TYPES OF THE ESSAY 
 
 SELECTED AND EDITED BY 
 
 BENJAMIN A. HEYDRICK, A.M. 
 
 HEAD OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, HIGH SCHOOL OF COMMERCE 
 NEW YORK CITY 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON ATLANTA 
 
 BAN FRANCISCO DALLAS 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1921, T 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Printed in the United States of America, 
 K 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 FAQS 
 
 WHAT Is AN ESSAY? vii 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE ESSAY viii 
 
 THE TYPES OP ESSAYS xi 
 
 How TO STUDY THESE ESSAYS xiii 
 
 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 A DAY IN LONDON Richard Steek . . 3 V . 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG . Charles Lamb ... 13 V- 
 
 OLD CHINA Charles Lamb ... 25 
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH 
 
 POETS William Hazlitt . . 35 
 
 ON GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS Leigh Hunt .... 63 
 
 ON A LAZY IDLE BOY W. M . Thackeray . 71 
 
 A COLLEGE MAGAZINE R. L. Stevenson . . 83 
 
 MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOL- 
 MISTRESS 0. W . Holmes . . 95 
 
 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 THE SKY John Ruskin ... 105 
 
 THE SITE OF A UNIVERSITY . . . J.H. Newman . . 115 
 
 THE SEA FOGS R. L. Stevenson . . 125 
 
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS H. D. Thoreau . . 133 
 
 v 
 
 M18OO4G 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 THE CHAKACTEK SKETCH 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE MAN IN BLACK Oliver Goldsmith . . 147 f 
 
 THE HUNTER'S FAMILY R. L. Stevenson . . 153 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THEODORE ROOSE- 
 VELT Julian Street . . , 165 
 
 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 WHAT AND How TO READ .... John Ruskin ... 175 
 
 BUNYAN'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" T. B. Macaulay . . 193 , 
 
 H. G. WELLS'S "OUTLINE OF HIS- 
 TORY " J. Salwyn Schapiro 209 
 
 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 FEMALE ORATORS Joseph Addison . . 237 
 
 LIVING IN A PAIR OF SCALES . . Joseph Addison . . 245 
 
 THE STAGE COACH Richard Steek . . 253 
 
 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 STUDIES; TRUTH; TRAVEL; RICHES; 
 
 GREAT PLACE; FRIENDSHIP . . Francis Bacon . . 259 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF BKS . . . Thomas Carlyle . . 283 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE . . R. W. Emerson . , 295 
 
 AMERICAN AND BRITON John Galsworthy . 329 
 
 Is THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? Henry van Dyke . . 349 
 
 READING LIST OF ESSAYS 371 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 WHAT IS AN ESSAY? 
 
 When you write a letter to a friend, you tell him what 
 you and others have been doing, what you have seen, 
 and what you think about various things. People who 
 write books do the same thing on a larger scale. A book 
 that tells what you have done is an autobiography; a 
 book telling what others have done is biography or his- 
 tory, or if it deals with imaginary people, it is fiction. A 
 book telling what you have seen is travel, and a book tell- 
 ing what you think on various topics is a book of essays. 
 Yet not all books giving people's thoughts are essays. 
 If a man writes a book on religion or philosophy, for 
 example, a book made up of various chapters, arrranged 
 in such order as to form a systematic and complete 
 treatment of the subject, that book would not be called 
 an essay but a treatise. The word essay comes from 
 the French essai, an attempt, an endeavor. So Francis 
 Bacon, the first English essayist, said in the preface to his 
 book: "To write just treatises requireth leisure in the 
 writer and leisure in the reader, . . . which is the cause 
 that hath made me choose to write certain brief notes, 
 set down rather significantly than curiously, which I 
 have called essays." 
 
 This gives us the second characteristic of the essay: it 
 is brief, and does not attempt to treat a subject either 
 completely or systematically. In fact, an essay is a 
 sort of literary go-as-you-please. An essayist may, like 
 Montaigne, announce as his subject "Coaches," and 
 proceed to write about sneezing, the entertainments of 
 Roman emperors, and the conquest of Mexico, with only 
 a brief mention of coaches. And yet while the essayist 
 
 vii 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 may seem to be careless how he begins or where he leaves 
 off his subject, there is one thing that he is always careful 
 about, his style. More than any other form of prose, the 
 essay demands mastery of style. How the thing is said 
 is as important often more important, than what is 
 said. This style may take many forms, from the stately, 
 thought-weighted sentences of Bacon to the whimsical 
 turns of Charles Lamb; it may have the calm and beauty 
 of a Newman, or the passionate eloquence of Carlyle: in 
 each case we feel that the style is the perfect medium for 
 the thought. 
 
 In its lack of logical method, its freedom to stray hither 
 and thither, the essay is like good conversation. It is 
 like conversation again in its tone, which may be now 
 serious, now humorous, now merely playful. Some essay- 
 ists, like Ruskin, are always serious; some, like Lamb, 
 are nearly always humorous; some, like Addison, are both 
 by turns. And the same essay may be partly serious, 
 partly humorous. As you read these essays, then, be on 
 the watch for a twinkle of the eye. 
 
 To sum up the characteristics of the essay, we may say 
 that it is a short piece of prose, not attempting to treat 
 its subject completely nor logically, but rather giving the 
 author's opinions upon it; opinions which may or may not 
 be serious, but which are set forth with a high degree of 
 literary art. It usually reveals more or less of the per- 
 sonality of the author, and in this respect corresponds 
 in prose to the lyric in poetry. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE ESSAY 
 
 The essay as a form in modern literature began with 
 a French writer, Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 
 published two volumes entitled Essais. These dealt with 
 such subjects as Fortune, Cannibals, Names, Smells, 
 
HISTORY OF THE ESSAY ix 
 
 Liars, Virtue, and the like. The book was soon trans- 
 lated into English, and had a marked influence upon Eng- 
 lish writers. Francis Bacon, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Steven- 
 son were readers of Montaigne, and acknowledge their 
 debt to him. 
 
 The first English writer of essays was Francis Bacon, 
 whose Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral appeared in 
 1625. This little volume contained sixty essays, in length 
 from two to ten pages; the subjects were all general, 
 such as Studies, Riches, Love, Great Place. The tone 
 of the essays was grave; one seems to hear the voice of 
 the Lord Chief Justice of England delivering his wise 
 verdicts upon human affairs. And of all Bacon's works, 
 which number fifteen large volumes, dealing with science 
 and philosophy, written by the wisest man of his time, 
 only this slender book of essays survives to be read to- 
 day. 
 
 From the time of Sir Francis Bacon to the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century, occasional volumes of essays 
 appeared. Such were the Religio Medici of Sir Thomas 
 Browne; Several Discourses by Way of Essays, by Abra- 
 ham Cowley, and the Miscellanea of Sir William Temple. 
 But the great development of the essay came with the 
 rise of periodical literature in England. 
 
 In our day, with the newspapers thrust into our hands 
 twice a day, and with newsstands piled with weekly and 
 monthly journals, it is hard to imagine a time when 
 neither newspaper nor magazine existed. Yet in 1688 
 this was exactly the situation in England. Newspapers 
 were the first to appear; then in 1691 came the first maga- 
 zine, the Athenian Gazette, a little sheet made up chiefly 
 of questions and answers. In 1704 Daniel Defoe, the 
 author of Robinson Crusoe, began a journal called A 
 Weekly Review of the Affairs of France, which contained, 
 in addition to the news from Europe, a short essay or 
 
x INTRODUCTION 
 
 editorial. This idea was still further developed by 
 Richard Steele, who in 1709 began the publication of 
 the Taller, a weekly paper consisting of a single large 
 sheet printed on both sides, containing a paragraph of 
 news and one or more essays. After a few numbers of 
 the paper had appeared, Steele was aided by his friend 
 Joseph Addison. The Toiler became popular; its editors 
 saw an opportunity for improving it, and in 1711 they 
 discontinued the Toiler and began the Spectator. This 
 was published at first three times a week, then daily; it 
 contained no news, merely a single essay, and a few adver- 
 tisements. The essays covered a wide range of topics. 
 They did not touch politics, but with this exception they 
 treated almost every topic of interest to the Londoner of 
 the day. There were papers on duelling, on the Italian 
 opera, on fashionable slang, on style in women's dress, 
 on the treatment of servants, on education, on courtship 
 and marriage. And in practically all these essays the 
 writers had the same aim as an editorial writer of to-day: 
 to bring to public attention some wrong or folly that 
 ought to be corrected. The editors did not deal with 
 great public questions, or with crimes punishable by law, 
 but with matters of behavior and the customs of the time. 
 These papers thus show a new type of essay: that which is 
 written to influence public opinion in some particular 
 direction. This may be called the editorial essay. 
 
 The success of the Spectator led to many imitations. 
 Dr. Johnson wrote the Rambler and the Idler. Oliver 
 Goldsmith wrote a series of papers called The Citizen of 
 the World, and there were hundreds of others. But none 
 of them equalled the work of Addison and Steele, the 
 founders of the type. 
 
 The next development of the essay was also a result 
 of the development of periodical literature. The early 
 journals were affairs of only a few pages. But with the 
 
THE TYPES OF ESSAYS xi 
 
 beginning of the nineteenth century we have the ap- 
 pearance of magazines, published monthly or quarterly, 
 of a size to permit the publication of long articles. The 
 Edinburgh Review was established in 1802; the Quarterly 
 Review in 1809, Blackwood's Magazine in 1817, the London 
 Magazine in 1820. The rivalry between these journals 
 led them to pay contributors liberally, and to allow much 
 freedom to these writers. Hence such authors as Ma- 
 caulay, Lamb, De Quinoey, Hazlitt, and Hunt were 
 stimulated to do their best. Macaulay, with his wide 
 reading and his marvellous memory, could write for the 
 Edinburgh a book review in which he discussed not only 
 the book itself, and all the subjects mentioned in it, but 
 other subjects which the author should have discussed, 
 but did not. Charles Lamb, who by day was a book- 
 keeper, by night read his favorite authors, and wrote his 
 whimsical essays for the London Magazine. Hazlitt and 
 De Quincey, both great readers and famous as talkers, 
 could pour out their talk on paper at the rate of a guinea 
 a printed page. So with the advent of the modern maga- 
 zine came the full development of the critical and descrip- 
 tive and personal essays as we know them to-day. The 
 magazine has continued to be the medium for the first 
 publication of almost all essays. Carlyle published his 
 Sartor Resartus in Eraser's Magazine ; Thackeray's Round- 
 about Papers were written for the Comhill; Stevenson's 
 earlier essays appeared in the Comhill, his later ones in 
 Scribner's; Holmes J s Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table was 
 published in the Atlantic, and Van Dyke's essays in Scrib- 
 ner's. 
 
 THE TYPES OF ESSAYS 
 
 When we read Lamb's essay on Old China, we do not 
 learn very much about porcelain, but we learn a good deal 
 about Charles Lamb, his likes and dislikes. Such essays, 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 aiming primarily to entertain, and revealing the person- 
 ality of the author, are called personal essays. To this 
 group belong the writings of Thackeray, of Hazlitt, and 
 most of Stevenson. As we read their essays we grow 
 better and better acquainted with the writers. Mon- 
 taigne, who was the first to write essays of this type, 
 says in the introduction to his book, "It is myself I por- 
 tray." So the personal essay, or, as it is sometimes 
 called, the familiar essay, forms a distinct class, and in- 
 cludes some of the most noted essays in English litera- 
 ture. 
 
 The descriptive essay is self-explanatory. It may deal 
 with the larger aspects of nature, as Ruskin's description 
 of the sky, or with animals, as Thoreau's Brute Neigh- 
 bors, or indeed with any created thing. It differs from 
 pure description in that you are always conscious of the 
 author: he tells what he thinks as well as what he sees. 
 Thus Thoreau begins by asking questions about nature, 
 and Ruskin closes with an appeal to let the beauty of the 
 sky strengthen our faith. Such touches mark the writ- 
 ing as belonging to the essay type. 
 
 The character sketch differs from the description in 
 that while the description deals with the outward appear- 
 ance, the character sketch deals with the inner man. 
 It may have as its subject an imaginary individual, as 
 Goldsmith's Man in Black, or real persons, as in Julian 
 Street's portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 In the critical essay, the subject is usually a work of 
 art. It^may be a book, a painting, an opera, a statue, or 
 an architectural work. When Macaulay wrote a review 
 of a new edition of the Pilgrim's Progress, or when a 
 critic of to-day writes an account of a new book or play, 
 each tells us something about the contents of the book,' 
 and in addition gives his opinion, in the form of praise 
 or blame. Or the critical essay may be general, as when 
 
HOW TO STUDY ESSAYS xiii 
 
 Ruskm tells us how to choose books and how to read 
 them. 
 
 Another type is the editorial essay, or that which is 
 published in a periodical with the aim of influencing pub- 
 lic opinion. It is necessary to distinguish between the 
 editorial and the editorial essay. Most editorials are 
 really brief arguments: they are plain in style, they aim 
 at convincing their readers and nothing more. Such 
 articles cannot be called essays. But the writers of the 
 Spectator aimed to entertain their readers quite as much 
 as to persuade them; they gave careful attention to their 
 style, and they so imbued what they wrote with their 
 own personality that it has power to charm us yet. There 
 are occasional articles of the essay type on the editorial 
 pages of our newspapers: sometimes a column regularly 
 appears, such as the "Topics of the Times" in the New 
 York Times, made up of brief papers which in mood 
 and form are true essays. 
 
 The reflective essay differs from the others in two 
 respects: its subjects are general, often abstract, and its 
 tone is serious. Francis Bacon writing upon Studies, 
 Emerson writing upon Self-Reliance, Carlyle writing 
 upon the Influence of Books, John Galsworthy writing 
 upon the differences between Americans and English- 
 men, are examples of the reflective essay at its best. In 
 each case the writer is a man with a philosophic mind, 
 one who looks beneath the appearance of things to find 
 realities; each has thought deeply upon an important sub- 
 ject, and in the essay gives his matured conclusions. 
 
 HOW TO STUDY THESE ESSAYS 
 
 First, do not expect to find a story. Short stories are 
 delightful and simple. Anybody can read them; a child 
 can understand them. A taste for essays is like a taste 
 
XIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 for olives: it must be cultivated. An essay requires more 
 attention to read than a story, and it repays you by giving 
 you more to think about. 
 
 The essays in each group should be read with a different 
 purpose. In the personal essays, ask yourself what each 
 one shows about the man who wrote it. How many of 
 these experiences are like your own? What bits of 
 humor do you find? What ideas that are well ex- 
 pressed? 
 
 For the descriptive essays, read slowly and try to see 
 with your imagination the pictures presented. Recall 
 similar sights you have seen. Try to write something 
 yourself in imitation of one of these descriptions. 
 
 In reading a character sketch, ask yourself such ques- 
 tions as these: What are the chief traits of the person 
 portrayed? How are these made clear, by stating them 
 or by giving instances to illustrate the point? Why did 
 the writer choose this particular person as his subject? 
 Does he give his opinion of the person directly, or does 
 he let you infer it? 
 
 In the critical essays, note how fully the writers tell 
 about the books they discuss. Few books are reviewed 
 at such length as Professor Schapiro's review of Wells's 
 History, and few are reviewed so well. What qualifica- 
 tions should one have to review a book? What should be 
 his aim: to tell the contents of a book? to praise it so that 
 it may sell? to attack it? to show his own cleverness? to 
 point out its merits and faults without prejudice? Which 
 of these aims is seen in Macaulay's review? in Schapiro's? 
 Has either one an introduction? a conclusion? Point 
 out the extent of each. Compare these reviews with 
 other essays as regards logical arrangement. 
 
 For the editorial essays, state in a sentence the point 
 which the writer wished to make. Why did he introduce 
 imaginary characters? What subjects might engage the 
 
HOW TO STUDY ESSAYS xv 
 
 attention of the Spectator to-day? Try to treat one of 
 them in the Spectator manner. 
 
 The reflective essay demands careful reading, sentence 
 by sentence, to get its meaning. As you read, note sen- 
 tences that contain ideas new to you, or particularly 
 well expressed, and copy them into a note-book. Form 
 the habit of making quotations from what you read. 
 As you finish each essay, ask yourself what new ideas you 
 have gained. What do essays give you that fiction does 
 not? 
 
 The writers in this book represent the leading essayists 
 of England and America. In the biographies of these au- 
 thors, given in the notes, you will find the titles of various 
 books of essays written by these men; other volumes of 
 essays are given in the list at the end of the book. Some 
 of these books you will read in the library, some of them 
 you ought to own. 
 
THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 RICHARD STEELE 
 A DAY IN LONDON 
 
Richard Steele (1672-1729) was born in Dublin. At 
 twelve years of age he was sent to the Charterhouse School 
 in London, where he met Joseph Addison and the two be- 
 came fast friends. He entered Oxford, but left without 
 a degree; soon afterward he entered the army. After 
 some years Captain Steele of the Guards became inter- 
 ested in writing. Several of his plays were produced at 
 the Drury Lane Theatre: the best of these was a comedy, 
 The Tender Husband. Encouraged by success, Steele re- 
 signed from the army and devoted himself to literature. 
 He knew Pope and Swift and most of the writers of the 
 day, and still kept up his friendship with Addison. In 
 1709 he started a paper of his own, the Tatler, which was 
 the beginning of the periodical essay. (See Introduction, 
 p. x.) This was later followed by the Spectator ; to both 
 periodicals Addison was a frequent contributor, but the 
 plan was Steele's and he first sketched the members of 
 the famous Spectator Club. In the first volume of the 
 Tatler Steele thus set forth its purpose: 
 
 "The general purpose of this paper is to expose the 
 false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, 
 vanity and affectation, and to recommend a general 
 simplicity in our dress, our discourse and our behavior." 
 
 But Steele was not always bent upon reforming society. 
 In the paper here quoted, as in many others, he writes to 
 entertain his readers, and at the end he tries desperately 
 to find a moral. This essay gives an account of a day 
 of his own life: reading between the lines, we learn not 
 a little about lively Dick Steels. 
 
RICHARD STEELE 
 
 A DAY IN LONDON 
 
 (From the Toiler) 
 
 It is an inexpressible pleasure to know a little of the 
 world, and be of no character or significancy in it. 
 
 To be ever unconcerned, and ever looking on new ob- 
 jects with an endless curiosity, is a delight known only 
 to those who are turned for speculation: nay, they who 
 enjoy it must value things only as they are the objects 
 of speculation, without drawing any worldly advantage 
 to themselves from them, but just as they are what con- 
 tribute to their amusement, or the improvement of the 
 mind. I lay one night last week at Richmond; and being 
 restless, not out of dissatisfaction, but a certain busy 
 inclination one sometimes has, I rose at four in the morn- 
 ing, and took boat for London, with a resolution to rove 
 by boat and coach for the next four-and-twenty hours, 
 till the many different objects I must needs meet with 
 should tire my imagination, and give me an inclination 
 to a repose more profound than I was at that time capa- 
 ble of. I beg people's pardon for an odd humor I am 
 guilty of, and was often that day, which is saluting any 
 person whom I like, whether I know him or not. This 
 is a particularity which would be tolerated in me, if they 
 considered that the greatest pleasure I know I receive 
 at my eyes, and that I am obliged to an agreeable person 
 for coming abroad into my view, as another is for a visit 
 of conversation at their own houses. 
 
 3 
 
4 J/TH$ PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 The hours of the day and night are taken up in the 
 cities of London and Westminster, by people as different 
 from each other as those who are born in different cen- 
 turies. Men of six o'clock give way to those of nine, 
 they of nine to the generation of twelve; and they of 
 twelve disappear, and make room for the fashionable 
 world, who have made two o'clock the noon of the day. 
 
 When we first put off from shore, we soon fell in with 
 a fleet of gardeners, bound for the several market ports 
 of London; and it was the most pleasing scene imaginable 
 to see the cheerfulness with which those industrious 
 people plied their way to a certain sale of their goods. 
 The banks on each side are as well peopled, and beautified 
 with as agreeable plantations, as any spot on the earth; but 
 the Thames itself, loaded with the product of each shore, 
 added very much to the landscape. It was very easy to 
 observe by their sailing, and the countenances of the 
 ruddy virgins, who were supercargoes, the parts of the 
 town to which they were bound. There was an air in 
 the purveyors for Covent-garden, who frequently con- 
 verse with morning rakes, very unlike the seeming so- 
 briety of those bound for Stocks-market. 
 
 Nothing remarkable happened in our voyage; but I 
 landed with ten sail of apricot-boats, at Strand-bridge, 
 after having put in at Nine-Elms, and taken in melons, 
 consigned by Mr. Cuffe, of that place, to Sarah Sewell 
 and Company, at their stall in Covent-garden. We 
 arrived at Strand-bridge at six of the clock, and were 
 unloading, when the hackney-coachmen of the fore- 
 going night took their leave of each other at the Dark- 
 house, to go to bed before the day was too far spent. 
 Chimney-sweepers passed by us as we made up to the 
 market, and some raillery happened between one of the 
 fruit-wenches and those black men about the Devil and 
 Eve, with allusion to their several professions. I could 
 
RICHARD STEELE 5 
 
 not believe any place more entertaining than Covent- 
 garden; where I strolled from one fruit-shop to another, 
 with crowds of agreeable young women around me, who 
 were purchasing fruit for their respective families. 
 
 It was almost eight of the clock before I could leave 
 that variety of objects. I took coach and followed a 
 young lady, who tripped into another just before me, at- 
 tended by her maid. I saw immediately she was of the 
 family of the Vainloves. There are a set of these, who, 
 of all things, affect the play of Blind-man's-buff, and 
 leading men into love for they know not whom, who are 
 fled they know not where. This sort of woman is usually 
 a jaunty slattern; she hangs on her clothes, plays her 
 head, varies her posture, and changes place incessantly, 
 and all with an appearance of striving at the same time 
 to hide herself, and yet give you to understand she is in 
 humor to laugh at you. You must have often seen the 
 coachmen make signs with their fingers, as they drive 
 by each other, to intimate how much they have got that 
 day. They can carry on that language to give intelli- 
 gence where they are driving. In an instant my coach- 
 man took the wink to pursue; and the lady's driver gave 
 the hint that he was going through Long-acre toward 
 St. James's; while he whipped up James-street, we drove 
 for King-street, to save the pass at St. Martin's-lane. 
 The coachmen took care to meet, jostle, and threaten 
 each other for way, and be entangled at the end of New- 
 port-street and Long-acre. The fright, you must believe, 
 brought down the lady's coach-door, and obliged her, 
 with her mask off, to inquire into the bustle, when she 
 sees the man she would avoid. The tackle of the coach- 
 window is so bad she cannot draw it up again, and she 
 drives on sometimes wholly discovered, and sometimes 
 half-escaped, according to the accident of carriages in 
 her way. One of these ladies keeps her seat in a hackney- 
 
6 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 coach as well as the best rider does on a managed horse. 
 The laced shoe on her left foot, with a careless gesture, 
 just appearing on the opposite cushion, held her both 
 firm, and in a proper attitude to receive the next jolt. 
 
 As she was an excellent coach-woman, many were the 
 glances at each other which we had for an hour and a 
 half, in all parts of the town, by the skill of our drivers; 
 till at last my lady was conveniently lost, with notice 
 from her coachman to ours to make off, and he should 
 hear where she went. This chase was now at an end: 
 and the fellow who drove her came to us, and discovered 
 that he was ordered to come again in an hour, for that 
 she was a silk-worm. I was surprised with this phrase, 
 but found it was a cant among the hackney fraternity for 
 their best customers, women who ramble twice or thrice 
 a week from shop to shop, to turn over all the goods in 
 town without buying anything. The silk-worms are, it 
 seems, indulged by the tradesmen; for, though they never 
 buy, they are ever talking of new silks, laces, and ribbons, 
 and serve the owners in getting them customers, as their 
 common dunners do in making them pay. 
 
 The day of people of fashion began now to break, 
 and carts and hacks were mingled with equipages of 
 show and vanity; when I resolved to walk it out of cheap- 
 ness; but my unhappy curiosity is such, that I find it 
 always my interest to take coach; for some odd adventure 
 among beggars, ballad-singers, or the like, detains and 
 throws me into expense. It happened so immediately: 
 for at the corner of Warwick-street, as I was listening to 
 a new ballad, a ragged rascal, a beggar who knew me, 
 came up to me, and began to turn the eyes of the good 
 company upon me, by telling me he was extremely poor, 
 and should die in the street for want of drink, except I 
 immediately would have the charity to give him sixpence 
 to go into the next ale-house and save his life. He urged, 
 
RICHARD STEELE 7 
 
 with a melancholy face, that all his family had died of 
 thirst. All the mob have humor, and two or three began 
 to take the jest; by which Mr. Sturdy carried his point, 
 and let me sneak off to a coach. As I drove along, it 
 was a pleasing reflection to see the world so prettily 
 checkered since I left Richmond, and the scene still filling 
 with children of a new hour. 
 
 This satisfaction increased as I moved toward the city; 
 and gay signs, well-disposed streets, magnificent public 
 structures, and wealthy shops adorned with contented 
 faces, made the joy still rising till we came into the centre 
 of the city, and centre of the world of trade, the Ex- 
 change of London. As other men in the crowds about 
 me were pleased with their hopes and bargains, I found 
 my account in observing them, in attention to their sev- 
 eral interests. I, indeed, looked upon myself as the 
 richest man that walked the Exchange that day; for 
 my benevolence made me share the gains of every bar- 
 gain that was made. It was not the least of my satis- 
 faction in my survey, to go upstairs, and pass the shops 
 of agreeable females; to observe so many pretty hands 
 busy in the folding of ribbons, and the utmost eagerness 
 of agreeable faces in the sale of patches, pins, and wires, 
 on each side of the counters, was an amusement in which 
 I could longer have indulged myself, had not the dear 
 creatures called to me, to ask what I wanted, when I 
 could not answer, only "To look at you." I went to one 
 of the windows which opened to the area below, where 
 all the several voices lost their distinction, and rose up 
 in a confused humming; which created in me a reflec- 
 tion that could not come into the mind of any but of one 
 a little too studious; for I said to myself with a kind of 
 pun in thought, "What nonsense is all the hurry of this 
 world to those who are above it?" In these, or not 
 much wiser thoughts, I had like to have lost my place at 
 
8 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 the chop-house, where every man, according to the nat- 
 ural bashfulness or sullenness of our nation, eats in a 
 public room a mess of broth, or chop of meat, in dumb 
 silence, as if they had no pretense to speak to each other 
 on the foot of being men, except they were of each other's 
 acquaintance. 
 
 I went afterward to Robin's, and saw people, who had 
 dined with me at the five-penny ordinary just before, 
 give bills for the value of large estates; and could not but 
 behold with great pleasure, property lodged in, and trans- 
 ferred in a moment from, such as would never be masters 
 of half as much as is seemingly in them, and given from 
 them, every day they live. But before five in the after- 
 noon I left the city, came to my common scene of Covent- 
 garden, and passed the evening at Will's* in attending 
 the discourses of several sets of people, who relieved each 
 other within my hearing on the subjects of cards, dice, 
 love, learning, and politics. The last subject kept me 
 till I heard the streets in the possession of the bellman, 
 who had now the world to himself, and cried, "Past two 
 o'clock." This roused me from my seat; and I went to 
 my lodgings, led by a light, whom I put into the dis- 
 course of his private economy, and made him give me an 
 account of the charge, hazard, profit, and loss of a family 
 that depended upon a link, with a design to end my trivial 
 day with the generosity of sixpence, instead of a third 
 part of that sum. When I came to my chambers, I writ 
 down these minutes; but was at a loss what instruction 
 I should propose to my reader from the enumeration of 
 so many insignificant matters and occurrences; and I 
 thought it of great use, if they could learn with me to 
 keep their minds open to gratification, and ready to re- 
 ceive it from any thing it meets with. This one circum- 
 
 * Will's, a famous coffee-house in Russell Street, London, fre- 
 quented by literary men. 
 
RICHARD STEELE 9 
 
 stance will make every face you see give you the satis- 
 faction you now take in beholding that of a friend; will 
 make every object a pleasing one; will make all the good 
 which arrives to any man, an increase of happiness to 
 yourself. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) has been called the best 
 loved of English writers. He was the son of a poor 
 London clerk, and attended as a charity scholar the fa- 
 mous boys' school Christ's Hospital. Here he learned 
 the Latin which he is fond of introducing in his essays; 
 here he met Coleridge, and they became lifelong friends. 
 When school-days ended, Coleridge went to the uni- 
 versity, and Lamb became a bookkeeper in a London 
 office. His work in this place is described in two essays, 
 The South Sea House, and The Superannuated Man. He 
 lived with his sister Mary, who appears in the essays as 
 Bridget Elia. With her he wrote the Tales from Shake- 
 speare, which have introduced the plays to many young 
 readers. His chief work is the Essays of Elia. These 
 were contributed to the London Magazine, over the sig- 
 nature of James Elia, a fellow-clerk in the office. Lamb's 
 style is unique. He was a great reader of Elizabethan 
 literature, especially plays, and frequently uses quaint 
 old words from these books. He is fond of giving an un- 
 expected turn to his sentences, and humor, a quiet, sly 
 humor, peeps out everywhere. 
 
 In connection with the essay on Roast Pig, it is interest- 
 ing to read this letter of Lamb's, addressed to a farmer 
 and his wife: 
 
 Twelfth Day, '23. 
 
 The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear 
 pigmy. There was some contention as to who should 
 have the ears; but in spite of his obstinacy, (deaf as these 
 little creatures are to advice) I contrived to get at one of 
 them. . . . 
 
 He must have been the least of his race. His little 
 foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take 
 him to have been a Chinese, and a female. 
 
 He crackled delicately. 
 
 I left a blank at the top of the page, not being deter- 
 mined which to address it to: so farmer and farmer's 
 wife will please to divide our thanks. May your gran- 
 aries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens 
 plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and your la- 
 
 rers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 C. LAMB. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 
 
 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 
 
 (From the Essays of Elia, First Series) 
 
 Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend 
 M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for 
 the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, 
 clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they 
 do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not obscurely 
 hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter 
 of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind 
 of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' 
 Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art 
 of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the 
 elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner 
 following. The swine-herd, Ho-ti, having gone out into 
 the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect 
 mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest 
 son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of play- 
 ing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let 
 some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kin- 
 dling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of 
 their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together 
 with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a 
 building, you may think it), what was of much more 
 importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than 
 nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed 
 a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that 
 we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as 
 you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, 
 which his father and he could easily build up again with 
 
 13 
 
14 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or two, at 
 any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was think- 
 ing what he should say to his father, and wringing his 
 hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely 
 sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent 
 which he had before experienced. What could it pro- 
 ceed from? not from the burnt cottage he had smelt 
 that smell before indeed, this was by no means the first 
 accident of the kind which had occurred through the 
 negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less 
 did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. 
 A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed 
 his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next 
 stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of 
 life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he ap- 
 plied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of 
 the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his 
 fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's 
 life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he 
 tasted crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at the 
 pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his 
 fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke 
 into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt 
 so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and surrendering 
 himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up 
 whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, 
 and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fash- 
 ion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed 
 with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, 
 began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, 
 as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more 
 than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which 
 he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him 
 quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those 
 remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could 
 
CHARLES LAMB 15 
 
 not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end 
 of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situa- 
 tion, something like the following dialogue ensued. 
 
 "You graceless whelp, what have you got there de- 
 vouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down 
 three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to 
 you ! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what 
 what have you got there, I say?" 
 
 "O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how nice 
 the burnt pig eats." 
 
 The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his 
 son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a 
 Bon that should eat burnt pig. 
 
 Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
 morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rend- 
 ing it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into 
 the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the 
 burnt pig, father, only taste O Lord!" with such-like 
 barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he 
 would choke. 
 
 Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the 
 abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put 
 his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when 
 the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his 
 son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his 
 turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour 
 mouths he would for a pretense, proved not altogether 
 displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript 
 here is a little tedious), both father and son fairly set down 
 to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all 
 that remained of the litter. 
 
 Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
 for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for 
 a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of im- 
 proving upon the good meat which God had sent them. 
 
16 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was observed 
 that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently 
 than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. 
 Some would break out in broad day, others in the night- 
 time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house 
 of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti himself, which was 
 the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed 
 to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length 
 they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and 
 father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, 
 then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, 
 the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
 about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury 
 begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits 
 stood accused, might be handed into the box. He 
 handled it, and they all handled it; and burning their 
 fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, 
 and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, 
 against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge 
 which judge had ever given, to the surprise of the whole 
 court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters, and all present- 
 without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation 
 whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of 
 Not Guilty. 
 
 The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 
 manifest iniquity of the decision: and when the court 
 was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs 
 that could be had for love or money. In a few days 
 his lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. 
 The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be 
 seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew 
 enormously dear all over the district. The insurance- 
 oflaces one and aU shut up shop. People built slighter 
 and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very 
 science of architecture would in no long time be lost to 
 
CHARLES LAMB 17 
 
 the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, 
 till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, 
 like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of 
 swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked 
 (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consum- 
 ing a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude 
 form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came 
 in a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. 
 By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the 
 most useful, and seemingly the most obvious, arts make 
 their way among mankind. 
 
 Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
 above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext 
 for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire 
 (especially in these days) could be assigned in favor of 
 any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be 
 found in ROAST PIG. 
 
 Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis* I 
 will maintain it to be the most delicate princeps 06- 
 soniorumj 
 
 I speak not of your grown porkers things between 
 pig and pork these hobbledehoys but a young and ten- 
 der suckling under a moon old guiltless as yet of the 
 sty with no original speck of the amor immunditiw,]. the 
 hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest his 
 voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish 
 treble and a grumble the mild forerunner or prceludium 
 of a grunt. 
 
 He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our an- 
 cestors ate them seethed, or boiled but what a sacrifice 
 of the exterior tegument ! 
 
 * Mundus edibilis, world of eatables, 
 t Princeps obsoniorum, the chief of viands. 
 | Amor immunditice, the love of dirt. 
 $ Prceludium, prelude. 
 
18 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to that 
 of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, 
 crackling, as it is well called the very teeth are invited 
 to their share of the pleasure at this banquet, in over- 
 coming the coy, brittle resistance with the adhesive 
 oleaginous O call it not fat! but an indefinable sweet- 
 ness growing up to it the tender blossoming of fat 
 fat cropped in the bud taken in the shoot in the first 
 innocence the cream and quintessence of the child- 
 pig's yet pure food the lean, no lean, but a kind of ani- 
 mal manna or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) 
 so blended and running into each other, that both to- 
 gether make but one ambrosian result or common sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Behold him while he is "doing" it seemeth rather a 
 refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is so 
 passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! 
 Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of 
 that tender age! he hath wept out his pretty eyes ra- 
 diant jellies shooting stars. 
 
 See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 
 lieth ! wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to 
 the grossness and indocility which too often accompany 
 maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he would have proved a 
 glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal 
 wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation from these 
 sins he is happily snatched away 
 
 Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
 Death came with timely care, 
 
 his memory is odoriferous no clown curseth, while his 
 stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon no coal-heaver 
 bolteth him in reeking sausages he hath a fair sepulchre 
 in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure and 
 for such a tomb might be content to die. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 19 
 
 He is the best of sapors.* Pine-apple is great. She 
 is indeed almost too transcendent a delight, if not sin- 
 ful, yet so like to sinning, that really a tender-conscienced 
 person would do well to pause, too ravishing for mortal 
 taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips that ap- 
 proach her like lovers' kisses, she biteth she is a plea- 
 sure bordering on pain from the fierceness and insanity 
 of her relish but she stoppeth at the palate she med- 
 dleth not with the appetite and the coarsest hunger 
 might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 
 
 Pig let me speak his praise is no less provocative 
 of the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness 
 of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten 
 on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 
 
 Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
 virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to 
 be unravelled without hazard, he is good throughout. 
 No part of him is better or worse than another. He help- 
 eth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is 
 the least envious of banquets. He is all neighbors' fare. 
 
 I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart 
 a share of the good things of this life which fall to their 
 lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I protest 
 I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his 
 relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine own. "Pres- 
 ents," I often say, "endear Absents." Hares, pheasants, 
 partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those "tame 
 villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, 
 I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
 them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But a 
 stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 
 "give everything." I make my stand upon pig. Me- 
 thinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavors 
 to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house slightingly 
 * Sapor, flavor, taste. 
 
20 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what) a bless- 
 ing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to 
 my individual palate. It argues an insensibility. 
 
 I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. 
 My good old aunt, who never parted from me at the end 
 of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, or some nice 
 thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening 
 with a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my 
 way to school (it was over London Bridge) a gray-headed 
 old beggar saluted me (I have no doubt at this time of day, 
 that he was a counterfeit). I had no pence to console 
 him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the very 
 coxcombry of charity, schoolboy like, I made him a pres- 
 ent of the whole cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed 
 up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of 
 self-satisfaction; but, before I had got to the end of the 
 bridge, my better feelings returned, and I burst into 
 tears, thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good 
 aunt, to go and give her good gift away to a stranger that 
 I had never seen before, and who might be a bad man for 
 aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my aunt 
 would be taking in thinking that I I myself, and not 
 another would eat her nice cake and what should I 
 say to her the next time I saw her how naughty I was 
 to part with her pretty present! and the odor of that 
 spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and the plea- 
 sure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her make it, 
 and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and how disap- 
 pointed she would feel that I had never had a bit of it in 
 my mouth at last and I blamed my impertinent spirit 
 of alms-giving, and out-of -place hypocrisy of goodness; 
 and above all I wished never to see the face again of that 
 insidious, good-for-nothing, old gray impostor. 
 
 Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing 
 these tender victims. We read of pigs whipped to death 
 
CHARLES LAMB 21 
 
 with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obso- 
 lete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would 
 be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) 
 what effect this process might have toward intenerating 
 and dulcifying a substance naturally so mild and dulcet 
 as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. 
 Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhu- 
 manity, how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It 
 might impart a gusto. 
 
 I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
 students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 
 much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, 
 supposing that the flavor of a pig who obtained his death 
 by whipping (per flagellationem extremam*) superadded a 
 pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any 
 possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man 
 justified in using that method of putting the animal to 
 death?" I forgot the decision. 
 
 His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
 bread crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a 
 dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I be- 
 seech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole 
 hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out 
 with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; you cannot 
 poison them, or make them stronger than they are but 
 consider, he is a weakling a flower. 
 
 * Per flagellationem, through capital punishment by whipping. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 
 
 OLD CHINA 
 
Few passages in the history of English literature are 
 more touching than the story of Charles and Mary Lamb. 
 She was ten years his senior; the mother was an invalid, 
 so that as a child Charles was cared for by his sister. 
 There was a trait of insanity in the family. When 
 Charles was twenty-one, Mary, her mind affected by a 
 long strain, became insane, and killed her mother. She 
 was placed in an asylum, and although she regained her 
 reason, she was only released upon the solemn pledge of 
 her brother that he would watch over her. From time 
 to time the affliction recurred, and the brother would take 
 her to the asylum for a season. At other times she was 
 an ideal companion, interested in books as Charles was, 
 helping him to write his Tales from Shakespeare, making 
 a pleasant home for him, where his friends Hazlitt, 
 Coleridge, Godwin, Haydon the painter, and W r 4 s " 
 worth formed a famous group. Yet over all their life 
 hung the shadow. Charles, faithful to his sister, never 
 sought to marry. They had been very poor, but as 
 Charles's literary work gradually won recognition, their 
 circumstances became easier, even allowing a few luxuries. 
 They were both intensely fond of the theatre, and num* 
 bered among their friends some of the best actors of the 
 day. Such are the materials out of which Lamb made 
 the essay on Old China. Mary appears there as Bridget; 
 all their pleasures and the sweet intimacy of their lives 
 are told, but the shadow is not there. Like Stevenson, 
 Lamb resolutely carried his own burden; it might be 
 heavy, but no whimper or groan escapes into his pages. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 
 
 OLD CHINA 
 
 (From the Essays of Elia, Second Series) 
 
 I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
 When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china- 
 closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot de- 
 fend the order of preference, but by saying that we have 
 all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of 
 our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. 
 I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, 
 that I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when 
 china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 I had no repugnance then why should I now have? 
 to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that, 
 under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir- 
 cumscribed by any element, in that world before perspec- 
 tive a china tea-cup. 
 
 I like to see my old friends whom distance cannot 
 diminish figuring up in the air (so they appear to our 
 optics), yet on terra firma still for so we must in courtesy 
 interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous 
 artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up be- 
 neath their sandals. 
 
 I love the men with women's faces, and the women, 
 if possible, with still more womanish expressions. 
 
 Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea 
 to a lady from a salver two miles off. See how distance 
 seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or 
 another for likeness is identity on tea-cups is stepping 
 
 25 
 
26 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this 
 calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in 
 a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) 
 must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead 
 a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream ! 
 
 Farther on if far or near can be predicated of their 
 world see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.* 
 
 Here a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive 
 so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of 
 fine Cathay. 
 
 I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over 
 our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink 
 unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these spedosa 
 miracida'f upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a 
 recent purchase) which we were now for the first time us- 
 ing; and could not help remarking, how favorable circum- 
 stances had been to us of late years, that we could afford 
 to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort 
 when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows 
 of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer 
 clouds in Bridget. 
 
 "I wish the good old times would come again/' she 
 said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean 
 that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state" 
 so she was pleased to ramble on, "in which I am sure 
 we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a pur- 
 chase, now that you have money enough and to spare. 
 Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a 
 cheap luxury (and, ! how much ado I had to get you to 
 consent in those times !) we were used to have a debate 
 two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, 
 and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving 
 we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A 
 
 * Hays, an old English dance, where the dancers stood in a ring, 
 t Spedosa miracula, beautiful marvels. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 27 
 
 thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money 
 that we paid for it. 
 
 "Do you remember the brown suit, which you made 
 to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon 
 you, it grew so threadbare and all because of that folio 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late 
 at night from Barker's in Covent Garden? Do you re- 
 member how we eyed it for weeks before we could make 
 up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a 
 determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday 
 night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should 
 be too late and when the old bookseller with some 
 grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper 
 (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from 
 his dusty treasures and when you lugged it home, wish- 
 ing it were twice as cumbersome and when you presented 
 it to me and when we were exploring the perfectness of 
 it (collating, you called it) and while I was repairing 
 some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impa- 
 tience would not suffer to be left till daybreak was there 
 no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black 
 clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep 
 brushed, since we have become rich and finical give 
 you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it 
 about in that overworn suit your old corbeau* for 
 four or five weeks longer than you should have done to 
 pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen 
 or sixteen shillings was it? a great affair we thought it 
 then which you had lavished on the old folio. Now 
 you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I 
 do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old pur- 
 chases now. 
 
 "When you came home with twenty apologies for lay- 
 ing out a less number of shillings upon that print 
 * Corbeau, a crow, a raven. 
 
28 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 after Lionardo,* which we christened the 'Lady Blanch'; 
 when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the 
 money and thought of the money, and looked again at 
 the picture was there no pleasure in being a poor man? 
 Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, 
 and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you? 
 
 "Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, 
 and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday 
 holidays and all other fun are gone now we are 
 rich and the little hand-basket in which I used to de- 
 posit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad and 
 how you would pry about at noontide for some decent 
 house, where we might go in and produce our store only 
 paying for the ale that you must call for and speculate 
 upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was 
 likely to allow us a tablecloth and wish for such another 
 honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one 
 on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a-fish- 
 ing and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, 
 and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us 
 but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and 
 would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging 
 Piscatorf his Trout Hall? Now when we go out a 
 day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we ride part 
 of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order the best of 
 dinners, never debating the expense which, after all, 
 never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, 
 when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a 
 precarious welcome. 
 
 "You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but 
 in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to 
 sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender 
 
 * Lionardo, Leonardo da Vinci; perhaps the picture referred to is 
 the "Mona Lisa." 
 
 t Piaoator, the name of the fisherman in Walton's Compleat Angler. 
 
CHARLES LAMB 29 
 
 of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children 
 in the Wood when we squeezed out our shillings apiece 
 to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling 
 gallery where you felt all the time that you ought not 
 to have brought me and more strongly I felt obligation 
 to you for having brought me and the pleasure was the 
 better for a little shame and when the curtain drew up, 
 what cared we for our place in the house, or what mat- 
 tered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were 
 with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of 
 Illyria? You used to say that the gallery was the best 
 place of all for enjoying a play socially that the relish 
 of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infre- 
 quency of going that the company we met there, not 
 being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend 
 the more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the 
 stage because a word lost would have been a chasm 
 which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such 
 reflections we consoled our pride then and I appeal to 
 you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less at- 
 tention and accommodation than I have done since in 
 more expensive situations in the house? The getting in, 
 indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient stair- 
 cases, was bad enough but there was still a law of civility 
 to woman recognized to quite as great an extent as we 
 ever found in the other passages and how a little diffi- 
 culty overcome heightened the snug seat and the play, 
 afterwards ! Now we can only pay our money and walk 
 in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I 
 am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then but 
 sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. 
 
 "There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they 
 became quite common in the first dish of peas, while 
 they were yet dear to have them for a nice supper, a 
 treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to 
 
30 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 fcreat ourselves now that is, to have dainties a little 
 above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is 
 the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what 
 the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat- 
 when two people, living together as we have done, now 
 and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which 
 both like; while each apologizes, and is willing to take 
 both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no 
 harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense 
 of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much 
 of others. But now what I mean by the word we 
 never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor 
 can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but 
 persons as we were, just above poverty. 
 
 "I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty 
 pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, and 
 much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of 
 December to account for our exceedings many a long 
 face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in 
 contriving to make it out how we had spent so much or 
 that we had not spent so much or that it was impossible 
 we should spend so much next year and still we found 
 our slender capital decreasing but then, betwixt ways, 
 and projects, and compromises of one sort or another, 
 and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without 
 that for the future and the hope that youth brings, and 
 laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now), 
 we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty 
 brimmers' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheerful 
 Mr. Cotton, as you called him), we used to welcome in the 
 'coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at 
 the end of the old year no flattering promises about the 
 new year doing better for us." 
 
 Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 
 that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 
 
CHARLES LAMB 31 
 
 how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling 
 at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination 
 had conjured up out of a clear income of poor hun- 
 dred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when 
 we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. 
 I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were 
 to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much 
 mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, 
 as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thank- 
 ful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We 
 could never have been what we have been to each other, 
 if we had always had the sufficiency which you now com- 
 plain of. The resisting power those natural dilations 
 of the youthful spirit, which circumstances cannot 
 straiten with us are long since passed away. Com- 
 petence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supple- 
 ment indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We 
 must ride where we formerly walked: live better and lie 
 softer and shall be wise to do so than we had means 
 to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could 
 those days return could you and I once more walk our 
 thirty miles a day could Bannister and Mrs. Bland 
 again be young, and you and I be young to see them 
 could the good old one-shilling gallery days return they 
 are dreams, my cousin, now but could you and I at 
 this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our 
 well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa be 
 once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, 
 pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest 
 rabble of poor gallery scramblers could I once more 
 hear those anxious shrieks of yours and the delicious 
 Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the 
 topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whote 
 cheerful theatre down beneath us I know not the fathom 
 line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be 
 
32 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or 
 
 the great Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. 
 
 And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter 
 holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the 
 head of that pretty insipid half Madonna-ish chit of a 
 lady in that very blue summer-house." 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 
 
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was the son of an English 
 clergyman, and was himself educated for the ministry, 
 but declined to enter it. An elder brother was a por- 
 trait-painter; William tried for four years to learn the 
 art, but without success. He went to London, where 
 he became theatrical critic for a newspaper. Leigh Hunt, 
 who was then editing the Examiner, asked him to write 
 some essays for it. The result was The Round Table, a 
 series of papers on books, manners, and social customs, 
 written in a style of singular clearness and charm. Ste- 
 venson says in one of his essays, "We are fine fellows, but 
 we cannot write like Hazlitt." 
 
 A course of lectures on literature which Hazlitt deliv- 
 ered was later published in three volumes, English Comic 
 Writers, English Poetry, and Dramatic Literature of the Age 
 of Elizabeth. These contain some admirable literary criti- 
 cism. But his chief fame rests upon his volumes of es- 
 says, which include Table Talk, The Round Table, The 
 Plain Speaker, Sketches and Essays, and Winterslow. Haz- 
 litt was the friend of interesting people like Coleridge, 
 Lamb, and Wordsworth; he was himself an interesting 
 character, strong in his likes and dislikes, very apt to quar- 
 rel with his friends. In this essay he shows himself as a 
 true hero-worshipper. It was published in 1823, twenty- 
 five years after the events which it relates. Note the fre- 
 quency with which he quotes from his beloved poets; the 
 ease of the style, and the vividness with which he de- 
 scribes the appearance of Coleridge, and the impression 
 made by him. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS 
 
 (From Winterslow, a collection of Hazlitt's essays 
 published after his death) 
 
 My father was a Dissenting minister, at Wem, in 
 Shropshire; and in the year 1798 (the figures that com- 
 pose the date are to me like the "dreaded name of Demo- 
 gorgon" *) Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to suc- 
 ceed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian 
 congregation there. He did not come till late on the 
 Saturday afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr. 
 Rowe, who himself went down to the coach, in a state 
 of anxiety and expectation, to look for the arrival of 
 his successor, could find no one at all answering the de- 
 scription but a round-faced man, in a short black coat, 
 (like a shooting jacket) which hardly seemed to have 
 been made for him, but who seemed to be talking at a 
 great rate to his fellow passengers. Mr. Rowe had scarce 
 returned to give an account of his disappointment when 
 the round-faced man in black entered, and dissipated all 
 doubts on the subject by beginning to talk. He did not 
 cease while he stayed; nor has he since, that I know of. 
 He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful sus- 
 pense for three weeks that he remained there, "flutter- 
 ing the proud Salopians ,f like an eagle in a dove-cote"; 
 and the Welsh mountains that skirt the horizon with 
 their tempestuous confusion, agree to have heard no such 
 mystic sounds since the days of 
 
 "High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay." t 
 
 * Demogorgon, one of the fallen angels in Milton's Paradise Lost. 
 t Salopians, inhabitants of Salop, an old name for Shropshire. 
 J Quoted from Gray's "The Bard." 
 
 35 
 
36 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, 
 and I eyed their blue tops seen through the wintry 
 branches, or the red rustling leaves of the sturdy oak- 
 trees by the roadside, a sound was in my ears as of a 
 Siren's song; I was stunned, startled with it, as from deep 
 sleep; butJ^had^no^-aertio^rEheii- that I should evr be 
 able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery 
 or quarat -allusion, till the light of his genius shone into 
 my soul like the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of 
 the road. I was at that time dumb, inarticulate, help- 
 less, like a worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, life- 
 less; but now, bursting the deadly bands that "bound 
 them, 
 
 "With Styx nine times round them," * 
 
 my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their 
 plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul 
 has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, ob- 
 scure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, 
 shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never 
 found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that 
 my understanding also did nob remain dumb and brutish, 
 or at length found a language to express itself, I owe to 
 Coleridge. But this is not to my purpose. 
 
 My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was 
 in the habit of exchanging visits with Mr. Rowe, and 
 with Mr. Jenkins of Whitchurch (nine miles farther on), 
 according to the custom of Dissenting ministers in each 
 other's neighborhood. A line of communication is thus 
 established, by which the flame of civil and religious 
 liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire 
 unquenchable, like the fires in the Agamemnon of ^Eschy- 
 lus, placed at different stations, that waited for ten long 
 years to announce with their blazing pyramids the de- 
 
 *From Pope's "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day." 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 37 
 
 struction of Troy. Coleridge had agreed to come over 
 and see my father, according to the courtesy of the 
 country, as Mr. Howe's probable successor; but in the 
 meantime, I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday 
 after his arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up 
 into a Unitarian pulpit to preach the gospel, was a ro- 
 mance in these degenerate days, a sort of revival of the 
 primitive spirit of Christianity, which was not to be 
 resisted. 
 
 It was in January of 1798, that I rose one morning 
 before daylight, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear 
 this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day 
 
 I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this 
 cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. 
 
 II y a des impressions que ni le temps ni ks circonstances 
 peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux 
 temps de ma jeunesse ne pent renaitre pour moi, ni s' effacer 
 jamais dans ma memoir e* When I got there, the organ 
 was playing the hundredth Psalm, and when it was done, 
 Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, "And he went 
 up into the mountain to pray, himself, alone." As he 
 gave out this text, his voice "rose like a steam of rich 
 distilled perfumes," f and when he came to the two last 
 words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it 
 seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had 
 echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if 
 that prayer might have floated in solemn silence through 
 the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, 
 "of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt 
 about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey." 
 
 * II y a, etc. "There are impressions which neither time nor cir- 
 cumstances can efface. If I should live whole ages, the sweet days 
 of my youth could never return to me, nor ever be effaced from my 
 memory." Rousseau's Confessions. 
 
 t Quoted from Milton's "Comus." 
 
38 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 The preacher then launched into his subject, like an 
 eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon was upon 
 peace and war; upon church and state not their alli- 
 ance but their separation on the spirit of the world and 
 the spirit of Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed 
 to one another. He talked of those who had " inscribed 
 the cross of Christ on banners dripping with human 
 gore." He made a poetical and pastoral excursion 
 and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking con- 
 trast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team 
 afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, 
 "as though he should never be old," and the same poor 
 country lad, crimped,* kidnapped, brought into town, 
 made drunk at an ale-house, turned into a wretched 
 drummer boy, with his hair sticking on end with 
 powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and 
 tricked out in the loathsome finery of the profession 
 of blood: 
 
 "Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung."f 
 
 And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if 
 I had heard the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philos- 
 ophy had met together. Truth and Genius had em- 
 braced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion. 
 This was even beyond my hopes. I returned home well 
 satisfied. The sun that was still laboring pale and wan 
 through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an 
 emblem of the good cause; and the cold dank drops of 
 dew, that hung half melted on the beard of the thistle, 
 had something genial and refreshing in them; for there 
 was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that turned 
 
 * Crimped, entrapped in order to be forced into military or naval 
 service. 
 
 t From Pope's "Epistle to Oxford." 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 39 
 
 everything into good. The face of nature had not then 
 the brand of Jus Divinum* on it: 
 
 "Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe."f 
 
 On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker 
 came. I was called down into the room where he was, 
 and went half hoping, half afraid. He received me very 
 graciously, and I listened for a long time without utter- 
 ing a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by my silence. 
 "For those two hours," he afterward was pleased to say, 
 "he was conversing with William Hazlitt's forehead"! 
 His appearance was different from what I had antici- 
 pated from seeing him before. At a distance, and in the 
 dim light of the chapel, there was to me a strange wild- 
 ness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity, and I thought him 
 pitted with the smallpox. His complexion was at that 
 time clear, and even bright 
 
 "As are the children of yon azure sheen." J 
 
 His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of 
 ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes roll- 
 ing beneath them, like a sea with darkened lustre. "A 
 certain tender bloom his face o'erspread," a purple tinge 
 as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions of the 
 Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez. His 
 mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin 
 good-humored and round; but his nose, the rudder of 
 the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing, 
 like what he has done. It might seem that the genius 
 of his face as from a height surveyed and projected him 
 (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the 
 
 * Jus Divinum, the doctrine of the divine right of kings, i. e., that 
 kings enjoyed their power by the sanction of God. 
 t From Milton's "Lycidas." 
 j From Thomson's "Castle of Indolence." 
 
40 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 world unknown of thought and imagination, with noth- 
 ing to support or guide his veering purpose, as if Colum- 
 bus had launched his adventurous course for the New 
 World in a scallop, without oars or compass. So, at 
 least, I comment on it after the event. Coleridge, in his 
 person, was rather above the common size, inclining to 
 the corpulent, or like Lord Hamlet, "somewhat fat and 
 pursy." His hair (now, alas ! gray) was then black and 
 glossy as the raven's, and fell in smooth masses over his 
 forehead. This long pendulous hair is peculiar to enthu- 
 siasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward; and is tra- 
 ditionally inseparable (though of a different color) from 
 the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a charac- 
 ter, to all who preach Christ crucified, and Coleridge was 
 .at that time one of those ! 
 
 It was curious to observe the contrast between him and 
 my father, who was a veteran in the cause, and then de- 
 clining into the vale of years. He had been a poor Irish 
 lad, carefully brought up by his parents, and sent to the 
 University of Glasgow (where he studied under Adam 
 Smith*) to prepare him for his future destination. It 
 was his mother's proudest wish to see her son a Dissent- 
 ing minister. So, if we look back to past generations (as 
 far as eye can reach), we see the same hopes, fears, wishes, 
 followed by the same disappointments, throbbing in thft 
 human heart; and so we may see them (if we look for- 
 ward) rising up forever, and disappearing, like vaporish 
 bubbles, in the human breast ! After being tossed about 
 from congregation to congregation in the heats of the 
 Unitarian controversy, and squabbles about the Ameri- 
 can war, he had been relegated to an obscure village, 
 where he was to spend the last thirty years of his life, 
 far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about 
 
 * Adam Smith, author of the Wealth of Nations, one of the most 
 notable books on political economy. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 41 
 
 disputed texts of Scripture, and the cause of civil and 
 religious liberty. Here he passed his days, repining, 
 but resigned, in the study of the Bible, and the perusal 
 of the commentators huge folios, not easily got through, 
 one of which would outlast a winter ! Why did he pore 
 on these from morn to night (with the exception of a 
 walk in the fields or a turn in the garden to gather 
 broccoli-plants or kidney-beans of his own rearing, with 
 no small degree of pride and pleasure)? Here were "no 
 figures nor no fantasies" neither poetry nor philosophy 
 nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity; 
 but to his lack-lustre eyes there appeared within the 
 pages of the ponderous, unwieldy, neglected tomes, the 
 sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew capitals: pressed 
 down by the weight of the style, worn to the last fading 
 thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, 
 glimmering notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with 
 palm-trees hovering in the horizon, and processions of 
 camels at the distance of three thousand years; there 
 was Moses with the Burning Bush, the number of the 
 Twelve Tribes, types, shadows, glosses on the law and 
 the prophets; there were discussions (dull enough) on 
 the age of Methuselah, a mighty speculation ! there were 
 outlines, rude guesses at the shape of Noah's Ark and of 
 the riches of Solomon's Temple; questions as to the date 
 of the creation, predictions of the end of all things; the 
 great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe 
 were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over; 
 and though the soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic 
 veil of inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was 
 in a slumber ill exchanged for all the sharpened realities 
 of sense, wit, fancy, or reason. My father's life was 
 comparatively a dream; but it was a dream of infinity 
 and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment 
 to come ! 
 
42 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 No two individuals were ever more unlike than were 
 the host and his guest. A poet was to my father a sort 
 of nondescript; yet whatever added grace to the Unitarian 
 cause was to him welcome. He could hardly have been 
 more surprised or pleased, if our visitor had worn wings. 
 Indeed, his thoughts had wings: and as the silken sounds 
 rustled round our little wainscoted parlor, my father 
 threw back his spectacles over his forehead, his white 
 hairs mixing with its sanguine hue; and a smile of delight 
 beamed across his rugged, cordial face, to think that 
 Truth had found a new ally in Fancy ! * Besides, Cole- 
 ridge seemed to take considerable notice of me, and 
 that of itself was enough. 
 
 He talked very familiarly, but agreeably, and glanced 
 over a variety of subjects. At dinner time he grew more 
 animated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary 
 Wollstonecraftt and Mackintosh. The last, he said, he 
 considered (on my father's speaking of his Vindicice Gal- 
 licce as a capital performance) as a clever, scholastic man 
 a master of the topics or, as the ready warehouseman 
 of letters, who knew exactly where to lay his hand on 
 what he wanted, though the goods were not his own. He 
 thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter. 
 Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. 
 Burke was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in 
 figures, because he had an eye for nature: Mackintosh, 
 on the other hand, was a rhetorician, who had only an 
 
 * My father was one of those who mistook his talent, after all. 
 He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to 
 his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally 
 from him. For ease, half -plays on words, and a supine, monkish, 
 indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled. (Hazlitt's 
 note.) 
 
 t Mary Wollstonecraft was the author of the Vindication of the 
 Rights of Women, published in 1792. James Mackintosh's Vinditias 
 Gallicce was a defense of the French Revolution. Both books were 
 regarded as very radical in their day. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 43 
 
 eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured to say that 
 I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and 
 that (as far as I could find) the speaking of him with con- 
 tempt might be made the test of a vulgar, democratical 
 mind. This was the first observation I ever made to Cole- 
 ridge, and he said it was a very just and striking one. I 
 remember the leg of Welsh mutton and the turnips on 
 the table that day had the finest flavor imaginable. Cole- 
 ridge added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgewood* (of 
 whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very 
 indifferent opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on 
 which he remarked to them "He strides on so far before 
 you, that he dwindles in the distance!" Godwin had 
 once boasted to him of having carried on an argument 
 with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success; 
 Coleridge told him "If there had been a man of genius 
 in the room he would have settled the question in five 
 minutes." He asked me if I had ever seen Mary Woll- 
 stonecraft, and I said, I had once for a few moments, 
 and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's objec- 
 tions to something she advanced with quite a playful, 
 easy air. He replied, that "this was only one instance 
 of the ascendancy which people of imagination exercised 
 over those of mere intellect." He did not rate Godwin 
 very highf (this was caprice or prejudice, real or affected), 
 but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wollstonecraft's powers 
 of conversation; none at all of her talent for book-making. 
 We talked a little about Holcroft. He had been asked if 
 
 * Thomas Wedgewood was a famous maker of pottery. The works 
 he established at Burslem grew into the Five Towns described in 
 Arnold Bennett's novels. 
 
 t He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempt- 
 ing to establish the future immortality of man, "without" (as he 
 said) "knowing what Death was or what Life was" and the tone 
 in which he pronounced these two words seemed to convey a com- 
 plete image of both. (Hazlitt's note.) 
 
44 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 he was not much struck with him, and he said, he thought 
 himself in more danger of being struck by him. I com- 
 plained that he would not let me get on at all, for he re- 
 quired a definition of every the commonest word, ex- 
 claiming, " What do you mean by a sensation, Sir ? What 
 do you mean by an idea?" This, Coleridge said, was 
 barricading the road to truth; it was setting up a turn- 
 pike-gate at every step we took. I forget a great num- 
 ber of things, many more than I remember; but the day' 
 passed off pleasantly, and the next morning Mr. Cole- 
 ridge was to return to Shrewsbury. 
 
 When I came down to breakfast, I found that he had 
 just received a letter from his friend, T. Wedge wood, 
 making him an offer of 150 I. a year if he chose to waive 
 his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the 
 study of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to 
 make up his mind to close with this proposal in the 
 act of tying on one of his shoes. It threw an additional 
 damp on his departure. It took the wayward enthusiast 
 quite from us to cast him into Deva's winding vales, or by 
 the shores of old romance. Instead of living at ten miles' 
 distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting congrega- 
 tion at Shrewsbury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill 
 of Parnassus, to be a Shepherd on the Delectable Moun- 
 tains.* Alas ! I knew not the way thither, and felt very 
 little gratitude for Mr. Wedgewood's bounty. I was 
 presently relieved from this dilemma, for Mr. Coleridge, 
 asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write 
 something on a bit of card, advanced toward me with, 
 undulating step, and giving me the precious document, 
 said that that was his address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether 
 Stowey, Somersetshire; and that he should be glad to see 
 me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose, would 
 
 * Delectable Mountains, described in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress 
 as a place from which one may see the Celestial City. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 45 
 
 come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised than 
 the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in Cassandra), 
 when he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. I 
 stammered out my acknowledgments and acceptance 
 of this offer (I thought Mr. Wedge wood's annuity a trifle 
 to it) as well as I could; and this mighty business being 
 settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I accompanied 
 him six miles on the road. 
 
 It was a fine morning in the middle of winter, and he 
 talked the whole way. The scholar in Chaucer is de- 
 scribed as going 
 
 "sounding on his way." 
 
 So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in 
 passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to 
 float in air, to slide on ice. He told me in confidence 
 (going along) that he should have preached two sermons 
 before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury, one on 
 Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, show- 
 ing that he could not administer either, which would have 
 effectually disqualified him for the object in view. I 
 observed that he continually crossed me on the way by 
 shifting from one side of the footpath to the other. This 
 struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that 
 tune connect it with any instability of purpose or invol- 
 untary change of principle, as I have done since. He 
 seemed unable to keep on in a straight line. He spoke 
 slightingly of Hume (whose Essay on Miracles he said 
 was stolen from an objection started in one of South's 
 sermons Credat Judceus Appella!*) I was not very 
 much pleased at this account of Hume, for I had just 
 been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of all 
 metaphysical chokepears, his Treatise on Human Nature, 
 
 * Credat, etc. "Lot the Jew Appella believe it, I will not!" 
 Quoted from Horace. 
 
46 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 to which the Essays in point of scholastic subtlety and 
 close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer 
 reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume's 
 general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or 
 candor. He however made me amends by the manner in 
 which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on 
 his Essay on Vision as a masterpiece of analytical reason- 
 ing. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry 
 with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in 
 allusion to this author's theory of matter and spirit, and 
 saying, "Thus I confute him, Sir." Coleridge drew a 
 parallel (I don't know how he brought about the connec- 
 tion) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said 
 the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute 
 mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. 
 The one was a shop-boy's quality, the other the charac- 
 teristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler 
 as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious 
 thinker, a genuine reader of nature and his own mind. 
 He did not speak of his Analogy, but of his Sermons at 
 the Rolls' Chapel, of which I had never heard. Coleridge 
 somehow always contrived to prefer the unknown to the 
 known. In this instance he was right. The Analogy is 
 a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special- 
 pleading; the Sermons (with the preface to them) are in a 
 fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to 
 our observation of human nature, without pedantry and 
 without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few re- 
 marks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that 
 I had made a discovery on the same subject (the Natural 
 Disinterestedness of the Human Mind) and I tried to 
 explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with 
 great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself 
 understood. 
 
 I sat down to the task shortly afterward for the twenti-- 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 47 
 
 eth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make 
 clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skele- 
 ton style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half- 
 way down the second page; and, after trying in vain to 
 pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, 
 facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction in 
 which I had plunged myself for four or five years pre- 
 ceding, gave up the attempt as labor in vain, and shed 
 tears of helpless despondency on the blank, unfinished 
 paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than 
 I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang 
 of regret at not being able to express it, is better than 
 all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that 
 I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not 
 revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had 
 the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would 
 write a Sonnet to the Road between Wem and Shrewsbury, 
 and immortalize every step of it by some fond enigmat- 
 ical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had 
 ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to 
 listen to a poet, as he passed ! I remember but one other 
 topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, 
 praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but 
 condemned his sentiments, thought him a mere time- 
 serving casuist, and said that "the fact of his work on 
 Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book 
 in our universities was a disgrace to the national char- 
 acter." 
 
 We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned home- 
 ward, pensive, but much pleased. I had met with unex- 
 pected notice from a person whom I believed to have been 
 prejudiced against me. "Kind and affable to me had 
 been his condescension, and should be honored ever with 
 suitable regard." He was the first poet I had known, 
 and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had 
 
48 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 heard a great deal of his powers of conversation and was 
 not disappointed. In fact, I never met with anything 
 at all like them, either before or since. I could easily 
 credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding 
 forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening 
 or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made 
 the whole material universe look like a transparency of 
 fine words; and another story (which I believe he has 
 somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at 
 Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep 
 after dinner on a sofa, where the company found him, to 
 their no small surprise, which was increased to wonder 
 when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, 
 looked about him, and launched into a three hours' 
 description of the third heaven, of which he had had a 
 dream, very different from Mr. Southey's Vision of Judg- 
 ment, and also from that other "Vision of Judgment,"* 
 which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the Bridge-street 
 Junta, took into his especial keeping. 
 
 On my way back I had a sound in my ears it was the 
 voice of Fancy; I had a light before me it was the face 
 of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not 
 quitted my side ! Coleridge, in truth, met me half-way 
 on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been 
 won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, 
 pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. 
 During those months the chill breath of winter gave 
 me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration 
 to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, 
 lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. / 
 was to visit Coleridge in the spring. This circumstance 
 was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with 
 
 "Vision of Judgment," by Byron. This poem, which satirized 
 George the Third, was sent to Byron's publisher, Murray, who re- 
 fused to print it. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 49 
 
 all my feelings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, 
 and received an answer postponing my intended visit 
 for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to com- 
 plete my promise then. This delay did not damp, but 
 rather increased my ardor. In the meantime, I went to 
 Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mys- 
 teries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted 
 with it. I had been reading Coleridge's description of 
 England in his fine Ode on the Departing Year, and I ap- 
 plied it, con amore,* to the objects before me. That valley 
 was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new existence: 
 in the river that winds through it, my spirit was baptized 
 in the waters of Helicon ! 
 
 I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey 
 with unworn heart, and un tired feet. My way lay 
 through Worcester and Gloucester, and by Upton, 
 where I thought of Tom Jonesf and the adventure of the 
 muff. I remember getting completely wet through one 
 day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at Tewkes- 
 bury) where I sat up all night to read Paul and Virginia.l 
 Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched 
 my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the 
 books I read ! I recollect a remark of Coleridge's upon 
 this very book that nothing could show the gross indeli- 
 cacy of French manners and the entire corruption of 
 their imagination more strongly than the behavior of 
 the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from 
 a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save 
 her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist 
 him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such a 
 circumstance ? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were 
 
 * Con amore, earnestly, with love. 
 
 t Tom Jones, the hero of the novel of that name, by Henry Field- 
 ing. It was a great favorite of Hazlitt's. 
 
 \ Paid and Virginia, a novel by Bernardin St. Pierre. 
 
60 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I thought he 
 had borrowed the idea of his Poems on the Naming of 
 Places from the local inscriptions of the same kind in 
 Paul and Virginia. He did not own the obligation, and 
 stated some distinction without a difference in defense 
 to his claim to originality. Any, the slightest varia- 
 tion, would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind; 
 for whatever he added or altered would inevitably be 
 worth all that any one else had done, and contain the 
 marrow of the sentiment. I was still two days before the 
 time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken care to set out 
 early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater; 
 and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its 
 muddy river, returned to the inn and read Camilla* So 
 have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at 
 pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on 
 what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing 
 to make me happy; but wanting that have wanted every- 
 thing ! 
 
 I arrived, and was well received. The country about 
 Nether Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the 
 seashore. I saw it but the other day, after an interval 
 of twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was 
 the map of my life spread out before me, as the map of 
 the country lay at my feet ! In the afternoon, Coleridge 
 took me over to Alfoxden, a romantic old family mansion 
 of the St. Aubins, where Wordsworth lived. It was then 
 in the possession of a friend of the poet's, who gave him 
 the free use of it. Somehow, that period (the time just 
 after the French Revolution) was not a time when noth- 
 ing was given for nothing. The mind opened and a soft- 
 ness might be perceived coming over the heart of individ- 
 uals, beneath "the scales that fence" our self-interest. 
 
 * Camilla, a novel by Madame D'Arblay, better known as Fanny 
 Burney. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 51 
 
 Wordsworth himself was from home, but his sister kept 
 house, and set before us a frugal repast; and we had free 
 access to her brother's poems, the Lyrical Ballads, which 
 were still in manuscript, or in the form of Sybilline Leaves. 
 I dipped into a few of these with great satisfaction, and 
 with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an old 
 room with blue hangings, and covered with the round- 
 faced family portraits of the age of George I. and II., 
 and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park 
 that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day, could 
 
 "hear the loud stag speak." 
 
 In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I 
 felt it so) our imagination has a body to it. We are in a 
 state between sleeping and waking, and have indistinct 
 but glorious glimpses of strange shapes, and there is 
 always something to come better than what we see. As 
 in our dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and 
 reality to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas 
 are clothed, and fed, and pampered with our good spirits; 
 we breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight 
 of future years presses on the strong pulses of the heart, 
 and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth and good. 
 As we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment and 
 of hope. We are no longer wrapped in lamb's-wool, 
 lulled in Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, 
 their spirit evaporates, the sense palls; and nothing is left 
 but the phantoms, the lifeless shadows of what has been! 
 
 That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we 
 strolled out into the park, and seating ourselves on the 
 trunk of an old ash-tree that stretched along the ground, 
 Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous and musical voice, 
 the ballad of "Betty Foy."* I was not critically or 
 
 * " Betty Foy " and the other poems here mentioned are by Words- 
 worth. 
 
52 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, 
 and took the rest for granted. But in the " Thorn," the 
 "Mad Mother," and the "Complaint of a Poor Indian 
 Woman," I felt that deeper power and pathos which have 
 been since acknowledged, 
 
 "In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,' M 
 
 as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a 
 new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It 
 had to me something of the effect that arises from the 
 turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath 
 of Spring: 
 
 "While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed." f 
 
 Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that eve- 
 ning, and his voice sounded high 
 
 "Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, 
 Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute," { 
 
 as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or 
 waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonlight! He la- 
 mented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to be- 
 lieve in the traditional superstitions of the place, and 
 that there was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fact- 
 ness, a clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in 
 his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a spirit 
 that descended to him through the air; it sprung out of 
 the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green 
 spray, on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however 
 (if I remember right), that this objection must be con- 
 fined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry 
 had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his 
 
 * From Pope's Essay on Man. f From Thomson's Seasons. 
 
 J From Milton's Paradise Lost. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 53 
 
 soul seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to 
 discover truth by intuition, rather than by deduction. 
 The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at 
 Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He an- 
 swered in some degree to his friend's description of him, 
 but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was 
 quaintly dressed (according to the costume of that un- 
 constrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped 
 pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in 
 his gait, not unlike his own Peter Bell. There was a 
 severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a 
 fire in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more 
 than the outward appearance), an intense, high, narrow 
 forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong 
 purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to 
 laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with 
 the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face. 
 Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits; but he was 
 teased into making it regular and heavy: Haydon's 
 head of him, introduced into the Entrance of Christ into 
 Jerusalem, is the most like his drooping weight of thought 
 and expression. He sat down and talked very naturally 
 and freely, with a mixture of clear, gushing accents in 
 his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tinc- 
 ture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. He 
 instantly began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire 
 cheese on the table, and said, triumphantly, that "his 
 marriage with experience had not been so productive as 
 Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good 
 things of this life." He had been to see the Castk Specter 
 by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very 
 well. He said "it fitted the taste of the audience like a 
 glove." This ad captandum * merit was however by no 
 means a recommendation of it, according to the severe 
 * Ad captandum, to catch the crowd. 
 
54 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 principles of the new school, which reject rather than 
 court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the 
 low, latticed window, said, "How beautifully the sun 
 sets on that yellow bank!" I thought within myself, 
 "With what eyes these poets see nature !" and ever after, 
 when I saw the sunset stream upon the objects facing it, 
 conceived I had made a discovery, or thanked Mr. Words- 
 worth for having made one for me ! 
 
 We went over to Alfoxden again the day following, 
 and Wordsworth read us the story of Peter Bell in the 
 open air; and the comment upon it by his face and voice 
 was very different from that of some later critics ! What- 
 ever might be thought of the poem, "his face was as a 
 book where men might read strange matters," * and he 
 announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There 
 is a ckaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge and Words- 
 worth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms 
 the judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves 
 by making habitual use of this ambiguous accompani- 
 ment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and 
 varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and in- 
 ternal. The one might be termed more dramatic, the 
 other more lyrical. Coleridge has told me that he him- 
 self liked to compose in walking over uneven ground, or 
 breaking through the straggling branches of a copse 
 wood; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) 
 walking up and down a straight gravel walk, or in some 
 spot where the continuity of his verse met with no col- 
 lateral interruption. Returning that same evening, I 
 got into a metaphysical argument with Wordswerth, 
 while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the 
 nightingale to his sister, in which we neither of us suc- 
 ceeded in making ourselves perfectly clear and intell'^i- 
 Ue. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether Stowey f Vi 
 * From Macbeth, I, v, 63. 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 55 
 
 in the neighborhood, generally devoting the afternoons to 
 a delightful chat in an arbor made of bark by the poet's 
 friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and 
 listening to the bees humming round us while we quaffed 
 our flip. 
 
 It was agreed, among other things, that we should 
 make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. 
 We pet off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and 
 I. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, one of 
 those who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse as 
 flies are to honey, or bees in swarming- time to the sound 
 of a brass pan. He "followed in the chase like a dog who 
 hunts, not like one that made up the cry." * He had on 
 a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low 
 in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a 
 drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a 
 sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running foot- 
 man by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or 
 Bound that fell from Coleridge's lips. He told me his 
 private opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He 
 scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an opinion the 
 whole way: yet of the three, had I to choose during that 
 journey, I would be John Chester. He afterward fol- 
 lowed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean 
 philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any 
 of their categories. When he sat down at table with his 
 idol, John's felicity was complete; Sir Walter Scott's, or 
 Mr. Blackwood's, when they sat down at the same table 
 with the king, was not more so. We passed Dunster on 
 our right, a small town between the brow of a hill and the 
 Bea. I remember eying it wistfully as it lay below us: 
 contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked as 
 clear, as pure, as embrowned and ideal as any landscape I 
 have seen since, of Caspar Poussin's or Domenichmo'a. 
 * From Othello, II, iii, 370. 
 
56 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 We had a long day's march (our feet kept time to the 
 echoes of Coleridge's tongue) through Minehead and by 
 the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not 
 reach till near midnight, and where we had some diffi- 
 culty in making a lodgment. We, however, knocked the 
 people of the house up at last, and we were repaid for our 
 apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of 
 fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had 
 been splendid. We walked for miles and miles on dark 
 brown heaths overlooking the Channel, with the Welsh 
 hills beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered 
 valleys close by the seaside, with a smuggler's face scowl- 
 ing by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a 
 path winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like 
 a monk's shaven crown, from one of which I pointed out 
 to Coleridge's notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very 
 edge of the horizon, and within the red-orbed disk of the 
 setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the Ancient 
 Manner. 
 
 At Linton the character of the seacoast becomes more 
 marked and rugged. There is a place called the Valley 
 of Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for 
 it), bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with 
 rocky caverns beneath, into which the waves dash, and 
 where the sea-gull forever wheels its screaming flight. 
 On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, 
 as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind 
 these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like 
 the Giant's Causeway. A thunder-storm came on while 
 we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running out bare- 
 headed to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the 
 Valley of Rocks, but as if in spite, the clouds only mut- 
 tered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing 
 drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were 
 to have made this place the scene of a prose-tale, which 
 
WILLIAM HAZLITT 57 
 
 was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, 
 the Death of Abel, but they had relinquished the design. 
 In the morning of the second day, we breakfasted luxuri- 
 ously in an old-fashioned parlor on tea, toast, eggs, and 
 honey, in the very sight of the beehives from which it 
 had been taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild 
 flowers that had produced it. 
 
 On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's Georgics, 
 but not well. I do not think he had much feeling for 
 the classical or elegant.* It was in this room that we 
 found a little worn-out copy of the Seasons, lying in a 
 window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, "That is 
 true fame!" He said Thomson was a great poet, rather 
 than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his 
 thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best 
 modern poet. He said the Lyrical Ballads were an ex- 
 periment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, 
 to see how far the public taste would endure poetry written 
 in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been 
 attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical 
 diction, and making use only of such words as had prob- 
 ably been common in the most ordinary language since 
 the days of Henry II. Some comparison was introduced 
 between Shakespeare and Milton. He said "he hardly 
 knew which to prefer. Shakespeare appeared to him a 
 mere stripling in the art; he was as tall and as strong, 
 with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he never 
 appeared to have come to man's estate; or if he had, he 
 
 * He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this 
 time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account 
 at present of the Cartoons at Pisa by Buffamalco and others; of one 
 in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, 
 and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, 
 while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. 
 He would, of course, understand so broad and fine a moral as this 
 at any time. (Hazlitt's note.) 
 
58 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 would not have been a man, but a monster." He spoke 
 with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. 
 He did not like the versification of the latter. He ob- 
 served that "the ears of these couplet writers might be 
 charged with having short memories, that could not re- 
 tain the harmony of whole passages." He thought little 
 of Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; 
 and a much higher opinion of Burke as an orator and 
 politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He, however, thought 
 him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some 
 of our elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. 
 He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get 
 him to enter into the merits of Caleb Williams* In short, 
 he was profound and discriminating with respect to those 
 authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment 
 fair play; capricious, pre verse, and prejudiced in his 
 antipathies and distastes. 
 
 We loitered on the "ribbed sea sands," in such talk as 
 this a whole morning, and, I recollect, met with a curi- 
 ous seaweed, of which John Chester told us the country 
 name ! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy 
 that had been drowned the day before, and that they had 
 tried to save him at the risk of their own lives. He said 
 "he did not know how it was that they ventured, but, 
 Sir, we have a nature toward one another." This expres- 
 sion, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of 
 that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with 
 Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an argument of 
 mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of 
 ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind 
 of a man's foot, not because it was part of a former im- 
 pression of a man's foot (for it was quite new), but be- 
 cause it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented 
 to the justness of this distinction (which I have explained 
 
 * Caleb Williams, a political novel by Godwin, famous in its day. 
 
\\LLLLAM HAZll'lT 59 
 
 at length elsewhere, for the benefit of the curious) and 
 John Chester listened; not from any interest in the sub- 
 ject, but because he was astonished that I should be able 
 to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did not already 
 know. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge 
 remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the valleys 
 where, a few evenings before, we had seen the lights 
 gleaming through the dark. 
 
 In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set 
 out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It 
 was a Sunday morning, and he was to preach that day 
 for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had pre- 
 pared anything for the occasion? He said he had not 
 even thought of the text, but should as soon as we parted. 
 I did not go to hear him this was a fault but we met 
 in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a 
 long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a 
 well side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our 
 thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive 
 lines of his tragedy of Remorse ; which I must say became 
 his mouth and that occasion better than they, some years 
 after, did Mr. Elliston's and the Drury-lane * boards 
 
 "Oh memory! shield me from the world's poor strife, 
 And give those scenes thine everlasting life." 
 
 I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which 
 period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest, in 
 Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, un- 
 like his setting out. It was not till some time after that 
 I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always 
 appears to me (as I first saw him) with a commonplace 
 book under his arm, and the first with a bon mot in his 
 mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Hoi- 
 croft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely 
 
 * Drury Lane, a famous London theatre. Elliston acted there. 
 
60 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 which was the best M an as he was, or man as he is to be. 
 "Give me," says Lamb, "man as he is not to be." This 
 saying was the beginning of a friendship between us which 
 I believe still continues. Enough of this for the present. 
 
 "But there is matter for another rime, 
 And I to this may add a second tale." 
 
LEIGH HUNT 
 
 ON GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS 
 
Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was a London boy ;~ fee received 
 his early education in the Christ's Hospital School, as 
 did Charles Lamb. He very early began to write verse, 
 which his father published under the title, A Collection of 
 Poems Written between the Ages of Twelve and Sixteen. 
 In 1808 Leigh ^and his brother John started a newspaper 
 called the Examiner. For certain articles in this criti- 
 cising the Prince Regent, the editors were prosecuted 
 and imprisoned for two years. Here they continued 
 their writing and entertained their friends; Thomas 
 Moore, Byron, and John Keats came to see them. After 
 Hunt's release he continued his literary work, writing 
 criticism, book reviews, essays, plays, and poems. In 1822 
 he went to Italy to edit The Liberal, at a safe distance 
 from England. Charles Dickens in Bleak House carica- 
 tured Hunt as Harold Skimpole, magnifying some of his 
 weaknesses.^ 1 Hunt's best-known works are his Autobi- 
 ography, an interesting book, and the volumes of essays 
 entitled, Men, Women, and Books and Table Talk. While 
 he does not rank among the greater English essayists, his 
 writing has a freedom and spontaneity that make it very 
 pleasant reading. 
 
LEIGH HUNT 
 
 ON GETTING UP ON COLD MORNINGS 
 
 (From the Examiner) 
 
 An Italian author Giulio Cordara, a Jesuit has 
 written a poem upon insects, which he begins by insist- 
 ing, that those troublesome and abominable little animals 
 were created for our annoyance, and that they were cer- 
 tainly not inhabitants of Paradise. We of the north may 
 dispute this piece of theology; but on the other hand, it 
 is as clear as the snow on the housetops, that Adam was 
 not under the necessity of shaving; and that when Eve 
 walked out of her delicious bower, she did not step upon 
 ice three inches thick. 
 
 Some people say it is a very easy thing to get up of a 
 cold morning. You have only, they tell you, to take the 
 resolution; and the thing is done. This may be very true; 
 just as a boy at school has only to take a flogging, and 
 the thing is over. But we have not at all made up our 
 minds upon it; and we find it a very pleasant exercise to 
 <iiscuss the matter, candidly, before we get up. This, 
 at least, is not idling, though it may be lying. It affords 
 an excellent answer to those who ask how lying in bed can 
 be indulged in by a reasoning being, a rational crea- 
 ture. How? Why, with the argument calmly at work 
 in one's head, and the clothes over one's shoulder. Oh 
 it is a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour. 
 
 If these people would be more charitable they would 
 get on with their argument better. But they are apt 
 to reason so ill, and to assert so dogmatically, that one 
 could wish to have them stand round one's bed, of a 
 
 63 
 
64 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 bitter morning, and lie before their faces. They ought 
 to hear both sides of the bed, the inside and out. If 
 they cannot entertain themselves with their own thoughts 
 for half an hour or so, it is not the fault of those who can. 
 Candid inquiries into one's decumbency, besides the 
 greater or less privileges to be allowed a man in propor- 
 tion to his ability of keeping early hours, the work given 
 his faculties, etc., will at least concede their due merits 
 to such representations as the following.^ In the first 
 place, says the injured but calm appealer,^! have been 
 warm all night, and find my system in a state perfectly 
 suitable to a warm-blooded animal. , To get out of this 
 state into the cold, besides the inharmonious and un- 
 critical abruptness of the transition, is so unnatural to 
 such a creature, that the poets, refining upon the tor- 
 tures of the damned, make one of their greatest agonies 
 consist in being suddenly transported from heat to cold, 
 from fire to ice. They are "haled" out of their "beds," 
 says Milton, by "harpy-footed furies," fellows who 
 come to call them. On my first movement toward the 
 anticipation of getting up I find that such parts of the 
 sheets and bolster as are exposed to the air of the room 
 are stone-cold. On opening my eyes, the first thing that 
 meets them us my own breath rolling forth, as if in the 
 open air, like smoke out of a chimney. Think of this 
 symptom. Then I turn my eyes sideways and see the 
 window all frozen over. Think of that. Then the ser- 
 vant comes in. "It is very cold this morning, is it 
 not? "-"Very cold, sir."" Very cold indeed, isn't it?" 
 "Very cold indeed, sir." "More than usually so, 
 isn't it, even for this weather?" (Here the servant's 
 wit and good nature are put to a considerable test, and 
 the inquirer lies on thorns for the answer.) "Why, 
 sir ... I think it is." (Good creature ! There is not 
 a better or more truth-telling servant going.) "I must 
 
LEIGH HUNT 65 
 
 rise, however get me some warm water." Here comes 
 a fine interval between the departure of the servant and 
 the arrival of the hot water; during which, of course, it is 
 of "no use" to get up. The hot water comes. "Is it 
 quite hot?" "Yes, sir." "Perhaps too hot for shaving; 
 I must wait a little ? " " No, sir; it will just do." (There 
 is an overnice propriety sometimes, an officious zeal of 
 virtue, a little troublesome.) "Oh the shirt you must 
 air my clean shirt; linen gets very damp this weather." 
 "Yes, sir." Here another delicious five minutes. A 
 knock at the door. "Oh, the shirt very well. My 
 stockings I think the stockings had better be aired too." 
 "Very well, sir." Here another interval. At length 
 everything is ready, except myself. 
 
 I now, continues our incumbent (a happy word, by 
 the by, for a country vicar) I now cannot help thinking 
 a good deal who can? upon the unnecessary and vil- 
 lainous custom of shaving: it is a thing so unmanly (here 
 I nestle closer) so effeminate (here I recoil from an un- 
 lucky step into the colder part of the bed). No wonder 
 that the Queen of France took part with the rebels against 
 that degenerate king, her husband, who first affronted 
 her smooth visage with a face like her own. The Em- 
 peror Julian never showed the luxuriancy of his genius 
 to better advantage than in reviving the flowing beard. 
 Look at Cardinal Bembo's picture at Michael Angelo's 
 ftt XitHn'q at Shakespeare's at. FlotefaeT*s at Spen- 
 ser'sat Chaucer's at Alfred's at Plato's I could 
 name a great man for every tick of my watch. Look at 
 the Turks, a grave and otiose people. Thinlr nf-ILitew*" 
 Al Unnnhirl nTTrf-TrrrfTrrlrlrin Pmmr Thinlr of Wortley- 
 Montague, the worthy son of his mother, above the preju- 
 dice of his time. Look at the Persian gentlemen, whom 
 one is ashamed of meeting about the suburbs, their dress 
 and appearance are so much finer than our own. Lastly, 
 
66 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 think of the razor itself how totally opposed to every 
 sensation of bed how cold, how edgy, how hard! how 
 utterly different from anything like the warm and circling 
 amplitude, which 
 
 Sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses.* 
 
 Add to this, benumbed fingers, which may help you to 
 cut yourself, a quivering body, a frozen towel, and a ewer 
 full of ice; and he that says there is nothing to oppose 
 in all this, only shows that he has no merit in opposing 
 it. 
 
 Thomson the poet, who exclaims in his Seasons 
 
 Falsely luxurious ! Will not man awake? 
 
 used to lie in bed till noon, because he said he had no 
 motive in getting up. He could imagine the good of 
 rising; but then he could also imagine the good of lying 
 still; and his exclamation, it must be allowed, was made 
 upon summer-time, not winter. We must proportion 
 the argument to the individual character. A money- 
 getter may be drawn out of his bed by three or four pence; 
 but this will not suffice for a student. A proud man may 
 say, "What shall I think of myself, if I don't get up?" 
 but the more humble one will be content to waive this 
 prodigious notion of himself, out of respect to his kindly 
 bed. ; The mechanical man shall get up without any ado 
 at all; and so shall the barometer. An ingenious Her in 
 bed will find hard matter of discussion even on the score 
 of health and longevity. He will ask us for our proofs 
 and precedents of the ill effects of lying later in cold 
 weather; and sophisticate much on the advantages of an 
 even temperature of body; of the natural propensity 
 (pretty universal) to have one's way; and of the animals 
 
 * From Macbeth, I, vi, 3. 
 
LEIGH HUNT 67 
 
 that roll themselves up and sleep all the winter. As to 
 longevity, he will ask whether the longest is of necessity 
 the best; and whether Holborn is the handsomest street 
 in London. 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 
 
 ON A LAZY IDLE BOY 
 
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) one of the 
 leading writers of the Victorian age, was born in Calcutta; 
 at six he was sent to England to be educated. He entered 
 the Charterhouse school in London, a place that appears 
 as Greyfriars in his novel Pendennis. He attended Trin- 
 ity College, Cambridge, but did not graduate. He spent 
 some years abroad, partly in rambling over Europe, partly 
 in studying art in Paris. His ability in this direction 
 was shown later in the illustrations he made for his own 
 books. He learned German at Weimar; the essay On a 
 Lazy Idle Boy, contains a reminiscence of this period. 
 On his return to England he became a contributor to vari- 
 ous magazines, writing sketches of Paris and Irish life. 
 His first novel, The Great Hoggarty Diamond, appeared 
 in 1841, but it was not until the publication of Vanity 
 Fair (1847) that he became famous as a novelist. He de- 
 livered a course of lectures on English history; his success 
 in this field led him to make lecture tours to America in 
 1852 and 1855. His lectures were later published in two 
 volumes, English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century and 
 The Four Georges. He was the first editor of the Corn- 
 hill Magazine, and contributed to it a series of essays en- 
 titled The Roundabout Papers. These reveal the person- 
 ality of a man whom Thomas Carlyle a man not given 
 to sentiment always called "dear old Thackeray/' Easy 
 in style, yet never undignified; worldly-wise, yet not 
 cynical; shrewd, but not sarcastic, the essays are the 
 best talk of one of the best of gentlemen. 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 
 
 ON A LAZY IDLE BOY 
 
 (From the Roundabout Papers) 
 
 I had occasion to pass a week in the autumn in the 
 little old town of Coire or Chur, in the Orisons,* where 
 lies buried that very ancient British king, saint, and 
 martyr, Lucius,f who founded the Church of St. Peter, 
 on Cornhill. Few people note the church nowadays, and 
 fewer ever heard of the saint. In the cathedral at Chur, 
 his statue appears surrounded by other sainted persons 
 of his family. With tight red breeches, a Roman habit, 
 a curly brown beard, and a neat little gilt crown and 
 sceptre, he stands, a very comely and cheerful image: 
 and from what I may call his peculiar position with re- 
 gard to Cornhill, I beheld this figure of St. Lucius with 
 more interest than I should have bestowed upon person- 
 ages who, hierarchically, are, I dare say, his superiors. 
 
 The pretty little city stands, so to speak, at the end 
 of the world of the world of to-day, the world of rapid 
 motion, and rushing railways, and the commerce and 
 intercourse of men. From the northern gate, the iron 
 road stretches away to Zurich, to Basle, to Paris, to 
 home. From the old southern barriers, before which a 
 
 * Grisons, a canton of Switzerland. Chur is the capital. 
 
 fStow quotes the inscription still extant "from the table fast 
 chained in St. Peter's Church, Cornhill"; and says, "he was after 
 some chronicle buried at London, and after some chronicle buried 
 at Glowcester" but, oh! these incorrect chroniclers! when Alban 
 Butler, in the Lives of the Saints, v. 12, and Murray's Handbook, 
 and the sacristan at Chur, all say Lucius was killed there, and I 
 saw his tomb with my own eyes. (Thackeray's note.) 
 
 71 
 
72 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 little river rushes, and around which stretch the crumbling 
 battlements of the ancient town, the road bears the slow 
 diligence or lagging vetturino * by the shallow Rhine, 
 through the awful gorges of the Via Mala, and presently 
 over the Spliigen to the shores of Como. 
 
 I have seldom seen a place more quaint, pretty, calm, 
 and pastoral, than this remote little Chur. What need 
 have the inhabitants for walls and ramparts, except to 
 build summer-houses, to trail vines, and hang clothes to 
 dry on them ? No enemies approach the great mouldering 
 gates: only at morn and even the cows come lowing past 
 them, the village maidens chatter merrily round the 
 fountains, and babble like the ever-voluble stream that 
 flows under the old walls. The schoolboys, with book 
 and satchel, in smart uniforms, march up to the gym- 
 nasium, f and return thence at their stated time. There 
 is one coffee-house in the town, and I see one old gentle- 
 man goes to it. There are shops with no customers 
 seemingly, and the lazy tradesmen look out of their little 
 windows at the single stranger sauntering by. There is 
 a stall with baskets of queer little black grapes and apples, 
 and a pretty brisk trade with half-a-dozen urchins stand- 
 ing round. But, beyond this, there is scarce any talk or 
 movement in the street. There's nobody at the book- 
 shop. "If you will have the goodness to come again in 
 an hour," says the banker, with his mouth full of dinner 
 at one o'clock, "you can have the money." There is 
 nobody at the hotel, save the good landlady, the kind 
 waiters, the brisk young cook who ministers to you. No- 
 body is in the Protestant church (Oh ! strange sight, the 
 two confessions are here at peace !) nobody in the Catho- 
 lic church: until the sacristan, from his snug abode in the 
 cathedral close, espies the traveller eying the monsters 
 
 * Vetturino, a four-wheeled carriage. 
 
 t Gymnasium, a school which prepares for the university. 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 73 
 
 and pillars before the old shark-toothed arch of his cathe- 
 dral, and comes out (with a view to remuneration possi- 
 bly) and opens the gate, and shows you the venerable 
 church, and the queer old relics in the sacristy, and the 
 ancient vestments (a black velvet cope, amongst other 
 robes, as fresh as yesterday, and presented by that no- 
 torious "pervert/' Henry of Navarre and France), and 
 the statue of St. Lucius who built St. Peter's Church, 
 on Cornhill. 
 
 What a quiet, kind, quaint, pleasant, pretty old town ! 
 Has it been asleep these hundreds and hundreds of years, 
 and is the brisk young Prince of the Sidereal Realms in 
 his screaming car drawn by his snorting steel elephant 
 coming to waken it? Time was when there must have 
 been life and bustle and commerce here. Those vast, 
 venerable walls were not made to keep out cows, but 
 men-at-arms, led by fierce captains, who prowled about 
 the gates, and robbed the traders as they passed in and 
 out with their bales, their goods, their pack-horses, and 
 their wains. Is the place so dead that even the clergy of 
 the different denominations can't quarrel? Why, seven 
 or eight, or a dozen, or fifteen hundred years ago (they 
 haven't the register of St. Peter's up to that remote period. 
 I dare say it was burned in the fire of London) a dozen 
 hundred years ago, when there was some life in the town, 
 St. Lucius was stoned here on account of theological dif- 
 ferences, after founding our church in Cornhill. 
 
 There was a sweet pretty river walk we used to take 
 in the evening and mark the mountains round glooming 
 with a deeper purple; the shades creeping up the golden 
 walls; the river brawling, the cattle calling, the maids 
 and chatterboxes round the fountains babbling and bawl- 
 ing; and several times in the course of our sober walks 
 we overtook a lazy slouching boy, or hobbledehoy, with a 
 rusty coat, and trousers not too long, and big feet trailing 
 
74 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 lazily one after the other, and large lazy hands dawdling 
 from out the tight sleeves, and in the lazy hands a little 
 book, which my lad held up to his face, and which I dare 
 say so charmed and ravished him, that he was blind to the 
 beautiful sights around him; unmindful, I would venture 
 to lay any wager, of the lessons he had to learn for to- 
 morrow; forgetful of mother waiting supper, and father 
 preparing a scolding; absorbed utterly and entirely in 
 his book. 
 
 What was it that so fascinated the young student, as 
 he stood by the river shore? Not the Pons Asinorum.* 
 What book so delighted him, and blinded him to all the 
 rest of the world, so that he did not care to see the apple- 
 woman with her fruit, or (more tempting still to sons of 
 Eve) the pretty girls with then* apple-cheeks, who laughed 
 and prattled round the fountain! What was the book? 
 Do you suppose it was Livy, or the Greek grammar? 
 No; it was a NOVEL that you were reading, you lazy, not 
 very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy! It was 
 D'Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, or almost 
 succeeding in keeping Charles the First's head on. It was 
 the prisoner of the Chateau d'lf cutting himself out of 
 the sack fifty feet under water (I mention the novels I 
 like best myself novels without love or talking, or any 
 of that sort of nonsense, but containing plenty of fight- 
 ing, escaping, robbery, and rescuing) cutting himself 
 out of the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte 
 Cristo. O Dumas! O thou brave, kind, gallant old 
 Alexandre ! I hereby offer thee homage, and give thee 
 thanks for many pleasant hours. I have read thee 
 (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours of a happy day, 
 
 * Pons Asinorum, literally "bridge of asses," an old name for the 
 proposition in geometry which sets forth that if a triangle has two 
 sides of equal length the angles opposite those sides are also equal. 
 This is the first difficult proposition in geometry, hence its name. 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 75 
 
 and had the ladies of the house fighting for the volumes. 
 Be assured that lazy boy was reading Dumas (or I will 
 go so far as to let the reader here pronounce the eulogium, 
 or insert the name of his favorite author); and as for the 
 anger, or it may be, the reverberations of his schoolmaster, 
 or the remonstrances of his father, or the tender plead- 
 ings of his mother that he should not let the supper grow 
 cold I don't believe the scapegrace cared one fig. No ! 
 figs are sweet, but fictions are sweeter. 
 
 Have you ever seen a score of white-bearded, white- 
 robed warriors, or grave seniors of the city, seated at 
 the gate of Jaffa or Beyrout, and listening to the story- 
 teller reciting his marvels out of Antar or the Arabian 
 Nights f I was once present when a young gentleman at 
 the table put a tart away from him, and said to his neigh- 
 bor, the Younger Son (with rather a fatuous air): "I 
 never eat sweets." 
 
 "Not eat sweets! and do you know why?" says T. 
 
 "Because I am past that kind of thing," says the young 
 gentleman. 
 
 "Because you are a glutton and a sot !" cries the Elder 
 (and Juvenis winces a little). "All people who have 
 natural, healthy appetites, love sweets; all children, all 
 women, all Eastern people, whose tastes are not corrupted 
 by gluttony and strong drink." And a plateful of rasp- 
 berries and cream disappeared before the philosopher. 
 
 You take the allegory? Novels are sweets. All people 
 with healthy literary appetites love them almost all 
 women; a vast number of clever, hardheaded men. 
 Why, one of the most learned physicians in England said 
 to me only yesterday, "I have just read So-and-So for 
 the second time" (naming one of Jones's exquisite fic- 
 tions). Judges, bishops, chancellors, mathematicians, are 
 notorious novel-readers; as well as young boys and sweet 
 girls, and their kind tender mothers. Who has not read 
 
76 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 about Eldon, and how he cried over novels every night 
 when he was not at whist? 
 
 As for that lazy naughty boy at Chur, I doubt whether 
 he will like novels when he is thirty years of age. He 
 is taking too great a glut of them now. He is eating jelly 
 until he will be sick. He will know most plots by the 
 time he is twenty, so that he will never be surprised when 
 the Stranger turns out to be the rightful earl, when the 
 old Waterman, throwing off his beggarly gabardine, shows 
 his stars and the collars of his various orders, and clasp- 
 ing Antonia to his bosom, proves himself to be the prince, 
 her long-lost father. He will recognize the novelist's 
 same characters, though they appear in red-heeled pumps 
 and ailes-de-pigeon, or the garb of the nineteenth century. 
 He will get weary of sweets, as boys of private schools 
 grow (or used to grow, for I have done growing some little 
 time myself, and the practice may have ended too) 
 as private schoolboys used to grow tired of the pudding 
 before their mutton at dinner. 
 
 And pray what is the moral of this apologue? The 
 moral I take to be this: the appetite for novels extend- 
 ing to the end of the world; far away in the frozen deep, 
 the sailors reading them to one another during the end- 
 less night; far away under the Syrian stars, the solemn 
 sheiks and elders hearkening to the poet as he recites his 
 tales; far away in the Indian camps, where the soldiers 
 
 listen to 's tales, or 's, after the hot day's march; 
 
 far away in little Chur yonder where the lazy boy pores 
 over the fond volume, and drinks it in with all his eyes : 
 the demand being what we know it is, the merchant must 
 supply it, as he will supply saddles and pale ale for Bom- 
 bay or Calcutta. 
 
 But as surely as the cadet drinks too much pale ale, 
 it will disagree with him; and so surely, dear youth, will 
 too much novels cloy on thee. I wonder, do novel- 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 77 
 
 writers themselves read many novels? If you go into 
 Gunter's you don't see those charming young ladies (to 
 whom I present my most respectful compliments) eating 
 tarts and ices, but at the proper eventide they have good 
 plain wholesome tea and bread and butter. Can any- 
 body tell me does the author of the Tale of Two Cities 
 read novels ? does the author of the Tower of London de- 
 vour romances? does the dashing Harry Lorrequer de- 
 light in Plain or Ringlets or Spunge's Sporting Tourf 
 Does the veteran, from whose flowing pen we had the 
 books which delighted our young days, Darnley, and 
 Richelieu, and Delorme* relish the works of Alexandre 
 the Great, and thrill over the Three Musqueteersf Does 
 the accomplished author of The Caxtons read the other 
 tales in Blackwoodf (For example, that ghost-story 
 printed last August, and which for my part, though I 
 read it in the public reading-room at the " Pavilion Ho- 
 tel" at Folkestone, I protest frightened me so that I 
 scarce dared look over my shoulder.) Does Uncle Tom 
 admire Adam Bede; and does the author of the Vicar 
 of Wrexhill laugh over The Warden and the Three Clerks f 
 Dear youth of ingenuous countenance and ingenuous 
 pudor ! f I make no doubt that the eminent parties above 
 named all partake of novels in moderation eat jellies 
 but mainly nourish themselves upon wholesome roast 
 and boiled. 
 
 Here, dear youth aforesaid! our Cornhill Magazine 
 owners strive to provide thee with facts as well as notion; 
 and though it does not become them to brag of their 
 
 * By the way, what a strange fate is that which befell the veteran 
 novelist! He was appointed her Majesty's Consul-General in 
 Venice, the only city in Europe where the famous "Two Cavaliers" 
 cannot by any possibility be seen riding together. (Thackeray's 
 note.) The reference is to G. P. R. James, whose romantic novels 
 usually opened with a description of two cavaliers riding togetker. 
 
 t Pudor (Lat.), shyness, modesty. 
 
78 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 Ordinary, at least they invite thee to a table where thou 
 shalt sit in good company.* That story of the Fox f was 
 written by one of the gallant seamen who sought for poor 
 Franklin under the awful Arctic Night: that account of 
 China J is told by the man of all the empire most likely 
 to know of what he speaks: those pages regarding Volun- 
 teers come from an honored hand that has borne the 
 sword in a hundred famous fields, and pointed the British 
 guns in the greatest siege in the world. 
 
 Shall we point out others? We are fellow-travellers, 
 and shall make acquaintance as the voyage proceeds, 
 In the Atlantic steamers, on the first day out (and on 
 high and holy days subsequently), the jellies set down on 
 table are richly ornamented; medioque in fonte leporum || 
 rise the American and British flags nobly emblazoned in 
 tin. As the passengers remark this pleasing phenomenon, 
 the Captain no doubt improves the occasion by expressing 
 a hope, to his right and left, that the flag of Mr. Bull 
 and his younger Brother may always float side by side 
 in friendly emulation. Novels having been previously 
 compared to jellies here are two (one perhaps not en- 
 tirely saccharine, and flavored with an amari aliquid^ 
 very distasteful to some palates) two novels** under two 
 flags, the one that ancient ensign which has hung before 
 
 * This essay appeared in the first issue of the ComhUl Magazine, 
 of which Thackeray was editor. In the following sentences he men- 
 tions the chief articles in that number of the magazine. 
 
 t The Search for Sir John Franklin. (From the Private Journal 
 of an Officer of the Fox.) 
 
 J The Chinese and the Outer Barbarians. By Sir John Bowring. 
 
 $ Our Volunteers. By Sir John Burgoyne. 
 
 li In the midst of this abundance of attractive things. 
 
 1T Amari aliquid, something bitter, referring to the occasional 
 satire in Thackeray's novels. 
 
 '* In this issue of the Cornhill appeared the opening chapters of 
 Thackeray's Lovel the Widower and of Anthony Trollope's Framley 
 Parsonage. 
 
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 79 
 
 the well-known booth of Vanity Fair ; the other that fresh 
 and handsome standard which has lately been hoisted 
 on Barchester Towers. Pray, sir, or madam, to which 
 dish will you be helped? 
 
 So have I seen my friends Captain Lang and Captain 
 Comstock press their guests to partake of the fare on 
 that memorable "First day out," when there is no man, 
 I think, who sits down but asks a blessing on his voyage, 
 and the good ship dips over the bar, and bounds away 
 into the blue watar. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), one of the best- 
 known English novelists, was born in Edinburgh. His 
 father was a builder of lighthouses and wished his son 
 to follow his profession, but the boy's health forbade 
 this. He attended Edinburgh University, where he was 
 not a very diligent student but a tremendous reader. He 
 began the study of law, although his heart was not in it: 
 as he tells us in this essay, he desired of all things to be- 
 come a writer. In this he was handicapped by his poor 
 health; an inherited tendency to consumption made him 
 an invalid practically all his life. In search of health he 
 went to the south of France, to Switzerland, to the Adiron- 
 dacks, and finally to the South Sea islands, where he died 
 in 1894. 
 
 The beginning of his literary work is told in this essay. 
 He made a canoe trip through Holland and Belgium, 
 and described it in An Inland Voyage ; a walking tour in 
 France gave material for Travels with a Donkey. Then 
 followed two volumes of essays, Virginibus Puerisque 
 (To Girls and Boys), and Familiar Studies of Men and 
 Books. His first novel, Treasure Island, published in 
 1883, made him famous. It has taken its place beside 
 Robinson Crusoe as one of the best boys' books ever written. 
 Other novels of his are Kidnapped, David Balfour, The 
 Master of Ballantrae, and The Weir of Hermiston. He 
 wrote a number of notable short stories, of which the 
 best known is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ; also a volume of 
 poems, A Child's Garden of Verses. 
 
 In his essays Stevenson shows himself one of the great 
 masters of style. Clear, flexible, musical, it is a perfect 
 medium for conveying his thought. How he acquired 
 this style is told in the paper A College Magazine. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 A COLLEGE MAGAZINE 
 
 (From Memories and Portraits) 
 I 
 
 All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and 
 pointed out for the pattern of an idler; and yet I was 
 always busy on my own private end, which was to learn 
 to write. I kept always two books in my pocket, one to 
 read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy 
 fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat 
 by the roadside, I would either read, or a pencil and a 
 penny version-book would be in my hand, to note down 
 the features of the scene or commemorate some halting 
 stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus 
 wrote was for no ulterior use, it was written consciously 
 for practice. It was not so much that I wished to be an 
 author (though I wished that too) as that I had vowed 
 that I would learn to write. That was a proficiency 
 that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men 
 learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Description 
 was the principal field of my exercise; for to any one 
 with senses there is always something worth describing, 
 and town and country are but one continuous subject. 
 But I worked in other ways also; often accompanied 
 my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played 
 many parts; and often exercise^ myself in writing down 
 ions from memory./ 
 
 This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries 
 I sometimes tried to keep, but always and very speedily 
 
 83 
 
84 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 discarded, finding them a school of posturing and melan- 
 choly self-deception. And yet this was not the most 
 efficient part of my training. Good though it was, it 
 only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) 
 the lower and less intellectual elements of the art, the 
 choice of the essential note and the right word: things 
 that to a happier constitution had perhaps come by na- 
 ture. And regarded as training, it had one grave de- 
 fect; for it set me no standard of achievement. So that 
 there was perhaps more profit, as there was certainly 
 more effort, in my secret labors at home. Whenever I 
 read a book or a passage that particularly pleased me, 
 in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with 
 propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous 
 force or some happy distinction in the style, I must sit 
 down at once and set myself to ape that quality. I was 
 unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried again, and was 
 again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at least 
 in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in 
 harmony, in construction, and in the co-ordination of 
 parts. I have thus played the sedulous ape to Hazlitt, 
 to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to 
 Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire, and 
 to Obermann. I remember one of these monkey tricks, 
 which was called The Vanity of Morals : it was to have 
 had a second part, The Vanity of Knowledge; and as I 
 had neither morality nor scholarship, the names wero 
 apt; but the second part was never attempted, and the 
 first part was written (which is my reason for recalling 
 it, ghostlike, from its ashes) no less than three times: 
 first in the manner of Hazlitt, second in the manner of 
 Ruskin, who had cast on me a passing spell, and third, 
 in a laborious pasticcio * of Sir Thomas Browne. So with 
 
 * Pasticcio, a term used in painting to denote a picture painted in 
 direct imitation of the style of another artist. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 85 
 
 my other works: Cain, an epic, was (save the mark!) 
 an imitation of SordeUo; Robin Hood, a tale in verse, 
 took an eclectic middle course among the fields of Keats, 
 Chaucer, and Morris; in Monmouth, a tragedy, I reclined 
 on the bosom of Mr. Swinburne; in my innumerable 
 gouty-footed lyrics, I followed many masters; in the 
 first draft of The King's Pardon, a tragedy, I was on the 
 trail of no lesser man than John Webster; in the second 
 draft of the same piece, with staggering versatility, I 
 had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and of course 
 conceived my fable in a less serious vein for it was not 
 Congreve's verse, it was his exquisite prose, that I ad- 
 mired and sought to copy. Even at the age of thirteen 
 I had tried to do justice to the inhabitants of the famous 
 city of Peebles in the style of the Book of Snobs. So I 
 might go on forever, through all my abortive novels, and 
 down to my later plays, of which I think more tenderly, 
 for they were not only conceived at first under the brac- 
 ing influence of old Dumas, but have met with resurrec- 
 tions: one, strangely bettered by another hand, came on 
 the stage itself and was played by bodily actors; the other, 
 originally known as Semiramis: a Tragedy, I have ob- 
 served on book-stalls under the alias of Prince Otto. But 
 enough has been said to show by what arts of impersona- 
 tion, and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw 
 my words on paper. 
 
 That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether 
 I have profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats 
 learned, and there was never a finer temperament for 
 literature than Keats's; it was so, if we could trace it 
 out, that all men have learned; and that is why a revival 
 of letters is always accompanied or heralded by a cast 
 back to earlier and fresher models. Perhaps I hear some 
 one cry out: But this is not the way to be original ! It is 
 not; nor is there any way but to be born so. Nor yet, 
 
86 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 if you are born original, is there anything in this training 
 that shall clip the wings of your originality. There can 
 be none more original than Montaigne, neither could 
 any be more unlike Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to 
 see how much the one must have tried in his time to imi- 
 tate the other. Burns is the very type of a prime force 
 in letters: he was of all men the most imitative. Shake- 
 speare himself, the imperial, proceeds directly from a 
 school. It is only from a school that we can expect to 
 have good writers; it is almost invariably from a school 
 that great writers, these lawless exceptions, issue. Nor 
 is there anything here that should astonish the consider- 
 ate. Before he can tell what cadences he truly prefers, 
 the student should have tried all that are possible; before 
 he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he 
 should long have practised the literary scales; and it is 
 only after years of such gymnastic that he can sit down 
 at last, legions of words swarming to his call, dozens of 
 turns of phrase simultaneously bidding for his choice, 
 and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within 
 the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to dojj 
 
 And it is the great point of these imitations ftlaTthere 
 still shines beyond the student's reach his inimitable 
 model. Let him try as he please, he is still sure of fail- 
 ure; and it is a very old and a very true saying that 
 failure is the only highroad to success. I must have 
 had some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly con- 
 demned my own performances. I liked doing them in- 
 deed; but when they were done, I could see they were 
 rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them 
 even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be 
 my confidants I must have chosen well, for they had the 
 friendliness to be quite plain with me. "Padding," said 
 one. Another wrote: "I cannot understand why you 
 do lyrics so badly." No more could I ! Thrice I put 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 87 
 
 myself in the way of a more authoritative rebuff, by 
 sending a paper to a magazine. These were returned; 
 and I was not surprised nor even pained. If they had 
 not been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected 
 was the case, there was no good in repeating the experi- 
 ment; if they had been looked at well, then I had not 
 yet learned to write, and I must keep on learning and 
 living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune, which is 
 the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to 
 see my literature in print, and to measure experimentally 
 how far I stood from the favor of the public. 
 
 II 
 
 The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, 
 and has counted among its members Scott, Brougham, 
 Jeffrey, Homer, Benjamin Constant, Robert Emmet, 
 and many a legal and local celebrity besides. By an 
 accident, variously explained, it has its rooms in the very 
 buildings of the University of Edinburgh: a hall, Turkey- 
 carpeted, hung with pictures, looking, when lighted up 
 at night with fire and candle, like some goodly dining- 
 room; a passage-like library, walled with books in their 
 wire cages; and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, a 
 table, many prints of famous members, and a mural 
 tablet to the virtues of a former secretary. Here a mem- 
 ber can warm himself and loaf and read; here, in defiance 
 of Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus looks 
 askance at these privileges; looks even with a somewhat 
 vinegar aspect on the whole society; which argues a lack 
 of proportion in the learned mind, for the world, we may 
 be sure, will prize far higher this haunt of dead lions than 
 all the living dogs of the professorate. 
 
 I sat one December morning in the library of the Spec- 
 ulative; a very humble-minded youth, though it was a 
 
88 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 virtue I never had much credit for; yet proud of my 
 privileges as a member of the Spec.; proud of the pipe 
 I was smoking in the teeth of the Senatus; and in par- 
 ticular, proud of being in the next room to three very 
 distinguished students, who were then conversing beside 
 the corridor fire. One of these has now his name on 
 the back of several volumes, and his voice, I learn, is 
 influential in the law courts. Of the death of the sec- 
 ond, you have just been reading what I had to say.* And 
 the third also has escaped out of that battle of life in 
 which he fought so hard, it may be so unwisely. They 
 were all three, as I have said, notable students; but this 
 was the most conspicuous. Wealthy, handsome, ambi- 
 tious, adventurous, diplomatic, a reader of Balzac, and 
 of all men that I have known, the most like to one of 
 Balzac's characters, he led a life, and was attended by 
 an ill fortune, that could be properly set forth only in 
 the Comedie Humaine. He had then his eye on Parlia- 
 ment; and soon after the tune of which I write, he made a 
 showy speech at a political dinner, was cried up to heaven 
 next day in the Courant, and the day after was dashed 
 lower than earth with a charge of plagiarism in the Scots- 
 man. Report would have it (I dare say, very wrongly) 
 that he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly 
 trusted, and that the author of the charge had learned 
 its truth from his own lips. Thus, at least, he was up 
 one day on a pinnacle, admired and envied by all; and the 
 next, though still but a boy, he was publicly disgraced. 
 The blow would have broken a less finely tempered spirit; 
 and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he took 
 flight to London, and there, in a fast club, disposed of 
 the bulk of his considerable patrimony in the space of 
 one winter. For years thereafter he lived I know not 
 
 *The reference is to the essay "Old Mortality," which precedes 
 this essay in the volume Memories and Portraits. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 89 
 
 how; alwaj T s well dressed, always in good hotels and good 
 society, always with empty pockets. The charm of his 
 manner may have stood him in good stead; but though 
 my own manners are very agreeable, I have never found 
 in them a source of livelihood; and to explain the miracle 
 of his continued existence, I must fall back upon the 
 theory of the philosopher, that in his case, as in all of the 
 same kind, "there was a suffering relative in the back- 
 ground." From this genteel eclipse he reappeared upon 
 the scene, and presently sought me out in the character 
 of a generous editor. It is in this part that I best remem- 
 ber him; tall, slender, with a not ungraceful stoop; look- 
 ing quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an ur- 
 bane adventurer; smiling with an engaging ambiguity; 
 cocking at you one peaked eyebrow with a great appear- 
 ance of finesse; speaking low and sweet and thick, with 
 a touch of burr; telling strange tales with singular de- 
 liberation and, to a patient listener, excellent effect. 
 After all these ups and downs, he seemed still, like the 
 rich student that he was of yore, to breathe of money; 
 seemed still perfectly sure of himself and certain of his 
 end. Yet he was then upon the brink of his last over- 
 throw. He had set himself to found the strangest thing 
 in our society: one of those periodical sheets from which 
 men suppose themselves to learn opinions; in which 
 young gentlemen from the universities are encouraged, 
 at so much a line, to garble facts, insult foreign nations, 
 and calumniate private individuals; and which are now 
 the source of glory, so that if a man's name be often enough 
 printed there, he becomes a kind of demigod; and people 
 will pardon him when he talks back and forth, as they 
 do for Mr. Gladstone; and crowd him to suffocation on 
 railway platforms, as they did the other day to General 
 Boulanger; and buy his literary works, as I hope you 
 have just done for me. Our fathers, when they were 
 
$0 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 upon some great enterprise, would sacrifice a life; build- 
 ing, it may be, a favorite slave into the foundations of 
 their palace. It was with his own life that my companion 
 disarmed the envy of the gods. He fought his paper 
 single-handed; trusting no one, for he was something of 
 a cynic; up early and down late, for he was nothing of a 
 sluggard; daily ear-wigging influential men, for he was 
 a master of ingratiation. In that slender and silken 
 fellow there must have been a rare vein of courage, that 
 he should thus have died at his employment; and doubt- 
 less ambition spoke loudly in his ear, and doubtless love 
 also, for it seems there was a marriage in his view had he 
 succeeded. But he died, and his paper died after him; 
 and of all this grace, and tact, and courage, it must seem 
 to our blind eyes as if there had come literally nothing. 
 
 These three students sat, as I was saying, in the corri- 
 dor, under the mural tablet that records the virtues of 
 Macbean, the former secretary. We would often smile 
 at that ineloquent memorial, and thought it a poor thing 
 to come into the world at all and leave no more behind 
 one than Macbean. And yet of these three, two are gone 
 and have left less; and this book, perhaps, when it is 
 old and foxy, and some one picks it up in a corner of a 
 book-shop, and glances through it, smiling at the old, 
 graceless turns of speech, and perhaps for the love of 
 Alma Mater (which may be still extant and flourishing) 
 buys it, not without haggling, for some pence this book 
 may alone preserve a memory of James Walter Ferrier 
 and Robert Glasgow Brown. 
 
 Their thoughts ran very differently on that December 
 morning; they were all on fire with ambition; and when 
 they had called me in to them, and made me a sharer in 
 their design, I too became drunken with pride and hope. 
 We were to found a University magazine. A pair of 
 IHtle, active brothers Livingstone by name, great 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 91 
 
 skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept 
 a book-shop over against the University building had 
 been debauched to play the part of publishers. We four 
 were to be conjunct editors and, what was the main 
 point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by 
 every rule of arithmetic that flatterer of credulity 
 the adventure must succeed and bring great profit. 
 Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went home that 
 morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by these 
 three distinguished students was to me the most un- 
 speakable advance; it was my first draught of considera- 
 tion; it reconciled me to myself and to my fellow men; 
 and as I steered round the railings at the Tron, I could 
 not withhold my lips from smiling publicly. Yet, in the 
 bottom of my heart, I knew that magazine would be a 
 grim fiasco; I knew it would not be worth reading; I 
 knew, even if it were, that nobody would read it; and 
 I kept wondering how I should be able, upon my compact 
 income of twelve pounds per annum, payable monthly, 
 to meet my share in the expense. It was a comfortable 
 thought to me that I had a father. 
 
 The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover which was 
 the best part of it, for at least it was unassuming; it ran 
 four months in undisturbed obscurity, and died without 
 a gasp. The first number was edited by all four of us 
 with prodigious bustle; the second fell principally into 
 the hands of Ferrier and me; the third I edited alone; 
 and it has long been a solemn question who it was that 
 edited the fourth. It would perhaps be still more diffi- 
 cult to say who read it. Poor yellow sheet, that looked 
 so hopefully in the Livingstones' window ! Poor, harm- 
 less paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare 
 on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense! 
 And, shall I say, Poor Editors? I cannot pity myself, 
 to whom it was all pure gain. It was no news to me, but 
 
92 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 only the wholesome confirmation of my judgment, when 
 the magazine struggled into half-birth, and instantly 
 sickened and subsided into night. I had sent a copy 
 to the lady with whom my heart was at that time some- 
 what engaged, and who did all that in her lay to break 
 it; and she, with some tact, passed over the gift and my 
 cherished contributions in silence. I will not say that I 
 was pleased at this; but I will tell her now, if by any 
 chance she takes up the work of her former servant, that 
 I thought the better of her taste. I cleared the decks 
 after this lost engagement; had the necessary interview 
 with my father, which passed off not amiss; paid over 
 my share of the expense to the two little, active brothers, 
 who rubbed their hands as much, but methought skipped 
 rather less than formerly, having perhaps, these two 
 also, embarked upon the enterprise with some graceful 
 illusions; and then, reviewing the whole episode, I told 
 myself that the time was not yet ripe, nor the man ready; 
 and to work I went again with my penny version-books, 
 having fallen back in one day from the printed author to 
 the manuscript student. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS 
 
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) was a member of 
 the famous Cambridge group of writers, including also 
 Longfellow and Lowell. He was born in Cambridge, 
 Mass., and educated at Phillips Andover Academy and 
 Harvard College, where Wendell Phillips the orator and 
 John Lothrop Motley the historian were his classmates. 
 He wrote verse for the college magazine, and an early 
 poem, "Old Ironsides," was copied in newspapers all over 
 the country. He studied medicine, and practised in Bos- 
 ton, besides being a professor in the Harvard Medical 
 School. In the moments that he could spare from his pro- 
 fession he wrote several books that are a permanent addi- 
 tion to American literature. When the Atlantic Monthly 
 was projected, it was Holmes who suggested its name, and 
 in the first number appeared the opening pages of The 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. The novelty of the form, 
 a sort of conversational essay, the sparkling wit, the keen 
 comments on life, the apt turns of phrase, all these made 
 the Autocrat a joy to his readers. Two later volumes, 
 The Professor at the Breakfast-Table and The Poet at the 
 Breakfast-Table continued the same vein. Holmes's other 
 works include a novel, Elsie Venner; a volume of poems, 
 and biographies of Emerson and Motley. The selection 
 here given is from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 
 While a thread of narrative runs through it, nearly all 
 of the article is in the essay vein; the story is merely an 
 opportunity for the writer to express his opinions on a 
 variety of subjects. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS * 
 
 (From The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Tabk) 
 
 (A Parenthesis) 
 
 I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken 
 together before this one. I found the effect of going out 
 every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. 
 Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just 
 marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshen- 
 ing cheeks when she smiled and nodded good morning 
 to me from the schoolhouse steps. 
 
 I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At 
 any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during 
 the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that 
 I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the pub- 
 lishers that a separate volume, at my own risk and ex- 
 pense, would be the proper method of bringing them be- 
 fore the public. 
 
 I would have a woman as true as Death. At the 
 first real lie which works from the heart outward, she 
 should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, 
 where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed 
 on strange fruits which will make her all over again, 
 even to her bones and marrow. Whether gifted with 
 the accident of beauty or not, she should have been 
 moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath 
 of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capaoity is 
 
 * Used by permission of Houghton, Mifflin Company, the author- 
 ized publishers of Holmes'a works. 
 
 95 
 
96 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one 
 gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from 
 the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them. Proud she 
 may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride, in 
 the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, 
 deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's 
 Inferno, where the punishments are Smallpox and Bank- 
 ruptcy. She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, 
 as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those 
 whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, pro- 
 claims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, 
 but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned posi- 
 tion makes people gracious in proper measure to all; 
 but if a woman put on airs with her real equals, she had 
 something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, 
 or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged 
 people, who know family histories, generally see through 
 it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, 
 that is the maternal grandfather, said a wise old friend 
 to me, he was a boor. Better too few words, from the 
 woman we love, than too many: while she is silent, Na- 
 ture is working for her; while she talks, she is working 
 for herself. Love is sparingly soluble in the words of 
 men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable 
 of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's 
 heart can hold. 
 
 Whether I said any or all of these things to the 
 schoolmistress, or not, whether I stole them out of 
 Lord Bacon, whether I cribbed them from Balzac, 
 whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian * 
 wisdom, or whether I have just found them in my head, 
 laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience (who, accord- 
 ing to my observation, cackles oftener than she drops 
 
 * Tupperian, a reference to Martin F. Tupper, author of Proverbial 
 Philosophy, a book of precepts and advice in verse. 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 97 
 
 real live eggs), I cannot say. Wise men have said more 
 foolish things, and foolish men, I don't doubt, have 
 said as wise things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I 
 had pleasant walks and long talks, all of which I do not 
 feel bound to report. 
 
 You are a stranger to me, Ma'am. I don't doubt 
 you would like to know all I said to the schoolmistress. 
 I sha'n't do it; I had rather get the publishers to return 
 the money you have invested in these pages. Besides, 
 I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall tell only what 
 I like of what I remember. 
 
 My idea was, in the first place, to search out the 
 picturesque spots which the city affords a sight of, to 
 those who have eyes. I know a good many, and it was a 
 pleasure to look at them in company with my young 
 friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the Frank- 
 lin-Place front yards or borders: Commerce is just putting 
 his granite foot upon them. Then there are certain small 
 seraglio gardens, into which one can get a peep through 
 the crevices of high fences, one in Myrtle Street, or at 
 the back of it, here and there one at the North and 
 South ends. Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then 
 the stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers 
 Street, which hold their outspread hands over your head 
 (as I said in my poem the other day), and look as if they 
 were whispering, "May grace, mercy, and peace be with 
 you!" and the rest of that benediction. Nay, there 
 are certain patches of ground, which, having lain neg- 
 lected for a time, Nature, who always has her pockets 
 full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has covered 
 with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with 
 each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and 
 succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry 
 which Raphael would not have disdained to spread over 
 the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor pre- 
 
98 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 tends that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, 
 in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegeta- 
 tion, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public 
 Garden as ignominiously as a group of young tatterde- 
 malions playing pitch-and-toss beats a row of Sunday- 
 school boys with their teacher at their head. 
 
 But then the Professor had one of his burrows in that 
 region, and puts everything in high colors relating to it. 
 That is his way about everything. I hold any man 
 cheap, he said, of whom nothing stronger can be 
 uttered than that all his geese are swans. How is that, 
 Professor? said I; I should have set you down for one 
 of that sort. Sir, said he, I am proud to say, that 
 Nature has so far enriched me, that I cannot own so much 
 as a duck without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever 
 swam the basin in the garden of Luxembourg. And the 
 Professor showed the whites of his eyes devoutly, like 
 one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses. 
 
 I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of 
 Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of 
 cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn rocks on a 
 square mile or two of earth which was green once. The 
 trees look down from the hillsides and ask each other, 
 as they stand on tiptoe, " What are these people about?" 
 And the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper 
 back, "We will go and see." So the small herbs pack 
 themselves up in the least possible bundles, and wait 
 until the wind steals to them at night and whispers, 
 "Come with me." Then they go softly with it into the 
 great city, one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout 
 on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich 
 gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone 
 where nothing but a man is buried, and there they 
 grow, looking down on the generations of men from 
 mouldy roofs, looking up from between the less-trodden 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 99 
 
 pavements, looking out through iron cemetery-railings. 
 Listen to them, when there is only a light breath stirring, 
 and you will hear them saying to each other, "Wait 
 awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those 
 narrow green lines that border the roads leading from 
 the city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the 
 trees repeat in low murmurs to each other, "Wait 
 awhile !" By and by the flow of life in the streets ebbs, 
 and the old leafy inhabitants the smaller tribes always 
 in fronts-saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, 
 but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great 
 stones gape from each other with the crowding of their 
 roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the 
 granite to find them food. At last the trees take up their 
 solemn line of march, and never rest until they have en- 
 camped in the market-place. Wait long enough and you 
 will find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block in 
 its yellow underground arms; that was the corner-stone 
 of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, this imper- 
 turbable Nature ! 
 
 Let us cry ! 
 
 But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks 
 with the schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not 
 tell you something about them. Let me alone, and I 
 shall talk to you more than I ought to, probably. We 
 never tell our secrets to people that pump for them. 
 
 Books we talked about, and education. It was her 
 duty to know something of these, and of course she did. 
 Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, but I 
 found that the difference between her reading and mine 
 was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. 
 The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman 
 goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half 
 the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, but 
 she goes into all the corners and attends to the leaves as 
 
100 THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 much as to the covers. Books are the negative pictures 
 of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives 
 their images, the more nicely the finest lines are repro- 
 duced. A woman (of the right kind), reading after a 
 man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, 
 and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat. 
 
 But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly 
 together. I thought I knew something about that, 
 that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the 
 purpose. 
 
 To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge 
 sucks up water, to be steeped and soaked in its realities 
 as a hide fills its pores lying seven years in a tan-pit, to 
 have winnowed every wave of it as a mill-wheel works up 
 the stream that runs through the flume upon its float- 
 boards, to have curled up in the keenest spasms and 
 flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing sick- 
 ness, which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for 
 three or four score years, to have fought all the devils 
 and clasped all the angels of its delirium, and then, just 
 at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled 
 down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice- 
 cold stream of some human language or other, one might 
 think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring 
 and temper in it All this I thought my power and 
 province. 
 
 The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while 
 one meets with a single soul greater than all the living 
 pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer 
 sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and 
 weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are 
 meek, slight women who have weighed all which this 
 planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the 
 palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. 
 Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 101 
 
 of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city life 
 were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil 
 face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often 
 sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters 
 we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and 
 lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, 
 unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the 
 cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were 
 meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great 
 Passion. 
 
 I never addressed one word of love to the school- 
 mistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed 
 to me that we talked of everything but love on that par- 
 ticular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more tim- 
 idity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly 
 shown among our people at the boarding-house. In 
 fact, I considered myself the master at the breakfast- 
 table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just 
 then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a 
 passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave 
 at noon, with the condition, however, of being released 
 in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The school- 
 mistress knew nothing about all this, of course, as yet. 
 
 It was on the Common that we were walking. The 
 mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various 
 branches leading from it in different directions. One 
 of these runs down from opposite Joy Street southward 
 across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. 
 We called it the long path, and were fond of it. 
 
 I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust 
 habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that 
 morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making 
 myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, 
 Will you take the long path with me ? Certainly, 
 said the schoolmistress, with much pleasure. Think, 
 
: 10'2 '"-'THE PERSONAL ESSAY 
 
 I said, before you answer: if you take the long path with 
 me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more ! 
 The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden move- 
 ment, as if an arrow had struck her. 
 
 One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard 
 by, the one you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. 
 Pray, sit down, I said. No, no, she answered, softly, 
 I will walk the long path with you ! 
 
 The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, 
 arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, 
 very charmingly, "Good morning, my dears!" 
 
THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 THE SKY 
 
John Ruskin (1819-1900), eminent as author, art 
 critic, and social reformer, was the son of a wealthy English 
 merchant. His father was a lover of pictures, and took 
 the boy to see the great collections in public and private 
 galleries in England. His mother read to him daily from 
 the Bible, and to this Ruskin attributed the clearness and 
 beauty of his style. He was educated at Oxford. His 
 first intellectual interest was in art, and his first book was 
 Modern Painters. Later volumes were Stones of Venice, 
 and Seven Lamps of Architecture. These established his 
 position as one of the great art critics of his time, and as 
 a master of English prose. He next turned his attention 
 to social and economic questions. It was his belief that 
 no nation could produce great art unless it had moral 
 and spiritual greatness as a foundation. He saw the 
 English people in their great industrial development, 
 forgetful of higher things. He wrote books and delivered 
 lectures untiringly in the effort to arouse the nation to a 
 sense of its wrong aims. Nor did he stop at writing. The 
 death of his father left him a fortune of nearly a million 
 dollars: he spent practically all of this in various proj- 
 ects for bettering the condition of the working people 
 of England. He built model tenements, established 
 co-operative associations, started schools for workers. 
 Many of the reform movements of to-day owe their origin 
 to John Ruskin. 
 
 He wrote a great number of books, dealing mainly 
 with the three great interests of his life, painting, archi- 
 tecture, and political economy. The selection "The Sky" 
 illustrates Ruskin's wonderful descriptive power, and his 
 gift of writing prose that has the beauty and music of 
 poetry. 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 THE SKY 
 
 (From Modem Painters) 
 
 It is a strange thing how little in general people know 
 about the sky. It is the part of creation in which Nature 
 has done more for the sake of pleasing man more for 
 the sole and evident purpose of talking to him, and teach- 
 ing him than in any other of her works; and it is just 
 the part in which we least attend to her. There are not 
 many of her other works in which some more material 
 or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is 
 not answered by every part of their organization; but 
 every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, 
 be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, 
 ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and 
 everything well watered, and so all left blue again till 
 next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening 
 mist for dew and instead of this, there is not a moment 
 of any day of our lives, when Nature is not producing 
 scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, 
 and working still upon such exquisite and constant prin- 
 ciples of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain 
 it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual plea- 
 sure. And every man, wherever placed, however far 
 from other sources of interest of or beauty, has this doing 
 for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth 
 can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that 
 man should live always in the midst of them; he injures 
 
 105 
 
106 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he is always 
 with them; but the sky is for all: bright as it is, it is not 
 
 "too bright nor good 
 For human nature's daily food;"* 
 
 it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort 
 and exalting of the heart, for soothing it, and purifying 
 it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes 
 capricious, sometimes awful never the same for two 
 moments together; almost human in its passions, almost 
 spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, 
 its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its 
 ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal 
 is essential. 
 
 And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a sub- 
 ject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensa- 
 tions; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more 
 clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to 
 the intention of the Supreme that we are to receive more 
 from the covering vault than the light and the dew which 
 we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succes- 
 sion of meaningless and monotonous accident, too com- 
 mon and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watch- 
 fulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments 
 of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as 
 a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak 
 of? One says, it has been wet; and another, it has been 
 windy, and another, it has been warm. Who among the 
 whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms and the 
 precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded 
 the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow 
 sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their 
 summits until they melted and mouldered away in the 
 
 * Quoted from Wordsworth's "She was a Phantom of Delight." 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 107 
 
 dust of blue rain ? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds 
 where the sunlight left them last night, and the west 
 wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All 
 has passed unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be 
 ever shaken off even for an instant, it is only by what is 
 gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not in the 
 broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, 
 nor in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirl- 
 wind, that the highest characters of the sublime are de- 
 veloped. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, 
 but in the still small voice. They are but the blunt 
 and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be 
 addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in 
 quiet and unsubdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, 
 the deep and the calm, and the perpetual; that which 
 must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is under- 
 stood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and 
 yet vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never 
 repeated, which are to be found always, yet each found 
 but once; it is through these that the lesson of devotion 
 is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. 
 
 We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and 
 gray; not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, 
 though not the most dazzling, of the hues of heaven. 
 Often in our English mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn 
 form soft, level fields, which melt imperceptibly into 
 the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into apparent 
 bars, crossing the sheets of broader clouds above; and all 
 these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure 
 rose-color, and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, 
 but misty-soft; the barred masses, when seen nearer, 
 composed of clusters or tresses of cloud, like floss silk; 
 looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of 
 lighted rain. 
 
 Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are? 
 
108 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the 
 valley, level and white, through which the tops of the 
 trees rise as if through an inundation why is it so heavy, 
 and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail 
 that it will melt away utterly into splendor of morning 
 when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? 
 Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as 
 of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun 
 full on their fiery flanks, why are they so light, their 
 bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps? 
 Why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as 
 he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear; while 
 the valley vapor gains again upon the earth, like a shroud ? 
 Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump 
 of pines; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts 
 them, wreathing yet round them, and yet, and yet, 
 slowly; now falling in a fair waved line like a woman's 
 veil; now fading, now gone; we look away for an instant, 
 and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do 
 with that clump of pines, that it broods by them, and 
 waves itself among their branches, to and fro? Has it 
 hidden a cloudy treasure among the moss at their roots, 
 which it watches thus? Or has some strong enchanter 
 charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within 
 those bars of bough? And yonder filmy crescent, bent 
 like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, the highest 
 of all the hills that white arch which never forms but 
 over the supreme crest, how it is stayed there, repelled 
 apparently from the snow, nowhere touching it, the 
 clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet 
 never leaving it poised as a white bird hovers over its 
 nest ! Or those war clouds that gather on the horizon, 
 dragon-crested, tongued with fire, how is their barbed 
 strength bridled ? What bits are those they are champing 
 with their vaporous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam ? 
 Leagued leviathans of the Sea and Heaven, out of their 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 109 
 
 nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids 
 of the morning; the sword of him that layeth at them can- 
 not hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. Where 
 ride the captains of their armies? Where are set the 
 measures of their march? Fierce murmurers, answering 
 each other from morning until evening what rebuke is 
 this which has awed them into peace; what hand has 
 reined them back by the way in which they came? 
 
 I know not if the reader will think at first that ques- 
 tions like these are easily answered. So far from it, I 
 rather believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds 
 never will be understood by us at all. "Knowest thou 
 the balancing of the clouds ?" Is the answer ever to be 
 one of pride? The wondrous works of Him, which is 
 perfect in knowledge! Is our knowledge ever to be 
 so? ... 
 
 On some isolated mountain at daybreak, whenfjjie 
 niglit mists/first rise from off the plain, watch their white 
 and lake-fife fields, as they float in level bays, and wind- 
 ing gulfs about the islanded summits of the lower hills, 
 untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and more quiet 
 than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch 
 when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, 
 how the foam of their undulating surface^ parts, and passes 
 away, and down under then* depths the" glittering city 
 and green pasture lie like Atlantis, between the white 
 paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every 
 moment faster and broker among the starry spires, as 
 the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and 
 the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten 
 their gray shadows upon the plain. Wait a little longer, 
 and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the 
 ravines, and floating up toward you, along the winding 
 valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, iridescent with 
 the morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher 
 hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back, 
 
110 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, 
 and set in its lustre, to appear again above in the serene 
 heaven like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundation- 
 less, and inaccessible, their very base vanishing in the 
 unsubstantial, and making blue of the deep lake below. 
 Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists 
 gather themselves into white towers, and stand like for- 
 tresses along the promontories, massy and motionless, 
 only piled with every instant higher and higher into the 
 sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and 
 out of the pale blue of the horizon you will see forming 
 and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapors, 
 which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their gray 
 network, and take the light off the landscape with an 
 eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the 
 motion of the leaves, together; and then you will see 
 horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and 
 lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, 
 among the shoulders of the hills; you never see them form, 
 but when you look back to a place which was clear an 
 instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipice 
 as a hawk pauses over his prey; and then you will hear 
 the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see 
 those watch-towers of vapor swept away from their foun- 
 dations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to 
 the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black 
 bending fringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the 
 lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And 
 then as the sun sinks you shall see the storm drift for an 
 instant from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smok- 
 ing and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like 
 rags of capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again, 
 while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but 
 burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could 
 reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 111 
 
 cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, 
 dyeing all the air about it with blood; and then you shall 
 hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, 
 and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of 
 the eastern hills, brighter, brighter yet, till the large white 
 circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred 
 clouds, step by step, line by line; star after star she 
 quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead 
 an army of pale, penetrable fleecy wreaths in the heaven, 
 to give light upon the earth, which move together hand 
 in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so mea- 
 sured in their unity of motion that the whole heaven 
 seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. 
 And then wait yet for one hour, until the east again be- 
 comes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against 
 it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one 
 by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white gla- 
 ciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, 
 like mighty serpents with scales of fire: watch the col- 
 umnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downward chasm 
 by chasm, each in itself a new morning their long ava- 
 lanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the light- 
 ning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like altar- 
 smoke up to heaven, the rose-light of their silent domes 
 flushing that heaven about them, and above them, pierc- 
 ing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, 
 casting a new glory on every wreath, as it passes by, 
 until the whole heaven, one scarlet canopy, is interwoven 
 with a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault beyond 
 vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of 
 angels: and then when you can look no more for gladness, 
 and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the 
 Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best delivered 
 this His message unto men ! 
 
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
 THE SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
John Henry Newman (1801-1890), often called Cardinal 
 Newman, belonged to the writers of the Victorian group. 
 He was the son of a London banker. He early showed 
 his bent to literature, writing verses at nine and a drama 
 at twelve. Later he entered Oxford, where he won a fel- 
 lowship. His life was spent as a clergyman, first in the 
 Church of England, later in the Roman Catholic faith; 
 the reasons for his change of belief are told in his Apologia 
 pro Vita Sua (Apology for His Life). He was rector of 
 the Catholic University at Dublin from 1854 to 1858; 
 he was made a cardinal in 1879. Most of his life was 
 spent at Birmingham, England. His writings include two 
 novels, Loss and Gain and Callista ; a number of poems, 
 including the well-known hymn "Lead, Kindly Light"; 
 and a volume of essays entitled The Idea of a Univer- 
 sity, written while he was at Dublin University. 
 
 Newman is considered one of the great masters of Eng- 
 lish prose. He took the greatest pains with his work, 
 often writing whole chapters over and over again, be- 
 sides making innumerable corrections. But in the fin- 
 ished work there is no trace of labor; his essays have the 
 clearness and beauty of a statue. The description of 
 Athens, in the selection here given, is one of the finest ex- 
 amples of Newman's style. 
 
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 
 THE SITE OF A UNIVERSITY 
 
 (From Historical Sketches, vol. Ill) 
 
 If we would know what a University is, considered in 
 its elementary idea, we must betake ourselves to the first 
 and most celebrated home of European literature and 
 source of European civilization, to the bright and beau- 
 tiful Athens, Athens, whose schools drew to her bosom, 
 and then sent back again to the business of life, the youth 
 of the Western World for a long thousand years. Seated 
 on the verge of the continent, the city seemed hardly 
 suited for the duties of a central metropolis of knowl- 
 edge; yet what it lost in convenience of approach, it 
 gained in its neighborhood to the traditions of the mysteri- 
 ous East, and in the loveliness of the region in which it 
 lay. Hither, then, as to a sort of ideal land, where all 
 archetypes of the great and the fair were found in sub- 
 stantial being, and all departments of truth explored, and 
 all diversities of intellectual power exhibited, where taste 
 and philosophy were majestically enthroned as in a royal 
 court, where there was no sovereignty but that of mind, 
 and nobility but that of genius, where professors were 
 rulers, and princes did homage, hither flocked continually 
 from the very corners of the orbis terrarum,* the many- 
 tongued generation, just rising, or just risen into manhood, 
 in order to gain wisdom. 
 
 Pisistratus had in an early age discovered and nursed 
 the infant genius of his people, and Cimon, after the 
 Persian war, had given it a home. That war had estab- 
 lished the naval supremacy of Athens; she had become 
 * Orbis terrarum, the circle of the world. 
 115 
 
116 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 an imperial state; and the lonians, bound to her by the 
 double chain of kindred and of subjection, were import- 
 ing into her both their merchandise and their civilization. 
 The arts and philosophy of the Asiatic coast were easily 
 carried across the sea, and there was Cimon, as I have 
 said, with his ample fortune, ready to receive them with 
 due honors. Not content with patronizing their pro- 
 fessors, he built the first of those noble porticos, of which 
 we hear so much in Athens, and he formed the groves, 
 which in process of time became the celebrated Academy. 
 Planting is one of the most graceful, as in Athens it was 
 one of the most beneficent, of employments. Cimon 
 took in hand the wild wood, pruned and dressed it, and 
 laid it out with handsome walks and welcome fountains. 
 Nor, while hospitable to the authors of the city's civili- 
 zation, was he ungrateful to the instruments of her pros- 
 perity. His trees extended their cool, umbrageous 
 branches over the merchants who assembled in the Agora, 
 for many generations. 
 
 Those merchants certainly had deserved that act of 
 bounty; for all the while their ships had been carrying 
 forth the intellectual fame of Athens to the western world. 
 Then commenced what may be called her University 
 existence. Pericles, who succeeded Cimon both in the 
 government and in the patronage of art, is said by Plu- 
 tarch to have entertained the idea of making Athens the 
 capital of federated Greece: in this he failed, but his 
 encouragement of such men as Phidias and Anaxagoras 
 led the way to her acquiring a far more lasting sover- 
 eignty over a far wider empire. Little understanding 
 the sources of her own greatness, Athens would go to 
 war: peace is the interest of a seat of commerce and the 
 arts; but to war she went; yet to her, whether peace or 
 war, it mattered not. The political power of Athens 
 waned and disappeared; kingdoms rose and fell; centuries 
 
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 117 
 
 rolled away, they did but bring fresh triumphs to the city 
 of the poet and the sage. There at length the swarthy 
 Moor and Spaniard were seen to meet the blue-eyed 
 Gaul; and the Cappadocian, late subject of Mithridates, 
 gazed without alarm at the haughty conquering Roman. 
 Revolution after revolution passed over the face of 
 Europe, as well as of Greece, but still she was there, 
 Athens, the city of mind, as radiant, as splendid, as 
 delicate, as young as ever she had been. 
 
 Many a more fruitful coast or isle is washed by the blue 
 jEgean, many a spot is there more beautiful or sublime 
 to see, many a territory more ample; but there was one 
 charm in Attica, which in the same perfection was no- 
 where else. The deep pastures of Arcadia, the plain of 
 Argos, the Thessalian vale, these had not the gift; Bceotia, 
 which lay to its immediate north, was notorious for its 
 very want of it. The heavy atmosphere of that Bceotia 
 might be good for vegetation, but it was associated in 
 popular belief with the dulness of the Boeotian intellect: 
 on the contrary, the special purity, elasticity, clearness, 
 and salubrity of the air of Attica, lit concomitant and em- 
 blem of its genius, did that for it which earth did not; 
 it brought out every bright hue and tender shade of the 
 landscape over which it was spread, and would have 
 illuminated the face even of a more bare and rugged 
 country. 
 
 A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest 
 length, and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky 
 barriers, meeting at an angle; three prominent moun- 
 tains, commanding the plain, Parnes, Pentelicus, and 
 Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not 
 always full; such is about the report which the agent 
 of a London company would have made of Attica. He 
 would report that the climate was mild; the hills were 
 limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture- 
 
118 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 land than at first survey might have been expected, 
 sufficient certainly for sheep and goats; fisheries produc- 
 tive; silver-mines once, but long since worked out; figs 
 fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would 
 not think of noting down, was, that that olive-tree was 
 so choice in nature and so noble in shape, that it excited 
 a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the 
 light soil, as to expand into woods upon the open plain, 
 and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think 
 of writing word to his employers, how that clear air, of 
 which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and sub- 
 dued, the colors on the marble, till they had a softness 
 and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture 
 looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He 
 would not tell, how that same delicate and brilliant at- 
 mosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive for- 
 got its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus 
 or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of 
 the thyme and thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted 
 Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; 
 nor take much account of the rare flavor of its honey, 
 since Gozo and Minorca were sufficient for the English 
 demand. He would look over the ^Egean from the 
 height he had ascended: he would follow with his eye 
 the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian 
 headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, 
 when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of via- 
 duct thereto across the sea: but that fancy would not 
 occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet 
 billows with their white edges down below; nor of those 
 graceful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, which 
 slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then 
 shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, 
 and disappear, in a soft mist of foam; nor of the gentle, 
 incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain; 
 
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 119 
 
 nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of 
 soldiery, as they resound upon the hollow shore, he 
 would not deign to notice that restless living element at 
 all, except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. 
 Nor the distinct detail, nor the refined coloring, nor the 
 graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting 
 crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium 
 by the declining sun; our agent of a mercantile firm 
 would not value these matters even at a low figure. 
 Rather we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon 
 pilgrim student come from a semi-barbarous land to that 
 small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might 
 take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations 
 of invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger 
 from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauri- 
 tania, who in a scene so different from that of his chilly, 
 woody swamps, or of his fiery choking sands, learned at 
 once what a real University must be, by coming to under- 
 stand the sort of country which was its suitable home. 
 
 Nor was this all that a University required, and found 
 in Athens. No one, even there, could live on poetry. 
 If the students at that famous place had nothing better 
 than bright hues and soothing sounds, they would not 
 have been able or disposed to turn their residence there 
 to much account. Of course they must have the means 
 of living, nay, in a certain sense, of enjoyment, if Athens 
 was to be an Alma Mater at the time, or to remain after- 
 ward a pleasant thought in their memory. And so they 
 had: be it recollected Athens was a port, and a mart of 
 trade, perhaps the first in Greece; and this was very much 
 to the point, when a number of strangers were ever flock- 
 ing to it, whose combat was to be with intellectual, not 
 physical difficulties, and who claimed to have their bodily 
 wants supplied, that they might be at leisure to set about 
 furnishing their minds. Now, barren as was the soil 
 
120 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 of Attica, and bare the face of the country, yet it had 
 only too many resources for an elegant, nay luxurious 
 abode there. So abundant were the imports of the place, 
 that it was a common saying, that the productions, which 
 were found singly elsewhere, were brought all together 
 in Athens. Corn and wine, the staple of subsistence in 
 such a climate, came from the isles of the ^Egean; fine 
 wool and carpeting from Asia Minor; slaves, as now, 
 from the Euxine, and timber too; and iron and brass 
 from the coasts of the Mediterranean. The Athenian 
 did not condescend to manufactures himself, but encour- 
 aged them in others; and a population of foreigners caught 
 at the lucrative occupation both for home consumption 
 and for exportation. Their cloth, and other textures 
 for dress and furniture, and their hardware for instance, 
 armor were in great request. Labor was cheap; stone 
 and marble in plenty; and the taste and skill, which at 
 first were devoted to public buildings, as temples and 
 porticos, were in course of time applied to the mansions 
 of public men. If nature did much for Athens, it is un- 
 deniable that art did much more. 
 
 Here some one will interrupt me with the remark: 
 *'by the by, where are we, and whither are we going? 
 what has all this to do with a University? at least what 
 has it to do with education? It is instructive doubtless; 
 but still how much has it to do with your subject ? " Now 
 I beg to assure the reader that I am most conscientiously 
 employed upon my subject; and I should have thought 
 every one would have seen this: however, since the ob- 
 jection is made, I may be allowed to pause awhile, and 
 show distinctly the drift of what I have been saying, be- 
 fore I go farther. What has this to do with my subject ! 
 why, the question of the site is the very first that comes 
 into consideration, when a Studium Generate * is contem- 
 plated; for that site should be a liberal and noble one; 
 
 * Studium Generate, a course of study embracing all subjects. 
 
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 121 
 
 who will deny it ? All authorities agree in this, and very 
 little reflection will be sufficient to make it clear. I 
 recollect a conversation I once had on this very subject 
 with a very eminent man. I was a youth of eighteen, 
 and was leaving my University for the Long Vacation, 
 when I found myself in company in a public conveyance 
 with a middle-aged person, whose face was strange to 
 me. However, it was the great academical luminary of 
 the day, whom afterward I knew very well. Luckily 
 for me, I did not suspect it; and luckily too, it was a 
 fancy of his, as his friends knew, to make himself on easy 
 terms especially with stage-coach companions. So, what 
 with my flippancy and his condescension, I managed to 
 hear many things which were novel to me at the time; 
 and one point which he was strong upon, and was evi- 
 dently fond of urging, was the material pomp and cir- 
 cumstance which should environ a great seat of learning. 
 He considered it was worth the consideration of the 
 government, whether Oxford should not stand in a do- 
 main of its own. An ample range, say four miles in di- 
 ameter, should be turned into wood and meadow, and 
 the University should be approached on all sides by a 
 magnificent park, with fine trees in groups and groves 
 and avenues, and with glimpses and views of the fair 
 city, as the traveller drew near it. There is nothing 
 surely absurd in the idea, though it would cost a round 
 sum to realize it. What has a better claim to the purest 
 and fairest possessions of nature, than the seat of wisdom ? 
 So thought my coach companion; and he did but express 
 the tradition of ages and the instinct of mankind. 
 
 For instance, take the great University of Paris. That 
 famous school engrossed as its territory the whole south 
 bank of the Seine, and occupied one half, and that the 
 pleasanter half, of the city. King Louis had the island 
 pretty well as his own, it was scarcely more than a 
 fortification; and the north of the river was given over to 
 
122 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 the nobles and citizens to do what they could with its 
 marshes; but the eligible south, rising from the stream, 
 which swept around its base, to the fair summit of St. 
 Genevieve, with its broad meadows, its vineyards and 
 its gardens, and with the sacred elevation of Montmartre 
 confronting it, all this was the inheritance of the Uni- 
 versity. There was that pleasant Pratum, stretching 
 along the river's bank, in which the students for centuries 
 took their recreation, which Alcuin seems to mention in 
 his farewell verses to Paris, and which has given a name 
 to the great Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres. For long 
 years it was devoted to the purposes of innocent and 
 healthy enjoyment; but evil times came on the University; 
 disorder arose within its precincts, and the fair meadow 
 became the scene of party brawls; heresy stalked through 
 Europe, and Germany and England no longer sending 
 their contingent of students, a heavy debt was the con- 
 sequence to the academical body. To let their land was 
 the only resource left to them: buildings rose upon it, 
 and spread along the green sod, and the country at length 
 became town. Great was the grief and indignation of 
 the doctors and masters, when this catastrophe occurred. 
 "A wretched sight," said the Proctor of the German 
 nation, "a wretched sight, to witness the sale of that 
 ancient manor, whither the Muses were wont to wander 
 for retirement and pleasure. Whither shall the youthful 
 student now betake himself, what relief will he find for 
 his eyes, wearied with intense reading, now that the 
 pleasant stream is taken from him?" Two centuries 
 and more have passed since this complaint was uttered; 
 and tune has shown that the outward calamity, which 
 it recorded, was but the emblem of the great moral revolu- 
 tion, which was to follow; till the institution itself has 
 followed its green meadows, into the region of things 
 which once were and now are not. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 THE SEA FOGS 
 
While Robert Louis Stevenson was living in an art 
 colony near Paris he met Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, and fell 
 in love with her. She returned to her home in California; 
 Stevenson heard that she was ill and in trouble, and rushed 
 to her assistance. His means were so scanty that he 
 crossed as a steerage passenger, and travelled from New 
 York to San Francisco in an emigrant train. The ex- 
 perience nearly cost him his life, but Mrs. Osbourne 
 nursed him through his illness, and in the spring of 1880 
 they were married. The honeymoon was spent in an 
 abandoned mining camp in the California mountains: 
 the record of these weeks is given in the book The Silverado 
 Squatters. They had chosen a lofty spot to be out of the 
 fogs; in the following essay Stevenson describes how he 
 was almost overtaken by them. One can imagine the 
 frail, eager half-invalid, his own danger forgotten in the 
 transport of gazing upon the wonderful spectacle, and 
 perhaps even as he looked, fitting words to the scene. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 THE SEA FOGS 
 
 (From The Silverado Squatters) 
 
 A change in the color of the light usually called me in 
 the morning. By a certain hour, the long, vertical chinks 
 in our western gable, where the boards had shrunk and 
 separated, flashed suddenly into my eyes as stripes of 
 dazzling blue, at once so dark and splendid that I used to 
 marvel how the qualities could be combined. At an 
 earlier hour, the heavens in that quarter were still quietly 
 colored, but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts 
 in the canyon already glowed with sunlight in a wonder- 
 ful compound of gold and rose and green; and this too 
 would kindle, although more mildly and with rainbow 
 tints, the fissures of our crazy gable. If I were sleeping 
 heavily, it was the bold blue that struck me awake; if 
 more lightly, then I would come to myself in that earlier 
 and fairer light. 
 
 One Sunday morning, about five, the first brightness 
 called me. I rose and turned to the east, not for my 
 devotions, but for air. The night had been very still. 
 The little private gale that blew every evening in our 
 canyon, for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, 
 had swiftly blown itself out; in the hours that followed 
 not a sigh of wind had shaken the tree tops; and our 
 barrack, for all its breaches, was less fresh that morning 
 than of wont. But I had no sooner reached the window 
 than I forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and 
 I made but two bounds into my clothes, and down the 
 crazy plank to the platform. 
 
 125 
 
126 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 The sun was still concealed below the opposite hill- 
 tops, though it was shining already, not twenty feet 
 above my head, on our own mountain slope. But the 
 scene, beyond a few near features, was entirely changed. 
 Napa Valley was gone; gone were all the lower slopes 
 and woody foot-hills of the range; and in their place, not 
 a thousand feet below me, rolled a great level ocean. 
 It was as though I had gone to bed the night before, 
 safe in a nook of inland mountains, and had awakened 
 in a bay upon the coast. I had seen these inundations 
 from below; at Calistoga I had risen and gone abroad in 
 the early morning, coughing and sneezing, under fathoms 
 on fathoms of gray sea vapor, like a cloudy sky a dull 
 sight for the artist, and a painful experience for the in- 
 valid. But to sit aloft one's self in the pure air and 
 under the unclouded dome of heaven, and thus look down 
 on the submergence of the valley, was strangely differ- 
 ent and even delightful to the eyes. Far away were hill- 
 tops like little islands. Nearer, a smoky surf beat about 
 the foot of precipices and poured into all the coves of 
 these rough mountains. The color of that fog ocean was 
 a thing never to be forgotten. For an instant, among the 
 Hebrides and just about sundown, I have seen something 
 like it on the sea itself. But the white was not so opa- 
 line; nor was there, what surprisingly increased the effect, 
 that breathless, crystal stillness over all. Even in its 
 gentlest moods the salt sea travails, moaning among the 
 weeds or lisping on the sand; but that vast fog ocean lay 
 in a trance of silence, nor did the sweet air of the morn- 
 ing tremble with a sound. 
 
 As I continued to sit upon the dump, I began to ob- 
 serve that this sea was not so level as at first sight it 
 appeared to be. Away in the extreme south, a little hill 
 of fog arose against the sky above the general surface, 
 and as it had already caught the sun, it shone on the 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 127 
 
 horizon like the topsails of some giant ship. There were 
 huge waves, stationary, as it seemed, like waves in a 
 frozen sea; and yet, as I looked again, I was not sure 
 but they were moving after all, with a slow and august 
 advance. And while I was yet doubting, a promontory 
 of the hills some four or five miles away, conspicuous by 
 a bouquet of tall pines, was in a single instant overtaken 
 and swallowed up. It reappeared in a little, with its 
 pines, but this time as an islet, and only to be swallowed 
 up once more and then for good. This set me looking 
 nearer, and I saw that in every cove along the line of 
 mountains the fog was being piled in higher and higher, 
 as though by some wind that was inaudible to me. I 
 could trace its progress, one pine-tree first growing hazy 
 and then disappearing after another; although some- 
 tunes there was none of this forerunning haze, but the 
 whole opaque white ocean gave a start and swallowed a 
 piece of mountain at a gulp. It was to flee these poison- 
 ous fogs that I had left the seaboard, and climbed so high 
 among the mountains. And now, behold, here came the 
 fog to besiege me in my chosen altitudes, and yet came 
 so beautifully that my first thought was of welcome. 
 
 The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all 
 the gaps of the hills it cast long bars of gold across that 
 white ocean. An eagle, or some other very great bird 
 of the mountain, came wheeling over the nearer pine 
 tops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as if to 
 look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, per- 
 haps with terror, for the aeries of her comrades. Then, 
 with a long cry, she disappeared again toward Lake 
 County and the clearer air. At length it seemed to me 
 as if the flood were beginning to subside. The old land- 
 marks, by whose disappearance I had measured its ad- 
 vance, here a crag, there a brave pine-tree, now began, 
 in the inverse order, to make their reappearance into 
 
128 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. This 
 was not Noah's flood; it was but a morning spring, and 
 would now drift out seaward whence it came. So, mightily 
 relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the sight, I went 
 into the house to light the fire. 
 
 I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more mounted 
 the platform to look abroad. The fog ocean had swelled 
 up enormously since last I saw it; and a few hundred feet 
 below me, in the deep gap where the Toll House stands 
 and the road runs through into La,ke County, it had al- 
 ready topped the slope, and was pouring over and down 
 the other side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed 
 along with it; and though I was still in calm air, I could 
 see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident 
 sighing mounted to me where I stood. 
 
 Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the 
 ridge on the opposite side of the gap, though a shoulder 
 of the mountain still warded it out of our canyon. Napa 
 Valley and its bounding hills were now utterly blotted 
 out. The fog, sunny-white in the sunshine, was pouring 
 over into Lake County in a huge, ragged cataract, tossing 
 tree tops appearing and disappearing in the spray. The 
 air struck with a little chill, and set me coughing. It 
 smelled strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing-house, 
 but with a shrewd tang of the sea salt. 
 
 Had it not been for two things the sheltering spur 
 which answered as a dike, and the great valley on the 
 other side which rapidly engulfed whatever mounted 
 our own little platform in the canyon must have been 
 already buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. 
 As it was, the interest of the scene entirely occupied our 
 minds. We were set just out of the wind, and but just 
 above the fog; we could listen to the voice of the one as 
 to music on the stage; we could plunge our eyes down 
 into the other, as into some flowing stream from over the 
 parapet of a bridge; thus we looked on upon a strange, 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 129 
 
 impetuous, silent, shifting exhibition of the powers of 
 nature, and saw the familiar landscape changing from 
 moment to moment like figures in a dream. 
 
 The imagination loves to trifle with what is not. Had 
 this been indeed the deluge, I should have felt more 
 strongly, but the emotion would have been similar in 
 kind. I played with the idea, as the child flees in de- 
 lighted terror from the creations of his fancy. The look 
 of the thing helped me. And when at last I began to 
 flee up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape from 
 the raw air that kept me coughing, but it was also part 
 in play. 
 
 As I ascended the mountainside, I came once more to 
 overlook the upper surface of the fog; but it wore a dif- 
 ferent appearance from what I had beheld at daybreak. 
 For, first, the sun now fell on it from high overhead, and 
 its surface shone and undulated like a great norland 
 moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. 
 And next the new level must have been a thousand or 
 fifteen hundred feet higher than the old, so that only 
 five or six points of all the broken country below me, still 
 stood out. Napa Valley was now one with Sonoma on 
 the west. On the hither side, only a thin scattered fringe 
 of bluffs was unsubmerged; and through all the gaps the 
 fog was pouring over, like an ocean, into the blue clear 
 sunny country on the east. There it was soon lost; for 
 it fell instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following 
 the watershed; and the hilltops in that quarter were still 
 clear cut upon the eastern sky. 
 
 Through the Toll House gap and over the near ridges 
 on the other side, the deluge was immense. A spray of 
 thin vapor was thrown high above it, rising and falling, 
 and blown into fantastic shapes. The speed of its course 
 was like a mountain torrent. Here and there a few tree 
 tops were discovered and then whelmed again; and for 
 one second, the bough of a dead pine beckoned out of the 
 
130 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 spray like the arm of a drowning man. But still the 
 imagination was dissatisfied, still the ear waited for some- 
 thing more. Had this indeed been water (as it seemed 
 so, to the eye), with what a plunge of reverberating thun- 
 der would it have rolled upon its course, disembowelling 
 mountains and deracinating pines! And yet water it 
 was, and sea-water at that true Pacific billows, only 
 somewhat rarefied, rolling in mid air among the hilltops. 
 
 I climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel 
 and dwarf underwood of Mount Saint Helena, until I 
 could look right down upon Silverado, and admire the 
 favored nook in which it lay. The sunny plain of fog 
 was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting 
 spur a gigantic accumulation of cottony vapor threat- 
 ened, with every second, to blow over and submerge our 
 homestead; but the vortex setting past the Toll House 
 was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in the 
 arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sun- 
 shine. About eleven, however, thin spray came flying 
 over the friendly buttress, and I began to think the fog 
 had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it was the last 
 effort. The wind veered while we were at dinner, and 
 began to blow squally from the mountain summit; and 
 by half-past one, all that world of sea fogs was utterly 
 routed and flying here and there into the south in little 
 rags of cloud. And instead of a lone sea beach, we found 
 ourselves once more inhabiting a high mountainside, 
 with the clear green country far below us, and the light 
 smoke of Calistoga blowing in the air. 
 
 This was the great Russian campaign for that season. 
 Now and then, in the early morning, a little white lakelet 
 of fog would be seen far down in Napa Valley; but the 
 heights were not again assailed, nor was the surrounding 
 world again shut off from Silverado. 
 
HENRY D. THOREAU 
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS 
 
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was one of the most 
 original figures in American literature. He was born at 
 Concord, Mass., a neighbor of Emerson's, and educated 
 at Harvard. His father was a manufacturer of lead- 
 pencils. Henry worked with him, and so improved the 
 process that he turned out a better pencil than had ever 
 been produced before. His neighbors congratulated him, 
 telling him that his fortune was made. But he said that 
 he would never make another pencil. "Why should I? 
 I would not do again what I have done once." The 
 remark was characteristic of Thoreau; he was not con- 
 cerned with making money, but with living according to 
 his own ideas. He had some skill as a carpenter and as 
 a surveyor; he would work at these occupations occa- 
 sionally the rest of his days he spent in reading, writing, 
 and observing nature. Wishing to spend some time in 
 solitude, he built a hut on the shore of Walden pond, near 
 Concord, and lived there alone for two years. The record 
 of this experience is given in Walden, or Life in the Woods, 
 from which the chapter here printed is taken. In addition 
 to Walden, he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimac 
 Rivers; Excursions; and Cape Cod. His Journals have 
 been published in several volumes. All of his books are 
 made up of descriptions of what he saw, observed with 
 the trained eye of a naturalist, and set down with the 
 pen of a poet. To these descriptions he adds his own 
 reflections upon men and things. 
 
HENRY D. THOREAU 
 
 BRUTE NEIGHBORS 
 
 (From Walden, or Life in the Woods') 
 
 Why do precisely these objects which we behold make 
 a world? Why has man just these species of animals for 
 his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled 
 this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay* and Co. have put 
 animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of bur- 
 den, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts. 
 
 The mice which haunted my house were not the com- 
 mon ones, which are said to have been introduced into 
 the country, but a wild native kind not found in the vil- 
 lage. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it 
 interested him much. When I was building, one of these 
 had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid 
 the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come 
 out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at 
 my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and 
 it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my 
 shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the 
 sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which 
 it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with 
 my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, 
 and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper 
 which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and 
 dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last 
 I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, 
 
 * Pilpay. The Fables of Pilpay is an ancient work, originally 
 written in Sanskrit. It is a series of stories about animals, each story 
 teaching a lesson. 
 
 133 
 
134 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward 
 cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away. 
 
 A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for pro- 
 tection in a pine which grew against the house. In June 
 the partridge (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, 
 led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the 
 rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to 
 them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself 
 the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on 
 your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirl- 
 wind had swept them away, and they so exactly resem- 
 ble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveller has 
 placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the 
 whirr of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls 
 and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his 
 attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The 
 parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in 
 such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, 
 detect what kind of a creature it is. The young squat 
 still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and 
 mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, 
 nor will your approach make them run again and betray 
 themselves. You may even tread on them, or have youi 
 eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I 
 have held them in my open hand at such a time, and 
 still their only care, obedient to their mother and their 
 instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. 
 So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid 
 them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on 
 its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same 
 position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow 
 like the young of most birds, but more perfectly devel- 
 oped and precocious even than chickens. 
 
 The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their 
 open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence 
 
HENRY D. THOREAU 135 
 
 seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the 
 purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. 
 Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval 
 with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another 
 such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such 
 a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often 
 shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these inno- 
 cents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or 
 gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they 
 so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a 
 hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are 
 lost, for they never hear the mother's call which gathers 
 them again. These were my hens and chickens. 
 
 It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free 
 though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves 
 in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. 
 How retired the otto manages to live here! He grows 
 to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps with- 
 out any human being getting a glimpse of him. I for- 
 merly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my 
 house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering 
 at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the 
 shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read 
 a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and 
 of a brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile 
 from my field. The approach to this was through a suc- 
 cession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch- 
 pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a 
 very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white 
 pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to sit on. I had 
 dug out the spring, and made a well of clear gray water, 
 where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and 
 thither I went for this purpose almost every day in mid- 
 summer, when the pond was warmest. Thither too the 
 woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, 
 
136 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they 
 ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would 
 leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer 
 and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken 
 wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her 
 young, who would already have taken up their march, 
 with faint wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as 
 she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I 
 could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle-doves 
 sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of 
 the soft white pines over my head; or the red squirrel, 
 coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly fa- 
 miliar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long 
 enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its 
 inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns. 
 
 I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. 
 One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my 
 pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, 
 the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and 
 black, fiercely contending with one another. Having 
 once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled 
 and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I 
 was surprised to find that the chips were covered with 
 such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, 
 a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted 
 against the black, and frequently two red ones to one 
 black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the 
 hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was 
 already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and 
 black. It was the only battle which I have ever wit- 
 nessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle 
 was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the 
 one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On 
 every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet with- 
 out any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never 
 
HENRY D. THOREAU 137 
 
 fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast 
 locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley 
 amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till 
 the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red 
 champion had fastened himself like a vise to his adver- 
 sary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field 
 never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers 
 near the root, having already caused the other to go by 
 the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from 
 side to side, and as I saw on looking nearer, had already 
 divested him of several of his members. They fought 
 with more pertinacity than bulldogs. Neither mani- 
 fested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident 
 that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. 
 
 In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on 
 the hillside of this valley, evidently full of excitement, 
 who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken 
 part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none 
 of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return 
 with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some 
 Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had 
 now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw 
 this unequal combat from afar for the blacks were nearly 
 twice the size of the red he drew near with rapid pace 
 till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the com- 
 batants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon 
 the black warrior, and commenced his operations near 
 the root of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select 
 among his own members; and so there were three united 
 for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented 
 which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should 
 not have wondered by this time to find that they had 
 their respective musical bands stationed on some emi- 
 nent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to 
 excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was 
 
138 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. 
 The more you think of it, the less the difference. And 
 certainly there is not a fight recorded in Concord history, 
 at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a mo- 
 ment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers 
 engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. 
 For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dres- 
 den. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, 
 and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant 
 was a Buttrick, "Fire ! for God's sake, fire !" and thou- 
 sands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was 
 not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a 
 principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and 
 not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the re- 
 sults of this battle will be as important and memorable 
 to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bun- 
 ker Hill, at least. 
 
 I took up the chip on which the three I have particu- 
 larly described were struggling, carried it into my house, 
 and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order 
 to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first- 
 mentioned red ant, 1 saw that, though he was assiduously 
 gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed 
 his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, 
 exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black 
 warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for 
 him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's 
 eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. 
 They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, 
 and when I looked again the black soldier had severed 
 the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living 
 heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly 
 trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly 
 fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble 
 struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant 
 
HENRY D. THOREAU 139 
 
 of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to 
 divest himself of them; which at length, after half an 
 hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he 
 went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. 
 Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the 
 remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do 
 not know; but I thought that his industry would not be 
 worth much thereafter. I never learned which party 
 was victorious, nor the cause of the war: but I felt for 
 the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited 
 and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity 
 and carnage, of a human battle before my door. 
 
 Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have 
 long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, 
 though they say that Huber is the only modern author 
 who appears to have witnessed them. "^Eneas Sylvius," 
 say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of 
 one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small 
 species on the trunk of a pear-tree," adds that, '"This 
 action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the 
 Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an emi- 
 nent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle 
 with the greatest fidelity.' A similar engagement be- 
 tween great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, 
 in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have 
 buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of 
 their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event hap- 
 pened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern 
 the Second from Sweden." The battle which I witnessed 
 took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before 
 the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. 
 
 Many a village Bose,* fit only to course a mud-turtle 
 in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the 
 woods, without the knowledge of his master, and ineffec- 
 * Bose, a nickname for a dog. 
 
140 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 tually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; 
 led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded 
 the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its 
 denizens; now far behind his guide, barking like a 
 canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed 
 itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes 
 with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of some 
 stray member of the jerbilla* family. 
 
 Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the 
 stony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far 
 from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the 
 most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, 
 appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and 
 stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than 
 the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met a 
 cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they 
 all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely 
 spitting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods 
 there was what was called a "winged cat" in one of the 
 farmhouses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian 
 Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she 
 was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am 
 not sure whether it was a male or female, and so use the 
 more common pronoun), but her mistress told me that 
 she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year 
 before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; 
 that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white 
 spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy 
 tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and 
 flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten or twelve 
 inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin 
 like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like 
 felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They 
 
 * Jerbilla, or jerboa, a mouse or rat with a pouch; the kangaroo 
 rat is an example. 
 
HENRY D. THOREAU 141 
 
 gave me a pair of her "wings," which I keep still. Thero 
 is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some 
 thought it was part flying-squirrel or some other wild 
 animal, which is not impossible, for, according to natural- 
 ists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of 
 the marten and domestic cat. This would have been the 
 right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for 
 why should not a poet's cat be winged as well as his 
 horse ? 
 
 In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, 
 to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring 
 with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of 
 his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, 
 in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with 
 patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They 
 come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at 
 least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on 
 this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird 
 cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up 
 there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the 
 leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no 
 loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond 
 with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their 
 discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, 
 taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must 
 beat a retreat to town, and shop, and unfinished jobs. 
 But they were too often successful. When I went to 
 get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw 
 this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. 
 If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to 
 see how he would manoeuvre, he would dive and be com- 
 pletely lost, so that I did not discover him again, some- 
 times, till the latter part of the day. But I was more 
 than a match for him on the surface. He commonly went 
 off in a rain. 
 
142 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm 
 October afternoon, for such days especially they settle 
 on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked 
 in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out 
 from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of 
 me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pur- 
 sued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up 
 I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I mis- 
 calculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty 
 rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I 
 had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed 
 loud and long, and with more reason than before. He 
 manoeuvred so cunningly that I could not get within 
 half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the 
 surface, turning his head this way and that, he coolly 
 surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose 
 his course so that he might come up where there was the 
 widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from 
 the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his 
 mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at 
 once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be 
 driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his 
 brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. 
 It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of 
 the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adver- 
 sary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the 
 problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear 
 again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on 
 the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly 
 under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweari- 
 able, that when he had swum farthest he would immedi- 
 ately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could 
 divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth sur- 
 face, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had 
 time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its 
 
HENRY D. THOREAU 143 
 
 deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in 
 the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with 
 hooks set for trout, though Walden is deeper than that. 
 How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly 
 visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their 
 schoolsjj Yet he appeared to know his course as surely 
 under water as on the surface, and swam much faster 
 there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached 
 the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and in- 
 stantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me 
 to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to en- 
 deavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and 
 again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one 
 way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh 
 behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, 
 did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up 
 by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough 
 betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I 
 could commonly hear the plash of the water when he 
 came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour 
 he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam 
 yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how 
 serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came 
 to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet 
 beneath. 
 
 His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet some- 
 what like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when 
 he had balked me most successfully and come up a long 
 way off, he muttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, prob- 
 ably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a 
 beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately 
 howls. This was his looning, perhaps the wildest sound 
 that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and 
 wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my ef- 
 forts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky 
 
144 THE DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY 
 
 was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that 
 I could see where he broke the surface when I did not 
 hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and 
 the smoothness of the water were all against him. At 
 length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of 
 those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons 
 to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the 
 east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with 
 misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer 
 of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me, and 
 so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous 
 surface. 
 
 For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly 
 tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from 
 the sportsman tricks which they will have less need to 
 practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise 
 they would sometimes circle round and round and over 
 the pond at a considerable height, from which they could 
 easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes 
 in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither 
 long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight 
 of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left 
 free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the 
 middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its 
 water for the same reason that I do. 
 
THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 THE MAN IN BLACK 
 
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) was one of the important 
 men of letters of the eighteenth century, an associate of 
 Addison, Steele, and Johnson. He was born in Ireland, 
 the son of a poor country clergyman. He graduated at 
 Dublin University at the foot of his class. This low rank 
 was not due to any lack of ability, but rather to Gold- 
 smith's happy-go-lucky nature. He wandered about 
 Europe, supposed to be studying medicine, but when he 
 set up practice in London no patients came. Then he 
 became a hack writer, producing books on whatever 
 subjects the publishers desired. For a newspaper he 
 wrote a series of essays called The Citizen of the World. He 
 is best remembered as the author of the Vicar of Wake- 
 field, a famous novel of rural life in England, and as the 
 author of a comedy which yet holds the stage, She Stoops 
 to Conquer, and of two poems, "The Traveller" and "The 
 Deserted Village," which are in almost every collection of 
 English poetry. 
 
 The essay here printed is interesting not only in itself 
 but from the fact that the character here sketched is a 
 foreshadowing of the famous Doctor Primrose in the Vicar 
 of Wakefield. The impulsive generosity of the Man in 
 Black, his inconsistency, his heart quickly moved by dis- 
 tress, all these were characteristics of Goldsmith him- 
 self. 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 
 
 THE MAN IN BLACK 
 (From The Citizen of the World) 
 
 Though fond of many acquaintances, I desire an in- 
 timacy only with a few. The Man in Black, whom I 
 have often mentioned, is one whose friendship I could 
 wish to acquire, because he possesses my esteem. His 
 manners, it is true, are tinctured with some strange in- 
 consistencies; and he may be justly termed an humorist 
 in a nation of humorists. Though he is generous even 
 to profusion, he affects to be thought a prodigy of parsi- 
 mony and prudence; though his conversation be replete 
 with the most sordid and selfish maxims, his heart is 
 dilated with the most unbounded love. I have known 
 him profess himself a man-hater, while his cheek was 
 glowing with compassion; and, while his looks were sof- 
 tened into pity, I have heard him use the language of the 
 most unbounded ill-nature. Some affect humanity and 
 tenderness, others boast of having such dispositions from 
 Nature; but he is the only man I ever knew who seemed 
 ashamed of his natural benevolence. He takes as much 
 pains to hide his feelings, as any hypocrite would to con- 
 ceal his indifference; but on every unguarded moment 
 the mask drops off, and reveals him to the most super- 
 ficial observer. 
 
 In one of our late excursions into the country, happen- 
 ing to discourse upon the provision that was made for 
 the poor in England, he seemed amazed how any of his 
 countrymen could be so foolishly weak as to relieve occa- 
 sional objects of charity, when the laws had made such 
 
 147 
 
148 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 ample provision for their support. "In every parish- 
 house," says he, "the poor are supplied with food, clothes, 
 fire, and a bed to lie on; they want no more, I desire no 
 more myself; yet still they seem discontented. I'm sur- 
 prised at the inactivity of our magistrates in not taking 
 up such vagrants, who are only a weight upon the indus- 
 trious; I'm surprised that the people are found to relieve 
 them, when they must be at the same time sensible that 
 it, in some measure, encourages idleness, extravagance, 
 and imposture. Were I to advise any man for whom I 
 had the least regard, I would caution him by all means 
 not to be imposed upon by their false pretenses: let me 
 assure you, sir, they are impostors, every one of them; 
 and rather merit a prison than relief." 
 
 He was proceeding in this strain earnestly, to dissuade 
 me from an imprudence of which I am seldom guilty, 
 when an old man, who still had about him the remnants 
 of tattered finery, implored our compassion. He assured 
 us that he was no common beggar, but forced into the 
 shameful profession to support a dying wife and five 
 hungry children. Being prepossessed against such false- 
 hoods, his story had not the least influence upon me; but 
 it was quite otherwise with the Man in Black; I could see 
 it visibly operate upon his countenance, and effectually in- 
 terrupt his harangue. I could easily perceive that his 
 heart burned to relieve the five starving children, but he 
 seemed ashamed to discover his weakness to me. While 
 he thus hesitated between compassion and pride, I pre- 
 tended to look another way, and he seized this oppor- 
 tunity of giving the poor petitioner a piece of silver, 
 bidding him at the same time, in order that I should hear, 
 go work for his bread, and not tease passengers with such 
 impertinent falsehoods for the future. 
 
 As he had fancied himself quite unperceived, he con- 
 tinued, as we proceeded, to rail against beggars with as 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 149 
 
 much animosity as before; he threw in some episodes on 
 his own amazing prudence and economy, with his pro- 
 found skill in discovering impostors; he explained the 
 manner in which he would deal with beggars, were he a 
 magistrate, hinted at enlarging some of the prisons for 
 their reception, and told two stories of ladies that were 
 robbed by beggarmen. He was beginning a third to the 
 same purpose, when a sailor with a wooden leg once more 
 crossed our walks, desiring our pity, and blessing our 
 limbs. I was for going on without taking any notice, 
 but my friend, looking wistfully upon the poor petitioner, 
 bade me stop, and he would show me with how much 
 ease he could at any time detect an impostor. 
 
 He now, therefore, assumed a look of importance, and 
 in an angry tone began to examine the sailor, demanding 
 in what engagement he was thus disabled and rendered 
 unfit for service. The sailor replied in a tone as angrily 
 as he, that he had been an officer on board a private ship 
 of war, and that he had lost his leg abroad in defense of 
 those who did nothing at home. At his reply, all my 
 friend's importance vanished in a moment; he had not a 
 single question more to ask; he now only studied what 
 method he should take to relieve him unobserved. He 
 had, however, no easy part to act, as he was obliged to 
 preserve the appearance of ill-nature before me, and yet 
 relieve himself by relieving the sailor. Casting, there- 
 fore, a furious look upon some bundles of chips which the 
 fellow carried in a string at his back, my friend demanded 
 how he sold his matches; but not waiting for a reply, de- 
 sired in a surly tone to have a shilling's worth. The sailor 
 seemed at first surprised at his demand, but soon recol- 
 lecting himself, and presenting his whole bundle "Here, 
 master," says he, "take all my cargo, and a blessing into 
 the bargain." 
 
 It is impossible to describe with what an air of triumph 
 
150 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 my friend marched off with his new purchase; he assured 
 me that he was firmly of opinion that those fellows must 
 have stolen their goods who could thus afford to sell 
 them for half value. He informed me of several different 
 uses to which those chips might be applied; he expatiated 
 largely upon the savings that would result from lighting 
 candles with a match instead of thrusting them into the 
 fire. He averred that he would as soon have parted 
 with a tooth as his money to those vagabonds, unless for 
 some valuable consideration. I cannot tell how long this 
 panegyric upon frugality and matches might have con- 
 tinued, had not his attention been called off by another 
 object more distressful than either of the former. A 
 woman in rags, with one child in her arms, and another 
 on her back, was attempting to sing ballads, but with 
 such a mournful voice that it was difficult to determine 
 whether she was singing or crying. A wretch who in 
 the deepest distress still aimed at good-humor, was an 
 object my friend was by no means capable of withstand- 
 ing; his vivacity and his discourse were instantly inter- 
 rupted; upon this occasion his very dissimulation had 
 forsaken him. Even in my presence, he immediately ap- 
 plied his hands to his pockets, in order to relieve her; but 
 guess his confusion, when he found he had already given 
 away all the money he carried about him to former ob- 
 jects. The misery painted in the woman's visage was 
 not half so strongly expressed as the agony in his. He 
 continued to search for some time, but to no purpose, 
 till, at length, recollecting himself, with a face of in- 
 effable good-nature, as he had no money, he put into her 
 hands his shilling's worth of matches. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 
 
The following essay, like the one on The Sea Fogs, 
 is taken from The Silverado Squatters, the book which 
 records the life of the Stevensons in the mountains of 
 California. His frail health made it necessary to have 
 some assistance in their cabin, and to this fact we owe the 
 minute portrayal of the two men, Irvine and Rufe. As 
 Irvine loafed about, talking boastfully of his own achieve- 
 ments, he little imagined that every attitude, every word, 
 was being recorded upon a mind more sensitive than any 
 photographic film, so that not only his image, but his very 
 self would be set forth on paper, and he would be known 
 to men in distant lands and other times. Such is the 
 miracle wrought by literature. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
 THE HUNTER'S FAMILY 
 
 (From The Silverado Squatters) 
 
 There is quite a large race or class of people in America, 
 for whom we scarcely seem to have a parallel in England. 
 Of pure white blood, they are unknown or unrecognizable 
 in towns; inhabit the fringe of settlements and the deep, 
 quiet places of the country; rebellious to all labor, and 
 pettily thievish, like the English gypsies; rustically igno- 
 rant, but with a touch of wood lore and the dexterity of 
 the savage. Whence they came is a moot point. At 
 the time of the war,* they poured north in crowds to 
 escape the conscription; lived during summer on fruits, 
 wild animals, and petty theft; and at the approach of 
 winter, when these supplies failed, built great fires in the 
 forest, and there died stoically by starvation. They are 
 widely scattered, however, and easily recognized. Lout- 
 ish, but not ill-looking, they will sit all day, swinging 
 their legs on a field fence, the mind seemingly as devoid 
 of all reflection as a Suffolk peasant's, careless of politics, 
 for the most part incapable of reading, but with a rebel- 
 lious vanity and a strong sense of independence. Hunt- 
 ing is their most congenial business, or, if the occasion 
 offers, a little amateur detection. In tracking a criminal, 
 following a particular horse along a beaten highway, and 
 drawing inductions from a hair or a footprint, one of 
 those somnolent, grinning Hodges will suddenly display 
 activity of body and finesse of mind. By their names ye 
 may know them, the women figuring as Loveina, Larsenia, 
 Serena, Leanna, Orreana; the men answering to Alvin, 
 * The reference is to the Civil War. 
 153 
 
154 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 Alva, or Orion, pronounced Orion, with the accent on 
 the first. Whether they are indeed a race, or whether 
 this is the form of degeneracy common to all backwoods- 
 men, they are at least known by a generic byword, as 
 Poor Whites or Lowdowners. 
 
 I will not say that the Hanson family was Poor White, 
 because the name savors of offense; but I may go as far 
 as this they were, in many points, not unsimilar to the 
 people usually so called. Rufe himself combined two of 
 the qualifications, for he was both a hunter and an 
 amateur detective. It was he who pursued Russel and 
 Dollar, the robbers of the Lakeport stage, and captured 
 them the very morning after the exploit, while they were 
 still sleeping in a hay-field. Russel, a drunken Scotch 
 carpenter, was even an acquaintance of his own, and he 
 expressed much grave commiseration for his fate. In all 
 that he said and did, Rufe was grave. I never saw him 
 hurried. When he spoke, he took out his pipe with cere- 
 monial deliberation, looked east and west, and then, in 
 quiet tones and few words, stated his business or told his 
 story. His gait was to match; it would never have sur- 
 prised you if, at any step, he had turned round and 
 walked away again, so warily and slowly, and with so 
 much seeming hesitation did he go about. He lay long 
 in bed in the morning rarely, indeed, rose before noon; 
 he loved all games, from poker to clerical croquet, and in 
 the Toll House croquet ground I have seen him toiling 
 at the latter with the devotion of a curate. He took an 
 interest in education, was an active member of the local 
 school board, and when I was there, he had recently lost 
 the schoolhouse key. His wagon was broken, but it 
 never seemed to occur to him to mend it. Like all truly 
 idle people, he had an artistic eye. He chose the print 
 stuff for his wife's dresses, and counselled her in the 
 making of a patchwork quilt, always, as she thought, 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 155 
 
 wrongly, but to the more educated eye, always with 
 bizarre and admirable taste the taste of an Indian. 
 With all this, he was a perfect, unoffending gentleman 
 in word and act. Take his clay pipe from him, and he 
 was fit for any society but that of fools. Quiet as he 
 was, there burned a deep, permanent excitement in his 
 dark blue eyes; and when this grave man smiled, it was 
 like sunshine in a shady place. 
 
 Mrs. Hanson (nee, if you please, Lovelands) was more 
 commonplace than her lord. She was a comely woman, 
 too, plump, fair-colored, with wonderful white teeth; and 
 in her print dresses (chosen by Rufe) and with a large 
 sunbonnet shading her valued complexion, made, I as- 
 sure you, a very agreeable figure. But she was on the 
 surface, what there was of her, outspoken and loud- 
 spoken. Her noisy laughter had none of the charm of one 
 of Hanson's rare, slow-spreading smiles; there was no 
 reticence, no mystery, no manner about the woman; she 
 was a first-class dairymaid, but her husband was an un- 
 known quantity between the savage and the nobleman. 
 She was often in and out with us, merry, and healthy, 
 and fair; he came far seldomer only, indeed, when there 
 was business, or now and again, to pay a visit of cere- 
 mony, brushed up for the occasion, with his wife on his 
 arm, and a clean clay pipe in his teeth. These visits, in 
 our forest state, had quite the ah- of an event, and turned 
 our red canyon into a salon. 
 
 Such was the pair who ruled in the old Silverado Hotel, 
 among the windy trees, on the mountain shoulder over- 
 looking the whole length of Napa Valley, as the man aloft 
 looks down on the ship's deck. There they kept house, 
 with sundry horses and fowls, and a family of sons, 
 Daniel Webster, and I think George Washington, among 
 the number. Nor did they want visitors. An old gentle- 
 man, of singular stolidity, and called Breedlove I think 
 
156 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 he had crossed the plains in the same caravan with Rule 
 housed with them for a while during our stay; and they 
 had besides a permanent lodger, in the form of Mrs. 
 Hanson's brother, Irvine Lovelands. I spell Irvine by 
 guess; for I could get no information on the subject, just 
 as I could never find out, in spite of many inquiries, 
 whether or not Rufe was a contraction for Rufus. They 
 were all cheerfully at sea about their names in that gen- 
 eration. And this is surely the more notable where the 
 names are all so strange, and even the family names 
 appear to have been coined. At one time, at least, the 
 ancestors of all these Alvins and Alvas, Loveinas, Love- 
 lands, and Breedloves, must have taken serious counsel 
 and found a certain poetry in these denominations; that 
 must have been, then, their form of literature. But 
 still times change; and their next descendants, the George 
 Washingtons and Daniel Websters, will at least be clear 
 upon the point. And anyway, and however his name 
 should be spelled, this Irvine Lovelands was the most un- 
 mitigated Caliban I ever knew. 
 
 Our very first morning at Silverado, when we were full 
 of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds 
 and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, 
 Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she 
 for neighborliness and general curiosity; he, because he 
 was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I 
 forget how much a day. The way that he set about 
 cutting wood was characteristic. We were at that mo- 
 ment patching up and unpacking in the kitchen. Down 
 he sat on one side, and down sat his sister on the other. 
 Both were chewing pine-tree gum, and he, to my annoy- 
 ance, accompanied that simple pleasure with profuse ex- 
 pectoration. She rattled away, talking up hill and down 
 dale, laughing, tossing her head, showing her brilliant 
 teeth. He looked on in silence, now spitting heavily on 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 157 
 
 the floor, now putting his head back and uttering a loud, 
 discordant, joyless laugh. He had a tangle of shock hair, 
 the color of wool; his mouth was a grin; although as strong 
 as a horse, he looked neither heavy nor yet adroit, only 
 leggy, coltish, and in the road. But it was plain he was 
 in high spirits, thoroughly enjoying his visit; and he 
 laughed frankly whenever we failed to accomplish what 
 we were about. This was scarcely helpful: it was even, 
 to amateur carpenters, embarrassing; but it lasted until 
 we knocked off work and began to get dinner. Then 
 Mrs. Hanson remembered she should have been gone an 
 hour ago; and the pair retired, and the lady's laughter 
 died away among the nutmegs down the path. That 
 was Irvine's first day's work in my employment the 
 devil take him ! 
 
 The next morning he returned and, as he was this time 
 alone, he bestowed his conversation upon us with great 
 liberality. He prided himself on his intelligence; asked 
 us if we knew the schoolma'am. He didn't think much 
 of her, anyway. He had tried her, he had. He had put 
 a question to her. If a tree a hundred feet high were to 
 fall a foot a day, how long would it take to fall right 
 down? She had not been able to solve the problem. 
 "She don't know nothing," he opined. He told us how 
 a friend of his kept a school with a revolver, and chuckled 
 mightily over that; his friend could teach school, he could* 
 All the time he kept chewing gum and spitting. He 
 would stand a while looking down; and then he would 
 toss back his shock of hair, and laugh hoarsely, and spit, 
 and bring forward a new subject. A man, he told us, 
 who bore a grudge against him, had poisoned his dog. 
 "That was a low thing for a man to do now, wasn't it? 
 It wasn't like a man, that, nohow. But I got even with 
 him: I pisoned his dog." His clumsy utterance, his rude 
 embarrassed manner, set a fresh value on the stupidity 
 
158 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 of his remarks. I do not think I ever appreciated the 
 meaning of two words until I knew Irvine the verb, 
 loaf, and the noun, oaf; between them, they complete his 
 portrait. He could lounge, and wriggle, and rub himself 
 against the wall, and grin, and be more in everybody's 
 way than any other two people that I ever set my eyes 
 on. Nothing that he did became him; and yet you were 
 conscious that he was one of your own race, that his mind 
 was cumbrously at work, revolving the problem of exist- 
 ence like the quid of gum, and in his own cloudy manner 
 enjoying life, and passing judgment on his fellows. Above 
 all things, he was delighted with himself. You would 
 not have thought it, from his uneasy manners and troubled, 
 struggling utterance; but he loved himself to the marrow, 
 and was happy and proud like a peacock on a rail. 
 
 His self-esteem was, indeed, the one joint in his harness. 
 He could be got to work, and even kept at work, by flat- 
 tery. As long as my wife stood over him, crying out how 
 strong he was, so long exactly he would stick to the matter 
 in hand; and the moment she turned her back, or ceased 
 to praise him, he would stop. His physical strength was 
 wonderful; and to have a woman stand by and admire his 
 achievements, warmed his heart like sunshine. Yet he 
 was as cowardly as he was powerful, and felt no shame 
 in owning to the weakness. Something was once wanted 
 from the crazy platform over the shaft, and he at once 
 refused to venture there "did not like," as he said, 
 "foolen* round them kind o' places," and let my wife 
 go instead of him, looking on with a grin. Vanity, where 
 it rules, is usually more heroic: but Irvine steadily ap- 
 proved himself, and expected others to approve him; 
 rather looked down upon my wife, and decidedly expected 
 her to look up to him, on the strength of his superior 
 prudence. 
 
 Yet the strangest part of the whole matter was per- 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 159 
 
 haps this, that Irvine was as beautiful as a statue. His 
 features were, in themselves, perfect; it was only his 
 cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression that disfigured 
 them. So much strength residing in so spare a frame 
 was proof sufficient of the accuracy of his shape. He 
 must have been built somewhat after the pattern of Jack 
 Sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be cer- 
 tain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of 
 his mind no less than by the vigor of his body, that he 
 broke his strong prison with such imperfect implements, 
 turning the very obstacles to service. Irvine, in the same 
 case, would have sat down and spat, and grumbled curses. 
 He had the soul of a fat sheep, but, regarded as an artist's 
 model, the exterior of a Greek god. It was a cruel 
 thought to persons less favored in their birth, that this 
 creature, endowed to use the language of theatres 
 with extraordinary "means," should so manage to mis- 
 employ them that he looked ugly and almost deformed. 
 It was only by an effort of abstraction, and after many 
 days, that you discovered what he was. 
 
 By playing on the oaf's conceit, and standing closely 
 over him, we got a path made round the corner of the 
 dump to our door, so that we could come and go with 
 decent ease; and he even enjoyed the work, for in that 
 there were boulders to be plucked up bodily, bushes to 
 be uprooted, and other occasions for athletic display: 
 but cutting wood was a different matter. Anybody could 
 cut wood; and, besides, my wife was tired of supervising 
 him, and had other things to attend to. And, in short, 
 days went by, and Irvine came daily, and talked and 
 lounged and spat; but the firewood remained intact as 
 sleepers on the platform or growing trees upon the moun- 
 tainside. Irvine as a wood-cutter, we could tolerate; 
 but Irvine as a friend of the family, at so much a day, 
 was too bald an imposition, and at length, on the after- 
 
160 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 noon of the fourth or fifth day of our connection, I ex- 
 plained to him, as clearly as I could, the light in which I 
 had grown to regard his presence. I pointed out to him 
 that I could not continue to give him a salary for spitting 
 on the floor; and this expression, which came after a good 
 many others, at last penetrated his obdurate wits. He 
 rose at once, and said if that was the way he was going 
 to be spoke to, he reckoned he would quit. And, no one 
 interposing, he departed. 
 
 So far, so good. But we had no firewood. The next 
 afternoon, I strolled down to Rufe's and consulted him 
 on the subject. It was a very droll interview, in the 
 large, bare north room of the Silverado Hotel, Mrs. Han- 
 son's patchwork on a frame, and Rufe, and his wife, and 
 I, and the oaf himself, all more or less embarrassed. 
 Rufe announced there was nobody in the neighborhood 
 but Irvine who could do a day's work for anybody. 
 Irvine, thereupon, refused to have any more to do with 
 my service; he "wouldn't work no more for a man as had 
 spoke to him 's I had done." I found myself on the 
 point of the last humiliation driven to beseech the 
 creature whom I had just dismissed with insult: but I 
 took the high hand in despair, said there must be no 
 talk of Irvine coming back unless matters were to be 
 differently managed; that I would rather chop firewood 
 for myself than be fooled; and, in short, the Hansons 
 being eager for the lad's hire, I so imposed upon them 
 with merely affected resolution, that they ended by beg- 
 ging me to re-employ him again on a solemn promise that 
 he should be more industrious. The promise, I am bound 
 to say, was kept. We soon had a fine pile of firewood at 
 our door; and if Caliban gave me the cold shoulder and 
 spared me his conversation, I thought none the worse of 
 feim for that, nor did I find my days much longer for the 
 deprivation. 
 
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 161 
 
 The leading spirit of the family was, I am inclined to 
 fancy, Mrs. Hanson. Her social brilliancy somewhat 
 dazzled the others, and she had more of the small change 
 of sense. It wa she who faced Kelmar, for instance; 
 and perhaps, if she had been alone, Kelmar would have 
 had no rule within her doors. Rufe, to be sure, had a 
 fine, sober, open-air attitude of mind, seeing the world 
 without exaggeration perhaps, we may even say, with- 
 out enough; for he lacked, along with the others, that 
 commercial idealism which puts so high a value on time 
 and money. Sanity itself is a kind of convention. Per- 
 haps Rufe was wrong; but, looking on life plainly, he was 
 unable to perceive that croquet or poker were in any 
 way less important than, for instance, mending his wagon. 
 Even his own profession, hunting, was dear to him mainly 
 as a sort of play; even that he would have neglected, had 
 it not appealed to his imagination. His hunting-suit, for 
 instance, had cost I should be afraid to say how many 
 bucks the currency in which he paid his way: it was 
 all befringed, after the Indian fashion, and it was dear 
 to his heart. The pictorial side of his daily business 
 was never forgotten. He was even anxious to stand for 
 his picture in those buckskin hunting clothes; and I re- 
 member how he once warmed almost into enthusiasm, 
 his dark blue eyes growing perceptibly larger, as he 
 planned the composition in which he should appear, 
 "with the horns of some real big bucks, and dogs, and a 
 camp on a crick" (creek, stream). 
 
 There was no trace in Irvine of this woodland poetry. 
 He did not care for hunting, nor yet for buckskin suite. 
 He had never observed scenery. The world, as it ap- 
 peared to him, was almost obliterated by his own great 
 grinning figure in the foreground : Caliban Malvolio. And 
 it seems to me as if, in the persons of these brothers-in- 
 law, we had the two sides of rusticity fairly well rep- 
 
162 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 resented: the hunter living really in nature; the clod- 
 hopper living merely out of society: the one bent up in 
 every corporal agent to capacity in one pursuit, doing at 
 least one thing keenly and thoughtfully, and thoroughly 
 alive to all that touches it; the other in the inert and 
 bestial state, walking in a faint dream, and taking so 
 dim an impression of the myriad sides of life that he is 
 truly conscious of nothing but himself. It is only in 
 the fastnesses of nature, forests, mountains, and the 
 back of man's beyond, that a creature endowed with five 
 senses can grow up into the perfection of this crass and 
 earthy vanity. In towns or the busier country sides, 
 he is roughly reminded of other men's existence; and if 
 he learns no more, he learns at least to fear contempt. 
 But Irvine had come scathless through life, conscious 
 only of himself, of his great strength and intelligence; 
 and in the silence of the universe, to which he did not 
 listen, dwelling with delight on the sound of his own 
 thoughts. 
 
JULIAN STREET 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
Julian Street (1879 ) an American journalist of 
 
 to-day, was born in Chicago, and received his education 
 in the public schools of that city and at Ridley College. 
 He entered journalism, becoming a reporter on the New 
 York Mail (then the Mail and Express), in 1899, and wns 
 for a time dramatic editor. He has been a frequent 
 contributor to magazines, and has published a number of 
 books, of which the best known are a humorous story, 
 The Need of Change, some sketches of travel called Abroad 
 at Home and American Adventures, also a recent book on 
 Mysterious Japan. 
 
 His work as a writer of magazine articles brought him 
 into relations with Theodore Roosevelt, and, like many 
 other journalists, he became a warm admirer of the Colo- 
 nel. In 1915 he published a sketch of Roosevelt with 
 the title The Most Interesting American. In this he pointed 
 out the fact that Theodore Roosevelt combined within 
 himself men of many types : he was a physical-culture ex- 
 pert, a historian, a biographer, an essayist, a natural scien- 
 tist, a big-game hunter, an explorer and discoverer, a 
 critic, a former cowboy, the holder of a dozen LL.D.'s, 
 an editor, a former member of the State legislature, a prac- 
 tical reformer, a veteran colonel of cavalry, a former As- 
 sistant Secretary of the Navy, a former governor, a Nobel 
 prize winner, a former Vice-president and former Presi- 
 dent the youngest who ever held that position. On the 
 death of Theodore Roosevelt, Mr. Street wrote the fine 
 tribute here printed; it appeared first in Collier's, and is 
 now published as part of the volume, The Most Interest- 
 ing American. 
 
JULIAN STREET 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT* 
 (From The Most Interesting American) 
 
 We, whom Theodore Roosevelt used proudly and affec- 
 tionately to call his "fellow Americans/' have always 
 listened with great relish to characteristic stories of him. 
 His qualities, physical and spiritual, were so utterly his 
 own, his individuality so intense and overmastering, that 
 he seemed somehow to be projected among us, to be in- 
 timately known even to those of us who had never touched 
 his hand or even seen him. It was this curious feeling 
 as of personal acquaintance with him that caused us so 
 to delight in the flavor of a typical Roosevelt story. 
 
 "Isn't that just like him !" we would say, as we might 
 of a story hitting off familiar traits of our own father. 
 
 But whereas, on the night of January 5, 1919, a Roose- 
 velt story might by many of us have been regarded merely 
 as something entertaining, the next morning witnessed a 
 great change. The wand of Death touching him as he 
 slept, releasing him to further high adventure, to great, 
 final explorations, transformed not him alone, but the 
 environment and the legend of him. To every posses- 
 sion of his, from the wife and children he loved to such 
 small objects as that inkstand, made from an elephant's 
 foot, which stood upon his desk at Sagamore Hill, or the 
 very pens and pencils there, thenceforth attached a quite 
 new sacredness. And so, for us, his fellow Americans, 
 
 * Copyright, Cottier's, February 1, 1919; also Century Co., 1920. 
 Reprinted by permission of the author and of the publishers. 
 
 165 
 
166 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 new sacredness attaches now to the rich legacy of wisdom 
 he has left us, to every thought of his that we can learn, 
 to every belief he held, and consequently to every au- 
 thentic story that can in any way contribute to our 
 knowledge of him. 
 
 In the vast amount of matter that has been printed of 
 the Colonel I do not recall having seen any reference to a 
 certain theory that he had (and, having it, of course he 
 put it into practice) in connection with the bringing up 
 of children. It was a characteristic theory, and now it, 
 like all else, takes on a new significance. 
 
 As long since as when he was Governor of New York 
 it was his practice to go every Saturday afternoon for a 
 tramp in the country with Mrs. Roosevelt and the chil- 
 dren. And it was understood between them that in the 
 course of all such tramps he would lead them to some 
 physical obstacle which must be overcome. Sometimes 
 it would be merely the obstacle of long distance over a 
 difficult terrain, calling for sustained effort in face of 
 great fatigue; sometimes it would be a wide brook to be 
 crossed at a difficult place; sometimes a deep ravine full 
 of tangled underbrush to be traversed; and on one mem- 
 orable occasion, less than a fortnight before the Colonel 
 was nominated for Vice-President that nomination de- 
 signed by political enemies within his own party to ter- 
 minate his political career there was a steep cliff of 
 crumbling slate to be ascended and descended. 
 
 The idea that Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt attempted 
 to fasten in the children's minds was that life frequently 
 presents obstacles comparable with those encountered on 
 these walks, and that it is the part of good manhood and 
 good womanhood squarely to meet and surmount them, 
 going through or over, but never around. Thus early the 
 Roosevelt children, whose later record has been so worthy 
 ef their father and their mother, had begun to learn pri- 
 
JULIAN STREET 167 
 
 mary lessons in resourcefulness, perseverance, courage, 
 stoicism, and disregard for danger for sometimes, as in 
 the Adventure of the Slate Cliff, there was danger. 
 
 The bank, soft and almost perpendicular, at first ap- 
 peared insurmountable, but after an hour and a half all 
 but one of that day's walking party had managed to 
 climb up and down again. The exception was Alice 
 Roosevelt, then a girl of sixteen, who, having reached 
 the top, found herself unable to descend. 
 
 On this day Elon Hooker, an old friend of the Roose- 
 velts, was with them. Walking along the base of the 
 cliff, this young man found a stout tree growing up be- 
 side it. Climbing the tree, he leaned out and, seizing 
 with one hand a hummock of slate at the crest of the 
 little precipice, offered his arm as a bridge over which 
 Alice could step into the tree, whence it would be no 
 very difficult matter to climb down to earth. 
 
 The hummock was less secure than it appeared. As 
 she stepped upon his arm the slate to which he was hold- 
 ing broke away and his arm fell beneath her. She had, 
 however, managed to grasp with one hand a branch, and 
 to this she clung until he succeeded in catching her and 
 drawing her safely into the tree. 
 
 On reaching the ground they discovered that the fallen 
 mass of slate had struck the Colonel fairly on the head, 
 laying open his scalp from the forehead to a corresponding 
 point at the back of the skull. Though the wound bled 
 freely, they were immediately reassured by his smile. 
 Finding a brook, they washed the gash as best they 
 could; later a surgeon took a dozen stitches in the 
 Colonel's scalp; and when, some ten days after, he at- 
 tended the Republican National Convention he was none 
 the worse for the accident. Few persons, indeed, knew 
 of it at all, for it was characteristic of him to avoid any 
 mention of his injuries or ailments, and if forced to men- 
 
168 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 tion them he would invariably pass them off as being of 
 no consequence. 
 
 Thus, for example, when it became known a twelve- 
 month or so ago that he had been for many years stone 
 blind in the left eye, as the result of a blow received in 
 boxing, the news came as a surprise to numerous friends 
 who knew him well. Yet he had been blind in that eye 
 when he shot lions in Africa. He was not in the least 
 sensitive about his blindness, nor do I think he tried par- 
 ticularly to conceal it. It was simply that he had an 
 aversion, resembling that of the aboriginal American, for 
 the discussion of bodily ills; a contempt for the incon- 
 venience or suffering resulting from them. And still, 
 when others suffered physically or spiritually, he was the 
 most solicitous, the gentlest, the tenderest of men. 
 
 It was like him, too, that throughout the afternoon 
 on which he went to the hospital for a grave operation, 
 a year before his death, he continued to dictate letters to 
 his secretary, and that while dictating he had a hemor- 
 rhage and fainted three times, only to revive and resume 
 his dictation. And until the doctor forbade it, he even 
 contemplated going that night to a dinner at which he 
 had agreed to speak. 
 
 On his hunting trips, when travelling, and more lately 
 when confined to his bed in the hospital, he utilized every 
 moment of his time for work, study, and reflection; he 
 would concentrate upon a book or a conversation while 
 enduring pain to a degree that would have rendered it 
 impossible for most men to think consecutively, let alone 
 converse upon important topics with a succession of 
 visitors. 
 
 He was afraid neither to live nor to die. And in the 
 purely orthodox sense he had no cause to fear death, for 
 his soul was as clean as that of a little child. The ulti- 
 mate biographer of Roosevelt will not have BO much as 
 
JULIAN STREET 169 
 
 one single item to gloss over or conceal. And I am not 
 sure that that is not the finest thing that may be said 
 of any man. 
 
 Until a year ago I never heard him speak of death, 
 but since then I have known him to speak of it more 
 than once. I am wondering now if it merely happened 
 so, or whether, as he lay there in the hospital a year ago, 
 and again in the last months of the year just past, 
 he may not have had a premonition that the end was 
 perhaps nearer than those about him supposed. Cer- 
 tainly he knew a year ago, at the time of the operation 
 for an abscess in the middle ear, which rapidly extended 
 to the inner ear, that he was at death's door. Dr. Arthur 
 B. Duel, his surgeon, told him so, and the Colonel promptly 
 expressed a brave resignation. 
 
 I saw him in the hospital a few days after the opera- 
 tion. He was reading a book. After we had spoken a 
 few words he said: 
 
 "Lying here, I have often thought how glad I would 
 be to go now if by doing so I could only bring the boys 
 back safe to Mrs. Roosevelt." 
 
 One day at luncheon last April, when we all thought 
 him as vigorous as ever, he spoke again of his boys, and 
 there was in what he said as much apprehension for them 
 as he ever allowed himself to show or perhaps I should 
 say as much apprehension of the blow that the loss of 
 any one of them would be to the remainder of the family. 
 
 "Mrs. Roosevelt has been perfectly wonderful," he 
 said, "about their going to fight. We both realize that 
 we have a very full, interesting, satisfying life to look 
 back upon. Whatever may come now, we have had 
 more than thirty years of happiness together, with all 
 our children spared to us." 
 
 And again, less than a month ago, as I write, when I 
 called at the hospital, Mrs. Roosevelt who always stayed 
 
170 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 there with him spoke in the same terms, though in the 
 interim the blow had fallen. It was of Quentin, the 
 eagle, that she spoke. 
 
 "We have been until now a singularly united family/' 
 she said. "This is the first loss from our immediate 
 circle. Life has been kind to us. We have much to be 
 thankful for." 
 
 The story I have told of his walks with the children 
 and the obstacles over which he led them was, until the 
 morning of January 6, only a typical Roosevelt story. 
 Since then it has become an allegory. For his feeling for 
 us all was in a very fine sense paternal. He was the 
 father; we the children. "Face the obstacles," he always 
 urged us. "Go through or over; never around." 
 
 Or to quote his own words, uttered in that great speech 
 twenty years ago: 
 
 "/ preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country 
 calls not for the life of ease, but for the life of strenuous en- 
 deavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the 
 fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely 
 swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from 
 the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives 
 and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and 
 stronger people will pass by us and will win for themselves 
 the domination of the world. 
 
 "Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to 
 do our duty well and manfully ; resolute to uphold righteous- 
 ness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and 
 brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. 
 Above all, let us not shrink from strife, moral or physical, 
 within or without the Nation, provided we are certain the 
 strife is justified ; for it is only through strife, through hard 
 and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the 
 goal of true national greatness." 
 
 That, I believe, was the essence of Roosevelt's per- 
 
JULIAN STREET 171 
 
 sonal and national philosophy. Simply he thought and 
 spoke and lived and died. And that, without exception, 
 has been true of all our greatest men. Like Lincoln and 
 Franklin, he was one of us. When he spoke we under- 
 stood him. He never juggled thoughts or words to baffle 
 us, confuse us, stupefy us with the brilliancy of his per- 
 formance. Nor did he ever speak or write to mask a 
 purpose, or a lack of purpose. He never thought, as he 
 tried to set down his ideas: "Now I am writing something 
 that will live. Now I am making history." He was im- 
 patient of such notions, just as he was impatient of the 
 applause that interrupted him when he was making pub- 
 lic speeches. Time and again I have seen him hold up 
 his hand to stop applause. He wanted to go on. It was 
 the thing to be accomplished that obsessed him. 
 
 Thinking of the ingratitude that we have sometimes 
 shown him, and of the follies we have committed, on oc- 
 casion, in face of his exhortation to be brave and prompt 
 and ready, I once asked him how he had kept from be- 
 coming cynical about mankind. 
 
 "I am not cynical," he said, " because I have observed 
 that just when our people seem to be becoming altogether 
 hopeless they have a way of suddenly turning around and 
 doing something perfectly magnificent." 
 
 What a prophecy that was ! for he said it in the hour 
 of our national shame, when we were crying gratefully: 
 "He kept us out of war !" 
 
 Well may we be thankful that Roosevelt lived to see 
 his profound faith in us justified; to see us at last take up 
 arms in answer to his repeated call; to see us quit "the 
 life of ease" for that of "strenuous endeavor"; to see us 
 spurn "ignoble peace" and enter the "hard contest where 
 men must win at hazard of their lives." That the poison 
 of pacifism did not ruin the nation is due to the fact that 
 we had Roosevelt as an antitoxin. 
 
172 THE CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 Thus his greatest single service to his country was 
 performed, not while he was President, but in the last 
 years of his life; not while he held the reins of government, 
 but as a private citizen whose unofficial power lay solely 
 in the nation's admiration for him; its faith in him and 
 in his vision; its heed to what he said. 
 
 There will, of course, be a memorial to Roosevelt. It 
 will be a noble thing of marble. But such a thing, how- 
 ever glorious, will mean much more to us than it could 
 mean to him. We shall erect it to give ourselves the 
 mournful satisfaction of doing our dead hero honor. But 
 let us not forget, meanwhile, that the one memorial he 
 would have wished cannot be built of tangible materials, 
 but must be made of thoughts and deeds. 
 
 He has taken his last tramp with his own children, and 
 with us. He has guided them, and us, up to the last ob- 
 stacle we were destined to meet and overcome under his 
 leadership. And the one thing he would ask of us is 
 this: That we go on without him. That we learn the 
 simple lessons he has taught by precept and example. 
 That we be foresighted, prompt, practical, honest, reso- 
 lute, courageous. 
 
 So, in ourselves, we will make his spirit live. 
 
THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 WHAT AND HOW TO READ 
 
A sketch of Ruskm's life is given on page 104. On 
 one side he was an artist, on the other side a reformer. 
 Even when he writes about books, he does not aim to lead 
 us upon pleasant literary rambles, but tells us plainly 
 that we are reading the wrong books, and reading them 
 the wrong way. This is not very complimentary, it is 
 true; if you are looking for compliments, if you are afraid 
 of criticism, do not read Ruskin. But if you are willing 
 to face honest criticism, if you have the mental vigor to 
 follow a great thinker, then Ruskin has a message for you. 
 In another essay, Ruskin says: "No book is worth any- 
 thing which is not worth much; nor is it serviceable un- 
 til it has been read and re-read and loved and loved again, 
 and every passage marked, so that you can refer to the 
 passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the weapon 
 he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring the spice 
 she needs from her store." As you read the following 
 essay, decide what passages you would mark in this way. 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 WHAT AND HOW TO READ 
 
 (From Sesame and Lilies, Lecture I) 
 
 I want to speak to you about books; and about the 
 way we read them, and could, or should read them. A 
 grave subject, you will say; and a wide one ! Yes; so 
 wide that I shall make no effort to touch the compass 
 of it. I will try only to bring before you a few simple 
 thoughts about reading, which press themselves upon me 
 every day more deeply, as I watch the course of the 
 public mind with respect to our daily enlarging means of 
 education, and the answeringly wider-spreading, on the 
 levels, of the irrigation of literature. It happens that I 
 have practically some connection with schools for different 
 classes of youth; and I receive many letters from parents 
 respecting the education of their children. In the mass 
 of these letters, I am always struck by the precedence 
 which the idea of a "position in life" takes above all 
 other thoughts in the parents' more especially in the 
 mothers' minds. . . . 
 
 Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective 
 in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the 
 first at least that which is confessed with the greatest 
 frankness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to 
 youthful exertion is this of "advancement in life." My 
 main purpose this evening is to determine, with you, 
 what this idea practically includes, and what it should 
 include. 
 
 You will grant that moderately honest men desire 
 place and office, at least in some measure, for the sake of 
 
 175 
 
176 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 their beneficent power; and would wish to associate rather 
 with sensible and well-informed persons than with fools 
 and ignorant persons, whether they are seen in the com- 
 pany of the sensible ones or not. And finally, without 
 being troubled by repetition of any common truisms about 
 the preciousness of friends, and the influence of com- 
 panions, you will admit, doubtless, that according to the 
 sincerity of our desire that our friends may be true, and 
 our companions wise, and in proportion to the earnest- 
 ness and discretion with which we choose both, will be 
 the general chances of our happiness and usefulness. 
 
 But, granting that we had both the will and the sense 
 to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power ! 
 or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice ! 
 Nearly all our associations are determined by chance or 
 necessity; and restricted within a narrow circle. We 
 cannot know whom we would; and those whom we know, 
 we cannot have at our side when we most need them. 
 All the higher circles of human intelligence are, to those 
 beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may, 
 by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and 
 hear the sound of his voice; or put a question to a man 
 of science, and be answered good-humoredly. We may 
 intrude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered 
 probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive; 
 or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of 
 throwing a bouquet in the path of a Princess, or arrest- 
 ing the kind glance of a Queen. And yet these momen- 
 tary chances we covet; and spend our years, and passions, 
 and powers in pursuit of little more than these; while, 
 meantime, there is a society continually open to us, of 
 people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever 
 our rank or occupation; talk to us in the best words 
 they can choose, and with thanks if we listen to them. 
 And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 177 
 
 and can be kept waiting round us all day long, not to 
 grant audience, but to gain it; kings and statesmen 
 lingering patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow 
 anterooms, our bookcase shelves, we make no account 
 of that company, perhaps never listen to a word they 
 would say, all day long ! 
 
 You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, 
 that the apathy with which we regard this company of 
 the noble, who are praying us to listen to them, and the 
 passion with which we pursue the company, probably of 
 the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach 
 us, are grounded in this, that we can see the faces of 
 the living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, 
 with which we desire to become familiar. But it is not 
 so. Suppose you never were to see their faces; suppose 
 you could be put behind a screen in the statesman's 
 cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would you not be glad 
 to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to 
 advance beyond the screen? And when the screen is 
 only a little less, folded in two, instead of four, and you 
 can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that 
 bind a book, and listen, all day long, not to the casual 
 talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses 
 of the wisest of men; this station of audience, and hon- 
 orable privy council, you despise ! 
 
 But perhaps you will say that it is because the living 
 people talk of things that are passing, and are of im- 
 mediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them. 
 Nay; that cannot be so, for the living people will them- 
 selves tell you about passing matters, much better in 
 their writings than in their careless talk. But I admit 
 that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer 
 those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring 
 writings books, properly so called. For all books are 
 divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the 
 
178 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 books of all time. Mark this distinction it is not one 
 of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does 
 not last, and the good one that does. It is a distinction 
 of species. There are good books for the hour, and good 
 ones for all time; bad books for the hour, and bad ones 
 for all time. I must define the two kinds before I go 
 farther. 
 
 The good book of the hour, then, I do not speak of 
 the bad ones is simply the useful or pleasant talk of 
 some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, 
 printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you 
 need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's 
 present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; 
 good-humored and witty discussions of questions; lively 
 or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact- 
 telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of 
 passing history; all these books of the hour, multiply- 
 ing among us as education becomes more general, are a 
 peculiar characteristic and possession of the present age; 
 we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely 
 ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. 
 But we make the worst possible use, if we allow them to 
 usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they 
 are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in 
 good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or 
 necessary, to-day; whether worth keeping or not, is to be 
 considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at 
 breakfast time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day. 
 So, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which 
 gives you so pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, 
 and weather last year at such a place, or which tells you 
 that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of 
 such and such events, however valuable for occasional 
 reference, may not be, in the real sense of the word, a 
 "book" at all, nor, in the real sense, to be "read." 
 
 A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 179 
 
 thing; and written, not with the view of mere communi- 
 cation, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed 
 only because its author cannot speak to thousands of 
 people at once; if he could, he would the volume is 
 mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your 
 friend in India; if you could, you would; you write in- 
 stead: that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is 
 written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it 
 merely, but to preserve it. The author has something 
 to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or help- 
 fully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said 
 it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound 
 to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at 
 all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the 
 thing, or group of things, manifest to him; this the 
 piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sun- 
 shine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would 
 fain set it down forever; engrave it on rock, if he could; 
 saying, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and 
 drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life 
 was as the vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew; 
 this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." That 
 is his "writing"; it is, in his small human way, and with 
 whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscrip- 
 tion, or scripture. That is a "Book." 
 
 Perhaps you think no books were ever so written ? 
 
 But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, 
 or at all in kindness? or do you think there is never any 
 honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I 
 hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever 
 bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently 
 done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art. It is mixed 
 always with evil fragments ill-done, redundant, affected 
 work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover 
 the true bits, and those are the book. 
 
 Now books of this kind have been written in all ages 
 
180 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 by their greatest men; by great leaders, great states- 
 men, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; 
 and life is short. You have heard as much before; yet 
 have you measured and mapped out this short life and 
 its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that 
 you cannot read that that what you lose to-day you 
 cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with 
 your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk 
 with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is 
 with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to 
 respect that you jostle with the common crowd for entree 
 here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal 
 court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, 
 multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of 
 every place and time? Into that you may enter always; 
 in that you may take fellowship and rank according to 
 your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never 
 be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of 
 companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will 
 be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive 
 to take high place in the society of the living, measured, 
 as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the 
 place you desire to take in this company of the dead. 
 
 "The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself 
 for, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the 
 past differs from all living aristocracy in this: it is open 
 to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth 
 will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the 
 guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no 
 vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portieres 
 of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief 
 question, "Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you 
 ask to be the companion of nobles ? Make yourself noble, 
 and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the 
 wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 181 
 
 But on other terms? No. If you will not rise to us, we 
 cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume cour- 
 tesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you 
 with considerable pain; but here we neither feign nor in- 
 terpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you 
 would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if 
 you would recognize our presence." 
 
 This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it 
 is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you 
 are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. 
 They scorn your ambition. You must love them, and 
 show your love in these two following ways. 
 
 I. First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to 
 enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; 
 not to find your own expressed by them. If the person 
 who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not 
 read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in 
 many respects. 
 
 Very ready we are to say of a book, "How good this is 
 that's exactly what I think !" But the right feeling is, 
 "How strange that is! I never thought of that before, 
 and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, 
 some day." But whether thus submissively or not, at 
 least be sure that you go to the author to get at his mean- 
 ing, not to find yours. Judge it afterward, if you think 
 yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be 
 sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you will 
 not get at his meaning all at once; nay, that at his whole 
 meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. 
 Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong 
 words too; but he cannot say it all; and what is more 
 strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in 
 order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot quite 
 see the reason of this, nor analyze that cruel reticence in 
 the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide 
 
182 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 their deeper thought. They do not give it to you by 
 way of help, but of reward, and will make themselves sure 
 that you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. 
 But it is the same with the physical type of wisdom, gold. 
 There seems, to you and me, no reason why the electric 
 forces of the earth should not carry whatever there is of 
 gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings 
 and people might know that all the gold they could get 
 was there; and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, 
 or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as 
 much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it 
 so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody 
 knows where: you may dig long and find none; you must 
 dig painfully to find any. 
 
 And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. When 
 you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, "Am 
 I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are 
 my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good 
 trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my 
 breath good, and my temper?" And, keeping the figure 
 a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a 
 thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of 
 being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the 
 rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at 
 it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learn- 
 ing; your smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful soul. 
 Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning without 
 those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, 
 finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, before you can 
 gather one grain of the metal. 
 
 And, therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and 
 authoritatively, (I know I am right in this,) you must get 
 into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring 
 yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable nay let- 
 ter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 183 
 
 opposition of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in 
 functions of signs, that the study of books is called "litera- 
 ture," and that a man versed in it is called, by the con- 
 sent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man of books, 
 or of words, you may yet connect with that accidental 
 nomenclature this real principle; that you might read 
 all the books in the British Museum (if you could live 
 long enough), and remain an utterly "illiterate," unedu- 
 cated person; but that if you read ten pages of a good 
 book, letter by letter, that is to say, with real accuracy, 
 you are for evermore in some measure an educated 
 person. The entire difference between education and 
 non-education (as regards the merely intellectual part of 
 it), consists in this accuracy. A well-educated gentleman 
 may not know many languages, may not be able to 
 speak any but his own, may have read very few books. 
 But whatever language he knows, he knows precisely; 
 whatever word he pronounces he pronounces rightly; 
 above all, he is learned in the peerage of words; knows the 
 words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance, from 
 words of modern canaille; remembers all their ancestry 
 their intermarriages, distantest relationships, and the 
 extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held, 
 among the national noblesse of words at any time, and in 
 any country. . . . 
 
 Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the 
 habit you must form. Nearly every word in your lan- 
 guage has been first a word of some other language of 
 Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of 
 eastern and primitive dialects). And many words have 
 been aU these; that is to say, have been Greek first, 
 Latin next, French or German next, and English last; 
 undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the lips 
 of each nation; but retaining a deep vital meaning which 
 all good scholars feel in employing them, even at this day. 
 
184 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn it; young 
 or old girl or boy whoever you may be, if you think of 
 reading seriously (which, of course, implies that you have 
 some leisure at command), learn your Greek alphabet; 
 then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and 
 whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down 
 patiently. Read Max Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to 
 begin with; and, after that, never let a word escape you 
 that looks suspicious. It is severe work; but you will 
 find it, even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly 
 amusing. And the general gain to } r our character, in 
 power and precision, will be quite incalculable. 
 
 Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, 
 Greek, or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to 
 learn any language perfectly. But you can easily as- 
 certain the meanings through which the English word 
 has passed; and those which in a good writer's work it 
 must still bear. 
 
 And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with your 
 permission, read a few lines of a true book with you, 
 carefully; and see what will come out of them. I will 
 take a book perfectly known to you all; no English words 
 are more familiar to us, yet nothing perhaps has been 
 less read with sincerity. I will take these few following 
 lines of "Lycidas": 
 
 " Last came, and last did go, 
 The pilot of the Galilean lake; 
 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
 (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), 
 He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 
 How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
 Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
 Of other care they little reckoning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest; 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 185 
 
 Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 
 A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 
 
 That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
 
 What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; 
 
 And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 
 Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; 
 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
 
 But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
 
 Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; 
 
 Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said." 
 
 Let us think over this passage, and examine its words. 
 
 First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. 
 Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very 
 types of it which Protestants usually refuse most pas- 
 sionately? His "mitred" locks ! Milton was no Bishop- 
 lover; how comes St. Peter to be "mitred"? "Two 
 massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the 
 keys claimed by the Bishops of Rome, and is it acknowl- 
 edged here by Milton only in a poetical license for the 
 sake of its picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam 
 of the golden keys to help his effect? Do not think it. 
 Great men do not play stage tricks with doctrines of life 
 and death: only little men do that. Milton means what 
 he says; and means it with his might too is going to 
 put the whole strength of his spirit presently into the 
 saying of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, he 
 was a lover of true ones; and the Lake-pilot is here, in 
 his thoughts, the type and head of true episcopal power. 
 For Milton reads that text, "I will give unto thee the 
 keys of the kingdom of Heaven" quite honestly. Puritan 
 though he be, he would not blot it out of the book be- 
 cause there have been bad bishops; nay, in order to 
 understand him, we must understand that verse first; it 
 will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under our 
 breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is 
 
186 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind 
 by all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to 
 reason on it if we go on a little farther, and come back 
 to it. For clearly, this marked insistence on the power 
 of the true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily 
 what is to be charged against the false claimants of epis- 
 copate; or generally, against false claimants of power and 
 rank in the body of the clergy; they who, "for their bellies' 
 sake, creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." 
 
 Do not think Milton uses those three words to fill up 
 his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the 
 three; specially those three, and no more than those 
 " creep/' and "intrude," and "climb"; no other words 
 would or could serve the turn, and no more could be 
 added. For they exhaustively comprehend the three 
 classes, correspondent to the three characters, of men 
 who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. First, those 
 who "creep 11 into the fold; who do not care for office, nor 
 name, but for secret influence, and do all things occultly 
 and cunningly, consenting to any servility of office or con- 
 duct, so only that they may intimately discern, and un- 
 awares direct, the minds of men. Then those who "in- 
 trude" (thrust, that is) themselves into the fold, who 
 by natural insolence of heart, and stout eloquence of 
 tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-assertion, obtain 
 hearing and authority with the common crowd. Lastly, 
 those who "climb," who by labor and learning, both 
 stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in the cause of their 
 own ambition, gain high dignities and authorities, and 
 become "lords over the heritage," though not "ensamples 
 to the flock." 
 
 Now go on: 
 
 "Of other care they little reckoning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast; 
 Blind mouths " 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 187 
 
 I pause again, for this is a strange expression; a broken 
 metaphor, one might think, careless and unscholarly. 
 
 Not so: its very audacity and pithiness are intended to 
 make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those 
 two monosyllables express the precisely accurate con- 
 traries of right character, in the two great offices of the 
 Church those of bishop and pastor. 
 
 A Bishop means a person who sees. 
 
 A Pastor means one who feeds. 
 
 The most unbishoply character a man can have is 
 therefore to be Blind. 
 
 The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to 
 be fed, to be a Mouth. 
 
 Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind 
 mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a 
 little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen 
 from bishops desiring power more than light. They want 
 authority, not outlook. Whereas their real office is not 
 to rule; though it may be vigorously to exhort and re- 
 buke; it is the king's office to rule; the bishop's office is 
 to oversee the flock; to number it, sheep by sheep; to be 
 ready always to give full account of it. Now it is clear 
 he cannot give account of the souls, if he has not so much 
 as numbered the bodies of his flock. The first thing, 
 therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put him- 
 self in a position in which, at any moment, he can ob- 
 tain the history from childhood of every living soul in 
 his diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back 
 street, Bill and Nancy, knocking each other's teeth out ! 
 Does the bishop know all about it? Has he his eye 
 upon them? Has he had his eye upon them? Can he 
 circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit 
 of beating Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he is 
 no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury 
 steeple; he is no bishop he has sought to be at the helm 
 
188 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 instead of the masthead; he has no sight of things. 
 "Nay," you say, it is not his duty to look after Bill in 
 the back street. What ! the fat sheep that have full 
 fleeces you think it is only those he should look after, 
 while (go back to your Milton) "the hungry sheep look 
 up, and are not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with 
 privy paw" (bishops knowing nothing about it) "daily 
 devours apace, and nothing said"? 
 
 "But that's not our idea of a bishop." Perhaps not; 
 but it was St. Paul's; and it was Milton's. They may be 
 right, or we may be; but we must not think we are read- 
 ing either one or the other by putting our meaning into 
 their words. 
 
 I go on. 
 
 "But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 
 
 This is to meet the vulgar answer that "if the poor are 
 not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls; 
 they have spiritual food." 
 
 And Milton says, "They have no such thing as spiri- 
 tual food; they are only swollen with wind." At first 
 you may think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. 
 But again, it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up 
 your Latin and Greek dictionaries, and find out the mean- 
 ing of "Spirit." It is only a contraction of the Latin 
 word "breath," and an indistinct translation of the 
 Greek word for "wind." The same word is used in writ- 
 ing, "The wind bloweth where it listeth"; and in writing, 
 "So is every one that is born of the Spirit"; born of the 
 breath, that is; for it means the breath of God, in soul 
 and body. We have the true sense of it in our words 
 "inspiration" and "expire." Now, there are two kinds 
 of breath with which the flock may be filled; God's breath, 
 and man's. The breath of God is health, and life, and 
 peace to them, as the air of heaven is to the flocks on the 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 189 
 
 hills; but man's breath the word which he calls spiritual, 
 is disease and contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. 
 They rot inwardly with it; they are puffed up by it, as a 
 dead body by the vapors of its own decomposition. This 
 is literally true of all false religious teaching; the first and 
 last, and fatalest sign of it is that "puffing up." Your 
 converted children, who teach their parents; your con- 
 verted convicts, who teach honest men; your converted 
 dunces, who, having lived in cretinous stupefaction half 
 their lives, suddenly awakening to the fact of there being 
 a God, fancy themselves therefore His peculiar people 
 and messengers; your sectarians of every species, small 
 and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high church or low, 
 in so far as they think themselves exclusively in the 
 right and others wrong; and pre-eminently, in every sect, 
 those who hold that men can be saved by thinking rightly 
 instead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, and wish 
 instead of work: these are the true fog-childrenclouds, 
 these, without water; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor 
 and skin, without blood or flesh: blown bagpipes for the 
 fiends to pipe with corrupt, and corrupting, "Swollen 
 with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 
 
 Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power 
 of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the 
 difference between Milton and Dante in their interpreta- 
 tion of this power: for once, the latter is weaker in thought; 
 he supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven; 
 one is of gold, the other of silver: they are given by St. 
 Peter to the sentinel angel; and it is not easy to deter- 
 mine the meaning either of the substances of the three 
 steps of the gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes 
 one, of gold, the key of heaven; the other, of iron, the key 
 of the prison, in which the wicked teachers are to I 
 bound who "have taken away the key of knowledge, yet 
 entered not in themselves." 
 
190 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are 
 to see, and feed; and, of all who do so, it is said, "He 
 that watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the 
 reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be 
 withered himself, and he that seeth not, shall himself be 
 shut out of sight, shut into the perpetual prison-house. 
 And that prison opens here, as well as hereafter: he who 
 is to be bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. 
 That command to the strong angels, of which the rock- 
 apostle is the image, "Take him, and bind him hand and 
 foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, against the 
 teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth 
 refused, and for every falsehood enforced; so that he is 
 more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther 
 outcast, as he more and more misleads, till at last the 
 bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as "the golden 
 opes, the iron shuts amain." 
 
 We have got something out of the lines, I think, and 
 much more is yet to be found in them; but we have done 
 enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word 
 examination of your author which is rightly called "read- 
 ing"; watching every accent and expression, and putting 
 ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our 
 own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to 
 be able assuredly to say, "Thus Milton thought," not 
 "Thus I thought, in mis-reading Milton." 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 
 
 BUNYAN'S "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS" 
 
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was one of 
 the eminent writers of the Victorian age. He was educated 
 at Cambridge University, where he was distinguished 
 as a debater, and famous for his ability to remember 
 everything that he read, often in the exact words of the 
 book. To the Edinburgh Review he contributed a num- 
 ber of essays on historical and literary topics. He served 
 several terms in Parliament, had a seat in the Cabinet, 
 and went to India as a member of the Supreme Council. 
 He wrote a History of England that was so popular that 
 its sales exceeded those of the novels of the time. He 
 also wrote some stirring ballads called the Lays of Ancient 
 Rome, and contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica 
 articles upon Samuel Johnson, Bunyan, and Goldsmith. 
 
 Macaulay had the power to make his readers see the 
 persons and scenes he described. His marvellous memory 
 enabled him, as in this essay, to bring in a mass of details. 
 Yet he never lets the detail become confusing; he carries 
 us along as over a well-marked road, we know where we 
 are, and he knows exactly where he is taking us. His 
 style is always clear; he is fond of using balanced sentences 
 and sharp antitheses; his statements are always positive; 
 when he makes a general statement he usually follows 
 it by a concrete example. All these characteristics are 
 seen in the essay on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. It 
 was first published in the Edinburgh Review for December, 
 1832. 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 
 
 BUNYAN'S " PILGRIM'S PROGRESS " * 
 
 (From Macaulay's Literary Essays) 
 
 This is an eminently beautiful and splendid edition of 
 a book which well deserves all that the printer and the 
 engraver can do for it. The Life of Bunyan is, of course, 
 not a performance which can add much to the literary 
 reputation of such a writer as Mr. Southey. But it is 
 written in excellent English, and, for the most part, in 
 an excellent spirit. Mr. Southey propounds, we need 
 not say, many opinions from which we altogether dissent; 
 and his attempts to excuse the odious persecution to 
 which Bunyan was subjected have sometimes moved our 
 indignation. But we will avoid this topic. We are at 
 present much more inclined to join in paying homage to 
 the genius of a great man than to engage in a controversy 
 concerning Church government and toleration. 
 
 We must not pass without notice the engravings with 
 which this volume is decorated. Some of Mr. Heath's 
 woodcuts are admirably designed and executed. Mr. 
 Martin's illustrations do not please us quite so well. His 
 Valley of the Shadow of Death is not that Valley of the 
 Shadow of Death which Bunyan imagined. At all 
 events, it is not that dark and horrible glen which has 
 from childhood been in our mind's eye. The valley is a, 
 cavern: the quagmire is a lake: the straight path runs 
 zigzag: and Christian appears like a speck in the dark- 
 ness of the immense vault. We miss, too, those hideous. 
 
 * The Pilgrim's Progress, urith a Life of John Bunyan. By Robert. 
 Southey, Esq., LL.D., Poet-Laureate. Illustrated with Engrav- 
 ings. 8vo. London: 1830. 
 
 193 
 
194 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 forms which make so striking a part of the description 
 of Bunyan, and which Salvator Rosa would have loved 
 to draw. 
 
 The characteristic peculiarity of the Pilgrim's Progress 
 is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a 
 strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the 
 fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many 
 thousands with tears. There are some good allegories 
 in Johnson's works, and some of still higher merit by 
 Addison. In these performances there is, perhaps, as 
 much wit and ingenuity as in the Pilgrim' 's Progress. But 
 the pleasure which is produced by the Vision of Mirza,* 
 the Vision of Theodore, the Genealogy of Wit, or the Con- 
 test between Rest and Labor, is exactly similar to the 
 pleasure which we derive from one of Cowley's odes or 
 from a canto of Hudibras. It is a pleasure which be- 
 longs wholly to the understanding, and in which the 
 feelings have no part whatever. Nay, even Spenser 
 himself, though assuredly one of the greatest poets that 
 ever lived, could not succeed in the attempt to make 
 allegory interesting. It was in vain that he lavished the 
 riches of his mind on the House of Pride and the House 
 of Temperance. One unpardonable fault, the fault of 
 tediousness, pervades the whole of the Fairy Queen. We 
 become sick of Cardinal Virtues and Deadly Sins, and long 
 for the society of plain men and women. Of the per- 
 sons who read the first canto, not one in ten reaches the 
 end of the first book, and not one in a hundred perse- 
 veres to the end of the poem. Very few and very weary 
 are those who are in at the death of the Blatant Beast. 
 If the last six books, which are said to have been destroyed 
 in Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether any 
 heart less stout than that of a commentator would have 
 held out to the end. 
 
 * This and the following are titles of Addison's Spectator papers. 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 195 
 
 It is not so with the Pilgrim's Progress. That won- 
 derful book, while it obtains admiration from the most 
 fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to 
 admire it. Dr. Johnson, all whose studies were desul- 
 tory, and who hated, as he said, to read books through, 
 made an exception in favor of the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 That work, he said, was one of the two or three works 
 which he wished longer. It was by no common merit 
 that the illiterate sectary extracted praise like this from 
 the most pedantic of critics and the most bigoted of Tories. 
 In the wildest parts of Scotland the Pilgrim's Progress is 
 the delight of the peasantry. In every nursery the Pil- 
 grim's Progress is a greater favorite than Jack the Giant- 
 killer. Every reader knows the straight and narrow path 
 as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backwar 1 
 and forward a hundred times. This is the highest mir- 
 acle of genius, that things which are not should be as 
 though they were, that the imaginations of one mind 
 should become the personal recollections of another. 
 And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no 
 ascent, no declivity, no resting place, no turnstile, with 
 which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket gate, 
 and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City 
 of Destruction, the long line of road, as straight as a rule 
 can make it, the Interpreter's house and all its fair shows, 
 the prisoner in the iron cage, the palace, at the doors of 
 which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of 
 which walked persons clothed all in gold, the cross and 
 the sepulchre, the steep hill and the pleasant arbor, the 
 stately front of the House Beautiful by the wayside, the 
 low green valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and cov- 
 ered with flocks, all are as weU known to us as the sights 
 of our own street. Then we come to the narrow place 
 where Apollyon strode right across the whole breadth of 
 the way, to stop the journey of Christian, and where 
 
196 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 afterward the pillar was set up to testify how bravely 
 the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, 
 the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of 
 the precipices on both sides falls blacker and blacker. 
 The clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the clank- 
 ing of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, 
 are heard through the darkness. The way, hardly dis- 
 cernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth of the burning 
 pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and 
 its hideous shapes, to terrify the adventurer. Thence he 
 goes on, amidst the snares and pitfalls, with the mangled 
 bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by 
 his side. At the end of the long dark valley he passes 
 the dens in which the old giants dwelt, amidst the bones 
 of those whom they had slain. 
 
 Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, 
 till at length the towers of a distant city appear before 
 the traveller; and soon he is in the midst of the innumer- 
 able multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers 
 and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There 
 are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and 
 British Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and 
 loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth. 
 
 Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver-mine, 
 and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that 
 pleasant river which is bordered on both sides by fruit- 
 trees. On the left branches off the path leading to the 
 horrible castle, the courtyard of which is paved with the 
 skulls of pilgrims; and right onward are the sheepfolds 
 and orchards of the Delectable Mountains. 
 
 From the Delectable Mountains, the way lies through 
 the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here 
 and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green 
 arbor. And beyond is the land of Beulah, where the 
 flowers, the grapes, and the songs of birds never cease, 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 197 
 
 and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are 
 plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, 
 on the other side of that black and cold river over which 
 there is no bridge. 
 
 All the stages of the journey, all the forms which cross 
 or overtake the pilgrims, giants and hobgoblins, ill- 
 favored ones and shining ones, the tall, comely, swarthy 
 Madam Bubble, with her great purse by her side, and her 
 fingers playing with the money, the black man in the 
 bright vesture, Mr. Worldly Wiseman and my Lord 
 Hategood, Mr. Talkative, and Mrs. Timorous, all are 
 actually existing beings to us. We follow the travellers 
 through their allegorical progress with interest not in- 
 ferior to that with which we follow Elizabeth from Siberia 
 to Moscow, or Jeanie Deans from Edinburgh to London. 
 Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the 
 abstract the interest of the concrete. In the works of 
 many celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. 
 We have not an Othello, but jealousy, not an lago, but 
 perfidy, not a Brutus, but patriotism. The mind of 
 Bunyan, on the contrary, was so imaginative that personi- 
 fications, when he dealt with them, became men. A 
 dialogue between two qualities, in his dream, has more 
 dramatic effect than a dialogue between two human 
 beings in most plays. 
 
 The Pilgrim's Progress undoubtedly is not a perfect 
 allegory. The types are often inconsistent with each 
 other; and sometimes the allegorical disguise is altogether 
 thrown off. The river, for example, is emblematic of 
 death; and we are told that every human being must pass 
 through the river. But Faithful does not pass through 
 it. He is martyred, not in shadow, but in reality, at 
 Vanity Fair. Hopeful talks to Christian about Esau's 
 birthright and about his own convictions of sin as Bun- 
 yan might have talked with one of his own congregation. 
 
198 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 The damsels at the House Beautiful catechise Christi- 
 ana's boys, as any good ladies might catechise any boys 
 at a Sunday-school. But we do not believe that any 
 man, whatever might be his genius, and whatever his 
 good luck, could long continue a figurative history with- 
 out falling into many inconsistencies. We are sure that 
 inconsistencies, scarcely less gross than the worst into 
 which Bunyan has fallen, may be found in the shortest 
 and most elaborate allegories of the Spectator and the 
 Rambler. The Tale of a Tub * and the History of John 
 Bull swarm with similar errors, if the name of error can 
 be properly applied to that which is unavoidable. It is 
 not easy to make a simile go on all fours. But we be- 
 lieve that no human ingenuity could produce such a 
 centipede as a long allegory in which the correspondence 
 between the outward sign and the thing signified should 
 be exactly preserved. Certainly no writer, ancient or 
 modern, has yet achieved the adventure. The best thing, 
 on the whole, that an allegorist can do, is to present to 
 his readers a succession of analogies, each of which may 
 separately be striking and happy, without looking very 
 nicely to see whether they harmonize with each other. 
 This Bunyan has done; and, though a minute scrutiny 
 may detect inconsistencies in every page of his tale, the 
 general effect which the tale produces on all persons, 
 learned and unlearned, proves that he has done well. 
 The passages which it is most difficult to defend are those 
 in which he altogether drops the allegory, and puts into 
 the mouth of his pilgrims religious ejaculations and dis- 
 quisitions better suited to his own pulpit at Bedford or 
 Reading than to the Enchanted Ground or the Inter- 
 preter's Garden. Yet even these passages, though we 
 will not undertake to defend them against the objections 
 
 *The Tale of a Tub is by Jonathan Swift; the History of John 
 Butt by John Arbuthnot. Both are prose allegories. 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 199 
 
 of critics, we feel that we could ill spare. We feel that 
 the story owes much of its charm to these occasional 
 glimpses of solemn and affecting subjects, which will not 
 be hidden, which force themselves through the veil, and 
 appear before us in their native aspect. The effect is 
 not unlike that which is said to have been produced on 
 the ancient stage, when the eyes of the actor were seen 
 flaming through his mask, and giving life and expression 
 to what would else have been an inanimate and uninter- 
 esting disguise. 
 
 It is very amusing and very instructive to compare 
 the Pilgrim 1 s Progress with the Grace Abounding. The 
 latter work is indeed one of the most remarkable pieces 
 of autobiography in the world. It is a full and open con- 
 fession of the fancies which passed through the mind of 
 an illiterate man, whose affections were warm, whose 
 nerves were irritable, whose imagination was ungoverna- 
 ble, and who was under the influence of the strongest 
 religious excitement. In whatever age Bunyan had lived, 
 the history of his feelings would, in all probability, have 
 been very curious. But the time in which his lot was cast 
 was the time of a great stirring of the human mind. A 
 tremendous burst of public feeling, produced by the 
 tyranny of the hierarchy, menaced the old ecclesiastical 
 institutions with destruction. To the gloomy regularity 
 of one intolerant Church had succeeded the license of in- 
 numerable sects, drunk with the sweet and heady must 
 of their new liberty. Fanaticism, engendered by perse- 
 cution and destined to engender persecution in turn, 
 spread rapidly through society. Even the strongest and 
 most commanding minds were not proof against this 
 strange taint. Any time might have produced George 
 Fox and James Naylor. But to one time alone belong 
 the frantic delusions of such a statesman as Vane, and the 
 hysterical tears of such a soldier as Cromwell. 
 
200 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 The history of Bunyan is the history of a most excita- 
 ble mind in an age of excitement. By most of his bi- 
 ographers he has been treated with gross injustice. They 
 have understood in a popular sense all those strong terms 
 of self-condemnation which he employed in a theological 
 sense. They have, therefore, represented him as an 
 abandoned wretch, reclaimed by means almost mirac- 
 ulous; or, to use their favorite metaphor, "as a brand 
 plucked from the burning." Mr. Ivimey calls him the 
 depraved Bunyan, and the wicked tinker of Elstow. 
 Surely Mr. Ivimey ought to have been too familiar with 
 the bitter accusations which the most pious people are in 
 the habit of bringing against themselves, to understand 
 literally all the strong expressions which are to be found 
 in the Grace Abounding. It is quite clear, as Mr. Southey 
 most justly remarks, that Bunyan never was a vicious 
 man. He married very early; and he solemnly declares 
 that he was strictly faithful to his wife. He does not 
 appear to have been a drunkard. He owns, indeed, that 
 when a boy he never spoke without an oath. But a 
 single admonition cured him of this bad habit for life; 
 and the cure must have been wrought early; for at eigh- 
 teen he was in the army of the Parliament; and, if he had 
 carried the vice of profaneness into that service, he would 
 doubtless have received something more than an admoni- 
 tion from Sergeant Bind-their-kings-in-chains, or Captain 
 Hew -Agag- in- pieces -bef ore -the-Lord. Bell-ringing, and 
 playing at hockey on Sundays, seem to have been the 
 worst vices of this depraved tinker. They would have 
 passed for virtues with Archbishop Laud. It is b^uite clear 
 that, from a very early age, Bunyan was a man of a strict 
 life and of a tender conscience. "He had been," says 
 Mr. Southey, "a blackguard." Even this we think too 
 hard a censure. Bunyan was not, we admit, so fine a 
 gentleman as Lord Digby; but he was a blackguard no 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 201 
 
 otherwise than as every tinker that ever lived has been 
 a blackguard. Indeed, Mr. Southey acknowledges this. 
 "Such he might have been expected to be by his birth, 
 breeding, and vocation. Scarcely, indeed, by possibility, 
 could he have been otherwise." A man whose manners 
 and sentiments are decidedly below those of his class 
 deserves to be called a blackguard. But it is surely un- 
 fair to apply so strong a word of reproach to one who is 
 only what the great mass of every community must in- 
 evitably be. 
 
 Those horrible internal conflicts which Bunyan has 
 described with so much power of language prove, not that 
 he was a worse man than his neighbors, but that his mind 
 was constantly occupied by religious considerations, that 
 his fervor exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagina- 
 tion exercised despotic power over his body and mind. 
 He heard voices from heaven. He saw strange visions of 
 distant hills, pleasant and sunny as his own Delectable 
 Mountains. From those abodes he was shut out, and 
 placed in a dark and horrible wilderness, where he wan- 
 dered through ice and snow, striving to make his way 
 into the happy region of light. At one time he was seized 
 with an inclination to work miracles. At another time 
 he thought himself actually possessed by the devil. He 
 could distinguish the blasphemous whispers. He felt his 
 infernal enemy pulling at his clothes behind him. He 
 spurned with his feet and struck with his hands at the 
 destroyer. Sometimes he was tempted to sell his part 
 in the salvation of mankind. Sometimes a violent im- 
 pulse urged him to start up from his food, to fall on his 
 knees, and to break forth into prayer. At length he 
 fancied that he had committed the unpardonable 
 His agony convulsed his robust frame. It was, he says, 
 as if his breast-bone would split; and this he took for a 
 sign that he was destined to burst asunder like Judas. 
 
202 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 The agitation of his nerves made all his movements 
 tremulous; and this trembling, he supposed, was a visible 
 mark of his reprobation, like that which had been set 
 on Cain. At one time, indeed, an encouraging voice 
 seemed to rush in at the window, like the noise of wind, 
 but very pleasant, and commanded, as he says, a great 
 calm in his soul. At another time a word of comfort 
 "was spoke loud unto him; it showed a great word; it 
 seemed to be writ in great letters." But these intervals 
 of ease were short. His state, during two years and a 
 half, was generally the most horrible that the human 
 mind can imagine. "I walked," says he, with his own 
 peculiar eloquence, "to a neighboring town; and sat 
 down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep 
 pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought 
 me to; and, after long musing, I lifted up my head; but 
 methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens 
 did grudge to give me light; and as if the very stones in 
 the street, and the tiles upon the houses, did band them- 
 selves against me. Methought that they all combined 
 together to banish me out of the world. I was abhorred 
 of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had 
 sinned against the Saviour. Oh, how happy now was 
 every creature over I ! for they stood fast, and kept their 
 station. But I was gone and lost." Scarcely any mad- 
 house could produce an instance of delusion so strong, or 
 of misery so acute. 
 
 It was through this valley of the Shadow of Death, 
 overhung by darkness, peopled with devils, resounding 
 with blasphemy and lamentation, and passing amidst 
 quagmires, snares, and pitfalls, close by the very mouth 
 of hell, that Bunyan journeyed to that bright and fruit- 
 ful land of Beulah, in which he sojourned during the 
 latter period of his pilgrimage. The only trace which his 
 cruel sufferings and temptations seem to have left behind 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 203 
 
 them was an affectionate compassion for those who were 
 still in the state in which he had once been. Religion 
 has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in 
 his allegory. The feeling which predominates through 
 the whole book is a feeling of tenderness for weak, timid, 
 and harassed minds. The character of Mr. Fearing, of 
 Mr. Feeblemind, of Mr. Despondency and his daughter 
 Miss Muchafraid, the account of poor Littlefaith who was 
 robbed by the three thieves of his spending money, the 
 description of Christian's terror in the dungeons of Giant 
 Despair and in his passage through the river, all clearly 
 show how strong a sympathy Bunyan felt, after his own 
 mind had become clear and cheerful, for persons afflicted 
 with religious melancholy. 
 
 Mr. Southey, who has no love for the Calvinists, ad- 
 mits that, if Calvinism had never worn a blacker appear- 
 ance than in Bunyan's works, it would never have 
 become a term of reproach. In fact, those works of 
 Bunyan with which we are acquainted are by no means 
 more Calvinistic than the articles and homilies of the 
 Church of England. The moderation of his opinions on 
 the subject of predestination gave offense to some zealous 
 persons. We have seen an absurd allegory, the heroine 
 of which is named Hephzibah, written by some raving 
 supralapsarian* preacher who was dissatisfied with the 
 mild theology of the Pilgrim's Progress. In this foolish 
 book, if we recollect rightly, the Interpreter is called the 
 Enlightener, and the House Beautiful is Castle Strength. 
 Mr. Southey tells us that the Catholics had also their 
 Pilgrim's Progress, without a Giant Pope, in which the 
 Interpreter is the Director, and the House Beautiful 
 Grace's Hall. It is surely a remarkable proof 
 
 ^ssszx 
 
 to be saved and which were to be damned. 
 
204 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 power of Bunyan's genius, that two religious parties, 
 both of which regarded his opinions as heterodox, should 
 have had recourse to him for assistance. 
 
 There are, we think, some characters and scenes in the 
 Pilgrim's Progress, which can be fully comprehended and 
 enjoyed only by persons familiar with the history of the 
 times through which Bunyan lived. The character of 
 Mr. Greatheart, the guide, is an example. His fighting 
 is, of course, allegorical; but the allegory is not strictly 
 preserved. He delivers a sermon on imputed righteous- 
 ness to his companions; and, soon after, he gives battle 
 to Giant Grim, who had taken upon him to back the lions. 
 He expounds the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to the 
 household and guests of Gaius; and then he sallies out to 
 attack Slaygood, who was of the nature of flesh-eaters, 
 in his den. These are inconsistencies; but they are in- 
 consistencies which add, we think, to the interest of the 
 narrative. We have not the least doubt that Bunyan 
 had in view some stout old Greatheart of Naseby and 
 Worcester, who prayed with his men before he drilled 
 them, who knew the spiritual state of every dragoon in 
 his troop, and who, with the praises of God in his mouth, 
 and a two-edged sword in his hand, had turned to flight, 
 on many fields of battle, the swearing, drunken bravoes 
 of Rupert and Lunsford. 
 
 Every age produces such men as By-ends. But the 
 middle of the seventeenth century was eminently prolific 
 of such men. Mr. Southey thinks that the satire was 
 aimed at some particular individual; and this seems by 
 no means improbable. At all events, Bunyan must have 
 known many of those hypocrites who followed religion 
 only when religion walked in silver slippers, when the 
 sun shone, and when the people applauded. Indeed, he 
 might have easily found all the kindred of By-ends among 
 the public men of his time. He might have found among 
 the peers my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-server, 
 
THOMAS B. MACAULAY 205 
 
 and my Lord Fair-speech; in the House of Commons, 
 Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Any-thing, and Mr, Facing-both- 
 ways; nor would "the parson of the parish, Mr. Two- 
 tongues," have been wanting. The town of Bedford 
 probably contained more than one politician who, after 
 contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during 
 the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had 
 got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the 
 strumpets, and more than one priest who, during repeated 
 changes in the discipline and doctrines of the church, had 
 remained constant to nothing but his benefice. 
 
 One of the most remarkable passages in the Pilgrim's 
 Progress is that in which the proceedings against Faith- 
 ful are described. It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan 
 intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were 
 conducted under Charles the Second. The license given 
 to the witnesses for the prosecution, the shameless par- 
 tiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipi- 
 tancy and the blind rancor of the jury, remind us of those 
 odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the 
 Revolution, were merely forms preliminary to hanging, 
 drawing, and quartering. Lord Hategood performs the 
 office of counsel for the prisoners as well as Scroggs him- 
 self could have performed it. 
 
 " JUDGE. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast 
 thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed 
 against thee? 
 
 "FAITHFUL. May I speak a few words in my own 
 defense ? 
 
 "JUDGE. Sirrah, sirrah! thou deservest to live no 
 longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, 
 that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear 
 what thou, vile runagate, hast to say." 
 
 No person who knows the state trials can be at a loss 
 for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the 
 baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times "sinned 
 
206 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 up to it still," and even went beyond it. The imaginary 
 trial of Faithful, before a jury composed of personified 
 vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the 
 real trial of Alice Lisle before that tribunal where all the 
 vices sat in the person of Jefferies. 
 
 The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and 
 invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to ob- 
 tain a wide command over the English language. The 
 vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. 
 There is not an expression, if we except a few technical 
 terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. 
 We have observed several pages which do not contain a 
 single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer 
 has said more exactly what he meant to say. For mag- 
 nificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle 
 disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, the orator, 
 and the divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain 
 working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book 
 in our literature on which we would so readily stake the 
 fame of the old unpolluted English language, no book 
 which shows so well how rich that language is in its own 
 proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by 
 all that it has borrowed. 
 
 Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not 
 name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a 
 sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord 
 Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke 
 of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be 
 compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the 
 preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are 
 not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever 
 men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth 
 century, there were only two great creative minds. One 
 of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the 
 Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 
 
 WELLS'S "OUTLINE OF HISTORY"; 
 
J. Salwyn Schaplro (1879 ) is assistant professor 
 
 of History in the College of the City of New York. He 
 received his early education in the public schools of 
 Hudson, New York ; and his collegiate training at the 
 College of the City of New York and at Columbia Uni- 
 versity, receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
 from Columbia in 1909. He is the author of Social Re- 
 form and the Reformation and Modern and Contemporary 
 European History. 
 
 The review here given appeared originally in the New 
 York Nation. It is longer than most reviews, partly 
 because of the importance of the book to be discussed, 
 partly because of the method of treatment adopted by 
 the reviewer. The article has three main divisions: 
 (a) a general discussion of the subject of history, with 
 reference to Mr. Wells; (6) a summary of the Outline of 
 History, with comment; (c) an estimate of Mr. Wells's 
 whole literary product, for the purpose of pointing out 
 features which are common to all his writings. 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 
 
 H. G. WELLS'S "OUTLINE OF HISTORY" 
 
 (This article appeared in The Nation for February 3, 1921. It 
 is reprinted by permission of the author and of the editor of The 
 Nation.) 
 
 In The Outline of History Mr. Wells has performed at 
 least one remarkable feat: he has interested the average 
 intelligent reader in history. No professional historian 
 now living has ever done it or could do it. The average 
 intelligent person will read fiction, essays, philosophy, 
 science, and sometimes even poetry; but he will not read 
 history. And the reason for this is obvious. History 
 has recently been written for one of two audiences. One 
 of these audiences consists of students in school and col- 
 lege to whom history is presented as an endless and tire- 
 some succession of dates, battles, political parties, the 
 "heroic dead," politicians, kings, and generals. Exami- 
 nations once over, these students promptly proceed to 
 forget all about it. But the memory of horrors associated 
 with studying history lingers, and in after-life nothing 
 will induce them to open a book on this subject. Or 
 history has been written by the Ph. Deified for the Ph. 
 Deified, generally in a language unknown to living men. 
 When an ordinary person happens across a volume of 
 this type and begins reading it, he is at first mystified, 
 then dismayed, and ends by giving the book as a gift to 
 a deserving nephew. Now and then a Macaulay, a 
 Green, a Michelet, a Treitschke, a Mommsen, a Ban- 
 croft comes along and writes a history so vivid, so full 
 
 209 
 
210 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 of the life and color that characterize man even at his 
 lowest and stupidest that the reader overcomes his 
 antipathy for the subject and pursues it with avidity. 
 
 Mr. Wells, by profession a novelist and by tempera- 
 ment a reformer, has now essayed the task. In spite of 
 the fact that he is not a member of the guild of historians 
 and has therefore received no training in what is termed 
 scientific history, he is nevertheless in many ways re- 
 markably well qualified for it. In the first place, he has 
 a strong, subtle, and profound sense of human relation- 
 ships. Few men of our day have so keen a realization 
 of the forces in life that make or mar individuals and so- 
 cieties. In the second place, Mr. Wells possesses un- 
 usual powers of imagination, an essential gift in one who 
 essays to write history, for it takes imagination to see 
 reality. The unimaginative see only forms, appearances, 
 and semblances, never reality. Finally, Mr. Wells can 
 write superlatively well. A reader can rest assured as 
 he takes up these two rather large volumes that they will 
 hold his attention throughout. 
 
 To Mr. Wells, as to many other thoughtful men, the 
 World War and the class wars that followed in its wake 
 revealed a civilization sick unto death. A true lover of 
 mankind, he was moved to inquire into the origin of the 
 dreadful disease that brought about the world tragedy. 
 He came to the conclusion that the trouble lay primarily 
 in the fact that history has been the handmaid of narrow 
 nationalisms, religious bigotry, stupid racialism, and cul- 
 tural arrogance that fostered suspicions and bred hatreds; 
 and that "there can be no common peace and prosperity 
 without common historical ideas." Thereupon Mr. 
 Wells determined to become the propagandist for man- 
 kind by writing a universal history from the time, about 
 half a million years ago, when the earth was a flaring 
 mass of matter without life, to the present day. 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 211 
 
 The Outline is a history with a new point of view, Mr. 
 Wells 's own. Briefly, it is this: All mankind has a com- 
 mon origin and heritage, has travelled along a common 
 path, and is nearing a common goal. Being conscious 
 of this, it has tried "to create and develop a common 
 consciousness and a common stock of knowledge which 
 may serve and illuminate that purpose." History in this 
 sense becomes "the common adventure of all mankind" 
 in search of social and international peace through a 
 mitigation of the rights and privileges of nations and of 
 property. Mr. Wells's history "deals with ages, and 
 races, and nations where the ordinary history deals with 
 reigns and pedigrees and campaigns." No people, no 
 religion, no country, no period, is overlooked. The Old- 
 line is in spirit and in fact a universal history. It con- 
 cerns itself with Asia and Africa no less than with Europe 
 and America; with Buddhism and Mohammedanism no 
 less than with Judaism and Christianity; with primitive 
 life no less than with modern; with Hindus, Chinese, 
 Persians, and Egyptians no less than with Englishmen, 
 Frenchmen, and Germans. 
 
 According to Mr. Wells there have been three struc- 
 tural ideas in the life of mankind on which the great 
 society of the future will be built: (1) science, first identi- 
 fied with Herodotus and Aristotle; (2) a universal God of 
 righteousness, the contribution of the Semites; and (3) 
 a system of world polity, first suggested by the empire of 
 Alexander the Great. Mr. Wells has envisaged the path 
 of civilization. Civilization arose as a "community of 
 obedience," subject to priests, lords, and kings, and has 
 progressed toward a "community of will," self-determin- 
 ing, democratic, free. The American Revolution, he de- 
 clares, was the first great positive and successful tep 
 toward the foundation of a "community 01 will, 
 repudiated the ancient forms of authority, king, priest, 
 
212 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 and lord. The great repudiation was of course the 
 French Revolution. 
 
 So gigantic a task as Mr. Wells set before himself would 
 require the industry of a Ranke, the versatility of a 
 Leonardo da Vinci, the learning of a Mommsen, and the 
 style of a Macaulay; in short, universal genius of the 
 highest order. Mr. Wells, having a sense of humor, 
 knows his limitations. He has modestly avowed them 
 and has sought advice and assistance from many experts 
 in various fields, the chief being Mr. Ernest Barker, Sir 
 E. Ray Lankester, and Professor Gilbert Murray. The 
 Outline is profusely illustrated with interesting and orig- 
 inal maps, diagrams, and drawings by Mr. J. F. Horra- 
 bin. One of the unusual features of the book is the 
 heckling, in true English fashion, of the text by the 
 foot-notes. It is the tradition for foot-notes to murmur 
 approval to whatever the text is pleased to say; in this 
 history they shout defiance at the text. Mr. Wells's 
 advisers, who wrote and signed most of the foot-notes, 
 use this method of disagreeing with him. Sometimes he 
 descends to the foot-notes to engage in a bout with his 
 critics. All this is quite diverting and gay, and for once 
 the reader will enjoy reading foot-notes. 
 
 The Outline contains nothing original except the point 
 of view and method of treatment. Mr. Wells does not 
 claim to have discovered new material or to have dis- 
 credited old material. Everything in his book is acces- 
 sible elsewhere. Universal histories, too, are not new; 
 they were the fashion in the eighteenth century and even 
 earlier. But his is the first book, and, so far as I know, 
 the only one, that is a universal history with a distinctly 
 modern point of view and that has utilized and has brought 
 to bear upon its thesis the accumulated riches of modern 
 scholarship in the related sciences of geology, biology, 
 archaeology, ethnology, sociology, comparative religions, 
 economics, and political science. 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 213 
 
 At this point it is important to inquire on what basis 
 Mr. Wells solved the problem of selection. Every writer 
 of history is confronted with this vexing problem. What 
 shall he select from the enormous mass of material that 
 constitutes human history? What shall be excluded? 
 What shall be emphasized? What shall be minimized? 
 The manner in which historians react to these problems 
 varies with their point of view, their traditions, their 
 education, their milieu* their temperament, and espe- 
 cially with the spirit of the age in which they live. Every 
 age rewrites history to suit itself, because interpretation 
 of history changes with increase of knowledge and with a 
 better understanding of that curious being called Man. 
 We of to-day understand the ancient Greeks far better 
 than did Pericles because we know more of human psy- 
 chology than he did. In a sense the historian may be 
 considered a social psychoanalyst, for he brings to the 
 surface the unconscious motives and forces that have 
 caused profound changes in human affairs. Those who 
 write history with the view to merely explaining the past 
 are not historians but antiquarians. A true historian 
 studies the past with a view primarily to explaining the 
 present, and not infrequently does he use the present to 
 throw light on the past. Now, what was Mr. Wells's 
 basis of selection? In his case the question is all the 
 more important because he had to encompass half a mil- 
 lion years of world history in two volumes. His answer 
 is in itself no small contribution. His purpose is to in- 
 clude and to emphasize only those events in the past 
 that have a bearing on the future. Readers of Mr. 
 Wells's books know that, in his great quest to fathom the 
 mystery of life, his eyes have always been turned toward 
 the future. He never tires of reiterating the sentiment 
 that the chief business of mankind ought to be to prepare 
 * Milieu, environment, the conditions which surround one. 
 
214 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 itself, its ideals, and its institutions for the great future 
 that is approaching. This point of view animates and 
 distinguishes the Outline. 
 
 The book possesses another unique quality, its inti- 
 macy. Mr. Wells is the one writer of history who takes 
 the reader into his confidence and discusses with him 
 frankly the significance of the great events of the past. 
 History as seen through the temperament of Mr. Wells 
 is novel, piquant, and entertaining. In reading the Old- 
 line one seldom gets the idea that what is narrated oc- 
 curred far away and long ago. Mr. Wells has no sense 
 of time, for he discusses events in the remote past as if 
 they were still happening. All ages are contemporary 
 with Mr. Wells. This gives vividness to his story and 
 truthfulness, too; for let it not be forgotten that the dead 
 we have always with us. 
 
 II 
 
 Book I tells the story of the origin of the world. In a 
 style so simple and lucid that a child can understand it, 
 he describes the Record of the Rocks, the changes of 
 climate, the formation of the earth's surface, the first 
 appearance of life, the origin of species, and finally the 
 Age of Mammals. Mr. Wells's early scientific training 
 has stood him in good stead. He has evidently read 
 widely and deeply in this field, for he moves easily among 
 his materials. The reader is held in breathless suspense 
 as the thrilling tale is told of thousands of years of which 
 the record, though so slight, is yet so significant. 
 
 Book II is, if anything, still more fascinating. It 
 alone is worth the price of the two volumes. It tells the 
 story of the origin and development of the human race, 
 from our ape-like ancestor through the Heidelberg, Pilt- 
 down, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon types to present 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 215 
 
 man. Mr. Wells possesses a scientific imagination of a 
 high order. He reconstructs in a marvellous way the 
 Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages with their inhabitants, 
 tools, architecture, and art. He then tells of the origin 
 of races, of agriculture, of herding, and of trade. Finally 
 he reconstructs the mind of primitive man, and describes 
 the origin of thought, of symbols, of legends, of religion, 
 and of the various languages. 
 
 Book III, on the Dawn of History, keeps up the pace. 
 It deals with the first civilizations, Sumerian, Assyrian, 
 Chaldean, Egyptian, Hindu, and Chinese; with the mari- 
 time and trading people of the ^Egean, the Cretans, Tro- 
 jans, Phoenicians, and Homeric Greeks. There is a 
 short but remarkably clear chapter on the origin and 
 importance of writing. Mr. Wells traces writing through 
 the picture, the syllable, and finally to the alphabet stage. 
 With the coming of the written word, "verbal tradition 
 which had hitherto changed from age to age, began to be 
 fixed. Men separated by hundreds of miles could now 
 communicate their thoughts. An increasing number of 
 human beings began to share a common written knowl- 
 edge and a common sense of a past and a future. Human 
 thinking became a larger operation in which hundreds 
 of minds in different places and different ages oould react 
 upon each other." 
 
 How the priest and king came into history is the next 
 theme. There is a bare suggestion that the forerunner 
 of both was the Paleolithic Old Man of the Tribe, dreaded 
 not only in life as the master but dreaded as well after 
 death, so that his spirit had to be propitiated. He had 
 cared for the tribe when alive; he no doubt would care 
 for it when dead ! He was the spirit of authority. Per- 
 haps a god ! Ideas that once have lived never really die. 
 They live on as taboos, conventions, traditions, rever- 
 ences, and "sweet remembrances." Book III ends with 
 
216 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 the story of the common man. It tells the origin of castes, 
 trades, professions, guilds, slavery, and free labor. 
 
 With Book IV, on Judea, Greece, and India, the Out- 
 line enters the field of history proper. Here Mr. Wells 
 treats of familiar things in a quite unfamiliar manner. 
 He has no great admiration for David and Solomon, both 
 of whom are pictured as cruel, treacherous, and bloody 
 Eastern monarchs. 
 
 Four chapters are devoted to the Greeks, whom Mr. 
 Wells greatly admires as the first truly modern men be- 
 cause they were scientific and sceptical. Much valuable 
 space is given to the struggles between the Greeks and 
 Persians. Many trivial incidents and personalities are 
 dwelt upon because of their picturesqueness. Croesus 
 gets fully six pages and Socrates only two. On the whole 
 the chapter on Greek thought is not up to the mark. Of 
 Alexander the Great Mr. Wells has a low opinion. De- 
 moralized as a child by his mother, Alexander grew up 
 to be insanely egotistical. He did nothing directly of 
 any permanent value. As for Hellenizing the East, all 
 he did was to wander aimlessly through the region, fight- 
 ing any one who came his way and for no particular reason. 
 Both as statesman and soldier, Alexander's father, Philip, 
 was much his superior. Alexander is "nothing but a 
 personal legend," his greatness an invention of historians. 
 About the only thing that he did bequeath to posterity 
 is the custom of shaving one's face, which he initiated 
 because he was enamored of his own youthful loveliness. 
 Mr. Wells has small respect for "Heroes of History/' 
 especially if they happen to be conquerors, and his opin- 
 ion of Alexander, just stated, is certainly entertaining 
 and perhaps correct. 
 
 One of the best chapters, if not the best, in the Out- 
 line is that on Buddhism. Strangely enough, Mr. Wells 
 is at his best when dealing with science and religion. 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 217 
 
 The story of the life of Gautama is told with thrilling 
 eloquence and fine appreciation. Gautama's teachings, 
 Mr. Wells declares, are in "closest harmony with modern 
 ideas" and are indisputably "the achievement of one of 
 the most penetrating intelligences the world has ever 
 known." He corrects the common misconception that 
 Nirvana is a state of complete annihilation by explaining 
 that it is a state of serenity of soul which comes to one 
 who is absorbed in something greater than himself. Mr. 
 Wells is lost in admiration for Gautama's doctrine, which 
 he identifies with the teaching of history as presented by 
 the Outline. However, Buddhism gathered corruption as 
 it spread, so that to-day the ideals of Gautama are fairly 
 smothered in a hideous mass of idolatry, superstition, and 
 sacerdotalism. The teachings of a master are generally 
 corrupted by his disciples, who are apt to be enthusiastic 
 and undiscriminating propagandists, eager to spread the 
 faith at all costs. "Men who would scorn to tell a lie 
 in every-day life," writes Mr. Wells, "will become un- 
 scrupulous cheats and liars when they have given them- 
 selves up to propagandist work." Who has not met 
 them these last years ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 With the chapter on Buddhism the Outline reaches its 
 high-water mark. From thence on, a startling change is 
 noticeable. And the change is for the worse. There is 
 no longer, as in the first volume, the sure touch and firm 
 grasp that comes from knowledge accumulated and di- 
 gested. Mr. Wells now moves uneasily among his ma- 
 terials, which he has annexed from encyclopaedia articles 
 and a few simple manuals. Although he makes compara- 
 tively few downright errors, his story of the Roman Em- 
 pire, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times is tragically 
 
218 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 disappointing in view of the hopes he has raised in the 
 earlier sections. The second volume is disfigured by in- 
 sufficient knowledge and bad judgment, gaucheries,* prej- 
 udice, and even pettiness, sometimes to a degree that is 
 positively shocking. There seems to be no rhyme or 
 reason for the inclusion of some things and the exclusion 
 ef others except the author's whims. In short, there is 
 no basis of selection of any kind that I can see. The 
 various periods and countries are badly integrated, and 
 the reader loses sight completely of the great path that 
 humanity has travelled since its appearance on the earth. 
 
 Book V is the history of the Roman Empire. As may 
 be expected, the children of Mars fare badly at the hands 
 of the anti-militarist Mr. Wells. The Romans were 
 brutal "Neanderthal men," incurious, unimaginative, and 
 intellectually far inferior to the Greeks. The Roman Em- 
 pire was "a colossally ignorant and unimaginative em- 
 pire." It foresaw nothing. It had no conception of 
 statecraft. It was a gigantic bureaucracy only, that 
 taxed and kept the peace. Its inhabitants, both rich and 
 poor, led dreary lives, which explains their delight in the 
 savage conflicts of the arena. Even though one may dis- 
 like the Romans, the fact nevertheless remains that, 
 during a period of six centuries, they did unify the West- 
 ern world and did create a world polity that thing so 
 much desired by Mr. Wells; they did create the system of 
 private law upon which modern jurisprudence is largely 
 based; they did create an administrative system which 
 functions to this day in Latin Europe. 
 
 According to Mr. Wells, the most significant fact in 
 Roman history is the increasing use of money, making 
 capital fluid and free. This led to speculation and the 
 rise of a money power, which became the efficient help- 
 meet of the military. Mr. Wells thinks the Roman 
 * Gaucheries, awkward expressions. 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 219 
 
 system was "a crude anticipation of our own," with its 
 machine politics and professional politicians, class con- 
 flicts, mobs, wire-pullers, "common people," reformers, 
 political corruption, capitalism, and the "science of 
 thwarting the common man." He tells the story of the 
 Gracchi, and of how they were energetically massacred 
 by the "champions of law and order." All this is highly 
 suggestive. 
 
 Mr. Wells's judgment of famous Romans is amusing, to 
 say the least. The picture that he draws of Cato the 
 Censor would lead one to believe that that austere worthy 
 fairly reeked with morals and was therefore full of hatred 
 and all uncharitableness for the gentle and joyous things 
 of life. Julius Caesar's greatness, Mr. Wells firmly be- 
 lieves, is purely the invention of historians, who magnify 
 and dress him up "for the admiration of careless and un- 
 critical readers." According to our author, Csesar was 
 a Roman politician, rich, corrupt, and dissolute. Like 
 Clodius and Catiline he was a vulgar schemer and con- 
 spirator, only shrewder and more crafty than they. At 
 no time did he show any symptoms of greatness either of 
 mind or character. At the very zenith of his power, 
 Caesar was much more interested in Cleopatra than in 
 Romanizing the world. This belittling of Csesar, as of 
 Alexander, is due to Mr. Wells's intense dislike of con- 
 querors and the homage that is paid them. 
 
 I was astounded to find that Mr. Wells has swallowed 
 hook, worm, and sinker the legend of the "Fall" of 
 Rome, now long exploded. He characterizes the inva- 
 sion of the German barbarians as a "conquest of the 
 Empire" which "crumpled up." He does not seem to 
 understand that what he calls the "Fall" was a long 
 process of decay and absorption. The cause of the 
 "Fall," he writes, was the stupidity and "incuriousness" 
 of the Romans. He gives us no evidence of being aware 
 
220 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 of the rast social changes that were taking place during 
 the fourth and fifth centuries, the silent economic mas- 
 sacre of the lower middle classes, the sinking of the free 
 laborers to a condition of serfdom, the race suicide 
 phenomena that surely offer some explanation for the 
 decay of the Roman world. 
 
 Book VI deals with Christianity, Islam, and the Mid- 
 dle Ages. Naturally one is interested in what the author 
 of First and Last Things has to say on the religion of his 
 fathers and of his contemporaries. The Outline nar- 
 rates the life of Christ in a tone that is reverent and 
 "correct." There is no such thrilling eloquence, however, 
 as there is in the description of Gautama. 
 
 Christianity, says Mr. Wells, diverged from the pure 
 Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth almost from the beginning. 
 He has severe things to say of St. Paul as a preacher "of 
 the ancient religion of priest and altar and propitiatory 
 bloodshed." Soon there came accretions from Mith- 
 raism and from the Isis cult of Egypt. Finally there came 
 the dogma of the Trinity which to Mr. Wells was "a dis- 
 astrous ebullition of the human mind" leading to bitter 
 schisms that rent the Church. " Men who quarrelled over 
 business affairs," he writes, "wives who wished to annoy 
 their husbands, developed antagonistic views on this 
 exalted theme." Further on in the book he goes on to 
 say that in time "the gory forefinger of the Etruscan 
 pontifex maximus emphasized the teachings of Jesus of 
 Nazareth; the mental complexity of the Alexandrian 
 Greek entangled them." So deeply hostile is Mr. Wells 
 to Christianity that when he does say something nice 
 about it he says something which is erroneous. He re- 
 peats the common fallacy that Christianity was opposed 
 to slavery and brought about its abolition. 
 
 The story of Christianity's rival as a world religion, 
 Mohammedanism, is told next. Mr. Wells's opinion of 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 221 
 
 Mohammed is that he was "vain, egotistical, tyrannous, 
 and a self -deceiver." Although not an impostor, he was 
 "diplomatic, treacherous, ruthless, or compromising as 
 the occasion required." But though its founder was at 
 once a knave and a fool, Mr. Wells assures us that Islam 
 was superior to both Judaism and Christianity. Mr. 
 Wells's ideas of Mohammedanism are what Alice in 
 Wonderland would call "imaginotions." His enthu- 
 siasm for Islam is understandable, however, for its vast 
 embrace of millions of all sorts of races and tribes marks 
 a great step in the advance of the unity of mankind, the 
 goal of all human history. 
 
 Mr. Wells then betakes himself to the Middle Ages. 
 The greatness of the hero of the period, Charlemagne, 
 another warrior-statesman, posterity has greatly exag- 
 gerated, Mr. Wells assures us. Charlemagne was the first 
 of the imitation Caesars of which William II was the last. 
 Nowhere in this chapter, or in any other, is there an ade- 
 quate description of feudal society; there are a few loose 
 paragraphs about it. The Crusades, on the other hand, 
 receive adequate treatment. Mr. Wells has a sense for 
 movements, and he describes these romantic popular 
 outpourings with spirit and insight. 
 
 Book VII contains two surprising chapters. The one 
 on the Mongols is surprising because it is dull. It is the 
 only dull chapter in the two volumes. It is a tedious re- 
 cital of Tartar raids and Tartar dynasties. The other 
 chapter deals with the Renaissance and the Protestant 
 Revolution. It is surprising because there is so little of 
 the Renaissance and of Protestantism in it. Petrarch, 
 Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and the great artists remain 
 unhonored and unsung: for they are barely mentioned. 
 There is a poor description of mediaeval scholasticism, 
 little or nothing of humanism, and a fairly good account 
 of the scientific aspect of the Renaissance. I searched 
 
222 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 for the origins of Protestantism, and after a great effort 
 I found a few lines about Martin Luther tucked away in 
 the corner of a long dissertation on Charles V, a mon- 
 arch whom Mr. Wells considers commonplace, with a 
 " thick upper lip and long clumsy chin/' Scarcely a 
 word is to be found about Calvin, Knox, Zwingli, and 
 Cranmer. All the space that poor Queen Elizabeth gets 
 is that she is "among those present" in a list of Tudor 
 monarchs. But let that good lady not worry. Shake- 
 speare has escaped Mr. Wells's notice altogether. Much 
 space is devoted to Machiavelli, Charles V, Francis I, 
 and Loyola. 
 
 The reader now encounters long digressions that point 
 in every direction. One of these is interesting and im- 
 portant. It is on education. Because the Roman Em- 
 pire failed to establish a system of popular education, it 
 did not develop what Mr. Wells suggestively calls "edu- 
 cational government"; and therefore it had to rely upon 
 political and military government. The written word 
 meant nothing to the average man of ancient times. 
 Owing to this lack of popular education, ancient civiliza- 
 tion was "a light in a dark lantern." It was Christi- 
 anity that first relied successfully upon the power of the 
 written word "to link great multitudes of diverse men 
 together in common enterprises." Islam later imitated 
 Christianity. By establishing schools for popular teach- 
 ing the Catholic Church grasped the idea of educational 
 government, the ideal of the future. What was lacking 
 was the means to get knowledge and information so that 
 this new type of government could function. That came 
 with printing. Mr. Wells cannot overemphasize the im- 
 portance of printing. In a highly interesting and in- 
 structive manner he explains how "paper liberated the 
 human mind," causing the spread of knowledge so that 
 "it ceased to be the privilege of a favored minority." All 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 223 
 
 modern progress and all hope for the future are inevitably 
 bound up with the printed page. 
 
 IV 
 
 Book VIII concerns itself with the period from the 
 seventeenth century to the year 1920. The leading 
 theme is the development of the "Great Power" idea 
 and its evil influence upon humanity. It was, Mr. Wells 
 believes, responsible for the dynastic wars of the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries, the English, American, 
 and French Revolutions, the nationalistic wars of the 
 nineteenth century, and the World War of 1914. Ac- 
 cording to Mr. Wells the modern state was a disastrous 
 humbug that ousted Christianity as the chief religion in 
 the Western World. At every opportunity he fires vol- 
 leys of destructive criticism and withering sarcasm at the 
 cult of nationalism, man's real, living god. A nation he 
 defines as "in effect any assembly, mixture, or confusion 
 of people which is either afflicted by or wishes to be 
 afflicted by a foreign office of its own in order that it 
 should behave collectively as if it alone constituted hu- 
 manity." He denounces this "megalomaniac national- 
 ism," and pleads for a "natural political map of the 
 world." This should be drawn by a commission of eth- 
 nologists, geographers, and sociologists instead of by 
 scheming and intriguing diplomats, who settle little and 
 unsettle much. To Mr. Wells nationalism is reactionary 
 because the idea of a world state "was already in the 
 world two thousand years ago, never more to leave it." 
 Mr. Wells utterly fails to see that nationalism is not an 
 idea that one can eliminate by merely taking thought. 
 It is a sentiment that expresses the desire of a community 
 to live its own life in its own way, unhampered by re- 
 strictions imposed by autocrats or by outsiders. (By 
 
224 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 the way, was not Mr. Wells himself a hundred per cent 
 Britisher during the War?) Nationalism and democracy 
 are one and inseparable. Had there been no subject 
 nations there would have been no nationalism. Instead 
 of being reactionary, it was the revolutionary force of the 
 nineteenth century; and it is one of the great progressive 
 forces of our day. Consider India, China, Ireland, Egypt, 
 Imperialism, the very antithesis of nationalism, is what 
 has brought so much woe to the world. 
 
 Incomparably the worst part of the Outline is that 
 which deals with the French Revolution. Being totally 
 devoid of any knowledge or understanding of this great 
 movement, Mr. Wells naturally turns for support to 
 Carlyle's French Revolution. Six precious pages are given 
 to Carlylian gabble about marching women, Marat-in-the- 
 bathtub, and similar sensational episodes; and only a 
 few paragraphs to the tremendous work of the National 
 Assembly that completely transformed France from a 
 feudal to a modern state. Why is Carlyle's French Revo- 
 lution considered a great work of "literature"? I am 
 sure that I do not know. I have tried several times to 
 read it, but I have never got very far. This famous book 
 is hardly more than an endless series of disconnected 
 ejaculations, emitted by the dyspeptic philosopher who 
 was the greatest bore in all Christendom. Mr. Wells 
 actually says that England was a "prospective ally" of 
 the French Revolution because of the sympathies of the 
 English liberals with the movement, but the French lost 
 this "prospective ally" by foolishly declaring war upon 
 England. Could there be any poorer judgment? Of 
 course the true cause of the French Revolution was the 
 "Great Power" game. It would take real ability to 
 write a chapter on the French Revolution worse than this. 
 
 Mr. Wells's description of Napoleon is the most enter- 
 taining part of the Outline. There is a laugh in every 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 225 
 
 line. The reader must not expect a study of the Na- 
 poleonic period, military, political, or social. There is 
 nothing there worthy of serious notice. The interest in 
 the chapter lies entirely in Mr. Wells's view of Napoleon 
 himself. He is " down on " the Man of Destiny, obviously 
 for the same reason that he is "down on" Alexander, 
 Caesar, and Charlemagne. Napoleon was a soldier and 
 no soldier could possibly have been a truly great man. 
 Mr. Wells considers Talleyrand an abler statesman than 
 Napoleon; Moreau and Hoche, abler generals; Czar 
 Alexander I had finer imagination. Mr. Wells also opines 
 that Napoleon III was "a much more supple and intelli- 
 gent man" than his uncle. This is too much for Ernest 
 Barker, who shouts from the foot-notes that "this is a 
 paradox to which I cannot subscribe. Please put me 
 down as convinced of the opposite." "Even regarded as 
 a pest," pursues the imperturbable Mr. Wells, "Napoleon 
 was not of supreme rank; he killed far fewer people than 
 the influenza epidemic of 1918." His victories were due 
 to the fact that he was "marvellously lucky" in his 
 "flounderings"; his diplomatic triumphs were due to 
 "good fortune." Napoleon's career was the "raid of an 
 intolerable egotist across the disordered beginning of a 
 new time"; "his little imitative imagination was full of 
 a deep cunning dream of being Caesar all over again." 
 He had wonderful opportunities for creating a new world; 
 and "there lacked nothing to this great occasion but a 
 noble imagination, and failing that, Napoleon could do no 
 more than strut upon the crest of this great mountain of 
 opportunity like a cockerel on a dunghill." 
 
 The account of the nineteenth century opens with a 
 description of the Industrial Revolution which is good; 
 
226 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 but it is not as good as might be expected from Mr. 
 Wells, who all his life has been interested in matters so- 
 cial and economic. What follows this account it is hard 
 for me to state exactly. There is little in it, political, 
 economic, or cultural, that I recognize as nineteenth- 
 century history. The unification of Germany and of 
 Italy get a nonchalant page or two; the reform move- 
 ments in England hardly a mention; the United States 
 barely a page. Of France, Russia, Austria, and Spain, 
 there is little that is worth noting; not a word of indus- 
 trial Germany or England; nothing about social legisla- 
 tion; nothing about the relation of church and state; 
 nothing of literature and art. For Mr. Wells, Mazzini, 
 John Bright, and Gambetta never lived; and Bismarck, 
 Disraeli, and Cavour barely existed. There is not a word 
 about the woman's movement; and for this omission I 
 leave the author of Ann Veronica to the tender mercies 
 of the psychoanalysts. 
 
 What then is the chapter, a hundred pages long, about ? 
 It is all about Mr. Wells Mr. Wells's view of this, of 
 that, and of the other person or thing. Digressions and 
 digressions from digressions devour most of the precious 
 pages. As I am especially interested in the nineteenth 
 century I was dismayed. I read the chapter over again 
 and finally came to the conclusion that Mr. Wells did 
 have in mind an original way of treating this period: to 
 make a study of Darwin, Marx, and Gladstone as the 
 truly great personalities of the century. The selection 
 is a happy one. With these personalities as a basis he 
 could have written a study of the scientific, the revolu- 
 tionary, and the liberal movements of the period that 
 would have been original and profound. But he fails 
 utterly. 
 
 There is a fairly good description of the influence of 
 Darwinism, though it is not brought up to date. For 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 227 
 
 example, Mr. Wells wholly overlooks the recent criticisms 
 of the doctrine of " natural selection." He shows how 
 Darwinism was perverted by Kiplingism; and he actually 
 devotes a whole page to Stalky and Co. to explain how 
 Kipling led the "children of the middle and upper class 
 British public back to the Jungle to learn 'the law.'" 
 Nothing more does the author tell us about the progress 
 of science during the nineteenth century. 
 
 The explanation of socialism is scrappy and totally in- 
 adequate. Mr. Wells devotes four pages to Robert Owen 
 and not a word to Saint-Simon or Fourier! To Karl 
 Marx and his ideas he devotes a page, and a very poor 
 page. From the Outline one can get almost no idea of 
 the meaning of Marxism, now of overshadowing interest 
 to the world. Mr. Wells fights shy of Marx. For a 
 moment he hovers over Marx's beard, and then flees, 
 fearful of being entangled in that vast, "uneventful" 
 growth. 
 
 No sooner does the Outline mention the name of Glad- 
 stone than the author lashes himself into a fury and falls 
 upon that mirror of Christian statesmanship with hammer 
 and tongs. He calls Gladstone a profoundly ignorant 
 man, who "was educated at Eton College and at Christ 
 Church, Oxford, and his mind never recovered from the 
 process." The description of Gladstone is unforgetable: 
 "He was a white-faced, black-haired man of incredible 
 energy, with eyes like an eagle's, wrath almost divine, 
 and the 'finest barytone voice in Europe.'" Mr. Wells 
 brings a strange accusation against Gladstone, namely, 
 that he made "nationality his guiding political principle." 
 In spite of the fact that, at this charge, Ernest Barker 
 and Gilbert Murray fire volleys of protests from the foot- 
 notes, Mr. Wells continues to belabor Gladstone with 
 undiminished zeal. 
 
 We now come to Ireland. At the hand of Mr. Wells 
 
228 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 Ireland fares badly indeed. His treatment of the Irish 
 Question is pervaded by a marked anti-Irish bias. When- 
 ever Ireland comes into the Outline she comes in for a 
 sound drubbing. Mr. Wells reproaches the Irish for 
 having "a long memory for their own wrongs" and actually 
 condones England's indifference. He slides over and 
 even excuses Cromwell's massacres. The great loss of 
 population in Ireland during the nineteenth century he 
 lays to the overcultivation of the potato; and he says 
 nothing of English landlordism with its " rack-renting" 
 and of the savage persecution of the Irish. Now and then 
 the readers of the Outline will be astonished at exhibitions 
 of prejudice, strange indeed in a man like Mr. Wells, 
 whose outlook is as wide as the world itself. He unmis- 
 takably dislikes the "dark whites," or Mediterranean 
 peoples, and greatly admires the "Nordic" races, or 
 northern Europeans. This comes out very strongly in 
 his treatment of the Irish who, he says, are "of the dark 
 1 Mediterranean' strain, pre-Nordic and pre- Aryan." 
 The "dark whites" are inclined to be superstitious, but 
 the "Nordics" are free, bold, and rational. "The Eng- 
 lish were naturally a non-sacerdotal people; they had the 
 Northman's dislike for and disbelief in priests"; but the 
 Irish "found the priest congenial." 
 
 At last we come to the World War. The fundamental 
 cause was the "Great Power" game that Europe had been 
 playing since the seventeenth century and which now 
 culminated in universal slaughter. "All the great states 
 of Europe before 1914," declares Mr. Wells, "were in a 
 condition of aggressive nationalism and drifting toward 
 war; the government of Germany did but lead in the 
 general movement." He gives a brief and spirited ac- 
 count of the war, which he believes could have been ended 
 before 1916, had the Allied army chiefs consented to use 
 the tank sooner. "But the professional military mind is 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 229 
 
 by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man 
 of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his 
 gifts in such a calling." Mr. Wells's judgment of the 
 Peace Conference follows closely that of Mr. Keynes; 
 for the story of the Conference he relies mainly on Mr. 
 Dillon's gossipy book. 
 
 In Book IX the historian becomes prophet. He 
 climbs to the top of a high mountain to view the Promised 
 Land of Future Humanity. In the distance, he sees 
 humanity attaining its goal after the long, dreary march 
 through the centuries. In one of the most eloquent 
 chapters of the book, Man's Coming of Age, he describes 
 this goal, "a world league of men," peaceful and happy. 
 What does Mr. Wells the prophet see? 
 
 (1) A world with a common religion, neither Christi- 
 anity, Islam, nor Buddhism, but "religion itself, pure and 
 undefiled." 
 
 (2) A system of world education. 
 
 (3) A world in which there are no armies, no navies, 
 and no unemployed. 
 
 (4) A universal organization for scientific research. 
 
 (5) A democratic world government. 
 
 (6) An economic order in which private enterprise ex- 
 ploits natural resources no longer as a " robber master" 
 but as "a useful, valued, and well-rewarded servant." 
 
 (7) An honest and efficient electoral system. 
 
 (8) An honest and efficient currency system. 
 
 This world order must inevitably come, for "human 
 history becomes more and more a race between educa- 
 tion and catastrophe." The element in the population 
 that will lead mankind to the World State is that be- 
 tween the upper and the working classes, an element 
 " capable of being aroused to a sense not merely of wicked- 
 ness but of the danger of systematic self-seeking in a 
 strained, impoverished, and sorely tried world." This 
 
230 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 bourgeois edaire* must inaugurate an educational and re- 
 ligious revival to enlighten all classes "by pen and per- 
 suasion, in schools and colleges and books, and in the 
 highways and byways of public life." 
 
 VI 
 
 Is Mr. Wells one of the immortals? It would hardly 
 be an exaggeration to say that he has been the most in- 
 fluential writer in English of our day. And his influ- 
 ence has not been merely literary. He has the power, 
 rare in a novelist, of affecting directly and profoundly 
 the political and social views of his readers. Then there 
 is that manner of his, that spiritual-romantic manner, 
 that invites you to go with him in the search for the Holy 
 Grail of social salvation. If ever there was a man who 
 viewed society as a spiritual organism, that man is Mr. 
 Wells. It is not surprising, therefore, that the fine spirits 
 among the rising generation have looked to him as the 
 prophet of a new and nobler order of society. And yet 
 I say, and I say it regretfully, that in my opinion Mr. 
 Wells is not an immortal. He will not pass into future 
 generations. My reading of the Outline has convinced 
 me of it more than ever. In this book, as in his others, 
 he shows his fatal weakness. The beginnings of a Wells 
 book are superb, wonderful, inspiring. The problem pre- 
 sented is a universal one, and the characters approach it 
 with magnificent strides. The reader feels that he is 
 about to see a solution of the problem worthy of its 
 greatness. Or perhaps Mr. Wells, like Michelangelo and 
 Rodin, will leave his creation superbly unfinished, because 
 he feels himself inadequate to express the greatness of 
 his concepts. But what does take place? When you 
 are about half-way through, there is a break; a sudden 
 
 * Bourgeois 6dair6, enlightened middle class. 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 281 
 
 descent begins; and the book fizzles out completely in 
 the end. Over and over again have I had this sad ex- 
 perience. Ann Veronica is in revolt against her family 
 and society. She runs away from home to live her own 
 life, to save her own soul, to earn her own living. In 
 the end, she marries and lives happy ever after. Rem- 
 ington in The New Machiavelli is appalled at the human 
 waste and confusion of present society. In a "white 
 passion of statecraft " he dreams of a new statesmanship 
 that will end this muddle. What does he do? He es- 
 tablishes institutions for the Endowment of Motherhood. 
 Stratton in The Passionate Friends desires to be truly 
 a "world man." He goes to Africa, to Asia, to America 
 to study world problems in order to deal efficiently with 
 them. At last he finds a way. He establishes an inter- 
 national publishing house that sells cheap editions of good 
 books. Trafford in Marriage is a great scientist who 
 is driven into commercialism by the needs of an extrava- 
 gant wife. He is distraught, so he and his wife go to the 
 wilds of Labrador to think it over. There he finds that 
 he cares more for his wife than for anything else. He 
 returns home happy, and does nothing. Lady Harman 
 in The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman resents the possessive 
 attitude of her wealthy husband. She has dreams of 
 beauty and of freedom, and falls in love with an artistic 
 and intellectual friend. She has several daring adven- 
 tures. Suddenly her husband dies. Now she is free. 
 What does she do? She devotes her life to the estab- 
 lishment of co-operative apartments for the deserving 
 middle class. Job Huss in The Undying Fire is stricken 
 with misfortune. He is ill of cancer; his school burns 
 down; his son is reported dead. The problem of human 
 suffering is presented, truly a great problem. In the end 
 Job Huss recovers; his school is rebuilt; and his son turns 
 up alive. Desiring to devote his life to the cause of hu- 
 
232 THE CRITICAL ESSAY 
 
 manity, Huss builds an Imperial Institute that will teach 
 people history, geography, and ethnology. The Outline 
 of History begins in the magnificent way that I have de- 
 scribed. The plan of the book is given in bold strokes. 
 It is to rewrite history so that the great purpose of the 
 life of man on earth shall become evident. At last his- 
 tory has found its true use, to discover the future. And 
 what is humanity's future, according to Mr. Wells's 
 prophecy? It is a vague, sentimental, middle-class, 
 middle-age, mid- Victorian vision of peace and prosperity. 
 What is there in this vision to which Samuel Smiles would 
 have objected ! Was it for this that the hairy ape-man 
 shambled into full humanity! Was this to be the out- 
 come 
 
 Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
 
 Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain ! 
 
 What ails Mr. Wells? What is the disease that proves 
 him mortal? This is what I now propose to diagnose. 
 Mr. Wells is a man of extraordinary imagination, ex- 
 traordinary both for its vividness and versatility; it is 
 poetic, scientific, religious, social, political, literary. In 
 my opinion he is the most highly imaginative human 
 being now living. But his intellect is not extraordinary. 
 Toward the great problems of the world his imagination 
 makes a magnificent stride; but his intellect cannot keep 
 pace with it. Hence in the realm of ideas he is sugges- 
 tive, not creative. He arouses, he stimulates, he throws 
 out fine hints, he suggests new ways of looking at things; 
 but he is utterly incapable of being the architect of any 
 new system of thought, be it political, social, moral, or 
 philosophical. Condemned to sterility, he becomes sen- 
 timental and half-mystical. Whenever he does succeed 
 in giving birth to an idea, it immediately expires in a 
 sigh. What political theories has he fashioned comparable 
 
J. SALWYN SCHAPIRO 233 
 
 to those of Rousseau, Locke, or Mill? What social the- 
 ories, comparable to those of Comte or Saint-Simon? 
 What interpretation of history comparable to that of 
 Buckle or of Marx? Indeed, what characters in fiction 
 has he created that have the immortality of Emma 
 Bovary, Pere Goriot, Pickwick, Anna Karenina, Rudin, 
 Becky Sharp, Bergeret, Raskolnikov, Pecksniff, or Tess 
 of the D'Urbervilles? 
 
 The Outline, with all its shortcomings, is nevertheless 
 a tour de force such as only a remarkably versatile man 
 like Mr. Wells could have accomplished. It gives a new 
 model for the writing of history, with its magnificent 
 sweep, wide range, deep sympathies, and progressive 
 view-point. Once immersed in these volumes, students 
 of history no less than others will gain an indelible im- 
 pression of going through a great and abiding experi- 
 ence. To read the book is in itself a liberal education. 
 
THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON 
 
 FEMALE ORATORS 
 
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) is the foremost figure 
 among the essayists of the eighteenth century. He was 
 the son of an English clergyman, in a country parish. He 
 was sent to Oxford, and completed his education by Euro- 
 pean travel. He gained literary recognition by a poem 
 on the battle of Blenheim, and was rewarded by various 
 political offices. When his friend Steele began the Tatler, 
 Addison contributed a number of essays to it, and in the 
 Spectator the two men worked together. 
 
 The age in which they lived was a coarse one. Profane 
 speech and bad manners were the fashion. Addison was 
 too shrewd a man to attack these things directly, or to 
 denounce them violently; that would only bring ridicule 
 upon him. But if he could adroitly manage to make these 
 things appear ridiculous, he might gain his end. So in 
 the Spectator he introduces imaginary characters, and 
 has these personages discuss the manners and follies of 
 the day. The two essays here printed deal with condi- 
 tions not peculiar to Addison's age: female orators and 
 people who are constantly worrying about their health 
 we have always with us. 
 
 The style of Addison has always been considered a 
 model of English prose. Franklin in his autobiography 
 tells how he improved his style by imitating Addison, 
 in the same way that Stevenson describes in A College 
 Magazine. Samuel Johnson said: "Whoever would at- 
 tain an English style, familiar but not coarse, elegant 
 but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to 
 the study of Addison." 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON 
 
 FEMALE ORATORS 
 (From the Spectator, December 13, 1711) 
 
 We are told by some ancient authors, that Socrates 
 was instructed in eloquence by a woman, whose name, if 
 Ixajn_._not mistaken, was Aspasia. I have indeed very 
 often looked upon that art as the most proper for the 
 female sex, and I think the universities would do well to 
 consider whether they should not fill the rhetoric chairs 
 with she professors. 
 
 It has been said in the praise of some men, that they 
 could talk whole hours together upon anything; but it 
 must be owned to the honor of the other sex, that there 
 are many among them who can talk whole hours together 
 upon nothing. I have known a woman branch out into 
 a long extempore dissertation upon the edging of a petti- 
 coat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup, in 
 all the figures of rhetoric. 
 
 Were women admitted to plead in courts of judicature, 
 I am persuaded they would carry the eloquence of the 
 bar to greater heights than it has yet arrived at. If any 
 one doubts this, let him but be present at those debates 
 which frequently arise among the ladies of the British 
 fishery.* 
 
 The first kind therefore of female orators which I 
 shall take notice of, are those who are employed in stir- 
 ring up the passions, a part of rhetoric in which Socrates 
 
 * British fishery, a playful reference to the famous fish-market at 
 Billingsgate. The women who kept the stalls were so noted for 
 profanity that the word billingsgate came to mean profane or scurri- 
 lous speeeh. 
 
 237 
 
238 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 his wife * had perhaps made a greater proficiency than 
 his above-mentioned teacher. 
 
 The second kind of female orators are those who deal 
 in invectives, and who are commonly known by the name 
 of the censorious. The imagination and elocution of 
 this set of rhetoricians is wonderful. With what a flu- 
 ency of invention, and copiousness of expression, will 
 they enlarge upon every little slip in the behavior of 
 another ! With how many different circumstances, and 
 with what variety of phrases, will they tell over the same 
 story! I have known an old lady make an unhappy 
 marriage the subject of a month's conversation. She 
 blamed the bride in one place; pitied her in another; 
 laughed at her in a third; wondered at her in a fourth; 
 was angry with her in a fifth; and in short, wore out a 
 pah* of coach-horses in expressing her concern for her. 
 At length, after having quite exhausted the subject on 
 this side, she made a visit to the new-married pan*, praised 
 the wife for the prudent choice she had made, told her 
 the unreasonable reflections which some malicious people 
 had cast upon her, and desired that they might be better 
 acquainted. The censure and approbation of this kind 
 of women are therefore only to be considered as helps 
 to discourse. 
 
 A third kind of female orators may be comprehended 
 under the word gossips. Mrs. Fiddle Faddle is perfectly 
 accomplished in this sort of eloquence; she launches out 
 into descriptions of christenings, runs divisions upon an 
 head-dress, knows every dish of meat that is served up 
 in her neighborhood, and entertains her company a whole 
 afternoon together with the wit of her little boy, before 
 he is able to speak. 
 
 The coquet may be looked upon as a fourth kind of 
 female orator. To give herself the larger field for dis- 
 * His wife, modern usage would be, Socrates's wife. 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON 239 
 
 course, she hates and loves in the same breath, talks to 
 her lap-dog or parrot, is uneasy in all kinds of weather 
 I in every part of the room: she has false quarrels and 
 feigned obligations to all the men of her acquaintance; 
 sighs when she is not sad, and laughs when she is not 
 merry. The coquet is in particular a great mistress of 
 that part of oratory which is called action, and indeed 
 seems to speak for no other purpose, but as it gives her 
 an opportunity of stirring a limb, or varying a feature, 
 of glancing her eyes, or playing with her fan. 
 
 As for news-mongers, politicians, mimics, story-tellers, 
 with other characters of that nature, which give birth to 
 loquacity, they^ are^ as commonly found among the men 
 as the wpjaen; for which reason I shall pass them over in 
 
 I have often been puzzled to assign a cause why women 
 should have this talent of a ready utterance in so much 
 greater perfection than men. |Hrave -sometimes fancied 
 that they have not a retentive power, or the faculty of 
 suppressing their thoughts, as men have, but that they 
 are necessitated to speak everything they think, and if 
 so, it would perhaps furnish a very strong argument to 
 the Cartesians, for the supporting of their doctrine that 
 the soul always thinks. But as several are of opinion 
 that the fair sex are not altogether strangers to the art 
 of dissembling and concealing their thoughts, I have been 
 forced to relinquish that opinion, and have therefore en- 
 deavored to seek after some better reason. In order to 
 -k^a friend of mine, who is an excellent anatomist, has 
 promised me by the first opportunity to dissect a woman's 
 tongue, and to examine whether there may not be in it 
 certain juices which render it so wonderfully voluble or 
 flippant, or whether the fibres of it may not be made up 
 of a finer or more pliant thread, or whether there are not 
 in it some particular muscles which dart it up and down 
 
240 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 by such sudden glances and vibrations; or whether in the 
 last place, there may not be certain undiscovered chan- 
 nels running from the head and the heart to this little 
 instrument of loquacity, and conveying into it a perpetual 
 affluence of animal spirits. Nor must I omit the reason 
 which Hudibras * has given, why those who can talk on 
 trifles speak with the greatest fluency; namely, that the 
 tongue is like a race-horse, which runs the faster the lesser 
 weight it carries. 
 
 Which of these reasons soever may be looked upon as 
 the most probable/ I think the Irishman's thought was 
 very natural, who after some hours' conversation with a 
 female orator, told her, that he believed her tongue was 
 very glad when she was asleep, for that it had not a mo- 
 ment's rest all the while she was awake. 
 
 TJiat excellent old ballad of The Wanton Wife of Bath 
 has the following remarkable lines: 
 
 J think, quoth Thomas, Women's Tongues 
 S 0f Aspen Leaves are made. 
 
 And Ovid, though in the description of a very bar- 
 barous circumstance, tells us, that when the tongue of a 
 beautiful female was cut out, and thrown upon the 
 ground, it could not forbear muttering even in that pos- 
 ture. 
 
 If a tongue would be talking without a mouth, what 
 could it have done when it had all its organs of speech, 
 and accomplices of sound ajbout it? I might here men- 
 tion the story of the pippin-wbinan, had not I some reason 
 to look upon it as fabulous. 
 
 I must confess I am so wonderfully charmed with the 
 music of this little instrument, that I would by no means 
 discourage it. All that I aim at by this dissertation is, 
 to cure it of several disagreeable notes, and in particular 
 
 * Hudibras, the title of a famous satirical poem by Samuel Butler. 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON 241 
 
 of those little j airings and dissonances which arise from 
 anger, censoriousness, gossiping and coquetry. In short, 
 I would always have it tuned by good nature, truth, dis- 
 cretion and sincerity. 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON 
 LIVING IN A PAIR OF SCALES 
 
Letters to the editor appear in almost every journal. 
 Although the editors of the Spectator did not publish their 
 names, in the first number of the paper they gave an ad- 
 dress to which letters might be sent. These letters often 
 provided material for an essay. Sometimes the editors 
 wrote these letters themselves, as one might set up a 
 straw man merely to knock him down. Such is the case 
 with the letter in the essay that follows. In plan, the 
 essay is typical of many of the Spectator papers, and in- 
 deed of the periodical essay of that period. The editor 
 first introduces an imaginary character who is to per- 
 sonify some weakness of human nature; in this case it 
 is the man who lived in a pair of scales. When he has 
 been brought forward, and made to appear sufficiently 
 ridiculous, the editor then dismisses him and proceeds 
 to comment upon the trait of character shown, with 
 advice as to a better course of conduct. Note the play 
 of quiet humor in the essay. 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON 
 
 LIVING IN A PAIR OF SCALES 
 
 (From the Spectator, March 29, 1711) 
 
 The following letter will explain itself, and needs no 
 apology. 
 
 "SIR, 
 
 " I am one of that sickly tribe who are commonly known 
 by the name of valetudinarians, and do confess to you, 
 that I first contracted this ill habit of body, or rather of 
 mind, by the study of physic. I no sooner began to 
 peruse books of this nature, but I found my pulse was 
 irregular, and scarce ever read the account of any disease 
 that I did not fancy myself afflicted with. Dr. Syden- 
 ham's learned treatise of fevers threw me into a lingering 
 hectic, which hung upon me all the while I was reading 
 that excellent piece. I then applied myself to the study 
 of several authors, who have written upon phthisical dis- 
 tempers, and by that means fell into a consumption, ; til 
 at length, growing very fat, I was in a manner shamed out 
 of that imagination. Not long after this I found in my- 
 self all the symptoms of the gout, except pain, but was 
 cured of it by a treatise upon the gravel, written by a 
 very ingenious author, who (as it is usual for physicians 
 to convert one distemper into another) eased me of the 
 gout by giving me the stone. I at length studied myself 
 into a complication of distempers; but accidentally taking 
 into my hand that ingenious discourse written by Sanc- 
 torius I was resolved to direct myself by a scheme of 
 rules, which I had collected from his observations. The 
 learned world are very well acquainted with that gentle* 
 
 245 
 
246 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 man's invention; who, for the better carrying on of his 
 experiments, contrived a certain mathematical chair, 
 which was so artificially hung upon springs, that it would 
 weigh anything as well as a pair of scales. By this means 
 he discovered how many ounces of his food passed by 
 perspiration, what quantity of it was turned into nour- 
 ishment, and how much went away by the other channels 
 and distributions of nature. 
 
 "Having provided myself with this chair, I used to 
 study, eat, drink, and sleep in it; in so much that I may be 
 said, for these three last years, to have lived in a pair of 
 scales. I compute myself, when I am in full health, to 
 be precisely two hundredweight, falling short of it about 
 a pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as much after 
 a very full meal; so that it is my continual employment, 
 to trim the balance between these two volatile pounds 
 in my constitution. In my ordinary meals I fetch my- 
 self up to two hundredweight and a half pound; and 
 if after having dined I find myself fall short of it, I drink 
 just so much small beer, or eat such a quantity of bread, 
 as is sufficient to make me weight. In my greatest ex- 
 cesses I do not transgress more than the other half pound; 
 which, for my health's sake, I do the first Monday in 
 every month. As soon as I find myself duly poised after 
 dinner, I walk till I have perspired five ounces and four 
 scruples; and when I discover, by my chair, that I am so 
 far reduced, I fall to my books, and study away three 
 ounces more. As for the remaining parts of the pound, 
 I keep no account of them. I do not dine and sup by 
 the clock, but by my chair, for when that informs me 
 my pound of food is exhausted I conclude myself to be 
 hungry, and lay in another with all diligence. In my 
 days of abstinence I lose a pound and a half, and on 
 solemn fasts am two pound lighter than on other days in 
 the year. 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON 247 
 
 "I allow myself, one night with another, a quarter of 
 a pound of sleep within a few grains more or less; and if 
 upon my rising I find that I have not consumed my whole 
 quantity, I take out the rest in my chair. Upon an exact 
 calculation of what I expended and received the last 
 year, which I always register in a book, I find the medium 
 to be two hundredweight, so that I cannot discover that 
 I am impaired one ounce in my health during a whole 
 twelve-month. And yet, Sir, notwithstanding this my 
 great care to ballast myself equally every day, and to 
 keep my body in its proper poise, so it is that I find my- 
 self in a sick and languishing condition. My complexion 
 is grown very sallow, my pulse low, and my body hy- 
 dropsical. Let me therefore beg you, Sir, to consider me 
 as your patient, and to give me more certain rules to walk 
 by than those I have already observed, and you will very 
 much oblige Your Humbk Sermnt >, 
 
 This letter puts me in mind of an Italian epitaph 
 written on the monument of a valetudinarian: Stavo ben, 
 ma per star meglio, sto qui:* which it is impossible to 
 translate. The fear of death often proves mortal, and 
 sets people on methods to save their lives, which infal- 
 libly destroy them. This is a reflection made by some 
 historians, upon observing that there are many more 
 thousands killed in a flight than in a battle, and may be 
 applied to those multitudes of imaginary sick persons 
 that break their constitutions by physic, and throw them- 
 selves into the arms of death, by endeavoring to escape 
 it. This method is not only dangerous, but below the 
 practice of a reasonable creature. To consult the preser- 
 vation of life, as the only end of it, to make our health 
 our business, to engage in no action that is not part of a 
 
 * Stavo ben, etc. It may be freely translated thus: I was well, I 
 would be better, and here I am. 
 
248 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 regimen, or course of physic, are purposes so abject, so 
 mean, so unworthy human nature, that a generous soul 
 would rather die than submit to them. Besides that a 
 continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, 
 and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature; as it is 
 impossible we should take delight in anything that we 
 are every moment afraid of losing. 
 
 I do not mean, by what I have here said, that I think 
 any one to blame for taking due care of their health. On 
 the contrary, as cheerfulness of mind and capacity for 
 business are in a great measure the effects of a well-tem- 
 pered constitution, a man cannot be at too much pains 
 to cultivate and preserve it. But this care, which we are 
 prompted to not only by common sense but by duty and 
 instinct, should never engage us in groundless fears, 
 melancholy apprehensions and imaginary distempers, 
 which are natural to every man who is more anxious to 
 live than how to live. In short, the preservation of life 
 should be only a secondary concern, and the direction of 
 it our principal. If we have this frame of mind, we shall 
 take the best means to preserve life, without being over- 
 solicitous about the event; and shall arrive at that point 
 of felicity which Martial has mentioned as the perfection 
 of happiness, of neither fearing nor wishing for death. 
 
 In answer to the gentleman who tempers his health 
 by ounces and by scruples, and instead of complying with 
 those natural solicitations of hunger and thirst, drowsiness 
 or love of exercise, governs himself by the prescriptions of 
 his chair, I shall tell him a short fable. Jupiter, says the 
 mythologist, to reward the piety of a certain countryman 
 promised to give him whatever he would ask. The 
 countryman desired that he might have the management 
 of the weather in his own estate. He obtained his request, 
 and immediately distributed rain, snow, and sunshine, 
 among his several fields, as he thought the nature of the 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON 249 
 
 soil required. At the end of the year, when he expected 
 to see a more than ordinary crop, his harvest fell infinitely 
 short of that of his neighbors. Upon which (says the 
 fable) he desired Jupiter to take the weather again into 
 his own hands, or that otherwise he should utterly ruin 
 himself. 
 
RICHARD STEELE 
 THE STAGE-COACH 
 
The following essay belongs in the series known as the 
 Sir Roger de Coverley papers, which appeared in the 
 Spectator. Its connection with the series, however, is 
 confined to the mention of Sir Roger in the first sentence. 
 The real subject of the essay is behavior in public convey- 
 ances. Travellers by stage-coach were far more at the 
 mercy of a quarrelsome or impertinent fellow passenger 
 than are travellers to-day. In this essay Steele teaches 
 a needed lesson, yet does it with such good humor, such 
 touches of wit, such deft characterization, that we are 
 pleasantly carried along, and cannot help agreeing with 
 his conclusion. It is an excellent example of the method 
 by which the editors of the Spectator set about to improve 
 the manners of the time. For biographical sketch of 
 Steele, see page 2. 
 
RICHARD STEELE 
 
 THE STAGE-COACH 
 (From the Spectator, August 1, 1711) 
 
 Having notified to my good friend Sir Roger that I 
 should set out for London the next day, his horses were 
 ready at the appointed hour in the evening; and attended 
 by one of his grooms, I arrived at the county town at 
 twilight, in order to be ready for the stage-coach the day 
 following. As soon as we arrived at the inn, the servant 
 who waited upon me, inquired of the chamberlain in my 
 hearing what company he had for the coach? The fellow 
 answered, Mrs. Betty Arable, the great fortune, and the 
 widow her mother; a recruiting officer (who took a place 
 because they were to go); young Squire Quickset her 
 cousin (that her mother wished her to be married to); 
 Ephraim the Quaker, her guardian; and a gentleman that 
 had studied himself dumb from Sir Roger de Coverley's. 
 I observed by what he said of myself, that according to 
 his office he dealt much in intelligence; and doubted not 
 but there was some foundation for his reports of the rest 
 of the company, as well as for the whimsical account he 
 gave of me. The next morning at daybreak we were all 
 called; and I, who know my own natural shyness, and 
 endeavor to be as little liable to be disputed with as pos- 
 sible, dressed immediately, that I might make no one 
 wait. The first preparation for our setting out was, that 
 the captain's half-pike was placed near the coachman, 
 and a drum behind the coach. In the meantime the 
 drummer, the captain's equipage, was very loud, that 
 none of the captain's things should be placed so as to be 
 
 253 
 
254 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 spoiled; upon which his cloak bag was fixed in the seat 
 of the coach; and the captain himself, according to a 
 frequent, though invidious behavior of military men, 
 ordered his man to look sharp, that none but one of the 
 ladies should have the place he had taken fronting to 
 the coach box. 
 
 We were in some little time fixed in our seats, and sat 
 with that dislike which people not too good-natured 
 usually conceive of each other at first sight. The coach 
 jumbled us insensibly into some sort of familiarity: and 
 we had not moved above two miles, when the widow asked 
 the captain what success he had in his recruiting? The 
 officer, with a frankness he believed very graceful, told 
 her, "That indeed he had but very little luck, and had 
 suffered much by desertion, therefore should be glad to 
 end his warfare in the service of her or her fair daughter. 
 In a word," continued he, "I am a soldier, and to be plain 
 is my character: you see me, madam, young, sound, and 
 impudent; take me yourself, widow, or give me to her, I 
 will be wholly at your disposal. I am a soldier of for- 
 tune, ha!" This was followed by a vain laugh of his 
 own, and a deep silence of all the rest of the company. 
 I had nothing left for it but to fall fast asleep, which I 
 did with all speed. "Come," said he, "resolve upon it, 
 we will make a wedding at the next town: we will wake 
 this pleasant companion who is fallen asleep, to be the 
 brideman," and giving the Quaker a clap on the knee 
 he concluded: "This sly saint, who, I'll warrant, under- 
 stands what's what as well as you or I, widow, shall give 
 the bride as father." 
 
 The Quaker, who happened to be a man of smartness, 
 answered: "Friend, I take it in good part that thou hast 
 given me the authority of a father over this comely and 
 virtuous child; and I must assure thee, that if I have 
 the giving her, I shall not bestow her on thee. Thy mirth, 
 
RICHARD STEELE 255 
 
 friend, savoreth of folly: thou art a person of a light mind; 
 thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty. 
 Verily, it is not from thy fulness, but thy emptiness that 
 thou hast spoken this day. Friend, friend, we have hired 
 this coach in partnership with thee, to carry us to the 
 great city; we cannot go any other way. This worthy 
 mother must hear thee if thou wilt needs utter thy follies; 
 we cannot help it, friend, I say; if thou wilt we must 
 hear thee: but if thou wert a man of understanding, thou 
 wouldst not take advantage of thy courageous counte- 
 nance to abash us children of peace. Thou art, thou say- 
 est, a soldier; give quarter to us, who cannot resist thee. 
 Why didst thou fleer at our friend, who feigned himself 
 asleep? he said nothing: but how dost thou know what 
 he containeth? If thou speakest improper things in the 
 hearing of this virtuous young virgin, consider it is an 
 outrage against a distressed person that cannot get from 
 thee. To speak indiscreetly what we are obliged to hear, 
 by being hasped up with thee in this public vehicle, is 
 in some degree assaulting on the highroad." 
 
 Here Ephraim paused, and the captain with an happy 
 and uncommon impudence (which can be convicted and 
 support itself at the same time) cried: "Faith, friend, I 
 thank thee; I should have been a little impertinent if 
 thou hadst not reprimanded me. Come, thou art, I see, 
 a smoaky * old fellow, and I'll be very orderly the ensuing 
 part of the journey. I was going to give myself airs, but, 
 ladies, I beg pardon." 
 
 The captain was so little out of humor, and our com- 
 pany was so far from being soured by this little ruffle, 
 that Ephraim and he took a particular delight in being 
 agreeable to each other for the future; and assumed their 
 different provinces in the conduct of the company. 
 
 * Smoaky, a slang phrase of the time, meaning, quick to smell 
 out an idea. 
 
256 THE EDITORIAL ESSAY 
 
 reckonings, apartments, and accommodation, fell under 
 Ephraim; and the captain looked to all disputes on the 
 road, as the good behavior of our coachman, and the right 
 we had of taking place as going to London of all vehicles 
 coming from thence. The occurrences we met with were 
 ordinary, and very little happened which could entertain 
 by the relation of them. But when I considered the 
 company we were in, I took it for no small good fortune 
 that the whole journey was not spent in impertinences, 
 which to one part of us might be an entertainment, to 
 the other a suffering. What therefore Ephraim said when 
 we were almost arrived at London, had to me an air not 
 only of good understanding but good breeding. Upon 
 the young lady's expressing her satisfaction in the journey, 
 and declaring how delightful it had been to her, Ephraim 
 declared himself as follows: "There is no ordinary part 
 of human life which expreseeth so much a good mind, 
 and a right inward man, as his behavior upon meeting 
 with strangers, especially such as may seem the most 
 unsuitable companions to him; such a man, when he 
 falleth in the way with persons of simplicity and innocence, 
 however knowing he may be in the ways of men, will not 
 vaunt himself thereof, but will rather hide his superiority 
 to them, that he may not be painful unto them. My 
 good friend," continued he, turning to the officer, "thee 
 and I are to part by and by, and peradventure we may 
 never meet again; but be advised by a plain man: Modes 
 and apparel are but trifles to the real man, therefore do 
 not think such a man as thyself terrible for thy garb, 
 nor such a one as me contemptible for mine. When two 
 such as thee and I meet, with affections as we ought to 
 have toward each other, thou shouldst rejoice to see my 
 peaceable demeanor, and I should be glad to see thy 
 strength and ability to protect me in it." 
 
THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 FRANCIS BACON 
 
 STUDIES; TRUTH; TRAVEL; RICHES; GREAT 
 PLACE; FRIENDSHIP 
 
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was one of the great figures 
 of the Elizabethan age. His father was Lord Keeper of 
 the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth. Francis Bacon 
 grew up in the court; he was educated at Cambridge 
 University, and afterward studied law. He became a 
 member of Parliament, where he was noted for his ability 
 to say much in few words. Ben Jonson says of him: 
 "There happened in my time one noble speaker who was 
 full of gravity in his speaking. No man ever spake more 
 neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less 
 emptiness, less idleness in what he uttered. His hearers 
 could not cough or look aside from him without loss. The 
 fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make 
 an end." Under James I Bacon was made Lord High 
 Chancellor of England, the highest judicial position in 
 the land. He was accused of receiving bribes, tried, and 
 removed from office. He admitted receiving money from 
 suitors, but declared that he had not allowed this to influ- 
 ence his decisions. The remainder of his life he spent in 
 retirement, devoting himself to study and writing. Most 
 of his works are written in Latin and deal with philosophy 
 and science. His fame as an English writer rests upon his 
 essays. They are marked by clearness and conciseness of 
 style, depth of thought, and occasional beauty of imagery. 
 They are full of quotable sentences. To use his own 
 words, some books "are to be tasted, others to be swal- 
 lowed, and some few to be chewed and digested." His 
 essays are among the books to be chewed and digested. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 
 
 OF STUDIES 
 
 (Thifl and the five following essays are from Essays, or Counsels, 
 Civil and Moral.) 
 
 Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. 
 Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; 
 for ornament is in discourse; and for ability is in the 
 judgment and disposition of business. For expert men 
 can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by 
 one; but the general counsels, and the plots and mar- 
 shalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. 
 To spend too much time in studies is sloth, to use them 
 too much for ornament is affectation, to make judgment 
 only by their rules is the humor of a scholar. They per- 
 fect nature, and are perfected by experience. For natural 
 abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by 
 study; and studies themselves do give forth directions 
 too much at large, except they be bounded in by experi- 
 ence. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire 
 them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their 
 own use, but that is a wisdom without them and above 
 them, won by observation. 
 
 Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and 
 take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to 
 weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others 
 to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; 
 that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to 
 be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read 
 wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books 
 also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them 
 by others; but that would be only in the less important 
 
 259 
 
260 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 arguments and the meaner sort of books; else distilled 
 books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. 
 Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and 
 writing an exact man. And therefore if a man write lit- 
 tle, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, 
 he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, 
 he had need have much cunning to seem to know that 
 he doth not. 
 
 Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathemat- 
 ics subtile, natural philosophy deep, moral grave, logic 
 and rhetoric able to contend. " Abeunt studia in mores." * 
 Nay, there is no stond f or impediment in the wit but may 
 be wrought out by fit studies, like as diseases of the body 
 may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for 
 the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, 
 gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, and 
 the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study 
 the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be 
 called away never so little, he must begin again. If his 
 wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him 
 study the schoolmen, for they are a/mini sectores.lf. If he 
 be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing 
 to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' 
 cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special 
 receipt. 
 
 OF TRUTH 
 
 "What is truth?" said jesting Pilate ; and would not 
 stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in 
 giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affect- 
 ing free will in thinking, as well as in acting. And 
 
 * Abeunt, etc., studies pass over into habits. 
 
 t Stond, an obsolete form of stand, here used to mean a halt. 
 
 | Cymini sectores, splitters of hairs. 
 
 Pilate. See New Testament, John, xviii, 38. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 261 
 
 though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet 
 there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the 
 same veins, though there be not so much blood in them 
 as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the 
 difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of 
 truth; nor again, that when it is found it imposeth upon 
 men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a 
 natural though corrupt love of the lie itself. One of the 
 later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and 
 is at a stand to think what should be in it that men should 
 love lies, where neither they make for pleasure, as with 
 poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for 
 the lie's sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth is a 
 naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks, 
 and mummeries, and triumphs of the world half so stately 
 and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come 
 to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it 
 will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that 
 showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth 
 ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there 
 were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering 
 hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and 
 the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of 
 men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indis- 
 position, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the 
 Fathers,* in great severity, called poesy vinum dcemonum,^ 
 because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with 
 the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth 
 through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth 
 in it, that doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. 
 
 But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved 
 judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth 
 judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, which is 
 
 * Fathers, St. Augustine, in his Confessions. 
 t Vinum darmonum, the wine of demons. 
 
262 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 the love-making or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, 
 which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which 
 is the enjoying of it is the sovereign good of human na- 
 ture. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, 
 was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; 
 and his Sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his 
 Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the mat- 
 ter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; 
 and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of 
 his chosen. The poet * that beautified the sect that was 
 otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: 
 " It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see ships 
 tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window 
 of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof 
 below ; but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon 
 the vantage ground of truth" (a hill not to be com- 
 manded, and where the air is always clear and serene) 
 "and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and 
 tempests, in the vale below"; so always, that this pros- 
 pect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Cer- 
 tainly, it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind 
 move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the 
 poles of truth. 
 
 To pass from theological and philosophical truth to 
 the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even 
 by those that practise it not, that clear and round deal- 
 ing is the honor of man's nature; and that mixture of 
 falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver; which 
 may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth 
 it. For these winding and crooked courses are the goings 
 of the serpent, which goeth basely upon the belly, and 
 not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a 
 man with shame as to be found false and perfidious. 
 
 *The poet, Lucretius, a Roman poet, of the "sect" of the Epi- 
 cureans. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 263 
 
 And therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he in- 
 quired the reason why the word of the lie should be such 
 a disgrace, and such an odious charge; saith he: "If it 
 be well weighed, to say that a man lieth is as much as 
 to say that he is brave toward God and a coward toward 
 men." For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. 
 Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, 
 cannot possibly be so highly expressed as in that it shall 
 be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the 
 generations of men; it being foretold that when Christ 
 cometh "He shall not find faith upon the earth." * 
 
 OF TRAVEL 
 
 Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in 
 the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into 
 a country before he hath some entrance into the language, 
 goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men 
 travel under some tutor or grave servant, I allow well; 
 so that he be such a one that hath the language and hath 
 been in the country before, whereby he may be able to 
 tell them what things are worthy to be seen in the coun- 
 try where they go, what acquaintances they are to seek, 
 what exercises or discipline the place yieldeth. For else 
 young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little. 
 
 It is a strange thing that in sea voyages, where there is 
 nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make 
 diaries; but in land travel, wherein so much is to be ob- 
 served, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were 
 fitter to be registered than observation. Let diaries 
 therefore be brought in use. 
 
 The things to be seen and observed are: the courts of 
 princes, specially when they give audience to ambas- 
 sadors; the courts of justice, while they sit and hear 
 * Quoted from Luke, xviii, 8. 
 
264 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 causes; and so of consistories ecclesiastic; the churches 
 and monasteries, with the monuments which are therein 
 extant; the walls and fortifications of cities and towns, 
 and so the havens and harbors; antiquities and ruins; 
 libraries, colleges, disputations, and lectures, where any 
 are; shipping and navies; houses and gardens of state and 
 pleasure near great cities, armories, arsenals, magazines, 
 exchanges, burses, warehouses; exercises of horsemanship, 
 fencing, training of soldiers, and the like; comedies, such 
 whereunto the better sort of persons do resort; treasuries 
 of jewels and robes, cabinets and rarities; and, to con- 
 clude, whatsoever is memorable in the places where they 
 go: after all which the tutors or servants ought to make 
 diligent inquiry. As for triumphs, masques, feasts, wed- 
 dings, funerals, capital executions, and such shows, men 
 need not to be put in mind of them; yet are they not to 
 be neglected. 
 
 If you will have a young man to put his travel into a 
 little room, and in short time to gather much, this you 
 must do: first, as was said, he must have some entrance 
 into the language before he goeth. Then he must have 
 such a servant or tutor as knoweth the country, as was 
 likewise said. Let him carry with him also some card 
 or book describing the country where he travelleth, which 
 will be a good key to his inquiry. Let him keep also a 
 diary. Let him not stay long in one city or town; more 
 or less as the place deserve th, but not long. Nay, when 
 he stayeth in one city or town, let him change his lodging 
 from one end and part of the town to another, which is a 
 great adamant of acquaintance. Let him sequester him- 
 self from the company of his countrymen, and diet in 
 such places where there is good company of the nation 
 where he travelleth. Let him, upon his removes from 
 one place to another, procure recommendation to some 
 person of quality residing in the place whither he removeth, 
 
FRANCIS BACON 265 
 
 that he may use his favor in those things he desireth to 
 see or know. Thus he may abridge his travel with much 
 profit. 
 
 As for the acquaintance which is to be sought in travel, 
 that which is most of all profitable is acquaintance with 
 the secretaries and employed men of ambassadors; for so 
 in travelling in one country he shall suck the experience 
 of many. Let him also see and visit eminent persons in 
 all kinds which are of great name abroad, that he may 
 be able to tell how the life agreeth with the fame. For 
 quarrels, they are with care and discretion to be avoided. 
 They are commonly for mistresses, healths, place, and 
 words. And let a man beware how he keepeth company 
 with choleric and quarrelsome persons, for they will en- 
 gage him into their own quarrels. When a traveller re- 
 turneth home, let him not leave the countries where he 
 hath travelled altogether behind him, but maintain a 
 correspondence by letters with those of his acquaintance 
 which are of most worth. And let his travel appear 
 rather in his discourse than in his apparel or gesture; and 
 in his discourse let him be rather advised in his answers 
 than forward to tell stories. And let it appear that he 
 doth not change his country manners for those of foreign 
 parts, but only prick in some flowers of that he hath 
 learned abroad, into the customs of his own country. 
 
 OF RICHES 
 
 I cannot call riches better than the baggage of virtue. 
 The Roman word is better, "impedimenta," for as the 
 baggage is to an army so is riches to virtue. It cannot 
 be spared, nor left behind, but it hindereth the march; 
 yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the 
 
 victory. 
 
 Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the 
 
266 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 distribution; the rest is but conceit. So saith Solomon, 
 "Where much is, there are many to consume it; and what 
 hath the owner but the sight of it with his eyes ? " * The 
 personal fruition in any man cannot reach to feel great 
 riches: there is a custody of them, or a power of dole and 
 donative of them, or a fame of them, but no solid use to 
 the owner. Do you not see what feigned prices are set 
 upon little stones and rarities? And what works of os- 
 tentation are undertaken, because there might seem to 
 be some use of great riches? But then, you will say, 
 they may be of use to buy men out of dangers or troubles. 
 As Solomon saith: ''Riches are as a stronghold in the 
 imagination of the rich rnan."f But this is excellently ex- 
 pressed, that it is in imagination, and not always in fact. 
 For certainly great riches have sold more men than they 
 have bought out. 
 
 Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get 
 justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave con- 
 tentedly. Yet have no abstract nor friarly contempt of 
 them; but distinguish, as Cicero saith well of Rabirius 
 Posthumas, "in studio rei amplificandse apparebat, non 
 avaritise prsedam, sed instrumentum bonitati quseri."t 
 Hearken also to Solomon, and beware of hasty gathering 
 of riches: "Qui festinat ad divitas, non erit insons." 
 The poets feign that when Plutus, which is riches, is sent 
 from Jupiter, he limps, and goes slowly, but when he is 
 sent from Pluto, he runs, and is swift of foot; meaning, 
 that riches gotten by good means and just labor pace 
 slowly, but when they come by the death of others, as 
 by the course of inheritance, testaments, and the like, 
 
 * From Ecclesiastes, v, 11. f From Proverbs, xviii, 11. 
 
 J In studio, etc. In the endeavor to increase his estate, it was evi- 
 dent that he sought, not the plunder of avarice, but the means of 
 doing good. 
 
 Qui festinat, etc. He that makes waste to be rich shall not be 
 innocent. Proverbs, xxviii, 22. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 267 
 
 they come tumbling upon a man. But it might be ap- 
 plied likewise to Pluto, taking him for the devil. For 
 when riches come from the devil, as by fraud, and op- 
 pression, and unjust means, they come upon speed. 
 
 The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul. 
 Parsimony is one of the best, and yet is not innocent, for 
 it withholdeth men from works of liberality and charity. 
 The improvement of the ground is the most natural ob- 
 taining of riches, for it is our great mother's blessing, the 
 earth's; but it is slow. And yet, where men of great 
 wealth do stoop to husbandry, it multiplieth riches exceed- 
 ingly. I knew a nobleman in England that had the 
 greatest audits of any man in my time: a great grazier, 
 a great sheep master, a great timber man, a great collier, 
 a great corn master, a great lead man, and so of iron, 
 and a number of the like points of husbandry; so as the 
 earth seemed a sea to him, in respect of the perpetual 
 importation. It was truly observed by one, that him- 
 self came very hardly to a little riches, and very easily to 
 great riches. For when a man's stock is come to that, 
 that he can expect the prime of markets, and overcome 
 those bargains which, for their greatness, are few men's 
 money, and be partner in the industries of younger men, 
 he cannot but increase mainly. 
 
 The gains of ordinary trades and vocations are honest, 
 and furthered by two things chiefly, by diligence, and by 
 a good name for good and fair dealing. But the gains 
 of bargains are of a more doubtful nature, when men 
 shall wait upon others' necessity; broke* by servants and 
 instruments to draw them on; put off others cunningly 
 that would 'be better chapmenf; and the like practices, 
 which are crafty and naught. As for the chopping of 
 bargains, when a man buys, not to hold, but to sell over 
 again, that commonly grindeth double, both upon the 
 
 * Broke, negotiate. t Chapmen, buyers. 
 
268 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 seller and upon the buyer. Sharings do greatly enrich, 
 if the hands be well chosen that are trusted. Usury is 
 the certainest means of gain, though one of the worst, 
 as that whereby a man doth eat his bread "in sudore 
 vultus alieni,* and besides, doth plough upon Sundays. 
 But yet, certain though it be, it hath flaws; for that the 
 scriveners and brokers do value unsound men, to serve 
 their own turn. 
 
 The fortune in being the first in an invention, or in a 
 privilege, doth cause sometimes a wonderful overgrowth 
 in riches, as it was with the first sugarman in the Ca- 
 naries. Therefore, if a man can play the true logician, 
 to have as well judgment as invention, he may do great 
 matters, especially if the times be fit. He that resteth 
 upon gains certain, shall hardly grow to great riches; 
 and he that puts all upon adventures, doth oftentimes 
 break, and come to poverty; it is good therefore to guard 
 adventures with certainties that may uphold losses. 
 Monopolies, and coemption of wares for resale, where 
 they are not restrained, are great means to enrich; 
 especially if the party have intelligence what things are 
 like to come into request, and to store himself before- 
 hand. Riches gotten by service, though it be of the 
 best rise, yet when they are gotten by flattery, feeding 
 humors, and other servile conditions, they may be placed 
 amongst the worst. As for fishing for testaments and 
 executorships (as Tacitus saith of Seneca, "Testamenta 
 et orbos tanquam indagine capi"f), it is yet worse; by 
 how much men submit themselves to meaner persons 
 than in service. 
 
 Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for 
 they despise them that despair of them; and none worse 
 
 * In sudore, in the sweat of another's brow. 
 t Testamenta, etc. Wills and trusteeships were pulled in by him 
 as if with a net. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 269 
 
 when they come to them. Be not penny-wise; riches 
 have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves, 
 sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more. 
 
 Men leave their riches either to then: kindred, or to 
 the public; and moderate portions prosper best in both. 
 A great estate left to an heir is as a lure to all the birds 
 of prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the 
 better stablished in years and judgment. Likewise glori- 
 ous gifts and foundations are like sacrifices without salt; 
 and but the painted sepulchres of alms, which soon will 
 putrefy and corrupt inwardly. Therefore measure not 
 thine advancements by quantity, but frame them by 
 measure. And defer not charities till death; for certainly, 
 if a man weigh it rightly, he that doth so, is rather liberal 
 of another man's than of his own. 
 
 OF GREAT PLACE 
 
 Men in great place are thrice servants: servants of the 
 sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of busi- 
 ness; so as they have no freedom, neither in their per- 
 sons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a 
 strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty; or to 
 seek power over others and to lose power over a man's 
 self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains 
 men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and 
 by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is 
 slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least 
 an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing. "Cum non sis 
 qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere." * Nay, retire men 
 cannot when they would, neither will they when it were 
 reason, but are impatient of privateness, even in age and 
 sickness, which require the shadow; like old townsmen 
 
 * Cum non, etc. Since you are not what you were, there is no 
 reason why you should wish to live. 
 
270 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby 
 they offer age to scorn. Certainly, great persons had 
 need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves 
 happy, for if they judge by their own feeling they cannot 
 find it; but if they think with themselves what other 
 men think of them, and that other men would fain be as 
 they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when 
 perhaps they find the contrary within. For they are the 
 first that find their own griefs, though they be the last 
 that find their own faults. Certainly, men in great for- 
 tunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in 
 the puzzle of business they have no time to tend their 
 health either of body or mind. " Illi mors gravis incubat, 
 qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi." * 
 
 In place there is license to do good and evil, whereof 
 the latter is a curse; for in evil the best condition is not 
 to will, the second not to can. But power to do good is 
 the true and lawful end of aspiring. For good thoughts, 
 though God accept them, yet toward men are little better 
 than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that 
 cannot be without power and place, as the vantage and 
 commanding ground. Merit and good works is the end 
 of man's motion, and conscience of the same is the ac- 
 complishment of man's rest. For if a man can be par- 
 taker of God's theatre, he shall likewise be partaker of 
 God's rest. "Et conversus Deus, ut aspiceret opera, 
 quse fecerunt manus suse, vidit quod omnia essent bona 
 nimis, "f and then the Sabbath. 
 
 In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best 
 examples, for imitation is a globe of precepts. And after 
 
 * Illi, etc. Death presses heavily upon him who, well known to 
 all others, dies unknown to himself. 
 
 t Et conversus, etc. And God turned to behold the works which 
 his hands had wrought, and he saw that everything was very good. 
 Gcnosis, i, 31. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 271 
 
 a time set before thee thine own example, and examine 
 thyself strictly, whether thou didst not best at first. 
 Neglect not also the examples of those that have carried 
 themselves ill in the same place, not to set off thyself by 
 taxing their memory, but to direct thyself what to avoid. 
 Reform, therefore, without bravery or scandal of former 
 times and persons; but yet set it down to thyself, as well 
 to create good precedents as to follow them. Reduce 
 things to the first institution, and observe wherein and 
 how they have degenerated; but yet ask counsel of both 
 times: of the ancient time what is best, and of the latter 
 time what is fittest. Seek to make thy course regular, 
 that men may know beforehand what they may expect; 
 but be not too positive and peremptory, and express thy- 
 self well when thou digressest from thy rule. Preserve 
 the right of thy place, but stir not questions of jurisdic- 
 tion; and rather assume thy right in silence and de facto,* 
 than voice it with claims and challenges. Preserve like- 
 wise the rights of inferior places, and think it more honor 
 to direct in chief than to be busy in all. Embrace and 
 invite helps and advices touching the execution of thy 
 place, and do not drive away such as bring thee informa- 
 tion, as meddlers, but accept of them in good part. 
 
 The vices of authority are chiefly four: delays, corrup- 
 tion, roughness, and facility. For delays: give easy ac- 
 cess, keep times appointed, go through with that which 
 is in hand, and interlace not business but of necessity. 
 For corruption: do not only bind thine own hands, or 
 thy servants' hands, from taking, but bind the hands of 
 suitors also from offering. For integrity used doth the 
 one; but integrity professed, and with a manifest detes- 
 tation of bribery, doth the other. And avoid not only 
 the fault but the suspicion. Whosoever is found variable, 
 and changeth manifestly without manifest cause, giveth 
 * De facto, as a matter of course. 
 
272 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 suspicion of corruption. Therefore always when thou 
 changes! thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and 
 declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to 
 change, and do not think to steal it. A servant or a 
 favorite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of 
 esteem, is commonly thought but a byway to close cor- 
 ruption. For roughness: it is a needless cause of dis- 
 content; severity breedeth fear, but roughness breedeth 
 hate. Even reproofs from authority ought to be grave, 
 and not taunting. As for facility,* it is worse than bribery. 
 For bribes come but now and then; but if importunity or 
 idle respects lead a man, he shall never be without. As 
 Solomon saith: "To respect persons is not good; for such 
 a man will transgress for a piece of bread." f 
 
 It is most true that was anciently spoken, "A place 
 showeth the man"; and it showeth some to the better 
 and some to the worse. "Omnium consensu, capax im- 
 perii, nisi imperasset,"t saith Tacitus of Galba; but of 
 Vespasian he saith, "Solus imperantium Vespasianus 
 mutatus in melius." Though the one was meant of suf- 
 ficiency, the other of manners and affection. It is an 
 assured sign of a worthy and generous spirit, whom 
 honor amends. For honor is, or should be, the place of 
 virtue: and as in nature things move violently to their 
 place, and calmly in their place; so virtue in ambition is 
 violent, in authority settled and calm. 
 
 All rising to great place is by a winding stair, and, if 
 there be factions, it is good to side a man's self whilst he 
 is in the rising, and to balance himself when he is placed. 
 Use the memory of thy predecessor fairly and tenderly; 
 
 * Facility, being too easy of access. 
 
 t Proverbs, xxviii, 21. 
 
 J Omnium, etc. By the consent of all he was fit to govern, if he 
 had not governed. 
 
 Solus, etc. Of all the emperors, Vespasian alone changed for 
 the better after he came to the throne. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 273 
 
 for if thou dost not, it is a debt will sure be paid when 
 thou art gone. If thou have colleagues, respect them, 
 and rather call them when they look not for it, than ex- 
 clude them when they have reason to look to be called. 
 Be not too sensible or too remembering of thy place in 
 conversation and private answers to suitors; but let it 
 rather be said, "When he sits in place he is another man." 
 
 OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
 It had been hard for him that spake it to have put 
 more truth and untruth together in few words than in 
 that speech, " Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either 
 a wild beast or a god." For it is most true that a natural 
 and secret hatred and aversation toward society in any 
 man hath somewhat of the savage beast; but it ie most 
 untrue that it should have any character at all of the 
 divine nature, except it proceed, not out of a pleasure in 
 solitude, but out of a love and desire to sequester a man's 
 self for a higher conversation: such as is found to have 
 been falsely and feignedly in some of the heathen, as 
 Epimenides* the Candian, Numa the Roman, Empedocles 
 the Sicilian, and Apollonius of Tyana; and truly and really 
 in divers of the ancient hermits and holy fathers of the 
 Church. But little do men perceive what solitude is, 
 and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, 
 and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a 
 tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. The Latin 
 adage meeteth with it a little, "Magna civitas, magna 
 solitudo"t; because in a great town friends are scattered, 
 so that there is not that fellowship, for the most part, 
 
 * Epimenides is said to have fallen into a sleep which lasted fifty- 
 seven years; Numa pretended that he was instructed by a divine 
 nymph; Empedocles declared himself to be immortal; Apollonius 
 professed to be able to perform miracles. 
 
 f Maffna* etc. A great city is a great solitude. 
 
274 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 which is in less neighborhoods. But we may go further, 
 and affirm most truly that it is a mere and miserable 
 solitude to want true friends, without which the world 
 is but a wilderness. And even in this sense also of soli- 
 tude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections 
 is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not 
 from humanity. 
 
 A principal fruit of friendship is the ease and discharge 
 of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions 
 of all kinds do cause and induce. We know diseases of 
 stoppings and suffocations are the most dangerous in the 
 body, and it is not much otherwise in the mind; you may 
 take sarza to open the liver, steel to open the spleen, flour 
 of sulphur for the lungs, castoreum for the brain, but no 
 receipt openeth the heart but a true friend, to whom you 
 may impart griefs, joys, fears, hopes, suspicions, counsels, 
 and whatsoever lieth upon the heart to oppress it, in a 
 kind of civil shrift or confession. 
 
 It is a strange thing to observe how high a rate great 
 kings and monarchs do set upon the fruit of friendship 
 whereof we speak; so great as they purchase it many 
 times at the hazard of their own safety and greatness. 
 For princes, in regard of the distance of their fortune from 
 that of their subjects and servants, cannot gather this 
 fruit except, to make themselves capable thereof, they 
 raise some persons to be, as it were, companions and 
 almost equals to themselves, which many times sorteth to 
 inconvenience. The modern languages give unto such 
 persons the name of favorites or privadoes, as if it were 
 matter of grace or conversation; but the Roman name 
 attaineth the true use and cause thereof, naming them 
 "participes curarum," * for it is that which tieth the knot. 
 And we see plainly that this hath been done, not by weak 
 and passionate princes only, but by the wisest and most 
 * Sharers of cares. 
 
FRANCIS BACON 275 
 
 politic that ever reigned; who have oftentimes joined to 
 themselves some of their servants, whom both themselves 
 have called friends, and allowed others likewise to call 
 them in the same manner, using the word which is re- 
 ceived between private men. 
 
 L. Sylla, when he commanded Rome, raised Pompey, 
 after surnamed the Great, to that height that Pompey 
 vaunted himself for Sylla's overmatch. For when he had 
 carried the consulship for a friend of his against the pur- 
 suit of Sylla, and that Sylla did a little resent thereat, and 
 began to speak great, Pompey turned upon him again, 
 and in effect bade him be quiet, "for that more men 
 adored the sun rising than the sun setting." With Julius 
 Caesar, Decimus Brutus had obtained that interest, as he 
 set him down in his testament for heir in remainder after 
 his nephew. And this was the man that had power with 
 him to draw him forth to his death. For when Caesar 
 would have discharged the senate, in regard of some ill 
 presages, and especially a dream of Calpurnia, this man 
 lifted him gently by the arm out of his chair, telling him 
 he hoped he would not dismiss the senate till his wife had 
 dreamed a better dream. And it seemeth his favor was 
 so great as Antonius, in a letter which is recited verbatim 
 in one of Cicero's Philippics, calleth him "venefica," 
 witch, as if he had enchanted Caesar. Augustus raised 
 Agrippa, though of mean birth, to that height as, when he 
 consulted with Maecenas about the marriage of his daugh- 
 ter Julia, Maecenas took the liberty to tell him, "That he 
 must either marry his daughter to Agrippa or take away 
 his life; there was no third way, he had made him so 
 great." With Tiberius Caesar, Sejanus had ascended to 
 that height as they two were termed and reckoned as a 
 pair of friends. Tiberius in a letter to him saith: "Haec 
 pro amicitia nostra non occultavi"*; and the whole senate 
 
 * Hcec, etc. These things, by reason of our friendship, I have not 
 concealed from you. 
 
276 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 dedicated an altar to friendship, as to a goddess, in re- 
 spect of the great dearness of friendship between them 
 two. The like or more was between Septimius Severus 
 and Plautianus. For he forced his eldest son to marry 
 the daughter of Plautianus, and would often maintain 
 Plautianus in doing affronts to his son; and did write 
 also in a letter to the senate by these words: "I love the 
 man so well as I wish he may overlive me." Now, if 
 these princes had been as a Trajan, or a Marcus Aurelius, 
 a man might have thought that this had proceeded of an 
 abundant goodness of nature; but being men so wise, of 
 such strength and severity of mind, and so extreme lovers 
 of themselves, as all these were, it proveth most plainly 
 that they found their own felicity, though as great as 
 ever happened to mortal men, but as a half-piece, except 
 they might have a friend to make it entire. And yet, 
 which is more, they were princes which had wives, sons, 
 nephews; and yet all these could not supply the comfort 
 of friendship. 
 
 It is not to be forgotten what Comineus observeth of 
 his first master, Duke Charles the Hardy; namely, that 
 he would communicate his secrets with none, and least 
 of all those secrets which troubled him most. Whereupon 
 he goeth on, and saith that toward his latter time "that 
 closeness did impair, and a little perish his understanding." 
 Surely Comineus might have made the same judgment 
 also, if it had pleased him, of his second master, Louis 
 XI, whose closeness was indeed his tormentor. The 
 parable of Pythagoras is dark but true: "Cor ne edito," 
 eat not the heart. Certainly, if a man would give it a 
 hard phrase, those that want friends to open themselves 
 unto are cannibals of their own hearts. But one thing is 
 most admirable (wherewith I will conclude this first- 
 fruit of friendship), which is, that this communicating of 
 a man's self to his friend works two contrary effects: for 
 
FRANCIS BACON 277 
 
 it redouble th joys, and cutteth griefs in halves. For there 
 is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he 
 joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to 
 his friend, but he grieveth the less. So that it is, in 
 truth, of operation upon a man's mind, of like virtue as 
 the alchemists used to attribute to their stone for man's 
 body, that it worketh all contrary effects, but still to the 
 good and benefit of nature. But yet, without praying 
 in aid of alchemists, there is a manifest image of this in 
 the ordinary course of nature. For in bodies, union 
 strengthened and cherisheth any natural action, and, on 
 the other side, weakeneth and dulleth any violent im- 
 pression; and even so is it of minds. 
 
 The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign 
 for the understanding, as the first is for the affections. 
 For friendship maketh indeed a fair day in the affections 
 from storm and tempests; but it maketh daylight in the 
 understanding out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. 
 Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, 
 which a man receiveth from his friend; but before you 
 come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind 
 fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding 
 do clarify and break up in the communicating and dis- 
 coursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts more 
 easily, he marshalleth them more orderly, he seeth how 
 they look when they are turned into words; finally, he 
 waxeth wiser than himself, and that more by an hour's 
 discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said 
 by Themistocles to the King of Persia, "That speech was 
 like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the 
 imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they 
 lie but as in packs." Neither is this second fruit of friend- 
 ship, in opening the understanding, restrained only to 
 such friends as are able to give a man counsel; they in- 
 deed are best, but even without that, a man learneth of 
 
278 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 himself, and bringeth his own thoughts to light, and 
 whetteth his wits as against a stone, which itself cuts not. 
 In a word, a man were better relate himself to a statue 
 or picture, than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother. 
 Add now, to make this second fruit of friendship com- 
 plete, that other point which lieth more open, and falleth 
 within vulgar observation: which is faithful counsel from 
 a friend. Heraclitus saith well on one of his enigmas, 
 "Dry light is ever the best." And certain it is, that the 
 light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is 
 drier and purer than that which cometh from his own 
 understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and 
 drenched in his affections and customs. So as there is as 
 much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, 
 and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the 
 counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no 
 such flatterer as is a man's sen"; and there is no such 
 remedy against flattery of a man's self as the liberty of a 
 friend. Counsel is of two sorts: the one concerning man- 
 ners, the other concerning business. For the first, the 
 best preservative to keep the mind in health is the faith- 
 ful admonition of a friend. The calling of a man's self 
 to a strict account is a medicine sometimes too piercing 
 and corrosive. Reading good books of morality is a 
 little flat and dead. Observing our faults in others is 
 sometimes unproper for our case. But the best receipt 
 (best, I say, to work, and best to take) is the admonition 
 of a friend. It is a strange thing to behold what gross 
 errors and extreme absurdities many, especially of the 
 greater sort, do commit for want of a friend to tell them 
 of them; to the great damage both of their fame and for- 
 tune. For, as St. James saith, they are as men "that 
 look sometimes into a glass, and presently forget their 
 own shape and favor." * As for business, a man may 
 * James, i, 23 
 
FRANCIS BACON 279 
 
 think if he will that two eyes see no more than one; or 
 that a gamester seeth always more than a looker-on; or 
 that a man in anger is as wise as he that hath said over 
 the four-and-twenty letters; or that a musket may be 
 shot off as well upon the arm as upon a rest; and such 
 other fond and high imaginations, to think himself all in 
 all. But when all is done, the help of good counsel is that 
 which setteth business straight. And if any man think 
 that he will take counsel, but it shall be by pieces; asking 
 counsel in one business of one man, and in another busi- 
 ness of another man; it is well (that is to say, better per- 
 haps than if he asked none at all), but he runneth two 
 dangers. One, that he shall not be faithfully counselled: 
 for it is a rare thing, except it be from a perfect and entire 
 friend, to have counsel given, but such as shall be bowed 
 and crooked to some ends which he hath that giveth it. 
 The other, that he shall have counsel given, hurtful and 
 unsafe, though with good meaning, and mixed partly of 
 mischief and partly of remedy. Even as if you would 
 call a physician that is thought good for the cure of the 
 disease you complain of, but is unacquainted with your 
 body; and therefore may put you in way for a present 
 cure, but overthroweth your health in some other kind, 
 and so cure the disease and kill the patient. But a friend 
 that is wholly acquainted with a man's estate will beware 
 by furthering any present business how he dasheth upon 
 other inconvenience. And, therefore, rest not upon scat- 
 tered counsels; they will rather distract and mislead than 
 settle and direct. 
 
 After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the 
 affections, and support of the judgment) followeth the 
 last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many 
 kernels: I mean aid, and bearing a part in all actions and 
 occasions. Here the best way to represent to life the 
 manifold use of friendship, is to cast and see how many 
 
280 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 things there are which a man cannot do himself; and then 
 it will appear that it was a sparing speech of the ancients 
 to say, "That a friend is another himself"; for that a 
 friend is far more than himself. Men have their time, 
 and die many times in desire of some things which they 
 principally take to heart, the bestowing of a child, the 
 finishing of a work, or the like. If a man have a true 
 friend, he may rest almost secure that the care of those 
 things will continue after him. So that a man hath, as 
 it were, two lives in his desires. A man hath a body, 
 and that body is confined to a place; but where friend- 
 ship is, all offices of life are, as it were, granted to him and 
 his deputy, for he may exercise them by his friend. How 
 many things are there which a man cannot, with any face 
 or comeliness say or do himself ! A man can scarce 
 allege his own merits with modesty, much less extol them; 
 a man cannot sometimes brook to supplicate or beg; 
 and a number of the like. But all these things are grace- 
 ful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a man's 
 own. So again, a man's person hath many proper rela- 
 tions which he cannot put off. A man cannot speak to 
 his son, but as a father; to his wife but as a husband; to 
 his enemy but upon terms; whereas a friend may speak 
 as the case requires, and not as it sorteth with the per- 
 son. But to enumerate these things were endless. I 
 have given the rule where a man cannot fitly play his 
 own part: if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 
 
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) is noted as a historian and 
 essayist. He was the son of a Scotch stone-mason of 
 Ecclefechan. When, at fourteen, he was ready to enter 
 college, he walked the eighty miles to Edinburgh to 
 enter the university there. Most of his life was spent in 
 London, and it was given entirely to literature, resulting 
 in a long row of volumes. His first book, Sartor Resartus 
 (The Tailor Re-tailored), was a curious setting forth of 
 his philosophy of life, written in such an unusual style 
 that it found few readers. His next book, The French 
 Revolution, made him famous. For vivid description, 
 picturesque characterization, and dramatic narrative, it 
 stands alone among historical works. He also wrote biog- 
 raphies of Cromwell, of John Sterling, and of Frederick 
 the Great, and contributed to magazines a number of 
 critical essays, including a famous paper on Burns. He 
 delivered a course of lectures on great men, which was 
 published under the title Heroes and Hero-Worship. This 
 book and his French Revolution are the best known of his 
 works. The selection here given is from Heroes and Hero- 
 Worship, being a part of the lecture on "The Hero as 
 Man of Letters." It shows the vigor of Carlyle's style, 
 the intense earnestness of the man, and the originality 
 of his thought. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF BOOKS 
 
 (From Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lecture V) 
 
 Complaint is often made, in these times, of what we 
 call the disorganized condition of society: how ill many 
 arranged forces of society fulfil their work; how many 
 powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, 
 altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a com- 
 plaint, as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this 
 of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, as 
 it were, the summary of all other disorganization; a sort 
 of heart, from which, and to which, all other confusion 
 circulates in the world ! Considering what Book-writers 
 do in the world, and what the world does with Book- 
 writers, I should say, it is the most anomalous thing the 
 world at present has to show. We should get into a sea 
 far beyond sounding, did we attempt to give account of 
 this: but we must glance at it for the sake of our sub- 
 ject. 
 
 Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay 
 in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made 
 endowments, regulations; everywhere in the civilized 
 world there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of 
 complex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that 
 therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, 
 address his fellow men. They felt that this was the most 
 important thing; that without this there was no good 
 thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs; beautiful 
 to behold! But now with the art of Writing, with the 
 
 283 
 
284 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 art of Printing, a total change has come over that busi- 
 ness. The Writer of a Book, is not he a Preacher preach- 
 ing not to this parish or that, on this day or that, but to 
 all men in all times and places? Surely it is of the last 
 importance that he do his work right, whoever do it 
 wrong; that the eye report not falsely, for then all the 
 other members are astray! Well; how he may do his 
 work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is 
 a point which no man in the world has taken the pains 
 to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, trying to get some 
 money for his books, if lucky, he is of some importance; 
 to no other man of any. Whence he came, whither he 
 is bound, by what ways he arrived, by what he might be 
 furthered on his course, no one asks. He is an accident 
 in society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a 
 world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the 
 guidance or the misguidance ! 
 
 Certainly the art of Writing is the most miraculous of 
 all things man has devised. Odin's Runes * were the first 
 form of the work of a Hero; Books, written words, are 
 still miraculous Runes, the latest form! In Books lies 
 the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible 
 yoice of the Past, when the body and material substance 
 of it has altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets 
 and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, 
 many-engined, they are precious, great: but what do 
 they become? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, 
 Pericleses, and their Greece; all is gone now to some 
 ruined fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: 
 but the Books of Greece ! There Greece, to every thinker, 
 still very literally lives; can be called up again into life. 
 No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Man- 
 kind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in 
 
 * Runes, a name given to the ancient Scandinavian alphabet, 
 which according to tradition was given to mankind by the god Odin. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 285 
 
 magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the 
 chosen possession of men. 
 
 Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were 
 fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretched- 
 est circulating-library novel, which foolish girls thumb 
 and con in remote villages, but will help to regulate the 
 actual practical weddings and households of those fool- 
 ish girls. So " Celia " felt, so " Clifford " acted : the foolish 
 Theorem of Life, stamped into those young brains, comes 
 out as a solid Practice one day. Consider whether any 
 Rune in the wildest imagination of Mythologist ever did 
 such wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books 
 have done! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at 
 the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Book, 
 the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending 
 his Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago, in the 
 wildernesses of Sinai ! It is the strangest of things, yet 
 nothing is truer. With the art of Writing, of which Print- 
 ing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignifi- 
 cant corollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind 
 commenced. It related, with a wondrous new contiguity 
 and perpetual closeness, the Past and Distant with the 
 Present in time and place; all times and all places with 
 this our actual Here and Now. All things were altered 
 for men; all modes of important work of men: teaching, 
 preaching, governing, and all else. 
 
 To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are a 
 notable, respectable product of the modern ages. Their 
 existence too is modified, to the very basis of it, by the 
 existence of Books. Universities arose while there were 
 yet no Books procurable; while a man, for a single Book, 
 had to give an estate of land. That, in those circum- 
 stances, when a man had some knowledge to communi- 
 cate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, 
 face to face, was a necessity for him. If you wanted to 
 
286 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to 
 Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty thousand, went 
 to hear Abelard and that metaphysical theology of his. 
 And now for any other teacher who had also something 
 of his own to teach, there was a great convenience opened: 
 so many thousands eager to learn were already assem- 
 bled yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. 
 For any third teacher it was better still; and grew ever 
 the better, the more teachers there came. It only needed 
 now that the King took notice of this new phenomenon; 
 combined or agglomerated the various schools into one 
 school; gave it edifices, privileges, encouragements, and 
 named it Unwersitas, or School of all Sciences: the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, in its essential characters, was there. 
 The model of all subsequent Universities; which down 
 even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to 
 found themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of 
 Universities. 
 
 It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, 
 facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the busi- 
 ness from top to bottom were changed. Once invent 
 Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or super- 
 seded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather 
 men personally round him, that he might speak to them 
 what he knew: print it in a Book, and all learners far and 
 wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much 
 more effectually to learn it ! Doubtless there is still 
 peculiar virtue in Speech; even Writers of Books may still, 
 in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also, 
 witness our present meeting here ! * There is, one would 
 say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a 
 distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and 
 Printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to 
 Universities among others. But the limits of the two 
 * This was originally given as a lecture. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 287 
 
 have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much 
 less put in practice; the University which would com- 
 pletely take in that great new fact, of the existence of 
 Printed Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nine- 
 teenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, 
 has not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all 
 that a University, or final highest School can do for us, 
 is still but what the first School began doing, teach us 
 to read. We learn to read, in various languages, in various 
 sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner 
 of Books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, 
 even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves! It 
 depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors 
 have done their best for us. The true University of these 
 days is a Collection of Books. 
 
 But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is 
 changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the intro- 
 duction of Books. The Church is the working recognized 
 Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise 
 teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no 
 Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing or Print- 
 ing, the preaching of the voice was the natural sole method 
 of performing this. But now with Books I He that can 
 write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the 
 Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and of 
 All England? I many a time say, the writers of News- 
 papers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these are the real 
 working effective Church of a modern country. Nay, not 
 only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too 
 accomplished by means of Printed Books? The noble 
 sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in me- 
 lodious words, which brings melody into our hearts, is 
 not this essentially, if we will understand it, of the nature 
 of worship? There are many, in all countries, who, in 
 this confused time, have no other method of worship. 
 
288 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 He who, in any way, shows us better than we knew before 
 that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it 
 us as an effluence of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the 
 handwriting, made visible there, of the great Maker of 
 the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with 
 him, a little verse of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. 
 How much more he who sings, who says, or in any way 
 brings home to our heart the noble doings, feelings, dar- 
 ings and endurances of a brother man! He has verily 
 touched our hearts as with a live coal from the altar. Per- 
 haps there is no worship more authentic. 
 
 Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an "apocalypse 
 of Nature/' a revealing of the "open secret." It may 
 well enough be named, in Fichte's style, a "continuous 
 revelation" of the Godlike in the Terrestrial and Com- 
 mon. The Godlike does ever, in very truth, endure there; 
 is brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with vari- 
 ous degrees of clearness: all true gifted Singers and Speak- 
 ers are, consciously or unconsciously, doing so. The dark 
 stormful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and per- 
 verse, may have touches of it; nay the withered mockery 
 of a French sceptic, his mockery of the False, a love and 
 worship of the True. How much more the sphere- 
 harmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; the cathedral 
 music of a Milton ! They are something too, those hum- 
 ble genuine lark notes of a Burns, skylark, starting from 
 the humble furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and 
 singing to us so genuinely there ! For all true singing is 
 of the nature of worship; as indeed all true working may 
 be said to be, whereof such singing is but the record, and 
 fit melodious representation, to us. Fragments of a real 
 "Church Liturgy" and "Body of Homilies," strangely 
 disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering 
 in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely 
 call Literature ! Books are our Church too. 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 28$ 
 
 Or turning now to the Government of men. Witena- 
 gemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs 
 of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what 
 we were to do as a nation. But does not, though the name 
 Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, 
 everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive 
 way, out of Parliament altogether? Burke said there 
 were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' 
 Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important 
 far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty 
 saying; it is a literal fact, very momentous to us in these 
 times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which 
 comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equiva- 
 lent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevi- 
 table. Writing brings Printing; brings universal every- 
 day extempore Printing as we see at present. Whoever 
 can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a 
 power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight 
 in lawmaking, in all acts of authority. It matters not 
 what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requi- 
 site thing is, that he have a tongue which others will 
 listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation 
 is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: Democ- 
 racy is virtually there. Add only, that whatsoever power 
 exists will have itself, by and by, organized; working 
 secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it 
 will never rest till it get to work free, unencumbered, visi- 
 ble to all. Democracy virtually extant will insist on be- 
 coming palpably extant. 
 
 On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, 
 of the things which man can do or make here below, by 
 far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the 
 things we call Books ! Those poor bits of rag-paper with 
 black ink on them; from the Daily Newspaper to the 
 sacred Hebrew Book, what have they not done, what are 
 
290 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 they not doing! For indeed, whatever be the outwartf 
 form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black 
 ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man's 
 faculty that produces a Book? It is the Thought of man; 
 the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all 
 things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pass, 
 is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with 
 all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge 
 immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, 
 but millions of Thoughts made into One; a huge, im- 
 measurable Spirit of Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, 
 smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, 
 Catherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was 
 made but some man had to think of the making of that 
 brick. The thing we called "bits of paper with traces 
 of black ink," is the purest embodiment of a Thought 
 man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest 
 and noblest. 
 
 All this, of the importance and supreme importance of 
 the Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press 
 is to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the 
 Senatus Academicus and much else, has been admitted 
 for a good while; and recognized often enough, in late 
 times, with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonder- 
 ment. It seems to me, the Sentimental by and by will 
 have to give place to the Practical. If Men of Letters 
 are so incalculably influential, actually performing such 
 work for us from age to age, and even from day to day, 
 then I think we may conclude that Men of Letters will 
 not always wander like unrecognized unregulated Ish- 
 maelites among us ! Whatsoever thing, as I said above, 
 has virtual unnoticed power will cast off its wrappages, 
 bandages, and step forth one day with palpably articu- 
 lated, universally visible power. That one man wear the 
 clothes and take the wages of a function which is done 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 291 
 
 by quite another: there can be no profit in this; this is 
 not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the making of it 
 right, what a business, for long times to come ! Sure 
 enough, this that we call Organization of the Literary 
 Guild is still a great way off, encumbered with all manner 
 of complexities. If you asked me what were the best 
 possible organization for the Men of Letters in modern 
 society; the arrangement of furtherance and regulation, 
 grounded the most accurately on the actual facts of their 
 position and of tho world's position, I should beg to say 
 that the problem far exceeded my faculty ! It is not one 
 man's faculty; it is that of many successive men turned 
 earnestly upon it, that will bring out even an approximate 
 solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us 
 could say. But if you ask, Which is the worst? I an- 
 swer: This which we now have, that Chaos should sit 
 umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or any good 
 one, there is yet a long way. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), one of the famous 
 New England group of writers, was the son of a Boston 
 minister. He attended the Boston Latin School and Har- 
 vard College, where he waited on table for his board. 
 After graduation he taught school for a time, preached 
 for a time, and then found his real vocation as lecturer 
 and writer. His home was in Concord, a village near 
 Boston. Here he spent his days quietly, the mornings 
 in reading and writing, the afternoons in long walks, 
 usually alone; the evenings with his family. At this time 
 nearly every small town had its "lyceum," or course of 
 lectures, every winter, and Emerson was much in demand 
 as a lecturer. He gave courses on science, on biography, 
 and on literature. Gradually his subjects became more 
 general, such as Compensation, Heroism, Self-Reliance, 
 Spiritual Laws. Then he began to publish the substance 
 of these lectures as books. In 1847 he was invited to 
 England to lecture. Here he met Carlyle, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, and other 
 notable people. His impressions of England were pub- 
 lished under the title English Traits. His other writ- 
 ings are: Nature, Essays, First and Second Series, Poems, 
 Representative Men, Conduct of Life, Society and Solitude, 
 Letters and Social Aims. His prose works are practically 
 all essays, and are of the reflective type. They contain 
 the mature wisdom of one who had read carefully and 
 thought deeply. They are not easy reading; the thought 
 is close-packed, and often the connection between one 
 idea and the next is not evident, but one who reads slowly 
 and attentively will be richly repaid. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 SELF-RELIANCE 
 
 (From Essays, First Series) 
 Ne te qusesiveris extra.* 
 
 Man is his own star; and the soul that can 
 Render an honest and a perfect man, 
 Commands all light, all influence, all fate; 
 Nothing to him falls early or too late. 
 Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, 
 Our fatal shadows that walk by us still. 
 -Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune* 
 
 Cast the bantling on the rocks, 
 Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, 
 Wintered with the hawk and fox, 
 Power and speed be hands and feet. 
 
 EMERSON. 
 
 I read the other day some verses written by an eminent 
 painter which were original and not conventional. Always 
 the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject 
 be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more 
 value than any thought they may contain. To believe 
 your own thought, to believe that what is true for you 
 in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. 
 Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal 
 sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost and 
 our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets 
 of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind 
 is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, 
 
 * Do not seek beyond thyself. 
 295 
 
296 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 and Milton is that they set at naught books and tradi 
 tions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. 
 A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of 
 light which flashes across his mind from within, more 
 than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. 
 Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it 
 is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own 
 rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain 
 alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more 
 affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide 
 by our spontaneous impression with good-humored in- 
 flexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on 
 the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with 
 masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and 
 felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with, 
 shame our own opinion from another. 
 
 There is a time in every man's education when he ar- 
 rives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imi- 
 tation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for 
 worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is 
 full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him 
 but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground 
 which is given to him to till. The power which resides 
 in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what 
 that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has 
 tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, 
 makes much impression on him, and another none. It 
 is not without pre-established harmony, this sculpture 
 in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray 
 should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. 
 Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his conces- 
 sion. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of 
 that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be 
 safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it 
 be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 297 
 
 made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to 
 exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when 
 he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but 
 what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no 
 peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In 
 the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; 
 no invention, no hope. 
 
 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. 
 Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, 
 the society of your contemporaries, the connection of 
 events. Great men have always done so, and confided 
 themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying 
 their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their 
 heart, working through their hands, predominating in 
 all their being. And we are now men, and must accept 
 in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and 
 not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards 
 fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, 
 pious aspirants to be noble clay; under the Almighty ef- 
 fort let us advance on Chaos and the Dark. 
 
 What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in 
 the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes. 
 That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment 
 because our arithmetic has computed the strength and 
 means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their 
 mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and 
 when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. In- 
 fancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one 
 babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who 
 prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and 
 pubertv and manhood no less with its own piquancy and 
 enarm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims 
 not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think 
 the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you 
 and me. Hark ! in the next room who spoke so clear and 
 
298 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 emphatic? It seems he knows how to speak to his con- 
 temporaries. Good Heaven ! it is he ! it is that very 
 lump of bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks has done 
 nothing but eat when you were by, and now rolls out 
 these words like bell strokes. It seems he knows how to 
 speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he 
 will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. 
 
 The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and 
 would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to 
 conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. 
 How is a boy the master of society; independent, irre- 
 sponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and 
 facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their 
 merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, 
 interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers 
 himself never about consequences, about interests; he 
 gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court 
 him; he does not court you. But the man is as it were 
 clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he 
 has once acted or spoken with eclat he is a committed 
 person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hun- 
 dreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. 
 There is no Lethe * for this. Ah, that he could pass again 
 into his neutral, godlike independence! Who can thus 
 lose all pledge and, having observed, observe again from 
 the same unaffected, unbiassed, unbribable, unaffrighted 
 innocence, must always be formidable, must always en- 
 gage the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an im- 
 mortal youth the force would be felt. He would utter 
 opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be 
 not private but necessary, would sink like darts into the 
 ear of men and put them in fear. 
 
 These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but 
 
 * Lethe. In Greek mythology, Lethe was a river in Hades. Those 
 who drank of its waters lost all memory of their past lives. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 299 
 
 they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. 
 Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood 
 of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock 
 company, in which the members agree, for the better 
 securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender 
 the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most 
 request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It 
 loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. 
 Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He 
 who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered 
 by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be good- 
 ness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our 
 own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have 
 the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which 
 when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued 
 adviser who was wont to importune me with the dear 
 old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have 
 I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly 
 from within? my friend suggested, "But these impulses 
 may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They 
 do not seem to me to be such, but if I am the devil's child, 
 I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred 
 to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but 
 names very readily transferable to that or this; the only 
 right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong 
 what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the pres- 
 ence of all opposition as if everything were titular and 
 ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily 
 we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and 
 dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken indi- 
 vidual affects and sways me more than is right ! I ought 
 to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all 
 ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, 
 shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bounti- 
 ful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last 
 
300 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 news from Barbadoes,* why should I not say to him, "Go 
 love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured 
 and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your 
 hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tender- 
 ness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar 
 is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such 
 greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of 
 love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else 
 it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as 
 the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules 
 and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and 
 brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the 
 lintels of the door post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat 
 better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day 
 in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I 
 seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not 
 tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to 
 put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? 
 I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the 
 dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not 
 belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a 
 class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am 
 bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; 
 but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education 
 at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the 
 vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the 
 thousandfold Relief Societies; though I confess with 
 shame I sometime succumb and give the dollar, it is a 
 wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood 
 to withhold. 
 
 ^ Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the excep- 
 tion than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. 
 Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of 
 
 * At the time this was written, slavery still existed in the British 
 West Indies. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMSRSON 301 
 
 courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in ex- 
 piation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their workr 
 are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in 
 the world, as invalids and the insane pay a high board. 
 Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, 
 but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is 
 for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it 
 should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, 
 than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish 
 it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleed- 
 ing. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a 
 battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence 
 that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man 
 to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no differ- 
 ence whether I do or forbear those actions which are 
 reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a priv- 
 ilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as 
 my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my 
 own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secon- 
 dary testimony. 
 
 What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the 
 people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and 
 in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction 
 between greatness and meanness. It is the harder be- 
 cause you will always find those who think they know 
 what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy 
 in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy 
 in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is 
 he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect 
 sweetness the independence of solitude. 
 
 The objection to conforming to usages that have be- 
 come dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses 
 your time and blurs the impression of your character. If 
 you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible 
 Society, vote with a great party either for the Govern- 
 
302 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 ment or against it, spread your table like base house- 
 keepers, under all these screens I have difficulty to de- 
 tect the precise man you are. And of course so much 
 force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your 
 thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you 
 shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a 
 blindman's buff is this game of conformity. If I know 
 your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher 
 announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of 
 the institutions of his church. Do I not know before- 
 hand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous 
 word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of 
 examining the grounds of the institution he will do no 
 such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself 
 not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a 
 man, but as a parish minister ? He is a retained attorney, 
 and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. 
 Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another 
 handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of 
 these communities of opinion. This conformity makes 
 them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, 
 but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not 
 quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not 
 the real four: so that every word they say chagrins us 
 and we know not where to begin to set them right. Mean- 
 time nature is not slow to equip us in the prison uniform 
 of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one 
 cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest 
 asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in 
 particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the 
 general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the 
 forced smile which we put on in company where we do 
 not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not 
 interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but 
 moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 303 
 
 outline of the face, and make the most disagreeable sen- 
 sation; a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave 
 young man will suffer twice. 
 
 For non-conformity the world whips you with its dis- 
 pleasure. And therefore a man must know how to esti- 
 mate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him 
 in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this 
 aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like 
 his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; 
 but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, 
 have no deep cause disguise no god, but are put on and 
 off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is 
 the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that 
 of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a 
 firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the 
 cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, 
 for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. 
 But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the 
 people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are 
 aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at 
 the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs 
 the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike 
 as a trifle of no concernment. 
 
 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our 
 consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because 
 the eyes of others have no other data for computing our 
 orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint 
 them. 
 
 But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? 
 Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, 
 lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or 
 that public place? Suppose you should contradict your- 
 self; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never 
 to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of 
 pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the 
 
304 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. 
 Trust your emotion. In your metaphysics you have 
 denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout 
 motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, 
 though they should clothe God with shape and color. 
 Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the 
 harlot, and flee. 
 
 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 
 adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
 With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. 
 He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the 
 wall. Out upon your guarded lips ! Sew them up with 
 packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what 
 you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and 
 to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words 
 again, though it contradict everything you said to-day. 
 Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be 
 misunderstood ! Misunderstood ! It is a right fool's 
 word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythag- 
 oras* was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and 
 Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and 
 every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be 
 great is to be misunderstood. 
 
 I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies 
 of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the 
 inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in 
 the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you 
 gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or 
 Alexandrianf stanza; read it forward, backward, or 
 
 * Pythagoras and Socrates were Greek philosophers; one was ban- 
 ished; the other was unjustly sentenced to death. Copernicus and 
 Galileo were famous astronomers. Copernicus established the theory 
 that the earth revolved about the sun, but for fear of persecution 
 dared not announce his discovery; Galileo was imprisoned for pub- 
 lishing his discoveries. 
 
 t Alexandrian stanza, a line of twelve syllables. Emerson prob- 
 ably meant the palindrome, which reads the same backward or f ?r 
 ward, as "Madam, I'm Adam." 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 305 
 
 across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing con- 
 trite wood life which God allows me, let me record day 
 by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, 
 and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though 
 I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of 
 pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow 
 over my window should interweave that thread or straw 
 he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what 
 we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine 
 that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt 
 actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath 
 every moment. 
 
 Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever 
 variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in 
 their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmoni- 
 ous, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost 
 sight of when seen at a little distance, at a little height of 
 thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage 
 of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This 
 is only microscopic criticism. See the line from a suffi- 
 cient distance, and it straightens itself to the average 
 tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and 
 will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity 
 explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already 
 done singly will justify you now. Greatness always ap- 
 peals to the future. If I can be great enough now to do 
 right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right be- 
 fore as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. 
 Always scorn appearances and you always may. The 
 force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days 
 of virtue work their health into this. What makes the 
 majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which 
 so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train 
 of great days and victories behind. There they all stand 
 and shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is 
 
306 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 attended as by a visible escort of angels to every man's 
 eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's 
 voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America 
 into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is 
 no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship 
 it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay 
 it homage because it is not a trap for our love and homage, 
 but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an 
 old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. 
 I hope in these days we have heard the last of conform- 
 ity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and 
 ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, 
 let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow 
 and apologize nevermore. A great man is coming to 
 eat at my house. I do not wish to please him: I wish 
 that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for 
 humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would 
 make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth 
 mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and 
 hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact 
 which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great 
 responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves 
 a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, 
 but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. 
 He measures you and all men and all events. You are 
 constrained to accept his standard. Ordinarily, every- 
 body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some 
 other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing 
 else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must 
 be so much that he must make all circumstances indiffer- 
 ent put all means into the shade. This all great men 
 are and do. Every true man is a cause, a country, and 
 an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time 
 fully to accomplish his thought;- and posterity seem to 
 follow his steps as a procession. A man Csesar is born, 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 307 
 
 and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is 
 born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his 
 genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible 
 of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one 
 man; as, the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; 
 Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, 
 Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history re- 
 solves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout 
 and earnest persons. 
 
 Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under 
 his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down 
 with the air of a charity boy, a bastard, or an interloper 
 in the world which exists for him. But the man in the 
 street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to 
 the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, 
 feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a 
 statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, 
 much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 
 "Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors for his 
 notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out 
 and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; 
 it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to 
 praise. That popular fable* of the sot who was picked 
 up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, 
 washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on 
 his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the 
 duke, and assured that he had been insane owes its 
 popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state 
 of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and 
 then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a 
 true prince. 
 
 Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history 
 
 * The story is in the Arabian Nights, under the title "Abou Has- 
 san, or the Sleeper Awakened." It is also used by Shakespeare in 
 the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. 
 
308 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. King- 
 dom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocab- 
 ulary than private John and Edward in a small house 
 and common day's work: but the things of life are the 
 same to both: the sum total of both is the same. Why 
 all this deference to Alfred and Scanderberg* and Gus- 
 tavus? f Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out 
 virtue ? As great a stake depends on your private act to- 
 day as followed their public and renowned steps. When 
 private men shall act with original views, the lustre will 
 be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gen- 
 tlemen. 
 
 The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, who 
 have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been 
 taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that 
 is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which 
 men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or 
 the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of 
 his own, make his own scale of men and things and re- 
 verse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with 
 honor, and represent the Law in his person, was the 
 hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their con- 
 sciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of 
 every man. 
 
 The magnetism which all original action exerts is ex- 
 plained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who 
 is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a 
 universal reliance may be grounded ? What is the nature 
 and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax,! 
 
 * Scanderberg, an Albanian leader of the fifteenth century who 
 successfully defended his country against Turkey. 
 
 t Gustavus, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who defeated Russia 
 in the Thirty Years' War. 
 
 t Parallax, a reference to the method of calculating the distance 
 of the stars. A star without parallax would be so remote that its 
 distance could not be calculated. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 309 
 
 without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty 
 even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark 
 of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that 
 source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, 
 and the essence of life, which we call Spontaneity or In- 
 stinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, 
 whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, 
 the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things 
 find their common origin. For the sense of being which 
 in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not 
 diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, 
 from man, but one with them and proceedeth obviously 
 from the same source whence their life and being also 
 proceedetri. We first share the life by which things exist, 
 and afterward see them as appearances in nature and 
 forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the foun- 
 tain of action and the fountain of thought. Here are 
 the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, 
 of that inspiration of man which cannot be denied with- 
 out impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense 
 intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and re- 
 ceivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when we 
 discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a 
 passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if 
 we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all metaphysics, 
 all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is 
 all we can affirm. Every man discerns between the vol- 
 untary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions. 
 And to his involuntary perceptions he knows a perfect 
 respect is due. He may err in the expression of them, 
 but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, 
 not to be disputed. All my wilful actions and acquisitions 
 are but roving; the most trivial revery, the faintest 
 native emotion, are domestic and divine. Thoughtless 
 people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions 
 
310 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do 
 not distinguish between perception and notion. They 
 fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But per- 
 ception is not whimsical, but fatal.* If I see a trait, my 
 children will see it after me, and in course of time all 
 mankind, although it may chance that no one has seen 
 it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact 
 as the sun. 
 
 The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure 
 that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be 
 that when God speaketh he should communicate, not 
 one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his 
 voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from 
 the centre of the present thought; and new date and new 
 create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple and re- 
 ceives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away, 
 means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and 
 absorbs past and future into the present hour. All 
 things are made sacred by relation to it, one thing as 
 much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre 
 by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty and 
 particular miracles disappear. This is and must be. If 
 therefore a man claims to know and speak of God and 
 carries you backward to the phraseology of some old 
 mouldered nation in another country, in another world, 
 believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which 
 is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than 
 the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? 
 Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries 
 are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the 
 soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which 
 the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; 
 where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and 
 an injury if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue 
 or parable of my being and becoming. 
 
 * Fatal, here meaning ordained by fate. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 311 
 
 Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; 
 he dares not say "I think/ 7 "I am," but quotes some saint 
 or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the 
 blowing rose. These roses under my window make no 
 reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for 
 what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no 
 time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in 
 every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has 
 burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is 
 no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature 
 is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. 
 There is no time to it. But man postpones or remem- 
 bers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted 
 eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that sur- 
 round him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He 
 cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature 
 in the present, above time. 
 
 This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong in- 
 tellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the 
 phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or 
 Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few 
 texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat 
 by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as 
 they grow older, of the men of talents and character they 
 chance to see, painfully recollecting the exact words 
 they spoke; afterward, when they come into the point of 
 view which those had who uttered these sayings, they 
 understand them and are willing to let the words go; for 
 at any time they can use words as good when occasion 
 comes. So was it with us, so will it be, if we proceed. 
 If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the 
 strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. 
 When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburthen 
 the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When 
 a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the 
 murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. 
 
312 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 And now at last the highest truth on this subject re- 
 mains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we 
 say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That 
 thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, 
 is this. When good is near you, when you have life in 
 yourself, it is not by any known or appointed way; you 
 shall not discern the footprints of any other; you shall 
 not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; 
 the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange 
 and new. It shall exclude all other being. You take 
 the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever 
 existed are its fugitive ministers. There shall be no fear 
 in it. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. It asks noth- 
 ing. There is somewhat low even in hope. We are then 
 in vision. There is nothing that can be called gratitude, 
 nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passion. It 
 seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a perceiving 
 that Truth and Right are. Hence it becomes a Tran- 
 quillity out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast 
 spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast 
 intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. 
 This which I think and feel underlay that former state 
 of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present 
 and will always all circumstances, and what \s called life 
 and what is called death. 
 
 life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases 
 in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of tran- 
 sition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the 
 gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world 
 hates, that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades 
 the past; turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a 
 shame; confounds the saint with the rogue; shoves Jesus 
 and Judas equally aside. Why then do we prate of self- 
 reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present there will be 
 power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 313 
 
 poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that 
 which relies because it works and is. Who has more soul 
 than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. 
 Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. 
 Who has less I rule with like facility. We fancy it rhet- 
 oric when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet 
 see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company 
 of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law 
 of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, 
 kings, rich men, poets, who are not. 
 
 This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on 
 this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever- 
 blessed ONE. Virtue is the governor, the creator, the 
 reality. All things real are so by so much virtue as they 
 contain. Hardship, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, 
 eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage 
 my respect as examples of the soul's presence and impure 
 action. I see the same law working in nature for con- 
 servation and growth. The poise of a planet, the bended 
 tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital re- 
 sources of every animal and vegetable, are also demon- 
 strations of the self-sufficing and therefore self-relying 
 soul. All history, from its highest to its trivial passages 
 is the various record of this power. 
 
 Thus all concentrates; let us not rove; let us sit at 
 home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the in- 
 truding rabble of men and books and institutions by a 
 simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid them take the 
 shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our 
 simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law 
 demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside 
 our native riches. 
 
 But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe 
 of man, nor is the soul admonished to stay at home, to 
 put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but 
 
314 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of men. 
 We must go alone. Isolation must precede true society. 
 I like the silent church before the service begins better 
 than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste 
 the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanc- 
 tuary. So let us always sit. Why should we assume the 
 faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because 
 they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same 
 blood? All men have my blood and I have all men's. 
 Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to 
 the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation 
 must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be 
 elevation. At times the wliole world seems to be in con- 
 spiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, 
 client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at 
 once at thy closet door and say, "Come out unto us." 
 Do not spill thy soul; do not all descend; keep thy state; 
 stay at home in thine own heaven; come not for a mo- 
 ment into their facts, into their hubbub of conflicting 
 appearances, but let in the light of thy law on their con- 
 fusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them 
 by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but 
 through my act. "What we love, that we have; but by 
 desire we bereave ourselves of the love." 
 
 If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience 
 and faith, let us at least resist our temptations, let us 
 enter into the state of war and wake Thor and Woden, 
 courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is 
 to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. 
 Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live 
 no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiv- 
 ing people with whom we converse. Say to them, 
 father, mother, O wife, brother, O friend, I have 
 lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward 
 I am the truth's. Be it known unto vou that hence- 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 315 
 
 forward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will 
 have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavor to 
 nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the 
 chaste husband of one wife, but these relations I must 
 fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from 
 your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break my- 
 self any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for 
 what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will 
 still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. 
 I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust 
 that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before 
 the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the 
 heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you 
 are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical 
 attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth 
 with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. 
 I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike 
 your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we 
 have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound 
 harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by 
 your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth 
 it will bring us out safe at last. But so may you give 
 these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and 
 my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons 
 have their moments of reason, when they look out into 
 the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and 
 do the same thing. 
 
 The populace think that your rejection of popular 
 standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere anti- 
 nomianism;* and the bold sensualist will use the name of 
 philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of conscious- 
 ness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the 
 other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil 
 
 * Antmomianism, the doctrine that one may be saved by faith, 
 regardless of his disobedience of the moral law. 
 
316 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, 
 or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satis- 
 fied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbor, 
 town, cat and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. 
 But I may also neglect this reflex standard and absolve 
 me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect 
 circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that 
 are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts it 
 enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any 
 one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its com- 
 mandment one day. 
 
 And truly it demands something godlike in him who 
 has cast off the common motives of humanity and has 
 ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be 
 his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in 
 good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a 
 simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity 
 is to others. 
 
 If any man consider the present aspects of what is 
 called by distinction society, he will see the need of these 
 ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn 
 out, and we are become timorous desponding whimperers. 
 We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, 
 and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and 
 perfect persons. We want men and women who shall 
 renovate life and our social state, but we see that most 
 natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy their own wants, 
 have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical 
 force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually. 
 Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, 
 our marriages, our religion we have not chosen, but so- 
 ciety has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. The 
 rugged battle of fate, where strength is born, we shun. 
 
 If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises they 
 lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 317 
 
 is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our col- 
 leges, and is not installed in an office within one year 
 afterward, in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, 
 it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in 
 being disheartened and in complaining the rest of his life. 
 A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in 
 turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, ped- 
 dles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to 
 Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive 
 years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a 
 hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his 
 days and feels no shame in not "studying a profession/' 
 for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He 
 has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a stoic 
 arise who shall reveal the resources of man and tell men 
 they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach 
 themselves; that with the exercise of self -trust, new powers 
 shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to 
 shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed 
 of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from 
 himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and cus- 
 toms out of the window, we pity him no more but thank 
 and revere him; and that teacher shall restore the life 
 of man to splendor and make his name dear to all History. 
 
 It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance a new 
 respect for the divinity in man must work a revolution 
 in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; 
 in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of 
 living; their association; in their property; in their spec- 
 ulative views. 
 
 1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That 
 which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and 
 manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign 
 addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses 
 itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and 
 
318 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a par- 
 ticular commodity anything less than all good, is vicious. 
 Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the 
 highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding 
 and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing 
 his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private 
 end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not 
 unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man 
 is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see 
 prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling 
 in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling 
 with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard through- 
 out nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletch- 
 er's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of 
 the god Audate, replies, 
 
 His hidden meaning lies in our endeavors; 
 Our valors are our best gods. 
 
 Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Dis- 
 content is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. 
 Regret calamities if you can thereby help the sufferer; 
 if not, attend your own work and already the evil begins 
 to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come 
 to them who weep foolishly and sit down and cry for 
 company, instead of imparting to them truth and health 
 in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in com- 
 munication with the soul. The secret of fortune is joy 
 in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is 
 the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide. 
 Him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow 
 with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces 
 him because he did not need it. We solicitously and 
 apologetically caress and celebrate him because he held 
 on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods 
 love him because men hated him. "To the persevering 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 319 
 
 mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are 
 swift." 
 
 As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their 
 creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those 
 foolish Israelites, "Let not God speak to us, lest we die. 
 Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey." * 
 Everywhere I am bereaved of meeting God in my brother, 
 because he has shut his own temple doors and recites 
 fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's 
 God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it 
 prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, f 
 a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Spurzheim, it im- 
 poses its classification on other men, and lo ! a new sys- 
 tem. In proportion always to the depth of the thought, 
 and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings 
 within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly 
 is this apparent in cieeds and churches, which are also 
 classifications of some powerful mind acting on the great 
 elemental thought of Duty and man's relation to the 
 Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgi- 
 anism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating 
 everything to the new terminology that a girl does who 
 has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new 
 seasons thereby. It will happen for a time that the 
 pupil will feel a real debt to the teacher will find his 
 intellectual power has grown by the study of his writings. 
 This will continue until he has exhausted his master's 
 mind. But in all unbalanced minds the classification is 
 idolized, passes for the end and not for a speedily ex- 
 haustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to 
 their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the uni- 
 
 * Exodus, 20, 19. 
 
 t Locke and Bentheim were English philosophers; Lavoisier a 
 French chemist who discovered the composition of water; Hutton 
 was a Scotch geologist; Spurzheim, a German who put forth the 
 system of phrenology. 
 
320 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 verse; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on 
 the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how 
 you aliens have any right to see how you can see; "It 
 must be somehow that you stole the light from us." 
 They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, in- 
 domitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. 
 Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are 
 honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will 
 be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and 
 vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, 
 million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the uni- 
 verse as on the first morning. 
 
 2. It is for want of self-culture that the idol of Travel- 
 ling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, remains for 
 all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, 
 or Greece venerable in the imagination, did so not by 
 rambling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by 
 sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. 
 In manly hours we feel that duty is our place and that 
 the merry men of circumstance should follow as they 
 may. The soul is no traveller: the wise man stays at 
 home with the soul, and when his necessities, his duties, 
 on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign 
 lands, he is at home still and is not gadding abroad from 
 himself, and shall make men sensible by the expression 
 of his countenance that he goes the missionary of wisdom 
 and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign and 
 not like an interloper or a valet. 
 
 I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation 
 of the globe for the purposes of art, of study, and benev- 
 olence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not 
 go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater 
 than he knows. He who travels to be amused or to get 
 somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from 
 himself and grows old even in youth among old things. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 321 
 
 In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become 
 old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins. 
 
 Travelling is a fooPs paradise. We owe to our first 
 journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home 
 I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated 
 with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, 
 embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake 
 up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the 
 sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek 
 the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated 
 with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. 
 My giant goes with me wherever I go. 
 
 3. But the rage of travelling is itself only a symptom 
 of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual 
 action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal 
 system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds 
 travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We 
 imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the 
 mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our 
 shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opin- 
 ions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean, and follow the 
 Past and the Distant, as the eyes of a maid follow her 
 mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have 
 flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought 
 his model. It was an application of his own thought to 
 the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. 
 And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? 
 Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint 
 expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American 
 artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to 
 be done by him, considering the climate, the soil ; the 
 length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and 
 form of the government, he will create a house in which 
 all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and senti- 
 ment will be satisfied also. 
 
322 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you 
 can present every moment with the cumulative force of 
 a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of 
 another you have only an extemporaneous half-posses- 
 sion. That which each can do best, none but his Maker 
 can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, 
 till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master 
 who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the 
 master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washing- 
 ton, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is an 
 unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part 
 he could not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the 
 great man imitates in the original crisis when he per- 
 forms a great act, I will tell him who else than himself 
 can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the 
 study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned thee 
 and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much. 
 There is at this moment, there is for me an utterance 
 bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, 
 or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses or Dante, 
 but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul, 
 all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign 
 to repeat itself; but if I can hear what these patriarchs 
 say, surely I can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; 
 for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. 
 Dwell up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, 
 obey thy heart and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld 
 again. 
 
 4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, 
 so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves 
 on the improvement of society, and no man improves. 
 
 Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one 
 side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only apparent, 
 like the workers of a treadmill. It undergoes continual 
 changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 323 
 
 it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. 
 For everything that is given something is taken. Society 
 acquires new arts and loses old instincts. What a con- 
 trast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking 
 American, with a watch, a pencil and a bill of exchange 
 in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose prop- 
 erty is a club, a spear, a mat and an undivided twentieth 
 of a shed to sleep under. But compare the health of the 
 two men and you shall see that his aboriginal strength 
 the white man has lost. If the traveller tell us truly, 
 strike the savage with a broadax and in a day or two 
 the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow 
 into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white 
 to his grave. 
 
 The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the 
 use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks 
 so much support of muscle. He has got a fine Geneva 
 watch, but he has lost the skill to tell the hour by the sun. 
 A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure 
 of the information when he wants it, the man in the street 
 does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does 
 not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole 
 bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. 
 His note-books impair his memory: his libraries overload 
 his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of acci- 
 dents; and it may be a question whether machinery does 
 not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement 
 some energy, by a Christianity intrenched in establish- 
 ments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every 
 Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Chris- 
 tian? 
 
 There is no more deviation in the moral standard than 
 in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are 
 now than ever were. A singular equality may be ob- 
 served between the great men of the first and of the last 
 
324 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy 
 of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men 
 than Plutarch's* heroes, three or four and twenty cen- 
 turies ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, 
 Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they 
 leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be 
 called by their name, but be wholly his own man, and in 
 his turn the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions 
 of each period are only its costume and do not invigorate 
 men. The harm of the improved machinery may com- 
 pensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so 
 much in their fishing-boats as to astonish Parry and 
 Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of 
 science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered 
 a more splendid series of facts than any one since. Co- 
 lumbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It 
 is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of 
 means and machinery which were introduced with loud 
 laudation a few years or centuries before. The great 
 genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the im- 
 provements of the art of war among the triumphs of sci- 
 ence, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, 
 which consisted of falling back on naked valor and dis- 
 encumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impos- 
 sible to make a perfect army, says Las Cases, "without 
 abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries and car- 
 riages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the sol- 
 dier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand- 
 mill and bake his bread himself." 
 
 Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the 
 water of which it is composed does not. The same par- 
 ticle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity 
 
 * Plutarch, a Greek historian who wrote the lives of illustrious 
 Greeks and Romans. The names following are those of great states- 
 men and philosophers of whom he wrote. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 325 
 
 is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation 
 to-day, next year die, and their experience dies with them. 
 And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance 
 on governments which protect it, is the want of self- 
 reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and 
 at things so long that they have come to esteem what they 
 call the soul's progress, namely, the religious, learned and 
 civil institutions, as guards of property, and they deprecate 
 assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults 
 on property. They measure their esteem of each other 
 by what each has, and not by what each is. But a culti- 
 vated man becomes ashamed of his property, ashamed of 
 what he has, out of new respect for his being. Especially 
 he hates what he has if he see that it is accidental, came 
 to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels 
 that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no 
 root in him, and merely lies there because no revolution 
 or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is, 
 does always by necessity acquire, and what the man 
 acquires, is permanent and living property, which does 
 not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or 
 fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews 
 itself wherever the man is put. "Thy lot or portion of 
 life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; there- 
 fore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence 
 on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for 
 numbers. The political parties meet in numerous con- 
 ventions; the greater the concourse and with each new 
 uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! 
 The Democrats from New Hampshire ! The Whigs of 
 Maine ! the young patriot feels himself stronger than be- 
 fore by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like man- 
 ner the reformers summon conventions and vote and 
 resolve in multitude. But not so O friends ! will the God 
 deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely 
 
326 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from himself 
 all external support and stands alone that I see him to 
 be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit 
 to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask 
 nothing of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only 
 firm column must presently appear the upholder of all 
 that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is in 
 the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for 
 good out of him and elsewhere, and, so perceiving, throws 
 himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
 himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, 
 works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is 
 stronger than a man who stands on his head. 
 
 So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble 
 with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. 
 But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal 
 with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the 
 Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel 
 of Chance, and shalt always drag her after thee. A 
 political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick 
 or the return of your absent friend, or some other quite 
 external event raises your spirits, and you think good 
 days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. It can 
 never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. 
 Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 AMERICAN AND BRITON 
 
John Galsworthy (1867 ), one of the most significant 
 
 of English writers of to-day, was born at Coombe, Surrey, 
 of an old English family, and was educated at Harrow 
 and at Oxford. After several years spent in travel, he re- 
 turned to England and began his literary work. He is 
 noted as a novelist, dramatist, and essayist. His novels 
 deal with contemporary English life; the best known of 
 these are The Man of Property, Fraternity, The Dark Flower, 
 The Freelands, and Saint's Progress. He visited America 
 in 1918, delivering lectures on literature, which were pub- 
 lished as Addresses in America. He is among the success- 
 ful dramatists of to-day. His plays often present some 
 problem of the time, as Strife, which dramatizes the con- 
 flict between employer and employee, with a strike as the 
 chief incident; or Justice, which deals with our methods 
 of punishment. Other plays are: The Silver Box, Joy, 
 The Little Dream, The Pigeon, The Eldest Son, The Fu- 
 gitive, The Mob, A Bit o' Love, The Skin Game. Many of 
 these have been produced in America. His essays in- 
 clude four volumes, A Motley, The Inn of Tranquillity, 
 A Sheaf, and Another Sheaf. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 
 
 AMERICAN AND BRITON 
 (From Another Shtaf) 
 
 On the mutual understanding of each other by Britons 
 and Americans the future happiness of nations depends 
 more than on any other world cause. 
 
 I have never held a whole-hearted brief for the British 
 character. There is a lot of good in it, but much which 
 is repellent. It has a kind of deliberate unattractive- 
 ness, setting out on its journey with the words: "Take 
 me or leave me." One may respect a person of this sort, 
 but it is difficult either to know or to like him. I am 
 told that an American officer said recently to a British 
 staff officer in a friendly voice: "So we're going to clean 
 up Brother Boche together ! " and the British staff officer 
 replied "Really!" No wonder Americans sometimes 
 say: "I've got no use for those fellows." 
 
 The world is consecrate to strangeness and discovery, 
 and the attitude of mind concreted in that "Really!" 
 seems unforgivable, till one rememoers that it is manner 
 rather than matter which divides the hearts of American 
 and Briton. 
 
 In a huge, still half-developed country, where every 
 kind of national type and habit comes to run a new thread 
 into the rich tapestry of American life and thought, 
 people must find it almost impossible to conceive the life 
 of a little old island where traditions persist generation 
 after generation without anything to break them up; 
 where blood remains undoctored by new strains; de- 
 meanor becomes crystallized for lack of contrasts* and 
 
 329 
 
330 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 manner gets set like a plaster mask. The English man- 
 ner of to-day, of what are called the classes, is the growth 
 of only a century or so. There was probably nothing at 
 all like it in the days of Elizabeth or even of Charles II. 
 The English manner was still racy when the inhabitants 
 of Virginia, as we are told, sent over to ask that there 
 might be despatched to them some hierarchical assistance 
 
 for the good of their souls, and were answered: "D n 
 
 your souls, grow tobacco!" The English manner of 
 to-day could not even have come into its own when that 
 epitaph of a lady, quoted somewhere by Gilbert Murray, 
 was written: "Bland, passionate, and deeply religious, 
 she was second cousin to the Earl of Lei trim; of such are 
 the Kingdom of Heaven." About that gravestone motto 
 was a certain lack of the self-consciousness which is now 
 the foremost characteristic of the English manner. 
 
 But this British self-consciousness is no mere fluffy 
 gaucherie* it is our special form of what Germans would 
 call "Kultur." Behind every manifestation of thought 
 or emotion the Briton retains control of self, and is think- 
 ing: "That's all I'll let them see"; even: "That's all I'll 
 let myself feel." This stoicism is good in its refusal to 
 be foundered; bad in that it fosters a narrow outlook; 
 starves emotion, spontaneity, and frank sympathy; de- 
 stroys grace and what one may describe roughly as the 
 lovable side of personality. The English hardly ever say 
 just what comes into their heads. What we call "good 
 form," the unwritten law which governs certain classes of 
 the Briton, savors of the dull and glacial; but there lurks 
 within it a core of virtue. It has grown up like callous 
 shell round two fine ideals suppression of the ego lest 
 it trample on the corns of other people, and exaltation of 
 the maxim: "Deeds before words." Good form, like any 
 other religion, starts well with some ethical truth, but 
 * Gaucherie, awkwardness, stiffness. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 331 
 
 soon gets commonized and petrified till we can hardly 
 trace its origin, and watch with surprise its denial and 
 contradiction of the root idea. 
 
 Without doubt good form had become a kind of disease 
 in England. A French friend told me how he witnessed 
 in a Swiss hotel the meeting between an Englishwoman 
 and her son, whom she had not seen for two years; she 
 was greatly affected by the fact that he had not brought 
 a dinner jacket. The best manners are no "manners," 
 or at all events no mannerisms; but many Britons who 
 have even attained to this perfect purity are yet not free 
 from the paralytic effects of "good form"; are still self- 
 conscious in the depths of their souls, and never do or 
 say a thing without trying not to show what they are 
 feeling. All this guarantees a certain decency in life; 
 but in intimate intercourse with people of other nations 
 who have not this particular cult of suppression, we Eng- 
 lish disappoint, and jar, and often irritate. Nations have 
 their differing forms of snobbery. At one time the Eng- 
 lish all wanted to be second cousins to the Earl of Lei trim, 
 like that lady bland and passionate. Nowadays it is not 
 so simple. The Earl of Leitrim has become etherealized. 
 We no longer care how a fellow is born so long as he be- 
 haves as the Earl of Leitrim would have, never makes 
 himself conspicuous or ridiculous, never shows too much 
 what he's really feeling, never talks of what he's going 
 to do, and always "plays the game." The cult is centred 
 in our public schools* and universities. 
 
 At a very typical and honored old public school the 
 writer of this essay passed on the whole a happy time; 
 but what a curious life, educationally speaking! We 
 lived rather like young Spartans; and were not encour- 
 
 * Public school, in England, means a private school where the sons 
 of the well-to-do and the nobility prepare for college. They corre- 
 spond to Lawrenceville, Exeter, and other academies in America. 
 
332 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 aged to think, imagine, or see anything that we learned 
 in relation to life at large. It's very difficult to teach 
 boys, because their chief object in life is not to be taught 
 anything, but I should say we were crammed, not taught 
 at all. Living as we did the herd-life of boys with little 
 or no intrusion from our elders, and they men who had 
 been brought up in the same way as ourselves, we were 
 debarred from any real interest in philosophy, history, 
 art, literature and music, or any advancing notions in 
 social life or politics. I speak of the generality, not of the 
 few black swans among us. We were reactionaries almost 
 to a boy. I remember one summer term Gladstone came 
 down to speak to us, and we repaired to the Speech Room 
 with white collars and dark hearts, muttering what we 
 would do to that Grand Old Man if we could have our 
 way. But he contrived to charm us, after all, till we 
 cheered him vociferously. In that queer life we had all 
 sorts of unwritten rules of suppression. You must turn 
 up your trousers; must not go out with your umbrella 
 rolled. Your hat must be worn tilted forward; you must 
 not walk more than two abreast till you reached a cer- 
 tain form, nor be enthusiastic about anything, except 
 such a supreme matter as a drive over the pavilion at 
 cricket, or a run the whole length of the ground at foot- 
 ball. You must not talk about yourself or your home 
 people, and for any punishment you must assume com- 
 plete indifference. 
 
 I dwell on these trivialities because every year thou- 
 sands of British boys enter these mills which grind ex- 
 ceeding small, and because these boys constitute in after- 
 life the great majority of the official, military, academic, 
 professional, and a considerable proportion of the busi- 
 ness classes of Great Britain. They become the English- 
 men who say: "Really!" and they are for the most part 
 the Englishmen who travel and reach America. The 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 333 
 
 great defense I have always heard put up for our public 
 schools is that they form character. As oatmeal is sup- 
 posed to form bone in the bodies of Scotsmen, so our 
 public schools are supposed to form good, sound moral 
 fibre in British boys. And there is much in this plea. 
 The life does make boys enduring, self-reliant, good- 
 tempered and honorable, but it most carefully endeavors 
 to destroy all original sin of individuality, spontaneity, 
 and engaging freakishness. It implants, moreover, in the 
 great majority of those who have lived it the mental atti- 
 tude of that swell, who when asked where he went for his 
 hats, replied: "Blank's, of course. Is there another fel- 
 low's?" 
 
 To know all is to excuse all to know all about the 
 bringing up of English public school boys makes one 
 excuse much. The atmosphere and tradition of those 
 places is extraordinarily strong, and persists through all 
 modern changes. Thirty-seven years have gone since I 
 was a new boy, but cross-examining a young nephew who 
 left not long ago, I found almost precisely the same fea- 
 tures and conditions. The war, which has changed so 
 much of our social life, will have some, but no very great, 
 effect on this particular institution. The boys still go 
 there from the same kind of homes and preparatory 
 schools and come under the same kind of masters. And 
 the traditional unemotionalism, the cult of a dry and 
 narrow stoicism, is rather fortified than diminished by 
 the times we live in. 
 
 Our universities, on the other hand, are now mere 
 ghosts of their old selves. At a certain old college in 
 Oxford, last term, they had only two English students. 
 In the chapel under the Joshua Reynolds window, through 
 which the sun was shining, hung a long "roll of honor," a 
 hundred names and more. In the college garden an open- 
 air hospital was ranged under the old city wall, where we 
 
334 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 used to climb and go wandering in the early summer 
 mornings after some all-night spree. Down on the river 
 the empty college barges lay void of life. From the top 
 of one of them an aged custodian broke into words: " Ah ! 
 Oxford'll never be the same again in my time. Why, 
 who's to teach 'em rowin' ? When we do get undergrads 
 again, who's to teach 'em? All the old ones gone, killed, 
 wounded and that. No! Rowin'll never be the same 
 again not in my time." That was the tragedy of the 
 war for him. Our universities will recover faster than 
 he thinks, and resume the care of our particular "Kultur," 
 and cap the products of our public schools with the Ox- 
 ford accent and the Oxford manner. 
 
 An acute critic tells me that Americans reading such 
 deprecatory words as these by an Englishman about his 
 country's institutions would say that this is precisely an 
 instance of what an American means by the Oxford man- 
 ner. Americans whose attitude toward their own coun- 
 try is that of a lover to his lady or a child to its mother, 
 cannot he says understand how Englishmen can be 
 critical of their own country, and yet love her. Well, 
 the Englishman's attitude to his country is that of a man 
 to himself, and the way he runs her down is but a part 
 of that special English bone-deep self-consciousness. 
 Englishmen (the writer amongst them) love their country 
 as much as the French love France and the Americans 
 America; but she is so much a part of them that to speak 
 well of her is like speaking well of themselves, which they 
 have been brought up to regard as "bad form." When 
 Americans hear Englishmen speaking critically of their 
 own country, let them note it for a sign of complete 
 identification with that country rather than of detach- 
 ment from it. But on the whole it must be admitted 
 that English universities have a broadening influence on 
 the material which comes to them so set and narrow. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 335 
 
 They do a little to discover for their children that there 
 are many points of view, and much which needs an open 
 mind in this world. They have not precisely a demo- 
 cratic influence, but taken by themselves they would not 
 be inimical to democracy. And when the war is over 
 they will surely be still broader in philosophy and teach- 
 ing. Heaven forbid that we should see vanish all that is 
 old, and has, as it were, the virginia-creeper, the wis- 
 taria bloom of age upon it; there is a beauty in age and a 
 health in tradition, ill dispensed with. What is hateful 
 in age is its lack of understanding and of sympathy; in a 
 word its intolerance. Let us hope this wind of change 
 may sweep out and sweeten the old places of our country, 
 sweep away the cobwebs and the dust, our narrow ways 
 of thought, our mannikinisms. But those who hate in- 
 tolerance dare not be intolerant with the foibles of age; 
 we should rather see them as comic, and gently laugh 
 them out. I pretend to no proper knowledge of the 
 American people; but, though amongst them there are 
 doubtless pockets of fierce prejudice, I have on the whole 
 the impression of a wide and tolerant spirit. To that 
 spirit one would appeal when it comes to passing judgment 
 on the educated Briton. He may be self-sufficient, but 
 he has grit; and at bottom grit is what Americans appre- 
 ciate more than anything. If the motto of the old Ox- 
 ford college, "Manners makyth man," were true, one 
 would often be sorry for the Briton. But his manners do 
 not make him; they mar him. His goods are all absent 
 from the shop-window; he is not a man of the world in 
 the wider meaning of that expression. And there is, of 
 course, a particularly noxious type of travelling Briton, 
 who does his best, unconsciously, to deflower his coun- 
 try wherever he goes. Selfish, coarse-fibred, loud-voiced, 
 the sort which thanks God he is a Briton I suppose 
 because nobody else will do it for him. 
 
336 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 We live in times when patriotism is exalted above all 
 other virtues, because there happen to lie before the pa- 
 triotic tremendous chances for the display of courage and 
 self-sacrifice. Patriotism ever has that advantage, as 
 the world is now constituted; but patriotism and provin- 
 cialism are sisters under the skin, and they who can only 
 see bloom on the plumage of their own kind, who prefer 
 the bad points of their countrymen to the good points of 
 foreigners, merely write themselves down blind of an eye, 
 and panderers to herd feeling. America is advantaged 
 in this matter. She lives so far away from other nations 
 that she might well be excused for thinking herself the 
 only people in the world; but in the many strains of 
 blood which go to make up America there is as yet a 
 natural corrective to the narrower kind of patriotism. 
 America has vast spaces and many varieties of type and 
 climate, and life to her is still a great adventure. Amer- 
 icans have their own form of self-absorption, but seem 
 free as yet from the special competitive self-centrement 
 which has been forced on Britons through long centuries 
 by countless continental rivalries and wars. Insularity 
 was driven into the very bones of our people by the gen- 
 eration-long wars of Napoleon. A distinguished French 
 writer, Andre Chevrillon, whose book* may be com- 
 mended to any one who wishes to understand British 
 peculiarities, used these words in a recent letter: "You 
 English are so strange to us French, you are so utterly 
 different from any other people in the world." Yes! 
 We are a lonely race. Deep in our hearts, I think, we 
 feel that only the American people could ever really 
 understand us. And being extraordinarily self-conscious, 
 perverse, and proud, we do our best to hide from Ameri- 
 cans that we have any such feeling. It would distress 
 the average Briton to confess that he wanted to be under- 
 *England and the War. Hodder & Stoughton. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 33V 
 
 stood, had anything so natural as a craving for fellowship 
 or for being liked. We are a weird people, though we 
 seem so commonplace. In looking at photographs of 
 British types among photographs of other European na- 
 tionalities, one is struck by something which is in no 
 other of those races exactly as if we had an extra skin; 
 as if the British animal had been tamed longer than the 
 rest. And so he has. His political, social, legal life was 
 fixed long before that of any other Western country. 
 He was old, though not mouldering, before the May- 
 flower touched American shores and brought there ava- 
 tars, grave and civilized as ever founded nation. There 
 is something touching and terrifying about our character, 
 about the depth at which it keeps its real yearnings, about 
 the perversity with which it disguises them, and its in- 
 ability to show its feelings. We are, deep down, under 
 all our lazy mentality, the most combative and competi- 
 tive race in the world, with the exception, perhaps, of the 
 American. This is at once a spiritual link with America, 
 and yet one of the great barriers to friendship between 
 the two peoples. We are not sure whether we are better 
 men than Americans. Whether we are really better than 
 French, Germans, Russians, Italians, Chinese, or any 
 other race is, of course, more than a question; but those 
 peoples are all so different from us that we are bound, I 
 suppose, secretly to consider ourselves superior. But 
 between Americans and ourselves, under all differences, 
 there is some mysterious deep kinship which causes us to 
 doubt and makes us irritable, as if we were continually 
 being tickled by that question: Now am I really a better 
 man than he? Exactly what proportion of American 
 blood at this time of day is British, I know not; but 
 enough to make us definitely cousins always an awkward 
 relationship. We see in Americans a sort of image of 
 ourselves; feel near enough, yet far enough, to criticise 
 
338 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 and carp at the points of difference. It is as though a 
 man went out and encountered, in the street, what he 
 thought for the moment was himself, and, wounded in 
 his amour propre,* instantly began to disparage the appear- 
 ance of that fellow. Probably community of language 
 rather than of blood accounts for our sense of kinship, 
 for a common means of expression cannot but mould 
 thought and feeling into some kind of unity. One can 
 hardly overrate the intimacy which a common literature 
 brings. The lives of great Americans, Washington and 
 Franklin, Lincoln and Lee and Grant, are unsealed for 
 us, just as to Americans are the lives of Marlborough and 
 Nelson, Pitt and Gladstone and Gordon. Longfellow 
 and Whittier and Whitman can be read by the British 
 child as simply as Burns and Shelley and Keats. Emer- 
 son and William James are no more difficult to us than 
 Darwin and Spencer to Americans. Without an effort 
 we rejoice in Hawthorne and Mark Twain, Henry James 
 and Howells, as Americans can in Dickens and Thackeray, 
 Meredith and Thomas Hardy. And, more than all, 
 Americans own with ourselves all literature in the English 
 tongue before the Mayflower sailed; Chaucer and Spenser 
 and Shakespeare, Raleigh, Ben Jonson, and the authors 
 of the English Bible Version are their spiritual ancestors 
 as much as ever they are ours. The tie of language is 
 all-powerful for language is the food formative of minds. 
 A volume could be written on the formation of character 
 by literary humor alone. The American and Briton, 
 especially the British townsman, have a kind of bone- 
 deep defiance of Fate, a readiness for anything which 
 may turn up, a dry wry smile under the blackest sky, and 
 an individual way of looking at things which nothing can 
 shake. Americans and Britons both, we must and will 
 think for ourselves, and know why we do a thing before 
 * Amour propre, self -love, vanity. 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 339 
 
 we do it. We have that ingrained respect for the indi- 
 vidual conscience which is at the bottom of all free insti- 
 tutions. Some years before the war an intelligent and 
 cultivated Austrian, who had lived long in England, was 
 asked for his opinion of the British. "In many ways/' 
 he said, "I think you are inferior to us; but one great 
 thing I have noticed about you which we have not. You 
 think and act and speak for yourselves." If he had 
 passed those years in America instead of in England he 
 must needs have pronounced the same judgment of 
 Americans. Free speech, of course, like every form of 
 freedom, goes in danger of its life in war-time. The other 
 day, in Russia, an Englishman came on a street meeting 
 shortly after the first revolution had begun. An ex- 
 tremist was addressing the gathering and telling them 
 that they were fools to go on fighting, that they ought 
 to refuse and go home, and so forth. The crowd grew 
 angry, and some soldiers were for making a rush at him; 
 but the chairman, a big, burly peasant, stopped them 
 with these words: "Brothers, you know that our country 
 is now a country of free speech. We must listen to this 
 man, we must let him say anything he will. But, brothers, 
 when he's finished, we'll bash his head in!" 
 
 I cannot assert that either Britons or Americans are 
 incapable in tunes like these of a similar interpretation 
 of "free speech." Things have been done in our coun- 
 try, and will be done in America, which should make us 
 blush. But so strong is the free instinct in both countries 
 that some vestiges of it will survive even this war, for 
 democracy is a sham unless it means the preservation 
 and development of this instinct of thinking for oneself 
 throughout a people. "Government of the people, by 
 the people, for the people" means nothing unless indi- 
 viduals keep their consciences unfettered and think freely. 
 Accustom people to be nose-led and spoon-fed, and de- 
 
340 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 mocracy is a mere pretense. The measure of democracy 
 is the measure of the freedom and sense of individual re- 
 sponsibility in its humblest citizens. And democracy 
 I say it with solemnity has yet to prove itself. 
 
 A scientist, Dr. Spurrell, in a recent book, Man and 
 His Forerunners, diagnoses the growth of civilizations 
 somewhat as follows: A civilization begins with the en- 
 slavement by some hardy race of a tame race living a 
 tame life in more congenial natural surroundings. It is 
 built up on slavery, and attains its maximum vitality in 
 conditions little removed therefrom. Then, as individual 
 freedom gradually grows, disorganization sets in and the 
 civilization slowly dissolves away in anarchy. Dr. Spur- 
 rell does not dogmatize about our present civilization, 
 but suggests that it will probably follow the civilizations 
 of the past into dissolution. I am not convinced of that, 
 because of certain factors new to the history of man. 
 Recent discoveries are unifying the world; such old iso- 
 lated swoops of race on race are not now possible. In our 
 great industrial states, it is true, a new form of slavery 
 has arisen, but not of man by man, rather of man by 
 machines. Moreover, all past civilizations have been 
 more or less Southern, and subject to the sapping influ- 
 ence of the sun. Modern civilization is essentially North- 
 ern. The individualism, however, which, according to 
 Dr. Spurrell, dissolved the empires of the past, exists 
 already, in a marked degree, in every modern state; and 
 the problem before us is to discover how democracy and 
 liberty of the subject can be made into enduring props 
 rather than dissolvents. It is the problem of making 
 democracy genuine. And certainly, if that cannot be 
 achieved and perpetuated, there is nothing to prevent 
 democracy drifting into anarchism and dissolving modern 
 states, till they are the prey of pouncing dictators, or of 
 states not so far gone in dissolution. What, for instance, 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 341 
 
 will happen to Russia if she does not succeed in making 
 her democracy genuine? A Russia which remains an- 
 archic must very quickly become the prey of her neigh- 
 bors on west and east. 
 
 Ever since the substantial introduction of democracy 
 nearly a century and a half ago with the American War 
 of Independence, Western civilization has been living on 
 two planes or levels the autocratic plane, with which is 
 bound up the idea of nationalism, and the democratic, to 
 which has become conjoined the idea of internationalism. 
 Not only little wars, but great wars such as this, come 
 because of inequality in growth, dissimilarity of political 
 institutions between states; because this state or that is 
 basing its life on different principles from its neighbors. 
 The decentralization, delays, critical temper, and im- 
 portance of home affairs prevalent in democratic coun- 
 tries make them at once slower, weaker, less apt to strike, 
 and less prepared to strike than countries where bureau- 
 cratic brains subject to no real popular check devise 
 world policies which can be thrust, prepared to the last 
 button, on the world at a moment's notice. The free 
 and critical spirit in America, France, and Britain has 
 kept our democracies comparatively unprepared for any- 
 thing save their own affairs. 
 
 We fall into glib usage of words like democracy and 
 make fetiches of them without due understanding. De- 
 mocracy is inferior to autocracy from the aggressively 
 national point of view; it is not necessarily superior to 
 autocracy as a guarantee of general well-being; it may 
 even turn out to be inferior unless we can improve it. 
 But democracy is the rising tide; it may be dammed or 
 delayed, but cannot be stopped. It seems to be a law 
 in human nature that where, in any corporate society, the 
 idea of self-government sets foot it refuses to take that 
 foot up again. State after state, copying the American 
 
342 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 example, has adopted the democratic principle; the 
 world's face is that way set. And civilization is now so 
 of a pattern that the Western world may be looked on 
 as one state and the process of change therein from au- 
 tocracy to democracy regarded as though it were taking 
 place in a single old-time country such as Greece or 
 Rome. If throughout Western civilization we can se- 
 cure the single democratic principle of government, its 
 single level of state morality in thought and action, we 
 shall be well on our way to unanimity throughout the 
 world; for even in China and Japan the democratic virus 
 is at work. It is my belief that only in a world thus uni- 
 form, and freed from the danger of pounce by autocracies, 
 have states any chance to develop the individual con- 
 science to a point which shall make democracy proof 
 against anarchy and themselves proof against dissolu- 
 tion; and only in such a world can a League of Nations 
 to enforce peace succeed. 
 
 But even if we do secure a single plane for Western 
 civilization and ultimately for the world, there will be 
 but slow and difficult progress in the lot of mankind. 
 And unless we secure it, there will be only a march back- 
 ward. 
 
 For this advance to a uniform civilization the soli- 
 darity of the English-speaking races is vital. Without 
 that there will be no bottom on which to build. 
 
 The ancestors of the American people sought a new 
 country because they had in them a reverence for the in- 
 dividual conscience; they came from Britain, the first 
 large state in the Christian era to build up the idea of 
 political freedom. The instincts and ideals of our two 
 races have ever been the same. That great and lovable 
 people, the French, with their clear thought and expres- 
 sion, and their quick blood, have expressed those ideals 
 more vividly than either of us. But the phlegmatic and 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 343 
 
 the dry tenacity of our English and American tempera- 
 ments has ever made our countries the most settled 
 and safe homes of the individual conscience, and of its 
 children Democracy, Freedom and Internationalism. 
 Whatever their faults and their offenses cry aloud to 
 such poor heaven as remains of chivalry and mercy the 
 Germans are in many ways a great race, but they possess 
 two qualities dangerous to the individual conscience 
 unquestioning obedience and exaltation. When they 
 embrace the democratic idea they may surpass us all in 
 its logical development, but the individual conscience 
 will still not be at ease with them. We must look to our 
 two countries to guarantee its strength and activity, and 
 if we English-speaking races quarrel and become dis- 
 united, civilization will split up again and go its way to 
 ruin. We are the ballast of the new order. 
 
 I do not believe in formal alliances or in grouping na- 
 tions to exclude and keep down other nations. Friend- 
 ships between countries should have the only true reality 
 of common sentiment, and be animated by desire for the 
 general welfare of mankind. We need no formal bonds, 
 but we have a sacred charge in common, to let no petty 
 matters, differences of manner, or divergencies of ma- 
 terial interest, destroy our spiritual agreement. Our 
 pasts, our geographical positions, our temperaments make 
 us, beyond all other races, the hope and trustees of man- 
 kind's advance along the only line now open democratic 
 internationalism. It is childish to claim for Americans 
 or Britons virtues beyond those of other nations, or to 
 believe in the superiority of one national culture to an- 
 other; they are different, that is all. It is by accident 
 that we find ourselves in this position of guardianship to 
 the main line of human development; no need to pat 
 ourselves on the back about it. But we are at a great and 
 critical moment in the world's history how critical none 
 
344 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 of us alive will ever realize. The civilization slowly built 
 since the fall of Rome has either to break up and dissolve 
 into jagged and isolated fragments through a century of 
 wars; or, unified and reanimated by a single idea, to 
 move forward on one plane and attain greater height and 
 breadth. 
 
 Under the pressure of this war there is, beneath the 
 lip-service we pay to democracy, a disposition to lose 
 faith in it because of its undoubted weakness and incon- 
 venience in a struggle with states autocratically governed; 
 there is even a sort of secret reaction to autocracy. On 
 those lines there is no way out of a future of bitter rival- 
 ries, chicanery and wars, and the probable total failure of 
 our civilization. The only cure which I can see lies in 
 democratizing the whole world and removing the present 
 weaknesses and shams of democracy by education of the 
 individual conscience in every country. Good-by to that 
 chance if Americans and Britons fall foul of each other, 
 refuse to pool their thoughts and hopes, and to keep the 
 general welfare of mankind in view. They have got to 
 stand together, not in aggressive and jealous policies, but 
 in defense and championship of the self-helpful, self- 
 governing, "live and let live" philosophy of life. 
 
 The house of the future is always dark. There are 
 few corner-stones to be discerned in the temple of our 
 fate. But of these few one is the brotherhood and bond 
 of the English-speaking races, not for narrow purposes, 
 but that mankind may yet see faith and good-will en- 
 shrined, yet breathe a sweeter air, and know a life where 
 Beauty passes, with the sun on her wings. 
 
 We want in the lives of men a "Song of Honor," as in 
 Ralph Hodgson's poem: 
 
 "The song of men all sorts and kinds, 
 As many tempers, moods and minds 
 As leaves are on a tree, 
 
JOHN GALSWORTHY 345 
 
 As many faiths and castes and creeds, 
 As many human bloods and breeds, 
 As in the world may be." 
 
 In the making of that song the English-speaking races 
 will assuredly unite. What made this world we know 
 not; the principle of life is inscrutable and will forever be; 
 but we know that Earth is yet on the up-grade of existence, 
 the mountain top of man's life not reached, that many 
 centuries of growth are yet in front of us before Nature 
 begins to chill this planet till it swims, at last, another 
 moon, in space. In the climb to that mountain top of a 
 happy life for mankind our two great nations are as guides 
 who go before, roped together in perilous ascent. On 
 their nerve, loyalty, and wisdom the adventure now hangs. 
 What American or British knife will sever the rope? 
 
 He who ever gives a thought to the life of man at large, 
 to his miseries and disappointments, to the waste and 
 cruelty of existence, will remember that if American or 
 Briton fail himself, or fail the other, there can but be for 
 us both, and for all other peoples, a hideous slip, a swift 
 and fearful fall into an abyss, whence all shall be to begin 
 over again. 
 
 We shall not fail neither ourselves, nor each other. 
 Our comradeship will endure. 
 
 1917. 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 
 IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
Henry van Dyke (1852 ), one of the eminent men 
 
 of letters of to-day, was born at Germantown, near Phila- 
 delphia. He prepared for college at the Brooklyn Poly- 
 technic Institute, and was graduated from Princeton in 
 1873. He next took a course in the Theological Seminary, 
 followed by study at the University of Berlin. He en- 
 tered the Presbyterian ministry, serving as pastor of the 
 Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. His work 
 as a literary critic having given him a reputation, he was 
 offered and accepted a position as professor of literature 
 at Princeton. In 1913-17 he served as United States 
 minister to the Netherlands, and during the World War 
 his writings were of great value, both as interpreting 
 Europe to America and America to Europe. He has re- 
 ceived degrees from many universities; he is a commander 
 in the Legion of Honor, and has served as president of 
 the National Institute of Arts and Sciences. 
 
 His published works include a score of volumes, the 
 most important of which are a book of essays on The Po- 
 etry of Tennyson ; several volumes of poems, published in 
 collected form in 1911; two books of short stories, The 
 Blue Flower and The Ruling Passion, and several volumes 
 of essays and sketches with such attractive titles as Fisher- 
 man's Luck, Little Rivers, and Days Off. Another volume, 
 Essays in Application, deals with deeper themes; it is 
 from this that the essay, "Is the World Growing Better?" 
 is taken. 
 
 His writing is characterized by finish of style, breadth 
 of outlook, and ripe and serene wisdom. 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
 IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER? 
 
 (From Essays in Application) 
 
 No man knows, of a certainty, the answer to this 
 question. 
 
 If it were an inquiry into the condition of the world's 
 pocketbook, or farm, or garden, or machine house, or 
 library, or schoolroom, the answer would be easy. Six 
 million more spindles whirling in the world's workshop 
 in 1903 than in 1900; eight hundred million more bushels 
 of wheat in the world's grain-fields than in 1897; an aver- 
 age school attendance gaining 145 per cent between 1840 
 and 1888, while the population of Europe increased only 
 33 per cent. So the figures run in every department. 
 No doubt the world is busier, richer, better fed, and prob- 
 ably it knows more, than ever before. 
 
 I am not one of those highly ethereal and supercilious 
 people who can find nothing in this to please them, and 
 who cry lackadaisically: "What is all this worth?" I 
 am honest enough to confess to a sense of satisfaction 
 when my little vegetable garden rewards my care with 
 an enlarged crop, or when my children bring home a 
 good report from school. Why should not a common- 
 sense philanthropy Jead us to feel in the same way about 
 the improved condition and the better reports of the big 
 world to which we belong? Of course our satisfaction is 
 checked and shadowed, often very darkly shadowed, by 
 the remembrance of those who are left behind in the 
 march of civilization the retarded races, the benighted 
 classes, the poor relations, of the world. But our sym- 
 pathy with them is much more likely to be helpful if it 
 
 349 
 
350 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 is hopeful, than if it is despairing. I do not think it 
 necessary to cultivate melancholy or misanthropy as a 
 preparation for beneficence. 
 
 A generous man ought to find something cheerful and 
 encouraging to his own labors, in the knowledge that the 
 world is growing "better off." 
 
 But is it growing better? That's another question, 
 and a far more important one. What is happening to 
 the world itself, the owner of all this gear, the prosperous 
 old adventurer whose wealth, according to Mr. Gladstone, 
 increased twice as much during the first seventy years of 
 the nineteenth century as it had done during the eighteen 
 hundred years preceding? Is this marvellous increase 
 of goods beneficial to the character of the race ? Or is it 
 injurious? Or has it, perhaps, no deep or definite influ- 
 ence one way or the other? 
 
 You know how hard it is to come to a clear and just 
 conclusion on such points as these, even in the case of an 
 individual man. Peter Silvergilt's wealth has grown 
 from nothing to three hundred million dollars during the 
 last fifty years; but are you sure that Peter's personality 
 is better, finer, nobler, more admirable than it was when 
 he was a telegraph-boy earning ten dollars a week? 
 William Wiseman has a world- wide fame as a scholar; 
 it is commonly reported that he has forgotten more than 
 most men ever knew; but can you trust William more 
 implicitly to be fair and true and generous than when 
 he was an obscure student just beginning to work for a 
 degree in philosophy? 
 
 When we try to apply such questions, not to a single 
 person, but to the world at large, positive and mathemat- 
 ical answers are impossible. The field of inquiry is too 
 vast. The facts of racial character are too secret and 
 subtle. 
 
 But a provisional estimate of the general condition of 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 351 
 
 the world from the point of view of goodness, comparing 
 the present with the past a probable guess at the direc- 
 tion in which the race is moving morally this is some- 
 thing that we may fairly make. Indeed, if you think and 
 care much about your brother men you can hardly help 
 making it, and upon the color of this guess the tone of 
 your philosophy depends. If the color is dark, you be- 
 long among the pessimists, who cannot be very happy, 
 though they may sometimes be rather useful. If the 
 color is bright, you are what men call an optimist, though 
 I think George Eliot's word, "meliorist," would be a 
 more fitting name. 
 
 For what is it, after all, that we can venture to claim 
 for this old world of ours, at most? Certainly not that 
 it is altogether good, nor even that it is as good as it might 
 be and therefore ought to be. Police stations and prisons 
 and wars are confessions that some things are wrong and 
 need correction. The largest claim that a cheerful man 
 who is also a thoughtful man a child of hope with his 
 eyes open dares to make for the world is that it is better 
 than it used to be, and that it has a fair prospect of 
 further improvement. This is meliorism, the philosophy 
 of actual and possible betterment; not a high-stepping, 
 trumpet-blowing, self-flattering creed, immediately avail- 
 able for advertising purposes; but a modest and sober 
 faith, useful for consolation in those hours of despondency 
 and personal disappointment when the grasshopper and 
 the critic both become a burden, and for encouragement 
 to more earnest effort in those hours of cheer when a 
 high tide of the spirit fills us with good-will to our fellow 
 men. 
 
 I asked John Friendly the other day: "Do you think 
 the world is growing better?" 
 
 "Certainly," said he, with a smile like sunrise on his 
 honest face, "I haven't the slightest doubt of it." 
 
352 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 "But what makes you so sure of it?" 
 
 "Why, it must be so! Look at all the work that is 
 being done to-day to educate people and help them into 
 better ways of living. All this effort must count for 
 something. The wagon must move with so many horses 
 pulling at it. The world can't help growing better !" 
 
 Then he left me, to go down to a meeting of his " Citizens' 
 Committee for the Application of the Social Boycott to 
 Political Offenders" (which frequently adjourns without 
 a quorum). Immediately afterward I passed the door of 
 the "Michael T. Moriarty Republi-cratic Club" wide 
 open and crowded. On my way up the avenue I saw a 
 liquor-saloon on every block and all busy. The news- 
 stands were full of placards announcing articles in the 
 magazines "Graft in Chicago," "The Criminal Calendar 
 of Millionaires," "St. Louis, the Bribers' Paradise," "The 
 Plunder of Philadelphia." Head-lines in the yellow jour- 
 nals told of "Immense Slaughter in Manchuria," "Russia 
 Ripe for Revolution," "The Black Hand Terror in the 
 Bronx," "Gilded Gambling-Dens of the Four Hundred," 
 "Diamonds and Divorce." 
 
 John Friendly's cheerful a priori* confidence in the bet- 
 terment of the world seemed to need reinforcement. Some 
 of the horses are pulling his way, no doubt, but a good 
 many appear to be pulling the other way. Under such 
 conditions the wagon might stick fast, or go backward. 
 Possibly it might be pulled to pieces. Who can measure, 
 in the abstract, the comparative strength of the good and 
 the evil forces? Who can tell beforehand which way the 
 tug-of-war must go? 
 
 The only sound and satisfactory method is to bring 
 out the foot rule of fact and apply it to the tracks of the 
 wagon. Has it moved ? How fast, how far, which way ? 
 
 "Growing better" is a phrase about which a company 
 * A priori, reasoning from cause to effect. 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 353 
 
 of college professors would probably have a long prelim- 
 inary dispute; but plain people understand it well enough 
 for practical purposes. There are three factors in it. 
 When we say that a man grows better, we mean that, in 
 the main, he is becoming more just, and careful to do the 
 right thing; more kind, and ready to do the helpful thing; 
 more self-controlled, and willing to sacrifice his personal 
 will to the general welfare. Is the world growing better 
 in this sense? Is there more justice, more kindness, 
 more self-restraint, among the inhabitants of earth than 
 in the days of old? 
 
 Of course, when we consider a question like this, before 
 even a modest guess at the answer is possible, we must be 
 willing to take a long view and a wide view. The world, 
 like the individual man, has its moods and its vagaries, 
 its cold fits and its hot fits, its backslidings and its re- 
 pentances, its reactions and its revivals. An advance 
 made in one century may be partly lost in the next, and 
 regained with interest in a later century. One nation 
 may be degenerating, under local infections of evil, while 
 others are improving. There may be years, or regions, 
 of short harvest in the field of morals, just as there are 
 in the cotton-field or the corn-field. The same general 
 conditions that work well for the development of most 
 men, may prove unfavorable to certain races. Civiliza- 
 tion seems to oppress and demoralize some tribes to the 
 point of extinction. Liberty is a tonic too strong for 
 certain temperaments; it intoxicates them. But what 
 we have to look at is not the local exception, nor the tem- 
 porary reaction: it is the broad field as far as we can see 
 it, the general movement as far as we can trace it. And 
 as I try to look at the question in this way, clearly and 
 steadily, it seems to me that the world is really growing 
 better: not in every eddy, but in the main current of its 
 life; not in a straight line, but with a winding course; not 
 
354 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 in every respect, but in at least two of the three main 
 points of goodness; not swiftly, but slowly, surely, really 
 growing better. 
 
 Take the matter of justice. The world's sense of 
 equity, its desire to act fairly and render to every man 
 his due, is expressed most directly in its laws. Who can 
 fail to see a process of improvement in the spirit and tem- 
 per of legislation, a conscientious effort to make the law 
 more efficient in the protection of human rights and more 
 just in the punishment of offenses? 
 
 In Shakespeare's time, for example, a woman's exist- 
 ence, in the eye of the law, was merged in that of her 
 husband. A man could say of his wife: "She is my 
 goods, my chattels; she is my house, my household stuff, 
 my field, my barn, my horse, my ox, my anything." The 
 very presents which he gave her were still his property. 
 He could beat her. He could deprive her of the guardian- 
 ship of her children. It was not until the end of the 
 seventeenth century that the law secured her right to 
 the separate use of her property, and not until the middle 
 of the nineteenth century that the legislation of Great 
 Britain and America began to recognize and protect her 
 as a person, entitled to work and receive wages, to dis- 
 pose of her own earnings, to have an equal share with 
 her husband in the guardianship of their children. Surely 
 it is an immense gain in justice that woman should be 
 treated as a human being. 
 
 This gain is most evident, of course, in those nations 
 which are leading the march of civilization. But I think 
 we can see traces of it elsewhere. The abolition of child- 
 marriage and the practical extinction of the suttee* in 
 India, the decline of the cruelly significant fashion of 
 
 * Suttee, the custom among Hindoo wives of casting themselves 
 into the funeral pyre where the body of the husband was being 
 burned. 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 355 
 
 " foot-binding" in China, the beginning of the education 
 of girls in Egypt, are hints that even the heathen world 
 is learning to believe that woman may have a claim to 
 justice. 
 
 In the same way we must interpret the laws for the 
 protection of the young against cruelt}^ oppression, and 
 injustice. Beginning with the Factory Act of 1833 and 
 the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 in England, there 
 has been a steadily increasing effort to diminish and pre- 
 vent the degradation of the race by the enslavement of 
 childhood to labor. Even the parent's right of control, 
 says the modern world, must be held in harmony with the 
 child's right to life and growth, mental, moral, and physi- 
 cal. The law itself must recognize the injustice of deal- 
 ing with young delinquents as if they were old and hard- 
 ened criminals. No more herding of children ten and 
 twelve years old in the common jail ! Juvenile courts 
 and probation officers, asylums and reformatories: an in- 
 telligent and systematic effort to reclaim the young life 
 before it has fallen into hopeless bondage to crime : this is 
 the spirit of civilized legislation to-day. In 1903 no less 
 than ten of the American states enacted special statutes 
 with this end in view. 
 
 The great change for the better in modern criminal 
 law is another proof that the world is growing more just. 
 Brutal and degrading methods of execution, such as cruci- 
 fixion, burying alive, impaling, disembowelling, breaking 
 on the wheel: the judicial torture of prisoners and unwill- 
 ing witnesses by the thumb-screw, the strappado, and the 
 rack: cruel and agonizing penalties of various kinds have 
 been abolished, not merely by way of concession to hu- 
 manity, but with the purpose of maintaining justice in 
 purity and dignity. 
 
 The world has been learning to discriminate more care- 
 fully between the degrees of crime. In the eighteenth 
 
35S THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 century men were condemned to death for forgery; for 
 stealing from a shop to the value of five shillings or from 
 a house to the value of forty shillings; for malicious in- 
 jury to trees, cattle, or fish-ponds; for the cutting of hop- 
 bands from the poles in a plantation. Within eighty 
 years capital punishment has been inflicted in England 
 for sheep-stealing and for robbery from a house. The 
 laws of Pennsylvania at the time of the Revolution enu- 
 merated twenty crimes punishable with death; in Virginia 
 and Kentucky there were twenty-seven. Modern legis- 
 lation recognizes the futility as well as the fundamental 
 injustice of such crass and indiscriminate retribution, and 
 reserves the final penalty for the supreme crime against 
 the life of the individual or the state. 
 
 At the same time there has been a twofold rectification 
 of the scope of the criminal law. Some of the offenses 
 most severely punished in old times have ceased to be 
 grounds of prosecution: for example, heresy, witchcraft, 
 religious nonconformity. On the other hand, misdeeds 
 which formerly were disregarded have been made pun- 
 ishable. It was not until 1833 that the English law began 
 to treat drunkenness as a crime, rather than a misfortune. 
 In 1857 a fraud on the part of a trustee, and in 1875 the 
 falsification of accounts, were declared to be criminal. 
 The laws of various States are recognizing and defining a 
 vast number of new misdemeanors, such as the adultera- 
 tion of foods, gambling, violation of laws in restraint of 
 the liquor traffic, selling cigarettes to children, tapping 
 electric wires, disfiguring the landscape with advertise- 
 ments or printing them on the American flag, making 
 combinations in restraint of trade, sleeping in a public 
 bakery, spitting on the floor of a street-car. I do not 
 say that all of these offenses are wisely defined or fairly 
 punished; but I do say that the process of modern legis- 
 lation in regard to such matters indicates a growing desire 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 357 
 
 among men that justice shall prevail in the commu- 
 nity. 
 
 A large part of what appears to be the increase of 
 crime in recent years (according to statistics), is due to 
 this new definition of misdemeanors. There are more 
 offenders in the most peaceful and well-governed states, 
 because there are more offenses defined. Another part 
 comes from the greater efficiency in the execution of laws 
 and the greater completeness in the tabulation of reports. 
 The remaining part comes from a cause on which I will 
 touch later. But in spite of this apparent increase of 
 crime, no sensible man believes that the actual amount 
 of violence and disorder among men is as great as it used 
 to be. Pike's History of Crime in England estimates that 
 in the fourteenth century murders were at least sixteen 
 times as frequent as in our own day. 
 
 I pass by such notorious and splendid triumphs of the 
 world's moral sense as the abolition of the slave-trade, 
 and the establishment of international law, to mention 
 two humble, concrete illustrations of what I mean by the 
 advance of justice. The purchase by the American Gov- 
 ernment of the lands of the Spanish friars in the Phil- 
 ippines was a just way of accomplishing what would have 
 been done a century ago by confiscation. The passage 
 by the Congress of the United States of an act granting 
 copyright to foreigners was a recognition, resisted by 
 selfishness and ignorance for fifty years, of the funda- 
 mental principles of righteousness and fair dealing. 
 
 I know there are many items, and some of them most 
 grievous, to be set down on the other side. There are 
 still wars of conquest; corruptions and delays in legisla- 
 tion; oppressions and inequalities in government; rob- 
 beries and cruelties which go unpunished. But these are 
 not new things; they are as old as sin; evils not yet shaken 
 off. I do not dream that the world is already quite just. 
 
358 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 But by the light that comes from the wiser, fairer laws of 
 many lands, I guess that the world is growing more just. 
 
 In regard to the increase of kindness in the human 
 race, the evidence is even more clear and strong. There 
 are more people in the world who love mercy, and they 
 are having better success in making their spirit prevail. 
 More is being done to-day to prevent and mitigate human 
 suffering, to shelter and protect the weak and helpless, to 
 minister wisely to the sick and wounded in body and in 
 mind, than ever before in the history of mankind. Part 
 of the evidence of this lies in some of the facts already 
 noted in connection with the humanizing of the law, and 
 in the extraordinary story of the work begun by John 
 Howard, a hundred and thirty years ago, which has 
 cleansed away so much of the shame of a cruel, filthy, and 
 irrational prison system. But there is evidence, also, of 
 a more direct and positive sort, going beyond the removal 
 of ancient evils and manifesting a spirit of creative kind- 
 ness eager to find new ways of helping others. 
 
 Since the middle of the nineteenth century, says the 
 best authority on statistics, charity has grown twice as 
 fast as wealth in England, three times as fast in France. 
 In the United States the amount of the larger gifts ($5,000 
 or more) rose from $29,000,000, in 1893, to $107,000,000, 
 in 1901. The public and private charities of New York 
 alone (excluding the money spent on buildings) are esti- 
 mated at $50,000,000 a year. 
 
 With all this increase of money comes an equal increase 
 of care and thought in regard to the best way of using it 
 for the real benefit of mankind. Reckless almsgiving is 
 recognized as an amiable but idiotic form of self-indul- 
 gence. The penny dropped into the beggar's hat gives 
 place to an inquiry into the beggar's condition. This 
 costs more, but it is worth more. Waste in money given 
 is no more virtuous than waste in money earned. Schools 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 359 
 
 of philanthropy are established to study and teach the 
 economy of generosity. Asylums are investigated and 
 supervised. Relief funds are intrusted to responsible 
 committees, who keep books and render accounts. Men 
 and women are trying to take the head into partnership 
 with the heart in beneficence. A rich father and mother 
 lose their child by scarlet fever: they give a million dol- 
 lars to endow an institution for the study and prevention 
 of infectious diseases. An excursion steamboat is burned 
 in New York harbor and a thousand people, most of them 
 poor, lose their lives; within two weeks $125,000 is given 
 for relief; it is not thrown away with open hands, but ad- 
 ministered by a committee with as much care as they 
 would bestow on their own affairs; every dollar is ac- 
 counted for, and a balance of $17,000 is left, to meet 
 future calls, or to be devoted to some kindred purpose. 
 These are illustrations of intelligent mercy. 
 
 Consider the advance in the general spirit of kindness 
 which is indicated by such a fact as the founding and suc- 
 cessful operation of the system of Working Men's Insur- 
 ance in Germany. A certain sum of money is set aside 
 for each workman every week (the employer and the 
 employee each contributing half), and the Government 
 adds a supplement of twelve dollars on each pension. 
 Ten million workmen are thus insured against sickness; 
 seventeen million against accident; ten million against 
 disability from old age. Six hundred and seventy thou- 
 sand persons receive the benefit of this fund in yearly 
 pensions. Incidentally there has been an immense bene- 
 fit in the increase of precautions to prevent accidents and 
 to reduce dangerous occupations. The employer who is 
 not yet willing to protect his workmen, for kindness' sake, 
 will do it to escape heavier taxes. And the community 
 which silently compels him to do this, the community 
 which says to the laboring man, "If you will perform your 
 
360 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 duty, you shall not starve when you are sick and old/' 
 is certainly growing more kind as well as more just. 
 
 Look at the broad field of what we may call interna- 
 tional mercy. It has been estimated that since the days 
 when the failure of the harvest drove Abraham from Pal- 
 estine down to Egypt to seek food for his starving people, 
 there have been three hundred and fifty great famines in 
 various parts of the world. How many of the hungry 
 nations received help from the outside world before the 
 nineteenth century began ? But now, within a week after 
 the distress is known, money, food, and help of all kinds 
 begin to flow in from all quarters of the globe. The 
 famine in India in 1900-1901 called forth contributions 
 from Great Britain, Germany, France, America, to the 
 amount of $72,000,000. The greater part came from 
 England, of course, but the whole world stood ready to 
 aid her. 
 
 After the great fire of London in 1666, and the Lisbon 
 earthquake in 1755, there was some outside assistance 
 given, it is true. But in the main, the stricken cities had 
 to suffer alone and help themselves. When the little city 
 of Galveston, Texas, was swept by flood in 1900, within 
 three weeks $750,000 was poured in for its relief, and 
 the whole fund amounted to nearly a million and a 
 half. 
 
 Turn again to look at the effort which the world is 
 making to get rid of the hell of war, or, if that be not 
 possible, at least to mitigate its horrors and torments. 
 The High Tribunal of Arbitration at The Hague is a 
 mile-stone on the world's path of progress toward the 
 peaceful method of solving international disputes. Each 
 year sees some new advance in that direction. Since 
 1903 Great Britain and France, Holland and Denmark, 
 France and Spain, Great Britain and Italy, France and 
 Holland, Great Britain and Spain, Italy and France, have 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 301 
 
 made treaties by which they pledge themselves to refer 
 all differences of certain kinds which may arise between 
 them to this tribunal for settlement. During the same 
 time at least seven international questions have been re- 
 ferred to special arbitrators. 
 
 True, war has not yet been eliminated from the pro- 
 gramme of the race. Great armaments are maintained 
 at incredible expense, and nations insist, as Ruskin said, 
 that it is good policy to purchase terror of one another at 
 the cost of hundreds of millions every year. Some of the 
 honest friends of peace are not yet reasonable enough to 
 see the folly of this arrangement. A peace which depends 
 upon fear is nothing but a suppressed war. Every now 
 and then the restraining fear gives way, in one place or 
 another, and thousands of men are dreaeed in uniform 
 and marshalled with music to blow one another's brains 
 out. But, in spite of all this, the growth of the spirit of 
 mercy in the world makes itself known in the application 
 of more humane rules to the inhumanity of war. Private 
 wars, prevalent in the Middle Ages, and piracy, tolerated 
 until the nineteenth century, have been abolished. The 
 slaughter, torture, and enslavement of prisoners of war, 
 which was formerly practised by even Christian nations, 
 gave place in the middle of the seventeenth century to the 
 custom of releasing all prisoners at the close of the war 
 without ransom. Even Mahometan nations agreed by 
 treaty that they would no longer subject their captives 
 to bondage or torture. Persia and Turkey, in 1828, 
 pledged themselves to the exchange of prisoners. 
 
 There has been a steady advance in the strictness and 
 efficiency of the rules protecting the life and property of 
 non-combatants, an immense decrease in the atrocities 
 inflicted by conquering armies upon the peaceful inhabi- 
 tants of vanquished countries. Let any man read the 
 story of the siege and sack of a town in Holland by the 
 
362 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 Spanish soldiers as it is given in Motley's Dutch Republic, 
 and compare it with the story of the capture of Paris in 
 1870, or even the taking of Pekin in 1900, and he will 
 understand that war itself has felt the restraining touch 
 of mercy. Let him reflect upon the significance of the 
 work of the Red Cross Society, with its pledge of kindly 
 succor to all who are wounded in battle, "treating friend 
 and foe alike"; let him consider the remarkable fact that 
 this society in Japan has a service as perfectly organized 
 as any in the world, with a million members, and an an- 
 nual income of more than $1,500,000, and he cannot but 
 acknowledge that the spirit of pity and compassion has 
 gained ground since the days of Charlemagne and Bar- 
 barossa and Napoleon yes, even since the days of Libby 
 Prison and Elmira. And if none of these things are enough 
 to comfort or encourage him, let him take in the meaning 
 of the simple fact that not one of the great nations of 
 the world to-day would dare to proclaim a war in the 
 name of Religion. By this blessed change alone, I should 
 make bold to guess that the world is surely growing 
 better. 
 
 But how is it with the third factor of real betterment: 
 self-restraint, the willingness to sacrifice one's own pas- 
 sion and pleasure for the good of others? Here, I con- 
 fess, my guessing is confused and troubled. There was a 
 vast improvement from the fourteenth to the nineteenth 
 century, no doubt. But whether the twentieth century 
 is carrying on the advance seems uncertain. 
 
 It may be that on this point we have entered into a 
 period of reaction. The theory of individual liberty 
 threatens to assert itself in dangerous forms. Literature 
 and art are throwing their enchantments about the old 
 lie that life's highest value is found in moments of in- 
 tense self -gratification. Speed is glorified, regardless of 
 direction. Strength is worshipped at the expense of 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 363 
 
 reason. Success is deified as the power to do what one 
 likes. Gilding covers a multitude of sins. 
 
 On the one hand, we have a so-called "upper class," 
 which says: "The world was made to amuse me; nothing 
 else matters." On the other hand, we have an appar- 
 ent increase of the criminal class, which lives at war with 
 the social order. Corporations and labor unions engage 
 in a struggle so fierce that the rights and interests of the 
 community are forgotten by both parties. In our own 
 country lynching, which is organized murder for unproved 
 offenses, grows more common; divorces increase to 60,000 
 in one year; and there is an epidemic of shocking acci- 
 dents and disasters, greater than any hitherto recorded, 
 and due apparently to the spirit of unrestraint and reck- 
 lessness which is sweeping furiously in its motor-car along 
 the highways of modern life. 
 
 Is this selfish and headlong spirit growing? Will it 
 continue to accelerate the pace at which men live, and 
 diminish the control by which they are guided? Will it 
 weaken more and more the bonds of reverence, and mu- 
 tual consideration, and household fidelity, and civic 
 virtue, until the states which have been civilized by the 
 sanctions of love and the convictions of duty are whirled 
 backward, by the passion of self-indulgence, into the 
 barbarism of luxurious pleasure or the anarchy of social 
 strife? 
 
 These are the questions that rise to trouble us in our 
 moments of despondency and foreboding. But I think 
 that it is neither wise nor brave to give them an answer 
 of despair. Two are stronger than one. The growth 
 of justice and of kindness, I guess, will in the long run 
 prevail over the decline of self-restraint, and the selfish, 
 reckless spirit will be overcome. 
 
 At all events, when Christmas comes I shall sit down 
 with John Friendly to enjoy its cheer, rather than with 
 
364 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 any sour pessimist. For one thing is sure. The hope 
 of humanity lies in the widening, deeping influence of 
 that blessed Life which was born nineteen hundred years 
 ago in Bethlehem. The Lesson which that Life teaches 
 us is that the only way to make the world better is for 
 each man to do his best. 
 Christmas, 1904! 
 
 THE GREAT RELAPSE 
 
 Christmas, 1920 ! Sixteen years have passed since the 
 foregoing pages were written. Between them and now 
 what dread disaster has befallen our too cheerful hopes, 
 what hideous war-clouds have shadowed the world and 
 drenched it with blood and tears ! 
 
 Whence came this tempest of wrath? Out of the 
 depths of human nature, not yet delivered from the lusts 
 and passions that war within us and make wars around 
 us: out of the reckless greed of our civilization centering 
 its efforts on material riches and luxury and neglecting 
 the discipline of the mind and heart: and especially out 
 of the violent "will to power" of the German Empire, 
 ready to set fire to the world in order to gain its dominion. 
 These were the sources of the vast world-war of 1914- 
 1918, whose after-flames still burn along the borders and 
 whose ashes cover the face of the earth. 
 
 How immense the cost of that conflagration! Eight 
 million human lives swiftly blotted out in battle, and as 
 many more slowly devoured by misery and heart-break, 
 disease and starvation; two hundred billion dollars' worth 
 of world-wealth squandered in destruction or desperately 
 spent in defense; fair cities and famous temples laid in 
 ruin, fertile lands left bare and desolate; the health of 
 the race impaired by pestilence and famine; the mind of 
 millions poisoned by wild hatreds, shaken by swift tu- 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 365 
 
 mults of unrest, shell-shocked into a state of dull sus- 
 picion, anxious fear, and sudden anger that comes near 
 insanity, what a frightful price mankind has had to 
 pay! And for what? For nothing, absolutely nothing; 
 unless, unless indeed it was for liberty and a ksson. 
 Liberty to begin again, trying to make the world better: 
 the lesson that it never can be done until to a clearer 
 ideal of justice and a deeper impulse of mercy, mankind 
 shall join a greater power of self-control. 
 
 That was the point at which the slow progress of the 
 race, a real advance by small degrees, though far from 
 perfection, that was the point where the process of 
 peaceful development broke down in 1914, and the world 
 was plunged into the awful pit of strife and the red mire 
 of slaughter. I was wrong in saying that "two are 
 stronger than one." My calculation that because the 
 sense of justice and the motive of kindness were increas- 
 ing all must go well, was too hasty, too easy, too abso- 
 lute. At a given hour, for a certain time, one may be 
 stronger than two. 
 
 " Yet all these fences and their whole array 
 One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away." 
 
 It was the lack of self-control in German ambition, it 
 was the reckless and ruthless urge of self-aggrandizement 
 and the lust of mondial dominion, that swept away the 
 restraints of righteousness and silenced the scruples of 
 compassion and made Germany will war to win world- 
 power. "Upon the heads of her diplomats and princes 
 are the blood and guilt of it." But the burden and the 
 sorrow and the calamity of it press heavily upon all the 
 nations. 
 
 Yet in our dejection and the revulsion of our minds, in 
 our shock of dismay that such a thing could happen in 
 the twentieth century, we must beware of falling into the 
 
366 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 dark exaggerations of despair. This latest war was in- 
 deed the largest, but I do not believe it was the most 
 terrible, cruel, and barbarous known to history. Let us 
 be sane in our judgments and seek not to claim a false 
 pre-eminence for our own time even in evil things. Much 
 that mankind has gained through the centuries in miti- 
 gation of the concomitant horrors of warfare was for- 
 feited to the Teutonic theory of Schrecklichkeit, and the 
 Allies themselves were not free from reproach in their 
 methods of reprisal. Poison-gas, submarines, aerial bom- 
 bardments are indiscriminate and horrible weapons. But 
 after all there were some things in ancient warfare which 
 were not practised, for very shame, in this great conflict 
 of arms. 
 
 Prisoners of war were not chained in the galleyc, nor 
 decapitated by thousands. Wicked things were done in 
 Louvain and Dinant and Lille and elsewhere. But rich 
 captured cities were not given over to death and destruc- 
 tion. When Sulla took Athens the massacre of the in- 
 habitants was so fierce that the blood filled the market- 
 place like a pool and ran out of the city gate. When 
 Titus destroyed Jerusalem, when the Goths sacked Rome, 
 nothing was spared. When "The Spanish Fury" fell on 
 Antwerp in 1576, eight thousand people were murdered 
 in three days. Nothing comparable with that happened 
 in Belgium or Northern France in the late war. It was 
 bad, unspeakably bad, but it was not as bad as in the 
 olden time. If it had been, half the population of Europe 
 would have perished. 
 
 International law, though often broken and evaded by 
 the Germans, was never wholly denied. They even 
 promised to make good their transgressions when they 
 had won their victory ! The blackest page of the whole 
 history was the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks, 
 the unforgetable crime of an unpardonable despotism. 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 367 
 
 Through all this long and ghastly strife the Red Cross 
 went calmly and bravely on its errands of mercy to friend 
 and foe, ministering to the sick and wounded, seeking 
 with a divine inconsistency to help with one hand of 
 civilization those whom the other had smitten down. 
 
 Nor may we forget, amid our natural abhorrence of the 
 repulsive realities of war, that there was a real and essen- 
 tial difference between the two sides of the combat. 
 Germany was the actual assailant, she attacked, she 
 invaded, fighting for the extension of her empire, for "a 
 place in the sun," which she claimed as needful for her 
 fuller self-realization. The Allies were on the defensive. 
 They fought on their own soil to maintain their liberties, 
 their rights, their honor, and their life. 
 
 Now it is profoundly unreasonable to ignore the vital 
 difference between these two kinds of war, and so to put 
 them on a level, either in the same condemnation. Even 
 those who hold the absolute pacifist theory that physical 
 resistance to evil is never permissible, must still admit 
 that the aggressor has a far deeper guilt than the man 
 who withstands aggression. On the other hand, we who 
 believe that the gift of strength carries an obligation to 
 use it for the protection of assaulted virtue, imperilled 
 freedom, and justice endangered or openly attacked, must 
 hold that men who take arms in such a cause are soldiers 
 of the right, "thrice-armed" because they "have their 
 quarrel just." Believing this, I regard the victory of the 
 Allies and America in the late war as in the main, (and 
 despite all minor drawbacks and delinquencies,) a great 
 moral victory and a proof that the world is growing bet- 
 ter. If any one doubts this let him consider the alter- 
 native; let him read the programmes which the Lords of 
 Potsdam issued before and during their mad adventure; 
 let him think carefully what the triumph of the German. 
 Empire would have meant to the rest of mankind. See- 
 
368 THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY 
 
 ing that this great disaster did not come to pass, let us 
 thank God and take courage. 
 
 But these considerations are only rays of light gilding 
 the cloud of danger, distress, and apprehension that still 
 hangs over us. Will the world ever be much better un- 
 less we get rid of the anachronism of war as the arbiter 
 of disputes between nations? May not this method of 
 violence and unreason at any moment thrust us back 
 from the path of progress, destroy our dearly bought 
 gains of justice and mercy, and, overthrowing the shaken 
 pillars of civilization, bring back upon the world the dark 
 and shelterless night of barbarism ? 
 
 Undoubtedly it may, and probably it will, unless men 
 of good-will unite their efforts everywhere, and work to- 
 gether to prevent war and to establish peace on strong 
 foundations. 
 
 Two things will certainly help the wounded world to 
 recover from its great relapse and move forward again on 
 the path of progress. First, we must make a clear and 
 definite endeavor to bring a regulative, disciplinary influ- 
 ence into the progress of education. We must try to 
 bring up a new generation to understand and respect, not 
 only the sanctity of justice and the beauty of human- 
 kindness, but also the necessity of self-control. This 
 work can only be done through individuals, in the home, 
 the school, the church. It must be plain and patient, 
 watchful and sympathetic, loving and uncompromising, 
 satisfied with nothing less than the creation of a finer, 
 stronger, more self-restrained man, 
 
 "King of himself and servant of mankind." 
 
 Such men will do their best to avoid and avert war. 
 
 Second, we must carry the principle of self-control, 
 (which is so essential in the social relations of the com- 
 munity that we protect and uphold it by law,) into the 
 
HENRY VAN DYKE 369 
 
 international relations of the world. We must learn to 
 think of national sovereignty in terms of self-restraint as 
 well as in terms of action. We must interpose every 
 possible barrier between the cold ambition of rulers, or 
 the hot passions of the multitude, and those aggressive 
 policies and deeds which thrust war upon an unwilling 
 world. We must devise practical means by which the 
 cause of countries aggrieved or injured may have a 
 prompt appeal to an impartial council of arbitration, or 
 a fair and speedy trial before a high court of international 
 law. 
 
 But, you say, we already have those things, at least in 
 outline. Well then, all that we need is to make them 
 work, and to put behind them the combined force, the 
 concerted powers of those free nations that believe in 
 justice, mercy, and self-control, as the vital elements of 
 human progress. 
 
 In this good hope we labor. We believe that the world 
 has grown better. We confess that it has suffered, ap- 
 parently, after the weariness of a great trial the discour- 
 agement of a great relapse. But we set our will and our 
 work towards great recovery, in which the world shall grow 
 better yet. 
 
READING LIST OF ESSAYS 
 
READING LIST OF ESSAYS 
 
 Abbott, C. C.: 
 
 Days Out of Doors. 
 
 Freedom of the Fields. 
 Abbott, Lyman: 
 
 Problems of Life. 
 
 Spirit of Democracy. 
 Addison, Joseph: 
 
 The Spectator. 
 Arnold, Matthew: 
 
 Essays in Criticism. 
 Atlantic Classics: 
 
 Essays by various authors. 
 
 Bacon, Francis: 
 
 Essays. 
 Baker, Ray S. (David Grayson) : 
 
 Adventures in Contentment. 
 
 The Friendly Road. 
 Barrie, J. M.: 
 
 Margaret Ogilvy. 
 
 My Lady Nicotine. 
 Beebe, William: 
 
 Jungle Peace. 
 
 Edge of the Jungle. 
 Bennett, Arnold: 
 
 How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day. 
 
 Literary Taste and How to Form It. 
 
 Self and Self Management. 
 
 The Human Machine. 
 Benson, A. C.: 
 
 At Large. 
 
 Beside Still Waters. 
 
 From a College Window. 
 
 The Altar Fire. 
 
 The Silent Isle. 
 
 373 
 
374 READING LIST OF ESSAYS 
 
 Bergengren, Ralph: 
 
 The Comforts of Home. 
 
 The Perfect Gentleman. 
 Birrell, Augustine: 
 
 Men, Women and Books. 
 
 Obiter Dicta. 
 Black, Hugh: 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Work. 
 Bollee, Frank: 
 
 At the North of Bearcamp Water. 
 
 Land of Lingering Snow. 
 Brewer, D. J.: 
 
 American Citizenship. 
 Briggs, L. B. R.: 
 
 School, College and Character. 
 Browne, Thomas: 
 
 Religio Medici. 
 Bryce, James: 
 
 Hindrances to Good Citizenship. 
 Burroughs, John: 
 
 Accepting the Universe. 
 
 Indoor Studies. 
 
 Locusts and Wild Honey. 
 
 Signs and Seasons. 
 
 Wake-Robin. 
 
 Winter Sunshine. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas: 
 
 Heroes and Hero-Worship. 
 
 Sartor Resartus. 
 Chesterton, G. K: 
 
 A Miscellany of Men. 
 
 Defense of Nonsense. 
 Cowley, Abraham: 
 
 Discourses. 
 Croly, H.D.: 
 
 Promise of American Life. 
 Crothers, S. McC.: 
 
 Among Friends. 
 
 By the Christmas Fir. 
 
READING LIST OF ESSAYS 375 
 
 The Gentle Reader. 
 The Pardoner's Wallet. 
 Curtis, G. W.: 
 
 From the Easy Chair. 
 Prue and I. 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas: 
 
 English Mail Coach. 
 
 Flight of a Tartar Tribe. 
 Dobson, Austin: 
 
 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. 
 
 Eaton, W. P.: 
 
 Barn Doors and By Ways. 
 
 Green Trails and Upland Pastures. 
 Eliot, C. W.: 
 
 American Contributions to Civilization. 
 
 The Durable Satisfactions of Life. 
 Emerson, R. W.: 
 
 Conduct of Life. 
 
 Essays, First and Second Series. 
 
 Society and Solitude. 
 
 Galsworthy, John: 
 
 A Sheaf. 
 
 Another Sheaf. 
 
 Inn of Tranquillity. 
 Goldsmith, Oliver: 
 
 Citizen of the World. 
 Gosse, Edmund: 
 
 Gossip in a Library. 
 
 Portraits and Sketches. 
 Griggs, E. H.: 
 
 Self Culture. 
 
 Hazlitt, William: 
 
 Lectures on English Comic Writers. 
 
 Lectures on English Poets. 
 
 Table Talk. 
 Hearn, Lafcadio: 
 
 A Japanese Miscellany. 
 
 Out of the East. 
 
376 READING LIST OF ESSAYS 
 
 Holliday, R. C.: 
 
 Walking-Stick Papers. 
 Holmes, 0. W.: 
 
 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. 
 
 Poet at the Breakfast-Table. 
 
 Professor at the Breakfast-Table. 
 Howells, W. D.: 
 
 Criticism and Fiction. 
 
 London Films. 
 
 My Literary Passions. 
 
 Suburban Sketches. 
 Hudson, W.H.: 
 
 Naturalist in La Plata. 
 Hunt, Leigh: 
 
 Men, Women and Books. 
 
 Table Talk. 
 
 Wit and Humor. 
 
 Irving, Washington: 
 Sketch Book. 
 
 James, William: 
 
 Talks to Teachers. 
 
 The Will to Believe. 
 Jeffries, Richard: 
 
 Story of My Heart. 
 Jerome, J. K.: 
 
 Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. 
 
 Lamb, Charles: 
 
 Essays of Elia, First and Second Series. 
 Lang, Andrew: 
 
 Letters to Dead Authors. 
 Leacock, Stephen: 
 
 Literary Lapses. 
 Lowell, J. R.: 
 
 Among My Books. 
 
 Fireside Travels. 
 
 My Study Windows. 
 
READING LIST OF ESSAYS 377 
 
 Lucas, E. V.: 
 
 A Little of Everything. 
 Character and Comedy 
 Cloud and Silver. 
 Fireside and Sunshine. 
 
 Mabie, H.W.: 
 
 Books and Culture. 
 
 My Study Fire. 
 Macaulay, T. B.: 
 
 Literary and Historical Essays. 
 Martin, E. S.: 
 
 Windfalls of Observation. 
 Matthews, Brander: 
 
 Americans of the Future. 
 
 Inquiries and Opinions. 
 Milne, A. A.: 
 
 Not That It Matters. 
 Mitchell, D. G.: 
 
 Dream Life. 
 
 Reveries of a Bachelor. 
 Montaigne, Michel: 
 
 Essays. 
 More, P. E.: 
 
 Shelburne Essays. 
 Morley, Christopher: 
 
 Mince Pie. 
 
 Pipefuls. 
 
 Newman, John H. : 
 
 Historical Sketches. 
 
 Idea of a University. 
 Newton, A. E.: 
 
 Amenities of Book Collecting. 
 Nicholson, Meredith: 
 
 The Provincial American. 
 
 The Valley of Democracy. 
 
 The Man in the Street. 
 
 Pater, Walter H.: 
 
 Imaginary Portraits 
 The Renaissance. 
 
378 READING LIST OF ESSAYS 
 
 Repplier, Agnes: 
 
 Americans and Others. 
 
 Books and Men. 
 
 Compromises. 
 
 Essays in Idleness. 
 
 Points of View. 
 Roosevelt, Theodore: 
 
 American Ideals. 
 
 History as Literature, and Other Essays. 
 Ruskin, John: 
 
 Crown of Wild Olive. 
 
 Frondes Agrestes. 
 
 Sesame and Lilies. 
 
 Steele, Richard: 
 
 The Tatler. 
 Stephen, Leslie: 
 
 Hours in a Library. 
 Stevenson, R. L. : 
 
 Across the Plains. 
 
 Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 
 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 The Amateur Emigrant. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 Strunsky, Simeon: 
 
 Belshazzar Court. 
 
 Post-Impressions. 
 
 The Patient Observer. 
 
 Thru the Looking-Glass. 
 
 Thackeray, W. M.: 
 
 English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century. 
 
 Roundabout Papers. 
 Thoreau, H. D.: 
 
 Cape Cod. 
 
 Excursions. 
 
 Walden. 
 
 Van Dyke, Henry: 
 
 Camp Fires and Guide Posts. 
 
 Days Off. 
 
 Essays in Application. 
 
READING LIST OF ESSAYS 379 
 
 Fisherman's Luck. 
 Little Rivers. 
 
 Warner, C. D.: 
 
 As We Go. 
 
 As We Were Saying. 
 Wilson, Woodrow: 
 
 Mere Literature. 
 
 When a Man Comes to Himself. 
 Woodbeny, G. E.: 
 
 The Appreciation of Literature. 
 
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