with his wife in 1815: "In Glenorchy his time was much occupied by fishing, and distance was not considered JOHN WILSON 379 an obstacle. He started one morning at an early hour to fish in a loch which at that time abounded in trout, in the Braes of Glenorchy, called Loch Toila. Its nearest point was thirteen miles distant from his lodgings at the schoolhouse. On reaching it, and unscrewing the butt-end of his fishing-rod to get the top, he found he had it not. Nothing daunted, he walked back, breakfasted, got his fishing- rod made all complete, and off again to Loch Toila. He could not resist fishing on the river when a pool looked invitingly, but he went always onwards, reached the loch a second time, fished round it, and found that the long summer day had come to an end. He set off for his home again with his fishing-basket full and confessing somewhat to weariness. Passing near a farmhouse whose inmates he knew (for he had formed acquaintance with all), he went to get some food. They were in bed, for it was eleven o'clock at night, and after rousing them, the hostess hastened to supply him ; but he requested her to get him some whisky and milk. She came with a bottle-full and a can of milk, with a tumbler. Instead of a tumbler he requested a bowl, and poured the half of the whisky in along with half the milk. He drank the mixture at a draught; and, while his kind hostess was looking on with amazement, he poured the re- mainder of the whisky and milk into the bowl and drank that also. He then proceeded homeward, performing a journey of not less than seventy miles." In " Anglimania : Cast Second ; Twaddle on Tweed- side" ("Works," vi. 334, 335), he tells this story himself, with some slight variations. He says nothing of the Homeric can of milk and bottle of whisky, 380 CRITICAL STUDIES but avows that on recovering from the stupor at the absence of his rod-pieces, " we put our pocket-pistol to our head and blew out its brains into our mouth in the liquid character of Glenlivet." He makes the distance to the loch fourteen instead of thirteen miles, and thus summarises the day's proceedings : " At eleven our five flies were on the water. By sunset we had killed twenty dozen none above a pound, and by far the greater number about a quarter but the tout-ensemble was imposing, and the weight could not have been short of five stone. We filled both creels (one used for salmon), bag, and pillow-slip, and all the pockets about our person and at first peep of evening star went our ways again down the glen towards Dalmally. We reached the school- house ' ae wee short hour ayont the twal,' having been on our legs almost all the twenty-four hours, and for eight up to the waist in water distance walked, fifty- six miles ; trouts killed, twenty dozen and odds ; and weight carried 'At the close of the day when the hamlet was still, And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness proved,' certainly seventy pounds for fourteen miles; and if the tale be not true, may May-day miss Maga." So fatal are " long earthen pipes " and Glenlivet to physical stamina and moral fortitude ! JOHN WILSON 381 II In our desire to illustrate the character of Wilson in youth a character preserved throughout his prime, for his nature was not one of those which have start- ling late developments or aberrations we have reserved but scant space for recording the rest of his career. Luckily, the " Memoir " by his daughter is a very accessible as well as very readable book, and to it we refer the reader who wants full details. On leaving Oxford, in 1807, he went to live at Elleray, near Windermere, a charming estate with a charming rustic cottage, which he had purchased some little time before. Here were his headquarters until 1815. He soon became friendly with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Charles Lloyd, Bishop Watson, and other notables of the district, and especially with his age- fellow, Thomas De Quincey, about fourteen years afterwards to be famous as the English opium eater. Of Windermere he constituted himself the admiral (Canning made him Lord High Admiral of the Lakes), maintaining a little fleet of seven sailing vessels as well as a fine ten- oared Oxford gig. His time was fully employed, all the days and many of the nights, with rambling, boating, wrestling, riding, bull-hunting (see De Quincey's account of this, "Memoir," i. 138-140), and cock-fighting. In the "Memoir" (i. 145-147) is a good story of one of his boating and swimming freaks, extracted from " Rambles in the Lake Country," by Edwin Waugh. For softer de- lights he had poetry, dancing, and love-making. The Misses Penny, daughters of a Liverpool mer- 382 CRITICAL STUDIES chant, lived at Ambleside; and Miss Jane and he, being both young and lish, were not long in dancing into each other's hearts. " A spectator at a ball given in Liverpool in those days, relates that when Mr. Wilson entered the room with Miss Penny on his arm, the dancers stopped and cheered in mere ad- miration of their appearance." They were married in May 1811, she bringing some fortune, and he having not cut very deeply into the unencumbered ^50,000 left him by his father. "The circumstances which occurred to make it absolutely necessary to leave Elleray were of a most painful nature, inas- much as they not only deprived Wilson of his entire fortune, but in that blow revealed the dishonesty of one closely allied to him in relationship, and in whom years of unshaken trust had been reposed. An uncle had acted the part of 'unjust steward,' and, by his treachery, overwhelmed his nephew in irretrievable loss. A sudden fall from affluence to poverty is not a trial easily borne, especially when it comes through the fault of others ; but Wilson's nature was too strong and noble to bow beneath the blow. On the con- trary, with a virtue rarely exemplified, he silently submitted to the calamity, and generously assisted in contributing to the support of his relative, who, in the ruin of others, had also ruined himself. Here was a practical illustration of Moral Philosophy, more eloquent, I think, than even the Professor's own lectures, when he came to teach what he had practised." So, in 1815, he removed to Edinburgh with his young wife and babes, and was received into the house, 53 Queen Street, of his mother, "a lady JOHN WILSON 383 whose skill in domestic management was the admira- tion and wonder of all zealous housekeepers. Under one roof she accommodated three distinct families; and, besides the generosity exercised towards her own, she was hospitable to all, while her charities and goodness to the poor were unceasing. . . . She belonged to that old school of Scottish ladies whose refinement and intellect never interfered with duties the most humble." If that fine old school is really now closed, the sooner it opens again the better. This same year he was called to the bar, along with his friend Patrick (afterwards Lord) Robertson, of legal, and yet more convivial and humorous renown ; Scorpio Lockhart joining them the next year. Wilson professionally promenaded the Hall of Lost Steps (Salle de Pas Perdus, as our neighbours say) for but a brief while, not wholly briefless ; he got a few cases, but owned afterwards that when he found them on his table, " I did not know what the devil to do with them ! " Of such stuff are not lawyers made. In the "Memoir" (i. 228) is a capital sketch of Wilson and Robertson in a punt : the former in the stern, standing and pointing with bare extended arm; the latter, almost supine with the oars, a long pull if not a strong pull, purring big clouds from his cigar. We now come to the starting, in 1817, of Black- wood, of which Wilson (Lockhart, in 1825, going to London to assume the editorship of the Quarterly) ere long made himself the leading spirit, though the man whose " name was as it had been the colour of ebony " always held firmly the real editorship in his own hands. An interesting chapter of the " Memoir" (i. 233-295) is devoted to this subject. Towards the 384 CRITICAL STUDIES end of 1819, Wilson, having then five young children, removed with his family from his mother's house to 20 Ann Street, then quite out of town in the suburb of Stockbridge. In April 1820, the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh became vacant by the death of Dr. Thomas Brown. The two chief competitors for the post were Wilson and Sir William Hamilton, afterwards Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. The contest was exceedingly furious, being fought out by their partisans on purely political grounds; Government influence and Tories for Wilson, Whigs (the Whigs, now effete, were very much alive then) for Hamilton; but the intimate personal friendship of the two rivals was not broken or interrupted. " The patronage lay with the Town Council, whose members had to be canvassed per- sonally, like the voters in a rotten borough." Wilson was elected by twenty-one votes out of thirty, and immediately was hard at work reading-up and pre- paring his first course of lectures, and asking counsel from competent friends. In his first lecture he triumphed over all ill-will ; and thenceforward to his death rejoiced in the title of "The Professor," actually filling the chair for thirty years, and only resigning when quite worn out and broken down. And as he grew more and more prominently the Professor, one of the best-known men in Edinburgh, he grew also more and more prominently Christopher North, one of the best known writers in Britain. At the University he was the idol of his class, wielding an enormous influence over many successive student- generations, all in their plastic youth. John Hill Burton, the historian of Scotland and delightful Book JOHN WILSON 385 Hunter, who sat under him in 1830, says: "Much as I had heard of his appearance, it exceeded expecta- tion; and I said to myself that, in the tokens of physi- cal health and strength, intellect, high spirit, and all the elements of masculine beauty, I had not seen his equal." The Rev. William Smith, of North Leith Church, writes of a lecture in the winter session of 1837 : "I have heard some of the greatest orators of the day Lords Derby, Brougham, Lyndhurst ; Peel, O'Connell, Sheil, Follett, Chalmers, Caird, Guthrie, M'Neile; I have heard some of these in their very best styles make some of their most celebrated ap- pearances j but for popular eloquence, for resistless force, for the seeming inspiration that swayed the soul, and the glowing sympathy that entranced the hearts of his entire audience, that lecture by Professor Wilson far exceeded the loftiest efforts of the best of these I ever listened to." And again : " It was some- thing, moreover, not without value or good effect, to be enabled to contemplate, from day to day through- out a session, the mere outward aspect of one so evidently every inch a man, nay, a king of men, in whom manly vigour and beauty of person were in such close keeping with all the great qualities of his soul; the sight at once carried back the youthful student's imagination to the age of ancient heroes and demigods, when higher spirits walked with men on earth, and made an impression on the opening mind of the most genial and ennobling tendency." In an account of Wilson's last year of professional work (session 1850-51), Mr. Alexander Taylor Innes, the gold medallist of that year, writes : " The first thing that every one remarked on entering his class, was 2 B 386 CRITICAL STUDIES how thoroughly he did his proper work as a Professor of Moral Philosophy. This is not generally known now, and was not even at the time. There was a notion that he was there Christopher North, and nothing else; that you could get scraps of poetry, bits of sentiment, flights of fancy, flashes of genius, and anything but Moral Philosophy. Nothing was further from the truth in that year, 1850. In the very first lecture he cut into the core of the subject, raised the question that has always in this country been held to be the deepest and hardest in the science (the origin of the Moral Faculty), and hammered at it through the great part of the session. Even those who were fresh from Sir William Hamilton's class, and had a morbid appetite for swallowing hard and angular masses of logic, found that the work here was quite stiff enough for any of us. ... His appearance in his classroom it is far easier to remember than to forget. He strode into it with the professor's gown hanging loosely on his arms, took a comprehensive look over the mob of young faces, laid down his watch so as to be out of the reach of his sledge- hammer fist, glanced at the notes of his lecture (generally written on the most wonderful scraps of paper), and then, to the bewilderment of those who had never heard him before, looked long and ear- nestly out of the north window, towards the spire of the old Tron Kirk; until, having at last got his idea, he faced round and uttered it with eye and hand, and voice, and soul, and spirit, and bore the class along with him." And, finally, Mr. John Skelton bears witness, in his Introduction to the volume which has occasioned the present article : JOHN WILSON 387 " John Wilson had the eagle-beak, the lion-like mane of the Napiers. Mrs. Barrett Browning has said of Homer : ' Homer, with the broad suspense Of thund'rous brows, and lips intense Of garrulous god-innocence ' and whenever I read the lines, the mighty presence of Christopher North rises before me. . . . He was such a magnificent man ! No other literary man of our time has had such muscles and sinews, such an ample chest, such perfect lungs, such a stalwart frame, such an expansive and Jove-like brow. Had he lived in the classic ages, they would have made a god of him not because he wrote good verses, or possessed the Divine gift of eloquence, but because his presence was god-like. There was a ruddy glow of health about him, too, such as the people of no nation have possessed as a nation since the culture of the body as an art of the national life has been neglected. The critic, therefore, who never saw Wilson, cannot rightly estimate the sources of his influence. . . . The picture of the old man eloquent in his college classroom the old man who had breasted the flooded Awe, and cast his fly across the bleakest tarns of Lochaber pacing restlessly to and fro like a lion in his confined cage; his grand face working with emotion while he turns to the window, through which are obscurely visible the spires and gables of the ancient city ; his dilated nostril yet ' full of youth ; ' his small grey eye [Mr. Innes terms it " bright blue ; " and probably both are correct] alight with visionary fire, as he discourses (somewhat discursively, it must 388 CRITICAL STUDIES be owned) of truth and beauty and goodness, is not one to be forgotten. Had he talked the merest twaddle, the effect would have been very nearly the same ; he was a living poem where the austere grandeur of the old drama was united with the humour and tender- ness of modern story-tellers ; and some such feeling it was that attracted and fascinated his hearers." So much for Wilson as the Professor: what he did as Christopher North may be judged by a list, appended to the " Memoir," of his contributions to Blackwood, from 1826, it being impossible now to fix the authorship of various articles before that date. In one month we find five articles, making sixty-eight pages, from his pen ; in another, double number, five articles, sixty-five pages ; in another, six, sixty-nine; in another, double number, seven, one hundred and sixteen ; in another, double, four, one hundred and forty-seven ; in another, double, seven, one hundred and thirty-one. In one year, 1830, he wrote thirty articles, making twelve hundred columns; in the two years, 1833-34, fifty-four, mak- ing two thousand four hundred columns. All this in addition to his university work. "The amazing rapidity with which he wrote caused him too often to delay his work to the very last moment, so that he almost always wrote under compulsion, and every second of time was of consequence. Under such a mode of labour there was no hour left for relaxation. When regularly in for an article for Blackivood, his whole strength was put forth, and it may be said that he struck into life what he had to do at a blow. He at these times began to write immediately after breakfast. . . . He then shut himself into his study, JOHN WILSON 389 with an express command that no one was to disturb him, and he never stirred from his writing-table until perhaps the greater part of a 'Nodes' was written." After a frugal dinner at nine (boiled fowl, potatoes, and glass of water), he wrote on again till midnight ; and so for the next day or two when necessary. " I do not exaggerate his power of speed, when I say he wrote more in a few hours than most able writers do in a few days; examples of it I have often seen in the very manuscript before him, which, disposed on the table, was soon transferred to the more roomy space on the floor at his feet, where it lay ' thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa,' only to be piled up again quickly as before." In 1837, after twenty-six years of most happy marriage, he lost his wife. Their five children were all grown up. The three daughters afterwards married : Margaret, the eldest, her cousin, Professor J. F. Ferrier; Mary, Mr. J. T. Gordon, sheriff of Midlothian ; Jane Emily, Professor Aytoun of whose bashful wooing, and Wilson's presentation of the ladylove " with the author's compliments " (pinned to her back), her sister in the " Memoir " tells us not. In 1840 he was attacked by paralysis of the right hand, which disabled him for nearly a year. He took a zealous part in the Burns festival at Ayr, 6th August, 1844 ; having written the essay for the " Land of Burns," brought out by Messrs. Blackie, of Glasgow. When the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution was established, 1847, he was elected the first president; and was annually re-elected during his life. In the winter of 1850, in his sixty-sixth year, his health was evidently breaking, and he could scarcely manage to 39O CRITICAL STUDIES get through the session. Mr. Taylor Innes says : " The old lion sat in his arm-chair, yellow-maned and toothless, prelecting with the old volubility and eloquence, and with occasionally the former flash of his bright blue eye, soon fading into dulness again. I still remember his tremulous ' God bless you ! ' as the door closed for the last time. How different from that fresh and vigorous old age in which he had moved among us so royally the year before ! " In 1851 he was forced to resign his professorship, after thirty years' service; and Lord John Russell, the old Whig, hastened to secure a pension of ^300 a year for the stout old Tory. In the summer of 1852, although very infirm, he had himself driven to Edin- burgh from Woodburn, near Dalkeith, where he was staying with his brother Robert : "His mysterious mission to Edinburgh was to give his vote for Thomas Babington Macaulay. When he entered the com- mittee-room in St. Vincent Street, supported by his servant, a loud and long cheer was given." Macaulay heartily responded to this magnanimity. As Wilson wrote on another occasion : " The animosities are mortal, but the humanities live for ever." In his later years, he and Patrick Robertson had many a pleasant evening with Jeffrey, Cockburn, and Ruther- furd. On the ist of April, 1854, he was stricken with paralysis of one side ; and as the clock sounded midnight on the 3rd he breathed his last. He was buried in the Dean Cemetery, " where now repose a goodly company of men whose names will not soon die Jeffrey, Cockburn, Rutherfurd, Thomas Thom- son, Edward Forbes, David Scott, John Wilson, and his well-loved brother James." It was soon resolved JOHN WILSON 391 in public meeting to raise a memorial to him; and John Steell was commissioned to execute a bronze statue, ten feet in height, with a suitable pedestal, to be placed at the north-west corner of East Princes Street Gardens. In the year following his death, that other monu- ment to his memory, the edition of his works, was begun by Professor Ferrier. Comprehensive as it is, in- cluding " Noctes," essays, critiques, tales, poems, some important series of articles are omitted, as those on Spenser and " Specimens of the British Critics." Of the latter Mrs. Gordon says : " Those papers, along with too many of equal power and greater interest, have found jealous protection within the ccinture of Blackwootfs pages, and seem destined to a fate which ought only to belong to the meagre works of mediocrity." It is natural that a loving and revering daughter should wish as much as possible of her father's writing collected in a permanent form ; but we may safely assume that Messrs. Blackwood were and are very willing to republish anything in demand, and we are sure that Ferrier was not the man to leave out anything of enduring interest. So we take it that our busy world in general is quite satisfied, if not over satisfied, with the dozen rather closely printed volumes ; and we venture to remind Mrs. Gordon that permanent form by no means secures permanent perusal. Ferrier, indeed, as we have already remarked, was fascinated and overpowered by the personal mag- netism of his father-in-law into a stupor of admira- tion, which, with all our hearty respect for both, we cannot help feeling is very comical. Thus, writing of the principal personages of the "Noctes," he calmly 39 2 CRITICAL STUDIES assures us: "In wisdom the Shepherd equals the Socrates of Plato ; in humour he surpasses the Fal- staff of Shakespeare. Clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr. Johnson in close and peremptory argument ; fertile and copious, he might have rivalled Burke in amplitude of declamation." Mr. Skelton, although, as we have seen, he, too, has been mightily influenced by the same personal ascen- dency, writes far more judicially of the writer : "John Wilson was an immense man, physically and mentally, and yet his nature was essentially incomplete. He needed concentration. Had the tree been thoroughly pruned, the fruit would have been larger and richer. As it was, he seldom contrived to sustain the inspira- tion unimpaired for any time; it ran away into shallows, and spread fruitlessly over the land. In many respects one of the truest, soundest, honestest men who ever lived, he used to grow merely declama- tory at times. Amazingly humorous as the Shepherd of the 'Nodes' is (there are scenes, such as the opening of the haggis, the swimming match with Tickler while the London packet comes up the Forth, which manifest the humour of conception as well as the humour of character in a measure that has seldom been surpassed by the greatest masters), his fun is often awkward, and his enthusiasm is apt to tire. . . . And if the Shepherd at his best could be taken out of the 'Noctes' and compressed into a compact duodecimo volume, we should have an original piece of imaginative humour, which might fitly stand for all time by the side of the portly Knight [Falstaff.]" In his "Comedy of the Noctes," Mr. Skelton has attempted the compression thus indicated, JOHN WILSON 393 and we think that he has very fairly succeeded in his attempt; for we certainly find in this case that the third is better than the whole that now, by the lapse of time, his one volume is more interesting and effec- tive than Ferrier's four. He "suspects that the lacunce. are sometimes visible to the naked eye," and they certainly are, and here and there a few words in parenthesis might well have been inserted to bridge the gaps; but it is also true that in the complete dialogues the transitions were often very abrupt. Ferrier's glossary has been retained; and Ferrier's own words thereanent are too good for omission here (Preface to "Noctes," xix.): "As the last specimen, then, on a large scale, of the national language of Scotland which the world is ever likely to see, I have preserved with scrupulous care the original ortho- graphy of these compositions. Glossarial interpreta- tions, however, have been generally subjoined, for the sake of those readers who labour under the disadvantage of having been born on the south side of the Tweed." The glossary is very good as far as it goes, but, like most glossaries we have ever come across, omits some words which the average general reader cannot under- stand ; while including others with whose meaning he is quite familiar. Thus we find braird, yellow-yite, flasterin, clegs, soop the floor or ripe the ribs, of each a Thurm, bate the girdle, partail, stance, rumblede- thumps in the text, unexplained by footnote or glossary ; yet surely most of those who labour under the disadvantage of having been born on the south side of the Tweed, would be far more puzzled by them than by such glossary terms as a', aboon, ae, aim, alane, aneath, auld ; would indeed be as "catawamp- 394 CRITICAL STUDIES tuously chawed up " by them as was the Opium Eater, who had been claiming mastery of the Scottish dialects, by the Shepherd's, " What's a gcnvpen of glaur ? " and the lucid interpretation, "It's just twa neif-fifs o' darts" [two fistfuls of mud]. It would have been well, also, had Mr. Skelton, like Ferrier, noted the dates at which the several dialogues appeared ; and we think he had better have given, as did Ferrier, some of the best of the songs, with the airs, even although not by Wilson, merely naming the author. For the rest, we have nothing but praise for the manner in which he has accomplished the task he set himself. In several recent literary biographies we have re- marked that a letter from Carlyle, or anything concern- ing him personally, is about the most interesting piece in the work. In the " Memoir of Wilson," II. 140-151, Carlyle appears but once, in a letter, not important but characteristic, from Craigenputtock, December, 1829, reminding the Professor of his promise of a Christmas visit : " Come, then, if you would do us a high favour^ that warm hearts may welcome in the cold New Year, and the voice of poetry and philosophy, numeris lege solutis, may for once be heard in these deserts, where, since Noah's deluge, little but the whirring of heath-cocks and the lowing of oxen has broken the stillness. You shall have a warm fire, and a warm welcome ; and we will talk in all dialects, concerning all things, climb to hill-tops, and see certain of the kingdoms of this world ; and at night gather round a clear hearth, and forget that winter and the devil are so busy in our planet. There are seasons when one seems as if emancipated from JOHN WILSON 395 the 'prison called life,' as if its bolts were broken, and the Russian ice-palace were changed into an open sunny Tempe, and man might love his brother without fraud or fear ! A few such hours are scattered over our existence, otherwise it were too hard, and would make us too hard." Further on he says : " My wife sends you her kindest regards, and still hopes against hope that she shall wear her Goethe brooch this Christmas, a thing only done when there is a man of genius in the company." So much for the lonely scholar nourishing his mighty heart in soli- tude, and already brooding over " Sartor Resartus " and the " History of the French Revolution." The letter ends with a few words touching Wilson : " I must break off, for there is an Oxonian gigman coming to visit me in an hour, and I have many things to do. I heard him say the other night that in literary Scotland there was not one such other man as ! a thing in which, if would do himself any justice, I cordially agree." We cannot but think that Carlyle was then mistaken in his estimate of Wilson, who in our opinion did himself full justice that is, all the justice of which his nature was capable. There are men forced by circumstances to hurry their work, or to labour on uncongenial subjects, who could undoubtedly write much better if they had ample time and subjects of their own choice. But the case of Wilson was not as theirs. He always wrote on whatever subjects he preferred, and he had plenty of leisure for writing, rewriting, correcting, condens- ing ; but he was lacking in the artistic impulse and instinct to elaborate and study and perfect. His poems and tales, to which he gave more care, are 396 CRITICAL STUDIES not stronger but weaker than his headlong " Nodes." His nature and genius were not profound and intense, but exuberant and expansive. His pathos and humour alike, though natural and genuine, are not deep ; are easily stirred and much too frothy. A hearty laugh is echoed and re-echoed again and again, till it be- comes a wearisome, hollow monotony ; page after page is pickled in the diluted brine of a single not very salt tear. The humour, in especial, is composed of the simplest and commonest ingredients boisterous animal spirits and boundless exaggeration. Turn over the leaves of his works, and you see at a glance, by the mere multitude of the dashes^ that you have to do with a prolix and slap-dash rhapsodist, not with a writer working studiously under laws of austere self-restraint. In his precipitant outpourings, the dregs, the foam, and the good liquor gush together in turbid redundance. Yet when criticism and hyper- criticism have said their worst, we feel that this condensed "Comedy of the Noctes" is and will long continue a right wholesome as well as enjoyable book, particularly for the young. Robust animal spirits are catching and inspiring in this weary, moiling world, and we willingly ignore the defaults of their joyous and joy-giving possessors. The book is manly throughout ; full of sympathy with Nature and human nature ; contemptuous of all cant and priggishness, reverent to enthusiasm in the presence of lofty genius and virtue; inciting to activity, boldness and en- durance, to the freest bodily as well as mental and moral culture. The Gargantuan eating and drinking (not all unaccompanied by smoking) are most jolly, for there is a hearty natural poetry in much of the JOHN WILSON 397 fervid festal expatiation ; and omnivorous eucrasy is infinitely to be preferred to the sentimental languish- ment of dyspeptic queasiness. Finally, the rich and racy Doric of the Shepherd adds wonderfully to the effectiveness of the whole; and really, as Ferrier urged, gives it a monumental significance. Nor do we think the less of Wilson because his life was superior to his writings, we who have been pained and disappointed in learning how many very con- siderable authors were very inconsiderable men. OUR brief notice of Wilson and the " Noctes " may be fitly followed by some account of the original of the leading character in those exuberant dialogues. Christopher North himself intended and engaged to write a Memoir of his dear Shepherd, who owed much to him and to whom he also owed much ; and this Memoir was even announced as accompanying a certain edition of Hogg's Poems, but it never got written. The Rev. Thomas Thomson tells us that his " Life of the Ettrick Shepherd " has been com- posed " partly from communications with his family, partly from oral intimations of the few friends who still survive, and partly from his own reminiscences which he appended to several of his publications, and * " The Works of the Ettrick Shepherd. Anew Edition; with a Memoir of the Author, by the Rev. Thomas Thomson [and Hogg's Autobiography and Reminiscences and Illustrative Engrav- ings]." Two vols. Blackie and Son; London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. 1865-66 "The Jacobite Relics of Scotland; being the Songs, Airs, and Legends of the Adherents to the House of Stuart." Collected and illustrated by James Hogg. Reprinted from the Original Edition. First and Second Series. Two vols. Paisley : Alex. Gardner. 39 8 JAMES HOGG 399 which are now given in their collected form at the end of this volume, as his Autobiography." They had better have come immediately after or before the Life, and the last partly should be mainly, Mr. Thomson having little to add save by way of dis- quisition and amplification. Fortunately the real Shepherd is pretty fully pictured to us in his own reminiscences and other writings, whose self-por- traiture agrees very well with the various casual sketches by his contemporaries, for he was genuine and simple to the core, and delightfully outspoken and by help of these we can discern that there is a good deal of the actual man in the stage-presentation of the "Noctes." Thus he prefaces his fragmentary Autobiography: "I like to write about myself; in fact there are few things which I like better ; it is so delightful to call up old reminiscences. Often have I been laughed at, for what an Edinburgh editor styles my good-natured egotism, which is sometimes anything but that; and I am aware that I shall be laughed at again. But I care not. ... I shall re- late with the same frankness as formerly ; and in all, relating either to others or myself, speak fearlessly and unreservedly out." And he keeps his word. He tells us that he was the second of four sons by the same father and mother, Robert Hogg, and Margaret Laidlaw, and was born the 25th January, 1772. The parish register, however, records his baptism on the gth December, 1770, and his birth may have taken place some considerable time before. He himself was decided as to the day and month, it being the anniversary of the birth of Burns ; and not less decided as to the year, if we may trust a 4OO CRITICAL STUDIES charmingly characteristic passage in his reminiscences of Scott, who, as we know, was born August 15, 1771: " There are not above five people in the world who, I think, know Sir Walter better, or under- stand his character better than I do : and if I outlive him, which is likely, as I am five months and ten days younger, I shall draw a mental portrait of him, the likeness of which to the original shall not be disputed." He did outlive Scott, just three years and two months (let us be as precise as himself), dying November 21, 1835 (in his sixty-fourth year, says Mr. Thomson, after correcting Hogg's birth- date!); and in 1834 he published the "Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott," wherein he exclaims, with honest and reverent enthusiasm : " Is it not a proud boast for an old shepherd, that for thirty years he could call this man 'friend,' and associate with him every day and hour that he chose ? Yes, it is my proudest boast. Sir Walter sought me out in the wilderness and attached him- self to me before I had ever seen him, and although I took cross fits with him, his interest in me never subsided for one day or one moment." As we shall find when we get farther on. He was born in a lowly cottage at Ettrickhall, near the church and school, his father being a shepherd. No Southron swinish associations defiled the family name, which was rather exceedingly appropriate, hog, or hogg, in their venacular meaning, a year-old sheep ; and they were indeed of right good Border descent, claiming from Haug of Norway, a valiant viking and reiver, whose successors were the Hoggs of Fauldshope, a farm about five miles from Selkirk, JAMES HOGG 4