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
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