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
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