THE IMAGINATION 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 GEORGE MACDONALD LL. D 
 
 Author of " Warlock O' Glenwarlock," " Weighed anx 
 Wanting," *' Annals of a Quiet Neighbor- 
 hood," Etc. Etc Etc 
 
 ^tSE UB^ 
 
 Of THE 
 
 UN 
 
 TY 
 
 BOSTON 
 D LOTHROP COMPANY 
 
 FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 
 
 /!/ s S3j 
 
-^ ^ :^6c 
 
 I 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I WAS first induced to read George MacDonald by 
 the late Rev. Dr. Gannett, who said that he had found 
 more in him and got more from him than in or from any 
 author whose name belonged to the current literature 
 of the day. This commendation on so high and grave 
 authority led me to make acquaintance with him, and 
 I can cordially second the testimony of my venerable 
 friend; yet not because I underrate other men who 
 are justly favorites in the reading world, but because 
 MacDonald is a class by himself, and as such, holds 
 in his own vein, and m minds receptive of his influence, 
 a sole place ; while on other Hnes of thought and senti- 
 ment, attention and interest are more or less divided and 
 distributed. 
 
 He is best known by his novels, and they furnish 
 the most genuine test of the quality and strength of 
 his intellectual fibre. As stories, they are by no means 
 faultless. They often have ill-constructed plots, awk- 
 ward denouements, unnatural incidents, and impossible 
 characters ; and the conversations, though never dull, 
 are abnormally prolix, and when the person speaking 
 can be supposed to have a provincial dialect, its vocab- 
 ulary is aired to the reader's utter weariness. Yet 
 with all these drawbacks MacDonald clenches the heart 
 and soul of his reader with an iron grasp ; the interest, 
 strong at the outset, grows with every chapter; the 
 
4 INTBOBUCTION, 
 
 personages brought upon the stage seem, if not our 
 near kindred, at least our next-door neighbors, and we 
 part from them as from old acquaintance, — from some 
 of them as from very dear friends. Yet the power thus 
 exerted, though the story is its vehicle, is independent 
 of the story. It is in the man himself, and in the 
 medium through which he beholds the world and its 
 Creator, — things seen and things unseen. He is pre- 
 eminently realistic ; not in the material, but in the spirit- 
 ual sense of the word. He looks directly and always 
 into the soul of things, and that soul is to him the 
 immanent God. 
 
 The Divine omnipresence, as a dogma, we all be- 
 lieve; with him it is more than a belief, — a perception, 
 a face-to-face communion. We are afraid to associate 
 the Divine image with paltry things, with every-day 
 affairs, with trivial needs, vexations and enjoyments ; to 
 him the least things seem great, because he sees God 
 in them. In like manner he brings us, as it were, 
 into the interior presence of the human beings that he 
 portrays; gives us the inmost physiology of emotion, 
 purpose, will, self-congratulation, penitence, remorse ; 
 shows us his personages, not as they look or talk for 
 the eye or ear of the outside world, but as in lluii 
 moments of deepest introspection they know themselves 
 to be. In religion, he deals not with dogmas or their 
 verbal drapery, but with the actual relations of beings 
 which, in his apprehension, are not typified, but literally 
 described by the terms of the closest and tenderest 
 
INTBOBUCTION. ft 
 
 human kindred as applied to God and man, and to man 
 and man. It is in accordance with this tone of repre- 
 sentation that duty, conscience, obligation, sin, in fine, 
 all ethical concepts, are treated not as matters of formal 
 law and statute, but as phases of the human soul turned 
 to or averted from the present God. 
 
 The same characteristics mark his sermons and relig- 
 ious essays, which are a handling of realities, and not of 
 their symbols. His words have a transparency which 
 belongs to very few writers of any age. One looks 
 through them, instead of seeing things by means of 
 them. His literary criticisms have a similar directness 
 and translucency. They manifest keen insight rather 
 than appreciation. He does not look at his author as 
 from a distance, but rather for the time assumes his 
 personality, thinks and feels with him, and almost in 
 him. 
 
 With these traits MacDonald might seem better 
 furnished as an essayist than as a novel-writer, and I 
 certainly should say so were I not more than delighted 
 with his novels. But as an essayist he would have 
 won distinguished reputation, had he not eclipsed him- 
 self in this department by his eminent success in another. 
 I have before me two volumes of his essays, one on 
 The Miracles of our Lord, the other — England's Aniz- 
 phon — on English religious poetry, either of which 
 would have given a new writer a very high place in 
 the esteem of the best minds. In the former of these 
 specially, are all th« elements of thought and feeling 
 
6 INTBOBUCTION, 
 
 which give character to his novels, — the near approach 
 to sacred verities, the vivid sense of their reality, and 
 their familiar presentation with a loving tenderness that 
 is more than reverence. 
 
 What has been said may in a good measure describe 
 the book now offered to the American public. Its sub- 
 jects are various, and they show the several aspects o^ 
 the author's genius; but in all of them the reader is 
 brought into the closest relation with the author, and he, 
 in a sense almost peculiar to him, literally, rather than 
 metaphorically, "enters into" his subject. But no more 
 needs to be said ; he can best speak for himself. 
 
 This volume is a reprint of the English edition, with 
 the exception of the title of the book and the title 
 of the last Essay or Sermon ; and the less than a 
 page of Preface in the English edition is wholly taken 
 up in finding fault with those two titles. The name of 
 the book is Orts; but the author says that since it 
 was irrevocably printed, he has doubted its fitness. 
 There can be no reasonable doubt of its unfitness, 
 and though not by my advice, it is with my hearty 
 approval that the author's better second thoughts have 
 been respected by the American publishers. The last 
 Sermon is in the English edition entitled The Christian 
 Ministering, which the author says was a mistake and 
 an oversight, True Greatness being the substitute which 
 he himself suggests. 
 
 A. P. Peabody. 
 
 Cambridge, March 9, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Imagination: its Functions and its Culture i 
 A Sketch of Individual Development ... 43 
 St. George's Day, 1564 ^ ^JidfU^eAc^ , . 77 
 The Art of Shakspare, as revealed by himself 141 
 
 The elder Hamlet, 170 
 
 On Polish i8a 
 
 Browning's "Christmas Eve" 195 
 
 "Essays on some of the Forms of Literature" . 218 
 "The History and Heroes of Medicine" . . 236 
 
 Wordsworth's Poetry 245 
 
 Shelley 264 
 
 jA. Sermon 282 
 
 True Greatness ••••••••298 
 
TjNIVEBSITl 
 
 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 ITS FUNCTIONS AND ITS CULTURE. 
 
 HERE are in whose notion education would 
 seem to consist in the production of a 
 certain repose through the development 
 of this and that faculty, and the de- 
 pression, if not eradication, of this and that other 
 faculty. But if mere repose were the end in view, an 
 unsparing depression of all the faculties would be the 
 surest means of approaching it, provided always the 
 animal instincts could be depressed likewise, or, better 
 still, kept in a state of constant repletion. Happily, 
 however, for the human race, it possesses in the 
 passion of hunger even, a more immediate saviour 
 than in the wisest selection and treatment of its 
 faculties. For repose is not the end of education ; its 
 end is a noble unrest, an ever renewed awaking from 
 the dead, a ceaseless questioning of the past for the 
 interpretation of the future, an urging on of the 
 motions of life, which had better far be accelerated 
 into fever, than retarded into lethargy. 
 
 By those who consider a balanced repose the end 
 of culture, the imagination must necessarily be re- 
 > 1867. 
 
2 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 garded as the one faculty before all others to be sup- 
 pressed. "Are there not facts?" say they. "Why 
 forsake them for fancies 1 Is there not that which 
 may be knovmf Why forsake it for inventions? 
 What God hath made, into that let man inquire." 
 
 We answer : To inquire into what God has made 
 is the main function of the imagination. It is aroused 
 by facts, is nourished by facts, seeks for higher and yet 
 higher laws in those facts ; but refuses to regard science 
 as the sole interpreter of nature, or the laws of science 
 as the only region of discover}''. 
 
 We must begin with a definition of the word 
 imagination, or rather some description of the faculty 
 to which we give the name. 
 
 The word itself means an imaging or a making of 
 likenesses. The imagination is that faculty which 
 gives form to thought — not necessarily uttered form, 
 but form capable of being uttered in shape or in sound, 
 or in any mode upon which the senses can lay hold. 
 It is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to 
 the prime operation of the power of God, and has, 
 therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its 
 exercise creation. Poet means maker. Wo must not 
 forget, however, that between creator and poet lies the 
 one unpassable gulf which distinguishes — far be it 
 from us to say divides — all that is God's from all that 
 is man's ; a gulf teeming with infinite revelations, but 
 a gulf over which no man can pass to find out God, 
 although God needs not to pass over it to find man ; 
 the guK between that which calls, and that which 
 is thus called into being ; between that which makes in 
 
THE IMAGIXATION. 'S 
 
 its own image and that which is made in that image. 
 It is better to keep the word creation for that calling 
 out of nothing which is the imagination of God ; except 
 it be as an occasional symbolic expression, whose daring 
 is fully recognized, of the likeness of man's work to 
 the work of his maker. The necessary unlikeness 
 between the creator and the created holds within it the 
 equally necessary likeness of the thing made to him 
 who makes it, and so of the work of the made to the 
 work of the maker. When therefore, refusing to em- 
 ploy the word creation of the work of man, we yet use 
 the word imagination of the work of God, we cannot 
 be said to dare at all It is only to give the name of 
 man's faculty to that power after which and by which 
 it was fashioned. The imagination of man is made in 
 the image of the imagination of God. Everything of 
 man must have been of God first ; and it will help 
 much towards our understanding of the imagination 
 and its functions in man if we first succeed in regarding 
 aright the imagination of God, in which the imagina- 
 tion of man lives and moves and has its being. 
 
 As to what thought is in the mind of God ere it 
 takes form, or what the form is to him ere he utters it ; 
 in a word, what the consciousness of God is in either 
 case, all we can say is, that our consciousness in 
 the resembling conditions must, afar off, resemble his. 
 But when we come to consider the acts embodying the 
 Divine thought (if indeed thought and act be not with 
 him one and the same), then we enter a region of large 
 difference. We discover at once, for instance, that 
 wheie a man would make a machine, or a picture, or • 
 B 2 
 
4 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 book, God makes the man that makes the book, or the 
 picture, or the machine. Would God give us a drama 1 
 He makes a Shakespere. Or would he construct a 
 drama more immediately his own 1 He begins with 
 the building of the stage itself, and that stage is a ^ 
 world — a universe of worlds. He makes the actors, and 
 they do not act, — they are their part. He utters them 
 into the visible to work out their life — his drama. 
 When he would have an epic, he sends a thinking hero 
 into his drama, and the epic is the soliloquy of his 
 Hamlet. Instead of writing his lyrics, he sets his birds 
 and his maidens a- singing. All the processes of the . 
 ages are God's science ; all the flow of history is his 
 poetry. His sculpture is not in marble, but in living 
 and speech-giving forms, which pass away, not to yield 
 place to those that come after, but to be perfected in a 
 nobler studio. What he has done remains, although it 
 vanishes; and he never either forgets what he has 
 once done, or does it even once again. As the thoughts 
 move in the mind of a man, so move, the worlds of 
 men and women in the mind of God, and make no 
 confusion there, for there they had their birth, the 
 offspring of his imagination. Man is but a thought of ) 
 God. 
 
 If we now consider the so-called creative faculty in 
 man, we shall find that in no primary sense is this 
 faculty creative. Indeed, a man is rather being thought . 
 than th inking t when a new thought arises in his mind. 
 He kaew it not till he found it there, therefore he 
 could not even have sent for it He did not create it, 
 else how could it be the surprise that it was when it 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 arose ? He may, indeed, in rare instances foresee that 
 something is coining, and make ready the place for its 
 hirth ; but that is the utmost relation of consciousness 
 and will he can hear to the dawning idea. - Leaving 
 this aside, however, and turning to the embodiment or 
 revelation of thought, we shall find that a man no more 
 creates the forms by which he would reveal his thoughts, 
 tlian he creates those thoughts themselves. 
 
 For what are the forms by means of which a man 
 may reveal his thoughts] Are they not those of 
 nature? But although he is created in the closest 
 sympathy with these forms, yet even these forms are 
 not born in bis mind. What springs there is the per- 
 ception that this or that form is already an expression 
 of this or that phase of thought or of feeling. For the 
 world around him is an outward figuration of the con- 
 dition of his mind ; an inexhaustible storehouse oi 
 forms whence he may choose exponents — the crystal 
 pitchers that shall protect his thought and not need to 
 be broken that the light may break forth. The mean- 
 ings are in those forms already, else they could be no 
 garment of unveiling. God has made the world that 
 it should thus serve his creature, developing in the 
 service that imagination whose necessity it meets. 
 The man has but to light the lamp within the form : 
 his imagination is the light, it is not the form. 
 Straightway the shining thought makes the form 
 visible, and becomes itself visible through the form.' 
 
 ' We would not be understood to say that the man works 
 consciously even in this. Oftentimes, if not always, the 
 vision arises in the mind, thought and form together. 
 
O THE IMAGI2fAT10N. 
 
 In illustration of what we mean, take a passage from 
 the poet Shelley. 
 
 In Ms poem Adonais, written upon the death of 
 Keats, representing death as the revealer of secrets, he 
 says : — 
 
 " The one remains j tte many change and pass | 
 
 Heaven's light for ever shines; earth's shadows flyf 
 Life, like a dome of many coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of eternity. 
 Until death tramples it to fragments.*' 
 
 This is a new embodiment, certainly, whence he who 
 gains not, for the moment at least, a loftier feeling of 
 death, must be dull either of heart or of understanding. 
 But has Shelley created this figure, or only put together 
 its parts according to the harmony of truths already 
 embodied in each of the parts ] For first he takes the 
 inventions of his fellow-men, in glass, in colour, in 
 dome: with these he represents life as finite though 
 elevated, and as an analysis although a lovely one. 
 Next he presents eternity as the dome of the sky above 
 this dome of coloured glass — the sky having ever been 
 regarded as the true symbol of eternity. This portion 
 of the figure he enriches by the attribution of white- 
 ness, or unity and radiance. And last, he shows us 
 Death as the destroying revealer, walking aloft through 
 the upper region, treading out this life-bubble of 
 colours, that the man may look beyond it and behold 
 the true, the un coloured, the all-coloured. 
 
 But although the human imagination has no choice 
 but to make use of the forms already prepared for it. 
 
THE IMAirlXATlOK. 7 
 
 its operation is the same as that of the divine inasmuch 
 as it does put thought into form. And if it be to man 
 what creation is to God, we must expect to find it 
 operative in every sphere of human activity. Such is, 
 indeed, the fact, and that to a far greater extent than 
 is commonly supposed. 
 
 The sovereignty of the imagination, for instance, 
 over the region of poetry will hardly, in the present 
 day at least, be questioned ; but not every one is pre- 
 pared to be told that the imagination has had nearly 
 as much to do with the making of our language as with 
 " Macbeth " or the " Paradise Lost." The half of our 
 language is the work of the imagination. 
 
 For how shall two agree together what name they 
 shall give to a thought or a feeling How shall the 
 one show the other that which is invisible ? True, he 
 can unveil the mind's construction in the face — that 
 living eternally changeful symbol which God has hung 
 in front of the unseen spirit— but that without words 
 reaches only to the expression of present feeling. To 
 attempt to employ it alone for the conveyance of the 
 intellectual or the historical would constantly mislead ; 
 while the expression of feeling itself would be misinter- 
 preted, especially with regard to cause and object : the 
 dumb show would be worse than dumb. 
 
 But let a man become aware of some new movement 
 within him. Loneliness comes with it, for he would 
 share his mind with his fiiend, and he cannot ; he is 
 shut up in speechlessness. Thus 
 
 He may live a man forbid 
 
 Weary sevennights nine times niBe, 
 
8 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 or the first raoment of his perplexity may be that oi 
 .his release. GaziDg about him in pain, he suddenly 
 beholds the material form of his immaterial condition. 
 There stands his thought ! God thought it before him, 
 and put its picture there ready for him when he wanted 
 if.. Or, to express the thing more prosaically, the man 
 cannot look around him long without perceiving, some 
 form, aspect, or movement of nature, some relation 
 between its forms, or betweeft such and himself which 
 resembles the state or motion within him. This he 
 seizes as the symbol, as the garment or body of his 
 invisible thought, presents it to his friend, and his 
 friend understands him. Every word so employed 
 with a new meaning is henceforth, in its new character, 
 born of the spirit and not of the flesh, born of the 
 imagination and not of the understanding, and is 
 henceforth submitted to new laws of growth and 
 modification. 
 
 *^ Thinkest thou," says Carlyle in " Past and Present,*' 
 "there were no poets till Dan Chaucer? No heart 
 burning with a thought which it could not hold, and 
 had no word for ; and needed to shape and coin a word 
 for — ^what thou callest a metaphor, trope, or the like t 
 For every word we have there was such a man and 
 poet The coldest word was once a glowing new 
 metaphor and bold questionable originality. Thy very 
 ATTENTION, does it not mean an attentio, a stretching- 
 TO ? Fancy that act of the mind, which all were con- 
 scious of, which none had yet named, — when this new 
 poet first felt bound and driven to name it. His 
 questionable originality and new glowing metaphor was 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 9 
 
 found adoptable, intelligible, and remains our name for 
 it to this day.'' 
 
 All words, then, belonging to the inner world of the 
 mind, are of the imagination, are originally poetic 
 words. ■ The better, however, any such word is fitted 
 for the needs of humanity, the sooner it loses its poetic 
 aspect by commonness of use. It ceases to be heard as 
 a symbol, and appears only as a sign. Thus thousands 
 of words which were originally poetic words owing 
 their existence to the imagination, lose their vitality, 
 and liarden into mummies of prose. Not merely in 
 literature does poetry come first, and prose afterwards, 
 but poetry is the source of all the language that belongs 
 to the inner world, whether it be of passion or of 
 metaphysics, of psychology or of aspiration. No poetry 
 comes by the elevation of prose ; but the half of prose 
 comes by the " massing into the common clay " of thou- 
 sands of winged words, whence, like the lovely shells 
 of by-gone ages, one is occasionally disinterred by some 
 lover of speech, and held up to the light to show the 
 play of colour in its manifold laminations. 
 
 For the world is — allow us the homely figure — the 
 hiunan being turned inside out. All that moves in the 
 mind is symbolized in Nature,. Or, to use another 
 more philosophical, and certawly not less poetic figure, 
 the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence 
 an inexhaustible wardrobe for the clothing of human 
 thought. Take any word expressive of emotion — take 
 the word emotion itself — and you -svill fiind that its 
 primary meaning is of the outer world. In the sway- 
 ing of the woods, in the unrest of the " wavy plain,** 
 
10 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 the imagination saw the picture of a well-known coirdi- 
 tion of the human mind ; and hence the word emotion.* 
 But while the imagination of man has thus the divine 
 function of putting thought into form, it has a duty 
 altogether human, which is paramount to that function 
 — the duty, namely, which springs from his immediate 
 relation to the Father, that of following and finding 
 , out the divine imagination in whose image it was made. 
 To do this, the man must watch its signs, its manifes- 
 tations. He must contemplate what the Hehrew poets 
 call the works of His hands. 
 
 " But to follow those is the province of the intellect, 
 not of the imagination." — We will leave out of the ques- 
 tion at present that poetic interpretation of the works 
 of Nature with which the intellect has almost nothing, 
 and the imagination almost everything, to do. It is 
 unnecessary to insist that the higher heing of a flower 
 even is dependent for its reception upon the human 
 imagination ; that science may pull the snowdrop to 
 shreds, but cannot find out the idea of suffering hope 
 and pale confident submission, for the sake of which 
 that darling of the spring looks out of heaven, namely, 
 God's heart, upon us his wiser and more sinful chil- 
 dren ; for if there be any truth in this region of things 
 acknowledged at all, it will be at the same time 
 acknowledged that that region belongs to the imagina- 
 
 s This passage contains only a repetition of what is fax 
 better said in the preceding extract from Oarlyle, but it waa 
 written before we had read (if reviewers may be allowed to 
 confess sach ignorance) the book from which that extract is 
 taken. 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 11 
 
 tioiL We confine ourselves to that questioning of tlie 
 works of God which is called the province of science. 
 
 "Shall, then, the human intellect," we ask, "come 
 into readier contact with the divine imagination than 
 that human imagination 1 " The work of the Higher 
 must be discovered by the search of the Lower in 
 degree which is yet similar in kind. Let us not be 
 supposed to exclude the intellect from a share in every 
 highest office. Man is not divided when the manifes- 
 tations of his life are distinguished. The intellect " is 
 all in every part." There were no imagination with- 
 out intellect, however much it may appear that intel- 
 lect can exist without imagination. What we mean 
 to insist upon is, that in finding out the works of God, 
 the Intellect must labour, workman-like, under the 
 direction of the architect, Imagination. Herein, too, 
 "we proceed in the hope to show how much more than 
 is commonly supposed the imagination has to do with 
 human endeavour ; how large a share it has in the 
 work that is done under the sun. 
 
 " But how can the imagination have anything to do 
 with science? That region, at least, is governed by 
 fixed laws." 
 
 " True," we answer. " But how much do we know 
 of these laws 1 How much of science already belongs to 
 the region of the ascertained — in other words, has been 
 conquered by the intellect 1 We will not now dispute 
 your vindication of the ascertained from the intrusion 
 of the imagination; but we do claim for it all the undis- 
 covered, all the unexplored." "Ah, well ! There it can 
 do little harm. There let it run riot if you will. " "No,** 
 
12 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 we reply. " Licence is not what we claim when we 
 assert the duty of the imagination to be that of follow- 
 ing and finding out the work that God maketh. Her 
 part is to understand God ere she attempts to utter 
 man. Where is the room for being fanciful or riotous 
 here 1 It is only the ill-bred, that is, the uncultivated 
 imagination that will amuse itself where it ought to 
 worship and work." 
 
 "But the facts of l^ature are to be discovered only 
 l)y observation and experiment." True. But how 
 does the man of science come to think of his experi- 
 ments 1 Does observation reach to the non-present, the 
 possible, the yet unconceived 1 Even if it showed you 
 the experiments which oi/ght to be made, will observation 
 reveal to you the experiments which might be made 1 
 And who can tell of which kind is the one that carries 
 in its bosom the secret of the law you seek ? We yield 
 you your facts. The laws we claim for the prophetic 
 imagination. " He hath set the world in man's 
 heart," not in his understanding. And the heart must 
 open the door to the understanding. It is the far- 
 seeing imagination which beholds what might be a 
 form of things, and says to the intellect : " Try whether 
 that may not be the form of these things ;" which 
 beholds or invents a harmonious relation of parts and 
 operations, and sends the intellect to find out whether 
 tliat be not the harmonious relation of them — that is, 
 the law of the phenomenon it contemplates. Nay, the 
 poetic relations themselves in the phenomenon may 
 suggest to the imagination the law that rules its scien- 
 tific life. Yea, more than this : we dare to claim for 
 the true, childlike, humble imagination, such an inwaid 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 13 
 
 oneness with the laws of the universe that it possesses 
 in itself an insight into the very nature of things. 
 
 Lord Bacon tells us that a prudent question is the 
 half of knowledge. Whence comes this prudent 
 question? we repeat. And we answer, From the 
 imagination. It is the imagination that suggests in 
 what direction to make the new inquiry — which, 
 should it cast no immediate light on the answer sought, 
 can yet hardly fail to be a step towards final discovery. 
 Every experiment has its origin in hypothesis ; with- 
 out the scaffolding of hypothesis, the house of science 
 could never arise. And the construction of any hypo- 
 thesis whatever is the work of the imagination. The 
 man who cannot invent will never discover. The 
 imagination often gets a glimpse of the law itself long 
 before it is or can be ascertained to be a law.* 
 
 ♦ This paper was already written wben, happening to 
 mention the present subject to a mathematical friend, a 
 lecturer at one of the universities, he gave us a corroborative 
 instance. He had lately guessed that a certain algebraic 
 process could be shortened exceedingly if the method which 
 his imagination suggested should prove to be a true one — that 
 is, an algebraic law. He put it to the test of experiment — 
 committed the verification, that is, into the hands of his 
 intellect — and found the method true. It has since been 
 accepted by the Royal Society. 
 
 Noteworthy illustration we have lately found in the record 
 of the experiences of an Edinburgh detective, an Irishman of 
 the name of McLevy. That the service of the imagination in 
 the solution of the problems peculiar to his calling is well 
 known to him, we could adduce many proofs. He recognizes 
 its function in the construction of the theory which shall unite 
 this and that hint into an organic whole, and he expressly seta 
 forth the need of a theory before facts can be serviceable: — 
 
 *♦ I would wait for my * idea.' ... I never did any good 
 
14 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 The region belonging to the pure intellect is 
 straitened : the imagination labours to extend its 
 territories, to give it room. She sweeps across the 
 borders, searching out new lands into which she may 
 guide her plodding brother. The imagination is the 
 light which redeems from the darkness for the eyes of 
 the understanding. Novalis says, " The imagination 
 is the stuff of the intellect " — affords, that is, the 
 material upon which the intellect works. And Bacon, 
 in his " Advancement of Learning," fully recognizes 
 this its office, corresponding to the foresight of God in 
 this, that it beholds afar off. And he says : " Imagi- 
 nation is much akin to miracle-working faith."* 
 
 In the scientific region of her duty of which we 
 speak, the Imagination cannot have her perfect work ; 
 this belongs to another and higher sphere than that 
 of intellectual truth — that, namely, of full-globed 
 humanity, operating in which she gives birth to poetry 
 
 without mine. . . . Chance never smiled on mo unless I poked 
 her some way ; so that my ' notion,' after all, has been in the 
 getting of it my own work only perfected by a higher hand." 
 " On leaving the shop I went direct to Prince's Street, — of 
 course with an idea in my mind ; and somehow I have always 
 been contented with one idea when I could not get another; 
 and the advantage of sticking by one is, that the other don't 
 jostle it and turn you about in a circle when you should go in 
 a straight line." * 
 
 * We are sorry we cannot verify this quotation, for which 
 we are indebted to Mr. Oldbuck the Antiquary, in the novel of 
 that ilk There is, however, little room for doubt that it is 
 Bufficiently correct. 
 
 * Since quoting the above I have learned that the book 
 referred to is unworthy of confidence. But let it stand aa 
 lUastrntion where it cannot be proof. 
 
THE IMAGIXATION. 15 
 
 — truth in beauty. But her function in the complete 
 sphere of our nature, will, at the same time, influence 
 her more limited operation in the sections that belong 
 to science. Coleridge says that no one but a poet will 
 make any further great discoveries in mathematics ; 
 and Bacon says that " wonder," that faculty of the 
 mind especially attendant on the child-like imagination, 
 " is the seed of knowledge." The influence of the 
 poetic upon the scientific imagination is, for instance, 
 especially present in the construction of an invisible 
 whole from the hints afi'orded by a visible part ; where 
 tlie needs of the part, its uselessness, its broken rela- 
 tions, are the only guides to a multiplex harmony, 
 completeness, and end, which is the whole. From a 
 little bone, worn with ages of death, older than the 
 man can think, his scientific imagination dashed with 
 the poetic, calls up the form, size, habits, periods, 
 belonging to an animal never beheld by human eyes, 
 even to the mingling contrasts of scales and wings, of 
 feathers and hair. Through the combined lenses of 
 science and imagination, we look back into ancient 
 times, so dreadful in their incompleteness, that it may 
 well have been the task of seraphic faith, as well as of 
 cherubic imagination, to behold in the wallowing 
 monstrosities of the terror-teeming earth, the prospec- 
 tive, quiet, age-long labour of God preparing the 
 world with all its humble, graceful service for his 
 unborn Man. The imagination of the poet, on the 
 other hand, dashed with the imagination of the man 
 of science, revealed to Goethe the prophecy of the 
 flower in the leaf. No other than an artistic imagina- 
 tion, however, fulfilled of science, could have attained 
 
16 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 to the discovery of the fact that the leaf is the imper- 
 feet flower. 
 
 When we turn to history, however, we find probably 
 the greatest operative sphere of the intellectuo-coii- 
 structive imagination. To discover its laws ; the 
 cycles in which events return, with the reasons of their 
 return, recognizing them notwithstanding metamor- 
 phosis ; to perceive the vital motions of this spiritual 
 body of mankind ; to learn from its facts the rule of 
 God ; to construct from a succession of broken indica- 
 tions a whole accordant with human nature ; to approach 
 a scheme of the forces at work, the passions over- 
 whelming or upheaving, the aspirations securely 
 upraising, the selfishnesses debasing and crumbling, 
 with the vital interworking of the whole ; to illuminate 
 all from the analogy with individual life, and from the 
 predominant phase^ of individual character which are 
 taken as the mind of the people — this is the province 
 of the imagination. Without her influence no process 
 of recording events can develop into a history. As 
 truly might that be called the description of a volcano 
 which occupied itself with a delineation of the shapes 
 assumed by the smoke expelled from the mountain's 
 burning bosom. What history becomes under the 
 full sway of the imagination may be seen in the 
 " History of the French Eevolution," by Thomas 
 Carlyle, at once a true picture, a philosophical revela- 
 tion, a noble poem. 
 
 There is a wonderful passage about Time in Shakc^- 
 Bpere's " Eape of Lucrece," which shows how he 
 understood history. The passage is really about 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 17 
 
 history, and not about time ; for time itself does 
 nothing — not even " blot old books and alter their 
 contents." It is the forces at work in time that 
 produce all the changes ; and they are history. We 
 quote for the sake of one line chiefly, but the whole 
 stanza is pertinent. 
 
 " Time's glory is to calm contending kings, 
 To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light. 
 To stamp the seal of time in aged things. 
 To wake the morn and sentinel the night, 
 To wrong the wronger till he render right ; 
 To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, 
 And smear with dust their glittering golden towers." 
 
 To wrong the wronger till he render right. Here is 
 a historical cycle worthy of the imagination of Shake- 
 spere, yea, worthy of the creative imagination of our 
 God — the God who made the Shakespere with the 
 imagination, as well as evolved the history from the 
 laws which that imagination followed and found out. 
 
 In full instance we would refer our readers to 
 Shakespere's historical plays ; and, as a side -illustration, 
 to the fact that he repeatedly represents his greatest 
 characters, when at the point of death, as relieving 
 their overcharged minds by prophecy. Such prophecy 
 is the result of the light of imagination, cleared of all 
 distorting dimness by the vanishing of earthly hopes 
 and desires, cast upon the facts of experience. Such pro- 
 phecy is the perfect working of the historical imagination. 
 
 In the interpretation of individual life, the same 
 principles hold ; and nowhere can the imaginatioji be 
 more healthily and rewardingly occupied than in 
 
 Q 
 
18 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 endeavouring to construct the life of an individual out 
 of the fragments which are all that can reach us of the 
 history of even the noblest of our race. How this 
 will apply to the reading of the gospel story we leave 
 to the earnest thought of our readers. 
 
 We now pass to one more sphere in which the student 
 imagination works in glad freedom— the sphere which 
 is understood to belong more immediately to the poet. 
 
 We have already said that the forms of Nature (by 
 which vfoid forms we mean any of those conditions of 
 Nature which affect the senses of man) are so many 
 approximate representations of the mental conditions 
 of humanity. The outward, commonly called the 
 material, is informed by, or has form in virtue of, the 
 inward or immaterial — in a word, the thought. The 
 forms of Nature are the representations of human 
 thought in virtue of their being the embodiment of 
 God's thought. As such, therefore, they can be read 
 and used to any depth, shallow or profound. Men of 
 all ages and all developments have discovered in them 
 the means of expression ; and the men of ages to 
 come, before us in every path along which we are now 
 striving, must likewise find such means in those forms, 
 unfolding with their unfolding necessities. The man, 
 then, who, in harmony with nature, attempts the 
 discovery of more of her meanings, is just searching 
 out the things of God. The deepest of these are far 
 too simple for us to understand as yet. But let our 
 imagination interpretive reveal to us one severed 
 significance of one of her parts, and such is the har- 
 mony of the whole, that all the realm of Nature is opeo 
 
THE IMAGIXATIOX. 19 
 
 to US henceforth — not without labour — and in time. 
 Upon the man who can understand the human mean- 
 ing of the snowdrop, of the primrose, or of the daisy, 
 the life of the earth blossoming into the cosmical 
 flower of a perfect moment will one day seize, possess- 
 ing him with its prophetic hope, arousing his conscience 
 with the vision of the "rest that remaineth," and 
 stirring up the aspiration to enter into that rest : 
 
 " Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve I 
 But long as godlike wish, or hope divine, 
 Informs my spirit, ne'er can I believe 
 That this magnificence is wholly thine! 
 — From worlds not quickened by the sun 
 A portion of the gift is won ; 
 An intermingling of Heaven's pomp is spread 
 On ground which British shepherds tread ! * 
 
 Even the careless curve of a frozen cloud across the blue 
 will calm some troubled thoughts, may slay some selfish 
 thoughts. And what shall be said of such gorgeous 
 shows as the scarlet poppies in the green corn, the 
 likest we have to those lilies of the field which spoke 
 to the Saviour himself of the care of God, and rejoiced 
 His eyes wth the glory of their God-devised array? 
 From such visions as these the imagination reaps the 
 best fruits of the earth, for the sake of which all the 
 science involved ia its construction, is the inferior, yet 
 willing and beautiful support. 
 
 From what we have now advanced, will it not then 
 
 appear that, on the whole, the name given by our 
 
 Norman ancestors is more fitting for the man who 
 
 moves in these regions than the name given by the 
 
 2 
 
20 ~ THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 Greeks? Is not the Poet, the Maker, a less suitahle 
 name for him than the Trouvere, the Finder? At 
 least, must not the faculty that finds precede the 
 faculty that utters 1 
 
 But is there nothing to be said of the function of the 
 imagination from the Greek side of the question? 
 Does it possess no creative faculty ? Has it no ori- 
 ginating power 1 
 
 Certainly it would be a poor description of the 
 Imagination which omitted the one element especially 
 present to the mind that invented the word Poet. — It 
 can present us with new thought-forms — new, that is, 
 as revelations of thought. It has created none of the 
 material that goes to make these forms. Nor does it 
 work upon raw material. But it takes forms already 
 existing, and gathers them about a thought so much 
 higher than tliey, that it can group and subordinate 
 and harmonize them into a whole which shall represent, 
 unveil that thought." The nature of this process we 
 will illustrate by an examination of tlie well-known 
 Bugle Song in Tennyson's " Princess." 
 
 First of all, there is the new music of the song, 
 which does not even remind one of the music of any 
 other. The rhythm, rhyme, melody, harmony are all 
 
 6 Just so Spenser describes the process of the embodiment 
 of a human soul in his Platonic " Hymn in Honour of Beauty." 
 " She frames her house in w hich she will be placed 
 Fit for herself ^ . . . . 
 And the gross matter by a sovereign might 
 Tt mpers so trim ..... 
 For of the soul the body form doth take ; 
 For Boul is form, and doth the body njake." 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 21 
 
 an embodiment in sound, as distiDguished from word, 
 of what can be so embodied — the feeling of the poem, 
 which goes before, and prepares the way for the follow- 
 ing thought — tunes the heart into a receptive harmony. 
 Then comes the new arrangement of thought and figure 
 whereby the meaning contained is presented as it never 
 was before. We give a sort of paraphrastical synopsis 
 of the poem, which, partly in virtue of its disagreeablc- 
 ness, will enable the lovers of the song to return to it 
 with an increase of pleasure. 
 
 The glory of midsummer mid-day upon mountain, 
 lake, and ruin. Give nature a voice for her gladness. 
 Blow, bugle. 
 
 N"ature answers with dying echoes, sinking in the 
 midst of her splendour into a sad silence. 
 
 ITot so with human nature. The echoes of the word 
 of truth gather volume and richness from every soul 
 that re-echoes it to brother and sister souls. 
 
 With poets the fashion has been to contrast the 
 stability and rejuvenescence of nature with the evanes- 
 cence and unreturning decay of humanity : — 
 
 "Yet soon reviving plants and flowers, anew shall deck the 
 
 plain ; 
 The woods shall hear the voice of Sprin;,', and flourish 
 
 green again. 
 But man forsakes this earthly scene, ah ! never to return : 
 Shall any following Spring revive the ashes of the urn ? " 
 
 But our poet vindicates the eternal in humanity : — 
 
 ••O Love, they die in yon rich sky, 
 They faint on hill or field or river : 
 
-i- THE IMAGIXATIOX. 
 
 Ot3t echoes roll from soul to soul, 
 And grow for ever and for ever. 
 Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying ; 
 And answer, echoes, answer, Dying, dying, dying." 
 
 Is not this anew form to the thought — a form which 
 makes us feel the truth of it afresh 1 And every new 
 embodiment of a known truth must be a new and wider 
 revelation. Ko man is capable of seeing for himself 
 the whole of any truth : he needs it echoed back to him 
 from every soul in the universe ; and still its centre is 
 hid in the Father of Lights. In so far, then, as either 
 form or thought is new, we may grant the use of the 
 word Creation, modified according to our previous 
 definitions. 
 
 This operation of the imagination in choosing, gather- 
 ing, and vitally combining the material of a new reve- 
 lation, may be well illustrated from a certain employ- 
 ment of the poetic faculty in which our greatest poets 
 have delighted. Perceiving truth half hidden and half 
 revealed in the slow speech and stammering tongue of 
 men who have gone before them, they have taken up 
 the unfinished form and completed it ; they have, as it 
 were, rescued the soul of meauing from its prison of 
 uninformed crudity, wiiere it sat like the Prince in the 
 " Arabian Nights," half man, half marble ; they have 
 set it free in its own form, in a shape, namely, which it 
 could " through every part impress." Shakespere's 
 keen eye suggested many such a rescue from the tomb 
 — of a tale drearily told — a tale which no one now 
 would read save for the glorified form in which he has 
 re-embodied its trae contents. And from Tennyson 
 
IHE niAGIXATIOX. 23 
 
 we can produue one specimen small enough for our use, 
 which, a mere chip from the great marble re-embody- 
 ing the old legend of Arthur's death, may, like the 
 hand of Achilles holding his spear in the crowded 
 picture, 
 
 " Stand for the whole to be imagined.** 
 
 In the " History of Prince Arthur," when Sir Bedi- 
 vere returns after hiding Excalibur the first time, the 
 king asks him what he has seen, and he answers — 
 
 " Sir, I saw nothing but waves and wind." 
 
 The second time, to the same question, he answers — 
 
 " Sir, I saw nothing but the water ' wap, and the waves wan." 
 
 This answer Tennyson has expanded into the well- 
 known lines— 
 
 ** I heard the ripple washing in the reeds. 
 And the irild water lapping.on the crag j" 
 
 slightly varied, fdr th^ other occasion, into — 
 
 7 The word wop is plain enough ; the word wan we cannot 
 satisfy ourselves about. Had it been used with regard to the 
 water, it might have been worth remarking that wan, meaning 
 dark, gloomy, turbid, is a common adjective to a river in the 
 old Scotch ballad. And it might be an adjective here ; but 
 that is not likely, seeing it is conjoined with the verb wap. 
 The Anglo-Saxon wanian, to decrease, mi^ht be the root- word, 
 perhaps, (in the sense of to e&b,) if this water had been the 
 sea and not a lake. But possibly the meaning is, " I heard 
 the water whoop or wail aloud " (from Wopan) ; and " the 
 waves whine or hewadl" (from Wdnian to lament). But even 
 th«n the two yerbs would seem to predicate of transposed 
 ■ubjeo4g. 
 
24 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 " I heard the wator lapping on the crag, 
 And the long ripple washing in the reeds.** 
 
 But, as to this matter of creation, is there, after all, 
 I ask yet, any genuine sense in which a man may be 
 said to create his own thought-forms ? Allowing that 
 a new combination of forms already existing might be 
 called creation, is the man, after all, the author of this 
 new combination 1 Did he, with his will and his 
 knowledge, proceed wittingly, consciously, to construct 
 a form which should embody his thought 1 Or did 
 this form arise within him without will or effort of his 
 — vivid if not clear — certain if not outlined ? Euskin 
 (and better authority we do not know) will assert the 
 latter, and we think he is right : though perhaps he 
 would insist more upon the absolute perfection of the 
 vision than we are quite prepared to do. Such embodi- 
 ments are not the result of the man's intention, or of 
 the operation of his conscious nature. His feeling is 
 that they are given to him ; that from the vast un- 
 known, where time and space are not, they suddenly 
 appear in luminous writing upon the wall of his con- 
 sciousness. Can it be correct, then, to say that he 
 created them 1 Nothing less so, as it seems to us. But 
 can we not say that they are the creation of the uncon- 
 scious portion of his nature ? Yes, provided we can 
 understand that that which is the individual, the man, 
 can know, and not know that it knows, can create and 
 yet be ignorant that virtue has gone out of it. Erom 
 that unknown region we grant they come, but not by 
 its own blind working. Nor, even were it so, could 
 any amount of such production, where no will was con- 
 
THE nrAGIXATION. 25 
 
 cemed, be dignified with the name of creation. But 
 God sits in that chamber of our being in which the 
 candle of our consciousness goes out in darkness, and 
 sends forth from thence wonderful gifts into the light 
 of that understanding which is His candle. Our hope 
 lies in no most perfect mechanism even of the spirit, 
 but in the wisdom wherein we live and move and have 
 our being. Thence we hope for endless forms of beauty 
 informed of truth. If the dark portion of our own 
 being were the origin of our imaginations, we might 
 well fear the apparition of such monsters as would be 
 generated in the sickness of a decay which could never 
 feel — only declare — a slow return towards primeval 
 chaos. But the Maker is our Light. 
 
 One word more, ere we turn to consider the culture 
 of this noblest faculty, which we might well call the 
 creative, did we not see a something in God for which 
 we would humbly keep our mighty word : — the fact 
 that there is always more in a work of art — which is 
 the highest human result of the embodying imagination 
 — than the producer himself perceived while he pro- 
 duced it, seems to us a strong reason for attributing to 
 it a larger origin than the man alone — for saying at the 
 last, that the inspiration of the Almighty shaped its 
 ends. 
 
 We return now to the class which, from the first, we 
 supposed hostile to the imagination and its functions 
 generally. Those belonging to it will now say : " It 
 was to no imagination such as you have been setting 
 forth that we were opposed, but to those wild fancies 
 and vague reveries in which young people indulge, to 
 
26 
 
 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 the damage and loss of the real in the world around 
 them." 
 
 " And," we insist, " you would rectify the matter by 
 smothering the young monster at once — because he has 
 wings, and, young to their use, flutters them about in a 
 way discomposing to your nerves, and destructive to 
 those notions of propriety of which this creature — you 
 stop not to inquire whether angel or pterodactyle — ^has 
 not yet learned even the existence. Or, if it is only 
 the creature's vagaries of which you disapprove, why 
 speak of them as the exercise of the imagination? As 
 well speak of religion as the mother of cruelty because 
 religion has given more occasion of -cruelty, as of all 
 dishonesty and devilry, than any other object of human 
 interest. Are we not to worship, because our forefathers 
 burned and stabbed for religion ? It is more religion 
 we want. It is more imagination we need. Be 
 assured that these are but the first vital motions of 
 that whose results, at least in the region of science, you 
 are more than willing to accept." That evil may 
 spring from the imagination, as from everything except 
 the perfect love of God, «annot be denied. But in- 
 finitely worse evils would be the result of its absence. 
 Selfishness, avarice, sensuality, cruelty, would flourish 
 tenfold ; and the power of Satan would be weU esta- 
 blished ere some children had begun to choose. Those 
 who would quell the apparently lawless tossing of the 
 spirit, called the youthful imagination, would suppress 
 all that is to grow out of it. They fear the enthusiasm 
 they never felt ; and instead of cherishing this divine 
 thing, instead of giving it room and air for healthful 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 27 
 
 growth, they would crush and confine it — with hut one 
 result of their victorious endeavours — imposthume, 
 fever, and corruption. And the disastrous consequences 
 would soon appear in the intellect likewise which they 
 worship. Kill that whence spring the crude fancies 
 and wild day-dreams of the young, and you will never 
 lead them hey end dull facts— dull hecause their rela- 
 tions to each other, and the one life that works in them 
 all, must remain undiscovered. Whoever would have 
 his children avoid this arid region will do well to allow 
 no teacher to approach them — not even of mathematics 
 — who has no imagination. 
 
 "But although good results may appear in a few from 
 the indulgence of the imagination, how will it he with 
 the many 1 " 
 
 We answer that the antidote to indulgence is 
 development, not restraint, and that such is the duty of 
 the wise servant of Him who made the imagination. 
 
 "But will most girls, for instance, rise to those 
 useful uses of the imagination? Are they not more 
 likely to exercise it in building castles in the air to the 
 neglect of houses on the earth? And as the world 
 affords such poor scope for the ideal, will not this habit 
 breed vain desires and vain regrets ? Is it not better, 
 therefore, to keep to that which is known, and leave 
 the rest?" . 
 
 "Is the world so poor?" we ask in return. The 
 less reason, then, to be satisfied with it; the more 
 reason to rise above it, into the region of the true, of the 
 eternal, of things as God thinks them. This outward 
 world is but a passing vision of the persistent true. 
 
28 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 We shall not live in it always. We are dwellers in a 
 divine universe where no desires are in vain, if only 
 they be large enough. Not even in this world do all 
 disappointments breed only vain regrets.* And as to 
 keeping to that which is known and leaving the rest — 
 how many affairs of this world are so well-defined, so 
 capable of being clearly understood, as not to leave 
 large spaces of uncertainty, whose very correlate faculty 
 is the imagination 1 Indeed it must, in most things, 
 work after some fashion, filling the gaps after some 
 possible plan, before action can even begin. In very 
 truth, a wise imagination, which is the presence of the 
 spirit of God, is the best guide that man or woman 
 can have; for it is not the things we see the most 
 clearly that influence us the most powerfully ; unde- 
 fined, yet vivid visions of something beyond, something 
 which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more 
 influence than any logical sequences whereby the same 
 things may be demonstrated to the intellect. It is the 
 nature of the thing, not the clearness of its outline, 
 that determines its operation. We live by faith, and 
 not by sight. Put the question to our mathematicians 
 — only be sure the question reaches them — whether 
 they would part with the well-defined perfection of their 
 
 • " We will grieve not, rather find 
 Strength in what remains behind ; 
 In the primal sympathy 
 Which, having been, must ever be; 
 In the soothing thoughts that sprii^ 
 Out of human suffering ; 
 In the faith that looks through death, 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind. 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 29 
 
 diagrams, or the dim, strange, possibly half-obliterated 
 characters woven in the web of their being; their 
 science, in short, or their poetry ; their certainties, or 
 their hopes ; their consciousness of knowledge, or their 
 vague sense of that which cannot be known absolutely : 
 will they hold by their craft or by their inspirations, 
 by their intellects or their imaginations 1 If they say 
 the former in each alternative, I shall yet doubt whether 
 the objects of the choice are actually before them, and 
 with equal presentation. 
 
 What can be known must be known severely ; but 
 is there, therefore, no faculty for those infinite lands of 
 uncertainty lying all about the sphere hollowed out of 
 the dark by the ghmmering lamp of our knowledge 1 
 Are they not the natural property of the imagination 1 
 there, for it, that it may have room to grow ] there, 
 that the man may learn to imagine greatly like God 
 who made him, himself discovering their mysteries, 
 in virtue of his following and worshipping imagina- 
 tion? 
 
 All that has been said, then, tends to enforce the 
 culture of the imagination. But the strongest argument 
 of all remains behind. For, if the whole power of 
 pedantry should rise against her, the imagination will 
 yet work ; and if not for good, then for evil ; if not for 
 truth, then for falsehood ; if not for life, then for death ; 
 the evil alternative becoming the more likely from the 
 unnatural treatment she has experienced from those 
 who ought to have fostered her. The power that 
 might have gone forth in conceiving the noblest forms 
 of action, in realizing the lives of the true-hearted, the 
 
30 THB IMAGINATION. 
 
 self-forgetting, will go forth in building airy castles of 
 vain ambition, of boundless riches, ot unearned admira- 
 tion. The imagination that might be devising how to 
 make home blessed or to help the poor neighbour, will 
 be absorbed in the invention of the new dress, or worse, 
 in devising the means of procuring it. For, if she be 
 not occupied with the beautiful, she will be occupied 
 by the pleasant ; that which goes not out to worship, 
 will remain at home to be sensual. Cultivate the mere 
 intellect as you may, it will never reduce the passions : 
 the imagination, seeking the ideal in everything, will 
 elevate them to their true and noble service. Seek 
 not that your sons and your daughters should not see 
 visions, should not dream dreams; seek that they 
 should see true visions, that they should dream noble 
 dreams. Such out-going of the imagination is one with 
 aspiration, and will do more to elevate above what is 
 low and vile than all possible inculcations of morality. 
 Nor can religion herself ever rise up into her own calm 
 home, her crystal shrine, when one of her wings, one 
 of the twain with which she flies, is thus broken or 
 paralyzed. 
 
 ** The universe is infinitely wide, 
 And conquering Reason, if self-glorified, 
 Can nowhere move uncrossed by some new wall 
 Or gulf of mystery, which thou alone, 
 Imaginative Faith ! canst overleap, 
 In progress towards the fount of love." 
 
 The danger that lies in the repression of the imagina- 
 tion may be well illustrated from the play of ** Mac- 
 beth.* The imagination of the hero (in him a powerful 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 31 
 
 faculty), representing how the deed -would appear to 
 others, and so representing its true nature to himself, 
 was his great impediment on the path to crime. Nor 
 would he have succeeded in reaching it, had he not 
 gone to his wife for help — sought refuge from his 
 troublesome imagination with her. She, possessing 
 far less of the faculty, and having dealt more destruc- 
 tively with what she had, took his hand, and led him 
 to the deed. From her imagination, again, she for her 
 part takes refuge in unbelief and denial, declaring to 
 herself and her husband that there is no reality in its 
 representations; that there is no reality in anything 
 beyond the present effect it produces on the mind upon 
 which it operates ; that intellect and courage are equal 
 to any, even an evil emergency ; and that no harm 
 will come to those who can rule themselves according 
 to their own will. Still, however, finding her imagina- 
 tion, and yet more that of her husband, troublesome, 
 she effects a marvellous combination of materialism and 
 idealism, and asserts that things are not, cannot be, 
 and shall not be more or other than people choose to 
 think them. She says, — 
 
 ** These deeds must not be thonght 
 After these ways ; so, it will make us mad.'* 
 
 " The sleeping and the dead 
 Are but as pictures." 
 
 But she had over-estimated the power of her will, and 
 under-estimated that of her imagination. Her will 
 was the one thing in her that was bad, without root 
 or support in the universe, while her imagination was 
 
82 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 the voice of God himself out of her own nnknown 
 being. The choice of no man or woman can long 
 determine how or what he or she shall think of things. 
 Lady Macbeth's imagination would not be repressed 
 beyond its appointed period — a time determined by 
 laws of her being over which she had no control. It 
 arose, at length, as from the dead, overshadowing her 
 with all the blackness of her crime. The woman who 
 drank strong drink that she might murder, dared not 
 sleep without a light by her bed ; rose and walked in 
 the night, a sleepless spirit in a sleeping body, rubbing 
 the spotted hand of her dreams, which, often as water 
 had cleared it of the deed, yet smelt so in her sleeping 
 nostrils, that all the perfumes of Arabia would not 
 sweeten it. Thus her long down-trodden imagination 
 rose and took vengeance, even through those senses 
 which she had thought to subordinate to her wicked 
 will. 
 
 But all this is of the imagination itself, and fitter, 
 therefore, for illustration than for argument. Let us 
 come to facts. — Dr. Pritchard, lately executed for 
 murder, had no lack of that invention, which is, as it 
 were, the intellect of the imagination — its lowest form. 
 One of the clergymen who, at his own request, attended 
 the prisoner, went through indescribable horrors in the 
 vain endeavour to induce the man simply to cease from 
 lying : one invention after another followed the most 
 earnest asseverations of truth. The effect produced 
 upon us by this clergyman's report of his experience 
 was a moral dismay, such as we had never felt with 
 regard to human being, and drew from us the exclama- 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 33 
 
 tion, **The man could have had no imagination." 
 The reply was, " None whatever." Never seeking true 
 or high things, caring only for appearances, and, there- 
 fore, for inventions, he had left his imagination all un- 
 developed, and when it represented his own inner con- 
 dition to him, had repressed it until it was nearly de- 
 stroyed, and what remained of it was set on fire of hell." 
 Man is " the roof and crown of things." He is the 
 world, and more. Therefore the chief scope of his 
 imagination, next to God who made him, will he the 
 world in relation to his own life therein. Will he do 
 hetter or worse in it if this imagination, touched to fine 
 issues and having free scope, present him with noble 
 pictures of relationship and duty, of possible elevation 
 of character and attainable justice of behaviour, of 
 friendship and of love ; and, above all, of all these in 
 that life to understand which as a whole, must €ver be 
 the loftiest aspiration of this noblest power of humanity 1 
 Will a woman lead a more or a less troubled life that 
 the sights and sounds of nature break through the 
 crust of gathering anxiety, and remind her of the peace 
 of the lilies and the well-being of the birds of the airl 
 Or will life be less interesting to her, that the lives of 
 her neighbours, instead of passing like shadows upon 
 a wall, assume a consistent wholeness, forming them- 
 
 • One of the best weekly papers in London, evidently as 
 much in ignorance of the man as of the facts of the case, 
 spoke of Dr. MacLeod as having been engaged in " white- 
 washing the murderer for heaven." So far is this from a true 
 representation, that Dr. MacLeod actually refused to pray 
 with him, telling him that if there was a hell to go to, he must 
 go to it. 
 
 D 
 
 c '■ :;^ 
 
 CK ).'-;,'..., :':^ 
 
34 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 selves into stories and phases of life 1 Will she not 
 hereby love more and talk less ? Or will she be more 
 
 unlikely to make a good match 1 But here we 
 
 arrest ourselves in bewilderment over the word good, 
 and seek to re-arrange our thoughts. If what mothers 
 mean by a good match, is the alliance of a man of 
 position and means — or let them throw intellect, 
 manners, and personal advantages into the same scale ' 
 — if this be all, then we grant the daughter of culti- 
 vated imagination may not be manageable, will pro- 
 bably be obstinate. We hope she will be obstinate 
 enough.* But will the girl be less likely to marry a 
 gentleman, in the grand old meaning of the sixteenth 
 century 1 when it was no irreverence to call our Lord 
 
 ** The first true gentleman that ever breathed ;'* 
 
 or in that of the fourteenth 1 — when Chaucer teaching 
 " whom is worthy to be called gentill," writes thus : — 
 
 " The first stocke was full of rightwisnes, 
 Trewe of his worde, sober, pitous and free, 
 Clene of his goste, and loved besinesse. 
 Against the vice of slouth in honeste ; 
 And but his heire love vertue as did he, 
 
 • Let women who feel the wrongs of their kind teach women 
 to be high-minded in their relation to men, and they will do 
 more for the social elevation of women, and the establishment 
 of their rights, whatever those rights may be, than by 
 any amount of intellectual development or assertion of 
 equality. Nor, if they are other than mere partisans, will thej' 
 refuse the attempt because in its success men will, after all, 
 be equal, if not greater gainers, if only thereby they should be 
 " feelingly persuaded " what they are. 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 85 
 
 He 18 not gentill thougli he rioli seme, 
 All weare he miter, crowne, or diademe." 
 
 Will she be less likely to marry one who honours 
 women, and for their sakes, as well as his own, honours 
 himself ? Or to speak from what many would regard 
 as the mother's side of the question — will the girl be 
 more likely, because of such a culture of her imagina- 
 tion, to refuse the wise, true-hearted, generous rich 
 man, and fall in love with the talking, verse-making 
 fool, because be is poor, as if that were a virtue for 
 which he had striven 'i The highest imagination and 
 the lowliest common sense are always on one side. 
 
 For the end of imagination* is harmony. A right 
 imagination, being the reflex of the creation, will fall 
 in with the divine order of things as the highest form 
 of its own operation ; " will tune its instrument here 
 at the door " to the divine harmonies within ; will be 
 content alone with growth towards the divine idea, 
 which includes all that is beautiful in the imperfect 
 imaginations of men ; will know that every deviation 
 from that growth is downward; and will therefore 
 send the man forth from its loftiest representations to 
 do the commonest duty of the most wearisome calling 
 in a hearty and hopeful spirit. This is the work of 
 the right imagination ; and towards this work every 
 imagination, in proportion to the rightness that is in 
 it, will tend. The reveries even of the wise man will 
 make him stronger for his work ; his dreaming as well 
 as his thinking will render him sorry for past failure, 
 and hopeful of future success. 
 
 To come now to the culture of the imaginatioa Ite 
 D 2 
 
36 " THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 development is one of the main ends of the divine 
 education of life with all its efiforts and experiences. 
 Therefore the first and essential means for its culture 
 must be an ordering of our life towards harmony with 
 its ideal in the mind of God. As he that is willing to 
 do the will of the Father, shall know of the doctrine, 
 so, we doubt not, he that will do the will of The Poet, 
 shall behold the Beautiful. Eor all is God's ; and the 
 man who is growing into harmony with His will, is 
 growing into harmony with himself; all the hidden 
 glories of his being are coming out into the light of 
 humble consciousness ; so that at the last he shall be 
 a pure microcosm, faithfully reflecting, after his manner, 
 the mighty macrocosm. We believe, therefore, that 
 nothing will do so much for the intellect or the imagi- 
 nation as being good — we do not mean after any formula 
 or any creed, but simply after the faith of Him who 
 did the will of his Father in heaven. 
 
 But if we speak of direct means for the culture of 
 • the imagination, the whole is comprised in two words 
 — food and exercise. If you want strong arms, take 
 animal food, and row. Feed your imagination with 
 food convenient for it, and exercise it, not in the con- 
 tortions of the acrobat, but in the movements of the 
 gymnast. And first for the food. 
 
 Goethe has told us that the way to develop the 
 aesthetic faculty is to have constantly before our eyes, 
 that is, in the room we most frequent, some work of 
 the best attainable art. This will teach us to refuse 
 the evil and choose the good. It will plant itself in 
 our minds and become our counsellor. Involuntarily, 
 
THE 131 A (i I. NATION. 37 
 
 unconsciously, we shall compare with its perfection 
 everything that conies before us for judgment. Kow, 
 although no better advice could be given^ it involves 
 one danger, that of narrowness. And not easily, in 
 dread of this danger, would one change his tutor, and 
 so procure variety of instruction. But in the culture 
 of the imagination, books, although not the only, are 
 the readiest means of supplying the food convenient 
 for it, and a hundred books may be had where even 
 one work of art of the right sort is unattainable, seeing 
 such must be of some size as well as of thorough ex- 
 cellence. And in variety alone is safety from the 
 danger of the convenient food becoming the incon- 
 venient model. 
 
 Let us suppose, then, that one who himself justly 
 estimates the imagination is anxious to develop its 
 operation in his child. No doubt the best beginning, 
 especially if the child be young, is an acquaintance 
 with nature, in which let him be encoumged to observe 
 vital phenomena, to put things together, to speculate 
 from what he sees to what he does not see. But let 
 earnest care be taken that upon no matter shall he go 
 on talking foolishly. Let him be as fanciful as he 
 may, but let him not, even in his fancy, sin against 
 fancy's sense ; for fancy has its laws as certainly as the 
 most ordinary business of life. When he is silly, let 
 him know it and be ashamed. 
 
 But where this association with nature is but occa- 
 sionally possible, recourse must be had to Kterature. 
 In books, we not only have store of all results of the 
 imagination, but in them, as in her workshop, we may 
 
05 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 "behold her embodying before our very eyes, in imisio 
 of speech, in wonder of words, till her work, like a 
 golden dish set with shining jewels, and adorned by 
 the hands of the cunning workmen, stands finished 
 before us. In this kind, then, the best must be set 
 before the learner, that he may eat and not be satisfied ; 
 for the finest products of the imagination are of the 
 best nourishment for the beginnings of that imagina- 
 tion. And the mind of the teacher must mediate 
 between the work of art and the mind of the pupil, 
 bringing them together in the vital contact of intel- 
 ligence; directing the observation to the lines of 
 expression, the points of force ; and helping the mind 
 to repose upon the whole, so that no separable beauties 
 shall lead to a neglect of the scope — that is the shape 
 or form complete. And ever he must seek to show 
 excellence rather than talk about it, giving the thing 
 itself, that it may grow into the mind, and not a 
 eulogy of his own upon the thing ; isolating the point 
 worthy of remark rather than making many remarks 
 upon the point. 
 
 Especially must he endeavour to show the spiritual 
 scaffolding or skeleton of any work of art; those 
 main ideas upon which the shape is constructed, and 
 around which the rest group as ministering depen- 
 dencies. 
 
 But he will not, therefore, pass over that intellectual 
 structure without which the other could not be mani- 
 fested. . He will not forget the builder while he ad- 
 mires the architect. While he dwells with delight on 
 the relation of the peculiar arch to the meaning of the 
 
THE IMAGINATION. W 
 
 whole cathedral, he will not think it needless to explain 
 the principles on which it is constructed, or even how 
 those principles are carried ont in actual process. 
 Neither yet will the tracery of its windows, the foliage 
 of its crockets, or the fretting of its mouldings be for- 
 gotten. Every beauty will have its word, only all 
 beauties will be subordinated to the final beauty — that 
 is, the unity of the whole. 
 
 Thus doing, he shall perform the true office of 
 friendship. He will introduce his pupil into the 
 society which he himself prizes most, surrounding him 
 with the genial presence of the high-minded, that this 
 good company may work its own kind in him who 
 frequents it. 
 
 But he will likewise seek to turn him aside from 
 such company, whether of books or of men, as might 
 tend to lower his reverence, his choice, or his standard. 
 He will,, therefore, discourage indiscriminate reading, 
 and that worse than waste which consists in skimming 
 the books of a circulating library. He knows that if 
 a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading well ; 
 and that, if it is not worth reading, it is only to the 
 most accomplished reader that it can be worth skim- 
 ming. He -will seek to make him discern, not merely 
 between the good and the evil, but between the good 
 and the not so good. And this not for the sake of 
 sharpening the intellect, still less of generating that 
 self-satisfaction which is the closest attendant upon 
 criticism, but for the sake of choosing the best path 
 and the best companions upon it. A spirit of criticism 
 for the sake of distinguishing only, or, far worse, for 
 
40 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 the sake of having one^s opinion ready upon demand, 
 is not merely repulsive to all true thinkers, but is, in 
 itself, destructive of all thinking. A spirit of criticism 
 for the sake of the truth — a spirit that does not start 
 from its chamber at every noise, but waits till its 
 presence is desired — cannot, indeed, garnish the house, 
 but can sweep it clean. Were there enough of such 
 wise criticism, there would be ten times the study of 
 the best writers of the past, and perhaps one-tenth of 
 the admiration for the ephemeral productions of the 
 day. A gathered mountain of misplaced worships 
 would be swept into the sea by the study of one good 
 book ; and while what was good in an inferior book 
 would still be admired, the relative position of the 
 book would be altered and its influence lessened. 
 
 Speaking of true learning, Lord Bacon says : "It 
 taketh away vain admiration of anything, which is the 
 root of all loeakness." 
 
 The right teacher would have his pupil easy to 
 please, but ill to satisfy ; ready to enjoy, unready to 
 embrace ; keen to discover beauty, slow to say, " Here 
 I will dwell." 
 
 But he will not confine his instructions to the region 
 of art. He will encourage him to read history with an 
 eye eager for the dawning figure of the past. He will 
 especially show him that a great part of the Bible is 
 only thus to be understood ; and that the constant and 
 consistent way of God, to be discovered in it, is in fact 
 the key to all history. 
 
 In the history of individuals, as well, he will try to 
 show him how to put sign and token together, con- 
 
THE IMAGINATION. 41 
 
 structing not indeed a whole, but a probable suggestion 
 of the whole. 
 
 And, again, while showing him the reflex of nature 
 in the poets, he will not be satisfied without sending 
 him to I^ature herself; urging him in country rambles 
 to keep open eyes for the sweet fashionings and blend- 
 ings of her operation around him ; and in city walks 
 to watch the " human face divine." 
 
 Once more : he will point out to him the essential 
 difference between reverie and thought; between 
 dreaming anfl imagining. He will teach him not to 
 mistake fancy, either in himself or in others for ima- 
 gination, and to beware of hunting after resemblances 
 that carry with them no interpretation. 
 
 Such training is not solely fitted for the possible 
 development of artistic faculty. Few, in this world, 
 will ever be able to utter what they feel. Fewer still 
 will be able to utter it in forms of their own. 'Nov is 
 it necessary that there should be many such. But it is 
 necessary that all should feel. It is necessary that all 
 should understand and imagine the good ; that all 
 should begin, at least, to follow and find out God. 
 
 "The^lory of God is^tjo conceal a thing, but the 
 glory of the king is to find it out," says Solomon. 
 "As if," remarks Bacon on the passage, "according to 
 the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took 
 delight to hide his works, to the end to have them 
 found out ; and as if kings could not obtain a greater 
 honour than to be God's playfellows in that game." 
 
 One more quotation from the book of Ecclesiastes, 
 setting forth both the necessity we are under to imaginei 
 
42 THE IMAGINATION. 
 
 and the comfort that our imagining cannot outstrip 
 God's making. 
 
 " I have seen the travail which God hath given to 
 the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made 
 everything beautiful in his time ; also he hath set the 
 world in their heart, so that no man can find out the 
 work that God maketh from the beginning to the 
 end." 
 
 Thus to be playfellows with God in this game, the 
 little ones may gather their daisies and follow their 
 painted moths ; the child of the kingdom may pore 
 upon the lilies of the field, and gather faith as the 
 birds of the air their food from the leafless hawthorn, 
 ruddy with the stores God has laid up for them ; and 
 the man of science 
 
 " May sit and rightly spell 
 Of every star that heaven doth shew. 
 And every herb that sips the dew j 
 Till old experience do attain 
 To something like prophetio strain.* 
 
A SKETCH OF INDIVIDUAL DEVEL- 
 OPMENT. 
 
 WISH I had thought to watch when God 
 was making me ! " said a child once to 
 his mother. "Only," he added, "I was 
 not made till I was finished, so I 
 couldn't." "We cannot recall whence we came, nor tell 
 how we began to be. We know approximately how 
 far back we can remember, but have no idea how far 
 back we may not have forgotten. Certainly we knew 
 once much that we have forgotten now. My own 
 earliest definable memory is of a great funeral of one of 
 the Dukes of Gordon, when I was between two and 
 three years of age. Surely my first knowledge was not 
 of death. I must have known much and many things 
 belore, although that seems my earliest memory. As 
 in what we foolishly call maturity, so in the dawn of 
 consciousness, both before and after it has begun to be 
 buttressed with 6'eZ/-consciousness, each succeeding 
 consciousness dims — often obliterates — that which went 
 betbre, and with regard to our past as well as our 
 future, imagination and faith must step into the place 
 vacated of knowledge. We are aware, and we know 
 
 1 1880. 
 
44 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 that we are aware, but when or how we began to be 
 aware, is wrapt in a mist that deepens on the one side 
 into deepest night, and on the other brightens into the 
 full assurance of existence. Looking back we can but 
 dream, looking forward we lose ourselves in specula- 
 tion ; but we may both speculate and dream, for all 
 speculation is not false, and all dreaming is not of the 
 unreal. What may we fairly imagine as to the inward 
 condition of the child before the first moment of which 
 his memory affords him testimony ? 
 
 It is one, I venture to say, of absolute, though, no 
 doubt, largely negative faith. Neither memory of pain 
 that is past, nor apprehension of pain to come, once 
 arises to give him the smallest concern. In some way, 
 doubtless very vague, for his being itself is a border- 
 land of awful mystery, he is aware of being surrounded, 
 enfolded with an atmosphere of love ; the sky over him 
 is his mother's face ; the earth that nourishes him is 
 his mother's bosom. The source, the sustentation, the 
 defence of his being, the endless mediation betwixt his 
 needs and the things that supply them, are all one. 
 There is no type so near the highest idea of relation to 
 a God, as that of the child to his mother. Her face is 
 God, her bosom Nature, her arms are Providence — all 
 love — one love — to him an undivided bliss. 
 
 The region beyond him he regards from this vantage- 
 ground of unquestioned security. There things may 
 come and go, rise and vanish — he neither desires nor 
 bemoans them. Change may grow swift, its swiftness 
 grow fierce, and pass into storm : to him storm is calm ; 
 his haven is secure ; his lest cannot be bioken : he is 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 45 
 
 acconntable for nothing, knows no responsibility. Con- 
 science is not yet awake, and there is no conflict. 
 His waking is full of sleep, yet his very being is 
 enough for him. 
 
 But all the time his mother lives in the hope of his 
 growth. In the present babe, her heart broods over 
 the coming boy — the unknown marvel closed in the 
 visible germ. Let mothers lament as they will over 
 the change from childhood to maturity, which of them 
 would not grow weary of nursing for ever a child in 
 whom no live law of growth kept unfolding an infinite 
 change ! The child knows nothing of growth — desires 
 none — but grows. Within him is the force of a power 
 he can no more resist than the peach can refuse to 
 swell and grow ruddy in the sun. By slow, inappre- 
 ciable, indivisible accretion and outfolding, he is lifted, 
 floated, drifted on towards the face of tlie awful mirror 
 in which he must encounter his first foe— must front 
 himself. 
 
 By degrees he has learned that the world is around, 
 and not within him -that he is apart, and that is 
 apart ; from consciousness he passes to self-conscious- 
 ness. This is a second birth, for now a higher life 
 begins. When a man not only lives, but knows that 
 lie lives, then first the possibility of a real life com- 
 mences. By real life, I mean life which has a share 
 in its own existence. 
 
 For now, towards the world around him — the world 
 that is not his mother, and, actively at least, neither 
 loves him nor ministers to him, reveal themselves cer- 
 tain relations, initiated by fancies, desires, preferences, 
 
46 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 that arise within himself — reasonable or not matters 
 little : — founded in reason, they can in no case be 
 devoid of reason. Every object concerned in these 
 relations presents itself to the man as lovely, desirable, 
 good, or ugly, baleful, bad ; and through these rela- 
 tions, obscure and imperfect, and to a being weighted 
 with a strong faculty for miskike, begins to be revealed 
 the existence and force of Being other and higher than 
 his own, recognized as Will, and first of all in its 
 opposition to his desires. Thereupon begins the strife 
 without which there never was, and, I presume, never 
 ;;an be, any growth, any progress ; and the first result 
 is what I may call the third birth of the human being. 
 The first opposing glance of the mother wakes in the 
 child not only answering opposition, which is as the 
 rudimentary sac of his own coming will, but a new 
 something, to which for long he needs no name, so 
 natural does it seem, so entirely a portion of his being, 
 even when most he refuses to listen to and obey it. This 
 new something — we call it Conscience — sides with his 
 mother, and causes its presence and judgment to be felt 
 not only before but after the event, so that he soon 
 comes to know that it is well with him or ill with him 
 as he obeys or disobeys it. And now he not only 
 knows, not only knows that he knows, but knows 
 he knows that he knows — knows that he is self-con- 
 scious — that he has a conscience. With the first 
 sense of resistance to it, the power above him has 
 drawn nearer, and the deepest within him has declared 
 itself on the side of the highest without him. At one 
 and the same monient, the heaven of his childhood has, 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 47 
 
 as it were, receded and come nigher. lie has run from 
 under it, but it claims him. It is farther, yet closer 
 — immeasurably closer : he feels on his being the grasp 
 and hold of his mother's. Through the higher indivi- 
 duality he becomes aware of his own. Through the 
 assertion of his mother's will, his own begins to awake. 
 He becomes conscious of himself as capable of action — 
 of doing or of not doing ; his responsibility has begun. 
 He slips from her lap ; he travels from chair to chair ; 
 he puts his circle round the room ; he dares to cross 
 the threshold ; he braves the precipice of the stair ; he 
 takes the greatest step that, according to George Her- 
 bert, is possible to man — that out of doors, changing 
 the house for the universe; he runs from flower to 
 flower in the garden ; crosses the road ; wanders, is 
 lost, is found again. His powers expand, his activity 
 increases ; he goes to school, and meets other boys like 
 himself ; new objects of strife are discovered, new ele- 
 ments of strife developed ; new desires are born, fresh 
 impulses urge. The old heaven, the face and will of 
 his mother, recede farther and farther ; a world of men, 
 which he foolishly thinks a nobler as it is a larger 
 world, draws him, claims him. More or less he yields. 
 The example and influence of such as seem to him 
 more than his mother like himself, grow strong upon 
 him. Hia conscience speaks louder. And here, even 
 at this early point in his history, what I might call 
 his fourth birth may begin lo take place : I mean the 
 birth in him of the Will — the real Will — not the 
 pseudo-will, which is the mere Desire, swayed of im- 
 pulse, selfishness, or one of many a miserable motive. 
 
48 INDIYIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 When the man, listening to his conscience, wills and 
 does the right, irrespective of inclination as of conse- 
 quence, then is the man free, the universe open before 
 him. He is born from above. To him conscience 
 needs never speak aloud, needs never speak twice ; to 
 him her voice never grows less powerful, for he never 
 neglects what she commands. And when he becomes 
 aware that he can will his will, that God has given 
 him a share in essential life, in the causation of his 
 own being, then is he a man indeed. I say, even here 
 this birth may begin ; but with most it takes years not 
 a few to complete it. For, the power of the mother 
 having waned, the power of the neighbour is waxing. 
 If the boy be of common clay, that is, of clay willing 
 to accept dishonour, this power of the neighbour over 
 him will increase and increase, till individuality shall 
 have vanished from him, and what his friends, what 
 society, what the trade or the profession say, will be to 
 him the rule of life. With such, however, I have to 
 do no more than with the deaf dead, who sleep too 
 deep for words to reach them. 
 
 My typical child of man is not of such. He is capa- 
 ble not of being influenced merely, but of influencing 
 — and first of all of influencing himself ; of taking 
 a share in his own making ; of determinij^g actively, 
 not by mere passivity, what he shall be and become ; 
 for he never ceases to pay at least a little heed, how- 
 ever poor and intermittent, to the voice of his con- 
 science, and to-day he pays more heed than he did 
 yesterday. 
 
 Long ere now the joy of space, of room, has laid 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 49 
 
 hold upon him — the more powerfully if he inhabit a 
 wild and broken region. The human animal delights 
 in motion and change, motions of his members even 
 violent, and swiftest changes of place. It is as if he 
 would lay hold of the infinite by ceaseless abandon- 
 ment and clioice of a never-abiding stand-point, as if 
 he would lay hold of strength by the consciousness of 
 the strength he has. He is full of unrest. He must 
 know what lies on the farther shore of every river, see 
 how the world looks from every hill : What is behind ? 
 What is beyond ? is his constant cry. To learn, to 
 gaMier into himself, is his longing. Nor do many 
 years pass thus, it may be not many months, ere the 
 world begins to come alive around him. He begins to 
 feel that the stars are strange, that the moon is sad, 
 that the sunrise is mighty. He begins to see in them 
 all the something men call beauty. He will lie on the 
 sunny bank and gaze into the blue heaven till his soul 
 seems to float abroad and mingle with the infinite made 
 visible, with the boundless condensed into colour and 
 shape. The rush of the water through the still twilight, 
 under the faint gleam of the exhausted west, makes in 
 his ears a melody he is almost aware he cannot under- 
 stand. Dissatisfied with his emotions he desires a 
 deeper waking, longs for a greater beauty, is troubled 
 with the stirring in his bosom of an unknown ideal of 
 Nature. Nor is it an ideal of Nature alone that is 
 forming within him. A far more precious thing, a 
 human ideal namely, is in his soul, gathering to itself 
 shape and consistency. The wind that at night fills 
 him with sadness — he cannot tell why, in the daytime 
 
50 i:n-dividual development. 
 
 haunts him like a wild consciousness of strength which 
 has neither difficulty nor danger enough to spend itself 
 upon. He would he a champion of the weak, a friend 
 to the great ; for hoth he would fight— a merciless foe 
 to every oppressor of his kind. Pie would be rich that 
 he might help, strong that he might rescue, brave — 
 that he counts himself aheady, for he has not proved 
 his own weakness. In the first encounter he fails, and 
 the hitter cup of shame and confusion of face, whole- 
 some and saving, is handed him from the well of life. 
 He is not yet capable of understanding that one such as 
 he, filled with the glory and not the duty of victory, 
 could not but fail, and therefore ought to fail ; but his 
 dismay and chagrin are soothed by the forgetfulness 
 the days and nights bring, gently wiping out the sins 
 that are past, that the young life may have a fresh 
 chance, as we say, and begin again unburdened by the 
 weight of a too much present failure. 
 
 And now, probably at school, or in the first months 
 of his college- life, a new phase of experience begins. 
 He has wandered over the border of what is commonly 
 called science, and the marvel of facts multitudinous, 
 strungupon the golden threads of law, has laid hold upon 
 him. His intellect is seized and possessed by a new spirit. 
 For a time knowledge is pride ; the mere consciousness 
 of knowing is the reward of its labour; the ever 
 recurring, ever passing contact of mind with a new fact 
 is a joy full of excitement, and promises an endless 
 delight. But ever the thing that is known sinks into 
 insignificance, save as a step of the endless stair on 
 which he la climbing — whither he knows not; the 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 61 
 
 unknown draws him ; the new fact touches his miud, 
 flames up in the contact, and drops dark, a mere fact, 
 on the heap helow. Even the grandeur of law as law, 
 so far from adding fresh consciousness to his life, 
 causes it no small suffering and loss. For at the 
 entrance of Science, nobly and gracefully as she bears 
 herself, young Poetry shrinks back startled, dismayed. 
 Poetry is true as Science, and Science is holy as Poetry ; 
 but young Poetry is timid and Science is fearless, and 
 bears with her a colder atmosphere than the other has 
 yet learned to brave. It is not that ^Fadam Science 
 shows any antagonism to Lady Poetry ; but the atmo- 
 sphere and plane on which alone they can meet as 
 friends who understand each other, is the mind and 
 heart of the sage, not of the boy. The youth gazes on 
 the face of Science, cold, clear, beautiful ; then, turn- 
 ing, looks for his friend — but, alas ! Poetry has fled. 
 With a great pang at the heart he rushes abroad to 
 find her, but descries only the rainbow glimmer of her 
 skirt on the far horizon. At night, in his dreams, she 
 returns, but never for a season may he look on her face 
 of loveliness. What, alas ! have evaporation, caloric, 
 atmosphere, refraction, the prism, and the second 
 planet of our system, to do with " sad Hesper o'er the 
 buried sun 1" From quantitative analysis how shall 
 he turn again to " the rime of the ancient mariner," 
 and " the moving moon " that " went up the sky, and 
 nowhere did abide " ? From his window he gazes across 
 the sands to the mightily troubled ocean: "What is 
 the storm to me any more ! " he cries ; "it is but the 
 clashing of countless water-drops 1" He finds relief in 
 B 2 
 
52 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 the discovery that, the moment you place man in the 
 midst of it, the clashing of water-drops hecomes a 
 storm, terrible to heart and brain : human thought 
 and feeling, hope, fear, love, sacrifice, make the 
 motions of nature alive with mystery and the 
 shadows of destiny. The relief, however, is but 
 partial, and may be but temporary ; for what if this 
 mingling of man and Nature in the mind of man be but 
 the casting of a coloured shadow over her cold indif- 
 ference? What if she means nothing — never was 
 meant to mean anything ! What if in truth " we 
 receive but what we give, and in our life alone doth 
 Nature live ! " What if the language of metaphysics 
 as well as of poetry be drawn, not from Nature at all, 
 but from human fancy concerning her ! 
 
 At length, from the unknown, whence himself he 
 came, appears an angel to deliver him from this horror 
 — this stony look — ah, God ! of soulless law. The 
 woman is on her way whose part it is to meet him with 
 a life other than his own, at once the complement of 
 his, and the visible presentment of that in it which is 
 beyond his owu understanding. The enchantment of 
 what we specially call love is upon him — a deceiving 
 glamour, say some, showing what is not, an opening of 
 the eyes, say others, revealing that of which a man had 
 not been aware : men will still be divided into those 
 who believe that the horses of fire and the chariots of fire 
 are ever present at their need of them, and those who 
 class the prophet and the drunkard in the same cate- 
 gory as the fools of their own fancies. But what this 
 love is, he who thinks he knows least understands. 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 63 
 
 Let foolish maidens and vulgar youths simper and jest 
 over it as they please, it is one of the most potent 
 mysteries of the living God. The man who can love 
 a woman and remain a lover of his wretched self, is fit 
 only to he cast out with the broken potsherds of the 
 city, as one in whom the very salt has lost its savour. 
 "With this love in his heart, a man puts on at least the 
 vision robes of the seer, if not the singing robes of the 
 poet. Be he the paltriest human animal that ever 
 breathed, for the time, and in his degree, he rises above 
 himself. His nature so far clarifies itself, that here and 
 there a truth of the great world will penetrate, sorely 
 dimmed, through the fog-laden, self-shadoAved atmo- 
 sphere of his microcosm. For the time, I repeat, he is 
 not a lover only, but something of a friend, with a 
 reflex touch of his own far-ofi" childhood. To the youth 
 of my history, in the light of his love — a light that 
 passes outward from the eyes of the lover — the world 
 grows alive again, yea radiant as an infinite face. He 
 sees the flowers as he saw them in boyhood, recovering 
 from an illness of all the winter, only they have a yet 
 deeper glow, a yet fresher delight, a yet more unspeak- 
 able soul. He becomes pitiful over them, and not 
 willingly breaks their stems, to hurt the life he more 
 than half believes they share with him. He cannot 
 think anything created only for him, any more than 
 only for itself. Nature is no longer a mere contention 
 of forces, whose heaven and whose hell in one is the 
 dull peace of an equilibrium ; but a struggle, through 
 splendour of colour, graciousness of form, and evasive 
 vitality of motion and sound, after an utterance hard to 
 
54 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 find, and never found but marred by the imperfection 
 of the small and weak that would embody and set forth 
 the great and mighty. The waving of the tree-tops is 
 the billowy movement of a hidden delight. The sun 
 lifts his head with intent to be glorious. No day lasts 
 too long, no night comes too soon : the twilight is 
 woven of shadowy arms that draw the loving to the 
 bosom of the Night. In the woman, the infinite after 
 which he thirsts is given him for his own. 
 
 Man's occupation with himself turns his eyes from 
 the great life beyond his threshold : when love awakes, 
 he forgets hiuiself for a time, and many a glimpse of 
 strange truth finds its way through his windows, 
 blocked no longer by the shadow of himself. He may 
 now catch even a glimpse of the possibilities of his 
 own being — may dimly perceive for a moment the 
 image after which he was made. But alas ! too soon, 
 self, radiant of darkness, awakes; every window be- 
 comes opaque with shadow, and the man is again a 
 prisoner. For it is not the highest word alone that the 
 cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the 
 lust of other things entering in, choke, and render 
 unfruitful. Waking from the divine vision, if that can 
 be called waking which is indeed dying into the 
 common day, the common man regards it straightway 
 as a foolish dream ; the wise man believes in it still, 
 holds fast by the memory of the vanished glory, and 
 looks to have it one day again a present portion of the 
 light of his life. He knows that, because of the imper- 
 fection and dulness and weakness of his nature, after 
 every vision follow the inclosing clouds, with the threat 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 65 
 
 of an ever during dark ; knows that, even if the vision 
 could tarry, it were not well, for the sake of that which 
 must yet be done with him, yet be made of him, that 
 it should tarry. But the youth whose history I am 
 following is not like the former, nor as yet like the 
 latter. 
 
 From whatever cause, then, whether of fault, of 
 natural law, or of supernal will, the flush that seemed 
 to promise the dawn of an eternal day, shrinks and 
 fades, though, with him, like the lagging skirt of the 
 sunset in the northern west, it does not vanish, but 
 travels on, a withered pilgrim, all the night, at the long 
 last to rise the aureole of the eternal Aurora. And now 
 new paths entice him— or old paths opening fresh 
 horizons. With stronger thews and keener nerves he 
 turns again to the visible around him. The change- 
 lessness amid change, the law amid seeming disorder, 
 the unity amid units, draws him again. He begins to 
 descry the indwelling poetry of science. The untiring 
 forces at work in measurable yet inconceivable spaces 
 of time and room, fill his soul with an awe that 
 threatens to uncreate him with a sense of littleness ; 
 while, on the other side, the grandeur of their opera- 
 tions fills him with such an informing glory, the mere 
 presence of the mighty facts, that he no more thinks of 
 himself, but in humility is great, and knows it not. 
 Rapt spectator, seer entranced under the magic wand of 
 Science, he beholds the billions of billions of miles of 
 incandescent vapour begin a slow, scarce perceptible 
 revolution, gradually grow swift, and gather an awful 
 speed. He sees the vapour, as it whirls, condensing 
 
66 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 through slow eternities to a plastic fluidity. He notes 
 ring after ring part from the circumference of the mass, 
 break, rush together into a globe, and the glowing ball 
 keep on through space with the speed of its parent 
 bulk. It cools and still cools and condenses, but still 
 fiercely glows. Presently — after tens of thousands of 
 years is the GieativQ presently — arises fierce contention 
 betwixt the glowing heart and its accompanying atmo- 
 sphere. The latter invades the former with antagonis- 
 tic element. He listens in his soul, and hears the rush 
 of ever descending torrent rains, with the continuous 
 roaring shock of their evanishment in vapour — to turn 
 again to water in the higher regions, and again rush to 
 the attack upon the citadel of fire. He beholds the 
 slow victory of the water at last, and the great globe, 
 now glooming in a cloak of darkness, covered with a 
 wildly boiling sea — not boiling by figure of speech, 
 under contending forces of wind and tide, but boiling 
 high as the hills to come, with veritable heat. He sees 
 the rise of the wrinkles we call hills and mountains, 
 and from their sides the avalanches of water to the 
 lower levels. He sees race after race of living things 
 appear, as the earth becomes, for each new and higher 
 kind, a passing home ; and he watches the succession 
 of terrible convulsions dividing kind from kind, until 
 at length the kind he calls his own arrives. Endless 
 are the visions of material grandeur unfathomable, 
 awaked in his soul by the bare facts of external 
 existence. 
 
 But soon comes a change. So far as he can see or 
 leam, all the motion, all the seeming dance, is but a 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 67 
 
 msli for death, a panic flight into the moveless silence. 
 The summer wind, the tropic tornado, the softest tide, 
 the fiercest storm, are alike the tumultuous conflict of 
 forces, rushing, and fighting as they rush, into the arms 
 of eternal negation. On and on they hurry — down and 
 down, to a cold stirless solidity, where wind blows not, 
 water flows not, where the seas are not merely tideless 
 and beat no shores, but frozen cleave with frozen roots 
 to their gulfy basin. All things are on the steep- 
 sloping path to final evanishment, uncreation, non- 
 existence. He is filled with horror — not so much of 
 the dreary end, as at the weary hopelessness of the 
 path thitherward. Then a dim light breaks upon him, 
 and with it a faint hope revives, for he seems to see in 
 all the forms of life, innumerably varied, a spirit 
 rushing upward from death — a something in escape 
 from the terror of the downward cataract, of the rest 
 that knows not peace. " Is it not," he asks, " the 
 soaring of the silver dove of life from its potsherd-bed 
 — the heavenward flight of some higher and incorrup- 
 tible thing ? Is not vitality, revealed in growth, itself 
 an unending resurrection ? " 
 
 The vision also of the oneness of the universe, ever 
 reappearing through the vapours of question, helps to 
 keep hope alive in him. To find, for instance, the law 
 of the relation of the arrangements of the leaves on dif- 
 fering plants, correspond to the law of the relative dis- 
 tances of the planets in approach to their central sun, 
 wakes in him that hope of a central Will, which alone 
 can justify one ecstatic throb at any seeming loveliness 
 of the universe. For without the hope of such a centre, 
 
5S INDIVIDTJAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 delight is unreason — a mockery not such as the skele- 
 ton at the Egyptian feast, hut such rather as a crowned 
 corpse at a feast of skeletons. Life without the higher 
 glory of the unspeakable, the atmosphere of a God, is 
 not life, is not worth living. He would rather cease to 
 be, than walk the dull level of the commonplace — than 
 live the unideal of men in whose company he can take 
 no pleasure — men who are as of a lower race, whom he 
 fain would lift, who will not rise, but for whom as for 
 himself he would cherish the hope they do their best 
 to kill. Those who seem to him great, recognize the 
 unseen — believe the roots of science to be therein hid — 
 regard the bringing forth into sight of the things that 
 are invisible as the end of all Art and every art— judge 
 the true leader of men to be him who leads them closer 
 to the essential facts of their being. Alas for his love 
 and his hope, alas for himself, if the visible should 
 exist for its own sake only ! — if the face of a flower 
 means nothing — appeals to no region beyond the scope 
 of the science that would unveil its growth. He can- 
 not believe that its structure exists for the sake of its 
 laws ; that would be to build for the sake of its joints 
 a scafi'old where no house was to stand. Those who 
 put their faith in Science are trying to live in the 
 scaffold of the house invisible. 
 
 He finds harbour and comfort at times in the written 
 poetry of his fellows. He delights in analyzing and 
 grasping the thought that informs the utterance. For 
 a moment, the fine figure, the delicate phrase, make 
 him jubilant and strong ; but the jubilation and the 
 strength soon pass, for it is not any of the /orm^ even 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 69 
 
 of the thought-forms of truth that can give rest to his 
 soul. 
 
 History attracts him little, for he is not able to dis- 
 cover by its records the operation of principles yielding 
 hope for his race. Such there may be, but he does not 
 find them. What hope for the rising wave that knows 
 in its rise only its doom to sink, and at length be 
 dashed on the low shore of annihilation ] 
 
 But the time would fail me to follow the doubling 
 of the soul coursed by the hounds of Death, or to 
 set down the forms innumerable in which the golden 
 Haemony springs in its path, 
 
 Of sovran use 
 'Grainst all enchantments, mildew blast, or damp. 
 
 And now the shadows are beginning to lengthen 
 towards the night, which, whether there be a following 
 morn or no, is the night, and spreads out the wings of 
 darkness. And still as it approaches the more aware 
 grows the man of a want that differs from any feeling 
 I have already sought to describe — a sense of insecurity, 
 in no wise the same as the doubt of life beyond the 
 grave — a need more profound even than that which 
 cries for a living Nature. And now he plainly knows, 
 that, all his life, like a conscious duty unfulfillod, this 
 sense has haunted his path, ever and anon descending 
 and clinging, a cold mist, about his heart. What if 
 this lack was indeed the root of every other anxiety ! 
 IS"ow freshly revived, this sense of not having, of some- 
 thing, he knows not what, for lack of which his being 
 is in pain at its own incompleteness, never leaves him 
 
60 IISTDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 more. And with it the terror has returned and grows, 
 lest there should be no Unseen Power, as his fathers 
 believed, and his mother taught him, filling all things 
 and meaning all things,— no Power with whom, in his 
 last extremity, awaits him a final refuge. With the 
 quickening doubt falls a tenfold blight on the world 
 of poetry, both that in INTature and that in books. Far 
 worse than that early chill which the assertions of 
 science concerning what it knows, cast upon his in- 
 experienced soul, is now the shivering death which its 
 pretended denials concerning what it knows not, send 
 through all his vital frame. The soul departs from the 
 face of beauty, when the eye begins to doubt if there 
 be any soul behind it ; and now the man feels like one 
 I knew, affected with a strange disease, who saw in the 
 living face always the face of a corpse. What can the 
 world be to him who lives for thought, if there be no 
 supreme and perfect Thought, —none but such poor 
 struggles after thought as he fia:ids in himself % Take 
 the eternal thought from the heart of things, no longer 
 can any beauty be real, no more can shape, motion, 
 aspect of nature have significance in itself, or sympathy 
 with human soul. At best and most the beauty he 
 thought he saw was but the projected perfection of his 
 own being, and from himself as the crown and summit 
 of things, the soul of the man shrinks with horror : it 
 is the more imperfect being who knows the least his 
 incompleteness, and for whom, seeing so little beyond 
 himself, it is easiest to imagine himself the heart and 
 apex of things, and rejoice in the fancy. The killing 
 power of a godless science leturns upou him with 
 
IXDIVIDl'AL DEYELOrMEXT. 61 
 
 tenfold force. The ocean-tempest is once more a mere 
 clashing of innumerable water-drops; the green and 
 amber sadness of the evening sky is a mockery of 
 sorrow ; his own soul and its sadness is a mockery of 
 himself " There is nothing in the sadness, nothing in 
 the mockery. To tell him as comfort, that in his own 
 thought lives the meaning if nowhere else, is mockery 
 worst of all ; for if there be no truth in them, if these 
 things be no embodiment, to make them serve as such 
 is to put a candle in a deatli's head to light the dying 
 through the place of tombs. To his former foolish 
 fancy a piimrose might preach a childlike trust ; the 
 untoiling lilies might from their field ca8t seeds of a 
 higher growth into his troubled heart ; now they are 
 no better than the colour the painter leaves behind liim 
 on the door[)Ost of his workshop, when, the day's 
 labour over, he wipes his brush on it ere he depart for 
 the night. The look in the eyes of his dog, hap[)y in 
 that he is short-lived, is one of infinite sadness. All 
 graciousness must henceforth be a sorrow : it has to go 
 with the sunsets. That a thing must cease takes from 
 it the joy of even an aionian endurance — for its kind 
 is mortal ; it belongs to the nature of things that 
 cannot live. The sorrow is not so much that it shall 
 perish as that it could not live — that it is not in its 
 nature a real, that is, an eternal thing. His children 
 are shadows— their life a dance, a sickness, a corruption. 
 The very element of unselfishness, which, however 
 feeble and beclouded it may be, yet exists in all love, 
 in giving life its only dignity adds to its sorrow. 
 Nowhere at the root of things is love — it is only a 
 
62 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 something that came after, some sort of fungous f ;c 
 crescence in the hearts of men grown helplessly 
 superior to their origin. Law, nothing but cold, im- 
 passive, material law, is the root of things — lifeless 
 happily, so not knowing itself, else were it a demon 
 instead of a creative nothing. Endeavour is paralyzed 
 in him. " Work for posterity," says he of the skyless 
 philosophy ; answers the man, " How can I work 
 without hope 1 Little heart have I to labour, where 
 labour is so little help. What can I do for my chil- 
 dren that would render their life less hopeless than 
 my own ! Give me all you would secure for them, 
 and my life would be to me but the worse mockery. 
 The true end of labour would be, to lessen the number 
 doomed to breathe the breath of this despair." 
 
 Straightway he developes another and a deeper mood. 
 He turns and regards himself. Suspicion or sudden 
 insight has directed the look. And there, in himself, 
 he discovers such imperfection, such wrong, such shame, 
 such weakness, as cause him to cry out, " It were well 
 I should cease ! Why should I mourn after life ? 
 Where were the good of prolonging it in a being like 
 mel * What should such fellows as I do crawling 
 between heaven and earth ! ' " Such insights, when 
 they come, the seers do their best, in general, to 
 obscure; suspicion of themselves they regard as a 
 monster, and would stifle. They resent the waking 
 of such doubt. Any attempt at the raising in them 
 of their buried best they regard as an offence against 
 intercourse. A man takes his social life in his hand 
 who dares it. Few therefore understand the judgment 
 
INDIVIDUAL ])I-:\ ri."PMT:XT 
 
 63 
 
 of Hamlet upon himself; the common reader is so 
 incapable of imagining he could mean it of his own 
 general character as a man, that he attributes tlie 
 utterance to shame for the postponement of a vengeance, 
 which indeed he must have been such as his critic to 
 be capable of performing upon no better proof than he 
 had yet had. When the man whose unfolding I would 
 now represent, regards even his dearest love, he finds 
 it such a poor, selfish, low-lived thing, that in his 
 heart he shames himself before his cliildren and his 
 friends. How little labour, how little watching, how 
 little pain has he endured for their sakes ! He reads 
 of great things in this kind, but in himself he does not 
 find them. How often has he not been wrongfully 
 displeased — wrathful with the innocent ! How often 
 has he not hurt a heart more tender than his own ! 
 Has he ever once been faithful to the height of his 
 ideal 1 Is his life on the whole a thing to regard with 
 complacency, or to be troubled exceedingly concerning 1 
 Beyond him rise and spread infinite seeming possi- 
 bilities — height beyou'l height, glory beyond glory, 
 each rooted in and rising from his conscious being, but 
 alas ! where is any hope of ascending them 1 These 
 hills of peace, " in a season of calm weather," seem to 
 surround and infold him, as a land in which he could 
 dwell at ease and at home : surely among them lies the 
 place of his birth ! — while against their purity and 
 grandeur the being of his consciousness shows miserable 
 * — dark, weak, and undefined — a shadow that would 
 fain be substance — a dream that would gladly be born 
 into the light of reality. But alas if the whole thing 
 
64 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 be only in himself — if the vision be a dream of 
 nothing, a revelation of lies, the outcome of that 
 which, helplessly existent, is yet not created, therefore 
 cannot create — if not the whole thing only be a dream 
 of the impotent, but the impotent be himself but a 
 dream — a dream of his own — a self-dreamed dream — 
 with no master of dreams to whom to cry ! Where 
 then the cherished hope of one day atoning for liis 
 wrongs to those who loved him ! — they are nowhere — 
 vanished for ever, upmingled and dissolved in the 
 primeval darkness ! If truth be but the hollow of a 
 sphere, ah, never shall he cast himself before them, to 
 tell them that now at last, after long years of revealing 
 separation, he knows himself and them, and that now 
 the love of them is a part of his very being — to implore 
 their forgiveness on the ground that he hates, despises, 
 contemns, and scorns the self that showed them less 
 than absolute love and devotion ! Never thus shall 
 he lay his being bare to their eyes of love ! They do 
 not even rest, for they do not and will not know it. 
 There is no voice nor hearing in them, and how can 
 there be in him any heart to live ! The one comfort 
 left him is, that, unable to follow them, he shall yet 
 die and cease, and fare as they — go also no whither ! 
 
 To a man under the dismay of existence dissociated 
 from power, unrooted in, unshadowed by a creating 
 Will, who is Love, the Father of Man — to him who 
 knows not being and God together, the idea of death — 
 a death that knows no reviving, must be, and ought to 
 be the blessedest thought left him. "0 land of 
 •hadows 1 ** well may such a one cry I " land where 
 
rNTHVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT, 66 
 
 the shadows love to ecstatic self-loss, yet forget, and 
 love no more ! land of sorrows and despairs, that sink 
 the soul into a deeper Tophet than death has ever 
 sounded ! broken kaleidoscope ! shaken camera ! pro- 
 miser, speaking truth to the ear, but lying to the 
 sense ! land where the heart of my friend is sorrowful 
 as my heart — the more sorrowful that I have been but 
 a poor and far-off friend ! land where sin is strong and 
 righteousness faint ! where love dreams mightily and 
 walks abroad so feeble ! land where the face of my 
 father is dust, and the hand of my mother will never 
 more caress! where my children will spend a few 
 years of like trouble to mine, and then drop from the 
 dream into the no- dream ! gladly, land of sickliest 
 shadows — gladly, that is, with what power of gladness 
 is in me, I take my leave of thee ! Welcome the cold, 
 pain-soothing embrace of immortal Death ! Hideous 
 are his looks, but I love him better than Life : he is 
 true, and will not deceive us. Nay, he only is our 
 saviour, setting us free from the tyranny of the false 
 that ought to be true, and sets us longing in vain." 
 
 But through all the man's doubts, fears, and per- 
 plexities, a certain whisper, say rather, an uncertain 
 rumour, a vague legendary murmur, has been at the 
 same time about, rather than in, his ears — never ceasing 
 to haunt his air, although hitherto he has hardly 
 heeded it. He knows it has come down the ages, 
 and that some in every age have been more or less 
 influenced by a varied acceptance of it. Upon those, 
 however, with whom he has chiefly associated, it has 
 made no impression beyond that of a remarkable 
 
 F 
 
60 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 legend. It is tlie story of a man, represented as at 
 least greater, stronger, and better than any other man. 
 With the hero of this tale he has had a constantly 
 recurring, though altogether undefined suspicion that 
 he has something to do. It is strongest, though not 
 even then strong, at such times when he is most aware 
 of evil and imperfection in himself. Betwixt the two, 
 tlie idea of this man and his knowledge of himself, 
 seems to lie, dim-shadowy, some imperative duty. He 
 knows that the whole matter concerning the man is 
 commemorated in many of the oldest institutions of 
 his country, but up to this time he Jjas shrunk from 
 the demands which, by a kind of spiritual insight, he 
 foresaw would follow, were he once to admit certain 
 things to be true. He has, however, known some and 
 read of more who by their faith in the man conquered 
 all anxiety, doubt, and fear, lived pure, and died in 
 gladsome hope. On the other hand, it seems to him 
 that the faith which was once easy has now become 
 almost an impossibility. And what is it he is called 
 upon to believe 'i One says one thing, another another. 
 Much that is asserted is simply unworthy of belief, and 
 the foundation of the whole has in his eyes something 
 of the look of a cunningly devised fable. Even should 
 it be true, it cannot help him, he thinks, for it does 
 not even touch the things that make his woe : the God 
 the tale presents is not the being whose very existence 
 can alone be his cure. 
 
 But he meets one who says to him, " Have you 
 then come to your time of life, and not yet ceased to 
 accept hearsay as ground of action — for there is action 
 
INDIVIDUxVL DKVELOrilEXT. 67 
 
 ir. abstaining as well as in doing ? Suppose the man in 
 question to have taken all possible pains to be under- 
 stood, does it follow of necessity that he is now or 
 ever was fairly represented by the bulk of his fol- 
 lowers ? With such a moral distance between him and 
 them J is it possible ? " 
 
 ** But the whole thing has from first to last a strange 
 aspect ! " our thinker replies. 
 
 "As to the Ictst that is not yet come. And as to its 
 aspect^ its reality must be such as human eye could 
 never convey to reading heart. Every human idea of 
 it must be more or less wrong. And yet perhaps the 
 truer the aspect the stranger it would be. But is it 
 not just with ordinary things you are dissatisfied ? 
 And should not therefore the very strangeness of these 
 to you little better than rumours incline you to examine 
 the object of them ? Will you assert that nothing 
 strange can have to do with human affairs % Much that 
 was once scarce credible is now so ordinary that men 
 have grown stupid to the wonder inherent in it. 
 Nothing around you serves your need : try what is at 
 least of another class of phenomena. What if the 
 things rumoured belong to a more natural order than 
 these, lie nearer the roots of your dissatisfied existence, 
 and look strange only because you have hitherto been 
 living in the outer court, not in the penetralia, of life ? 
 The rumour has been vital enough to float down the 
 ages, emerging from every storm: why not see for 
 yourself what may be in it ? So powerful an influence 
 on human history, surely there will be found in it 
 signs by which to determine whether the man under- 
 F 2 
 
68 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 stood himself and his message, or owed his apparent 
 greatness to the deluded worship of his followers! 
 That he has always had foolish followers none will 
 eiy^, aul none but a fool would judge any leader 
 from such a fact. "Wisdom as well as folly will serve 
 a fool's purpose ; he turns all into folly. I say nothing 
 now of my own conclusions, because what you imagine 
 my opinions are as hateful to me as to you disagreeable 
 and foolish." 
 
 So says the friend ; the man hears, takes up the old 
 story, and says to himself, " Let me see then what I 
 can see ! " 
 
 I will not follow him through the many shadows and 
 slow dawns by which at length he arrives at this much : 
 A man claiming to be the Son of God says he has 
 come to be the light of men ; says, " Come to me, and 
 I will give you rest ;" says, " Follow me, and you shall 
 find ' my Father ; to know him is the one thing you 
 cannot do without, for it is eternal life." He has 
 learned from the reported words of the man, and from 
 the man himself as in the tale presented, that the bliss 
 of his conscious being is his Father ; that his one 
 delight is to do the will of that Father — the only 
 thing in his eyes worthy of being done, or worth 
 having done ; that he would make men blessed with 
 his own blessedness ; that the cry of creation, the cry 
 of humanity shall be answered into the deepest soul of 
 desire ; that less than the divine mode of existence, 
 the godlike way of being, can satisfy no man, that is, 
 make him content with his consciousness ; that not this 
 world only, but the whole universe is the inheritance 
 
INDIVIDUAL develop:mext. 69 
 
 of those who consent to be the children of their Father 
 in heaven, who put forth the power of their will to be 
 of the same sort as he ; that to as many as receive him 
 he gives power to become the sons of God ; that they 
 shall be partakers of the divine nature, of the divine 
 joy, of the divine power — shall have whatever they 
 desire, shall know no fear, shall love perfectly, and 
 shall never die ; that these things are beyond the 
 grasp of the knowing ones of the world, and to them 
 the message will be a scorn ; but that the time will 
 o.ome when its truth shall be apparent, to some in con- 
 fusion of face, to others in joy unspeakable ; only that 
 we must beware of judging, for many that are first shall 
 be last, and there are last that shall be first. 
 
 To find himself in such conscious as well as vital 
 relation with the source of his being, with a Will by 
 which his own will exists, with a Consciousness by and 
 through which he is conscious, would indeed be the 
 end of all the man's ills ! nor can he imagine any 
 other, not to say better way, in which his sorrows could 
 be met, understood and annihilated. For the ills that 
 oppress him are both within him and without, and ovei 
 each kind he is powerless. If the message were but a 
 true one ! If indeed this man knew what he talked of ! 
 But if there should be help for man from anywhere 
 beyond him, some one might know it first, and may 
 not this be the one ? And if the message be so great 
 so perfect as this man asserts, then only a perfect, an 
 eternal man, at home in the bosom of the Father, could 
 know, or bring, or tell it. According to the tale, it 
 had been from the first the intent of the Father to 
 
70 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 reveal himself to man as man, for without the know- 
 ledge of the Father after man's own modes of being, he 
 could not grow to real manhood. The grander the 
 whole idea, the more likely is it to be what it claims 
 to be ! and if not high as the heavens above the earth, 
 beyond us yet within our reach, it is not for us, it 
 cannot be true. Fact or not, the existence of a God 
 such as Christ, a God who is a good man infinitely, is 
 the only idea containing hope enough for man ! It 
 such a God has come to ba known, marvel must sur- 
 round the first news at least of the revelation of 
 him. Because of its marvel, shall men find it in reason 
 to turn from the gracious rumour of what, if it be true, 
 must be the event of all events 1 And could marvel 
 be lovelier than the marvel reported 1 But the humble 
 men of heart alone can believe in the high — they alone 
 can perceive, they alone can embrace grandeur. Hu- 
 mility is essential greatness, the inside of grandeur. 
 
 Something of such truths the man glimmeringly sees. 
 But in his mind awake, thereupon, endless doubts aiid 
 questions. What if the whole idea of his mission was 
 a deception bom of the very goodness of the man ? 
 What if the whole matter was the invention of men 
 pretending themselves the followers of such a man 1 
 What if it was a little truth greatly exaggerated 1 Only, 
 be it what it may, less than its full idea would not be 
 enough for the wants and sorrows that weaken and 
 weigh him down ! 
 
 He passes through many a thorny thicket of inquiry ; 
 gathers evidence upon evidence; reasons upon the 
 goodness of the men who wrote : they might be 
 
IXDIVIDUAL DEVELOrMENT. 71 
 
 deceived, but they dared not invent ; holds with him- 
 self a thousand arguments, historical, psychical, meta- 
 physical — ^whicli for their setting-forth would require 
 volumes; hears many an opposing, many a scoffing 
 word from men " who surely know, else would they 
 speak?" and finds himself much where he was before. 
 But at least he is haunting the possible borders of dis- 
 covery, while those who turn their backs upon the idea 
 are divided from him by a great gulf — it may be of 
 moral difference. To him there is still a grand auroral 
 hope about the idea, and it still draws him ; the others, 
 taking the thing from merest report of opinion, look 
 anywhere but thitherward. He who would not trust 
 his best friend to set forth his views of life, accepts the 
 random judgements of unknown others for a sufficing 
 disposal of what the highest of the race have regarded 
 as a veritable revelation from the Father of men. He 
 sees in it therefore nothing but folly ; for what he takes 
 for the thing nowhere meets his nature. Our searcher 
 at least holds open the door for the hearing of what 
 voice may come to him from the region invisible : if 
 there be truth there, he is wdiere it will find him. 
 
 As he continues to read and reflect, the perception 
 gradually grows clear in him, that, if there be truth in 
 the matter, he must, first of all, and beyond all things 
 else, give his best heed to the reported words of the 
 man himself — to what he says, not what is said about 
 him, valuable as that may afterwards prove to be. And 
 he finds that concerning these words of his, the man 
 says, or at least plainly implies, that only the obedient, 
 childlike soul can understand them. It follows that the 
 
 
72 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 judgement of no man who does not obey can be received 
 concerning them or the speaker of them— that, for 
 instance, a man who hates his enemy, who tells lies, who 
 thinks to serve God and Mammon, whether he call 
 himself a Christian or no, has not the right of an 
 opinion concerning the Master or his words — at least 
 in the eyes of the Master, however it may be in his 
 own. This is in the very nature of things : obedience 
 alone places a man in the position in which he can see 
 so as to judge that which is above him. In respect of 
 great truths investigation goes for little, speculation for 
 nothing ; if a man would know them, he must obey 
 ^them. Their nature is such that the only door into 
 them is obedience. And the truth-seeker perceives — 
 which allows him no loophole of escape from life — that 
 what things the Son of Man requires of him, are either 
 such as his conscience backs for just, or such as seem 
 too great, too high for any man. But if there be help 
 for him, it must be a help that recognizes the highest 
 in him, and urges him to its use. Help cannot come 
 to one made in the image of God, save in the obedient 
 effort of what life and power are in him, for God is 
 action. In such effort alone is it possible for need to 
 encounter help. It is the upstretched that meets the 
 downstretched hand. He alone who obeys can with 
 confidence pray — to him alone does an answer seem a 
 rhing that may come. And should anything spoken 
 by the Son of Man seem to the seeker unreasonable, he 
 feels in the rest such a majesty of duty as compels 
 him to judge with regard to the other, that he has not 
 yet perceived its true nature, or its true relation to 
 life. 
 
DTDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 73 
 
 And now comes the crisis : if here the man sets him- 
 self honestly to do the thing the Son of Man tells him, 
 he so, and so first, sets out positively upon the path 
 which, if there be truth in these things, will conduct 
 bim to a knowledge of the whole matter ; not until 
 then is he a disciple. If the message be a true one, 
 the condition of the knowledge of its truth is not only 
 reasonable but an unavoidable necessity. If there be 
 help for him, how otherways should it draw nigh 1 He 
 has to be assured of the highest truth of his being : 
 there can be no other assurance than that to be gained 
 thus, and thus alone ; for not only by obedience does 
 a man come into such contact with truth as to know 
 what it is, and in regard to truth knowledge and belief 
 are one. That things which cannot appear save to the 
 eye capable of seeing them, that things which cannot 
 be recognized save by the mind of a certain develop- 
 ment, should be examined by eye incapable, and pro- 
 nounced upon by mind undeveloped, is absurd. The 
 deliverance the message offers is a change such that the 
 man shall he the rightness of which he talked : while 
 his soul is not a hungered, athirst, aglow, a groaning 
 after righteousness — that is, longing to be himself 
 honest and upright, it is an absurdity that he should 
 judge concerning the way to this rightness, seeing that, 
 while he walks not in it, he is and shall be a dishonest 
 man : he knows not whither it leads and how can he 
 know the way ! What he can judge of is, his duty at 
 a given moment — and that not in the abstract, but as 
 something to be by him done, neither more, nor less, 
 nor other than done. Thus judging and doing, he 
 
74 INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 makes the only possible step nearer to righteousness 
 and righteous judgement ; doing otherwise, he becomes 
 the more unrighteous, the more blind. For the man 
 who knows not God, whether he believes there is a 
 God or not, there can be, I repeat, no judgement of 
 things pertaining to God. To our supposed searcher, 
 then, the crowning word of the Son of Man is this, 
 " If any man is willing to do the will of the Father, he 
 shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or 
 whether I speak of myself." 
 
 Having thus accompanied my type to the borders of 
 liberty, my task for the present is over. The rest let 
 him who reads prove for himself. Obedience alone can 
 convince. To convince without obedience I would take 
 no bootless labour ; it would be but a gain for hell. If 
 any man call these things foolishness, his judgement is 
 to me insignificant. If any man say he is open to con- 
 viction, I answer him he can have none but on the 
 condition, by the means of obc ( idudf a man say, 
 ** The thing is not interesting to me," I ask him, " Are 
 you following your conscience 1 By that, and not by 
 the interest you take or do not take in a thing, shall 
 you be judged. Nor will anything be said to you, or 
 of you, in that day, whatever that day mean, of which 
 your conscience will not echo every syllable." 
 
 Oneness with God is the sole truth of humanity. 
 Life parted from its causative life would be no life ; it 
 would at best be but a barrack of corruption, an out- 
 post of annihilation. In proportion as the union is 
 incomplete, the derived life is imperfect. And no 
 man can be one with neighbour, child, dearest, except 
 
INDIVIDUAL DEVEI.OP.MEXT. 75 
 
 as he is one with his origin ; and he fai]R of liis perfec- 
 tion so long as there is one being in the universe he 
 could not love. 
 
 Of all men he is bound to hold his face like a flint 
 in witness of this truth who owes everything that ^ 
 makes for eternal good, to the belief that at the heart 
 of things and causing them to be, at tlie centre of 
 monad, of world, of protoplastic mass, of loving dog, 
 and of man most cruel, is an absolute, perfect love ; 
 and that in the man Christ Jesus this love is with 
 us men to take us home. To nothing else do I for one 
 owe any grasp upon life. In this I see the setting 
 right of all things. To the man who believes in the 
 Son of God, poetry returns in a mighty wave ; liistory 
 imrolls itself in harmony ; science shows crowned with 
 its own aureole of holiness. There is no enlivener of 
 the imagination, no enabler of the judf,'ment, no 
 strengthener of the intellect, to compare with the belief 
 in a live Ideal, at the heart of all personality, as of 
 every law. If there be no such live Ideal, then a 
 falsehood can do more for the race than the facts of its 
 being; then an unreality is needful for the develop- 
 ment of the man in aU that is real, in all that is in the 
 highest sense true ; then falsehood is greater than fact, 
 and an idol necessary for lack of a God. They who 
 deny cannot, in the nature of things, know what they 
 deny. When one sees a chaos begin to put on the 
 shape of an ordered world, he will hardly be persuaded 
 it is b|r the power of a foolish notion bred in a diseased 
 fancy. 
 
 Let the man then who would rise to the height of 
 
76 INDIVIDUAL DEVKLOl'xMENT. 
 
 his being, be persuaded to test the Truth by the deed 
 — the highest and only test that can be applied to the 
 loftiest of all assertions. To every man I say, " Do 
 the truth you know, and you shall learn the truth you 
 need to know,'' 
 
ST. GEORGE'S DAY, 1564. 
 
 LL England knows that this year (1864) is 
 the three hundredth since Shakspere was 
 born. The strong probability is likewise 
 that this month of April is that in which 
 he first saw the earthly light. On the twenty-sixth of 
 April he was baptized. Whether he was born on the 
 twenty-third, to which effect there may once have been 
 a tradition, we do not know ; but though there is 
 nothing to corroborate that statement, there are two 
 facts which would incline us to believe it if we could : 
 the one that he died on the twenty- third of April, thus, 
 as it were, completing a cycle ; and the other that the 
 twen y-third of April is St. George's Day. If there is 
 no harm in indulging in a little fanciful sentiment 
 about such a grand fact, we should say that certainly 
 it was St. George for merry England when Shakspere 
 was born. But had St. George been the best saint in 
 the calendar — which we have little enough ground for 
 supposing he was — it would better suit our subject to 
 say that the Highest was thinking of his England 
 when he sent Shakspere into it, to be a strength, a 
 wonder, and a gladness to the nations of his earth. 
 
 > 1864 
 
78 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 But if we write thus about Shakspere, influenced 
 only by the fashion of the day, we shall be much in 
 the condition of those fashionahle architects who with 
 their vain praises built the tombs of the prophets, 
 while they had no regard to the lessons they taught. 
 We hope to be able to show that we have good grounds 
 for our rejoicing in the birth of that child whom after- 
 years placed highest on the rocky steep of Art, up 
 which so many of those who combine feeling and 
 thought are always striving. 
 
 First, however, let us look at some of the more 
 powerful of the influences into the midst of which he 
 was born. For a child is born into the womb of the 
 time, which indeed enclosed and fed him before he 
 was born. Not the least subtle and potei-^ of those 
 influences which tend to the education of the child (in 
 the true sense of the word education) are those which 
 are brought to bear upon him through the mind, heart, 
 judgement of his parents. We mean that those powers 
 which have operated strongly upon them, have a 
 certain concentrated operation, both antenatal and 
 psychological, as well as educational and spiritual, upon 
 the child. Now Shakspere was born in the sixth 
 year of Queen Elizabeth. He was the eldest son, but 
 the third child. His father and mother must have 
 been martied not later than the year 1557, two years 
 after Cranmer was burned at the stake, one of the two 
 hundred who thus perished in that time of pain, re- 
 sulting in the firm establishment of a reformation 
 which, like all oth'^r changes for the better, could not 
 be yerifled and secured without some fonu or other of 
 
SHAKSPERE. 79 
 
 the trial hij fire. Events such as then took place in 
 every part of the country could not fail to make a 
 strong impression upon all thinking people, especially 
 as' it was not those of high position only who were 
 thus called upon to bear witness to their beliefs. John 
 Shakspero and Mary Arden were in all likelihood 
 themselves of the Protestant party ; and nlthough, as 
 far as we know, they were never in any especial danger 
 of being denounced, the whole of the circumstances 
 must have tended to produce in them individually, 
 what seems to have been characteristic of the age in 
 which they lived, earnestness. Tn times such as those, 
 people are compelled to think. 
 
 And here an interesting question occurs : Was it in 
 part to his mother that Shakspere Avas indebted for 
 that profound knowledge of the Bible which is so 
 evident in his writings ? A good many copies of the 
 Scriptures must have been by this time, in one trans- 
 lation or another, scattered over the country.* No 
 doubt the word was precious in those days, and hard 
 to buy ; but there might have been a copy, not- 
 withstanding, in the house of John Shakspere, and 
 it is possible that it was from his mother's lips that 
 the boy first heard the Scripture tales. We have 
 called his acquaintance with Scripture profound^ and 
 one peculiar way in which it manifests itself will bear 
 out the assertion ; for frequently it is the very spirit 
 and essential aroma of the passage that he reproduces, 
 
 * And it seems to us probable that this diflFdsion of the 
 Bible, did more to rouse the slumbering literary power of 
 England, than any influences of foreign literature whatevw. 
 
80 SIIAKSPERE. 
 
 without making any use of the words themselves. 
 There are passages in his writings which we could not 
 have understood but for some acquaintance with the 
 New Testament. We will produce a few specimens of 
 the kind we mean, confining ourselves to one play, 
 « Macbeth." 
 
 Just mentioning the phrase, " temple -haunting mart- 
 let " (act i. scene 6), as including in it a reference to 
 the verse, " Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and 
 the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her 
 young, even thine altars, Lord of hosts," we pass to 
 the following passage, for which we do not believe 
 there is any explanation but that suggested to us by 
 the passage of Scripture to be cited. 
 
 Macbeth, on his way to murder Duncan, says, — 
 
 **Thou sure and firm -set earth, 
 Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear 
 Thy very stones prate of my whereabout. 
 And take the present horror from the time 
 Which now suits with it." 
 
 What is meant by the last two lines 1 It seems to us 
 to be just another form of the words, "For there is 
 nothing covered, that shall not be revealed ; neither hid, 
 that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have 
 spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light ; and 
 that which ye havo spoken in the ear in closets shall 
 be proclaimed upon the house-tops." Of course we do 
 not mean that Macbeth is represented as having this 
 passage in his mind, but that Shakspere had the 
 feeling of it when he wrote thus. What Macbeth 
 ii^ " Earth, do not hear me in the dark, which 
 
811 \K<ri:R7^. 81 
 
 is 8mta"ble to the present horror, lest the very stones 
 prate about it in the daylight, which is not suitable to 
 such things ; thus taking * the present horror from the 
 time which now suits with it.' " 
 
 Again, in the only piece of humour in the play — if 
 that should be called humour which, taken in its relation 
 to the consciousness of the principal characters, is as 
 terrible as anything in the piece — the porter ends off 
 his fantastic soliloquy, in which he personates the 
 porter of hell-gate, with the words, " But this place is 
 too cold for hell : I'll devil-porter it no further. I had 
 thought to have let in some of all professions, that go 
 the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." Now 
 what else had the writer in his mind but the verse 
 from the Sermon on the Mount, " For wide is the gate, 
 and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and 
 many there be which go in thereat " ? 
 
 It may be objected that such passages as these, 
 being of the most commonly quoted, imply no profound 
 acquaintance with Scripture, such as we have said 
 Shakspere possessed. But no amount of knowledge 
 of the loords of the Bible would be sufficient to justify 
 the use of the word ^ro/oww^. What is remarkable in 
 the employment of these passages, is not merely that 
 they are so present to his mind that they come up for 
 use in the most exciting moments of composition, but 
 that he embodies the spirit of them in such a new form 
 as reveals to minds saturated and deadened with the 
 sound of the words, the very visual image and spiritual 
 meaning involved in them. " The primrose way / " 
 And to what 1 
 
82 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 • 
 
 We will confine ourselves to one passage more : — 
 
 " Macbeth 
 Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above 
 Put on their instruments.** 
 
 In the end of the 14th chapter of the Eevelation we 
 have the words, " Thrust in thy sickle, and reap : for 
 tlie time is come for thee to reap ; for the harvest of 
 the earth is ripe." We suspect that Shakspere wrote, 
 ripe to shaking. 
 
 The instances to which we have confined ourselves 
 do not by any means belong to tie most evident kind 
 of proof that might be adduced of Shakspere's ac- 
 quaintance with Scripture. The subject, in its ordinary 
 aspect, has been elsewhere treated with far more fulness 
 than our design would permit us to indulge in, even if 
 it had not been done already. Our object has been to 
 bring forward a few passages which seem to us to breathe 
 the very spirit of individual passages in sacred writ, 
 without direct use of the words themselves ; and, of 
 course, in such a case we can only appeal to the (no 
 doubt) very various degrees of conviction which they 
 may rouse in the minds of our readers. 
 
 But there is one singular correspondence in another 
 almost literal quotation from the Gospel, which is to 
 us wonderfully interesting. We are told that the words 
 *' eye of a needle," in the passage about a rich man 
 entering the kingdom of heaven, mean the small side 
 entrance in a city gate. Now, in " Richard IL," act v. 
 scene 6, Richard quotes the passage thus :— 
 
 '< It is as hard to oome as for a oamel 
 To thread the postern of a needle's ejBff* 
 
SHAKSPEKE. 83 
 
 ehowing that either the imagination of Shakspere 
 suggested the real explanation, or he had taken pains 
 to acquaint himself with the significance of the simile. 
 "We can hardly say that the correspondence might be 
 merely fortuitous ; because, at the least, Shakspere 
 looked for and found a suitable figure to associate with 
 the words eye of a needle, and so fell upon the real 
 explanation ; except, indeed, he had no particular sig- 
 nificance in using the word that meant a little gate, 
 instead of a word meaning any kind of entrance, which, 
 with him, seems unlikely. 
 
 We have not by any means proven that Shak- 
 spere's acquaintance with the Scriptures liad an early 
 date in his history ; but certainly the Bible inust have 
 had a great influence upon liim who was the higliest 
 representative mind of the time, its influence on tlie 
 general development of the nation being unquestion;i])l(\ 
 This, therefore, seeing the Bible itself was just dawning 
 full upon the country while Shakspere was becoming 
 capable of understanding it, seems the suitable sequence 
 in which to take notice of that influence, and of some 
 of those passages in his works which testify to it. 
 
 But, besides the Bible, every nation has a Bible, or 
 at least an Old Testament, in its own history ; and 
 that Shakspere paid especial attention to this, is no 
 matter of conjecture. We suspect his mode of writing 
 historical plays is more after the fashion of the Bible 
 histories than that of most writers of history. Indeed, 
 the development and consequences of character and 
 conduct are clear to those that read his histories with 
 open eyes. Now, in his childhood Shakspere may 
 o 2 
 
84 SHAKSPEBB. 
 
 have had some special incentive to the study of history 
 
 springing out of the fact that his mother's grandfather 
 had been *' groom of the chamber to Henry VII.," while 
 there is sufficient testimony that a further removed 
 ancestor of his father, as well, had stood high in the 
 favour of the same monarch. Therefore the history of 
 the troublous times of the preceding century, which 
 were brought to a close by the usurpation of Henry VII., 
 would naturally be a subject of talk in the quiet 
 household, where books and amusements such as now 
 occupy our boys, were scarce or wanting altogether. 
 The proximity of such a past of strife and commotion, 
 crowded with eventful change, must have formed a 
 background full of the material of excitement to an 
 age which lived in the midst of a peculiarly exciting 
 history of its own. 
 
 Perhaps the chief intellectual characteristic of the 
 age of Elizabeth was activity ; this activity accounting 
 even for much that is objectionable in its literature. 
 IS^ow this activity must have been growing in the 
 people throughout the fifteenth century ; the wars of 
 >;ie Roses, although they stifled literature, so that it 
 had, as it were, to be born again in the beginning of 
 the following century, being, after aU, but as the 
 " eager strife " of the shadow-leaves above the " genuine 
 life " of the grass, — 
 
 " And the mute repose 
 Of sweetly breathing flowers." 
 
 But when peace had fallen on the land, it would seem 
 as if the impulse to action springing &om strife still 
 
SHAKSPERE. 
 
 85 
 
 operated, as tlie waves will Jo on raving upon the 
 shore after the wind has ceased, and found one outlet, 
 amongst others, in literature, and peculiarly in dramatic 
 literature. Peace, rendered yet more intense by the 
 cessation of the cries of the tormentors, and the groans 
 of the noble army of suffering martyrs, made, as it were^i 
 a kind of vacuum ; and into that vacuum burst up the 
 torrent-springs of a thousand souls —the thoughts that 
 were no longer repressed — in the history of the past 
 and the Utopian speculation on the future ; in noble 
 theology, capable statesmanship, and science at once 
 brilliant and profound ; in the voyage of discovery, and 
 the change of the swan-like merchantman into a very 
 fire- drake of war for the defence of the threatened 
 shores ; in the first brave speech of the Puritan in 
 Elizabeth's Parliament, the first murmurs of the voice 
 of liberty, soon to thunder throughout the land j in the 
 naturalizing of foreign genius by translation, and the in- 
 vention, or at least adoptioi^, of a new and transcendent 
 rhythm ; in the song, in the epic, in the drama. 
 
 So much for the general. Let us now, following 
 the course of his life, recall, in a few sentences, some 
 of the chief events which must have impressed the all- 
 open mind of Shakspere in the earlier portion of his 
 history. 
 
 Perhaps it would not be going back too far to begin 
 with the Massacre of Paris, which took place when he 
 was eight years old. It caused so much horror in 
 England, that it is not absurd to suppose that some 
 black rays from the deed of darkness may have fallen 
 on the mind of such a child as Shakspere. 
 
86 SIIAKSPERE. 
 
 In strong contrast with the foregoing is the next 
 event to which we shall refer. 
 
 When he was eleven years old, Leicester gave the 
 Queen that magnificent reception at Kenilworth which 
 is so well known from its memorials in our literature. 
 It has been suggested as probable, with quite enough 
 of likelihood to justify a conjecture, that Shakspere 
 may have been present at the dramatic representations 
 then so gorgeously accumulated before her Majesty. 
 If such was the fact, it is easy to imagine what an 
 influence the shows must have had on the mind of the 
 young dramatic genius, at a time when, happily, the 
 critical faculty is not by any means so fully awake as 
 are the receptive and exultant faculties, and when what 
 the nature chiefly needs is excitement to growth, with- 
 out which all pruning, the most artistic, is useless, as 
 having nothing to operate upon. 
 
 When he was fifteen years old, Sir Thomas North's 
 translation of Plutarch (through the French) was first 
 published. Any reader who has compared one of 
 Shakspere's Roman pla^^s with the corresponding life 
 in Plutarch, will not be surprised 'that we should 
 mention this as one of those events which must have 
 been of paramount influence upon Shakspere. It is 
 not likely that he became acquainted with the large 
 folio with its medallion portraits first placed singly, 
 and then repeated side by side for comparison, as soon 
 as it made its appearance , but as we cannot tell when 
 he began to read it, it seems as well to place it in the 
 order its publication would assign to it. Besides, it 
 evidently took such a hold of the man, that it is m38t 
 
SHAKSPEKi:. 87 
 
 probable his acquaintance with it began at a very early 
 period of his history. Indeed, it seems to us to have 
 been one of the most powerful aids to the development 
 of that perception and discrimination of character with 
 which he was gifted to such a remarkable degree. Nor 
 would it be any derogation from the originality of his 
 genius to say, that in a very pregnant sense he must 
 have been a disciple of Plutarch. In those plays 
 founded on Plutarch's stories he picked out every 
 dramatic point, and occasionally employed the very 
 phrases of North's nervous, graphic, and characteristic 
 English. He seems to have felt that it was an honour 
 to his work to embody in it the words of Plutarch 
 himself, as he knew them first. From him he seems 
 especially to have learned how to bring out the points 
 of a character, by putting one man over against another, 
 and remarking wherein they resembled each other and 
 wherein they differed; after which fashion, in other 
 plays as well as those, he partly arranged his dramatic 
 characters. 
 
 Not long after he went to London, when he was 
 twenty-two, the death of Sir Philip Sidney at the age 
 of thirty-two, must have had its unavoidable influence 
 on him, seeing all Europe was in mourning for the 
 death of its model, almost ideal man. In England the 
 general mourning, both in the court and the city, which 
 lasted for months, is supposed by Dr. Zouch to have 
 been the first instance of the kind ; that is, for the 
 :leath of a private person. Eenowned over the civilized 
 world for everything for which a man could be 
 renowned, his literary fame must have had a consider- 
 
88 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 able share in the impression his death would make on 
 such a man as Shakspere. For although none of his 
 works were published till after his death, the first 
 within a few months of that event, his fame as a writer 
 was widely spread in private, and report of the same 
 could hardly fail to reach one who, although he had 
 probably no friends of rank as yet, kept such keen 
 open ears for all that was going on around him. But 
 whether or not he had heard of the literary greatness 
 of Sir Philip before his death, the '' Arcadia," which 
 was first published four years after his death (1590), 
 and which in eight years had reached the third edition 
 — with another still in Scotland the following year — 
 must have been full of interest to Shakspere. This 
 book is very different indeed from the ordinary impres- 
 sion of it. which most minds have received through the 
 confident incapacity of the critics of last century. Few 
 books have been published more fruitful in the results 
 and causes of thought, more sparkling with fancy, 
 more evidently the outcome of rich and noble habit, 
 than this " Arcadia " of Philip Sidney. That Shak- 
 spere read it, is sufficiently evident from the fact that 
 from it he has taken the secondary but still important 
 plots in two of his plays. 
 
 Although we are anticipating, it is better to mention 
 hexe another book, published in the same year, namely, 
 1590, when Shakspere was six-and-twenty : the first 
 three books of Spenser's " Faery Queen." Of its recep- 
 tion and character it is needless here to say anything 
 further than, of the latter, that nowadays the depths of 
 its teaching, heartily prized as that was by no less a 
 
SHAKSFi:iiE. 89 
 
 man than Milton, are seldom explored. But it would 
 be a labour of months to set out the known and 
 imagined sources of the knowledge and spiritual pabu- 
 lum of the man who laid every mental region so under 
 contriMition, that he has been claimed by almost every 
 profession as having been at one time or another a 
 student of its peculiar science, so marvellously in him 
 was the power of assimilation combined with that of 
 reproduction. 
 
 To go back a little : in 1587, when he was three- 
 and-twenty, Mary Queen of Scots was executed. In 
 the following year came that mighty victory of England, 
 and her allies the winds and the waters, over the tower- 
 ing pride of the Spanish Armada Out from the 
 coasts, like the birds from their cliffs to defend their 
 young, flew the little navy, many of the vessels only 
 able to carry a few guns ; and fighting, fire-ships, and 
 tempest left this island,— 
 
 " This precious stone set in the silver sea," 
 
 still a " blessed plot," with an accumulated obligation 
 to liberty which can only be paid by helping others to 
 be free ; and when she utterly forgets which, her doom 
 is sealed, as surely as that of the old empires which 
 passed away in their self-indulgence and wickedness. 
 
 When Shakspere was about thirty-two, Sir Walter 
 Raleigh published his glowing account of Guiana, 
 which instantly provided the English mind with an 
 earthly paradise or fairy-land. Raleigh himself seems 
 to have been too full of his own reports for us to be 
 able to suppose that he either invented or disbelief ed 
 
90 
 
 SHAKSPEKE. 
 
 th^nj especially when he represents the heavenly 
 country to which, in expectation of his execution, he 
 is looking forward, after the fashion of those regions of 
 the wonderful West : — 
 
 •* Then the blessed Paths wee'l travel, 
 Strow'd with Rubies thick as gravel ; 
 Sealings of Diamonds, Saphire floors, 
 High walls of Coral, and Pearly Bowers." 
 
 Such were some of the influences which widened the 
 region of thought, and excited the productive power, 
 in the minds of the time. After this period there were 
 fewer of such in Shakspere's life ; and if there had 
 been more of them they woidd liave been of less im- 
 port as to their operation on a mind more fully formed 
 and more capable of choosing its own influences Let 
 us now give a backward glance at the history of the art 
 which Shakspere chose as the means of easing his own 
 mind of that wealth which, like the gold and the silver, 
 has a moth and rust of its own, except it be kept in use 
 by being sent out for the good of our neighbours. 
 
 It was a mighty gain for the language and the people 
 when, in the middle of the fourteenth century, by per- 
 mission of the Pope, the miracle plays, most probably 
 hitherto represented in Norman-French, as Mr. Collier 
 supposes, began to be represented in English. Most 
 likely there had been dramatic representations of a sort 
 from the very earliest period of the nation's history ; 
 for, to begin with the lowest form, at what time would 
 there not, for the delight of listeuers, have been the 
 imitation of animal sounds, such as the drama of the 
 
SHAKSPEBB. 91 
 
 conversation between an attacking poodle and a fiercely 
 repellent puss? Through innumerable gradations of 
 childhood would the art grow before it attained the first 
 formal embodiment in such plays as those, so-called, of 
 miracles, consisting just of Scripture stories, both 
 canonical and apocryphal, dramatized after the rudest 
 fashion. Eegarded from the height which the art had 
 reached two hundred and fifty years after, "how 
 dwarfed a growth of cold and night " do these miracle- 
 plays show themselves ! But at a time when there was 
 no printing, little preaching, and Latin })ia}ers, we 
 cannot help thinking that, grotesque and ill-imagined 
 as they are, they must have been of uuspeakable value 
 for the instruction of a people whose spiritual digestion 
 was not of a sort to be injured by the presence of a 
 quite abnormal quantity of husk and saw-du.st in their 
 food. And occasionally we find verses of true poetic 
 feeling, such as the following, in " The Fall of Man :" — 
 
 Deus, Adam, that with myn handys I made. 
 
 Where art thou now ? What hast thou wrought ? 
 
 Adam. A! lord, for synne oure floures do ffade, 
 I here thi voys, but I se the nought ; 
 
 implying that the separation between God and man, 
 although it had destroyed the beatific vision, was not 
 yet so complete as to make the creature deaf to the 
 voice of his Maker. Nov are tlie words of Eve, with 
 which she begs her husband, in her shame and remorse, 
 to strangle her, odd and quaint as they are, without an 
 utmost overpowering pathos ; — 
 
 "Now stomble we on stalk and ston| 
 My wy t awey is fro mo gon : 
 
92 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 , Wrythe on to my neoke bon 
 
 With hardnesse of thin honde," 
 
 To this Adam commences his reply with the verses, — 
 
 ** Wyff, thi -wytt is not wurthe a rosohe. 
 Leve woman, turn thi thought." * 
 
 And this portion of the general representation ends 
 with these verses, spoken by Eve : — 
 
 "Alas ! that ever we wrought this synne, 
 Oure bodely sustenauns for to wynne, 
 Ye must delve and I xal spynne, 
 In care to ledyn oure lyff." 
 
 In connexion with these plays, one of the contempla- 
 tions most interesting to us is, the contrast between 
 them and the places in which they were occasionally 
 represented. For though the scaffolds on which they 
 were shown were usually erected in market-places or 
 churchyards, sometimes they rose in the great churches, 
 and the plays were represented with the aid of eccle- 
 siastics. Here, then, we have the rude beginnings of 
 the dramatic art, in which the devil is the unfortunate 
 buffoon, giving occasion to the most exuberant laughter 
 of the people — here is this rude boyhood, if we may so 
 say, of the one art, roofed in with the perfection of 
 another, of architecture ; a perfection which now we 
 can only imitate at our best : below, the clumsy con 
 trivance and the vulgar jest; above, the solemn heaven 
 of uplifted arches, their mysterious glooms ringing with 
 the delight of the multitude : the play of children 
 enclosed in the heart of prayer aspiring in stone. But 
 
8HAKSPESB. 98 
 
 it was not by any means all laughter ; and so mucli 
 nearer than architecture is the drama to the ordinary 
 human heart, that we cannot help thinking these gro- 
 tesque representations did far more to arouse the inward 
 life and conscience of the people than all the glory into 
 which the out- working spirit of the monks had com- 
 pelled the stuhhorn stone to bourgeon and blossom. 
 
 But although, no doubt, there was some kind of growth 
 going on in the drama even during the dreary fifteenth 
 century, we must not suppose, that it was by any regu- 
 lar and steady progression that it arrived at the gran- 
 deur of the Elizabethan perfection. It was rather as if 
 a dry, knotty, uncouth, but vigorous plant suddenly 
 opened out its inward life in a flower of surpassing 
 splendour and loveliness. When the representation of 
 real historical persons in the miracle-plays gave way 
 before the introduction of unreal allegorical personages, 
 and the miracle-play was almost driven from the stage 
 by the " play of morals " as it was called, there was 
 certainly no great advance made in dramatic represen- 
 tation. The chief advantage gained was room for more 
 variety ; while in some important respects these plays 
 fell otf from the merits of the preceding kind. Indeed, 
 any attempt to teach morals allegorically must lack that 
 vivifying fire of faith working in the poorest represen- 
 tations of a history which the people heartily believed 
 and loved. Nor when we come to examine the 
 favourite amusement of later royalty, do we find that 
 the interludes brought forward in the pauses of the 
 banquets of Henry YIII. have a claim to any refine- 
 ment upon those old miracle-plays. They have gained 
 
94 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 in facility and wit ; they have lost in poetry. They 
 have lost pathos too, and have gathered grossness. 
 In the comedies which soon appear, there is far more 
 of fun than of art ; and although the historical play 
 had existed for some time, and the streams of learning 
 from the inns of court had floM^ed in to swell that of 
 the drama, it is not before the appearance of Shakspere 
 that we find any whole of artistic or poetic value. And 
 this brings us to another branch of the subject, of which 
 it seems to us that the importance has never been duly 
 acknowledged. We refer to the use, if not invention, 
 of llank verse in England, and its application to the 
 purposes of the drama. It seems to us that in any 
 contemplation of Shakspere and his times, the con- 
 sideration of these points ought not to be omitted. 
 
 We have in the present day one grand master of 
 blank verse, the Poet Laureate. But where would he 
 have been if Milton had not gone before him ; or if the 
 verse amidst which he works like an informing spirit 
 had not existed at all ? No doubt he might have 
 invented it himself; but how different would the 
 result have been from the verse which he will now 
 leave behind him to lie side by side for comparison 
 with that of the master of the epic ! All thanks then 
 to Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey ! who, if, dying on 
 the scaffold at the early age of thirty, he has left no 
 poetry in itself of much value, yet so wrote that ho 
 refined the poetic usages of the language, and, above 
 all, was tke first who ever made blank verse iii English. 
 He used it in translating the second and fourth books 
 of Virgil's ".<3Eneid." This translation he probably 
 
SHAKSPEKB. 05 
 
 wrote not long before his execution, which took place 
 in 1547, seventeen years before the birth of Shakspere. 
 There are passages of excellence in the work, and very 
 rarely does a verse quite fail. But, as might be 
 expected, it is somewhat stiff, and, as it were, stunted 
 in sound ; partly from the fact that the lines are too 
 much divided, where distinction would have been suf- 
 ficient. It would have been strange, indeed, if he had 
 at once made a free use of a rhythm which every boy- 
 poet now thinks he can do what he pleases with, but 
 of which only a few ever learn the real scope and capa- 
 bilities. Besides, the difficulty was increased by the 
 fact that the nearest approach to it in measure was the 
 heroic conplet, so well known in our language, although 
 scarce one who has used it has come up to the various- 
 ness of its modelling in the hands of Chaucer, with 
 whose writings Surrey was of course familiar. But 
 various as is its melody in Chaucer, the fact of there 
 being always an anticipation of the perfecting of a 
 rhyme at the end of tbe couplet would make one accus- 
 tomed to heroic verse ready to introduce a rhythmical 
 fall and kind of close at the end of every blank verse 
 in trying to write that measure for the first time. Still, 
 as we say, there is good verse in Surrey's translation. 
 Take the following lines for a specimen, in which the 
 fault just mentioned is scarcely perceptible. Mercury 
 is the subject of them. 
 
 " His golden wings he knits, which him transport, 
 With a light wind above the earth and seas ; 
 And then with him his wand he took, whereby 
 He calls from hell pale ghosts. 
 
96 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 By power whereof he drives the winds avray, 
 And passeth eke amid the troubled clouds, 
 Till in his flight he 'gan descry the top 
 And the steep flanks of rocky Atlas* hill 
 That with his crown sustains the welkin up ) 
 Whose heal, forgrown with pine, circled alway 
 With misty clouds, is beaten with wind and storm ; 
 His shoulders spread with snow j and from his chin 
 The springs descend ; his beard frozen with ice. 
 Here Mercury with equal shining wingg 
 First touched." 
 
 In all comparative criticism justice demands that lie 
 who began any mode should not be compared with those 
 who follow only on the ground of absolute merit in the 
 productions themselves ; for while he may be inferior 
 in regard to quality, he stands on a height, as the 
 inventor, to which they, as imitators, can never ascend, 
 although they may climb other and loftier heights, 
 through the example he has set them. It is doubtful, 
 however, whether Surrey himself invented this verse, 
 or only followed the lead of some poet of Italy or 
 Spain ; in both which countries it is said that blank 
 verse had been used before Surrey wrote English in that 
 measure. 
 
 Here then we have the low beginnings of blank 
 verse. It was nearly a hundred and twenty years 
 before Milten took it up, and, while it served him 
 well, glorified it ; nor are we aware of any poem of 
 worth written in that measure between. Here, of 
 course, we speak of the epic form of the verse, which, 
 an being uttered ore rotundo, is necessarily of consider- 
 able difference from the form it assumes in the drama. 
 
 Let us now glance for a moment at the forms of 
 
SHAKSPERE. 97 
 
 composition in use for dramatic purposes before blank 
 verse came into favour with play-writers. The nature 
 of the verse employed in the miracle-plays will be suf- 
 ficiently seen from the short specimens already given. 
 These plays were made up of carefully measured and 
 varied lines, with correct and superabundant rhymes, 
 and no marked lack of melody or rhythm. But as far 
 as we have made acquaintance with the moral and 
 other rhymed plays which followed, there was a great 
 falling off in these respects. They are in great measure 
 composed of long, irregular lines, with a kind of rhyth- 
 mical progress rather than rhythm in them. They are 
 exceedingly difficult to read musically, at least to one 
 of our day. Here are a few verses of the sort, from 
 the dramatic poem, rather than drama, called somewhat 
 improperly " The Moral Play of God's Promises," by 
 John Bale, who died the year before Shakspere was born. 
 It is the first in Dodsley's collection. The verses have 
 some poetic merit. The rhythm will be allowed to be 
 difficult at least. The verses are arranged in stanzas, 
 of which we give two. In most plays the verses are 
 arranged in rhyming couplets only. 
 
 Pater Ccelestis. 
 I have with fearoenesse mankynde oft tymes corrected. 
 And agayne, I have allured hym by swete promes. 
 I have sent sore plages, when he hath me neglected. 
 And then by and by, most comfortable swetnes. 
 To Wynne hym to grace, bothe mercye and ryghteousnes 
 I have exercysed, yet wyll he not am^de. 
 Shall I now lose hym, or shall I him defende P 
 
 In hya moat mysohefe, moat hygh grace will I sendee 
 To overcome hym by favonre, if it may be. 
 
98 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 Witli hys abnsyons no longar wyll I oontende, 
 Bnt now accomplysh my first wyll and deore. 
 My worde beynge flesh, from hens shall set hym fre^ 
 Hym teachynge a waye of perfyght ryhteousnesse. 
 That he shall not nede to perysh in hys weaknesse. 
 
 To our ears, at least, the older miracle-plays were greatly 
 superior. It is interesting to find, however, in this 
 apparently popular mode of " building the rhyme " — 
 certainly not the lofty rhyme, for no such crumbling 
 foundation could carry any height of superstructure — 
 the elements of the most popular rhythm of the present 
 day ; a rhythm admitting of any number of syllables 
 in the line, from four up to twelve, or even more, and 
 demanding only that there shall be not more than four 
 accented syllables in the line. A song written with 
 any spirit in this measure has, other things not being 
 quite equal, yet almost a certainty of becoming more 
 popular than one written in any other measure. Most 
 of Barry Cor a wall's and Mrs. Heman's songs are 
 written in it. Scott's " Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
 Coleridge's " Christabel," Byron's " Siege of Corinth," 
 Shelley's *' Sensitive Plant," are examples of the 
 rhythm. Spenser is the first who has made good use 
 of it. One of the months in the " Shepherd's Calen- 
 dar " is composed in it. We quote a few lines from 
 this poem, to show at once the kind we mean: — 
 
 "No marvel, Thenot, if thou can bear 
 Cheerfully the winter's wrathful cheer; 
 For age and winter accord fall nigh ; 
 This chill, that cold ; this crooked, that wry | 
 And as the lowering weather looks down, 
 So seemest thou like Gk>od Friday to fruwai 
 
SHAKSPERE. W 
 
 Bnt my flowering youth is foe to frost | 
 
 My ship unwont in storms to be tost." 
 
 We can trace it slightly in Sir Thomas "Wyatt, and we 
 think in others who preceded Spenser. There is no 
 sign of it in Chaucer. But we judge it to be the 
 essential rhythm of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which will 
 quite harmonize with, if it cannot explain, the fact of 
 its being the most popular measure still. Shakspere 
 makes a little use of it in one, if not in more, of his 
 plays, though it there partakes of the irregular 
 character of that of the older plays which he is imitating. 
 But we suspect the clowns of the authorship of some 
 of the rhymes, " speaking more than was set down for 
 them," evidently no uncommon offence. 
 
 Prose was likewise in use for the drama at an early 
 period. 
 
 But we must now regard the application of blank 
 verse to the use of the drama. And in this part of 
 our subject we owe most to the investigations of ^Ir. 
 Collier, than whom no one has done more to merit our 
 gratitude for such aids. It is universally acknowledged 
 that " Ferrex and Porrex " was the first drama in blank 
 verse. But it was never represented on the public 
 stage. It was the joint production of Thomas Sack- 
 ville, afterwards Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset, 
 and Thomas Norton, both gentlemen of the Inner 
 Temple, by the members of which it was played before 
 the Queen at Whitehall in 1561, throe years before 
 Shakspere was born. As to its merits, the impression 
 left by it upon our minds is such that, although the 
 verse is decent, and in some respects irreproachable, we 
 H 2 * 
 
100 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 think the time spent in reading it must be all but lost 
 to any but those who must verify to themselves their 
 literary profession ; a profession which, like all other 
 professions, involves a good deal of disagreeable duty. 
 We spare our readers all quotation, there being no 
 occasion to show what blank verse of the commonest 
 description is. But we beg to be allowed to state that 
 this drama by no means represents the poetic powers of 
 Thomas Sackville. For although we cannot agree 
 with Hallam's general criticism, either for or against 
 Sackville, and although we admire Spenser, we hope, 
 as much as that writer could have admired him, we 
 yet venture to say that not only may some of Sackville's 
 personifications " fairly be compared with some of the 
 most poetical passages in Spenser," but that there is in 
 this kind in Sackville a strength and simplicity of repre- 
 sentation which surpasses that of Spenser in passages in 
 which the latter probably imitated the former. We 
 refer to the allegorical personages in Sackville's "In- 
 duction to the Mirrour of Magistrates," and in Spenser's 
 description of the " House of Pride." 
 
 Mr. Collier judges that the play in blank verse first 
 represented on the public stage was the " Tamburlaine " 
 of Christopher Marlowe, and that it was acted before 
 1587, at which date Shakspere would be twenty-three. 
 This was followed by other and better plays by the 
 same author. Although we cannot say much for the 
 dramatic art of Marlowe, he has far surpassed every 
 one that went before him in dramatic poetry. The 
 passages that might worthily be quoted from Marlowe's 
 writings for the sake of their poetry are innumerable, 
 
SHAKSPERE. - 101 
 
 notwithstanding that there are many others which 
 occupy a border land between poetry and bombast, and 
 are such that it is to us impossible to say to which class 
 they rather belong. Of course it is easy for a critic to 
 gain the credit of common-sense at the same time that 
 he saves himself the trouble of doing what he too fre- 
 quently shows himself incapable of doing to any good 
 purpose — we mean thinking — by classing all such pas- 
 sages together as bombastical nonsense ; but even in 
 the matter of poetry and bombast, a wise reader will 
 recognize that extremes so entirely meet, without being 
 in the least identical, that they are capable of a sort 
 of chemico-literary admixture, if not of combination. 
 Goethe himself need not have been ashamed to have 
 written one or two of the scenes in Marlowe's " Faust ;'* 
 not that we mean to imply that they in the least 
 resemble Goethe's handiwork. His verse is, for dramatic 
 purposes, far inferior to Shakspere's ; but it was a 
 great matter for Shakspere that Marlowe preceded him, 
 and helped to prepare to his hand the tools and fashions 
 he needed. The provision of blank verse for Shak- 
 spere's use seems to us worthy of being called providen- 
 tial, even in a system in which we cannot believe that 
 there is any chance. For as the stage itself is elevated 
 a few feet above the ordinary level, because it is the 
 scene of a representation, just so the speech of the 
 drama, dealing not with unreal but with ideal persons, 
 the fool being a worthy fool, and the villain a worthy 
 villain, needs to be elevated some tones above that of 
 ordinary life, Avhich is generally flavoured with so much 
 of the commonplace, i^'ow the commonplace has i^ 
 
102 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 place at all in the drama of Shakspere, which fact at 
 once elevates it above the tone of ordinary life. And so 
 the mode of the speech must be elevated as well ; there- 
 fore from prose into blank verse. If we go beyond 
 this, we cease to be natural for the stage as well as 
 life ; and the result is that kind of composition well 
 enough known in Shakspere's time, which he ridicules 
 in the recitations of the player in " Hamlet," about 
 Priam and Hecuba. "We could show the very passages 
 of the play- writer Nash which Shakspere imitates in 
 these. To use another figure, Shakspere, in the same 
 play, instructs the players "to hold, as 'twere, the 
 mirror up to nature." Now every one must have felt 
 that somehow there is a difference between the appear- 
 ance of any object or group of objects immediately 
 presented to the eye, and the appearance of the same 
 object or objects in a mirror. Nature herself is not 
 the same in the mirror held up to her. Everything 
 changes sides in this representation ; and the room 
 which is an ordinary, well-known, homely room, gains 
 something of the strange and poetic when regarded in 
 the mirror over the fire. Now for this representation, 
 for this mirror-reflection on the stage, blank verse is 
 just the suitable glass to receive the silvering of the 
 g('nius-mind be^^ind it. 
 
 l>ut if Shakspere had had to sit down and make his 
 tools first, and then quarry his stone and fell his timber 
 for the building of his house, instead of finding every- 
 thing ready to his hand for dressing his stone already 
 hewn, for sawing and carving the timber ah-eady in 
 logs and planks beside him, no doubt his house would 
 
8HAKSPEEE. 103 
 
 have been built ; but can we with any reason suppose 
 that it would have proved such "a lordly pleasure- 
 house"? Not even Shakspere could do without his 
 poor little brothers who preceded him, and, like the 
 goblins and gnomes of the drama, got everything out 
 of the bowels of the dark earth, ready for the master, 
 whom it would have been a shame to see working in 
 the gloom and the dust instead of in the open eye of the 
 day. Nor is anything so helpful to the true develop- 
 ment of power as the possibility of free action for as 
 much of the power as is already operative. This room 
 for free action was provided by blank verse. 
 
 Yet when Shakspere came first upon the scene of 
 dramatic labour, he had to serve his private apprentice- 
 ship, to which the apprenticeship of the age in the 
 drama, had led up. He had to act first of all. Driven 
 to London and the drama by an irresistible impulse, 
 when the choice of some profession was necessary to 
 make him independent of his father, seeing he was him- 
 self, though very young, a married man, the first form 
 in which the impulse to the drama would naturally show 
 itself in him would be the desire to act ; for the outside 
 relations would first operate. As to the degree of merit 
 he possessed as an actor we have but scanty means of 
 judging; for afterwards, in his own plays, he never 
 took the best characters, having written them for his 
 fiiend Richard Burbage. Possibly the dramatic im- 
 pulse was sufficiently appeased by the writing of the 
 play, and he desired no further satisfaction from per- 
 sonal representation ; although the amount of study 
 spent upon the higher department of the art might 
 
104 SHAKSPEBE. 
 
 have been more than sufficient to render him unrivalled 
 as well in the presentation of his own conceptions. 
 But the dramatic spring, having once broken the upper 
 surface, would scoop out a deeper and deeper weU for 
 itself to play in, and the actor would soon begin to 
 work upon the parts he had himself to study for pre- 
 sentation. It being found that he greatly bettered 
 his own parts, those of others would be submitted to 
 him, and at length whole plays committed to his 
 revision, of which kind there may be several in the 
 collection of his works. If the feather-end of his pen 
 is just traceable in " Titus Andronicus," the point of it 
 is much more evident, and to as good purpose as Beau- 
 mont or Fletcher could have used his to, at the best, in 
 "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." Nor would it be long 
 before he would submit one of his own plays for appro- 
 bation j and then the whole of his dramatic career lies 
 open before him, with every possible advantage for 
 perfecting the work, for the undertaking of which he 
 was l)etter qualified by nature than probably any other 
 man whosoever ; for he knew everything about acting, 
 practically — about the play-house and its capabilities, 
 about stage' necessities, about the personal endowments 
 and individual qualifications of each of the company — 
 so that, when he was writing a play, he could distribute 
 the parts before they even appeared upon paper, and 
 write for each actor with the very living form of the 
 ideal person present "in his mind's eye," and often to 
 his bodily sight ; so that the actual came in aid of the 
 ideal, as it always does if the ideal be genuine, and the 
 loftiest conceptions proved the truest to visible nature. 
 
SHAKSPERE. 105 
 
 This close relation of Shakspere to the actual leads 
 us to a general and remarkable fact, which again will 
 lead us back to Shakspere. All the great writers of 
 Queen Elizabeth's time were men of affairs ; they were 
 not literary men merely, in the general acceptation of 
 tlfe word at present. Hooker was a hard working, 
 sheep-keeping, cradle-rocking pastor of a country parish. 
 Bacon's legal duties were innumerable before he became 
 Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor. Ealeigh was sol- 
 dier, sailor, adventurer, courtier, politician, discoverer: 
 indeed, it is to his imprisonment that we are indebted 
 for much the most ambitious of his literary under- 
 takings, " The History of the World," a work which 
 for simple majesty of subject and style is hardly to be 
 surpassed in prose. Sidney, at the age of three-and- 
 twenty, received the highest praise for the management 
 of a secret embassy to the Emperor of Germany; took 
 the deepest and most active interest in the political 
 affairs of his country; would have sailed with Sir 
 Francis Drake for South American discovery ; and 
 might probably have been king of poor Poland, if the 
 »]^ueen had not been too selfish or wise to spare him. 
 The whole of his literary productions was the work of 
 his spare hours. Spenser himself, who was, except 
 Shakspere, the most purely a literary man of them all, 
 was at one time Secretary to the Lord Deputy of 
 Ireland, and, later in life. Sheriff of Cork. IS'or is the 
 remark true only of the writers of Elizabeth's period, 
 or of the country of England. 
 
 It seems to us one of the greatest advantages that 
 can befall a poet, to be drawn out of his study, and still 
 
106 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 more out of the chamter of imagery in his own thoughts, 
 to behold and speculate upon the embodiment of Divine 
 thoughts and purposes in men and their affairs around 
 him. Now Sbakspere had no public appointment, 
 but he reaped all the advantage which such could have 
 given him, and more, from the perfection of his 
 dramatic position. It was not with making plays alone 
 that he had to do ; but, himself an actor, himself in a 
 great measure the owner of more than one theatre, 
 with a little realm far more difficult to rule than many 
 a kingdom — a company, namely, of actors — although 
 possibly less difficult from the fact that they were only 
 men and boys ; with the pecuniary affairs of the 
 management likewise under his supervision — he must 
 have found, in the relations and necessities of his own 
 profession, not merely enough of the actual to keep 
 him real in his representations, but almost sufficient 
 opportunity for his one great study, that of mankind, 
 independently of social and friendly relations, which 
 in his case were of the widest and deepest. 
 
 But Shakspere had not business relations merely : 
 he was a man of business. There is a common blunder 
 manifested, both in theory on the one side, and in 
 practice on the other, which the life of Shakspere sets 
 full in the light. The theory is, that genius is a sort 
 of abnormal development of the imagination, to the 
 detriment and loss of the practical powers, and that a 
 genius is therefore a kind of incapable, incompetent 
 being, as far as worldly matters are concerned. The 
 most complete refutation of this notion lies in the fact 
 that the greatest genius the world has known was a 
 
SHAKSPERE. 107 
 
 successful man in common affairs. Wtile his genius 
 grew in strength, fervour, and executive power, his 
 worldly condition rose as well ; he became a man of 
 importance in the eyes of his townspeople, by whom 
 he would not have been honoured if he had not made 
 money ; and he purchased landed property in his 
 native place with the results of his management of his 
 theatres. 
 
 The practical blunder lies in the notion cherished 
 occasionally by young people ambitious of literary 
 distinction, that in the pursuit of such things they 
 must be content with the poverty to which the world 
 dooms its greatest men ; accepting their very poverty 
 as an additional proof of their own genius. If this 
 means that the poet is not to make money his object, 
 it means well : no man should. But if it means either 
 that the world is unkind, or that the poet is not to 
 *' gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost,'* it 
 means ill. Shakspere did not make haste to be rich. 
 He neither blamed, courted, nor neglected the world : 
 he was friendly with it. He could not have pinched 
 and scraped ; but neither did he waste or neglect his 
 worldly substance, which is God's gift too. Many 
 immense fortunes have been made, not by absolute 
 dishonesty, but in ways to which a man of genius 
 ought to be yet more ashamed than another to con- 
 descend ; but it does not therefore follow that if a man 
 of genius will do honest work he will not make a fair 
 livelihood by it, which for all good results of intellect 
 and heart is better than a great fortune. But then 
 Shakspere began with doing what he could. He did 
 
108 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 not consent to starve until the world should recognize 
 his genius, or gmmhle against the blindness of the 
 nation in not seeing what it was impossible it should 
 see before it was fairly set forth. He began at once 
 to supply something which the world wanted ; for it 
 wants many an honest thing. He went on the stage 
 and acted, and so gained power to reveal the genius 
 which he possessed ; and the world, in its possible 
 measure, was not slow to recognize it. Many a young 
 fellow who has entered life with the one ambition of 
 being a poet, has failed because he did not perceive 
 that it is better to be a man than to be a poet, that it 
 is his first duty to get an honest living by doing some 
 honest work that he can do, and fox which there is a 
 demand, although it may not be the most pleasant 
 employment. Time would have shown whether he 
 was meant to be a poet or not ; and if he had been no 
 poet he would have been no beggar ; and if he had 
 turned out a poet, it would have been partly in virtue 
 of that experience of life and truth, gained in his case 
 in the struggle for bread, without which, gained some- 
 how, a man may be a sweet dreamer, but can be no 
 strong maker, no poet. In a word, here is the English- 
 man of genius, beginning life with nothing, and dying, 
 not rich, but easy and honoured j and this by doing 
 what no one else could do, writing dramas in which 
 the outward grandeur or beauty is but an expoiient of 
 the inward worth ; hiding pearls for the wise even 
 within the jewelled play of the variegated bubbles of 
 fancy, which he blew while he wrought, for the inno- 
 cent delight of his thoughtless brothers and sisteis. 
 
SIIAKSPERE. 109 
 
 Wherever the rainbow of Shakspere's genius stands, 
 there lies, indeed, at the foot of its glorious arch, a 
 golden key, which will open the secret doors of truth, 
 and admit the humble seeker into the presence of 
 AVisdom, who, having cried in the streets in vain, sits 
 at home and waits for him who will come to find her. 
 And Shakspere had cakes and ale, although he was 
 virtuous. 
 
 But what do we know about the character of Shak- 
 spere 1 How can we tell the inner life of a man who 
 has uttered himself in dramas, in which of course it is 
 impossible that he should ever speak in his own 
 person ? No doubt he may speak his own sentiments 
 through the mouths of many of his persons ; but how 
 are we to know in what cases he does so ? — At least 
 we may assert, as a self-evident negative, that a passage 
 treating of a wide question put into the mouth of a 
 person despised and rebuked by the best characters in 
 the play, is not likely to contain any cautiously formed 
 and cherished opinion of the dramatist. At first sight 
 this may seem almost a truism ; but we have only to 
 remind our readers that one of the passages oftenest 
 (j noted with admiration, .and indeed separately printed 
 iti)d illuminated, is "The Seven Ages of Man," a 
 jjassage full of inhuman contempt for humanity and 
 unbelief in its destiny, in which not one of the seven 
 :iges is allowed to pass over its poor sad stage without 
 a sneer ; and that this passage is given by Shakspere 
 to the blase sensualist Jaques in " As You Like it," a 
 man who, the good and wiseDuJce says, has been as vile as 
 it is possible for man to be, so vile that it would be an 
 
110 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 additional sin in him to rebuke sin ; a man who never 
 was capable of seeing what is good in any man, and 
 hates men's vices because he hates themselves, seein.q 
 in them only the reflex of his own disgust. Shalvsi)('ie 
 knew better than to say that all the world is a stage, 
 and all the men and women merely players. He had 
 been a player himself, but only on the stage : Jaques 
 had been a player where he ought to have been a true 
 man. The whole of his account of human life is con- 
 tradicted and exposed at once by the entrance, the very 
 moment whan he has finished his wicked burlesque, of 
 Ch'landOj the young master, carrying Adam, the old 
 servant, upon his back. The song that immediately 
 follows, sings true : " Most friendship is feigning, 
 most loving mere folly." But between the all of Jaques 
 and the most of the song, there is just the difference 
 between earth and hell. — Of course, both from a 
 literary and dramatic point of view, "The Seven 
 Ages " is perfect. 
 
 Now let us make one positive statement to balance 
 the other : that wherever we find, in the mouth of a 
 noble character, not stock sentiments of stage virtue, 
 but appreciation of a truth which it needs deep thought 
 and experience united with love of truth, to discover or 
 verify for one's self, especially if the truth be of a sort 
 which most men will fail not merely to recognize as a 
 truth, but to understand at all, because the under- 
 standing of it depends on the foregoing spiritual per- 
 ception — then we think we may receive the passage as 
 an expression of the inner soul of the writer. He 
 must have seen it before he could have said it ; an(1 
 
SHAKSPERE. lit 
 
 to see such a truth is to love it ; or rather, love of truth 
 in the general must have preceded and enabled to the 
 discovery of it. Such a passage is the speech of the 
 Duke^ opening the second act of the play just referred 
 to, " As You Like it." The lesson it contains is, that 
 the well-being of a man cannot be secured except he 
 partakes of the ills of life, " the penalty of Adam." 
 And it seems to us strange that the excellent editors of 
 the Cambridge edition, now in the course of publica- 
 tion — a great boon to all students of Shakspere — 
 sliould not have perceived that the original reading, 
 that of the folios, is the right one, — 
 
 ** Here feel we not the penalty of Adam ? " 
 
 which, with the point of interrogation supplied, fur- 
 nishes the true meaning of the whole passage ; namely, 
 that the penalty of Adam is just what makes the 
 " wood more free from peril than the envious court," 
 teaching each "not to think of himself more highly 
 than he ought to think." 
 
 But Shak?pere, although everywhere felt, is nowhere 
 r>een in his plays. He is too true an artist to show his 
 own face from behind the play of life with which he 
 tills his stage. What we can find of him there we 
 must find by regarding the whole, and allowing the 
 si>irituai evssence of the whole to find its way to our 
 })rain, and thence to our heart. The student of Shak- 
 spere becomes imbued with the idea of his character. 
 It exhales from his writings. And when we have 
 found the main drift of any play — the grand rounding 
 of the whole — then by that we may interpret indi- 
 
112 
 
 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 vidual passages. It is alone in their relation to the 
 whole that we can do them full justice, and in their 
 relation to the whole that we discover the mind of the 
 master. 
 
 But we have another source of more direct enlighten- 
 ment as to Shakspere himself. We only say more 
 direct, not more certain or extended enlightenment. 
 "We have one collection of poems in which he speaks 
 in his own person and of himself. Of course we reier 
 to his sonnets. Though these occupy, with their 
 presentation of himself, such a small relative space, 
 they yet admirably round and complete, to our eyes, 
 the circle of his individuality. In them and the plays 
 the common saying — one of the truest — that extremes 
 meet, is verified. No man is complete in whom there 
 are no extremes, or in whom those extremes do not 
 meet. Now the very individuality of Shakspere, 
 judged by his dramas alone, has been declared non- 
 existent ; while in the sonnets he manifests some of 
 the deepest phases of a healthy self-consciousness. We 
 do not intend to enter into the still unsettled question 
 as to whether these sonnets were addressed to a man 
 or a woman. We have scarcely a doubt left on the 
 question ourselves, as will be seen from the argument 
 we found on our conviction. We cannot say we feel 
 much interest in the other question. If a man, what 
 man f A few placed at the end, arranged as they 
 have come down to us, are beyond doubt addressed to 
 a woman. But the difference in tone between these 
 and the others we think very remarkable. Possibly 
 «t the time they were written — most of them early in hia 
 
SHAKSPERE. 113 
 
 lifp, as it appears to us, although they were not published 
 till the year 1609, when he was forty-five years of age, 
 IMeres referring to them in the year 1598, eleven years 
 before, as known *' among his private friends" — ^he 
 had not known such women as he knew afterwards, 
 and hence the true devotion of his soul is given to a 
 friend of his own sex. Gervinus, whose lectures on 
 Shakspere, profound and lofty to a degree unattempted 
 by any other interpreter, we are glad to find have been 
 (lone into a suitable English translation, under the 
 superintendence of the author himself — Gervinus says 
 somewhere in them that, as Shakspere lived and wrote, 
 his ideal of womanhood grew nobler and purer. Cer- 
 tainly the woman to whom the last few of these 
 sonnets are addressed was neither noble nor pnie. 
 We think, in this matter at least, they record one of 
 his early experiences. 
 
 We shall briefly indicate what we find in these 
 sonnets about the man himself, and shall commence 
 with what is least pleasing and of least value. 
 
 We must confess, then, that, probably soon after he 
 came first to London, he, then a married man, had an 
 intrigue with a married woman, of which there are 
 indications that he was afterwards deeply ashamed. 
 . One little incident seems curiously traceable : that he 
 had given her a set of tablets which his friend had 
 given him ; and the sonnet in which he excuses him- 
 self to his friend for having done so, seems to us the 
 only piece of special pleading, and therefore nngenuine 
 expression, in the whole. This friend, to whom the 
 rest of the sonnets are addressed, made the acquaintance 
 
 1 
 
114 SIIAKSPERE. 
 
 of this woman, and both were false to Shakspere. 
 Even Shakspere could not keep the love of a worthless 
 woman. So much the better for him ; but it is a sad 
 story at best. Yet even in this environment of evil 
 we see the nobility of the man, and his real self The 
 sonnets in which he mourns his friend's falsehood, 
 forgives him, and even finds excuses for him, that he 
 may not lose his own love of him, are, to our minds, 
 amongst the most beautiful, as they are the most 
 profound. Of these are the 33rd and 34th. 'Not does 
 he stop here, but proceeds in the following, the 35th, 
 to comfort his friend in his grief for his offence, even 
 accusing himself of offence in having made more 
 excuse for his fault than the fault needed! But to 
 leave this part of his history, which, as far as we 
 know, stands alone, and yet cannot with truth be 
 passed by, any more than the story of the crime of 
 David, though in this case there is no comparison to 
 be made between the two further than the primary 
 fact, let us look at the one reality which, from a 
 spiritual point of view, independently of the literary 
 beauties of these poems, causes them to stand all but 
 alone in literature. We mean what has been un- 
 avoidably touched upon already, the devotion of his 
 friendship. We have said this makes the poems stand 
 all hut alone ; for we ought to be better able to under- 
 stand these poems of Shakspere, from the fact that in 
 our day has appeared the only other poem which is 
 like these, and which casts back a light upon them. 
 
 •* Yet turn thee to the doubtful shore, 
 
 Where thy first form was made a man: 
 
SHAKSPERE. 115 
 
 I loved thee, spirit, and love j nor can 
 The soul of Shakspeare love thee more.** 
 
 So sings the Poet of our day, in the loftiest of his 
 poems — " In Memoriam " — addressing the spirit of his 
 vanished friend. In the midst of his song arises the 
 thought of the Poet of all time, who loved his friend 
 too, and would have lost him in a way far worse than 
 death, had not liis love been too strong even for that 
 death, alone ghastly, which threatened to cut the 
 golden chain that hound them, and part them by the 
 gulf impassable. Tennyson's friend had never wronged 
 him; and to the divineness of Shakspere's love is 
 added that of forgiveness. Such love as this between 
 man and man is rare, and therefore to the mind which 
 is in itself no way rare, incredible, because unintel- 
 ligible. But though all the commonest things are 
 very divine, yet divine individuality is and will be a 
 rare thing at any given period on the earth. Faith, in 
 its ideal sense, will always be hard to find on the earth. 
 But perhaps this kind of affection between man and 
 man may, as Coleridge indicates in his " Table Talk," 
 have been more common in the reigns of Elizabeth 
 and Jamos than it is now. There is a certain dread of 
 the demonstrative in the present day, which may, 
 perhaps, be carried into regions where it is out of place, 
 and hinder the development of a devotion which must 
 be real, and grand, and divine, if one man such as 
 Shakspere or Tennyson has ever felt it. If one has 
 felt it, humanity may claim it. And surely He who 
 is the Son of man has verified the claim. We believe 
 there are indeed few of us who know what to love our 
 i2 
 
116 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 neighbour as ourselves means ; but when we find a man 
 here and there in the course of ^centuries who does, we 
 may take this man as the prophet of coming good for 
 his race, his prophecy being himself. 
 
 But next to the interest of knowing that a man 
 could love so well, comes the association of this fact 
 with his art. He who could look abroad upon men, 
 and understand them all — who stood, as it were, in the 
 wide-open gates of his palace, and admitted with 
 welcome every one who came in sight — had in the 
 inner places of that palace one chamber in which he 
 met his friend, and in which his whole soul went forth 
 to understand the soul of his friend. The man to 
 whom nothing in humanity was common or unclean ; 
 in whom the most remarkable of his artistic morals is 
 fair-play ; who fills our hearts with a saintly love for 
 Cordelia and an admiration of Sir John Falstaff the 
 lost gentleman, mournful even in the height of our 
 laughter ; who could make an AutolyctLS and a Macbeth 
 both human, and an Ariel and a Puck neither human 
 — this is the man who loved best. And we believe 
 that this depth of capacity for loving lay at the root 
 of all his knowledge of men and women, and all his 
 dramatic pre-eminence. The heart is more intelligent 
 than the intellect. Well says the poet Matthew 
 Raydon, who has hardly left anything behind him but 
 the lamentation over Sir Philip Sidney in which the 
 lines occur, — 
 
 *' He that hath love and judgment too 
 Sees more than any other do." 
 
 Simply, we believe that this, not this only, but thif 
 
SHAKSPERE. 117 
 
 more than any other endowment, made Shakspere the 
 artist he was, in providing him all the material of 
 humanity to work upon, and keeping him to the true 
 spirit of its use. Love looking forth upon strife, under- 
 stood it all. Love is the true revealer of secrets, 
 because it makes one with the object regarded. 
 
 " But," say some impatient readers, '* when shall we 
 have done with Shakspere? There is no end to this 
 writing about him." It will be a bad day for England 
 when we have done with Shakspere; for that will 
 imply, along with the loss of him, that we are no 
 longer capable of understanding him. Should that 
 time ever come, Heaven grant the generation which 
 does not understand him at least the grace to keep its 
 pens off him, which will by no means follow as a 
 necessary consequence of the non-intelligence ! But 
 the writing about Shakspere which has been hitherto 
 so plentiful must do good just in proportion as it directs 
 attention to him and gives aid to the understanding of 
 him. And while the utterances of to-day pass away, 
 the children of to-morrow are born, and require a new 
 utterance for their fresh need from those who, having 
 gone before, have already tasted life and Shakspere, and 
 can give some little help to further progress than their 
 own, by tolling the following generation what they have 
 found. Suppose that this cry had been raised last 
 century, after good Dr. Johnson had ceased to produce 
 to the eyes of men the facts about his own incapacity 
 which he presumed to be criticisms of Shakspere, where 
 would our aids be now to the understanding of the 
 dramatist 1 Our own conviction is, when we reflect 
 
118 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 with how much laboui we have deepened onr know- 
 ledge of him, and thereby found in him the best — for 
 the best lies not on the surface for the careless reader 
 — our own conviction is, that not half has been done 
 that ought to be done to help young people at least to 
 understand the master mind of their country. Few 
 among them can ever give the attention or work to it 
 that we have given; but much may be done with 
 judicious aid. And a profound knowledge 'of their 
 greatest writer would do more than almost anything 
 else to bind together as Englishmen, in a true and 
 unselfish way, the hearts of the coming generations ; 
 for his works are our country in a convex magic 
 mirror. 
 
 When a man finds that every time he reads a book 
 not -only does some obscurity melt away, but deeper 
 depths, which he had not before seen, dawn upon him, 
 e is not likely to think that the time for ceasing to 
 write about the book has come. And certainly in 
 Shakspere, as in all true artistic work, as in nature 
 herself, the depths are not to be revealed utterly; 
 while every new generation needs a new aid towards 
 discovering itself and its own thoughts in these forms 
 of the past. And of all that read about Shakspere 
 there are few whom more than one or two utterances 
 have reached. The speech or the writing must go 
 forth to find the soil for the growth of its kernel of 
 truth. We shall, therefore, with the full consciousness 
 that perhaps more has been already said and written 
 about Shakspere than about any other writer, yet 
 ventuie to add to the mass by a few general xemarkSi 
 
SHAKSPEEE. 119 
 
 And first we would remind our readers of the marvel 
 of the combination in Shakspere of such a high degree 
 of two faculties, one of which is generally altogether 
 inferior to the other : the faculties of reception and 
 production. Rarely do we find that great receptive 
 power, brought into operation either by reading or by 
 observation, is combined with originality of thought. 
 Some hungers are quite satisfied by taking in what 
 others have thought and felt and done. By the 
 assimilation of this food many minds grow and prosper ^ 
 but other minds feed far more upon what rises from 
 their own depths ; in the answers they are compelled 
 to provide to the questions that come unsought ; in the 
 theories they cannot help constructing for the inclu- 
 sion in one whole of the various facts around them, 
 which seem at first sight to strive with each other like 
 the atoms of a chaos ; in the examination of those 
 impulses of hidden origin which at one time indicate a 
 height of being far above the thinker's present condi- 
 tion, at another a gulf of evil into which he may pos- 
 sibly fall. But in Shakspere the two powers of 
 beholding and originating meet like the re-joining halves 
 of a sphere. A man who thinks his own thoughts 
 much, will often walk through London streets and see 
 nothing. In the man who observes only, every passing 
 object mirrors itself in its prominent peculiarities, 
 having a kind of harmony with all the rest, but arouses 
 no magician from the inner chamber to charm and chain 
 its image to his purpose. In Shakspere, on the con- 
 trary, every outer form of humanity and nature spoke 
 to that eyei^moving, self-vindicating— we had almost 
 
120 SIIAKSPERE. 
 
 Baid, and in a sense it would be trae, self-generating — 
 humanity within him. The sound of any action with- 
 out him, struck in him just the chord which, in motion 
 in him, would have produced a similar action. When 
 anything was done, he felt as if he were doing it — per- 
 ception and origination conjoining in one conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 But to this gift was united the gift of utterance, or 
 representation. Many a man both receives and gene- 
 rates who, somehow, cannot represent. Nothing is 
 more disappointing sometimes than our first experience 
 of the artistic attempts of a man who has roused our 
 expectations by a social display of familiarity with, and 
 command over, the subjects of conversation. Have we 
 not sometimes found that when such a one sought to 
 give vital or artistic form to these thoughts, so that 
 they might not be born and die in the same moment 
 upon his lips, but might existj a poor, weak, faded 
 simulacrum alone was the result? Now Shakspere 
 was a great talker, who enraptured the listeners, and 
 was himself so rapt in his. speech that he could scarcely 
 come to a close ; but when he was alone with his art, 
 then and then only did he rise to the height of his 
 great argument, and all the talk was but as the fallen 
 mortar and stony chips lying about the walls of the 
 great temple of his drama. 
 
 But, along with aU this wealth of artistic speech, an 
 artistic virtue of an opposite nature becomes remark- 
 able : his reticence. How often might he not say fine 
 things, particularly poetic things, when he does not, 
 because it would not suit the character or the time ! 
 
SHAKSPERE. 121 
 
 How many delicate points are there not 'in his plays 
 which we only discover after many readings, because 
 he will not put a single tone of success into the flow of 
 natural utterance, to draw our attention to the triumph 
 of the author, and jar with the all-important reality of 
 his production ! Wherever an author obtrudes his own 
 self-importance, an unreality is the consequence, of a 
 nature similar to that which we feel in the old moral 
 plays, when historical and* allegorical personages, such 
 as Julius Cceear and Charity, for instance, are intro- 
 duced at the same time on the same stage, acting in the 
 same story. Shakspere never points to any stroke of 
 his own wit or art. We may find it or not : there it 
 is, and no matter if no one see it ! 
 
 Much has been disputed about the degree of con- 
 sciousness of his own art possessed by Shakspere : 
 whether he did it "by a grand yet blind impulse, or 
 whether he knew what he wanted to do, and knowingly 
 used the means to arrive at that «nd. ]N'ow we cannot 
 here enter upon the question ; but we would recom- 
 mend any of our readers who are interested in it not to 
 attempt to make up their minds upon it before con- 
 sidering a passage in another of his poems, which may 
 throw some light on the subject for them. It is the 
 description of a painting, contained in " The Eape of 
 Lucrece," towards the end of the poem. Its very 
 minuteness involves the expression of principles, and 
 reveals that, in relation to an art not his own, he could 
 hold principles of execution, and indicate perfection of 
 finish, which, to say the least, must proceed from a 
 general capacity for art, and therefore might find an 
 
122 SIIAKSPERB. 
 
 equally conscious operation in his own pecuKar pro- 
 vince of it. For our own part, we think that his 
 results are a perfect combination of the results of con- 
 sciousness and unconsciousness; consciousness where 
 the arrangements of the play, outside the region of 
 inspiration, required the care of the wakeful intellect ; 
 unconsciousness where the subject itself bore him aloft 
 on the wings of its own creative delight. 
 
 There is another manifestation of his power which 
 will astonish those who consider it. It is this : that, 
 while he was able to go down to the simple and grand 
 realities of human nature, which are all tragic; and 
 while, therefore, he must rejoice most in sach contem- 
 plations of human nature as find fit outlet in a '* Ham- 
 let," a " Lear," a " Timon," or an " OtheUo," the 
 tragedies of Doubt, Ingratitude, and Love, he can yet, 
 when he chooses, float on the very surface of human 
 nature, as in " Love's Labour's Lost,*' " The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor," "The Comedy of Errors," "The 
 Taming of the Shrew ;" or he can descend half way as 
 it were, and there remain suspended in the characters 
 and feelings of ordinary nice people, who, interesting 
 enough to meet in society, have neither received that 
 development, nor are placed in those circumstances, 
 which admit of the highest and simplest poetic treat- 
 ment. In these he wiU bring out the ordinary noble 
 or the ordinary vicious. Of this nature are most of his 
 comedies, in which he gives an ideal representation of 
 common social life, and steers perfectly clear of what 
 in such relations and surroundings would be heroics. 
 Look how steadily he keeps the noble-iiimded yoatb 
 
8HAKSPEBE. 123 
 
 Orlando in this middle region j and look how the best 
 comes out at last in the wayward and recalcitrant and 
 bizarre, but honest and true natures of BeatHce and 
 Benedick ; and this without any untruth to the nature 
 of comedy, although the circumstances border on the 
 tragic. Wlien he wants to give the deeper affairs of 
 tlie heart, he throws the whole at once out of the social 
 circle with its multiform restraints. As in " Hamlet " 
 the stage on which the whole is acted is really the heart 
 of Hamletj so he makes his visible stage as it were, 
 slope off into the misty infinite, with a grey, starless 
 heaven overhead, and Hades open beneath his feet. 
 Hence young people brought up in the country under- 
 stand the tragedies far sooner than they can compre- 
 hend the comedies. It needs acquaintance with sociely 
 and social ways to clear up the latter. 
 
 The remarks we have made on " Hamlet " by way of 
 illustration, lead us to point out how Shakspere pre 
 pares, in some of his plays, a stage suitable for all the 
 representation. In " A Midsummer Night's Dream " 
 the place which gives tone to the whole is a midnight 
 wood in the first flush and youthful delight of summer. 
 In " As You Like it " it is a daylight wood in spring, 
 full of morning freshness, with a cold wind now and 
 then blowing through the half-clothed boughs. In 
 " The Tempest " it is a solitary island, circled by the 
 mysterious sea-horizon, over which what may come who 
 can tell 1 — a place where the magician may work his 
 will, and have aU nature at the beck of his superior 
 knowledge. 
 
 The only writer who would have bad a chance of 
 
124. SHAKSPEBE. 
 
 rivalling Shakspere in his own walk, if he had been 
 born in the same period of English history, is Chaucer, 
 lie has the same gift of individualizing the general, 
 and idealizing the portrait. But the best of the 
 dramatic writers of Shakspere's time, in their desire of 
 dramatic individualization, forget the modifying multi- 
 formity belonging to individual humanity. In their 
 anxiety to present a character , they take, as it were, a 
 human mould, label it wtth a certain peculiarity, and 
 then fill in speeches and forms according to the label. 
 Thus the indications of character, of peculiarity, so 
 predominate, the whole is so much of one colour, that 
 the result resembles one of those allegorical personifi- 
 cations in which, as much as possible, everything 
 human is eliminated except what belongs to the pecu- 
 liarity, the personification. How different is it with 
 Shakspere's representations! He knows that no 
 human being ever was like that. He makes his most 
 peculiar characters speak very much like other people ; 
 and it is only over the whole that their peculiarities 
 manifest themselves with indubitable plainness. The 
 one apparent exception is JaqueSy in "As You Like 
 it." But there we must remember that Shakspere is 
 representing a man who so chooses to represent him- 
 self. He is a man in Ms humour^ or his own peculiar 
 and chosen affectation. Jaques is the writer of his 
 own part ; for with him " all the world's a stage, and 
 aU the men and women," himself first, "merely 
 players." We have his own presentation of himself, 
 not, first of all, as he is, but as he chooses to be taken. 
 Of course his real self does come out in it, for no 
 
SHAKSPEKB. 125 
 
 can seem altogether other than he is ; and besides, the 
 Duke, who sees quite through him, rebukes him in the 
 manner ah-eady referred to ; but it is his affectation 
 th it gives him the unnatural peculiarity of his modes 
 ami speeches. He wishes them to be such. 
 
 There is, then, for every one of Shakspere's charac- 
 ters the firm ground of humanity, upon which the 
 \\i'e<ls, as well as the flowers, glorious or fantastic, as 
 the case may be, show themselves. His more heroic 
 persons are' the most profoundly human. Nor are his 
 villains unhuman, although inhuman enough. Com- 
 pared with Marlowe's Jew, Shylock is a terrible man 
 beside a dreary monster^ and, as far as logic and the lex 
 talionis go, has the best of the argument. It is the 
 strength of human nature itself that makes crime 
 strong. Wickedness could have no power of itself : it 
 lives by the perverted powers of good. And so great 
 is Shakspere's syinpath}" with ShijlocJc even, in the 
 hard and unjust doom that overtakes him, that he dis- 
 misses him with some of the spare sympathies of the 
 more tender-hearted of his spectators, llowhere is the 
 justice of genius more plain than in Shakspere's utter 
 freedom from party-spirit, even with regard to his 
 own creations. Each character shall set itself forth- 
 from its own point of view, and only in the choice and 
 scope of the whole shall the judgment of the poet be 
 beh-eld. . He never allows his opinion to come out to 
 the dan:aging of the individual's own self-presentation. 
 He knows well that for the worst something can be 
 said, and that a feeling of justice and his own right 
 will be strong in the mind of a man who is yet swayed 
 
126 
 
 SIIAKSPERE. 
 
 by perfect saifishness. Therefore the false man ia not 
 discoverable in his speech, not merely because liio 
 villain will talk as like a true man as he may, liit 
 because seldom is the villainy clear to the villain's own 
 mind. It is impossible for us to determine whether, 
 in their fierce bandying of the lie, BoVmjhroke or 
 Norfolk spoke the truth. Doubtless each believed 
 the other to be the villain that he called him. And 
 Shakspere has no desire or need to act the historian in 
 the decision of that question. He leaves his reader in 
 full sympathy with the perplexity of Richard; as 
 puzzled, in fact, as if he had been present at the in- 
 terrupted combat. 
 
 If every writer could write up to his own best, we 
 should have faj less to marvel at in Shakspere. It is 
 in great measure the wealth of Shakspere's suggestions, 
 giving him abundance of the best to choose from, that 
 lifts him so high above those Avho, having felt the 
 inspiration of a good idea, are forced to ^o on writing, 
 constructing, carpentering, with dreary handicraft, 
 before the exhausted faculty has recovered sufficiently 
 to generate another. And then comes in the unerring 
 choice of the best of those sugges ions. Yet if any one 
 wishes to see what variety of the same kind of thoughts 
 he could produce, let him examine the treatment of the 
 B9,me business in different plays ; as, for instance, the 
 way in which instigation to a crime is managed in 
 " Macbeth," where Macbeth tempts the two mur»lerers 
 to kill Banquo ; in "King John," when the Kiixj 
 tempts Hubert to kiU Arthur; in "The Tempest," 
 when Antaiiio tempts Sebastian to kill Aloiizo ; in 
 
SHAKSPERE. 127 
 
 " As You Like it," %hen Oliver instigates Cliarles to 
 kill Orlando ; and in " Hamlet," where Clmidms urges 
 Laertes to the murder of HaiiUet. 
 
 He shows no anxiety about being original. When 
 a man is full of his work he forgets himself. In his 
 desire to produce a good play he lays hold upon any 
 material that offers itself. He will even take a bad 
 play and make a good one of it. One of tlie most 
 remarkable discoveries to the student of Shakspere is 
 the hide-bound poverty of some of the stories, which, 
 informed by his life-power, become forms of strength, 
 richness, and grace. He does what the Spirit in 
 " Comus " says the music he heard might do, — 
 
 ** create a soul 
 Under the ribs of death ;" 
 
 and then death is straightway '* clotlied upon." And 
 nowhere is the refining operation of his genius more 
 evident than in the purification of these stories. 
 Characters and incidents which would have been 
 honey and nuts to Beaumont and Fleitcher are, not- 
 withstanding their dramatic recommendations, entirely 
 remodelled by him. The fair Ophelia is, in the old 
 tale, a common woman, and Hamlet'' s mistress ; while 
 the policy of the Lady of Belmont, who in the old 
 story occupies the place for which he invented the 
 lovely Portia, upon which policy the whole story 
 turns, is such that it is as unfit to set forth in our 
 pages as it was unfit for Shakspere.'s purposes of art. 
 His noble art refuses to work upon base matter. He 
 sees at once the capabilities of a tale, but he will not 
 use it except he may do with it what he pleases. 
 
128 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 If we might here offer some assistance to the yonng 
 student who wants to help himself, we would suggest 
 that to follow, in a measure, Plutarch's fashion of com- 
 parison, will be the most helpful guide to the under- 
 standing of the poet. Let the reader take any two 
 characters, and putting them side by side, look first 
 for differences, and then for resemblances between 
 them, with the causes of each ; or let him make a 
 wider attempt, and setting two plays one over against 
 the other, compare or contrast them, and see what will 
 be the result. Let him, for instance, take the two 
 characters Hamlet and Brutus, and compare their be- 
 ginnings and endings, the resemblances in their charac- 
 ters, the differences in their conduct, the likeness and 
 unlikeness of what was required of them, the circum- 
 stances in which action was demanded of each, the 
 helps or hindrances each had to the working out of the 
 problem of his life, the way in which each encounters 
 the supernatural, or any other question that may 
 suggest itself in reading either of the plays, ending off 
 with the main lesson taught in each ; and he will be 
 astonished to find, if he has not already discovered it, 
 what a rich mine of intellectual and spiritual wealth 
 is laid open to his delighted eyes. Perhaps not the 
 least valuable end to be so gained is, that the young 
 Englishman, who wants to be delivered from any 
 temptation to think himself the centre around which 
 the universe revolves, will be aided in his endeavours 
 after honourable humility by looking up to the man 
 who towers, like Saul, head and shoulders above his 
 brethren, and seeing that he ifl humble, may learn to 
 
8HAKSPEEE. 129 
 
 leave it to the pismire to be angry, to the earwig to be 
 conceited, and to the spider to insist on his own im- 
 portance. 
 
 But to return to the main course of our observations. 
 The dramas of Shakspere are so natural, that this, the 
 greatest praise that can be given them, is the ground 
 of one of the difficulties felt by the young student in 
 estimating them. The very simplicity of Shakspere's 
 art seems to throw him out of any known groove of 
 judgment. When he hears one say, ''''Look at tliis, 
 and admire" he feels inclined to rejoin, "Why, he 
 only says in the simplest way what the thing must 
 have been. It is as plain as daylight." Yes, to the 
 reader ; and because Shakspere wrote it. But there 
 were a thousand wrong ways of doing it : Shakspere 
 took the one right way. It is he who has made it 
 plain in art, whatever it was before in nature; and 
 most likely the very simplicity of it in nature was 
 scarcely observed before he saw it and represented it. 
 And is it not the glory of art to attain this simplicity? 
 for simplicity is the end of all things — all manners, all 
 morals, ail religion. To say that the thing could not 
 have been done otherwise, is just to say that you forget 
 the art in beholding its object, that you forget the 
 mirror because you see nature reflected in the mirror. 
 Any one can see the moon in Lord Rosse's telescope ; 
 but who made the reflector 1 And let the student try 
 to express anything in prose or in verse, in painting or 
 in modelling, just as it is. No man knows tiU he has 
 made many attempts, how hard to reach is this sim- 
 plicity of art. And the greater the success, the fewer 
 
 X 
 
130 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 are the signs of the labour expended. Simplicity ifl 
 
 art's perfection. 
 
 But so natural are all his plays, and the great 
 tragedies to which we would now refer in particular, 
 amongst the rest, that it may appear to some, at first 
 sight, that Shakspere could not have constructed them 
 alter any moral plan, could have had no lesson of his 
 own to teach in them, seeing they bear no marks of 
 individual intent, in that they depart nowhere from 
 nature, the construction of the play itself going straight 
 on like a history. The directness of his plays springs 
 in [)art from the fact that it is humanity and not cir- 
 cumstance that Shakspere respects. Circumstance he 
 uses only for the setting forth of humanity ; and for 
 the })lot of circumstance, so much in favour with Ben 
 Joiison, and others of his contemporaries, he cares 
 nothing As to their looking too natural to have any 
 design in them, we are not of those who believe that 
 it is unlike natnie to have a design and a result. If 
 the proof of a high aim is to be what the critics used 
 to call j)oetic justice, a kind of justice that one would 
 gladly find more of in grocers' and linen-drapers' shops, 
 but can as well spare from a poem, then we must say. 
 that he has not always a high end : the wicked man is 
 not tortured, nor is the gOod man smothered in bank- 
 notes and rose-leaves. Even when he shows the out- 
 ward ruin and death that comes upon Macbeth at last, 
 it is only as an unavoidable little consequence, follow- 
 ing in the wake of the mighty vengeance of nature, 
 even of God, that Macbeth cannot say Amen; that 
 Macbeth can sleep no more; that Macbeth is "cabined 
 
SHAKSPEKE. 
 
 131 
 
 cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears ;" 
 that his very brain is a charnel-house, whence arise 
 the ghosts of his own murders, till he envies the very 
 dead the rest to which his hand has sent thenu That 
 immediate and eternal vengeance upon crime, and that 
 inner reward of well-doing, never fail in nature or in 
 Shakspere, appear as such a matter of course that they 
 hardly look like design either in nature or in the mirror 
 which he holds up to her. The secret is that, in the 
 ideal, habit and design are one. 
 
 Most authors seem anxious to round off and finish 
 everything in full sight. Most of Shakspere's tragedies 
 compel our thoughts to follow their persons across the 
 bourn. They need, as Jean Paul says, a piece of the 
 next world painted in to complete the picture, And 
 this is surely nature : but it need not therefore be no 
 design. What could be done with Hamlet, but send 
 him into a region where he has some chance of finding 
 his difficulties solved ; where he will know that his 
 reverence for God, which was the sole stay left him in 
 the flood of human worthlessness, has not been in vain ; 
 that the skies are not " a foul and pestilent congrega- 
 tion of vapours ;" that there are noble women, though 
 his mother was false and Ophelia weak ; and that there 
 are noble men, although his uncle and Laertes were 
 villains and his old companions traitors 1 If Hamlet 
 is not to die, the whole of the play must perish under 
 the accusation that the hero of it is left at last with 
 only a superadded misery, a fresh demand for action, 
 namely, to rule a worthless people, as they seem to 
 him, when action has for him become impossible ; that 
 
 ^l'!!^ 
 
 [( t;kivei!8Ity V 
 
132 RIIAKSPERE. 
 
 he has to live on, forsaken even of death, which will 
 not come though the cup of misery is at the brim. 
 
 But a high end may be gained in this world, and 
 the vision into the world beyond so justified, as in 
 King Lear. The passionate, impulsive, unreasoning 
 old king certainly must have given his wicked 
 daughters occasion enough of making the charges to 
 which their avarice urged them. He had learned veiy 
 little by his life of kingship. He was but a boy witii 
 grey hair. He had had no inner experiences. And 
 so all the development of manhood and age has to be 
 crowded into the few remaining weeks of his life. His 
 own folly and blindness supply tlie occasion. Ami 
 before the few weeks are gone, he has passed through 
 all the stages of a fever of indignation and wrath, 
 ending in a madness from which love redeems him ; 
 he has learned that a king is nothing if the man is 
 nothing ; that a king ought to care for those who 
 cannot help themselves; that love has not its origin 
 or grounds in favours flowing from royal resource and 
 munificence, and yet that love is the one thing woi tli 
 living for, which gained, it is time to die. And now 
 that he has the experience that life can give, has 
 become a child in simplicity of heart and judgment, 
 he cannot lose his daughter again ; who, likewise, has 
 learned the one thing she needed, as far as her father 
 was concerned, a little more excusing tenderness In 
 the same play it cannot be by chance that at its cotu- 
 mencement G-loucester speaks with the utmost careless- 
 ness and oj^'hand wit about the parentage of his natural 
 son Edmund, but finds at last that this son is his rum. 
 
SHAKSPEEE. 188 
 
 Edgar, the true son, says to Edmund, after having 
 righteously dealt him his death- wound,— 
 
 ** The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices 
 Make instruments to scourge us : 
 The dark and vicious place where thee ho got 
 Cost him his eyes." 
 
 To which the dying and convicted villain replies,— 
 
 " Thou hast spoken right ; *tia true l 
 The wheel is come fall circle j I am here.** 
 
 Could anything he put more plainly than the moral 
 lesson in this 1 
 
 It would be easy to produce examples of fine design 
 from his comedies as well ; as for instance, from 
 " Much Ado about Nothing :" the two who are made 
 to fall in love with each other, by being each severally 
 assured of possessing the love of the other, Beatrice 
 and Benedick, are shown beforehand to have a strong 
 inclination towards each other, manifested in their 
 continual squabbling after a good-humoured fashion ; 
 but not all this is sufficient to make them heartily in 
 love, until they find out the nobility of each other's 
 character in their behaviour about the calumniated 
 Hero; and the author takes care they shall not be 
 married without a previous acquaintance with the trick 
 that lias been played upon them. Indeed we think 
 the remark, that Shakspere never leaves any of his 
 characters the same at the end of a play as he took 
 them up at the beginning, will be found to be true. 
 They are better or worse, wiser or more kreteierftbly 
 
134 SIIAKSPERB. 
 
 foolish. The historical plays would illustrate the 
 remark as well as any. 
 
 But of all the terrible plays we are inclined to think 
 " Timon " the most terrible, and to doubt whether 
 justice has been done to the finish and completeness 
 of it. At the same time we are inclined to think that 
 it was printed (first in the first folio, 1623, seven years 
 after Shakspere's death) from a copy, corrected by the 
 author, but not written fair, and containing consequent 
 mistakes. The same account might belong to others 
 of the plays, but more evidently perhaps belongs to 
 the " Timon." The idea of making the generous 
 spendthrift, whose old idolaters had forsaken him 
 because the idol had no more to give, into the high- 
 priest of the Temple of Mammon, dispensing the gold 
 which he hated and despised, that it might be a curse 
 to the race which he had learned to hate and despise 
 as wellj and the way in which Shakspere discloses 
 the depths of Timon's wound, by bringing him into 
 comparison with one who hates men by profession and 
 humour — are as powerful as anything to be found even 
 in Shakspere. 
 
 We are very willing to believe that '* Julius Caesar " 
 was one of his latest plays ; for certainly it is the play 
 in which he has represented a hero in the high and 
 true sense. Brutus is this hero, of course ; a hero 
 because he will do what he sees to be right, indepen- 
 dently of personal feeling or personal advantage. ]^or 
 does his attempt fail from any overweening or blind- 
 ness, in himself. Had he known that the various 
 pigpen thiowB in liis waj, were the concoctions of 
 
SHAKSPEPE. 135 
 
 Casmis, he would not have made the mistake of sup 
 posing that the Komans longed for freedom, and there- 
 fore would be ready to defend it. As it was, he 
 attempted to liberate a people which did not feel its 
 slavery. He failed for others, but not for himself; 
 for his truth was such that everybody was true to him. 
 Unlike Jaques with his seven acts of the burlesque of 
 human life, Brutus says at the last, — 
 
 " Countrymen, 
 My heart doth joy, that yet, in all my life, 
 I found no man but he was true to me." 
 
 Of course all this is in f*lutarch. But it is easy to 
 see with what relish Shakspere takes it up, setting 
 forth all the aids in himself and in others which Brutus 
 had to being a hero, and thus making the representation 
 as credible a? possible. 
 
 We must heartily confess that no amount of genius 
 alone will make a man a good man ; that genius only 
 shows the right way — drives no man to walk in it. 
 But there is surely some moral scent in us to let us 
 know whether a man only cares for good from an 
 artistic point of view, or whether he admires and loves 
 good. This admiration and love cannot be prominently 
 set forth by any dramatist true to his art ; but it must 
 come out over the whole. His predilections must show 
 themselves in the scope of his artistic life, in the things 
 and subjects he chooses, and the way in which he 
 represents them. Notwithstanding Uncle Toby and 
 Maria, who will venture to say that Sterne was noble 
 or yirtuous, when ke looks over the whole that he has 
 
136 
 
 SHAKSPERE. 
 
 written? But in Shakspere there is no suspicion of a 
 cloven foot. Everywhere he is on the side of virtue 
 and of truth. Many small arguments, with great 
 cumulative force, might he adduced to this effect. 
 
 For ourselves we cannot easily helieve that the 
 calmness of his art could be so unvarying except he 
 exercised it with a good conscience ; that he . could 
 have kept looking out upon the world around him with 
 the untroubled regard necessary for seeing all things as 
 they are, except there had been peace in his house at 
 home ; that he could have known all men as he did, 
 and failed to know himself. We can understand the 
 co-existence of any degree of partial or excited genius 
 with evil ways, but we cannot understand the existence 
 of such calm and universal genius, wrought out in his 
 works, except in association with all that is noblest in 
 human nature. !N'or is it other than on the side of 
 the argument for his rectitude that he never forces 
 rectitude upon the attention of others. The strong 
 impression left upon our minds is, that however Shak- 
 spere may have strayed in the early portion of his life 
 in London, he was not only an upright and noble man 
 for the main part, but a repentant man, and a man 
 whose life was influenced by the truths of Christianity. 
 
 Much is now said about a memorial to Shakspere, 
 The best and only true memorial is no doubt that 
 described in Milton's poem on this very subject : the 
 living and ever- changing monument of human admira- 
 tion, expressed in the faces and forms of those absorbed 
 in the reading of his works. But if the external 
 monument might be such as to foster the constant 
 
SHAKSPEKB. 137 
 
 reproduction of the inward montiment of love and 
 admiration, then, indeed, it might be well to raise 
 one ; and with this object in view let ns venture to 
 propose one mode which we think would favour the 
 attainment of it. 
 
 Let a Gothic hall of the fourteenth century be built ; 
 such a hall as would be more in the imagination of 
 Shakspere than any of the architecture of his own time. 
 Let aU the copies that can be procured of every early 
 edition of his works, singly or collectively, be stored 
 in this haU. Let a copy of every other edition ever 
 printed be procured and deposited. Let every book 
 or treatise that can be found, good, bad, or indifferent, 
 ^vritten about Shakspere or any of his works, be like- 
 wise collected for the Shakspere library. Let a special 
 place be allotted to the shameless corruptions of his 
 plays that have been produced as improvements upon 
 them, some of which, to the disgrace of England, still 
 partially occupy the stage instead of what Shakspere 
 wrote. Let one department contain every work of 
 whatever sort that tends to direct elucidation of his 
 meaning, chiefly those of the dramatic writers who 
 preceded him and closely followed him. Let the 
 windows be filled with stained glass, representing the 
 popular sports of his own time and the times of his 
 English histories. Let a small museum be attached, 
 containing all procurable antiquities that are referred 
 to in his plays, along with first editions, if possible, of 
 the best books that came out in his time, and were 
 probably rtad by him. Let the whole thus as much 
 as possible represent his time. Let a marbU Btatue in 
 
138 SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 the midst do the best that English art can accomplish 
 for the representation of the vanished man ; and let 
 copies, if not the originals, of the several portraits be 
 safely shrined for the occasional beholding of the 
 multitude. Let the perpetuity of care necessary for 
 this monument be secured by endowment ; and let it 
 be for the use of the public, by means of a reading- 
 room fitted for the comfort of all who choose to avail 
 themselves of these facilities for a true acquaintance 
 with our greatest artist. Let there likewise bo a 
 simple and moderately-sized theatre attached, not for 
 regular, but occasional use; to be employed for the 
 representation of Shakspere's plays only, and allowed 
 free of expense for amateur or other representations of 
 them for charitable purposes. But within a certain 
 cycle of years — if, indeed, it would be too much to 
 expect that out of the London play-goers a sufficient 
 number would be found to justify the representation 
 of all the plays of Shakspere once in the season — let 
 the whole of Shakspere's plays be acted in the best 
 manner possible to the managers for the time being. 
 
 The very existence of such a theatre would be a 
 noble protest of the highest kind against the sort of 
 play, chiefly translated and adapted from the Frencli, 
 which infests our boards, the low tone of which, even 
 where it is not decidedly immoral, does more harm 
 than any amount of the rough, honest plain-spokenness 
 of Shakspere, as judged by our more fastidious, if not 
 always purer manners. The representation of such 
 plays forms the real ground of objection to theatre- 
 going. We believe that other objections, which may 
 
SHAKSPERE, 189 
 
 be equally urged against large assemblies of any sort, 
 are not really grounded upon such an amount of objec- 
 tionable fact as good people often suppose. At all 
 events it is not against the drama itself, but its con- 
 comitants, its avoidable concomitants, that such objec- 
 tions are, or- ought to be, felt and directed. The 
 dramatic impulse, as well as all other impulses of our 
 nature, are from the Maker. 
 
 A monument hke this would help to change a blind 
 enthusiasm and a dileitante-talk into knowledge, reve- 
 rence, and study ; and surely this would be the true 
 way to honour the memory of the man who appeals to 
 posterity by no mighty deeds of worldly prowess, but 
 has left behind him food for heart, brain, and con- 
 science, on which the generations will feed till the end 
 of time. It would be the one true and natural mode 
 of perpetuating his fame in kind ; helping him to do 
 more of that for which he was bom, and because of 
 which we humbly desire to do him honour, as the 
 years flow farther away from the time when, at the 
 age of fifty-two, he left the world a richer legacy of the 
 results of intellectual labour than any other labourer in 
 literature has ever done. It would be to raise a monu- 
 ment to his mind more than to his person. 
 
 But to honour Shakspere in the best way we must 
 not gaze upon some grand memorial of his fame, we 
 must not talk largely of his wonderful doings, we must 
 not even behold the representation of his works on the 
 stage, invaluable aid as that is to the right understand- 
 ing of what he has written ; but we must, by close, 
 silent, patient study, enter into an understanding with 
 
1^^ SHAKSPEEE. 
 
 the spirit of the departed poet-sage, and thus let his 
 own words be the necromantic spell that raises the 
 dead, and brings us into communion with that man 
 who knew what was in men more than any other mere 
 man ever did. Well was it for Shakspere that he was 
 humble ; else on what a desolate pinnacle of com- 
 panionless solitude must he have stood ! Where avhs 
 he to find his peers ? To most thoughtful minds it is 
 a terrible fancy to suppose that there were no greater 
 human being than themselves. From the terror of 
 such a truth Shakspere's love for men preserved him. 
 He did not think about himself so much as he thought 
 about them. Had he been a self-student alone, or 
 chiefly, could he ever have written those dramas? 
 We close with the repetition of this truth : that tlie 
 love of our kind is the one key to the knowledge of 
 humanity and of ourselves. And have we not sacred 
 authority for concluding that he who loves his brother 
 is the more able and the more likely to love Him who 
 made him and his brother also, and then told them 
 that love is the fulfilling of the law % 
 
THE ART OF SHAKSPERE, AS RE- 
 VEALED BY HIMSELF. 
 
 Who taught you this P 
 I learn'd it out of women's &ces. 
 
 Winter's Tale, Act ii. scene L 
 
 XE occasionally hears the remark, that the 
 commentators upon Shakspere find far 
 more in Shakspere than Shakspere ever 
 intended to express. Taking this asser- 
 tion as it stands, it may he freely granted, not only of 
 Shakspere, but of every writer of genius. But if it be 
 intended by it, that nothing can exist in any work of 
 art beyond what the writer was conscious of while ill 
 the act of producing it, so much of its scope is false. 
 
 No artist can have such a claim to the high title of 
 creator, as that he invents for himself the forms, by 
 means of which he produces his new result ; and all the 
 forms of man and nature which he modifies and com- 
 bines 'to make a new region in his world of art, have 
 their own original life and meaning. The laws likewise of 
 their various combinations are natural laws, harmonious 
 with each other. While, therefore, the artist employs 
 many or few of their original aspects for his immediate 
 purpose, he does not and cannot thereby deprive them 
 of the many more which are essential to their yitality, 
 » 1863. 
 
142 SHAKSPERE S ART. 
 
 and the vitality likewise of his presentation of them, 
 although they form only the background from which 
 his peculiar use of them stands out. The objects pre- 
 sented must therefore fall, to the eye of the observant 
 reader, into many different combinations and harmonies 
 of operation and result, which are indubitably there, 
 whether the writer saw them or not. These latent 
 combinations and relations will be numerous and true, 
 in proportion to the scope and the truth of the repre- ■ 
 sentation ; and the greater the number of meanings, 
 harmonious with each other, which any work of art 
 presents, the greater claim it has to be considered a 
 work of genius. It must, therefore, be granted, and 
 that joyfully, that there may be meanings in Shak- 
 spere's writings which Shakspere himself did not see, 
 and to which therefore his art, as art, does not point. 
 
 But the probability, notwithstanding, must surely be 
 allowed as well, that, in great artists, the amount of 
 conscious art will bear some proportion to the amount of 
 unconscious truth : the visible volcanic light will bear 
 a true relation to the hidden fire of the globe ; so that 
 it will not seem likely that, in such a writer as Shak- 
 spere, we should find many indications of present and 
 operative art^ of which he was himself unaware. Some 
 truths may be revealed through him, which he himself 
 knew only potentially ; but it is not likely that marks 
 of work, bearing upon the results of tlie play, should 
 be fortuitous, or that the work thus indicated should 
 be unconscious work. A stroke of the mallet may be 
 more effective than the sculptor had hoped ; but it was 
 intended. In the diama it is easier to discover indivi- 
 
143 
 
 dual marks of the chisel, than in the marble whence 
 all signs of such are removed : in the drama the lines 
 themselves fall into the general finish, without neces- 
 sary obliteration as lines. Still, the reader cannot help 
 being fearful, lest, not as regards truth only, but as 
 regards art as well, he be sometimes clothing the idol 
 of his intellect with the weavings of his fancy. My 
 conviction is, that it is the very consummateness of 
 Shakspere's art, that exposes his. work to the doubt 
 that springs from loving anxiety for his honour ; the 
 dramatist, like the sculptor, avoiding every avoidable hint 
 of the process, in order to render the result a vital whole. 
 But, fortunately, we are not left to argue entirely from 
 probabilities. He has himself given us a peep into his 
 studio — let me call it workshop, as more comprehensive. 
 It is not, of course, in the shape of literary criticism, 
 that we should expect to meet such a revelation ; for 
 to use art even consciously, and to regard it as an object 
 of contemplation, or to theorize about it, are two very 
 different mental operations. The productive and 
 critical faculties are rarely found in equal combination ; 
 and even where they are, they cannot operate equally 
 in regard to the same object. There is a perfect 
 satisfaction in producing, which does not demand a 
 re- presentation to the critical faculty. In other words, 
 the criticism which a great writer brings to bear upon 
 his own work, is from within, regarding it upon the 
 liidden side, namely, in relation to his OAvn idea; 
 whereas criticism, commonly understood, has reference 
 to the side turned to the public gaze. Neither could 
 we expect one so prolific as Shakspere to find time for 
 
144 shakspere's art. 
 
 the criticism of the works of other men, except in such 
 moments of relaxation as those in which the friends at 
 the Mermaid Tavern sat silent beneath the flow of his 
 wisdom and humour, or made the street ring with the 
 overflow of their own enjoyment. 
 
 But if the artist proceed to speculate upon the nature 
 or productions of another art than his own, we may 
 then expect the principles upon which he operates in 
 his own, to take outward and visible form — a form 
 modified by the difference of the art to which he now 
 applies them. In one of Shakspere's poems, we have 
 the description of an imagined production of a sister-art 
 — that of Painting — a description so brilliant that the 
 light reflected from the poet-picture illumines the art of 
 the Poet himself, revealing the principles which he 
 held with regard to representative art generally, and 
 suggesting many thoughts with regard to detail and 
 harmony, finish, pregnancy, and scope. This descrip- 
 tion is found in " The Rape of Lucrece." Apology will 
 hardly be necessary for making a long quotation, seeing 
 that, besides the convenience it will afford of easy refer- 
 ence to the ground of my argument, one of the greatest 
 helps which even the artist can give to us, is to isolate 
 peculiar beauties, and so compel us to perceive them. 
 
 Lucrece has sent a messenger to beg the immediate 
 presence of her husband. Awaiting his return, and 
 worn out with weeping, she looks about for some varia- 
 tion of her misery. 
 
 1. 
 
 At last she oalla to mind where hangs a pieoe 
 Of ikilfiil painting, made for Priam's Troy | 
 
shakspere's aet. 145 
 
 Befoi-e the which is drawn the power of Greece^ 
 For Helen's rape the city to destroy. 
 Threatening cloud -kissing Ilion with annoy | 
 Which the conceited painter drew so proud,* 
 As heaven, it seemed, to kiss the turrets, bowed. 
 
 2. 
 A thousand lamentable objects there, 
 
 In scorn of Nature, Art gave lifeless lifet 
 Many a dry drop seemed a weeping tear, 
 
 Shed for the slaughtered husband by the wife ; 
 
 The red blood reeked, to show the painter's strife. 
 And dying eyes gleamed forth their. ashy lights. 
 Like dying coals burnt out in tedious nights. 
 
 3. 
 
 There might you see the labouring pioneer 
 
 Begrimed with sweat, and smeared all with dust | 
 
 And, from the towers of Troy there would appear 
 The very eyes of men through loopholes thrust, 
 Gazing upon the Greeks with little lust : 
 
 Such sweet observance in this work was had, 
 
 That one might see those far-off eyes look sad. 
 
 4. 
 
 In great commanders, grace and majesty 
 
 You might behold, triumphing in their faoeS| 
 
 In youth, quick bearing and dexterity ; 
 And here and there the painter interlaces 
 Pale cowards, marching on with trembling paces, 
 
 Which heartless peasants did so well resemble. 
 
 That one would swear he saw them quake and tremble. 
 
 5. 
 
 In Ajax and Ulysses, what art 
 Of physiognomy might one behold I 
 
 The face of either ciphered either*s heart } 
 
 Their face their manners most expressly tolds 
 In Ajax* eyes blunt rage and rigour rolled j 
 
 But the mild glance that sly Ulysses lent 
 
 Showed deep regard, and smiling government. 
 
 & 
 
146 shakspere's art. 
 
 There pleading might you see grave Nestor standi 
 As 'twere encouraging the Greeks to fight ; 
 
 Making such Sober action with his hand, 
 
 That it beguiled attention, charmed the sight ; 
 In speech, it seemed his beard, all silver- white, 
 
 Wagged up and down, and from his lips did fly 
 
 Thin winding breath, which purled up to the slqr. 
 
 7. 
 
 About him were a press of gaping faces, 
 
 Which seemed to swallow up his sound advice f 
 
 All jointly listening, but with several graces, 
 As if some mermaid did their ears entice j 
 Some high, some low, the painter was so nioo. 
 
 The scalps of many, almost hid behind, 
 
 To jump up higher seemed, to mock the mind. 
 
 8. 
 Here one man's hand leaned on another's head, 
 
 His nose being shadowed by his neighbour's ear | 
 Here one, being thronged, bears back, all boUen and l6Cl| 
 
 Another, smothered, seems to pelt and swear ; 
 
 And in their rage such signs of rage they bear, 
 As, but for loss of Nestor's golden words. 
 It seemed they would debate with angry swords. 
 
 9. 
 
 For mnch imaginary work was there ; 
 Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, 
 
 That tor Achilles' image stood his spear, 
 Ci r iped in an armed hand ; himself behind 
 Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind t 
 
 A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head. 
 
 Stood for the whole to be imagined. 
 
 10. 
 
 And, from the walla of strong-besieged Troy, 
 When their brave hope^ bold Hector, marched to tUUif 
 
147 
 
 Stood many Trojan mothers, sharing joy- 
 To see their youthful sons bright weapons wield. 
 And to their hope they such odd action yield ; 
 That through their light joy seemed to appear, 
 Like brigl:^ things stained, a kind of heavy fear. 
 
 11. 
 
 And from the strond of Dardan, where they fongbty 
 • To Simois' reedy banks, the red blood ran ; 
 Whose waves to imitate the battle sought. 
 
 With swelling ridges ; and their ranks began 
 
 To break upon the galled sFiore, and then 
 Retire again, till, meeting greater ranks, 
 They join, and shoot their foam at Simois' banks. 
 
 The oftener I read these verses, amongst the very 
 earliest compositions of Shakspere, I am the more 
 impressed with the carefulness with which he repre- 
 sents the work of the picture — " shows the strife of the 
 painter." The most natural thought to follow in 
 sequence is : How like his own art ! 
 f The scope and variety of the whole picture, in which 
 mass is effected by the accumulation of individuality ; 
 in which, on tlie one hand, Troy stands as the imper- 
 sonation of the aim and object of the whole; and on 
 the other, the Simois flows in foaming rivalry of the 
 strife of men, — tlie pictorial form of that sympathy of 
 nature with human effort and passion, which he so 
 often introduces in his plays, — is like nothing else so 
 much as one of the works of his own art. But to 
 take a portion as a more condensed representation of 
 his art in combining all varieties into one harmonious 
 "whole : his genius is like the oratory of ITestor as 
 described by its effects in the seventh and eighth stanzas. 
 L 2 
 
148 shakspere's art. 
 
 Every variety of attitude and countenance and action 
 is harmonized by the influence which is at once the 
 occasion of debate, and the charm which restrains by 
 the fear of its own loss : the eloquence and the listen- 
 ing form the one bond of the unruly mass. So the 
 dramatic genius that harmonizes his play, is visible 
 only in its effects ; so etherial in its own essence that 
 it refuses to bo submitted to the analysis of the ruder 
 intellect, it is like the words of Nestor, for which in 
 the picture there stands but " thin winding breath 
 which purled up to the sky." Take, for an instance of 
 this, the reconciling power by which, in the mysterious 
 midnight of the summer-wood, he brings together in 
 one harmony the graceful passions of childish elves, 
 and the fierce passions of men and women, with the 
 ludicrous reflection of those passions in the little convex 
 mirror of the artisan's drama ; while the mischievous 
 Puck revels in things that fall out preposterously, and 
 the Klt'-Queen is in love with ass-headed Bottom, from 
 the hollows of whose long hairy ears— strange bouquet- 
 holders — bloom and breathe the musk-roses, the charac- 
 teristic odour- founts of the play ; and the philosophy 
 of the unbelieving Theseus, with the candour of 
 Hippolyta, lifts the whole into relation with the 
 realities of human life. Or take, as another instance, 
 the pretended madman Edgar, the court-fool, and the 
 rugged old king going grandly mad, sheltered in one 
 hut, and lapped in the roar of a thunderstorm. 
 
 My object, then, in respect to this poem, is to pro- 
 duce, from many instances, a few examples of the 
 metamorphosis of such excellences as he describes in 
 
SHAKSPERE 8 ART. 
 
 149 
 
 the picture, into the corresponding forms of the drama; 
 in the hope that it will not then be necessary to urge 
 the probability that the presence of those artistic 
 virtues in his own practice, upon which he expatiates 
 in his representation of another man's art, were accom- 
 panied by the corresponding consciousness — that, 
 namely, of the artist as differing from that of the critic, 
 its objects being regarded from the concave side of the 
 hammered relief. If this probability be granted, I 
 would, from it, advance to a higher and far more im- 
 portant conclusion — how unlikely it is that if the writer 
 was conscious of such fitnesses, he should be uncon- 
 scious of those grand embodiments of truth, which are 
 indubitably present in his plays, whether he knew it 
 or not. This portion of my argument will be strength- 
 ened by an instance to show that Shakspere was 
 himself quite at home in the contemplation of such 
 truths. 
 
 Let me adduce, then, some of those corresponding 
 embodiments in words instead of in forms ; in which 
 colours yield to tones, lines to phrases. I will begin 
 with the lowest kind, in which the art has to do with 
 matters so small, that it is difficult to believe that 
 unconscious art could have any relation to them. They 
 can hardly have proceeded directly from the great 
 inspiration of the whole. Thei^^ very minuteness is an 
 argument for their presence to th'3 poet's consciousness ; 
 while belonging, as they do, only to the construction of 
 the play, no such independent existence can be accorded 
 to them, as to truths^ which, being in themselves 
 realities, are there, whether Shakspere saw them or 
 
150 shakspere's art. 
 
 not. If he did not intend them, the most that can 
 be said for them is, that such is the naturalness of 
 Shakspere's representations, that there is room in his 
 plays, as in life, for those wonderful coincidences 
 which are reducible to no law. 
 
 Perhaps every one of the examples I adduce will be 
 found open to dispute. This is a kind in which direct 
 proof can have no share ; nor should I have dared 
 thus to combine them in argument, but for the ninth 
 stanza of those quoted above, to which I beg my readers 
 to revert. Its imaginary work means — work hinted 
 at, and then left to the imagination of the reader. Of 
 course, in dramatic representation, such work must 
 exist on a great scale ; but the minute particularization 
 of the " conceit deceitful " in the rest of the stanza, 
 will surdy justify us in thinking it possible that 
 Shakspere intended 'many, if not all, of the little 
 fitnesses which a careful reader discovers in his plays. 
 That such are not oftener discovered comes from this : 
 that, like life itself, he so blends into vital beauty, that 
 there are no salient points. To use a homely simile : 
 he is nut like the barn-door fowl, that always runs out 
 cackling when she has laid an ^gg \ and often when 
 she has not. In the tone of an ordinary drama, you 
 may know when something is coming ; and the tone 
 itself declares — / liave done it. But Shakspere will 
 not spoil his art to show his art. It is there, and does 
 its part : that is enough. If you can discover it, good 
 and woU ; if not, pass on, and take what you can find. 
 He can afford not to be fathomed for every little pearl 
 that lies at the bottom of his ocean. If I succeed in 
 
shakspeee's art. 151 
 
 Bhowing that such art may exist where it is not readily- 
 discovered, this may give some additional probability 
 to its existence in places where it is harder to isolate 
 and define. 
 
 To produce a few instances, then : 
 
 In " Much Ado about Xothing," seeing the very nature 
 of the play is expressed in its name, is it not likely that 
 Shakspere named the two constables, Dogberry (a 
 poisonous terry) and Yerjuice (the juice of crab-apples)', 
 those names having absolutely nothing to do with the 
 stupid innocuousness of their characters, and so corre- 
 sponding to their way of turning things upside down, 
 and saying the very opposite of what they mean 1 
 
 In the same play we find Margaret objecting to her 
 mistress's wearing a certain rebato (a large plaited ruff), 
 on the morning of her wedding: may not this be 
 intended to relate to the fact that Margaret had dressed 
 in her mistress's clothes the night before ? She might 
 have rumpled or soiled it, and so feared discovery. 
 
 In "King Henry IV.," Part L, we find, in the 
 last scene, that the Prince kills Hotspur. This is 
 not recorded in history : the conqueror of Percy is un- 
 known. Had it been a fact, history would certainly 
 have recorded it ; and the silence of history in regard 
 to a deed of such mark, is equivalent to its contradiction. 
 But Shakspere requires, for his play's sake, to identify 
 the slayer of Hotspur with his rival the Prince. Yet 
 Shakspere will not contradict history, even in its silence. 
 What is he to do ? He will account for history not 
 knotoing the fact. — Falstaff claiming the honour, the 
 Prince says to him : 
 
152 shakspere's art. 
 
 "For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, 
 m gild it with the happiest terms I have ;•* 
 
 revealing tlius the magnificence of his own character, in 
 his readiness, for the sake of his friend, to part with 
 his chief renown. But the Historic Muse could not 
 believe that fat Jack Falstaff had killed Hotspur, and 
 therefore she would not record the claim. 
 
 In the second part of the same play, act i. scene 2, we 
 find Falstaff toweringly indignant with Mr. Domhledon, 
 the silk mercer, that he will stand upon security with 
 a gentleman for a short cloak and slops of satin. In 
 the first scene of the second act, the hostess mentions 
 that Sir John is going to dine with Master Smooth, 
 the silkman. Foiled with Mr. Domhledon, he has 
 already made himself so agreeable to Master Smooth, 
 that he is "indited to dinner" with him. This is, 
 by the bye, as to the action of the play ; but as to 
 the character of Sir John, is it not 
 
 " Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind" — Mnned — natwalf 
 
 The conceit deceitful in the painting, is the imagina- 
 tion that means more than its says. So the words 
 of the speakers in the play, stand for more than the 
 speakers mean. They are Shakspere*s in their rela- 
 tion to his whole. To Achilles, his spear is but his 
 «pear : to the painter and his company, the spear of 
 Achilles stands for Achilles himself. 
 
 Coleridge remarks upon James Gumey, in "King 
 John :" " How individual and comical he is with the 
 four words allowed to his dramatic life ! " These words 
 are those with which he answers the Bastard's request 
 
shakspeee's aet. 153 
 
 to leave the room. He has heen lingering with all the 
 inquisitiveness and privilege of an old servant ; when 
 Faulconbridge says : " James Gurney, wilt thou give 
 us leave a while 1 " with strained politeness. AYith 
 marked condescension to the request of the second son, 
 whom he has known and served from infancy, James 
 Gurney replies : " Good leave, good Philip ;" giving 
 occasion to Faulconbridge to show his ambition, and 
 scorn of his present standing, in the contempt with 
 which he treats even the Christian name he is so soon 
 to exchange with his surname for Sir Bichard and 
 Plantagenet ; Fliilip being the name for a sparrow in 
 those days, when ladies made pets of them. Surely in 
 these words of the serving-man, we have an outcome 
 of the same art by which 
 
 " A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, 
 Stood for the whole to be imagined." 
 
 In the "Winter's Tale,*' act iv. scene 3, Perdita, 
 dressed with unwonted gaiety at the festival of the 
 sheep-shearing, is astonished at finding herself talking 
 in full strains of poetic verse. She says, half-ashamed : 
 
 *• Methinks I play as I have seen them do 
 In Whitsun pastorals : sure, this robe of mine 
 Does change my disposition 1 " 
 
 She does not mean this seriously. But the robe has 
 more to do with it than she thinks. Her passion for 
 Plorizel is the warmth that sets the springs of her 
 thoughts free, and they flow with the grace belonging 
 to a princess-nature ; but it is the robe that opens the 
 
154 
 
 door of her speech, and, by elevating her conscious- 
 ness of herself, betrays her into what is only natural 
 to her, but seems to her, on reflection, inconsistent 
 with her low birth and poor education. This instance, 
 however, involves far higher elements than any of the 
 examples I have given, before, and naturally leads to a 
 much more important class of illustrations. 
 
 In " Macbeth," act ii. scene 4, why is the old man, who 
 has nothing to do with the conduct of the play, intro- 
 duced? -That, in conversation with Rosse, he may, as 
 an old man, bear testimony to the exceptionally terrific 
 nature of that storm, which, we find — from the words 
 of Banquo : 
 
 " There's husbandry in heaven • 
 Their candles are all out," — 
 
 had begun to gather, before supper was over in the 
 castle. This storm is the sympathetic horror of Nature 
 at the breaking open of the Lord's anointed temple — 
 a horror in which the animal creation partakes, for 
 the horses of Duncan, " the minions of their race," and 
 therefore the most sensitive of their sensitive race, tear 
 each other to pieces in the wildness of their horror. 
 Consider along with this a foregoing portion of the 
 second scene in the same act. Macbeth, having joined 
 his wife after the murder, says : 
 
 " Who lies i* the second chamber P 
 Lad/y M, Donalbain. 
 
 There are two lodged together.** 
 These two, Macbeth says, woke each other — the one 
 
shakspere's art. 155 
 
 laughing, the other crying murder. Then they said 
 their prayers and went to sleep again. — I used to think 
 that the natural companion of Donalbain would be 
 Malcolm, his brother ; and that the two brothers woke 
 in horror from the proximity of their father's murderer 
 who was just passing the door. A friend objected to 
 this, that, had they been together, Malcolm, being the 
 elder, would have been mentioned rather than Donal- 
 bain. Accept this objection, and we find a yet more 
 delicate significance ; the pi'esence operated differently 
 on the two, one bursting out in a laugh, the other 
 crying murder ', but both were in terror when they 
 awoke, and dared not sleep till they had said their 
 prayers. His sons, his horses, the elements themselves, 
 are shaken by one unconscious sympathy with the 
 murdered king. 
 
 Associate with this the end of the third scene of 
 the fourth act of " Julius Caesar f where we find that 
 the attendants of Brutus all cry out in their sleep, as 
 the ghost of Caesar leaves their master's tent. This 
 outcry is not given in Plutarch. 
 
 To return to " Macbeth : " Why is the doctor of 
 medicine introduced in the scene at the English 
 court ? He has nothing to do with the progress of the 
 play itself, any more than the old man already alluded 
 to. — He is introduced for a precisely similar reason. — 
 As a doctor, he is the best testimony that could be 
 adduced to the fact, that the English King Edward 
 the Confessor, is a fountain of health to his people, 
 gifted for his goodness with the sacred privilege of 
 curing The King's UvU, by the touch of his holy handa 
 
156 shakspebe's art. 
 
 The English King himself is thus introduced, for the 
 sake of contrast with the Scotch King, who is a raging 
 bear amongst his subjects. 
 
 In the " Winter's Tale," to which he gives the name 
 because of the altogether extraordinary character of the 
 occurrences (referring to it in the play itself, in the 
 words : "a sad tale's best for winter: I have one of 
 sprites and goblins,'') Antigonus has a remarkable dream 
 or vision, in which Hermione appears to him, and com- 
 mands the exposure of her child in a place to all 
 appearance the most unsuitable and dangerous. Con- 
 vinced of the reality of the vision, Antigonus obeys ; 
 and the whole marvellous result depends upon this 
 obedience. Therefore the vision must be intended for 
 a genuine one. But how could it be such, if Hermione 
 was not dead, as, from her appearance to him, Anti- 
 gonus firmly believed she was 1 I should feel this to 
 be an objection to the art of the play, but for the 
 following answer : — At the time she appeared to him, 
 she was still lying in that deathlike swoon, into which 
 she fell when the news of the loss of her son reached 
 her as she stood before the judgment-seat of her hus- 
 band, at a time when she ought not to have been out 
 of her chamber. 
 
 Note likewise, in the first scene of the second act of 
 the same play, the changefulness of Hermione's mood 
 with regard to her boy, as indicative of her condition 
 at the time. If we do not regard this fact, we shall 
 think the words introduced only for the sake of filling 
 up the business of the play. 
 
 In "Twelfth Night," both ladies make the first 
 
shakspere's art. 157 
 
 advances in love. Is it not worthy of notice that one 
 of them has lost her brother, and that the other believes 
 she has lost hers 1 In this respect, they may be placed 
 with Phffibe, in " As You Like It," who, having sud- 
 denly lost her love by the discovery that its object was 
 a woman, immediately and heartily accepts the devotion 
 of her rejected lover, Silvius. Along with these may 
 be classed Romeo, who, rejected and, as he believes, 
 inconsolable, falls in love with Juliet the moment he 
 sees her. That his love for Eosaline, however, was 
 but a kind of calf-love compared with his love for 
 Juliet, may be found indicated in the differing tones of 
 his speech under the differing conditions. Compare 
 what he says in his conversation with Benvolio, in the 
 first scene of the first act, with any of his many 
 speeches afterwards, and, while conceit will be found 
 prominent enough in both, the one will be found to be 
 ruled by the fancy, the other by the imagination. 
 
 In this same play, there is another similar point 
 which I should like to notice. In Arthur Brook's 
 story, from which Shakspere took his, there is no 
 mention of any communication from Lady Capulet to 
 Juliet of their intention of marrying her to Count 
 Paris. Why does Shakspere insert this? — to explain 
 her falling in love with Romeo so suddenly. Her 
 mother has set her mind moving in that direction. 
 She has never seen Paris. She is looking about her, 
 wondering which may be he, and whether she shall be 
 able to like him, when she meets the love-fiUed eyes of 
 Romeo fixed upon her, and is at once overcome. 
 
 What a significant speech is that given to Paulina 
 
158 shakspere's art. 
 
 in the " Winter's Tale," act v. scene 1 : " How ? Not 
 women?" Paulina is a thoroiigli partisan, siding with 
 women against men, and strengthened in this by the 
 treatment her mistress has received from her hus- 
 band. One has just said to her, that, if Perdita would 
 begin a sect, she might "make proselytes of who she 
 bid but follow." "How"? Not women?" Paulina 
 rejoins. Having received assurance that " women will 
 love her," she has no more to say. 
 
 I had the following explanation of a line in '* Twelfth 
 Nigl^t " from a stranger I met in an old book-shop : — ■ 
 Malvolio, having built his castle in the air, proceeds to 
 inhabit it. Describing his own behaviour in a supposed 
 case, he says (act ii. scene 5) : "I frown the while ; and 
 perchance, wind up my watch, or play with my some 
 rich jeweL" — A dash ought to come after mij. Mah'olio 
 was about to say chain; but remembering that his 
 chain was the badge of his office of steward, and there- 
 fore of his servitude, he alters the word to " some ncli 
 jewel" uttered with pretended carelessness. 
 
 In " Hamlet," act iii. scene 1, did not Shakspere in- 
 tend the passionate soliloquy of Ophelia — a soliloquy 
 which no maiden knowing that she was overheard would 
 have uttered, — coupled with the words of her father : 
 
 " How now, Ophelia ? 
 You need not tell us what lord Hamlet said, 
 We heard it all ;"— 
 
 to indicate that, weak as Ophelia was, she was not false 
 enough to be accomplice in any plot for betraying 
 Hamlet to her father and the King? They had 
 
shakspere's art. 159 
 
 remained behind the arras, and had not gone out as she 
 must have supposed. 
 
 Next, let me request my reader to refer once more 
 to the poem ; and having considered the physiognomy 
 of Ajax and Ulysses, as described in the fifth stanza, 
 to turn then to the play of " Troilus and Cressida," 
 and there contemplate that description as metamor- 
 phosed into the higher form of revelation in speech. 
 Then, if he will associate the general principles in that 
 stanza with the third, especially the last two lines, I 
 will apply this to the character of Lady Macbeth. 
 
 Of course, Shakspere does not mean that one regard- 
 ing that portion of the picture alone, could see the eyes 
 looking sad ; but that the sweet ohaervance of the whole 
 so roused the imagination that it supplied what distance 
 had concealed, keeping the far-off likewise in sweet 
 observance with the whole : the rest pointed that Avay. 
 — In a manner something like this are we conducted 
 to a right understanding of the character of Lady 
 Macbeth. First put together these her utterances : 
 
 "You do unbend your noble strength, to think 
 So brainsickly of things." 
 
 " Get some water, 
 And wash this filthy witness from your hands.*' 
 
 " The sleeping and the dead 
 Are but as pictures.** 
 
 ** A little water clears us of this deed.** 
 
 " When all's done, 
 You look but on a stool." 
 
 ** You lack the season of all natures, sleep.**— 
 
160 SHAKSrERE's ART. 
 
 Had these passages stood in the play unmodified by 
 others, we might have judged from them that Shakspere 
 intended to represent Lady Macbeth as an utter 
 materialist, believing in nothing beyond the immediate 
 communications of the senses. But when we find them 
 associated with such passages as these — 
 
 " Memory, the warder of the brain, 
 Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason 
 A limbeck only ;" 
 
 " Had he not resembled 
 My father as he slept, I had done't j 
 
 " These deeds must not be thought 
 After these ways ; so, it will make us mad ;'* — 
 
 then we find that our former theory will not do, for 
 here are deeper and broader foundations to build 
 upon. We discover that Lady Macbeth was an un- 
 believer morally J and so found it necessary to keep 
 down all imagination, which is the upheaving of that 
 inward world whose very being she would have anni- 
 hilated. Yet out of this world arose at last the 
 phantom of her slain self, and possessing her sleeping 
 frame, sent it out to wander in the night, and rub its 
 distressed and blood-stained hands in vain. For, as in 
 this same " Rape of Lucrece," 
 
 " the soul's fair temple is defaced j 
 To whose weak ruins muster troops of cares, 
 To ask the spotted princess how she fares.** 
 
 But when so many lines of delineation meet, and 
 ran into, and correct one another, assuming such a 
 natoial and vital form, that there is no making of a point 
 
shakspere's art. 161 
 
 anywhere ; arid the woman is shown after no theory, 
 but according to the natural laws of human declen- 
 sion, we feel that the only way to account for the 
 perfection of the representation is to say that, given 
 a shadow, Shakspere had the power to place himself 
 so, that that shadow became his own — was the correct 
 representation as shadow, of his form coming between 
 it and the sunlight. And this is the highest dramatic 
 gift that a man can possess. But we feel at the 
 same time, that this is, in the main, not so much 
 art as inspiration. There woidd be, in all probability, 
 a great mingling of conscious art with the inspiration ; 
 but the lines of the former being lost in the geneml 
 glow of the latter, we may be left where we were as to 
 any certainty about the artistic consciousness of Shak- 
 spere. I will now therefore attempt to give a few 
 plainer instances of such sweet observance in his own 
 work as he would have admired in a painting. 
 
 First, then, I woidd request my reader to think how 
 comparatively seldom Shakspere uses poetry in his 
 plays. The whole play is a poem in the highest sense ; 
 but truth forbids him to make it the rule for his 
 characters to speak poetically. Their speech is poetic 
 in relation to the whole and the end, not in relation to 
 the speaker, or in the immediate utterance. And even 
 although their speech is immediately poetic, in this 
 sense, that every character is idealized ; yet it is idealized 
 after its Hnd ; and poetry certainly would not be the 
 ideal speech of most of the characters. This granted, 
 let us look at the exceptions ; we shall find that such 
 passages not only glow with poetic loveliness and fervour, 
 
 M 
 
162 shakspere's are. 
 
 but are very jewels of s?red observance, whose setting 
 allows them their force as lawful, and their prominence 
 as natural. I will mention a few of such. 
 
 In " Julius CaBsar," act i. scene 3, we are inclined to 
 think the way Casca speaks, quite inconsistent with 
 the " sour fashion " which Cassius very justly attributes 
 to him ; till we remember that he is speaking in the 
 midst of an almost supernatural thunder-storm : the 
 hidden electricity of the man's nature comes out in 
 poetic forms and words, in response to the wild outburst 
 of the overcharged heavens and earth. 
 
 • Sli ikspere invariably makes the dying speak poetic- 
 rdly, and generally prophetically, recognizing the identity 
 of the poetic and prophetic moods, in their highest 
 development, and the justice that gives them the same 
 name. l'>ven Sir John, poor ruined gentleman, babbles 
 of green fields. Every one knows that the passage is 
 disputed : I believe that if this be not the restoration 
 of the original reading, Shakspere himself would justify 
 it, and wish that he had so written it. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet talk poetry as a matter of course. 
 
 In " King John," act v. scenes 4 and 5, see how 
 differently the dying Melun and the living and vic- 
 torious Lewis regard the same sunset : * 
 
 Melun. 
 
 this night, whose black contagions breath 
 
 Already smokes about the burning crest 
 Of the old, feeble, and day- wearied sun. 
 
 Lewis. 
 The sun of heaven, methought, was loath to Bet| 
 But stayed, and made the western welkin blush, 
 When the English measured backward their own ground. 
 
shakspeee's art. 163 
 
 The exquisite duet between Lorenzo and Jessica^ in 
 the opening of the fifth act of " The Merchant of 
 Venice," finds for its subject the circumstances that 
 produce the mood — the lovely night and the crescent 
 moon— which first make them talk poetry, then call for 
 music, and next speculate upon its nature. 
 
 Let us turn now to some instances of sweet obser- 
 vance in other kinds. 
 
 There is- observance, more true than sweet, in the 
 character of Jacques, in "As You Like It :" the fault- 
 finder in age was the fault-doer in youth and manhood. 
 Jacques patronizing the fool, is one of the rarest shows 
 of self-ignorance. 
 
 In the same play, when Rosalind hears that Orlando 
 is in the wood, she cries out, " Alas the day ! what 
 shall I do with my doublet and hose?" And when 
 Orlando asks her, " Where dwell you, pretty youth?" 
 she answers, tripping in her role, " Here in the skirts 
 of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat." 
 
 In the second part of " King Henry lY.,** act iv. 
 scene 3, Falsta;§ says of Prince John : " Good faith, this 
 same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor 
 a man cannot make him laugh ; — but that's no marvel : 
 he drinks no wine," This is the Prince JoJin who 
 betrays the insurgents afterwards by the falsest of 
 quibbles, and gains his revenge through their good 
 faith. 
 
 In " Kiag Henry IV.," act i. scene 2, Poins does 
 not say Falstaff is a coward like the other two ; but 
 only— " If he fight longer than he sees reason, I'll for- 
 swear arms." Associate this with FdLstajf^s soliloquy 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 about honour in the same play, act v. scene 1, and the 
 true character of his courage or cowardice— for it may 
 bear either name — comes out. 
 
 Is there not conscious art in representing the hospit- 
 able face of the castle of Macbeth, bearing on it a 
 homely welcome in the multitude of the nests of the 
 temple-haunting martlet (Psalm Ixxxiv. 3), just as Lady 
 Macbeth J the fiend-soul of the house, steps from the 
 door, like the speech of the building, with her falsely 
 smiled welcome ? Is there not observance in it 1 
 
 But the production of such instances might be end- 
 less, as the work of Shakspere is infinite. I confine 
 myself to two more, taken from "The Merchant of 
 Venice." 
 
 Shakspere requires a character capable of the mag- 
 nificent devotion of friendship which the old story 
 attributes to Antonio. He therefore introduces us to 
 a man sober even to sadness, thoughtful even to 
 melancholy. The first words of the play unveil this 
 characteristic. He holds " the world but as the 
 world,"— 
 
 ** A stage where every man must play a part, 
 And mine a sad one." 
 
 The cause of this sadness we are left to conjecture. 
 Antonio himself professes not to know. But such a 
 disposition, even if it be not occasioned by any definite 
 event or object, will generally associate itself with 
 one ; and when Antonio is accused of being in love, 
 he repels the accusation with only a sad " Fie ! fie ! " 
 This, and his whole character, seem to me to point to 
 an old but ever cherished grief. 
 
SHAKSPERT S ART. 165 
 
 Into the original story upon which this play ia 
 founded, Shakspere has, among other variations, in- 
 troduced the story of Jessica and Lorenzo^ apparently 
 altogether of his own invention. What was his ohject 
 in doing so ? Surely there were characters and interests 
 enough already ! — It seems to me that Shakspere 
 douhted whether the Jew would have actually pro- 
 ceeded to carry out his fell design against Antonio^ upon 
 the original ground of his hatred, without the further 
 incitement to revenge afforded hy another passion, 
 second only to his love of gold— his affection for his 
 daughter ; for in the Jew having reference to his o^vn 
 property, it had risen to a passion. Shakspere there- 
 fore invents her, that he may send a dog of a Christian 
 to steal her, and, yet worse, to tempt her to steal her 
 father's stones and ducats. I suspect Shakspere sends 
 the old villain off the stage at the last with more of the 
 pity of the audience than any of the other dramatists 
 of the time would have ventured to rouse, had they 
 been capable of doing so. I suspect he is the only 
 human Jew of the English drama up to that time. 
 
 I have now arrived at the last and most important 
 stage of my argument. It is this : If Shakspere was 
 so weU aware of the artistic relations of the parts of 
 his drama, is it likely that the grand meanings involved 
 in the whole were unperceived by him, and conveyed 
 to us without any intention on his part - had their origin 
 only in the fact that he dealt with human nature so 
 truly, that his representations must involve whatever 
 lessons human life itself involves % 
 
 1b there no intention, for instance, in placing Pros- 
 
166 
 
 pero^ who forsouk the duties of his dukedom for the 
 study of magic, in a desert island, with just three 
 subjects ; one, a monster below humanity ; the second, 
 a creature etherealized beyond it ; and the third a 
 complete embodiment of human perfection 1 Is it not 
 that he may learn how to rule, and, having learned, 
 return, by the aid of his magic wisely directed, to the 
 home and duties from which exclusive devotion to 
 that magic had driven him % 
 
 In " Julius Caesar," the death of Brutus, while fol- 
 lowing as the consequence of his murder of CcesaVj is 
 yet as much distinguished in character from that death, 
 as the character of Brutus is different from that of 
 Ccesar. Ccesar's last words were Et tu Brute ? Bnitm, 
 when resolved to lay violent hands on himself, takes 
 leave of his friends with these words : 
 
 " Countrymen, 
 My heart doth joy, that yet, in all my life, 
 I found no man, but he was true to me." 
 
 Here Shakspere did not invent. He found both 
 speeches in Plutarch. But how unerring his choice ! 
 
 Is the final catastrophe in " Hamlet " such, because 
 Shakspere could do no better 1 — It is : he could do 
 no better than the best. Where but in the regions 
 beyond could such questionings as Hamlcfs be put to 
 rest 1 It would have been a fine thing indeed for the 
 most nobly perplexed of thinkers to be left — his love 
 in the grave ; the memory of his father a torment, of 
 his mother a blot ; with innocent blood on his inno- 
 cent hands, and but half understood by his best friend 
 
shakspere's art. 167 
 
 — to ascend in desolate dreariness the contemptible 
 height of the degraded throne, and shine the first in a 
 drunken court ! 
 
 Before bringing forward my last instance, I will 
 direct the attention of my readers to a passage, in 
 another play, in which the lesson of the play I am 
 about to speak of, is directly taught : the first speech 
 in the second act of " As You Like It," might be made 
 a text for the exposition of the whole play of " King 
 Lear." 
 
 The banished duke is seeking to bring his courtiers 
 to regard their exile as a part of their moral training. 
 I am aware that I point the passage difi'erently, while 
 I revert to the old text. 
 
 •* Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envioua court f 
 Here feel we not the penalty of Adam — 
 The season's difference, as the icy fang, 
 And churlish chiding of the winter's wind P 
 Which, when it bites and blows upon my body^ 
 Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say— • 
 This is no flattery ; these are counsellors 
 That feelingly persuade me what I am. 
 Sweet are the uses of adrersity." 
 
 The line Here feel ice not the penalty of Adam f has 
 given rise to much perplexity. The expounders of 
 SliaksjDere do not believe he can mean that the uses of 
 adversity are really sweet. But the duke sees that 
 tlie penalty of Adam is what makes the woods more 
 free from p&ril than the emnous court; that this 
 penalty is in fact the best blessing, for it feelingly 
 permades man what he is ; and to know what we axe, 
 
168 siiakspeee's aet. 
 
 to have no false judgments of ourselves, he considers 
 so sweet, that to be thus taught, the churlish chiding 
 of the icinter^s wind is well endured. 
 
 Now let us turn to Lear. We find in him an old 
 man with a large heart, hungry for love, and yet not 
 knowing what love is ; an old man as ignorant as a 
 child in all matters of high import ; with a temper so 
 unsubdued, and therefore so unkingly, that he storms 
 because his dinner is not ready by the clock of his 
 hunger ; a child, in short, in everything but his grey 
 hairs and wrinkled face, but his failing, instead of 
 growing, strength. K a life end so, let the success of 
 that life be otherwise what it may, it is a wretched and 
 unworthy end. But let Lear be blown by the winds 
 and beaten by the rains of heaven, till he pities " poor 
 naked wretches ;" tiU he feels that he has " ta'en too 
 little care of " such ; tiU pomp no longer conceals from 
 him what *' a poor, bare, forked animal " he is ; and the 
 old king has risen higher in the real social scale — the 
 scale of that country to which he is bound — far higher 
 than he stood while he still held his kingdom undivided 
 to his thankless daughters. Then let him learn at last 
 that " love is the only good in the world f let him 
 find his Cordelia, and plot with her how they will 
 in their dungeon singing like birds € the cage, and, 
 dwelling in the secret place of peace, look abroad on 
 the world like God's spies ; and then let the generous 
 great old heart swell till it breaks at last — not with 
 rage and hate and vengeance, but with love ; and all is 
 well : it is time the man should go to overtake his 
 daughter ; henceforth to dwell with her in the home 
 
shakspeee's akt. 169 
 
 of the trae, the eternal, the unchangeable. All his 
 suffering came from his own fault ; but from the suffer- 
 ing has sprung another crop, not of evil but of good ; 
 the seeds of which had lain unfruitful in the soil, but 
 were brought within the blessed influences of the air 
 of heaven by the sharp tortures of the ploughshare 
 ofilL 
 
THE ELDER HAMLET. 
 
 *Tis bitter cold, 
 And I am sick at heart. 
 
 HE ghost in "Hamlet" is as faithfully 
 treated as any character in the play. 
 Next to Hamlet himself, he is to me the 
 most interesting person of the drama. 
 The rumour of his appearance is wrapped in the 
 larger rumour of war. Loud preparations for uncertain 
 attack fill the ears of " the subject of the land," The 
 state is troubled. The new king has hardly compassed 
 his election before his marriage with his brother's 
 widow swathes the court in the dust-cloud of shame, 
 which the merriment of its forced revelry can do little 
 to dispel. A feeling is in the moral air to which the 
 words of Francisco, the only words of significance he 
 utters, give the key : " *Tis bitter cold, and I am sick 
 at heart." Into the frosty air, the pallid moonlight, 
 the drunken shouts of Claudius and his court, the 
 bellowing of the cannon from the rampart for the 
 enlargement of the insane clamour that it may beat the 
 dram of its own disgrace at the portals of heaven, 
 glides the silent prisoner of hell, no longer a king of 
 the day walking about his halls, " the observed of all 
 1 1876. 
 
THE ELDER HAMLET. 171 
 
 observers," but a thrall of the night, wandering between 
 the bell and the cock, like a jailer on each side of him. 
 A poet tells the tale of the king who lost his garments 
 and ceased to be a king : here is the king who has 
 lost his body, and in the eyes of his court has ceased 
 to be a man. Is the cold of the earth's night pleasant 
 to liim after the purging fire? What crimes had the 
 honest ghost committed in his days of nature ? He 
 calls them foul crimes! Could such be his? Only 
 who can tell how a ghost, with his doubled experience, 
 ma\- think of this thing or that ? The ghost and the 
 fire may between them distinctly recognize that as a 
 foul crime which the man and the court regarded as a 
 weakness at worst, and indeed in a king laudabla 
 
 Alas, poor ghost ! Around the house he flits, 
 shifting and shadowy, over the ground he once paced 
 in ringing armour — armed still, but his very armour a 
 shadow ! It cannot keep out the arrow of the cock's 
 cry, and the heart that pierces is no shadow. Where 
 now 15 the loaded axe with which, in angry dispute, 
 he smote the ice at his feet that cracked to the blow ? 
 Where is the arm, that heaved the axe ? Wasting in 
 the marble maw of the sepulchre, and the arm he 
 carries now — I know not what it can do, but it cannot 
 slay his murderer. For that he seeks his son's. 
 Doubtless his new ethereal form has its capacities and 
 privileges. It can shift its garb at wiU ; can appear in 
 mail or night-gown, unaided of armourer or tailor ; can 
 pass through Hades-gates or chamber-door with equal 
 ease ; can work in the ground Hke mole or pioneer, and 
 let its voice be heard from the cellaiago. But tbeie It 
 
172 THE ELDER HAMLET. 
 
 one to whom it cannot appear, one wlioin the ghost 
 can see, but to whom he cannot show himself. She 
 has built a doorless, windowless wall between them, 
 and sees the husband of her youth no more. Outside 
 her heart— that is the night in which he wanders, 
 while the palace-windows are flaring, and the low wind 
 throbs to the wassail shouts : within, his murderer sits 
 by the wife of his bosom, and in the orchard the spilt 
 poison is yet gnawing at the roots of the daisies. 
 
 Twice has the ghost grown out of the night upon 
 the eyes of the sentinels. With solemn march, slow 
 and stately, three times each night, has he walked by 
 them ; they, jellied with fear, have uttered no challenge. 
 They seek Horatio, who the third night speaks to him 
 as a scholar can. To the first challenge he makes no 
 answer, but stalks away ; to the second, 
 
 It lifted up its head, and did address 
 Itself to motion, like as it would speak j 
 
 but the gaoler cock calls him, and the kingly shape 
 
 started like a guilty thing 
 Upon a fearful summons ; _ 
 
 and then 
 
 shrunk in haste away, 
 And vanished from our sight. 
 
 Ah, that summons ! at which majesty welks and 
 shrivels, the king and soldier starts and cowers, and, 
 armour and aU, withers from the air ! 
 
 But why has he not spoken before? why not now 
 ere the cock could claim him 1 He cannot trust the 
 men. His court has f oisaken his memoiy — crowds 
 
THE ELDEK HAMLET. 173 
 
 with as eager discontent about the mildewed ear as 
 ever about his wholesome brother, and how should he 
 trust mere sentinels ? There is but one who will heed 
 his tale. A word to any other would but defeat his 
 intent. Out of the multitude of courtiers and subjects, 
 in all the land of Denmark, there is but one whom he 
 can trust — his student-son. Him he has not yet found 
 — ^the condition of a ghost involving strange difficulties. 
 
 Or did the horror of the men at the sight of him 
 wound and repel himi Does the sense of regal 
 dignity, not yet exhausted for all the fasting in fires, 
 unite with that of grievous humiliation to make him 
 shun their speech ? 
 
 But Horatio — why does the ghost not answer him 
 ere the time of the cock is come ? Does he fold the 
 cloak of indignation around him because his son's 
 friend has addressed him as an 'intruder on the night, 
 an usurper of the form that is his -own? The com- 
 panions of the speaker take note that he is offended 
 and stalks away. 
 
 Much has the kingly ghost to endure in his attempt 
 to reopen relations with the world he has left : when 
 he has overcome his wrath and returns, that moment 
 Horatio again insults him, calling him an illusion. 
 But this time he will bear it, and opens his mouth to 
 speak. It is too late ; the cock is awake, and he must 
 go. Then alas for the buried majesty of Denmark ! 
 with upheaved halberts they strike at the shadow, and 
 would stop it if they might — usage so grossly unfitting 
 that they are instantly ashamed of it themselves, recog- 
 nizing the offence in the majesty of the offended. But 
 
174 THE ELDER HAMLET. 
 
 he is already gone. The proud, angry king has found 
 himself but a thing of nothing to his body-guard— for 
 he has lost the body which was their guard. Still, not 
 even yet has he learned how little it lies in the power 
 of an honest ghost to gain credit for himself or his tale ! 
 His very privileges are against him. 
 
 All this time his son is consuming his heart in the 
 knowledge of a mother capable of so soon and so utterly 
 forgetting such a husband, and in pity and sorrow for 
 the dead father who has had such a wife. He is thirty 
 years of age, an obedient, honourable son - a man of 
 thought, of faith, of aspiration. Him now the ghost 
 seeks, his heart burning like a coal with the sense of 
 ■unendurable wrong. He is seeking the one drop -that 
 can fall cooling on that heart -the sympathy, the 
 answering rage and grief of his boy. But when at 
 length he finds him, the generous, loving father has to 
 see that son tremble like an aspen-leaf in his doubtful 
 presence. He has exposed himself to the shame of 
 eyes and the indignities of dullness, that he may pour 
 the pent torrent of his wrongs into his ears, but his 
 disfranchisement from the flesh tells against him 
 even with his son : the young Hamlet is doubtful of 
 the identity of the apparition with his father. After 
 all the burning words of the phantom, the spirit he 
 has seen may yet be a devil ; the devil has power to 
 assume a pleasing shape, and is perhaps taking advan- 
 tage of his melancholy to damn him. 
 
 Armed in the complete steel of a suit well known 
 to the eyes of the sentinels, visionary none the less, 
 with useless truncheon in hand, resuming the memory 
 
THE ELDEK HAMLET. 175 
 
 of old martial habits, but with quiet countenance, more 
 in sorrow than in anger, troubled— not now with the 
 thought of the hell-day to which he must sleepless 
 return, but with that unceasing ache at the heart, which 
 ever, as often as he is released into the cooling air of 
 the upper world, draws him back to the region of his 
 wrongs — where having fallen asleep in his orchard, in 
 sacred security and old custom, suddenly, by cruel 
 assault, he was flung into Hades, where horror upon 
 horror awaited him — worst horror of all, the knowledge 
 of his wife ! — armed he comes, in shadowy armour but 
 how real sorrow ! Still it is not pity he seeks from his 
 son: he needs it not — he can endure. There is no 
 weakness in the ghost. It is but to the imperfect 
 human sense that he is shadowy. To himself lie knows 
 his doom his deliverance ; that the heU in which he 
 finds himself shall endure but until it has burnt up the 
 hell he has found within him — until the evil he was 
 and is capable of shall have dropped from him into the 
 lake of fire ; he nerves himself to bear. And the cry 
 of revenge that comes from the sorrowful lips is the 
 cry of a king and a Dane rather than of a wronged 
 man. It is for public justice and not individual ven- 
 geance he caUs. He cannot endure that the royal bed 
 of Denmark should be a couch for luxury and damned 
 incest. To stay this he would bring the murderer to 
 justice. There is a worse wrong, for which he seeks 
 no revenge : it involves his wife ; and there comes in 
 love, and love knows no amends but amendment, seeks 
 only the repentance tenfold more needful to the wronger 
 than the wronged. It is not alone the father's care for 
 
176 THE ELDER HAMLET. 
 
 the human nature of his son that warns him to take no 
 measures against his mother ; it is the husband's ten- 
 derness also for her who once lay in his bosom. The 
 murdered brother, the dethroned king, the dishonoured 
 husband, the tormented sinner, is yet a gentle ghost. 
 Has suffering already begun to make him, like Pro- 
 metheus, wise? 
 
 But to measure the gentleness, the forgiveness, the 
 tenderness of the ghost, we must well understand his 
 wrongs. The murder is plain ; but there is that which 
 went before and is worse, yet is not so plain to every 
 eye that reads the story. There is that without which 
 the murder had never been, and which, therefore, is a 
 cause of all the wrong. For listen to what the ghost 
 reveals when at length he has withdrawn his son that 
 he may speak with him alone, and Hamlet has fore- 
 stalled the disclosure of the murderer : 
 
 "Ay, tliat incestuous, that adulterate beast, 
 "With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, 
 (0 wicked wit and gifts that have the power 
 So to seduce !) won to his shameful lust 
 The will of my most seeming virtuous queen : 
 Oh, Hamlet, what a falling oif was there ! 
 From me, whose love was of that dignity 
 That it went hand in hand even with the vow 
 I made to her in marriage, and to decline 
 Upon a wretch, whose natural gifts were poor 
 To those of mine ! 
 
 But virtue — as it never will be moved 
 Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaveii. 
 So lust, though to a radiant angel linked, 
 Will sate itself in a celestial bed. 
 And prey on garbage." 
 
 Beading this passage, can any one doubt that the 
 
THE ELDEK HAMLET. 177 
 
 ghost charges his late wife with adultery, as the root 
 of all his woes 1 It is true that, obedient to the ghost's 
 injunctions, as well as his own filial instincts, Hamlet 
 accuses his mother of no more than was patent to all 
 the world; but unless we suppose the ghost misinformed 
 or mistaken, we must accept this charge. And had 
 Gertrude not yielded to the witchcraft of Claudius' 
 wit, Claudius would never have murdered Hamlet. 
 Through her his life was dishonoured, and his death 
 violent and premature : unhuzled, disappointed, un- 
 aneled, he woke to the air — not of his orchard-blossoms, 
 but of a prison-house, the lightest word of whoso 
 terrors would freeze the blood of the listener. What 
 few men can say, he could — that his love to his wife 
 had kept even step with the vow he made to her in 
 marriage ; and his son says of him — 
 
 ** so loving to my mother 
 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
 Yisit hor face too roughly ;" 
 
 and this was her return ! Yet is it thus he charges his 
 son concerning her : 
 
 " But howsoever thou pursu'st this act, 
 Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive 
 Against thy mother aught ; leave her to heaven, 
 And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, 
 To prick and sting her." 
 
 And may we not suppose it to be for her sake in part 
 that the ghost insists, with fourfold repetition, upon 
 a sword-sworn oath to silence from Horatio and Mar- 
 cellus ? 
 
 Only once again does he show himself — not now in 
 
178 THE ELDER HAMLET 
 
 armour upon the walls, but in his gown and in his 
 
 wife's closet. 
 
 Ever since his first appearance, that is, all the time 
 filling the interval between the first and second acts, 
 we may presume him to have haunted the palace un- 
 seen, waiting what his son would do. But the task 
 has been more difficult than either had supposed. The 
 ambassadors have gone to ISTorway and returned ; but 
 Hamlet has done nothing. Probably he has had no 
 opportunity; certainly he has had no clear vision of 
 duty. But now all through the second and third acts, 
 together occupjdng, it must be remembered, only one 
 day, something seems imminent. The play has been 
 acted, and Hamlet has gained some assurance, yet the 
 one chance presented of killing the king — at his 
 prayers— he has refused. He is now in his mother's 
 closet, whose eyes he has turned into her very souL 
 There, and then, the ghost once more appears — come, 
 he says, to whet his son's almost blunted purpose. 
 But, as I have said, he does not know all the dis- 
 advantages of one who, having forsaken the world, has 
 yet business therein to which he would persuade ; he 
 does not know how hard it is for a man to give credence 
 to a ghost ; how thoroughly he is justified in delay, and 
 the demand for more perfect proof. He does not know 
 what good reasons his son has had for uncertainty, or 
 how much natural and righteous doubt has had to do 
 with what he takes for the blunting of his purpose. 
 Neither does he know how much more tender his son's 
 conscience is than his own, or how necessary it is to 
 him to be sure before he acts. As little perhaps does 
 
THE ELDER HAMLET. 179 
 
 he tmderstand how hateful to Hamlet is the task laid 
 upon him — the killing of one wretched villain in the 
 midst of a corrupt and contemptible court, one of a 
 world of whose women his mother may he the type ! 
 
 Whatever the main object of the ghost's appearance, 
 he has spoken but a few words concerning the matter 
 between him and Hamlet, when he turns abruptly from 
 it to plead with his son for his wife. The ghost sees 
 and mistakes the terror of her looks ; imaguies that, 
 either from some feeling of his presence, or from the 
 power of Hamlet's words, her conscience is thoroughly 
 roused, and that her vision, her conception of the facts, 
 is now more than she can bear. She and her fighting 
 soul are at odds. She is a kingdom divided against 
 itself. He fears the consequences. He would not have 
 her go mad. He would not have her die yet. Even 
 while ready to start at the summons of that hell to 
 which she has sold him, he forgets his vengeance on 
 her seducer in his desire to comfort her. He dares 
 not, if he could, manifest himself to her : what 
 word of consolation could she hear from Ms lips 1 Is 
 not the thought of him her one despair? He turns 
 to his son for help : he cannot console his wife ; his 
 son must take his place. Alas ! even now he thinks 
 better of her than she deserves ; for it is only the fancy 
 of her son's madness that is terrifying her : he gazes 
 on the apparition of which she sees nothing, and 
 from his looks she anticipates an ungovernable out- 
 break. 
 
 " But look ; amazement on tliy mother sits I 
 Oh ; step between her and her fighting soul 
 N 2 
 
180 THE ELDEE HAMLET 
 
 Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. 
 Speak CO her, Hamlet." 
 
 The call to his son to soothe his wicked mother is 
 the ghost's last utterance. For a few moments, sadly 
 regardful of the two, he stands — while his son seeks 
 in vain to reveal to his mother the presence of his 
 father- a few moments of piteous action, all but ruining 
 the remnant of his son's sorely-harassed self-possession 
 — his whole concern his wife's distress, and neither his 
 own doom nor his son's duty; then, as if lost in 
 despair at the impassable gulf betwixt them, revealed 
 by her utter incapacity for even the imagination of his 
 proximity, he turns away, and steals out at the portaL 
 Or perhaps he has heard the black cock crow, and is 
 wanted beneath : his turn has come. 
 
 Will the fires ever cleanse lier ? Will his love ever 
 lift him above the pain of its loss ? Will eternity ever 
 bo bliss, ever be endurable to poor King Hamlet ? 
 
 Alas ! even the memory of the poor ghost is insulted. 
 Night after night on the stage his effigy appears — 
 cadaverous, sepulchral — no longer as Shakspere must 
 liave represented him, aerial, shadowy, gracious, the 
 thill corporeal husk of an eternal — shall I say inefface- 
 aVJe? — sorrow! It is no hollow monotone that can 
 ^i.^htly upbear such words as his, but a sound mingled 
 of distance and wind in the pine-tops, of agony and 
 love, of horror and hope and Iqss and judgment — a 
 voice of endless and sweetest inflection, yet with a 
 shuddering echo in it as from the caves of memory, 
 on whose walls are written the eternal blazon that 
 must not be to ears of flesh and blood. The spirit 
 
THE ELDEE HAMLET. 181 
 
 that can assume form at will must surely be able to 
 bend that form to completest and most delicate ex- 
 pression, and the part of the ghost in the play offers 
 work worthy of the highest artist. The would-be 
 actor takes from it vitality and motion, endowing it 
 instead with the rigidity of death, as if the soul had 
 resumed its cast-off garment, the stiffened and mouldy 
 corpse — ^whose frozen deadness it could ill model to 
 the utterance of its lively will 1 
 
ON POLISH. 
 
 Y Polish I mean a certain well-known 
 and immediately recognizable condition 
 of surface. But I must request my 
 reader to consider well what this condi- 
 on really is. For the definition of it appears to 
 to be, that condition of surface which allows the 
 luner structure of the material to manifest itself. 
 Polish is, as it were, a translucent skin, in which the 
 life of the inorganic comes to the surface, as in the 
 animal skin the animal life. Once clothed in this, the 
 iimer glories of the marble rock, of the jasper, of the 
 porphyry, leave the darkness behind, and glow into the 
 day. From the heart of the agate the mossy landscape 
 comes dreaming out. From the depth of the green 
 chrysolite looks up the eye of its gold. The " goings 
 on of life " hidden for ages under the rough bark of 
 the patient forest-trees, are brought to light ; the rings 
 of lovely shadow which the creature went on making 
 in the dark, as the oyster its opaline laminations, and 
 its tree-pearls of beautiful knots, where a beneficent 
 disease has broken the geometrical perfection of its 
 structure, gloom out in their infinite variousness. 
 
 I^or are the revelations of polish confined to things 
 having variety in their internal construction; they 
 > 1866. 
 
ON POLISH. 183 
 
 operate equally in things of homogeneous structure. 
 It is the polished ebony or jet which gives the true 
 blank, the material darkness. It is the polished steel 
 that shines keen and remorseless and cold, like that 
 luiinan justice whose symbol it is. And in the polished 
 diamond the distinctive purity is most evident; while 
 from it, I presume, will the light absorbed from the 
 sun gleam forth on the dark most plentifully. 
 
 But the mere fact that the end of polish is revela- 
 tion, can hanlly be worth setting forth except for some- 
 ulterior object, some further revelation in the fact 
 itself. — I wish to show that in the symbolic use of the 
 word the same truth is involved, or, if not involved, at 
 least suggested. But let me first make another remark 
 on the preceding definition of the word. 
 
 There is no denying that the first notion suggested 
 by the word polish is that of smoothness, which will 
 indeed be the sole idea associated with it before we 
 begin to contemplate the matter. But when we con- 
 sider Avhat things are chosen to be " clothed upon " 
 with this smoothness, then we find that the smoothness 
 is scarcely desired for its own sake, and remember 
 besides that in many materials and situations it is 
 elaborately avoided. We find that here it is sought 
 because of its faculty of enabling other things to show 
 themselves — to come to the surface. 
 
 I proceed then to examine how far my pregnant 
 interpretation of the word will apply to its figurative 
 use in two cases — Polish of Style, and Polish of 
 Manners. The two might be treated together, seeing 
 that Style may be called the manners of intellectiuil 
 
184 ON POLISH. 
 
 utterance, and Manners the style of social utterance ; 
 but it is more convenient to treat them separately. 
 
 I will begin with the Polish of Style. 
 
 It will be seen at once that if the notion of polish 
 be limited to that of smoothness, there can be little to 
 say on the matter, arid nothing worthy of being said. 
 For mere smoothness is no more a desirable quality in 
 a style than it is in a country or a countenance ; and 
 its pursuit will, result at length in the gain of the 
 monotonous and the loss of the melodious and har- 
 monious. But it is only upon worthless material that 
 polish can be mere smoothness ; and where the material 
 is not valuable, polish can be nothing but smoothness. 
 No amount of polish in a style can render the produc- 
 tion of value, except there be in it embodied thought 
 thereby revealed ; and the labour of the polish is lost. 
 Let us then take the fuller meaning of polish, and see 
 how it wiU apply to style. 
 
 If it applies, then Polish of Style will imply the 
 approximately complete revelation of the thought. It 
 will be the removal of everything that can interfere 
 between the thought of the speaker and the mind of 
 the hearer. True polish in marble or in speech reveals 
 inlying realities, and, in the latter at least, mere 
 smoothness, either of sound or of meaning, is not 
 worthy of the name. The most polished style will be 
 that which most immediately and most truly flashes 
 the meaning embodied in the utterance upon the mind 
 of the listener or reader. 
 
 "Will you then," I imagine a reader objecting^ 
 <' admit of no ornament in style I** 
 
ON POLISH. 185 
 
 ■• Assuredly," I answer, " I would admit of no oma- 
 
 ment whatever." 
 
 But let me explain what I mean by ornament. I 
 mean anything stuck in or on, like a spangle, because 
 it is pretty in itself, although it reveals nothing. 'Not 
 one such ornament can belong to a polished style. It 
 is paint, not polish. And if this is not what my ques- 
 tioner means by ornament, my answer must then be read 
 according to the differences in his definition of the 
 word. What I have said has not the least application 
 to the natural forms of beauty which thought assumes 
 in speech. Between such beauty and such ornament 
 there lies the same difference as between the overflow 
 of life in the hair, and the dressing of that loveliest of 
 utterances in grease and gold. 
 
 For, when I say that polish is the removal of every- 
 thing that comes between thought and thinking, it 
 must not be supposed that in my idea thought is only 
 of the intellect, and therefore that all forms but bare 
 intellectual forms are of the nature of ornament. As 
 well might one say that the only essential portion of 
 the human form is the bones. And every human 
 thought is in a sense a human being, has as necessarily 
 its muscles of motion, its skin of beauty, its blood of 
 feeling, as its skeleton of logic. For complete utter- 
 ance, music itself in its right proportions, sometimes 
 clear and strong, as in rhymed harmonies, sometimes 
 veiled and dim, as in the prose compositions of the 
 masters of speech, is as necessary as correctness of 
 logic, and common sense in construction. I should 
 have said conveyance rather than utterance ; for there 
 
t86 ON POLISH. 
 
 may be utterance such as to relieve the mind of th» 
 speaker with more or less of fancied communication, 
 while the conveyance of thought may be little or none ; 
 as in the speaking with tongues of the infant Church, 
 to which the lovely babblement of our children has 
 probably more than a figurative resemblance, relieving 
 their own minds, but, the interpreter not yet at his 
 post, neither instructing nor misleading any one. But 
 as the object of grown-up speech must in the main 
 be the conveyance of thought, and not the mere utter- 
 ance, everything in the style of that speech which 
 interposes between the mental eyes and the thought 
 embodied in the speech, must be polished away, that 
 the indwelling life may manifest itself. 
 
 What, then (for now we must come to the practical), 
 is the kind of thing to be polished away in order that 
 the hidden may be revealed ? 
 
 All words that can be dismissed without loss ; for 
 all such more or less obscure the meaning upon which 
 they gather. The first step towards the polishing of 
 most styles is to strike out — polish off— the useless 
 words and phrases. It is wonderful with how many 
 fewer words most things could be said that are ^aid ; 
 while the degree of certainty and rapidity with which 
 an idea is conveyed would generally be found to be in 
 an inverse ratio to the number of words employed. 
 
 All ornaments so called — the nose and lip jewels of 
 fityle — ^the tattooing of the speech ; all similes that, 
 although true, give no additional insight into the 
 meaning ; everything that is only pretty and not beau- 
 tiful ; all mere sparkle as of jewels that lose their own 
 
OK POLISH. 187 
 
 beauty by being set in the grandeur of statues or the 
 dignity of monumental stone, must be ruthlessly 
 polished away. 
 
 All utterances which, however they may add to the 
 amount of thought, distract the mind, and confuse its 
 observation of the main idea, the essence or life of the 
 book or paper, must be diligently refused. In the 
 manuscript of Comus there exists, cancelled but 
 legible, a passage of which I have the best authority for 
 saying that it would have made the poetic fame of any 
 writer. But the grand old self- denier struck it out of 
 the opening speech because that would be more polished 
 without it — because the Attendant Spirit would say 
 more immediately and exclusively, and therefore more 
 completely, what he had to say, without it. — All this 
 applies much more widely and deeply in the region of 
 art ; but I am at present dealing with the surface of 
 style, not with the round of result. 
 
 I have one instance at hand, however, belonging to 
 this region, than which I could scarcely produce a more 
 apt illustration of my thesis. One of the greatest of 
 living painters, walking with a friend through the late 
 Exhibition of Art-Treasures at Manchester, came upon 
 Albert Diirer's Melancholia, After looking at it for a 
 moment, he told his friend that now for the first time 
 he understood it, and proceeded to set forth what he 
 saw in it. It was a very early impression, and the 
 delicacy of the lines was so much the greater. He had 
 never seen such a perfect impression before, and had 
 never perceived the intent and scope of the engraving. 
 The mere lemoyal of accidental thickness and furriness 
 
188 O-N^ POLISH. 
 
 in the lines of the drawing enabled him to see into the 
 meaning of that wonderful production. The polish 
 brought it to the surface. Or, what amounts to the 
 same thing for my argument, the duUing of the surface 
 had concealed it even from his experienced eyes. 
 
 In fine, and more generally, all cause whatever of 
 obscurity must be polished away. There may lie in 
 the matter itself a darkness of colour and texture which 
 no amount of polishing can render clear or even vivid ; 
 the thoughts themselves may be hard to think, and 
 difficulty must not be confounded with obscurity. The 
 former belongs to the thoughts themselves ; the latter 
 to the mode of their embodiment. AU cause of 
 obscurity in this must, I say, be removed. Such may 
 lie even in the region of grammar, or in the mere 
 arrangement of a sentence. And while, as I have said, 
 no ornament is to be allowed, so all roughnesses, which 
 irritate the mental ear, and so far incapacitate it for 
 receiving a true impression of the meaning from the 
 words, must be carefuUy reduced. For the true music 
 of a sentence, belonging as it does to the essence of the 
 thought itself, is the herald which goes before to pre- 
 pare the mind for the following thouglit, calming the 
 surface of the intellect to a mirror-like reflection of tlie 
 image about to fall upon it. But syllables that hang- 
 heavy on the tongue and grate harsh upon the ear are 
 the trumpet of discord rousing to unconscious opposition 
 and conscious rejection. 
 
 And now the consideration of the Polish of Manners 
 will lead us to some yet more important reflections. 
 Here again I must admit that the ordinary use of the 
 
ON POLISH. 189 
 
 phrase is analogous to that of the preceding ; hut its 
 relations lead us deep into realities. Eor as diamond 
 alone can polish diamond, so men alone can polish 
 men ; and hence it is that it was first hy living in a 
 city (ttoAis, iwlis) that men — 
 
 "rubbed each other's angles down/* 
 
 and hecame ijolished. And while a certain amount of 
 ease with regard to ourselves and of consideration with 
 regard to others is everywhere necessary to a man's 
 I-assing as a gentleman — all unevenness of behaviour 
 resulting either from shyness or self-consciousness (in 
 the shape of awkwardness), or from overweening or 
 selfishness (in the shape of rudeness), having to be 
 polished away — true human polish must go further than 
 this. Its respects are not confined to the manners of 
 the ball-room or the dinner-table, of the club or the 
 exchange, but wherever a man may rejoice with them 
 that rejoice or weep with them that weep, he must 
 remain one and the same, as polished to the tiller of 
 the soil as to the leader of the fashion. 
 
 But how will the figure of material polish aid us any 
 further 1 How can it be said that Polish of Manners 
 is a revelation of that which is within, a calling up to 
 the surface of the hidden loveliness of the material *? 
 For do we not know that courtesy may cover contempt ; 
 that smiles themselves may hide hate ; that one who 
 will place you at his right hand when in want of your 
 uif erior aid, may scarce acknowledge your presence when 
 his necessity has gone by % And how then can polished 
 manners be a revelation of what is within ? Are they 
 
190 ON POLISH. 
 
 not the result of putting on rather than of taking off t 
 Are they not paint and varnish rather than polish 1 
 
 I must yield the answer to each of these questions ; 
 protesting, however, that with such polish I have 
 nothing to do ; for these manners are confessedly false. 
 But even where least able to mislead, they are, with 
 corresponding courtesy, accepted as outward signs of an 
 inward grace. Hence even such, by the nature of their 
 falsehood, support my position. For in what forms are 
 the colours of the paint laid upon the surface of the 
 material ? Is it not in as near imitations of the real 
 right human feelings about oneself and others as the 
 necessarily imperfect knowledge of such an artist can 
 produce ? He will not encounter the labour of polish- 
 ing, for he does not believe in the divine depths of his 
 own nature : he paints, and calls the varnish polish. 
 
 " But why talk of polish with reference to such a 
 character, seeing that no amount of polishing can bring 
 to the surface what is not there? No polishing of 
 sandstone will reveal the mottling of marble. For it is 
 sandstone, crumbling and gritty— not noble in any way." 
 
 Is it so then ? Can such be the real nature of the 
 man 1 And can polish reach nothing deeper in him 
 than such 1 May not this selfishness be polished away, 
 revealing true colour and harmony beneath? Was not 
 the man made in the image of God ? Or, if you say 
 that man lost that image, did not a new process of 
 creation begin from the point of that loss, a process of 
 re-creation in him in whom aU shall be made alive, 
 which, although so far from being completed yet, can 
 never be checked 1 If we cut away deep enough at the 
 
ON POLISH. 191 
 
 rough block of our nature, shall we not arrive at some 
 
 ] ikeness of that true man who, the apostle says, dwells 
 in us — the hope of glory 1 He informs us — that is, 
 forms us from within. 
 
 Dr. Donne (who knew less than any other writer in 
 the English language what Polish of Style means) 
 recognizes this divine polishing to the fulL He says in 
 a poem called '' The Cross :" — 
 
 As perchance carvers do not faces make, 
 But that away, which hid them there, do take. 
 Let Crosses so take what hid Christ in thee, 
 And be his Image, or not his, but He. 
 
 This is no doubt a higher figure than that of polish, 
 but it is of the same kind, revealing the same truth. 
 It recognizes the fact that the divine nature lies 
 at the root of the human nature, and that the polish 
 which lets that spiritual nature shine out in the 
 simplicity of heavenly childhood, is the true Polish 
 of Manners of which all merely social refinements are 
 a poor imitation. — Whence Coleridge says that nothing 
 but religion can make a man a gentleman. — And when 
 these harmonies of our nature come to the surface, we 
 shall be indeed " lively stones," fit for building into 
 the great temple of the universe, and echoing the 
 music of creation. Dr. Donne recognizes, besides, the 
 notable fact that crosses or afflictions are the polishing 
 powers by means of which the beautiful realities of 
 human nature are brought to the surface. One can tell 
 at once by the peculiar loveliness of certain persons 
 that they have suffered. 
 
192 ON POLISH. 
 
 But, to look for a moment less profoundly into the 
 matter, liave we not known those whose best never 
 could get to the surface just from the lack of polish ? 
 —persons who, if they could only reveal the kindness 
 of their nature, would make men believe in human 
 nature, but in whom some roughness of awkwardness or 
 of shyness prevents the true self from appearing? 
 Even the dread of seeming to claim a good deed or to 
 patronize a fellow-man will sometimes spoil the last 
 touch of tenderness which would have been the final 
 polish of the act of giving, and would have revealed 
 infinite depths of human devotion. For let the truth 
 out, and it will be seen to be true. 
 
 Simplicity is the end of all Polish, as of all Art, 
 Culture, Morals, Eeligion, and Life. The Lord our 
 Grod is one Lord, and we and our brothers and sisters 
 are one Humanity, one Body of the Head. 
 
 Now to the practical ; what are we to do for the 
 polish of our manners *? 
 
 Just what I have said we must do for the polish of 
 our style. Take off; do not put on. Polish away this 
 rudeness, that awkwardness. Correct everything self- 
 assertive, which includes nine tenths of all vulgarity. 
 Imitate no one's behaviour ; that is to paint. Do not 
 think about yourself ; that is to varnish. Put what 
 is wrong right, and what is in you will show itself in 
 harmonious behaviour. 
 
 But no one can go far in this track without dis- 
 covering that true polish reaches much deeper ; that 
 the outward exists but for the sake of the inward ; and 
 that the manners, as they depend on the morals, must 
 
ON POLISH. 193 
 
 be forgotten in the morals of whicli they are but the 
 revelation. Look at the high-shouldered, ungainly 
 child in the corner : his mother tells him to go to his 
 book, and he wants to go to his play. Regard the 
 swollen lips, the skin tightened over the nose, the dis- 
 turtion of his shape, the angularity of his whole 
 appearance. Yet he is not an awkward child by 
 nature. Look at him again the moment after he has 
 given in and kissed his mother. His shoulders have 
 dropped to their place; his limbs are free from the 
 fetters that boimd them ; his motions are graceful, and 
 the one blends harmoniously with the other. He is 
 no longer thinking of himself. He has given up his 
 own way. The true childhood comes to the surface, 
 and you see what the boy is meant to be always. 
 Look at the jerkiness of the conceited man. Look at 
 the quiet fluency of motion in the modest man. Look 
 how anger itself which forgets self, which is imhating 
 and righteous, will elevate the carriage and ennoble the 
 movements. 
 
 But how far can the same rule of omission or re/ec- 
 tion be applied with safety to this deeper character — 
 the manners of the spirit ? 
 
 It seems to me that in morals too the main thing is 
 to avoid doing wrong ; for then the active spirit of life 
 in us will drive us on to the right. But on such a 
 momentous question I would not be dogmatic. Only 
 as far as regards the feelings I would say : it is of no 
 use to try to make ourselves feel thus or thus. Let us 
 tight with our wrong feelings ; let us polish away the 
 rough ugly distortions of feeling. Then the real and 
 
194 ON" POLISH. 
 
 the good will come of themselves. Or rather, to keep 
 to my figure, they will then show themselves of them- 
 selves as the natural home-produce, the indwelling 
 facts of our deepest — that is, our divine nature. 
 
 Here I find that I am sinking through my subject 
 into another and deeper— a truth, namely, which 
 should, however, he the foundation of all our building, 
 the background of all our representations : that Life is 
 at work in us — the sacred Spirit of Q-od travailing in 
 us. That Spirit has gained one end of his labour — at 
 which he can begin to do yet more for us — when he 
 has brought us to beg for the help which he has been 
 giving us all the time. 
 
 I have been regarding infinite things through the 
 medium of one limited figure, knowing that figures 
 with all their suggestions and relations could not reveal 
 them utterly. But so far as they go, these thoughts 
 raised by the word Polish and its figurative uses appear 
 to me to be most true. 
 
BROWNING'S ^'CHRISTMAS EVE." 
 OETHE says :— 
 
 " Poems are painted window panes. 
 If one looks from the square into the chnroh. 
 Dusk and dimness are his gains — 
 Sir Philistine is left in the lurch ! 
 The sight, so seen, may well enrage him. 
 Nor anything henceforth assuage him. 
 
 ** But come just inside what conceals | 
 Cross the holy threshold quite — 
 All at once 'tis rainbow-bright, 
 Device and story flash to light, 
 A gracious splendour truth reveals. 
 This to God's children is full measure, 
 It edifies and gives you pleasure ! " 
 
 This is true concerning every form in whicli truth is 
 embodied, whether it be sight or sound, geometric 
 diagram or scientiiic formula. Unintelligible, it may 
 be dismal enough, regarded from the outside ; prisma- 
 tic in its revelation of truth from within. Such is the 
 world itself, as beheld by the speculative eye ; a thing 
 of disorder, obscurity, and sadness : only the child-like 
 heart, to which the door into the divine idea is thrown 
 opt.n, can understand somewhat the secret of the 
 1 1868. 
 
 o2 
 
196 BEOWNING's " CIIEISTMAS EVE." 
 
 Almighty. In human things it is particularly true 
 of art, in which the fundamental idea seems to be the 
 revelation of the true through the beautiful But of 
 all the arts it is most applicable to poetry ; for the 
 others have more that is beautiful on the outside ; can 
 give pleasure to the senses by the form of the marble, 
 the hues of the paintiag, or the sweet sounds of the 
 music, although the heail} may never perceive the 
 meaning that lies within. But poetry, except its 
 rhythmic melody, and its scattered gleams of material 
 imagery, for which few care that love it not for its 
 own sake, has no attraction on the outside to entice 
 the passer to enter and partake of its trutL It is 
 inwards that its colours shine, within that its forms 
 move, and the sound of its holy organ cannot be heard 
 from without. 
 
 Now, if one has been able to reach the heart of a 
 poem, answering to Goethe's parabolic description ; or 
 even to discover a loop-hole, through which, from an 
 opposite point, the glories of its stained windows are 
 visible ; it is well that he should seek to make others 
 partakers in his pleasure and profit. Some who might 
 not find out for themselves, would yet be evermore 
 grateful to him who led them to tne point of vision. 
 
 I Surely if a man would help his fellow-men, he can do 
 so far more effectually by exhibiting truth than exposing 
 error, by unveiling beauty than by a critical dissection 
 of deformity. From the very nature of the things it 
 must be so. Let the true and good destroy their 
 opposites. It is only by the good and beautiful that 
 
browning's " CHEISTMAS EVE." 197 
 
 tlie evil and ugly are known It is the light that 
 makes manifest. 
 
 The poem " Christmas Eve," by Robert Browning, 
 with the accompanying poem " Easter Day," seems not 
 to have attracted fliuch notice from the readers of 
 poetry, although highly prized by a few. This is, 
 perhaps, to be attributed, in a great measure, to what 
 many would call a considerable degree of obscurity. 
 But obscurity is the appearance which to a first glance 
 may be presented either by profundity or carelessness 
 of thought. To some, obscurity itself is attractive, 
 from the hope that worthiness is the cause of it. To 
 apply a test similar to that by which Pascal tries the 
 Koran and the Scriptui*es : what is the character of 
 those portions, the meaning of which is plain ? Are 
 they wise or foolish 1 If the former, the presumption 
 is that the obscurity of other parts is caused not by 
 opacity, but profundity. But some will object, not- 
 withstanding, that a writer ought to make himself 
 plain to his readers ; nay, that if he has a clear idea 
 himself, he must be able to express that idea clearly. 
 
 ■ But for communion of thought, two minds, not one, 
 are necessary. The fault may lie in him that receives 
 or in him that gives, or it may be in neither. For 
 how can the result of much thought, the idea which 
 for months has been shaping itself in the mind of one 
 man, be at once received by another mind to which it 
 
 ji comes a stranger and unexpected 1 The reader has no 
 right to complain of so caused obscurity. Nor is that I 
 form of expression, which is most easily understood at I 
 first sight, necessarily the best It will not, therefore, 
 
198 BBOWNING*S " CHRISTMAS EVE.^' 
 
 continue to move ; nor will it gather force and influence 
 
 with more intimate acquaintance. Here Goethe's little 
 parable, as he calls it, is peculiarly applicable. But, 
 indeed, if after all a writer is obscure, the man who 
 has spent most labour in seeking to enter into his 
 thoughts, will be the least likely to complain of his 
 obscurity ; and they who have the least difficulty in 
 understanding a writer, are frequently those who 
 understand him the least. 
 
 To those to whom the religion of Christ has been 
 the law of liberty ; who by that door have entered into 
 the universe of God, and have begun to feel a growing 
 delight in all the manifestations of God, it is cause of 
 much joy to find that, whatever may be the position 
 taken by men of science, or by those in whom the 
 intellect predominates, with regard to the Christian 
 religion, men of genius, at least, in virtue of what is 
 child-like in their nature, are, in the present time, 
 plainly manifesting deep devotion to Christ. There 
 are exceptions, certainly ; but even in those, there are 
 symptoms of feelings which, one can hardly help 
 thinking, tend towards him, and will one day flame 
 forth in conscious worship. A mind that recognizes 
 any of the multitudinous meanings of the revelation of 
 God, in the world of sounds, and forms, and colours, 
 cannot be blind to the higher manifestation of God in 
 common humanity ; nqr to him in whom is hid the 
 key to the whole, the First-bom of the creation of 
 God, in whose heart lies, as yet but partially developed, 
 the kingdom of heaven, which is the redemption of 
 the earth. The mind that delights in that which is 
 
CHRISTMAS EVE." 199 
 
 lofty and great, which feels there is something higher 
 than self, will undoubtedly be drawn towards Christ ; 
 and they, who at first looked on him as a great 
 prophet, came at length to perceive that he Mas the 
 radiation of the Father's glory, the likeness of his 
 unseen being. 
 
 A description of the poem may, perhaps, both in- 
 duce to the reading of it, and contribute to its easier 
 comprehension while being perused. On a stormy 
 Christmas Eve, the poet, or rather the seer (for the 
 whole must be regarded as a poetic vision), is com- 
 pelled to take refuge in the " lath and plaster entry " 
 of a little chapel, belonging to a congregation of Cal- 
 vinistic Methodists, who are at the time assembling for 
 worship. Wonderful in its reality is the description 
 of various of the flock that pass him as they enter the 
 chapel, from 
 
 " the raany-tattered 
 
 Little old-fiwjed, peaking sister-turned-mother 
 
 Of the sickly babe she tried to smother 
 
 Somehow up, with its spotted face, 
 
 From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place :** 
 
 to the " shoemaker's lad ;" whom he follows, determined 
 not to endure the inquisition of their looks any longer, 
 into the chapel. The humour of the whole scene within 
 is excellent. The stifling closeness, both of the atmo- 
 sphere and of the sermon, the wonderful content of the 
 audience, the " old fat woman," who 
 
 " purred with pleasure. 
 And thumb round thumb went twirling faster. 
 While she, to his periods keeping measure, 
 Maternally devoured the pastor }" 
 
200 BEOWKING's "CHRISTMAS EVE,'* 
 
 are represented by a few rapid touches that bring certain 
 points of the reality almost unpleasantly near. At 
 length, unable to endure it longer, he rushes out into 
 the air. Objection may, probably, be made to »the 
 mingling of the humorous, even the ridiculous, with 
 the serious ; at least, in a work of art .like this, where 
 they must be brought into such close proximity. But 
 are not these things as closely connected in the world 
 as they can be in any representation of it ? Surely 
 there are few who have never had occasion to attempt 
 to reconcile the thought of the two in their own minds. 
 Nor can there be anything human that is not, in some 
 connexion or other, admissible into art. The widest 
 idea of art must comprehend aU things. A work of 
 this kind must, like God's world, in which he sends 
 rain on the just and on the unjust, be taken as a whole 
 and in regard to its design. The requisition is, that 
 everything introduced have a relation to the adjacent 
 parts and to the whole suitable to the design. Here 
 the thing is real, is true, is human ; a thing to be 
 thought about. It has its place amongst other pheno- 
 mena, with which, however apparently incongruous, 
 it is yet vitally connected within. 
 
 A coolness and delight visit us, on turning over the 
 page and commencing to read the description of sky, 
 and moon, and clouds, which greet him outside the 
 chapel. It is as a vision of the vision-bearing world 
 itself, in one of its fine, though not, at first, one of its 
 rarest moods. And here a short digression to notice 
 like feelings in unlike dresses, one thought differently 
 expressed will, perhaps, be pardoned. The moon is 
 
BKOWNIKg's •■ < HiasTMAS EVE." 201 
 
 prevented from shining out by the ** blocks " of dond 
 " built up in the west :" — 
 
 ** And the empty other half of the sky 
 Seemed in its silence as if it knew 
 What, any moment, might look throngh 
 A chance-gap in that fortress massy.'* 
 
 Old Henry Yaughan says of the " Dawning :"— 
 
 " The whole Creation shakes oflF night, 
 And for thy shadow looks the Light } 
 Stars now vanish without number, 
 Sleepie Planets set and slumber, 
 The pursie Clouds disband and scatter. 
 All expect some sudden matter." 
 
 Calmness settles down on his mind. He walks on, 
 thinking of the scene he had left, and the sermon he 
 had heard. In the latter he sees the good and the bad 
 intimately mingled; and is convinced that the chief 
 benefit derived from it is a reproducing of former im- 
 pressions. The thought crosses him, in how many 
 places and how many different forms the same thing 
 takes place, "a convincing " of the "convinced ;" and 
 he rejoices in the contrast which his church presents 
 to these ; for in the church of ITature his love to God, 
 assurance of God's love to him, and confidence in the 
 design of God regarding him, commenced. While 
 exulting in God and the knowledge of Him to be 
 attained hereafter, he is favoured with a sight of a 
 glorious moon-rain 1 ow, which elevates his worship to 
 ecstasy. During which — 
 
 " All at once I looked up with terror^* 
 He was there. 
 
He himself with His human air, 
 
 On the narrow pathway, just before : 
 
 I saw the back of Him, no more — 
 
 He had left the chapel, then, as I. 
 
 I forgot all about the sky. 
 
 No face : only the sight 
 
 Of a s weepy garment, vast and white, 
 
 With a hem that I could recognize. 
 
 I felt terror, no surprise : 
 
 My mind filled with the cataract, 
 
 At one bound, of the mighty fact. 
 
 I remembered, He did say 
 
 Doubtless, that, to this world's end, 
 
 Where two or three should meet and pray. 
 
 He would be in the midst, their friend; 
 
 Certainly He was there with them. 
 
 And my pulses leaped for joy 
 
 Of the golden thought without alloy, 
 
 That I saw His very vesture's hem. 
 
 Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, 
 
 Witli a fresh enhancing shiver of fear." 
 
 Praying for forgiveness wherein he has sinned, and 
 prostrate in adoration before the form of Christ, he is 
 " caught up in the whirl and drift " of his vesture, and 
 carried along with him over the earth. 
 
 Stopping at length at the entrance of St. Peter's in 
 Rome, he remains outside, while the form disappears 
 within. He is able, however, to see all that goes on 
 in the crowded, hushed interior. It is high mass. He 
 has been carried at once from the little chapel to the 
 opposite aesthetic pole. From the entry, where — 
 
 *' The flame of the single tallow candle 
 In the cracked square lanthom I stood under 
 Shot its blue lip at me,'* 
 
"CHRISTMAS EVb/' 203 
 
 to— 
 
 ** This miraonlous dome of God — 
 This colonnade 
 With arms wide open to embrace 
 The entry of the human race 
 To the breast of ... . what is it, yon building, 
 Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, 
 With marble for brick, and stones of price 
 For garniture of the edifice ? " 
 
 to " those fountains "— 
 
 ** Growing up eternally 
 Each to a musical water-tree, 
 Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, 
 Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, 
 To the granite la vers underneath ;" 
 
 from the singing of the chapel to the organ self- 
 restrained, that " holds his breath and grovels latent," 
 while expecting the elevation of the Host. Christ is 
 within ; he is left without. Eeflecting on the matter, 
 he thinks his Lord would not require him to go in, 
 though he himself entered, because there was a way to 
 reach him there. By-and-by, however, his heart awakes 
 and declares that Love goes beyond error with them, 
 and if the Intellect be kept down, yet Love is the 
 oppressor ; so next time he resoWes to enter and praise 
 along with them. The passage commencing, "Oh, 
 love of those first Christian days ! " describing Love's 
 victory over Intellect, is very fine. 
 
 Again he is caught up and carried along as before. 
 This time halt is made at the door of a college in a 
 Grerman town, in which the class-room of one of the 
 professors is open for lecture this Christmas Eve. It 
 
204 browning's " chrtstmas eve." 
 
 is, intellectually considered, the opposite pole to both 
 the Methodist chapel and the Eoman Basilica. The 
 poet enters, fearful of losing the society of " any that 
 call themselves his friends." He describes the assem- 
 bled company, and the entrance of '* the hawk-nosed, 
 high-cheek-boned professor," of part of whose Christmas 
 Eve's discourse he proceeds to give the substance. The 
 professor takes it for granted that " plainly no such 
 life was liveable," aiid goes on to inquire what expla- 
 nation of the phenomena of the life of Christ it were 
 best to adopt. Not that it mattered much, " so the 
 idea be left the same." Taking the popular story, fo]; 
 convenience sake, and separating all extraneous matter 
 from it, he found that Christ was simply a good man, 
 with an honest, true heart; whose disciples thought 
 him divine; and whose doctrine, though quite mis- 
 taken by those who received and published it, " had 
 yet a meaning quite as respectable." Here the poet 
 takes advantage of a pause to leave him ; reflecting that 
 though the air may be poisoned by the sects, yet here 
 "the critic leaves no air to poison." His meditations 
 and arguments following, are among the most valuable 
 passages in the book. The professor, notwithstanding 
 the idea of Christ has by him been exhausted of all 
 that is peculiar to it, yet recommends him to the vene- 
 ration and worship of his hearers, ** rather than all who 
 went before him, and all who ever followed after." 
 But why ? says the poet. For his intellect, 
 
 ** Which tells me simply what was told 
 (If mere morality, bereft 
 Of the God in Christ, be all that's lofb) 
 Slsewhere by voioes manifold f " 
 
browning's " CIIIIIST.MAS EVE." 205 
 
 with which must be combined the fact that this in- 
 tellect of his did not save him from making the "im- 
 portant stumble," of saying that he and God were one. 
 "But his followers misunderstood him," says the 
 objector. Perhaps so ; but " the stumbling-block, his 
 speech, who laid it 1 " Well then, is it on the score 
 of his goodness that he should rule his race I 
 
 " You pledge 
 Your fealty to such rule ? What, all — • 
 From Heavenly John and Attic Paul, 
 And that brave weather-battered Peter, 
 Whose stout faith only stood completer 
 For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, 
 As the more his hands hauled nets, they hardened- 
 All, down to you, the man of men, 
 Professing here at Gottingen, 
 Compose Christ's flock ! So, you and I 
 Are sheep of a good man ! And why ? " 
 
 Did Christ invent goodness? or did he only demon- 
 strate that of wliich the common conscience was 
 
 judge i 
 
 '* I would decree 
 Worship for such mere demonstration 
 And simple work of nomenclature. 
 Only the day I praised, not Nature, 
 But Harvey, for the circulation.'* 
 
 The worst man, says the poet, knows more than the 
 best man does. God in Christ appeared to men to help 
 them to doj to awaken the life within them. 
 
 ** Morality to the uttermost, 
 Supreme in Christ as we all confess, 
 Why need we prove would avail no jot 
 To make Him God, if God he were not f 
 
206 browning's "Christmas eve. 
 
 What is the point where Himself lays stress P 
 
 Does the precept run, ' Believe in good, 
 
 In justice, truth, now understood 
 
 For the first time ? ' — or, ' Believe in Mb, 
 
 Who lived and died, yet essentially 
 
 Am Lord of life ' ? Whoever can take 
 
 The same to his heart, and for mere lovers sake 
 
 Conceive of the love, — that man obtains 
 
 A new truth ; no conviction gains 
 
 Of an old one only, made intense 
 
 By a fresh appeal to his faded sense." 
 
 In this lies the most direct practical argument with re- 
 gard to what is commonly called the Divinity of Christ. 
 Plere is a man whom those that magnify him the least 
 confess to be a good man, the best of men. He says, 
 "I and the Father are one." "Will an earnest heart, 
 .knowing this, be likely to draw back, or will it draw 
 nearer to behold the great sight? Will not such a 
 heart feel : "A good man like this would not have 
 said so, were it not so. In all probability the great 
 truth of God lies beliind this veil." The reality of 
 Christ's nature is not to be proved by argument. He 
 must be beheld. The manifestation of Him must 
 "gravitate inwards" on the soul. It is by looking 
 that one can know. As a mathematical theorem is to 
 be proved only by the demonstration of that theorem 
 itself, not by talking about it ; so Christ must prove 
 himself to the human soul through being beheld. The 
 only proof of Christ's divinity is his humanity. Be- 
 cause his humanity is not comprehended, his. divinity 
 is doubted ; and while the former is uncomprehended, 
 an assent to the latter is of little avail. For a man to 
 
207 
 
 theorize theologically in any form, while he has not so 
 apprehended Christ, or to neglect the gazing on him 
 for the attempt to substantiate to himself any form of 
 belief respecting him, is to bring on himself, in a 
 matter of divine import, such errors as tlie expounders 
 of nature in old time brought on themselves, when 
 they speculated on what a thing must be, instead of 
 observing what it was ; this must he having for its 
 foundation not self-evident truth, but notions wliose 
 chief strength lay in their preconception. There are 
 thoughts and feelings that cannot be called up in the 
 mind by any power of will or force of imagination ; 
 which, being spiritual, must arise in the soul when in 
 its highest spiritual condition ; when the mind, indeed, 
 like a smooth lake, reflects only heavenly images. A 
 steadfast regarding of Him will produce this calm, and 
 His will be the heavenly form reflected from the mental 
 depth. 
 
 But to return to the poem. The fact that Christ 
 remains inside, leads the poet to reflect, in the spirit 
 of Him who found all the good in men he could, 
 neglecting no point of contact which presented it- 
 self, whether there was anything at this lecture with 
 which he could sympathize ; and he* finds that the 
 heart of the professor does something to rescue him 
 from the error of his brain. In his brain, even, " if 
 Love's dead there, it has left a ghost." For when the 
 natural deduction from his argument would be that our 
 faith 
 
 " Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole, — 
 He bids us, when we least expect it, 
 
208 BEOWKING's " CHRISTMAS EVE." 
 
 Take back our faitb— if it be not just whole, 
 Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it, 
 Which fact pays the damage done rewardingly, 
 So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly ! " 
 
 Love as well as learning being necessary to the 
 understanding of the New Testament, it is to the poet 
 matter of regret that " loveless learning " should leave 
 its proper work, and make such havoc in that which 
 belongs not to it. But while he sits " talking with his 
 mind," his mood begins to degenerate from sympathy 
 with that which is good to indifference towards all 
 forms, and he feels inclined to rest quietly in the enjoy- 
 ment of his own religious confidence, and trouble him- 
 self in no wise about the faith of his neighbours ; for 
 doubtless all are partakers of the central light, though 
 vai'iously refracted by the varied translucency of the 
 mental prism .... 
 
 '* 'Twas the horrible storm began afresh I 
 The black night caught me in his mesh. 
 Whirled me up, and flung me prone ! 
 I was left on the college-step aJone. 
 I looked, and far there, ever fleeting 
 Far, far away, the receding gesture, 
 And looming of the lessening vesture, 
 Swept forward from my stupid hand, 
 While I watched my foolish heart expand 
 In the lazy glow of benevolence 
 O'er the various modes of man's belief. 
 I sprang up with fear's vehemence. 
 — Needs must there be one way, our chitf 
 Best way of worship : let me strive 
 To find it, and when found, contrive 
 My fellows also take their share. 
 This constitutes my earthly care t 
 God's is above it and diatmct 1 " 
 
browning's "CHRISTMAS EVE." 209 
 
 The symbolism in the former part of this extract is 
 grand. As soon as he ceases to look practically on the 
 phenomena with which he is surrounded, he is en- 
 veloped in storm and darkness, and sees only in the 
 far distance the disappearing skirt of his Lord's gar- 
 ment. God's care is over all, he goes on to say ; I 
 must do my part. If I look speculatively on the 
 world, there is nothing hut dimness and mystery. If 
 I look practically on it, 
 
 ** No mere mote's-breadth, bnt teems immense 
 With witnessingg of Providence." 
 
 And whether the world which I seek to help censures 
 or praises me — that is nothing to me. My life — how 
 is it with me 1 
 
 ** Sonl of mine, hadst thou caught and held 
 By the hem of the vesture .... 
 And I caught 
 At the flying robe, and, unrepelled, 
 Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught 
 With warmth and wonder and delight, 
 God's mercy being infinite. 
 And scarce had the words escaped my tongue^ 
 When, at a passionate bound, I sprung 
 Out of the wandering world of rain, 
 Into the little chapel again." 
 
 Had he dreamed? how then could he report of the 
 sermon and the preacher 1 of which and of whom he 
 proceeds to give a very external account But cor- 
 recting himself — 
 
 *' Ha ! Is Gk)d mocked, as He asks P 
 Shall I take on me to change his tasks. 
 And dare, despatched to a river-head 
 
21 BROWNIT^g'S " CHRISTMAS EVE." 
 
 For a simple draught of the element, 
 
 Neglect the thing for which He sent, 
 
 And return with another thing instead I 
 
 Saying . . . . ' Because the water found 
 
 Welling up from underground, 
 
 Is mingled with the taints of earth, 
 
 While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, 
 
 And couldest, at a word, convulse 
 
 The world with the leap of its river-pulse, — 
 
 Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, 
 
 And bring thee a chalice I found, instead. 
 
 See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy ! 
 
 One would suppose that the marble bled. 
 
 What matters the water ? A hope I have nursed. 
 
 That the waterless cup will quench my thirst.* 
 
 — Better have knelt at the poorest stream 
 
 That trickles in pain from the straitest rift ! 
 
 For the less or the more is all God's gift, 
 
 Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam. 
 
 And here, is there water or not, to drink ? " 
 
 He comes to tlie conclusion, that the best for Mm is 
 that mode of worship which partakes the least of 
 human forms, and brings him nearest to the spiritual ; 
 and, while expressing good wishes for the Pope and 
 the professor — 
 
 " Meantime, in the still recurring fear 
 Lest myself, at unawares, be found. 
 While attacking the choice of my neighbours round, 
 Without my own made — I choose here ! " 
 
 He therefore joins heartily in the hymn which is 
 sung by the congregation of the little chapel at the 
 close of their worship. And this concludes the poem. 
 What is the central point from which this poem 
 can be regarded % It does not seem to be very hard 
 
211 
 
 to find. Novalis has said : " Die Pliilo/^ophie i?t 
 eigentlich Heimweh, ein Trieb iiberall zii Hause zu sein." 
 (Philosophy is really home-sickness, an impulse to he 
 at home everywhere.) The life of a man here, if life 
 it he, and not the vain image of what might he a life, 
 is a continual attempt to find his place, his centre of 
 recipiency, and active agency. He Avants to know 
 where he is, and where he onght to be and can be ; 
 for, rightly considered, the position a man ought to 
 occupy is tha only one he truly can occupy. It is a 
 climbing and striving to reach that point of vision 
 where the multiplex crossings and apparent intertwist- 
 ings of the lines of fact and feeling and duty shall 
 manifest themselves as a regular and symmetrical 
 design. A contradiction, or a thing unrelated, is foreign 
 and painful to him, even as the rocky particle in the 
 gelatinous substance of the oyster ; and, like the latter, 
 he can only rid himself of it by encasing it in the pearl- 
 like enclosure of faitli ; believing that hidden there lies 
 the necessity for a higher theory of the universe than 
 has yet been generated in his souL The quest for this 
 home-centre, in the man who has faith, is calm and 
 ceaseless ; in the man whose faith is weak, it is stonny 
 and intermittent. Unhappy is that man, of necessity, 
 whose perceptions are keener than his faith is strong. 
 Everywhere Nature herself is pr.tting strange questious 
 to him ; the human world is full of dismay and con- 
 fusion; his own conscience is bewildered by contra- 
 dictory appearances ; aU which may well happen to tlie 
 man whose eye is not yet single, whose heart is not 
 yet pure. He is not at home ; his soul is astray amid 
 p 2 
 
212 BROWNING S " CHRISTMAS EVE." 
 
 people of a strange speech and a stammering tongue. 
 Eut the faithful man is led onward ; in the stillness 
 that his confidence produces arise the bright images of 
 truth ; and visions of God, which are only beheld in 
 solitary places, are granted to his souL 
 
 ** struggling with the darkness all the night. 
 And visited all night by troops of stars ! " 
 
 What is true of the whole, is true of its parts. In 
 all the relations of life, in all the parts of the great 
 whole of existence, the true man is ever seeking his 
 home. This poem seems to show us such a quest. 
 " Here I am in the midst of many who belong to the 
 same family. They differ in education, in habits, in 
 forms of thought ; but they are called by the same 
 name. "What position with regard to them am I to 
 assume ? I am a Christian ; how am I to live in rela- 
 tion to Christians 1 " Such seems to be something like 
 the poet's thought. What central position can he gain, 
 which, while it answers best the necessities of his 
 own soul with regard to God, will enable him to feel 
 himself connected with the whole Christian world, 
 and to sympathize with all ; so that he may not be 
 alone, but one of the whole. Certainly the position 
 necessary for both requirements is one and the same. 
 He that is isolated from his brethren, loses one of the 
 greatest helps to draw near to God. Now, in this time, 
 which is so peculiarly transitional, this is a question of 
 no little import for all who, while they gladly forsake 
 old, or rather modern^ theories, for what is to them a 
 more full development of Christianity as well as a le- 
 
BEOWXIXG's " CHETST^rAS EVE." 213 
 
 turn to the fountain-head, yet seek to be saved from 
 the danger of losing sympathy with those who are 
 content with what they are compelled to abandon. 
 Seeing much in the common modes of thought and 
 belief that is inconsistent with Christianity, and even 
 opposed to it, they yet cannot but see likewise in many 
 of them a power of spiritual good; which, though 
 not dependent on the peculiar mode, is yet enveloped, 
 if not embodied, in that mode. 
 
 **Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, 
 This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, ^ 
 
 This soul at struggle with insanity, 
 Who thence take comfort, can I doubt. 
 Which an empire gained, were a loss without." 
 
 The love of God is the soul of Christianity. Christ is 
 the body of that truth. The love of God is the 
 creating and redeeming, the forming and satisfying 
 power of the universe. The love of God is that 
 which kills evil and glorifies goodness. It is the 
 safety of the great whole. It is the home -atmosphere 
 of all life. "WeU does the poet of the "Christmas 
 Eve " say : — 
 
 *' The loving worm within its clod, 
 Were diviner than a loveless God 
 Amid his \n orlds, I will dare to say.'* 
 
 Surely then, inasmuch as man is made in the image of 
 God, nothing less than a love in the image of God's 
 love, all-embracing, quietly excusing, heartily com- 
 mending, can constitute the blessedness of man ; a love 
 
211 BROAVNING's "CHRISTMAS EVE." 
 
 not insGnsible to that which is foreign to it, "but over- 
 coming it with good. "Where man loves in his kind, 
 even as God loves in His kind, then man is saved, 
 then he has reached the unseen and eternal. But if, 
 besides the necessity to love that lies in a man, there 
 be likewise in the man whom he ought to love some- 
 thing in common with him, then the law of love has 
 increased force. If that point of sympathy lies at the 
 centre of the being of each, and if these centres are 
 brought into contact, then the circles of their being 
 will be, if not coincident, yet concentric. We must 
 wait patiently for the completion of God's great har- 
 mony, and meantime love everywhere and as we can. 
 
 Eut the great lesson which this poem teaches, and 
 which is taught more directly in the " Easter Day ** 
 (forming part of the same volume), is that the busi- 
 ness of a man's life is to be a Christian. A man has 
 to do with God first ; in Him only can he find the 
 unity and harmony he seeks. To be one with Him is 
 to be at the centre of things. K one acknowledges 
 that God has revealed himself in Christ ; that God 
 has recognized man as his family, by appearing among 
 them in their form ; surely that very acknowledgment 
 carries with it the admission that man's chief con- 
 cern is with this revelation. What does God say and 
 mean, teach and manifest, herein] If this world is 
 God's making, and he is present in all nature ; if he 
 rules all things and is present in all history ; if the 
 soul of man is in his image, with all its circles of 
 thought and multiplicity of forms j and if for man it 
 be not enough to be rooted in Grod, but he must like- 
 
CHEISTMAS EVE." -15 
 
 wise lay hold on God ; then surely no question, in 
 whatever direction, can be truly answered, save by him 
 who stands at the side of Christ. The doings of God 
 cannot be understood, save by him who has the mind 
 of Christ, which is the mind of God. All things must 
 1)0 strange to one who sympathizes not with the 
 thought of the Maker, who understands not the design 
 of the Artist. Where is he to begin? What light 
 has he by which to classify ? How will he bring order 
 out of this apparent confusion, when the order is 
 higher than his thought ; when the confusion to him 
 is caused by the order's being greater than he can 
 com])rehend? Because he stands outside and not 
 within, he sees an entangled maze of forces, where 
 there is in truth an intertwining dance of harmony* 
 There is for no one any solution of the world's mys- 
 tery, or of any part of its mystery, except he be able 
 to say with our poet : — 
 
 ** I have looked to Thee from the beginning, 
 Straight up to Thee through all the world. 
 Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled 
 To nothingness on either side : 
 And since the time Thou wast descried. 
 Spite of the weak heart, so have I 
 Lived ever, and so fain would die, 
 Living and dying, Thee before ! " 
 
 Christianity is not the ornament, or even complement, 
 of life ; it is its necessity ; it is life itself glorified into 
 God's ideal. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers, from considering the minuteness of 
 the directions gi\en to Moses for the making of the 
 
216 browning's 
 
 tabernacle, was led to tliink that he himself was wrong 
 in attending too little to the ^^ petite morale " of dress. 
 "VYill this be excuse enough for occupying a few sen- 
 tences with the rhyming of this poem 1 Certainly the 
 rhymes of a poem form no small part of its artistic 
 existence. Probably there is a deeper meaning in this 
 part of the poetic art than has yet been made clear to 
 poet's mind. In this poem the rhymes have their share 
 in its humorous charm. The writer's power of using 
 double and triple rhymes is remarkable, and the effect 
 is often pleasing, even where they are used in the more 
 solemn parts of the poem. Take the lines : — 
 
 ** No I love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it» 
 Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, 
 The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, 
 Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it." 
 
 A poem is a thing not for the understanding or heart 
 only, but likewise for the ear ; or, rather, for the under- 
 standing and heart through the ear. The best poem is 
 best set forth when best read. If, then, there be rhymes 
 which, when read aloud, do, by their composition of 
 words, prevent the understanding from laying hold on 
 the separate words, while the ear lays hold on the 
 rhymes, the perfection of the art must here be lost 
 sight of, notwithstanding the completeness which the 
 rhyming manifests on close examination. Eor instance, 
 in "equipt yours" "Scriptures;" "Manchester^'* 
 '* haunches stir ;" or " affirm any" " Germany " where 
 two words rhyme with one word. But there are very 
 few of them that are objectionable on account of this 
 difficulty and necessity of lapid analysis. 
 
217 
 
 One of the most wonderful things in the poem is, 
 that so much of argument is expressed in a species of 
 verse, which one might be inclined, at first sight, to 
 think the least fitted for embodying it. But, in fact, 
 the same amount of argument in any other kind of 
 verse would, in all likehhood, have been intolerably dull 
 as a work of art. Here the verse is full of life and 
 vigour, flagging never. "Where, in several parts, the 
 exact meaning is difficult to reach, this results chiefly 
 from the dramatic rapidity and condensation of the 
 thoughts. The argumentative power is indeed wonder- 
 ful ; the arguments themselves powerful in their sim- 
 plicity, and embodied in words of admirable force. 
 The poem is full of pathos and humonr ; full of beauty 
 and grandeur, earnestness and truth. 
 
ESSAYS ON SOME OF THE FORMS 
 OF LITERATURE." 
 
 CHOPPE, the satiric choras of Jean Paul's 
 romance of Titan, makes his appearance 
 at a certain masked ball, carrying in front 
 of him a glass case, in which the ball is 
 remasked, repeated, and again reflected in a mirror 
 behind, by a set of puppets, ludicrously aping the 
 apery of the courtiers, whose whole life and out- 
 ward manifestation was but a body-mask mechanically 
 moved with the semblance of real life and action. The 
 court simulates reality. The masks are a multiform 
 mockery at their o^vn unreality, and as such are re- 
 garded by Schoppe, who takes them off with the utmost 
 ridicule in his masked puppet-show, which, with its 
 reflection in the mirror, is again indefinitely multiplied 
 in the many-sided reflector of Schoppe's, or of Richter's, 
 or of the reader's own imagination. The successive 
 retreating and beholding in this scene is suggested to 
 the reviewer by the fact that the last of these essays 
 by Mr. Lynch is devoted in part to reviews. So that 
 the reviews review books, — Mr. Lynch reviews the 
 reviews, and the present Reviewer finds himself (some- 
 what presumptuously, it may be) attempting to review 
 
 ' ** Essays on some of the Forms of Literature." By T. T« 
 Lynch, Author of ** Theophflus TrinaL** Longmaiia. 
 
FOK:>rS OF LITERATURE. 219 
 
 Mr. Lynch. In this, however, his office mnst be very 
 different from that of Schoppe (for there is a deeper 
 and more real correspondence between the position of 
 the showman and the reviewer than that outward 
 resemblance which first caused the one to suggest the 
 other). The latter's office, in the present instance, 
 was, by mockery, to destroy the false, the very involu- 
 tion of the satire adding to the strength of the ridicule. 
 His glass case was simply a review uttered by shapes 
 and wires instead of words and handwriting. And the 
 work of the true critic must sometimes be to condemn, 
 and, as far as his strength can reach, utterly to destroy 
 the false, — scorching and withering its seeming beauty, 
 till it is reduced to its essence and original ground- 
 work of dust and ashes. It is only, however, when it 
 wears the form of beauty which is the garment of 
 ti^tli, and so, like the Erl-maidens, has power to 
 bewitch, that it is worth the notice and attack of the 
 critic. Many forms of error, perhaps most, are better 
 left alone to die of their own weakness, for the galvanic 
 battery of criticism only helps to perpetuate their 
 ghastly life. The highest work of the critic, however, 
 must surely be to direct attention to the true, in what- 
 ever form it may have found utterance. But on this 
 let us hear Mr. Lynch himself in the last of these four 
 lectures which were delivered by him at the Eoyal 
 Institution, Manchester, and are now before us in the 
 form of a book : — 
 
 " The kritikos, the discemer, if he is ever saying to ns, This 
 is not gold ; and never, This is ; is either very humbly useftil, 
 or very perverse, or very unfortiinato. Thia is not gold, im 
 
220 FOEMS OF LITERATURE. 
 
 says. Thank you, we reply, we perceived as much. And this 
 is not, he adds. True, we answer, but we see gold grains 
 glittering out of its nide, dark mass. Well, at least, this is 
 not, he proceeds. Perverse man ! we retort, are you seeking 
 what is not gold ? We are inquiring for what is, and unfor- 
 tunate indeed are we if, born into a world of Nature, and of 
 Spirit once so rich, we are bom but to find that it has spent 
 or has lost all its wealth. Unhappy man would he be, who, 
 walking bis garden, should scent only the earthy savour of 
 leaves dead or dying, never perceiving, and that afar ofi", the 
 heavenly odour of roses fresh to-day from the Maker's hands. 
 The discerning by spiritual aroma may lead to discernment 
 by the eye, and to that careful scrutiny, and thence greater 
 knowledge, of which the eye is instrument and minister.'* 
 
 And again : — 
 
 '* The critic criticized, if dealt with in the worst fashion of 
 his own class, must be pronounced a mere monster, * seeking 
 whom he may devour ;' and, therefore, to be hunted and slain 
 as speedily as possible, and stuffed for the museum, where he 
 may be regarded with due horror, but in safety. But if dealt 
 with after the best fashion of his class, a very honourable and 
 beneficent ofiice is assigned him, and he is warned only— though 
 zealously — against its perversions. A judicial chair in the 
 kingdom of human thought, filled by a man of true integrity, 
 comprehensiveness, and delicacy of spirit, is a seat of terror 
 and praise, whose powers are at once most fostering to what- 
 ever is good, most repressive of whatever is evil The 
 
 critic, in his office of censurer, has need so much to controvert, 
 expose, and punish, because of the abundance of literary faults ; 
 and as there is a right and a wrong side in warfare, so there 
 will be in criticism. And as when soldiers are numerous, there 
 will be not a few who are only tolerable, if even that, so of 
 critics. But then the critic is more than the censurer; and in 
 his higher and happier aspect appears before us and serves us, 
 as the discoverer, the vindicator, and the eulogist of excel- 
 lence." 
 
 But resisting the temptation to quote further from 
 
FORMS OF LITERATURE. 221 
 
 Mr. Lynch's book on this matter of Criticism, which 
 seemed the natural point of contact by which the 
 Eeviewer could lay hold on the book, he would pass 
 on with the remark that his duty in the present instance 
 is of the nobler and better sort— nobler and better, that 
 is, with regard to the object, for duty in the man 
 remains ever the same— namely, the exposition of ex- 
 cellence, and not of its opposite. Mr. Lynch is a man 
 of true insight and large heart, who has already done 
 good in the world, and will do more ; although, possibly, 
 he belongs rather to the last class of writers described 
 by himself, in the extract I am about to give from this 
 same essay, than to any of the preceding : — 
 
 "Some of the best books are written avowedly, or with 
 evident consciousness of the fact, for the select public that ia 
 constituted by minds of the deeper class, or minds the more 
 advanced of their time. Such books may have but a re- 
 stricted circulation and limited esteem in their own day, and 
 may afterwards extend both their fame and the circle of their 
 readers. Others of the best books, written with a pathos and 
 a power that may be universally felt, appeal at onco to the 
 common humanity of the world, and get a response mar- 
 vellously strong and immediate. An ordinary human eye and 
 heart, whose glances are true, whose pulses healthy, will fitua 
 to say of much that we read— This is good, that is poor. But 
 only the educated eye and the experienced heart will fit us to 
 judge of what relates to matters veiled from ordinary observa- 
 tion, and belougiug to the profounder region of human thought 
 and emotion. Powers, however, that the few only possess, 
 may be required to paint what everybody can see, so that 
 everybody shall say, How beautiful ! how like ! And powers 
 adequate to do this in the finest manner will be often adequate 
 to do much more— may produce, indeed, books or pictures, 
 whose singular merit only the few shall perceive, and the 
 soanj for awhile deny, and books or pictures which, whil* 
 
222 FORMS OF LITEKATUEE. 
 
 they give an immediate and pure pleasure to the common eye, 
 shall give a far fuller and finer pleasure to that eye that is the 
 organ of a deeper and more cultivated soul. There are, too, 
 men of peculiar powers, rare and fine, who can never hope to 
 please the large public, at least of their own age, but whose 
 writings are a heart's ease and heart's joy to the select few, 
 and serve such as a cup of heavenly comfort for the earth's 
 journey, and a lamp of heavenly light for the shadows of the 
 way." 
 
 One other extract from the general remarks on Books 
 in this essay, and we will turn to another : — 
 
 " In all our estimation of the various qualities of books, if it 
 be true that our reading assists our life, it is true also that 
 our life assists our reading. If we let our spirit talk to us in 
 undistracted moments — if we commune with friendly, serious 
 Nature, face to face, often — if we pursue honourable aims in a 
 steady progress — if we learn how a man's best work falls 
 below his thought, yet how still his failure prompts a tenderer 
 love of his thought — if we live in sincere, frank relations with 
 some few friends, joying in their joy, hearing the tale and 
 sharing the pain of their grief, and in frequent interchange of 
 honest, household sensibility — if we look about us on character, 
 marking distinctly what we can see, and feeling the prompting 
 of a hundred questions concerning what is out of our ken : — if 
 we live thus, we shall be good readers and critics of books, 
 and improving ones.*' 
 
 The second and third of these essays are on Biography 
 and Fiction respectively and principally; treating, how- 
 ever, of collateral subjects as well. Deep is the rela- 
 tion between the life shadowed forth in a biography, 
 and the life in a man's brain which he shadows forth 
 in a fiction — when that fiction is of the highest order, 
 and written in love, is beheld even by the writer him- 
 self with reverence. Delightful, surely, it must be ; 
 
FORMS OF LITERATrRE. 223 
 
 yes, awful too, to read to-day the embodiment of a 
 man's noblest thought, to follow the hero of his creation 
 through his temptations, contests, and victories, in a 
 world which likewise is — 
 
 " All made out of the carver's brain ;" 
 
 and to-morrow to read the biography of this same 
 writer. What of his own ideal has he realized 1 Where 
 can the life-fountain be detected within him which 
 foimd issue to the world's light and air, in this ideal 
 self 1 Shall God's fiction, which is man's reality, fall 
 short of man's fiction 1 Shall a man be less than what 
 he can conceive and utter 1 Surely it will not, cannot 
 end thus. If a man live at all in harmony with the 
 great laws of being — if he will permit the working out 
 of God's idea in him, he must one day arrive at some- 
 thing greater than what now he can project and behold. 
 Yet, in biography, we do not so often find traces of 
 those struggles depicted in the loftier fiction. One 
 reason may be that the contest is often entirely within, 
 and so a man may have won his spiritual freedom with- 
 out any outward token directly significant ot the vic- 
 tory ; except, if he be an artist, such expression as it 
 finds in fiction, whether the fiction be in marble, or in 
 sweet harmonies, or in ink. Nor can we determine the 
 true significance of any living act ; for being ourselves 
 within the compass of the life-mystery, we cannot hold 
 it at arm's length from us and look v.t its lines of con- 
 figuration. Xor of a life can we in any measure deter- 
 mine the success by what we behold of it. It is to us 
 at best but a truncated spire, whose want of completion 
 
22i POEMS OS LITERATURE. 
 
 may be the greater because of the breadth of its base, 
 and its slow taper, indicating the lofty height to which 
 it is intended to aspire. The idea of our own life is 
 more than we can embrace. It is not ours, but God's, 
 and fades away into the infinite. Our comprehension 
 is finite ; we ourselves infinite. We can only trust in 
 God and do the truth ; then, and then only, is our life 
 safe, and sure both of continuance and development. 
 
 But the reviewer perhaps too often merely steals his 
 author's text and writes upon it ; or, like a man who 
 lies in bed thinking about a dream till its folds enwrap 
 him and he sinks into the midst of its visions, he for- 
 gets his position of beholding, and passes from observa- 
 tion into spontaneous utterance. What says our author 
 about " biography, autobiography, and history ? " This 
 lecture has pleased the reviewer most of the four. 
 Reading it in a lonely place, under a tree, with wide 
 fields and slopes around, it produced on his mind the 
 two efi"ects which perhaps Mr. Lynch would most wish 
 it should produce — namely, first, a longing to lead a 
 more true and noble life ; and, secondly, a desire to 
 read more biography. Nor can he but hope that it 
 must produce the same eff'ect on every earnest reader, 
 on every one whose own biography would not be alto- 
 gether a blank in what regards the individual will and 
 spiritual aim. 
 
 " In meditative hours, when we blend despair of ourself with 
 complaint of the world, the biography of a man successful in 
 this great business of living is as the visit of an angel sent to 
 strengthen ns. Give the soldier his sword, the farmer his 
 plough, tte carpenter his hammer and nails, the manufacturer 
 his maohinesy the merchant his stores, and the scholar hif 
 
FORMS OF LITERATURE. 225 
 
 books ; these are bnt implements ; the man is more than his 
 work cr tools. How far has he fulfilled the law of his being, 
 and attained its desire ? Is his life a whole ; the days as 
 threads and as touches ; the life, the well-woven gannent, the 
 well-painted picture ? Which of two sacrifices has he offered — 
 the one so acceptable to the powers of dark worlds, the other 
 so acceptable to powers of bright ones - that of soul to body, 
 or that of body to soul ? Has he slain what was holiest in 
 him to obtain gifts from Fashion or Mammon ? Or has he, in 
 days so arduous, so assiduous, that they are like a noble ai-my 
 of martyrs, made burnt offering of what was secoadary, 
 throwing into the flames the salt of true moral energy and the 
 incense of cordial affections ? We want the work to show ns 
 by its parts, its mass, its form, the qualities of the man, and 
 to see that the man is perfected through his work as well as 
 the work finished by his effort." 
 
 Perhaps the highest moral height which a man can 
 reach, and at the same time the most difficult of attain- 
 ment, is the willingness to be nothing relatively, so that 
 he attain that positive excellence which the original 
 conditions of his being render not merely possible, but 
 imperative. It is nothing to a man to be greater or 
 less than another — to be esteemed or otherwise by the 
 public or private world in which he moves. Does he, 
 or does he not, behold, and love, and live, the un- 
 changeable, the essential, the divine? This he can 
 only do according as God hath made him. He can 
 behold and understand Grod in the least degree, as well 
 as in the greatest, only by the godlike within him ; 
 and he that loves thus the good and great, has no room, 
 no thought, no necessity for comparison and difference. 
 The truth satisfies , him. He lives in its absoluteness. 
 Gkni makes the glow-worm as well as the star ; the 
 
 Q 
 
226 FOEMS OF LITERATURE. 
 
 light in both is divine. If mine be an earth-star to 
 gladden the wayside, I must cultivate humbly and 
 rejoicingly its green earth-glow, and not seek to blanch 
 it to the whiteness of the stars that lie in the fields of 
 blue. For to deny Grod in my own being is to cease to 
 behold him in any. God and man can meet only by 
 the man's becoming that which Grod meant him to be. 
 Then he enters into the house of life, which is greater 
 than the house of fame. It is better to be a child 
 in a green field than a knight of many orders in a state 
 ceremonial 
 
 ** One biography may help conjecture or satisfy reason con- 
 cerning the story of a thousand unrecorded lives. And how few 
 even of the deserving among the multitude can deserve, as 
 * dear sons of memory,' to be shrined in the public heart. 
 Few of us die unwept, but most of us unwritten. We shall 
 find a grave — less certainly a tombstone — and with much less 
 likelihood a biographer. Those ' bright particular ' stars that 
 at evening look towards us from afar, y t still are individual 
 in the distance, are at clearest times but about a thousand ; 
 but the milky lustre that runs through mid heaven is com- 
 posed of a million million lights, which are not the less separate 
 because seen undistinguishably. Absorbed, not lost, in the 
 multitude of the unrecorded, our private dear ones make part 
 in this mild, blissful shining of the ' general assembly,* the 
 great congregation of the skies. Thus the past is aglow with 
 the unwritten, the nameless. The leaders, sons of fame, con- 
 spicuous in lustre, eminent in place ; these are the few, whose 
 great individuality bums with distinct, starry light through 
 the dark of ages. Such stars, without the starry way, would 
 not teach us the vastness of heaven ; and the • way,' without 
 these, were not sufficient to gladden and glorify the night 
 with pomp of Hierarchical Ascents of Domination." 
 
 There aie many passages in this essay with which 
 
FORMS OF LITERATURE. 227 
 
 the reviewer would be glad to enrich his notice of the 
 book, but limitation of space, and perhaps justice to the 
 essay itself, which ought to be read in its own com- 
 pleteness, forbid. Mr. Lynch looks to the heart of 
 the matter, and makes one put the question — " Would 
 not a biography written by Mr. Lynch himself be a 
 valuable addition to this kind of literature?" His 
 would not be an interesting account of outward events 
 and relationships and progress, nor even a succession of 
 revelations of inward conditions, but we should expect 
 to find ourselves elevated by him to a point of view 
 from which the Kfe of the man would assume an artis- 
 tic individuality, as it were an isolation of existence ; 
 for the supposed author could not choose for his 
 regard any biography for which this would be im- 
 possible ; or in which the reticulated nerves of pur- 
 pose did not combine the whole, mth more or less 
 of success, into a true and remarkable unity. One 
 passage more from tliis essay, — 
 
 " Biography, then, makes life known to us as more wealthy 
 in character, and much more remarkable in its everj-day 
 stories, than we had deemed it. Another good it docs us is 
 this. It introduces us to some of our most agreeable and 
 stimulative friendships. People ,may be more* beneficially 
 intimate witb one they never saw than even with a neighbour 
 or brother. Many a solitary, puzzled, incommunicative person, 
 has found society provided, his liddle read, and liis heart's 
 secret, that longed and strove for utterance, outspoken for 
 him in a biography. And both a love purer than any yet enter- 
 tained may be originated, and a pure but ungratified love 
 already existing, find an object, by the visit of a biography. 
 In actual life you see ydur friend to-day, and will see him again 
 to-morrow or next year j but in the dear book, yoa hare your 
 Q 2 
 
228 FORMS OF LITERATURE. 
 
 friend and all his experiences at once and ever. He is witb 
 
 you wholly, and may be with you at any time. He lives foi 
 you, and has already died for you, to give finish to the meaning, 
 fulness, and sanctity, to the comfort of his days. He is mys- 
 teriously above as well as before you, by this fact, that he has 
 died. Thus your intimate is your superior, your solace, but 
 your support, too, and an example of the victoiy to which he 
 calls you. His end, or her end, is our own in view, and the 
 flagging spirit revives. We see the goal, and gird our loins 
 anew for the race. Or, speaking of things minor, there is 
 fresh prospect of the game, there is companionship in the 
 hunt, and spirit for the winning. Such biography, too, is a 
 mirror in which we see ourselves ; and we see that we may 
 trim or adorn, or that the plain signs of our deficient health or 
 ill-ruled temper may set us to look for, and to use the means 
 of improvement. But such a mirror is as a water one ; in which 
 first you may see your face, and which then becomes for you a 
 bath to wash away the stains you see, and to ofier its pure, 
 cool stream as a restorative and cosmetic for your wrinkles 
 and pallors. And what a pleasure there will be sometimes as 
 we peruse a biography, in finding another who is so like our- 
 self — saying the same things, feeling the same dreads, and 
 shames, and flutterings ; hampered and harassed much as poor 
 self is. Then, the escapes of such a friend give us hope of 
 deliverance for ourself ; and his better, or if not better, yet re- 
 warded, patience, freshens our eye and sinews, and puts a staff 
 into our hand. And certain seals of impossibility that we had 
 put on this stone, and on that, beneath which our hopes lay 
 buried, are by this biography, as by a visiting angel, effectually 
 broken, and our hopes arise again. Our view of life becomes 
 more complete because we see the whole of his, or of hers. 
 We view life, too, in a more composed, tender way. Wavering 
 faith, in its chosen determining principles, is confirmed. In 
 quiet comparison of ourselves with one of otu* own class, or 
 one who has made the mark for which we are striving, we are 
 shamed to have done no better, and stirred to attempt former 
 things again, or fresh ones in a stronger and more patient 
 ■pirit.'* 
 
FORMS OF LITEEATTIEE. 229 
 
 It is, indeed, well with him who has foirnd a 
 friend whose spirit touches his own and illuminates it. 
 
 ** I missed him -wheii the sun began to bend ; 
 I fonnd him not when I had lost his rim ; 
 With many tears I went in search of him, 
 Climbing high mountains which did still ascend. 
 And gave me echoes when I called mj friend ; 
 Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim, 
 And high cathedrals where the light was dim; 
 Through books, and arts, and works without an end- 
 But found him not, the friend whom I had lost. 
 And yet I found him, as I found the lark, 
 A sound in fields I heard but could not mark; 
 I fonnd him nearest when I missed him most, 
 I found him in my heart, a life in frost, 
 A light I knew not till my soul was dark." 
 
 'Next to possessing a true, wise, and victorious 
 friend seated by your fireside, it is blessed to have 
 the spirit of such a friend embodied — for spirit can 
 assume any embodiment — on your bookshelves. But 
 in the latter case the friendship is all on one side. For 
 full friendship your friend must love you, and know 
 that you love him. Surely these biographies are not 
 merely spiritual links connecting us in the truest 
 manner with past times and vanished minds, and thus 
 producing strong half friendships. Are they not like- 
 wise links connecting us with a future, wherein these 
 souls shall dawn upon ours, rising again from the 
 death of the past into the life of our knowledge and 
 love 1 Are not these biographies letters of introduction, 
 forwarded, but not yet followed by him whom they 
 introduce, for whose step we listen, and whose voice we 
 
230 FORMS or LITEBATURE. 
 
 long to hear ; and whom we shall yet meet somewhere 
 in the Infinite ? Shall I not one day, " somewhere, 
 somehow," clasp the large hand of Novalis, and, gazing 
 on his face, compare his features with those of Saint 
 John? 
 
 The essay on light literature must be left to the 
 spontaneous appreciation of those who are already 
 acquainted with this book, or who may be induced, by 
 the representations here made, to become acquainted 
 M-ith it. Before proceeding to notice the first essay in 
 the little volume, namely, that on Poetry, its subject 
 suggests the fact of the publication of a second edition 
 of the Memorials of Theophilus Trinal, by the same 
 author, a portion of which consists of interspersed poems. 
 These are of true poetic worth ; and although in some 
 cases wanting in rhythmic melody, yet in most of these 
 cases they possess a wild and peculiar rhythm of their 
 own. The reviewer knows of some whose hearts this 
 book has made glad, and doubtless there are many 
 such. 
 
 The essay on Poetry is itself poetic throughout in its 
 expression. And how else shall Poetry be described 
 than by Poetry ? What form shall embrace and define 
 the highest 1 Must it not be self-descriptive as self- 
 existent ? For what man is to this planet, what the 
 eye is to man liimseK, Poetry is to Literature. Yet 
 one can hardly help wishing that the poetic forms in 
 this Essay were fewer and less minute, and the whole 
 a little more scientific ; though it is a question how far 
 we have a right to ask for this. As you open it, how- 
 ever, the pages seem absolutely to sparkle, as if strewn 
 
FORMS OF LITERATURE. 23 1 
 
 with diamond sparks. It is no dull, metallic, surface 
 lustre, but a shining from within, as well as from the 
 superficies. Still one cannot deny that fancy is too 
 prominent in IVIr. Lynch's writings. It is true that his 
 Fancy is the fairy attendant on his Imagination, which 
 latter uses the former for her own higher ends ; and 
 that there is little or no mere fancy to he found in his 
 books ; for if you look below the surface-form you find 
 a truth. But it were to be desired that the Truth 
 clothed herself always in the living forms of Imagina- 
 tion, and thus walked forth amongst her worshippers, 
 looking on them from Kving eyes, rather than that she 
 should show herself through the windows of fancy. 
 Sometimes there may be an offence against taste, as in 
 page 20 ; sometimes an image may be expanded too 
 much, and sometimes the very exuberance of imagina- 
 tive fancy (if the combination be correct) may lead to 
 an association of images that suggests incongruity. 
 StiU the essay is abundantly beautiful and true. The 
 poetical quotations are not isolated, or exposed to view- 
 as specimens, but are worked into the web of the prose 
 Hke the flowers in the damask, and do their part in the 
 evolution of the continuous thought. 
 
 "If poetry, as light from the heart of God, is for our heart, 
 that we may brighten and distinguish individual things j if it 
 is to transfigure for us the round, dusk world as by an inner 
 radiance ; if it is to present human life and history as 
 Rembrandt pictm-es, in which darkness serves and glorifies 
 light ; if, like light, formless in its essence, all things shapen 
 towards the perfection of their forms under its influence ; if, 
 entering as through crevices in single beams, it makes dimmest 
 plaoes <d)eerfal and saored with its golden touch : then moat 
 
232 FORMS OF LITERATURE. 
 
 "the heart of the Poet in whioli this true light shir.eth be as a 
 hospice on the mountain pathways of the world, and his verse 
 mnst be the lamp seen from far that bums to tell us where 
 bread and shelter, drink, fire, and companionship, may be 
 found; and he himself should have the mountaineer's hardi- 
 ness and resolution. From the heart as source, to the heart 
 in influence, Poetry comes. The inward, the upward, and the 
 onward, whether we speak of an individual or a nation, may not 
 be separated in our consideration. Deep and sacred imagina- 
 tive meditations are needed for the true earthward as well as 
 for the heavenward progress of men and peoples. And Poetry, 
 whether old or new, streaming from the heart moved by the 
 powerful spirit of love, has influence on the heart public and 
 individual, and thence on the manners, laws, and institutions of 
 nations. If Poesy visit the length and bieadth of a country 
 after years unfruitfully dull, coming like a showery fer'^^ilizing 
 wind after drought, the corners and the valley-hidings are 
 visited too, and these perhaps she now visits first, as these 
 sometimes she has visited only. For miles and for miles, the 
 public com, the bread of the nation's life, is bettered ; and in 
 our own endeared spot, the roses, delight of our individual eye 
 and sense, yield us more prosperingly their colour and their 
 fragrance. For the universal sunshine which brightens a 
 thousand cities, beautifies ten thousand homesteads, and re- 
 joices ten times ten thousand hearts. And as rains in the mid 
 season renew for awhile the faded greetmess of spring ; and 
 trees in fervent summers, when their foliage has deepened or 
 fully fixed its hue, bedeck themselves through the fervency 
 with bright midsummer shoots ; so, by Poetry are the youthful 
 hues of the soul renewed, and truths that have long stood fuU- 
 foliaged in our minds, are by its fine influences empowered to 
 put forth fresh shoots. Thus age, which is a necessity for the 
 body, may be warded off as a disease from the soul, and we may 
 be like the old man in Chauoer, who had nothing hoary about 
 him but his hairs — 
 
 •** Though I be hoor I fare as doth a tree 
 That blosmeth er the fruit ywoxen be, 
 The blosmy tree n* is neither drie ne ded t 
 
FORMS OF LITERATURE. 233 
 
 I feel me nowhere hoor but on my head. 
 Min herte and all my limm^s ben as grene 
 As laurel through the yere is for to sene/ ** 
 
 Hear our anthor again as to the calling of the poet : — 
 
 " To unite earthly love and celestial — ' true to the kindred 
 points of heaven and home ;' to reconcile time and eternity ; to 
 draw presage of joy's victory from the delight of the secret 
 honey dropping from the clefts of rocky sorrow ; to harmonize 
 our instinctive longings for the definite and the infinite, in the 
 ideal Perfect ; to read creation as a human book of the heart, 
 both plain and mystical, and divinely written : such is the 
 office fulfilled by best-loved poets. Their ladder of celestial 
 ascent must be fixed on its base, earth, if its top is to securely 
 rest on heaven." 
 
 Beautifully, too, does he describe the birth of 
 Poetry ; though one may doubt its correctness, at least 
 if attributed to the highest kind of poetry. 
 
 " When words of felt truth were first spoken by the first 
 pair, in love of their garden, their God, and one another, and 
 these words were with joyful surprise telt to be in their form 
 and glow answei-able to the happy thought uttered; then 
 Poetry sprang. And when the first Father and first Mother, 
 settling their soul upon its thought, found that thought 
 brighten ; and when from it, as thus they mused, like 
 branchlets from a branch, or flowerets from their bud, other 
 thoughts came, raugiug themselves by the exerted, yet pain- 
 lessly exerted, power of the soul, in an order felt to be beauti- 
 ful, and of a sound pleasant in utterance to ear and soul; 
 being withal, through the sweetness of their impression on the 
 heart, fixed for memory's frequentest recurrence ; then was 
 the world's fixst poem composed, and in the joyful flutter of a 
 heart that had thus become a maker, the maker of a * thing of 
 beauty,' like in beauty even unto God's heaven, and trees, and 
 flowers, the secret of Poesy shone tremulously forth." 
 
 Whether this be so or not, the highest poetic feeling 
 
234 FORMS OF LITERATURE. 
 
 of which we are now r.onscious springs not from the 
 beholding of perfected beauty, but from the mute sym- 
 pathy which the creation with all its children manifests 
 with us in the groaning and travailing which looketh 
 for the sonship. Because of our need and aspiration, 
 the snowdrop gives birth in our hearts to a loftier 
 spiritual and poetic feeling, than the rose most complete 
 in form, colour, and odour. The rose is of Paradise — 
 the snowdrop is of the striving, hoping, longing Earth. 
 Perhaps our highest poetry is the expression of our 
 aspirations in the sympathetic forms of visible nature. 
 Nor is this merely a longing for a restored Paradise; 
 for even in the ordinary history of men, no man or 
 woman that has fallen can be restored to the position 
 formerly occupied. Such must rise to a yet higher 
 place," whence they can behold their former standing 
 far beneath their feet. They must be restored by 
 attaining something better than they ever possessed 
 before, or not at all. If the law be a weariness, we must 
 escape it by being filled with the spirit, for not other- 
 wise can we fulfil the law than by being above the law. 
 There is for us no escape, save as the Poet counsels 
 us:— 
 
 " Is thy strait horizon dreary P 
 
 Is thy foolish fancy chill ? 
 Change the feet that have grown weary, 
 
 For the wings that never will. 
 Burst the flesh and live the spirit j 
 
 Haunt the beautiful and far ; 
 Thou hast all things to inherit, 
 
 And a soul for every star.'* 
 
 Bat the Keviewer must hasten to take leave, though 
 
FOKMS OF LITEEATURE. 235 
 
 nnwillingly, of this pleasing, earnest, and profitable 
 book. Perhaps it could be wished that the writer 
 helped his readers a little more into the channel of his 
 thought ; made it easier for them to see the direction 
 in which he is leading them ; called out to them, 
 " Come up hither,'* before he said, " I will show you a 
 thing." But the Ke viewer says this with deference ; 
 and takes his leave with the hope that Mr. Lynch will 
 be listened to for two good reasons : first, that he speaks 
 the truth j last, that he has already suffered for the 
 Truth's sake. 
 
THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF 
 MEDICINE" 
 
 N this volume, Dr. Russell has not merely 
 aimed at the production of a book that 
 might be serviceable to the Faculty, by 
 which the history of its own art is not 
 at all sufficiently studied, but has aspired to the far 
 more difficult success of writing a history of medi- 
 cine which shall be readable to all who care for true 
 history — that history, namely, in which not merely 
 growth and change are represented, but the secret 
 supplies and influences as well, which minister to 
 the one and occasion the other. If the difficulty has 
 been greater (although with his evidently wide sym- 
 pathies and keen insight into humanity we doubt if it 
 has), the success is the more honourable ; for a success 
 it certainly is. The partially biographical plan on 
 which he has constructed his work has no doubt aided 
 in the accompKshment of this purpose; for it is much 
 easier to present the subject in its human relations, 
 when its history is given in connexion with the lives 
 of those who were most immediately associated with it. 
 l)Ut it would be a great mistake to conclude from this, 
 that it is the less a history of the art itself ; for no art 
 
 ^ By J. Eutherfurd Eussell, M.D. 
 
THE HISTOEY AND HEEOES OF MEDICINE. 2o7 
 
 or science has life in itself, apart from the minds which 
 foresee, discover, and verify it. Whatever point in its 
 progress it may have reached, it will there remain 
 until a new man appears, whose new questions shall 
 illicit new replies from nature— replies which are the 
 essential food of the science, by which it lives, grows, 
 and makes itself a history. 
 
 Nor must our readers suppose that because the book 
 is readable, it is therefore slight, eithei in material or 
 construction. Much reading and research have pro- 
 vided the material, wMle real thought and argument 
 have superintended the construction. Noi is it by any 
 means without the adornment that a poetic tempera- 
 ment and a keen sense of humour can supply. 
 
 Naturally, the central life in the book is that of 
 Lord Bacon, the man who brought out of his treasures 
 things both new and old. Up to him the story gradu- 
 ally leads from the prehistoric times of .^culapius, the 
 pathway first becoming plainly visible in the life and 
 labours of Hippocrates. His fine intellect and powers 
 of acute observation afforded the material necessary for 
 the making of a true physician. The Greek mind, 
 partly, perhaps, from its artistic tendencies, seems to 
 have been peculiarly impatient of incomplete forms, and 
 therefore, to have much preferred the construction of a 
 theory from the most shadowy material, to the patient ex- 
 periment and investigation necessary for the procuring 
 of the real substance ; and Hippocrates, not knowing how 
 to advance to a theory by rational experiment, and too 
 honest to invent one, assumes the traditional theories, 
 lounded on the vaguest and most obtrusive generaliza- 
 
238 THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 tions. Those which his experience taught him to re- 
 ject, were adopted and maintained hy Galen and all 
 who followed him for centuries, the chief instance of 
 progress heing only the substitution by the Arabians of 
 some of the milder medicines now in use, for the 
 terrible and often fatal drugs employed by the Greek 
 and Eoman physicians. The fanciful classification of 
 diseases into four kinds — hot, cold, moist and dry, 
 with the corresponding arbitrary classification of reme- 
 dies to be administered by contraries, continued to be 
 the only recognized theory of medicine for many cen- 
 turies after the Christian era. 
 
 But Lord Bacon, amongst other branches of know- 
 ledge which he considers ill-followed, makes especial 
 mention of medicine, which he would submit to the 
 same rules of observation and experiment laid down by 
 him for the advancement of learning in general "With 
 regard to it, as with regard to the discovery of all the 
 higher laws of nature, he considers " that men have 
 made too untimely a departure, and too remote a recess 
 from particulars." Men have hurried to conclusions, 
 and then argued from them as from facts. Therefore 
 let us have no traditional theories, and make none for 
 ourselves but such as are revealed in the form of laws 
 to the patient investigator, who has " straightened and 
 held fast Proteus, that he might be compelled to change 
 his shapes," and so reveal his nature. Hence one of 
 the aspects in which Lord Bacon was compelled to 
 appear was that of a destroyer of what preceded. In 
 this he resembled Cardan and Paracelsus who went 
 before him, and who like him pulled down, bat could 
 
THE HISTORY AXD HEROES OF MEDICINE. 239 
 
 not, Kke him, build up. He resembled tbem, how- 
 ever, in the possession of another element of character, 
 namely, that poetic imagination which looks abroad into 
 the regions of possibilities, and foresees or invents. But 
 in the case of the charlatan, the vaguest suggestions of 
 his mind in its favourite mood, is adopted as a theory- 
 all but proved, if not as a direct revelation to the 
 favoured individual ; while the true thinker seeks but 
 an hypothesis corresponding in some measure to facts 
 already discovered, in order that he may have the sug- 
 gestion of new experiments and investigations in the 
 course of his attempts to verify or disprove the hypo- 
 thesis. Lord Bacon considered hypothesis invaluable 
 in the discovery of truth, but he only used it as a board 
 upon which to write his questions to nature ; or, to 
 use another figure, hypothesis with him is as the next 
 stepping-stone in the swollen river, which he supposes 
 to be here or there, and so feels for with his staff. 
 But it must be proved before it be regarded as a law, 
 and greatly corroborated before it be even adopted as a 
 theory. Cardan and Paracelsus were destroyei-s and 
 mystics only ; they destroyed on the earth that they 
 might build in the air : Lord Bacon united both 
 characters in the philosopher. He looked abroad into 
 the regions of the unknown, whence all knowledge 
 comes ; he called wonder the seed* of knowledge ; but 
 he would build nowhere but on the earth — on the firm 
 land of ascertained truth. That which kept him right 
 was his practical humanity. It was for the sake of 
 delivering men from the ills of life, by discovering the 
 laws of ihe elements amidst which that life must be 
 
240 THE HISTORY AND HEROES OP MEDICINE. 
 
 led, tliat he laboured and thought. This object kept 
 him true, made him able to discover the very laws of 
 discovery ; brought him so far into rapport with the 
 heart of nature herself, that, like a physical prophet, 
 his seeing could outspeed his knowing, and behold a 
 law — dimly, it is true, but yet behold it — long before 
 his intellect, which had to build bridges and find straw 
 to make the bricks, could dare to affirm its approach to 
 the same conclusion. Truth to humanity made him 
 true to fact; and truth to fact made him true in 
 theory. 
 
 It was in this spirit of devotion to his kind that he 
 said, " Therefore here is the deficience which I find, 
 that physicians have not ... set down and delivered 
 over certain experimental medicines for the cure of 
 particular diseases." 
 
 Dr. EusseU s true insight into the relation of Lord 
 Bacon to the medical as well as to all science, has sug- 
 gested the above remarks. What our author chiefly 
 desires is, that the same principles which made medicine 
 what it is, should be allowed to carry it yet further, 
 and make it what it ought to be, and must become. 
 As he goes on to show, through succeeding lives and 
 theories, that just in proportion as these principles have 
 been followed — the principles of careful observation, 
 hypothesis, and experiment — have men made discoveries 
 that have been helpful to their fellow-men ; while, on 
 the other hand, the most elaborate theories of the most 
 popular physicians, which have owed their birth to 
 premature generalization and invention, have passed 
 •way, like the crackling of thorns under a pot Belong- 
 
THE HISTORY AND HEEOES OF MEDICINE. 241 
 
 lug to the latter class of men, we have Stahl, Hoilman, 
 Boerhaave, Cullen, and Brown; while to the former 
 belong Harvey, Sydenham, Jenner, and Hahnemann. 
 
 After the last name, there is no need to say that 
 our author is a homoeopath. Whatever may be our 
 private opinion of the system, justice requires that we 
 should say at least that books such as these are quite aa 
 open to refutation as to ridicule ; for it is only a good 
 argument that is worth refuting by a better. But we 
 fear there are few books on this subject that treat of it 
 with the calmness and fairness which would incline an 
 honest homoeopath to put them into the hands of one 
 of the opposite party as an exposition of his opinions. 
 There is no excitement in these pages. They are the 
 work of a man of liberal education, of refinement, and 
 of truthfulness, with power to understand, and facility 
 to express ; one of whose main objects is to vindicate 
 for homoeopathy, on the most rightful of all grounds — 
 those on which alone science can stand — on the ground, 
 that is, of laws discovered by observation and experi- 
 ment — the place not only of a fact in the history of 
 medicine, but the right to be considered as one of the 
 greatest advances towards the estabhshment of a science 
 of curing. Certainly if he and the rest of its advocates 
 should fail utterly in this, the heresy will yet have 
 established for itself a memorial in history, as one of 
 the most powerful illusions that have ever deceived 
 both priests and people. But the chief advantage 
 which the system will derive from Dr. Eussell's book 
 will spring, it seems to us, from his attempt — a success- 
 ful one it must be confessed — to prove that homceO" 
 
242 THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 pathy is a development^ and not a mere reaction ; that it 
 has its roots far down in the history of science. The 
 first mention of it in the book, however, is made for 
 the purpose of disavowing the claim, advanced by many 
 homoeopathists, to Hippocrates as one of their order. 
 Not to mention the curious story about Galen and the 
 patient ill from an overdose of theriacum, who was 
 cured by another dose of the same substance, nor the 
 ridicule of the doctrine of contraries by Paracelsus 
 and Van Helmont, nor the fact that the contraries of 
 Boerhaave, by his own explanation, merely signify 
 whatever substances prove their contrariety to the 
 disease by curing it — to pass by these, we find one of 
 the main objects of homoeopathy, the discovery of speci- 
 fics, insisted upon by Lord Bacon in his words already 
 quoted. Not that homoepaths, while they depend 
 upon specifics, believe that there is any such thing as 
 a specific for a disease— a disease being as various as 
 the individuality of the human beings whom it may 
 attack; but that an approximate specific may be 
 found for every well-defined stage in every individual 
 disease ; a disease having its process of change, de- 
 velopment, and decline, like a vegetable or animal life. 
 Besides an equally strong desire for specifics, and a 
 determined opposition to compound medicines, Boyl(^ 
 who was bom the year of Bacon's death, and in- 
 herited the mantle of the great philosopher, manifests 
 a strong belief in the power of the infinitesimal dose. 
 Neither Bacon nor Boyle, however, were medical men 
 by profession. But Sydenham followed them, accord- 
 ing to Dr. Russell, in their tendency towards specifics 
 
THE HISTORY AXD HEROES OF MEDICINE. 243 
 
 It is almost needless to mention Jenner's victory over 
 the small- pox as, in the eyes of the homoeopaths, a 
 grand step in the development of their system. It 
 gives Dr. Eussell an opportunity of showing in a 
 strong instance that the best discoveries for delivermg 
 mankind from those ills even of which they ^re most 
 sensible have been received with derision, with more 
 than bare unbelief. This is one of his objects in the 
 book, and while it is no proof whatever of the truth 
 of homcepathy, it shows at least that the opposition 
 manifested to it is no proof of its falsehood. This is 
 enough ; for it seeks to be tried on its own merits ; 
 and its foes are bound to accord it this when it is 
 advocated in such an honest and dignified manner as in 
 the book before us. 
 
 The need of man, in physics as well as in higher 
 things, is the guide to trutL With evils of any sort 
 we need no further acquaintance than may be gained in 
 the endeavour to combat them. The discovery of what 
 will cure diseases seems the only natural mode of 
 rising by generalization to the discovery of the laws of 
 cure and the nature of disease. 
 
 Those portions of the volume which discuss the 
 influence of Christianity on the healing art, likewise 
 those relating to the different feelings with which at 
 different times in different countries physicians have 
 been regarded, are especially interesting. 
 
 The only portion of the book we should be inclined 
 
 to find fault with, as to the quality of the thought 
 
 expended upon it, is the dissertation in the second 
 
 chaper on the ^^^ and itvcv/ao. "We doubt likewise 
 
 R 2 
 
244 THE HISTORY AND HEROES OF MEDICINE. 
 
 whether the author gives the ArchsBUs of Van Hehiiont 
 quite fair play; but these are questions so purely 
 theoretical that they scarcely admit of discussion here 
 "We rise from the perusal of the book, whatever may be 
 our feelings with regard to the truth or falsehood of the 
 system it advocates, with increased respect for the 
 profession of medicine, with enlarged hope for its 
 future, and with a strong feeling of the nobility con- 
 ferred by the art upon every one of its practitioners 
 who is ftware of the dignity of his calling. 
 
WORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 
 
 HE history of the poetry of Wordsworth is 
 a true reflex of the man himseK. The 
 life of Wordsworth was not outwardly 
 eventful, but his inner life was full of 
 confliict, discovery, and progress. His outward 
 life seems to have been so ordered by Provi- 
 dence as to favour the development of the poetic life 
 within. Educated in the country, and spending most 
 of his life in the society of nature, he was not subjected 
 to those Molent external changes which have been the 
 lot of some poeta Perfectly fitted as he was to cope 
 with the world, and to fight his way to any desired 
 position, he chose to retire from it, and in solitude to 
 work out what appeared to him to be the true destiny 
 of his life. 
 
 The very element in which the mind of Wordsworth 
 lived and moved was a Christian pantheism. Allow 
 me to explain the word. The poets of the Old Testa- 
 ment speak of everything as being the work of Q-od's 
 hand : — We are the " work of his hand j" " The world 
 
 > Delivered extempore at Manchester. 
 

 246 
 
 was made by him." But in the New Testament there 
 is a higher form used to express the relation in which 
 we stand to him — " We are his ofifspring ;" not the 
 work of his hand, but the children that came forth 
 from his heart. Our own poet G-oldsmith, with the 
 high instinct of genius, speaks of Q-od as having " loved 
 us into being." Now I think this is not only true with 
 regard to man, but true likewise with regard to the 
 world in which we live. This world is not merely a 
 thing which God hath made, subjecting it to laws j but 
 it is an expression of the thought, the feeling, the heart 
 of God himself. And so it must be ; because, if man be 
 the child of God, would he not feel to be out of his 
 element if he lived in a world which came, not from 
 the heart of God, but only from his hand? This 
 Christian pantheism, this belief that God is in every- 
 thing, and showing himself in everything, has been much 
 brought to the light by the poets of the past generation, 
 and has its influence still, I hope, upon the poets of the 
 present. We are not satisfied that the world should 
 be a proof and varying indication of the intellect of 
 God. That was how Paley viewed it. He taught us 
 to believe there is a God from the mechanism of the 
 world. But, allowing all the argument to be quite 
 correct, what does it prove ? A mechanical God, and 
 nothing more. 
 
 Let us go further ; amd, looking at beauty, believe 
 that God is the first of artists ; that he has put beauty 
 into nature, knowing how it will affect us, and intend- 
 ing that it should so affect us ; that he has embodied 
 his own grand thoughts thus that we might see them 
 
Wordsworth's poetry. 247 
 
 and be glad. Then, let us go further still, and believe 
 that whatever we feel in the highest moments of truth 
 shining thi'ough beauty, whatever comes to our souls 
 as a power of life, is meant to be seen and felt by us, 
 and to be regarded not as the work of his hand, but as 
 the flowing forth of his heart, the flowing forth of his 
 love of us, making us blessed in the union of his heart 
 and ours. 
 
 Now, Wordsworth is the high priest of nature thus'i 
 regarded. He saw God present everywhere ; not 
 always immediately, in his own form, it is true ; but 
 whether he looked upon the awful mountain-peak, 
 sky-encompassed with loveliness, or upon the face of 
 a little child, which is as it were eyes in the face of 
 nature in all things he felt the solemn presence of the 
 Divine Spirit. By Keats this presence was recognized 
 only as the spirit of beauty ; to Wordsworth, God, as 
 the Spirit of Truth, was manifested through the forms of 
 the external world. ~~ 
 
 I have said that the life of Wordsworth was so 
 ordered as to bring this out of him, in the forms of his 
 art, to the ears of men. In childhood even his con- 
 science was partly developed through the influences of 
 nature upon him. He thus retrospectively describes 
 this special influence of nature : — 
 
 One summer evening (led by her) I found 
 A little boat, tied to a willow tree, 
 Within a rocky cave, its usual home. 
 Straight I unloosed her chain, and stepping in, 
 Pushed from the shore. It was an act of stealth, 
 And troubled pleasure, nor without the voice 
 Of mountain echoes did my boat move on, 
 
248 Wordsworth's poetry. 
 
 Leaving behind her still, on either side, 
 
 Small circles glittering idly in the moon. 
 
 Until they melted all into one track 
 
 Of sparkling light. But now, like one who rowi 
 
 Proud of his skill, to reach a chosen point 
 
 With an unswerving line, I fixed my view 
 
 Upon the summit of a craggy ridge, 
 
 The horizon's utmost boundary ; far above 
 
 Was nothing but the stars and the grey sT^, 
 
 She was an elfin pinnace ; lustily 
 
 I dipped my oars into the silent lake, 
 
 And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat 
 
 Went heaving through the water like a swan j 
 
 When, from behind that craggy steep, till then 
 
 The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and hng% 
 
 As if with voluntary power instinct, 
 
 Upreared its head. I struck and struck again, 
 
 And, growing still in stature, the grim shape 
 
 Towered ap between me and the stars, and still 
 
 For so it seemed, with purpose of its own, 
 
 And measured motion like a living thing. 
 
 Strode after me. With trembling oars I turnedy 
 
 And through the silent water stole my way 
 
 Back to the covert of the willow tree j 
 
 There in her mooring place I left my bark. 
 
 And through the meadows homeward went, in gravt 
 
 And serious mood ; but after I had seen 
 
 That spectacle, for many days, my brain 
 
 Worked with a dim and undetermined sense 
 
 Of unknown modes of being j o'er my thoughts 
 
 There hung a darkness, call it solitude, 
 
 Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes 
 
 Remained, no pleasant images of trees, 
 
 Of sea, or sky, no colours of green fields; 
 
 But huge and mighty forms, that do not live 
 
 Like living men, moved slowly through the mind 
 
 By day, and were a trouble to my dreams. 
 
 Here we see that a fresh impulse was given to his Uft 
 
woedstvoeth's poetry. 249 
 
 even in boyhood, by the influence of nature. If we 
 have had any similar experience, we shall be able to 
 enter into this feeling of Wordsworth's ; if not, the 
 tale will be almost incredible. 
 
 One passage more I would refer to, as showing what 
 "Wordsworth felt with regard to nature, in his youth ; 
 and the growth that took place in him in consequence. 
 Nature laid up in the storehouse of his mind and heart 
 her most beautiful and grand forms, whence they might 
 be brought, afterwards, to be put to the highest human 
 service. I quote only a few lines from that poem, 
 deservedly a favourite -with all the lovers of Words- 
 worth, " Lines ^vritten above Tintem Abbay ;" — 
 
 I cannot paint 
 What then I was. The sounding catai'act 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood. 
 Their colours and their forms, were then to me 
 An appetite ; a feeling and a love, 
 That had no need of a remoter charm 
 By thought supplied, nor any interest 
 Unborrowed from tlie eye. — That time is past, 
 And all its aching joys are now no more. 
 And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
 Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts 
 Hare followed ; for such loss, I would believe, 
 Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused. 
 
250 woEDS worth's poetry. 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting siinB, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man| 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. 
 
 In this little passage you see the growth of the influence 
 of nature on the mind of the poet. You observe, too, 
 that nature passes into poetry ; that form is sublimed 
 into speecL You see the result of the conjunction of 
 the mind of man, and the mind of Grod manifested in 
 His works ; spirit coming to know the speech of spirit. 
 The outflowing of spirit in nature is received by the 
 poet, and he utters again, in his form, what Grod has 
 already uttered in His. Wordsworth wished to give 
 to man what he found in nature. It was to him a 
 power of good, a world of teaching, a strength of life. 
 He knew that nature was not his, and that his enjoy- 
 ment of nature was given to him that he might give it 
 to man. It was the birthright of man. 
 
 But what did Wordsworth find in nature 1 To begin 
 with the lowest; he found amusement in nature. 
 Right amusement is a part of teaching; it is the 
 childish form of teaching, and if we can get this in 
 mature, we get something that lies near the root of good. 
 In proof that Wordsworth found this, I refer to a poem 
 which you probably know well, " The Daisy." The 
 poet sits playing with the flower, and listening to the sug- 
 gestions that come to him of odd resemblances that this 
 flower bears to other things. He likens the daisy to— 
 
 A little Cyclops, with one eye 
 gtarisg to threaten and defy, 
 
261 
 
 That thoaght comes next— and instantly 
 
 The freak is over, 
 The shape will vanish — and behold 
 A silver shield with boss of gold, 
 That spreads itself, some faery bold 
 
 In fight to cover I 
 
 Look at the last stanza, too, and yon will see how close 
 amusement may lie to deep and earnest thought : — 
 
 Bright Flower ! for by that name at last 
 When all my. reveries are past, 
 I call thee, and to that cleave fast, 
 
 Sweet silent creature ! 
 That breath*st with me in sun and air» 
 Do thou, as thou art wont, repair 
 My heart with gladness, and a share 
 
 Of thy meek nature ! 
 
 But Wordsworth found also joy in nature, which is 
 a hetter thing than amusement, and consequently easier 
 to be found. We can often have joy where we can 
 have no amusement, — 
 
 I wandered lonely as a cloud 
 
 That floats on high o'er vales and hills^ 
 
 When all at once I saw a crowd, 
 A host, of golden daflfodils j 
 
 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
 
 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze* 
 
 The waves beside them danced ; but they 
 Out-did the sparkling waves in glee : 
 
 A poet could not but be gay. 
 In such a jocund company : 
 
 I gazed — and gazed— but Uttle thought 
 
 What Health the show to me had brought. 
 
252 wonDs worth's poetet. 
 
 ** For oft, when on my couch I lie 
 
 In vacant or in pensive mood. 
 
 They flash upon that inward eye 
 
 Which is the bliss of solitude j 
 
 And then my heart with pleasure GJHa, 
 
 And dances with the daflEbdils. 
 
 This is the joy of the eye, as far as that can be 
 separated from the joy of the whole nature ; for his 
 whole nature rejoiced in the joy of the eye ; but it 
 was simply joy ; there was no further teaching, no 
 attempt to go through this beauty and find the truth 
 below it. We are not always to be in that hungry, 
 restless condition, even after truth itself. If we keep 
 our minds quiet and ready to receive truth, and some- 
 times are hungry for it, that is enough. 
 
 Q-oing a step higher, you will find that he sometimes 
 draws a lesson from nature, seeming almost to force a 
 meaning from her. I do not object to this, if he does 
 not make too much of it as existing in nature. It is 
 rather finding a meaning in nature that he brought to 
 it. The meaning exists, if not there. For illustration 
 I refer to another poem. Observe that Wordsworth 
 found the lesson because he looked for it, and would 
 
 find it. 
 
 This Lawn, a carpet all alive 
 
 With shadows flung from leaves — to strive 
 
 In dance, amid a press 
 Of sunshine, an apt emblem yields 
 Of Worldlings revelling in the fields 
 
 Of strenuous idleness. 
 • * * # • 
 
 Yet, spite of all this eager strife, 
 This ceaseless play, the genuine life 
 
 That serves the steadfast honri^ 
 
Wordsworth's poetry. 253 
 
 Is in the grass beneath, that grows 
 Unheeded, and the mute repose 
 
 Of sweetly-breathing flowers. 
 
 Wlietlier he forced this lesson from nature, or not, it is 
 a good lesson, teaching a great many tilings with regard 
 to life and work. 
 
 Again, nature sometimes flashes a lesson on his mind ; 
 gives it to him— and when nature gives, we cannot but 
 receive. As in this somiet composed dm-ing a storm, — 
 
 One who was sufiering tumult in his soul 
 
 Yet failed to seek the sure relief of prayer, 
 
 Went forth ; his course surrendering to the care 
 
 Of the fierce wind, while mid-day lightnings prowl 
 
 Insiduously, untimely thunders growl ; 
 
 While trees, dim-seen, in frenzied numbers tear 
 
 The lingering remnant of their yellow hair, 
 
 And shivering wolves, surprised with darkness, howl 
 
 As if the sun were not. He raised his eye 
 
 Soul-smitten ; for, that instant, did appear 
 
 Large space (mid dreadful clouds) of purest sky. 
 
 An azure disc — shield of Tranquillity; 
 
 Invisible, unlooked-for, minister 
 
 Of pi'ovidential goodness ever nigh ! 
 
 Observe that he was not looking for this ; he had 
 not thought of praying ; he was in such distress that it 
 had benumbed the out-goings of his spirit towards the 
 source whence alone sure comfort comes. He went out 
 into the storm ; and the uproar in the outer world was 
 in harmony with the tumult within his soul. Suddenly 
 a clear space in the sky makes him feel— he has no 
 time to think about it — that there is a shield of tran- 
 quillity spread over him. For was it not as it were an 
 
254 woedsworth's poetry. 
 
 opening up into that region -where there are no storms ; 
 the regions of peace, because the regions of love, and 
 truth, and purity, — the home of Grod himself ? 
 
 There is yet a higher and more sustained influence 
 exercised by nature, and that takes effect when she 
 puts a man into that mood or condition in which 
 thoughts ' come of themselves. That is perhaps the 
 best thing that can be done for us, the best at least 
 that nature can do. It is certainly higher than mere 
 intellectual teaching. That nature did this for Words- 
 worth is very clear ; and it is easily intelligible. If 
 the world proceeded from the imagination of Grod, and 
 man proceeded from the love of God, it is easy to be- 
 lieve that that which proceeded from the imagination 
 of Grod should rouse the best thoughts in the mind of 
 a being who proceeded from the love of God. This I 
 think is the relation between man and the world. As 
 an instance of what I mean, I refer to one of Words- 
 worth's finest poems, which he classes under the head 
 of "Evening Voluntaries." It was composed upon an 
 evening of extraordinary splendour and beauty : — 
 
 Had this effulgence disappeared 
 With flying haste, I might have sent, 
 Among the speechless clouds, a look 
 Of blank astonishment ; 
 But 'tis endued with power to stay. 
 And sanctify one closing day, 
 That frail Mortality may see — 
 What is ? — ah no, but what c<m be ! 
 Time was when field and watery coTd 
 With modulated echoes rang, 
 While choirs of fervent Angels Ban« 
 Their vespers ia the grove; 
 
woedsworth's poetry. 255 
 
 Or, crowning, star-like, each some sovereign height, 
 Warbled, for heaven above and earth below. 
 Strains suitable to both. Such holy rite, 
 Methinks, if audibly repeated now 
 From hill or valley, could not move 
 Sublimer transport, purer love, 
 Than doth this silent spectacle — the gleam— 
 'Kie shadow — and the peace supreme ! 
 
 No sound is uttered, — but a deep 
 And solemn harmony pervades 
 The hollow vale from steep to steep, 
 And penetrates the glades. 
 * # * * • 
 
 Wings at my shoulders seem to play ; 
 
 But, rooted here, I stand and gaze 
 
 On those bright steps that heaven- ward raiae 
 
 Their practicable way. 
 
 Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad, 
 
 And see to what fair countries ye are bound ! 
 
 • • # * « 
 
 Dread Power ! whom peace and calmness serve 
 No less than Nature's threatening voice. 
 From Thee, if I would swerve, 
 Oh, let Thy grace remind me of the light 
 Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored ; 
 Which, at this moment, on my waking sight 
 Appears to shine, by miracle restored j 
 My soul, though yet confined to earth, 
 Eejoices in a second birth ! " 
 
 Picture the scene for yourselves ; and observe how it 
 moves in him the sense of responsibility, and the 
 prayer, that if he has in any matter wandered from the 
 right road, if he has forgotten the simplicity of child- 
 hood in the toil of life, he may, from this time, re- 
 member the vow that he now records— from this time 
 
256 
 
 to press on towards the things that are unseen, but 
 which are manifested through the things that are seen. 
 I refer you likewise to the poem "Resolution and 
 Independence, "commonly called "The Leech Gatherer;'* 
 also to that grandest ode that has ever been written, 
 the " Ode on Immortality." You wiU find there, 
 whatever you may thiuk of his theory, in the latter, 
 sufficient proof that nature was to him a divine teach- 
 ing power. Do not suppose that I mean that man can 
 do without more teaching than nature's, or that a man 
 with only nature's teaching would have seen these 
 things in nature. No, the soul must be tuned to such 
 things. Wordsworth could not have found such things, 
 had he. not known something that was more definite 
 and helpful to him ; but this known, then nature was 
 fuU of teaching. When we understand the Word of 
 God, then we understand the works of God ; when we 
 know the nature of an artist, we know his pictures ; 
 when we have known and talked with the poet, we 
 understand his poetry far better. To the man of God, 
 aU nature will be but changeful reflections of the face 
 of God. 
 
 Loving man as Wordsworth did, he was most anxious 
 to give him this teaching. How was he to do it 1 By 
 poetry. Nature put into the crucible of a loving heart 
 becomes poetry. We cannot explain poetry scienti- 
 fically; because poetry is something beyond science. 
 The poet may be man of science, and the man of 
 science may be a poet ; but poetry includes science, 
 and the man who will advance science most, is the man 
 who, other qualifications being equal, has most of the 
 
257 
 
 poetic faculty in him. 'Wordsworth defines poetry to 
 be " the impassioned expression which is on the face of 
 science." Science has to do with the construction of 
 things. The casting of the granite ribs of the mighty 
 earth, and all the thousand operations that result in 
 the manifestations on its surface, this is the domain 
 of science. But when there come the grass-bearing 
 meadows, the heaven-reared hills, the great streams 
 that go ever downward, the bubbling fountains that 
 ever arise, the wind that wanders amongst the leaves, 
 and the odours that are wafted upon its wings ; when 
 we have colour, and shape, and sound, then we have 
 the material with which poetry has to do. Science has 
 to do with the underwork. For what does this great 
 central world exist, with its hidden winds and waters, 
 its upheavings and its downsinkings, its strong frame 
 of rock, and its heart of fire 1 What do they all exist 
 for 1 Xot for themselves surely, but for the sake of 
 this out-spreading world of beauty, that floats up, as it 
 were, to the surface of the shapeless region of force 
 Science has to do with the one, and poetry with the 
 other : poetry is " the impassioned expression that is 
 on the face of science." To illustrate it still further. 
 You are walking in the woods, and you find the first 
 primrose of the year. You feel almost as if you had 
 found a child. You know in yourself that you have 
 found a new beauty and a new joy, though you have 
 seen it a thousand times before. It is a primrose. A 
 little flower that looks at me, thinks itself into my 
 heart, and gives me a pleasure distinct in itself, and 
 which I feel as if I could not do without The impas- 
 
258 Wordsworth's poetry. 
 
 sioned expression on the face of this little outspread 
 lio-wer is its childhood ; it means trust, consciousness of 
 protection, faith, and hope. Science, in the person of 
 the botanist, conies after you, and pulls it to pieces to 
 see its construction, and delights the intellect ; bat the 
 science itself is dead, and kills what it touches. The 
 flower exists not for it, but for the expression on its 
 face, which is its poetry, — that expression which you 
 feel to mean a living thing ; that expression which 
 makes you feel that this flower is, as it were, just 
 growing out of the heart of God. The intellect itself 
 is but the scaffolding for the uprearing of the spiritual 
 nature. 
 
 It will make all this yet plainer, if you can suppose 
 a human form to be created without a soul in it. 
 Divine science has put it together, but only for the sake 
 of the outshining soul that shall cause it to live, and 
 move, and have a being of its own in God. When you 
 see the face lighted up with soul, when you recognize 
 in it thought and feeling, joy and love, then you know 
 that here is the end for which it was made. Thus you 
 see the relation that poetry has to science ; and you 
 find that, to speak in an apparent paradox, the surface 
 is the deepest after all ; for, through the surface, for the 
 sake of which all this building went on, we have, as it 
 were, a window into the depths of truth. There is not 
 a form that lives in the worlds but is a window cloven 
 through the blank darkness of nothingness, to let 
 us look into the heart, and feeling, and nature of God. 
 So the surface of things is the best and the deepest, 
 provided it is not mere surface, but the impassioned 
 
Wordsworth's poetry. 259 
 
 expression, for the sake of which the science of God 
 has thought and laboured. 
 
 Satisfied that this was the nature of poetry, and 
 wanting to convey this to the minds of his fellow-men, 
 "What vehicle," Wordsworth may be supposed to 
 have asked himself, " shall I use ? How shall I decide 
 what form of words to employ ? Where am I to find 
 the right language for speaking such great things to 
 men 1 " He saw that the poetry of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury (he was born in 1770) was not like nature at all, 
 but was an artificial thing, with no more originality in 
 it than there would be in a picture a hundred times 
 copied, the copyists never reverting to the original. 
 You cannot look into this eighteenth century poetry, 
 excepting, of course, a great proportion of the poetry 
 of Cowper and Thompson, without being struck with 
 the sort of agreement that nothing should be said 
 naturafiy. A certain set form and mode was employed 
 for saying things that ought never to have been said 
 twice in the same way. Wordsworth resolved to go 
 back to the root of the thing, to the natural simplicity 
 of speech ; he would have none of these stereotyped 
 forms of expression. " Where shall I find," said he, 
 "the language that will be simple and powerful?" 
 And he came to the conclusion that the language of the 
 common people was the only language suitable for his 
 purpose. Your experience of the everyday language of 
 the common people may be that it is not poetical. 
 True, but not even a poet can speak poetically in his 
 Btupid moments. Wordsworth's idea was to take the 
 language of the common people in theii uncommon 
 s 2 
 
260 AVORDSWORTH'S POETRY. 
 
 moods, in their high and, consequently, simple moods, 
 when their minds are influenced by grief, hope, reve- 
 rence, worship, love ; for then he believed he could get 
 just the language suitable for the poet. As far as that 
 language will go, I think he was right, if I may ven- 
 ture to give an opinion in support of Wordsworth. Of 
 course, there will occur necessities to the poet which 
 would not be comprehended in the language of a man 
 whose thoughts had never moved in the same directions, 
 but the kind of language will be the right thing, and I 
 have heard such amongst the common people myself — 
 language which they did not know to be poetic, but 
 which fell upon my ear and heart as profoundly poetic 
 both in its feeling and its form. 
 
 In attempting to carry out this theory, I am not pre- 
 pared tQ, say that "Wordsworth never transgressed his 
 own self-imposed laws. But he adhered to his theory 
 to the last. A friend of the poet's told me that Words- 
 worth had to him expressed his belief that he would be 
 remembered longest, not by his sonnets, as his friend 
 thought, but by his lyrical ballads, those for which he 
 had been reviled and laughed at ; the most by critics 
 who could not understand him, and who were unworthy 
 to read what he had written. As a proof of this let me 
 read to you three verses, composing a poem that was 
 especially marked for derision : — 
 
 She dwelt among the untrodden ways, 
 
 Beside the springs of Dove ; 
 
 A maid whom there were none to praisey 
 
 And very few to love. 
 
 A violet by a mossy stone. 
 Half hidden from the eye } 
 
261 
 
 Fur as a star, when only one 
 Is shining in the sky. 
 
 She lived unknown, and tevr oonld know 
 When Lucy ceased to be j 
 But she is in her grave, and Oh I 
 The difference to me. 
 
 The last Kne was especially chosen as the ohject of 
 ridicule ; but I think with most of us the feeling will 
 be, that its very simplicity of expression is overflowing 
 in suggestion, it throws us back upon our own expe- 
 rience ; for, instead of trying to utter what he felt, he 
 says in those simple and common words, *' You who 
 have known anything of the kind, will know what the 
 difference to me is, and only you can know." " My 
 intention and desire," he says in one of his essays, 
 " are that the interest of the poem shall owe nothing 
 to the circumstances ; but that the circumstances shall 
 be made interesting by the thing itself." In most 
 novels, for instance, the attempt is made to interest U3 
 in worthless, commonplace people, whom, if we had 
 our choice, we would far rather not meet at aU, by sur- 
 rounding them with peculiar and extraordinary circum- 
 stances ; but this is a low source of interest. Words- 
 worth was determined to owe nothing to such an 
 adventitious cause. For illustration allow me to read 
 that well-known little ballad, " The Reverie of Poor 
 Susan," and you wiU see how entirely it bears out 
 what he lays down as his theory. The scene is in 
 London : — 
 
 At the corner of Wood-street, when daylight appears, 
 Hangs a Thmsh that sings loud, it has snng for three yeanii 
 
 
262 WORDSWORTH S POETRY. 
 
 Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard. 
 In the silence of morning, the song of the Bird. 
 
 'Tis a note of enchantment : what ails her ? She 
 A mountain ascending, a vision of trees j 
 Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, 
 And a river flows on through the vale of Oheapside. 
 
 Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale, 
 Down which she so often has tripped with her pail } 
 And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, 
 The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. 
 
 She looks, and her heart is in heaven : but they fadOf 
 The mist and the river, the hill and the shade : 
 The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, 
 And the colours have all passed away from her eyes ! 
 
 Is any of the interest here owing to the circumstances 1 
 Is it not a very common incident ? But has he not 
 treated it so that it is not commonplace in the least % 
 We recognize in this girl just the feelings we discover 
 in ourselves, and acknowledge almost with tears her 
 sisterhood to us alL 
 
 I have tried to make you feel something of what 
 "Wordsworth attempts to do, but I have not given you 
 the best of his poems. AUow me to finish by reading 
 the closing portion of the Prelude, the poem that was 
 published after his death. It is addressed to Cole- 
 ridge : — 
 
 Oh I yet a few short years of useful life, 
 
 And all will be complete, thy race be run, 
 
 Thy monument of glory will be raised ; 
 
 Then, though (too weak to head the ways of trnfh) 
 
 This age £fkll back to old idolatry, 
 
POETRY. 263 
 
 Though men return to servitude as fast 
 
 As the tide ebbs, to ignominy and shame 
 
 By nations sink together, we shall still 
 
 Find solace — knowing what we have learnt to know— 
 
 Kich in true happiness, if allowed to be 
 
 Faithful alike in forwarding a day 
 
 Of firmer trust, joint labourers in the work 
 
 (Should Providence such grace to us vouchsafe) 
 
 Of their deliverance, surely yet to come. 
 
 Prophets of Nature, we to them will speak 
 
 A lasting inspiration, sanctified 
 
 By reason, blest by faith : what we have loved, 
 
 Others will love, and we will teach them how ; 
 
 Instruct them how the mind of man becomes 
 
 A thousand times more beautiful than the earth 
 
 On which he dwells, above this frame of thingg 
 
 (Which, 'mid all revolution in the hopes 
 
 And fears of men, doth still remain unchanged) 
 
 In beauty exalted, as it is itself 
 
 Of quality and fabric more divine. 
 
SHELLEY. 
 
 HATEYER opinion may be held with 
 regard to the relative position occupied 
 by Shelley as a poet, it will be granted 
 by most of those who have studied his 
 writings, that they are of such an individual and 
 original kind, that he can neither be hidden in the 
 shade, nor lost in the brightness, of any other poet 
 No idea of his works could be conveyed by instituting 
 a comparison, for he does not sufficiently resemble any 
 other among English writers to make such a comparison 
 possible. 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley was bom at Field Place, near 
 Horsham, in the county of Sussex, on the 4th of 
 August, 1792. He was the son of Timothy Shelley, 
 Esq., and grandson of Sir Bysshe Shelley, the first 
 baronet. His ancestors had long been large landed 
 proprietors in Sussex. 
 
 As a child his habits were noticeable. He was 
 especially fond of rambling by moonlight, of inventing 
 wonderful tales, of occupying himself with strange, and 
 sometimes dangerous, amusements. At the age of 
 thirteen he went to Eton. In this little world, that 
 determined opposition to whatever appeared to him 
 an invasion of human rights and liborty, which was 
 
SHELLEY. 265 
 
 afterwards the animating principle of most of his 
 writings, was first roused ia the mind of Shelley. "Were 
 we not aM'are of far keener distress, which he after- 
 wards endured from yet greater injustice, we might 
 suppose that the sufferings he had to bear from placing 
 himself in opposition to the custom of the school, by 
 refusing to fag, had made him morbidly sensitive on 
 the point of liberty. At a time, however, when free- 
 dom of speech, as indicating freedom of thought, was 
 especially obnoxious to established authorities ; when 
 no allowance could be made on the score of youth, still 
 less on that of individual peculiarity, Shelley became a 
 student at Oxford. He was then eighteen, devoted to 
 metaphysical speculation, and especially fond of logical 
 discussion, he, in his first year, printed and distributed 
 among the authorities and members of his college a 
 pamphlet, if that can be called a pamphlet which con- 
 sisted only of two pages, in which he opposed the usual 
 arguments for the existence of a Deity; arguments 
 which, perhaps, the most ardent believers have equally 
 considered inconclusive. Whether Shelley wrote this 
 pamphlet as an embodiment of his own opinions, or 
 merely as a logical confutation of certain arguments, 
 the mode of procedure adopted with him was certainly 
 not one which necessarily resulted from the position of 
 those to whose care the education of his opinions 
 was entrusted. Without waiting to be assured that 
 he was the author, and satisfying themselves with his 
 refusal to answer when questioned as to the authorship, 
 they handed him his sentence of expulsion, which had 
 been already drawn up in due f oim. 
 
266 siii:li.ey. 
 
 About this time Shelley wrote, or cpmrnenced writing, 
 Queen Mah^ a poem, which he never published, 
 although he distributed copies amongst his friends. In 
 after-years he had such a low opinion of it in every 
 respect, that he regretted having printed it at all ; and 
 when an edition of it was published without his con- 
 sent, he appHed to the Court of Chancery for an injunc- 
 tion to suppress it. 
 
 Shelley's opinions in politics and theology, which he 
 appears to have been far more anxious to maintain than 
 was consistent with the peace of the household, were 
 peculiarly obnoxious to his father, a man as different 
 from his son as it is possible to conceive ; and his ex- 
 pulsion from Oxford was soon followed by exile from his 
 home. He went to London, where, through his sisters, 
 who were at school in the neighbourhood, he made the 
 acquaintance of Harriet Westbrook, whom he eloped 
 with and married, when he was nineteen and she 
 sixteen years of age. It seems doubtful whether the 
 attachment between them was more than the result of 
 the reception accorded by the enthusiasm of the girl to 
 the enthusiasm of the youth, manifesting itself in wild 
 talk about human rights, and equally wild plans for 
 their recovery and security. However this may be, 
 the result was unfortunate. They wandered about 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, with frequent and 
 sudden chauge of residence, for rather more than two 
 years. During this time Shelley gained the friendship 
 of some of the most eminent men of the age ; of whom 
 the one who exercised the most influence upon his 
 character and future history was William Godwin. 
 
SHELLEY. 267 
 
 The instructions and expostulations of tliis eminent 
 writer tended to reduce to solidity and form the vague 
 and extravagant opinions and projects of the youthful 
 reformer. Shortly after the commencement of the 
 third year of their married life, an estrangement of 
 feeling, which had been gradually widening between 
 him and his wife, resulted in their final separation. We 
 are not informed as to the causes of this estrangement, 
 further than that it seems to have been owing, in a con- 
 siderable degree, to the influence of an elder sister of Mrs. 
 Shelley, who domineered over her, and whose presence 
 became atdast absolutely hateful to Shelley. His wife 
 returned to her father's house, where, apparently, about 
 three years after, she committed suicide. There seems 
 to have been no immediate connexion between this 
 act and any conduct of Shelley. One of his biographers 
 informs us, that while they were living happily together, 
 suicide was a favourite subject of speculation and con- 
 versation with Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Shortly after his first wife's death, Shelley married 
 the daughter of William G-odwin, with whom he had 
 lived almost from the date of the separation. During 
 this time they had twice visited Switzerland. In the 
 following year (1817), it was decreed in Chancery that 
 Shelley was not a proper person to take charge of his 
 two children, left by his first wife. These had lived 
 with her after the separation, and the bill was filed in 
 Chancery by their grandfather. The efi'ects of this 
 proceeding upon Shelley may be easily imagined. 
 Perhaps he never recovered from them ; for they were 
 not of a nature to pass away. During this year he 
 
268 SHELLEY. 
 
 resided at Marlow, and wrote The Revolt of Islam, 
 besides portions of other poems. In the following 
 year (1818) he left England, not to return. The state 
 of his health, for he had appeared to be in a consump- 
 tion for some time, joined with the fear lest his son, by 
 his second wife, should be taken from him, was such 
 as to lead him to take refuge in Italy from both im- 
 pending evils. At Lucia he began his Frometheus, 
 and wrote Julian and Maddalo. He moved from 
 place to place in Italy, as he had done in his own 
 country. Their two children dying, they were for a 
 time left childless; but the loss of these grieved 
 Shelley less than that of his eldest two, who were 
 taken from him by the hand of man. In 1819 SheUey 
 finished his Prometheus TJnhound, writing the greater 
 part at Rome, and completing it at Florence. In this 
 year also he wrote his tragedy, The Genci. This attracted 
 more attention during his lifetime than any other 
 of his works. The " Ode to a Skylark " was written 
 at Leghorn in the Spring of 1820 ; and in August of 
 the same year, the Witch of Atlas was written near 
 Pisa. In the following year Shelley and Byron met 
 at Pisa. They were a good deal together ; but their 
 friendship, although real, does not appear to have been 
 of a very profound nature. Though unlikeness be one 
 of the necessary elements of friendship, there are kinds 
 of unlikeness which will not harmonize. During all 
 this time he was not only maligned by unknown 
 enemies, and abused by 'anonymous writers, but 
 attempts of otlier kinds were made to render his life 
 as uncomfortable as possible. His lifej however, waa 
 
SHELLEY. 269 
 
 drawing to its close. In 1821 lie wrote his ** Adonais," 
 a monody on the death of Keats. Part of this poem 
 is owing to tlie mistaken notion, that the illness and 
 death of Keats were caused by a brutal criticism of his 
 " Endymion," which appeared in the Quarterly Review, 
 The last verse of this poem seems almost prophetic 
 of his own end. Passionately fond of boating, he and 
 a friend of his, Mr. Williams, united in constructing a 
 boat of a peculiar build j a very fast sailer, but difficult 
 to manage. On the 8th of July, 1822, Shelley and Ms 
 friend Williams sailed from Leghorn for Lerici, on the 
 Bay of Spezia, near which was his home for the time. 
 A sudden squall came on, and their boat disappeared. 
 The bodies of the two friends were cast on shore ; and, 
 according to quarantine regulations, were burned to 
 ashes. Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Mr. Trelawney 
 were present at the ceremony ; so that the ashes of 
 Shelley were saved, and buried in the Protestant burial 
 ground at Eome, near the grave of Keats, who was 
 laid there in the spring of the preceding year. Cor 
 Cordumo were the words inscribed by his widow on 
 the tomb of the poet. 
 
 The character of Shelley has lit en sadly maligned. 
 Whatever faults he may have committed against society, 
 they were not the result of sensuality. One of his 
 biographers, who was his companion at Oxford, and 
 who does net seem inclined to do him more than 
 justice, asserts that while there his conduct was im- 
 maculate. The whole picture he gives of the youth 
 makes it easy to believe this. To discuss the moral 
 question involved in one part of his history would be 
 
270 SHELLEY. 
 
 out of place here ; but on the supposition, even that a 
 man's conduct is altogether inexcusable in individual 
 instances, there is the more need that nothing but the 
 truth should be said concerning that, and other portions 
 thereof. And whatever society may have thought 
 itself justified in making subject of reprobation, it 
 must be remembered that Shelley was under less 
 obligation to society than most men. Yet his heart 
 seemed full of love to his kind ; and the distress which 
 the oppression of others caused him, was the source of 
 much of that wild denunciation which exposed him to 
 the contempt and hatred of those who were rendered 
 uncomfortable by his unsparing and indiscriminating 
 anathemas. In private he was beloved by all who 
 knew him ; a steady, generous, self-denying friend, 
 not only to those who moved in his own circle, but to 
 all who were brought within the reach of any aid he 
 could bestow. To the poor he was a true and laborious 
 benefactor. That man must have been good to whom 
 the heart of his widow returns with such earnest devo- 
 tion and thankfulness in the recollection of the past, 
 and such fond hope for the future, as are manifested 
 by Mrs. Shelley in those extracts from her private 
 journal given us by Lady Shelley. 
 
 As regards his religious opinions, one of the thoughts 
 that most strongly suggests itself is, — how ill he must 
 have been instructed in the principles of Christianity. 
 " Indeed," he says himself in a letter to Godwin, " I 
 have known no tutor or adviser {not excepting my 
 father) from whose lessons and suggestions I have not 
 recoiled with disgust" So ffur is he from being an 
 
SHELLEY. 271 
 
 opponent of Christianity, properly so-called, that one 
 can hardly help feeling what a Christian he would have 
 been, could he but have seen it in any other way than 
 through the traditional and practical misrepresentations 
 of it which surrounded him. All his attacks on 
 Christianity are, in reality, directed against evils to 
 which the true doctrines of Christianity are more 
 opposed than those of Shelley could possibly be. How 
 far it was right of him to give the name of Christianity 
 to what he might have seen to be only a miserable 
 perversion of it, is another question, and one which 
 hardly admits of discussion here. It was in the nawA 
 ol Christianity, however, that the worst injuries of 
 which he had to complain were inflicted upon him. 
 Coming out of the cathedral at Pisa one day,^ Shelley 
 warmly assented to a remark of Leigh Hunt, " that a 
 divine religion might be found out, if charity were 
 really made the principle of it instead of faith." Surely 
 the founders of Christianity, even when they magnified 
 faith, intended thereby a spiritual condition, of which 
 the central principle is coincident with charity. Shelley's 
 own feelings towards others, as judged from his poetry, 
 seem to be tinctured with the very essence of Chris- 
 tianity.* 
 
 1 His Essay on Christianity is full of noble views, some of 
 ■which are held at the present day by some of the most earnest 
 believers. At what time of his life it was written we are not 
 informed ; but it seems such ad would insure his acceptance 
 with any company of intelligent and devout Unitarians. 
 
 2 From Shelley Memorials, edited by Lady Shelley, whicdi 
 the writer of this paper has principally followed in regard to 
 the external facte of Shelley's histoxj. 
 
272 SHELLEY. 
 
 ^ Shelley's religion seems to have heen a form of 
 Pantheism. He did not, at one time at least, believe 
 that we could know the source of our being ; and 
 seemed to take it as a self-evident truth, that the 
 Creator could not be like the creature. But it seems 
 injustice to fix upon any utterance of opinion, and 
 regard it as the religion of a man who died in his 
 thirtieth year, and whose habits of thinking were such 
 that his opinions must have been in a state of constant 
 change. Coleridge says in a letter : " His (Shelley's) 
 discussions, tending towards atheism of a certain sort, 
 would not have scared me ; for me it would have been 
 a semi-transparent larva, soon to be sloughed, and 
 through which I should have seen the true image — 
 the final metamorphosis. Besides, I have ever thought 
 that sort of atheism the next best religion to Chris- 
 tianity ; nor does the better faith I have learned from 
 Paul and John interfere with the cordial reverence I 
 feel for Benedict Spinoza." N 
 
 Shelley's favourite study was metaphysics. The 
 more impulse there is in any direction, the more 
 education and experience are necessary to balance that 
 impulse ; and one cannot help thinking that Shelley's 
 taste for exercises of this kind was developed more 
 rapidly than the corresponding^oz^er. His favourite phy- 
 sical studies were chemistry and electricity. With these 
 he occupied himself from his childhood, apparently, 
 however, with more delight in the experiments them- 
 selves, than interest in the general conclusions to be 
 arrived at by means of them. In the embodiment of 
 his metaphysical ideas in poetiy, the influence of these 
 
SHELLEY. 273 
 
 studies seems to appear. For the forms chosen are of 
 an exi-irnal physical kind, belonging, in their association 
 with the idea, to the realm of the fancy rather than 
 chosen by the imaginative power, because of an inward 
 vital resemblance. Logic had considerable attractions 
 for him. To geometry and mathematics he was quite 
 indifferent. One of his biographers states, that " he 
 was neglectful of flowers," because he had no interest 
 in botany ; but one who derived such full delight 
 from the contemplation of their external forms, could ; 
 hardly be expected to feel very strongly the impulse to 
 dissect and explore. He derived exceeding pleasure 
 from the Grreek, especially from the works of Plato. 
 
 Several little peculiarities in Shelley's tastes are 
 worth mentioning, because they seem to correspond so 
 well with the nature of his poetry, although in them- 
 selves they are insignificant. Perhaps the most 
 prominent of these was his passion for boat-sailing, / 
 He could not pass any piece*' of water without launching 
 upon it a number of boats, constructed from what 
 paper he could find in his pockets. The fly-leaves of 
 the books he was in the habit of carrying with him, 
 for he was constantly reading, often went to this end- 
 He would watch the fate of these boats with the 
 utmost interest, till they sank or reached the opposite 
 side. He was just as fond of real boating, and that 
 frequently of a dangerous kind. Pistol-shooting was ? 
 also a favourite amusement. Fire-works, too, gave him 
 great delight. Some of his habits were likewise peculiar. 
 He was remarkably abstemious, preferring bread and 
 raisins to anything else in the way of eating, and f eiy 
 
 T 
 
274 SHELLEY. 
 
 seldom drinking anything stronger tlian water. Honey 
 was a favourite luxury with him. While at college, 
 his biographer Hogg says, he was in the habit, during 
 the evening, of going to sleep on the rug, close to a 
 blazing fire, heat seeming never to have other than a 
 beneficial efiect upon him. After sleeping some hoars 
 he would awake perfectly restored, and continue 
 actively occupied till far into the morning. Indeed, he 
 seemed to have more than the usual dislike to going to 
 bed. His whole movements are represented as rapid, 
 hurried, and uncertain. He would appear and dis- 
 appear suddenly and unexpectedly; forget appoint- 
 ments; burst into wild laughter, heedless of his 
 situation, whenever anything struck him as peculiarly 
 ludicrous. His changes of residence were most nume- 
 rous, and frequently made with so much haste that 
 _wliole little libraries were left behind, and often lost. 
 He was very fond of children, and used to make 
 humorous efforts to induce them to disclose to him 
 the still remembered secrets of pre-existence. He 
 seemed to have a peculiar attraction towards the un- 
 known, and was ready to believe there was a secret 
 hidden, where no one else would have thought of one. 
 His room, while he was at college, was in a state of 
 indescribable confusion. Not only were all sorts of 
 personal necessaries mingled with books and philoso- 
 phical instruments, but things belonging to one depart- 
 ment of service were not unfrequently pressed into the 
 slavery of another. He dressed well but carelessly. In 
 person he was tall, slender, and stooping ; awkward in 
 gait, but in manners a thorough gentleman. His com- 
 
SHELLEY. 275 
 
 plexion was delicate ; his head, face, and features 
 remarkably small; the last not very regular, but in 
 expression, both intellectual and moral, wonderfully 
 beautiful. His eyes were deep blue, "of a wild, 
 strange beauty;" his forehead high and white ; his hair 
 dark, brown, curling long, and bushy. His appearance 
 in later life is described as singularly combining the 
 appearances of premature age and prolonged youth. 
 
 The only art in which his taste appears to have been 
 developed is that of poetry. Even in his poetry, taken 
 as a whole, the artistic element is not generally very 
 manifest. His earliest verses (none of which are in- 
 cluded in his collected works) can hardly be said to be 
 good in any sense. He seemed in these to find poetry 
 a fitting material for the embodiment of his ardent, 
 hopeful, indignant thoughts and feelings; and provided 
 he could say what he wanted to say, does not seem to 
 have cared much about the how. Indeed, there is too 
 much of this throughout his works : and if the utter- 
 ance, instead of the conveyance of thought, were the 
 object sought in art, of course, not merely imperfection 
 of language, but absolute external unintelligibility, 
 would be unobjectionable. But his art constantly in- 
 creases with his sense of its necessity; so that the 
 Cenci, which is the last work of any pretension that he 
 wrote, is decidedly the most artistic of all. There are 
 beautiful passages in Queen Mai), but it is the work of 
 a boy-poet ; and as it was all but repudiated by him- 
 seK, it is not necessary to remark further upon it. The 
 Revolt of Islam is a poem of twelve cantos, in the 
 Spenserian stanza ; though in all other respects, besides 
 T 2 
 
276 SHELLEY. 
 
 the arrangement of lines and rhymes, it, In common 
 with all other imitations of the Spenserian stanza, has 
 little or nothing of the spirit or individuality of that 
 stanza. The poem is dedicated to the cause ot freedom, 
 and records the eiForts, successes^ defeats, and final 
 triumphant death of two inspired champions of liberty 
 — a youth and maiden. The adventures are marvellous, 
 not intended to be within the bounds of probability, 
 scarcely of possibility. There are very noble senti- 
 ments and fine passages throughout the poem. Now 
 and then there is grandeur. But the absence of art is 
 too evident in the fact that the meaning of portions is 
 often obscure ; an obscurity not unf requenllv occasioned 
 by the difiiculty of the stanza, which is the most diffi- 
 cult mode of composition in English, except the rigid 
 soimet. The words and forms he em}>loys to express 
 thought seem sometimes mechanical devices for that 
 purpot;e, rather than an utterance which suggested itself 
 naturally to a mind where the thought Avas vitally present. 
 The words are more a clothing for the thought than an 
 emhodlment of it. They do not lie near enough to the 
 thing which is intended to be represented by them. 
 It is, however, but just to remark, that some of the 
 obscurity is owing to the fact, that, even with Mrs. 
 Shelley's superintendence, the works have not yet been 
 satisfactorily edited, or at least not conducted through 
 the press with sufficient care. 
 
 The Genci is a very powerful tragedy, but unfitted 
 for public representation by the horrible nature of the 
 historical facts upon which it is founded. In the 
 execution of it, however, Shelley has kept very much 
 
SHELLEY. 277 
 
 nearer to nature than in any other of his works. He 
 has rigidly adhered to his perception of artistic propriety 
 in respect to the dramatic utterance. It may he douhted 
 whether there is sufficient difference between the modes 
 of speech of the different actors in the tragedy ; but it 
 is quite possible to individualize speech far too minutely 
 forprobable nature ; and iu this respect, at least, Shelley 
 has not erred. Ptrliaps the action of the whole is a 
 little hurried, and a central moment of awful repose 
 and fearful anticipation might add to the force of the 
 trqgedy. The scenes also might, perhaps, have been 
 constructed so as to suggest more of evolution; but the 
 central point of horror is most powerfully and delicately 
 handled. You see a possible spiritual horror yet 
 behind, more frightful than all that has gone before. 
 The whole drama, indeed, is constructed around, not a 
 prominent point, but a dim, infinitely- withdrawn, un- 
 derground perspective of dismay and agony. Perhaps 
 it detracts a little from our interest in the Lady 
 Beatrice, that, after all, she should wish to live, and 
 should seek to preserve her life by a denial of her 
 crime. She, however, evidently justifies the denial to 
 herself on the ground that the deed being absolutely 
 right, although regarded as most criminal by her judges, 
 the only way to get true justice is to deny the fact, which, 
 there being no guilt, is only a verbal lie. Her very 
 purity of conscience enables her to utter this with the 
 most absolute innocence of look, and word, and tone. 
 This is probably a historical fact, and Shelley has to 
 make the best of it. In the drama there is great ten- 
 derness, as weU as terror: but for a full efi'ect, one 
 
278 SHELLEY. 
 
 feels it desirable to be brouglit better acquainted with 
 the individuals than the drama, from its want of gradua- 
 tion, permits. Shelley, however, was only six-and- 
 twenty when he wrote it. lie must have been attracted 
 to the subject by its embodying the concentration of 
 tyranny, lawlessness, and brutality in old Cenci, as 
 opposed to, and exercised upon, an ideal loveliness and 
 nobleness in the person of Beatrice. 
 / 1 But of all Shelley's works, the Prometheus Unbound 
 is that which combines the greatest amount of individual 
 power and peculiarity. There is an airy grandeur about 
 it, reminding one of the vast masses of cloud scattered 
 about in broken, yet magnificently suggestive forms, 
 all over the summer sky after a thunderstorm. The 
 fundamental ideas are grand, the superstructure, in 
 many parts, so ethereal, that one hardly knows whether 
 he is gazing on towers of solid masonry, rendered dim 
 and unsubstantial by intervening vapour, or upon the 
 golden turrets of cloudland, themselves born of the 
 mist which surrounds them with a halo of glory. The 
 beings of Greek mythology are idealized and ethereal- 
 ized by the new souls which he puts into them, 
 making them think his thoughts and say his words. 
 In reading this, as in reading most of his poetry, we 
 feel that, unable to cope with the evils and wrongs of 
 the world as it and they are, he constructs a new 
 universe, wherein he may rule according to his will ; 
 and a good will in the main it is — good always in 
 intent, good generally in form and utterance. Of the 
 wrongs which Shelley endured from the collision and 
 resulting conflict between his lawless goodness and the 
 
SHELLEY. 279 
 
 lawful wickedness of those in authority, this is one of 
 the greatest, — that during the right period of pupilage 
 he was driven from the place of learning, cast on his 
 own mental resources long before those resources were 
 sufficient fox his support, and irritated against the 
 j^urest embodiment of good by the harsh treatment he 
 received undei its name. If that reverence, which was 
 hv from wanting to his nature, had been only presented 
 in the person of some guide to his spiritual being, with 
 an object worthy of its homage and trust, it is probable 
 that the yet free and noble result of Shelley's indivi- 
 duality would have been presented to the world in a 
 form which, while it attracted still only the few, would 
 not have repelled the many ; at least, not by what was 
 merely accidental in its association with his earnest 
 desires and efforts for the well-being of humanity. 
 
 That which chiefly distinguishes Shelley from all 
 other writers, is the unequalled exuberance of his 
 fancy. The reader, say for instance in that fantastically 
 brilliant poem, The Witch of Atlas, the work of three 
 days, is overwhelmed in a storm, as it were, of rainbow 
 snow-flakes, and many-coloured lightnings, accompanied 
 ever by " a low melodious thunder." The evidences of 
 pure imagination in his writings are unfrequent as 
 compared with those of fancy ; there are not half the 
 instances of the direct embodiment of idea in form, 
 that there are of the presentation of strange resem- 
 blances between external things. 
 
 One of the finest short specimens of Shelley's pecu- 
 liar mode is his " Ode to the West Wind," full of 
 mysterioui* melody of thought and sound. But of all 
 
280 SHELLEY. 
 
 his poems the most popular, and deservedly so, is the 
 " Skylark." Perhaps the " Cloud " may contest it with 
 the " Skylark " in regard to popular favour ; but the 
 ** Cloud," although full of beautiful words and fantastic 
 cloud-like images, is, after all, principally a work of 
 the fancy ; while the " Skylark," though even in it 
 fancy predominates over imagination in the visual 
 images, forms, as a whole, a lovely, true, individual 
 work of art ; a lyric not unworthy of the lark^ which 
 Mason apostrophizes as " sweet feathered lyric." The 
 strain of sadness which pervades it is only enough to 
 make the song of the " Lark " human. 
 
 In " The Sensitive Plant," a poem full of the pecu- 
 liarities of his genius, tending through a wilderness of 
 fanciful beauties to a thicket of mythical speculation, 
 one curious idiosyncrasy is more prominent than in any 
 other ; curious, as belonging to the poet of beauty and 
 loveliness : it is the tendency to be fascinated by what 
 is ugly and revolting, so that he cannot withdraw his 
 thoughts from it till he has described it in language, 
 powerful, it is true, and poetic, when considered as to 
 its fitness for the desired end, but, in force of these 
 very excellences in the means, nearly as revolting as 
 the objects themselves. Associated with this is the 
 tendency to discover strangely unpleasant likenesses 
 between things ; which likenesses he is not content with 
 seeing, but seems compelled, perhaps in order to get 
 rid of them himself, to force upon the observation of 
 his reader. But the admirer of Shelley is not pleased 
 to* find that one or two passages of this nature have 
 been omitted in the last editions of his worka. 
 
SHELLEY. 281 
 
 Few men have been more misunderstood or misre- 
 presented than Shelley. Doubtless this has in part 
 been his own fault, as Coleridge implies, when he 
 writes to this effect of him : that his horror of hypo- 
 crisy made him speak in such a wild way, that South ey 
 (who was so much a man of forms and proprieties) 
 was quite misled, not merely in his estimate of his 
 worth, but in his judgment of his character. But 
 setting aside this consideration altogether, and regard- 
 ing him merely as a poet, Shelley has written verse 
 which will last as long as the English literature lasts ; 
 valuable not only from its excellence, but from the 
 peculiarity of its excellence. To say nothing of his 
 noble aims and hopes, Shelley will always be admired 
 for his sweet melodies, lovely pictures, and wild pro- 
 phetic imaginings. His indignant remonstrances, in- 
 termingled with grand imprecations, burst in thunder 
 from a heart overcharged with the love of his kind, 
 and roused to a keener sense of all oppression by the 
 wrongs which sought to overwhelm himself. But as 
 he recedes further in time, and men are able to see 
 more truly the proportions of the man, they will judge, 
 that without having gained the rank of a great reformer, 
 Shelley had in him that element of wide sympathy 
 and lofty hope for his kind which is essential both 
 to the birth and the subsequent making of the greatest 
 of poets. 
 
A SERMON. 
 
 Philippiaits iii. 15, 16,— Let us therefore, as many as be peifectjbe 
 thus minded; »Jid if in anything ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal 
 even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, 
 let us walk by that same. 
 
 HIS is the reading of the oldest manu- 
 scripts. The rest of the verse is pretty 
 clearly a not overwise marginal gloss that 
 has crept into the text. 
 In its origin, opinion is the intellectual body, taken 
 for utterance and presentation hy something necessarily 
 larger than any intellect can afford stuff sufficient for 
 the embodiment of. To the man himself, therefore, 
 in whose mind it arose, an opinion will always repre- 
 sent and recaU the spirit whose form it is, — so long, at 
 least, as the man remains true to his better sell 
 Hence, a man's opinion may be for him invaluable, 
 the needle of his moral compass, always pointing to the 
 truth whence it issued, and whose form it is. Nor is 
 the man's opinion of the less value to him that it may 
 change. Nay, to be of true value, it must have in it 
 not only the possibility, but the necessity of change : 
 it must change in every man who is alive with that 
 life which, in the New Testament, is alone treated as 
 life at all. For, if a man's opinion be in no process of 
 
 1 Bead in the Uiiit»rian Ohapel, IQsBex Street, London, 18791 
 
A SERMON. 283 
 
 change whatever, it must be dead, valueless, hurtful 
 Opinion is the offspring of that which is itself horn to 
 grow; which, being imperfect, must grow or die. 
 Where opinion is growing, its imperfections, however 
 many and serious, will do but little hurt ; where it is 
 not growing, these imperfections will further the decay 
 and corruption which must already have laid hold of 
 the very heart of the man. But it is plain in the 
 world's history that what, at some given stage of the 
 same, was the embodiment in intellectual form of 
 the highest and deepest of which it was then spiritually 
 capable, has often and speedily become the source of 
 the most frightful outrages upon humanity. How is 
 this 1 Because it has passed from the mind in which 
 it grew into another in which it did not grow, and has 
 of necessity altered its nature. Itself sprung from 
 that which was deepest in the man, it casts seeds 
 which take root only in the intellectual understanding 
 of his neighbour ; and these, springing up, produce 
 flowers indeed which look much the same to the eye, 
 but fruit which is poison and bitterness, — worst of it 
 all, the false and arrogant notion that it is duty to force 
 the opinion upon the acceptance of others. But it is 
 because such men themselves hold with so poor a grasp 
 the truth underlying their forms that they are, in their 
 self-sufficiency, so ambitious of propagating the forms, 
 making of themselves the worst enemies of the truth 
 of which they fancy themselves the champions. How 
 truly, in the case of all genuine teachers of men, shall 
 a man's foes be they of his own household ! For of 
 all tiie destroyers of the truth which any man has 
 
284 A SErorox. 
 
 pleached, none have done it so effectually or so griev- 
 ously as his own followers. So many of them have 
 received but the forms, and know nothing of the truth 
 which gave him those forms ! They lay hold but of 
 the non-essential, the specially perishing in those 
 f onus ; and these aspects, doubly false and misleading 
 in their crumbling disjunction, they proceed to force 
 upon the attention and reception of men, calling that 
 the truth which is at best but the draggled and useless 
 fringe of its earth-made garment. Opinions so held 
 belong to the theology of heD, — not necessarily alto- 
 gether false in form, but false utterly in heart and 
 spirit. The opinion then that is hurtful is not that 
 \\hich is formed in the depths, and from the honest 
 necessities of a man's own nature, but that which he 
 has taken up at second hand, the study of which has 
 ploased_his intellect; has perhaps subdued fears and 
 mollified distresses which ought rather to have grown 
 and increased until they had driven the man to the true 
 physician ; has puffed him up with a sense of superio* 
 rity as false as foolish, and placed in his hand a club 
 with which to subjugate his neighbour to his spiritual 
 dictation. The true man even, who aims at the per- 
 petuation of his opinion, is rather obstructing than 
 aiding the course of that truth for the love of which he 
 holds his opinion; for truth is a living thing, opinion 
 is a dead thing, and transmitted opinion a deadening 
 thing. 
 
 Let us look at St Paul's feeling in this regard. 
 And, in order that we may deprive it of none of its 
 force, let us note first the nature of the truth which 
 
A SERMON. 285 
 
 he had just been presenting to his disciples, when he 
 follows it with the words of my text : — 
 
 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for 
 Christ. 
 
 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the 
 excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for 
 whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them 
 but dung, that I may win Christ, 
 
 And be #()und in him, not having mine own righteousness, 
 ■which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of 
 Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith : 
 
 That I niay know him, and the power of his resurrection, 
 and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made confoi'mable 
 unto his death ; 
 
 If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the 
 dead. 
 
 Not as though I had already attained, either were already 
 perfect : but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for 
 "which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus, 
 
 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended : but this 
 one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and 
 reaching forth unto those things which are before, 
 
 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of 
 God in Christ Jesus. 
 
 St. Paul, then, had been declaring to the Philippians 
 the idea upon which, so far as it lay with him, his life 
 was constructed, the thing for which he lived, to which 
 the whole cons^cious effort of his being was directed, — 
 namely, to be in his very nature one with Christ, to 
 become righteous as he is righteous; to die into his 
 •death, so that he should no more hold the slightest 
 personal relation to evil, but be alive in every fibre to 
 all that is pure, lovely, loving, beautiful, perfect He 
 had been telling them that he spent himself in con- 
 
286 A SERMON. 
 
 tinuous effort to lay hold upon that for the sake of 
 which Christ had laid hold on him. This he declares 
 the sole thing worth living for : the hope of this, the 
 hope ol becoming one with the living God, is that 
 which keeps a glorious consciousness awake in him, 
 amidst all the unrest of a being not yet at harmony with 
 itself, and a laborious and persecuted life. It cannot 
 therefore be any shadow of indifference to the truth to 
 which he has borne this witness, that causes him to 
 add, "If in anything ye be otherwise minded." It is 
 to liim even the test of perfection, whether they be 
 thus minded or not ; for, although a moment before, he 
 has declared himself short of the desired perfection, he 
 now says, " Let as many of us as are perfect be thus 
 minded." There is here no room for that unprofitable 
 thing, bare logic : we must look through the shifting 
 rainbow of his words, — rather, we must gather aU their 
 tints together, then turn our backs upon the rainbow, 
 that we may see the glorious light which is the soul of 
 it. St. Paul is not that which he would be, which he 
 must be ; but he, and aU they who with him believe 
 that the perfection of Christ is the sole worthy effort of 
 a man's life, are in the region, though not yet at the 
 centre, of perfection. They are, even now, not indeed 
 grasping, but in the grasp of, that perfection. He tells 
 them this is the one thing to mind, the one thing to go 
 on desiring and labouring for, with all the earnestness 
 of a God- born existence ; but, if any one be at all other- 
 wise minded,— that is, of a different opinion, — what 
 then 1 That it is of little or no consequence 1 No, 
 verily ; but of such endless consequence that God will 
 
A SERMUX. 287 
 
 himself unveil to them the truth of the matter. Thi3_ 
 is Paul's faith, not his opinion. Faith is that hy which 
 a man lives inwardly, and orders his way outwardly. 
 Faith is the root, belief the tree, and opinion the 
 foliage that falls and is renewed with the seasons. 
 Opinion is, at best, even the opinion of a true man, 
 but the cloak of his belief, which he may indeed cast 
 to his neighbour, but not with the truth inside it : that 
 remains in his own bosom, the oneness between Him 
 and his God. St. Paul knows well — who better? — 
 that by no argument, the best that logic itself can afford, 
 can a man be set right with the truth ; that the spiritual 
 perception which comes of hungering contact with the 
 living truth — a perception which is in itself a being 
 born again — can alone be the mediator between a man 
 and the truth. He knows that, even if he could pass 
 his opinion over bodily into the understanding of his 
 neighbour, there would be little or nothing gained 
 thereby, for the man's spiritual condition would be just 
 what it was before. God must reveal, or nothing is 
 known. And this, through thousands of difficulties 
 occasioned by the man himseK, God is ever and always 
 doing his mighty best to effect. 
 
 See the grandeur of redeeming liberality in thQ 
 Apostle. In his heart of hearts he knows that salva- 
 tion consists in nothing else than being one with 
 Christ ; that the only life of every man is hid with 
 Christ in God, and to be found by no search anywhere 
 else. He believes that for this cause was he bom into 
 the world, — that he should give himself, heart and 
 soul, body and spirit, to him who came into the world 
 
288 A SERMON. 
 
 that he might hear witness to the truth. He believes 
 that for the sake of this, and nothing less, — anything 
 more there cannot be, — was the world, with its endless 
 glories, created. Nay, more than all, he believes that 
 for this did the Lord, in whose cross, type and triumph 
 of his self-abnegation, he glories, come into the world, 
 and live and die there. And yet, and yet, he says, and 
 says plainly, that a man thinking differently from all 
 this or at least, quite unprepared to make this whole- 
 hearted profession of faith, is yet his brother in Christ, 
 in whom the knowledge of Christ that he has will 
 work and work, the new leaven casting out the old 
 leaven until he, too, in the revelation of the Father, 
 shall come to the perfect stature of the fulness of 
 Christ. Meantime, Paul, the Apostle, must show due 
 reverence to the halting and dull disciple. He must 
 and will make no demand upon him on the grounds of 
 what he, Paul, believes. He is where he is, and God 
 is his teacher. To his own Master, — that is, Paul's 
 Master, and not Paul, — he stands. He leaves him to 
 the company of his Master. " Leaves him ? " JS'o : 
 that he does not ; that he will never do, any more than 
 God will leave him. Still and ever will he hold him 
 and help him. But how help him, if he is not to press 
 upon him his own larger and deeper and wiser in- 
 sights 'i The answer is ready : he will press, not his 
 opinion, not even the man's opinion, but the man's own 
 faith upon him. " 0, brother, beloved of the Father, 
 walk in the light, — in the light, that is, which is thine, 
 not which is mine ; in the light which is given to thee, 
 not to me : thou canst not walk by my light, I cannot 
 
A SERMON. 289 
 
 walk "by thine : how should either walk except by the 
 light which is in him 1 brother, what thou seest, that 
 do ; and what thou seest not, that thou shalt see : God 
 himself, the Father of Lights, will show it to you." 
 This, this is the condition of all growth, — that whereto 
 Ave have attained, we mind that same ; for such, fol- 
 lowing the manuscripts, at least the oldest, seems to 
 me the Apostle's meaning. Obedience is the one con- 
 dition of progress, and he entreats them to obey. If a 
 man will but work that which is in him, will but make 
 the power of God his own, then is it well with him for 
 evermore. Like his Master, Paul urges to action, to 
 the highest operation, therefore to the highest condition 
 of humanity. As Christ was the Son of his Father 
 because he did the will of the Father, so the Apostle 
 would have them the sons of the Father by doing the 
 will of the Father. Whereto ye have attained, walk 
 by that. 
 
 But there is more involved in this utterance than 
 the words themselves will expressly carry. IS'ext to his 
 love to the Father and the Elder Brother, the passion 
 of Paul's life — I cannot call it less — is love to all his 
 brothers and sisters. Everything human is dear to 
 him : he can part with none of it. Division, separation, 
 the breaking of the body of Christ, is that which he 
 cannot endure. The body of his flesh had once 
 been broken, that a grander body might be' prepared 
 for him: was it for that body itself to tear itself 
 asunder 'i "With the whole energy of his great heart, 
 Paul clung to unity. He could clasp together with 
 might and main the body of his Master — the body 
 
29() A SEEMON. 
 
 that Master loved because it was a spiritual body, with 
 the life of his Father in it. And he knew well that 
 only by walking in the truth to which they had 
 attained, could they ever draw near to each other, 
 Wliereto we have attained, let us walk by that. 
 
 My honoured friends, if we are not practical, we are 
 nothing.^ Now, the one main fault in the Christian 
 Church is separation, repulsion, recoil between the com- 
 ponent particles of the Lord's body. I will not, I do 
 not care to inquire who is more to blame than another 
 in the evil fact. I only care to insist that it is the 
 duty of every individual man to he innocent of the 
 same. One main cause, perhaps I should say the one 
 cause of this deathly condition, is that whereto we had, 
 we did not, whereto we have attained, we do not walk 
 by that. Ah, friend ! do not now think of thy neigh- 
 bour. Do not applaud my opinion as just from what 
 thou hast seen around thee, but answer it from thy 
 own being, thy own behaviour. Dost thou ever feel 
 thus toward thy neighbour, — "Yes, of course, every 
 man is my brother ; but how can I be a brother to him 
 so long as he thinks me wrong in what I believe, and 
 so long as I think he wrongs in his opinions the dignity 
 of the truth % " What, I return, has the man no hand 
 to grasp, no eyes into which yours may gaze far deeper 
 than yor r vaunted intellect can follow 1 Is there not, 
 I ask, anything in him to love ? Who asks you to be 
 of one opinion 1 It is the Lord who asks you to be of 
 one heart. Does the Lord love the man ? Can the 
 Lord love, where there is nothing to love ? Are you 
 wiser than he, inasmuch as you perceive impossibility 
 
A SERMON. 291 
 
 where he has failed to discover it ? Or will you say, 
 ''Let the Lord love where he pleases: I will love 
 where I please " 1 or say, and imagine you yield, 
 " Well, I suppose I must, and therefore I will, — but 
 with certain reservations, politely quiet in my own 
 heart " 1 Or wilt thou say none of all these things, 
 but do them all, one after the other, in the secret 
 chambers of thy proud spirit 1 If you delight to con- 
 demn, you are a wounder, a divider of the oneness of 
 Christ. If you pride yourself on your loftier vision, 
 and are haughty to your neighbour, you are yourself a 
 division and have reason to ask : " Am I a particle of 
 the body at allT' The Master wiU deal with thee 
 upon the score. Let it humble thee to know that thy 
 dearest opinion, the one thou dost worship as if it, and 
 not God, were thy Saviour, this very opinion thou art 
 doomed to change, for it cannot possibly be right, if it 
 work in thee for death and not for life. 
 
 Friends, you have done me the honour and the 
 kindness to ask me to speak to you. I will speak 
 plainly. I come before you neither hiding anything of 
 my belief, nor foolishly imagining I can transfer my 
 opinions into your bosoms. If there is one role I hate, 
 it is that of the proselytizer. But shall I not come to 
 you as a brother to brethren ? Shall I not use the 
 privilege of your invitation and of the place in which I 
 stand, nay, must I not myself be obedient to the 
 heavenly vision, in urging you with all the power of 
 my persuasion to set yourselves afresh to walk accord- 
 ing to that to which you have attained. So doing, 
 whatever yet there is to learn, you shall learn it. Thus 
 u 2 
 
292 A SERMON. 
 
 doing, and thus only, can you draw nigh to the centre 
 truth ; thus doing, and thus only, shall we draw nigh 
 to each other, and become brothers and sisters in 
 Christ, caring for each other's honour and righteousness 
 and true well-being. It is to them that keep his com- 
 mandments that he and his Father wiU come to take 
 up their abode with them. Wliether you or I have 
 the larger share of the truth in that which we hold, of 
 this I am sure, that it is to them that keep his com- 
 mandments that it shall be given to eat of the Tree of 
 Life. I believe that Jesus is the eternal son of the 
 eternal Father; that in him the ideal humanity sat 
 enthroned from all eternity ; that as he is the divine_ 
 man, so is he the human God; that there was no taking 
 of our nature upon himself, but the showing of himself 
 as he reaUy was, and that from evermore : these things, 
 friends, I believe, though never would I be guilty of 
 what in me would be the irreverence of opening my 
 mouth in dispute upon them. Not for a moment would 
 I endeavour by argument to convince another of this, 
 my opinion. If it be true, it is God's work to show it, 
 for logic cannot. But the more, and not the less, do I 
 believe that he, who is no respecter of persons, wiU, 
 least of aU, respect the person of him who thinks to 
 please him by respecting his person, calling him, " Lord, 
 Lord," and not doing the things that he tells him. 
 Even if I be right, friend, and thou wrong, to thee 
 who doest his commandments more faithfully than I, 
 will the more abundant entrance be administered. God 
 gi-ant that, when thou art admitted first, I may not bo 
 cast out, but admitted to learn of thee that it is 
 
A SERMON. 293 
 
 truth in tlie inward parts that he requireth, and they 
 that have that truth, and they alone, shall ever know 
 wisdom. Bear with me, friends, for I love and honour 
 you. I seek but to stir up your hearts, as I would 
 daily stir up my own, to be true to that which is 
 deepest in us, — the voice and the will of the Father of 
 our spirits. 
 
 Friends, I have not said we are not to utter our 
 opinions. I have only said we are not to make those 
 opinions the point of a fresh start, the foimdation of a 
 new building, the ^oundwork of anything. Tliey arc 
 not to occupy us in our dealings with our brethren. 
 Opinion is often the very death of love. L > aright, 
 and you will come to think aright ; aiul iliu-e who 
 think aright must think the same. In tlie meantime, 
 it matters nothing. The thing that does matter is, 
 that whereto we have attained, by that we should walk. 
 But, while we are not to insist upon our opinions, 
 which is only one way of insisting upon ourselves, 
 however we may cloak the fact from ourselves in tlie 
 vain imagination of thereby spreading the truth, wo 
 are bound by loftiest duty to spread tlie truth ; for 
 that is the saving of men. Do you ask, TIow spread 
 it, if we are not to talk about it? Friends, I never 
 said. Do not talk about the truth, although I insi.4 
 upon a better and the only indispensable way : let your 
 light shine. What I said before, and say again, is, Do 
 not talk about the lantern that holds the lamp, but 
 make haste, uncover the light, and let it shine. Let 
 your light so shine before men that they may see your 
 good works, — I incline to the Vatican reading of good 
 
294 A SERMOlf. 
 
 things, — and glorify your- Father who is in heaven. It 
 is not, Let your good works shine, but, Let your light 
 shine. Let it be the genuine love of your hearts, 
 taking form in true deeds ; not the doing of good deeds 
 to prove that your opinions are right. If ye are thus 
 true, your very talk about the truth will be a good 
 work, a shining of the light that is in you. A true 
 smile is a good work, and may do much to reveal the 
 Father who is in heaven ; but the smile that is put on 
 for the sake of looking right, or even for the sake of 
 being right, will hardly reveal him, not heing like him. 
 Men say that you are cold : if you fear it may be so, 
 do not think to make yourselves warm by putting on 
 the cloak of this or that fresh opinion ; draw nearer to 
 the central heat, the living humanity of the Son of 
 Man, that ye may have life in yourselves, so heat in 
 yourselves, so light in yourselves ; understand him, 
 obey him, then your light wiU shine, and your warmth 
 will warm. There is an infection, as in evil, so in 
 good. The better we are, the more will men glorify 
 God. If we trim our lamps so that we liave liL,4it in 
 our house, that light will shine through our windows, 
 and give light to those that are not in the house. Ikit 
 remember, love of the light alone can trim the lamp. 
 Had Love trimmed Psyche's lamp, it had never dropped 
 the scalding oil that scared him from her. 
 
 The man who holds his opinion the most honestly 
 ought to see the most plainly that his opinion must 
 change. It is impossible a man should hold anything 
 aright How shall the created embrace the self-existent 
 Creator f That Creator, and he alone, is the truth: 
 
A SERMON. 295 
 
 how, then, shall a man embrace the truth ? But to 
 him who will live it, — to him, that is, who walks by 
 that to which he has attained, — the truth will reach 
 down a thousand true hands for his to grasp. AYe 
 would not wish to enclose that which we can do more 
 than enclose, — live in, namely, as our home, inherit, 
 exult in, — the presence of the infinitely higher and 
 better, the heart of the living one. And, if we know 
 that God himself is our inheritance, why should we 
 tremble even with hatred at the suggestion that we 
 may, that we must, change our opinions 1 If we held 
 them aright, we should know that nothing in them 
 that is good can ever be lost; for that is the true, 
 whatever in them may be the false. It is only as they 
 help us toward God, that our opinions are worth a 
 straw ; and every necessary change in them must be to 
 more truth, to greater uplifting power. Lord, change 
 me as thou wilt, only do not send me away. That in 
 my opinions for which I reaUy hold them, if I be a 
 true man, will never pass away ; that which my evils 
 and imperfections have, in the process of embodying it, 
 associated with the truth, must, thank God, perish and 
 faU. My opinions, as my life, as my love, I leave in 
 the hands of him who is my being. I commend my 
 spirit to him of whom it came. Why, then, that dis- 
 like to the very idea of such change, that dread of 
 having to accept the thing oJBfered by those whom we 
 count our opponents, which is such a stumbling-block 
 in the way in which we have to walk, such an obstruc- 
 tion to our yet inevitable growth 1 It may be objected 
 that no man wiU hold his opinions with the needful 
 
296 A SEEMOK. 
 
 earnestness, who can entertain the idea of having to 
 change them. But the very objection speaks powerfully 
 against such an overvaluing of opinion. For what is 
 it but to say that, in order to be wise, a man must 
 consent to be a fool. AYhatever must be, a man must 
 be able to look in the face. It is because we cleave to 
 our opinions rather than to the living God, because 
 self and pride* interest themselves for their own vile 
 Bakes with that which belongs only to the truth, that 
 we become such fools of logic and temper that we lie 
 in the prison-houses of our own fancies, ideas, and 
 experiences, shut the doors and windows against the 
 entrance of the free spirit, and will not inherit the love 
 of the Father. 
 
 Yet, for the help and comfort of even such a refuser 
 as this, I would say : Nothing which you reject can be 
 such as it seems to you. For a thing is either true or 
 untrue : if it be untrue, it looks so far like itself that 
 you reject it, and with it we have nothing more to do ; 
 but, if it be true, the very fact that you reject it shows 
 that to you it has not appeared true, — has not appeared 
 itself. The truth can never be even beheld but by the 
 man who accepts it : the thing, therefore, which you 
 reject, is not that which it seems to you, but a thing 
 good, and altogether beautiful, altogether fit for your 
 gladsome embrace, — a thing from which you would not 
 turn away, did you see it as it is, but rush to it, as 
 Dante says, like the wild beast to his den,— so eager 
 for the refuge of home. No honest man holds a truth 
 for the sake of that because of which another honest 
 man rejects it : how it may be with the dishonest, 1 
 
A sER:>roN. 297 
 
 have no confidence in my judgment, and hope I am 
 not bound to understand. 
 
 Let us then, my friends, beware lest our opinions 
 come between us and our God, between us and our 
 neighbour, between us and our better selves. Let us 
 be jealous that the human shall not obscure the divine. 
 For we are not mere human : we, too, are divine ; and 
 there is no such obliterator of the divine as the human 
 that acts undivinely. The one security against our 
 opinions is to walk according to the truth which they 
 contain. 
 
 And if men seem to us unreasonable, opposers of that 
 which to us is plainly true, let us remember that we 
 are not here to convince men, but to let our light shine. 
 Ejiowledge is not necessarily light ; and it is light, not 
 knowledge, that we have to diffuse. The best thing 
 we can do, infinitely the best, indeed the only thing, 
 that men may receive the truth, is to be ourselves true. 
 Beyond all' doing of good is the being good ; for he 
 that is good not only does good things, but all that he 
 does is good. Above all, let us be humble before the 
 God of truth, faithfully desiring of him that truth in 
 the inward parts which alone can enable us to walk 
 according to that which we have attained. May the 
 God of peace give you his peace ; may the love of 
 Christ constrain you j may the gift of the Holy Spirit 
 be yours. Amen. 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 Matt. xx. 26 — 28. — But Jesus called them unto him and said, Ye 
 know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and 
 they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it should not be 
 so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your 
 minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your 
 servant : even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but 
 to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many, 
 
 OW little this is believed ! People think, 
 if they think about it at all, that this is 
 very well in the church, but, as things 
 go in the world, it won't do. At least, 
 their actions imply this, for every man is struggling to 
 get above the other. Every man would make his 
 neighbour his footstool that he may climb upon him to 
 some throne of glory which he has in his own mind. 
 There is a continual jostling, and crowding, and buzzing, 
 and striving to get promotion. Of course there are 
 known and noble exceptions; but still, there it is. 
 And yet we call ourselves " Christians," and we are 
 Christians, all of us, thus far, that the truth is within 
 reach of us all, that it has come nigh to us, talking to 
 us at our door, and even speaking in our hearts, and 
 yet this is the way in which we go on ! The Lord 
 said, " It shall not be so among you." Did he mean 
 only his twelve disciples 1 This was all that he had 
 to say to them, but — thanks be to him ! — he says the 
 > A spoken sennon. 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 299 
 
 same to every one of us now. " It shall not be so 
 among you : that is not the way in m}' kingdom." The 
 people of the world — the people who live in the world 
 — will always think it best to get up, to have less and 
 less of service to do, more and more of service done to 
 them. The notion of rank in the world is like a 
 pyramid ; the higher you go up, the fewer are there 
 who have to serve those above them, and who are 
 served more than those underneath them. All 
 who are under serve those who are above, until you 
 come to the apex, and there stands some one who has 
 to do no service, but whom all the others have to serve. 
 Something like that is the notion of position — of social 
 standing and rank. And if it be so in an intellectual 
 way even — to say nothing of mere bodily service — if 
 any man works to a position that others shall all look 
 up to him and that he may have to look up to nobody^ 
 he has just put himself precisely into the same condi- 
 tion as the people of whom our Lord speaks — as those 
 who exercise dominion and authority, and really he 
 thinks it a fine thing to be served. 
 
 But it is not so in the kingdom of heaven. The 
 figure there is entirely reversed. As you may see a 
 pyramid reflected in the water, just so, in a reversed 
 way altogether, is the thing to be found in the kingdom 
 of God. It is in this way : the Son of Man lies at the 
 inverted apex of the pyramid ; he upholds, and serves, 
 and ministers unto all, and they who would be high in 
 his kingdom must go • near to him at the bottom, to 
 uphold and minister to all that they may or can uphold 
 and minister unto. There is no other law of pre- 
 
300 TRUE OiREATNESS. 
 
 cedence, no other law of rank and position in God's 
 kingdom. And mind, tliat is the kingdom. The other 
 kingdom passes away — it is a transitory, ephemeral, 
 passing, bad thing, and away it must go. It is only 
 there on sufferance, because in the mind of God even 
 that which is bad ministers to that which is good ; and 
 when the new kingdom is built the old kingdom shall 
 pass away. 
 
 But the man who seeks this rank of which I have 
 spoken, must be honest to follow it. It wiU not do to 
 say, " I want to be great, and therefore I will serve." 
 A man will not get at it so. He may begin so, but he 
 wiU soon find that that will not do. He must seek it 
 for the truth's sake, for the love of his fellows, for the 
 worship of Go^, for the delight in what is good. In 
 the kingdom of heaven people do not think whether I 
 am promoted, or whether you are promoted. They are so 
 absorbed in the delight and glory of the goodness that 
 is round about them, that they learn not to think much 
 about themselves. It is the bad that is in us that makes 
 us think about ourselves. It is necessary for us, because 
 there is bad in us, to think about ourselves, but as we 
 go on we think less and less about ourselves, until at 
 last we are possessed with the spirit of the truth, the 
 spirit of the kingdom, and live in gladness and in 
 peace. We are prouder of our brothers and sisters than 
 of ourselves ; we delight to look at them. God looks 
 at us, and makes us what he pleases, and this is what 
 we must come to ; there is no escape from it. 
 
 But the Lord says, that " the Son of Man came not 
 to be ministered unto." Was he not ministered unto 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 301 
 
 then t Ah ! he was ministered unto as never man 
 was, but he did not come for that. Even now we 
 bring to him the burnt-oiferings of our very spirits, 
 but he did not come for that. It was to help us that 
 he came. We are told, likewise, that he is the express 
 image of the Father. Then what he does, the Eather 
 must do ; and he says himself, when he is accused of 
 breaking the Sabbath by doing work on it, "My 
 Father worketh.hitherto, and I work." Then this must 
 be God's way too, or else it could not have been Jesus's 
 way. It is God's way. Oh ! do not think that God 
 made us with his hands, and then turned us out to find 
 out our own way. Do not think of him as being always 
 over our heads, merely throwing over us a wide-spread 
 benevolence. You can imagine the tenderness of a 
 mother's heart who takes her child even from its 
 beloved nurse to soothe and to minister to it, and that 
 is like God ; that is God. His hand is not only over 
 us, but recollect what David said — "His hand was 
 upon me." I wish we were all as good Christians as 
 David was. *' "Wherever I go," he said, " God is there 
 — beneath me, before me, his hand is upon me ; if 
 I go to sleep he is there; when I go down to the 
 dead he is there." Everywhere is God. The earth 
 underneath us is his hand upholding us.^ Every 
 spring-fountain of gladness about us is his making and 
 his delight. He tends us and cares for us ; he is 
 close to us, breathing into our nostrils the breath of 
 life, and breathing into our spirit this thought and that 
 thought to make us look up and recognize the love and 
 * The waters are ip the hollow of it. 
 
302 TRUE GREATXESS. 
 
 the care around us. What a poor thing for the little 
 baby would it be if it were to be constantly tended 
 thus tenderly and preciously by its mother, but if it were 
 never to open its eyes to look up and see her mother's 
 face bending over it. A poor thing all its tending 
 would be without that. It is for that that the other 
 exists ; it is by that that the other comes. To recog- 
 nize and know this loving-kindness, and to stand up in 
 it strong and glad ; this is the ministration of God 
 unto us. Do you ever think " I could worship Grod if 
 he was so-and-so ? " Do you imagine that Grod is not 
 as good, as perfect, as absolutely all-in-all as your 
 thoughts can imagine 1 Aye, you cannot come up to 
 it ; do what you will you never will come up to it. 
 Use all the symbols that we have in nature, in human 
 relations, in the family — all our symbols of grace and 
 tenderness, and loving-kindness between man and man, 
 and between man and woman, and between woman and 
 woman, but you can never come up to the thought of 
 what God's ministration is. TV hen our Lord came he 
 just let us see how his Father was doing this always, 
 he " came to give his life a ransom for many." It 
 was in giving his life a ransom for us that he died ; 
 that was the consummation and crown of it all, but it 
 was his life that he gave for us— his whole being, 
 his whole strength, his whole energy — not alone his 
 days of trouble and of toil, but deeper than that, he 
 gave his whole being for us ; yea, he even went down 
 to death for us. 
 
 But how are we to learn this ministration ? I will 
 tell you where it begins. The most of us are forced to 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 803 
 
 work ; if you do not see that the commonest things in 
 life belong to the Christian scheme, the plan of God> 
 you have got to learn it. I say this is at the begin- 
 ning. Most of us have to work, and infinitely better is 
 that for us than if we were not forced to work, but not 
 a very fine thing unless it goes to something farther. 
 We are forced to work ; and what is our work 1 It is 
 doing something for other people always. It is doing ; 
 it is ministration in some shape or other. All kind of 
 work is a serving, but it may not be always Christian 
 service. No. Some of us only work for our wages ; 
 we must have them. We starve, and deserve to starve, 
 if we do not work to get them. But we must go a 
 little beyond that ; yes, a very great way beyond that. 
 There is no honest work that one man does for another 
 which he may not do as unto the Lord and not unto 
 men ; in which Jj^e cannot do right as he ought to do 
 right. Thus, I say that the man who sees the com- 
 monest thing in the world, recognizing it as part of the 
 divine order of things, the law by which the world 
 goes, being the intention of God that one man should 
 be serviceable and useful to another— the man, I say, 
 who does a thing well because of this, and who tries to 
 do it better, is doing God service. 
 
 We talk of "divine service." It is a miserable 
 name for a great thing. It is not service, pro- 
 perly speaking, at all. When a boy comes to hia 
 father and says, " May I do so and so for you ? " or, 
 rather, comes and breaks out in some way, showing 
 his love to his father — says, "May I come and sit 
 beside you ? May I have some of your books 1 May 
 
304 TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 I come and t>e quiet a little in your room?" what 
 would you think of that boy if he went and said, " I 
 have been doing my father a service." So with pray- 
 ing to and thanking God, do you call that serving 
 God?" If it is not serving yourselves it is worth 
 nothing ; if it is not the best condition you can find 
 yourselves in, you have to learn what it is yet. Not 
 so ; the work you have to do to-morrow in the count- 
 ing-house, in the shop, or wherever you may be, is that 
 by which you are to serve God. Do it with a high 
 regard, and then there is nothing mean in it ; but there 
 is everything mean in it if you are pretending to please 
 people when you only look for your wages. It is mean 
 then ; but if you have regard to doing a thing nobly, 
 greatly, and truly, because it is the work that God has 
 given you to do, then you are doing the divine service. 
 Of course, this goes a great deal farther. We have 
 endless opportunities of showing ourselves neighbours 
 to the man who comes near us. That is the divine 
 service ; that is the reality of serving God. The others 
 ought to be your reward, if " reward " is a wo id that 
 can be used in such a relation at all. Go home and 
 speak to God ; nay, hold your tongue, and quietly go 
 to him in the secret recesses of your own heart, and 
 know that God is there. Say, " God has given me this 
 work to do, and I am doing it ;" and that is your joy, 
 that is your refuge, that is your going to heaven. • It 
 is not service. The words " divine service," as they 
 are used, always move me to something of indignation. 
 It is perfect paganisn^ ; it is looking to please God by 
 gathering together your services, — something that la 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 305 
 
 supposed to be service to him. He is serving us for 
 ever, and our Lord says, " If I have washed your feet, 
 so you ought to wash one another's feet," This will 
 be the way in which to minister" for some. 
 
 But still, when we are beginning to learn this, some 
 of us are looking about us in a blind kind of way, 
 thinking, " I wish I could serve God ; I do not know 
 what to do ! How is it to be begun 1 What is it at 
 the root of it ? What shall I find out to do ? Where 
 is there something to do 1 " 
 
 Now, first of all, service is obedience, or it is nothing. 
 This is what I would gladly impress upon you ; 
 upon every young man who has come to the point to 
 be able to receive it. There is a tendency in us to 
 think that there is something degrading in obedience, 
 something degrading in service. According to the 
 social judgment there is ; according to the judgment of 
 the earth there is. Not so according to the judgment 
 of heaven, for Grod would only have us do the very 
 thing he is doing himself. You may see the tendency 
 of this nowadays. There is scarcely a young man who 
 will speak of his "master." He feels as if there is 
 something that hurts his dignity in doing so. He does 
 just what so many theologians have done about God, 
 who, instead of taking what our Lord has given us, 
 talk about God as *' the Governor of the Universe." 
 So a young man talks about his master as " the gover- 
 nor ;" nay, he even talks of his own father in that way, 
 and then you come in another region altogether, and a 
 worse one. I take these things as symptoms, mind. 
 I know habits may be picked up, when they get com- 
 
 X 
 
306 TKUB GREATNESS. 
 
 mon, without any great corresponding feeling ; but a 
 wrong habit tends always to a wrong feeling, and if a 
 man cannot learn to honour his father, so as to be able 
 to call him " father," I think one or the other of them 
 is greatly to blame, whether the father or the son I 
 cannot say. I know there are such parents that to tell 
 their children that God is their " Father " is no help to 
 them, but the contrary. I heard of a lady just the 
 other day to whom, in trying to comfort her, some one 
 said, "Eemember God is your Father." "Do not 
 mention the name ' father ' to me," she said. Ah ! 
 that kind of fault does not lie in God, but in those 
 who, not being like him, cannot use the names aright 
 which belong to him. 
 
 But now, as to this service, this obedience. Our 
 Lord came to give his life a ransom for the many, and 
 to minister unto all in obedience to his Father's will. 
 We call him equal with God — at least, most of us 
 here, I suppose, do ; of course we do not pretend to 
 explain ; we know that God is greater than he, because 
 he said so ; but somehow, we can worship him with 
 our God, and we need not try to distinguish more than 
 is necessary about it. But do you think that he was 
 less divine than the Father when he was obedient ? 
 Observe his obedience to the will of his Father. He 
 was not the ruler there. He did not give the com- 
 mands ; he obeyed them. And yet we say He is God ! 
 Ah, that is no difficulty to me. Obedience is as 
 divine in its essence as command ; nay, it may be more 
 divine in the human being far; it cannot be more 
 divine in God, but obedience is far more divine in its 
 
TRUE GREATIS^ESS. 307 
 
 essence with regard to humanity than command is. It 
 is not the ruling being who is most like God ; it is the 
 man who ministers to his fellow, who is like Grod ; and 
 the man who will just sternly and rigidly do what his 
 master tells him — be that master what he may — who 
 is likest Christ in that one particular matter. Obedience 
 is the grandest thing in the world to begin with. Yes, 
 and we shall end with it too. I do not think the time 
 will ever come when we shall not have something to 
 
 do, because we are told to do it without knowing why^ 
 
 Those parents act most fooKshly who wish to explain 
 everything to their children — most foolislily. Xoj 
 teach your child to obey, and you give him the most 
 precious lesson that can be given to a child. Let him 
 come to that before you have had him long, to do what 
 he is told, and you have given him the plainest, first, 
 and best lesson that you can give him. If he never 
 goes to school at all he had better have that lesson than 
 all the schooling in the world. Hence, when some 
 people are accustomed to glorify this age of ours as 
 being so much better in everything than those which 
 went before, I look back to the times of chivalry, 
 which we regard now, almost, as a thing to laugh at. 
 or a merry thing to make jokes about ; but I find thaj 
 the one essential of chivalry was obedience. It is ^ 
 recognized in our army still, but in those times it 
 was carried much farther. When a boy was seven 
 years old he was sent into another family, and put 
 with another boy there to do what ? To wait with him 
 upon the master and the mistress of the house, and to 
 be taught, as well, what few things they knew in those 
 X 2 
 
8C8 TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 times in the way of intellectual cultivation. But he 
 also learned stern, strict obedience, such as it was ini' 
 possible for him to forget. Then, when he had been 
 there seven years, hard at work, standing behind the 
 chair, and ministering, he was advanced a step ; and 
 what was that step 1 He was made an esquire. He 
 had his armour given him ; he had to watch his armour 
 ir. the chapel all night, laying it on the altar in silent 
 devotion to God. I do not say that aU these things 
 were carried out afterwards, but this was the idea of 
 them. He was an esquire, and what was the duty of 
 an esquire 1 More service ; more important service. 
 He still had to attend to his master, the knight. He 
 had to watch him ; he had to groom his horse for him ; 
 he had to see that his horse was sound ; he had to 
 clean his armour for him ; to see that every bolt, every 
 rivet, every strap, every buckle was sound, for the life 
 of his master was in his hands. The master, having to 
 fight, must not be troubled with these things, and 
 therefore the squire had to attend to them. Then 
 seven years after that a more solemn ceremony is gone- 
 through, and the squire is made a knight ; but is he 
 free of service then ? No ; he makes a solemn oath to 
 help everybody who needs help, especially women and 
 children, and so he rides out into the world to do the 
 work of a true man. There was a grand and essential 
 idea of Christianity in that — no doubt wonderfully 
 broken and shattered, but not more so than the Chris- 
 tian church iias been ; wonderfully broken and shat- 
 tej-ed, but stiU the essence of obedience ; and I say it 
 is recognized in our army still, and in every anny ; and 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 809 
 
 where it is lost it is a terrible loss, and an army is 
 worth nothing without it. You remember that terrible 
 story from the East, that fearful death-charge, one of 
 the grandest things in our history, although one of the 
 most blundering : — 
 
 " Theirs not to make reply, 
 Theirs not to reason why. 
 Theirs but to do and die j 
 Into the valley of death 
 
 Bode the Six Hundred.** 
 
 So with the Christian man ; whatever meets him, 
 obedience is the thing. If he is told by his conscience, 
 which is the candle of G-od within him, that he must 
 do a thing, why he must do it. He may tremble from 
 head to foot at having to do it, but he will tremble 
 more if he turns his back. You recollect how our old 
 poet Spenser shows us the Knight of the Red Cross, 
 who is the knight of holiness, ill in body, diseased in 
 mind, without any of his armour on, attacked by a 
 fearful giant. What does he do ? Run away 1 No, 
 he has but time to catch up his sword, and, trembling 
 in every limb, he goes on to meet the giant ; and that 
 is the thing that every Christian man must do. I can- 
 not put it too strongly ; it is impossible. There is no 
 escape from it If death itself lies before us, and we 
 know it, there is nothing to be said ; it is all to be 
 done, and then there is no loss ; everything else is all 
 lost unto God. Look at our Lord. He gave his life 
 to do the will of his Father, and on he went and did 
 it. Do you think it was easy for him— easier for him 
 than it would have been for us 9 Ah ! the greater the 
 
310 TRUE GREATNESS. 
 
 man the more delicate and tender his nature, and the 
 more he shrinks from the opposition even of his fellow- 
 men, because he loves them. It was a terrible thing 
 for Christ. Even now and then, even in the little 
 touches that come to us in the scanty story (though 
 enough) this breaks out. We are told by John that 
 at the Last Supper " He was troubled in spirit, and 
 testified." And then how he tries to comfort himself 
 as soon as Judas has gone out to do the thing which 
 was to finish his great work : '' Now is the Son of 
 Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God 
 be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in 
 himself." Then he adds, — just gathering up his 
 strength, — " I shall straightway glorify him." This 
 was said to his disciples, but I seem to see in it that 
 some of it was said for himself. This is the grand 
 obedience ! Oh, friends, this is a hard lesson to learn. 
 We find every day that it is a hard thing to teach. 
 We are continually grumbling because we cannot get 
 the people about us, our servants, our tradespeople, or 
 whoever they may be, to do just what we tell them. 
 It makes half the misery in the world because they will 
 have something of their own in it against what they 
 are told. But are we not always doing the same thing t 
 and ought we not to learn something of forgiveness for 
 them, and very much from the fact that we are just in 
 the same position 1 We only recognize in part that 
 we are put here in this world precisely to learn to 
 be obedient. He who is our Lord and our God 
 went on being obedient all the time, and was 
 obedient always ; and I say it is as divine for us to 
 
TRUE GREATNESS. 311 
 
 obey as it is for God to rule. As I have said already, 
 Grod is ministering the whole time. I^ow, do you 
 want to know how to minister ? Begin by obeying. 
 Obey every one who has a right to command you ; but 
 above all, look to what our Lord has said, and find out 
 what he wants you to do out of what he left behind, 
 and try whether obedience to that will not give a con- 
 sciousness of use, of ministering, of being a part of 
 the grand scheme and way of God in this world. In 
 fact, take your place in it as a vital portion of the 
 divine kingdom, or— to use a better figure than that 
 — a \dtal portion of the Godhead. Try it, and see 
 whether obedience is not salvation ; whether service 
 is not dignity ; whether you will not feel in yourselves 
 that you have begun to be cleansed from your plague 
 when you begin to say, " I will seek no more to be 
 above my fellows, but I will seek to minister to them, 
 doing my work in God's name for them." 
 
 " Who sweeps a room as for Thy law. 
 Makes that and the action fine." 
 
 Both the room and the action are good when done for 
 God's sake. That is dear old George Herbert's way of 
 saying the same truth, for every man has his own 
 way of saying it. The gift of the Spirit of God to 
 make you think as God thinks, feel as God feels, judge 
 as God judges, is just the one thing that is promised. I 
 do not know anything else that is promised positively 
 but that, and who dares pray for anything else with 
 perfect confidence? God wiU not give us what we 
 pray for except it be good for us, but that is one 
 
312 
 
 TEUE GEEATNEBS. 
 
 thing that we nmst have or perish. Therefore, let ns 
 pray for that, and with the name of God dwelling in 
 us — if this is not true, the whole world is a heap of 
 ruins — ^let us go forth and do this service of God in 
 ministering to our fellows, and so helping him in 
 his work of upholding, and glorifying and saving all 
 
 THB END. 
 
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