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CRITICAL ESSAYS 
 
< f 
 
 IN THE 
 REPUBLIC OF LETTERS 
 
 BY W. MACNEILE DIXON 
 
 M.A., LL.B., LITT.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND 
 
 LITERATURE IN MASON COLLEGE 
 
 BIRMINGHAM 
 
 
 I 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
 1898 
 
.-** ;/:'. 
 
 Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
TO 
 
 THE REV. JOHN GWYNN, D.D., D.C.L. 
 
 REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN 
 
 WITH THE AFFECTIONATE REGARD 
 
 OF THE AUTHOR 
 
 -V '*' o ' * ■" 
 
 ?^'J »j> «7 ♦} ':> O 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD, , . 1 
 
 THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH, . . 32 
 
 THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES, , . .64- 
 
 THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH, . .119 
 
 THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL, . . . .166 
 
 XaAeTTo. TO. KaXd, ..... 203 
 
I have to acknowledge the kindness 
 of the Proprietors of The Quarterly 
 and Church Quarterly for permission 
 to reprint the papers in this volume 
 which have already appeared in 
 their Reviews 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 The king is dead: the great peers of the realm 
 poetic had passed away before him, and there is no 
 head found worthy of the consecrating oil.^ The 
 critical search-parties that went forth throughout 
 all the land have returned, and ^report that they 
 have failed to meet with a Saul who stands head 
 and shoulders above his brethren. Meanwhile dis- 
 affected persons murmur, and hint at the abolition 
 of the monarchy. Kingship is out of date, and we 
 must set up a poetic republic as we have set up a 
 republic of polite letters. To which it is replied 
 by others, that Nature, to whom we have still to 
 look for our supply of poets, goes about her work 
 in a way that renders futile a revolution with such 
 an end in view. It is said that she produces a poet 
 in the most unlikely spot, in the midst of what 
 appear to be hopelessly uncongenial and blighting 
 circumstances, and at periods incalculable even by 
 the acute physical scientist, who knows all about 
 her movements and designs. And when she has 
 1 Written in 1893. 
 
 A I 
 
THfi P'OETRr OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 produced him she straightway crowns him ; and 
 despite any efforts of the critics to discrown him 
 or crown another in his place, she never fails in 
 retaining the robe and sceptre for the man of 
 her own choice. And the moral is, that it is 
 desirable to discover, as early as may be in each 
 case, these favourites of Nature, and to set the 
 laurel upon their temples ; for it is best to be on 
 the side of Nature, seeing that here as elsewhere 
 she is invincible. 
 
 However these things be, some of the explorers 
 of these recent search-parties are angry because 
 there is no giant in Israel, and the poets of ordi- 
 nary stature have been mocked, and otherwise 
 severely handled. It is undoubtedly a grievous 
 thing that they are so many, and yet so diminutive 
 and unimpressive withal ; and the fact would in 
 the eyes of the desponding be significant of the 
 degeneracy of the age, if that degeneracy were not, 
 alas ! firmly established. The minor poet has 
 indeed always been as much the butt of ridicule 
 as the major poet has been the god — when once 
 his divinity is discovered — in whose honour temples 
 are built and incense-fires kept continually burning. 
 To attempt poetry, and to attain minor poetry, is 
 the unpardonable sin : — 
 
 ' Mediocribus esse poetis 
 Non cli^ non homines, non coucessere columnae,' 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 There would be small cause, however, to make a 
 present quarrel with the minor poets, were it not 
 that among them are the high-priests of culture, 
 and there is a suspicion abroad that the evangel 
 of culture, in which we trusted, shows signs of 
 hardening into an unexpansive dogma — into some 
 creed like that of ' art for art's sake,' and that its 
 apostles, in the very intensity of their zeal against 
 Philistinism, have themselves become short of sisrht 
 and dull of hearing. For the literature that 
 strengthens, or even gladdens, many of us have 
 been out of tune, and have given ear to the poets 
 of culture. Their bower serves as a retreat from 
 the ugly and wearying facts of life, and this 
 although their consolations are oftentimes with- 
 out hope. Nevertheless it is a pleasantly situated 
 bower. The air is delicate ; the moan of doves, 
 and song of nightingales, and ripple and gush of 
 rivulet and waterfall, are on the breeze, and the 
 poet himself makes sweet diversion for us on his lute 
 — it is the most exquisite of artistic performances. 
 But while we recline at ease in the gardens of 
 Boccaccio, the plague still continues to rage in 
 the city. This new Alexandrian school will not 
 serve the needs of humanity. It will not do to 
 divorce poetry from the people, to allow it to 
 become the possession of an aristocratic or an 
 exclusive class. In Elizabethan times, and at 
 
 3 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 other not unremarkable poetic epochs, the poet was 
 a man among men, who had no need to retire into 
 lifelong seclusion apart from his fellows to pay 
 court to his muse, and it was to the man in the 
 street that he made his appeal. Poetry is the 
 democratic art ; it will not do to leave it in the 
 hands of a haughtily exclusive guild of artificers. 
 And for another reason it must not be left in 
 their hands. Their songs, far from being of 
 Tyrtean strain, not only fail to rouse to war, but 
 they even console in defeat ; and such music is 
 not conducive to the health of the soul. Too 
 many have been the forces at work in the present 
 century whose resultant has powerfully shaken the 
 natural optimism which supports the human race. 
 Of some who tried courageously enough to accom- 
 modate themselves to the new economics, not a few 
 feel that they have taken shelter beneath a totter- 
 ing wall, for of the new economics we may ask, as 
 of the new creeds of Science, ' Art thou fairer than 
 thy many brethren, or stronger than thy fathers 
 with whom they sleep ? ' But the pessimistic tide 
 has run strongly in our days, and though the 
 creed of Pessimism is out of date, we are still in a 
 mood of discontent, oppressed by a sense of the 
 futility of life. To encourage this sense is easy — 
 to reconcile us, make us friends again with life, 
 this is a pressing need. We need 
 
 4 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ' One common wave of thought and joy, 
 Lifting" mankind again ' ; 
 
 and we want in poetry ' the rhythms of a courageous 
 and harmonious life." We want in it likewise not a 
 beauty which may be discovered by ' a certain acute 
 and honourable minority,' but a beauty more 
 affluent which shall illuminate the dull tracts of 
 our daily journeying with an unimagined light, so 
 that we may cross the threshold of the coming 
 century with a buoyant, not with a listless step. 
 
 To whom — if we accept Mr. Swinburne's law, 
 ' Nothing which leaves us depressed is a true work 
 of art ' — to whom are we to look for these rhythms, 
 for this beauty ? For the ideal City of the Future, 
 Plato's suggestion has not yet lost its force. An 
 intolerance of a certain order of poets is to be 
 apprehended. We who are not poets may yet 
 have reason to congratulate ourselves that we have 
 declined to walk without due caution in their 
 narrow footsteps, for we anticipate that there 
 come evil days for the musicians in a minor key 
 who now find favour amono; us : — 
 
 ' We are not sure of sorrow^ 
 
 And joy was never sure^ 
 To-day will die to-morrow ; 
 
 Time stoops to no man's lure : 
 And love grown faint and fretful^ 
 With lips but half regretful 
 Sighsj and with eyes forgetful 
 
 Weeps that no loves endure.' 
 
 5 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 When a poet who writes in this strain presents 
 himself at the august court of the twentieth century, 
 it may hap that he will be treated as Plato recom- 
 mended : — 
 
 'When one of these makes a proposal to exhibit 
 himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship 
 him as a sweet and holy and worshipful being ; but we 
 must also inform him that there is no place for such as 
 he in our state — the law will not allow them. And so, 
 when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a 
 garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away 
 to another city. For we mean to employ for our soul's 
 health the rougher and severer poet, who will imitate 
 the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those 
 models which we prescribed at first when we began 
 the education of our soldiers.' 
 
 But the future will be sufficient for itself. Mean- 
 time it is out of place, perhaps, to rail at the 
 poetry of culture until some other and better wares 
 are offered us. In literature, as in life, the gifts of 
 fortune are to be received with thankfulness, be 
 they small or great. And if we get little but fine 
 jewel-work from his successors, from Arnold, the 
 first poet of culture, the ' prophet of culture,' as he 
 has been ironically styled, we have been the reci- 
 pients of a truly rich gift ; and to him our gratitude 
 will be as lasting as it is pure — to him who was the 
 chief poet of the autumnal season of this century, 
 
 6 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 the time of the falling of the leaf and the withering 
 of the flower of faith. 
 
 With the publication of The Princess, Alfred 
 Tennyson became the acknowledged representative 
 of his age in poetry. But it is the Tennyson of 
 the early poems, not the Tennyson of the Idylls 
 of the King, who represents the prevailing tone, 
 the prevailing opinions, of his time. In his later 
 years Tennyson did not give himself openly and 
 freely to the predominant current of ideas ; he 
 held back, and finally his influence became one 
 making against the predominant current. He 
 came to represent the Conservative party, w^hich 
 clung to its cherished beliefs and traditions ; to 
 what w-e may call the Broad Church party, which, 
 while it acknowledged the authority of Science in 
 its own sphere of work, and the general truth of 
 its teaching, refused to see in that teaching any 
 reason for the abandonment of the old religious 
 position. Tennyson came to be the spokesman of 
 a section that was not the progressive section, but 
 opposed to it — which believed that the latter had 
 gone too far. His mental attitude was that of 
 the men w^ho held that if the old faiths were to 
 live with the new they must be shown to be in 
 harmony ; that at first sight they did not seem 
 likely to harmonise, and that an exercise of faith 
 might be necessary — eventually it came to be im- 
 
 7 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 peratively necessary — for the believer in the creed 
 of Science who was likewise a believer in the creed 
 of the Churches. The consideration of the revela- 
 tions made by Science filled him at times with mis- 
 giving for the revelations of his religion. 
 
 Browning''s was quite another intellectual temper. 
 He hastened joyfully to embrace truths new and 
 old. There was little need to harmonise new with 
 old ; they could not fail to be in harmony if both 
 were indeed truths. One was as precious as the 
 other, and whether their meeting-place was within 
 human sight or not was a matter of little moment. 
 
 ^ On the earth the broken arcs, in the heaven the perfect 
 round,' 
 
 Matthew Arnold is by contrast the representative 
 poet of the later culture, where that culture parts 
 company with the old beliefs, feels compelled to do 
 so, and bids them a tearful farewell. 
 
 If a critic happens to share the opinions to 
 which Tennyson found it possible to remain faith- 
 ful, he will be apt to think of Arnold's poetical 
 work as the expression of a philosophical creed, 
 and as such to speak of its spiritual weakness. 
 On the other hand, a critic who belongs to Arnold's 
 own school of thought, in matters of religion and 
 art, will incline to dwell almost exclusively upon 
 the technical excellence of his art, the beauty of 
 
 8 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 its severely classic simplicity, the delicacy and 
 purity of its colour, the instinctive grace of its 
 rhythmic movement, its happy fidelity in rendering 
 English landscape. As typical of these two classes 
 of critics, let us take Mr. Hutton and i\Ir. Swin- 
 burne. It is interesting to notice that Mr. Hutton 
 and Mr. Swinburne both express regret — but for 
 very different reasons — that Arnold's poetry should 
 so constantly sound the note of dubiety regarding 
 things spiritual as they are represented in the creed 
 of Christendom. Mr. Hutton, observing, as he 
 could not easily fail to observe, the air of sadness 
 and disquiet betrayed by the poet in poems dealing 
 with the loss the soul has sustained in the removal 
 of its chief support and consolation, finds in these 
 poems (using the words of Hazlitt) ' the sweetness, 
 the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the 
 languor of death." Mr. Swinburne, too, regrets 
 that Arnold should so frequently have given utter- 
 ance to the pain of uncertainty in spiritual things. 
 ' This alone I find profitless and painful in his 
 work, this occasional habit of harking back and 
 loitering in mind among the sepulchres."' The 
 highest significance of Matthew Arnold's poetry 
 for Mr. Hutton lies in its confession of an unsatis- 
 fiable spiritual hunger ; its highest significance for 
 Mr. Swinburne lies in its classic excellence as an 
 art-product. ' And everywhere is the one ruling 
 
 9 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 and royal quality of classic work, an assured and 
 equal excellence of touch.' An impartial critic will 
 prefer to avoid the separation made here, the 
 separation of the two aspects that this, in common 
 with all poetry, presents — the interest of the 
 subject-matter, and the interest of the form. He 
 will be desirous of considering it without unduly 
 untwisting the composing strands — without either 
 (on the one hand) too loudly lamenting its weakness 
 as a moral or spiritual force, or (on the other hand) 
 neo-lectincr the nerve of motive and the nerve of 
 thouo^ht which are its real distinction. And he 
 will specially wish to avoid the latter error, 
 because it is one to which modern criticism is 
 prone, and because in the best poetry, in the 
 poetry of Sophocles, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the 
 form is not the chief care of the poet, but the 
 thought that moulds the form, the something that 
 is beyond the reach of the artist, who is merely a 
 finished workman in technique. 
 
 For this reason not Sohrah and Rustem, not 
 Balder Dead, nor any of the poems in the classical 
 manner of which Arnold was the advocate, seem to 
 me to possess the same interest — certainly not the 
 same significance — as the lyrics and elegiacs into 
 which ran the stream of his own inner life. He 
 was a poetic artist who studied in the classical 
 school and with consummate success; but if we 
 
 10 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 wish to find the man in the poetry, it is not to 
 these studies from the antique that we shall turn. 
 And one might go further and say that it is when 
 most himself and least a student of the Greek that 
 even in these poems he takes us captive. 
 
 ^ But the majestic river floated on, 
 Out of the mist and hum of that low land. 
 Into the frosty starlight, and there moved. 
 Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian waste. 
 Under the solitary moon :— he flowed 
 Right for the polar star, past Orgunje, 
 Brimming and bright and large : then sands begin 
 To hem his watery march, and dam his streams. 
 And split his currents ; that for many a league 
 The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along 
 Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles — 
 Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had 
 In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere, 
 A foiled circuitous wanderer — till at last 
 The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide 
 His luminous home of waters opens, bright 
 And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars 
 Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.' 
 
 Is there not suggested here a pathos other than 
 that declared ? It is not Oxus only that is a ' foiled 
 circuitous wanderer ' ; it is not for Oxus alone that 
 there waits the quiet of a 'home of waters,' 
 tranquil, infinite. Who wdll fail to recognise the 
 prevailing mood of the poet who held that the 
 secret of life was peace, not joy ? 
 
 The biography of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, im- 
 
 II 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 presses itself upon the reader not only as the life- 
 record of a scholar and noble gentleman but also 
 of a thinker, before whose clearness of vision and 
 steadiness of aim the intellectual difficulties of his 
 time seemed to vanish away. England has pos- 
 sessed among her family of brilliant sons during 
 the present century many of more commanding 
 genius and more splendid gifts ; perhaps none 
 whose intellectual sanity more nearly approached 
 the ideal, or whose serene cheerfulness was so 
 admirable. Upon his mind the pressure of pro- 
 blems which disturbed his contemporaries seemed 
 to have no bewildering effect, for, as he himself 
 said, in presence of an insoluble difficulty his mind 
 reposed as tranquilly as in possession of a demon- 
 strated truth. His moral life was at no hour 
 troubled by the suspicion that the struggle cannot 
 avail us, that there is some incurable disease which 
 baffles, and will ever continue to baffle, the most 
 cunning physicians : a germ of evil, the source of 
 all irremediable disorders in the universe as it 
 exists. Or if, indeed, the spectres of the mind did 
 trouble him, they had no power over his spirit to 
 sap its enthusiasm. 
 
 ' If, in the paths of the world, 
 Stones might have wounded thy feet^ 
 Toil or dejection have tried 
 Thy spirit, of that we saw 
 
 12 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Nothing — to us thou wast still 
 Cheerful and helpful and firm ! 
 Therefore to thee it was given 
 Many to save with thyself ; 
 And at the end of the day, 
 O faithful Shepherd, to come 
 Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.' 
 
 To the son of such a father, the temperament 
 that makes the student of life came by right of 
 birth. To live life and to study it are not identi- 
 cal processes : the living are many, the students of 
 life are few, and it is not perhaps too much to 
 say that they are of the elect of Nature, and that 
 no man can be rendered free of that company any 
 more than of the company of the poets save by 
 being born to it : nascHur non Jit. For every man, 
 as for every student of life, there are centres round 
 which his sympathies cluster; a natural bent of 
 mind is shown by the objects which attract and 
 retain sympathetic attention, and the natural 
 strength of a mind displays itself best at work 
 when concerned with these objects. To inquire 
 of any man, what are his interests ? is the shortest 
 way to an estimate of the man. To inquire of a 
 poet, what are his interests, his sympathies ? is 
 equally legitimate and efficacious as preliminary to 
 the foundation of any judgment of him, literary or 
 social. Only, in the latter case, the answer cannot 
 (as it may often in the former) be given in a word ; 
 
 13 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 for the sympathies of the poet are likely to be so 
 much wider, and at the same time so much more 
 delicate, that a lengthened inquiry has to be in- 
 stituted, and a more detailed chart drawn compiled 
 from a longer series of observations and more care- 
 ful soundings. In the drawing out of such a chart 
 in the present case, Arnold's prose must at times be 
 read side by side with his poetry. 
 
 In the forefront of Matthew Arnold's sympathies 
 stands, as it stood in the forefront of the sympathies 
 of the great Rugby schoolmaster and of nearly all 
 the great makers of English literature, his passion 
 for a better practice of life, a more widely diffused 
 rightness of conduct, founded upon self-knowledge 
 and self-control. ' A better practice of life "* — yes, 
 surely ; but to get at once at the root-principle, 
 it is not in any crusade against vices, general or 
 particular, that the amelioration of social conditions 
 is to be sought, but by the acquisition on the part 
 of each of a purified vision and a cleansed judgment. 
 
 ' It is of little moment,' we can imagine him say- 
 ing — using the words of Emerson, whose voice was 
 for Arnold (he tells us) in his Oxford days, ' a clear 
 and pure voice which, for my ear at any rate, 
 brought a strain as new and moving and unforget- 
 table as the strain of Newman or Carlyle or Goethe,' 
 — ' It is of little moment,' we can imagine him saying 
 with Emerson, ' that one or two or twenty errors of 
 
 14 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 our social system be corrected, but of much that the 
 man be in his senses. Society gains nothing whilst 
 a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate 
 things round him ; he has become tediously good 
 in some particular, but negligent or narrow in the 
 rest, and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgust- 
 ing result/ Arnold's enthusiasm for reform is not of 
 the popular order. With him the first question is. 
 How of your own temper ? — is it serene, under com- 
 plete control ? How of your own judgment ? — is it 
 capable of right decision ? are there no lurking 
 desires or bias which hamper its efficiency, its pre- 
 cision? The modern crusaders who ride forth in the 
 panoply of war to do battle for a religious or social 
 cause, raise such whirlwinds of dust that they obscure 
 the issues at stake, and the field on which they must 
 be tried — and that field is already obscure with a 
 darkness that may be felt : — 
 
 ' We are here as on a darkling plain 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flighty 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night. ' 
 
 Arnold's moral intensity is the more remarkable as 
 the dogmatic support that morals have had in the 
 past is no longer any support for him, but — as one 
 of Spinoza's propositions puts it, in words which 
 might slip with perfect aptness into one of Arnold's 
 own essays — ' even if we did not know that our mind 
 
 15 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 is eternal, we should still consider as of primary 
 importance piety and religion, and generally all 
 thincrs which we have shown to be attributable to 
 courage and hiffh-mindedness.' It is of vital moment 
 that the man be in his senses ; this serves as the 
 keystone to the philosophy of conduct built up for 
 himself and for all who care to join with him in the 
 effort to construct anew a dwelling for the heart 
 and spirit left houseless by the ruin of the home of 
 its ancestral traditions. 
 
 This moral intensity, which is in some special 
 degree the birthright of English authors, organises 
 and directs the search for ideas which shall be 
 applicable to conduct, available for life. Facts or 
 ideas which had no direct bearing upon action, 
 which were incapable (in his own phrase) of any 
 immediate ' relation with our sense for conduct or 
 our sense for beauty," for such facts or ideas he did 
 not care, nor greatly wish to cultivate any apprecia- 
 tion. Hence it was that only that side of philosophy 
 interested him which looked towards ethics, only 
 that side of science interested him of which the 
 facts were of incontrovertible social or moral service. 
 Towards speculative philosophy, as towards purely 
 abstract science, he preserved an attitude of lofty 
 indifference, now and then exchanged for that of a 
 thinly veiled ironical contempt. Here lies the true 
 secret of Spinoza's attraction for him, not easily 
 
 l6 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 missed by the reader of Arnold who has even a super- 
 ficial acquaintance with the work of the great Jewish 
 thinker. Spinoza cuts short the purely speculative 
 part of his philosophy, compresses the metaphysical 
 inquiry into brief space, and lays the emphasis, 
 the leal stress, on his ethical deductions, giving 
 to the whole system the title ' Ethics.' This 
 fact, and the fact that Spinoza's ethics are 
 neither more nor less than the ethics of Stoicism, 
 after the pattern of whose 'wise man"* (o ao(f)6<;) 
 Arnold desired to form himself; these, to which we 
 may add the admiration of a disciple for a master, 
 in that the Tractatus Theologico-PoUticus was the 
 first w^ork to apply the principles of rationalistic 
 interpretation to the Jewish Scriptures — these are 
 the sufficient reasons for the elevation of Spinoza 
 by Arnold to the supreme seat among philosophers. 
 The canonisation is in the characteristic dog-matic 
 vein. ' The lonely precursor of German philosophy, 
 he still shines when the light of his successors is 
 fading away ; they had celebrity, Spinoza has fame.' 
 In the judgment of one who cherished this slight 
 respect for the pure idea, we may anticipate that it 
 will go hard with Plato, and the verdict is a verifi- 
 cation of our conjecture. Here is a quotation made 
 with full approbation from Joubert : — ' Plato loses 
 himself in the void, but one sees the play of his 
 wings, one hears their rustle. ... It is good to 
 B 17 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 breathe his air, but not to live upon him.' For the 
 same reason Arnold was never in touch with Shelley, 
 that brilliant transgressor into the field of pure 
 abstractions. Shelley too was in the void (the figure 
 is borrowed from Joubert's), 'a beautiful and in- 
 effectual angel beating in the void his luminous 
 wings in vain.' Or again, Marcus Aurelius, had he 
 known the Christian writings, would have ' found in 
 the Gospel of St. John, which has leavened Christen- 
 dom so powerfully, too much Greek metaphysics, 
 too much gliosis ' ; and we may assume that the 
 real worth of the reflections of the Roman Emperor 
 lies in their practical efficacy, in their richness of 
 suggestion for the government of daily life. The 
 utilitarian spirit which has gone so far to determine 
 the English racial type, which has dominated the 
 counsels political, religious, and social of the nation, 
 and made the Englishman the most successful 
 practical man of affairs the world has ever seen, 
 has, nevertheless, severely circumscribed the sphere 
 of his mental energy. It has denied to the race, as 
 it denied to the Roman, any philosopher of the first 
 rank ; while in Berkeley despised Ireland was the 
 mother of a son who takes rank with Plato as a 
 primate in the hierarchy of thought as well as a 
 master of style. 
 
 ' All good poetry, all good literature, is a criticism 
 of life,' said Arnold ; and it is true of his own poetry 
 
 i8 
 
THE POETRY OF xMATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 that it is such. Whether there may or may not be 
 good literature other than this we need not stay to 
 question. The poetry of Matthew Arnold, genuine 
 poetry, is a criticism of life. Take as typical 
 perhaps the most perfect of his poems, the lyric 
 To Marguerite^ beginning 
 
 'Yes ! in the sea of life enisled.' 
 
 With what fidelity to human emotion does he here 
 express that sense of solitariness that accompanies 
 individuality, with what pathos invest it, with what 
 subtle beauty shape it to a ' lyrical cry ' ! But 
 critical it is, nevertheless ; a delineation of the 
 conditions of life, a judgment upon them. 
 
 ' Who ordered that their longing's fire 
 Should be^ as soon as kindled^ cooled? 
 A\'ho renders vain their deep desire } — 
 A God, a God, their severance ruled ! 
 And bade betwixt their shores to be 
 The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea.' 
 
 To the critic the universe presents itself as 
 a problem, or a series of problems ; and as long 
 as he can look on them impersonally, as he 
 might on a proposition in the pure mathematics, 
 he may exercise his intellect without feeling that 
 his will is in any degree strengthened or im- 
 paired, his sorrows deepened, or the fountains of 
 his joy dried up. But the critic who joins to 
 his critical faculty the temperament of the poet 
 
 19 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 is in no such happy case. He hangs upon 
 the answers which are returned to his anxious 
 questionings as upon words which, issuing from a 
 final tribunal, make for life or death. Born into a 
 critical period which had few fresh vital forces to 
 arouse or sustain it, Arnold, while he preserved his 
 zeal for high moral standards, became the prey of 
 an unquiet mind. The restless century of his birth 
 transformed him, sensitive as he was, too sensitive 
 to remain unimpressed by it. Had he been less of 
 a poet he might have escaped its influence ; but the 
 prevailing scepticism of the age, the atmosphere of 
 doubt, of uncertainty, of anxiety, of fever, took 
 from him the natural self-sufficingness, the inner 
 dependence, which of all the gifts of health he felt 
 to be the most precious. And throughout his 
 poetry, expressive as it is of the longing for the 
 spirit of the Greek life, a cheerful ' Stoic Epicurean 
 acceptance "* of things as they were, and a real delight 
 in the environment thus acquiesced in, with all its 
 longing for the spirit that was never sick or sorry — 
 throughout his poetry there are few indications of 
 the attainment of that serener air. When the note 
 of its profoundest conviction falls upon our ears, it 
 has far other sound : — 
 
 ' Ah love, let us be true 
 To one another, for the world which seems 
 To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
 So various, so beautiful, so new, 
 20 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Hath really neither joy^ nor love^ nor light, 
 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain, 
 And we are here as on a darkling plain 
 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight. 
 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night.' 
 
 In some sense a Greek born out of due season, 
 Arnold was yet far separated from the Greek 
 temper. May not a student go further and say 
 that the scholars who have discovered the classic 
 tone in his poetry have been misled by the classic 
 cast, the simplicity, of its diction, into the belief 
 that his kinship with the Greek is a close and vital 
 one ? The kinship is, I think, in reality superficial 
 and slight. What were the motives of the poetry 
 of the Attic stage, taking it as representative of 
 Greek poetry in general ? There is nothing more 
 distinctly marked in vEschylus, in Sophocles, or in 
 Euripides, than the simplicity and directness of the 
 central motive, and the absence of secondary 
 motives. There is nothing more characteristic of 
 Arnold's poetry, as of all modern poetry, than the 
 complexity of its motive — it is the battle-ground of 
 varied and conflicting emotions, thoughts, passions. 
 The analysis of the Weltschmerz, the world-pain 
 which broods over modern Hfe, and throws it into 
 shadow, beside which the Greek life is bright with 
 sunshine, this analysis is altogether foreign to 
 classic art. Take another point. Arnold turns to 
 Nature for a season of consolation. In her dispas- 
 
 21 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 sionate calm he finds an anodyne for the hurrying 
 fever of the soul — a conception so modern as to be 
 almost new to ourselves, and one which never 
 crossed the mind of a Greek poet, to whom Nature 
 (at most) supplies the landscape in his background 
 — a simple and slightly sketched landscape, while as 
 in real life the figures of men occupy and animate 
 the foreground. 
 
 One idea, however, a central idea in the developed 
 philosophy we owe to Greece, Arnold seems to 
 make his own. In his revolt from the intense indi- 
 vidualism of modern ethics, in his desire to render 
 up his own private, partial, and narrow life for the 
 universal, wide, and elemental movement of the 
 whole, to receive the spirit and join in the order of 
 the Cosmos, to enter thus into the great harmonic 
 progression of the living All, which is the interpre- 
 tation of the maxim ^rjv Kara (pvaiv — here he is 
 more of a Greek thinker than elsewhere : — 
 
 ' "Ah, once more/' I cried, "ye stars, ye waters, 
 On my heart your mighty charm renew ; 
 Still, still let me as I gaze upon you 
 Feel my soul becoming vast like you ! " 
 
 From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven. 
 
 Over the lit sea's unquiet way, 
 In the rustling night air came the answer, 
 
 " Wouldst thou be as these are ? Live as they." 
 
 " Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 
 Undistracted by the sights they see, 
 
 22 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 These demand not that the things without them 
 Yield them love, amusement^ sympathy. 
 
 "And with joy the stars perform their shinmg. 
 And the sea its long moon-silvered roll ; 
 For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
 All the fever of some differing soul." ' 
 
 A critic of life, he could not fail to recognise its 
 pathos, and the sense of its pathos intensified the 
 sympathy with which as fellow-suiFerer he thought 
 of those to whom the same dark suspicions had 
 come home, and the same ague of the mind with 
 its alternate chills and fever had been a close 
 companion ; and especially did his heart go out to 
 those fugitives from life who, no longer able to 
 endure the world^s tempestuous and treacherous 
 weather, had sought refuge in the eternal haven of 
 death, or in some unvisited bay of isolated seclusion. 
 It is impossible during a distracted youth to look 
 forward to age and think it a blessing, as Sophocles 
 thought it. Age, which the 'singer of sweet 
 Colonus* congratulated himself upon reaching, 
 because it delivered him from the impatient passions 
 that agitate early life, carrying it hither and thither 
 without fixity of purpose— in age Arnold puts no 
 confidence. To grow old is 
 
 ' To spend long days 
 And not once feel that we were ever young.' 
 
 He anticipates that when youth is past, its hurry- 
 
 23 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 ing fever, as he looks back upon it, will seem 
 generous fire, and he will awake to the conviction 
 that one thing only has been given 
 
 ^To youth and age in common — discontent.' 
 
 The want of accord, the estrangement between mind 
 and soul, has been the experience of some of the 
 rarest and loveliest characters whose birth-lot had 
 fallen in untoward places ; and with them Arnold 
 felt himself bound by indissoluble and sacred links 
 of moral and intellectual kinship. A great part of 
 his poetry is occupied with setting forth in his own 
 person, or in the persons of these brethren in spirit, 
 as in Ohermann or The Sick King at Bokhai'a, the 
 various phases of the sad estate in which the 
 soul — 
 
 ' A wanderer between two worlds — one dead^ 
 The other powerless to be born ' — 
 
 is never quite possessed. In such estate the pur- 
 suits of the world, the acquisition of power, the 
 happiness of love, are adjudged vain by one 
 
 ' Who needs not love and power to know 
 Love transient^ power an unreal show.' 
 
 The setting forth of this mood in the poetry of 
 Matthew Arnold is so elaborate and careful, so 
 marked by precision, that it will be preserved and 
 
 24 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 studied as a permanent record of the reign in this 
 century of a distinctive spirit — the poetry of 
 imaginative and spiritual regret. 
 
 The strain is one which could not in the nature 
 of things be heard in classic poetry with the 
 same piercing clearness and pathetic power. The 
 imperative questions respecting his destiny and 
 duties put with ever fresh insistence to each new 
 arrival on the world"'s stage, have a vastly more 
 incisive force when they come to one who has dwelt 
 for a season in restful quiet under the protecting 
 wings of a revealed religion, and rudely awaken 
 him from the sense of an everlasting security. 
 Neither to Greek nor to Roman, whose gods were 
 made in the likeness of men, and whose hopes foi; 
 the future were as dim as the shadow-land the poets 
 feigned for the ghosts of the departed, did the 
 spiritual questions come with such power to wound 
 as when for the child of a Christian race they bring 
 in their train an inextinguishable regret for a 
 beautiful and lost faith, and a yearning after the 
 sv;eet yet passionate summons to an ideal of life of 
 which that faith was the fostering parent. But 
 although in the life of the modern world there was 
 no task which a spirit such as Arnold's could take 
 upon it with genuine enthusiasm, to escape from the 
 life of ' the madman or the slave ' some effort was 
 imperative. The question comes to be asked, 
 
 25 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 What is to take the place of the sustaining faith 
 that is gone ? The question is answered, directly 
 in his prose, touched with emotion in his verse. 
 The Best may indeed be denied him; 'the joyful 
 emotion to make moral action perfect ' is no longer 
 possible ; it can be reached only by rare souls : but 
 the 'Second Best,' an impulse relatively inferior 
 indeed but nevertheless sustaining, may be his — 
 
 ' All impulse from the distance 
 Of liis deepest, best existence 
 To the words Hope, Light, Persistence 
 Strongly sets and truly burns.' 
 
 Thus bracing ourselves to endure we may renew 
 the battle, and as while the Palladium stood Troy 
 could not fall, so with us whose Palladium is the 
 soul : — 
 
 ' Then we shall rust in shade or shine in strife. 
 And fluctuate 'twixt blind hopes and blind despairs, 
 And fancy that we put forth all our life. 
 And never know how with the soul it fares. 
 
 Still doth the soul from its lone fastness high. 
 Upon our life a ruling effluence send. 
 And when it fails, fight as we will, we die ; 
 And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.' 
 
 This is the poetic statement of the ethics of a 
 humanised Stoicism. And it is to the Stoic philo- 
 sophers and to the Stoic code that the thinker 
 whose ethical fervour has not suffered eclipse, has 
 
 26 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 survived the parting from a dogmatic creed, and 
 whose loss of a divinely revealed religion only 
 intensifies his longing for a high-pitched scheme 
 of conduct — it is to Seneca, to Epictetus, and to 
 Marcus Aurelius, of all the philosophers the nearest 
 in spirit to the Christian saints, that he naturally 
 turns. Of the systems that claim no supernatural 
 sanction, Stoicism is the nearest akin to Christianity. 
 Its appeal to Arnold was necessarily powerful ; and 
 ]\Iarcus Aurelius is first favourite because he supplies 
 something of that ' very sentiment whence Christian 
 morality draws its best power.' Stoic morals touched 
 with sentiment will go far to support the traveller 
 through the weary ways of life ; and for its pains 
 he may find also certain consolations, remedies, 
 anodynes. Not that any of these will supply the 
 glow, the sense of security, the holy joy of the 
 saint, but they will serve to lift heart and mind 
 into a serener sphere of existence. These consola- 
 tions and remedies for the pains of life do not con- 
 sist in passionate effort such as that which Browning 
 counsels : — 
 
 ' Then welcome each rebuff 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough. 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 
 Be our joy three parts pain ! 
 Strive^ and hold cheap the strain ; 
 Learn^ nor account the pang ; dare^ never grudge the throe ! ' 
 
 Nor are they to be experienced, as with Tennyson, 
 
 27 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 in the contemplation of a blessed far-off consum- 
 mation towards which the whole creation moves. 
 Arnold felt that these consolations and remedies 
 were breathed from the dispassionate calm, the 
 orderly perfection and loveliness of Nature, that 
 they entered and for a little time gave ease to the 
 heart from the contemplation of the highest reaches 
 of human art, and that they were abundantly pre- 
 sent in the deliverance of his own soul in his poetry. 
 Various has been the teaching of the prophets of 
 the century : Carlyle's, a fire-eyed defiance of the 
 ' Everlasting No,' and a devotion to the work near- 
 est one's hand ; George Eliot's, a determined bracing 
 of the moral sinews though without hope or joy ; 
 Arnold's, that consolation may be derived from 
 Nature, from beauty, and from art. And the sub- 
 jects of his own poetry are thus determined. They 
 are such as in poetic treatment will best reheve his 
 own overstrained feelings, such as will 'ease his 
 wound's imperious anguish.' Thus it comes that, 
 take what form they may, his poems are transcripts 
 of his own emotional moods. Throughout his 
 poetry — to recall his own fine phrase spoken of 
 Byron, he bears ' the pageant of his bleeding heart.' 
 To escape from the enfeebling mood, he turns 
 to Nature. Take this from Empedodes on Etna, 
 when he passes from critical efforts to appraise and 
 weigh the value and the issues of existence, to bathe 
 
 28 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 his spirit in divine light and air, in the wells of 
 sovereign and unceasing beauty : — 
 
 ' Far, far from here^ 
 Tlie Adriatic breaks in a warm bay 
 Among tlie green Illyrian hills ; and there 
 The sunshine in the happy glens is fair. 
 And by the sea, and in the brakes 
 The grass is cool, the sea-side air 
 Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers 
 More sweet and virginal than ours.' 
 
 Of the class of poems in which he turns to Nature 
 for consolation, Thyrsis will serve as the best 
 example. Here the elegiac strain softly dies away 
 into the tender sweetness of the soothing music 
 that celebrates some morn in early June before the 
 roses and the longest day ; or the high midsummer 
 pomps, the roses that shine afar down the alleys, the 
 lattices jasmine-muffled : — 
 
 *■ So, some tempestuous morn in early June, 
 When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, 
 
 Before the roses and the longest day — 
 When garden-walks and all the grassy floor 
 
 \Vith blossoms red and white of fallen May 
 
 And chestnut flowers are strewn — 
 So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry 
 From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees 
 Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze : 
 The bloom is gone and with the bloom go I. 
 
 Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ? 
 Soon will the high midsummer pomps come on. 
 
 Soon will the musk carnations break and swell. 
 Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, 
 
 29 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Sweet William with his homely cottage smell. 
 
 And stocks in fragrant blow . 
 Roses that down the valleys shine afar, 
 
 And open jasmine-muffled lattices_5 
 And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, 
 And the full moon, and the white evening star. ' 
 
 Arnold's gospel according to Nature is not 
 Wordsworth's. While both poets are lovers of 
 Nature, and join in her matins and vespers, her 
 litanies, her festivals of spring and summer, they 
 worship her each in a different spirit. In no poem 
 of Arnold's is to be heard the pure note of joy ; he 
 is the poet of a nation's elegiac mood. The con- 
 solations of Nature that are to him so soothing, so 
 indispensable, are the whispers of her peace, the 
 hushing effluence of her calm ; while to Wordsworth 
 Nature is the source of rapture, of passionate delight, 
 of inexpressible thrills of j oyous ecstasy. To Arnold 
 she is the consoling mother whose gracious counten- 
 ance 4nd winning sympathy soothes, steals away 
 the sharpness of his pain. To Wordsworth she is 
 much more than this : his teacher, his constant 
 companion, sharer and source of joy as well as 
 friend. In the one case we have palliative remedies 
 for the fever of the mind ; in the other a power of 
 renovation and a stimulus, assistance in health as 
 well as in disease. Wordsworth's healing power 
 arises from this, that, like Shakespeare, he discovers 
 'a joy in widest commonalty spread,' and (what is 
 
 30 
 
THE POETRY OF MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 still harder to find) 'joys that spring out of human 
 sufFerinsr.' To become a Words worthian, one must 
 be born again ; to read the poetry of Arnold with 
 pleasure, we need not again become children. It 
 will soothe us in unrest for a time ; while if we learn 
 the secret of the elder poet, we shall enter into pos- 
 session of a peace that cannot be disturbed. 
 
 Of Arnold himself what shall we say as last 
 word ? How better or more truly can we think 
 of him than as he himself taught us to think of the 
 high-hearted Roman Emperor Avith whose inner life 
 of thought and feelino; he had so much in common ? 
 
 ' We see him just, wise, self-governed, tender, 
 thankful, blameless ; yet with all this, agitated, 
 stretching out his arms for something beyond — 
 
 Tendentemque manus ripae ulterioris amove.' 
 
 31 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 What distinguishes Mi\ Meredith among living 
 writers is not so much his possession of this or that 
 quality, the intensity and variety of his sympathies, 
 the power or peculiarity of his style : it is that in 
 an era of talent, in an era in which we may be said 
 to suffer from a plethora of talent, his work is so 
 unmistakably beyond the reach of talent, so far, 
 too, beyond the reach of labour added to ambition 
 and desire — it is so obviously the work of genius. 
 Readers of Mr. Meredith's novels long ago dis- 
 covered in him the man with the key to a new garden 
 of romance, which matched the best-loved of old, 
 to a new gallery in art, whose portraits might hang 
 unabashed beside those of the old masters. From a 
 little clan the readers of his prose have grown into 
 an army ; but as for the readers of his verse, these 
 may even now easily be numbered. Yet it is not 
 beyond possibility — though the Meredith of to- 
 day is indisputably the novelist — that the Meredith 
 of the twentieth century may be the poet. 'All 
 novels in every language,' said De Quincey, 'are 
 
 32 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 hurrying to decay' — a judgment not without a 
 germ of truth. Posterity, at all events, if one may 
 venture to predict the future from the present — 
 will possess a considerable body of literature of 
 its own, and will be necessarily impatient, as 
 the present generation is impatient, of surplusage 
 and bulk in the literature of the past; w^ill do 
 honour to the works of justest proportions, and 
 harbour prejudices in favour of beauties apparent 
 at first sight, and of excellence displayed in narrow 
 ground. And in some sense poetry is excellence 
 displayed in narrow ground, prose cleared of the 
 superfluous, transfigured prose, the sublimated 
 essence ; its precious sentiment close-packed and 
 embalmed for a long journey down the stream of 
 Time. 
 
 It cannot be said of Mr. Meredith that no writer 
 of his century has challenged the like serious atten- 
 tion in the field of poetry as well as of fiction. To 
 leave a great name — that of Scott — out of account, 
 there are other and not inconsiderable rivals. But 
 Mr. Meredith has achieved a strikingly uniform 
 success, such a success as makes it difficult to place 
 his prose above his poetry, or his poetry above his 
 prose, without misgivings that the verdict may be 
 reversed by the critical court of the later genera- 
 tions. One thing is indisputable and noteworthy ; 
 Mr. Meredith's verse bears a very close relationship 
 c 33 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 to his prose — it supplements, reinforces, and inter- 
 prets his prose. Essentially a dramatic artist, he 
 has none the less experienced the lyrical passion for 
 the deliverance of his own soul, and in his verse 
 has set free his thought in his own person. It is 
 precisely the dramatic artist entering through his 
 imaginative sympathy into the characters and 
 situations of his dramatis personce who presents 
 'the imaginary utterances of so many imaginary 
 persons, not his,' and suppresses himself the while ; 
 it is precisely the dramatic artist, we may naturally 
 suppose, in whom the impulse towards self- revelation 
 exists most strongly. He is the wide and clear-eyed 
 spectator of life who sees and pictures it best, but 
 is, for the most part, content to remain unknown 
 behind his creations. And in Mr. Meredith's 
 fiction, as in Shakespeare's, a persistent and impene- 
 trable irony veils the artist himself; the author 
 lurks undiscovered behind the humorist. So was 
 it not with Thackeray, who steps forward ever and 
 anon to speak in propria persona. So was it not 
 with Scott, whose sympathies there is no mis- 
 taking. Shakespeare in his sonnets, the popular 
 theory has it, laid aside the mask of humour, and 
 ' with the sonnet-key unlocked his heart.' Let this 
 be so or not, it is certain that Mr. Meredith lays 
 aside in his verse the mask of humour worn in 
 his novels. His poetry is more essentially serious 
 
 34 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 than his prose ; it is grave almost throughout ; a 
 personal utterance, the expression of the philo- 
 sophy of the individual. The reader of the novels 
 is in contact with the dramatic artist, the spectator 
 and the student of life ; the poems are the out- 
 spoken utterance of the man who is himself one of 
 the dramatis personoe in personal relation with the 
 facts of the world. Taken together, this prose and 
 this verse constitute an autobiography — the outlook 
 and the inlook are comprised in it. To Mr. Mere- 
 dith's poetry belongs therefore a special, because a 
 near and personal, interest ; it supplements his 
 prose, as has been said, and stands to it somewhat 
 in the relation of interpretative criticism. Not the 
 ignoble curiosity which pries into the private life 
 of an author, but a legitimate intellectual curiosity 
 is here satisfied. One is grateful to possess the 
 individual view of so ardent and so brilliant a 
 student of life, especially if, as in ]\Ir. Meredith's 
 case, no discord is introduced into the harmony of 
 the entire impression received from his work. And 
 it may be broadly stated that the predominant note 
 in i\Ir. ^Meredith's work as a whole, both prose and 
 verse, is its invincible fortitude, its cheerful accept- 
 ance of things as they are. He belongs to that 
 company of artists who have looked the world in 
 the face, and expressed neither disappointment nor 
 dissatisfaction therewith. In an epoch in which 
 
 35 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 poets are neither few nor insignificant, Mr. Mere- 
 dith shares with Browning the distinction that he 
 has never for the briefest season dwelt in the 
 melancholy shade. Here is poetry in which prevails 
 no sense of sadness, no overpowering sentiment of 
 pity for the vexed human race, no Virgilian cry with 
 its sense of tears in mortal things, no wistful regrets, 
 no torturing doubts. Even so interesting and so 
 great a writer as Count Tolstoi suffers at times a 
 sense of hopelessness to overcome him, and involves 
 us in his own despair. But Mr. Meredith's citadel 
 of mind and heart is impregnable, and, while he 
 will have us see the naked truth, he fortifies us for 
 its reception. In this poetry there is ever scant 
 sympathy dispensed for weak nerves and apprehen- 
 sive hearts. Read Earth and Man, or this Whimper 
 of Sympathy : — 
 
 ' Hawk or shrike has done this deed 
 Of downy feathers : rueful sight ! 
 Sweet sentimentalist, invite 
 Your bosom's Power to intercede. 
 
 So hard it seems that one must bleed 
 Because another needs will bite ! 
 All round we find cold Nature slight 
 The feelings of the totter-knee'd. 
 
 O it were pleasant^ with you 
 
 To fly from this tussle of foes. 
 
 The shambles, the charnel, the wrinkle ! 
 
 To dwell in yon dribble of dew 
 
 On the cheek of your sovereign rose. 
 
 And live the young life of a twinkle. ' 
 
 36 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ' Part of the best of a great literatus/ said Whitman, 
 ' shall be the absence in him of the idea of the covert, 
 the lurid, the maleficent, the devil, the grim estimates 
 inherited from the Puritans, hell, natural depravity, 
 and the like. The great literatus will be known among 
 us by his cheerful simplicity, his adherence to natural 
 standards, his limitless faith in God, his reverence, and 
 by the absence in him of doubt, ennui, burlesque, 
 persiflage, or any strained or temporary fashion.' 
 
 How luminous a saying — but how shattering to 
 the pretensions of the majority of our literati \ 
 The absence of doubt, ennui, burlesque, persiflage, 
 or any strained or temporary fashion! Yet it is 
 thus Mr. Meredith may be known among his con- 
 temporaries as the great literatus ; by his cheerful 
 simplicity, his adherence to natural standards, his 
 limitless faith in God, and by the absence in him 
 of doubt and ennui. And this though we have 
 passed and are passing through times unfavourable 
 to literature possessed of these qualities: times 
 whose spiritual winds are chil], and whose skies 
 grey with the greyness of the sea in winter. Too 
 surely the modern world is not all that it was 
 expected to be; it has disappointed expectation, 
 and we moderns have reaped from it a plentiful 
 crop of discouragement. Since the Renaissance — 
 that birthday of the modern world — brought with 
 it a sense of buoyancy, of widening horizons, and 
 incalculable advances, and endless triumphs for 
 
 37 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 humanity, only a poet here and there has been 
 a minister of hope and promised great things 
 in a day that was not very far off. These eager 
 spirits on the watch-towers of thought saw, or 
 thought they saw, the breaking light of some 
 great morning of the world — a light that was 
 about to fill the heavens and orb into humanity's 
 perfect day. Wordsworth and Coleridge had these 
 purple visions in youth, but the disillusioning years 
 dealt hardly with them. Shelley could not bring 
 himself to believe that the light that filled his 
 own soul did not shine in the open sky. But we 
 of the modern world do not suffer from these 
 illusions, and the happy enthusiasts among us who 
 put their trust in the progress of Science seem 
 also to suffer from disillusion. They are reluc- 
 tantly brought to confess that while Science has 
 given liberally to humanity with one hand, she 
 has taken away with the other. While, however, 
 the majority of the latter-day poets have felt the 
 absence of inspiring motives in the atmosphere 
 of the time, Mr. Meredith breathes the keen dis- 
 illusioning air without pain and without discour- 
 agement, and declares it to be spiritually bracing. 
 The season is autumn, and the grey mist 
 
 ' Narrows the world to my neighbour's gate ; 
 Paints me Life as a wheezy crone. . . . 
 I, even I, for a zenith of sun 
 
 38 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Cry^ to fulfil me_, nourish my blood : 
 O for a day of the long lights one ! ' 
 
 But here is the last word : — 
 
 ^ Verily now is our season of seed^ 
 Now in our Autumn ; and Earth discerns 
 Them that have served her in them that can read^ 
 Glassing, where under the surface she burns. 
 Quick at her wheel, while the fuel, decay, 
 Brightens the fire of renewal : and we ? 
 Death is the word of a bovine to-day, 
 Know you the breast of the springing To-be ? ' 
 
 The majority of the poets seek refuge when the 
 psychological climate of the times is unfavourable 
 to poetry, in the limitless romance of the past. 
 Not so Mr. Meredith. He is a poet of a sceculum 
 reallsticum, and the only romance for him is the real 
 romance of the present, the inexhaustible romance 
 of the future. The poetry with the passion for the 
 past, the poetry that would hang its richly wrought 
 arabesque in gold and purple between us and the 
 facts of life, has here given place to the poetry 
 with an undivided allegiance to the present, and to 
 truth palatable or unpalatable. Goldsmith — that 
 tender, human-hearted poet — w^rote of his favourite 
 books as being those which, amusing the imagina- 
 tion, contributed to ease the heart, and in another 
 of his exquisite sentences defined the office of the 
 poet- sage : ' Innocently to amuse the imagination 
 in this dream of life is wisdom.' The wisdom of 
 
 39 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Mr. Meredith's poetry is made of sterner stuff. 
 If we are to be cradled in comfortable philosophies, 
 transcendental or mystical, lapped in soft Lydian 
 airs, or borne in a car of song by the instinct of 
 sweet music driven, we must read poetry other 
 than this. And Mr. Meredith declines, too, the 
 sad task in which Matthew Arnold engaged, the 
 task of ' sweeping up the dead leaves fallen from 
 the dying tree of faith.' 
 
 ^ These are our sensual dreams ; 
 Of the yearning to touchy to feel 
 The dark Impalpable sure. 
 And have the Unveiled appear.' 
 
 Poetry such as this, devoid of the sentiment of 
 regret, devoid of that tender melancholy so charac- 
 teristic of Matthew Arnold ; almost devoid, too, 
 of the sentiment of pathos ; which seems to shun 
 the elegiac sentiment in which so much of the 
 world's poetry is steeped, and by which it makes 
 its appeal ; poetry like this strikes a strange 
 and original note. The chords to which Mr. 
 Meredith trusts for his effects are chords seldom 
 heard upon the lyre ; his is a poetry of almost 
 exclusively intellectual interest — the music from 
 an iron string. It is not to be expected that this 
 poetry should give us the full sense of vitality as 
 Chaucer gives it, of the mere joy of living, or 
 charm us to dreamful ease as Spenser charms. 
 
 40 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 * He who has looked upon Earth 
 Deeper than flower and fruit 
 Loses some hue of his Hiirth.' 
 
 But poesy has an infancy, an adolescence, an 
 immortality Protean. ]\Ir. Meredith's is not the 
 buoyant spirit of Chaucer, but the virtue of his 
 poetry resides none the less in its astonishing 
 vitality and in the power to communicate that 
 vitality. To the freshness and buoyancy it possesses 
 is added a flavour of intellectual bitter that springs 
 from its devotion to reality, and it is by reason of 
 its rarely mingled elements, its freshness and buoy- 
 ancy, and its strenuous devotion to reality, that Mr. 
 Meredith's poetry achieves a new poetic triumph. 
 
 ' I am certain,' said Keats of his own Lamia.) 
 ' I am certain that there is that sort of fire in it 
 which must take hold of people in some way — 
 give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation.*' 
 The poetry of Mr. Meredith, too, is not negligible ; 
 it has that sort of fire in it which takes hold of 
 one, and gives him either a pleasant or unpleasant 
 sensation. This is verse that will not suffer a 
 reader to pass bv in peace, and, if it makes not 
 music for him, he will, with Hotspur, prefer to 
 hear the dry wheel grate on the axle-tree. 
 
 ' Square along the couch^ and stark, 
 Like the sea-rejected thing 
 Sea-sucked white^ behold their king 
 Attila^. my Attila ! . . . 
 
 41 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Him, their lord of day and niglit, 
 White, and lifting up his blood 
 Dumb for vengeance. Name us that, 
 Huddled in the corner dark. 
 Humped and grinning like a cat. 
 Teeth for lips ! 'Tis she ! She stares. 
 Glittering through her bristled hairs. 
 Rend her ! Pierce her to the hilt ! ' 
 
 Discriminating readers of Mr. Meredith's novels 
 have no doubt felt the presence of the poet even 
 in his garment of prose, but probably few suspect 
 that the poet preceded the novelist. His first 
 public appearance was with a volume, published 
 in 1851, simply entitled Poems, and dedicated to 
 his father-in-law, Thomas Love Peacock. It was 
 not until some years later that he took the field 
 with a novel. The Shaving of Shagpat. The 
 second volume of Poems appeared in 1862 (three 
 years after Richard Feverel), Modem Love and 
 Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and 
 Ballads ; the third, Poems and Lyrics of the Joy 
 of Earth, in 1883 ; the fourth, Ballads and Poems 
 of Tragic Lije, in 1887; the fifth, A Reading of 
 Earth, in 1888 ; the sixth. The Empty Purse and 
 other Poems, in 1892. Of these the first volume 
 is now a rare treasure, more especially as the 
 author has not cared to reprint his Juve^iilia ; and 
 the second contains, besides many verses never 
 reprinted, the original Modern Love, which was 
 
 42 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 selected by the author for republication accom- 
 panied by some new poems as a separate volume 
 in 1892. 
 
 The best order in which first to read Mr. 
 Meredith's poetry is not, I think, the chronological 
 order. If one begins wdth A Reading of Earth, 
 and passes to the remaining volumes by way of 
 the Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, one 
 moves more easily, receives a more continuous, 
 a more unbroken impression, and enters at once 
 into sympathy with the attitude of the author. 
 And Mr. Meredith's attitude, his choice of subject, 
 and his method require to be acquiesced in — ' not 
 to sympathise is not to understand.' A poet com- 
 monly places himself en rapport with his audience 
 by his choice of subject or by the adoption of a 
 familiar method, and he is accustomed as artist to 
 retire to a distance from his work and to contem- 
 plate its eflPect from a point of view not entirely 
 his own. He has during the creative process his 
 audience in his eye. If he is unable or imwilling to 
 gain this remoteness from his own creation, if he 
 decline to place himself either by choice of subject 
 or by the adoption of a familiar method at the 
 universal point of view, he demands an unusual in- 
 tellectual activity from his readers, and wins his 
 way with them certainly more gradually, perhaps 
 not at all. Approval of his choice of subject, 
 
 43 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 approval of his method, are not assured him until 
 it be granted that the eiFect has justified the means. 
 For a law of parsimony holds in art : the old 
 methods are sealed by acceptance, and a new, if 
 not successful, is an impertinence. 
 
 The onus probandi rests with such a poet to 
 show good reason for his departure from accredited 
 poetic example. The progress of Wordsworth 
 through ridicule to fame was the progress of a 
 poet of determined independence in choice of sub- 
 ject as well as in poetic methods. Yet opposition 
 once overcome, it is the poet with the note of 
 strangeness in his voice to whom we return — the 
 note of strangeness is the note of individuality. 
 In poetry, too, as in all art, there is a compromise 
 effected, and the note of strangeness is the mark 
 of the fresh compromise, the alteration of balance 
 effected by the new method, the new choice of sub- 
 ject. Or rather let us say that with the original 
 poet a novel aspect of things is brought into the 
 foreground, a new predominant purpose is dis- 
 played. With Tennyson the main purpose was to 
 bend his lanocuass-e to his thouo^ht so that no verse 
 should escape him unenriched by a musical cadence, 
 that no arrow unfeathered with melody should leave 
 his bow. With Mr. Meredith the main purpose is 
 achieved if no line, no phrase escape him unin- 
 formed by force, if he discharge no shaft unwinged 
 
 44 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 or unweighted with thought. Hence obscurity is 
 the charge brought against him ; he has been called 
 an inarticulate poet, and doubtless he is at times 
 obscure. But like Browning's, Mr. Meredith's 
 obscurity arises out of the number and fervency 
 of his ideas ; he is obscure because he has so much 
 to say, and is in such haste to say it, and moreover 
 insists upon his own point of view and demands 
 from his reader that flexibility of intelligence, that 
 intellectual activity, necessary to the appreciation 
 of an unfamiliar poetic method. And obscurity 
 is, after all, the vaguest of charges. Gray was 
 accounted obscure ; Shelley intolerably obscure ; 
 Tennyson, even our popular Tennyson, in the days 
 of his early triumphs was censured for his obscurity. 
 And if the readers of Browning are content to 
 travel far, and at times even with lagging step, 
 to catch sight of splendours such as this : — 
 
 ' I shall keep your honour safe ; 
 With mine I trust you, as the sculptor trusts 
 Yon marble woman with the marble rose. 
 Loose on her hand, she never will let fall. 
 In graceful, slight, silent security ' — 
 
 then the readers of Mr. Meredith may well be con- 
 tent to undergo occasional mental fatigue for the 
 sake of, let us say, such a magnificent Meditation 
 under Stars as this : — 
 
 ' We who reflect those rays, though low our place. 
 To them are lastingly allied. 
 
 45 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 So may we read^ and little find them cold : 
 
 Not frosty lamps illumining dead space^ 
 
 Not distant aliens^ not senseless Powers. 
 
 The fire is in them whereof we are born ; 
 
 The music of their motion may he ours. 
 
 Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced 
 
 Sisterly to her_, in her beams rejoiced. 
 
 Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold 
 
 The love that lends her grace 
 
 Among the starry fold. 
 Then at new flood of customary morn. 
 
 Look at her through her showers. 
 
 Her mists, her streaming gold, 
 A wonder edges the familiar face : 
 She wears no more that robe of printed hours ; 
 Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers. ' 
 
 It may freely be granted that in general we have 
 too continuous a strain, too unrelieved an emphasis 
 in Mr. Meredith's poetry. It lacks breathing- 
 spaces, points of repose for the imagination. Once 
 we have ascended his poetic car we are borne along 
 at full speed, a speed that is rarely slackened until 
 the goal be reached. Thus it comes that one can- 
 not read for long in these volumes, as in Tenny- 
 son's ; one cannot fleet the time carelessly with this 
 poet as with Mr. William Morris. Mr. Meredith 
 is not of the singers who simply say the most heart- 
 easing things, who lead us to their favourite haunts 
 by wood or stream, and discourse music to us that 
 we may drink oblivion of care and pass into a 
 many-coloured dream of flitting shadows. There is a 
 
 46 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 poetry — and who shall deny to it an unceasing charm? 
 — a poetry that breathes the spirit of meadow and 
 woodland, of cottages nestling in sunny angles, of 
 fields that have known the plough for centuries, 
 of orchards weighted with fruit and lanes heavy 
 with the scent of honeysuckle and meadowsweet, 
 a poetry sweet as country air can make it, that 
 speaks of English Spring and Summer and happy 
 harvests. There is, too, a poetry that is less sweet, 
 that seems born of the barren hills, that bears with 
 it the sharp salt air of the sea ; a poetry that sum- 
 mons rather than promises, and in the room of rest 
 offers action. Mr. Meredith has touched the tender 
 stops of various quills, and the Doric lay is not 
 beyond his skill, but in the main his music is the 
 inspiring music of the trumpet that calls to war. 
 And if he fall short as a poet, it is that he is too 
 strenuous to be altogether peaceful, and that the 
 impressions received from his verse are too crowded 
 to permit of that leisurely sipping of the cup, that 
 tranquil enjoyment which is essential to the due 
 appreciation of poetry. Poetry and haste are 
 eternal incompatibles. One cannot bolt a stanza 
 in the five minutes'* interval between encfasfements, 
 nor can one find perfect happiness in the company 
 of a poet whose pace is always a gallop. Mr. 
 Meredith's verse has caught contagion from the 
 hurry and the bustle of modern life. And his 
 
 47 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 utterance, too, is a staccato utterance. It would 
 be untrue to say of him that there was no light 
 and shade in his conceptions, but there is often an 
 absence of light and shade in his expression. And 
 thouo-h Mr. Meredith conceives aright the sensuous 
 as well as the intellectual life, his poetry usually, 
 though with brilliant instances to the contrary, 
 lacks the sensuous element, usually fails to express 
 that element as vividly as it expresses the intel- 
 lectual. Language, especially the language of 
 poetry, has an office other than that of mirroring 
 with precision a train of ideas; it must make 
 appeal to the senses, to the eye and to the ear, 
 to the memory and its associations, to the imagina- 
 tion and its dreams. Yet this is not the day nor 
 the hour to complain of poetry in which the intel- 
 lectual element outbalances the sensuous; rather 
 we owe to poetry of which this is true a debt of 
 gratitude. A little thought goes far in modern 
 verse, and the critics assure us that even that little 
 is unnecessary. ' Poetry,' Mr. Henley tells us, ' is 
 style.' And in Mr. Meredith's poetry the very 
 force and intensity of his thought communicate 
 a beauty to his phrase — the beauty that shines 
 in strength. Take this of Byron's Manfred : — 
 
 '^ Considerably was the world 
 Of spinsterdom and clergy racked 
 ^^^ile he his hinted horrors hurled. 
 And she pictoriallv attacked. 
 
 4S 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 A duel hugeous ! Tragic ? Ho ! 
 The cities, not the mountains, blow 
 Such bladders ; in their shapes confessed 
 An after-dinner's indigest/ 
 
 But Mr. Meredith's is not always the music from 
 an iron string. That he has a manner besides this 
 of rugged force is easily demonstrable. The critic 
 will need to search dili^entlv throuirh Eno-lish 
 poetry to discover a poem of more blithe and 
 gracious sweetness, more radiant with the dew and 
 sunshine of morning, with the captivating joyance of 
 youth than Love in the Valley. The measure — and 
 it may be noted that in metres Mr. Meredith greatly 
 and successfully dares — the measure itself dances to 
 the tripping pulses of the young blood. 
 
 ' Cool was the woodside ; cool as her white dairy 
 
 Keeping sweet the cream-pan ; and there the boys from 
 school. 
 Cricketing below, rushed brown and red with sunshine ; 
 
 the dark translucence of the deep-eyed cool ! . . : 
 
 Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, 
 
 1 would speak my heart out : heaven is my need. 
 Every woodland tree is flushing like the dogwood. 
 
 Flashing like the whitebeam, swaying like the reed. 
 Flushing like the dogwood crimson in October ; 
 
 Streaming like the flag-reed south-west blown ; 
 Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted whitebeam : 
 
 All seem to know what is for heaven alone.' 
 
 Here, and in a pastoral not reprinted from his 
 earliest volume, Mr. Meredith's verse bubbles, and 
 D 49 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 creams, and ripples from the very founts of spring 
 and summer. 
 
 ' Come_, and like bees will we gather the rich golden honey 
 
 of noontide 
 Deep in the sweet summer meadows_, bordered by hillside 
 
 and river. . . . 
 O joy thus to revel all day in the grass of our own belov'd 
 
 countrj'^_, 
 Revel all day till the lark mounts at eve with his sweet 
 
 ' tirra-lirra ' ; 
 Thrilling delightfully.' 
 
 The lyric beauty of poems such as these will recall 
 to readers of the novels the passion-brimming lyrical 
 enchantments woven in the ' Ferdinand and Mir- 
 anda ' chapters of Richard Feverel, beside which I 
 do not know that there is anything in literature to 
 be placed since Romeo and Juliet itself. In others 
 of the Poems aiid Lyrics of the Joy of Earth is heard 
 the same clear lark-like trill of gladness, a music as 
 of the early world untouched by human pain or 
 sorrow, a song of the elements : — 
 
 ' Water^ first of singers^ o'er rocky mount and mead^ 
 First of earthly singers^ the sun-loved rill 
 Sang of liim^ and flooded the ripples on the reed 
 Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill. ' 
 
 But to enter into the true spirit of Mr. Meredith's 
 poetry of nature we must come to it bv way of A 
 Reading of Earth. We are constantly assured by 
 modern criticism and by the practice of modern 
 
 50 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 poets that it is no part of the poet's duty to be a 
 teacher, that the exposition of belief Hes altogether 
 outside the province of art. Mr. Meredith abides 
 by the tradition of the greater English poets, 
 Spenser and Milton and Wordsworth, and his 
 poetry frankly outlines a faith, delineates a philo- 
 sophy of life. It is a creed of full and lasting 'joy 
 in the old heart of things "* ; but how hold and live 
 by that creed in the face of the certain sorrows, the 
 uncertain issues, the unavoidable partings of life, 
 the knowledge that 
 
 ^ The word of the world is adieu : 
 Her word : and the torrents are round^ 
 The jawed wolf-waters of prey ' ? 
 
 To preserve for the human race during its dark 
 hours the heart of hope, the faith that there is some 
 soul of goodness in things evil, that evil itself is not 
 immortal, and that the destiny of man is something 
 more than to die, is not the meanest achievement of 
 the poet. Yet, when this faith and this hope are 
 threatened, so exclusively does the poetic spirit 
 seem to feed upon the beauty and the pathos of life 
 that the poets often offer us no more than a sad 
 philosophy of ' indifference," or a fuller life of the 
 senses, the worship of the flesh in despair of soul. 
 But Mr. Meredith in this also abides by the poetic 
 tradition of the greater poets, and refuses to despair 
 
 51 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 of soul. The resurgent brood of questions — to 
 
 which Earth, our mother, replies not — are but 
 
 the brood of unfaith, and earth's silence argues 
 
 no indifference to her children. Of those who ask 
 
 them 
 
 ^ Earth whispers : they scarce have the thirsty 
 Except to unriddle a rune ; 
 And I spin none ; only show^ 
 Would humanity soar from its worst, 
 Winged above darkness and dole. 
 How flesh unto spirit must grow. 
 Spirit raves not for a goal. 
 
 ... It trusts ; 
 Uses my gifts, yet aspires ; 
 Dreams of a higher than it.' 
 
 In A Faith on Tj'ial, and in Earth a7id Man, 
 Mr. Meredith sets forth a spiritual philosophy of 
 courageous faith, a philosophy akin, in some re- 
 spects, to that of Wordsworth, but informed by the 
 later spirit of scientific realism. The poet is now, 
 as the man of the future will be, as we are all fast 
 becoming, neither idealist nor realist, neither one 
 nor the other, because both. If Mr. Meredith in his 
 poetry rejects with the unalterable mien of physical 
 science any mystical explanation of things which 
 leaves the facts and laws of the great external world 
 of our physical nature out of account, he rejects 
 with equal firmness the philosophy of immediate 
 conclusions based upon the slight and meagre know- 
 ledge we possess. Like the Christian's, Mr. Mere- 
 
 52 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 dith's word is 'Faith till proof be ready." Only 
 when the lesson of 
 
 ^ A fortitude quiet as Earth's 
 At the shedding of leaves ' 
 
 has been duly learned, only when the attitude of 
 
 '^ uiifaith clamouring to be coined 
 To faith by proof 
 
 has been abandoned, can the inheritance of the 
 children of Earth be entered upon, the children 
 whose love is without fear, who have taken to heart 
 Earth'*s counsel — 
 
 ^ " And if thou hast good faith^ it can repose," 
 She tells her son.' 
 
 The poem which stands first in the volume of 
 Poems and Lyrics of the Joy oj Earth conveys a 
 warning on the threshold to those about to enter 
 on the inheritance, the harvest of full delight in 
 companionship with Earth. These are enchanted 
 woods, and the only charm that affords protection 
 is a spirit of courageous confidence. 
 
 • Enter these enchanted woods^ 
 
 You who dare. 
 Nothing harms beneath the leaves 
 More than waves a swimmer cleaves. 
 Toss your heart up with the lark, 
 Foot at peace with mouse and worm, 
 
 Fair you fare. 
 
 53 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Only at a dread of dark 
 
 Quaver^ and they quit their form : 
 
 Thousand eyeballs under hoods 
 
 Have you by the hair. 
 Enter these enchanted woods. 
 
 You who dare.' 
 
 Few among Mr. Meredith's poems are more 
 quaintly, and at the same time more powerfully, 
 conceived than this. The Woods of Westermain. 
 The very spirit of the forest is abroad in it, a 
 mystery of life lurks in the thicket and among the 
 leaves. With it should be read Melampus — 
 
 ^ Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam. 
 The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew.' 
 
 Here, as in all his nature-poems, Mr. Meredith moves 
 with the firm step of one to whom the path is a 
 familiar one : a subtle accuracy of observation shines 
 in every epithet. There is no poet since the death 
 of Wordsworth for whom nature has meant so 
 much as for Mr. Meredith. From many of his 
 poems one might conceive him as entirely preoccu- 
 pied with nature, a close and eager student, to 
 whom the world of individual men and women was 
 little more than a shadowland. How far this is 
 wide of the truth readers of Mr. Meredith's novels 
 are indeed aware; and perhaps we need go no 
 further for convincing proof, if any were needed, 
 of the mental grasp and breadth displayed in his 
 
 54 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 work, a breadth and grasp unmatched in the work 
 of any living man. The place occupied by nature 
 in modern poetry since the advent of Wordsworth 
 must in large measure be associated with the growth 
 of a knowledge of nature, and the desire for that 
 knowledge displayed in scientific investigation. 
 With Mr. Meredith nature is not so much, as with 
 Wordsworth, an object of impassioned contempla- 
 tion, an enclasping presence, the source of spiritual 
 ecstasy. She is rather nature as revealed to us by 
 science, the eternal activity, the nature that over- 
 flows with individual life. And an enduring place 
 among the English poets is assured to Mr. Mere- 
 dith if for this alone, that he is the first to accept 
 fearlessly the view of nature offered by modern 
 science, and not to accept it only, but to find that 
 view vitally poetic and inspiring. For this he will 
 be remembered. He will be remembered and hon- 
 oured as that courageous spirit who, when his com- 
 panions were assailed by fears, embraced with ready 
 welcome the entire unbroken ring, the whole result 
 of science, and, claiming this too as a province of 
 art, drew from the new truths fresh auo^uries and 
 hopes and lessons for humanity. 
 
 Mr. Meredith's study of nature is that of the 
 naturalist, the naturalist who has become the pas- 
 sionate lover. He would have us believe that a 
 closer intimacy with nature will serve to prove her 
 
 55 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ' Mother of simple truth. 
 Relentless quencher of lies. 
 Eternal in thought,' 
 
 and to dispel the unworthy apprehensions which, 
 judging her with shrinking nerves, make her 'a 
 cruel sphinx," 
 
 ^ A mother of aches and jests ; 
 Soulless, heading a hunt. 
 Aimless except for the meal. ' 
 
 She is before and above all the Earth our mother, 
 instructress of her children ; and to prate of other 
 worlds ere we have mastered this and its lessons 
 seems to Mr. Meredith the hugest of follies. 
 Man's debt to Earth is not yet fully paid ; his glory 
 is that in paying that debt he lays at her feet a 
 nobler garland than any crown of beauty that 
 adorns her brows : — 
 
 ' He builds the soaring spires. 
 That sing his soul in stone : of her he draws. 
 Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws. 
 Her purest fires. 
 
 Through him hath she exchanged. 
 For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown. 
 Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown 
 Where monsters ranged. 
 
 And order, high discourse. 
 And decency, than which is life less dear. 
 She has of him : the lyre of language clear. 
 Love's tongue and source.' 
 
 Thus it is that through the knowledge of earth, 
 
 56 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ' never misread by brain,"* we approach a fuller 
 consciousness of the issues and meanings of life, 
 ^Till brain-rule splendidly towers.' 
 
 Mr. Meredith is at times obscure, but he is never 
 
 intangible ; he is at times difficult, but he is never 
 
 unreal. Sureness of grasp, concentration, force, 
 
 significance — these are the splendid qualities of his 
 
 style, and at times one catches an accent, a phrase, 
 
 a verse exquisitely tuneful, a melody wholly his 
 
 own. How much of the poetry of talent, how 
 
 much even of the poetry of genius, fails because 
 
 it does not go deep enough, because it does not 
 
 lay hold of reality ! ]Mr. Meredith's poetry of 
 
 nature lays firm hold of reality. Just as Browning 
 
 had no fear of the real, but delighted in the 
 
 uncouth, the forbidding, the extravagant natural 
 
 forms — 
 
 ' See our fisher arrive 
 And pitch down his basket before us ; all trembling- alive 
 ^^^ith pink and grey jellies^ your sea-fruit ; you touch the 
 
 strange lumps^ 
 And mouths gape there, eyes open^ all manner of horns and 
 
 of humps ' — 
 
 so Mr. Meredith does not fear the real, and does 
 not reserve himself to celebrate nature in 
 
 ' Her pomp of glorious hues^ 
 Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile.' 
 
 His ' cosmic enthusiasm ' is without reservations, 
 his spiritual freedom untrammelled and entire. 
 
 57 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 The Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life display 
 Mr. Meredith in his characteristic, his unmistakable 
 style, the style which is the despair of so many 
 readers. Here are ballads, indeed, but not of that 
 species which may be defined as the simplest and 
 most direct form of narrative poetry. To disen- 
 tangle these tales one must proceed warily, and 
 piece each together, like a mosaic, from hints, re- 
 flections, apostrophes, and the future may not find 
 ballads of this order acceptable. Save in The 
 Nuptials ofAttila, the vigour of the manner hardly 
 compensates for the harshness of the narration. 
 But The Nuptials of Attila is a notable exception, a 
 notable poem. It is not only a notable, it is an 
 altoo-ether marvellous and indescribable, poem. To 
 read it is to hear the tread of armies, to mingle in 
 the tossing tumult of barbarian camps, to catch 
 one's breath in the presence of the Queen of Tragedy 
 herself. There is no poem with which it can to 
 any purpose be compared. From first to last it 
 displays the characteristics of Mr. Meredith at his 
 best and strongest, and will take rank among the 
 great achievements of modern verse as a tour de 
 force of unique power and splendour. 
 
 The volume containing these ballads, which 
 represent the poet in his most disdainful mood of 
 the accepted poetical methods, represents him also 
 in his docile mood of almost academic ' correctness,' 
 
 58 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 content to move in familiar ways of art. The sus- 
 tained magnificence of diction in France^ December 
 1870, recalls the historical accents of our English 
 speech, the English language as written by its 
 greatest masters, as we have grown to love and 
 hope to preserve it. 
 
 ^The Gods alone 
 
 Remember everlastingly ; they strike 
 
 Remorselessly, and ever like for like. 
 
 By their great memories the Gods are known.' 
 
 ' Lo, strength is of the plain root-virtues born ; 
 Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in scorn. 
 Train by endurance, by devotion shape. 
 Strength is not won by miracle or rape. 
 It is the offspring of the modest years. 
 The gift of sire to son, thro' those firm laws 
 Which we name God's ; which are the righteous cause. 
 The cause of man, and manhood's ministers.' 
 
 ' Soaring France, 
 Now is Humanity on trial in thee ; 
 Now mayst thou gather humankind in fee ; 
 Now prove that Reason is a quenchless scroll ; 
 Make of calamity thine aureole. 
 And bleeding, lead us thro' the troubles of the sea.' 
 
 This is the English of Milton, and Southey, and 
 Wordsworth, the English that speaks the character 
 and power of the English race. It is evidently not 
 because Mr. Meredith finds it beyond his power to 
 write a simple and direct style that he indulges in 
 the style characteristic of him. In France^ and in 
 that remarkable series of poems entitled Modern 
 
 59 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Love^ he moves with ease and dignity within the 
 strictest traditions of poetic diction, and if the 
 latter exhibits any obscurities, they are certainly not 
 obscurities of expression. The works of ancient art, 
 said Sainte-Beuve, 'ne sont pas classiques parce 
 qu'ils sont vieux, mais parce qu'ils sont energiques, 
 frais et dispos."* Modern Love is a series of sonnets 
 — we may call them sonnets — modern in phrase, 
 modern in sentiment, modern in their treatment of 
 a subject unknown to ancient art, yet if Saint-Beuve 
 be right, then is Mr. Meredith, the author of 
 Modern Love, already a classic. On the appear- 
 ance of this poem in 1862, the Spectator spoke of 
 the author as dealing here with ' a deep and painful 
 subject upon whicli he has no convictions to express.** 
 But the aim of Mr. Meredith's art is neither to 
 persuade nor to tranquillise. He is neither a con- 
 cise doctrinaire with ready-made conclusions for his 
 readers, nor the type of poet who affords agreeable 
 shelter for the imagination, from the strain and 
 stress of the world. Throughout his poetry, this 
 strain and stress is exhibited ; the fingers of the 
 artist are upon the pulse of the modern world. The 
 web and the woof of Mr. Meredith's poetry are its 
 resolute devotion to the conditions that are present, 
 his achievement as a poet is the singular exactness 
 with which these conditions are presented by him, 
 and elevated to poetic rank. He has extracted 
 
 60 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 inspiration from conditions which seemed incapable 
 of supplying inspiration, which seemed hostile to it, 
 and from the dull or commonplace, or dispiriting 
 aspects of life, has rescued the stimulus or interest 
 which, properly approached and viewed by the 
 artist, they offer. Sedatives are abundantly supplied 
 in the poetry of the time ; in its tonic properties 
 consists the virtue of Mr. Meredith's poetry. It 
 kindles energy, because energy is its preponderating 
 quality, and if he has not cared to provide for his 
 readers the graces and harmonies to which they 
 have grown accustomed, compensations are not 
 wanting. Let it be granted that the familiar acces- 
 sories of colour and rhythm and impassioned feeling 
 are subservient to the heart of thought. Thought 
 is his familiar, and finds him in every mood ; finds 
 him intense and eager, finds him pensive or lyrical, 
 passionate or mirthful, finds him careful or careless 
 of his art, but is his constant, his ever-present 
 familiar, and the wise will be willing to accept Mr. 
 Meredith in all his moods. 
 
 If the music seem harsh, or the strain a jangled one, 
 
 ^ But listen in the thought ; so may there come 
 Conception of a newly-added chord. 
 Commanding space beyond where ear has home.' 
 
 As to the greatness of Modern Love, that tragedy 
 of the heart, a sombre picture etched in quick 
 suggestions alive with tragic irony and force, — as to 
 
 6i 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the greatness of that poem in respect of execution, 
 Mr. Swinburne may be left to speak. 
 
 'Take almost any sonnet at random out of this 
 series, and let any one qualified to j udge for himself of 
 metre, choice of expression, and splendid language 
 decide on its claims. And after all, the test will be 
 unfair except as regards metrical or pictorial merit, 
 every section of this great progressive poem being 
 connected with the other, by links of the finest and 
 most studied workmanship. Take, for example, that 
 noble sonnet, beginning 
 
 ' We saw the swallows gathering iu the skies,' 
 
 a more perfect piece of writing no man alive has turned 
 out ; witness these three hues, the greatest perhaps of 
 the book : — 
 
 'And in the largeness of the evening earth, 
 Our spirit grew as we walked side by side. 
 The hour became her husband and my bride ' ; 
 
 but in transcription it must lose the colour and effect 
 given it by its place in the series; the grave and 
 tender beauty, which make it at once a bridge and a 
 resting-place between the admirable poems of passion 
 it falls among.' 
 
 It needs but to read this sonnet-sequence, or some 
 other of the finer of Mr. Meredith's sonnets — Lucifer 
 in Starlight or The Spirit of Shal'espere — or to 
 recall lines like these : — 
 
 ' In tragic life, God wot 
 No villain need be ! Passions spin the plot ; 
 We are betrayed by what is false within ' ; 
 
 or these : — 
 
 62 
 
THE POETRY OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ' The city of the smoky fray ; 
 A prodded ox, it drags and moans ; 
 Its Morrow no man's child ; its Day 
 A vulture's morsel beaked to bones ' ; 
 
 it needs but to read such poetry to feel that it 
 follows the best traditions of English verse, owing 
 its effects, not to verbal ingenuities, but to simple 
 gravity of thought, expressed in words which follow 
 a natural order, whose music is the wholly unforced 
 music of the greater poets. 
 
 The poetry of Mr. Meredith gives a new aim to 
 art, and demands a new feeling for the results 
 attained in pursuance of that aim, and the altered 
 conditions essential to it. But the lovers of the 
 poetry of an elder day will not find it impossible, or 
 even difficult, to accommodate their vision to the 
 changed surroundings. There is a sentence quoted 
 by Professor Dowden in his essay from Edgar 
 Quinet, which seems to me to express with admir- 
 able strength and conciseness the impressions that 
 will finally be left upon the reader of Mr. Mere- 
 dith's poetry: 'Each day justice has appeared to 
 me more holy, liberty more fair, speech more sacred, 
 art more real, reality more artistic, poetry more 
 true, truth more poetical, nature more divine, and 
 what is divine more natural.* 
 
 63 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 The Wordsworthian tradition has fared ill in 
 poetry since 1850. That tradition lays emphasis 
 upon the attitude and habit of mind involved in 
 poetic composition, and thus upon its substance ; 
 to language, however skilfully handled, it denies 
 any sufficient virtue to elevate or of itself make 
 poetic the ordinary material of thought. With 
 Wordsworth it was the impassioned and truthful 
 view of things that was essential ; when that was 
 lacking, the ' accomplishment of verse ' was a trivial 
 copy-book matter. Poetry for him was ' the breath 
 and finer spirit of knowledge, the impassioned 
 expression that was on the face of science,"* and 
 against all theories of ' poetic diction,' against any 
 effort to construct poetry out of words in the 
 absence of the inspiring idea he had set his face 
 from the first. The root-conception in the Words- 
 worthian, as in the classical theory of poetry, is 
 that the employment of rhythm, and more especially 
 of the complex rhythms of lyric verse, presupposes 
 some depth of meaning, some intensity of emotion 
 
 64 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 which prose at its best can but imperfectly and 
 inadequately render. It is certain that verse 
 attracts because verse is an intense and emphatic 
 form of expression. It is equally certain that verse 
 disappoints and wearies, save in the way of parody 
 or comedy, when there is nothing intense or em- 
 phatic to express ; when an attempt is made to 
 transmute the trite, the fanciful, or the common- 
 place, to disguise them in the robes of sovereign 
 thought, or of sovereign emotion, by tricking them 
 out in metrical dress. If it were possible to consti- 
 tute a Supreme Court of Appeal in matters poetic 
 before which aspirants for the poet's bays were 
 compelled to appear, such a court would perhaps do 
 no great injustice by requiring from each candidate 
 some work in prose, not as an exercise in language, 
 but as a witness to intellectual or imaginative 
 power, as witness to a way of regarding things, to 
 mental methods at once rational and suggestive, to 
 types of thought or feeling for the perfect repre- 
 sentation of which verse was the natural and 
 proper medium. Did such a court exist, we should 
 be spared the frequent necessity of the judgment 
 best delivered in Heine's words, 'Das hattest du 
 Alles sehr gut in guter Prosa sagen konnen.' But 
 the decrees of such a court would condemn not 
 a few of our poets to the exile of perpetual 
 silence. 
 
 E 6S 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Wordsworth denied then that ' poetry can boast 
 any celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices 
 from those of prose/ But in the ' superlative 
 lollipops' of his early verse Tennyson once more 
 asserted the indefinable charm of new and cun- 
 ning: modulations and verbal melodies, even when 
 but slightly informed by real strength of thought 
 or fire of feeling. The course of the later stream 
 of poetry has flowed in other channels than those 
 in which Wordsworth would have had it run. The 
 sovereignty of the spirit is no longer recognised, 
 and, with exceptions few and honourable, the poets 
 have sworn allegiance to Our Lady of Music. The 
 poetry approximating to music, expressive of half- 
 articulate emotion not yet definitely yoked with 
 or transmuted into mental images, — this poetry, 
 dependent for such value as it may possess upon 
 its expression rather than upon its spirit, is the 
 characteristic poetry of the latter half of the 
 present century. In Mr. Swinburne, its leader, 
 and the popular choir, the view of things taken 
 by the poet, his philosophy, his imaginative grasp 
 and interpretation of life count for little. In their 
 place delicate turns of phrase are zealously sought 
 out, the dainty effects of collocated vowels, the 
 ripple of alliteration, the aromas and the colours 
 that fascinate the sense. We are presented by the 
 poets of to-day with phials full of odours, and he is 
 
 66 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 the best poet whose distillations catch the breath 
 and sting the nerves with the most pungent per- 
 fumes. Yet, however far we are tempted to wander 
 from it, the severe magnificence of pure as distinct 
 from decorative art never fails to recall us, and 
 we know that to it the final success indisputably 
 belongs. Read but diligently enough in Mr. 
 Swinburne's many volumes, and after a time the 
 charm begins to fail, it ceases to have its early 
 effects : we are taking in nothing, we are simply 
 marking time musically. In the verse of the 
 majority of our poets it is the same. Nothing 
 is to be found there that is not very pleasing, 
 but in the end we are not pleased. 
 
 ^ The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.' 
 
 There is nothing ' to hold or to keep,' and we 
 recognise that beyond the marking of time music- 
 ally we have been unemployed. A critic who 
 abides by the Wordsworthian tradition essays to 
 distinguish between poets by the internal differ- 
 ences in their work due to divergent mental 
 methods and sympathies, by the intellectual and 
 emotional framework upon which the artist builds. 
 Such a critic seeks for the soul of the work, which 
 is the fountain of its power ; his endeavour must be 
 to find the individual character, the man in the 
 poem. He will recognise a poem as Shelley's or as 
 
 67 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Bvron's by the unmistakable internal evidences of 
 its authorship, by the spirit that is abroad in it. 
 In the poetry of our own time what guidance from 
 internal evidence is possible ? The critic will trace 
 a recent poem to its source by an investigation 
 of the vocabulary, the structure of the rhythm, and 
 it may be by echoes of the poetry other than his 
 own read by the author. 
 
 ^ They are past as a slumber that passes, 
 As the dew of a dawn of old time ; 
 More swift than the shadows on glasses. 
 More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.' 
 
 We know this style ; not by its heart of thought, 
 but by its parti-coloured raiment. The voice is the 
 voice of Mr. Swinburne, but the commonplace is the 
 commonplace of the general choir. Now, in the case 
 of the Di majores the commonplace is their own 
 commonplace, it is part of the general stock that 
 they have appropriated and assimilated ; the spirit 
 that is abroad in them shines throughout their 
 speech. 
 
 ^ These thoughts may startle well, but not astound 
 The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended 
 By a strong siding champion, Conscience.' 
 
 The voice is undoubtedly the voice of Milton ; but 
 though no very great thing in itself, it expresses 
 Milton's habitual way of thought. 
 
 68 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 ' Six feet in earth my Emma lay. 
 And yet I loved her more. 
 For so it seemed, than till that day 
 I e'er had loved before.' 
 
 The voice of Wordsworth not at his best, but 
 Wordsworth's intellectual method is displayed here. 
 The great mass of modern poetry offers on the 
 contrary nothing to give the clue to any unique 
 individual pattern of mind possessed by the poet. 
 It confines itself to saying nothing in particular 
 with delicate perfection, in an exquisite key of 
 words. The office of most modern poets seems to 
 be that of carpet-minstrelsy ; though from Barrack- 
 Room Ballads one derives hope for the future. An 
 endurino; truth, a true instinct, lies at the root of 
 Wordsworth's theory that greatness in art is great- 
 ness in conception, that ' fundamental brain-work ' 
 is the secret of its power. Speaking of Tennyson, 
 Wordsworth struck upon the weakness which the 
 splendour of his robe of language not infrequently 
 concealed: 'He is not much in sympathy with 
 what I should myself most value in my attempts, 
 viz. the spirituality with which I have endeavoured 
 to view the material universe, and the moral rela- 
 tions under which I have wished to exhibit its most 
 ordinary appearances.' Its most ordinary appear- 
 ances are for the true poets pregnant with meaning ; 
 their subjects lie ready to hand.^ Language is the 
 1 Mr. Rudyard Kipling has found not a few that serve. 
 
 69 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 medium in which they work, but the substance is 
 more than the medium. 
 
 And the subjects of modern poetry, its criticism 
 of life ? How needful after it all, as Saint-Beuve 
 would say, to take up some wise book, where 
 common-sense holds the field, and where the simple 
 and sound language is the reflection of a delicate 
 and manly soul ! We exclaim, Oh for the style of 
 manly men, of men who have revered the things 
 worthy of reverence, whose feelings have been 
 governed by the principles of good taste ! Oh for 
 the polished, pure, and moderate writers! A little 
 of the bracing air of the dawn of the century after 
 this enervating, breathless time of its decline, an hour 
 or two with plain good sense and simple diction and 
 human beings that belong to the real world ! 
 
 Than such exclusive devotion to form as is con- 
 spicuous in the Victorian era there is no surer sign 
 of the absence of inspiring motive and imaginative 
 wealth. ' Es ist immer ein Zeichen einer unpro- 
 ductiven Zeit,'' said Goethe, ' wenn die so ins Klein- 
 liche des Technischen geht, und eben so ist ein 
 Zeichen eines unproductiven Individuums, wenn es 
 sich mit dergleichen befasst."'^ No large canvas is 
 
 1 ' A second invaluable merit which I find in Wordsworth is 
 this : he has something to say. Perhaps one prizes this merit the 
 more as one grows old, and has less time left for trifling. Goethe 
 got so sick of the fuss about form and technical details, without 
 due care for adequate contents, that he said if he were younger he 
 
 70 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 attempted even by the successful artists. How 
 often has it been lamented, for example, that 
 the great series of English historical portraits 
 begun but left unfinished by Shakespeare have 
 not attracted the poets who followed him. 
 Tennyson, it is said, was of opinion — an opinion 
 apparently abandoned later — that the great sub- 
 jects had all been treated and were exhausted, and 
 chose for himself the artistic embellishment of 
 slighter themes. But the confession, though a 
 proof of individual weakness, afterwards confirmed, 
 has no warrant in reality. It was not prompted by 
 a judgment of insight. In Browning's Ring and 
 the Bool', Sir Aubrey de Vere's Mari/ Tudor, and 
 Mr. Aubrey de Vere's Alexander the Great, we have 
 abundant confirmation of the opposite view, which 
 finds in the o-reat artist sufficient cause for the 
 great work. When lesser men complain of the 
 cramping influences of the age, of the blighting 
 conditions, the unpropitious environment, the great 
 work is unexpectedly produced, and the apparently 
 impossible is achieved. It is of the very nature of 
 genius to achieve the unexpected, the impossible — 
 for other men. 
 
 Little encouragement as there is in these days 
 
 should take pleasure in setting the so-called art of the new school 
 of poets at naught, and in trusting for his whole effect to his having 
 something important to say.' — M. Arnold. 
 
 71 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 for those Musas severiores qui colunt, yet to read 
 -the poetry of our own times is a species of intel- 
 lectual necessity, and hence perhaps the vein of 
 indignation in certain minds arising out of personal 
 disappointment. Some of us, like Tantalus, sick 
 with hunger and thirst, yet never able to satisfy 
 our appetites, become somewhat irascible. That 
 poetic representations, estimates, interpretations of 
 the life and thought and movement of the world in 
 which we are active agents as well as spectators, 
 with which we are naturally most in sympathy, and 
 of compulsion have exclusively to do, — that these 
 are needful for us we feel keenly. In each age too 
 there are revised estimates of the persons, the 
 intellectual, moral, and spiritual tendencies, and the 
 actions and movements of past ages; and with 
 many of these the poet alone is competent to deal. 
 It is therefore no fictitious demand which each 
 succeeding epoch makes for a poet to express its 
 deepest convictions. The great poets doubtless are 
 for all time, but to be without powerful poetical 
 interpreters in the present is a want in the age for 
 which no excellence in the poetry of the past can 
 compensate. Nevertheless, it is a thousand times 
 better to confess our wants than to suffer ourselves 
 to be deluded miserably by the fashionable ' make- 
 believe' criticism, that will persuade us in terms of 
 insolent assertion that half the respectable verse- 
 
 72 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 writers of the day are great poets. The daily ' dis- 
 coveries ' of 'great poets' by the ' eminent critics-' 
 of the literary journals — do they not wake the an- 
 cestral savao-e in the blood ? 
 
 But though the Wordsworthian tradition has 
 fared ill at the hands of the majority, it has been 
 carried on, and nobly. In the poetry of the de 
 Veres, father and son, there is, indeed, a richer 
 mine of inspiring thought, a subtler vein of reflec- 
 tion, a wider dramatic range, a purer sensibility, and 
 a simpler, more forcible diction than in the work of 
 perhaps any living poet. To escape from the region 
 occupied by the poets who are fanciful rather than 
 imaginative, striking rather than truthful, brilliant 
 in restatement of the ordinary poetic sentiment 
 rather than illuminating, — to escape ' the thirst 
 after outrageous stimulation,' if we read the poetry 
 of to-day, it must be that of Mr. de Vere. Take 
 almost at random a passage in Alexander the Great 
 to illustrate the spontaneous elastic expression of 
 fine thought, the larger utterance that distinguishes 
 Mr. de Vere from his contemporaries. Craterus 
 describes the character of Alexander : — 
 
 ' He wills not opposition to his will. 
 Since first he breathed this Asian air of kingship. 
 Divinity of kings hath touched him much ; 
 First in his blood it played like other lusts ; 
 It mounted next to fancy's seat, and now 
 His eye usurping purples all his world.' 
 
 73 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Or take the same speaker's description of Ptolemy : — 
 
 ' A speculative man that knows not men^ 
 A man whose blood flows sweetly through his veins. 
 Leaving at every point a sleepy pleasure 
 That needs must overflow to all our race 
 In vague complacent kindness. All his thoughts 
 In orbits as of planets curving go. 
 And grasp, like them, blank space. Your minds 
 
 majestic, 
 Like Ptolemy's, are oft but stately triflers. ' 
 
 How unlike the twitterings to which we are accus- 
 tomed ! This is a manner distinctive and fine in 
 itself, the instrument of a mind at once subtle 
 and comprehensive, at home in the region of 
 human heart and life. 
 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere, who was a contemporary 
 of Byron and of Sir Robert Peel ^ at Harrow, was 
 like Wordsworth, his friend, cradled into poetry 
 by Nature, amid the same scenes as that poet, 
 beside the ' peaceful mountain stream ' that flows 
 from Grasmere and Rydal into Windermere — the 
 Rotha. But human nature claimed him and the 
 historia spectahilis of the drama. Julian the 
 Ajyostate and The Duke of Mercia were his first 
 considerable compositions ; Mary Tudor ^ by far 
 his greatest work, was not published until after 
 
 ^ Peel on one occasion, ' to save his friend trouble, wrote a 
 copy of Latin verses so good that the "fine Roman hand" was 
 well-nigh detected, and the two boys with difficulty escaped 
 punishment.' 
 
 74 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 the author's death in 184-6, and as a consequence 
 was never revised. Sir Aubrey de Vere's life was 
 by no means wholly devoted to poetry. We are 
 told by his son that probably not more than two 
 years of his life, scattered over its various portions, 
 were spent in the composition of his longer works. 
 They must necessarily have occupied his mind for 
 more extended periods of time than is here indi- 
 cated, but Sir Aubrey de Vere cannot be regarded 
 as in any sense a poet by profession : — 
 
 ^His reading was discursive^ military works inter- 
 esting him not less than poetry or history. From his 
 boyhood he had approached military subjects with the 
 ardour of a soldier, studying campaigns ancient and 
 modern, with the aid of maps as well as books, a 
 habit to which he probably owed his minute geo- 
 graphical knowledge, and a singular power of realising, 
 as a tactician might, the relative positions of remote 
 places.' 
 
 By birth an Irishman, Sir Aubrey de Vere's 
 sympathies were divided between his native country 
 and England, the home of his remoter ancestors, 
 — sympathies which found expression in his his- 
 torical sonnets and in those composed upon scenes 
 of natural beauty in Ireland. In the brief memoir 
 written by his son, which appears in the volume 
 containing Mary Tudor, there is put on record 
 an estimate of the man by one who bent over 
 
 75 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 him after his death, — an estimate which harmonises 
 well with any that can be passed upon his poetry, 
 — ' In that brow I see three things — Imagination, 
 Reverence, and Honour.' Among the fragments 
 left behind him, the following now serves as a 
 motto to his work as a poet : — 
 
 ' An if I be a worm^ mine office is 
 Like his which spins a thread that shall attire 
 The noblest of the land ; and when his task 
 Is rightly done^ sleeps, and puts forth again 
 His powers in wings that waft him like an angel, 
 Onward from flower to flower and up to heaven.' 
 
 It is a somewhat difficult task to criticise Sir 
 Aubrey de Vere's early dramas, a task made still 
 more difficult in the case of poems which can 
 hardly be said ever to have had a spell of life in 
 public favour. With many of the qualities that 
 compose distinction and compel admiration, they 
 fail to command — as poetry must do or drop into 
 oblivion — the attention, it may be said, in its own 
 despite. The reader cannot fail to acknowledge 
 their power, but he is not taken captive. With 
 Mary Tudor it is quite another matter: one 
 does not escape there from the poefs net; we 
 are enmeshed in its magic toils from first to last. 
 His friends might well be content to rest Sir 
 Aubrey de Vere's reputation upon his Sonnets, 
 pronounced by Wordsworth 'amongst the most 
 
 76 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 perfect of our age," or upon that magnificent crea- 
 tion just spoken of, Mary Tudor ^ which two such 
 different minds as those of Mr. Gladstone and the 
 late Cardinal Manning agreed in placing next to 
 Shakespeare. Probably no critical panegyric would 
 induce any but a stray student of poetry in these 
 hurrying days to read Julian or The Duke of 
 Mercia. Yet, if once read by him, that they 
 would be read a second time is not improbable. 
 But, like Southey, the author seems to have held 
 the unpopular theory that poetry ought to elevate 
 rather than affect ; and his early dramas, like 
 Southey's epics, move on a plane above that on 
 which the drama of life proceeds for ordinary 
 human beings. To the few who read Southey's 
 epics these dramas can be confidently recommended 
 as sustaining like them, with evident ease, the 
 weight of a difficult subject, and rising at times 
 to incontestable displays of passion and of power. 
 
 The high level sustained in Sir Aubrey de Vere's 
 poetry is one of its most striking characteristics. 
 If not inspiring throughout — and what poet is 
 inspiring throughout ? — he is never paltry, and the 
 verse moves with a conscious unflagging dignity 
 that corresponds to the grave and luminous current 
 of thought beneath. That so fine a subject for 
 historical tragedy as Mary Tudor^ treated with 
 such dramatic and poetic force as Sir Aubrey de 
 
 77 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Vere possessed, should be comparatively neglected, 
 suffirests several reflections. It seems clear that 
 the reputation of a poet must be built up ; that 
 an enduring popular recognition of his genius is 
 impossible unless he have laid a foundation broad 
 enough to permit of appreciation from a circle 
 wider than the circle of culture. For, after all, 
 it is not to the critics nor even to the students 
 that the gods have granted the disposal of fame, 
 but to the people. The average man is little 
 of a critic in any eyes other than his own, but 
 upon his knees lie the final dooms of authors. 
 That Sir Aubrey de Vere wrote little poetry which 
 appealed to the general circle of readers militated 
 against his acceptance as a representative poet of 
 his epoch. And indeed he was not its representa- 
 tive. His interests were not sufficiently local and 
 temporary, nor in the fashion of the time. He 
 interpreted few feelings, faiths, or aspirations of 
 his day, and thus missed the path which Tennyson, 
 in whose brain the man of the world was not un- 
 represented, took, — the path that leads direct to 
 fame. Sir Aubrey de Vere chose too for his longer 
 works a poetic form, the dramatic, to which readers 
 had grown unaccustomed, and by whose unfamili- 
 arity they were at the outset discouraged. 
 
 But whether recognised by the voo' populi or 
 not, the delineation of Mary Tudor ranks indis- 
 
 78 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 putably as the finest delineation of royal character 
 since Shakespeare. The note of the characterisa- 
 tion is that it presents a queen who is a woman, 
 a woman who was also a queen ; for royal, with 
 all her faults, iNIary Tudor was : royalty sat visibly 
 upon the Tudor brow. To restore womanliness to 
 that Queen of England whom history, as it was 
 written, had presented as an impossible personifica- 
 tion of bloodthirstiness, was a dramatic aim, noble 
 in itself, and in execution nobly sustained. 'The 
 author of Mary Tudor,'' writes ^Ir. de Vere, in 
 the fine preface to his father's play, ' used to affirm 
 that most of the modern historians had mistaken a 
 part, and that the smaller part, of the sad Queen's 
 character for the whole of it.' Sir Aubrey de 
 Vere's conception of Mary's character deserves con- 
 sideration, not only as poetic, but as in reality 
 the most authentic portrait we possess, — historic- 
 ally more correct as taking in a larger group of 
 facts, and morally deeper and more convincing as 
 consistent with real human nature. To it should 
 be accorded the respect due to greater truthfulness 
 and insight, as well as the admiration due to a 
 more powerful artistic presentation than can be 
 found in any other, whether painted by historian 
 or rival poet. 
 
 No criticism of Mary Tudor can avoid com- 
 paring it with the Queen Mary of Tennyson, 
 
 79 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 published twenty-eight years later. While neither 
 of the dramas dealing with Queen Mary can be 
 charged as pieces of special pleading, both attempt 
 a revision of the historic estimate passed in her 
 disfavour by popular English traditions. Were it 
 necessary to sum up in a sentence the relative 
 impressions produced by these companion pictures, 
 it might fairly be said, Mary Tudor is the work 
 of a dramatist and a poet, Queen Mary the work 
 of a poet ; the first is dramatic in the fullest sense 
 throughout, the latter poetic throughout, and only 
 in parts dramatic. That Sir Aubrey de Vere had 
 more of a native dramatic instinct than Lord 
 Tennyson cannot be questioned. The grasp of 
 character in his plays is firmer, the action and 
 movement more inevitable, more highly and 
 simply natural. The dramatis personam move and 
 speak as in the movement and speech of real life. 
 The dialogue is vital, not a conversation issuing 
 from the mouths of puppets; the groups are 
 natural groups, and the action unfolds itself as 
 the necessary outcome of the circumstances and 
 characters involved. Nowhere does Sir Aubrey 
 de Vere fritter away dramatic effects by indulgence 
 in prettinesses, nowhere seek opportunities for poeti- 
 cal descriptions ; but, when such arise, the poetry 
 is as pure and sweet as any in Lord Tennyson's 
 drama. Take this from the scene on Wanstead 
 
 80 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Heath, exquisite in itself, and full of pathos from 
 the lips of the loneliest queen that ever sat on 
 throne : — 
 
 ^ MARY. 
 
 How name you this fair prospect ? 
 
 ARUNDEL. 
 
 Wanstead Heath, 
 By Epping Chase. 
 
 MARY. 
 
 How blest these breezy downs_, 
 ^Vith purple heath and golden gorse enamelled ; 
 Each bosky bank with dewy windflowers strewn_, 
 Each dell with cowslip and rathe violet, — 
 And the sun-loving daisy on hill-tops 
 Drinking the light ! Ah, happy shepherd's life ! 
 He this sweet solitude, without constraint. 
 Explores, his chosen damsel at his side ; 
 Recounting tales of love and plighted faith ; 
 Or from his pipe pours such delicious song 
 That the wild hare in the close bitten lane 
 Pauses with ear erect, and timorous deer 
 That down the labyrinthine forest glade 
 Goes bounding, starts aside, and turns to gaze.' 
 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere's blank verse is the blank 
 verse of the English drama, — the panha7^monio7i, as 
 Symonds called it, the universal instrument as used 
 by the Elizabethans. Tennyson's blank verse is 
 the verse of the Idylls of' the King, arranged to suit 
 dialogue. Sweetness and an ornate beauty it pos- 
 sesses, but nowhere, I think, the dramatic ring, the 
 broken pause of power, the alternate gravity and 
 swiftness of living speech. 
 F 8i 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 But this comparison is made with the mind's 
 eye upon the first of the two dramas that com- 
 pose the tragedy of Mary Tudor. Sir Aubrey's 
 second drama, though a fine work in itself, 
 loses by following the first, and, if compared 
 alone with Queen Majy, might not without ques- 
 tion bear away the palm. The reader fresh 
 from a perusal of the first play, who has felt its 
 condensed power, finds a certain diffuseness, and 
 experiences less distinctly a unity of impression. 
 The delineation is not so sharp nor arresting, the 
 action somewhat languid, and, to some degree, 
 the sentiment and thought seem to return upon 
 themselves. Had Sir Aubrey de Vere lived to 
 publish the work himself, there can be little doubt 
 that much would have been altered, and the whole 
 shortened. The weakness, if weakness there be in 
 the second drama, is only weakness by comparison 
 with the first. So fine a tragedy was produced by 
 the author of the early part of the Queen's reign 
 that it was hardly possible to add another. The 
 second play contributes little to our knowledge of 
 Mary : the horror of remorse with which the first 
 drama closes is in itself intensely tragic ; and to 
 the tragedy of a broken heart, the accumulation of 
 sorrows or the advent of death lends no additional 
 terrors. After the scene in which Mary sees from 
 her window in the Tower the executioner hold up 
 
 82 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 to view the once lovely head of Jane Grev, and the 
 unhappy Queen cries, 
 
 ' Pah ! I am choked — my mouth is choked with blood ! ' 
 
 no scene remained in her life of such overpower- 
 ing agony. Life contained for her henceforth only 
 
 ''Sorrow's faded form and Solitude behind.' 
 
 Marv's failure and death are far less touchino-, 
 fraught far less with the ' pity and terror ' of 
 tragedy, than her remorse in the moment of final 
 triumph over her enemies. Throughout the first 
 part, which opens with Northumberland's plot to 
 seize the crown for his son's wife and ends with Jane 
 Grey's execution, the poet with the finest instinct 
 retains our sympathy for the Queen no less than 
 for her innocent rival. In weaker hands the play 
 would undoubtedly have become the tragedy of 
 Lady Jane Grey, the guiltless victim of her father's 
 ambition ; but Sir Aubrey de Vere makes us realise, 
 and it is a dramatic achievement of the first 
 order, that the real suffering, the weight upon the 
 heart which makes tragedy, is Mary's. Lady Jane 
 suffers, indeed, innocently ; but her whiteness of 
 soul and devotion of love make her sorrows less 
 sorrowful, and death a release from a w^orld of 
 troubles. That Sir Aubrey de Vere could give 
 us such a picture as this of Lady Jane's last short 
 
 S3 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 interview with her mother, and still command our 
 deepest grief for the Queen who signed her death- 
 warrant, is surely a proof of the highest tragic 
 genius : — 
 
 ' What shall I give thee ? — they have left me little — 
 What slight memorial through soft tears to gaze on ? 
 This bridal ring — the symbol of past joy ? 
 I cannot part with it ; upon this finger 
 It must go down into the grave. Perchance 
 After long years some curious hand may find it, 
 Bright^ like our better hopes, amid the dust. 
 And piously, with a low sigh, replace it. 
 Here — take this veil, and wear it for my sake. 
 And take this winding-sheet to him ; and this 
 Small handkerchief, so wetted with my tears. 
 To wipe the death-damp from his brow. This kiss — 
 And this — my last — print on his lips, and bid him 
 Think of me to the last, and wait my spirit. 
 Farewell, my mother ! Farewell, dear, dear mother ! 
 These terrible moments 1 must pass in prayer — 
 For the dying — for the dead ! Farewell ! farewell ! ' 
 
 The gentleness, fortitude, and constancy of Jane 
 Grey, her solicitude for her husband's life, her 
 quiet acceptance of her own fate, the singleness of 
 purpose and the beauty of her character, act as 
 a foil to the political craft and pusillanimous 
 shrinking from the result of his own acts displayed 
 by Northumberland, and no less to the stormy 
 passion and thirst for revenge in Mary alternating 
 with woman''s weakness and remorse. The delinea- 
 tion of the struggle in which the Queen's soul is 
 
 84 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 tempest-tost among the winds and waves of passion 
 and native inclination, driven at one time by her 
 imperious will, fortified by the resolve to keep 
 guard over ' the true cross and the authentic faith," 
 at another swayed by a passionate craving, a wist- 
 ful longing, infinitely pathetic, for some real affec- 
 tion, or by an inclination towards clemency and 
 a milder policy, — this delineation can hardly fail 
 to recall the tragic elevation, the ' high passions 
 and high actions,** of the Elizabethan drama. How 
 finely this recalls the accent of an elder day ! The 
 Queen's passion is fairly alight, and the sword has 
 been thrown into the scale of vengeance ; ' the 
 demon wakes wdthin her heart,"* and her mood 
 passes into frenzy and madness : — 
 
 ' MARY. 
 
 I want 
 To see Jane Grey— after her widowhood. 
 
 FAKENHA3I {ttSlde). 
 
 After } — She then shall live. 
 
 GARDINER (ttside). 
 
 Observe^ she raves. 
 
 MARY. 
 
 We '11 sit together in some forest nook 
 
 Or sunless cavern by the moaning sea^ 
 
 And talk of sorrow and vicissitudes 
 
 Of hapless love^ and luckless constancy _, 
 
 And hearts that death or treachery divides ! 
 
 ^Vhat 's the hour,'' Be quick^ be quick^ I 've much to do. 
 
 85 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 GARDINER. 
 
 Just noon. 
 
 MARY. 
 
 There will be death soon on the air. 
 With outspread pinions making an eclipse. 
 Ha ! ha ! brave work we Queens do ! Destiny 
 Is in our hands — yea, in these very veins 
 The spirit of the fatal Sisterhood 
 Riots ! The snakes of the Eumenides 
 Brandish their horrent tresses round my head ! ' 
 
 Of the minor characters, or rather the characters 
 other than protagonist, Northumberland, Jane 
 Grey, and Cardinal Pole are the most finely drawn; 
 and, for the worthless Philip, Sir Aubrey de Vere 
 compels a hate akin to that which Shakespeare 
 compels for a stronger though hardly more hateful 
 villain in lago. Mary's passion for Philip cannot 
 be read as a passion real in itself, but as centred on 
 the only possible object for her lifelong repressed 
 affections. She sought some outlet for the sweeter 
 springs beneath the bitter waters of her soul. 
 Gardiner and Cranmer are great historical por- 
 traits, worthy of their place in a drama which, 
 with admirable impartiality, describes a period so 
 full of religious passions, and, within the narrow 
 circumference of its acts and scenes, depicts the 
 very life and figure of the times as no historian 
 has given or ever can give it, — England vexed 
 
 86 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 with fierce religious discords and civil strife, 
 stained with innocent blood, aflame with hatreds 
 as with martyrs' fires, — England in whose borders 
 the spirit of independence of an already ancient and 
 free people was even now astir, but in which the 
 various elements of the national life were not yet 
 fused and unified as they were to be fused and 
 unified in the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 Like characters drawn by all great artists. Sir 
 Aubrey de Vere's portraits are at once individual 
 and typical, at once persons and types. To each 
 individual belongs a personality that differs from 
 all others in the world ; but it rests upon a human 
 foundation, an understructure which is the same 
 for all men. It is no high artistic achievement 
 for the painter to limn a face which we recognise 
 as in the abstract beautiful, or to reproduce 
 features we know and recognise ; but to see 
 in every human countenance not its distinguish- 
 ing lines alone, but those more fleeting which 
 mark a special type, or to inform with human 
 expression some abstract ideal of beauty, argues 
 a power that belongs to the highest imaginative, 
 combined with the highest observant and execu- 
 tive, genius. In Sir Aubrey de Vere's portraiture 
 in Mary Tudor a thoughtful student will read 
 the features not of individuals alone, but of indi- 
 viduals who belong to a certain age, a certain epoch 
 
 87 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 in the history of England and of the world. 
 Human and personal, they are also racial and 
 peculiar to an epoch. Mary and Jane Grey, 
 English to the core, though of natures widely 
 differing ; Northumberland and Cardinal Pole, 
 types of the Englishmen of the period ; Philip, the 
 representative of Spain ; and Gardiner, of the 
 narrower stronger Churchmen whose religion con- 
 sumed their humanity, and so on throughout the 
 play. It would be difficult to find among English 
 dramas one which would serve better as a gallery, 
 wherein to study the prevailing types of mind 
 during the period of which it treats, than Mary 
 Tudor. 
 
 Sir Aubrey de Vere is greater in the old tradition 
 of the drama, in the representation of action and 
 of character displayed in action. Mr. de Vere 
 excels, like Browning, in the intellectual drama, 
 the internal development of character amid cir- 
 cumstances rather than its delineation hy action, 
 in the actual conflict and clash of forces in the 
 external world. Taken together, they represent the 
 highest reach in the present century, of the drama 
 of action and the drama of thought. Of the drama 
 of thought, or the intellectual drama, Hamlet 
 may serve as an example, where the character of the 
 hero displays itself in the life of his mind, rather 
 than in the field of action, since he is in action 
 
 88 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 uncertain and wavering, and acts from sudden 
 impulses, instead of along definite lines of policy. 
 The proper instrument of the intellectual drama, 
 which is mainly concerned with crises in the history 
 of the soul, seems to be, as with Browning, mono- 
 logue, and it is noticeable that in Hamlet the 
 monologues are more frequent and more lengthy 
 than in any other of Shakespeare's tragedies. Mr. 
 de Vere's method is somewhat different. In his 
 finest play he makes a gradual revelation of the 
 character of Alexander, largely by a chronicle in 
 dialogue of the impressions made by his personality 
 upon those in contact with him, partly by Alex- 
 ander's own words, and partly by his actions. How 
 admirable is this w^hen Parmenio, King Philip's old 
 general, corrects his son Philotas's conception of 
 Alexander, and the causes of his success in war ! — 
 
 ' PHILOTAS. 
 
 Que half his victories come but of his blindness, 
 And noting not the hindrance. 
 
 PARMENIO. 
 
 At Granicus- 
 But that Mas chance. At Issus he was greater ; 
 I set small store on Eg)'pt or on Tyre ; 
 Next came Arbela. Half a million foes 
 Melted like snow. To him Epaminondas 
 Was as the wingless creature to the winged. 
 
 89 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 PHILOTAS. 
 
 I graut his greatness were his godship sane ! 
 
 But note his brow ; 'tis Thought's least earthly temple : 
 
 Then mark beneath that round, not human eye, 
 
 Still glowing like a panther's ! In his body 
 
 No passion dwells ; but all his mind is passion, 
 
 Wild intellectual appetite, and instinct 
 
 That works without a law. 
 
 PABMENIO. 
 
 But half you know him. 
 There is a zigzag lightning in his brain 
 That flies in random flashes, yet not errs ; 
 His victories seem but chances ; — link those chances. 
 And under them a science you shall find. 
 Though unauthentic, contraband, illicit. 
 Yea, contumelious oft to laws of war. 
 Fortune, that as a mistress smiles on others, 
 Serves him as duty bound ; her blood is he. 
 Born in the purple of her royalties.' 
 
 If this be not in the manner of the great masters, 
 one might well be at a loss to adduce examples of 
 their manner. This passage serves well to illus- 
 trate Mr. de Vere's characteristic diction at its best, 
 — 'a style," to use Matthew Arnold's luminous 
 description of Wordsworth's best writing, ' a style 
 of perfect plainness, relying for effect solely on the 
 weight and force of that which with entire fidelity 
 it utters.' It is a diction which aims at no sur- 
 prises for the reader. It does not care to goad 
 him into excitement if his imagination or his 
 feelings are dull, and it thus elects to suffer com- 
 
 90 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 parative neglect amongst the styles of the day, 
 which ask nothing from the reader, but take upon 
 themselves to electrify his already over-stimulated 
 nerves by the surprising and the ostentatious. 
 
 ' During the last century,' writes Mr. de Vere in 
 his preface to Alexander the Great, ' it was thought 
 philosophical to sneer at the "Macedonian madman,'' 
 and moral to declaim against him as a bandit. 
 Maturer reflection has led us to the discovery that 
 " a fooFs luck " helping a robber's ambition could 
 hardly have enabled a youth but twenty-two years 
 of ao-e when he began his enterprise to conquer half 
 the world in ten years. The ancients made no such 
 mistake. They admired, and therefore they under- 
 stood.' Mr. de Vere's study and presentation of the 
 person and achievements of Alexander bring before 
 us the greatest captain of the ancient world with 
 the sharpness and reality of outline that time, when 
 counted by centuries, in despite of all historical 
 records does so much to eiface. One imperative 
 demand is made upon fictional art — it must be con- 
 vincing. And this whether it works in the field of 
 pure invention and reproduces types, or in the field 
 of history, and clothes the skeleton records with 
 flesh and blood. The creative artist makes what 
 we may call his only — for it is his fatal — failure, 
 when he fails to be convincing. However roughly 
 his material be handled, however ineffectively he 
 
 91 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 executes detail, if the result leaves the impression 
 of reality, if it convinces the eye and mind, the 
 hiohest success has been achieved. Verisimilitude 
 can hardly be gained at too dear a cost. Because 
 it must be gained at all costs, an artist who works 
 upon a period other than his own burdens himself 
 with preliminary study. He must himself live the 
 life of the period ; he must not only know its outward 
 shows, the dress it wore, its life of field and hearth, 
 its pomp and circumstance, but he must know its 
 inner life, sympathise with its ways of thought, ex- 
 perience its emotions, and feel the truth of its beliefs. 
 Perhaps Mr. de Vere of all living men, partly by 
 natural affinity of mind and partly by reason that 
 he is a poet, has the closest knowledge of, the fullest 
 sympathy with, that period of European history 
 which we are accustomed somewhat vaguely to de- 
 nominate the Middle Ages. Much of his finest 
 poetry is steeped in the spiritual mood, and might 
 have been composed in the environment, of those 
 ao-es. He has written what might almost be termed 
 an apology for the Middle Ages in the preface to 
 his Mediceval Records. But it is a proof of the 
 breadth and intellectual range of his genius, that he 
 has produced no greater work than that which deals 
 with the Pagan world, and a type of such distinctly 
 Paffan heroism as Alexander. True it is that Mr. 
 de Vere finds in pride the great vice in his char- 
 
 92 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 acter, ' the all-pervading vice; as he writes, ' which, 
 except in the rarest instances, blended itself like a 
 poison with Pagan greatness, and penetrated into 
 its essence/ But in so doing he is not judging 
 Alexander by the standard of Christian virtue, but 
 by a standard which the highest minds among the 
 ancients, such as Alexander's master, Aristotle, might 
 have applied, and by his admiration for Alexander's 
 heroic and intellectual qualities he proves for himself 
 the possession of that openness and independence 
 of mind which are so essential in j udgments upon 
 the persons and actions of ages other than our own. 
 Broadly human and sympathetic treatment of 
 any period, however far removed from the present, 
 could hardly fail to be successful ; but in Alexander 
 the Great one's admiration is claimed, not alone 
 for the poet, but for the student whose alert eye 
 caught sight of the finer details and possibilities of 
 poetic and dramatic material in the comparatively 
 scanty records of the year 323 b.c. From the hints 
 in Plutarch Shakespeare reconstructed the main 
 characters in the Roman plays. Mr. de Vere 
 gleaned a like precious harvest in the same field, 
 but took the incident which is in some respects the 
 most interesting in Alexander's life, his visit to the 
 Temple in Jerusalem, from Josephus. Of this 
 incident Mr. de Vere makes a poetic and legitimate 
 use, in tracing the effect of the religions of the 
 
 93 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 East, and especially of the monotheism of the 
 Hebrews, upon the imperial mind of the soldier- 
 statesman. Alexander's sublime idea of a universal 
 empire, 'redeemed from barbarism and irradiated 
 with Greek science and art,' proceeded from a mind 
 far other than that which guides the designs of the 
 successful general. As Mr. de Vere says, 'His 
 intellect was at once vast and minute, his mind was 
 at once idealistic and practical,' and he was keenly 
 susceptible of the reality and moral depth of the 
 religions held by the peoples whom his genius over- 
 threw. But Alexander's pride of power, ministered 
 to by a dazzling series of successes, choked the 
 spiritual fountains of his nature. So self-centred 
 he stands, even in his moments of doubt, and in the 
 company of his only friend Hephestion, that his 
 thought cannot travel beyond the circle of the one 
 supreme ambition of his life. From the religions of 
 the conquered peoples he extracts material to feed 
 his quenchless pride ; or, if that be impossible, he 
 can at least, by resource to scepticism, set aside 
 their appeals to higher ideals, and at the worst he 
 can cut the tangled knot with his resistless sword. 
 
 ' This only know we^ 
 We walk upon a world not knowable 
 Save in those things which knowledge least deserve. 
 Yet capable, not less, of task heroic. 
 My trust is in my work ; on that 1 fling me. 
 Trampling all questionings down.' 
 
 94 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 The many aspects of Alexander's character, beside 
 that of its overmastering pride, his poetic mysticism, 
 soldierly decision, statesmanlike foresight, consum- 
 mate coolness and dexterity, passion and ardour, 
 subtlety, and an instinct almost animal, are all 
 revealed by Mr. de Vere in firm but delicately con- 
 trived strokes ; and much more than these. How 
 much of insight he gives us into the heart of the 
 man in this contemptuous reference to Philotas, 
 whom he has put to death on a suspicion of treason 
 
 unproven ! — 
 
 ' I, in his place. 
 Had ta'en small umbrage at my days abridged : 
 There lived not scope nor purpose in his life 
 Which death could mar.' 
 
 How affectingly, and with what exquisite appropri- 
 ateness of scene, does Mr. de Vere introduce us to 
 the only expression of Alexander's feelings which 
 were not wholly centred in himself! With 
 Hephestion Alexander visits the tomb of Achilles, 
 and anoints the pillar that marks the grave ; 
 Hephestion lingers : — 
 
 ' ALEXANDER. 
 
 The night descends. 
 Hephestion, I depart. — You tarried ; — wherefore } 
 
 HEPHESTION. 
 
 For justice's sake and friendship's. Is there room 
 For nothings then^ but greatness on the earth ? 
 I crowned that other tomb. 
 
 95 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 ALEXANDER. 
 
 What tomb ? 
 
 HEPHESTION. 
 
 It stood 
 Close by, the loftier ; — greater love had raised it ; — 
 Patroclus' tomb. 
 
 ALEXANDER. 
 
 'Tis strange I marked it not. 
 
 HEPHESTION. 
 
 These two were friends. 
 
 ALEXANDER. 
 
 Ay ! nor in death divided. 
 
 HEPHESTION. 
 
 Therefore, despite that insolent cynic sect^ 
 The gods have care for things on earth. 
 
 ALEXANDER. 
 
 Hephestion ! 
 That which Patroclus to Achilles was 
 Art thou to me — my nearest and mine inmost. 
 In them^ not lives alone, but fates were joined ; 
 Patroclus died, Achilles followed soon.' 
 
 The character of Alexander, whose ' one human 
 affection,' his friendship for Hephestion, ' did not 
 escape the alloy' of pride, has an historic and 
 philosophical interest; that of Hephestion an 
 interest more near, human and personal. Without 
 Hephestion the drama could not but have lain 
 
 96 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 somewhat outside the realm of ordinary human 
 nature, so far removed are Alexander's character 
 and achievements from those possible for the 
 average man. But in the juxtaposition of these 
 two figures Mr. de Vere has produced a striking 
 contrast of wide intellectual and moral bearings. 
 Alexander touches earth in his love for his friend ; 
 Hephestion is ennobled by his preservation of every 
 virtue, especially those distinctively Christian, of 
 simplicity and humility, like Marcus Aurelius, even 
 on the steps, as we may say, of an imperial throne. 
 Alexander, like another Achilles, gathers around 
 his person all the glories of intellect and of power 
 which make him an incarnation of almost divine 
 greatness; and, like Achilles, the dazzling bright- 
 ness of his day is in imagination still more bright, 
 because the night of death descended upon it all too 
 soon and sudden, with no twilight interspace of 
 lessening greatness to prepare the eye. Alexander 
 may stand for us as the supreme power of intellect, 
 soaring in contemplation, resistless in action, and 
 the worshippers of mind could hardly enthrone a 
 greater deity chosen from among mortals. Hephes- 
 tion, around whose head play less dazzling lights 
 than those of imperial intellect and power, is a type 
 of moral grandeur, of the beauty of virtue. Mr. 
 de Vere's design in this contrast was doubtless 
 to make comparison between the Greek and the 
 G 97 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Christian ideals, the glory of the mind and the 
 greater glory of the soul. 
 
 It is barely conceivable that any careful student 
 of this drama can assign to it a place second to any 
 produced in the nineteenth century. Nearly all the 
 great poets of the century have essayed drama; 
 almost without exception they have failed. Scott's 
 genius, supreme in narrative fiction, proved too 
 discursive for dramatic bounds. Wordsworth failed 
 because his intellect was contemplative, out of any 
 close sympathy with action. Coleridge, metaphy- 
 sician and mystic though he was, came nearer 
 success, but did not reach it. Byron was too 
 rigidly confined within the iron circle of his own 
 personality to succeed in dramatic characterisation. 
 Landor produced with the statuary's art noble 
 groups of men and women, but could not call them 
 from their pedestals into breathing life. Keats 
 rioted in the glow and passion of colour and of 
 music, and the Fates gave him no lease of life 
 wherein to study the world that lay around him. 
 Shelley achieved success in one instance, but his is a 
 drama of hateful night un visited by the blessed 
 light of day. Tennyson, after a brilliant career in 
 almost every other branch of the poetic art which 
 raised high expectations, gained only a respectable 
 mediocrity in this — the highest. The honours in 
 nineteenth-century drama are all divided between 
 
 98 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Sir Henry Taylor, Browning, and the de Veres, and 
 to the de Veres the future should confirm the 
 laurel. Mary Tudor and Alexander the Great, as 
 we have said, rank side by side as the highest 
 limits in the drama of action and of thought 
 reached in later times. Alexander is full of fine, 
 of memorable, of durable things ; it is a poem 
 large in conception, noble in execution. Mary 
 Tudor, less striking in single lines and passages, 
 less daring in its subject, has the processional move- 
 ment suited to its subject, and in harmony with the 
 traditions of English historical drama. Mr. de 
 Vere's diction is richer and more varied than Sir 
 Aubrey's, and rises in dignity with the difficulty of 
 the theme. Alexander's address to his troops after 
 the mutiny among them has been put down, begin- 
 
 nmg- 
 
 ' Ye swineherds^ and ye goatherds^ and ye shepherds. 
 That shamelessly in warlike garb usurped 
 Your vileness cloak, my words are not for you ; 
 There stand among you others, soldiers' sons, 
 Male hearts, o'er writ with chronicles of war : 
 To them I speak ' — 
 
 is a truly magnificent oration, not unmatched, 
 however, by passages from the same play, as where 
 Alexander crowns the tomb of Achilles and apos- 
 trophises the dead hero, or where, looking out 
 from the cliff opposite new Tyre, he sees in vision 
 the city that was to bear his name, Alexandria. 
 
 99 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 ' There the Euxine 
 Thaws in the hot winds from the Arabian gulfs, 
 There meet the East and West ; dusk Indian kings 
 Thither shall send their ivory and their gold_, 
 And thence to far Hesperia ! ' 
 
 The imagery is throughout poetic and arresting, 
 as here, where Hephestion speaks of Philotas : — 
 
 ' Coldness in youth is twice the cold of eld ; 
 Beneath the ashes of a fire burnt out 
 Some heat may lurk ; but from the unfuelled hearth 
 And dusk bars of a never-lighted fire 
 The chillness comes of death.' 
 
 Or here, where Philotas is awaiting death after 
 condemnation, and has drawn from Phylax an oath 
 to revenge him by the assassination of Hephestion : 
 
 ' Remember ! 
 An ice-film gathers on my shivering blood. 
 O happy days of youth ! They '11 laugh at me, 
 A shadow 'mid the shades, as I have laughed 
 At Homer's ghosts bending to victim blood, 
 A sieve-like throat incapable of joy ! 
 Tell me these things are fables. I 'd not live 
 A second time ; for life 's too dangerous ! 
 We come from nothing ; and another nothing, 
 A hoary Hunger, couchant at Death's gate 
 Waits to devour us.' 
 
 A critic's duty towards this play would be 
 unfaithfully performed if he failed to call attention 
 to the fine scenes in prose which it contains — scenes 
 which, almost to a greater degree than those in 
 
 100 
 
THE POETRY OF THE IJE VERES 
 
 verse, fill the reader with admiration for the 
 author's subtle psychological power and command 
 over the resources of language. 
 
 Into Mr. de Vere's dramas, Aleocander the Great 
 and St. Thomas of Canterhury., enters a philoso- 
 phical in addition to their historical, personal, 
 and poetic interest. The hero of each figures 
 forth in his own person a great world - moving 
 idea, such ideas as emanate from individuals who 
 stand head and shoulders above their fellows, are 
 in advance of their own times, and often powerful 
 ao-ents in the development, so slow and vet so 
 certain, of human society. To Alexander must be 
 ascribed of right the first inception of the idea 
 which in our day has become the familiar one of 
 'the parliament of man, the federation of the 
 world.' He first conceived the possibility of a 
 universal empire, which should embrace the nations 
 and gather the whole human family under the rule 
 of a single sceptre. It was not to be expected that 
 he should conceive it as a commonwealth or as 
 ruled bv anv other than its imperial founder. He 
 would have thrown the peoples into the melting- 
 pot of his own ambition, and created a terrestrial 
 planetary system of nations, with himself as central 
 sun. But the magnificence of the idea is scarcely 
 marred by the splendid egotism of the man, who 
 not alone conceived, but went far to realise it, 
 
 lOI 
 
THE POjJtR'Y OF THE DE VERES 
 
 'to make,' in Drydens fine phrase, 'one city of 
 the universe/ 
 
 ' Had he Hved/ says Mr. de Vera, ' he must have 
 created it. The Romans, whose legions with difficulty 
 resisted the phalanx when wielded by Pyrrhus of 
 Epirus^ must have sunk, despite the patriotic confidence 
 of Livy, before the conqueror. The imperial series 
 would then have been far otherwise completed ; the 
 consummating empire, which resumed all its prede- 
 cessors, inheriting their gifts, and exaggerating at once 
 their good and their evil, the virtues that win power, 
 and the earthly aim that degrades it, would have been 
 an empire of Intellect, not of Law; and over its 
 subject realms there would have been scattered, not 
 Roman municipalities, but Greek schools.' 
 
 What the world has lost, what it may have gained, 
 by the early death of the world -dissolving, world- 
 creating Macedonian, who shall determine ? 
 
 In the person of Becket, Mr. de Vere also repre- 
 sents an idea of wide-reaching national import- 
 ance. Becket stands in the history of his epoch 
 as representative of the Church, a moral power 
 espousing the higher national interests against 
 a tyrannous control, and so as a pillar of the 
 people's cause, a pioneer in the movement towards 
 true freedom and the higher civilisation. As a 
 reformer of clerical abuses, one indeed regarded in 
 his own day as secular in his views, and as defender 
 of the Church against the Crown, he was in reality 
 
 1 02 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 the upholder and guardian of the cause of liberty, 
 so hardly won in council-hall and tented field by 
 the people of England from their hereditary 
 
 kings. 
 
 The poetry of Mr. de Vere, to one fresh from 
 the perusal of modern verse, seems almost over- 
 weio-hted, overcharo;ed with thought. The error, 
 if error there be, lies certainly in excess rather 
 than deficiency ; he sows less with the hand than 
 with the whole sack. Or it might be more truth- 
 fully said that the fault is in over-refinement, such 
 refinement as can hardly be censured in itself, but 
 is rarely achieved without expansion beyond the 
 limits of emphasis, or without sacrifice of that 
 breadth of effect which is essential to the highest 
 beauties of verse. But though refined beyond 
 necessity, the informing ideas of his poetry are 
 never abstract, but spring spontaneously from some 
 ground of universal experience, and are vitally 
 connected with human feeling and the real world. 
 Like the poetry of Wordsworth, it lives and moves 
 in the peopled city of the pure humanities, not 
 in the world of phantasy, derived, it may be, from 
 ancient legend or saga, where we are ' housed m 
 dreams.' It is poetry whose source is very near 
 the heart, whose appeal needs not therefore to be 
 couched in the language of exaggeration, so simple, 
 direct, and winning are the truth and justice of 
 
 103 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 its natural claims. As with Wordsworth, too, the 
 level of Mr. de Vere's verse is determined by its 
 immediate subject ; as the wind of inspiration blows 
 strongly or faintly the verse rises or falls, but it 
 must be noticed that the language remains the 
 same throughout; it is never by trick of phrase 
 or cunning effects of word-melody that Mr. de 
 Vere's poetic power displays itself. The subjects 
 of which he makes choice are subjects upon which 
 he feels strongly and treats for their own sake, 
 not merely such as afford facilities for poetic 
 handling or the production of surprising beauties, 
 that we may be induced to exclaim, ' How ingeni- 
 ous an artist ! ' It is poetry not by reason of 
 its ornate splendour, but because its thoughts 
 are sincere, its impulses spontaneous, its passion 
 authentic. 
 
 It has been already observed that the poetry of 
 the de Veres is characterised by its independence 
 of contemporary fashion, than which there are few 
 surer tests of true poetic genius. This alone gives 
 interest to their work apart from success in the 
 dramatic form, a form in which the representative 
 poets of the century fell short. There is yet another 
 field of poetry, cultivated indeed by many modern 
 poets, but by few among the greatest with eminent 
 success, in which the de Veres have attained a notable 
 mastery. Minds of the discursive order, like Words- 
 
 104 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 worth's, working in the medium of measured lan- 
 guage, are apt to run on to undue lengths, to 
 spread their thought over too large a surface. 
 For this reason Mr. de Vere, like Wordsworth, is 
 indisputably at his best in the poems composed 
 in fixed forms ; in the drama, because compression 
 is essential, and in 'the sonnet's scanty plot of 
 ground,' where prolixity is impossible. A poet 
 who is exclusively a poet, whose business in life 
 is poetry, naturally pours into verse all his impres- 
 sions of life, makes the Muse his confidante in 
 small matters as in great. But enduring poetry 
 is occasional : it comes into being at unexpected 
 moments only when a perfect balance of mind and 
 heart are attained, when speech and idea are in 
 the closest harmony. Throughout a long poem it 
 is barely possible that this perfect harmony can 
 remain unbroken. A strict form, such as that of 
 the drama or the sonnet, seems to aid some poets, 
 compelling them to a severer guard over them- 
 selves than they care to exercise when moving in 
 freer, more liberal forms. In the art of sonnet- 
 writing Mr. de Vere inherited to the full his 
 fathei's genius. If less massive than the sonnets 
 of Sir Aubrey, Mr. de Vere's are as delicately 
 chiselled, are more varied in melody, and embrace 
 a wider range of subject. Of his father's sonnets, 
 some by their weight of thought and correspond- 
 
 105 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 ing dignity of movement remind us of the organ 
 note to be heard in Milton's 
 
 ' Captain, or Colonel, or Kniglit at Arms,' 
 
 or in his 
 
 ' Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints ' ; 
 
 while in singleness or unity of effect, in chaste 
 beauty of language, others can best be compared 
 with Wordsworth's. Of the one hundred sonnets 
 in the volume published in 1875, many deal with 
 aspects of scenery, in the main Irish ; some may 
 be classed among poems inspired by patriotism, 
 others among those inspired by religious feeling. 
 Take this as an example of the grave splendour 
 for which almost all are conspicuous : — 
 
 GOUGAUN BaRRA. 
 
 ' Not beauty which men gaze on with a smile, 
 Not grace that wins, no charm of form or hue. 
 Dwelt with that scene. Sternly upon my view. 
 And slowly — as the shrouding clouds awhile 
 Disclosed the beetling crag and lonely isle — 
 
 From their dim lake the ghostly mountains grew. 
 Lit by one slanting ray. An eagle flew 
 From out the gloomy gulf of the defile, 
 Like some sad spirit from Hades. To the shore 
 Dark waters rolled, slow heaving, with dull moan ; 
 The foam-flakes hanging from each livid stone 
 Like froth on deathful lips ; pale mosses o'er 
 The shattered cell crept, as an orphan lone 
 Clasps his cold mother's breast when life is gone. ' 
 
 1 06 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Or this, as representative of the sonnets dealing 
 with national themes : — 
 
 The True Basis of Power. 
 ^ Power's footstool is Opinion^ and his throne 
 The Human Heart ; thus only kings maintain 
 Prerogatives God-sanctioned. The coarse chain 
 Tyrants would bind around us may be blown 
 Aside_, like foam_, that with a breath is gone : 
 For there 's a tide within the popular vein 
 That despots in their pride may not restrain^ 
 Swoln with a vigour that is all its own. 
 
 Ye who would steer along these doubtful seas^ 
 Lifting your proud sails to high heaven, beware ! 
 
 Rocks throng the waves, and tempests load the breeze ; 
 Go search the shores of History — mark there 
 
 Tlie Oppressor's lot^ the Tyrant's destinies ; 
 Behold the wrecks of ages, and despair ! ' 
 
 Mr. de Vere, in his memoir of his father, tells 
 us that 
 
 ' The somiet was with him to the last a favourite form 
 of composition. This taste was fostered by the mag- 
 nificent sonnets of Wordsworth, whose genius he had 
 early hailed, and whose friendship he regarded as one 
 of the chief honours of his later life. For his earlier 
 sonnets he had found a model chiefly in the Italian 
 poets, especially Petrarch and Fihcaja. Like Filicaja 
 also, who so well deserved the inscription graven on 
 his tomb, '^qui gloriam literarum honestavit," he 
 valued the sonnet the more because its austere brevitv, 
 its severity, and its majestic completeness fit it especi- 
 ally for the loftier themes of song.' 
 
 It may be remarked, however, that the sonnet 
 
 107 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 has been in recent years so assiduously cultivated 
 
 as a poetic form, so much careful attention has 
 
 been o^iven to the minutest details of its structure, 
 
 and, as a result, such metrical perfection is now 
 
 required of the writer of sonnets, that many of Sir 
 
 Aubrey de Vere's most finished poems in this form 
 
 might from one point of view be regarded as 
 
 inferior to those of poets not comparable with 
 
 him. Mr. de Vere had the advantage of experience 
 
 not open to his father, and his work has perhaps 
 
 gained in technical qualities. He is best known 
 
 probably as a sonneteer, and it will be sufficient, 
 
 therefore, to quote two from his many faultless poems 
 
 cast in this mould. The first is very characteristic 
 
 of the refinement, the grave wisdom, the stateli- 
 
 ness of his mind. 
 
 Sorrow. 
 
 ' Count each affliction^, whether light or grave, 
 God's messenger sent down to thee ; do tliou 
 With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow ; 
 
 And ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave 
 
 Permission first his heavenly feet to lave ; 
 Then lay before him all thou hast ; allow 
 No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow. 
 
 Or mar thy hospitality ; no wave 
 
 Of mortal tumult to obliterate 
 
 The soul's marmoreal calmness ; grief should be 
 
 Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; 
 
 Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free ; 
 
 Strong to consume small troubles, to commend 
 
 Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to 
 the end.' 
 
 io8 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 The following in a different key displays the 
 ample sweep of his imagination : — 
 
 The Sux-God. 
 
 ' I saw the Master of the Sun. He stood 
 
 High in his luminous car^ himself more bright ; 
 
 An archer of immeasurable might : 
 On his left shoulder hung his quivered load ; 
 Spurned by his steeds the Eastern mountains glowed ; 
 
 Forward his eager eye, and brow of light 
 He bent ; and while both hands that arch embowed, 
 
 Shaft after shaft pursued the flying night. 
 No wings profaned that god-like form ; around 
 
 His neck high-held an ever-moving crowd 
 Of locks hung glistening ; while such perfect sound 
 
 Fell from his bowstring, that th' ethereal dome 
 Thrilled as a dewdrop, and each passing cloud 
 
 Expanded, whitening like the ocean foam.' 
 
 I have dwelt thus long upon the dramatic 
 quality, the solidity of substance, the wealth and 
 melody of language to be found in ]\Ir. de Vere's 
 poetry, because it seems to be popularly supposed 
 that he is a poet of purely meditative mood whose 
 sympathies are almost exclusively engaged with 
 aspects of religious faith or aspiration. Nothing 
 could be further from the truth. In the work of 
 the poetic sire and son alike there is a healthv 
 variety of interests, a hearty appreciation of all 
 that can gladden or beautify or ennoble life, a 
 fulness of pulse such as rarely beats in the poetry 
 of mature life, and is conspicuously absent in the 
 
 109 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 pessimistic period we have lately traversed. The 
 enthusiasms of Mr. de Vere's nature have free 
 course; its joys and sorrows, noble in themselves, 
 have a noble outpouring in his verse, and not 
 seldom does it render with perfect fidelity the 
 inmost cry of the heart — 
 
 ^ When the ploughshare of deeper passion 
 Tears down to our primitive rock.' 
 
 Next to Browning's, Mr. de Vere's poetry shows, 
 it may be said without exaggeration, the fullest 
 vitality, resumes the largest sphere of ideas, covers 
 the broadest intellectual field since the poetry of 
 Wordsworth. But with his versatility of manner 
 and wealth of ideas he has not combined that 
 poetic parsimony which gives only of its best, and 
 which has its reward at the hands of time. Had 
 he been less facile, it is probable that his reputation 
 as a poet would have been higher. Only the diligent 
 student of poetry cares to discover for himself the 
 pleasantest places in a poet's garden. If it be a 
 garden so carefully cultivated as that of Gray or 
 Tennyson, where every inch of ground has been 
 scrupulously tended, where the poet has, to change 
 the metaphor, been his own editor and made his 
 own selections, the visitors will be more numerous 
 and the critics disarmed ere they enter the sacred 
 enclosure. With poets like Browning and Words- 
 
 IIO 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 worth, the part is often greater than the whole, and 
 in these days of many writers only the choicest 
 work of an author can hope for survival. Most of 
 the poets of our own times and those to come will 
 be read only in anthologies, and brief space will be 
 granted to few among them save the highest. Were 
 a judicious selection made from Mr. de Vere's poetry 
 — neither of the two already published is in all 
 respects satisfactory — the critic of the future will 
 view with some astonishment a verdict of the 
 present which ranks before it a volume by any 
 living writer. 
 
 It has been sufficiently proved that Mr. de Vere 
 is an original author. Alone among living poets 
 he certainly stands, if only by reason of the strik- 
 ingly impersonal character of his work. Like Byron 
 and Tennyson, the later singers are rarely success- 
 ful save when intensely personal, when they depict 
 moods they have themselves experienced. It will 
 be granted, however, that by far the highest 
 triumphs of imaginative art are achieved by those 
 poets, rare indeed in their appearance, whose sphere 
 of operation is not limited by the narrow boundary 
 of a single life's experience, but who cast themselves 
 abroad upon universal human nature, sound its 
 depths and shallows, sympathise with its multiform 
 interests, and entering through knowledge and 
 native insight into the long history of man, are, in 
 
 III 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 a very positive sense, citizens of the world rather 
 than the slaves of environment in any age or country. 
 Mr. de Vere has indeed lived abroad, a mental life 
 untrammelled by space or time, of singular variety 
 and depth ; but perhaps he has felt himself most in 
 unison, and, it may be, almost desired to make his 
 home with the ages which he characterises as 
 eminently Christian ages, when life was at once 
 gay and serious, represented in one aspect by Dante, 
 the most spiritual of poets, and in another 
 by Chaucer, the most mirthful and human- 
 hearted. 
 
 In these latter days of science and scientific in- 
 quiry, necessary progress has done much to remove 
 into the region of discarded legend and mystic 
 unreality many of the largest and most penetrating 
 conceptions, many of the noblest truths regarding 
 it that could inform and illuminate human life. 
 In that body of Mr. de Vere's work which we 
 may call distinctively religious, as dealing with 
 the spiritual in man, he has chosen for poetic 
 treatment certain great spiritual conceptions, and 
 has illustrated them at work in the formation of 
 saintly character, producing lovely and perfect lives, 
 and as productive of that self-forgetfulness, the 
 passionate surrender to the service of humanity, of 
 those who, ' loving God, loved man the more,'' which 
 shines in the devoted missionary labours of the 
 
 112 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 ancient Roman and Celtic churches. The gladsome 
 and luminous wisdom, the child's heart within the 
 man's maturer mind, the quiet yet expectant trust- 
 fulness that belongs to unquestioning faith, the 
 intense glow of an unquenchable fire of aspiration — 
 these are but dim and remote to us in a season that 
 seems by contrast the dull November of the world. 
 So wise are we grown that we can scarce be joyful, 
 and, though heirs of all the ages, can reduce only a 
 small portion of our patrimony into actual owner- 
 ship. Mr. de Vere would have us recover the ancient 
 wealth of our fathers, while we retained what is 
 exclusively our own ; and in his verse the neglected 
 truths, once in actual possession of the Christian 
 peoples, are finely emphasised. In reading Mr. de 
 Vere's Legends of the Saxon Saints, Mediaeval 
 Records, and Legends of St. Patrick, the uppermost 
 feeling must be — a feeling which Mr. de Vere was 
 doubtless desirous of inspiring — how much our 
 material and scientific progress, our advance in 
 civilisation, has cost us. That there have been 
 compensating gains Mr. de Vere would be the first 
 to insist, but the loss is no less certain. It would 
 seem that the human race lies under the blighting 
 necessity of paying for its greatest gains by the 
 abandonment of other and no less priceless posses- 
 sions. In a fine poem written at Lugano, we have 
 Mr. de Vere's message to the present age : — 
 H 113 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 ' Teach us in all that round us lies 
 
 To see and feel each hour 
 More than Homeric majesties^ 
 
 And more than Phidian power ; 
 Teach us the coasts of modern life 
 With lordlier tasks are daily rife 
 
 Than theirs who plunged the heroic oar 
 
 Of old by Chersonese ; 
 But bid our Argo launch from shore 
 
 Unbribed by golden Fleece : 
 Bid us Difidalean arts to scorn 
 Which prostituted ends suborn ! 
 
 That science — slave of sense— which claims 
 
 No commerce with the sky_, 
 Is baser thrice than that which aims 
 
 With waxen wings to fly ! 
 To grovel, or self-doomed to soar — 
 Mechanic age, be proud no more ! ' 
 
 Of that department of Mr. de Vere's work dealing 
 with chivah-y, the lives of saints and the records of 
 the Christian Church, I omit a lengthened criticism 
 with the less regret since this part of his work is 
 most widely known. To a volume of selections 
 recently published under the editorship of Mr. 
 Woodberry an appreciative and excellent essay 
 stands as preface, in which full justice is done to 
 these Christian poems. 
 
 'They succeed one another as the poet's memory 
 wanders back to the legends of the Empire on the first 
 establishment of the faith in Roman lands and along 
 
 114 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 Asian shores, or moves through mediaeval times with 
 Joan of Arc and episodes of the Cid that recall Cuchul- 
 lain in their light-hearted performance of natural deeds, 
 now under the Cross. The beauty of these separate 
 stories is equable and full of a softened charm ; but in 
 them too, as in the Bardic myths, there abides that 
 distance of time which makes them remote, as if they 
 were not of our own. They are highly pictorial; and 
 in reading them, each secluded in that silent, old-world 
 air that encompasses it, one feels that here is a modern 
 poet, like those early painters of pious heart who 
 spent their lives in picturing scenes from the life of 
 Christ ; and one recalls, perhaps, some Convent of San 
 Marco, where each monastic cell bears on its quiet walls 
 such scenes from the shining hand of the Florentine on 
 whose face fell heaven's mildest light. These poems 
 of Aubrey de Vere — to characterise them largely — are 
 scenes from the life of Christ in man ; and there is 
 something in them — in their gladness, their luminous- 
 ness, their peace — which suggests Fra Angelico, the 
 halo of Christian art.' 
 
 Before taking final leave of Mr, de Vere, I 
 would illustrate by one quotation the felicity with 
 which he moves in lighter and more lyric measure. 
 There are few poets of the present generation, de- 
 spite their almost exclusive devotion to the lyric 
 Muse, who can write more charming verse. 
 
 ^ In Spring, when the breast of the lime-grove gathers 
 
 Its roseate cloud ; when the flushed streams sing. 
 And the mavis tricks her in gayer feathers ; 
 Read Chaucer then ; for Chaucer is Spring ! 
 
 115 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 On lonely evenings in dull Novembers, 
 
 When rills run choked under skies of lead. 
 
 And on forest-hearths the year's last embers. 
 Wind-heaped and glowing, lie, yellow and red ; 
 
 Read Chaucer still ! In his ivied beaker 
 
 With knights and wood-gods, and saints embossed, 
 
 Spring hides her head till the wintry breaker 
 Thunders no more on the far-off coast.' 
 
 And there have been few poets smce Coleridge 
 passed over to the great majority who have touched 
 a string which so nearly recalls the enchantments of 
 his magic harp as Mr. de Vere in his magnificent 
 Autumnal Ode. 
 
 ' It is the Autumnal Epode of the year : 
 
 The Nymphs that urge the seasons on their round. 
 They to whose green lap flies the startled deer 
 
 When bays the far-off hound. 
 They that drag April by the rain-bright hair. 
 Though sun-showers daze her and the rude winds scare. 
 
 O'er March's frosty bound, 
 Tliey by whose warm and furtive hand unwound 
 
 The cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast. 
 Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier. 
 
 With folded palms and faces to the ^Vest, 
 And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground. 
 
 A sacred stillness hangs upon the air, 
 
 A sacred clearness. Distant shapes draw nigh : 
 Glistens yon Elm grove, to its heart laid bare. 
 
 And all articulate in its symmetry, 
 W^ith here and there a branch that from on high 
 Far flaslies washed in wan and watery gleam ; 
 Beyond, the glossy lake lies calm — a beam 
 Upheaved, as if in sleep, from its slow central stream. 
 
 Il6 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 This quietj is it Truth^ or some fair mask ? 
 
 Is pain no more ? Shall sleep be lord, not Death ? 
 Shall sickness cease to afflict and overtask 
 
 The spent and labouring- breath ? 
 Is there, 'mid all yon forms and fields, this day 
 
 No grey old head that drops ? no darkening eye ? 
 Spirits of Pity, lift your hands and pray — 
 
 Each hour, alas, men die ! ' 
 
 We cannot recall from English literary history 
 such true poetic genius exhibited in the work of 
 both father and son, as in that of Sir Aubrey 
 and Mr. Aubrey de Vere. It is a unique instance 
 of the inheritance of high poetic power — a power 
 which, in another member of the family working in 
 a different field, has displayed itself in the admirable 
 translations of Horace (by far the most perfect we 
 possess) of Sir Stephen de Vere, Mr. de Vere's elder 
 brother. The de Vere constellation is a brio^ht and 
 arresting object among the greater and the lesser 
 stars of the century. The value of poetry such as 
 has been given us by the de Vere family is perhaps 
 greater to-day than ever before. It recalls us from 
 the inconsiderable details which life and livelihood 
 impose upon the majority of men. It frees from the 
 dreary round of commonplace, from the mechani- 
 cal, dream-like walk through life. To take up 
 this poetry is for most men to step out of the 
 narrow, circumscribed circle of their daily tasks and 
 conversation into free air under the open eye of 
 
 117 
 
THE POETRY OF THE DE VERES 
 
 heaven. It gives a clue to the inner and seldom- 
 sounded depths of the soul, to the possibilities that 
 are latent in the character, the powers hid beneath 
 the surface, it supports the reason that follows, 
 the soul that aspires towards the intellectual, the 
 spiritual view of things. It fortifies, amid much 
 that disheartens in modern life, the divine spirit 
 in man. 
 
 Ii8 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Criticism, it is complained, moves but haltingly 
 after the pioneer of genius, and the boundaries of 
 art are enlarged in its despite. We have, there- 
 fore, in criticism a somewhat discredited science. 
 The judgment indisputably takes a colour, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, from the kind of excel- 
 lence with which it is familiar; in excellence of 
 an unfamiliar type there lurks a bewildering and 
 baffling element. We are on the whole right in 
 thinking that the laws of art are written in the 
 practices of the great artists ; we are right too in 
 conceiving the grammar of criticism as in large 
 measure a system derived from these practices ; we 
 fail when we assume that the book of practices is 
 closed and that the grammar as it exists is final. 
 One may thus account for the great historical 
 mistakes of criticism, for its inefficiency in deahng 
 with an original writer who indulges in novel and 
 unfamiliar practices, and justifies them only by 
 his results. Criticism like that of Dr. Johnson, a 
 criticism of fixed and external standards we may 
 
 119 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 call it, can never, even when supported by sound 
 learning and robust good sense, be altogether trust- 
 worthy. It is never free of the danger that it 
 may be discredited by the event. The search for 
 a definitive, a final canon of criticism must there- 
 fore be futile ; the closing chapter of the history 
 of art, like the history of language, cannot be 
 written. But despair of finding such a final canon 
 need not drive us into the wilderness of private 
 tastes and individual opinions. We may perhaps, in 
 the end, attain to an apparatus criticus which, while it 
 formulates a general demand, will leave art practi- 
 cally unfettered in its choice of methods ; we may 
 yet lay down a system of criticism which shall be 
 possessed of a touchstone universally applicable, but 
 free to enlarge its grammar of practices. Out of 
 the chaos produced by the flamboyant individualism 
 of latter-day criticism we may in time see an order 
 emerge, though no prophet has proclaimed the day 
 of its coming as at hand. In the present state of 
 criticism it is plain that no view taken of an author 
 possesses any authority beyond that of the indi- 
 vidual who presents it ; there exists no final court 
 of appeal in matters of art. Yet when a writer 
 has gained the attention of a considerable body 
 of cultivated opinion, one is desirous, and naturally 
 desirous, to test his performance by some deep-lying 
 and permanent principles, to determine if possible 
 
 1 20 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 whether his eminence is real, or an apparent emin- 
 ence due to our proximity to the object; in a 
 word, to anticipate the verdict of posterity. By 
 an imperious intellectual necessity we are driven 
 to compare the achievements of our own day and 
 generation with those of the past. And because 
 no other body of principles exists which formulates 
 a consistent demand, it is perhaps best, even when 
 dealino- with an author who disregards conventions, 
 to make an appeal to the broad principles of ancient 
 art, or to take these at least as the most fitting 
 point of departure in any attempted critical 
 estimate. 'They at any rate knew^ what they 
 wanted in art, and we do not.' For this reason 
 Matthew Arnold in his search for what was sound 
 and true in poetical art found the only sure 
 guidance among the ancients. ' They at any rate 
 knew what they wanted in art, and we do not.' 
 We do not know what we want in art, nor is it 
 a matter of any importance, w^e seem now^ to be 
 told ; we do not greatly need to know. The writer 
 will write as he pleases, and the business of the 
 critic will be merely to note characteristics, ' as a 
 chemist notes some natural element.' The author 
 and his work stand to the critic as Nature and her 
 phenomena stand to the man of science. There is 
 no room left for the expression of dissatisfaction, 
 there can be no inequalities in art. Like nature, 
 
 121 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 art too is perfect. ' Perfection is equal,' writes one 
 of Mr. Meredith's disciples, 'and all art stands 
 on the equality of perfection.' How luminous a 
 saying ! What insight, what sagacity ! Here is 
 the only and the true simplification of criticism, 
 henceforth to consist in the selection of super- 
 latives, since the praise of perfection cannot be 
 adequately conducted save in superlatives. But 
 a writer of Mr. Meredith's calibre is not served by 
 criticism such as this suited to the ceremonial 
 which accompanies the canonisation of the minor 
 poet or the decadent. He is not served by this 
 inability to perceive distinctions, to discriminate, 
 to appraise with justice; he is not served by a 
 gracious readiness to accept all art as on the equality 
 of perfection. A writer of Mr. Meredith's genius 
 is better served by principles of criticism which 
 narrow the circle than by these sweeping circuits 
 of magnificent inclusiveness. Though his worth 
 and influence are yet uncalculated, the curve of 
 his orbit yet undetermined, there is that about Mr. 
 Meredith which distinguishes his from the lesser 
 writers. He is very evidently not of their com- 
 pany, though he has yet to attain a secure niche 
 in the national imagination. Mr. Meredith is not 
 the people's favourite, and no extravagances of 
 critical appreciation will ever make him their 
 favourite, but he is a figure of sufficient importance 
 
 122 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 to suggest the application to his work of the 
 severest tests, such tests as need only be applied 
 to writers who challenge comparison with the best 
 literary artists, not of their own day alone but of 
 England. And, however it may be with writers 
 of whom we think and speak as accomplished 
 rather than creative, questions of technique are 
 not the first questions that arise in connection 
 with such an author. An author who challenges 
 comparison with the classics of our own or any 
 other literature does so on broader ground than 
 the finish or perfume of his sentences. 
 
 ' Is there not in field, wood, or shore something 
 more precious and tonic than any special beauties we 
 may chance to find there — flowers, perfumes, sunsets 
 — something that we cannot do without, though we 
 can do without these ? Is it health, life, power, or 
 what is it "^ ' 
 
 Form is a vital matter in literature — it will not 
 do to disregard it, it is a vital matter ; but the 
 Aristotelian canon lays its first emphasis upon 
 form in the sense of architectonics rather than in 
 the sense of finish of detail. And if we are to 
 judge of Mr. Meredith''s achievement by classic 
 canons, it is well for him that it is so. 
 
 As a novelist, and it is as a novelist that Mr. 
 Meredith claims the most serious attention — as a 
 novelist he is a worker in a field not directly re- 
 
 123 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 cognised in the ancient world as a legitimate sphere 
 for the literary artist. But within the present 
 century Fiction has made a kind of triumphal 
 progress from village maiden to reigning beauty 
 at the Court. Her charms compel universal 
 homage. She has taken without protest a place 
 beside poetry, the drama, and history, as a branch 
 of art, hardly if at all of inferior dignity. She 
 has usurped the place of these older literary arts 
 in public favour. This position she has achieved 
 while still in her artistic youth. She has enlarged 
 the sphere of her influence, and is likely still 
 further to enlarge it, for she draws to herself 
 every variety of talent, and offers it an open field. 
 In the novel we have the formal world into which 
 much of the best creative energy of the century 
 has been directed ; and in his choice of the novel 
 as the best medium for his own imaginative work 
 Mr. Meredith followed a true guiding instinct. 
 Here the peculiarities of his methods detract less 
 from the effectiveness of his work than in his 
 poetry. Traditions and conventions are of less 
 weight in fiction than in any other department 
 of literary art, and of this fact Mr. Meredith has 
 taken advantage. Nevertheless, and in spite of 
 his indifference to literary traditions, many of 
 the qualities of Mr. Meredith's work are classic 
 qualities. The novel may be regarded as a drama 
 
 124 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 written out in full for fireside readers, with occa- 
 sional comments by the Chorus in the person of 
 the author. Mr. Meredith's novels are in every 
 sense dramas, usually comedies or tragi-comedies, 
 but essentially dramatic in presentation. If we 
 make a demand upon the modern noveUst in the 
 person of Mr. Meredith such as was made upon 
 the ancient Greek dramatist, a demand for design, 
 and again design, and yet again design, we shall 
 not find an absence of design, we shall not find 
 even a weakness, but a positive largeness, a 
 breadth of design, which at once distinguishes 
 him as a writer of no ordinary note. The breadth 
 of design in his works forbids any question as 
 to his intellectual eminence. It is when he 
 attempts to execute his design that he is less 
 successful. To anticipate in a measure what must 
 be the concluding judgment on Mr. Meredith, 
 we may say that his design is usually noble and 
 spacious, but it is never wholly extricated. It 
 is extricated in parts, but in the main, hke some 
 colossal sphinx, it lies half-buried in the desert sand. 
 That Mr. Meredith has not been altogether 
 successful is not indeed surprising; the task he 
 has set himself in each one of his greater novels 
 is a task of vastly greater magnitude than that 
 undertaken, let us say, by Euripides in his Hecuba 
 or Ion. The canvas is a larger one, the types of 
 
 125 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 character more subtle and complex, the issues more 
 involved, the action no less important. If one has 
 to complahi that Mr. Meredith's designs are less 
 completely extricated than those of his predecessors 
 who have created the traditions of art, if at times 
 they are not in any respect set free, it is only just 
 to bear in mind the magnitude of his intellectual 
 undertakings. The character of Mr. Meredith's 
 drama must also be borne in mind. It is the 
 drama of conduct and of motives, the inner springs 
 of conduct; of character evolved by varying sets 
 of circumstances and amid the mutual relations, 
 actions, and reactions of human life. He isj be- 
 sides, the chronicler of the subtle and elusive 
 fluctuations of emotion, the ebb and flow of feeling, 
 the alternations of moods that make a theatre of 
 the human heart. Present as spectator of this 
 subjective play of swiftly passing moods, he delights 
 to publish the secrets whispered on that inner stage, 
 to draw aside at certain critical moments, in certain 
 critical situations, the curtain that makes it invisible 
 to the physical eye. It is not merely what his 
 personages do, but how and what they feel, that in- 
 terests Mr. Meredith ; he is the novelist who most 
 faithfully records the phases of that inner, partly 
 even subconscious life Avhich, viewed from without, 
 we denominate character or temperament. The 
 psychological forest Mr. Meredith is not the first 
 
 126 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 to enter, but no previous author has penetrated 
 it so deeply. One, and not the least, of his dis- 
 tinctions, therefore, is to have added to art a new 
 province legitimately reclaimed for future cultiva- 
 tion by his successors. 
 
 In his methods, too, Mr. Meredith, if not without 
 precursors, has pushed beyond the limits of tradi- 
 tion. He is content to indicate rather than to 
 describe, to suggest rather than to paint a picture, 
 ' to rouse the inward vision ' rather than elaborate 
 a finished masterpiece. These are the characteristics 
 which remind Mr. Meredith's readers of Browninsr. 
 Like Browning he is content to depend upon his 
 reader to a larger degree than perhaps the majority 
 of present-day readers are prepared to bear. Thus 
 Mr. Meredith and Mr. Browning, declining to pipe 
 to popular airs, haughtily impose a test upon their 
 audiences. They trust to the sympathy and to the 
 intelligence of the faithful few, they make words 
 their servants, nor suffer themselves by any over- 
 scrupulous regard for form to become the slaves of 
 their own vocabularies. Mr. Meredith's interests 
 and methods may be thus briefly indicated, but the 
 spirit of his work, the leaven that leavens it, resides 
 in his apprehension of life as a tragi-comedy, as a 
 subject for ' thoughtful laughter." ]Mr. Meredith 
 — a7rovho'ye\oLO<^ — conceives that there exists no 
 need to distort or dislocate human life, to view it 
 
 127 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 in concave or convex mirrors, in order to present 
 a picture which will afford a smile to the wise 
 student of the spectacle. ' The Comic Spirit, which 
 is the perceptive, is the governing spirit, awaken- 
 ing and giving aim to the powers of laughter.' 
 Mr. Meredith is the willing servitor of the Comic 
 Muse. 
 
 ' Thine is the service^ thine the sport 
 This shifty heart of ours to hunt 
 Across its webs and round the many a ring 
 Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds 
 Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke 
 Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster's grunt, ' 
 
 But the Comic Muse knows her limitations. 
 
 There are sights at which she does not laugh ; 
 
 and in the presence of Sincerity she spreads her 
 
 wings. You may even love and not call a smile 
 
 to her features. ' If she watches over sentimen- 
 
 talism with a birch-rod, she is not opposed to 
 
 romance. You may love, and warmly too, as long 
 
 as you are honest. Do not offend reason.' There 
 
 are causes, Mr. Meredith will tell us, for tears as 
 
 well as laughter. 
 
 ' For this the Comic Muse extracts of creatures 
 Appealing to the fount of tears ; that they 
 Strive never to outleap our human features 
 And do right reason's ordinance obey. 
 In peril of the hum to laughter nighest. 
 But prove they under stress of action's fire 
 Nobleness, to that test of Reason highest 
 She bows ; she waves them for tlie loftier lyre.' 
 
 128 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 In the main, however, Mr. Meredith finds that 
 there is more of comedy than tragedy in the world, 
 or he has found in himself a riper faculty for its 
 representation. The tragedy that follows hard 
 upon the heels of comedy in human life he does 
 not exclude as a subject for his art; but he usually 
 declines to dwell upon it, to bring it into the fore- 
 ground of his representation. Comedy occupies 
 the foreground in Mr. Meredith's drama of life. 
 And of the supreme tragedy of love deflowered he 
 would have us believe that Shakespeare himself, 
 master of human nature, had no knowledge. 
 
 ^ Thence came the honeyed corner at his lips, 
 The conquering smile wherein his spirit sails 
 Calm as the God who the white sea wave whips. 
 Yet full of speech and intershifting- tales. 
 Close mirrors of us ; thence had he the laugh 
 We feel is thine ; broad as ten thousand beeves 
 At pasture ! ' 
 
 In Mr. Meredith's drama of life comedy occupies 
 the foreground ; yet, when the issues are the issues 
 of tragedy, it cannot be said that his power is less 
 apparent. The tragic argument is not too high for 
 him ; but he is at all times a stranwr to that vulo-ar 
 insistence upon grief, that call to tears, that pro- 
 tracted demand for pity which so often masquerades 
 as tragedy or as pathos. 
 
 ' Concerning pathos/ as he tells us in the opening 
 I 129 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 chapter of The Egoist, ' no ship can now set sail without 
 pathos ; and we are not totally deficient of pathos. 
 The Egoist surely inspires pity. He who would 
 desire to clothe himself at everybody's expense, and 
 is of that desire condemned to strip himself stark 
 naked, he, if pathos ever had a form, might be taken 
 for the actual person. Only he is not allowed to rush 
 at you, roll you over, and squeeze your body for the 
 briny drops. There is the innovation.' 
 
 But this innovation of Mr. Meredith's, this reluct- 
 ance to force tears from us, to compel us to a luxury 
 of grief, is construed by some so as to yield a theory 
 akin to the feminine theory in respect of Thackeray 
 — that he, too, is a cynic, or if not a cynic, at least 
 deficient in heart. It is a theory to be summarily 
 dismissed. We have no fear in the company of 
 those who speak freely of their grief, in the com- 
 pany of those whose recital is accompanied by 
 tears. In such company we can remain masters 
 of our own emotions. But there are others who 
 feel widely and deeply, and through excess or 
 intensity of emotion do not trust themselves to 
 speak, or, when they speak, preserve a calm or 
 even a cheerful countenance; this is dangerous 
 company for those whose emotions are 'tickle o' 
 the sere.' Composed features furnish but a shallow 
 argument that the heart does not bleed. And 
 indeed not one of the popular titles will fit Mr. 
 Meredith, not cynic, nor pessimist, nor sceptic. 
 
 130 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 The popular ethical codes, too, will not serve ; he is 
 not to be parcelled out by the Liliputian measur- 
 ing-tapes. Not realist nor idealist, but both; a 
 writer who appeals in his own fine phrase to ' the 
 conscience residing in thoughtfulness,' who is on 
 the side of unwearying, inextinguishable effort, 
 whose ethics are the simple ethics of a faith in all 
 heroic enterprises. 
 
 Mr. Meredith" entered the field of authorship 
 between the publication of Pendennis and that of 
 Heiiry Esmond, in 1851, the year after the publi- 
 cation of In Memoriam, and entered it, not as a 
 novelist, but as a poet. It was not until five years 
 later that he made his first appearance as a prose 
 writer, in The Shaving of Shagpat, a fantasy less 
 likely to attract than to bewilder even a conciliatory 
 public. No reader of Mr. Meredith's early verses, 
 however gifted with critical second-sight, could have 
 foreseen the author of The Egoist, or Diana of 
 the Crossways, either in the strong or in the weak 
 poems contained in that first volume. 
 
 ^ Summer glows warm on the meadows ; then come let us 
 
 roam thro' them gaily. 
 Heedless of heat and the hot-kissing sun, and the fear of 
 
 dark freckles, . . . 
 Come, and like bees we will gather the rich golden honey 
 
 of noontide ; 
 Deep in the sweet summer meadows, bordered by hillside 
 
 and river 
 
 131 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Lined with long trenches half-hidden^ where sweetest the 
 
 smell of white meadoM^sweet 
 Blissfully hovers — O sweetest ! but pluck it not ! even in 
 
 the tenderest 
 Grasp it will lose breath and wither ; like many not made 
 
 for a posy.' 
 
 There is not much indication here of the later 
 and more characteristic manner. This was written 
 in the years before Mr. Meredith had taught him- 
 self to write love-speeches like this : — 
 
 ' So in love with you that on my soul your happiness 
 was my marrow — whatever you wished ; anything you 
 chose. It's reckoned a fool's part. No_, it's love ; the 
 love of a woman — the one woman ! I was like the 
 hand of a clock to the springs. I taught this old 
 watch-dog of a heart to keep guards and bury the bones 
 you tossed him.' 
 
 Or to inform his readers of a simple fact in this 
 fashion : — 
 
 ' Algernon waited dinnerless until the healthy-going 
 minutes distended and swelled monstrous and horrible 
 as viper-bitten bodies^ and the venerable Signior Time 
 became of unhealthy hue.' 
 
 Or to set them problems like this : — 
 
 ' The talk fell upon our being creatures of habit. 
 She said, " It is there that we see ourselves crutched 
 between love grown old and indifference ageing to 
 love." ' 
 
 Yet, like that of all great writers, Mr. Meredith's 
 
 132 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 style has charm, a something analogous to the 
 expression which accompanies the words of the 
 speaker, and lends to them the interest of his 
 personality. i\Ir. Meredith's style has charm, but 
 an occasional, a fitful charm. We do not contend 
 that there is a hidden grace in such phrases as ' her 
 meditations tottered in dots,"* 'swings suspended on 
 a scarce credible guess,"* ' infrigidated a congenial 
 atmosphere by an overflow of exclamatory wonder- 
 ment,'' ' women whose bosoms can be tombs,"* or 
 ' Her head performed the negative,"' or ' resumed its 
 brushing negative,"* or in any of the phrases usually 
 quoted in derision of Mr. Meredith's style. For a 
 deliberate artist he can be terribly uncouth, but 
 though eccentricities may mar a character, though 
 they may mar a style, they are not necessarily 
 inconsistent with charm. Mr. Meredith plays the 
 coquette with his readers, and estranges them, that 
 he may display his power of reducing them once 
 again to subjection. In Shagpat^ for example, 
 though he bewilders he fascinates, and Shagpat is 
 one of his most typical works. Here is a fairy tale, 
 the only fairy tale, we have been assured by one of 
 their best students, which, produced in an age of 
 culture, fully conforms to the folk-tale convention. 
 How characteristic of its author to set himself so 
 herculean a task, to court a failure and to achieve 
 a triumph. Much of the charm of Mr. Meredith's 
 
 JO 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 style consists in this, that it is suffused with 
 poetry. He began as poet, and it is not diffi- 
 cult, more especially perhaps in his transcripts of 
 Nature, to discover the poet behind the novelist. 
 Passage after passage will recur to his readers in 
 which he has rendered with a poet's fidelity, with a 
 poet's felicity, the more elusive aspects of a scene, 
 its air and sky. No poet has with more penetrating 
 insight realised the unity, the larger harmony, which 
 without moral or spiritual loss includes man in 
 Nature. The atmosphere of Nature's varying moods, 
 and their magnetic influences upon the soul, these, 
 the proofs of that harmony, he has set himself to 
 delineate in his verse. The subtle effluences of a 
 morn of May, the autumnal chill of November that 
 damps to the bone, the virago morn on which the 
 wind has teeth and claws, all these he is glad to 
 have known, they belong to the great order of 
 things. And because he is a poet Mr. Meredith 
 is the closest observer of Nature among all our 
 novelists, the closest observer and the most minute 
 painter among them. 
 
 ' February blew south-west for the pairing of the 
 birds. A broad warm wind rolled clouds of every 
 ambiguity of form in magnitude over peeping azure, 
 or skimming upon lakes of blue and lightest green, or 
 piling the amphitheatre for majestic sunset.' 
 
 ' Rain was universal ; a thick robe of it swept from 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 hill to hill; thunder rumbled remote, and between the 
 ruffled roars, the downpour pressed on the land, with a 
 great noise of eager gobbling.' 
 
 ' South-western rain-clouds are never long sullen . . . 
 they rise and take veiled features in long climbing 
 watery lines ; at any moment they may break the veil 
 and show soft upper cloud, show sun on it, show sky, 
 green near the verge they spring from, of the green 
 of grass in early dew.' 
 
 But if Mr. Meredith's transcripts of Nature be- 
 long to poetry, there are passages in his description 
 of women that belong to it no less. His admirers 
 are indeed always willing to stake his reputation 
 upon the boyishness of his boys, and the woman- 
 hood of his women. And they are not wrong. The 
 author of Richard Feverel and Harry Richmond 
 is without doubt a supreme delineator of boyhood ; 
 he has probed it to the centre. And despite the 
 reservations it is necessary to make in respect of 
 Mr. Meredith as a literary artist, one must register 
 a conviction that in his portraiture of women he is 
 without a rival among English novelists. The 
 reference to Shakespeare made in this connec- 
 tion by Mr. Meredith's admirers is a trite one, but 
 it is not unwarrantable. When one thinks of 
 Shakespeare's women, and the wonderful procession 
 begins to pass before the eye of the mind, it is diffi- 
 cult to believe that anything at all comparable will 
 ever be seen again. And indeed nothing at all 
 
 135 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 comparable ever will be seen again. Yet if one 
 thinks of some of them singly : of Juliet, who 
 could ' teach the torches to burn bright ' ; of 
 Constance, who ' will instruct her sorrows to be 
 proud "* ; of Portia, ' the true and honourable wife '' 
 of Brutus ; of Rosalind the forest-maid, who plays 
 the forester with such consummate delicacy and 
 grace ; of Perdita the country child, as fresh and 
 beautiful as her own flowers drenched in the bright 
 dews of heaven ; of Viola the silent, of Olivia the 
 stately, of Cleopatra, who could ' make death proud 
 to take her' — if we call up to memory some of these 
 marvellous portraits by Shakespeare, though the 
 possibility of any general comparison dies away 
 with the mere mental enumeration, it may yet 
 perhaps justly be said, that among Mr. Meredith's 
 portraits there are some which the fierce light of 
 the comparison cannot injure, there are some ima- 
 gined and presented so similarly that we are even 
 forced to make it. Letitia Dale, ' with the romantic 
 tale upon her eyelashes ' ; Clara Middleton, ' the 
 dainty rogue in porcelain,' 'who gives one an idea of 
 the mountain echo ' ; Diana, all air and fire, worthy 
 the name of the quivered goddess ; Renee with her 
 southern blood and wilful graces ; Emilia, the 
 simple girl and passionate patriot ; Lucy, a fairy 
 princess, a magic enchantment to the eyes of the 
 new Ferdinand ; the soft-eyed star of love, Ottilia, 
 
 136 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 noble in heart and name ; — to deny that these are 
 near of kin to the women of Shakespeare is indeed 
 possible, but Justice and the Graces forbid it. 
 
 We have said that the poet in Mr. Meredith is 
 displayed in his transcripts from Nature and in 
 his descriptions of women no less. Perhaps in that 
 love idyll, the chapter in Richard Feverel entitled 
 'A Diversion, played on a Penny Whistle," the 
 best that prose can do to blend in one unforget- 
 table strain the full enchantment of summer and 
 the golden joys of young hearts that love has 
 been done. Perhaps it would be difficult to find 
 elsewhere the like sympathetic intensity of descrip- 
 tion, so marvellous a power of realising with so 
 marvellous a power of rendering into words in 
 their prose order the mingled flame and mystery 
 and ecstasy that surround as with a shimmering 
 magic haze the early hours of a great passion. 
 Here is a fragment from one of his chapters in 
 Richard Feverel^ which are unsurpassed and unsur- 
 passable : — 
 
 ' And so it was with the damsel that knelt there. 
 The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the 
 smooth southern cloud lying along the blue ; from a 
 dewy copse standing dark over her nodding hat the 
 blackbird fluted, calhng to her -with thrice mellow 
 note ; the kingfisher flashed emerald out of green 
 osiers ; a bow-winged heron travelled aloft^ seeking 
 solitude; a boat slipped towards her containing a 
 
 137 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 dreamy youth ; and still she plucked the fruit, and 
 ate, and mused, as if no fairy prince were invading 
 her territories, and as if she wished not for one or 
 knew not her wishes. Surrounded by the green 
 shaven meadows, the pastoral summer buzz, the weir- 
 fall's thundering white, amid the breath and beauty 
 of wild-flowers, she was a bit of lovely human life 
 in a fair setting — a terrible attraction. The Magnetic 
 Youth leaned round to note his proximity to the weir 
 piles, and beheld the sweet vision. Stiller and stiller 
 grew Nature as at the meeting of two electric clouds.' 
 
 There is little need to go further for proof of 
 Mr. Meredith's right to rank with the greater 
 novelists of the century in point of literary or 
 dramatic skill ; here at least he is the equal of 
 most men, but as a student of human nature he 
 is the master of most. The absence of sentiment- 
 ality, the absence of mawkish n ess, from Mr. Mere- 
 dith's descriptions of the relations of men and 
 women, his quiet adherence to the facts, is not one 
 of the least attractions of his books. Mr. Meredith 
 is never more secure in his grasp of reality than 
 when on difficult or dangerous ground. The ques- 
 tion of the sex-relation is indeed what he would 
 himself call a crucible question — he speaks some- 
 where of a ' crucible woman,' a woman in whose 
 presence one is quickly resolved into one's com- 
 ponent parts. In dealing with the sex-relation so 
 many of our novelists, otherwise undetected, have 
 
 13S 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 betrayed the unhealthy mind. It is the rock upon 
 which so many have split, and not a few while 
 flying white-cross colours of a lofty creed. Of one 
 of his own women he says : — 
 
 ^ She gave him [her lover] comprehension of the 
 meaning of love — a word in many mouths not often 
 explained. With her, wound in his idea of her^ he 
 perceived it to signify a new start in our existence, a 
 finer shoot of the tree stoutly planted in good gross 
 earth, the senses running their live sap, and the minds 
 companioned and the spirits made one by the whole- 
 natured conjunction.' 
 
 It would be difficult to better such a description. 
 Of another he says with admirable frankness : ' She 
 was not pure of nature ; it may be that we breed 
 saintly souls which are ; she was pure of will ; fire 
 rather than ice.' It ought to be observed that ^Ir. 
 Meredith's heroines belong almost without excep- 
 tion to the class which finds in the conditions of 
 modern life something from which they would 
 escape, something that under all their gracious 
 acceptance of things as they are they endure with 
 difficulty. By certain subtle signs they per- 
 ceive that they are still under the physical yoke. 
 Though born within the cage they have hints of 
 freedom — strange, half- understood longings for 
 emancipation, and the gilt upon the bars does not 
 deceive them. 
 
 139 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 ' Men may have doubled Seraglio point ; they have 
 not yet rounded Cape Turk.' 
 
 ^ Women are in the position of inferiors. They are 
 hardly out of the nursery when a lasso is round their 
 necks ; and if they have beauty, no wonder they turn 
 it to a weapon and make as many captives as they 
 can.' 
 
 According to Mr. Meredith women are still 
 creatures of the chase, preyed upon by primitive 
 man. And for those who do not feel or who 
 positively extract a pleasure from their subjection, 
 as for those who are unconscious that they are in 
 captivity, Mr. Meredith exhibits a frank contempt. 
 ' The humbly-knitting housewife, unquestionably 
 worshipful of her lord,' the virginal ninny, she who 
 has ' worn a mask of ignorance to be named inno- 
 cent,' she who is '^etpoijOij^;, or in the language of 
 men is ' essentially feminine,' of these types he is 
 not enamoured, hardly even interested in them, 
 and of these he draws but few portraits. They 
 have indeed had their day, these heroines of twenty 
 thousand fictions ; they have been beloved of many 
 novelists, and by not a few, it must be acknow- 
 ledged, among those of even the greatest name. 
 But they lack Mr. Meredith's praise. To those 
 women he turns ' who have shame of their sex, 
 who realise that they cannot take a step without 
 becoming bond-women,' to those whose wings beat 
 
 140 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 against the bars of their prison-house, ' who muse 
 on actual life and fatigue with the exercise of 
 their brains and traffic in ideas; to these 'prin- 
 cesses of their kind and time, albeit foreign ones 
 and speaking a language distinct from the mer- 
 cantile,' to these women Mr. ]\Ieredith turns for 
 his heroines. The majority of them are either 
 actually insubordinate or chafing. They are splen- 
 did wild creatures: not tamed, even untamable, 
 and for this very reason dear to him ; the true 
 type of womanhood, spiritually free, and bidding 
 defiance to the mere primitive hunter from the 
 inaccessible resorts of their own natures. 
 
 As he has broken through the conventional 
 treatment of sex problems, so he has broken 
 throuo-h the traditional, the conventional treat- 
 ment of women as exhibited in fictional art. Of 
 sentimentalism he is the unceasing enemy. Mr. 
 Meredith's heroines are women who would escape 
 the feminine in themselves in order to assimilate 
 something of masculine strength, who would be 
 admitted within the pale of reasonable beings, and 
 not left in the outer world of sentimentalities and 
 gossip. And had Mr. Meredith accomplished 
 nothing save the delineation of so noble and so 
 new a type of heroine, had he accomplished nothing 
 save to press home upon us the conviction that 
 to the finer, the more spiritual, elements in woman- 
 
 141 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 hood we had hitherto done scant justice, that its 
 beauty and its charm were resident in qualities 
 other than those conventionally ascribed to it, his 
 work would not be unfruitful. Mr. Meredith's 
 success in penetrating into the very heart of the 
 feminine character, the depth and subtlety of his 
 analysis, the variety of the types he has presented 
 — this is one of the pillars upon which his reputa- 
 tion rests. 
 
 Indisputably, I believe the perfection of these 
 portraits of women consists in the art which the 
 author shares with all the great writers who have 
 excelled in the portraiture of women, the art with 
 which he contrives, despite his searching analysis, 
 to leave something untold, something of mystery in 
 the character of every woman he has drawn. Mr. 
 Meredith's instinct often fails him ; it has never 
 failed him here. He has recognised that however 
 boldly the artist may delineate the character of a 
 man, however completely render him, it is not 
 possible to give the same finishing touches, the 
 same air of finality to the character of a woman. 
 Something that eludes analysis, something that 
 declines to be rendered, remains, and to convey this 
 impression is essential to avoid a mechanical result, 
 a mere photograph. But Mr. Meredith, whatever 
 his failings as an artist, is no mere photographer, 
 and I, at least, am satisfied that his gallery of life- 
 
 142 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 like women is unmatched in any other English 
 prose writer. Not only is he a master of the 
 secrets of the female heart ; no other novelist has 
 such an eye for the graces of her person. Take 
 this of Renee in Beauchamps Career, Renee, 
 
 ' a brunette of the fine lineaments of the good blood of 
 France. . . . She chattered snatches of Venetian caught 
 from the gondoliers, she was like a delicate cup of 
 crystal brimming with the beauty of the place, and 
 making one drink in all his impressions through her. 
 Her features had the soft irregularities which ran to 
 rarities of beauty, as the ripple rocks the light ; mouth, 
 eyes, brows, nostrils, and bloomy cheeks played into 
 one another liquidly ; thought flew, tongue followed, 
 and the flash of meaning quivered over them like 
 night-lightning.' 
 
 Or take this of Clara Middleton : — 
 
 ' really insufferably fair, ... a sight to set the w^oodland 
 dancing. . . . She wore a dress cunning to embrace the 
 shape and flutter loose about it, in the spirit of a 
 Summer s day. Calypso-clad, Dr. Middleton would 
 have called her. See the silver birch in the breeze : 
 here it swells, there it scatters, and it is puffed to a 
 round and it streams like a pennon, and now gives the 
 glimpse and shine of the white stem's line within, 
 now hurries over it, denying that it was visible, with a 
 chatter along the sweeping folds, while still the white 
 peeps through. She had the wonderful art of dress- 
 ing to suit the season and the sky. To-day the art 
 was ravishingly companionable with her sweet-lighted 
 
 143 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 face : too sweet, too vividly-meaningful for pretty, if 
 not of the strict severity for beautiful. Millinery 
 would tell us that she wore a fichu of thin white 
 muslin crossed in front on a dress of the same light 
 stuff, trimmed with deep rose. She carried a grey 
 silk parasol, traced at the borders with green creepers, 
 and across the arm devoted to Crossjay, a length 
 of trailing ivy, and in that hand a bunch of the 
 first long grasses. These hues of red rose and green 
 and pale green, ruffled and pouted in the billowy 
 white of the dress ballooning and valleying softly, like 
 a yacht before the sail bends low ; but she walked not 
 like one blown against ; resembling rather the day of 
 the South-west driving the clouds, gallantly firm in 
 commotion; interfusing colour and varying in her 
 features from laugh to smile and look of settled 
 pleasure, like the heavens above the breeze.' 
 
 What a picture for blended colour and move- 
 ment ! When one reads a passage like this, a 
 picture from Mr. Meredith at his best, or when one 
 comes upon a triumphant phrase like that descrip- 
 tive of Vernon Whitford— ' Phoebus Apollo turned 
 fasting friar,' one cannot but acknowledge him, to 
 borrow his own phrase of Alvan, as ' a figure of easy 
 and superb predominance' among contemporary 
 novelists. Yet when victory is within his grasp he 
 misses it, for Mr. Meredith, though a great, is not 
 a sure artist, comparable with Wordsworth in the 
 sphere of poetry, capable of achieving great effects, 
 but apparently unable to distinguish the great 
 
 144 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 effects and the writing which achieves no effect at 
 all, or even a disagreeable one. The absence of the 
 critical faculty, the blindness when one's own work 
 is in question, though a serious defect in a poet 
 is immeasurably more serious in a prose writer. 
 Wordsworth was subject to ' strange hallucinations 
 of the ear,' he frequently produced prose, and 
 betrayed no consciousness that it was not high 
 poetry. Hence it comes that with Wordsworth the 
 part is greater than the whole. But that part is 
 easily separable from the whole ; a broad line may 
 be drawn dividing the work of great and enduring 
 value from the work of no value at all. Nor does 
 the uninspired verse seriously interfere with our 
 enjoyment of the inspired. But with a prose 
 writer we are in no such happy case. Certainly 
 with a prose writer like Mr. Meredith we are in 
 very evil case indeed. We may easily separate the 
 poet's wheat from the chaff, but no such separation 
 can be made with the novelist. He is even less 
 amenable than the historian to any principles of 
 selection. He must be accepted or rejected as a 
 whole, and can make no bid for popular favour in 
 a volume of elegant extracts. Here are a number 
 of bulky volumes within whose covers a full and 
 systematised philosophy might easily find a home, 
 within whose covers, indeed, a view of human 
 life so clear, so sane, so complete as rightly to be 
 
 K 145 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 named philosophical is actually set forth ; but 
 if the view be clear and sane and complete, the 
 exposition of the view is tortuous, beset with inco- 
 herencies and choked with perversities of diction. 
 'Inordinate unvaried length, sheer longinquity, 
 staggers the head, ages the very heart of us at a 
 view.' To make one's way to Mr. Meredith's 
 elevated tableland of thought one must be a moun- 
 taineer, to whom neither col nor arete present any 
 difficulties. There is no means of getting there 
 save by toiling up the lower snow-slopes, and 
 cutting a path with the ice-axe for the remainder 
 of the journey. It might almost be said of some of 
 Mr. Meredith's novels that they were not designed 
 by their author to be read any more than the 
 Himalayas were designed by Nature to be climbed. 
 Doubtless many of the eccentricities of his style are 
 incidental to his genius and temperament, but we 
 are convinced that its worst faults are faults which 
 its possessor has acquired, not succeeded to as part 
 of his original mental equipment. 
 
 Mr. Meredith, then, has taught himself to write 
 the style that is characteristic of him, and he has 
 done so in order to avoid ' the malady of sameness, 
 our modern malady,' as he calls it. On every page 
 of his writing appears his horror of the common- 
 place. Language worn dull by use, phrases that 
 have lost their edge, collocations of words with 
 
 146 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 which the ear is familiar, these he will have none of. 
 There is no one who will not sympathise with an 
 author acutely sensitive to the value of words, 
 acutely sensitive to the diminution of their power or 
 picturesqueness in certain combinations. But we 
 are too willing to accept piquancy or novelty as dis- 
 tinction in style, just as we are often too willing 
 to accept eccentricity as genius. And not infre- 
 quently Mr. Meredith, in his determination to be 
 anything rather than commonplace in diction, has 
 succeeded only too well by becoming unintelligible 
 or aggressively obscure. 'He succeeds,' says Mr. 
 Barrie somewhere of his phrases, ' he succeeds, I 
 believe, as often as he fails.' There is an heroic 
 rino- in this darins; ' I believe.' Grant the contention, 
 and we are merely reiterating that he is not a sure 
 artist. Mr. Meredith, as is often remarked, is too con- 
 sistently clever, and mere cleverness palls. A writer, 
 to deserve the epithet great, should be master of a 
 various power, a various charm ; he should subdue 
 us by sympathy, by enthusiasm, by wit, by reason, 
 by an appeal to the heart as well as by an appeal 
 to the head ; Mr. Meredith hammers too exclusively 
 at our intelligence. ' The creative power and the 
 intellectual energy,' says Coleridge of Shakespeare, 
 ' wrestle as in a war embrace.' Something of the 
 same kind is true of Mr. Meredith, but his intel- 
 lectual power generally obtains the mastery. And 
 
 147 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 it is here that his admirers who desire to preserve 
 their allegiance to the traditions of classic art 
 become his critics. His first conceptions, his 
 initial designs, are projected on a superb scale, his 
 instinct probes to the centre. Then comes the 
 hour of elaboration, of patient and gradual pro- 
 gression ; and the temptation to make dashing 
 excursions, forays of intellectual brilliance, into 
 adjoining country proves too much for him. The 
 plan of the attack is that of a heaven-born com- 
 mander, but the management of the campaign is 
 slow and desultory. In a word, Mr. Meredith's 
 judgment is not equal to his genius. What a 
 spendthrift he is of his intellectual wealth, how 
 wantonly he sows with the whole sack, his readers do 
 not need to be informed. We are indeed willing to 
 acknowledge that there is a princeliness, something 
 of the intellectual potentate, about this splendid 
 diffusion of treasure, this unlimited largess from 
 inexhaustible mines of mind. There is no need for 
 Mr. Meredith to hoard his thoughts, or to tender 
 each for acceptance with impressive accompanying 
 ceremonies, to offer his jewels only when cut and 
 polished and set in a frame of precious metal 
 choicely wrought as a foil. Are such methods only 
 appropriate in the case of scanty possessions ? Here 
 you may choose and bear away what you will from 
 these indistinguished heaps where the commonest 
 
 148 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 pebbles are strewn side by side with gems worthy 
 the lapidary's art. 
 
 Yet since it is not j\Ir. Meredith's intellectual 
 wealth but the perfection of his art that is in 
 question, there is no other verdict possible than 
 that already given — his judgment is not equal to 
 his genius. How vastly would readers profit had 
 the entire garden been weeded even as Richard 
 Feverel has been weeded. In the second edition of 
 that book whole paragraphs, even chapters of irre- 
 levancy disappeared, and in the edition now offered 
 to the public further excisions, including the chapter 
 entitled ' A Shadowy View of Ccelebs Pater going 
 about with a Glass Slipper,' have been made. It is 
 a hopeful sign. The surplusage in this final edition 
 of Mr. Meredith's works is not indeed wholly 
 removed ; it is not in the nature of things wholly 
 removable. Much of it is so imbedded in the fabric 
 itself that to remove it would be to dislocate and 
 loosen the entire framework. Apart, too, from the 
 mere surplusage, removable or irremovable, there 
 are the extravagances of diction which disfigure so 
 many even of the finest passages. In his determina- 
 tion to avoid the insipidity of the commonplace, 
 Mr. Meredith was driven into permitting himself a 
 freedom of speech which deserted elegance to ally 
 itself with licence, and failed to justify the union 
 in the only way in which the union can be justified, 
 
 149 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 by success. Great writers commonly attain their 
 eifects with apparent ease ; to suggest strain argues 
 littleness. Yet of all English writers of rank there 
 is perhaps not one who seems to write with more 
 continued effort, as of a gymnast performing feats 
 whose only interest lies in their difficulty, feats 
 which we would willingly believe not merely difficult, 
 but impossible. In the efforts, belated efforts one 
 must call them, to prune away useless excrescences 
 upon his work, Mr. Meredith virtually acknowledges 
 the recklessness of his methods. In describing, too, 
 Diana's novel The Cantatrice, it is, we think, with a 
 side-glance at his own works. 
 
 ^No clever transcript of the dialogue of the day 
 occurred/ we are told ; ' no hair-breadth 'scapes, perils 
 by sea and land, heroisms of the hero, fine shrieks of 
 the heroine ; no set scenes of catching pathos and 
 humour; no distinguishable points of social satire, 
 equivalent to a smacking of the public on the chaps, 
 which excites it to a grin with keen discernment of the 
 author's intention. She did not appeal to the senses 
 nor to a superficial discernment. So she had the 
 anticipatory sense of failure ; and she wrote her best in 
 perverseness.' 
 
 Mr. Meredith, too, I think, has written his 
 best, but in perverseness. Not because he has 
 avoided, as Diana is here described as having 
 avoided, the commonplace situations, characters, 
 
 150 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 and methods of the average novelist, has he failed 
 to reach a wider audience. The author and his 
 admirers indeed bear themselves as if it were so, but 
 they are seriously at fault. Not because he has been 
 original do we make a quarrel with so remarkable an 
 author— ^Ir. Meredith's argument is not too high, 
 nor his wit too subtle for us,— but because, it is a 
 simple reason, he has been neglectful of important 
 artistic principles derived from the capitalised 
 experience of writers and readers. The audience is 
 not all to blame. Others beside the sluggish in 
 intellect dishke his mannerisms — many eager 
 readers, many who find in him the most potent, 
 the most invigorating spirit among modern prose 
 
 writers. 
 
 But Mr. Meredith does not offend in his style 
 alone ; he transgresses the limits of ease and clear- 
 ness, he transgresses the limits of warrantable 
 analysis. Little enough is often gleaned from the 
 torture to which he so indefatigably subjects his 
 characters. They yield less than one expects when 
 examined on the rack of his method. The deter- 
 mined probing to the bitter end, the following up 
 of every thread of motive, every hereditary phase 
 of character, every temperamental idiosyncrasy to 
 its source is not of necessity either entertaining or 
 instructive, and Mr. Meredith often fails to justify 
 it. The fixed introspective eye becomes dim and 
 
 151 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 loses its sense of proportion, and the results of its 
 scrutiny are often disappointing. Mr. Meredith 
 shows us the human heart, but we are not convinced 
 that his knowledge, as he would seemingly have us 
 believe, has really been derived from a study of it 
 under the microscope. He knows it instinctively, 
 but displays it otherwise than he has actually learned 
 it. He has acquired his knowledge in one way, he 
 is for having us acquire it in another. It may also 
 indeed justly be remarked that it is with the results 
 of analysis rather than with its processes that art 
 is primarily concerned ; our interest centres in the 
 results. In Mr. Meredith's novels the processes are 
 sometimes unnecessarily exposed, and we are asked 
 to admire their ingenuity rather than to contem- 
 plate their final expression. There is, when one 
 thinks of it, hardly one of his brilliant intellectual 
 powers which is not abused. Take his wit. The 
 creator of Diana, of Adrian, the wise youth, of Col. 
 de Craye, of Dr. Corney, of many another of his 
 witty personages, had a plentiful need of wit, and 
 there are chapters in Feverel alone which may stand 
 beside the work of any English humorist. Mr. 
 Meredith's witty personages too really sparkle; we 
 are not told that their conversation is brilliant, we 
 are present, and hear it for ourselves. Yet how 
 often does it happen that his wit, like his analysis, 
 is not helpful. The temptation to make even the 
 
 152 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 average man witty is in itself sufficient to betray 
 him, and we exclaim, ' Oh that he should put cun- 
 ning words into their mouths to steal away their 
 individualities ! ' Was there ever author so ready 
 to sacrifice his main design to subsidiary decoration, 
 to exhibit his intellectual versatility at the expense 
 of his art ? To me it seems that every book he has 
 written is a dissertation on the superiority of his 
 genius to his judgment. It is writ large over all 
 his greater as well as his lesser works. The great 
 outstanding things in literature are the designs of 
 the masters. Not their language, not their senti- 
 ments, not their thoughts, but the firm outline of 
 their towering design, the disposed and ordered 
 whole, conspicuous, proudly pre-eminent. To 
 appeal once more to ancient art, that is where the 
 Greeks excelled. They saw to it that, as Matthew 
 Arnold wrote, ' the action itself, the situation of 
 Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmaeon, was to stand the 
 central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, 
 principal ; that no accessories were for a moment to 
 distract the spectator's attention from this ; that 
 the tone of the parts was to be continually kept 
 down, in order not to impair the grandiose effect of 
 the whole." As has been already observed, Mr. 
 jMeredith sets himself a task infinitely more difficult 
 than that undertaken by the Greek dramatist. His 
 stage is always crowded : in Vittoria, for example, 
 
 Is 
 
 DO 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 the story of the Italian rising of 1848 till the battle 
 of Novara, we have a bewildering number o^ dramatis 
 personoe^ Austrians, Italians, Englishmen, with their 
 entrances and exits ; it is a turmoil of events, in- 
 trigues, passions, fanaticisms. But because he has 
 set himself a task of almost unexampled severity, 
 because his stage is so crowded, the interests so 
 numerous and varied, for this reason we are the 
 more in need of a resolute adherence to the main 
 desig-n, for this reason ' not a word should be wasted, 
 not a sentiment capriciously thrown in." The larger 
 the original conception, the more rigorous the ex- 
 clusion demanded by the best traditions of art of 
 all that is not strictly to the purpose, that does not 
 further the argument nor advance the movement of 
 the piece. If in the Greek drama, despite its re- 
 stricted sphere, the parts were so strictly sub- 
 ordinated to the whole, if the poet found it necessary 
 to keep himself in hand, unless we embrace ideas 
 that differ toto coelo from those of ancient art, it is 
 tenfold more necessary in the case of the modern 
 artist who ranges freely over the whole domain of 
 human life. But so busied is Mr. Meredith with his 
 accessories, that to the action in his novels, surely 
 an important part of the design, he is frequently 
 indifferent, and it becomes occasionally a problem 
 of some difficulty to ascertain what is actually 
 going on. Yet with action the most intellectual 
 
 154 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 of us are and must remain more in sympathy than 
 with ideas, however subtly distilled. 
 
 Unhappily for fictional art the novelist has never 
 had to please the critic ; he has not been educated 
 in the school of the severest discipline and best tra- 
 ditions. It has ever been sufficient if he found 
 in himself a power to tickle the public taste irre- 
 spective of artistic conventions and artistic ideals. 
 Yet it can hardly be considered idle to inquire for 
 the qualities which have enabled some works to 
 endure the unrelaxing test of time through cen- 
 turies, and to suggest that similar qualities may 
 be counted upon to ensure a similar result in the 
 future. Not all works of genius survive, though his 
 genius obtains present indulgence for Mr. Meredith. 
 Much may be pardoned to genius, even though dis- 
 played in a spasmodic fashion, when there is never 
 any doubt that it is there. The knowledge that 
 it is there draws us like a magnet; we read on 
 patiently, and now and then we are rewarded for 
 our constancy. Only his genius too enables him to 
 triumph in any measure over the difficulties with 
 which he has strewn his own path to success. And 
 as it is he must suffer. Either the writer or the 
 reader must take the pains, and readers are con- 
 spicuously an indolent race. 
 
 We are not inclined to think that criticism is 
 much concerned with the fact that the plots of 
 
 155 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 several of Mr. Meredith's novels follow history very 
 closely, and that some of his dramatis personce en- 
 joyed an actual flesh-and-blood existence before 
 they entered the shadow-world of a life in fiction. 
 The Elizabethan drama did not exclude actions or 
 characters within the memory of living men, and 
 fiction has always claimed the privilege of an appeal 
 to the interests of the hour. Vittoria, as has been 
 noticed, reproduces the main incidents of the Italian 
 insurrection of 1848 ; in Beaucliamp's Caree?' some- 
 thing of the political and social life of England 
 at the time of the Crimean War is reproduced ; 
 in LojyI Ormont and his Aminta the author has 
 followed a part of the career of the famous Earl 
 of Peterborough, who made his reputation as a 
 soldier of genius at Valencia, but, found of too 
 imperious a temper, was recalled in 1707, and in 
 1722 privately married a famous singer, Anastasia 
 Robinson, who was not, however, acknowledged as 
 Countess until shortly before the death of the Earl. 
 In The Tragic Coviedians Mr. Meredith is indebted 
 for something more than the mere framework of his 
 plot. It is, as the author entitles it, ' a study in 
 a well-known story '' — the story of the loves of 
 Ferdinand Lassalle, the German Social Democrat, 
 and Helene von Doninges, afterwards Frau von 
 Racowitza. Mr. Meredith not only follows the inci- 
 dents which, in real life as in the novel, lead to the 
 
 156 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 tragic death of Lassalle, but is indebted for the 
 greater part of his dialogue to an account published 
 by Frau von Racowitza of the episode of her life, 
 entitled Meine Bez'iehungen zu Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 More public interest has been excited, however, in 
 Mr. Meredith's reproduction, in Diana of the Cross- 
 ways^ of the life and career of Caroline Norton, one 
 of the three beautiful granddaughters of Sheridan, 
 and sister of Lady Dufferin, mother of the present 
 Marquis of Dufferin and Ava. Caroline Norton's 
 marriage proved a most unhappy one, and her 
 friendship with Lord Melbourne, then Prime 
 ^Minister, led to an unsuccessful action for divorce 
 brought against her by her husband. Famous not 
 only in society for her beauty and her wit, Mrs. 
 Norton was distinguished as one of the most popular 
 poets and novelists of her time. Her writings were 
 characterised by their enthusiastic advocacy of 
 what we mi^ht now denominate the rights of 
 women. The incident upon which the plot of 
 Mr. Meredith's novel hinges was the storv (un- 
 authentic) of Mrs. Norton's betrayal to Barnes, 
 the editor of The Times, of the communication 
 made to her in strict secrecy by one of her most 
 ardent admirers, Sidney Herbert, to the effect that 
 Sir Robert Peel and his Cabinet had resolved upon 
 a repeal of the Corn Laws. Whether Mr. Meredith 
 has been successful in reconciling his readers to 
 
 157 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 such a gross breach of confidence on the part of 
 his heroine it would be difficult to determine ; that 
 his explanation of her conduct is inadequate, one 
 must admit. It is the one defect in an otherwise 
 charming portrait, but possibly the author felt 
 himself justified in securing in this fashion for 
 an otherwise blameless lady that touch of pity 
 which tends to deepen our sympathy with a 
 briHiant and fascinating, but perhaps not in 
 all respects a winning or attractive, character. I 
 would place Diana of' the Crossways second to 
 The Ordeal of Richard Fever el^ incontestably Mr. 
 Meredith's most perfect work from the standpoint of 
 art, as least open, in spite of its obscurities, to the 
 charges of sluggish development and the introduc- 
 tion of irrelevant intellectual excursions. What 
 Mr. Meredith has to say in his own person in this 
 book seems to harmonise more completely with its 
 subject. Fever el, were it not for its ending, so 
 admirably commented upon by the late Robert 
 Louis Stevenson, is indeed almost faultless. 
 
 But if Richard Fever el, taken all in all, be Mr. 
 Meredith's greatest work. The Adventures of Harry 
 Richmond is his supreme achievement in the higher 
 comedy. His portrait of Richmond Roy is surely 
 the most impressive, the most masterful, in his whole 
 gallery. A character so near the verge of utter im- 
 probability and yet convincing, so near the verge of 
 
 158 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 scoundrelism and yet attractive, so near the verge 
 of the absurd, yet so pathetic. When we think of 
 Richmond Roy we are no longer critical of Mr. 
 Meredith's defects. This romantic voyager in 
 dreamland, this master of the springs of emotion, 
 this sublime architect in cloudland, this schemer 
 hardly less noble than the noble, lacking only some 
 trifling ingredient to become altogether heroic, a 
 later Falstaff', whose heart too is at last broken, this 
 portrait is Mr. Meredith's outstanding triumph 
 among many triumphs. The contrast, too, between 
 Squire Beltham, the vindictive old man who 
 stands for respectability and all the best that 
 respectability has to show, with the brilliant 
 free lance of the outer unconventional world, 
 Richmond Roy himself — the contrast between 
 these two antagonistic types, and the battle be- 
 tween them for the son of the one and the grand- 
 son of the other, are grandly conceived. These two 
 tower over against each other like Homeric com- 
 batants, and their challenges and defiances are, like 
 their contest, Homeric. If Feverel be Mr. Meredith's 
 most perfect work, this is of all his books the one 
 which commands the fullest admiration of his genius, 
 which evinces his possession of the highest type of 
 power. In The Egoist many of Mr. Meredith's 
 admirers find proof of a greater achievement ; but 
 Sir Willoughby Patterne, though evolved with 
 
 159 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 astonishing skill, is a far less complex character, 
 a commoner, a coarser, and a more easily rendered 
 type, without the finer strands of poetry and ro- 
 mance which are woven through the heart and 
 brain of Richmond Roy. And I am not sure 
 that in his delineation Mr. Meredith does not 
 betray that uncertainty of judgment which mars so 
 much of his finest work. His main appeal is, as 
 elsewhere, mainly to our intelligence; but the 
 appeal is here so exclusively to our intelligence, 
 he harps so remorselessly, vindictively we might 
 say, upon the single string, he insists so strongly 
 upon the line of his effect that, having been early 
 convinced, we become in the end, and indeed long 
 before the end, entirely wearied. Sir Willoughby 
 Patterne is an Egoist, and the ingenious methods 
 by which he is driven to a self-revelation are in 
 the earlier part of the book quite to our taste. 
 We are in close sympathy with the invisible wicked 
 imps in attendance, they ' who love to uncover 
 ridiculousness in imposing figures," they who, 
 ' whenever they catch sight of Egoism, pitch 
 their camp, circle and squat, and forthwith trim 
 their lanterns confident of the ludicrous to come.' 
 But Mr. Meredith is not content to reveal the 
 Egoist to a private audience of imps and readers, 
 he must be revealed to us ad nauseam ; and not 
 to us only, but to his fiancee, to his relations, at 
 
 1 60 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 length to an outer circle of friends and wor- 
 shippers, and hardly stops short of a revelation 
 to the whole country-side, fascinated and agape. 
 We can believe in the Sir Willoughby of the 
 earlier part of the story, but as the ' comedy 
 in narrative '' progresses, the Egoist wounded, 
 pierced by a shaft here and there, loses the jaunty 
 self-possession of the knight encased in armour of 
 proof, and begins to stumble to and fro with un- 
 certain steps. Then the hunt fairly sets in, and 
 Mr. Meredith, not content with his revelation, cries 
 ' Havoc,' and lets loose the hounds of merciless 
 laughter, who drive the Egoist before them, a 
 spent and quivering and degraded thing. He will 
 not permit a pause in the chase until the self- 
 possessed English gentleman has proclaimed him- 
 self ass and churl in trumpet tones. Revelation 
 of his character is not sufficient ; the Egoist must 
 be whipped in public, and soundly, too. And the 
 portrait, at first that of the true Egoist, a man of the 
 world, presents at length the coarse and repellent 
 features of the coward and the loon. Surely here 
 the author has over-analysed until his instinct left 
 him and his discernment played him false. Nothing 
 is easier than to sacrifice the truth of a representa- 
 tion by over-elaboration, and here, in the eagerness 
 to display the Nemesis which dogs the steps of the 
 Egoist, the limits are passed which divide the por- 
 L l6i 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 trait from the caricature. A degree overmuch of 
 emphasis, of vehemence in the presentation, mars 
 in our judgment the chief portrait in a great 
 book. 
 
 ^The hardest and surest proof of a great and ab- 
 solute genius/ says Mr. Swinburne, Ms the gift of 
 a power to make us feel in every nerve that thus 
 and not otherwise, but in all things even as we are 
 told and shown, it was and it must have been with 
 the human figures set before us in their action and 
 their suffering, that thus and not otherwise they 
 absolutely must and would have felt and thought and 
 spoken under the proposed conditions.' 
 
 On the application of this test to The Egoist, 
 or indeed to any of Mr. Meredith's novels, one 
 finds that the inevitable is at times replaced 
 in his narrative by the unexpected or the unin- 
 telligible. The degree overmuch of vehemence 
 is not in The Egoist only a hostile element to 
 the ejffect of his art ; it is characteristic of him 
 that the shorter time he is about it the more 
 perfect are his results — he begins better than he 
 leaves off. Truth of outline, truth of tone, but 
 not truth of detail, belong to his characterisation. 
 Mr. Meredith misses then the point in art which 
 suppresses the irrelevant or the accidental, and, 
 dependent as it is upon his judgment, his humour 
 of phrase is not always successful, his wit not 
 
 162 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 always wise. The ingenious arabesque of thought 
 is frequently not justified by subordination to a 
 purpose ; the coruscation of fanciful imagery lends 
 no elucidating light. But how different is it with 
 his humour of view, the humour that belongs to 
 his mental attitude, his outlook over life, the 
 humour that is of the essence of his genius. See 
 it at work in the creation of a character, even of 
 secondary importance, like Colonel de Craye, or 
 Mrs. Berry, or Lord Romney, ' a gentleman whose 
 character it was to foresee most human events."* 
 See it in the lambent irony which pervades and 
 leavens his books. What an extraordinary breadth 
 of humorous appreciation of life is his ! — now he 
 calls for jeering Aristophanic laughter, now it is 
 the humour of pathetic situations, now of the 
 great and now of the little incongruities of life 
 that move him. It is in the breadth of his humour 
 and in the breadth of his characterisation that 
 Mr. Meredith's greatness consists ; in his intel- 
 lectual penetration and his imaginative range. 
 His method involves revelation of character by 
 analysis, but analysis conducted while his per- 
 sonages pass through the fire of some crucial 
 position, or are subjected to the shock of cir- 
 cumstance, as of Beauchamp tested amid the 
 conflict of party politics, or Emilia drawn ' at 
 once by love of country and passion for her lover. 
 
 163 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 And that the only fatality is the fatality of char- 
 acter is a truth driven home in all Mr. Meredith's 
 greater novels. Thus is his tragedy human, and 
 thus it comes that it is not depressing. Human 
 life is never represented in his novels as tragic, 
 because an iron necessity drives man whither he 
 would not go ; but tragic only when a free choice 
 is unwisely made, or when passion guides, or when 
 the stress of storm finds the spirit too weak or 
 unresourceful to meet and endure it. In all the 
 greater novels, too, which may be said to end 
 with The Egoist, Mr. Meredith's style, when 
 at its best, has the elasticity of steel with its 
 strength. Like a ' sword of Spain, the ice-brook's 
 temper,' it can, within the moment, bend like a 
 bow and spring again to the bright, quivering, 
 darting line that bears the inexsuperable point. 
 And with all its faults, it is a robust organic 
 style that suits its subject. One might trace in 
 it many influences, and that in spite of its dis- 
 tinctive peculiarities. In a sentence such as this, 
 'Their common candle wore with dignity the 
 brigand's hat of midnight, and cocked a drunken 
 eye at them from under it,' one seems to hear 
 the voice of Dickens ; in RJioda Fleming there 
 are passages which George Eliot might have 
 written; the hand of Thackeray -might have 
 assisted in the creation of Jack Raikes in Evan 
 
 164 
 
THE NOVELS OF GEORGE MEREDITH 
 
 Harrington-, Carlyle's Teutonic style in full blast 
 is displayed in Farina. Yet in its strength and 
 weakness it is wholly its creator's; on this page 
 magnificent and unsurpassable, on the next in- 
 tolerable and unreadable. The ordinary man, it 
 has been said, is satisfied to see something going 
 on, the man of more intelligence must be made to 
 feel, the man of high cultivation must be made 
 to reflect. To the society of the highly cultivated 
 Mr. Meredith makes his appeal, and not without 
 response. But had his judgment equalled his 
 genius, he would, I believe, have appealed to 
 them past all resistance, as no English novelist 
 has yet appealed to them, in an appeal that 
 would have been irresistible for all time. 
 
 165 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL ^ 
 
 The terms classic and romantic, freely bandied 
 about in the literary criticism of the last hundred 
 years, can hardly be said to have attained any 
 definite connotation, any sharp precision of mean- 
 ing. The classic authors, par excellence, are the 
 ancients, the makers of the literatures of Greece 
 or Rome ; and the classics of our own or any other 
 literature are the writers who best represent it, 
 who have given to it whatever of beauty or of 
 dignity it may possess. Thus far we speak the 
 language of the market-place, and are intelligible 
 to the average citizen ; but if we adopt the phrases 
 of the schools, if we speak of the classics of our 
 own literature as romantic in temper ; of some of 
 the ancients, like Virgil, as no less so ; if we speak 
 of classic subjects as treated by Marlowe or Shelley 
 in the romantic manner, or of romantic subjects by 
 Keats and Byron in the classic couplet, we intro- 
 duce conceptions to the comprehension of which 
 a course of literary history is the only avenue. 
 
 1 The Beginnings of the English Roma?itic Movement, by W. L. 
 Phelps. 
 
 i66 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 It is, indeed, neither possible nor desirable to 
 harden into absolute definition the general sense 
 suggested by these terms, but because, how- 
 ever loosely they may be applied, they represent 
 certain real characteristics, represent each a clearly 
 marked group or blend of qualities, we are called 
 upon to retain them, and to render to ourselves 
 some account of them. The term classic needs no 
 interpretation as regards origin — that which belongs 
 to the first class — but a serviceable suggestion may 
 be gleaned from the origin of the term romantic. 
 When the northern barbarians streamed through 
 the various gates of the declining Roman empire, 
 and, victorious, imposed their rule upon the con- 
 quered Romans, they rendered a homage to the 
 power that once had ruled the world by acknow- 
 ledging the language of the conquered inhabitants 
 as the language which best represented the results 
 of civilisation, as the language proper to the 
 church, the school, and the law, the lingua Latina. 
 But beside the purer language of the scholar, they 
 found flourishing a language of the people, lingua 
 Romana rustica, and with this the language of the 
 conquering tribes was eventually mingled. The 
 mother Latin thus became the parent of several 
 daughters, the Romance languages. By Romance 
 of course we mean no longer a language, but a 
 type of composition, of which the poems and tales 
 
 167 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 of the troubadours were the earliest specimens ,• 
 and as the new conditions of life gave birth to a 
 literature which differed not merely in form, but in 
 spirit and tone from the older literature, we come 
 into possession of a term which is descriptive of that 
 spirit and tone. Thus from the moment at which 
 Renaissance influences are first apparent in our own 
 literature, the need arises to distinguish by the 
 terms classic and I'omantk the two clearly defined 
 tendencies in art, the two clearly marked lines of 
 artistic purpose discernible in the work of English 
 writers. It may be said of Chaucer that he was at 
 school in France and at the university in Italy ; 
 his early poetical education was obtained in the 
 school of the Romance writers, his later in the school 
 of the Classical Revival. But the impulse generated 
 by the Renaissance in the direction of a study 
 and imitation of the classic literatures, though it 
 assisted in the technical education of the English 
 poets of the age of Elizabeth, did not, as in France, 
 exert an immediate and overpowering influence 
 upon our literature. In the Elizabethan drama, 
 as represented by Marlowe and by Shakespeare, 
 the romantic temper predominates, the romantic 
 spirit is triumphant. — 
 
 ' Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 
 And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? 
 Sweet Helen^ make me immortal with a kiss ! ' 
 
 1 68 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 ^ I dreamt there was an emperor Antony ; — 
 O, such another sleep^ that I might see 
 But such another man ! . , . 
 His legs bestrid the ocean ; his reared arm 
 Crested the workl : his voice was propertied 
 As all the tuued spheres^ ... in his livery 
 ^Falked crowns and crownets ; realms and islands were 
 As plates dropped from his pocket.' 
 
 Such passages vibrate to the true romantic string, 
 but while the spirit of romance predominates in 
 Elizabethan literature, while the romantic note 
 rings clear above all others in it, a tendency 
 may be read there, which was destined to outlast 
 the romantic, was destined to a later, but no less 
 complete a triumph. While Marlowe, and Spenser, 
 and Shakespeare pursued the path along which they 
 were guided by their own genius and the stronger 
 impulses of the time, Ben Jonson, who was student 
 and scholar no less than poet, pondering over the 
 precedents and principles of art as exhibited in 
 the works of ancient literature, endeavoured to 
 frame for himself an apparatus ciiticus of precept 
 and example, and as early as Spenser's university 
 days a group of scholars and critics were ready to 
 agree with Ascham that ' our rude beggarly rhyming 
 was first brought into Italy by Goths and Huns, 
 when all good verses and all good learning were 
 destroyed by them.' 
 
 In France the Renaissance ideals achieved an 
 
 169 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 immediate triumph, and from the foundation of 
 the Academy in 1635, those^ ideals were enthroned 
 in absolute authority, and the reign of the classical 
 tradition assured. The English authors of the 
 Elizabethan period remained for the most part 
 untrammelled by the classic tradition, about which 
 they knew or cared little, and Jonson and Milton, 
 who may be regarded as in one sense the last 
 of the Elizabethans, were the first great English 
 writers who followed by deliberate choice the tradi- 
 tions of classical rather than of English literature. 
 Thus gradually was it, and not until the appeal 
 made upon the imagination by the widening 
 horizons of the physical and intellectual worlds 
 began to prove less potent and stimulating, that 
 the influence of the new learning makes itself fully 
 felt, and the studies of the scholars shape the ideals 
 of the republic of letters. What, then, were the 
 qualities which the Renaissance found so admirable 
 in the works of the ancients, what potent charm 
 resided in those qualities strong enough to create 
 an enthusiasm for the classic literatures which, 
 ripened later into something like a superstitious 
 regard for them as divinely perfect, as literatures 
 beside which those of the Romance languages were 
 merely barbarous or Gothic ? 
 
 All art springs from the instinctive human 
 worship of the ideal, of perfection : art celebrates 
 
 170 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 beauty, and ministers to the human desire for it. 
 But to some races, as to some individuals, certain 
 aspects of beauty make the most persuasive appeal, 
 and to others certain other aspects. For one man 
 the highest note in poetry is struck by such a 
 passage as this from Wordsworth :— 
 
 ' The Form remains, the Function never dies ; 
 \\^hile we the brave, the mighty, and the wise, 
 We men, who in our morn of youth defied 
 The elements, must vanish :— be it so ! 
 Enough if something from our hands have power 
 To live, and act, and serve the future hour : 
 And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, 
 Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent 
 
 dower. 
 We feel that we are greater than we know.' 
 
 For another, the cup of intellectual delight brims 
 over when magic accents such as these from Cole- 
 ridge fall upon his ear : — 
 
 ' In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
 A stately pleasure-dome decree : 
 Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
 Through caverns measureless to man, 
 Down to a sunless sea.' 
 
 To the Greeks, the beauty which resides in form, 
 in perfect proportions, made the most powerful 
 appeal ; hence in their sculpture, and in their archi- 
 tecture, the Greeks became the masters of the 
 world. The classic spirit in art, too, is for ever 
 
 171 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 associated with sharpness of intellectual outline, 
 precision of design, with purity, and calm, and 
 order. ' What is there lovely in poetry," says 
 Landor, 'unless there be moderation and com- 
 posure ? ' The qualities which the Renaissance 
 found admirable in ancient art were those which 
 distinguished it from the romantic, the qualities of 
 simplicity, repose, precision, order. These it found 
 admirable because the mediaeval world knew beauty 
 under other and differing guises, and the noble 
 simplicities of ancient art once known asserted a 
 sovereign power. The aim of the classic artist — 
 one may read it on every surviving work, on every 
 magnificent fragment — was to elevate rather than 
 to affect ; the aim of the romantic artist to affect, 
 and again affect, and once again affect. Thus classic 
 art is dominated by the conception that only what 
 is fully grasped, completely realised and understood, 
 is suitable for artistic treatment ; mediaeval art is 
 eager to suggest a significance, a depth of meaning, 
 such as may, with however vague imaginings, dilate 
 the soul. 
 
 Christian revelation, with its introduction of 
 truths beyond precise comprehension, carried the 
 artist of the middle ages, into dealing with human 
 life as an island in an ocean of mystery, but 
 an ocean across which the light of heaven shone, 
 across which the saints of God continually were 
 
 172 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 privileged to journey. While, then, the classic 
 spirit in art is associated with form, and calm, 
 and order, the mediaeval is suffused with colour, 
 enthusiasm, and mystery ; for the one believed in 
 the senses and fed them with beauty, keeping as its 
 ideal, ' self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,' 
 the other discredited the earthly senses, and had 
 for its ideal self-abandonment, a knowledsfe of 
 God, and spiritual raptures. Approaching truth 
 by analysis, Greek art draws in outline and speaks 
 a direct language ; approaching truth by intuition 
 and faith, Christian art paints in colour and speaks 
 in symbol. The Greek, like Sophocles, believed in 
 the real world with all its certainties. He saw all 
 that he did see wdth unfailing clearness of vision, 
 and the spirit of precision and simplicity bear rule 
 in the sphere of his artistic creation.^ The Christian 
 of the middle ages, like Dante, believed in an 
 invisible world, with all its terrors and splendours 
 seen only by the eye of the soul ; and enthusiasm, 
 inspired fervour, emotional glow, and a sense of 
 reverence and of awe are the marks of his art. 
 
 In their reproduction of life in art the ancients, 
 then, aimed at clearness and sharpness of out- 
 line, both in idea and language, and were thus 
 content to win acceptance, not so much through 
 
 ^ I have here and elsewhere in this paper made use of one or 
 two sentences of my own previously published. 
 
 ^7Z 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 the excitement resident in the subject as through 
 their treatment of it. ' The charm of what is 
 classical in art or literature," wrote Mr. Pater, ' is 
 that of the well-known tale, to which we can never- 
 theless listen over and over again, because it is told 
 so well. ... It is the addition of strangeness to 
 beauty that constitutes the romantic character in 
 art. ... It is the addition of curiosity to the 
 desire for beauty that constitutes the romantic 
 temper.' ' The essence of romance is mystery," says 
 another critic ; ' it is the sense of something hidden, 
 of imperfect revelation." The romantic artist, 
 not content with the sharp, clear outline of the 
 classical artist, desires to suggest, to arouse the 
 feeling of expectation or of awe, of something yet 
 untold. ' Clear, unimpassioned presentation of the 
 subject, whether done in prose or verse, is the pro- 
 minent feature of the classical style." We may 
 speak of the classical artist as disinterested : he 
 stands aloof from his creations, they betray no 
 trace of his personal affections, dislikes, enthusiasms. 
 ' Homer," says Landor, ' is subject to none of the 
 passions, but he sends them all forth on their 
 errands with as much precision as Apollo his golden 
 arrows." 
 
 While, then, ancient or classic art takes the 
 world as it finds it, and imports into it no personal 
 element, and few moral and intellectual problems, 
 
 174 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 the romantic artist declines to accept the present and 
 visible as the only sphere for art ; and seeking in 
 his own mind for sentiments and ideas, presents a 
 new world, composed of the world as it appears to 
 sense together with another, the world as it might 
 be, or will be, or ought to be, or perhaps, if all 
 were known, really is, a world drawn from his 
 ideals, and feelings, and desires. Romanticism 
 rejoices in the freshness and the glory of the 
 exhaustless vistas and changing emotional and 
 spiritual perspectives of the world ; classicism in 
 the sharply defined presentations of the intellect, 
 the victory of reason over emotion as well as over 
 the baffling problems of the soul. ' All art,"* said 
 Mr. Pater, ' constantly aspires towards the con- 
 ditions of music"*; and again it has been contended 
 that the very perfection of lyrical poetry, which is 
 artistically the highest and most complete form of 
 poetry, seems to depend on ' a certain suppression 
 or vagueness of mere subject.'' These are dicta from 
 the notebook of the romantic critic. He speaks of 
 mere subject ; with him the perfection of poetry is 
 reached when meaning is almost lost in an excess of 
 sensuous suc^orestiveness. He desires to affect. With 
 
 CiC) 
 
 Aristotle the lyric was not the highest and most 
 complete form of poetry, and architectonics, con- 
 structive power, design, ranked far above the mere 
 accessories of music and diction. He desires to 
 
 175 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 elevate. If bred in the classical school, the critic's 
 first requirement in poetry is that it should be 
 articulate, else how can it serve the reason ? Mr. 
 Matthew ArnoWs preference was consequently 
 enlisted on the side of the poetry which made for 
 intellectual clearness and moral force, for the 
 poetry which touched life at the greatest number 
 of points of human interest, and illuminated or 
 interpreted it. The most artistic poetry for Mr. 
 Arnold was poetry such as this : — 
 
 ' If thou didst ever hold me in thy hearty 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile^ 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath with pain 
 To tell my story.' 
 
 With Mr. Pater it would have been poetry such 
 as this, which weaves a fantasy around the song of 
 the nightingale : — 
 
 ^ The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown ; 
 
 Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth^ when, sick for home. 
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
 
 The same that ofttimes hath 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.' 
 
 When one is asked to make choice between pas- 
 sages such as these, exhibiting poetry at its best in 
 different moods, one is reminded of the children''s 
 game in which the delicate question is secretly 
 
 176 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 proposed to each player in turn, ' Would you rather 
 have a golden apple or a golden pear?' and the 
 answer enlists him in one or other of two opposing 
 camps. Some of us insist on the qualities of the 
 golden apple, on truth and high seriousness, on 
 intellectual and moral insight in poetry ; some on 
 the qualities of the golden pear, on sensuous and 
 emotion-stirring powers, on perfume and bouquet, 
 on music and mystery. There exists no need at 
 this time to rank the apple before the pear, or 
 to disparage its qualities beside those of its more 
 luscious companion. But we must note that from 
 the moment at which the fountains of the Eliza- 
 bethan inspiration began to fail, and writers with 
 a student's enthusiasm to seek for principles to 
 guide their efforts, the qualities of ancient poetry 
 attracted a continually deepening and widening 
 appreciation. Yet because the genius of Greek 
 literature declined to yield up the secret of its 
 subtle perfections to an age in which scholarship 
 was young,^ the English writers of the Augustan 
 age failed to reproduce anything of the Greek spirit 
 in their work, and were successful only in reproduc- 
 ing something of the spirit of Latin literature, a 
 
 1 Bentley's comment upon Pope's Homer— ^ K very pretty poem, 
 Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer ' — may perhaps stand as 
 the first record in English of a true appreciation of the distinctive 
 genius of Greek poetry. 
 
 M 1/7 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 literature imitative and disciplined, majestic but 
 measured, regular, orderly, formal, sober in subject 
 and manner. Propriety of language, correctness 
 and precision, restraint and moderation, these 
 words express the lessons learned from the Roman 
 authors by Dryden and his successors. And in 
 the sphere of prose the lessons were of inestim- 
 able value. The gain to English poetry is not so 
 obvious. However willing we may be to retain for 
 the school of Pope and Johnson the title of the 
 classical school of English poetry, it is evident that 
 the writers who belonged to it neither appreciated 
 profoundly the true character of Hellenic and 
 Roman art, nor did they succeed in imitating it 
 with the closeness desired. Dryden and Pope 
 and Johnson exhibit the qualities of simplicity, 
 repose, precision, and these have been named as 
 classic qualities. But they attain them by limiting 
 the scope of their undertakings. They are simple 
 because they deal only with the familiar facts of 
 life ; calm, because they have never known what it 
 is to be profoundly moved ; precise, because they 
 merely repeat in terser phrase the current opinions 
 of the time. Simplicity, repose, precision are only 
 admirable and precious, are only classic, when 
 threatened by imaginative wealth, emotional fer- 
 vour, intellectual profundity. But the poets of the 
 Augustan age were in perfect security from these 
 
 178 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 splendid dangers. Pope, as Johnson said, ' wrote 
 in such a manner as might expose him to few 
 hazards." The times, indeed, were not in need of 
 poetry ; prose satisfied the pressing intellectual 
 needs of the majority. How little was the neces- 
 sity felt for poetry at all is seen in the words of 
 Pope : ' I chose verse because I could express ideas 
 more shortly than in prose itself." Pope chose 
 verse not because he felt the need of verse, but 
 because he found it a superior kind of prose. It 
 might not be too much to say that with the majority 
 at any period prose answers every need of their 
 natures. But with the middle of the eighteenth 
 century came a demand for something more than a 
 superior prose, and we may think accurately of the 
 Romantic Revival as a reaction in favour of poetry 
 as against prose. The qualities which the writers 
 of the Augustan age lacked, even in their poetry, 
 were precisely the qualities which make poetry, 
 which go to distinguish it from prose, and the 
 Romantic Revival was the outcome of a need for 
 a medium of fuller expression felt by the spiritual 
 and emotional part of human nature, which had 
 for a time suffered eclipse. The character of 
 English literature in the eighteenth century may 
 be summed up by saying that its appeal was an 
 appeal almost exclusively to the intelligence ; it 
 looked upon man as if he were of intelligence all 
 
 179 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 compact, and was not ruled by feeling and instinct 
 and authority and fancy in a greater degree than 
 by the lucubrations of his reason. The Romantic 
 Revival enthroned in the room of reason and of 
 law, aspirations, desires, ideals — in a word, absolute 
 though unattainable perfection in the place of re- 
 lative perfection, represented by tolerable social 
 and political institutions. With the Revolution 
 at the end of the century came the idea of 
 
 ^ the ultimate angels' law, 
 Indulging every instinct of the soul^ 
 There where law^ life^ joy, impulse are one thing.' 
 
 It may be paradoxical to assert that the interests 
 of the Augustan age were not literary or artistic, 
 that they were political or religious ; but the litera- 
 ture of the period is a series of practical and polemi- 
 cal pamphlets, prose and verse, into which are com- 
 pressed the best ideas, the most cogent arguments 
 connected with questions of the day. 'Subjects of 
 importance to society "* were the poet"'s themes, 
 what interested 'the Town' his business. Hence 
 is it that the age of Anne adored in literature 
 the neat, the finished, the complete, in a word the 
 finite, and the men of letters chose to treat in 
 art only such subjects as lent themselves to a pre- 
 sentation in sharp, clear outlines, topics in which 
 no mystery lurked, and upon which expressions of 
 final opinion were possible. Thus was the sphere 
 
 1 80 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 of art cabiii'd and confined, and no room could 
 be found for lyric poetry in a generation whose 
 interests were practical, and could not therefore be 
 sung about. 
 
 It is not surprising that such an age should 
 dislike obscurity and extravagance, enthusiasm or 
 intemperate emotion, and should correspondingly 
 admire clearness, precision, moderation, and common- 
 sense ; that it should ridicule the ' metaphysical "" 
 poets who had carried the Elizabethan character- 
 istics to excess ; that it should hold as barbarous and 
 Gothic Spenser and Marlowe, and prefer Chaucer 
 in a version by Dryden ; that it should lack interest 
 in nature, and find in the social life of the town 
 the only pleasures worthy of the cultivated man. 
 
 It will not do to think of the Romantic Revival 
 as a protest against classical qualities in poetry, or 
 as arising; out of a mere desire for the new and 
 strange ; it had its origin in a gradual recognition 
 of the inadequate account virtually taken of human 
 nature by the current mode of thought in the early 
 eighteenth century. Even during the undisputed 
 sovereignty of the Augustan tradition, an indivi- 
 dual author here and there showed in his writings 
 that he harboured treasonable ideas. A ^ writer 
 like Allan Ramsay not only harboured treasonable 
 ideas, but indulged in treasonable practices. As 
 Principal Shairp says, ' Ramsay had the courage, in 
 
 i8i 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 a conventional time both in English and Scottish 
 poetry, to recognise and be true to the manners, 
 the simple everyday life, the rural character, and 
 the scenery of his native land.' Others, like 
 Parnell and William Hamilton, the author of the 
 Braes of Yarrow, might be cited as secret traitors, 
 the pioneers of revolution. We can conceive the 
 more imaginative minds of the time protesting 
 that the world of moderation and good taste and 
 common-sense was a somewhat dull world, in which 
 there was little to interest and less to attract or 
 charm ; we can conceive the growth of an appetite 
 for something more emotional in poetry or more 
 stimulating in philosophy. The tide of opinion 
 gradually rose until it became possible for heresy 
 to appear in print unabashed, such heresy as Joseph 
 Warton's, for example, who wrote in 1756 : ' I revere 
 the memory of Pope, I respect and honour his 
 abilities, but I do not think him at the head of 
 his profession. In other words, in that species of 
 poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all 
 mankind, and I only say that this species of poetry 
 is not the most excellent one of the art.' That 
 in the representative poetry of the time certain 
 qualities essential to poetry were absent, that in 
 the representative philosophy of the time only a 
 small part of the actual truth about things was 
 told, could only be convictions of gradual growth. 
 
 182 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 In the real world, in the world there could be no 
 mistake about, the eighteenth century had a pro- 
 found belief. But common-sense realism turns its 
 back upon truth by declining to investigate it. And 
 in effect we can imagine the early Romanticists ask- 
 ing the exasperating question, What is the real world? 
 In the account given of the universe by some enthu- 
 siastic scientists a generation ago, the eighteenth- 
 century point of view recurred, and w^hen the meta- 
 physician inquired innocently enough, What is 
 the real world ? he acted again the part uncon- 
 sciously played in the domain of aesthetics by the 
 revolutionaries. The world of eighteenth-century 
 art and philosophy was the world so far as it was 
 thoroughly understood. But the world as far as it 
 is fully understood falls far short of the real world, 
 said the Romanticists. The sphere of art is not the 
 apparent world of reality : to art belongs the right 
 and privilege of entrance into the larger reality, 
 it emancipates man from the bondage of his little 
 circumscribed life of conventions and customs and 
 routine, and makes him a citizen of the universe. 
 And so when Mr. Pater says, ' It is the addition of 
 strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic 
 character in art,' he is expressing only a half-truth, 
 for a large part of the delight which the poetry 
 of Romanticism can give arises out of a recognition 
 that the poet has penetrated to a higher sphere of 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 reality than that in which we are accustomed to 
 move, and we appreciate not the strangeness but 
 the truth of his conception. Take the nature 
 poetry of Wordsworth — take a poem Kke that 
 entitled The Education of Nature: — 
 
 ^ Three years she grew in sun and shower. 
 Then Nature said, " A lovelier flower 
 On earth was never sown ; 
 This Child 1 to myself will take ; 
 She shall be mine, and I will make 
 A Lady of my own. 
 
 She shall be sportive as the fawn 
 That wild with glee across the lawn 
 Or up the mountain springs ; 
 And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
 And hers the silence and the calm 
 Of mute insensate things. 
 
 The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 
 To her ; for her the willow bend ; 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 
 Even in the motions of the Storm 
 
 Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form 
 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 The stars of midnight shall be dear 
 
 To her ; and she shall lean her ear 
 
 In many a secret place 
 
 Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
 
 And beauty born of murmuring sound 
 
 Shall pass into her face." ' 
 
 Is this a string of conceits, or is it a profound 
 philosophy ? If your feelings respond to verses 
 
 184 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 such as these, you are a true child of the Romantic 
 Revival, or rather you are a human being with needs 
 other than mere intellectual needs, a human being 
 open to impressions from 'worlds unrealised,' and 
 possessed of sympathies which admit you into the 
 secret councils of the universal mind. But it 
 cannot be too frequently emphasised that the 
 Romantic Revival was not a revolt against the 
 methods of ancient classic art; a revolt rather 
 ao-ainst the poetry which addressed itself exclusively 
 to the intelligence, and which had arisen out of an 
 appreciation of certain qualities of Latin poetry 
 that were readily apparent in it, and characteristic 
 of its peculiar genius. It was a protest raised 
 by the imagination and the emotions. And that 
 protest was first made in the reaction against the 
 heroic couplet, a form specially adapted for the 
 poetry of syllogism and epigram, of satire and dis- 
 sertation, and almost exclusively employed in the 
 unemotional and unimaginative verse of the time. 
 
 All through the eighteenth century was waged 
 the literary controversy between the defenders of 
 the heroic couplet against blank verse and the 
 unconscious forerunners of the Romantic school who 
 attacked it. The value of rhyme was found by 
 Dryden to be, that 'it bounds and circumscribes the 
 fancy. For imagination in a poet is a faculty so 
 wild and lawless, that, like a high-ranging spaniel, 
 
 185 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 it must have clogs tied to it, lest it outrun the 
 judgment. The great easiness of blank verse 
 renders the poet too luxuriant/ ^ Or in other words, 
 moderation, restraint, regularity, order, what is there 
 in poetry which can compensate for the absence of 
 these? The first poem of any importance after 
 Milton, written in blank verse, was Thomson's 
 Seasons in 1726, the next was Young's Night 
 Thoughts in 1742. From this time blank verse 
 grew in favour with the more imaginative writers, 
 and with its revival came the revival of the sonnet 
 and some of the earlier English lyrical measures. 
 But the reappearance of the Spenserian stanza as a 
 popular form is a more important indication of the 
 change in taste than any other, and for this reason, 
 that Spenser was looked upon by the orthodox in 
 matters literary during the eighteenth century as 
 par eoccellence the representative of the extrava- 
 gant and wild, of the Gothic in poetry, an epitome 
 of the qualities to be repudiated by the lovers of 
 true excellence. V\^hen moved to praise Spenser or 
 Shakespeare, the critic had to vindicate his possession 
 of good taste by reservations, as did Addison : — 
 
 ' Old Spenser next^ warmed with poetic rage. 
 In ancient tales amused a harharous aye ; 
 An age that yet uncultivate and rude. 
 Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued 
 
 ^ Dedicatory Epistle to The Rival Ladies, 1664. 
 186 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods. 
 To dens of dragons and enchanted woods. 
 But now the mystic tale that pleased of yore 
 Can charm an understanding age no more.' 
 
 What illumination there is in the complacent 
 phrase, 'an understanding age'! Addison's diagnosis 
 of the character of his times was excellent, but his 
 range of vision did not permit him to foresee that 
 the protest of the future would be raised against 
 the limitations his words unconsciously announce. 
 Time has imported a similar irony into the remark 
 of John Hughes, an early eighteenth-century editor 
 of Spenser — 'To compare the Faerie Queene with 
 the models of antiquity w^ould be like drawing 
 a parallel between the Roman and the Gothic 
 architecture."* 
 
 A number of Spenserian imitations nevertheless 
 appeared in the eighteenth century, and from 1725 
 to 1750 the Spenserian heresy made considerable 
 progress. Thomson, by his Castle of Indolence 
 (1748), increased his claim to attention as a fore- 
 runner of the revolution, more especially as he 
 exhibited traces of true romantic feeling, and was 
 not merely engaged, as were the majority of the 
 revivers of the earlier verse forms, in pouring the old 
 wine of conventional sentiment into the new bottles 
 of resuscitated metres. In 1757 Dr. Johnson, the 
 guardian of the sacred Augustan tradition, became 
 
 187 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 alarmed. The imitators of Spenser waxed numerous, 
 heresy was rampant, and the champion of orthodoxy 
 strode into the arena. In the Ramble?' of May 14, 
 1757, he wrote : 'The imitation of Spenser by the 
 influence of some men of learning and genius seems 
 likely to gain upon the age.' ' His style was in his 
 own time allowed to be vicious. . . . His stanza 
 is at once difficult and unpleasing ; tiresome to the 
 ear by its monotony, and to the attention by its 
 length.' 'The style of Spenser might by long 
 labour be justly copied ; but life is surely given 
 us for higher purposes than to gather what 
 our ancestors have thrown away, and to learn 
 what is of no value, but because it has been 
 forgotten.' 
 
 One can barely imagine a literary conservatism 
 more complete than that of Johnson ; with Pope 
 the end of the w^orld had come, all things were con- 
 summated. 'By perusing the works of Dryden, 
 Pope discovered the most perfect fabric of English 
 verse, and habituated himself to that only which he 
 found the best ; in consequence of which restraint 
 his poetry has been censured as too uniformly 
 musical, and as glutting the ear with unvaried 
 sweetness. . . . New sentiments and new images 
 others may produce; but to attempt any further 
 improvement in versification will be dangerous. 
 Art and diligence have now done their best, and 
 
 i88 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 what shall be added will be the effort of tedious toil 
 and needless curiosity.' 
 
 The imitations of Spenser herald the approaching 
 change in literary fashion, but it is noteworthy that 
 the poets who did the best service in the cause of 
 Romanticism v.ere rather students in the school of 
 Milton than of Spenser, a proof that it was not 
 against classic qualities but against the poetry 
 of mere intelligence that the revolt was directed. 
 Milton was a better scholar than either Pope or 
 Dryden, he modelled his great epics upon the works 
 of the ancient poets : his Samson Agon'istes is the 
 best example of a drama in the Attic manner that 
 English literature possesses, his Lycklas is suffused 
 with memories of the Greek ; but for all this the 
 spirit of his poetry was felt to be more romantic 
 than classic, as the eighteenth century understood 
 those terms. But Milton's scholarship enabled him 
 to assimilate the true spirit of the ancients, to learn 
 of them something more than their negative virtues 
 of restraint and discipline and precision, and while 
 preserving these virtues to give at the same time 
 free scope to his imagination. Though he lacks 
 the passion and emotion which the later school of 
 Romance desired, there is no English poetry which 
 more powerfully dilates the imagination; and to his 
 earlier poems Collins and Gray were indebted for 
 the impulse which gave them their place as leaders 
 
 189 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 in the early stages of the revolutionary movement. 
 The ' longing for a shudder," which is present in the 
 poetry of the Romantic Revival, presents in an ex- 
 aggerated form the revolt against the tyranny of 
 convention. But it must not be named as its sole 
 constituent. A poem of Warton's, published in 
 1740, entitled The Entlmtsiast ; or the Lover of 
 Nature, presents another aspect of the new tendency : 
 the fancy for wildness or solitude in landscape, for 
 woods and mountains, ruined castles and twilight 
 groves, such scenes, in short, as might feed the 
 emotions, and stimulate the imagination. ' It may 
 certainly," as Mr. Courthope says, ' be regarded as 
 the starting-point of the Romantic Revival, as it 
 expresses all that love of solitude and that yearning 
 for the spirit of a bygone age which are especially 
 associated with the genius of the Romantic school of 
 poetry." Another volume of poems, published in 
 1746 by Joseph Warton, is avowedly romantic in 
 character. In the preface the author remarks that 
 he looks upon ' invention and imagination to be the 
 chief faculties of a poet, so he will be happy if the 
 following odes may be looked upon as an attempt 
 to bring back poetry into its right channel." The 
 early poetry of Romanticism, both that of the 
 brothers Warton and their contemporaries, is 
 characterised by a strain of melancholy : a vein of 
 sombre reflection runs through it. Elegies were for 
 
 190 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 a time a favourite form of composition, and ' grave- 
 yard poetry' was not a little appreciated.^ The 
 following from Warton are characteristic verses : — 
 
 ' Haste Fancy from tlie scenes of folly 
 To meet the matron Melancholy, 
 Goddess of tlie tearful eye, 
 That loves to fold her arms and sigh ; 
 Let us with silent footsteps go 
 To charnels and the house of woe, 
 To Gothic churches, vaults and tombs 
 Where each sad night a virgin comes 
 With throbhing breast and faded cheek 
 Her promised bridegroom's urn to seek.' 
 
 But ' the whole Romantic school,"' as Mr. Lowell 
 wrote, ' in its germ no doubt, but unmistakably 
 foreshadowed, lies already in the Ode on the Super'- 
 stitions of the Highlands.'' This poem, written by 
 Collins about 1750, was not published until 1788, 
 perhaps because it was not thought suited to the 
 spirit of the times, but exhibits even in its title the 
 new literary attitude. — 'An Ode on the Popular 
 Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland ; con- 
 sidered as the subject of poetry .'' In praising the High- 
 land superstitions as good subjects for poetry, Collins 
 thus addresses Home, the author of Douglas : — 
 
 ' Fresh to that soil thou turn'st, where every vale 
 Shall prompt the poet, and his song demand ; 
 To thee thy copious subjects ne'er shall fail ; 
 Thou needst but take thy pencil in thy hand. 
 And paint what all believe, who own thy genial land.' 
 
 ^ E.g. Parnell's Night- Piece o?i Death, and Blair's Grave, 1743. 
 
 191 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 Here is the kernel of the whole matter, the con- 
 viction that outside the world of reality and 
 common-sense, as represented in polite society and 
 the opinions of cultivated men, as limited by the 
 current philosophy, were to be found subjects 
 adapted for poetic treatment. About the time 
 that Collins was engaged upon this poem. Gray 
 completed his famous Elegy. In his earliest poems, 
 he betrays no trace of romantic predilections, the 
 Elegy marks an indeterminate period ; but in The 
 Progress of Poetry^ 1754, and The Bard, 1757, we 
 see him well on his way towards the camp of the 
 liberals, and in The Descent of 0dm, 1761, enrolled 
 as a recruit in the rapidly swelling forces of the 
 revolution. How is one to explain Gray''s con- 
 version .? It may be ascribed without hesitation 
 to the critical movement, which accompanied and 
 supported the new poetic impulse. In 1755 
 Professor Mallet of Copenhagen published an 
 Introduction to the History erf Denmarh', and in 
 the following year added a volume upon the 
 mythology and poetry of the Celts, and particularly 
 of the ancient Scandinavians. This book marks 
 the awakening of the modern historic sense, the 
 birth of European interest in ancient and mediaeval 
 history, and at once exercised a potent influence 
 upon the thought of the day. Gray was pro- 
 foundly impressed, and when in 1760 Fragments 
 
 192 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of 
 Scotland^ and translated Jrom the Gaelic or Erse 
 Language ^ appeared, his adhesion to the cause of 
 Romanticism was sealed. Public taste was ripe for 
 the reception of the work of the antiquarian and 
 poet, and when in 1765 Percy published his famous 
 Reliques of Ancient Poetry (preceded by Five Pieces 
 of Runic Poetry in 1763), and in 1770 his transla- 
 tion of Mallet's book, the popular imagination was 
 at once captivated, and the stream was soon running 
 strongly in favour of the Gothic barbarians. In 
 this suddenly awakened interest in the past we have 
 of course one of the chief characteristics of the 
 Romantic movement. The intellectual horizon was 
 immeasurably extended, and as in the Elizabethan 
 age the strange tales brought back by the adventurers 
 of the new world beyond the seas at once aroused 
 and delighted the imagination, so these stories and 
 ballads of a past and forgotten age, the marvels of 
 the northern mythologies recovered by the students 
 of antiquity, stimulated and delighted the more 
 imaginative minds of the eighteenth century, weary 
 of conventional good taste and common-sense. In 
 order to appreciate the electric thrill with which, 
 despite the passionate scorn of Dr. Johnson, Mac- 
 pherson's Ossian was received, it is only necessary 
 
 ^ The work of Macpherson, who followed it up in 1762 and 1763 
 by translations of Ossian. 
 
 N 193 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 to read, after a few lines of polite eighteenth- 
 century poetry by Pope or some members of his 
 school, a few lines of its vague and suggestive 
 declamations : — 
 
 <^ I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were 
 desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls;, and 
 the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream 
 of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of 
 the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head ; 
 the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out 
 of the windows; the rank grass of the wall waved 
 round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina ; 
 silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise the song 
 of mourning, O bards ! over the land of strangers.' 
 
 After Pope's most admired epigrams, 
 
 ^ 'Tis from high life high characters are drawn : 
 A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn/ 
 
 how enchanting, too, must have sounded the antique 
 vigour of the ballad, 
 
 ' The King sits in Dunfermline town, 
 Drinking the bluid-red wine ' ! 
 
 Mallet's book on the Scandinavian mythology 
 represents the positive side of the critical move- 
 ment, while Joseph Warton's Essay on Pope, 
 published the year following (1756), is representative 
 of its negative side, denying, as it does, to the Augus- 
 tan poetry the possession of the final virtues. 
 
 194 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 But the effects of the revolution in taste were not 
 confined to poetry, or even to literature in general. 
 If we turn to Gray's Letters and Journals we shall 
 find sentences breathing new and surprising senti- 
 ments. — 'In our little journey up to the Grande 
 Chartreuse,' he writes to his friend West, 'I do 
 not remember to have gone ten paces without an 
 exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a 
 precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is jm'gnant 
 with religion and poetry: But if Gray was one of 
 the earliest writers who discovered that mountains 
 were to be admired, Horace Walpole, as has been 
 frequently noted, was 'almost the first modern 
 Englishman who found out that our cathedrals 
 were really beautiful.' During the eighteenth cen- 
 tury the classical style in architecture completely 
 predominated. Early in the century the palaces of 
 Blenheim and Castle Howard were erected in it, 
 and the preference gradually led to its adoption for 
 all classes of buildings, public or domestic. Like 
 Percy, Walpole was an enthusiastic antiquarian, 
 and in 1747 made the first attempt in England to 
 revive the Gothic style. The sham battlements of 
 the famous ' Gothic castle,' Strawberry Hill, are a 
 landmark in connection with the birth of modern 
 historical and antiquarian interest. But in 1764 
 Walpole erected still another Gothic buildinir in his 
 novel The Castle of Otranto, which, although like 
 
 195 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 its predecessor a sham structure, supplied to the 
 novel some of the modern ingredients wanting in 
 the fiction of Defoe. Defoe belonged to the age of 
 prose : a journalist who was in the habit of report- 
 ing daily occurrences, and whose stories are merely 
 such reports, differing from those of the newspaper 
 only in this, that they are occurrences that had not 
 occurred. In his narratives there is a marked absence 
 of poetry and sentiment ; nor does Pope in his Essay 
 on Man better display the spirit of the eighteenth 
 century than Defoe in Robinson Crusoe. To the 
 novel AValpole added the vein of heightened emotion 
 desired by the time, and the element of mystery in 
 character and situation. The host of his imitators 
 proclaims the age hungry for sensation. In Miss 
 Clara Reeve's Old English Ba?'o?i, Beckford's Vathek, 
 Mrs. RadclifFe's Sicilian Romance and The Mys- 
 teries of Udolpho, and in Lewis''s Monk, the interest 
 is of an intense and agitating character, the scenery 
 wild and suggestive, the characters strange, violent, 
 supernatural. The school of fiction which grew 
 immediately out of the Romantic Revival represents 
 its features in an exaggerated form ; true and false 
 Romanticism were not yet distinguished. The 
 appetite was yet too strong to discriminate, or to 
 discern in Strawberry Hill, Ossian, or The Castle of 
 Otranto, the unreal and the counterfeit element. 
 At the head of another group of writers who 
 
 196 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 assisted in the emancipation of the natural life of 
 the feelings stands the author of Pamela, and 
 Clarissa Harlowe, published in 1748. llichardson''s 
 ' Romances of the heart "* heralded one aspect of the 
 revolt against the supremacy of the intelligence, and 
 not only vindicated the right of the emotions to 
 legitimate expression, but assigned to them their 
 natural place as guides to conduct and ministers to 
 deliijht. With Richardson the word ' sentimental,' 
 now fallen to baser uses, meant little more than the 
 cultivation of the feelings. But with Sterne, senti- 
 mentalism begins to run to waste, and becomes a 
 prevailing mood which regards emotion as an end 
 in itself, nor cares to determine its appropriate 
 occasions or objects. In Henry Mackenzie''s Man 
 qf Feeling, published in 1771, we reach the limits 
 of which this style is capable, we assist at the car- 
 nival of the sentiments, we learn that there is such 
 a thing as luxury in grief. But while Sterne took 
 advantage of the emotional necessities of the time 
 to trick his readers into tears, a nobler use of its 
 susceptibilities was made by Wesley. A frank 
 supernaturalist, Wesley's triumph by an appeal 
 rather to the emotions than to the reason, affords 
 an important clue to the social and moral needs of 
 his generation. The Romantic movement, indeed, 
 regarded in all its bearings, exhibits the develop- 
 ment of the humanitarian out of the political ideal, 
 
 197 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 a cause in which the notion of a return to nature, 
 promulgated by Rousseau, who visited England in 
 1766, did so great a service. With that herald of 
 the Revolution a return to nature was a return 
 to a less elaborately organised, a simpler political 
 system, where kings and priests could imprison 
 neither the intellects nor the sentiments of men. 
 But the theories of fraternity and equality which 
 inflamed the enthusiasm of France made no impres- 
 sion upon the colder-spirited islanders. Abstract 
 doctrines sown in English fields send up no terrible 
 crop of armed men. Later in the century, W^illiam 
 Blake, born in 1757, stood out boldly in the great 
 cause of liberty and democratic ideals. But Blake as 
 artist and poet represents a later stage in the develop- 
 ment of English thought. From boyhood a dreamy 
 mystic to whom visions of angels were familiar, his 
 best artistic work recalls that of Dlirer and the 
 mediaeval painters ; throughout life he believed him- 
 self to be guided by ministers from the spiritual 
 world, and he accounts for the greater part of his 
 literary work as communicated to him by the spirit 
 of a dead brother. Blake"'s singular independence of 
 prevailing fashion, literary and artistic, is hardly 
 matched in the history of our literature. Both as 
 artist and as poet he expresses the life of a later 
 generation, nourished on a more spiritual philo- 
 sophy, a nobler political and social creed, a poetry 
 
 198 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 emancipated from the influences of a mechanic 
 age. 
 
 No historian of the Romantic Revival could over- 
 look the past played by the writers, like Warton and 
 Hurd, who contributed to the liberalisation of criti- 
 cism. Warton's Observations on the Faerie Queene 
 (1753), and Kurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 
 display the conscious side of a movement which was 
 in the main unconscious, or rather they display the 
 effort made by the analytical minds to understand 
 and explain to themselves what the majority were 
 content to feel. Yet it was not from England that 
 the ideals of a criticism which should form part of 
 a universal philosophy first emanated : the shaping 
 ideas of the future issued from Germanv, and their 
 history in this country belongs to the early years 
 of the present century. Upon the later history of 
 Romanticism in England, of its association with 
 revolutionary and democratic ideals, I do not pro- 
 pose to enter ; that later history, is it not written 
 large that all may read in the poetry of Shelley and 
 of Scott, of Wordsworth and of Coleridge and of 
 Keats, is it not the history of English literature 
 and art in the nineteenth century ? 
 
 The early Romanticists had a mission to fulfil, and 
 they fulfilled it by saying in effect to the generation 
 to which they belonged, in the words of Hamlet to 
 Horatio, ' There are more things in heaven and earth 
 
 199 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' It sounded 
 the first few notes of a music which later became 
 orchestral — the music of passion and of triumph, of 
 passion for humanity in its long upward struggle, 
 and of the emancipated imagination which frames 
 for humanity ever new ideals. It opened out of a 
 conventional age a little wicket-gate into a world 
 outside that of our own immediate and circum- 
 scribed experience, into a world that we cannot 
 enter unless imagination and faith take us by the 
 hand and make us free of its mysteries, its aspira- 
 tions, its hopes, its sympathies, and its thoughts 
 ' that do often lie too deep for tears."* 
 
 If we would sum up our impressions we may think 
 of the Romantic Revival as the revolt of the natural 
 man against the artificial, the revolt of the imagina- 
 tion and the feelings against the insolent domination 
 of the intelliocence in the literature of England from 
 Dryden to Johnson. It displays itself at first by a 
 renewed interest in the works of the older English 
 writers, turning from French models to the imitation 
 of their works, and adopting their metrical forms 
 in the place of the heroic couplet almost exclusively 
 employed by the Augustan poets. It displays itself 
 later by a revival of taste for anything mediaeval, 
 for Gothic in preference to classical architecture, 
 by its interest in ancient ballad poetry, fostered 
 by Percy's Reliques and similar collections, by its 
 
 200 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 interest in the early history, the sagas and pictur- 
 esque mythology of the Scandinavian and of the 
 Celtic races, fostered by various antiquarian works 
 and by the poems of Ossian. It displays itself 
 by a renewed feeling for external nature, more es- 
 pecially in the wilder and more rugged types of 
 scenery which most stimulate the imagination and 
 the emotions. It displays itself by the appearance 
 of a school of critics, a school of poets, a school of 
 Romance writers, a school of novelists, expressing 
 unconsciously or avowedly these predilections. 
 
 It would be vain to attempt any classification of 
 latter-day writers which should assign them places 
 in opposing camps. The wizard stream of romance 
 has flowed into the sacred stream of poetry. It is 
 not the poetry that can be most unreservedly la- 
 belled Romantic that we find irresistible, but that 
 poetry which is above classification, which, while it 
 excludes nothing that touches humanity from its 
 world of subjects, displays in its expression the 
 exactness, the dignity, the composure, the restraint 
 that we associate with Sophocles or Lucretius, while 
 at its heart burns the passion and the fire of Dante 
 or of Burns. That strain is sometimes heard in the 
 work of the Romanticists, sometimes in the work of 
 the writers we name classical ; for it is simply the 
 strain of poetry at its highest reach, the poetry that 
 never fails to tranquillise or satisfy, to whose appeal 
 
 201 
 
THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL 
 
 in any preoccupation we can never be blind or deaf. 
 Here we may surrender ourselves to the influences 
 that belong to the divine beauty that ever brings 
 consolation if it brings sadness, and can fortify the 
 heart in the presence of Tragedy. 
 
 202 
 
XaXeTra ra Koka 
 
 The success of a college like this is sufficient 
 proof, if indeed any proof were required, that the 
 English mind of to-day is keenly alive to the im- 
 portant truth that knowledge is power, is keenly 
 alive to the practical utility of knowledge. It can 
 hardly, I think, be said that there is a present need 
 for any of us to be reminded of the value of know- 
 ledge, of the indispensable part it plays in social 
 and individual welfare: we are already convinced 
 of it. We are indeed accustomed daily to con- 
 gratulate ourselves on the marvellous widening of 
 the horizon of what is known, and on the remark- 
 able spread of general and even special information 
 among the people. We have been led, too, by the 
 writers and speakers upon education, and upon 
 social, economic, and kindred questions for many 
 years past, to expect great things from this increase, 
 and from this spread of knowledge. Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer and other scientific writers have raised 
 
 1 An Address delivered at the opening of the Session 1894-95, 
 in Mason College, Birmingham. 
 
 20^ 
 
our expectations by their splendid confidence in 
 the diffusion of knowledge, especially a knowledge 
 of science, and have taught us to believe that 
 ignorance is the only serious barrier between the 
 present condition of society and a veritable Utopia. 
 We are all impressed by this view of the latter-day 
 teachers, a great deal can be said for it ; and yet 
 some of us are forced to confess that we cannot 
 share their confidence ; some of us, perhaps because 
 we are by nature of less sanguine temperament, are 
 disappointed, and are forced to confess our dis- 
 appointment. The good seed has been diligently 
 sown, but the harvest has not realised our expecta- 
 tions, nor is there any assurance that the future 
 will realise them. We put our trust in education, 
 and we have not found in it, at least in the accepted 
 methods of education, the sovereign remedy for the 
 ills of society. That many and capital results 
 have followed the sowing of the seed it would be 
 idle to deny; capital results are apparent. But 
 there is none the less present with some of us a 
 disheartening sense that all is not well; that the 
 progress we have made, though valuable, is not of 
 the best kind ; that we have not followed the vera 
 lux, rather allowed ourselves to be led by a bright 
 but erring star. It suffices not that we have learned 
 to have our wits about us, that an edge has been 
 put upon many of our mental faculties, that vast 
 
 204 
 
continents have been added to man's intellectual 
 empire. Even these gains do not suffice ; some of 
 us remain unsatisfied, and go about with the query 
 on our lips, ' How comes it that we see knowledge 
 wide, and widening, a multiplication of the arts 
 and sciences side by side with so much that offends 
 the eye, and offends the reason, and offends the 
 heart in our modern civilisation ? ' The remedy in 
 which we trusted has not penetrated deep enough ; 
 the changes that have been brought about are 
 surface changes ; and so it comes that our con- 
 fidence in the absolute efficacy of know^ledge has 
 been shaken, and we are now suffering disillusion. 
 The results, too, even in the cases that we should 
 imagine would display this efficacy most triumph- 
 antly, often dishearten us still further. How dry 
 and hard, how socially valueless, how intellectually 
 uninteresting, how spiritually barren even the 
 scholar or the man of science too frequently 
 becomes : so much so, that in moments of despon- 
 dency one is inclined to say hastily that education 
 is a failure, that human nature is not affected by it, 
 or to exclaim, ' How cheap a thing is scholarship 
 when weighed in the scales with pure humanity, 
 with magnanimity, with moral breadth, depth, and 
 simplicity ! ' Education is not indeed a failure, 
 human nature is disciplined, armed, and inspired 
 by it, if it be education of the right stamp, but 
 
 205 
 
■^okeTTa ra Kokd 
 
 we are suffering disillusion as regards the absolute 
 efficacy of knowledge. Mr. Herbert Spencer and 
 the writers upon education no longer inspire us 
 with their confidence. And it seems probable that 
 we shall be still further disillusioned, and this 
 time more seriously, not merely as regards know- 
 ledge, but even the intellectual powers which it 
 nourishes ; for in a recent and able work, Mr. 
 Kidd's Social Evolution, dealing with the largest 
 social problems, our intellectual supremacy, the 
 intellectual supremacy of the modern world and of 
 the nineteenth century, is very strictly questioned. 
 It appears that we are not nearly so clever as we 
 had imagined ourselves, that the marvellous ac- 
 complishments of modern civilisation, upon which 
 we rest our claims of intellectual pre-eminence, are 
 due to small accumulations of knowledge slowly 
 and painfully added by many minds through an 
 indefinite number of generations, and that these 
 minds have not been at all separated from the 
 general average, or even from the minds of other 
 races of lower social development, by any great 
 intellectual interval. And moreover, it is said, 
 and excellent reasons advanced in support of the 
 statement, that it is to ethical and religious, and 
 not at all to intellectual qualities, that the pro- 
 gress of the race must be ascribed. Assuredly 
 knowledge is not everything : it is not everything 
 
 206 
 
to have our wits about us, to have great stores of 
 useful information, to have an edge on the mental 
 faculties. There are other, and perhaps better 
 things, of which our methods of education take 
 little or no account. Our methods of education 
 take account of knowledge, and of the training of 
 certain useful intellectual faculties, for these things 
 have a definite market value. A career is nowa- 
 days open to a well-equipped mind, as in old days 
 a career was open to a sharp sword and dexterity 
 in wielding it, and we are thus led to high estimates 
 of the value of knowledge and mental dexterity. 
 People are willing to pay for these things, and we 
 address ourselves in our schools and colles^es and 
 universities to the task of imparting knowledge 
 that possesses a market value, and training the 
 faculties that command success. 
 
 I do not think that I am here misrepresenting 
 the methods of education we adopt as a nation, 
 and I am anxious, since the privilege has been 
 granted me of addressing you on some subject 
 appropriate to the place in which we are met, I am 
 anxious to ask whether we do right in pursuing 
 exclusively these methods, in prizing so highly 
 knowledge and mental dexterity ; and whether we 
 might not find ourselves more nearly right if we 
 w^ere to make certain other powers and attainments 
 the measure of perfection, if we were to recognise 
 
 207 
 
;)(aX€7ra tol Ka\d 
 
 how much of man''s life falls outside of the intel- 
 lectual sphere, and if in our methods of education 
 we were to take into serious account the whole, 
 and not a part only, of human nature ; if, in short, 
 we were to recognise what I may speak of as the 
 sovereignty of the heart, as well as the sovereignty 
 of the head. 
 
 I am very far indeed from suggesting that it is 
 not an honourable and fitting thing that our educa- 
 tion should be made practical and possess a market 
 value, but there are two things we must look to. 
 We must see to it that our education shall result 
 in real and enduring gain to the individual, and in 
 real and enduring service to society. For it is not 
 enouffh — it is not even wise — to arm the individual 
 with weapons for his personal aggrandisement if 
 you do not at the same time inspire him with an 
 honourable zeal for public ends. Education for the 
 people will not advantage society, it will not advan- 
 tage the world, if it be not accompanied, as is the 
 discipline and skill of the soldier, with the spirit of 
 loyal attachment to the honour and fortune of the 
 state. A diifusion of knowledge there is that can 
 serve the community. It is knowledge that belongs 
 to a man with catholic aims, a knowledge that clears 
 the mental vision, braces the judgment, but also 
 broadens the imagination and the sympathies, and 
 thus assists in the realisation of the soul. 
 
 208 
 
^aXcTTa TO. Ka\d 
 
 The late Mr. Matthew Arnold, in pursuing a 
 parallel line of thought in one of his essays, quotes 
 a sentence from Plato about this matter of educa- 
 tion. ' An intelligent man,' Plato says, ' will set 
 store by those studies which result in his soul 
 attaining soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, 
 and will count the others of less value.' This talk 
 of the soul, and of soberness, righteousness, and 
 wisdom, in connection with education, is, in modern 
 ears, unfamihar and startling. Of the soul we 
 hear little in these days, even in theories of educa- 
 tion ; it is customary to leave affairs of the soul 
 exclusively to the theologians, and perhaps it is 
 not altogether a matter for regret that it has 
 escaped the notice of i\Ir. Herbert Spencer in his 
 book on education. I should like, indeed, to follow 
 out the line of thought as suggested here, but the 
 soul is to-day so discredited by many accurately 
 informed authors, who know all about the subjects 
 upon which they write, as for example Mr. Grant 
 Allen, the soul is so discredited by these brilliant 
 and trustworthy writers, that one has some diffidence 
 in speaking of it, even on the authority of Plato, 
 and for this reason I shall use the word ' heart ' in 
 the phrase you have already heard, the sovereignty 
 of the head, the sovereignty of the heart. I mean 
 by this phrase to express the dual nature of man ; 
 a dual nature of which, if they are to be efficient, if 
 o 209 
 
-^akena tol koKol 
 
 they are to be satisfying, our methods of education 
 must take note. For the little kingdom of man, 
 like the Lacedaemonian state of old, is a city of two 
 kings. The kingship does not belong to the head 
 alone, nor to the heart alone. We are not governed 
 by thoughts, but by thoughts, and instincts, and 
 feelings, and affections. To take full account of 
 the constitution of our natures is to take the first 
 step towards wisely ordered life. To frame our 
 methods of education so that the training, the 
 cultivation given in our schools and colleges may 
 help us towards the realisation of the best that is 
 in us, this is the problem we have to face. But 
 the best that is in us includes much more than a 
 capacity for absorbing vast stores of useful informa- 
 tion, and a capacity for acquiring admirable mental 
 dexterity. Our methods, taking no account of the 
 other powers we possess, not recognising the dual 
 sovereignty to which each of us owes allegiance, 
 the sovereignty of the head, the sovereignty of the 
 heart, our methods of education are narrow and 
 faulty. 
 
 I stand, indeed, upon a famous battlefield of con- 
 troversy, but to me it seems clear at all events that 
 of the various needs, instincts, and powers of man, 
 we are to-day losing sight of and neglecting the 
 more pressing, the more serviceable, whether for 
 the individual or society. What we need to-day, 
 
 210 
 
;)(aXe7ra ret /caXa 
 
 what we desire as a result of education, is not so 
 much knowledge and mental dexterity, we want a 
 sane mental attitude, we want sanity and serenity, 
 we want temper. What I wish to know about the 
 man with whom I am to associate is his mental 
 attitude, his temper. I am not so much concerned 
 with, I do not greatly care to know the number of 
 the languages he has acquired, the number of the 
 sciences of which he is master. These acquisitions 
 on the part of an individual may result in little vital 
 refinement, in little advantage to society. They 
 may be a source of personal satisfaction, they may 
 also be a source of personal gain, but the possessor 
 of them is not always a good citizen, a sure thinker, 
 a man whose companionship is profitable and pleas- 
 ing. And again, it is not in the power of every 
 man to become a scholar. To become a scholar 
 one must spend one's life with books, and that is 
 a life, not without disadvantages, reserved for the 
 few. But it is in every man's power to become a 
 good citizen, an agreeable companion, to cultivate 
 breadth of judgment, cheerfulness and serenity of 
 temper, to desire and study to obtain moral and 
 intellectual dignity. And not only because all 
 men cannot be scholars, cannot indulgre in what 
 Herder called 'the luxury of knowledge,' but for 
 many other reasons also; in the education of the 
 citizen we look to social and ethical qualities, 
 
 211 
 
the qualities that I have tried to sum up as repre- 
 sented by the phrase, the sovereignty of the heart. 
 Mental freedom and receptiveness, moral breadth 
 and sincerity, the interdependence of the mental 
 and moral faculties recognised, these are our needs ; 
 or in other words, that there is no vital refinement 
 without character, this is the important truth for 
 us to realise. For 'the moral," as Emerson says, 
 'must be the measure of health. If your eye is 
 on the eternal your intellect will grow, and your 
 opinions and actions will have a beauty which- no 
 learning or combined advantages of other men can 
 rival." Or to express it in Plato's words : ' In the 
 world of knowledge the idea of good appears last 
 of all, and is seen only with an effort ; and when 
 seen it is also inferred to be the universal author of 
 all things beautiful and right, parent of light and 
 of the lord of light in this world, and the source of 
 truth and reason in the other ; and is the power 
 upon which he who would act rationally, either in 
 public or private life, must have his eye fixed.' 
 
 A recognition, then, of the dual sovereignty 
 under which we must live — the sovereignty of the 
 head, the sovereignty of the heart — will assist us as 
 individuals, will assist us as a nation, in pushing 
 forward the progress of the world, and hastening 
 whatever of good the future holds for man. And 
 with quiet minds we may contemplate and await 
 
 212 
 
the future. The course of the world has not yet 
 proved cleverness better than wisdom, and upon 
 the brow of Justice the crown is still inviolate. 
 However long one listens to the voices that praise 
 success on lower planes one is not persuaded. 
 There is no authority in these voices, and the ear 
 of mankind is attune to higher strains. And so it 
 is that we demand more of ourselves, and seek after 
 the best things, and are not satisfied with know- 
 ledge and mental dexterity. But our methods of 
 education have set these up as standards of attain- 
 ment, and it is a noticeable fact that to improve 
 the standard, to raise it, our writers on education 
 and our university men can think of no other 
 expedient than simply to increase the amount of 
 knowledge required, and to make examinations, 
 which are the recognised test of progress in educa- 
 tion, more difficult. And we go on increasing the 
 amount of knowledge required in the apj^lication 
 of our customary tests, until it is quite marvellous 
 how much the brain of very average intelligence, 
 skilfully treated, will hold, and also quite mar- 
 vellous how indifferent the power of thought, and 
 how slight the vital refinement that are the result. 
 And thus it seems as if we were almost at a stand- 
 still, not knowing where to turn in order to widen 
 our conception of a liberal education, and reduced 
 to continue mechanically raising the standard, as it 
 
 213 
 
is called, by demanding more and more information 
 and greater mental readiness. But there are many 
 of us to be reckoned with who cannot admit that 
 this is in any acceptable sense a raising of the 
 standard, for truly to do so involves much that 
 is not thought of in this process. It involves a 
 realisation of powers in ourselves besides memory, 
 or even high intelligence, powers of imagination, 
 and conduct, and feeling, and sympathy; it in- 
 volves a recoojnition of how much of Hfe lies 
 outside the sphere of pure intellect ; it involves 
 other measures of attainment than those furnished 
 by examinations, and honour given to different 
 types of character from those to which the crowd 
 does homage. The utilitarian view of education, 
 making: livelihood more than life, which has some- 
 how mastered us, is fatal to that ideal of it which 
 includes finer moral feeling, a keener sensitiveness 
 to beaut V, a nobler scale of ambition, a choicer 
 growth of affections. Breadth, lucidity, insight, 
 sincerity, harmony, tranquillity, amiableness, mag- 
 nanimity — these are some of the words I should 
 like to have added to the vocabulary used by our 
 writers and speakers on education. These words 
 carry with them a larger conception of human life, 
 a deeper sense of its meaning and dignity, a deeper 
 sense of beauty, intellectual and moral. How are 
 we to secure in our methods of education such 
 
 214 
 
^aXeTTO, ret /caXa 
 
 qualities as breadth, lucidity, insight, sincerity, 
 harmony, tranquillity, amiableness, magnanimity ? 
 That is, of course, the difficulty ; these qualities 
 are vastly harder of attainment than a goodly 
 amount of knowledge and mental readiness, they 
 dwell in a region wellnigh inaccessible. And 
 there is also the difficulty that even to speak of 
 these things is to be liable to contempt as un- 
 practical. I am well aware how unpractical all 
 this must sound, but fortunately I am not very 
 greatly in awe of what is usually called the 
 practical view^ of things, though it is a hard 
 matter to persuade people that such a view is not 
 necessarily ripe with the highest wisdom. People 
 not infrequently cloak their dislike to ideas, their 
 incapacity to entertain ideas, by an insistence upon 
 this so-called practical view, which comes to be, as 
 a rule, the traditional, the easiest, and the least 
 complete view, whereas the only really practical 
 view is that which takes in all the facts. Briefly, 
 I think we may say, that if the qualities repre- 
 sented by the words I have just used are desirable, 
 it is not open to us to speak of any effort to attain 
 them as unpractical ; and I may say for myself that 
 I am far, indeed, from playing with words, or from 
 speaking with any feeling but one of grave serious- 
 ness in this matter. The sad earnestness of modern 
 life forbids trifling, and constrains sincere eflbrt to 
 
 215 
 
^aXcTTa ra Koka 
 
 see things as they are, and to conceive them as they 
 should be. 
 
 One of the chief complaints made against higher 
 education for the people is that it tends to make 
 them dissatisfied, discontented with their place in 
 life, and feverishly anxious to climb to some 
 superior social grade. Education undoubtedly 
 tends to make people discontented, but we may 
 judge of its character by the kind of discontent 
 it brings. The right methods bring discontent 
 with ourselves that we fall so far short, that 
 excellence lies still so far ahead of us. Breadth, 
 lucidity, insight, sincerity, harmony, tranquillity, 
 graciousness, magnanimity : how hard it is even 
 to approach the possession of these qualities ! 
 Certainly they are not to be gained in a day, nor 
 even in the twelve terms of a university curri- 
 culum, and we must be content if at the end of 
 life we come to see clearly how inestimable they 
 are, if we come to see that honour and fortune and 
 success are already his who has continually before 
 his eyes the vision of their incomparable beauty. 
 If now it were at all possible for our students to 
 gain a sight of these qualities while pursuing their 
 studies, we might still hope for great things from 
 education ; our confidence might be renewed. 
 
 It will be said that I have strayed too far into 
 the field of philosophy and philosophic ideals. I 
 
 216 
 
would that in the education of the nation we might 
 stray yet further into it, and into the field also of 
 the fine arts. For philosophy is no mere academic 
 study, but the science and art of life itself, and the 
 fine arts do not bear us away into any unreal fairy- 
 land, but in this workaday world are the ministers 
 of beauty and of light, and truths that we cannot 
 spare. So much rests with our attitude towards 
 these and similar influences. The word to the wise 
 is, what we seek we find. These influences are for 
 us exactly what we make them. To take history 
 for example. To some people, said Plunket, the 
 great Irish Chancellor, history is an old almanac ; 
 and he went on to say that history written by men 
 without literary cultivation was as unreadable as 
 an old almanac. It rests with ourselves whether 
 history shall be an old almanac, and philosophy 
 a scholastic exercise, and the fine arts an elegant 
 diversion, or whether we shall lay them under 
 higher contribution, and as travellers on these 
 great highways of the world's upward life coming 
 to a clearer knowledge of ourselves, a fuller con- 
 sciousness of our instincts and needs and powers, 
 at length arrive at our journey's end with justice 
 and truth and beauty in our company, and for our 
 friends those who have loved the liffht. 
 
 o 
 
 In the academy of the world's past the student 
 corrects his impressions of life by a comparison of 
 
 217 
 
-^akeira tol Kokd 
 
 them with the impressions of greater minds, his 
 ambitions are enlarged and purified by an estimate 
 of the value of the ambitions that the long 
 centuries have cherished, in his realisation of the 
 world's sorrow his emotions are deepened, in his 
 companionship with its joys his joys are increased, 
 and in his own mingle the elements of universal 
 thought. There is no part of the majestic order 
 of thinors, there are no harmonies of Nature that 
 may not be shared by him, and there abides 
 continually before him the vision of 'a world 
 unrealised."* 
 
 The education we shall learn to prize will be 
 such as serves us in every duty of life, public and 
 private, and in hours of reckoning with ourselves 
 affords us glimpses that continually restore, en- 
 courage, and confirm. I should like myself, did 
 it lie in my power, to show what fortifying and 
 consoling glimpses might be the reward of earnest 
 study in the school of letters, for example, the 
 subject in which I am myself specially concerned. 
 Almost any study will, I believe, if properly 
 followed, put an edge upon the intellect ; but for 
 the student who looks for more than this the 
 choice is perhaps a narrower one. For my own 
 part, and you will allow that it is natural in me, 
 and so perhaps pardonable, I feel the influences of 
 literature and, let me add, philosophy very strongly, 
 
 2i8 
 
more strongly than I feel similar influences from 
 other studies. And for one who thinks that ' the 
 whole life of man stands in need of grace and 
 harmony," there can hardly be a wiser choice 
 than literature and philosophy among the various 
 studies to which a student may apply himself.^ 
 Not that it need be an exclusive study. There is 
 too much made of what is called the 'conflict of 
 studies "* ; we cannot affbrd to neglect any oppor- 
 tunity to enlighten or to enlarge our minds. No 
 man, indeed, can make himself master of all 
 branches of knowledge, or even of any one branch ; 
 but to profit by a study it is fortunately not im- 
 perative that it should be mastered in its entirety. 
 You may make some profitable acquaintance with 
 the results at least in many departments of science, 
 though your direct path lies otherwhere ; your 
 friendship with Plato, or Dante, or Shakespeare 
 will make no impossible demand upon your time, 
 nor can it weaken your grasp in the region of 
 mathematics or geology. 
 
 It seems curiously difficult for the average 
 human mind to entertain more than one idea at 
 a time, and we are not yet safe from attacks upon 
 literature, and the study of literature, by men of 
 science, and attacks upon science, and the value of 
 
 ^ I should like, with Professor Dowden, to see the student pass 
 four years in a School of Philosophy and Letters. 
 
 219 
 
^aXcTra ra Kokd 
 
 science, by men of letters. But I think we are now 
 nearly safe, and that in this college the English 
 feeling of to-day is represented, where science and 
 literature are sworn allies, and have buried deep 
 the weapons of their former warfare. It has indeed 
 frequently been shown that the study of literature 
 is itself a science, and it is to be remembered that 
 in some sense the man of science is also a student 
 of literature, for he is a student of our most 
 ancient document. In its broadest meaning, all 
 that is preserved in writing — litera, the written 
 or printed thing — includes much more than books. 
 That great living being, the world, as the Stoics 
 feigned it, wrote its pre-human history in the beds 
 of rivers, in the hieroglyphics of ice-worn or fire- 
 fused rock, in the debris of primaeval forests, and 
 in the mammoth skeletons of its earliest inhabitants. 
 This is the literature in which the geologist, the 
 palaeontologist, is versed. And even that god-like 
 person, the pure mathematician, who lives upon the 
 delights of abstract quantities and the relations of 
 things at infinity, is a reader of the literature of 
 curves and angles supplied in the book of Nature. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that a student is in quest 
 of breadth, lucidity, insight, sincerity, harmony, 
 tranquillity, graciousness, magnanimity — shall we 
 promise him many near glimpses of these in the 
 school of letters ? I think we may certainly so 
 
 220 
 
promise. We may not indeed say that these 
 glimpses are not to be had elsewhere, we may even 
 affirm the contrary, for there are many schools of 
 intellectual, moral, and social discipline. But we 
 may say that he will do well here, that here 
 life may be strengthened, sustained, and consoled, 
 quickened with the love of truth and the love of 
 beauty, and made bright with memories of the best 
 human traditions. And though I have no right to 
 speak upon any aspect of the study of science, I 
 shall venture the opinion that he will do well here 
 also, that in the study of Nature and her laws 
 there is room for the discipline we seek. For once 
 more it is what we seek we find, and Nature has 
 her own breadth, and sincerity, and harmony, and 
 tranquillity, and graciousness. 
 
 ' And with joy the stars perform their shining. 
 And the sea its long moon-silvered roll, 
 For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
 All the fever of some differing soul. 
 
 Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 
 Undistracted by the sights they see, 
 
 These demand not that the things without them 
 Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 
 
 Bounded by themselves, and unregardful 
 In what state God's other works may be. 
 
 In their own tasks all their powers pouring. 
 These attain the mighty life you see.' 
 
 You will permit me in conclusion to quote some 
 
 221 
 
^aXcTTa TO. Kokd 
 
 words of my own, addressed not long since to 
 students of my own college. If it be asked what 
 is the final end of education, we may say that 
 towards the effort to improve our own selves so 
 that we may the more effectively assist our fellows, 
 our hest guides direct us, in this is the purest 
 happiness given us to enjoy. It frees each day 
 and hour of our little journeying beneath the sun 
 from the sense of its paltry vanity that so often 
 and so sharply afflicts the heart. The remem- 
 brance of that endeavour will be ours upon the 
 threshold of the future when our eyes grow dim 
 to the sunlight, and the veil of Isis is raised for 
 each of us. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
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