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 Copyrighted, 1893, 
 
 BY 
 
 William Doxey. 
 
 Press of C. A. Murdock & Co., San Francisco.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Biographical Sketches : 
 
 Page 
 Timothy H. Rearden, - - - - vii 
 
 A Man of Letters, - . . - xiii 
 
 Essays : 
 
 Francis Petrarch, i 
 
 Alfred Tennj'son'^v'PcJet^^Laureate, - 43 
 
 Ditmarsch and Klaus Groth, - - - 105 
 
 Fritz Renter's Life and Works, - 133 
 
 Ballads and Lyrics, . . . . 165 
 
 Poem : 
 
 "The Sea! The Sea!" - - - 199
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
 
 TIMOTHY H. REARDEN. 
 
 JUDGE TIMOTHY H. REARDEN was born 
 of Irish parentage, in VVooster, Ohio, in the 
 year 1S39. His father, Dennis Rearden, died while 
 Timothy was a child, and the widow, with two 
 young children, but with the cheerful courage of 
 her race, undertook the battle of life An their be- 
 half 
 
 The brightness and wit of her little boy soon 
 made him friends. At the age of sixteen he grad- 
 uated from the High School of the city of Cleve- 
 land, and four years later from Kenyon College. 
 
 In college he was both the delight and the terror 
 of the professors. His scholarship and scholarly 
 tastes were their pride, his affectionate nature en- 
 deared him to their hearts, yet his escapades were 
 sometimes serious ; but because in part of his abil- 
 ity, and more because of the love he inspired, no 
 severe penalties were inflicted. When he left col- 
 lege he had, in a very unusual degree, impressed 
 himself upon the memory and affections of profes- 
 sors and students alike. 
 
 Reporting for newspapers, teaching in the Cleve- 
 land public schools, and studying law occupied the 
 next three or four years. 
 
 In 1S62, Judge Rearden served for a time in an 
 Ohio regiment, in response to an urgent short- 
 term call. This touch of army life set many 
 chords, patriotic and poetic, vibrating in him, 
 which alwaj's remained sensitive.
 
 Timothy H. It was not his fortune to have been engaged in 
 
 Rear den. any great battle ; but who that knew him can 
 
 doubt his possession of that splendid courage so 
 
 common in his race, and only needing opportunity 
 
 to attain distinction or a glorious death ? 
 
 About iS66 he came to California, and for a time 
 was employed in the United States Mint. Bret 
 Harte, Ambrose Bierce, and some others of litera- 
 ry tastes and acquirements were fellow-employes, 
 and Rearden soon became one of a little coterie 
 of scholars, artists, and writers. 
 
 While others wrote and published, he wrote 
 but did not, save in rare instances, publish. His 
 literary tastes were so exacting, that nothing he 
 did seemed to satisfy him. Essays and poems 
 were written and laid aside, as not, in his opinion, 
 coming up to the requirements of publicity. But 
 the great drawback that prevented his coming 
 before the people was his shyness. Nothing could 
 induce him to put himself in a position where he 
 would attract attention. In this age of brass, such 
 modesty as his, joined with such merit, is a rare 
 spectacle. 
 
 Meantime he prosecuted his law studies, and 
 became in time a learned lawyer, but remained 
 all too modest to push himself or his fortunes. 
 After leaving the Mint he worked a while for other 
 lawyers, but about 1872 opened an office of his 
 own. What came to him in the way of business 
 he disposed of with a wealth of learning and re- 
 search out of all proportion frequently to the im- 
 portance of the matter involved. 
 
 The study of languages and of literature was his 
 great delight. It is not much of exaggeration to 
 say that Greek was as familiar to him as is our 
 
 viii
 
 mother tong:ue to most of us. He seemed to know Timothy H. 
 all the leading modern languages, and even their KcaJ'den. 
 various dialects. A publication of his on some 
 ancient forms of the German language won for 
 him reputation and correspondence with distin- 
 guished literary men of that country, who freely 
 expressed their admiration of such knowledge by 
 a scholar who never was in Europe, and whose 
 home was in remote California. 
 
 Any notice of Judge Rearden would be incom- 
 plete that did not call attention to his remarkable 
 faculty of winning afTection. He was so shy that 
 not many knew him ; but those who did, — chil- 
 dren, women, men, — gave him their hearts. 
 
 In 1883 a vacancy occurred on the bench of the 
 Superior Court, and Governor Stoneman had the 
 right under the Constitution to fill it by appoint- 
 ment. As usual, there was a scramble for the 
 place. The Governor was so distracted by the 
 claims of the different candidates, that finally he 
 said to some members of the Bar Association that 
 he would be pleased if that body would make a 
 recommendation to him of a suitable candidate. 
 Thereupon the lawyers belonging to that organiza- 
 tion got together and took a vote by ballot as to 
 their preference for the vacant judgeship. Our 
 deceased friend received two-thirds of all the 
 votes cast. Governor Stoneman said he had never 
 heard of Mr. Rearden before, but that he could 
 not overlook such an indorsement, and so ap- 
 pointed him. 
 
 In the following year he was elected by the peo- 
 ple to succeed himself, and served as judge till 
 January i, 1891. On the expiration of his term he 
 resumed the practice of his profession.
 
 Timothy H. It was while Judge Rearden was on the bench 
 Rearden. that his romantic marriage took place, which, while 
 it cost his friends his companionship, was felt by 
 them to concentrate the best of his life in a pecu- 
 liarly interesting way. He married Miss Cowles, 
 the daughter of a Cleveland and California fam- 
 ily with which he had been closely connected in 
 kindly relations from his youth. His friends re- 
 joice in seeing in the little daughter, the only 
 child of this marriage, the promise of a continu- 
 ance of her father's unusual qualities. 
 
 Ill health came to be a frequent companion, but 
 neither he nor his friends had any suspicion until 
 near the end that there was any danger of his re- 
 moval. 
 
 His last bit of work was the taking up and 
 completing the noble poem for the last memorial 
 exercises of the Grand Army post to which he 
 belonged. 
 
 For one hundred years the pathetic story ot 
 Mozart's Requiem has touched the hearts of all 
 who read it. Judge Rearden's poem, prepared for 
 a memorial of his comrades, was his requiem. It 
 was the last act of his life. With the shadows 
 of death closing around him, he gave the final 
 touches to the poem and sent it to the post to be 
 read. 
 
 " Life's fevered day declines : its purple twilight falling 
 Draws length'ning shadows from the broken flanks ; 
 And from the column's head, a viewless chief is calling : 
 ' Guide right — close up your ranks. ' ' ' 
 
 California has not produced anything finer in its 
 line, — nor so good, — since Bret Harte's tribute to 
 Dickens, more than twenty years ago. There is 
 
 X
 
 a rhythm and a swing about it that reminds one Timothy II. 
 of the swing and cadence of marching men. Rearden. 
 
 This offering of our comrade to the noble dead 
 was read on the evening of May 3, 1892. A few 
 days later he joined the glorious army in the future 
 land. 
 
 To him, permeated by Grecian thought and lit- 
 erature, how naturally came the Grecian idea of 
 heaven, and with what poetic power he weaves it 
 with the martial inspirations of the occasion ! 
 
 " Far in the broad and gray expanse of spirit vision, 
 Where tempests rail not. Heaven forever smiles, 
 Float on an ever-laughing sea, the Fields Elysian, 
 The wished-for Happy Isles. 
 
 " There, long-lost comrades, risen from j'our couches gory, 
 Leaving your nameless graves and crumbling clay, 
 And, recking nothing earthly fame or paltry glory, 
 Ye know a brighter day. 
 
 " And there the stately captains of the host immortal 
 Call out the guard that ushers heroes in ; 
 And each brave soul that, trembling, knocks at Death's dark 
 portal 
 Is proudly mustered in." 
 
 Warren Olnev.
 
 A MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 IN the death of ex-Judge Timothy H. Rearden, 
 California has experienced a loss of which she is 
 not presently' conscious, and which is more likely 
 to be adequately estimated in another generation 
 than in this. A lawyer dies, and his practice 
 passes to others. A judge falls in harness ; an- 
 other is appointed or elected, and the business 
 of the court goes on as before, frequently better. 
 But for the vacancy left by a scholar and man 
 of letters there are no applicants. To that there 
 is no successor ; neither the Governor has the ap- 
 pointing power nor the people the power to elect. 
 The vacancy is permanent, the loss irreparable ; 
 something has gone out of the better and higher 
 life of the community which cannot be replaced, 
 and the void is the dead man's best monument, 
 invisible but imperishable. Other scholars and 
 men of letters will come forward in the new gen- 
 eration, but of none can it be said that he carries 
 forward on the same lines the work of the "van- 
 ished hand," nor declares exactly those truths of 
 nature and art that w'ould have been formulated 
 by the "voice that is still." 
 
 In that elder education which was once es- 
 teemed the only needful intellectual equipment 
 of a gentleman, those attainments still commonly, 
 and perhaps preferably, denoted by the word 
 "scholarship," Judge Rearden was probably with- 
 out an equal on this side of the continent. This
 
 A Man of statement will surprise manj- even of those of his 
 Letters. personal friends who thought the^' knew him best ; 
 for, except by his habit of historical and literary 
 allusion — to which he was perhaps somewhat 
 over-addicted — and by that significant something 
 so difficult to name, yet to the discerning few so 
 obvious, in the thought and speech of learned 
 men — which is not altogether breadth and reach 
 of reason, nor altogether subtlety of taste and 
 sentiment, and, in sober truth, is compatible with 
 their opposites, — except for these indirect disclos- 
 ures, he seldom, and to few indeed, gave even a 
 hint of the wealth in the treasury of his mind. 
 
 Graduating from Kenyon College, in Ohio, with 
 little except a knowledge of Latin and Greek, a 
 studious habit, and disposition so unworldly that 
 it might almost be called unearthly, he pursued 
 his amassment of knowledge with the unfailing 
 diligence of an unfailing love to the end. He 
 knew not only the classical languages, and all, or 
 nearly all, the tongues of modern Europe, but 
 their various dialects as well. To know a lan- 
 guage is nothing ; but to know its literature from 
 the beginning forward, and to have incorporated 
 its veritable essence and spirit into mind and 
 character — that is much ; and that is what Rear- 
 den had done with regard to all these tongues. 
 Doubtless this is not the meat upon which intellec- 
 tual Caesars feed, and doubtless he did not make 
 that full use of his attainments which the world 
 approves as "practical," and at which he smiled, 
 in his odd, tolerant way, as one may smile at the 
 earnest work of a child making mud pies. 
 
 Yet Rearden's was not altogether a barren pen. 
 Of Bret Harte's brigiit band of literary coadjutors
 
 on the old Overland JMonihIy lie was among the A Man of 
 first and best, and at various times, though irregu- Letters. 
 larly and all too infrequently, he enriched the va- 
 rious Californian and other periodicals with noble 
 contributions in prose and verse. Among the for- 
 mer were essays on Petrarch and Tennyson ; the 
 latter included a poem of no mean merit on the 
 Charleston earthquake, and a recent one which 
 he had intended to read before the George H. 
 Thomas Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, 
 but was prevented by his last illness. Reading it 
 now in the solemn light that lies along his path 
 through the Valley of the Shadow, the initial stan- 
 za seems to have a significance almost prophetic : 
 
 " Life's fevered day declines : its purple twilight falling 
 Draws length'ning shadows from the broken flanks ; 
 And from the column's head, a viewless chief is calling: 
 ' Guide right — close up your ranks.' " 
 
 Some of his papers for the Chit-chat Club could 
 not too easily be matched by selections from the 
 magazines and reviews, and if a collection were 
 made of the pieces that he loved to put out in that 
 wasteful way, we should have a volume of notable 
 reading, distinguished for a sharply accented indi- 
 viduality of thought and style. 
 
 For a number of years before his death Rear- 
 den was engaged in constructing (the word 
 "writing" is here inadequate) a work on Sappho, 
 which, as we understand the matter, was to be a 
 kind of compendium of all the little that is known 
 and pretty nearly all the much that has been con- 
 jectured and said of her. It was to be profusely 
 illustrated by master-hands, copiously annotated, 
 and enriched by variorum readings — a book for
 
 A Man of bookworms. Of its present status we are not ad- 
 Letters. vised, but trust that it is so far advanced toward 
 completion that none of this labor of love may be 
 lost. A work which for many years engaged the 
 hand and the heart of such a man as he cannot, 
 of whatever else it may be devoid, lack that dis- 
 tinction which is to literature what it is to charac- 
 ter — its life, its glory, and its crown. 
 
 Ambrose Bierce.
 
 ESSAYS.
 
 FRANCIS PETRARCH. 
 
 " Behold the man that loved and lost ; 
 But all he was is overworn." 
 
 " Odero, si potero ; si non, invitus amabo." 
 N taking as the subject of my 
 essay the first and greatest 
 lyric poet of the Italians, I 
 feel conscious that I am on 
 well-worn and possibly over- 
 worked hterary ground, which has been 
 ploughed up, harrowed, and planted (often- 
 times with exotic crops of fiction rather 
 than facts), generation by generation, for 
 nearly five centuries. I do not intend to 
 offer anything new in the way of illustration, 
 or to give more than a sketchy review, the 
 materials for which might be examined by 
 any one in an hour's time spent in an ordi- 
 nary public library. 
 
 The fact is, that novel research has at this 
 day few outposts. One might go to India, 
 and, after a lifetime spent at its oracles, bring 
 back to the western world of civihzation some- 
 thing new and valuable ; one might pitch his 
 tent among the bituminous ruins of Babylon,
 
 Francis and find profitable subject for study ; but 
 European history has been read and re-read, 
 indexed, glossaried, padded with excursus, 
 and viewed in so many lights that not a fleck 
 or spot remains unnoted, even for the scholar 
 who haunts the literary walks of London or 
 Paris, Rome or Florence. But when, instead 
 of being in the swim of European literary 
 currents, one is beached, as it were, on dis- 
 tant shores, with nothing to put him in sym- 
 pathy with those who are at the centres of 
 mundane intellectual civilization, it is difficult 
 to rise above the trite and commonplace in 
 literary criticism. 
 
 But still, if we do not occasionally examine 
 our models, we would forget their peculiar 
 beauties, and would find ourselves drifting 
 away into heresies, and homage to strange 
 gods, leaving the temples and altars of our 
 literary family idols desolate and bare. 
 
 One of these shrines was set up five hun- 
 dred years since at Vaucluse, with Francesco 
 Petrarca for its minister, and on its walls the 
 literary world has ever since been hanging up 
 its ex votos, and taking part in its liturgy, 
 
 Francis Petrarch was born at the Tus- 
 can town of Arezzo, on the 20th of July, 
 1304. The circumstances of his birth are of
 
 a romantic character ; and it would seem as Francis 
 if the wandering- spirit of unrest that presided 
 over his long life had taken charge of him 
 even in his mother's womb, and made him a 
 pilgrim and exile from his birth. 
 
 His father was one of the band of Floren- 
 tines driven out during the strifes of the Bimica 
 and Nera parties, which at the same time 
 sent Dante (a friend of the elder Petrarch) 
 forth as a fugitive, never to return. The an- 
 cestry of the poet was of gentle origin but 
 limited means, with a hereditary tendency to 
 municipal aspirations and literary culture. 
 The Petrarca household (Petracco, Petrac- 
 colo, and Petrarco) in many points resembled 
 that of Goethe, both in its social and political 
 status. But, unlike Goethe, Petrarch's in- 
 fancy was shadowed with family misfortune 
 and ruin, brought about by the party feuds of 
 Florence ; and at the very hour of the poet's 
 birth, his father was engaged in a forcible but 
 unsuccessful effort to reclaim his citizenship 
 and his property. 
 
 A few months after the birth of Petrarch, 
 his mother, Eletta (who was of the Canigiani 
 family), betook herself with the boy to An- 
 cise, where the family had some little prop- 
 erty; and they there remained until the child 
 had reached its eiqhth vear, when the head
 
 Francis of the house removed with them to Avignon, 
 the then residence of Clement V., a Gascon 
 Pope, which place had become ancL remained 
 the seat of the Papal power during the period 
 styled "The Babylonish Captivity" of the 
 Papacy, commencing in 1305, and continuing 
 until 1378, four years after Petrarch's death. 
 
 The young exile, from his eleventh to his 
 fifteenth year, went to school at Carpentras; 
 then removed to Montpelier, where he re- 
 mained four years. 
 
 Like Goethe's parent, Petrarch's father in- 
 tended him for the law, but, unlike the Ger- 
 man, did not as well seek to encourage his 
 son in general literary culture. Indeed, an 
 anecdote is given, depicting Petrarch senior 
 flinging the classical works which his son was 
 surreptitiously reading into the fire. As, 
 however, he seems to have softened, and res- 
 cued them from the burning, it is quite prob- 
 able that Petrarch's fondness for the poets 
 was, after all, a bit of hereditary weakness. 
 
 It may also be fairly assumed that any jurist 
 of those days would necessarily have a turn 
 to polite literature, as even Cino da Pistoja, 
 the friend of Dante, and Petrarch's reputed 
 preceptor at Bologna, whither the student 
 had gone to complete his legal studies, was 
 fond of elegant learning, and no mean poet 
 
 4
 
 liiiiiself. Indeed, Cino was the lover of Sel- Francis 
 viit^gia (Ricciardetta dei Selvaggi), one of ' '''^'^ ' 
 the four ladies of that period rendered famous 
 by their respective idolaters, Selvaggia being 
 styled the " bel numer' una" of the poetic 
 group, the remaining three being Dante's 
 Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, and Boccaccio's 
 Fiammetta. 
 
 In 1325, Petrarch's mother, a beautiful and 
 good woman, died, and in 1326 his father. 
 These misfortunes drew Petrarch back to 
 Avignon, where he and his only brother, 
 Gerard, found their inheritance wasted by 
 their guardian. 
 
 It was possibly his deprivation of means 
 that led Petrarch to take the tonsure. But in 
 those days there was not that strict sense of 
 propriety and of the earnestness of a re- 
 ligious calling that has grown up since ; and 
 the court and society of Avignon were re- 
 markable as well for luxury as for the air of 
 gallantry that was indigenous in that home of 
 the joyous science of the Troubadours. At 
 this period his many brilliant social qualities 
 attracted the attention of the Colonna family, 
 a branch of which was settled at Avignon. 
 He also found a friend in John of Florence, 
 Apostolic Secretary, a learned and patriotic 
 Italian.
 
 Francis Here were the two young men, Francis 
 
 and Gerard, thrown upon their own resources. 
 Petrarch, barely twenty-two, with a complex- 
 ion which the women envied him, a graceful- 
 ness of person and demeanor that drew every 
 eye upon him in admiration, fastidious as a 
 lady in his attire, actually pinching his feet in 
 small shoes, with an excess of foppishness, 
 with a scholar's skill in chivalrous verse, 
 whether vulgar or learned, was at that date fit 
 for nothing so much as a grand passion, and 
 only needed a proper object to adore and be 
 miserable about. This he found at Matins, 
 April 6, 1327, in the church of Santa Clara, 
 in Avignon. This day was at that period a 
 sort of red-letter Lady day, and may have 
 been fixed upon by the lover as a proper con- 
 ventional period whence to date his real pas- 
 sion. It is amusing to notice how many 
 hearts, then as now, Cupid pierced with shafts 
 sent from the ambush of a prayer-book. No 
 wonder those early illuminators worked the 
 little wretch as an ornament into the borders 
 of the most fervent orisons ! 
 
 Laura de Noves, wife of Hugo de Sade, 
 was then in her twentieth year, and had been 
 a wife two years. Taking it for granted that 
 the alleged portraits of her that have reached
 
 Petrarch. 
 
 us are correct, her style of beauty had a de- Francis 
 mure dignity which would have been certain 
 to inthrall an intellectual person, who might 
 be attracted by it when posed, in religious hu- 
 milit)'', upon a hassock at early devotions. She 
 was not a blue-stocking. It has been mur- 
 mured by priggish critics that she could 
 barely have known how to read. She seems 
 to have been femininely fond of gorgeous at- 
 tire. She had two dresses, the description of 
 which has come down to us, that, to use an 
 enthusiastic expression, were "just too lovely 
 for anything. ' ' 
 
 Laura was, however, remarkable for her 
 virtue and discretion, and all the personal 
 beauty and accomplishments of the embryo 
 poet appear not to have caused her to swerve 
 a hair's breadth from the safe path of conjugal 
 fidelity. Heine's mahcious verses might ap- 
 ply to her : 
 
 " Zu der Lauheit und der Flaiiheit 
 Deiner Seele passte nicht 
 INIeiner Liebe wilde Rauheit, 
 
 Die sich Bahn durch Felsen bricht. 
 
 " Du, du liebtest die Chausseen 
 In der Liebe, und ich schau 
 Dich am Arm des Gatten gehen. " 
 
 But poor Petrarch took the disease in its 
 most virulent form. His divinity's charms 
 7
 
 Francis were thenceforth ever in his thoughts; and 
 he recorded his feelings and sorrows in a suc- 
 cession of sonnets, madrigals, ballads, and 
 canzoniy that, superior to the class of erotic 
 lyrics then in circulation, fell in with the taste 
 in that regard of his contemporaries ; and he 
 became famous, not so much for his great 
 qualities as a man as for his vmhappy weak- 
 ness as a lover. 
 
 It may be fairly set down as a fact, that a 
 disappointment or misfortune in an author's 
 love affairs is the best recommendation to 
 popular favor that he can have. Successful 
 love, it is true, excites a certain degree of 
 tender interest; but the sentimental world ad- 
 mits the jilted swain, or him who has loved 
 and forever lost, at once to its heart, without 
 asking for passport. It is the nightingale 
 with breast tortured by the thorn whose song 
 is the most emotional. Loss of wealth or 
 power cannot move the heart nearly so effec- 
 tually as the misfortune which springs from 
 the adverse whim of some simple girl, or the 
 removal by death of some unpretending wife 
 from the circle of a man's worldly happiness. 
 " Hyperion " is a bright book of travel; but I 
 question if its pictures of Old-World experi- 
 ences would strike us half so vividly if it were 
 not that we view them through the eyes of a
 
 young husband stricken by the greatest do- Francis 
 
 ■ r ^ Petrarch. 
 
 mestic misiortune. 
 
 In his twenty-eighth year, Petrarch left 
 Avignon for a grand tour through France 
 and Germany. He hoped by this absence to 
 dull the pain of his unfortunate passion. He 
 visited Paris, the Low Countries, and Ger- 
 many ; and on coming back to Italy, he, 
 together with Jacob Colonna, journeyed to 
 Rome, to gratify their enthusiastic taste for 
 its antiquities. 
 
 But Avignon and Laura were ever asso- 
 ciated in his thoughts. He hastened back, 
 and on his return thither, at the instance of 
 his patron. Cardinal Colonna, he entered the 
 service of John XXII., then Pope, who em- 
 ployed him as an envoy to France, to Italian 
 princes, and even, as is said, to England. 
 
 Wearying of this, Petrarch sought retire- 
 ment in Vaucluse, where he nursed his love 
 griefs with the most tender assiduity. 
 
 Vaucluse ( Val Chiusa, Vallis Clazisd) is 
 a beautiful and romantic spot, fourteen miles 
 from Avignon. Its rocks, its picturesque 
 beauty, and the fact that here Petrarch idled 
 away so many hours of lovesick melancholy, 
 have rendered the place, with the petulant lit- 
 tle river Sorgue, that boils through the valley, 
 9
 
 Francis one of the most interesting attractions for lit- 
 e tare I. gj.^j.y pilgrimages in the south of Europe. 
 
 In this spot Petrarch Hved with an old 
 fisherman and his wife — ignorant peasants, 
 whom Petrarch, however, easily found worthy 
 of his friendship, and about whom he wrote 
 some of his most interesting and touching 
 observations. 
 
 At this period he projected his Latin epic, 
 "Africa," desiring thereby to glorify his great 
 hero, Scipio Africanus. 
 
 At this time, too, he seems to have had 
 an intrigue which might give cause to doubt 
 his sincerity in his poetic professions of hom- 
 age to Laura. Whatever feeling Petrarch 
 invested in the experience, the girl involved 
 does not appear to have been as rigorous as 
 Laura. A son, Giovanni, was born in 1337, 
 whom Petrarch afterwards recognized and had 
 legitimated. What a relief the matter-of-fact 
 facility of this humble love must have been 
 to the icicle-tipped sentiment of the stately 
 Laura! 
 
 But his learning, his political experience, 
 and his amiable character (and above all, 
 perhaps, the romance of his barren love) be- 
 gan to bring him literary glory ; and at this 
 time he received from the Chancellor of the
 
 University of Paris and from the Roman Francis 
 Senate simultaneous invitations to visit those 
 capitals, for the purpose of receiving a laurel 
 crown as a mark of recognition of his emi- 
 nence as a poet. He decided, from patriotic 
 motives, to accept the Senate's invitation. 
 
 His real claims as a poet rested at that pe- 
 riod properly upon his Tuscan sonnets; but 
 these he regarded as but trifles, and he felt 
 that, to entitle him to the glory proffered, he 
 should produce something in Latin, namely, 
 his epic "Africa," before mentioned. This 
 prize poem, in an unfinished state, he sub- 
 mitted to Robert, the cultivated King of 
 Naples, who formally examined him as to his 
 qualifications as Laureate, and pronounced 
 him worthy, giving him his own robe of state 
 as a fitting garment in which to present him- 
 self at Rome for the expected honor. Those 
 were the days of pageantry; and the laurel 
 wreath was bestowed upon Petrarch April 
 17, 1 341, in a manner most gratifying to the 
 recipient, and reflecting credit upon the taste 
 and culture of all concerned in the ceremony. 
 
 The crowning of Petrarch as poet laureate 
 Was the great event of his life. Thereafter 
 he visited Parma, where he learned of the 
 death of his great friend, Jacob Colonna, the 
 Bishop of Lombes, of which event he experi-
 
 Francis enced a presentiment in a dream. Here he 
 
 Pctyci vch • 
 
 received a stall in the cathedral as arch- 
 deacon, and thereafter devoted his time to 
 the perfecting of his epic. 
 
 But his passion drew him back to Avignon 
 and Vaucluse, having been commissioned to 
 the new Pope, Clement VI., as advocate of 
 the Roman people; and in his days of retire- 
 ment he wrote his three imaginary dialogues 
 with St. Augustine, wherein he sought to lay 
 bare his feelings and motives in the matter of 
 his love passion. 
 
 The business which Petrarch was to man- 
 age at this date was to urge the new Pope to 
 return to Rome and re-establish the papal 
 throne in that city. His colleague in the 
 office was Niccolo Gabrino, better known as 
 Cola di Rienzi, afterwards famous, weak, and 
 unfortunate, as the Roman Tribune, who 
 commenced by attacking the nobles, and 
 ended by aping them. 
 
 The Pope, however, notwithstanding the 
 kindness with which he behaved towards the 
 Roman deputies, declined to take the step 
 desired. He permitted the Jubilee, however, 
 which had theretofore been celebrated only 
 once a century, to be proclaimed for 1350. 
 
 Petrarch was indignant at the neglect which
 
 Rome received at the hands of His Holiness, Francis 
 and gave vent to his feelings in abuse of 
 Avignon, which place he likened unto the 
 Scriptural Babylon, styling his work "Liber 
 epistolarum sinetitulo." 
 
 Gherardo, Petrarch's brother, became at 
 this time a Carthusian friar, having received 
 an impulse to the act from a visit which the 
 two brothers made to a convent. It is said 
 that Gherardo became a monk because of grief 
 at the loss of his mistress by death. 
 
 In 1342, Petrarch took up the study of 
 Greek with Bernardo Barlaamo, a Calabrian 
 monk, an envoy sent by the Emperor of the 
 East to the Pope. He subsequently continued 
 the study under Leonzio Pilato, a pupil of 
 Barlaamo' s, but never actually acquired any 
 proficiency as a Grecian. 
 
 In 1343, a second child, a daughter, Fran- 
 cesca, was born to Petrarch by his every-day 
 mistress; Laura, of course, being only the 
 Platonic titular incumbent of his heart. This 
 mistress died shortly afterwards. Francesca 
 grew to be an estimable woman, and proved 
 a great comfort to her father in his old age. 
 
 In this year. King Robert of Naples died, 
 and was succeeded by his granddaughter, 
 Giovanna. Petrarch went to Naples as em- 
 13
 
 Francis bassador to represent the Pope, and also to 
 '^^^ '■ endeavor to obtain the release of some adher- 
 ents of the Colonna family, who had been 
 imprisoned. He was treated by the Queen 
 with great consideration, but otherwise was 
 unable to mitigate the tragic disputes between 
 her and the brother of her murdered hus- 
 band, the King of Hungary. 
 
 After a short sojourn at Rome, under the 
 invitation of Jacob H., of Carrara, he visited 
 Padua, and was named by his host as a Canon 
 of Parma. Here he wrote his treatise, " De 
 viris illustribus." 
 
 In 1347, the dramatic rise of Rienzi at 
 Rome took place. Rienzi was elected trib- 
 une, and the popular movement received the 
 hearty approval of the Pope (Clement VI.), 
 and also of Petrarch. But Rienzi' s vanity 
 worked his own destruction, and helped to 
 disgust the aristocratic churchmen with lib- 
 erty in that shape. It may be well to call 
 attention to the fact that the ecclesiastics of 
 those days were in no sense political abso- 
 lutists, but seemed only too anxious to raise 
 up the old Roman Republic from under the 
 ruins of the Capitol. 
 
 In 1348, the Pest, so eloquently and vividly 
 pictured by Boccaccio, broke out in Italy. 
 
 14
 
 It travelled finally to Avignon, and one of its Francis 
 shining victims was Laura, the news of whose 
 death came to Petrarch at Verona, where he 
 was then sojourning. His grief for the death 
 of his mistress was excessive, and to it we 
 owe some of his tenderest lyrics. Indeed, 
 the poems written subsequently to the death 
 of the lady are remarkable for their genuine 
 feeling, dignity, and beauty. 
 
 In 1350, he went to Rome, to gain the in- 
 dulgence promised in connection with the 
 papal Jubilee, and after accomplishing his 
 duty, tarried at Arezzo, his birthplace. Here 
 he was honored with an enthusiastic recep- 
 tion, and a decree was entered by the com- 
 munity that the house wherein he was born 
 should be ever kept in its then condition, as a 
 sacred place. 
 
 He returned to Vaucluse and Avignon, 
 where he remained until 1352; but Laura 
 was dead: he never had liked Avignon save 
 because she lived there, and he determined 
 to return to Lombardy. 
 
 Here he entered into diplomatic duties, 
 mainly for the Milanese Visconti ; and, as ad- 
 ditional employment, he was placed in charge 
 of the library which the Archbishop Giovanni 
 had established at Padua. He remained in 
 the service of the Visconti ten years.
 
 Francis In 1354, Charles IV., Emperor, invited him 
 
 to his court, then held at Mantua. Charles 
 had been a great admirer of Petrarch — in- 
 deed, the story is told, that in 1346, when at 
 Avignon with his father, Charles had singled 
 out Laura from all the bevy of beauties at 
 the luxurious court of Avignon, and had 
 then and there kissed her, at the expense 
 of arousing the tender jealousy of the poet. 
 
 Petrarch was very free in his remarks to 
 Charles upon royal and imperial duties, but 
 the latter took it in gentle part ; spoke ever 
 in the most enthusiastic terms of the poet, 
 wishing to have him permanently in his court; 
 the Chancellor of the Empire sending the 
 poet a patent as Count Palatine. 
 
 But the days when a court poet was an en- 
 viable profession had for a generation gone 
 by, when the Hohenstauffen dynasty failed; 
 and Petrarch possibly did not feel ambitious 
 of a position in which he might find his per- 
 sonal dignity shading off into that of the 
 court jester, and he therefore clung to his 
 loved Italy, and after a lengthy sojourn at 
 Milan, he practically settled at Padua, finally 
 making his home at Arqua. 
 
 But, ever restless, and yet ever seeking re- 
 pose, he betook himself to Venice, then a city 
 of wonderful growth, civilization, and glory. 
 
 16
 
 The Venetians honored him highly; and, Francis 
 
 by way of grateful return, he presented to the 
 state his library, which became the nucleus 
 of the famous collection of St. Mark's. An- 
 other motive for the gift may be found in the 
 fact, that to a restless man, ever changing his 
 domicile, the transportation of such treasures 
 as books were in those days would be a mat- 
 ter of great anxiety. The Venetian Senate 
 also appointed a palace for his residence. 
 
 At this time his relations with Boccaccio 
 became intimate. He used to wear the great 
 prose writer's portrait with his own in a ring; 
 and Boccaccio gave him the works of St. 
 Augustine, Varro, and some of Cicero's, be- 
 sides copying for his use, with his own hands, 
 Dante's great poem. Indeed, the connection 
 between Petrarch and Boccaccio is one of the 
 purest friendships ever formed between two 
 literary men, and shows to great advantage 
 the lack of small envies in the composi- 
 tion of both men. 
 
 Boccaccio successfully procured the rein- 
 statement of Petrarch (1351) as a citizen of 
 Florence, from which place he had been from 
 prenatal days a hereditary exile. The Flor- 
 entines demanded of the Pope (Urban V., 
 1365) that the poet be inducted into a can- 
 17 
 
 Petrarch.
 
 Francis onry, either in Florence or Fiesole. But Pe- 
 trarch, although appreciating the honor and 
 kindness, declined to return, and ultimately- 
 fixed his abode, in 1370, at Arqua, in the 
 Euganean Hills, a short distance from Padua. 
 His last public act was a diplomatic service in 
 the interest of a patron, Francesco Novello 
 da Carrara, Prince of Padua, to settle a dis- 
 pute with Venice. 
 
 After finishing the mission in an honorable 
 but not altogether successful manner, he re- 
 turned to Arqua, and June 18, 1374, was 
 found dead, sitting in a chair in his library. 
 
 His funeral was conducted with all the 
 pomp which appertained to the sepulture of 
 a man who had possessed so great an influ- 
 ence as ecclesiastic, poet, and statesman, his 
 colleagues of the diocese joining with his 
 friend, the reigning Prince of Padua, in doing 
 the honors of his burial. 
 
 One feels, on reviewing Petrarch's life and 
 works, continually reminded of Goethe. Both 
 had been educated to the law, but abandoned 
 it as a business full of unsatisfactory sophistry. 
 
 Both lived in a revolution of culture. 
 Goethe was not utterly carried away by the 
 Storm-and-Stress flood, but nevertheless its 
 current shook up and kept in movement his 
 
 18
 
 whole being. Petrarch was full of the ex- Francis 
 citement of the Revival of Letters. 
 
 Both found their bread-and-butter exist- 
 ence practically dependent upon their services 
 to petty princes in fragmentary nationalities; 
 for the Holy Roman Empire was as weak 
 a bond in Italy in the days of Dante and 
 Petrarch as it was four hundred years later, 
 when the French Revolution burst under it 
 and blew it to pieces. 
 
 Both were lifted into notice by the poetic 
 expression which they gave to their mental 
 and moral throes and tortures as unsatisfied 
 lovers, the one by his lyric poetry, the other 
 by his " Sorrows of Werther." Had the Ital- 
 ian been able to break away from his passion, 
 or had the German suffered his to become 
 chronic, the parallel would be complete, so 
 far as there could be a likeness between the 
 hale and hearty German and the morbid 
 Florentine. 
 
 Both were honored by the great ones of 
 their time, and were characters as well in 
 political as in literary history; and if we ex- 
 amine their daily lives and ambitions, as well 
 as their successes and failures, we may find 
 much in the glorified sage of Weimar which 
 has also its representative trait in him of 
 Padua. 
 19
 
 Francis Although somewhat fanciful and strained, 
 
 one cannot help seeking what might be par- 
 allelisms in the lives of Petrarch and Goethe. 
 I have picked out a few facts which show a 
 certain ratio of coincidence. Goethe has left 
 us more of his work which we can benefit 
 by. Much of Petrarch's labor was of neces- 
 sity apt only for the time in which he lived; 
 and his productions were formed or deformed 
 in accordance with the mannerisms of that 
 era. Both were successful in their worldly 
 lives — a compensation, in a manner, for the 
 pangs of despised love which both suffered 
 early in life. Here I might refer to Napo- 
 leon's famous criticism upon Werther: that an 
 unhappy passion was not, in itself, sufficient 
 reason for suicide; but that a failure in one's 
 career must also supervene to warrant such 
 extreme despair — in brief, that Glory and 
 Fame are the best physicians for a broken 
 heart, Petrarch and Goethe having success- 
 fully submitted to the treatment. Had Pe- 
 trarch not been kept alive by the hopeful 
 brilliancy of the revival of letters, and encour- 
 aged by the social regard paid him as a 
 cherished favorite of the Colonnas, or had 
 Goethe seen no grander life before him than 
 that of a snuffy imperial chancery clerk, the 
 burthen of an impossible love might have
 
 seemed to both, as it did to poor Jerusalem, 
 too heavy to bear. 
 
 Francis 
 Petrarch. 
 
 PETRARCH. 
 
 Family origin : The family 
 of Petrarch's motherwas prob- 
 ably more influential than that 
 of his father, Petraccolo. Gar- 
 zo, Petrarch's paternal grand- 
 father, had something like the 
 municipal status of Textor, 
 Goethe's maternal grandfa- 
 ther. Petrarch's mother was 
 a beautiful woman, of lovely 
 disposition. 
 
 Petrarch is destined for ju- 
 risprudence, but prefers the 
 classics and poets, sufiering 
 thereby his father's displeas- 
 ure ; abandons the law when 
 left to his own devices. 
 
 Finds his enjoyment in the 
 society of elegant ladies of 
 Avignon. Fastidious in his 
 dress. 
 
 Petrarch's dissipation at 
 Avignon. 
 
 Petrarch's era the regener- 
 ation of classical learning and 
 rivalry of Latin with Tuscan. 
 
 Laura de Sade. 
 
 Sonnets and other Tuscan 
 poems in the lifetime of Laura. 
 
 Becomes famous by reason 
 of his Tuscan poems. 
 
 Makes the tour of France 
 to forget his passion. 
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 Maternally descended from 
 Johann Wolfgang Textor, 
 Schultheiss of Frankfort, the 
 family (as well as Goethe's 
 father) being hereditary g:ens 
 de la robe. Goethe's mother 
 was as brilliant in a feminine 
 way as Goethe himself in his. 
 
 Goethe's father resents his 
 son's neglect of the law. 
 Goethe barely takes his doc- 
 torate degree (?), and never 
 devotes any serious attention 
 to the subject thereafter. 
 
 " Willst du genau erfahren was 
 
 sich ziemt 
 So frage nur bei edlen Frauen 
 
 an." 
 Goethe in his j-oung days a 
 thorough fop. 
 
 Goethe's wild days at Wei- 
 mar. 
 
 Storm - and - Stress period : 
 the crystallization of the ele- 
 gant modern High German. 
 
 LoTTE Buff Kestner. 
 
 The Sorrows of Werther. 
 
 The wild enthusiasm of Ger- 
 many over Werther. Goethe's 
 songs marvels of lyric perfec- 
 tion. 
 
 Leaves Wetzlar. 
 Swiss journey.
 
 Francis '■'' ^ protege of the Colonna 
 
 Petrarch f^f^i^y' ^id the bosom friend 
 
 ofGiacomo, Bishop of Lombes. 
 
 Enters diplomatic service 
 under Cardinal Colonna and 
 Pope John XXII.; subsequent- 
 ly ends his career as minister 
 of the Milanese Visconti. 
 
 Forms a liaison with some 
 unknown woman, although he 
 still celebrates Laura in his 
 verse. Two children born of 
 the connection. 
 
 Receives a patent as Count 
 Palatine of the Roman Em- 
 pire. 
 
 Petrarch's epic and his re- 
 publican ideas a failure. The 
 following century criticises his 
 Latin style. 
 
 Petrarch greatly honored by 
 the Emperor Charles. 
 
 Laura in her matronly days 
 comes to be proud of the glory 
 conferred on her by Petrarch's 
 verse, and affects a sentiment- 
 al friendship for him. 
 
 Boccaccio's friendship. 
 
 Old age at Arqua. Cultured 
 ease amid books and objects 
 of art, admired by the great 
 and scholarly of his time. 
 
 Chaucer's verdict upon Pe- 
 trarch, as recorded in " The 
 Gierke's Tale." 
 
 The Stolbergs, and ultimate 
 ly Karl August of Weimar. 
 
 Appointed Legationsrath, 
 and subsequently promoted. 
 
 Becomes the admirer of Bar- 
 oness von Stein, and has a 
 connection which ultimately 
 ends in a marriage with Chris- 
 tiane Vulpius. 
 
 Is ennobled. 
 
 Goethe wastes his energ>' in 
 erroneous theories as to nat- 
 ural science. 
 
 Napoleon's interview with 
 Goethe: " Voila jtn hotnme." 
 
 Lotte, an old woman, the 
 mother of twelve children, 
 visits Goethe. 
 
 Schiller's friendship. 
 
 Old age at Weimar. An ob- 
 ject of veneration to both his 
 countrymen and strangers. 
 
 Thackeray's " 7'a«^?<»i vidi." 
 
 In reading Petrarch's letters and noting his 
 personal doings, one is struck with the al- 
 most insupportable burthen as a scribe that 
 must have pressed upon him. It would not
 
 be giving too strong an illustration in that re- Francis 
 gard to suggest the sort of labor which a lad ^ ^^^'' ' 
 of to-day would undergo if, to reach a liberal 
 education, he were compelled to slavishly 
 copy every author he read in a fair engross- 
 ing hand. How many people would have 
 favorite authors in these times if the claim 
 had to be supported by laboriously engross- 
 ing them on parchment ? What misery the 
 want of paper must have caused! Petrarch 
 used a leather jerkin, which he treated as a 
 sort of note-book when he was out of reach 
 of fitting writing materials, which garment 
 was still in existence in 1527, when it was a 
 prized relic in the hands of the erudite Car- 
 dinal Sadoleto. It will be seen what respect- 
 able precedent one has for soiling one's 
 cuffs with memoranda. The Vatican has his 
 "Rime" in autograph — a fair copy. At 
 Florence is a transcript by him of certain 
 epistles of Cicero, bound in wood, with iron 
 clasps, the corners of copper, the identical 
 book which so often fell on his unlucky left 
 leg, and came near costing him its amputation. 
 He forever complains of the unreliability 
 of copyists, who, in those days, received the 
 abuse which we now lavish, deservedly or 
 otherwise, on the printers. The calligraphist 
 was an artist in those times, as was also the 
 23
 
 Francis illuminator, one of whom Dante finds in 
 Purgatory. Petrarch was an elegant scribe. 
 His handwriting was so neat and clear that 
 when, in 1501-2, Aldus Manutius invented 
 the so-called Italic type as an improvement 
 upon black letter, he made it a fac-simile of 
 Petrarch's hand. 
 
 It is not always that the grand qualities 
 inherent in a man are the basis of his reputa- 
 tion or fame. Petrarch is a shining example 
 of the weakness of a great mind, proving the 
 connecting sympathetic link binding to him 
 the regard and affection of his fellow-men for 
 a period of centuries in duration. 
 
 Laura seems to have been a grande dame 
 of the court at Avignon, filling the part of a 
 sort of local queen, with no particular intel- 
 lectual gifts, probably, but with a complete 
 appreciation of the power of her beauty, and 
 a disposition to set it off as much as possible 
 by an attention to dress and coquettish re- 
 quirements. 
 
 She recognized the advantage of having a 
 great man and poet grovelling at her feet; 
 and it seems that it annoyed her when she 
 ran the risk of losing him. She was selfish 
 about it, however. She granted him no fa- 
 vors. She snubbed him when he effervesced 
 
 24
 
 into indiscretion, and practically and crush- Francis 
 
 ingly said, "Messer Petrarcha, I am no such 
 
 woman." 
 
 r non son forse chi tu credi. 
 
 She seems to have been remarkably pro- 
 lific ; and whether she loved her lord or no, 
 she was most of the time in that state in 
 which women who do like to be. There are ten 
 or eleven children mentioned as born of her 
 marriage, and we do not know how many got 
 away. It is singular to notice in that regard 
 how she and Lotte Kestner, Goethe's great 
 passion, are compeers. Now, the spectacle 
 of poor Petrarch, as it were, getting in his 
 tributes of adoration of her person (^p'fb's 
 exhaicstuni) in such breathing-spells as were 
 allowed to the midwives, might draw a sneer 
 from lips moulded for sarcasm. 
 
 What an opportunity would have been 
 offered for the great modern song-writer of 
 Germany to say something piquant, had he 
 been thrown back five hundred years, in 
 some anachronistic way, and, as a barbarian, 
 have met the demure Laura, swinging through 
 the streets of the Gascon capital on the arm 
 of her noble spouse, 
 
 " Eine brave schwangere Frau ! " 
 
 Of course, we must acquit Laura of any 
 yielding to the poet. She could not have 
 25
 
 Francis been imitating that methodical Roman Em- 
 Pctfci fch 
 
 press, who, when asked why, when she had 
 
 so many lovers, her children wore her hus- 
 band's features, answered — 
 
 Numquam nisi navi plena tollo vectorem. 
 
 Perhaps, however, if Laura had possessed 
 the quality of ready negotiability in the mat- 
 ter of affections, such as a malign Venus 
 vested in Sordello's Cunizza, it is possible 
 that Petrarch never would have developed 
 as a poet. Gratified love stills the music of 
 men as effectually as of birds. It will be re- 
 membered how, when the brother and the 
 lover of Beatrix Esmond discovered her in- 
 trigue with the Chevalier, and were uneasy 
 lest she had already yielded, their minds were 
 set at rest by the discovery that the Prince 
 was still in the verse-writing stage of the 
 flirtation. Petrarch never passed from it, in 
 spite of the slanderous hints of Madame 
 Deshoulieres. No; Laura was good; 
 
 "And whether coldness, pride, or virtue dignify 
 A woman, so she is good, what does it signify ? " 
 
 To sentimental souls, I must frankly ad- 
 mit my lack of inclination to crown Laura 
 with the customary nimbus of angelic phos- 
 phorescence. She doubtless was extremely 
 good, but not "too good to be unkind," at 
 
 26
 
 least to her passionate admirer. Of course, Francis 
 as supporters of the ethical dogma of wifely 
 virtue, we ought to feel a glow of enthusiasm 
 at the fact that five centuries ago, under the 
 warm sun of Provence, in a very dissipated 
 capital, and with a crossish sort of husband, 
 a woman was found of such arctic rigor as to 
 return only an iceberg reflection of the flam- 
 ing glow of her servant's passion; but, at the 
 same time, we may be allowed to cherish a 
 sneaking regret that the garland of poetic 
 blossom— the first of the new growth of modern 
 European civilization — should have brought 
 no response from the lady at whose feet it was 
 laid, save the throwing in the poet's eyes of a 
 shovelful of the ashes of her flickering con- 
 jugal fires. 
 
 It was a practical blessing to Petrarch 
 when the Plague eloped with her. It ended 
 his haunting Provence when he should have 
 been in Italy, where he rightfully belonged. 
 For my part, I feel a sense of relief when I 
 come to the poems which record Laura as in 
 Heaven, and her disturbing and baleful influ- 
 ence removed from the gentle canon's ex- 
 istence. 
 
 We may pardon Petrarch's morbid passion 
 for Laura. It was a disease that had settled 
 on him in his youth — a rheumatic disorder of 
 27
 
 Francis his blood, which kept him ever in unrest. 
 But his other idols were equally objects of 
 mistaken homage. He believed that Virgil 
 and his Latin predecessors and successors 
 of the classical age were sacred prophets. He 
 worshipped their sandal-strings. He attempted 
 to bring back their language, not as a philo- 
 logical inquiry, not as material in an archaic 
 museum, not as a stage costume, but as a 
 matter of daily habit. He was not alone in 
 his error. Dante and the preceding genera- 
 tion were equally enthusiastic — equally wrong. 
 Ciceronian Latin and Roman Freedom seemed 
 to all the bright intellects of that day, whether 
 pope or king, priest or layman, matters to 
 struggle and strive after, as the theoretical 
 siunmum boniini of earthly polity and culture. 
 
 His talk was full of allusions and illustra- 
 tions from Roman and Grecian history. It 
 forcibly reminds one of the orators of the 
 French Revolution; and, possibly, also of the 
 classical mannerisms of some of our own 
 Revolutionary fathers' stilted effects in speech, 
 which have long ago been abandoned to 
 school-boy rhetoric. 
 
 Petrarch, like many an enthusiastic student 
 since his time, was carried off his feet by the 
 voluble graces of Cicero. He esteemed it 
 
 28
 
 true statesmanship to adopt Cicero's opinions. Francis 
 He did his best to write Ciceronian Latin. ^ ^^^'' ' 
 He, amidst those grim ItaUan tyrants, who 
 had more of Catihne than of Augustus in 
 their composition, actually tried, as the acme 
 of genius to be attained, to be an orator such 
 as was Cicero, forgetful that Cicero himself, 
 in his vanity as a Roman Consul, was prob- 
 ably more conceited, inwardly, over his petty 
 military success, and his doubtful title of hn- 
 perator, than over his most brilliant civic vic- 
 tories. Petrarch's friend, Dandolo, the Doge 
 of Venice, gave him a rough rebuke in that 
 regard. But if Cicero was a failure when in 
 the glow of life and action, with a Roman 
 Senate behind him as clients, and a populace 
 in front charmed by his wealth of diction, 
 it would not be likely that Petrarch, as a me- 
 diaeval sorcerer, by sprinkling his fickle ashes 
 and muttering his silvery phrases all over 
 Italy, could invoke the old Roman phantoms 
 of glory. And in so blindly taking Cicero 
 as a model, Petrarch did what he him- 
 self reprehends : His opinions were more 
 like pictures of Roman bass-reliefs than 
 like flesh-and-blood descendants of Roman 
 heroes. 
 
 But even Petrarch's mumbling of Cicero- 
 nian expressions was not free from criticism. 
 29
 
 Francis Writing a dead language is like solving a 
 mystic fifteen puzzle — a matter of ingenious 
 fitting of mosaic. Petrarch was dab at it; 
 but the succeeding century grew more expert 
 at the game; and Petrarch's stilted hexam- 
 eters became a matter of about as much 
 literary regard as John Tzetzes' epic balder- 
 dash, made out of the splinters of Homer. 
 A work in a dead language can no more be 
 imitated than a stained-glass window can be 
 restored from its fragments, after the art of 
 staining glass has been lost. 
 
 Petrarch's Italian verse has long been held 
 above criticism. Perhaps we feel a half- 
 monotonous weariness at the uniformity of a 
 collection of sonnets on one subject, and that 
 a cloying one, when any one of the poems by 
 itself would excite nothing but simple ad- 
 miration. But one should not read the poet 
 in that way. The proper mode to appreciate 
 Petrarch is to dawdle under the shade of a 
 tree ; to sleepily open to any chance page, 
 and to stop after turning the leaf A sonnet 
 is like an intaglio gem: you must not expect 
 heroic breadth therein; it must be examined 
 with half-shut eyes to bring out its beauties. 
 Many of Petrarch's poems are as fantastic 
 and involved as a parti-colored twist of silk. 
 
 30
 
 But to put a bundle of thoughts into so small Francis 
 a compass as fourteen lines is a task like 
 stowing a lady's robe into a traveller's hand- 
 bag : there must inevitably be some little 
 wrinkling of ideas. 
 
 For the same reason, the difficulty of trans- 
 lating into a foreign language a sonnet which 
 is closely packed in the original becomes in- 
 surmountable. Besides, the day of the Eng- 
 lish sonnet ended with the death of Queen 
 Elizabeth. The poets of that era spoke a 
 language more fitted for the purpose of ren- 
 dering Petrarch, and they were entitled to 
 take more liberties with the idiom. 
 
 Dante's great epic was sparingly com- 
 mended by Petrarch, who could not fail to 
 note its beauties, and who was the soul of 
 fairness as a critic, even when heavily handi- 
 capped with the delusions of his day; but 
 it was in the common tongue, and to him 
 it was admirable only with reservations. 
 
 In Petrarch's old age, he produced his 
 "Trionfi. " Here, perhaps, by the influence 
 of Boccaccio, he takes Dante somewhat as a 
 model. That these efforts were excellent of 
 their kind, may be seen from the fact that 
 so many modern poets have followed in his 
 wake, and have adopted analogous forms for 
 their poetic art.
 
 Francis The great wealth of new themes shining in 
 
 the epics of barbarian Germany, which had 
 found expression in the preceding century, 
 awoke Uttle interest in Petrarch. The music 
 of the Minnesingers and the cycles of Ro- 
 land and Arthur worked itself into Italian lit- 
 erature two centuries later, when Boiardo, 
 Ariosto, and Tasso found the legends worthy 
 subjects for their verse. Petrarch was un- 
 consciously attempting to bring back the 
 modes of thought and action of the ancient 
 world, forgetful that that world could not be in 
 harmony with Christian tradition and Christian 
 chivalry. Only a Christian gentleman could 
 have suffered or been victimized by such a pas- 
 sion as Petrarch entertained for Laura. A 
 Greek or Roman would not have understood 
 it or its morbid pains ; and Petrarch's political 
 and literary views were out of place as much 
 as was the tribuneship of Rienzi, decked with 
 the gewgaws of mediaeval knighthood. For 
 these reasons, Petrarch might well complain, 
 
 " Solco onde, e 'n rena fondo e scrivo invento." 
 
 A striking instance of the mode in which 
 il gran canonico was absorbed in his Nir- 
 vana of classical contemplation may be drawn 
 from the scanty facts tending to prove his in- 
 tercourse with Chaucer. 
 
 32
 
 There can be no moral doubt but that Francis 
 Chaucer knew Petrarch personally. They 
 were both in France many times, where they 
 might have met. They were both courtiers. 
 They both had an enthusiasm for scholarship. 
 Whether they met then, or whether Chaucer, 
 when on his visit to Genoa, specially visited 
 the Italian, it does not appear, I do not im- 
 agine that a visit by the hearty, beef-eating 
 Valethcs Noster to the fruit-eating poet of 
 Arqua would have been very cheery as a 
 feast-hunting episode ; but the only reason 
 that such a visit could not have occurred lies 
 in the fact that Petrarch himself does not re- 
 cord it. Still, on the other hand, would he 
 have mentioned the visit of a man who was 
 the servant of a barbarous monarch, and 
 whose only claim to notice, literary-wise, was 
 his cultivation of an unknown and uncouth 
 dialect, that was half-bastard French ? 
 
 I think that we must accept Landor's 
 " Imaginary Conversations," Boccaccio and 
 Petrarch, and then Chaucer as an intervener, 
 as conventional truths, whether direct evi- 
 dence to support the idea is ever found or 
 not. 
 
 Petrarch's patriotism was of the sturdiest 
 order. His hopes were for the return of the 
 Pope to Rome, to the end that the horde of 
 33
 
 Francis petty tyrants who swarmed over Italy, and 
 e rare . ^^^^^ jj. ^j^^ bloody ground of their aimless 
 and endless brawlings, might be overawed by 
 a strong central power at Rome. He was 
 not averse to a temporal emperor sitting side 
 by side with a spiritual pontiff ; but he wished 
 that emperor to be the right hand of Italy, 
 and to fight its battles for a return to suprem- 
 acy of Roman ideas and the Roman race, as 
 exponents of civilization. 
 
 Petrarch was a man of strong, clear, almost 
 sceptical mind. He was a disbeliever in ju- 
 dicial astrology and alchemy — superstitions 
 which clung to western civilization far into 
 the eighteenth century. He saw through the 
 quackery of what its professors were, in those 
 days, pleased to style the medical profession; 
 and by his railleries at its expense, he won 
 the animosity of the guild as deservedly as 
 did Moliere three centuries later. 
 
 He was so scientifically intelligent that he 
 won from Innocent VI., the ignoramus among 
 the Avignon popes, the reputation (in those 
 days a dangerous one) of being, like his 
 cherished model, Virgil, a sorcerer ; and tak- 
 ing one line as a prophecy, we might almost 
 fancy him foretelling the discovery of America : 
 
 ' ' Che '1 di nostro vola 
 A gente che di la forse 1' aspetta." 
 
 34
 
 To an American, there is something pecu- Francis 
 
 Harly attractive in the spectacle of the great 
 poet looking over the Atlantic, straining his 
 eyes to catch a glimpse of another world, 
 bathed in the glories of the setting sun. A 
 hundred years later, Luigi Pulci borrowed 
 and expanded this idea of Petrarch. Charles 
 Sumner, in his " Prophetic Voices About 
 America," notices Pulci, but overlooks Pe- 
 trarch's precedence. Pulci, however, might 
 have learned at the same source as Columbus. 
 
 Had Petrarch sought riches by the road of 
 mercantile enterprise — and those were the 
 days of mercantile power — he might have 
 founded a family that would have rivalled the 
 Medici, and his declining age would have 
 been spent in an old-gentlemanly fever of en- 
 thusiasm over antique gems and coins, and 
 amid a collection of chipped torsos from his 
 pet Roman Imperial days. 
 
 Had he, like Sordello, worn a cuirass in- 
 stead of a cassock, and flourished a sword 
 instead of a censer, he might have sprung 
 into power as a coyidottiere, and, as either the 
 Pope's trusty man-at-arms or the Emperor's 
 legate, have won for his beloved Italy that 
 peaceful unity, prosperity, and stability as a 
 nation which have ever seemed a mirage of 
 
 Petrarch.
 
 Francis glory that has shifted away from every ItaUan 
 e tar i. ^^^^-.^q^ Jj^ every age, as he has attempted to 
 grasp and detain them. 
 
 Petrarch was a great man — above such 
 vanity as caused Rienzi to burst like the fabled 
 frog — sincere and loving in his friendships, a 
 genuine broken-hearted lover, who never took 
 revenge upon his prudish mistress, either in 
 word or deed, and who did not sit down and 
 wither into intellectual apathy because she was 
 not kind. He stood out from his age as pure 
 and symmetrical in character as an antique 
 column left standing amid the ruins of his 
 own dear Rome, after Gothic devastations, to 
 mark a trysting-place for lovers, and a surface 
 whereon to engrave the date of the regener- 
 ate birth of classical and philosophical learn- 
 ing in modern Europe out of the mingled 
 ashes of monkish scribes and gallant bards of 
 Provence, and the epitaph of the last and 
 
 GREATEST OF THE TROUBADOURS.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 It would, of course, be a piece of presumption 
 to attempt any list, either of editions, annotators, 
 or biographers of Petrarch. Marsand, we believe, 
 collected, long ago, a " Biblioteca Petrarchesca " 
 of nine hundred volumes (now at Paris); and the 
 list has been steadily increasing. The best that 
 can be done, therefore (and all that is necessary in 
 an essay like the present), is to note some of the 
 more curious or more popular works or editions 
 which a student of Petrarch may find referred to in 
 his reading. 
 
 I.— LIST OF PUBLISHED WORKS OF PE- 
 TRARCH. 
 
 WRITTEN IN TUSCAN. 
 
 ist. Sonnets ; written in the lifetime of Laura, 
 227 ; after her death, 90. This is exclusive 
 of six sonnets discovered and published 
 by G. Veludo, and one found in the French 
 National Library by M. L. Podhorsky, and 
 the one (alleged to be by Petrarch) found 
 in Laura's tomb. 
 
 2d. Canzoni ; written in Laura's lifetime, 21 ; 
 after her death, 8. 
 
 3d. Sestine ; written in Laura's lifetime, S; after 
 her death, i. 
 
 4th. Ballate ; written in Laura's lifetime, 6; after 
 her death, i. 
 
 37
 
 Francis 5th. Madrigals (all in Laura's lifetime), 4. 
 
 Petrarch, gt]-. Triumphs, begun in 1357, left unfinished at 
 the death of the poet. Love, Chastity, 
 Death, Fame, Time, Eternity. 
 
 LATIN POEMS. 
 
 1st. Africa (commenced in 1341; not finished for 
 
 years after); XII books. 
 2d. Bucolicum carmen. 
 3d. Epistolae ; III books. 
 4th. Septem Psalmi Penitentiales ; novem con- 
 
 fessionales. 
 
 ETHICAL OR PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS. 
 
 ist. Secretum de Contemptu Mundi ; III dia- 
 logues. De Conflictu Curarum Suarum. 
 
 2d. De Avaritia Vitanda. 
 
 3d. De Otio Religioso ; II books ; written in con- 
 sequence of a visit to his brother in a Car- 
 thusian convent. 
 
 4th. De Vera Sapientia ; II dialogues. 
 
 5th. De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae ; com- 
 menced in 1358. 
 
 6th. De Vita Solitaria ; II books; written for the 
 Bishop of Cavaillon (Vaucluse); com- 
 menced as a sketch in 1346 ; finished in 
 1366. 
 
 7th. De Sui Ipsius et Aliorum Ignorantia ; a re- 
 buke to Atheism. 1370. 
 
 8th. Epistola ad Posteritatem. 
 
 POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. 
 
 • 1st. De Officiis et Virtutibus Imperatoris. 
 
 2d. Exhortations to Attempt the Recovery of 
 Liberty ; to restore peace to Italy. 
 
 38
 
 3d. Ad Quosdam ex Illustribus Antiquis. Francis 
 
 4th. De Republica Optime Administranda ; writ- Petrarch. 
 
 ten for the Prince of Padua. {1373.) 
 5th. Liber Epistolarum sine Titulo (concerning 
 
 tlie Papal sojourn at Avignon). 
 6th. Letters ; to Humbert, Dauphin of the Vien- 
 
 nois (1339); to the Emperor Charles (1350); 
 
 to Dandolo, Doge of Venice (1351). 
 
 HISTORICAL. 
 
 ist. Epitome Illustrium Virorum. 
 2d. De Rebus Memorandis; IV books. 
 3d. Commentarii de Vita Caesaris (formerly as- 
 cribed to Celsus). 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 ist. Itinerarium Syriacum ; written on account 
 
 of the Crusades. 
 2d. Contra Medicum Objurgantem. 
 3d. Invectiva Contra Galium. 
 4th. Griseldis (translation from Boccaccio). 
 
 EPISTOLAE. 
 
 1st. De Rebus Familiaribus ; VIII books. 
 2d. De Rebus Senilibus ; XVI books. 
 3d. On various subjects. 
 
 II.— EDITIONS. 
 
 INCUNABULA. 
 
 Tuscan poems, first edition, Venice, 1470 (4to), 
 sold at the Pinelli sale in 1789 for ;^27 6s. Rome, 
 1471 ; Padua, 1472 ; Rome, Milan, and Venice, 
 1473 ; Basle, 1474 ; Bologna (Filelfo), 1476 ; Brus- 
 sels, 1477 ; Venice (black letter), 1478 ; Venice, 
 1481 ; Venice (black letter), 1484 ; Venice, 14S6-88 ; 
 Padua, 1490 ; Venice, 1492-94. 
 
 39
 
 Francis printed after a. d. 1500. 
 
 Petrarch. (pilelfo) Venice, isoc^isis ; Aldus (Bembo, 
 editor), 1501, '14, '21, '33, '46. Giunti, Florence, 
 1510, 1515, or 1522 ; Paganino, Venice, 1516; Da 
 Bologna, 1516; Gesualdo, 1533, also 1553. 
 
 Velutello, Venice, 1545, '47, '60 ; Bruccioli, 
 Venice, 1548 ; Daniello da Lucca, Venice, 1549 ; 
 Dolce, Venice, 1554 ; Bembo, Lione, 1574 ; Castel- 
 vetro, Basil. 1582 ; with illustrations of Porro, 
 Venice, 1600; Tassoni, Modena, 171 1 ; Tassoni, 
 Muzio, and Muratori, Venice, 1722 ; Padua (with 
 portrait of author), 1732 ; Zapato de Cisneros, 
 Venice, 1756 ; Muratori, Modena, 1762 ; Bodoni, 
 Parma, 1804; Pisa (portrait by Morghen), 1805; 
 Marsand, Padua, 1819-20; variorum notes, Padua, 
 1837 ; Leopardi, 1847. 
 
 Miniature Ed., Pickering, London, 1822. 
 
 Microscopic Ed., Ongania, Venice, 1879. 
 
 OTHER WORKS. 
 
 Griseldis, Cologne, 1470 ; Secretum, Strasburg 
 («. flf.), first edition; De Vita Solitaria, Strasburg 
 («. d.); Triuniphi, Parma, 1473; Glicino, Vicenza, 
 1474; Omnia Opera, Basil, 1481-96. 
 
 Lives of the Popes and Emperors, Florence, 
 1478 ; Book of Famous Men, Verona, 1476 ; Bu- 
 colics, Da Imola, Venice, 1516; Basil Edition 
 (Latin and Italian), 1554-81 ; Geneva, 1601. 
 
 IIL— BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Villani, Vergerio, the two Aretinos, Polintono, 
 Manetti ; all of whom, Campbell says, were more 
 eulogists than anything else. 
 
 Squarciafico ; Velutello ; Lelio dei Lei (the 
 descendant of Petrarch's friend); Niccolini; 
 
 40
 
 Gesualdo; Beccadelli; Tommasini; Muratori 
 Bimard; Bandini; De Sade, 1764; Arnaiid 
 Mehus; Baldelli; Levati; Marsand; Guingu^n^ 
 Menage, 1690; Niceron, 1734. 
 
 M^zi^res, 1868; Quinet, 1857; Planche, Revue 
 des Deux Mondes, June, 1847; Gazzera, Turin 
 Academy of Science; Meinart, 1794; Bibliog- 
 raphy, Rosetti, Trieste, 1828. 
 
 Francis 
 Petrarch. 
 
 IV.— ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS. 
 
 Howard, Earl of Surrey' ; Drummond of Haw- 
 thornden ; Sir Thomas Wyat, the elder. (See 
 Harrington's Nugae Antiquae.) 
 
 Tryumphes of Fraunces Petrarcke, by Henry 
 Parker, Knyght, Lord Morley, London, John 
 Cawood (4to), («. d.), 52 leaves; only four copies 
 known. 
 
 Phisicke against Fortune, Thomas Twyne, 1579. 
 
 Visions of Petrarch, by Edmund Spenser. 
 
 Triumphs, by Mrs. Anna Hume, Edinburgh, 
 1644. 
 
 Seaven Penitential Psalmes, Geo. Chapman, 
 1612. (Very scarce. See Collins' Bibliographical 
 Account of Early Eng. Lit.) 
 
 Life of Petrarch (with some translations), Tytler 
 (Lord Woodhouselee), 1810. 
 
 Sonnets and Triumphs, by Geo. Henderson, 
 1S03. 
 
 Triumphs, Rev. Henry Boyd, 1807. 
 
 Selections, by the Translator of Catullus (Nott), 
 
 Sonnets, Wrangham, 1817. 
 
 Petrarque et Laure (romance), Madame de 
 Genlis, London, 1819. 
 
 4'
 
 Francis Sonnets, Lord Charlemont, Dublin, 1822. 
 
 Petrarch. Translations, Barbarina Wilmot (Lady Dacre), 
 1836. Lady Dacre is the sweetest of all modern 
 translators. 
 
 Sonnets, Susan Wollaston, 1841. 
 Odes, by Macgregor, 1851. 
 Bohn's Illustrated Library, 1859. 
 
 v.— ENGLISH BIOGRAPHIES, SKETCHES, 
 AND ESSAYS. 
 
 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chapter LXX. 
 Susannah Dobson, 1775. 
 Penrose, sketch, 1790. 
 Sir Wm. Jones. 
 
 Foscolo, Essays (also No. 48 of Quarterly), 
 1823. 
 
 Montgomery, Lives of Literary Men of Italy, 
 
 1835- 
 
 Thos. Campbell, 1841. 
 
 Alger, 1867; Brydges (Imaginative Biography), 
 1820 ; Buckley (Dawning of Genius) ; Dele- 
 pierre (Historical Difficulties); Greene (Historical 
 Studies), 1850. 
 
 Macaulay, Later Essays ; Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 Reeve, (1878); Fraser's Magazine, Vol. LXIV; 
 McMillan's (Miss C. M. Phillimore), Vol. XXVIII; 
 Contemporary Review, 1874 (July); Athenaeum, 
 July, 1874 ; Nat. Q. Review, June, 1873. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson (Loves of the Poets); Landor 
 (Imaginary Conversations). 
 
 Higginson, in the Atlantic, 1867, Sunshine and 
 Petrarch. 
 - Longfellow, Poets and Poetry of Europe. 
 
 42
 
 ALFRED TENNYSON, 
 POET LAUREATE. 
 
 "Mein Lied ertont der unbekannten Menge ; 
 Ihr Beifall selbst macht meinem Herzen bang." 
 
 |ENNYSON enjoys at least a 
 titular popularity in America. 
 If that needed confirmation, 
 the unremitting piracy of his 
 works would furnish it. In 
 one or more forms, they may be found in all 
 polite households ; charming ladies the world 
 over will, if urged, gratify you by singing his 
 lyrics; clever, penniless young bachelors 
 everywhere will, when jilted, mouth stanzas 
 of " Locksley Hall"; and chaps with ill-bal- 
 anced hearts, who have become unhappily 
 spooney about their friends' wives, will half 
 imagine themselves Lancelots or Tristrams; 
 while village Guineveres are as plentiful as vil- 
 lage Cromwells, and not always as guiltless in 
 their particular pose. Has not the poor, pale 
 corpse of the Lily Maid been bandied about 
 among us of the Pacific Coast as recklessly 
 as if it were a mummy in a museum or a 
 "stiff" on an express train? Who shall say 
 43
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 that we do not know our poet intimately ? 
 and what is there that a prosy essayist out 
 here can tell us in that behalf? 
 
 And yet, one feels that there is a certain 
 sediment of niefiance pervading the half- 
 cultured strata of the American reading pub- 
 lic, which hinders the Englishman's verse 
 from thorough assimilation with the popular 
 American nature. It is almost as if a taste for 
 Tennyson were an exotic, requiring green- 
 house fastidiousness to protect it from rude 
 republican northers. 
 
 This literary symptom (not, however, ex- 
 actly confined to Tennyson) has been growing 
 apparent in the last twenty years. Former 
 generations not only courted British culture, 
 but found it a necessity. To-day there is 
 arising an actual aversion to British ideas — 
 at least, in what may be called the superficial 
 literary populace. 
 
 The fact is, Great Britain is becoming for- 
 eign to us. Like the Irish, our literary state 
 is conspiring for Home Rule, and clamors for 
 a parliament of its own. We dislike to be 
 thought to speak the English rather than the 
 American language. Even in our pronuncia- 
 tion and modulation, there is a sibboleth ap- 
 parent; and we gird at the Britisher who has 
 not our speech, however provincial it be, just 
 
 44
 
 as country louts are amused at a stranger's 
 costume or special habits of body. Usages 
 once common to both lands are fast wearing 
 out with us; and a time would seem to be 
 coming when English and American, once 
 identical, will be to each other as Japanese 
 unto Chinese. 
 
 An evidence of the divergence between the 
 two countries is furnished by the fading popu- 
 larity (regard being had to the increase of 
 population and relative greater percentage of 
 general readers) of English authors once as 
 eagerly conned in America as in the land of 
 their domicile. This partly arises from the 
 confused ideas of superficially educated Amer- 
 icans as to British customs, usages, and local 
 terms — a defect which renders the reading 
 of British writers a matter of painful thought, 
 more or less clogged with ignorance and un- 
 certainty as to the allusions. I do not think 
 Scott as popular in America as formerly; 
 Burns is actually archaic; and Hogg requires 
 more than a glossary, even to smartish people 
 who are ordinarily swift to catch the slang 
 current in bar-rooms and mining camps, as 
 crystallized in local or humorous journalism. 
 
 All this is a weakness to be deplored. If our 
 literature had become so broad and deep, by 
 reason of its Longfellows, its Hawthornes, its 
 45 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 Irvings, its Howellses, and its Holmeses, there 
 might be ground for national pride in our liter- 
 ary progress; but the generation that knows 
 not Joseph also forgets Joseph's brethren and 
 sympathizers on this side the ocean; and is 
 apt to be satisfied with thought, poetry, or 
 humor scenting of no higher taste than might 
 be bred in the cabin of the Arkansas Traveller. 
 The literature chosen to supplant English 
 models must be better, not worse, than what 
 has been cast upon us by British descent. 
 
 Then, too, it happens that, while we are 
 moving farther from British influence, we are 
 drawing closer to lands which foster the alien- 
 ation. Our young folks are running the risk 
 of knowing more about Zola than about 
 Thackeray; and our aesthetic ladies are more 
 interested in Mademoiselle de Maupin than in 
 the Vicar of Wakefield's Olivia. And yet 
 they might draw a personal benefit from the 
 good taste and elegance of Goldy, which their 
 quavering knowledge of a foreign tongue 
 must ever be a barrier to their finding or ap- 
 preciating in Gautier. 
 
 If, therefore, I sermonize a while about an 
 author whom all ought to appreciate, gentle or 
 simple, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, it is 
 but to repeat an Old -World echo of instruc- 
 tion which distance and a murky literary at- 
 
 46
 
 niosphere have almost weakened to unintelli- 
 gibility. I would like to discuss Tennyson 
 in the light in which cultivated people in his 
 own country regard him and his works, as 
 shown by commentators in magazines or pub- 
 lished volumes. 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate, 
 
 The life of Alfred Tennyson has not been 
 one of startling events. There are no prom- 
 inent facts in his career hurtled about as liter- 
 ary gossip which would render his biography 
 a dramatic poem. Save for the fact that he 
 is a poet, and poet laureate, his existence 
 has been passed in the elegant obscurity 
 affected by cultured Englishmen who keep 
 out of politics. 
 
 His poetry, in one sense, is not egoistic, and 
 he has shrunk from breaking up the privacy 
 of his life to build the materials into the struc- 
 ture of his poetic reputation. 
 
 But, for all that, everything that we need to 
 know, or perhaps ought to wish to know, of 
 Tennyson is in his writings, if we will but 
 ' ' read between the lines. ' ' For that matter, 
 I would challenge any man with the slightest 
 claim to frankness to write anything at all 
 without confessing some portion of his nature. 
 I remember how a gentleman of old Califor- 
 nia days came to his death by shipwreck. 
 47
 
 Alfred His general reputation had been of decidedly 
 PQgl ' misanthropic acerbity. None gave him credit 
 Laureate, for especial warmth of feeling. Yet with 
 death not a quarter of an hour away, he 
 attempted an autographic will, of half a dozen 
 lines, which, by its kindness of tone towards 
 children, strangers to his blood, and towards 
 collaterals by the preciseness of his chirography 
 and punctuation, by the aptness of terms, and 
 the fact that one of them was Scotch, gave 
 indirectly the materials for a biography of a 
 frosty but kindly nature, bred in the Land o' 
 Cakes, in a lawyer's office, thence transferred 
 to journalist duties on a distant shore, of as 
 heroic a soul as one would expect to dwell in 
 the breast of even the vieux ■}nilitaire who 
 sank with him. In like manner, one might 
 compose a charming history of Tennyson by 
 stringing together verses from his poems ; 
 and one might also branch out and show not 
 only what has been, but what might have 
 been — a feature wanting in most biographies. 
 One might mistake a detail here and there, it 
 is true; but the general truth would be told. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson was born August 5, 
 1809, at Somersby, a village in Mid-Lincoln- 
 shire. Even Americans have heard of the Lin- 
 colnshire Fens ; and every poem of Tennyson's 
 
 48
 
 youth tells of some feature of the scenery of Alfred 
 the land, the verdure and foliage of meadow, p^^^-^ "' 
 marsh, and wood, the brook that flows by Laureate. 
 Somersby, the mill upon it, 
 
 "The sandy tracts, 
 And the hollow ocean ridges roaring into cata- 
 racts." 
 
 For here the German Ocean has full sweep, 
 and seems to enjoy its gambols. It is in 
 Lincolnshire that the poet has laid the scene 
 of his latest drama, "The Promise of May." 
 
 Tennyson's father, Dr. George Clayton 
 Tennyson, was rector of the parish of Somers- 
 by. The poet's mother was the daughter of 
 the Rev. Stephen Fytche. 
 
 Tennyson comes of gentle stock. Indeed, 
 some of the collateral branches must have been 
 quite tenacious and precise in the matter of 
 their claims in that regard. There are, I be- 
 lieve, extinct baronies lying around, here and 
 there, in the family history. Those English- 
 men are proud of nothing so much as spring- 
 ing from an old county family ; and I have 
 no doubt but that Tennyson has a proper 
 weakness that way, befitting a man who need 
 not be his own grandfather, and who is grand- 
 father to others. Of course, he has his quiet 
 thrusts at pride of birth ; but behind them 
 remains, evidently, the feeling which, while 
 49
 
 Alfred covered by indifference to the pomps of her- 
 Poet ' aldry, borders on satisfaction that he, also, 
 Laureate, might, had he willed it so, 
 
 "Somewhere beneath his own low range of roofs 
 Have also set his many-shielded tree." 
 
 The entire Tennysonian household were 
 poets — "a nest of nightingales," as one of 
 their friends calls them. There was Charles, 
 who afterward took the surname of Turner, 
 Frederick, Septimus, Edward, Horatio, and 
 Arthur ; and there were two sisters who like- 
 wise made girlish attempts at verse. 
 
 One can readily picture the youth of the 
 poet spent in an English rectory, swarming 
 with sisterly and cousinly maidens ; such, 
 doubtless, as TroUope, and the artists who 
 have illustrated Trollope, have depicted for 
 us. No ordinary nature could pass through 
 that sort of training without a certain wincing 
 softness that would give tone to his whole 
 after-existence. It may therefore be noted, 
 that all of Tennyson's heroines, of whatever 
 race, time, or clime, are, morally, just such 
 people as one would likely meet in an English 
 country house on long, summer days, book 
 in hand, or in a parish church at Christmas- 
 tide, helping the curate with the evergreens, 
 or flirting in demure style with the lads home 
 from college or London. 
 
 50
 
 Tennyson's father was a man of accom- 
 plishments — more, perhaps, than of scholar- 
 ship or of theological propensities. He was 
 an athlete, a musician, a linguist. It would 
 seem that the poet learned Italian to some 
 extent — possibly induced by his father. In 
 those days there was a breeze of revival of 
 interest in Italian letters, owing to the fact 
 that England had become a refuge for a 
 number of lettered revolutionists, such as 
 Foscolo, Panizzi, and Rossetti; and Tenny- 
 son's short-lived friend Hallam was gliding 
 into the Tuscan groove of culture, with no 
 mean promise of future effectiveness and 
 honor in that direction. 
 
 Tennyson's status in life pointed vaguely to 
 the Anglican Church as his possible vocation ; 
 but it was fortunate that he escaped being a 
 parson. I fancy that his brother Charles 
 would have lived a more rounded and com- 
 plete life had he never taken orders. Besides, 
 one never sees " Reverend" before an author's 
 name without expecting something goody- 
 goody and narrow. Alfred might have been 
 driven into the inns of court; but one shud- 
 ders at the thought that the brow now decked 
 with laurel should have run the risk of per- 
 spiring in a horse-hair wig, although poets, 
 and true ones, have sat on the bench and 
 51 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson^ 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred been its ornaments. Testibus, Sir William 
 Poet ' Jones, Talfourd, and, for that matter, many a 
 Laureate. Scotch laird. And is there not Browning-, 
 who by rights ought to have been a Q. C. , 
 chopping up, say, the law of remainders in a 
 court of equity, instead of knitting his brows 
 and frowning in a lord-chancellor way on high 
 Parnassus ? 
 
 The only other employment in which Ten- 
 nyson, according to our present lights, would 
 not have cut a moderate figure, would have 
 been the army. What a jovial mess member 
 he would have been! How he would have 
 shirked drill and pipe-clay! What rollick- 
 ing camp songs he would have composed 
 and sung! What a popular colonel he 
 would have grown to be ! And how re- 
 ligiously and simultaneously he would have 
 hated and abused the French, and have 
 seen that the mess port was of the right 
 body and flavor! He would have been just 
 in time to go out to the Crimea and to take 
 part with his Six Hundred there, instead 
 of singing their exploits in slippered feet at 
 home, where his big bass voice, fit to call a 
 squadron to advance, was utterly thrown 
 away on Boots and the butler. (There was, 
 by the way, another Englishman who would 
 have graced any branch of the service, but 
 
 52
 
 whose life was wasted on art — poor George 
 Cruikshank.) 
 
 It might here be noted that when certain 
 Crimean heroes came home, and were called 
 to receive their academic brevets from Ox- 
 ford, 1855, in the shape of doctorates in juris- 
 prudence, Tennyson was joined with them in 
 the honors for his poetic gallantry. 
 
 No; I don't think that " Major-General Sir 
 Alfred Tennyson, K. C. B.," etc., etc., would 
 sound badly. But if it were the present fact, 
 what a loss to us on this side of the Atlantic, 
 who have, lo, these many years, enjoyed and 
 stolen his work so remorselessly! 
 
 Tennyson's physical, mental, and moral na- 
 ture and needs are those of a man enjoying 
 active, every-day life, with a right to take 
 long furloughs from it, and retreat into his 
 library as occasion demands; apt to linger in 
 cosey discussion ' ' across the walnuts and the 
 wine," when the ladies had cleared out; to 
 sit on a stile and remark a colt's points; to 
 take a languid interest in turnips and crop 
 rotation; and to have interchange of proper 
 courtesies with svispected poachers on the sub- 
 ject of wood-craft, or with the pretty farmers' 
 daughters touching their swains. In Amer- 
 ica there is somehow a lack among literary 
 men of that sort of catholicity of intercourse; 
 53 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poel 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 and my idea of the blessed Longfellow has 
 always been of one who had the New England 
 college tutor thoroughly injected into his 
 marrow at an early age, and who would have 
 been fearful of saying or doing anything hos- 
 tile to varnished boots or academic discipline. 
 
 The two brothers, Charles and Alfred, were 
 early sent to the Louth grammar school. It 
 was here that in March, 1827, they jointly 
 published a small volume of verse, entitled 
 " Poems by Two Brothers." It was stated in 
 the preface that the pieces contained in the 
 volume had been written by them between 
 their fifteenth and eighteenth years. 
 
 This little collection has become a great 
 bibliomaniac rarity. The late Rev. Dr. 
 Chapin, of New York, was said to possess 
 the only copy ever brought to America. 
 
 Criticism of verse attempts by young 
 school-boys would, of course, be idle; but 
 the fact of the publication may simply be 
 marked, as showing at how early an age and 
 with what apparent success the poet had put 
 in practice his studies of the laws of English 
 rhythm. 
 
 In 1829, the two poetic lads went to reside 
 at Cambridge, whither young Hallam had 
 preceded them some months, with whom 
 Alfred contracted the warmest of friendships, 
 
 54
 
 strengthened, as it was to be, by an engage- Alfred 
 nient between one of the poet's sisters and poet ' 
 Hallam. Laureate. 
 
 Within half a year from his entry at Trin- 
 ity College, Alfred was declared the success- 
 ful competitor for the Chancellor's Gold Medal 
 for English verse — the subject imposed being 
 Timbuctoo. 
 
 The name recalls the famous witty and 
 successful attempt of Sydney Smith to find a 
 rhyme for it, and invokes something of the 
 grotesque in our feelings ; but if we consider 
 what gorgeous speculations were then rife 
 as to the resources and condition of Central 
 Africa, and the fabulous tales in vogue about 
 its cities and their treasures, it would seem 
 natural enough that a question of such great 
 geographical interest should have been sug- 
 gested as the subject for verse. 
 
 A couple of years before, an adventurous 
 British officer had lost his life in attempting 
 to gain personal knowledge of Timbuctoo. 
 
 Prize poems have, I think, been rather 
 unjustly abused. But if they have no other 
 raison d'etre, one might now be found in the 
 fact that Tennyson had buckled down to the 
 task of competing for a prize, and had suc- 
 ceeded so well that the effort became the 
 hinge of his poetic reputation. And it would 
 
 55
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 appear, too, that there was a brilHant set of 
 students at Cambridge in those days, when 
 Tennyson bore the banner of success, and 
 young Hallam and Thackeray were among 
 the defeated candidates. In looking over the 
 names of eminent Englishmen who at that 
 time resided at Cambridge, as undergraduates 
 or otherwise, one cannot help thinking that 
 there was there transpiring what we West- 
 erners would call an "intellectual boom." 
 It is not necessary here to discuss the mer- 
 its of "Timbuctoo"; but it is not out of 
 place to call the attention of San Franciscans 
 to the way in which the young Cantab, who 
 had never felt the shudder of an earthquake, 
 hits off the salient suggestions elicited by the 
 experience : 
 
 "As when in some great city when the walls 
 Shake, and the streets with ghastly faces thronged 
 Do utter forth a subterranean sound." 
 
 There are but three lines; but the phenom- 
 enon is fully described. 
 
 The AthcJiceum declared that the poem 
 "indicated first-rate poetical genius, and 
 would have done credit to any man that ever 
 wrote. ' ' 
 
 In 1830, Tennyson published a volume 
 entitled "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical." Of this 
 collection there appeared in the Westminster 
 
 56
 
 for January, 1831, a review, written, it is said, 
 by John Stuart Mill, wherein, after defining- 
 the duty, influence, and power of a true poet, 
 the following prophetic passage occurs: 
 
 ' ' If our estimate of Mr. Tennyson is cor- 
 rect, he, too, is a poet; and many years hence 
 may he read his juvenile description of that 
 character, with the proud consciousness that 
 it has become the description and history of 
 his own work." 
 
 Leigh Hunt, also, in the Tatler, gave a 
 favorable review of the volume, in conjunction 
 with one published simultaneously by Charles 
 Tennyson; and Arthur Hallam wrote a notice 
 of his friend's venture, which appeared in the 
 Englishma7i' s Magazine. 
 
 Kit North, in his breezy way, clinched the 
 strain of eulogy in Blackwood' s (May, 1832), 
 mixing kind encouragement with a certain 
 amount of critical banter. In acknowledg- 
 ment of this latter notice, Tennyson wrote 
 the lines, "Musty, Fusty Christopher," which 
 appeared in a second volume published in 
 the winter of 1832-33, by the poet-publisher, 
 Moxon. 
 
 This second volume was discussed by Cole- 
 ridge in Table -Talk ; and the veteran brings 
 the singular charge against the young poet 
 of a mismanagement of his metres, recom- 
 57 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred mending him to stick to two or three com- 
 
 Poe"'^^^"' ^^^^^ ones. Now, Coleridge knew all about 
 
 Laureate, rhythm, and meant to be a fair critic; but in 
 
 the light of Tennyson's rhythmical history, 
 
 we cannot fail to suspect the justice of all 
 
 poetical criticism. 
 
 As adverse utterances, that of the Quar- 
 iej'Iy (July, 1833) is the most noticeable. It 
 found all the weak chords in Mr. Tennyson's 
 lyre; and spoke distrustfully and scornfully 
 of many others, since acknowledged to be 
 strong. The Quarterly, in after years, man- 
 fully retracted its hasty opinion. 
 
 But out of the collections thus far published 
 by the young man, enough pieces stood their 
 ground to entitle the author to take decided 
 rank as a poet. 
 
 The year 1833 was the year of young 
 Hallam's death — that Hallam who had been 
 more than a brother to a poet who knew 
 the worth of sympathetic fraternity; and to 
 Hallam's memory, seventeen years later, 
 Tennyson unveiled the most graceful literary 
 monument that could be raised to the mem- 
 ory of a friendship cut short by death. 
 
 The time had now come when the poet 
 could not be allowed to rest confidingly upon 
 ancient models, or to find a large enough 
 
 58
 
 world in the limits of a college quadrangle. Alfred 
 He had become a man; and whatever life p"g"'^^^"' 
 men of his day led would be, if not his own, Laureate. 
 at least a strong agency in marking out his 
 pathway for him. The most " offish" of us 
 are affected to some extent by those about 
 us; and we cannot wholly avoid the vices of 
 our day and generation, even if we would. 
 
 If any one would like to frame an idea of 
 qicasi fine literary society in England between 
 1830 and 1840, he has only to study the ways 
 and doings of coteries such as Lady Blessing- 
 ton's, and simultaneously to read Disraeli's 
 novels. From our standpoint, it was a very 
 good sort of life to keep out of; and Tenny- 
 son, in spite of some quavering motions, 
 must have remained on the utter rim. It was 
 a time when men had pallid brows and long 
 hair and brocade dressing-gowns, and were 
 suspected of corsets, and had a glory of soft, 
 white hands, innocent of blisters and gauded 
 with rings; a reign of Pelhams and Count 
 d'Orsays in drawing-rooms; a time of An- 
 nuals, and Books of Gems, and Keepsakes, 
 and Friendship's Offerings — all illustrated 
 with plates and engraved titles, and to which 
 contributed languourous gentlemen, whose 
 fathers had sparred with Jackson and fought 
 with bargemen, and whose sons, in their 
 59
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyso?i, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 subsequent day, took to club-swinging and 
 foot-racing; dainty volumes, patronized by 
 impossible copper-plate beauties, who wrote 
 watery verse, and flirted with the Melbournes 
 and the Endymions of the hour. 
 
 I have said that Tennyson somehow escaped 
 all that — the glamour whereof led captive 
 the soul of the future tory leader, and made 
 him, as a reward for his appreciative worship, 
 like Joseph in Egypt, a ruler among strangers 
 to his blood. But Tennyson did contribute 
 to the annuals; and one of the most exquisite 
 bits of his verse, afterwards embodied in 
 "Maud," first saw light in one of those fash- 
 ionable collections. 
 
 But Tennyson must have studied in one 
 direction — that of nature — with no careless 
 attention. No poet can effectively pursue 
 his calling if deprived of the essentials of out- 
 door life and pure air. He needs the odors 
 and harmonies of the country to guide him 
 in tuning his harp. He cannot shut himself 
 up in a city without more or less vulgarizing 
 his muse, and rendering his imagery paltry. 
 He cannot bar out the world of sensuous 
 force by closing his library door without 
 growing fastidious and finical. What would 
 Scott have been but for his stumbling strolls 
 through the heaths, with Maida at his heels ? 
 
 60
 
 What sort of verse would Byron have written, Alfred 
 had he not found the sea a place to revel in ? /j^""'*' '' 
 I think the real obstacle which shunted Lamb Laureate. 
 off the poetic highway was his intense cock- 
 neyism. He had it in him to be a poet, and 
 would have been one, had he been compelled 
 to rest his eyes upon beds of wild flowers 
 instead of shop windows and book-stalls. 
 
 Tennyson, all his life, has continued the 
 habit, which he had commenced in his Lin- 
 colnshire boyhood, of illustrating his verse 
 with suggestions from nature. He is so fond 
 of the trick, and is so full of surprises of that 
 kind, that his critics have taken to carping 
 at the accuracy of his facts. Bayard Taylor 
 speaks of some of his similes as inapt, and 
 instances where he compares the rippling, 
 broken gurgles of a girl's laughter to a wood- 
 pecker's tapping. I fancy it is a question, 
 not of the tapper, but of the sounding-board. 
 Some kinds of woods when struck give an al- 
 most liquid response. Another critic objects 
 to the poet's making a dog leap from the 
 water to the land, and shake his ears as he 
 recovers his balance. This critic says a dog 
 does not leap but climbs ashore, and waggles 
 his entire body before attending to his drip- 
 ping ears. Now, it is true that if the dog were 
 6i
 
 Alfred in the act of swimming, he would not leap; 
 Poet ' ^^^ '^^^ were a shallow brook, he would make 
 Laureate, a quick jump from the one element to the 
 other; and if he had pendent ears they would 
 likely be wet when his back would be dry. 
 Indeed, the jump itself would shake his ears. 
 I would hardly be willing to admit that Ten- 
 nyson was an inaccurate or near-sighted ob- 
 server in matters of natural phenomena; and 
 he is certainly possessed of an immense fund 
 of forest-and-field wisdom. 
 
 Tennyson did not issue any new volumes, 
 after Hallam's death, until 1842, although, as 
 before mentioned, verses by him appeared in 
 the annuals. 
 
 Those who have read the lately published 
 volume of letters to and by Miss Mitford 
 will remember the energetic scorn which 
 she evinces for those who write but do not 
 read. Tennyson had no such conceit of self- 
 evolution. He has written sparingly and 
 read diligently. 
 
 The nine years of comparative silence were 
 undoubtedly with him a period of study. His 
 mental structure was being "fed with lime," 
 drawn from the nourishment furnished by 
 masters in poetry; and he had completely ac- 
 
 62
 
 quired his virile strength by cautious exercise 
 of his powers, when, in 1842, he pubHshed a 
 new edition of his poems in two volumes (re- 
 published the same year by Ticknor, Boston), 
 from which it may be shown that by that time 
 he had adopted the essential features of his 
 mature style, whereon the success of his liter- 
 ary career has been based. 
 
 The epic idyll is there represented by 
 the " Morte d' Arthur " ; " Dora" stands as a 
 model of his other idyllic efforts ; ' ' Locksley 
 Hall," "Ulysses," "The Day-Dream," "Sir 
 Lancelot and Queen Guinevere," "Break, 
 Break, Break," and "Come not when I am 
 dead," are all typical in their several manners 
 of Tennyson. 
 
 Tennyson was recognized thenceforth as a 
 poet. It must not, however, be lost sight of 
 that, literary-wise, his lines had fallen in 
 pleasant places. His antecedents were all of 
 cultured dignity. He had been the honored 
 nursling of a venerable academy of learning. 
 His friends were brilliant in their ways of 
 thought, and stood manfully by him. The 
 reviews had been kind to him in the main, 
 and the portals of the temple of fame, if not 
 staring open, were at least ajar for his coming. 
 
 In 1845, Wordsworth, too great-minded 
 to be afraid of his newly created peer, pro- 
 63 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 nounced Tennyson to be " decidedly the first 
 of our living poets. ' ' 
 
 Had Tennyson followed in the wake of 
 Keats, with whom at an early period he was 
 frequently compared, he would only have 
 intensified his model until his exaggerations 
 became defects. Keats might have been, per- 
 haps, a good companion, but not a master. 
 The secret to rival Keats in his special class 
 of merits would best be solved by poring 
 over the writers of the days of Queen Bess. 
 These, the Laureate seems in his youth to 
 have studied and understood. Here I would 
 note the precocity of the poet. With most of 
 us, the thoughts of great authors need to be 
 subjected to successive winnowings through 
 our minds at intervals of years. We do not 
 obtain all that is precious at one reading or at 
 one period in our lives. But Tennyson would 
 seem to have extracted every beauty of style 
 at one sifting, and to have deftly worked every 
 grain of knowledge so acquired into his own 
 mass. 
 
 Gladstone regards Tennyson's Homeric and 
 Dantesque studies as at one time scanty; but 
 Gladstone has been cultivating the Homeric 
 field for more than fifty years, with a fine- 
 toothed rake; and any ordinary knowledge 
 on the subject would to him probably appear 
 
 64
 
 defective. I am afraid, too, that, however Alfred 
 strong may be the Premier's friendship for poeY^^"' 
 the Laureate, the former does not quite follow Laureate. 
 the latter throughout his entire poetic laby- 
 rinth. There is, however, one piece of evi- 
 dence in favor of Gladstone's slur upon Ten- 
 nyson's Homeric shortcomings : when the 
 poet makes Ulysses address his old compan- 
 ions with a request to sail with him again out 
 into the west, had he had Homer in his mind, 
 he would have been aware that all those brave 
 souls — Greenwich Pensioners, so to speak — 
 had gone to Hades; and that it would be 
 necessary to ship a fresh crew of merely ordi- 
 nary seamen. Probably he preferred to err 
 with Dante, who knew not the Odyssey, rely- 
 ing for the success of his paraphrase of the 
 Italian upon its being marvellously true to 
 Homeric spirit, if faulty in incident. 
 
 Mr. Stedman, in his elaborate chapters upon 
 Tennyson, seeks to draw a general parallel 
 between the Victorian age, of which Tenny- 
 son stands forth as the poet, and the Ptolemaic 
 or Alexandrian period of Greek literature. It 
 does seem to me strange that, in this age of 
 critical literary research and revamping of old 
 material, more has not been done to bring 
 into direct popularity the authors of that cul- 
 tivated era. Fox, I think, is said to have 
 65
 
 Alfred preferred the ' ' Argonautica ' ' of Apollonius 
 
 PoeF^^"' ^^ Homer himself. Macaulay admired the 
 
 Laureate, poem ; and it would be no ungraceful task for 
 
 some ambitious young scholar of to-day to 
 
 attempt a metrical translation of the work. 
 
 Tennyson, in dawdling about old country 
 houses and their libraries, seems to have fallen 
 upon many an old volume of the classics not 
 usual in university examinations. Mr. Sted- 
 man thinks that, because there was a new 
 edition of Bion and Moschus in print during- 
 Tennyson's Cambridge years, his attention 
 must have been thereby attracted to those 
 authors. It may be so; but one would pre- 
 fer to believe that he rummaged the authors 
 out of some old collection in cracked covers, 
 worm-eaten and mouldy, led thereto by some 
 apt quotation which lingered in his mind as a 
 .sample of what a search would bring forth; 
 and that, having hunted down his author, he 
 devoured him, more with literary hunger than 
 academic or scholarly ambition. There are in 
 Tennyson refined echoes of Ouintus Calaber, 
 Tryphiodorus, and other dust-covered old 
 worthies, editions of whose works were pub- 
 lished in days when men had more time, and 
 did more than merely pretend to read. 
 
 There is one elegance which Tennyson 
 .seems to have caught early from Virgil. 
 
 66
 
 Sainte-Beuve joins with Fox in admiring Vir- 
 gil for his power to infuse his own originality 
 into his most exact imitations of his Greek 
 predecessors. From Virgil, Tennyson's mode 
 of paraphrase conies, employed almost always 
 by him in a most felicitous way. 
 
 He has an art, too, of adopting the epithets 
 already applied to objects by older writers — 
 the giving to things, as it were, their chris- 
 tened names. And it has a very happy effect 
 upon the mind of the reader. For, if he be 
 familiar with the godfather, a double set of 
 imagery is thrown upon his mental retina — 
 or rather, like a dissolving view, the old idea, 
 recalled momentarily by the epithet, fades 
 softly into the glory of the new thought 
 brought in by the later poet. 
 
 It would be curious to gather together a 
 vocabulary of all the classical phrases for 
 which Tennyson has furnished pat English 
 equivalents. 
 
 Although transferring to English passages 
 from Latin, Greek, and Italian poets seems 
 to have been a recreation for which Tennyson 
 has a particular affection, it is not, however, 
 original with him. From Chaucer down, it 
 has been common with English poets — learned 
 by them from Italian writers, perhaps, and 
 orignated with the Latins. The famous lines 
 67 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred Qf Catullus, in his epithalaniium upon Man- 
 Tennyson, , t i- rr r, ■ • m i 
 
 /*oei "US and Julia — '■'Ut fios in septis — proba- 
 
 Laureate. j^jy taken originally from Sappho, have been 
 appropriated or imitated by Tasso, Ariosto, 
 Jacques Gohorry, Spenser, and Jonson, to 
 say nothing of out-and-out translations by 
 others. Byron has the same taste. 
 
 Tennyson has used more than once a pas- 
 sage from Homer — 
 
 " Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, 
 Nor ever wind blows loudly — " 
 
 which he found that Lucretius had used be- 
 fore him; and which Dante has also worn as 
 a gem — "a jewel five words long." * 
 
 Americans of casual Latinity cannot quite 
 appreciate how vividly the verse of Virgil 
 lingers in the minds of English lads, be they 
 ever so indolent at study. 
 
 With the English gentleman, Virgil is a 
 sacred book — verbally inspired. There is 
 nothing in America similar to the reverence 
 hitherto paid it by the Briton of culture, 
 unless, perhaps, the devotion of the old- 
 fashioned, square-shouldered American, in 
 the good days gone by, to the English Bible. 
 (I fancy that it is to the familiarity thereby 
 
 * " Perche non pioggia, non grando, non neve 
 Non rugiada, non brina piu su cade—" 
 
 Furg. xxi. 
 
 68
 
 obtained with the genuine English tongue that 
 we are indebted for any purity of speech left. 
 As for Webster's spelling-book, we may thank 
 it for the metallic phonograph sounds which 
 bewray us all over the world. Why could it 
 not have been fated that some Scotchman or 
 Irishman should have struck the tuning-fork 
 of our American orthoepy ? ) 
 
 I doubt if Virgil would not be the first 
 thought, on the subject of poetry, of every 
 Englishman who went to school fifty years 
 ago. He was almost confessedly Tennyson's, 
 as shown by his summarized judgment of the 
 poet in his Mantuan ode, published the other 
 day. Virgil is the patron saint of our five 
 hundred years of Renaissance, and Tennyson 
 closes the dynasty of its high priests. 
 
 From Virgil to Theocritus, so far as idyllic 
 poetry is concerned, is but a step. Virgil's 
 shield is the same as that of Theocritus, only 
 with the difference of a Latin field instead 
 of a Greek one; and what Tennyson failed 
 to find in Virgil he sought in the ' ' Sicilian 
 Shepherd." 
 
 But it would be useless to set forth all the 
 paths of labor which the poet has travelled in 
 his reading to glean material wherewith to 
 enrich his muse. Even in his most fervid 
 and off-hand efforts, he has apparently first 
 
 69 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 racked his memory for a model or a sugges- 
 tion. The "Charge of the Light Brigade" 
 recalls, by a line or two (suppressed, I be- 
 lieve), the ancient Greek revolutionary song 
 of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, showing how 
 Tennyson had cast about him for a precedent 
 in the past. Tennyson's sources of literary 
 culture may principally be found in Greek, 
 Latin, Italian, and English literature. He 
 hardly seems to be attracted to French; and 
 if he does use that tongue, it is probably the 
 form known as Duke-of- Wellington French 
 — a speech which came to be popular after 
 Waterloo. 
 
 The Laureate, whatever liberality there 
 may be in his character, is an Englishman. 
 He does not belong to that class of elastic 
 cosmopolites, who, in whatever land they 
 may be, give the impression that they were 
 born elsewhere. He believes thoroughly in 
 British insulation; and in company the other 
 day with a numerous assembly of the nobility 
 and gentry, signed the Channel protest, wish- 
 ing it to be of record that he for one believed 
 in maintaining those bulwarks of British glory 
 — the Channel fleet and seasickness. 
 
 " God bless the narrow seas ! 
 I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad." 
 
 70
 
 Tennyson does not show any faith in the Alfred 
 modern hexameter; and he has a sneer for poet '' 
 the German article — probably as found in Laureate. 
 Voss. He may not be partial to German 
 literature: save in "Maud" (and possibly 
 not there), he scarcely indicates any Ger- 
 man reading. When he was young, German 
 scholarship in England was meagre. It was 
 only when Carlyle, by force and arms, com- 
 pelled attention to it, that a knowledge in that 
 direction became common. De Ouincey, for 
 philosophical uses, studied the tongue; Cole- 
 ridge and Shelley took hold of it for poetry's 
 sake; Walter Scott translated Goetz von 
 Berlichingen. But in the early part of the 
 century, besides his unsavory "Monk," a 
 knowledge of German was the only recom- 
 mendation to literary notice that Matthew 
 Lewis could assert. Nowadays, almost any 
 clever English girl (leaving out her brother, 
 Macaulay's school-boy) is supposed to be 
 able to read Schiller. 
 
 It would not be wise to contradict an opin- 
 ion on the subject of verse melody originating 
 with the poet. His ear has been too long in 
 the training of harmonious sounds to be dis- 
 trusted; but though there is a deal of sibila- 
 tion in Voss's hexameters, it gives, after all, a 
 seething, swishing spatter to the verse that 
 71
 
 Alfred sounds of the Baltic waves, and remotely of 
 Tennyson, ^t j i t- 
 
 Poet Homer and the ytgaean. 
 
 Laureate. 
 
 One test of excellence, if it be a test, has 
 been tried again and again upon Tennyson. 
 It is the transferring of his poems by scholars 
 into Latin verse. At this amusement, some 
 of the noted Latinists in England have tried 
 their hands. I noticed, some months since, 
 a translation into Greek of the pretty song 
 in "The Cup." Such jeux d' esprit show 
 how affectionately he is regarded by the 
 scholarly portion of the rising generation 
 in England. Tennyson is the only English 
 author besides Shakspere and Milton who 
 has been found worthy of a concordance. 
 Samuel Rogers, with all his wealth to gild 
 his claims as poet, could never have invaded 
 the hearts of artists of brush and pencil as 
 Tennyson has done, nor could he have 
 ever furnished such inspiration for their 
 work. 
 
 Tennyson's attitude towards his critics and 
 the public has ever been one of patient hu- 
 mility. It is rare that he shows any restive 
 anger. One or two poems have an indignrfnt 
 sound; and on one occasion — namely, tow- 
 ards Bulwer— he did exhibit temper, which, 
 
 72
 
 notwithstanding the provocation, he has since 
 no doubt regretted. 
 
 I am nowise sure, however, that Bulwer's 
 " Miss Alfred " was not a beneficial sneer, after 
 all. There was a general tone and perfume of 
 boudoir elegance pervading his then published 
 poems, which, agreeable under certain condi- 
 tions, might have become too much of a good 
 thing. And, besides, some of his early poems 
 — for example, "O Darling Room" — are 
 quite too awfully nice to escape brutal critics. 
 The fact is, that a minstrel's listeners must be 
 mailed knights as well as gentle ladies; and 
 he must sing accordingly, if he would not be 
 relegated to the companionship of the idol- 
 ized pianist and limp curate — objects of mys- 
 terious interest to the feminine heart, but 
 unloved by coarser males. 
 
 In response to Bulwer's rasping mention 
 of him, Tennyson gave one deep-chested 
 howl of ire (just to show his critic that he 
 had been nudging an Ursus horridus instead 
 of a sentimental girl), and then trimmed 
 his style to avoid a similar reproach in the 
 future. 
 
 He has, in fact, used criticism very much 
 as painters use a mirror, to verify or discover 
 errors in drawing or color. 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 73
 
 Alfred In the earlier volumes, Tennyson appended 
 
 Poet ' exegetical notes, here and there, to bring the 
 Laureate, reader into better intelligence with the verse. 
 There was too much of it in some instances, 
 and he ultimately veered to the other extreme, 
 and dropped notes of any kind. We all have 
 laughed heartily at Thackeray's burlesque 
 upon "Timbuctoo," which was printed in 
 the "Snob" of university days; and one of 
 the most amusing features of the squib is the 
 wealth of exegesis appended. To avoid the 
 error there satirized, Tennyson stripped his 
 poems of all prose explanation. I do not know 
 that such a course is always commendable. 
 For my own part, I find it very comfortable 
 to be bolstered up by marginal commentary. 
 There is more wit, philosophy, and informa- 
 tion in Byron's autograph elucidation of his 
 own works than in many authors' texts. 
 
 And in this connection, would it not be a 
 good idea if some clever American editor, 
 who would not mind being a thief, should 
 publish an edition of Tennyson with a run- 
 ning commentary made up with excerpts, 
 more or less apposite or true, from the criti- 
 cisms which have appeared of our poet, from 
 "Musty, Fusty Christopher" down to the 
 latest date, together with all the parallel pas- 
 sages marked by admirers or foes ? It would 
 
 74
 
 do Tennyson no harm, and might stir up a 
 closer spirit of examination, and consequent 
 better appreciation of his merit and power. 
 Something in the nature of an annotated edi- 
 tion was at one time contemplated in England. 
 The author of " A New Study of Tenny- 
 son," in Cornhill, wonders why the poet does 
 not give Miss Mitford credit for "Dora," so 
 far as plot is considered. In the 1842 edition 
 there is a note to that effect, also crediting 
 Miss Ferrier (Walter Scott's pet young au- 
 thoress) with the idea of ' ' Lady Clare ' ' ; but 
 the rigid suppression of notes carried that 
 one with the rest. 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 Tennyson has, throughout his career of 
 literary labor, not merely inverted his stilus 
 to rub out a word here and there; but when- 
 ever he fancied a verse or a whole poem to 
 be overripe or rotten, he has not hesitated 
 to tear out page after page, and fling whole 
 editions into the fire. But the permanency 
 of print to him is a curse. His older versions 
 have acquired a charm for ghoulish biblio- 
 maniacs; and notwithstanding his suppressive 
 policy, he is impotent in his endeavors, and 
 must sit and suffer pangs while surreptitious 
 and piratic editions of his early poems are 
 being passed about under his very nose. 
 75
 
 Alfred The "Lover's Tale" (what motive could 
 
 P0gf ' have induced him to withdraw it from pub- 
 Laureate. lication ?), written when the poet was nine- 
 teen, is a specimen of his fastidious anxiety; 
 some freebooting publisher of late years issued 
 it illicitly, and the Laureate "had him up" 
 for the offense, but was finally obliged to yield 
 to his fate, and issue it himself The London 
 Times intimated that theft of that sort would 
 become popular, if publication of a sought- 
 for poem were thereby enforced. 
 
 What an unpretentious winning poem is 
 "The Princess"! Who is there among 
 articulately speaking men that has not been 
 charmed by it ? (By articulately speaking 
 men, I mean, of course, English-speaking 
 men.) It is so simple, so easy to understand 
 (one wise critic, however, claims Tennyson's 
 intelligibility to be a defect); and yet it has 
 political, moral, and social philosophy enough 
 in it to furnish up a university or social con- 
 gress. It appeared in 1847, and showed that 
 Wordsworth had not mistaken the merit of 
 his successor to the laurel crown. 
 
 Several models may have been used to ob- 
 tain the form of "In Memoriam." The one 
 nearest in mechanical construction is the latter 
 
 76
 
 part of Petrarch's "Rime" (after Laura's Alfred 
 Death). Adonais had been adopted by Shel- ^p^S^^""' 
 ley as his model for the poem on the death of Laureate. 
 Keats; and Tennyson had the Greek lament 
 in his mind, as also Milton's "Lycidas." 
 Ben Jonson and Lord Herbert of Cherbury 
 perhaps furnished the particular versification 
 used. 
 
 But if we compare Tennyson's work with 
 the Italian or English poems suggested, we 
 find it infinitely superior both in matter and 
 manner. There is always a hint of mawkish - 
 ness when a lover whines bemoaningly over 
 a mistress, whether alive or dead; but a boy's 
 friendship for his fellow is pure and reverential; 
 and in the grandeur of the thoughts strung 
 together, the man of the nineteenth century 
 has by far the advantage in breadth and dig- 
 nity over him of the fourteenth. 
 
 "Lycidas," after all, has something of the 
 air of a college exercise, gotten up "to im- 
 prove the occasion" of young King's death; 
 and Shelley was thinking entirely too much 
 of his Greek model to be completely natural 
 in his verse or grief 
 
 "In Memoriam " is neither more nor less 
 than a careful treasure-house, wherein are 
 stored the best and most affectionate of a 
 man's thoughts, for delivery on the joyous 
 77
 
 Alfred day when a far-travelled friend returns to his 
 Tennyson, , 
 Poet home. 
 
 Laureate. 
 
 In 1850, Wordsworth died, and Tennyson 
 was appointed to the laureateship by Lord 
 John Russell; Palmerston, as great an admirer 
 of Virgil as Maecenas himself, being of the 
 cabinet. 
 
 The ' ' Ode on the Death of Wellington ' ' 
 was the first really important official duty un- 
 dertaken by Tennyson — if a laureate can be 
 said to have duties. No appointed task is 
 easy for a poet; and a poem for an occasion 
 is likely to be weak and worthless. Duty 
 gets but mediocre service out of its slaves. 
 Yet if ever there was a man who could come 
 to the task of poetic eulogy of the dead soldier, 
 it was Tennyson. Wellington was nothing it 
 not English — a character in which he claimed 
 the poet's fullest reverence; who could sym- 
 pathize fully with the Waterloo victor's in- 
 tense Anglicanism, distrust of Napoleonic 
 ideas, and feith in England's pluck and glory. 
 All of the Laureate's metrical skill was ac- 
 cordingly invoked; and he even went back to 
 the court of the Romano-Byzantine emperors 
 for a poetic title grand enough and glorious 
 enough to inscribe upon the sarcophagus of 
 the Great Duke. 
 
 78
 
 What a puzzle was ' ' Maud ' ' to the critics Alfred 
 for some time after its publication! How its /j^^/ ' 
 rambling incoherency was discussed! The Laureate. 
 Laureate was actually compelled to insert, at 
 places in the subsequent edition, additional 
 verses to serve as bridges over the difficulties. 
 And yet how simple it seems to-day! We • 
 have most of us grown up to it. 
 
 The poem is really an English version of 
 the "Sorrows of Werther" — the facts being 
 changed to correspond to English taste and 
 prejudices. Indeed, some of the most ex- 
 quisite passages might be versifications of the 
 German prose, though it may be that Tenny- 
 son did not obtain his matter from that source. 
 There is the same brooding introspection; the 
 same impossible ambition to be something, 
 one knows not what; the same sense of ap- 
 prehension as to the passion of love. The 
 English solution — "a hope for the world in 
 the coming wars" — is better than the Ger- 
 man crisis of snuffing out the candle of life 
 altogether. There is the same disgust for the 
 arrogance of wealth. I wonder how many of 
 us thought of the ' ' oiled and curled Assyrian 
 bull" when the Stalwart leader translated the 
 epithet, the other day, into the Stalwart dia- 
 lect, and likened his faithful Achates unto "a 
 prize ox, waiting for his blue ribbon." 
 79
 
 Alfred I always regarded Thackeray's criticism of 
 
 PoeY^'^"' Tennyson's " Welcome to Alexandra " as one 
 Laureate, of the happiest expressions of literary judg- 
 ment of record. Indeed, one always feels 
 safe and satisfied when Thackeray ascends 
 the bench. None but the novelist could have 
 likened the Laureate to "a giant showing a 
 beacon torch on a 'windy headland.' [Ten- 
 nyson, I believe, then lived on the Isle of 
 Wight.] His flaming torch is a pine-tree, to 
 be sure, which nobody can wield but himself 
 He waves it; and four times in the midnight 
 he shouts mightily, 'Alexandra!' and the 
 pontic pine is whirled into the ocean, and 
 Enceladus goes home." Think of the tall 
 poet as Enceladus waving a flaming pine! 
 Thackeray once said that Tennyson was the 
 wisest man he knew. 
 
 The two men were at college together; but 
 it is hardly likely that they were in the same 
 set. The fact is, that Thackeray in those 
 days must have been too wild for the rectory 
 boy poet. We all enjoy the recital of the 
 tricks and manners of the Steynes, the Cinq- 
 bars, the Ringwoods, and the Deuceaces; but, 
 my dear young lady readers, it could hardly 
 be that one should describe them so well with- 
 out having frequented their society more than 
 was good for a young gentleman with his for- 
 
 80
 
 tune still to make. It is all right now; but 
 what trouble the perverseness of attaining 
 that sort of knowledge must have given, at 
 the time, to those in family or collegiate 
 authority! 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 I somehow fancy that we of this generation, 
 who learned our letters before '50 {Ekeu 
 fugaces /), and were rather tender calves when 
 the rebellion broke out, who had to read the 
 "Idylls of the King" by piecemeal, have 
 been cheated out of the fullest appreciation 
 of the work which would attend a perusal of 
 the entire series as one logical unity. After 
 " Morte d' Arthur," every one believed that 
 Tennyson could write an English epic, if an 
 English epic was to be written at all; and for 
 all practical purposes, the ' ' Idylls ' ' constitute 
 an epic; and if the author did not give them 
 the name, it was probably out of respect for 
 some arbitrary tradition, such as that which 
 requires an epic to be limited in narrative, so 
 far as the poet is concerned, to one year — in 
 other words, to be the record of a single 
 campaign. 
 
 It had been understood for years, before 
 the Arthurian legends, constituting four of 
 the " Idylls," were published, that the Laure- 
 ate was at work upon a long poem; indeed, 
 81
 
 Alfred two of the ' ' Idylls ' ' had been privately printed, 
 Poet ' ^^^ were being held in suspense, and subject 
 Laureate, to emendation. For some time before the 
 actual publication there was a buzz of liter- 
 ary expectancy, which pervaded the United 
 States as well as England; and the eagerness 
 to read the poems invaded classes ordinarily 
 cold to the charms of verse. I can remem- 
 ber my own enthusiasm, in a western town, 
 when the librarian handed me the only copy 
 which had come, and which he had saved for 
 me, and I shut myself up to enjoy the mar- 
 vellous production before the bloom had van- 
 ished from the verse or the odor from the 
 printer's ink. 
 
 Tennyson, as befitted an Englishman, took 
 an English demi-god for his hero — that is, a 
 hero conventionally agreed upon by myth 
 dealers as English; for it is by no means cer- 
 tain that Arthur was not Breton rather than 
 Briton in birth and domicile. People, too, who 
 look into such matters closely seem to fancy 
 that Flos regicni Arthuriis is a graft, imported 
 from some Aryan nursery. The material 
 forming the basis of the story was the " Morte 
 d' Arthur" of Malory, heli)ed out by other 
 chroniclers — English, French, Welsh, and 
 Irish — in prose and verse; for the story has 
 oozed into the text of nearly all legends of 
 
 8?
 
 the Romantic literature of Europe. The sub- 
 ject was said to be a favorite one with the 
 late Prince Consort, whose taste shows itself 
 in a quiet way in so many directions in Eng- 
 lish art and culture. 
 
 Among the sources other than Malory to 
 which Tennyson betook himself for his frame- 
 work of facts was the "Mabinogion," or 
 "Boys' Own Book of Tales," as an English 
 publisher might call it. 
 
 There was, half a century ago, down in 
 the * ' black country ' ' of Wales, a certain man 
 of great financial genius, who "wrought till 
 he crept from a gutted mine, master of half 
 a servile shire," and of every other good 
 thing which wealth can buy; and among these 
 good things, of a noble and brilliant wife, one 
 Lady Charlotte Lindsey. (All women named 
 Lindsey or Lindsay are wonderfully clever; 
 witness, "Auld Robin Gray," etc.) This ele- 
 gant dame took it into her head to publish 
 an Edition de luxe of the " Mabinogion," and 
 to have it printed in Wales. Of course, it 
 was the bibliographical wonder of the day. 
 Scholars prized it, learned bishops spoke en- 
 thusiastically (and truthfully also) of its merits; 
 while Tennyson, who seems to like the Welsh, 
 appropriated or conveyed from it into his 
 collection of idylls the story of ' ' Geraint ap 
 83 
 
 Alfred 
 Tetitiyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred Erbin," a tale that, whether in the original 
 Poet ' legend or in the poet's verse, more than rivals 
 Laureate, the ' ' Griseldis ' ' of Boccaccio for interest and 
 simplicity of moral. 
 
 Tennyson is said to consider the idyll of 
 " Guinevere" the culmination of the epic. I 
 never felt very deeply the force of that idyll. 
 It has somehow seemed to me that the real 
 painful crisis is when little Dagonet — the poor, 
 faithful clown, the affectionate human dog — 
 looks up to his royal master and says, sobbing, 
 
 "I am thy fool, 
 And I shall never make thee smile again." 
 
 As to the " Guinevere" idyll, there would 
 naturally be some sense of cheerfulness about 
 the parties, like two divorced people taking 
 lunch together after the judge has decreed 
 separation a vinculo. Arthur's spirits are 
 stirred by the battle in which he is about to 
 engage — a dubious one, it is true; but Arthur 
 is a Celt, and the outlook has its charms. 
 On the other hand, Guinevere has been con- 
 fessing the wrongs done by her; and next to 
 wronging a friend or lover, what a woman 
 most enjoys is telling him of it. In such a 
 crisis there is falsehood either to her lord or 
 her lover, and falsehood is never lofty or 
 touching. It is moral, however; but morality
 
 is neither epic nor tragic. If prim Madam Alfred 
 Morality even escapes being laughable, she is poet^^^"' 
 lucky. Laureate. 
 
 The business of appropriating other men's 
 labors as the foundation for one's own has 
 been a matter of controversy in the forum of 
 literary morality ever since the ^neid. Is it 
 a merit or a vice to take up and improve 
 another's thought? A certain class of critics 
 would like to make it a crime; but, on the 
 other hand, success seems to crown every 
 author, whether epic poet or dramatist, who 
 accomplishes such a robbery boldly and artis- 
 tically. There is probably no great literary 
 monument (not even excepting Homer's epics) 
 that is not a plagiaristic conversion, for which 
 not one, but several generations and ages, 
 might be actionable together. 
 
 An instance of this successive appropria- 
 tion is the story of " Federigo and the Fal- 
 con," claimed to be original with Boccaccio. 
 As a fact, it is an Arabic legend, told of Ha- 
 tem Tai, a sheik and poet of a period prior 
 to Mohammed, whose metrical attacks upon 
 avarice are still on the lips of his countrymen; 
 the legend varying, however, in that it repre- 
 sents the sacrifice to hospitality as being a 
 favorite horse which the Byzantine emperor, 
 
 85
 
 Alfred to make trial of Hateni's renowned generosity, 
 Poet ' ^^^ ^^^^ messengers to request as a gift, and 
 Laureate, which, on their arrival, and before Hatem had 
 learned the object of their coming, he had 
 (being straitened in his larder, and horseflesh 
 being regarded as dainty food) killed and 
 cooked for their entertainment. It was nat- 
 ural that the gallantry of western Europe 
 should have substituted a lady-love for the 
 emperor, and that the gentle sport of falconry 
 should have suggested a pet hawk for the 
 Arab's steed. 
 
 In style, Tennyson seems to harmonize, to 
 a remarkable degree, with the languid tender- 
 ness of the Italian prosaist. Had Boccaccio 
 been kept in Purgatory five hundred years 
 for his sins of sense, and then as penance let 
 loose in England to write what pleased him, 
 he certainly would have chosen the Laureate's 
 style. 
 
 Into what bright and glittering pieces Ten- 
 nyson has recoined the old Italian bullion! 
 And with what manly decency does he stand 
 out in his vigorous, mental health as com- 
 pared with La Fontaine's licentious indolence, 
 and in working the same lode! 
 
 As a moralist, and in comparison with the 
 French masters in that regard, Tennyson has 
 
 86
 
 much of the delicate faculty of observation Alfred 
 
 of the suppressed emotions and passions of pj"!-^^^"' 
 
 men and women which vivifies the prose of Laureate. 
 La Bruyere. 
 
 In his subjects and his treatment of them, 
 Tennyson is the very high-priest of ' ' Di- 
 vinest Melancholy"; and in that particular, 
 whatever be the cause, whether it lies in the 
 imperfect digestion of his generation or in its 
 overwrought nervous powers, he is emphati- 
 cally the poet of his age, of its thought and 
 emotions. He has only to touch the chords, 
 and humanity mysteriously grieves like a 
 tender-hearted setter under the magic of a 
 nocturne on the piano. 
 
 Politically, Tennyson would appear to be 
 an aristocratic liberal; that is, a man who as- 
 sumes to be above the people rather than of 
 them; who would not the less scorn to add 
 a feather to their weights in running the race 
 of life; but who, at the same time, has an 
 amiable contempt for the servility, treachery, 
 and dishonesty which are more than likely 
 to be qualities inherent in poverty, whether 
 handicapped or not by ignorance or servile 
 origin. And in any event, ex officio, every 
 poet should be something of a tory. 
 87
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Lmireate. 
 
 For the same reason, a poet should, for 
 his profession's sake, belong to the more 
 archaic church. The ceilings of the would-be 
 philosophical temple of Protestantism have too 
 white-washed and forbidding a look to invite 
 the muses to kneel therein. But we have no 
 right to expect that a man born in an English 
 rectory should escape the prejudices which 
 are the lares haunting its hearthstones. To 
 me, "Queen Mary," whether regarded as a 
 poem or a drama, is a very uncomfortable 
 production. There is an aura of chilliness 
 running through the entire subject. There is 
 but one cheery moment or word to rest upon; 
 and that is where "Robin came and kissed 
 me milking the cow." 
 
 Wives who suffer as did Mary are by no 
 means uncommon; and in a social point of 
 view, to say the least of it, it was rather un- 
 gallant of the Laureate, in his eagerness to 
 strike a blow for his island's church, to hit 
 out at a poor, visionary old maid making a 
 loveless and fruitless marriage. Whenever 
 rubicund and wheezy Anglican ecclesiasticism 
 feels, as punishment for its good living, an 
 extra twinge of rheumatic gout in its joints, 
 it has frightful visions of the Armada and the 
 Spanish Inquisition; and groans about thumb- 
 screws and racks.
 
 "The Cup," as a drama, has, I believe, 
 had more stage success than either "Harold" 
 or "Mary," and has bits here and there in the 
 poet's happiest manner. The incident is tak- 
 en from Plutarch's "Amatoria" (repeated in 
 Polyaenus). I remember seeing it made into 
 a story with a French ?nise en scene, published 
 in "Friendship's Offering" for 1839, an an- 
 nual to preceding years of which Tennyson 
 had contributed. The subject appears also to 
 have been selected by Jean de Hays, a French 
 dramatist, at the close of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, for his ' ' Cammate. ' ' 
 
 As each of Tennyson's plays has been pro- 
 duced on the stage, there has been a buzzing 
 sub- murmur of critics that there was only a 
 succes d'estime, if not an absolute failure. 
 Had there been an out-and-out failure, it 
 would only have been what might have been 
 expected. The poet is not versed in stage 
 business, as is Boucicault, and such knowl- 
 edge is absolutely essential to the composi- 
 tion, nowadays, of a successful drama. Had 
 the rectory lad improved his time properly, 
 from say 1830 to 1840, in lounging in the 
 green-rooms and posing in the side-scenes, 
 jostling scene-shifters and shawling soubrettes, 
 and taking thespian parties to supper orgies, 
 instead of sitting priggishly in his darling 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyso7i, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 room and posing as " Miss Alfred," his train- 
 ing would now stand him in good service. 
 
 But a day may come when the public 
 familiar with the text of his plays will enjoy 
 them on representation. Be it remembered 
 that "The Cid " had detractors whose opin- 
 ions were weighty; and that Moliere's wittiest 
 lines took time to impress. 
 
 The telegraph tells us that Tennyson's prose 
 drama, " The Promise of May," is a failure; 
 and also that the Most Noble, the Marquess 
 of Queensberry, arose and protested against 
 the travesty in the play of the modern dogmas 
 concerning free thought, and left the house. 
 One is carried back to the days of Louis 
 Quatorze, and to the noble cavaliers who 
 then crowded the stage, and abused the 
 dramatists of that glittering time. What 
 the deuce has a noble marquess to do with 
 free thought, anyway? A coronet is about 
 as handy a thing to have on in a revolu- 
 tion in politics or religion as a stovepipe 
 hat in an Irish shindy. How much more 
 appreciative a critic would her Grace Kitty 
 of the ducal Queensberrys have been — Prior's 
 Kitty — Gay's Kitty — who stood stoutly up 
 for "The Beggar's Opera," and nursed the 
 sick poet in his disgrace when royalty itself 
 turned censor — Walpole's Kitty — could she 
 
 90
 
 have sat in a box and patted her pretty 
 hands ! 
 
 Tennyson's fame has brought him one 
 frightful infliction, in the persistent intrusion 
 upon his time and acquaintance of hon-hunt- 
 ing tourists; and it is even murmured that 
 there is a class of travelling Americans espe- 
 cially guilty in that way. 
 
 Hawthorne set Americans an example in 
 that regard which should have been accepted. 
 Now, if there was an American who would 
 have represented our nation gracefully in 
 the poet's eyes, it would have been Haw- 
 thorne; if any American could have been 
 sure of a welcome, it was Hawthorne; and 
 yet he contented himself with a good look 
 at the Englishman in a public assembly. 
 There might be a remedy for the evil, paci- 
 fying all parties. The poet might select a 
 tall young man from the rising generation — 
 some Maudle or Postlethwaite — who would 
 not cloy with being stared at (and there 
 are young bards to whom notoriety is so 
 sweet!), to play the part of the veteran's 
 double, and be shown as the actual incum- 
 bent of the laureateship. Of course, the 
 shadow would have to prune his diction so 
 as not to ruin Tennyson's reputation; but 
 
 91 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureale.
 
 Alfred such discipline might be a great benefit in 
 
 Tentiyson, 
 
 Poet years to come. 
 
 Laureate. 
 
 Tennyson has, as a fact, founded no school. 
 His grammatical methods, his fashions of pros- 
 ody, his shades of mannerism, have all been 
 imitated, for all had the seed; but the revolu- 
 tion in science, over the infancy of which Ten- 
 nyson has been a watchful sentinel, and the 
 broadening of the field of culture, the new 
 aims which are to be sought, and the new 
 foes which are to be vanquished, render it 
 necessary that "the foremost files of time," 
 in which Tennyson has so long served 
 as a grenadier, be filled up with young re- 
 cruits armed with new weapons; and that 
 the veterans who survive be left to do sim- 
 ple garrison duty over the spoils already 
 captured. 
 
 Tennyson has lived a brilliant and com- 
 plete literary life. We hope he may be 
 spared to us as long as was Fontenelle to the 
 Frenchmen; that he will see an international 
 copyright in smooth working order; that 
 he will make a fortune out of his books, 
 every stanza bringing him a one-caret dia- 
 mond; and that he will be peremptorily 
 summoned to the House of Lords before 
 ' ' that venerable bulwark ' ' is smashed to 
 
 92
 
 flinders by the artillery of " Free Thought." Alfred 
 What a pang strikes the hearts of us — /b"/"^ ' 
 
 " With tonsured heads in middle age forlorn " — 
 
 when a master of our day passes away ! 
 How many are there of us who have read 
 a fresh novel with any intensity since Thack- 
 eray fell asleep? People of the glaring, im- 
 pertinent generation coming in and treading 
 on our kibes may have their new fiction, 
 new poems, and new philosophy; but we will 
 none of them. 
 
 The generation which commenced "when 
 classic Canning died" is closing; the men 
 who amused and instructed it are, with some 
 few exceptions, gone. Macaulay, Thack- 
 eray, Dickens, Longfellow, Dr. Newman, 
 Carlyle, Mrs. Browning, George Eliot, and 
 Anthony TroUope are dead. If a few like 
 Manning, Gladstone, and Tennyson still re- 
 main with us, ' ' yet is their strength labor and 
 sorrow. ' ' 
 
 There is no easy transition or succession 
 from one generation to another. There is 
 always a moral chasm intervening. The 
 coming race may admire Tennyson; but he 
 will not be their representative poet. His 
 prides, his sympathies, his affections, his 
 politics, his beliefs, will be archaisms to their 
 93 
 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred taste. There are poets, possessors of some 
 Poet ' power and authority in our reading world, 
 Laureate, who may reign after him; but it will be as a 
 new dynasty, and not by regular succession. 
 
 It will be a bad index of the morality of 
 the next age if the band of ' ' fleshly ' ' bards 
 who have already glided into popularity main- 
 tain their ground permanently. They are as 
 foreign to the Laureate in temperament and 
 morals as were the authors of the days of 
 Charles II. to Milton. The clef to which the 
 Laureate has at all times set his notes has 
 been one of honest morality or honest re- 
 morse. He has sung either the miseries that 
 attend as sequences to impossible or disap- 
 pointed love in self-reverencing natures, or 
 the happiness which honestly comes from 
 gratification; but he has not dallied over 
 description of the actual orgasms of pas- 
 sion. Love is present in all his verses; but 
 it is hidden under the soil, like the dead 
 man's head in the Pot of Basil. It is the 
 force behind the emotion — not the ultimate 
 object to be reached. But with the school I 
 speak of, the delirium is the normal state of 
 the pulse; and poetry would seem to be mere- 
 ly one long gloating chant of tyrannic and 
 slobbering sensuality, that suggests the turgid 
 
 94
 
 visions of an insane retreat, and the propriety 
 of prompt exhibition of a strong dose of 
 bromide to the fevered or epileptic versifier. 
 
 What Tennyson thinks of that sort of poet- 
 ico-sexual Katzenjammer may be gathered 
 from the fact that he makes Lucretius speed 
 his departure out of hfe when he discovers, or 
 fancies that he discovers, what a degraded 
 phenomenon it is, under given conditions. 
 
 Alfred 
 TeniiysoTiy 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 I have suggested that Tennyson closes a 
 poetic generation. He has been in sympathy 
 with every great poet, from Dante downward. 
 He is, as it were, the end of the Renaissance. 
 After all, there is only a difference of degree, 
 of intensity of knowledge, between, say Pe- 
 trarch, Erasmus, Bentley, Dr. Johnson, Per- 
 son, and Dr. Arnold. All belong to the same 
 order of thought, used the same materials — 
 that is to say, they rescued the fragments of 
 Greek civilization and letters, and worked 
 them into western culture. Those materials, 
 so far as the workmen are concerned, are ex- 
 hausted. There is little or nothing of them 
 that is not being manipulated at third or 
 fourth hands. There must be details told 
 off to go out into the forests, like Homer's 
 Achaians, for new fuel. The precious met- 
 als of the Greek revival of letters have been 
 
 95
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 all melted down and thoroughly mixed. The 
 old plate of Asiatic thought must now go into 
 the pot. 
 
 Tennyson felt the need of being in full sym- 
 pathy with the scholarship of his day, and at- 
 tained it. But the new poet, the possible 
 worthy successor of Tennyson, must not rest 
 with Virgil and Theocritus, Dante and Shak- 
 spere, as his masters and guides. 
 
 He must go back to the cradle of the world, 
 peradventure, to find there, not models, but 
 mysterious metaphysical forces, wherewith to 
 vivify his verse. This new poet, whoever he 
 be, this lopas to come after the Phemios of 
 Her Majesty Victoria's court, must, in any 
 event, as part of his poetic task, learn to 
 clothe the present aridity of science in grace- 
 ful garb. He must be a Lucretius to the 
 Memmii of the next race. 
 
 How he will work, what elements he will 
 employ, what emotions invoke, we of this age 
 cannot declare, any more than Coleridge 
 could have foretold the success and glory of 
 Tennyson. 
 
 96
 
 CHRONOLOGY 
 OF LITERATURE AND POLITICS, 
 
 PREPARED WITH REFERENCE TO THE BIOGRAPHY 
 OF ALFRED TENNYSON. 
 
 August 5. Alfred Tennyson born. 
 
 In the same year were born William E. 
 Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, Elizabeth 
 Barrett Browning (1807?), Charles R. 
 Darwin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John 
 Stuart Blackie, Edgar Allen Poe, Lord 
 Houghton (R. Monckton Milnes), Bishop 
 Selwyn. 
 
 Within the century, and to be regarded as 
 contemporaries, were born Thomas Bab- 
 ington Macaulay (iSoo), George Bancroft 
 (1800), Edgar Bouverie Pusey (1800), John 
 Henry Newman (1801), Hugh Miller 
 (1802), Harriet Martineau (1802), Victor 
 Hugo (1802), Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 (1803), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), John 
 Frederick Denison Maurice (1805), Bul- 
 wer-Lytton (1805), Benjamin Disraeli 
 (1805), John Sterling (1806), John Stuart 
 Mill (1806), John Greenleaf Whittier 
 {1807), Richard Chenevix Trench (1807), 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807), 
 Charles Tennyson Turner (1808). 
 
 Within the decade succeeding Tennyson's 
 birth were born Henry Alford (1810), 
 
 97
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 1821. 
 
 1822. 
 
 1824. 
 1825. 
 1827. 
 
 1828. 
 
 1829. 
 
 Alfred de Musset (1810), Arthur Henry 
 Hallam (February, 181 1), William Make- 
 peace Thackeray (1811), Robert Lowe 
 (181 1), John Bright (181 1), Robert Brown- 
 ing (1812), Charles Dickens (1812), Nor- 
 man Macleod (1812), Charles Reade 
 (1814), Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815), 
 Anthony Trollope(i8i5), Charlotte Bront^ 
 (1816), Tom Taylor (1817), James Anthony 
 Froude [circa 1818), Her Majesty Queen 
 Victoria (1819), Prince Albert (1819), 
 Charles Kingsley (1819), James Russell 
 Lowell (1819), John Ruskin (1819), Her- 
 bert Spencer (1820), John Tyndall (1820), 
 Florence Nightingale (1820). 
 
 Death of John Keats (born 1795). 
 
 Bishop Temple (Essays and Reviews) born. 
 
 Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley (born 1792). 
 
 Alfred Tennyson writes a MS. tale. 
 
 Death of Lord Byron (born 1788). 
 
 Thomas Henry Huxley born. 
 
 Death of Ugo Foscolo (born 1775). 
 
 "Poems by Two Brothers" published 
 May 19. First contemporary criticism 
 of the Poems appeared in the Literary 
 Chronic te. 
 
 Death of Canning. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson writes "The Lover's 
 Tale" (not printed till 1833). 
 
 The poet takes up his residence at Cam- 
 bridge (Trinity College). 
 
 The Poem "Timbuctoo" gains the 
 Chancellor's Medal. 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti born. 
 
 Catholic Relief Bill passed. 
 
 98
 
 x83o. 
 1831. 
 
 1S32. 
 
 1832-3 
 
 1833- 
 1834. 
 
 1837- 
 
 1840. 
 99 
 
 "Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," published. 
 
 John Stuart Mill writes a favorable criti- 
 cism on. 
 
 Dr. George Clayton Tennyson, the poet's 
 father, dies. 
 
 The present Lord Lytton (Owen Meredith) 
 born. 
 
 A poem by Tennyson appears in "The 
 Gem." 
 
 Reform Bill passed. 
 
 January. Arthur Hallam leaves Cambridge. 
 
 Wilson (Kit North) publishes a review of 
 Tennyson in Blackwood. 
 
 Death of Sir Walter Scott (born 1771). 
 
 Tennyson publishes sonnets in "The York- 
 shire Literary Annual," and in "Friend- 
 ship's Offering"; a sonnet published by 
 Edward Tennyson. 
 
 . Second Volume of Alfred Tennyson's 
 poems published by Moxon. 
 
 Sept. 15. Arthur Henry Hallam dies 
 AT Vienna. 
 
 Death of Coleridge (born 1772). 
 
 January 3. Hallam buried at Clevedon 
 Church, Somersetshire. 
 
 Her Majesty Queen Victoria ascends 
 the throne. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson resident at Caistor, Lin- 
 colnshire, where an uncle was vicar. 
 
 "St. Agnes" published in "The Keep- 
 sake." 
 
 The lines in Maud, "O that 'twere possi- 
 ble," published in "The Tribute." 
 
 Marriage of Queen Victoria with Prince 
 Albert. 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 1841. Birth of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 1842. Poems by Alfred Tennyson in two 
 
 volumes published. 
 
 1843. Death of Robert Southey, Poet Lau- 
 
 reate (born 1774). 
 
 Charles Algernon Swinburne born. 
 
 Wordsworth meets Tennyson. 
 
 Wordsworth writes eulogistically of Ten- 
 nyson to Professor Reed. 
 
 Death of John Sterling. 
 
 Tennyson receives a pension of £100 from 
 Sir Robert Peel, prime minister. 
 
 January 31. Tennyson dines at the poet 
 Rogers'. 
 
 Death of Thomas Hood (born 1798). 
 
 "The Princess, a Medley," published. 
 
 Sir John Franklin lost in the Arctic (born 
 1786). 
 
 Death of Lady Blessington (born 1789). 
 
 June 13. Tennyson married to Emily, 
 daughter of Henry Sellwood, Esq., of 
 Horncastle (a niece of Sir John Franklin). 
 
 April 23. Death of William Words- 
 worth, Poet Laureate (born 1770). 
 
 "In Memoriam" published. Three edi- 
 tions appeared the same year. 
 
 Death of Sir Robert Peel (born 1788). 
 
 Death of Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam. 
 
 Nov. 21. Tennyson Gazetted Poet 
 Laureate. 
 1851. March 6. Tennyson attends the Queen's 
 Levee. 
 
 The seventh edition of Tennyson's poems 
 appears. 
 
 September. Tennyson in France. 
 
 100 
 
 1844. 
 1845. 
 
 1847. 
 
 1849. 
 1850.
 
 i852. 
 
 1854. 
 
 1855. 
 
 1856. 
 1857. 
 
 1859- 
 
 Sept. 14. Death of the Duke of Wel- 
 lington (bom 1769). 
 
 Death of Thomas Moore (born 1779). 
 
 In the course of this year several anti- 
 GalHc or anti-Napoleonic songs appeared, 
 supposed to be by the Laureate. (Two 
 verses addressed to America omitted 
 in the later edition of "Hands all round.") 
 
 Hallam Tennyson born at Twickenham, 
 where the poet then resided. 
 
 Death of Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd (born 
 
 1795)- 
 
 John Wilson (Kit North) dies (born 1785). 
 
 Frederick Tennyson publishes a volume of 
 poems. 
 
 Dec. 9. "The Charge of the Light Bri- 
 gade" appears in the Londo7i Examiner. 
 
 The Poet Laureate is admitted to the hon- 
 orary degree of D. C. L. Oxon. 
 
 "Maud, and Other Poems," published. 
 
 Death of Mary Russell Mitford (born 1786). 
 
 Death of Samuel Rogers (born 1763). 
 
 Death of Hugh Miller. 
 
 "Enid" and "Nemuc" privately printed. 
 
 Death of Alfred de Musset. 
 
 Hawthorne sees Tennyson at Manchester. 
 
 Bayard Taylor visits Tennyson at the Isle 
 of Wight. 
 
 Death of Leigh Hunt (born 1784). 
 
 Death of Thomas Babington Lord 
 Macau LAY. 
 
 Death of Henry Hallam (born 1777). 
 
 Death of Thomas De Quincey (born 1785). 
 
 Death of Washington Irving (bom 
 1783). 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 July. "Idylls OF the King" published. 
 1861. Death of the Prince Consort. 
 
 Death of Elizabeth Barrett Brown- 
 ing. 
 1S63. March 18. "Welcome to Alexandra" 
 published. 
 Death of Thackeray. 
 Death of Richard Whately (born 1787). 
 
 1864. Mrs. Alfred Tennyson writes a song, "Alma 
 
 River." 
 "Enoch Arden" published. 
 Death of Walter Savage Landor (born 
 
 1775)- 
 Death of Nathaniel HAVifTHORNE. 
 
 1865. Death of Edward Everett (born 1794). 
 Death of Lord Palmerston (born 1784). 
 Alfred Tennj'son offered a baronetcy and 
 
 declines it; admitted to the Royal Society. 
 
 1866. Septimus Tennyson, a brother of the poet, 
 
 dies at Cheltenham. 
 Death of William Whewell (born 1795). 
 
 1867. Professor Selwyn publishes a Latin version 
 
 of "Enoch Arden." 
 "The Window; or, the Loves of the 
 
 Wrens," privately printed by Sir Ivor 
 
 Guest. 
 Set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. 
 
 1868. Alexander Strahan becomes the poet's 
 
 publisher. 
 Death of Henry Hart Milman (born 1791). 
 Death of Sir David Brewster (born 1781). 
 "Lucretius" published in Macmillan^ s. 
 
 1869. The poet elected an honorary fellow of 
 
 Trinity College, Cambridge, removes to 
 Surrey. 
 
 102
 
 1870. 
 
 i87i. 
 1872. 
 
 1873- 
 
 1874. 
 
 1875- 
 1S77. 
 1S78. 
 
 1879. 
 1880. 
 
 1881. 
 103 
 
 Death of the Earl of Derby (born 1799). 
 
 Death of Charles Dickens. 
 
 "The Holy Grail, and Other Poems," 
 published (4 new idylls). 
 
 Death of Henry Alford. 
 
 Death of George Grote (born 1794). 
 
 "The Last Tournament" published in 
 the Contemporary Review for December. 
 
 " Gareth and Lynette" published. 
 
 Death of Frederick Maurice. 
 
 Library edition in six volumes of Tenny- 
 son's poems. 
 
 Death of Lord Bulwer-Lytton (born 
 1805). 
 
 Death of John Stuart Mill. 
 
 H. S. King & Co. become the poet's pub- 
 lishers. 
 
 "Queen Mary" published. 
 
 "Harold" published. 
 
 Death of Earl Russell (born 1792). 
 
 Birth of Alfred Tennyson, the poet's 
 grandson. 
 
 "The Revenge." A ballad of the Fleet. 
 
 Death of Charles Tennyson Turner. 
 
 "The Lover's Tale" republished. 
 
 "The Falcon" performed at "The St. 
 James." 
 
 " Ballads, and Other Poems," pub- 
 lished; C. Kegan Paul & Co. become 
 the poet's publishers. 
 
 Death of Frank Buckland (born 1826). 
 
 Death of Tom Taylor. 
 
 Death of George Eliot. 
 
 "The Cup" performed at "The Lyceum." 
 
 Death of Thomas Carlyle (born 1795). 
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate.
 
 Alfred 
 Tennyson, 
 Poet 
 Laureate. 
 
 Death of Lord Beaconsfield. 
 
 Death of Mrs. S. C. Hall (born 1805). 
 
 1882. Death of Henry Wadsworth Long- 
 
 fellow. 
 Death of Ralph Waldo Emerson (born 
 
 1803). 
 Death of Charles R. Darwin. 
 Death of Anthony Trollope. 
 Death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
 "The Promise of May" performed at 
 
 "The Globe." 
 
 1883. Takes a trip with Mr. Gladstone to Copen- 
 
 hagen, and is received by the King and 
 Queen of Denmark, the Czar and Czarina, 
 the King and Queen of Greece, and the 
 Princess of Wales. 
 
 1884. "Brackett, and Other Plays." 
 "The Cup" and "The Falcon." 
 
 Is offered a peerage by her majesty, and is 
 gazetted Baron of Aldworth and Farring- 
 ford January 18. 
 
 1885. " Tiresias, and Other Poems." 
 
 1886. "Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After." 
 1889. " Demeter, and Other Poems." 
 
 1892. "The Foresters, Robin Hood and Maid 
 
 Marian." 
 Death of George William Curtis. 
 Death of John Greenleaf Whittier. 
 Death of Ernest R^nan. 
 Death of Tennyson, October 6. 
 "Aenone, Akbar's Dream, and Other 
 
 Poems," published. 
 
 104
 
 DITMARSCH AND 
 KLAUS GROTH. 
 
 A PLATTDEUTSCH CHAT. 
 
 " Beer is keen Win, Win is keen Beer." 
 
 [HERE is a long strip of the 
 German empire (say the north- 
 ern one third, extending from 
 the Rhine to Russian Poland, 
 and especially comprising the 
 lower Rhine lands, Westphalia, Hanover, 
 what was once lower Saxony, Holstein — and 
 Ditmarsch — Mecklenburg, Pommern, and 
 Brandenburg), to the natives of which the 
 language of Lessing is an acquired tongue. 
 Their vernacular, the speech of the farm and 
 the nursery, is a mass of queer crystalliza- 
 tions of expression, with few grammatical 
 inflections to keep it from being jumbled. 
 It is only when the young North German 
 goes to school, and often not then, that he 
 finds his tongue in the quasi Greek harness 
 of conjugation and declension which marks 
 High German — the language of Teutonic 
 civilization — as distinct from Low German 
 or Plattdeutsch. 
 105
 
 Ditmarsch English is Plattdeutsch ; Dutch is Platt- 
 Groth deutsch; but inasmuch as both English and 
 
 Dutch have acquired a sort of autonomy 
 among tongues, the name Plattdeutsch is 
 rather limited to the unwritten, or more cor- 
 rectly, non-literary, language of the North 
 German. To illustrate, in a homely way, the 
 affinities of the two speeches, English and 
 Plattdeutsch, let us suppose that we take a 
 batch of fine-bolted wheaten flour; bake it, 
 with its suitable ingredients, into a pancake; 
 sprinkle it with loaf-sugar; smear it with cur- 
 rant jelly; and may be, scatter over it a little 
 ground cinnamon. The dish will represent 
 the English tongue, starting with the wheaten 
 flour as the old Saxon and Frisian basis; the 
 sugar being the Latin addition; the currant 
 jelly, what we have borrowed from the French 
 and Normand; and the cinnamon, a trifle we 
 have picked up in our piratical sea maraudings 
 from the Orientals. But if you bake your 
 cake from unbolted flour, and eat it with no 
 fancy additions, that would be the Plattdeutsch 
 of Mecklenburg and Ditmarsch — a healthful 
 article, good for the teeth and the complexion, 
 but all full of lumps and rough edges — homely 
 black bread, as it were. 
 
 If you have ever hung over a grocery coun- 
 ter in San Francisco, you perhaps have no- 
 
 io6
 
 ticed that the grocer talked with his blond Ditmarsch 
 apprentice in a tongue that sounded strangely Qyoi^ 
 familiar, but unintelligible ; and you have, 
 may be, imagined that it might be very cor- 
 rupt English spoken with a strong Germanic 
 accent. You were mistaken a little — it was 
 German spoken with an English accent; for 
 the accent and pronunciation of Plattdeutsch 
 are more akin to English than are those of 
 any other branch of the Teutonic stem. Low 
 German consonants are not bitten so sharply 
 as they leave the mouth; it has the Anglo- 
 Saxon th, which High German has not; and 
 its vowels are not so broad or long as in its 
 more aristocratic sister. 
 
 Put the tips of your fingers and thumb of 
 one hand together. If you call the thumb, 
 with its insertion far down at the wrist, Platt- 
 deutsch, the forefinger would be, let us say, 
 Hollandish; the middle finger, English; the 
 third, old Low German of Charlemagne's 
 time; and the little finger. Middle Low Ger- 
 man; while the other hand might be called 
 the High or Upper German division, com- 
 mencing with Luther's New High German, 
 and ending off say with Ulfila's Gothic of the 
 fourth century, which, however, is by some 
 philologists ranked as the parent stem of both 
 upper and lower German, and by some as a 
 107
 
 Diiniarsch purely Low German. And here let me say 
 
 and Klaus ^-i ^ ? r^ j ^ • ^^ 
 
 Groth ^"^^ ^^'^ German does not, primarily, mean 
 
 vulgar German; nor does high German mean 
 aristocratic. Hill German and plain Ger- 
 man would be better renderings of hoch and 
 platt. 
 
 Low German has been called the Doric 
 German; but the expression — though as re- 
 gards its rusticity somewhat happy — philo- 
 logically, is incorrect. If the classes of Greek 
 writers had but interchanged tongues, and if 
 Xenophon and Plato had written Doric, and 
 Theocritus had written Attic, then the literary 
 position of Low German would be that of 
 Attic German, as you might say; for in the 
 matter of interchangeability of certain of the 
 consonants, and the closing of the lips for 
 the vowels, Low German has the Atticism 
 and High German the Doricism on the scale 
 of phonetics. 
 
 Scotch has been called the Doric branch of 
 English; as a fact, it is simply purer Saxon, 
 and I might almost say, a closer sib of the 
 Plattdeutsch. It would be practical, I fancy, 
 to take a child born in the Lowlands, and by 
 slow migration translate him to Vienna in 
 such easy stages that he would never be able 
 to designate when or where he left his English 
 and commenced his German, nor where he 
 
 1 08
 
 dropped Plattdeutsch and entered upon High Ditmarsch 
 r^ and Klaus 
 
 German. ^^^^^ 
 
 There are probably as many different dia- 
 lects of Low German as there are villages. 
 Uniformity in that regard is as impossible, in 
 fact, as to find vernacular English unchange- 
 able as you go from one district in England 
 to another. It is the result of there being no 
 written standard. Webster's spelling-book 
 has, in America, given us a sort of metallic 
 tuning-fork, by which a certain degree of 
 faulty uniformity has been gained; but when 
 there are no written records, a language is 
 apt to vary with every wind that blows — in 
 short, to be modified according to every 
 special influenza that attacks the human air- 
 passages, and to be the victim of every snuffle 
 or whine that may be in vogue. Plattdeutsch 
 has had no written standard, to give it a tram- 
 way, for over two hundred years. 
 
 Hence Ditmarsch Plattdeutsch is other, in 
 some regards, than Mecklenburg Plattdeutsch; 
 and the Hanoverian has a different speech 
 from him of Pommern. 
 
 Plattdeutsch once, however, was literary; 
 it had chronicles, legends, poems (" Reynard 
 the Fox" was originally Plattdeutsch), and a 
 mediaeval written existence. One might class 
 certain grand poems — now growing into 
 109
 
 Ditmarsch popularity in a Wagnerian sort of way — as 
 QyQtfi Middle Plattdeutsch; and the Plattdeutsch 
 
 Genius of Language, looking back to his 
 mediaeval school-days, might well say, in a 
 proud way, to his High German brother, as 
 Entspekter Brasig was wont to boast to his 
 old school friend, Hawermann : "In dem 
 Stil, Korl, war ich Dich doch iiber." 
 
 But the High German Luther, one day, 
 handed in his exercise in the shape of a 
 translation of the Bible; and it won so much 
 praise from the pedagogues, and the nobility 
 and gentry, that the slow Plattdeutscher flung 
 down his copy-book in disgust, and went 
 back to his farm, and abused his cattle, and 
 made love, and quarrelled, in his humble 
 tongue, and but rarely thereafter cared to see 
 himself down in black and white. So Platt- 
 deutsch ceased to be written from the begin- 
 ning of the seventeenth century; it then be- 
 came essentially a vulgar tongue — a peasant's 
 patois, almost. But an occasional bookworm 
 looked into its old chronicles, and made glos- 
 saries, and discussed it as if it were already a 
 corpse on the philological dissecting-table. 
 
 It became the triumph of a modest Dit- 
 marsch school-teacher to show that there was 
 a current of blood yet in the Plattdeutsch 
 language.
 
 Klaus Groth was born at Heide (Heath), Ditmarsch 
 a market-town of Holstein, or rather of Dit- Qyoth 
 marsch, April 24, 1819. To appreciate our 
 author, it is as necessary to understand his 
 native place as it is to know the Scottish Bor- 
 der to read Scott, or the Hudson to grow 
 fond of Irving. Ditmarsch is the northwest 
 corner of Germany, between the outlets of 
 the Elbe and Eider. Heide, a borough town 
 in the middle of the northern half, became a 
 very flourishing place in 1450, by reason of 
 its being the capital established by the gov- 
 ernment of the so-called " Forty-eight," who 
 form the centre of the traditional picture of 
 the grand days of the Ditmarsch in a political 
 aspect. 
 
 It was near Heide — to wit, at Hemming- 
 sted, an adjoining parish — that the battle 
 was fought in A. D. 1500, June 17th, in 
 defense of the freedom of Ditmarsch against 
 King John of Denmark, the Duke of Hol- 
 stein, and Schlenz, the leader of the mer- 
 cenaries called " The Guard," in which fight, 
 the boors, under Wolf Isebrand, completely 
 routed the King's forces and slew the Junker 
 Schlenz, who fell at the head of his band. 
 The elements helped the boors, and espe- 
 cially the opening of the dikes or bulkheads, 
 whereby the battle-field was flooded.
 
 Ditmarsch Heide was afterwards — ^June 13, 1559 — de- 
 Groth stroyed utterly, and the Ditmarschers forced 
 
 to swear allegiance to their royal neighbor, 
 but sprang quickly into a prosperity which, 
 as the centre of a well-cultivated agricultural 
 community, it retained. 
 
 Ditmarsch is divided physically into two 
 very distinctive kinds of land, namely, Marsch, 
 and Geest — Marsch land being the moist, 
 fertile lands watered from the down-pouring 
 brooks and springs, shut in from the ocean 
 by dikes and earthworks, dams and gates, 
 flat, unbroken by anything of large growth, 
 save where on a hillock, here and there, a 
 pair of trees hang shadily over the farmer's 
 home. On the other hand, Geest (barren) is 
 sand-dune, difficult of cultivation (like the 
 San Francisco Park), where the huntsman 
 has moderate sport after hares and rabbits, 
 and where few acres now and then pay for 
 cultivation. It is in allusion to this Marsch 
 and Geest distinction that the possessions of 
 the Duke of Oldenburg were likened to Pha- 
 raoh's seven fat and seven lean kine, the 
 Geest representing the lean and the Marsch 
 the well-fed beasts. 
 
 If Alameda County could be cut out of its 
 present place and spread out and smoothed 
 down on the western side of San Francisco,
 
 which should be sunk into the bay, the tract Ditmarsch 
 so formed would be something like Ditmarsch. QyQth 
 It would want Sherman Island to be planted 
 out in the ocean to represent Biisum and 
 the so-called "Koog" land; and there must 
 needs be frost and snow to add to the effect. 
 
 A country of hedges, of embankments, of 
 canals, of fields cut squarely by rectangular 
 lines of ditch, of farms in like manner divided 
 with broader water-ways, of green fields, fat 
 cows, sturdy oxen, thatched roofs with the 
 stork sentinel upon them, a land of careful 
 farming, of broad-shouldered {sb'oni is the 
 word) men, of clean, ruddy, flax-haired 
 women — that is Ditmarsch in its best aspect. 
 It is a comfortable place, w'here the boor (in 
 Ditmarsch, an honorable word, like squire in 
 New England) sits in his quaint old house, 
 hears the lowing of his fat cattle as they are 
 driven to feed at their stalls from the juicy 
 hay, and gossips about the parish interests; 
 while afar off rolls up the roar of the Haff, 
 to remind him how large a world there is 
 beyond his little corner, which may pour in 
 upon him and sink him and his possession as 
 was Biisum of old. 
 
 Ditmarsch is in a good sense what one 
 might call communistic. Its legal organization 
 is a legacy from its older days. It consists
 
 Ditniarsch of two provinces, North and South Ditmarsch, 
 Groth which in turn are divided into parishes. The 
 
 province has for prefect a native Ditmarscher; 
 each parish has for mayor ( Vagi) a native 
 appointed from three proposed candidates 
 elected by the boor class, which election is for 
 life. Out of these elected deputies the pro- 
 vincial Diet is formed. Of course the deputy 
 ( Vullniacli) is an eminently respectable boor. 
 The parish mayor, with a clerk {Schriwef), 
 is the ex officio notary, registrar of wills, etc. ; 
 and the mayors with the Landvogt form the 
 provincial court. The code in use is particu- 
 larly Ditmarschish, a relic of their days of in- 
 dependence. The boor is essentially as much 
 a Tory as any Sir Leicester Dedlock could 
 be. He has the doctrine of primogeniture, 
 and in short every other pet faith of an 
 English country gentleman, in his marrow. 
 He is proud, rather despises the Geest folks, 
 and patronizes the petty farmers and peasants 
 struggling for life in his vicinage. He has 
 many virtues and few vices; and has about 
 as much appreciation of red republicanism 
 and its excited antics as a ruminating ox 
 would have of the feelings of a famished 
 wolf In old days his ancestors fought well 
 for liberty. It would seem that he has it. 
 His struggle with the ocean has made him 
 
 114
 
 vigilant. With less promise in his undertak- Ditmarsch 
 1 . r 1 1 • r ii- ^ <^nd Klaus 
 
 ing, his corner oi land is one oi the most Qygth 
 
 fertile and charming in its way in all Ger- 
 many. He keeps squalor and misery aloof, 
 just as he watches the dike and flood, by 
 always keeping work in hand. So much for 
 Ditmarsch, the birthplace of our poet. 
 
 Groth commenced his education at Ton- 
 dern, at a seminary. He could not attend 
 a university, either on account of his weak 
 health or want of funds; and accordingly 
 received a modest appointment as teacher of 
 a girls' school at Heide. While so engaged, 
 he pursued his studies, and made distin- 
 guished progress in mathematics, natural 
 science, and ancient and modern languages. 
 It was fortunate, perhaps, that he was so cut 
 short in the curriculum of school and uni- 
 versity. He had the talents and perceptive 
 powers of a great philologist; but had he 
 followed an academic career, it is possible 
 that, in lieu of the charming lyrics of his 
 native land, he might have given us little 
 beyond the dry bones of philological muse- 
 ums, fit to be cased up in grammars and 
 dictionaries, but not affording the delight 
 which his actual work has produced to his 
 legion of admirers. 
 
 In 1847, his head was knocking against 
 
 115
 
 Ditmarsch the ceiling of his girls' school, and he gave 
 Grotii. ^P ^^ place, intending to enter a university; 
 
 but, on account of his health, abandoned the 
 project, and settled at Femarn, where he 
 resided for six years and wrote most of his 
 poems. In 1853, he betook himself to Kiel, 
 to be near the university there. 
 
 In 1852, at Hamburg, he published his 
 charming collection of lyrics, and other 
 poems, entitled Quickborn, Volksleben in 
 plattdeutschen Gedichten dihnarscher Mzui- 
 dart. Quickborn is the name of a spring 
 in Ditmarsch, which runs both summer and 
 winter, never failing or freezing. 
 
 The volume has gone through many edi- 
 tions; its contents are household words from 
 one end of Germany to the other; and it was 
 owing probably to their success and popu- 
 larity that Fritz Renter was encouraged to 
 try a similar experiment with the Mecklen- 
 burg dialect. 
 
 The Quickborn now before me (ed. 1873, 
 Berlin) opens with a poem to "My Mother 
 Tongue" {Miii Moderspi'ak), which for pa- 
 thos and tenderness recalls some of the 
 sweetest verses of Burns. Indeed, it is evi- 
 dent, all through the book, that while the 
 poet does not seek to copy the Scotch poets, 
 he has studied them very closely; and in 
 
 116
 
 "Hans Schander" he has fairly localized Ditmarsch 
 "Tarn O'Shanter and his Mare." " Min Qyoth. 
 Annamedder " is a very Plattdeutsch ' ' Airy- 
 Fairy Lillian." 
 
 Veer de Gcern (For the Children) consists 
 of a number of songs, verses, and prose, two 
 of which I append, with translations, at the 
 same time begging the critical reader not 
 to be too hard upon my versions, as I in- 
 tended them only as crutches whereby the 
 tyro in German might travel through the 
 original in parallel columns without too much 
 trouble. 
 
 ' ' De Krautfru ' ' (The Crab-Woman) is a 
 charming bit of description of a local char- 
 acter, with the load of poverty and basket of 
 crabs on her back, and withal a strong fund 
 of uncomplaining good sense in her heart. 
 It is less refined, but more definite as a pic- 
 ture of character, than Chamisso's "Poor 
 Washerwoman." Wat sik dat Volk vertellt 
 is a series of grugely (to borrow a German 
 word) stories, to be told by a warm fire, with 
 ghosts shivering outside : ' ' How Old Biisum 
 was Engulfed," " Master John," " Dat gruli 
 Hus" (The Haunted House), and "Hans 
 Iwer, the werewolf" " Ut de ole Krbnk" 
 (Out of the Old Chronicle) are ballads as to 
 the struggles of the mediaeval Ditmarschers 
 117
 
 Ditmarsch for liberty. I append " De Slacht bi Hem- 
 Groth. mingsted," and " De letzte Feide." 
 
 " Wi gingn tosam to Feld" has a faint 
 flavor of "John Anderson, my Jo, John," 
 but nothing hke plagiarism, even to the 
 touchiest fault-finder. " Vullmacht sin Twes- 
 chens " is a thoroughly lovers' ditt}^' and 
 shows how deeply the local life and its be- 
 longings had worked into the young poet's 
 heart. Indeed, it is the local coloring and 
 freshness that make the poems so captivat- 
 ing. In picking out a number of pieces to 
 serve as examples, I have doubted if I have 
 selected the most appropriate, all having a 
 special charm in severalty. 
 
 Groth has published some prose Vertelln 
 (Tellings, or Tales) of great originality; but 
 his lyrics and ballads throw them so much 
 in the shade, that it is likely that his earliest 
 and youthful work will ever be the most 
 popular. 
 
 The poet has received from the Univer- 
 sity of Bonn the academic honor of Doctor 
 of Philosophy; and none could more richly 
 deserve such a tribute for his services to his 
 vernacular tongue. 
 
 In looking over popular works on lan- 
 guage (so as to be sure that I had, in the 
 foregoing, thrust forth no twig of philological 
 
 iiS
 
 heresy), I came upon an article by the great Ditmarsch 
 ^ • r TIT Tv-r-ii ^u (^^d Klaus 
 
 Oxonian professor, Max Muller, upon the Croth. 
 
 language of Schleswig-Holstein. At first I 
 was frightened lest I had been trifling with 
 a subject which had already been fully dis- 
 cussed by a master and arch-priest in the 
 temple of tongues; but I find that, to the 
 American reader, my chat will be modestly 
 supplemental, at least; and to such as have 
 not already read ' ' Chips from a German 
 Workshop," I recommend the perusal of 
 the article in question (Vol. III.)- Some of 
 the selections there from Groth I would have 
 liked to adopt, particularly " Ole Biisum," 
 but I have already usurped more space than 
 was my original intention. 
 
 We would encourage all American students 
 of German to look into the Plattdeutsch dia- 
 lect, even before they have finished strug- 
 gling with the High German branch. They 
 will find in Groth and Reuter expressions 
 that are old acquaintances; and, in a literary 
 point of view, there is something healthy 
 and hearty in the naturalism of the sketches 
 of the North German's life, like a red- 
 cheeked apple, which has not the mouldy- 
 orange realism of the modern literary mob 
 that believe in the Zola creed. 
 
 119
 
 SELECTIONS FROM "QUICKBORN." 
 
 FOR CHILDREN.— STILL, MY JOHNNY! 
 
 Still, my Johnny! list to me; 
 
 In the straw queaks mousey wee; 
 
 On the twig the birdies sleep, 
 
 Close their wings, and, dreaming, peep. 
 
 Still, my Johnny! cry no more; 
 
 Bogy waits outside the door — 
 
 The moon is passing through the skies — 
 
 "Which child is't here that cries ? " 
 
 O'er the tree so still and bare. 
 
 O'er the house, through Heaven and where 
 
 Gentle children meet the eye — 
 
 Look ! he smiles down jollily. 
 
 Then to Bogy doth he say, 
 " Let's be getting on our way." 
 So they go and stand together 
 There above the moor and heather. 
 
 Still, my Johnny! sleep away — 
 He'll be back with dawning day, 
 Shining down with yellow light 
 O'er the tree, from Heaven so bright. 
 
 The yellow flowers the grass among; 
 From apple-boughs birds chirp a song. 
 Still, and close thine eyes to rest — 
 Hear the mousey in his nest.
 
 SELECTIONS FROM "QUICKBORN." 
 
 VOER DE GOERN.— STILL, MIN HANNE ! 
 
 Still, mill Hanne, hor mi to ! 
 Liittje Miise pipt int Stroh, 
 Liittje Vageln slapt in Bom, 
 Rohrt de Fliink un pipt in Drom. 
 
 Still, min Hanne, hor mi an ! 
 
 Buten geit de bose Mann, 
 
 Baben geit de stille Maan : 
 
 " Kind, wull hett dat Schrigen dan?" 
 
 Aewern Bom so still un blank, 
 Aewert Hus an Heben lank, 
 Un wo he frame Kinner siiht, 
 Kik mal an, wa lacht he blid !" 
 
 Denn seggt he to de bose Mann, 
 Se wiillt en beten wider gan, 
 Denn gat se beid, denn stat se beid 
 Aewert Moor un aewer de Heid. 
 
 Still, min Hanne, slap mal rar! 
 Morgen is he wedder dar ! 
 Rein so gel, rein so blank, 
 Aewern Bom an Himmel lank. 
 
 All int Gras de gelen Blom ! 
 Vageln pipt in Appeldom, 
 Still un mak de Ogen to, 
 Liittje Miise pipt int Stroh.
 
 Ditmarsch 
 and Klaus 
 Groth. 
 
 THERE DWELT A MAN. 
 
 There dwelt a man in meadows green, 
 Who hadn't a cup or platter e'en. 
 To passing brook for drink he stooped, 
 And cherries plucked that o'er him drooped. 
 
 A jolly man ! A jolly man ! 
 He'd never a pot; he'd never a pan. 
 He ate the apples off the tree. 
 And slept in clover cosily. 
 
 The sun for him was time-piece good; 
 His bird-house was the shady wood; 
 They sang to him nights, above his head. 
 And waked him up with the dawning red. 
 
 This man (oh, what a silly man ! ) 
 
 To be o'ernice at last began. 
 
 To be too fussy, he began — 
 
 We've lived in houses e'er since then — 
 
 Come ! Let's off to the green again ! 
 
 THE FIGHT AT HEMMINGSTED. 
 
 (February 17, 1500.) 
 
 " There lay his steed, there lay his sword, 
 And with them, kingly crown." 
 
 — Ditmarsch Folksong. 
 
 The King unto the Duke did say : "O brother of 
 
 my heart, 
 How can we make this free Ditmarsch of our 
 
 brave realm a part?" 
 
 Reinhold of Milan heard the speech (of tawny 
 
 beard was he) ; 
 And answered straight : " Unto the Guard, for aid, 
 
 send presently."
 
 DAR WAHN EN MANN. Ditmarsch 
 
 and Klaits 
 Dar wahn en Mann int grone Gras Groth. 
 
 De harr keen Schiittel, harr keen Tass, 
 De drunk dat Water, wo he't funn, 
 De pliick de Kirschen, wo se stunn'. 
 
 Wat weert en Mann ! wat weert en Mann ! 
 De harr ni Putt, de harr ni Pann, 
 De eet de Appein vun den Bom, 
 De harr en Bett vun Inter Blom. 
 
 De Siinn dat weer sin Taschenuhr, 
 Dat Holt dat weer sin Vagelbur, 
 De sungn em Abends aewern Kopp, 
 De wecken em des Morgens op. 
 
 De Mann dat weer en narrschen Mann, 
 De Mann de fung dat Gruweln an. 
 De Mann de fung dat Gruweha an : 
 Nu maet wi All in Hiiser wahn'. — 
 Kumm mit, wi wiillt int Grone gan ! 
 
 DE SLACHT BI HEMMINGSTED. 
 
 (1500, Febr. 17.) 
 
 Dar lag do sin Perd, dar lag sin Swert, 
 Darto de koiiiglike Krone. 
 
 — Ditmarscher Volkslied. 
 
 De Konig to den Herzog sprok : Och hartley 
 
 Broder min, 
 Wa krigt wi dat frie Ditmarscher Land ? segg an, 
 
 wa kamt wi in? 
 
 As dat Reinold vun Mailand hor, de mit sin 
 
 gelen Bart, 
 Do seggt he, wi schickt de Garr en Bad, dat uns 
 
 en Bistand ward.
 
 Ditmarsch When to the Guard the message came, they mus- 
 and Klaus tered many a sword; 
 
 Uro I. They gathered fifteen thousand men, and o'er the 
 
 Heath they poured. 
 
 And when the Guard were with the King, "My 
 
 liege " ('twas said in mirth), 
 "Where lieth then this Ditmarsch land? In 
 
 Heaven or on earth?" 
 
 " If 'tis not bound with chains to Heaven, and if 
 
 on earth it Hes" — 
 So, vaunting, spake the Junker Schlenz — "We'll 
 
 make it soon our prize." 
 
 He bade the drummers roll their drums — his stan- 
 dards gayly fly. 
 
 And so, o'er road and bridge, they came, till they 
 our land espy. 
 
 "Now ware thee, boor — the Guard — it comes"; 
 
 from Meldorf was their course; 
 The helms and hauberks shone like gold — like 
 
 silver gleamed the horse. 
 
 King John and his proud lords advance, in all the 
 
 pomp of power, 
 While 'neath a wall at Braken, Wolf and his poor 
 
 landsmen cower. 
 
 The Meldorf road, in black'ning line, full thirty 
 
 thousand tread — 
 From Worden came a slender troop — a maiden at 
 
 their head. 
 
 "Help us, O God, who dost all things in Heaven 
 
 and earth dispose" — 
 Wolf Isebrand dashes from his fort— two hundred 
 
 followed close. 
 
 124
 
 Sobald de Garr dat Wort man hor, riist' se sik Dilmarsch 
 
 machti sehr, and Klaus 
 
 Se riist' wul fofteindusent Mann, un trock daer de ^^^''^• 
 Heiloh her. 
 
 Un as de Garr bi den Konig keem : " Och Herr, 
 
 niin lewe Herr, 
 Wo liggt denn nu dat Ditmarscher Land, in 
 
 Heben oder op de Eer?" 
 
 " Das nich mit Keden ann Himmel bunn', op Eern 
 
 is dat to finn'." 
 Do sa de Junker Slenz mit Stolt: denn wiillt wi't 
 
 bald gewinn' ! 
 
 He leet de Trummelslager slan, de Faiinn de leet 
 
 he fleegn, 
 Se trocken ut aewer Weg un Steg bet se dat 
 
 Liindken seegn. — 
 
 " Nu wahr di Bur, de Garr de kumt," vun Moldorp 
 
 jagt se her, 
 De Helm un Panzers schint as Gold, as Siilwer 
 
 schint de Per. 
 
 Konig Hans un all wat Adel kumt mit groten Larm 
 
 un Schall, 
 De Wulf de lurt mit wiicke Burn bi Braken achtem 
 
 Wall. 
 
 Vun Moldorp trock dat swart hendal, wul dortig 
 
 dusent Mann : 
 Vun Worden il en liitten Tropp, en Maden gung 
 
 vaeran. 
 
 "So holp uns, Herr, du hest dat Rik in Himmel 
 
 un op Eer!" 
 Wulf Isebrand stortt ut de Schanz, twee Hunnert 
 
 achterher. 
 
 125
 
 Groth. 
 
 Dittnarsch And on the chain-coats rained the blows, and 
 and Klaus knights rolled in the sand; 
 
 And from the Geest the landsmen came; and the 
 flood poured o'er the land; 
 
 And down from Heaven came the snow; on horse 
 
 and man fell blows — 
 Dim grows the Moor; the Geest is white; but red 
 
 the passage grows. 
 
 The landsmen cry: "The horses slay; but riders 
 
 let us spare "; 
 And barefoot with their bills they sprang; and 
 
 their foes fell everywhere; 
 
 Till to the trenches driven down, all in the mire 
 
 they crawled; 
 Along the dike, both man and beast in hopeless 
 
 struggle sprawled. 
 
 "Now ware thee, Guard — the boor — he comes"; 
 
 he comes with Lord our God; 
 From Heaven above, the snow descends; from 
 
 under, mounts the flood. 
 
 And distant hamlets send their aid; and fainter 
 
 hearts grow bold — 
 "Now spare the horse, we'll ride them yet, but 
 
 strike the riders cold." 
 
 The mud wrapt many a knightly form once swathed 
 in silken fold; 
 
 At swine-moor now rests many a one whose cra- 
 dle was of gold. 
 
 No name so great in Holstein all, or Danish 
 
 marches proud — 
 There sleep they without cross or stone; there lie 
 
 they without shroud. 
 
 126
 
 Un op de Panzers fulln de Slag', un Riiters in den Ditmarsch 
 
 Sand ^'"^ Klaus 
 
 Un vun de Geest dar keemn de Burn, un de Floth ^'^ ' 
 keem aewert Land. 
 
 Un dal vun Heben full de Snee, op Per un Minsch 
 
 de Slag', 
 Blank war dat Moor un witt de Geest, un bl5di 
 
 warn de Steg'. 
 
 De Buern schregen : stekt de Per un schont de 
 
 Riiterknechts ! 
 Un sprungn barfot mit Kluwerstock un slogen 
 
 links un rechts. 
 
 Un reten inne Groben dal un stortten se in 
 
 Slamm, 
 Bet Minsch un Veh sik drangn un drungn all 
 
 langs den smallen Damm. 
 
 " Nu wahr di Garr, de Bur de kumt!" he kumt 
 
 mit Gott den Herrn, 
 Vun Heben fallt de Snee heraf, de Floth de stiggt 
 
 vun nerrn. 
 
 Un wit ut alle Dorpen her kumt Holp un frischen 
 
 Moth : 
 " Nu schont de Per— de ridt wi noch — un slat de 
 
 Riiters dot!" 
 
 In Slick un Slamm sack menni Herr, de sunst op 
 
 Siden leeg, 
 Int Swinmoor liggt nu menni Een, de harr en 
 
 golden Weeg. 
 
 Keen Nam so grot int Holstenland un nich in 
 
 Diinnemark, 
 Dar ligt se nu ahn Kriiz un Steen, dar ligt se ahn 
 
 en Sark. 
 127
 
 Groth. 
 
 Ditmarsch The Guard went down with Junker Schlenz— that 
 and Klaus man so fierce to dare; 
 
 The saddler tall fiom Wimersted, he came and 
 slew him there. 
 
 In direful need King John escaped the field — a 
 
 woefiil man; 
 At Meldorf left he beer and wine, and roast-joint 
 
 in the pan. 
 
 A feast prepared ! Through need and death, we, 
 
 Freedom's heirs, came out, 
 By Isebrand's aid, "the devil's own," and the 
 
 " Thousand-de'ils-redoubt." 
 
 THE FINAL OATH OF VASSALAGE. 
 (June 20, 1559.) 
 
 Not a spoken word — not a voice or sound — 
 Like sheep in the meadow stood they; 
 
 They stood like a riven forest there 
 Where Heide in ruins lay. 
 
 For, far and near, the best in the land 
 Were crushed like the reedy brake; 
 
 And the remnant waited on bended knee 
 Their oath to a lord to take. 
 
 And many a heart in its breast beat high; 
 
 Through the veins the blood coursed hot; 
 But their eyes looked over the land through tears, 
 
 And the dry lips murmured not. 
 
 For those who were foremost in peace and war — 
 
 Their chieftains wise and bold — 
 Those now on the field at Heide slept, 
 
 In the mire and ashes cold. 
 
 128
 
 De Garr de full mit Junker Slenz, so grot un stolt Ditmarsch 
 he weer, (^nd Klaus 
 
 De lange Reimer Wimersted, de keem un steek ^^°^"^- 
 em daer. 
 
 Mit nauer Noth, in Angst un Sorg keem Konig 
 
 Hans dervan ; 
 In Moldorp leet he Beer un Win un Bradens inne 
 
 Pann. 
 
 Dat gev en Fest! na Noth un Dod, un Friheit 
 
 weer dat Arf. 
 Dat mak de Diiwels Isebrand un de Dusentdiiwels- 
 
 warf ! 
 
 DE LETZTE FEIDE. 
 (1559. Juni 20.) 
 
 Nich en Wort war hort, nich en Stimm, nich en Lut, 
 
 Se stunn' as de Schap oppe Weid, 
 
 Se stunn' as de Rest vun en dalslan Holt, 
 
 To Foten de Triimmer vun Heid. 
 
 So wit man seeg, de Besten ut Land, 
 
 Dar weern se fuUn as dat Reeth : 
 
 Nu stunn noch de Rest un sack oppe Knee — 
 
 Se swert nu en Herrn den Eed. 
 
 Dar klopp wul menni Hart inne Bost, 
 
 Un dat Blot dat krop un steeg, 
 
 Doch de Ogen gungn mit Thran aewert Land, 
 
 Un de Mund weer stumm un sweeg. 
 
 Denn wit umher de Besten ut Land 
 
 In Freden un Strit vaerut, 
 
 De legen nu dot oppet Feld vun Heid 
 
 Un stumm iinner Asch un Schutt. 
 
 129
 
 Dittnarsch Not a sound was heard save the Haff' s wild roar, 
 and Klaus As the priest their troth records, 
 ^'^ ' While the people of Ditmarsch were prostrate there, 
 
 And the Eight-and-forty Lords. 
 
 Blue was the sky, and their tend' rest green 
 The woods and the meadows wore; 
 
 But the Ditmarschers watered the sod with tears 
 For the freedom they saw no more. 
 
 THE DEPUTY'S TWIN DAUGHTERS. 
 
 There's a laugh from the garden there hid by 
 
 quick-set — 
 'Tis the deputy's twins — one blonde, one brunette. 
 
 The mayor and clerk just now sauntered along. 
 Like beer-tun with crane that o'er it is swung; 
 
 How the brown beauty laughs, as she tosses her 
 
 hair, 
 "You'll be Madam Crookback, mind that, in a 
 
 year ! ' ' 
 
 And the blonde claps her hands as she, laugh- 
 ing, replies : 
 
 "And you'll have old Dumpy as your wedded 
 prize !" 
 
 I thought, as I peeped through the hedge at the 
 
 pair, 
 Which most I would like to be — clerk or the 
 
 mayor. 
 
 130
 
 Groth. 
 
 Nich en Lut war liort as dat Haf iiii de Floth, Dihnarsch 
 
 Un de Prester leet se swern, ^"^ Klaus 
 
 Oppe Knee dar leeg dat Ditmarscher Volk 
 Un de Acht un veertig Herrn. 
 
 Noch schint de Heben der blau hendal 
 Un gron dat Holt un de Eer : 
 De Ditmarschen fallt de Thran int Gras, 
 Un de Friheit seht se ni mehr ! 
 
 VULLMACHT SIN TWESCHENS. 
 
 Wat gluddert in Blomhof un lacht achtern Tun ? 
 De Vullmacht sin Tweschens, de Witt un de Brun. 
 
 De Vagt un de Schriwer gungn eben verbi, 
 Weer jiis as en Beertiinn mit Haenken derbi. 
 
 Wa lach do de Brune un schiittel de Haar : 
 Du kriggst mul de Krumme, schast sehn, noch 
 vuntjahr ! 
 
 Wa lach doch de Witte un klapp inne Hann' : 
 Du kriggst mal de Dicke, de Dicke ton Mann ! — 
 
 Ik kik daer de Paten un heff mi bedacht : 
 
 Wat much ik denn, Schriwer wen — oder de Vagt?
 
 FRITZ REUTER'S 
 LIFE AND WORKS. 
 
 "Qui vir, et dialectum patriam et sensus animi 
 patrios callet; queni eundem Gratice ipsae Musis 
 conjunctas jocis miscere seria docuerunt; cujus 
 scriptoris quum alia opera turn etiam librum 
 aureolum huncce Olle Camellen, Germania 
 laudat universa." 
 
 FRIENDLY Kiel critic of 
 my first article (upon Groth, 
 Ditmarsch, and Plattdeutsch) 
 seems to think that there is 
 a thread of half-apology run- 
 ning through it in behalf of the Low German, 
 and ascribes it, in a charitable spirit, to my 
 wish to overcome the supercilious "pride 
 of the English race" toward a kindred but 
 humbler tongue — a poor cousin, as it were. 
 It may be that there was such a tinge un- 
 consciously given to the essay; but if any 
 prejudice exists in the American mind as 
 to Low German (a premise I do not wish 
 to concede), it has assuredly sprung from 
 exotic seeds planted there by fastidious High 
 Germans. There is a class of Germans who, 
 in discussing Plattdeutsch with Americans, 
 
 133
 
 Fritz leave an incorrect impression as to the social 
 life and ^i^^i^^ of the less cultivated tongue, not so 
 Works. much in the facts they offer as in the im- 
 pression left to be derived from those facts. 
 There is still another class, who (not being 
 quite at ease as to their own educational 
 ground) fancy that any suspicion of the platt 
 in their language would be a social blot — 
 a proof of vulgarity. Of this order was 
 that lady introduced in a modern German 
 novel, who assumed to be an oracle in cul- 
 ture by reason of being the daughter of 
 a professor, and who reproved her docile 
 husband for saying hippodrom, instead of 
 hippotraum, ' ' because di-om was so platt ! ' ' 
 No language or dialect is in itself mean; 
 nor can any dialect beget vulgarity; on the 
 other hand, vulgarity degrades any language 
 it employs, no matter how noble it may have 
 been in origin. Tuscan has, ever since 
 Dante and Boccaccio, been the cultivated 
 language of Italy; but for all that, the proud 
 Venetian retained his own soft dialect. It 
 accompanied him everywhere; even in his 
 courts, where the pleadings were entered in 
 Tuscan, the arguments of the advocates were 
 in Venetian; and it proved the chief feature 
 of as bright a period of the drama as Italy 
 ever saw, when Goldoni wrote down his 
 
 134
 
 plays in his native idiom. Under such cir- 
 cumstances, no speech, or phase of speech, 
 could be anything but dignified. Broad 
 Scotch has never been relegated to an in- 
 ferior social position. It has been the garb 
 of lyric and elegiac poetry; it has been the 
 solvent for wit in the drawing-room; it has 
 intensified the humorous sally of the advo- 
 cate; and has furnished its harmony to the 
 lecture-room of the professor. So much for 
 the dignity of dialect, provided, of course, 
 we take dialect in its scientific and good 
 sense, and do not confound it with disinte- 
 grating language. A bronze medal may not 
 be of greater intrinsic bullion value than 
 a debased coin; but, in that it is genuine, 
 it is meritorious, which the greasy coin is 
 not. Chinook is a tatter fit only for the 
 worst days of Babel; Pigeon-English is dis- 
 gusting — Confucius himself would be con- 
 temptible if he attempted to converse in 
 it. If ever a Chinese admiral blockades our 
 harbor, and dictates a surrender in Pigeon- 
 English, (and who can say what is in store 
 for us?) he would probably be listened to 
 with inextinguishable laughter. 
 
 Slang is distorted metaphor and corrupt 
 speech at the same time, both of which vices, 
 like a pair of bow legs, give it a harlequin, 
 
 135 
 
 Fritz 
 Renter's 
 Life and 
 Works.
 
 Fritz pigeon-toed air. Bret Harte's "Heathen 
 Life and Chinee" is simply a well-arranged chain of 
 Works. slang; and he ought to have been ashamed 
 to offer it in pawn for fame, when he had far 
 better stuff in his scrip at the time. James 
 Russell Lowell's " Biglow Papers" may be 
 considered partly in the light of dialect, 
 partly as an attempt to represent a peculiar 
 local pronunciation, and partly as the angu- 
 lar wit of one class of American society — 
 not precisely slang, and yet which looks 
 at times very like the boldest order of 
 slang. Artemus Ward wrote the patois of 
 the billiard-room and country hotel — an 
 argot that would, and did, enable him to 
 discuss the broadest questions of philosophy, 
 politics, and art with the average crowd for 
 which one has the bar-keeper ' ' set up the 
 drinks." 
 
 But I must return to my subject, having 
 announced that my platform (a vile Ameri- 
 canism, i}tei7i kicler Fre^ind') contains a plank 
 for the due support of the social and literary 
 dignity of all twigs of the great Teutonic or 
 Gothic branch of articulate speech, whether 
 written or unwritten. And, in one respect 
 at least, I would suggest an advantage which 
 the German has over the English limb of the 
 Teutonic tree : when High German wears 
 
 136
 
 out in spots, as all languages are fated to Fritz 
 do by constant use, the High German has ^^y-^ ^„^ 
 a choice lot of archaic material at hand, in Works. 
 the shape of Plattdeutsch, with which he 
 can mend his tongue — expressions, phrases, 
 constructions known to the elder Cethegi 
 of the race, which can be used without 
 violence to taste. But when our English 
 tongue rusts out, we have nothing where- 
 with to patch it, except chunks of slang, or 
 euphuistic soft-solder imported from Gaul. 
 It is interesting to notice the dainty efforts 
 of the Laureate, now and then, to substitute 
 an ancient word in lieu of a trite , modern 
 phrase, like old tiles set in a new chimney- 
 piece; but it is evidence that the language is 
 disintegrating. 
 
 In the former article I undertook to treat 
 of thought worked into a quaint and novel 
 language, under peaceful auspices, in "a 
 land where all things always seemed the 
 same," and where the poet would appear 
 to have drawn the georgic tranquillity into 
 his blood, and to have reinfused it into his 
 verse and prose — a sort of Teutonic Theoc- 
 ritus, in fact. 
 
 Now, I must speak of a widely different 
 character, laboring, if not in the same field, 
 137
 
 Fritz at least just over the hedge, and obtaining 
 Life and ^ different success, although reaching it by 
 Works. the same paths. 
 
 Groth's Qicickborn is a felicitous chain of 
 lyrics; and the work may fairly be placed as 
 the first serious employment of the dialect in 
 which it was composed for two centuries, if 
 we leave out of consideration the dilettant 
 efforts of Voss and a few others, who, in 
 times past, for amusement, noted the possi- 
 ble capacity of the common tongue for liter- 
 ary effort. 
 
 Groth has written prose tales; but these 
 efforts, so far as concerns the matter of them, 
 might as well have been idylls; for verse 
 would have suited eminently their pastoral 
 character. 
 
 On the other hand, Fritz Reuter first ap- 
 peared as a writer of verse. But though his 
 Lmischoi 71)1 Rimels won great success, and 
 brought him a degree of provincial fume, 
 I consider that collection as no evidence 
 of brilliancy that would give promise of his 
 future work. It was, as he says, an "assem- 
 bly of street urchins," amusing from their 
 dirty faces and mirthful ways, but with noth- 
 ing to indicate what they would be when 
 grown to manhood. They were like tavern 
 signs, on which a great painter may have
 
 labored before his genius had been hailed by 
 the world of culture. 
 
 And although Fritz Reuter wrote poems, 
 and long ones too, it is as the prose sketch- 
 writer that he is to be deemed most suc- 
 cessful. This is not to disparage his poetic 
 talent, which blossoms out of everything he 
 said or wrote. It is simply an attempt to 
 establish an approximative standpoint from 
 which to consider him in discussion. If 
 Burns were to be taken as a Scotch type of 
 Groth, the Ettrick Shepherd might bear some 
 resemblance to Reuter. 
 
 Fritz 
 Reuter 's 
 Life and 
 Works. 
 
 Fritz Reuter was born in Stavenhagen, 
 Mecklenburg-Schwerin, November 7, 18 10. 
 In the Rathhaus, where Fritz first saw light, 
 the enthusiastic burghers, in 1873, placed a 
 commemorative tablet to his honor, having, 
 in 1865, already planted a "Reuter Oak." 
 
 The town is in the midst of a flat country, 
 here and there a bit of rising ground called 
 ostentatiously a mountain, with little lakes as 
 resting-places for the sluggish streams. The 
 inhabitants, both gentle and simple, have 
 their interests mainly centred in the crops, 
 wheat being the staple — a land of slow- 
 moving, reflective, perhaps a little sly, peas- 
 antry; men loath to grasp at new ideas, with 
 139
 
 Fritz a ponderously careful tread, as if progress 
 Life and ^^^^ being made over wide furrows, with 
 Works. constant danger to the grain below. 
 
 Stavenhagen {^plattd. Stemhagen) was ruled 
 in those days, and for generations thereafter 
 (1805-45), by Fritz's father, as Biirgermei- 
 stcr (a sort of mayor, with certain criminal 
 and other conciliatory jurisdiction). Fritz's 
 mother was one of those typical, patient inva- 
 lids, full of kindness and cultivation — a queen 
 faineante in her household, carrying for 
 sceptre her knitting-needles, regarded by all, 
 high and low, with affection and chivalrous 
 courtesy^ elicited by her helplessness and 
 bodily suffering. It was probably to her 
 nature that Fritz owed his literary leanings, 
 his powers of humorous observation, and his 
 tact and gentle charity in expression. It 
 certainly was not from his father that he drew 
 any of these gifts. His father was a shrewd, 
 common-sense official, full of plans which he 
 carried out with success, bound up in his 
 daily life and duties, and conscientious in 
 performance — a man of stalwart power and 
 passions, filling his part in life amply and 
 creditably. 
 
 Fritz has, in Ut de Franzosentid, given 
 us a vivid picture of life at Stavenhagen in 
 his infancy. With a masterly hand, he has 
 
 140
 
 drawn for us an outline of the Amtshaupt- 
 mann (Prefect of District) Weber, a grand 
 old figure, something of a tyrant in his way, 
 looked up to by both burgher and peasant, 
 and of his wife a worthy counterpart. Then 
 there is an "Uncle Herse," who, however, 
 was no uncle at all, but who had that make- 
 up of character and habits which brings the 
 child inevitably to claim some irresponsible 
 relationship with him — a man who was clever, 
 who knew what the birds said, and could 
 answer them — a treasure to any community 
 of children anywhere. Then there was Fritz's 
 mother's sister, " Tante Christiane " ; there 
 was Mademoiselle Westphalen; there was the 
 ' ' Watchmaker Droz, ' ' a real Frenchman (aus 
 Neufchdtel), employed to teach Fritz a proper 
 accent. 
 
 Fritz did not, for his first years, attend the 
 public school, but took his lessons with his 
 sister Lisette, and his two cousins, Ernst 
 and August. Finally he went to a girls' 
 school — "an owl among the crows." Uncle 
 Herse taught him arithmetic and drawing; 
 the town apothecary, Latin and history; his 
 father, geography; and so his training went 
 on, in a straggling way, until a theological 
 student appeared in the house as a regular 
 pedagogue. When Fritz was fifteen, he lost 
 141 
 
 Fritz 
 Renter's 
 Life and 
 Works.
 
 Fritz his mother by death, and at about the same 
 
 Life and ^^"^^ ^^^ placed at school in the little town of 
 
 Works. Friedland, Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Of his life 
 
 there (it lasted three years), there is a quaint 
 
 picture drawn in Ddrchlauchting . 
 
 At this time Fritz had thoughts of becom- 
 ing a painter; his more prosaic father pre- 
 ferred the law. Neither was right; but Fritz 
 gave to art a better chance than to jurispru- 
 dence. He was sent to the gymnasium at 
 Parchim. In 1831, he went to the University 
 at Rostock, "the up-and-down jump for 
 every true Mecklenburger," as he terms it. 
 In half a year he left Rostock for Jena, and 
 became an altogether too gay member of the 
 Burschenschaft there. It was here that he 
 committed the offence which led to his sub- 
 sequent conviction of an attempt at high 
 treason, sentence to death, followed by com- 
 mutation to imprisonment for life, then soft- 
 ened to thirty years, and finally remitted, 
 after he had served seven years of misery, 
 and had lost the flower of his days in aimless 
 trifling within prison-walls. 
 
 It was the misfortune of the young man 
 that in those days the German governments 
 comprehended so little the radical leaven 
 which must, at a certain age, work into a 
 ferment in the veins of most educated youth. 
 
 142
 
 Had Fritz played the same class of political 
 pranks at an English university, perhaps the 
 college dons would have looked after him 
 with some degree of nervousness, and would 
 have given him an admonition now and then; 
 but to have ranked him as a criminal would 
 have been, in their eyes, downright absurd- 
 ity. In an American college, such talk or 
 conduct might have brought a jocular criti- 
 cism from the rhetorical professor, who, with 
 his gibes, would have patronized the sopho- 
 . moric reformer into conservatism. Dilettant 
 radicalism has long been regarded by English 
 and American professors as an amiable drone- 
 bee in the youthful bonnet, that must finish 
 up a certain amount of buzzing before it 
 assumes a duly conservative torpidity, or is 
 kicked out of the hive altogether by ideas oi 
 a honey-gathering class. 
 
 The Germanic authorities in those days 
 had, however, the blood of Kotzebue in their 
 eyes, and they fancied every top-booted, vel- 
 vet-coated, be-ribboned student to be a pos- 
 sible Karl Sand. They make cabinet min- 
 isters out of such stuff nowadays. Witness 
 Baron Haymerle. 
 
 The prominent facts of Fritz's trouble are 
 these : There was found to be a student con- 
 spiracy ramifying all the universities. Some 
 143 
 
 Fritz 
 R enter ' s 
 Life and 
 Works.
 
 Fritz silly fellows did actually commit an overt 
 Life and ^'^^^ ^^^ sedition at Frankfurt. Fritz was 
 Works. captured in Berlin (he had left Jena, and had 
 gone thither to study law), was tried, and 
 commenced his seven years' life in the differ- 
 ent military prisons (Festungen) to which he 
 was relegated, finally winding up, as an act 
 of grace, at Domitz, under his own Grand 
 Duke; and at last, being freed altogether, on 
 the death of the King of Prussia — a broken 
 young man, with a passion for strong drink 
 (Trunksucht), that never again entirely for- 
 sook him, but was the vampire of his life and 
 powers. 
 
 In 1840, at the instance of his father, he 
 went to Heidelberg to study jurisprudence; 
 but, owing to his unhappy tendency to alco- 
 holism, he was recalled, and started afresh 
 on a new career as a farmer. Herein he 
 might have succeeded but for his disease. 
 At this time he met his future wife, Luise 
 Kuntze. In 1844 he completed his educa- 
 tion as a farmer; but his Stromtid was still 
 a failure, for the old reason ; and in 1845 
 his father died, having finally despaired of 
 his son's reform, and making in his will a 
 guarded testamentary trust, by the terms of 
 which Fritz was not to touch his share of the 
 succession until he had shown signs of free- 
 
 144
 
 dom from the drink trouble for a term of 
 years. Fritz never abstained for the period, 
 and was never let into the possession of the 
 fund. 
 
 He had one good friend, however, who 
 held him patiently up during this period of 
 his life, one Fritz Peters, to whose sympathy 
 and care he probably owed his life, and to 
 whom the public possibly owe his works. 
 At this time he commenced to write — trifles, 
 maybe, but it was a training for success. 
 
 In those days broke out the 1848 excite- 
 ment. Of course the old Freiheit must be- 
 gan to effervesce in the veins of Renter, and 
 he attempted what we Americans would call 
 "going into politics." He was a deputy at 
 the Town's Diet at Giistrow, and then a dele- 
 gate to the Assembly for both Mecklenburgs; 
 but the movement never came to anything, 
 and indeed, that sort of business was not in 
 Renter's vein, as an incident would seem to 
 show. He was acting as president of a Re- 
 form League established at Stavenhagen. Of 
 course the members had an agricultural slow- 
 ness of comprehension. This was too much 
 for the patience of so nervous a politician as 
 Fritz, and amid the regrets of the assembly, 
 he laid down the gavel. He was pressed to 
 give his reasons for declining the office. The 
 145 
 
 Fritz 
 Ji enter's 
 Life a7id 
 Works.
 
 Fritz good-natured burghers desired, if possible, to 
 Life and conform to his views, and retain him. But 
 Works. Fritz made for the door, and reaching it, 
 shouted, ' ' You wish to know why I leave ? ' ' 
 There was a general stillness of expectation. 
 "Ji sid mi all tau dumm, ji Schapskopp " 
 (you are all too stupid for me, you sheep- 
 heads), and vanished. Such a man was not 
 stuff for a popular orator; at least, he would 
 make small headway here in a Sand-lot dem- 
 onstration. 
 
 At this time he started in vocation as a 
 private teacher. Still the old trouble. His 
 bride then married him, in hopes to reform 
 him, and in 1851 they commenced life to- 
 gether at Treptow. The wife seems to have 
 been a real helpmate and sympathizer. She 
 never was able to say that she had driven off 
 the arch-enemy, but her presence probably 
 kept the demon at bay most of the time. 
 
 Now it was that the poor fellow commenced 
 his work as an author; and to do so in the 
 projected manner, it became almost necessary 
 for him to relearn his Plattdeutsch. The tri- 
 fles he had hitherto produced, of a doubtful 
 merit and merely local interest, were in High 
 German. Klaus Groth's Ouickborn had but 
 just appeared, and it struck the needy peda- 
 gogue that something of a similar character 
 
 146
 
 in the Mecklenburg dialect would be popular, 
 at least within the boundaries of the duchies. 
 In that country there is a great degree of 
 popularity given to what we might call 
 "yarns," for the want of a better word 
 (^Geschichte). Fritz had been in the habit of 
 versifying these, and having collected a 
 quantity, launched out with great rashness 
 in business, as both publisher and author. 
 These first endeavors he styled L'duschen un 
 Rimels — " a mob of little street urchins, who, 
 in ruddy health, tumble over one another, 
 unrestrained as to aesthetic poses — jolly faces, 
 laughing out from under tow locks, and 
 finding, at times, their fun in the world's 
 folly." The success of this venture was 
 wonderful. The edition, consisting of twelve 
 hundred copies, was sold oh' briskly; and 
 though his reputation did not yet pass be- 
 yond his native Plattdeutsch land, yet his 
 success as an author was established. This 
 work has a quaint dedication to his old, well- 
 tried friend, Fritz Peters. 
 
 De Reis' nah Belligen followed — a story, 
 in verse, of the adventures of Vadder Witt 
 and Vadder Swart, two respectable peasants, 
 who with their sons, Corl and Fritz, project 
 and partially make a journey to Belgium, 
 for purposes of culture and travelled experi- 
 147 
 
 Fritz 
 Renter'' s 
 Life and 
 Works.
 
 Fritz ence. The excursion is one of ludicrous 
 life and JT^isfortune, winding up in the poUce station 
 Works. in Berhn, whence the party return home, to 
 be tongue-castigated by their less adventur- 
 ous and more conservative wives. There is 
 the thread of a love story, with Fritz and 
 the sexton's daughter for hero and heroine, 
 which terminates happily on the arrival home 
 of the travelled party. 
 
 At about this time (1855) our author be- 
 gan the publication of a weekly journal, 
 Unterhaltu7igsblatt fi'ir beide Mecklenburg 
 und Pominern. It was in this that he first 
 introduced to his readers his most distinct 
 and remarkable character, the jovial " z'wz- 
 7neritirter Entspekter Brdsig,^' who wrote 
 characteristic letters to the journal about 
 matters and things of interest to himself 
 and the public. To any admirer of Dick- 
 ens, who has not also read Reuter, it would 
 be a pleasure worth a whole philological 
 journey through High German, Low Ger- 
 man, and Messingsch, to shake hands with 
 the Inspector. It is impossible to give in 
 any language but his the cream of his utter- 
 ances. His style is his own. However, the 
 character was, at this period, only outlined, 
 and it was not until some time later that 
 Briisig became an active mover in Renter's
 
 fiction. On the German stage he became, Fritz 
 eventually, a leading character — as marked, zjfeand 
 as definite, as our American "Joshua Whit- Works. 
 comb. ' ' 
 
 The journal lived but a year. The pub- 
 lisher left his affairs in disorder, and de- 
 camped for America. Fritz at this time took 
 up his residence in New Brandenburg. 
 
 His next production was a tragic sort of 
 idyll, KeiJi Hilsing (No Housing — Anglice, 
 no right of settlement in the parish). It 
 was, in his own estimation, his chief work. 
 A young peasant, desirous of marrying the 
 girl whom he loves, is thwarted in procuring 
 the legal solemnization of the marriage, for 
 the reason that he is unable to furnish the 
 necessary evidence that they will not become 
 a charge on the public; it being necessary, 
 under the local laws, that the pair should 
 have a legal abode, and he employment. He 
 is prevented from this by the machinations 
 of the young Squire, who has cast covetous 
 eyes on the poor girl. The impatient desires 
 of the peasant lovers getting the better of 
 their prudence, the time approaches when 
 their indiscretion becomes known. The young 
 aristocrat and the peasant have a dispute ; 
 the peasant strikes the gentleman dead, and 
 disappears as an outlaw; the young mother 
 149
 
 Fritz becomes an outcast, and goes crazy, and her 
 Life mid i^^^^it boy, at her death, falls to the protec- 
 Works. tion of the old servant, once the friend of the 
 father. The father returns from America, 
 and hears the story of his bride's death, and 
 takes the child with him to his new home. 
 The moral of the tale is the working of a 
 quasi system of villeinage, which takes from 
 the serf his freedom while he is practically at 
 least adscriphis glebce. While it is a possible, 
 yet it can hardly be a typical, state of affairs, 
 even in Mecklenburg. 
 
 Ut de Franzosentid next followed. This is 
 in prose; and for freshness and delicacy of 
 character-drawing there can be nothing su- 
 perior in sketch-writing. Each person stands 
 out as plain as if morally photographed, and 
 there is variety enough, there are people 
 enough and material enough, to furnish up a 
 three-volume novel. 
 
 There are no finer gentlemen in all Thack- 
 eray than Amtshauptmann Weber and Colo- 
 nel von Toll. Uncle Herse would add a 
 charm to Pickwick, if he only could be post- 
 humously inserted, as binders sometimes in- 
 sert a rare plate in a work for which it was 
 not originally meant. 
 
 Mademoiselle Westphalen is as sweet a 
 woman as ever was; and the peasant char- 
 
 150
 
 acters, headed by the miller, the rear brought 
 up by the " Uhrmacher Droz," in his French 
 regimentals, are wonderful In their way. The 
 miller's daughter is a gem. In short, Fritz 
 has cast a halo about the picture of his child- 
 hood; and in the centre of it he has placed 
 his sick mother, knitting away, and receiving 
 the chivalrous homage of the old Amtshaupt- 
 mann. 
 
 Hanne N'ute (short for Master Johann 
 Snut), or de liltte Piidel, is "'w<? Vagel un 
 Minschengeschicht,'" or tale of men and birds, 
 which, if properly read to children, with be- 
 coming attention to dramatic recitation and 
 onomatopy, in giving the human dialogue 
 and the bird business, would prove a genuine 
 delight to any healthy crowd of young per- 
 sons we know — provided, of course, they 
 knew the tongue. 
 
 The " Little Poodle " (so called on account 
 of her curly head) is a good little child of a 
 poverty-stricken family, the station in life of 
 which puts her socially beneath Hanne, the 
 son of the village smith. She is out with the 
 children, tending the geese, when the old gray 
 gander takes it into his head to bite the 
 baker, a well-to-do but bad man. The surly 
 baker, indignant at the laughter excited, visits 
 his wrath upon the innocent Little Poodle, 
 151 
 
 Fritz 
 Renter's 
 Life and 
 Works.
 
 Fritz when Hanne appears as her defender, and 
 Life and ii^tervenes with a blow to the discomfited 
 Works. baker. Hanne "gets it," on his return home, 
 for his heroism. The course of true love is 
 broken by the disparity of social status, and 
 by Hanne' s departure on his Wandering Year 
 as apprentice. 
 
 He takes leave of his friends, and among 
 them, of the old rector, with whom he has 
 a glass of wine, and who breaks into a 
 spasm of enthusiasm over his own student 
 life at Jena, to the great terror of his wife, 
 who fears he may have taken a drop too 
 much. 
 
 Hanne sets out. The birds convene; the 
 duties are assigned as may best befit the 
 different feathered families; and under the 
 leadership of the solemn Adebor (stork), a 
 general campaign of observation is entered 
 upon for the protection of the Little Poodle's 
 love interests. Hanne is exposed to various 
 trials. Among his experiences, he is employed 
 by a buxom young widow, who tempts him 
 to stop and take up the abandoned sledge of 
 her good man. She attacks him, after the 
 manner of her sex, with good eatables; she 
 pours out for him the most enticing cups 
 of chocolate; she potters about him as he 
 drinks it. 
 
 152
 
 " Un leggt vor idel Trurigkeit 
 
 Sick sacht in Hannern sinen Arm 
 
 Un de oil Jung' ; de trost't un ei't 
 Un dorbi ward em gor tau warm — 
 
 'T is maglich von de Schockelor." 
 
 (And leans, her sorrow moving her, 
 So gently back on Hanne's arm : 
 
 And he — he plays the comforter, 
 
 And grows, unwitting, all too warm — 
 
 Quite likely 'twas the chocolate.) 
 
 But he is reminded by a sudden strain of the 
 nightingale, who is in the bird conspiracy in 
 favor of the Poodle, of his sweetheart at 
 home, and forthwith he starts up, tells the 
 widow the truth, and quits her with just as 
 little resentment in her heart as it is possible 
 for a true woman to have under the circum- 
 stances. He reaches the Rhine, and there 
 he comes to grief. He is arrested for the 
 murder of a poor Jew pedler, on the circum- 
 stance that some of the Jew's property is 
 found on him. How the birds turn in and 
 help him; how the widow befriends him; how 
 the rich baker is found to be the murderer; 
 and how Hanne and the Poodle become 
 united, and how the stately Adebor looks 
 down the chimney of the newly married pair, 
 
 Fritz 
 Renter^ s 
 Life and 
 Works. 
 
 ' Dunn seggt hei : ' So is dit 
 Adjiis! Wenn't Friihjohr wedder kihrt 
 
 153
 
 Fritz Denn bring' ich Jug wat mit. 
 
 Renter's Paggt up! Dat sail v5r Allen 
 
 Works Grossmutting Snutsch gefallen,' " 
 
 — it being the custom in North Germany (as 
 also detailed by Hans Andersen) for the 
 storks to supply any call for babies, they, as 
 importers, having a "corner" in that trade. 
 
 He also wrote at this period (1858-63) 
 Ut viine Festimgstid. This pathetic comic 
 history of his prison life shows the man in a 
 charming light. There is no bitterness in it 
 — nothing but gentleness and humor. The 
 miHtary officers with whom he came in con- 
 tact are all treated with fairness. There is 
 no petty grumbling; and while the account 
 of the manly Colonel, a compatriot who was 
 so thoughtful of the poor boy's situation, as 
 related in the first part of his story, has 
 something tragic in it, the scene of the kind, 
 superannuated old commandant in charge of 
 Domitz, and his lovely family, would strike 
 any one as the perfection of homely humor. 
 It is quite likely that perhaps the military 
 officers of that day were not as apprehensive 
 of political danger as the civilians, and were, 
 therefore, possibly less given to cruelty in 
 the line of their duty. 
 
 The Olle Ca^nellen series is probably the 
 most pretentious of all Fritz Reuter's pro- 
 
 154
 
 ductions; and whatever criticisms might be 
 thrown out as to the ' ' sketchiness ' ' of the 
 stories, they are no weaker in that respect 
 than the corresponding period in the labors 
 of Dickens and Thackeray. It is on a plane 
 with these two authors that we would place 
 Fritz. His career did not extend as far, 
 but his efforts are worthy the same order 
 of praise. Ut mine Stromtid has in it the 
 germ of a new "Vicar of Wakefield." There 
 is purity of delineation in every character. 
 Dickens could never draw a gentleman well; 
 Thackeray found it hard to color up his lady 
 portraitures with proper intensity; but poor 
 Fritz had a tact in both lines, which, if de- 
 veloped, would have made his books some- 
 thing wonderful. 
 
 After reading Olle Camellen, one cannot 
 but feel that in those little villages of Meck- 
 lenburg there are people the equal of any 
 Scotch Covenanter or New England Puri- 
 tan for rabid devotion to principle, and that 
 throughout the wheat-fields, and along the 
 little ponds they call lakes, there is enough 
 kindness of heart and delicacy of feeling to 
 civilize all Russia and Turkey, if it could 
 only be distilled into them. Germany will 
 never drop to pieces as long as there are 
 Havermanns and his kind to bind the sheaves 
 
 Fritz 
 Renter's 
 Life and 
 Works. 
 
 155
 
 Fritz together. A country that has so much force 
 Life and ^^ character, moraUty, and shrewdness, ly- 
 Works. ing, as it were, fallow in every farm and 
 village, cannot be wondered at that it flings 
 into fame in each generation its full measure 
 of great men, and that when its enemies 
 commence to swarm, it finds a hero in every 
 flaxen poll summoned from the plough or the 
 stable. 
 
 As long as the Plattdeutsch oak flourishes, 
 and the Plattdeutsch speech is uttered, so 
 long will there be a German empire and a 
 German voice in the councils of worldly gov- 
 ernment. Fritz Renter lived to see his writ- 
 ings eagerly read from one end of Germany 
 to the other. He lived to enjoy the honors 
 of aristocratic governments, without yielding 
 a jot of his independence; to find his boyish 
 vagary of a united Germany a reality, and to 
 see the colors, for the wearing of which he 
 took such severe punishment in his youth, 
 the emblem of German victory. He lived 
 to receive the favor and encomium of the 
 great German Chancellor, whose wit and 
 humor, and whose appreciation of wit and 
 humor and their attendant pathos, are said to 
 be as profound as his statesmanship. When 
 the Franco- Prussian war broke out, Renter 
 was a practical patriot to the marrow, albeit 
 
 156
 
 there is a tenderness in the little lyrics which Fritz 
 he then wrote which shows how deeply he jjfg^and 
 appreciated the private woes that find their Works. 
 hot-bed growth on the field of battle. In 
 the latter years of his life, however, his mal- 
 ady crowded more persistently upon him. 
 His later volumes, while marked at times 
 with flashes of the fire that makes his writ- 
 ings so charming, still show that the foul 
 fiend was at his elbow more frequently than 
 ever. The ' ' Journey to Constantinople ' ' is 
 a bit of humorous romance, combining his 
 own souvenirs of the tour made by him in 
 1864 with the comic adventures of two rival 
 Mecklenburg families, who are supposed to 
 make the excursion. It is only a half suc- 
 cess, though in it there are still traces of 
 the old spirit. Ddrchldiichting (His Little 
 Serene Highness) also appeared at about 
 this time. 
 
 In 1874 he died, in the full enjoyment of a 
 p'ersonal and literary popularity which only 
 genius and national sympathy could explain. 
 He had acquired a moderate fortune by his 
 works, and had been settled for some years 
 before his death at Eisenach. The disease 
 which ended his life was some affection of the 
 heart; but his morbid passion for alcohol was 
 probably the remote cause. 
 157
 
 Fritz I have not been able, in the foreefoinpf 
 
 Reuter'' s • • . o & 
 
 Life and slight biography, and in the one of Groth, 
 
 Works. to give a clear outline of the Groth and Reu- 
 ter influence upon German social literature. 
 The limits of a magazine article have already- 
 been too far trespassed upon. Nor have I, in 
 either of the two Plattdeutsch essays, paid 
 such regard to the bibliography of the two 
 authors as, in these days of exact informa- 
 tion, befits a review in any branch of litera- 
 ture. I must, however, refer the reader to 
 Adolph Wilbrandt's biography of Reuter, 
 to which I am indebted for most of the facts 
 of Renter's life. If one were to give an ac- 
 count of the Plattdeutsch reading clubs and 
 social organizations that have sprung into 
 existence in the last twenty years, it would 
 be almost a literary history of North Ger- 
 many. No such enthusiasm for any given 
 branch of literature has been stirred since 
 the days when Petrarch, Boccaccio, and 
 their contemporaries labored for the spread 
 of classical learning. 
 
 I must close this article, however, by say- 
 ing, that if it seems to an English reader 
 bold and unwarrantable in its enthusiasm, it 
 is because I cannot bring Reuter out of the 
 field in which he has flourished, any more 
 than I could transplant to California the oak 
 
 158
 
 which flourishes in his honor at Stavenhagen, Fritz 
 One can bring across the ocean the hard, y^y^ ^„^ 
 impenetrable pillars of Egypt; but the oak- Works. 
 tree drops his leaves, and seems, after trans- 
 portation, to be nothing but firewood. 
 
 159
 
 SELECTION FROM "HANNE NUTE." 
 
 THE PLATTDEUTSCH OAK. 
 
 I know of an oak by the shore of the sea; 
 
 Through his boughs the north winds make moan; 
 High tosseth his mighty crown, proudly and free, 
 The growth of full thousand years gone. 
 No human hand 
 His glories planned; 
 He stretcheth from Pommern to Netherland. 
 
 I know an oak-tree, all gnarly and scarred, 
 
 Whose roots bill or axe never harmed; 
 His bark is so rough and his timber so hard, 
 As though by some ban he were charmed. 
 But naught recks he; 
 A grand old tree 
 For another full thousand years he'll be. 
 
 The monarch, and with him his stately dame 
 
 And his daughter, walk on the strand; 
 " This oak, how mighty of girth and frame, 
 With branches that shadow the land ! 
 Whose watch and ward 
 Hath so kept guard, 
 That his verdure thus gayly flaunts heavenward? " 
 
 As the King now seeketh an answer there, 
 
 Before him a working lad stands : 
 "Oh, Sire, the tree hatli had little care 
 
 At yours, or the Queen's, or my Princess' hands: 
 
 1 60
 
 SELECTION FROM "HANNE NUTE. 
 
 DE EIKBOM. 
 
 Ik weit einen Eikbom, de steiht an de See, 
 
 De Nurdstorm, de brus't in sin Knast, 
 Stolz reckt hei de machtige Kron in de Hob ; 
 So is dat all dusend Johr west; 
 Kein Minschenhand, 
 De hett em plant't; 
 Hei reckt sik von Pommern bet Nedderland. 
 
 Ik weit einen Eikbom vull Knorrn un vull Knast, 
 
 Up den'n fott kein Bil nich un Aext. 
 Sin Bork is so rug un sin Holt is so fast. 
 As wir hei mal bannt un behext. 
 Nicks hett em dahn; 
 Hei ward noch stahn; 
 Wenn wedder mal dusend von Johren vergahn. 
 
 Un de Konig un sine Fru Konigin 
 
 Un sin Dochter, de gahn an den Strand : 
 "Wat deiht dat for'n machtigen Eikbom sin, 
 De sin Telgen reckt awer dat Land ? 
 Wer hett em plegt, 
 Wer hett em hegt, 
 Dat hei sine Blader so lustig rogt?" 
 
 Un as nu de Konig so Antwurt begehrt, 
 
 Trett vor em en junge Gesell : 
 " Herr Konig, Ji hewwt Jug jo siis nich d'riim schert, 
 
 Jug Fru nich un Juge Mamsell ! 
 i6i
 
 Fritz No gentle folk 
 
 Renter's E'er watched the oak, 
 
 L.ye an y^ guard it as sapling from harmful stroke. 
 
 Works. 
 
 "And now, the lusty old giant up-towers; 
 
 We Commons have tended him long; 
 
 The oak-tree, my Liege, the oak-tree is ours, 
 
 Of true Plattdeutsch nature and tongue : 
 
 No courtly wile 
 
 Hath grafted guile 
 
 On a growth ne'er fostered by royal smile." 
 
 Straightway the King's daughter gives him her 
 hand : 
 " God bless thee, my lad, for thy word. 
 The storm-blast may roar through our German land, 
 I know who can refuge afford. 
 Who, bold and free, 
 Hold Liberty- 
 Such hearts, in need, must loyal be." 
 
 162
 
 Kein vornehm Liid', Fritz 
 
 De hadden Tid, Renter's 
 
 Tau seihn, ob den Bom ok sin Recht geschuht. if/f,,'^"'^ 
 
 Works. 
 
 "Un doch griiunt so lustig de Eikbom up Stun'ns, 
 
 Wi Arbeitsliid' hewwen em wohrt; 
 
 De Eikbom, Herr Konig, de Eikbom is uns', 
 
 Uns' plattdiitsche Sprak is't un Ort. 
 
 Kein vornehm Kunst 
 
 Hett s' uns verhunzt, 
 
 Fri wiissen s' tau Hocliten ahn Konigsgunst." 
 
 Rasch giwwt em den Konig sin Dochter de Hand : 
 
 " Gott seg'n Di, Gesell, for Din Red' ! 
 Wenn de Storm wind einst brus't dorch dat diitsche 
 Land, 
 Denn weit ik 'ne sakere Stiid': 
 Wer eigen Ort 
 Fri wiinn un woiirt, 
 Bi den'n is in Noth Ein taum besten verwohrt." 
 
 163
 
 BALLADS AND LYRICS. 
 
 I AS it ever occurred to you 
 what a divine attribute is the 
 human voice? I am not 
 going to prose to you about 
 the ingenious anatomy of the 
 larynx, or to explain acoustics, or to weary 
 you with physical science in any shape. 
 There are a number of kind-hearted, intelli- 
 gent gentlemen down town — gentlemen who 
 gingerly feel your pulse, and who are ten- 
 derly curious about the state of your tongue, 
 who monopolize authority in that jurisdiction; 
 and I have too much respect — fear, I might 
 almost say — to venture to rival them in their 
 special field. 
 
 There is no harm in my incidentally calling 
 to your minds how the good God has blest 
 us in the matter of voice. Did you ever study 
 a joyful dog? Look, how he twists and 
 twines his body almost around itself! How 
 he dances hither and thither in a walk-around 
 of aimless beatitude, leaps up and down (if 
 he is properly trained, of course he keeps 
 sheer of your person), and finally how 
 
 " He chortles in his joy " ! 
 165
 
 Ballads and Poor brute ! He cannot speak — he can 
 yrtcs. merely chortle ; and although the chortle be 
 
 a complete sonata in itself, it is not of the 
 category of articulate speech, and its highest 
 development is a short, sharp bark. The 
 bark means something^it means a great deal 
 at times; and dogs, like parrots, are some- 
 times accused even of profanity. I think it 
 was Sir William Hamilton who had a dog 
 that was accustomed to ejaculate, ' ' D — n 
 grandmamma!" But the ordinary dog, 
 black-and-tan, or pointer, or setter, or "yaller 
 dog," is no conversationalist. His genius lies 
 in other channels entirely; and when he gets 
 conceited and tJmiks he has a voice, and tries 
 it (*and people are always fancying they have 
 talent when they have not), the community 
 arises and subdues him. 
 
 Referring again to the matter of voice and 
 speech : there is an old Persian tradition, 
 that when humanity was first distributed over 
 the earth, there was no speech. They wor- 
 ried along without it. When two people 
 took the disease of love, in those quaint days, 
 they did not talk at all; they looked in each 
 other's eyes and "just knew it," and the 
 knowledge was all in all. But later the fine 
 sensibility of those early mute passionists 
 wore off, and it took at least a kiss to satisfy 
 
 1 66
 
 them. Times are wonderfully altered since Ballads and 
 
 then. That is all very well for the Persians ; 
 
 but my own private theory is, that when the 
 
 first man became ensnared, the silly creature 
 
 felt as gay as a shouting- Methodist, and that 
 
 is the way he found out that he had vocal 
 
 organs at all. 
 
 But however those />d';zi?-protoplasmal an- 
 cestors started on their musical and elocu- 
 tionary education, it must have been eons 
 before they had anything like success in 
 melody. 
 
 Take a rough bit of limestone: it is a dull 
 pebble; it has no beauty save to a mineralo- 
 gist, and little even to him. Grind that lime- 
 stone, mix it with water, fling it in the sea; 
 let it pass through transformation after trans- 
 formation. It may, by good luck, gather 
 itself together after ages, and appear in its 
 integrity a pearl of great price — pink or 
 black, as the conditions may warrant. 
 
 Such has been the fate of the human voice. 
 The cave-dweller's organ is like the lime- 
 stone, and the diva's is the pearl. Vocal 
 limestone has survived in huge bowlders, so 
 to speak, and vocal pearls are rare and 
 precious still. 
 
 I have said that it took long for humanity 
 to find a voice — mellow and flexible — so long 
 167
 
 Ballads ayid that ever since it has been bolstered up by 
 y^^'-^- written speech it has scarcely improved. 
 
 The Rig-Vedas probably were intoned in as 
 melodious utterance when first composed as 
 any speech of to-day. All great ideas, how- 
 ever, grow slowly. 
 
 Music has appropriated to itself most of 
 the development of language — not all. Go 
 and hear a great orator on a great subject, 
 and you will see that voices are being culti- 
 vated. Actors are at work in that field. The 
 theatre should be a school for speech. He 
 is but a paltry clown who does not remem- 
 ber his duty in that regard. 
 
 If it took ages to smooth the hoarseness, 
 the gurgle, the gruffness, the gutturality out 
 of the human voice in the times of pre- 
 adamites — to comb out the tones, and take 
 the snarls out — think how long it must have 
 been before that voice grew capable of musi- 
 cal expression. Think how many genera- 
 tions of breeding the stock of that dog who 
 could ' ' d — n grandmamma ' ' it would take, 
 before developing a canine who could sing 
 say such an easy-going air as ' ' When John- 
 ny comes marching home," and of having 
 it become a commonplace sort of accom- 
 plishment, such as an ordinary " yaller dog" 
 could pretend to over his pipe and pewter. 
 
 1 68
 
 The world that we know of, humanity as Ballads and 
 we find it recorded, was never without music. ^^ 
 Man may, perhaps, have caught a bar or two 
 of heavenly harmony from those ancient days, 
 ' ' when the morning stars sang together, and 
 all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
 
 Whether music, "heavenly maid," came 
 directly from the skies to bless humanity, or 
 whether she tarried on the way, teaching the 
 brook to ripple, the wind to sigh, the ocean 
 to murmur its music, the lark its song, Philo- 
 mela to gurgle her air, the locust his cello 
 arrangement, and so prepared an orchestra 
 to which man, or perhaps lovely woman, 
 should be the protagonist and choragus, song 
 is old. The builder of the Pyramids had 
 probably a ' ' chanty ' ' song as he heaved 
 away at his huge blocks; the Nile boatman 
 had his air as he floated lazily down the 
 stream; the ploughman, and the reaper, and 
 the soldier had their melodies, only there 
 were no phonographs to bring them to us; 
 and the tiles of Nineveh may tell us many 
 things, but not the music that floated in the 
 Assyrian atmosphere or about the Hanging 
 Gardens of Babylon. 
 
 We cannot even make certain of our own 
 more direct predecessors, the Greeks and 
 Romans, and their musical ideas. We know 
 169
 
 Ballads and that the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus were 
 yrics. beautifully sung; but we cannot sing them; 
 
 and we only surmise their sweetness. 
 
 To-night, I am to discuss, in a sketchy sort 
 of way, the subject of Ballads and — inci- 
 dentally and by way of digression — of Lyrics. 
 Ballads and Lyrics must be considered a very 
 broad subject. It is hard to say where we can 
 commence. Orpheus is too far back — even 
 Terpander, the yEolian, is a misty personage; 
 Arion is almost a demigod with antiquity. 
 
 Then, too, the terms have a broad signifi- 
 cation. Dr. Maginn has very plausibly put 
 the Homeric poems in the category of bal- 
 lads, and Macaulay has tried to fancy, from 
 the few Fescennine verses which have come 
 down to us, what Roman ballads were like. 
 
 Lyrics are a character of composition more 
 easily typified and classed, and nowadays bal- 
 lad and lyric somewhat overlap each other; 
 although the lyric has generally crowned the 
 musical goddess, while the ballad has come by 
 way of girdle about her heart. Our present 
 lyric form is more than twenty-five centuries 
 old. The learned and genial author of ' ' Rab 
 and His Friends" compares without violence 
 Sappho, 600 B. C, and Burns, of our own 
 century almost; and the comparison is strik- 
 ing and suggestive. 
 
 170
 
 It has been seriously deplored that the Ballads and 
 preservers and editors of ballad and song -^ 
 collections have in the main been worthy old 
 Dryasdusts — gentlemen powerful in the mat- 
 ter of plodding learning, but in no wise gifted 
 with the delicacy of hearing which apper- 
 taineth to the joyous science of music; and 
 hence have neglected the airs which vivified 
 the ancient minstrelsy of the present culti- 
 vated world. You might as well ask a life- 
 less form, bereft of the electric blood which 
 should permeate it, to show forth an intellect, 
 as that a song or ballad should win its ap- 
 plause by the simple mumbling of the words, 
 that have fastened upon its music like moss 
 upon some lithe and airy statue. I felt the 
 force of that fact when the matter of my 
 present discourse was first suggested to me, 
 and also that something heroic must be done 
 to shelter my own short-comings; and I 
 must admit that it is a perverse fate that has 
 placed me in the attitude, in any capacity, of 
 expounder of the science and art of song. 
 
 When a man is in a bad way; when busi- 
 ness has ruined him, and the financial world 
 has given him the cold shoulder; when he is 
 desperate, and saltpetre wouldn't save him — 
 he generally goes moping home and pours 
 out the wealth of his misery in his good wife's 
 171
 
 Ballads afid lap, mopping his disconsolate eyes in her 
 ■^^ ' apron. She it is who must find expedients; 
 
 she must invent something; and whether she 
 succeeds or not, he crawls behind her ample 
 skirts for protection and sustenance. Such is 
 man's nature. With all his conceited brutal- 
 ity, his arrogant assumption of independence, 
 from the earliest protoplasmic days, doubt- 
 less, he has, at his last or despairing moments, 
 cowered behind the woman as a bulwark of 
 courage. 
 
 And so I took a manly course for to-night. 
 I have sought a lady's assistance * to help me 
 out; and all I can say now is, that if there is 
 any failure in this evening's programme, of 
 course it is the fault of the woman. Before 
 proceeding to the matter of my essay, I 
 would make another suggestion to you upon 
 which to reflect in connection with the subject 
 of the evening : It is the resistless power 
 which voiceful music has upon our wills — 
 how it usurps an unbidden authority over us. 
 I sometimes think there is something uncanny 
 and unchristian in the spell. The story of 
 the Sirens and Odysseus is no absolute fic- 
 tion; Lorelei charming the Rhine boatmen is 
 
 *Judge Rearden was aided in the reading of this essay by 
 Mrs. Ida Norton, who sang the ballads and lyrics mentioned, 
 or others illustrative of the text. 
 
 172
 
 not a legendary absurdity. If I were one Ballads and 
 of those good old-fashioned judges, like Sir 
 Matthew Hale, and issued writs de sagis com- 
 burendis, for the burning of witches, I would 
 not bother my head at all about the withered 
 beldames who rode broomsticks, and were 
 fond of other out-of-the-way amusements, 
 but would see if the culprit could sing; and 
 if yea, there would be a prima facie case 
 against her, which it would require strong 
 evidence to rebut, and the sheriff would at 
 once see that there was a bountiful supply 
 of faggots at hand. 
 
 Music is indeed a material force — as much 
 so as light, heat, or electricity; and its effect 
 is as magical and inexplicable. 
 
 You are all familiar with the Fall of Man 
 — you believe it — you ought to, from internal 
 evidence alone — his temptation, as set forth 
 in those sublime first chapters of Genesis. 
 That story has come home to the bosoms of 
 nations whose names have passed into ob- 
 livion. Those chapters have in them the 
 expression of great truths, philosophical, 
 psychical, and physical — "And the man said: 
 the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, 
 she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. ' ' 
 
 The story may or may not be an allegory; 
 but were I to restate that truth for modern 
 
 173
 
 Ballads and comprehension, as homely preachers some- 
 ■'" ^''^' times do treat Bible truths, I would not de- 
 
 pict it precisely as it occurred to the sacred 
 historian (something similar occurred to Ver- 
 gil, however). But I should not represent 
 the temptress as slinking out from behind 
 the orchard — a snow-limbed Eve — her beau- 
 teous jaws stretched over the expansive sur- 
 face of a mellow pippin, or holding it out 
 treacherously for the unsuspecting Adam to 
 "take a bite." No, I should depict her as 
 fully clothed, sauntering along some trout- 
 stream, with a typical rod and fly in her 
 grasp, and a big flip-flapping hat upon her 
 beautiful head, trolling some ballad catch, 
 and enchanting and enslaving some silly 
 angler down the stream; or perhaps in some 
 country house, on a rainy day, seated at a 
 tuneless piano and picking out some careless 
 notes, while the corp2is delicti lounged upon 
 a sofa, puffing a stupid cigar, and gazing in 
 enraptured idiocy upon the Moresque convo- 
 lutions of her back hair. 
 
 The Laureate — back in the thirties — seems 
 to have had some such idea of the modern 
 siren, and he has shadowed it forth in 
 "Maud": 
 
 A voice by the cedar-tree, 
 
 In the meadow under the Hall ! 
 
 174
 
 She is singing an air that is known to me, Ballads and 
 
 A passionate ballad, gallant and gay, Lyncs. 
 
 A martial song like a trumpet's call ! 
 
 Singing alone in the morning of life. 
 
 In the happy morning of life and of May, 
 
 Singing of men that in battle array. 
 
 Ready in heart, and ready in hand, 
 
 March with banner and bugle and fife 
 
 To the death, for their native land. 
 
 Maud, with her exquisite face, 
 
 And wild voice, pealing up to the sunny sky. 
 
 And feet like sunny gems on an English green, 
 
 ^laud, in the light of her youth and her grace, 
 
 Singing of Death and of Honor that cannot die, 
 
 Till I well could weep for a time so sordid and mean, 
 
 And myself so languid and base. 
 
 Silence, beautiful voice ! 
 
 Be still, for you only trouble the mind 
 
 With a joy in which I cannot rejoice, 
 
 A glory I shall not find. 
 
 Still ! I will hear you no more. 
 
 For your sweetness hardly leaves me a choice 
 
 But to move to the meadow and fall before 
 
 Her feet on the meadow grass, and adore, 
 
 Not her, who is neither courtly nor kind. 
 
 Not her, not her, but a voice." 
 
 And again : 
 
 " 'Tis a morning pure and sweet. 
 And a dewy splendor falls 
 On the little flower that clings 
 To the turrets and the walls; 
 'Tis a morning pure and sweet. 
 And the light and shadow fleet; 
 She is walking in the meadow,
 
 Ballads aiid And the woodland echo rings; 
 
 Lyrics. In a moment we shall meet; 
 
 She is singing in the meadow, 
 And the rivulet at her feet 
 Ripples on in light and shadow 
 To the ballad that she sings." 
 
 In short, the poet thoroughly appreciated 
 the charm of a simple song; and his own 
 exquisite successes in that behalf are conclu- 
 sive evidences of the fact. 
 
 I refer to this simplicity to show how pow- 
 erful is the impression which Folk-music has 
 upon the human organization, partly perhaps 
 because it appeals to our homelier intellectual 
 capacity, but chiefly because of the sensuous 
 form — the musical vehicle wherewith the idea 
 is conveyed to or aroused within us. 
 
 Fletcher of Saltoun, in the glorious days 
 of English literature and taste, advanced the 
 belief that he cared not who made the na- 
 tion's laws provided that he could make its 
 ballads; and Sir Philip Sidney declares: "I 
 never heard Chevy Chase, the old song 
 of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my 
 heart moved more than with a trumpet, and 
 yet it is sung but by some blinde crowder, 
 with no rougher voice than rude style." 
 
 The ballad is a comparatively modern po- 
 etic form. It is reputed to have taken its 
 
 176
 
 rise in the later Byzantine days. In those Ballads and 
 times, the ancient Greek language had fallen ^ 
 upon evil days. It was subject to constant 
 disintegration. The poetic dew which had 
 glistened upon both poetry and prose from 
 the glory of Homer to the polished Alexan- 
 drine poets was being dispelled in the harsh 
 and sultry noon-day of the Lower Empire. 
 The old cicada music was stilled; the great 
 god Pan had long been dead; and the lan- 
 guage was as broken and formless as an ice 
 palace in ruin. Quantity and tone — that 
 something beautiful in the youth of Grecian 
 language — had vanished; and accent was rep- 
 resented by emphasis; and chivalric poetry, 
 love ditty, and drinking song — everything 
 appertaining to sentiment, came forth in a 
 flippant and jingling measure, and bearing 
 as much resemblance to ancient Greek rhyth- 
 mic sublimity as a coin of those Greek em- 
 perors was in art like an intaglio of Pyrgo- 
 teles or Dioscorides. 
 
 One of the fashions of the Greek balladist 
 — if I may so call him — was to work into his 
 compositions the Grecian legends of more 
 classical epochs, as handed down in vulgar 
 tradition, or as travestied from the scholarship 
 that, until the downfall of Constantinople, still 
 haunted the Byzantine capital. For instance, 
 177
 
 Ballads and a popular ballad story was that of Hero and 
 '*' ' ■ Leander, which strayed into the far west of 
 
 Europe, as it is found in almost every Ger- 
 manic dialect. 
 
 Legends of the saints also were embodied 
 and told in ballads, and it is from the soft- 
 ened poetic versions of popular song that we 
 obtain our current ideas of many of the re- 
 ligious heroes, whose portraiture in history 
 is often widely at variance with the mirac- 
 ulous halo cast about the saint's head by 
 the rhythmic tale. For instance, St. George 
 of Cappadocia, the patron of English chiv- 
 alry, is described in far different terms in the 
 cold pages of Gibbon from the heroic slayer 
 of the loathly dragon, as he is depicted in 
 legends and mythic verse. 
 
 I must here trespass upon the patience of 
 my audience by reading a Greek-Romaic 
 ballad, a fair type of the character I have men- 
 tioned, introduced to Americans by the late 
 learned Professor Sophocles, who did so much 
 for Greek scholarship in the United States, 
 from the faithful version of President Felton. 
 
 CONSTANTINE AND ARETE. 
 
 O mother, thou with thy nine sons, and with one 
 
 only daughter, 
 Thine only daughter, well beloved, the dearest of 
 
 thy children, 
 
 178
 
 For twelve years thou didst keep the maid — the Ballads and 
 
 sun did not behold her, Lyrics. 
 
 Whom in the darkness thou didst bathe — in secret 
 
 braid her tresses; 
 And by the starlight and the dawn, didst wind her 
 
 curling ringlets; 
 Nor knew the neighborhood that thou didst have 
 
 so fair a daughter — 
 When came to thee from Babylon, a wooer's soft 
 
 entreaty — 
 Eight of the brothers yielded not, but Constantine 
 
 consented — 
 "O mother, give thine Arete, bestow her on the 
 
 stranger. 
 That I may have her solace dear when far away I 
 
 wander." 
 "Though thou art wise, my Constantine, thou hast 
 
 unwisely spoken; 
 Be woe my lot, or be it joy, who will restore my 
 
 daughter? " 
 He calls to witness God above, he calls the Holy 
 
 Martyrs, 
 Be woe her lot, or be it joy, he would restore her 
 
 daughter — 
 And when they wedded Arete in that far distant 
 
 country. 
 Then comes the year of sorrowing, and all the 
 
 nine did perish. 
 All lonely was the mother left like a reed alone in 
 
 the meadow; 
 O'er the eight graves she beats her breast, o'er 
 
 eight was heard her wailing. 
 And at the tomb of Constantine, she rends her 
 
 hair in anguish. 
 
 179
 
 Ballads a7id "Arise, my Constantine, arise, for Arete I lan- 
 Lyrics. guish; 
 
 On God to witness thou didst call, didst call the 
 
 Holy Martyrs, 
 Be woe my lot, or be it joy, thou wouldst restore 
 
 my daughter." 
 And forth at midnight hour he fares, the silent 
 
 tomb deserting; 
 He makes the cloud his flying steed, he makes the 
 
 star his bridle, 
 And by the silver moon conveyed, to bring her 
 
 home he journeys : 
 And finds her combing down her locks, abroad 
 
 by silvery moonlight. 
 And greets the maiden from afar, and from afar 
 
 bespeaks her : 
 "Arise, my Aretula dear, for thee our mother 
 
 longeth." 
 " Alas, my brother ! What is this ? What wouldst 
 
 at such an hour ? 
 If joy betide our distant home, I wear my golden 
 
 raiment, 
 If woe betide, dear brother mine, I go as now I'm 
 
 standing." 
 "Think not of joy, think not of woe— return as 
 
 here thou standest." 
 And while they journey on the way, all on the way 
 
 returning, 
 They hear the birds and what they sing, and what 
 
 the birds are saying : 
 " Ho, see the maiden all so fair — a Ghost it is that 
 
 bears her." 
 "Didst hear the birds, my Constantine; didst list 
 
 to what they're saying? " 
 
 i8o
 
 "Yes, they are birds, and let them sing — they're Bal/ads and 
 
 birds, and let them chatter." Lyrics. 
 
 And yonder, as they journey on, still other birds 
 
 salute them : 
 "What do we see, unhappy ones? Ah! woe is 
 
 fallen on us — 
 Lo, there the living sweep along, and with the 
 
 dead they travel ! " 
 " Didst hear, my brother Constantine, what yonder 
 
 birds are saying ? " 
 " Yes, birds are they, and let them sing — they're 
 
 birds, and let them chatter." 
 "I fear for thee, my brother dear, for thou dost 
 
 breathe of incense." 
 "Last evening late we visited the churcli of St. 
 
 Johannes; 
 And there the priest perfumed me o'er with clouds 
 
 of fragrant incense." 
 And onward as they hold their way, still other 
 
 birds bespeak them — 
 "O God, how wondrous is Thy power, what mira- 
 cles Thou workest ! 
 A maid so gracious and so fair ! A Ghost it is that 
 
 bears her." 
 'Twas heard again by Arete, and now her heart 
 
 was breaking; 
 "Didst hearken, brother Constantine, to what the 
 
 birds are saying ? 
 Say, where are now thy waving locks, thy strong, 
 
 thick beard — where is it? " 
 " A sickness sore has me befallen, and brought me 
 
 near to dying." 
 They find the house all locked and barred — they 
 
 find it barred and bolted, 
 
 iSi
 
 Ballads and And all the windows of the house with cobwebs 
 Lyrics. covered over. 
 
 "Unlock, O mother mine, unlock, thine Arete 
 
 thou seest. " 
 "If thou art Charon, get thee gone — I have no 
 
 other children — 
 My hapless Arete afar, in stranger lands is dwell- 
 ing." 
 "Unlock, O mother mine, unlock, thy Constan- 
 
 tine entreats thee. 
 I called to witness God above, I called the Holy 
 
 Martyrs, 
 Were woe thy lot, or were it joy, I would restore 
 
 thy daughter." 
 And when unto the door she came, her soul from 
 
 her departed. 
 
 Those of you who recall Biirger's famous 
 ballad of "Leonora," paraphrased by Sir 
 Walter Scott in "William and Mary," will 
 notice some dramatic effects in this Greek 
 prototype, which Biirger doubtless borrowed, 
 notably the manner in which the heroine 
 of the ghostly ride becomes, step by step, 
 conscious that her companion is a disembod- 
 ied spirit. 
 
 A Greek song ! Not such as Sappho sang 
 — not such as Anacreon sang; not even such 
 as have come down to us — the tavern catches 
 in the days of Alcibiades, or when Horace 
 was getting his education at Athens. Such 
 have musically vanished, although Scheffel 
 
 1S2
 
 makes his little Byzantine maid of honor in Ballads and 
 Der treiie Ekkehard sing in the ninth cen- ■^^^'' ' 
 tury an Anacreontic love ditty fifteen hun- 
 dred years old. Could we to-night evoke 
 one of the revelling deipnosophists of Athe- 
 naeus, we would have something from his 
 jovial throat which we would not wish to 
 forget. But we are indebted to a young 
 friend, lately returned from Greece, for the 
 words, and to his mother for the air, of a 
 more modern Greek lyric of popular type, 
 breathing of liberty and Christianity.* 
 
 The ballad originally did not have the 
 loose meaning which for several hundreds of 
 years we have given to it. It was, at the 
 outset, a song combined with a dance, rude, 
 maybe, but essentially of rhythmic motion. 
 There is scarcely a vestige left of this original 
 form. The nearest approach to the ballad 
 proper in our day is in children's songs: 
 
 " Nor you nor I nor no one knows 
 How oats, pease, beans, and barley grows"; 
 or, 
 
 " Hippety, hippety hop to the barber's shop 
 To buy a stick of candy"; 
 or, 
 
 " Uncle John is very sick; 
 
 What shall we send him?" 
 
 * Which was here sung. 
 183
 
 Ballads and The French have a numerous array of 
 yncs. these melodies, like " Le Chevalier du Guet," 
 
 and old song-books indicate how large an 
 element was bodily motion in popular music. 
 All these have a certain dramatic kernel in 
 their composition, which has perhaps lain 
 dormant for thousands of years, like the seeds 
 of flowers shut in from moisture by the rocky 
 clefts where they repose. I think a touch of 
 the idea in the common children's game, — 
 
 "Open the gates as high as the sky," 
 
 may be found in Sappho, as a bridal song, 
 and even in the Divine Psalmist, as a part of 
 the choral service of the Temple. 
 
 Italy has ever been the home of music. 
 Dante was proud of his songs, and polished 
 their versification with more care than prob- 
 ably he bestowed upon his Divine Poem. 
 Petrarch put into his all the sweetness and 
 light with which his temperament and climate 
 were endowed. Italy is the true home of 
 popular music; for every one there seems a 
 poet, and every ear is attuned to harmony. 
 
 Spanish glory is prophesied in the lullabies 
 with which it was cradled, in the days of 
 Pelayo and Don Jaime. The early literature 
 of Spain is one of ballads. There is some- 
 thing gallant and gay about every rhythmic 
 
 1S4
 
 tradition of The Cid and his stately wife Ballads and 
 Ximena. No wonder the French dramatist 
 was carried away with his subject. 
 
 It is likely that the Gothic chants of the 
 early kingly period of Spain were modified 
 and often supplanted by the musical themes 
 of the Moslem intruders. 
 
 It is difficult to snatch an idea of a race so 
 widely divergent from Western sentiment as 
 the Arab; but there is a song which may 
 serve as a type, the English words whereof 
 are by one Carlyle (not Thomas — he had lit- 
 tle music in his soul), a scholar of the last 
 century. It is a very ancient ditty of the 
 desert roamer. 
 
 Herder in Germany made a close study of 
 Folk-music among the Germanic nations; and 
 " Sir Olaf and His Bride" was from the same 
 legendary source as Goethe's "Erl-King." 
 Indeed, Herder looked into Spanish ballad 
 history as well; and his stringing together of 
 the verse that told the story of the Cid Cam- 
 peador, and his courtship and brave deeds, is 
 a charming production, full of fire and music. 
 
 Goethe's catholic taste led him in the same 
 direction. His "King in Thule" is a re- 
 polished Folk-song (the same may be said 
 of the "Erl-King"), spreading in variations 
 through Danish, German, Norse, and even 
 185
 
 Ballads and English literature. Goethe had a felicitous 
 ■^^^ ' way of appropriating songs that had attracted 
 
 him. The ditty sung by Mephisto at Mar- 
 garet's window comes from Ophelia — a cyn- 
 ical song that in fact has its origin far back 
 in Byzantine days ; and even the quaint 
 grave-digger's song in Hamlet is put by the 
 German poet in the month of his Lemures 
 at Faust's death. The music of the " Erl- 
 King " may be said to have almost made 
 Schubert's reputation. 
 
 Heine was a master of lyric composition; 
 but he, too, like Moliere, took his goods 
 wherever he found them, with a noble dis- 
 regard of the hue-and-cry of plagiarism. His 
 song of " Lorelei" is but the latest blossom 
 of a popular poetic growth, as definite and 
 smooth as the Rhine itself. 
 
 The earliest ascertained specimen of an 
 English ballad is one with the words of which 
 some of you are perhaps familiar. We are 
 indebted for much of our lyric literature to 
 one Walter Mapes, whom Tennyson brings 
 on the scene in his drama of " Becket." 
 
 "Somer is yeomen in " 
 
 is in the English-Saxon of its day, the twelfth 
 century. 
 
 The real home of the English ballad is 
 
 iS6
 
 the "North Countrie." The Lowland Scot, Ballads and 
 peasant or noble, has ever y>i^s. 
 
 " Heard in his soul the music 
 Of wonderful melodies." 
 
 In looking into the songful history of the 
 land of Burns, one is fairly overcome with 
 the embarrassment of riches. Burns himself 
 is only the crown of the column. There are 
 none of the Scottish poets who are his exact 
 equals; but if Burns be ranked as a lyric 
 duke, there are many earls, and a mob of 
 voiceful barons of music. Even the bar in 
 Scotland have ears and voices, from Lord 
 Neaves and George Outram down to a hum- 
 ble apprentice like Sir Walter. Burns did 
 not scorn taking an old ballad or song, and 
 fitting it up to his liking; and of his work it 
 may be said, as Dr. Johnson said of Gold- 
 smith: 
 
 " Nil tetegit quod non ornavit." 
 
 Ballads had fallen into disrepute in the 
 days of Queen Bess — a sure index of their 
 overworn popularity prior to that time. It 
 is amusing to note the frequent references to 
 ballads in Shakspeare as tending to show the 
 precise esteem in which they were held. It 
 may, too, be remarked how low the glorious 
 minstrel's profession had fallen, when we find 
 187
 
 Ballads and Prince Hal breaking the head of that wise 
 ■Lytics. ^j^^ witty man, Sir John, for Hkening him to 
 
 a "singing man of Windsor." If all the 
 pertinent citations in Shakspeare are collat- 
 ed, a very good definition of a ballad will be 
 evolved. It will be seen that any short lyric 
 was then yclept a ballad, although no possi- 
 bility of singing it to dance music existed. 
 It may be noted, however, that none of the 
 songs found in Shakspeare are certainly his 
 own. He took what was good in popular 
 use; and it may also be noted that his taste 
 is generally exquisite. 
 
 Irish ballads had the air of a bygone and 
 faded beauty. Irish music seemed a sort of 
 croon, to be murmured by some bent and 
 decrepit granny as she turned a spinning- 
 wheel. Moore, however, poured his poetic 
 elixir into the shrivelled lips; and the melo- 
 dies resounded from Dublin to Calcutta, 
 from London to Upper Canada. 
 
 There is one thing which may be remarked 
 about the Irish air: when the movement is 
 rapid, it is humorous — I might almost say 
 witty — and grotesque; when slow, it is pain- 
 fully weird and pathetic. 
 
 You have all been touched with the beauty 
 of "The Last Rose of Summer"; but take 
 the same notes in the original air, "The 
 
 1 88
 
 Lyrics. 
 
 Groves of Blarney," and change again to Ballads a^id 
 ' ' The Bells of Shandon. ' ' Thackeray was 
 fond of this air — probably because, like him- 
 self, it had pathos, satire, and fun in every 
 turn of the tune. 
 
 It never seems to have been necessary to 
 invent a new tune for each separate ballad 
 or lyric. Indeed, a ballad tune is all the 
 better for age — like a Stradivarius violin. 
 The tune must have passed through many 
 vicissitudes; it must have been voiced forth 
 in the squire's hall, in the wayside inn, 
 in the hunting field ; it must have floated 
 down streams, sung by maudlin lovers and 
 rejected suitors, by soldiers and sailors, by 
 gentle and simple, drunk and sober, before 
 it could be deemed of the true mellowness 
 to entitle it to its ultimate royal degree as a 
 ballad air. 
 
 Let us take one instance: When in the 
 East, Chateaubriand heard among the Arabs 
 a certain well-known air; and somehow, he 
 romantically assumed that it had been origi- 
 nally brought to France by returned Crusad- 
 ers, who had heard it sung beneath the walls 
 of Ascalon to the clash of paynim shields. 
 
 "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre" 
 
 was a cradle melody sung by the muse of the 
 189
 
 Ballads and unhappy dauphin, Louis Seize. The bewitch- 
 '■^'^ ■ ing Marie Antoinette caught the air and its 
 
 grotesque words, and hummed the song 
 among her briUiant courtiers. Forthwith, all 
 France was taken with the fun; and the ficti- 
 tious death of the great English duke was in 
 every mouth. The absurd story of the song 
 was painted upon fans, each verse adorning a 
 separate fold; and the beautiful duchess was 
 represented, now fat, now lean, and always 
 ridiculous. 
 
 You may remember the 
 
 " Pretty page with dimpled chin," 
 
 in the "Marriage of Figaro," and how Mozart 
 puts in his mouth a beautiful song, which 
 will probably charm many a future generation 
 as it has many a past. Well, Beaumarchais, 
 like the courtier that he was, in the prose 
 drama as it was originally produced, has this 
 pretty page sing his woe and languorous pas- 
 sion for his charming godmother, the count- 
 ess, to this same tune of " Malbrouck, that 
 prince of commanders." Then the army 
 men got hold of the tune, and every cavalry 
 man rubbed down his horse, or polished his 
 brasses, to the air of 
 
 " It's a way we have in the army." 
 
 190
 
 And so it travelled back and forth ; and tra- Ballads and 
 dition has it that the great Napoleon was y^^'^^- 
 wont to hum the air as he mounted to start 
 forth upon his campaigns, and it came back 
 to him at St. Helena as a grotesque reminis- 
 cence. It ultimately crossed the water; and 
 I think I can remember graceless college 
 students howling, in a symphony of inebriety, 
 
 "We won't go home till morning, 
 Till daylight doth appear," 
 
 and other lawless and irregular sentiments 
 not necessary here to specify. 
 
 Another air which has served many a song, 
 as a sort of Leporello to a wicked Don Gio- 
 vanni, is "Lauriger." It hath a smack of 
 that jolly old cleric. Archdeacon Mapes, of 
 Oxford, who wrote the song, 
 
 " Mihi est propositum 
 In taberna mori," 
 
 of which Leigh Hunt has made an English 
 version. It has been a Kneip song: 
 
 "Auf meiner Kneip ist alies leer"; 
 
 then the mournful whine of a woman-hater, 
 down in the dumps, with a frightful Katzen- 
 jammer, no money, and a jilting sweetheart, 
 
 "Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum"; 
 
 191
 
 Ballads and then a political song in the days of '48 in 
 Lyrics. -n 
 
 ■^ rrussia, 
 
 "Oh Holzenberg, oh Holzenberg, 
 Du segen von Neu Brandenberg"; 
 
 and, as "Lauriger," it crossed the ocean; and 
 down in the old National Road town of Cum- 
 berland I have heard it sung by malignant 
 but lovely rebels behind rose-trellised win- 
 dows as " Maryland, my Maryland." 
 
 Here let me say — and any married man 
 present will promptly bear me out in the 
 statement — that lovely woman is never su- 
 premely happy save when she is rebelling 
 against something or somebody. The sex 
 enjoys sedition. You all remember the great 
 hulking brute of an Irishman who was twitted 
 with the fact that his little wife could beat him 
 whenever she chose, and who replied, "It 
 don't hurt me, and it plazes her." Hence, a 
 rebellious song, Jacobite or Southron, has a 
 special fitness from a woman's throat. 
 
 Another air which has done yeoman ser- 
 vice in all climates and times is the song in 
 "Arrah na Pogue. " There is a tippling air 
 indigenous to Scotland, which scents strongly 
 of toddy: 
 
 " We've always been provided for. 
 And sae we sail be yet." 
 
 192
 
 This catch, borne on a whiff of punch across Ballads and 
 the Irish sea, turns up in Ireland as a patri- 
 otic song- of '98, — 
 
 " I met with Napper Tandj-, 
 
 And he tuk me by the hand "; 
 
 and, whatever the entire lyric was, Mr. Bouci- 
 cault found it and added verses to it, and 
 it circled the globe as the ' ' Wearing of the 
 Green." It had passed over to America be- 
 times; and when the Central Pennsylvania 
 Railroad threw out of employment an army 
 of teamsters, they vented their grief and re- 
 sentment in a strain to the old air: 
 
 "A-cheating us poor wagoners 
 And every honest man." 
 
 Then Dr. O'Brien, of the army, immortalized 
 Benny Havens to the old tune ; and every 
 college in the land admitted it as a student- 
 song with many sets of words. But the most 
 aristocratic promotion which the air received 
 was when Dr. Holmes wrote his "Song of 
 Other Days," and the melody, tippler-hke, 
 hovered over the famous punch-bowl of the 
 learned, the witty, the poetic, and the now 
 venerable professor; and in my day, I re- 
 member the air floating about colleges, with 
 the Doctor's charming lyric: 
 
 "As o'er the glacier's frozen sheet." 
 193
 
 Ballads and But I must close. I have not done justice 
 ■ to the subject of my essay, nor can I. I will 
 
 not claim for the ballad any place in the 
 hierarchy of intellectual enjoyment to which 
 it is not entitled. But whatever else there 
 may be lacking in the ballad, it is genuine in 
 its nature. It cannot be rhetorically parsed, 
 nor need it be. Its true emotional nature 
 may best be described in the words of Shaks- 
 peare introducing one of the sweet airs of his 
 time: 
 
 " Nuvv, good Cesario, but that piece of song, 
 That old and antique song we heard last night; 
 Methought it did relieve my passion much. 
 
 Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain; 
 
 The spinsters and the Icnitters in the sun 
 
 And the free maids that weave their thread with 
 
 bones 
 Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth. 
 And dallies with the innocence of love. 
 Like the old age." 
 
 That Shakspeare was subject to the witch- 
 ery of song may be seen in his verse — 
 
 "That strain again; it had a dying fall: 
 O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound 
 Tliat breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 StealiniT and giving odor." 
 
 194 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 There are, here and there, in Shaks])eare Dallads and 
 verses of songs which ha\'e been lost, but '- 
 which have excited, even as fragments, a 
 certain degree of achniration and Hterary 
 interest. Of one sucii but a single line re- 
 mains, a drop of liquid in the Shakspearian 
 crystal. It is, 
 
 " King Cophetua loved a beggar maid." 
 
 On this suggestion, Tennyson, in years gone 
 by, composed a simple and beautiful lyric. 
 
 Bishop Percy of Dromore, a learned and 
 accomplished prelate of the English Church, 
 and a scholar who has done as much as any 
 one to instruct the English-speaking world 
 as to the wealth of its early poetry, gathered 
 together several fragments in Shakspeare, 
 not assignable to any known ballad, to make 
 up his fam.ous 
 
 " 'Twas a friar of orders gray." 
 
 It was this song which was the rival of Gold- 
 smith's cheery and witty ballad of "Ange- 
 lina," on the same idea, neither poet being 
 conscious of having, in their sympathy of 
 thought, pursued the same path. 
 
 And now, for your attention to the essay's 
 reading, I have to thank you. I think I 
 said at the opening that if any fiilure occurred 
 
 195
 
 Ballads and in the evening's entertainment, you were in 
 ■ duty bound to ascribe it to the woman. If 
 
 there has been any measure of success, it is, 
 of course, the province of mascuhne modesty 
 to lay thereto an exckisive claim. In apol- 
 ogy for myself, however, I will say, with 
 Don Armado, that "the words of Mercury 
 are harsh after the songs of Apollo." 
 
 196
 
 POEM.
 
 "THE SEA! THE SEA!" 
 
 IFE'S levered day declines 
 its purple twilight falling- 
 Draws length' ning shadows 
 
 from the broken flanks; 
 And from the column's head, 
 a viewless chief is calling: 
 " Guide right — close up your ranks." 
 
 As once in ancient time, a Grecian host 
 defiant 
 Reeled back from Persia's might, and 
 treachery, " — ^ 
 
 And marched, on stubborn Grecian pluck 
 alone reliant, 
 Down to the Pontic Sea; 
 
 Full many a cruel foe they met and bravely 
 routed, 
 Battling on plain, in gorge, all mightily. 
 
 *This poem was written by Judge T. H. Reardeii, for the 
 Memorial Service of the G. H. Thomas Post, G. A. R., of San 
 Francisco, held May 3, 1S92. It was read on that occasion 
 by a member of the Post, Judge Rearden being ill at the time. 
 He died May 10, 1892. 
 
 199
 
 'The Sea.' Until, the last ridge climb' d, the vanguard 
 gazed and shouted 
 In tears : "The Sea! The Sea!" 
 
 So we, to-day, with Life's slow, carking 
 sorrows weary, 
 With hearts and natures sore and over- 
 worn, 
 Have trodden long the steep and rugged 
 highway dreary- — ■ 
 A band of hope forlorn. 
 
 A band forlorn, our garish banners torn and 
 faded; 
 Yet still with pulses beating high and free. 
 We view the silent, misty shore, with vision 
 shaded, 
 Of dim Eternity- 
 
 Lo! on the Infinite, Life's straitened king- 
 dom verges. 
 Worn by the flood of Death's weird 
 mystery ; 
 And as we catch the flashing light on burst- 
 ing surges, 
 We hail the friendly sea. 
 
 200
 
 Gone are ye glorious leaders of our youthful " The Sea! 
 
 . The Sea.'" 
 
 muster, 
 
 Whose sharp command thrilled like elec- 
 tric flame, 
 Your mem'ries blended with the sanguine, 
 lurid lustre 
 That gilds the warrior's name. 
 
 Ye comrades, too, the young, the gay, the 
 lion-hearted. 
 Dead on the field or slain by Fever's 
 breath — 
 How many changing years since you and 
 we were parted — 
 Your valor sealed by Death ! 
 
 Far in the broad and gray expanse of spirit 
 vision, 
 Where tempests rail not. Heaven forever 
 smiles, 
 Float on an ever-laughing sea, the Fields 
 Elysian, 
 The wished-for Happy Isles. 
 
 There, long-lost comrades, risen from your 
 couches gory, 
 Leaving your nameless graves and crum- 
 bling clay,
 
 "'The Sea! And, recking nothing earthly fame or paltry 
 The Sea ! i 
 
 glory, 
 
 Ye know a brighter day. 
 
 And there the stately captains of the host 
 
 immortal 
 
 Call out the guard that ushers heroes in; 
 
 And each brave soul that, trembling, knocks 
 
 at Death's dark portal 
 
 Is proudly mustered in.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 Mm^z. 
 
 989 J Q 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTEDINU S A.