THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES h UNIVERSITY OF r STATE NORilAL SCHOOL, ItOS AflOBUES, CAU. AULD LANG SYNE •'>^yx^> v^ ,'^^f^^/, . ;/^<9Vv>'W^>y-- /■ ^/#^x /^^;/4^ AULD LANG SYNE BY The Rt. Hon. Professor F. MAX MULLER AUTHOR OF THE "SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE," ETC. WITH A PORTRAIT New York CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1899 Copyright, 1898, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS TIIOW DIRECTORY MINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMFANT NEW YOBK ?J Si r, / PREFACE What are you to do when you are sent away by your doctor for three or four weeks of perfect rest? You are made to promise that you will lie perfectly fallow, take no books and allow no proofsheets to reach you, A very eminent German professor, the late Dr. Neander, the famous Church historian, solved the difficulty in his own way. He had faithfully promised his physician that he would take no books with him to Karlsbad, but had at last, as a great favour, obtained permission to take at least one work with him on his journey. On the morning of his departure the doctor wished to say good-bye to his patient, and calling at his door saw a cart laden with heavy folios. " But, dear pro- fessor," he said, with considerable surprise and displeasure, "you had promised me to take no books with you." " Yes, doctor," the professor re- plied, " but you allowed me one work, so I thought I might take the Fathers with me to Karlsbad." I might have done the same, if I had taken the " Kig Veda " only, or the Sacred Books of the East with vi Preface me, but my conscience would not allow it, so that I found myself in small lodgings at an English wa- tering place with nothing to do all day long but to answer a number of accumulated letters and to read The Times, which always follows me. What was I to do ? Doctors ought to know that to a man accustomed to work enforced rest is quite as irritating and depressing as travaux forces. In self-defence I at last hit on a very simple expedient. I began to write what could be written without a single book, and taking paper, pen and ink — these I had never forsworn — I jotted down some recol- lections of former years. The fancy took me, and I said with Goethe : — Ihr naht eucla wieder, schwankende Gestalten — and after a day or two I was so absorbed in my work, if work it could be called, that I said again with Goethe : — Ihr drangt eucli zu ! Nun gnt, so mogt ihr walten. . . . Of course I had to leave many a gap in my sketch of Auld Lang Syne. Dates, even names, would now and then leave me in the lurch, and as I had no means of verifying anything, I had to wait till I was settled again among my books and letters and papers at home. But though I corrected some glaring anachronisms and some mistaken names, I Preface vii could leave my MS. very mucli as it had been writ- ten down in my temporary exile, and I can there- fore vouch for its truth so far that it is an exact copy of the negative developed by long exposure in my memory. Whether it is accm'ate, who can tell ? I know from sad experience that my mem- ory is no longer what it was. All I can say is that the positive copy here published is as true and as ex- act as the rays of the evening sun of life, falling on the negative in my memory, could make it. Though I have suppressed whatever could possibly have given ojBfence to any sensible person, however sen- sitive, I have not retouched the pictures of my friends or acquaintances, nor have I tried, as is now so much the fashion, to take out all the lines and wrinkles so that nothing remains but the washed-out faces of angels. What I give here is but a small portion of the panorama of life that has passed before my eyes. Of myself there is but little, for the spectator or interpreter in a panorama should remain unseen and in the dark. It is a pleasure to him, though often a sad pleasure, to see once more what he has seen before, to live the old time over again, to look once more at dear faces, once so full of love and life, to feel the touch of a vanished hand, and hear a voice that is still. As we grow old it is our fate to lose our friends ; Vlll Preface but the friends we have lost are often nearer to us than those who remain. "Will they never be quite near to us again? Stars meet stars after thou- sands of years, and are we not of more value than many a star ? F. MAX MtJLLEH. STATE NORMAL SCHOiiL, CONTENTS FAQB Musical Recollections 1 LrrEEARY Recollections — 1 40 n 86 HI ,120 IV 164 Recollections of Royalties — 1 205 ■LI* • • • . c a • o . 245 Beggabs ...,,,... 289 Index . . , 321 AULD LANG SYNE MUSICAL RECOLLECTIONS The man that has no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils : The motions of his spirit are dull as night. And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Thus -wrote Shakespeare; but witli all due re- spect for the immortal bard, he was wrong for once. Did not my dear friend, Arthur Stanley, hate music, and was he not to be trusted ? Were his affections dark as Erebus ? True it is, music gives us a new life, and to be without that life is the same loss as to be blind, and not to know the infinite blue of the sky, the varied verdure of the trees, or the silver sparkle of the sea. Music is the language of the soul, but it defies interpretation. It means something, but that something belongs not to this world of sense and logic, but to another world, quite real, though 1 2 Auld Lang Syne beyond all definition. How different music is from all other arts ! They all have something to imitate which is brought to us by the senses. But what does music imitate? Not the notes of the lark, nor the roar of the sea ; they cannot be imitated, and if they are, it is but a caricature. The melo- dies of Schubert were chosen, not from the Prater, but from another w^orld. For educational purposes music is invaluable. It softens the young barbarian, it makes him use his fijigers deftly, it lifts him up, it brings him messages from another world, it makes him feel the charm of harmony and beauty. There is no doubt an eternal harmony that pervades every kind of music, and there are the endless varieties of music, some so strange that they seem hardly to deserve to be called a gift of the Muses. There is in music something immortal and something mor- tal. There is even habit in music ; for the music that delights us sounds often hideous to unedu- cated ears. Indian music is thoroughly scientific, based on mathematics, and handed down to the present age after many centuries of growth. But when we hear it for the first time, it seems mere noise, without melody, without harmony, without rhythm. The Maoris have their own music too, but send a New Zealander to hear a long symphony of Beet- Musical Recollections 3 hoven, and, if he can, he will certainly run away long before the finale. In a lesser degree it is the same with us. Beet- hoven's compositions were at first considered wild and lawless. Those who admired Mozart and Haydn could not endure him. Afterwards the world was educated up to his Ninth Symphony, but some of his later sonatas for pianoforte and violin were played by Mendelssohn and David in my hearing, and they both shrugged their shoul- ders, and thought that the old man had been no longer quite himself when he wrote them. We have grown into them, or up to them, and now many a young man is able to enjoy them, and to enjoy them honestly. I remember the time when Schu- mann's songs were published at Leipzig, and the very same songs which now delight us were then by the best judges called curious, strange, interest- ing, promising, but no more. Yes, there is habit in music, and we are constantly passing through a musical education ; nay, the time comes when our education seems finished, and we can learn and take in no more. I have passed through a long school. I began with Haydn, Mozart, and Beet- hoven, lived on with Mendelssohn, rose to Schu- mann, and reached even Brahms; but I could never get beyond, I could never learn to enjoy Wagner except now and then in one of his lucid 4 Auld Lang Syne intervals. No doubt this is my fault and my loss, but surely the vulgus profanum also has its rights and may protest against being tired instead of be- ing refreshed and invigorated by music. Would Mendelssohn have admired Wagner? Would Beet- hoven have listened to his music, would Bach have tolerated it ? Yet these were musicians too, though perhaps not sufficiently educated. To be honest, a great deal of Wagner's music seems tire- some to me, and I do not see why it should ever end. My musical education began very early, so early that I cannot remember ever passing through any drudgery. As long as I remember I could play, and I was destined to become a musician, till I went to the University, and Mendelssohn advised me to keep to Greek and Latin. I was bom and brought up in Dessau, a small German town in an oasis of oak-trees where the Elbe and the Mulde meet, a town then overflowing with music. Such towns exist no longer. When I went to school at Dessau, this small capital of the small Duchy of Anlialt - Dessau counted, I believe, not more than ten or twelve thousand inhabitants. Everybody knew every- body. As a boy I knew not only the notables of Dessau, I knew the shops and the shopmen, the servants, the day-labourers {Tagelohner) who Musical Recollections 5" sawed and split wood in the street, every old woman that sold apples, every beggar that asked for a Pfennig — mark, not a penny, but the tenth part of a penny. It was a curious town, with one long street running through it, the Cavalierstrasse, very broad, with pavements on each side. But the street had to be weeded from time to time, there being too little traffic to prevent the grass from growing up between the chinks of the stones. The houses had generally one storey only ; those of two or three storeys were mostly buildings erected by the Duke for his friends and his higher officials. Many houses were mere cottages, consisting of a ground floor and a high roof. Almost every house had a small mysterious looking-glass fastened out- side the window in which the dwellers within could watch and discuss an approaching visitor long be- fore he or she came within speaking distance. It was the fashion not only to white-wash the plastered walls of houses, but to green- wash, or to blue-wash, or to pink-wash them. All this is changed now ; few people remember the old streets, with distant lamps swinging across to make darkness more vis- ible at night, and with long waterspouts frowning down on the pavement like real gurgoyles, and not frowning only, but during a thunderstorm pouring down buckets of water on the large red and green umbrellas of the passers-by. 6 Auld Lang Syne Dessau was then a very poor town, but a Iceta paupertas reigned in it; everybody knew how much everybody else possessed or earned, and no one was expected to spend more than was justi- fied by his position. We can hardly understand now with how little people then managed, not only to live, but thoroughly to enjoy the highest pleasures of life. My grandfather, who was the Duke's Prime Minister, received, I believe, no more than two thousand thalers (<£300) salary, though there may have been additional allowances for rent, carriages and horses. But there was a curious mixture of simplicity of life and enjoy- ments of the highest kind. I remember in my grandfather's house delightful social gatherings, musical and literary performances. I remember Mozart's " Don Juan," Beethoven's " Fidelio " be- ing performed there, the latest works of Goethe and Jean Paul being read and appreciated with a cup of tea or a glass of wine. A more select cir- cle enjoyed their Shakespeare, their Dante, their Calderon in English, Italian, and Spanish. I re- member my grandfather (the son of Basedow, the reformer of national education in Germany) in his Court uniform, driving to Court in his carriage and pair, servants in full livery, everybody making room for him and bowing deep on each side, hat in hand. And when he came back from Court, V Musical Recollections 7 was it not a real holiday for liis grandchildren to turn the pockets of his uniform inside out — the pockets were lined on purpose with soft leather — to see what bonbons and cakes he had brought home for us from Tafel — i.e., dinner at Court ? Al- most my first recollections come from my grand- father's house. My mother, after the very early death of my father, who died before I was four years old, had gone back to live at her father's house. This was a very common arrangement then. Two or three generations often lived to- gether in the same house, and among the better families the house was looked upon as a common home, descending from father to son and grand- son. There was a large garden stretching out be- hind the house, which was our playground. Our neighbours' gardens were separated on each side from our own by a low hedge only. Next door to us was the house of a soap and candle maker, and I still remember the disagreeable smells on the day when soap was boiled and candles were drawn. People talked across the garden hedge to their neighbours, and all the affairs of the town were discussed there. Our neighbour on the right side took lodgers, and one of them was a young man who had come to Dessau to study music under F. Schneider, and at the same time to give music lessons. He had been a theological student, but 8 Auld Lang Syne had umgesattelt (changed saddles), and now tried to support himself as best he could at Dessau. He often talked to me across the garden hedge (I was only five years old). One day he lifted me across into his own garden, and asked whether I would like to learn the pianoforte. I, of course, said yes, and he then bade me promise to come to him every day for half an hour, but not to say a word to my mother or to anybody else. The bar- gain was struck; I kept my music quite secret, till, after about half a year or so, I sat down at my grandfather's pianoforte, and to the amazement of everybody played some easy pieces of Mozart or Diabelli. Of course the young theological student — his name was Kahle — was engaged at once to be my music-master. He charged five Groschen (six- pence) for a lesson, and I made very rapid prog- ress. My mother was very musical ; she had a splendid alto voice, and was often invited to sing the solos at the great musical festivals in Germany. My aunts, too, sang very well, and as a little boy I could sing all the songs which they sang, and well remember being put on a table to sing Handel's great arias, " Schnell wie des Blitzes Strahl," etc. Dessau at that time was steeped in music. The reigning Duke kept a first-rate orchestra^ and at the head of it was Friedrich Schneider, a well-known composer of the old school, a cantor, Musical Recollections 9 like Bach, but also Ducal Capellmeister, and the head of what was then called a musical school, now a conservatorium. This school was fre- quented by students from all parts of Germany, and it has produced some excellent musicians and well-known composers. There were public con- certs given regularly every fortnight at a very low charge, and there were rehearsals twice a week, at which a few people only were allowed to be pres- ent. I w^as one of the few, and every Tuesday and Friday after school I sat there for an hour or two hearing the very best music excellently per- formed, and being deeply impressed, nay, awed by old Schneider, who stormed at the players when a single note went wrong, and used language which I was not allowed to repeat. He was a character. A small, square man, with greyish hair flowing down to his shoulders, his black eyes full of fire, and sometimes of fm*y. He was very fond of his glass of wine, which had given to his whole face, and particularly to his nose, a glowing ruddy com- plexion. He brooked no opposition from any- body, and he was the terror of all the young mu- sicians who showed themselves at Dessau. His orchestra had such a reputation at that time that some of the greatest celebrities considered it an honour either to have their compositions per- formed or to be allowed to sing or play at his con- lo Auld Lang Syne certs. I remember Paganini, Sonntag, Spolir, Mendelssohn (then quite a young man), and many more passing through their ordeal at Dessau. Mendelssohn's visit left a deep impression on my mind. I was still a mere child, he a very young man, and, as I thought, with the head of an angel. Mendelssohn's was always a handsome face, but later in life the sharpness of his features betrayed his Jewish blood. He excelled as an or- gan player, and while at Dessau he plaj-ed on the organ in the Grosse Kirche, chiefly extempore. I was standing by him, when he took me on his knees and asked me to play a choral while he played the pedal. I see it all now as if it had been yesterday, and I felt convinced at that time that I too {ancJi io) would be a musician. Was not Weber, Karl Maria von Weber, my godfather, and had he not given me my surname of Max? My father and mother had been staying with Weber at Dresden, and my father had undertaken to write the text for a new opera, which was nev- er finished. Weber was then writing his "Frei schiitz," and my mother has often described to me how he would walk about the whole day in his room composing, not before the pianoforte, but with a small guitar, and how she heard every mel- ody gradually emerging from the twang of his little instrument. Both his wife and my mother were Musical Recollections ii expecting their confinement, and it was arranged that if the children should be boys, they should be called Max, if girls, Agathe. We were both boys, and Weber's son, Max Maria von Weber, be- came a distinguished traveller, a most charming writer, and at last an influential financier in the Austrian service. He stayed with me several times at Oxford, and we exchanged notes about our re- spective fathers. He published a life of his father, which has, I believe, been translated into English. Old Schneider was kind to young Mendels- sohn, whenever he came to Dessau ; they were both ardent admirers of Handel and Bach, but the more modern and romantic compositions of the young composer did not quite meet the ap- proval of the severe Maestro. Schneider was ter- ribly outspoken, and apt to lose his temper and be- come violent. He once had a most painful scene with Madame Sonntag, or rather with Count- ess Something, as she was then. First of all, he thought very little of any composer whose name ended in ini or ante, and he would but seldom yield to the Duke and Duchess when chey wished now and then to have some of Rossini's or Mer- cadante's music performed by their own orchestra. But when the Italian Countess ventured to speak to his orchestra and to ask them for a ritardando of her own, he flourished his baton and broke out : 12 Auld Lang Syne "Madame," he said, "you may siDg as you like, but I look after of my orchestra," and there was an end of it. Life went on, and what time I could spare from school work, perhaps too much, was given to mu- sic. There was not an air or a symphony of Beethoven's which at that time I could not have hummed from beginning to end, and even now I often detect myself humming, " Ich bin's, du bist's, O himmlisches Entziicken ! " Who does not know that duet between Fidelio and Florestan ? Much of that humming repertorio has remained with me for life, though I cannot always tell now where an Allegro or Adagio comes from. It comes without being called, I cannot drive it away when I want to be quiet. I hum the bass, I whistle the pic- colo, I draw out the notes from the violoncello, I blow the trumpet, in fact I often feel like Queen Bess, "And she shall have music wherever she goes." "When I was about eleven or twelve, old Schnei- der allowed me to play with accompaniment of the full orchestra some concertos of Mozart, etc. This was a great event in my quiet life, and every- thing looked as if music was to be my profession. When afterwards I went to the Nicolai School at Leipzig, the school at which Leibniz (not Leib- nitz) had been educated, I lived again in the Musical Recollections 13 musical house of Professor Carus. His wife sang sweetly ; his son, my old friend, Professor V. Carus, was an excellent violin player, a pupil of David. I myself began to play the violoncello, but without much success, and I joined a chorus under Mendelssohn, who was then director of the famous Gewandhaus Concerts at Leipzig. We often had to sing anything he had composed and wished to hear before performing it in public. As a friend of my father and my mother, Men- delssohn was always most charming to me, but he did not encourage my idea of a musical career. The fact was I had not time to serve two masters. I could not practise and study music as it ought to be practised and studied without neglecting Greek and Latin, and, as life became more serious, my mind was more and more drawn to the thoughts of antiquity, to Homer and Cicero, and away from the delights of music. I heard excellent music at tlie house of Professor Carus. I still have an old slip of paper on which Mendelssohn, Liszt, David, Kalliwoda and Hiller wrote their names for me one evening after they had been playing quartettes at Professor Carus's house. (See page 14.) I even ventured while at Leipzig to play some- times at public concerts in the neighbourhood. But when I began to look forward to what I should make of my life, and how I should carve out for H Auld Lang Syne myself a useful career, I saw that music was out of the question. There was another consideration which determined my choice. There was much deafness in my family. My mother became deaf C^ ^Al^^^^T^oc:^ when she was still quite young, my grandmother, several of my uncles and cousins, all had lost their hearing, and this induced me, young as I was, to choose a profession which would be possible even if I should share the same misfortune. I could not think of medicine, or law, or the Church — so I said to myself, keep to Greek and Latin, try to be Musical Recollections 15 a scholar. A professorsliip was my highest ambi- tion, but I thought that even if that should fail, I might find a quiet Benedictine cell somewhere, and support myself by my pen. So music had to step into the background, not altogether, but so as not to interfere with more serious work. No, music, though somewhat slighted, has remained a true and faithful friend to me through life. I have en- joyed music until very late in life when I began to feel satisfied, and would much rather hum a sym- phony to myself than hear it played, often not half so well as I remembered it at Dessau, at the Ge- wandhaus Concerts at Leipzig, and at the mar- vellous Conservatoire Concerts in Paris. These ^ere the perfection of instrumental music. Never has any other performance come near them. It was difficult to get a ticket. People used to form queue and stand the whole night in order to secure the next morning an abonnement for the season. To buy a ticket was beyond my means, for when I was at Paris I had entirely to support myself. But a friend of mine took me to the Conserva- toire, and I often sat in the corridor without see- ing the orchestra, listening as if to organ music. It was perfect. Every instrument of the orchestra was first-rate — the players had mostly passed through the same school, the conductor was an old man with a German name which I forget. Was it J 6 Auld Lang Syne Habeneck? He reminded me of Schneider, and certainly his orchestra marched like a regiment of soldiers. And besides being a constant source of the highest enjoyment to me, music has often helped me in my pilgrimage through life. Both in Paris and later on in London, many a house was open to me which would have remained closed to a mere scholar. Musicians also always took an interest in the son of the poet, Wilhelm Miiller, whose songs had been set to music, not only by Schubert, but by many other popular composers. I well remem- ber, Avhen telling Jenny Lind whose son I was, how she held up her hands and said: "What? the son of the poet of the * Miillerlieder ' ! Now sit down," she said, " and let me sing you the * Schone Miillerin.' " And she began to sing, and sang all the principal songs of that sad idyll, just moving her head and hands a little, but really act- ing the whole story as no actress on the stage could have acted it. It was a perfect tragedy, and it has remained with me for life. Stockhausen also (who, as I saw too late, has just been celebrating his seventieth birthday) once sang the "Winter- reise " to me in the same way, but as I had to ac- company him I had only half the pleasure, though even that was great. How many memories crowd in upon me ! I Musical Recollections 17 heard Liszt when I was still at scliool at Leipzig. It was liis first entry into Germany, and he came like a triumpliator. He was young, theatrical, and teiTibly attractive, as ladies, young and old, used to say. His style of playing was then something quite new — now every player lets off the same fireworks. The musical critics who then ruled supreme at Leipzig were somewhat coy and re- served, and I remember taking a criticism to the editor of the Leipziger Tagehlatt which the writer did not wish to sign with his own name. Men- delssohn only, with his well-tempered heart, re- ceived him with open arms. He gave a matinee musicale at his house, all the best-known musicians of the place being present. I remember, though vaguely, David, Kalliwoda, Hiller ; I doubt whether Schumann and Clara Wieck were pres- ent. Well, Liszt appeared in his Hungarian cos- tume, wild and magnificent. He told Mendelssohn that he had written something special for him. He sat down, and swaying right and left on his music-stool, played first a Hungarian melody, and then three or four variations, one more incredible than the other. We stood amazed, and after everybody had paid his compliments to the hero of the day, some of Mendelssohn's friends gathered round him, and said: "Ah, Felix, now we can pack up ('jetzt 2 l8 Auld Lang Syne konnen wir einpacken '). No one can do that ; it is over with us ! " Mendelssohn smiled ; and when Liszt came up to him asking him to play something in turn, he laughed and said that he never played now ; and this, to a certain extent, was true. He did not give much time to practis- ing then, but worked chiefly at composing and directing his concerts. However, Liszt would take no refusal, and so at last little Mendelssohn, with his own charming playfulness, said : " Well, I'll play, but you must promise me not to be angry." And what did he play? He sat down and played first of all Liszt's Hungarian Melody, and then one variation after another, so that no one but Liszt himself could have told the differ- ence. We all trembled lest Liszt should be of- fended, for Mendelssohn could not keep himself from slightly imitating Liszt's movements and raptures. However, Mendelssohn managed never to ofi'end man, woman, or child. Liszt laughed and applauded, and admitted that no one, not he himself, could have performed such a bravura. Many years after I saw Liszt once more, at the last visit he paid to London. He came to the Lyceum to see Irving and Ellen Terry act in "Faust." The whole theatre rose when the old, bent Maestro appeared in the dress circle. When the play was over, I received an invitation from Musical Recollections 19 Mr., now Sir Henry, Irving to join a supper party in lionour of Liszt. I could not resist, though I was staying with friends in London and had no latch-key. It was a brilliant affair. Booms had been fitted up on purpose with old armour, splendid pictures, gorgeous curtains. We sat down, about thirty people ; I knew hardly any- body, though they were all known to fame, and not to know them was to profess oneself unknown. However, I was placed next to Liszt, and I re- minded him of those early Leipzig days. He was not in good spirits ; he would not speak English, though Ellen Terry sat on his right side, and, as she would not speak German or French, I had to interpret as well as I could, and it was not always easy. At last Miss Ellen Terry turned to me and said : " Tell Liszt that I can speak German," and when he turned to listen, she said in her girlish, bell-like voice : " Lieber Liszt, ich liebe Dich." I hope I am not betraying secrets; anyhow, as I have been indiscreet once, I may as well say what happened to me afterwards. It was nearly 3 a.m. Avhen I reached my friend's house. With great difficulty I was able to rouse a servant to let me in, and when the next morning I was asked where I had been, great was the dismay when I said that I had had supper at the Lyceum. Liszt had promised to come to stay with me at Oxford, but 20 Auld Lang Syne the day when T expected him, the following note arrived from Amsterdam, probably one of the last he ever wrote : — <2^t— / ^/ y, ^^ e^AUy^ . A few weeks after, I saw his death announced in the papers. And thus Liszt left the stage. I saw his en- Musical Recollections 21 trance and his exit, and when I asked myself, What has he left behind ? I could only think of the new school of brilliant executionists of which he may truly be called the founder and life-long apostle. I confess that, though I feel dazzled at the impossibilities which he and his pupils per- form with their ten fingers, I often sigh for an Alle- gro or an Andante by Haydn and Mozart as they were played in my young days with simplicity and purity on very imperfect instruments. Players now seem to think of themselves only, not of the musical poets whose works they are to render. Mendelssohn, Clara Wieck (Madame Schumann) even Moscheles and Hummel acted as faithful interpreters. On listening to them, exquisite as theii execution was, one thought far more of what they played than how they played. That time is gone, and no one has now, or will ever have again, the courage to bring it back. If one wants to enjoy a sonata of Haydn one has to play it oneself or hum it, because the old fingers will not do their work any longer. And Mendelssohn also, whom I had known as a young man, said good-bye to me for the last time in London. It was after the first performance of his "Elijah " in 1847. He too said he would come again next year, and then came the news of his sudden death. I saw him last at Bunsen's house, 22 Auld Lang Syne where he played at a matinee musicale always ready to please and oblige his friends, always amiable and charming, even under great provocation. Only once I remember seeing him almost beside himself with anger, and well he might be. He possessed a most valuable album, with letters, poems, pictures, compositions of the most illustrious men of the age, such as Goethe and others. The binding had somewhat suffered, so it was sent to be mended, and I was present when it came back. It was at his sister's house, Fanny Hensel's, at Berlin. Mendelssohn opened the album, jumped up and screamed. The binder had cut off the blue skies and tree-tops of all the Italian sketches, and the signatures of most of the poems and letters. This was too much for Felix, he was for once infelix. Still, hap23y and serene as his life certainly was, for he had everything a man of his talents could desire, there were bitter drops in it of which the world knew little, and need not know anything now. There are things we know, important things which the world would be glad to know. But we bury them ; they are to be as if they had never been, like letters that are reduced to ashes and can never be produced again by frionds or enemies. He was devoted to his sister Fanny, who was married to Hensel the painter, an intimate friend of my father. When I was a student at Berlin, I Musical Recollections 23 was mucli in their liouse in the Leipziger Strasse, and heard many a private concert given in the large room looking out on the garden. Mendels- sohn played almost every instrument in the or- chestra, and had generally to play the instrument which he was supposed to play worst. When he played the pianoforte, he was handicapped by be- ing made to play with his arms crossed. All the celebrities of Berlin (and Berlin was then rich in celebrities) were present at those musical gather- ings, and Mendelssohn was the life of the whole. He was never quiet for a moment, moving from chair to chair and conversing with eveiybody. Boeckh, the great Greek scholar, lived in the same house, and Mendelssohn had received so good a classical education that he could hold his own when discussing with the old master the cho- ruses of the Antigone. Mendelssohn was, in fact, a man teres et rotundus. He was at home in clas- sical literature, he spoke French and English, he was an exquisite draughtsman, and had seen the greatest works of the greatest painters, ancient and modern. His father, a rich banker in Berlin, had done all he could for the education of his children. He was the son of Mendelssohn the philosopher, and when his son Felix had become known to fame, he used to say with his slightly Jewish accent : " When I was young I was called Musical Recollections 25 the son of the great Mendelssohn ; now that I am old I am called the father of the great Mendels- sohn ; then, what am I ? " Well, he found the wherewithal that enabled his son, and his other children too, to become what they were, all worthy of their great grandfather, all worthy of the name of Mendelssohn. Felix was attached to both his sisters, Fanny and Kebekah (Dirichlet), but he was more partic- ularly devoted to Fanny (Hensel). They had been educated together. She knew Greek and Latin like her brother, she played perfectly, and com- posed so well that her brother published several of her compositions under his own name. They were one spirit and one soul, and at that time ladies still shrank from publicity. Everybody knew which songs were hers (I remember, for in- stance, " Schoner und Schdner schmlickt sich die Flur "), and it was only later in life that she began to publish under her own name. I give the begin- ning of a song which she wrote for my mother. The words are my father's, the little vignette was drawn by her husband, who was an eminent artist at Berlin. The struggles which many, if not most men of genius, more particularly musicians, have had to pass through were unknown to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Some people go so far as to say that '' 26 Auld Lang Syne they miss tlie traces of tliose straggles in his char- acter and in his music. And yet those who knew him best know that his soul, too, knew its own bit- terness. His happiest years were no doubt spent at Leipzig, where I saw much of him while I was at school and at the University. He was loved and admired by everybody ; he was undisputed master in the realm of music. He was at first unmarried, and many were the rumours as to who should be his bride. News had reached his friends that his heart had been won by a young lady at Frankfurt ; but nobody, not even his most intimate friends, knew for certain. However, one evening he had just returned from Frankfurt, and had to conduct one of the Gewandhaus Concerts. The last piece was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I had sung in the chorus, and found myself on the orchestra when the concert was over, the room nearly empty, except his personal friends, who surrounded him and teased him about his approaching engagement. His beaming face betrayed him, but he would say nothing to anybody, till at last he sat down and extemporised on the pianoforte. And what was the theme of his fantasy ? It was the passage of the chorus, " Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, mische seinen Jubel ein." That was his confession to his friends, and then we all knew. And she was in- deed " ein holdes Weib " when she arrived at Leip- Musical Recollections 27 zig. One thing only she lacked — she could not express all she felt. She was soon called the " Goddess of Silence " by the side of her devoted husband, who never could be silent, but was always bubbling over like champagne in a small glass. They were a devoted couple, not a whisper was ever heard about either of them, though Mendels- sohn had many friends, the greatest of all being his sister Fanny. With her he could speak and ex- change whatever was uppermost or deepest in his heart. I have heard them extemporise together on the pianoforte, one holding with his little finger the little finger of the other. Her death was the heaviest loss he ever suffered in life. He was so unaccustomed to suffering and distress that he could never recover from this unexpected blow. Nor did he survive her long. She died on the 14th of May, 1847 ; he followed her on the 4th of November of the same year. During most of the time when Mendelssohn cel- ebrated his triumphs as director of the Gewandhaus Concerts, young Kobert Schumann was at Leip- zig, but he was little seen. Mendelssohn, so bright and happy himself, wished to see the whole world around him bright and happy, and was kind to everybody. The idea of jealousy was impossible at that time in Mendelssohn's heart. Neither could Schumann, as a young and rising musician, have 28 Auld Lang Syne thought himself then to be in any sense an equal or rival of Mendelssohn. But there are natures which like to be left alone, or with a very few inti- mate friends only, and which shrink from the too demonstrative happiness of others. It is not envy, it often is modesty ; but in any case it is not pleas- ant. Schumann was conscious of his own strength, but he was still struggling for recognition, and he was also struggling against that adversity of fort- une which seems to decree poverty to be the lot of genius. There was another struggle going on, a struggle which is generally fought out in pri- vate, but which in his case was carried on before the eyes of the world, at least the musical world of Leipzig. He was devoted to a young piano- forte player, Clara Wieck. But her father, a great teacher of music, would not allow the marriage. He had devoted years of his life to the musical education of his daughter, and then, as she was just beginning to earn applause for herself and her master, as well as the pecuniary reward for their combined labours, a young musician, poor, and not yet recognised, wished to carry her off. Par- ents have flinty hearts, and the father said " No." Many a time have I watched young Schumann walking alone in the neighbourhood of Leipzig, being unexpectedly met by a youug lady, both looking not so happy as I thought that under the Musical Recollections 29 circumstances tliey ought. This went on for some time, till at last, as usual, the severe or flinty- hearted father had to give way, and allow a mar- riage which certainly for many years was the reali- sation of the most perfect happiness, till it ended in a terrible tragedy. There was the seed of mad- ness in the genius of Schumann as in that of so many really great men, and in an access of mania he sought and found rest where Ophelia sought and found it. I did not see much of Schumann, nor of Madame Schumann, in later life, though in concerts in Lon- don I often admired her exquisite rendering of her husband's compositions. I only recollect Schu- mann as a young man sitting generally in a corner of the orchestra, and listening to one of his works being performed under Mendelssohn's direction. I remember his very large head, his drooping eyes ; I hardly ever remember a smile on his face. And yet the man must have been satisfied, if not happy, who could write such music as his, who could write, " Wohlauf noch getrunken den funklenden Wein ! " and he lived to see his own creations ad- mired more even than those of Mendelssohn. He lived to see his critics turned into admirers; in fact he educated his public, and gained a place for that thoughtful, wistful, fairy-like music which is peculiarly his own. 30 Auld Lang Syne Many celebrated musicians stayed at Leipzig during Mendelssohn's reign. I remember Mosch- eles, Tlialberg, Sterndale Bennett, Clara Novel- lo, young and fascinating, and many more. An- other friend of Mendelssohn who stayed some time at Leipzig was Ferdinand Hiller. We heard several of his compositions, symphonies and all the rest, performed at the Gewandhaus Concerts under Mendelssohn's direction. In his life there was, perhaps, too little of the dira necessitas that has given birth to so many of the masterpieces of genius. He might, no doubt, have produced much more than he did ; but that he was striving to the very end of his life was proved to me by an inter- esting letter I received from him about a year be- fore his death. His idea was to write a great ora- torio, and he wanted me to supply him with a text. It was a colossal plan, and I confess it seemed to me beyond the power of any musician, nay, of any poet. It was to be a historical drama, repre- senting first of all the great religions of the world, each by itself. We were to have the hymns of the Veda, the Gathas of the Avesta, the Psalms of the Old Testament, the Sermons and Dialogues of Buddha, the trumpet-calls of Mohammed, and, Tastly, the Sermon on the Mount, all of them to- gether forming one mighty symphony in which no theme was lost, yet all became in the end an ac- Musical Recollections 31 companiment of one sweet song of love domina- ting the full cliorus of the ancient religions of the world. It was a grand idea, but was it possible to realise it ? I was ready to help, but before a year was over I received the news of Killer's death, and who is the musician to take his place, always supposing that he could have achieved such a World Oratorio ? It was in the last year of his life that Mendels- sohn paid his last visit to England to conduct his last oratorio, the "Elijah." It had to be per- formed at Exeter Hall, then the best place for sacred music. Most of the musicians, however, were not professionals, and they had only bound themselves to attend a certain number of rehears- als. Excellent as they were in such oratorios as the " Messiah," which they knew by heart, a new oratorio, such as the " Elijah," was too much for them ; and I well remember Mendelssohn, in the afternoon before the performance, declaring he would not conduct. "Oh, these tailors and shoemakers," he said, " they cannot do it, and they will not practise ! I shall not go." However, a message arrived that the Queen and Prince Albert were to be present, so nothing remained but to go. I was present, the place was crowded. Mendelssohn conducted, and now and then made a face, but no one else 32 Auld Lang Syne detected wliat was wrong. It was a great success and a great triumph for Mendelssohn. If he could have heard it performed as it was per- formed at Exeter Hall in later years, when his tailors and shoemakers knew it by heart, he would not have made a face. It was at Bunsen's house, at a maiime musicale, that I saw him last. He took the liveliest inter- est in my work, the edition of the Rig Veda, the Sacred Hymns of the Bralimaus. A great friend of his, Friedrich Rosen, had begun the same work, but had died before the first volume was fin- ished. He was a brother of the wife of Mendels- sohn's great friend, Klingemann, then Hanove- rian Charge d'Affaires in London, a poet many of whose poems were set to music by Mendels- sohn. So Mendelssohn knew all about the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans, and talked very intelli- gently about the Veda. He was, however, sub- jected to a very severe trial of patience soon after. The room was crowded with what is called the best society of London, and Mendelssohn being asked to play, never refused. He played several things, and at last Beethoven's so-called " Moon- light Sonata." All was silence and delight ; no one moved, no one breathed aloud. Suddenly in the middle of the Adagio, a stately dowager sit- ting in the front row was so carried away by the Musical Recollections 33 rliyfclim, ratlicr than by anything else, of Beetho- veu's music, that she began to play with her fan, and accompanied the music by letting it open and shut with each bar. Everybody stared at her, but it took time before she perceived her atrocity, and at last allowed her fan to collapse, Mendelssohn in the meantime kept perfectly quiet, and played on ; but, when he could stand it no longer, he simply repeated the last bar in arpeggios again and again, following the movements of her fan ; and when at last the fan stopped, he went on playing as if nothing had happened. I dai'e say that when the old dowager thanked him for the great treat he had given her, he bowed without moving a muscle of his inspired face. How dif- ferent from another player who, when disturbed by some noise in the audience, got up in a rage and declared that either she or the talker must leave the room. And yet I have no doubt the old lady enjoyed the music in her own way, for there are many ways of enjoying music. I have known people who could not play a single instrument, who could not sing " God save the Queen " to save their life, in eloquent raptures about Mendelssohn, nay, about Beethoven and Bach. I believe they are perfectly honest in their admiration, though how it is done I cannot tell. I began by saying that 3 ' 34 Auld Lang Syne people who have no music in them need not be traitors, and I alluded to my dear friend Stanley. He actually suffered from listening to music, and whenever he could, he walked out of the room where there was music. He never disguised his weakness, he never professed any love or admira- tion for music, and yet Jenny Lind once told me he paid her the highest compliment she had ever received. Stanley was very fond of Jenny Lind, but when she stayed at his father's palace at Nor- wich he always left the room when she sang. One evening Jenny Lind had been singing Handel's " I know that my Eedeemer liveth." Stanley, as usual, had left the room, but he came back after the music was over, and went shyly up to Jenny Lind. " You know," he said, " I dislike music ; I don't know what people mean by admiring it. I am very stupid, tone-deaf, as others are colour- blind. But," he said with some warmth, "to- night, when from a distance I heard you singing that song, I had an inkling of what people mean by music. Something came over me which I had never felt before ; or, yes, I had felt it once be- fore in my life." Jenny Lind was all attention. " Some years ago," he continued, " I was at Vien- na, and one evening there was a tattoo before the palace performed by four hundred drummers. I felt shaken, and to-night while listening to your Musical Recollections 35 singing, the same feeling came over me ; I felt deeply moved." "Dear man," she added, "I know he meant it, and a more honest compliment I never received in all my life." However, unmusical as Stanley's house was, Jenny Lind, or Mrs. Goldschmidt as she was then, often came to stay there. " It is so nice," she said ; "no one talks music, there is not even a pianoforte in the house." This did not last long however. A few days after she said to me : "I hear you have a pianoforte in your rooms at All Souls'. Would you mind my practising a little ? " And practise she did, and delightful it was. She even came to dine in College, and after dinner she said in the most charming way : " Do you think your friends would like me to sing ? " Of course, I could not have asked her to sing, but there was no necessity for asking my friends. In fact, not only my friends listened with delight to her sing- ing, but the whole quadrangle of All Souls' was black with uninvited listeners, and the applause after each song was immense, both inside and out- side the walls of the College. Stanley's feeling about music reminds me of an- other music-hater at Oxford, the late Dr. Gaisford, the famous Dean of Christ Church. It was he who put my name on the books of " The House," a very great honcar to an unknown German scholar 36 Auld Lang Syne on whom the University, at his suggestion, had just conferred the degree of M.A. What the Dean's idea of music was may best be judged from his constantly appointing old scouts or servants who were too old to do their work any longer as bed- makers to be singing men in the Cathedral choir. The Dean's stall was under the organ, and one day in every month, when " The voice of Thy thunder was heard round about, and the light- nings shone upon the ground, and the earth was moved and shook withal," a certain key in the or- gan made the seat on which the Dean sat vibrate under him. On that day, before he left the Cathedral, he invariably thanked the organist, Dr. Corfe, for the nice tune he had played. Music, in fact, was at a very low ebb at Oxford when I arrived there. The young men would have considered it almost infra dignitatem to play any instrument ; the utmost they would do was now and then to sing a song. Yet there was much love of music, and many of my young and old friends were delighted when I would play to them. There was only one other person at Oxford then who was a real musician and who played well. Professor Donkin, a great mathematician, and altogether a man sui generis. He was a great invalid ; in fact, he was dying all the years I knew him, and was fully aware of it. It seemed to be quite admissi- Musical Recollections 37 ble, therefore, that he, being an invalid, and I, be- ing a German, should " make music " at evening parties ; but to ask a head of a house or a profess- or, or even a senior tutor, to play would have been considered almost an insult. And yet I feel cer- tain there is more love, more honest enjoyment of music in England than anywhere else. And how has the musical tide risen at Oxford since those days ! Some of the young men now come up to college as very good performers on the pianoforte and other instruments. I never know how they learn it, considering the superior claims which cricket, football, the river, nay, the classics and mathematics also have on their time at school. There are musical clubs now at Oxford where the very best classical music may be heard performed by undergraduates with the assistance of some professional players from London. All this is due to the influence of Sir F. Ouseley, and still more of Sir John Stainer, both professors of Music at Oxford. They have made music not only respect- able, but really admired and loved among the undergraduates. Sir John Stainer has been inde- fatigable, and the lectures which he gives both on the science and history of music are crowded by young and old. They are real concerts, in which he is able to illustrate all he has to say with the help of a well-trctined choir of Oxford amatems. 38 Auld Lang Syne As to myself, I liave long become a mere listener. One learns the lesson, whether one likes it or not, that there is a time for everything. Old fingers grow stiff and will no longer obey, and if one knows how a sonata of Beethoven ought to be played, it is most painful to play it badly. So at last I said : "Farewell ! " The sun has set, though the clouds are roseate still with reflected rays. It may be that I have given too much time to music, but what would life have been without it ? I do not like to exaggerate, or say anything that is not quite true. Musical ears grow sensitive to anything false, whether sharp or flat. But let us be quite honest, quite plain. Is there not in music, and in music alone of all the arts, something that is not en- tirely of this earth ? Harmony and rhythm may be under settled laws ; and in that sense mathema- ticians may be right when they call mathematics silent music. But whence comes melody ? Surely not from what we hear in the street, or in the woods, or on the sea-shore, not from anything that we hear with our outward ears, and are able to im- itate, to improve, or to sublimise. Neither history nor evolution will help us to account for Schubert's " Trockne Blumen." Here, if anywhere, we see the golden stairs on which angels descend from heaven to earth, and whisper sweet sounds into the ears of those who have ears to hear. Words Musical Recollections 39 cannot be so inspired, for words, we know, are of the earth earthy. Melodies, however, are not of this earth, and the greatest of musical poets has truly said : — Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS i AM the son of a poet, and I have tried very hard all my life not to be a poet myself, if poet means a man who tries to make his thoughts dance grace- fully in the chains of metre and rhyme. In my own very prosaic work I have had to suffer all my life from suppressed poetry, as one suffers from suppressed gout. Poets will, no doubt, protest most emphatically against so low a view of their art. They assure us that they never feel their chains, and that they are perfectly free in giving expression to their thoughts in rhyme and metre. Some of the more honest among them have even gone so far as to confess that their best thoughts had often been suggested to them by the rhyme. Platen may be quite right when he says : Was stets tmd aller Orfcen sich ewig jung erweist 1st in gebundenen Worten ein ungebundener Geist. ("What proves itself eternal in every place and time Is an unfettered spirit, free in the chains of rhyme.) True, very true. You may get that now and then, but in our modern languages it is but seldom that 40 Literary Recollections 41 th ought soars up quite free on the wings of rli3Tne. Many and many a thought sinks down because of the weight of the rhyme, many and many a thought remains altogether unspoken because it will not submit to the strait jacket of the rhyme ; many and many a poor thought is due entirely to an ir- repressible rhyme ; and if some brilliant thoughts have really been suggested by the rhyme, would it not be better if they had been suggested by some- thing else, whether you call it mind or soul ? The greatest masters of rhyme, such as Browning in English or Kiickert in German, and even H. Heine, often fall victims to their o-svn mastery. They spoil their poems in order to show that they can find a rhyme for anything and everything, however gro- tesque the rhyme may be. I remember once be- ing bold enough to ask Tennyson what was the use or excuse of rhyme. He was not offended, but was quite ready with his answer : " Rhyme helps the memory," he said — and that answer was as honest as it was true. But what is useful for one purpose, for the purpose of recollecting, may be anything but useful for other purposes, it may be even hurtful, and in our case it has certainly proved hurtful again and again to the natural flow and expression of thought and feeling. Nor should I venture to say a word against Platen's gebundene Worie. It was only the very 42 Auld Lang Syne necessity of finding a word to answer to time wliich led me to speak of chains of rhyme. Gebundene Worte are not necessarily rhymed words, they are measured words, and these are no doubt quite natural and quite right for poetry. Metre is meas- ure, and metrical utterance, in that sense, was not only more natural for the expression of the highest thoughts, but was probably everywhere more an- cient also than prose. In every literature, as far as we know, poetry came first, prose second. Inspired utterance requires, nay produces, rhythmic move- ments not only of the voice (song and prosodia), but of the body also (dance). In Greek, chorus means dance, measured movement, and the Greek choruses were originally dances; nay, it can be proved that these dancing movements formed really the first metres of true poetry. Hence, it was quite natural that David should have danced before the Lord with all his might. Language it- self bears witness to the fact that the oldest metres were the steps and movements of dancers. As the old dances consisted of steps, the ancient metres consisted of feet. Even we ourselves still speak of feet, not because we imderstand what it means, but simply because the Greeks and Romans spoke of feet, and they said so because originally the feet really marked the metre. The ancient poets of the Veda also speak of feet, Literary Recollections 43 and they seem to have been quite aware why they spoke of metrical feet, for in the names of some of their metres we still find clear traces of the steps of the dances which accompanied their poems. Trislituhh, one of their ancient metres, meant three- step; Anushtubh, the later Sloka, meant by-step* or Reigen. The last syllables or steps of each line were called the Vritta, or the turn, originally the turn of the dancers, who seem to have been allowed to move more freely till they came to the end of one movement. Then, before they turned, or while they turned, they marked the steps more sharply and audibly, either as iambic or as trochaic, and afterwards marched back again with greater free- dom. Hence in ancient Sanskrit the end or turn of each line was under stricter rules as to long and short steps, or long and short syllables, whereas greater freedom was allowed for the rest of a line. Thus Sanskrit Vritta, the turn, came to mean the metre of the whole line, just as in Latin we have the same word versus, literally the turn, then verse, and this turn became the name for verse, and re- mained so to the present day. There is no break in our history, and language is the chain that holds it together. A strophe also was originally a turn- ing, to be followed by the antistrophe or the return, all ideas derived from dancing. The ancient San- *See M. M., " Vedic Hymns," S.B.E., vol. xxxii., p. 96. 44 Auld Lang Syne skrit name for metre and metrical or measured speed was Khsmdas. The verb /lAand would cor- respond phonetically to Latin scandere, in the sense of marching, as in a-scendere, to march upward, to mount, and de-scendere, to march downward, all expressing the same idea of measured movement, but not of rhyme or jingle. These movements were free and natural in the beginning; they became artificial when they became traditional, and we find in such works as the Sanskrit Vr/tta-ratnakara, " the treasury of verse," every kind of monstrosity which was perpetrated by Hindu poets of the Ee- naissance period, and perpetrated, it must be con- fessed, with wonderful adroitness. But I must not tire my friends with these metri- cal mysteries. What I want them to know is that in the most ancient Aryan poetry which we possess there is no trace of rhyme, except here and there by accident, and that everywhere in the history of the poetry of the Aryas, rhyme, as essential to poetry, is a very late invention. It is the same in Semitic languages, though in Semitic as well as in Aryan speech, in fact, wherever grammatical forms are expressed chiefly by means of terminations, rhyme even in prose is almost inevitable. And this was no doubt the origin of rhyme. In lan- guages where terminations of declension and con- jugation and most derivative suffixes have retained Literary Recollections 45 a full-bodied and sonorous form, it was difficult to avoid the jingle of rhyme. In Latin, which abounds in such constantly recurring endings as orum, arum, ibus, amus, atis, amini, tatem, tatibus, inibiis, etc., good prose writers had actually to be warned against allowing their sentences to rhyme, while poets found it very easy to add these orna- mental tails to their measured lines. There can be little doubt that it was the rhymed Latin poetry, as used in the services of the Roman Catholic Church, which suggested to the German converts the idea of rhymed verses. The pagan poetry of the Teutonic races had no rhymes. It was what is called alliterative. In the German dialects the accent remained mostly on the radical syllable of words, and thus served to shorten the terminations. Hence we find fewer full-bodied terminations in Gothic than in Latin, while in later Teutonic dialects, in English as well as in German, these terminations dwindled away more and more. Thus, we say Bi' chter when the Romans would have Dicta' tor, Pre' diger for provia, as it was called, went on year after year, but, strange to say, Fronde's work was not killed by it ; on the contrary, it became more and more pox)ular. In fact, together with his other works, it enabled him to live independently and even comfortably by his pen. Things have come to such a pass that, if we may trust the experi- ence of publishers, nothing sells so well as a well- abused book, while laudatory notices seem to pro- duce little or no effect. The public, it seems, has grown too wise. Even such powerful adjectives 7 98 Auld Lang Syne as epoch-making (Epoche-machend), monumental and even pyramidal, fall flat. Epoche-macheiid has too often been found out to mean no more than Foche-machend {Foche in German means claque^ and monumental has once or twice proved a mis- print for momental or momentary. Few scholars would agree with M. Le Bon that "works of his- tory must be considered as works of pure imag- ination, as fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts." This is a French exaggeration. But neither are books of history meant to be mere chronicles. History is surely meant to teach not only facts, but lessons also ; and, though historians may say that facts ought to speak for themselves, they will not speak without a vates sacer. I am the last man to stand up for an unscholarlike treatment of history, or of anything else. But as I do not call a man a scholar who simply copies and collates MSS,, makes indices or collects errata, I doubt whether mere Quellenstudium will make a histo- rian. Quellenstudium is a sine qua non, but it is not everything ; and whereas the number of those who can ransack archives and libraries is large, the world has not been rich in real historians whom it is a delight to listen to, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus, Montesquieu, Gib- bon, and, may we not add, Macaulay and Froude? None of these historians, not even Gibbon, has Literary Recollections 99 escaped criticism, but how poor should we be with- out them ! Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was writing his " History of the World " in the Tower of London, overheard two bo/s quarrelling over the facts of an incident that had happened the day before; and he said to himself : " If these two boys cannot agree on an event which occurred almost before their own eyes, how can any one be profited by the narration which I am writing, of events which occurred in ages long past ? " The answer which the critical historian would give to Raleigh would probably be : " Go and examine the two boys ; find out their home, their relations, their circumstances, particularly the opportunities they had of seeing what they profess to have seen ; and try to dis- cover whether there was any bias in their minds that could have made them incline towards one side rather than the other. Give all that evi- dence, and then you are a real historian." But is that true, and were any of the great historians sat- isfied with that? Was not their heart in their work, and is the heart ever far from what we call bias? Did not Herodotus, in describing the con- flict between Greece and Asia, clearly espouse the cause of Greece ? I know he has been called the father of lies rather than of history ; but he has survived for all that. Did not Thucydides through- lOO Auld Lang Syne out his history write as the loyal son of Athens ? Was Tacitus very anxious to find out all that could be said in favour of Tiberius? "Was even Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of the Koman Empii-e," quite impartial? Eanke's " History of the Popes," may be very accurate, but for thousands who read Macaulay and Froude is there one who reads Eanke, except the historian by profession? History is not written for historians only. Macau- lay wrote the history of the English Restoration as a partisan, and Froude made no secret on which side he would have fought, if he had lived through the storms of the English Reformation. If Ma- caulay had been one of the two boys of Sii* Walter Raleigh, he would probably not have discovered some of the dark shadows on the face of William III. which struck the other boy ; while some crit- ics might possibly say of Froude that in drawing the picture of Henry VIII. he may have followed now and then the example of Nelson in the use of his telescope. Still, in describing such recent pe- riods as the reign of Henry YIII., historians can- not, at all events, go very far wi'ong in dates or names. Froude may have been wrong in embrac- ing the cause of Henry YIII. and accepting all the excuses or explanations which could be given for his violent acts. But Froude is, at all events, hon- est, in so far that no one can fail to see where his Literary Recollections loi sympathies lie, so that he really leaves us free to decide what side we ourselves should take. When the historian has to analyse prominent characters, and bring them again full of life on the stage of history, is it not the artist, nay the poet, who has to do the chief work, and not the mere chronicler? In Fronde's case the difficulty was very great. The contemporary estimates of Henry's character were most conflicting, and without taking a line of his own, without claiming in fact the same privilege which Henry's contemporaries claimed, whether friends or foes, it would have been impos- sible for him to create a character that should be consistent and intelligible. There w^as nothing too Jdendish to be told of the English king by the Papal party, and yet we cannot help asking how such a caitiff, as he is represented to have been by Eomau Catholic agents, could have retained the love of the English people and secured the ser- vices of some of the best among the noblemen and gentlemen of his time ? If we take upon ourselves to reject all reports of Eoyal Commissioners in Henry's reign as corrupt and mendacious, would it be worth while to write any history of the Eng- lish people at all? It is, no doubt, an ungrateful task to whitewash a historical character that has been besmirched for years by a resolute party. Yet it has to be done from time to time, from a 102 Auld Lang Syne seDse of justice, and not from a mere spirit of op- position. Carlyle's heroes were nearly all tlie best-abused men in Christendom : Frederick the Great, Cromwell, and Goethe. Every one of these characters was lying, as Carlyle said himself, under infinite dung; yet every one of them is now ad- mired by thousands, because they trust in Carlyle. It was the same Carlyle who encouraged Froude in his work of rehabilitating Bluff King Hal, and we ought, at all events, to be grateful to him for having enabled us to know all that can be said by the king's advocates. If Froude wrote as a par- tisan, he wrote, at the same time, as a patriot, and if a patriot sees but one side of the truth, some one else will see the other. Can we imagine any history of our own times written from the pole star, and not from amid the turmoil of contending parties? Would a history of the reign of Queen Victoria, written by Glad- stone, be very like a history written by Disraeli ? However, these squabbles of reviewers about the histories of Macaulay and Froude are now almost entirely forgotten, while the historical dramas which Macaulay and Froude have left us, remain, and Englishmen are proud of possessing two such splendid monuments of the most important peri- ods of their history. Macaulay's account of Will- iam III. remained unfinished, and it is character- Literary Recollections 103 istic of Froude that, if I understood him rightly, he gave up the idea of finishing the reign of Queen Elizabeth, because, as an Englishman, he was dis- appointed in her character towards the end of her reign. I saw much of Froude again during the last years of his life, when he returned to Oxford as Eegius Professor of History, having been appointed by Lord Salisbury. " It is the first public recognition I have received," he used to say. He rejoiced in it, and he certainly did credit to Lord Salisbm-y's courageous choice. His lectures were brilliant, and the room was crowded to the end. His private lectures also were largely attended, and he was on the most friendly and intimate terms with some of his pupils. There is no place so trying for a professor as Ox- ford. Fronde's immediate predecessors, Goldwin Smith, Stubbs, and Freeman, were some of the best men that Oxford has produced. Their lectures were excellent in every respect. Yet every one of them had to complain of the miserable scant- iness of their audiences at Oxford. The present Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Stubbs, in his " Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Mediaeval and Modern History" (1886), states what may sound almost in- credible, that he had sometimes to deliver his lect- ures " to two or three listless men." The same 104 Auld Lang Syne may be said of some of the best lectures delivered in the University. The young men are encour- aged in each college to attend the lectures deliv- ered by the tutors, and are given to understand that professorial lectures " do not pay " in the ex- aminations. These examinations are chiefly in the hands of college tutors. Professor Stubbs was not given to complain about anything that might seem to concern himself, yet he confesses that " some- times he felt hurt that in the combined lecture list he found the junior assistant tutor advertising a course on the same subject, or at the same hours, as his own." Nay, he goes so far in his modesty as to say : " It may be better that there should be a dozen or fifteen college lecturers working away with large classes, when I have only a few stray men," but the real friends of the University would hardly think so. As things are at present, it has been said, and, I believe, triily said, that nearly all professorial lectiu-es might be abolished, and the studies of the undergraduates would go on just the same. Oxford suffers in this respect from a real embarras de richesse. The University is rich enough, though by no means so rich as it was for- merly, to keep up a double staff of teachers, pro- fessorial and tutorial. It supports sixty-five pro- fessors, readers, and lecturers, and probably four or five times as many tutors. Many of the tutors Literary Recollections 105 are quite equal to the professors, nay, it may be, even superior to them, but the most popular tu- tor, whose lectures, when in college, were crowded, has to be satisfied with two or three listless men as soon as he has been raised to the professoriate. Froude's lectures formed an exception, but even this was quoted against him. Froude was not only the most fascinating lect- urer, but the most charming companion and friend. His conversation was like his writings. It nev- er tired one, it never made one feel his superior- ity. His store of anecdotes was inexhaustible, and though in his old age they were sometimes repeated, they were always pleasant to listen to. He enjoyed them so thoroughly himself, he chuckled over them, he covered his eyes as if half ashamed of telling them. They are all gone now, and a pity it is, for most of them referred to what he had actually seen, not only to what he had heard, and he had seen and heard a good deal, both in Church and State. He knew the little failings of great men, he knew even the peccadilloes of saints, better than anybody. He was never ill- natured in his judgments, he knew the world too well for that, and it is well, perhaps, that many things which he knew should be forgotten. He himself insisted on all letters being destroyed thai had been addressed to him, and from a high sense io6 Auld Lang Syne of duty, left orders that his own letters, addressed to his friends, should not be divulged after his death. Though he left an unfinished autobiogra- phy, extremely interesting to the few friends who were allowed to read it, those who decided that it should not be published have acted, no doubt, wisely and entirely in his spirit. My friend Charles Kingsley was a very diflfer- ent man. He was a strong man, while Froude had some feminine weaknesses, but also some of the best feminine excellencies. His life and his character are well known from that excellent bi- ography published by his gifted widow, not much more than a year after his death. This Life of hers really gave a new life to him, and secured a new popularity and influence to his writings. In him, too, what I admired besides his delightful character was his poetical power, his brilliant yet minute and accurate descriptions of nature, and the characters he created in his novels. With all the biographies that are now published, how little do people know after all of the man they are asked to love or hate ! In order to judge of a man, we ought to know in what quarry the marble of which he was made was carved, what sunshine there was to call forth the first germs of his mind, nay, even whether he was rich or poor, whether he had Avhat we rightly call an independence, and whether from Literary Recollections 107 his youth he was and felt himself a free man. There is something in the character of a man like Stanley, for instance, which we have no right to expect in a man who had to struggle in life like Kingsley. The struggle for life may bring out many fine qualities, but it cannot but leave traces of the struggle, a certain amount of self-assertion, a love of warfare, and a more or less pronounced satisfaction at having carried the day against all rivals and opponents. These are the temptations of a poor man which do not exist for a man of in- dependent means. It is no use shutting our eyes to this. Every fight entails blows, and wounds, and scars, and some of them remain for life. Kingsley seems to have had no anxieties as a young man at school or at the University, but when he had left the University and become a curate, and, more particularly, when he had mar- ried on his small curacy and there were children, his struggles began in good earnest. He had often to write against time ; he had to get up sub- ject after subject in order to be able to write an article, simply that he might be able to satisfy the most troublesome tradesmen. He always wrote at very high pressure ; fortunately his physical frame was of iron, and his determination like that of a runaway horse. People may say that he had the usual income of a country clergyman, but why will io8 Auld Lang Syne they forget that a man in Kingsley's position had not only to give his children an expensive educa- tion, but had to keep open house for his numerous friends and admirers ? There was no display in his quiet rectory at Eversley, but even the sim- plest hospitality entails more expense than a small living can bear, and his friends and visitors ranged from the lowest to the highest — from poor work- men to English and foreign royalties. As long as he could wield his pen he could procure the neces- sary supplies, but it had to be done with a very great strain on the brain. " It must be done, and it shall be done," he said ; yes, but though most of his work was done, and well done, it was like the work of an athlete who breaks down at the end of the day when his victory is won. People did not see it and did not know it, for he never would yield, and never would show signs of yield- ing. When, towards the end of his life, a canonry was offered him, first at Chester, then at Westmin- ster, he felt truly grateful. " After all," he said to me, " these stalls are good for old horses." His professorship at Cambridge was really too much for him. He was not prepared for it. Personally he did much good among the young men, and was certainly most popular. At Cambridge as a pro- fessor he did his best, but he had hardly calcu- lated Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent Literary Recollections 109 Anyhow, the work soon became too much even for his iron constitution, and he was glad to be re- lieved. The fact is that Kingsley was all his life, in everything he thought and in everything he did, a poet, a man of high ideals, and likewise of unswerving honesty. No one knew Kingsley, such as he really was, who had not seen him at Eversley, and among his poor people. He visited every cottage, he knew every old man and old woman, and was perfectly at home among them. His " Village Sermons " gave them just the food they wanted, though it was curious to see every Sunday a large sprinkling of young officers from Sandhurst and Aldershot sitting quietly among the smock-frocked congregation, and anxious to have some serious conversation with the preacher after- wards. Kingsley was a gi-eat martyr to stammer- ing, it often was torture to him in a lively conver- sation to keep us all waiting till his thoughts could break through again. In church, however, whether he was reading or speaking extempore, there was no sign of stammering ; apparently there was no effort to overcome it. But when we walked home from church he would say : " Oh, let me stammer now, you won't mind it." He was not a learned theologian, his one idea of Christianity was practical Christianity, honesty, purity, love. He was always most courteous, most no Auld Lang Syne willing to bow befoi's higher authority or greater learning; but when he thought there was any- thing wrong, or mean, or cowardly, anything with which he, as an honest man, could not agree, he was as fii'm as a rock. His favourite pursuits lay in natural science. He knew every flower, every bird, every fish, and every insect in his neighbourhood, and he had im- bibed a belief in the laws of nature, which rep- resented to him indirectly the thoughts of God. When, therefore, after a long continuance of drought, the bishop of his diocese ordered him to have a special prayer for rain, he respectfully and firmly declined. He would pray for the good gifts of heaven, offer thanks to God for all that He was pleased to send in His wisdom, but he would not enter into particulars with Him, he would not put his own small human wisdom against the Divine wisdom ; he would not preach on what he thought was good for us, for God knew best. He had no difficulty in persuading his farmers and labourers that if they had any trust in God, and any reverence for the Divine wisdom that rules the world, they would place all their troubles and cares before Him in prayer, but they would not beg for anything which, in His wisdom, He withheld from them. " Thy will be done," that was his prayer for rain. There was great commotion in ecclesiastical dove- Literary Recollections 1 1 1 cotes, most of all in episcopal palaces. All sorts of punishments were threatened, but Kingsley re- mained throughout perfectly quiet, yet most deter- mined. He would not degrade his sacred office to that of a rain-maker or medicine-man, and he carried his point. " In America we manage these things better ! " said an American friend of Kings- ley. "A clergyman in a village on the frontier between two of our States prayed for rain. The rain came, and it soaked the ground to such an ex- tent that the young lambs in the neighbouring State caught cold and died. An action was brought against the clergyman for the mischief he had done, and he and his parishioners were condemned to pay damages to the sheep farmers. They never prayed for rain again after that." Kingsley incurred great displeasure by the sup- port he gave to what was called Christian Social- ism. His novel " Alton Locke," contained some very outspoken sentiments as to the terrible suffer- ings of the poor and the duties of the rich. Kings- ley, Frederick Maurice, and their friends, did not only plead, but they acted ; they formed societies to assist poor tailors, and for a time the clothes they wore showed but too clearly that they had been cut in Whitechapel, not in Eegent Street. Poor Kingsley suffered not only in his wardrobe, but in his purse also, owing to his having been 1 1 2 Auld Lang Syne too sanguine in his support of tailoring by co-op- eration. However, his books, both in prose and poetry, became more and more popular, and this meant that his income became larger and larger. Publishers say that novels and sermons have the largest market in England and the colonies, and Kingsley provided both. All went on well : even his being stopped once in the middle of a sermon by a clergyman who had invited him to preach in his church in London, but did not approve of his sermon, did not hurt him. He had many influen- tial friends ; both the Queen and the Prince of Wales had shown by special marks of favour how much they appreciated him, and he had a right to look forward to ecclesiastical preferment and to a greater amount of leisure and freedom. One unex- pected cloud, however, came to darken his bright and happy life. Some people will say that he brought it upon himself, but there are certain clouds which no honest man can help bringing upon himself. He, no doubt, began the painful controversy with Newman. Having seen how much misery had been caused among some of his own dearest friends by the Komanising teaching under the auspices of Newman and Pusey, he made the mistake of fastening the charge of dis- honesty, half-heartedness, and untruthfulness on Literary Recollections 113 Newman personally, instead of on tlie whole Ro- man Catliolic propaganda in England from the time of Henry VIII.'s apostasy from the Roman Church to that of Newman's apostasy from the Church of England. I shall not enter into this controversy again. I have done so once, and have been well punished for having ventured to declare my honest conviction that throughout this painful duel Kingsley was in the right. But Kingsley was clumsy and Newman most skilful. Besides, Newman was evidently a man of many friends, and of many able friends who knew how to wield their pens in many a newspaper. In spite of having taken a most unpopular step in leaving the national church, Newman always retained the popularity which he had so well earned as a member of that Church. I have my- self been one of his true admirers, partly from having known many of his intimate friends at Ox- ford, partly from having studied his earlier works when I first came to England. I read them more for their style than for their contents. If New- man had left behind him no more than his ex- quisite University sermons and his sweet hymns he would always have stood high among the glories of England. But Kingsley also was loved by the people and surrounded by numerous and powerful friends. It must be due to my ignorance of the 8 1 14 Auld Lang Syne national character, but I have certainly never been able to explain why public sympathy went so en- tirely with Newman and against Kingsley; why Kingsley was supposed to have acted unchival- rously and Newman was looked upon as a martyr to his convictions, and as the victim of an illiberal and narrow-minded Anglican clique. Certain it is that in the opinion of the majority Kingsley had failed, and failed ignominiously, while Newman's popularity revived and became greater than ever. Kingsley felt his defeat most deeply ; he was like a man that stammered, and could not utter at the right time the right word that was in his mind. What is still more surprising was the sudden col- lapse of the sale of Kingsley's most popular books. I saw him after he had been with his publishers to make arrangements for the sale of his copyrights. He wanted the money to start his sons, and he had a right to expect a substantial sum. The sum offered him seemed almost an insult, and yet he assured me that he had seen the books of his pub- lishers, and that the sale of his books during the last years did not justify a larger offer. He was miserable about it, as well he might be. He felt not only the pecuniary loss, but, as he imagined, the loss of that influence which he had gained by years of hard labour. However, he was mistaken in his idea that he Literary Recollections I15 had laboured in vain. Immediately after his death there came the most extraordinary reaction. His books sold again in hundreds of thousands, and his family received in one year a great deal more from his royalties than had been offered him for the whole copyright of all his books. People are more willing now to admit that though Newman may have been right in his " Apologia pro Vita Sua," Kingsley was not wrong in pointing out the weak points in Newman's character and in the moral and political doctrines of the Roman Catholic system, more particularly of the Jesuits, and the dangers that threatened his beloved England from those who seemed halting between the two Churches, the one national, the other foreign, the one reformed, the other unreformed. There was another occasion when Newman's and Kingsley's friends had a sharp conflict at Oxford. When the Prince of Wales was invited to Oxford to receive his honorary degree of D.C.L., he had, as was the custom, sent to the Chancellor a list of names of his friends on whom he wished that the same degi-ee should be conferred at the same time. One of them was Kingsley, then one of his chap- lains. When his name was proposed a strong protest was made by Dr. Pusey and his friends, no one could understand why. Dr. Pusey declared distinctly that he did not mean to contest Kings- ii6 Auld Lang Syne ley's orthodoxy, but when asked at last to give his reasons, he declared that Kingsley's "Hypatia'* was an immoral book. This was too much for Dr. Stanley, who challenged Pusey to produce one sin- gle passage in " Hypatia " which could be called immoral. On such conditions Shakespeare could never have received an honorary degree from the University of Oxford. I still possess the copy of "Hypatia" which Stanley examined, mark- ing every passage that could possibly be called immoral. It need hardly be said that there was none. Still Dr. Pusey threatened to veto the de- gree in Convocation and to summon his friends from the country to support him. And what could have been done to prevent an unseemly scandal on such an occasion as a royal visit to Oxford ? Dr. Stanley and his friends yielded, and Kingsley's name was struck out from the Prince's list, and, what was still worse, it was never placed again on the list of honorary doctors such as might really have reflected honour on the University. If ever the secret history of the degrees conferred honoris causa by the University of Oxford on truly eminent persons, not members of the University, comes to be written, the rejection of Kingsley's name wiU not be one of the least interesting chapters. Kingsley's death was a severe blow to his coun- try, and his friends knew that his life might have Literary Recollections 117 been prolonged. It was a sad time I spent with him at Eversley, while his wife lay sick and the doctors gave no hope of her recovery. He him- self also was very ill at the time, but a doctor whom the Queen had sent to Eversley told him that with proper care there was no danger for him, that he had the lungs of a horse, but that he re- quired great care. In spite of that warning he •would get up and go into the sick-room of his wife, which had to be kept at an icy temperature. He caught cold and died, being fully convinced that his wife had gone before him. And what a funeral it was ! But with all the honour that was paid to him, all who walked back to the empty rectory felt that life henceforth was poorer, and that the sun of England would never be so bright or so cheerful again, now that he was gone. Though I admired — as who did not ? — his poetical power, his brilliant yet most minute and accurate descriptions of nat- ure, and the lifelike characters he had created in his novels, what we loved most in him was his presence, his delightful stammer, his downright honesty, and the perfect transparency of his moral nature. He was not a child, he was a man, but unspoiled by the struggles of his youth, unspoiled by the experiences of his later years. He was an English gentleman, a perfect specimen of noble English manhood. 1 1 8 Auld Lang Syne Having been particularly attached to his young niece, my wife, he had at once allowed me a share in his affections, and when other members of her family shook their heads, he stood by me and bade me be of good cheer till the day was won, and she became my wife. That was in 1859. Here are some verses he had addressed to his two nieces, to my wife and to her sister, afterwards Mrs. Theo- dore Walrond (died 1872) :— TO G * * *. A hasty jest I once let fall — As jests are wont to be, untrue— As if the snm of joy to you Were hunt and picnic, rout and ball. Your eyes met mine : I did not blame ; You saw it : but I touched too near Some noble nerve ; a silent tear Spoke soft reproach and lofty shame. I do not wish those words unsaid. Unspoilt by praise or pleasure, you In that one look to woman grew, While with a child, I thought, I played. Next to mine* own beloved so long I I have not spent my heart in vain. I watched the blade ; I see the grain ; A woman's sonl, most soft, yet strong. Literary Recollections 119 A FAEEWELL. My fairest child, I have no song to give you ; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey : Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day. Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. Do noble things, not dream them, all day long : And so make life, death, and that vast for ever One grand sweet song. In the original, as written down in her album, there is a third verse between the two : — I'll tell you how to sing a clearer carol Than lark who hails the dawn on breezy down. To earn yourself a purer poet's laurel Than Shakespeare's crown. LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS III Knowing both Kingsley and Froude very inti- mately, I soon came to know many of their friends, though my residence at Oxford kept me clear from the vortex of literary society in London. In some respects I regretted it, but in others I found it a great blessing. It requires not only mental, but considerable physical strength to stand the wear and tear of London life, and I confess I never could understand how some of my friends, Brown- ing, Tyndall, Huxley, M. Arnold, and others, could manage to do any serious work, and at the same time serve the Moloch of Society to whom so many men and women in London offer themselves and their children as willing sacrifices year after year. They had not only to dine out and lose their even- ings, but wherever they went they had to shine, they had often to make speeches, long speeches, at public dinners, they came home tired and slept badly, and in the morning they were interrupted 120 Literary Recollections 121 again by letters, by newspapers, by calls, tben by . meetings and committees, by the inevitable leav- ing of cards, and, lastly, there was with many of them their official work. Society is a voracious animal, and has deprived the world of much that can only be the outcome of quiet hours, of contin- uous thought, and of uninterrupted labour. These men must have had not only the brain, but the physical constitution also of giants, to survive this constant social worry. A quiet dinner with a few friends is pleasant enough, and a certain amount of social friction may even be useful in keeping us from rusting; nay, a casual collision with a kindred spirit may sometimes call forth sparks which can be turned into light and heat. But to dress, to drive a few miles, then to be set down, possibly, between two strangers who have little to say and much to ask, and who, if ill-luck will have it, may not even be beautiful or charming, is a torture to which men like Browning and M. Arnold ought never to have submitted. An afternoon tea is a far more rational amusement, because people are not kept chained for two hours to one chair and two neighbours, but can move about and pick out some of their friends whom they really wish to talk to. Even a luncheon is more bearable, for it does not last so long, and one may find a chance of talking 122 Auld Lang Syne to one's friends. But dinners are tortures, sur- vivals of the dark ages for which there is no longer any excuse, and I believe that more people, and good people too, have fallen victims to dinners, public or private, than have broken their necks in the hunting field. I had hoped at one time that the sBsthetic phase through which English society was passing, would have put an end to, or would at least have modi- fied, these social gobblings. Surely it is a most unbeautiful sight to see a number of people, young and old, with or without teeth, filling their mouths with mutton or beef, chewing, denticating, masti- cating their morsels, and then washing them down with wine or water. No doubt it can be done in- offensively, or even daintily, but is it? Eastern ladies know how to throw small morsels of food into their open mouths with their fingers, and Eastern poets describe this performance with rapt- ure. Chinese poets become eloquent even over chop-sticks as handled by their fair ones. But for all that, the Hindus seem to me to show their good taste by retiring while they feed, and reappearing only after they have washed their hands and face. Why should we be so anxious to perform this no doubt necessary function before the eyes of our friends? How often have I seen a beautiful face distorted by the action of the jaw-bones, the tern- Literary Recollections 123 pies forced out, and the clieeks distended by ob- stinate morsels. Could not at least the grosser part of feeding be performed in private, and the social gathering begin at the dessert, or, with men, at the wine, so as to have a real Symposion, not a Symphagion ? But I am on dangerous ground, and shall broach no further heresies. Life at Oxford has many advantages. Of course our London friends tell us that we are mere pro- vincials, but that is a relative expression, and, any- how, we enjoy life in peace. It is true we have not shaken off the regular society dinners alto- gether, but no one is offended if his friends tell him that they are too busy to dine out. And we still have our pleasant small dinners or luncheons of four, six, at the utmost eight people, when you can really see and enjoy your friends, and not only roast beef and port. In former years, when I first came to Oxford, it was different, but then the evil was chiefly confined to heads of colleges and halls, and there were even then exceptions, where you dined to meet a few friends, and not simply to lay in food. One of my earliest dinners I remember at Ox- ford was to meet Thackeray. Thackeray was then writing " Esmond," and a Mr. Stoddard— a fellow of St. John's College— asked me to meet him at dinner. We were only four, and we were all very 124 Auld Lang Syne much awed by Thackeray's presence, particularly I, not being able as yet to express myself freely in English. We sat silent for some time, no one ventured to make the first remark, the soup was over, and there was a fine John Dore on the table waiting to be splayed. We were hoping for some brilliant sally from Thackeray, but nothing came. At last Thackeray suddenly turned his large spec- tacled eyes on me and said : " Are you going to eat your own ancestor ? " I stared, everybody else stared. At last we gave it up, and Thackeray, looking very grave and learned, said : " Surely you are the son of the Dorian Miiller — the Mtiller who wrote that awfully learned book on the Dorians ; and was not John Dore the ancestor of all the Dorians ? " There was a general, " Oh, oh ! " but the ice was broken, and no one after this homble pun was afraid of saying anything. All I could tell Thackeray was that I was not the son of Otfried Miiller, who wrote on the Dorians, but of Wil- helm Miiller, the poet, who wrote " Die Homer- ische Vorschule," and "Die Schone Miilleriu," and as to John Dore being our ancestor, how could that be? The original John Dore, so I have been told, was il Jamtore, that is, St. Peter, and had no wife, as some people will have it, or at least never ac- knowledged her in public, though he was kind to his mother-in-law. All this did not promise well, Literary Recollections 125 yet the rest of our little dinner party was very successful ; it became noisy and even brilliant. Thackeray from his treasures of wit and sar- casm poured out anecdote after anecdote ; he used plenty of vinegar and cayenne pepper, but there was always a flavour of kindliness and good-nature, even in his most cutting remarks. I saw more of him when he came to Oxford to lecture on the Four Georges, and when he stood for Parliament and was defeated by Cardwell and Charles Neate. After one of his lectures, when I expressed my delight with his brilliant success, "Wait, wait," he said, " the time will come when you will lecture at Oxford." At that time my English was still very crumbly ; there was no idea of my staying on in England, still less of my ever becoming a pro- fessor at Oxford. Thackeray's novels were a great delight to me then, and some have remained so for life. Still, there is a fashion in all things, in literature quite as much as in music, and when lately reading " The Newcomes " I was surprised at the meagreness of the dialogue, the very dialogues for which we felt so impatient from month to month when the book first came out in numbers. Still one always recog- nises in Thackeray the powerful artist, who, like a Japanese painter, will with a few lines place a living man or woman before you, never to be forgotten. 126 Auld Lang Syne I am sorry I missed seeing and knowing more of Charles Dickens. I met him in my very early days with a friend of mine at some tavern in the Strand, but did not see him again till quite at the end of his career, when he was giving readings from his novels, and knew how to make his audi- ences either weep or laugh. Still I am glad to have seen him in the flesh, both as a young and as an old man. However wide apart our interests in life might be, no one who had read his novels could look on Dickens as a stranger. He knew the heart of man to the very core, and could di-aw a picture of human suffering with a more loving hand than any other English writer. He also possessed now and then the grand style, and even in his pictures of still life the hand of the master can always be perceived. He must have shed many a tear over the deathbed of poor Joe ; he must have chuckled and shouted over Mr. Winkle and Mr. Tupman going out partridge shooting. Perhaps to our taste, as it now is, some of his characters are too senti- mental and simpering, but there are few writers now who could create his child-uife. It always seemed to me very strange that my friend Stanley, though he received Dickens among the great ones of Westminster Abbey, could not, as he confessed to me, take any pleasure in his works. But though I could not spend much time in Literary Recollections 127 London and cultivate my literary acquaintances there, Oxford itself was not without interesting poets. After all, whatever talent England possesses is filtered generally either through Oxford or Cam- bridge, and those who have eyes to see may often watch some of the most important chapters in the growth of poetical genius among the young under- graduates. I watched Clough before the world knew him, I knew Matthew Arnold during many years of his early life, and having had the honour of examining Swinburne I was not surprised at his marvellous performances in later years. He was even then a true artist, a commander of legions of words, who might become an imperator at any time. Clough was a most fascinating character, thoroughly genuine, but so oppressed with the problems of life that it was difficult ever to get a smile out of him ; and if one did, his round ruddy face with the deep heavy eyes seemed really to suffer from the contortions of laughter. He took life very seriously, and made gi-eater sacrifices to his convictions than the world ever suspected. He was poor, but from conscientious scruples gave up his fellowship, and was driven at last to go to Amer- ica to make himself independent without giving up the independence of his mind. With a little more sunshine above him and around him he might have grown to a very considerable height, but there was 128 Auld Lang Syne always a Iieavy weight on liim, that seemed to ren- der every utterance and every poem a struggle. His poems are better known and loved in Amer- ica, I believe, than in England, but in England also they still have their friends, and in the history of the religious or rather theological struggles of 1840-50 Clough's figure will always be recognised as one of the most characteristic and the most pleasing. I had once the misfortune to give him great pain. I saw him at Oxford with a young lady, and I was told that he was engaged to her. Delighted as I was at this prospect of a happy issue out of all his troubles, I wrote to him to congratulate him, when a most miserable answer came, telling me that it all was hopeless, and that I ought not to have noticed what was going on. However, it came right in the end, only there were some years of patient struggle to be gone through first ; and who is not grateful in the end for such years passed on Pisgah, if only Jordan is crossed at last? Another poet whom I knew at Oxford as an un- dergraduate, and whom I watched and admired to the end of his life, was Matthew Ai-nold. He was beautiful as a young man, strong and manly, yet full of dreams and schemes. His Olympian man- ners began even at Oxford ; there was no harm in them, they were natural, not put on. The vei-y Literary Recollections 129 sound of his voice and the wave of his arm were Jovelike. He grappled with the same problems as Clough, but they never got the better of him, or rather he never got the worse of them. Goethe helped him to soar where others toiled and sighed and were sinking under their self-imposed burdens. Even though his later life was enough to dishearten a poet, he laughed at his being Pegasus im Jodie. Sometimes at public dinners, when he saw himself surrounded by his contemporaries, most of them judges, bishops, and ministers, he would groan over the drudgery he had to go through every day of his life in examining dirty schoolboys and schoolgirls. But he saw the fun of it, and laughed. What a pity it was that his friends, and he had many, could find no better place for him. Most of his contem- poraries, many of them far inferior to him, rose to high positions in Church and State, he remained to the end an examiner of elementary schools. Of coiurse it may be said that, like so many of his lit- erary friends, he might have written novels and thus eked out a living by pot-boilers, as they are called, of various kinds. But there was something noble and refined in him which restrained his pen from such work. Whatever he gave to the world was to be perfect, as perfect as he could make it, and he did not think that he possessed a talent for novels. His saying "No Arnold can ever write a 130 Auld Lang Syne novel " is well known, but it has been splendidly- falsified of late by his own niece. He had to go to America on a lecturing tour to earn some money he stood in need of, though he felt it as a dira ne- cessitas, nay, as a dire indignity. It is true he had good precedents, but evidently his showman was not the best he could have chosen, nor was Arnold himself very strong as a lecturer. England has not got from him all that she had a right to ex- pect, but whatever he has left has a finish that will long keep it safe from the corrosive wear and tear of time. When later in life Arnold took to theological studies, he showed, no doubt, a very clear insight and a perfect independence of judgment, but he had only a few spare hours for work which in or- der to be properly done would have required a lifetime. Yet what he wrote produced an efiect, in England at least, more lasting than many a learned volume, and he was allowed to say things that would have given deep offence if coming from other lips. His famous saying about the three Lord Shaftesburys has been judged very differently by diflerent writers. As a mere matter of taste it may seem that Arnold's illustration of what he took to be the common conception of the Trinity among his Philistine friends was objectionable. Let us hope that it was not even true. Literary Recollections 131 But Arnold's intention was clear enough. He argued chiefly against those who had called the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Mass " a degrading superstition." He tells them they ought to dis- cover in it what the historian alone, or what Ar- nold means by a man of culture, can discover ; namely, the original intention of the faithful in thus interpreting the words of Christ (St. John, vii., 53) : *' Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." It was in protest- ing against this narrowness that he reminded his Protestant friends of the weak joints in their own armour, particularly their too literal acceptation of the doctrine of the Trinity.* And I doubt whether he was altogether wrong when he charged them with speaking of the Father as a mere in- dividual, or, as he expressed it, a sort of infinitely magnified and improved Lord Shaftesbury with a race of vile ofi'enders to deal with, whom his nat- ural goodness would incline him to let off, only his sense of justice would not allow it. And is it not true that many who speak of Christ as the Son of God take " son " in its common literal sense, or, as Arnold expressed it, imagine " a younger Lord Shaftesbury, on the scale of his father and very dear to him, who might live in grandeur and * " Literature and Dogma," 1873, pp. 305, seq. 132 Auld Lang Syne splendour if he liked, but who preferred to leave his home to go and live among the race of offend- ers, and to be put to an ignominious death, on the condition that his merits should be counted against their demerits, and that his father's goodness should be restrained no longer from taking effect, but any offender should be admitted to the bene- fit of it, simply on pleading the satisfaction made by the son " ? Finally, when he points out the ex- tremely vague conception of the Holy Ghost as a person and as an individual, does he really exag- gerate so very much when he says that He is with many no more than " a third Lord Shaftesbury, still on the same high scale, who keeps very much in the background and works in a very occult manner, but very efficaciously nevertheless, and who is busy in applying everywhere the benefits of the son's satisfaction and the father's good- ness ? " Nay, even when he goes on to say that this is precisely the Protestant story of justifica- tion, what he wants to impress on his Protestant readers is surely no more than this, that from his point of view there is nothing actually degrading in their very narrow view, as little as in the com- mon Eoman Catliolic view of the Mass. "Wliat he means is no more than that both views as held by the many are grotesquely literal and unintelli- gent. Literary Recollections 133 People wlio liolcl such views would be ready to tell you, lie says, " the exact hangings in the Trinity's council chamber." But, with all that he is anxious to show that not only was the original intention both of Eoman and English Catholics good, but that even in its mistaken application it may help towards righteousness. In trjdng to im- press this view both on Protestants and Eoman Catholics, Arnold certainly used language which must have pained particularly those who felt that the picture was not altogether untrue. However, his friends, and among them many high ecclesias- tics, forgave him. Stanley, I know, admired his theological writings very much. Many of his critics fully agreed with what Arnold said, only they would have said it in a dijfferent way. There is a kind of cocaine style which is used by many able critics and reformers. It cuts deep into the flesh, and yet the patient remains insensible to pain. " Tou can say anything in English," Ar- thur Helps once said to me, " only you must know how to say it." Arnold, like Carlyle and others, preferred the old style of surgery. They thought that pain was good in certain operations, and helped to accelerate a healthy reaction. The only fault that one may find with Arnold, is that he did not himself try to restore the orig- inal and true conception of the Trinity to that 134 Auld Lang Syne clear and intelligible form wliicli lie as an liistorian and a man of cultiu'e could have brought out bet- ter than any one else. The original intention of the Lord's Supper, or the Mass, can easily be learnt, as Arnold has shown, from the very words of the Bible (St. Luke, xxii., 20) : " The cup is the new testament in my blood." But the doc- trine of the Trinity requires a far more searching historical study. As the very name of Trinity is a later invention, and absent from the New Testa- ment, it requires a thorough study of Greek, more particularly of Alexandrian philosophy, to under- stand its origin, for it is from Greek philosophy that the idea of the Word, the Logos, was taken by some of the early Fathers of the Church. As the Messiah was a Semitic thought which the Jewish disciples of Christ saw realised in the Son of Man, the Word was an Aryan thought which the Greek disciples saw fulfilled in the Son of God. The history of the divine Dyas which preceded the Trias is clear enough, if only we are acquainted with the antecedents of Greek philosophy. With- out that background it is a mere phantasm, and no wonder that in the minds of uneducated peo- ple it should have become what Arnold describes it,* father, son, and grandson, living together in the same house, or possibly in the clouds. To • " Literature and Dogma," p. 143. Literary Recollections 135 make people shrink back from such a conception is worth something, and Arnold has certainly achieved this, if only he has caused hundreds and thousands to say to themselves : " We never were so foolish or so narrow-minded as to believe in three Lord Shaftesburys." For some reason or other, however, the " three Lord Shaftesburys " have disappeared in the last edition of " Literature and Dogma " and have been replaced by " a Supernatural Man." Froude, who was an intimate friend both of Ai-nold and of Sir James Stephen, told me that the latter had warned Arnold that the three Lord Shaftesburys were really actionable, and if Arnold hated anything it was a, fracas. In the fifth edition they still remain, so that the change must have been made later on, when he prepared the cheap edition of his book. Anyhow, they are gone ! Arnold was a delightful man to argue with, not that he could easily be convinced that he was wrong, but he never lost his temper, and in the most patronising way he would generally end by : " Yes, yes ! my good iellow, you are quite right, but, you see, my vieAV of the matter is different, and I have little doubt it is the true one ! " This went so far that even the simplest facts failed to produce any impression on him. He had fallen in love with Emile Burnouf's attractive but not 136 Auld Lang Syne very scholar-like and trustworthy " Science de la Religion. " I believe that at first he had mistaken Emile for Eugene Burnouf, a mistake which has been committed by other people besides him. But, afterwards, when he had perceived the differ- ence between the two, he was not at all abashed. Nay, he was betrayed into a new mistake, and spoke of Emile as the son of Eugene. I told him that Eugene, the great Oriental scholar — one of the greatest that France has ever produced, and that is saying a great deal — had no son at all, and that he ought to correct his misstatement. " Yes, yes," he said, in his most good-humoured way, "but you know how they manage these things in France. fimile was really a natui'al son of the great scholar, and they call that a nephew." This I stoutly denied, for never was a more irreproach- able pere de famille than my friend and master Eugene Burnouf. But in spite of all remon- strances, fimile remained with Arnold the son of Eugene ; " For, you see, my good fellow, I know the French, and that is my view of the matter ! " If that happened in the green wood, what would happen in the dry ! We had a long-standing feud about poetry. To me the difference between poetry and prose was one of form only. I always held that the same things that are said in prose could be said in Literary Recollections 137 poetry, and vice versa, and I often quoted Goethe's saying that the best test of poetry was whether it would bear translation into prose or into a foreign language. To all that, even to Goethe's words, Arnold demurred. Poetry to him was a thing by itself, "not an art like other arts," but, as he grandly called it, " genius." He once had a great triumph over me. An American gentleman, who brought out a " Collec- tion of the Portraits of the Hundred Greatest Men," divided them into eight classes, and the first class was assigned to poetry, the second to art, the third to religion, the fourth to philosophy, the fifth to history, the sixth to science, the seventh to politics, the eighth to industry. Arnold was asked to -write the introduction to the first volume, H. Taine to the second, myself and Kenan to the third, Noah Porter to the fourth, Dean Stanley to the fifth, Helmholtz to the sixth, Froude to the seventh, John Fiske to the eighth. I do not know whether Arnold had anything to do Avith suggesting this division of Omne Scibile into eight classes ; anyhow, he did not allow the opportunity to pass to assert the superiority of poetry over every other branch of man's intellect- ual activity. " The men," he began, " who are the flower and glory of our race are to pass here be- fore us, the highest manifestations, whether on this 138 Auld Lang Syne line or that, of the force which stirs in every one of us — the chief poets, religious founders, philos- ophers, historians, scholars, orators, warriors, statesmen, voyagers, leaders in mechanical inven- tion and industry, who have appeared among mankind. And the poets are to pass first. Why ? Because, of the various modes of manifestation through which the human spirit pours its force, theirs is the most adequate and haj^py." This is the well-known ore rotundo and sinritu pro/undo style of Arnold. But might we not ask, Adequate to what ? HappTj in what ? Arnold him- self answers a little farther on : " No man can fully draw out the reasons why the human spirit feels itself able to attain to a more adequate and satisfying expression in poetry than in any other of its modes of activity." Yet he continues to call this a primordial and incontestable fact ; and how could we poor mortals venture to contest a primor- dial and incontestable fact? And then, limiting the question " to us for to-day," he says, " Surely it is its solidity that accounts to us for the superior- ity of poetry." How he would have railed if any of his Philistines had ventured to recognise the true superiority of poetry in its solidity ! Prose may be solid, it may be dense, massive, lumpish, concrete, and all the rest, but poetry is generally prized for its being subtle, light, ideal, Literary Recollections 139 air-di'awn, fairy-like, or made of such stuff as dreams are made of. However, let that pass. Let poetry be solid, for who knows what sense Arnold may have assigned to solid ? He next falls back on his great master Goethe, and quotes a pas- sage which I have not been able to find, but the bearmg of which must depend very much on the context in which it occui-s. Goethe, we are told, said in one of his many moods : " I deny poetry to be an art. Neither is it a science. Poetry is to be called neither art nor science, but genius." Who would venture to differ from Goethe when he defines what poetry is ? But does he define it ? He simply says that it is not art or science. In this one may agree, if only art and science are de- fined first. No one I think has ever maintained that poetry was science, but no one would deny that poetry was a product of art, if only in the sense of the Ars poetica of Horace, or the Dicht- kunst of Goethe. But if we ask what can be meant by saying that poetry is genius, Goethe would probably say that what lie meant was that poetry was the product of genius, the German Genie. Goethe, therefore, meant no more than that poetry requires, in the poet, originality and spontaneity of thought ; and this, though it would require some limitation, no one surely would feel inclined to deny, though even the authority of Goethe would 140 Auld Lang Syne hardly suffice to deprive the decipherer of an in- scription, the painter of the " Last Supper," or the discoverer of the bacilli of a claim to that divine light which we call genius. Arnold then goes on to say that poetry gives the idea, but it gives it touched with beauty, heightened by emotion. Would not Arnold have allowed that the language of Isaiah, and even some of the dialogues of Plato, were touched with beauty and heightened by emotion though they are in prose ? I think he himself speaks some- where of a poetic prose. Where, then, is the true difference between the creations of Isaiah and of Browning, between the eloquence of Plato and of Wordsworth ? Ai'nold has one more trump card to play in or- der to win for poetry that superiority over all the other manifestations of the forces of the human spirit which he claims again and again. I have al- ways been a sincere admirer of Arnold's poetry, still I think there is more massive force in some of his prose than in many of his poems ; nay, I be- lieve he has left a much deeper and more lasting impression on what he likes to call the Zeitgeist through his essays than through his tragedies. What then is his last card, his last proof of the superiority of poetry? Poetry, he argues, has more stability than anything else, and mankind Literary Recollections 141 finds in it a surer stay than in art, in pliilosopliy, or religion. " Compare," he says, " the stability of Shakespeai-e with that of the Thirty-nine Arti- cles." Poor Thirty-nine Articles ! Did they ever claim to contain poetry, or even religion? Were they ever meant to be more than a dry abstract of theo- logical dogmas? Surely they never challenged comparison with Shakespeare. They are an index, a table of contents, they were a business-like agree- ment, if you like, between different parties in the Chm-ch of England. But to ask whether they will stand longer than Shakespeare is very much like asking whether the Treaty of Paris will last longer than Victor Hugo. There is stay in poetry pro- vided that the prose which imderlies it is lasting, or everlasting ; there is no stay in it if it is mere froth and rhyme. Arnold always liked to fall back on Goethe. " What a series of philosophic sys- tems has Germany seen since the birth of Goethe," he says, " and what sort of stay is any one of them compared with the poetry of Germany's one great poet ? " Is Goethe's poetry really so sure a stay as the philosophies of Germany ; nay, would there be any stay in it at all without the suj)port of that philosophy which Goethe drank in, whether from the vintage of Spinoza or from the more recent crues of Kant and Fichte? Goethe's name, no 142 Auld Lang Syne doubt, is always a pillar of strengtli, but there is even now a very great part of Goethe's " Collected Works " in thirty volumes that is no longer a stay, but is passe, and seldom read by any one, except by the historian. Poetry may act as a powerful preservative, and it is wonderful how much pleas- ure we may derive from thought mummified in verse. But in the end it is thought in its ever- changing life that forms the real stay, and it mat- ters little whether that thought speaks to us in marble, or in music, in hexameters, in blank verse, or even in prose. Poetry in itself is no protection against folly and feebleness. There is in the world a smaU amount of good, and an immense amount of bad poetry. The former, we may hope, will last, and will serve as a stay to all who care for the music of thought and the harmony of lan- guage ; the twaddle, sometimes much admired in its time (and there is plenty of it in Goethe also), will, we hope, fade away from the memory of man, and serve as a lesson to poets who imagine that they may safely say in rhythm and rhyme what they would be thoroughly ashamed to say in sim- ple prose. Nor is the so-called stay or immortal- ity of poetry of much consequence. To have bene- fited millions of his own age, ought surely to sat- isfy any poet, even if no one reads his poems, or translations of thorn, a thousand years hence. Literary Recollections 143 Denn wer den Besten seiner Zeifc genug Gethan, der liat gelebt ftlr alle Zeiten * It is strange to go over the old ground when he with whom one travelled over it in former times is no more present to answer and to hold his own view against the world. There certainly was a great charm in Arnold, even though he could be very patronising. But there was in all he said a kind of understood though seldom expressed sad- ness, as if to say, " It will soon be all over, don't let us get angry ; we are all very good fellows," etc. He knew for years that though he was strong and looked very young for his age, the thread of his life might snap at any moment. And so it did — felix opportunitate mortis. Not long before his death he met Browning on the steps of the Athenaeum. He felt ill, and in taking leave of Browning he hinted that they might never meet again. Brown- ing was profuse in his protestations, and Arnold, on turning away, said in his airy way : " Now, one promise. Browning: please, not more than ten lines." Browning understood, and w^ent away with a solemn smile. Arnold was most brilliant as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, from 1857 to 18G7. He took great pains in writing and delivering his lectures. He looked ♦ Schiller's " Wallenstein," Prolog, vv. 48, 49. 144 Auld Lang Syne well and spoke well. Some of liis lectures were masterpieces, and he set a good example which was followed by Sir Francis Doyle, 1867-77, well known by his happy occasional poems, then by John Shairp from 1877 to his death, and lastly by Francis Palgrave from 1885-95. The best of Arnold's lectures were published as essays ; Shair]3's lectures appeared after his death, and have retained their popularity, particularly in America. Palgrave's lectures, we may hope, will soon appear. They were full of most valuable in- formation, and would prove very useful to many as a book of reference. I have known no one bet- ter informed on English poetry than my friend Palgrave. His " Golden Treasury " bears evidence of his wide reading, and his ripe judgment in se- lecting the best specimens of English lyric poetry. One had but to touch on any subject in the history of English literature, or to ask him a question, and there was always an abundance of most val- uable information to be got from him, I owe him a great deal, particularly in my early Oxford days. For it was he who revised my first attempts at writing in English, and gave me good advice for the rest of my journey, more particularly as to what to avoid. He is now one of the very few friends left who remember my first appearance in Oxford in 181C, and Avho Avcre chiefly iustnimental Literary Recollections 145 in retaiuing my services for a University which h