THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 ■ -*^A.A.J
 
 LECTURES AND ESSAYS
 
 ^- 

 
 LECTURES 
 
 AND 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED AINGER 
 
 M\ 
 
 IN TWO VOLS. VOL. I 
 
 3Lontion 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 i9°5 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 A 37 
 v. 1 
 
 f
 
 PREFACE 
 
 With these two volumes of Lectures and Essays 
 I complete the task laid upon me by Canon 
 Ainger's executors of editing his literary remains ; 
 and I take the opportunity afforded by this 
 preface to thank them for allowing me a free 
 hand in the choice of what seemed best to publish, 
 and to express the hope that I have not done my 
 friend's reputation a disservice by printing or 
 reprinting anything that he himself would have 
 preferred to let die. 
 
 The greater number of the Essays appeared 
 in the pages of Macmillarfs Magazine. One of 
 them, bearing the title of " Books and their Uses," 
 was contributed by its author, while still an under- 
 graduate at Cambridge, to the first number of 
 that magazine (Dec. 1859), under the signature 
 of Doubleday (i.e. doubled A) ; and I have in- 
 cluded it as a curiosity of literature, because it 
 displays thus early not a few of the preferences, 
 and perhaps a few of the prejudices also, with
 
 vi LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 which a large circle of friends were presently to 
 become familiar. It opens with a quotation from 
 Charles Lamb and concludes with a paragraph 
 constructed in his manner ; there are a few quips, 
 a few praises of the past, a few stout blows struck 
 for Tennyson, a eulogy of Shakspeare (with a 
 recommendation, that sounds oddly at this date, 
 to read Bucknill on the Psychology of that 
 dramatist), and throughout there is a diffused 
 feeling that literature, great as it is, must subserve 
 higher interests. Between this first boyish essay 
 and the short biographical note on Mr. Alexander 
 Macmillan in March 1896, Ainger's final contri- 
 bution to the magazine, ten articles appeared 
 there from his pen, of which the following is a 
 complete list : — 
 
 Jan. 187 1. Mr. Dickens's Amateur Theatricals (un- 
 signed). 
 
 Feb. 1874. The late Sir George Rose (unsigned). 
 
 Jan. 1875. The New Hamlet and his Critics (signed 
 " A Templar ")• 
 
 Oct. 1879. Charles James Mathews (unsigned). 
 
 Jan. 1887. The Letters of Charles Lamb. 
 
 June 1887. Coleridge's Ode to Wordsworth. 
 
 Feb. 1889. Nether Stowey. 
 
 Dec. 1889. The Teaching of English Literature. 
 
 Nov. 1892. The Death of Tennyson. 
 
 Dec. 1894. Poetse Mediocres.
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 Of these all but the third, the last, and the merely 
 biographical portion of the paper upon Charles 
 Mathews, are here reprinted ; and they are fairly 
 representative of the chief directions in which 
 their author's more secular talent and interest 
 displayed themselves, for they would fall under 
 the three divisions of wit, poetry, and the stage. 
 From contributions to other periodicals I have 
 selected a paper on Mrs. Barbauld which appeared 
 in the Hampstead Annual for 1901, and four 
 papers from the Pilot (see vol. ii. pp. 127- 181). 
 
 The greater number of the Lectures in these 
 volumes were delivered at the Royal Institution. 
 Some were given in sets of three : the " Three 
 Stages of Shakspeare's Art" in February 1890 ; 
 the three lectures on Swift in January 1894 '■> an ^ 
 those upon Cowper, Burns, and Scott in April 
 and May 1898; others were single lectures, 
 " Friday Evening Discourses," their subjects 
 being : " True and False Humour in Litera- 
 ture " (April 5, 1889), "Euphuism, Past and 
 Present" (April 24, 1891), "Children's Books 
 of a Hundred Years Ago" (March I, 1895), 
 and " The Ethical Element in Shakspeare " 
 (May 23, 1902). It must be confessed that 
 in regard to the publication of most of these 
 Royal Institution lectures the editor has ex-
 
 viii LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 perienced some qualms of conscience. So sensitive 
 a literary craftsman as Ainger could not fail to 
 make a great difference in style between a lecture 
 written to be listened to, and an essay written to be 
 read. The lectures which he himself sent to press, 
 those upon " The Letters of Charles Lamb," * and 
 " The Teaching of English Literature," 2 were of 
 the nature of essays, and were written with an 
 eye upon the magazine in which they subsequently 
 appeared ; while the altogether charming story 
 of his adventures in Hertfordshire in search of 
 memorials of Charles Lamb, although it was 
 originally given as a lecture, 3 and was not printed 
 until after his death, when it appeared in the 
 Comhill Magazine for May 1904, was really not a 
 lecture at all, but a narrative of adventures at 
 Widford ; and it may be said, in parenthesis, that 
 there is more of the true Elia flavour about it 
 than about many essays written more consciously 
 upon that inimitable model. 
 
 The popular lectures, delivered at the Royal 
 Institution, were creatures of another element. 
 They were written certainly (as the manu- 
 script testifies) in haste, and with little heed 
 
 1 Given at Alderley Edge, Nov. 3, 1886. 
 
 2 Given at University College, Bristol, 1889. 
 
 3 At Streatham Hill, Dec. 6, 1894.
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 for style, for the sake of the lessons to be taught ; 
 and these lessons were impressed by much repeti- 
 tion, and illustrated by much sympathetic reading 
 from the authors discussed. It was clear that an 
 editor, even if he allowed himself the freest use of 
 the blue pencil (and to that I must plead guilty), 
 could not convert the one type of lecture into the 
 other ; and so the question presented itself whether 
 their author, so fastidious about his own work, 
 would have suffered them to go to press at all. 
 In that form the question could not be answered. 
 But when I asked whether the lessons enforced in 
 the lectures still needed enforcing, I could not 
 doubt that the answer was yes. Accordingly, 
 with the exception of two courses, upon Tennyson 
 and Chaucer, given respectively in 1893 and 
 1900, the Royal Institution lectures have been 
 all printed. As some sort of reminder to the 
 reader that what he is reading is a lecture, I have 
 retained a good many of the lecturer's marks of 
 emphasis, in the guise of italics. 
 
 I have spoken of these lectures as enforcing 
 lessons, and the description will, I think, be 
 allowed as on the whole a true one. For with all 
 his sensitiveness to beauty of form and expression, 
 Ainger's interest in literature was in the main 
 ethical. He was the product of a time when our
 
 x LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 English poets and imaginative writers were largely 
 concerned with ideas, and when critics were largely 
 occupied in discussing the ideas of their authors. 
 He belonged, that is to say, to the era of Tennyson 
 and Browning, of Thackeray and Dickens. Our 
 own age, being less creative, has pushed criticism 
 further into detail, and has confined it within 
 more strictly aesthetic bounds. But Ainger, 
 having the happiness to live in one of the 
 great ages of creative impulse, found his atten- 
 tion necessarily fixed on the larger aspects of 
 literature, and so naturally restricted his atten- 
 tion to these in discussing other great literary 
 periods. 
 
 Through all the lectures there runs the insist- 
 ence upon what Ainger was accustomed to speak 
 of as the genuine humanity of the great men of 
 letters. If he is discussing style, he notices how 
 true feeling and earnestness at once raise and 
 clarify it ; he defines euphuism as the putting of 
 manner above matter ; he finds the root of real 
 humour, and its superiority over mere wit, in its 
 sympathy with, and reverence for, what is human. 
 It is characteristic of his point of view that he 
 should write upon the " ethical element " in 
 Shakspeare (even considering that he had proved 
 Sir John Falstaff to be a " corrupted Lollard ' : ) ;
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 that he should find more in Swift to censure than 
 to praise, and more in Burns to praise than to 
 censure ; and that he should trace the secret of 
 the " Art of Conversation " to certain qualities of 
 the heart rather than of the head. For one who 
 was himself endowed by nature with so much wit, 
 this insistence upon the deeper humanity of the 
 moral nature loses what might else have been 
 reckoned its professional bias, and becomes im- 
 pressive. 
 
 There are two things sometimes looked for in 
 critical essays, which the reader of these pages 
 must be warned at the outset that he will not find. 
 The first is work of research. I do not think 
 Ainger would have claimed to possess any special 
 zeal or skill for the discovery of new facts about 
 the great writers whom he loved and honoured. 
 The confessions in the essay about " Charles Lamb 
 in Hertfordshire " speak for themselves as to his 
 manner of working. He was uninterested in 
 points of minute historical accuracy for their 
 own sake, though when some question touching 
 character was involved, he would take a great 
 deal of pains in an investigation ; and I would 
 indicate specially the paper on Coleridge's Dejec- 
 tion Ode as forming an original and important 
 contribution to the study of that poet. The
 
 xii LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 other element, which the readers of modern critical 
 essays may be disappointed not to find in these 
 volumes, is paradox. It was Ainger's idea that 
 the function of criticism was not to coruscate, 
 but to analyse ; to get down to the truth about 
 any matter, not to say brilliant things for the 
 amusement of his audience. And if this older 
 fashion in criticism is allowed, the reader will find 
 many examples of his author's happy skill in 
 appreciating and discriminating what comes up 
 for judgment. The sort of question he liked to 
 put to himself was, What is true humour, and 
 how does it differ from what is false ? What is 
 true poetry, and how does it differ from what is 
 second-rate ? Why can I read a play of Shak- 
 speare again and again with renewed delight, and 
 never wish to return to the undoubtedly clever 
 scenes of this other playwright ? As examples 
 of his skill in analysis, it will suffice to refer to 
 the three lectures upon Shakspeare which open 
 the book ; in the first of which I would point to 
 the criticism of Lovers Labour's Lost, with its careful 
 investigation of what it is that makes the play 
 unpopular, and its vigorous defence of the play's 
 dramatic interest ; in the second, to the study of 
 Sensationalism ; and in the third, to the searching 
 discussion of Hallam's theory as to what con-
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 stitutes the common element in the last group of 
 dramas. 
 
 I have ventured to append a note here and 
 there ; these editorial notes are distinguished from 
 those of the author by being enclosed in square 
 
 brackets - H. C. EEECHING. 
 
 Little Cloisters, 
 Westminster Abbey, 
 June 1905.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I 
 
 The Three Stages of Shakspeare's Art 
 
 Spring (1591-159S) 
 
 Summer (1 598-1605) . 
 Autumn (1605-16 12) . 
 
 The Ethical Element in Shakspeare 
 
 Sir John Falstaff .... 
 
 Euphuism, Past and Present . 
 
 Swift — His Life and Genius (Three Lectures) 
 
 Some Leaders in the Poetic Revival of 
 
 1760-1S20 — 
 
 Cowper . 
 
 Burns 
 
 Scott ..... . 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld ...... 
 
 The Children's Books of a Hundred Years 
 Ago ........ 
 
 29 
 62 
 
 92 
 
 119 
 
 156 
 
 273 
 300 
 
 -» -» i 
 
 jjj 
 367 
 
 xv
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF SHAK- 
 SPEARE'S ART 
 
 SPRING 
 
 (1591-1598) 
 
 The man who sets himself to write critically on 
 Shakspeare's life or works writes with a hundred 
 daggers at his throat ! For that life and those 
 works are so full of problems — unsolvable as 
 regards any light ever likely to be thrown upon 
 them — that to attempt any explanation is at once 
 to come into conflict with somebody. And no one 
 but those who have taken part in it, or watched 
 as interested spectators from outside, can form 
 an idea of the earnestness of Shakspearian con- 
 troversy. But the plan I have proposed to 
 myself stands, for the most part, outside these 
 thorny paths. It will not require the previous 
 settlement of points on which Shakspearian critics 
 so widely differ. It will assume scarcely anything, 
 VOL. I £ B
 
 2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 I hope, on which they are not agreed. Such 
 questions as the precise order in which the poet 
 wrote the plays that bear his name, or the 
 presence in certain of these plays of some other 
 hand than his, interesting and important questions 
 as they are, will hardly come under notice. I ask 
 nothing from my audience beyond the acquaint- 
 ance which every educated man and woman is 
 supposed to have with the greatest literary glory 
 of their country. 
 
 I am obliged to say " is supposed to have," 
 because that general knowledge of Shakspeare 
 that undoubtedly prevails in society is very 
 various in kind. When a great writer has been 
 celebrated, and in vogue, as Shakspeare has been 
 (with a few long and dark intervals), for three 
 hundred years, a considerable familiarity with his 
 plots, characters, and language belongs to the very 
 air that people breathe. Without ever opening 
 Shakspeare's works, it would be possible for any 
 one of ordinary intelligence to know a great deal 
 of the contents of those volumes, so considerable 
 a part of Shakspeare's wisdom and poetry lives 
 about us in habitual quotation. Books and essays 
 deal with him ; pictures are painted of his char- 
 acters and incidents ; allusion to him is every- 
 where, and we cannot escape from it. And then 
 some of his masterpieces in tragedy and comedy 
 are acted at intervals ; and if evidence were wanted 
 of what I am alleging — the absence of first-hand 
 acquaintance with the poet — it is furnished by the
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 3 
 
 remarks that fly about among the audience during 
 these performances — one person expressing a sur- 
 prise, such as only actual novelty excites ; and 
 others expressing a keen desire to know how 
 Hamlet or the Merchant of Venice is " going 
 to end." And therefore, no one addressing 
 an audience on Shakspeare can quite take for 
 granted that the subject, in its length and breadth, 
 is familiar to his hearers. 
 
 Even among those to whom many of Shak- 
 speare's plays are old and loved companions 
 it will be found that others of his plays are much 
 less familiar, and in some cases all but unknown. 
 This is partly due, no doubt, to the circumstance 
 that certain plays are more often acted than 
 others ; that, indeed, certain plays are never acted 
 at all. In this country, I mean ; for in Germany 
 the whole range of the Shakspearian drama is 
 produced upon the stage, and in consequence the 
 average educated German has a more thorough 
 acquaintance with our poet than the average 
 educated Englishman. And quotation from, and 
 allusion to, Shakspeare is largely dependent on 
 the publicity that stage representations give to the 
 Shakspearian drama. But this by no means 
 represents the whole truth of the matter. It is 
 not only because Love's Labour's Lost and the Two 
 Gentlemen of Verona are less often performed in 
 public than As You Like It or Much Ado about 
 Nothing that they are less known to the ordinary 
 reader. Nor is it merely that, on the whole, the
 
 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 two last-named comedies are of greater excellence, 
 of higher quality, than the former. It is, in 
 reality, that they belong to a different stage in 
 the development of Shakspeare's genius. There 
 is a manifest unlikeness between dramas written 
 at different periods of Shakspeare's life, which 
 -cannot be described by saying that one play is 
 better than another — more beautiful in language, 
 richer in wisdom, more skilful in construction, 
 more exquisite in humour. One play is found to 
 be different from certain of its companions, and 
 the Shakspearian lo.ver, who has known the 
 Merchant of Venice from a child, finds upon 
 attempting to thread the labyrinth of Love's 
 Labour's Lost that he is in almost another world 
 — so different, at least, is the atmosphere of the 
 one from that of the other. I believe that this 
 difference of atmosphere is, as I have said, 
 literary — belonging to the form of the work rather 
 than to its essence — but it is not the less discon- 
 certing for that. It is, at all events, what con- 
 fronts the general reader at the outset of his task, 
 and what in many cases repels him, or at least 
 long delays his further venture into that unknown 
 world. And my object in these lectures is mainly 
 to consider with you the nature and causes of some 
 of these differences. 
 
 But assuming that there are many among my 
 audience who have been less attracted to certain 
 plays than to others, I want to show that even the 
 less attractive plays possess, and ought to supply,
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 5 
 
 a peculiar and compensating interest of their own. 
 Without deviating into points disputed, I want to 
 bring all that we know about Shakspeare's life and 
 art to bear upon this interest. There are one or 
 two dates that should be known to us already, 
 and ready when we want them. We know when 
 Shakspeare was born, and when he died. He 
 was born in 1564, and died in 16 16, when little 
 past the flower of life. We know approximately 
 which were his early plays, which his middle 
 plays, and which his later, though we cannot 
 ascertain in what precise year any play was 
 written. But we know as certain that Love's 
 Labour's Lost was one of his earliest (if not his 
 very earliest) dramas, that Hamlet belongs to the 
 meridian of his powers, that the Tempest was one 
 of the very last of his plays. We learn this, not 
 from guesswork, not by theorising, but from con- 
 temporary documents and allusions. We also 
 know the fact, with less certainty, of course, from 
 internal evidence, from noticing certain changes 
 in versification and in sentiment — and this kind of 
 evidence becomes more and more convincing as 
 we find certain characteristics pervading all Shak- 
 speare's early plays, and others distinguishing all 
 those that are known to be late. And I am not 
 challenging any contradiction that I ever heard of 
 when I speak of certain plays as belonging to 
 what I have called (perhaps over -sentimentally) 
 the Spring, Summer, and Autumn of Shakspeare's 
 creative faculty.
 
 6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Now the whole period within which these 
 plays of Shakspeare were written is one approxi- 
 mately of twenty-one years — from about i 59 t to 
 16 1 2. It is a period divisible by three, and gives 
 us a convenient arrangement of seven years for 
 our three lectures. I need not say that no space, 
 whether of a nation's development or an in- 
 dividual's, ever falls into exactly symmetrical 
 divisions. There is no magic in the number 
 seven. Geniuses arrange themselves in no lease- 
 holds of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, like 
 dwelling-houses. But it so happens that the 
 plays on which we propose to ground our obser- 
 vation of the changes in Shakspeare's literary 
 form and spirit fall within these prescribed limits, 
 and that is enough for us. 
 
 I have referred to the fact that the relative 
 popularity of Shakspeare's plays is not merely 
 due to some being more or less poetical than 
 others. It is not that the reader finds Love's 
 Labour's Lost a less excellent comedy than the 
 MercJiant of Venice ; but he finds it altogether of 
 another sort, and he resents the difference. Now, 
 our disappointments in literature mainly arise 
 from our approaching the work of an author 
 expecting something which we shall not find there. 
 The young and eager student, whose ear and 
 imagination have come to rejoice in the lyric 
 splendour of Shelley and Tennyson and Browning, 
 approaches the study of Pope, which he is told he 
 ought to admire, and finding it quite unlike
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 7 
 
 Tennyson and Shelley, is disappointed and even 
 aggrieved. For he has not yet mastered that 
 golden rule expressed in Pope's own couplet — 
 
 A perfect judge will read each work of wit 
 With the same spirit that its author writ — 
 
 a couplet which expresses quite perfectly the 
 key to all real appreciation of literary value. 
 This rule, then, shall be our guide. I have no 
 such presumptuous intention as that of telling you 
 what to admire most and what least in Shak- 
 speare's plays, but only to dwell upon the enhanced 
 interest that belongs to every creation of a great 
 master like Shakspeare, when we note its place in 
 his intellectual development, and the influences on 
 him of education or the example of his contem- 
 poraries, or the fashion and spirit of the hour. 
 
 Let me now, without further preface, very 
 briefly sum up what we know of Shakspeare's 
 circumstances and career before the time that he 
 comes to light in London as a highly successful 
 lyric and narrative poet. Born in 1564, in the 
 heart of one of the loveliest counties of England ; 
 the son of a well-to-do, though afterwards less 
 prosperous, farmer or grazier ; taught (because 
 there or nowhere) at the grammar-school of 
 Stratford-on-Avon ; accustomed as a boy to see 
 the wandering troupes of actors who frequently 
 visited Stratford ; apprenticed (at the end of his 
 seven years' schooling) to some craft, though we 
 know not what, whether the farming, the butcher-
 
 8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 ing, or (as Lord Campbell thought) the scrivener's 
 desk ; involved in a marriage, while still a boy, 
 with a woman some years his senior ; children 
 born to him in 1583 and 1585 ; and then, by 
 and by, a migration to London, whether or not 
 hastened by the traditional escapade among Sir 
 Thomas Lucy's deer. To assume all this, which 
 does not seem much (but is perhaps more than it 
 seems), is hardly to dogmatise, or to be wise 
 above that which is written. 
 
 For whatever cause, he left Stratford for 
 London, and alone, while a very young man. 
 And there, with whatever introductions (and the 
 Burbages were a Warwickshire family), he had 
 to face the eternal "bread and cheese" question 
 which controls the early days of all impecunious 
 young men. All known facts, as well as tradi- 
 tional anecdotes, point to a very early association 
 with the stage. The old story of his holding 
 horses at the theatre-door, though likely enough 
 to be widely incorrect in detail, is not valueless. 
 A young, and otherwise untried man, who con- 
 nects himself with a profession, because his 
 affections and his taste and his talent all draw 
 him thither, must needs, until he has shown 
 what stuff is in him, do very " general utility " 
 business indeed. A man cannot be made a 
 successful actor in a day (though many an 
 amateur has to be rudely awakened from that 
 dream !), nor a successful dramatist. There are 
 at least five years to account for in Shakspeare's
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 9 
 
 life before he is known to us as a coming power 
 in the art and literature of his clay. And though 
 these years are a blank to us — so far as any 
 authentic records of the poet are concerned — they 
 are not all blank if we remember that to make a 
 successful writer for the stage (as contrasted, I 
 mean, with a writer of poems in dramatic form) 
 requires an apprenticeship to the stage, if not as 
 actor, at least as one in constant touch with it 
 or observation of it. It was this that Shak- 
 speare was gaining by continual association 
 with the theatre — whether before or behind the 
 curtain. He served an apprenticeship to the 
 stage, as to the precise nature of which we know 
 nothing. And yet we know this, that his dramas 
 could not have been what they are to us had 
 their author not had this one effectual opportunity 
 of learning what in a play is effective dramatically, 
 and what is not. No writer, however en- 
 dowed with genius, can come into the world 
 possessed of this knowledge. And yet, by a sad 
 perversity, it is one of the last truths accepted 
 by the ardent and impatient genius of young 
 poets. Every young man of imaginative gifts 
 wishes to write a successful play. It is generally 
 his earliest ambition. It looks so easy — given 
 the subject, the poetic gift, the poet's own interest 
 in his work. But, alas ! when it comes out of the 
 study on to the stage it is a failure. It will not 
 act ; nor does it read as if it would act. 
 
 And it is this rare but all-important quality
 
 io LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 that belongs to the Shakspearian drama as a 
 whole ; and far more, I believe, than many 
 persons are aware of, accounts for his supremacy 
 even with those who know him from the book, 
 and little, or not at all, from the stage. We have 
 not much opportunity in England of knowing 
 Shakspeare as a whole (on all sides of him) 
 from the theatre. Only a select few of his plays 
 are ever acted at all. And even when they are 
 thus given, it is generally because of certain 
 leading actors wishing to play leading parts, the 
 remainder of the dramatis persona; being left 
 to play themselves anyhow. Some educated 
 persons resent this state of things and abstain 
 from the theatre, and their knowledge of 
 Shakspeare is accordingly derived in chief from 
 the pages of their favourite edition. And perhaps 
 when they are in full enjoyment of the master's 
 poetry, humour, pathos, imagination, wisdom, and 
 matchless gift of characterisation, they imagine 
 that this is all they are indebted to ; but there 
 is yet something else in the background — or 
 rather above them all — controlling, manipulating, 
 guiding, and restraining all the other great 
 faculties — the dramatist's faculty. It is mis- 
 leading to speak of that which is effective on 
 the stage and that which is effective " in the 
 closet." The source of the dramatist's effective- 
 ness is the same in both. A play that would 
 have " no chance " upon the stage (as we express 
 it) will have not much better chance with us
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART n 
 
 sitting in our library. It may be full of poetry 
 and cleverness, and even of a certain kind of 
 interest. But it is not, we feel, a drama. 
 
 Experience as an actor and the companion 
 of actors was therefore " making " William Shak- 
 speare in one way. In another way he was 
 being " made " by the building up of plays in 
 conjunction with other men. " Hack-work," no 
 doubt, but of the utmost value. In those days 
 of his apprenticeship to his craft he was 
 employed in adding to, or altering and adapting, 
 the crude productions of men much his inferiors. 
 Some even of his own acknowledged plays bear 
 indisputable marks of the presence up and down 
 of an inferior hand, or hands. By no surer 
 method could he have mastered the secret of 
 dramatic effectiveness, as he watched the effect 
 of experiment after experiment upon audiences, 
 and took to heart his failures and successes alike. 
 
 Meantime, by another path, he was training 
 his genius for that of which the dramatic form 
 is after all but the skeleton — he was training 
 his poetic gift and bringing it to maturity. In 
 the year 1593 there was published his long 
 narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, and in the 
 year following its pendant, the Rape of Lucrece. 
 How much earlier than the date of publication 
 these were written we cannot say. But the 
 former poem cannot be earlier than 1589, for 
 in that year had appeared Thomas Lodge's 
 poem, in the same metre, and on another famous
 
 12 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 myth of the Greek and Roman world, Glaucus 
 mid Scylla. The appearance of Lodge's poem 
 suggested to Shakspeare a parallel experiment. 
 But however suggested by its predecessor, 
 Shakspeare's " first heir of his invention " (so 
 he phrased it) bore no sign of imitation, or of 
 that weak echoing of the mannerisms of the 
 original which mark the host of copyists who, in 
 our own day, spring up on the appearance of a 
 new form of art. There is no weakness, no 
 vagueness, in the versification of Venus and 
 Adonis. On the contrary, it came to the world, 
 then as now, bearing on its face the indisputable 
 mark of genius, boundless invention, and that 
 evident " unfailingness " of power — the power " of 
 going on and still to be " — the hand as strong 
 at the end as at the beginning, as if it need 
 never leave off — always the sign of imaginative 
 genius of the great, first, order. The stream runs 
 through well-ordered banks, but as it flows it 
 bri)ns — infallible proof of a source that is going 
 to supply yet greater and greater things in the 
 future. 
 
 It was so that the young Shakspeare, un- 
 known as yet to the general public, save as actor 
 and play-compiler ; looked on with something of 
 contempt, if mingled with a dash of apprehensive 
 envy, by the poets and scholars — for he had 
 " small Latin and less Greek " — challenged com- 
 parison, at one bold dash, with the poets and wits, 
 and was not discomfited. For the poem at once
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 13 
 
 was acknowledged a masterpiece, and took a 
 position from which it has never been dislodged. 
 And yet its author little dreamed that in a quite 
 other field his supremacy among poets was to 
 come to him. 
 
 And yet by this time he had written at least 
 one masterpiece for the stage, although it did not 
 see the light of print until I 5 98. 1 I think most 
 critics are agreed in placing Love's Labour's Lost 
 as the very earliest of those plays which as a 
 whole are Shakspeare's, and have that unity and 
 completeness that follow therefrom. It stands 
 almost alone among Shakspeare's comedies in this 
 respect, that no original or germ of the plot has 
 been found in any contemporary Italian romance 
 or traditional story. But we may be sure that 
 there was something of the sort among the 
 hundreds of such novelettes that were current in 
 Shakspeare's day. It has perished, but we can- 
 not doubt that in some or other chap-book, foreign 
 or native, he had found the story of the King of 
 Navarre and his noble fellow-students. 
 
 I believe that to many readers of Shakspeare 
 in England this exquisite comedy is practically 
 unknown ; partly, no doubt, because it has hardly 
 ever been acted on a public stage. It is there- 
 
 1 [This first quarto of Love's Labour's Lost which gives the play as 
 we now have it, was a revised and augmented version ; prepared for 
 acting at court in the Christmas festivities of 1597, and very different 
 from the poet's first draft. The reader who desires further information 
 on this and other critical questions arising out of the lecture should 
 consult the prefaces to the plays in Professor Herford's edition (Eversley 
 series).]
 
 i 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 fore concerning readers of the play that I speak 
 when I ask why it is that this play on its very 
 surface deters so many. Well, I think it is the 
 very superabundance of its imaginative energy 
 and the prodigality with which it is used. How 
 natural in a young poet just become aware of 
 the vastness of his poetic resources ! Words- 
 worth once said finely of Shakspeare that " he 
 could not have written an epic — he would have 
 died of a plethora of thought " ; and we feel that 
 if Shakspeare had begun an epic at this stage of 
 his life, before he had attained the art to manage 
 and to restrain, he might well thus have perished. 
 At this very moment another great poet had 
 given to the world a work in which the same 
 characteristic was found. It was in 1590 that 
 Edmund Spenser published the first three books 
 — the first half — of his Faery Queene. And here, 
 too, with all its amazing beauty, invention, and 
 resource, one is aware of a prodigality that at first 
 repels instead of attracting. " Wading through 
 unmown grass " has been an image well invented 
 to describe the reader's experience. But the 
 prodigality of Spenser differs from that of Shak- 
 speare. In the long stretches of description and 
 of detail (often repeated, with slight variation) in 
 the Faery Qtieene, the grass remains the same grass, 
 and the weariness felt is the weariness of monotony. 
 Not so in Shakspeare's early plays. The prodi- 
 gality is that of quality rather than qttantity, of 
 boundless variety rather than sameness. The
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 15 
 
 food is too rich rather than too abundant, and the 
 consequence is that though Love's Labour's Lost 
 is very little longer than the Merchant of Venice 
 or Twelftli Niglit, and the plot quite as simple 
 and naturally worked out, it soon impresses 
 the unguarded reader who has omitted to take 
 a guide that he has wandered into a jungle, or 
 into the gorgeous, but pathless, luxuriance of a 
 West Indian forest. The very poetry of the play 
 at first interferes with his enjoyment of it as a 
 drama — an " action." He feels, as the old saying 
 has it, that he cannot somehow " see the wood 
 for the trees." And the reason is, that in these 
 early comedies (and in his one early tragedy) 
 Shakspeare is modulating from a lyrical and 
 narrative poet into a dramatist ; or, like a dissolv- 
 ing view, in the transition stage, it is for the 
 moment half one thing and half the other. Not 
 that there is any lack of dramatic sense and 
 experience. There is nothing of crudeness, of 
 inexperience, in the hand which constructed and 
 wrought out this play. The plot ; the sense of 
 the importance of " situations " ; of the value of 
 "climax"; all these things indeed which make a 
 play effective on the stage, are found in Love's 
 Labour s Lost when once our eye is accustomed 
 to the splendour of the setting. And this was so, 
 as we have seen, because the lyric abundance, 
 obvious in Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, was 
 possessed by a man who had also served a long 
 apprenticeship to the stage. Full of the enjoy-
 
 1 6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 merit of rhythm, rhyme, and metrical device, 
 Shakspeare began applying these to dramatic 
 purposes. Blank verse he uses also — splendid in 
 diction, but monotonous in cadence (for as yet 
 Shakspeare built upon the model of his pre- 
 decessors and had not learned the sovereign effect 
 of variety of pause) — but ready to deviate at any 
 moment into the rhymed couplet, into stanza, and 
 even into lines of a quite different metrical ictus. 
 
 The story of Love's Labour's Lost is so delightful 
 (when once disentangled from its poetical em- 
 broideries) that I could never quite forgive Charles 
 and Mary Lamb, when telling the story of these 
 plays in prose for young people, markedly omitting 
 this comedy — one other reason, by the way, why 
 it is less familiar to the young reader. The King 
 of Navarre, with his three noble friends, Biron, 
 Longaville, and Dumain, in the interests of what 
 is now called " culture," frame for themselves a 
 self-denying ordinance for three years — to devote 
 themselves in retirement to study, and for that 
 space to limit themselves to the severest discipline 
 as to food and drink and sleep, and never to look 
 upon a lady's face. Biron, the humourist among 
 them, has signed his name to this document, 
 somewhat rashly, without fully appreciating all 
 its covenants, but (good fellow as he is) will not 
 desert his friends. What follows, all may anti- 
 cipate. Man proposes, but woman disposes. 
 The King of France has occasion at this time 
 to send his daughter the princess, with three
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 17 
 
 charming ladies- in -waiting, Rosaline, Maria, 
 and Katharine, to the King of Navarre, with 
 embassies of peace, there being some outstanding 
 money claims between the parties arising out of 
 past wars. Immediately, it becomes evident (as 
 the late Mr. Artemus Ward used to put it) how 
 much of human nature there is in a man, for all 
 the self-denying ordinances are at once forgotten. 
 Each writes verses to the loved one ; and what 
 verses they are ! for one copy is no other than 
 the matchless — 
 
 On a day — alack the day ! — 
 Love, whose month is ever May, 
 Spied a blossom passing fair 
 Playing in the wanton air : 
 Through the velvet leaves the wind, 
 All unseen, can passage find ; 
 That the lover, sick to death, 
 Wish himself the heaven's breath. 
 Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow ; 
 Air, would I might triumph so ! 
 But, alack, my hand is sworn 
 Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn ; 
 Vow, alack, for youth unmeet, 
 Youth so apt to pluck a sweet ! 
 Do not call it sin in me, 
 That I am forsworn for thee ; 
 Thou for whom Jove would sw-ear 
 Juno but an Ethiope were ; 
 And deny himself for Jove, 
 Turning mortal for thy love — 
 
 lines, exquisite and immortal wherever read, but 
 how much more exquisite when read in their 
 VOL. 1 C
 
 1 8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 first setting, with their dramatic significance and 
 appropriateness clearly present to us. Each, 
 then, as I have said, writes his verses, and Biron, 
 concealed in a leafy oak, overhears them, one by 
 one, and finally discovering himself, rebukes them 
 all, with magnificent effrontery, for this breach 
 of their engagement — when, by a totally different 
 but perfectly natural mischance, his own similar 
 letter to the Lady Rosaline falls into the hands 
 of his friends, and he too is proclaimed de- 
 faulter. It is not for me to impose my pre- 
 dilections upon my audience, but I cannot help 
 saying that nowhere else, even in the Shak- 
 spearian drama, is there a situation so admirably, 
 yet so simply contrived as this — so effective 
 in climax, so sweet alike in its humour and in 
 its morale ; so sumptuous and exhilarating in the 
 strain of the poetry. The poor clown, Costard 
 (worthy peer of Dogberry and Launce), makes 
 his blunder, and transposes the two letters 
 entrusted to him, whereby poor Biron's falls 
 into the hands of his friends. And Biron turns 
 upon Costard, with a moment's fierce anger, and 
 then throws himself upon the indulgence that the 
 others must needs give him. I know nothing 
 more exquisitely imagined and worked out than 
 is this third scene of the fourth act. The 
 situation is most adroitly led up to. The King 
 overhears Dumain and Longaville confess their 
 passion, and rebukes them ; meantime Biron, in 
 the tree, has overheard the King ; and finally the
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 19 
 
 blunder of Costard unmasks Biron himself. 
 Biron, so stern critics say, is but an early sketch 
 of Benedick, with a dash of Mercutio in him ; 
 but we could not the better spare him for this 
 reason. 
 
 I have mentioned the very lavishness of the 
 poetic dialogue as one cause of the play cloying 
 the palate of the casual reader. There remains 
 one other cause, operating towards the same result. 
 Shakspeare took up comedy at the point at which 
 Lyly left it, and he began with a trenchant and 
 brilliant fantasia upon Lyly's manner, despising 
 it out of the depths of his good sense, and yet 
 employing it and adorning it out of the boundless 
 riches of his fancy. The play is at one and the 
 same time a study in what is vaguely called 
 " euphuism " 1 and a mockery of it. The more 
 easily imitable, and therefore more hackneyed 
 literary affectations — verbal trickery, pedantry, use 
 of finer words than the multitude used — are 
 frankly condemned in the person of Armado ; 
 but the more poetic capabilities of the fashion 
 — its opportunities for redundancy and efflor- 
 escence — these affect the language of the whole 
 play, whoever is the speaker ; and to a young 
 poet of illimitable resource of language and 
 fancy formed, no doubt, a strong temptation 
 and a snare, for which he has paid the penalty, 
 for it is as true of Shakspeare himself as it is of 
 Armado, of whom Holofernes said it, that he 
 
 1 [See the lecture upon Euphuism, p. 156.]
 
 20 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 sometimes " draws out the thread of his verbosity 
 finer than the staple of his argument." And 
 however superbly lovely that verbosity often is, it 
 is the enemy, not the friend, of the dramatic 
 method. Shakspeare had learned the art of mak- 
 ing a play (as I have pointed out) in the best of 
 all ways. He had served an apprenticeship to the 
 stage, but as yet he had not learned how to dis- 
 cipline the resources of his poetic invention. This 
 he had to teach himself, or learn for himself, by 
 another experience. Shakspeare probably (may 
 we not say certainly ?) never thought of posterity, 
 never thought even of his plays being read or 
 criticised outside the walls of the theatre. It suited 
 his purpose to ridicule a fashion, at the same time 
 displaying all its intellectual capabilities, without 
 remembering that a fashion (because it is a 
 fashion) passeth away ; and that even the ridicule 
 of a fashion may be as ephemeral as the fashion 
 itself. Hence is it that, having no national theatre 
 (not having even what all second-class towns have 
 in Germany), scarcely any of us have tested on 
 the stage the admirable effectiveness of this 
 comedy ; and perhaps in consequence we have 
 been disheartened and repelled in the reading 
 from one of the most human and even pathetic 
 of Shakspeare's plays. 
 
 Other important plays belonging to this first 
 period are the Midsummer Night's Dream, be- 
 tween 1 591 and 1593, and Romeo and Juliet, 
 1595 or 1596. Of these I can speak more
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 21 
 
 briefly, for, owing to stage representations and 
 other reasons, they are familiar to us all. On the 
 internal evidence of style (for those who have 
 eyes to see and ears to hear) they are as 
 manifestly the production of Shakspeare's earliest 
 stage as Love's Labour s Lost. The frequency of 
 the rhymed couplet, and even of stanzas diversify- 
 ing the couplet, and the lyric colouring of the 
 poetry throughout, are in these two other plays 
 also. But already we mark two things : that this 
 exuberance is more subdued than in the earlier 
 comedy ; and that it is less felt by the reader, 
 because of the more abundant incident, and the 
 quicker movement, of the dramas. We go on to 
 notice that as human feeling and passion assert 
 themselves in these plays, and the poet himself is 
 stirred by the " pity of it," even in the dilemmas 
 and cross-purposes of poor Hermia and Helena, 
 rhyme drops off from his style, and the freer 
 blank verse asserts ' its necessity. Though in 
 Romeo and Juliet whole scenes are written in 
 rhyme, yet when it comes to the mighty passion 
 of the pleading between the lovers, or of Juliet's 
 terrible soliloquies, rhyme disappears. We feel — 
 and we see how Shakspeare felt — that though, 
 while the course of true love runs smooth, Friar 
 Laurence may well deliver his fatherly counsel in 
 smooth neat couplets, yet when once the great 
 thoughts, the deep griefs, begin to burst and break 
 through all that is unreal in man, the artificial 
 adjuncts of speech are out of place. While Romeo
 
 22 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 is yet luxuriating in his day-dream of Rosaline, 
 we are not offended that he can remonstrate (even 
 in stanza) with his friend Benvolio, who bids him 
 look farther afield : — 
 
 When the devout religion of mine eye 
 
 Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires ; 
 And these, who often drown'd could never die, 
 
 Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars ! 
 One fairer than my love ! the all-seeing sun 
 Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun. 
 
 But when Romeo appears in Capulet's orchard, 
 beneath Juliet's window, the key of passion has 
 changed, and the key of language has changed 
 with it : — 
 
 O, that I were a glove upon that hand, 
 That I might touch that cheek ! 
 
 Juliet. Ay me ! 
 
 Romeo. She speaks : 
 
 O, speak again, bright angel ! for thou art 
 As glorious to this night, being o'er my head, 
 As is a winged messenger of heaven 
 Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes 
 Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him 
 When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds 
 And sails upon the bosom of the air. 
 
 I shall have occasion to say something further 
 on this subject in my next lecture. In the mean- 
 time, I must speak of Shakspeare's earliest prose. 
 In both plays I have been discussing, certain por- 
 tions of dialogue are in prose, and for the most part, 
 like the verse, largely infected with the euphuistic
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 23 
 
 trick of the current fashion. The puns, and the 
 word -quibbling and straw -splitting in the con- 
 versations of Armado with the page, or Romeo 
 with his friends, are due not merely to the 
 circumstance that John Lyly had set the example 
 of writing comedy in prose, and had naturally 
 therefore used the style that he had brought to per- 
 fection and given a name to. There was also the 
 contributing fact that the young men of the court 
 and society in Elizabeth's day — the Mercutios 
 and Osrics of actual life whom Shakspeare had 
 met in company of his friend Lord Southampton 
 — were themselves given to use a dialectic jargon, 
 which was in effect the argot, the slang, of the 
 hour. It was natural in a writer of comedy, 
 who had yet to make his name, to copy in his 
 prose-speaking characters the idiom of the day. 
 But happily for the development of Shakspeare's 
 power, it fell to him to draw characters of quite other 
 class and breeding than the Osrics and Mercutios, 
 and in providing them with dialogue to discover 
 in himself a faculty in which he leaves contem- 
 poraries and predecessors behind him even more 
 rapidly and decisively than in the domain of 
 poetry. Christopher Marlowe had written some 
 superb dramatic blank verse before Shakspeare 
 wrote a play at all. Greene and Peele had each 
 written melodious and flexible verse of fine 
 quality. And all these, in certain scenes of their 
 plays, had short passages of comic dialogue in 
 prose ; but of these three men, one (Marlowe) a
 
 24 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 genius of all but the first rank, and the others 
 endowed with real poetry and charm, it is not 
 unjust to say that the dialogue of their comic 
 characters never rises above buffoonery. In 
 Faustus and the Tamburlaine plays — where 
 Marlowe's " mighty line " is at its mightiest — the 
 incidental comic scenes are little more than 
 ribaldry ; and, as far as we can discover, this 
 wonderful genius was all but destitute of such 
 humour, at least, as could express itself in comic 
 characterisation. And it is this which constitutes 
 another of Shakspeare's immense gifts to us. 
 Before him, the comic characters of the stage were 
 only just emerging from their undoubted germ- 
 type — the vice of the miracle and morality play. 
 They came upon the stage, like the vice, " to 
 make pastime," to amuse the " groundlings," who 
 may have begun to tire of the sentimental interest. 
 Already, in plays we have been considering, we 
 have seen how Shakspeare was " drawing away " 
 from this crude idea of a low-comedy personage. 
 The clown Costard in Love's Labour's Lost is, like 
 the rest of the characters, more or less tarred with 
 the euphuistic brush ; but there is already in him, 
 we may say, an individuality. He is a character, 
 and not merely a clown. And I need not say 
 that the Midsummer Night's Dream had clearly 
 enough shown that the comedy of low - life 
 need not in future be but another name for 
 buffoonery, unless indeed (a large exception !) the 
 performer of the character chose to make it so.
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 25 
 
 But as yet Shakspeare had not shown how he 
 could treat in prose a humorous under-plot of real 
 life, of sustained interest. This opportunity came 
 to him when, towards the close of this first period 
 of his art, he formed out of the traditions of a 
 degenerate gentleman of convivial tastes, living 
 in Plantagenet days, the immortal group of Fal- 
 staff and his satellites ; each, however slightly 
 sketched, a distinct individuality — no longer 
 brought in, like the "corner" men of a nigger- 
 troupe, to exchange repartee, but flesh and 
 blood — having affections, organs, and senses like 
 ourselves. 
 
 In the two parts of Henry IV. — written probably 
 in 1597 or 1598 — there first comes to view this 
 pre-eminence of Shakspeare over anybody and 
 anything that he then had to model himself upon. 
 And we can see how the extraordinary advance 
 of Shakspeare in his power to compose prose 
 dialogue is really of the same nature and due 
 to the same causes as his advance in poetical 
 dialogue. In both cases conventionality is being 
 driven out by reality. Just as passion and deepest 
 feeling breaks away from rhyme and other metrical 
 limitations, so an actual individuality, though it 
 is an Ancient Pistol or a Mrs. Quickly, makes 
 impossible the time-honoured methods of raising 
 a laugh, and creates from within its true and 
 appropriate utterance, which is humorous just 
 because it is true to life. For all true humour 
 is based upon truth of observation there. Time
 
 26 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 fails me to notice Shakspeare's art in the poetical 
 portion of the historical plays, and to point out 
 why in these portions Shakspeare did not break 
 away as obviously from the diction and manner 
 of his contemporaries. As a fact, this is so, and 
 there are many lengths of blank verse (with some 
 brilliant exceptions) in these Henry IV. plays 
 which might have been written by another hand 
 than Shakspeare's. Not so, I have said, with the 
 humorous prose portion of these plays. There 
 had been as yet no English writer (whose works 
 have come down to us) who could conceivably 
 have drawn the characters and written the 
 dialogue of the personages gathering round Sir 
 John Falstaff — with the single exception of 
 Chaucer, had the genius of his age called that 
 great humourist to use the dramatic form. 
 Falstaff himself is so stupendous a creation — ■ 
 not one jot less a creation because divers other 
 small dramatists had been already meddling with 
 the traditional personage on which the character 
 was based — that one is ashamed to bring him in 
 at the fag-end of a lecture. 
 
 Not the least wonderful thing, many persons 
 probably think, about Shakspeare's wondrous 
 personality is that the author of the Falstaff 
 scenes could also write — had only a year or two 
 before written — the Balcony Scene in Romeo and 
 Juliet. I think our wonder as to such things 
 may diminish on deeper reflection. Imagination 
 on the one hand, sympathy and insight on the
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 27 
 
 other, is the key to both. And as their author 
 had himself not long before told us, the poet's 
 eye, rolling in its fine frenzy, glances from heaven 
 to earth, as well as from earth to heaven. The 
 humours of a very earthy and degenerate gentle- 
 man may evoke and inspire that imagination, that 
 insight, no less strongly than the fresh virginal 
 passion of the lovers of Verona. The phenomenon 
 of this two-fold faculty at least need not surprise 
 us. In a book published not so very long ago, 
 and familiar to us all, I find within the same 
 covers certain lines about King Arthur's death : — 
 
 I am going a long way 
 With these thou seest — if indeed I go 
 (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) — 
 To the island-valley of Avilion ; 
 Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
 Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns 
 And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, 
 Where I will heal me of my grievous wound. 
 
 This poem is immediately succeeded in the volume 
 by another, no less familiar to us, of which this 
 is a fragment : — 
 
 Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as bean a-talkin' o' thee ; 
 Thou's bean talkin' to muther, an' she bean a tellin' it me. 
 Thou'll not marry for munny — thou's sweet upo' parson's 
 
 lass — 
 Noa — thou'll marry for luvv — an' we boath on us thinks tha 
 
 an ass.
 
 28 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Do'ant be stunt : taake time : I knaws what maakes tha 
 
 sa mad. 
 Warn't I craazed fur the lasses mysen when I wur a lad ? 
 But I knaw'd a Quaaker feller as often 'as towd ma this : 
 " Doant thou marry for munny, but goa wheer munny is ! " 
 
 I confess that it does not surprise me that 
 Lord Tennyson should at least have shown us on 
 occasion how in this, and a few like poems, he 
 possesses a gift of humour and of characterisation 
 absolutely Shakspearian in quality. Nor am ] 
 surprised that he, like Shakspeare, being what 
 they were, should not have worked always that 
 same vein of genius. After the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor, close following on the Henry IV. plays 
 (an admirable comedy for those who abstain from 
 seeing it on the stage), Shakspeare continued 
 to diversify many a fine tragedy and comedy 
 with episodes of humorous lower middle -class 
 life ; but he never again made it the staple of 
 a plot. This also is not wonderful. " Spirits 
 are not finely touched but to fine issues," he 
 says himself, and he to whom we have just now 
 likened him reminds us that 
 
 We needs must love the highest when we see it, 
 Not Lancelot nor another.
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF SHAK- 
 SPEARE'S ART 
 
 II 
 
 SUMMER 
 (1598-1605) 
 
 CLOSE upon fifty years after Shakspeare's death, 
 on a fine summer evening in 1665, John Dryden 
 and his noble friends Lord Mulgrave, Sir Charles 
 Sedley, and others, engaged in a memorable 
 conversation (afterwards reported by Dryden 
 himself) on the condition of the drama in 
 England at that moment. It was only five 
 years after the Restoration, and the drama, long 
 exiled, had come back with the king, and had 
 likewise brought back many changed rules, 
 fashions, and (it must be added) vices. Among 
 changed fashions was the practice of writing 
 tragedies in the rhymed couplet, a la Francaise. 
 This subject of the merits of rhyme as against 
 blank verse is one of the many topics discussed 
 
 29
 
 3o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 on that memorable evening. One of Dryden's 
 friends attacks the innovation — for innovation it 
 was ; few, since Shakspeare, until the Restora- 
 tion, having reverted to the " tagged verse," 
 which had marked an earlier, ruder, stage of 
 dramatic art. Dryden defends it ; not very 
 successfully, and not even with an air of very 
 firm conviction. He had already written tragedy 
 in rhyme, and was destined after some years to 
 return to blank verse ; and Dryden's opinions were 
 always (as has been truly said) in a " state of 
 flux." The rhymed tragedy of Dryden was, 
 of course, an exotic. It was not developed out 
 of any antecedent English stage of the drama ; 
 it was adopted from another nation. It was 
 practised because the French writers practised 
 it. It was a fashion, and therefore doomed to 
 be ephemeral. Dryden could not see this. 
 There is no evidence in this famous Essay 
 of Dramatic Poesy that he even guessed 
 why Shakspeare, after largely using it in the 
 earliest of his poetic dramas, came in the second 
 stage of his art (as we have called it) to abandon 
 it altogether. We may, I believe, both guess 
 and justly decide this question — not because we 
 are profounder critics than Dryden, but because 
 we are, for all practical purposes, equally far 
 away from, both Shakspeare and Dryden — from 
 the fashion, or the bias, of the age which con- 
 tributed to direct the form their genius was to 
 take and to determine their opinion.
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 31 
 
 For the first seven years of Shakspeare's 
 period of dramatic productiveness I took Loves 
 Labour's Lost, the Midsummer Nights Dream, and 
 Romeo and Juliet as the chief examples of his 
 poetic drama, and two historical plays as speci- 
 mens of his comic prose. We pass now to 
 the next seven years, 1 598-1605, and of this 
 period I take the Merchant of Venice and As You 
 Like It as the maturest specimens of his comedy. 
 And the mere sound of their names, and the 
 ideas and associations they conjure up before us, 
 at once tell us (whether we pretend to be critics 
 or no) that we have changed our climate and 
 are breathing a different air. And it is this 
 that I desire to make clear to those — and they 
 are always the majority of the lovers of Shak- 
 speare — who have no pretension to be Shakspeare 
 critics or scholars, nor even students in the 
 common acceptation of the term ; whose educa- 
 tion and tastes do not lie in that direction, and 
 who are, like the poet in Wordsworth's verses, 
 " contented to enjoy " the things " that others 
 understand." I want all such still to recognise 
 that, without being critics or commentators, 
 they may still find much unsuspected pleasure 
 and heightened interest in their reading, from 
 tracing in these plays the sure marks of Shak- 
 speare's growing experience, growing mind, and 
 growing mastery over the resources of his art. 
 For it is not by reading other critics, and other 
 commentators, that we make ourselves good
 
 32 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 critics and commentators. It is our own love 
 for and interest in any author that first sets us 
 watching him and his changes for ourselves. It is 
 love and interest that opens our own eyes to see. 
 And I know that the things we discover about 
 an author, as we come to acquire increased 
 interest in him, must in turn react upon that 
 interest, and make it deeper and more profitable. 
 We shall not love Shakspeare less, but more, by 
 discovering that, marvellous genius as he was, he 
 was yet a man like ourselves, and was taught, 
 and profited by, the discovery in himself and in 
 his art of things that wanted mending, of things 
 that did not satisfy him. 
 
 Now the comedy that beyond all question 
 marks the transition from Shakspeare's first stage 
 to his second is perhaps the most popular of 
 Shakspeare's comedies — the Merchant of Venice. 
 It stands, by general agreement of critics, on the 
 borderland between the first period of seven 
 years and the second. That is to say, it belongs 
 to about i 597 or i 598. And the internal evidence 
 of style would alone bring us to the same con- 
 clusion. Rhyme is still in favour, and largely 
 used. Not whole scenes, but long passages from 
 whole scenes, are still in rhyme ; and even frag- 
 ments in the stanza-form are here and there 
 found. The diction is less florid, as a rule, than 
 in Lovers Labour s Lost, and Romeo and Juliet, and 
 Midsummer Night's Dream ; but it is florid, and 
 even wordy, in places ; and the euphuistic fashion
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 33 
 
 of over-doing illustration from the Greek and 
 Roman mythologies is very noticeable. You all 
 know this play so well that I scarcely need to do 
 more than indicate the passages I refer to. You 
 will remember how, in the most notable scenes, 
 rhyme alternates with blank verse, for some 
 reason not easy to account for. For instance, 
 Bassanio on opening the right casket — the one 
 containing Portia's portrait — begins his exclama- 
 tion of delight and relief in animated blank verse, 
 thus : — 
 
 What find I here ? 
 Fair Portia's counterfeit ! What demi-god 
 Hath come so near creation ? Move these eyes ? 
 Or whether, riding on the balls of mine, 
 Seem they in motion ? Here are sever'd lips, 
 Parted with sugar-breath : so sweet a bar 
 Should sunder such sweet friends. 
 
 Yet immediately afterwards, when he has read 
 the scroll, he relapses into the rhymed couplet : — 
 
 A gentle scroll. Fair lady, by your leave ; 
 I come by note, to give and to receive. 
 Like one of two contending in a prize, 
 That thinks he hath done well in people's eyes, 
 Hearing applause and universal shout, 
 Giddy in spirit, still gazing in a doubt 
 Whether those peals of praise be his or no ; 
 So, thrice-fair lady, stand I, even so ; 
 As doubtful whether what I see be true, 
 Until confirnrd, sign'd, ratified by you. 
 
 Now both these portions of Bassanio's speech 
 — the unrhymed and the rhymed — we shall agree 
 VOL. I d
 
 34 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 are as beautiful as they can be, in their respective 
 ways. He would be an ungrateful reader who 
 wished them other than they are ; and yet we 
 detect, so far, no certain reason why Shakspeare 
 used rhyme during one dozen lines and no 
 rhyme for the next dozen. Well, we pass im- 
 mediately to Portia's reply, a speech perhaps the 
 most exquisite, the most womanly in feeling, as 
 well as the most subtly varied in diction and 
 rhythm, in the whole range of the Shakspearian 
 drama, which is saying a good deal : — 
 
 You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, 
 
 Such as I am : though for myself alone 
 
 I would not be ambitious in my wish, 
 
 To wish myself much better ; yet, for you 
 
 I would be trebled twenty times myself; 
 
 A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times 
 
 More rich ; 
 
 That only to stand high in your account, 
 
 I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, 
 
 Exceed account ; but the full sum of me 
 
 Is sum of something, which, to term in gross, 
 
 Is an unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractised ; 
 
 Happy in this, she is not yet so old 
 
 But she may learn ; happier than this, 
 
 She is not bred so dull but she can learn ; 
 
 Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit 
 
 Commits itself to yours to be directed, 
 
 As from her lord, her governor, her king. 
 
 Myself and what is mine to you and yours 
 
 Is now converted : but now I was the lord 
 
 Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, 
 
 Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now, 
 
 This house, these servants and this same myself
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 35 
 
 Are yours, my lord : I give them with this ring ; 
 Which when you part from, lose, or give away, 
 Let it presage the ruin of your love 
 And be my vantage to exclaim on you. 
 
 I think there will be little difference among us 
 as to the matchless beauty of these lines. At 
 this stage of Shakspeare's mastery over the 
 resources of blank verse we must at last feel that 
 the battle of blank verse against rhyme is lost 
 and won. In those earlier plays — rich also in a 
 beauty of their own — Love's Labour's Lost and 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, we might not have 
 come to this conclusion, because the capabilities of 
 blank verse as against rhyme were not yet so 
 apparent as to be irresistible. The varieties of 
 blank verse — its flexibility, its perpetual changes 
 and surprises of effect — that are so clear to us in 
 the passage I have just read, were not as yet dis- 
 cernible, because Shakspeare had not yet impressed 
 upon blank verse his own individuality ; he was 
 still to an extent in the leading-strings of Marlowe 
 and Greene. In Love's Labour's Lost, indeed, there 
 is a liveliness about the rhymed passages that is 
 wanting in the blank verse, eloquent and refined 
 as it is. But here, I ask you to observe, all this 
 is changed. The liveliness has departed out of 
 the rhyme and is found in the blank verse, so 
 flexible is it, so evidently adapted to lend itself to 
 every varying mood of the speaker, every inflection 
 of his mind and heart. And when once Shak- 
 speare had attained this mastery over his instru-
 
 3 6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 ment, the supremacy of the rhymed couplet in his 
 dramatic verse was at an end. Yes, and I may 
 add that almost from this very scene (the second 
 of the third act) of the Merchant of Venice the 
 reign of rhyme was at an end. Never again in 
 this play, save in one subsequent speech of Portia, 
 when she is for the moment merry and elated, 
 does the rhymed couplet recur. Never in any 
 serious or tragic passage, never at all in Shylock's 
 mouth ; never in the " quality of mercy " speech, 
 or in the Trial Scene at all. In fact, the earnest- 
 ness and intensity of the play may be said to have 
 killed rhyme. We feel that Shakspeare, as he 
 grew in earnestness, which means in hu/nan-ness, 
 must have abandoned it for good and all. And 
 it is profoundly interesting that it should be this 
 play which witnessed its overthrow. For the 
 play was a comedy, and was meant originally to 
 be humorous throughout, save where it was senti- 
 mental, as in its love passages. Shylock was not 
 meant to be the leading character of the piece. 
 In such a case Shakspeare would doubtless have 
 called it, after him, the Usurer of Venice, or even 
 simply Shylock, as he did when a Macbeth or an 
 Othello was the central figure of the drama. 
 Shakspeare called the play after Antonio — the 
 Merchant of Venice — not, indeed, because Antonio 
 is the leading figure of the play, but because he is 
 the connecting link between the two stories of 
 which the drama is made up — the story of the 
 pound of flesh and the story of the caskets —
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 37 
 
 the " Shylock incident " and the " Bassanio 
 incident." 
 
 Very interesting to us, from many points of 
 view, is this play — the most popular perhaps of all 
 Shakspeare's comedies. For it is a comedy, in 
 the technical sense, seeing that it ends happily. 
 And yet it is the tragical interest pervading it 
 that has so impressed it upon the memories of us 
 moderns. And, stranger still, where to us it is 
 tragic, its author, at the outset of his task, meant 
 it to be comic. Before Shakspeare began to 
 write, the Jew of the drama had been always a 
 monster of wickedness, and (as in the miracle 
 plays) with a comic exterior — made up with a 
 pantomime wig and nose — to excite ridicule. So 
 it was in Marlowe's Jew of Malta ; so, doubtless, 
 in that earlier play (now lost) called the Jew, 
 where the pound of flesh and the caskets had 
 been already combined into a plot, and which 
 Shakspeare, with his admirable freedom in borrow- 
 ing, had " conveyed " bodily to his own use. I 
 think, from expressions and allusions in the 
 comedy itself, there can be no doubt that Shylock 
 was at first meant to be no other than the 
 stock Jew of the stage. And so strong, re- 
 member, continued that original estimate of the 
 character that, up to a hundred years ago 
 nearly, it kept the stage, and Shylock was treated 
 as a low-comedy creation. It was Macklin, the 
 actor and dramatist, who first (some hundred 
 and fifty years ago) treated him as a serious
 
 38 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 personage, and as even making demands upon 
 the spectators' sympathy, and in doing so called 
 forth the often-quoted criticism, " This is the Jew- 
 that Shakspeare drew." A just criticism, but 
 there are signs scarcely to be mistaken that it was 
 not the Jew that Shakspeare at starting intended 
 to draw ; but the humanity of the poet, as the 
 character grew under his hand, interposed, and 
 refused to allow all the spectators' sympathy to 
 go with the gentlemen who, priding themselves 
 on their Christianity, yet thought it nothing 
 derogatory to spit and call names on the Rialto. 
 It is this divided instinct in the poet, his duty 
 to the conventional and popular conception of the 
 Jew, and his allegiance to his own conscience and 
 sense of right, that makes the slight discrepancies, 
 and perhaps with them the fascination of this 
 drama. The language used about Shylock in the 
 play marks him out as a fiend, an incarnation of 
 all that is inhuman ; but his own language does 
 much to neutralise this, and to make such charges 
 recoil upon his adversaries. And here is yet 
 another instance of how the humanity of the poet 
 was overruling another of the conventions, not 
 merely artistic, of his time, and how the truer 
 humorous sense of the poet destroyed the lower 
 and poorer. And it is this which I think we shall 
 more and more notice in reading the plays of 
 Shakspeare's second period — how this humanity 
 of his, his power of sympathy with his characters, 
 increasingly keeps under, or drives out, the mere
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 39 
 
 fashions and artificialities of his age. What im- 
 aginative literature, and especially poetic and 
 dramatic literature, wanted at the period when 
 Shakspeare began to write was just this — it 
 wanted a profound and a sincere man, who was 
 also supreme in the imaginative faculty, to raise 
 literature above the atmosphere of pedantry and 
 of fancy, running into eccentricity, which so long 
 possessed the Tudor and Stuart times, and of 
 which euphuism is the most familiar example. 
 Literature wanted a perfectly sane genius to guide 
 it through the snares and pitfalls that encom- 
 passed it (and if there are any present so un- 
 fortunate as not to know Charles Lamb's profound 
 essay, entitled the Sanity of True Genius, let them 
 refer thither for further explanation). A fashion 
 can never be killed save by bringing it into 
 conflict with something healthier. That great 
 phrase of Dr. Chalmers is as true in the region of 
 art as in that of ethics — that phrase, " the expul- 
 sive power of a strong affection " — a poor affection 
 can only be driven out by a worthier. Shak- 
 speare, indeed, at no period of his life, even when 
 his art was least mature, was ever frivolous. His 
 earlier plays, often overlaid with ornament and 
 interpenetrated with the euphuistic trick of speech, 
 yet have beneath them always the sweet, the 
 divinely human touch. 
 
 On first thoughts the comedy that I named as 
 representative of this middle period, As You Like 
 It, might indeed seem to be a relapse into the
 
 40 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 fantastic and artificial after the direct and almost 
 tragic force of much in the Merchant of Venice. 
 This delightful play is almost as much a fairy-tale 
 as the Midsummer Nights Dream, if improbability 
 of incident, and a Forest of Arden, with lionesses 
 and serpents, and other such fantastic adjuncts, 
 make up fairyland. It is indeed the land of 
 pastoral poetry, which is to all intents and pur- 
 poses " no man's land." The play is (like the 
 Winter's Tale) a dramatised novel. The novel, 
 called Rosalynde, by Thomas Lodge, dramatist and 
 general literary craftsman in prose and verse, had 
 been published nearly ten years, and become very 
 popular, when Shakspeare adopted it. Lodge's 
 romance, in prose interspersed with songs and 
 sonnets, was imitated, like Sidney's Arcadia, from 
 the Italian and Spanish pastoral writers, one of 
 the innumerable variations upon a theme — the sup- 
 posed happy life of shepherds and shepherdesses 
 — which, first made popular at the Renais- 
 sance in the idylls of Theocritus and Virgil, had 
 fascinated in extraordinary degree the imagination 
 of Europe, and had rapidly spread through all 
 countries, infecting all literatures, like an intel- 
 lectual influenza. The fashion did not pass away 
 so soon as many epidemics, for it survived in 
 various shapes until late in the last century, and 
 may be tracked still in those little Watteau-like 
 groups in Dresden china that still adorn many a 
 best parlour in a country house. Here, again, as 
 in Love's Labour's Lost, we find Shakspeare the
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 41 
 
 satirist of a " fad." Lodge's Rosalynde was written 
 to meet the unfailing demand for pastoral romance. 
 Shakspeare adopted it for the purposes of his own 
 genius, recognising doubtless the real poetic and 
 dramatic capabilities of the story, but seeing also 
 with his all-embracing sense of humour an oppor- 
 tunity for satirising what was unreal in the pastoral 
 mania. In Lodge's romance there is no satire — no 
 Touchstone to act as the exquisite running com- 
 mentary, or chorus, upon the preposterous dream 
 that able-bodied young men and women of educa- 
 tion could wisely leave the duties of social life to 
 make love under hawthorn hedges, and watch 
 their flocks, under skies that were always sunny. 
 " And how like you this shepherd's life, Master 
 Touchstone ? " " Truly, shepherd, in respect of 
 itself, it is a good life ; but in respect that it is a 
 shepherd's life, it is naught. In respect that it is 
 solitary, I like it very well ; but in respect that 
 it is private, it is a very vile life. Now, in respect 
 that it is in the fields, it pleaseth me very well ; 
 but in respect that it is not in the court, it is 
 tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my 
 humour well ; but as there is no more plenty in 
 it, it goes much a,gainst my stomach." 
 
 I am dealing with such changes in Shak- 
 speare's art, that is to say in the way he dealt 
 with his materials, during the period covered by 
 the composition of his plays. And in so doing, it 
 would seem obvious to consider the plots of his 
 dramas ; for more and more in our own days does
 
 42 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the plot affect our judgment of a play or a story. 
 Clever construction, ingenious imbroglio, novel 
 and startling incident, are the qualities that now- 
 adays make the fortune of an author (or his 
 publisher), not characterisation, humour, poetry, 
 and the sweet human atmosphere that envelops 
 the whole. And the consequence is that origin- 
 ality in the matter of plot is watched for with a 
 rigorous jealousy. If the startling incident — some 
 novel and ghastly use of Nature's secrets — turns 
 out to have been used before, or not to have been 
 invented by the artist using it, there at once 
 " begins the scandal and the cry." Only the 
 other day the lady author of an admirable story 
 of child-life was severely handled because another 
 book, never heard of, contained two or three of 
 the same incidents ; and actually it was considered 
 worth fighting out the battle in the newspapers — 
 a curious, but instructive, comment upon the 
 change that has come over our standards of 
 artistic value. In the really palmy days of 
 literature such charges of plagiarism were unheard 
 of ; and we (such hypocrites or so inconsistent 
 we are) pretend that they did not signify then, 
 though they signify apparently so much now. In 
 this matter of plagiarism, so called, let it be 
 understood once for all that it is not where a 
 man finds his material that determines his origin- 
 ality, but what he does with his material when 
 he has got it. Shakspeare (as far as we know) 
 originated but one plot in his life. Sometimes he
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 43 
 
 took a previously written and acted play ; some- 
 times an existing romance from the French or 
 Italian in prose or verse ; sometimes an episode of 
 chronicle-history from Holinshed, or a biography 
 from Plutarch ; sometimes a hackneyed anecdote 
 from some popular chap - book. And it is 
 abundantly evident that the plagiarist, so far 
 from showing any desire to conceal his theft, 
 actually chose those themes because they were 
 already so widely known. The modern plagiarist 
 steals when he thinks the theft will escape notice. 
 It was the other way about with Shakspeare. 
 He stole because the material had already proved 
 itself attractive, and was therefore likely to attract 
 further notice in its new dress. And how new 
 that dress was ! His raw material was in most 
 cases, as we have the means of verifying, " raw " 
 indeed. When poor Mr. Baps, the dancing- 
 master in Dombey and Son, who dabbled in 
 political economy and was always boring his 
 friends with it, asked Mr. Toots at Dr. Blimber's 
 party : " What are you to do with your raw 
 material when it comes into your ports in 
 exchange for your drain of gold ? " Mr. Toots 
 suggested, " Cook 'em," an answer that failed to 
 satisfy Mr. Baps. But it is precisely what 
 Shakspeare did with his raw material, and we 
 all know with what magnificent gastronomic 
 results ! 
 
 Therefore, in one sense, we cannot trace the 
 growth of Shakspeare's art or humour by the
 
 44 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 stones he invented, for in their general outline he 
 did not invent them. Nor can we put it that he 
 chose better and better plots as he advanced in 
 experience and judgment. In tragedy he always 
 chose, even from the first, stories with splendid 
 opportunities. The very names of Hamlet, Mac- 
 beth, Othello, Lear, assure us of that, and Romeo 
 and Juliet, a much earlier play, is no exception. 
 But in comedy, it must be allowed, he was not 
 always so fortunate. The stories of Measure for 
 Measure, All's Well that Ends Well, Cymbeline, if 
 we first heard them related in unvarnished prose, 
 might not seem to any of us either pleasant or 
 hopeful material for a comedy. And we have 
 only to imagine how such stories would have 
 fared if treated by a second-class imagination, to 
 be struck once more with the extraordinary first- 
 class quality of Shakspeare's. The incidents are 
 often so exasperatingly disagreeable, in themselves, 
 that we wonder how a dramatist, who had a large 
 range of Italian fiction current in England to 
 choose from, should have been attracted to them. 
 We feel this now and then, I fancy, even in his 
 most favourite comedies. To many, I think, the 
 pleasure derived from Much Ado about Nothing— 
 as to the greater part of which, the Beatrice and 
 Benedick part, and the Dogberry and Verges part, 
 we should all agree that Shakspeare is at his 
 very best — the pleasure of these, I say, is hindered 
 by the secondary plot, dealing with the false 
 charge against Hero, where the silliness and
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 45 
 
 cruelty of those who assume her guilt are hard to 
 believe even in fiction. And yet, and yet, such 
 is the fusing power, the controlling strength, of 
 the dramatist that even this extreme case becomes 
 all but probable and reasonable when we see it 
 enacted. This is partly due to the author's train- 
 ing to the stage, which taught him what is drama- 
 tically effective. But far more is it due to that 
 sure-footed step of his in things moral, that he 
 never slips even on the most dangerous ground ; 
 that he leaves us in the end satisfied ; that he 
 never allows us at least to be for one moment un- 
 certain as to where his own sympathies are engaged. 
 That there is a certain sameness in Shak- 
 speare's comedies — I refer to the repetition of 
 a certain class of incidents — follows from the 
 circumstance that he took his stories from a 
 class of literature where certain stock incidents 
 were in frequent use : such as the mistakes 
 arising out of the personal likeness between 
 two characters ; that of the young ladies dress- 
 ing in men's attire, for some purpose of the 
 story, and then being fallen in love with by one 
 of their own sex. When Charles and Mary 
 Lamb were writing their Tales from Shakspeare, 
 poor Mary, who had undertaken the comedies, 
 grew weary of having to describe such masquerad- 
 ing so often. " She thinks Shakspeare must have 
 wanted imagination," Lamb writes to a friend. 
 The truth is, that Shakspeare could not escape 
 the inconvenience attendant on following a taste
 
 46 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of the hour. If he handicapped himself, so long 
 as he was in bondage to the euphuistic fashion, 
 so did he, in another way, when he chose a 
 popular class of incidents for his comedies. But, 
 on the whole, we must agree that if he incurred 
 this danger he avoided certain others, by not 
 inventing his own subjects. If there is necessarily 
 a mannerism in any fashion of the hour, there is 
 also, remember, an inevitable mannerism in a 
 man's own tastes and fads ; and when an author 
 invents his plots we must allow that the taste 
 and bias of the inventor is conspicuous in a 
 certain mannerism of the whole, however unlike 
 may be the separate incidents of the story. 
 Recall the writers who have achieved most 
 celebrity in the last few years as masters of 
 " constructive skill," and ask yourselves whether 
 the very ingenuity and novelty that is so admired, 
 elaborated out of the author's own brain, does 
 not tend to become painfully monotonous — 
 problem plays, plays written to fit particular 
 actors. On the other hand, although the incidents 
 of Shakspeare's comedies are often alike, how 
 unlike, do we not notice, at the same time, are 
 the plays themselves, as a whole ! Shakspeare 
 may repeat his devices (because he found them 
 in the stories that came first to hand), but the 
 play in each case comes out perfectly distinct 
 from its companions. And I take the reason of 
 this, first and foremost, to be that the writer did 
 not invent a subject to suit his own capabilities
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 47 
 
 and his own limitations. Any subject involving 
 the free play of human affections, passions, joys, 
 sorrows, frailties, ambitions, and temptations, seems 
 to have been good enough for Shakspeare. He 
 cared for man more than for incidents. We 
 recognise Shakspeare in his plays neither by the 
 incidents nor by the class of character chosen to 
 represent. We recognise him by the way in 
 which he makes his incidents subordinate to the 
 varied, yet unvarying, humanity of the characters. 
 How distinct, I repeat, are his comedies — As You 
 Like It, Twelfth Night, Winters Tale, Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, Tempest. It is only the 
 consummate imagination, the poetry, the moral 
 wisdom and sweetness, together with the magic 
 of style, that declare their writer to be one and 
 the same. There is a mannerism in these 
 qualities that forbids us to conceive that they 
 could have had different authors. But for the 
 rest, each has its own atmosphere, and they move 
 apart and distinct in the firmament of creative 
 energy. 
 
 Therefore, we are not to trace so much how 
 Shakspeare's raw material improves (for it seems 
 almost a chance to the end of his life whether 
 the story that he had to transmute into a play 
 was prima facie a good one or not), but it is open 
 to us to observe what class of subjects seem more 
 and more to have attracted him as he advanced 
 in experience of life, as the " graver mind " more 
 and more asserted itself above the " lighter heart,"
 
 48 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 and (what is more immediately to our purpose) 
 how this mental and moral growth affected the 
 masterliness of his workmanship and the clearness 
 and effectiveness of his dialogue. The two 
 comedies that follow in chronological order those 
 just dealt with seem to have been Much Ado 
 about Nothing (1599) and Tzvelfth Night (1601). 
 Now to tis the first named of these infallibly 
 suggests what in Shakspeare's intention was the 
 underplot. " Much ado about nothing," a proverb 
 of the day, of course points to the misery caused 
 by the preposterous charge against poor Hero. 
 This is, in fact, the centre of the entire fable, 
 and therefore gives its name to the play. Yet 
 the Benedick and Beatrice part has always taken 
 precedence of the other, partly because those on 
 whom poor Hero's fate brought all this trouble 
 so entirely fail to gain our sympathy. But this 
 incomparable pair, though in the first instance 
 merely the comic relief to the serious interest, 
 actually themselves constitute (if we come to 
 think) the serious interest of the drama ; just 
 because they are real people, real flesh and blood, 
 while some of those more deeply concerned in 
 Hero's fortunes are but shadows. The lady and 
 gentleman are indeed delightful in their holiday 
 moods, with their wit and their never -failing 
 resource, but beneath it all are the true man and 
 the true woman. Much of Beatrice's repartee 
 has lost its point for us, and some of it we have 
 become too refined to enjoy ; but when she
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 49 
 
 begins to feel true compassion, just resentment, 
 all this falls away — a mere society manner that 
 can be put on and put off at will. It is a 
 mistake to treat Beatrice as originally a coquette, 
 with a talent for saying smart things, and then 
 suddenly " converted to womanliness " by her 
 cousin's wrongs. Beatrice is a lady from the 
 beginning, as any one who remembers the late 
 Miss Helen Faucit in the character can never 
 have forgotten ; and I think nowhere does what I 
 have called the " clarifying " effect upon language 
 of genuine feeling and earnestness exhibit itself 
 more decisively than in the outburst of Beatrice 
 after the pitiable and shameful scene in the 
 church, where Hero's good name has been blasted 
 on evidence that in our own day would not have 
 hanged a kitten ! The euphuism of coquetry, the 
 badinage of the salon, has disappeared in this scene, 
 and the euphuism of style has passed away with 
 it. A bit of true, loving, right-minded woman- 
 hood has scattered it to the winds. It is Beatrice 
 who terrifies all the men with her sarcasm and 
 cutting remarks, who is still the real salt of 
 this play, the ozone of its atmosphere. And 
 Shakspeare, in the lightest and most fantastic of 
 his comedies, is never without the felt presence 
 of this moral element. It is this which from first 
 to last — though the incidents may be terrible, or 
 ghastly, or improbable — keeps the whole range 
 of his drama sweet ; the one strongest, most 
 enduring charm ; the thing on which his enduring 
 VOL. I E
 
 50 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 popularity with all sorts and conditions of men 
 most surely rests. 
 
 I was to speak in these lectures of a growth 
 in Shakspeare's art, and you see how natur- 
 ally one relapses into discussing his characters ; 
 perhaps because the most attractive as well as 
 the " proper study of mankind " is man. But 
 besides this, it is a part of our inquiry to trace 
 how the growing interest in the deeper problems 
 and mysteries of life brings about a corresponding 
 depth and reality in Shakspeare's literary form, 
 and gives strength to his poetic hand. Two 
 great tragedies belong to this second period of 
 Shakspeare's productivity. In one of these 
 every character is more familiar and more " alive " 
 to us than the real historical personages of 
 Elizabeth or James. Every speech, every happy 
 phrase, every fragment of moral wisdom in 
 Hamlet are with us " household words." The 
 very abundance of the " old quotations " in 
 Hamlet shows us that we have reached a new 
 stage of Shakspeare's dominion over us. I 
 suppose Romeo and Juliet is as rich in beauty, 
 poetry, eloquence, power, and charm as Hamlet, 
 yet there must be ten times as many often - 
 quoted passages from Hamlet as from it. If 
 you care to refresh your memory by turning 
 to any Handbook of Familiar Quotations (a 
 tolerably safe guide to the popular taste), 
 you will see, under the heading Hamlet, that not 
 only the quantity but the quality of the passages
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 51 
 
 that men have adopted into their daily speech 
 has somehow changed. For the most part, the 
 utterances borrowed from Romeo and Juliet savour 
 of their origin. Quotations, like the shell from 
 the sea-shore held to the child's ear, whisper of 
 the ocean from which they came ; and these 
 suggest the flavour of the languishing Italian 
 clime. " What's in a name ? That which we 
 call a rose, by any other name would smell as 
 sweet " ; or " Parting is such sweet sorrow that 
 I could say ' good-night ' until to-morrow." The 
 whole subject of popular quotations is one of 
 great interest, and not to be dealt with in a 
 parenthesis. A large proportion of these from 
 a writer like Shakspeare, who possesses that 
 supreme thing called style, owe their popularity 
 to some exquisite felicity or picturesqueness of 
 expression ; and thus they attain a vogue among 
 educated people something akin to what proverbs 
 have among those less educated. Shakspeare 
 puts some common observation of mankind into 
 a form that cannot be improved upon, and some 
 one else having discovered it and first applied it, 
 other people follow, and so the success of the 
 quotation is assured for all time. " Out-heroding 
 Herod " is an obvious example, and is, moreover, 
 a curious instance how, through losing all touch 
 with its context, a quotation may be continually 
 used with a lack of appropriateness quite amus- 
 ing. But setting aside these neutral passages — 
 popular for their mere usefulness — a hasty glance
 
 52 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 over these picked passages from the different 
 plays of Shakspeare is not without its use. They 
 convey, in the aggregate, the particular colouring 
 of each play — the " key " in which it is composed. 
 And as we pass from even Romeo and Jiriiet, and 
 the more serious and tragic parts of the Merchant 
 of Venice, we find ourselves, in Hamlet and in 
 Othello, entering worlds of a new intensity, and 
 with them a more matured, a stronger, greater 
 style. 
 
 Hamlet, the finished play as it left Shakspeare's 
 hands, belongs to 1603 or thereabouts. The 
 story of the Prince of Denmark whose father was 
 murdered by his uncle was already in many 
 shapes famous, and its dramatic capabilities 
 had been early discovered. There was a prose 
 romance taken from the French, still extant ; 
 and there had been at least one English play 
 on the subject before Shakspeare took it in 
 hand — a tragedy with a ghost in it, urging the 
 tardy son to vengeance ; and a German version 
 of this play was being acted in Germany about 
 the same time that Shakspeare produced his. 
 There is no doubt that here again Shakspeare 
 chose his subject because of its popularity already 
 approved. But as he took other property of his 
 wherever he found it, he was now to take it from 
 a writer of the day, who apart from his works is 
 absolutely a name to us and nothing more, and 
 that, writer was Thomas Kyd. As far as I am 
 aware, not a single fact or date is known about this
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 53 
 
 person, save that he wrote for the stage in the 
 reign of Elizabeth, and that he was the author of 
 an extremely popular play called Jeronimo, or the 
 Spanish Tragedy. Yes, one thing more is known, 
 and it is in the highest degree significant. In 
 the splendid lines addressed by Ben Jonson to 
 the memory of his " Well-beloved Master " William 
 Shakspeare, he deprecates comparison of him 
 with his contemporaries, though he says that 
 otherwise he might well point out — 
 
 How far thou didst our Lyly outshine, 
 Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line. 
 
 This well-known couplet has often fallen upon 
 the reader's ear with an uncertain sound. We 
 know, and can verify, the assertion as regards 
 two of these named, and the appropriateness of 
 their choice — for on comparison Shakspeare falls 
 into natural rank, as regards Marlowe and Lyly. 
 Marlowe did the stage the unsurpassable service 
 of first using blank verse in the public theatre ; 
 and when in his hands it became a " mighty line " 
 indeed. Lyly did a service hardly inferior, by 
 first writing comedy in prose ; a factitious and 
 unnatural prose, no doubt, but still opening a way 
 for Shakspeare to " better the instruction." But 
 who, the reader asks, was Kyd ? and if he was 
 merely a popular dramatist what relevancy was 
 there in the comparison between him and Shak- 
 speare ? For when we compare a man of supreme 
 genius with another, even to point out that he
 
 54 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 " outshines him," there must be some decorum in 
 the contrast. There must have been something 
 about this man Kyd, considered as one who 
 helped on the dramatic art in England, which 
 led Jonson to introduce him into this passage. 
 Remember that Ben Jonson, besides being the 
 great dramatist that he was, was also the leading 
 scholar and critic of his day, and as such did not 
 compare or contrast idly. 
 
 Ben Jonson applied to Thomas Kyd the 
 epithet " sporting," but this was merely a play 
 upon his name, a concession to that taste for a 
 pun, in season or out of season, another of the 
 common and stubborn symptoms of the euphuism 
 epidemic. It was a grim jest too, for Kyd's 
 topics and treatment were far other than sportive. 
 His Spanish Tragedy was certainly written before 
 1589, and therefore before Shakspeare had pro- 
 duced a tragedy at all. Now this play (actually 
 the sequel to a former play less known) achieved 
 an extraordinary popularity in its day, and its 
 day was a long one. Twelve years after its first 
 production we find Jonson paid by managers for 
 " additions to " it — for " writing up," as we should 
 call it, various scenes. For the popularity of the 
 play, as it came first from the hand of its author, 
 was certainly not due to any poetry or " elevation " 
 of language. Partly in so-called blank verse, but 
 largely in rhyme, it rarely rises above common- 
 place, and is often veritable doggerel. Its popu- 
 larity was won by the plot and the situations,
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 55 
 
 which were really of a most startling and effective 
 kind. Time fails me to tell you the story — you 
 will find the play in Dodsley, an easily accessible 
 book. 1 For the moment it is sufficient to point 
 out that the plot is a kind of Hamlet reversed. 
 In Hamlet a son discovers a father's murder ; in 
 the Spanish Tragedy the father, old Jeronimo, 
 discovers the murder of his son. He goes 
 distracted in consequence, and in the end makes 
 use of the machinery of a " play within a play " 
 (as also in Hamlet) to bring home the crime to its 
 true author ; the play ending, again like Hamlet, 
 with the visiting of the sins of the guilty upon 
 the innocent, and a carnage among the principal 
 characters as wholesale as that which so shocked 
 Voltaire and the eighteenth -century critics of 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 And monstrous, even to grotesqueness, as is 
 much of this drama, poor and crude as is its 
 language, it marked in some respects an advance 
 in the development of English tragedy, greatcr 
 even than Marlowe had attained. As poets and 
 masters of the harmony of the English tongue, 
 comparison between the two dramatists is idle. 
 Marlowe was one of the greatest ; Kyd one of the 
 least. Yet it is not too much to say that there is 
 
 1 [Since this lecture was given the plays of Kyd have been edited by 
 Prof. Boas, with elaborate prolegomena, including a memoir which 
 contains a good many more facts than the three referred to above. 
 Mr. Boas makes it quite certain that Kyd was the author of the 
 Hamlet play upon which Shakspeare worked ; but he is inclined to 
 allow his prottgt too much of the credit for the final result.]
 
 56 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 more grasp of what constitutes an effective tragic 
 story in Jeronimo than in anything Marlowe has 
 left us ; more, in short, of what goes to make the 
 superb effect, as a whole, in Hamlet, Macbeth, or 
 Lear. And it is to this fact, I believe, that Jonson 
 was pointing in that memorable passage. To say 
 that Shakspeare " outshone " Kyd as a poet would 
 be about as absurd as to say that Mr. Browning 
 outshone the poet Close. But to say that Shak- 
 speare " outshone " Kyd in having followed a path 
 that Kyd opened, and yet by virtue of imagination, 
 poetry, profound thought, and the matured power 
 of art, left Kyd immeasurable leagues behind, is 
 neither impertinent nor meaningless, but such a 
 criticism as was quite natural to one like Jonson, 
 to whom the incidents and situations of both 
 Jeronimo and of Hamlet were as perfectly familiar 
 as those of the latter are to ourselves. 
 
 Coming then to this group of tragedies that 
 mark the close of our second period of Shakspeare's 
 art — Hamlet and Othello — we feel that what marks 
 them above all that has gone before is maturity — 
 that we have reached the manhood of Shakspeare's 
 genius. Indeed, instead of that sentimental 
 nomenclature of mine, for which I have already 
 apologised, I might have characterised the first 
 two periods not as spring and summer, but as 
 youth and manhood ; only, what should I have 
 called the third, seeing that neither in his life nor 
 in his art was Shakspeare to feel old age ? And 
 so if summer stands for ripeness, before even the
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 57 
 
 shadows of decay have begun to fall, the word 
 may stand. Ripeness is strength, and strength is 
 what strikes us now, in this stage of the poet's art. 
 Mastery — mastery over his material, mastery over 
 his gifts, and, may we not add, mastery over him- 
 self. The language in the main is changed ; it 
 loses its redundance as it has to grapple more and 
 more closely with the problems of the life and soul 
 of man. Shakspeare's language does not (like 
 Marlowe's) grow in efflorescence and in magnilo- 
 quence as his incidents rise in wonder or terrible- 
 ness. Rather, as the incidents thus rise, his 
 language calms into simplicity and reverence. 
 Before the majesty of Life — its sorrows, fears, 
 passions, yearnings — the language becomes grave 
 and clear — and stronger because graver and clearer 
 — till often all that differences Elizabethan English 
 from our own seems to fall away, and the verse 
 becomes as modern as Wordsworth or Tennyson 
 would write. 
 
 During many, many later periods of criticism 
 in English history, Shakspeare has passed for a 
 " sensational " writer, and his sensationalism has 
 given great offence to many, both at home and 
 abroad. In a sense, it is a true charge. There are 
 plays of Shakspeare as sensational in their in- 
 cidents as Tambnrlaine or Jeronimo. The situa- 
 tions in Hamlet or Macbeth — what could be more 
 so ? And if they had been treated by a writer 
 wanting the quality that Shakspeare gave them, 
 they might have been equally popular, but for how
 
 58 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 long? As far as we can judge, the Spanish 
 Tragedy in its own day was quite as successful, 
 quite as popular as Hamlet. But where is Jero- 
 nimo now ? And this is why a sober critic must 
 refuse to brand Hamlet and Macbeth with the 
 name of " sensational." The truth of the matter 
 was pointed out long ago by Charles Lamb, in 
 words that cannot be bettered, in commenting on 
 a play of Webster's ; and in these words he has 
 defined for all time the essential weakness and 
 rottenness of the thing called " sensationalism." 
 " To move a horror skilfully, to touch a soul to 
 the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, 
 to wear and weary life till it is ready to drop, and 
 then step in with mortal instruments," this, Lamb 
 says, Webster has done in his Duchess of Malfy ; 
 and he adds, " inferior geniuses may upon horror's 
 head horrors accumulate, but they cannot do this. 
 They mistake quantity for quality ; they terrify 
 babes with painted devils — but they know not 
 how a soul is to be moved. Their terrors want 
 dignity, their affrightments are without decorum." 
 Now, we could not, if we sought far and near, 
 find a better description of what sensationalism 
 is, and of what Shakspeare is not, and, more- 
 over, of the popular literary food of our own day. 
 The mistaking " quantity for quality," the " piling 
 up the agony " as it is called, the skilfulness in 
 adding horror to horror, surprise to surprise, and 
 with it the absolute impotence to " move the 
 human soul," — terrors without dignity, and affright-
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 59 
 
 ments without decorum — how better could we 
 describe the works of fiction that satisfy all the 
 imaginative requirements of whole classes ? No, 
 it is not the surprising, the supernatural, the 
 sanguinary nature of his incidents that constitutes 
 a writer sensational. It is the use he fails to 
 make of these incidents. It is his having 
 recourse to the marvellous when he has no 
 imagination, and to the terrible when he has 
 no real human sympathy ; this that writes him 
 down " sensationalist," and this, let me add, which 
 causes that his writings, often the enthusiasm of one 
 generation, are destined to become the laughing- 
 stock of the next ! 
 
 In that Essay on Dramatic Poesy of Dryden's, 
 referred to at the outset of my lecture, the writer 
 has occasion to deliver a well-known criticism on 
 Shakspeare : " He was the Man who, of all 
 modern and perhaps ancient Poets, had the 
 largest and most comprehensive Soul. All the 
 Images of Nature were still present to him, and 
 he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When 
 he describes anything, you more than see it — you 
 feel it too. Those who accuse him to have 
 wanted learning, give him the greater commen- 
 dation : he was naturally learned ; he needed not 
 the spectacles of Books to read Nature ; he looked 
 inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is 
 everywhere alike : were he so, I should do him 
 injury to compare him with the greatest of man- 
 kind. He is many times flat and insipid : his
 
 6o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Comick Wit degenerating into clenches [i.e. puns], 
 his Serious Swelling into Bombast. But he is 
 always great when some great occasion is pre- 
 sented to him : no man can say he ever had a 
 fit Subject for his Wit, and did not then raise 
 himself as high above the rest of the Poets, 
 
 " Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi " 
 [As towers the cypress o'er the pliant shrub]. 
 
 These words may sound to us at first rather 
 patronising ; in a degree they are, for Dryden's 
 own ways, dramatic and other, were not Shak- 
 speare's. But Dryden could hardly help getting 
 to the root of the matter somehow. For, like the 
 Ben Jonson of forty years earlier, he was the first 
 critic of his day. And when he says that Shak- 
 speare is always great when some great occasion 
 is presented to him, and that he rose just in 
 proportion as he had a " fit subject for his wit," 
 he is indeed and in truth " touching the thing 
 with the needle's point." He proclaims the real 
 secret of Shakspeare's growth in genius, as in art ; 
 he proclaims not less his growth as a wise and 
 good man ; and in this criticism is comprised 
 also the explanation of Shakspeare's weakness, 
 as of his strength. It only needs guarding (in 
 my judgment) by this addition, that the fit 
 subjects came to him, not wholly by chance, but 
 that they more and more attracted him as he 
 himself grew in moral seriousness. If a genius 
 had it in him to rise to a great theme, how could
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 61 
 
 he help rising to such as Hamlet, Macbeth, or that 
 strange but most profound drama — technically a 
 comedy, but in its colouring throughout tragic — 
 Measure for Measure. Suffering, and the trans- 
 figuration of all noble suffering into victory ; 
 goodness defeated but never humiliated ; the 
 littleness of man always made to bring into light, 
 not shadow, the real greatness of man — it is in 
 the " strength of that meat " that we rise up 
 fortified from the study of these mighty works.
 
 THE THREE STAGES OF SHAK- 
 SPEARE'S ART 
 
 III 
 
 AUTUMN 
 (1605-1612) 
 
 The veil that seems to hang over the personality 
 of Shakspeare, — a veil that we have so often 
 mourned and sought in vain to pierce, — is not 
 wholly due to the scantiness of our information 
 from without, to the absence of any contemporary 
 accounts of him and his fortunes (although 
 mention of him is singularly abundant), and to 
 the lack of any " Boswell " in any shape whatever. 
 It is due also obviously to the fact that (putting 
 on one side a few narrative and lyric poems) he 
 was a dramatist, and as such wrote, never in his 
 own person but always as some one else. We 
 are apt to forget that in the instance of so 
 many dear and loved authors of our country we 
 know them from themselves, quite as much as 
 
 62
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 63 
 
 we know them from their Boswells. We know 
 Pope and Swift from their writings. They admit 
 us to their tastes, their fancies, their prejudices, 
 their philosophy, their weaknesses. We know 
 them there, and the stories of Martha Blount 
 or Stella hardly add to our vital knowledge of 
 them. For it is not " chatter " about these that 
 establishes our completer view of the man. Even 
 the novelist, who like his brother dramatist is 
 always presenting his characters and not himself 
 to our criticism, now and again relapses into 
 himself, and by his own criticism upon the 
 creations of his fancy permits us to form a 
 really valuable judgment of himself, his ideals 
 and standards, his likes and dislikes. But the 
 dramatist can never step apart from the characters 
 he draws to survey them and tell us what he 
 thinks. If a character passes under such review, 
 it can only be at the hands of yet another 
 character (not the author) in the same drama. 
 
 And so it comes about that, of all our supreme 
 writers, Shakspeare is in a way the most a 
 stranger to us. Even if we feel convinced in our 
 own minds from such-and-such a character or 
 situation that Shakspeare must have thought so- 
 and-so ; that his religion, his philosophy of life, 
 his political bias, must have lain in this or that 
 direction, the answer is ever at hand : " Oh, not 
 at all, it is his character who speaks, not the 
 man Shakspeare ; his treatment of men and 
 things is in accordance with the exigencies of
 
 64 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the particular fable that he treats. He throws 
 himself, marvel of protean change that he was, 
 into any form, into any mood." 
 
 I hope I have thus far shown, to those who 
 have honoured me by their presence here, that 
 I am not in these lectures broaching any new 
 theory, or supporting any old one, as to how 
 we can evolve Shakspeare out of his works. I 
 have absolutely no sympathy with those who 
 would point to this passage, or to that play, and 
 cry, " Here, or here, is the veritable Shakspeare." 
 My method, so far as it can be called one, is 
 (I hope) a different and a safer one — to try to 
 add to our knowledge of the poet by noticing 
 changes in those respects that are independent 
 of the "characterisation" in the plays — the 
 writer's own changes in style, in subject, and 
 lastly in tone, which is more particularly our 
 present topic. And this can only be done by 
 considering the aspect of groups of plays taken 
 together. We have dwelt upon Shakspeare's 
 relations to various fashions of his day — how he 
 began by being under their dominion, and then 
 gradually subjected them to himself, as he 
 advanced in firmness of step and clearness of 
 purpose. And if we are justified in any infer- 
 ences we have drawn, we are not, I think, without 
 just a new gleam of light upon the nature and 
 character of the writer, though we have not 
 referred to any one saying of his, or moral 
 apophthegm, as certainly conveying his own
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 65 
 
 sentiments in the matter. We have watched 
 Shakspeare laughing at fashions of his day, and 
 we know him all the better for it. I might have 
 supplemented this view of him by the instance 
 of that wonderful character, Ancient Pistol, a 
 drunken, vapouring braggart, one of the many of 
 that type in the Elizabethan drama, due to their 
 precedents in Plautus and Terence — the Boast- 
 ing Soldier (Pyrgopolinices's and such) — that 
 delighted the world so at the Revival of Learning. 
 One delightful feature, you remember, of " mine 
 Ancient" is his showing a theatrical turn, and 
 having picked up, while standing among the 
 "groundlings" in the inn-yards, fragments of 
 the popular tragedies of the day, producing 
 them in season and out of season (but chiefly 
 the latter), when more than usually the worse 
 for liquor. It is not one of the least exquisite 
 of Shakspeare's anachronisms that in plays, the 
 scene of which is laid in Henry IV.'s reign, he 
 allowed Falstaffs dependant to declaim passages 
 from the most sensational plays of Marlowe and 
 Peele, written only a few years before, and still 
 the rage with a certain class of audience. You 
 remember them — " Feed, and be fat, my fair 
 Calipolis." " Have we not Hiren here ? " 
 " Hollow pampered jades of Asia, that cannot 
 go but thirty miles a-day" — and so forth, being 
 the choicest bits of bombast out of Marlowe's 
 Tamburlaine and Peele's Alcazar. Here, I submit, 
 we are allowed a veritable glimpse of what the 
 VOL. I F
 
 66 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 man Shakspeare was. Behind the mask of 
 Pistol, we do know that there is a genuine 
 humourist laughing at the false-tragic, the false- 
 sublime of his day ; and knowing how soon he, 
 Shakspeare, was going to put that sort of thing 
 out of date. If some one points to Portia's 
 beautiful speech about Mercy, and argues from 
 it what a peculiarly compassionate heart Shak- 
 speare must have had, I am unconvinced, because 
 the speech is dramatically appropriate to Portia, 
 and not of necessity to the author. But when 
 I take leave, as I have just done, to argue from 
 Shakspeare's treatment of Pistol in this matter 
 of his quotations from Shakspeare's contempo- 
 raries, the case is different. It is Shakspeare, 
 and it is not Pistol, who is showing keen enjoy- 
 ment in the absurdities of the popular drama 
 of his day — in the " high-falutin " (if I may 
 venture on yet another anachronism) of Peele 
 and Marlowe. And we have to that extent 
 advanced in our knowledge of Shakspeare in 
 noticing these things. We have strengthened our 
 growing conviction of what I have called the 
 essential sanity of Shakspeare — his perception 
 from the beginning of what was real and genuine 
 in art as well as in human life. 
 
 Well, we have arrived now at the opening 
 of that third period of his art, between 1605 and 
 161 2, at which latter date, approximately, Shak- 
 speare ceased to write, and retired, like the Thane 
 of Cawdor, " a prosperous gentleman," to live
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 67 
 
 among his family and friends in his native 
 Stratford. The mention of Feele and Marlowe 
 reminds us opportunely how, not only as regards 
 the sanity of his mind and art, Shakspeare 
 showed himself worthy to uphold the dignity 
 of literature as against their example. Those 
 and other young men, of academical training, 
 who looked with such envy and dislike on the 
 young " literate " from Warwickshire, with his 
 little Latin and less Greek, had lived from 
 hand-to-mouth, in constant dissipation and 
 wretchedness, and had died prematurely — some 
 violent deaths, some of hunger or of their 
 pleasant vices. Shakspeare, on the other hand, 
 had worked his way, by honest labour and 
 enterprise as actor and shareholder in his theatre, 
 as well as by the writing of plays, from poverty 
 to comfort, from comfort to comparative affluence. 
 Whether or not he was the shrewd man of 
 business, the keen striker of bargains, such as 
 in an excess of revolt against idealism it is now 
 the fashion to describe him, we cannot say. 
 The main success of the Globe Theatre as a 
 speculation may have been due to his " Fellows " 
 and not to him. But this we know for certainty — 
 that he put by money, while supporting his wife 
 and children in Warwickshire ; that he invested 
 it from time to time in land and houses ; that 
 in May 1602 he bought more than a hundred 
 acres of arable land in Old Stratford parish, and 
 was later in the same year making fresh purchases
 
 68 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 in the town, as if preparing the way for his 
 return after half a score more years. Whether 
 he paid visits from time to time to his kith and 
 kin in his old home ; whether the relations 
 between him and his wife were happy or the re- 
 verse — fortunately for Shakspeare's fame, happily 
 also for ourselves — we cannot say, we can 
 hardly even guess. Happy, most happy for us 
 that the lust of the biographer has no field for 
 speculating as to whether Shakspeare or his wife 
 was " most to blame " ; and perhaps for seeking 
 to enhance our admiration for the poet by 
 depreciating the character or conduct of the 
 woman he had married. For not an anecdote, 
 not a rumour has come down to us, to hint that 
 he was other than a loyal husband ; nothing 
 even in that strangely misunderstood document, 
 his will, to show otherwise than that here too he 
 was one of the sanest of his time. For when his 
 work was done, and the position of himself and 
 family assured, he left London, at the height of 
 his fame and in the full vigour of his powers, to 
 live the life of a country gentleman, and to 
 retain, as the will shows, the kindliest memory 
 of his old friends, alike of Stratford and the Globe 
 Theatre, London. 
 
 As the Merchant of Venice stands on the 
 borderland between Shakspeare's first and second 
 period, so King Lear — the date of which is about 
 1605 — marks the transition from the second to 
 the third. And as I enumerate the seven or
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 69 
 
 eight plays that distinguish this last period, I 
 ask those to whom each new title conjures up so 
 many happy memories and associations, whether 
 this group does not suggest a tone or colouring 
 wholly different from those of the two preceding. 
 I give their dates in all cases as nearly as in 
 the judgment of the best scholars they can be 
 determined, without any pretension to be dog- 
 matic in the matter: Lear, 1605 ; Macbeth, 
 1606; Timon of Athens, 1606 or 1607; Corio- 
 lanus, 1608 ; Cymbeline, Winters Tale, and the 
 Tempest, 1610 or 1611. I have said that the 
 general quality or tone of feeling pervading a 
 group of plays like this, and giving to them a 
 unity of their own, is more trustworthy for those 
 seeking to know Shakspeare through his works 
 than is the study of any single play. For each 
 play, we have seen, is so distinct from its com- 
 panions : its own story, coming to its author from 
 without, not originating with himself, at once 
 gives such an individuality, and engenders such 
 an individuality, that any single play, if sifted 
 and searched, might even seem to contradict in 
 particulars what we had inferred from some other 
 play. It is safer for those who know and love 
 them severally to think for the moment of the 
 grotip, not the individual; I am disposed to 
 borrow a euphuism, of recent coinage, and say, 
 to become an " impressionist," and seize the 
 general " atmospheric effects " of the group, apart 
 from either characters or incidents in detail.
 
 70 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 And as we apply this test what do we find — 
 Lear, Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, 
 Winter's Tale, Tempest — what quality, tempera- 
 ment, or vein of sentiment is common to these 
 most <-/£?-similar masterpieces of invention ? I 
 need not say that I disclaim any originality when 
 I observe that such a connecting link exists. It 
 has been patent always to the Shakspeare 
 student. Henry Hallam long ago seems to have 
 been pointing to it when he wrote in his Intro- 
 duction to the Literature of Europe that " there 
 seems to have been a period of Shakspeare's life 
 when his heart was ill at ease, and ill-content 
 with the world or his own conscience ; the 
 memory of hours misspent, the pang of affection 
 misplaced or unrequited ; the experience of man's 
 worser nature which intercourse with unworthy 
 associates, by choice or circumstance, peculiarly 
 teaches ; — these, as they sank down into the depths 
 of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired 
 into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but 
 that of one primary character — the Censurer of 
 Mankind." And Hallam goes on to specify, as 
 types of this last character, Jaques in As You 
 Like It, and the Duke in Measure for Measure, 
 as well as the satirical language of Lear and 
 Timon. Now it is not quite easy to trace here 
 the following of Hallam's conclusions upon his 
 premises. There are grounds for believing these 
 premises to be just. That Shakspeare did suffer 
 in his early days of theatrical life certain experi-
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 71 
 
 ences just enumerated, is probably true. That, in 
 common with all thoughtful men, he had to grieve 
 over many " hours misspent " is likely enough ; 
 and we have his own most instructive and 
 pathetic confession — that confession which doubt- 
 less Hallam had in mind when he penned the 
 words — made in his hundred and eleventh sonnet, 
 where he bids his friend rebuke Fortune, " the 
 guilty goddess of his harmful deeds " — " Fortune " 
 who 
 
 Did not better for my life provide 
 Than public means which public manners breeds. 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. 
 Pity me then, and wish I were renewed. 
 
 These often-quoted words do apparently point 
 to the shame which a noble nature must needs 
 take to itself when it finds a once keen moral 
 sensitiveness becoming less keen by contact with 
 the world. " Public means," that is to say, the 
 " glare of the footlights " (an expression perhaps 
 allowable, though as yet there were no glare and 
 no footlights) ; the temptation to write, in a 
 measure, for the public taste ; the having to court 
 and to receive public applause, and that face to 
 face with the public, and yet to retain simplicity, 
 modesty, unselfishness, and toleration of some rival 
 who knew better how to condescend to the public 
 taste ; — " public means " may have bred in Shak- 
 speare at one time of his life " public manners,"
 
 72 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of which he saw the ignominy while he felt their 
 power. And it would appear as if, in Hallam's 
 judgment, it was as a result of this contamination 
 from public manners that Shakspeare's sympathies 
 went for a while with the satirical, or even the 
 cynical, contemplation of mankind. I must say 
 that I read a different lesson in these facts. It 
 was in a healthy mood, not an unhealthy, that 
 Shakspeare conceived, and worked out, the char- 
 acter of the melancholy Jaques. It is very 
 curious how the estimate of this character has 
 always been largely determined in popular judg- 
 ment by one famous and beautiful speech allotted 
 to it, that of the " seven ages " (even as to many 
 Portia is, in fact, represented by that about the 
 " quality of mercy "). The " seven ages " seems 
 so genuinely earnest, sympathetic, and tender that 
 we lose sight of the fact that it is mainly a 
 rhetorical tour de force, based upon a popular 
 division of life into seven stages, quite well known 
 in Shakspeare's day ; and that, alas ! even an 
 eloquent sermon may not prove the preacher 
 sound of heart and temper. No ! Jaques does 
 not represent Shakspeare, even the Shakspeare of 
 a possible brief period of disgust or remorse. In 
 Jaques — laughed at, detected, baffled (if you 
 remember), by all the healthy-natured persons of 
 the comedy — Shakspeare is condemning cynicism, 
 not allowing it. Not here (with all deference to 
 Mr. Hallam) is it with Shakspeare, that the " little 
 touch of conscience makes him sour." With
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPE ARE'S ART 73 
 
 Shakspeare, and men of kindred nature, the little 
 touch of conscience makes sweet. 
 
 Now, of course it is obvious that at one period 
 in Shakspeare's life, and it is the one we are now 
 considering, a series of subjects was treated by 
 him in which the leading characters are men 
 who have suffered much (unjustly, as they believe) 
 at the hands of their fellow-men, and who are 
 driven thereby into an attitude of hatred and 
 revolt. It is enough to name Lear, Timon, and 
 Coriolanus. Each has to discover the truth told 
 in Shakspeare's own touching lyric, that the tooth 
 of the wintry blast is not so keen " as man's 
 ingratitude." Each personage stands alone — 
 nothing common to them but this. Lear, the 
 aged king, from the first moment that we see him 
 showing signs of senile dementia ; a despot by 
 nature, and that despotism, unrestrained, deepening 
 into mania ; and lastly, the final collapse of reason, 
 under the real hardness of heart of two children, 
 and the imagined indifference of a third. Then 
 Timon of Athens, a generous but essentially poor 
 and weak nature, indulging in that vainest of 
 dreams, that gratitude can be won by giving, and 
 that he who lavishes unworthily can evoke any 
 worthy response in others. The cynicism that 
 springs up full-armed upon this disillusionment 
 is pronounced enough ; but it is the cynicism of 
 the character, not of that character's creator ; a 
 cynicism of which the root is abundantly laid 
 bare ; not (as in Jaques) to make it contemptible,
 
 74 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 for Timon in his prosperous days had never been 
 a Jaques — he loved his fellow-men, if " not 
 wisely," only too well. His outburst of unreason- 
 ing spleen is made really to awaken our com- 
 passion : — 
 
 The old Timon with the noble heart, 
 That, deeply loathing, greatly broke. 
 
 And lastly, Coriolanus, the patrician, disgusted by 
 the failure to win recognition from those to whom 
 he had displayed an arrogance matching Lear's 
 in extravagance, is driven into an excess of scorn 
 through the ingratitude he was himself answerable 
 for. In none of the "bitter words" uttered 
 throughout these plays by man against his 
 brother-man is there any reason to suspect that 
 Shakspeare himself is speaking behind the mask ; 
 for in none of these personages (I submit) is there 
 sign that he sympathised in the attitude of these 
 men thus out of harmony with their kind. Shak- 
 speare is neither with Timon in his misanthropy 
 nor with Coriolanus in his scorn ; however, in 
 both cases, those qualities are magnificent and 
 pity-compelling. That their author sympathised 
 with the men themselves, in his all-embracing 
 humanity, we can clearly see, for he had pity for 
 human un-perfectness as well as for human suffer- 
 ing, and understood the inevitable connection of 
 one with the other. And it is just this inevitable 
 connection that (however brought about) does form 
 the prominent theme of these last plays, and
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 75 
 
 imparts to them a unity of their own. It is the 
 same in the comedies as in the tragedies ; felt as 
 strongly in Cymbeline and the Winter's Tale and 
 the Tempest as in the three great tragic creations 
 just enumerated. The wrongs of Imogen, of 
 Hermione, of Prospero, at the hands of others 
 make the pathetic colouring of their respective 
 dramas as obvious as do the wrongs of these 
 three men, Timon, Lear, Coriolanus, though their 
 wrongs are so largely due to themselves. Suffer- 
 ing, and all the compensating glories of tender- 
 ness, charity, forgiveness that spring up like 
 flowers beneath its feet — it is this that constitutes 
 a unity that cannot pass unobserved and unfelt 
 by us. And it does mark, as Hallam pointed 
 out, a deepening vein of sadness in the writer, 
 though we may not agree with him as to the 
 significance of that sadness. If Shakspeare can 
 be judged at all from what he has left us, it is 
 not from individual characters, but from the plays 
 as a whole. It is not the sarcastic and misan- 
 thropic vein of Timon or Lear that tells us what 
 the poet himself was feeling or thinking about 
 mankind ; but the sympathy that unmistakably 
 envelops the whole drama — the attitude that the 
 writer takes up, as thus shown, towards the crea- 
 tions of his fancy, the lacrymae rerum of the 
 Roman poet — these unquestionably become more 
 dominant in the themes he chooses. For what- 
 ever cause, Shakspeare, in these last years of his 
 creative period, was drawn to the graver, sadder,
 
 76 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 and deeper experiences and problems of human 
 life. Was it that he himself felt he had entered 
 upon this last period, and that it was the " be- 
 ginning of the end " ? Was it that 
 
 The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality. 
 
 Who shall answer these questions ? We must 
 remain awhile content to notice the facts that 
 suggest them. 
 
 I have said that we cannot separate Shak- 
 speare's " manner " from his " matter," and that 
 we cannot deal with his changes of style without 
 relation to his changes of theme. And we inquire 
 if the style, the poetry, of these last plays shows 
 anything of a corresponding unity of its own. 
 Well, in comparing the styles of any writer, 
 especially a dramatic writer, in his various writings, 
 there are many pitfalls for the critic, especially 
 when some of these writings are much more 
 familiar to him than others. For instance, I am 
 sure that any one knowing Hamlet as well as 
 most educated persons know it, turning to another 
 play of the same period comparatively strange to 
 him, might easily fancy the very English of the 
 two plays very unlike. For the language of the 
 one play, through familiarity, having long ago lost 
 its initial difficulty or strangeness, has come to 
 seem as natural as our own modern tongue ; 
 while that of the other, with its words and terms
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 77 
 
 and grammar still to be mastered, might seem all 
 but foreign to us. Then again, as I have said, 
 the very differences in the story to be treated, and 
 the characters to be drawn, and the truths to be 
 worked out, engender, of necessity, a certain differ- 
 ence of style, and even of vocabulary, tending to 
 make any one play look different in this respect 
 from its companions. But making due allowance 
 for all these deflectors of our judgment, and still 
 regarding the group rather than any one play, 
 we must, I think, notice certain changes in the 
 writer's diction, difficult to define, it may be, but 
 unmistakable to ear and sense. Nothing of the 
 " redundancy of fancy " that characterised Shak- 
 speare from the day he published his first long 
 poem, nothing of that inexliaustibleness that I 
 noticed in my first lecture, has deserted him. 
 There is no change of style attributable to falling- 
 off in invention, in copiousness of thought and the 
 word expressing it. The exuberance of dialogue 
 in Coriolanus, for example, is as manifest as in 
 Love's Labour's Lost, although so different in kind. 
 In reading either we understand afresh what Ben 
 Jonson meant by saying of his friend and brother 
 dramatist that " Sometimes he wanted the curb 
 rather than the snaffle — he wanted ' holding in.' " 1 
 It is still, as at the beginning, the most prolific 
 creative genius the world has seen who is at 
 work ; but the redundancy has changed its 
 
 1 [" Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius." See the 
 passage in Ben Jonson's "Discoveries," De Shakespeare nostrati.]
 
 78 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 quality. No longer is it the redundancy of poetic 
 fancy, wit, and gaiety of heart ; it is the outpour- 
 ing of profound and yet excited feeling ; of thought 
 hurrying upon thought, as billow follows billow on 
 the seashore. It is here that, when so much else 
 has changed, we recognise that the hand is the 
 same hand, although the nature which directs and 
 controls it may have reached yet another stage of 
 moral purpose. To attempt to illustrate such 
 difference, to pit the style of this period against 
 the style of twenty years earlier, proclaims itself 
 absurd as soon as we put it in practice ; you 
 would justly think so, if I read a passage from a 
 speech of Coriolanus and then one of Biron's. 
 We should expect to find the difference. If 
 Lovers Labour's Lost is obscured by excess of fancy, 
 Coriolanus is obscure through excess of thought 
 (and through stress of thought — the wrestling 
 of the writer with the deep and the complex 
 feelings he would give utterance to) ; the super- 
 abundance of thought even overflowing on to the 
 very servants in Aufidius's kitchen (like crumbs 
 from a rich man's table), for it is one of these 
 who, speaking to his fellow-servant of the merits 
 of Peace and War, says, " Peace makes men hate 
 one another " ; to which the other makes the pro- 
 found reply : " Reason, for then they less need 
 one another." 
 
 I placed Timon of Athens in my lecture-paper 
 as a play typical of this period, not certainly as a 
 favourite play, or as the equal of either Coriolanus
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 79 
 
 or Cymbeline, but because of its marking the very 
 excess of the sterner, gloomier side of a human 
 frailty deepening into insanity. The very un- 
 pleasantness of this excess, I think, deters readers, 
 besides the unequal quality of the play, due to the 
 circumstance that, by general agreement of all 
 Shakspeare scholars, other hands than Shakspeare's 
 are traceable in it. The story of Timon already 
 was a favourite topic in story and play ; and 
 whether Shakspeare " wrote up " an existing play, 
 or whether he wrote certain scenes, leaving others 
 to finish, is uncertain ; but of the divided author- 
 ship there can be little question. There is, almost 
 inevitably, from the nature of Timon's malady, an 
 excess of "scolding" in the play; and there are two 
 cynics in the play (wonderfully contrasted) — one 
 Apemantus, the cynic by profession, and the other 
 Timon, made cynical by his own disillusionment, 
 both revilers in their turn ; and the climate of 
 the play is stormy, relieved indeed by passages of 
 excellent humour, which if not Shakspeare's, it is 
 hardly possible to ascribe to any other known 
 hand ; for still, as at the beginning, there were 
 more in that age to emulate Shakspeare in his 
 tragic verse than in his humorous prose. There 
 are three distinct types of parasite in this play, 
 who, having taken all they could get from Timon 
 in the day of his wealth, turn their backs on him 
 without a blush at the first hint of his tribulation — 
 the man who, with cynical frankness, avows that he 
 always knew Timon to be a fool ; the hypocrite,
 
 8o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 who is so very sorry that unfortunately his own 
 balance at the bank is so very low ; and the third, 
 yet more consummate in his effrontery, who (and 
 how true to life it is !) affects to be so hurt in his 
 feelings that Timon did not apply to him first 
 (the two former gentlemen having already declined 
 assistance) that he cannot see his way, consistent 
 with any self-respect, to offer any help at all. 
 
 And now we come to the two dramas that 
 stand last in our catalogue — for they stand last in 
 the order of writing — the Winter's Tale and the 
 Tempest, both belonging approximately to the 
 year 1610. They rank, you know, as comedies, 
 and yet the interest of both is so serious and so 
 pathetic, it seems all but profane not to rank them 
 in a class apart. For here, though the " storm 
 and stress " and the persistent sternness of the 
 plays we have just been considering are absent, 
 yet there is much to place them in the same 
 group — again a unity of subject, stcffering — injury 
 received at the hands of those near and dear to us, 
 from whom was to be expected treatment so 
 different — this is still the theme that fascinates 
 the poet in comedy as in tragedy. In Cymbeline, 
 Imogen wronged by her too-credulous husband ; 
 in the Winter's Tale, Hermione the victim of hers, 
 and Perdita involved so long in the same calamity ; 
 in the Tempest, Prospero cast forth to perish by his 
 ungrateful brother. In all these stories too there is 
 another link, that " the soul of goodness in things 
 evil " is indeed " distilled out " and made to
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 81 
 
 sweeten the entire play : forgiveness — wrong re- 
 ceived and wrong forgiven — this halo hangs over 
 one and all. Much of the obscurity, the difficulty 
 of thought struggling for expression, that we have 
 noticed in the preceding plays of the period, is 
 found in certain scenes, but in others the effect 
 upon us is as of a fair evening after rain and 
 gloom. The Tempest, as you are aware, has long 
 passed for the very latest of Shakspeare's plays. 
 No doubt this may be so, for it is beyond all 
 question one of the latest, though by the irony of 
 fate it happened to be printed first in the folio of 
 1623, and by consequence has almost invariably 
 been allowed the same place in all subsequent 
 editions of Shakspeare. Then, too, its supremacy 
 (even among its companions) as a feat of pure 
 imagination naturally favours the idea that 
 anything after it would be an anticlimax ; and 
 lastly and chiefly, students of Shakspeare have 
 always read in Prospero a type of that greater 
 enchanter to whose magic he himself was due, 
 and who with this play buried his wand, 
 " deeper than ever plummet sounded," never to 
 use it more. But while these conclusions are as 
 pleasing as they are probable, the companion 
 drama, the Winter s Tale, stands close by its side ; 
 and if it were proved that with this drama 
 Shakspeare ceased to write, could we find it in our 
 hearts to wish it otherwise ? Is there any sweeter, 
 more enchanting, picture of human life, any more 
 skilfully-wrought-out story, any image we would 
 VOL. I G
 
 82 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 rather retain in memory as our latest glimpse 
 of Shakspeare — his heart, his mind, and his 
 poetry ? 
 
 There may be, and is, difference of power in 
 this play from that shown in his earlier dramas, 
 but most assuredly no falling - off. And it so 
 happens that we have once more the opportunity 
 of testing what Shakspeare could make out of 
 material most unpromising. Like As You Like It, 
 the Winter's Tale is built upon a prose pastoral 
 novel, and this time also written by a dramatist 
 and poet contemporary with Shakspeare — Robert 
 Greene. The story, like Lodge's Rosalynde, written 
 in the current euphuistic vein of the day, is extant, 
 and it is open to all to test Shakspeare's obliga- 
 tions to his original. It is not too much to say 
 that while the outline of the legend — the jealousy 
 of the king, the exposure of the infant child, and 
 its preservation by shepherds, and ultimate re- 
 covery when grown to womanhood — is the same in 
 both ; all that makes the real beauty of the story 
 is Shakspeare's, for the conclusion of the whole 
 matter in Greene, including the death of the 
 queen, the suicide of the king, and so forth, is 
 crude and unpleasing in the extreme. We are thus 
 able to test that continuance — that ever-perfect- 
 ing of Shakspeare's strength — at the very moment 
 when he was about to throw the cloak of his 
 magic from him, saying, " Lie there, my art." In 
 point of construction alone, this play seems to 
 me the most perfect of all the comedies. The
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 83 
 
 series of incidents in the fourth scene of the fourth 
 act, by which the escape of Florizel and Perdita is 
 brought about, after the infuriated Polixenes has 
 discovered himself to his son, is certainly one of 
 the most ingeniously and effectively contrived in all 
 Shakspeare ; and here he owes absolutely nothing 
 to Greene's novel of Dorastus and Fawnia. For, 
 to begin with, remember the part that Autolycus, 
 the vagabond, plays in that scene, and there is no 
 Autolycus in Greene. Two leading characters, 
 indeed, in the Winter's Tale are not in the original 
 story ; and here there is an instructive parallel with 
 Shakspeare's other adaptation from Lodge's Rosa- 
 lynde. In using that story, Shakspeare added two 
 entirely new characters, Jaques and Touchstone ; 
 and you will remember that though these two 
 characters stand, in a sense, outside of the main 
 plot and action of the drama, yet, such is the part 
 they play in the general effect, the play would be 
 hopelessly maimed if they were absent. For the 
 cynic Jaques is the necessary foil to the sweet, 
 contented character of the exiled Duke, and 
 Touchstone is the running chorus upon the 
 pastoral artificialities of the theme. And now, 
 again, Shakspeare makes the fortune of Greene's 
 story for dramatic purposes by these additions 
 of his own. Paulina, the true-hearted, faithful, 
 common-sense lady, is the necessary foil to the 
 brainless jealousy of Leontes (and he too is 
 another type of the moral aberration merging by 
 indulgence into mania) ; and Autolycus, though
 
 84 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 in form merely the conventional clown or jester 
 of the piece, is here made by Shakspeare, like 
 Dogberry, not a mere jester obbligato, for he fills 
 a necessary place in the development of the plot. 
 It is interesting that in this all but latest play 
 Shakspeare shows how entirely he has broken with 
 the past in this matter of low-comedy characterisa- 
 tion. In his character, antecedents, and (I am 
 afraid) ambitions, Autolycus is not a person to be 
 emulated. He is essentially the "comic rogue," — a 
 stock character of the pre-Shakspearian drama, the 
 " vice " of the morality — and yet how individual, 
 how natural, how essential to the best interests of 
 the story ! In his frankness, his impudence, his 
 versatility, his all but genuine lamentation that 
 circumstances will not allow him a chance of being 
 honest, has anything so delightful, and yet so 
 morally harmless, ever since been conceived ? 
 Nothing in the first freshness of Shakspeare's 
 comic invention twenty years before is richer 
 than the appearance of Autolycus, turned pedlar, 
 among the dairy-maids and the sheep-shearers 
 in that perfect pastoral, the fourth act of this 
 play. 
 
 Then there is the young boy Mamillius ; 
 and as to the consummate skill with which 
 his half-dozen sentences are made to bring 
 before us the whole child-character, not even the 
 emphasis of Mr. Swinburne seems too emphatic. 1 
 And lastly, there is Perdita, to whom Shak- 
 
 1 [A Study of Shakespeare, p. 222.]
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 85 
 
 speare has allotted perhaps the loveliest blank 
 verse even he ever produced. 
 
 O Proserpina, 
 For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 
 From Dis's waggon ! daffodils, 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
 Or Cytherea's breath. 
 
 We cannot be offended because, brought up 
 in the shepherd's home, she yet knows so much 
 about the loves of the heathen gods and goddesses. 
 For remember that in Shakspeare's day the in- 
 cidents and personages of Ovid's Metamorphoses 
 (the most popular story-book of the Renaissance) 
 were as familiar to Shakspeare's audiences as the 
 incidents and personages of his own best-known 
 plays are to us ; and the names and sad fortunes 
 of Ganymede, or Endymion, or Danae, were as 
 quickly understood and appreciated as among us 
 the adventures of the Master of Ravenswood or 
 Diana Vernon. 
 
 But we must pause. Enough, I think, has 
 been recalled to you to show what I mean when 
 I say that the climate of the play, as of all of 
 this period, is autumnal. And when I described 
 this last seven years of Shakspeare's art as 
 autumn, it was to this I pointed, rather than to 
 the autumn season of Shakspeare's own life. 
 And in saying this, I claim to be neither senti- 
 mental nor fanciful. What I point to is a real
 
 86 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 thing — real to feel, if difficult to define. It is a 
 quality in the light of the sun ; in the colouring 
 of nature ; in the graver thought appropriate to 
 that season of " calm decay," as contrasted with 
 the buoyancy and forward-looking of spring. 
 Not decay in any sense of failing power. The 
 power of mastery over material, of mastery over 
 metrical effect, and of all the worthier secrets of 
 a dramatist's skill — situation, variety, and climax, 
 in addition to that more beneficent secret of 
 touching the heart and enlisting sympathy for 
 goodness, and pity for suffering — had never been 
 shown in larger measure than in this play, in 
 which Shakspeare may be said to have said his 
 last word to his fellow-men. 
 
 Concerning Shakspearian criticism, and it is 
 prone to run riot nowadays, the old jest may 
 with real truth be repeated, that much of it is 
 new, and much true ; but that for the most part 
 what is true is not new, and what is new is not 
 true ! In these desultory lectures I have sought 
 at least to avoid what is new. I have neglected 
 altogether the topics which seem most to fascinate 
 young " Shakspeare societies " — such questions as 
 whether Shakspeare meant Sir Toby Belch for 
 Ben Jonson, or (what would do equally well) 
 whether he meant Sir Oliver Martext for Richard 
 Hooker. I am speaking to those perhaps who 
 do not join such associations, who mostly read 
 these plays for their own profit and delight — 
 " alone, the world " (and Shakspeare societies)
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 87 
 
 " shut out " ! I have pointed out how we cannot 
 evolve Shakspeare out of his writings, just because 
 the dramatic method is the very antithesis of the 
 autobiographical. But although this method 
 serves to keep Shakspeare concealed from us, in 
 a way that is often tantalising in the highest 
 degree, and though the absence of information 
 from without concerning what sort of man he 
 was makes us yet more despondent in our 
 ignorance, still there is no need for us to 
 exaggerate that ignorance. We know a great 
 deal more about our author than those persons 
 allege who are for persuading us that he did not 
 write his own plays. It always suits such 
 persons, remember, to minimise, and even ignore, 
 the unquestioned facts that we possess ; and by 
 always harping on that string they sometimes 
 make easy converts among those not better 
 informed. Only a few days since I heard a 
 gentleman, perhaps with Hamlet and Lear deep in 
 his heart, murmuring, " A Warwickshire peasant ! 
 a Warwickshire peasant ! " No doubt the con- 
 trast is very effective, if it were based upon fact, 
 but it is not. In no sense of the term, or of 
 what the term implies, was Shakspeare a peasant. 
 His father was not a peasant, and the son got 
 his education (for he could have got it nowhere 
 else !) attending for six or seven years one of the 
 best country grammar-schools then in England. 
 There is no antecedent difficulty as to Shakspeare 
 writing Shakspeare's plays, given the primary
 
 88 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 condition (and there we enter the realm of 
 mystery indeed !) of the genius which is born, and 
 cannot be acquired. Half a dozen years of school ; 
 half a dozen years of intimate contact with the 
 poetry and poets of the most astounding age in 
 English literature ; and with the world of soldiers, 
 statesmen, travellers, scholars, and thinkers around 
 him ; and the " quiet eye " to make all these 
 its harvest-ground ; what more should be wanted 
 to equip the man who through his imaginative 
 art is to move mankind ? 
 
 No ! there are difficulties and disappointments 
 enough in searching out Shakspeare without 
 adding to them by sophistical arguments from 
 outside. We should carry with us all the know- 
 ledge we indubitably possess to help that other 
 mode of study we have been considering. With- 
 out any assumptions beyond what that knowledge 
 permits, we may enter upon our inquiry. We 
 have watched a young poet, all on fire with 
 native inspiration and the emulation of his fellows, 
 after testing his hand by a magnificent experi- 
 ment in other verse, beginning as dramatist — 
 starting, no doubt, from the level that his fellows 
 had attained ; starting from their weaknesses as 
 well as their strengths ; starting from the literary 
 customs and fashions of the day, or of the masters 
 and models that had most allured him. We 
 have watched him dallying with the very fashions 
 he was to do most to discredit, turning upon 
 them the whole blaze of his wit and fancy. We
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 89 
 
 have watched him discovering one by one his 
 powers. He had received from the hands of his 
 contemporaries a drama, at its best crude. From 
 one of these, Marlowe, he had received the gift of 
 a metre, blank verse, on which Marlowe had 
 impressed such a seal of individuality that its 
 success as the dramatic metre of the future was 
 thenceforth secure. We follow Shakspeare's use of 
 this metre — from the first, musical and eloquent, 
 yet monotonous and limited in its uses, but 
 growing every year in freedom and variety. We 
 note the gradual disappearance from the plays 
 of the lyric element in their verse (save and 
 except in the interspersed songs, and they — as 
 witness the Tempest — remain unique and un- 
 approachable to the end). We note the blank 
 verse proving itself not the less beautiful and im- 
 pressive, but far more so, for the loss of that florid- 
 ness which at first may have seemed its beauty, 
 showing yet once again how the " half may be 
 greater than the whole." We have gone on to 
 note how the verse, or the author, rose to meet 
 every greater theme and issue presented to 
 him ; and how fashion and precedent ceased to 
 dominate as the more potent voice of deep 
 human interests asserted its authority. And 
 lastly, we mark a change coming over the very 
 climate of Shakspeare's drama. A series of 
 plays, greater as a whole than anything that has 
 gone before, marks the last stage of his working 
 life — Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, the Tempest, and
 
 9 o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the Whiter s Tale. A ripening to the very end ; 
 ripeness in the choice of theme, in the imaginative 
 treatment, in the skill of the development, in the 
 versification, in the depth of the philosophy, in 
 the human pathos and sweetness that bathes each 
 drama in an atmosphere of its own. And after 
 this, no more ! Nothing follows this autumn. 
 We might, but for one line, apply to this our 
 singer, Logan's beautiful lines to the cuckoo : — 
 
 Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green, 
 
 Thy sky is ever clear ; 
 There is no sorrow in thy song, 
 
 No winter in thy year. 
 
 There is no winter in Shakspeare's year, but 
 always (and it deepens towards the close) there 
 is sorrow in his song, and it gives to that song 
 its peculiar and imperishable charm. 
 
 And if there is warrant for all we have been 
 noticing — if I have rightly interpreted the effect 
 of his successive plays upon the general reader — 
 I would urge that we have learned much about 
 Shakspeare that is of rarest value. We may 
 possess but a handful of facts about his private 
 life : we dare not identify him with this or that 
 character in his dramas ; but still he does reveal 
 himself to us in those dramas. It is a real man 
 that we note there, and he may become, as we 
 study him, ever more real and more a friend to 
 us as we test this reality. For we feel that we 
 are in contact with a life and a growth. It is
 
 THREE STAGES OF SHAKSPEARE'S ART 91 
 
 a living personality, having the same affections, 
 organs, senses, even as we common men. He 
 would not be one jot more real to us if all the 
 facts of his domestic history had been collected 
 and transmitted by some gossip-collector of his 
 day, and if we were able to pronounce with 
 confidence on the conduct of that odious Ann 
 Hathaway who inveigled a mere boy into so 
 deplorable a marriage. 
 
 And as we take our leave of Shakspeare, quit- 
 ting so early the stage, and the drama, and all the 
 harassments of public life, to turn once more, " like 
 the cony, to the place where he was kindled " — to 
 the family, the friends, the neighbours, the simple 
 interests and duties of his native town — then, after 
 some four years, to end in quietness his life, it is 
 allowable once again to ask in the latest words of 
 our own Laureate — 
 
 What sight so lured him thro' the fields he knew 
 As where earth's green stole into heaven's own hue, 
 
 Far — far — away ? 
 What sound was dearest in his native dells ? 
 The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells 
 
 Far — far — away.
 
 THE ETHICAL ELEMENT IN 
 SHAKSPEARE 
 
 Although with a natural reluctance to introduce 
 a personal reminiscence into my lecture, I still 
 feel that I must explain how this lecture came to 
 be written. Some two years since it fell to my 
 lot to contribute to the first number of my friend 
 Mr. Lathbury's new journal, the Pilot, some 
 remarks on Mr. Stephen Phillips's Tragedy, 
 Paolo and Francesca (founded, of course, on 
 the immortal episode in Dante's Inferno). Dante 
 had treated the theme, as he treated all such, 
 from the one Christian and Catholic standpoint. 
 The crime of the lovers, that is to say, was 
 regarded as " sin," and as incurring the dread 
 punishment of sin. In using the subject for 
 dramatic purposes, the purely didactic treatment 
 was, from the nature of the case, impossible. But 
 what, as I ventured to think, repelled the reader 
 in Mr. Phillips's drama was that, though dealing 
 with a tragedy arising out of the profoundest 
 temptations and sorrows of poor human nature, 
 he had all but entirely omitted the moral element 
 
 92
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 93 
 
 altogether. The very existence of a moral law, 
 or even of a moral sense, seemed ignored. And 
 I went on to contrast this method with that of 
 Shakspeare. I did not take this course for the 
 superfluous purpose of contrasting the general 
 merits as a dramatist of Shakspeare and Mr. 
 Phillips, but simply as contrasting their respective 
 attitudes towards the personages in their plays, 
 out of whose characters and acts the plots of 
 those plays were developed. And I submitted 
 that though a dramatist, never speaking in his 
 own person but always in the person of his 
 characters, cannot express directly his own opinion 
 of them and their actions, still, in the instance of 
 Shakspeare, the poet's treatment of his theme 
 never left in the reader or spectator any reasonable 
 doubt as to where the author's sympathies lay. 
 I contended that in all of Shakspeare's maturer 
 dramas the existence of the moral law and the 
 moral sense was never lost sight of ; and indeed 
 pervaded, and gave its chief interest and charm 
 to the play as a whole. 
 
 For taking this line I was taken to task by 
 critics, who maintained that such reasoning is 
 beside the mark. Both methods — Shakspeare's 
 and Mr. Phillips's — it is urged, are equally legiti- 
 mate ; although, as one critic was bold enough 
 to say, Shakspeare's method was in fact only 
 carried off by his prodigious genius, and in any 
 lesser poet would have been intolerable. Mr. 
 Phillips's school of tragic drama, we were reminded,
 
 94 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 is that of Maeterlinck, not of Shakspeare. It is 
 his business to " adorn a tale," but not to " point 
 a moral," directly or indirectly. In treating 
 dramatically Dante's famous story of the unhappy 
 lovers, he has nothing to do with the innocence 
 or guilt — still less with the righteousness or sin — 
 of the principal actors. All he had to do was 
 to show with truth and skill, and also with all 
 available poetic adornment, how the web of destiny 
 was woven round them, and how a power they 
 could not control was driving them on to the fatal 
 end. " What," it was asked, " can Canon Ainger 
 want more ? Does he want the poet to have 
 appended a moral to the play, pronouncing his 
 own judgment on the characters ? Or would 
 he have liked moral sentiments to have been 
 placed here and there in the mouths of the 
 characters themselves, whereby the same end 
 might be attained ? " 
 
 I hope I have not unfairly represented the 
 attitude of at least one of my courteous opponents. 
 Another, a very distinguished journalist and 
 editor, has suggested that probably, and naturally, 
 clerical bias is answerable for my opinions. But 
 I can honestly say that I did not arrive at those 
 opinions by that path. When I had read Paolo 
 and Francesca, with sincere admiration for its 
 many notable qualities, its mostly pure and 
 eloquent verse, and its dramatic skill, I found 
 myself asking at the end, Why is it that, having 
 satisfied my curiosity as to the author's treatment
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 95 
 
 of his subject, I do not feel as if I had anything 
 further to study in the play? Why is it, for me 
 at least, that the drama fails in charm ? One 
 recalls Shakspeare's treatment of the fate of two 
 unhappy lovers — a fate equally tragic, equally 
 heart-rending. The difference in the final effect 
 as a whole upon the reader in Romeo and Juliet, 
 and in Paolo and Francesca, is it due simply 
 and entirely to Shakspeare being the greater 
 poet — the more consummate master of dramatic 
 effectiveness ? 
 
 It was the asking of such questions, and the 
 attempt to answer them, that prompted me to 
 write as I did. And I did my best to make it 
 impossible that I should be so far misunderstood 
 as to provoke the questions just cited. I certainly 
 did not complain that the dramatist did not 
 append any moral of his own. For I cited 
 Shakspeare as my example, and I need not say 
 that he never employed such artifice. ^Esop's 
 Fables, as we read them in our youth, were 
 furnished with such tags. And in the jest-books 
 current in Shakspeare's day — such as the Hundred 
 Merry Tales — each humorous anecdote commonly 
 ended with the words, " Whereby you may see " 
 that so forth, and so forth. But this resource is 
 impossible in the drama. And if it were possible, 
 it would only injure that illusion, which is the 
 first condition of dramatic effect. For the object 
 of the drama is to " hold the mirror up to 
 Nature " ; and in human life there is no one to
 
 96 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 stand up and pronounce sentence — from outside. 
 This resource is not, therefore, at the dramatist's 
 command. 
 
 Again, the distribution of didactic moral senti- 
 ments among the dramatis personce is equally 
 impracticable, and would be equally destructive 
 of illusion. We do not in real life become like 
 Mr. Joseph Surface in the comedy, and deliver 
 abstract sentiments upon every occasion that 
 presents itself. Sir Peter Teazle expressed once 
 for all, in trenchant language, the opinion of all 
 reasonable persons on such a habit. If the 
 author must not stand apart and speak the moral, 
 and if there is not, as in the Greek drama, a 
 chorus to keep up a running commentary on 
 the situations as they occur, neither must the 
 characters step, as it were, out of the canvas and 
 the frame to enforce a moral. 
 
 " But " (you may reply) " as a matter of fact 
 the characters in Shakspeare do utter moral 
 sentiments from time to time, sentiments of rare 
 pathos, spirituality, and beauty, expressed in 
 language of such charm that they have long ago 
 passed into our everyday speech as proverbs or 
 maxims, and are used habitually by thousands 
 who are unaware whose morality they are enforc- 
 ing and in whose language." This is of course 
 true. I could take up half your time on this 
 occasion by citing such passages — reminding us, 
 for instance, how prone we are to " give to dust 
 that is a little gilt more laud than gilt o'er-
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 97 
 
 dusted " ; l or that " spirits are not finely touched 
 but to fine issues," 2 and that " Heaven doth with 
 us as we with torches do, not light them for them- 
 selves." 3 There are scores and hundreds of such 
 moral apophthegms in Shakspeare, for which we 
 owe him eternal gratitude. And yet we should 
 one and all scout the suggestion that these are 
 lugged in by the dramatist, either as bids for 
 popular applause or to convey the moral lesson 
 which he (the author) wished to convey. One 
 reason why they touch and impress and move us 
 is that in the position which they occupy in the 
 drama they are dramatically appropriate. They 
 are the " criticism of life " which the circumstances 
 of the moment naturally evoke from the personage 
 who utters them. They are not only essentially 
 true as maxims or reflections, they are artistically 
 and dramatically true. They do not (to borrow 
 yet another phrase from Sheridan) "encumber 
 the soil which they cannot fertilise." They do 
 fertilise the soil, and that is why they are never 
 superfluous. 
 
 Shakspeare, it may be said with confidence, 
 never preaches. Sometimes, no doubt, his char- 
 acters are constrained to do so by the circum- 
 stances in which they find themselves. Isabella 
 is compelled to preach to the " precise Angelo," 
 when pleading for her brother's life — and a noble 
 sermon it is. Portia has to preach to Shylock, 
 
 1 Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3. 178. 
 2 Measure for Measure, i. 1. 36. 3 Ibid. i. 1. 33. 
 
 VOL. I H
 
 98 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 when urging on him the divine duty of forgive- 
 ness. And I am aware that there are many- 
 excellent persons who find comfort in these two 
 incidents, as justifying them in accepting this 
 otherwise pagan play-writer and play-actor as 
 having some few signs of grace in him. They 
 will point to such, and a few similar passages 
 where the allusions to Christian ethics are too 
 obvious to deny, as justifying the claim that 
 Shakspeare is a religious poet. And yet this is 
 to place that claim upon a very doubtful founda- 
 tion. The utterance by any writer, even when it 
 is appropriate and decorous, of religious or moral 
 sentiments, or of what are called " beautiful 
 thoughts," proves very little as to the opinions 
 and temperament, still less as to the moral 
 attainments, of the utterer. I remember some 
 very wise remarks on this point by the late Mr. 
 Coventry Patmore, who was at least as good a 
 critic as he was a poet. He was combating the 
 prevalent doctrine that we have nothing to do 
 with the private character or opinions of a poet, 
 that our business is only with the teaching of 
 his poetry, and that it is all nonsense to 
 revive the old dictum that a good poet must 
 first be a good man. Coventry Patmore goes 
 on to insist, and in my judgment rightly, that 
 we are, in fact, whatever our theories on this 
 head, affected in our estimate of some beauti- 
 ful and touching thought by our acquaintance 
 with the personality of the author of it ; and
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 99 
 
 he cites, by way of illustration, Wordsworth's 
 familiar lines : — 
 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
 
 Byron, says Mr. Patmore, might well have 
 been the author of these lines. The sentiment of 
 them is entirely within his reach, and he was 
 quite capable of utilising it, had it occurred to him. 
 But, supposing that it had appeared in one of his 
 poems — Childe Harold or another — would it have 
 affected our imagination and evoked the kind of 
 response in our hearts, and have dwelt there as 
 an abiding comfort and monitor as it has done, 
 since it came to us from Wordsworth ? And Mr. 
 Patmore's answer is that it would not, and for this 
 reason, that in spite of our theories we do ask 
 ourselves as we read whether such a sentiment is 
 sincere, whether it is grounded, that is to say, in 
 the real character, and the real experience, the 
 real aim and bias, of the writer, or whether it is 
 merely employed by him as a popular and 
 effective sentiment. And that this argument is 
 sound we must all, I think, agree. We do in 
 fact pronounce that in one writer to be " clap- 
 trap " which in quite a different writer comes to 
 us with value, as part and parcel of his life's 
 message. 
 
 Therefore, concerning the moral sentiments 
 propounded in Shakspeare, they cannot, if separ- 
 ated from their context, be taken as other than
 
 ioo LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 very true and beautifully expressed maxims. 
 They could not in themselves constitute Shak- 
 speare's moral worth as a dramatist any more 
 than do such maxims in the mouth of Polonius 
 show him to have exhibited moral wisdom in his 
 life, or than the teaching of the Book of Proverbs 
 proves Solomon (if he be their author) to have 
 been personally a model of excellence and wisdom. 
 It is not, therefore, by the abundance of and 
 beauty of the gnomic utterances of Shakspeare 
 that we are to gauge the ethical element in his 
 writings. Many persons, as I have already said, 
 are of a different opinion. His moral sentiments 
 have been from time to time culled and collected 
 into anthologies. And as, you remember, when 
 one such was presented to a wise humourist as 
 the Beauties of Shakspeare, he is said to have 
 retorted, " Where are the other nine volumes ? " 
 His jest was wiser than it seems. The true and 
 vital beauty of Shakspeare does not lie in these 
 excerpts. It lies in his attitude towards human 
 life as a whole : in the development of human 
 character, and of human destinies arising out of 
 such character. Erase from Shakspeare " The 
 quality of mercy is not strained," 1 or " The gods 
 are just, and of our pleasant vices make instru- 
 ments to plague us," 2 or " There is some soul of 
 goodness in things evil," 3 or any of the hundred 
 such that will flock to your memory. We should 
 
 1 Merchant of Venice, iv. i. 184. 
 2 King Lear, v. 3. 170. 3 Henry /'. iv. r. 4.
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 101 
 
 be incalculably the poorer for the loss of these. 
 But their omission from the dramas would not 
 alter the moral complexion of those dramas. For 
 it is shown in profounder ways : not in their 
 detachable ornaments, but in their organic unity. 
 
 It is by this organic and consistent unity 
 that we are really to estimate the value of the 
 ornaments — whether they are real pearls or imita- 
 tion, diamonds or paste. In the case cited by 
 Mr. Patmore it is not because we know Words- 
 worth's private life, and also Byron's, that we 
 presume to judge the respective sincerity of their 
 moral teaching. Even if we knew nothing of 
 either one or other, we should find ourselves 
 passing the same judgment : because, in studying 
 a poem, or indeed any work of imagination, we 
 insensibly, but quite justly, compare parts with 
 the whole ; and if the parts fail to correspond to 
 the whole, we look on them with suspicion. A 
 beautiful and profound reflection in Wordsworth 
 we unconsciously compare with Wordsworth as 
 a whole, i.e. as exhibited in the great body of 
 his work ; and the same with Byron. When we 
 are moved by a profound thought in Wordsworth 
 it is because we have the best reason to believe it 
 sincere ; and this reason is to be found in the 
 whole body of his extant poetry. It is impossible 
 to mistake the general aim of that poetry, and the 
 uniform nature of the moral emotion that every- 
 where and always possesses him. We have thus 
 an absolute justification for accepting a thought
 
 102 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 or sentiment as being true to the writer's inner- 
 most nature. No doubt also we insensibly think 
 of Wordsworth's long and retired life — content to 
 think and muse and ponder, and learn amid rural 
 solitudes the lessons of Nature — human as well as 
 all other — content with comparative poverty, and 
 with the neglect or contempt of the critics and 
 the so-called lovers of poetry in his day, because 
 he was conscious of the sincerity of what he 
 wrote, and was strong in the belief that sooner or 
 later the principles on which he wrote would be 
 recognised and approved. 
 
 Now, in the instance of Shakspeare, this last 
 standard of comparison is denied us. Apart from 
 what we learn of his character from his works we 
 know almost nothing of it. Mr. Sidney Lee has 
 lately brought to a focus all that we really know 
 of Shakspeare, and it is more, far more, as regards 
 the course of his outward life and the story of his 
 literary development than many good people have 
 imagined, who supposed that it was quite open to 
 them to propound some new theory as to the 
 authorship of the dramas. But apart from one 
 apparently undeniable incident of his earliest days 
 of wedlock — a story of a poaching escapade when 
 he was little more than a boy — and a few most 
 uncertain inferences from certain of his sonnets — 
 what is there that we know for certain of his 
 conduct or his moral or religious opinions as a 
 private citizen ? He worked hard and saved 
 money, and invested his savings in property in
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 103 
 
 London and Stratford, and was able to retire, 
 while still in full strength of body and of mind, 
 to his native town. It is something to know this, 
 no doubt. It is something to know that the man 
 with every temptation to share the reckless and 
 extravagant habits of the Bohemian poets and 
 playwrights of the time worked and made pro- 
 vision for himself and family by means, as far as 
 we know, entirely praiseworthy. But we cannot 
 set the moral utterances placed in the mouths of 
 his characters side by side with incidents in his 
 own private life and cry, " What inconsistency, 
 what hypocrisy ! " or else " What sentimentality 
 and clap-trap ! " We cannot call in Shakspeare's 
 private history to confirm or to depreciate the 
 moral teaching of his poetry. 
 
 Neither, as we have seen, can we separate the 
 utterances of his characters from their connexion 
 with their speakers and with the plot, and say 
 authoritatively: Shakspeare thought so-and-so, 
 or taught so-and-so. Partly because they arc- 
 dramatic utterances ; partly because a skilful 
 sentimentalist can often obtain credit for utter- 
 ances which are not really his own. Where, then, 
 are we to look for evidence that these utterances 
 are characteristic of the writer himself? We must 
 do this, I submit, by a survey of his dramas as a 
 whole — by what they reveal to us of the mind of 
 the author, conceiving and evolving the develop- 
 ment of a moral order in the conduct and fortunes 
 of his characters. We can only safely do this by
 
 104 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 noting the impression left on us by each play 
 as a whole. Forgetting for the time being the 
 beautiful details of the drama — the exquisite poetry 
 of certain passages, or the truth of particular 
 reflections, let us seek to analyse the effect each 
 play produces on us when regarded as a page 
 torn from the volume of human history. Whether 
 it be Hamlet or Macbeth or Lear ; As You Like It, 
 Much Ado about Nothing; The Tempest, Cym- 
 beline, or Winters Tale, it will, as it recurs to 
 memory, leave in our mouths a taste quite distinct 
 from our admiration of its poetry, its construction, 
 or even its characterisation. I am certain that all 
 who are intimate with their Shakspeare will under- 
 stand and assent to this. And what is this 
 flavour that Shakspeare leaves upon the palate — 
 whether it be comedy or tragedy with which he 
 is dealing, whether the interest be serious and 
 pathetic, or whether it be fantastic and humorous ? 
 I think we must admit that the flavour has to do 
 with moral sweetness and beauty rather than with 
 any intellectual and aesthetic attractiveness — sup- 
 posing that we can safely separate these things 
 from each other ; and this moral beauty one 
 connected with the fates and fortunes of the 
 various personages, as originating with and con- 
 trolled by their respective characters, or the char- 
 acters of those surrounding them. Take Romeo 
 and Juliet — a play, as I have said, so far parallel 
 with Mr. Phillips's drama that its deepest interest 
 lies in the career and the sad end of two deeply
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 105 
 
 attached lovers. We can imagine safely, I think, 
 how Mr. Phillips, or other dramatists of to-day, 
 would have chosen to treat the theme. We 
 should have been led to note the fatefulness of 
 the drama, how from first to last the unhappy pair 
 were immeshed in a net against which it was vain 
 to struggle — wound round in the toils of Fate — 
 the old Greek 'AvdyKtj, or Necessity, a power 
 against which even the gods are powerless. 
 But it is safe to say that this is not the effect 
 produced on us by Shakspeare's treatment. We 
 recognise, on the contrary, that homelier law of 
 necessity which says that what a man sows that 
 he shall reap. Think of the miserable state of 
 things that exists in the beautiful city of Verona 
 — the wretched hereditary feuds between families, 
 causeless, unreasonable, and unreasoning ; the 
 idle, talent-wasting frivolity of the young and 
 fashionable — these are the toils in which the 
 lovers are caught. It is man's folly and short- 
 sightedness that brings about the misery of 
 so many. Charles Lamb, who most assuredly 
 was neither a puritan nor a sentimentalist, nor 
 given to preaching, cannot help drawing the moral 
 when he tells over the immortal story once again 
 for children. Referring to the last words of the 
 drama, he says : " So did these poor old lords 
 [Montague and Capulet], when it was too late, 
 strive to outgo each other in mutual courtesies ; 
 while so deadly had been their rage and enmity 
 in past times, that nothing but the fearful over-
 
 io6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 throw of their children {poor sacrifices to their 
 quarrels and dissensions) could remove the rooted 
 hates and jealousies of the noble families." Such 
 indeed is the moral, or, at least, one moral, of the 
 drama. But Shakspeare himself never tells us so. 
 He does not come forth at intervals in morning 
 dress and hat in hand to address the audience, 
 like a Drury Lane manager. Neither does he 
 put the moral into the mouth of any one of his 
 characters acting as chorus. He can nowhere be 
 said to be preaching oblique sermons ; and yet his 
 readers hear and read these sermons in the very 
 development of the story, and its fidelity to human 
 life and human society. We talk with justice of 
 the lifelikeness of Shakspeare's characters. But 
 it is not in that chiefly that his fidelity to truth 
 consists. The characters might themselves be 
 lifelike, and yet be represented as exercising an 
 influence the very reverse of lifelike upon the 
 actions of other characters and the ultimate issue 
 of those actions. It is this which always seems 
 to me a radical falsity of the modern drama. Its 
 conception and depicting of character we may 
 sometimes accept ; it is too often the perfectly 
 arbitrary and inconsistent issues of such character 
 that strike us as untrue, because based upon no 
 true study of human life, and of the invincible 
 sequels of human destiny, arising out of the 
 primary law that " what is sown is reaped." We 
 all have been tempted at times to make merry 
 over the wholesale slaughter in the last scenes of
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 107 
 
 Hamlet. But a little reflection will teach us that 
 such " indirect and crooked ways " as have led up 
 to the final disasters — the atmosphere of crime, 
 duplicity, conjugal inconstancy, that prevailed at 
 the Court of Denmark — resisted only by one noble 
 nature, handicapped by a weak will and an intel- 
 lectual hesitancy, were bound to result (in a semi- 
 barbarous age) in death and carnage involving 
 innocent and guilty alike. The world is made so, 
 and the drama, holding up the mirror to its life, 
 must follow suit. Not otherwise with Lear. You 
 will all of you remember how in an uncritical and 
 an unspiritual age the caterers for the theatre put 
 their " hooks " (it is Charles Lamb's phrase) into 
 " the jaws of this Leviathan," and provided the 
 play with a happy ending, marrying Cordelia and 
 Edgar, and sending Lear into happy retirement to 
 private life for the end of his days. In the noblest 
 critical passage on Shakspeare ever written, Lamb 
 has exposed the folly and the poor insight into 
 life shown in such changes. " What," Lamb asks, 
 — after such experience as Lear's, — " what was 
 there for him but to die ? " 
 
 Let us cite a comedy, where morals are not 
 expected to be so obvious, omitting for the 
 moment those into which the supernatural or 
 the purely fantastic enters — such as the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream or the Tempest. I take 
 one which purports to represent possible incidents 
 in real life, and in which no moral lesson — such 
 as that of " mercy " in the Merchant of Venice
 
 io8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 or that of " forgiveness " in the Winter's Tale — is 
 inevitably prominent in the story. I take instead 
 Much Ado about Nothing. There is much in 
 this play which goes against the grain with us. 
 The absurdity of the charge brought against 
 Hero, and the weakness of the evidence on which 
 it rests, strike us all. Perhaps we do not quite 
 make allowance for the difference of customs and 
 of amateur legal investigation in Shakspeare's 
 day and our own. We feel sure that a detective 
 from London would have made short work of the 
 conspiracy of Don John and his friends. But 
 then those days were not the days of Gaboriau 
 and Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Besides, Shakspeare 
 had to accentuate the credulity of Claudio and 
 Leonato for the purpose of his story. By the 
 title he gave his play, Much Ado about Nothing, 
 he prepares the spectator's mind for a stupid 
 fiasco made by some one. But his object was 
 to show how easily persons may be deceived 
 in other matters than believing a preposterous 
 story against a lady's character. He had to show 
 also how a true and most womanly woman may 
 pass for a while in the superficial society of her 
 lifetime as a mere utterer of smart sayings, and 
 in the indulgence of her marked gift for persiflage, 
 and yet, when the deeper feelings of pity and re- 
 sentment against outraged justice are awakened, 
 show herself something so different. 
 
 I might go on — and the temptation is very 
 great — to cite such instances, for they are legion,
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 109 
 
 in all of Shakspeare's plays. And these instances 
 are not interpolated : they arise naturally out of 
 the circumstances of the play — the situations, the 
 plot. However grotesque, however repellent, the 
 plots of Shakspeare's plays may be, yet it seems 
 as if, without his intending it, without being con- 
 scious of it, he sweetened them, and made them 
 leave us the wiser and happier, and more in love 
 with human goodness, at the end. This is very 
 noteworthy. What it was that attracted Shak- 
 speare in any story that came into his hands to 
 be turned into a play is of course a mystery 
 that can never be solved. But we might almost 
 be justified in inferring that it was a mere chance 
 whether he set to work upon a great and noble 
 set of incidents or on one quite the reverse. In 
 his great tragedies — in a Hamlet, a Macbeth, a 
 Romeo and Juliet — he employed plays already 
 written, or chronicle histories, or Italian romances, 
 which might well have stimulated the imagination 
 of any great poet qualified to deal with them. 
 But what are we to say of such stories as those 
 on which Measure for Measure was built, or 
 Cymbeline, composed as they are of incidents 
 that even now, for all that Shakspeare has done 
 for them, we almost gladly forget when the 
 curtain falls ? Yet to both these plays we owe 
 the inspiring example of two of the loveliest 
 types of womanhood that poet ever drew — 
 womanhood which not only passes unhurt through 
 all trial and unstained by any of the degrading
 
 no LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 associations among which it moves, but lifts the 
 whole story on to a plane where we feel we are 
 breathing a lofty air of humanity, and sympathy 
 with all that there is in the world protesting 
 against what is low and vile. 
 
 And this reminds us of a controversy lately 
 arisen as to the relative importance to a drama 
 of the plot and the characters. One critic, 
 relying on Aristotle's Poetics, claims precedence 
 for the former. Others, including such scholars 
 as Mr. Courthope, Professor Butcher, and Mr. 
 Andrew Lang, decline (as they say) to let Aris- 
 totle crush us with a single dictum. And indeed 
 in the great drama of the modern world it is 
 absolutely impossible to separate and distinguish 
 between the two. In the Shakspearian drama 
 the plot arises out of the characters of those who 
 take part in it, and could not exist but for these. 
 We proverbially laugh at the idea of the play of 
 Hamlet with the part of Hamlet omitted. And 
 the smile is more intelligent than we may think. It 
 is Hamlet's character — his human affections, his 
 scholarly temperament, his moral and intellectual 
 hesitancy — that makes the plot. What is even the 
 Dens ex machina of a ghost on a rampart without 
 the determining influence of that one mental and 
 moral individuality ? Where is the plot of Mac- 
 beth without the conflict of two opposite human 
 individualities in Macbeth and his wife ? This 
 is no critical subtlety ; a thing for scholars and 
 metaphysicians to fight over. No doubt the
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE in 
 
 course of much of the modern drama tends to 
 obscure this truth, and pervert the judgments of 
 modern audiences. An exciting plot, some good 
 situations, and a few purple patches of poetry — 
 these are enough to-day to constitute a master- 
 piece and secure a verdict of unanimous approval. 
 But though fine feathers may make fine birds, fine 
 passages do not make a fine play. It is the 
 development of character, with its influence on 
 other characters and on the circumstances among 
 which it moves, that is the one worthy con- 
 stituent of the drama that time preserves and 
 justifies. And it is so far as a poet's attitude 
 to his characters is a human attitude that he 
 possesses the elements of a popularity and a fame 
 that shall endure, and secures that when the 
 fashions of his own age pass away he shall not 
 pass away with them. 
 
 It is this quality of humanity which constitutes 
 the supreme ethical virtue of Shakspeare and (be 
 it in justice said) of the noblest of his contempo- 
 raries. It is not the poet's own ethical preaching ; 
 not the preaching of the good and virtuous per- 
 sonages of the play ; not even the presence of 
 good and virtuous characters themselves, that 
 account for the final impression left on us by 
 any one of his dramas as a whole. Nor is it, 
 as I have said, any strict and invariable notion of 
 " poetical justice." Of poetical justice, as that 
 imbecile phrase is ordinarily understood, there is 
 none in Shakspeare, or at least so little that some
 
 ii2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 foreign critics, and even critics at home, have 
 thought good to scorn at the denouements of some 
 of the dramas, because the punishment lights 
 often upon innocent and guilty alike. But of 
 course this is just where Shakspeare's essential 
 truth to Nature is made manifest. For just as 
 the genial rain from heaven falls alike upon the 
 just and the unjust, even so does the Nemesis of 
 wrongdoing. Except in his fantastic comedies, 
 where Shakspeare took a story as he found it, 
 and did not think it worth while to change it, 
 he shows nothing of the desire to make things 
 pleasant all round, and reward his characters as 
 the unthinking spectator would like to see them 
 rewarded. Shakspeare, when he is dealing with 
 the serious issues of life, never regards what the 
 " barren spectator " (for whom he seems ever to 
 have felt a well-grounded contempt) would like 
 to have seen. The " barren spectator " likes 
 " violent delights," such as the ultimate happiness 
 of the suffering, and the ultimate punishment of 
 the villain. He likes " sudden conversions," such 
 as in real life do not occur. The tragedy that 
 Nicholas Nickleby translated for Mr. Crummies 
 contains the kind of episode that pleases the 
 groundling. Mr. Lenville, who did their first 
 tragedy, is delighted with the character for which 
 he is cast. " You turn your wife and child out of 
 doors, and stab your eldest son in the library. 
 At last, in a fit of remorse, you determine to kill 
 yourself. You have raised your pistol to your
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 113 
 
 ear, when the clock strikes ten. You pause — 
 you remember to have heard a clock strike ten 
 in your infancy. The pistol falls from your 
 hand, and you become a virtuous and exemplary 
 character ever afterwards." Mr. Lenville is 
 delighted. " A sure card." " Get the curtain 
 down on a touch of Nature like that, and it's 
 a triumphant success." But Mr. Lenville was 
 wrong, although he had had a long experience 
 of what audiences like. It was not a " touch of 
 Nature," but only the touch of a debased art ; a 
 concession to the vulgarest and most unthinking 
 of tastes. Except in fairy-tales, men are not con- 
 verted by hearing clocks strike ten. Mr. Dickens's 
 Christmas Carol is probably the most delightful 
 fairy-tale ever written. And in such a tale it is 
 as legitimate as it is charming an effect that 
 the long years of selfish parsimony should be ex- 
 changed in a moment for sweetness and generosity. 
 But Shakspeare did not write moral fairy-tales, 
 even when he took in hand a Midsummer Night's 
 Dream or a Tempest. 
 
 Hamlet, in one of the most famous of his 
 sayings, has told us that the purpose of acting 
 " at the first and now, was and is, to hold the 
 mirror up to Nature " ; by which he means, of 
 course, that Nature may see herself faithfully 
 reproduced. This is said of acting, but it is also 
 meant of the drama acted, for the actor's business 
 is faithfully to interpret the drama. Now there 
 are various methods of " holding up the mirror," 
 
 VOL. I 1
 
 n 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 or rather various ideas of the Nature to be thus 
 reflected. The less educated audiences under- 
 stand by it the art of showing them on the stage 
 the various scenes that they are familiar with in 
 the world. To represent, for instance, on the 
 stage, Margate Sands, or Charing Cross, or a 
 busy day on the Stock Exchange, with every 
 detail attended to, will attract tens of thousands. 
 I remember, many years ago, when at classic 
 Drury Lane a real hansom cab was first brought 
 upon the stage, what enthusiasm it evoked. And 
 though this kind of realism is very crude, and 
 properly condemned in literary and artistic circles, 
 there are other kinds of realism which seem 
 to be held quite legitimate. To reflect certain 
 sections of modern society, to show smart people 
 always making rude answers to one another 
 (which is called " epigram "), and, of course, 
 to make them sail very near the wind in in- 
 delicate allusion, this, because a fair transcript 
 of a certain society of the day, is provided as the 
 attraction of many modern comedies. But it is 
 not of the outward life, or social manners of 
 people, that Shakspeare was thinking. " Nature " 
 with him meant " human nature," not any par- 
 ticular type or temporary garb that it wears. 
 But he meant more than this. He meant the 
 laws which govern human nature : the laws of 
 cause and effect, of conduct and the consequences 
 of conduct. To these it was his business to 
 " hold up the mirror " ; and unless he did so, how
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 115 
 
 was it possible that the characters he drew should 
 appear other than either sentimental abstractions 
 or grotesque and impertinent interpolations in the 
 plot ? Why have we not more Shakspeares born 
 into the world ? Why does generation after 
 generation pass and no poetic dramatist of the 
 same high rank ever appear ? There was a very 
 able and remarkable article in the Quarterly 
 Review for July 1900, which I daresay many of 
 you have read, entitled, " The Conditions of Great 
 Poetry." Its general object was to solve the 
 question I have just propounded — " Why are 
 we waiting in vain for a second Shakspeare ? " 
 And the writer finds the answer in the position 
 (not, of course, original with him) that the spirit 
 of the present age is not favourable, and that if 
 ever history repeats itself in this respect, the great 
 Shakspearian quality will reappear among us, 
 and the loftiest dramatic impulse England has 
 ever known will produce for us the dramatist we 
 long for. " Capacity for emotion," our reviewer 
 says, must be assumed in the poet, but it will not 
 be elicited from him unless it is " prevalent 
 amongst those whom the poet addresses." Unless 
 his convictions are shared by his contemporaries, 
 the poet will become a didactic and missionary 
 poet, if not a mere controversialist, eager to 
 convert the world of readers to his opinions. If, 
 on the other hand, the convictions belong to both 
 the poet and his readers, then he will be led to 
 exhibit life (as Shakspeare does) in the light
 
 u6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 which such convictions throw upon it. Shak- 
 speare lived in a great age " of great national 
 expansion — political, religious, intellectual," the 
 chains of ecclesiastical bondage had fallen off", 
 and the eyes of men were opened to see things 
 for themselves. It was still an age of Faith, but 
 the soul of man was brought into freer, nearer 
 communion with God ; Hope was new born ; 
 new national developments had become possible ; 
 thought was free, but it was not irreligious — " the 
 ethics of the old Catholicism, with its judgments 
 of conduct and character, were almost as fixed 
 and vivid for Shakspeare as they were for 
 Dante." I would have you carefully to study 
 this essay I am quoting from, for with much of it 
 we shall all agree. Where I venture to differ 
 from the writer is in this, that I think he 
 obliterates Individuality too much, in his en- 
 deavour to show that it is the creation of the age 
 it is born into. If all Shakspeare's contemporary 
 poets showed, even in general outline, the qualities 
 we note and admire in him, then a very strong 
 case would be made out for this view. But is 
 this so ? Take, for example, the instance of 
 Shakspeare's contemporary, Marlowe. By general 
 agreement his verse was the finest (" Marlowe's 
 mighty line," as Jonson called it) of the time, 
 next to Shakspeare's. His power of conceiving 
 and treating tragic situations was marvellous. 
 Passages in his plays are of singular power and 
 grandeur. But the ethical virtue of his dramas —
 
 ETHICAL ELEMENT IN SHAKSPEARE 117 
 
 all that quality which should have come to him 
 from the hopes, aspirations, new-born joys of his 
 time — was missing. He had had a more thorough 
 school and college education than Shakspeare ; 
 he was in no less close touch with the world of 
 wits and scholars in London ; but he was dissipated 
 and profligate and defiantly anti-religious, and 
 died in a tavern brawl. He had no humour, as 
 far as is possible to discover, and no power, 
 apparently, to conceive the beautiful or admirable 
 in the female character. If it was the age that 
 evoked what was finest and most characteristic 
 in Shakspeare, why did it fail to produce some- 
 thing akin to it in Marlowe ? Must not the 
 answer be that it was not there in Marlowe to be 
 evoked ? Shakspeare's Iago was a scoundrel, and 
 a pessimist, but surely he was right when he said, 
 " 'Tis in ourselves, that we are thus and thus." 
 " The abysmal deeps of personality " will not bear 
 to be neglected, I think, in our estimates of the 
 sources of a poet's strength or weakness. If a 
 man may be a pessimist in an optimistic age, 
 might he not be an optimist in a pessimistic one ? 
 " Conduct," Matthew Arnold said, is " four-fifths of 
 life " ; in which saying, as I have said elsewhere, if 
 he erred, it is only in omitting the other fifth. 
 Can we, in judging of Shakspeare's greatness, 
 neglect the fact that he had himself a dominating 
 sense of the supremacy and the beauty of 
 goodness, and that Marlowe (for example) was 
 without it ?
 
 n8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 It is the profound ethical beauty of so many 
 scenes that has fixed them " deep in the general 
 heart of men." Without this quality there is, I 
 believe, no permanent and enduring and universal 
 popularity for the poetic, the serious drama. A 
 fundamental sense of the sacredness of the moral 
 issues treated is as much the key to the great 
 tragedies of Greece as it is to those of Shakspeare. 
 Without it, a play may indeed be tragic — full of 
 terror and of pity — full of poetry which forces us 
 to exclaim, " How exquisite it is ! " — but it can 
 never ally itself with the profoundest moral con- 
 science of the reader, and can therefore never be 
 secure of living on from age to age, with un- 
 diminished interest and never-fading lustre.
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 
 
 I PROPOSE this evening to tell you the story of 
 a very singular historical development, how the 
 greatest humorous creation of Shakspeare grew 
 out of something, on the first glance, as remote 
 from it as possible ; and by what a curious series 
 of fatalities the popular tradition of a real person, 
 and one noted chiefly for his connexion with a 
 Protestant religious movement, was gradually 
 modified into the witty and unscrupulous knight 
 we all know so well. For it was one of the most 
 famous followers of John Wiclif, Sir John Old- 
 castle, who is the undeniable origin of Sir John 
 Falstaff. The outline of the story connecting the 
 two is familiar to Shakspearian scholars, but it 
 will bear telling over again, and I think you will 
 not grudge my occupying my first ten minutes 
 or so in a brief historical summary, seeing that I 
 shall hope to show you later on how Shakspeare's 
 character bears unmistakably in the grain of it 
 certain ineffaceable marks of its origin. 
 
 Let me first briefly remind you of what history 
 tells us of the real Sir John Oldcastle. He was 
 
 119
 
 i2o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 born in Edward III.'s reign, probably about the 
 year 1360. Whether, of Welsh origin or not, I 
 cannot tell you, but his earlier military services 
 were rendered in Wales and in the adjoining 
 counties of England, and in 1406 we find him 
 High Sheriff of Herefordshire. But in 1409 he 
 made a very important and distinguished marriage. 
 He married (as her fourth husband) the grand- 
 daughter and heiress of the wealthy and powerful 
 nobleman Lord Cobham of Cowling Castle, near 
 Rochester ; and, after the usual custom, inherited 
 the title as well as the estates of his wife's family, 
 and in the twelfth year of Henry IV.'s reign (141 1) 
 was summoned to Parliament by the title, by 
 which he came to be familiarly known, of Lord 
 Cobham. Shortly after his marriage he went 
 abroad on military service with the English army 
 supporting the Duke of Burgundy in the French 
 wars. He was thus, at the time that he first 
 becomes a conspicuous person in English history, 
 a man of some military reputation, and by wealth 
 and rank a person of great importance. 
 
 Henry IV. died in 141 3. His son Henry of 
 Monmouth (the " Prince Hal " of Shakspeare's 
 two historical plays) was then twenty-five. If 
 the usual date assigned to Oldcastle's birth (1360) 
 be approximately correct, 1 he would be at this 
 time about fifty - three years of age, quite 
 
 1 [ The Dictionary of National Biography shows reasons for prefer- 
 ring a later date, c. 1378 ; it gives interesting details of the relations 
 between Oldcastle and Henry V.]
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 121 
 
 sufficiently older than Prince Hal to have been 
 a very dangerous example to that young man, 
 had Oldcastle had any of the tastes and habits 
 attributed to Falstaff. And we may well believe 
 that Sir John Oldcastle was a friend and intimate 
 of Henry of Monmouth. He was a tried and 
 faithful servant of Henry IV. Walsingham, the 
 chronicler, tells us that he was " dear and accept- 
 able to the king for his honesty and worth." 
 That, indeed, is the character he bore among his 
 contemporaries. There is no fragment of con- 
 temporary evidence, or historical evidence of any 
 kind, to support an opposite conclusion. There 
 is no shred of evidence connecting the real Sir 
 John Oldcastle with the fracas between Prince 
 Hal and the Chief-Justice Gascoigne (first told by 
 Sir John Elyot in his book the Governour), or 
 with any of the other wild and regrettable passages 
 of that prince's career. 
 
 On the contrary, so far from Oldcastle bearing 
 the character of a man of lax morals and sensual 
 tastes, he had already, during the life of Henry 
 IV., made himself conspicuous in support of 
 the cause of the reformer Wiclif — a cause 
 which had for one vital purpose the purifica- 
 tion of the Church from scandals in the lives of 
 churchmen as much as from corruptions of 
 doctrine. The Lollard was a Puritan, first and 
 foremost ; and there is no reason to doubt that 
 Oldcastle's heart was as strongly in the moral 
 cause of Lollardy as in the doctrinal. And at this
 
 i22 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 time (the accession of Henry of Monmouth to the 
 throne as Henry V.) Lollardy was a great fact. 
 Wiclif's translation of the Bible had now been 
 many years in existence ; and portions of it, 
 copied and multiplied of course by hand, were 
 being secretly read and discussed through the 
 length and breadth of England. The Church was 
 furious at this destruction of its monopoly of 
 religious information. The gospel - pearl, the 
 clergy said, was being cast forth and trodden 
 by swine. The most cherished doctrines and 
 practices of the Church were being denied and 
 condemned ; and it was evident that the time 
 was come when Lollardy must be crushed out, 
 or the monks and friars would find their power, 
 and perhaps their existence, at an end. Oldcastle 
 had been known to favour the new gospel — 
 " Wiclif's Learning," as the priests called it — and 
 immediately after the accession of Henry V. a 
 synod of the bishops and clergy of England was 
 summoned to St. Paul's Cathedral in London to 
 deal with the spread of the Wiclif heresy. But 
 one special object of this synod was to proceed 
 against Oldcastle, who was then (to quote the 
 words of Foxe) " noted to be a principal Favourer, 
 receiver, and maintainer of them, whom the 
 Bishops misnamed to be Lollards, especially in 
 the Dioceses of London, Rochester and Hereford, 
 setting them up to preach whom the bishops had 
 not licensed, and sending them about to preach 
 . . . holding also and teaching opinions of the
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 123 
 
 sacraments of images, of pilgrimages, of the keys 
 and Church of Rome, contrary and repugnant to 
 the received determination of the Romish Church." 
 
 Oldcastle was summoned to appear, and 
 subjected to a long and rigorous examination, 
 the records of which remain, and may be read 
 in Foxe. Oldcastle made a bold and systematic 
 defence : he drew up his creed, he gave his 
 reasons for his opinions on image-worship and 
 transubstantiation, and bore the insolence and 
 brow-beating of his inquisitors as one who carried 
 his life in his hand. When threatened that the 
 Church could refuse him absolution, and being 
 offered it by the Archbishop if only he would 
 retract and submit, he refused all such terms, 
 declaring that he indeed stood in need of Heaven's 
 absolution, for that in his " frail youth," so he 
 said, " he had offended most grievously in pride, 
 wrath, and gluttony, in covetousness and lechery, 
 but that to Heaven, and not to the Church, he 
 looked humbly for forgiveness." 
 
 There could, of course, be but one end to this. 
 Oldcastle was condemned as a heretic and thrown 
 into the Tower. His opponents, being thus baffled 
 in their design of making him submit his judg- 
 ment to that of the Church, tried yet another 
 plan of neutralising his influence and example to 
 the common people. While he was in prison 
 they published a recantation of his opinions, 
 purporting to be drawn up by him. In no case 
 could this have long served their turn, for after
 
 i2 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 a few weeks Oldcastle escaped (by means never 
 ascertained) from the Tower, and took refuge in 
 the fastnesses of his old familiar country of 
 Wales. For five years he continued to elude 
 his enemies. Meantime Chichely had succeeded 
 Arundel as Archbishop, but the zeal for exter- 
 minating Lollards was in no way relaxed. 
 Finally, a reward being set upon Oldcastle's 
 head, Lord Powis, who held some high command 
 in Wales, betrayed the unhappy man, who was 
 removed to London, promptly declared a traitor 
 to the king and realm, and a heretic against 
 God, and sentenced to be drawn through the 
 streets of London to the new gallows in St. Giles, 
 and there hanged and burned. The sentence 
 was carried out on the 25 th of December 141 7. 
 
 Such, then, was the life and death of the good 
 John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. There is no 
 reason whatever to make him out a model 
 character, either in his early private life or his 
 methods of supporting the opinions of John 
 Wiclif. He was probably a hot - headed and 
 violent partisan, with more than the courage, 
 the intemperance, of his opinions. From his 
 rank and position he was the most famous 
 Lollard, and the most formidable. He did not 
 measure his language as to the shortcomings of 
 the clerical order. He boldly said that the Pope 
 was the head of Antichrist, the prelates the 
 members, and to the friars he assigned even a 
 less dignified part of the body politic. He could
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 125 
 
 expect little in return but hatred and exasper- 
 ated scorn. He was specially odious to the 
 mendicants, the preaching friars ; and through 
 them, during his lifetime and after his death, his 
 character would certainly be represented with 
 every unfavourable detail that belonged to it 
 exaggerated to its utmost, and with every 
 embellishment that the ecclesiastical spite could 
 graft upon it. 
 
 Time went on — Lollardy became a thing of 
 the past — though the influence of Wiclif could 
 never have died in England, and still less the 
 effect of his English version of the Scriptures. 
 But the Church succeeded in keeping the memory 
 of the name of Lollard odious. And as the 
 reputation of the cause decayed, so would the 
 reputation of those who had been identified with 
 it. By what gradual process the popular idea of 
 the good Sir John Oldcastle underwent trans- 
 formation we know not. For nearly a hundred 
 years from his death the nation was busy with 
 the Wars of the Roses and many other things 
 that distracted the public mind. There was 
 always a more ardent company bent on keeping 
 alive the unfavourable reputation of Oldcastle 
 than of those who had any interest in defending 
 his good name. I do not know of any apology 
 for the life of Oldcastle being written till Bale, in 
 1544, claimed Oldcastle among those who had 
 suffered as blessed martyrs for the Protestant 
 cause, and published in full the proceedings of
 
 126 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Oldcastle's examination and defence. His account 
 was twenty years later incorporated in Foxe's 
 great work, the Acts and Monuments or Book 
 of Martyrs. And indeed it was high time 
 that some fairly accurate picture of the man 
 should be given to the world ; for at this juncture, 
 or a very little later, the gradual manipulation of 
 Oldcastle's personality by the spite of priests or 
 the frolic fancy of the people had reached a very 
 singular stage. The few facts out of which it 
 had grown were just these : a knight (a Sir 
 John Oldcastle), a soldier, of the time of Henry 
 IV. and Henry V., presumably a companion of 
 the latter while still Prince of Wales ; in prosperity 
 during the reign of the former king ; falling into 
 disgrace in the time of the latter — those few are 
 the sole historic facts about the man that the 
 public fancy had to work upon. But there seems 
 to have been always a tradition (likely enough a 
 true tradition) that he was very fat j 1 and if so, 
 it is quite conceivable that the religious orders 
 whom he had so bitterly denounced did not leave 
 this occasion unimproved. Indeed, I have some- 
 times wondered whether a portion of the poor 
 man's own confession, when before his adversaries, 
 may not have been seized upon and made capital 
 of to his disparagement ; I mean that part of it 
 where he confessed that he had in his youth 
 offended grievously in pride and wrath, and 
 
 1 [I am not aware of any reference to Oldcastle's fatness earlier than 
 1597, the date of Shakspeare's play.]
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 127 
 
 covetousness and gluttony and lechery, and hoped 
 still humbly for forgiveness. Nothing more natural 
 and likely than that these sacred words of humility 
 should have been seized upon and made capital 
 of by the basest of his enemies. Can we not 
 fancy a wandering friar expounding the moral of 
 this as he sat by the villager's fireside, where he 
 was being made comfortable for the night ? "A 
 miserable man, my friends, by his own con- 
 fession a glutton and a wine-bibber, and a man 
 ot most profligate life. He professes to teach us 
 sound doctrine, and to take away from the poor 
 man his pilgrimages and his saint-worship, and 
 all the comforts of his religion. This is the man, 
 forsooth, who discovers that the clergy are not 
 men of moral lives. Who is he, to slander his 
 neighbours and to blaspheme against Holy 
 Church ? Why, my friends, you have but to 
 look at him to see the effects of his wicked life. 
 What does that great fat paunch mean ? What 
 can it mean but one thing — a career of gluttony 
 and drinking of old sack and canary. But then 
 the old king, you say, thought very highly of him, 
 and employed him in positions and commands 
 of great trust. Perhaps he did for a while — 
 yes — and let him be the friend and companion 
 of his son, the Prince. Well, my friends, you all 
 know how that turned out. What sort of a man 
 was the young Prince in those days ? Was it 
 not clearly the bad example and guidance 
 of Oldcastle that made the Prince far worse
 
 128 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 than he otherwise would have been ? Besides, 
 my friends, you see what happened when the 
 Prince had sown his wild oats and came to the 
 throne. The first thing he did on his accession 
 was to let justice overtake this man. He had 
 only been king a few weeks when the law was 
 put in force against this hypocrite. The Church 
 examined him and showed clearly that for all his 
 pretensions he was a heretic and a traitor ; and 
 though he contrived by some treachery to escape 
 his doom for a few years, the vengeance of 
 Heaven was not to be balked, and he has just 
 perished by a disgraceful death." 
 
 We can imagine Oldcastle's old enemies using 
 this kind of language, and drawing these sorts of 
 inferences, for the edification of the people after 
 that memorable day in December 14 17, when the 
 good Lord Cobham was hanged and burned. 
 And we can understand how, as the story was 
 told over and over again for the next hundred 
 and fifty years (and the friars had no other so 
 eminent a personage with whom to point the 
 moral of heresy and its righteous doom), it would 
 depart more and more from historic truth, and 
 get the ludicrous incidents, real or fictitious, more 
 and more accentuated. The image of Oldcastle 
 as a man of earnest religious opinions (however 
 mistaken) and as a martyr in their cause would 
 be allowed to become fainter and fainter, and the 
 comic side of him would alone survive in the 
 thoughts of the people. For it was a favourite
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 129 
 
 theory in the Middle Ages that the way to make 
 wickedness odious was to make it comic. In the 
 miracle and mystery plays, you may remember, 
 the wicked characters — those whom the people 
 were to be taught to loathe — were generally made 
 ridiculous, even in the accidents of features and 
 voice and dress. Pilate and Judas in the miracle 
 play were held up to ridicule as much as to 
 loathing, and the vice in the mystery play was 
 invariably a comic character ; not at all with any 
 view to make light of sin, but in order thereby to 
 make sin contemptible. Just so the fat knight 
 Oldcastle would be sure to be made as ridiculous 
 as possible for popular presentation ; and at the 
 time when Foxe printed his famous work there is 
 good reason to know that there was current a 
 popular conception of Oldcastle as a bloated old 
 sensualist, a soldier and yet a coward, who had 
 been the aider and abetter of an English prince in 
 very objectionable practices, and who had very 
 properly been thrown overboard by that prince 
 when he came to the throne and awoke to a true 
 sense of his duties as a king. 
 
 Let me quote two or three passages from 
 writers of the seventeenth century in proof of this. 
 There is extant a rare tract, published in London 
 in 1604, called "The Meeting of Gallants at an 
 Ordinarie, or the Walkes in Powles." The fat 
 host of the ordinary addresses his guests in terms 
 of welcome, when one of the number, one Signor 
 Shuttlecock, breaks in with, " Now, Signiors, how 
 VOL. 1 K
 
 i 3 o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 like you mine Host ? Did I not tell you he was 
 a madde round knave, and a merrie one too : and 
 if you chance to talk of fatte Sir John Oldcastle, 
 he will tell you he was his great-grandfather, and 
 not much unlike him in paunch, if you marke him 
 well by all descriptions." Again, in another 
 pamphlet of a few years later, a character called 
 Glutton declares : " I'm a fat man. It has been 
 a West- Indian voyage for me to come reeking 
 hither. A kitchin-stuff wench might pick up a 
 living for the fat which I lose by straddling. . . . 
 Sir John Oldcastle was my great-grandfather's 
 father's uncle — I came of a huge kindred ! " Now 
 allusions such as these would fall flat unless they 
 appealed to a very commonly diffused idea of 
 the habits and attributes of Oldcastle. He was 
 evidently still the typical fat man of the popular 
 imagination. But other qualities than fatness 
 were equally associated with the character. 
 Fuller in his Church History of Britain, writing 
 about Oldcastle, says : " Stage poets have them- 
 selves been very bold with, and others very merry 
 at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle, whom they 
 have fancied a boon-companion, a jovial royster, 
 and yet a coward to boot, contrary to the credit 
 of all chronicles, owning him a martial man of 
 merit." And in that other famous work of 
 Fuller's, the Worthies of England, he refers again 
 to Sir John Oldcastle " being made the make-sport 
 in all plays for a coward." " It is easily known," 
 adds the shrewd old writer, " out of what purse
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 131 
 
 this black penny came ; the Papists railing on 
 him for a heretick, and therefore he must also be 
 a coward, though indeed he was a man of arms, 
 every inch of him, and as valiant as any in his age." 
 
 " The make-sport in all plays for a coward," 
 says Fuller. There must have been several plays 
 then at least known to Fuller in which Oldcastle 
 appeared as such a character. Some of these may 
 have perished. We know that (say) between 
 1570 and 1620, that most prolific half-century of 
 stage productions, numbers of plays were compiled 
 and acted that were never printed, or if printed 
 have not come down to us. And of these we are 
 sure that many dealt with characters and incidents 
 in the history of England. For the rise of the 
 important line of chroniclers, Fabyan and Hall 
 and Holinshed, had supplied the writer for the 
 stage with an inexhaustible supply of themes, just 
 at the time when the moral play, or mystery, 
 was beginning to deal with real flesh-and-blood 
 characters instead of moral abstractions. Old- 
 castle may have taken the place of the " vice " 
 in many of these moralities, of which not even the 
 bare names have survived, and been " made up " 
 with a fat paunch and a red face, and subjected 
 to abundant indignity and ill-treatment. But 
 there has come down to us one play in which he 
 occurs, by name, in his popular character as a 
 disreputable old man ; and of this play it will be 
 interesting to take a very particular notice. 
 
 The play in question is the Famous Victories
 
 132 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of Henry V. Of the authorship of it we know 
 nothing ; and of its date we know only that it 
 must have been produced before 1588, because 
 Richard Tarleton, the famous low-comedy actor of 
 that period, played in it, and he died in 1 5 8 8. 1 
 The earliest edition of it known was printed in 
 1 5 98 — "The Famous Victories of Henry the 
 fifth : containing the Honourable Battel of Agin- 
 court : as it was plaid by the Queen's Majesties 
 Players " (4 Black Letter'). There is nothing in 
 the style or language of the play to suggest who 
 were the compilers. The dialogue is in mingled 
 prose and a halting metre which it is hardly fair 
 to call an attempt at blank verse. Certainly 
 neither Marlowe, Greene, nor Peele had any hand 
 in it. It is not divided into acts or scenes, and 
 enjoyed evidently no kind of editing when it was 
 sent to the press. But for all this, it is a very 
 interesting production. It covers a considerable 
 deal of ground, though it skims over it very 
 rapidly. It opens with the incidents of the 
 robbery on Gadshill by Prince Hal and his com- 
 panions. Then we have the trial of one of the 
 Prince's servants for theft, and the box on the ear 
 given by the Prince to the Chief- Justice ; the 
 Prince's consequent imprisonment ; the illness of 
 the King, and the Prince's premature carrying off 
 of the crown ; the death of the King, and accession 
 of the Prince, with the disgrace of his old com- 
 
 1 [It is noticeable, however, that the low-comedy part in this play 
 was not Oldcastle, but the carrier robbed on Gadshill. J
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 133 
 
 panions ; the declaration of war against France, 
 with the incident of the tennis balls ; the victory 
 of Agincourt, and the wooing and winning of the 
 French princess. It is safe to say that there is 
 not a poetical thought or expression from end to 
 end of this drama, nor a stroke of humour other 
 than sheer buffoonery. But in the brief summary I 
 have given of its contents you will have recognised 
 all the leading incidents in Shakspeare's two plays, 
 the First and Second Parts of Henry IV., and their 
 sequel, Henry V. Here, in fact, is the raw material 
 (and exceedingly crude it is) on which these three 
 immortal dramas were composed, some fifteen or 
 twenty years later. And in this rude drama Sir 
 John Oldcastle is one of the characters. There 
 is but little of him. Altogether, he does not 
 speak in the course of the play more than thirty 
 lines of dialogue. But the part he plays is un- 
 mistakable. He appears as the friend and 
 associate of the young Prince in acts of common 
 robbery on the highway. He takes part in the 
 freebooting expeditions on Gadshill. He is re- 
 presented as aiding and abetting the Prince in 
 a life of lawlessness and dissipation. He looks 
 forward to a still freer license when only his 
 young friend shall succeed to the throne ; but 
 when that looked-for happy moment arrives, he 
 is thrown over, and banished from the court. 
 For the chief incidents of the play, the author 
 unknown drew upon Holinshed and Sir John 
 Elyot. For the introduction of Oldcastle he had
 
 134 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 absolutely no historical authority. His Oldcastle 
 is derived from the unwritten history of popular 
 tradition. It is strange that there is no allusion 
 to his fatness or his fondness for eating and 
 drinking. He is in this play only a disreputable 
 old 1 man, with a turn for using sacred names and 
 allusions to Doint his conversation. And this 
 undoubtedly points to the current popular con- 
 ception of a Lollard. The Lollard, like his 
 successor the Puritan of the two next centuries, 
 was one who appealed habitually to Scripture, and 
 the language of Scripture, as the sole rule and 
 guide, and applied it to confute church doctrines 
 and morals, where he found them corrupt. John 
 Wiclif had given them the Bible in English ; and 
 this had put into their hands a weapon they were 
 not slow to handle. The friars would dilate to 
 their flocks upon this dragging of sacred names 
 and allusions through the mire ; this handling of 
 Bible themes by an ignorant laity ; and accord- 
 ingly the popular caricature of the Lollard would 
 inevitably come to be one who used Scripture 
 names and phrases in season and out of season, 
 and for the most grotesque and improper purposes. 
 Traces of this conception of the typical Lollard, 
 Oldcastle, are clearly discernible in the Famous 
 Victories of Henry V. 
 
 About ten years after the production of this 
 play it was apparently placed in the hands of 
 William Shakspeare as material for a series of 
 
 1 [There is no allusion to his age.]
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 135 
 
 dramas. The First and Second Parts of Henry 
 IV. and their sequel, the drama of Henry V., were 
 written between 1597 and 1599. Shakspeare 
 distributed over them the events which his pre- 
 decessor had crowded into a single play. The 
 Gadshill robbery is a leading incident of the comic 
 scenes of the First Part of Henry IV. The steal- 
 ing of the crown, and the subsequent repentance 
 of the young Prince, followed by his father's 
 death, and his repudiation of his former com- 
 panions, come into the Second Part ; and the 
 expedition to France, the victory of Agincourt, 
 and the wooing of the French princess, make up 
 the chief interest of Henry V. Nothing else did 
 Shakspeare borrow from the old play, except a 
 few names. The Prince's madcap friend in the 
 Famous Victories, habitually addressed as " Ned," 
 is also the Ned of Shakspeare's play, though his 
 full name and title is Edward Poins. Gadshill, 
 the highwayman of the Famous Victories (probably 
 so called from a favourite scene of his exploits), is 
 adopted also by Shakspeare, and is the Gadshill 
 of Henry IV. Why did not then Shakspeare (the 
 question becomes inevitable), in taking over the 
 other accomplice of the Prince from the older 
 play, borrow his name also ? Why did he not 
 call the disreputable old man of his predecessor's 
 drama Sir John Oldcastle ? 
 
 The answer is, simply, that in the first instance 
 he did; that when Henry IV., Part i,was first put 
 on the stage the character which we know as Sir
 
 136 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 John Fal staff was Sir John Oldcastle. Of this we 
 have various and abundant proof. Nicholas Rowe 
 (the earliest editor and biographer of Shakspeare), 
 as early as 1 709, mentions this as a tradition : 
 " Upon this occasion it may not be improper 
 to observe that this part of Falstaff is said to 
 have been written originally under the name of 
 Oldcastle ; some of that family being then remain- 
 ing, the Queen was pleased to command him to 
 alter it ; upon which he made use of Falstaff." 
 Much nearer still to Shakspeare's own day a 
 certain Dr. James, in a dedicatory letter prefixed 
 to a work called the Legend and Defence of the 
 Noble Knight and Martyr, Sir JoJm Oldcastel, 
 states it also, as a well-known fact, that " in Shak- 
 speare's first shewe of Henry V. the person with 
 which he undertook to play a buffoon, was not 
 Falstaff, but Sir John Oldcastel." Fuller, in his 
 Cliurch History, says the same thing ; but we are 
 not left even to authorities so unimpeachable as 
 these for our certainty on the point. Shakspeare's 
 play itself contains traces of the original name. 
 In the second scene of the first act of Henry IV., 
 Part 1, Falstaff asks Prince Hal: "Is not my 
 hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench ? " 
 The Prince answers, " As the honey of Hybla, 
 my old lad of the castle " ; a retort which 
 certainly involves a play upon the name Old- 
 Castle of the person addressed. Again, in the 
 play, Falstaff is described as having in his youth 
 filled a place, that of " Page to Thomas Mowbray,
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 137 
 
 Duke of Norfolk," a position which we know 
 from quite other sources that the historical Sir 
 John Oldcastle filled. Moreover, in the quarto 
 edition of the Second Part of Henry IV., printed 
 in 1600, though Falstaff is the name throughout 
 of the fat humourist, the printer has in one place, 
 by an obvious slip, left the prefix Old before 
 one of Falstaff s speeches : showing that he was 
 setting up the type from a printed copy or 
 manuscript in which the character was named 
 Oldcastle, and had omitted in this single instance 
 to make the change of name. But, finally, and 
 as if to set all doubt at rest, the Second Part of 
 Henry IV. is furnished, as you may remember, with 
 an epilogue ; probably not by the poet himself, 
 but supplied by the management of the theatre, 
 the concluding words of which run as follows : — 
 
 One word more, I beseech you. If you be not too 
 much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue 
 the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with 
 fair Katharine of France : where, for anything I know, 
 Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with 
 your hard opinions ; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is 
 710 1 the man. 
 
 " Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the 
 man." How simply and satisfactorily does not 
 this bring all we have been saying to a point. 
 It can mean nothing unless this — that the Sir 
 John of the play had been first Oldcastle, and 
 had then, for reasons significantly hinted, been 
 promptly changed. Fuller, and James, and others,
 
 138 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 have told us that the living descendants of the 
 once wealthy and famous Lord Cobham had taken 
 umbrage at this caricature of their great ancestor, 
 and that the Royal authority had been called 
 in to bring about a remedy. But the words of 
 the epilogue hint another reason. The materials 
 for something like a trustworthy history of 
 England's past were beginning to accumulate. 
 The chroniclers were doing something ; the enter- 
 prise of other searchers of old documents was doing 
 more ; and already for forty years there had been 
 in print Foxe's Acts and Monuments of the Church 
 — in which something like a true picture of the 
 historic Oldcastle was set forth. And in that age 
 of the Reformation every name of those who had 
 striven and suffered in that earlier protest against 
 ecclesiastical corruption was becoming more and 
 more dear to the English people — Oldcastle died 
 a martyr. It was to Foxe that the English 
 people were mainly indebted for having first 
 taught them this truth ; and the day when he 
 could be safely set forth as a buffoon and a 
 sensualist was passed for ever. 
 
 How and why Shakspeare then changed Sir 
 John Oldcastle into Sir John Falstaff does not 
 so much concern my immediate purpose, and 
 may be briefly dismissed. Casting about for a 
 Sir John, approximately near in time to the 
 historic date of his play, to take the place of 
 Oldcastle, Shakspeare recalled a Sir John Fastolf 
 (probably already, in the very unfixed spelling of
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 139 
 
 that age, known indiscriminately as Fastolf and 
 Falstaff) who played a not unimportant part in 
 the reigns of Henry IV., V., and VI. He had 
 already appeared as a character in the First 
 Part of Henry VI. (a play which the best critics 
 are almost unanimous in holding that Shak- 
 speare had but little hand in), but his name 
 would be well known to Shakspeare from its use 
 upon the stage. The historic Fastolf was a 
 soldier of unquestioned gallantry ; but he, it 
 appears, had on one occasion been accused of 
 cowardice ; and he is known to have been a 
 follower of Wiclif — a Lollard. These facts were 
 known possibly by popular tradition ; and it 
 would seem as if, one Sir John having failed him, 
 another would do equally well to fill his place. 
 And so it came about that " Oldcastle " gave 
 place to " Falstaff" ; and one historical caricature 
 was succeeded by another, as far as we know, 
 equally remote from truth. And of this we 
 may be quite certain — that it never entered into 
 Shakspeare's mind for one moment that he 
 was committing an historical outrage. Certain 
 materials came into his hands, to be made up 
 into new forms. How the character was labelled 
 when complete I do not suppose troubled him 
 much. At the same time remember that Shak- 
 speare must have been perfectly well aware of the 
 popular idea of Oldcastle. His instinct was bent 
 on producing a character true to a type in his 
 own mind. Whether that character was after-
 
 i 4 o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 wards christened Oldcastle or Falstaff did not 
 concern him. 
 
 Now let us examine how out of the popular 
 tradition of the character of Oldcastle, and 
 especially out of the outline of that character 
 suggested by the author of the Famous Victories, 
 Shakspeare evolved his greatest humorous crea- 
 tion ; perhaps the greatest humorous effort in any 
 literature, ancient or modern. The transformation 
 he effected is one as marvellous as the change 
 which the good fairy effects in the nursery 
 legend of Cinderella. There, you remember, out 
 of a pumpkin and some rats and mice, the wave 
 of the enchanter's wand produces a gold coach, 
 drawn by gallant and richly caparisoned steeds, 
 driven and attended by splendid coachmen and 
 lackeys. Here — out of a broken-down Lollard, 
 a fat old sensualist, retaining just sufficient 
 recollection of the studies of his more serious 
 days to be able to point his jokes with them — 
 the wand of a greater enchanter brings before us 
 this complex and absolutely consistent creation 
 of the fat knight, fertile and absolutely un- 
 scrupulous in resource ; brilliant in wit ; making 
 capital out of all his failings ; turning, as he 
 says, " even diseases to commodity " — the most 
 brilliant figure even in Shakspeare's own gallery 
 of humorous portraits. And yet all through 
 it we shall trace the quarry out of which it 
 was hewn, the grain of the original stone which 
 Shakspeare's chisel shaped into its perfect form.
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 141 
 
 I wonder if it has ever struck you how, running 
 through the whole creation, is this thread of the 
 perverted Puritan — of the man whose memory, 
 and perhaps uneasy conscience, is always recalling 
 to him the religious phraseology and topics of 
 his youth. Take the very first scene in which 
 he appears : all through Falstaff' s conception of 
 his own character is found the assumption that 
 he was once a profoundly respectable and religious 
 character, who has been spoiled by bad company. 
 
 Hal, I prithee, trouble me no more with vanity. I 
 would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good 
 names were to be bought. . . . Thou hast done much 
 harm upon me, Hal ; God forgive thee for't ! Before I knew 
 thee, Hal, I knew nothing ; and now am I, if a man should 
 speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. I must 
 give over this life, and I will give it over : by the Lord, 
 an I do not, I am a villain : I'll be damned for never a 
 king's son in Christendom. 
 
 Prince. Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack ? 
 
 Fal. 'Zounds, where thou wilt, lad ; /'// make one ; an 
 I do not, call me villain and baffle me. 
 
 Prince. I see a good amendment of life in thee ; from 
 praying to purse-taking. 
 
 Fal. Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation ; 'tis no sin for a man 
 to labour in his vocation. 
 
 What put it into Shakspeare's head to put 
 this distinctively religious, not to say Scriptural 
 phraseology into the mouth of Falstaff, but that 
 the rough draft of the creation, as it came into 
 his hands, was the decayed Puritan ? For the 
 Lollard of the fourteenth century was in this 
 respect the Puritan of the sixteenth, that the one
 
 142 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 certain mark of his calling was this use of the 
 language of Scripture, and that conventicle style 
 which had been developed out of it. So again, a 
 little later, we have Falstaff saying, with the pre- 
 cise manner of one of the Covenanting preachers 
 in Old Mortality, " Well, God give thee the spirit 
 of persuasion and him the ears of profiting, that 
 what thou speakest may move, and what he hears 
 may be believed." All through the language of 
 Falstaff will you trace these fragments of Scripture 
 or at least of religious phraseology : " Sons of 
 darkness " ; " Ancient writers do report that pitch 
 doth defile " ; " If a tree may be known by the 
 fruit, as the fruit by the tree " ; and running along 
 with it constant melancholy references to the 
 time when he was a religious man. " Company, 
 villanous company, has been the spoil of me." 
 " An I have not forgotten what the inside of a 
 church is like, I'm a peppercorn, a brewer's 
 horse : the inside of a church ! " And besides 
 such interlarding of his discourse with allusions 
 to Pharaoh's lean kine, and Adam in the days 
 of innocency, and the like, it will strike you afresh, 
 if you re-examine the character with this (what I 
 will call) Oldcastle key to it, how two images 
 from the Gospel histories seem to haunt him 
 along his whole course — those of the Prodigal Son 
 and Dives and Lazarus. Yet these are not 
 dragged in by the head and shoulders. There 
 is no dramatic impropriety in their appearance. 
 Shakspeare was too sound an artist for that.
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 143 
 
 There were no figures from sacred history more 
 familiar to people in Shakspeare's age than 
 these. On church walls, on inlaid cabinets, in 
 books of emblems, and, above all, on the tapestry 
 or painted cloth with which rooms of houses were 
 hung, there were no more popular subjects than 
 these. Indeed, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 where Falstaff is again one of the characters, he 
 is represented as lodging in a chamber at the 
 Garter Inn, where one of these themes was per- 
 petually before his eyes: — "Marry, sir," says 
 Simple to mine host, " I come to speak with Sir 
 John Falstaff from Master Slender." "Well," 
 replies mine host, " there's his chamber, his house, 
 his castle — 'tis painted about with the story of 
 the Prodigal, fresh and new." (This was what 
 was called " painted cloth " rather than tapestry.) 
 Going back to Henry IV., Falstaff retorts upon 
 Mrs. Quickly, when she is afraid she'll have to 
 pawn her plate and her tapestry to raise the 
 ten pounds the unconscionable man requires : 
 " Glasses, glasses, is the only drinking : and for 
 the walls, a pretty slight drollery, or the story 
 of the Prodigal ... is worth a thousand of these 
 hangings and these fly-bitten tapestries." The 
 topic of the Prodigal has a strange fascination for 
 him. When he had so misused the king's com- 
 mission to raise recruits, by allowing all the suit- 
 able men to buy themselves out, and then enlisting 
 instead such a ragged regiment of tatterdemalions, 
 he admits that " you would think I had a hundred
 
 i 4 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from 
 swine- keeping, from eating draff and husks." 
 The companion illustration from the parables 
 appears in the same speech, where he describes 
 the slaves he has recruited " as ragged as Lazarus 
 in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs 
 licked his sores." You may trace for yourselves 
 the other abundant references in Falstaff's repertory 
 of illustration to the " glutton " — the Dives (that 
 is) of the parable. The glutton and the prodigal, 
 these two figures are always at his command to 
 colour a story, to point an allusion, to heighten 
 a contrast. Himself a very vulgar glutton, faring 
 sumptuously every day on fat capon and gallons 
 of sack, qualified by a mere ha'porth of bread — 
 a very vulgar prodigal, discovering that there is 
 " no remedy for this consumption of the purse, for 
 borrowing only lingers and lingers it out " ; he 
 finds perhaps a mysterious fascination in handling 
 the awful narrations in which the fate of the 
 typical glutton and the recovery of the typical 
 prodigal are imaged forth. To my mind, there is 
 nothing in the world of imaginative creation more 
 wonderful than the way in which Shakspeare has 
 taken up the quite impossible and inconsistent 
 popular tradition of the Lollard Oldcastle and has 
 transmuted it into this absolutely consistent figure 
 of the degraded — may we not say, the decom- 
 posed — gentleman and Christian. It is a living 
 embodiment of the awful truth — Optimi corruptio 
 pessima. And with exquisite art, Shakspeare
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 145 
 
 represents him at one time assuming to be the 
 praiseworthy result of his own religious bring- 
 ing-up, and at another moment as ready to 
 turn the very same associations into ridicule. 
 " My Lord," he says to the Lord Chief-Justice, 
 with a quite magnificent burst of invention, " My 
 Lord, I was born (about three o'clock in the 
 afternoon) with a white head and something of 
 a round belly. For my voice — I have lost it 
 with hallelujahing and singing of anthems." 
 How superb the audacity of this invention ! The 
 Lollard and the Puritan were alike famous for 
 their habit of chanting or singing. The Puritan 
 who " sang Psalms to hornpipes " we know from 
 the description of the shepherd in the Winter's 
 Tale. Philologists are not quite agreed, I believe, 
 as to the root of the word Lollard, but one of the 
 most commonly accepted is from the low-German 
 " Lollen," to sing ; just as the Puritan form of 
 religion in much later times has impressed upon 
 the vulgar mind as its most prominent associa- 
 tion that of psalm-singing. But though at one 
 moment Falstaff makes this sublimely impudent 
 vaunt, at another he expresses for us, in another 
 outburst equally witty in the surprisingness of its 
 invention, his disgust with men and things, by 
 declaring, " I would I were a weaver ! " (Weavers, 
 you know, have always been noted for musical 
 tastes, singing at their looms.) " I would I were a 
 weaver ! I could sing psalms or anything." As 
 if this was the last drop in the cup of degradation 
 VOL. L
 
 146 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 that humanity could be asked to swallow ! Yes, and 
 there is one more curious instance of the perverted 
 Puritan, turning and trampling in his contempt 
 on the very signs and symptoms that had marked 
 his own better days. When Master Dombledon 
 refuses to supply Falstaff with " two-and-twenty 
 yards of satin " on credit (Bardolph's name being 
 offered as " security "), Sir John apostrophises him, 
 after a frightful imprecation, as a " rascally yea- 
 forsooth knave." Now, a " yea-forsooth knave " 
 is nothing more or less than the man of the 
 world's epithet for one who will not defile his lips 
 with the good " mouth-filling oaths " and other 
 profanities of the world, but confines his affirma- 
 tions to yea, yea and nay, nay. It was the stock 
 jest against the Lollard of the fifteenth century, 
 as against the Puritan of Shakspeare's own day, 
 that he would not swear like other people. It is 
 a trivial instance, but it goes to make up this 
 consummate picture of the demoralised gentleman, 
 on whom the temptations of sensuality and an un- 
 limited intellectual fertility have done their worst. 
 Intellectual fertility, infinite invention, bound- 
 less resource — of these we think first when the 
 individuality of the fat knight once more comes 
 before us. Wit, let us call it, to reduce it to its 
 simplest form. Falstaff is the wittiest of Shak- 
 speare's witty characters, and is no exception to 
 the rule that Shakspeare almost invariably associ- 
 ates wit with some moral deficiency. We have 
 his Mercutio — wit with frivolity — the mere idler
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 147 
 
 and lounger of life ; Jaques, wit with a selfish 
 cynicism ; Richard III., wit with heartlessness ; 
 I ago, wit with the nature of a fiend. Great 
 moralists have told us the same thing since in 
 words, what Shakspeare's knowledge of the heart 
 made him exhibit in action. " Diseur de bons 
 mots," says Pascal, " mauvais caractere." " I am 
 convinced," said Sydney Smith of wit (and we 
 feel that it may have cost the witty prebendary 
 something to make the confession) " that its 
 certain tendency is to deprave the understanding 
 and to corrupt the heart." And indeed wit (and 
 I beg of you not to confuse it for one moment 
 in your minds with the divine gift of humour, 
 that takes account of and feels with equal 
 poignancy the sad and the joyful, the temporary 
 and the essential sides of men and things) — wit is 
 only free to work its greatest triumphs when it 
 has got rid of truth and charity. Falstaff's wit 
 is magnificent, but it is absolutely unscrupulous. 
 When he gets the best in argument, it is always 
 by an intellectual coup de maitre, never by a 
 moral. Exaggeration (which means, in effect, 
 " never mind truth — go in for point ") has never 
 been raised to such an art. " I am out of pocket 
 by you," poor Mrs. Quickly complains of him with 
 bitter tears. " You owe me money, Sir John, for 
 your diet and by-drinkings . . . and now you pick 
 a quarrel to beguile me of it : I bought you a 
 dozen of shirts to your back." To which Falstaff 
 retorts : " Dowlas, filthy dowlas " — dowlas is one
 
 148 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of the coarsest kinds of linen, you will understand 
 — " I have given them away to bakers' wives, and 
 they have made bolters of them." A bolter was 
 a sieve ; and accordingly, if we are to believe 
 this audacious assertion, the material for his 
 shirts was a kind of canvas that flour could be 
 sifted through! It is indeed splendide mendax ! 
 a miracle of exaggeration. It is like Douglas 
 Jerrold's description of the gritty salad (supplied 
 to him at a tavern where they were dining) as " a 
 gravel walk with a weed here and there." Or, 
 again, take the instance of his promptness in 
 defending his choice of the extremely diminutive 
 Simon S/iadozv, and the pusillanimous Francis 
 Feeble, when he is raising recruits for the king : 
 " Shadow is the very man," he says, " and why ? 
 because if it comes to fighting he'll be so difficult 
 to hit. He presents no mark to the enemy : 
 the foeman may with as great aim level at the 
 edge of a penknife." Ingenuity might seem to 
 have reached its climax in this apology, but 
 something yet finer remains in what follows : 
 " And for a retreat ! how swiftly will this Feeble 
 the woman's tailor run off!" He will be so 
 useful in a retreat. What magnificent resource 
 in the mind who thought of this ! How magni- 
 ficent — and how unscrupulous ! 
 
 I have had occasion already to quote particular 
 sentences from the scene with the Chief-Justice ; 
 but it needs to be taken as a whole in order to 
 estimate the fertility of resource — the audacity
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 149 
 
 of invention — which is the special note of Fal- 
 staff' s wit. All through this interview he is able 
 to maintain the appearance of being the most 
 patriotic, the most virtuous, the bravest of His 
 Majesty's subjects. How immense is his quiet 
 assumption that his military experience is such 
 that the War Office (so to speak) cannot do 
 without him ! " There is not a dangerous action 
 can peep out his head, but / am thrust upon 
 it. Well, I cannot last for ever. But it was 
 always yet the trick of our English nation, if 
 they have a good thing, to make it too common. 
 If ye will needs say I am an old man, you 
 should give me rest." How adroit is this — 
 the thought of accepting, as it were humbly, the 
 Judge's remonstrance that he ought to know 
 better at his time of life, and making a modest 
 plea of it that, if he is old, then his country 
 might spare him further service. " I would to 
 heaven my name were not so terrible to the 
 enemy as it is ! " And there is this difference 
 between Falstaff and the military braggadocio, 
 the " miles gloriosus " of Plautus, which was 
 to become with Shakspeare's dramatic contem- 
 poraries a stock figure on the stage. Ancient 
 Pistol, who appears with Falstaff in these 
 plays, is the representative of this type, as 
 Parolles is in All's Well that Ends Well. 
 Falstaff is not a coward, a fire-eater, who is 
 trying to sustain a character as a very brave and 
 terrible person. His assumption of bravery and
 
 i 5 o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 patriotism and all other such qualities is simply 
 an intellectual amusement. He is an artist in 
 making the improbable appear probable by his 
 skill in argument, and, like a true artist, he 
 delights in his work. You can see from this 
 scene that he does not believe in himself in the 
 least, nor much expects that any one else will ; 
 but the opportunity of being matched in argument 
 with one so worthy of his steel as the Lord Chief- 
 Justice of England is so delightful to him that it 
 calls forth all his powers. It may be said (but it 
 would be inconsiderately said) that he argues in 
 the spirit of a humourist. But Falstaff is not 
 a great humourist — he is essentially a wit. To 
 be a humourist a man must have expansive 
 sympathies and a heart to grasp human nature 
 as a whole. Falstaff has not these. He is 
 essentially an egoist. " Humour," said Thackeray, 
 " what is it but a union of love and wit ? " In 
 Falstaff, alas ! is all the wit ; but truth and 
 charity had been killed within him, while the wit 
 was growing to its matchless maturity. 
 
 In the epilogue to the Second Part of Henry 
 IV., as we have seen, a hint is given of the 
 possible reappearance of the character of Falstaff 
 in a subsequent play. The sequel was written — 
 the noble drama of Henry V. — but the alternative, 
 also hinted as possible, that the knight might 
 have already passed away from this earthly stage 
 altogether, is found to have actually occurred. 
 Prince Henry has succeeded to the throne ; has
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 151 
 
 banished the companions of his idle and profli- 
 gate days ; and Falstaff's chances of keeping up 
 appearances before the world are gone for ever. 
 Even his resources are exhausted now. Chagrin, 
 and the prospect of a miserable pension to be 
 enjoyed ten miles away from the seat of his old 
 pleasures and triumphs, is more than he can 
 bear. Poor old Mrs. Quickly, with her easy 
 conscience, but not unwomanly heart, who has 
 so often ministered to his vices, and lent him 
 money for his wardrobe and his " by-drinkings," 
 sounds the first note of the coming end. " The 
 king has killed his heart," says this illiterate old 
 soul. " Ah, poor heart ! he is so shaked of a 
 burning quotidian tertian, that it is most lament- 
 able to behold." And then we hear, in a few 
 hours more, that all is over. The scene in which 
 we are told of this is transcendent even among 
 the master-strokes of the great dramatist. The 
 wretched crew who have been Falstaff's creatures 
 and hangers-on — Pistol, the bully ; Nym, the 
 rogue with the fancy vocabulary ; Bardolph, the 
 phlegmatic and somewhat beery moralist, are 
 shown us as yet feeling some touch of nature, 
 some compunctious visitings about the master they 
 have lost. Pistol cannot forget his theatricals, 
 even in this valley of the shadow : — 
 
 My manly heart doth yearn. 
 
 Bardolph, be blithe : Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins : 
 Boy, bristle thy courage up ; for Falstaff he is dead, 
 And we must yearn therefore.
 
 1 52 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 ' Shall we shog ? " asks Nym, using the pot- 
 house euphuism of his class, and they go their 
 way, and their old witty companion passes into 
 oblivion. Surely, in all fiction, there is no more 
 wonderful, no more terrible death-scene than this ! 
 Dickens has shown us old Scrooge lying dead, 
 unpitied and unmourned, while the charwoman 
 and the undertaker's men pilfer his few trinkets, 
 and strip the curtains from his bed. Balzac has 
 drawn for us, with his merciless hand, a Pere 
 Gaveot, forsaken of his wretched children, dead 
 in the attic of the Pension Vaugier, while the 
 frivolous fellow -lodgers make puns about the 
 event at their common meal ; but Shakspeare 
 has surpassed all humourists here, by the touch of 
 religious irony that elevates the scene. The last 
 flicker of the long-extinguished conscience — the 
 last leaping up of the candle in the socket. " A' 
 cried out ' God, God, God ! ' three or four 
 times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should 
 not think of God." We know what this poor 
 woman — most singular of ghostly counsellors — 
 meant. Indeed she goes on to tell us : "I 
 hoped there was no need to trouble himself with 
 any such thoughts yet." But with instinctive 
 art, Shakspeare lets us hear her words of comfort 
 before she adds her explanation ; and the words 
 remain as the grimmest and most awful com- 
 mentary on the gospel of materialism that the 
 human imagination has given us. " I, to comfort 
 him, bid him a' should not think of God." A
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 153 
 
 witty friend of mine once suggested that it would 
 make a perfect motto for Carlyle's Life of 
 Sterling. It may be that to say this is to err 
 a little in Falstaff' s own direction. An epigram 
 is scarcely ever a truth. But at the same time 
 there will be few who do not see to what the 
 application points. 
 
 Such, then, is the use which Shakspeare made 
 of the few scattered fragments of a perverted 
 reputation that came into his hands. The 
 subject of Falstaff is an old and hackneyed 
 one. Thinkers have loved for a hundred years to 
 analyse his character and intellect, as they have 
 those of Hamlet and Iago and Jaques, and will 
 do so to the end of time. I might almost 
 apologise for adding yet another pebble to the 
 heap. But I have chosen rather to dwell upon 
 the moral interest of the character — for that was 
 the only germ upon which the humourist had to 
 work. A " corrupted Lollard " — this was the 
 hint — and on this hint he spake. The marvellous 
 transformation he effected I have dwelt upon. In 
 its sheer brilliance it is like the hand of Science 
 taking the refuse of coal-tar and sending it forth 
 again in the splendour of aniline dyes. " An old 
 cloak," says Falstaff, when Bardolph takes service 
 with the innkeeper, " an old cloak makes a new 
 jerkin ; a withered serving-man a fresh tapster." 
 And thus the worn-out caricature of an Oldcastle, 
 just as it was on the point of coming to an end 
 (for historic accuracy in such matters was only just
 
 i 5 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 beginning in Shakspeare's time to be reckoned a 
 virtue), makes a new Sir John Falstaff. 
 
 I have shown how the publication of Foxe's 
 Martyrs aimed the first and most fatal blow at 
 the popular superstition about the martyr Old- 
 castle. It is noteworthy, in conclusion, how in 
 our own time our own great poet, Tennyson, 
 has done his part towards reviving the name of 
 Oldcastle, and showing the noble and pathetic 
 side of it by a touching poem in blank verse, in 
 which the valiant Lollard, after his escape from 
 the Tower, is represented as wandering among 
 the hills and valleys of Wales, aware that a 
 price is set on his head, and that the end may 
 be nearer than he knows, and comforting himself 
 with the thought of his revered teacher, Wiclif, 
 the soul that has made his soul wiser. Lord 
 Tennyson shows Oldcastle as mourning over 
 his old friend Harry of Monmouth, once the 
 companion of his thoughtless days, who had 
 once laughed with him against the hypocrisies 
 and follies of monks and pardon-sellers, and yet 
 who has now taken up the line of persecutor — 
 
 Him, who should bear the sword 
 Of Justice — what ! the kingly, kindly boy ; 
 Who took the world so easily heretofore, 
 My boon-companion, tavern-fellow — him 
 Who gibed and japed — in many a merry tale 
 That shook our sides — at Pardoners, Summoners, 
 Friars, absolution-sellers, monkeries 
 And nunneries, when the wild hour and the wine 
 Had set the wits aflame.
 
 SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 155 
 
 Harry of Monmouth, 
 Or Amurath of the East ? 
 
 Better to sink 
 Thy fleurs-de-lys in slime again, and fling 
 Thy royalty back into the riotous fits 
 Of wine and harlotry — thy shame, and mine, 
 Thy comrade — than to persecute the Lord, 
 And play the Saul that never will be Paul. 
 
 Within a few months of this, on Christmas 
 Day 141 7, the real Oldcastle was executed 
 for treason and for heresy. We know him at 
 last in his old true name, as the " Good Lord 
 Cobham " — 
 
 God's great gift of speech abused 
 Made his memory confused. 
 Let them rave ! 
 
 Shakspeare has done him no wrong — he has 
 built up indeed a character on the false concep- 
 tion of a noble Englishman — but he has com- 
 mitted no treason against the eternal truths of 
 the human conscience. " Oldcastle died a martyr, 
 and this (Falstaff) is not the man." This was 
 true, and needed saying in vindication of the 
 great Lollard, but " fat " Jack witnessed also in 
 his death to certain truths as to " conduct being 
 four-fifths of life," of which the world will never 
 cease to need Shakspeare's imperishable reminder.
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 The last quarter of a century. has witnessed an 
 extraordinary revival of interest in the writers 
 of the Elizabethan Age. Every author known, 
 and some hitherto unknown, have been reissued, 
 re-edited, and recriticised, almost ad nauseam. 
 And there should accordingly be little left me to 
 say that is new about a writer who was very 
 famous in his own day, and left a name in more 
 senses than one, for he added a most expressive 
 word, found useful up to the present moment, to 
 our literary vocabulary. But, notwithstanding, I 
 so often hear persons in conversation mixing up 
 euphuism with euphemism, and otherwise showing 
 a certain confusion of mind as to what John Lyly 
 really contributed, in the way of benefit or injury, 
 to the literary progress of his time, that I will 
 ask the kind indulgence of the many experts 
 present, if I tell over again an often-told story 
 (I will do it briefly), and just explain what is 
 Lyly's precise significance in English literature, 
 in connection with that book of his that gave 
 us the word "euphuism." For he was something 
 
 156
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 157 
 
 besides the author of this book, as you all know. 
 Lyly was a poet and wit and scholar — a writer 
 of plays — one of that remarkable group who 
 moulded the drama into the shape in which it came 
 into the hands of Shakspeare. He first wrote 
 comedy in prose, and thereby prepared the way 
 for many better things that followed : for the wit- 
 combats of Benedick and Beatrice, and the sweet 
 prattle of Hermione and Mamillius ; and for that 
 we bless his name, and can forgive him much. 
 But though the good he did was not " interred 
 with his bones," yet it is sadly true that the evil 
 he did, or helped to do, " lived after him," and 
 has not lost all its poison yet. John Lyly 
 was a Kentish gentleman, born just about the 
 middle of the sixteenth century, and educated at 
 Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1579, when he 
 was about six -and -twenty, he published his 
 famous Romance in Prose, which, for short, we 
 call EupJines (from the name of its hero), but 
 of which the full title was as follows : — 
 
 " Euphues. The Anatomy of Wit. Very 
 pleasant for all gentlemen to read, and most 
 necessary to remember. Wherein are contained 
 the delights that Wit followeth in his youth, by 
 the pleasantness of love ; and the happiness he 
 reapeth in age, by the perfectness of Wisdom. 
 By John Lylly, Master of Art." 
 
 We call the work a romance, in default of a 
 better word, but it has little of the quality we 
 associate with modern romances, or even with
 
 158 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 those of his contemporaries. It was not a 
 romance of passion or adventure, like Sidney's 
 Arcadia, or Lodge's Rosalynde. The story in it 
 is indeed reduced to a vanishing point ; and 
 though a few gentlemen and ladies form the 
 dramatis personce, the action is devised singly 
 and solely as the means of bringing in long 
 conversations on the subject of love and 
 friendship, and religion and education, and the 
 moralities generally. These form the staple of 
 the book, and for the sake of these Lyly wrote 
 it. The book was specially commended to the 
 attention of ladies. It was for the drawing- 
 room, so Lyly expressly said. His aim was to 
 bring morality and true philosophy into favour 
 and into fashion. Like Steele and Addison, a 
 hundred and fifty years later, Lyly wished to 
 bring philosophy down from the " sphery climes " 
 and domesticate it in the lady's boudoir. This 
 dominant feature of the book is naturally un- 
 known to the modern reader, for the simple fact 
 that its peculiar style forms an absolute barrier 
 to its being read, and that it is the style which 
 has determined the book's reputation. Indeed, 
 since Lyly's own day, I suppose no one had 
 troubled to point out the real secret of the 
 book's original popularity, until the late Charles 
 Kingsley wrote some perfectly true words about 
 it in Westward Ho ! To persons who would 
 sneer at Lyly's Euphues, he retorted : " Have 
 they read it ? For if they have done so, I pity
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 159 
 
 them if they have not found it, in spite of 
 occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, 
 righteous, and pious a book as man need look 
 into." For the subject-matter of the book this 
 praise is not too high. Its tone is unexception- 
 able, and its moral elevation throughout quite 
 remarkable. Euphues belongs to a class of 
 writing that has always been popular, and always 
 will be. The moral essay, slightly concealed in 
 the disguise of a novel, or a drama, or a dialogue 
 among friends, just sufficiently adorned to dis- 
 tinguish it from a homily or a sermon proper, 
 with a slight admixture of humour and senti- 
 ment, and perhaps a gently indicated background 
 of some love-making, will always appeal to an 
 immense public. And we may well be thankful 
 that this is so, and that so much real goodness, 
 tenderness, resignation, and religious feeling are 
 sown in this way broadcast over society. Every 
 generation produces its own crop of these works. 
 Sometimes the genius of their writers constitutes 
 them literature, as with the essays of Addison 
 and Johnson. More often they serve their 
 purpose with a certain class of readers, and then 
 die away, like the " Proverbial Philosophy " of the 
 late Mr. Tupper, and the " Gentle Life " of the 
 late Mr. Hain Friswell. 
 
 Well, it is to this class of literature that 
 Lyly's Euphues belongs. It is difficult to fix 
 its exact place and degree of merit in the cata- 
 logue. No doubt there is not much that is novel
 
 160 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 or original in its moral teaching ; and even were 
 it written in the most simple style imaginable, it 
 might present few attractions to us. It may be 
 full of truisms and platitudes, but we are to 
 remember that truisms nowadays were not so 
 much truisms three hundred years ago, and that 
 there was a charm and a novelty in ethical dis- 
 cussions to the ladies of Elizabethan households, 
 where there is none such for us. And we need 
 take no shame that, even were Lyly's romance 
 for other reasons readable, the discourses of 
 " Euphues, a young gentleman of Athens," 
 and " Philautus, a young gentleman of Athens," 
 and " Eubulus, an old gentleman of Naples," 
 offer but little attraction to us of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 But they offered great attraction to the courtiers 
 of the sixteenth century and their wives, and the 
 work achieved a rapid and amazing popularity. 
 We know of some six editions that it went 
 through in the first twenty years of its existence, 
 and that meant a great deal in those days. 
 Moreover, Lyly met with the invariable experi- 
 ence of the writer of a successful book. The 
 booksellers were at him to write another, and 
 a sequel to Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, 
 appeared only a year later, called EnpJiues and 
 his England. This proved almost equally suc- 
 cessful, and both books remained in demand into 
 nearly the middle of the seventeenth century. 
 Of the extraordinary popularity of these romances
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 161 
 
 there is no doubt whatever. We have the fact of 
 the number of editions sold ; we have the direct 
 evidence of all of Lyly's contemporaries ; we have 
 the indirect evidence of the universality of that 
 " truest flattery " which takes the shape of imita- 
 tion. Euphues was introduced by name into 
 the title of other romances by rival wits and 
 poets, who knew it. was the name to conjure with. 
 And what was the real cause of this unex- 
 ampled success ? Because the substance of 
 Lyly's long-drawn-out ethical dialogues is not, 
 to us, very edifying or interesting, it has been 
 the custom of critic after critic to assert that 
 the one attraction of the books lay in their style ; 
 that they were bought and read, and quoted, 
 because of the eccentric phraseology and the 
 curiously constructed sentences in which they 
 were composed. Well, I believe, and hope to 
 show, that this is a case of mistaking cause for 
 effect. I believe that mere style, whether good 
 or bad, wholesome or unwholesome, has never 
 yet made a book popular ; but that it is always 
 the book that brings its style into popularity, 
 and consequently into imitation. But waiving 
 this question for the moment, let us consider 
 what was this famous style of Lyly's books 
 which ultimately gave us the word " Euphuism," 
 where he found it, and what he added to it. 
 The story of its origin is a long one, but for our 
 purpose may be briefly set forth. 
 
 One of the effects of the revival of learning 
 VOL. I M
 
 1 62 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 during the century between 1450 and 1550 — 
 the reopening to the eager intellects of Europe of 
 the masterpieces of ancient literature, poetical, 
 dramatic, philosophical — -had been to induce a 
 kind of intellectual light-headedness. Men had 
 suddenly come into a vast, an unprecedented 
 fortune, and for a long while did not know how 
 to use it. Their heads were turned ; and if it 
 could not be said exactly that they were not 
 answerable for their actions, it certainly was the 
 case that they were not answerable for their 
 speech. They found themselves with such a 
 marvellous new balance at their intellectual 
 bankers that, like a young heir to a millionaire, 
 they were disposed to toss the coin about in 
 sheer bravado. Having gained this precious 
 possession, denied to the 'vulgar and ignorant, 
 they must make it felt, and not hide it under 
 a bushel. If their knowledge exceeded that 
 of the rude clown, their language should be 
 in a concatenation accordingly. And, born of 
 this ambition, certain affectations (as we call them) 
 of style sprang up in cultured circles all over 
 Europe. They spread like an epidemic, and with 
 just those variations of symptom and type that 
 other epidemics have shown, due to difference 
 of climate and the constitution of the sufferer. 
 There was one form of it in Spain, another form 
 in Italy, another in France, and, by and by, 
 several distinct forms in England. And though 
 the disease itself was in the air, the particular
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 163 
 
 form of it was, in every case that we can trace, 
 due to the stimulus of some poet or other 
 imaginative writer who, falling under its influence, 
 left upon it the mark of his own individuality. 
 Among these were Guevara and Gongora in 
 Spain, Marini in Italy, and, as we shall see, Lyly 
 in England. Differing greatly in details from one 
 another, the main characteristics of the disease, 
 regarded as a whole, were a desire to write in a 
 manner different from that of ordinary men ; to 
 let the superior knowledge and education of the 
 writer tell upon his style, so as to make it obvious 
 on the surface that a learned man held the pen. 
 In certain forms of the malady a desire was shown 
 to display a large amount of out-of-the-way in- 
 formation, to pile up allusions to ancient authors 
 or ancient mythology or natural history (of the 
 fabulous sort) ; but the most marked general char- 
 acteristic common to all of them was the making- 
 the structure of the sentence as different as 
 possible from that of everyday life ; to avoid the 
 natural at all costs and substitute the artificial ; 
 to exhibit skill and ingenuity in the arrangement 
 of clauses ; to get odd effects out of antithesis 
 and alliteration, or the " hunting of the letter " — 
 to build, in short, pretty edifices out of words as 
 children do with a box of bricks. It was the 
 very skittishness of pedantry. I have called it 
 " affectation," but that is hardly the word for 
 it. It was rather, I think, something of a tempo- 
 rary intoxication — the result of unbounded new
 
 1 64 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 resources and an untempered zeal to display them ; 
 a wish to be clever, not so much from personal 
 vanity as from a sense that, in intellectual matters, 
 noblesse oblige, and that being so cultivated they 
 were bound to show it. 
 
 Well, the epidemic reached England, and the 
 particular form of it from foreign parts that 
 started it here came from the writings of a certain 
 Spanish prelate of the court of Charles V., of the 
 name of Antonio de Guevara. He wrote more 
 than one book, but the most famous was a col- 
 lection of letters attributed to the Roman emperor 
 Marcus Aurelius, but, of course, spurious. This 
 work, entitled Marco Aurclio, or the Golden Book, 
 enjoyed a golden popularity, and was translated 
 into all the principal European languages, and 
 accordingly into English, by Lord Berners, as 
 early as 1532. A second work of Guevara's, 
 also consisting of letters and essays on ethical 
 topics, The Familiar Epistles, appeared in an 
 English dress in 1575. Some fifty years ago the 
 excellent Mr. Hallam pointed out that the type 
 of literary artifice which Lyly was to make so 
 familiar was borrowed from Guevara, and, within 
 the last few years, a scholarly German, Dr. Land- 
 mann, has drawn out the likenesses between the 
 two with great thoroughness. Into these details 
 we do not follow him. Suffice it to say that the 
 proofs of Lyly's indebtedness to Guevara extend 
 much further than to style. The subjects treated 
 and the ways of treating them are continually
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 165 
 
 alike, and we cannot doubt that Lyly judged, and 
 with good reason, that a book of native manu- 
 facture, discussing love and morals and philo- 
 sophy, and written in a style that was already 
 more or less a fashion, from its novelty and 
 piquancy, would find many readers. We have 
 seen how his anticipations were confirmed. 
 Euphues became the book of the season, and of 
 several seasons. And being thus written on the 
 lines of a foreign fashion, modified and developed 
 by Lyly's own fancy and ingenuity, it fell in with 
 a tendency of the time, already sufficiently pro- 
 nounced. As it was in every one's hands, every 
 one could enjoy imitating it and borrowing from 
 it, and so the style began to permeate other books, 
 and to spread even into men's daily speech. This, 
 you know, has since become a familiar experience. 
 A literary jargon (if it is not disrespectful to call 
 it so) passes very quickly into a colloquial jargon. 
 How soon the particular jargon of Lyly was called 
 " Euphuism " I think there is nothing to show. 
 As far as I know, the first use of the word is 
 found in the often -quoted passage in Blount's 
 edition of Lyly's Comedies in 1632, where he tells 
 us that our nation was in Lyly's debt " for a new 
 English which he taught them. Euphues and his 
 England began first that language ; all our ladies 
 were then his scholars ; and that beauty in court 
 which could not parley ' Euphuism ' was as little 
 regarded as she which now there speaks not 
 French." Blount may have coined the happy
 
 1 66 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 phrase then and there, but just as probably he 
 used a term already in vogue. 1 Such terms almost 
 coin themselves. - 
 
 Perhaps some among my audience who never 
 opened Lyly's pages might like to have a sample 
 of a style which played so important a part in 
 infecting a whole literature. But it cannot well 
 be " sampled." Its peculiar effect can only be 
 tested in a long draught, and a long draught is 
 absolutely nauseous. Just now we heard Mr. 
 Kingsley kindly describing Lyly as guilty of 
 " occasional tediousness and pedantry," but (to 
 confess the truth) there is nothing " occasional " 
 about Lyly. The style that was to become so 
 famous never deviates into naturalness or sim- 
 plicity. The perpetual building of sentences in 
 antithetical clauses, with other verbal artifice ; the 
 constant display of classical lore and the facts of 
 a (mostly fabulous) natural history never varies 
 and never ceases. No one nowadays could read 
 aloud two consecutive pages and retain his self- 
 respect ; no one, save by setting his face as a flint, 
 in the severe spirit of a student, could endure more 
 than half-a-dozen in the seclusion of his own 
 library. And it requires this same severe spirit 
 to understand how, even in the peculiar circum- 
 stances of Elizabethan society, such writing should 
 ever have been popular. I have maintained 
 already— and I think the history of literary influ- 
 
 1 [Murray's Dictionary quotes " Euphuisme " from Gabriel Harvey 
 1592 ; and "euphuize" from Dekker 1609 and Middleton 1627.]
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 167 
 
 ence in all times since supports the view — that it 
 was the book that commended the style, not the 
 style the book ; the familiar presentment of good 
 religion, good feeling, and good sense, on all sorts 
 of subjects, that made the book popular, and that 
 this popularity connected itself, by a most natural 
 and familiar law of association, with the style in 
 which it was written. And then, you understand, 
 Lyly did not invent this style, though he left his 
 own impress on it. He found forms of it already 
 in existence ; he recognised that in that time of 
 intellectual ferment the educated and literary 
 world, and the hangers-on of the educated and 
 literary world (always a much larger body), were 
 all agog for habits of speech that might bear wit- 
 ness to their culture. It was he who, in the first 
 instance, borrowed a fashion ; and by combining 
 it with a far more worthy fashion of the day, a 
 genuine interest in moral and intellectual prob- 
 lems, he made an undoubtedly lucky hit ; and 
 we may be sure that no one was more aston- 
 ished than Lyly himself at the success of his 
 experiment. 
 
 And so it came about that the epidemic being 
 already in the world — for there were Euphuists 
 before Eitphnes — Lyly was fated to become a new 
 centre of infection, and (almost accidentally) to 
 affix his own name to a bad fashion, for which he 
 was only partly responsible. How this fashion, 
 stimulated by him, worked and spread is a 
 commonplace of Elizabethan history. A school
 
 1 68 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of direct imitators arose among the lesser wits 
 and poets of the day, borrowing, in many cases, 
 the very name of his hero, and copying his every 
 trick and phrase. Nor were the greater wits 
 wholly unaffected by it — not even the greatest of 
 them all. Philip Sidney composed his Arcadia 
 in a euphuism of his own — owing less to the 
 precise model of Lyly than to that of the Italian 
 and Spanish pastoral romancists. But Shak- 
 speare is the most interesting and significant testi- 
 mony to Lyly's influence. Living in the very 
 heart and focus of London literary life, and as- 
 sociating with young gentlemen in the highest 
 intellectual spirits, he heard " euphuism parleyed " 
 all day long. When he began comedy writing, 
 with Lyly's precedent as a comedy writer strongly 
 present to him, he laughed at euphuism ; but he 
 showed, notwithstanding, how difficult it was for 
 himself to escape the infection. Where the wit 
 and fancy of his earliest comedies are least to our 
 present taste, it is where the surface-fancy and 
 phrase -trickery of the euphuists controlled him 
 most. He escaped altogether from it in his later 
 comedies ; wherever he was most earnest, he 
 became most himself, and when Beatrice urges 
 Benedick to avenge Hero, all traces of Lyly in 
 the dialogue have disappeared. But he continued 
 to laugh at all phases of the euphuism epidemic 
 to the end of his days. Pistol talks the euphuism 
 of the pot-house, Osric of the court, Polonius of 
 the schools, and for each in turn Shakspeare
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 169 
 
 takes care to show his contempt and aversion. 
 " Pistol ! " ejaculates Falstaff. " He hears with 
 ears," replies his ancient, striking an attitude — 
 and even poor Sir Hugh Evans is offended with 
 the absurdity. " He hears with ears ! Why, this 
 is affectations ! " And after Polonius has been 
 spinning and twisting his "True, 'tis pity — pity 
 'tis, 'tis true," and all the rest of it, the queen 
 interposes, not too soon, with an appeal for " more 
 matter — and less art." 
 
 In these two remonstrances, " Fie ! 'tis affecta- 
 tions," and the cry for " more matter, and less 
 art," is really summed up the moral of Lyly's 
 euphuism, and all euphuism in times since. It is 
 the putting manner above matter, or giving it as 
 a substitute for matter, that is at the root of what 
 may fairly be called euphuism. And yet, though 
 Sir Hu<ih Evans calls this " affectations," and 
 though we should most of us accept that name 
 for it as just, the very essence and mischief of 
 euphuism lies not so much in its affectation as 
 in its being imitation. For it is not until the 
 copyists, the plagiarists and parasites of style, 
 enter upon the scene that the real evil begins. 
 In one sense, the mischief begins with the man 
 who, quite innocently perhaps, first uses the style, 
 and thus sets the example. But it is the men 
 who borrow the style of some writer of pro- 
 nounced individuality, and who cannot borrow 
 any better quality from him, it is these persons 
 who start the real mischief — writers who can
 
 170 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 perpetuate the " art " (such as it is) without 
 being able to contribute any fresh " matter," who 
 (if I may use an exceedingly homely metaphor) 
 are perpetually adding more water to the teapot, 
 but never any more tea. 
 
 And such is the history of euphuism onwards 
 from the time of Lyly. It spread like a disease ; 
 it became the popular style of a dozen other 
 romances ; it became the jargon of the court and 
 wherever young scholars and wits most did con- 
 gregate. Its ridiculous side was abundantly 
 recognised. It was laughed at, but it lived. It 
 never affected verse in quite the same way as 
 prose. Verse was to develop a euphuism of its 
 own, but of another breed. It owned a different 
 origin. Its pedantry was pedantry of idea rather 
 than of phraseology. Even where a poem was 
 full of conceits — the offspring of hard-driven in- 
 vention, and fancy run wild — the diction was 
 often pure and lucid enough. To trace the 
 actual course of the euphuistic epidemic onward 
 is too large a theme for us. The euphuism of 
 the Stuart period exhibited many variations on 
 that of the Tudor. This later euphuism was 
 pedantic and artificial ; but it was in ingenuity 
 of thought, in " out-of-the-wayness " of metaphor 
 and simile that it mainly showed itself, rather 
 than in tricks of phrase. Johnson called it the 
 " metaphysical " style — that style of Cowley and 
 his companions — and the epithet has been 
 demurred to, but he was clearly pointing to
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 171 
 
 this peculiar subtlety of fancy as distinguished 
 from mere over-exquisitiveness of language. 
 Such was the style of Cowley, and Lovelace, 
 and Cleveland, and even of sacred writers such 
 as Herbert and Vaughan, and even of Dryden 
 himself, when that great poet condescended to 
 the depraved literary tastes of his age, as he 
 occasionally did in this as well as in more deplor- 
 able ways. Yet each of these men could, when 
 he chose, or when his better earnestness asserted 
 itself, write as simply and plainly as any one else. 
 One of the worst offenders, in the later euphuistic 
 way, Richard Lovelace, ran wild at times in the 
 forced ingenuity and silliness of his conceits. 
 Yet he has left us, as we all know, three of the 
 most perfect lyrics in the language ; and no one 
 would wish a word altered in " When love, with 
 unconfined wings," or " Tell me not, sweet, I am 
 unkind." I should be ashamed to repeat such 
 truisms of criticism as this were it not that, 
 though we all know the facts, we may not all 
 have learned the true lesson from them. When 
 Lovelace wrote a sonnet to his mistress's glove, 
 and compared it to an estate with five various- 
 sized farms upon it, these farms being the four 
 fingers and thumb ; when Cleveland, in a poem 
 to Julia " to expedite her promise," compares " the 
 object of his affections to an advowson, her rate 
 of life to the Gregorian calendar, her coyness to 
 the obstinate resistance of Ostend, and her tears 
 to the Pool of Bethesda," these men were really
 
 1 72 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 following a fashion, not necessarily from any love 
 for it, but because they thought it was expected 
 from them. They really believed that it was so 
 that readers of poetry liked to be regaled. One 
 can hardly say that they believed this sort of 
 thing would pay, in the vulgar sense of that term, 
 for as yet literature had hardly been formulated 
 into a profession ; but in the sense that it would 
 be popular because of this quality, they certainly 
 believed it. And so, I repeat, we should call 
 their vice imitation rather than affectation. The 
 affectation had taken place a long way back, but 
 these later men did not originate, they followed. 
 Their misfortune was that " heredity " which our 
 friends, the Ibsenites, so delight to dally with. 
 A proverb has been defined as the " wit of one 
 and the wisdom of many." And euphuism all 
 along its course, and in all its various species and 
 varieties, may be similarly defined as the ingenuity 
 of one and the silliness of the remainder. 
 
 And all this time, let us not forget, the wise 
 men and the true humourists were noting and 
 lamenting, or mocking, as their bent was, this 
 vice of unreality and fashion-following. Roger 
 Ascham had laid down one of the noblest of 
 literary canons when he advised his disciples to 
 think with the philosophers, but to write like 
 ordinary people — a rule never palatable to the 
 majority of writers, for it is never easy to think 
 wisely, but very easy to cultivate any style to 
 order. Cervantes, in his immortal work, though
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 173 
 
 he had higher game to fly at than literary artifice, 
 was pronouncing one long condemnation upon 
 that which is at the root of all artificiality. It is 
 not true that he " laughed Spain's chivalry away " ; 
 he had no such intention. But he did laugh 
 away what, by a slightly forced metaphor, we 
 will call the "euphuism of chivalry." And in 
 France, Moliere found in the euphuism of his 
 own fashionable world the opportunity of saying 
 the truest words in jest. Who has ever doubted 
 that Moliere himself is speaking out his own frank 
 contempt when, in that immortal scene, he 
 shows his misanthrope making mincemeat of 
 the Maudles and Postlethwaites of the day ? 
 — when he declares that thinking, not exactly 
 with the wise, but from the deep " general heart 
 of man," and using the language that that heart 
 dictates, is nearer to the spirit of genuine poetry 
 than all the " colifichets " of the fashionable 
 sonnet ? It was but stating a fact that might 
 have been restated in the same terms a century 
 and a half later, when Burns arose to discontent 
 men with the " mere mechanic art " that poetry 
 had then dwindled to. We can imagine some 
 one seizing upon some such lyric as 
 
 Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, 
 
 I dearly like the west, 
 For there the bonnie lassie lives, 
 
 The lassie I lo'e best, 
 
 and quoting it against the worn-out versification
 
 174 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of the eighteenth century, even as against the 
 dainty dexterity of M. Oronte, Alceste quotes, 
 
 J'aime mieux ma mie, oh gay ! 
 J'aime mieux ma mie, 
 
 and adds, " Voila d'un coeur vraiment 6pris." 
 However, as the phrase used to be, " I am antici- 
 pating." In my very desultory survey we have 
 come to the end of the seventeenth century ; and 
 from and after the beginning of the eighteenth, 
 euphuism, as a continuous erratic force in litera- 
 ture, is by no means dead ; but it begins to take 
 forms which connect themselves more distinct- 
 ively with the genius of individual writers. The 
 euphuism which owes its name to Lyly's book 
 owes it to the accident that Lyly made popular 
 an already existing fashion. He formulated it, 
 he crystallised it into a shape handy for general 
 imitation, and it is not wonderful that his name 
 henceforth stuck to it. And in the case of later 
 euphuisms that we have now reached, and which 
 we attribute to particular writers, that same 
 " heredity " may still exist, though its springs are 
 now hidden from us. Take, for instance, the 
 alleged founder of a poetic form that lived for 
 nearly a hundred years afterwards — Alexander 
 Pope. We talk inevitably of the school of Pope, 
 but Pope, great genius and artist as he was, did 
 not invent his own style. He, too, had literary 
 progenitors. But Pope left the impress of his 
 genius on the verse we know so well ; and if
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 175 
 
 we admit that it engendered a permanent literary 
 mannerism, it is not unfair to call it the euphuism 
 of Pope. Only we are to bear in mind that the 
 euphuism of any original writer begins with his 
 imitators, not with himself. 
 
 Some three generations of Popian " euphuists " 
 were destined to be the result of the great 
 man's influence : writers of verse who adopted his 
 couplet, his rhythms and pauses, and his diction ; 
 the best of these having native gifts of their own 
 which more than compensated for the adoption 
 of a hackneyed medium of expression ; men of 
 real distinction, such as Goldsmith and Crabbe ; 
 men with original gifts of wit and satire, like 
 Cowper and Samuel Johnson. But we forget (for, 
 luckily, they do not live to trouble us) the rank 
 and file of the Popian euphuists, the " mob of 
 gentlemen who wrote with ease " because Pope, 
 above all men, had first shown them the " trick 
 of it." The poetic diction, which, when all life 
 had died out of it, Wordsworth dissected in his 
 famous Prefaces — a diction which too often 
 disturbs our pleasure even in the loveliest 
 passages of Goldsmith or Gray — the gale, the 
 mead, the zephyr, the swain, the nymph, and all 
 the rest of it — this was the poetic euphuism of 
 the last century, and it has gone the inevitable 
 way of all euphuisms, illustrating once more that 
 first command of the Poetical Decalogue, " Thou 
 shalt not copy." At least, you may copy, and 
 you will win a day's applause by being in the
 
 i 7 6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 fashion, but you shall not live, and you shall 
 forfeit your claim to poetic greatness. 
 
 I can only briefly indicate some of the other 
 euphuisms of the century — there were prose 
 euphuisms, as well as verse. The author of 
 Tristram Shandy was a true genius, but he 
 bequeathed a manner to many who could copy 
 it after a fashion but for obvious reasons could 
 borrow nothing else, so that that which is still 
 fresh and living in Sterne is dead, because hope- 
 lessly fade and mawkish, in a Mackenzie. There 
 was a Johnsonian euphuism beloved of those who 
 could imitate the rounded sentences and the 
 ponderous verbosity of the Rambler, but who 
 were miles off the moral sagacity and the shrewd 
 humour of their original. And so the Johnsonian 
 euphuists in their turn are dead and buried. 
 And coming at last to our own century, the 
 euphuisms begin to multiply. If the old effete 
 classical methods had theirs, the new romantic 
 reaction was to have its own. Walter Scott was 
 to found a euphuism, and so was Byron. " In- 
 imitable," in very truth, in all that places him on 
 his high pedestal, yet Scott, in his treatment of 
 mediaeval life, and generally of the heroic element 
 in his novels, did expose himself to imitation ; 
 and Thackeray in his Rebecca and Rowena (per- 
 haps the cleverest, sweetest, and most charming 
 parody in our literature) has shown how the 
 Scott manner may be reproduced so as not to be 
 mistaken. The best of Lord Byron, again, could.
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 177 
 
 not be copied ; the best of no man can be 
 copied ; but Macaulay has reminded us, in a 
 passage we all remember, how his imitators " did 
 their best to write like him and to look like him " ; 
 how " for some years the Minerva Press sent forth 
 no novel without a mysterious, unhappy, Lara- 
 like peer " ; and how " the number of hopeful 
 undergraduates and medical students who became 
 things of dark imaginings, on whom the freshness 
 of the heart ceased to fall like dew," passed all 
 calculation. 
 
 Then, coming down to times within the 
 recollection of most of us, we recall, among 
 others of less note, two remarkable euphuisms, 
 the Dickens and the Carlyle. It was far from 
 being a distinction peculiar to Browning's Mr. 
 Gigadibs that he could write an article on the 
 " Slum and Cellar " that passed for the " true 
 Dickens." There was a host of Mr. Gigadibses 
 at that period who could do the same. In the 
 early days of Household Words there was a 
 whole school of writers in that periodical who 
 contrived so to model their style upon their 
 editor's that, like the wonderful " leaf- insect " 
 on the leaf, it was often all but impossible to 
 distinguish the imitative insect from the tree that 
 it had settled on. Then there was the Carlyle 
 euphuism — a portentous reality which was at its 
 height some thirty or forty years ago, and which 
 in its turn has " had its day and ceased to be." 
 When Carlyle's matured style came to the world 
 
 VOL. I N
 
 178 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 fresh from the master's hand, there were many to 
 call it even then, affectation. But it was not 
 affectation. Those who looked below the surface 
 knew that it was organically connected with the 
 mind and genius of the writer — his poetry, 
 imagination, and wit, modified no doubt by 
 certain foreign models that had helped to fertilise 
 his mind. But it was otherwise with the Carlyle 
 euphuists. Persons who shared little else with 
 Carlyle fancied that they could imitate him (so 
 to speak) " from the top downwards " — that they 
 could wield his weapons and produce his effects 
 by merely putting on his clothes — a new aspect 
 of Sartor Resartus which might have added 
 another chapter to that immortal work. Nor 
 was this euphuism a merely harmless thing, to 
 be smiled at and passed by. It had lamentable 
 effects while it lasted, and there were grave and 
 admirable scholars who could write, and had 
 before written, " like men of this world," who 
 succumbed to the new fashion, and for a time 
 wrote in a style neither their own nor Carlyle's, 
 nor any one else's, but a strange hybrid jargon 
 that might have made angels weep. 
 
 Then, turning from prose to poetry, there was 
 the Tennyson euphuism. After the year 1842, 
 when the two volumes appeared which made 
 Tennyson for the first time a great popular 
 influence, his strong individual style began to 
 make men wonder where he had " picked it up," 
 and a euphuism was accordingly seen, sooner or
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 179 
 
 later, to be the result. We all know how it grew. 
 At first, in pursuance of a law attending the 
 appearance of a markedly original writer, there 
 were those who demurred to the poet's style as 
 unreal — artificial ; then in due course, and with 
 more experience, men felt it to be genuine ; and 
 it became accepted. Then it was imitated ; and 
 once again it became a by-word for unreality— 
 a process in describing which, as you have 
 recognised, I am but turning into bald prose 
 what years after, in a curious fit of natural 
 irritation, Tennyson himself concentrated into 
 his little fable. It is worth quoting once more, 
 for it puts, unintentionally, the whole history and 
 moral of euphuism in a nutshell. 
 
 Once in a golden hour 
 
 I cast to earth a seed. 
 Up there came a flower, 
 
 The people said, a weed. 
 
 To and fro they went 
 
 Thro' my garden-bower, 
 And muttering discontent 
 
 Cursed me and my flower. 
 
 Then it grew so tall 
 
 It wore a crown of light, 
 But thieves from o'er the wall 
 
 Stole the seed by night. 
 
 Sow'd it far and wide 
 
 By every town and tower, 
 Till all the people cried, 
 
 ' Splendid is the flower.'
 
 180 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Read my little fable : 
 
 He that runs may read. 
 Most can raise the flowers now, 
 
 For all have got the seed. 
 
 And some are pretty enough 
 And some are poor indeed ; 
 
 And now again the people 
 Call it but a weed. 
 
 Only, in his brilliant little allegory, Lord Tenny- 
 son modestly veils the actual truth. Nobody was 
 found who actually could " raise the flower," any 
 more than any one could pilfer the " real seed." 
 All that could be raised from the stolen seed was 
 an artificial flower, which, no doubt, many persons, 
 with not much sense of smell and but imperfect 
 eyesight, for a while mistook for the natural one ; 
 but it only required a little time and testing to 
 prove the difference. We have had since whole 
 gardens full of this sort — Tennysonian euphuism, 
 Tennysonian " echoes — little worth " — and these, 
 too, have passed for a while as literature, and then 
 have gone the inevitable way into the limbo of all 
 imitations. 
 
 There have been other poetic euphuisms since 
 the Tennysonian. Browning has hardly founded 
 one, not so much because he is difficult to imitate 
 as because he is difficult to imitate without 
 appearing to parody. But we have witnessed in 
 turn a Rossetti euphuism and a Swinburne 
 euphuism, the characteristics of which are familiar 
 enough to you. Each of these eminent poets has
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 1S1 
 
 a manner which can be copied, and they have 
 been copied abundantly. Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
 a poet in whom thought is more dominant than 
 any metrical individuality, has had his influence 
 too, but just for that reason he is less easy to 
 imitate. But though Mr. Arnold has hardly left 
 us a poetic euphuism, he has helped (at least) 
 to leave us one in prose ; and in this respect, 
 though it seems ludicrous enough to compare him 
 with John Lyly, there remains a certain parallel 
 between a euphuism that was the delight of the 
 scholars surrounding Oueen Elizabeth, and another 
 that has been for some years past the delight of a 
 similar class in our own land. For here history 
 has closely repeated itself, and for some years 
 we have had a class of writers employing a 
 euphuism not due to the influence of any one 
 model, but growing out of a new " exhilaration of 
 culture." A modern so-called revival of learning, 
 a sort of a nineteenth-century renaissance, has led 
 our ambitious young men and women to invent a 
 corresponding diction, which shall difference them 
 from that of ordinary plain-speaking people. And 
 though I have mentioned Mr. Matthew Arnold's 
 name in introducing the topic, let me guard myself 
 against seeming to rank that true scholar and 
 poet with a school to which his example no doubt 
 contributed something, but for which he cannot 
 be held answerable. Mr. Arnold made many 
 striking and novel additions to the vocabulary of 
 art-criticism ; some he borrowed from the French
 
 1 82 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 critics, some he invented, and certainly it gave 
 him a mannerism of his own, which, however (as 
 always happens), fell off from him when he was 
 most in earnest, and when his style often rose to the 
 eloquence of genuine simplicity. But his phrases 
 were eagerly caught up by the new euphuists — 
 used in season and out of it — and a new language 
 was the result, the language of what they called 
 culture. This language is familiar to us all. It 
 has been caricatured and ridiculed over and over 
 again, but it lives on, for it is the sole stock-in- 
 trade of many of its possessors. The columns 
 of certain literary journals display it constantly. 
 We know it at a glance. We know that what- 
 ever new poem or new play it is that is being 
 criticised, we shall find the changes rung on the 
 old glossary, we shall meet the old substantives, 
 adjectives, and adverbs ; — " work " (this artist's 
 " work "), every other line ; " intense," " supreme," 
 " subtle," " precious," " distinctly," " accentuated," 
 " convincing," " incisive," " value," " charm " ; the 
 solemn application of these terms to writings often 
 ludicrously unworthy of criticism at all ; analysing 
 the performance of the latest droll, and assuring 
 us that his representation of Mr. Wilcox Gibbs in 
 My Aunt's Sewing- Machine is something we cannot 
 " afford to neglect." For the " note " (as they would 
 style it) of these critics is that they are one and 
 all totally destitute of humour, and could not by 
 any possibility write as they do if they possessed 
 a grain of it ! I am speaking, of course, of the
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 183 
 
 rank and file of those following this strange cultas, 
 but the trail of this euphuism is over the style 
 even of their betters. The aim at giving better 
 bread than ordinary men eat — to exhibit ' ; Dis- 
 tinction " — is at the root of it all. And we have 
 met, I think, with writers of genuine scholarship 
 who have attained such perfection in this kind 
 that their admirers claim for them that they write 
 the best English of their day — the effect of whose 
 style is something analogous to that of entering, 
 some fine spring day, into the hottest of the 
 tropical houses at the Botanic Gardens. For five 
 minutes the effect is magical. How warm, how 
 sweet, how balmy, and those tropical flowers how 
 aromatic ; but after those five minutes we feel 
 nothing but a desire to get out from the closeness 
 and the perfume into the open air, and Nature 
 left to herself. For we may expel her with a 
 fork, but she will come back ! 
 
 My friend Mr. Edmund Gosse has lately 
 published a very interesting essay with the some- 
 what alarming title, Is Verse in Danger ? He 
 was led to ask this serious question by the in- 
 creasing neglect that he noticed of new poetry 
 given to the world. For poetry by living men, he 
 seems to notice, finds fewer and fewer readers. 
 However well spoken of by the critics, " laudatur 
 et alget " — it gets its praise, and dies. Of course 
 Mr. Gosse would recognise, with all of us, certain 
 obvious exceptions to the rule. Our oldest and 
 most eminent living poet— there are assuredly no
 
 1 84 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 signs that his popularity is on the wane. And, 
 at what may be called the other end of the scale, 
 for verse treating in a commonplace way certain 
 interests intelligible to the ordinary intellect, re- 
 flecting in more or less facile blank verse senti- 
 ments and thoughts familiar to the uneducated, 
 there is also still a very large public. But Mr. 
 Gosse, I am sure, means a class of poets standing 
 apart from these two extremes — men of culture 
 and trained metrical faculty, of which our time 
 affords so many examples. It is these (I gather) 
 that complain of neglect. And Mr. Gosse seems 
 to think that there must be hypocrisy somewhere 
 about, for that the same persons who will eagerly 
 buy and study any fresh reprint of a minor 
 (perhaps a very minor) Elizabethan poet, yet 
 have no attention to spare for the minor poets of 
 to-day. Mr. Gosse sees inconsistency here, but I 
 venture to think he overlooks the fact, that to any 
 verse written three hundred years ago belong 
 many interests quite distinct from literary merit. 
 It has an historical and an antiquarian interest ; 
 and the age that produced it was so wonderful 
 that we cannot (as our friends the euphuists put it) 
 " afford to neglect " any new evidence that might 
 perchance throw a little fresh light upon persons 
 and things of more consequence than itself. If we 
 heard to-morrow that Mr. A. H. Bullen had come 
 upon a hitherto unknown songster of Shakspeare's 
 time, we should all be eager to welcome the new- 
 comer. It might easily prove to be very mediocre
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 185 
 
 stuff; but also it might throw light upon other 
 sineiner-birds of that time — it might even contain 
 an allusion to Shakspeare, or illustrate one of his 
 plays or a passage in one. Therefore I submit it 
 is not necessarily hypocrisy that we are interested 
 in one minor poet and not in another. Some 
 other reason must be looked for. Nor is it 
 sufficient to quote again Horace's hackneyed 
 saying that mediocre verse has no right to exist 
 — that neither gods nor men nor " the Trade " 
 can away with it — for, out of very mediocre verse 
 indeed "the Trade" have in their time made 
 laree fortunes. But the writers Mr. Gosse has 
 in view are not of this class. To do them 
 justice, they would not wish to be ; and again 
 to do them justice, they could not be if they 
 did wish it. For to address successfully the 
 commonplace, you must be yourself commonplace ; 
 and they are not that. They have accomplish- 
 ments quite their own, though somehow they fail 
 to tell. Why is this ? Well, a parallel from a 
 sister art may be invoked. The followers of 
 Richard Wagner have one special aversion, and 
 that is Mendelssohn ; and what they affirm about 
 Mendelssohn is this, that " he had nothing to 
 say, and said it charmingly." Now, I cannot 
 endorse this judgment. It seems to me a 
 monstrous thing to say of the composer of the 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dream music and the Elijah. 
 But the formula is useful for other purposes ; and 
 it fairlv describes the strength and the weakness
 
 1 86 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of a vast bulk of the literature of a highly cultured 
 age. It is beautifully written — the art of expres- 
 sion seems to have reached its climax — but what 
 else ? What is there besides ? Can men live 
 upon this food ; and if not, can the food itself 
 live ? Has it not in itself the seeds of ultimate 
 death ? A friend of mine used to affirm that 
 once, at a foreign table d'hote, he read on the 
 wine-carte, framed for the benefit of us British, 
 the following proud boast : " The wines at this 
 establishment are of such a quality as to leave 
 Mr. Traveller absolutely nothing further to hope 
 for." Of how many volumes of verse is not this 
 the true epitaph ! On reaching the end, after 
 wondering how well it is all written, we are forced 
 to the conclusion that the wines of this establish- 
 ment leave nothing further to hope for ; and that 
 any future volumes from the same source would 
 be equally well written, and equally devoid of 
 anything of permanent interest for mankind ! 
 
 And what has this to do, you ask, with 
 euphuism ? Well, I have tried to show that the 
 essence of euphuism is not affectation, that is to 
 say, not originality (even misdirected originality), 
 but rather the reverse of originality — the copying 
 of others, when one has not much or anything to 
 say of one's own. This is euphuism, whether 
 it take shape in fantastic tricks of style, in the 
 slavish following of particular models, in slang 
 (which is the euphuism of conversation), or in the 
 general desire to be superfine and belong to a
 
 EUPHUISM— PAST AND PRESENT 187 
 
 literary caste. Wherever manner is cultivated, 
 there is euphuism ; and no manner is worth any- 
 thing in literature that is not originally related to 
 the matter it clothes. Individuality is the soul of 
 literature. That alone gives a writer a chance of 
 taking his place in that noble category. Will 
 individuality alone confer it? Certainly not. 
 The quality that makes a writer live beyond his 
 own generation, and be re-read and quoted and 
 survive all swingings of the pendulum between 
 excessive praise and excessive dispraise, what is 
 it ? Who can define it ? What is charm — the 
 magic that never fades from out some short lyric, 
 some short essay — a salt of which the savour 
 never exhales ? How many of those of our own 
 day who seem, with the best judging among us, 
 to possess it will possess it for our grandchildren ? 
 The issues of literary fame are beyond our ken. 
 But one thing is certain, it is better to be original, 
 if only for a day, than to follow fashions and 
 euphuism. It is better to be one's self and die 
 than never to have been one's self at all !
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 
 
 I 
 
 When the subject of these lectures was first 
 announced, an eminent man of science was 
 so kind as to tell me that he much approved 
 of that subject, and that he hoped he might be 
 able to be present, because, he said, Swift was to 
 him " little more than a name." Now it is never 
 right to take comfort from a fellow -creature's 
 admission of ignorance, but I am bound to say 
 the confession gave me some encouragement. 
 For it was partly because I believed this ignorance 
 to be true of many persons, even those interested 
 in English literature, that I chose the subject. 
 And the reasons for this state of things are not far 
 to seek. In the first place, Swift is a voluminous 
 (as well as most luminous) writer, and the mere 
 bulk of any author has always an effect of warning 
 off beginners. Then, if Swift is not of unequal 
 strength or wit, he is indubitably unequal in power 
 of attraction, for much of his writing was concerned 
 with politics and questions of his time which have 
 
 188
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 189 
 
 comparatively small interest, save for the student 
 of history, and it would be quite easy for any one 
 approaching him to take hold of him " by the 
 wrong end," and so be disappointed and proceed 
 no farther. Indeed, many persons seem somehow 
 to have the gift of always thus missing such a 
 chance, and sometimes, I fear, even of taking a 
 pleasure in it. All writers of marked originality 
 require a guide for the beginner, lest, for example, 
 they approach Shakspeare by the Comedy of 
 Errors, Chaucer by the Romaunt of the Rose, or 
 Wordsworth by Julia and Vaudracour. But there 
 is another and a graver cause of Swift's unpopu- 
 larity, or rather of his non-appearance in the 
 family library. He had an extreme and pecul- 
 iarly disagreeable love of the coarse and the 
 offensive. It was connected, I believe, with a 
 morbid condition (I do not say mania) which 
 affected other sides of his temperament. But this 
 coarseness does not pervade his work. It affects 
 but a small minority of his writings ; it is not, as 
 in Sterne, a thread which runs through and taints 
 with a sense of impurity everything he ever wrote, 
 making it impossible to disengage and destroy it. 
 In Swift it can be cut away, and thrown away, like 
 the offal of a carcase, leaving the whole body other- 
 wise healthy and nutritious. Nevertheless until 
 comparatively lately no editions of Swift had been 
 thought of with regard to the family circle. But 
 within the last two or three years Mr. Henry Craik, 1 
 
 1 [Now Sir Henry Craik, K.C.B.]
 
 i 9 o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the author of quite the best biography of Swift, 
 has given us, through the Clarendon Press, two 
 volumes of selections from Swift, admirably edited 
 with notes and prefaces, and with slight exception 
 representing Swift's writings in all their many- 
 sidedness. These two volumes I confidently re- 
 commend to any of my audience who wish 
 seriously to obtain an all-round view of Swift's 
 genius, and, as I believe, an intellectual pleasure 
 they may never have dreamed of. 
 
 When Thackeray treated of Swift in his well- 
 known lectures, he was considering, he said, the 
 humourists of Queen Anne's time — the men them- 
 selves, that is to say, rather than their writings. 
 It is my intention not exactly to reverse this 
 order, but rather to speak of the books as well as 
 of the man, and in common with his life. And 
 for, I think, a sufficient reason — that the man 
 is already better known than his books. The 
 romantic interest of his career, as it affected 
 others, and notably two charming and ill-fated 
 women, has caused his story to be widely popular. 
 Thackeray has done much in the lectures just 
 named to diffuse the story, and a clever novelist 
 of our own time has taken it as the basis of a 
 romance. 1 The theme has struck the imagination 
 of foreigners also, and I have an indistinct recol- 
 lection of a French drama on the subject, in which 
 I recall nothing, however, but a pleasant idyllic 
 touch where Swift and the child Stella play 
 
 1 \Esther Vanhomrigh, by Mrs. Margaret Woods.]
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 191 
 
 at battledore and shuttlecock in the Moor Park 
 library. But with the exception of some school- 
 room version of Gulliver, and the fragments of 
 the Polite Conversations quoted by Mr. Thackeray, 
 I suppose that to most people the bulk of Swift's 
 satiric and ironic vein is all but unknown. It is 
 well, however, that we may take something for 
 granted in connection with Swift, for otherwise 
 the title of my lectures, his " life and genius," 
 would require not three, but a dozen lectures for 
 their exposition. There are at least three aspects 
 of Swift which might be treated separately : his 
 life, with all its mysteries, as yet unsolved and 
 certainly not to be solved by me ; his political 
 career, also not without mysteries ; and his posi- 
 tion as a prose-writer of rare and almost unique 
 quality ; a satirist of the first rank, and a master 
 of irony which, if we cannot quite accept his own 
 vaunt that he " was born to introduce it," he 
 certainly used with a freshness and variety that 
 leaves almost all other professors of that art far 
 behind. Yet all these three sides of Swift touch 
 and control each other so nearly that it is not 
 possible to ignore any one of them. I will 
 do my best to skim lightly over the motives 
 or secrets of his purely political action, and 
 if I state a view of these dogmatically, for 
 brevity's sake, I shall know that you can correct 
 my judgment at your leisure from any fuller 
 biography. 
 
 It was one of Swift's ungallant sayings (he
 
 1 92 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 was by no means always ungallant) that women 
 are riddles, the interest in which is gone as soon 
 as the answer is known. He himself was most 
 surely a riddle, and there seems little prospect of 
 the interest in it passing away for a like reason. 
 And perhaps this may explain why, until lately, 
 he had somehow warned off critics and biographers. 
 It is disappointing, not to say humiliating, to 
 grapple with these problems and leave them at 
 the end still unsolved. There is, indeed, no end 
 to the anomalies, contradictions, discords, in this 
 man Swift. Born in Ireland, exercising his pro- 
 fession, and spending the greater part of his life 
 there, the staunchest champion of that country's 
 rights and privileges ; dying there, and leaving 
 his fortune for Irish uses, Swift was yet an 
 Englishman ; English by parentage on both sides, 
 English in genius, English in character and in 
 temperament ; born and reared in poverty, and 
 during the whole of his early manhood living in 
 dependence and with crippled means, he had yet, 
 when means came to him, a heart " open as day 
 to melting charity," and capable of generosity, 
 rarer grace even than liberality. His appearance 
 presented the same incongruities. " His eyes," 
 said his friend Pope, " are azure as the heavens, and 
 have a surprising archness in them." " Sometimes," 
 writes poor Vanessa, " you strike me with that 
 prodigious awe, I tremble with fear ; at other 
 times a charming compassion shines through your 
 countenance, which revives my soul." Proud,
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 193 
 
 fierce, resentful, with few of the graces that are 
 supposed to win hearts, two of the most charming 
 women were at his feet. One died of her love, 
 of a broken heart, and the other chose the sadder 
 fate of a protracted life, gladdened by his devotion 
 and constant friendship, but cheated of her natural 
 hopes, and content to be his wife (if indeed the 
 ceremony was ever performed at all) only in name. 
 Swift was a misanthrope in theory, and in much 
 of his practice ; yet what love he had for his 
 friends, and what love they gave him in return ! 
 Many flattered him, I daresay, eager to propiti- 
 ate that tremendous force and that unscrupulous 
 tongue, but Pope and Gay and Arbuthnot had 
 little to fear on that score. Pope had a sting of 
 his own, which, had he chosen to use it, could 
 have amply avenged anything Swift could have 
 said or done towards him. A dozen lines in one of 
 his satires might have for ever modified the world's 
 view of Swift, just as in famous and familiar lines 
 he affected the future reputation of Addison. 
 No, there was that in Swift which in spite of 
 misanthropy and all else made his friends love 
 him. " My memory, my affection, my esteem," 
 writes Pope, " are inseparable from you, and will, 
 my dear friend, be for ever yours." And hear in 
 return Swift's subtle tribute to these friends in 
 the " Verses on his own Death " ; notice the 
 " inverted irony " by which, in the ostensible 
 language of a grievance, he yet contrives to pay 
 them the truest compliment : — 
 
 VOL. I O
 
 i 9 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 In Pope I cannot read a line 
 
 But with a sigh I wish it mine ; 
 
 When he can in one couplet fix 
 
 More sense than I can do in six, 
 
 It gives me such a jealous fit, 
 
 I cry "plague take him and his wit." 
 
 I grieve to be outdone by Gay 
 
 In my own humorous biting way ; 
 
 Arbuthnot is no more my friend 
 
 Who dares to irony pretend, 
 
 Which I was born to introduce ; 
 
 Refined it first, and showed its use. 
 
 St. John, as well as Pulteney, knows 
 
 That I had some repute for prose, 
 
 And till they drove me out of date 
 
 Could maul a minister of state. 
 
 If they have mortified my pride, 
 
 And made me throw my pen aside ; 
 
 If with such talents Heaven has blessed 'em 
 
 Have I not reason to detest 'em ? 
 
 Thackeray quotes the saying of some lady 
 that she could have borne Swift's cruelty for the 
 sake of his tenderness. In this she marked an 
 antithesis that runs through his life ; and when 
 we add to this the regularity of that life, con- 
 trasted with the cynical license of speech he at 
 times allows himself ; the daring treatment of 
 religious subjects in his Tale of a Tub, with his 
 own indubitable sense of religious need, and the 
 disgust he felt for the vulgar irreligion of his 
 day ; when we note further the logical vigour, the 
 piercing clearness of his intellect, contrasted with 
 the element of disease, weighing on his nervous 
 system from the beginning, growing more and
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 195 
 
 more intense, until the brain broke down altogether 
 and left him for the last years of his life a help- 
 less lunatic ; I say we have here a mingled yarn 
 indeed, problems sufficient to engage and defy 
 the closest scrutiny of the student of human 
 nature ! 
 
 And now let me briefly summarise that 
 portion of his life that concerns us to - day. 
 Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, in the year 
 1667; of English parents, and a posthumous 
 child. Reared by his mother in great poverty, he 
 was sent at the age of fourteen to Trinity College, 
 Dublin, where, though his already irrepressible 
 temper and impatience of discipline brought him 
 into constant conflict with the college authorities, 
 he must have contrived to read and think, and 
 to lay the foundation of that vigorous and un- 
 adorned English style, which, when he first 
 needed it, seemed to spring like Minerva, fully 
 armed, from his brain. He graduated without 
 distinction in 1685. He went on living, as he 
 had thus far lived, on the charity of relations, 
 until, that failing, he returned to England to his 
 mother in Leicestershire, in 1688. He was just 
 of age, and already soured and embittered by a 
 sense of dependence, of failure, and of conscious 
 ability unrecognised. And herein, I think, may 
 be seen the first foundations of the temper that 
 possessed him through life — a sense of vague 
 resentment, with no clear excuse for it, against 
 things in general. Mrs. Swift was connected by
 
 196 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 marriage with the Whig statesman and diplomatist, 
 Sir William Temple, and to his patronage she ven- 
 tured to commend her son ; and the result was the 
 admission of Swift into Temple's house at Moor 
 Park, near Farnham, in Surrey, at the salary of 
 £20 a year and his board, as secretary or literary 
 assistant, or in any other capacity in which 
 Temple might find him useful. The experiment 
 was tried. In little more than a year Swift could 
 bear it no longer, or else Temple couldn't. The 
 secretary was proud, and thought he was not held 
 of sufficient importance, and the master probably 
 wearied of the uncertain temper of the servant. 
 They quarrelled, and parted, Swift returning to 
 Ireland. In another year the breach was healed, 
 and Swift came back to Moor Park, this time for 
 about three years, during which he read and wrote, 
 using Temple's library to good purpose, and began, 
 as almost all young men of such power begin, by 
 writing poems. It is said by the cynical that 
 most men write and print a volume of poems 
 before they are twenty-five, and spend the rest 
 of their life in striving to suppress the volume. 
 Swift's poems were not of the order that most 
 men seek to suppress. There was nothing in them 
 which a more matured age could ridicule, nothing 
 of the " precious " or the " bric-a-brac." He 
 followed, indeed, the fashion of the hour, which 
 was for the English imitation (so called) of the 
 Pindaric ode, as made popular by Abraham 
 Cowley. What Swift could imitate, he imitated:
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 197 
 
 the structure of the ode and the general treat- 
 ment of the theme ; the masculine style and wit 
 he had no occasion to borrow, for it was his 
 already. It is only just to Cowley to add that 
 the best parts of him no one could borrow. It 
 was impossible, moreover, that Swift should ever 
 have ranked as a poet at all ; and nothing is more 
 futile than to discuss the question, as I have seen 
 it, even seriously, discussed. Read his ode to 
 Archbishop Sancroft, and I do not fear your 
 differing from me. It has the lofty rhetoric, and 
 the mannerism of Cowley, but little else. Dryden, 
 who was a not very near relation of Swift's, is 
 reported to have read these odes and to have 
 remarked, " Cousin Swift, you will never be a 
 poet." Swift, his biographers tell us, never 
 forgave him, and never afterwards wrote or 
 spoke cordially of " Glorious John." Of course 
 he did not, yet Swift very soon made the same 
 discovery for himself. He wrote abundance of 
 verse in his after-life, but nothing, I think, to 
 which he would have ventured to apply the term 
 " poetry." 
 
 As to the bearing of these productions on the 
 political or other bias of Swift's mind there dis- 
 played, it may just be mentioned that one is a 
 perfunctory piece of compliment to William the 
 Third, as befitted a secretary and dependant of 
 Temple's, and another a very obviously genuine 
 tribute to Sancroft as non- juror, a trustworthy 
 piece of evidence as to Swift's early jealousy for
 
 198 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the rights of the Church of England — a jealousy 
 which, as we shall see, followed him and controlled 
 much of his life's action and his life's destinies to 
 the very end. But the date of this last-named 
 ode (1689), when Swift was but twenty-two, was 
 the first year of his residence under Temple's roof, 
 and the event introduced him to another and 
 curiously different influence that was to make or 
 mar his future life. In a cottage within the 
 grounds of Moor Park dwelt a certain Mrs. 
 Johnson, the widow of a former dependant of 
 Temple's. Mrs. Johnson filled the post of com- 
 panion and confidential friend to Temple's sister, 
 Lady Giffard, who was one of the Moor Park 
 household. With her were her two daughters, 
 the elder of whom, Esther, just eight years old, 
 was, from Swift's first introduction to the Temple 
 family, placed to a certain extent under his care 
 as pupil. In those words of terrible calmness 
 written on the very night of her death, nearly 
 forty years later, Swift looked back and recorded 
 those early days with the method and precision 
 of an obituary notice : — " She was born at Rich- 
 mond, in Surrey, on the 1 3th day of March in the 
 year 1681. Her father was a younger brother of 
 a good family in Nottinghamshire, her mother of 
 a lower degree, and indeed she had little to boast 
 of her birth. I knew her from six years old " 
 (this was a confusion of memory, by the way — 
 she was eight when Swift went first to Moor Park), 
 " and had some share in her education, by directing
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 199 
 
 what books she should read, and perpetually in- 
 structing her in the principles of honour and 
 virtue, from which she never swerved in any one 
 action or moment of her life. She was sickly 
 from her childhood until about the age of fifteen, 
 but then grew into perfect health, and was looked 
 upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and 
 agreeable young women in London, only a little 
 too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and 
 every feature of her face in perfection." She was 
 eleven years old when Swift entered on his second 
 term of service under Temple's roof (Feb. 1692- 
 May 1694), and it may be that then for the first 
 time the child became his pupil, and fifteen when he 
 returned for the last time (May 1696-Jan. 1699). 
 In 1694 the patron and dependant again 
 parted company. Swift returned to Ireland to 
 take holy orders, and was ordained in October of 
 that year by the Bishop of Kildare. Six months 
 later he proceeded to priest's orders, was pre- 
 sented by Lord Capel to the prebend of Kilroot, 
 near Belfast, and then in little more than a year 
 later found a deputy to hold Kilroot, and once 
 more resumed residence with Temple at Moor 
 Park. This was in 1696. The remote parish 
 of Kilroot, containing a mere handful of Pro- 
 testants, with little to do and no society, had soon 
 tired this restless nature, growingly conscious of 
 its great powers — powers pointing, moreover, to 
 conquests in such different fields. He had quar- 
 relled again and again with Temple, but Temple
 
 2oo LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 was clear-sighted enough to see his value, and 
 wanted him back. A last reconciliation was 
 brought about, and Swift once more was at Moor 
 Park — resigning Kilroot in 1697 — till Temple's 
 death in 1699. Meantime one incident of the 
 preceding few years is to be noted as bearing 
 on that intense and overweening pride which was 
 to prove, I believe, the explanation of many of 
 the unexplained things in Swift's career. He had 
 always wished to take orders in the Anglican 
 Church, but so sensitive was he to public 
 criticism — perhaps even to his own — that he 
 only took the step after he had been offered 
 by Temple a sinecure post in Ireland which 
 would have put him beyond the reach of want. 
 That is to say, that he only took orders when 
 it had become impossible for others, or for his 
 own proud self, to allege that he entered that 
 profession simply as a means of livelihood. In 
 any case evidence begins henceforth to accumulate 
 that this sensitive pride was growing in him, even 
 as was the obscure and depressing malady which 
 afflicted him through life, and the origin of which 
 he himself attributed, as is well known, to a surfeit 
 of stone-fruit while under Temple's roof. There 
 was a taint of disease in Swift from the first, moral 
 as well as physical, and we know that an over- 
 weening pride may possess a man until in the 
 end "the potent poison quite o'er -crows the 
 spirit." Without anticipating any final verdict 
 upon Swift, it is well (I venture to think) that
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 201 
 
 we carry these truths with us as a possible clue 
 to some of the mysteries that will meet us on 
 our way. 
 
 And, indeed, if a growing sense of intellectual 
 power were any justification or excuse for pride 
 in poor human nature, Swift most surely did not 
 lack it. For during those years of much reading 
 and of contact with many ranks and many minds, 
 from kings downwards — for King William himself 
 was an occasional visitor at Moor Park — Jonathan 
 Swift must have become surely aware of the possi- 
 bilities within him. He had been a vast reader 
 of ancient literature and of the most out-of-the- 
 way authors. There remains a list (in his own 
 hand) of books read in a single year, and with the 
 industry of a Macaulay, he seems to have had 
 something also of the great historian's memory. 
 He was a glutton for books — English and French 
 history, travel, criticism, controversial theology — 
 anything that came handy, and out of this mixed 
 cauldron, a strange brew, was to come his first 
 satirical review of the vain controversies of man- 
 kind. In 1697 (he was then thirty) he appears 
 to have been engaged upon both the Tale of a Tub 
 and the Battle of the Books. Most persons have 
 a general idea of the central incident of the 
 Tale of a Tub, which deals with the growth of re- 
 ligious dissension in Christendom and the splitting 
 up into churches and sects. The title of the satire 
 is humorous simply, and has no special signi- 
 ficance except what Swift himself assigned to it,
 
 202 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 apparently as a humorous afterthought. A Tale 
 of a Tub is a very old English phrase, meaning 
 something like what later came to be called " A 
 Story of a Cock and a Bull," and was the title, 
 you may remember, of a comedy of Ben Jonson's. 
 But with the aid of his fertile fancy Swift gravely 
 informed his readers that as the sailors, when their 
 ship was threatened by a whale, threw out a tub 
 for that animal to play with, and so divert its 
 attention, so he (Swift) had thrown out this tub 
 to the critics to keep them employed while he was 
 aiming at more serious and important designs ! 
 The Tale of a Tub, then (or at least the central 
 core of it), is a satirical allegory upon the growing 
 extravagances of the three main divisions of the 
 Christian Church as known to Englishmen — the 
 Roman Catholic, the Anglican Church, and the 
 Protestant Nonconformists. These three Swift 
 represents by three brothers, Peter, Martin, and 
 Jack — the first name telling its own story ; Martin, 
 for Martin Luther, standing for the first stage of 
 the Reformation ; Jack, from John Calvin, for still 
 further deviations from the pre-Reformation creed 
 and use. That the extravagances which accom- 
 pany all religious parties in their extremes have a 
 ludicrous side, and one naturally tempting to the 
 satirist, may be freely admitted, and no less so 
 that, in composing his satire, Swift had no inten- 
 tion whatever of bringing the original fabric of 
 Christianity, so to speak, into discredit or dis- 
 repute. Among the many strange things in this
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 203 
 
 strange character this may be safely assumed. 
 But, without any arriere pensce of undermining 
 Christian belief, without any profane intention, 
 such a scheme as Swift's could not possibly be 
 framed and worked out without results lowering 
 to the dignity and prestige of the religion dealt 
 with. In tracing the developments, or even the 
 demoralisation, of doctrine and practice in Christian 
 sects, the result was inevitable. Topics which, in 
 their essential nature, command the reverence of 
 all religious-minded men without distinction cannot 
 safely be put in a ridiculous and degrading light. 
 Hence was it that the strong common-sense of 
 Queen Anne would not sanction the incongruity 
 of the author of such a work becoming a bishop. 
 Another eminent satirist in the clerical profession 
 nearer to our own time will occur to us as having 
 probably forfeited his chances of such promotion 
 owing to his over - cultivation of the humorous 
 faculty. Sydney Smith's case was a peculiarly 
 hard one, considering the qualifications for a 
 bishopric usually recognised in his day. With 
 all our admiration for Swift's genius, and with 
 frankest acceptance of the innocence of his 
 intentions, we can hardly take the same view 
 of his. 
 
 You will easily grasp the outline and the 
 main details of Swift's satire. The three brothers 
 just mentioned receive under their father's will a 
 coat apiece, with solemn injunctions neither to 
 add to it nor to diminish it, and the later treat-
 
 2o 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 merit of the coat by the three brothers after 
 remaining in harmony for some years, — Peter by 
 degrees adorning his coat with gold lace, which 
 Martin finally strips off; Jack following his 
 example with such impetuosity as to tear his 
 coat completely down the back, — is perhaps harm- 
 less enough, and intelligible enough, without note 
 or comment ; but when such subjects as tran- 
 substantiation come to be treated in the same 
 frankly facetious manner, you will readily under- 
 stand that the writer treads upon more than 
 doubtful ground, and that, for whatever purpose, 
 such dealing with such topics is shocking to 
 the religious sense, whatever be men's religious 
 opinions. We will pass over such ; but I may 
 select a short paragraph in which a habit of 
 theologians (of no one school of thought) is 
 happily treated — a habit, I mean, of getting over 
 difficulties by discovering that plain words are 
 capable of very ingenious interpretation. The 
 three brothers on one occasion were tempted to 
 adorn their coats with silver fringe ; they consult, 
 accordingly, the original document, the will, in 
 which their instructions are plainly written down. 
 " Here, to their great astonishment, they found 
 these words : ' I charge and command my three 
 sons to wear no sort of silver fringe upon or 
 about their said coats,' with a penalty in case of 
 disobedience too long here to insert. However, 
 after some pause, the brother so often mentioned 
 for his erudition, who was well skilled in criticisms,
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 205 
 
 had found in a certain author, which he said 
 should be nameless, that the same word which in 
 the will is called fringe does also signify a broom- 
 stick, and doubtless ought to have the same inter- 
 pretation in this paragraph. This another of the 
 brothers disliked because of that epithet silver, 
 which could not, he humbly conceived, in pro- 
 priety of speech, be reasonably applied to a 
 broomstick ; but it was replied upon him that 
 this epithet was used in a mythological and 
 allegorical sense. However, he objected again, 
 why their father should forbid them to wear a 
 broomstick on their coats — a caution that seemed 
 unnatural and impertinent ; upon which he was 
 taken up short, as one who spoke irreverently of 
 a mystery, which doubtless was very useful and 
 significant, but ought not to be over -curiously 
 pried into, or nicely reasoned upon. And, in short, 
 their father's authority being now considerably 
 sunk, this expedient was allowed to serve as a 
 lawful dispensation for wearing their full propor- 
 tion of silver fringe." The satire here, you will 
 notice, is the more trenchant that it is not directed 
 against any one church or creed. The theological 
 habit of silencing an opponent and getting over 
 difficulties, in the first instance by discovering that 
 words mean something quite different from what 
 they seem to the plain intelligence, and in the 
 next place by pleading an allegorical meaning, and 
 lastly by frowning down the objector for attempt- 
 ing to fathom a mystery, is a habit so inherent in
 
 206 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 religious controversy that it will not do perhaps 
 for any of us to begin throwing stones. But 
 though this theological allegory is the central 
 incident of the satire, it is but the nucleus of the 
 whole — a thread on which to string beads and 
 ornaments, in the shape of multifarious reflections 
 and jests on all human institutions, notably on 
 literary or critical impostors. The prefaces and 
 digressions form the larger part of the book, and 
 far the ablest and most valuable. Another man 
 might have invented Peter, Martin, and Jack ; no 
 other man in England could have poured forth 
 the rest. Read the chapters on the critics, and the 
 " Digression on Digressions," and the " Dedication 
 to Prince Posterity." Here is the true Swift. Pope 
 in a well-known line speaks of his friend as sitting 
 in " Rabelais' easy-chair," but the likeness to the 
 French master is more in that epithet " easy " 
 than in the rest. Swift is not like Rabelais, I 
 submit, save in one unfortunate respect — a frank 
 and even brutal coarseness ; but, like Rabelais in 
 his easy-chair, he sits so loose to his subject that 
 he can turn and laugh, and wander away, and is 
 conscious of no obligation to reach a certain end 
 in a certain time. But already there begins to 
 appear in Swift that which differences him from 
 Rabelais, and from all his own contemporaries 
 who bear the name of satirist. What makes the 
 Tale of a Tub so memorable and so gigantic a 
 satire is this, that at the outset of Swift's career 
 (like Gullivers Travels at its conclusion) it is
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 207 
 
 not so much a satire as an impeachment of 
 human nature. Behind the fallacies and follies 
 and eccentricities that he ridicules stands the real 
 object of his attack. He is always aiming, not 
 at the apparent offender, but at the " man 
 behind." We speak of Swift as a great satirist ; 
 but he is not one in the sense in which Addison 
 and Pope are satirists. Addison looks smilingly 
 on the follies and vanities of his kind, regarding 
 them as the " windy ways of men " — dust that 
 " lightly rises up, and is lightly laid again." Pope 
 lashes the vices as well as the follies of his age, 
 and even lashes individual fools and knaves, with 
 instruments far more effective for his purpose 
 than were possessed by Swift. But Swift's game 
 is neither vice nor folly ; he strikes at a more 
 tremendous victim — at the creature man. His 
 satire proper is but, as it were, the sparks that 
 fly from him at his work. But the fire of his 
 furnace is the fire of misanthropy. Human nature 
 does not amuse him, or merely make him angry ; 
 it lashes him into scorn. And later on we must 
 satisfy ourselves, as far as may be, as to the 
 possible causes and the actual reality of this 
 saeva indignatio. 
 
 Meantime, let us turn from this cynical, if not 
 as yet misanthropic, review of human conduct in 
 the Tale of a Tub to what is more properly a 
 satire, as clever, as masterly in conception and 
 working out, but sweeter, happier, lighter of touch 
 — the Battle of the Books. Mr. Craik, or any
 
 2o8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 other biographer of Swift, will tell you at length 
 the origin of this jeu d'esprit, as occasional, as 
 personal almost, as that of the Rape of the Lock. 
 It arose, in brief, out of a controversy begun in 
 France amid the intellectual elation of the great 
 period of Louis Quatorze, and then adopted and 
 continued in England, as to the relative merits of 
 ancient and modern literatures. Most persons 
 have read Macaulay's highly coloured treatment 
 of the subject in his Essay on Sir William 
 Temple, but it is one that must be taken with 
 some reservations. Temple had plunged into the 
 controversy as the champion of the ancients with 
 but moderate qualifications for the task in the shape 
 of exact scholarship, and was so unfortunate as to 
 base his decision in part on a work, the Epistles of 
 Phalaris, which better scholars knew to be spurious. 
 Swift, both on his own account and on his patron's, 
 would have taken side with the ancients, and he 
 saw a golden opportunity for a playful jeu (T esprit 
 that should not so much defend Temple as effect 
 a useful diversion from the real merits of the 
 squabble, a very foolish and useless one at the 
 best. He conceived the idea (and here again was 
 an anticipation of Pope's method) of writing a 
 mock-heroic, only in prose, and in burlesque of 
 the Homeric manner ; the story of a battle between 
 the books in the King's library, " last Friday," at 
 St. James's, the combatants being the ancient and 
 modern authors, all the familiar incidents being 
 retained and imitated, the " machinery " in which
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 209 
 
 the gods and goddesses take part in the contest, 
 each having his or her favourite, and intervening 
 in their behalf, the episodes and similes inter- 
 spersed, and the whole given as from an ancient 
 and imperfect manuscript, with frequent lacunae, 
 " hiatus valde deflendus," " hie multa desunt," and 
 all the rest of it ; this last-named feature enabling 
 Swift to break off any incident or reflection when 
 it threatened to become tiresome, and to make 
 humorous capital even out of the incompleteness 
 of his narrative. This at once bars any com- 
 parison with Pope's masterpiece as a work of art ; 
 and indeed a work of art it is not, save for the 
 skill with which all the effects are produced ; but 
 a work of consummate wit, satire, and irony it 
 undoubtedly is. All that marks Swift's later 
 satire, when he came to deal in earnest with 
 moral and political topics, is here in the germ, 
 and with no drawbacks of doubtful taste either in 
 reverence or decorum. There you will read how 
 " the army of the ancients was much fewer in 
 number than the moderns " (a world of useful 
 reflection in this remark) ; how Homer led the 
 horse and Pindar the light horse ; Euclid was 
 chief engineer ; Plato and Aristotle commanded 
 the bowmen ; Herodotus and Livy the foot ; 
 Hippocrates the dragoons ; the allies, led by 
 Vossius and Temple, bringing up the rear. You 
 will read how, among the moderns, the medical 
 writers came to the front, " a vast body of 
 dragoons, of different nations, under the leading 
 VOL. I P
 
 210 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of Harvey . . . part armed with scythes, the 
 weapons of death ; part with lances and long 
 knives, all steeped in poison ; part shot bullets of 
 a most malignant nature, and used white powder, 
 which infallibly killed without report " ; and how 
 the great scholar Bentley, who had taken the side 
 of the moderns, according to Swift (but he hadn't 
 — he had only opposed " the ancients" on an inci- 
 dental point), gave his superior officers, the modern 
 generals, to understand that " he conceived, with 
 great submission, they were all a pack of rogues 
 and fools, and confounded loggerheads, and 
 illiterate whelps, and nonsensical scoundrels." 
 And though this very attack on Bentley (who 
 was a head and shoulders taller than all other 
 classical scholars of his day, and knew if) is fair 
 satire, Swift must have known, and did know, 
 that on such subjects as the Epistles of PJialaris 
 he was worth a hundred such as Temple, who 
 praised them, or Boyle, who edited them on his 
 recommendation. There is a story of a late very 
 eminent Parliamentary Counsel, that when at 
 college he won the prize for an essay in 
 defence of some established institution (I forget 
 what), and that on some friends meeting him 
 in the street and congratulating him, he replied, 
 with a sorrowful countenance, " Ah ! and I could 
 have written such a much better one on the 
 other side." And that, I fear I must say, 
 we shall sometimes feel with regard to Swift's 
 gigantic power and resource ; that, under almost
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 211 
 
 any circumstances, he could have written, il not 
 " a better one," at least one quite as good, on the 
 opposite side. Another thing, also sufficing for 
 the present, you will not have failed to observe — 
 the power of a style, in which (according to super- 
 ficial judgments) there is no style at all. I do 
 not speak so much of this Battle of the Books, 
 because it is a mock-heroic, and had to be written 
 in burlesque fashion, but in the parts of it where, 
 as in the famous episode of the " Bee and the 
 Spider," it rises in seriousness and sobriety above 
 the rest of the work. Naked strength and absolute 
 lucidity are the two chief marks of Swift's serious 
 style, and are a most valuable lesson to those 
 who are meditating what style they shall write in, 
 or whose it is safest to copy. There is an admirable 
 remark of James Russell Lowell in one of those 
 delightful letters lately published, where he says 
 that any man who consciously aims at originality 
 thereby implicitly confesses that he has none of 
 his own : an observation which strikes very far and 
 wide, and puts justly out of court a vast bulk of 
 prose and poetry launched upon the world. And 
 Swift eminently illustrates the great truth by an 
 opposite course of action. I doubt if, apart from 
 the occasions when he was deliberately burlesquing, 
 there is in his prose a single sentence of rhetoric 
 or fine writing, or attempt to influence and affect 
 the reader by any artifice other than the cogency 
 of the argument or the illustration. His style 
 in controversial literature is the very triumph of
 
 212 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 " plain language " and naked reasoning. And 
 yet it wins every reader's admiration from this 
 very union of clearness and strength. Like the 
 sword of the Spanish warrior in the ballad — ■ 
 
 Ornament it carries none, 
 
 But the notches on the blade. 
 
 In January 1699 Sir William Temple died, 
 leaving Swift his literary executor, with some 
 trifling legacy attached. Meantime professional 
 prospects were dismal as ever. Hints of possible 
 preferment had come to him from time to time, 
 but nothing was done ; and as a stop-gap Swift 
 accepted the post of chaplain to Lord Berkeley, 
 then going to Ireland, to the Castle in Dublin, 
 as one of the Lord Justices. The post of secre- 
 tary was to have been his as well, but this (which 
 he desired most) was finally given elsewhere. 
 Then successive posts of dignity in the Church in 
 Ireland fell vacant, and still nothing came of it 
 until, after a year's residence at the Castle, he 
 received as a sop the united livings of Laracor 
 and two others in County Meath, with a total 
 income of some ^200 a year. A locum tenens 
 was found, as usual in those days, and on Lord 
 Berkeley's recall to London in 1702, Swift 
 followed him, to plunge at once into the poli- 
 tical strife of the hour. He was as yet still 
 a Whig, after the Temple pattern, and his 
 first political pamphlet on the Dissensions at 
 Athens and Rome was in support of the party,
 
 SWIFT—HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 213 
 
 and at once marked him out as a writer whom it 
 would be the interest of any party in the State 
 to secure. 
 
 In this same year Stella, who had remained 
 thus far with her mother at Moor Park, resolved 
 to settle in Ireland. Her mother was contem- 
 plating a second marriage, and Stella desired her 
 own home. She had but a moderate fortune, 
 and good interest on her capital was a first 
 necessity. This could be got in Ireland and 
 nowhere else. There was a poor relation of the 
 Temples, one of the strange company clustered 
 round Moor Park, a certain Mrs. Rebecca Dingley 
 — some years older than Stella — who now agreed 
 to throw in her lot with Stella, and follow her 
 wherever she might settle. She remained as 
 Stella's humble companion and chaperon till the 
 latter's death, nearly thirty years longer. Between 
 Laracor, Dublin, and England, Swift spent the 
 next few years. Laracor was not far from Dublin, 
 and communication with Stella and Mrs. Dingley 
 was easy. At Laracor, what with his garden and 
 his fruit-trees, Swift was not altogether without 
 amusement, although his congregation was often 
 scant, and although on emergency he had to 
 address his clerk as " Dearly beloved Roger, the 
 Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places." 
 In 1702 and 1703 Swift was in England, and in 
 1704 he resolved on the step of publishing the 
 two masterpieces we have reviewed to-day. They 
 were given to the world anonymously, but their
 
 214 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 authorship could never from the first have been 
 a secret. 1 
 
 This period was perhaps the least unhappy 
 of a life that could never have been anything 
 else than unhappy. From the first he was poor, 
 he was living in dependence on others ; he 
 was intensely proud and sensitive ; he had to 
 bear one disappointment and mortification after 
 another ; and he was the victim of some obscure 
 malady in the neighbourhood of the brain which 
 did not mean a gradual insanity, but did mean 
 a constant depression of nerves and spirits. On 
 the other hand, he was still young ; he had grown 
 conscious of tremendous powers residing in him- 
 self ; he had tasted of the delights of fame and 
 the appreciation of those whose judgments he most 
 valued ; the friendship with Stella was more to 
 him as years advanced, and the critical question 
 of marrying or not marrying had not become 
 urgent. Things were in suspense, but they were 
 of such a kind that they could not remain so 
 much longer. There are errors of judgment 
 
 1 [Atterbury writes (15th June 1704) to Bishop Trelawny : "I 
 beg your lordship to read the Tale of a Tub, for bating the profane- 
 ness of it, it is a book to be valued, being an original of its kind, full 
 of wit, humour, good sense, and learning. The town is wonderfully 
 pleased with it." A fortnight later he writes: "The authors of A 
 Tale of a Tub are now supposed generally at Oxford to be one Smith 
 and one Philips, the first a student, the second a Commoner of Christ 
 Church ' ' ; but three days later he seems to have got wind of the real 
 author, for he writes : ' ' The author of A Tale of a Tub will not as yet 
 be known ; and if it be the man I guess, he hath reason to conceal 
 himself, because of the profane strokes in that piece, which would do 
 his reputation and interest in the world more harm than the wit can do 
 him good."]
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 215 
 
 as well as " pleasant vices " of which the just 
 gods " make instruments to plague us," and of 
 such errors, assisted by an irony of fate that 
 Swift could not have foreseen, he was soon, poor 
 man, to reap the harvest.
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 
 
 II 
 
 We left Swift at his country living of Laracor, or 
 at least nominally there, for with a small parish, 
 and little squeamishness in those days as to non- 
 residence, visits to England were easily managed ; 
 and as he remained in close touch with the 
 church for the rest of his life — he was not Dean of 
 St. Patrick's till 17 13, — this may be a fit juncture 
 to inquire of what nature this churchmanship was. 
 There was a political side to his churchmanship, 
 with which we can only briefly deal. Swift was 
 what in those days was called a high churchman, 
 only we must carefully disengage this, like other 
 political badges of that time, from any association 
 with modern applications of them. A high 
 churchman, in Swift's day, was one who magnified 
 the position of the church, its independence, its 
 rights, privileges, and dignity. Whatever theo- 
 logical or spiritual suggestions his churchmanship 
 had were subordinate. Swift, from the first, had 
 apparently resolved to hold a perpetual brief for 
 his cloth. And this it was, as much as anything 
 
 216
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 217 
 
 else, that early dissolved his connexion, never more 
 than an accidental and temporary one, with the 
 Whigs. Association with Temple had identified 
 him for a while with the party ; when Temple 
 had passed away, it was merely a matter of time 
 when he should throw in his lot with their 
 opponents. Swift's visits to England between 
 1702 and 1707 had for their main business to 
 assert and defend certain alleged rights of the 
 Irish Church. Again, as to his own sense of the 
 responsibilities of the clerical office, there is no 
 evidence, as far as I know (and in the case of a 
 man with so many enemies as Swift this is im- 
 portant), that he was either remiss in his minis- 
 trations, or irregular, 1 or flippant. What was 
 according to public opinion of that day a clergy- 
 man's " duty," he seems always to have faith- 
 fully discharged. 1 As to his "personal religion," 
 it is neither charitable nor indeed possible to 
 inquire. Mr. Thackeray ventures to pronounce 
 that " Swift was a devout spirit. Swift could 
 love and could pray," which is perhaps a little 
 strong ; but it would be quite as strong, and 
 probably quite as wrong, to pronounce the 
 opposite. Mr. Thackeray, indeed, goes on to 
 modify his judgment by expressing his belief that 
 Swift was a sceptic, and was made wretched by 
 beine tied to a church the doctrines of which 
 he could not believe. But this I believe to be 
 
 1 [This is understated. Swift i?istitutcd a weekly communion at 
 St. Patrick's, and was remarkable for his regular attendance at 
 services.]
 
 218 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 stronger and wronger still. Except what we, 
 standing on such a different level in these matters, 
 might naturally infer from the daring treatment 
 of sacred subjects in the Tale of a Tub, there is 
 not, I think, a grain of evidence that Swift had 
 what are ordinarily called religious doubts or 
 difficulties. Neither science nor literary criticism 
 entered into men's study of such matters then, 
 and for critics, as we know, Swift entertained the 
 sublimest contempt. And, moreover, the lives 
 and general morale of the men around him, who 
 affected sceptical views and adopted " deism," 
 which was the chief educated form of opposition 
 to Christianity, did not command his sympathy. 
 As Swift looked out upon the world of political 
 society, or at least upon such as came within his 
 range, he saw, what Bishop Butler saw, and 
 adopted as the text of his great work some 
 thirty years later, namely, that " Religion had 
 come to be not even an open question, but was 
 finally exploded." But Swift's mind and genius 
 were widely different from Butler's. It was not 
 for him to champion the forsaken cause with any 
 such weapons as the great bishop. He had not 
 the equipment, nor the patience, nor the adequate 
 sympathy. When, in the remarkable treatise we 
 are now to consider, he poured the vials of his 
 scorn upon the light-hearted freethinkers about 
 him, it was not so much, it may be argued, from 
 jealousy for an outraged faith as from the depth 
 of his scorn for the outragers. Strange as it may
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 219 
 
 sound, the fact that the wits and men of fashion, 
 of whom he saw most in London, affected con- 
 tempt for the established religion would be to 
 Swift the strongest argument for believing that 
 such religion was true. How great the affection 
 he bore to the religion we cannot say, but he 
 certainly loathed many of its avowed enemies. 
 
 However, to turn from Swift's motives to his 
 methods, we have, perhaps, in this extraordinary 
 production the finest specimen of that literary art 
 on which he prided himself most, which is known 
 as irony. I referred in my last lecture to some 
 lines of Swift's in which he speaks of himself as 
 born to " introduce irony," to refine it and show its 
 use. The first portion of this boast is a trifle 
 arrogant, and certainly not true. There was 
 living at the very time Swift made the boast, a 
 strong and vigorous writer, somewhat looked down 
 upon by Swift and his set, but to whom Swift 
 owed more than he would have cared to allow, 
 who had used irony before him with undeniable 
 success, and that was Daniel Defoe. Gulliver s 
 Travels, as we shall see, owed something to 
 Robinson Crusoe, but earlier than that Swift's 
 method of political and other controversy really 
 took up irony where Defoe left it. And it is 
 quite true that Swift refined it, and showed its 
 " uses," for the versatility of his resource in its 
 exercise is indeed remarkable. For what is irony ? 
 Well, roughly speaking, it is the setting forth of 
 statement or argument in language which shall
 
 220 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 seem to express and enforce one meaning, when 
 it is really driving home, commending, and en- 
 forcing one very different. Irony is an argu- 
 mentative practical joke by which the hearer is 
 either actually bamboozled and made a fool of, 
 or is allowed the pleasure of enjoying the skill 
 with which the thing is done, the intellectual tour 
 de force, though he is not himself taken in by it. 
 In its rudest, most elementary shape, it is the 
 former of these. Some dozen years before Swift 
 wrote the argument against abolishing Christianity, 
 Defoe had published his memorable tract, called 
 The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. In the 
 character of an ardent Tory and churchman, he 
 (being a sturdy dissenter and enemy of this 
 position) had expressed his conviction that the 
 only method of dealing with dissenters (and it 
 was at a time when the Bill against occasional 
 conformity and other measures were deeply in- 
 censing them) was a root and branch extirpation, 
 shrift short and sharp. It was written with such 
 skill of apparent sincerity that for the moment 
 the irony was universally missed. It was joyfully 
 hailed by the very persons in contempt and 
 loathing of whom it was composed. Then after 
 a while the hoax was discovered ; the Government 
 of the day was wild with rage at having been 
 made fools of, and to their eternal disgrace hunted 
 down the author and put him in the pillory. 
 This is irony in its elementary form, and is, in 
 point of fact, what I have called it, a practical joke.
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 221 
 
 It was what was called in Swift's day a " bite," a 
 term to be superseded in time by a " hoax " or a 
 "sell." It consists of telling an elaborate fable, 
 or stating an apparently honest conviction, and 
 then when the hearer takes it seriously, turning 
 upon him with the cry, " Oh, you April fool ! " 
 But irony assumes a different character when 
 it is used as a mental or moral tonic to awaken 
 interest suddenly, to shock an opponent out of his 
 confidence of belief, to drive home some moral 
 or intellectual truth, to bring error or wickedness 
 into contempt. If it does this in any degree, the 
 intellectual use of the " bite " may be justified. 
 Our favourite illustration in the ancient world 
 was the famous irony of Socrates, by which that 
 great man gradually, by apparent agreement with 
 or acceptance of his opponents' position, landed 
 them in hopeless contradictions. This was his 
 " practical joke " upon the Sophists, and they did 
 not like it, and we know with what results. The 
 application of the method is boundless, and any 
 new wielder of the weapon will develop his own 
 special use of it. Defoe by stating the arguments 
 of his enemies in their naked deformity held them 
 up to the world's execration. By simply denoun- 
 cing them, he would simply have been one more 
 dissenter up in arms. His object was to shock 
 the public conscience by the process of apparent 
 agreement with the offending parties. Here, 
 again, is an elementary and not very subtle use 
 of the instrument. Though very effective for its
 
 222 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 purpose, yet, considered as a weapon, it is to 
 Swift's methods as a bill-hook is to a surgeon's 
 operating- knife. Both Defoe and Swift were 
 indignantly bent on showing up their opponents : 
 in one case, the hard and cruel type of fanatical 
 oppressor — of the Dr. Sacheverell type ; — in the 
 other, the corrupt and vicious men who affected 
 to have found out religion, because in point of 
 fact religion had found out them. And the 
 serious argument, as here framed by Swift, is one 
 of the most scathing pieces of sarcasm clothed in 
 the most skilful and subtle pretence of seriousness 
 that not only Swift, but probably any one else, 
 ever produced on a like occasion. The full title 
 of the tract, which was written in the year 1708 
 during a residence in England, is as follows : — 
 " An Argument to prove that the Abolishing of 
 Christianity in England may, as things now stand, 
 be attended with some Inconveniences, and per- 
 haps not produce those many Good Effects pro- 
 posed thereby." And it is itself a consummate 
 stroke of sarcasm that at the outset Swift relieves 
 himself of any responsibility for treating such a 
 serious question ironically at all, by presuming 
 that of course his argument is not meant to touch 
 a real and vital religion exercising any appreci- 
 able influence over men's conduct, for that (he 
 says), of course, has long ago disappeared from 
 our civilisation :■ — - 
 
 Here, I would not be mistaken, and must there- 
 fore be so bold as to borrow a distinction from the
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 223 
 
 writers on the other side, when they make a difference 
 between nominal and real Trinitarians. I hope no 
 reader imagines me so weak to stand up in the defence 
 of real Christianity, such as used, in primitive times (if 
 we may believe the authors of those ages), to have an 
 influence upon men's belief and actions ; to offer at the 
 restoring of that would indeed be a wild project ; it 
 would be to dig up foundations ; to destroy, at one 
 blow, all the wit and half the learning of the kingdom ; 
 to break the entire frame and constitution of things ; to 
 ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, with the pro- 
 fessors of them ; in short, to turn our courts, exchanges, 
 and shops into deserts ; and would be full as absurd as 
 the proposal of Horace, where he advises the Romans, 
 all in a body, to leave their city and seek a new seat in 
 some remote part of the world, by way of cure for the 
 corruption of their manners. 
 
 And then Swift, having thus cleared the way, 
 proceeds to deal in order with certain plausible 
 objections which he proposes (always ironically, 
 observe) that he can imagine being raised in 
 favour of the abolition in question. One great 
 advantage of this, he has heard it alleged, would 
 be that it would 
 
 enlarge and establish liberty of conscience — that great 
 bulwark of our nation and of the Protestant religion, 
 which is still too much limited by priestcraft, notwith- 
 standing all the good intentions of the legislature, 
 as we have lately found by a severe instance. For 
 it is confidently reported that two young gentlemen of 
 real hopes, bright wit, and profound judgment, who, 
 upon a thorough examination of causes and effects, and 
 by the mere force of their natural abilities, without
 
 224 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the least tincture of learning, having made a dis- 
 covery that there was no God, and generously com- 
 municating their thoughts for the good of the public, 
 were, some time ago, by an unparalleled severity, and 
 upon I know not what obsolete law, broke for blas- 
 phemy. And as it has been wisely observed, if perse- 
 cution once begins, no man alive knows how far it may 
 reach or where it will end. 
 
 In answer to all which, with deference to wiser 
 judgments, I think this rather shows the necessity of a 
 nominal religion among us. Great wits love to be free 
 with the highest objects ; and if they cannot be allowed 
 a God to revile or renounce, they will speak evil of 
 dignities, abuse the government, and reflect upon the 
 ministry, which, I am sure, few will deny to be of much 
 more pernicious consequence, according to the saying 
 of Tiberius, deorum offcnsa diis curae. 
 
 Again — 
 
 Another advantage proposed by the abolishing of Chris- 
 tianity is the clear gain of one day in seven, which is 
 now entirely lost, and consequently the kingdom one- 
 seventh less considerable in trade, business, and pleasure; 
 beside the loss to the public of so many stately structures, 
 now in the hands of the clergy, which might be con- 
 verted into play-houses, market -houses, exchanges, 
 common dormitories, and other public edifices. 
 
 I hope I shall be forgiven a hard word, if I call this 
 a perfect cavil. I readily own there has been an old 
 custom, time out of mind, for people to assemble in 
 the churches every Sunday, and that shops are still 
 frequently shut, in order, as it is conceived, to preserve 
 the memory of that ancient practice ; but how this can 
 prove a hindrance to business or pleasure is hard to 
 imagine. What if the men of pleasure are forced, one
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 225 
 
 day in the week, to game at home instead of the 
 chocolate-houses? Are not the taverns and coffee- 
 houses open ? Can there be a more convenient season 
 for taking a dose of physic ? Is not that the chief day 
 for traders to sum up the accounts of the week, and for 
 lawyers to prepare their briefs ? But I would fain know 
 how it can be pretended that the churches are mis- 
 applied ? Where are more appointments and rendez- 
 vouses for gallantry ? where more care to appear in the 
 foremost box, with greater advantage of dress ? where 
 more meetings for business ? where more bargains 
 driven of all sorts ? and where so many conveniences or 
 enticements to sleep ? 
 
 And once more — 
 
 If Christianity were once abolished, how could the 
 free-thinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of 
 profound learning, be able to find another subject, so 
 calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities ? 
 what wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived 
 of from those whose genius, by continual practice, has 
 been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against 
 religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or 
 distinguish themselves upon any other subject ? we are 
 daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, 
 and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only, 
 topic we have left ? who would ever have suspected 
 Asgil for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the inex- 
 haustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand 
 to provide them with materials ? what other subject, 
 through all art and nature, could have produced Tindal 
 for a profound author, or furnished him with readers ? 
 it is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns 
 and distinguishes the writer. For had a hundred such 
 pens as these been employed on the side of religion, 
 
 VOL. I Q
 
 226 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 they would have immediately sunk into silence and 
 oblivion. 
 
 And it ends thus : 
 
 Upon the whole, if it shall still be thought for 
 the benefit of Church and State that Christianity be 
 abolished, I conceive, however, it may be more con- 
 venient to defer the execution to a time of peace, and 
 not venture in this conjuncture to disoblige our allies 
 who, as it falls out, are all Christians, and many of 
 them by the prejudices of their education so bigoted as 
 to place a sort of pride on the appellation. If upon 
 being rejected by them we are to trust an alliance with 
 the Turk, we shall find ourselves much deceived; for 
 as he is too remote, and generally engaged in war with 
 the Persian Emperor, so his people would be more 
 scandalised at our infidelity than our Christian neigh- 
 bours. For the Turks are not only strict observers of 
 religious worship, but, what is worse, believe a God, 
 which is more than is required of us, even while we 
 preserve the name of Christians. 
 
 To conclude : whatever some may think of the great 
 advantages to trade by this favourite scheme, I do very 
 much apprehend that in six months' time after the act 
 is passed for the extirpation of the Gospel, the North 
 and East India stock may fall at least one per cent. 
 And since that is fifty times more than ever the wisdom 
 of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation of 
 Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so great 
 a loss, merely for the sake of destroying it. 
 
 Has intellectual scorn, we ask, ever been ex- 
 pressed with such consummate skill and effective- 
 ness ? Questions of how far it is just and justified, 
 disappear in the intellectual exhilaration that such
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 227 
 
 writing is calculated to arouse. And again, it is 
 a deep-rooted contempt of ma?i that barbs and 
 hurls this tremendous weapon. Yet as regards 
 the ostensible object of his satire, Swift's very- 
 pride makes it certain that, in his own conscience 
 at least, he was not exposing himself to the 
 retort, " Who are you that you thus judge your own 
 brethren ? " We cannot doubt that he believed 
 himself to have come into court (as it were) with 
 clean hands. No one could cast back upon him 
 the stone, that he did not believe the doctrines 
 he officially preached, or that his daily conduct 
 was inconsistent therewith. If pride were Swift's 
 deadly sin, at least we learn something from it as 
 to the non-existence of certain others. If the 
 wits and coffee-house critics and men of fashion 
 that he here scathes could have retorted upon 
 him, they doubtless would. But it does not 
 appear that any one cared to answer him. Perhaps 
 they were afraid, and who, indeed, would willingly 
 provoke a scorn so terrible, and weapons so 
 incisive. Yet it was hardly a noble scorn — this 
 misanthropic mood, in which is no balm, no hope, 
 for the world. It is not even the scorn of a 
 Timon — " Old Timon, with the noble heart, that 
 strongly loathing, greatly broke." It strongly 
 loathed — did the heart of Swift — but it never 
 broke. Happier for him if it had ! 
 
 Another production of Swift's, belonging to 
 this period of his life, must receive but a passing 
 comment, though to some tastes I can imagine
 
 228 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 it proving more palatable than the foregoing. I 
 mean the " Letter to a Young Clergyman lately 
 entered into Holy Orders." It is, in truth, a piece 
 of excellent advice and admirable good sense, 
 addressed to some young friend, and, with a few 
 notes and necessary alterations to adapt it to 
 modern ways and fashions, would be an excellent 
 manual to place in the hands of a young man 
 similarly situated just now. It is full of sarcasm 
 and irony of course. Swift could hardly have 
 written otherwise, but its good sense is undeniable ; 
 and, if I may be allowed to say so, the dangers 
 of popular pulpit oratory seem to have been much 
 the same a hundred and fifty years ago as now. 
 Swift notes the " frequent use of obscure terms " 
 by preachers, " which, by the women, are called 
 hard words, and by the better sort of vulgar, fine 
 language, than which I do not know a more 
 universal, inexcusable, and unnecessary mistake 
 among the clergy of all distinctions, but especially 
 the younger practitioners." He adds the generally 
 safe observation that " a divine has nothing to s,ay 
 to the wisest congregation of any parish in this 
 kingdom which he may not express in a manner 
 to be understood by the meanest among them." 
 He adds this exquisite remark, that " The fear of 
 being thought pedants has been of pernicious 
 consequence to young divines. This has wholly 
 taken them off from their severer studies in the 
 university, which they have exchanged for plays, 
 poems, and pamphlets, in order to qualify them
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 229 
 
 for tea-tables and coffee-houses. This they usually 
 call ' polite conversation, knowing the world, and 
 reading men instead of books.' " He further warns 
 his young friend against the use of slang and 
 humorous anecdote in the pulpit, and against 
 " endeavouring at wit in your sermons, because by 
 the strictest computation, it is very near a million 
 to one that you have none." 
 
 1 have, in noticing this last admirable treatise, 
 somewhat anticipated events as they affected 
 Swift's career. Swift had been made Dean of St. 
 Patrick's in 171 3 — which brought him back to 
 Ireland, after a continuous stay in England from 
 1 7 10 to 17 1 3, during which time he had been 
 absorbed in the party warfare into which his new 
 adhesion to the Tories had plunged him. To 
 this period accordingly belong the Examiner 
 Papers, the pamphlet on the " Conduct of the 
 Allies," and other noticeable works, which we, 
 however, can only pass by in silence. But to 
 this period also belongs, what far outweighs them 
 in permanent and in human interest, the Letters, 
 or rather the continuous Diary, which Swift 
 regularly transmitted to his two friends, Esther 
 Johnson and her inseparable, Mrs. Dingley. The 
 "Journal to Stella," as it is commonly called, 
 during these three years, is one of those invaluable 
 contributions to our political and social history 
 to which belong, for instance, Pcpyss Diary and 
 Horace Walpole's Letters, and it has the same 
 value as these two last named, that it throws
 
 230 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 a peculiar light, where light was much needed, 
 upon the character and habits of the writer ; only 
 that, not quite like them, it raises for us the 
 estimate we might otherwise have formed. For 
 if from Pepys we learn a surprising deal of his 
 " amiable weaknesses " ; and if from Walpole's 
 Letters we rise with a keener perception of his 
 wit than of anything worthier, we come from 
 those daily, unpremeditated, unedited outpourings 
 of Swift's to feel that the saeva indignatio of the 
 satirist, the misanthropy of his outlook, when 
 dealing with humanity in the abstract, was not 
 the whole Swift — perhaps not even the real Swift 
 — and that at least we have the choice here as to 
 which we shall conceive the real man to have 
 been. We may bear in mind the bitter scorn, 
 the deadly hatred of his kind, which is the " net " 
 conclusion as to the author forced upon us by the 
 perusal of Gulliver, for instance, and try to recon- 
 cile it with the kindness, the playful humour, the 
 desire to give pleasure— to say nothing of the 
 incidental revelations of Swift's good deeds to 
 the sick and sorry, and his sympathy with all 
 such, unfolded to us in these odd and petulant 
 but charming pages. It is a curious and sad 
 reflection how naturally, when two sides of a man 
 are obvious to the world, the world will — not in 
 malice necessarily — -generally select the darker 
 side as the true man, and the other side as the ex- 
 ception and the inconsistency : so difficult it seems 
 to believe that the littlenesses, or the tempers,
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 231 
 
 or even the maladies of men, do not in their 
 combination make up the whole of them. There 
 is a tradition that Swift was never seen to smile. 
 Yet this Diary is brimful of smiles — the smiles as 
 of a mother or nurse playing with her child. For 
 it is this obvious and unaffected attitude of Swift 
 to Stella, as of a parent or schoolmaster to a pet 
 child or pupil, that will be the first surprise, if I 
 am not mistaken, to those who, having a vague 
 general idea of the sad history that followed, 
 first read this- Journal. Swift was at the time 
 forty-three, and Stella was about twenty-nine, 
 and yet, whether by design or from old and 
 inveterate habit, the earliest relation that bound 
 the two, that of a young student to a little child 
 he played with and taught to write and cipher, is 
 the relation accentuated throughout. It may be 
 assumed that by this time the question must have 
 occurred both to Swift and to Stella, whether 
 their close friendship, their strong mutual sym- 
 pathy, was ever to ripen into something different ; 
 but from one end of the Journal to the other there 
 is not a sentence, a phrase, an allusion, or word, 
 that points in that direction. It is impossible to 
 doubt the genuine affection that shines out among 
 these daily jottings of public and private gossip, 
 and the real devotion that made a very busy, and 
 often invalided, man sit up at night, when sick 
 and weary, to complete the day's record and not 
 disappoint the two expectant ladies in Dublin ; 
 but of " lover's-talk," or of anything savouring of
 
 23 2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 it, there is none ; there is abundance of prattle, 
 but it is the prattle of the nursery. " The little 
 language " which so pervades and colours the 
 Journal is a recollection (so Swift admits) of those 
 early days, when (like mother or fond nurse) he 
 altered words and adopted pronunciations to assimi- 
 late the adult voice to the lisp and the imperfect 
 utterance of the babe. " Do you know what ? " 
 (he writes) " when I am writing in our language, 
 I make up my mouth just as if I was speaking 
 it. I caught myself at it just now." And again 
 and again, in his Journal, he " makes up his 
 mouth " after this fashion, and spells his words 
 accordingly. He calls himself "P d f r," which 
 perhaps is the short for "Poor dear foolish rogue!" 1 
 and calls Stella and Dingley " M. D." (my dears) ; 
 and writes " Pshaw, I must be writing to these 
 dear brats every night, whether I will or no — let 
 me have what business I will, or come home ever 
 so late, or be ever so sleepy : but an old saying 
 and a true one, ' Be you lords, or be you earls, 
 you must write to naughty girls.' " , Or he winds 
 up his letter with, " So God Almighty protect poor 
 dear, dear, dear, dearest M. D.," "and can Stella 
 read this writing without hurting her dear eyes ? 
 Oh faith, I'm afraid not. Have a care of these 
 eyes, pray, pray, pretty Stella." And so, in the 
 general subject matter and topics of his Journal, 
 it is what will amuse told in the most amusing 
 
 1 [Or " father " ; " foolish rogue" is unlikely because of the alter- 
 native spelling Podefar. ]
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 233 
 
 way ; his last pun, his last " bite," the last piece 
 of stupidity of his servant Patrick ; where he 
 dined last night and how much the dinner cost ; 
 and whether my Lord Treasurer was in good 
 humour ; and " faith " he (Swift) won't stand 
 these big men's tantrums any longer ; or some- 
 times there is a graver piece of news — how 
 Harlcy has been stabbed by a fanatical French- 
 man ; or how Duke Hamilton was killed in duel 
 by Lord Mohun, and how Swift was the first to 
 visit the poor Duchess, and stay and comfort her 
 for two hours, for " I had loved the Duke well, 
 and I think he loved me better." Full of light 
 upon Swift's goodness of heart, his fidelity, his 
 quick sense of pity, are these utterings ; and if 
 we would try to gauge him, outside these three 
 years, it is here he must (I believe) be studied. 
 If we knew him only by these confidences, we 
 should surely close the Journal and say : how 
 good a man is this, how neighbourly, how 
 sympathetic, how true a friend, eccentric doubt- 
 less, and petulant and fond of mischief, but sound 
 in his humanities. " I took Parnell this morning," 
 he writes on January 14, 171 2, "and we walked 
 to see poor Harrison. I had the hundred pounds 
 in my pocket. I told Parnell I was afraid to 
 knock at the door ; my mind misgave me. I did 
 knock, and his man, in tears, told me that his 
 master was dead an hour before. Think what 
 grief this is to me ! I went to his mother, and 
 have been ordering things for his funeral with
 
 234 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 as little cost as possible, to-morrow at ten at 
 night. Lord Treasurer was much concerned when 
 I told him. I could not dine with Lord Treasurer 
 nor anywhere else, but got a bit of meat toward 
 evening. No loss ever grieved me so much. 
 Poor creature ! Pray God Almighty bless you. 
 Adieu ! I send this away to-night, and I am 
 sorry it must go while I am in so much grief ! " 
 Perhaps when we think of Swift at rest in his 
 Cathedral of St. Patrick, beneath that terrible 
 self-chosen epitaph : " Where fierce wrath can tear 
 his heart no more," we may take some comfort 
 from confessions such as this last, and wonder 
 once more which was the true Swift after all ! 
 
 And indeed Swift had need of all that was 
 best in him to comfort, for troubles, not altogether 
 of his own making, or at least fruits of thought- 
 lessness rather than of a bad heart, were crowding 
 upon him. Among so much as there was to cheer 
 and please poor Stella in this Journal, there were 
 occasional entries which must have awakened 
 uneasy fears, and given even a few bitter pangs, 
 to one who was made of other stuff and had other 
 hopes than Swift. While in London he had made 
 the acquaintance of an estimable family, a widow 
 lady and her children, of the name of Vanhomrigh. 
 The eldest daughter's name — which by another 
 freak of that irony of fate which dogged the steps 
 of this master of earthly irony — was Esther ; but 
 she is better known to us by the playful name of 
 Vanessa, which Swift coined for her. Swift was
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 235 
 
 constantly at the house. " Dined with Mrs. Van- 
 homrigh " — afterwards, with growing familiarity, 
 " dined with Mrs. Van " — begins to appear oftener 
 and oftener in the letters to Dublin. Swift's 
 genius and versatility, and that unquestionable 
 charm which, in women's eyes, outweighed all his 
 sternness, peremptoriness, and eccentricity, made 
 him the most welcome of visitors. Unknown, 
 unsuspected, perhaps, by himself, Vanessa fell 
 madly in love with him, and told him so. Swift 
 professed astonishment — tried to laugh her out of 
 her folly, ended by offering her his eternal friend- 
 ship. But Vanessa was of a different temper, or 
 patience, from her unknown rival in Ireland. 
 When Swift was given the deanery of St. Patrick's, 
 and their separation became inevitable, she con- 
 ceived the bold idea of following him to Dublin. 
 A sentence in the Journal was of gloomy omen 
 for Stella : — " Mrs. Vanhomrigh's eldest daughter," 
 Swift writes, " is come of age, and going to Ireland 
 to look after her fortune, and get it into her own 
 hands." It was indeed a fortune she was groins 
 to seek and never to find. One knows nothing 
 in literary history so picturesque (if " the pity 
 of it " did not kill its picturesqueness) as the 
 history that was to follow ; this stern, proud 
 cynic — for such was his attitude towards the 
 world — standing dumb and helpless, terrified at 
 the spirits he himself had raised between beauty, 
 wit, fidelity in the person of Stella — fortune, 
 talent, adoration in that of Vanessa. No wonder
 
 236 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 that Swift's life attracts the lover of romance 
 above anything he has written. The wonders 
 of Gulliver, of Laputa and Brobdingnag, pale 
 before the fascination and the irony of this story 
 of blighted loves. 
 
 For Swift, in my judgment, had never any 
 intention of marrying either, or of marrying at 
 all, and dreaded any approach on the part of 
 either to the subject. A solution of one chief 
 mystery in the situation is that Swift believed 
 himself to be doomed in the end to insanity, and 
 that he for that reason had resolved not to marry. 
 I cannot accept this view. As to Swift's own 
 expectations of losing his reason, we do know that 
 he had suffered from his youth from an obscure 
 malady, not of the brain itself, but in a region of 
 the head bordering on the brain, which depressed 
 him always and caused him at times much suffer- 
 ing. But there was no known insanity in his 
 family, and therefore (even if heredity had been as 
 popular a theme then as it is to-day) there was 
 no need, I suppose, to anticipate that the taint of 
 madness would descend to his posterity. There 
 is one locus classicus on the subject. It is reported 
 that one day in late life Swift observed to Young, 
 the author of the Night Thoughts, pointing to a 
 lofty tree, leafless and decayed in its upper 
 branches, " I shall be like that tree ; I shall die 
 at the top." But to build a theory so large on 
 so slight a foundation as this seems to me unsafe ; 
 and, apart from this, I cannot see the necessity of
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 237 
 
 the theory. Swift was not a marrying man — that 
 at least is obvious — and his devotion to Stella at 
 least was compounded, as is clear from every pub- 
 lished communication with her, of the old affection 
 of master and pupil — of true admiration for her 
 character, and of intense enjoyment of her social 
 and intellectual charm. For though, in company 
 with only too many of her sex in those days, she 
 never could spell — and Swift is always in the 
 Journal rallying her in the playfullest way upon 
 her deficiencies in this regard — yet she had wit, 
 sense, and shrewdness, and her society was one 
 of the few home-like pleasures this lonely man 
 enjoyed. As to her wit, we all know that when 
 she heard how beautifully Swift had written about 
 her rival, Vanessa, she remarked that it was not 
 strange, for every one knew he had written beauti- 
 fully on a broom-stick — the allusion being to a 
 well-known parody of Swift's on the style of 
 Robert Boyle's meditations. Thackeray exclaims 
 on this, " A woman ! a true woman," which is not 
 nice, for a man might equally have said it had 
 the opportunity occurred to him, though perhaps 
 Stella might appropriately have kept the thought 
 to herself. But she did say (we also read) of an 
 exceedingly tall young gentleman, who, she was 
 informed, was " intended for the church," that she 
 should have rather imagined he was " intended 
 for the steeple," which gives one a notion of a 
 young lady with a decided turn for repartee ! 
 But to the affection of a life-long companionship,
 
 238 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 and to the admiration and sympathy of a con- 
 genial mind, was added, I believe, no other feeling 
 on the part of Swift. He would not have ex- 
 changed the relation for any other. How far he 
 was to blame for circumstances that so naturally 
 encouraged a different hope on her part we cannot 
 say or ever know. 
 
 There is a current belief, resting upon evidence, 
 no doubt, considerable of its kind, but not, I 
 think, absolutely conclusive, that Swift and Esther 
 Johnson were privately married in the garden of 
 the deanery by the Bishop of Clogher in the year 
 1 7 1 6. The evidence for this marriage rests on 
 the alleged communication of the secret by the 
 Bishop to Berkeley, afterwards Bishop Berkeley, 
 but at the time (171 6) travelling abroad as tutor 
 to the Bishop of Clogher's son. Neither of these 
 prelates is known to have betrayed the con- 
 fidence presumably reposed in them ; the publica- 
 tion of the story is due, so it appeared, to the 
 widow of Bishop Berkeley, who confided it to her 
 grandson, George Monck Berkeley. This is the 
 chief, almost the only evidence of importance, 
 and it will be at once noticed through how many 
 hands it had passed. It is evidence that cannot 
 be tested. Walter Scott accepted it as sufficient ; 
 John Forster regarded it as not sufficient. All 
 that we know is, that if such a ceremony was 
 gone through, Stella and Mrs. Dingley returned at 
 once to their old life, their " dual loneliness," and 
 that the relations of Swift to the household re-
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 239 
 
 mained the same as before. It is idle to dogmatise 
 upon what is long past decision. It may have 
 been that they went through the form of a marriage 
 at Stella's earnest request — for her own peace of 
 mind, for her own self-respect, or, more likely, as 
 a safeguard against the scandalous gossip, the 
 " whispering tongues that poison truth," in the 
 society of Dublin. Swift's appointment to the 
 deanery of St. Patrick's in 1 7 1 3 caused his return 
 to Ireland, when any already existing difficulties 
 and anomalies would be of course intensified ; 
 and the death of Queen Anne, with the accession 
 of the Hanoverian dynasty and the fall of the 
 Tory Ministry in the year following, set Swift 
 free from old party activity, and fixed Ireland as 
 henceforth his regular and abiding home. 
 
 Meantime the old friendship, the old pleasant 
 intimacies and exchange of thoughts and intel- 
 lectual sympathies went on as before. Each year, 
 on Stella's birthday, she received those quite 
 charming tributes in verse which place Swift 
 among; the best of writers of vers de societe — so 
 tender and playful, so ingenious and felicitous in 
 thought, and, if the fact is to remain unchallenged 
 that he was already privately married to her, so 
 amazingly hard to understand, seeing how devoid 
 they are of any awkwardness, any touch of self- 
 consciousness in this inexplicable man. Take 
 this, written in 1 7 1 8 : — 
 
 Stella this day is thirty-four 
 
 (We shan't dispute a year or more);
 
 2 4 o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 (this, by the way, is a daring compliment, for she 
 was thirty-seven !) 
 
 However, Stella, be not troubled 
 
 Although thy size and years are doubled 
 
 Since first I saw thee at sixteen, 
 
 The brightest virgin on the green, 
 
 So little is thy form declined, 
 
 Made up so largely in thy mind. 
 
 O would it please the gods to split 
 
 Thy beauty, size and years and wit ! 
 
 No age could furnish out a pair 
 
 Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair : 
 
 With half the lustre of your eyes, 
 
 With half your wit, your years, your size. 
 
 And then, before it grew too late, 
 
 How should I beg of gentle Fate 
 
 That either nymph might have her swain, 
 
 To split my worship, too, in twain. 
 
 Or take the verses that followed, two birth- 
 days later, in 1720, which seems to me as perfect 
 a thing of the kind as ever was penned : — 
 
 All travellers at first incline 
 
 Where'er they see the fairest sign ; 
 
 And if they find the chambers neat, 
 
 And like the liquor and the meat, 
 
 Will call again, and recommend 
 
 The Angel Inn to every friend. 
 
 What though the painting grows decayed ? 
 
 The house will never lose its trade ; 
 
 Nay, though the treacherous tapster, Thomas, 
 
 Hangs a new Angel two doors from us, 
 
 As fine as dauber's hands can make it, 
 
 In hopes that strangers may mistake it ; 
 
 We think it both a shame and sin 
 
 To quit the true old Angel Inn.
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 241 
 
 Now this is Stella's case, in fact, 
 
 An angel's face, a little crack'd ; 
 
 (Could poets or could painters fix 
 
 How angels look at thirty-six :) 
 
 This drew us in at first to find 
 
 In such a form an angels mind ; 
 
 And eveiy virtue now supplies 
 
 The fainting rays of Stella's eyes. 
 
 See at her levee crowding swains, 
 
 Whom Stella freely entertains 
 
 With breeding, humour, wit, and sense, 
 
 And puts them to but small expense ; 
 
 Their mind so plentifully fills, 
 
 And makes such reasonable bills, 
 
 So little gets for what she gives, 
 
 We really wonder how she lives ! 
 
 And had her stock been less, no doubt 
 
 She must have long ago run out. 
 
 Then who can think will quit the place 
 
 When Doll hangs out a newer face ; 
 
 Or stop and light at Chloe's head, 
 
 With scraps and leavings to be fed ? 
 
 Then, Chloe, still go on to prate 
 
 Of thirty-six and thirty-eight ; 
 
 Pursue your trade of scandal-picking, 
 
 Your hints that Stella is no chicken ; 
 
 Your innuendos, when you tell us 
 
 That Stella loves to talk with fellows. 
 
 And let me warn you to believe 
 
 A truth for which your soul should grieve ; 
 
 That, should you live to see the day 
 
 When Stella's locks must all be gray, 
 
 When age must print a furrowed trace 
 
 On every feature of her face ; 
 
 Though you, and all your senseless tribe, 
 
 Could art, or time, or nature bribe 
 
 To make you look like beauty's queen 
 
 And hold for ever at fifteen, 
 
 VOL. I R
 
 242 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 No bloom of youth can ever blind 
 The cracks and wrinkles of your mind ; 
 All men of sense will pass your door, 
 And crowd to Stella's at four-score. 
 
 Can we imagine anything more tenderly 
 witty, more playfully loving, than this ? And 
 when we recall the acrid humour, the gigantic 
 scorn, of Swift, when writing about men, do we 
 not recall some words that speak of the same 
 fountain sending forth sweet waters and bitter, 
 and conclude that we are here in presence of an 
 intellectual, if not a moral, " Dr. Jekyll," who has 
 also his " Mr. Hyde " ? 
 
 But sadder, darker events were not far off 
 when these pretty lines were written. Vanessa 
 was not far off ; her mother was dead, the 
 family fortunes crippled, and she had the reason- 
 able excuse for coming to Ireland that her father 
 had a property there, not far from Dublin. 
 Swift had sought to laugh away her infatua- 
 tion in the lines, admirable for skill and finesse, 
 which he called " Cadenus and Vanessa" — 
 "Cadenus" being, of course, an obvious anagram 
 of " Decanus." The verses are, indeed, a kind 
 of apology for both parties — for Vanessa having 
 had the courage of her sentiments, and having 
 taken the initiative usually restricted to leap 
 year ; and for him, Swift, who pleads that he 
 could never have foreseen or imagined a young 
 thing like that being captivated by an old fogy 
 and politician like himself. But the verses healed
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 243 
 
 no broken hearts, and the unhappy Vanessa con- 
 tinued to nurse her passion and brood over her 
 wrongs in this land of exile. Swift had never 
 meant, or wished, to be her lover ; she hardly 
 even suggests, in those sad extant letters, that he 
 had ever been other than a kind and indulgent 
 friend. For years the friendship proceeded. Far 
 better had it been even roughly and harshly 
 terminated long before. But the end came at last. 
 Vanessa had never, all those years, heard a word 
 of the private marriage with Stella, if, indeed, it 
 ever occurred, until at length (it was in the year 
 1723), according to the accepted tradition, though 
 I do not know the exact value of the evidence on 
 which it rests, Vanessa resolved on the step 
 which was to bring matters to a crisis, and bring 
 the curtain down on a " situation " as powerful as 
 any that dramatist ever conceived. According 
 to this story, Miss Vanhomrigh, weary of further 
 suspense, addressed a letter to Stella asking her 
 point blank what was the claim she had upon the 
 society and friendship of Swift. According to 
 the story, Stella replied at once that she was the 
 Dean's wife, and sent on her rival's communica- 
 tion to Swift. Swift, in a fury of passion, rode 
 over to Vanessa, flung a packet upon the table 
 before her, and remounting his horse, rode back 
 to Dublin. The packet contained her own letter 
 to Stella. " It was her death warrant." In a few 
 weeks she died — this is at least certain — the first 
 victim of this mournful tragedy.
 
 244 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 The story may be true, or it may not. It 
 may be in general outline true, even if the marriage 
 never took place. Stella may have let her rival 
 know that if Swift ever were to marry, it could not, 
 in common decency or for very pity, be any other 
 than herself. But we do not know, and dare not 
 dogmatise. As to apportioning blame or respon- 
 sibility for this unhappy crisis, the difficulty is as 
 absolute. Mr. Craik has told the story with 
 excellent moderation and impartiality, and it is 
 unlikely that we shall ever be brought nearer to 
 the truth.
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 
 
 III 
 
 THERE remain two-and-twenty years of Swift's 
 life to be traced. Really much less than this, for 
 the last years of all were to be but a living death. 
 The Romance of his history (as that word is 
 usually applied) ends with the climax which 
 we reached last time — the death of Esther 
 Vanhomrigh. The remainder of his working 
 life is marked by political and literary enterprise, 
 not by the conflicts of passion. He revisits 
 England more than once, cementing the ties 
 that bound him to his literary friends ; but when 
 at home in Ireland, devoting himself with a kind 
 of spitefulness of patriotism fo Irish interests — to 
 the country which he still and to the end felt as 
 exile — says, in effect, " if I am to be banished 
 here, I will espouse the cause of Ireland — right or 
 wrong — through evil report and good against 
 England." A notable opportunity for interfering, 
 with effect, had been afforded by an incident of 
 the year 1722, the year before Vanessa's death. 
 
 245
 
 246 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 By a piece of jobbery on the part of the English 
 Government, a patent had been granted to a 
 Birmingham man, named William Wood, to 
 manufacture a new copper coinage for Ireland. 
 The general outline of the conditions became 
 known. Wood was to be enriched, and a big 
 bribe to be paid by him for interest at court. 
 The greatest excitement was produced in Ireland, 
 and Swift, under a happy alias, placed himself in 
 the forefront of the opposition to the scheme. In 
 the character of one " M. B., Drapier {i.e. Draper) of 
 Dublin," he published in 1723, and the following 
 year, a series of letters pointing out the disastrous 
 effects upon Irish trade and prosperity of the new 
 and debased coinage, and this in an assumed 
 style, both of argument and phraseology, such as 
 would appear appropriate in the mouth of the 
 class represented. I have been obliged in these 
 lectures to neglect almost entirely what is yet a 
 most important side of Swift's genius, his con- 
 tributions to political and party discussion ; but 
 the Draper's Letters have a literary interest, 
 apart from their political. They show, as many 
 other things show — as his Gtdliver shows, as 
 several of his humorous poems show — that Swift 
 had a dramatic faculty, at least as regards 
 characterisation, of a rare quality. It was the 
 masterly presentment to the lower middle class of 
 Ireland of the kind of arguments and persuasion 
 current among themselves, of the kind which 
 would most surely " come home to their business
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 247 
 
 and bosoms," that, quite as much as the inherent 
 force of those arguments, delighted and stimulated 
 the Irish people. As we read them — no longer 
 in the turmoil of the struggle — we feel that they 
 were exactly what was wanted for the purpose in 
 view. They are hardly to us persuasive : we see 
 that there is special pleading throughout ; that 
 there is no pretence of fairness ; that the conse- 
 quences to Irish trade of the proposed influx of 
 coppers are frankly exaggerated ; and feel once 
 more that this " demonic " power of Swift's could 
 do pretty much what it liked, and could at any 
 time, if it chose, make the worse appear the 
 better reason, or at least could, like the under- 
 graduate I mentioned the other day, write " quite 
 as good a one on the other side." But it is, apart 
 from all this — and if we can remember that we 
 are watching a consummate actor — an intellectual 
 treat to read these letters, so skilful and so life- 
 like. Swift " masquerading " as a Dublin trades- 
 man, just as a few years later he was to 
 masquerade as a Rotherhithe sea-captain. The 
 excitement caused by the letters, the entire 
 success of their purpose, and the total defeat 
 of the scheme — these are part of Irish history of 
 the last century, and may be read in Mr. Lecky's 
 great work and elsewhere. For us, now, the 
 interest lies in the versatile genius, and, I fear we 
 must say, the versatile conscience of Swift. 
 
 This versatility of genius, this range of interest, 
 and this literary activity during those years of
 
 248 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Swift's decline, is one of the most extraordinary 
 sights in literary history. Our necessary omission 
 of his purely political writings may have made it 
 less clear how that splendid brain must have been 
 overworked ; how the merely intellectual tension 
 of his life, under circumstances of feeble health 
 and personal sorrows and mortifications, may 
 have had something to do with the breakdown 
 which came at last, quite as much as any one 
 weak point in the anatomy of the brain or ear. 
 The amount of writing he continued to produce 
 was amazing. Even of his purely literary matter, 
 as distinguished from political, I am only able to 
 touch upon a small part, and it is not till we face 
 his work as a whole — essays, satires, treatises, 
 sermons, verses, squibs, besides journals and letters 
 to his literary friends — that we form some idea of 
 the labour undergone. Meantime while much was 
 still to come, the final blow — taking from him 
 the companionship which remained as the one 
 sweetener of his life — fell upon the unhappy man. 
 Gulliver's Travels — of which more hereafter — had 
 appeared late in 1726; in 1727, during what 
 proved to be Swift's last visit to England, he was 
 recalled by Stella's failing health. She was living 
 still, as from the first day of her arrival in Ireland, 
 in the house and under the care of her friend, ex- 
 cept during Swift's absence from Ireland, when it 
 seems they occupied the deanery. She suffered 
 from asthma or some kindred affection, and had 
 been long failing. A month before her death she
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 249 
 
 made a will, in the name (be it remarked) of 
 " Esther Johnson, spinster," leaving her fortune, 
 for life, to her mother and sister, and afterwards 
 for charitable uses ; she left Swift certain papers, 
 and made him trustee as regarded a legacy for a 
 cousin of his. As to the title she bore in the 
 will, her maiden name, no particular argument 
 can be based on it. If she had actually been 
 Swift's wife, as a married woman in those days 
 could not make a will at all, the will was null and 
 void. But the marriage, if any, was known but 
 to two or three persons ; there was no one to 
 contest the will, and it was obviously carried into 
 effect. 
 
 There are traditions utterly unverifiable, and 
 in themselves of little value, as to interviews at 
 the end between Swift and Stella, in which 
 the latter urged Swift to publish the fact of 
 their marriage to the world. Whatever passed 
 between them on the subject, most certainly 
 Swift never did publish such fact ; and the 
 singular, and most deeply touching sketch of her 
 character and history, which he began to write on 
 the very night of her death, and continued to add 
 to from day to day till finished, is in curious 
 want of harmony with any such passages. I 
 read a few lines in my first lecture from this 
 singular document ; it is published in all com- 
 plete editions of Swift. It opens : " This day 
 being Sunday, 28th January 1727-28, about eight 
 o'clock at night, a servant brought me a note,
 
 250 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 with an account of the truest, most virtuous, and 
 valuable friend that I, or perhaps any other person, 
 was ever blessed with. She expired about six in 
 the evening of this day ; and as soon as I am left 
 alone, which is about eleven at night, I resolve for 
 my own satisfaction to say something of her life 
 and character." And then he proceeds, with a 
 calmness more terrible than any accent of despair, 
 to give a summary of her story, even with dates 
 and statistics as to her fortune : how he had first 
 known her, how she came to settle in Ireland, 
 what gifts of nature she had received, and how 
 she had improved them by reading and conversa- 
 tion ; how good her judgment was, how all sorts 
 and conditions of men delighted in her society, 
 how well-bred and modest she was, how libertines 
 and loose talkers were hushed into propriety by 
 her very look, how her servants adored her, and 
 how, like Steele's Lady Elizabeth Hastings, to love 
 her was a liberal education. Then comes a break. 
 "Jan. 29. My head aches, and I can write no 
 more," and then Tuesday, Jan. 30 : " This is the 
 night of the funeral, which my sickness will not 
 allow me to attend. It is now nine at night, and 
 I am removed into another apartment, that I 
 may not see the light in the church, which is just 
 over against the window of my bed-chamber." 
 And from this he passes on, without modulation, 
 to resume his description of her mental and moral 
 excellences, with anecdotes of her personal cour- 
 age ; but there is no trace of emotion, still less of
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 251 
 
 remorse, or regret for a past which might have 
 been so different ; not a word betrays the bitter- 
 ness that must have been his. He was ashamed, 
 unhappily for himself, of the common wants and 
 affections, the common griefs and consolations of 
 common men ! And indeed, within a few months 
 before Stella died, Swift had given to the world 
 that masterpiece, which more than anything he 
 had yet written, placed him in manifest antagon- 
 ism to his race, and marked him as the implac- 
 able scorner of his kind. How the scheme and 
 machinery of Gulliver's Travels originated and 
 matured we cannot say, but it seems to have been 
 one outcome of Swift's association in London 
 with Pope and Arbuthnot and the other members 
 of the " Scriblerus Club," an amiable combination 
 for general satire of human follies and eccentrici- 
 ties. The main plan was likely enough to have 
 been suggested by the great success of Robinson 
 Crusoe, a few years before, which would have 
 revived interest in the marvels of foreign peoples, 
 and given perhaps new vogue to the old travellers' 
 tales of " Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 
 do grow beneath their shoulders." But the main 
 plan being chosen, how was he to make it subserve 
 his intense desire to affront the human race ? For 
 this, as he admitted to his friend Pope, was his 
 leading object and desire. " I suppose he thought 
 it would annoy somebody" was Samuel Johnson's 
 shrewd interpretation of a certain line in Pope, 
 and it was to annoy everybody that Swift wrote
 
 252 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Gulliver. And his method was doubtless gigantic 
 and tremendous — demonic, to use a word I have 
 used before. It was not to satirise some imaein- 
 ary people — the Lilliputians or the Brobdingna- 
 gians — that he arranged his scheme ; but through 
 their eyes and judgments, and superior sense, to 
 satirise the England of whom Gulliver was a 
 native and son. It is a device of which in satire 
 and in allegory use has been often made since, 
 this ridicule of our morality or our customs, by 
 placing the ridicule in the mouth of a creature 
 from another country or sphere ; but it was a 
 comparative novelty to Swift's contemporaries. 
 
 This book, Gulliver's Travels, is the one work 
 of Swift's which is known to the universal reading 
 public, I suppose, in all European countries. It is 
 in every way his greatest and most characteristic 
 work. Swift's purely intellectual gifts are there 
 in perfection ; his vigour, clearness, and ease of 
 style ; invention of the first order ; wit and humour 
 of the most exquisite. We read it in an abridged 
 form as children ; for its marvels, and for the 
 verisimilitude which makes them seem possible, 
 if not wholly credible, and for the Defoe-like 
 handling of detail, which makes it so like what a 
 man would have written had he had such ad- 
 ventures as Gulliver. We are not surprised at 
 the Irish bishop who pronounced it most interest- 
 ing, but added there were things in it which he 
 could hardly believe. Then, as we grow older, 
 our eyes are opened to the pungent satire scattered
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 253 
 
 through the narrative, upon the trivial or foolish 
 quarrels of men or nations, on the pomps and 
 vanities which men will live and die for ; the wars 
 of the " Big-endians " and the " Little-endians," of 
 which, with amazing gravity (and this gravity is a 
 special feature of Swift's irony), the author relates 
 that " it is computed that eleven thousand persons 
 have at several times suffered death rather than 
 submit to break their eggs at the smaller end." 
 We become aware what is meant by the strips of 
 blue and red ribbon for which prominent men at 
 court would contend by jumping over sticks ; and 
 it is not till last of all, the sublime audacity of 
 the whole purpose flashes upon the reader. For, 
 besides the incidental satire upon particular 
 blemishes and weaknesses in any one particular 
 state of society, such as that among which Swift 
 dwelt, Swift, by the machinery of his allegory, 
 was able to inflict a deeper, wider wound upon 
 the credit of human nature. He wielded a two- 
 edged sword — a two-handed engine. For the 
 Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians were men, though 
 on vaster or more diminutive scale than ordinary ; 
 and Swift thereby contrives, without showing 
 that he had any such intention, to show human 
 nature as contemptible when exhibited in the 
 manikins of Lilliput, and gross, horrible, and 
 revolting when magnified into the size of the 
 Brobdingnagian. Samuel Gulliver, from this 
 point of view, is the author himself, looking from 
 a height of calm contemplation, alternately on the
 
 254 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 pettiness and on the grossness of human vanities 
 or pursuits. And this is what, of course, makes 
 Gulliver Swift's most characteristic, most repre- 
 sentative work, and places it in a different category 
 from that earlier satire, the Tale of a Tub. Taking 
 up that book once in the years of his decay, he 
 was heard to exclaim, " What a genius I had 
 when I wrote that book ! " But, brilliant as it is, 
 it is not Swift's masterpiece. There was under- 
 lying it — for those who had eyes to see — the 
 scorn for his kind, the grudge and the impeach- 
 ment of human nature. It was then in the germ, 
 as we have seen, but though the book was profane 
 enough, Swift had not conceived the more profane, 
 the more awful idea, of cursing the very image of 
 his Maker, and hooting and yelling at the flesh 
 and blood which he, the author, was himself com- 
 pelled to wear. And Gulliver belongs, as we see, 
 to Swift's matured powers, if not matured judg- 
 ment, and the years which should have brought 
 the philosophic mind, but which had brought him 
 only a deadlier hate and scorn. Gulliver is the 
 key to Swift's life and works. Swift, writing about 
 human nature, is always either in Lilliput or in 
 Brobdingnag — either pitying and scorning its 
 littleness, or enlarging and dilating on its horror. 
 Yet no one who has watched, in friend and neigh- 
 bour, or in himself, the manifold inconsistencies 
 which make up the individual life will be surprised 
 that the man who thus looked upon his kind was at 
 the same time capable of affection and admiration
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 255 
 
 for individuals. Swift could love Arbuthnot and 
 Gay and Addison, while he affected to loathe the 
 clay out of which they were formed. Yes, and 
 worse than this, he could be drawn to, and dearly 
 love, the converse and the sympathy of women like 
 Stella and Vanessa, and be aware at the same 
 time that, in accordance with this creed, he was 
 bound to loathe and despise them ; yes, and to 
 loathe and despise himself for not being superior 
 to the vulgar affections and needs of mankind. 
 And here may well have been a clue to some 
 portion of his conduct, and to certain elements of 
 his misery. His heart and his creed were in 
 deadly conflict. His heart pleaded with him to 
 be human ; his creed said, " to be human is to 
 be despicable or brutal." When he looked on 
 Stella, his heart may have often said, " take her, 
 and be happy " ; his creed said, " no, wedded love 
 is also a delusion and a snare." Samuel Taylor 
 Coleridge, in familiar lines, has told us that " to 
 be wrath with one we love, doth work like mad- 
 ness in the brain." But what is even that 
 struggle between love and anger to compare with 
 this conflict of love and scorn, this self-imposed 
 obligation of disgust and revolt. " I have just 
 beheld," said the Archbishop of Dublin to a friend, 
 after an interview with Swift, " the most miserable 
 man in the world " ; and one thinks he must have 
 deserved this description, as truly as any man 
 that ever lived. 
 
 Of Gulliver the world at large knows chiefly
 
 256 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the portions referring to Lilliput and Brobdingnag. 
 It is these only, and then only with careful 
 editings, that one cares to leave about in the 
 schoolroom. The other portions are most surely 
 not " meat for babes " ; not because of immorality, 
 or even of coarseness, as ordinarily understood, 
 but because of the horror of the continuous pre- 
 sentation of human nature in every light that can 
 lower it and make it hateful. To compare it 
 unfavourably with the lower animals — such as 
 that indeed noble animal " the horse " — to ex- 
 aggerate the animal aspect of the man, and 
 minimise the spiritual, by ignoring, not only the 
 soul, but any sense of dignity and self-respect in 
 the creature — this is the ignoble work Swift set 
 himself to do. And the disastrous character of 
 his method lies in its very skill and adroitness. 
 Here is no Thersites, scattering abuse and ribaldry 
 right and left, but a man, standing a head and 
 shoulders, in cleverness and plausibility, above his 
 contemporaries ; employing this ability to sow 
 broadcast the seeds of misanthropy ; for though 
 the satire is ostensibly directed against Swift's 
 own country, by making the criticisms of it 
 proceed from a kind of " Utopia," the censure 
 passed is not on this or that country at all, but 
 on the human subject. 
 
 It is a relief to turn from this intellectually 
 exhilarating but morally depressing work to some 
 of that lighter and wholesomer fare which Swift was 
 to provide for the world in the few years that
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 257 
 
 remained to him, when his great intellect was- 
 unimpaired. In 1 7 3 1 he wrote to his friend Gay 
 that he had two great works in hand — one 
 addressed to the domestic servants of England, 
 the other to their masters and mistresses. But 
 the subjects here are but accidentally to be so 
 described. It was no treatise on servants' duties 
 to their masters, and vice versa. The former tract, 
 the Directions to Servants, is a piece of sarcasm 
 less creditable to Swift than most of such effusions 
 of his, because it was addressed to a class who 
 were least likely of all to appreciate irony, or be 
 shamed by it into decency. The work is simply 
 a string of comical suggestions to the cook, the 
 groom, the valet — how to avoid doing their duty 
 by their employer, how to do everything they 
 should not, and avoid doing everything they should. 
 And the humour of this is obtained by the minute 
 knowledge the author shows of every sordid detail 
 of each practitioner's office. It is the very spleen 
 of cynicism : pitiless and ignoble, and without any 
 indirect possibility of raising any one's moral tone, 
 or inciting anything but the merriment that 
 makes men more callous. For " satire " at its 
 best exercises but feeble powers of discipline, 
 and cynicism even less. The other of the two 
 treatises mentioned is as different as possible, and 
 exhibits as well as any antithesis could do, the 
 singular versatility of Swift's powers, and even of 
 his moral temper. This work, as he told Gay, 
 was designed " to reduce the whole politeness, wit, 
 VOL. I S
 
 258 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 humour, and style of England into a short system 
 for the use of all persons of quality, and particu- 
 larly of all maids of honour." This is the jeu 
 d? esprit, of course, which we know as Swift's Polite 
 Conversations, and which probably shares with 
 Gulliver the distinction of being more generally 
 known than all other of its author's productions. 
 It is, indeed, the most genial, humorous, and justi- 
 fiable of all Swift's satires, and is readable from 
 first to last, including the admirable introduction, 
 in which the supposititious author, Mr. Simon 
 Wagstaff, propounds and describes his scheme, 
 which is no less than that of teaching the beau 
 monde the art of conversation by a series of 
 examples and illustrations, deduced from actual 
 conversations which the author had heard and 
 made notes of during a long term of years. The 
 whole thing, I need not say, is a satire upon the 
 silliness, the vapidity, the slang that does duty for 
 wit, the rudeness that does duty for repartee, and 
 the moral truisms that answer the purpose ol 
 thought in the smart society of that day, and 
 indeed of every day, for this is what makes the 
 perennial interest to us of these conversations. 
 Everything else has changed in these hundred 
 and fifty years since, all forms, that is to say, have 
 changed, but the essence remains the same. The 
 particular forms of repartee, and of coarseness, 
 and of rudeness, and of jest have all passed away ; 
 but the things are still with us, only clothed in 
 their new dress. If we wish to verify this con-
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 259 
 
 elusion, we should put side by side with Swift's 
 Persons of Quality those depicted in some lifelike 
 novel of our own day, say, for example, that de- 
 lectable romance which you have all been reading, 
 called Dodo. There is indeed little surface re- 
 semblance between the persons there portrayed 
 and Swift's famous company ; but look a little 
 below the surface, and, I repeat, the absolute 
 identity of substance is truly appalling. It is true 
 that we have deteriorated in some marked ways 
 since Swift's time. We are not as coarse or unre- 
 fined in the things we say as some of his inter- 
 locutors, but we are far more unsound at bottom, 
 quite as rude under the guise of repartee, and 
 quite as foolish. Tom Neverout and Miss Notable 
 exchange jests as broad as Benedick and Beatrice 
 a hundred years before them, but there is no sign 
 that they regard the ordinary bands of society as 
 relaxable at will ; and Lady Smart does not offer 
 to run away with Mr. Tom Neverout. 
 
 However, Swift's object, as he makes clear, is 
 not to touch ethical questions save on the very 
 surface, but to ridicule the absence of anything 
 like " originality " in the so-called conversation of 
 good society in his time. It seems to me that 
 even good critics have strangely gone wrong in 
 trying to settle the question how far Swift meant 
 these conversations to be a fair average picture of 
 what then was heard in dining- and drawing-rooms, 
 in the Park or the Mall. The way he makes his 
 point and drives home the ridicule is not by photo-
 
 2 6o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 graphing, or rather telephoning actual conversa- 
 tions, but by carefully accumulating all the stock 
 conventional jests and repartees current in that 
 society, and then framing his conversations wholly 
 out of these, omitting even the thinner and more 
 tasteless batter in which these plums were usually 
 found served up. In his introduction Mr. Wagstaff 
 apologises for many of the sayings attributed to 
 his dramatis persona; having the look of Proverbs, 
 and indeed many of them, having been long in 
 use, had even then acquired a quasi -proverbial 
 character. I well remember when I first read 
 these conversations being surprised and delighted 
 to find there a number of sayings or retorts which 
 I had heard first from my nurse. When, with 
 infantile frankness, we asked our nurse how old 
 she was, she used to reply, " As old as my tongue 
 and a little older than my teeth," and this is the 
 very repartee put into Miss Notable's mouth when 
 the same injudicious question is addressed to her. 
 But there were any number of others equally 
 familiar, and it showed, what indeed is matter of 
 common experience, that fashions, not only in 
 dress, descend from the parlour to the kitchen, or 
 ascend to the nursery. Pronunciations, I need 
 not say, travel the same route. Our grandfathers 
 used to say " the-ayter," where we say " theatre " ; 
 Rogers used to say that " balcony " instead of 
 " balcony " made him sick ; and I myself knew an 
 old lady who in her youth had mixed in the best 
 of company, and who refused to say anything but
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 261 
 
 "cowcumber" to the last day of her life. And so 
 with " slang," for the drawing-room has its slang 
 as well as the music-hall — that which is not 
 invented by the speaker, but is used by him, just 
 because others have said it before — each genera- 
 tion has its own, and it does duty for wit. And 
 as to repartee, it is astonishing how easy it is to 
 be brilliant, if the rules of the game allow you to 
 be insulting ; and it is in these respects that 
 Swift's smart people anticipate the certain smart 
 people of to - day. But the charm of Swift's 
 handling of the subject is that here for once in 
 a way, where there is such opportunity for bitter- 
 ness, his humour is not bitter, but sweet and 
 wholesome, and we part from Tom Neverout and 
 Miss Notable and the rest with quite a pleasant 
 taste in one's mouth. For their talk may be 
 vapid, and their raillery very second-hand, but it 
 breaks no bones and hurts no feelings. 
 
 To this period, between the death of Stella and 
 his own entire breakdown in health, belongs also 
 much of the most deservedly admired of Swift's 
 humorous verse. Swift had this faculty of easy 
 verse in all sorts of metres, but notably in the 
 eight-syllabled rhymed couplet, from his earliest 
 age ; and, as with his prose, turned it at times to 
 very sordid uses, but at its sanest, it is very ex- 
 cellent reading, and neither Butler before him, nor 
 Thomas Ingoldsby after him, wrote in it with more 
 humour, or greater copiousness and sense of ease. 
 Early in life he had retold in this favourite metre
 
 262 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Ovid's beautiful legend of Baucis and PJiilemon, 
 transforming Jupiter and Mercury into two Catholic 
 saints, endowed with miraculous powers, and the 
 old couple from Asia Minor into two Irish 
 cottagers. Mr. Craik includes this in his selec- 
 tion ; and it is good to read Swift where his 
 grudges against mankind have been for the time 
 wholly forgotten, and when he was indulging a 
 kindly and tender humour, which was perhaps 
 the most real, as well as the better side of him. 
 But these verses have another interest as ex- 
 hibiting Swift's power of dramatic characterisation, 
 which we have noticed both in the Drapier's Letters 
 and in Gulliver. In the development of the 
 English novel, which was in the closing years of 
 Swift's life to take its first definite shape in the 
 Pamela of Richardson, and the Joseph Andrews 
 of Fielding, Swift contributed certain elements, 
 though it would be idle to assert that he ever had 
 in him the germs of either novelist or dramatist, 
 for a vast deal more goes to make either one or 
 the other, besides the gift, essential as it is, of 
 conceiving character. But as the sketches of 
 Addison and Steele in the Spectator, Sir Roger de 
 Coverley and the like, are justly held to be a kind 
 of foretaste of the novel, a glimpse of what the 
 world was later to enjoy in Squire Western and 
 My Uncle Toby, so Swift's anticipations of the same 
 happy gift are not to be denied him, or passed by 
 without acknowledgment ; and one character at 
 least — in a poem I am to speak of — it is well
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 263 
 
 known, suggested to Fielding, or was even 
 borrowed by him for, the character of the Ensign 
 Northerton in Tom Jones. The poem, if we may 
 call it so for convenience, to which I refer is that 
 entitled " The Grand Question debated, whether 
 Hamilton's Bawn should be turned into a Barrack 
 or a Malt-house." Swift paid a visit of some 
 months to his friend Sir Arthur Acheson at 
 Market Hill, in Ireland, in 1728 ; and while there 
 must have heard this important question under 
 discussion, whether some farm -buildings on Sir 
 Arthur's estate should be let to the Government 
 of the day for a barrack, or should be converted 
 into a malting establishment. The barrack 
 scheme, if carried out, would obviously bring 
 some new and lively society into what was 
 presumably a rather dull neighbourhood, and we 
 can imagine that Lady Acheson and her lady's- 
 maid both ardently desired that this alternative 
 should be the one chosen. In any case, Swift 
 chose the incident to treat in verse, full of good 
 humour and excellent perception of character. 
 Mr. Craik had not space, I suppose, to include it 
 in his selection, but you will find it with other 
 pieces of Swift's in Mr. Frederick Locker's Lyra 
 Elegantiarum. (The word " Bawn," by the way, 
 has some Irish history wrapped up in it. A Bawn 
 was originally an entrenched or fortified settlement, 
 which the Ulster colonists made for themselves for 
 farming purposes, but also for defence against the 
 recalcitrant natives ; and this piece of property of
 
 264 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Sir Arthur's retained the name, doubtless, of its 
 earliest tenant.) Another, no less admirable, sketch 
 of the language and modes of thought of the 
 Servants' Hall is shown in some lines, written at a 
 very early period in Swift's career, when he was 
 acting as chaplain at Dublin Castle. An incident 
 of that time, in which the old housekeeper had 
 had her pocket picked, is treated with no less 
 insight and dramatic effectiveness. 
 
 But I must pass on to some verses, no longer 
 dramatic, but autobiographical, in which towards 
 the close of his working life Swift attempted an 
 estimate of his own gifts and services to his time, 
 taking advantage also of the opportunity, so dear 
 to him, of having his fling at the society of the 
 day. I mean the " Lines on the Death of Dr. 
 Swift," which he wrote in the year I 7 3 I . I cited 
 a few lines in my first lecture to illustrate how 
 delicately and tenderly Swift could write when 
 those he really loved and valued were in question ; 
 how he could pretend jealousy of Pope, and Gay, 
 and Arbuthnot, only in order to pay them the 
 subtlest compliment. But this is but a digression 
 in the poem. The tone otherwise is purely 
 satirical — on the heartless and careless summer 
 friends who begin to criticise him, and remember 
 his faults, as soon as ever he has passed away. 
 Rochefoucauld's often -quoted maxim as to the 
 " misfortunes of our best friends " is the text on 
 which he preaches. The satire towards the close 
 is in a higher and more serious strain, pleading for
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 265 
 
 some recognition of his services to Ireland. And 
 it ends with the lines best known, perhaps, and 
 oftenest quoted of all : 
 
 He gave the little wealth he had 
 To build a house for fools and mad, 
 And showed by one satiric touch 
 No nation wanted it so much. 
 
 This, you know, states a fact ; for thus did Swift 
 appropriate a great part of the fortune he had 
 to leave. It will often, I daresay, have been 
 accepted as a piece of additional evidence that 
 Swift anticipated insanity as his own final lot ; 
 that the malady he felt to be his own special 
 destiny should have awakened in him a special 
 sympathy for others afflicted in like manner. 
 But I think his own explanation here is far more 
 probable. A satirist so unrelenting as Swift may 
 well have wished to perpetuate a sarcasm, even 
 by the very terms of his will. A man who could 
 ordain the words saeva indignatio to be read 
 for ever above his mortal remains would hardly 
 have shrunk from converting a legacy into a 
 perennial libel on his countrymen. This remark- 
 able poem, full of wit and power as it is, should 
 not blind us to the light it throws upon Swift's 
 inherent personality. For any, the greatest of men, 
 to celebrate his own death, and ante-date the 
 adverse criticisms that may then be passed on 
 him, is a piece of audacious, however brilliant 
 cleverness ; but none the less is it a sign of an
 
 266 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 enormous "egotism" — a quality not perhaps 
 identical with pride, but near akin to it. And it 
 was the combination of the two that is the key 
 to much of Swift's temper in his treatment of 
 individual men and women — and not less so in his 
 treatment of men at large. Shakspeare has shown 
 us, in many profound creations, how the inordinate 
 development of some moral passion — jealousy, 
 scorn, the despotic habit — may grow and overrule 
 the whole nature, until the brain itself ceases 
 to control. 
 
 And now, after a few more verses (including 
 the fine " Rhapsody on Poetry "), Swift's work for 
 good or ill was done. The softening of the brain 
 — or whatever was the exact physical change in 
 its structure — or the increasing pressure on it 
 from without, was so far advanced that, in 1741, 
 a guardian was appointed for Swift by the Court 
 of Chancery. In 1740 he had written, "I am 
 sure my days will be few ; few and miserable they 
 must be " ; but he lingered five years longer, and 
 after two final years of helpless idiocy, he was 
 released from that " long disease," his life, on the 
 19th of October 1745. Well might Samuel 
 Johnson, in his " Vanity of Human Wishes," cite 
 Swift's decay as a warning to those who desire 
 length of days : 
 
 From Marlborough's eyes see tears of dotage flow, 
 And Swift expire, a driveller and a show ! 
 
 I am aware that I have presented but a maimed
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 267 
 
 portrait of Swift, because, from considerations of 
 time and space, I have omitted his public life 
 almost altogether, and his public life, his influence 
 on affairs and on men of his time, was consider- 
 able and important. I have preferred to dwell 
 upon the man, and on his literary work, so 
 far as it was creative and imaginative, and to 
 study with you, in this limited time, the relation 
 of the one to the other, and their mutual in- 
 fluence. Of all the great names in English 
 literature, Swift stands most conspicuously alone, 
 and this loneliness has had the effect of perhaps 
 warning many persons off from any study of 
 him at all. He had his friends — who loved 
 him, and whom he loved. He belongs to a 
 memorable group in a memorable age — a group 
 of humourists and satirists, Pope and Steele 
 and Addison and the rest — but we feel somehow 
 as if he was among them, but not of them. Even 
 when he is associating with them, planning satire 
 and jest and jeu d'esprit, he stands apart. When 
 we recall the greatest of all names in our litera- 
 ture—when we think of the great masters of 
 imagination — of Chaucer, of Shakspeare, of Milton, 
 of their sweetness and universality — we feel that 
 they too stand alone in their greatness, and yet 
 that they are not alone, because their humanity is 
 sound, because they have not lost or ignored their 
 sense of relationship with their kind. But when 
 we turn to Swift — great as he is in power and 
 versatility — we recognise a loneliness, but a
 
 268 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 loneliness of his own creating. It is noticed by 
 his biographers that he seems to have known and 
 studied Milton (there exists, I believe, a copy of 
 Paradise Lost annotated by. the Dean himself for 
 the use of Stella), but that there are few signs, 
 beyond an occasionally borrowed phrase, of his 
 familiarity with our greatest dramatist ; and that 
 when the Dean's library was sold it contained no 
 copy of Shakspeare's plays. One can understand 
 an interest in Milton being felt by the gloomy 
 Dean, unlike in all points as the men were. The 
 pulpit-like isolation of the Puritan poet would 
 command his respect. And in the hero of the 
 great epic (for Satan is the real hero), in the 
 picture of one who was intellectual without 
 responsibility, and who preferred to reign in hell 
 rather than serve in heaven, Swift might well have 
 recognised a certain counterpart of the lot which 
 he had chosen for himself. But in the " azure 
 eyes, with a surprising archness " we can fancy 
 were Shakspeare's as well as Swift's, we read no 
 reflection of himself. Not that Swift had not the 
 dramatic instinct — for we have seen that he had. 
 He could understand and reproduce with happiest 
 success the Dublin shopkeepers, or Hannah the 
 lady's-maid ; but of the Shakspearian width of 
 sympathy, of the serenity which shines out from 
 the Shakspearian page, of this he knew nothing, 
 for he had cut himself off from it. 
 
 And yet there were seasons in which he had 
 serene thoughts, and even deep and illuminating
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 269 
 
 ones. Among Swift's miscellaneous writings will 
 be found a collection of his detached thoughts or 
 apophthegms, reflecting, in their variety, his many- 
 sided and inconsistent nature. There will be found 
 sweetness and bitterness ; the great thoughts that 
 come from the heart, and expressions of mere 
 worldly shrewdness, lying, as in himself, without 
 arrangement, side by side. " Although men are 
 accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet 
 perhaps as few know their own strength." " We 
 have just enough religion to make us hate, but 
 not enough to make us love one another." " Very 
 few men, properly speaking, live at present, but 
 are providing to live another time." " An excuse 
 is worse and more subtle than a lie, for an excuse 
 is a lie guarded." " Amusement is the happiness 
 of those who cannot think." There is depth here, 
 and seriousness of moral conviction — an insight 
 into the heart of things worthy of an Augustine, 
 we almost say, or a Pascal. Then we light upon 
 a vein reminding one of the incisive observations 
 of a Bacon. " Atheists put on a false courage 
 and alacrity in the midst of their darkness and 
 apprehensions, like children who, when they go in 
 the dark, sing for fear." " Poetry is the madness 
 of many for the gain of the few." Elsewhere we 
 find the wit supreme — blazing out, and all but 
 hiding the wisdom it shines round. " The reason 
 why so few marriages are happy is that young 
 ladies spend their time in making nets instead of 
 making cages." Or this : " Praise is like amber-
 
 270 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 gris— a little whiff of it, and by snatches is very 
 agreeable ; but when a man holds a whole lump 
 of it to your nose it strikes you down." And, 
 lastly, we find the old leaven of misanthropy 
 and pessimism represented in such a parody as 
 this on the opening sentence of the Church's 
 Liturgy : " When a man becomes virtuous in his 
 old age he is but making a sacrifice to God of 
 the devil's leavings." Or this, most characteristic 
 of all, and at the root, as I have tried to show, of 
 most that he wrote and suffered : " It seems most 
 reasonable to love God and to despise man, so 
 far as we are able to understand either." And 
 what right, you indignantly ask, had Swift to 
 despise mankind ? Was there any secret cause, 
 any mystery of his constitution, of his brain's 
 development, that accounts for it, or palliates it ? 
 Well, every man is a mystery to every other ; 
 and cynicism is of many origins and many sorts. 
 A Timon turns cynic because he is a weak man 
 expecting a gratitude which he does not find. 
 An Iago is a cynic because he is a base man and 
 believes all others base. A Jaques is a cynic 
 because it is fine to pose as one ; he makes 
 capital out of it, and hopes to get credit for it — a 
 species quite familiar in our own day. Swift's 
 was none of these ; it was grounded upon the 
 observation of a particular society, which, indeed, 
 was dissolute, profane, and corrupt, to a degree 
 which justified any prophet in denouncing it. 
 But Swift was no such prophet. The essential
 
 SWIFT— HIS LIFE AND GENIUS 271 
 
 mark of the prophet was wanting in him — the 
 enthusiasm for morality. He is rarely, if ever, 
 eloquent for goodness ; he only comes near elo- 
 quence in lashing its opposite. He saw that 
 " man, proud man, dressed in a little brief 
 authority," was yet (how often !) a petty and 
 ignoble creature, and he resolved to trample on 
 that pride ; but it was, like Diogenes of old, with a 
 still greater pride. And thus he even stood in life- 
 long fear of the miserable creature he was always 
 expressing contempt for. It is apparent through- 
 out his life that he was so afraid of men's opinions 
 — so afraid of being called " hypocrite " — that he 
 often kept out of sight and in the dark the more 
 generous or devout promptings of his spirit. 
 And, moreover, unhappily for himself, he closed 
 his ears to the nobler voices and his eyes to the 
 nobler spectacles of humanity. It is possible to 
 do this. Just as by a marvellous mechanism of 
 will acting on brain we can so concentrate our 
 bodily ear upon some one particular sound (upon 
 one particular instrument, let us say, in an 
 orchestra) that it alone lives with us, while all the 
 rest retreat into distance, so we may see only 
 what we wish to see, and hear only what we wish 
 to hear ; and if we keep our inward eye fixed only 
 on the " seamy side of life," we shall only demoralise 
 ourselves in the process ; our attitude towards it 
 will not be that of the " weeping angel," but, as 
 Swift's too often was, that of the " angry ape." 
 The tigre- singe — ape and tiger — both were
 
 272 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 represented in his nature. But the angel was not 
 always absent either ; the tiger was not always 
 without its lamb-like moments ; there was much 
 and bitter struggle for the mastery ; and in con- 
 sideration of the misery it wrought we may turn, 
 not without pity, from the contemplation of so 
 much power and so much suffering.
 
 SOME LEADERS IN THE POETIC 
 REVIVAL OF 1 760-1 820 
 
 I 
 
 COWPER 
 
 1 731-1800 
 
 The poet William Cowper is perhaps to many- 
 persons, prima facie, a very unattractive name. 
 It is as true of some poetic reputations as of 
 men's moral character, that the evil that they 
 do " lives after them," and that their good is 
 " oft interred with their bones." Not that the 
 good and gentle Cowper left anything " bad " in 
 his poems ; but the reputation for whatever in 
 these days is unpopular in poetry, such as the 
 didactic element, or the pietistic moralising, an 
 occasional "jigginess" in his verse, through the 
 use of metres now passed out of fashion, has clung 
 to Cowper ; and it is astonishing how easily a 
 poet's reputation is determined for him by what is 
 weakest and poorest in his verse. And yet all 
 the while Cowper, so far from being a pietistic 
 VOL. I 273 T
 
 274 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 recluse, was one of the most cultivated men of his 
 day, one of the most perfect gentlemen, one of 
 the finest humourists. And all these qualities are 
 reflected in his verse. Doubtless he was not 
 reckoned at his truest value, even in his own day. 
 Because so much of his verse was prompted, and, 
 even when not prompted, coloured, by his fervent 
 Calvinistic theology, he came to be regarded as 
 the poet of a school of religious thought ; and 
 because men of that school naturally clung to him 
 and were proud of him, the more purely literary 
 critics of the day valued him lightly. The poet 
 admired by the Philistines (it was argued) must 
 be essentially Philistine himself. And this reputa- 
 tion has steadily attached to Cowper. Because 
 our grandmothers and great-aunts and other un- 
 critical persons learned him by heart and copied 
 him into their manuscript books, it might seem to 
 us that he is essentially of another day and another 
 creed, and therefore obsolete, with no message, and 
 therefore no source of pleasure for ourselves. We 
 recall his hymns, his pleasant and fluent fables, 
 his " Lines on his Mother's Picture," and his 
 miniature ode on the " British Warrior Queen 
 bleeding from the Roman Rods," and " there (we 
 imagine and say) is the once popular minor poet 
 William Cowper ! " 
 
 But William Cowper was very different from a 
 
 minor poet of our day ; and if anything were 
 
 wanted to prove this it would be that he was 
 
 fifty years of age before he rushed into print !
 
 COWPER 275 
 
 Born in 1 73 1 , Cowper was absolutely unknown 
 as a poet, beyond the small circle of his intimate 
 friends, when, about the year 1780, his faithful 
 friend Mrs. Unwin suggested, as a distraction 
 from the religious melancholy which had become 
 habitual, that he should undertake some sustained 
 poetic effort. She suggested as a topic the Pro- 
 gress of Error, to be treated in the form of a 
 " moral satire." The idea pleased Cowper : he 
 set to work, and it developed under his hand. It 
 grew and grew. The other once well-known but 
 now forgotten satires, " Truth," " Table Talk," 
 " Hope," " Charity," and the rest followed, and 
 constituted his first volume of poems, published in 
 1782. 
 
 Now, I am not going to trouble you with a 
 connected story of Cowper's life. Most of us who 
 could ill pass an examination in his poetry are 
 familiar with the course of that sad and deeply 
 interesting history. Cowper is one of those 
 English classics who is known to us as a person- 
 ality quite as intimately as by his writings. He 
 stands, in this respect, on a par with Johnson, 
 Goldsmith, Scott, and Charles Lamb. In all 
 these cases the author's struggles or sorrows have 
 had much to do with engendering that pity which 
 is " akin to love." And Cowper in this respect, 
 like Charles Lamb, though in every other so 
 different, put much of himself into what he wrote. 
 Also, like Lamb, he has left us some of the most 
 charming letters in our language.
 
 276 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Covvper is a classic ; and by that we mean, or 
 should mean, that he has individuality — that he 
 was not the mere follower of a fashion or a mood 
 belonging to the age in which he lived. Looking 
 back at his poetry, over the space of a hundred 
 years, we see him standing separate and apart 
 from the lesser versifiers who then, as now, were 
 plentiful as blackberries. Or, rather, we have no 
 occasion to distinguish him from them, because, 
 as a matter of fact, for us those lesser lights have 
 already ceased to be. Time passes these lesser 
 objects through his mighty and beneficent sieve, 
 and leaves behind the greater ones alone ! But 
 though Cowper had " individuality," that word 
 does not imply that he sprang full-equipped into 
 the world, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter. 
 He sprang, like all poets, all creative artists, from 
 the brains of many other men. Shakspeare started 
 from Greene and Lyly and Marlowe ; Milton from 
 Spenser and the Fletchers ; Pope from Dryden ; 
 Thomson from Milton ; Wordsworth from Burns 
 and Percy's Reliques ; and Walter Scott from the 
 Border Ballads. These were the fires at which they 
 lit their torches ; but then, just follow the growth 
 and the history in each case of the torch. The 
 borrowing is a very slight thing ; it is what we do 
 with the thing after ive have borrowed it that 
 determines whether we are the " true man " or 
 " the thief." Cowper had more than one starting- 
 point : his native gifts of feeling, and tenderness, 
 and playful humour drew him to those who had
 
 COWPER 277 
 
 exhibited kindred gifts and graces. He was at 
 Westminster School with many schoolfellows, and 
 one schoolmaster, who permanently determined 
 the direction of his genius — George Colman the 
 elder (who, if the child is " father of the man," 
 must have been a very comical boy !), and 
 Churchill, the sturdy and fierce satirist that was 
 to be. And when Cowper, more than thirty years 
 afterwards, adopted the satiric form in the old 
 Popian couplet, the influence of Churchill is 
 beyond all mistake. 
 
 But the young Cowper was also a scholar, on 
 the lines laid down at Westminster. He was for 
 those days an excellent Latinist, and could not 
 only enjoy good Latin verse, but could write it. 
 And he had for his form-master an odd, eccentric, 
 slovenly being, who seems to have had this for 
 his one raison d'etre in life — to impart to others 
 not merely his scholarship, but the enjoyment 
 of his rich vein of fancy and humour. This 
 was Vincent, known better by the affectionate 
 diminutive of " Vinny," Bourne, to whom yet 
 another humourist, Charles Lamb, was after- 
 wards to owe much pleasure and intellectual 
 stimulus. Even under the disguising garb of 
 modern Latin, it is easy to recognise that Bourne 
 had much of the peculiar observation, as well as 
 of the playfulness, which distinguished his pupil ; 
 something, too, of that fondness for animals, and 
 for noting their ways, which followed Cowper 
 through life, and made much of the happiness of
 
 278 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 which he was capable. Bourne had written various 
 little fables in various Latin metres on the " Glow- 
 worm," the "Jackdaw," the "Cricket," and the 
 " Parrot," and these had so lived in the heart of 
 the pupil that he thought them worth turning 
 into English verse and publishing them, to- 
 gether with much graver matter, in his first 
 volume, as Translations from Vincent Bourne. 
 Some of us may have read and remembered, 
 I hope, " The Jackdaw " : — 
 
 THE JACKDAW 
 
 There is a bird who by his coat, 
 And by the hoarseness of his note, 
 
 Might be supposed a crow ; 
 A great frequenter of the church, 
 Where, bishop-like, he finds a perch, 
 
 And dormitory too. 
 
 Above the steeple shines a plate, 
 That turns and turns, to indicate 
 
 From what point blows the weather ; 
 Look up — your brains begin to swim, 
 'Tis in the clouds — that pleases him, 
 
 He chooses it the rather ! 
 
 Fond of the speculative height, 
 Thither he wings his airy flight, 
 
 And thence securely sees 
 The bustle and the raree-show 
 That occupy mankind below. 
 
 Secure and at his ease.
 
 COWPER 279 
 
 You think, no doubt, he sits and muses 
 On future broken bones and bruises 
 
 If he should chance to fall ! — 
 No : not a single thought like that 
 Employs his philosophic pate, 
 
 Or troubles it at all. 
 
 He sees that this great roundabout 
 The world, with all its motley rout — 
 
 Church, army, physic, law, 
 Its customs and its businesses — 
 Is no concern at all of his, 
 
 And says — what says he ? — " Caw." 
 
 Thrice happy bird ! I too have seen 
 Much of the vanities of men ; 
 
 And sick of having seen 'em, 
 Would cheerfully these limbs resign 
 For such a pair of wings as thine, 
 
 And such a head between 'em. 
 
 Cowper modestly calls this a " translation " 
 from his old form-master's Latin verses, but it is 
 far more. It is a transmutation and expansion ; 
 and the result is a new thing, stamped with the 
 personality of the adapter. And how perfect it 
 is, and what a good example of the essential value 
 of perfection even in trifles ! The humour, the 
 pathos, the picturesqueness, the sense of the value 
 of brevity and the ne quid nimis — how could these 
 things be better shown ? And this is the reward, 
 among other matters, of not rushing into print, 
 and not being ambitious for the kind of applause 
 current in the " little day " for which the poet
 
 2 8o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 writes — indeed, from not consulting or studying 
 the " little day " at all ! 
 
 It was as satirist, however, that Cowper made 
 his first appeal to the reading public of his time. 
 He was, as I have said, the schoolfellow, and in 
 later life the profound admirer of Charles Churchill, 
 that strange, strong genius, for whom satire was as 
 the very breath of his nostrils ; — Churchill, the ally 
 of Wilkes, and coadjutor in the North Briton ; 
 author of those savage poems, " Gotham," and 
 the " Prophecy of Famine." You have only to 
 turn to the opening lines of Cowper's "Table Talk," 
 and then to the opening lines of such a poem as 
 Churchill's " Farewell," to detect the obligation of 
 the disciple to his master. And yet, though the 
 form and the turn of the verse are so like, the 
 spirit is so different. For the style of the one is 
 the rough, sledge-hammer, unscrupulous style, and 
 the other that of the polished gentleman. One 
 was the recreant clergyman, who had taken orders 
 at the bidding of some of his family, who had 
 essayed its duties, only to experience (as he said 
 himself) that 
 
 Sleep, at his bidding, crept from pew to pew. 
 
 The other, the essentially pious and reverent 
 nature, whose weak point as a satirist was that 
 he too often interspersed his wit and observation 
 with such long and prosaic " screeds " of mere 
 homiletics, that when the volume appeared, with 
 its modest title of " Poems, by William Cowper of
 
 COWPER 281 
 
 the Inner Temple, Esq.," the slightest glance at its 
 contents showed that it was from the hand of an 
 ardently religious nature, burning to deliver himself 
 of the great Evangelical message, which was every- 
 where, since Wesley and Whitfield, stirring into 
 life the religious consciousness of the " common 
 people," but not (as yet) that of the literary and 
 artistic world. And it is not surprising that the 
 volume of 1782 fell very fiat. For it may be 
 very true, as George Herbert had long before 
 pleaded, that " a verse may find him who a 
 sermon flies " ; but in this case the " verse " and 
 the " sermon " were one and the same thing ; and 
 the volatile and somewhat worldly devotees of the 
 former did not see their way to distinguishing one 
 from the other. Accordingly, as I have said, the 
 volume fell very fiat. The worldly were repelled 
 by the undisguised religion that pervaded the whole; 
 and the religious world of that day, no doubt in many 
 cases, regarded verse (unless it was a hymn pure 
 and simple) as unworthy of fallen man's attention, 
 especially when, as in this instance, it was accom- 
 panied by much that was barefacedly humorous 
 in treatment. And to this day, of course, though 
 the two extremes just indicated have very much 
 modified their attitude, these blended purposes 
 and talents in Cowper have largely contributed to 
 the neglect that has overtaken his poetry, with the 
 exception of all but a few of his scattered lyrics. 
 But, to show how much we lose by accepting 
 these traditions, and not testing for ourselves, is
 
 282 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 really one chief object of my being here to-day. 
 What individuality there is in these satires of 
 Cowper, based though they were upon Churchill, 
 whose poetic master, in his turn, was Dryden ! 
 James Smith, of Rejected Addresses fame, de- 
 scribed the poet Crabbe as " Pope in worsted 
 stockings." It is a smart epigram, but no more 
 precisely true than epigrams usually are. But if 
 it were legitimate, we might further adapt it to 
 Cowper, and call him " Pope in a white tie." Not 
 that that would be true either. Cowper is indeed 
 under some very obvious obligations to Pope. His 
 little sketches of character, interspersed among 
 matter purely didactic, his " Miss Bridgets," and 
 " Voltaires " ; his types of the Bore, and the 
 Military Braggart ; and the Squire's Son sent on 
 his travels, only to show how the " dunce " when 
 
 Sent to roam 
 Excels the dunce that has been kept at home, 
 
 are clearly modelled on the " Chloes," and " Nar- 
 cissas," and " Sir Balaams " of Pope. But then 
 how different — just because the writers themselves 
 were so different ! The essence of Cowper, in 
 such moods, is his playfulness, and playfulness had 
 no part in the genius of Pope. There is a smile 
 on the lip, and a twinkle in the eye, in Cowper's 
 satire, as well as a recognition, all the while, of 
 the " still, sad music of humanity " — a sense of the 
 " pity of it all " — a spiritual quality, in short, 
 which has no counterpart in the equipment of
 
 COWPER 283 
 
 the author of the Dunciad. Not that Cowper is 
 incapable of scorn — it is indeed one of his strongest 
 points — but then it is only for those who are as 
 yet trifling with the graver aspects of religious 
 truth and issues of human conduct. For the 
 ordinary man of the world's attitude towards 
 the faith which was all in all to him, he has no 
 pity, or rather no patience. Take the wonder- 
 fully graphic (almost dramatic) picture of the 
 amateur theologians — the Bon-vivant, the Colonel, 
 the Ensign, and the young Chaplain — over their 
 wine ; discussing one of the cardinal doctrines 
 of the newly revived religion, Faith as against 
 Works. It is in the section of the satire called 
 " Hope." 
 
 The inevitable influence of Pope is apparent 
 in particular lines ; but then, as I have said, 
 being so dramatic, that circumstance alone breaks 
 up and relieves the eternal recurrence of the 
 epigrammatic couplet. It loses the Popian finish, 
 but it gains in human reality. But the belle- 
 lettrists (to use a newly coined word) of Cowper's 
 day, if they might well have enjoyed the wit 
 and humour of such a passage, saw clearly 
 enough that it was to an extent levelled against 
 them, and could not therefore be expected to 
 greet it with any enthusiasm. Nor were the 
 dozen or so of short lyrics, fables, and other, 
 at the end of the volume, likely to counteract 
 the bad impression. They were in the main 
 fables, and elegant trifles of the same order ;
 
 284 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 but all of these evinced (to those who had ears 
 to hear) that this strange religious satirist had 
 mastered a lyric style of rare lucidity and 
 grace, and an exquisite sense of the music of 
 words and cadences, almost new of its kind in 
 English verse — 
 
 "t> j 
 
 O happy shades ! to me unblest, 
 Friendly to peace, but not to me ! 
 
 How ill the scene that offers rest, 
 And heart that cannot rest, agree ! 
 
 This glassy stream, that spreading pine, 
 Those alders quivering to the breeze, 
 
 Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine, 
 And please, if anything could please. 
 
 How perfect, how unimprovable, 1 are these 
 stanzas ! A single word of them could not be 
 changed but at a loss. The thought, indeed, is 
 commonplace, but only in the sense of being the 
 common property of all real men who have 
 thought deeply and suffered deeply. What is it 
 but Coleridge's — 
 
 *t> v 
 
 Ah, Lady, we receive but what we give, 
 
 And in our life alone does Nature live, 
 
 Ours is her wedding-garment ; ours her shroud 
 
 What is it, again, but the burden of Scott's lovely 
 lines, " The Sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill " : — 
 
 1 [Would it not be an improvement if the second rime in the 
 second stanza were on a different vowel from the second rime in the 
 first ?]
 
 COWPEF 285 
 
 With listless look along the plain 
 I see Tweed's silver current glide ; 
 
 And coldly mark the holy fane 
 Of Melrose rise in ruined pride. 
 
 The quiet lake, the balmy air, 
 
 The hill, the stream, the tower, the tree, — 
 Are they still such as once they were, 
 
 Or is the dreary change in me ? 
 
 The " dejection " thus recorded had no doubt 
 a different root in each of the three instances, but 
 the chaneed relation of man to Nature under its 
 influence is the same in all, and the influence in 
 each case prompted poetry of unsurpassable charm. 
 
 Cowper's volume, notwithstanding, failed to 
 attract notice. Of those who opened it at hazard, 
 some would have been deterred by its obviously 
 pietistic tendency ; but the majority perhaps for 
 another reason, that nine-tenths of its contents 
 were moral satires, in the rhymed heroic couplet, 
 and the crowd of Pope's imitators had succeeded 
 in wearing this fabric very threadbare. The 
 world was in truth beginning to tire of it, and 
 had not the patience to detect the fresher accents 
 of playfulness and grace that differentiated those 
 of William Cowper. The volume, if it did not 
 fall dead from the press, made its way slowly. 
 But it was far otherwise with a second volume 
 that followed it, three years later, bearing the 
 title of The Task, a Poem in Six Books. The 
 former volume had been suggested by Cowper's 
 faithful Mrs. Unwin, as a refuge and a stimulus
 
 286 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 for his melancholy. The second volume was the 
 even happier suggestion of another lady, the 
 charming and vivacious Lady Austen. She had 
 often asked Cowper to write something in blank 
 verse. He replied, " Give me a subject." " You 
 can write on any subject," she archly rejoined. 
 " Write upon this Sofa." Cowper was too gallant 
 to refuse. He started with the uninspiring theme, 
 but soon broke away to scenes and objects more 
 congenial. This was the origin of the series of 
 blank-verse poems, the better - known of which 
 bear the far more attractive titles of " The Winter 
 Evening," " The Winter Morning's Walk," and 
 " The Garden." Although these poems, amounting 
 in the aggregate to many thousand lines, occupied 
 the bulk of the volume, he appended (as in his 
 previous venture) a few others of different character, 
 and among these the memorable ballad of John 
 Gilpin. For this also (as is well known) Cowper 
 was indebted to his fascinating friend. Lady 
 Austen told him the story as actually having 
 occurred within her knowledge, and it so delighted 
 the poet that he turned it into verse that very 
 night, and was heard laughing over it through 
 all the quiet hours of slumber. The inimitable 
 stanzas were printed in a magazine, and at once 
 made their mark ; and, further (strange fate for 
 Cowper, to whom the theatre was the bite noire 
 among all worldly entertainments !), were chosen 
 for recitation by Henderson, a leading comedian of 
 the day. JoJin Gilpin doubtless attracted many
 
 COWPER 287 
 
 purchasers to the volume. But those who had 
 come to laugh over the luckless horseman of 
 Cheapside remained to pay a wholly different 
 tribute of admiration elsewhere. It was the 
 collection of blank verse called the Task that at 
 once gave Cowper a leading place, if not the 
 leading place, among the poets of the day. 
 
 There were not many poets deserving the name 
 then living. The great forerunner of them all in 
 reviving an interest in nature, as distinguished from 
 human nature, James Thomson, the author of the 
 Seasons, had been dead nearly forty years. Those 
 who had carried on the work, producing little in 
 amount, but that little of exquisite quality — Gold- 
 smith, Gray, Collins, Shenstone — had also passed 
 away. Crabbe, indeed, had written his Village, 
 and Burns was on the eve of giving to the world 
 his first poems, but, with few exceptions, this was 
 the deadest period of English poetry. Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Scott, were still to be ; and yet there 
 was being fostered in silence an ardent desire and 
 longing for that familiarity with Nature which had 
 been so long dormant. " You may drive out 
 Nature at the point of a pitchfork," says the 
 Roman poet, " but she will come back." Nature 
 had been thus kept at bay in the carefully polished 
 and regulated verse of Alexander Pope and his 
 followers. They had carried the maxim that 
 
 The proper study of mankind is man 
 to lengths and deductions which the words cannot
 
 288 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 reasonably bear. Nature had been called in, 
 now and then, as a garnish by these poets, but 
 even this " garnish " they borrowed from one 
 another. They had certain words or phrases 
 for certain aspects of natural scenery, and these 
 did duty over and over again in endless per- 
 mutations and combinations. The " nymphs " 
 and the " swains," the " gale," the " azure main," 
 the "grove," the "bard," the "pilgrim," the 
 "bowers," the "verdure" — all these and a hundred 
 other terms had become the stock-in-trade of the 
 hack-poet ; until at last readers of poetry began 
 to sicken and to crave for some real nourish- 
 ment, and not this sandy and sterile imitation 
 of nourishment. I remember, when I was a 
 child, there was a Joe Miller's Jest-Book in 
 our library, and in it a pleasantry which greatly 
 tickled my childish fancy. It described how, in a 
 certain besieged town, the scarcity of food became 
 very severe ; and when there was not a blade of 
 grass left for the horses, the inhabitants hit upon 
 the ingenious expedient of putting " green spec- 
 tacles" on the horses and then giving them shavings 
 to eat ! This may serve very well as an allegory. 
 The so-called descriptions of Nature in the Popian 
 school were as unreal and as innutritious as shav- 
 ings, and those to whom they had been offered 
 were beginning to find out the difference, that eyes 
 were better than spectacles. 
 
 Well, the reaction had begun some fifty years 
 before Cowper published his first poem, in which
 
 COWPER 289 
 
 he reflected her so truly, and made others share 
 his happiness in so doing. Thomson's Seasons is 
 the first notable English poem that takes Nature 
 herself as a topic. He was handicapped, as all 
 poets of the second rank begin by being handi- 
 capped, by his following too servilely a model. 
 The model of Thomson's blank verse was Milton, 
 and his treatment of blank verse abounds from 
 first to last in Miltonic echoes. It was unfor- 
 tunate for his fame, for much of the real and 
 genuine individuality of Thomson is thereby con- 
 cealed, and passes unobserved by his reader. We 
 of this day, I must admit, can hardly read Thomson 
 with patience. The form and diction of those 
 once famous poems repel us. They are so like 
 certain other versifiers, that we fancy we must 
 have heard it all before. But when Thomson 
 began to write, men had not heard it all before ! 
 He was no dealer in natural scenery at second 
 hand and on trust. The storm and the calm, 
 the aspects of the fields and woods changing from 
 season to season — these he had watched and noted 
 and treasured up in the days when he wandered 
 as a boy through the fields surrounding his father's 
 manse. Thomson was a conscientious watcher 
 and lover of Nature ; his matter, which was his 
 own, was hindered by his manner, which was some- 
 body else's. It is so, as I have said, with many 
 poets of similar rank. They really have some 
 " new wine " of their own to benefit their kind, 
 only they persevere in serving it up in the " old 
 VOL. I U
 
 290 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 bottles." And this is why for us, living a century 
 or more afterwards, it is difficult to arouse interest 
 in what seems to be still part and parcel of an old 
 order. But the contemporaries of these poets 
 recognised the " new wine," and were grateful for 
 it, and overlooked the want of originality in the 
 " bottle." Thomson made his mark just because 
 he brought something of his own that the heart 
 of man was yearning for. Goldsmith clung to 
 the rhymed couplet of Pope, but in his hands it 
 became the vehicle of such a new beauty and 
 tenderness that he made the world for ever his 
 debtor. Gray had the insight to perceive that 
 the heroic couplet had had its day, and he framed 
 his matchless Elegy in the less familiar form of 
 stanzas. And thus, little by little, whether in the 
 old bottles or the new, the supreme and imperish- 
 able wine of Nature — her ever-shifting aspects of 
 beauty, and her power to purify and to delight 
 and to soothe — was being given back to a 
 world of literature from which it had long been 
 absent. 
 
 But it is interesting to note, that even while 
 Nature was coming slowly back and resuming her 
 charm, it was some time before she was known and 
 recognised aright. The world was so hungering 
 for green food, after so much dry, that it at first 
 devoured, without much perception, whatever had 
 a prima fade claim to be the genuine thing. 
 I remember an incident that I once witnessed in 
 the streets of London, many years ago, that always
 
 COWPER 291 
 
 seemed to me an undesigned allegory of this 
 state of poetic famine in the last century. I was 
 walking in the East City, not far from the Docks, 
 and I saw a group of sailors, evidently just come 
 ashore, and just paid off. A poor woman was 
 standing by the way with a tray of water-cresses, 
 upon which the sailors made a sudden and unani- 
 mous descent, consuming the whole trayful in 
 quicker time than it takes me to write the words, 
 and (I need not add) duly paying for their pur- 
 chase with that prodigality that marks the British 
 tar when in funds. The situation was unmis- 
 takable. Months of dry biscuit and salt junk 
 had done their work, and the tempting green 
 herb was too much for them. This, for a while, 
 was the condition of the English reader of poetry, 
 and for the while they were often deceived 
 by much so-called "poetry of Nature," with 
 which, indeed, it is only unfair to the savoury 
 and refreshing water-cress to compare it for a 
 moment ! 
 
 The most memorable of these counterfeits 
 was Mr. Macpherson's Ossian, in which he 
 professed to be giving a true version of scattered 
 fragments of a Gaelic epic. This, with its 
 grandiose and very monotonous rhapsodies — to 
 us now unreadable — came to the English reader 
 of that day as a revolution and a revelation. 
 It was so full of big out-door things — the storm, 
 the mist, the mountain. To read it seemed 
 for the moment so like being let out upon a
 
 2 9 2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Scottish moor, after being confined all day to 
 some close and mechanical occupation, that its 
 reception was extraordinary, and not only in 
 England, but in foreign countries. It was not 
 indeed Nature, but it produced a vague effect of 
 being so. Wordsworth said, with perfect truth, 
 that much of the English Ossian was composed 
 of mere words borrowed from the traditional 
 vocabulary, and that there was no first-hand ob- 
 servation in it at all. Its imagery was " spurious," 
 but it was accepted with joy by starving thousands. 
 Nevertheless, the true thing did not fail to strike 
 home when it appeared, and Cowper's second 
 volume at once showed Englishmen that the 
 true thing was there. There was, no doubt, 
 something of inferior origin blended with it. 
 There are prosaic and dreary lengths of moralising 
 in the Task ; there is even a great deal of what 
 one of his biographers has called " mischievous 
 rant," for Cowper, with all his goodness and sweet- 
 ness, was not exempt from the law that men are 
 bound to write nonsense when they write about 
 things, such as " geology," for instance, of which 
 they are wholly ignorant. But it was neither the 
 moralisings nor the religious denunciations that 
 made these poems a revelation and a delight. 
 It was not even the witty and felicitous lines 
 and phrases which are plentiful, and are still 
 imbedded in the daily speech of many who never 
 read a poem of Cowper straight through in their 
 lives —
 
 COWPER 293 
 
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still. 
 
 There is a pleasure in poetic pains 
 Which only poets know. 
 
 The toil 
 Of dropping buckets into empty wells, 
 And growing old in drawing nothing up ! 
 
 The cup that cheers but not inebriates — 
 
 and a dozen more. Rather was it the home-felt 
 scenes in the " Winter Morning's Walk " and the 
 " Walk at Noon " and the " Winter Evening," in 
 which Cowper was describing things, not only 
 which he remembered in far-off days of childhood, 
 but which he was actually living among and loving 
 while he wrote. These descriptions were doubt- 
 less to Cowper's first readers, and still more to us, 
 hampered by being often expressed in a metre 
 too closely modelled upon another poet, Milton ; 
 but the descriptions were at first hand, not second, 
 and they were prompted by deep personal affec- 
 tion and deep personal piety. When he speaks 
 of the incidents of a country walk, and the features 
 of a country lane, he speaks of what he knows. 
 Here are no longer vague platitudes about the 
 " grove " and the " plain " and the " bowers " (to 
 rhyme with flowers !), but the eye of the minute 
 observer — minute as Wordsworth or Tennyson 
 long afterwards — lines such as 
 
 Ankle-deep in moss and flowery thyme 
 (which is Tennyson all over), and the clear, dis-
 
 294 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 tinctive treatment of the trees (no longer lumped 
 together as the grove) — 
 
 The poplar that with silver lines his leaf, 
 And ash far-stretching his umbrageous arm ; 
 Of deeper green the elm ; and deeper still, 
 Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak. 
 
 Cowper had not been writing long about the 
 Sofa (the opening poem of the series) when his 
 ardent love of Nature drove him out of doors, to 
 the meadows and the lanes of Olney, to the fresh 
 air and the sweet sights and sounds of country. 
 And this " first-handedness " of his is just as 
 apparent when he writes of man — man as he 
 watched him daily on his village walks, not man 
 as he analysed him from his Calvinistic stand- 
 point, or from books. In the days of our grand- 
 fathers every one knew and could cite Cowper's 
 picture of the village postman, with his " twanging 
 horn " :— 
 
 He comes, the herald of a noisy world, 
 
 With spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks, 
 
 News from all nations lumbering at his back. 
 
 He whistles as he goes, light-hearted wretch, 
 Cold and yet cheerful. 
 
 A description that is simply Shakspearian ; a 
 worthy pendant to the smith in King John, rushing 
 from his anvil 
 
 With slippers thrust upon contrary feet. 
 But only Shakspearian, of course (for I do
 
 COWPER 295 
 
 not think Cowper read or cared much about 
 " play-actors "), because both men drew the thing 
 they had seen. 
 
 This, then, it was that fascinated the weary 
 poetry-reader of 1785, and gave Cowper at once 
 a supreme place among poets then living. For 
 there were elements beyond even the reach of 
 Thomson in these new poems of country life. 
 There was a minuter and more immediate observa- 
 tion of things, whether human nature or the natural 
 objects of the landscape. The observation em- 
 braced more detail, more precision, and the charm 
 that ever accompanies these things. Thomson 
 had doubtless seen the things he sought to convey 
 in his verse ; but he drew largely from memory, 
 and after the things had gone through some 
 process of adaptation to the supposed claims of 
 poetic convention. Thomson's natural history is 
 apt to become academic in the process ; Cowper's 
 remains a transcript, pure and simple. And, 
 moreover, Thomson's attitude to Nature was differ- 
 ent from Cowper's. His was the deistic attitude ; 
 but Cowper's, equally reverential, was tinged with 
 the emotion of personal thankfulness and trust. 
 You remember the once famous hymn with which 
 Thomson closes his Seasons : — 
 
 These, as they change, Almighty Father, these, 
 Are but the varied God. The rolling year 
 Is full of Thee. 
 
 Compare with this the somewhat similar apo-
 
 296 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 strophe which Covvper makes a peroration to his 
 " Winter Morning Walk," and which it is quite 
 conceivable was even prompted by the recollection 
 of the passage in Thomson. It is in fact really- 
 different in motive, and the difference is just that 
 which made people feel here was a new and a 
 safer guide to the worship of Nature than they 
 had hitherto acknowledged in the author of the 
 Seasons. The whole passage is too long to read, 
 but it opens with the line — 
 
 So reads he Nature, whom the Lamp of Truth 
 Illuminates. 
 
 And it goes on to the fine lines, at least lofty and 
 noble rhetoric if not the highest poetry — 
 
 Thee we reject, unable to abide 
 
 Thy purity, till, pure as Thou art pure, 
 
 Made such by Thee, we love Thee for that cause 
 
 For which we shunned and hated Thee before. 
 
 Then we are free : then Liberty like day 
 
 Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from Heaven 
 
 Fires all the faculties with glorious joy. 
 
 Cowper is not one of those poets who have directly 
 founded or influenced a school of poets. He 
 stands, from this point of view, rather aside, in 
 a back-water. His obvious and close association 
 with a certain school of theology in great part 
 accounts for this. But poets are not without 
 their influence on the subsequent progress of 
 poetry merely because they have not inspired or 
 guided any particular disciple. There is such a
 
 COWPER 297 
 
 thing as influencing the general atmosphere in 
 which the poetic heart and spirit of man alone 
 can thrive ; and I think Cowper did this for 
 his generation and those that followed. He 
 greatly widened the range and scope of subjects 
 in which it was supposed poetry had any right 
 to intervene. For though Cowper lived in the 
 country, and made his friendships largely among 
 ladies — Mrs. Unwin, Lady Hesketh, Lady Austen, 
 — it is quite a wrong idea of him to imagine that 
 the subjects which interested him were all or 
 chiefly of the same sort. He was a thorough 
 Englishman. He took a keen interest in all that 
 interested his countrymen at home or abroad. 
 The revolt of the American Colonies, the crusade 
 against the Slave Trade, the establishment of our 
 rule in India ; these were all to Cowper matters of 
 liveliest concern, as were all public calamities or 
 disasters at home, such as the burning of Lord 
 Mansfield's library, or the wreck of the Royal 
 George ; the latter of which events, as you know, 
 prompted that noble threnody, of which Mr. 
 F. T. Palgrave does not say too much when he 
 says that "this little poem might be called one of 
 our trial pieces in regard to taste," and dwells 
 upon the " vigour of description and the force of 
 pathos underlying Cowper's bare and truly Greek 
 simplicity of phrase." 
 
 This age of ours is an impatient age. We 
 like our poetry in small doses rather than in 
 long draughts. And it is not likely that we
 
 298 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 shall ever be able again to call Cowper's Task 
 a popular poem. But happily for his fame 
 many of his masterpieces are brief, and being 
 both one and the other, can never die. No 
 greater depth of tenderness, combined with abso- 
 lute perfection of form, exists in our literature 
 than in certain of the shorter poems of William 
 Cowper ; notably the effusions which speak of the 
 womanly love and devotion that saved at least 
 a remnant of his life from absolute misery and 
 despair : — " Mary ! I want a lyre with other 
 strings," and " The twentieth year is well nigh 
 past." 
 
 Such, then, I conceive is Cowper's contribution 
 to the poetic history of the last century, which he 
 did not live to see. He was the resultant of all 
 the great forces that were at work in his day. It 
 is a commonplace of criticism that he owed much 
 to Rousseau. The keen love of freedom, the 
 sense of the dignity of man as man, the growth 
 of pity and sympathy for all living things — animals 
 as well as human beings, — the quickened love of 
 Nature, all that was best and enduring in the 
 great truths that were stirring men in the last 
 quarter of the last century are all reflected in 
 Cowper ; and his saving sense of humour pre- 
 served him from any of the pedantries and extra- 
 vagances of certain new gospels of humanity. 
 He was not less the disciple of Rousseau because 
 he clearly saw the defective side of Rousseau's 
 views of children's education. " I will not ask
 
 COWPER 299 
 
 Jean-Jacques Rousseau if birds confabulate or no," 
 he says, at the opening of one of his charming 
 fables, for Rousseau had solemnly enjoined that 
 to give children stories about animals talking 
 was " to weaken their sense of truth " ! ! ! 
 
 And I hope I have shown that Cowper, though 
 he formed no school, was yet an important person 
 in the development of the poetry of the last 
 hundred years. In one of his poems he apolo- 
 gises for even referring to John Bunyan, — " in- 
 genious dreamer ! " he calls him — so " despised a 
 name " was the author of the Pilgrim's Progress 
 to the wits and persons of taste of the year 1780. 
 I will not so apologise for mentioning Cowper, 
 for, thanks to our Wordsworth, our Keats, our 
 Tennyson, we have learned to be thankful to all 
 those who have opened our eyes and softened our 
 hearts to the beauty and the pathos of the world 
 in which we live.
 
 SOME LEADERS IN THE POETIC 
 REVIVAL OF 1760-1820 
 
 II 
 
 BURNS 
 
 1759-1796 
 
 I CANNOT forbear entering some kind of apology 
 that, being an Englishman and English-bred, I 
 should presume to lay unhallowed hands upon the 
 ark of the poetry and the reputation of Robert 
 Burns. I may plead, however, in mitigation of 
 any harsh sentence likely to be pronounced on 
 me, that if I err, not being a Scotsman, in com- 
 menting upon one of the greatest of Scottish poets 
 and humourists to an English audience, it has been 
 not from any desire to shine as an exception to 
 English apathy and incapacity in the matter, but 
 simply and solely because from my early child- 
 hood I heard Burns read and quoted in my own 
 home, and was taught and shown how high was 
 his place in a literature which I cannot refuse to 
 call Englisli literature, merely because he wrote 
 
 300
 
 BURNS 301 
 
 his most characteristic work in a north-country 
 dialect. 
 
 But I am well aware that this much explana- 
 tion is not an adequate defence for my conduct. 
 My real motive is one of a "missionary" order — 
 a desire to encourage others in making or improv- 
 ing their acquaintance with one of the greatest 
 names in poetry — which we all recognise and 
 confess as such, but which I believe is still, after 
 a hundred years, little more than a name to 
 hundreds, even of those who read and enjoy 
 other poetry of the highest kind. I was speaking 
 last week of a considerable English poet, Cowper, 
 who once enjoyed in England a reputation pro- 
 portionate to his merits, but who has lost it 
 through lapse of time, and change of taste, and 
 the rise of poets of greater power and passion. 
 Cowper is forgotten, as one old-fashioned. But 
 Robert Burns never has been, I venture to think, 
 widely read and known in England — save in half- 
 a-dozen of his poems, and a score or so of quota- 
 tions from the rest. And one prime reason, no 
 doubt, is that he wrote his best in a dialect not 
 in itself difficult, because of its grammar or idiom, 
 but certainly comprising a large vocabulary, strange 
 and repellent to the ordinary reader. And the 
 ordinary reader (if I may say so without offence) 
 is always intolerant of taking trouble. Even 
 Tennyson, when he wrote in the North Lincoln- 
 shire vernacular, which he knew so well, and 
 though his greatest achievements as a humourist
 
 3 o2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 were won in that dialect, has never been properly- 
 known in that character. If I may quote my own 
 experience, I have on many occasions read the 
 "Northern Farmer" and the "Spinster's Sweetarts" 
 in some company where many have admitted 
 afterwards that the very look of the spelling 
 had deterred them from ever seeking to master 
 the preliminary difficulty. That exquisite singer, 
 Mr. William Barnes, the Dorsetshire poet, whom 
 the late Francis Turner Palgrave has sought, I 
 fear in vain, to popularise, is practically unknown 
 as a poet. And the far greater poet, Burns, has 
 shared much of the same fate ; and though we 
 quote him, and recognise him when quoted, after 
 a fashion, it is to be feared that many of us are 
 in the same plight as honest Mr. Micawber who, 
 when citing from Burns's familiar " Auld Lang 
 Syne," to young David Copperfield, the lines — 
 
 We tvva hae run about the braes, 
 And pu'd the gowans fine, 
 
 was constrained to add, with the old roll in his 
 voice, " I am not atvare what the ' gowans ' may 
 be ; but I am sure that my friend Copperfield and 
 myself would have taken a pull at them, had it 
 been feasible." 
 
 Then again, let it be freely admitted that when 
 the dialect difficulty is surmounted (and it is not 
 half as great as persons imagine !), there is a 
 certain admixture of free-speech, both on religiour, 
 topics and others, and a good deal of drinkiiv
 
 BURNS 303 
 
 and other recreations in Burns's humorous poems 
 that easily repel those scrupulous in such matters ; 
 and many persons never care, and apparently 
 never like, to distinguish between satire on re- 
 ligious bigotry and hypocrisy, and ridicule of 
 religion itself — so that there are, and always will 
 be, deterrents in abundance for those whose 
 digestion, in matters of literary food, is somewhat 
 weak — although I would add, by way of paren- 
 thesis, that up and down our beloved country at 
 the present moment there may be seen novels 
 and novelettes, with the stamp of Mr. Mudie 
 or Mr. Smith upon their brows, infinitely more 
 unwholesome and demoralising than anything 
 in Robert Burns. But this is a digression. I 
 would only plead in behalf of this consummate 
 poet and humourist, that he has his enemies or 
 indifferents, and that I would fain convert a few 
 of these into friends and enthusiasts. 
 
 Another obstacle to the diffusion of his fame 
 arises out of the dialect difficulty already men- 
 tioned. Burns, as you all know, wrote for the 
 most part in the peasant-speech of his native Ayr- 
 shire. It should at once be said that all his most 
 memorable and enduring work was so written. 
 But he occasionally wrote in the English tongue, 
 or rather in the literary, the poetic diction of the 
 eighteenth century. He certainly understood his 
 own vernacular — its resources, capabilities, oppor- 
 tunities, far better than he knew those of our 
 southern English speech ; for he had drunk
 
 3o 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 it in, so to speak, with his mother's milk ; it 
 was the everyday speech of his family and 
 neighbours ; and it was the language of those 
 Scottish lyrists and satirists, his predecessors, 
 to whom he was most indebted as models. Now 
 the English lover of poetry, when urged by 
 Burns, enthusiasts to enter upon the study of that 
 poet, is naturally under the strong temptation 
 to tackle him on his easiest and most familiar 
 side — to follow the line (as it were) " of least 
 resistance," and to begin with his English poems, 
 or at least with those in which there is some 
 admixture of literary English — for Burns occa- 
 sionally uses English and lowland Scotch side by 
 side in the same poem. But when the reader 
 turns to Burns writing English, it is certain that 
 he encounters a Burns writing under disadvan- 
 tages, and therefore a Burns not at his best. I 
 cannot go as far as certain critics of Burns, who 
 will tell you, as Mr. Henley tells you, that English 
 was to Burns " a foreign language." This seems 
 to me a serious over-statement of the case. Burns 
 had read, and thoroughly mastered — as men do 
 who have access to only a few cherished volumes 
 — a fair number of English poets. His father, an 
 admirable specimen of the best type of Scottish 
 peasant — industrious, upright, religious, and with 
 the traditional Scottish love and respect for Educa- 
 tion, — had brought his children up to believe in 
 book-learning, and the profit of it. Little by 
 little, throughout their constant poverty, some-
 
 BURNS 305 
 
 thing had been spared for books, and copies of the 
 Scottish poets on the one hand — Allan Ramsay, 
 Robert Fergusson, and the rest ; and on the other 
 hand, the eighteenth-century English poets then 
 most in vogue — Pope, Shenstone, Thomson, Gray, 
 Young (and doubtless also certain of the feebler 
 imitators of these poets), were among the volumes 
 which stimulated the fancy and the ambition of 
 the youthful Burns. Now, while this was not by 
 any means so bad a training in the English 
 grammar and idiom, it was certainly not the 
 best training for writing English poetry. Of 
 the really great English models — of the great 
 Elizabethans and their immediate successors — 
 Burns had not drunk deeply, though he certainly 
 knew and quoted Shakspeare. His English style 
 was formed upon a poetic school already in its 
 decadence. The " poetic diction " of which we 
 were speaking in my former lecture — the poetic 
 phraseology and vocabulary which had come, by 
 the end of the last century, to be accepted as 
 a poet's sufficient equipment ; the conventional 
 verbiage against which Wordsworth first did, 
 noble service in protesting ; the once familiar 
 occurrence in every fresh poem of the " bard," and 
 the " grove," and the " gale," and the " pilgrim," 
 and the " nymph," and the " swain " — was in full 
 force when Burns began to write verse, and it 
 was inevitable that these should reappear there as 
 soon as he began to write in a language, certainly 
 not " foreign to him," but which he had learned 
 VOL. I X
 
 3 o6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 chiefly, or wholly, from books — from those English 
 literary models to which alone he had access. 
 
 And this seems the common -sense of the 
 whole matter. When Burns wrote verse in 
 English, he wrote it under the influence of bad 
 models, and he did not quite know the difference 
 between bad models and good. Accordingly, 
 when he wrote songs in pure English (he did not 
 write many) he seldom rose above the common- 
 place. But when he introduced English into his 
 narrative and didactic poems, he often did so 
 with real effect ; and when he contrived, as some- 
 times he did, to forget the bad models altogether, 
 he often wrote both simply and eloquently. 
 Moreover, Burns was neither indiscriminate nor 
 inartistic in his use of English. He seemed 
 generally to know when the transition from low- 
 land Scotch to English could be effectively made. 
 As a general rule, he perceived that as long as 
 he was dealing with scenes and incidents purely 
 Scottish, he must retain the speech of the people, 
 as part of the' local colour. When he digressed 
 into reflections or topics abstract and general in 
 their character, he perhaps as naturally had 
 recourse to the language of the larger British 
 world. Take the beautiful poem called the 
 "Vision," from the first published volume of 
 1786; as long as the poet is describing the 
 doings and thoughts of a Scottish peasant at the 
 close of a hard day's toil, he uses the vernacular 
 with his usual skill and humour : —
 
 BURNS 307 
 
 The sun had closed the winter day, 
 The curlers quat their roaring play, 
 And hungered maukin' ta'en her way 
 
 To kail-yards green, 
 While faithless snaws ilk step betray 
 
 Where she has ben. 
 
 The thresher's weary flingin'-tree 
 The lee-lang day had tired me ; 
 And when the day had closed his e'e 
 
 Far i' the west, 
 Ben i' the spence right pensivelie 
 
 I gaed to rest. 
 
 All in this mottie, misty clime, 
 
 I backward mused on wasted time 
 
 How I had spent my youthfu' prime 
 
 And done nae thing 
 But stringin' blethers up in rhyme 
 
 For fools to sing. 
 
 But as the poem advances, and the young 
 man dreams his dream, and the guardian spirit 
 of his country appears to console and encourage 
 him in his task of interpreting the joys and 
 sorrows and aspirations of his people in song, 
 the vernacular gives place to a strain of purest 
 English, in which even the familiar vocabulary 
 of the eighteenth-century English poets all but 
 disappears — 
 
 " I saw thy pulse's maddening play 
 Wild send thee pleasure's devious way, 
 Misled by fancy's meteor-ray, 
 
 By passion driven ; 
 But yet the light that led astray, 
 
 Was light from heaven.
 
 3 o8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 " Then never murmur nor repine, 
 Strive in thy humble sphere to shine ; 
 And, trust me, not Potosi's mine 
 
 Nor king's regard 
 Can give a bliss o'ermatching thine, 
 
 A rustic Bard. 
 
 " To give my counsels all in one — 
 Thy tuneful flame still careful fan, 
 Preserve the dignity of man 
 
 With soul erect ; 
 And trust the Universal Plan 
 
 Will all protect. 
 
 " And wear thou this," she solemn said, 
 And bound the Holly round my head ; 
 The polished leaves and berries red 
 
 Did rustling play ; 
 And like a passing thought she fled 
 
 In light away. 
 
 I cannot think that the writer of this last 
 stanza — so nobly simple, so free from rhetoric, 
 so musically perfect — had much to learn in the 
 management of the English tongue ; or the writer 
 of such stanzas as these in the "Jolly Beggars," lines 
 which have never been rivalled in sheer force by 
 any Englishman, unless it be Jonathan Swift — 
 
 A fig for those by law protected, 
 
 Liberty's a glorious feast ! 
 Courts for cowards were erected, 
 
 Churches built to please the priest. 
 
 What is title, what is treasure, 
 
 What is reputation's care ? 
 If we lead a life of pleasure, 
 
 'Tis no matter how or where.
 
 BURNS 309 
 
 Life is all a variorum, 
 
 We regard not how it goes ; 
 Let them cant about decorum, 
 
 Who have characters to lose ! 
 
 I can never think that to the man who wrote 
 those lines English was " a foreign tongue." 
 The truth is, that when Burns was deeply 
 moved, or carried away by the whirlwind of his 
 prodigal fancy, he forgets models altogether, and 
 among them models of English, and becomes 
 as modern and universal as Shakspeare himself 
 became under like conditions. 
 
 This question of the " bi-lingual " gift of Burns 
 comes specially before us in the memorable first 
 volume that he published in 1786, commonly 
 known as the " Kilmarnock " edition, from the 
 country town in Ayrshire in which it was printed. 
 Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, was its title ; 
 but it contained more poems of which the literary 
 English formed at least a part than (I imagine) 
 any subsequent similar body of his verse com- 
 prised. This volume, containing about forty 
 pieces, of varying length, was the first intimation 
 to any Scotsmen, outside the circle of Burns's 
 friends and neighbours, that a new poet of un- 
 questionable originality, of poetic quality and 
 humour equally decisive, had appeared in 
 Scotland. In one sense the volume did not 
 bear upon its face the mark of originality, and 
 Burns himself, with a manly modesty, the genuine- 
 ness of which at all periods of his career there
 
 310 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 is no reason to doubt, disclaims both originality 
 and deprecates comparison with those to whom 
 he frankly admitted his indebtedness. He 
 believes (so he admits in his Preface) that he 
 has something to say worth saying, or he would 
 not have ventured into print ; " but," he goes on 
 to say, " to the genius of a Ramsay, or the 
 glorious dawnings of the poor unfortunate 
 Fergusson, he, with equal unaffected sincerity, 
 declares that even in his highest pulse of vanity 
 he has not the most distant pretensions. These 
 two justly-admired Scotch poets he has often had 
 in his eye in the following pieces ; but rather 
 with a view to kindle at their flame than for 
 servile imitation." 
 
 Considering the verdict of the English-speaking 
 world since pronounced on the respective merits 
 of Burns and the poets here named, this is 
 singularly pathetic ; but at the same time, 
 knowing the public whom he was immediately 
 addressing, the disclaimer was natural. For the 
 Scottish wits and critics in Edinburgh or else- 
 where, taking up this first volume of the Ayrshire 
 ploughman, would be first of all struck by the 
 apparent absence of novelty in the verses therein 
 contained. For almost every topic and every 
 metrical form employed had been used before 
 by Scottish versifiers of more or less note, and 
 especially by Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, 
 of whom Burns makes this special mention ; the 
 very metre which we English readers (the
 
 BURNS 311 
 
 majority of whom perhaps know no Scottish poetry 
 save Burns and Walter Scott) probably imagine 
 to be Burns's own invention, or at least specially 
 characteristic of Burns, the six-line stanza : — 
 
 O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us 
 
 To see oursels as ithers see us ! 
 
 It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
 
 An' foolish notion : 
 What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, 
 
 And even devotion ! 
 
 This metre had been the common property not 
 only of Ramsay and Fergusson, but of much 
 earlier Scottish poets — the metre being in fact an 
 adaptation from an ancient French metre, well 
 known to the Troubadours. Then, again, the 
 familiar epistle in verse which Burns wrote in 
 this stanza had been used by his predecessors — 
 and both Ramsay and Fergusson wrote satire in 
 verse to excellent purpose ; — so that, as I have 
 said, when they looked chiefly on the surface of 
 things, the Scottish critics of 1786 might well 
 have taken Burns at his word and decided that 
 here was a moderately successful imitation of the 
 two poets named. But a little further examina- 
 tion could leave no doubt in the minds of those 
 who had ears to hear, and hearts to feel, and a 
 sense of humour to enjoy. 
 
 The " Kilmarnock " volume does not indeed 
 represent Burns at his highest. It is not the 
 Burns of " Mary Morison," and " Ae fond kiss 
 and then we sever " ; of " Duncan Gray," and
 
 312 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 " John Anderson, my jo " ; of " Holy Willie's 
 Prayer," and " Tam o' Shanter." The first 
 published work of a new poet must be of 
 necessity tentative ; and Burns was, in a sense, 
 trying his " 'prentice-han'." It was the reception 
 given to his first volume that made him sure of 
 his ground, and eager to better the best of what 
 he had done. But, after all such allowance 
 made, the volume was an astonishing revelation 
 of a new poetic force being in the world. For, 
 on one side of Burns's many-sided talent, it 
 contained the " Address to a Mountain Daisy," 
 and the " Address to a Mouse, on turning her up 
 in her Nest with the Plough " ; on another, it had 
 the " Twa Dogs," and " Hallowe'en," the " Holy 
 Fair," and the " Address to the Deil " ; on another, 
 the Epistles to Rankin and Lapraik ; and on 
 another, the " Cotter's Saturday Night." In many 
 of these kinds, Burns was yet to do better things — 
 things more distinctly revealing genius — in the 
 future. In one kind, indeed (by which Burns was 
 to attain his greatest height as a poet, pure and 
 simple), the " Kilmarnock " volume is almost 
 without example. The Song is all but entirely 
 absent — being represented by two specimens only, 
 hardly worth notice. 
 
 But one poem was there — in the familiar 
 metre, — winding up the volume, which demands 
 particular notice, so pathetic is it in its forecast of 
 the subsequent fortunes of Robert Burns. The 
 " Bard's Epitaph" — placed last in the book, as if
 
 BURNS 313 
 
 serving as a kind of comment on all that had gone 
 before — is (as it were) his own epitaph, one written 
 in conscious anticipation of his own sad and 
 chequered life. To quote the line from Langhorne 
 which the young Walter Scott, on the only occasion 
 of meeting Burns, was so proud to know and tell 
 the authorship of, 1 this epitaph 
 
 Gives the sad presage of his future years. 
 
 All lovers of Burns will remember the 
 
 stanzas : — 
 
 Is there a whim-inspired fool, 
 
 Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, 
 
 Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, 
 
 Let him draw near ; 
 And o'er this grassy heap sing dool, 
 
 And drap a tear. 
 
 1 [" I saw him one day at the late venerable Professor Ferguson's, 
 where there were several gentlemen of literary reputation, among whom 
 I remember the celebrated Mr. Dugald Stewart. Of course, we 
 youngsters sate silent, looked and listened. The only thing I re- 
 member which was remarkable in Burns's manner was the effect pro- 
 duced upon him by a print of Bunbury's, representing a soldier lying 
 dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on the one side, on the other 
 his widow with a child in her arms. These lines were written beneath : 
 
 Cold on Canadian hills or Minden's plain 
 Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain ; 
 Bent o'er her babe her eye dissolved in dew, 
 The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, 
 Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
 The child of misery^ baptised in tears. 
 
 Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather, the ideas it 
 suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the 
 lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that 
 they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the unpro- 
 mising title of 'The Justice of the Peace.' I whispered my informa- 
 tion to a friend present, who mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me 
 with a look and a word which, though of mere civility, I then received, 
 and still recollect, with very great pleasure." — Letter to Lockhart, 
 1827.]
 
 314 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Is there a bard of rustic song, 
 
 Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, 
 
 That weekly this area throng, 
 
 Oh pass not by ! 
 But with a frater-feeling strong, 
 
 Here heave a sigh. 
 
 Is there a man whose judgment clear 
 Can others teach the course to steer, 
 Yet runs, himself, life's mad career, 
 
 Wild as the wave ; 
 Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear, 
 
 Survey this grave. 
 
 The poor inhabitant below 
 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow 
 
 And soft e7- flame ; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low, 
 
 And stained his name I 
 
 Reader, attend — whether thy soul 
 Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole, 
 Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, 
 
 In low pursuit ; 
 Know prudent, cautious, self-control 
 
 Is wisdom's root. 
 
 It seems to me certain that in writing this 
 imaginary epitaph, Burns had himself in view ; 
 his own dangers and temptations ; his anticipa- 
 tory verdict on his own life should it be lived to 
 the end, under certain clouds that were already 
 gathering. And it is significant that Burns, whose 
 use of italics is always noticeable, thus underlines 
 two expressions in this poem — first, the " softer 
 flame" and secondly, " self-control?
 
 BURNS 315 
 
 I am speaking of Burns as a poet ; and cer- 
 tainly have no wish to fall in with the tendency 
 of most Burns critics of the day, and devote my 
 efforts to weighing and balancing the good and 
 evil in his character. It has come of late to be a 
 practice, where there is little or no difference of 
 opinion among the critics as to a man's genius, 
 to open an entirely new inquest into his moral 
 character. It is notorious, for instance, that many 
 readers of poetry, and still more numerous critics, 
 appear to be more interested in Shelley's matri- 
 monial troubles than in his matchless poetry. 
 And one notices that, especially since the Burns 
 Centenary of a few years since, the same tendency 
 has developed itself in his case ; and the critics 
 are just now much exercised as to the amount 
 of blame to be attached to the poet for certain 
 grievous offences against morality, which are not 
 denied by either party. I will not join them in 
 this, save so far as in noticing how far the effect 
 of these offences, and the discrepancies between 
 his creed and his practice in that respect, are 
 brought before us in his works. For the moment, 
 the citation just made may suffice. But one result 
 of the unquestionable incongruity of Burns's moral 
 " didactic " with much of his practice is that it 
 has led his critics, and doubtless many of his 
 general readers, to lay stress upon such incon- 
 gruity, to the extent of doubting whether the fine 
 and noble ethical teaching of many of Burns's 
 poems was actually genuine. And this not only
 
 316 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 in Burns's relations to women, but in his relation 
 to the religion of his native country. As to the 
 first-named class of cases, if one may pardonably 
 talk of " inconsistency " between a man's principles 
 and his practice, then Burns was undoubtedly 
 inconsistent, for he has left us many such avowals 
 as that we have just heard of what he knew to be 
 the true source of dignity and happiness, ideals to 
 which he was himself so often false. There was a 
 dual personality in Burns, as in every one of us, 
 and they alternated in him often (as also in us) 
 with startling contrasts. And, if this be true, it 
 is, in my judgment, but shallow criticism to speak 
 as if the " bad " half, the " shady side," of Burns 
 was really the true Burns, and as if the other was 
 a mere concession to the tastes or prejudices of his 
 more respectable neighbours. When Burns pub- 
 lished his first volume at Kilmarnock he was an 
 unknown man, and the outcry against any of his 
 moral delinquencies, and the discussion over them, 
 could not have started save among a few of his 
 nearest neighbours. But the contents of Burns's 
 first volume must even thus early have awakened 
 curiosity as to his attitude towards religion, for 
 the volume contained both the " Holy Fair " and 
 the " Cotter's Saturday Night." " Superstition 
 and hypocrisy " are, in his own words, the topics 
 illustrated in the former poem. Whereas (as 
 we all know) the latter presents one of the 
 most noble and endearing aspects of religion, 
 considered as the strength and glory of a
 
 BURNS 317 
 
 people, that have ever been revealed to us in 
 prose or verse. 
 
 Now there is no personal inconsistency in this 
 instance. The startling differences presented are 
 not in Burns himself — his principles and his 
 practice, his mood to-day and his mood to- 
 morrow — the differences lay in the religion of 
 Scotland. Burns had become familiar with what 
 religion in the family meant, by the example of his 
 own father, a devout Scottish peasant of the finest 
 type of integrity and patient toil. The other type 
 of religion he had come to know through watch- 
 ing it in certain of the elders of the kirk in the 
 presbytery of Ayr. " Holy Willie's Prayer " (the 
 most transcendent religious satire ever penned) 
 was yet to come, but the picture is foreshadowed 
 in the " Holy Fair." 
 
 For the moment, I would deal with the 
 " Cotter's Saturday Night." Of all Burns's longer 
 poems, this is certainly the one best known to 
 the purely English reader. And this for two 
 reasons mainly. One reason, the less dignified, 
 may be that half the stanzas or more are written 
 in literary English, and only the remainder in the 
 dialect of Ayrshire. Half of it is thus intelligible 
 to the meanest capacity. The other reason (far 
 worthier) is the picture just referred to, of religion 
 purifying and dignifying the home of Scottish 
 peasant life. Now, of course, the value of such 
 a picture depends wholly on its fidelity to truth. 
 If Burns had evolved such a picture out of his own
 
 3 i8 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 poet's imagination in order to win applause from 
 religious people, " the unco guid," at a distance, 
 he would be open to the charge of "sentimentality," 
 which certain influential critics of to-day have not 
 scrupled to bring against him. But I have never 
 heard it advanced that Burns was not drawing 
 his picture from the life, or that even in Holy 
 Willie's day religion was not still the strength 
 and glory of many a Scottish home. What is 
 meant by Burns's sentimentality is, therefore, 
 something different, and must be that in thinking 
 it worth while to draw such a picture, he was not 
 expressing his own sentiments, but only making 
 a concession to the sentimentality of others. Now 
 this is a view I wholly dissent from. I am certain 
 that the "Cotter's Saturday Night" expresses 
 Burns's heart - felt estimate of the worth and 
 dignity of true religion ; just as his "Holy Willie" 
 expresses his detestation of the Brummagem 
 Pharisee — for the two things are separated by 
 a whole heaven. " Sentimentality," moreover, is 
 a thins that does not last. Like a bad veneer, 
 the surface wears away with time, and the cheap 
 timber underneath stands revealed. Much of 
 Sterne's sentiment (not all) has perished in this 
 wa y — an d perhaps all of his imitator, James 
 Mackenzie. Burns's true sentiment is as pure and 
 sweet and true to-day as it was on the day, a 
 hundred years ago, when it disclosed a new poet 
 as having arisen to enrich his native country. 
 The impression of sentimentality that might
 
 BURNS 319 
 
 be left upon some of us by the poem is doubtless 
 favoured by the English stanzas being written, 
 as already noticed, under the influence of that 
 literary diction of the close of the last century 
 with which Burns was most familiar. The poem 
 itself is a delightful instance of Burns's power to 
 imitate a predecessor, and yet to throw him ab- 
 solutely into the shade. The " Cotter's Saturday 
 Night " is clearly based upon the " Farmer's Ingle " 
 of Robert Fergusson, which latter poem describes 
 in vernacular Scotch the " end of the day " in 
 the household of a small farmer, or cotter ; and 
 it is written in a nine-lined stanza, roughly re- 
 sembling the " Spenserian." The idea and the 
 form were thus alike borrowed by Burns ; but the 
 result — oh, how different ! Poor Fergusson, had 
 he lived to read it, might well have cried with 
 Andrea del Sarto in Browning's fine monologue — 
 
 But all the play, the insight, and the stretch, 
 Out of me, out of me ! 
 
 First of all Burns puts the metre right, restoring 
 the Spenserian interlacing of the rhymes, and 
 making the ninth an Alexandrine — giving thereby 
 to his poem a dignity and artistic finish to which 
 Fergusson could never approach. Then, again, 
 he innovates, by passing alternately from lowland 
 Scotch to English ; and it is this which I believe 
 some of the more devout Burnsians among- his 
 countrymen are given to deplore. As a humble 
 English critic I again venture to differ. Although
 
 3 2o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the Scottish portion is in the language of the life 
 he knew, and the English is the reflection of his 
 experience of books, I recognise a distinct artistic 
 purpose in the alternations, which to some persons 
 only present a scrappy and incongruous medley ; 
 a purpose which I have already discussed in 
 speaking of the " Vision." In the present case 
 Burns not so much alternates stanzas in English 
 and Scotch, as alternates words and idioms in the 
 same stanza ; but the reason seems to me analo- 
 gous to that already suggested : that it is the 
 essential dignity of the thought that lifts him for 
 the moment into a speech more universal, less 
 local, than his own. I cannot regard it as merely 
 a foolish literary ambition that now and again 
 leads Burns to abandon one dialect in which 
 he was strong for another in which he was weak. 
 It was rather that his local vocabulary was 
 limited for the purpose he needed it for, and 
 that he naturally and rightly resorted to English 
 wherewith to supplement and strengthen it. 
 
 Unquestionably there is a sentimental side to 
 Burns, which was due to the particular moment 
 in the history of literature at which his genius 
 first bore fruit. The Kilmarnock edition contains 
 several poems (and these among his most admired 
 and famous) making this evident, notably the 
 " Address to the Field Mouse " turned up in her 
 nest with the plough, and that to the " Mountain 
 Daisy " on the similar disaster that befell it. 
 Perhaps these are scorned by the same critics as
 
 BURNS 321 
 
 " sentimental," but the world of readers have 
 hitherto not been of the same mind. We turn 
 away with distaste from Sterne weeping over his 
 dead donkey, but not from Burns pausing to pity 
 the homeless mouse or the crushed daisy. The 
 truth is that we instinctively associate such a 
 display of feeling in Burns with other influences 
 than those under which the author of the Senti- 
 mental Jourfiey composed his rhapsodies. When 
 Burns wrote, the influence of Rousseau — on his 
 best and wholesomest side — was in the air, and 
 the attitude of man to Nature, both animate and 
 inanimate, had been profoundly affected by it. 
 We have noted it in Cowper, who was in one 
 respect a very child of Rousseau, though his fine 
 sense of humour made him detect clearly Rous- 
 seau's many absurdities. But a new affection for 
 Nature, different from all that had gone before in 
 the eighteenth century, had sprung up in men's 
 hearts, and notably a sympathy with animals and 
 flowers and all innocent creatures having life. 
 This new-born tenderness for the innocent and 
 defenceless of God's creatures marks all the poets 
 of that renaissance of the last years of the century. 
 We note it in Cowper and Burns — we note it 
 later in Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey— 
 that instinct and resolve 
 
 Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. 
 
 And thus it has come about that time, having 
 VOL. I Y
 
 322 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 separated the true from the spurious sentiment of 
 the last century (time is the true test and the 
 sure one), the " Ode to the Field Mouse " has not 
 lost its savour, and never will. 
 
 It is as a song-writer that Burns is best known 
 to many, but it was not, strangely enough, in that 
 character that he first appealed to his readers. 
 The Kilmarnock edition, as I have said, contains 
 but very few songs, and none of first-rate merit. 
 Yet Burns had written six years before (when he 
 was just one-and-twenty) one at least of supreme 
 excellence — indeed one of the world's masterpieces 
 in this kind — a triumph of metrical skill, as it is 
 of tenderness and point, which just stops short of 
 epigram, or any other disturbance of the truth 
 and pathos of the theme :— 
 
 Mary, at thy window be, 
 
 It is the wish'd, the trysted hour ! 
 Those smiles and glances let me see 
 
 That make the miser's treasure poor ; 
 How blithely wad I bide the stoure, 
 
 A weary slave frae sun to sun ; 
 Could I the rich reward secure, 
 
 The lovely Mary Morison. 
 
 Yestreen when to the trembling string 
 The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha', 
 
 To thee my fancy took its wing, 
 I sat, but neither heard nor saw : 
 
 Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, 
 And yon the toast of a' the toon, 
 
 1 sighed, and said among them a', 
 
 " Ye are na' Mary Morison."
 
 BURNS 323 
 
 O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 
 Wha for thy sake wad gladly die ? 
 
 Or canst thou break that heart of his, 
 Whase only faut is loving thee ? 
 
 If love for love thou wilt na ; gie, 
 At least be pity to me shown ! 
 
 A thought ungentle canna' be 
 • The thought of Mary Morison ! 
 
 This song, one of the earliest, and also one of 
 the most perfect of Burns's effusions of this kind, 
 introduces what, to many readers, is the most 
 engaging feature of his genius. He wrote liter- 
 ally hundreds of such, of very various degrees 
 of merit, for the best are transcendent, unique 
 almost in literature, and others poor and trite and 
 among his failures. Some were prompted by a 
 personal experience, by one and another of those 
 attachments to women which were transient, but 
 not the less real and heartfelt while they lasted ; 
 but others were written, not exactly to order (for 
 they were mostly contributed gratuitously to 
 collections of Scottish songs, published by two of 
 his friends at different periods of his life), but 
 constructed upon the basis of some fragments of 
 old Scottish song, in many cases only a single 
 verse, which from their intrinsic beauty or sug- 
 gestiveness happened to strike his fancy. For in 
 his songs, as much as in his other poetic forms, 
 Burns seemed for the most part to need a starting- 
 point, either in form or substance. Only that 
 then from some such starting-point he proceeded, 
 not once but scores of times, to produce some
 
 324 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 masterpiece of sense, feeling, and music. Some- 
 times he was touched by a phrase, such as " Auld 
 Lang Syne," already invented by one of his 
 unknown predecessors, and went on to add stanzas 
 of his own to a verse in which it formed the 
 burden or chorus. At one time it was the 
 beauty of some such fragment that attracted him ; 
 and he mourned openly (for he was the most 
 generous of critics towards his fellow-workers in 
 his art) that the names of these forgotten poets 
 had died, because they themselves had lacked a 
 " Vates Sacer " to preserve them. At another 
 time it was the very vulgarity or oddity of an old 
 fragment, wedded to some charming melody, that 
 fired him to supply the tune with a worthier 
 accompaniment of verse. One day when the girl 
 who nursed him in his later illnesses (Jessie 
 Lewars) repeated to him an old humorous song, 
 beginning : — 
 
 The robin cam' to the wren's nest 
 
 And keekit in, and keekit in : 
 O weel's me on your auld pow 
 
 Wad ye be in, wad ye be in ? 
 Ye've ne'er get leave to lie without, 
 
 And I within, and I within, 
 As lang's I hae an auld clout 
 
 To row ye in, to row ye in ! 
 
 The tune was pretty and Burns was asked to 
 write pretty words to match, and you know, I 
 am sure, many of you, the inimitable lines he 
 produced : —
 
 BURNS 325 
 
 O wert thou in the cauld blast, 
 
 On yonder lea, on yonder lea, 
 My plaidie to the angry airt, 
 
 I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee : 
 Or did misfortune's bitter storms 
 
 Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, 
 Thy bield should be my bosom, 
 
 To share it a', to share it a'. 
 
 Or were I in the wildest waste, 
 
 Sae black and bare, sae black and bare, 
 The desert were a paradise, 
 
 If thou wert there, if thou wert there. 
 Or were I monarch o' the globe, 
 
 Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, 
 The brightest jewel in my crown 
 
 Wad be my queen, wad be my queen. 
 
 If I began to enlarge upon this theme of Burns 
 as a song-writer, when should I end ? I must 
 needs then disturb the due proportions of ray 
 lecture. The very mention of the names of a 
 few : — " Ye Banks and Braes " ; or " Mary in 
 Heaven " ; or " Of a' the airts the wind can blaw," 
 will at once remind you of what his countrymen 
 of all classes, from almost the lowest to the 
 highest, owe to Robert Burns, for filling their 
 homes, and their hearts and memories, with lyric 
 treasures such as these. Were ever simplicity, 
 beauty, and tenderness (and in the last-named 
 quality Burns has surely no rival) so united as in 
 these, and scores of others ? I will only quote 
 one in full, rather less familiar than those just 
 named : —
 
 326 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 I gaed a waefu' gate yestreen, 
 
 A gate, I fear, I'll dearly rue ; 
 I gat my death frae twa sweet een, 
 
 Twa lovely een o' bonnie blue. 
 'Twas not her golden ringlets bright, 
 
 Her lips like roses wat wi' dew, 
 Her heaving bosom, lily white — 
 
 It was her een sae bonnie blue. 
 
 She talk'd, she smiled, my heart she wil'd, 
 
 She charmed my soul, I wist na how ; 
 And aye the stound, the deadly wound, 
 
 Cam frae her een sae bonnie blue. 
 But "spare to speak, and spare to speed " ; 
 
 She'll aiblins listen to my vow ; 
 Should she refuse, I'll lay my dead 
 
 To her twa een sae bonnie blue. 
 
 Surely a result so exquisite was never by any 
 other man achieved out of material so elementary 
 and so scanty in amount as this ! And, indeed, 
 the poem raises the whole question of what the 
 mysterious quality is in verse which constitutes 
 supreme excellence, and distinguishes it from 
 all second-rate, however clever and plausible. 
 Burns's songs, in this day when such helpless and 
 aimless critical deliverances are heard all round 
 about us, come in opportunely to remind us that 
 in literature and in art the interval between first 
 and second rate is practically infinite, while those 
 between second, third, and fourth are compara- 
 tively insignificant ! And it is only by storing 
 our memories and feeding our tastes and affec- 
 tions on these masters of perfection (whom we 
 call classics), and among whom Burns holds a
 
 BURNS 327 
 
 foremost place, that we shall ever learn to recognise 
 first-rate when we see it, and also second-rate 
 when we see it. But this is a digression, and I 
 dare not digress, for I have yet to commend to 
 you the artistic quality of Burns as shown in his 
 humorous, no less than his serious and tender 
 verse. The notion of Burns as a kind of human 
 " skylark," uttering " wood-notes wild," pouring 
 forth strains of " unpremeditated art," is curiously 
 wide of the mark. As I have said, he is unequal, 
 as any man must be who wrote so much ; but he 
 is almost always the artist. He understands form 
 and limits, he understands when to stop ; his gift 
 of narrative in verse shows this in wonderful 
 degree. As a story-teller in lyric measures he 
 has no equal. Not only by what he says, but by 
 what he omits and reveals only by suggestion, 
 his power is of the rarest. Take the familiar 
 " Duncan Gray," in which Burns's favourite theme 
 of the " falling out " of lovers, and the sub- 
 sequent " renewal " of their loves, is so exquisitely 
 treated : — 
 
 Duncan Gray cam here to woo, 
 
 Ha, ha, the wooing o't ! 
 On blythe yule night when we were fou, 
 
 Ha, ha, the wooing o't ! 
 Maggie coost her head fu' high 
 Looked asklent and unco skeigh, 
 Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh ; 
 Ha, ha, the wooing o't ! 
 
 Duncan fleech'd and Duncan pray'd : 
 Ha, ha, etc.
 
 328 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 Duncan sigh'd baith out and in, 
 Grat his een baith bleert and blm, 
 Spak o' loupin' o'er a linn ; 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 
 Time and chance are but a tide, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 Slighted love is sair to bide, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 Shall I, like a fool, quoth he, 
 For a haughty hizzie die ? 
 She may gae to — France for me ! 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 
 How it comes let doctors tell, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 Meg grew sick — as he grew hale, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 Something in her bosom wrings, 
 For relief a sigh she brings ; 
 And O, her een, they spak sic things ! 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 
 Duncan was a lad o' grace, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 Maggie's was a piteous case, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 Duncan could na be her death, 
 Swelling pity smoor'd his wrath ; 
 Now they're crouse and canty baith, 
 
 Ha, ha, etc. 
 
 Or take the opening of" Death and Dr. Hornbook," 
 where he has to tell his story in his own favourite 
 metre, and where, as usual, he introduces one of 
 his own peculiar diagnoses of the effects of intoxica-
 
 BURNS 329 
 
 tion, and no man, unfortunately, had had better 
 opportunities of so doing ; or again, take his 
 masterpiece " Tarn o' Shanter," composed straight 
 away at a sitting, or rather on a walk, and yet 
 displaying in every line, besides its matchless 
 humour and power, the artistic faculty to which 
 I have referred. The alternations of grave and 
 gay — of comedy and grimmest tragedy; the 
 admirable effect he produces of interspersing 
 the lowland vernacular with English, not now for 
 purely poetic purposes, but to give a grandiose 
 effect to the Homeric similes with which he 
 variegates his theme, combine to make the poem 
 a masterpiece of mock heroic. 
 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen has somewhere solemnly 
 observed that criticism on Burns " is only per- 
 mitted to Scotchmen of pure blood." And this 
 warning, which I entirely agree in, would have 
 been sufficient had I had any wish to do the 
 opposite. But it was never my intention. There 
 is only too much criticism of our great poets in 
 circulation. It is not for those who know and 
 love Robert Burns that I am here to-day, but for 
 those who know Burns by half-a-dozen poems and 
 a score of quotations, and there an end. My other 
 object has been just to indicate for such of my 
 hearers the place that Burns marks in the develop- 
 ment of the poetic art in England. Burns stands, 
 as regards the old and the new world of poetry, 
 both in Scotland and in England, at the parting 
 of the ways. He was at once the climax of the
 
 330 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 old and the harbinger of the new. He brought 
 to perfection what many of his Scottish pre- 
 decessors and models had practised with much 
 charm and ability. In the vernacular Scotch 
 song, in the satire, in the familiar epistle, in the 
 dramatic narrative, he rose to a height from which 
 no successor has deposed him, or could depose 
 him. He is the greatest of Scottish poets, but 
 not the last. One other also of consummate 
 genius, but of gifts widely different, was to follow. 
 Walter Scott owed something, I believe, to Burns, 
 but he owed even more, as we shall see, to other 
 fountains of inspiration. As touching the poetry 
 of England, the influence of Burns is perhaps in- 
 calculable. More than any one else — more than 
 Thomson, Cowper, or Wordsworth — did he serve 
 to break up the frost that seemed to be settling 
 upon the lyric flow in England at the end of the last 
 century. To him we might apply the first line of 
 Horace's charming ode : — 
 
 Solvitur acris hiems grata vice veris et Favoni. 
 
 The writer of English poetry was, indeed, on the 
 point of yielding to other and larger influences 
 when Burns first wrote, but he, if any one, brought 
 the " spring" and the " south-west wind " to break 
 up the crusts of inveterate custom. It was Words- 
 worth, you will remember, who confessed, in one 
 of those touching poems he wrote in Burns's 
 memory, that to him he first owed the momentous 
 opening of the eyes to the fact that a new world
 
 BURNS 331 
 
 was at hand, and new conquests awaiting the 
 poet. 
 
 He showed my youth 
 How verse may build a princely throne 
 
 On humble truth. 
 
 Not Wordsworth alone (though he eminently) 
 owed this to Burns. The renaissance of poetry- 
 early in this century owes this to him, and we 
 who have owed to poetry no small part of our 
 highest education will not grudge him our thought- 
 ful gratitude. 
 
 At the same time it cannot be concealed that 
 the taste of this generation shows few signs of 
 returning to the plain, direct, objective simplicity 
 of such as Burns. The poets of to-day that 
 obtain a hearing seem for the most part afraid of 
 the simple and elementary topics, thoughts, feel- 
 ings, and passions of their kind. They wander 
 away too often over the head of the ordinary 
 reader rather than by his side. They deal in 
 riddles and in paradox, in the far-off and the far- 
 fetched — they go in for the cultivated rather than 
 for the spontaneous, for mist rather than for 
 clearness. A story is told of an intrepid aeronaut 
 who, being carried by strong winds through the 
 darkness into unknown countries, found himself, 
 when the dawn of day arrived, over a favourable 
 ground for descent. Ignorant of his whereabouts 
 (it proved to be somewhere in rural Suffolk), and 
 seeing some labourers in the field below, he shouted 
 as he neared the earth, " Where am I ? " To
 
 332 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 which the very simple villagers, looking up, replied 
 without any hesitation, " Yoiire in a ballione, sor ! " 
 Even thus is the modern poet too often " in a 
 ballione " as regards the simple, humble tenant 
 of this earth. The comparison may seem to you 
 flippant, but it has a curious parallel in poetry 
 itself. In the beautiful prelude to " Peter Bell " 
 Wordsworth tells us how he, too, was tempted at 
 times to rise in the " little flying ship " above the 
 heads of his readers, and how he rejected the offer, 
 and why. His talent alike and his duty fitted 
 him for humbler functions and other triumphs : — 
 
 Long have I loved what I behold, 
 
 The night that calms, the day that cheers ; 
 
 The common growth of mother-earth 
 
 Suffices me — her tears, her mirth, 
 
 Her humblest mirth and tears. 
 
 The dragon's wing, the magic ring, 
 I shall not covet for my dower, 
 If I along that lowly way 
 With sympathetic heart may stray, 
 And with a soul of power.
 
 SOME LEADERS IN THE POETIC 
 REVIVAL OF i 760-1 820 
 
 III 
 
 SCOTT 
 1771-1832 
 
 WHETHER or no Walter Scott Is much read and 
 genuinely admired at the present day is one of 
 those quasi-literary, half- fashionable questions that 
 furnish diners-out from time to time with a con- 
 venient topic of conversation. It is evident that 
 he is a good deal " bought" or otherwise publishers, 
 we may presume, would not produce edition after 
 edition, often two or three voluminous ones appear- 
 ing in the same year. But this is not conclusive. 
 An author is not necessarily much read because 
 he is much purcJiased. There are certain standard 
 authors, especially in the drama and in fiction, 
 whose works may be called " furniture " books, 
 and are bought as almost necessary articles of 
 domestic equipment, although, when once bought 
 and on the shelves, they may more properly be 
 
 333
 
 334 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 called fixtures. I remember in my youth a well- 
 intentioned nouveau riche who, having built or 
 bought a fine place in the country, found a room 
 in it called "library" which could not be allowed 
 to remain bare of its appropriate contents. He 
 accordingly summoned a bookseller of repute, and 
 commissioned him without delay to furnish the 
 naked shelves. The man naturally replied, " Of 
 what description, sir, do you like your books to 
 be ? " to which came the ready reply, " Well, I 
 don't know — but something literary, I suppose." 
 Now with the many who wish to do the right 
 thing at once by themselves, their homes, their 
 families, and public opinion, I suppose the same 
 ingenuous desire exists. If a house is to com- 
 prehend a room, or a set of shelves, called a 
 library, it should contain " something literary," and 
 of the books beyond question deserving the name 
 Scott is one of the most obvious. A Shakspeare, 
 a Scott, a Tennyson — these are undoubtedly 
 " books that no gentleman's library should be with- 
 out." There may be found also with these a Ruskin 
 and a Meredith, but these imply an ambition and 
 a culture somewhat in advance of the other. 
 
 Scott, then, is certainly bought, but there is 
 little evidence that he is read, thought of, or that 
 his influence much affects the general taste of 
 those who buy him. People continue to buy 
 Scott, but in the meantime subscribe to Mudie's, 
 and read something quite different — the master- 
 pieces of the hour they live in. But there is yet
 
 SCOTT 335 
 
 another large class, having the courage of their 
 opinions, who will tell you that Scott's day is 
 done, and that other gifts and other messages 
 have supplanted his. I do not notice that these 
 sentiments are generally uttered with that joy of 
 trampling something under foot with which the 
 rising generation of cultured young men and 
 young women announce that they " cannot read " 
 Dickens. The farther distance of Scott from 
 this generation, and the wider scope, the deeper 
 root, of his fame, are sufficient to check »the voice 
 of open scorn ; and there is doubtless a vein of 
 real, and therefore respectable conviction in many 
 minds that in the scale of later developments of 
 intellect and of art in fiction, Scott is weighed 
 and found wanting, and must therefore be surely, 
 if sadly, shelved (in more than one sense) for the 
 future. It is, happily, with a sorrowful feeling — 
 " How are the mighty fallen ! " — rather than with 
 anything of contempt, that this decision is arrived 
 at by many, and, " pity being akin to love," I 
 have no words of resentment to utter against such. 
 But not only the " prosperity of a jest," but 
 the prosperity of any literary achievement, must 
 live in the ear and heart of the reader, as well as 
 of the writer ; and as I am convinced that Pope's 
 couplet is true, and no writer can prosper unless 
 approached by the reader " in the same spirit that 
 the author writ," I am venturing to ask in this 
 lecture how far some of us fail to enjoy Scott, as 
 our grandfathers and grandmothers enjoyed him,
 
 336 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 just because we have failed to act upon these 
 maxims, and demanding from Scott something 
 which he was not born to give us, thereby lose 
 the profit of the rare and splendid gifts with 
 which he zvas endowed. For this, I need not 
 say, is at the root of all that spurious self-deceiving 
 criticism everywhere current. " I can read Mere- 
 dith, and even Thackeray. Scott is not at all 
 like either, therefore I cannot read Scott. There- 
 fore Scott appears to me obsolete." Such is the 
 " simple syllogism " that seems so satisfactory, and 
 yet starves our literary sense. 
 
 Let us then, admitting that Scott is very 
 different from the idols in fiction worshipped to- 
 day, examine how Scott came to write novels 
 as he did. Every great writer has his pro- 
 genitors, and Scott is no exception. Happily, 
 I may take for granted that all my hearers 
 know the general facts of his life, and the order 
 of his works. In a direct line of literary suc- 
 cession Scott is the child of that poetic revival 
 that was in progress (say) from 1760 to 1800. 
 In this revival Percy's Reliques of English 
 Poetry (published in 1765) played an important 
 part, and Scott has left on record that when 
 he was a boy there was no book he studied 
 more, and with more pleasure and profit. Then 
 this new-born love of the romantic ballad led 
 him on to hunt out and collect all the like 
 treasures with which the border country between 
 Scotland and England was so rich — the Mins-
 
 SCOTT 337 
 
 trelsy of the Scottish Border. Then, in due course, 
 his own native gift and instinct for poetry led 
 him to practise his hand both in the short lyric 
 and in the sustained metrical narrative. His 
 romances in verse began in 1805 ; the particular 
 metre and method were prompted by a first sight 
 of Coleridge's splendid fragment " Christabel," as 
 Scott himself cheerfully admitted. And there is 
 nothing in that most attractive personality more 
 engaging than the noble modesty of the man, the 
 frankness and genuineness of his recognition of 
 others. He has told us in one of his prefaces to 
 the Waverley Novels how he came to tire, or to 
 fancy that his public would tire, of the vein he 
 had worked in Marmion, and the Lady of the 
 Lake, and the rest. Byron had risen, a new and 
 exciting poetic force, and at least against that 
 kind of power, and the spell of that temperament, 
 it was not in Scott to contend. It was then that 
 his thoughts turned to prose romance. He had 
 tried his hand years before on such a task and 
 had abandoned it. We all know that most fasci- 
 nating anecdote in literature of the discovery of 
 the fragment of Waverley (supposed to be lost) 
 in the drawer of the old desk where its author was 
 searching for fishing-tackle for a guest in the house. 
 The fragment was read over, the old impulse and 
 the old confidence returned, the story was com- 
 pleted — Waverley was published — and the direc- 
 tion of Scott's genius and the triumphs that followed 
 was determined for the remainder of his life. 
 VOL. I Z
 
 338 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 There were, I believe, three separate converging 
 influences that determined the form and quality 
 of Scott's romances. The one was the direct 
 poetic stimulus and education just pointed to. 
 Another was the influence of a school of prose- 
 romance already existing, of which Walpole's 
 Castle of ' Otranto (1765) may be regarded as the 
 starting-point. And following it, born of the 
 same growing appetite for the springs of marvel 
 and mystery in the weary pilgrims through the 
 droughty ways of the eighteenth century, came 
 Mrs. Radcliffe, with her Mysteries of UdolpJio and 
 Romances of the Forest, and all the " shockers " 
 which so fascinated and absorbed Catharine Mor- 
 land and her friend in Miss Austen's delightful 
 story. George Colman the elder neatly packed 
 into a single stanza the essence of the Rad- 
 cliffian romance : — 
 
 A novel, now, says Will, is nothing more 
 Than an old castle, and a creaking door, 
 
 A distant hovel. 
 Clanking of chains, a gallery, a light, 
 Old armour, and a phantom all in white, 
 
 And there's a novel ! 
 
 And the spell of this school of romance was a 
 distinct factor in the making of Walter Scott. It 
 was when Mrs. Radcliffe was in the maturity of 
 her powers that Scott conceived (to borrow his 
 own language) the desire to compose " a tale of 
 chivalry, which was to be in the style of the Castle 
 of Otranto, with plenty of Border characters and
 
 SCOTT 339 
 
 supernatural incidents." Of such a work Scott 
 actually wrote a portion. The fragment (it was 
 to have been called " Thomas the Rhymer ") is in 
 print, first published as a preface to Waver ley in 
 1829. But Scott was happily deterred from 
 completing it, and fifteen years elapsed before 
 he again essayed to join the band of writers of 
 fiction. Much had happened in the interval. 
 His love of mediaevalism, of the romantic and 
 the adventurous, had not declined, but he had 
 learned better to trust his own resources, his 
 own individuality, and to study the secrets of 
 the true novelist's success in other directions. 
 Miss Edgeworth had " swum into his ken." Her 
 pictures of humble life and manners in Ireland 
 had inspired him with the thought how worthy 
 would be the task of doing something of the kind 
 for the same rank and class among his own 
 countrymen. " If I could but hit Miss Edge- 
 worth's wonderful power of vivifying all her 
 persons, and making them live as beings in your 
 mind, I should not be afraid." So Scott wrote to 
 his friend and publisher, James Ballantyne. And 
 then there was another lady novelist who had 
 risen above the horizon, in her gifts and methods, 
 her culture and her reading, differing from Scott 
 toto ccelo, and yet who inspired in him the pro- 
 foundest admiration. In an often-quoted passage 
 he confesses that that young lady had a power of 
 reproducing the minutiae of character and manners 
 in her personages with a fidelity he could only
 
 34o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 admire, but could not hope to rival. " I can do," 
 he said, " the big bow-wow 1 style as well as any- 
 one, but this of Miss Austen's is denied me." 
 To this " bow-wow " style we must return. 
 
 Meantime, just consider with what an equip- 
 ment Scott came furnished to the task of story- 
 telling. A poet, practised in the taste and in the 
 art alike ; a wide, if not profound student of 
 history, and of archaeology and heraldry and all 
 the studies subsidiary to history ; an omnivorous 
 reader in almost every branch of the belles lettres 
 and the drama ; a man with as fine a sense of 
 the humorous as ever practised the story-teller's 
 craft ; a lover of nature — -of scenery and the 
 picturesque — as strong, where the rising school 
 of society novelists were weak, as he was weak 
 perhaps where they were strong. What a com- 
 bination of gifts and accomplishments was here, 
 and with it what invention and resource ; what 
 variety, considering the amount he produced, even 
 though the quality thinned and weakened towards 
 the end. Nor are these all the great qualities 
 and faculties that made Scott an all but instan- 
 taneous success when Waverley came to the world 
 to refresh and fortify the hungry reader — still 
 hungry after what Charles Lamb called " the 
 
 1 [The exact words are: — "That young lady has a talent for 
 describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life, 
 which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow- 
 wow strain I can do myself like any now going ; but the exquisite 
 touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters 
 interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is 
 denied me."]
 
 SCOTT 341 
 
 innutritious phantoms " of the Minerva Press. 
 Why is it that, after eighty years, the series of 
 fiction that began in such a triumph, and is still 
 regarded as a " classic," is found unreadable, some- 
 times genuinely, sometimes the reverse, by even 
 the educated fiction-reading public of to-day ? 
 
 Well, I think that the " big bow-wow " has 
 more than anything else been against Scott's 
 enduring, I do not say " popularity," as much as 
 appreciation by the critical, or would-be critical 
 public, in this much-changed and changing age. 
 And I believe that the use of the " bow-wow " 
 (it is his own frank and humorous description, 
 remember) was mainly due to the vast acquaint- 
 ance Scott had with the English drama, acted and 
 unacted. If he had one affection stronger than 
 another, in the realm of poetical imaginative 
 literature, it was for the drama. From a child he 
 had stored his memory with the plays of the 
 Elizabethan and Jacobean age. He must have 
 known Shakspeare almost by heart. His prose 
 writings, not merely his novels, are steeped in 
 references to Shakspeare's characters, in quota- 
 tions from him or allusions to him. Even when 
 writing on a purely technical and commercial 
 subject, such as the powers and prerogatives of 
 banking institutions in Scotland (I refer to the 
 letters of " Mungo Malagrowther "), you will find 
 hardly a page without some use made of an 
 incident or passage in Shakspeare ! I feel sure 
 indeed that it was mainly Scott who not only set
 
 342 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the fashion of habitually quoting Shakspeare early 
 in this century, but who materially contributed to 
 make Shakspeare familiarly known. Nor was his 
 interest in the drama confined to the Elizabethans. 
 He edited an " ancient " and a " modern " British 
 Drama, in six or eight goodly volumes, among the 
 multifarious work done for the booksellers. He 
 even tried writing drama, though without much 
 success. Almost all poets, and many who are 
 not poets, do the same thing, with a like inade- 
 quate result. The art of the dramatist is an art 
 by itself, and the greatest of romantic writers, 
 whether in verse or prose, may never possess it. 
 But the dramatic idea was always present to 
 Scott's mind. When he wanted an appropriate 
 motto for a new chapter of a novel and could not 
 recall one at the moment, he at once composed 
 one, and nine times out of ten it was, as you 
 know, from a supposititious drama, labelled Old 
 Play. Moreover, Scott's intimate acquaintance 
 with the drama was not exclusively that of the 
 student and reader. He knew and loved the 
 acted drama. He was contemporary with the 
 great Kemble family and the group of well- 
 trained actors that played with them. He knew 
 his Shakspeare, no doubt, largely from these, but 
 he would know another drama of somewhat in- 
 ferior kind — the old semi-classical tragedy, with 
 very few lines in it that would now bear quota- 
 tion, but which were yet quickened into something 
 like life by the genius of a Siddons. Scott had
 
 SCOTT 343 
 
 known what it was to be carried away by such 
 triumphs, and the " heroic " diction of this some- 
 what unreal atmosphere had for him the charm 
 of early association. And thus, it chanced, I 
 believe, that when Scott came to construct prose 
 romance, while in his dealing with the characters 
 and manners of his humbler countrymen, which 
 he knew so thoroughly, because from his youth he 
 had made them his companions and friends in his 
 country home and in his rambles through the 
 Border country, while, I say, in his dealings with 
 such, he drew from the life — following the fine 
 precedent of Fielding and Smollett as well as 
 his contemporary, Miss Edgeworth ; when he 
 came to the characters of higher life, and where 
 the affections and passions and ambitions of men 
 and women were to be acted out upon a loftier 
 stage, he turned, I believe, unconsciously to the 
 stage (in another sense). In portraying a Bailie 
 Nicol Jarvie, an Oldbuck, a Mucklebackit, an 
 Edie Ochiltree, an Andrew Fairservice, he drew 
 upon his memory and his observation. When he 
 came to his heroes and heroines — his kings and 
 queens, his warriors, his females in distress — he 
 was not, indeed (far from it), untrue to the primal 
 facts of human nature, but he clothed these char- 
 acters, by way of giving them dignity and distinc- 
 tion, with a language which is often curiously 
 in the conventional vein of the tragic or senti- 
 mental drama of his day. Mr. Puff, in the Critic^ 
 as you will remember, remarked that it was not
 
 344 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 his way to make " slavish distinctions," and give 
 the fine language only to the upper classes. But 
 this is very much what Scott did, and what he 
 had largely been accustomed to in the drama of 
 his day. And I think this was what he meant 
 by talking of the " big bow-wow " manner, and 
 what deters so many critics in these days, when 
 the romantic manner has so wholly changed and 
 new canons of taste are in operation, from adapting 
 themselves to the dramatic vein of Scott. 
 
 If I may be allowed a short digression, I would 
 point to a comparison in this respect between Scott 
 and another great humourist and novelist of this 
 century, who in other respects differs widely from 
 him — I mean Charles Dickens. When Dickens 
 began his astounding career as a writer of stories, 
 he too, like Scott, started from a close acquaint- 
 ance with the great novelists and essayists of the 
 previous century — Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith, 
 Addison, and the like. But outside this school of 
 writers Dickens's literary range (unlike Scott's) 
 was not large. He was, through the poverty of 
 his up -bringing, not a liberally educated man. 
 Scott came to his task with mind and memory 
 stored with a variety of reading at the command 
 of very few men, and hence his taste is rarely, if 
 ever, at fault. But Dickens, so different in this, 
 was (again like Scott) a passionate lover of the 
 drama — notably the acted drama, — and the con- 
 sequence was that as long as a story was, like 
 Pickivick, almost purely humorous and, moreover,
 
 SCOTT 345 
 
 had no plot — was in the main a mere sequence of 
 events and incidents — Dickens only evinced his 
 strong points, his almost matchless drollery and 
 observation of life. But as soon as ever, in the 
 books that followed — Nicholas Nickleby, for in- 
 stance, and Oliver Twist — it became necessary 
 to have a plot, something involving complexity, 
 with elements of tragedy and sentiment in it, the 
 influence upon Dickens of the drama (and very 
 largely of the transpontine drama) became 
 apparent. The story of Ralph Nickleby and 
 Smike, of Monk and Oliver Twist, are melo- 
 drama, and not very good melodrama. Dickens, 
 while he dearly loved the stage and all things 
 belonging to it, knew the weak side of it — its 
 foibles and conventionalities and traditions — as no 
 man ever knew or drew them before. But none 
 the less was the " idea " of the drama ever before 
 him, and determined his method of handling 
 certain themes and situations. And because 
 Dickens lacked a thousand gifts and attainments 
 that Scott possessed, the defects of taste and of 
 art are of course correspondingly great and 
 irritating. 
 
 But to return to Scott. The fact that he had 
 before him so often, as I conceive, the recollec- 
 tions of his dramatic ideals, involves more than 
 the fact that it led him to invent dialogue that 
 was sometimes more literary than lifelike. The 
 idea of the drama, if present to a writer of 
 romance, consciously or unconsciously affects his
 
 346 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 treatment of the larger passions and sentiments 
 of his characters. There is a convenient French 
 phrase, the " optique du theatre," which may be 
 explained as the particular treatment which not 
 only the scenery but the very gestures and the 
 language of the characters in a drama require, 
 in order to produce their designed effect upon 
 the spectator. This, arising of course from the 
 large stage and the distance from the eye of 
 the spectator, we are all familiar with in the 
 case of scenery. An elaborate stage landscape 
 seen from the boxes appears a perfect and 
 exquisite transcription of nature. You go behind 
 the scenes and approach the same work of art 
 and you are astonished at the rudeness and 
 coarseness of the painting — made up of smears and 
 splashes. Some of our most notable painters — a 
 Roberts and a Stanfield — worked for a great part 
 of their lives in both occupations. But if we 
 could pass directly from the beautiful scenery 
 painted by the latter for Ads and Galatea to 
 his pathetic picture (we all know so well) of the 
 " Abandoned " wreck, we should recognise at once 
 probably that Stanfield was no less of an artist 
 in one instance than the other, only that in the 
 one case he knew that his painting was to be seen 
 from (say) fifty yards off, and in the other from a 
 yard and a half! and he laid on his lines and his 
 colours accordingly. Thus, also (I believe), there 
 is an " optique du theatre " in prose romance, 
 and Scott, in the more highly pitched scenes and
 
 SCOTT 347 
 
 characters of his novels, used the method of the 
 theatre, the condition of which is that he must 
 not be looked at too closely. And I venture to 
 think that this method was used by him — true 
 poet, humourist, and man of the world as he was 
 — hoping, and not hoping in vain, as regarded at 
 least his contemporaries, that his readers would 
 accept this method, and adapt the focus of their 
 own point of view accordingly. I think he 
 recognised that there is some kind of character- 
 painting that needs to be looked at from a 
 distance, and another kind that admits of being held 
 almost close to the eye. He saw and genuinely ad- 
 mired the rare gifts of Miss Austen, her "exquisite 
 touch," as he said, " which renders commonplace 
 things and characters interesting from the truth 
 of their description." If I remember rightly, Miss 
 Austen herself speaks of her work as that of a 
 " miniature painter," and of herself as minutely 
 filling in her two square inches of ivory. To this 
 method Scott made no pretence. He envied the 
 power, and there was no occasion, for it is one's 
 own gift, not the absence of some one else's, that 
 determines our services to art, as they do our 
 services to our kind. 
 
 Of course, however, one objection to trusting 
 to the " optique du theatre " in fiction lies in 
 this, that as Scott passed from one class of 
 incident and character to another the focus had 
 continually to be changed. He wrote under the 
 spell of so many determinant influences that at
 
 348 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 one moment he was writing his old romances 
 (only this time in prose) ; at another he re- 
 membered a Siddons and a Kean, their very 
 voices and their looks ; at another, again, he was 
 drawing from close observation of middle-class 
 real life and his humble friends, and with the 
 humourist's boundless enjoyment of their wit and 
 humour, their shrewdness, and their " canniness." 
 The reader has, indeed, to hold the book at 
 different distances from his eye as he passes from 
 one to the other. But I think Scott expected, 
 and in the main was justified in expecting, from 
 his readers a certain measure of sympathetic 
 imagination responding to his own. He trusted 
 that every reader would bring something to the 
 reading, with a view to his enjoyment. It is 
 because in these latter days readers expect every- 
 thing to be done for them, and to give nothing 
 in return, that our criticisms upon past masters 
 of the literary world seem so often to miss their 
 mark. 
 
 To pass from the general to the particular, let 
 us remind ourselves of one of the most famous 
 and popular, as surely it is one of the greatest of 
 the Waverley series — I mean Rob Roy. There is 
 as much variety in this work as in any of the 
 purely Scottish novels. Think of the names that 
 spring to the memory at the sound of its title — 
 not first or chiefly, perhaps, the hero and his wife, 
 but the Osbaldistone family, Mr. Owen, the Bailie 
 Nicol Jarvie, Andrew Fairservice, the " Dougal
 
 SCOTT 349 
 
 Creature," and last, but most surely not least, Diana 
 Vernon, most winning, most lovable of all Scott's 
 heroines — to love whom, indeed, as was once said 
 of some one very different, is "a liberal education." 
 Think of the wide stretches of country (and what 
 country !) covered in this enchanting romance. 
 Think of the new and fresh and exhilarating effect 
 upon the readers of the year 1 8 1 8 (the romance 
 was the fourth in order from Waverley) of this 
 outdoor, breezy, health -breathing life, after the 
 dull and stale conventionalities of the Minerva 
 Press ; and if one traverses wide stretches of 
 country in the book, so one does of human character 
 and speech. It is a far cry, indeed, from Andrew 
 Fairservice to Helen MacGregor or to Rashleigh 
 Osbaldistone, and we must needs contemplate 
 them from unequal distances. We seem in a 
 different sphere of life and art, somehow, when 
 we recall the astute gardener at the Hall begging 
 Frank Osbaldistone's interest to get him a new- 
 situation where " he wad hear pure doctrine, and 
 where there was no leddy about the place to count 
 the apples " ; and pass from this to Rashleigh, 
 who is indeed rather too " steep " (as Mr. A. Lang 
 would say), too much i' the vein of Edward Fitz- 
 ball and the Surrey Theatre. So also may be, 
 for modern taste, the outlaw, with " his foot upon 
 his native heath, his name MacGregor " ; but I 
 think adverse criticism of Scott generally nowadays 
 fixes upon his heroes and heroines as his weakest 
 spot, and where he may most safely be disparaged
 
 350 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 in comparison with his successors. Well, Frank 
 Osbaldistone is, technically, rather than Rob Roy, 
 the hero of the story. He appears earliest upon 
 the scene, and the story ends with his marrying 
 the heroine. I admit the charge that this char- 
 acter is absolutely colourless. But then, by a 
 method known to lawyers as a " demurrer," while 
 I admit the charge, I retort, " What then ?" Was 
 it necessary for the conduct of the story, the pur- 
 pose of the writer, or the enjoyment of the reader, 
 that the particular character should be made any 
 more individual, any less shadowy, than it is? I 
 submit that it was not necessary, and that the 
 criticism is irrelevant. 
 
 There is nothing so easy and, I venture to 
 think, so fallacious as what I would call " criticism 
 by sampling." Scott, as a novelist, is nowadays 
 very much on his trial. Other romancers and 
 novelists, dealing with Scottish life and manners 
 past and present, have risen among us, and it was 
 inevitable perhaps that comparisons or contrasts 
 should be prevalent. Scott is, indeed, a name 
 still revered as a classic, and yet when faint and 
 timorous whispers were at first heard suggesting 
 "this or that new story-teller is really a great 
 advance upon Scott," others, one by one, concurred, 
 and now it is openly, without any bashfulness, 
 alleged in many quarters that Scott has been 
 surpassed even on his own ground. But the 
 methods by which this decision is arrived at seem 
 to partake of what I have just called " sampling."
 
 SCOTT 351 
 
 An admitted weak point in the elder writer is 
 called into court, and a strong point in the later 
 one is put side by side with it, and the cry goes 
 up to the cultured heavens, " Behold, how inferior 
 is this ' weak side ' to this ' strong one '" ; " behold, 
 how inferior is Walter Scott to Mr. A. or Mr. B. ! " 
 Foremost among such judgments against Scott is 
 the verdict on his style, and this is worth a few 
 moments' consideration. Style — the ordinary 
 narrative, descriptive style of Scott — can very 
 easily be found fault with, if by style is meant 
 a mode of writing carefully devised and elaborated. 
 Scott had no such style. He wrote far too quickly 
 and far too much for him to think of such things ; 
 and accordingly his style is not only devoid of 
 artistic premeditation, but it is often slovenly, and 
 now and then even ungrammatical. The veriest 
 neophyte in writing English — any well-instructed 
 sixth-form boy — could make merry over it. And 
 while we admit all this, there rings in our ears, by 
 way of warning, the stern voice of Buffon, who 
 first said that " the style is the man " ! — " Le style 
 c'est de l'homme." But I am not afraid of seeming 
 to speak disrespectfully of dignities in challenging 
 the application of this famous saying in the case 
 of Scott. For it really comes to this : what did 
 Buffon mean by " style " ? Did he mean a care- 
 fully concocted method of writing, adopted by a 
 writer in order to difference himself from other 
 men ? For that is really what " style " comes to, 
 as often practised or sought after. A young and
 
 352 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 new writer desires above all things that he should 
 attract at the outset by his style. He wishes — it 
 is a harmless and natural desire — to have the 
 credit of individuality. He thinks style will give 
 him this, and he seeks to master a style that will 
 impress. Sometimes, indeed, a new writer, mis- 
 trustful of his own power to be original, seeks to 
 win laurels by imitating authors already popular. 
 Thus a Macaulay and a Carlyle called into exist- 
 ence a whole brood of young disciples, who sought 
 to borrow their artifices in writing and to repro- 
 duce their manner. In the same way Tennyson 
 was answerable (quite innocently) for all those 
 who, having bought a packet of his particular 
 seed, sought to raise the same kind of bloom. 
 But this nowadays is recognised to be a cheap 
 and second-hand sort of proceeding, and accord- 
 ingly what the cookery-books used to call " another 
 way " is resorted to. Instead of adopting a style 
 like that of some one distinguished predecessor, 
 let us adopt a style (our young men seem to say) 
 as unlike as possible to anything ever used before. 
 Instead of a style used by somebody, we will invent 
 a style used by nobody. And many a young author 
 has tried this last plan, and has often met with a 
 most encouraging reception from the critics on his 
 first appearance on the strength of it. 
 
 Now, I would ask, when Buffon uttered his 
 saying, " The style is the man," did he point to 
 anything like this ? — did he refer to a man either 
 imitating, or labouring not to imitate, any other
 
 SCOTT 353 
 
 writer ? I am sure he did not ; he meant " style," 
 where the writer forgets both one and the other 
 ambition, but, writing unconsciously, reveals therein 
 his own individuality, with all its strength and 
 with all its weakness. There is something (as the 
 great Frenchman would have been the first to 
 avow) greater than style. It is the individual at 
 the back of the style which concerns us, and so far 
 as that individuality attracts or repels, to that 
 degree will the writing in question charm us, or 
 the reverse ! 
 
 And it is the felt presence of such individuality 
 in the case of Scott that (I submit) constitutes 
 the charm of what may still be called his " style." 
 Take any exception you like (and there are many 
 possible) to his literary English, and the charm is 
 unaffected. " Shatter " the style " as you will," 
 but the charm of the man — his mind, his nature, 
 his tastes, his education, all that constitutes a 
 " personality " — clings to it still. And this is 
 why it cannot be sound criticism to contrast two 
 men on the strength of the English that they 
 write. For the verdict of the true manhood and 
 womanhood of England will ultimately rest upon 
 qualities not to be identified with the skill and 
 elaboration of the written word. And thus it is 
 that in our efforts to give Scott his true place in 
 literature, or to account for his fame, it does not 
 do to try him by tests that are no tests. It is of 
 no avail or profit to take a square inch, or a square 
 foot, or even a square mile of him, and begin 
 
 VOL. I 2 A
 
 354 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 comparing the sample with even a corresponding 
 " sample " in some one else. I always think that 
 Dick Swiveller's observation, in reply to the little 
 " Marchioness," that beer cannot be " tasted in a 
 sip," is of wide literary application. Walter Scott 
 cannot be tasted and cannot be judged " in a sip." 
 But take him as a whole, if you will, and compare 
 him with the supposed rival as a ivhole. Or take 
 any single romance of his as a whole and compare 
 it with a corresponding romance of some one else's 
 as a whole, and you are something nearer to 
 understanding wherein Scott's overwhelming great- 
 ness consists. This novel of Rob Roy, for instance, 
 is surely a representative one in the splendid series 
 of the Scottish romances. It stands, perhaps with 
 some half-dozen others, among Scott's acknow- 
 ledged masterpieces. It is yet one more proof of 
 Scott's supremacy that, of any half-a-dozen persons 
 consulted, each would name a different one as his 
 favourite. But I am hardly wrong in naming 
 from among the purely Scottish stories Rob Roy, 
 Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, the Antiquary, 
 the Heart of Midlothian, the Bride of Lammer- 
 moor, as those that we should agree to as the most 
 powerful, characteristic, and memory-haunting of 
 his novels. The very names of these stories have 
 (to borrow Charles Lamb's expression) " a perfume 
 in the mention." But the stories themselves have 
 this " perfume," and that a perfume which never 
 fades ; they are like some magic pot-pourri, the 
 flavour of which is brought back to us on the
 
 SCOTT 355 
 
 instant when we recall the characters and the 
 situations. Keeping still to our first choice, Rob 
 Roy, I suppose there is no one of the series to 
 which more of all sorts of exceptions might not 
 be taken as to the inartistic qualities of the plot, 
 the improbabilities, the occasional " high-falutin," 
 the occasional melodrama, the shadowiness of 
 certain characters, and a dozen objections more, 
 equally well founded. 
 
 We will agree to all this, and yet again we ex- 
 claim, " What then?" These flaws and blemishes, 
 which to some of us seem hopelessly repellent, to 
 the majority of healthy-minded readers are as 
 nothing by the side of the indefeasible charm of 
 the story, the attractiveness of its leading char- 
 acters, the pathos, the romantic touch, the tran- 
 scendent humour. Those who have once come 
 under its spell desire to renew again and again 
 the experience, and a slight indisposition or other 
 enforced justification for rest and idleness is almost 
 welcomed as finding ample compensation in the 
 opportunity of reading yet once more this and 
 others of its companions. Does this really count 
 for nothing in the art and mystery of criticism ? 
 Is this really no proof of high excellence, and the 
 place of its author in the roll of literature ? Can 
 we seriously hesitate as to the answer ? The 
 element of permanence, of the charm of any writing 
 enduring beyond the fashion and taste of a day, 
 is surely one of the first elements in the constitu- 
 tion of what we call a classic. A classic is a work
 
 356 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 which has the quality of survival. And I am, of 
 course, aware that those who back some quite 
 new favourite in the race against Walter Scott 
 cannot, from the nature of the case, apply this test 
 to their own candidate. But the test is not 
 absolutely necessary. Those others that I have 
 sought to indicate are with us to apply. The 
 " happy-making " quality which those who love 
 him find in him, is it not all but unique in a 
 British writer of romance — " happy-making," so 
 utterly different a quality from the pleasure 
 excited by literary style, or cleverness of plot, the 
 excitement of some new and surprising sensation, 
 or even academic loftiness of sentiment and high 
 social purpose. We turn again and again to 
 that which in its treatment of human nature 
 draws us to certain persons, quickening in us, 
 through their example, love, and sympathy, and 
 admiration — which things, together with " hope," 
 says Wordsworth, are the things by which we 
 live. Heroine-drazving is not usually considered 
 Scott's forte ; but again I ask, who can recall the 
 character and the fortunes of Diana Vernon — the 
 personality of the creation, impressed upon us 
 even in despite of the occasional tragedy-language 
 put into her mouth, and the abnormal and unusual 
 situations into which the plot leads her — without 
 feeling that in one other author alone (need I say 
 I mean Shakspeare ?) can we look for a parallel 
 success, a parallel triumph ? Thomas Carlyle 
 often said unfortunate things — things which had
 
 SCOTT 357 
 
 better been " left unsaid," — but never, I think, one 
 more infelicitous and more misleading than when 
 he ventured the judgment that Shakspeare drew 
 his characters " from the heart outwards," and 
 that Scott drew them "from the costumes in- 
 wards." If this were approximately true of any 
 class of Scott's innumerable creations, it would be 
 of his heroes and heroines ; but certainly it is no 
 more true of Diana Vernon than it is of the 
 Bailie himself! 
 
 Very early, as you are aware, in the career of 
 the Waverley Novels, the stories were seized upon 
 by the playmakers of the day and turned into 
 dramas — in many cases, if not all, into melo- 
 dramas, in the original sense of that word, which 
 was of a drama intermingled with music, after the 
 fashion of that epoch. The first of the novels 
 thus " operated upon " was Guy Mannering, which 
 was produced in London in I 8 1 6, with music by 
 the eminent composer Henry Bishop. The man 
 of letters who arranged the libretto was Scott's 
 friend Daniel Terry (Scott used, you remember, 
 to joke about his stories as being " Terry-fied "), 
 and though Scott pleasantly affected to be an 
 unwilling recipient of the compliment, he clearly 
 did not seriously resent the tribute paid him, for 
 Lockhart tells us that Scott even assisted his 
 friend in the process of adaptation, and wrote up 
 certain portions of the dialogue. He even con- 
 tributed a charming lyric, " Oh slumber, my 
 Darling, thy Sire is a Knight," so that he could
 
 358 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 not have been seriously angry. And, indeed, 
 Scott, with his fine eye for all things dramatic 
 and theatrical, must have seen at once how in the 
 skeletons, so to speak, of many of his stories there 
 were great capabilities for effectiveness on the 
 stage. Here, again, I venture to think, the 
 parallel with Dickens comes in, and for the same 
 reasons as I have already indicated. All Dickens's 
 early novels were seized upon in like manner for 
 conversion into plays, and, as in the case of Scott, 
 not, I think, merely to take advantage of the 
 enormous popularity of the novels treated, but 
 because, although much that was most distinc- 
 tively Dickens inevitably disappeared in the pro- 
 cess, the residuum consisted often of effects which 
 are essentially intelligible and impressive on the 
 stage. So it was at least with Scott. After the 
 Guy Mannering experiment had proved successful 
 — with such opportunities as it gave for a clever 
 actress in Meg Merrilies, and a comic genius 
 (such as Liston) in Dominie Sampson — the rest 
 of the Scottish novels underwent the same treat- 
 ment. Not Terry alone, but other skilful play- 
 wrights of the day — Pocock, Dibdin, Fitzball — 
 took part in it, no doubt with varying degrees of 
 success, according to the varying adaptability of 
 the novels, but in some cases with marked and 
 enduring results. 
 
 It was my good fortune some dozen years 
 since, the year of the first Edinburgh Exhibition, 
 to witness a performance of Rob Roy in the chief
 
 SCOTT 359 
 
 theatre of that great metropolis. It is well known 
 that the pre-eminent success of this dramatic 
 version of Scott was due in the first instance to 
 the inimitable performance of the Bailie Nicol 
 Jarvie by the famous actor William Mackay, and 
 I take it that the continued popularity of this 
 special play down to the present hour is due to 
 the fame of this particular character, and to the 
 traditions of the actor's art and craft as to its 
 representation which have been handed on from 
 one actor to another during the last seventy years. 
 Most assuredly when I saw it the really exhilar- 
 ating feature of the whole performance was the 
 rendering of the part by a comedian whose very 
 name I forget. Indeed so much of the original 
 comedy was preserved in the play that it could 
 hardly fail to be delightful. But the stage 
 dialogue thought necessary for kings and chief- 
 tains in 1 8 17 or thereabouts falls but ludicrously 
 on the ear in 1898, and it must be confessed that 
 Rob Roy and Helen MacGregor in the drama are 
 but painfully suggestive of Mr. and Mrs. Crummies. 
 It is possible, indeed, that changes in the estimate 
 of Scott's value as a painter of life that this gen- 
 eration has witnessed have been brought about by 
 the stage treatment and the stage accentuation 
 of such elements in his dialogue as gave some 
 countenance to the charge of being theatrical, or 
 at least melodramatic. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, when a big man is drama- 
 tised by a little one, the main success, if achieved,
 
 360 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 will be found to lie in the memories that it con- 
 jures up of the original, and it is so with the 
 serious interest of Scott's novels when dramatised. 
 It must be admitted that Diana Vernon and 
 Frank Osbaldistone suffer severely in their treat- 
 ment in the play before us. When they appear 
 upon the scene, and immediately begin singing a 
 duet ; when Osbaldistone, on " the rocks, near 
 Aberfoil," begins : " I fear I have dismissed 
 my guide too early. Every step I have taken 
 since his departure renders my way to Aberfoil 
 more intricate. The twilight darkens rapidly, 
 and each succeeding moment the surrounding 
 objects wear a different feature, changeful as my 
 fortunes," and then proceeds to sing (like a tenor 
 in an English opera) — 
 
 O ! life is like a summer flower, 
 
 Blooming but to wither ; 
 O ! love is like an April hour, 
 
 Tears and smiles together — 
 
 why, I say, the reputation of Scott rather gains 
 than loses by the treatment, for the parody, as it 
 were, sends us back rejoicing to the original, the 
 language of which, by comparison with the act- 
 ing version, seems the very language of real life. 
 The inimitable scenes in which the Glasgow 
 Bailie finds himself in the uncongenial society 
 of military circles in the Highlands fare much 
 better in the play, for the original dialogue, or 
 some of it, survives, and there is little attempt
 
 SCOTT 361 
 
 by the playwright to improve that which is 
 absolutely unimprovable. 
 
 I am aware that I lay myself open to the 
 remark that I proposed in these lectures to 
 treat of poets and poetry, and that as yet I 
 have said nothing of the poetry of Scott in its 
 influence upon that art in the future, or of its 
 place in the literature of the time, and that I 
 have dealt only with his prose. But the fact 
 is that in the case of Scott it is impossible to 
 separate his romances in prose from his romances 
 in verse in estimating that influence. Or rather 
 it must be said that his place in the great revolu- 
 tion of the first quarter of this century was due 
 even more to Waverley and its successors than to 
 the poetry that preceded them. It was his prose 
 romances that sent a thrill and a wave of inspira- 
 tion through all Europe. It was from Germany 
 that the romantic impulse had first come to Scott 
 — from Burger, whose romantic legends Scott had 
 begun his career with translating, and thus setting 
 in circulation. But there is nothing more interest- 
 ing and instructive in the study of literature than 
 the way in which the torch is alternately lighted 
 and handed on through the confederacy of nations. 
 It was the English ballads in Percy's Rcliques 
 that first fired the German Burger. Then from 
 Germany the torch was handed back to Coleridge 
 and to Scott, and then, through these again, went 
 abroad to help the reaction in France against a 
 worn-out classicism, and to inspire a Dumas and
 
 362 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 a Hugo. But in his own country Scott was the 
 magician — the " Wizard," indeed, of the North — 
 who first separated the romantic from the super- 
 natural and the mystical, and made it touch earth 
 and illuminate its common growth, " its humblest 
 mirth and tears." But I am far from saying this 
 in disparagement of Scott's verse. It is quite 
 true that our taste for romantic-historical stories 
 told in metre has passed away, and that we no 
 longer, to our children's great loss, feed their 
 imaginations and their hearts early with the 
 delicious and haunting cadences of the Lay or 
 Marmion ; but this hardly affects the question. 
 It is common even, I believe, to question Scott's 
 title to be a poet of eminence at all ; and per- 
 haps those who accept this view have never 
 read, or have long forgotten, certain stanzas 
 which should, I think, decide the question once 
 for all :— 
 
 Ah ! County Guy, the hour is nigh, 
 
 The sun has left the lea, 
 The orange flower perfumes the bower, 
 
 The breeze is on the sea. 
 The lark, his lay who trilled all day, 
 
 Sits hushed his partner nigh ; 
 Breeze, bird, and flower confess the hour, 
 
 But where is County Guy ? 
 
 The village maid steals through the shade, 
 
 Her shepherd's suit to hear ; 
 To beauty shy, by lattice high, 
 
 Sings high-born cavalier.
 
 SCOTT 363 
 
 The star of love, all stars above, 
 
 Now reigns o'er earth and sky ; 
 And high and low the influence know — 
 
 But where is County Guy ? 
 
 If this does not place its author in the first rank 
 of romantic lyrists, what canons of literature can 
 we be following ? And what are we to say of 
 such fragments as he threw off, now and again, on 
 the spur of the moment to make a motto for a 
 chapter ? — 
 
 Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! 
 
 To all the sensual world proclaim, 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 
 Is worth an age without a name ! 
 
 What is the secret of the first-rate, which is 
 separated by such an infinite gulf from the second- 
 rate ? What is it that, after all deductions 
 that the microscopic eye and the fastidious taste 
 can suggest, keeps a writer like Scott in his place 
 among the really great poets and creative artists 
 of the world ? Why is it that, all allowance 
 made for defective art, for theatricalism, and the 
 like, his fame stands practically unaffected with 
 the multitude ? Well, this last word suggests a 
 reason, though it does not provide us with a 
 definition. The great men address great multi- 
 tudes. They do not write for a clique, despising 
 the crowd. They do not write for a clique, and 
 therefore they do not perish with the clique. The 
 writer who is human, and who writes for the 
 human, is the man who alone will live. Shak-
 
 364 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 speare and Scott, Burns and Wordsworth and 
 Tennyson, unlike as they are in all else, are alike 
 in this, and can never die. 
 
 And one likes to remember how the really 
 great ones in our literature, different in so much 
 (for one genius differs from another genius in 
 kind, not in degree), know one another, and are 
 thankful for one another. Scott had his weak- 
 nesses, and one at least led to that mighty downfall 
 which he gave his subsequent life to repair. But of 
 the jealousies of the little world he knew nothing. 
 How touching was his life- long admiration for 
 Wordsworth, whose poetic point of view might 
 have been thought all but unintelligible to 
 him. I know no passage in all fiction more 
 tender and beautiful than that in which the 
 Antiquary confides to his young friend Lovell why 
 he does not often visit one particular room at 
 Monkbarns {Antiquary, chapter x.) : . . . "I can- 
 not but be touched with the feeling so beauti- 
 fully expressed in a poem which I have heard 
 repeated : — 
 
 " My eyes are dim with childish tears, 
 My heart is idly stirred. 
 For the same sound is in my ears, 
 Which in those days I heard. 
 
 Thus fares it still in our decay, 
 
 And yet the wiser mind 
 Mourns less for what time takes away 
 
 Than what he leaves behind." 
 
 And nobly and faithfully did Wordsworth return
 
 SCOTT 365 
 
 such loyalty. Who can ever forget that last visit 
 of Wordsworth and his daughter to Abbotsford, 
 on the eve of Scott's visit to Naples in the vain 
 hope that the climate and the " sweet idleness " 
 of the South might prolong a life worn out with 
 toil and sorrow. They had been all together to 
 visit once again Newark Castle and the Yarrow ; 
 and Wordsworth writes : " On our return in the 
 afternoon we had to cross the Tweed directly 
 opposite Abbotsford. The wheels of our carriage 
 grated upon the pebbles in the bed of the stream 
 that there flows somewhat rapidly ; a rich but 
 sad light, of rather a purple than a golden hue, 
 was spread over the Eildon Hills at that moment, 
 and thinking it probable that it might be the last 
 time Sir Walter would cross the stream, I was 
 not a little moved, and expressed some of my 
 feelings in the sonnet : — 
 
 " A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain, 
 Nor of the setting sun's pathetic light 
 Engendered, hangs o'er Eildon's triple height : 
 Spirits of Power, assembled there, complain 
 For kindred Power, departing from their sight ; 
 While Tweed, best pleased in chanting a blithe strain, 
 Saddens his voice again, and yet again. 
 Lift up your hearts, ye Mourners ! for the might 
 Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes ; 
 Blessings and prayers, in nobler retinue 
 Than sceptred king or laurelled conqueror knows 
 Follow this wondrous Potentate. Be true, 
 Ye winds of ocean, and the midland sea, 
 Wafting your Charge to soft Parthenope ! " 
 
 So is it, let us be thankful, that the great spirits
 
 366 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of our literature, who stand with heads far above 
 the fleeting mists of earth, not often fail to recog- 
 nise kindred greatness. As " deep answers unto 
 deep," so " height answers unto height," and the 
 mighty ones who tower above the crowd know 
 one another from afar, and are not deceived.
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 
 
 THERE is no need to tell once again at length 
 the life-story of the eminent lady who lived so 
 many years in Hampstead, and will always be one 
 of its most justly honoured memories. Her niece, 
 Miss Lucy Aikin, her great-niece, Mrs. Le Breton, 
 and others, not forgetting Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, 
 have done worthy service in preserving her repu- 
 tation and her many claims to our admiration 
 and respect. We all remember that she was the 
 daughter of Dr. John Aikin, who was master of a 
 nonconformist academy at Warrington ; that her 
 father gave her a classical education as well as 
 making her mistress of modern languages ; but 
 that so modest was she as to her acquirements, 
 that it was not till she was thirty years of age, 
 in 1773, that she printed a volume of poems, and 
 in the same year a joint volume of essays with 
 her brother, John Aikin. In 1774 Anna Letitia 
 married a gentleman of French extraction, a Mr. 
 Rochemont Barbauld, son of a clergyman of the 
 Churchof England, who, however, having been placed 
 by his father as a pupil at the Warrington academy, 
 
 367
 
 3 68 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 " imbibed presbyterian opinions," and ultimately 
 became a unitarian minister. The Barbaulds 
 went to live in Suffolk, and established a school 
 in the village of Palgrave, which prospered ex- 
 ceedingly, and where Mrs. Barbauld wrote and 
 published her once popular Hymns in Prose for 
 Children. The school, after eleven years of 
 profitable success, was discontinued, and the 
 Barbaulds, after a year's foreign travel and a 
 year in London, settled in Hampstead, where Mr. 
 Barbauld took pupils, and became minister of the 
 Chapel on Rosslyn Hill, since rebuilt. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld's first impression of the beauty 
 of her new surroundings, then pure country, is 
 surely not to be omitted here. It is thus she 
 writes to her brother, then resident at Stoke 
 Newington : — 
 
 Hampstead is certainly the pleasantest village about 
 London. The mall of the place, a kind of terrace, 
 which they call Prospect Walk, commands a most 
 extensive and varied view over Middlesex and Berkshire, 
 in which is included, besides many inferior places, the 
 majestic Windsor and lofty Harrow, which last is so 
 conspicuously placed that you know King James called 
 it "God's visible Church upon Earth." Hampstead 
 and Highgate are mutually objects to each other, and 
 the road between them is delightfully pleasant, lying 
 along Lord Mansfield's fine woods, and the Earl of 
 Southampton's ferme ornee. Lady Mansfield and Lady 
 Southampton, I am told, are both admirable dairy- 
 women, and so jealous of each other's fame in that 
 particular, that they have had many heart burnings, and
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 369 
 
 have, once or twice, been very near a serious falling-out, 
 over the dispute which of them could make the 
 greatest quantity of butter from such a number of cows. 
 On observing the beautiful smoothness of the turf in 
 some of the fields about this place, I was told, the 
 gentleman to whom they belonged had them rolled 
 like a garden plot. 
 
 As we have no house, we are not visited, except by 
 those with whom we have connexions, but, few as they 
 are, they have filled our time with a continual round of 
 company, we have not been six days alone. This is a 
 matter I do not altogether wish, for they make very 
 long tea-drinking afternoons, and a whole long afternoon 
 is really a piece of life. However, they are very kind 
 and civil. I am trying to get a little company in a more 
 improving way, and have made a party with a young 
 lady to read Italian together. 
 
 I pity the young ladies of Hampstead ; there are 
 several very agreeable ones. One gentleman has five 
 tall marriageable daughters, and not a single young man 
 is to be seen in the place, but of widows and old maids 
 such a plenty. 
 
 " The Village of Hampstead," Mrs. Le Breton 
 adds, " was then even more secluded than its 
 distance from town seemed to warrant ; the hill 
 apparently being considered almost inaccessible." 
 In a diary kept by Mr. Barbauld, he frequently 
 speaks of being prevented from going to town by 
 the state of the roads ; and the passengers by the 
 stage coach were always required to walk up the 
 hill. Mrs. Barbauld in a letter to Dr. Aikin 
 describes the house they afterwards took as 
 " standing in the high road at the entrance of 
 
 VOL. I 2 B
 
 3 7o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the village quite surrounded by fields." Mrs. Le 
 Breton, writing in 1874, refers to the house as 
 still standing — " the one immediately above 
 Rosslyn Terrace," but I do not know if it has 
 survived another quarter of a century. 
 
 During the years at Hampstead, Mrs. Barbauld 
 collaborated with her brother, Dr. Aikin, in the 
 once popular Evenings at Home. The work 
 appeared in successive volumes, six in number, 
 between 1792 and 1795. Out of the ninety-nine 
 stories, allegories, dialogues, and schoolroom 
 dramas, contained in the work, only fourteen 
 were contributed by Mrs. Barbauld, and these 
 have not perhaps attained such distinction as some 
 by her brother. " Eyes and no Eyes," the most 
 famous of them all, was his, and the " Trans- 
 migrations of Indur." On the other hand, the 
 lady wrote " The Little Philosopher," and the two 
 dramatic scenes, dealing with Alfred the Great 
 in the neatherd's cottage, and King Canute 
 rebuking the flattery of his courtiers. How well 
 does the present writer recall the feeding of his 
 nascent histrionic ambitions in the title-roles of 
 these two engaging dramas ; and how the relentless 
 ocean was represented by a large blue dust-cloth, 
 beneath which two other denizens of the nursery 
 persistently rolled to produce the effect of the 
 stormy billows. 
 
 The book seems to be neglected by the present 
 generation of young people and their parents. 
 But it remains a classic, by virtue of the presence
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 371 
 
 in it of a poetic imagination, quite distinct from 
 that gift of invention which enabled Maria Edge- 
 worth to construct the admirable stories in the 
 Parents Assistant. Miss Edgeworth abounds in 
 moral good sense ; but the Aikins have a way of 
 striking a child's moral imagination which had no 
 counterpart in the rival caterers for the nursery 
 of their day. It was Dr. Aikin, I think, and not 
 his sister, who told of the little girl and her 
 mother walking through the city on a Sunday 
 morning, when the Anglican was coming out of 
 his church, the Quaker out of his meeting-house, 
 the Wesleyan and the Baptist out of their 
 respective chapels. "See, my girl," is the mother's 
 remark, " how mankind differ ! " By and by, a 
 poor wayfarer is struck down with a fit in the 
 open street. The Churchman takes his head in 
 his lap, the Dissenter fetches a doctor, the Friend 
 administers remedies, and all are alike keen to 
 succour the distressed. " See, my child," is the 
 mother's second comment, " how mankind agree." 
 If these admirable sketches are forgotten, and 
 the prose hymns no longer in vogue, there is still 
 a certainty that Mrs. Barbauld's name will endure 
 as a poetess, though it be, with many a reader, on 
 the strength of a single poem. Her poetical gift 
 was remarkable ; but she shared the fate of all 
 but the supreme poetical masters in the renais- 
 sance of the end of the eighteenth and opening 
 of the nineteenth century, in that she was 
 hampered by the traditions and the example of
 
 372 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the school that was passing away. She had style, 
 and a fine sense of metrical charm, but too often 
 she could not disengage herself from the bias of 
 certain poets whom she admired. Especially was 
 she fascinated by Collins, whose poems she edited; 
 and one of her own poems, the " Ode to Spring," 
 is closely modelled in metre and style, and even 
 in treatment, on the famous " Ode to Evening." 
 But when she succeeded in breaking away from 
 the old metres and the old diction, in which 
 thought had so long been cramped, she showed 
 that distinction and individuality which give 
 poetry a right to live. We all know the con- 
 cluding lines of her poem called " Life." The 
 poem has for motto the first line of the famous 
 apostrophe to the soul, attributed to the Emperor 
 Hadrian, " Animula, vagula, blandula," known up 
 to Mrs. Barbauld's time chiefly by Pope's tawdry 
 and theatrical paraphrase, "Vital spark of Heavenly 
 Flame." Mrs. Barbauld treats it in far nobler 
 and worthier fashion. The fate of her now famous 
 verses has been peculiar. They have survived on 
 the strength of the concluding stanza or strophe, 
 which is cited in most modern anthologies as if 
 it were the whole poem. But the introductory 
 and larger portion is in every way worthy of it, 
 and, moreover, separated from their context the 
 last lines lose their significance, so that I make 
 no apology for giving the poem in its entirety : — 
 
 Life ! I know not what thou art, 
 But know that thou and I must part ;
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 373 
 
 And when, or how, or where we met, 
 I own to me's a secret yet 
 But this I know, when thou art fled, 
 Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, 
 No clod so valueless shall be, 
 As all that then remains of me. 
 O whither, whither dost thou fly, 
 Where bend unseen thy trackless course, 
 
 And in this strange divorce, 
 Ah, tell where I must seek this compound I ? 
 
 To the vast ocean of empyreal flame, 
 From whence thy essence came, 
 Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed 
 From matter's base encumbering weed ? 
 Or dost thou, hid from sight, 
 Wait, like some spell-bound knight, 
 
 Through blank oblivious years th' appointed hour, 
 
 To break thy trance and reassume thy power ? 
 
 Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be ? 
 
 O say what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee. 
 
 Life ! We've been long together, 
 
 Through pleasant and through cloudy sveather ; 
 
 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear ; 
 
 Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 
 
 Then steal away, give little warning, 
 
 Choose thine own time ; 
 Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime 
 
 Bid me Good-morning. 
 
 Readers of Crabb Robinson's Diary will recall 
 the interesting anecdote connecting Mrs. Barbauld's 
 name with Wordsworth. Speaking of her collected 
 works, published after her death by her niece, 
 Crabb Robinson adds, " Among the poems is a 
 stanza on Life, written in extreme old age. It
 
 374 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 had delighted my sister, to whom I repeated it 
 on her deathbed. It was long after I gave these 
 works to Miss Wordsworth that her brother said, 
 1 Repeat me that stanza by Mrs. Barbauld.' I 
 did so. He made me repeat it again. And so 
 he learned it by heart. He was at the time walk- 
 ing in his sitting-room at Rydal, with his hands 
 behind him, and I heard him mutter to himself, 
 ' I am not in the habit of grudging people their 
 good things, but I wish I had written those lines.' " 
 The fame of this particular ode was posthumous. 
 The only one of her poems that attracted wide 
 attention in her lifetime was the once much 
 discussed poem, entitled " 1 8 1 I ," in which the 
 writer was impelled by what seemed the forlorn 
 condition of England, to despair of the future 
 fortunes of her country and predict its ruin. It 
 was indeed a dark hour the nation was passing 
 through in the great struggle with Napoleon. 
 Things were looking bad in the Peninsula, and 
 Napoleon's efforts to isolate England, by what 
 was called the continental system, seemed nearest 
 to success. Moreover, Mrs. Barbauld believed — 
 as to which she was a true prophet — in the future 
 greatness of the United States. She believed, 
 with Bishop Berkeley, from whom indeed she may 
 have drawn her inspiration, that 
 
 Westward the course of Empire takes its way, 
 
 and though she trusted still in the final pre- 
 dominance of an English - speaking nation, it
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 375 
 
 was to be one from another hemisphere. Mrs. 
 Barbauld was no " little Englander." It was no 
 " craven fear of being great " that prompted her 
 misgivings. Her admiration and affection for her 
 country are read through every line of her prophetic 
 despondency. It was rather a feminine timidity, 
 and that natural horror of bloodshed which 
 affects many persons when war has been long in 
 progress, and overcomes the healthier conviction 
 that a struggle for the world's good is best for 
 a nation whether the end be success or failure. 
 There was an element also, no doubt, of political 
 antipathy in the lines, which accounted for the 
 fierceness with which she was attacked by the 
 Party organs on the other side. The Quarterly 
 Review treated her with the characteristic insolence 
 that marked that early stage of literary warfare, 
 and caused her great and enduring pain. But no 
 great harm followed her predictions. Their most 
 noteworthy outcome was the curious incident that 
 Macaulay, in reviewing Ranke's History of the 
 Popes, predicted that the Roman Catholic Church 
 showed so little sign of decay, that it would or 
 might still exist " in undiminished vigour when 
 some traveller from New Zealand shall in the 
 midst of a vast solitude take his stand on a 
 broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
 ruins of St. Paul's." Macaulay's Essay was 
 written nearly thirty years later than Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld's poem, and there can be no doubt that his 
 prediction was a quite unconscious reminiscence
 
 376 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of Mrs. Barbauld ; she too had foretold the day 
 when some visitor, 
 
 From the Blue Mountains or Ontario's Lake, 
 
 might curiously trace the crumbling turrets and 
 the broken stairs of London, 
 
 And choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey 
 Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way. 
 
 Of Mrs. Barbauld's prose essays, mainly 
 didactic, and often clothed in fable or allegory, 
 little needs to be said save that they everywhere 
 show her moral good sense and insight. In some 
 matters, indeed, she would not satisfy the intellec- 
 tual yearnings of her sex in the present day as to 
 female culture. A proposal to start a ladies' 
 college, over which she should preside, found no 
 favour in her eyes. Although herself brought up 
 with some knowledge of the ancient classics, she 
 regarded herself as no rule for others — a kind of 
 " freak," as it were, and the mere creature of 
 circumstances. The duties of the home and the 
 sick-room seemed to her quite sufficient for the 
 average girl. But on the larger question of what 
 Education is, as distinguished from Instruction, 
 and as to those early years when the child is 
 influenced by what Thomas Hood wittily called 
 " Impressions before the Letters," her teaching 
 was admirably sound. Her Essay entitled " Educa- 
 tion," in which she warns the father that his 
 child's character will inevitably be formed by 
 what he sees and notes in the parent and in his
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 377 
 
 surroundings, and not by what the parent tells 
 him to be and do, involves counsel that can never 
 be obsolete. " You," she says, " that have toiled 
 during youth to set your son upon higher ground, 
 and to enable him to begin where you left off, do 
 not expect that son to be what you were — diligent, 
 modest, active, simple in his tastes, fertile in 
 resources. You have put him under quite a 
 different master. Poverty educated you, wealth 
 will educate him" 
 
 One other essay may be referred to because it 
 marks, almost pathetically, a breaking away from 
 the severely philosophical principles of her co- 
 religionists, and caused many weepings over her 
 defection. It is the one entitled " Thoughts on 
 the Devotional Taste." She here pleads for the 
 admission into the forms of Divine Worship of 
 some little element of the emotional and the 
 sentimental, and even has a word to say for that 
 offence which in the days following Wesley and 
 Whitefield had almost come, even with devout 
 Anglicans, to be regarded as the unpardonable 
 sin — that of enthusiasm. " Let us not," she finely 
 says, "be superstitiously afraid of superstition." 
 But her warning fell upon unprepared ground. 
 This very moderate and humble plea was so little 
 satisfactory to her niece and biographer, that Miss 
 Aikin found herself compelled to note that " the 
 piece betrays, it must be confessed, that propensity 
 to tread on dangerous ground which sometimes 
 appears an instinct of genius."
 
 373 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld's life was prosperous, as it was 
 useful and honoured. But she had one great 
 sorrow. Her marriage was surely one of affection, 
 but was hardly prudent. Mr. Barbauld had early 
 shown symptoms which pointed to brain-trouble, 
 in the form of a morbid irritability. Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld seems to have been forewarned of this, but 
 she flattered herself that her love and care would 
 overcome these tendencies. But they deepened 
 and darkened with years until they ended in 
 chronic mania. Moreover, she had no children, 
 and the little " Charles " of the Early Lessons was 
 an adopted nephew, the son of her brother, Dr. 
 Aikin. Yet the married life in its earlier days 
 had its bright and happy moments. Some verses 
 addressed to her husband, when just four years 
 had passed, I shall be forgiven for quoting, for 
 like all her poems, save one, they have passed out 
 of our ken, and even from the anthologies. The 
 date of the poem, which heads it, was probably 
 Mr. Barbauld's birthday. It was certainly not his 
 wife's, nor their wedding day. The lines show 
 the grace and playfulness and more than the 
 tenderness of Matthew Prior. 
 
 TO MR. BARBAULD 
 
 November 14, 1778 
 
 Come, clear thy studious looks awhile, 
 
 'Tis arrant treason now 
 
 To wear that moping brow 
 When I, thy empress, bid thee smile.
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 379 
 
 What though the fading year 
 
 One wreath will not afford 
 To grace the poet's hair, 
 
 Or deck the festal board ; 
 
 A thousand pretty ways we'll find 
 
 To mock old Winter's starving reign ; 
 
 We'll bid the violets spring again, 
 
 Bid rich poetic roses blow, 
 
 Peeping above his heaps of snow ; 
 
 We'll dress his withered cheeks in flowers, 
 
 And on his smooth bald head 
 
 Fantastic garlands bind : 
 
 Garlands which we will get 
 From the gay blooms of that immortal year, 
 
 Above the turning seasons set, 
 Where young ideas shoot in Fancy's sunny bowers. 
 
 A thousand pleasant arts we'll have 
 To add new feathers to the wings of Time, 
 And make him smoothly haste away : 
 
 We'll use him as our slave, 
 And when we please we'll bid him stay, 
 And clip his wings, and make him stop to view 
 Our studies, and our follies too ; 
 How sweet our follies are how high our fancies climb. 
 
 We'll little care what others do, 
 And where they go, and what they say ; 
 Our bliss, all inward and our own, 
 Would only tarnished be by being shown. 
 The talking restless world shall see, 
 Spite of the world we'll happy be ; 
 But none shall know 
 How much we're so, 
 Save only Love, and we. 
 
 The Barbaulds left Hampstead in 1802, and 
 removed to Stoke Newington in order to be near
 
 380 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 her brother, Dr. Aikin, who had given up his 
 London practice and settled there in 1798. Still 
 full of energy in spite of growing anxieties as to 
 her husband's health, she achieved an excellent 
 piece of editorial work in the Correspondence, with 
 Memoir, of Samuel Richardson. 
 
 Crabb Robinson first made her personal 
 acquaintance in 1805, an d describes her (she was 
 then in her sixty-third year) as bearing " the 
 remains of great personal beauty. She had a 
 brilliant complexion, light hair, blue eyes, a small 
 elegant figure, and her manners were very agree- 
 able, with something of the generation then 
 departing." Her husband ended " that long 
 disease, his life," in 1808. Her brother died in 
 1822, and she herself survived three years longer, 
 dying at the age of eighty-two, on the 9th of 
 March 1825. 
 
 A memorable and admirable woman was Anna 
 Letitia Barbauld. Within her limits she was many- 
 sided. She was a poetess with a real sense of 
 metrical charm, but with many indications that 
 she was held back by some invisible force from 
 pressing into the kingdom of poetry that was 
 growing up around her. She could never quite 
 resist the influences of the eighteenth century, 
 though the nineteenth was dawning at her feet. 
 Her theology, or the absence of any, causes her 
 devotional writings, hymns in prose or verse, to 
 strike us as tepid and ineffectual, in despite of 
 her truly reverential nature. She never was
 
 MRS. BARBAULD 381 
 
 wholly weaned from the idolatry of common- 
 sense, though she felt, as we have seen, the weak 
 side of the religious conceptions among which she 
 had grown up. But in an age of frivolity and 
 dissipation in high life, she set up noble standards 
 and lived by them herself, and more than one 
 generation of children has had reason to call her 
 blessed.
 
 THE CHILDREN'S BOOKS OF A 
 HUNDRED YEARS AGO 
 
 The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, not 
 many years since given for the first time to the 
 public, have afforded, I have no doubt, to many 
 a real delight, whether or no they came to the 
 book as readers and admirers of her numerous 
 works of fiction. Her charming personality — a 
 mind and nature so well balanced ; such good 
 sense, good feeling, kindliness, and humour ; all 
 exhibited on a stage of domestic life that must 
 have been full of difficulties and stumbling-blocks 
 — must always be a pleasant subject of con- 
 templation. But with all her achievements and 
 excellences it is doubtful if she ever did better 
 and more enduring work than in that once 
 famous series of children's books which too many 
 of us know only vaguely by name, as Rosamond, 
 Frank, Harry and Lucy, and the Parents Assistant. 
 If I had addressed such an audience as the 
 present thirty years ago, I might safely have 
 assumed that every educated person of middle 
 age had been " brought up " on some or other of 
 
 382
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 383 
 
 these books, and that the names of the chief 
 personages therein remained with them as " house- 
 hold words." But I grieve to say that often now 
 when I cite the once honoured names of Lazy 
 Lawrence and Simple Susan I am met with a 
 countenance of painful astonishment and non- 
 recognition. 
 
 The first volume of Maria Edgeworth's stories 
 for children (containing amongst others Rosamond 
 and the Purple Jar) appeared more than a 
 hundred years ago. Those who have read the 
 Life and Letters will remember the origin of 
 these stories. Miss Edgeworth had a father — an 
 amiable and admirable man of considerable ability 
 and untiring energy, to whom she was devoted, 
 and with reason, for (with slight abatements) he 
 was an excellent husband and father. His 
 conjugal history has a humorous side, as such 
 things are apt to have when the chief actor, like 
 Richard Lovell Edgeworth, is all but destitute of 
 a sense of humour. He was one of those pro- 
 foundly influenced by the writings of Jean-Jacques 
 Rousseau, and especially by the new ideas of 
 education propounded in that writer's Emile. 
 This work forms the key to Richard Edgeworth's 
 philosophy generally. He took his eldest son 
 abroad to bring him up after the doctrines of 
 Rousseau ; and when it was discovered that his 
 daughter Maria possessed the unmistakable gift 
 of narration (she had practised the art regularly 
 on her schoolfellows), it occurred to him how, in
 
 384 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the important work of education, stories about 
 young people for young people might be made 
 a means of teaching the coming generation the 
 great doctrines of the French reformer — an 
 education based, as he believed, on the principles 
 of common-sense and pure reason, inculcating 
 temperance, industry, justice, benevolence, and 
 home discipline as the road to all excellence and 
 happiness. And it was he, doubtless, in the first 
 instance, who suggested the methods and furnished 
 the moral topics of his daughter's little books. 
 In the earlier stories the father and daughter 
 were in fact partners, and the prefaces were often 
 signed with their joint initials. 
 
 The credit of originating the moral story for 
 the young cannot be claimed for Richard Lovell 
 Edge worth. The influence of the new ideas 
 which had been at work in France, culminating 
 in the French Revolution, had already borne fruit 
 widely in European societies ; and the influence 
 of Rousseau had distinctly affected children's 
 literature before the Edgeworths began to write. 
 Moral tales for the young were abundant at the 
 time the Edgeworths began their labours, and 
 had evidently been found to supply a real want. 
 In 1792, for instance, I find already in a third 
 edition a collection of stories translated from the 
 German of Salzmann, written with the express 
 purpose, as the preface announces, of giving birth 
 ' to what we call a good disposition in children " 
 — such good disposition meaning, in the writer's
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 385 
 
 view. " a superior degree of knowledge," whereby 
 the child, viewing in human example the sad 
 results of idleness or envy or dissipation, may 
 learn how to avoid these vices. No attempt in 
 preface or title-page is made to disguise the real 
 object of these short histories. Anything more 
 heartlessly unattractive than the title-page of 
 these volumes was assuredly never put into type 
 — " Elements of Morality for the Use of Children ; 
 with an introductory Address to Parents. Trans- 
 lated from the German of the Rev. C. G. Salz- 
 mann." Dreary and mawkish as are these histories 
 of naughty or erring children, they seem to have 
 been popular, and to have prompted many like 
 histories of native growth. Two years later, in 
 1794, appeared, by an estimable attorney's wife, 
 " The Two Cousins : a Moral Story for the use of 
 Young Persons, in which is exemplified the neces- 
 sity of Moderation and Justice to the attainment 
 of Happiness." In this story the country- bred 
 daughter, leading a life of obedience and content- 
 ment, is made to put to shame the spoiled fine- 
 lady cousin from town. Here the badge of 
 Rousseau is actually worn upon the sleeve by 
 the lady author, who introduces a passage in 
 French from that author and translates it into 
 English for the benefit of her readers. So that 
 Richard Lovell Edgeworth and his daughter were 
 only following a strong and proved leading of the 
 time in regarding moral fiction as an important 
 part of the education of children. Had the father 
 VOL. T 2 c
 
 386 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 been left to himself in this task, however moral 
 his aims, he might have been long forgotten, like 
 those dreary predecessors of which I have just 
 given samples. Happily, he allied himself with 
 a daughter whose invention, humour, and fancy 
 were to do so much to neutralise the depressing 
 rationality of her parent. One other influence 
 (nearer home) had been at work, in the first 
 instance, upon the father and daughter — that of 
 Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth's dearest 
 friend, and the ingenious author of Sandford and 
 Merton, a gentleman who might be defined as a 
 Rousseau run silly, and who " muddled " his exist- 
 ence generally by preposterous fads. He selected 
 two workhouse girls for education on Rousseau- 
 like principles, intending .to marry whichever 
 turned out best, and then married neither ; and 
 concluded his ill-starred existence by attempting 
 (for Nature's sake) to ride an unbroken colt without 
 saddle or bridle ! The first joint effort of the 
 father and daughter appeared in 1796 — a single 
 volume containing, amongst other stories, the 
 Purple Jar and Lazy Lawrence (Miss Edgeworth 
 afterwards separated these, placing the Purple Jar 
 in the Rosamond series, to which it clearly 
 belongs). Now the Purple Jar has attained a 
 notoriety which has perhaps unduly injured the 
 reputation of its many successors in the same 
 
 kind. 
 
 The Purple Jar reflects the parent Edge- 
 worth's lack of humour in its ghastliest shape.
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 387 
 
 You will remember how poor Rosamund, aged 
 seven, whose shoes are sadly out of repair, attracted 
 by the sight of a radiant vessel in a chemist's 
 window, and coveting its possession, is allowed by 
 her mother to choose (there being apparently only 
 one spare half-guinea available) between the jar 
 and a new pair of shoes, the mother being at the 
 time quite aware that the jar was a fraud, and 
 would not serve the purpose for which the child 
 desired it. In this story the hand of the father is 
 unmistakable — the most reprehensible mother 
 being simply Richard Lovell Edgeworth in petti- 
 coats. Her course of proceeding seemed to him 
 (we cannot doubt) a proud vindication of pure 
 reason against maudlin sentiment. There is a 
 couplet of Pope's which seems not inopportune : — 
 
 There are whom Heaven has blest with store of wit, 
 Yet need as much again to manage it. 
 
 This is equally true of that rarer faculty, common- 
 sense. Richard Lovell Edgeworth had a fair 
 share of it, only he sadly wanted at least as 
 much again to prevent its making a fool of itself. 
 However, happily, as time went on the genius 
 of the daughter proved too strong for the dis- 
 ciplinary theories of such a moral martinet as her 
 father. He fell out of the firm by degrees, or 
 became a sleeping partner ; and then followed in 
 due succession the admirable series, carefully 
 graduated according to the age of the intended 
 reader — the series relating the ways and the doings
 
 388 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of Frank and Robert, of Rosamond and Laura, of 
 Harry and Lucy, and that miscellaneous collection 
 known to us as the Parent's Assistant, including 
 those beloved friends of our childhood, Lazy Laiv- 
 rence and Simple Susan, Barring-out, the Basket 
 Woman, Waste not Want not, the Mimic, and 
 Old Poz. 
 
 Now we are given to understand by many- 
 critics of the present day that Maria Edgeworth 
 falls short of the highest merit as a story-teller 
 from the fact that her tales are so generally tales 
 " with a purpose." It has come to be regarded 
 almost as an axiom that fiction is necessarily 
 spoiled or lowered by being thus written ; that is 
 to say, to instil certain moral lessons, or to pro- 
 pagate certain opinions, or, in fact, with any 
 arriere pensee at all, except the claims of art (as 
 we understand it). You may amuse in your 
 fiction, and I need not add at the present juncture, 
 that you may horrify and disgust at your own 
 sweet will, but you must on no account edify. 
 And, in truth, if any prejudice has grown up in 
 these days against stories with a purpose, there 
 may be some excuse for it. When novels are so 
 often either sermons, or philosophical treatises, or 
 blue-books in disguise ; and when persons with no 
 genius and no humour, but only a good deal of 
 culture and some literary skill, compose these 
 works, we find them dreary reading, no doubt, 
 and straightway perhaps lay the blame of it upon 
 the subject, instead of upon the writer. When
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 389 
 
 the subject, or object, or both, are everything, no 
 wonder that boredom sets in early. For the 
 " purpose," under these circumstances, is always 
 protruding from under what ought to be character- 
 drawing, construction, humour, pathos, the very 
 flesh and blood which ought to constitute the real 
 body and the real attractiveness of the work. As 
 the sarcastic policeman observed to the cabman, 
 in John Leech's picture, " Hullo ! Cabby, I see 
 you're going to have a new 'orse." " A new 'oss ! 
 'ow do you mean ? " " Well, I see you've got the 
 framework ready ! " Yes, when the framework is 
 the chief thing visible, the result is indeed depress- 
 ing. But I take the real truth to be that every 
 novel or story, to be worth anything, is written 
 with a purpose — a purpose very clear and real in 
 the mind of the writer. I believe the biggest men 
 in fiction have always had a purpose, and cherished 
 it to the end — some moral or lesson which they 
 wished should be drawn, or, at least, felt. Depend 
 upon it, Henry Fielding and W. M. Thackeray 
 had lessons in their minds to teach — differing, 
 doubtless, according to the lights and the moral 
 standpoints of the writers — when they wrote Tom 
 Jones and Vanity Fair — only, they happened to 
 be Fielding and Thackeray, and the world has 
 been too grateful to think of complaining, or even 
 remarking, upon the circumstance. But indeed 
 it is rather late to begin complaining. From the 
 earliest ages of civilisation fiction and moral pur- 
 pose have gone hand-in-hand. The Parable, and
 
 39o LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 the Fable, and the Proverb, — what are these but 
 fiction with a purpose " written small," and what 
 does not the current morality of the world, yes, 
 and the conscience of the world, owe to these 
 homely ethical admonishers ? Well, let us admit 
 that Maria Edgeworth, especially at first, when 
 papa was always looking over her shoulder, did 
 write her purpose in letters too staring. Madame 
 de Stael, we are told, remarked about her, after 
 reading some of her Tales of Fashionable Life, 
 " Vraiment,Miss Edgeworth est digne de l'enthousi- 
 asme, mais elle se perd dans votre triste utilite." 
 The exceptional presence of the utilite in many of 
 her stories cannot be gainsaid; but in her children's 
 books, at least, we must utterly deny the tristesse. 
 How little {too little, some people might even 
 allege !) of the triste was there in that generous, 
 humorous, and happy nature. Call to mind that 
 inimitable and, in my judgment, to this day un- 
 rivalled collection of stories called by the unin- 
 viting name of the Parents Assistant. The 
 Parent's Friend Miss Edgeworth would have pre- 
 ferred, but her publisher was inexorable. I almost 
 fear (as I have said) that even the name of this 
 series is unknown to many middle-aged persons 
 in this day. And how great, I would remark, is 
 their loss. Every one of these stories, I am sure, 
 has a moral, but only here and there is it obtruded 
 at all. Now and again it appears in the title, and, 
 after all, what harm is done in giving the title of 
 Waste not Want not to that delightful narrative
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 391 
 
 of the two young archers, and the archery meet- 
 ing, and Lady Di ; and that noble piece of whip- 
 cord, "well saved," which appears from Ben's 
 pocket at the crisis of his fate to enable him to 
 make the triumphant shot. I am sure I have not 
 read this story for forty years, but the exhilaration 
 of it — the life, the breezy air of the downs, the 
 keen human interest of it — live for me to this day. 
 And what if it is " marred " by having a moral 
 purpose — and a maxim at the head of it ? After 
 all, it is but an early instance of that charming 
 thing the French call a Proverbe, — which a De 
 Musset has made immortal in " II ne faut jurer de 
 rien," or " On ne badine pas avec l'amour." I am 
 certain that as a child I was not offended or dis- 
 turbed by the admixture of this moral powder 
 with the currant jelly. Happily, children do not 
 regard their fiction from the standpoint of the 
 high-art critic ; but I am sure that in this story, 
 and in all of the same series, the invention and 
 the tact and the saving gift of humour of the 
 writer reduce all such objections to an absurdity. 
 
 How good they all are, how fresh and how 
 various, and how (surest test of all) they live in 
 the memory of those brought up among them— 
 if only for the blessed reason that such books in 
 our childhood were few and excellent, instead of 
 beine multitudinous and mediocre. I undertake 
 to say that those who remember these stories, 
 remember them not as names, but as pictures 
 indelibly impressed upon their imaginations, and
 
 392 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 as lessons which have become part of their stock 
 of moral wisdom. I remember, many years ago, 
 breakfasting in company with Dean Stanley at 
 the house of my friend and predecessor Dr. 
 Vaughan, and of setting him off at once by the 
 mention of Miss Edgeworth, whose story of 
 Simple Susan we straightway proceeded to 
 recall alternately in successive incidents — the 
 blind harper and his boy ; little Susan and 
 " take a poon, pig ! " Sir Arthur and the vulgar 
 attorney ; that ill-regulated Miss Bab and the 
 overturned bee-hive. And did not a greater 
 than Dean Stanley, Sir Walter Scott, remark of 
 the same touching history that when the boy 
 brought home Susan's pet lamb, " there was 
 nothing for it but to cry " ? 
 
 And to those who read and re-read these 
 stories, as children's books were read in those 
 days, how many others will remain ineffaceable 
 from memory ! The basket woman, with the 
 honest children who " skidded " the wheels of the 
 gentleman's coach and received a guinea instead 
 of a shilling by mistake ; Barring-out, with the 
 majestic Dr. Middleton, and Fisher with the bag 
 of twelve buns, in itself a delightful picture for the 
 childish imagination ; Tarleton, and the " False 
 Key," with that wicked cook who exchanged 
 " delicate cold turkey " for the cherry brandy of 
 the wicked butler ; and the exquisite story of 
 the Orp/ians, who earned so admirably the long- 
 desired boon of the " slated house." What variety
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 393 
 
 there was in these stories ; what freshness of 
 invention ; what a rare power of striking what 
 one may call the moral imagination ; and, unlike 
 the sermon of the sheriff's chaplain, so brief, and 
 yet never tedious ! 
 
 In my retrospect this evening, I am choosing 
 typical representatives of a change that was 
 coming over the child's library, and I have there- 
 fore to pass over many other interesting con- 
 tributions to it belonging to the period in 
 question. Some among the more elderly of my 
 readers will recall some such, and perhaps feel a 
 pang to find them unmentioned. Some will 
 remember the Looking-Glass for the Mind, which 
 was, however, French, not English, for it was a 
 translation of parts of Berquin's Ami des Enfans ; 
 and many, I hope, would regret if I did not 
 make even barest mention of Charles and Mary 
 Lamb's two memorable children's books, the 
 Tales from Shakspeare, and the Poetry for 
 Children. All generations since have owed a 
 mighty debt to the former of these ; and the 
 latter has a peculiar interest in that, as far as I 
 am aware, it was the first compliment ever paid 
 to children, in recognising that poetry (as dis- 
 tinguished from nursery rhymes) had a mission 
 for children at all. The verses of Charles and 
 Mary are of very varying degrees of merit {qua 
 poetry), but at their best they are full of sweet 
 felicities and ingenuities, and for those familiar 
 with earlier poets, are ever recalling the art of
 
 394 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Gay, or Prior, or Wither. And this circumstance 
 might well place them in a corner apart — a 
 pleasant back-water, away from the flowing 
 stream, were it not that the effect of that stream 
 is clearly shown in this, that these charming 
 fancies are (four-fifths of them) instructive, having 
 their moral written on their very sleeve — the 
 moral of meekness, and brotherly love, and 
 obedience and modesty ; the folly of envy, and 
 conceit, and thoughtless cruelty — all serving to 
 show how strongly the tide was setting in for 
 something more sober and more earnest than 
 the outgoing Tommy Trips and Goody Two- 
 Shoes of Mr. Newbery's large collection. But 
 as yet, for the most part, though children's 
 literature had reflected strongly the influence 
 of the new spirit, born of the French Revolution, 
 in the glorification of pure reason, and the 
 quickened sense of the dignity of human nature, 
 yet two other spirits already working elsewhere 
 had not as yet entered into and leavened that 
 literature. I mean the Evangelical movement, 
 which itself of course grew out of the work of 
 Wesley and his companions, and the new opening 
 of the eyes of Poetry to the light and life that 
 lives in a first-hand study of Nature — that move- 
 ment which came, not " at one stride " (like the 
 dark in the Ancient Mariner), but gradually and 
 untraceably, like the dissolving views of our 
 " Polytechnic " days — struggling against the 
 fetters of the old Popian diction in Thomson and
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 395 
 
 Cowper, appearing first in unsullied glory in 
 Burns, from whom in turn Wordsworth rejoiced 
 to have borrowed and carried on the torch, for 
 was it not Burns who taught his youth — 
 
 How verse may build a princely throne 
 On humble truth ! 
 
 But there was now to appear a writer, or 
 rather two writers, for children, on whom this 
 double influence of the poetic renascence of the 
 first years of the century and the spiritual re- 
 vival bequeathed by the Wesleys was to be 
 distinctly shown. I mean the two sisters, Ann 
 and Jane Taylor, authors of the Original Poems 
 for Infant Minds, the first series of which 
 appeared in 1804. The daughters of one Isaac 
 Taylor, an engraver, destined to be the father 
 of a second Isaac Taylor, of considerable mark 
 as theologian and thinker, the girls lived a 
 happy and profitable country life in Essex, with 
 " engraving " as their study, but literature as their 
 real bent, began writing verse for one of the many 
 popular annuals or " pocket-books " of that day, 
 and so attracted the attention of the publishers, 
 who proposed to them to write "moral songs" 
 or " easy poetry for young children." a Hence the 
 Original Poems just named ; — if to be judged by 
 their vitality, more remarkable than any classics 
 
 1 [The publishers' letter to Isaac Taylor, signed ' ' for self and 
 partner, very respectfully, Darton and Harvey," is given in the Intro- 
 duction to the Centenary edition of the Original Poems, edited by 
 E. V. Lucas (Wells Gardner, Darton and Co.).]
 
 396 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of the nursery yet mentioned — perhaps because 
 designed more exclusively for the nursery than 
 their predecessors, being for children of a tenderer 
 age. It is more difficult to suggest even plausible 
 fresh substitutes for such infantile lyrics as 
 " Twinkle, twinkle, little star ! " or " Thank you, 
 pretty cow, that made pleasant milk to soak my 
 bread," than for the Parent's Assistant of Miss 
 Edgeworth. To write well for the nursery — to 
 be simple and yet not mawkish, poetical and 
 yet enjoyable to the full by the child-mind — is 
 harder than to write for that next stage, the 
 schoolroom. And the Taylors had mastered 
 this rare and difficult art. Their own studies 
 had lain in the direction of simplicity and purity 
 of diction. Their poetic masters had been 
 Cowper (notably, I think), Wordsworth, and 
 Blake. Where, indeed, the two sisters are baldly 
 didactic, where the moral purpose forbids much 
 dedication to the unfettered muse, their merit 
 is simply that of brisk narrative, ending generally 
 in some startling Nemesis. The mad bull who 
 gored the little boy for asking questions, a legend 
 which that " little infidel " Paul Dombey demurred 
 to entertain (having based his objection, you re- 
 member, on the alleged lunacy of the bull), 
 appears too often in these poems as a Dais ex 
 machina. The little angler, who catches his own 
 chin on a hook in the kitchen dresser ; the 
 embryo dandy, who, being over-proud of his new 
 suit of clothes, comes to condign grief by contact
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 397 
 
 with the chimney-sweep, — these will be familiar 
 memories to us all. But such freaks as these 
 do not make the real essence of the book. It 
 is the little lyrics interspersed calling attention 
 to the common sights of heaven and earth, of 
 garden and field, of the varying seasons — lyrics 
 resembling Wordsworth, and even more re- 
 sembling Blake ; and though they never show 
 that touch of genius which now and again lifts 
 Blake into the highest heaven of poetic beauty, 
 they also are supremely sane, and never dwindle 
 away into mystic riddles. Listen to this, so 
 direct and so simple, so based on first-hand 
 observation of Nature : — 
 
 THE MICHAELMAS DAISY 
 
 I am very pale and dim 
 With my faint and bluish rim ; 
 Standing on my narrow stalk 
 By the littered gravel walk. 
 And the withered leaves aloft 
 Fall upon me very oft. 
 
 But I show my lonely head 
 When the other flowers are dead. 
 And you're even glad to spy 
 Such a homely thing as I ; 
 For I seem to smile, and say 
 " Summer is not quite away." 
 
 Wordsworth or Blake could not better that. 
 It is as perfect (which is saying much) as Lord 
 Tennyson's " What does little Birdie say, in his
 
 398 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 bed at break of day ? " And there are a dozen 
 others as perfect in feeling and sincerity, which 
 is but another way of saying perfect in " charm." 
 Here, too, we come upon the most famous of all 
 infantile lyrics, the stanzas to " My Mother," 
 obviously suggested by Cowper's to " My Mary," 
 and in their kind hardly less musical and tender. 
 
 Who fed me from her gentle breast, 
 And hushed me in her arms to rest, 
 And on my cheek sweet kisses prest ? 
 
 My Mother. 
 
 Doubtless in this poem, as in others, little 
 crudities of Calvinistic theology may just peep, 
 crocus-like, above the soil ; and doubtless in other 
 of the verses modern political economy might 
 suggest important modifications. An acquaint- 
 ance of mine was fond of suggesting that a new 
 edition of the Original Poems might be prepared 
 in more accord (for instance) with the principles 
 of the Charity Organisation Society, and flippantly 
 proposed that " little Ann and her mother," who 
 walked, you remember, in Cavendish Square, 
 should end their adventure thus — 
 
 ' I'm ashamed of you, Ann," said her parent so kind, 
 " Yon beggar is clearly a cheat ; 
 And your blue-books will tell you you ought to be fined 
 If e'er you give alms in the street." 
 
 But after all, perhaps, there is an order in a 
 child's education, and the duty and blessedness
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 399 
 
 of charity l may well precede the consideration 
 of how best to preserve its administration from 
 danger of abuse. The mainspring takes preced- 
 ence in importance of the regulator. In the 
 same way one should properly demur to a similar 
 proposed alteration in one of Ann Taylor's best 
 known Hymns for Infants. For I trust that as 
 yet we need not require such infants to return 
 thanks to Providence, 
 
 Who made them in post-Christian days, 
 A happy School-Board child. 
 
 However, this is a digression. What I wish 
 to point out with regard to Ann and Jane Taylor 
 is that they were no exception to the rule that 
 whenever " little things " (or what pass for such 
 with the unthinking) do the work intended for 
 them, and thus live in men's memory and affection, 
 it is because their authors come to the task from 
 a higher ground. They do the little things so 
 well because they can do greater ones. There 
 was the true poetic feeling (rarest of all poetical 
 gifts) in these two women, besides that gift which 
 
 1 [But there is no lesson of charity in this poem. Neither Ann nor 
 her mother proposes to relieve the beggar. Having overheard her 
 pitiful story the mother moralises as follows : — 
 
 This poor little beggar is hungry and cold, 
 
 No mother awaits her return ; 
 And while such an object as this you behold, 
 
 Your heart should with gratitude burn. 
 
 Your house and its comforts, your food and your friends 
 
 "lis favour in God to confer ; 
 Have you any claim to the bounty He sends? 
 
 Who makes you to differ from her? ]
 
 4 oo LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 so often goes with it, the saving sense of humour. 
 I wonder if many of my hearers ever even heard 
 of the " Squire's Pew " of Jane Taylor, a poem 
 which Archbishop Trench (an excellent critic) 
 did not disdain to include in his anthology, the 
 Household Book of English Poetry. The thought 
 is the old, old thought of the transitoriness of 
 human life, and the pathos of its contrast with 
 the old, old surroundings — the subject, that is to 
 say, is as hackneyed as that of Gray's Elegy — 
 and though the writer has no command of Gray's 
 magic, she has got the atmosphere and the tone, 
 the " feeling " in a word, which is the secret of all 
 charm. 
 
 A slanting ray of evening light 
 
 Shoots through the yellow pane — 
 
 It makes the faded crimson bright, 
 And gilds the fringe again ; 
 
 The window's gothic framework falls 
 
 In oblique shadows on the walls. 
 
 And since those trappings first were new 
 
 How many a cloudless day, 
 To rob the velvet of its hue, 
 
 Has come, and passed away ! 
 How many a setting sun hath made 
 That curious lattice-work of shade ! 
 
 And then the poetess speaks of the courtly 
 knight and his family who worshipped there 
 " when the First James was King," and now they 
 are to be seen only in the sculptured effigies, in 
 " marble hard and cold " —
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 401 
 
 Outstretched together are exprest 
 
 He and my lady fair, 
 With hands uplifted on the breast 
 
 In attitude of prayer : 
 Long-visaged, clad in armour, he — 
 With ruffled arm and bodice, she. 
 
 Set forth in order as they died 
 Their numerous offspring bend, 
 
 Devoutly kneeling side by side 
 As if they did intend 
 
 For past omissions to atone 
 
 By saying endless prayers in stone. 
 
 How perfect is this in its kind — with that 
 perfection that never grows old, or old-fashioned ! 
 And unlike, radically unlike, as were those three 
 notable groups of writers for the young that I have 
 brought before you this evening, yet there is just 
 this supreme bond of union, that they were all 
 considerable people, outside the work of this 
 kind ; that they could boast of more than the 
 very best intentions, they brought something like 
 genius to their task — and because their work was 
 good, not merely " goody-goody," they impressed 
 themselves on the generation they wrote for, and 
 for many after it. 
 
 Two qualities, indeed, we have found common 
 to this group of writers ; — something of the poet's 
 imagination and creative power, and a strong 
 conviction working with it (which may fairly be 
 called " utilitarian ") that for minds and natures in 
 process of forming and training, the combination 
 VOL. I 2 D
 
 4 o2 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 of fiction or legend with moral teaching was 
 wholesome and necessary. Whether fervent 
 Dissenter or placid Deist, this was their common 
 conviction, and they wrote accordingly. Hundreds 
 and thousands of contemporaries and successors 
 followed suit, and doubtless a surfeit of these (and 
 when they are mawkish they are mawkish with 
 a vengeance !) has sickened nurseries and school- 
 rooms, and provoked clever writers (of very 
 different order of genius) to try to supply a 
 different literature for the schoolroom, which 
 shall at least not be "goody-goody." But here 
 we must not forget yet a third peculiarity in 
 our writers well worth noting. The striking 
 success of the Aikins, the Edgeworths, and 
 the Taylors was due largely, I think, to this 
 — that they wrote for the young without any 
 reservation, any arricre pensie whatever. There 
 is a story of Heinrich Heine that gives us a 
 useful parallel here. Heine used to say that 
 whenever a woman wrote a book (and of course 
 that was a rarer thing in his day than ours), 
 she wrote with one eye on her manuscript and 
 another on a man. He excepted (so he said) 
 the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who had only one 
 eye ! Now I would not have soiled my lips with 
 this very objectionable remark had it not supplied 
 me, as I have said, with just the image that I 
 want. The fault of some of the most famous 
 children's books of our time is that their clever 
 authors have written with one eye on the child
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 403 
 
 and the other on the groivn-np person — in fact, on 
 you and me ! I am not speaking now of those 
 beautiful tales about children, which are not 
 meant for their reading at all, I hope — such as 
 Miss Montgomery's Misunderstood, or the exquisite 
 sketches of child-life by the late Mrs. Ewing — 
 Jackanapes, and the Story of a Short Life, and 
 the rest. But I am thinking of such masterpieces 
 in their way as Charles Kingsley's Water-Babies, 
 and Mr. Dodgson's Alice in Wonderland. You 
 will not, I am certain, suspect me of questioning 
 the genius and the charm of such works ; but 
 however they may contain elements fitted to 
 engage the attention of the child, it is the grown- 
 up intellect and the groivn-up sense of humour 
 that alone is capable of enjoying them to the 
 full, or any degree near it. Even that delightful 
 humourist, and master of so many styles, whose 
 loss the whole English-speaking race is still 
 mourning, Robert Louis Stevenson, when he 
 writes his fascinating verses for children, has 
 still (it cannot be overlooked) his beaming eye 
 upon those who will enjoy his pleasant satire 
 at the child's expense. Curiously enough, both 
 he and Ann Taylor have written about the 
 " pretty cow." We all remember her first 
 stanza : — 
 
 Thank you, pretty cow, that made 
 Pleasant milk to soak my bread 
 Every day, and every night, 
 Warm and fresh and sweet and white.
 
 4 o 4 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 Now hear Louis Stevenson : — 
 
 The friendly cow, all red and white, 
 
 I love with all my heart — 
 She gives me cream with all her might 
 
 To eat with apple-tart. 
 
 Is there no arriere pensee here ? "She gives me 
 cream with all her might." Are we not sure, as 
 sure as if he had publicly confessed the fact, that 
 the gentle humourist was winking that other eye 
 of his at Mr. Sidney Colvin, and Mr. Andrew 
 Lane, and all whom he loved so well ? And 
 it is because (in my opinion, at least) burlesque, 
 and satire, and humour (of the intellectual sort) 
 are inestimable things, but their proper place 
 is later than the nursery and the schoolroom, 
 therefore I hold that the writers for children of 
 a hundred years ago did a work, and supplied a 
 want (which never grows old), which these far 
 cleverer and more brilliant writers do not supply. 
 Once more I say that I am sure you will not 
 suspect me of underrating the imaginative and the 
 fanciful and the playful, and even the humorous, 
 as elements (absolutely necessary elements) in the 
 education of the child. But there are various 
 kinds even of these things ; and we ought to 
 observe that natural order which we respect with- 
 out question in other fields of intellectual or 
 aesthetic training. We do not feed our poetical 
 youth upon Browning and Shelley before they 
 have formed an ear and a taste upon Scott and
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 405 
 
 Gray and Goldsmith ; we do not let our young 
 pianists tackle Brahms and Liszt till their ears 
 have been well saturated with the jocund Haydn 
 and the pellucid Mozart. And therefore, after a 
 hundred years, I devoutly wish Miss Edgeworth 
 and Mrs. Barbauld could be restored to our 
 nursery book -shelves. Mammas have indeed 
 said to me sometimes, " My children will not 
 look at Miss Edgeworth," and only good manners 
 have prevented my retorting, " Yes ! but what 
 had they been fed upon beforehand ? " for even 
 brown bread and butter is apt to be insipid after 
 a surfeit of chocolate -creams and hard -bake. 
 After the gaudy hot-pressed, profusely illustrated, 
 smartly bound children's books of to-day, a new 
 one every month, when each is just tasted and 
 then thrown away, it may be hard to make the 
 little patient believe that it is the few books, got 
 well into the system by reading over and over 
 again, that educate in any worthy sense. 
 
 No doubt in the season of the Rousseau 
 influence (all violent reactions having their silly 
 side) much nonsense was talked about the unfit- 
 ness of fairy tales, fables, and the like for the 
 young mind, as not bearing the test of Nature 
 and pure reasonableness. Rousseau himself (one 
 of whose chief defects was that of a sense of 
 humour) demurred to these as injurious to a 
 child's sense of truth. That fascinating and 
 forgotten humourist, the poet Cowper (himself 
 a distinct product of the Rousseau influence, on
 
 4 o6 LECTURES AND ESSAYS 
 
 its happier side of a fresh and first-hand con- 
 templation of man and nature), fortunately 
 possessed this missing sense of the ludicrous. 
 One of his own delightful fables is prefaced 
 
 thus : — 
 
 I will not ask Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
 
 If birds confabulate, or no. 
 
 'Tis clear that they were always able 
 
 To hold discourse, at least in fable ; 
 
 And e'en the child, who knows no better 
 
 Than to interpret by the letter 
 
 A story of a cock and bull, 
 
 Must have a most uncommon skull. 
 
 But I am afraid there were fanatics who for a 
 while lost the fine common-sense thus delight- 
 fully expressed ; and even dear Charles Lamb 
 and his sister were provoked by it into thinking 
 bitter thoughts of " Mrs. Barbauld's stuff," which 
 (Lamb wrote to Coleridge) had " banished all the 
 old classics of the nursery." But though Richard 
 Edgeworth may have wished to do this, certainly 
 Mrs. Barbauld did not ; and in Evenings at Home 
 there is abundant proof that no such pedantry 
 clung to the Aikins. And the pedantry, wherever 
 found, did not last, except perhaps among the 
 extremest puritans. The fads and follies of the 
 Rousseau school died away, and the good 
 remained, bearing admirable fruit for years to 
 come. Mr. John Morley, in his thoughtful 
 estimate of Rousseau's work and its influence, 
 finds that influence, in England at least, " not 
 very perceptible." I venture to differ here from
 
 CHILDREN'S BOOKS 407 
 
 Mr. Morley, in the way I have tried to show 
 this evening ; but I am entirely with him when 
 he says of Emile that it is one of the most 
 fertilising books in the history of literature ; and 
 that " of such books the worth resides less in the 
 parts than in the whole. It touched the deeper 
 things of character. It filled parents with a sense 
 of the dignity and moment of their task." 1 And 
 it is because I think that such trifles as the 
 pleasure -books of the nursery and schoolroom 
 (like the proverbial straw when thrown aloft) 
 show which way the wind blows in these fin-de- 
 siecle days, when character is left so much to take 
 care of itself, that I have hoped they were not 
 too trivial even for the distinguished audience 
 that gathers under this roof. 
 
 1 [Rousseau. By John Morley, ii. 248.] 
 
 END OF VOL. I 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clakk, Limited, Edinburgh.
 
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