NEW STUDIES JN LITERATURE
 
 NJEW 
 
 STUDIES IN LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD JJUWDEN. 
 
 LITT.D., DUBLIN ; LL. D. , EDINBURGH ; D.C.L., OXFORD; PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
 LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN ; CLARK LECTURER IN- 
 ENGLISH LITEKATURE, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. 
 1902
 
 All Rights Reserved
 
 IN MEMOKIAM 
 M. D.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THESE studies, chosen from a larger number which 
 appeared during a series of years in The Fortnightly 
 Review, are reprinted with the permission of the pro- 
 prietors of that periodical. 
 
 The portion of the volume which deals with Goethe 
 is derived from an examination of Goethe's mind and 
 art, to which I gave much time and pains, but which 
 still remains incomplete. So much new material has 
 recently come to light, so much awaits publication, and 
 so great has been the industry of German scholars, that 
 delay seemed advisable. Certain fragments of my 
 study were thrown into the shape of addresses delivered 
 as President of the English Goethe Society ; one 
 that on Goethe's friendship with Schiller was read 
 before the Manchester Goethe Society. 
 
 The article on " Literary Criticism in France " was 
 given as one I believe the first of the recently 
 established Taylorian lectures at Oxford. That on 
 Edmond Scherer was written swiftly, but with the
 
 viii Preface. 
 
 advantage of an intimate acquaintance with Scherer's 
 writings, on the occasion of his death. I have left it 
 unaltered. 
 
 The studies of the poetry of John Donne and of 
 Mr Meredith attempt to make access to part of the work 
 of two difficult writers, one belonging to the past, one 
 happily to the present, more easy for their readers. 
 They are both writers who in their verse attract and 
 repel, and finally give a courageous explorer an ample 
 reward of impulse, thought, or beauty. The article on 
 Mr Bridges is modest in its aim, seeking only to extend 
 the circle of those who enjoy that fine poet's work, 
 lyrical and dramatic, by presenting an apergu rather 
 than what is now sometimes termed an "appreciation." 
 The essay on Coleridge endeavours .to bring out the 
 humanity more than the romance of his poetry, and 
 may be viewed as a supplement to the work of other 
 critics. 
 
 In the article on Fabre d'Eglantine's diary I in- 
 dulge the pleasure experienced by one who has been 
 a somewhat fortunate " snapper - up of unconsidered 
 trifles." 
 
 The article on the teaching of English Literature 
 notes various points in method which it seemed useful 
 to bring before a College class. I should like it to
 
 Preface. ix 
 
 be read in connection with a paper called " The 
 Interpretation of Literature " in my " Transcripts and 
 Studies." 
 
 The Introduction is a venture towards expressing 
 certain hopes and fears for literature at the present 
 day, especially as those hopes and fears are connected 
 with the democratic tendencies and the scientific 
 movement of our century. I glance also at what may 
 be styled the separatist tendency, not in politics, 
 but in literature. It has been asserted that since 
 I wrote this article some literary errors against which 
 I pleaded have become less prevalent. I should be 
 glad to think that this is true ; but I do not believe 
 that my exhortations and warnings are even now 
 altogether untimely. 
 
 E.. D.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION, . .... 1 
 
 MR MEREDITH IN HIS POEMS, . . . .33 
 
 THE POETRY OF ROBERT BRIDGES, . . . .61 
 
 THE POETRY OF JOHN DONNE, . 90 
 
 AMOURS DE VOYAGE, ...... 121 
 
 GOETHE 
 
 I. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, . . . .142 
 
 II. Goethe and the French Revolution, . . . 181 
 
 III. Goethe in Italy, ... .218 
 
 IV. Goethe's Friendship with Schiller, . . .251 
 V. Goethe's Last Days (with a document hitherto 
 
 unpublished), ... . 283 
 
 COLERIDGE AS A POET, ..... 313 
 
 EDMOND SCHERER, . . . . . . 355 
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE, .... 388 
 
 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, . . . 419
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 WHITHER is literature tending ? Our weather prophets, 
 who announce the arrival of storms and calms, with all 
 the advantages of telegraphic stations from Haparanda 
 to Lisbon, do not venture to predict what a month or a 
 year will bring forth. They are well pleased if they 
 can foretell the temper of a day ; and it sometimes 
 happens that the gale promised for Wednesday has got 
 lost on Tuesday amid the Atlantic, or the expected sun- 
 shine travelling from Spain refuses in a sulk to cross 
 the narrow seas from Calais to Dover. The science of 
 spiritual meteorology has not yet found its Dalton or 
 its Humboldt ; the law of the tides of the soul has not 
 yet been expressed in a formula. Rather the problems 
 have increased in complexity and become more difficult 
 of solution, as the forces of humanity have grown in 
 energy and expanded in range, as they have differenti- 
 ated themselves into new forms and advanced in the 
 rapidity of their interaction. 
 
 In an article on " Victorian Literature," published in 
 " Transcripts and Studies," I spoke of the literature of 
 our time as being that of a period of spiritual and social 
 revolution, a revolution not the less real or important 
 because it is being conducted without violence. And of 
 the forces effecting this revolution, I spoke of democracy 
 and science as among the most potent. Upon these 
 
 A l
 
 2 Introduction. 
 
 forces we can certainly reckon ; but when we ask the 
 question, How are they related to literature ? the 
 answer is neither prompt nor sure. 
 
 Men of letters reply as might be expected from the 
 members of an intellectual ruling class, possessed by the 
 fear of change. We all remember how Tocqueville long 
 since described the levelling tendency of a democratic 
 age and the tyranny of the majority : " In America the 
 majority draws a formidable circle around thought. 
 Within the determined limits a writer is free ; but woe 
 to him if he should pass beyond them." Tocqueville's 
 tone of discouragement was echoed by M. Scherer, who 
 did not hesitate to assert that democracy is for ever 
 doomed and devoted to mediocrity : " The general level 
 rises with democracy ; the average of comfort, of know- 
 ledge, perhaps even of morality, is higher ; on the other 
 hand, and by a parallel movement, all that is superior 
 is lowered, and the average of which I speak is the 
 result of the lowering of the minority as well as of the 
 elevation of the masses." M. Renan employed his ex- 
 quisite literary skill to press home the indictment. In 
 the French Revolution, he tells us, lay a germ of evil 
 which was to introduce the reign of mediocrity and 
 feebleness, the extinction of every great initiative ; a 
 seeming prosperity, but a prosperity the conditions of 
 which are self-destructive. And M. Paul Bourget, 
 representing a younger generation of men of letters, 
 in a volume of " Studies " published not long since, 
 speaks of modern society as little favourable to the 
 development of very intense or very vigorous person- 
 alities " pareille sur ce point a toutes les societes
 
 Introduction. 3 
 
 de"mocratiques." These witnesses are summoned from 
 the most democratic nation of Europe. To their testi- 
 mony we may add the word of an eminent thinker of 
 our own country, Sir Henry Maine. A very wide 
 suffrage, he took pains to assure us, cannot fail to pro- 
 duce a mischievous form of intellectual conservatism. 
 It would certainly have prohibited the spinning-jenny, % 
 the power-loom, and the threshing-machine ; it would 
 have prevented the adoption of the Gregorian calendar ; 
 it would have proscribed the Roman Catholics ; it would 
 have proscribed the Dissenters ; it would have restored 
 the Stuarts. 
 
 All this sounds of dreadful omen for the future ; but 
 is all this true ? Are new inventions prohibited in the 
 United States ? Has Mr Edison's house been destroyed 
 by the mob ? Is diversity of religious opinions a thing 
 unknown in democratic America or democratic France 
 or democratic England ? Have the writings of Mr 
 Frederic Harrison been burnt by the common hangman ? 
 Did the author of the " Vie de Je"sus " fail to find an 
 audience ? 
 
 If democracy means anything it means a career open 
 to all talents ; it means, therefore, a great addition to 
 the stock of vigorous characters and the play of indi- 
 vidual minds. The peasant of the feudal period, with 
 rare exceptions, remained of necessity a peasant to the 
 end of his days ; his little environment of a few square 
 miles furnished all the ideas that exercised his slow- 
 stirring brain. Had Lincoln been a rail-splitter in 
 mediaeval England he would probably have split rails 
 faithfully and well from boyhood to old age. Had
 
 4 Introduction. 
 
 Richard Arkwright practised the barber's art six hun- 
 dred years ago he would have been enrolled in the 
 guild of Preston barbers, and there would certainly have 
 been DO spinning-frame for Sir Henry Maine's stupid 
 democracy to destroy ; had his genius shown itself in 
 the invention of an improved shaving-machine, its use 
 would not improbably have been forbidden by the 
 jealousy of the guild. The fact is that if the pre- 
 dominant power of a few great minds is diminished in 
 a democracy, it is because, together with such minds, a 
 thousand others are at work contributing to the total 
 result. Instead of a few great captains cased in armour 
 or clothed in minever wielding the affairs of State and 
 Church, we have many vigorous captains of industry, 
 captains of science, captains of education, captains of 
 charity and social reform. It is surely for the advan- 
 tage of the most eminent minds that they should be 
 surrounded by men of energy and intellect who belong 
 neither to the class of hero-worshippers nor to the class 
 of valets-de-chambre. 
 
 The truth seems to be that with an increased popu- 
 lation and the multiplicity of interests and influences 
 at play on men, we may expect a greater diversity of 
 mental types in the future than could be found at any 
 period in the past. The supposed uniformity of society 
 in a democratic age is apparent, not real ; artificial dis- 
 tinctions are replaced by natural differences ; and within 
 the one great community exists a vast number of smaller 
 communities, each having its special intellectual and 
 moral characteristics. In 'the few essentials of social 
 order the majority rightly has its way, but within
 
 Introduction. 5 
 
 certain broad bounds, which are fixed, there remains ample 
 scope for the action of a multitude of various minorities. 
 Every thinker may find a hearing from a company of 
 men sufficiently large to give him sympathy and encour- 
 agement. The artist who pursues ideal beauty and the 
 artist who studies the naked brutalities of life has each 
 a following of his own. The sculptor who carves a 
 cherry-stone draws to himself the admirers of such 
 delicate workmanship ; he who achieves a colossus is 
 applauded by those who prefer audacity of design. 
 When the court gave its tone to literature there might 
 have been a danger of uniformity in letters ; when 
 literature was written for " the town " its type might be 
 in some measure determined ; but the literature of a 
 great people, made up of ploughmen and sailors, shop- 
 keepers and artists, mechanics and dilettanti, priests 
 and lawyers, will be as various as are the groups of 
 men who seek in books for knowledge, recreation, or 
 delight. 
 
 Let us not imagine that any form of government or 
 any arrangements of society will produce men of genius. 
 When they happen to be born men of genius play their 
 part in the world, but of their coming we can still say 
 no more than that the wind bloweth where it listeth. 
 We have fallen into an idle way of speaking of a poet 
 or an artist as if he were a product of his age ; philo- 
 sophers have provided us with a formula the race, the 
 milieu, and the moment by which to explain his 
 nature and origin. And so we cheat ourselves with 
 theories and with words. We may, however, reasonably 
 hope that from a population of thirty millions, more
 
 6 Introduction. 
 
 brains of superior size and quality will come into the 
 world than from a population of ten millions, or twenty. 
 And undoubtedly the chance that such brains will be 
 developed and matured is better among a people edu- 
 cated and intellectually alive than among a people 
 ignorant and lethargic. Here surely are some unques- 
 tionable facts to set against the desponding phrases of 
 men of letters who talk of democracy as devoted to 
 mediocrity, and foredoomed to intellectual sterility. 
 
 But if there be just grounds for hope, there are also 
 certain dangers which must needs cause apprehension. 
 At a time when vast multitudes of imperfectly educated 
 readers make their demands for instruction and amuse- 
 ment, there is danger that the merely utilitarian or 
 the merely commercial view of literature may prevail. 
 Talents and energy are indeed well employed in making 
 knowledge easily accessible to a great population. When 
 an eminent scholar produces his handbook or primer, 
 which circulates by tens of thousands, we can have no 
 feeling but one of gratitude and gladness. It is well 
 that, by skilful engineering, an abundant supply of good 
 water should be brought to our crowded cities from lake 
 or river, and that every house should have its tap. The 
 projector of a popular series of useful books deserves 
 his reward as a successful engineer in the province of 
 science or literature ; he must surely be a busy, intelli- 
 gent, and active man. But what were all his engineer- 
 ing works without the river or the lake ? There, in 
 solitary spaces of the hills, far from the stir and smoke, 
 amid the dews and mists, under the lonely blue by day 
 and the stars and winds by night, the streams have
 
 Introduction., 7 
 
 collected which descend as a blessing to the city and the 
 plain. 
 
 " Child of the clouds, remote from every taint 
 Of sordid industry thy lot is cast ; 
 Thine are the honours of the lofty waste." 
 
 These useless places on the heights where no plough is 
 driven and no harvest waves, enrich the life of man no 
 less than do the richest fields of corn or vine. 
 
 Without assuming the airs of the " superior person," 
 we cannot but note in our newspapers and the humbler 
 periodicals of the day some effects not altogether ad- 
 mirable of the democratising of literature. We enter a 
 railway carriage ; everyone is reading, and the chances 
 are that everyone is filling the vacuity of his mind with 
 something little, if at all, better than sheer emptiness 
 of thought. Only a prig would expect to find the 
 occupant of a railway carriage lost in the study of 
 Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," or Spinoza's "Ethics." 
 But the railway novel of twenty or thirty years ago, 
 which had some literary merit, some coherence of narra- 
 tive, some grace of feeling, has t)f late been superseded 
 to a great extent, and in its place we commonly find 
 the pennyworth of a scandalous chronicle, or some heb- 
 domadal collection of jests, flavoured according to the 
 taste of the buyer, with much heavy vulgarity or with a 
 spice of appetising indecency. In order that no demand 
 should be made on sustained attention, the old leading 
 article or essay is in great measure displaced, and a 
 series of dislocated and disjointed paragraphs or sen- 
 tences fill its room. The mind of the reader is 
 paralysed rather than exercised. Our guides to health
 
 8 Introduction. 
 
 have advised persons who take an interest in their diges- 
 tive processes to bestow two-and-thirty bites on each 
 morsel of food. The caterers nowadays provide us with 
 a mincemeat which requires no chewing, and the teeth 
 of a man may in due time become as obsolete as those 
 which can still be perceived in the foetal whale. Will 
 the great epic of the democratic period, its " Diviner 
 Comedy " and its " New Paradise Regained," be com- 
 posed in the form of poetical tit-bits ? Composed or 
 should we not rather say decomposed ; and is not this 
 new vermiculated style that of a literature of decom- 
 position ? 
 
 Let us rather hope that the multitude of readers, and 
 especially of young readers, will by-and-by find their 
 way to better things. The vast circulation of such 
 a series as Cassell's " National Library," in which the 
 best of reading can be got for threepence, or of Rout- 
 ledge's " Universal Library," or Scott's " Carnelot Series," 
 proves that already there exists a popular appetite for 
 what is admirable in literature. Indeed it may be 
 questioned whether the owners of luxurious libraries 
 often turn their attention to some of the works now 
 bought, as we must suppose, by the young mechanic or 
 apprentice of the shop, who amongst the master-pieces 
 of imaginative literature will find in one or other of the 
 series just named Bacon's " Wisdom of the Ancients " 
 and Dante's " Bauquet," More's " Utopia," and Campa- 
 nella's " City of the Sun," Brown's " Religio Medici," 
 and the stoical teaching of Marcus Aurelius and 
 Epictetus. 
 
 One of the chief intellectual infirmities of democracy,
 
 Introduction. 9 
 
 and one which has often attracted notice, is the passion 
 for abstractions. We know what a part metaphysical 
 abstractions played in the great French Revolution. 
 There were greeds and interests and hatreds, indeed, for 
 which abstract ideas and eloquent phrases sometimes 
 provided a decent veil ; but there was also, and 
 especially in the bright opening days of the Revolu- 
 tion, a genuine delight in what we may term, as we 
 please, either " glittering generalities," or in Emerson's 
 indignant correction of that expression, " shining ubi- 
 quities." Emerson's countrymen, the people of America, 
 " font beaucoup plus souvent usage que les Anglais," 
 observes Tocqueville, " des idees generates et s'y com- 
 plaisent bien davantage." Democracy, says M. Scherer, 
 is profoundly idealistic. It disdains to study the actual 
 nature of things ; it has the quality of exciting im- 
 moderate fervours of hope. It lives upon a few simple 
 ideas ; but in truth, " simple ideas are sterile ideas." 
 Not always sterile, I would reply ; for good or for evil 
 the simple ideas of the French Revolution have helped 
 to transform the face of modern Europe. Yet, un- 
 doubtedly a chief duty of the thinker and the man 
 of letters at the present time, and in the coming years, 
 must be to save the democracy, if possible, from what is 
 unfruitful in its own way of thinking and feeling. As 
 topics arise which demand the attention of the people, 
 it will be necessary to challenge the current notions, the 
 current phrases, and the popular sentiments ; it will be 
 necessary to ply the public, willing or unwilling, with 
 exact knowledge and well-considered thoughts. The 
 state of half-culture which seizes with enthusiasm upon
 
 io Introduction. 
 
 a general principle, regardless of its limitations or rela- 
 tions to other principles, and which is therefore full of 
 impetuosity and self-confidence, at once purblind and 
 bold, is a state as dangerous as we can well conceive. 
 We must endeavour to meet this half-culture with 
 a culture less incomplete, trained to exact methods of 
 thought and observant of the details of fact. 
 
 This passion for intellectual abstractions when trans- 
 ferred to the literature of imagination becomes a passion 
 for what is grandiose and vague in sentiment and in 
 imagery ; in religion it becomes what Tocqueville 
 noticed as characteristic of democratic societies, a 
 tendency to pantheistic forms of faith. The great 
 laureate of European democracy, Victor Hugo, exhibits 
 at once the democratic love of abstract ideas, the demo- 
 cratic delight in what is grandiose (as well as what is 
 grand) in sentiment, and the democratic tendency to- 
 wards a poetical pantheism. An acute French critic, 
 whose early death we must deplore, M. Emile Henne- 
 quin, thus exhibits in tabular form some of those themes 
 for which Victor Hugo had a special predilection. 
 
 " Sujets abstraits. 
 
 (a) Vers a propos de rien, sujets nuls ; 
 (6) Sujets indifferents, vers a propos de tout, versatilite ; 
 
 (c) Developpement de lieux communs ; 
 
 (d) Humanitarisme, socialisme, optiraisme, idealisme, et panthe- 
 
 isme vogues ; 
 
 (e) Aspects grandioses, mysterieux ou bizarres, de la legende, de 
 
 1'histoire ou de la vie." 
 
 Between the " verses apropos of nothing " and the 
 " verses apropos of everything " lies indeed a stupendous 
 creation of true poetry, all brought into being by one
 
 Introduction. 1 1 
 
 marvellous hand. But we shall study Victor Hugo's 
 writings imperfectly and ill if they do not tell us much 
 about the dangers as well as much about the glories of 
 the literature of a democratic age. There are not a few 
 pages in which he does little else than wear magnifi- 
 cently the robes of a courtier of King Demos ; but 
 literature has simpler, more substantial, perhaps less 
 acceptable, work to do than that of satiating the ears 
 of the new grand monarch with the rhetoric that has 
 gathered about the great words " Progress," " Humanity," 
 " Liberty," " Justice." 
 
 It is especially the friend and not the enemy of 
 democracy who should desire to maintain the superiority 
 of our higher literature to the vulgar temptations of the 
 day. If King Demos reign, b} r all means let him have 
 counsellors courageous, stern, and true, rather than 
 hysterical or servile flatterers. He, like other kings, 
 is sometimes stupid, is sometimes gross and materialistic 
 in his tastes, is sometimes unjust and greedy, is often 
 a good-natured blunderer or a rash sentimentalist. The 
 so-called leaders of the people have seldom the courage 
 to lead in any true sense of the word. They commonly 
 maintain their position by observing whither the moving 
 multitude tends, and by running to the front with a 
 banner and a cry. " They may be as able and eloquent as 
 ever," observes Sir Henry Maine, " but they are mani- 
 festly listening nervously at one end of a speaking-tube 
 which receives at its other end the suggestions of a lower 
 intelligence." It is well if they do not become the para- 
 sites and sycophants of his new Majesty, who, as much 
 as any former potentate, enjoys the doffing of caps, the
 
 1 2 Introduction. 
 
 prostration of his attendants, and the music of courtly 
 adulation. The man of letters who would be true to the 
 dignity of his office, the man of letters who would really 
 serve King Demos, aiming less than the statesman at 
 immediate results, and more at a re-formation of opinion 
 and a new grouping of emotions, is under less temptation 
 to be a flatterer. He will not assure the sovereign that 
 his breath is sweeter than incense, that all great ideas 
 and all generous sentiments have their source in him. 
 He will not play the part of pander to the grosser 
 appetites of the sovereign. He will not supply incen- 
 tives to his evil passions of envy, suspicion, malice, 
 cupidity, the lust of power. He will endeavour to 
 illuminate the monarch's better feelings, to direct his 
 ill-informed benevolence to useful ends, to train him to 
 a grave regard for what is true and substantial, to bring 
 home to him the conviction that self-restraint and even 
 self-denial may be at times the glory of a king. 
 
 As the historic method is .applied in new directions, 
 and the social point of view prevails more than it has 
 hitherto done over the individual, we may expect an 
 increasing study of the facts of social evolution, and in 
 all matters which relate to political change, a frequent 
 appeal to history. As we loose from our moorings and 
 drive before the wind there is indeed a certain unwilling- 
 ness to look backwards, already finding expression in a 
 current phrase which describes all things of earlier date 
 than the last general election or assembling of Parlia- 
 ment as " matters of ancient history." But when this 
 ancient history is supposed to affect the interests of 
 either political party, the leaders quickly furbish up
 
 Introduction. 1 3 
 
 their knowledge or, it may be, their ignorance, and 
 discover such parallels and precedents and arguments as 
 they require. It is true for students of history, patient, 
 disinterested, and exact, to hold in check, chiefly in 
 ways that are indirect, the superficial views, the partisan 
 representations, the crude generalisations of the amateur 
 sociologist and political manipulator of half knowledge. 
 " The scientific spirit," it has been well said, " is not a 
 triumphant and boastful one, fired with a sort of intel- 
 lectual Chauvinism, seeking polemical distinction and a 
 path to promotion in the field of party war." The 
 scientific spirit does not work back through the facts of 
 history in order to find the appearance of confirmation 
 for a conjecture of the day or hour ; it works forward, 
 with a profound sense of the continuity of human life, 
 until it touches the events of our own time in their 
 causes. A little history is a dangerous thing and 
 history as grasped at by the politician is almost always 
 a little. From a careful and conscientious study of the 
 past more perhaps than from anything else, a temper of 
 mind is formed which is fitted to hold in check the rash 
 ardours of the democratic spirit, a temper of mind at 
 once courageous and cautious, strong in serious hopes 
 and free from illusions, faithful to the best traditions of 
 our forefathers and not bound in subjection to them, 
 but rather pressing forward to those high ends towards 
 which they and we together work. 
 
 Those somewhat vague yet potent words, Humanity, 
 Progress, Fraternity, which have fired the democratic 
 imagination in the present century, are the property of 
 no single nation, and the common ardours of the age
 
 1 4 Introduction. 
 
 have introduced a cosmopolitan element into literature. 
 The more rapid and freer interchange of ideas, the 
 swifter and more powerful flow of waves of sentiment 
 between nations, have tended in the same direction, 
 so that amid all their diversities a certain community 
 has been established between the several literatures of 
 Europe. As in the mediaeval period a dominant theo- 
 logy bound together the intellects of the various countries 
 of the West, so now the dominant conceptions of science 
 inhabit English, Italian, French, and German brains, and 
 a real society of thinkers, extending beyond the limits of 
 any one nation, has come into existence. Yet, as it were 
 to counterpoise these influences tending to a cosmopoli- 
 tan mode of thought and feeling, the principle of nation- 
 ality seems at the same time to have acquired increased 
 force. A united Germany and a united Italy have given 
 notable demonstrations of its power, and the very dis- 
 memberment of France has but intensified the national 
 self-consciousness. In literature the profound differences 
 which have their origin or expression in diverse modes 
 of speech must remain, however close be the alliance of 
 nations. The German who constructs his sentence in 
 one way can never be master of the same intellectual 
 motions as the Frenchman who constructs his sentence 
 in another. The use during long centuries of this in- 
 strument, or of that, has called forth and has determined 
 a characteristic play of thought. Obviously where there 
 is diversity of tongues the principle of nationality cannot 
 fail to assert itself in literature. But we may well feel 
 surprise when within the bounds of a single people, and 
 within the area possessed by one common language, the
 
 Introduction. 1 5 
 
 literary claims of contending nationalities are raised. 
 Shall we in these islands of ours, who " speak the 
 tongue that Shakespeare spake," nurse the dream of four 
 separate streams of literature, or shall we have our pride 
 and our joy in one noble river broadened and deepened 
 by various affluent waters ? 
 
 The question, as it presents itself to one whose home 
 is in Ireland, is not an altogether academic one. The 
 present Home Eule movement, which exists only by 
 virtue of the economic crisis affecting an agricultural 
 population, cannot be called a national movement, 
 in the sense in which the movement of 1848, or 
 the Fenian movement, was national. Its strength at 
 the present moment in Ireland lies in the fact that it is 
 essentially a struggle which concerns material interests. 
 Idealists of the type of Thomas Davis, who sighed for 
 the time when " the brighter days shall surely come, 
 . . . and the sweet old language be heard once more 
 in college, mart and senate," have been thrust contemp- 
 tuously aside. The echoes of the old language, whether 
 sweet or harsh, dwindle in forlorn wilds and on rugged 
 headlands of the west. Yet some of the old hopes and 
 dreams are not extinct, and we hear from time to time 
 plaintive demands for an Irish literature with a special 
 character of its own. We read of the enthusiasm with 
 which Welsh bards are listened to at the national 
 Eisteddfods ; and perhaps it is a genuine enthusiasm, 
 for doubtless the Cymric speech vibrates along nerves 
 which are not stirred by our English tongue. And we 
 know how vigorous is the spirit of Scottish patriotism, 
 though it may not have formulated an express demand
 
 1 6 Introduction. 
 
 in literature. It cannot be altogether an idle question 
 to ask whether it is possible or desirable that separate 
 channels should be cut for the flow of these several 
 streams of sentiment in literature. 
 
 Unquestionably our strength springs from the soil in 
 which we grow. We are not epiphytes, living upon the 
 air. A literature which consciously aims at cosmopoli- 
 tanism is almost always a literature in a period of decline. 
 Yet it is well to remember that the spirit of a man may 
 inhabit an ampler space than that in which his body 
 lives and moves. " Spartam nactus es : hanc orna." 
 Yes, but which Sparta is our possession the land that 
 has fed our bodies, or the land that has nourished and 
 enriched our souls ? Carlyle, the son of a Scotch 
 peasant, and proud of his honourable parentage, had in 
 him always much that was derived from his Scottish 
 birth and breeding, his Scottish moors and hills, his 
 Scottish religion. But how much less fruitful would 
 have been the result for literature if he had drawn a 
 circle around his mind corresponding to his physical 
 environment, and had admitted within that circle no 
 other thoughts and aspirations than those proper to a 
 Scottish literary coterie, or the Scottish kirk from which 
 he had gained so much in moral training and for the 
 ministry of which he was at one time designed ? In his 
 solitude of Craigenputtoch "a solitude altogether 
 Druidical . . . nothing to disturb you with speech, 
 except Arcturus and Orion, and the spirit of nature," 
 he was really an inhabitant of Weimar, and the com- 
 panion of Goethe and Schiller. Would he have served 
 Scotland better or worse if he had occupied his imagina-
 
 Introduction. 1 7 
 
 tion solely or chiefly with memories of Bruce and 
 Wallace, if he had devoted himself to Scottish antiqui- 
 ties, or Scottish history, or Scottish religion, regarded 
 from a purely national that is, a provincial point 
 of view ? Was it not better for us all, and better for 
 his own countrymen, that he followed the leadings 
 of his genius when it invited him into the great 
 world ? 
 
 The national spirit was strong in Carlyle because it 
 worked unconsciously. He was a Scotchman in the best 
 of all ways, that is, as it were, inevitably. The deepest 
 instincts of the man were those of his people, and even 
 when his thoughts ranged wide they had intimate 
 relations with the faith of his fathers. Whenever the 
 genius of a nation is strong it works thus in deep and 
 obscure ways. The attempt to whip up deliberately and 
 by artificial means the national spirit in literature is 
 evidence of the decay of that spirit. A noble ancestry 
 is a source of honourable pride, but it is a pride which 
 maintains itself with a quiet dignity ; bounce and brag 
 are the tokens of a plebeian. And as with individuals 
 so with a nation. If we really belong to an excellent 
 race, we shall prove it by our deeds rather than perpetu- 
 ally boast of it with our tongues. 
 
 If there be, indeed, a distinctive genius characterising 
 each of the peoples of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, it is 
 highly desirable that this should find expression, and that 
 the unity of our literature should be a unity possessing 
 as much variety as possible. The different strands if 
 twisted together should make up a cord which is both 
 strong and delightfully coloured. In Ireland at present,
 
 1 8 Introduction. 
 
 apart from the Universities we must sorrowfully 
 acknowledge the fact little interest is taken in .litera- 
 ture ; but we can conceive an Irish literary movement 
 which should command our deepest interest and sym- 
 pathy ; a movement in which such differences of national 
 character as may perhaps exist should manifest them- 
 selves not of deliberate purpose, but naturally and 
 spontaneously. But if the Irish literary movement were 
 to consist in flapping a green banner in the eyes of the 
 beholders, and upthrusting a pasteboard "sunburst" high 
 in air, I, for one, should prefer to stand quietly apart 
 from such a movement. In a popular life of Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald, published in Dublin, I read the 
 following poetical exordium : " Not Greece of old in her 
 palmiest days, the Greece of Homer and Demosthenes, 
 of /Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, of Pericles, 
 Leonidas, and Alcibiades, of Socrates, Plato, and Aris- 
 totle, of Solon and Lycurgus, of Apelles and Praxiteles, 
 not even this Greece, prolific as she was in sages and 
 heroes, can boast such a lengthy bead-roll as Ireland can 
 of names worthy of the immortality of history." How 
 partial, then, have been the awards of history ! How 
 true the saying that the world knows nothing of its 
 greatest men ! And how modest the writer of this life 
 of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, to set forth the bead-roll of 
 Greece in such ample detail and to throw the veil of a 
 general statement over the glories of his native land ! 
 If in the Irish literary movement we are to step to such 
 a tune as this, I think on the whole I should rather 
 fall out of the ranks, or even step to music as rhetorical 
 as that of " Rule Britannia."
 
 Introduction. \ g 
 
 Not that I have any of Captain Macmorris's sensi- 
 tiveness. " What ish my nation ? Who talks of my 
 nation ? " We are well content to be known as the 
 fellow-countrymen of those Irishmen and West Britons, 
 Goldsmith and Burke. " It may not," says one of 
 George Eliot's characters, " be good luck to be born a 
 woman, but one gets used to it from a baby." And in 
 like manner it may not be altogether good luck, from a 
 literary point of view, to be born an Irishman, but one 
 gets used to it. It seems alike absurd to be proud or 
 to be ashamed of the fact. But I confess that I am not 
 ambitious of intensifying my intellectual or spiritual 
 brogue. If national character be really strong and vivid 
 it will show itself, although we do not strive to be 
 national with malice prepense ; it will show itself, 
 whether we occupy ourselves with an edition of 
 Sophocles or of Cicero, or with a song of the deeds 
 of Cuchullain or the love and sorrow of Deirdre. No 
 folly can be greater than that of fancying that we shall 
 strengthen our literary position by living exclusively in 
 our own ideas, and showing ourselves inhospitable to 
 the best ideas of other lands. Nor is that the 
 wisest hospitality which constrains the guest to assume 
 the garb and adopt the manners of his entertainers. 
 The shock of strangeness is inspiriting. Every great 
 literary movement of modern Europe has been born 
 from the wedlock of two peoples. So the great Eliza- 
 bethan literature sprang from the love-making of 
 England with Italy ; the poetry of the early part of 
 the nineteenth century from the ardour aroused in 
 England by the opening promise of the French Revolu-
 
 2O Introduction. 
 
 tion. Surely an Irish man of letters may be engaged 
 in work in the truest sense patriotic if he endeavours to 
 bring into his country the best ideas from France, from 
 Germany, from the old world of classical learning, from 
 the living world of nature, or from some fresh ex- 
 ploration of the mind of man, even though the word 
 " Ireland " be not for ever shrilling on his lips. We 
 should be far better patriots if, instead of singing paeans 
 about Irish genius, we were to set ourselves to correct 
 some of the defects of Irish intellect. Let an Irish poet 
 teach his countrymen to write a song free from rhetoric, 
 free from false imagery, free from green tinsel, and with 
 thoroughly sound workmanship in the matter of verse, 
 and he will have done a good and a needful thing. Let 
 an Irish prose writer show that he can be patient, exact, 
 just, enlightened, and he will have done better service 
 for Ireland, whether he treats of Irish themes or not, 
 than if he wore shamrocks in all his buttonholes and 
 had his mouth for ever filled with the glories of Brian 
 the Brave. Let an Irish antiquary study the relics of 
 his native land with all the resources of modern science, 
 viewing these interesting remains from the central and 
 not merely from a provincial standpoint, and he will 
 lead us towards the truth instead of plunging us in folly 
 and illusion. We cannot create a school of Irish men 
 of genius poets are born, not made but what we 
 can do is this : we can try to secure for Ireland the 
 advantage of possessing a school of honest and skilled 
 craftsmen in literature. Out of this school of craftsmen 
 now and again a man of genius may arise, strong and 
 sane because he has sprung from a race of intelligent
 
 Introduction. 2 1 
 
 and patient workmen, and because he feels their in- 
 fluence surrounding him. 
 
 Such a body of trained scholars should be the in- 
 tellectual aristocracy of a democratic age, an upper ten 
 thousand of workers. It will include in large propor- 
 tion those whose studies are scientific, and who influence 
 literature only indirectly. Their influence, although 
 indirect, is far from unimportant. There are not want- 
 ing persons who assure us that the pursuit of scientific 
 studies must in the end prove injurious, if not fatal, to 
 the higher forms of literature. M. Paul Bourget, him- 
 self a poet, in his dialogue, " Science et Poesie," argues, 
 through the lips of one of the speakers who seems to 
 express, in part at least, his own opinions, that Poetry 
 can no longer be an instrument or envoy of truth, and 
 that it must more and more confine itself to the domain 
 of sensibility, while its rival, Science, takes possession 
 more and more of the domain of intelligence." M. 
 Scherer is assured that if poetry lives, it will only be as 
 the private cult of rare individuals ; the people has 
 ceased, he says, to believe in poetry. " It will soon 
 be with poetry as with religious painting or classical 
 tragedy ; a Flandrin, a Rachel only make us feel the 
 more strongly that such forms of art exist by an 
 artificial convention, that the pleasure which they bring 
 us is an affaire d'archaisme." A writer in our own 
 country, of whom we may say that she has been herself, 
 as Mill said of Charles Kingsley, one of the good in- 
 fluences of the age, Miss F. P. Cobbe, accepted a 
 brief in the case of Literature, Religion, and Morals, 
 versus Science, and she conducted her pleadings with
 
 2 2 Introduction. 
 
 remarkable vivacity : " When science," she bids us 
 believe, " like poverty comes in at the door, art 
 like love flies out of the window." Her pleadings 
 against the scientific spirit of the age reminded me that 
 I had myself, a good many years ago, written something 
 from a different point of view, maintaining that the 
 great ideas of modern science were not without a noble 
 inspiration for poetry ; and it led me to consider 
 whether, having then joined in the choral ode which 
 celebrates science, I ought not now to sing a palinode. 
 Miss Cobbe prophesies like a lively Cassandra. And 
 then comes Mr Matthew Arnold, in his posthumous 
 volume of " Essays," with a promise on behalf of poetry 
 which is more deadly than a threat. The future of 
 poetry, he says, is immense ; in poetry our race will 
 find, as time goes on, an ever surer and surer stay. 
 And why ? Because criticism and science having 
 deprived us of all old faiths and traditional dogmas, 
 poetry, which attaches itself to the idea will take the 
 place of religion and philosophy, or what now pass for 
 such, and will console and sustain those who, but for it, 
 would be forlorn. A pale hospital nurse attending the 
 bed of scepticism such, it would seem, is the Muse 
 henceforth to be. She will speak soothing sentences 
 and administer the tonic draught. And the palsied 
 man will cling to her all the more because he is well 
 assured that henceforward no divine stranger will ever 
 come and say, in words of sacred cheer, " Rise, take up 
 thy bed, and walk." 
 
 We shall do well, in glancing at this subject, to bear 
 in mind the well-known distinction made by De Quincey
 
 Introduction. 23 
 
 between the literature of knowledge and the literature 
 of power. The function of the first is to teach ; the 
 function of the second is to move : the first is a rudder, 
 the second an oar or a sail. If we were to embark on 
 a voyage, we should find that both rudder and sail have 
 their uses. Between the two divisions of literature 
 spoken of by De Quincey lies a kind of writing which 
 occupies a considerable space in our own day and has an 
 important work to do the literature of criticism. It is 
 concerned neither wholly with knowledge nor wholly 
 with emotions ; it has both to feel and to know : it 
 tries at once to enlighten the intellect and to quicken 
 and refine the sensibility. 
 
 There is another distinction to be observed if we 
 would arrive at any sound conclusion with respect to 
 the influence of science on literature. We must dis- 
 tinguish between scientific results and scientific methods. 
 The conclusions of science may be fruitful for literature 
 now, or may become so when they have passed into the 
 general consciousness, and yet the mental processes 
 which lead to such conclusions may tend to disqualify 
 the mind for the enjoyment of poetry and art. If this 
 be the case, we must regard a man of science who 
 transforms himself into "a machine for grinding general 
 laws out of large collections of fact " (the words are 
 Darwin's), as one who submits to a personal loss in 
 order to procure some valuable prize for his country 
 or his race. The doctrines which we associate with the 
 name of Mr Darwin may prove indispensable to those 
 who desire to have an intelligent and coherent view of 
 the world we live in ; they may form an essential
 
 24 Introduction. 
 
 part of the Weltanschauung of the future, a Weltans- 
 chauung which may be as needful for the poet as 
 the man of science. This seems not unlikely to come 
 to pass. And yet we have been told by Mr Darwin 
 himself in a remarkable passage, which Miss Cobbe, 
 kindliest of devil's advocates, does not fail to quote, 
 that after the age of thirty certain of his faculties 
 began to suffer an atrophy caused by disuse ; that his 
 great delight in poetry and painting and music con- 
 stantly waned. " Now for many years I cannot endure 
 to read a line of poetry. I have also almost lost my 
 taste for pictures or music." Mr Darwin's experience is 
 probably by no means singular. There are times when 
 humanity needs an organ or a function more than a com- 
 plete man. When the Angelical Doctor at dinner with 
 the King of France dropped into a cogitation, and struck 
 the table with his fist as the light of an argument fatal 
 to the Manichees flashed across his brain, he showed 
 himself deficient in good manners ; but such a power 
 of self-abstraction was a condition without which the 
 " Summa " could Dot have been written. When St 
 Bernard, hearing his fellow-travellers speak of Lake 
 Leman, on whose banks he had journeyed the whole 
 day, asked, " But where is the lake ? " he showed 
 himself highly insensible to natural beauty ; but had 
 the saint not been from boyhood mire cogitalivus, 
 Abelard might have come and conquered at the 
 Council of Sens. There have been times when, in 
 order to keep alive the moral and spiritual tradition 
 in a world of luxury and lust, it was necessary for men 
 to fly to the desert and forget the joys of domestic life
 
 Introduction. 25 
 
 and all the pleasures of colour and of song. We honour 
 the saints who put out the right eye in order that they 
 might save what was more precious for the world's uses 
 than even an eye. Let us also honour the ascetic of 
 science, whose inductions have helped us to know the 
 laws of the world, if not aright, yet at least less 
 erroneously. 
 
 The results of scientific study are in no respect 
 antagonistic to literature, though they may profoundly 
 modify that view of the world which has hitherto found 
 in literature an imaginative expression. The concep- 
 tions of a great cosmos, of the reign of law in nature, of 
 the persistence of force, of astronomic, geologic, biologic 
 evolution, have in them nothing which should paralyse 
 the emotions or the imagination. To attempt indeed a 
 poetical " De Rerum Natura " at the present moment were 
 premature ; but when these and other scientific concep- 
 tions have become familiar, they will form an accepted, 
 intellectual background from which the thoughts and 
 feelings and images of poetry will stand out quite 
 as effectively as they stood out from the antiquated 
 cosmology of the Middle Ages. Although, however, 
 scientific conclusions may in the end subserve litera- 
 ture, it is certain that the methods and processes of 
 science, and those employed in what De Quincey terms 
 the literature of power, are essentially different. Such 
 literature is nothing if it is not personal ; it expresses 
 the thoughts, passions, and imaginings of an individual. 
 Science aims at excluding whatever is peculiar to the 
 individual : he must not read himself into the pheno- 
 mena ; his vision must be free from the mists of
 
 26 Introduction. 
 
 sentiment ; his imagination is of use only in shap- 
 ing an hypothesis to be verified by subsequent inquiry 
 or in varying the experiments by which he may attain 
 to new objective facts. The literature of power, if it is 
 to deserve the name, must adhere to its own methods, 
 unseduced by the glamour which at present surrounds 
 the words science and scientific. When M. Zola appears 
 as the champion of what he styles the Experimental 
 Romance, and when he professes to practise in literature 
 the methods of the eminent physiologist, Claude Ber- 
 nard, he is in truth a charlatan juggling with words. 
 It would please him to crown himself at once with the 
 glory of science and the glory of letters. The person- 
 ality of the writer of experimental romance, he tells us, 
 is to be found in the fact that he starts, like the scien- 
 tific investigator, with an hypothesis, or a general idea, 
 which is presently to be verified or rejected ; he puts 
 his characters into motion in a certain environment ; 
 their behaviour in this way or that constitutes an ex- 
 periment and establishes or overthrows the a priori 
 hypothesis. " This it is," he says, " which constitutes 
 the experimental romance ; to be master of the 
 mechanism of human phenomena, to exhibit the springs 
 of intellectual and sensual manifestations as they are 
 explained to us by physiology, under the influences of 
 heredity and environing circumstances ; then to exhibit 
 the man living in the social milieu which he has him- 
 self created, which he modifies from day to day, and in 
 the midst of which he experiences in his turn a con- 
 tinual transformation." What is true in this is not 
 new. Richardson and Fielding practised the method,
 
 Introduction. 2 7 
 
 as far as it is a legitimate method, just as much as does 
 the author of " L'Assommoir." What is new is the 
 pretence of scientific experiment where none exists. 
 
 Experimental romance is then a misnomer ; but a 
 title which has been applied to M. Zola and his group, 
 " the school of observation," goes nearer the mark. 
 And undoubtedly the scientific tendencies of the age 
 have led us to value, and even to overvalue, the results 
 of the mere observation of external phenomena. Yet 
 a reaction from the vague idealism of writers whose in- 
 spiration was drawn from the democratic abstractions 
 Progress, Humanity, Liberty, Fraternity, and the like 
 was inevitable, and has not been wholly unserviceable. 
 Let the school of observation but do its work more 
 thoroughly, and we shall again be in presence of the 
 nobler facts of human life as well as the baser, and per- 
 ceive the glory of our manhood together with the 
 shame. What the fruits of this higher realism in 
 literature may be, we can divine from the perusal of 
 certain pages in such works as " Anna Karnina " and 
 " War and Peace." 
 
 The literature of power may indeed be stimulated by 
 the scientific spirit of the age to make more exact and 
 thorough observations of external nature and the varie- 
 ties of human life, and so to complete its preliminary 
 studies ; but it must adhere to its own methods. If a 
 writer possess a powerful individuality, and can affix to 
 every piece he produces his ineffaceable sign manual, he 
 may bring this into relief by a certain air of scientific 
 disinterestedness and impassivity. So it was with the 
 chief of recent French poets, Leconte de Lisle. We
 
 28 Introduction. 
 
 are all the more sensible of the peculiar character of his 
 genius because he seems to submit himself with such a 
 patient study to his object, while in fact the object is 
 being moulded in his shaping hands. He did indeed 
 learn something from science, but he assumed no false 
 airs, and he loyally adhered to the processes proper to art. 
 But although the literature of power cannot adopt 
 the methods of science, it is to a great extent otjier- 
 wise with the literature of knowledge. Thus in our 
 own day we have seen the rise of a school of historians 
 who are too scientific, in the true sense of the word, to 
 pretend that they are masters of a science of history. 
 They have lost something, perhaps, in no longer conceiv- 
 ing a history as a work of art, as a passionate drama, 
 or as a gallery of portraits. They have not produced, 
 and cannot by their methods produce, a Thucydides or 
 a Tacitus. But the gains have outbalanced the loss. 
 They are patient and indefatigable in research. They 
 labour in original sources as the geologist among his 
 strata or the comparative anatomist among his verte- 
 brates and invertebrates. They endeavour to lay aside 
 prejudice and passion, in order that they may see things 
 as they are. They recognise the continuity of human 
 history. They treat no portion of the past with scorn. 
 They do not dress up the men of past ages in the cos- 
 tumes or the ideas of to-day. They study the action of 
 great but obscure social forces and discover in them the 
 causes of those conspicuous events which alone attract 
 the attention of superficial observers. In a word, living 
 at a time when the scientific spirit is dominant, they 
 appropriate to their own uses some of the methods of
 
 Introduction. 29 
 
 science and cultivate certain habits of inind which may 
 be described as scientific. And great has been the gain 
 for their special study, great the gain for us all. 
 
 In the literature of criticism the influence of science 
 has brought loss and gain. Sainte-Beuve mourned over 
 the disappearance of the circle of " studious amateurs " 
 in literature, vibrating to the finest and most fugitive 
 impressions. But he did not deny that the time has 
 come when we must gird up our loins courageously for 
 a series of steadfast and laborious marches. No one 
 demonstrated more admirably than Sainte-Beuve himself 
 that it is possible to reconcile la critique de gout and la 
 critique naturelle ; no one gave happier examples of 
 that kind of criticism which, while remaining a delicate 
 art yet knows how to take advantage of all the induc- 
 tions of science and all the acquisitions of history. 1 He 
 found his happiness in exquisite studies of literary 
 natural history and literary physiology, and in reproduc- 
 ing from ample stores of knowledge and with the finest 
 tact an image of this or that environment which has 
 aided the development of genius. Yet he cannot forbear 
 from uttering a light sigh as he thinks of days when it 
 was possible to taste and dwell upon the flavour of the 
 fruit without discussing all the conditions of soil and 
 climate which reared the plant and matured the sap. 
 In a characteristic passage he makes his "last complaint," 
 half serious, half playful, against the inevitable which he 
 is fully prepared to accept : 
 
 " Where is that vanished time in which, even though one were 
 an author and professional man of letters, it was not essential to 
 
 1 "Nouveaux Lundis," ix. pp. 84, 85.
 
 30 Introduction. 
 
 engage in so many trains of reasoning and observe such learned 
 ceremonies ; when the impression on a reader's mind came easily, 
 and took complete possession of him without an effort, as at the 
 theatre the play engages and interests the amateur pleasantly seated 
 in his stall ; when we could read Ancients and Moderns lying on 
 our bed like Horace in the dog-days, or stretched 011 a sofa like 
 Gray, murmuring to ourselves that such pleasure was better than 
 the joys of Paradise or Olympus ; the time when we walked in the 
 shade, reading, like that excellent Dutchman, who could not con- 
 ceive, he said, greater happiness here below at the age of fifty than 
 to saunter through a lovely country, book in hand, sometimes clos- 
 ing it, without passion, without desire, yielding oneself wholly to 
 meditation ; the time when, like Meissonier's Reader, in our solitary 
 chamber, on a Sunday afternoon, by the open window in its frame 
 of honeysuckle, we read some book which seemed for the season our 
 only love. Happy age, where is it flown ? Nothing truly is less 
 like it than to be forever on the thorns as we are nowadays when 
 we read than to be on our guard at every step, to question our- 
 selves without end ; to ask whether this is the right text, whether 
 there is not some alteration here, whether the author whom we 
 should enjoy did not take this in a different way, whether he copied 
 from actual things or invented, whether he is original and in what 
 way, whether he has been faithful to his genius and to his race, 
 . . . with a thousand other questions which spoil pleasure, breed 
 doubt, make you rub your forehead, compel you to run to your 
 library, to climb to the highest shelves, to tumble over all your 
 books, to consult, to inspect, to become in a word an artisan or a 
 labouring man instead of a delicate voluptuary or a fastidious 
 amateur, who inhales the spirit of things, and takes only what may 
 suit him and gratify his taste. Epicurism of culture, forever lost I 
 fear ; henceforth forbidden assuredly to every critic ; last religion 
 of those for whom no other survived ; last honour and last virtue 
 of a Hamilton and a Petronius, how truly I conceive you, how 
 much I regret you, even while I combat you, and while I forswear 
 you ! " l 
 
 We cannot do things by halves. Literary research, 
 
 like historical research, must be exact and thorough or 
 
 it is of little worth. It has opened new regions and 
 
 buried ages for our study ; yes, and for our enjoyment. 
 
 1 "Nouveaux Lundis," ix. pp. 86, 87.
 
 Introduction. 3 1 
 
 It has illuminated the past. It has widened our sym- 
 pathies. It has substituted for that dogmatic criticism 
 which pronounced imperious judgments a new natural 
 history of poets and prose-writers. Our library has 
 become a kind of museum, in which specimens of the 
 various species are arranged and classified. What we 
 had read any way for our pleasure we must now study 
 in chronological sequence, so that we may observe and 
 follow a development. We reconstruct our author's 
 environment, we investigate his origins. All this is 
 well ; yet subject to one condition that we do not 
 forget the end of study in the means, that we somehow 
 and at some time get beyond the apparatus. It is well 
 to know that the vine belongs to the natural order 
 vitacece; that it prefers an open soil with good drainage; 
 that it has pentamerous flowers ; that the fruit is two- 
 celled and four-seeded ; and that the juice contains 
 bitartrate of potash and tartrate of lime. But all this 
 we might know although we had never tasted the grape 
 or drunk a cup of wine. The student of chemistry may 
 find as interesting a subject of analysis in a bottle of 
 wine still harsh in youth and lacking its finer appeal 
 to sense as in a bottle of the rarest vintage ; but 
 wine has other uses than that of affording a field for 
 analysis. It rejoices the heart of man, and this quality 
 of the juice of the grape deserves at least a certain 
 degree of attention. 
 
 There is undoubtedly a danger that in accumulation, 
 arrangement, observation, analysis, induction, we may 
 lose some of the higher spirit of literature. With the 
 great French critic from whom I have quoted such a
 
 32 Introduction. 
 
 danger could not exist. No wine-taster had a finer 
 palate than that incomparable old taster of the vintages 
 of literature, Sainte-Beuve. His intellect was not dog- 
 matic ; he did not read to confirm a theory ; he did not 
 force things, as his fellow-countryman, M. Taine, does, 
 to become mere illustrations of a doctrine ; he would 
 hardly, like M. Hennequin, push scientific criticism to 
 the point at which it conjecturally explores the " third 
 frontal convolution " in the " cerebral organism " of a 
 great poet ; he carried his weight of erudition lightly 
 and gracefully. There is life and not mere arrangement 
 in all that he has written. Acquisition of intellectual 
 property is admirable, but only on condition that we are 
 the masters and not the slaves of our possessions. 
 " Reading," Edmund Burke wrote in a letter of advice 
 to his son, " and much reading, is good. But the power 
 of diversifying the matter infinitely in your own mind, 
 and of applying it on every occasion that arises, is far 
 better ; so don't suppress the vivida vis." That we may 
 lose ourselves in materials is the danger of our time. 
 No word of counsel is more to the purpose at the present 
 day than Burke's word. Let knowledge and erudition 
 do their perfect work, only let us also see that they do 
 not suppress but rather subserve the spirit of life within 
 us.
 
 MR MEREDITH IN HIS POEMS. 
 
 ONE of Mr Meredith's disciples has expressed a hope 
 that at least his master's verse may be saved from the 
 intrusion of the literary excursionist and holiday tripper. 
 Vain hope ! To name any Parnassian aiguille as in- 
 accessible is to invite some hardy mountaineer to essay 
 its conquest. By-and-by a pair of climbers follow in 
 the solitary explorer's track ; next, an adventurous lady, 
 roped and accompanied by guides ; then a lady more 
 adventurous, who discovers a second way of ascent, and 
 whose achievement is duly blazoned abroad. Presently, 
 the needle-point is declared to be no barren peak, but 
 a pleasant table-land ; a company, with limited liability 
 and unlimited power of talk, exploits the discovery ; 
 hotels crown the summit : from base to brow runs the 
 railway scientifically engineered ; personally-conducted 
 parties troop and bustle ; and picnics remain in evidence 
 by scattered fragments of the beer-bottle, greasy papers, 
 broken corks, and morsels of bitten sandwiches, that 
 moulder in the sun. After all, why not ? Let not our 
 literary daintiness be over-nice. The great writers are 
 hospitable, and afford ample space for comers of all 
 kinds. A poet, if there be a little granite in him, will 
 survive his worst and best admirers. His sunshine and 
 air are better antiseptics than our daintiness. 
 
 One who has no part in that " cult within a cult," of 
 
 C 33
 
 34 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 which the fervent disciple speaks, may yet be of the 
 opinion that it is worth while to make acquaintance 
 with the poetry of Mr George Meredith, and all the 
 more so because that poetry really sets up no petty 
 aesthetic temple of its own, but belongs, in its degree, to 
 the National Church of English Letters. Mr Meredith 
 composes hymns in honour of Mother Earth, whose rain 
 and dew drop upon the evil and the good ; such hymns, 
 if they are worthy of their theme, can be meant for 
 no clan or coterie or conventicle. And, in fact, their 
 maker has said as much in his poem of The Thrush in 
 February. 
 
 " So mine are these new fruitings rich 
 The simple to the common brings ; 
 I keep the youth of souls who pitch 
 Their joy in this old heart of things." 
 
 Mr Meredith's joy is indeed in the old heart of 
 things the wheat-field and the upland lawn and the 
 fir-wood, the sun and the wind and the rain, the ways 
 of bird and beast, the gladness of earth in man's and 
 maiden's blood, and this refining itself to the swift play 
 of intelligence, and the rapture of the spirit. It is none 
 the less true that, in celebrating the simple, he is often 
 highly elaborate and ingenious, and that he presents the 
 common in curiously uncommon ways. But when we 
 have learnt how to straighten out his twisted phrases, 
 to leap his aery chasms of remote associations, to catch 
 a prospect through his eyelet holes of intelligence, to 
 practise a certain legerdemain and keep five balls of 
 meaning a dance together in the brain when we have 
 learnt these various things and several others, then the
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 35 
 
 total significance of Mr Meredith as a poet is found to 
 be good ; is found to be sound and sweet and sane, 
 seed for a hopeful sowing and clean wheat for our 
 quern. 
 
 Of course, it may be said that the demands which 
 Mr Meredith makes of his readers are exorbitant, and 
 that a difficult style is necessarily a bad style. A 
 student of the history of literature, however, knows that 
 the charge of obscurity, which is one of the charges 
 most confidently brought by contemporaries, can be 
 finally adjudicated on only by time. It may be sus- 
 tained, or it may be refuted. To many of his contem- 
 poraries Gray was a tangle of difficulties ; for critics of 
 authority in a later period Wordsworth and Shelley and 
 Coleridge wrote unintelligible nonsense; and in our 
 own day we have seen the poetry of Robert Browning 
 slowly but surely expounding itself to a generation. 
 Even caviare, it seems, may become a little fly-blown. 
 Perhaps Mr Meredith's style is difficult ; but difficulty 
 is a relative term, and experience should have taught 
 us that this is a point on which it is wise to reserve an 
 absolute judgment. Sword-practice is difficult to those 
 who have not exercised the muscles of the wrist ; and 
 some dancers who foot it merrily in the waltz stand 
 grim against the wall looking condemnation at the 
 lifted leg and pointed toe of the pas de quatre. If Mr 
 Meredith can teach young folk to dance to his music, 
 the most reluctant of us will be forced to admit by- 
 and-by that he has achieved what is the essential thing. 
 Meanwhile it is lawful for anyone who pleases to raise a 
 sceptical eyebrow and put the question, " But will he ? "
 
 36 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 In guessing at the answer to that question we may 
 find some help from considering another : What has 
 Mr Meredith to say, be his manner of saying it good or 
 ill ? In a dozen volumes of prose the eager student of 
 human nature has told us of his discoveries. Prose is 
 proved by the achievement of his forty years of author- 
 ship to be the main stream ; verse is no more than a 
 slender affluent. But both are Dichtung, and both, it 
 may be added, are Wahrheit. Or, to vary our metaphor, 
 the Dichtung written in prose is the lake, broad- 
 bosomed, with countless coves and creeks ; the Dichtung 
 written in verse is a lakelet higher among the hills, less 
 easy of access, but open to the skies and to the passage 
 of the stars, though at times involved in wreathing 
 mists ; and a stream runs down from lakelet to lake, 
 connecting the two for Mr Meredith's prose is at times 
 such prose as a poet writes, and the thought and feeling 
 expressed in his novels are fed from the contemplations 
 of a poet. His subtlety and his analytic power have in 
 the novels a wider range for play ; his faith and hope 
 are more directly expressed in his verse. In both prose 
 and verse his felicities are found in infelicity or what 
 for the present seems such ; his infelicities are found 
 amid felicity ; he is at once a most alluring and a most 
 provoking writer. 
 
 In a generous letter of protest against one of Mr 
 Meredith's reviewers of thirty years ago a reviewer 
 who had complained of Modern Love as dealing with 
 " a deep and painful subject on which the writer has no 
 conviction to express " Mr Swinburne denied to poets 
 the right to mount a pulpit : " there are pulpits enough
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 37 
 
 for all preachers in prose ; the business of verse-writing 
 is hardly to express convictions." Yet certain poets at 
 all times have chosen to assume the attitude of teachers 
 or preachers. Spenser defined his purpose in the Faerie 
 Qucene as that of " fashioning a gentleman or noble 
 person in virtuous and gentle discipline." Milton, in 
 Paradise Lost, would 
 
 "assert Eternal Providence 
 And justify the ways of God to men." 
 
 We can hardly believe that when Milton wrote those 
 words he was " full of his fun." Pope alleged as the 
 peculiar merit of his "Essay on Man," that it steers 
 between the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, 
 and forms a temporate yet not inconsistent system of 
 ethics. Fortunately or unfortunately for his art, Shelley 
 was a persistent preacher on texts chosen from " Political 
 Justice." " I wish either to be considered as a teacher 
 or as nothing," said Wordsworth. Philosophy, declared 
 Browning, is at the base of poetry. The doctrine of 
 Stoicism modified by a doctrine of culture is nobly 
 preached in Matthew Arnold's verse. .The poet who 
 proclaimed himself the idle singer of an empty day, one 
 who had no power to sing of heaven or hell, now 
 declaims with poetic rage against the hell of capitalism 
 and competition, and prophesies of the terrestrial heaven 
 of the Communist. Someone has even been found to 
 set forth in a review and the task was no unworthy 
 one the theology of Mr Swinburne. No reader of the 
 poems of Mr Meredith, now when his orbit as poet may 
 be more nearly determined than was possible in 1862, 
 can doubt that he has convictions and that he desires to
 
 38 Mr Meredith in his Poems, 
 
 express them. He, too, like all the larger spirits of this 
 age of inward trouble and perplexity, whether with or 
 against his will, must needs be a preacher. 
 
 In a recently-published Lives of the Saints 
 motley saints of the Positivist Calendar it is men- 
 tioned among the grounds of Shelley's canonization 
 that he quickened in a high degree our sense of rever- 
 ence and awe for the great fetish, the Earth. To 
 Mr Meredith's imagination and affections the great 
 fetish is the mother at whose breasts we hang, from 
 whose life we draw the milk that feeds us, and before 
 all else he would inspire his disciple with filial loyalty 
 and filial love. His feeling for nature is not at least 
 in its root, however it may be with the flower the 
 Wordsworthian sense 
 
 " Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." 
 
 He prefers the word earth to the more abstract word 
 nature, and hugs reality. " I remember Mr Words- 
 worth saying," writes a friend of the poet, " that, at a 
 particular stage of his mental progress, he used to be 
 frequently so rapt into an unreal transcendental world 
 of ideas that the external world seemed no longer to 
 exist in relation to him, and he had to reconvince him- 
 self of its existence by clasping a tree, or something that 
 happened to be near him." Mr Meredith never loses 
 his hold upon things actual and positive ; he clasps the 
 tree, observes its intricacy of branches, studies the 
 wrinkles of its rind, can almost hear the murmur of 
 the sap, catches sight of the squirrel scurrying aloft, 
 sees every tit and finch that peeps or perches ; and
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 39 
 
 then through the real he discovers as real also the 
 spiritual. He is the physician Melampus of his own 
 admirable poem : 
 
 " With love exceeding a simple love of the things 
 
 That glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck ; 
 Or change their perch on a beat of quivering wings 
 
 From branch to branch, only restful to pipe and peck ; 
 Or, bristled, curl at a touch their snouts in a ball ; 
 
 Or cast their web between bramble and thorny hook ; 
 The good physician Melampus loving them all, 
 
 Among them walked, as a scholar who reads a book. 
 
 " For him the woods were a home and gave him the key 
 
 Of knowledge, thirst for their treasures in herbs and flowers. 
 The secrets held by the creatures nearer than we 
 
 To earth he sought, and the link of their life with ours : 
 And where alike we are, unlike where, and the veined 
 
 Division, veined parallel, of a blood that flows 
 In them, in us, from the source by man unattained, 
 
 Save marks he well what the mystical woods disclose." 1 
 
 Like the physician Melampus the poet would not soar 
 to the spiritual meanings of earth by any transcendental 
 flight, but would master the text, with all its minute 
 difficulties, as an exact scholar, and so at last attain to 
 the innermost purport of this book of life. 
 
 Such a study implies faith at the outset, and it 
 implies courage. Some of the meanings of earth lie 
 indeed upon the surface her summer meanings, her 
 messages of pleasure to the blood. If these are easy 
 they are none the less precious : 
 
 " Call to mind 
 The many meanings glistening up 
 
 When Nature to her nurslings kind 
 Hands them the fruitage and the cup ! " 
 
 1 Save marks he well: i.e., unless he marks well.
 
 4O Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 There is nothing of the ascetic in Mr Meredith, unless 
 we use " ascetic " in the nobler sense, meaning one who 
 values strength and hardihood attained through discip- 
 line. He finds that blood nourishes brain, and whole- 
 some blood means wholesome animal delights: 
 
 " Life thoroughly lived is a fact in the brain, 
 While eyes are left for seeing." 
 
 Very charmingly, and with a touch of the great geniality 
 of nature in her hour of animal awakening, Mr Meredith 
 has told his tale of "The Appeasement of Demeter." 
 The beloved Persephone has been snatched below; it is 
 the season of dearth and almost despair : 
 
 " Lean grass-blades, losing green on their bent flags, 
 
 Sang chilly to themselves ; lone honey-bees 
 Pursued the flowers that were not, with dry bags ; 
 
 Sole sound aloud the snap of sapless trees, 
 More sharp than slingstones on hard breastplates hurled. 
 Back to first chaos tumbled the stopped world, 
 Careless to lure or please. 
 A nature of gaunt ribs, an Earth of crags." 
 
 The description is hardly less admirable than Keats's 
 night of frost. Man and woman, youth and age, are 
 shrunken, cheerless, lost in the sloth of hopeless hours, 
 wagging the tongue with weak and bird-like voice. De- 
 meter stands yet wrathful in the vale, nor can her 
 once glad naiad of the mountain-rivulet, lambe, at first 
 awaken forgiveness in her heart. But lambe has some 
 shadow of laughter in her still, and a woman's bright- 
 ness of craft ; above the moan of human prayer she 
 raises the cattle-call, and slowly from among the droves 
 a horse and mare " the wrecks of horse and mare " 
 defile into the presence of the queen :
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 41 
 
 " Howbeit the season of the dancing blood, 
 
 Forgot was horse of mare, yea, mare of horse : 
 Reversed, each head at either's flank, they stood. 
 
 Whereat the goddess, in a dim remorse, 
 Laid hand on them and smacked ; and her touch pricked. 
 Neighing within, at either's flank they licked ; 
 
 Played on a moment's force 
 At courtship, withering to the crazy nod." 
 
 And, presently, the Great Mother, touched by this faint 
 symbol of all the vast and genial joy of earth, laughs 
 aloud laughter " like thunder of the song of heart " ; 
 the curse is rent ; gladness, like a thousand runnels 
 from the hills, descends upon the valley and the valley- 
 folk, and beast and bird ; the " kindly lusts " inspire 
 them once again ; the plough drives in the furrow, and 
 the blade springs green above the brown : 
 
 " Laughter ! beauty plumped, and love had birth. 
 Laughter ! thou reviver of sick Earth ! 
 Good for the spirit, good 
 For body ; thou to both art wine and bread ! " 
 
 Our English people, Mr Meredith inclines to believe, 
 have less need of their pious exercises, conjoined with 
 " hoggery " than of a wise " schooling in the Pleasures." 
 He distrusts profoundly that way of piety which begins 
 by rejecting God's first gift the earth itself, its school- 
 ing, its toils, its joys. Shall we fancy that we have 
 wings to our shoulders and name this earth of ours 
 Dust and Ashes ? or shall we run the glad furrow and 
 turn the soil ? Shall we view Earth as a " damned 
 witch," fair to the eye but full of foulness ? And is this 
 piety to him who gave us so excellent a habitation ? 
 
 " We, pious humpback mountebanks, meanwhile 
 Break off our antics to stand forth, white-eyed,
 
 42 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 And fondly hope for our Creator's smile, 
 By telling him that his prime work is vile, 
 
 Whom, through our noses, we've renounced, denied." 
 
 No ; there is a better way of religious service than this 
 a way of faith and labour and joy : 
 
 " And are we the children of Heaven and Earth 1 
 We'll be true to the mother with whom we are, 
 So to he worthy of Him who, afar, 
 Beckons us on to a brighter birth." 1 
 
 Fidelity to earth is indeed fidelity to that heaven in 
 which earth lives and moves and has its being. 
 
 With The Appeasement of Demeter should be read 
 The Day of the Daughter of Hades, and Phoebus 
 with Admetus. Each poem, and to these may be 
 added as a third, The Lark Ascending is a song of 
 the joy of earth. When Persephone returns from the 
 under world, she bears with her, on a morning, the 
 shadow-born daughter of Hades, to whom one glad 
 holiday in the sunshine is granted ; and slipping from 
 the car, the maiden has for her companion throughout 
 this day the young singer, Callistes. In the valley 
 among the vines, among the wheat-fields, among the 
 olive-groves, by the lake margin, by the stream-side, 
 in the brakes, in the pine-woods, upon the mountain 
 heights, go by this morning of delight, this noon with 
 its deeper bliss, this evening with its thunder- showers 
 and racing torrents, a day of mingled joy and alarm to 
 the human heart of young Callistes, but of fearless joy 
 to the maiden who can interpret in her song the good 
 meanings of the earth : 
 
 1 This and the quotation immediately preceding are from the Ode to the 
 Spirit of Earth in Autumn.
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 43 
 
 " That song 
 
 Of the sowing and reaping, and cheer 
 Of the husbandman's heart, made strong 
 Through droughts and deluging rains, 
 With his faith in the Great Mother's love : 
 the joy of the breath she sustains, 
 And the lyre of the light above, 
 And the first rapt vision of Good, 
 And the fresh young sense of Sweet." 
 
 Something of Demeter's laughter that of a god at 
 sight of the play of pleasure in a humbler sphere than 
 the realm of gods may be divined in the maiden's 
 fond regard for Pan and her innocent curiosity about 
 his ways : 
 
 " The sacred loon, 
 The frolic, the Goatfoot God ; 
 
 For stories of indolent noon 
 In the pine-forest's odorous nod, 
 
 She questioned, not knowing : he can 
 Be waspish, irascible, rude, 
 
 He is oftener friendly to man, 
 And ever to beasts and their brood. 
 
 For the which did she love him well, 
 She said, and his pipes of the reed, 
 
 His twitched lips puffing to tell 
 In music his tears and his need, 
 
 Against the sharp catch of his hurt, 
 Not as shepherds of Pan did she speak, 
 
 Nor spake as the schools, to divert, 
 But fondly, perceiving him weak 
 
 Before gods, and to shepherds a fear, 
 A holiness, horn and heel." 
 
 Yes, with all his weakness, the frolic Goatfoot is sacred, 
 and he should be dear to the lovers of Earth. 
 
 But a true lover of Earth must be a hardy lover, 
 caring for more than her soothing touch and soft caress, 
 able to read her heart even though she should frown or
 
 44 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 seem cold and indifferent. Mr Meredith is bent above 
 all to understand her meanings that are severe, yet 
 kind in their severity ; those ways of hers which train 
 us for the battle-field rather than the bower. Is it 
 later autumn when foliage flies, and the skies are of 
 slate, or when the mist lies low, and 
 
 " Narrows the world to my neighbour's gate ; 
 Paints me Life as a wheezy crone " ? 
 
 Let us master the blood ; let us not live by the senses ; 
 let us read deeper into the life of earth, and we shall 
 see that all is well. Under the surface, in this season 
 of chill, there is the fire of a great hearth. Mother 
 Earth is not sluggish nor cold : 
 
 " Under the surface she burns, 
 Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay, 
 Brightens the fire of renewal : and we ? 
 Death is the word of a bovine day, 
 Know you the breast of the springing To-be." 
 
 Or, again, is the bitterest of east winds hissing ? is the 
 land whipped and shorn by the gale ; the sky hurried 
 on and obliterated by flying cloud-rack ; and are the 
 mouths of men locked grimly as they wrestle with the 
 blast ? For the senses it is hard ; but once more let 
 us read deeper, and what shall we discern ? What but 
 Life sitting at her grindstone 
 
 " That she may give us edging keen, 
 Sting us for battle, till as play 
 The common strokes of fortune shower. 
 Such meaning in a dagger-day 
 Our wits may clasp to wax in power." 
 
 It is through contention and struggle that blood is 
 mastered, and brain wins its due supremacy. Earth
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 45 
 
 has always loved the strong ; once she loved her old 
 Titan brood, and now she cares for their modern suc- 
 cessors who strive with mind more than with muscle ; 
 she would rouse her chosen ones out of the soft life of 
 sensual ease, she would teach them mastery and self- 
 command, so that brain may grow out of blood, and 
 brain in its turn be developed into soul. 
 
 But does Earth indeed care at all for her offspring, 
 Man ? Are not the laws of nature regardless of humanity, 
 and ruthless in their blind persistence ? Mr Meredith 
 has no desire to cheat himself with words ; above all 
 else he seeks reality. Is there, then, in truth this 
 opposition between man and nature ? Is there this 
 breach of continuity in the universe, or rather is not 
 man the crowning part of nature nature evolving 
 itself, or being evolved, into mind and soul ? And are 
 not the laws of human nature her laws ? Man's loving- 
 kindness, his mercifulness, his passion for righteousness, 
 are they not the flower and fruit of her long obscure 
 endeavour ? Is not in truth their root in her ? And 
 what if the seeming cruelty of Earth to her child, Man, 
 be no more than a wholesome severity, needed in order 
 that he may advance through brain to soul, and from 
 bestial up to spiritual ? Her desire all along was no 
 other than to speed the race ; her fear, that man might 
 falter and wax faint : 
 
 "She, judged of shrinking nerves, appears 
 
 A Mother whom no cry can melt ; 
 But read her past desires and fears, 
 The letters on her breast are spelt." 
 
 It is through strife and through suffering that such
 
 46 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 advance as the world can boast an advance like that 
 of a drunkard who bears a pack and reels from side 
 to side, yet still keeps on his way has been made. 
 Hence, though Mr Meredith perceives our national 
 need of " schooling in the Pleasures," he is no sedate 
 philosopher at ease in the garden of Epicurus. That 
 garden was indeed 
 
 " A shining spot upon a shaggy map, 
 Where mind and body, in fair junction free, 
 Luted their joyful concord." 
 
 That garden was a happy nursery of gentlemen ; but the 
 higher wisdom is not attained by the "long drawing of 
 an equal breath." There is wilderness to be reclaimed 
 outside the ordered garden ; and so for the needs of our 
 world better than the philosophy of Epicurus is 
 
 " The crucifix that came of Nazareth." 
 
 Let us not suppose, however, that even in what is 
 highest in our religions or fairest in our ideals we can 
 sever ourselves from the good Mother Earth. What we 
 deem divine, and what indeed is divine, is but the 
 natural evolved to its perfect flower in the spirit 
 
 " Man builds the soaring spires, 
 That sing his soul in stone : of Earth he draws, 
 Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws, 
 His purest fires." 
 
 " Intellect and reverence," writes Mr Meredith in a 
 recent novel, " must clash to the end of time if we persist 
 in regarding the Spirit of Life as a remote externe, who 
 plays the human figures to bring about this or that 
 issue, instead of being beside us, within us, our 'breath, 
 if we will ; marking on us where at each step we sink
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. "47 
 
 to the animal, mount to the divine, we and ours who 
 follow, offspring of body or mind." 
 
 Thus then, according to Mr Meredith's teaching, 
 external nature loses its cruel sphinx-like aspect as soon 
 as we read its meaning with the soul ; as soon as we 
 perceive the unity of the cosmos, and know that it 
 constantly climbs upward from sense to spirit, and that 
 spirit signifies for us righteousness, love, sacrifice, joy 
 a joy transcending the poor pleasure which comes through 
 the satisfaction of egoistic greeds. Blood and brain and 
 spirit these three are co-operant powers, the " deepest 
 gnomes of Earth," and it will go ill with us if we part 
 the friendly triad. We walk on the dark edge of earth 
 under the midnight stars, and they seem remote and 
 cold, shining implacably ; little care they for human 
 hungers, hungers of the heart, hungers of the intellect : 
 
 " Forever virgin to our sense, 
 Remote they wane to gaze intense : 
 Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite 
 The beating heart behind the ball of sight : 
 Till we conceive their heavens hoar, 
 Those lights they raise but sparkles frore, 
 And Earth, our warm-blood Earth, a shuddering prey 
 To that frigidity of brainless ray." 
 
 But is not love the gift of Earth ? And is not Earth 
 the member "of this stupendous cosmos best known to us ? 
 And shall we believe that Earth is the sole throne of 
 Deity ? It is the craven part of us that quails before 
 the splendour of the stars. If Earth be known aright as 
 one among the starry fold, faith comes to us faith 
 grounded in reason by virtue of which we recognise 
 the presence of her life in them, her law in the law to
 
 48' Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 which they move ; yes, and even her love in the heart 
 of these, her sister-planets. And so when night wanes, 
 and morning brings back the sight of our old beloved 
 Earth, we see her, touched, through our sense of this 
 sisterhood to strange and remote worlds, with a new 
 glory : 
 
 " Then at new flood of customary morn, 
 
 Look at her through her showers, 
 
 Her mists, her streaming gold, 
 A wonder edges the familiar face : 
 She wears no more that robe of printed hours ; 
 Half strange seems Earth and sweeter than her flowers." 
 
 The reader need not be counselled to let that last perfect 
 line linger in his ear and live in his heart. 
 
 The mystery of Earth and of its life, is like that of the 
 enchanted Woods of Westermain a terror to those of 
 little insight and little faith, but to one who brings brain 
 and spirit, as harmless as are the gliding waves to a 
 swimmer. Possess in yourself a love of the light, and 
 you shall be enabled by it to read every secret of the 
 darkness, and to know that each secret is good. Doubt 
 or distrust, let greeds and egoistic pride darken the 
 light within you, and you are caught in your own trap ; 
 all that was innocent and sweet, all that was grave and 
 ennobling in these Woods of Westermain become danger- 
 ously hostile to you in a moment : 
 
 " Here the snake across your path 
 Stretches in his golden bath : 
 Mossy-footed squirrels leap 
 Soft as winnowing plumes of Sleep : 
 * * * * 
 
 Each has business of his own 
 But should you distrust a tone 
 Then beware
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 49 
 
 Shudder all the haunted roods, 
 All the eyeballs under hoods 
 
 Shroud you in their glare. 
 Enter these enchanted woods, 
 
 You who dare." 
 
 Mr Meredith has dared ; and he tells us, as his solu- 
 tion of the mystery, and as the truth by which he lives, 
 this that the Great Mother, in her joy of life, has given 
 us blood and breath not for sensual uses or luxurious 
 ease, but for endless warfare ; that her medicinal herb 
 can heal all the wounds of our battle ; and that reading 
 to this effect the spiritual meaning of Earth, he can 
 trust her, not in life alone, but even " down to death." 
 
 Yes, " down to death ; " for what is a faith but a 
 reed, if it cannot stand its crucial test and extreme 
 trial ? In the Ode to the Spirit of Earth in Autumn 
 occur some lines which express with incomparable 
 beauty a trust in the good purport of death founded 
 on a knowledge of the good purport of life : 
 
 " And 0, green bounteous earth ! 
 Bacchante Mother ! stern to those 
 Who live not in thy heart of mirth ; 
 Death shall I shrink from, loving thee 1 
 Into the breast that gives the rose 
 Shall I with shuddering fall ?" 
 
 But to contemplate our own death with equanimity is 
 not after all difficult for any sane person. There is 
 a trial more cruel to the flesh and spirit than this. No 
 poem of Mr Meredith's strikes deeper from the coloured 
 surface of things to the hard rock of life, out of which 
 springs water for our needs, than that named A Trial 
 of Faith. It is the morning of May day, and before 
 the holiday children appear at the window the writer 
 
 D
 
 50 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 goes forth and climbs the hill that he may wrestle alone 
 with his fate ; for the good companion of his life, she, 
 the pulse of his heart, lies upon her death-bed. All the 
 world is glad, expecting summer ; the lark is aloft, and 
 a south wind blows. Memories of her brightness, her 
 sweetness, her Norman birthplace, and the visit to it 
 paid by husband and wife together fill his mind. With 
 heart and brain and soul divided from each other, one 
 thing, and one only, seems to remain with him the 
 disciplined habit of the observing eye ; all the sights of 
 the May morning enter at that sense ; yet " this Earth 
 of the beautiful breasts " seems to wear the visage of a 
 hag. Of a sudden an exquisite apparition comes into 
 view ; up the spine of the double combe, something 
 shining like new-born light or as a banner victorious 
 over death and despair the pure wild cherry in 
 bloom : 
 
 " I knew it : with her, my own, 
 Had hailed it pure of the pure ; 
 Our beacon yearly." 
 
 There are moments of life quickened by pain or by 
 joy, when we become chords sensitive to every musical 
 touch of Nature. Suddenly, by this sight of the shining 
 tree and the sound of the children's voices at their 
 maying, maternal Earth gains entrance to the sufferer's 
 spirit, and a harmony is re-established between heart 
 and brain and soul, which enables him to think sanely 
 and face his sorrow with manly courage. Not, indeed, 
 that Nature sympathises with our grief, or gives tear for 
 tear ; we weep, bleed, writhe, and she is unmoved. Nor, 
 when we question her of the life beyond earth does she
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 5 1 
 
 give one sign. Her wheels roll on ; to implore them to 
 pause is the cry of unfaith. To catch at comfort in 
 legends is but an indulgence of our weakness. 
 
 " Earth yields not for prayer at her knees ; 
 The woolly beast bleating will shear. 
 These are our sensual dreams." 
 
 Nor will she answer those questions that neither sow 
 nor reap. But one thing Earth gives us, and that the 
 one thing needful harsh wisdom, her medicinal herb. 
 Not through pathetic fallacies about Nature, not through 
 legends once useful for man's growth, but now an evil 
 opiate shall we win such strength as is attainable, but 
 rather through reality and the true reading of the law of 
 life. And what is this law, but the law of growth from 
 sense to spirit through change and through pain, until a 
 warrior's heart and a reasonable soul are formed within 
 us 
 
 " Mirror of Earth, and guide, 
 To the Holies from sense withheld " ? 
 
 If Eeason be once active and armed in us, she will 
 wrestle with that old worm, self; she will pierce the 
 brute in us ; her light will cleanse the foul recesses of 
 his den ; and through our service to her the well of the 
 sorrows within us may also be cleansed : 
 
 " For a common delight will drain 
 The rank individual fens 
 Of a wound refusing to heal 
 While the old worm slavers its root." 
 
 And so the sufferer, doomed to the loss of his dearest 
 one, can meet his trial with a human heart : 
 
 " I bowed as a leaf in vain, 
 As a tree when the leaf is shed
 
 52 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 To winds in the season at wane : 
 
 And when from my soul I said, 
 
 ' May the worm be trampled : smite 
 
 Sacred Reality ! ' power 
 
 Filled me to front it aright. 
 
 I had come to my faith's ordeal." 
 
 There are indeed questions which remain unanswered. 
 It is not enough that we should learn the lesson of our 
 Earth how through strife and anguish the flesh grows 
 up into the spirit ? And as for spirit, it does not rave 
 about a goal; it needs not anthropomorphic idols; it 
 desires neither celestial splendours nor the sleep of 
 annihilation ; it can trust the purpose of Earth ; it uses 
 Earth's gifts and aspires ; it dreams of something higher 
 than itself, and such dreams those of Reason " at the 
 ultimate bound of her wit " are serviceable as an atmo- 
 sphere and widening horizon for the soul, dreams un- 
 touched by the lusts of ease and sensual comfort, dreams 
 of the blossom of good, which are as a banner unrolled 
 for battle, upheld by Reason as it presses onward to find 
 the Reason higher than itself, which also we name not 
 Reason, but Beneficence. Mr Meredith's conclusion of 
 the whole matter, in " A Faith on Trial," is expressed 
 more concisely in the closing stanza of his lyric, The 
 Question Whither : 
 
 " Then let our trust be firm in good, 
 
 Though we be of the fasting ; 
 Our questions are a mortal brood, 
 
 Our work is everlasting. 
 We children of Beneficence 
 
 Are in its being sharers ; 
 And Whither vainer sounds than Whence, 
 
 For word with such wayfarers." 
 
 If it be alleged that such cheerful optimism as this is
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 53 
 
 a matter of temperament Mr Meredith answers " No ; 
 it is a truth of Reason, tested by the test of experience 
 bitter to the flesh, and not found wanting." 
 
 To discover the teaching of Mr Meredith I have had 
 resort chiefly to poems which deal with the interpreta- 
 tion of nature ; but it is obvious that the true meanings 
 of Earth, as Mr Meredith conceives them, can be read 
 only through humanity viewed as the chief offspring of 
 Earth. The secret of Earth is to be found neither in 
 the solitude of the fields nor in turbid cities ; it is 
 known only to those who pass to and fro between nature 
 and man : 
 
 " They hearing History speak, of what men were, 
 And have become, are wise. The gain is great 
 In vision and solidity ; it lives. 
 Vet at a thought of life apart from her, 1 
 Solidity and vision lose their state, 
 For Earth, that gives the milk, the spirit gives." 
 
 Solidity and vision these are the needs of a worthy 
 student of life ; solidity, growing from a patient mastery 
 of facts, so that the vision may be other than that of 
 the phantast ; vision, as of a true seer, so that the 
 student may be more than a myopic specialist and mere 
 accumulator of details. The sentimental or pseudo- 
 romantic feeling for nature, which flies to its glooms 
 and grandeurs, or to its pastoral innocences, as a refuge 
 from human society is, with Mr Meredith, material for 
 scorn. This is the " bile and buskin attitude " of Byron 
 in his Manfred and Childe Harold ; and in the duel 
 between Byron with his dreams of indigestion, his 
 sham misanthropy, his hinted horrors and " the world 
 
 1 Earth.
 
 54 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 of spinsterdom and clergy," there is excellent sub- 
 stance for a comedy. Standing beside the glacier- 
 green Rosanna as it foams and tumbles through its 
 ravine of the Stanzer Thai, Mr Meredith sees in its 
 eddying rush, its passion, joy, and trouble, an image 
 of London or shall we say ? of life : 
 
 " Here's devil take the hindmost too ; 
 And an amorous wave has a beauty in view ; 
 And lips of others are kissing the rocks : 
 Here's chasing of bubbles, and wooing of rocks." 
 
 To an Arcadian dreamer such fancies must seem a pro- 
 fanation of the sanctity of the spot ; for is it not the 
 naiad's haunt ? " Most certainly it is," replies Mr Mere- 
 dith, " but what is the present use of your naiad ? If 
 she be useless, she stands condemned by art as no 
 creature of true beauty. Will she fly with the old gods, 
 or join with the new ? Come : let us put the naiad to 
 the test." 
 
 " What say you, if, in this retreat, 
 
 While she poises tiptoe on yon granite slab, man, 
 I introduce her, shy and sweet, 
 To a short-neck'd, many-caped London cabman ? " 
 
 Why not ? A scientific professor would prove that she 
 is a mere foam-bow ; and a nymph on sufferance must 
 not act my Lady Scornful. In other words, if sentiment 
 cannot wed fact, sentiment must vanish as unfit for this 
 century of ours which honours reality. The nymph lacks 
 a soul, which possibly she may get by wedding the 
 wheezy cabman. Bear in mind that it is a little hard 
 on him too ; before he could plunge in the stream he 
 must needs peel off a dozen capes ! Thus, with the 
 hearty animal spirits that come of open-air adventure
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 55 
 
 among Tyrolean heights, Mr Meredith plays with his 
 grotesque allegory. But the meaning is a serious and 
 sober one ; he would point out the way in which the 
 delicate spirit of solitary places may live and last by 
 mingling its life with that of humanity. And has it not 
 in truth done so in the impulse and cheer which the poet 
 bears back from the glacier- torrent to his own English 
 home ? 
 
 " How often will these long links of foam 
 Cry to me in my English home, 
 To nerve me, whenever I hear them bellow, 
 Like the smack of the hand of a gallant fellow ! " 
 
 Were ever the gains of holiday travel more gaily re- 
 counted ? 
 
 " I give them my meaning here, and they 
 Will give me theirs when far away. 
 And the snowy points, and the ash-pale peaks, 
 Will bring a trembling to my cheeks, 
 The leap of the white fleck'd, clear light, green 
 Sudden the length of its course be seen, 
 As, swift it launches an emerald shoulder, 
 And, thundering ever of the mountain, 
 Slaps in sport some giant boulder 
 And tops it in a silver fountain." 
 
 Here truly is the Rosanna brought into London, alive 
 and splashing for Piccadilly, if it please. 
 
 Those who would make acquaintance with Mr 
 Meredith's men and women may begin with the 
 novels ; and successive editions prove that now they 
 need no advice to act thus wisely. But the men and 
 women of the Poems form an interesting and varied 
 group. The English figures of humble life, figures 
 humorously treated, which are, perhaps, the best known 
 of the group Juggling Jerry and the Old Chartist
 
 56 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 are by no means the most admirable. The humour of 
 these inventions, or the mingled humour and pathos, is 
 somewhat crude and somewhat self-conscious ; the moral 
 is needlessly patent through the poem. I should not 
 greatly grieve if the Patriot Engineer a modern and 
 degenerate Philip Falconbridge were interned in some 
 obscure portion of the territory of Limoges, Duke of 
 Austria, where the railway system may need extension. 
 But there is not one maid or wedded woman of Mr 
 Meredith's poems, from the lissome beauty of Love in 
 the, Valley to Archduchess Anne, grim in her struggle 
 between pride and passion, whom we could willingly 
 forget. Even the " Fair Ladies in Revolt," though 
 ladies in revolt are not always fair in aspect or in argu- 
 ment show an admirable art in piercing masculine 
 sophistries and current platitudes. Almost they per- 
 suade me to be laureate-logician of their company, 
 though at the risk of becoming the most 
 
 " Fool-flushed old noddy ever crowned with buds." 
 
 " I like Mr Meredith best," says a critic with whom 
 even to err would be still to remain bright and sugges- 
 tive, " I like Mr Meredith best in The Nuptials of 
 Attila." And in making choice of this masterly piece 
 of narrative the critic perhaps has not gone astray. 
 The enormous life and movement of the army of the 
 Huns is brought visibly and audibly before us ; the 
 turbulent sea of humanity surges in our sight. And our 
 sense of its vastness and its wild ness gives us a measure 
 of the power of that short, glittering-eyed, thin-bearded, 
 square-chested ruler, who sways to his will this mass of
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 57 
 
 fiery force and passion. And yet there is one stronger 
 than he. Is it Death the conqueror ? Or can it be 
 the cold, white girl, his one-night bride, whose fist is 
 no larger than a summer fig : 
 
 " Huddled in the corner dark, 
 Humped and grinning like a cat, 
 Teeth for lips ! 'tis she ! she stares, 
 Glittering through her bristled hairs. 
 Eend her ! Pierce her to the hilt !" 
 
 For a moment longer we see her the central object of 
 wild contention, but now in the calm fit of her insanity, 
 combing her hair, " with quiet paws " ; and then in the 
 break up of the vast army Ildico disappears from view ; 
 of her we know no more than of a leaf rolled down the 
 Danube. 
 
 The most important document in the study of the 
 human heart which Mr Meredith has given us in verse 
 is doubtless Modern Love. " Praise or blame," wrote 
 Mr Swinburne, " should be thoughtful, serious, careful, 
 when applied to a work of such subtle strength, such 
 depth of delicate power, such passionate and various 
 beauty " as this. Praise or blame seems each equally 
 needless now ; the poem has taken its place ; there it 
 is, and there it will remain. The critic's complaint 
 that Modern Love deals with a deep and painful subject 
 on which Mr Meredith has no conviction to express, was 
 a natural outbreak of human infirmity ; we all like to 
 have the issues of a difficult case made clear ; we all 
 like to have a problem worked out to its solution. 
 But in art, as in life, it is not always good policy to 
 snatch at a near advantage ;
 
 58 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 " Oh ! if we draw a circle premature, 
 
 Heedless of far gain, 
 Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure, 
 Bad is our bargain ! " 
 
 Sometimes it is more for our good that art should put a 
 question courageously than that it should propose some 
 petty answer to the question. In Modern Love, if Mr 
 Meredith does not prescribe a remedy for the disease of 
 marriage perverted from its true ends unless that 
 remedy be the general one of more brain, and so more 
 spirit, more righteousness, more beneficence he at least 
 makes a careful diagnosis of the case. It is something 
 to describe the phases of the malady, and to issue no 
 advertisement of a quack nostrum. And in that silence 
 which precedes one last low cry " Now kiss me, dear 
 it may be, now ! " does not Mr Meredith make us feel, 
 with a sense too deep for tears, how Pity pleads for 
 Sin ? and is not this something as helpful to us as if he 
 had expressed " a conviction on a painful subject " ? 
 
 One remarkable poem treats, not of a malady in the 
 individual life, but of a crisis in the life of a nation, and 
 here certainly Mr Meredith does not fail to express clear 
 and sound convictions. The calamities of France in 
 1870 called forth two English chaunts of extraordinary 
 poetic beauty and virtue. Whitman's cry of cheer amid 
 the gloom, Star of France, and Mr Meredith's noble 
 ode, first published in The Fortnightly Review. Both 
 poems are inspired by love and grief and hope ; but 
 Mr Meredith, having " convictions to express," does not 
 refrain from words of warning and of counsel. France 
 is honoured by him as the possessor of what he values
 
 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 59 
 
 so highly "brain;" and being "Mother of Reason" 
 she is trebly cursed, because she not only feels and sees 
 the cruel blow, but perceives that it is the just punish- 
 ment of her misdeeds. " Inveterate of brain," let her 
 put her insight to wise uses, and learn from whence 
 true strength proceeds : 
 
 " For Strength she yearns, 
 For Strength, her idol once, too long her toy. 
 Lo, Strength is of the plain root- Virtues born : 
 Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn, 
 Train by endurance, by devotion shape. 
 Strength is not won by. miracle or rape. 
 It is the offspring of the modest years, 
 The gift of sire to son, thro' those firm laws 
 Which we name Gods ; which are the righteous cause, 
 The cause of man and manhood's ministers." 
 
 There is a country nearer to his beloved England 
 than is her neighbour France, to which it were well if 
 like counsel were tendered by Mr Meredith ; and the 
 lines which follow on the priestly blessing of banners 
 flung abroad " in the game of beasts," are perhaps not 
 grown altogether out of date. 
 
 Mr Meredith describes his first volume, the " Poems " 
 of 1851, as "extinct." I have now said my say; but 
 if space permitted I should willingly add a postscript 
 on this rare volume. It has much in it that is graceful 
 and even beautiful, and when Mr Meredith superin- 
 tends a collected edition of his verse, he should follow 
 Wordsworth's example, and admit, as one section, 
 " Poems Written in Youth." Meanwhile curious readers, 
 who have not had my own good fortune, may learn 
 something about the poet's "Juvenilia," from Mr Le 
 Gallienne's study of George Meredith.
 
 60 Mr Meredith in his Poems. 
 
 To many persons, not long since, Mr Meredith's novels 
 seemed to be the Woods of Westermain, dark, obscure, 
 and unfrequented. Like Poliphilus, in the Renaissance 
 allegory, they have now emerged out of the dark wood, 
 and are about to refresh themselves from its waters. 
 But in the magical woodcut of Fra Francesco Colonna's 
 romance, at the moment when he stoops to drink, the 
 attention of Poliphilus is arrested by a wondrously 
 sweet song ; with hand already scooped for the water, 
 he pauses and looks up. I shall be pleased if this 
 article touches for any reader of Mr Meredith's novels 
 the nerve of hearing, and awakens his sense to the song 
 of the bird.
 
 THE POETKY OF ROBERT BRIDGES. 
 
 FATHER GERARD HOPKINS, an English priest of the 
 Society of Jesus, died young, and one of his good deeds 
 remains to the present time unrecorded. We were 
 strangers to each other, and might have been friends. 
 I took for granted that he belonged to the other camp 
 in Irish politics, on the outskirts of which and not on 
 the outskirts only a motley crew not pleasant to en- 
 counter had squatted. I learn from a notice of his life 
 that among other distresses " the political dishonesty 
 which he was forced to witness in Dublin, so tortured 
 his sensitive spirit that he fell into a melancholy state "; 
 and soon afterwards he died. Father Hopkins was a 
 lover of literature, and himself a poet. Perhaps he did 
 in many quarters missionary work on behalf of the 
 poetry of his favourite, Robert Bridges. He certainly 
 left, a good many years since, at my door two volumes 
 by Mr Bridges, and with them a note begging that I 
 would make no acknowledgment of the gift. I did not 
 acknowledge it then ; but, with sorrow for a fine spirit 
 lost, I acknowledge it now. 
 
 Mr Bridges, more than some other men of letters, 
 needed in those days a mediator between his work 
 and the public. He has never learnt the art of self- 
 advertisement. The interviewer has not appeared at 
 Yattendon, or captured him in some shy nook on his
 
 62 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 beloved Thames. Among poets he has been somewhat 
 of a scholar-gipsy 
 
 " For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground ! " 
 
 seen in the rare glimpses of limited black-letter issues 
 from Mr Daniel's Oxford press 
 
 " In type of antique shape and wrapper gray." 
 
 But to-day Mr Bridges advertises his poems with their 
 prices ; and happily no critic has to discover him, 
 for he has gradually revealed himself. There is com- 
 fort for the critic in this ; and perhaps there is comfort 
 also in the fact that he is not a poet with a mission ; he 
 has no new creed to proclaim to the age ; he need fear 
 no Robert Bridges Society. All he has to tell is that 
 he loves beauty and loves love ; and all he has done is 
 to praise God in the best of ways by making some 
 beautiful things. 
 
 The body of Mr Bridges' work is now considerable. 
 A volume of lyrics, a volume of sonnets, a narrative 
 poem, the libretto for an oratorio, an historical tragedy, 
 a tragedy " in a mixed manner," a comedy " in the 
 Latin manner," several other dramas, classical or 
 romantic, and a searching study of the prosody of 
 Milton this is no inconsiderable achievement. And 
 Mr Bridges has published nothing that is not carefully 
 considered, and wrought to such excellence as can be 
 conferred on it by studious and delicate workmanship. 
 He is, doubtless, known best by his " Shorter Poems," 
 to which in the latest edition has been added a fifth 
 book until recently reserved for the possessors of Mr 
 Daniel's limited issue. And it is not ill that he
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 63 
 
 should be first thought of as a writer of lyrics. So 
 much excellent lyrical verse has been written by 
 poets born within the last half century that it is 
 difficult to conjecture an order of merit ; but some 
 persons will incline to believe that Mr Miles exercised a 
 sound judgment when he named the eighth volume of 
 his poetical encyclopaedia (in which writers younger than 
 Mr William Morris and younger than Mr Swinburne 
 appear), "Robert Bridges and Contemporary Poets." The 
 clan, though agile and shapely, are not of pre-eminent 
 stature (I speak as one of the minor poets) but to 
 overtop them should secure the respect of all. " The 
 Emperor of Lilliput," said Gulliver, " is taller, by almost 
 the breadth of my nail, than any of his court, which 
 alone is enough to strike an awe into his beholders." 
 Such an awe many of the writers in Mr Miles's eighth 
 volume may well feel in presence of the author of 
 There is a Hill beside the silver Thames and The 
 Winnowers. 
 
 There is a lyric which is the direct outcry of passion 
 transformed to art such are some of the songs of 
 Burns; a lyric which is the expression of profound and 
 ardent contemplation such are some of Wordsworth's 
 poems ; a lyric, which is architectonic in character, the 
 product of an elaborate evolution such are some of the 
 odes of Gray. Mr Bridges' poems are seldom mere 
 outcries of passion ; they do not often explore the 
 heights and depths of thought ; they are in general of 
 admirable evolution, but their design is rarely (save in 
 the choral odes of his dramas) complex and of large 
 dimensions. Elements of many and various kinds enter
 
 64 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 into his volume of " Shorter Poems " delicate observa- 
 tion, delight in external nature, delight in art, delight 
 in love, gladness and grief, ethical seriousness, pensive 
 meditation, graceful play of fancy. But all are subdued 
 to balance, measure, harmony ; and sometimes our in- 
 firmity craves for some dominant note, some fine 
 extravagance, even some splendid sins. Mr Bridges' 
 audacities are to be found in occasional phrases often 
 felicitous and of true descriptive or interpretative 
 power, sometimes not felicitous and in his metrical 
 experiments. But in his metrical experiments there 
 is nothing revolutionary ; they are extensions of a true 
 tradition in English verse ; they amount to little more 
 than nicely calculated variations of stress. No writer 
 of verse understands his business better than Mr 
 Bridges ; and if finer and subtler harmonies are 
 attained unconsciously or half-unconsciously by greater 
 poets, our ear soon adapts itself to the delicate sur- 
 prises and delicate satisfactions, which he has thought 
 out and felt out as a skilled craftsman. He is no 
 representative in English poetry of M. Rene Ghil's 
 " ecole evolutive instrumentiste " ; he has it is likely 
 a prejudice against talking nonsense ; but he has 
 made curious inquisition into the sources of Milton's 
 metrical effects, and in that great school he is an 
 ingenious pupil. 
 
 Pleasure rounded with peace, a tender tranquillity 
 with sudden impulses of joy give origin to some of the 
 most beautiful of these lyrical poems. And the scenery 
 of the upper and unsullied reaches of the Thames 
 supplies a suitable environment for such moods. Mr
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 65 
 
 Bridges is a most exact observer of those natural 
 phenomena which accord with his temper of mind ; but 
 his observation is not in the manner of a realism hard 
 and unqualified ; it is guided by a delicate instinct of 
 selection ; it is subject to a law of beauty ; it is a quest, 
 not for fact, but for delight. His eye can read the 
 details, the minion type, in the book of nature ; and it 
 also can find rest or excitement in breadths of prospect 
 the still solitude of English downs, a woodland after 
 the havoc of autumn gales, the scourge of the surf and 
 sweep of the tides seen from the cliff. Spring and 
 Summer are dear to him. No one who has read the 
 " Shorter Poems " will forget the exquisite personification 
 of Spring as the virgin-mother clad in green, 
 
 " Walking the sprinkled meadows at sundown." 
 
 But he can also celebrate the joys of Winter in a fine 
 sonnet (No. 10 of "The Growth of Love"), and one of 
 his most admirable pieces of observation is the descrip- 
 tion of the London streets at morning after a night of 
 snow. I will set side by side, as contrasted pieces 
 of pictorial poetry, a stanza from The Garden in 
 September, and a stanza from The Downs : 
 
 " Now thin mists temper the slow-ripening beams 
 Of the September sun : his golden gleams 
 On gaudy flowers shine, that prank the rows 
 Of high -grown hollyhocks, and all tall shows 
 That Autumn flaunteth in his bushy bowers : 
 Where tomtits, hanging from the drooping heads 
 Of giant sunflowers, peck the nutty seeds, 
 And in the feathery aster bees on wing 
 Seize and set free the honied flowers, 
 Till thousand stars leap with their visiting : 
 E
 
 66 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 While ever across the path mazily flit, 
 
 Unpiloted in the sun, 
 
 The dreamy butterflies, 
 
 With dazzling colours powdered and soft glooms, 
 
 White, black and crimson stripes, and peacock eyes, 
 
 Or on chance flowers sit, 
 
 With idle effort plundering one by one 
 
 The nectaries of deepest-throated blooms." 
 
 There is something of the rich lethargy of Autumn even 
 in the versification of this elaborate stanza. In contrast 
 let the opening of The Downs suffice : 
 
 " O bold majestic downs, smooth, fair and lonely ; 
 still solitude, only matched in the skies : 
 
 Perilous in steep places, 
 
 Soft in the level races, 
 
 Where sweeping in phantom silence the cloudland flies ; 
 With lovely undulation of fall and rise ; 
 
 Entrenched with thickets thorned, 
 By delicate miniature dainty flowers adorned." 
 
 Mr Bridges' poems have been censured for a lack of 
 warm humanity, and, with the exception of certain 
 poems of joy and love, his lyrics are not direct and 
 simple utterances of passion. But many of his lyrics 
 are charged with fine and tender human sentiment, and 
 he can express moods of dejection and meditative sorrow 
 as well as the happiness of lovers. There is poignant 
 grief, purged of all that is violent, in the beautiful 
 stanzas On a Dead Child. Even into his interpreta- 
 tion of nature an element of humanity enters. It was a 
 bold enterprise, for any poet to attempt a new rendering 
 of the nightingales' voices when Keats had been his pre- 
 decessor; but there is magic in Mr Bridges' poem, 
 Nightingales, and half the magic is won, not from 
 the birds' songs, but from the heart of man. The poem
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 67 
 
 appears in the fifth book of " Shorter Poems," which is 
 less known than its predecessors : 
 
 " Beautiful must be the mountains whence ye come, 
 And bright in the fruitful valleys the streams, wherefrom 
 
 Ye learn your song : 
 
 Where are those starry woods ? might I wander there, 
 Among the flowers, which in that heavenly air 
 
 Bloom the year long. 
 
 " Nay, barren are those mountains and spent the streams : 
 Our song is the voice of desire, that haunts our dreams, 
 
 A throe of the heart, 
 
 Whose pining visions dim, forbidden hopes profound 
 No dying cadence nor long sigh can sound, 
 For all our art. 
 
 " Alone aloud in the raptured ear of men 
 We pour our dark nocturnal secret : and then, 
 
 As night is withdrawn 
 
 From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May, 
 Dream while the innumerable choir of day 
 Welcome the dawn." 
 
 There is something of southern radiance and southern 
 desire in the imagination and sentiment of this poem, 
 and, in several instances, Mr Bridges has found his 
 masters and models in Italian literature. Yet he is 
 characteristically English in most of his shorter poems ; 
 and the fineness of beauty and -reserve of passion in 
 English landscape accord with his peculiar character as 
 a poet. 
 
 It is difficult to turn away from the lyrics, for 
 though they would fill only a slender volume, Mr 
 Bridges has been fastidious as regards his work, and 
 has admitted no verse into his collection which has 
 not some grace of its own. But other parts of his 
 poetical achievement must be noticed.
 
 68 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 Of his narrative, Eros and Psyche, Mr Bridges 
 writes with modesty, it " neither pretends to originality 
 nor loftiness. The beautiful story is well known, and 
 the version of Apuleius has been simply followed." The 
 subject did not escape the writers of the seventeenth 
 century ; it was treated in a graceful narrative poem by 
 Shackerley Marmion, and in dramatic form by Thomas 
 Heywood, in his Loves Mistress. Mr Bridges' poem 
 certainly gains much upon Mrs Tighe's Psyche, by 
 the fact that the writer does not flourish over the 
 narrative with fancies and reflections of his own. 
 Where Mr Bridges alters, it is in the direction of 
 refinement "a gentler treatment of the motive and 
 the substitution of Hellenism for Latin vulgarity." The 
 metre is a seven-line stanza of attractive form, in which 
 the last line is bound by rhyme to the fourth line of the 
 opening quatrain, and encloses the couplet formed by 
 the fifth and sixth lines. Mr Bridges leaves the story 
 half fairy-tale, half myth ; a piece of fantasy, charming 
 as such, but also bearing to the reader a spiritual 
 meaning and moral. Anyone who chooses can set 
 the poem by the side of Mr Pater's prose telling of 
 the tale in " Marius the Epicurean," and it will not 
 lose by the comparison ; the verse, indeed, seems to 
 flow more gently and gracefully, and with less self- 
 conscious effort than the superintended, calculated, 
 chastened, and enriched prose. 
 
 Probably no part of Mr Bridges' work is less 
 generally known than his sonnets ; but the fault does 
 not lie with the public. If privacy be desired, it is 
 not attained by a limited issue ; the philistine of cul-
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 69 
 
 ture will pay the fee for an artificial curiosity ; the 
 true lover of poetry may be compelled prudently to 
 count his pence. The securest privacy, if indeed the 
 poet be undiscoverably " hidden in the light of 
 thought," is publicity. One cannot for a moment 
 suppose that Mr Bridges courts an illustrious obscurity, 
 or would enhance an occult fame by having the sump- 
 tuous bushel at hand at the moment when the candle 
 is lighted. Sometimes, it is true, the bushel is a more 
 impressive advertisement than the farthing dip, but Mr 
 Bridges' candle is of a kind to carry light to many in 
 the house. The Growth of Love deserves 'the good 
 fortune that befalls books when they fare forth to 
 choose lovers out of the crowd those who in a book 
 hear the right voice and follow it. The sonnets 
 many of the Italian, a few of the English, model are 
 nearly fourscore in number, some of them forming a 
 sequence, some standing apart, or permitting them- 
 selves to be lightly detached. Love, as Mr Bridges 
 treats it, is no isolated passion of our nature, but 
 runs into all the higher joys and connects itself with 
 all the deeper sorrows of the spirit. It is a tributary 
 of beauty, of thought, of art, of devotion, or these are 
 tributaries of it. His treatment of the theme is subtle, 
 delicate, refined ; but his subtlety seldom takes the form 
 of metaphysical conceits. I shall not follow the writer 
 through his fine trains of feeling, his radiances and 
 sadnesses, but present to the reader two sonnets which, 
 without loss, can be separated from the rest, and which 
 will probably be new to many lovers of poetry. In Mr 
 Daniel's beautiful edition the poems are without titles,
 
 70 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 but I will name the first of these sonnets Anglo- 
 Indians in Florence, and the second shall be The 
 Iron Skip. 
 
 ANGLO-INDIANS IN FLORENCE. 
 
 " Say whose be these light-bearded sunburnt faces, 
 In negligent and travel-stained array, 
 That in the city of Dante come to-day 
 Haughtily visiting her holy places ? 
 these be noble men that hide their graces, 
 True England's blood, her ancient glory's stay, 
 By tales of fame diverted on their way 
 Home from the rule of Oriental races. 
 
 " Life-trifling lions these, of gentle eyes 
 And motion delicate, but swift to fire 
 For honour, passionate where duty lies, 
 Most loved and loving : and they quickly tire 
 Of Florence, that she one more day denies 
 The embrace of wife and son, of sister or sire." 
 
 THE IRON SHIP. 
 
 " The fabled sea-snake, old Leviathan, 
 Or else what grisly beast of scaly chine 
 That champed the oceanwrack, and swashed the brine 
 Before the new and milder days of man, 
 Had never rib nor bray nor swingeing fan 
 Like his iron swimmer of the Clyde or Tyne, 
 Late born of golden seed to breed a line 
 Of offspring swifter and more huge of plan. 
 
 " Straight is her going, for upon tin.- sun 
 When once she hath looked, her path and place are plain : 
 With tireless speed she smiteth one by one 
 The shuddering seas and foams along the main : 
 And her eased breath when her wild race is run 
 Roars through her nostrils like a hurricane." 
 
 We pass from Mr Bridges' narrative and lyrical 
 poetry to his dramatic writings. The Tragedy of Nero 
 gives us a sense of the limit of his powers. To speak
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 7 1 
 
 of the play is perhaps premature, for a second part, 
 which has not yet appeared, is promised. l The first 
 part deals with that period of the evil Caesar's reigu 
 when his wife, Octavia, was still living, though fallen 
 out of favour ; when Poppsea was rising to power, when 
 Agrippina was desperately plotting to recover her 
 authority, and young Britannicus, having become an 
 offence to the tyrant, was ruthlessly spurned out of 
 his way. The action closes, as Gray designed his 
 tragedy to close, with the murder of Agrippina. It 
 thus extends beyond the limit of time in Racine's great 
 tragedy, and does not arrive at the years which furnish 
 the subject of that remarkable play so daringly and 
 finely wrought by an unknown English poet and scholar 
 towards the close of James I.'s reign. Comparisons, 
 full of danger, but inevitable, are suggested by a modern 
 tragedy having Nero for its chief personage. Racine, 
 admirable always in his female figures, and in Britanni- 
 cus admirable in his presentation of the graceful man- 
 tiger, not yet full-grown in cruelty, is indeed un- 
 approachable ; and the nameless Jacobean poet has 
 left an eminent achievement in dramatic art. Mr 
 Bridges has brought study to the aid of imagination, 
 thought, and skill ; yet with some readers the feeling 
 must constantly be present that he is always falling 
 below a lofty theme and missing the great possibilities 
 of his tragedy. In his Prometheus, as he informs us, 
 " all the characters are good." Mr Bridges is happiest 
 in his treatment of such characters ; he exhibits varieties 
 of delicately coloured pleasure more successfully than 
 1 See note at the end of this article.
 
 72 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 deep passions. A group of criminals should not be 
 drawn in pastel. There is excellent dramatic writing 
 in Nero ; as, for example, in the interview between 
 Agrippina and her son in the fourth scene of the 
 second Act. But to fall short of complete success in 
 a work of such high intention is to fail completely ; 
 and by those who know what great tragedy is it cannot 
 be maintained that Mr Bridges has succeeded. 
 
 If Mr Bridges has done anything which may be 
 stigmatised as clever, it is his attempt to reproduce 
 Menander for the English stage, through the medium 
 of The Feast of Bacchus, a play founded on the 
 " Heautontimorumenos " of Terence. Sainte-Beuve's 
 articles on Terence in the " Nouveaux Lundis " open 
 with a sigh : " Comme les gouts changent ! comme le flot 
 se deplace ! comme il y a des branches tout entieres de 
 litterature qui defleurissent et se dessechent ! " Mr 
 Bridges has made a gallant attempt to revive the 
 Menandrian comedy ; the intrigue is admirably evolved ; 
 a bright temper of youth lives throughout the play. But 
 if The Feast of Bacchus be put upon a modern stage, it 
 must, like some of the Elizabethan dramas, be " enacted 
 at both the Universities," there to help some young 
 imaginations to cross the gulf between the old world 
 and the new. There is no position in art more difficult 
 to maintain than that of a mediator between an ancient 
 and a modern culture ; it is easier to cross Niagara 
 upon a tight-rope. Mr Bridges balances himself with 
 rare skill ; but his proceeding is after all a tour de force. 
 We are tempted to exclaim, " Terence we know, and 
 Pinero we know ; but who art thou ? " I am not sure
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 73 
 
 that the line of six stresses chosen by Mr Bridges as his 
 metre, though it be " written according to rules of 
 English rhythm," enhances the reader's enjoyment. 
 The dramatic capacities of blank verse are infinitely 
 wider and finer. George Colman was not a master 
 of dramatic blank verse, though he could write it with 
 credit ; Mr Bridges has the utmost skill in the use of 
 his instrument, but as regards the mere pleasure derived 
 from form, I doubt whether an English reader will 
 prefer his lines of six stresses to the somewhat wooden 
 verse of Colman. A few Hues chosen at random may 
 serve as a test : 
 
 " An old Corinthian woman 
 Now sojourns here, a stranger in these parts, 
 And very poor. It happened, of her daughter 
 My son became distractedly enamour'd ; 
 E'en to the brink of marriage ; and all this 
 Unknown to me : which I no sooner learnt 
 Than I began to deal severely with him, 
 Not as a young and love-sick mind requird, 
 But in the rough and usual way of fathers." 
 
 This is not like the verse of The Tempest or The 
 Winters Tale, the secrets of which are known to Mr 
 Bridges ; but it is respectable eighteenth-century writing. 
 And now for the lines of six stresses : 
 
 " There came to live in the city 
 
 A poor old widow woman from Corinth. She had a daughter, 
 With whom my son, who is just of age, fell madly in love. 
 Was even at the point to marry ; but all without my knowledge. 
 However it came to my ears ; and then I began to treat him 
 Unkindly, and not in the way to deal with a love-sick lad ; 
 But after the usual dictatorial manner of fathers." 
 
 The fact that blank verse is farther removed from 
 prose than the six-stressed line enables it though
 
 74 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 Colman may not have learnt the art to attain a multi- 
 tude of beautiful freedoms without licence, which if 
 sought by the other form become licences, afflicting to 
 an ear that cherishes the delicate law of rhythm. And 
 hence its superiority for dramatic purposes. 
 
 Achilles in Scyros dramatises and refines upon 
 the Achillean tradition handed down by Apollodorus. 
 The hero of Troy, a youth of sixteen, by the device 
 of his mother, Thetis, is hidden upon the island of 
 Scyros as a maiden, among the maiden companions of 
 Princess Deidamia, daughter of the old King Lycomedes. 
 An oracle has declared that the expedition to recover 
 Helen must fail if he be not a leader of the war, 
 and Ulysses, accompanied by Diomede, lands upon the 
 island with the resolve not to depart until he has dis- 
 covered the object of his search. The young champion 
 has already given his heart to Deidamia, and she, though 
 ignorant of his sex, has a joy in the tall, protective 
 Pyrrha, which she had never felt before in the presence 
 of any playfellow. The conflict of the drama is between 
 love and honour, and between the craft of a sea- 
 goddess and that of the most experienced and astutest 
 of mortals : 
 
 " As smooth of face as tongue, gentle in voice 
 But sturdy of body, and 'neath his helm his locks 
 O'er a wide brow and restless eye curl forth 
 In ruddy brown." 
 
 But Ulysses will not appear among the Scyrian 
 maids in his proper form ; he steals upon them at 
 their play in ragged garb and hoary beard as a pedlar, 
 provided with such gawds and trinkets as tickle girlish
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 75 
 
 fancies, and with one article of barter a sword which 
 may serve as the test of manhood : 
 
 " There is a hunter with his game, a lion, 
 Inlaid upon it : and on the other side 
 Two men that fight to death." 
 
 The disguised Pyrrha turns away from the ruby 
 brooch which Deidamia has chosen for her favourite, 
 and handles the sword with longing at which moment 
 and with the cry of " Achilles," the pedlar, pulling off 
 his beard and head-dress, leaps up, and betrays Ulysses, 
 and on the instant there stands before him no maiden 
 but the young hero arrayed in the shining armour 
 the gift of Thetis which he had worn beneath his 
 feminine robe. At the close, Achilles places his fate 
 in the hands of the princess if she set their mutual 
 pleasure above his honour, he will call that duty : 
 
 " But, as I know her, if she bid me go 
 Where fate and danger call ; then I will go, 
 And so do better : and very sure it is, 
 Pleasure is not for him who pleasure serves. 
 Deid. Achilles, son of Thetis ! As I love thee, 
 I say, go forth to Troy." 
 
 But Achilles does not join the fleet at Aulis until he has 
 won his bride. 
 
 Through the whole play there is charm. Action, 
 character, and dialogue are all contrived with skill and 
 grace ; and if something of modern sentiment is added 
 to the classical subject, it does not produce any sense of 
 incongruity in a drama which is confessedly " in a 
 mixed manner," which brings the antique over to the 
 romantic. The wedlock of Helena and Faust has 
 taken place long since in Christian art, and the voice
 
 76 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 of their child Euphorion may be heard in such lines 
 as these : 
 
 Ach. " See, while the maids warm in their busy play, 
 We may enjoy in quiet the sweet air, 
 And thro' the quivering golden green look up 
 To the deep sky, and have high thoughts as idle 
 And bright, as are the small white clouds becalmed 
 In disappointed voyage to the moon : 
 There is no better pastime. 
 
 Deid. I will sit with thee 
 
 In idleness, while idleness can please. 
 
 Ach. It is not idleness to steep the soul 
 In nature's beauty : rather every day 
 We are idle letting beauteous things go by 
 Unheld, or scarce perceived. We cannot dream 
 Too deeply, nor o'erprize the mood of love, 
 When it comes on us strongly, and the hour 
 Is ripe for thought." 
 
 And again, where Thetis declares herself to Deidamia 
 there is a translation of classicism into romance : 
 
 " I Thetis am, daughter of that old god 
 Whose wisdom buried in the deep hath made 
 The unfathoined water solemn, and I rule 
 The ocean-nymphs, whose pastime is to play 
 In the blue glooms, and darting here and there 
 Chequer the dark and widespread melancholy 
 With everlasting laughter and bright smiles." 
 
 But with what charm these lines interpret the mirth 
 and the solemnity of ocean. 
 
 The Return of Ulysses converts into drama the 
 closing scenes in Homer's Odyssey. The possibility of 
 throwing the epic action into dramatic form had been 
 suggested by Aristotle ; but the reader can hardly help 
 coming to Mr Bridges' play with a foreboding of failure. 
 He closes it in a pleasant surprise crying, " How well 
 it goes !" And his final thought is too likely to be
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 77 
 
 the ungrateful one, " But why, after all, should this 
 have been written?" The drama is wrought with 
 great skill ; the action is conducted ingeniously ; there 
 is bright dialogue, with genuine dramatic play of mind 
 in it ; the characters are happily conceived. Yet every- 
 where the drama seems to offer us something inferior to 
 what we already possess. Ingratitude to Mr Bridges for 
 having done well seems to be inevitable. There are 
 things in the play, however, for which any but a 
 churlish reader must thank him. The bard Phemius 
 has sung an ode to sad music in the presence of 
 Ulysses and the wooers, when Penelope suddenly enters 
 with her attendant maids : 
 
 Ulysses (aside). " I see the beacon of my life undimmed. 
 
 Penelope. Hush ye these mournful strains ! 'tis music's skill 
 To comfort and wean sorrow's heart away 
 With beautiful distractions from its woe : 
 Not to be plunged therein, and chafe remembrance 
 With added echoes. Oh, I have wept enough. 
 Would you my life should faster waste in grief, 
 That ye must widen more its aching channels 
 With melancholy dirges ? These are fit 
 For souls at ease ; ay, such as ye, my lords, 
 Who feel no thorns prick you, may love to drink 
 The soft compunctious mimicries of woe. 
 But me with all your pleasures still ye vex, 
 In mine own house, forgetful of my wounds." 
 
 And in the following lines Penelope describes to her 
 disguised husband the difficult life of hope that an- 
 guishes from hour to hour : 
 
 " What is man's hope, good friend 1 
 Is't not a beggar in the land of doubt, 
 Seeking as thou shelter and fire and food 
 From day to day 1 and, while she finds a little, 
 She travels on, comforting life's affections 
 With scraps and crumbs fall'n from the dish of joy.
 
 78 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 "Pis thus hope lives, patient and pleasureless : 
 But time will come when hope must die ; she feels 
 The gathering cold and creeping touch of death, 
 And hath no thought but how to pass in peace." 
 
 The excellence of the entire work is without strain ; and 
 yet all the time the poet is striving in the impossible 
 task of doing again, and in a different way, what has 
 been done once for all, and absolutely. Why should 
 he set himself to string Ulysses' bow ? 
 
 The scene of Palicio is in Sicily, at Palermo and on 
 the hills above Monreale. The play is partly derived 
 from what Mr Bridges concisely describes as " a bad 
 French story," Stendhal's " Vanina Vanini," in the 
 Chroniques Italiennes ; but Stendhal's carbonaro of 
 the nineteenth century is transported to somewhere 
 about the year 1500, the character of Vanina is en- 
 nobled in that of Margaret, and the denouement is 
 changed to one of happy love. The people of Palermo, 
 moved by rumours of the death of the Spanish king, 
 are in revolt against the unpopular viceroy, Hugo ; and 
 Palicio a brigand though of noble blood has espoused 
 the popular cause. He is taken prisoner, but escapes, 
 and seeks shelter, wounded and disguised as a woman, 
 in the house of his distant kinsman Manuel, the Chief 
 Justiciary. Before she has seen him, Margaret, the 
 beautiful sister of the Justiciary, has allowed her 
 imagination to play around the story of the brigand's 
 heroism : 
 
 " Forgive me, friends ; I see 
 This man's your master, and I like him for it. 
 Bravery I love, and there's no cause so poor 
 It cannot justify."
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges, 79 
 
 She has observed by moonlight her brother bearing 
 across the court a fainting woman whom he has secreted 
 in a chamber of the house ; she resolves to unravel the 
 mystery, obtains admission to the chamber, and, in the 
 wounded woman, discovers the brigand, Palicio. The 
 aid of a surgeon is required, and Margaret leads her 
 lover devoted though unrewarded the physician 
 Rosso, who submits to be blind-folded, to effect the 
 brigand's cure. When Palicio had recovered, and joins 
 his comrades in the hills, Margaret follows him. But 
 in order to save him from the dangers of a rash enter- 
 prise against the Viceroy, she (like her prototype in 
 the "bad French story") betrays the names of his 
 fellows, who in good time are placed under arrest. 
 Palicio, with a gallantry, which is at once Margaret's 
 admiration and despair, resolves to share their fate, 
 and yields himself to the authorities. Margaret visits 
 him in prison, confesses her plot against his rashness, 
 and, when his indignation breaks forth against her, she 
 falls seemingly lifeless at his feet. Palicio is stricken 
 with remorse, rouses her from her swoon, and, upon 
 her entreaty again flies from prison. At the close, the 
 popular uprising is quelled by the announcement that 
 Manuel has been appointed Viceroy in Hugo's place ; 
 the brigands are pardoned, and the hand of Margaret 
 is placed in that of her lover, Giovanni Palicio. 
 
 The play, which its author entitles "a romantic 
 drama in the Elizabethan manner," would indeed take 
 good rank if found among the works of the later 
 Elizabethans. The tangle of incident, of which I have 
 followed only the main thread, is ingeniously ravelled
 
 8o The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 and unravelled. The dialogue is true dramatic dia- 
 logue. And the characters, if not strongly, are grace- 
 fully drawn. How true to the Elizabethan or rather 
 the Jacobean manner, Mr Bridges has contrived to 
 be, a fragment of dialogue and a soliloquy will show. 
 Margaret is conversing with her lover on the hills above 
 Monreale : 
 
 Mar. " See here the flowers 
 
 I have plucked. Know'st thou, Giovanni, why they grow ? 
 Pal. How meanest thou 1 
 Mar. Why in one place one flower 
 
 Will grow and not another. 
 
 Pal. Canst thou tell ? 
 
 Mar. The spirits of good men, allowed to wander 
 
 After their death about the mortal sites 
 
 Where once they dwelt, there where they love to rest 
 
 Shed virtue on the soil, as doth a ray 
 
 Of sunlight : but the immortal qualities 
 
 By which their races differ, as they once 
 
 Differed in blood alive, with various power 
 
 Favour the various vegetable germs 
 
 With kindred specialty. This herb, I think, 
 
 Grows where the Greek hath been. Its beauty shows 
 
 A subtle and full knowledge, and betrays 
 
 A genius of contrivance. Seest thou how 
 
 The fading emerald and azure blent 
 
 On the white petals are immeshed about 
 
 With delicate sprigs of green ? 'Tis therefore called 
 
 Love-in-a-mist. 
 
 Pal. Who is this thistle here 1 
 
 Mar. 0, he, with plumed crest, springing all armed 
 
 In steely lustre, and erect as Mars, 
 
 That is the Roman. 
 
 Pal. Find the Saracen. 
 
 Mar. This hot gladiolus, with waving swords 
 
 And crying colour. 
 
 Pal. And this marigold ? 
 
 Mar. That is the Norman : nay, his furious blood 
 
 Blazes the secret. 'Tis said, where'er he roamed
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 8 1 
 
 This flower is common ; but 'tis in those climes 
 Where he wrought best it wears the strongest hue, 
 And so with us 'tis bravest. 
 Pal. And that's thy countryman ! " 
 
 Palicio's outbreak of admiration for his brave Margaret 
 in the last word gives a true dramatic ending to a 
 passage of flower- poetry perhaps as graceful as any 
 written in drama since the incomparable one in which 
 Perdita parted her blossoms between Camillo and 
 Polixenes. Mr Bridges excels in the expression of 
 exquisite pleasure. It is not very often that he utters 
 as full a note of joy as that of Margaret's soliloquy 
 when she sets forth to meet her lover on the hills : 
 
 " joy, my joy ! 
 This beauteous world is mine : 
 All Sicily is mine : 
 
 This morning mine. I saw the sun, my slave, 
 Poising on high his shorn and naked orb 
 For my delight. He there had stayed for me, 
 Had he not read it in my heart's delight 
 I bade him on.' The birds at dawn sang to me, 
 Crying 'Is life not sweet ? O is't not sweet?' 
 I looked upon the sea : there was not one, 
 Of all his multitudinous waves, not one, 
 That with its watery drift at raking speed 
 Told not my special joy. happy lovers 
 In all the world, praise God with me : his angels 
 Envy us, seeing we are his favourites. 
 What else could grant such joy ? Now on my journey 
 Must I set forth to be a brigand's wife . . . 
 That's but the outward of it, and looks strange : 
 For, oh, the heart of it is a fire of passion 
 To lick up trifling life." 
 
 In the preface to his Sicilian Summer, Henry Taylor 
 expressed a wish that it were possible, not indeed to 
 repeat the comedy of the Elizabethan age, but to renew 
 
 F
 
 82 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 the spirit that gave it birth. Fictions as they were 
 written in the mid years of this century seemed to him 
 powerful only to give pain ; the writer seemed " to 
 despair of getting an answer from the popular imagina- 
 tion in any other way than by breaking it on the 
 wheel." On the contrary, romantic comedy, while 
 light and sweet for the most part, can be, as the author 
 of A Sicilian Summer alleges, in turn serious, pathetic, 
 and still more eminently wise. Some part of Taylor's 
 wish has been fulfilled in our own day by Mr Bridges, 
 and among the elements of his dramas those pleasantries 
 of wisdom, which Henry Taylor especially commends, 
 are not absent. 
 
 The Humours of the Court lies somewhere between an 
 original play and an adaptation of Calderou's El secreto 
 d voces, a drama which long since furnished Gozzi with 
 the material for his PuUico Secreto; something also 
 of which Mr Bridges makes due acknowledgment, is 
 derived from Lope's El perro del hortelano. The 
 reader, whose Spanish is small, can follow Mr Bridges 
 to his sources through M'Carthy's translation of Calderon, 
 and Eugene Baret's translation of Lope ; but no such 
 labour is needed for the enjoyment of what is in truth 
 a delightful English comedy. There are two pairs of 
 lovers, with a comic parallel, in proper Spanish fashion, 
 in the love of servant-man and lady's-maid ; and a plot 
 of Calderon's construction is not likely to be lacking in 
 bright ingenuity. Diana, Countess of Belflor, keeps her 
 court with a code of fantastic, school-girl rules, involving 
 fine and forfeit from the offenders. She secretly indulges 
 the humour of her heart in a fancied passion which is,
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 83 
 
 in reality, no more than love-in-idleness for her 
 secretary, Frederick ; but Frederick's affections are set 
 in all earnestness upon the Countess's adopted sister, 
 Laura. Meanwhile, Frederick's old college companion, 
 Richard, Duke of Milan, a rejected lover of Diana, visits 
 her court in disguise, and lays his amorous plots with 
 Frederick's assistance. We know how love-in-idleness 
 is sometimes only a rehearsal for true hopes and fears 
 and rapture ; we remember how Shakespeare's Olivia 
 can find in Sebastian another Cesario, and how readily 
 Orsino can transfer his heart from Olivia to Viola. 
 The god Amor in romantic comedy is not always the 
 awful deity, but has in him somewhat of " der Schalk." 
 When Diana at length bends before Ricardo's ardour, 
 we are content to believe that she was not indifferent to 
 him on that day when he first beheld her among the 
 Graces and Madonnas in his Holiness's galleries at 
 Rome, and that his presumption in first declaring his 
 passion had not given the Countess too fatal an offence. 
 The play is in truth a play, not striking deep to the 
 dark places of the human heart, but living in the air 
 and sunlight and among the songs of birds. It is fit 
 reading for some glad holiday of summer. 
 
 The, Christian Captives rehandles the subject of 
 Calderon's The Steadfast Prince, and is partly founded 
 upon that admirable play. The theme, involving the 
 enthusiasm of honour, the zeals and even extravagances 
 of pure passion, is better suited to the genius of the 
 Spanish than to that of the English poet. The 
 luminous ardours, the shining fantasies of Calderon 
 are not aimed at or are not attained; and yet the
 
 84 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 action of the dramatic personages embodies extremes 
 of resolve and of desire which even pass beyond the 
 bounds assigned to the characters of El Principe 
 Constante. Almeh, daughter of the King of Fez, 
 is beloved by the great general, now no longer young, 
 Sala ben Sala, while her father designs her for the 
 bride of Tarudante, Prince of Morocco. But she 
 has hardly exchanged glances with Ferdinand, the 
 captive Prince of Portugal, before she loves him, and 
 with a love that is returned, or rather is anticipated. 
 The same test of Ferdinand's constancy is proposed as 
 in Calderon's play will he deliver up the little town 
 of Ceuta to the Moors, and the Prince's answer is 
 in substance the same the city is not his to give, a 
 Christian city belongs to God. Imprisonment and starva- 
 tion fail to overcome his resolution, and, while he suffers, 
 Almeh now a baptised Christian voluntarily takes 
 like trials and sufferings upon herself. Even the 
 promise of freedom, with the Princess for his wife, 
 cannot seduce Ferdinand from his loyalty to Portugal 
 and Christ, and in an outbreak of rage the King of Fez 
 stabs his captive. Almeh, seeking for the Prince in the 
 moonlit garden, discovers the body in the arbour where 
 it has been laid by the Christian captives, who form the 
 chorus of the play, and she dies " upon a kiss." The 
 victorious Portuguese, led by Ferdinand's brother, Prince 
 Henry the Navigator, lay the bodies of the lovers in one 
 grave in the Christian soil of Ceuta. 
 
 Chivalry, loyalty, courtesy, find beautiful expression 
 in Mr Bridges' play ; in the rendering of tragic passion 
 he is less successful. The poet declines to provide purple
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 85 
 
 patches for the quotation of his critics ; the dialogue is 
 wrought into the action of the play. But Almeh's 
 dream of the last Judgment is too impressive a piece 
 of imagination to pass by, and if it be founded on any 
 Spanish original which probably is not the case I do 
 not know or I fail to recall it : 
 
 " For in my dream I saw the spirits of men 
 Stand to be judged : along the extended line _ 
 Of their vast crowd in heaven, that like the sea 
 Swayed in uncertain sheen upon the bounds 
 Of its immensity, nor yet for that 
 Trespassed too far upon the airy shores, 
 I gazed. The unclouded plain, whereon we stood, 
 Had no distinction from the air above, 
 Yet lacked not foothold to that host of spirits, 
 In all things like to men, save for the brightness 
 Of incorruptible life, which they gave forth. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 * * Then, as I gazed, and saw 
 The host before me was of men, and I 
 
 In a like crowd of women stood apart, 
 
 The judgment, which had tarried in my thought, 
 
 Began : from out the opposed line of men 
 
 Hundreds came singly to the open field 
 
 To take their sentence. There, as each stepped forth, 
 
 An angel met him, and from out our band 
 
 Beckoned a woman spirit, in whose joy 
 
 Or gloom his fate was written. Nought was spoken, 
 
 And they who from our squadron went to judge 
 
 Seemed, as the beckoning angel, passionless. 
 
 Woman and man, 'twas plain to all that saw 
 
 Which way the judgment went : if they were blessed 
 
 A smile of glory from the air around them 
 
 Gathered upon their robes, and music sounded 
 
 To guide them forward : but to some it happed 
 
 That darkness settled on them. As a man 
 
 Who hears ill tidings wraps his cloak about him, 
 
 For grief, and shrouds his face, not to be seen ; 
 
 So these by their own robes were swallowed up,
 
 86 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 That thinned to blackness and invisible darkness, 
 And were no more. Thus, while I wondered much 
 How two fates could be justly mixed in one, 
 Behold a man for whom the beckoning angel 
 Could find no answering woman, and I watched 
 What sentence his should be ; when I myself 
 Was 'ware that I was called. A radiant spirit 
 Waited for me. I saw Prince Ferdinand." 
 
 It is a vision which Rossetti might have put into 
 colour, if Rossetti could have pictured a woman's face 
 as that of God's calm, unerring doomster. 
 
 No one of Mr Bridges' plays is of higher intention 
 than his Prometheus the Fire-giver, and in no play has 
 he succeeded better in executing his design. In form 
 it is classical, with a chorus of youths and maidens of 
 the house of Inachus. But in reading it we think 
 little of the classical or romantic tradition, the modern or 
 antique ; the drama is neither one of manners nor of 
 intrigue ; its spiritual motives are for ever old and for 
 ever new desire and hope, love and courage, and 
 aspiration for the better life of man. King Inachus 
 and his household are devout worshippers of Zeus as 
 the supreme god ; but in their hearts lives the desire 
 for that which the harshness of Zeus has withdrawn 
 from earth fire, the needful condition of human 
 progress, the source from which must spring the 
 comfort, the joy, and the glory of man's existence. It 
 is dreamed of, but is still unknown ; the servant lays 
 fir-cones and sticks and sun-dried logs ready for the 
 sacrifice, but the flame to kindle them is lacking. On 
 Zeus's festival the unknown Prometheus arrives at 
 Argos, bearing in a reed the hidden spark. The king,
 
 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 87 
 
 with patient and pious spirit, has come to accept 
 the cruel decree of heaven, and yet the longing in 
 his heart for fire fire, the beneficent is not dead. 
 The first task of Prometheus is to rouse the king from 
 his religious apathy or submission, to infuse faith and 
 hope into his spirit, and convince him that the truest 
 piety lies in loyalty to his purest desire. Even after 
 Inachus has been won over, there are the womanly 
 timidities of Queen Argeia to conquer, and Prometheus 
 will cheat them with no illusion of unmingled personal 
 joy in obtaining this gift of fire for the race he sets 
 forth the coming sorrow of the house in the metamor- 
 phosis of lo, and her wanderings through wild and 
 distant lands. But faith is at last triumphant, and 
 amid the enthusiastic songs of youths and maidens the 
 flame leaps aloft from the pyre with bickering tongues. 
 The choral odes are rhymed, and they close with one in 
 praise of Prometheus, who, leaving his name inscribed 
 on the altar, has disappeared on conferring his great gift. 
 The blank verse is restrained, yet with an inward ardour, 
 verse of steadfast wing, poised, but with an energy of 
 advance. 
 
 Prometheus' vision of " fair Greece inhabited " is set 
 forth in large, musical periods, such as could be written 
 only by one who possessed a rare mastery of unrhymed 
 heroic verse : 
 
 " Nature's varied pleasance 
 Without man's life is but a desert wild 
 Which most where most she mocks him needs his aid. 
 She knows her silence sweeter when it girds 
 His murmurous cities, her wide wasteful curves 
 Larger beside his economic line ;
 
 88 The Poetry of Robert Bridges. 
 
 Or what can add a mystery to the dark, 
 
 As doth his measured music when it moves 
 
 With rhythmic sweetness through the void of night It 
 
 Nay, all her loveliest places are but grounds 
 
 Of vantage, where with geometric hand, 
 
 True square and careful compass he may come 
 
 To plan and plant and spread abroad his towers, 
 
 His gardens, temples, palaces and tombs. 
 
 And yet not all thou seest, with tranced eye 
 
 Looking upon the beauty that shall be, 
 
 The temple-crowned heights, the walled towns, 
 
 Farms and cool summer seats, nor the broad ways, 
 
 That bridge the rivers and subdue the mountains, 
 
 Nor all that travels on them, pomp or war, 
 
 Or needful merchandise, nor all the sails 
 
 Piloting over the wind-dappled blue 
 
 Of the summer-soothed ^Egean, to thy mind 
 
 Can picture what shall be : these are the face 
 
 And form of beauty, but her heart and life 
 
 Shall they be who shall see it, born to shield, 
 
 A happier birthright with intrepid arms, 
 
 To tread down tyranny and fashion forth 
 
 A virgin wisdom to subdue the world, 
 
 To build for passion an eternal song, 
 
 To shape her dreams in marble, and so sweet 
 
 Their speech, that envious Time hearkening shall stay 
 
 In fear to snatch, and hide her rugged hand." 
 
 The entire drama has a grave, almost a religious, 
 beauty. All the characters are good ; there is no tragic 
 passion, in the ordinary sense of the word ; but Mr 
 Bridges convinces our imagination that the meeting of 
 Prometheus and Inachus is one of the great and eventful 
 moments in the history of the life of man. 
 
 To attempt anything of the nature of a final estimate 
 of Mr Bridges' work would be premature. My task has 
 been a humbler one. I desire to make a gift of beauty 
 more widely known to lovers of literature.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 SINCE the above was written, " The Second Part of Nero " has been 
 published. It deals with the conspiracy of Piso, and closes with 
 the preparations of Seneca for death. The tragedy is written with 
 more imaginative energy, and with a finer and stronger rendering 
 of character, than the " First Part " ; indeed, nowhere has Mr 
 Bridges so nearly attained high tragic power as in the closing act 
 of this play ; the facts of history are followed, and are wrought 
 together with admirable skill for dramatic purposes. For the sake 
 of their beauty I will convey into my pages part of a speech 
 addressed by Petronius to Piso, at a supper to which the con- 
 spirators have gathered in the house of Petronius : 
 
 " You little think 
 
 What charm the witching night hath for her lovers : 
 How her solemnity doth deepen thought, 
 And bring again the lost hellenic Muse 
 To sing from heaven : or on moonlit swards 
 Of fancy shadows in transfigured scene 
 The history of man. Thus, like a god, 
 I dwell ; and take the early morning cries 
 For calls to sleep ; and from divinity 
 Fall to forgetfulness, while bustling day 
 Ravages life ; and know no more of it, 
 Your riot and din, the plots and crimes of Rome, 
 Than doth a diver in Arabian seas, 
 Plunging for pearls beneath the lonely blue : 
 But o'er my slumbering head soft airs of dreamland 
 Rock their wild honey-blooms, till the shy stars 
 Once more are venturing forth, and I awake. 
 Is not that something ? " 
 
 I could wish that the speech had ended with " the lonely blue."
 
 THE POETRY OF JOHN DONNE. 1 
 
 THE study of a great writer acquires its highest interest 
 only when we view his work as a whole ; when we per- 
 ceive the relation of the parts to one another, and to 
 their centre ; when nothing remains isolated or frag- 
 mentary ; when we trace out unity in variety ; when we 
 feel the pulse and the rhythm of life. I had hoped to 
 speak of Donne the famous preacher as well as of Donne 
 the poet, and to show how the same intellect and the 
 same heart lived under the doublet of the poet, courtier, 
 scholar, and the gown of the grave, yet passionate 
 divine. But the task has proved too much for the 
 limited time at my disposal. I must reserve for some 
 other occasion what I have to say of the eloquent Dean of 
 St Paul's. In presenting to Sir Robert Carr, afterwards 
 Earl of Somerset, the unworthy favourite of James I., 
 one of his early works, the author begs him to remember 
 that " Jack Donne," not " Dr Donne," was the writer. 
 It is of Jack Donne that I propose to speak this even- 
 ing. After he had taken holy orders Donne seldom 
 threw his passions into verse ; even his "Divine Poems " 
 are, with few exceptions, of early date ; the poet in 
 Donne did not cease to exist, but his ardour, his 
 imagination, his delight in what is strange and wonder- 
 
 1 Read before the Elizabethan Literary Society, May 7, 1890. The 
 subject had been announced as ' ' John Dounc : his Verse and Prose. " 
 90
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 91 
 
 ful, his tenderness, his tears, his smiles, his erudition, 
 his intellectual ingenuities, were all placed at the service 
 of one whose desire was that he might die in the pulpit, 
 or if not die, that he might take his death in the pulpit, 
 a desire which was in fact fulfilled. 
 
 The latest historian of Elizabethan literature, Mr 
 Saintsbury, has said that Donne the poet should be 
 regarded by every catholic student of English literature 
 with a respect only " this side idolatry." There is 
 indeed a large expense of spirit in the poems of Donne, 
 an expense of spirit not always judicious or profitable, 
 and the reader who comes with reasonable expectations 
 will get a sufficient reward. When prospecting for gold 
 the miner considers himself fortunate if he can reckon 
 on finding some twenty-five pennyweights of the precious 
 metal in a ton of quartz and wash- dirt. The prospecter 
 in the lesser poetry of any former age must be content 
 to crush a good deal of quartz and wash a good deal of 
 sand in the expectation of an ounce of pure gold. But 
 by vigour and perseverance in the 'pursuit large fortunes 
 may be amassed. 
 
 Donne as a poet is certainly difficult of access. How 
 shall we approach him, how effect an entrance ? With 
 different authors we need different methods of approach, 
 different kinds of cunning to become free of their 
 domain. Some must be taken by storm, some must be 
 entreated, caressed, wheedled into acquiescence. There 
 are poets who in a single lyric give us, as it were, a key 
 which admits us to the mastery of all their wealth. 
 Towards others we must make an indirect advance, we 
 must reach them through the age which they represent,
 
 92 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 or the school in which they have been teachers or 
 pupils. It is as the founder of a school of English 
 poetry that Donne is ordinarily set before us. We are 
 told that in the decline of the greater poetry of the 
 Elizabethan period a " metaphysical school " arose, and 
 that Donne was the founder or the first eminent member 
 of this school. I do not believe in the existence of 
 this so-called " metaphysical school." Much of the most 
 characteristic poetry of Donne belongs to the flood-tide 
 hour of Elizabethan literature ; to the time when 
 Spenser was at work on the later books of the Faerie 
 Queene and Shakespeare was producing his early 
 histories and comedies. The delight in subtleties of 
 thought, in over-ingenious fantasies, in far-fetched 
 imagery, in curiosity, and not always felicitous curiosity, 
 of expression was common' to almost all the writers of 
 the period. The dramatists were to some extent pre- 
 served from the abuse of fantastic ingenuity by the fact 
 that they wrote for a popular audience, and must 
 have failed unless they were at once intelligible. But 
 authors of prose as well as authors in verse were 
 fascinated by subtleties of the fancy ; the theologian 
 and the philosopher, as well as the poet, swung in the 
 centre of a spider's web of fantasies, 
 
 " All the waving mesh 
 Laughing with lucid dew-drops rainbow-edged." 
 
 There was no special coterie or school of " metaphysical 
 poets," but this writer or that yielded with more 
 abandon than the rest to a tendency of the time. 
 
 It is not then by studying Donne as the leader of a 
 school that we shall come to understand him. We get
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 93 
 
 access to his writings, I believe, most readily through 
 his life, and through an interest in his character as an 
 individual. And fortunately he is the subject of a con- 
 temporary biography, which is one of the most delight- 
 ful biographies in the language. We possess a large 
 number of his letters, and for Donne friendship was 
 almost a second religion, and to write a letter was often 
 
 o * 
 
 to give himself up to an ecstasy. The story of his life 
 is an Elizabethan romance, made the more impressive 
 by the fact that the romance is a piece of reality. The 
 son of a London merchant, he had in his veins the 
 blood of the poet John Heywood and that of the sister 
 of Sir Thomas More. His two maternal uncles, mem- 
 bers of the Society of Jesus, suffered persecution in 
 their native land, and died in exile on the Continent. 
 The little boy, left fatherless at the age of three, must 
 have been a zealous student, for he was admitted at 
 Hart Hall, Oxford, when in his twelfth year. While 
 still hardly more than a child he travelled abroad for 
 some three years, gaining a knowledge of French, Span- 
 ish and Italian. On his return he became a student 
 of Lincoln's Inn, but he was more interested in poetry 
 and theology than in the law. When he was twenty 
 he was already known as a writer of high-conceited 
 love lyrics, and led the way in another department of 
 poetry as the first English satirist. He was the friend 
 of wits and ladies and men of letters ; he probably had 
 known some of the bitter-sweets of forbidden pleasure. 
 He had doubtless received a deep shock when his 
 younger brother was thrown into prison for the crime 
 of harbouring a seminary priest, and it may have been
 
 94 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 this, as Dr Jessop suggests, which set him upon his 
 study of the rival claims of the Protestant faith and of 
 that Church in which he had been devoutly reared. 
 In June, 1596, he was on shipboard as a volunteer 
 in the expedition against Spain under the Earl of 
 Essex. The soldier and sailor was by-and-by trans- 
 formed into the Lord Keeper's secretary, and became 
 acquainted with the intrigues and follies and fashions 
 of the Court. And then came about the great hap- 
 piness and the great misfortune of Donne's life his 
 passion for the niece of Lord Keeper Egerton's second 
 wife she sixteen years old, he nearly twenty-seven 
 their secret marriage, followed by the dismissal of the 
 bridegroom from his patron's service, his disgrace and 
 imprisonment, his subsequent poverty, with a constantly 
 increasing family, the trials and fidelity of love, and the 
 years of weary waiting for Court employment, during 
 which time he dulled the sense of misery with what 
 he terms " the worst voluptuousness, an hydroptique 
 immoderate desire of human learning and languages." 
 In the same letter a melancholy one in which he uses 
 these words Donne speaks of his passion for meditation 
 as being almost criminal in one who has duties to those 
 dependent on him ; even in that deep desire for a 
 future world, which remained with him through good 
 and evil fortune, he finds something of sin. He would 
 not meet death in a lethargy, but confront it with 
 the courage of a man of action; but how and where 
 to act ? that was the question : " I would not that 
 death should take me asleep. I would not have him 
 merely seize me, and only declare me to bo dead, but
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 95 
 
 win me and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I 
 would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have 
 some excuse ; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could 
 not have so much as exercise for my swimming." We 
 talk of melancholy as a disease of the nineteenth 
 century ; but Burton anatomised it more than two hun- 
 dred years ago. Donne, in one of his sermons, speaks 
 of the peculiar liability of men in his own time to 
 "an extraordinary sadness, a predominant melancholy, 
 a faintness of heart, a cheerlessness, a joylessness of 
 spirit," and he exhorts his hearers to the duty of 
 dilating the heart with holy gladness the duty of a 
 " true joy in this world that shall flow into the joy of 
 heaven as a river flows into the sea." Doubtless he 
 had himself known that sadness which comes from 
 thought and desire that cannot be turned to active 
 uses ; doubtless he had often longed " to make to 
 himself some mark, and go towards it alegrement," as 
 he advises the friend to whom his mournful letter is 
 addressed. 
 
 " I be in such a planetary and erratique fortune," he 
 writes, " that I can do nothing constantly." Papist and 
 Protestant; doubter and believer; a seeker for faith and 
 one who amused himself with sceptical paradoxes; a 
 solitary thinker on obscurest problems and " a great 
 visitor of ladies," as Sir Richard Baker describes him, 
 "a great frequenter of plays"; a passionate student 
 longing for action ; a reader of the law ; a toiler among 
 folios of theology; a poet and a soldier; one who com- 
 muned with lust and with death; a courtier and a satirist 
 of the court ; a wanderer over Europe and one who lay
 
 g6 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 inactive in a sullen weedy lake without space for stroke 
 of arms or legs such was Donne up to his fortieth 
 year. We have not now to consider him as he was in his 
 later life, when all his powers were concentrated in the 
 intense effort to plead with the souls of men " a 
 preacher in earnest," as Izaak Walton has pictured 
 him, " weeping sometimes for his auditory, sometimes 
 with them ; always preaching to himself, like an angel 
 from a cloud, but in none ; carrying some, as St Paul 
 was, to heaven in holy raptures, and enticing others by 
 a sacred art and courtship to amend their lives. . . . 
 and all this with a most particular grace and an 
 inexpressible addition of comeliness." We have not 
 now to think of Dr Donne, the preacher ; but when 
 we look at the portrait of Donne in his youth with 
 right hand upon the sword, the jewelled cross pendant 
 at his ear, and those other adornments which, as Walton 
 says, might then suit with the present fashions of youth 
 and the giddy gaieties of that age, and when we read 
 his motto 
 
 " How much shall I be changed, 
 Before I am changed ! " 
 
 we are constrained to recall that other portrait executed 
 by his own desire, in which he was represented with 
 closed eyes, cadaverous face, and the winding sheet 
 knotted at the head and feet. It was a morbid 
 thought of Donne to be so pictured ; but he had 
 always lived in the presence of death ; and un- 
 doubtedly, apart from the one great sorrow that his 
 faithful wife was taken from him, the closing years of 
 his life were the happiest years. He was no longer a
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 97 
 
 disappointed waverer ; he had a supreme purpose ; his 
 powers were organised in a great cause ; he had 
 abundant evidence that he did not fight now as one 
 that beateth the air. Donne, amid the pleasures of 
 his youth, amid the studies of his early middle life, 
 was not a happy man. Donne, as he feebly ascended 
 the pulpit steps on that first Friday in Lent, with 
 hollow cheeks and pallid lips, and gave forth with a 
 tremulous voice the text of his own funeral sermon, 
 " To God the Lord belong the issues from death," was 
 filled with a joy that passeth understanding. 
 
 About the time when Donne wrote the melancholy 
 letter to Sir Henry Goodere from which I have quoted, 
 he wrote also the poem entitled The Litanie, and 
 sent the manuscript to the same friend. Through this 
 poem we can obtain, perhaps, a clearer insight into 
 D.onne's character than through any other that he has 
 written. In a series of stanzas, full of spiritual ardour, 
 he invokes the persons of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, 
 the Angels, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, 
 Confessors, Virgins, and Doctors. He laments that 
 he has fallen into ruin, that his heart by its dejection 
 has turned to clay, that he who had been wasted by 
 " youth's fires of pride and lust " is now weather-beaten 
 by new storms ; he prays that his perpetual inquisition 
 of truth may not darken the spiritual wisdom within 
 him : 
 
 " Let not my mind be blinder by more light j " 
 
 He implores the " eagle-sighted Prophets " to petition 
 on his behalf that he may not by their example excuse 
 his excess 
 
 G
 
 98 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 " In seeking secrets or poetiqueness ; " 
 
 He hopes to \vin, through the blood of the martyrs, " a 
 discreet patience," which may endure death, or life, and, 
 if life, then without too passionate a longing for the 
 grave : 
 
 " For oh, to some 
 Not to be martyrs is a martyrdom ! " 
 
 And then in his litany he passes on to a series of 
 petitions, which seem to be veritable sighs of desire 
 from his inmost heart. The general purport of these 
 may be expressed by saying that they are prayers for 
 temperance of mind, for a via media between the 
 extremes and excesses natural to a temperament at 
 once ardently sensual and ardently spiritual. Donne 
 feels that in either extreme of passion he must lose 
 himself. He fears that the world may be too much 
 to him, and fears equally that it may be too little ; 
 he would not think that all happiness is centred in 
 earth's brightest places, nor yet that this earth is only 
 framed for our prison ; he prays that we may be pre- 
 served from the danger " of thinking us all soul," and 
 in consequence neglecting our natural duties ; from the 
 danger of indiscreet humility ; from thirst of fame, and 
 no less from an unjust scorn of fame ; from contempt 
 of poverty, and from contempt of riches. The bodily 
 senses, he maintains, though often fighting for sin, are, 
 in truth, not opposed to righteousness, but rather the 
 " soldiers of God " ; learning, which sometimes tempts 
 us from our allegiance, is, in truth, " God's ambassador " ; 
 beauty, though it may be poisoned, is, in truth, a flower 
 of Paradise made for precious uses. The whole poem
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 99 
 
 is directed against the temptations to which a man 
 liable to the opposite violences of the flesh warring 
 against the spirit, and the spirit warring against the 
 flesh, is exposed. He fears a barren asceticism, or the 
 sweet blindness of mystical devotion almost as much as 
 he fears the world and the flesh. With both extremes 
 he has been acquainted, and now would win, if possible, 
 an " evenness " instead of his " intermitting aguish 
 piety." He would especially seek deliverance from 
 temptations of the intellect ; from dwelling with an 
 endless idle curiosity on nature, and so ceasing to bear 
 his part in the life of the world, from a dilettante 
 interest in religion, which uses it only as a mode of 
 deploying a shallow intellectuality. The poem is the 
 litany of the scholar, the courtier, the poet; it admits 
 us to the secrets of its writer's troubled spirit. 
 
 Something of the same feeling appears in poems 
 which are rather ethical than religious. Donne com- 
 mends what he does not himself possess a philosophical 
 equanimity. In one of his letters in verse addressed to 
 Sir Henry Wotton, he speaks of the various ways in 
 which men lose themselves in cities, in courts, and in 
 the solitude of the country, how the ideals of early life 
 are corrupted and destroyed, so that if one of these men 
 were to meet his true self there would scarcely be a 
 recognition between the pair : 
 
 " They would like strangers greet themselves, being then 
 Utopian youth grown old Italian." l 
 
 And then Donne proceeds to exhort his friend 
 
 1 Italy being taken as the land of nameless vices, and so opposed to 
 Utopia.
 
 ioo The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 to seek for the tranquillity of a self-sufficing 
 soul : 
 
 " Be then thine own home, and in thyself dwell ; 
 Inn anywhere ; continuance maketh hell. 
 And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam, 
 Carrying his own house still, is still at home, 
 Follow for he is easy -paced this snail : 
 Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail." 
 
 But it is not a barren quietism that Donne commends. 
 Man's nature is at first a wilderness, which must by 
 degrees be reclaimed, and then actively tilled, that it 
 may bear the noblest fruits. We are familiar with 
 Tennyson's exhortation in In Memoriam : 
 
 " Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die." 
 
 The same image is to be found in Donne's letter 
 to Sir Edward Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury : 
 
 " How happy's he which hath due place assigned 
 To his beasts, and disafforested his mind." 
 
 Donne would have these beasts tamed and put to 
 the uses for which they are best fitted. How happy, 
 the poet goes on, is he who has 
 
 " Empal'd himself to keep them out, not in ; 
 Can sow, and dares trust corn where they have bin, 
 Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast." 
 
 When the wilderness is reclaimed, then begins the 
 vigorous tillage of the soil ; as Donne elsewhere puts 
 
 it: 
 
 " "We are but farmers of ourselves, yet may, 
 If we can stock ourselves and thrive, uplay 
 Much, much good treasure for the great rent day." 1 
 
 1 To Mr Rowland Woodward, ed. 1669, p. 153.
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 101 
 
 The vital centre of some of Matthew Arnold's poems, 
 in which he tells of the pains of outward distraction 
 and inward division, may be found in his exhortation 
 to us to " rally the good in the depths of ourselves," or 
 in such a line as that which concludes the remarkable 
 sonnet suggested by words of Marcus Aurelius : 
 
 " The aids to noble life are all within." 
 
 Donne preaches no such Stoical gospel constantly ; 
 but he, too, can at times take a Stoical text for his 
 discourse : 
 
 " Seek we then ourselves in ourselves ; for as 
 Men force the sun with much more force to pass 
 By gathering his beams with a chrystal glass, 
 
 So we, if we into ourselves will turn, 
 Blowing our spark of virtue, may out-burn 
 The straw which doth about our hearts sojourn." 
 
 There is some danger in the pride of Stoicism ; in 
 the notion that one has attained ; in the tendency to 
 look down as from a pinnacle, rather than up towards 
 the endless height yet to be climbed. In our own 
 day no poet has expressed so nobly as Robert Browning 
 the unsatisfied aspiration of the soul after perpetual 
 progress. What though the body stand still or decline, 
 the soul only rises from the body's decay, and spreads 
 wings for a farther flight. We remember the exultant 
 spiritual advance of Rabbi ben Ezra amid the growing 
 infirmities and sadnesses of old age. Browning hardly 
 expressed this prerogative of the soul with more imagi- 
 native energy than Donne in his letter to Sir Henry 
 Good ere :
 
 IO2 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 " A palace, when 'tis that which it should be, 
 
 Leaves growing, and stands such, or else decays ; 
 But he which dwells there is not so ; for he 
 Strives to urge upward, and his fortune raise : 
 
 So had your body her morning, hath her noon, 
 And shall not better ; her next change is night : 
 
 But her fair larger Guest, to whom sun and moon 
 Are sparks and short-liv'd, claims another right." 
 
 Donne apologises in this poem for his moralisings, 
 which might as well be found, he says, at the end of 
 fables or in the mottoes inscribed on fruit-trenchers. 
 Even if this were true, we might read what he has 
 written in this kind with interest. Much of a man's 
 character and inmost experience is revealed by the se- 
 lection which he makes from among the commonplaces 
 of morality. When a truism strikes us as eminently 
 true, it must have been vivified for us by some 
 passage of the inner life, some moral victory or moral 
 failure. 
 
 Several of Donne's most interesting poems are con- 
 nected with incidents of his personal history, and 
 gain an added interest from the fact that they are 
 autobiographical. Few lovers of poetry are un- 
 acquainted with the Elegy addressed perhaps to his 
 young wife when he thought of quitting his native 
 land, and the ardent girl a Shakespearian Viola in 
 real life proposed to accompany him in the disguise 
 of a page. There is a vigour of movement, a strong 
 coherence, a freedom from conceits in these lines which 
 is not always, or perhaps very often, to be found in 
 a like degree in Donne, and which we may ascribe to 
 the fervour and directness of his feeling :
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 103 
 
 " By our first strange and fatal interview, 
 By all desires which thereof did ensue, 
 By our long starving hopes, by that remorse 
 Which my words' masculine-persuasive force 
 Begot in thee, and by the memory 
 Of hurts which spies and rivals threatened me, 
 I calmly beg ; but by thy parents' wrath, 
 By all pains which want and divorcement hath 
 I conjure thee ; and all those oaths, which I 
 And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy, 
 Here I unswear and overswear them thus 
 Thou shalt not love by ways so dangerous ; 
 Temper, fair love, Love's impetuous rage, 
 Be my true mistress still, not my feign'd page." 
 
 Touches of dramatic power are rare in Donne, whose 
 genius was lyrical and meditative, not that of a 
 dramatist ; but in this Elegy there is one touch which 
 might seem of triumphant power even if it had occurred 
 in a tragedy by Webster. Having pictured the dangers 
 to which his lady would be exposed in foreign lands, 
 where, in spite of her garb of a boy, all would spy 
 
 in her 
 
 " A blushing womanly discovering grace," 
 
 Donne goes on to exhort her, for his sake, to be of 
 good cheer, and to dream no ill dreams during his 
 absence : 
 
 " Nor in bed fright thy nurse 
 With midnight startings, crying out, ' Oh ! Oh ! 
 Nurse, oh ! my love is slain ! I saw him go 
 O'er the white Alps alone ; I saw him, I, 
 Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall, and die.' " 
 
 All the greatness and terror of external nature are here 
 
 made subservient to the passion of a girl's heart in that 
 
 midnight cry " I saw him go o'er the white Alps alone." 
 
 There are other poems of parting which probably refer
 
 IO4 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 to later seasons of their writer's life. The births of 
 Donne's children followed each other at no long intervals ; 
 and it was when his wife looked forward to hours of 
 trial and danger that he was urged by Sir Robert Drury 
 to be his companion on a visit to the court of the 
 French king, Henry IV. When Isaac Walton, speaking 
 of the unwillingness of Mrs Donne to let her husband 
 part from her on this occasion, quotes the words, " her 
 divining soul boded her some ill in his absence," he was, 
 in fact, citing them from the exquisite lyric of parting 
 which begins with the lines : 
 
 " Sweetest love, I do not go 
 
 For weariness of thee, 
 Nor in hope the world can show 
 A fitter love for me." 
 
 Two days after Donne's arrival in Paris, he saw, at 
 midday, a vision of his wife pass before him twice, with 
 her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child 
 in her arms. Her ill-divining fears were in fact realised ; 
 the infant of which she was delivered died at birth. 
 Walton refers to the same occasion of parting Donne's 
 Valediction, forbidding to mourn, in which occurs the 
 quaint image of the two feet of the compass, one fixed, 
 the other moving, and each inseparably united to the 
 other. The poet prays for a mild departure, without 
 violences of grief, like that of a good man when leaving 
 his friends on earth in a tranquil death : 
 
 " So let us melt, and make no noise, 
 
 No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move ; 
 'Twere profanation of our joys 
 To tell the laity our love." 
 
 It will be for some close investigator of the facts of
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 105 
 
 Donne's life for Dr Jessop, let us hope to attempt to 
 ascertain the precise occasions of several of his poems. 
 I like to think that it is of his young bride and the new 
 glad morning of life which he found in her love that he 
 speaks in his Good-morrow : 
 
 " I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I 
 
 Did till we loved : were we not wean'd till then, 
 
 But suck'd on childish pleasures seelily ? 
 Or slumbefd we in the Seven Sleepers' den ? 
 
 'Twos so ; hut as all pleasures fancies be, 
 
 If ever any beauty I did see 
 
 Which I desired and got, 'twas but a dream of thee." 
 
 And I suppose there can be little doubt that it is the 
 first annual return of the day of his meeting with her 
 which is celebrated in another poem, written before 
 marriage, and entitled The Anniversary. The two 
 lovers are a king and a queen, and what king and 
 queen so safe as they, whom no reason can assail ? 
 
 " True and false fears let us refrain. 
 Let us love nobly, and live, and add again 
 Years and years unto years, till we attain 
 To write three-score : this is the second of ouv reign." 
 
 A Lecture upon the Shadow, one of the most 
 admirable of Donne's shorter poems, has in it a touch of 
 fear lest love may, indeed, pass its meridian and decline 
 towards the west. The poet undertakes to read his 
 mistress a lecture in love's natural philosophy ; as they 
 walked side by side in the morning hours, the eastern 
 sun threw their shadows behind them on the ground ; 
 so it was in the early days of secret love, when they 
 practised disguises and concealment upon others ; but 
 now it is love's full noon, and they tread all shadows 
 under foot :
 
 io6 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 " That love hath not attain'd the highest degree 
 Which is still diligent lest others see." 
 
 But what if the sun of love decline westerly ? Then 
 the shadows will work upon themselves and darken their 
 path ; each of them will practise disguisings upon the 
 other : 
 
 " The morning shadows wear away, 
 But these grow longer all the day, 
 But oh, love's day is short, if love decay." 
 
 Unfaith in aught, sings Vivien, is want of faith in all, 
 and Donne's Lecture upon the Shadow closes with the 
 same truth or shall we say sophism ? of an ardent 
 heart : 
 
 " Love is a growing, or full constant light : 
 And his short minute after noon is night." 
 
 The love of Donne and his wife may, perhaps, have 
 known some of the cloudy vicissitudes incident to all 
 things on earth, but it never waned. After her death, 
 which took place before the days of his worldly prosperity 
 as Dean of St Paul's, " his first motion from his desolated 
 house was," says Walton, " to preach where his beloved 
 wife lay buried, in St Clement's Church, near Temple 
 Bar, London ; and his text was a part of the Prophet 
 Jeremiah's Lamentation : ' Lo I am the man that have 
 seen affliction.' " 
 
 In several of his early poems Donne, with his delight 
 in paradox and dialectical ingenuity, maintains that love 
 must needs range and change with boundless incon- 
 stancy : 
 
 " Change is the nursery 
 Of music, joy, life, and eternity." 
 
 It is, he declares, the very law of man's nature ; and
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 107 
 
 as for woman, a fair woman and a true may be found 
 when we can catch a falling star, or translate the 
 mermaid's song, or tell who cleft the devil's foot. We 
 cannot doubt that Donne himself had followed false 
 fires of passion before he found his true home of love. 
 But it were rash to take all his poems of intrigue as 
 passages of autobiography. He sometimes wrote best, 
 or thought he wrote best, when his themes were wholly 
 of the imagination. Still it is evident that Donne, 
 the student, the recluse, the speculator on recondite 
 problems, was also a man who adventured in pursuit 
 of violent delights which had violent ends. I cannot 
 think that the Elegy entitled The Perfume, has 
 reference to an incident in his secret wooing of Ann 
 More, his wife to be ; if there be any autobiographical 
 truth in the poem, it must be connected with some 
 earlier passion. Once and only once, the Elegy tells 
 us, was the lover betrayed in his private interviews 
 with his mistress ; her little brothers had often skipped 
 like fairy sprites into the chamber, but had seen 
 nothing ; the giant porter at the gate, a Ehodian 
 colossus 
 
 " The grim eight-foot-high iron-bound serving-man," 
 
 for all his hire could never bear witness of any touch 
 or kiss. Who then was the traitor ? Not silks that 
 rustled nor shoes that creaked. It was the courtier's 
 perfume, scenting the air, as he crept to the chamber 
 of his beloved, which betrayed his presence ; whereupon 
 the narrator breaks forth into reproaches against the 
 effeminacy of perfumes, of which the one happy use
 
 io8 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 were to embalm the corpse of the father who had 
 interrupted their delights : 
 
 " All my perfumes I give most willingly 
 To embalm thy father's corpse. What, will he die ?" 
 
 We can well believe that in this poem Donne has 
 set his fancy to work and created what he thought a 
 piquant incident out of the stuff of dreams. 
 
 The Picture seems clearly to have been written 
 on the occasion of his voyage as a volunteer with the 
 Earl of Essex, or to have been suggested to his 
 imagination by some such soldierly adventure. As 
 he starts on his seafaring he bids farewell to his be- 
 loved, and places his picture in her hands. Thoughts 
 of death fly like shadows across his mind ; even if he 
 should ever return, he will come back changed, with 
 rough and weather-beaten face, his hand, perhaps, 
 grown coarse from labour at the oar, and tanned by 
 the sun, his skin speckled with blue marks of the 
 powder-grains : 
 
 " If rival fools tax thee to have loved a man 
 So foul and coarse as, oh, I may seem then, 
 This [his picture] shall say what I was." 
 
 His lady will have the greater joy in knowing that 
 she still owns her full beauty to bestow on one so 
 worn, and will feel that the loss of what was fair and 
 delicate in him is more than compensated by the 
 manlier complexion of his love. There is no doubt 
 that two descriptive poems, The Storm and The 
 Calm, record some of Donne's experience on the 
 Spanish expedition. In the former of these poems 
 the terrors and miseries of a tempest at sea are set
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 109 
 
 forth as they might be by one who had himself en- 
 dured them. The writer does not paint from fancy 
 but had surely seen with his bodily eyes the pale 
 landsmen creeping up on deck to ask for news, and 
 finding no comfort in the sailors' rough replies : 
 
 " And as sin-burden'd souls from graves will creep 
 At the last day, some forth their cabins peep, 
 And trembling ask, What news ? and do hear so 
 As jealous husbands what they would not know." 
 
 The Calm was a favourite with Ben Jonson, who 
 could repeat by heart some of Donne's poems. It 
 describes such a weary, torrid stillness of the elements 
 as that suffered by the ancient mariner of Coleridge's 
 poem ; the men lying helpless on the hatches, the 
 tackling hung with idle garments, the air all fire, the 
 sea " a brimstone bath," the deck as hot to the feet 
 as if an oven : 
 
 " And in one place lay 
 Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday." 
 
 The descriptions in these companion poems are 
 unique in Elizabethan literature by virtue of Donne's 
 choice of unusual subjects and his realistic manner of 
 treatment. 
 
 Donne's Satires are also among the poems which 
 were not spun out of his brain, but were written, to 
 use Wordsworth's expression, with his eye upon the 
 object. In one he tells how he was tempted away 
 from the companionship of his beloved books, into the 
 London streets, by a coxcomb, who, says Donne, though 
 superstitionsly devoted to all the rites and ceremonies 
 of good manners, might be called for the precision of
 
 no The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 his fine breeding a very Puritan. There is something 
 of majesty in the lines contrasting the poet's own 
 condition with the elegance of this spruce master of 
 ceremonies : 
 
 " And in this coarse attire which now I wear 
 With God and with the Muses I confer." 
 
 In another satire the object of Donne's ridicule is 
 a small poet of the day who has turned lawyer, and 
 who interlards his ordinary conversation with legal 
 term and phrase, nay, who wooes in language of the 
 pleas and bench : 
 
 " Words, words, which would tear 
 The tender labyrinth of a maid's soft ear 
 More, more than ten Sclavonians' scoldings, more 
 Than when winds in our ruin'd Abbeys roar." 
 
 In yet another there is a lively picture of the needy 
 court suitor assuming courtier's airs, and in the end 
 thankful to be dismissed with the gift of a crown-piece, 
 a figure half-piteous, half-grotesque : 
 
 " A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun 
 E'er bred." 
 
 But of the Satires the most remarkable is one which 
 hardly deserves that name ; it is rather a hortatory 
 poem addressed to those who fail as Christians to stand 
 with their loins girt and their lamps burning. How is 
 it, asks Donne, that the Stoic philosopher of Greece or 
 Rome should be more zealous in the pursuit of the true 
 ends of life than the Christian of to-day ? 
 
 " Is not our mistress, fair Religion, 
 As worthy of all our soul's devotion 
 As Virtue was to the first blinded age ?" 
 
 How is it that a man will dare the frozen North
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. in 
 
 and burning South, and undertake forbidden wars and 
 give rash challenges for idle words, and yet will not be 
 bold against his true foes and the foes of God, " who 
 made thee to stand sentinel in this world's garrison ? " 
 Donne glances at the various creeds and churches 
 Rome where the rags of religion are loved : 
 
 " As we here obey 
 The state-cloth where the Prince sate yesterday ; " 
 
 Geneva where religion is " plain, simple, sullen, young, 
 contemptuous, yet unhandsome ; " and having spoken 
 of the man who cares nothing for any form of faith, 
 and the amateur in creeds who cares a little for all, he 
 justifies the earnest seeker for truth, even though he 
 still remain a doubter. We are reminded of an often- 
 quoted stanza of In Memoriam by the words of 
 
 Donne : 
 
 " Doubt wisely ; in strange ways 
 To stand inquiring right is not to stray ; 
 To sleep, or run wrong, is." 
 
 But Donne would have the doubter attain, if possible, 
 before old age comes, which he names the twilight of 
 death, for that is the season to which rest in the posses- 
 sion of truth is due, and soon follows the night when no 
 man can work. In this passage we have unquestionably 
 a personal confession, a vindication of Donne's own 
 attitude of inquiry and doubt, addressed by himself 
 to himself. 
 
 Another parallel with a passage of In Memoriam 
 may be noted in passing 
 
 " I thought if I could draw my pains 
 Through rhyme's vexation, I should them allay. 
 Grief brought to number cannot be so fierce, 
 For he tames it that fetters it in verse."
 
 ii2 The Poetry of John Donne, 
 
 So Donne. And Tennyson similarly in the well-known 
 stanza 
 
 " But, for the unquiet heart and brain, 
 A use in measured language lies ; 
 The sad mechanic exercise 
 Like dull narcotics lulling pain." 
 
 The section of Donne's poems entitled " Songs and 
 Sonnets " is almost wholly devoted to love, and the 
 metaphysics and casuistry of love. On occasions he 
 can write, at least for a line or two, with a directness 
 like that of Burns : 
 
 " Yet I had rather owner be 
 Of thee one hour than all else ever " 
 
 What words can be simpler than these which sound 
 almost as if they had come out of a song to Mary 
 Morison or Jean Armour ? More often he is ingeniously 
 subtle. Mr Ruskin, if I remember right, has some- 
 where praised and overpraised the delicacy of a quatrain 
 in Mr Coventry Patmore's Angel in the House, which 
 is indeed a pretty Chinese puzzle in verse : the lady 
 who has taken her lover's kiss maintains that her 
 modesty is still inviolate : 
 
 " He thought me asleep ; at least, I knew 
 He thought I thought he thought I slept." 
 
 A parallel may be found in Donne's poem Love's 
 Exchange : 
 
 " Let me not know that others know 
 
 That she knows my pains, lest that so 
 A tender shame make me mine own woe." 
 
 For the most part Donne in his love poems is high- 
 fantastical, but this does not imply any coldness or 
 insincerity. " True love," he" says, " finds wit," but he 
 whose wit moves him to love confesses that he does
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 1 1 3 
 
 not know genuine passion. In a poem in which he 
 makes various imaginary legacies, he leaves all that he 
 has written in rhyme to Nature, in doing which, as he 
 tells us, he does not give but restore ; and it is un- 
 doubtedly a fact that there have been periods of liter- 
 ature when it was natural to seek out ingenuities of 
 fancy and curiosities of expression. When Donne writes 
 in his licentious vein he is not light and gay but studi- 
 ously sensual ; he makes voluptuousness a doctrine and 
 argues out his thesis with scholastic diligence. To the 
 other extreme belongs such a poem as that admirable 
 lyric beginning with the lines : 
 
 " I have done one braver thing 
 Than all the Worthies did ; 
 And yet a braver thence doth spring, 
 Which is to keep that hid." 
 
 This rare achievement is to love a woman without a 
 single thought of the difference of "he and she " ; but 
 profane men would deride such love as this, and hence 
 the braver thing is called for to keep this spiritual 
 friendship a secret from the unbelieving world. In this 
 book of his, Donne declares 
 
 " Love's divines since all divinity 
 
 Is love or wonder may find all they seek, 
 Whether abstracted spiritual love they like, 
 Their souls exhaled with what they do not see, 
 Or, loth so to amuse 
 Faith's infirmities, they choose 
 Something which they may see and use ;" 
 
 for though Mind be the heaven of love, Beauty is a 
 type which represents that heaven to our mortal senses. 
 Or, to cite another of Donne's similitudes, if love be an 
 
 H
 
 H4 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 angel, yet an angel takes to himself a face and wings of 
 air, else he were invisible ; and in like manner love 
 materialises itself through beauty while yet it remains a 
 spirit. In The Extasie the same doctrine of amorous 
 metaphysics is upheld ; two lovers seated upon a flowery 
 bank hold commune in the spirit, and time seems almost 
 suspended : 
 
 " And whilst our souls negotiate there 
 
 We like sepulchral statues lay ; 
 All day the same our postures were, 
 And we said nothing all the day." 
 
 But why should not hand meet hand and lip touch 
 lip ? There is an ascent and a descent in this complex 
 nature of ours ; the blood rarifies itself into the animal 
 spirits, 
 
 " Because such fingers need to knit 
 
 The subtle knot which makes us man;" 
 
 and in like manner the soul must descend into the 
 affections and the lower faculties, 
 
 " Else a great Prince [the soul] in prison lies." 
 
 The metre of The Extasie is the same as that of 
 the Angel in the House, and the manner in which 
 meaning and metre move together closely resembles that 
 of Mr Patmore's Preludes. 
 
 The piece best known of all that Donne has written 
 is that in which he imagines the exposure of his own 
 skeleton, when his grave shall be reopened to receive a 
 second guest, and tjie discovery of the secret love-token, 
 " a bracelet of bright hair about the bone." It is some- 
 times forgotten that in this romantic piece of fantasy 
 Donne heightens the effect by representing the lovers as
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 115 
 
 during all their lives no other than ideal friends to 
 whom such a pledge as this golden tress was the highest 
 symbol granted of their perfect union : 
 
 " Difference of sex we never knew, 
 No more than guardian angels do." 
 
 The Funeral is a companion piece : 
 
 " Whoever comes to shroud me do not harm, 
 
 Nor question much, 
 
 That subtle wreath of hair about mine arm ; 
 The mystery, the sign you must not touch, 
 
 For 'tis my outward soul." 
 
 But here it is evident that there was a time when the 
 speaker " knew difference of sex," had offered a man's 
 love to the woman of his choice, had been rejected, and 
 had received this gift as a token of friendship from 
 which all thought of wedded union must be banished. 
 Cartwright names one of his lyrics, No Platonique 
 Love, and tells with what result he had once tried " to 
 practise this thin love " : 
 
 " I climb'd from sex to soul, from soul to thought ; 
 
 But, thinking there to move, 
 Headlong I roll'd from thought to soul, and then 
 From soul I lighted at the sex again." 
 
 It may be conjectured that Donne sometimes toppled 
 from his heights (if indeed it is a fall) ; but there is one 
 poem in which with evident sincerity and with rare 
 grace, he sings the praises of autumnal beauty like that 
 so gracefully pictured in Mr Alfred Austin's Love's 
 Widowhood and Donne finds in this loveliness, which is 
 almost spiritual, a charm found nowhere else : 
 
 " No Spring nor Summer's beauty hath such grace 
 As I have found in one Autumnal face."
 
 n6 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 Here is Love's abiding-place : 
 
 " Here dwells he, though he sojourn everywhere 
 In Progress, 1 yet his standing house is here. 
 Here where still evening is, nor noon nor night, 
 Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight." 
 
 The range is indeed wide between the feeling expressed 
 in this poem and in others of the same group of 
 Elegies. 
 
 In several of the passages from which I have quoted 
 examples occur of the juxtaposition, so frequent in Donne, 
 of thoughts of love and thoughts of the grave : 
 
 " A fancy shared party per pale between 
 Death's heads and skeletons and Aretine." 
 
 When he gazes at womanly beauty he reflects that 
 one day it will be as useless as " a sun-dial in a grave"; 
 when at parting from his mistress he scratches his name 
 with his diamond upon her window-pane, he leaves the 
 ragged signature with her, he says, as a death's head to 
 preach the mortality of lovers ; when he would learn 
 the ancient lore of passion in happier days before the 
 Lord of Love grew tyrannous, he desires to hear the tradi- 
 tion from a phantom : 
 
 " I long to talk with some old lover's ghost 
 Who died before the god of love was born ; " 
 
 His own brief love-lyrics are likened by him to " well- 
 wrought urns," which will preserve the ashes confided to 
 them as becomingly as " half-acre tombs." Even from 
 an epithalamion he cannot banish a thought of death ; 
 when the bride rises on the wedding morning from her 
 
 1 i.e. The progress of a Prince.
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. 117 
 
 downy bed, the impression left by her body reminds him 
 of the grave : 
 
 " Your body's print 
 Like to a grave the yielding down doth dint." 
 
 In whatever sunny garden, and at whatever banquet 
 Donne sits, he discerns in air the dark scythesman of 
 that great picture attributed to Orcagna. An entire 
 section of his poetry is assigned to death. In one of 
 the funeral elegies he compares death to the sea that 
 environs all, and though God has set marks and bounds 
 to it, yet we can for ever hear it roar and gnaw upon 
 our shores. In another the similitude is hardly less 
 majestic : Death is a " mighty bird of prey," but " re- 
 claimed by God," and taught to lay all that he kills at 
 his Master's feet. 
 
 Donne's most ambitious efforts as a poet are not 
 the most successful. One of these is the sequence of 
 elegiac poems suggested by the death of Mistress 
 Elizabeth Drury, his friend Sir Robert Drury's daughter, 
 who died in her fifteenth year. Donne had had no 
 personal knowledge of her ; he was, as it were, the 
 poetical tomb-maker, and he determined to erect a 
 pompous monument in verse. On each anniversary 
 of the day of death he purposed to present his friend 
 with a memorial poem ; but not more than two of these 
 were written, nor can we regret that this vast funereal 
 structure was carried no higher than the second stage. 
 Donne expatiates on a general theme rather than 
 laments an individual ; true sorrow is discreet, and sets 
 a bound to extravagance ; but here the poet, taking for 
 his subject the loss of ideal womanhood, does not write
 
 n8 The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 under the controlling power of deep personal grief, and 
 pushes to an extreme his fantastic exaggerations. In 
 the poem of the first anniversary Donne enlarges on the 
 frailty and decay of the whole world ; in the second 
 elegy he traces the progress of the soul. Thus they 
 form a contrasted pair. The lines in the second poem, 
 which picture the face of the dead maiden as it was in 
 life, sensitive to every motion of her spirit, are well 
 known : 
 
 " Her pure and eloquent blood 
 Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought 
 That one might almost say her body thought." 
 
 But in the earlier elegy there are lines perhaps 
 more admirable which have been forgotten. Donne is 
 maintaining that while the doers and workers of the 
 world may be named the active organs of society, the 
 very life of its life and soul of its soul resides in rare 
 spirits, like that of the dead girl, which awaken in us 
 what he elsewhere calls " the whole of divinity "- 
 wonder and love : 
 
 " The world contains 
 
 Princes for arms, and Counsellors for brains, 
 Lawyers for tongues, Divines for hearts and more, 
 The rich for stomachs, and for backs the poor ; 
 The officers for hands, merchants for feet, 
 By which remote and distant countries meet : 
 But those fine spirits which do tune and set 
 This organ are those pieces which beget 
 Wonder and love." 
 
 It will be remembered that the word " piece " is used 
 by Elizabethan writers in the sense of perfect specimen 
 or masterpiece, as where Prospero describes her mother 
 to Miranda as " a piece of virtue."
 
 The Poetry of John Donne. \ 1 9 
 
 Donne's other ambitious effort in verse is also a frag- 
 ment. It is that singular poem, written in an elabor- 
 ate stanza of his own, and embodying the doctrine of 
 metempsychosis, which bears the same title as the later 
 written elegy on the death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury 
 The Progress of the Soul. " Now when I begin 
 this book," Donne writes and at this time he was in 
 his twenty-eighth year " I have no purpose to come 
 into any man's debt ; how my stock will hold out I 
 know not." We may lament that he did not carry out 
 his complete design, for though the poem could never 
 have been popular, it would have afforded, like the 
 Scotchman's haggis, " a hantle of miscellawneous 
 feeding" for those with an appetite for the strange 
 dishes set before them by Donne. Professor Minto, 
 in an excellent study of Donne, contributed to The 
 Nineteenth Century, has said of this poem that, if 
 finished, it might have been a monument worthy of 
 its author's genius. The soul whose progress the 
 poet traces was once the apple of temptation in the 
 garden of Eden : 
 
 " Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn." 
 
 Thence it passed into the dark and mysterious life of the 
 mandrake, and ascending through antediluvian fish and 
 bird and beast, became in the course of time the ape which 
 toyed wantonly with Adam's fifth daughter, Si phatecia. In 
 the last transformation recorded by the poet the soul is 
 incarnated in Themech, the sister and the wife of Cain ; 
 but its brave adventures have only just begun. There 
 was scope in Donne's design for a history of the world ;
 
 I2O The Poetry of John Donne. 
 
 the deathless soul would have been a kind of Wandering 
 Jew, with this advantage over Ahasuerus, that it would 
 have been no mere spectator of the changes of society, 
 but itself a part and portion of the ever-shifting, ever- 
 progressing world of men.
 
 AMOURS DE VOYAGE. 
 
 TIME, that aged gossip, has made me the confidant of a 
 love affair, which has amused me as a little fragment of 
 the great human tragi-comedy, and I hasten to betray 
 the confidence of Time. The hero of the story is not 
 unknown to fame ; he was a poet and, unfortunately, 
 a politician ; secretary to the great Danton, and the 
 companion of Danton and Camille Desmoulins in the 
 tumbril which wound its way through a surging crowd 
 on that radiant evening of April 5th, 1794, to the 
 guillotine on the Place de la Revolution. On the way 
 to the scaffold, the poet lamented that his latest comedy 
 in verse, L'Orange de Malte, could never be completed ; 
 and Danton interrupted him with a hideous play on 
 words such as an Elizabethan dramatist might have 
 invented to enhance the horror of the scene : " Vos 
 vers ! Bah ! dans une semaine vous ferez assez de 
 vers " ; then with a noble seriousness and elevation, the 
 chief added, " We have finished our task ; let us take 
 our rest." 
 
 It will not, I think, disturb the rest of Fabre 
 d'Eglantine, Danton's secretary and companion in 
 arms, now that he has slept sound for a century, if I 
 take up this little pocket-book which lies before me 
 in its binding of faded green, and open it for the 
 
 beguilement of a quarter of an hour. I have inquired 
 
 121
 
 122 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 at the British Museum Library and at the Bibliotheque 
 Nationale as to whether anything is known of its con- 
 tents, and I have been assured that they are unknown ; 
 yet an uneasy curiosity remains lest some portion of 
 this little manuscript volume may have seen the light 
 in a certain " Correspondence Amoureuse, precede'e 
 d'un precis historique de son existence morale, 
 physique, et dramatique, et d'un fragment de sa vie 
 ecrite par lui-meme," which Fabre d'Eglantine's exe- 
 cutors caused to be printed in three volumes after his 
 death ; " a production little worthy of him," says Fabre's 
 sometime pupil in elocution, M. Audiffret, "if indeed 
 it be his " ; a production, I may add, which I have 
 sought for and been unable to find. Meanwhile, I 
 must accept as sufficient the word of a friend, M. 
 Leony Guilgault, who has on my behalf made some 
 research in the French National Library : " Printed 
 books and manuscripts have been examined and no 
 trace has been found of the ' Journal de mon Voyage ' ; 
 it has never been published." 
 
 And, indeed, in this omission the publishers have 
 shown their discretion. If a young gentleman in his 
 nineteenth year, and at a time when " La Nouvelle 
 Heloise " had opened wide the sluice-gates of sentiment, 
 should confide to paper all the pulsations of his heart, 
 the world is not called on to quit its business and 
 attend. In Rousseau's novel, and in " The Sorrows of 
 Werther " we have representative and typical creations 
 of the age. To render possible the creation of such 
 works as these, a thousand minor dramas of sentiment 
 must have been enacted ; sighs innumerable must have
 
 Amours de Voyage. 123 
 
 been breathed, tears innumerable shed. But the stock 
 of human patience is not unlimited ; knowing the 
 typical products of the time, we may take its inferior 
 romances and dramas as read : and I am not sure 
 that Fabre d'Eglantine's tale of young love would have 
 moved me to become its brief chronicler, were there not 
 in it a touch of comedy, and that not altogether of the 
 genre larmoyant. 
 
 Let us open the little pocket-book, half-blank, but 
 with its two hundred and odd pages of manuscript in 
 the neatest of handwriting, and read the title : 1 
 "Journal de mon voyage de Troyes chez moi ecrit 
 a la chere Amie de mon Cceur, a la maitresse cherie 
 de mon ame ; a celle en qui reside tout mon bonheur, 
 ma vie, et ma felicite." Whereupon follows a motto 
 in verse : 
 
 " Le soleil ici bas ne voit que vanite", 
 
 D'ignorance et d'erreur toute la terre abonde, 
 Mais aimer tendrement une jeune beaute", 
 
 C'est la plus douce erreur des vanites du monde." 
 
 The writer who had made such deep discovery of the 
 vanity of human existence was still in his teens ; he 
 had entered upon his nineteenth year three months 
 since on December 28, 1773. It was now the 
 spring of 1774, a few weeks before the miserable 
 death of Louis XV., once the bien Aime of his people. 
 Fabre, for the honour of whose birth Limoux contends 
 with Carcasonne, had been educated at the college 
 of the doctrinaires ; he was a youth of promise, with 
 a gift for music and for song, a gift for painting, and 
 
 1 I adopt here and elsewhere the spelling of Fabre's MS. , and also its 
 accentuation, or lack of accents.
 
 124 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 he had learnt, at least in an amateur's fashion, the art 
 of engraving ; the exquisite writing of his " Journal " 
 betokens a hand which might dexterously manipulate 
 the burin. It is said that, after his early studies, he 
 entered the congregation of the doctrinaires at Toulouse, 
 and passed through the lower classes. We know for 
 certain that his poem carried off the prize of the gold 
 eglantine at the Jeux Floraux in that city, and that 
 the author, highly gratified at the distinction, added 
 to his own family name Fabre that of the flower 
 which was the emblem of his victory. Altogether, we 
 should say, a young man with a future, and one who 
 might be carried far by that ardent southern tempera- 
 ment which shows itself in the rapid development of 
 his various powers, and shows itself also at a later time 
 in the ambitious fervour of his writings. 
 
 Little is known of Fabre's early life, and how and 
 why he came to Troyes must be left to conjecture. But 
 for some time past the presence of the " chere amie de 
 son coeur," whose name would seem to be Madame 
 Catan perhaps a young widow, for no husband is ever 
 mentioned had surely made the old city on the Seine 
 the most delightful place in the world. " Business," 
 has been described by Donne as " the worst disease of 
 love"; and it was business his "affairs" which 
 obliged Fabre, in the spring of 1774, to quit Troyes 
 and journey to his home at Carcasonne, in Languedoc. 
 On the evening of March 30, he bade an agitated adieu 
 to his beloved ; sound repose under such circumstances 
 was impossible, and after the uneasy slumbers of an 
 hour and a half he woke in the grey of morning to
 
 Amours de Voyage. 125 
 
 an exile's sorrow. Never was dressing a more tragic 
 affair : 
 
 "Je me suis habille apres avoir baise avec toute la tendresse 
 possible ta lettre et les cheveux qu'elle contenait ; chaque vetement 
 que je passais portait un coup de poignard a mon coeur ; il me 
 semblait que je me reprochais de me trop hater pour abandonner 
 les lieux que tu habites ; chaque meuble me retraait ton souvenir, 
 et surtout ceux que je tiens de toi." 
 
 Accompanied by two friends, one of these the brother 
 of his beloved, Fabre reached on foot the outskirts of 
 the city ; then found himself alone, in a " dreadful 
 solitude," and, having waved a farewell, leaped into the 
 voiture, which was starting southwards. One female 
 follower, however, was determined to prove her fidelity 
 a dog which belonged to a neighbour of Madame 
 Catan ; fawning and fondling she had pursued the 
 wanderer, and since it was so clearly her wish not to be 
 separated from him, Fabre resolved to take her as the 
 companion of his travel. Having reached Bar-sur- 
 Seine, he gladly escaped for awhile from the irksome 
 presence of his fellow-travellers, and strolled alone into 
 the country, shedding many tears, and uttering from 
 time to time the words "0 ma chere amie!" then 
 returned to his inn, set down in his note-book eight 
 pages of raptures and despairs, in elegant calligraphy, 
 and, drying his eyes, was ready for the heartless business 
 of supper. Rest on that night, after the long day's 
 journey, was welcome, but he did not close his eyes 
 until he had kissed a precious letter and a lock of hair, 
 " avec une ardeur extraordinaire," and had placed them 
 religiously upon his heart.
 
 126 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 Refreshed by the deep sleep of youth and open-air 
 fatigue, Fabre rose with the lark, and strode forward a 
 league in advance of the vehicle, enjoying as he went 
 along an enchanting sunrise, seen in solitude, and giving 
 rise to thoughts and feelings of delicious melancholy. 
 The start of the following morning from Chatillon-sur- 
 Seine was yet earlier at three A.M. but, unfortun- 
 ately, the weather had broken. The light had not yet 
 dawned, while the carriage struggled and stumbled on 
 through the chilling night-wind and the drenching rain. 
 At nine the traveller reached Montbard. It was the 
 birth-place and the retreat of Buffon. In the interval 
 between his arrival and a quarter past ten, as Fabre 
 records with particularity and evident self-satisfaction, 
 he found time to compose an Ode in five stanzas : 
 A. M. de Buffon, which, being duly copied, was 
 despatched to the great naturalist without disclosure 
 of his admirer's name. Literature, in France of the 
 eighteenth century, did homage to science. Wisdom 
 and virtue, our young poet declares, inspire his muse ; 
 the divine painter of nature has painted also for us God 
 in the creatures that He formed ; Buffon's presence 
 that of an eagle who confronts the sun is the glory of 
 this remote and solitary place : 
 
 " Sans cet illustre Solitaire, 
 Parmis tes rochers escarpes, 
 Montbard ! du reste de la terre, 
 Tes remparts seraient ignores ; 
 L'univers te voit couronnde 
 Des lauriers memes de Buffon ; 
 Emule d' Athene et de Home, 
 Tu possedes dans un seul homme 
 Socrate, Pline, et Ciceron."
 
 Amours de Voyage. 127 
 
 " The impromptu," adds Fabre, " is doubtless not worthy 
 of its hero ; but zeal is a good excuse." 
 
 Providence seems to take a kind care that young 
 enthusiasm shall have its checks, and that a descent 
 shall be duly made from the illuminated heights. Still 
 struggling through the most dismal weather Fabre 
 reached Semur a town to be remembered for the 
 wrongs and humiliations which it inflicted on his heart, 
 and for the sordid self-interest of its inhabitants. It is 
 clear that Fabre had resided here at some time not very 
 remote, had run up scores for which his few belongings 
 and among them a portrait of Madam Catan were 
 kept in pledge, and had borrowed money from a certain 
 
 beautiful and charming Mdlle. R . Beautiful and 
 
 charming, but alas ! not superior to mercenary thoughts ; 
 capable even of preserving and producing a note of the 
 debt in Fabre's own hand-writing, and of taking the 
 uttermost farthing " elle a pris la somme jusqu'au 
 dernier Hard." Still more cruel was the hostess of the 
 inn where Fabre had stayed during his former residence 
 in Semur. To lessen his little store of cash by two 
 louis, and at the same time refuse to restore his 
 " effects " it was an act of sore injustice, and the 
 victim had thoughts of appealing to the law. But 
 there were other creditors who might even seize his 
 portmanteau. It was more prudent to avoid pursuit, 
 to shake off from his feet the dust or, it may be the 
 mud of this accursed town, and to push forward on 
 foot with the eighteen livres still in his pocket. Mean- 
 while would not his adored one, his beloved one, come 
 to the rescue of her friend in distress ? Could she con-
 
 128 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 trive to despatch the small sum of three louis d'or to 
 " Mr F. D'E. de St Nazaire, poste restante a Beaune en 
 Bourgogne"? As the bells were ringing noonday on 
 April 4th, Fabre left Semur, and while he covered the 
 four leagues of ground between Semur and Vitteaux he 
 had time to indulge in many reflections on the baseness 
 of average human nature and the incomparable excel- 
 lence of " the dear mistress of his soul." 
 
 At an early hour he was awakened by the lashing of 
 the rain on window-pane and roof. Yet when seven 
 o'clock came he was on the road, while torrents still 
 descended. Wayfarers were few, but on a lonely hill 
 he encountered one whom he would gladly have avoided 
 an ill-looking fellow with a great red beard which 
 half concealed his hang-dog face; he was armed with 
 an iron-tipped staff, was clad in rags, and came striding 
 towards the solitary traveller. At a distance of ten 
 paces Fabre called upon him to halt, and assuming an 
 air of authority demanded where he was going and 
 whether he was provided with a passport. The stranger 
 replied that he was on the way to Fontainebleau and 
 had a passport about him. " Go then on your way," 
 cried Fabre, " but see that you avoid cities ; if you do 
 not obey you will be arrested." Grumbling out a 
 petition for alms the fellow withdrew. 
 
 After three mortal leagues of mire and rain, Fabre, 
 in dripping garments, reached a village, but there was 
 little comfort for him in the sight of houses which he 
 could not enter ; all the inhabitants were at Mass, and 
 the doors were locked. At length tumbling headlong 
 into a miserable hovel he found a woman who assured
 
 Amours de Voyage. 129 
 
 him that he ought to be in the chapel the priest's 
 benediction was of more importance than considerations 
 of health. " I did not yield," says Fabre, " and 
 remained where I was." Mass being ended, he obtained 
 admission to a tavern, where a fire was soon kindled, 
 and some poor victuals were procured. To draw up 
 the bill required an hour's whispered conference 
 between those in authority, and as the rain still 
 continued Fabre occupied himself delightfully in once 
 more reading over the letters of the " chere amie," 
 thirty-eight in all, which, though a large packet, he 
 carried about his person lest so inestimable a treasure 
 might be lost. " Cheres lettres ! charmantes lettres ! 
 qui m'avez donne aujourd'hui tant de plaisir, est-il 
 quelque puissance qui puisse vous arracher de mes 
 mains " ? 
 
 A little adventure gave a different turn to Fabre's 
 thoughts. The villagers, some forty years since, had 
 converted into arable land a portion of the neighbouring 
 forest. The lady of the manor had been urged to 
 assert her rights against the peasants, and efforts were 
 made on their part to refer the matter to arbitration. 
 Putting their heads together as they passed from chapel 
 to tavern, the wise men of the village came to the 
 conclusion that the young stranger who had arrived 
 must needs be one of the commissioners or surveyors 
 who were to decide the question of their rights in the 
 tilled land and the woodland. When questioned as to 
 whether he had .not come among them as their repre- 
 sentative, Fabre, amused at their simplicity, met the 
 inquiry with a pleasant smile ; it was no longer 
 
 I
 
 130 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 doubted that he was a person of more importance than 
 he professed to be ; at the least he must be a learned 
 counsellor of the law. Everyone made offer of his best 
 his bed, his board, his bread, his wine until, for 
 good humour's sake it became necessary to accept pro- 
 visionally the rdle assigned to him, and listen with all 
 gravity to their views and representations. Amid many 
 good wishes he bade the assembled villagers farewell. 
 It was on the anniversary of this day, exactly twenty 
 years later, that Fabre d'Eglantine was again the centre 
 of interest for a crowd, but one of a different temper, 
 as he laid his head below the knife of the guillotine. 
 
 The journal for April 6 opens with the words : 
 " Aussi mouille qu'hier, aussi peu distrait de ta chere 
 image." It needed some internal fire to enable him 
 to meet courageously the chill invasion of the rain ; 
 he was as if drawn through a river, yet with the 
 ardours of love unquenched. On reaching Beaune he 
 was too exhausted to go in person to the post-office; 
 his messenger returned with a disappointing answer no 
 letter had yet arrived. But the morning of April 8 was 
 one of joy " Elle est arrivee cette lettre tout atteudue, 
 elle est arrive'e ! . . . mes yeux et mon cceur en 
 deVorait chaque ligne, je 1'ai lue et relue, baisee et 
 rebaisee, et dans 1'instant meme ou j'ecris elle est sur 
 mon cceur dont elle fait la joye et la felicite." Yet 
 it was weary waiting in Beaune until the later letter 
 containing money for his journey should arrive ; he was 
 perishing of ennui. But pencil and pen came to 
 Fabre's aid ; he occupied himself with drawing from 
 memory a portrait of his lady, which should serve as
 
 Amours de Voyage. 131 
 
 a kind of frontispiece to the thirty-eight letters (now 
 grown to the number of thirty-nine) ; as these lay 
 ranged in their case in chronological order. The Catan 
 smiled forth on her portrait- painter, in her negligent 
 head attire and her dressing-gown of violet trimmed 
 with white, and a violet ribband which became her a 
 merveille. A world of eighteenth - century allegory 
 formed a border for the oval of her face and bust. 
 An artist and a lover must be pardoned for being 
 particular in describing his invention : above, were the 
 quiver and the torch of Love in a disk of roses ; to the 
 right, an urn from which climbed a myrtle and a 
 blossoming rose-bush, " qui expriment les plaisirs et 
 les peines dont notre union est suivie " ; opposite this, 
 two doves billing in a nest of roses ; below, a burning 
 torch, " the emblem of thy spirit," encircled by garlands 
 of roses. There was still space for a hive from which 
 the bees were issuing to gather sweets " the bees 
 are thy industry, thy wise economy ; the honey, thy 
 sweetness and the roses, the virtues with which thou 
 nourishest the soul " ; last appeared a little dog holding 
 an arrow in his mouth the emblem of her constancy 
 and fidelity. The inscription is unfortunately carefully 
 inked over in Fabre's journal so as to be illegible ; but 
 perhaps we have had enough. At the foot of the design 
 ran the words " Peint et invente par 1'Amour." One is 
 reminded of that characteristic product of eighteenth- 
 century design in France, the " Iconologie " of Gravelot 
 and Cochin, in which every vice and every virtue, every 
 science and every art is represented by a graceful em- 
 blematical figure ; in which " Affabilite* " strews roses
 
 132 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 and "Orgueil" totters on her rolling sphere ; in which 
 " Constance " embraces her column, and " Devotion " 
 kneels with the flambeau in one hand while the other 
 hand is pressed upon her heart. Charming eighteenth 
 century of Fragonard and Chardin and Greuze ! " S'il 
 ne cherche pas le beau," a hostile critic has confessed, 
 " il trouve le joli." And Fabre was poet as well as 
 painter. Hearing by chance some one who sang the 
 air, Quand un cceur sort de I'esclavage, and recalling 
 from what lips he had last heard the song, he sets him- 
 self to compose new words for the same air, of which 
 my reader shall have a single stanza out of eight : 
 
 " Moi, je cheris mon esclavage, 
 
 De Gatan j 'adore les fers, 
 Du bonheur ses yeux sont le gage, 
 Pour moi son coeur est 1'univers." 
 
 " I sang the song," the author records, " twenty times 
 during the day, not because I made it, but because " 
 of many reasons which were of weight with a lover of 
 nineteen. 
 
 Some interest in other matters than those of his own 
 heart remained with Fabre, and there are pages of his 
 diary which give us a picture of misery in France under 
 the old Eegime : 
 
 " After dinner I strolled abroad, in order to hold more intimate 
 converse with you ; my steps led me to a place where I was fully 
 convinced that, hard as is my own lot, there are yet on earth beings 
 more unfortunate than myself. There is, in this city of Beaune, 
 an ancient clidteau, of which only the four walls remain. In the 
 depth of the walls are still certain little subterraneous hollows, 
 which were formerly little doors or embrasures. In these dreadful 
 places, which pen cannot describe, men, women, and children reside. 
 It makes one shudder to look in. An opening two and a half feet
 
 Amours de Voyage. 133 
 
 wide, and seven or eight feet deep, the floor of which is strewn 
 with a little straw to serve as bedding, and where a fire is lit with- 
 out a chimney, forms the most tolerable dwelling-place in this 
 abode of misery. A man and woman occupy it. Hard by lives an 
 old man in the embrasure for a cannon, which his industry has 
 transformed into a bed with some stones and some faggots ; such 
 is his domicile ; further on is another of like kind. But what 
 shocks one's feelings most, what horrifies one's sense of humanity, 
 and rends one's heart, is to see a miserable creature, who lost his 
 arm while working in the forest, his wife, and three young children) 
 lodged in a frightful subterranean hole to which the blackest dun- 
 geon were a palace. The water reaches one's ankle ; the cold is 
 deadly ; no windows, no fireplace, no furniture, no bread, no 
 clothes, no covering at night ; the whole of this wretched family 
 huddle on a pile of half-rotted straw, resting on stones which raise 
 it to the surface of the water. It is nothing to describe such 
 misery ; one must see it. I cannot understand after this how any 
 man can venture to complain of his lot." 
 
 Fabre d'Eglantine, a child of his age, was not devoid 
 of some of the eighteenth century humanitarian zeal. 
 His store of coins had run low indeed ; but of what was 
 left to him he shared with these piteous brothers in 
 distress. " I should blush," he writes, " if before leaving 
 I had not given them part of what I own." He, even 
 if poor, had still " philosophy," had still love ; they 
 had nothing but misfortune. He visited them on 
 several occasions, and saw that his arrival was welcomed 
 as that of a friend. " Ah, my beloved ! " he breaks 
 forth, " how sweet it is to do good ! we weep for joy, 
 but the tears are genuine tears of pleasure." 
 
 Ten sous remained in Fabre's purse when at length 
 an answer came to the letter in which he had petitioned 
 for a loan or gift of money. For a moment he had a 
 cruel pang of disappointment to endure ; they informed 
 him at the post-office that the courier had arrived, but
 
 J34 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 had brought no missive for him ; he was leaving the 
 office with heavy heart, when his name was called, and 
 there joy inexpressible ! was a letter addressed in the 
 well-known handwriting. Yes, she had written, she had 
 sent the three louis d'or ; but how coldly she wrote ! 
 In three pages, written at a distance of thirty leagues, 
 there were not three words of tenderness ; not two lines 
 addressed to the heart ; nothing but reason and prudence, 
 and morality and economy. " They say," writes Fabre, 
 " that money is the key of the human heart ; alas, 
 yes ! but it is a key which fastens the lock." 
 
 He had now the means of proceeding on his journey 
 to the south. But unluckily the Saone was in flood 
 after the heavy rains, and the bateau de diligence could 
 not start. One painful duty remained to be performed 
 in Beaune it was necessary to wound a sensitive heart. 
 While at Troyes Fabre had corresponded with a young 
 lady who was residing in a convent at Beaune with a 
 view to completing her education. She had heard of 
 his arrival, and sent a message by one of her friends 
 a camarade pensionnaire to assure the irresistible 
 youth that she had always loved him tenderly. Fabre 
 could easily conceive how cruel it must be to love with- 
 out return ; he had not courage to crush her hopes at a 
 blow ; he dared not declare that his heart was another's ; 
 " All I could do," writes this chivalrous victim of female 
 passion, " was to show my indifference ; I wrote to her, 
 but only that the coldness of my letters might make her 
 feel the true state of rny heart ; she understood it too 
 well ! Only once did I see her, in order that I might 
 quit Beaune without exciting further hope, resolving for
 
 Amours de Voyage. 135 
 
 my part to leave to time and absence the task of ex- 
 tinguishing a love to which it was impossible for me to 
 respond." The situation, if painful, was not without 
 some compensatory luxuries of tender emotion for the 
 hero of the drama. 
 
 On April 21, Fabre left Beaune on foot for Chalons. 
 The feminine caprices of his dog, who now refused to 
 follow as obstinately as she had on a former occasion 
 refused to stay behind, delayed the start, and her master 
 had to run the leagues between Beaune and Chalons in 
 order to reach the bateau de diligence before it should 
 set sail. Hot, breathless, and fatigued, he arrived just 
 in time to get on board. Nor does the exercise seem to 
 have brightened his temper, for he found his fellow- 
 voyagers intolerably tiresome priests, ladies, and 
 bourgeois uttering stupidities, and officers retailing 
 gasconading stories by the hour. He withdrew into 
 himself, and employed his time to advantage in once 
 again perusing his collection of letters, which now 
 reached the number of forty. Next evening, when in 
 the theatre at Lyons he searched his pockets for a letter 
 which he had just received, and had "devoured rather 
 than kissed " the forty-first to his horror it was not 
 to be found. The sacred document had been left at his 
 inn, and more than ordinary devotion became a duty 
 that night, in order to efface the shame of such seeming 
 neglect. 
 
 Before Fabre had left Beaune the three louis d'or 
 forwarded by Madame Catan had almost vanished away. 
 He found himself at Lyons reduced to the painful 
 necessity of begging for more. He owes her everything
 
 136 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 happiness, even existence ; why should he shrink 
 from increasing the debt by the trifling addition of two 
 more louis ? To-morrow he will set out for le Pont St 
 Esprit by way of Valence. It is incredible how money 
 goes in travel, economise as much as one will. From 
 le Pont St Esprit to his home there will be sixty leagues 
 to traverse : two louis d'or is not an excessive sum for 
 the cost of such a journey. And she is she not his 
 life, his felicity, his being, his all his precious all, his 
 first, his last, his only love ? 
 
 Next morning Fabre was one of many passengers 
 on board the bateau de diligence, and stood on deck 
 admiring the banks of the Rhone which, to right and 
 left, were rich in beauty. In Valence he had friends, of 
 
 whom one, Mademoiselle de C , had taken, as he 
 
 believed, no common interest in him. Truly the sorrows 
 which beset an irresistible young man almost counter- 
 vail the pride and joy of conquest. To be obliged 
 in every town one visits to convince some tender 
 and virtuous demoiselle that it is impossible to respond 
 to her love that is, indeed, a severe trial for a heart 
 full of sensibility. On visiting the lady, however, Faber 
 found her much less tender than were her letters ; "and 
 so much the better, I shall have the less regret in giving 
 evidence of my coldness." Her curiosity had been 
 piqued by a sight which she had caught at the post of 
 a letter -the forty-second addressed in a feminine 
 hand to M. Fabre d'Eglantine. She begged that it 
 might be shown to her, and her request was met by a 
 refusal. A little quarrel, Fabre hoped, would bring 
 matters to a satisfactory issue.
 
 Amours de Voyage. 137 
 
 " En badinant elle a mis sa main dans ma poche, et en a tire" ta 
 lettre que j'ai regue a Lion, et que je laissais dans ma poche pour la 
 placer chaque nuit sur mon coeur ; je 1'ai arrachee de ses mains, et 
 malgre ses prieres et ses menaces, je n'ai pas eu la complaisance de 
 la lui laisser lire ; elle est piquee an vif ; et c'est tant mieux." 
 
 This was a piece of May-day merriment on the part of 
 
 Mdlle. de C , for May, with its bouquets and its 
 
 mirth had come, and found Fabre still in Valence. 
 His serious thoughts were given to an imaginative 
 creation romance or drama founded on fact. No lady 
 in Valence had been more beautiful or more admired 
 than Madame de la Mouchetiere ; her age was twenty- 
 four ; " she did not greatly care for her husband, but 
 en revanche she had a lover whom she adored, M. le 
 Comte de Rouault de Gamaches." While travelling to 
 Paris with his wife and the Count, the jealous husband 
 provoked the latter to a duel, and killed him on the 
 spot. The unhappy lady received so cruel a shock that 
 within a few days she too was dead. " My design," 
 writes Fabre, " is to compose a work on this sad 
 catastrophe, and I know not whether I shall accomplish 
 it." 
 
 Once again on the bateau de diligence, amid a 
 hundred strangers, but without his canine friend, who 
 deserted him at the moment of embarkation, Fabre had 
 to endure baffling winds and bitter rain, but at last le 
 Pont St Esprit was reached. Part of the journey had 
 been made on foot, for the weather would not allow the 
 boat to proceed. And now that he had come so many 
 leagues upon his way he found himself literally without 
 a sou. To pay the porter who carried his valise to the 
 inn he requested the hostess as a man who possessed
 
 138 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 no coin beneath a louis d'or to oblige him with some 
 small change, and was refused. A friendly stranger 
 came to his aid, and, presently, by the sale of his sword, 
 Fabre was enabled to repay the petty loan. At the 
 post there was a letter from Madame Catan, but not 
 written in reply to his second request for money. It 
 spoke cruel letter ! very little of her own love, still 
 
 less of his, but much of a Monsieur D , on whom 
 
 the writer lavished her praises; "the praise is just," 
 writes Fabre, " but I knew not that you were his pane- 
 gyrist." On his return to the inn, the hostess, who 
 mistrusted her lodger, asked him whether he would wish 
 to get change for six livres ; she could now accommodate 
 him. The insult stung him and he lost no time in 
 exchanging " cette villaine demeure " for a little shelter, 
 the proprietor of which seemed to be more civil. 
 
 To beguile the tedious hours, Fabre explored on foot 
 the country roads and paths. It was just the moment 
 when his Holiness the Pope was rewarded for his 
 suppression of the order of the Jesuits by the restoration 
 of Avignon and the Venaissin. The inhabitants of the 
 villages were rejoiced to pass from under the rule of a 
 sovereign who exacted from them subsidies which they 
 could with difficulty pay. They celebrated their liberation 
 with dances and song. Cries of Vive le Pape filled the 
 air. " By a sudden, and, as it were, supernatural impulse," 
 writes Fabre, " as soon as I had left the crowd behind I 
 cried with transport, Vive la chere amie de mon coeur ! " 
 
 But, alas ! the days went on and on. and still no 
 letter came, no louis d'or. From post to post unhappy 
 Fabre watched and hoped against hope ; impatience
 
 Amours de Voyage. 139 
 
 grew to anxiety, and anxiety to agony " O raon Dieu ; 
 est-il possible ? point de lettre." Has his friend for- 
 gotten him ? Can a letter have gone astray ? Did his 
 own letter ever reach her ? Would God that it were 
 morning ! would God that it were night ! Thrice 
 unhappy Fabre, without friend, without lover, without 
 current coin of the realm ! Fifteen days have passed 
 since he wrote from Lyons, and still no answer. Once 
 more he puts pen to paper, and writes as a desperate 
 man : " Pity, my dear friend ! my only friend ! reply 
 with all speed ; if you are able to send the two louis 
 d'or, do send them ; I have not a sou. If you are 
 unable, it does not matter ; I have only fifty-five 
 leagues to travel ; but deliver me from my present dis- 
 quietude ; it is terrible . . . adieu ! I adore you, I love 
 you more than a thousand lives, more than the universe. 
 And then follows a postscript of an unsentimental kind : 
 " If you have not already sent the two louis, please let 
 it be three instead of two." A little later this letter was 
 followed by a second of like purport. But still no ac- 
 knowledgment ; no reply. May 13th was a black day, 
 for hope had grown strong that it would bring the still 
 expected letter, and it passed like the rest a miserable 
 disappointment. Once again hope sprang up on the 
 morning of the 14th : Fabre had made an error in his 
 reckoning ; it was on this afternoon that the carrier 
 would arrive. But once again hope died away in 
 despair : " Point de lettre ! O mon Dieu, que je suis 
 a plaindre ! " Yet the entry for the day closes without 
 reproaches with the accustomed tender adieu to his 
 beloved.
 
 140 Amours de Voyage. 
 
 The date " May 15" is inscribed at the head of the 
 next page. But the page is blank, and the rest of the 
 volume is of virgin paper. Here then the story breaks 
 off, and we must not quarrel with it in a world which 
 contains so many fragments, so many odds and ends. 
 What was the issue of it all ? You, reader, must help 
 me with your conjectures. Did Madame Catan ever 
 receive the later letters of Fabre d'Eglantine ? Were 
 they intercepted by guardian or brother ? Had she 
 grown weary of his amorous protestations, and doubtful 
 of his prudence and discretion ? There were bees, you 
 remember, as well as roses amongst the emblems which 
 represented the virtues of her soul. Can it be that 
 
 Monsieur D , whose panegyrist she was, had an 
 
 attraction for the industrious bees ? And what of the 
 afflicted lover ? Did he after all receive the two louis, 
 with that bonus of a third which he had asked for 
 in his postscript, sent as the recompense for his long 
 waiting ? Did he trudge the miles to Carcasonne ? 
 And how did he settle the little account of which his 
 polite landlord, he tells us, had reminded him ? Pray, 
 reader, make answer to these questions according to 
 your pleasure. I can tell you no more than that 
 Fabre's pupil, M. Audiffret, supposes that his master 
 had been determined to tread the boards as an actor 
 (which he certainly did) by " une intrigue amoureuse." 
 Was it the intrigue of which our journal tells us ? 
 And did some strolling company visit Avignon at this 
 season of popular rejoicing, and as it crossed the bridge 
 of le Pont St Esprit might Fabre, disconsolate and yet 
 hopeful, be seen bringing up the rear ? We cannot
 
 Amours de Voyage. 141 
 
 tell. He was about thirty years old when he came to 
 Paris. His plays are now forgotten, though one at 
 least deserves to live. We remember Fabre by the 
 Republican Calendar, with its Germinal, Floreal, Praire"al 
 a fanciful nomenclature furnished to Romme by 
 Danton's poetical secretary. In Germinal of the Year 
 Two he was executed, at the age of thirty-nine.
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 I. WILHELM MEISTER. 
 
 SIR JOHN SEELEY, who has written of Goethe with 
 an intimate knowledge of his mind, even now rare 
 among our countrymen, has described " Wilhelm Meister " 
 as not the most attractive or the most perfect of its 
 author's works, but as perhaps the most characteristic, 
 and, as it were, the textbook of the Goethean philo- 
 sophy. Yet he admits that most English readers lay 
 it down bewildered, wondering what Goethe's admirers 
 can see in it so extraordinary ; " it still," he says, 
 " remains the book which chiefly justifies the profound 
 distrust and aversion with which Goethe has been and 
 is regarded among those who are Christian either in 
 the dogmatic or in the larger sense." l 
 
 We all remember Wordsworth's sentence of indignant 
 condemnation. We all remember De Quincey's article 
 in which he employed a heavy flippancy to make the 
 book look more disgraceful and ridiculous as it " travels 
 on its natural road to shame and oblivion." And Mr 
 Lewes's excuse was one of those excuses which seem 
 to accuse : " All that can be said," he wrote, " is that 
 the artist has been content to paint scenes of life ivith- 
 out comment " precisely what Goethe has not done 
 
 1 Sir John Seeley's " Goethe reviewed after Sixty Years" collects and 
 expands the admirable articles of the Contemporary Review, 1884. 
 142
 
 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 143 
 
 in " Wilhelm Meister " for it is full of commentary on 
 the life which it represents. Even Carlyle, its trans- 
 lator, was slow to comprehend the unity or the drift 
 of the tale. " I go on with Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister/" 
 he wrote in 1823, "a book which I love not, which 
 I am sure will never sell, but which I am determined 
 to print and finish. There are touches of the very 
 highest, most ethereal genius in it ; but diluted with 
 floods of insipidity, which even / would not have 
 written for the world." 1 It is not, however, for 
 touches here and there that any true student of Goethe 
 values the work. " There is poetry in the book," wrote 
 Carlyle to another correspondent, 2 "and prose, prose 
 for ever. When I read of players and libidinous 
 actresses and their sorry pasteboard apparatus for 
 beautifying and enlivening the ' Moral World,' I render 
 it into grammatical English with a feeling mild and 
 charitable as that of a starving hyaena. . . . Goethe 
 is the greatest genius that has lived for a century, 
 and the greatest ass that has lived for three. I could 
 sometimes fall down and worship him ; at other times 
 I could kick him out of the room." 3 It was not until 
 1828 five years later that Carlyle could write with 
 entire confidence of Goethe as seen in his " Wilhelm 
 Meister." " Here the ardent high-aspiring youth has 
 grown into the calmest man, yet with increase and not 
 
 1 To Miss Welsh, "Early Letters," i. 219. 
 
 2 Mr James Johnstonc, "Early Letters," i. 223. 
 
 3 See also Carlyle's ' ' Early Letters," i. 269. ' ' Meister himself is perhaps 
 the greatest ganache that ever was created by quill and ink. I am going 
 to write a fierce preface, disclaiming all concern with the literary or the 
 moral merit of the work. . . . What a work ! Bushels of dust and 
 straw and feathers, with here and there a diamond of the purest water. "
 
 144 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 loss of ardour, and with aspirations higher as well as 
 clearer. For he has conquered his unbelief; the Ideal 
 has been built on the Actual ; no longer floats vaguely 
 in darkness and region of dreams, but rests in light, on 
 the firm ground of human interest and business, as in its 
 true sense, on its true basis." x 
 
 Sir John Seeley has said a better word on " Wilhelm 
 Meister," it seems to me, than that of any other English 
 writer, unless it be this word of Carlyle ; and yet I do 
 not think that Sir John Seeley has exactly hit the mark. 
 The book, he maintains, is at once immoral and pro- 
 foundly moral. It is immoral on one point on the 
 relations of men and women ; " immoral in Goethe's 
 peculiar, inimitable, good-natured manner." Goethe is 
 an indifferentist as to one important section of morality, 
 " partly because he is a man formed in the last years of 
 the old regime, partly because he is borne too far on the 
 tide of reaction against Catholic and monastic ideas." 
 But all that Goethe has to say on the choice of voca- 
 tions and this is the real subject of the book is 
 profoundly moral and of immense importance. The 
 greatest of all duties, he tells us, is that of choosing our 
 occupation aright. The lesson of " Wilhelm Meister " is 
 "that we should give unity to our lives by devoting 
 them with hearty enthusiasm to some pursuit, and that 
 the pursuit is assigned to us by Nature through the 
 capacities she has given us. It is thus that Goethe 
 substitutes for the idea of pleasure that of the satis- 
 faction of special inborn aptitudes different in each 
 individual." This word of Sir John Seeley, even if it 
 1 Miscellanies, " Goethe," i. 170, ed. 1857.
 
 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 145 
 
 only says a portion of the whole truth, is assuredly 
 well said. 
 
 Carlyle found we see it from his letters, and he tells 
 us so himself that with "Wilhelm Meister" as with every 
 work of real and abiding excellence, the first glance is 
 the least favourable. 1 Such is the experience of every 
 reader who has come to value the book ; before we can 
 judge the parts aright we must conceive the whole. 
 Even with respect to the relations of men and women, 
 as we shall see, the teaching of the book is not precisely 
 that of one to whom morality is indifferent, although 
 Goethe's point of view is a worldly one ; but we do not 
 perceive how order in " Wilhelm Meister " pronounces a 
 judgment on disorder until we survey the earlier portions 
 of the work in the light thrown back upon them from its 
 close. 
 
 The magic words of the eighteenth century revolt, 
 the Sturm und Drang of Young Germany, in which 
 Goethe in his earlier years had been a leader, were the 
 words Freedom and Nature. Limitless freedom in life 
 and in literature was to be attained, as it were, at a 
 bound, by a return to nature. But nature is twofold : 
 there is first the visible world surrounding us, the world 
 of hill and stream and sky ; and secondly, there is the 
 native manhood in the heart of each of us. To return 
 to nature meant to commune with the forces of the 
 external world, and also to consult the oracle in our 
 bosom. First, it meant the sentiment of nature. 
 " Ah ! how often," cries Werther, " when the crane was 
 in flight above my head, have I longed on the shore of 
 
 1 Preface to the first edition of Carlyle's translation. 
 K
 
 146 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 the boundless sea to quaff from the foaming goblet of 
 the Infinite the overflowing ecstasy of life." And strains 
 of a like kind are heard in the opening scenes of" Faust." 
 Secondly, it meant a return from conventions, cere- 
 monies, false traditions, to the nature that is within us. 
 Would we discover the true law of conduct ? Let us 
 seek it in our own breast. Would we find inspiration 
 for song ? Let us look in our hearts and write. Would 
 we ascertain the true rules of art ? Let us cast aside 
 Aristotle and Horace and Boileau, and consult only our 
 inward sense of beauty. 1 
 
 The revolt of heart and will on behalf of freedom, 
 real or imaginary, took two forms ; the form of Titanic 
 egoism, unbridled energy, a boundless deploying of the 
 will ; and the form of sentimental egoism, unrestrained 
 sensibility, an abandonment of the heart to measureless 
 desire. One we may, if we please, term the masculine, 
 and the other the feminine form of the revolt. Goethe, 
 before attaining the age at which Shakespeare probably 
 was writing his first comedy, had interpreted the 
 literary movement of his time in a twofold way : in 
 " Goetz von Berlichingen " he had presented the ideal 
 of freedom in its active form an heroic will struggling 
 with circumstance; in"Werther" he had presented the 
 same ideal on its passive side of immoderate sensibility 
 a heart for ever trembling and yielding to every touch 
 of circumstance. 
 
 1 Mr Matthew Arnold, following M. Scherer, says that what young 
 Germany really did was to fall from one sort of imitation, the imitation 
 of the so-called classical French literature, into another, that of Rousseau. 
 Rousseau, to be sure, set the stone a-rolling ; but the creator of Werther 
 rolled it in his own German way. The movement was instinctive, not 
 imitative.
 
 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 147 
 
 " Faust " in its origin belongs to the same period, and 
 represents in its earlier written scenes the same 
 tendencies. But " Faust " is the work of Goethe's entire 
 life, having occupied its author at intervals from early 
 manhood to extreme old age. It has a real unity, 
 inasmuch as it is the product of one mind, the outcome 
 of one life ; we trace in it the orbit of a great planetary 
 spirit. It extends beyond " Wilhelm Meister " at either 
 end, telling us of the aspiring youth of Goethe, of those 
 early days when the two great figures of the mediaeval 
 magician, Faust, and the Greek Titan, Prometheus, took 
 form in his imagination ; and telling us also of the elder 
 years, when his hand had lost its fiery energy though 
 not all its craftsman's cunning. And " Faust," though to 
 a certain extent a companion work to "Wilhelm Meister," 
 occupied in part with like problems and attaining like 
 solutions, is written in a higher strain ; what in the one 
 work is thought out as prose is felt and uttered in the 
 other as song. One of these books speaks of what can 
 be effected by conscious self-direction and education ; 
 the other contemplates the whole of human existence 
 and its result upon the individual man. One has been 
 styled an Odyssey of culture ; the other is the Odyssey 
 of life. In " Wilhelm Meister " we read the prose of 
 Goethe's midmost years ; in " Faust " we read the poetry 
 of his whole life ; we discover him as a young man 
 seeing visions, and as an old man dreaming dreams. 
 
 When, after the first wild days at Weimar, Goethe 
 began to settle down to his work, it quickly became 
 evident to him that the freedom, of which so much had 
 been said or sung by Young Germany, was not to be
 
 148 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 won by a blow or at a bound ; and that if a return to 
 nature was needed so also was a true art of life. 
 
 " This is an art which does mend nature, but 
 The art itself is nature." 
 
 His duties grew many and arduous ; his position was 
 one of no slight difficulty. Werther's sigh of limitless 
 desire would not help him much in an attempt to revive 
 the Ilmenau mines, nor would Goetz's iron hand serve 
 to untie the vexatious knots of the Privy Council 
 Chamber. Yet if Werther's ardour and Goetz's force 
 could be turned to wise uses it were well, and a freedom 
 might in the end be attained of a different and more 
 excellent kind than had been dreamed of in the days of 
 the Sturm und Drang a freedom at one with the 
 limitations of duty and patient, persistent toil. " Would 
 you penetrate," writes Goethe, " into the Infinite, then 
 press on every side into the Finite : " 
 
 " Willst Du ins Unendliche schreiten, 
 Geh nur im Endlichen nach alien Seiten." 
 
 The advance from " Werther " to " Wilhelm Meister " is 
 from the pursuit of the ideal built on the void to the 
 discovery of the ideal built on the actual. Goethe, as 
 Carlyle has put it, no longer " floats vaguely in darkness 
 and region of dreams, but rests in light, on the firm 
 ground of human interest and business." 
 
 "Wilhelm Meister" sprouted, " cotyledon-wise," during 
 the first Weimar years, and occupied Goethe from time 
 to time almost up to the date of his Italian journey. 
 In 1787 he wrote to the Duke from Italy, saying that 
 the novel must end with the opening of his hero's 
 fortieth year, and he wished to have it written by the
 
 Goethe 's Wilhelm Meister. 149 
 
 arrival of its author at the same time of life. But 
 Goethe was little of the professional book-maker ; other 
 things interested him, and " Wilhelm Meister " was laid 
 aside. The work was resumed at a moment when the 
 political revolt of the eighteenth century had reached its 
 culmination, when the words " freedom " and " nature " 
 were again heard, but now with a new and dreadful 
 significance ; for Danton had just fallen in revolutionary 
 Paris, and in the public procession in honour of the God 
 of Nature, Robespierre, the admiring disciple of Rousseau, 
 had appeared as high priest. Goethe had been repelled 
 by the violences of the French revolution. He was of 
 one mind with Coleridge when he wrote the lines : 
 
 " The sensual and the dark rebel in vain 
 Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game 
 They burst their manacles and wear their name 
 Of Freedom graven on a heavier chain ! " 
 
 Political liberty, he held, in order to be other than a 
 mere pretence, must be preceded by the deliverance of 
 individual men from their own base passions and vain 
 strivings. 1 Now, too, it was that Schiller, the poet of 
 freedom, was occupied with his " Letters on ^Esthetic 
 Culture." " The eyes of the philosopher and the man 
 of the world," he writes, " are turned, full of expectation, 
 towards the political arena, where, as is believed, the 
 great destiny of man is now developed. ... If I suffer 
 Beauty to precede Freedom I trust not only to accom- 
 modate it to my inclination, but to vindicate it by 
 principles. I hope to convince you that this matter 
 
 1 "Franzthum drangt in diesen verworrenen Tagen, wie ehmals 
 Lutherthum es gethan, ruhige Bildung zuriick." 
 
 " Werke," ed. Hempel, ii. 171.
 
 150 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 of aesthetic culture is far less foreign to the wants than 
 to the taste of the age ; nay, more, that in order to 
 solve this political problem in experience one must pass 
 through the aesthetic, since it is beauty that leads to 
 freedom." Such was also Goethe's feeling. Freedom 
 is not to be attained by violence or at a blow ; it is 
 to be attained through culture, through an education, 
 an education which may seem severe and even repres- 
 sive, yet which shall serve the cause of freedom in the 
 end by delivering from the vagueness and error and 
 confusion of life that true humanity which lies en- 
 cumbered within each one of us. 
 
 Mr. G. H. Lewes and other critics have maintained 
 that Goethe's original intention in "Wilhelm Meister" was 
 to represent the nature, aims, and art of the comedian ; 
 that this was in fact the theme of the earlier books ; 
 and that when taking his novel again in hand after a 
 lapse of years, the author altered the design, and made 
 the remodelled story symbolical of the erroneous striving 
 of youth towards culture. There can be no doubt that 
 much in the story was suggested by the busy, shifting, 
 irregular life which had for its centre the Duke's amateur 
 theatre. But with whatever intention Goetfie may have 
 started and it would seem from a letter to Merck 
 (August 5, 1778), and from expressions in his later 
 letters to Schiller, that he meant to treat fully of the 
 stage in due time a subject which interested him 
 more profoundly than any question respecting the 
 theatre became uppermost. It would not have been 
 at all wonderful, he said to Schiller, if he had got 
 bewildered over the book ; but " I have, after all,
 
 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 151 
 
 held to my original idea." * That idea assuredly is 
 more nearly related to the actual life of man than to 
 human life as mirrored by the artist on the boards. 
 We may bear in mind Mr Lewes's view as possessing 
 a portion of historical truth, but it does not help us 
 much to understand the more important meanings of 
 the book. 
 
 On the other hand we must be on our guard against 
 reducing a book so full of reality and life to an idea or 
 an abstraction or a theory. The stream flows for many 
 wanderers, says Goethe of his poem Die Geheimnisse : 
 
 " Gar Viele miissen Vieles hier gewinnin, 
 Gar manche Bliithen bringt die Mutter Erde." 
 
 Looking back at "Wilhelm Meister" from his elder years 
 he described it as " one of the most incalculable pro- 
 ductions." " I myself," he continued, " can scarcely 
 be said to have the key to it. People seek a central 
 point, and that is hard and, after all, not good. I 
 should think a rich manifold life, which deploys before 
 our eyes, were in itself something, without an express 
 tendency, which indeed is merely for the intellect." 
 It is with a work of art, says au excellent French critic, 
 M. Montegut, as with the productions of nature ; life 
 encroaching and overrunning soon covers up the prin- 
 ciples on which the work reposes, the vegetation of 
 thought reduces to nothing the seed from which it 
 springs, form takes possession of the idea, conceals or 
 veils it, and the artist himself, overmastered by this 
 tyranny of life, loses sight of his point of departure or 
 
 1 Goethe to Schiller, December 10th, 1794.
 
 152 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 recognises it only in the results of his toil. 1 From the 
 first Goethe aimed at something more than creating 
 a kind bf theatrical " Gil Bias." His letters to Frau von 
 Stein show that the representation of the upper classes 
 of society, with their virtues and their faults, was to 
 form an essential part of the work. Can we name any 
 thought as presiding over a work so full of various 
 matter ? In February, 1778, just after the first book of 
 "Wilhelm Meister" had been brought to a close, Goethe 
 made a characteristic and highly significant entry in his 
 diary : " Bestimmteres Gefiihl von Einschrankung und 
 dadurch der wahren Ausbreitung " a more definite 
 sense of limitation and thereby real expansion. I 
 will not say with Hettner, who calls attention to this 
 entry, that here we have " the great and comprehensive 
 ground-idea of the romance ; " but it may truly be said 
 that here we have the most important lesson of life 
 learnt by Goethe during the ten years of service at 
 Weimar, and from these words we can infer the spirit , 
 which was to preside over the representative work of 
 that period. 
 
 Let me make an acknowledgment to Hermann Hettner 
 which will serve to cover a large obligation. Several 
 years ago I gave a course of public lectures on Goethe, 
 working my way as best I could (and one always 
 advances in any literature except one's own with uncer- 
 tainty and difficulty) from " Werther" and "Goetz" to the 
 "West-Eastern Divan" and the second part of "Faust." 
 On reaching " Wilhelm Meister," viewing it as I did in . 
 
 1 Types litUraires et Fantaisies estMliques, Wilhelm Meister, pp. 153. 
 154.
 
 Goethe 's Wilhelm Meister. 153 
 
 connection with what went before and what followed 
 after, its meaning or meanings, formerly obscure, seemed 
 to grow clearer and clearer as I read. Order began to 
 emerge from what had been a chaotic crowd of impres- 
 sions. The whole work seemed to become intelligible, 
 and I felt, or believed that I felt, how the parts stood 
 related to the whole and to each other. Those were 
 for me fruitful and happy hours. And then I turned to 
 that section of Hettner's admirable " History of Litera- 
 ture in the Eighteenth Century " which deals with what 
 he terms "the Ideal of Humanity" in the classical age 
 of German Literature, anticipating that I should have to 
 abandon my own view of Goethe's novel in favour of one 
 wider perhaps and deeper, such as I had often gained 
 in other matters by trying to see things through 
 Hettner's eyes. It was a source of satisfaction, not of 
 chagrin, to find that all which I called my own had 
 been long in possession of the German critic. One can 
 hardly hope to say a new word in studying a foreign 
 literature ; it is perhaps enough if one says a true word. 
 And now, when reading " Wilhelm Meister" once again, 
 after an interval of several years, I find that everything 
 takes form again in the same way. I seem to feel the 
 same Goethean irony in all the narrative contained in 
 the earlier portion of the novel, and the same Goethean 
 seriousness underlying the irony. And for what I 
 shall say of the book 1 will make no claim to origin- 
 ality, but offer it to the English reader as Hettner's 
 criticism, and bearing the authority of his eminent 
 name, while for my private satisfaction I may preserve 
 the remembrance that at one time I had found my
 
 154 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 way through the book, as I think aright, without much 
 external aid. 
 
 It is a novel without a hero. When William first 
 appears in this pseudo-epos, 1 we see him as a kind of 
 tamer, less attractive Werther ; less imaginative than 
 Werther, less of a poet, but like Werther vague, 
 unpractical, self-involved, indulging to excess a shal- 
 lower sensibility and a poorer kind of passion. How 
 he came by the name of Meister was unknown to 
 Goethe, for his right name was Wilhelm Schuler. 2 
 William must start from low beginnings. He has 
 small sense of his duties to others ; he wastes him- 
 self in dreams of little profit ; and it is out of such 
 stuff as this that a worthy, useful, even admirable 
 man is to be formed. It is enough at first if there 
 lies within him the capacity of growth, the possi- 
 bility of progress. But the way is long: delusions, 
 snares, wanderings must be experienced; by error he 
 must be delivered from error. In " Werther " Goethe 
 had exhibited the ruin that comes upon an idealist 
 who will not and cannot abandon his dreams and 
 immoderate desire. In " Tasso " he had shown how a 
 masculine prudence, an enlightened worldliness pre- 
 sented in the person of Antonio may come to the aid 
 and deliverance of the idealist when he cannot de- 
 liver himself. 3 Here in " Wilhelm Meister " a foolish 
 dreamer is to be formed into a true man ; the vague 
 and void of indefinite idealism is to be filled here- 
 
 1 So Goethe terms his novel in a letter to Schiller. 
 
 2 Goethe to Schiller, December 6th, 1794. 
 
 3 " Tasso " was conceived at a later date than " Wilhelm Meister," but 
 it was completed long before the completion of the novel.
 
 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 155 
 
 after by a life of well-chosen, well-defined activity. 
 He is to be educated not in the schools it is now 
 unhappily too late for that but by the harder 
 discipline of life ; he is to be delivered from the 
 splendid prison painted with idle visions into the 
 liberty of modest well-doing. 
 
 A dreamer the boy was born. As a child he 
 hung over his puppets, which were for his imagina- 
 tion Jonathan, and David, and Goliath : " I sur- 
 rendered myself to fantasy, rehearsed and prepared 
 for ever, built a thousand castles in the air, and 
 saw not that I had shaken the foundations of the 
 little edifice." Now in early manhood he creates 
 glorious visions out of the petty stage of his native 
 town, and the poor little plays represented upon it. 
 His spirit is too large to interest itself in his father's 
 merchandise ; the narrow concerns of the homestead 
 cannot satisfy his aspiring soul ; his ideal beckons him 
 away. Then in a sudden first love the youth seems 
 to enter Paradise. While her first true passion brings 
 to Mariana a sense of the waste and void within 
 her soul, a sense of the abject desert which her life 
 has been, and fills her with alarm lest she may prove 
 " that miserable creature a woman who, inspiring 
 desire, does not also inspire reverence and love," 
 William " paints a picture out of manifold ideas upon 
 a canvas of cloud ; the figures of it, to be sure, ran 
 a good deal into one another, yet the whole had 
 an effect the more charming on that account." He 
 soars into the upper regions of illusion. He ardently 
 continues his endless tale of the puppets, and does
 
 156 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 not notice that Mariana has dropped asleep. Old 
 Barbara, tippling wine and trading in her mistress's 
 beauty, does not repel him. He had known order 
 in his father's house ; not an order allied with beauty, 
 for old Meister had turned into money the art treasures 
 of William's grandfather, but the order of a certain 
 bourgeois magnificence heavy plate, costly furniture, 
 dull substantial dinners. The wild disorder of the 
 actress's room music, fragments of plays and pairs 
 of shoes, washes and Italian flowers, hair-pins, rouge- 
 pots, ribbons, books, straw-hats, all tossed about in 
 admired confusion gives him a pleasure which the 
 heavy pomp of his own home had never communi- 
 cated. He looks upon himself as a beggar fed upon 
 the alms of his beloved. 
 
 And then all the dream-fabric suddenly tumbles 
 in the false supposal of Mariana's infidelity. It is 
 the old story of Troilus in his salad days finding 
 heaven in the love of Cressida, and forthwith dropping 
 from heaven into the uncomely limbo of lost illusions. 
 Only that Cressida was indeed loveless and base ; 
 whereas here Mariana is true even to the death, and 
 William's second error of renouncing his love and 
 purposed marriage is more grievous than his first 
 error of unwise passion. 
 
 William is no young hero like Troilus ; but shall 
 we despise him because he is vague, unpractical, lost 
 in illusions ? Shakespeare, while presenting the Trojan 
 youth and his erroneous passion with finest irony, 
 yet sees in him the promise of a great and noble 
 warrior ; and Goethe will not permit us to think
 
 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 157 
 
 slightingly of his idealist, since excellent possibilities 
 lie unfolded within him. Over against William is 
 set his early companion, Werner, of the same age, 
 but already a shrewd man of business who sticks to 
 his desk, regards his occupation as merchant with 
 entire satisfaction, finds a daily pleasure in adding 
 to his possessions, and yet perhaps amid all his addi- 
 tions and balancings, forgets, as William puts it, the 
 true sum-total of life. Goethe does not despise mer- 
 chandise or commerce ; he sincerely honours them. 
 It is William, not Goethe who thinks scorn of the life 
 of man in trade. When Werner and William are 
 first presented to us, Werner has in several respects 
 the advantage of his young companion ; at least he 
 has attained to more of manhood. And yet we already 
 see that living as he does regarding the means of life 
 as its ends he is not in the way of growth ; and we 
 shall see Werner and William once again side by side 
 before the close. 
 
 Before the cruel wreck of his illusion as a lover, 
 William obtains a momentary glimpse of what the 
 player's life actually is ; he makes acquaintance with 
 the stroller Melina. With his pleasing figure, sonorous 
 voice, and sensitive heart, Melina surely must find 
 in the stage a noble field for his ambition, and know 
 the pure and elevated joy of the artist. How greatly 
 is William taken aback to discover that Melina, so 
 weary is he of vulgar vagabondage, longs for a little 
 quiet home to which he may take his young bride, and 
 could be well content with some small post of clerk or 
 collector, from which he might draw a modest salary.
 
 158 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 As is natural, William regards Melina in no favourable 
 light, and mentally contrasts the player unworthy of his 
 high profession with himself and Mariana, the gifted 
 ones, who are destined to revive the German theatre. 
 " Amid such words and thoughts our friend undressed 
 himself and went to bed, with feelings of the deepest 
 satisfaction." 
 
 A little later, a stranger, seeking a certain inn, accosts 
 him. This mysterious person seems wonderfully familiar 
 with William's past history, and their conversation, as 
 they walk together, soon tends towards the most serious 
 questions. The stranger would fain impress upon his 
 young companion the danger of living upon chances and 
 accident, the duty of clear-sightedness and firmness of 
 will. " I can look with satisfaction on that man alone 
 who knows what is of use to himself and others, and 
 who labours to set bounds to his caprice and self-will. 
 Each man has his own fortune in his hands, as the 
 artist has the raw material which he is to fashion to a 
 certain shape. But it is with this art as with all 
 others ; the capacity alone is born with us ; it must be 
 learnt and practised with incessant care." The stranger 
 goes his way ; in the street there is heard the sound of 
 clarionets, French horns, and bassoons ; it is a travel- 
 ling showman's troop. In a moment the words of the 
 monitor are clean forgotten. Here is a chance not to 
 be lost. William will hire the musicians to perform a 
 serenade outside Mariana's door. 
 
 When happiness and hope, dreams and aspirations 
 crash down together in the hapless boy's first loss "of 
 illusion, he has virtue enough to recover himself. His
 
 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 159 
 
 whole being, indeed, seems to be laid waste ; his bodily 
 health gives way before the stress of his misery ; but 
 when strength returns, he destroys the relics of bis past 
 folly, he flings his poems into the fire, he abandons the 
 theatre, and sets himself diligently to work at the 
 merchant's business. From infinity he returns to the 
 office-desk. Yet he has not learnt the true lesson of 
 human duty, for this is but the zeal of despair. Deep 
 in his heart new illusions begin to push and sprout 
 illusions which are, indeed, but half illusions, since they 
 give promise of a real life, worthier and better suited to 
 his nature, if only it could be attained, than this life of 
 desperate self-repression and enforced toil in an alien 
 field. 
 
 The second book of " Wilhelm Meister " has been 
 named by Hettner the romance of poetical vagabondage. 
 Sent forth by his father on the task of collecting certain 
 debts, William falls in with the wandering fragments of 
 a company of players. The commonplace morality of 
 gathering his father's coin counts as nothing when set 
 beside the opportunity of cultivating his talent among a 
 troop of theatrical gipsies. There is at once something 
 admirable and something ludicrous in William's lofty 
 views, set forth with imperturbable earnestness, while 
 he sits in company with that hearty youth, Laertes, and 
 the incomparable Philina, who has no more moral sense 
 than a lively sparrow. He would have the State em- 
 ploy the theatre in serious art for the elevation of the 
 working classes ; but Philina cannot imagine statesmen 
 exfllpt in periwigs, and " a periwig, let who will be the 
 wearer, always gives my fingers a spasmodic motion."
 
 160 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 Again at this juncture, when William is drifting into 
 a close alliance with the wandering players, a stranger 
 appears whom, by his dress and dignified mien, one 
 might have taken for a clergyman. He and William 
 fall into conversation on the needs and education of the 
 artist. " Will not genius save itself," asks William, 
 " from the results of its own errors ? Will it not heal 
 the wounds which itself has inflicted ? " " By no means," 
 replies the stranger, " or at best to a very small extent. 
 Let no one think that he can conquer the first impres- 
 sions of his youth. If he has grown up in enviable 
 freedom, surrounded with beautiful and noble objects, 
 in constant intercourse with good men, ... if he has 
 never learnt anything which he requires to unlearn, if 
 his first efforts have been so guided that, without break- 
 ing himself of his habits, he can more easily produce 
 what is excellent in the future ; then such a one will 
 lead a purer, more perfect, and happy life, than another 
 man who has wasted the force of his youth in opposition 
 and error." The inference is obvious ; it is the " Fly, 
 youth, fly ! " which afterwards sounds in William's ears. 
 But for the present he chooses to confide rather in fate 
 than in self-direction and self-control. " Fate," said the 
 other, smiling, " is an excellent but an expensive private 
 tutor." 
 
 Among the figures, so lively and so real, of William's 
 companions, appear two about whom Goethe has thrown 
 an air of romance, two who seem framed to suffer and 
 to love Mignon and the Harper. " Mignon," writes 
 M. Scherer, " has been elevated into a poetic creatio^i ; 
 but Mignon has neither charm nor mystery nor veritable
 
 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. i6r 
 
 existence ; nor any other poetry let us dare to say it 
 than a few immortal stanzas put into her mouth." 
 I shall not consider the justice of M. Scherer's criticism, 
 On the whole it is more important to attend to the 
 opinions of German critics on a German creation than 
 to that of any foreign critic ; and there is a consensus 
 of German feeling and opinion in opposition to M. 
 Scherer's. But here I want to indicate the moral in- 
 tention of Goethe in the creation of these two romantic 
 figures. A life of emotion which cannot be converted 
 into action is, according to the teaching of Goethe, a 
 life of disease. William is to be led in the end from 
 vain dreaming to wholesome practical activity. Here 
 are two sufferers, one still a child, one seemingly an old 
 man though in years he is not really old, who are 
 wasted by deep but vain longing, an endless sehnsucht> 
 and who must needs descend to the tomb as the victims 
 or martyrs of desire. All Mignon's existence is summed 
 up in two absorbing sentiments the longing for her 
 native land, and a deep devotion to the benefactor who 
 has rescued her from a life of harsh, loveless, and 
 degrading servitude, a devotion which can never attain 
 the satisfaction which it needs. 1 An inward fire con- 
 sumes her being; when her young heart suddenly ceases 
 to beat, she reaches the only rest attainable by one who 
 has become enamoured of the im possible. The Harper lives 
 a life still more remote from sanity, with his gaze fixed 
 for ever upon the past; fixed for ever upon one season 
 of intoxicating joy, cut short by the terror of an appall- 
 ing discovery, and upon that early love which he re- 
 
 1 See the words of her physician, in book viii. chap. iii. 
 L
 
 1 62 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 members with a mingled delight, horror and remorse. 
 It were possible for him to renew his existence and 
 recover his moral health if he could leave this dead 
 past behind, and occupy himself with some simple and 
 useful activities in the present ; and his restoration is 
 almost effected. But the habit of his soul is too deep- 
 rooted, and he too perishes the victim of a fatal spiritual 
 malady. 
 
 The stir and animation of the scenes which present 
 William's life of poetical vagabondage must not hide 
 from us the irony which accompanies that presentation, 
 or Goethe's seriousness which underlies his irony. 
 Before exhibiting, in the close of his romance, the life 
 of pure and noble order, Goethe will show us, on this 
 side and on that, the life of impure and ignoble disorder. 
 And he will set this forth in a twofold way first, the 
 vagabond disorder of these poor strollers, some of them 
 friendly creatures enough, yet living what a sorry life ! 
 And, secondly, disorder in the upper classes of society, 
 where we find more to repel and less to make us 
 tolerant, more, certainly, that is dull and ridiculous, 
 than in the shambling life of the poor losels of the 
 stage. How admirable for stir and play, for shifting 
 gleam and shadow, are some of these scenes ! Yet, 
 while Goethe seems to write with most abandon, some 
 touch of irony here, and again some momentary start 
 aside, betrays the fact that the writer holds his own 
 personality, his own true self almost sternly aloof. 1 
 
 1 Note, for example, how the Harper's beautiful song of the minstrel, 
 who refuses a chain of gold as the reward of his art, is immediately fol- 
 lowed by a squabble about money, in which, of course, the manager, 
 Melina, takes the lead.
 
 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 163 
 
 Tf human life were a ballet set to frivolous music, 
 then Philina might be leader of the dance ; and yet 
 let us credit Philina with her own small kind of 
 quick-sightedness and clear-sightedness, with some 
 capricious good-nature, and with the merit of at least 
 being no hypocrite. And what an artist is the youth 
 Laertes, whose first rude rebuff in love has taken all 
 faith in the ideal out of his existence, has left him to 
 live on the chance pleasures of the hour, and prepared 
 him for settling down, when weary of adventure, into 
 an old bachelorhood of respectable Philistinism ! And 
 how shall we speak of that luminary of the German 
 stage, the Pedant, with his idiotic smiles, and crouching, 
 ludicrous bows, and ridiculous grimaces and theatrical 
 gestures ? It is with such material as this that 
 William's great reformation of the dramatic art is to 
 be effected. 
 
 The third book introduces us to the society of persons 
 of rank and distinction. Now, indeed, William may ex- 
 pect to see a life made up of freedom and beauty. Here, 
 if anywhere, true art will be recognised and honoured. 
 The strolling troop has received a call from the Count 
 to present a play before his illustrious visitor the Prince ; 
 the Count is a learned lover of the drama ; his friend, 
 the Baron, is an ardent admirer of German literature, 
 full of patriotic enthusiasm. William, the burgher's 
 son, looks forward with delight to the opportunities 
 for higher culture which open before him. "Thrice 
 happy," he exclaims to himself, " are they to be 
 esteemed whom their birth of itself exalts above the 
 lower stages of mankind. . . . Far extending and
 
 164 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 unerring must their vision be on that higher station ; 
 easy each step of their progress in life. . . . Who can 
 better know the worth and worthlessness of earthly 
 things than he who was in a position to enjoy them 
 from youth upwards ? and who can earlier guide his 
 mind to the useful, the necessary, the true, than he 
 who may convince himself of so many errors at an age 
 when his strength is still fresh to begin a new career ? " 
 The Countess is beautiful and full of grace. And is 
 not the Baron an amateur dramatic poet ? And what 
 a happy chance it is to meet a Prince who himself has 
 presided over a theatre ! 
 
 Alas for William's new erections in the land of 
 dreams, which crumble one by one ! The Baron has 
 indeed written a drama, and the manuscript is copious, 
 and the hero is a virtuous, magnanimous, and much- 
 afflicted man. It is necessary to compliment the 
 author, but the piece is insufferably dull; it is in five 
 acts, and that sort of acts which never have an end. 
 The Count is chiefly concerned about the success of 
 the transparency representing the princely hat with 
 the illuminated princely name. It is a dark night 
 when the troop arrive at the castle ; the rain has 
 fallen heavily and long ; they are drenched men and 
 women to the bone, they are bundles of wet rags, 
 human sops and sponges. But there will be the com- 
 fortable chambers, the warm fires, the good fare pro- 
 vided by the Count. All seems strangely dark, and 
 cold, and silent. The wind sweeps through the lofty 
 gate ; the old towers rise grey and dreary in the night. 
 No one is attended to except Mademoiselle Philina, in
 
 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 165 
 
 whom the Stall-meister has a special interest. William 
 sits upon some steps, among wet knapsacks, the poor 
 child Mignon, tired and hungry, on his knees. He 
 is filled with sullen indignation as he reflects upon 
 the courtesy shown to his humbler guests by a count. 
 
 Things brighten up next day as far as material com- 
 fort is concerned, but the daylight only gives a clearer 
 view into the disorderly vulgarity of the wealthy well- 
 born. Their dilettante interest in art is but the thinnest 
 varnish. Life in the castle is a perpetual riot and 
 racket of untrained animal spirits. The poor players 
 are the worthier folk among its occupants, and for sake 
 of their own manners and morals attempt some system 
 of police, which, however, is little heeded by the insolent 
 young gentry assembled to meet the Prince. Yet illu- 
 sions do not cease to flatter William's fancy. The fine 
 ladies express a wish that he would read aloud for them 
 some of his poetical compositions. He examines the 
 chosen pieces beforehand with a critical eye, corrects 
 them with minute attention, practises himself in private 
 recitations, and in due time is presented to the charming 
 Countess. 1 The cherished manuscript is in his pocket, 
 and his fingers itch to draw it forth. But there is 
 Philina kneeling at the Countess's chair, and practising 
 a thousand fooleries, and there is a brother artist, the 
 friseur, who has not quite done his task of erecting 
 a tower of curls on the fair female head. Presently 
 
 1 The original of the Countess seems to have been the Countess von 
 Werther, a sister of the great statesman Stein. "This little person 
 . . . ," Goethe writes to Frau von Stein, March llth, 1781, "is like 
 quicksilver, who in a moment scatters herself into a thousand parts and 
 again runs together into a ball. '
 
 1 66 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 a man-milliner arrives and begins to open his bandboxes 
 and parcels. William " often felt for his manuscript in 
 his pocket, and hoped for his deliverance every instant." 
 But no deliverance comes ; the company increases, and, 
 after an hour of fruitless waiting, William retires. 
 
 So proceed the discoveries of Wilhelm Meister, who 
 is even still a Wilhelm Schiller. On the Prince's arrival, 
 the Count, who prides himself on his patronage of the 
 drama, summons the whole company to appear before 
 him. Everything goes off to perfection ; at the end of 
 the play each member of the troop is presented in turn 
 to the Prince, who has a happy and encouraging word 
 for each. But before long he grows remiss in his 
 attendance at the little theatre ; a rival attraction, 
 gaming, in the antechamber proves on the whole more 
 attractive. Sometimes after dinner the players are 
 summoned before him, an honour which they highly 
 esteem ; William alone notices with displeasure that on 
 the same occasions the huntsmen bring in the hounds or 
 lead the horses through the courtyard to be exhibited in 
 like manner. " It is a pity," says his uncompromising 
 monitor, Jarno, " that you should play with hollow nuts 
 for a stake of hollow nuts." And yet the Prince is 
 gracious and cultivated, and has an interest in art. 
 " Does William read the great French dramatic 
 writers ? " he asks. William is ready with an eager 
 " Yes ; " but his Highness has already turned to some 
 one else. William will not consent, however, to perish 
 of suppressed aesthetic criticism ; he faces round, inter- 
 cepts the Prince, and delivers himself of an admirable 
 discourse on Eacine and Corneille. His Highness
 
 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 167 
 
 impatiently nods approval and escapes. " William," 
 observes Goethe, " now began to have an inkling that 
 things went forward in the world differently from what 
 he had supposed." 
 
 I cannot trace through all its gulfs and shallows, 
 storms and enchanted islands, this Odyssey of Culture. 
 By slow and sorrowful degrees William discovers that he 
 is not made to be an artist, discovering at the same 
 time that the theatre is not a fitting school for the 
 formation of character. There, for example, is Serlo, a 
 man of genius and a born actor ; yet see how he cares 
 less for his art than to live a life of selfish indulgence ; 
 see how he has lost all native worth and dignity in the 
 never-ending, ever-varying postures of the mime. And 
 there is Aurelia, who in actual life, as on the stage, can 
 never be other than the passionate, half-real, half-factitious 
 tragedy queen. How different it all is from what William 
 had dreamed ! And yet his time has not been quite 
 misspent. The study of Shakespeare has made an epoch 
 in his moral history, inciting him to quicken his foot- 
 steps forward into the actual world. He has grown in 
 many ways since he left his father's home. Through 
 error he has been delivered from error. He has never 
 been wholly false to his higher self. He has always 
 tried to be kindly and helpful to his fellows. He has 
 not loved indulgence or ease or wealth or station, but 
 things of the mind, and each day higher things than 
 yesterday. He has, it is true, lived too much in his 
 own thoughts and his own feelings, and of men he 
 knows lamentably little ; but if he knows little of 
 men, he already knows something of man. The
 
 1 68 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 moment has all but arrived when he may find his true 
 direction. 
 
 But before William enters on his worthier life Goethe 
 interposes that book which is in some respects the most 
 remarkable of the novel " The Confessions of a Beauti- 
 ful Soul." It is connected by slender threads with the 
 action of the story, but it is intimately related to Goethe's 
 general theme. A higher life must now be sought by 
 William : what ideal shall he set and keep before him ? 
 The pure and pale ideal of religious mysticism, which 
 turns away from all the noblest powers and influences of 
 earth to live in inward communion with the invisible 
 Friend and Helper ? or that of the man who uses the 
 world for his spiritual furtherance, for the development 
 of his entire nature, who uses the world as not abusing 
 it ? We know beforehand what answer to these questions 
 Goethe will give. The experiences of the fair saint are 
 presented with exquisite delicacy and fidelity ; they are 
 interpreted with a reverential tenderness. There are 
 passages in the confessions of the heroine of this book 
 which might almost be placed beside passages in the 
 life of St Teresa of Jesus. In writing it Goethe re- 
 membered the beautiful spirit and the pure interior 
 life of his early friend, Fraulein Klettenberg. 1 " I 
 find that Christianity," wrote Schiller to Goethe, 
 " contains the first elements of what is highest and 
 noblest, and its various manifestations in life seem to 
 me repulsive and distasteful only because they are 
 
 1 See in connection with this book of ' ' Wilhelm Meister, " the ' ' Reliquien 
 der Fraulein Susanna Catherina von Klettenberg nebst Erliiuterungen 
 zu den Bekenntnissen einer schonen Seele von J M. Lappenberg." 
 Hamburg, 1849.
 
 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 169 
 
 erroneous representations of this highest." And he 
 goes on to point out that the peculiar feature of 
 Christianity, which distinguishes it from all other 
 monotheistic forms of religion, lies in the substitution 
 of a free will desiring what is best in place of an 
 external moral law. " Hence, in its pure form, it is 
 the representation of morality at one with beauty." 
 " It is not my intention," replies Goethe, " to exhibit 
 Christianity in its purest light till the eighth book of 
 'Wilhelm Meister' in the following generation where 
 it fully agrees with what you write about it." Goethe's 
 purpose was not carried out ; the closing books of his 
 novel did not receive their due development ; but in 
 the " Wanderjahre " we find a partial fulfilment of his 
 promise to Schiller. There he shows us religion as 
 forming an essential part of education that education 
 which prepares men for the active uses of life. Here, 
 in the Confessions of a Beautiful Soul, the religious 
 experiences are not entirely based upon reality; they 
 are in part illusions, though, as Goethe says in a letter 
 to Schiller, " the noblest illusions ; " they imply in the 
 spirit of the saintly lady " the most delicate confusion 
 between the subjective and the objective." x But for 
 Wilhelm Meister it is most to be desired that he 
 should be delivered from all illusions, even from the 
 noblest. Is it not possible for him to enter upon the 
 higher life in some other way than that of pietism ? 
 
 Over against the figure of the fair saint Goethe 
 places the remarkable figure of her uncle, in whom 
 Schiller perceived, as many others have independently 
 1 To Schiller, Weimar, 18 March, 1795.
 
 170 Goetkes Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 perceived, a likeness to Goethe himself. When his 
 pious niece sets foot in the uncle's house, she feels for 
 the first time how earnest and harmonious human life 
 can be ; a noble order reigns everywhere ; grave beauty 
 presides over the day's toil or pleasure ; no profusion 
 of pomp dissipates the spirit, but serious harmonies 
 of form and colour and sound engender seriousness and 
 recollection. It is her uncle's mind projected outwards 
 and embodied in domestic and social life. " Man's 
 highest merit," says the master of the house, " always 
 is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances, 
 and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by 
 them. Life lies before us as a huge quarry lies before 
 the architect ; he deserves not the name of architect, 
 except when, out of this fortuitous mass, he can combine 
 with the greatest economy and fitness, and durability, 
 some form, the pattern of which originated in his spirit 
 . . . You, my dear niece, have, it may be, chosen the 
 better part; you have striven to bring your moral 
 being, your earnest lovely nature into accordance with 
 itself and with the Highest ; but neither ought we to 
 be blamed when we strive to get acquainted with the 
 sentient and perceptive man in all his comprehensive- 
 ness, and to bring about an active harmony among his 
 powers." 
 
 He honours his niece because her loins are girt and 
 her lamp is lit : but are not his own loins girt and 
 his own lamp lit after another fashion ? Pointing to 
 the pictures on the wall he said, " Bestow a little 
 notice on the spirit manifested in these works. Good 
 minds delight to trace the finger of God in nature ;
 
 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 171 
 
 why not also pay some small regard to the hand of 
 his imitator ? " She looks long and earnestly, and 
 although her exclusive preoccupation with inward re- 
 ligious feelings and her neglect of the history of art, 
 prevents her from perceiving all that her uncle perceives, 
 she cannot fail to discover here something closely akin 
 to moral culture. " You are altogether right," observes 
 the uncle, " and we see from this that those do not 
 act well who, in a solitary exclusive manner, follow 
 moral cultivation by itself. On the contrary, it will 
 be found that he whose spirit strives after inward and 
 moral culture has every reason, at the same time, to 
 improve his sentient and perceptive powers, that so 
 he may not run the risk of sinking from his moral 
 height, by giving way to the enticements of an ill- 
 regulated fancy, and degrading his moral nature by 
 allowing it to take delight in tasteless baubles, if not 
 in something worse." The pious niece could not 
 suspect that the speaker was levelling at her ; but 
 neither could she avoid the recollection of the in- 
 sipidities in some of the spiritual songs that used to 
 edify her ; nor help feeling that much of the imagery 
 which she associated with her religious ideas would 
 have found little favour with her uncle. Until now 
 she had known no other mode of singing than the 
 usual style of rendering hymns practised by good folk 
 whose pious emotions are little disturbed by hoarse or 
 discordant pipes. Here in her uncle's hall she has 
 the pleasure of listening to devotional songs in the 
 Latin language arranged for eight voices. The music 
 " seemed to originate in the deepest feelings of the
 
 172 Goethe 's Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 most accomplished human beings ; . . . without pre- 
 tending to edify, they elevated and made me happy 
 in the most spiritual manner." She has in a measure 
 learned her uncle's lesson ; he has not once troubled 
 the purity of her faith or disturbed the harmony of 
 nature to which she has attained ; but he has added 
 something to her spiritual culture. As she is about 
 to take her departure he gives her the cross of her order 
 beautifully wrought and hanging upon a large brilliant, 
 the noblest stone in his collection ; it is a symbol signi- 
 fying that the religious spirit gains, not loses, by an 
 association with what is beautiful, and that the more 
 completely we bring into harmonious action all the 
 higher powers of our nature, the richer and the more 
 excellent will be the result. 
 
 When Wilhelm Meister finally abandons the stage, 
 he has uprooted from his imagination the chief illusion 
 which led him astray. He begins to perceive that true 
 human happiness and human worth are to be attained 
 by right dealing with the real stuff of life, which lies 
 near to our hand, limited indeed as are our powers of 
 fashioning it, and fortunately limited for creatures such 
 as we are. He learns that only through definiteness 
 can strength be attained or service be rendered ; " the 
 safe plan is always to do the task that lies nearest to 
 us." And now he becomes connected with a group of 
 persons who, like the Count and the Baron, are of high 
 station, and raised above the necessity of common toil, 
 and yet each has taken upon himself or herself a share 
 in the labour and the responsibilities of life, each toils with 
 unwearying earnestness in some field of well-directed,
 
 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 173 
 
 practical activity. Lothario, as long as he lived for 
 an abstract idea, cared little for the human relations 
 which were nearest to him and which ought to 
 have been dearest ; he contracted debts, quarrelled 
 with his uncle, left his sisters to themselves, de- 
 spised the obvious duties of life. In America, he 
 fancied that he might accomplish something. And 
 then came his discovery of the truth : " I will return, 
 and in my house, amid my fields, among my people, I 
 will say, Here, or nowhere, is America." He manages 
 his estate, rigidly insisting on his servants doing each 
 man his proper work ; his land increases in value, his 
 income is augmented. " And shall I," he says, " alone 
 enjoy this growing benefit ? Shall not those who labour 
 with me and for me partake, in their degree, of the 
 advantages which expanding knowledge and a period of 
 progress are procuring for us ? " Were it better that he 
 should part with his fortune in a fit of fantastic bene- 
 volence, and seek for some new imaginary duties ? 
 Such a sacrifice were, after all, but a selfish mode of 
 relieving himself from the burden of daily service, a 
 sacrifice made, as it were, in despair. Better by far is 
 the active sacrifice implied in the steadfast administra- 
 tion of his wealth and influence at once for his own 
 good and the good of others. Here is a worthy 
 example for William, that bird of paradise with soiled 
 and draggled plumes, whose feet have never yet touched 
 the earth. 
 
 And at this fortunate moment William's long-lost son 
 is found. This, indeed, Goethe declares, is something 
 to live for better than the dreams of stage-struck youth.
 
 174 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 " How zealously he contemplated repairing what had 
 been neglected, restoring what had fallen ! He no 
 longer looked upon the world with the eyes of a bird of 
 passage ; a building was no longer to him as a grove 
 hastily put together and withering before one quits it. 
 Everything that he proposed commencing was to be 
 completed for his boy ; everything that he erected was 
 to last for several generations. In this sense his ap- 
 prenticeship was ended ; with the feelings of a father 
 he had acquired all the virtues of a citizen." He has 
 lost his mere individuality, and with it his absorbing 
 desire for his individual culture. His son has bound 
 him to the whole human race. 
 
 But William, while he is about to accept loyally the 
 bond of life and cheerfully acknowledge its limitations, 
 is not to degrade into a Philistine. Werner, his former 
 young companion of the counting-house, now appears at 
 the age of forty. " The honest man seemed rather to have 
 retrograded than advanced. He was much leaner than of 
 old ; his peaked face appeared to have grown sharper, 
 his nose longer ; brow and crown had lost their hair ; 
 the voice, clear, eager, shrill ; the hollow breast and 
 stooping shoulders, the sallow cheeks, announced indubi- 
 tably that a melancholic drudge was there." He talks 
 of his bourgeois household ; the women are satisfied 
 and happy, never short of money ; half their time they 
 spend in dressing, the other half in showing themselves 
 when dressed ; they are as domestic as a reasonable 
 man could wish. " My boys are growing up prudent 
 youths. I see them in my mind's eye already sitting 
 writing, reckoning, running, trading, trucking ; each of
 
 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 175 
 
 them as soon as possible shall have a business of his 
 own." As for recreation when the day's work is over, 
 Werner can while away the evening with cards. It is 
 not such a home of material abundance and spiritual 
 indigence that could content Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 The voice of life and love is heard in these closing 
 chapters of the romance, summoning its hero to the 
 duty and the joy of wise living. But there also 
 sounds in them the voice of death. In the house, 
 modest and yet ennobled with dignity and beauty, 
 where William is to find the highest happiness of his 
 future life, is a spacious passage leading to a door, in the 
 Egyptian fashion, before which lie two granite sphinxes. 
 Within is a place of tombs, the Hall of the Past, where 
 lies the body of the former owner of the mansion. All 
 is planned and contrived so as to produce a feeling of 
 cheerful serenity. Here are no grim emblems of death ; 
 here is no grinning skeleton, dart in hand, or bearing 
 a scroll with the familiar legend, Memento mori. Yet 
 death is here remembered, not thrust out of view, and 
 this Hall of the Past might as justly be named Hall of 
 the Present and the Future. 
 
 " Opposite the door, on a stately sarcophagus, lay a marble figure 
 of a noble-looking man " the uncle of the pious lady of the Con- 
 fessions " reclined upon a pillow. He held a roll before him, and 
 seemed to look on it with still attention. It was placed so that you 
 could read with ease the words that stood there. They were these 
 'Think of living'" 
 
 And around are sculptured forms representative of 
 the joys and duties of life : the mother pressing her 
 infant to her bosom ; the bearded man playing with 
 his little son ; the bridegroom and the bride ; the
 
 176 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 maiden with her pitcher by the well ; the king invoking 
 the gods at the altar as he solemnizes some great 
 alliance of peoples. In this hall the body of Mignon 
 is afterwards laid youth resting here by the side 
 of age, the old man and the child as companions in 
 death. But it is not of death that the chorus sings. 
 After the due of sorrow and of tears is given, the voices 
 of the invisible singers and of the bright-robed boys 
 raise a chant not of death, but life : 
 
 " Chorus. Children, turn back unto life ! Your tears let the fresh 
 air dry, which plays upon the winding waters. Fly from Night ! 
 Day and Pleasure and Continuance are the lot of the living. 
 
 " Boys. Up, we turn back unto life. Let the day give us labour 
 and pleasure, till the evening brings us rest, and the sleep of night 
 refreshes us. 
 
 " Chorus. Children, hasten into life ! In the pure garments of 
 beauty may Love meet you with heavenly looks and with the 
 wreath of immortality ! " 
 
 We have travelled far from the disorderly vagabond- 
 age of the poor gipsies of the stage, far from the riot 
 and racket and folly and vain dilettantism of the aristo- 
 cratic gathering at the castle before we are permitted to 
 hear such strains of life and death as these. 
 
 One thing is still lacking to William the love and 
 helpful companionship of a noble woman. And in the 
 company of men and women, to which he is now intro- 
 duced, there are two, Theresa and Natalia, of whom one 
 is surely to take her place by his side. Which of the 
 two is best qualified to be his true helpmate ? Theresa 
 delights in much serving ; her motions are all with a 
 purpose and alert ; nothing, however minute, escapes 
 her clear blue eyes. She manages her own property in 
 the country, and superintends the large estate of her
 
 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 177 
 
 old neighbour who cannot see to it himself. She, if 
 anyone ever has been such, is practical and definite ; 
 from her earliest youth the store-room, the granaries, 
 the fields have been her chosen province. Her firewood 
 is sawed to the precise length and exactly split and 
 piled ; her tubs are of the cleanest and are ranged each 
 in its precise place ; everything needed for convenience, 
 cheerfulness, durability, is at hand. And she is most 
 successful in her bringing up of little ones entrusted to 
 her care, such children as promise to be lively, service- 
 able housewives. With her William would possess a 
 secure, terrestrial life, order in prosperity, courage in 
 adversity. But while she is perfect in the moral 
 virtues, she is deficient in spiritual graces. " Instead 
 of faith she has insight, instead of love she has stead- 
 fastness, instead of hope she has trust." Natalia's 
 occupation is that of educating a number of little girls, 
 especially those who show a fine and gentle nature, and 
 guiding their minds to what is good. Theresa breaks 
 in her pupils, Natalia forms them. In her presence 
 William feels that she has the power to form him for 
 higher things and build up not his fortune but his 
 spirit. Her peculiar gift is that of discovering the 
 wants of others, and of satisfying those wants ; satisfying 
 them not by money but in a higher way, for all her 
 gifts are distributed in kind. She has a firm faith in 
 the wise governance of life by law and order : " I could 
 almost venture to assert," she says, " that it is better to 
 be wrong by rule than to be wrong with nothing but 
 the fitful caprices of our nature to impel us hither and 
 thither ; and in my way of viewing men there always 
 
 M
 
 178 Goethe s Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 seems to be a void in their nature, which cannot be 
 filled up except by some decisive and clearly settled 
 law." For the beauty of nature, for the charms of art 
 she cares but little ; all her concern is for the needs of 
 men and women. It was Goethe's intention to have 
 drawn with careful detail the figure of Natalia that of 
 the woman whose life is one happy, harmonious, active 
 self-surrender ; unfortunately the portrait is a somewhat 
 slight and hasty one. Still we can clearly divine his 
 intention. William, the lover of the ideal, could not be 
 quite happy with a Theresa. But Natalia will know 
 his wants and supply them ; she will guide him to 
 obedience to the true law of his nature. And it is to 
 Natalia that his fate is entrusted. All is well that ends 
 well. Truly may the sprightly Friedrich say to him : 
 " To my mind thou resemblest Saul, the son of Kish, 
 who went out to seek his father's asses, and found a 
 kingdom." " I know not the worth of a kingdom," 
 answered William, " but I know I have attained a 
 happiness which I have not deserved, and which I 
 would not change for anything in life." 
 
 We have now traced the story of Wilhelm Meister in 
 the sense in which, it seems to me, Goethe intended 
 that it should be understood. On its artistic faults I 
 have not cared to dwell ; the imperfect construction, the 
 longueurs, the somewhat absurd device of the secret 
 society, the theatrical preparation of the poor little 
 body of the dead Mignon, and other matters of offence 
 are sufficiently obvious. As to the alleged immoral 
 tone in which Goethe treats of the relations of men and 
 women, we constantly feel that he had none of that
 
 Goethes Wilhelm Meister. 179 
 
 quick, indignant spirit of purity, which feels a soil as if 
 it were a wound. His men can act with baseness or 
 live in careless license, as Lothario has acted and lived, 
 and yet, like Lothario, can leave their baser selves 
 behind, and suffer meanwhile no keen compunctious 
 visitings. But at least there is the figure of the uncle 
 in the " Confessions " to condemn all base and ignoble 
 pleasure by showing us the higher purposes of existence. 
 And as we look back over the book we feel how Mariana's 
 shameful ways, and that error of girlish abandonment, 
 which half cleansed her careless life, and the conscience- 
 less frivolity of Philina, and Mignon's hopeless brooding 
 passion, and the Countess's transitory love-in-idleness, 
 each and all stand convicted and condemned by the 
 pure and generous affection of Natalia. There are 
 readers, and among them I find some of the best of 
 readers, who refuse to dwell among ill or doubtful com- 
 pany in a book, even for sake of a subsequent moral 
 gain. And there are other readers who, sensibly or 
 insensibly, get more evil from such doubtful company 
 than they can get good from any of the larger meanings 
 of a book. Let readers of both these classes turn away 
 from " Wilhelm Meister," and let them include in their 
 well -justified private index expurgatorius not this only 
 but many other great works of literature. 
 
 With one remark on " Wilhelm Meisters Wander- 
 jahre " I must end. It is Goethe's express opinion that 
 William's way of buying experience at a high price in 
 the market is a way, if possible, to be avoided. With 
 some men it is indeed inevitable. If one is wrapped 
 round with illusions, as William was, there is nothing for
 
 180 Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. 
 
 it but that life should rudely strip them off. But far 
 better is it if, by early training, pure and true, we can 
 avert such harsh necessity. Accordingly in " Wilhelm 
 Meisters Wanderjahre," a pendant to the "Apprentice- 
 ship," Goethe sets forth an ideal of education for children 
 which shall serve, as far as may be, to make them true 
 men, sane, vigorous, frank, laborious, helpful to them- 
 selves and to others, clear-souled, and, therefore, clear- 
 sighted, reverential, and religious. Above all else 
 reverence which Shakespeare names " the angel of the 
 world " presides over their spirits ; reverence for what 
 is above us, reverence for what is around us, reverence 
 for what is beneath us ; and, arising from these three 
 reverences, the fourth and last self-reverence. All 
 selfish isolation is rendered as impossible, in this school 
 of education, as it is unnatural. In union with his 
 equal, each boy grows up into a man, who, a service- 
 able member of the great community of men, can 
 courageously meet life and death.
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 II. GOETHE AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 1 
 
 IN his relation to the thinkers and poets of young 
 Germany who were coming to manhood in his elder 
 years, Goethe has been compared by Heine to a 
 venerable oak, which with its great boughs over- 
 shadows and for a time checks the growth of the 
 woodland saplings. Bitter murmurs, he says, began 
 to be heard against this majestic king of the forest. 
 To the extreme right of religious orthodoxy was united 
 in opposition to Goethe the extreme left of the Revolu- 
 tion. Those who held by the old faith were afflicted 
 because they could not find in the tree-trunk one niche 
 sanctified by the image of a saint, and because the 
 dryads all undraped, with their heathen witcheries, had 
 here their haunt ; and, like St Boniface, these people 
 would have rejoiced to level to the ground with some 
 consecrated axe the old enchanted oak. Those who 
 held by the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were 
 angry because they could not appropriate it as a tree of 
 liberty, nor even construct from its timber a barricade. 
 " In truth," goes on Heine, " the tree was too high ; 
 they were not able to plant on its summit the bonnet 
 
 1 An Address delivered by the writer as President of the English 
 Goethe Society, in Westminster Town Hall, June 28, 1889. 
 
 181
 
 1 82 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 rouge and dance the carmagnole at its foot. The 
 public in general, however, honoured the old oak 
 because it stood erect in lordly independence, because 
 it filled the whole world with its perfume, because its 
 branches rose so majestically to the sky that it seemed 
 as if the stars were only the golden fruits of this 
 wondrous tree." 
 
 We cannot plant the bonnet rouge on the tree-top ; 
 and yet Goethe belonged to the century of Revolution, 
 and was, as much as any man, a child of his own time. 
 In considering his relation to the revolutionary move- 
 ment critics have erred by fixing their attention too 
 exclusively on those works of Goethe which deal in a, 
 polemical or critical spirit with the Revolution, as it 
 manifested itself with sanguinary violence in France, dr 
 was propagated by its missionaries in the neighbouring 
 countries. These works are indeed worthy of attention, 
 and we shall do well to give them their place a minor 
 one among the creations of his genius. But the 
 Revolution which has changed the face of Europe was 
 not confined to France, nor did it begin its work in the 
 year 1789. Republican Paris discredited the Revolu- 
 tion by madness and crime, and prepared the way for 
 a gigantic military tyranny. The disastrous orgies of 
 anarchy were in no sense inevitable, except as shipwreck 
 is inevitable when the crew is mad with strong drink 
 and a blinded helmsman steers for the boiling surf. But 
 Robespierre and Marat, Hebert and St Just, were not 
 the true representatives of the European revolution ; 
 they were only its madmen or its bandits. The great 
 movement which they and such as they misrepresented
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 183 
 
 and deformed was, as its apologist Mr Frederic Harrison 
 has lately said, a movement of the human race towards 
 a completer humanity. Adam Smith and John Howard, 
 Turgot and Condorcet are names more important in the 
 history of the advancing movement of the human mind 
 in the eighteenth century than those of the brigands 
 and assassins who betrayed, robbed, and strangled 
 freedom and justice. That movement, indeed, in its 
 inner spirit was, as its apologist has asserted, an evolvu- 
 tion rather than a revolution. It aimed at much more 
 than political liberty, at much more even than social 
 reform ; it aimed at freedom for the thinker intel- 
 lectual liberty ; at the emancipation of the artist from 
 barren rules and worn-out conventions ; at a return to 
 nature, a simplification of life, a fuller deploying of the 
 emotions, a more complete development of all the powers 
 of our manhood. And who will question that Goethe 
 bore a part, and no inconsiderable part, in the great war 
 of liberation ? 
 
 But before 1 7 8 9 the poet of " Goetz " and " Werther " had 
 passed through his revolutionary period of destruction, if 
 he ever cared to destroy, and had set himself actively to 
 the work of constructing, to the work of reconciling. 
 "Goetz von Berlichingen " had been a cry for freedom, 
 such freedom as the natural man by his generous but 
 rude instincts, and his spontaneous but rude sense of 
 justice may attain. The central figure, after whom that 
 play is named, is a vigorous and noble child of nature. 
 He is tough and brawny as our English Robin Hood ; a 
 lover of free air, and if a draught of wine cannot be had, 
 the stream will satisfy his needs ; joyous of temper ;
 
 184 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 ruling his followers by the bonds of personal loyalty and 
 affection ; not overbearing in prosperity ; undepressed 
 in adverse circumstances, except when all things darken 
 towards the close ; merciful to the poor ; bold against 
 the tyrant; a man, as Brother Martin describes 'him, 
 whom princes hate but to whom the oppressed throng ; 
 a promise-keeper ; loyal to the Emperor ; a lover of his 
 wife ; bound to his fellows by the bonds of faithful 
 comradeship. And all this virtue of his is unlearned 
 by rule or rote ; it is native to his soul. In his own 
 perceptions and his own will lies the initiative of his 
 deeds. Kule and precedent he scorns, and under God 
 and the Emperor he knows no lord or master save his 
 own sense of right. When his head falls back in death 
 it is with the cry, " Freedom ! freedom ! " upon his lips. 
 In point of form also the drama " Goetz von Ber- 
 lichingen " was an assertion of independence. But the 
 freedom of the artist was more expressly maintained 
 in the " Prometheus." The great shaper of statues, the 
 moulder of man and woman, acknowledges no other 
 almighty and immortal Power above him than time, 
 which shall subdue the Olympians. And when his 
 brother Epimetheus urges compliance with the will 
 of Zeus, and predicts that the gods will give him a 
 place upon Olympus from whence he may rule the earth, 
 if only he will submit to their authority, Prometheus 
 rejects with disdain the thought of acting as deputy for 
 another. No ; let each keep his own. 
 
 " Epimetheus. And how much then is thine 1 
 Prometheus. The circle my activity doth fill 
 Nor more nor less than this."
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 185 
 
 In his essay of 1772 on German Architecture, Goethe 
 describes the artist as a demi-god who breathes the 
 breath of his own spirit into his creations ; schools and 
 doctrines can but trammel him ; in order that art may 
 be living it must needs be " characteristic ; " and 
 characteristic art must spring directly from the inward, 
 individual, independent genius of the artist. 
 
 But in due time Goethe puts himself in many ways 
 under discipline. When Prometheus reappears in the 
 " Pandora," written some four-and-thirty years later than 
 the drama and monologue which bear his name, how 
 different is the conception of the great artist and patron 
 of humanity ! He has sunk into the utilitarian toiler ; 
 a vigorous master-smith, content to forge serviceable 
 weapons of war, and fearing not a little those visions of 
 ideal beauty, which, arising smoke-like from the casket 
 of Pandora, may draw away his workers in iron from 
 their appointed task. The Titans, declares Eos in the 
 closing words of the fragment, may make a large 
 beginning ; but to lead to everlasting good and immortal 
 beauty is the work of the gods. Not by the storm of 
 passion such is the teaching of Goethe's allegory 
 can true beauty in art be attained ; not by this, but by 
 clear and solemn thought inspired by purified emotion. 
 Phileros, the son of Prometheus, must rise from the sea, 
 with all his grosser ardours purged away. Epimeleia, 
 the daughter of Epimetheus, must rise ennobled from 
 the flames, before they can be wedded in the Temple of 
 Peace, when Pandora shall have returned to earth, 
 restored in joy to her rejuvenated husband. 
 
 Goethe's years of Titanism were past before the
 
 1 86 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 earthquake began ^to rumble in revolutionary Paris. 
 He had inherited from his father a sense of order and 
 method which could not fail in time to assert itself. 
 We know how in his elder years it was a happiness to 
 him to arrange his scientific and artistic collections in 
 the way which best exhibited their meaning. When 
 the boy Mendelssohn played for him, Goethe requested 
 that the musical pieces might be given in a chrono- 
 logical sequence. We are told that he was exact and 
 neat even in the folding of a letter. And the ordering 
 of his external possessions was only the projecting out- 
 wards of what constantly went on in his mind. He 
 tabulated his facts, methodised his ideas, endeavoured to 
 introduce order into his feelings, aimed at bringing each 
 observation, each thought, as he himself would express 
 it, under its proper rubric ; trusting all the while that 
 the one spirit of life within him would animate and 
 give unity to the accumulated items, and that the result 
 would be no lifeless classification but an organic whole. 
 He had uttered his cry for freedom in " Goetz " and in 
 " Prometheus." But he had learnt that true freedom for 
 the individual comes not through tumult of passion, not 
 through anarchy of will, not through the vague and 
 infinite longing of a Werther, but through wise limita- 
 tion, through intellectual clearness and order, .through 
 purity of feeling, and through activity within a definite 
 sphere. The Revolution, we are told, was a movement 
 of the human race towards a completer humanity. 
 Goethe, if any man of the eighteenth century, aspired 
 towards this . completer humanity; but he thought it 
 was to be attained, if at all, by patience and discipline,
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 187 
 
 by love and toil, not by the intoxication of intellectual 
 abstractions qualified by the intoxication of the guillotine. 
 His public services to the State, his scientific studies, 
 and his feeling for art as matured during his sojourn in 
 Italy, alike indisposed Goethe for sympathizing with 
 the revolutionary spirit in France. He had learnt, from 
 his own experience as a public functionary, how much 
 can be effected by a steadfast effort at reform and 
 improvement, apart from violence. He had in a great 
 measure put aside the tasks and the joys which were 
 dearest to him in order that he might devote himself to 
 the concerns of the State. He had set himself to revive 
 the mines at Ilmenau ; to plan and superintend public 
 buildings in Weimar ; to see that the roads were not 
 swamps and hollows, but fair ways of passage ; to inspect 
 the public domains, and perform the duties of an en- 
 lightened steward or land agent ; to reform the finances 
 by constant care and the most watchful economy ; to 
 regulate the War Department, softening as far as it lay 
 in his power the harshness of military discipline, and 
 lessening the burden which the common people bore. 
 He had undertaken all this, and effected much ; nor did 
 he neglect the interests of art, for while his time and 
 strength permitted he endeavoured to elevate and 
 purify the dramatic performances in the Weimar theatre ; 
 while at Jena he busied himself in the affairs of the 
 university, and made such effort as he could towards a 
 complete system of school reform. " Goethe," said his 
 keen if friendly critic Merck, " is all-important and all- 
 directing, and everyone is content with him, because he 
 serves many and injures none. Who can resist the
 
 i88 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 disinterestedness of the man ? " Goethe took things up 
 where he found them, and tried by close attention to 
 principles and to details to make things better. He 
 did not start from the year One, nor lay down laws for all 
 mankind, nor hatch a series of brand-new constitutions, 
 nor expect the millennium. He could not be an opti- 
 mist, for he knew something of the nature of man ; but 
 a meliorist of the most earnest and practical kind Goethe 
 was. Among many good works of his perhaps the best 
 was that he helped to form the Grand Duke's character, 
 so that from a crude and passionate youth Karl August 
 grew to be a wise and beneficent ruler ; but it does 
 not appear that at an}' time Goethe had a desire to 
 serve humanity by cutting off the Grand Duke's head. 
 
 His scientific studies led him in the same direction ; 
 they taught him to expect much from a gradual evolu- 
 tion ; they taught him to believe that the way of 
 natural development is not a way of violent cataclysms. 
 Goethe's discovery of an intermaxillary bone in man 
 may seem to have only a remote connection with his 
 feeling towards the French Revolution ; but his joy in 
 that discovery was part of the happiness with which 
 he contemplated the external universe as a great 
 harmonious whole, as an eternal process moving on, 
 free from convulsive interruption and lawless change ; 
 and his contemplation of nature as a harmonious whole 
 governed by law predisposed him for trust in evolution 
 rather than revolution in the affairs of men. His 
 theory that the skull is only a modified vertebra, his 
 theory of the metamorphosis of plants, his preference 
 for the Neptunian over the Plutonic hypothesis in
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 189 
 
 geology, are tokens of an intellect which loved to trace 
 out harmonies and connections and order in nature ; 
 and such an intellect is little pleased by the presence 
 of catastrophes in the history of society. 
 
 It is, indeed, under the similitude of a geological 
 catastrophe that Goethe, in his Rabelaisian fragment, 
 " The Travels of the Sons of Megaprazon," describes the 
 huge convulsion in France. Pantagruel, in the fourth 
 book of Rabelais' extraordinary work, embarks on ship- 
 board to visit the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, and on 
 his voyage makes acquaintance with certain strange 
 islands. In Goethe's unfinished romance of the early 
 Revolution days, Pantagruel's descendants, the six sons 
 of Megaprazon, each endowed with his own peculiar 
 gift of craft, wisdom, beauty, strength, persuasive 
 speech, inquisitive skill, sail for the Rabelaisian islands 
 of Papimany and Pope Figland, which have curiously 
 changed in character since the epoch of the Reformation. 
 From an inhabitant of Papimany the voyagers hear of 
 strange occurrences in the neighbouring island of 
 Monarchomany. This land of monarchy, in the first 
 intention of the allegory, obviously means France. It 
 had been one of the most famous and beautiful islands 
 of the Papimanian Archipelago. The palace of the 
 king, a building of superb dimensions, was planted 
 upon a lofty promontory. Hard by were rocky heights, 
 beautified by art, and adorned with all flower and fruit- 
 bearing trees, whereon stood the splendid mansions of 
 the aristocracy. The country generally was fruitful, 
 and was tilled by a vigorous peasantry ; but by a law 
 of the island these tillers of the fields were forbidden
 
 190 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 ever quite to satisfy their hunger with the fruits of 
 their toil. The aristocracy suffered much from gastric 
 diseases, but they could always tempt their appetite 
 with every dainty. The king could do, or thought he 
 could do, as he pleased. Unhappily, the island was 
 of volcanic origin, of which there was abundant evi- 
 dence in scoriae, shoots of flame, earth tremors, and 
 boiling springs. The lively temper of the inhabitants 
 seemed to have in it something that betrayed a kinship 
 to this fire. Eecently, earthquakes had been felt, 
 especially where the fields of the labourers adjoined 
 the heights occupied by the dwellings of the nobility ; 
 and at length at this point a volcano made a vent for 
 the subterranean forces. One night the sky seemed 
 all aflame, and the sea was violently disturbed. When 
 morning dawned the island of Monarchomany no longer 
 existed ; it had been split into three fragments, and 
 each fragment, torn from its roots below the sea, went 
 floating hither and thither, like a rudderless ship driven 
 before the winds of heaven. The majestic promontory 
 with its palace had drifted into the dim north-east. 
 Sailors brought reports that the rocky headlands, 
 crowned with noble dwellings, had been observed 
 aimlessly wandering in some wild and distant sea. 
 What had become of the main body of the island, 
 where the humbler inhabitants had lived and laboured, 
 was as yet unknown in Papimany. Such was Goethe's 
 gloomy view of the events in France ; and we cannot 
 wonder that those of his friends who trusted that some 
 day the island might be more fertile than ever it had 
 been before, and that its poor inhabitants might for
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 191 
 
 the first time eat freely of the fruits of the field, 
 were little pleased with this offspring from the earlier 
 and more joyous " Pantagruel." Few, however, will 
 dispute that the subterranean fires still exist in the 
 island, no longer named Monarchomany ; that the vol- 
 cano has from generation to generation been in active 
 eruption, and that the quaking and gaping of the soil 
 may even now justly give rise to grave apprehensions. 
 
 If Goethe's work as a servant of the State and his 
 scientific studies alienated him from the revolutionary 
 spirit and revolutionary methods, so also did his con- 
 victions and feelings with reference to art. " Oeser 
 taught me," says Goethe, " that the ideal of beauty is 
 simplicity and repose ; " but this lesson of his early 
 master was not fully learned until the pupil had studied 
 in Rome, as in the high school of the world. There his 
 vision was calmed and purified ; there his energy was at 
 the highest, and at the same time his repose was most 
 profound. In the presence of the masterpieces of 
 classical sculpture he felt that intellectual sanity and 
 obedience to law produce nobler results in art than 
 eruptive fervours or fantastic caprices of the imagina- 
 tion. In Italy Goethe finally decided in favour of the 
 Olympians as opposed to the Titans. His period of 
 revolt was at an end ; he would henceforth build up, 
 if possible upon true lines, and he would waste none 
 of his strength in destroying. Or if he annoyed dul- 
 ness, hypocrisy, and folly, it should be with his sling, 
 in jest and epigram, as a humorous recreation after 
 earnest toil. In the Hellenism of such works as 
 " Iphigenia," recast from prose to verse in Eome, and
 
 192 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 "Hermann and Dorothea," Goethe was in a certain sense 
 doing the work of the European revolution of the 
 eighteenth century ; he was seeking after a completer 
 conception of humanity ; he was delivering the ideal 
 man alike from the faded fripperies of courtly art and 
 from the violences and sentimentalities of the earlier 
 revolutionary days to which belong his own " Goetz " and 
 " Werther." But the spirit in which these products of 
 Goethe's Hellenism were conceived and executed lay 
 as far removed as is possible from the spirit which 
 could be carried away in sympathy with the fierce 
 and turbid passions of the Parisian demagogues. 
 
 And yet this very Hellenism of Goethe, which 
 opposed itself to all turbulence of passion, had certain 
 points of contact with the French revolutionary move- 
 ment, even in its days of wildest frenzy. The young 
 Republic loved to demonstrate, in somewhat theatrical 
 fashion, its kinship with the republics of antiquity. 
 Altars of liberty and high-priests of the god of nature 
 were to the taste of the time. The actor Talma, as 
 Proculus in the tragedy of "Brutus," appeared no longer 
 in eighteenth- century costume, but wearing a veritable 
 Roman toga. " How absurd he is ! " exclaimed his 
 sister artist, Louise Contat, " he looks like an antique 
 statue ! " The painter David, a deputy for Paris in the 
 Convention, designed ceremonies in the Greek or the 
 high Roman fashion, for the great public functions. 
 His last "words, as he gazed with dying eyes at the 
 engraver's proof of his Thermopylae, expressed a pride 
 in his art as true to the classical ideal : " None but 
 myself could have conceived the head of Leonidas."
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 193 
 
 And the exquisite singer and victim of the Revolution, 
 Andre" Chenier, who dedicated to Louis David his ode 
 Le Jeu de Paume, is the author of poems which, for 
 antique grace and beauty fresh and young, yet withal 
 severe, are unsurpassed even by the Hellenics of our 
 English Landor. 
 
 In truth there was a certain relation between the 
 politics of the Ee volution and its classical or pseudo- 
 classical art. Each tended towards the abstract ; each 
 was an effort towards simplification. A multitude of 
 concrete details, specialities of time and place, were 
 disregarded both in art and in politics, in order that 
 the ideal or abstract man might appear disencumbered 
 of his accidental surroundings. It was not the rights 
 of Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen concerning 
 which the politician declaimed not thege, but the 
 rights of Man. And the artist desired to exhibit 
 typical or representative characters rather than in- 
 dividuals, so that Goethe himself, in " The Natural 
 Daughter," defines neither dramatic place nor time, and 
 refuses to give the persons of his drama any other 
 names than certain general titles. The king, the 
 duke, the count, the monk, the abbess, appear before 
 us ; but in dealing with a work of art we must not ask 
 the questions which have a merely historical interest, 
 What king ? and king of what country ? " The high 
 symbolism with which it is handled," wrote Schiller of 
 this play, " so that all the crude material is neutralised, 
 and everything becomes portion of an ideal Whole, is 
 truly wonderful." But, as in politics, it is easy to 
 advance from useful generalisations to vacuous abstrac- 
 
 N
 
 194 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 tions, so in art, if we abandon what is concrete and 
 individual, it is easy to pass on from what is ideal 
 to colourless and lifeless symbols, nor did Goethe or 
 Schiller always know where lay the true bounding-line 
 of dramatic characterisation. 
 
 But in politics Goethe was almost as little inclined 
 as Burke to adopt the abstract way of thinking. He 
 concerned himself much less about the rights of man 
 than about the needs, especially the intellectual and 
 moral needs, of his own countrymen. And as he felt 
 strongly that each individual makes the most of his 
 powers when he consults his own turn of mind and 
 peculiar character, so he felt with respect to nations. 
 He would capture for the uses of his countrymen what- 
 ever they could really appropriate and assimilate from 
 foreign nations, and he willingly set himself to the task 
 of a translator and adapter from Voltaire and from 
 Diderot ; but he could not tolerate any attempt to 
 Gallicise the German people, and he looked with im- 
 patient scorn on efforts to transplant the revolutionary 
 ideas into a soil to which they were not native. He 
 was a German. He confessed that he often thought 
 with sorrow of the weakness of his country in its days 
 of division ; he confessed that in art and science which 
 belongs to the world he at times found wings to raise 
 himself above such sorrow. But he found his best 
 comfort in his faith that a great future awaited 
 Germany. " I cling to that faith," he said. He con- 
 fidently looked forward to a Germany united in heart 
 and will, while yet the several centres of culture should 
 retain each its own special character. " I am not
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 195 
 
 uneasy," he said a few years before his death, "about 
 the unity of Germany ; our good highroads and future 
 railroads will of themselves do their part. But, above 
 all, may Germany be one in love ! and may it always 
 be one against the foreign foe ! " 
 
 Goethe, however, as all who know anything of him 
 must be aware, though an admirable public servant, was 
 not a political thinker in the highest sense of the word. 
 He was deficient in the historic sense, and the universal 
 culture towards which, like Bacon, he aspired, hardly 
 included the study of political history. The history 
 of science, the history of literature and of art interested 
 him profoundly, but he cared little to follow the career 
 of dynasties, or to investigate the causes which underlie 
 the rise and fall of governments. It often happens that 
 those who are profoundly occupied with what is inward 
 in man, with what belongs to character, acquire a certain 
 degree of indifference to the external machinery of 
 society. And such persons as being free from party 
 passions and on the watch for whatever can aid the 
 intellectual and moral development of men, are by 
 no means the least useful members of the community, 
 and form an admirable reserve power ready to throw in 
 their weight on either side in favour of moderation and 
 good sense. But it is also true that they are liable 
 unjustly to depreciate the importance of the external 
 conditions under which men pass their lives. It 
 seemed to Goethe, as Chancellor Fried rich von Miiller 
 said of him, that an honest and vigorous will could 
 make to itself a path, and employ its activity to 
 advantage under every form of civil society. " Sir,"
 
 196 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 cried Dr Johnson, " I would not give half a guinea to 
 live under one form of government rather than another. 
 It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual." 
 And on another occasion : " They make a rout- about 
 universal liberty, without considering that all that is 
 to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, 
 is private liberty. Political liberty is good only so far 
 as it produces private liberty." There is a portion of 
 truth in this paradox of the sturdy old Tory, who 
 doubtless would have sacrificed several half-guineas to 
 displace the " Whig dogs " from power. Goethe's 
 political indifference did not extend as far as this 
 professed indifference of Dr Johnson. Among the 
 " Venetian Epigrams " we read the following : 
 
 " All the apostles of freedom to me have ever been hateful : 
 
 Each in the end desires licence alone for himself. 
 Would you enfranchise the people ? Up then, and venture to 
 
 serve them ! 
 Ah ! but the danger of that only a trial will show." 
 
 Yet an epigram hard by pleads against any attempt 
 to deceive the multitude, and closes with the words 
 " Only be honest, and you will lead the populace on to 
 humanity." And that Goethe was not indifferent to 
 the intellectual gains which result from political freedom 
 another epigram may suffice to prove : 
 
 " ' These men are mad,' you say of the eager and violent speakers 
 Whom in France we hear declaiming in street and in square ; 
 I too think they are mad ; yet a madman utters in freedom 
 Wisdom's words, while ah ! wisdom 'mid slaves must be dumb." 
 
 Goethe was not indifferent to freedom ; but it seemed 
 to him that most men have some special non-political 
 business of their own to do, which they will probably
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 197 
 
 do well if they attend to it closely, ill if they attend to 
 other things ; and he believed that the country in the 
 long run gains more by each man doing his own work 
 well than by every one doing badly the public work of 
 the nation or of the government. He felt very deeply 
 the" demoralising effect of violent party-spirit, and espe- 
 cially its ill-effects in relation to culture and learning. 
 Addison, writing at a time when the strife between 
 Whig and Tory ran high and a furious party-spirit 
 divided thejiation against itself, proposed that honest 
 men of all parties should enter into an association for 
 the vindication of truth and the defence of merit, to 
 whatever party it might belong. According to the 
 articles of association each member should set his 
 hand to a declaration that as long as he shall live 
 he will call black black, and white white. " And 
 we shall upon all occasions," so ran the declaration, 
 " oppose such persons that upon any day of the year 
 shall call black white, or white black, with the utmost 
 peril of our lives and fortunes." Goethe might serve as 
 patron saint of such a guild as this. In " The German 
 Emigrants " he has represented the disinterested enthu- 
 siasm of one enamoured of French republican ideas in 
 the person of Cousin Charles. His estates are in the 
 hands of the enemy, and yet he cannot hate a nation 
 whose principles he approves and in whose large promises 
 to the world he still confides. Privy Councillor S., who 
 joins the party of which Cousin Charles is a member, 
 has also suffered much from the French invasion. " He 
 had come," says Goethe, " to know the licence of the 
 nation which spoke only of law, and felt the tyranny of
 
 198 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 men who had always the cry of freedom on their lips." 
 But it is his error to view all things in a splenetic way, 
 and to yield up his sounder judgment to passion. He 
 speaks with bitter mockery of young people who are 
 inclined to idealise every object, while Charles is equally 
 severe against men who can tolerate nothing which does 
 not agree with obsolete forms and lifeless precedent. 
 The amiable Baroness would fain keep the peace be- 
 tween the contending parties, but her efforts are in 
 vain ; her old friends leave the house in wrath, and as 
 a last resource she proposes that among those who 
 remain there shall be a general agreement to avoid 
 subjects of dispute, and seek for such pleasant neutral 
 ground as without contention they may occupy in 
 common. And so begins in the midst of the revolu- 
 tionary storms that series of tales which, like the 
 romantic and mirthful stories of the " Decameron " nar- 
 rated in the happy garden while the plague raged 
 outside in Florence, were to withdraw the mind from 
 the troubles, vain fears, vain hopes, and rancorous 
 party-passion of the time. 
 
 But the infection was in the air, and who could 
 escape the fever of the age ? In the " Travels of the 
 Sons of Megaprazon," the symptoms of this malady 
 the "fever of the age" (Zeitfieber), or, as some call it, 
 the "journal-fever" (Zeitungsfieber) are described. 
 " The sufferer all at once becomes oblivious of his closest 
 concerns, mistakes his truest and most obvious advan- 
 tages, sacrifices everything, even his desires and passions, 
 to a notion which has become his master passion. If 
 help is slow to arrive, the notion fixes itself in his
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 199 
 
 brain, and forthwith becomes the axle around which 
 whirls a spirit of blind delusion. The man neglects 
 the business which benefited his domestic circle and the 
 commonweal ; he sees father and mother, brothers and 
 sisters no more." Such is Goethe's diagnosis of the 
 disease from which he saw his friend Knebel suffering, 
 and from the attacks of which Herder and Fichte were 
 not free. Three youths of high and generous temper 
 in our own land, Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth, 
 had their imagination dazzled for a time by what 
 seemed the splendour of the rising sun of liberty ; 
 and assuredly in young men it was a venial error. 
 To hope too boldly of human nature, Coleridge has 
 admirably said, is a fault which all good men have 
 an interest in forgiving. But Goethe was a man of 
 forty ; he had been actively employed within his own 
 sphere during many years in the work of a high-minded 
 reformer, the work of an earnest meliorist ; and who 
 can blame him because he was unwilling to risk the 
 fruits which had been obtained by the sweat of his 
 brow in order to pursue what might prove to be the 
 phantom fruits of a mirage, and perhaps to find him- 
 self at last in a burning waste of sand ? 
 
 It was the affair of the diamond necklace, revealing 
 as it did the depths of baseness and the heights of 
 audacity in France, that first startled Goethe, and 
 stared upon him, as he says, like the Gorgon's head. 
 In his earliest design for a dramatic rendering of the 
 affair, he made the mistake of supposing that the 
 subject could be treated as an opera. Such a theme 
 could not call forth a joyous spirit, and the opera made
 
 2oo Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 no progress. In 1791 he took up his unfinished work, 
 recast it, and produced, in the theatre at Weimar, his 
 prose comedy, " Der Grosskophta." The reception of the 
 piece was not favourable, nor can the fact surprise us. 
 Knaves and dupes are indeed excellent material for 
 comedy, but when their frauds and follies rise to the 
 dignity of an affair of State, and when we see their 
 doings stand forth from a wide and dark historical 
 background, the artist must handle his material some- 
 what in the spirit of our Aristophanic humorist, Carlyle, 
 whose "Diamond Necklace" serves as a brilliant dramatic 
 prelude to his huge farce-tragedy of the " French 
 Revolution." Thus, and thus alone, can the theme 
 be ennobled. Goethe, to afford the spectators some 
 relief from the company of titled thieves, and charlatans, 
 and fools, introduces a feeble love-episode, which fails 
 to interest us. The only piece of human virtue in the 
 play to which our heart gives a prompt response is 
 the obedience to orders of the Swiss guards who, in 
 the garden scene, arrest the grand impostor, and care 
 not a straw for his supernatural pretensions. " Are 
 you aware," asks Cagliostro, rising to the height of the 
 occasion, " that I am the Conte di Rostro, di Rostro, 
 impudent fellows, a foreigner, honourable, and every- 
 where held in honour, a master in the occult sciences, 
 
 one who has power over spirits " at which point 
 
 he is roughly interrupted by the Swiss soldier : " Tell 
 this to our captain, look you, who understands the 
 Italian lingo ; and if you don't walk straight, we shall 
 give it to you right and left in the ribs ; we will show 
 you the way, as he has given us orders." Cagliostro.
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 201 
 
 " You fellows, have you no human understanding ? " 
 Swiss. " He has who gives us our orders." And for 
 once the magician, unable to command the spirit of 
 the rough soldier, thinks it the part of prudence to 
 obey. 
 
 But Goethe's play, although unsuccessful as an acting 
 drama, is interesting in two respects. It gives us a 
 view of the corruption of French society, and especially 
 society of the upper class, in the days which preceded 
 the Revolution ; and it is a very curious and striking 
 study of the arts of the impostor who plays upon the 
 credulity of mankind in what we may call the grand 
 style of charlatanry. We can investigate in the play 
 the nature of that hotbed in which the gigantic mush- 
 rooms of mendacity and folly sprouted and spread ; we 
 see a society in which the very virtue of simple truth 
 seems extinct ; in which there are eager and exorbitant 
 desires, but not the honesty to compass those desires 
 by the slow and toilsome methods of nature. As long 
 as men hold fast by the old truth of experience that 
 in order to have oaks we must plant acorns, they afford 
 no chance to the charlatan ; but when we would fain 
 possess worldly fortune and power, or know the heights 
 and depths of science, or even enjoy the illumination 
 of divine wisdom, and at the same time look for some 
 short-cut to grandeur or wisdom or spiritual illumina- 
 tion, then is the fortunate moment for such a pretender 
 as Cagliostro. At such a moment he becomes, as it 
 were, the incarnation of our own desire for self-decep- 
 tion. The fact is somewhat remarkable that the 
 eighteenth century, which has been named the sceculum
 
 202 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 rationalisticum, the age of enlightenment, when every 
 old belief was cited to the bar of reason to justify its 
 existence, was also towards its close, as Carlyle has 
 said, the very age of impostors, swindlers, and en- 
 thusiasts ; " quacks simple, quacks compound ; crack- 
 brained or with deceit prepense ; quacks and quackeries 
 of all kinds and colours." A cynical observer of man- 
 kind might allege that there is always about the same 
 dose of folly in the human brain, and that when it is 
 not afforded a safe mode of relief in certain time- 
 honoured superstitions, prejudices, and conventions 
 that is, in nonsense which has grown inert or quiescent 
 it takes its revenge by breaking forth in more active 
 and mischievous forms of absurdity. And it is un- 
 doubtedly true that persons who throw away the crutch 
 of tradition, and would fain walk by the aid of reason 
 alone, are often precisely the persons who find their 
 way into the most guarded enclosures of folly. There 
 is a pride and joy in the possession of nonsense which 
 has on it the bloom of novelty, and which is not the 
 common heritage of mankind. 
 
 But, indeed, Goethe's Grand Cophta, Cagliostro, with 
 his " greasy prophetic bull-dog face," is a great artist 
 who can touch the various stops of the human soul, 
 and make it discourse much curious music. He knows 
 how to mingle truth with lies, to appeal to the generous 
 as well as the baser instincts of men, to overawe and 
 to cajole, to assume the air of universal benevolence 
 and superiority to all self-interested passions, while he 
 is in fact devoured by vulgar greeds. And he has 
 learnt the profound truth that the appetite for delusion
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 203 
 
 grows by what it feeds on. He has promised his 
 disciples to reveal to them the Grand Cophta, that 
 mysterious being whose envoy he is ; and when the 
 veil of the awful stranger is removed, behold the greasy 
 prophetic bull-dog face of Cagliostro himself ! Ah, slow 
 of heart ! has he been thus moving among them and 
 watching over them, and have they not known that it 
 was the greatest of all mortals who was in their midst ? 
 The mouths of his dupes, which had gaped for some new 
 wonder, gape delightedly still wider to meet the larger 
 miracle. This is indeed charlatanry in the grand 
 style. Should a political Grand Cophta ever arise in 
 our own or any other country, what serviceable lessons 
 in the art of moral jugglery he might gather from 
 Goethe's play ! 
 
 The " Burgergeneral," written in three days in April, 
 1793, is a dramatic jest, but not without a serious 
 intention underlying the fun and frolic. Goethe found 
 his characters ready-made to his hand in Florian's 
 comedy " Les deux billets," together with the connected 
 French plays and the German adaptations. But 
 Florian's comedy had no relation to politics, while 
 Goethe's " Civilian-General " is designed as a light satire 
 directed against the attempts made to convert the 
 quiet rural population of Germany by means of the 
 evangel of Jacobinism. The newly-wedded George 
 and Rose are the happy peasants of the eighteenth- 
 century stage, contented with rustic toil and rustic 
 love. But Old Martin, the father of Rose, is afflicted 
 with the fever of the age, which some call the 
 "journal-fever." He pores over the latest gazettes,
 
 204 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 and is much concerned on behalf of the oppressed 
 French nation. 
 
 Rose. And when father reads the newspapers, and troubles himself 
 about the affairs of the world, then we press each other's hands. 
 
 George. And when the old man is disturbed because things go so 
 wrong elsewhere, then we draw closer and rejoice that all is so 
 peaceful and quiet here with us. 
 
 Rose. And when father cannot imagine how he will save the 
 French nation from debt, then I say, " George, we will at all events 
 take care that we don't go into debt ourselves." 
 
 George. And when he is beside himself because yonder in France 
 they rob every one of his goods and chattels, then we consult to- 
 gether how we may improve our bit of land, which we think of 
 buying some day with a lottery-prize. 
 
 And the kindly nobleman who is their landlord com- 
 mends the excellent sense of these prudent and happy 
 young people. 
 
 The greybeard Martin, however, is no disciple of this 
 egoistic philosophy of good sense ; and wily gossip 
 Schnaps knows how to play upon the old man's in- 
 firmity to his own advantage. Schnaps has become 
 possessed of the uniform of a French prisoner of war 
 who had died in the neighbourhood, and has found in 
 the poor devil's haversac a bonnet rouge and tricoloured 
 cockade. Bearing these borrowed plumes in his carpet- 
 bag (which carpet-bag in the first representation was 
 one actually picked up on the French frontier by 
 Goethe's servant), Schnaps appears in solemn secrecy 
 before old Martin, and announces that he has received 
 his commission as Civilian-General under the French 
 Republic : for the Jacobin Club had heard of his liberal 
 opinions and secured his adhesion to the cause through 
 the agency of an accredited envoy ; in proof of which
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 205 
 
 assertions, behold the uniform of freedom, sabre, cap, 
 cockade, and besides all these a magnificent pair of 
 mustachios, which it has been decreed every Civilian- 
 General must wear ! The German Revolution is to 
 begin forthwith, and in this very village. There are 
 presently alarms and excursions in the cottage caused 
 by the unexpected return of George, threatening a 
 drubbing to the rogue Schnaps if he be found on the 
 premises. But George withdraws baffled, and Schnaps 
 reappearing from the hayloft resumes his exposition of 
 revolutionary principles, and employs, to honest Martin's 
 dismay, for the purposes of demonstration, the various 
 good things in Rose's cupboard, this standing for a 
 village and that for a fortress, which the learned exposi- 
 tor greedily eyes with intent to devour. The fun as 
 we read this scene seems laborious and overwrought, 
 yet we are told that it went merrily on the Weimar 
 boards. In the end the impostor Schnaps is of course 
 discomfited, and is rudely reduced from his rank of 
 Civilian-General. The whole winds up with a moral 
 address from the amiable lord and landlord, who 
 expresses, perhaps even too plainly for dramatic art, 
 Goethe's own convictions. Let Rose and George con- 
 tinue to love each other, to cultivate their field and 
 tend the house. Let old Martin be proud to know the 
 nature of the soil and seasons and the succession of 
 crops ; as to the political heavens and the signs of the 
 times, it will be enough if he study them on Sundays 
 and feast days. Let each one begin with himself and 
 he will find enough to do ; so he will in the end contri- 
 bute most to the good of all. And for the judge who
 
 206 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 is impatient to unmask the grand Jacobinical con- 
 spiracy, and to punish the offenders this wise moderator 
 has also a word. 
 
 " Be at ease ! unseasonable orders, unseasonable punishments 
 only cause an outbreak of mischief. In a country where the Prince 
 is always accessible ; where the classes and the masses think kindly 
 of each other, where no one is hindered from his proper activity, 
 where sound views and knowledge are spread abroad, there no 
 parties can come into existence. What goes forward in the world 
 will claim our attention ; but the seditious sentiments of entire 
 nations will have no influence. We in our quietude will be thank- 
 ful that we see above our heads a calm heaven, while miserable 
 tempests devastate boundless tracts of country." 
 
 Such was Goethe's lesson of practical wisdom for 
 rural Germany in the days of Revolution. 
 
 Let us not forget that Goethe had himself seen the 
 horrors of an invasion. He had advanced into France 
 with the allies in the autumn of 1792, and had heard 
 the thunders of the cannonade at Valmy. He accom- 
 panied the invading army not as a soldier, but as a 
 student a student of new and profoundly interesting 
 aspects of life. Nor could he in the midst of the 
 turmoil forget those studies in natural philosophy 
 which calmed and fortified his spirit. He was told 
 that once only and that was when he had to part 
 from his " Lexicon of Natural Philosophy " did he shew 
 a peevish countenance, once only did he fail to sustain 
 his friends with wise words or else to entertain them 
 with witty ones. He observed all things in a dis- 
 interested spirit, and did not fail to note the citizen 
 dignity, kindliness, and graceful bearing of the inhabi- 
 tants of the French provinces, maintained even in the 
 presence of the enemy and amid accumulating miseries.
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 207 
 
 " Of such a state of society we can form no conception," 
 he says, " either from the actual condition of our own 
 country, or from its attempts to imitate its neighbours." 
 And with what he describes as the idyllic, Homeric, 
 country life in France Goethe was delighted. All the 
 more deeply therefore did he suffer when he saw how 
 rudely war dealt with the deep affections and strong if 
 simple passions of the cottier and the husbandman. 
 Wordsworth has told in an affecting poem of the tears 
 shed by a strong man as he bore in his arms for sale 
 the last lamb of his dwindled flock. Goethe was an 
 intellectual aristocrat, but his sympathies with the 
 common folk were deeper than those of many who com- 
 pensated for their indifference to the joys and sorrows 
 of men by a zeal on behalf of the rights of mankind. 
 The German invaders did not pillage as they advanced ; 
 they obtained supplies by a convenient and highly 
 moral method of compulsory purchase, giving bills for 
 the value of what they secured upon King Louis XVI., 
 the father of his people. Such a piece of imposition 
 greatly exasperated the people of the towns and villages 
 through which they passed. 
 
 " I myself," Goethe writes, " witnessed a scene which I remember 
 as a most tragic one. Several shepherds, who had succeeded in 
 uniting their flocks, in order to conceal them for safety in the 
 forests, or other secluded places, were seized by some active patrols 
 and brought to the army, and found themselves at first well 
 received and kindly treated. They were questioned as to the 
 several owners ; the flocks were separated and counted. Anxiety 
 and fear, but still not without hope, hovered upon the faces of 
 these worthy people. But when the proceedings ended in the 
 sharing of the flocks among the regiments and companies, while 
 the papers drawn upon Louis XVI. were politely handed to the 
 proprietors, and their woolly favourites were slaughtered at their
 
 208 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 feet by the impatient and hungry soldiers, I confess that my eyes 
 and spirit have seldom witnessed a more cruel spectacle or more 
 profound manly grief in all its gradations. The Greek tragedies 
 alone have anything so purely, deeply pathetic." 
 
 With which scene may be compared for tragic effect, 
 though of a different kind, the march out from Mainz 
 of the conquered. French garrison, as described by 
 Goethe first the columns of infantry, short, black-look- 
 ing men, dressed in rags of all colours, some faces 
 grave and sullen, but all resolute, even in defeat ; then 
 the chasseurs a cheval, their band playing to a slow 
 measure the ominous revolutionary Te Deum, the Mar- 
 seillaise ; " It was impressive and fearful, and a solemn 
 sight when the troopers drew near, long, lean men of 
 somewhat advanced years, whose mien accorded well 
 with the melancholy music ; singly you might have 
 compared them to Don Quixote ; in a body they looked 
 most venerable." 
 
 The strain of the events told upon Goethe, in spite 
 of his efforts to possess his soul in calm. When he 
 visited Pempelfort, almost immediately after the cam- 
 paign in France, his kind friends there, Jacobi and the 
 members of his household, gave him his own "Iphigenia" 
 to read aloud to them in the evening. But he could not 
 endure this work of calm, ideal beauty and unclouded 
 moral feeling. The "QEdipus at Colonus" was then pro- 
 duced. Its lofty sanctity, Goethe declares, was hateful 
 to his mind, hardened as it was by the events of the 
 late campaign. " I could not read a hundred lines of 
 it." More in accord with his mood at this time was 
 that famous satirical beast-epic of the Middle Ages, 
 "Reynard the Fox." Here he found the animal nature of
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 209 
 
 man his greeds, and lusts, and wiles of which he 
 had himself seen and heard too much, represented with 
 a certain cheerful humour. The satire mirrors rather the 
 life in princely courts than the life of the people ; it was 
 in this respect at least a change from what had chiefly 
 occupied his mind. But in modernising the narrative 
 Goethe could not resist the temptation to insert a piece 
 of what he held to be good doctrine for the masses, in a 
 passage not to be found in his original (" Achter Gesang," 
 v. 152 160), a passage which dwells on the madness 
 of men who, in the pride of their self-will, suppose that 
 they can govern or rearrange the world. If each man, 
 he says, could keep his wife and children in order, 
 could hold insolent servants under restraint, could 
 quietly be happy with a modest competency while 
 fools lavish their means, things would improve. But 
 how is the world to amend ? Everyone gives himself 
 up to licence, and would violently compel others to his 
 will, and so we sink deeper and deeper into evil. If 
 this teaching of Goethe's is only a fragment of the 
 entire truth, it is certainly a fragment which has im- 
 portant uses at certain times and seasons of a nation's 
 history. 
 
 ^ In the unfinished drama " Die Aufgeregten," which we 
 might name in English, " Agitators and the Agitated," 
 and which originally bore the title " The Signs of the 
 Times " (die Zeichen der Zeif), is contained not in- 
 deed a complete confession of political faith, but one 
 which more nearly approaches completeness than any 
 that can be elsewhere found in Goethe's writings for 
 the stage. Here the characters are admirably con- 
 
 o
 
 2io Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 ceived, and the partisan spirit is conspicuously absent. 
 The scene is a German village, whose humbler in- 
 habitants have been grievously wronged by the selfish- 
 ness of a deceased lord of the soil and the fraud of an 
 unjust steward. The grandfather of the present count, 
 who is still a child under his mother's wardship, sen- 
 sible of the burdens under which the good folk of the 
 village laboured, had granted them certain generous 
 remissions, and a deed to that effect had been drawn 
 up, but the document has since disappeared ; the copy 
 which exists has no legal force, serving only to make 
 known to the villagers that their privileges have been 
 forfeited. The good count's immediate successor a 
 hard and selfish master would make no concessions, 
 and the iniquitous dues are still exacted. His widow, 
 the countess, fearing to compromise the rights of her 
 son during his minority, has done nothing, although her 
 kind heart prompts her to all that is liberal. But the 
 ideas of 1789 have taken wing and have flown across 
 the Rhine. The surgeon, Breme von Bremenfeld, a 
 worthy man, now well advanced in years, but of 
 infinite energy, and much possessed with a notion of 
 his own fitness to figure on the great political stage, 
 passes the long winter evenings at the pastor's house, in 
 reading the journals which contain the latest news from 
 Paris, in arguing endlessly, and forming plans for 
 effectively asserting the claims of the defrauded 
 peasantry. " What good or ill the French Revolution 
 has done I cannot determine," cries his niece, Louise, 
 a maiden of true German prudence, who sits up to make 
 her uncle's midnight coffee. " I only know that this
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 2 1 1 
 
 winter it has knitted several pairs of stockings for 
 me." 
 
 But the French Revolution, as it appears, has in fact 
 done good, and the good extends to this province of 
 Germany ; for the large-hearted countess has been 
 for a time a resident in Paris, has seen many things 
 there to sadden her and few to make her glad, but has 
 brought back to her German home an ardent resolve 
 that she at. least will add nothing to the accumulating 
 wrongs of the world. " Since I have seen with my own 
 eyes," she says, " how human nature can be oppressed 
 and degraded, but not suppressed or annihilated, I have 
 made a firm resolve to abstain for my part from every 
 act which seems to me unjust, and to express my 
 opinion aloud with reference to such acts in society, at 
 the court, and in the town. I will no longer be silent 
 in the presence of any injustice, I will tolerate no mean- 
 ness under a fine appearance, even though I also were 
 to be decried under the hated name of a democrat." 
 And her wise and trusted friend the councillor commends 
 her resolution. Let her point out the faults of her own 
 class in society ; we can never be quite sure that we are 
 right when we criticise those either of a higher or lower 
 station than our own ; for which reason he, the coun- 
 cillor, being a bourgeois and intending to remain one, may 
 declare that he recognises the great importance of an 
 aristocracy in the State, and that he cannot tolerate the 
 bourgeois vices petty jealousies and envies, blind 
 hatred of rank nourished by a miserable egoism, which 
 pretentiously attacks pretensions, and becomes formal in 
 condemning formalities ; nor will he ever deny that to
 
 212 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 have descended from illustrious ancestors is a real 
 advantage, no, not if they should brand him with the 
 odious name of an aristocrat. 
 
 These two, the countess and the councillor, represent 
 the temper of moderation and good-will in the play, 
 a temper which is alike helpful in noble, bourgeois, or 
 peasant ; and the surgeon's niece, with her practical 
 sense and cheerful disposition, makes a third of the 
 group. Minor personages present the vices, or the 
 mingled vices and virtues of the several classes in 
 society : the young baron, who takes thought only of 
 the frivolous pleasures of an aristocrat without remem- 
 bering that high station has its duties ; well acquainted 
 with the amusement of love in idleness, and impertinent 
 in his advances to persons of lower rank and another 
 sex than his own ; the countess's daughter, self-willed, 
 proud, domineering, but energetic, ardent, and capable 
 of acts of capricious kindness ; having the good qualities 
 and the defects of her caste ; it is she who, by her 
 prompt and determined action, discovers the where- 
 abouts of the concealed document ; and, on the other 
 side, the worthy but not over-wise surgeon Breme, who 
 organises the peasant's revolt ; the clerical tutor to the 
 young count, devoured by the discontent and envy of 
 the baser Radical ; and the rustic folk who follow the 
 leadership of the great Breme von Bremenfeld, and for 
 whose political capacity Goethe had as little respect as 
 had Shakespeare, though, like Shakespeare, he recog- 
 nises the fact that a good heart may often go with a 
 very poorly-furnished head. Unhappily, the play is a 
 fragment ; but though the entire fifth act and some
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 213 
 
 earlier scenes are wanting, we possess materials by 
 which we can trace the whole of the intended action. 
 We have particularly to regret the lack of a mirthful 
 scene in which, on the suggestion of the baron, almost 
 all the dramatis personce were to form themselves into 
 a mock National Assembly, each playing a characteristic 
 part, and humorously setting forth the views of rival 
 parties on the great events of the day. 
 
 If we have cause to lament that " Die Aufgeregten " 
 is unfinished, much more must we lament that only a 
 single play exists of the vast trilogy in which Goethe, 
 at a later date, designed to embody all his maturest 
 views and reflections with reference to the French 
 Revolution. " The Natural Daughter," founded but 
 with a free hand on the " Memoires historiques de 
 Stephanie Louise de Bourbon-Conti," is but the exposi- 
 tion of the great theme, and unfortunately Goethe's 
 memoranda with reference to the scheme of the later 
 plays are so slight, that in many places they leave ample 
 room for the rival conjectures of contending critics. 
 The play which we possess presents as the background 
 of the intrigue that forms its plot a view of monarchy 
 toppling over into anarchy. The later plays would have 
 exhibited the wild confusion of the time, and the 
 creation from chaos of a better order. Through all 
 the high-hearted heroine would have moved as one 
 connected with the court through her parentage and 
 her devotion to the throne, and at the same time 
 connected with the people through her union with 
 the worthy republican magistrate, who, to save her 
 from banishment and the persecution of a brother,
 
 214 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 had given her his loyal affection and the name of 
 wife. 
 
 " The Natural Daughter " in which Goethe's Hellenism 
 tends perhaps in some respects to an ideality proper to 
 sculpture alone, has been described as marble-smooth 
 and marble-cold. The remark of Goedeke, that the 
 coldness is more apparent than real, seems to me to be 
 just. But however this may be, there is one work of 
 Goethe's, the happiest offspring of his period of Hel- 
 lenism, which no recent critic, unless it be the late 
 M. Scherer, has described as cold that most charming 
 of epic-idylls, " Hermann and Dorothea." Here once again 
 the French Revolution, with the invasion of Germany 
 by the armies of the Republic, forms the background. 
 The betrothed of Dorothea, her first love, had been 
 drawn into the revolutionary maelstrom, and had 
 perished in its mad vortex. She herself is a fugitive 
 from her home, driven forth as an exile by the armies 
 of freedom and fraternity. In the book of the poem 
 which bears the name of the " Muse of History," the 
 magistrate tells in vivid words of the high hopes in- 
 spired by the ideas of 1789, and of the melancholy 
 blight which had fallen upon these hopes : 
 
 " Who will deny that high within him his heart was uplifted, 
 And that his pulses throbbed with a freer and purer emotion, 
 When he beheld the sun uprise in his freshness and glory ; 
 When of the Rights of Man he heard as the wide world's 
 
 possession, 
 Heard of Freedom, Equality glorious names and inspiring ? " 
 
 But soon the sky was overcast, the rain descended, 
 and the floods came. A vile crew strove for the
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 215 
 
 mastery, men too base to be authors of anything that 
 is good : 
 
 ".Murderers one of another, and foul oppressors of new-found 
 Neighbours and brethren, commanding their ravenous hordes o'er 
 the frontier." 
 
 And so this once enthusiastic believer in the new 
 gospel of the age has come almost to despair of human 
 virtue. 
 
 But the author of the poem of " Hermann and 
 Dorothea " does not despair. The poem is throughout 
 ennobled by the presence of goodness, courage, hope, 
 and love. Iphigenia, the priestess-daughter of Aga- 
 memnon, is an admirable figure ; her spirit is one of 
 pure and high devotion ; yet I am not sure that I 
 do not love better the daughter of the people, Dorothea, 
 noble in her large simplicity, with her strong, sweet 
 German heart, sound to the inmost core, as she tends 
 the feeble mother and new-born infant, or holds her 
 water-jug to Hermann's lips, or flushes with honest 
 indignation at the imagined affront to her maiden 
 dignity in the guest-chamber of the Golden Lion, or as 
 she stands at last by the side of her betrothed making 
 his life so full of worth. In the background we see the 
 wild storm of the Revolution ; but here all is blessedness 
 and peace. To build up one happy home, Goethe would 
 say, after all serves the earth better than to discourse 
 infinitely of rights of man or to enforce the doctrine of 
 fraternity at the point of the bayonet. May this better 
 way be the German way ! Such is the closing aspira- 
 tion of the poem :
 
 2i6 Goethe and the French Revolution. 
 
 " Thus she spoke, and she placed the rings by the side of each other, 
 And the bridegroom spoke with a manly accent of feeling : 
 All the firmer amidst this universal disruption 
 Be Dorothea the tie ! And thus we will hold and continue 
 True to each other, and still maintain the good that is given us ; 
 For the man who in wavering times has a mind ever wavering 
 Only increases the evil and spreads it wider and wider ; 
 But who firmly stands he moulds the world to his posture. 
 Not the German's work should it be, this fearful commotion 
 Onward to urge, or to reel in his courses this way and that way. 
 ' Here we take our stand.' Such be our word and our action ! " 
 
 And thus in the strength and love of the German 
 home, Goethe sees the foundation and the root of 
 German society. 
 
 In 1807, after the peace of Tilsit, the members of 
 the ducal family, parted for a season by the events 
 of the Napoleonic war, were reunited, and for the 
 occasion was written one of the most admirable of 
 Goethe's later poems, and one which is as wise in 
 thought as it is beautiful in expression the Vorspiel 
 of that year. Germany at this date might almost be 
 described as lying in ruins. But Goethe did not in- 
 dulge in weak lamentations. He had faith that 
 Germany might be built up anew ; not by doctrinaire 
 abstractions ; not by beginning with the human race 
 and descending from it to patriotism, civic virtue, 
 domestic loyalty, and individual self-culture : not thus, 
 but by the reverse process : by a gradual ascension 
 from the individual and the family to the city and 
 to the state, and in the end perhaps to universal 
 humanity; by each man and each woman doing the 
 duty that was nearest to him, and gradually widening, 
 if possible, the sphere of this beneficent activity. It
 
 Goethe and the French Revolution. 217 
 
 was a modest but a sound programme. Do not, says 
 Goethe, despise little things. 
 
 " For in little things as in the greatest 
 Nature ever works, the human spirit 
 Works, and each alike is a reflection 
 Of that primal Light from highest heaven 
 Which invisible all the word illumeth." 
 
 Who then is the true patriot ? He answers Goethe, 
 who begins by ordering his own house, who builds up 
 himself first, in order that by-and-by, with other worthy 
 assistants, he may help to build up the commonweal. 
 
 " Er ist Patriot, und seine Tugend 
 Dringt hervor und bildet Ihresgleichen, 
 Schliesst sich an die Reihen Gleichgesinnter. 
 Jeder fiihlt es, Jeder haf s erfahren ; 
 Was dem Einen frommt,' das frommet Allen." 
 
 Such is Goethe's unpretentious, but not useless lesson 
 in political wisdom.
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 III. GOETHE IN ITALY. 1 
 
 His visit to Italy may be regarded as a capital event 
 in Goethe's intellectual life. Several aids towards the 
 fuller understanding of this memorable passage in the 
 story of his life have appeared in recent years. In the 
 Hempel edition of Goethe's works the " Italianische 
 Eeise " is edited by Diintzer with that writer's exem- 
 plary diligence and erudition. He has included among 
 his illustrations of the .text many important letters 
 belonging to that period written by Goethe to his 
 secretary Seidel, to the Grand Duke, to Friedrich von 
 Stein, and others. An excellent monograph, narrative 
 and critical, entitled " Goethe en Italic," has been written 
 by a French author, M. Theophile Cart. Ingenious 
 essays on two projected works belonging to the Italian 
 period, the " Nausikaa " and the " Iphigenie in Delphi," 
 are included in the posthumous collection of studies, 
 " Aufsatze iiber Goethe," by that admirable critic and 
 historian of literature, whose untimely loss we deplore, 
 Wilhelm Scherer. The second volume of the publica- 
 tions of the Goethe Gesellschaft presents us with the 
 first fruits of the examination of the Goethe archives 
 in diaries and letters from Italy to Frau von Stein 
 and Herder, from which, a quarter of a century after 
 
 1 An Address delivered by the writer as President of the English 
 Goethe Society, on June 28, 1888, in the Westminster Town Hall. 
 
 218
 
 Goethe in Italy. 219 
 
 they had been written, portions of the "Italianische Reise" 
 were formed. 1 Here is ample material for study ; but 
 in essentials the impression which we had obtained from 
 Goethe's own account of his Italian sojourn remains 
 unchanged. If in his delightful book there be a 
 certain element of " Dichtung " as well as of 
 " Wahrheit " the " Dichtung " is in no sense opposed 
 to the " Wahrheit," but is rather its development or 
 expression in a higher sphere of feeling and of thought. 
 It is exactly one hundred years since Goethe re- 
 turned from Italy to his German home. On June 18, 
 1788, he re-entered Weimar after an absence of nearly 
 two years. This evening we celebrate the centenary 
 of the close of that memorable epoch in the history of 
 Goethe's intellectual development. He himself has 
 spoken of the Italian journey as if it were no less 
 than the beginning of a new life. " I reckon a second 
 birthday," he writes, "a true new birth from the day 
 that I entered Rome." And again : 
 
 " The new birth, which is re-moulding me from centre to 
 surface, is still in process. I thought indeed that there was some- 
 thing to be learnt here ; but that I should have to take so low a 
 place in the school, that I should have to forget so much that I had 
 learnt, or rather completely iinlearn so much, is what I had not 
 suspected. Now, however, I am convinced of this, and have 
 wholly yielded up myself ; and the more I am obliged to re- 
 nounce myself, the happier I am. I am like an architect, who 
 would build a tower, and finds that he has laid a bad foundation ; 
 he becomes aware of the fact betimes, and willingly pulls down 
 what he had raised above the earth, endeavours to broaden and 
 
 1 I may also note as valuable the lectures of Hermann Grimm, and his 
 article "Goethe in Italien," in his " Fiinfzehn Essays," and the introduc- 
 tion to Schuchardt's edition of the " Italianische Reise." The edition of 
 that work, illustrated by Julie von Kahle, with an introduction by 
 Diintzer, I have not seen.
 
 220 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 improve his ground-plan, to strengthen his basis, and already re- 
 joices in anticipating the assured stability of his future erection. 
 Heaven grant that, on my return, the moral gains which this life 
 in a larger world has brought to me may be discernible ! Yes, 
 indeed, the moral sense as well as the artistic is being renewed 
 within me." 
 
 So Goethe himself felt, and the students of his 
 life and the critics of his works have generally ad- 
 mitted the fact that the man who left Home in 1788 
 was not the same man who entered Eome in 1786. 
 Some have maintained that then for the first time his 
 genius found its true direction. Others, and among 
 them M. Scherer, have dated from the Italian journey 
 a gradual cooling of his temperament, and a marked 
 increase in what they term his artistic egoism. 
 
 What is the truth in this matter ? Was so 
 great a change really effected in Goethe during the 
 two years in Italy ? If so, what was the nature 
 of that change? And did loss or gain preponderate? 
 
 If any one thing more than another may be indicated 
 as the secret, the open secret, of Goethe's life, it is the 
 double nature of the man, and the need felt by him of 
 adjusting to each other the halves which made up this 
 complex nature. On the one hand he was a poet, with 
 a poet's ardent temperament, caught at times in the 
 toils of his own passions, following lures of his imagina- 
 tion, imposing his own moods upon external nature, 
 seeing objects in colours projected on them from his 
 own emotions. On the other hand he was from the 
 first a man of reason and reflection, one who felt the 
 need of self-mastery and self-regulation, who valued 
 order in things external, and still more order in his
 
 Goethe in Italy. 221 
 
 thoughts and harmony in his feelings, one resolved not 
 to be imposed on by his moods, but if possible to see 
 things as they are. We know how in his writings Goethe 
 is profoundly interested in two opposite types of char- 
 acter the man of emotions and of imagination, and 
 again the man of reflection and self-control ; we 
 remember how it pleases him to set the one over 
 against the other, Werther set over against Albert, 
 Wilhelm Meister set over against Jarno and Lothario, 
 Tasso set over against Antonio, Edward and Ottilie set 
 over against Charlotte and the Captain. Goethe repre- 
 sents in his art that which he best understood from his 
 own experience, and thus all his writings, as he himself 
 said, had first been lived, all are fragments of a great 
 confession, all, as he declared of " Tasso," are bone of his 
 bone and flesh of his flesh. The contrast between these 
 two types of character is in some degree also the con- 
 trast between the earlier Faust, who, gazing on the 
 setting sun, longs for wings on which to follow the 
 ebbing flood of light 
 
 " I hasten on, his beams eternal drinking, 
 The Day before me, and the Night behind, 
 Above me heaven unfurled, the floor of waves beneath me, 
 A glorious dream ! " 
 
 between this Faust and the elder Faust who needs no 
 wings and whose whole desire is to rescue a piece of 
 solid earth from the encroaching sea as a region for 
 habitation by a race of free and energetic men : 
 
 " Let man look round him here ! Here plant his foot ! 
 The world is to the Active never mute. 
 We know but what we grasp. What need have we 
 Of thoughts that wander through eternity ? "
 
 222 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 Such an enthusiasm of well-defined, beneficent 
 activity as that of the aged Faust suffices well, 
 Goethe assures us, for the needs of earth, and pre- 
 pares a man, if anything can prepare him, for his 
 future " Himmelfahrt," that ascent which the spirit of 
 Faust experiences under the guidance of contemplative 
 wisdom, innocence, and love, from circle to circle of 
 the celestials. 
 
 Nothing, perhaps, is expressed by Goethe with a 
 deeper accent of sincerity than the desire for inward 
 harmony which possessed him. And the pain of moral 
 dissonance and the need of moral reconciliation often 
 form the motive of his poetical creations. Earlier 
 poetry represents heroic persons contending against 
 the forces of external nature, contending against their 
 fellows or vainly struggling with fate. There are seas 
 to be rowed through and justling rocks, monsters to 
 be tamed, robbers to be bound or slain, cities and 
 champions to be subdued. Or by some impious deed 
 committed, it may be unaware, the immitigable wrath 
 of a God is aroused, and through sire and son the 
 inexorable doom must be accomplished. Even in 
 Shakespeare's tragic dramas how strong is the stress of 
 external circumstance. The love of youth and maiden 
 in Verona grows upon the hatred of the rival houses, 
 and is brought to an untimely end by that hatred. In 
 what a world of chicanery, fraud, espionage, secret crime 
 Hamlet moves, and how terrible a duty is imposed on 
 him by fate ! In what strong toils of serpentine craft 
 and malice the heroic Othello is enfolded ! But in 
 Goethe's dramatic studies of character it is not so, or
 
 Goethe in Italy. 223 
 
 at least it is not so in the same degree. 1 An inward 
 malady is studied ; it is life itself which ails. Why 
 must Werther die ? Because measureless desire within 
 the limits of a human breast makes him its victim : 
 could he but regulate that desire, and bring his inward 
 being into harmony, he were saved. Who has brought 
 Faust to that pass in which he must needs summon 
 Mephistopheles to his aid ? Who but Faust himself, 
 since he can set no bounds to his passion for knowledge 
 and his thirst for the joy of life. Man, as Goethe 
 expressed it, is the offspring of two worlds, the finite 
 and the infinite, and hence the riddle of his existence. 
 But if we cannot solve that riddle in its deepest mean- 
 ings, we can at least meet it with a provisional, practical 
 solution. We can strengthen and build up the regu- 
 lative side of our nature ; we can calm and clear our 
 sense of sight, train our will, seek the infinite by press- 
 ing on every side into the finite, and lose ourselves and 
 find ourselves again by pure, disinterested attachment 
 to the external objects which are most in harmony with 
 our nature. 
 
 " The Sorrows of Werther " gave literary expression to 
 the eighteenth century reaction against the tyranny of 
 the understanding ; it rendered into art -all the excess 
 of sensibility, the new feeling for nature, the revolt 
 against formality and convention proper to the move- 
 ment which in England produced " Clarissa " and " The 
 Sentimental Journey," which in France produced the 
 " Nouvelle Heloise," and which in Germany became 
 known as the " Sturm und Drang." But though one- 
 
 1 See Bernays : " Der Junge Goethe : " Einleitung, xxxviii.-xlii.
 
 224 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 half of Goethe's complex nature furnished material for 
 the character of Werther, Goethe himself, as Mr Lewes 
 truly says, was no Werther. Endowed with extra- 
 ordinary sensibility, he had that within him from the 
 outset which in due time would regulate his sensibility, 
 and bring it into obedience to a law of reason. When 
 a child, and tortured by the irritation which follows 
 smallpox, he held down his hands lest he might dis- 
 figure his face by a touch. At another time he invited 
 his schoolfellows to beat him with rods in order that he 
 might acquire the power of mastering bodily pain. A 
 little later he fell in love with Stoicism, and took 
 Epictetus for his master. To conquer a giddy head he 
 regularly climbed the Strasburg spire, and sat on the 
 narrow resting-place at the summit, looking down on 
 the abyss. What else, indeed, does Goethe do in 
 " Werther " but climb to a giddier height, from which 
 others had flung themselves down to destruction, and 
 there study his own sensations with a view to mastering 
 them, as he afterwards studied the battle fever when, in 
 the French campaign, he went under fire at the out- 
 work of La Lune ? Goethe was no Werther, and yet it 
 would be untrue to say that the sentimental fever 
 described in his novel was not in his blood. In his 
 blood it certainly was, as the letters to the Countess 
 Stolberg, of a later date than " Werther," suffice to 
 prove : 
 
 " ' On this day of last week,' he writes to her, ' Lili was here. 
 And at that time I was in the fearfullest, gayest, sweetest state in 
 all my life (I might say). O Gustchen, why can I not tell anything 
 about it 1 Why 1 How I looked at the moon and the world through 
 the hottest tears of love and everything rapturous surrounded me.
 
 Goethe in Italy. 225 
 
 And in the distance the forest-horn and the noisy mirth of the 
 wedding guests. Gustchen, since the storm I am not at rest, but 
 quiet quiet for me, and only fear another tempest which in the 
 most peaceful days is ever gathering, and good-night, Angel. 
 Barest, rarest maiden ! " 1 
 
 This outbreak is quite in the Werther manner, and it 
 is evident that when the letter containing this passage 
 and other letters in the same tone were written, Goethe 
 was still either actually subject to the sentimental fever 
 or at least in love with the sentimental style. 
 
 At this time Goethe was in his twenty- seventh year. 
 Within a few weeks he had begun the ten years' resi- 
 dence at Weimar which preceded his Italian travels. 
 These ten years of service at Weimar gave his character 
 its adult shape and set. As he advanced towards mid- 
 manhood, the reflective and regulative side of his nature 
 naturally gained in strength. The public duties under- 
 taken by him acted as a counterpoise to his passions 
 and imagination. It was necessary to turn his attention 
 to matters which were indeed of great importance, but 
 which had no peculiar affinity for his genius ; it was 
 necessary to master a mass of practical details connected 
 with affairs of the state; and in order to do this Goethe 
 was obliged to direct his mind outwards, and become, 
 for the time at least, disengaged from his 'private 
 emotions and imaginings. While superintending the 
 revival of the Ilmenau mines, while acting on the 
 Commission of Buildings, while studying the subject of 
 finance, while presiding over the War Department and 
 the Department of Public Roads, he was in truth 
 
 1 " Der Junge Goethe," iii. 107; and translated in Mr E. Bell's " Early 
 and Miscellaneous Letters of Goethe," p. 257.
 
 226 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 delivering himself from the sentimental fever and 
 widening the basis of his moral being. " I will 
 manage the War Department well," Goethe notes in 
 his diary (February 1, 1779), "because in business 
 I have no imagination at all ; I will originate nothing 
 on my own account, but only rightly know and faith- 
 fully order that which is." Much of this public work 
 never ceased to be irksome to Goethe, but some of it 
 led him on to the pursuit of scientific knowledge, a 
 pursuit conducted in his own peculiar way, which was 
 not altogether that of a man of science. The creator of 
 Werther, with his tears and his sighs of limitless desire, 
 can now spend his days collecting or arranging minera- 
 logical specimens, and his nights, not in reading Ossian 
 beneath the moon, but in writing an essay on granite. 
 Botany and comparative anatomy now interest him pro- 
 foundly, and everywhere in external nature he finds 
 himself in the presence of order, law, constant uni- 
 formities, which he delights to trace ; and in following 
 the processes of nature he comes to venerate her 
 harmonies and to acquire something of her calm. 
 Thus, by ways laborious and sometimes even painful, 
 Goethe, during these first ten years at Weimar, was 
 gaining in the power of reflection and self-control ; was 
 submitting to the limitations of the intellect and the 
 will, learning at the same time to work strenuously 
 within those limits ; was becoming capable of pure and 
 disinterested observation ; was delivering himself from 
 the errors of his own temperament and passions. 
 
 But how did it fare during these years with the poet 
 in Goethe ? The oppression of public business beyond
 
 Goethe in Italy. 227 
 
 question weighed heavily on the poet. It was not 
 always that he could feel as when he wrote in his diary 
 of January 13, 1779 : " The pressure of business is very 
 beautiful for the soul; when the burden is gone the play 
 of the spirit is the freer, the enjoyment of life is quick- 
 ened." More often he painfully recognises the fact that 
 the life of the man of affairs is fatal to the continuity of 
 imaginative effort. It was a period of great designs inter- 
 rupted, and, if not foiled, at least held in check. "Faust" 
 and " Egmont " still remained fragments ; " Wilhelm 
 Meister " was written in part and was laid aside; "Tasso " 
 was conceived and was carried as far as the second act ; 
 " Iphigenia," indeed, was completed, but in a form which 
 was afterwards rejected as unsuitable for the matter ; 
 that poem of large and singular design, "Die Geheimnisse," 
 stood still when little more than the introduction was 
 written. Obviously there was a danger that the poet 
 in Goethe might be overborne by the statesman and 
 public servant or there would have been such a danger 
 if the emotional and imaginative side of Goethe's nature 
 had not been kept constantly quick and stirring through 
 the ardour of his feeling for Frau von Stein. During 
 ten years she was a centre for his hopes and fears, his 
 happiness and his troubles, a representative for him of 
 the ideal, a rallying point for his emotions and his 
 imagination. 1 Goethe's lyrical feeling during this period 
 
 1 The latest expression of opinion which I have noted, that of Erich 
 Schmidt, on the once disputed question of the nature of Goethe's relations 
 with Frau von Stein, is that of all competent students of Goethe's life in 
 recent years. " No one now need get angry," he says, " over any formal 
 bills of indictment against Frau von Stein, they have descended voiceless 
 to Orcus."
 
 228 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 is to be found less in the pieces of verse written on rare 
 occasions than in his daily letters to his beloved friend. 
 What her influence upon him was may be understood 
 from reading the " Iphigenia." She was both law and 
 impulse to his heart, at once quickening all his emotions 
 and calming their turbulence, and setting strict bounds 
 to their advance. She instructed him in refinements of 
 feeling which were beyond the comprehension of the 
 passionate young man who had flung himself into the 
 boisterous pleasures of the Court during the first wild 
 days at Weimar. And yet it must be frankly said that 
 the relation with Frau von Stein was not and could not 
 be soundly and securely based ; it necessarily lacked all 
 the quietudes and trustful ease of domestic life ; 
 it suffered from a constant tendency to an unhealthy 
 strain. 
 
 It seems as if I had forgotten the subject of Goethe 
 in Italy ; but that subject has from the first been before 
 my mind. We have seen how the great affair of 
 Goethe's life was his need of inward harmony ; that 
 this harmony was difficult to attain in his case, because 
 of the existence within him of powers which to a certain 
 extent were rival powers on the one hand his passions 
 and imagination, the passions and imagination of a poet, 
 and on the other hand his intellect and will such an 
 intellect as cannot be satisfied until it sees things 
 as they are, unstained by the cross-lights of passion 
 or temperament, a will set upon gaining the power 
 of complete self-control and self-regulation. And we 
 have seen how during the years at Weimar, which 
 preceded Goethe's sojourn in Italy, these two sides of
 
 Goethe in Italy. 229 
 
 his nature stood apart each from the other ; how public 
 duties tended to cultivate and strengthen the regulative 
 side of his character, and yet that these duties were 
 often irksome and alien to his truer self ; how, on the 
 other hand the influence of Frau von Stein cultivated 
 and refined his passions and imagination, and yet that 
 the relation to Frau von Stein was necessarily, to a 
 certain extent, an unnatural and unhealthy relation. 
 We may now put the question again, What new 
 development in Goethe's genius and character was 
 effected during his two years' residence in Italy ? 
 
 In answer to this question I would say : Nothing 
 essential was added to Goethe's nature by his Italian 
 travels, but that was the season when he came into 
 full and happy possession of himself; then for the 
 first time he was at harmony with himself and with 
 the world around him ; then for the first time the 
 two parts of his complex nature were organically 
 united, and instead of contending within him for 
 mastery, helped each the other, so that his imagina- 
 tion and passions became regulated, ordered, and 
 rational, and his self-control and his methods of the 
 intellect became almost like a happy instinct; then 
 first for his mind order became one with freedom. 
 
 His own delightful book, the " Italianische Reise," 
 tells us of the various objects which made each its 
 due impression on his spirit the Graeco-Eoman 
 sculptures, the frescoes of Michael Angelo, the tape- 
 stries after Raphael, the Church ceremonies, the life 
 of the people, the sun and sea of Naples, the vacant 
 streets of Pompeii, the fires and rumours of Vesuvius,
 
 230 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 the Sicilian bays and headlands. It would be an 
 interesting study to trace the succession of his vary- 
 ing moods, and to inquire how these varying moods 
 stand related to his abiding personality. Here, from 
 the point of view which we have taken, it is less 
 important to note the objects seen by Goethe than 
 to consider how he saw them. The temper and 
 habits of mind, the intellectual methods which he 
 had acquired in the course of his public duties and 
 his scientific pursuits at Weimar, were now directed 
 upon objects not alien to his genius but in closest 
 kinship with that genius. The seriousness and stead- 
 fastness with which he had applied himself to the min- 
 ing operations at Ilmenau, to finance, to the duties 
 of the War Department and the Department of 
 Public Boads, were now turned to account in the 
 study of things for which a poet and lover of 
 beauty could care with his whole heart. The habits 
 of pure, disinterested observation which he had found 
 to be essential in his efforts to master the affairs of 
 State were now employed in the world of the im- 
 agination. Had Goethe visited Rome ten years 
 earlier we should probably have received some remark- 
 able records of a sentimental journey, like the earlier 
 " Letters from Switzerland," which were represented 
 as having been found among Werther's papers after 
 his death. 1 The writer would probably have allowed 
 his imagination to play around all the romantic 
 memories of the capital of the world. But of senti- 
 
 1 The " Letters from Switzerland," of 1779, are written in a very 
 different spirit, and show how much Goethe had gained in the interval.
 
 Goethe in Italy. 231 
 
 ment or of phantasy and romance there is not a 
 word in the " Italian Travels." In the Viceroy's 
 palace at Palermo Goethe made the acquaintance of 
 a lively little Maltese gentleman, who had had some 
 acquaintance with Weimar in former days. Having 
 asked after old friends, he added : " And how is the 
 person who, full of youth and vivacity when I was 
 there, in himself made rain and fine weather ? I 
 forget his name, but he is the author of ' Werther.' " 
 After a little pause, as if he were considering, Goethe 
 replied : " I am the person about whom you are 
 kindly inquiring." With the most manifest tokens 
 of astonishment, the little Maltese drew back and 
 cried : " There must have been a great change then." 
 "Oh, yes," rejoined Goethe, " between Weimar and 
 Palermo I have undergone many a change." Among 
 the many changes which took place between the 
 Werther period and that of the Italian Travels, 
 perhaps none was more important than the change 
 from that habit of mind which led him to project 
 his own moods over all external objects to the habit 
 of mind which enabled him to submit patiently to 
 the object and receive from it a pure and true im- 
 pression. 
 
 Although it was happiness to Goethe to escape from 
 the strange miscellany of occupations which made up 
 his public duties at Weimar, he travelled, not for rest 
 or pleasure, but for fresh toil and effort. He speaks 
 with a touch of contempt of those tourists who bring 
 back with them, in return for their fatigue and money, 
 nothing but a mere / have seen it. His own feeling
 
 232 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 was not that of a sight-seer, but of a scholar going 
 through his classes. He quotes with approbation the 
 words of Winckelmann : " In Rome, I believe, is the 
 high school for all the world, and I also have been 
 purified and tried in ic." And at a later date, when 
 Rome had grown familiar to him, he himself writes : 
 "I have entered too big a school to get speedily 
 through my classes. My sense of art, my small talents 
 must here go through the whole course and become 
 matured, else I shall bring you back but half a friend, 
 and the old longing, labouring, groping, crawling will 
 go on anew." When looking back at the four months 
 of his earlier residence in Rome he could declare that 
 not a moment had been lost ; that, he adds, is much 
 to say, but not more than the fact. In order the 
 better to escape distractions and concentrate himself 
 he travelled incognito, and avoided society, except that 
 of the group of friendly German artists (including 
 among them the charming Angelica Kaufmann) whom 
 he felt to be aids to his progress. " People would like 
 to entice me here, too," he writes (Aug. 18, 1787), 
 " out of my stillness and methodic arrangements, and 
 draw me into the world. I guard myself as well as 
 I can promise, postpone, slip out of it, promise again, 
 and play the Italian with the Italians. ... I am as 
 shy of ladies and gentlemen as of some sore disease ; 
 I feel ill as often as I see them driving." 
 
 In such self-concentration and solitude Goethe's study 
 of the public buildings and statues and paintings of 
 Rome was a noble excitement of all his faculties, but 
 an excitement in which his faculties worked so har-
 
 Goethe in Italy. 233 
 
 raoniously that it put on the aspect of a blissful calm. 
 We feel in every page of his " Italian Travels " how 
 his whole nature was quickened and exalted by the 
 presence of beautiful things as it had never been 
 before, and at the same time we feel that he possessed 
 his soul in a profound composure such a peace as 
 we see in a river when, swift and crystalline, it moves 
 forward with all the weight of its waters, meeting no 
 obstacle, but under strict control of its restraining 
 banks. " According to my fashion," he writes (Feb. 
 27, 1787), "I am quite still and calm." And again: 
 " Here we come into a very great school, where one 
 day says so much that we dare say nothing of the day. 
 Yes, indeed, it were wise if, tarrying here for years, 
 one should preserve a Pythagorean silence." And 
 again, at Naples : " To pass through such a countless 
 multitude, for ever restless and in motion, is indeed 
 something remarkable and salutary. How they all 
 stream to and fro, and yet each finds his own way 
 and aim. In so great a crowd and bustle I feel myself 
 perfectly calm and solitary; the greater the turmoil of 
 the streets, the more I am at rest." If we look at 
 the portrait of Goethe painted by his friend Tischbein, 
 we shall see in his face the calm which possessed his 
 spirit, and that earnestness without severity which at 
 this time characterised him. He rests on an over- 
 turned Egyptian obelisk, and gazes forth over the 
 Campagna ; and through his eyes we read the union 
 of energy and repose in a great spirit. " Goethe," 
 wrote Tischbein to a friend, " was already known to 
 me fairly well through you and other friends, and the
 
 234 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 descriptions which I had heard of him. I found him 
 what I had imagined him to be. Only his great calm 
 and tranquillity I could not have conceived before- 
 hand, nor the power which he possesses of everywhere 
 rinding himself at home. What especially delights me 
 in him is the simplicity of his life. He asked of me 
 only one little bedroom in which he could work un- 
 disturbed, and a frugal meal, which I could easily 
 procure, so content is he with a little. There he sits 
 now, working at his "Iphigenia " till nine o'clock ; then 
 he goes out to see the great works of art. He is seen 
 by few people of distinction, and receives no visitors 
 except the artists." 1 
 
 At first there seemed something overwhelming and 
 almost terrible to Goethe in the greatness of Rome 
 not, indeed, its material greatness, but the vast out- 
 put of human intellect and will here made manifest. 
 "Can man," he asks, "ever make himself equal to all 
 that here surrounds him of the noble, the vast, and 
 the cultured ? " As we find the sea deeper the farther 
 we advance into it, so, Goethe declares, was it with 
 him and the study of the city. " I have lately," he 
 writes, "been tossed hither and thither by mighty 
 forces, and, as indeed is natural, I do not always know 
 where I am standing." But he had learnt at Weimar 
 how to deal with an oppressive weight of facts requiring 
 to be gradually mastered and thought into clearness, 
 and now he could apply his method to this mass of 
 new sensations and delights. On revisiting what at 
 first had filled him with amazement, he felt the amaze- 
 1 December, 1786, " Aus Tisclibein's Lebeu und Briefwechsel, " p. 39.
 
 Goethe in Italy. 235 
 
 ment pass away, or at least dimmish, and an intelligent 
 sympathy and a purer perception of the true value of 
 objects take its place. 
 
 In Goethe's method of study the first principle was 
 that nothing should be allowed to stand between him- 
 self and the individual, concrete object ; no tradition, 
 no second-hand criticism, no doctrinaire generalisation. 
 He required an immediate impression as the foundation 
 of all knowledge. Not that he was slow to make use 
 of what others have accomplished for our benefit ; he 
 read his Winckelmann devoutly, and placed perhaps 
 too much reliance on his guide-book by Volkmann ; 
 nor did he fail to turn to good account the culture of 
 his artist friends. But he held that real knowledge 
 did not begin until he had placed himself in direct 
 contact with the objects. " I will not give myself any 
 rest," he says, " till nothing remains a mere word or 
 tradition for me, till everything becomes a living con- 
 ception." And again : " In art I must at least attain 
 this that everything shall be direct, intuitive know- 
 ledge, that nothing remain a tradition or a name." But 
 in order to see things in their truth and purity it is 
 necessary to come to them without prepossession, or 
 prejudice, or self-will; it is necessary to yield with a 
 wise passiveness, or rather with a strenuous submission, 
 to the object while it works upon us. Goethe speaks of 
 himself as having acquired only lately the power of see- 
 ing things, for formerly he saw in and with things what 
 actually was not there ; and he valued his attempts at 
 drawing from the antique, from the life, and from land- 
 scape, chiefly as a means of learning to see all that is in
 
 236 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 an object and nothing that is not in it. For such pure 
 observation he felt that he needed a certain strictness 
 and severity in dealing with himself. " The best thing 
 was this," Goethe writes, " I had no self-conceit, no pre- 
 tension, nor did I make any conditions or demands when 
 I came here. And now I press forward until nothing 
 remains for me a name, a word. Whatever is accounted 
 beautiful, great, or venerable I will see and apprehend 
 with my own eyes. But this is impossible without 
 myself reproducing the objects. I must now set myself 
 to the gypsum heads. The right method is being pointed 
 out to me by artists. I hold the reins of all my powers 
 in hand as far as possible." In such words as these we 
 discern that union of a resolved will and an intellectual 
 method with the play of imagination and a passionate 
 but well-directed ardour, which is characteristic of the 
 Italian period in Goethe's life. 
 
 The art which surrounded him in Rome favoured and 
 supported the tendencies of his mind. It represented a 
 union and balance of human faculties which he had not 
 found in the art of the north. It was ideal art, but it 
 was not fantastic, for here intellectual sanity was always 
 present, directing and controlling the play of the imagi- 
 nation. It seemed inexhaustible and infinite in the 
 perfection of its beauty, and yet the bounding limit was 
 as strict as fate. All was subject to a law which could 
 not be transgressed, yet through obedience to law the 
 ancient artists seemed to have attained the happiest 
 freedom and a more liberal and blither life than was 
 known at any later period of the world's history. The 
 idea and the form in which the idea was embodied were
 
 Goethe in Italy. 237 
 
 here in perfect equipoise. Was it not because the old 
 artists had got, as it were, upon the track of nature, and 
 so their creations came to possess the life and reality and 
 inevitableness of the works of nature, having grown from 
 within outwards with as much freedom as a flower or a 
 shell, and yet all the while being under the control of 
 law ? " These high works of art," writes Goethe, " are 
 also the highest works of Nature, produced by men in 
 accordance with true and natural laws. All arbitrariness, 
 all self-conceit is banished ; here is necessity, here is 
 God." And yet, as if the contrast between classical art 
 and the wild inventions of northern mediae valism had 
 quickened within him a new sense of the grotesque, it 
 was in the noble surroundings of the Borghese Gardens 
 that Goethe wrote the most wildly fantastic scene of 
 " Faust " that in which are represented the mad 
 humours of the witch's kitchen. 
 
 It must be admitted that to some extent Goethe's 
 feeling for classical art was imperfect. " The greatest 
 men, "he wrote in the "Elective Affinities," "are connected 
 with their own century always through some weakness." 
 Goethe judged of art as a man of the eighteenth century, 
 as one who distinguished imperfectly between sculpture 
 of the Greek classical period and the copies reproduced 
 by the later artists for their Roman patrons. Nor did 
 "Goethe perceive clearly that in the eighteenth-century 
 work of such artists as his friend Angelica Kaufman n 
 work which won his admiration there was a large 
 element of pseudo-classicism, a modern sentiment, or 
 even a modern sentimentality draped in antique 
 costume. Goethe did not transcend his age, but he
 
 238 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 helped to carry it forward to more exact knowledge 
 and a truer feeling than were accessible to himself. 
 And in turning from the study of antique sculpture 
 to the study of the living human form he was assuredly 
 on the way to rectify whatever errors he may have in- 
 curred. " Now at last," he writes from Rome in August, 
 1787, "the Alpha and Omega of all known things, the 
 human figure, has taken hold of me, and I of it, and I 
 say, ' Lord, I will not let thee go until thou bless me, 
 though I should wrestle myself lame.' " By such means 
 he was training his eye to precision of form, and the 
 results of his education in definiteness and exactness 
 can be traced in the fine outline of such poems as "Alexis 
 und Dora" and "Hermann und Dorothea." 
 
 I have said that the first principle of Goethe's method 
 of study in Italy was to come into direct contact with 
 the object. " My habit of seeing and taking all things 
 as they are," he writes, " my fidelity in letting the eye 
 be my light, my entire renunciation of all pretension, 
 have again come to my aid, and make me in my 
 quietude happy in the highest degree." Yielding him- 
 self thus to the object, he was really preparing to spring 
 forward and seize its motive and meaning. He could 
 not be satisfied until he had submitted these new 
 sensations, this new delight to the intellect, and had 
 discovered their secret. Indeed the delight became a 
 real trouble unless he could decipher and interpret for 
 himself its inward significance. " What at first furnishes 
 a hearty enjoyment, when we take it superficially," he 
 writes, " often weighs on us afterwards most oppressively, 
 when we see that without solid knowledge the true de-
 
 Goethe in Italy. 239 
 
 light must be missed." The first overpowering sensa- 
 tion caused by objects which were supremely beautiful 
 or sublime gave place in due time to an intellectualised 
 enjoyment ; and then, as soon as he could interpret 
 aright his new mental experiences, Goethe, with that 
 sense of the value of order which was now habitual with 
 him, set to work to arrange in his mind these precious 
 acquisitions, so that from a troublesome crowd of sensa- 
 tions he created in a short time a cosmos, and found 
 that again there was space in his brain for further 
 acquisitions. 
 
 " ' For the last fortnight,' he wrote a little before his departure 
 from Eome for Southern Italy, ' I have been moving about from 
 morning to night ; I am searching out everything I have not yet 
 seen. I am also viewing for a second and a third time the most im- 
 portant objects, and they are all arranging themselves in something 
 like order in my mind ; for while the chief objects are taking their 
 right places, there is space and room between them for many a less 
 important one. My enthusiasm is purifying itself and becoming 
 more definite, and now for the first time my mind can rise in un- 
 troubled sympathy to the height of the greatest and purest crea- 
 tions of art.' " 
 
 And several months later, when again in Rome, he 
 expresses himself in a similar way. " Rome is now 
 quite familiar to me, and I find hardly anything in it 
 that overstrains me. Little by little the objects have 
 lifted me up to themselves. I enjoy with ever more 
 purity and ever increasing knowledge : good fortune 
 will still help me further forward." 
 
 Two pleasant examples may be found in the " Italian 
 Travels " of the mode in which Goethe, by applying his 
 intellect to objects which seemed to have no special 
 interest for him, discovered in them sources of a real
 
 240 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 and deep interest. He was present in Rome during 
 two successive springs on the occasion of the carnival. 
 The carnival, seen for the first time, impressed him as 
 a folly unworthy of the venerable city ; he only wished 
 that he might never witness it again. " Nothing," he 
 says, " can be written about it, though one may talk 
 of it with some amusement ; there was incredible 
 tumult, but no heartfelt joy. The sky, so infinitely 
 pure and beautiful, looked down nobly and innocently 
 upon the mummeries." On the second occasion the 
 thought occurred to him that this popular festival, like 
 every other recurring portion of the web of life, must 
 have its definite history and meaning. This thought, 
 he tells us, reconciled him to the hubbub ; he viewed 
 it as a significant product of nature and as a national 
 event, and in this sense it acquired an interest for him. 
 " I observed minutely the course of the follies," he 
 writes, " and how everything ran its round in a certain 
 prescribed form and propriety." The idea of the car- 
 nival he found to be that of a festival given by the 
 people to themselves ; and he was pleased to conceive 
 it as no cataclysm of popular life, but as a continuation 
 or, rather, the acme of the usual Sunday and festival- 
 day recreations. " It is nothing novel, nothing foreign, 
 nothing unique; but attaches itself quite naturally to 
 the general Roman style of living." To this thought, 
 which reconciled Goethe to the carnival, we owe that 
 curious study of all its features which was amongst the 
 earliest published records of his visit to Italy. Again, 
 when at Naples, he determined that he would not allow 
 the swarming population to remain for him a vast,
 
 Goethe in Italy. 241 
 
 unintelligible, meaningless phenomenon ; rather he 
 would patiently decipher its meaning. He had read 
 in his guide-book that in Naples there are from thirty 
 to forty thousand idlers, and he conjectured that this 
 was very probably a northern view of things which 
 takes every one for an idler who is not drudging all 
 day long. Accordingly he determined to investigate 
 the matter on his own account ; and hence we possess 
 an admirable study of the popular life of Naples in its 
 manifold forms and varieties. He found as the result 
 of his investigations that no one was idle, not even the 
 lazzaroni ; that they worked, however, not simply to 
 live, but to enjoy ; that they were most shrewdly 
 industrious, not to make riches, but to live free from 
 care. Having thus discovered the meaning of that 
 amazing phenomenon of the swarming streets, Goethe 
 could contemplate it with a certain intellectual satisfac- 
 tion and moral sympathy. 
 
 Such studies as those of the Roman carnival and the 
 Neapolitan populace are really the work of a great 
 critic, in which intellect and imagination operate to- 
 gether, each reinforcing the other. And as he winds 
 himself into these social phenomena and, so to speak, 
 lives himself into them, so also by the aid of intellect 
 united with imagination penetrating the phenomena of 
 external nature, he made the discovery, which is con- 
 nected with his Sicilian expedition, that all the several 
 parts of a plant are but various modifications of the 
 same primary form which is best seen in the leaf. Mr 
 Hutton happily compares the method in which Goethe's 
 mind worked in making this discovery with the method
 
 242 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 by which he winds himself into the open secret of the 
 amphitheatre at Verona. Such an amphitheatre is 
 made in order to give the people the imposing spectacle 
 of themselves, to amuse the people with themselves. 
 " If anything worth looking at happens on a flat 
 space, the hindmost seek in every possible way to get 
 on higher ground than the foremost ; they get on 
 benches, roll up casks, bring up carriages and plank 
 them over, cover any hill in the neighbourhood, and 
 thus a crater forms itself. If the spectacle is often 
 repeated such a crater is artificially constructed." 
 Thus, as Mr Hutton expresses it, Goethe tits his mind 
 so close to the objects he studies, that he not only 
 takes off a perfect impression of their present condition, 
 but becomes conscious of the secrets of their tendency, 
 and has often a glimpse back into what they have 
 been. 1 He does more indeed than fit his mind to the 
 objects ; he lives himself, as I have said, into them, 
 and thus grows aware of the forces which animate them, 
 and which have moulded their forms. " If I can only 
 attain to so much of any object as a finger's tip, I shall 
 be able by hearing and thinking to make out the whole 
 hand." These words were written just before Goethe 
 left Naples for Sicily, and they look like an unconscious 
 prophecy of what came to him in the public gardens of 
 Palermo, when the vision of his Nausicaa vanished 
 before the idea of the primordial plant. 
 
 Such a critical method as Goethe's is as nearly as 
 possible akin to creative genius. " Properly, I ought 
 to devote the rest of my life to observation," he wrote 
 1 "Essays, Theological and Literary," ii. 83.
 
 
 Goethe in Italy. 243 
 
 from Naples, "I should discover much that would 
 enlarge man's knowledge." But he could not be a 
 mere critic and student, however admirable ; his 
 nature compelled him to be also a producer, and 
 there were times when he felt himself to be so satur- 
 ated with knowledge that he could receive no more : 
 " I wish now to know nothing more, but to produce 
 something, and only practise my faculty." And to 
 produce, he was well assured, must prove the best 
 possible road to yet higher knowledge. Thus the 
 creative and critical forces of Goethe's nature alter- 
 nately had mastery within him, or worked together to 
 a common end. He was indeed enlarging the ground- 
 plan of his existence, and laying the bases more solidly 
 and securely. " I have so much to bring up and 
 assimilate," he wrote, " that I see no rest before me 
 for ten years." 1 
 
 This last word, " I have so much to bring up and 
 assimilate," a birthday comment of Goethe's, suggests 
 an explanation in part of what has been spoken of as 
 the cooling of his genius, a refroidisscmcnt which is 
 alleged to have commenced during his residence in 
 Italy. " Ce qui est certain," says M. Scberer, " c'est 
 qu'il s'y est refroidi." If a swift military advance is 
 to be made, a small body of troops lightly equipped 
 will be pushed forward ; unquestionably no experienced 
 commander will hope to push rapidly forward a grand 
 army, with infantry, cavalry, heavy and light artillery, 
 
 1 " Und wenn ich auch em isolirtes, privates Leben fiihren sollte, habe 
 ich so viel nachzuholen und zu vereinigen, dass ich fur zehn Jahre keine 
 Ruhe sehe." 28 August, 1787.
 
 244 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 baggage, and commissariat. But Goethe's mind, from 
 his fortieth year onwards, refused to send forward a 
 single faculty on an adventure, unsupported by the 
 rest ; it was one of those minds like Wordsworth's 
 cloud, " which moveth altogether if it move at all." 
 He could not now perhaps strike as rapidly at a single 
 point as he could in earlier years ; his advance covered 
 a wide area, and was made in force. To some persons 
 it seemed as if he had lost his early ardour, but in 
 reality the massive ardour of his mid manhood contained 
 a body of heat incomparably greater than that which 
 sufficed to produce a " Goetz von Berlichingen " or a 
 " Sorrows of Werther." It is only a superficial observer 
 who looks for the evidence of passion in tears and sighs. 
 One who considers the matter more deeply will per- 
 ceive in Goethe's studies in optics studies not alto- 
 gether fortunate or well-directed a passion as strong 
 and deep as that which dictated his letters to Frau von 
 Stein ; it is, however, an intellectualised passion, and 
 takes the name, not of love-making, but of investigation 
 and research. And yet Truth is a mistress who requires 
 a heart's whole devotion, and sometimes, as was the case 
 with Goethe in his investigations of the laws of light and 
 colour, she is a coy mistress, who eludes her pursuer in 
 the end. 
 
 Assuredly in the delightful pages of the " Italianische 
 Reise " we shall find no trace of that cooling down of 
 Goethe's temperament of which M. Scherer speaks. It 
 shows us how Goethe's enthusiasm was purified and 
 made definite ; but at the close of the two years he is 
 as ardent as when he first passed the frontier, and
 
 Goethe in Italy. 245 
 
 rejoiced to hear the speech which he had always loved 
 now living on the lips of men and women. During his 
 later residence in Rome he devoted himself to the 
 artistic study of the human body, and he speaks of it 
 with the same capacity for a fine wonder and admiration 
 in which he had written at an earlier time of Michael 
 Angelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, or of his first 
 Roman love, the Juno Ludovisi ; " The interest of the 
 human figure now abolishes every other. I had felt it 
 indeed before now, and always shrank from it as one 
 shrinks from the dazzling suu, knowing, too, that all 
 study of such a subject outside Rome was vain." These 
 are not the words of a disenchanted enthusiast. The 
 slow processes of drawing from the life only made this 
 wonder and admiration more definite, while it educated 
 Goethe's eye, and served in a measure the purposes of 
 intellectual analysis, his mind at every moment working 
 along with his hand. From all his attempts at drawing, 
 however, from all experiments in plastic art experi- 
 ments which decisively proved his incapacity for any 
 high success from these, and from all analytic pro- 
 cesses of mind, he finally returned to the pure contem- 
 plation of beauty a contemplation now lifted far above 
 all gross or crude astonishment. In the narrative which 
 he has given of the last month in Rome he describes 
 this mode of calm, illuminated contemplation as the 
 highest result and ultimate attainment of his sojourn in 
 the world of art : 
 
 "In Rome, where we are constantly in the presence of the 
 plastic art-works of the ancients, we feel as in the presence of Nature, 
 that we are compassed about by the Infinite, the Unsearchable. 
 The impression of the sublime, the beautiful, however great a gain,
 
 246 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 disturbs us ; and we wish to embody our feelings and our percep- 
 tions in words. For this, however, knowledge, insight, conception 
 are necessary. We begin to separate, to distinguish, to arrange, and 
 this too we find, if not. impossible, in the highest degree difficult. 
 We therefore at last fall back on contemplative admiration which is 
 pure enjoyment." 
 
 Thus Goethe's word to Herder, "1 am ever the 
 new-born child" came true in a strange and beautiful 
 sense of the word, when through knowledge and thought 
 and intellectual analysis he reached an altitude of 
 feeling where these were no longer needed, and where 
 simple intuition, a frank and happy gaze at objects, 
 like that of a wide-eyed infant, filled his spirit with 
 complete content. 
 
 The greatest gain, however, which came to Goethe 
 during this period in Italy was not that his eyes rested 
 with a fine delight on forms of ideal beauty, but that 
 here and now he entered into full possession of himself. 
 " In Rome," he writes, " I have for the first time found 
 myself, for the first time come into harmony with my- 
 self and grown happy and rational." It was not merely 
 that he learnt to distinguish what was appropriate to 
 his nature and what alien to it ; nor was it merely that 
 he was able to see whither he and his faculties were 
 definitely tending, that he quenched his erroneous 
 desire to excel in plastic art, and turned that passion 
 for plastic beauty to account in his proper pursuits as 
 a poet. The inward harmony now attained by Goethe 
 meant before all else that the reflective and regulative 
 side of his nature, which he had been painfully building 
 up during the ten years at Weimar, came at last into 
 happy relation with the imaginative and emotional side
 
 Goethe in Italy. 247 
 
 of his nature that his feelings were not dulled by his 
 judgment, but were rendered sane and wise ; that hia 
 imagination was inspired and controlled by reason ; that 
 his will no longer toiled after achievements in an alien 
 province ; that his faculties were at length fully organ- 
 ised and each subservefl the ends of the complete 
 man. 
 
 I find a happy symbol of this union of Goethe's 
 powers in that drama of his which belongs more than 
 any other of his dramatic works to the period of his 
 sojourn in Italy. The " Iphigenia in Tauris " was re- 
 handled in Rome, and its form was elevated from prose 
 to verse ; but in essentials the " Iphigenia " belongs to 
 the years at Weimar, and translates into drama the 
 calming and reconciling influence of the spirit of Frau 
 von Stein on the troubled spirit of Goethe. But " Tasso" 
 is in great measure a direct product of Italy. Now 
 conceive to yourselves two opposite types of men one 
 who finds his be-all and end-all within the compass of 
 his own heart and brain a narrow compass, and yet 
 containing infinite desires, and aspirations, and strivings 
 towards thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ; who 
 broods on his own passions and is therefore weak and 
 restless ; who lacks a clear outlook on the external 
 world ; who is therefore suspicious of his fellows ; yet 
 who thrills to the touch of sympathy or love. Conceive 
 such a type of man, and now conceive his opposite : one 
 who has subdued his self-will, his turbulent desires and 
 dreams and extravagant thoughts ; who turns his eye 
 outward on the broad, substantial world ; who binds 
 his own life to the life of his fellows by social action ;
 
 248 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 who is therefore strong, calm, and prudent ; who masks 
 his force under forms and compromises and courtesies ; 
 no man of genius perhaps, but at least a master of the 
 machinery of human life ; who can deal wisely and 
 energetically with circumstance and mould events with 
 his powerful shaping hands. These two men are 
 Goethe's Tasso and Antonio. It is a mistake to name 
 one the poet and the other the statesman ; or to name 
 one the dreamer and the other the man of action ; nor 
 do the names idealist and realist quite express the 
 contrast. The contrast between them is wider and 
 deeper than any of these names suggest. I will 
 venture to call them the adept who reveres the sign 
 of the microcosm and the adept who reveres the sign 
 of the macrocosm. No other titles seem to be so 
 fitting. 
 
 In Goethe these two men existed side by side. In 
 the Weimar days the man of the microcosm expressed 
 his troubled joys, his hopes and fears and aspirations 
 in the letters addressed from day to day, and almost 
 from hour to hour, to Frau von Stein. The man of the 
 macrocosm was superintending mines, raising recruits, 
 regulating finances for Karl August. Which of the two 
 was to be the master within him ? Or was it possible 
 that they might one day hold hands in a mutually 
 beneficent friendship ? 
 
 These are the precise questions put and answered in 
 Goethe's " Tasso." " What idea did you endeavour to 
 represent in ' Tasso ' ? " asked Eckermann of the aged 
 poet. " Idea ! " exclaimed Goethe, " as if I knew 
 anything about it ! I had the life of Tasso, I had
 
 Goethe in Italy. 249 
 
 my own life ... I can truly say of what I have 
 presented in the play, It is bone of my bone and flesh 
 of my flesh" The double nature of Goethe is par- 
 celled out between Tasso, the self-involved dreamer, 
 lover, poet ; and Antonio, the wide-seeing, strong-willed, 
 prudent statesman. Tasso wins all the sympathy of 
 our heart ; Antonio, the respect of our understanding. 
 To Antonio, the man of the world, Tasso, as we at 
 first are led to suppose, seems no better than an idle 
 dreamer ; and Tasso in his turn thinks hard things of 
 the man who has wounded him by his cold reserve and 
 worldly scepticism. He draws his sword upon Antonio 
 even in the precincts of the palace ; the prince arrives 
 and condemns Tasso to a light imprisonment in his 
 chamber ; and there in solitude and tears the unhappy 
 poet devours his own heart. The princess endeavours 
 to soothe, relieve and strengthen him ; but Tasso in 
 the very weakness of his joy exceeds the bounds of 
 a subject's duty, and in one wild moment demands 
 from her a woman's love. That moment is fatal ; the 
 princess retires, and the poor dreamer is left to the 
 bitterness of shame and despair. In " Iphigenia " a 
 sister's devotion saved the afflicted Orestes ; but it is 
 no woman who can save Tasso. To the solitary and 
 despairing man of genius enters Antonio, the man of 
 calm intelligence and steadfast will. A cry of anguish 
 is about to break from the unhappy poet at the arrival 
 of this tormentor. And then we perceive Antonio 
 drawing towards him with gracious earnestness and 
 strong benignity ; he is at Tasso's side and takes him 
 by the hand. The man of the macrocosm and the man
 
 250 Goethe in Italy. 
 
 of the microcosm have met, have understood each other, 
 and are reconciled ; passion and imagination stand sup- 
 ported by intelligence and will. It is Tasso who 
 speaks : 
 
 " Oh, noble man ! thou standest firm and calm, 
 While I am like the tempest-driven wave. 
 But be not boastful of thy strength. Eeflect ! 
 Nature, whose mighty power hath fix'd the rock, 
 Gives to the wave its instability : 
 She sends her storm, the passive wave is driven, 
 And rolls, and swells, and falls in billowy foam ; 
 Yet in this very wave the glorious sun 
 Mirrors his splendour, and the quiet stars 
 Upon its heaving bosom gently rest ; 
 Dimm'd is the splendour, vanish'd is the calm ! 
 In danger's hour I know myself no longer, 
 Nor am I now asham'd of the confession. 
 The helm is broken, and on every side 
 The reeling vessel splits. The riven planks, 
 Bursting asunder, yawn beneath my feet ! 
 Thus with my outstretch'd arms I cling to thee ! 
 So doth the ship-wreck'd mariner at last 
 Cling to the rock, whereon his vessel struck." 1 
 
 Italy was the genius which placed the hand of that 
 Tasso who lived in Goethe's complex nature in the 
 hand of his Antonio. Henceforth opposition and rivalry 
 ceased ; each became the friend and ally of the other. 
 
 1 Miss Anna Swanwick's translation.
 
 GOETHE'S FRIENDSHIP WITH SCHILLER. 
 
 OF the friendships of authors none is so illustrious as 
 that of Goethe and Schiller, and none is more truly 
 remarkable, for it was a friendship between two great 
 spirits of opposite types ; it overcame a long resistance, 
 it resulted in the most strenuous co-operation for the 
 highest ends, it bore the richest and the most abundant 
 fruit. 
 
 In July 1787, when Goethe, having returned from 
 Sicily, was settling to his second and more deliberate 
 study of Rome, Schiller visited Weimar. A deserted 
 Weimar, for the Duke as well as Goethe was absent ; but 
 Wieland was to be found, and was willing to quit his 
 translation of Lucian to greet a distinguished visitor. 
 Herder was here, and was favourably impressed with 
 what he had read of Schiller's latest play, " Don Carlos " ; 
 and in the presence of his friend and admirer, Charlotte 
 von Kalb ailing, unhappy, excitable, exacting Schiller 
 found an uneasy pleasure. In that year Goethe's age 
 was thirty-eight ; Schiller was ten years younger. He 
 was already famous. " The Robbers " had made a conquest 
 of young Germany when he was only twenty-one ; since 
 then his reputation had been sustained and widened, if 
 not by " Fiesco," certainly by " Kabale und Liebe " and 
 his lyrical poems. But in his reception at Weimar there 
 was clearly no enthusiasm ; the ex-medical student and 
 
 261
 
 252 Goethe's Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 revolutionary playwright was made to feel that he was 
 admitted somewhat on sufferance to the aristocratic circle 
 of the Court ; despondency descended upon him, and, 
 partly to resist its invasion, he worked fiercely at the 
 " Revolt of the Netherlands." Everywhere he was met 
 and foiled by a kind of tyrannous numen, a spiritual 
 presence of the absent Goethe, to which all paid un- 
 questioning homage. Now he encounters the Duke's 
 favourite, Knebel, and finds that he sets small store by 
 a young poet's criticisms and esthetics prefers, indeed, 
 to these the gathering of herbs or examination of minerals ; 
 too evidently Knebel is of Goethe's faction. Now the 
 Court-singer, Corona Schroter reads aloud to an admir- 
 ing audience Goethe's classical " Iphigenia." Now it is 
 Goethe's birthday, and in the wanderer's garden his 
 friends have gathered to drink his health ; Schiller must 
 drink it, too, in a goblet of Khenish ; " he little thinks, 
 in Italy," wrote Schiller, " that he has me among his 
 guests ; but fate brings men and things wonderfully 
 together." 
 
 Schiller had already seen Goethe. When Goethe, in 
 1779, carried Karl August to Switzerland to work off 
 some of his redundant energy, they stayed for a week at 
 Stuttgart, and attended the distribution of prizes at the 
 Military Academy. A lank, red-haired youth advanced 
 to receive his three prizes and to kiss the hem of the 
 Duke of Wlirtemberg's garment. It was Schiller, and 
 there, on the right of " The Anointed," stood Karl 
 August, of Weimar, and on the left, in stiff Court suit, 
 the illustrious author of " Goetz " and " Werther," con- 
 scious that he was gazed at, and colouring visibly.
 
 Goethe's Friendship with Schiller. 253 
 
 Before Goethe's return from Italy, Schiller had left 
 Weimar for the little village of Volkstadt, where he 
 could wander on hillside and river-bank in company 
 with his beloved Lotte. " I am very curious to see 
 Goethe," he writes to Korner (27th July, 1788); "on 
 the whole, I feel well disposed towards him, and there 
 are few whose abilities I so honour." And a little later : 
 "I have not yet seen Goethe, but we have exchanged 
 greetings. He said he should have paid me a visit if he 
 had known he must pass so near me QJQ his way to 
 Weimar. We were within three miles of each other. 
 I am told he has retired from active life." In Sep- 
 tember of that year Schiller's desire was gratified. At 
 Rudolstadt, in the house of his future mother-in-law, 
 Frau von Lengefeld, the meeting took place. There, 
 beside Schiller's Lotte and her more intellectual sister 
 Caroline, were Herder's wife and Goethe's sometime 
 friend and confidant, Frau von Stein. The first meeting 
 did not inspire Schiller with any strong wish to advance 
 from acquaintance to intimacy. There was, indeed, no 
 coldness nor formality on either side ; Goethe was in a 
 happy mood, and spoke much and delightfully of Italy, 
 and the manners and morals of its people; his move- 
 ments seemed to Schiller himself nervously irregular 
 in his gestures somewhat stiff, and his countenance not 
 open ; yet his eye could beam and rivet attention ; there 
 was an earnest kindliness in his expression, and his voice 
 was singularly pleasing. But as he spoke the ladies 
 fluttered or settled around him ; there was small chance 
 for the new comer, unless it might be once on a ramble 
 by the Saale, to converse with him alone. Schiller had
 
 254 Goethds Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 looked forward with ardent expectation to this meeting ; 
 it was over, and nothing had come of it; he could not 
 but feel somewhat mortified. " The high idea I had 
 conceived of Goethe," he tells Kb'rner, " is not in the 
 slightest degree lessened by personal acquaintance ; but 
 I doubt if we shall ever draw very close towards each 
 other. Much that still interests me, that I still wish 
 and hope for, he has outlived. He is so far ahead of 
 me not so much in years as in experience of the world 
 and self-development that we cannot meet on the road. 
 His whole life, from the very first, has run in a contrary 
 direction to mine ; his world is not my world . . . But 
 from so short an interview it is hard to draw a conclusion. 
 Time will show." 
 
 Goethe has himself explained why it was impossible 
 for him at this time to approach Schiller with cordiality. 
 He had brought back with him from Italy, a conception 
 of art which made him look, with something like im- 
 patient scorn, on the movement of which he had, him- 
 self, once been a leader the movement of storm and 
 revolt and in which Schiller, as a dramatist, was now 
 the banner-bearer. " An energetic, but immature talent 
 had poured over the country in full torrent, just those 
 ethical and theatrical paradoxes from which I was 
 endeavouring to clear myself. . . . The applause 
 universally bestowed on those extravagant abortions, 
 by wild students as by the cultivated Court lady, 
 fell like a shock on me. All the pains I had taken 
 with myself seemed to me entirely lost." A past 
 self which we have transcended sometimes seems to 
 us to revive as our most hateful adversary. The
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 255 
 
 earlier plays of Schiller were turbid and revolutionary. 
 "Don Carlos" was doubtless felt by Goethe to be rhetorical 
 and doctrinaire. And, on the other hand, Schiller, on 
 reading " Egmont," was conscious that it cast him down 
 from his heights ; here in Egmont was a veritable hero, 
 fashioned by history for the drama ; how he, himself, 
 could have exalted and idealised Egmont ! And this 
 hero who might have declaimed so eloquently on 
 the great truths of politics, on freedom and nature 
 and virtue, had been degraded by Goethe into the 
 cavalier of a love intrigue ! The criticism of " Egmont," 
 published by Schiller, appeared to Goethe to prove 
 that its writer knew more of morals and politics 
 than of poetry. Perhaps, when, by his influence, 
 Schiller was appointed to the Professorship of History 
 at Jena, he supposed that he had rendered the young 
 enthusiast a more than material service, that a better 
 way was now opened for this crude intellect, and that 
 out of a bad, or at least a mischievous, poet, he had 
 helped to create a useful professor. 
 
 Schiller guessed that to this Pharisee of art he 
 himself must appear irregular and riotous. " Don Carlos " 
 had again drawn the eyes of Germany upon him ; but 
 Goethe coldly averted his face. And he had the fatal 
 power of binding other hearts in ice, for Moritz was also 
 cold, and valued the smallest finished work of Goethe 
 more than the most daring attempt of another. " It 
 would make me unhappy," wrote Schiller, 2nd February, 
 1789, "to be much with Goethe; he never overflows 
 even to his closest friends ; nothing attaches him ; I 
 believe that he is an egoist in a supreme degree. He
 
 256 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 possesses the talent of putting men under an obligation 
 to him by small as well as great acts of courtesy ; but 
 he always manages to remain free himself. He makes 
 himself known by acts of beneficence, but only as a god, 
 without giving himself. This mode of action seems to 
 me a calculated plan to obtain the highest gratification 
 for his self-love. Men should not tolerate near them a 
 being of this kind. Hence he is hateful to me, though 
 I love his intellect with all my heart, and have an 
 exalted idea of him. . . . He has aroused in me a most 
 singular combination of hate and love, a feeling not un- 
 like that which Brutus and Cassius must have had for 
 Caesar. I could murder his spirit, and then love him 
 from my heart." One more quotation from Schiller's 
 letters to Korner will show how foiled he was by Goethe's 
 unapproachable distance, and how, desiring to get rid of 
 this mortifying sense of defeat, he gave it expression in 
 bitter words that really meant more of disappointment 
 than of wrath : " This man, this Goethe, is an impedi- 
 ment in my way ; and he reminds me too often how 
 hard Fate has been to me. How tenderly was his 
 genius led on by Fate, and how I have even still to 
 struggle ! I cannot repair all I have lost after thirty 
 a man does not refashion himself. . . . But I pluck 
 up a good heart, and believe in a happy revolution in 
 the future." 
 
 These words were written in the spring of 1789. 
 Five years followed, during which no real advance 
 towards friendship was made on either side. Goethe 
 had returned from Italy an altered man. He saw his 
 way, and would not be tempted to forsake it. He
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 257 
 
 shook off the burden of miscellaneous public cares, and 
 was resolved not again to give himself away to un- 
 congenial tasks. Though still ready to advise and 
 assist the Duke, he ceased to appear at the council 
 table. The estrangement from Frau von Stein before 
 long became complete. More and more Goethe 
 secluded himself in his home. He had not gone 
 forward with the stream of popular literature ; he 
 was now in opposition. As a poet he was no favourite 
 with the mass of readers, nor did he seek to please 
 them ; he lived his life, and if his life yielded poetry, 
 he wrote it down ; if not, he was silent. The collected 
 edition of his poems was not warmly welcomed. He 
 occupied himself more and more with scientific pursuits, 
 and with the history of art. On his return from the 
 disastrous French campaign, Goethe, saddened by the 
 mournful events of the war, and oppressed by an un- 
 usual feeling of desolation, visited Jacobi at Pempelfort. 
 Here, if anywhere, he would meet a genuine friend. A 
 sorrowful change had indeed taken place in the house- 
 hold Jacobi's bright wife (" one of Rubens' women," 
 said Goethe) was dead ; but still there were some who 
 would receive him with open arms. Alas, it soon 
 appeared that even here Goethe's hermit spirit dwelt 
 apart ; he was not less solitary than before ; nay, he 
 was more so, for the sense of an impassable gulf between 
 himself and his friend seemed a crowning proof of his 
 isolation. They begged him to read aloud to them the 
 " Iphigenie " ; he could not endure its pure and tender 
 ideality. They produced the " (Edipus at Colonus " ; he 
 could not get beyond a hundred lines. His mind had 
 
 R
 
 258 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 been hardened by the events of the campaign ; he was 
 disposed to look on human affairs as a severe and satiri- 
 cal critic. But in the laws of nature, in the forms of 
 plants, in the phenomena of light, he was profoundly 
 interested. And to live with these he must return to 
 solitude, or form a community, as it were, from the 
 faculties of his own many-sided intellect. In the 
 quiet of his Weimar home Goethe founded, as Herman 
 Grimm has put it, " an invisible university, where he 
 filled every department himself rector, professor in 
 all the faculties, private tutor, pupil, and beadle ; 
 everything revolves about him, and he cares for every- 
 thing separately." 
 
 The dream of perfect union of heart with heart had 
 faded away. If any woman could be the companion 
 of his spirit it was Charlotte von Stein ; and now her 
 love was but a memory or a pang. If there was any 
 man on whose heart his own could find repose it 
 was Jacobi, and in Jacobi's house he was not happy. 
 Perhaps he could altogether dispense with friendship ; 
 to find a true comrade might be impossible, but in 
 the place of such an one he might establish many 
 ministers to his intellect. Herman Grimm, from whom 
 I have just quoted, observes justly that at this time 
 Goethe ceased to cultivate companionship as of man 
 with man, and attached to himself a number of 
 specialists, each of whom could yield something to 
 some fragment of his mind. He became a general 
 with his adjutants ; a prince with ministers who accept 
 their portfolios for this department or for that. He 
 was far from unhappy ; he was delightfully and pro-
 
 Goethes Friendship with Schiller. 259 
 
 fitably occupied ; and yet one thing was wanting. 
 Nor was a serious danger absent that in gathered 
 materials, in variety of studies, in optics, and osteology, 
 and botany, and art-history, Goethe might lose himself, 
 might parcel out his mind into fragments, and cease 
 to possess the force and momentum of one living 
 character, or as he himself would have said, one living 
 nature. 
 
 The incident which brought together Goethe and 
 Schiller has been often told, but a brief notice of it 
 is necessary here as an essential part of the story, and 
 because its significance has not always been accurately 
 perceived. Leaving at the same moment a meeting 
 of Batsch's Natural Research Association, Schiller and 
 Goethe entered into conversation. It was remarked 
 by the former that such a fragmentary way of treating 
 nature as that adopted by the lecturer must fail to 
 interest such of the audience as were not specialists. 
 In these words he touched the very heart of Goethe's 
 method of envisaging external nature. " There might, 
 indeed, be another mode of presenting nature," said 
 Goethe, " not dismembered and in fragments, but 
 operative and alive, and striving definitely from the 
 whole to differentiate itself in the parts." And there- 
 upon he plunged into his theory of the metamorphosis 
 of plants. When they reached Schiller's door, Goethe 
 followed him into the house, and, seizing a pen, 
 sketched the type-plant. " That is not an observation," 
 said Schiller, " that is an idea." " My surprise," adds 
 Goethe, in relating the incident, " was painful, for 
 these words clearly indicated the line that divided us."
 
 260 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 Thus at the moment when the union was effected, 
 it was wrought through opposition. " That is not an 
 observation but an idea " : Goethe, gazing at an actual 
 plant and comparing one plant with another, held that 
 he really divined, really saw within the visible forms 
 that typical form which they were striving to manifest. 
 To Schiller who, in his own creations, started from an 
 idea and proceeded to adapt his material to the idea 
 which he desired to set forth, it seemed as if Goethe 
 were but following a like method that he had con- 
 ceived the typical plant a priori, and was accommo- 
 dating by aid of his intellect and imagination the actual 
 forms of leaf and flower to his preconceived idea. 
 
 The incident took place at a fortunate moment. In 
 the preceding year Schiller had made the acquaintance 
 of a man whose name is most honourably associated 
 with the literary movement of the time the publisher, 
 Cotta. The scheme of the Augsburg Allgemeine 
 Zeitung, still a leading journal of Germany, was in 
 Cotta's head, and he proposed that Schiller, whose 
 interest in politics was deep and whose historical 
 studies had given him a certain political education, 
 should become its first editor. His delicate health 
 forbade the acceptance of so arduous a post, but he 
 would gladly undertake the conduct of a monthly 
 magazine, from which politics and religion should be 
 excluded. To his surprise Cotta gladly listened to 
 the proposal. The name Die Horen was approved ; 
 the most distinguished thinkers and men of letters in 
 Germany were to be invited to assist ; if Kant, Jacobi, 
 Herder, Klopstock, Voss, Lichtenberg, Fichte, Hum-
 
 Goethes Friendship with Schiller. 261 
 
 boldt, Goethe could be secured all would assuredly 
 go well. 
 
 On the 13th June 1794, Schiller forwarded to 
 Goethe a prospectus of the magazine, and respectfully 
 invited his co-operation, promising that, if he joined, he 
 would find himself in good company. Goethe let ten 
 days pass before he replied ; then gave in his adhesion 
 to the scheme of Die Horen. " Keep me in friendly 
 remembrance," he wrote, a month later, " and believe 
 me that I am looking forward with sincere pleasure 
 to a frequent interchange of ideas with you." Such 
 cordiality from an Olympian had in it something 
 overpowering. The attractions of Batsch's Scientific 
 Association and of the new periodical drew Goethe 
 more than once from Weimar to Jena, and in friendly 
 communion with Schiller the league was almost 
 cemented. We can picture to ourselves the meetings 
 on the one side the stiff Geheimerath, a middle- 
 aged courtier, now grown somewhat stout and heavy- 
 jawed, enjoying a tranquil self-possession, having a 
 fund of varied experience, and bearing a reputation 
 for Epicurean tolerance ; we can imagine him as he 
 allowed his true personality gradually to reveal itself 
 through the masks and disguises of life ; and on the 
 other side the eager idealist, his tall, spare figure, his' 
 narrow chest, his restless energy, his aspiring gaze, his 
 exalted air, his phrases from the Kantian philosophy ; 
 and now his head drooped upon his breast, his racking 
 cough, a martyr to enthusiasm, looking, said Goethe, 
 like an Ecce Homo. They discussed philosophical 
 questions. Schiller, as a believer in a system, was
 
 262 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 armed at all points ; Goethe's philosophy was a vague 
 pantheism, fed from a mass of observations of nature, 
 both poetical and scientific ; systems he waived aside as 
 having of necessity only a subjective or personal valid- 
 ity. It was easy to worst Goethe in argument, and he 
 was himself at times disturbed by the force with which 
 Schiller assailed the grounds of his convictions ; but 
 somehow in the end he escaped from the trammels of 
 argumentative discussion, and Proteus stood free. Nor 
 was his skill in argument the sole advantage on the 
 side of Goethe's new friend. " Idealist " we name 
 Schiller, and he is rightly so named. But it was soon 
 apparent to Goethe that in the art of handling men the 
 idealist was his superior. In all the deeper and broader 
 wisdom about human life, Goethe was beyond measure 
 the better instructed of the two ; but in this or that 
 case where difficulties or perplexities had arisen, Schiller 
 would be alive at all points, would deal skilfully with 
 this person and that, and extricate himself cleverly 
 from an untoward position. Goethe would accept things 
 with a large carelessness, and would somehow outlive 
 them in the end. 
 
 Soon after they parted in July 1794, Schiller wrote 
 a long and memorable letter, which may be looked on 
 as the real starting-point of that correspondence kept 
 up incessantly for so many years, a correspondence 
 which covers the whole time from 1794 to the month 
 of Schiller's death, May 1805. The entire period of 
 the union of these two eminent spirits was ten years. 
 In Schiller's brief life, ten years counts as a great epoch, 
 and they were the crowning years of his existence,
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 263 
 
 those towards which all the rest had tended, those 
 during which he was advancing in the race with a 
 runner's speed. Had Schiller died before he gained 
 the friendship of Goethe we should have known him as 
 a young, ambitious writer of irregular imagination, and 
 an intellect afflicted with a tendency to philosophical spec- 
 ulations which did not aid his genius as a poet ; and 
 Goethe would have appeared to us, through Schiller's 
 letters to Korner, as cold, calculating, egoistic. Happily, 
 Schiller's martyrdom was slow ; and hence we are the 
 possessors of " Wallenstein," " Mary Stuart," " The Maid 
 of Orleans," " The Bride of Messina," " William Tell," the 
 ballads, and the later lyrics ; hence we can observe him 
 at work by means of that long correspondence, to read 
 which is like looking into a glass bee-hive, and seeing 
 the bees shape their cells, only that here the bees are 
 poets, and the cells are filled with other sweetness than 
 that of the heathbell or the honeysuckle ; hence, too, 
 instead of Goethe the calculating egoist, we know 
 Goethe the loyal and generous friend, such as he is de- 
 scribed in a letter of Schiller (1800) to the Countess 
 Schimrnelmann : " It is not the noble qualities of his 
 intellect which bind me to him. If he had not the 
 highest worth of all in my eyes worth as a man, 
 whom 1 have personally learnt to know, I could only 
 wonder at his genius from afar. I can truly say that 
 for the six years during which I have lived iu closest 
 union with Goethe, I have never for a moment been 
 mistaken in his character. There are in his nature a 
 lofty integrity and truth, together with the highest 
 earnestness on behalf of what is right and good."
 
 264 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 But let us return to the first remarkable letter of 
 the correspondence. It is nothing else than an attempt 
 on Schiller's part to set up a mirror in which Goethe 
 may view his form and features, for " genius," he says, 
 " ever remains the greatest mystery to itself." The 
 chief impression left upon Schiller after their recent 
 conversations was not that he had acquired a number of 
 new ideas, but that he had been contemplating an 
 extraordinary mind, and that this mind had a power to 
 draw his own towards itself out of intricacies and extra- 
 vagances, and into broad sane ways of feeling and of 
 thought. " Your calm and clear way of looking at 
 things," he writes, " keeps you from getting upon the 
 by-roads, into which speculation as well as arbitrary or 
 self-directed imagination is so apt to lead one astray. 
 Your direct intuition grasps all things in their complete- 
 ness which are sought for laboriously by analysis, and 
 because this lies within you as a whole, the wealth of 
 your mind is concealed from yourself ; for alas ! we 
 know only that which we take to pieces. . . . You 
 look on nature as a whole in order that you may obtain 
 light as to each particular part." And so he goes on 
 to point out how, getting as it were upon the track of 
 nature, Goethe ascends from simpler organisms to more 
 complex, until at last he arrives at man, and creates 
 beautiful human forms and characters in the deep, 
 silent, mysterious way of nature herself. " Had you 
 been born a Greek, or even an Italian, and had you 
 from the cradle been placed in the midst of choice 
 natural surroundings and of an idealising art, your 
 path would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 265 
 
 even have been rendered quite superfluous. . . . But 
 being born a German, and your Grecian spirit having 
 been cast in this northern mould, you had no other 
 choice but either to become a northern artist, or, by 
 the power of thought, to furnish your imagination 
 with what reality did not supply, and thus to create 
 from within outwards a land of Greece by a reasoning 
 process." At first, in his romantic period of " Goetz 
 von Berlichingen," Goethe so it is implied by the 
 criticism was a German, and in any attempt to 
 correct this original Germanic nature there was a 
 danger that he might have remained in the region 
 of abstract conceptions, and have never got so far 
 as to translate these conceptions into intuitions and 
 the concrete forms of art. From that danger Goethe 
 had been most happily and completely delivered. 
 
 So runs on the letter, with its ingenious theory of 
 Goethe's genius and its development a singular open- 
 ing to a series of friendly communications, but one 
 characteristic of the whole correspondence in its con- 
 scious striving after the highest culture, its strenuous 
 effort towards a clear comprehension of the conduct of a 
 poet's mind. Schiller has more of system in his body 
 of philosophic or aesthetic doctrine ; Goethe is the 
 broader and more penetrating in his glances. Both 
 strive and each in his own fashion after things of 
 the mind with rare intelligence and zeal as others 
 strive for worldly wealth or place and power. The 
 correspondence is not easy reading ; it taxes the 
 patience of one who is fain to repose now and again in 
 pleasant quietudes of feeling, or who would gladly over-
 
 266 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 hear the gossip of daily life. We do not perceive its 
 true value until we have formed acquaintance with the 
 works of Schiller and Goethe which belong to these years, 
 and study the correspondence partly as a commentary 
 and partly as a document in the history of origins. 
 
 To Schiller's long letter of analysis and theory Goethe 
 replied almost with effusion. Writing on the eve of his 
 forty-fifth birthday, he tells his new friend how he 
 regards the days of their first cordial intercourse as an 
 epoch in his life ; and how it pleases him to reflect that 
 this union came in a natural, unforced way, "for it 
 seems to me that after so unexpected a meeting we 
 cannot but wander on together." He dares to hope that 
 some of his manifold undertakings may be bequeathed 
 to his young contemporary to carry to completion, and 
 promises as soon as possible to place in Schiller's hands 
 the proof-sheets of the book which occupies him at 
 present. Nor can he be content that his friend should 
 only hold an intellectual mirror up before him ; rather 
 let Schiller write about himself, the course of his pro- 
 gress, and the point to which it has brought him. 
 
 The approach of mind to mind is very grave and 
 noble. They do not throw themselves into each other's 
 arms, as new friends were accustomed twenty or thirty 
 years earlier, and shed the tears of sentiment. Each 
 maintains himself in his place, and gives the other his 
 right hand in pledge of helpful comradeship of mind 
 with mind. What higher, what more moving spectacle 
 does the world afford than such loyal alliance of strong 
 man with strong man, such fellowship of athletes wrest- 
 ling for the solid prizes of the universe !
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 267 
 
 Very beautiful in its tone of moderation is Schiller's 
 next letter : " Our acquaintance late, but awakening 
 in me many a delightful hope is for me another proof 
 of how much better it often is to let chance have its 
 way than to forestall it with too much officiousness. . . . 
 The very different paths along which you and I moved 
 could not, with any advantage to ourselves, have brought 
 us together sooner than at the present time. I now can 
 hope, however, that for as much of the way as remains 
 we may travel as companions, and with so much more 
 advantage as the last travellers on a long journey have 
 always the most to say to one another." Then, having 
 finally remarked that all Goethe's mental powers seemed 
 to have agreed with his imagination that it should be 
 their representative, while in his own little world of 
 man the philosophical and the poetic minds embarrass 
 each other in their operations, he goes on to refer to 
 his bodily infirmity : " I can scarcely hope for time to 
 accomplish any great and general mental revolution in 
 myself; but I will do what I can, and when at last 
 the building falls, I shall, perhaps, after all, have 
 snatched from the ruins what was most worthy of 
 being preserved." 
 
 The activity of the new friends has been represented 
 by Herman Grimm in an algebraic formula ; it was, as 
 he says, much more than doubled ; the new force, as he 
 puts it, was not simply G + S, but rather (G + S) + 
 (S + G). A new Goethe reinforced by Schiller stood 
 side by side with a new Schiller reinforced by Goethe. 
 There were boundless possibilities and ever-opening 
 vistas in this friendship, for the friends were constantly
 
 268 Goethe's Friendship with Schiller, 
 
 faring forward, fellow-travellers in untried ways of in- 
 tellectual experience, fellow-pioneers in new worlds of 
 the imagination. And in its character the friendship 
 was thoroughly masculine ; neither spirit rushed into 
 the other to be absorbed and lose its identity ; each 
 held its own. There was no feigned consent of 
 opinions ; each could protect himself, if needful, against 
 the other's influence. The first fact recognised by each 
 was that of his own individuality ; the next, that each 
 individuality supplied something wanting to the other. 
 And as time went on each was aware of a great 
 accumulated gain. " The change which your personal 
 influence has wrought in me," writes Schiller (12th 
 August 1796), "I feel to be perfectly marvellous, and 
 though as regards one's essential self and one's ability 
 nothing can be altered, a great purification has taken 
 place in me." And Goethe (6th January 1798) : "If 
 I have served you as the representative of much that is 
 objective, you have led me back to myself from a too 
 exclusive observation of outward things and their 
 relations. . . . You have given me a second youth, and 
 made me once again a poet, which I might be said to 
 have ceased to be." And once again Schiller (23rd 
 July 1799): "My being will receive quite a new 
 momentum when we are together again, for you always 
 know how to propel me towards the outer world and 
 into wider latitudes ; when I am alone I sink back into 
 myself." When the public had failed to distinguish 
 the separate authorship of certain writings which they 
 had published in association, Goethe finds pleasure in 
 the evidence thus given that each of them was escaping
 
 Goethfs Friendship with Schiller. 269 
 
 from mannerisms, and was attaining an excellence free 
 from merely personal peculiarities : " It will then be 
 for us to consider," he goes on (26th December 1795), 
 " what a glorious space may be spanned by each hold- 
 ing the other by one hand, and stretching out the 
 other hand as far as nature will permit us to reach." 
 
 Herder would willingly have transformed the rulership 
 of German literature into a triumvirate. His jealousy 
 of Schiller, and the painful breach with the Duke and 
 Goethe, in which questions relating to money were 
 involved, rendered alliance with him impossible. There 
 was much that was lovable in Herder's nature, and yet 
 his temper was easily irritated, and springs of bitterness 
 made all the sweeter waters brackish. Goethe valued 
 Herder's powers highly, but his moods of barren harsh- 
 ness were peculiarly alien to Goethe's feelings. "Herder's 
 two new volumes," he wrote in June 1796, "I have 
 read with great interest. The seventh especially seems 
 to me admirably conceived, thought out, and executed ; 
 the eighth, although containing much that is excellent, 
 does not impress me favourably. ... A certain reserve, 
 a certain caution, a turning and twisting, an ignoring, a 
 niggardly dealing out of praise and blame, renders, more 
 especially what he says about German literature, ex- 
 tremely meagre." And then follows a sentence which 
 all who concern themselves with the appreciation of 
 literature may well lay to heart, and which contains 
 encouragement for those who are not afraid to love 
 well lest they might sometimes love unwisely : " It may 
 be owing to my present mood, but it seems to me when 
 speaking of what is written as of what is done in act,
 
 270 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 that unless one utters oneself with affectionate sympathy, 
 or even with a certain one-sided enthusiasm, the result 
 is so small as to be hardly worth mentioning. Delight, 
 pleasure, sympathy with things this alone is real, and 
 again calls forth reality ; all else is empty and vain." 
 
 Three chief objects were aimed at by the now united 
 friends : to cultivate and direct the public taste of 
 Germany ; to harry and if possible to scatter the forces 
 of the Philistines ; and above all, to enrich their native 
 land with great and enduring works in literature. Each 
 wrought in his own manner. Schiller was the author 
 by profession ; he turned over the leaves of books to 
 find themes, and then adapted them to his own ideas. 
 He " sucked his subjects," as he himself expresses it, 
 "out of his fingers' ends." When a dramatic theme 
 had been found there came upon him first, as he tells 
 us, a musical mood of mind, from which after a time 
 emerged a clear conception ; he would then arrange his 
 materials, and put together a skeleton drama the most 
 material process of all ; last he would clothe the dry 
 bones with flesh, and breathe into them the breath of 
 life. Goethe's poems were not thus brought together, 
 constructed, and animated. They were more like vital 
 organisms, growing, in some mysterious way, from a 
 living germ. Or if he dutifully gathered material, it 
 was of no avail until some power other than that of the 
 conscious will came to unify the lifeless mass and ani- 
 mate it with a soul. " We can do nothing," he says, 
 "but pile the wood and dry it thoroughly; then it 
 takes fire at the right moment, and we ourselves are 
 amazed at the issue." His larger works, into which
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 271 
 
 self-consciousness necessarily entered, Goethe would 
 sometimes submit to Schiller, and at least in the 
 case of " Wilhelm Meister " some things far from happily 
 conceived are due to Schiller's suggestion. In other 
 cases he bore his growing design about with him in 
 silence, and feared to submit it to consideration or 
 discussion. So it was with the " Hermann und 
 Dorothea ; " though he often mentioned the fact that 
 he was at work upon his epic-idyl, not once did he 
 yield his poem to his friend's scrutiny and analysis. 
 Schiller, on the other hand, was well pleased to dis- 
 course concerning his poetical projects, and discussed 
 all the later dramas with Goethe, scene by scene. 
 They did not grow in silence : they might well gain 
 by such discussion, because there was little in them 
 of the inevitable ; their author was never decided, 
 never could let his work rest, and often altered a 
 part just before rehearsal. " He seized boldly on a 
 great subject," Goethe said long afterwards to Ecker- 
 mann, " and turned it this way and that, and handled 
 it now in one fashion, now in another. But he saw 
 his object, as it were, only on the outside ; a quiet 
 development from within was not within the province 
 of his art." Yet with every new piece, adds Goethe, 
 he made an advance towards perfection. 
 
 Although he chose subjects from history unconnected 
 with his own life, Schiller is always exposing himself 
 through his admirations, his idealisings, his enthusi- 
 asms. His imagination delights in noble attitudes, and 
 through the creatures of his art we discover himself a 
 beautiful and well defined personality. His dramatic
 
 272 Goethe 's Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 characters and the man himself are clearly intelligible. 
 Goethe in this at least resembling Shakespeare has 
 some of the taciturnity of nature. All his works are 
 indeed confessions ; all grow from his veritable life ; and 
 you think you have seized him in some dexterous critical 
 theory, but lo ! he has escaped, he is far away, and mocks 
 you with ironical laughter. If you search for the roots 
 of " Faust" or of "King Lear," you must dig to the depths 
 from which Igdrasil grows, that tree on which all we 
 mortal men hang like fluttering leaves. With a certain 
 feeling that it was impossible to make himself com- 
 pletely intelligible, Goethe was often pleased to veil his 
 true self, and he indulged a whim for disguises ; thus 
 he supposed that he might remain himself, whole and 
 undivided, and produce his true impression by degrees, 
 whereas if he were known in person, a group of notions 
 connoted by the name of " Goethe " would, so to speak, 
 be severed from his total self, and the real Goethe would 
 be obliged to act up to this notional Goethe in the 
 minds of other men an irksome and unprofitable task. 
 Sometimes this tendency carried him into idle mystifi- 
 cations, but it was deep-seated in his nature. In later 
 days even the good Eckermann was now and again too 
 painfully perplexed by the oracle. When his famulus 
 humbly asked the master for some explanation of " the 
 Mothers " in the second part of " Faust," Goethe only 
 turned his face full upon the enquirer and, with wide 
 open eyes, repeated the line : 
 
 "Die Mutter ! Mutter ! 's klingt so wunderlich." 
 His meaning must be received whole by the imagination
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 273 
 
 and not be apprehended piecemeal by means of explana- 
 tions designed for the understanding. 
 
 Lines of difference so deep-drawn between the pair 
 of friends created no difficulty in their communion of 
 thought and feeling, or if it did, that difficulty was 
 happily overcome. Both felt strongly that popular 
 taste in Germany needed to be elevated and purified, 
 that a public opinion on matters of literature and art 
 must be created and trained. " The public," writes 
 Schiller, " no longer has that unity of taste which 
 belongs to childhood, and still less that unity which is 
 the outcome of perfected culture. It stands midway 
 between both ; hence it is a glorious time for bad 
 authors." Schiller held that a true body of doctrine 
 respecting works of art might be ascertained and 
 inculcated, that a party might be formed under his 
 own and Goethe's leadership, and that by a vigorous 
 attack the pedants and obscurantists might be driven 
 from the field. Goethe, if not cynical, at least older 
 and more realistic, expected less from anything which 
 they could effect. Every effort indeed should be made, 
 but " who can separate his ship from the waves on 
 which it is floating ? In working against wind and 
 tide one makes but little headway." Something, how- 
 ever might be done. " Things were the same," he 
 writes, " twenty-five years ago, when I began, and will 
 be even so long after I am gone. Yet ... it does 
 seem as if certain views and principles, without which 
 no one ought to approach a work of art, must by 
 degrees become more general." 
 
 As he read one day in Martial, it occurred to Goethe 
 
 s
 
 274 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 that a retort upon the enemies of Die Horen might be 
 made in the skirmishing way of epigrams. Schiller 
 eagerly took up the idea, and enlarged its scope ; and 
 so came into existence the " Xenia," foxes with firebrands 
 at their tails, let loose ID the corn of Timnath. Literary 
 mediocrity, learned pedantry, pietistic sentimentalism, 
 metaphysical wordspinning against each of these a 
 lively attack was directed. To Schiller the " Xenia " were 
 almost a serious poetical occupation ; he looked on 
 them as miniature works of art ; and, in truth, his 
 genius adapted itself more happily than did that of 
 Goethe to the epigram. " What time I wasted over 
 them ! " was Goethe's feeling in later years, and while 
 he wrote them it was with a half-cynical feeling that 
 to be modest, able, and deserving during our three-score 
 years and ten will not prevent the devil's advocate from 
 appearing beside our corpse, and that perhaps it is better 
 to anticipate his appearance by the aid of a little well- 
 timed aggressiveness, which will compel our contempor- 
 aries to say what they have against us in petto, while 
 we are still alive and stirring. A man can efface the 
 impression produced by malignant comment or lie at 
 any time, said Goethe, by his presence, his life, and his 
 activity. Schiller was a little disturbed by the coarse 
 attacks which the epigrams called forth ; he was 
 especially anxious that the " Xenia " should not be 
 mistaken for vulgar satire, but rather be recognised as 
 poetical productions in their own kind. " I hope," 
 replies Goethe, taking things in his easy way, " that 
 the ' Xenia ' will continue to produce an effect for some 
 time to come, and that they will keep alive the evil
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 275 
 
 spirit that has been raised against us. We will mean- 
 while advance with our positive works, and leave to it 
 the torment of negation. If only our humour holds 
 good we must again stir up their spleen from its very 
 depths, but not till they are quite at ease, and think 
 themselves secure." 
 
 In that remarkable letter with which the correspond- 
 ence between the two friends may be said to have 
 begun, Schiller speaks of Goethe's transforming himself 
 by a self-conscious effort from a German into a Greek. 
 The period of their union is that of Goethe's Hellenism, 
 and to it belong both the " Hermann und Dorothea " and 
 the more admirable portion of the " Helena," which repre- 
 sents the union between Faust, as the genius of Northern 
 art, and Helen, the ideal of beauty as conceived by 
 classical antiquity. Schiller died when the Hellenistic 
 tendencies in his work were obtaining their purest 
 expression. Goethe moved forward, and without ever 
 ceasing to render homage to Greek poetry and Greek 
 art, he passed out of bis period of exclusive Hellenism 
 into what has been named by one of his critics, correctly 
 enough, though the name is a cumbrous one, his period 
 of " eclectic universality." But did Goethe at any 
 period transform himself into a Greek, or was he at 
 best only what M. Paul Stapfer suggests as an appro- 
 priate description the greatest of the Alexandrians ? 
 The very presence of a self-conscious effort to become 
 that which naturally he was not would have rendered 
 him incapable of attaining the frank spontaneity of 
 Greek art. Schiller, however, has overstated the facts ; 
 Goethe never attempted to transform himself into a
 
 276 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 Greek; on the contrary, it seemed to him essential for 
 the object which he had in view that he should remain 
 a German, since it was from the alliance of the Teutonic 
 genius with the genius of Greece that he hoped for the 
 birth of the ardent child, Euphorion. And in the re- 
 presentative poem of this period, " Hermann und 
 Dorothea," if Goethe is more than elsewhere a Greek 
 in the bright purity of his art, and its fine simplicity 
 of outline, here also more than elsewhere in the body 
 of thought and feeling he is a German of the Germans. 
 We can trace part of Schiller's way towards Hellenism, 
 and it is curiously connected with his views in ethical 
 philosophy. " Through all Schiller's works," said Goethe 
 to Eckermann, "runs the idea of freedom, and this idea 
 assumed a new shape as Schiller advanced in his culture 
 and became another man. In his youth it was physical 
 freedom which inspired him, and expressed itself in his 
 poems; in his later life it was ideal freedom." The 
 justice of this remark is obvious ; from " The Robbers " to 
 " William Tell " the change is indeed remarkable ; but 
 the idea of freedom is a central idea in each. From 
 the French Republic he obtained the diploma of citizen- 
 ship as author of " The Robbers," and in honour of his 
 devotion to liberty. But the course of the Revolution 
 convinced Schiller that civil liberty is vainly sought by 
 those who have not yet attained to human liberty the 
 freedom of cultured manhood. The poet of freedom was 
 in philosophy a disciple of Kant, whose ethics are the 
 strictest ethics of duty. The categorical imperative, 
 " Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not," written on the 
 conscience, seemed to Kant to be a sublimer manifesta-
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 277 
 
 tion of the cosmos to which we belong than even the 
 starry heavens at night. But Kantian ethics did not 
 quite satisfy the needs of Schiller's poetical nature. To 
 the idea of virtue he could not choose but add the idea 
 of beauty, and of this an essential element was freedom. 
 Not painful self-subjugation to a moral law appeared to 
 him to be the highest ideal for man, but rather a joyful 
 embracing of law. The duty to which he did homage 
 was the duty of Wordsworth's ode : 
 
 " Flowers laugh before thee in their beds 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads." 
 
 It was the conception of duty incarnated in Plutarch's 
 men ; and that cultured humanity from which, as 
 Schiller believed, civil freedom might rise as on a 
 solid basis, he found happily exemplified in the Athens 
 of Pericles. 
 
 Their tendency towards ideal art, in which certain 
 abstractions of passion and of beauty were to be in- 
 carnated, led Goethe and Schiller to distrust merely 
 personal emotion, which had not been completely taken 
 up and purified by the imagination, and in a certain 
 sense generalised. As dramatists they endeavoured to 
 stand above and away from their own creations, related 
 to these not as a man to offspring which is bone of his 
 bone and flesh of his flesh, but as a demiurge to the 
 world which he fashions. As poets learning daily more 
 of their craft, they naturally set a higher value each day 
 on poetic form, and spoke at times as if it were an ad- 
 vantage to the artist that he should be indifferent to 
 the subject-matter with which he dealt. We smile at 
 Schiller's touching devotion to a theory when we find
 
 278 Goethe's Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 him congratulating himself, while at work on " Wallen- 
 stein," upon the circumstance that he feels coldly towards 
 the characters of his drama; none of them can tempt 
 him to put any of his own personality into them ; he is 
 not far from hating them all ; therefore he can with 
 single mind occupy himself with the poetic form of the 
 piece. And though the coldness of Goethe's " Natural 
 Daughter " is more apparent than real, we cannot rejoice 
 to see a poet who, at his best, was so true, natural, and 
 spontaneous, setting himself deliberately to create type- 
 characters, like some of the dramatis personce of that 
 play, upon whom the author will not even condescend 
 to bestow proper names. From abstractions it was easy 
 to pass on to symbols ; if once we leave the surface of 
 this dear old mother-earth, we are but too likely to 
 wander farther and farther towards the Inane. Some 
 of the lifeless symbolism, the allegorical ingenuities of 
 Goethe's later poetry, may be viewed as the last product 
 of the intellectual movement which began so admirably 
 in the form of ideal art and Hellenism. The scientific 
 studies of Goethe, his passion for the discovery of type- 
 forms in nature, indirectly confirmed this tendency in 
 art ; it seemed to accredit his new doctrine with the 
 authority of Nature herself. But at the same time it is 
 right to remember that his habit of observing natural 
 phenomena helped also to keep Goethe in close connec- 
 tion with reality, and encouraged that method of in- 
 tuition, that comprehensive and penetrating gaze from 
 which, whether in science it led to discovery or error, 
 some of his happiest poetical motives were derived. 
 The year of " Hermann und Dorothea," 1797, was also
 
 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 279 
 
 the year of Ballads. Singularly enough, that year is 
 memorable for ballad poetry in England as well as in 
 Germany. Then it was that Southey, in his home at 
 Westbury, caught, in " Bishop Bruno," the right tone, as 
 he conceived it, of the modern ballad. Then it was that 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, residing at Alfoxden and 
 Nether Stowey, made that autumn excursion to Lyn- 
 mouth on which was planned The Ancient Mariner to 
 be included next year among the "Lyrical Ballads." Then, 
 too, Goethe and Schiller, . in Weimar and Jena, were 
 adding to German literature a wealth of poetry now 
 familiar to us all. In that year Goethe wrote The Bride 
 of Corinth, The Magician's Apprentice, The God and 
 the Bayadere ; Schiller produced . in rapid succession 
 The Diver, The Glove, The Cranes of Ibycus, The Ring 
 of Poly crates, and other ballads which take rank among 
 the best that he has written. 
 
 As contrasted with Goethe's early songs and lyrics, 
 these poems of the period of his friendship with Schiller 
 appear to be less the overflowing of instincts and 
 spontaneous nature than the shapings of the self- 
 conscious artist. " I had come," Goethe writes of his 
 earlier period, " to look on my indwelling poetic gift 
 quite as nature ; the more so as I was inclined to 
 regard external nature as its proper object. The 
 exercise of this poetic gift could, indeed, be excited 
 and determined by circumstances, but its most joyous 
 and richest action was involuntary, or rather in 
 opposition to the will : 
 
 " Through field and forest roaming, 
 My little songs still humming, 
 So went it all day long."
 
 280 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 As I lay awake at night the same thing happened, and 
 I often wished, like one of my predecessors, to get me 
 a leather jerkin, and to accustom myself to write in the 
 dark so as to fix at once such unpremeditated song. 
 So frequently had it happened that after repeating a 
 little song to myself I could not recall it, that I some- 
 times would hurry to the desk, make no delay to adjust 
 the paper as it lay slantwise, and write down in 
 diagonal lines the poem from beginning to end without 
 once stirring from the spot. . . . For the poems which 
 came thus into existence I had a particular reverence, 
 for I felt towards them somewhat as the hen does 
 towards the chickens which she sees hatched and 
 chirping about her." These early poems, many of 
 which are songs, springing sometimes from purely 
 imaginative motives, sometimes from personal feeling 
 or from incidents in Goethe's life, are perfect in 
 technique but the workmanship is seldom of an 
 elaborate kind. From among the earlier ballads or 
 romantic songs one may be named as illustrating the 
 character of all, " The Fisher," inspired, as Goethe told 
 Eckermann, by the mysterious charm of water, the 
 irresistible seduction of the rippling, lapping, whispering 
 stream at noontide under a summer sun. Or we might 
 name " The Erl-King," a poem in which terror and love, 
 the icy fears which cling to the heart of popular super- 
 stition and the mysterious suggestions of the sights and 
 sounds of night and lonely nature are marvellously 
 blended. The poems of the later period are very 
 different from these. It was inevitable and right that 
 the spontaneity of youth should give place to the self-
 
 Goethes Friendship with Schiller. 281 
 
 conscious study of the literary artist. Some of these 
 later poems aim at effects which might almost be 
 described as approaching those of plastic art ; the form 
 in all is contrived with the subtlest skill ; if they 
 belong, as Goethe said that his early lyrics did, to 
 nature, it is to nature which has grown aware of itself, 
 and which exercises over its own creative instincts an 
 exact and exquisite superintendence. 
 
 In May of the year 1805 the end came. Schiller 
 lay dying. Goethe himself was seriously ill. In his 
 household they feared to tell him the saddest tidings 
 of all. At night they listened, and could hear him 
 weeping in the darkness, alone. When morning broke 
 he asked, " Is it not true that Schiller was very ill 
 yesterday ? " For only answer to his question he heard 
 the sobs of Christiane. " He is dead ? " said Goethe, 
 putting his assurance as an interrogation, and so 
 leaving an avenue for hope. On learning the truth he 
 turned aside, covered his face with his hands, and spoke 
 no word. 
 
 No : in May of the year 1805 the end did not come ; 
 nor has it come to-day. For Goethe, though so much 
 was lost, his friend remained a living presence. He 
 had known no spirit which stood so close to his own, as 
 comrade beside comrade ; and the new life engendered 
 by that companionship could not pass away from him. 
 We recall those tine verses written by Goethe as an 
 epilogue to Schiller's poem, "The Bell," when it was 
 recited in honour of his memory in August 1805. 
 There is consolation in the repeated words, JDenn er 
 war unser ! (" For ours he was ! ") and as the poem
 
 282 Goethe s Friendship with Schiller. 
 
 closes in its form of ten years later, the thought 
 changes ; " Even still he is with us, nor could we 
 receive all his best gifts until he was taken from us by 
 death." When Goethe was in his seventy-seventh year, 
 it was ordered that the vault to which Schiller's body 
 had been indecently hurried should be cleared. There 
 they found one skull of peculiar beauty ; it was de- 
 clared to be Schiller's. They placed it on the 
 pedestal of Daunecker's bust of the poet. A poem in 
 the solemn terza rima of Dante tells us what the old 
 man felt in presence of this relic of the grave, what 
 mystic joy, what solemn ecstacy, for a fount of life 
 seemed to spring for him from the inmost cavern of 
 death : 
 
 " Mysterious chalice ! Oracle most dear ! 
 Even to grasp thee in my hand too base 
 
 Except to steal thee from thy prison here 
 With pious purpose, and devoutly go 
 
 Back to free air, free thoughts, and sunlight clear." 
 
 Back to these, not for relief or rest or pleasure, but, 
 amid the frailty of old age, corroborated for renewed 
 toil by the memory of such a friend as Schiller, and by 
 the thought of such a life as his, so pure, so daring, so 
 steadfast to high aims.
 
 GOETHE'S LAST DAYS. 
 
 (WITH A DOCUMENT HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.) 
 
 AN eminent French critic has lately taken upon him- 
 self to rebuke the passion for unpublished^ documents 
 valuable or valueless which is a disease of the 
 present time, la fureur, as he terms it, de I'intdit. 
 With much that M. Brunetiere has said persons who 
 care more for literature than for trivialities of pseudo- 
 scholarship are likely to agree. But I do not think 
 that I shall be expected to offer an apology for printing 
 for the first time a record of circumstances attending 
 the death of the most illustrious writer of Germany 
 which has come into my hands, and which, though it 
 adds little to the knowledge we had previously 
 possessed, has the interest of being a contemporary 
 document written in English by an honest and intelli- 
 gent man, having good opportunities for acquiring 
 information. 
 
 The writer, Dr Wilhelm Weissenborn, was thirty- 
 three years of age at the date of Goethe's death. He 
 held for a time the position of Gymnasial-lehrer and 
 afterwards Gymnasial - Professor at Eisenach. For 
 several years, from 1821 onwards, he lived in Weimar, 
 " where he worked," I am told, " at the Landes- 
 Industrie Comptoir." " He has the merit," writes 
 
 283
 
 284 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 Goethe's biographer, Diintzer's, in a letter to my friend, 
 Mr Lyster, the translator of Dlintzer's " Life of Goethe," 
 " of being the author of an excellent Latin grammar 
 for schools (1838) and the editor of an important 
 school edition of Livy in six volumes. From 1838 
 to 1842 I had a correspondence with the admirable 
 (tlichtigen) man on the ' Latin Grammar/ but we 
 never came to speak of Goethe." It is evident from 
 letters of Weissenborn, which are in my possession, 
 that he gave lessons to the occasional English residents 
 in Weimar who desired to learn German. The friend 
 to whom the letters are addressed had been one of 
 these pupils, and in 1832 was an attache to the 
 English legation at Berlin. Possibly the future author 
 of " Vanity Fair " and of " Fitz-Boodle's Confessions " 
 was another pupil. " I look into your last letter," 
 writes Weissenborn (May 1, 1833), "and find to 
 my utter contrition that you want to know little 
 Thackeray's direction at Paris. If he have the organ 
 of adhesiveness sufficiently developed for the occasion 
 to keep him at the same house in the same city till 
 now, he is still drawing both breath and caricatures 
 at the H6tel Lille, in Rue Richelieu. He wrote to 
 me that he intended to stay at Paris for the winter. 
 Now there's no knowing when that season ends, but 
 I believe the other one has not begun yet. If you 
 should write to him, remember me kindly to this old 
 friend of ours. I remember now that I have given 
 you the same direction already about the latter end 
 of October last year." 
 
 Weissenborn's interest in literature and in Goethe
 
 Goethes Last Days. 285 
 
 as a great poet was real and intelligent ; the manuscript 
 poems of his own contained in his letters are not with- 
 out merit : but he had unfortunately allowed himself 
 to be prejudiced against Goethe as a man, and he 
 never sought that personal acquaintance which would 
 probably have caused his suspicions and alienation to 
 vanish as morning ground mists disappear before the 
 summer sun. Of Geothe's private character he thought 
 unfavourably ; Goethe's teaching he looked upon as a 
 dangerously subtle form of Epicureanism ; but Weissen- 
 born honoured Goethe's genius, and was a manly and 
 open antagonist. " Have you read the ' Second Part 
 of Faust ' ? " he asks. " It is a very curious production, 
 and though many may think of Horace's 
 
 ' Desinat in piscem mulier forniosa superne ' 
 
 I think we must be grateful for having the worldly 
 Gospel of the Germans complete. It abounds in 
 splendid wit and invention, and the language is music 
 throughout ; the Sirens sing quite in character. I find 
 that the old women are particularly incensed against 
 it, because many of them find their own portraits too 
 well drawn to be mistaken in the Lamise and Empusae, 
 and there are even men who think it rather too gross 
 that the devil's attention is withdrawn from his prey 
 (Faust's soul) by the well-formed limbs of the angels. 
 I believe nobody ought to drink spirits unless he has 
 got a stomach that will stand them; and though I 
 be still of opinion that Goethe has sown in the hearts 
 of men more weeds than the present generation is able 
 to destroy by the knowledge he has put in their heads,
 
 286 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 yet I trust the good will, in the progress of time, far 
 outweigh the evil, and in despite of my own insig- 
 nificancy I am sometimes painfully remembered of 
 Goethe's words : 
 
 ' Was raucherst Du nun Deinen Todten ? 
 Ha'ttst Du's ihm so im Leben geboten ! ' 
 
 But I am sure I have his forgiveness." l 
 
 With these notes and explanations the reader will 
 be able to place the following letter aright among 
 Goethe documents and assign their true value to the 
 opinions which it expresses. 
 
 " MY DEAR , 
 
 "Gothe became ill of his last disease on the 16th of this 
 month ; it was a catarrhal fever, which, however, yielded to the 
 proper medicines so soon that in the evening of the 17th he 
 declared to Mr Vogel 2 his willingness to begin again next day 
 his wonted occupations. Already his friends thought that all 
 danger was over, when on the night between the 19th and 20th he 
 was seized with a violent rigor that lasted for ten hours, attended 
 with severe pains in the abdomen. When Vogel arrived he ad- 
 ministered remedies that effected a reaction, evinced by profuse 
 perspiration, but not sufficient for removing all the bad symptoms. 
 From this time the illness took a dangerous character, though the 
 patient did hot suffer much. On the 21st, in the morning, there 
 could already be perceived symptoms of approaching dissolution ; 
 his limbs began to become cold, the expression of his countenance 
 was less lively, and the features altered, in consequence of paralysis 
 of the lungs, as the physician stated. The night between the 21st 
 and 22nd was passed partly in slumber, but life was fast drawing 
 to its close. In the morning between seven and eight he vxtlked 
 (since he sat during the whole illness in his armchair) to the ad- 
 joining room, where he bid his grandchildren be cheerful, since he 
 felt much better, and hoped to pass a very pleasant summer. He 
 then walked back, supported by two friends as formerly, and sat 
 
 1 I owe some of my information respecting Weissenborn to inquiries 
 kindly made on my behalf of Dr von Scheffler by Sir W. W. Hunter. 
 
 2 Goethe's physician.
 
 Goethe's Last Days. 287 
 
 with a hurried respiration and in a state approaching to stupor, from 
 which he would recover now and then and talk more or less 
 coherently ; his words indicated that he felt no pain. For instance, 
 he wanted the curtains to be removed from the windows ; he asked the 
 servant to bring him a letter-cover for despatching a letter that was 
 not written ; he wanted to read Salvandy's newest publication. 1 
 About an hour and a half before his death he bid his daughter-in- 
 law go out of the room, and asked his servant how much money 
 he had made with the manuscripts he had stolen from him ; and 
 after a pause said, ' You have certainly not stolen them in order 
 to make presents.' In the last hour of his life he was continually 
 writing with his forefinger on his thigh, viz., characters that seemed 
 to be his signature, as he began always with the letter W (Wolfgang 
 Gdthe). By eleven o'clock almost all movement stopped ; he reclined 
 on his armchair, and expired at a quarter past eleven, without other 
 agonies but those occasioned by a few struggles against suffocation. 
 Madame de Gothe has told a friend that he died whilst holding her 
 hand in his, leaning with his face on her bosom, and looking stead- 
 fastly at her, so that she perceived what she thinks was his last 
 moment only by a sort of tremor pervading his system. 
 
 " I may here mention a few interesting circumstances which I 
 forgot to speak of in their chronological order. Gothe's last words 
 were directed to his daughter-in-law (who has nursed him tenderly 
 during his whole illness), and bore the expression of perfect 
 serenity. They were, ' Komm, mein Tochterchen, und gieb mir ein 
 Pfotchen,' 2 terms that he was in the habit of using when un- 
 commonly gentle and good-humoured. His last written verses 
 were destined for Countess Vaudreuil, 3 but found a different 
 destination in going to Jenny Pappenheim. 4 The reason was this : 
 Gothe was very partial for Countess Vaudreuil, who is young, 
 beautiful, intelligent, and, as far as is consistent with feminine 
 delicacy, uncommonly frank in expressing and maintaining her 
 
 1 " Seize Mois, ou la Revolution de 1830 et les Revolution aires." 
 
 2 Literally, ' ' Come, my little daughter, and give me a little paw. " 
 
 3 The Countess Vaudreuil was the wife of the French ckargi d'affaires 
 at Weimar. 
 
 4 Jenny von Pappeuheim, daughter of General von Pappenheim, was 
 one of the court beauties of Weimar. On Goethe's last birthday she sent 
 him a pair of slippers which she had embroidered, together with some 
 verses " Zum 28 August 1831" (see " Goethe- Jahrbuch," vi. p. 172). 
 Goethe was gratified and sent his thanks in verse ; the lines may be 
 found in the Hempel edition of Goethe's works, vol. iii. p. 367.
 
 288 Goethes Last Days. 
 
 opinions (but do not think that I am in love with her !). She was 
 often in company with him, and he showed his attention for her 
 by sending her different curiosities of which he knew she was fond. 
 He promised her likewise his portrait, and she made a similar 
 promise. About six weeks ago Countess Vaudreuil got painted for 
 herself Miss Pappenheim's portrait and her own, both being so 
 strikingly like that her husband thought fit to have the Countess's 
 portrait copied. Gothe, who had heard of the proceedings, held 
 a couple of verses ready with which to receive the Countess's 
 portrait ; but as only Jenny's portrait was sent to him for the present, 
 and for mere inspection, he decided that these verses must belong 
 to Pap. However, the last verses which he shaped in his head 
 incontestably belong to Countess Vaudreuil. He received his copy 
 of her portrait on the day before his death, when he was no more able 
 to write, though he expressed a wish to do so, and said that the 
 verses were quite ready in his head. The leading thought in them 
 was probably expressed in the words which he uttered whilst 
 looking at the portrait, ' Ich freue mich dass der Mensch nicht 
 verpfuscht hat was Gott so schon geschaffen hat.' l 
 
 " Some persons, being in the adjoining room at the time of Gothe's 
 death, pretend that they heard a tune, as if played by a large band 
 of music. This music, however, cannot have been very celestial, 
 as the same persons allege in corroboration of their statement that 
 they sent over to the next houses to inquire why the noise was 
 made. Some persons find it very curious that Gothe died in the 
 beginning of Spring, and I might think it very strange that he 
 actually died on my birthday, and who could contradict me if I 
 maintained that he did so at the very same hour when I was born ? 
 Who but my parents, who would not perhaps expose their dear 
 child ? There exists likewise a portrait of Gothe, where he sits 
 in his armchair with a clock on the desk before him showing the 
 time to be half -past eleven ? Dabit Deus his quoque finem. 
 
 " When this great life was extinguished the busy people about 
 Gothe's corpse began to quarrel whether his body ought to be 
 publicly exhibited. The ultras maintained that it was profanation 
 to expose those divine features (which according to the expression 
 of one of his admirers, glowed, a few hours after death, with the 
 reflection of all the characters portrayed in Gothe's works Mephi- 
 stopheles not excepted) to the dull eyes of the mob. But to the chief 
 supporter of this opinion it was objected that when the late Grand 
 Duke died, he had himself been instrumental in causing the 
 
 1 "I rejoice that man has not spoilt what God has made so fair."
 
 Goethes Last Days. 289 
 
 country and expense of 50,000 dollars to have the corpse exhibited, 
 on the plea that what had been so glorious in life, and so eminent 
 in character, ought to be honoured after death by all the externals 
 that mortals could bestow ; and the Whig party carried off the 
 victory. The corpse was exhibited on the 26th between eight and 
 one o'clock in Gothe's own house, the back gateway having been 
 transformed into a sort of chapel. He lay with a laurel crown on his 
 head, and a gown of white satin covering his breast. Over and 
 behind him there were three golden stars, and beneath these dif- 
 ferent emblems, among which the lyre was the most prominent 
 feature. Near the sides of his bed there burned numbers of wax- 
 candles, and behind the latter stood a honorary guard of four 
 men on each side, numbers of friends to the sciences and arts 
 relieving each other. The expression of his countenance had 
 much of truly majestic in it, and I thought he looked more like 
 an old warrior than anything else. 
 
 " I now come to speak about his funeral. The day after his death 
 there was circulated a manuscript regulation about the order of the 
 procession and solemnity, couched in the following terms : 
 
 " ' Arrangements with respect to the funeral of the late Minister 
 of the State, His Excellency Mr de Gothe. on the 26th of March, 
 1832. 
 
 " ' In the afternoon at four o'clock for the first time, and at half- 
 past four o'clock for the second time, the great bells of both 
 steeples will be rung ; and at five o'clock, when the procession will 
 move from the house of the defunct, all the bells will toll until 
 the coffin will be arrived at the chapel of the burial-ground. The 
 persons that wish to join in the procession will be at Gothe's house 
 at half-past four. The funeral procession will be formed in the 
 following order : [I omit the list of functionaries, which may be 
 found in Dr K. W. Miiller's " Goethe's letzte literarische Thatigkeit, 
 &c.," pp. 87-89.] As soon as the coffin is taken from the carriage the 
 chorus begins to sing the verses (which I subjoin ; they were 
 originally composed by Gothe for the funeral solemnity that took 
 place at the Lodge of the Freemasons on the late Grand Duke's 
 death : they are exceedingly beautiful, in my opinion, but leave us 
 very little hope of a future existence as individuals ; Herder would 
 never have written such verses, although the evident, and it seems 
 not accidental, double entendre of the last two lines allows of an 
 interpretation favourable to the hopes of a future state. The music 
 is by Zelter at Berlin *). Then follows the funeral speech by Rohr ; 
 
 1 The verses are those beginning " Lass't fahren bin das allzu 
 
 T
 
 290 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 then a short song of Riemer (on the other side of the leaf), the 
 music by Hummel. 1 Afterwards all the people present, except a 
 few officers of the court, will leave the Chapel.' 
 
 " The funeral took place, as much as I could observe, in the above 
 order. However, it was to be lamented that one of the carriages 
 looked more like an old post-waggon (and probably was one) than 
 a carriage belonging to the funeral, and the mob behaved very ill ; 
 boys with pastry (Bretzeln) went about, tinkling with their bells, 
 and on the cemetery there was great confusion and unbecoming 
 merriment, so that the whole looked more like a Catholic saint's- 
 day and procession than the funeral of Gothe. 
 
 " On the following day there was Tasso acted, and a Prologue 
 spoken, by whom I know not, but I'll try to learn it before I send 
 this letter. 2 Numbers of persons who had better saw wood or knit 
 stockings rack their brains with a view to erect eternal monuments 
 to the honour of Gothe, and a lady of rank actually showed me a 
 paper that she had written on the occasion, and which she intended 
 for immediate publication, which ends thus : ' But the pen, over- 
 whelmed with sorrow, sinks down ! ! ' Do not take this for a bad 
 piece of humour : it is as true as truth itself. 
 
 " In Gothe's papers there was found nothing about the manner 
 in which he should like to be interred. The funeral therefore was 
 shaped after that of the Minister that died last. The corpse was 
 put into a coffin that was like Schiller's, and therefore according to 
 the taste of Gothe, who had planned that of Schiller. It stands in 
 the Grand-ducal vault near Schiller's. 
 
 "With respect to Gothe's will I have learnt the following 
 authentic circumstances. The heirs to the property left (which is 
 said to be very considerable) are his three grandchildren. His 
 
 Fliichtige" ("Gedichte," ed. G. von Loeper, ii. p. 265). I give the 
 last verse : 
 
 ' ' So lost sich jene grosse Frage 
 
 Nach unserm zweiten Vaterland ; 
 
 Denn das Bestandige der ird'schen Tage 
 
 Verbiirgt uns ewigen Bestand." 
 
 1 An extract from Dr Rohr's funeral address is given in Dr K. W. 
 Miiller's "Goethe's letzte literarische Thatigkeit," &c., pp. 91, 92, 
 Riemer's song, "Ruhe sanft in heil'gem Frieden," is printed in the same 
 volume, p. 94. 
 
 2 Query Epilogue ? This Epilogue, a poem in ten stanzas of ottava 
 rima, written by Chancellor von Miiller, is given in Dr K. W. Miiller's 
 book, pp. 104-107.
 
 Goethes Last Days. 291 
 
 daughter-in-law has been bequeathed a decent income for herself 
 and another for bringing up her children. Besides she gets a 
 considerable pension from Government on account of her late 
 husband. The administration of the property is confined to the 
 tutors of the grandchildren, Mr de Waldungen, and your old 
 landlord, Court Advocate Bdttner. These tutors were named by 
 Gothe's son and confirmed by Gothe. The assets bequeathed to his 
 servants are so little that even Gothe's best friends cannot speak of 
 it without some indignation. To his nephew, who during the last 
 years has, with the greatest care, trouble, and to the very neglect of 
 his own houshold, kept in order that of Gothe, he has bequeathed 
 200 dollars, say 200 dollars Saxon monej^. Nor has he given a 
 farthing to any public institution, thereby showing evidently that 
 he was only interested in the progress of the arts, sciences, &c., as 
 long as they were instrumental in making his own self great. His 
 collections will be under the care of Chancellor Miiller, and 
 Secretary Kreuter will be appointed as Gustos, so that the public 
 may hope to arrive at the sight of them at length. These collec- 
 tions Gothe has wished to be sold, in preference to the Weimar 
 Government, if a considerable sum were offered. The Library 
 is not to be sold, but shall remain for his grandsons. Many 
 volumes of unpublished manuscripts have been found ready for 
 publication (I understand eighteen). Dr Eckermann will super- 
 intend this task. The correspondence between Gothe and Zelter 
 is to be published after the death of the latter. Four hundred 
 letters of Schiller are to be published in 1850. 
 
 " This is all I could learn about the circumstances connected 
 with the death of this remarkable and lucky person, who died, it 
 seems, without a sting of conscience, and after having fulfilled his 
 whole misson (as he said himself two months before his death, 
 when having completed the last part of his Faust, adding that 
 Providence now allowed to him only loans of days or weeks), and 
 from whose character still nothing can wipe the stain of mean 
 egotism. I am in possession of many first-rate and first-hand facts 
 by which I can prove this assertion, which T do not speak out for 
 asperging [aspersing] the character of a great man, but because it 
 is just that it should be duly appreciated what practical result the 
 leading tendency of such a reformer has bred in his own self ; and 
 I have a right to speak out without fear my own opinion about the 
 man at a time when he is dead, because I have, during his life-time, 
 never courted his favour, nor could I have done so but against my 
 feelings. But as you have not wished for an incrimination, but for
 
 292 Goethe's Last Days. 
 
 a plain statement of the circumstances that preceded and immedi- 
 ately followed Gothe's death, it would look like private animosity 
 if I did further expatiate on his failures ; and I may only add, 
 that had Schiller or Herder been the last survivors of the heroes of 
 our literature, I should have felt the loss much more severely than 
 in the present case, though I think we ought to be thankful to God 
 that he has allowed Gothe to live so long and to fulfil his mission 
 upon earth. 
 
 " I understand that you would rather have me send the above 
 information immediately than wait till the autograph of Gothe 
 that has been positively promised to me by a trustworthy person, 
 and which I believe I shall receive within this week, has reached 
 me. As soon as I have got it I'll send it you. I have applied 
 to Vogel, who sends you with his compliments the following 
 scantling. 
 
 " Believe me, truly yours, 
 
 "W. WEISSENBORN." 
 
 " Weimar, March 28, 1832. 
 
 " Excuse the very bad writing and other imperfections of this 
 letter." 
 
 The chief sources of information about the closing 
 days of Goethe's life, and the offices rendered after his 
 death are Dr Vogel's " Die letzte Krankheit Goethe's," 
 which describes in detail the medical aspect of the case, 
 and Dr Miiller's very interesting little volume, " Goethe's 
 letzte literarische Thatigkeit, Verhaltniss zum Ausland 
 und Scheiden." It is somewhat remarkable that an 
 account of the circumstances of Goethe's death, written 
 by the architect Coudray, who arranged the ceremony of 
 the lying-in-state, remained unprinted until a recent 
 date. Coudray visited Goethe for the last time on 
 March 12, 1832, the day before his departure from 
 Weimar on business to Allstedt. He found the old poet 
 engaged in looking through his drawings and sketches of 
 past years with a view to separating those that were 
 worth preserving from those which might be destroyed.
 
 Goethds Last Days. 293 
 
 Coudray pleaded that none should be destroyed as there 
 were persons to whom the slightest of them would be of 
 interest. Some were coloured, and as Coudray gazed long 
 at one of these which represented a calm sunset, Goethe 
 expressed his thought in the words " Yes, great even in 
 departure " (" Ja, auch im Scheiden gross "), words which 
 afterwards recurred to Coudray's memory as though they 
 had been a prophetic intimation of the approaching end. 
 
 The talk after the two o'clock meal on that day 
 turned on the sketch sent to Goethe from Pompeii of 
 the mosaic representing Alexander's battle with the 
 Persians at Arbela, which had been found in the house 
 excavated in presence of Goethe's son and named the 
 " Casa di Goethe." In the evening Coudray said farewell, 
 little anticipating that he would never again see Goethe 
 except in the shadow of death. 
 
 On returning from Allstedt on the 18th he called at 
 Goethe's house, but was informed by a servant that the 
 master was unwell and could not receive him. Next 
 morning Goethe, remembering their last conversation, 
 sent Coudray the letter accompanying the drawings 
 from Pompeii, which he had not been able to lay his 
 hand on during their recent after-dinner talk. On the 
 following day the sick man suffered much ; Coudray 
 was in the house, but did not enter the bedroom ; 
 through the open door he could hear sounds which 
 betokened a state of pain. An apparent amendment 
 on the morning of the 21st soon passed away. On the 
 night of that day Coudray offered to watch beside his 
 ailing friend, but his help was not needed. At seven 
 o'clock next morning he called and found all in the
 
 294 Goethe's Last Days. 
 
 Goethe house full of deep agitation ; the physician had 
 declared that the case was hopeless. From Goethe's 
 study Coudray could see the patient in the adjoining 
 bedroom, seated beside the bed in his armchair ; he 
 appeared to be calm and free from suffering ; and 
 evidently his mind was occupied, for he uttered from 
 time to time intelligible words. On drinking some 
 wine and water he became brighter and asked for light. 
 The blinds of the bedroom had been kept down, and 
 even the light which came from the study windows 
 had appeared to cause him some inconvenience, for he 
 frequently shaded his eyes with his hands. Supported 
 by his amanuensis and his servant Friedrich, he raised 
 himself from the armchair, and as he stood, asked what 
 day of the month it was ; on hearing that it was the 
 22nd of March, he said, " So the spring has begun, and 
 we may get well the sooner." He again seated himself 
 in the armchair, took the hand of his daughter-in-law 
 Ottilie, who since the previous day had remained con- 
 stantly by his side, and fell into a gentle slumber. 
 From time to time he spoke. " See that lovely woman's 
 head with black curls in splendid colours on a dark 
 background " ; and later, " Give me the portfolio yonder 
 with the drawings " (pointing to the place with his 
 hand). A book and not a portfolio lay before him ; 
 the servant handed it to him, but Goethe repeated, 
 " Not the book but the portfolio." When the servant 
 assured him that there was no portfolio but only a 
 book, " So then," he said, " it was a spectre " (Gespensty, 
 the word in this sense being adopted by Goethe from 
 his own " Theory of Colours." l 
 
 1 Coudray, "Goethe's drei letzte Lebenstage," pp. 6, 7.
 
 Goethe s Last Day 3. 295 
 
 Having tried to take some food and sipped a little 
 wine and water, Goethe again was raised from his chair 
 by his attendants. " But," says Coudray, " I noticed 
 with alarm how the tall figure tottered, and the patient 
 was once more lowered into his seat." He fancied that 
 he saw a paper lying on the floor and asked, " Why 
 have they let Schiller's correspondence lie here ? " A 
 little later he said to the servant, " Raise the bedroom 
 blinds so that more light may enter." These, says 
 Coudray and Dr Mtiller confirms the statement were 
 Goethe's last articulate words. It will have been 
 noticed by the reader that Weissenborn's statement is 
 different. I am not, for my own part, deeply concerned 
 to ascertain whether his latest request was for the light 
 which was fast disappearing from his dying eyes or for 
 the comfort of his daughter's hand ; and I should be 
 sorry to add one more topic of historical inquiry to 
 that important class which includes the question as to 
 whether King Charles I. knelt or lay prone to receive 
 the headsman's stroke, and the question as to the 
 precise words in which Wellington called upon the 
 Guards to make the final charge at Waterloo. It is 
 certain, at all events, that the rest was silence. For a 
 while Goethe's finger traced letters, first in the air, 
 and then, as his hand sank lower, on the down quilt 
 which lay across his knees. His breathing became 
 feebler from minute to minute, and at half-past eleven, 
 leaning towards the left side of the armchair, he gently 
 yielded up his spirit. The face retained an expression 
 of majestic calm. It was like the setting of the sun in 
 his own picture, " Ja, auch im Scheiden gross."
 
 296 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 Our impression of Goethe in his elder years is de- 
 rived in great measure from the conversations reported 
 by Eckermann, and we are most fortunate in possessing 
 that delightful treasury of wisdom and knowledge. But 
 in addition to the conversations with Eckermann, and 
 those, less familiar perhaps to English readers, with 
 Chancellor von Miiller, there exists a multitude of 
 scattered memorials of a like kind, and it was a happy 
 thought of Biedermann to bring together all existing 
 records of Goethe's conversations, and to publish them 
 in their chronological sequence. The eight volumes of 
 this collection form, as the editor alleges, virtually a 
 new work of Goethe's ; but they are something more 
 than this, for they present us with a series of portraits 
 of Goethe taken from almost every possible point of 
 view ; they exhibit in turn, and in the happiest way, 
 the many and various facets of that marvellous 
 mind. 
 
 Every visitor to Weimar was of course anxious to get 
 a sight of Jupiter Olympicus, and if possible to hold 
 speech with the immortal. Goethe bore the afflictions 
 which attend celebrity with a graceful fortitude, or 
 rather in the spirit of Wordsworth's happy warrior, 
 who 
 
 "Turns his necessity to glorious gain." 
 
 There may have been a time in middle life when he 
 secluded himself, was somewhat difficult of access, or 
 protected himself from distraction by a frigid courtesy. 
 Rumours lived in Weimar of the terrors to which a 
 visitor might be exposed who rashly crossed the " Salve " 
 at his threshold, and it was even said that he sometimes, 

 
 Goethe s Last Days. 297 
 
 when in an ill-humour, gave a silent audience to the 
 unhappy lion-hunter ; he shook his mane but would not 
 roar. One admirer describes Goethe's glance when he 
 entered the room as that of a boa-constrictor at sight of 
 a deer. Another from the New World thought the great 
 man's face was that of a student of natural science ex- 
 pecting some Transatlantic phenomenon. When Karl 
 von Holtei called in 1827, and brought forth his best 
 prepared sentences, Goethe at first let him speak, 
 while from time to time he sniffed at the corner of 
 his scented pocket-handkerchief. The thirsty traveller, 
 as he admits, struck the rock at first with little dexterity, 
 and no water gushed forth. Heine had lain awake, as 
 he tells us in his humorous way, many winter nights 
 thinking what magnificent and profound things he 
 should say to Goethe when they met ; and as soon as 
 he was in the presence he remarked that the plums on 
 the road between Jena and Weimar had a very fine 
 taste. Goethe could employ to good effect the German 
 " So," which is an admirable armour of defence, whether 
 used with an interrogative or an affirmative intonation ; 
 and his " H'm ! h'm ! " was not always encouraging to 
 conversation. If we do not find ourselves successful in 
 an interview with an Eminency or Excellency we are apt 
 to salve our wounded vanity by laying the blame 
 on the unsympathetic egoist, who has failed to give 
 us the sweets of self-content. 
 
 But during his elder years it rarely happened that a 
 visitor left the Goethe house without a feeling not only 
 of reverence but of regard or affection for its master. 
 Goethe had turned his necessity to gain ; if he was an
 
 298 Gotehes Last Days. 
 
 Olympian he was also in the finest sense of the word, 
 humane. The happiest man, he told the young musician 
 Lobe, is he who possesses to the widest extent the power 
 of taking a sympathetic interest in the occupations and 
 concerns of other men, and probably no one ever pos- 
 sessed this power more fully than Goethe himself. If 
 his "visitor were not a person of distinction still there 
 were the common joys and sorrows of humanity as a 
 basis of sympathy, and perhaps some modest special gift 
 which he might discover and, as far as opportunity 
 permitted, might foster. Goethe's grandchildren, and 
 his delight in them, had reopened some of the springs 
 of affection within him. Little Wolfgang usually 
 breakfasted at an early hour with the old man, and 
 was always happy when beside him. If, after break- 
 fast, he grew too noisy, Goethe would gently direct that 
 he should be removed, but Wolf's promises or perhaps 
 tears easily gained a remission of the sentence. Soon 
 the uproar would recommence, disturbing the worker 
 at his desk, or as he paced the room dictating to 
 his amanuensis, and Goethe would be compelled to 
 exile " den kleinen Menschen " ; but often Wolfs 
 sobs could be heard outside the door, and upon 
 renewed promises to be quiet he would be readmitted. 
 Sometimes before work had begun the boy would 
 climb into his grandfather's lap or on his shoulder, 
 and would be welcomed with caressing words as 
 his " kleines Kaferchen." In the winter which pre- 
 ceded his death Goethe, although his work-room was 
 cumbered with books and scientific apparatus, fitted 
 up a table in the window for " Wolfchen," in order
 
 Goethes Last Days. 299 
 
 that the boy might pursue his studies under his 
 own eyes. 1 
 
 Among the favourite playfellows of Wolfgang and 
 Walther were three little girls named Melos. There 
 was constant coming and going between the two houses. 
 When the little people overhead made too great a racket, 
 Goethe would send them, in petition for truce, a box of 
 choice Frankfort bonbons, designed as prizes for a less 
 noisy game. Often he would stand in the garden, 
 wearing his long grey house-coat, his hands behind his 
 back, and look on at the children's play. " If our balls 
 flew higher or our hoops made a finer curve," wrote one 
 of the troop, afterwards the wife of the poet Freiligrath, 
 " the grandsons would receive a mild rebuke ' Ah, the 
 girls put you to shame ! the girls do it better ! ' . . . 
 Once when Goethe was changing his coat and we were 
 by, I busied myself in giving him assistance, and 
 received the compliment ' It is a long time since 
 such pretty hands have helped me.' " 
 
 If Goethe were not truly amiable his temper might 
 have been tried a little by an incident of Saturday, 
 October llth, 1828. Herr Wiggers and his wife were 
 about to place their two sons, aged respectively seven- 
 teen and twelve, in a great educational institution, and, 
 accompanied by the boys, they stopped at Weimar on 
 the way. The writings of Goethe were held in high 
 honour in the Wiggers family, and the father without 
 delay sought for himself the honour of an interview. 
 Goethe readily consented to see the visitor, and learning 
 on his arrival that Frau Wiggers was not far off, he 
 1 Dr Midler, "Goethe's letzte literarische Thiitigkeit," &c., p. 4, note.
 
 300 Goethe's Last Days. 
 
 begged her husband to bring the lady to his house. 
 The happy husband flew with the message ; and when 
 the elders laid their heads together, it seemed to them 
 a grievous thing that young Julius and Moritz should 
 not also have the privilege of looking upon the great 
 poet. Accordingly when Goethe, arrayed in black, 
 with the silver star upon his breast, stepped into 
 the room in which he received his guests, it was 
 to find himself invaded by the entire Wiggers house- 
 hold. With' the friendliest air he led the lady to 
 a sofa and seated himself beside her, while the others 
 formed a semicircle in front. He questioned rather than 
 communicated his own thoughts, and had soon learnt 
 the mother's anxiety with respect to the severe disci- 
 pline to which her boys would be subjected at school. 
 " A mother," said Goethe, " who in the fulness of 
 love is wont to look on her child as an unit in the 
 house must needs feel anxious in surrendering that 
 child to an institution where it can be but an insig- 
 nificant fragment of the whole." Before the party 
 withdrew he begged the eldest son not to forget the 
 Goethe house if he should visit Weimar again ; then, 
 with a summons to his grandson Wolf to accompany 
 them to the door, he bade farewell. But hardly had 
 they reached their inn when little Wolfgang arrived 
 as the bearer from his grandfather of a small box 
 containing a bronze medal impressed with the poet's 
 likeness ; it was a joyous moment, and a kind message 
 and one of Goethe's visiting-cards filled up the measure 
 of the good folk's happiness. 
 
 It was necessary for Goethe still in some measure
 
 Goethes Last Days. 301 
 
 to protect himself. When a young author brought 
 his manuscript verses and declared not quite sincerely 
 that he would consider Goethe's verdict as final and 
 decisive of his future career, the great poet, who had 
 still work of his own to accomplish, must needs in 
 all kindness explain that his old age, with its limited 
 powers, made it impossible for him to do real justice 
 in such a case, and that he was obliged to decline 
 the responsibility. He had to guard himself also 
 against surprise or sudden emotion, and, as he said 
 to Victor Cousin, even abstain from many things that 
 interested him, in order to maintain his equilibrium. 
 It may have been also that in endeavouring to resist 
 or conceal the infirmities of age he acquired at times 
 a certain stiffness. So at least it appeared to the 
 Viennese dramatist Grillparzer, who visited Goethe 
 in 1826. On a second interview what had seemed 
 like the stiffness of a minister of state wore off, and 
 Goethe had, in Grillparzer's eyes, the aspect " half 
 of a king and half of a father." A visitor who possessed 
 some special faculty or some special knowledge was 
 most welcome of all to Goethe. It was not required 
 or expected that he should be known to fame. 
 " Original talent," said Goethe, " that is water for 
 my mill." And such a person, who perhaps having 
 been alarmed by the tales and fables of Weimar, 
 had entered the reception-room with tremors or em- 
 barrassment, was forthwith set at ease, and presently, 
 to his surprise and delight, found himself instructing 
 his host, while, under a keen and eager cross-examina- 
 tion, he learnt new meanings and discovered hidden
 
 302 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 relations in the facts at his command. In the spring 
 of 1820 the young musician, J. Christian Lobe, desiring 
 an introduction to Zelter, called on Goethe. What 
 strength and courage the old man infused into the 
 young aspirant may be read in Lobe's account of 
 the interview. How much Goethe learnt and how 
 much he taught ! How quickly he caught Lobe up 
 when the latter described Zelter's music as old-fashioned ! 
 How " old-fashioned " ? Explain and be precise ; good ! 
 there is the piano ; what you have stated must 
 stand the test of an experiment. Goethe strongly 
 urged upon his young acquaintance the advantage 
 of making careful notes of the performances in the 
 theatre at Berlin ; all details should be classified, 
 and each entered under its proper rubric : " Write, 
 for example, under ' Theatre ' as special questions : 
 the piece ? poet ? actors ? reception by the public ? 
 impression made on myself? and, as you have told 
 me that you travel with a couple of companions, 
 impression made on these? &c., &c." It was Goethe's 
 aim that nothing should escape the young man's 
 observation, that he should see at once broadly and 
 minutely, and that everything should find its exact 
 place in his mind. When a few months later Lobe 
 returned from Berlin to Weimar, he was able in a 
 very creditable manner to meet Goethe's fire of cross- 
 examination, and to satisfy, as far as the occasion 
 permitted, Goethe's insatiable curiosity about things 
 of the mind. And once again, nothing must remain 
 in the vague which can be made definite. Spontini's 
 music has a plastic quality. Plastic ? What exactly
 
 Goethe s Last Days. 303 
 
 does that mean when used with reference to music ? 
 Explain, explain ! 
 
 A traveller among the palms and temples was perhaps 
 a rarer apparition in Weimar seventy years ago than he 
 would be to-day. Gustav Parthey arrived in 1827 with 
 an introduction from Zelter, and found Goethe all 
 eagerness to hear what he had to tell. " I tried in 
 my answers," he writes, " to approximate to the clear 
 precision of the questions." He had spent two months 
 in Malta before setting out on his travels to Constanti- 
 nople, Egypt, and up the Nile as far as Wady-Halfa 
 and Dongola. Parthey imagined that Malta might in 
 some measure be taken for granted ; but no : " We will 
 for the present remain at Malta." This island of car- 
 bonaceous limestone between Sicily and Africa must 
 have a peculiar character of its own. And before the 
 peculiarities of Malta had been exhausted it was time to 
 say good-bye. " We have so much to talk about your 
 Eastern travels," said Goethe, " that I beg you will dine 
 with me every day during your stay among us." The 
 desultory questions put by his son at dinner about 
 mosques at Constantinople and pyramids at Memphis 
 did not divert Goethe from his regular method of pro- 
 gression ; the dinner lingered on from two to six 
 o'clock, and they had reached Phila3 when it was 
 time to go. Goethe commissioned the traveller as 
 he departed to be the bearer of hearty greetings 
 to his friend Knebel, whom he would find " Quite a 
 young man of eighty-three." 
 
 In the autumn of the same year, 1827, the servant 
 presented Goethe with a card bearing on it the name of
 
 304 Goethes Last Days. 
 
 Wilhelm Zahn, " architect and painter." Zahn was 
 young and unknown. He had heard alarming stories 
 of Goethe's cold and arrogant bearing to strangers. One 
 distinguished applicant for admission to the Goethe 
 house had never received an acknowledgment of his 
 letter. Another had ventured in, and then had timidly 
 slipped into the courtyard to seek some attendant spirit 
 favourably inclined. Two boys, the poet's grandsons, 
 were there at noisy play. Suddenly a window was 
 thrown up, and the much-desired face became visible. 
 With eyes aflame and a leonine roar he cried, " You 
 lubbers, will you keep quiet ? " and the window came 
 down with a bang. The boys were quiet, and the 
 stranger fled in terror. 1 Such tales were not encourag- 
 ing to Zahn, architect and painter, even though he had 
 begged the servant in announcing him to add the 
 words, " arrived from Italy." If Goethe had been 
 inclined to moroseness, however, these words would 
 have charmed him into good -humour. Zahn was 
 conducted into the reception - room, and in a few 
 moments there entered a veritable Olympic Jove, 
 with the great forehead and two great brown eyes 
 of indescribable lustre. " So you have been in Italy ? " 
 " Three years, your Excellency." " And have perhaps 
 visited the excavations in the neighbourhood of 
 Naples ? " " That was the special object of my 
 travel. I made myself at home in an antique house 
 at Pompeii, and during two years all the excavations 
 
 1 Freiligrath's wife stated that she, as a little girl, was constantly in 
 and out of Geothe's study with Wolfgang, and never once heard a harsh 
 word from the old man.
 
 Goethe's Last Days. 305 
 
 were under my eyes." " Delighted glad to hear 
 it," exclaimed Goethe, who had a way of dropping 
 unnecessary pronouns. He drew his chair nearer 
 and continued. " Have often advised the Academies 
 of Berlin and Vienna to send young artists to study 
 the antique paintings of the subterranean buildings ; 
 so much the better if you have done it on your 
 own account. Yes, yes, the antique must remain 
 the model for every artist. But let us not forget 
 the best thing. Have perhaps some drawings in 
 your trunk ? " "I drew the finest of the wall- 
 paintings almost immediately on their discovery, and 
 tried to reproduce the colours. Perhaps your Excel- 
 lency would care to see some of them ? " " O, surely, 
 surely, gladly and thankfully. Come again to dinner ; 
 dine at two o'clock. You will find some lovers of 
 art. Have the greatest desire to examine your 
 pictures. Auf iviedersehen, my young friend." 
 
 Beside Goethe, his daughter-in-law, and her sister 
 Ulrike, the new guest found at table the Chancellor 
 von Miiller, the architect Coudray, Vogel, Goethe's 
 physician, and Eckermann listening to the words of 
 the master as to the utterances of an oracle. The 
 talk was of Italy, and Fraulein Ulrike, amid the 
 general praises of the glories of Rome, could not repress 
 a little militant Protestantism directed against the Pope 
 and all his works. Goethe, smiling, handed her a 
 toothpick with the words, " Take this, my dear, and 
 wreak your vengeance ! " The pictures Achilles and 
 Briseis, Leda, the marriage of Pasithea, Jupiter en- 
 throned, and the rest were duly exhibited ; when 
 
 u
 
 306 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 suddenly the Grand Duke, in hunting costume and 
 meerschaum in hand, entered unannounced. The 
 situation was explained, and Zahn was invited to 
 dine next day with his Royal Highness, but Goethe 
 interposed. " No, Zahn is mine for dinner." And 
 so it was permitted to be. Ten days passed away 
 rapidly. " Goethe," says Zahn, " was inexhaustible 
 in questions, and knew how to win from me what 
 was best and most secret, so that I often regarded 
 myself with astonishment. In those precious hours 
 he sank deep in golden memories of a golden life, 
 and allowed me to look into his great and noble 
 heart. That heart was indeed as great as his intellect. 
 He knew not the shadow of envy, but embraced with 
 warm good-will the whole of human kind, and he had 
 helped hundreds of persons with word and deed, but 
 always quietly and secretly." 
 
 French and English visitors were received with a 
 warm welcome by Goethe. Among the former were 
 the sculptor David, Jean- Jacques Ampere, and Ampere's 
 philosophic teacher, Cousin. Goethe spoke perhaps 
 more freely of the contemporary movement in French 
 literature to his Polish visitor, Count A. E. von Kosmian, 
 than to any of these : 
 
 " ' Victor Hugo,' said Goethe, ' possesses remarkable gifts ; with- 
 out doubt he has renewed and quickened French poetry, but one 
 cannot help fearing that if not he himself, yet his pupils and fol- 
 lowers may go too far in the course which they have ventured to 
 pursue. The French nation is the nation of extremes ; it knows 
 moderation in nothing. Endowed with great moral and physical 
 strength, the French people might lift the world, if they could only 
 find the centre, but they never seem to know that if one would lift 
 great weights, one must discover the middle point. It is the only
 
 Goethe's Last Days. 307 
 
 people on earth in whose history we can find the night of St 
 Bartholomew and the Feast of Reason, the despotism of Louis XIV. 
 and the orgies of the sansculottes, and almost in the same year the 
 capture of Moscow and the capitulation of Paris. Accordingly we 
 cannot but fear that in literature also, after the despotism of Boileau, 
 licentiousness and repudiation of all law may follow.' 
 
 " ' I, too,' said I, ' share this fear, but I cannot deny that the 
 literary forms which were once in vogue cannot serve as models for 
 to-day. We read the tragedies of the French dramatic masters with 
 constant pleasure, but when represented on the stage they fail to 
 interest the present public. If Racine were to rise again, he would 
 himself now avoid the faults which we find in his works.' 
 
 " ' Believe me,' replied Goethe, ' we might well desire a new 
 Racine with the faults of his elder namesake. The masterpieces of 
 the French drama remain masterpieces for ever. The representa- 
 tion of them interested me deeply in my early years, when at 
 Frankfort ; then it was that I first thought of writing plays. The 
 present school may do much for literature, but never as much as 
 the earlier school has done.' " 
 
 Goethe's feeling towards English visitors to Weimar 
 was happily expressed in a conversation with Ecker- 
 marin of March 12, 1828. The young Englishman's 
 confidence and sense of power pleased Goethe ; but he 
 was not without a portion of the feeling so widespread 
 on the Continent that as a nation we are not entirely 
 free from the vice of hypocrisy. 1 Between 1815 and 
 1830 Goethe added to his collection of portraits painted 
 by Schmeller those of fourteen English acquaintances, 
 among them one of Crabb Robinson, a head in crayons, 
 which the sitter described as " frightfully ugly and very 
 like." Goethe was by no means indifferent as to the 
 reception of his works in our country. Crabb Robinson 
 tells us how the poet was mortified at the poor account 
 
 i "Nirgendwo giebt es soviel Heuchler und Scheinheilige wie in Eng- 
 land ; zu Shakespeare's Zeit mag das (loch wohl anders gewesen sein." 
 Goethe to Fbrster, Oct. 17, 1829.
 
 308 GoeMs Last Days. 
 
 which he gave him of Lord Leveson Gower's translation 
 of " Faust." " On my mentioning that Lord Leveson 
 Gower had not ventured to translate the Prologue in 
 Heaven, he seemed surprised. ' How so ? that is quite 
 unobjectionable. The idea is in Job.' He did not 
 perceive that that was the aggravation, not the excuse." 
 A few weeks after the conversation with Robinson, 
 Goethe was smiling with Friedrich Forster over his 
 lordship's rendering of Gretchen's song, " There was a 
 King in Thule." When in the translation the king 
 comes to die 
 
 " He called for his confessor, 
 Left all to his successor " 
 
 probably, as Forster ingeniously suggested, because the 
 rhymes came pat. Goethe, when the lines were quoted, 
 laughed heartily. " ' Called for his confessor,' " he cried. 
 " We must direct the noble lord's attention to the .fact 
 that the King of Thule reigned before the Flood. At 
 that early date confessors were unknown." The speakers 
 went on to cite other amusing mistranslations of Goethe's 
 poems in both English and French, and to notice the 
 " nice derangement of epitaphs " in certain ill-printed 
 German texts and songs arranged for music. On one 
 occasion an Englishman expressed his surprise that the 
 father in the ballad of the "Erl-Kiug" should have 
 grieved so excessively for the boy, considering the fact 
 that he had been blessed with so numerous a family. 
 On the remark that nothing was mentioned on this 
 subject in the ballad, he recited with lips which hardly 
 parted the words that proved the correctness of his 
 assertion :
 
 Goethe's Last Days. 309 
 
 " Dem Vater grauset, er reitet geschwind, 
 Er halt in den Armen das achtzehnte Kind "- 
 
 He held in his arms his eighteenth child a number 
 which even in Great Britain, with its rapidly increasing 
 population, must exceed the average. 
 
 It was inevitable that the editorof "Goethes Gesprache," 
 wide-read and diligent though he be, should overlook 
 some of the scattered material for his collection. -In an 
 Appendix to the last volume much might be done to 
 fill up the gaps. Among visitors from our country to 
 Weimar who held speech with Goethe, he has failed to 
 notice R. P. Gillies the same Gillies to whom Words- 
 worth addressed a fine sonnet directed against despond- 
 ency in youth. The year of Gillies' continental tour 
 was, I think, 1821. Goethe in figure, contour of 
 features, mode of speech and demeanour, reminded 
 him in an indefinable way of John Kemble, but of 
 Kemble as he might be should he live to be old. 
 "As the door opened from the farther end of the 
 reception-room, and his Excellency's tall, gaunt form, 
 wrapped in a long, blue surtout, which hung loosely 
 on him, slowly advanced, he had veritably the air 
 and aspect of a revenant. His was not an appearance 
 but an apparition." At this time Goethe was recover- 
 ing from a serious illness ; yet Gillies could perceive 
 that the fire and energy of youth had not wholly 
 died out from his face. In profound silence he 
 advanced ; like other ghosts he seemed to wait to 
 be spoken to. The talk, when it started, was of 
 Sir Brooke Boothby, whom Goethe had known well, 
 and who had obtained a commission in the Duke of
 
 310 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 Weimar's cavalry, in order that he might have the 
 privilege of appearing at court in boots instead of 
 silk stockings ; of Walter Scott, of Byron, of the 
 influence of " Faust " and " Wilhelm Meister " on English 
 literature. Gillies withdrew not altogether pleased 
 with Goethe's reserve and taciturn humour, but con- 
 vinced that he was inaccessible to flattery and " cared 
 not a straw about praise." l 
 
 Another wanderer from England to Weimar, whose 
 conversation with Goethe has escaped Biedermann's 
 research, was the eminent physician, Dr Granville. 
 The name Granville, it will be remembered, had been 
 taken by Augustus Bozzi in accordance with his 
 mother's dying wish ; mingled blood of Milan and 
 Cornwall ran in Granville's veins. In 1827, when 
 forty-four years of age, he made a journey to St 
 Petersburg, and halted en route at Weimar, in order 
 to obtain, if possible, an interview with " the patriarch 
 of German literature." 2 Ottilie's assistance having 
 been obtained, an appointment for the interview was 
 made. " He advanced towards me," Granville writes, 
 " with the countenance of one who seems not to go 
 through the ceremony of a first greeting ct contre caeur. 
 .... His person was erect and denoted not the 
 advance of age. His open and well-arched eyebrows, 
 which gave effect to the undimmed lustre of the most 
 brilliant eye I have ever beheld, his fresh look and mild 
 expression of countenance at once captivated my atten- 
 
 1 "Memoirs of a Literary Veteran." By R. P. Gillies, vol. iii. p. 16. 
 
 2 The record of this visit is given in Granville's ' ' St Petersburg : A 
 Journal of Travels," &c. (Golburn, 1828).
 
 Goethes Last Days. 3 1 1 
 
 tion." He was free alike from frivolity and haughty 
 reserve. " I found him in his conversation ready rather 
 than fluent ; following, rather than leading ; unaffected, 
 yet gentlemanly ; earnest, yet entertaining ; and mani- 
 festing no desire to display how much he deserved the 
 high reputation which not only Germany but Europe in 
 general had simultaneously acknowledged to be his due." 
 He spoke disparagingly of Lord Leveson Gower's trans- 
 lation of " Faust," and commended a rendering of his 
 " Tasso" into English by Des Voeux. 1 The conversation 
 then passed on to the subject of education, and especially 
 to that of instruction in a foreign language. " Through- 
 out the interview," writes Granville, " which lasted up- 
 wards of an hour, Goethe manifested great eagerness 
 after general information, particularly respecting England 
 and her numerous institutions ; and also on the subject 
 of St Petersburg, which he looked upon as a city that 
 was fast rising to the rank of the first capital on the 
 Continent." When bidding good-bye Goethe presented 
 his visitor with a small morocco case containing two 
 bronze medals, each bearing a bust of himself in relief. 
 Granville ascribes the pleasant character of the meeting 
 partly to the fact that he had gone through the correct 
 forms for obtaining an interview, and had not taken the 
 venerable poet by surprise. 
 
 Yet another visitor of Goethe's was William K. Swifte, 
 whose death took place near Dublin not very long since. 
 He has told his early adventures in a little volume 
 
 1 Granville spells the name as Goethe pronounced it, Devaux. I learn 
 from the English Goethe Society's papers that Goethe had Des Voeux' 
 portrait painted by Schmeller.
 
 312 Goethe s Last Days. 
 
 I cannot describe it as one of much value entitled, 
 if I remember aright, " Wilhelm's Wanderings." He 
 also was one of those who bore away from Weimar a 
 Goethe medal, and his album contained some lines of 
 verse in Goethe's handwriting which I remember to have 
 read and noted as already in print. Mr Swifte, like most 
 Irish country gentlemen, was a spirited rider ; and the 
 Goethe medal, lost in some flying leap, lies, or was 
 supposed by him to lie, if my memory serves me right, 
 in some ditch of the county Kildare.
 
 COLERIDGE AS A POET. 
 
 IT would need Coleridge the critic to discover the secrets 
 of the genius of Coleridge the poet. To solve intellect- 
 ual puzzles in verse, to condense a diffused body of 
 doctrine, to interpret what is called a poet's criticism of 
 life is after all not difficult ; but to find expressions in 
 the language of thought corresponding to pure melody 
 and imaginative loveliness is a finer exercise of wit. In 
 one of his pieces of blank verse Coleridge has described 
 a vision of the graceful white-armed Isabel reflected in 
 the placid waters of a lonely stream : let but a blossom 
 of willow-herb or a fox-glove bell be tossed upon the 
 pool and the charm is broken 
 
 " All that phantom-world so fair 
 Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, 
 And each mis-shape the other." 
 
 The description might stand for that of Coleridge's own 
 poetry personified, with its visionary beauty, and its 
 harmony of exquisite colours ; and what shall be said of 
 the critic who flings his heavy stone of formula and 
 scatters the loveliness ? 
 
 There is a quality of Coleridge's work as a poet which 
 has obtained little attention from the critics, and yet 
 which submits itself to criticism without injury to the 
 beauty of the whole. The critics tell us of the romantic 
 strangeness of his work like that of " a lady from a far 
 
 313
 
 314 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 countree," its wealth of fantastic incident, its dream-like 
 inconsequence, its cloud-like and rainbow-like splendours ; 
 and the critics have a reason for what they say. But 
 they hardly recognise enough the fine humanity in 
 Coleridge's poetry. He has been admirably compared 
 by Mr Swinburne to a footless bird of paradise. Another 
 great poet, Mr Swinburne's friend, Dante Rossetti, has a 
 far different comparison, though here also to a bird, in 
 his sonnet on Coleridge, and the lines are valuable, at 
 least, as containing a fragment of sound criticism. 
 
 " His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home grove 
 The father-songster plies the hour-long quest), 
 To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest ; 
 
 But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above 
 
 Their callow fledgling progeny still hove 
 
 With tented roof of wings and fostering breast 
 Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Kichly blest 
 
 From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love." 
 
 " I conceive the leading point about Coleridge's work," 
 wrote Dante Rossetti, " is its human love ; " and yet 
 Rossetti least of all men could be insensible to its 
 romantic beauty, or the incantation of its verse. If 
 we would express the whole truth about Coleridge as 
 a poet, we must find some mode of reconciling the con- 
 ception of him as the footless bird of paradise with our 
 knowledge of his affluent and sweet humanity. 
 
 To understand and to feel his poetry aright we must 
 think of him, not as for ever floating on golden and 
 emerald plumes somewhere above Mount Abora and 
 feeding on the honey-dew, but also as nestling in 
 that cottage at Clevedon or at Nether Stowey with 
 a wife and child, loving the Somerset hills and coombs,
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 315 
 
 rich in friendships, and deeply interested in the great 
 public events of his own time. It was a fortunate time, 
 if to be compelled to think, to hope, and to fear in early 
 manhood be fortunate ; a time when the great name for 
 honour or detestation in English politics was that of 
 William Pitt ; when the French Revolution was not a 
 thing to be studied in documents, but an enormous 
 phenomenon in process of actual development, a neigh- 
 bouring Vesuvius, glorious or terrible, in active eruption ; 
 when the chief rival political teachers of England were 
 the doctrinaire Godwin with his haughty abstractions of 
 reason, and Edmund Burke who inspired the historical 
 British habit of thinking with the perfervid passion of 
 the Celt ; when Hartley's system of physical psychology 
 had all the force derived from its presenting a novel 
 view of human nature apparently in harmony at once 
 with science and with religion ; when in literature the 
 return to nature and the sentimental reaction from the 
 dry ness and formality of the earlier part of the century 
 were represented by Cowper and Burns, and when with 
 the return to nature there came the discovery of the 
 supernatural and the romantic ; when Macpherson's 
 Ossian, if discredited by scholarship, was still an in- 
 fluence ; when the genius of Chatterton had aided 
 in the revival of an imaginative medievalism, and 
 when Mrs Radcliffe thrilled the nerves of our fair 
 foremothers with her tales of the forest and mountain, 
 the lonely lake, the ruined castle, the vault, the secret 
 passage, the cowled monk, the torturer of the Inquisi- 
 tion, the high-souled chieftain of banditti, and the gliding 
 apparitions of the dead. We smile at the stage-heroes,
 
 316 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 stage-villains, and tarnished stage-properties, but they 
 interested a simple generation which had not learnt to 
 sympathise with the trials, difficulties, and dangers of 
 fervid young clergymen struggling amid the shallows of 
 biblical criticism. 
 
 Such was the time ; and the place was no less faith- 
 fully mirrored in Coleridge's verse. The landscape poetry 
 of England gains not a little in interest when we can 
 recognise its truthfulness to the local character and 
 spirit of the several districts which it depicts. We 
 hardly do justice to Cowper's descriptive fidelity until 
 we have grown familiar with the low-lying country 
 watered by the Ouse ; nor to that of Crabbe, until 
 we have become acquainted with the coast scenery 
 of Suffolk, its sullen ocean, its sandy levels, its com- 
 mons wild and bleak, its scanty herbage, and the saline 
 vegetation of its fens. The genius of the English Lake 
 District through all its moods, from the nestling beauty 
 of the cottage, owning " its own small pasture, almost 
 its own sky," to the visionary glory of the mountain- 
 heights at sunrise or in wreathing mists or under the 
 midnight stars, is expressed in the poetry of Words- 
 worth. But if we would find a poetical rendering of 
 the landscape of the Quantocks, with its unambitious 
 loveliness of coomb and cliff, the exquisite delicacy of its 
 green dells, each possessing a murmuring and living 
 stream, and again those fine bursts of prospect, including 
 the Severn and the Bristol Channel, visible from its 
 smooth green heights, we must turn to the Nether 
 Stowey poems of Coleridge. For Coleridge the peculiar 
 charm of the district lay in its two-fold beauty the
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 317 
 
 beauty of those nooks made for silent repose or secluded 
 meditation, and the larger and freer beauty of wide- 
 spreading woods and pastures beheld in one and the 
 same moment with the glory of the sea. The elevation 
 of the Quantock hills, reaching at most twelve hundred 
 feet, is never such as to disconnect the climber from the 
 humanity which reposes or toils below. There are hills 
 of snow and even hills of heather which seem to lead us 
 to the gate of heaven ; the smooth airy ridge of the 
 Quantocks is not framed for ecstasy or awe, but it 
 enlarges our sense of the cheerful beauty of the earth. 1 
 In April, 1798, when England was alarmed by the 
 report of an intended French invasion, Coleridge wrote 
 his Fears in Solitude, and the opening and closing lines 
 of the poem present us with this two-fold beauty of the 
 Quantock district : 
 
 " A green and silent spot amid the hills, 
 A small and silent dell ! O'er stiller place 
 No singing skylark ever poised himself. 
 The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope, 
 Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, 
 All golden with the never-bloomless furze, 
 Which now blooms most profusely ; but the dell, 
 Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate 
 As vernal cornfield, or the unripe flax, 
 When, through its half -transparent stalks at eve, 
 The level sunshine glimmers with green light." 
 
 In this silent dell among the hills the poet meditates on 
 the great events of the time, and in truth grows over- 
 rhetorical and over-didactic in the utterance of his fears 
 
 1 I may refer the reader to an interesting little volume, "The Quan- 
 tocks and their Associations," by the Rev. W. L. Nichols (Bath: printed 
 for private circulation, 1873), to which I owe the identification of some 
 of the localities described by Coleridge.
 
 318 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 and hopes. And when heart and brain are weary he 
 turns homeward to wind his way by the green sheep- 
 track up the height of Danesbarrow, when suddenly he 
 pauses upon the brow, startled, yet .pleased by the 
 prospect below : 
 
 " This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main, 
 Dim tinted, there the mighty majesty 
 Of that huge amphitheatre of rich 
 And elmy fields, seems like society 
 Conversing with the mind, and giving it 
 A livelier impulse and a dance of thought ! " 
 
 And the heart of all this beauty is the cottage which 
 shelters the beings whom he loves : 
 
 " And now beloved Stowey ! I behold 
 Thy church-tower, and methinks, the four huge elms 
 Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend : 
 And close behind them, hidden from my view, 
 Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe, 
 And my babe's mother dwell in peace." 
 
 It is the same contrast, characteristic of the Quantock 
 scenery, between the coomb or dell and the landscape 
 as seen from the heights, which reappears in that poem, 
 the title of which is itself a poem, The Lime-tree Bower 
 my Prison. A delightful prison for the limbs, but 
 none for the thoughts and wishes which follow his 
 friends to that spot now known as Wordsworth's Glen, 
 then called " The Mare's Pool," about a quarter of a mile 
 from Alfoxden : 
 
 " The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep, 
 And only speckled by the midday sun ; 
 Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock 
 Flings arching like a bridge ; "
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 319 
 
 and where within the breathing of the little waterfall 
 the hart's-tongue ferns 
 
 " Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge 
 Of the blue slate-stone." 
 
 But presently the wanderers, as he imagines them, are 
 on the hill-top edge, and view 
 
 " The many-steepled tract magnificent 
 Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea, 
 With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up 
 The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles 
 Of purple shadow ! " 
 
 Assuredly the writer of these lines, who was a traveller 
 at times through cloudlaud, and who could create from 
 his imagination such visions as those of Kubla Khan, 
 had also his foot on English grass and heather, and 
 writing, to use Wordsworth's phrase, with his eye upon 
 the object, was able to add a page of rare fidelity to the 
 descriptive poetry of our country. 
 
 Old Parkinson, in recounting the virtues of the 
 hart's-tongue fern, tells us that divers commend the 
 distilled water thereof to be taken against the passions 
 of the heart; but the ferns of Wordsworth's Glen and 
 the fact has not been noticed exerted a malign in- 
 fluence over Coleridge. My readers will remember the 
 unhappy " Drip, drip, drip, drip," in the cavern scene 
 of Osorio, and the sorry jest of Sheridan, to whom 
 Coleridge had sent his manuscript " In short," said he, 
 " it was all dripping : " 
 
 " A jutting clay-stone 
 
 Drips on the long lank weed that grows beneath : 
 And the weed nods and drips."
 
 320 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 The cavern in which Osorio murders Ferdinand is in 
 Granada, among the Alpuj arras ; but we have only to 
 glance at The Lime-tree Bower my Prison, to make 
 sure that the ferns are those of Somerset, for here too 
 we find " the dark green file of long lank weeds " that 
 " nod and drip beneath the dripping edge of the blue 
 clay-stone." Dioscorides, who saith that the hart's- 
 tongue water is a preservative against the stings of 
 serpents, as regards this instance at least did vainly 
 teach. 
 
 The character of the Quantock landscape is inter- 
 preted in Coleridge's poetry, but what of the inhabitants 
 of the district cottagers of Stowey, toilers in the fields 
 and shepherds of the hills ? Where are they ? No- 
 where in any of his poems. He lived with his own 
 thoughts and fancies in dell or on upland, his affections 
 twined themselves around the beloved inmates of his 
 cottage and certain cherished friends ; he was deeply 
 interested in great national questions of the day, but 
 neither now nor at any other time did he exercise his 
 imagination with the joys and sorrows of the humble 
 men and women among whom his lot was cast. We 
 must turn to Wordsworth's poems of this period if we 
 would find any imaginative record of the life of the 
 inhabitants of the district ; it is there we read of the 
 Holford peasant mourning for the last of his dwindled 
 flock, of the wronged and distracted mother bearing her 
 infant on her breast, of the old huntsman Simon Lee 
 and his pathetic gratitude, of Martha Ray and the 
 mvsterious hillock of moss beside the solitary thorn-tree, 
 of the idiot boy and his moonlight adventures.
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 321 
 
 Coleridge's domestic life was not fortuiiate or wisely 
 managed, but at Clevedon, for some time after his early 
 marriage, he was as happy as a lover. Every one who 
 knows his early verse remembers the frequent references 
 to the beloved Sara, which are provoking in their lack 
 of real characterisation. With the most exquisite feel- 
 ing for womanhood in its general features, he seems to 
 have been incapable of drawing strongly the features of 
 any individual woman. His nearest approach to the 
 creation of a heroine is perhaps in his Illyrian queen, 
 Zapolya. Even Christabel is a figure somewhat too 
 faintly drawn, a figure expressing indeed the beauty, 
 innocence, and gentleness of maidenhood, but without 
 any of the traits of a distinctive personality. All his 
 other imaginings of women are exquisite abstractions, 
 framed of purely feminine elements, but representing 
 Woman rather than being themselves veritable women. 
 His comment on Pope's line, " Most women have no 
 characters at all," is an unconscious apology for his own 
 practice. Shakespeare, he says, who knew man and 
 woman much better than Pope, saw that it was the 
 perfection of woman to be characterless. This, which 
 is conspicuously untrue of the creator of the two 
 Portias, Rosalind, Viola, Isabel, Hermione, Juliet, 
 Imogen, is absolutely true of Coleridge himself, and 
 of what he saw or thought he saw in woman. He 
 can no more paint a variety of female portraits than 
 can Stothard. The delicacy of design and occasionally 
 the exquisite execution almost, but not quite, prevent 
 us from feeling a certain monotony in Stothard's charm- 
 ing pictures of maidenhood, in which no line is ever in- 
 
 X
 
 322 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 troduced which is not purely feminine, but in which also 
 a type is presented rather than a person ; and so it is 
 with the poet who has justly praised the art of Stothard. 
 We can collect no portrait of Sara Coleridge from her 
 husband's verse, but we get a delightful picture of the 
 happiness of early wedded life from such a poem as that 
 which describes husband and wife seated together in the 
 twilight beside their jasmine-covered cottage at Clevedon, 
 while they watch the darkening clouds and the evening 
 star as it shines forth : 
 
 " How exquisite the scents 
 
 Snatch'd from yon bean-field ! and the world so hush'd ! 
 The stilly murmur of the distant sea 
 Tells us of silence." 
 
 We seem to know the baby Hartley through his 
 father's poetry better than we know his " pensive 
 Sara." Coleridge indeed has said nothing of his 
 son in verse so admirable as what he said in a 
 letter which describes Hartley as " a strange, strange 
 boy, exquisitely wild, an utter visionary, like the 
 moon among thin clouds he moves in a circle of 
 his own making. He alone is a light of his own. 
 Of all human beings I never saw one so utterly 
 naked of self." Nor has he written of Hartley in 
 verse anything so happy in characterisation or so 
 pathetic in its power of prophecy as Wordsworth's 
 lines addressed to the fairy-like boy at the age of 
 six. But his father has recorded in a sonnet his 
 hopes and fears while hastening to his wife from a 
 distance on hearing of the infant's birth ; and in 
 another well-known sonnet has told of the momentary
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 323 
 
 sadness that seized him when he first gazed into 
 the face of his child, a sadness that passed away in 
 the rapture of a father's and a husband's love. Nor 
 will any reader of Coleridge forget his midnight com- 
 panionship with the cradled and sleeping infant as 
 related in Frost at Midnight, all tenderest paternal 
 hopes and wishes hovering over the cot and mingling 
 with the gentle breathings of the sleeper. We are 
 told that the pensive Sara had a just ground of com- 
 plaint against Samuel for the late hours that he kept, 
 the Bard pacing up and down the room composing 
 poetry when he and she ought to be sleeping the 
 sleep of the just 1 Wordsworth looking back upon 
 his past life thought with remorse of the many occasions 
 on which in consequence of yielding to his immoderate 
 passion for walking, he had kept the family dinner 
 waiting. But as we can forgive Wordsworth his 
 domestic crime for the sake of a Leech Gatherer 
 or a Michael, so Frost at Midnight may atone for 
 many a darkling reverie of Coleridge in that Stowey 
 cottage where solitude and silence were not always to 
 be had in the workaday hours. In another of the 
 Nether Stowey poems, while Coleridge recalls the 
 " skirmish and capricious passagings " of the nightin- 
 gales, his fatherly thoughts turn to his boy, just now 
 beginning to " mar all things with his imitative lisp," 
 and he imagines how the little one would hearken to 
 the nightingale's song with baby hand held up : 
 
 " And I deem it wise 
 To make him Nature's playmate. He knows well 
 
 1 Mrs Sandford's " Thomas Poole and his Friends," i. 239.
 
 324 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 The evening star ; and once, when he awoke 
 
 In most distressful mood (some inward pain 
 
 Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream !) 
 
 I hurried with him to our orchard-plot, 
 
 And he beheld the moon, and, hush'd at once, 
 
 Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently, 
 
 While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped tears, 
 
 Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam ! " 
 
 " Well," adds the poet apologetically, " it is a father's 
 tale." Let us not mar the tale by cynical conjecture as 
 to how the mother, his serious Sara, may have regarded 
 this mode of treating an infant's " inward pain." Let 
 us rather think of what Eossetti dwells on, the human 
 love in Coleridge's poetry, and think also of the pathos 
 of these paternal cares and fears and hopes when viewed 
 in connection with Hartley's gentle yet not blameless 
 future life. 
 
 Although in his poetry Coleridge never deals, as 
 Wordsworth does, with the characters and lives of 
 the men and women among whom he dwelt, his 
 verse no less than his prose informs us how deeply 
 moved he was by the general concerns of the nation 
 and by the public events of his time. His earliest 
 volume of poems had given utterance, sometimes 
 in turbid rhetoric, to his democratic ardour and that 
 desire to simplify life which was one of the better 
 characteristics of the revolutionary temper. The young 
 ass which he hails as " Brother " (with all the emphasis 
 of capital letters), if transported to the dell of peace 
 and mild equality on the banks of the Susquehanna, 
 would frisk as gleesome as a kitten, and his Bray of 
 Joy would be more musically sweet to his poet than 
 warbled melodies
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 325 
 
 " That soothe to rest 
 The tumult of some Scoundrel Monarch's breast ! " * 
 
 Earl Stanhope, the " Friend of the Human Kace," 
 is great and glorious because he has redeemed himself 
 from " that leprous stain Nobility," and refuses to sit 
 with the rest complotting against Gallic Liberty 
 
 " Who from the Almighty's bosom leapt 
 With whirlwind arm, fierce Minister of Love." 
 
 The sainted form of Freedom mourns over the errors 
 of Burke (styled elsewhere by Coleridge the Hercules 
 Furens of politics) whose crime it was, not indeed to be 
 corrupted by the bribes of tyranny, but to be bewildered 
 by the disturbance of his own nobler faculties, by 
 " stormy pity " and " proud precipitance of soul." The 
 name of Iscariot, a convenient term of reproach then 
 as now, is reserved for the statesman whose name was 
 formed by letters four, him who kissed his country with 
 the apostate's lips 
 
 " Staining most foul a godlike father's name." 
 
 Yet his abhorrence of Pitt's policy could not wholly 
 alienate Coleridge's affections from the land of his birth. 
 The declaration of war against France put a strain upon 
 his loyalty, and he felt as Tom Poole and many other 
 excellent men felt, that he could not wish for success in 
 arms to the Powers leagued against what seemed to be 
 the hope of the whole human race. But even when he 
 opposed or stood aloof from the action of the English 
 nation, he did this, as he believed, out of a care for the 
 highest interests of the country. In the ode which 
 
 1 Altered in the edition of 1797 to "The aching of pale Fashion's 
 vacant breast."
 
 326 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 apostrophises Albion as " doomed to fall, enslaved and 
 vile " (to be significantly altered in a later text to " not 
 yet enslaved, not wholly vile "), occurs that exquisite 
 address to his sea-encircled native land the Somerset 
 landscape appearing once again, but now in the ideal 
 light of imaginative vision of which the last lines 
 haunt the memories of all lovers of poetry who are 
 lovers of England, almost with the charm of some of 
 Shakespeare's patriotic words : 
 
 " And Ocean mid his uproar wild 
 Speaks safety to his island-child." 
 
 In the Fears in Solitude, while Coleridge still de- 
 claims against the sins of England, and protests against 
 the mad idolatry of national wrong-doing, which in 
 claiming the appellation of patriotism insults that great 
 name, he yet utters himself before the close with all the 
 filial loyalty of a true son of England, and he declares 
 in a noble strain of eloquence how the foundations of 
 his patriotism have been laid in the domestic affections, 
 in friendship, in the strength of natural love, in the 
 spiritual influences derived from the beauty of external 
 nature, and in whatever other ground there may be for 
 joys and hopes that ennoble the heart. 
 
 " There lives nor form nor feeling in my Soul 
 Unborrow'd from my country ! O divine 
 And beauteous island ! thou hast been my sole 
 And most magnificent temple, in the which 
 I walk with awe." 
 
 Such patriotism as this can only be uprooted together 
 with the very foundations of our moral being. 
 
 Now in these two things first, his alienation from
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 327 
 
 the policy of England and attachment to principles of 
 broader import than the traditional ; and secondly, his 
 loyalty to England founded on deep and abiding affec- 
 tions lay much of Coleridge's future way of thinking 
 and feeling. He broke with tradition in the vulgar 
 sense of the word ; he broke with tradition in theology, 
 philosophy, politics ; yet he did so in a spirit more 
 truly loyal to the past than was the common orthodoxy 
 in theology or philosophy, or the common Toryism in 
 politics. One of the chief moral and intellectual effects 
 of the French Revolution was that it threw ardent 
 young minds abroad upon a search for first principles. 
 " In tranquil moods and peaceable times," Coleridge 
 writes, " we are quite practical. Facts only and cool 
 common sense are then in fashion. But let the winds 
 of passion swell, and straightway men begin to gener- 
 alise ; to connect by remotest analogies ; to express the 
 most universal positions of reason in the most glowing 
 figures of fancy ; in short, to feel particular truths and 
 mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incommensurate 
 with their feelings." x The passion for truth -seeking 
 and the desire to find rest in primary principles were, 
 through all his changes of opinion, characteristic of 
 Coleridge from first to last, and if these had not their 
 origin in, they derived a confirming impulse from, his 
 early revolutionary excitement. As a critic of literature 
 he lights up the subjects of which he treats, because he 
 is not willing to pronounce dogmatic judgments as if 
 from a magisterial chair, but rather seeks after and finds 
 the inner springs of life in each work of art, and so 
 1 Coleridge's "Lay Sermons," p. 16, third edition.
 
 328 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 puts us on the track which the artist followed in the 
 act of creation. As a thinker on politics he begins by 
 comparing the several systems of political justice and 
 tracing the origin of government to what he holds to be 
 its true foundation in expediency and prudence. When 
 he would write of the National Church he must first 
 ascertain the " idea " of the Church as the clerisy of the 
 nation, comprehending not the ministers of religion alone, 
 but also the learned of all denominations. His writings 
 on theology have been pointed to as aiding at once the 
 development of the High-Church school of thought and 
 the rationalistic movement ; for in fact he could not 
 think on behalf of a mere party. " Even with regard 
 to Christianity itself," he says, " like certain plants, I 
 creep towards the light, even though it draw me away 
 from the more nourishing warmth. Yea, I should do 
 so, even if the light had made its way through a rent in 
 the wall of the Temple." If anything imparts unity to 
 his married life, now soaring high or diving deep, now 
 trailing in the dust with broken wing, it is this, that 
 alike in the glory of his youth and the dawn of his 
 genius, in the infirmity and conscious self-degradation 
 of his manhood, and amid the lassitude and languor 
 of his latest days, he was always one who loved the 
 light and grew towards it. 
 
 But he grew towards the light with his affections as 
 well as with his intellect. A movement merely critical 
 and destructive could not satisfy his spirit. Even in his 
 most ardent revolutionary days he expected his Utopia 
 not from the downfall of thrones and churches, but from 
 a reformation of life, a reformation for which in its com-
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 329 
 
 raencement he supposed a little group of chosen indi- 
 viduals, placed under advantageous circumstances in the 
 New World, was competent, a reformation social and 
 religious, which should not rend but draw closer all the 
 bonds of natural love. The Pantisocratic scheme was 
 religious, founded on the worship of God ; it was also 
 founded on the fidelity of wedded love and the idea of 
 the family. It abolished private property in the little 
 community, but in every country where property pre- 
 vails, property, Coleridge -held, must be the grand basis 
 of the government. " To the intense interest and im- 
 passioned zeal," wrote Coleridge in later life, " which 
 called forth and strained every faculty of my intellect 
 for the organisation and defence of this scheme, I owe 
 much of whatever I at present possess, my clearest in- 
 sight into the nature of individual man, and my most 
 comprehensive views of his social relations." For young 
 men whom the excitement connected with the French 
 Revolution had interested deeply in the first principles 
 of social order there was a philosophy ready-made, im- 
 mense in its pretensions, seeming at a first view most 
 elevated in its moral purpose, and apparently as precise 
 and well-assured as the demonstrations of geometry. It 
 was that which afterwards spell-bound the intellect of 
 Shelley, and which is largely responsible for the errors 
 of his life the philosophy set out in full in the volumes 
 of Godwin's " Political Justice." It spoke much of reason 
 and universal benevolence, while cutting at the roots of 
 all the humbler natural affections. Even patriotism was 
 for it a prejudice; the ties of kindred, of gratitude, of 
 wedded union, were the shackles of the slave. Coleridge
 
 330 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 was already prepared to accept some of Godwin's opin- 
 ions, for his honoured teacher Hartley had convinced 
 him of the truth of the doctrine of necessity, a corner 
 stone of Godwin's philosophy. Like Godwin, he had 
 dreamed of the perfectibility of man and the omnipotence 
 of truth. Like Godwin, he was filled with ardent hopes 
 for society, hopes inspired by the sudden uprising of the 
 spirit of liberty in France. Yet in the addresses which 
 he delivered in Bristol in February 1795, when he was 
 little more than twenty-two years of age, he bids his 
 hearers beware of " that proud philosophy which affects 
 to inculcate philanthropy while it denounces every home- 
 born feeling by which it is produced and nurtured." And 
 a year later, replying to a certain Caius Gracchus, who 
 had rebuked The Watchman in the pages of the Bristol 
 Gazette, Coleridge writes : " I do consider Mr Godwin's 
 principles as vicious, and his book as a pandar to sensu- 
 ality. Once I thought otherwise ; nay, even addressed 
 a complimentary sonnet to the author in the Morning 
 Chronicle, of which I confess, with much moral and 
 poetical contrition, that the lines and the subject were 
 equally bad." 1 In The Friend, no passages, perhaps, 
 are more valuable than those in which the writer 
 analyses the essential character of Jacobinism in 
 politics, a system which denies all rightful origin to 
 government, except so far as it is derivable from prin- 
 ciples contained in the reason of man, and at the same 
 time denies all truth and distinct meaning to the words 
 
 1 It was probably while his mind was at work on the Bristol addresses 
 that his opinion of Godwin underwent a change, for the sonnet appeared 
 in January 1795, the addresses were delivered in February.
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 331 
 
 right and duty, by affirming that the human mind con- 
 sists of nothing but manifold modifications of passive 
 sensation. Coleridge could with truth declare that at 
 no period of his life had he been a convert to the 
 Jacobinical system. 
 
 In the spring of 1798 appeared in The Morning Post 
 the noble poem in which Coleridge renounces his sym- 
 pathy with revolutionary France, known to us now as 
 France, an Ode, but which originally was entitled The 
 Recantation. This ode, which Shelley thought the 
 finest in the English language, is remarkable not only 
 as an expression of its author's political feeling, but on 
 account of the logic of passion and imagination with 
 which the theme is evolved. In Coleridge's first volume 
 of verse he had styled a considerable number of the 
 pieces " Effusions," in defiance of Churchill's line 
 
 " Effusion on effusion pour away." 
 
 These so-called effusions include even a number of 
 sonnets, for he felt that his poems in that form seldom 
 possessed the unity of thought which is indispensable in 
 a true sonnet. Before the second edition appeared 
 Charles Lamb implored him for heaven's sake to call 
 them sonnets and not effusions, and from that edition 
 the word of offence is banished. But it really served 
 to describe not unaptly some of Coleridge's early pieces 
 in blank verse, written apparently without that previous 
 conception of the whole and that strict evolution which 
 we should expect in a work of art. The poet, in these 
 effusions, places himself in some environment of beauty, 
 submits his mind to the suggestions of the time and 
 place, falls as it were of free will into a reverie, in
 
 332 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 which the thoughts and images meander stream-like at 
 their own pleasure, or rather as if the power of volition 
 were suspended and the current must needs follow the 
 line of least resistance ; then, as if by good luck, comes 
 the culmination or some soft subsidence, and the poem 
 ceases. In the earlier odes that on the Departing 
 Year and the Monody on the Death of Chatterton 
 there is indeed an evolution, but it proceeds sometimes 
 by those fits and starts which were supposed to prove in 
 writers of the ode a kind of Pindaric excitement. The 
 poet is less of the artist here than the enthusiast. 
 "Enthusiast" it was a name rejected by the youthful 
 Coleridge as a thinker on politics and applied by him 
 as a term of reproach to the disciples of Godwin, but it 
 describes well enough his conception of the poet. And 
 it clearly enough marks the distance that had been 
 traversed from the Restoration days, when a poet 
 desired before all else to be a " wit," and from the age 
 of Anne, when the poet was both a " wit," and a " man 
 of sense." When Coleridge pictures the youthful Chat- 
 terton roaming the woods near the Severn with wild 
 unequal steps, 
 
 " In Inspiration's eager hour, 
 When most the big soul feels the maddening power," 
 
 he conceives him not as the artist or the wit but as the 
 enthusiast, and this is the conception generally present 
 in Coleridge's earlier verse. The sequences of thought 
 and feeling in these earlier poems are often either of 
 the meditative-meandering or the spasmodic-passionate 
 kind. Now, however, in his France he produced a 
 poem strongly concatenated in thought and emotion,
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 333 
 
 and from the first line to the last faultless in its 
 evolution. Here freedom in artistic handling is at one 
 with obedience to artistic law. Mr Theodore Watts, 
 in his article on Poetry in the " Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica," has called attention to what he describes as its 
 fluidity of metrical movement. " The more billowy the 
 metrical waves," he says, " the better suited they are to 
 render the emotions expressed by the ode ; " and he 
 points out how in the opening stanza of the France the 
 first metrical wave, after it has gently fallen at the end 
 of the first quatrain, " leaps up again on the double 
 rhymes and goes bounding on, billow after billow, to the 
 end of the stanza." The mastery of a prolonged period 
 in lyrical poetry is rare even with great writers ; we 
 find it in Shelley's Ode to the West Wind ; we find it 
 in Coleridge's France ; and the sense of power which 
 accompanies it lifts these poems into quite another class 
 than that which includes the tesselated odes of Gray. 
 The idea of liberty presented in Coleridge's France is 
 one which he sorrowfully admits cannot be found in any 
 human society, which indeed cannot possibly be realised 
 under any form of human government. Yet it is true, 
 he maintains, for the individual man so far as he is 
 pure and inflamed with the love and adoration of God 
 in nature. The close of the poem in its recoil from 
 society to the individual soul resembles the close of his 
 earlier ode on the Departing Year. It seems not im- 
 probable that when Shelley wrote his great Ode to 
 Liberty, a song inspired by the highest hopes for 
 society, he had before his mind Coleridge's words of 
 despair, for freedom as conceived by Shelley and it
 
 334 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 is freedom for a people, not merely for an individual, of 
 which he sings comes not alone but accompanied by 
 justice and love and wisdom, the memory of what has 
 been and the hope for what will be. 
 
 The ode France is dated February 1798. The 
 spring and early summer of that year were a season of 
 radiant beauty. Coleridge had been relieved from 
 anxiety about his worldly ways and means by the 
 generosity of the Wedgwoods. Young Hazlitt eagerly 
 accepted his invitation to Nether Stowey, and on the 
 afternoon of his arrival Coleridge took him over to 
 Alfoxden. Wordsworth was not at home, but his 
 sister Dorothy received Coleridge and his friend for 
 the night, and gave them free access to her brother's 
 manuscripts. 1 Next morning, seated on the trunk of 
 an old ash-tree in Alfoxden Park, Coleridge read aloud 
 in his musical voice some of Wordsworth's Somerset 
 poems, and on his walk homewards he lamented, says 
 Hazlitt, that his fellow poet was not prone enough to 
 believe in the traditional superstitions of the place, and 
 that in some of his poems there was a something cor- 
 poreal, a matter-of-factness, a clinging to the palpable. 
 Hazlitt remained three weeks at Nether Stowey, often 
 spending his afternoons in discourse with Coleridge in 
 the arbour of bark built by Tom Poole ; and before 
 they parted he accompanied Coleridge on an excursion 
 
 1 Some readers of Coleridge's words describing Dorothy " In every 
 motion her innocent soul outbeams so brightly, that who saw her would 
 say, ' Guilt was a thing impossible with her ' " may have been puzzled 
 by the last words. He is here quoting from his own description of 
 Teresa in Remorse, and this passage seems to prove that the first scene 
 of Remorse, which does not appear in Osorio, must nevertheless have 
 been written in 1797.
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 335 
 
 to Lynton and the Valley of Rocks. A like excursion 
 to the north coast of Devon had been made in the late 
 autumn by Coleridge in company with Wordsworth and 
 his sister, which earlier visit to Lynton is connected with 
 a memorable event in the history of English poetry. 
 
 It was on a November afternoon of 1797 that this 
 earlier tramp began. 1 " The evening dark and cloudy," 
 writes Miss Wordsworth ; " we went eight miles, William 
 and Coleridge employing themselves in laying the plan of 
 a ballad, to be published with some pieces of William's." 
 This ballad was the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with 
 which originated the conjoint volume published in the 
 autumn of the following year. Two classes of poems, it 
 will be remembered, were to appear in this volume of 
 " Lyrical Ballads," " in the one the incidents and agents 
 were to be, in part at least, supernatural, and the excel- 
 lence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the 
 affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as 
 would naturally accompany such situations, supposing 
 them real. . . For the second class, subjects were to be 
 chosen from ordinary life," and these were to be inter- 
 preted and illuminated by a meditative and feeling 
 mind, and by the light of imagination. Such is 
 Coleridge's well-known account of the origin of the 
 " Lyrical Ballads ; " and it indicates exactly wherein lies 
 the importance of the publication of that little volume 
 
 1 In Wordsworth's Fenwick note to We are Seven, as printed by Pro- 
 fessor Knight and elsewhere, the tour is dated "in the spring of the year 
 1798." In the "Memoirs of Wordsworth," by Christopher Wordsworth, 
 vol. i. p. 107, the same note is printed, and the words are " in the 
 autumn of 1797." There seems to be no doubt that the tour actually 
 took place in November 1797.
 
 336 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 in the history of our literature. A few words will serve 
 to make this clear. 
 
 In the literature of the time there were two powerful 
 tendencies, each of which was liable to excess when it 
 operated alone, each of which needed to work in har- 
 mony with the other, and to take something into itself 
 from the other. A little before the death of Johnson 
 English poetry had almost reached the lowest ebb. It 
 has often been said that its revival was due to the 
 excitement and enthusiasm caused by the Revolution iii 
 France ; but this is certainly untrue. In 1785 appeared 
 Cowper's poem, The Task. Two years previously the 
 most remarkable of Crabbe's earlier group of poems, The 
 Village, had been published. In 1786 the Kilmarnock 
 edition of the poems of Burns was issued. Thus our 
 poetry had sprung into sudden and splendid life before 
 that memorable year the centenary of which has recently 
 been celebrated in Paris. And by what means did 
 English poetry renew its life and regain its vigour ? By 
 a return to nature. Burns sang direct out of his own 
 warm heart and out of the joys and sorrows of his 
 fellows. The daisy in the furrow, the mouse in the 
 stubble-field, the dying ewe in the ditch, the rustic 
 patriarch among his children and servants, the humours 
 of Scotch drink, the humours of Scotch ecclesiastical 
 parties, and the passions of his own wayward heart 
 supplied him with the themes of his song. Cowper 
 turned from the wire-drawn abstractions in verse which 
 had done duty as poetry and looked around him in his 
 walks about Olney, or filled his senses and spirit with 
 the domestic pleasures of Mary Unwin's home, and uttered
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 337 
 
 in verse the feelings aroused in him by his garden, 
 his walk in the crisp December morning, his evening 
 fireside, his newspaper and easy chair. And Crabbe 
 resolved to set down for once the truth, the whole truth, 
 and nothing but the truth about the life of the peasant 
 or the rough fisher on our eastern coasts. He was sick 
 of the ideality of Sweet Auburns and of Cory dons com- 
 plaining of their amorous pains, " the only pains, alas, 
 they never feel." He aimed at being what in our pre- 
 sent critical phraseology we term a realist or naturalist. 
 
 " I praise the cot, 
 As truth will paint it and as bards will not." 
 
 He was unable to select from a crowd of details, for 
 everything should be recorded. But with this tendency 
 there coexisted another which was also strong. It was 
 the tendency towards romance, which gave their popu- 
 larity to the Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian, 
 which appears in the modern-antiques of Chatterton, 
 and in connection with a sentiment supposed to be that 
 of primitive poetry in Macpherson's Ossian. The 
 Gothic revival which in our own century became learned 
 and antiquarian was then sentimental and imaginative. 
 As Crabbe may serve to represent the extreme of natural- 
 ism in art, so " Monk " Lewis may serve to represent 
 the other extreme, the extravagance of the romantic 
 tendency. His Castle Spectre, a play brimful of super- 
 natural horrors, was produced in the year in which 
 Coleridge and Wordsworth met at Nether Stowey, and it 
 had a run of sixty nights. The " Tales of Wonder " were 
 published three years after the " Lyrical Ballads." In 
 "The Monk," published in 1796, Ambrosio, tempted by an
 
 338 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 evil spirit, and guilty of monstrous crimes, is tried and 
 tortured by the Inquisition, and is at length dashed 
 headlong from an airy height by Lucifer. Raymond is 
 haunted at night by the spectre of the bleeding nun : 
 " She lifted up her veil slowly. What a sight presented 
 itself to my startled eyes ! I beheld before me an ani- 
 mated corse." The gross marvel and mystery amassed 
 in " The Monk " would suffice for a library of our 
 modern tales of horror. 
 
 Here then were two movements in our literature, 
 each operating apart from the other and each prone to ex- 
 cess naturalism, tending to a hard, dry, literal manner, 
 unilluminated by the light of imagination ; romance, 
 tending to become a coarse revel in material horrors. 
 English poetry needed first that romance should be saved 
 and ennobled by the presence and the power of truth, 
 and, secondly, that naturalism, without losing any of its 
 fidelity to fact, should be saved and ennobled by the 
 presence and the power of imagination. And this was 
 precisely what Coleridge and Wordsworth contributed 
 to English poetry in their joint volume of " Lyrical 
 Ballads," which in consequence may justly be described 
 as marking if not making an epoch in the history of our 
 literature. 
 
 Relying largely, as he did in his poems which deal 
 with the supernatural, on the effect produced by their 
 psychological truth, Coleridge could afford to subdue the 
 supernatural, and refine it to the utmost. His regard 
 for truth even in the description of minute physical 
 phenomena, though in the midst of a world of wonders, 
 is illustrated by the alteration of the line in the Ancient
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 339 
 
 Mariner, " The furrow followed free " to " The furrow 
 streamed off free," because when on board a ship he per- 
 ceived that as seen from the deck, though not from the 
 shore, the wake appears like a brook flowing off from 
 the stern. More important than truth physical he felt 
 truth psychological to be. And attaining this, he did 
 not need, as Monk Lewis did, to drag into his verse all 
 the horrors of the churchyard and the nether pit of 
 Hell. None of us can tell what was that sight of shame 
 or anguish revealed to Christabel when the Lady 
 Geraldine unbound her girdle and dropped the robe 
 to her feet. We can imagine how exact in his descrip- 
 tion of the dreadful object Lewis would have been. 
 And it seems certain that in the manuscript a line 
 existed in this passage of Christabel which never was 
 permitted to appear in the published text : 
 
 " Behold her bosom and half her side, 
 Hideous, deformed, and pale of hue, 
 A sight to dream of, not to tell." 
 
 The words " hideous, deformed, and pale of hue" are 
 known to us through a quotation made from memory in 
 the pages of Hunt's Examiner, and Coleridge preferred 
 to leave a line without its rhyme rather than retain 
 words which define a horror better shadowed in mystery. 
 Again, in the Ancient Mariner where the spectre- 
 bark approaches the doomed ship, and the forms of 
 Death and Life-in-Death are visible playing at dice for 
 the mariner and his companions, a verse full of charnel 
 abominations occurs in the original text which was 
 afterwards judiciously omitted. Coleridge felt that 
 these hideous incidents of the grave only detracted
 
 34 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 from the finer horror of the voluptuous beauty of his 
 White Devil, the night-mare Life-in-Death : 
 
 " Her lips were red, her looks were free, 
 Her locks were yellow as gold, 
 Her skin was as white as leprosy." 
 
 She it was, this Life-in-Death, who with her numbing 
 spell haunted Coleridge himself in after days. 
 
 It is remarkable that a poem which impresses us so 
 much as an imaginative unity, the work of one who had 
 a genius for the finer kind of supernatural invention, 
 should in great part have been a compilation from 
 several brains and books. Young Cruikshank, a neigh- 
 bour of Coleridge at Nether Stowey, had dreamed of a 
 skeleton ship worked by a skeleton crew, and this was 
 the starting-point of the whole. It has been suggested 
 that the blessed spirits who bring the ship to harbour 
 came from one of the epistles of St Paulinus of Nola, 
 the friend of St Ambrose. The crime of the Old 
 Navigator (as Coleridge loved to call him) was Words- 
 worth's suggestion derived from Shelvocke's " Voyage 
 round the World." Shelvocke describes the insupport- 
 able cold of the South Atlantic Ocean, and the perpetual 
 squalls of sleet and snow. They had not seen since they 
 passed the straits of Le Maire a single living creature 
 save one disconsolate black albatross, which accompanied 
 them for several days, as if it had lost itself, till the 
 second captain in one of his melancholy fits shot 
 the bird, imagining from its colour that it was of 
 evil omen, and not doubting that they would have 
 a fair wind if it were destroyed. Wordsworth can 
 hardly have omitted to mention the ominous colour
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 341 
 
 of the albatross, but in Coleridge's poem it becomes 
 the friend and companion of the mariners, and we 
 must imagine it a white-plumed majestic creature. 
 The device of animating the bodies of the dead crew 
 with a troop of seraphs, whether the suggestion is 
 due to St Paulinus or to Wordsworth, is so conceived 
 and executed as to illustrate admirably Coleridge's 
 power of evoking beauty out of horror. Nor are 
 his strange creatures of the sea those hideous worms 
 which a vulgar dealer in the supernatural might have 
 invented. Seen in a great calm by the light of the 
 moon these creatures of God are beautiful in the joy of 
 their life : 
 
 "Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 
 They coil'd and swam ; and every track 
 Was a flash of golden fire." 
 
 And it is through a sudden welling-forth of sympathy 
 with their happiness, and a sudden sense of their beauty, 
 that the spell which binds the afflicted mariner is 
 snapped. That one self-centred in crude egoism should 
 be purified and converted through a new sympathy with 
 suffering and sorrow is a common piece of morality ; this 
 purification through sympathy with joy is a piece of 
 finer and higher doctrine. 
 
 Mrs Barbauld once told Coleridge that she admired 
 the Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were 
 two faults in it it was improbable and it had no moral. 
 As for the probability, said Coleridge (and the good Mrs 
 Barbauld might perhaps have observed a twinkle in the 
 noticeable man's large grey eyes), that might admit some 
 question ; but as to the want of moral, he told her that
 
 34 2 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 in his judgment the poem had too much ; the only or 
 chief fault, if he might say so, was the obtrusion of 
 the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a prin- 
 ciple or cause of action in a work of such pure ima- 
 gination. The mariner is punished for shooting an 
 albatross ; the curse passes away when he blesses the 
 watersnakes. Coleridge might have called his critic's 
 attention to the fact that the professed moral is service- 
 able at least as an artistic device. The beautiful stanza 
 beginning, 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small," 
 
 sets forth this professed moral. Its real effect is admir- 
 ably described by Mrs Oliphant, when she says that the 
 soothing words "bring our feet back to the common 
 soil with a bewildered sweetness of relief and soft quiet " 
 after the imaginative strain with which we follow the 
 tale of the voyage through strange seas. If any reader 
 require a moral he can find it elsewhere ; he can find it 
 in that passage which tells how a sense of the incompar- 
 able beauty and the rapturous life of the world quickens 
 and redeems the withered soul of the mariner. " How 
 do you know," asks William Blake, " but every bird 
 that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight 
 closed by your senses five ? " It is the opening of our 
 senses and our hearts to the miracle of beauty and of life 
 everywhere surrounding us that (if we must have a moral) 
 is the highest spiritual effect wrought by the poem. 
 
 We shall not dispute with the excellent Mrs Barbauld 
 as to the improbability of the narrative. Have we not 
 submitted to the spell of the mariner's eye, which
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 343 
 
 compels us to listen like a child and suspends our in- 
 credulity ? The bride, red as a rose, and the nodding 
 minstrelsy pass before us, but the gaiety of the village 
 festival makes us only the more sensible of the solitude 
 of the narrator " alone on the wide, wide sea," and of 
 that subsequent solitude, and yet at the same time need 
 of sympathy, created in him by an intense and unique 
 experience, which even here and now isolates him, yet 
 mysteriously connects him with his fellows. The 
 majesty and beauty with which some of the old and 
 common facts of nature are described, as only an eye- 
 witness could describe them, vouch for the truth of the 
 stranger incidents. In regions far from the stir of 
 human life there is yet a constant action going on, and 
 the actors are not alone the Polar Spirit and the 
 spectres of the skeleton hulk, and the troop of blessed 
 angels, but the sea and the sun and the moon and the 
 stars of heaven. How majestically the sunrise at sea is 
 expressed : 
 
 " Nor dim nor red, like God's own head 
 The glorious sun uprist." 
 
 It is like the solemn apparition of one of the chief 
 actors in this strange drama of crime, and agony, and 
 expiation, and in the new sense of wonder with which 
 we witness that oldest spectacle of the heavens we can 
 well believe in other miracles. How exquisite is the 
 description of the journeying moon, what magic in the 
 simplest words : 
 
 " The moving moon went up the sky, 
 
 And nowhere did abide ; 
 Softly she was going up 
 With a star or two beside."
 
 344 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 These regents of the upper air are not dead balls of 
 matter, but living powers, and " everywhere," says Cole- 
 ridge in the gloss which he added to his poem, " the 
 blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, 
 and their native country, and their own natural homes, 
 which they enter unannounced, as lords that are cer- 
 tainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their 
 arrival." 
 
 In Christdbel the human and the supernatural ele- 
 ments interpenetrate each other more completely and 
 more subtly than in the Ancient Mariner. The pre- 
 sence of higher than mortal powers for evil and for 
 good is everywhere felt, yet nowhere is it thrust forward. 
 We can reconstruct a story almost the same in which 
 the incidents shall proceed in accordance with the 
 acknowledged laws of the world ; we can imagine an 
 innocent girl coming under the influence of a woman 
 older than herself, of beautiful person and powerful 
 intellect, but of depraved character, who shall disclose to 
 her some bosom-sin under conditions which render indis- 
 pensable for a time an inviolable secrecy; to shield the 
 maiden from harm she shall possess, besides her own 
 purity of heart, the pious memory of her dead mother. 
 Thus by merely lowering the key all the action of the 
 poem might be transposed from the supernatural to the 
 natural. Even the malign influence of Geraldine's look 
 askance could readily be translated into its moral sig- 
 nificance the fascinating power of evil over a virginal 
 soul, the mere knowledge of vice seeming to imply a 
 horrible community with it during, at least, one dread- 
 ful moment before the instinctive recoil from sin has
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 345 
 
 had time and force to come into operation. Coleridge's 
 story is far other than this ; but thus we may interpret 
 the moral and psychological truth on which Coleridge's 
 story is founded. The poem is not a piece of didactic 
 morality, nor such a spiritual allegory as one of its 
 critics, Mr Cotterill, has fancied ; it is an imaginative 
 romance pervaded throughout by the supernatural ; and 
 yet it is founded in spiritual truth, and, as Christopher 
 North has said, while we read it, we are all the while in 
 our own real and living world, and in the heart of its 
 best and most delightful affections. 
 
 The first part of Christabel was written at Nether 
 Stowey ; and it is perhaps worth remarking that in 
 Dorothy Wordsworth's diary, in which we can trace the 
 origin of some of her brother's poems, we also find 
 touches which are manifestly connected with this romance 
 of her friend. In her frequent walks with Coleridge in 
 the neighbourhood of Alfoxden observations of nature 
 were made, and little incidents were noticed and talked 
 of, which became a common possession for the memories 
 and imaginations of both. 
 
 " There is not wind enough to twirl 
 The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
 That dances as often as dance it can, 
 Hanging so light, and hanging so high 
 On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky." 
 
 That impish leaf of the oak against which the witch 
 lady leaned was seen near Nether Stowey on March 7, 
 1798. "One only leaf upon the top of a tree," writes 
 Dorothy Wordsworth, " the sole remaining leaf, danced 
 round and round like a rag blown by the wind."
 
 346 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 " The thin grey cloud is spread on high, 
 It covers, but not hides the sky. 
 The moon is behind, and at the full ; 
 And yet she looks both small and dull." 
 
 So the poem. And Dorothy Wordsworth, noticing also 
 the apparent diminution of the moon behind a fleecy 
 cloud : " When we left home the moon, immensely 
 large, the sky scattered over with clouds. These soon 
 closed in, contracting the dimensions of the moon, 
 without concealing her." And it may be. that the 
 baron's mastiff which howls at intervals in answer to 
 the clock was ennobled by Coleridge from "the manu- 
 facturer's dog " near Alfoxden, that " makes a strange, 
 uncouth howl, which it continues many minutes after 
 there is no noise near it but that of the brook. It 
 howls at the murmur of the village stream." 
 
 Although in Ghristabel we are aware of the ghostly 
 presence of the maiden's mother, we never see the 
 phantom ; we only know that the witch lady tries to 
 wave her off, and that she comforts her daughter with 
 sweet visions as she lies dreaming in the arms of her 
 foe. But Coleridge has elsewhere created a visible 
 ghost, a ghost which appears under the strangest cir- 
 cumstances, a ghost itself so strange that Coleridge may 
 be said to have invented a new spiritual fear. It is 
 indeed the first of the many ghosts that have appeared 
 upon our earth, much more ancient than the old man of 
 Endor, for it is the spirit of the first human being who 
 left the mystery of life on our globe for the mystery of 
 death. Here again in The Wanderings of Cain 
 loveliness and terror are allied. The boy Enos, son of
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 347 
 
 the first murderer, beautiful in his innocence and en- 
 cinctured with leaves for his only garments, plucks by 
 moonlight the fruits not of the happy garden but of the 
 wilderness. There is a majesty in the mighty limbs of 
 Cain and in the intolerable grief which wastes his frame 
 like fire. Behind the pair lie the cavern-like recesses 
 of the forest; before them, the desert sands, white in 
 the moonshine, with one rock casting its shadow on the 
 sands. And here in the shadow of the rock lurks the 
 piteous ghost of Abel, the shape as of a young man, 
 apparelled in unclean garments, his skin as white as the 
 moonlit sands, and his voice sweet but thin and queru- 
 lous, " like that of a feeble slave in misery who weeps 
 and laments." And why should not he weep, who 
 having served during his life the God of the living has 
 now become the sad servant of that other and strange 
 God, the God of the dead ? Moonlight the wilderness 
 the solitary rock with its shadow and these three 
 figures of the innocent boy, the first fratricide, and this 
 forlorn ghost with his sweet querulous voice and his 
 dreadful secret what a strange, and, Mrs Barbauld 
 might add, improbable invention ! Unquestionably, if 
 we might have our choice of a ghost to haunt us, we 
 should say give us one of those comfortable domestic 
 larvae who rattle chains and draw the midnight curtain, 
 and save us from the sight of such a ghost as this 
 lamentable youth of the moon-illumined desert and from 
 the cadence of his sweet and plaintive voice. 
 
 The poems of the Nether Stowey period are in the 
 main Coleridge's poems of joy ; those written after his 
 thirtieth year are, with few exceptions, poems born of
 
 348 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 sorrow. Two visionary figures seem to mediate between 
 the earlier and later groups, two visionary figures that 
 are seldom absent for a long time from his verse those 
 of Love and Hope. But the imagery changes mourn- 
 fully as the years go by. In an early poem he recalls 
 the cloudless day of boyhood 
 
 " When by my native brook I wont to rove, 
 While Hope with kisses nursed the Infant Love." 
 
 In a poem of his elder years he pictures the same 
 pair, but how differently ! 
 
 " Hope keeping Love, Love Hope alive, 
 Like babes bewildered in the snow, 
 That cling and huddle from the cold 
 In hollow tree or ruined fold." 
 
 And yet more sadly in another poem : 
 
 " Thee, genial Hope, 
 Love's elder sister ! thee did I behold, 
 Drest as a bridesmaid, but all pale and cold, 
 With roseless cheek, all pale and cold and dim 
 Lie lifeless at my feet," 
 
 and when Love enters and would revive her pale sister 
 with a kiss, 
 
 " Alas ! 'twas but a chilling breath 
 Woke just enough of life in death 
 To make Hope die anew." 
 
 Mr Traill, in his biography of Coleridge, speaks of the 
 years from 1800 to 1804 as the turning-point, moral 
 and physical, of his career. According to his own state- 
 ment the habit of drinking laudanum, taken at first to 
 sop the Cerberus of physical pain, had become fixed 
 about 1803. But we know that the dream-poem of
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 349 
 
 Kubla Kltan came into being while Coleridge was under 
 the influence of an anodyne, and the date of its creation 
 is the summer of 1797. As De Quiiicey records in 
 succession the pleasures and the pains of opium, so Cole- 
 ridge places side by side this Eastern vision of imagina- 
 tive delight and The Pains of Sleep, in which the night- 
 mare terrors of disease are so powerfully expressed. 
 Both poems have in a high degree the special dream 
 quality a suspension of all power of volition ; but in 
 the one the will is charmed into passivity by images of 
 beauty, in the other it is overwhelmed and prostrated 
 after a desperate struggle with visions of horror and of 
 shame. 
 
 The sense that his higher powers were suffering 
 ominous eclipse, the consciousness of duties neglected, 
 the knowledge that friends were falling away in con- 
 sequence of his inability to respond to their love, the 
 blank of domestic happiness, even his deep regard for 
 Sara Hutchinson, which made him more painfully aware 
 of all that his life had missed, united to produce those 
 rnoods and long seasons of depression under which he 
 lay inactive. No one had felt more exquisitely than he 
 the visitations of joy, as of a swift light breeze blowing 
 from some Elysian meadow : 
 
 " A new joy, 
 
 Lovely as light, sudden as summer gust, 
 And gladsome as the first-born of the spring, 
 Beckons me on, or follows from behind, 
 Playmate, or guide ! " 
 
 Now such visitations were rare indeed ; and in their 
 place Coleridge had grown acquainted with the dull, un-
 
 350 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 changing cloud of depression which hung upon him 
 for long periods like a pall. All the dull misery of such 
 a hopeless mood is exposed to view in the great ode 
 Dejection. Other poems of other authors express a 
 passion of grief, which this does not ; when sorrow has 
 us in its grip we are conscious at least of the life within 
 us by virtue of the very pain which we endure. No 
 other poem so truthfully renders the leaden mood of 
 helpless and hopeless prostration, too dull to be named 
 despair : 
 
 " A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, 
 A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, 
 Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, 
 In word, or sigh, or tear." 
 
 Whatever comfort he was capable of in such forlorn 
 weakness came to Coleridge through human love. The 
 ode, addressed in its later text to a " Lady," who, we 
 are assured by Professor Knight, was Wordsworth's 
 sister-in-law, Sara Hutchinson, had been originally 
 addressed to Wordsworth himself. And it is the 
 generous thought that his friend at least had been 
 true to the duties and the glories of his high calling 
 as poet, that brings some lightening of the cloud of 
 
 misery. 
 
 " William, friend of my devoutest choice, 
 O raised from anxious dread and busy care 
 By the immenseness of the good and fair 
 Which thou seest everywhere, 
 Joy lifts thy spirit, joy attunes thy voice." J 
 
 When Wordsworth and his family, escaping from 
 Dove Cottage, Grasmere, which had grown too small 
 
 1 In the earliest printed text ' ' Edmund " appears instead of ' ' William, " 
 and from later texts of the poem these lines are omitted.
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 351 
 
 for their needs, were settled through Sir George 
 Beaumont's kindness in the farm-house at Coleorton 
 in the winter of 1806-7, Coleridge with his son Hartley 
 visited them. It was one of the saddest periods in 
 Coleridge's homeless life ; but among these faithful 
 friends he received all the tender ministering of love. 
 One evening Wordsworth read aloud for him a portion 
 of The Prelude and Coleridge, roused by the ennob- 
 ling excitement, composed on that night the loftiest and 
 the most pathetic of his poems in blank verse. The 
 lines which compare the pain of life and love awakening 
 in his heart after its long syncope to the suffering 
 experienced by the drowned when they begin to breathe 
 again, must be in the memory of every reader of Cole- 
 ridge. But certain lines which precede these as the 
 poem was originally written remained for long unknown ; 
 they were for the first time printed from the manuscript 
 by Professor Knight, and they tell much of the strength 
 and the weakness of the writer's heart. Dear shall be 
 the " Orphic song " to which he had listened, exclaims 
 Coleridge : 
 
 " Dear shall it be to every human heart, 
 To me how more than dearest ! me on whom 
 Comfort from thee and utterance of thy love 
 Came with such heights and depths of harmony, 
 Such sense of wings uplifting, that its might 
 Scatter'd and quelled me, till my thoughts became 
 A bodily tumult ; and thy faithful hopes 
 Thy hopes of me, dear friend ! by me unfelt ! 
 Were troublous to me, almost as a voice 
 Familiar once, and more than musical ; 
 As a dear woman's voice to one cast forth, 
 A wanderer with a worn-out heart forlorn, 
 'Mid strangers pining with untended wounds."
 
 352 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 Among the sorrows which resulted from his neglect 
 of duties, not the least was the loss of love. " To be 
 beloved," he says, " is all I need," and it is true that he 
 more than men of hardier and more self-sufficing nature 
 found repose in affection. 
 
 " for some dear-abiding place of Love, 
 O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove, 
 Might brood with warming wings." 
 
 So he writes in a poem of leave-taking, and the lines 
 may have suggested to Eossetti the thought of his sonnet 
 to Coleridge quoted in the opening of this article. It 
 was not easy for Coleridge's friends to continue to love a 
 man who met all their solicitude and tenderness with 
 silence and seeming indifference. Yet part of his misery 
 arose from the fact that while unable to give evidence 
 of his affection, as he lay inactive, " deeper than ever 
 plummet sounded," he had nevertheless a constant crav- 
 ing for sympathy. He was sensible that his friends, 
 though deeply concerned on his behalf, could not give 
 him the love that he required, and such kindness as 
 theirs counterfeiting absent love is described by him in 
 one of his poems as " the pang more sharp than all." 
 
 Yet to the last there were occasional beamings forth 
 of the spirit of delight and poetry even in those elder 
 days when his body did him grievous wrong, and when 
 his mind, though it had recovered much of its intel- 
 lectual power, had not recovered its early illumination 
 of hope and joy. One of these out-wellings of poetry, 
 among the latest and loveliest, is to be found in the 
 lines which accompany the delicate engraving of the 
 garden of Boccaccio, after Stothard, in The Keepsake, for
 
 Coleridge as a Poet. 353 
 
 1829. "The love, the joyance, and the gallantry" of 
 the Florentine pleasance as seen in Stothard's design 
 conquer the numbness of his dreary mood, and bring 
 back for an hour all his lost youth, all the glory of his 
 early manhood. 
 
 Coleridge wrote for his own epitaph those lines in 
 which he speaks of himself as one who 
 
 " Many a year with toilful breath 
 Found death in life." 
 
 I like better to remember him in connection with that 
 memorial poem adapted from the Italian of Chiabrera, 
 where Coleridge names himself Satyrane the idoloclast 
 idoloclast, because he hated the objects of vain wor- 
 ship of his own day ; Satyrane, because, like the sylvan 
 protector of Spenser's Una, he had a " wild-wood fancy 
 and impetuous zeal." In this Tombless Epitaph he 
 tells of his years of weary days, and of the sickness that 
 besieged him " even to the gates and inlets of his life." 
 Yet he declares that he maintained the citadel uncon- 
 quered, that he was "strong to follow the delightful 
 Muse : " 
 
 " Not a rill 
 
 There issues from the fount of Hippocrene 
 
 But he had traced it upward to its source, 
 
 Through open glade, dark glen and secret dell, 
 
 Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled 
 
 Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone, 
 
 Piercing the long-neglected holy cave, 
 
 The haunt obscure of old Philosophy, 
 
 He bade with lifted torch its starry walls 
 
 Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame 
 
 Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage. 
 
 O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts ! 
 
 studious Poet, eloquent for truth ! 
 Z
 
 354 Coleridge as a Poet. 
 
 Philosopher, contemning wealth and death, 
 Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love." 
 
 Not merely then a "footless bird of Paradise," but 
 "childlike, full of life and love." With this word I 
 may fitly close.
 
 EDMOND SCHERER. 
 
 THE death of Edmond Scherer, which took place on 
 Saturday, March 16th, 1889, deprived French literature, 
 not indeed of a great thinker, not perhaps even of a 
 critic of the highest order, but of a perfectly sincere 
 seeker for the truth in matters religious, political, and 
 literary, and a writer whose curiosity about ideas was 
 always liberal and serious. He has been spoken of as 
 if he were Sainte-Beuve's successor in French criticism ; 
 but Sainte-Beuve has had no successor. It was not 
 merely that Scherer had not, as Matthew Arnold put 
 it, Sainte-Beuve's elasticity and cheerfulness, Sainte- 
 Beuve's gaiety and radiancy ; he lacked Sainte-Beuve's 
 vast erudition and his mastery of literary detail. His 
 studies are nourished with ideas, but each of them 
 has not the air of being the work of a writer who 
 for the time being had made himself a specialist in 
 that particular province, and the marvel of Sainte- 
 Beuve's causeries is this that he handles a thousand 
 topics and shows himself to be a specialist, almost 
 infallible in his accuracy, with reference to each. 
 Scherer, says Matthew Arnold, had the same open- 
 mindedness as Sainte-Beuve. Yes, open-minded to 
 ideas he was, and his training as a student of philo- 
 sophy gave him access to certain regions of thought 
 which Sainte-Beuve hardly ventured to approach. 
 
 355
 
 356 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 But he had not in the same degree as Sainte-Beuve 
 that open-heartedness to all varieties of literary pleas- 
 ures, which is the indispensable condition of a generous 
 equity in literary judgment. 
 
 He had indeed as a critic more in common with 
 Matthew Arnold than with Sainte-Beuve. But behind 
 the critic in Matthew Arnold lay the poet, and though 
 M. Colani has assured us that there was the material 
 for a poet in Scherer, this poet hardly once comes 
 forward even to peer wistfully through the prison-bars 
 of abstract ideas. Nor had he Matthew Arnold's gift 
 of light irony, Matthew Arnold's happy malice of the 
 pen, nor his fortunate or unfortunate knack of inventing 
 catch-words, which served to give currency to his ideas. 
 He resembled Arnold in the moral rigour, which was 
 something deeper in each than literary culture a 
 moral rigour derived, in the one instance, from the 
 impress of the noble character of the master of Rugby, 
 in the other that of a Parisian by birth from the 
 influences of Protestant Geneva. He resembled Arnold 
 also in the fact that his intellectual life was felt by him 
 to be that of a wanderer between two worlds, 
 
 " One dead, 
 The other powerless to be born." 
 
 He tried to think for himself, and to some extent suc- 
 ceeded ; but he sadly yet resignedly acknowledges that 
 most of his thinking was done for him by the spirit 
 of the age ; that he could not resist the strong pressure 
 of the time ; that he found himself compelled in honesty 
 to walk in ways of thought difficult and dangerous,
 
 Edmond Scherer, 357 
 
 ways which in the end might open upon some 
 destructive precipice. 
 
 The volume entitled "Melanges d'Histoire Religieuse " 
 (1864) marks the season of transition from his earlier 
 period that of the Professor of Exegesis at the 
 Genevan Ecole ]vangelique, to his later period, that 
 of the critic of a Parisian journal. He had ceased 
 by this time to hope for the attainment of any abso- 
 lute truth by means either of theology or philosophy. 
 The thinker who chases absolute truth, he says, is a 
 man who would leap away from his own shadow. The 
 discovery of the relative character of truths is, he 
 declares, the capital fact in the history of contemporary 
 thought. Hegelianism had had its day ; it was the 
 conjuror's goblet, under which the conjuror finds what 
 he himself has put there, and nothing more. The 
 authority of the Churches and of the Bible had 
 crumbled away under the disintegrating touch of 
 criticism. " I have occupied myself for long," he 
 writes in his introduction, " with these subjects [reli- 
 gious history and philosophy] ; I have taken an active 
 part in the discussions which so deeply interest the 
 public of our day ; I have known in turn the sweet 
 and bitter fruits of knowledge, the charm of enfran- 
 chisement, and the sadness which great ruins inspire. 
 I am far from believing that I have either opened 
 or closed the cycle of those researches to which I 
 have devoted myself, but it seems to me that I have 
 almost finished the task which has fallen to me. . . . 
 What strikes me most in reviewing the way which I 
 have traversed, is to see how the general movement
 
 358 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 overmasters the individual initiative. What is our 
 personal thought, our personal effort in comparison 
 with that secret logic which proposes problems, each 
 in its turn, and resolves them with a sovereign au- 
 thority ? " Belief in moral freedom, belief in the 
 duality of soul and body, these also, he admits, must 
 be regarded as of no more than relative significance, 
 beliefs deep-seated in the heart of humanity, yet which 
 express only the individual point of view. Because 
 we make admissions such as these, are we, he asks, to 
 be denounced as sceptics ? The sceptic, indeed, has 
 a right to exist as well as the dogmatist. But the 
 real sceptic here is he who is indifferent to the truth, 
 or he who, not regarding the truth in all seriousness, 
 makes DO strict demand for evidence. " I am resigned 
 beforehand," writes Scherer, " to every truth, and to 
 every consequence of every truth. Is this the attitude 
 of the sceptic ? The genuine sceptic is the partisan, 
 he whose resting-place is already found as to every 
 question, he who has taken up a position once for 
 all, and who no longer dreams of defending it ; the 
 man who looks to the social, moral, or religious utility 
 of ideas rather than to their conformity with facts. Let 
 us be assured that what has least of seriousness in our 
 frivolous society, what is least healthy and least sincere, 
 is precisely that dogmatism which claims for itself so 
 readily the monopoly of sincerity and seriousness." 
 
 Let us turn from Scherer the student of religion and 
 philosophy to Scherer the critic of literature. Here 
 too he is characterised by those moral qualities which 
 ally themselves with qualities purely intellectual ; the
 
 Edmond Scherer. 359 
 
 conscience of the intellect is ever awake within him ; 
 seriousness and sincerity are still the notes of his work. 
 It was because he believed that these qualities were 
 present in the critical work of Matthew Arnold that 
 Scherer was in a peculiar degree drawn and attached 
 to it. In his third volume of " Etudes " he had 
 contrasted the prose written in France with that of 
 German and English authors, and had enjoyed a 
 national satisfaction which was not in this instance 
 national vanity. In England, he says, we seek in 
 vain for a school of accomplished prose writers such 
 as those who form the glory of French letters : " On 
 n'y ecrit pas excellemment." At this moment (1865) 
 he adds, there is not across the Channel a single author 
 whom we can read for the pleasure of style and "la 
 joie du gout." At a later date he discovered at least 
 one such author, and I shall not wrong Scberer's 
 French by attempting to translate into a medium 
 which he held inferior the passage in which he points 
 out the special excellence of Matthew Arnold's writing 
 as contrasted with that of Carlyle and Ruskin. " M. 
 Arnold est un charmant ecrivain. II a la clarte 
 limpide et la bonne grace. On ne le prend jamais 
 en flagrant delit d'attitude prise, de tour ambitieux. 
 C'est un repos d'ouvrir ses livres lorsqu'on vient de 
 lire ceux des grands manie"ristes dont s'enorgueillit si 
 a tort la litteVature de nos voisins : Carlyle au jargon 
 conscient, voulu, calcule" ; Ruskin et ses affectations 
 de profondeur, sa laborieuse recherche d'expression, 
 toutes ses poses e'tudie'es d'un charlatanisme qu'on 
 regrette de voir allie parfois & un me'rite re'el, et qui
 
 360 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 constituent un peche' centre le vrai serieux et le grand 
 gout." J Matthew Arnold, says Scherer elsewhere, had 
 probably as many ideas in his head as Carlyle, and as 
 much poetry in his soul as Ruskin, but he did not on 
 that account consider himself obliged to speak like a 
 mystagogue. Perhaps, preoccupied with ideas, as he so 
 often was, Scherer, in writing these sentences, did not 
 perceive that Carlyle often employed language for other 
 purposes than the expression of thought, and that such 
 admirable epic or dramatic effects as those which he 
 produces in many pages of his " French Revolution " 
 could have been produced by no other means than 
 those actually employed. At another moment Scherer 
 expressed his opinion that Carlyle was an artist more 
 than a prophet, and that his grand and oracular manner, 
 his passions, his tempests of pity or objurgation, form 
 part of his manner as a painter. Nor, perhaps, did 
 the French critic perceive that dainty kind of affecta- 
 tion in which Matthew Arnold sometimes indulged, 
 the affectation of affectation, followed by a bright smile 
 at his own assumed airs. Still less can he have per- 
 ceived Arnold's gravest failing the want of seriousness 
 which is implied in undertaking critical work for which 
 he was in no way adequately prepared. It needed a 
 touch of levity or of rare self-confidence to enable one 
 to attempt the criticism of the Hebrew writings with 
 so slender an equipment of scholarship as that of the 
 author of " Literature and Dogma." 
 
 Scherer is serious and sincere, but his criticism has 
 some deficiency of warmth and colour. It makes us 
 1 "Etudes," vii. 5.
 
 Edmond Scherer, 361 
 
 think, says M. Berard-Varagnac, of a Protestant meeting- 
 house " elle a garde je ne sais quel accent et quel 
 arriere-gout genevois." M. Colani, himself a theologian 
 and a minister of religion, who saw much of Scherer 
 at Geneva, speaks of that separation of the idea from 
 the image, which long years of philosophic study in- 
 evitably bring with them. " We may be engravers," 
 he writes, applying his words to Scherer as well as to 
 himself, " but we shall never be colourists. Unknown 
 to ourselves we are for ever operating with algebraic 
 expressions, and when we think we have described 
 a person or an object, it always happens that we have 
 set down his formula." l Hence, as some one has 
 observed, a certain want of amenity in Scherer when 
 he becomes controversial. It is not a living man 
 whom he criticises, but an idea or a system, and no 
 reserves or compromising refinements are claimed by 
 an idea. M. Berard-Varagnac characterises happily 
 much of Scherer's work when he speaks of " la trame 
 forte et serree, un peu incolore, de ses ecrits ; " con- 
 trasting this strong but somewhat colourless texture 
 with that other criticism, if so it may be called, " tout 
 eblouissante et tonnante de fusees et de flammes de 
 Bengale, qui eclatait, comme des feux d'artifice, dans 
 les feuilletons et dans les livres de M. Paul de Saint- 
 Victor." No contrast, indeed, could be more striking 
 than that between the style of Scherer and that of the 
 author of " Hommes et Dieux." In criticising " Les 
 Deux Masques," Scherer recognises the amazing virtu- 
 osity of Paul de Saint- Victor in his handling of the 
 1 Quoted by M. Berard-Varagnac : "Portraits litteraires, " p. 257.
 
 362 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 instrument of language ; but he fears that with him 
 the word may at times take the place of the idea 
 " we think of one of those Eastern weapons, where 
 the chasings on the blade and the jewels of the sheath 
 make us a little forgetful of the masculine uses of the 
 sword." In Scherer's own writing we are constantly 
 in the presence of ideas, and his style has a sober and 
 manly grace ; but it rarely becomes radiant with that 
 intellectual beauty where light in its exquisiteness 
 produces on our feelings almost the effect of colour. 
 
 Matthew Arnold did not, perhaps, introduce Scherer 
 in the happiest way to English readers when he chose 
 for detailed notice his studies on Milton and on Goethe. 
 An early residence in our country and his marriage 
 with an English lady gave him advantages not often 
 possessed by foreigners in dealing with our literature, 
 His articles on Milton, Wordsworth, George Eliot, 
 Lord Beaconsfield, Mill, Carlyle, and other English 
 writers would in themselves form an interesting volume. 
 But no critic has the same independence of judgment 
 and sureness of eye in dealing with a foreign literature 
 which he has in dealing with the literature of his 
 native land. What shall we think of a writer who 
 could translate the exquisite lines of Wordsworth 
 
 " She lived unknown, and few could know 
 When Lucy ceased to be." 
 
 by the words, " Inconnue pendant sa vie, bien peu ont 
 su quand Lucy a terming son existence " ? It is the 
 translation of a dialectician rather than of a poet. Yet 
 Scherer can say a happy thing about each of the 
 English authors whom he studies, expressing, if not 
 a complete truth, at least an important fragment of the
 
 Edmond Scherer. 363 
 
 truth. Carlyle, lie tells us, though not a philosopher, is 
 " un accoucheur d'esprits." The talent of Lord Beacons- 
 field is " tout en facade sur la rue." Mr Gladstone, in 
 his writings on Homer and on Holy Scripture, is " a 
 survivor from the age of scholasticism ; he belongs to 
 those epochs of human thought when the force of 
 intellect applied itself to data furnished by tradition; 
 when they dissertated ad infinitum on texts the value 
 of which they did not know how to discuss ; when the 
 finest subtlety existed side by side with a superstitious 
 respect for authority." Lord Tennyson, as a lyric poet, 
 is the author of pieces " unequalled in any language, 
 some of an infinite morbidezza, others of a penetrating 
 pathos, others, again, vibrating like the horn of a knight 
 of romance ; and he wants but one thing, the supreme 
 gift, the stroke of wing which raises Ganymede to the 
 empyrean, and throws him trembling at the feet of 
 Jupiter." George Eliot is " the most important literary 
 personality which has appeared since the death of 
 Goethe." Wordsworth "comes after Milton, decidedly 
 below him, yet is the first who comes after him." 
 Scherer's admiration of Wordsworth, however, does not 
 make him unjust to Shelley. Half of Shelley's work, 
 indeed, is "gatee par d'insupportables tendances humani- 
 taires ; " but he remains a poet of the first order : 
 " he was freer than Wordsworth, his thought was more 
 speculative, he touched higher questions, he expressed 
 deeper troubles, more actual needs of contemporary 
 humanity ; and all this in a poetical language of wider 
 musical range, of profounder resonance, of a nobler 
 imaginative power, of a melody absolutely prodigious,
 
 364 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 penetrating, and subtle ; here the long and solemn 
 murmur of the wind in the pine-forest, there the song, 
 liquid and pearl-pure, of the lark ascending in a sun- 
 beam." Such an outbreak of enthusiasm is rare in 
 Scherer, the soberest of critics. 
 
 But in general a foreign critic can say little that is at 
 once new to us and true with reference to the inner 
 power and more intimate meanings of our own litera- 
 ture. Scherer is at his best when he either discusses 
 some literary principle of general application, or studies 
 some great epoch or important writer in the literature 
 of his own country. Admirable, for example, is his 
 analysis of the characteristics of the eighteenth century 
 in a review of the volume by Edmond and Jules de 
 Goncourt, " La Femme au dix-huitieme siecle." That 
 age was named by Mark Pattison, who knew it well, 
 the sceculwm rationalisticum ; yet one of its most 
 striking peculiarities is that it was, so to speak, personi- 
 fied in its women: "La fern me, au dix-huitieme siecle, 
 est le principe qui gouverne, la raison qui dirige, la 
 voix qui commande. Elle est la cause universelle et 
 fatale, 1'origine des evenements, la source des choses." 
 Though the French bourgeoisie had increased in riches, 
 society was still essentially aristocratic, and the mis- 
 fortune of the French aristocracy was that it had 
 always existed as " a dignity without functions." Life 
 for the aristocrat was reduced to mere relations of 
 elegance and pleasure. Hence the French salon, with 
 its graces of conversation : hence also a devouring 
 ennui. " Ce mal incurable de 1'ennui, le dix-huitieme 
 siecle le porte partout. C'est la son fond j'allais dire
 
 Edmond Scherer. 365 
 
 son principe. C'est par la que s'expliquent ses agita- 
 tions, ses degouts, ses tristesses cach^es, 1'audace de ses 
 vices." To Scherer the eighteenth century in France 
 presents itself as an age more brilliant than delicate, 
 voluptuous without passion, having a void at its heart 
 which constantly gaped wider. On the other hand, it 
 was charming ; it had external grace and elegance, an 
 exquisite accomplishment in the art of living. If it 
 was not creative in architecture, painting, sculpture, 
 and poetry, it could at least decorate. If it did not 
 seek the beautiful, it found le joli. " Its character is 
 not great ; but still it has a character ; it puts its mark 
 on all that it produced buildings, pictures, furniture." 
 And in the paintings of Greuze, Watteau, Fragonard, 
 Chardin, we can perceive a certain frankness under the 
 affectation, a certain originality in the mannerism, and 
 a real vitality at the heart of this conventional art. 
 Moreover, as the years drew on towards the Eevolution, 
 society became animated with the liveliest intellectual 
 curiosity. It was in the highest degree mobile. There 
 was an universal taste for letters, and in letters for new 
 and adventurous things. 
 
 "Les dames ont de gros in-quartos sur leur toilettes (c'est le 
 format regu). Rien ne les rebute. Elles lisent FHistoire philo- 
 sophique de Raynal, les Stuarts de Hume, VEsprit des Lois de 
 Montesquieu. Mais c'est des sciences surtout qu'elles s'<$prennent. 
 . . . Courez apres ces charmantes jeunes femmes, elles vont au 
 Jardin des Plantes pour voir fabriquer la theriaque ; chez 1'abbe 
 Mical, pour entendre parler un automate ; chez Rouelle pour 
 assister a la volatilisation du diamant ; chez Reveillon pour y 
 embrasser Pilatre de Rozier, avant une ascension. Ce matin, elles 
 ont rendu une visite au grand cierge serpentaire, qui ne porte de 
 flours que tous les cinquante ans ; elle iront cette apres-midi a 
 des experiences sur 1'air inflammable ou sur 1'e'lectricite'. II n'est
 
 366 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 pas jusqu'& la medecine, jusqu'a 1'anatomie, qui n'aient des attraits 
 pour ces curiosit^s dechainees ; la comtesse de Voisenon mdica- 
 mente ses amis ; la comtesse de Coigny n'a que dix-huit ans et elle 
 disseque !" 
 
 And then came what Scherer terms the crisis, or 
 rather the conversion, of the eighteenth century, 
 Nature and simplicity and sensibility were preached 
 by Rousseau, and idyls were dreamed and tears rained 
 in gentle showers. Elegant shepherdesses and charming 
 dairy maids took the place of the graceful students of 
 philosophy. It was the period of symbolical emblems, 
 burning hearts, altars, doves. " Madame de Blot bore 
 on her breast a miniature representing the church where 
 her brother was buried. Beauty formerly was piquant, 
 now it aspired to be tender and touching. . . . Every 
 woman was ambitious to love as Julie loved. Every 
 mother educated her son like Emile." And under all 
 the affectations, and the fashion of sensibility, there 
 was again something genuine a real passion of 
 humanity, an intense pity for the sorrows and 
 sufferings of men, and an enthusiasm for generous 
 ideas, for toleration, justice, equality. The heroes of 
 the age, " sont les hommes utiles, les agriculteurs, 
 les bienfaiteurs des peuples. II embrasse dans ses 
 reTormes toutes les nations. II s'eleve a la notion 
 de la solidarity humaine. II se compose un age 
 d'or ou les theories du philosophe se melent aux 
 reveries du songe-creux. . . . L'utopie, 1'utopie a la 
 fois rationelle comme la geometric et aveugle comme 
 1'enthousiasme : toute la revolution fran9aise est deja 
 la." Not quite all the French Revolution, for when 
 Utopia was realised, the pedants and dreamers found
 
 Edmond Scherer. 367 
 
 themselves side by side with the bandits and assassins 
 who always lurk in the shade to seize upon each new 
 Utopia and convert it to their own vile uses. 
 
 The melancholy of the literature which followed the 
 Revolution is traced by Scherer to Rousseau as its 
 parent, or, if one may so speak, its founder. But 
 though " Rene' " appeared in 1802 and "Obermann" 
 in 1804, the influence of Rousseau, as the father of 
 modern melancholy, did not produce its full fruits 
 until twenty years later. Edgar Quinet has described 
 in his autobiography the condition of letters in France 
 after the fall of the Empire, the moral exhaustion 
 which followed the shock of great events, the spiritual 
 sterility, the apparent void all around him in his years 
 of opening manhood, a void in religion, in poetry, in 
 philosophy. Lamartine gave poetical expression to this 
 melancholy of the Restoration period, deriving, as it 
 did, something from the melancholy of Rene", which is 
 that of passion, and the melancholy of Obermann, which 
 is that of reflection and wasted desires. Lamartine's 
 is the contemplative melancholy : " Strictly speaking, 
 he has uttered in song only one thing disenchant- 
 ment. . . . Lamartine was not a painter, he had 
 neither design nor colour but he was a musician, a 
 sovereign master of melodious motives. In reading him 
 we rather experience sensations than recognise ideas. 
 We seem to have drunk some magical philter, so that 
 the outlines of real things mingle in confusion, and our 
 personality seems to be on the point of dissolving and 
 losing itself in the infinite like a sound, or returning 
 to the bosom of nature as one of the primitive elements."
 
 368 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 Scherer's high estimate of Lamartine as a lyrical poet 
 is far nearer the truth than the popular estimate of the 
 present day, when the great singer of the Kestoration is 
 forgotten and M. Zola is read. All the more because he 
 valued Lamartine's poetical work at its true worth, 
 Scherer mourned over the intellectual and moral decline 
 betrayed in his later writings, when he subordinated 
 thought to effects of style, and especially to "the most 
 puerile of all, antithesis," when he broke with good 
 sense and self-respect ; when he came so near charlatan- 
 ism that he may be said to have touched it. 
 
 Victor Cousin, the illustrious autocrat of philosophy, 
 a great figure from 1828 onwards, has but a moder- 
 ate portion of Scherer's admiration and esteem. Two 
 thousand listeners thronged to hear his eloquent dis- 
 courses on philosophy. They were impressed by the 
 enthusiasm with which that brilliant philosophic actor 
 played his part. He ruled his audience with his air 
 of profound conviction, and a range of knowledge that 
 seemed as well ascertained as it was universal, with 
 his resonant voice, his gestures, his generous phrases. 
 They did not perceive, says Scherer, the consummate 
 skill which lay concealed under the surprises of his 
 inspiration, nor at how small a cost of real originality 
 he made his philosophic display. " M. Cousin was 
 before all else an artist ; thought was with him a 
 role ; he conceived philosophic instruction as an 
 effective piece of parade, as a drama to be put on 
 the stage. . . . Two departments of study were for 
 him as sealed books the natural sciences and historical 
 criticism. Unfortunately it is precisely these studies
 
 Edmond Scherer. 369 
 
 which are laying the foundations of modern science." 
 With an appearance of extraordinary power in organ- 
 ising ideas, he really succeeded only in the philosophic 
 joiner's art of eclecticism. But " a philosophic system 
 is not a piece of marquetry, formed from bits made to 
 match ; it is rather the development of a living and 
 creative idea. Eclecticism is the negation of philosophy, 
 as it is of science." This pseudo-philosophy, however, 
 was imposed, during Cousin's reign, upon all young 
 minds in that spirit of autocratic authority which 
 formed part of his character. Hence the modern 
 French school it was in 1867 that Scherer wrote 
 the school of " declamatory spiritualism," on which 
 the critic pronounces judgment in a word of excessive 
 severity : " grandes preventions, formules creuses, ste"ri- 
 lite absolue." 
 
 Scherer's study on Tocqueville, a much more modest, 
 and a much more sincere writer than Cousin, illustrates 
 happily the critic's method one which he only occa- 
 sionally adopts of reducing a living person to the for- 
 mula which expresses his essential difference. Tocque- 
 ville, he tells us, is " a talent in the service of a 
 character ; with him everything else is subservient to 
 the conscience." He sees in the world not a problem 
 to study but a task to accomplish. He is a fully- 
 formed will, devoured by activity, eager for clearness 
 and certitude, incapable of doubt. " Let the curious 
 look on life as a spectacle, the epicurean view it as 
 a festival, the pessimist as a piece of irony ; for him 
 it is 'a serious business with which we are entrusted, 
 and which we must conduct and bring to a close in 
 
 2 A
 
 370 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 a way that shall do us honour.' " As a result of his 
 constant preoccupation with duty, there is something 
 of overstrain in Tocqueville's character ; he is insen- 
 sible to the humorous aspect of things ; he takes in a 
 tragic spirit the failures of men to reach the pre- 
 scribed standard, when sometimes it were better if he 
 had smiled. He is a Liberal in politics, because duty is 
 a matter for the individual conscience, and Liberalism 
 consists essentially in respect for the individual. His 
 style as a writer is determined by his character ; its 
 admirable qualities are of a moral kind : energy, 
 sincerity, virility. The masculine virtues of Tocque- 
 ville raised him, as a publicist, above the lower sphere 
 of politics, and made him sensible of the dangers to 
 which our contemporary civilisation is exposed. He 
 sees the man in the citizen, and finds in conduct the 
 substance and the vital principle of society. Our age, 
 says Scherer, has no political writer to compare with 
 him ; posterity will place his bust at the feet of the 
 statue of Montesquieu. 
 
 The Romantic movement of which Victor Hugo was 
 the leader, is viewed by Scherer not merely as a reaction 
 from the tastes and ideals of the eighteenth century, 
 but also as a direct and inevitable consequence of 
 the rationalism of that century, which overthrew the 
 authority of the classical literature of France, and left a 
 space for the fresh play of imagination and passion. 
 That classical literature of the age of Louis XIV. was 
 itself what Scherer styles a tertiary literature ; it was a 
 French imitation of the Latin imitation of Greek authors; 
 it was indeed national, but, as it were, in spite of its own
 
 Edmond Scherer. 371 
 
 intentions ; it saved itself from servility by its involun- 
 tary anachronisms. The Romantic movement of 1830 
 proclaimed its independence of tradition, but, as Scherer 
 observes, in fact it only changed its models ; " Shakes- 
 peare and Byron in place of Racine and Boileau, and, as 
 usually happens in such cases, the singularities of the 
 model copied as its beauties ; " the nodosities of the oak, 
 to use Burke's well-known words, sometimes reproduced, 
 without its strength, and the contortions of the Sybil 
 without her inspiration. It was the misfortune of 
 Romanticism, says Scherer, to resolve at whatever cost 
 to be novel, powerful, naive ; but this is not to be 
 attained by force of a predetermination, and never did a 
 poet reach originality, in the higher sense of the word, 
 by proposing to himself to be original. 
 
 Throughout the eight volumes of his " Etudes " 
 Scherer has nowhere attempted an estimate of the 
 genius and the work of Victor Hugo. A short obituary 
 notice of Hugo doubtless expresses only a small- frag- 
 ment of the critic's complete mind. He comments upon 
 the singular fact that with an imagination of such stu- 
 pendous power, Hugo should also have possessed in large 
 measure the gift of esprit esprit of a peculiar kind, 
 more strong than delicate, a sort of herculean gaiety, a 
 vein of amusing extravagance : " mais je me trompe, car 
 on so trompe toujours avec lui, et il e"chappe a toutes les 
 definitions : ce geant a fait des chansons, et, dans ces 
 chansons, il en est de gracieuses et de delicates." Add 
 to all else, add to the magic of his genius and the power 
 of his work, the fact that Victor Hugo had generous ideas, 
 and noble personal qualities, patriotism, humanity, faith.
 
 372 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 Scherer had himself found his early faith, and especially 
 an optimistic faith, difficult, if not impossible, to retain ; 
 he had lost his early illusions about the progress of 
 society, but " glory," he says finely, " will never fall to 
 the sceptics ; the people love those alone who share the 
 certitudes and the illusions which form an essential part 
 of their life." 
 
 Of Hugo's greatest contemporary in the creative 
 literature of imagination Scherer speaks without 
 those reserves which the old age and the accumu- 
 lated glory of Hugo may not improbably have 
 imposed upon the critic. " Massive and materialis- 
 tic " are the epithets by which he characterises the 
 genius of Balzac, a genius devoid of warmth and 
 delicacy. His chief work has been to enlarge and 
 elevate " the novel of character " of character con- 
 sidered, not as that merely which is born with a 
 man, but also as the product of education and en- 
 vironment, and representing as such a general con- 
 dition of society. He has failed in depicting tender 
 and passionate feelings ; he is only moderately success- 
 ful in dialogue ; he is guilty of an abuse of description ; 
 he has a morbid taste for social corruptions ; his style is 
 laboured and colourless ; but he has represented, if not 
 the whole, assuredly a huge fragment of French civilisa- 
 tion of the nineteenth century. And he possessed in an 
 extraordinary degree the genuine power of evocation. 
 " His persons remain in our memory as if they had 
 actually lived. We have seen them, we have con- 
 versed with them, we can summon them by their 
 names. And these imaginary beings are of a number
 
 Edmond Scherer. 373 
 
 almost incredible ; the novelist's creation is as vast 
 as a world." Scherer is compelled at last to admit 
 that Balzac had not only the force, but the fecundity 
 of genius. 
 
 With the younger school of romantic writers, and 
 with those who cultivated what has been called the 
 style of decadence, Scherer has little sympathy, and 
 at times in dealing with them his critical intelligence 
 deserts him almost completely. He describes Theophile 
 Gautier as the writer, of all who ever lived, most remote 
 from an elevated conception of art as well as from a 
 virile use of the pen. Towards Baudelaire the critic 
 shows himself implacably hostile. His only merit, 
 according to Scherer, is that he has the courage, not of 
 his opinions, for Baudelaire is without ideas, but of his 
 vices. When men have exhausted and worn out the 
 merely sensuous delight in beauty then the sensual 
 pleasure in deformity begins. When the terrible can 
 no longer thrill our satiated nerves we turn for a new 
 sensation to whatever is disgusting. Decomposition 
 engenders a yet more fetid decomposition, until at last 
 there remains something which cannot be described or 
 named in human speech. Voild, Baudelaire. He was 
 neither an artist nor a poet. Believing himself to be 
 very strong because he was very corrupt, he was at 
 bottom a Philistine pure and simple. The moral indig- 
 nation of the Genevan professor mingles here with the 
 passion of the literary critic, offended by the artistic 
 vices of the style of decadence. And the nickname of 
 Philistine, a Philistine, that is, turned topsy-turvy 
 applied to one who honours the proprieties by an out-
 
 374 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 rageous attempt to shock them, is prettily conceived. 
 But Baudelaire, notwithstanding the critic's violence, 
 and notwithstanding what M. Paul Bourget terms his 
 " truculent paradoxes," remains a poet. We recall to 
 mind that majestic sonnet La Vie Anterieure or Les 
 Aveugles, with its power of cruel pathos, and can then 
 turn to sane uses what is just in Scherer's unmeasured 
 invective. 
 
 At the present moment, when the strife between the 
 classicists and romanticists is a thing of the past, the 
 actual contest is between two schools which Scherer 
 names the Virgilians and Mosaic-makers. For the one 
 school poetry is a language that expresses a meaning, 
 for the other it is an art that produces a sensation : 
 "The first the Virgilians speak because they have 
 something to say, and they say it as a man does who is 
 impelled to speech by a thought and a feeling, with grace 
 of style, seeking fulness of sound as well as of sense, lov- 
 ing amplitude of utterance and completeness of idea, di 
 parlar largo fiume. The others make poetry an affair 
 of technique. Form has for them an independent 
 value. They pursue rare turns, of expression, rich 
 rhymes, difficulties subdued. Virtuosi, as they are, 
 they aim at giving evidence of their virtuosity." It 
 need hardly be said that Scherer, while not insensible 
 to some services rendered to poetry by the school of 
 the Mosa/istes, ranges himself without hesitation on the 
 side of the Virgiliens. What volume of verse now-a- 
 days, he asks, makes us think ? What book quickens 
 the beating of our heart ? We are reminded of some 
 words of Matthew Arnold in his address, as President of
 
 Edmond Scherer. 375 
 
 the Wordsworth Society. Matthew Arnold there indi- 
 cates as an invaluable merit of Wordsworth this in 
 particular, that he had something to say. " Perhaps 
 one prizes this merit the more as one grows old, and 
 has less time left for trifling. Goethe got so sick of the 
 fuss about form and technical details, without due care 
 for adequate contents, that he said if he were younger 
 he should take pleasure in setting the so-called art of 
 the new school of poets at naught, and in trusting for 
 his whole effect to his having something important to 
 say." Not that Goethe, or Arnold, or Scherer, under- 
 valued form and the workmanship of verse, but that 
 even in the interest of form it is needful that a higher 
 and finer kind of beauty should be born from art than 
 that which is attained by skilful juggling with phrases 
 and ingenious manipulation of rhymes. 
 
 On the other hand, Scherer was not insensible to the 
 danger incurred by poetry when the abstractions of 
 thought usurp the place of the visionary power of 
 imagination, and his fear was that the predominance 
 of scientific habits of thought at the present day would 
 leave no room for the higher forms of art. The spirit 
 of research, analysis, criticism cannot develop itself 
 without diminishing the province and the power of 
 inspiration. He valued as highly as did Sainte-Beuve 
 the exquisite poetry to be found in the earlier volumes 
 of that tender and thoughtful Virgilian, M. Sully 
 Prudhomme. But he received with certain reserves 
 the later volume, " La Justice," in which the poet, 
 calling to his aid the resources of modern science, 
 makes an inquisition into ultimate moral problems.
 
 376 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 We feel, he says, that the writer is preoccupied with 
 the precision of his thought and not with rendering 
 it in a perfect form. Victor Hugo, indeed, in his 
 wonderful piece, le Satyre, had attempted with a 
 happier result " la poesie scientifique." His cosmogony, 
 it is true, is somewhat vague ; his style is marred by 
 extravagances, by puerilities ; but as compared with 
 the pages of M. Sully Prudhoinme, what astonishing 
 plasticity of language ! " Quel temperament il y a 
 la-dessous ! De quel pied solide il creve le bleu de 
 Tether, celui-la, quand par hasard il s'y aventure ! 
 C'est absurde, mais c'est splendide. C'est du Rubens." 
 And then comes the critic's final reserve and touch 
 of doubt with respect to Victor Hugo also, a touch 
 of doubt felt often by the readers of Victor Hugo 
 who do not wholly lose their balance : " L'ennuyeux 
 de tout cela, c'est qu'on est force de se demander si, 
 plus sense, Victor Hugo serait un aussi grand poete et si, 
 en definitive, ce n'est pas lui qui a choisi la bonne part." 
 Who has ever thought of putting such a question as this 
 in reading Dante or Shakespeare or Goethe ? And does 
 not such a touch of doubt help us to assign its true, 
 place to that stupendous genius which invented le 
 Satyre ? 
 
 The works of the modern school of realistic fiction 
 are examined by Scherer each on its own merits. 
 Flaubert he admits at least to the suburbs of his good 
 pleasure ; Zola, " an illiterate writer trying to degrade 
 literature to his own level," he absolutely rejects. It is 
 an error, he maintains, to speak of idealism and realism 
 as if they were mutually exclusive in art ; rather they
 
 Edmond Scherer. 377 
 
 are the two poles between which art lives and moves. 
 The real is that which exists outside the artist and 
 apart from him ; the ideal is that which the mind of 
 the artist discovers as the interpretation of the object 
 or adds to the object. Both the real and the ideal are 
 essential to all true art, and it is natural and right 
 that there should be two schools of artists, one of which 
 approaches nearer to this pole of art, and the other 
 which approaches nearer to that. In his review of 
 Flaubert's " I/Education sentimentale," which ought 
 rather, he says, to have been named " Les Bonnes for- 
 tunes de M. Frederic," Scherer points out the two 
 capital risks incurred by the realistic novelist. First, 
 there is the danger of want of unity or ensemble. A 
 series of photographic pictures is not a work of art. 
 In " Madame Bovary," indeed, the acts of the drama 
 are in living connection each with the other, and lead 
 naturally and inevitably to the denouement. It is not 
 so with " L'fidu cation sentimentale;" "1'ouvrage n'est 
 pas composeV' We might describe it as a collection of 
 medallions, each interesting in itself, but still a collec- 
 tion, not like a single living and breathing statue or 
 portrait. Secondly, the artist who is a realist may make 
 a choice of subjects which are indeed capable of artistic 
 imitation, but which do not interest us when we see 
 them so reproduced. Scherer anticipates the possible 
 retort upon his criticism that he condemns Flaubert's 
 choice of subjects as a moralist. " I am no more of a 
 prude," he says, " than other folk. I confess even that 
 I look on morality as not concerned in the question. 
 I have never understood what is meant by a dangerous
 
 378 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 book, for every book may be in turn dangerous or 
 wholesome according to the reader's disposition. But as 
 a matter of decency, that is to say of taste, that is to 
 say of art, M. Flaubert himself knows well that every- 
 thing cannot be shown, that everything cannot be said." 
 And in the same spirit in which he called Baudelaire a 
 Philistine, Scherer adds, " You fancy that j r ou give a 
 proof of strength in braving the conventions of life and 
 the decencies of language, and you only prove your own 
 impotence. You flatter yourself that in this way you 
 are raised above the bourgeois, and you do not see that 
 nothing is more bourgeois than this kind of cynicism. 
 You, moreover, enter a narrow passage from which there 
 is no issue. These high-spiced dainties soon leave an 
 appetite for others still more highly seasoned. Diseased 
 passions, vile curiosities call for new gratifications, and 
 he who has undertaken to supply their requirements is 
 condemned to descend ever lower and lower." " Veils," 
 says Scherer happily, " are made to be lifted, but woe 
 to him who lifts them, for the veil itself is part of the 
 divinity." Such ideal beauty as that of an undraped Greek 
 goddess is indeed the loveliest of veils* And Scherer 
 does not deny that one charm of beauty is possessed in 
 a high degree by Flaubert's least happy creation the 
 author knows how to write. Now modern novels fall 
 into two classes those which are written and those 
 which are not written ; and unhappily not one novel in 
 ten is written. " The fact is," Scherer exclaims, " I 
 would give all Balzac and all Alexandre Dumas for 
 a single page of exquisite French." Such exquisite 
 French the fastidious critic finds in Flaubert, French
 
 Edmond Scherer. 379 
 
 written, with clearness and precision of style; no plas- 
 tered colour, no pile of insignificant details, but words 
 that can be seen through and descriptions that really 
 describe. 
 
 Valuing at so high a rate a page of perfect prose, 
 Scherer naturally pays homage to the most charming 
 of prose writers, M. Renan. " Oh ! la merveilleuse 
 souplesse ! " he cries, " 1'ondoyante nature ! " A style 
 at once of the finest subtlety and the most exquisite 
 simplicity : " une phrase d'allure naturelle, ni peViodique 
 ni hachee, sans convenu ni rhetorique, sans maniere ni 
 banalite, ne connaissant d'autre parure que le bonheur 
 de 1'expression, n'empruntant d'impre'vu qu'a la nou- 
 veaute" de la pense'e, au tour spirituel qu'elle revet, ou, 
 c,a et la, a quelque e'chappee d'imagination." Contrary 
 to what is true of most other writers, the form with M. 
 Renan is the real substance ; he is essentially an artist, 
 and ideas are only the instruments of his art. But to 
 seize this Proteus, says Scherer, is impossible, forrtias se 
 vertit in omnes. He is in turn enamoured of the ideal, 
 and assured that the ideal is an illusion. He passes 
 without halt or stumbling from Epictetus to Epicurus. 
 He has his elevated religious theory, a kind of intel- 
 lectualised mysticism, when he speaks of God and the 
 soul, of immortality and duty. And then he brings 
 forth his impious magician's alembic, in which all these 
 ideas are sublimated and evaporated. " Sciense is re- 
 duced to research, religion to the religious sentiment, 
 the ideal to a mirage, duty to a strategic device of 
 nature, God to the category of the divine, and the life 
 to come to our part in the eternal work of evolution."
 
 380 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 Essentially M. Renan, as he appears to Scherer, is not 
 a believer or a combatant, but an interested spectator 
 of life ; a spectator " seated in his stall, glass in hand, 
 judging the actors, now moved by them and now 
 amused." At moments he has the air of being deeply 
 and passionately concerned in the action going forward 
 on the stage, and he has some faint desires to undertake 
 a part in the great drama. " But no ; he soon returns 
 to his true vocation, that of a looker-on, and to his busi- 
 ness of applauding the fine passages and enjoying a 
 delightful evening. And, indeed, what critic more en- 
 lightened or more amiably disposed could the author of 
 the piece desire ? " Kenan's early articles in the Revue 
 des Deux Mondes, written when he was about thirty- 
 five, his studies of Channing, M. de Sacy, Cousin, 
 Augustin Thierry, Lamennais, are ranked higher by 
 Scherer than his later or more elaborate works. The 
 charm, he says, has grown feebler with repetition ; we 
 have too many nuances ; the challenging of popular 
 prejudices has lost some of its piquancy : the voluntary 
 self-contradictions, designed, as M. Renan declares, to 
 exhibit the several aspects of truth, now run some risk 
 of appearing as a mere sport of the intellect. 
 
 Of none of his contemporaries did Scherer speak more 
 justly or more generously than of Sainte-Beuve, and he 
 was never tired of returning to one whom he regarded 
 as the last of the great race of men of letters. " I 
 expressed the idea," he writes, " when Sainte-Beuve 
 died, that something came to an end together with his 
 life. This something was literature in the old sense of 
 the word, the pre-occupation of the mind with what is
 
 Edmond Scherer. 381 
 
 A 
 beautiful and elevated, or delicate and refined, the search 
 
 for truth in thought and balance in expression ; in a 
 word, all that has hitherto been called literary taste 
 and the art of writing." More than once he describes 
 Sainte-Beuve as a nineteenth-century kinsman of Mon- 
 taigna a Montaigne with a vaster range of knowledge, 
 more love of art, an accumulated experience, and all the 
 difference which the centuries can make between two 
 men. A Montaigne, indeed, with a difference, but with 
 as much likeness as the descendant can have to his an- 
 cestor the same moderated wisdom, the same happy 
 equilibrium, the same sceptical curiosity, the same supple 
 intelligence, the same distrust of theories and phrases, 
 the same freedom from great passions and enthusiasms. 
 We do not think of elevated greatness in connection 
 with Sainte-Beuve ; " and yet," says Scherer, " he had 
 in him something great, something royal namely, 
 equity." Scherer quotes with approval a passage from 
 one of Doudan's letters, which characterises Sainte-Beuve 
 so happily, that I cannot pass it by. 
 
 " No one has been his equal in the union of gifts of intellect and 
 of character which rarely coexist in one and the same person : the 
 toil of a Benedictine monk with the penetrating imagination of a 
 finely -strung woman; boldness in saying everything while preserv- 
 ing at the same time all the nuances of equity; a taste for exactness 
 and a passion for truth, together with a feeling for the ideal in the 
 criticism of great writers; a marvellous erudition in all departments 
 of literature, and sometimes the skimming flight of a bird over the 
 surface of things; ... an understanding for all the subtleties and 
 all the lofty ardours of the piety of Port- Royal, and on his death-bed 
 a readiness to say of the priest : 
 
 ' Get esclave est venu, 
 II a montre son ordre et n'a rien obtenu.' "
 
 382 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 Port-Royal, indeed, lay far behind and far away from 
 Sainte-Beuve in his elder years. He, like Scherer, if at 
 any time he had hoped for absolute truth, if at any time 
 he had dreamed of some ardent moral deliverance from 
 the perplexities of life, came in the end to accept as 
 sufficient for the needs of each day, the day's portion of 
 relative truth, truth touched now at this point, and again 
 at that other and different point. " Pascal," writes 
 Scherer, " resolves problems, but he resolves them by 
 simplifying their terms, and by eliminating part of the 
 facts. There is a time of life, I am aware, when we love 
 to lay hold of questions thus on their absolute side, to 
 decide them once for all by some sublime act of will. 
 Later, we learn to suspect this simplicity as a cheat ; 
 we have come to feel all that there is of insensible 
 demonstration in simple contact with what is real ; we 
 are eager to know the universe in all its plenitude, 
 in all its complexity, and then we are disposed to 
 pardon much to a writer, who, like M. Sainte-Beuve, 
 shows himself simple, sincere, and who, in his pages, 
 reproduces something of the infinite variety as well 
 as something of the imperturbable sang-froid of 
 nature." 
 
 Equity a great, a sovereign thing ; it was his con- 
 scious gain in this as years advanced that more than 
 consoled Scherer for the disenchantments and the in- 
 creasing isolation of old age. I have tried in this 
 article, by showing the critic's mind in relation to many 
 eminent literary predecessors and contemporaries, and 
 by offering to the reader a variety of characteristic 
 passages chosen from the eight volumes of his
 
 Edmond Scherer. 383 
 
 " Etudes," to make Scherer his own exponent and 
 interpreter. And now, at the close, I must quote 
 freely from the remarkable preface to the last of 
 these volumes, in which the author expressed his 
 mind more completely than anywhere else, and gave 
 to the world what he calls a kind of literary and 
 philosophic testament. The preface is dated June 1, 
 1885, and in that month Scherer had just left behind 
 his seventieth birthday. Growing old has been de- 
 scribed in a poem of Matthew Arnold's a poem written, 
 we must believe, when he was very young as not merely 
 a loss of bloom and strength, but also as a miserable 
 decay of thought and emotion, until the man becomes at 
 last the hollow phantom of himself. It was not thus 
 that Scherer at seventy felt towards old age. " A 
 delicious thing, old age," he exclaims, " old age ap- 
 proaching or already come ! " But I will not rob the 
 charm from this lyric de senectute by a translation 
 into English : 
 
 "Delicieuse chose que la vieillesse, la vieillesse approchant ou 
 ineme deja venue ! avec la sante, bien entendu, cette condition 
 premiere, ce substratum de toute jouissance, et avec les facultes 
 assez intactes pour vous ^pargner les preuves de la decadence. 
 Les passions sont calmees, mais les sentiments peuvent etre vifs 
 encore ; le talent, s'il y a eu talent, a gagne" en acquis, en savoir- 
 faire, ce qu'il a perdu en verve ; le temps, qui a dissip4 les 
 enivrements de la jeunesse, nous a donne en compensation 1'etrange 
 joie du desabusement. On a appris a ses depens, mais on a appris, 
 et, cette vie qui echappe, on la ressaisit par I'exp^rience ; on se 
 possede, et en se possedant on domine ce qu'il nous reste -de 
 destine'e a accomplir." 
 
 If, then, in our elder years we lose the audacity and 
 decisiveness of youth, its happy, prompt, instinctive 
 way, we have some compensating gains the capacity
 
 384 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 for wise doubt, the habit of suspending our judgment, 
 the courage, if there be a need, to acknowledge our 
 ignorance. We can wait ; we have no passion now 
 for rash generalisations. Nor are we disposed to judge 
 our fellows absolutely ; we do not see men as if each 
 one was fashioned all of a piece, entirely good or 
 entirely bad, worth everything or worth nothing. We 
 can make distinctions, which implies that we can spare 
 time to reflect and to analyse : " Avec 1'absolu c'est 
 plus tot fait ; le vulgaire se plait a 1'absolu, c'est la 
 forme naturelle de la pensee inculte." We now enjoy 
 the rapier play of Voltaire's wit, his incorruptible good 
 sense, and we see at the same time his pitiful character, 
 wholly devoid of the sentiment of self-respect. We 
 do not doubt, any more than did M. Thiers, that 
 Napoleon conducted a campaign with his genius, but 
 we are willing to acknowledge, with M. Thiers, that 
 he conducted politics with his passions, and we add 
 that his incomparable force of intellect coexisted with 
 the ignoble soul of a criminal. And Goethe Scherer 
 has always had his grave reserves with respect to 
 Goethe " c'est Goethe qui a ecrit ' Faust,' Pceuvre 
 unique, tissue de sarcasme et de pathetique, et c'est 
 Goethe qui a ecrit cette ceuvre pretentieuse et mal 
 venue des ' Wanderjahre.' " We now acknowledge 
 that the whole truth has at least two different aspects ; 
 we are no longer prone to admire " comme une bete." 
 We find something of intellectual apathy or sloth 
 in the hasty and exaggerated judgments which are 
 given en bloc, and which refuse to make the due 
 distinctions.
 
 Edmond Scherer. 385 
 
 Nor in old age can we be content to pay ourselves 
 with words. " Progress ! progress ! " cry the fresh 
 young voices of our nineteenth century ; but this 
 notion of an unlimited advance towards perfection is 
 borrowed from the sciences and industrial arts ; and 
 in reality applies only to the accumulation of know- 
 ledge, and to a certain, external, material improvement 
 of society. Every day more of suffering is averted, 
 more pleasures are made accessible to the great bodv 
 of our fellows, and this indeed is something considerable, 
 something essential. " The error begins in supposing 
 that what is true of the practical and positive order 
 is equally true of the moral order, in supposing that 
 society advances in moral uprightness, in equity, in 
 moderation, in modesty, in refinement of feeling, by 
 some inevitable evolution and automatic development." 
 And again what shall we say of another word which 
 passes for current coin, for unalloyed gold the word 
 " humanity " ? What is it but a name for one of 
 those abstractions which are created to satisfy the 
 incurable mystical needs of the soul ? We have a 
 family, friends, a city, a country, but all these are not 
 enough ; we must needs idealise the entire genus homo. 
 " I cannot sufficiently admire," cries Scherer, " the 
 power of abstraction of those persons, who in the wide 
 overflow of their sympathies, forget all that is hideous, 
 mean and stupid, nor will pay any regard to what is 
 vicious, vile, atrocious. ... As for myself, the human 
 species amuses me and interests me, but in its totality 
 it inspires me neither with veneration nor tenderness ; 
 I decline solidarity." 
 
 2 B
 
 386 Edmond Scherer. 
 
 The " discomfiture of the absolute," the discovery of 
 the relative character of things, is regarded by Scherer 
 as the great event in modern thought. And the 
 discomfiture of the absolute, as he says, is at least 
 favourable to indulgence. " To understand is to 
 excuse, it is almost to become an accomplice." The 
 instinct of indignation is indeed one of those instincts 
 which protect the dignity of human life ; but we do 
 not lose it when it has been wisely tempered. The 
 finest fruit of instruction, the best proof of nobility of 
 soul, is it not sympathy with all the aspirations of men 
 towards light and happiness ? But even this sympathy 
 is the purer if it also be tempered by experience. We 
 see the wanderings, the errors, the sins, the sorrows of 
 men, their ineffectual strivings towards an unattainable 
 ideal ; and if we love them, our love is mingled with 
 a poignant pity. 
 
 Such, in brief, is Scherer's philosophic testament. 
 Not that he regards himself as a philosopher who has 
 reached illuminated heights above his fellows. Far 
 from that. " My aim has been as much to amuse as 
 to instruct, and when I look back over my life, it 
 seems to me in all sincerity that I have had a certain 
 passion for seeing things as they really are at bottom, 
 that this passion has led me into many adventures, 
 and that my pen as I held it between my fingers, has 
 been for me an instrument of experiment and research. 
 Which fact, however, is not inconsistent with this 
 other, that while working for myself, I have had a 
 confused sense of working at the same time towards 
 a common result, towards some impersonal achieve-
 
 Edmond Scherer. 387 
 
 ment, towards some end which I cannot clearly 
 discern." 
 
 Assuredly we, his debtors, will gratefully acknowledge 
 that the faithful striving of his life has not been for 
 himself alone.
 
 LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE. 1 
 
 WHEN the Curators of the Taylorian Institution 
 honoured me with an invitation to lecture on some 
 subject connected with the study of modern literature, 
 I glanced back over my recent reading, and I found 
 that a large part, perhaps an undue proportion of it, 
 had consisted of French literary history and French 
 literary criticism. The recent death of that eminent 
 critic, M. Scherer, had led me to make a survey of 
 his writings. I had found in M. Brunetiere an 
 instructor vigorous and severe in matters of literature ; 
 one who allies modern thought with classical tradition. 
 I had beguiled some hours, not more pleasantly than 
 profitably, with M. Jules Lemaitre's bright if slender 
 studies of contemporary writers, in which the play of 
 ideas is contrived with all the skill and grace of a 
 decorative art. I had followed M. Paul Bourget, as 
 many of us have done, through his more laborious 
 analyses in which he investigates, by means of typical 
 representatives in literature, the moral life of our time. 
 And I had in some measure possessed myself of the 
 legacy of thought left to us by two young writers, 
 ardent students, interested in the philosophical aspects 
 of literature, whose premature loss French letters must 
 deplore, M. Guyau, the author of several volumes on 
 
 1 Eead as the Taylorian Lecture, Oxford, November 20th, 1889. 
 ass
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 389 
 
 questions of morals and aesthetics, and M. Hennequin, 
 whose attempt to draw the outlines of a system of 
 scientific criticism has at least the merit of bold 
 ingenuity. It seemed to me that I had fresh in my 
 mind matter which must be of interest to all who care 
 for literature, and that I should not do ill if I were to 
 try to gather up some of my impressions on recent 
 literary criticism, and especially on methods or proposed 
 methods of criticism in France. 
 
 Nearly a generation has passed since a distinguished 
 son of Oxford, Mr Matthew Arnold, declared that the 
 chief need of our time and especially the need of our 
 own country was a truer and more enlightened 
 criticism. He did not speak merely of literature ; 
 he meant that we needed a fresh current of ideas about 
 life in its various provinces. But he included the 
 province of literature, the importance of which, and 
 especially of poetry, no man estimated more highly 
 than did Mr Arnold. And as the essential prelude to 
 a better criticism, he made his gallant, and far from 
 unsuccessful, effort to disturb our national self-com- 
 placency, to make us feel that Philistia is not a land 
 which is very far off; he made the experiment, which 
 he regarded as in the best sense patriotic, to rearrange 
 for our uses the tune of Rule Britannia in a minor 
 key. His contribution to our self-knowledge was a 
 valuable one, if wisely used. The elegant lamentations 
 of the prophet over his people in captivity to the 
 Philistines were more than elegant, they were inspired 
 by a fine ideal of intellectual freedom, and were 
 animated by a courageous hope that the ideal might
 
 390 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 be, in part at least, attained. Disciples, however, too 
 often parody the master, and I am not sure that success 
 in any other affectation is more cheaply won than in 
 the affectation of depreciating one's kinsfolk and one's 
 home. There is a Jaques-like melancholy arising from 
 the sundry contemplation of one's intellectual travel, 
 which disinclines its possessor for simple household 
 tasks. Our British inaccessibility to ideas, our wilful- 
 ness of temper, our caprices of intellect, our insular 
 narrowness, the provinciality of our thought, the 
 brutality of our journals, the banality of our popular 
 teachers, our incapacity to govern, or at least to be 
 gracious in governing these are themes on which it 
 has become easy to dilate : 
 
 " Most can raise the flowers now, 
 For all have got the seed." 
 
 And with the aid of a happy eclecticism which chooses 
 for comparison the bright abroad with the dark or dull 
 at home, and reserves all its amiable partiality and 
 dainty enthusiasm for our neighbours, it really has not 
 been difficult to acquire a new and superior kind of 
 complacency, the complacency of national self-depre- 
 ciation. 
 
 As regards the criticism of literature, Mr Arnold did 
 good service in directing our eyes to France, and when 
 we spoke of French literary criticism any time in the 
 fifties and sixties of this century, we meant first of all 
 Sainte-Beuve. Here Mr Arnold was surely right, nor 
 did he depart from the balance and measure which he 
 so highly valued when, in the " Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 nica," he described Sainte-Beuve as an unrivalled guide
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 391 
 
 to bring us to a knowledge of the French genius and 
 literature " perfect, so far as a poor mortal critic can 
 be perfect, in knowledge of his subject, in tact, in tone." 
 We are all pupils of Sainte-Beuve. But to what Mr 
 Arnold has said of Sainte-Beuve, I should like to add 
 this : that while the great critic was French in his tact, 
 French in his art of finely insinuating opinions, in his 
 seeming bonhomie, and at the same time in the delicate 
 malice of his pen, French above all in his sense of the 
 intimate relations of literature with social life, his 
 method as a critic was not the dominant method of 
 France ; it was hardly characteristic of the French 
 intellect ; it was his own method, and it had been in 
 great measure our English method. 1 
 
 For, while possessing extraordinary mobility within 
 certain limits seldom overpassed, the French intellect, 
 as compared with that of England, is pre-eminently 
 systematic, and to attain system, or method, or order 
 in its ideas, it is often content to view things in an 
 abstract or generalising way, or even to admit things 
 which present a difficulty to the systematiser. At the 
 highest this order is a manifestation of reason, and 
 when it imposes itself upon our minds, it brings with 
 it that sense of freedom which accompanies the 
 recognition of a law. But when by evading difficulties 
 a pseudo-order is established, and when this is found, 
 as it inevitably will be found in the course of time, to 
 be a tyranny, then the spirit of system becomes really 
 an element of disorder, provoking the spirit of anarchy, 
 
 1 Mr Arnold's doge does not apply to the earlier writings of Sainte- 
 Beuve, which were wanting in critical balance, and often in critical 
 disinterestedness.
 
 39 2 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 and, as M. Nisard has called it, the spirit of chimera. 
 In a nation where the tendency towards centralisation 
 is strong, and a central authority has been constituted, 
 an order of ideas, which is probably in part true, in 
 part false, will be imposed by that authority, and as 
 years go by this will become traditional. So it was in 
 France. The Academy was precisely such a central 
 authority in matters intellectual, and from its origin 
 it asserted a claim to be a tribunal in literary criticism. 
 It imposed a doctrine, and created a tradition. But 
 even among writers who revolted from the traditional 
 or Academical manner in criticism, the spirit of system 
 was often present, for the spirit of system is character- 
 istic of the intellect of France. An idea, a dogma was 
 enounced, and the facts were selected or compelled to 
 square with the idea ; an age was reduced to some 
 formula which was supposed to express the spirit of 
 that age, and the writers of the time were attenuated 
 into proofs of a theory. 
 
 Now Sainte-Beuve's method as a critic was as far 
 as possible removed from this abstract and doctrinaire 
 method. He loved ideas, but he feared the tyranny 
 of an idea. He was on his guard against the spirit 
 of system. Upon his seal was engraved the English 
 word " Truth," and the root of everything in his 
 criticism, as Mr Arnold said of him, is his simple- 
 hearted devotion to truth. Mr Arnold might have 
 added that his method for the discovery of truth is 
 the method characteristic of the best English minds, 
 that of living and working in the closest relation with 
 facts, and incessantly revising his opinions so that they
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 393 
 
 may be in accord with facts. It will be in the 
 memory of readers of Sainte-Beuve that in 1862, in 
 the articles on Chateaubriand, afterwards included in 
 the third volume of " Nouveaux Lundis," he turned 
 aside to give an exposition of his own critical method. 
 He had been reproached with the fact that he had 
 no theory. " Those who deal most favourably with me 
 have been pleased to say that I am a sufficiently good 
 judge, but a judge who is without a code." And while 
 admitting that there existed no " code Sainte-Beuve," 
 went on to maintain that he had a method, formed 
 by practice, and to explain what that method was. It 
 was that for which afterwards, when reviewing a work 
 by M. Deschanel, he accepted the name of naturalistic 
 criticism. He tells us how we are inevitably carried 
 from the book under our view to the entire work of 
 the author, and so to the author himself; how we 
 should study the author as forming one of a group with 
 the other members of his household, and in particular 
 that it is wise to look for his talent in the mother, 
 and, if there be sisters, in one or more of the sisters ; 
 how we should seek for him in " le premier milieu," 
 the group of friends and contemporaries who surrounded 
 him at the moment when his genius first became full- 
 fledged ; how again we should choose for special obser- 
 vation the moment when he begins to decay, or decline, 
 or deviate from his true line of advance under the 
 influences of the world ; for such a moment comes, 
 says Sainte-Beuve, to almost every man ; how we 
 should approach our author through his admirers and 
 through his enemies ; and how, as the result of all
 
 394 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 these processes of study, sometimes the right word 
 emerges, which claims, beyond all power of resistance, 
 to be a definition of the author's peculiar talent ; such 
 an one is a " rhetorician," such an one an " impro- 
 visator of genius." Chateaubriand himself, the subject 
 of Sainte-Beuve's causerie, is " an Epicurean with the 
 imagination of a Catholic." But, adds Sainte-Beuve, 
 let us wait for this characteristic name, let us not 
 hasten to give it. 
 
 This method of Sainte-Beuve, this inductive or 
 naturalistic method, which advances cautiously from 
 details to principles, and which is ever on its guard 
 against the idols that deceive the mind, did not, as 
 he says, quite satisfy even his admirers among his 
 own countrymen. They termed his criticism a negative 
 criticism, without a code of principles ; they demanded 
 a theory. But it is a method which accords well with 
 our English habits of thought ; and the fact is perhaps 
 worth noting that while Mr Arnold was engaged in 
 indicating, for our use, the vices and the foibles of 
 English criticism as compared with that of France, 
 Sainte-Beuve was thinking of a great English philo- 
 sopher as the best preparatory master for those who 
 would acquire a sure judgment in literature. " To be 
 in literary history and criticism a disciple of Bacon," 
 he wrote, " seems to me the need of our time." Bacon 
 laid his foundations on a solid groundwork of facts, but 
 it was his whole purpose to rise from these to general 
 truths. And Sainte-Beuve looked forward to a time 
 when as the result of countless observations, a science 
 might come into existence which should be able to
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 395 
 
 arrange into their various species or families the 
 varieties of human intellect and character, so that the 
 dominant quality of a mind being ascertained we might 
 be able to infer from this a group of subordinate qualities. 
 But even in his anticipations of a science of criticism 
 Sainte-Beuve would not permit the spirit of system to 
 tyrannise over him. Such a science, he says, can never 
 be quite of the same kind as botany or zoology ; man 
 has "what is called freedom of will," which at all 
 events presupposes a great complexity in possible com- 
 binations. And even if at some remote period, this 
 science of human minds should be organised, it will 
 always be so delicate and mobile, says Sainte-Beuve, 
 that "it will exist only for those who have a natural 
 calling for it, and a true gift for observation ; it will 
 always be an art requiring a skilful artist, as medicine 
 requires medical tact in those who practise it." There 
 are numberless obscure phenomena to be dealt with in 
 the criticism of literature, and they are the phenomena 
 of life, in perpetual process of change ; there are 
 nuances to be caught, which, in the words of one who 
 has tried to observe and record them, are " more fugitive 
 than the play of light on the waters." Saint-Beuve 
 felt that to keep a living mind in contact with life must 
 for the present be the chief effort of criticism, to touch 
 here some vital point, and again some other point there. 
 In that remarkable volume, " Le Roman Experimental," 
 in which M. Zola deals with his fellow authors not so 
 much in the manner of a judge as in that of a trucu- 
 lent gendarme, he lays violent hold on Sainte-Beuve, 
 claiming him as essentially a critic of his own so-called
 
 396 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 experimental school ; not, indeed, that Sainte-Beuve's 
 was one of those superior minds which comprehend 
 their age, for was he not rather repelled than subdued 
 by the genius of Balzac, and did he not fail to perceive that 
 the romantic movement of 1830 was no more than the cry 
 for deliverance from dogma and tradition of an age on 
 its way to the naturalism of M. Zola himself ? Still, says 
 M. Zola, in certain pages Sainte-Beuve formulated with 
 a tranquil daring the experimental method " which we 
 put in practice." And it is true that there are points 
 of contact between Sainte-Beuve's criticism, with its 
 careful study of the author's milieu, and the doctrines 
 proclaimed by M. Zola. But what a contrast between 
 the spirits of the two men ; what a contrast in the 
 application to life even of the ideas which they possessed 
 in common ! M. Zola, whose mind is over-ridden, if 
 ever a mind was, by the spirit of system ; whose work, 
 misnamed realistic, is in the main a monstrous ideal- 
 ising of humanity under the types of the man-brute and 
 the woman-brute ; and Sainte-Beuve, who in his method 
 would fain be the disciple of our English Bacon ; 
 Sainte-Beuve, ever alert and mobile, ever fitting his 
 mind to the nicenesses of fact, or tentatively grouping 
 his facts in the hope that he may ascertain their law ; 
 Sainte-Beuve, whom, if the word " realism " be forced 
 upon us, as it seems to be at the present time, we may 
 name a genuine realist in the inductive study of the 
 temperaments of all sorts and conditions of men. 
 
 Of M. Scherer I spoke a few days after his death in 
 the pages of the Fortnightly Review, and I shall only 
 say here that he resembled Sainte-Beuve at least in this,
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 397 
 
 that he too feared the tyranny of the spirit of system. 
 In his earlier years, indeed, he had aspired as a philo- 
 sophical thinker and a theologian to the possession of 
 a body of absolute beliefs ; but he found, or thought he 
 found, that all which he had supposed to be fixed was 
 moving, was altering its shape and position. He saw 
 or thought he saw, a sinking of the soil on which he 
 had built his house as if to last for ever, a gaining of 
 the tide upon the solid land ; he recognised, as so many 
 have had to recognise in this century of moral difficulty, 
 the processes of the evolution, or at least the vicissitude, 
 of beliefs. He ceased to hope for truth absolute, but it 
 was not as one disillusioned and disenchanted that he 
 took refuge in the relative. He felt that his appointed 
 task of truth-seeking had grown more serious and more 
 full of promise. It seemed to him that there was some- 
 thing childish in the play of building up elaborate 
 erections of dogma, ingenious toy-houses, to be tumbled 
 down presently by the trailing skirts of Time. The 
 business of a man was rather, as he conceived it, to live 
 by the truth of to-day, trusting that it would develop 
 into the completer truth of to-morrow, to contribute 
 something of sound knowledge and well-considered 
 opinion to the common fund, to work with all other 
 honest minds towards some common result, though what 
 that result may be, none of us as yet can be aware. He 
 thought that he could perceive a logic in the general 
 movement of the human mind, and he was content, for 
 his own part, to contribute a fragment of truth here 
 and a fragment there which might be taken up in the 
 vast inductions of that mighty logician, the Zeit Geist.
 
 398 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 A critic of such a temper as this can hardly set up 
 absolute standards by which to judge, he can hardly 
 make any one age the final test of another, and condemn 
 the classic because it is not romantic, or the romantic 
 because it is not classic. Yet he is far from being a 
 sceptic either in matters of faith or matters of literary 
 conviction ; he may possess very clear and strong 
 opinions, and indeed it becomes his duty to give a 
 decided expression to his own view of truth, even if it 
 be but a partial view, for how otherwise can he assist 
 in the general movement of thought ? The discomfiture 
 of the absolute, as Scherer has said, is an aid to 
 tolerance, is even favourable to indulgence, but it need 
 not and should not paralyse the judgment, or hopelessly 
 perplex the literary conscience. And Scherer himself 
 was indeed at times more inclined to severity than to 
 indulgence ; behind the man, who was the nominal 
 subject of his criticism, he saw the idea, and with an 
 idea it is not necessary to observe the punctilio of fine 
 manners. He must at the same time make his own 
 idea precise, must argue out his own thesis. Yet he 
 feels all the while that his own idea, his own thesis, has 
 only a relative value, and that his criticism is at best 
 something tentative. Scherer's conviction that all our 
 truths are only relative, and that none the less they are 
 of the utmost importance to us, gives in great measure 
 its special character, at once tentative and full of deci- 
 sion, to his criticism. 
 
 But Scherer came on his father's side from a Swiss 
 family, and the Parisian critic had been formed in the 
 school of Protestant Geneva ; Sainte-Beuve's mother
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 399 
 
 was of English origin, and his reading as a boy was 
 largely in our English books. These are facts which 
 may fairly be noted by one who accepts Sainte-Beuve's 
 principles of literary investigation. The critical methods 
 characteristic of the French intellect as contrasted with 
 the English intellect are not the methods which guide 
 and govern the work of these writers. Their work lacks 
 the large ordonnance, the ruling logic, the vues d 'ensemble 
 in which the French mind, inheritor of Latin tradition, 
 delights. Without a moment's resistance we yield our- 
 selves to such guides, because the processes of their 
 minds agree with those to which we are accustomed, 
 only they are conducted by them with an ease and 
 grace which with us are rare. But perhaps we gain 
 more, or at least something more distinctive, from 
 contact with intellects of a type which differs essentially 
 from the English type, minds more speculative than 
 ours, more apt in bringing masses of concrete fact under 
 the rule and regimen of ideas. These characteristics of 
 the French intellect are exhibited in a very impressive 
 way by two well-known histories of literature, which, as 
 regards methods and principles of criticism, stand as far 
 apart from each other as it is possible to conceive 
 Nisard's " History of French Literature," and the much 
 more celebrated " History of English Literature " by 
 Taine. The one is of the elder school of criticism, 
 dogmatic and traditional ; the other is of the newer 
 school, and claims to be considered scientific. Both are 
 works over which ideas preside or perhaps we might 
 say dominate with an excessive authority. A mind
 
 4OO Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 of the English type could hardly have produced either 
 of the two. 
 
 The name of M. Desire Nisard seems to carry us far 
 into the past. It is more than half a century since he 
 made his masked attack on the Romantic school, 
 then in its fervid youth, in his " Latin Poets of the 
 Decadence," and put forth his famous manifesto against 
 la literature facile. It was in 1840 that the first two 
 volumes of his " History of French Literature " appeared : 
 but twenty years passed before that work was completed ; 
 and it is little more than twelve months since M. Nisard 
 gave to the Public his "Souvenirs et Notes mographiques," 
 volumes followed, perhaps unfortunately for his fame, by 
 the " ^Egri Somnia " of the present year. Such a life of 
 devotion to letters is rare, and the unity of his career 
 was no less remarkable than its length. For sixty 
 years M. Nisard was a guardian of the dignity of French 
 letters, a guardian of the purity of the French language, 
 a maintainer of the traditions of learning and thought, an 
 inflexible judge in matters of intellect and taste. The 
 aggressive sallies of his earlier years were only part of 
 the system of defence which at a later time he conducted 
 with greater reserve from within the stronghold of his 
 own ideas. When the first volumes of his " History of 
 French Literature" were written, M. Nisard's doctrine 
 and method were fully formed, and when, twenty years 
 later, he finished his task, it seemed never to have been 
 interrupted ; and though the author was of Voltaire's 
 opinion that he who does not know how to correct, does 
 not know how to write, there was nothing to alter in 
 essentials of the former part of the work, It is a work
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 401 
 
 which cannot be popular, for its method is opposed to 
 that which at present has the mastery, and its style has 
 a magisterial, almost a monumental, concision, which is 
 not to the liking of the crowd of torpid readers. It is, 
 says a contemporary critic, a feature in common between 
 two writers, in other respects so unlike, M. Nisard and 
 M. Renan, that neither can be enjoyed by the common 
 mass of readers, because " they are equally concerned, 
 though in different ways, with the effort to be sober and 
 simple, to efface colours that are over lively, and never 
 to depart, in the temperate expression of their thought, 
 from that scrupulous precision and exquisite netteU 
 which Vauvenargues has named le vernis des maitres." 
 But though it cannot live the noisy life of a popular 
 book, M. Nisard's " History " remains, and does its work, 
 a work all the more valuable because it resists in many 
 ways the currents of opinion and taste in our age. 
 
 What, then, is M. Nisard's method ? It is as far as 
 possible removed from the method of Sainte-Beuve, as 
 far as possible removed from what I may call the Eng- 
 lish method of criticism. A piece of literature a poem, 
 a novel, a play carries Sainte-Beuve to the other works 
 of the author, whether they be of the same kind or not, 
 and thence to the author himself, to the little group of 
 persons with whom he lived and acted, and to the 
 general society of which he formed a member. M. 
 Nisard views the work apart from its author and apart 
 from his other works, if those other works be of a differ- 
 ent literary species. He compares this book or that 
 with other books of the same genre, or rather with the 
 type of the genre, which by a process of abstraction, he 
 
 2 c
 
 4O2 Literary Criticism in France, 
 
 has formed in his own mind ; he brings it into compari- 
 son with his ideal of the peculiar genius of tlie nation, 
 his ideal of the genius of France, if the book be French ; 
 he tests its language by his ideal of the genius of the 
 French language ; finally, he compares it with his ideal 
 of the genius of humanity as embodied in the best 
 literature of the world, to whatever country or age that 
 literature may belong. Criticism, as conceived by M. 
 Nisard, confronts each work of literature with a three- 
 fold idea that of the nation, that of the language, 
 that of humanity : " elle note ce qui s'en rapproche ; 
 voila le bon : ce qui s'en eloigne ; voila le mauvais." 
 The aim of such criticism, according to M. Nisard's own 
 definition, is " to regulate our intellectual pleasures, to 
 free literature from the tyranny of the notion that there 
 is no disputing about tastes, to constitute an exact 
 science, intent rather on guiding than gratifying the 
 mind." 
 
 Surely a noble aim to free us from the tyranny of 
 intellectual anarchy. We all tacitly acknowledge that 
 there is a hierarchy of intellectual pleasures, and it is 
 M. Nisard's purpose to call upon these individual pre- 
 ferences and aversions to come forward and justify them- 
 selves or stand condemned in the light of human reason. 
 The historian of French literature has somewhere con- 
 trasted two remarkable figures of the Renaissance and 
 Reformation Montaigne and Calvin ; Montaigne, a 
 representative of the spirit of curiosity then abroad, and, 
 notwithstanding his sceptical tendency, a lover of the 
 truth ; Calvin, a representative of theological system 
 and rigour, a wielder of the logic of the abstract idea.
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 403 
 
 We may describe Sainte-Beuve as a nineteenth-century 
 descendant of Montaigne, with the accumulated erudi- 
 tion and the heightened sensibility of this latter time. 
 M. Nisard carries into the province of literature some- 
 thing of Calvin's spirit of system, and we can hardly help 
 admiring the fine intolerance of his orthodoxy as he 
 condemns some heretic who disbelieves or doubts the 
 authority of the great classical age of French letters. 
 He would have criticism proceed rather by exclusions 
 than by admissions, and has no patience with the " facile 
 and accommodating admirations of eclecticism ; " he sees 
 a sign of decadence in the ambition peculiar to our time 
 which pretends to reunite in French literary art all the 
 excellencies and all the liberties of foreign literatures. 1 
 It is easy to indulge a diluted sympathy with every- 
 thing ; it is harder, but better, to distinguish the evil 
 from the good, and to stand an armed champion of 
 reason, order, beauty. 
 
 The genius of France, according to M. Nisard, is more 
 inclined to discipline than to liberty ; it regards the 
 former discipline as the more fruitful in admirable 
 results. An eminent writer in France is " the organ of 
 all, rather than a privileged person who has thoughts 
 belonging to himself alone, which he imposes on his 
 fellows by an extraordinary right." And hence, French 
 literature, avoiding, when at its best, all individual 
 caprice, all license of sensibility or imagination, is, as 
 it were, the living realisation of the government of the 
 human faculties by reason. It is not so with the litera- 
 ture of the North ; there the equilibrium of the faculties 
 1 "Hist, dc la Litterature frai^aise," i. 13.
 
 404 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 is disturbed, there liberty often prevails over discipline, 
 there reverie or subtlety often usurps the place of reason. 
 It is not so with the literatures of the South ; there 
 passion often prevails over reason, and the language of 
 metaphor takes the place of the language of intelligence. 
 But human reason did not come to maturity in France 
 until the great age of classical literature, the age of 
 Moliere and Eacine and La Fontaine, of Bossuet and 
 Pascal, of La Bruyere and La Rochefoucauld. Then 
 first in French literature humanity became completely 
 conscious of itself, then, first, man was conceived as man 
 in all the plenitude of his powers, then, first, human 
 nature was adequately represented and rendered in 
 literary art. And since that great age, if we strike the 
 balance of gains and losses we shall find perhaps that the 
 gains are exceeded by the losses. In the eighteenth 
 century, which claimed to be the age of reason, the 
 scecnlum rationalisticum, the authority of reason in fact 
 declined, and the spirit of Utopia, the chimerical spirit, 
 exemplified by Rousseau, obtained the mastery. As to 
 our own century, the magisterial words of condemnation 
 uttered by M. Nisard half a century ago have perhaps 
 gained in significance since the day on which his " Latin 
 Poets of the Decadence " appeared. We have, as he says, 
 analyses infinitely subtle of certain moral situations ; 
 delicate investigations of the states, often morbid states, 
 of individual souls ; but where is the great art that deals 
 with man as man in those larger powers and passions 
 which vary little from generation to generation ? The 
 difficulties of our social problems, the mass of talents for 
 which, in our old world, scope can hardly be found, the
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 405 
 
 consequent restlessness of spirit, the lack of religious dis- 
 cipline, the malady of doubt, the political passions of the 
 time, a boundless freedom of desires, ambitions, sensa- 
 tions, and almost no proportion between power and 
 desire, a refinement of intelligence which multiplies our 
 wants these were enumerated long since by M. Nisard 
 as causes unfavourable to the growth of a great nine- 
 teenth-century literature ; and though the word pessi- 
 mism was not in fashion in 1834, the anxious physician 
 of his age foresaw the modern malady. 
 
 No wonder that such a critic was not popular with 
 young and ardent spirits in the first fervours of the 
 Romantic movement. But M. Nisard's work, as I have 
 said, remains, and partly by virtue of the fact that he 
 maintained the great tradition of French letters. In 
 the literature of the age of Louis XIV., where M. Taine 
 sees only or chiefly the literature of a court and courtiers, 
 he saw the genius of humanity embodied and expressed 
 by the special genius of the French nation. His view 
 was determined by a deeper and a truer insight than 
 that of M. Taine or of the romantic critics of an earlier 
 date. The revolt of the Romantic school itself testifies 
 to the strength in France of the classical tradition, and 
 no critic of French literature can be a sure guide who 
 does not recognise the force and value of that tradition. 
 We, who have had no one age supremely great, who have 
 had the double tradition of the age of Queen Elizabeth 
 and the age of Queen Anne, this embodying the truths 
 of discipline and that the truths of liberty, can find in 
 our literary history no one stream of tendency " strong 
 without rage, without o'erflowing, full," at all correspond-
 
 406 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 ing to that derived in French literary history from the 
 age of Louis XIV. We may feel sure that however the 
 fashions of literature may change, the best mind of 
 France must always, from time to time, make a return 
 upon the wonderful group of writers, poets, thinkers, 
 orators, epigrammatists, of the seventeenth century, and 
 find in them undying masters of thought, of art, of 
 literary style. And this is what the idealist school of 
 critics, represented by M. Nisard, have rightly under- 
 stood, and what the historical school, represented by 
 M. Taine, has failed to perceive. At the present 
 moment we may rejoice to see so eminent a critic as 
 M. Brunetiere taking vigorous part in the much-needed 
 return upon the masters of tfie great tradition. He 
 comes to them in no servile spirit to pay blind homage. 
 Without accepting the ingenious paradox that every 
 classic was in his own day a romantic, he perceives that 
 these revered masters were in fact innovators, and en- 
 countered no little opposition from their contemporaries ; 
 they enlarged the bounds of art ; and one who now 
 dares to enlarge the bounds and break the barriers may 
 be in the truest sense the disciple of Racine and of 
 Moliere. He perceives that the immortal part of such 
 a writer as Racine is not his reproduction of the tone 
 and manners of the Court. If Assuerus, in " Esther," 
 speaks in the mode of Louis XIV., or Berenice has a 
 likeness to Marie de Mancini, this, as M. Brunetiere 
 says, is precisely what is feeble in* Racine, this is the 
 part of his work which has felt the effects of time, the 
 part which is dead. The enduring part of his work is 
 that which, if French of the seventeenth century is
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 407 
 
 something more than French, the part which is human, 
 and which in 1889 has precisely the same value that 
 it had in the fortunate days when his masterpieces 
 appeared for the first time on the stage. 1 
 
 M. Brunetiere, from whose review of a study of 
 Racine by M. Deschanel I have cited some words, is, 
 like Nisard, a critic who values principles, who himself 
 possesses a literary doctrine, and who certainly does not 
 squander his gift of admiration in various and facile 
 sympathies. He has been described as a less amiable, 
 less elegant, less delicate Nisard ; and it is true that he 
 has not Nisard's fineness of touch nor his concinnity of 
 style ; but M. Brunetiere suffers less than Nisard from 
 the rigour of system, and he is far more than Nisard in 
 sympathy with contemporary ideas. He is a combative 
 thinker, with a logic supported by solid erudition and 
 reinforced by a resolute temper which does not shrink 
 from the severities of controversy. Yet to a certain 
 extent M. Brunetiere has been a conciliator, attempting, 
 as he has done, to distinguish what is true and fruitful 
 in that movement of the present day which has claimed 
 the title of "naturalism," and to ally this with the 
 truths of that other art discredited or extolled under 
 the name of " idealistic." He recognises the power of 
 environing circumstances, the " milieu," in forming the 
 characters of men and determining their action ; but, as 
 becomes one who does honour to the great art of the 
 seventeenth century, the art of Corneille and Racine, he 
 recognises also that (to use Sainte-Beuve's hesitating 
 phrase) there is in man that which they call freedom of 
 1 F. Brunetiere, " Histoire et Litte'rature," ii. 9.
 
 408 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 will : " Man hath all which nature hath, but more," 
 wrote Matthew Arnold in a memorable sonnet, in which 
 perhaps he had that far more admirable poem of Goethe, 
 Das Gottliche, in his mind : 
 
 " Man, and man only, 
 Achieves the impossible, 
 He can distinguish, 
 Elect and direct." 
 
 In an article on M. Paul Bourget's remarkable novel 
 " Le Disciple," in the Revue des Deux Mondes of July 
 1st, M. Brunetiere, in the interest of art and of sound 
 criticism no less than in the interest of morality and 
 social life, sets himself to oppose what he terms the 
 great error of the last hundred years, the sophism which 
 reduces man to a part of nature. In art, in science, in 
 morals, argues M. Brunetiere, man is human in propor- 
 tion as he separates himself from nature. 
 
 " It is natural" he writes, " that the law of the stronger and the 
 more skilful should prevail in the animal world ; but this, pre- 
 cisely, is not human. . . . To live in the present, as if it had no 
 existence, as if it were merely the continuation of the past and the 
 preparation for the future this is human, and there is nothing less 
 natural. By justice and by pity to compensate for the inequalities 
 which nature, imperfectly subdued, still allows to subsist among 
 men this is human, and there is nothing less natural. Far from 
 loosening, to draw closer the ties of marriage and the family, 
 without which society can no more progress than life can organise 
 itself without a cell this is human, and there is nothing less 
 natural. Without attempting to destroy the passions, to teach 
 them moderation, and, if need be, to place them under restraint 
 this is human, and there is nothing less natural. And finally, on 
 the ruins of the base and superstitious worship of force, to establish, 
 if we can, the sovereignty of justice this is human, and this, above 
 all, is an effort which is not natural." 
 
 I have quoted this passage from M. Brunetiere be-
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 409 
 
 cause, as we are all aware, there is a school of literary 
 criticism, brought into existence by the same tendencies 
 of the present time which have given birth to what 
 M. Zola somewhat absurdly names " the experimental 
 novel," a school of criticism, led by an eminent French 
 thinker, which reduces to a minimum the independence 
 and originating force of the artist, and is pleased to 
 exhibit him in a group with his contemporaries as the 
 natural and inevitable product of ancestry and ambient 
 circumstances. Since the publication of M. Taine's 
 " History of English Literature " some twenty-five years 
 ago, all students of literature and art have been more 
 or less under the spell of that triple charm the race, 
 the milieu, and the moment, and every critic has found 
 it needful to get the magic formula by heart. A new 
 dogmatism, which in the name of science holds all 
 dogma in scorn, has set forth its credo; and the spirit 
 of system, that passion for intellectual ordonnance, 
 characteristic of the French mind, has once again mani- 
 fested itself in a powerful manner. M. Taine's great 
 work is one which at first overmasters the reader with 
 its clear and broad design, its comprehensive logic, its 
 scientific claims, its multitude of facts arranged under 
 their proper rubrics ; it seems for a little while to put 
 a new organon for the study of literature into our hands ; 
 and the rest of our time, I fear, is spent in making 
 ever larger and larger reservation. The truth is, as 
 Scherer noticed, that professing to proceed by the way 
 of induction, M. Taine is constantly deductive in his 
 method. " He begins by giving us a formula, and then 
 draws from that formula the consequences and conclu-
 
 4io Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 sions which, as he believes, are included in it." The 
 works of this writer or of that are studied not for their 
 own sakes, but in order that they may furnish proofs of 
 the thesis of the scientific critic. " His crowd of de- 
 scriptions, his accumulation of details" I quote the 
 words, eminently just, of Scherer " his piled-up phrases 
 are so many arguments urged upon the reader. We 
 perceive the dialectic even under the imagery. I never 
 read M. Taine without thinking of those gigantic steam 
 hammers, which strike with noisy and redoubled blows, 
 which make a thousand sparks fly, and under whose 
 incessant shock the steel is beaten out and shaped. 
 Everything here gives us the idea of power, the sense 
 of force ; but we have to add that one is stunned by so 
 much noise, and that, after all, a style which has the 
 solidity and the brilliancy of metal has also sometimes 
 its hardness and heaviness." 
 
 Two debts we certainly owe to M. Taine, and we 
 acknowledge them with gratitude ; first, he has helped 
 us to feel the close kinship between the literature of 
 each epoch and the various other manifestations of the 
 mind of the time ; and secondly, he has helped to 
 moderate the passion for pronouncing judgments of 
 good and evil founded on the narrow aesthetics of the 
 taste of our own day. We have all learnt from M. 
 Taine the art of bringing significant facts from the 
 details of social manners, government, laws, fashions of 
 speech, even fashions of dress, into comparison with 
 contemporaneous facts of literature. He has made it 
 easier for us to ascertain, at least in its larger features, 
 what is called the spirit of an age. And this is much.
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 411 
 
 But there are two things which as they express them- 
 selves in literature he has failed to enable us to com- 
 prehend the individual genius of an artist, that unique 
 power of seeing, feeling, imagining, what he and he 
 alone possesses ; and again, the universal mind of 
 humanity, that which is not bounded by an epoch nor 
 contained by a race, but which lives alike in the pillars 
 of the Parthenon and in the vault of the Gothic cathe- 
 dral, which equally inspires the noblest scenes of 
 Sophocles and of Shakespeare, which makes beautiful 
 the tale of Achilles' wrath and that of the fall of the 
 Scottish Douglas. Of what is local and temporary in 
 art M. Taine speaks with extraordinary energy. Of 
 what is abiding and universal he has less to say. Each 
 author whom he studies is presented to us as the 
 creature of the circumstances of his time, or at the 
 highest as a representative of his tribe and people. 
 The critic does not possess that delicate tact which 
 would enable him to discover the individuality of each 
 writer ; it suits his thesis rather to view the individual 
 as one member of a group. Nor does he possess that 
 higher philosophical power which would enable him to 
 see in each great work of art the laws of the universal 
 mind of man. 
 
 M. Taine has served us also, I have said, by moder- 
 ating our zeal for a narrow kind of judicial criticism, 
 which pronounces a work of art to be good or bad as it 
 approaches or departs from some standard set up by 
 the taste or fashion of our own day. He started indeed 
 from a false position that criticism was to attempt no 
 more than to note the characteristics of the various
 
 412 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 works of literature and art, and to look for their causes. 
 It was, he said, to be a sort of botany applied not to 
 plants, but to the works of men. Botany does not 
 pronounce the rose superior to the lily, nor should crit- 
 icism attempt to establish a hierarchy in art ; enough, 
 if it records characteristics and ascertains their causes. 
 But it will be remembered that M. Taine quickly 
 abandoned his false position. In his lectures on "The 
 Ideal in Art" he showed himself as ready to absolve or 
 condemn as any disciple of the old aesthetic, and as I 
 remember putting it in a review of M. Taine's volume 
 which appeared soon after its publication, he said in 
 unmistakable language, " Despise pre-Raphaelite art, 
 it is ascetic," " Despise the English school of painting, 
 it is literary ; " " Admire above all else Renaissance art ; 
 it shows you what painting ought to show, straight 
 limbs, well-developed muscles, and a healthy skin." 
 
 M. Taine, in fact, did not cease to be a judicial 
 critic ; but he endeavoured to base his judgments on 
 principles of a different kind from those accepted by 
 the older school of judicial critics. He endeavoured to 
 find what we may call an objective standard of literary 
 and artistic merit, one which should be independent 
 of the variations of individual caprice arid current 
 habits of thought and feeling. A great work of art, 
 he tells us, is one in which the artist first recognises, in 
 the object he would represent, the predominance of its 
 central characteristic the flesh-eating lust, for ex- 
 ample, of the greater carnivora ; and secondly, by a 
 convergence of effects heightens in his representation 
 the visible or felt predominance of that characteristic,
 
 Literary Criticism in France, 413 
 
 so that with a great animal painter the lion becomes 
 indeed as a zoologist has described the creature a 
 jaw mounted on four feet. So also, in representing 
 man, the artist or author who exhibits the predominance 
 of the master powers of our manhood ranks higher than 
 he does who merely records a passing fashion, or even 
 than he who interprets the mind of a single generation. 
 A book which possesses an universal and immortal life, 
 like the "Psalms," the "Iliad," the "Imitation," the 
 plays of Shakespeare, attains this deserved pre-eminence 
 by virtue of its ideal representation of what is central 
 and predominant in man. Thus M. Taine, no. less 
 than M. Nisard, attempts to establish a hierarchy of 
 intellectual pleasures, and he has perhaps this advantage 
 over M. Nisard that he does not identify the human 
 reason with the genius of the French people, nor this 
 again with its manifestation in the literature of the age 
 of Louis XIV. If he does not reap the gains, he does 
 not suffer from that narrowing influence of the French 
 tradition of which we are sometimes sensible in M. 
 Nisard, he does not yield to that noble pride or pre- 
 judice which once drew from Sainte-Beuve the impatient 
 exclamation " Toujours 1'esprit fran9ais et sa glori- 
 fication ! " 
 
 M. Brunetiere, in a thoughtful article on the 
 "Literary Movement of the Nineteenth Century," in 
 the Revue des Deux Mondes of October 15th, has 
 justly distinguished M. Taine as the critic who has 
 expressed most powerfully the tendencies of that move- 
 ment which has carried literature forward into new 
 ways since the Romantic movement has ceased to be
 
 414 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 a living force. The Romantic movement was essen- 
 tially lyrical in spirit; it subordinated everything to 
 personal sentiment, personal passion, often to personal 
 fantasy and caprice ; it cared little for the Life of the 
 world at large ; it consisted of an endless series of 
 confessions in prose or rhyme uttered by great souls 
 and by little ; it perished because the limited matter 
 of these confessions was speedily exhausted, and the 
 study of outward things and of social life was found 
 to be inexhaustibly rich in fruit. Hence the justifica- 
 tion of that movement of our own day which has 
 assumed the title of naturalism or realism, of which 
 the error or misfortune has been that it has studied 
 too exclusively and too persistently the baser side of 
 life. M. Taine's critical writings have tended to reduce 
 the importance of the individual, have operated to- 
 gether with the scientific tendencies of our time in 
 antagonism to the lyrical, personal character of the 
 Romantic school ; they belong essentially to the same 
 movement of mind which has found other expression 
 in the plays of Dumas, the poems, severely impersonal, 
 of Leconte de Lisle, the novels of Flaubert, and the 
 works of the modern school of historians which stand in 
 marked contrast with the lyrical narratives of Michelet 
 and our English Carlyle. A play of Shakespeare's, a 
 group of Victor Hugo's odes or elegies, is for M. Taine 
 not so much the work of its individual author as the 
 creation of the race, the milieu, and the moment a 
 document in the history and the psychology of a people. 
 We perceive, as M. Brunetiere has justly said, the close 
 relation between his principles of criticism and the
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 415 
 
 doctrine of the impersonality of art, a doctrine drawn 
 out to its extreme logical consequences in some of the 
 recently published letters of Flaubert. 
 
 Scientific criticism, however, in the hands of its 
 latest exponent comes to restore to the individual 
 leaders of literature some of their alienated rights. 
 M. Hennequin, while expressing his high esteem for 
 Taine, as the writer who has done more than any 
 other of our generation to advance the study of 
 literature, was himself ambitious to remodel the method 
 of Taine, to amend it in various respects, to widen 
 its scope, and to set forth the revised method as a 
 Novum Organum for the investigation of literature. 
 He does not deny the influence of heredity, which 
 Taine asserts so strongly, but the race, considered as 
 the source of moral and intellectual characteristics, 
 seems to him to be little better than a metaphysical 
 figment. There is no pure, homogeneous race in exis- 
 tence, or at least none exists which has become a 
 nation, none which ha's founded a civilized state, and 
 produced a literature and art. Nor is it true, as 
 M. Taine assumes, that the intellectual characteristics 
 of a people persist unchanged from generation to genera- 
 tion. The action of heredity on individual character 
 is in the highest degree variable and obscure ; we may 
 admit it as an hypothesis, but it is an unworkable 
 hypothesis, which in the historical study of literature 
 can only confuse, embarrass, and mislead our inquiry. 
 In like manner, as to the 'milieu, the social environ- 
 ment, we may admit that its influence is real and 
 even important ; but can that influence, in which there
 
 416 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 is nothing fixed aud constant, be made a subject of 
 science ? It is in the power of the artist to shield or 
 withdraw himself from the influence of his environment, 
 and to create a little milieu in harmony with his 
 peculiar genius ; or he may prove himself refractory 
 and react against the social milieu. How else shall 
 we account for the diversity, the antagonism of talents 
 existing in one and the same historical period. Did 
 not Pascal and Saint Simon come each to his full 
 development at the same epoch and in the same 
 country ? Did not Aristophanes and Euripides ? Hume 
 and Whitfield ? Shelley and Scott ? William Blake and 
 David Wilkie ? Mr Herbert Spencer and Cardinal 
 Newman ? In truth, the influence of environment 
 constantly diminishes as an art or a literature advances 
 to maturity. Man has acquired modes of adapting 
 circumstances to himself, and so of economising the 
 force of his individuality ; in a highly civilised com- 
 munity every type of mind can find the local habitation 
 and the social group which correspond with its peculiar 
 wants and wishes. Nor indeed is the principle of life 
 and growth altogether that of adaptation to surrounding 
 circumstances ; life is also " a resistance and a segrega- 
 tion, or rather a defensive adaptation, antagonistic to 
 the action of external forces," and as the years advance 
 the system of defence becomes more ingenious, more 
 complicated, and more successful. Each of the great 
 influences, the effects of which M. Taine attempts to 
 ascertain, doubtless exists and is operative, but the 
 action of each is occult and variable. If M. Taine's 
 results have an appearance of precision, this arises from
 
 Literary Criticism in France. 417 
 
 the art with which he manipulates his facts and dis- 
 poses his arguments. 
 
 Such in substance is the criticism of the younger 
 thinker on the method of his master. He recognises 
 no fixed relation between an author and his race or his 
 environment. On the other hand, such a fixed relation 
 can certainly be discovered between an author "or artist 
 and the group of his disciples or admirers. He is a 
 centre of force drawing towards him those who spiritu- 
 ally resemble himself. Thus a great author, instead 
 of being the creature of circumstances, in fact creates 
 a moral environment, a world of thoughts and feelings 
 for all those who are attracted, and as we may say 
 enveloped, by his genius. The history of literature is 
 the history of the successive states of thought and 
 feeling proceeding from eminent minds and obtaining 
 the mastery, often in the face of much contemporary 
 opposition, over inferior minds of a like type. With 
 much pomp of scientific terms some of them possibly 
 seeming more scientific because they are barbarous 
 from a literary point of view M. Hennequin brings 
 us round to the obvious truth that a powerful writer, 
 if he is in part formed by his age, reacts on his con- 
 temporaries and impresses his individuality upon them. 
 
 The central fact with respect to the contemporary 
 movement remains, the fact dwelt on with much force 
 by M. Brunetiere, that literature has turned away from 
 the lyrical, the personal, or, as they call it, the sub- 
 jective, to an ardent study of the external world and 
 the life of man in society. The lyrical, the personal, 
 has doubtless a, subordinate place in literary criticism, 
 
 2 D
 
 4i 8 Literary Criticism in France. 
 
 but the chief work of criticism is that of ascertaining, 
 classifying, and interpreting the facts of literature. 
 We may anticipate that criticism in the immediate 
 future if less touched with emotion will be better 
 informed and less wilful than it has been in the past. 
 If it should be founded on exact knowledge, illuminated 
 by just* views, and inspired by the temper of equity 
 we shall have some gains to set over against our losses. 
 The subordination of self to the faithful setting forth 
 of the entire truth of one's subject will be some com- 
 pensation for the absence of the passion, the raptures, 
 the despairs, the didactic enthusiasm of one great 
 English critic ; some compensation even for the 
 quickening half-views and high-spirited, delightful 
 wilfulness of another. 1 
 
 1 The admirable critical writings of M. Anatole France are not noticed 
 in this article, aiming, as it does, at a study of critical methods rather 
 than of that criticism which professes to be only a record of personal 
 impressions. In the discussion between M. Anatole France and M. 
 Brunetiere as to the personal element in criticism, the latter writer seems 
 to me to have maintained his position.
 
 THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 1 
 
 AN eminent English scholar has confessed that he 
 knows no geography save of those countries over which 
 he has himself travelled. And there is, in fact, no 
 method of learning geography to compare with that of 
 tramping across hill and plain with a knapsack on the 
 shoulders. But to know a country aright, one must 
 know it in relation to other lands, and the pedestrian 
 traveller might well begin his geographical studies by 
 inspecting a map of the globe, and by mastering, not 
 indeed the details, but the broader outlines of that map. 
 In like manner no one can be said to know, in the 
 true sense of the word, any portion of history until 
 he has made close acquaintance with it in the original 
 sources and authorities. Service of high value may 
 be rendered to him by the modern historian ; but 
 the modern historian is at best a trustworthy guide 
 describing the country ; to know the country aright 
 the traveller must breathe its air, live amongst its 
 inhabitants, become familiar, if possible, with its every 
 height and hollow. The historical student, if he be 
 a true student, must address himself to the mastering 
 of contemporary texts. " To the law and to the 
 testimony, to the charter and to the chronicle, to the 
 abiding records of each succeeding age, writ on the 
 1 An introductory lecture to my College class. 
 
 419
 
 420 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 parchment or graven on the stone it is to these that 
 he must go himself and must guide others." * But 
 in order to conceive aright his special field of study, 
 the student should have in his mind a broad outline 
 map of the whole course of history, a map not crowded 
 with petty names, but clearly setting forth the facts 
 of prime importance. Having once possessed himself 
 of such an outline map, he will ever after be able to 
 place things aright, and to understand in some degree 
 their true relations. And so he can enter on the close 
 study of his particular province, to win from it by 
 patient observation, research, reflection, that rich know- 
 ledge of concrete realities which nourishes the under- 
 standing, and fortifies and trains the judgment. 
 
 Such an outline map of European history the young 
 student has ready to his hand in Mr Freeman's 
 " General Sketch." It owns no charm of picturesque 
 beauty, or dramatic presentment, or philosophical re- 
 flection ; but it is what it professes to be a clue to 
 a labyrinth. The general relations of different periods 
 and different countries to one another are traced 
 through a vast tract of time, extending from the early 
 history of the Aryan nations to the union of Germany 
 in our own days ; and this is achieved within the 
 limits of some three or four hundred pages. It would 
 be possible by brute force to hammer the contents of 
 this little book into a boy's head in the course of a 
 few weeks or months, and brute force could hardly 
 be better employed. The young student of history 
 
 1 Mr Freeman, speaking of the duties of the Professor of History, 
 " Methods of Historical Study," pp. 16, 17.
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 421 
 
 would ever after be able to place things aright, and 
 to understand how this thing is related to that. He 
 might by-and-by proceed to fill in one fragment of 
 the great map with topographical details, nor rest 
 until he had become intimate with every feature of 
 his chosen province. 
 
 Had I my way in the teaching of P^nglish literature 
 I would have the student start with a " General Sketch 
 of European Literature " somewhat resembling Mr Free- 
 man's " General Sketch of European History " in its 
 aim and scope and manner of treatment. Unfortun- 
 ately no such book (as far as I am aware) exists, nor 
 does one know where to turn in search of a writer 
 competent to trace such an outline. If Hallam's 
 " Introduction to the Literature of Europe," admirable 
 as it is for its learning and good sense, were recast, 
 revised, amended, and reduced from four large volumes 
 to a single volume of three hundred pages, we should 
 possess something which might at least serve as a 
 stop-gap, until a better book were ready to take its 
 place. But a large book reduced in scale is never 
 quite the same as a small book written with a different 
 purpose ; it is not easy merely by omission or conden- 
 sation to obtain breadth and simplicity of outline. 
 
 Such a "General Sketch of European Literature" 
 I would fix once and for all, as an outline map, in 
 the brain of the young student. It is essential that 
 he should conceive the history of English literature 
 as part of a larger movement. It is essential that 
 he should know where were the head-quarters of liter- 
 ature in each successive period now in Florence or
 
 422 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 in Rome, now in Paris, now in London, now at 
 Weimar. When Boccaccio is spoken of in connection 
 with Chaucer, when Tasso or Ariosto is spoken of in 
 connection with Spenser, or Boileau in connection with 
 Dryden and Pope, or Goethe in connection with Carlyle, 
 he ought at least to be able to place Boccaccio and 
 Tasso and Ariosto and Boileau and Goethe aright in 
 the general movement of European literature, and in 
 some measure to conceive aright the relation of each 
 to the literary movement in our own country. 
 
 The student of English literature ought, however, to 
 know a good deal more of the entire course and progress 
 of literature in England than he can know of the 
 course and progress of literature in France or Spain or 
 Italy or Germany. But it is hardly to be expected 
 that he can know English literature from the CaBdtnon 
 poems to Tennyson at first hand. He may be told 
 that it is well for him to learn a little about many 
 things at second hand, and therefore it is well for him 
 to read some short and well-written " History of English 
 Literature," from the first page to the last. If he fully 
 understands the profound difference which there is 
 between first-hand and second-hand knowledge such a 
 history will do him not harm but good. In every 
 direction we take some of our knowledge provisionally 
 and on trust ; and if we are slow to put forward as facts 
 statements which we have not verified, and if we refuse 
 to air notions as our own which we have derived from 
 others, our second-hand information may be highly 
 serviceable. 
 
 But no " History of English Literature " should 

 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 423 
 
 be read until the student is made to perceive and 
 feel what knowledge at first hand indeed is by being 
 put to work on an actual text. Whether English 
 literature can be taught or not, I am convinced that 
 the right method of approaching a great author, the 
 right method of dealing with a great literary period 
 can be taught, and that to teach this is the most 
 important part of a professor's work. And the first 
 lesson which must be enforced is that which enables 
 the student to bring home to himself the vast difference 
 between knowing about an author, or knowing about 
 a book and knowing the author or the book. 
 
 Let us take, then, as our first unit in the study of 
 literature one complete work in prose or verse. A 
 complete work, not a fragment of a long poem, such 
 as one or two books of Paradise Lost; not passages 
 from some famous piece of prose, such as " Selections 
 from Gulliver's Travels." It is well that we should 
 choose a great work by a great author, and that 
 author ought himself to belong to a great and .fruit- 
 ful period of literature. A play of Shakespeare's 
 fulfils all the conditions which we require ; let us 
 ask on what side the teacher and his class should 
 attack the text before them. 
 
 My answer is, They should attack it on every side ; 
 there is nothing in the play which the student ought 
 not to try to grasp and hold. Some persons seem 
 to fear that a close attention to textual difficulties, 
 conjectural emendations, obsolete words, allusions to 
 manners and customs, and suchlike will quench an 
 interest in the higher meanings of the play. I have
 
 424 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 not found it so. The saying " He that is faithful 
 in that which is least is faithful also in much " has 
 its just application to the true scholar. The letter 
 indeed without the spirit is dead ; but to affect to 
 reach the spirit while ignorant of the letter is the 
 folly either of the dilettante or the half-witted enthusiast- 
 " Let us not press too hard for spirit and feeling in our 
 friends," said Serlo to Wilhelm Meister, when they were 
 instructing their troop of actors in the mysteries of 
 Hamlet ; " the surest way is first coolly to instruct 
 them in the sense and letter of the piece ; if possible to 
 open their understandings. Whoever has the talent 
 will then of his own accord eagerly adopt the spirited 
 feeling and manner of expression ; and those who have 
 it not will at least be prevented from acting or reciting 
 altogether falsely. And among actors, as indeed in all 
 cases, there is no worse arrangement than for any one 
 to make pretensions to the spirit of a thing, while the 
 sense and letter of it are not ready and clear to 
 him." ! 
 
 What we desire before all else at this stage of our 
 progress is to form the scholarly habit of mind, which is 
 not content with inaccuracy or slovenliness or blurred 
 renderings. If I ask a boy to explain the lines in 
 King Lear 
 
 " Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks 
 With every gale and vary of their masters," 
 
 I put the question not because I think it of much 
 
 importance that he should know how formerly the 
 
 " lytle byrde called the King's Fysher " was used 
 
 1 B. v. chap. vii. (Carlyle's translation).
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 425 
 
 as a weather-cock, it having been supposed that " his 
 nebbe or by 11 wyll be alwayes dyrect or strayght against 
 ye winde." The inner meaning of the passage is worth 
 many king-fishers. But I ask the question because I 
 would train the boy to pass over nothing without trying 
 to understand it, and because the chances are that if he 
 could pass over " halcyon beaks " without understanding 
 it, he has passed over a hundred other things not 
 understood or misunderstood. 
 
 The value of questions put at examinations is often ^,, n 
 erroneously estimated. It is supposed that because the 
 subject-matter of a question is of little importance, there- 
 fore the question itself is injudicious or trivial. But 
 every sensible examiner knows that a question seemingly 
 trivial may sometimes serve as an excellent test, which 
 shall ascertain whether attention has been paid to an 
 important class of topics. When for lack of time or 
 through some other causes, a candidate cannot be 
 expected to give full proof of his knowledge, the 
 skilful examiner desires him to exhibit the signs of 
 that knowledge, signs the presence of which implies 
 that much else is present though all cannot on the 
 moment be shown. Whether these signs be trivial or 
 not matters less than is commonly supposed. 
 
 I have said that the student should attack the text 
 before him on every side. It is the business of the 
 examiner to ascertain whether this has been done. 
 Some of his questions will be mere tests of memory ; 
 and it is very right that the student should remember 
 accurately what he has read, and that considerable stress 
 should be laid on the cultivation of mere memory. But,
 
 426 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 it will be said, this is to give encouragement to the 
 crammer. I am no advocate of cram, but neither 
 am I frightened by the word. A good deal of what 
 is carelessly and ignorantly termed cram I should 
 venture to call sound teaching as far as it goes. When 
 a boy is taught the probable dates of Shakespeare's 
 plays, he has learnt something of importance, and 
 he has exercised at least his memory. The chances 
 are that he will always remember that A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream is the fairy fantasy of Shakespeare's 
 earlier years as a dramatic craftsman, and that The 
 Tempest exhibits the poet's genius in its maturity, 
 with all the solemn splendour of his moral wisdom ; 
 and the time may come when the boy will put this 
 piece of knowledge to a worthy use. 
 
 I am no advocate of cram ; but when cram means 
 something less than what I have indicated, it may still 
 have its uses, if not for literature yet for life. To have 
 acquired rapidly and accurately the knowledge of a 
 mass of facts, and to possess the art of skilfully pre- 
 senting that knowledge to others, even though it be 
 swept out of the candidate's memory on the morning 
 after his examination, gives evidence of considerable 
 aptitude and power. This indeed is not to learn 
 literature, but it is in some degree to prepare for life. 
 No lethargic or stupid boy can take cram in this 
 intelligent and vigorous fashion. I remember how 
 the late Mr Forster, when Chief Secretary for Ireland, 
 on each of two occasions when I happened to converse 
 with him, touched on this topic, and used his own 
 experience as evidence of the value of cram^ or, to
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 427 
 
 speak more precisely, the value of the power of taking 
 cram. " I have frequently," he said, " to answer at 
 length a question in the House of Commons requiring 
 for my answer a knowledge of facts which has to be 
 rapidly acquired from others ; or I have to make a 
 speech in the preparation of which the knowledge 
 possessed by me must receive immediate and large 
 augmentation from the authorities to whom I refer 
 myself ; I am crammed by skilful crammers ; I put 
 to use the knowledge which I have gained, and then 
 dismiss from my mind what has been needed only for 
 a passing occasion. And there are numberless cases 
 occurring throughout life, in which it is of the utmost 
 importance to possess the capacity of thus quickly and 
 correctly gaining acquaintance with facts to serve the 
 needs of a day or of an hour." * 
 
 But an intelligent examiner will give a preference 
 to questions which do more than test the memory. 
 There is a class of questions which serve as a test 
 of close and intelligent reading, and also give the 
 candidate an opportunity of showing whether he has 
 exercised what I may call the faculty of imaginative 
 realisation. If I act as examiner in King Lear, 
 and put the question : " Who is the speaker of the 
 following lines and on what occasion are they spoken 
 
 ' He is attended by a desperate train, 
 And what they may incense him to, being apt 
 To have his ear abused, wisdom bids fear ' ? " 
 
 I test no more than memory. But if I ask this 
 
 1 I report faithfully the substance of what was said. I cannot be sure 
 as to the precise words.
 
 428 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 question : " On what occasion does Lear say of 
 Cordelia 
 
 ' Her voice was ever soft, 
 Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman ' 1 " 
 
 I do something towards ascertaining the activity of 
 a higher power than memory, the power, as I have 
 termed it, of imaginative realisation. For these words 
 are uttered by Lear at the moment when he is bending 
 over his dead daughter, to catch the low utterance of 
 that voice which is now silent for ever 
 
 "Ha! 
 
 What is't thou sayst ? Her voice was ever soft, 
 Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman." 
 
 Or the candidate may be required to describe the 
 spectacle on the stage as the curtain is falling at the 
 close of the fifth act of the same play. He will re- 
 member of course that the bodies of Goneril and 
 Regan have been produced : 
 
 " Produce the bodies be they alive or dead." 
 
 He will doubtless remember that Lear dies with Cordelia 
 in his arms. But if he should describe the body of 
 Edmund as being also present, he will give evidence 
 that he has failed to imagine the close of the tragedy 
 as it was conceived by Shakespeare. Although the 
 play includes a double plot the story of the house 
 of Gloucester and the story of the house of Lear this 
 is not the moment to divide the solemn tragic im- 
 pression. We do not think now of Edmund ; he has 
 been dealt with by the strong right hand of God's 
 justiciary, Edgar ; he has been borne off the stage before
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 429 
 
 the entrance of Lear. And as the curtain falls we see 
 the dead Lear with his three daughters dead ; the evil 
 and the good seemingly overtaken by one common 
 doom ; but Cordelia the rejected and offcast child, slain 
 by the passion of love which brought her from France 
 to Britain and now restored to her father's arms, while 
 the two unnatural sisters lie apart, each the ruin of her 
 own monstrous passions. 
 
 I would have the student, then, approach the piece 
 of literature which forms the subject of his study from 
 every side, and think no pains ill-bestowed which help 
 to bring him into close contact with it. The considera- 
 tion of a textual crux in itself sharpens the wits ; and 
 if the student be alive about other and larger things 
 than verbal difficulties, the retardation of his advance, 
 caused by some question as to a doubtful text, will be 
 of service to him, allowing his mind to work in some 
 way of unconscious cerebration about the higher pro- 
 blems of the poem or the play, as we unconsciously 
 take in a landscape from different points of view while 
 picking our steps among boulders or shingle towards a 
 mountain platform. 
 
 " Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, 
 The seasons' difference," 
 
 says the banished Duke in the forest of Arden. It is 
 well worth considering whether Shakespeare wrote 
 
 " Here feel we not the penalty of Adam," 
 
 as the folio has it, or whether Theobald's emendation 
 but shall be received. The student's eye ought to He 
 as sharp at least as the eye of a tailor threading his
 
 430 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 needle. But while delayed by this petty difficulty, 
 he cannot help stealing glances to the right and left ; 
 and he will have lived longer, even though uncon- 
 sciously, in the manly and gentle temper of the Duke 
 who in Arden woods has discovered the sweet uses 
 of adversity. 
 
 Let us suppose that the teacher and his pupils 
 set themselves to master the play of Hamlet. It 
 would be desirable first of all that the play should 
 be read swiftly and attentively from beginning to end, 
 if possible at a single sitting. A general view of the 
 whole is necessary before attending to minutiae ; other- 
 wise we see nothing but a succession of petty and un- 
 connected points, and the eye runs a risk of that disease 
 of shortsightedness, which has its outward and visible sign 
 in the spectacles worn by the myopic scholar. 1 A 
 broad knowledge of the action of the play and some 
 conception of the characters will often serve us in the 
 interpretation of details, and will give a reason and add 
 an interest to our scrutiny of every sentence and 
 every word. Something in the way of introduction 
 must be said by the teacher as to the sources of 
 the text ; and if he have the opportunity he will 
 do well not merely to talk of Folio and Quarto, 
 but to let his pupils see and handle the facsimiles 
 of the first and second Quartos produced by Mr Griggs, 
 together with Mr Staunton's noble facsimile of the 
 first Folio. The thought may strike across the 
 
 "^ It is much to be regretted that in the study of a Greek play some- 
 thing of this kind is not attempted.
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 431 
 
 brain of some forward youth that he need not remain 
 always in leading-strings to an editor or a commen- 
 tator ; that here he can enquire and verify for him- 
 self. And thus an impulse may by happy chance 
 be received which shall start a scholarly mind upon 
 a career of original research. 
 
 The teacher and his pupils will now read aloud 
 the first scene of the play. They will read it not 
 in character, but speech by speech, each person tak- 
 ing the speech which happens to come to him as 
 the reading passes round the class. Were characters 
 assigned half the class must be silent during certain 
 scenes, and the interest of the listeners would natur- 
 ally flag. Moreover, the readers would lose the cen- 
 tral standpoint from which all the characters are to 
 be viewed. Horatio would know the part of Horatio 
 well ; but he would know the other dramatis personce 
 too little except as they are brought into relation 
 with Horatio. We must try, on the contrary, to 
 see Hamlet and Ophelia and the King from Shake- 
 speare's central point of vision, and not rest satisfied 
 with a series of imperfect side views of the whole. 
 
 Few persons nowadays seem to feel how powerful (ft 
 an instrument of culture may be found in modest, ^ 
 intelligent, and sympathetic reading aloud. The re- 
 citer and the elocutionist of late have done much to 
 rob us of this which is one of the finest of the fine 
 arts. A mongrel something which, at least with the 
 inferior adepts, is neither good reading nor yet verit- 
 able acting, but which sets agape the half-educated 
 with the wonder of its airs and attitudinising, its
 
 432 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 pseudo-heroics and pseudo-pathos, has usurped the 
 place of the true art of reading aloud, and has made 
 the word " recitation " a terror to quiet folk who 
 are content with intelligence and refinement. Happily 
 in their behalf the great sense-carrier to the Empire, 
 Mr Punch, has at length seen it right to intervene. 
 The reading which we should desire to cultivate is 
 intelligent reading, that is, it should express the 
 meaning of each passage clearly ; sympathetic reading, 
 that is, it should convey the feeling delicately ; musical 
 reading, that is, it should move in accord with the 
 melody and harmony of what is read, be it in verse 
 or prose. " I often think," writes Sir Henry Taylor 
 in a letter of thirty years ago, now in my hands, 
 " how strange it is that amongst all the efforts 
 which are made in these times to teach young 
 people everything that is to be known, from the 
 cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall, the 
 one thing omitted is teaching them to read. At 
 present, to be sure, it is a very rare thing to find 
 any one who can teach it; but it is an art which 
 might be propagated from the few to the many 
 with great rapidity if a due appreciation of it were 
 to become current. The rage for lecturing would be 
 a more reasonable rage if that were taught in lec- 
 tures which can be conveyed only by voice and utter- 
 ance and not by books. A few weeks ago I was 
 pointing out to Dr Whewell one of the most sublime 
 and majestic passages that I know of in prose (a 
 passage in one of Bacon's prefaces), and I asked him 
 to read it aloud. I was astonished to find that he
 
 The Teaching of English Literature, 433 
 
 read it as the town-crier might have read it. It 
 could not be that he was insensible to the grace and 
 beauty of the language ; I believe he was no more 
 insensible to it than I am to the beauty of a Raphael 
 or a Perugino ; but he was no more able to produce 
 it in utterance than I am to paint a ' Saint Cecilia ' 
 or an ' Incendio del Borgo.' " 
 
 Having read the first scene of Hamlet, the teacher 
 and his pupils, of our imaginary class-room, will turn 
 back to see whether anything requires comment or 
 explanation. Attention may be called to the fact that 
 the chief character, Hamlet, is not thrust to the front as 
 Richard III. is in the opening scene of the play which 
 bears his name. King Richard III. was written when 
 Shakespeare was under Marlowe's influence, and it opens 
 like Doctor Faustus and the Jew of Malta with a 
 great soliloquy uttered by the protagonist. In Hamlet, 
 as in Romeo and Juliet, the environment is prepared 
 for the hero of the play before he enters. Again, the 
 teacher may cite the words in which Gildon records a 
 ridiculous tradition : " This scene, I have been assured," 
 says he, " Shakespeare wrote in a charnel-house in the 
 midst of the night," and may make this an occasion for 
 dwelling on the fact that though to a certain extent the 
 scene is one of horror, yet the horror has nothing in it 
 of the raw-head and bloody-bones description, but is 
 throughout elevated and majestic in its mystery and 
 sorrow. The closing speeches especially, it may be 
 noticed, are illuminated by a spiritual beauty, with 
 their references to the sacred season of the Saviour's 
 
 birth 
 
 2 E
 
 434 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 " The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, 
 No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, 
 So hallo w'd and so gracious is the time," 
 
 and are touched with the light and colour of the dawn 
 already brightening the hill-tops 
 
 " But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, 
 Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill." 
 
 In the opening lines 
 
 " Bernardo. Who's there 1 
 Francisco. Nay, answer me ; stand and unfold yourself," 
 
 the teacher will observe whether due emphasis has been 
 placed on the word me as proper to the response and 
 challenge of the sentinel, and will correct the reader if 
 he have laid the stress only on the word answer. He 
 will note the uneasiness of the believers in the appari- 
 tion in contrast with Horatio's half-jesting reply to the 
 question, " What, is Horatio there ? " "A piece of 
 him." He will consider whether the line 
 
 " What, has this thing appeared again to-night ? " 
 
 should be assigned, as in the Folio, to Marcellus, or, as 
 in the Quartos, to the sceptical Horatio. The lines 
 
 " Such was the very armour he had on 
 When he the ambitious Norway combated," 
 
 on comparision with certain speeches of the gravedigger 
 (Act v. 1, 135 140) will raise the difficult question of 
 the ages of Horatio and Hamlet, but the discussion of 
 this subject may be reserved until later. There will be 
 many obsolete words or words with altered meanings 
 " rivals of my watch," " sledded Polacks," " unimproved
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 435 
 
 mettle," "prologue to the omen" to be explained, and 
 at least one difficult textual crux 
 
 " As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood," 
 
 to be examined. Nor will the teacher fail to call 
 attention to the similarity in the metrical movement of 
 those lines in which Horatio addresses the Ghost 
 
 " If thou hast any sound or use of voice, 
 Speak to me," &c., 
 
 and that of a passage very different in substance and 
 spirit, where Silvius, in As You Like It, reproaches 
 old Corin with his ignorance of true love * : 
 
 " If thou remember'st not the slightest folly 
 That ever love did make thee run into, 
 Thou hast not loved," &c. 
 
 In each case the force of the address is enhanced by the 
 thrice recurring hemistich. 
 
 Occupied with such an examination, now of the larger 
 features of the play, now of minute details, the students 
 of Hamlet would steadily and patiently work their 
 way from the first line to the last. Then a survey of 
 the whole might be given in the form of a prelection, in 
 which among other matters the views of the character 
 of Hamlet, taken by Goethe and Coleridge and other 
 eminent critics, might be considered. Nor would it be 
 uninteresting or amiss to notice the interpretation of 
 the tragedy by great actors, and to call attention to its 
 qualities as an acting play which have enabled it to hold 
 the stage during three centuries. 
 
 1 Noticed in the Clarendon Press edition.
 
 436 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 Let us suppose now that the student knows this one 
 play of Shakespeare's for what it is as thoroughly as it 
 can be known. He knows the play as it is, but he does 
 not yet know how it came to be what it is. A mind 
 that is alive and inquiring naturally seeks to discover 
 the causes of things, and is sensible that things are but 
 imperfectly known until they are known in and through 
 their causes. How then did the play of Hamlet 
 come to be what it is ? Obviously the single work 
 belongs to a group of works which proceeded from the 
 same author and which possess certain common charac- 
 teristics. The inquirer must advance from the first 
 unit in the study of literature a single complete work 
 to a larger unit, the group of works to which it 
 belongs, and thence to the mind from which they all 
 proceeded. And now larger aspects of beauty and 
 deeper sources of interest begin to reveal themselves. 
 There are lines of force which, as it were, run through 
 Hamlet, but which have their beginnings elsewhere, 
 and which do not complete themselves until we 
 have reached The Tempest and A Winter's Tale. To 
 trace the majestic sweep of these lines is a higher 
 delight than to make acquaintance with any Prince of 
 Denmark, even though we should indeed pluck out the 
 heart of his mystery and be able to sound him from 
 his lowest note to the top of his' compass. The fruit- 
 tree is more valuable than any of its fruits singly, and 
 possesses a higher kind of beauty : " the blossoms, the 
 green and the ripe fruit of an orange-tree are more 
 beautiful to behold when on the tree, and seen as one 
 with it, than the same growth detached and seen
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 437 
 
 successively, after their importation into another 
 country and different clime." 1 
 
 To know Hamlet aright we must therefore know 
 Shakespeare. We pass from the study of a book to 
 the study of an author. And here our inquiry is two- 
 fold ; we must endeavour first to perceive and com- 
 prehend the characteristics of our author's genius, and 
 secondly to trace its development and history. This 
 indeed is an achievement for athletes ; but by a 
 judicious method something can be done to bring 
 home to the consciousness even of a young student a 
 real sense of the greatness and variety of Shakespeare's 
 powers, and to enable him to understand how those 
 powers put forth first the bud and blossom and then 
 the ripened fruit. He cannot be expected to be 
 familiar with all the comedies, tragedies, histories, 
 poems, which make up Shakespeare's wonderful gift 
 to the world ; but we can do something towards 
 putting him in the way of knowing aright Shake- 
 speare's total work and the mind of its creator. He 
 cannot examine carefully seven-and-thirty separate 
 plays ; let us then select for his use two small groups 
 one group intended to bring him into close relation 
 with the poet's genius when working at its highest, 
 the other intended to exhibit the development and 
 history of that genius. Let him read King Henry 
 IV., As You, Like It, King Lear, Antony and 
 Cleopatra, The Tempest, and if he has not learnt 
 something of the height and depth and breadth of 
 Shakespeare's genius he will never learn to know these. 
 1 Coleridge, " Aids to Reflection," Introductory Aphorisms, v.
 
 438 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 Let -him next place the dramas hitherto read in their 
 chronological order, and add the Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona as an early comedy in comparison with As 
 You Like It ; King Richard III. as an early history 
 in comparison with King Henry IV.; Romeo and 
 Juliet as an early tragedy in comparison with King 
 Lear. He has read indeed only nine plays out of 
 thirty-seven, but if he has not acquired some sense of 
 the growth and history of Shakespeare's powers as a 
 dramatist he will never acquire it. Let one thing 
 more be added, the " Sonnets," in order that his feeling 
 for the man Shakespeare, who forever lurks behind the 
 dramatist, may be quickened and deepened. He has 
 indeed much yet to learn, but very little, it may be 
 hoped, to unlearn. 
 
 In the case of Shakespeare we labour under the 
 disadvantage of knowing comparatively little of his life. 
 There are persons indeed to whom this seems to be no 
 disadvantage, and the utterance sounds somewhat heroic 
 in its superiority to facts and to the common sentiment 
 of men when such a person thanks heaven that we can 
 read the poems and plays without troubling ourselves 
 with any of the gossip of biography. What were we 
 the better for endless chatter about Anne Hathaway ? 
 I confess that I fall in very contentedly with the general 
 feeling of my fellows to which no relic of the man 
 Shakespeare is wholly without interest. I should like 
 to know him as well, in all the incidents of his life, 
 as I know Dr Johnson. " All my writings," said 
 Goethe, "are fragments of a great confession." And 
 so it is and so it will be with every great writer who
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 439 
 
 writes not merely out of his head in the dry light of 
 intellect, but out of his head and heart, with intellect, 
 imagination, passions, senses, conscience, will, all con- 
 spiring to one common result. We read the great 
 confession in "Werther" and "Faust" and " Tasso " 
 and " Iphigenie " and " Wilhelm Meister " and " Die 
 Wahlverwandschaften " and the " West-b'stlicher Divan " 
 with twofold intelligence and double sympathy, because 
 we are acquainted with Goethe at Frankfurt and Strass- 
 burg and Wetzlar in the " Sturm und Drang " of his 
 youth ; with Goethe at Weimar, when the man of the 
 world and the idealist within him the Tasso and the 
 Antonio were at odds ; with Goethe when, after his 
 stormy struggles towards unbounded spiritual liberty, he 
 found that true freedom was attainable only through a 
 wisely limited activity ; with Goethe caught in the 
 toils of his own passions, yet with strong and deliberate 
 hand delivering himself from those toils ; with Goethe 
 in the illuminated wisdom, the light, wide and serene, 
 of his elder years. 
 
 There is of course gossip of biography with which no 
 true student of literature or of life will concern himself. 
 An accumulation of trivial accident and unorganised 
 circumstance on which mind and character have had 
 no play, and which has had no play on these, is 
 not life but mere lumber and litter. Yet it some- 
 times happens that a seemingly trivial fact, wholly 
 devoid of interest in itself, becomes an essential link 
 in a chain of evidence on which depends some con- 
 clusion of weight. Dr Dryasdust is therefore a person 
 towards whom the true student may at times feel
 
 440 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 grateful, and of whom he will not lightly think 
 scorn. 
 
 In order to acquire right methods in what I may 
 call the biographical study of literature the student 
 must set himself down to make complete acquaintance 
 with at least one great author, whose life is far more 
 fully known to us than is the life of Shakespeare. It 
 will be his task to collate the author's life and his 
 works, seeking to interpret each in and through the 
 other ; to refund now the life into the writings, and now 
 again the writings into the life ; or, if this be impossible, 
 to consider each alternately as the text and the other as 
 its commentary. The task is simpler and easier when 
 the author happens to be one whose genius is not of the 
 dramatic order. It is easier to discover Milton in 
 Comus or Samson Agonistes than to discover Shake- 
 speare in Othello or Macbeth. And here the student 
 is fortunate in being able to put himself under the 
 guidance of Professor Masson, so that while attempting 
 to know Milton in Comus and Lycidas, in the Sonnets 
 in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained in the 
 Areopagitica and the Letter on Education, and other 
 writings in verse and prose, one may also come 
 to know him as the lady of his college, virginal in 
 aspect and purity of heart, if virile in intellect and 
 will ; as the young recluse at Horton among his 
 books or wandering in the meadows by the banks of 
 the Colne ; in London as the armed champion of 
 liberty, domestic, civil, and religious ; in the chamber 
 of the Council of State as Latin secretary ; in his house 
 near Bunhill Fields dictating in his blindness from the
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 441 
 
 elbow-chair the " organ-voice of England " unheard 
 amid the noise of Restoration riot or sitting at the 
 door in sunny weather in his grey, coarse cloth coat, his 
 face pale but not cadaverous, and his sightless eyes still 
 clear, to outward view, of blemish or of spot. 
 
 Knowing Milton thus, we shall know Samson 
 Agonistes more truly and fully than if we had never 
 passed beyond the poem to its author, and we shall 
 also know not only wlwt it is but how it came to be 
 what it is. In refunding the poem into the life, and 
 interpreting the life by the poem, we have come to see 
 and feel many things which otherwise must have escaped 
 our notice. But let Professor Masson take my place and 
 use the expositor's pointing-rod : 
 
 " The story of Samson must have seemed to Milton a metaphor 
 or allegory of much of his own life in its later stages. He also, in 
 his veteran days, after the Eestoration, was a champion at bay, a 
 prophet warrior left alone among men of a different faith and 
 different manners Philistines, who exulted in the ruin of his cause, 
 and wreaked their wrath upon him for his past services to that 
 cause by insults, calumnies, and jeers at his misfortunes and the 
 cause itself. He also was blind as Samson had been groping about 
 among the malignant conditions that had befallen him, helplessly 
 dependent on the guiding of others, and bereft of the external 
 consolations and means of resistance to his scorners that might have 
 come to him through sight. He also had to live mainly in the 
 imagery of the past. In that past, too, there were similarities in 
 his case to that of Samson. Like Samson, substantially, he had 
 been a Nazarite no drinker of wine or strong drink, but one who 
 had always been an ascetic in his dedicated service to great designs. 
 And the chief blunder in his life, that which had gone nearest to 
 wreck it, and had left the most marring consequences and the most 
 painful reflections, was the very blunder of which, twice repeated, 
 Samson had to accuse himself. Like Samson, he had married a Philis- 
 tine woman one not of his own tribe, and having no thoughts or 
 interests in common with his own ; and, like Samson, he had
 
 44 2 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 suffered indignities from this wife and her relations, till he had 
 learnt to rue the match. ... In short, there must have rushed 
 upon Milton, contemplating in his later life the story of the blind 
 Samson among the Philistines, so many similarities with his own 
 case, that there is little wonder that he then selected this subject 
 for poetic treatment. While writing Samson Agonistes (i.e. Samson 
 the Agonist, Athlete, or Wrestler) he must have been secretly con- 
 scious throughout that he was representing much of his own 
 feelings and experience ; and the reader of the poem who knows 
 anything of Milton's life has this pressed upon him at every turn." 
 
 In Milton's life, as in Milton's prose writings, occur 
 passages which are not admirable, which are indeed 
 the reverse of admirable. The student of literature, 
 we may presume, is a lover of beauty, and the tempta- 
 tion with him to shirk the ugly passages of a life is a 
 temptation easily understood. Here he may say, as 
 Mr Matthew Arnold has said of Shelley, here, in 
 Comus and Samson, here in the Council Chamber 
 sheltering Davenant from dangers incurred through his 
 Royalist ardours, here, in company with Lawrence, 
 listening to the lute well touched, is the Milton we 
 desire to know, the Milton who delights. Let us, at 
 least as long as we are able, avert our eyes from the 
 Milton who disgusts, from the unamiable Milton, the 
 Milton who calls his opponent " an idiot by breeding 
 and a solicitor by presumption," the Milton who helped 
 to embitter his daughters' lives, and remembered them 
 as " unkind children " in his will. What is gained by 
 forcing this disgusting Milton on our attention ? We 
 choose, if we can, to retain a charming picture of the 
 great poet. The delightful Milton is the true Milton 
 after all. Ah, give us back the delightful Milton ! 
 
 But the lover of beauty is sometimes a lover of truth,
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 443 
 
 and in the long run he will gain not only more of truth 
 but more of beauty and delight by cultivating the power 
 and habit of seeing things as they are, and under- 
 standing them aright, and acquiring the temper of 
 justice and of charity, than if he were to indulge what, 
 to speak plainly, is a kind of fastidious egotism. A 
 man compassed about with infirmity, yet a heroic man, 
 is after all better worth knowing than either a phantom 
 or a fragment of a man. And indeed unless we know the 
 whole man we shall comprehend no fragment aright. 
 It was not admirable in Milton that he should have 
 darkened and saddened his young wife's bridal days. 
 It seems at a first glance ridiculous and odious that he 
 should have celebrated her flight from his house by 
 rushing before the public with a pamphlet on divorce ; 
 it seems something worse than odious that he should 
 have proposed marriage to another woman while Mary 
 still lived, and when Miss Davis, had she accepted his 
 proposal, must have sacrificed her reputation, and 
 perhaps her happiness, for his sake. Was it not, then, 
 the disgusting Milton who acted thus ? No, not the 
 disgusting Milton, but the very Milton who beheld 
 the Lady of Conius, and who presents in his pamphlets 
 on divorce noble and exalted views on this same 
 subject of marriage. When, instead of picking and 
 choosing certain fragments of Milton and constructing 
 from these a charming vision to gratify our own 
 peculiar sentiment, we come to know and understand 
 the actual man, we can do justice, and a justice not 
 devoid of charity, to the errors of the haughty idealist, 
 we shall find new meanings in the Eve and the Dalila
 
 444 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 of his poems ; and if we choose to moralise, we may 
 learn the humbling truth that human greatness and 
 human infirmity are often near akin, and that to 
 dwell in the empyrean, though glorious for a mortal, 
 is not always the best preparation for sitting with 
 grace and amiability by the fireside. 
 
 We shall now assume that our student of literature 
 has mastered what I have termed the biographical 
 method of study. Inquiring how this or that piece 
 of literature came to be what it is, he perceived that 
 it belongs to a group of works, all possessing certain 
 characteristics in common, works all of which proceeded 
 from one and the same mind, and he has been led to 
 inquire into the nature of that mind and the history 
 of its development. There are qualities possessed in 
 common by King Henry IV. and Measure for 
 Measure and Lear and The Tempest which cannot 
 be found in Sejanus or The Jew of Malta, or The 
 Broken Heart; signs and tokens there are which 
 would make us cry " Shakespeare ! " were we to 
 discover one of these plays for the first time in a 
 copy without title-page or trace of the author's name. 
 But looking farther, our student finds certain common 
 characteristics belonging to the plays of Shakespeare 
 and to those of Ben Jonson and Marlowe and Ford 
 which he cannot find in plays by Dryden, or Lee, or 
 Rowe. It becomes evident to him that all Shake- 
 speare's plays belong to a larger group consisting of 
 the works of the Elizabethan age. Thus, seeking to 
 discover how Hamlet or Lear or The Tempest came 
 to be what it is, he is compelled to pass beyond
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 445 
 
 the author of those plays, to leave the biographical 
 study of literature, and to enter on the wider field of 
 historical study. He now needs to know more than 
 an author, he must know a period. 
 
 In the study of an individual author the inquirer, 
 as we have seen, first investigates the peculiar nature 
 of the author's genius, and then endeavours to trace 
 its development through successive stages ; so here, 
 in the historical study of literature, he will seek first 
 to understand the leading characteristics of the age, 
 and secondly, to follow the movement of the age, 
 observing how it arose out of the past, how it cul- 
 minated, how it prepared the way for a new epoch 
 and then declined. To know a period aright we must 
 know its outward body and its inward spirit ; we must 
 study it in its actions, its passions, and its thought. 
 What were its great achievements in the material 
 world and its daily habits of social life ? What were 
 its dominant emotions ? what were its guiding ideas ? 
 And finally, is there any common element or principle 
 which manifests itself alike in ideas, emotions, and 
 action ? 
 
 Can we, for example, perceive any central and ruling 
 tendency in the age which Shakespeare and Bacon and 
 Hooker and Spenser represent in literature ? I have 
 elsewhere ventured to assert that a profound interest 
 in reality as opposed to abstractions, a rich feeling for 
 concrete fact, was the dominant characteristic of the 
 Elizabethan age. The greatest theological thinker of 
 the time was not greatly concerned about the abstract 
 dogmas of theology, but gave the full force of his
 
 446 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 mind to laying the foundations and building up, like 
 a wise master-builder, the fabric of the Anglican 
 Church. The great philosopher of the Elizabethan 
 age looked with disdain on the speculations in vacuo, 
 as they appeared to him, of the elder philosophies ; 
 his own discoveries were " copied," as he says, " from 
 a very ancient model, even the world itself." He too, 
 like Hooker, desired to be a master-builder ; he would 
 fain " lay a foundation in the human understanding 
 for a holy temple after the model of the world." Light 
 indeed seemed precious to Bacon, but precious chiefly 
 in order to the attainment of fruit. Spenser, the 
 dreamer of fairyland, in his romantic epic professes 
 not to justify the ways of God to man as Milton 
 afterwards professed ; he does not, like Pope, turn 
 into verse a series of philosophical or pseudo-philo- 
 sophical views concerning the nature and state of man 
 with respect to the universe ; he professes no other 
 general intention than " to fashion a gentleman or 
 noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." And 
 Shakespeare, with his company of fellow-dramatists, 
 is profoundly interested in the characters and deeds 
 of men and women, in their relations one with another, 
 their joys and sorrows, their loves and hatreds, their 
 laughter and their tears ; and hence the possibility of 
 his great dramatic creations. 
 
 The action, the emotions, and the ideas of an age 
 may to some extent, and as a matter of convenience, 
 be studied apart from one another ; the action, in the 
 lives of statesmen and warriors, and above all in records 
 of the social life of the time ; the emotions, in its poetry
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 447 
 
 and art ; the ideas, in the writings of its theologians, 
 philosophers, moralists, men of science. But we must 
 also endeavour to see ideas, passions, action, in their 
 vital relations and mutual intercourse as parts of a 
 living organism ; that is, we must study not only 
 the anatomy but the physiology of the age. There 
 are epochs, such as that of the French Revolution, 
 when ideas have inflamed passions, and passions have 
 transformed themselves into ideas, and when both ideas 
 and passions hurry forward to obtain expression and 
 realisation in some stupendous deed ; and such epochs 
 of flood and fire seldom pass without displacing old 
 strata and creating a new stratum, from which flowers 
 and fruits of kinds hitherto unknown will in due time 
 arise. 
 
 I have said that the student will do more than study 
 the characteristics of the period ; he will watch the life 
 of the period in the various moments of its development 
 and its decline. If a writer belongs to an age in which 
 a revolution in ideas is accomplishing itself, in which 
 old dogmas are passing away, although this great fact 
 the dying of an old faith may be the central character- 
 istic of the epoch, it matters much to the individual 
 whether he is summoned to take part in the movement 
 at this moment or at that. He may arrive at manhood 
 just when the weariness and profound indifference, 
 proper to the first moment in the decay and approach- 
 ing agony of an old belief, are universal. He will still 
 continue a believer, but his belief will be no more than 
 a piece of lifeless custom. Or he may belong to the 
 moment of awakening doubt and critical inquiry. Or,
 
 448 The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 yet again, to the moment when the negation of a 
 received faith has itself become the newer creed, when 
 the old interests and passions connected with traditional 
 beliefs are alarmed, and a combat hand to hand is being 
 waged. Or the epoch of contemptuous jest and 
 mockery may have arrived. Or the first presages may 
 already have been felt of the serious faith of the 
 future. 1 
 
 No period of our literature lends itself more naturally 
 to historical study, and indeed to biographical study 
 also, than the eighteenth century. The sources of 
 information are abundant; material as delightful as 
 it is important lies open before the student ; he is 
 constantly in the company of eminent men and in- 
 teresting women. The period is sufficiently remote 
 from our own day to permit us to view it dis- 
 passionately ; and the chief movements of the time 
 can be clearly discerned in their origin, development, 
 and issue, Our historian of English thought in that 
 century, Mr Leslie Stephen, in a lecture on the 
 study of English Literature, delivered at St Andrews, 
 spoke with excellent judgment of acquaintance with 
 the philosophy of an age and acquaintance with its 
 social conditions as essential to a right knowledge of 
 its literature. The lecturer did not quote an admir- 
 able page from the " History of English Thought in 
 the Eighteenth Century," which is so much to my 
 purpose that I shall make amends for Mr Stephen's 
 error by copying it here. 
 
 1 I have drawn my illustration from Jouffroy's remarkable study 
 " Comment lea Dogmes finissent."
 
 The Teaching of English Literature. 449 
 
 " The character of an imaginative literature is a function of many 
 forces. It depends not only upon the current philosophy, but upon 
 the inherited peculiarities of the race, upon its history, its climate, 
 its social and political relations, and upon individual peculiarities 
 of mind and temperament, which defy all attempt at explanation. 
 Thus, in our English literature of the eighteenth century, we can 
 see the reflection of the national character ; its sturdy common 
 sense ; the intellectual shortsightedness which enables it to grasp 
 details whilst rejecting general systems ; the resulting tendency to 
 compromise, which leads it to acquiesce in heterogeneous masses of 
 opinions ; its humour, its deep moral feeling, its prejudices, its 
 strong animal propensities, and so forth. Or, again, the social 
 development affects the literature. The whole tone of thought is 
 evidently coloured by the sentiments of a nation definitely emerg- 
 ing from the older organisation to a modern order of society. We 
 see the formation of an important middle-class and of an audience 
 composed, not of solitary students or magnificent nobles, but of 
 merchants, politicians, lawyers, and doctors, eager for amusement, 
 delighting in infinite personal gossip, and talking over its own 
 peculiarities with ceaseless interest in coffee-houses, clubs, and 
 theatres. Nor, again, are the political influences unimportant. 
 The cessation of the fierce struggles of the previous century cul- 
 minating in the undisputed supremacy of a parliamentary oligarchy, 
 led to a dying out of the vehement discussions which at other 
 periods have occupied men's minds exclusively, and made room for 
 that theological controversy which I have described, and which 
 itself disappeared as the political interests revived in the last half 
 of the century. Foreign influences, again, would have to be 
 considered. French literature was to Dryden and Pope what 
 Italian had been to Spenser and Milton ; the influence of Bayle 
 may be traced in the earlier criticism, as at a later period Montes- 
 quieu, Kousseau, and Voltaire profoundly affected English thought 
 The attempt, then, to deduce Pope from Clarke, or to connect Swift 
 with Butler, to the neglect of the many conflicting influences 
 would be necessarily illusory. It is not the less true that remark- 
 able analogies may be traced between the speculative and the 
 imaginative literature. The complex conditions to which I have 
 referred affected both modes of thought ; and sometimes we may- 
 best regard the two manifestations as springing from the same root, 
 sometimes as directly influencing each other." 1 
 
 1 " History of English Thought," &c., vol. ii. j. 330. 
 2 F
 
 450 The Teaching of English Literature, 
 
 Between the epoch of Puritan enthusiasm and the 
 epoch of revolutionary enthusiasm lies this rich level 
 period of common sense, when enthusiasm was dis- 
 credited and yet could not long be suppressed. If we 
 would understand its literature aright we should study 
 the age not only in the " Rape of the Lock " and the 
 " Essay on Man," in " The Spectator " and " Gulliver," 
 in " Clarissa " and " Tom Jones," but in the letters 
 of Horace Walpole, and those of Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu, the- pictures of Hogarth, the sermons of 
 Butler, the lives of Wesley and Whitfield, the operas 
 and oratorios of Handel, the brilliant mockeries of 
 Voltaire, and the tears and raptures of Rousseau. 
 
 Once more lifting his eyes and looking abroad, the 
 student of English literature will perceive that there 
 are groups of writings not arbitrarily formed and larger 
 than can be comprehended within any age or even 
 within the history of any nation. He will perceive 
 a kinship between Macbeth and The Orptian and 
 Phedre and Le Roi s'amuse and the Agamemnon 
 and the Medea. All these belong to the dramatic order 
 of writings. What then is the drama ? What are its 
 laws or principles ? How does it differ from the epic ? 
 What constitutes a tragedy ? What are the essentials 
 of a tragic plot ? What is required in the character of 
 a tragic hero ? That is to say, the investigator who has 
 examined a piece of literature simply in order to know 
 what it is, and who inquiring then how it came to be 
 what it is, has studied first the genius of an individual 
 author and next the genius of a particular period to 
 which that author belongs, is now compelled to take a
 
 The Teaching of English Literature, 45 1 
 
 wider view ; and seeking to know whether there be not 
 certain principles common to all literature and derived 
 from the general mind of humanity, he passes from the 
 biographical and the historical to the philosophical study 
 of literature. 
 
 That there are such general laws or principles apply- 
 ing to the various forms of literature, in whatever age 
 and in whatever clime produced, is certain ; but now-a- 
 days the prevalence of the historical method, as exercised 
 most commonly within some narrow field, has caused a 
 natural timidity in putting forth those large inductions 
 which the historical method itself would justify if the 
 range of its operation were extended. It is not desirable 
 that the professor of English literature should become a 
 lecturer on the science of the beautiful or the theory of 
 the fine arts. In and through his historical criticism, 
 however, will assuredly gleam certain openings and 
 vistas leading in the direction of that criticism which I 
 have termed philosophical. And if English literature 
 be connected in our college and university courses with 
 either Greek or Latin, or French or German literature, 
 the thoughtful student can hardly fail to be aroused by 
 his comparative studies to consider questions which 
 demand an answer from philosophy. Two books which 
 I should certainly like to see in the hand of every 
 student of literature are the " Poetic " of Aristotle and 
 Lessing's " Laocoon." 
 
 TCK.NBCLL AMI SPEAR*. PKINTERS, KDIXBCRCH
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 GAYUORD 
 
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