,< I- ;-   T-R 
 
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 Sr^U I HERN BRANCH, 
 
 l/NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, 
 
 LIBRARY, 
 ILDS ANGELES, CALIF.
 
 SPECIMENS 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN ENGLISH LITERARY 
 CRITICISM
 
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 SPECIMENS 
 
 OF 
 
 MODERN ENGLISH LITERARY 
 
 CRITICISM 
 
 CHOSEN AND EDITED 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM T. BREWSTER 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
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 1907 
 
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 Copyright, 1907, 
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 Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1907. 
 
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 PREFACE 
 
 This book belongs to the realm of rhetoric rather than that of 
 literature or literary history. It aims to use critical writing, more 
 completely than is done in any existing text-book of selections, 
 as an agent in rhetorical study and intellectual discipHne. Books 
 of specimens of the so-called forms of discourse, narration, de- 
 scription, exposition, and argumentation, are abundant, as well as 
 useful. The present volume is less a complete illustration of a form 
 of discourse than an analysis of a fair variety of pieces that would 
 commonly be called literary criticism, but it is hoped that it also 
 will be useful — at least to those moderately advanced students for 
 whom it is intended. 
 
 The point of view in the editing of these selections is one from 
 which literary criticism is regarded, rhetorically, largely as a form 
 of exposition and argumentation, and, as a matter of fact, as a body 
 of more or less particular theses and opinions. Selections, there- 
 fore, are given without abridgment, and the important points all 
 along brought out relate to the dicta of each critic and his reasons 
 for holding his opinions. The safest way to begin the study of 
 literary criticism and the surest progress toward a sound knowledge 
 of that art is, in my opinion, to be found in the examination of actual 
 critical production. It is certainly wholesome to treat works of 
 criticism like any other body of facts, as well as an illustration 
 of some theory or other of the universe. Supplying material for 
 analysis and some direction for study is, therefore, as far as this 
 book attempts to go. 
 
 In arrangement, the essays proceed from the simplest, most 
 matter of fact, and most easily demonstrable, to the more general, 
 more abstract, and less easily provable. The arrangement is as 
 ^ follows : the first eight essays deal with particular men ; num- 
 bers 9 and lo have to do with special topics ; and the last 
 five are illustrative of general discussions — from highly dif- 
 ferent points of view — of literary art and morality. For 
 any of the essays here an infinite variety of substitution and sup- 
 plementation may, of course, be made, according to the preference 
 of the teacher. I have chiefly tried to get as large a variety as 
 possible within the limits of literary criticism, to avoid repetition 
 of type, to present well-contrasted views and methods, and to 
 avoid essays of too difl&cult a character. These reasons will
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 account for the omission of most earlier modern critics except 
 Drvden and Johnson, and that of such later modern critics as 
 Hazlitt, De Quincey, Carlyle, and Lowell. The introduction is a 
 definition of criticism, and it contains also suggestions for the 
 study of the form as a matter both of intelligent reading and of 
 training in composition. The notes and questions are analytical 
 rather than explanatory of the text; bracketed footnotes in the 
 shape of translations of phrases not clear from the context are 
 the only additions that I have made to the body of the book. 
 I have also added a list of the books that I have cited in the course 
 of the introduction and the notes, and an index of names and of 
 topics. Any one who wishes to pursue the subject of criticism 
 more exhaustively is, of course, referred to Professor Gay ley 
 and Professor Scott's invaluable bibliographies in their Introduc- 
 tion to the Materials and Methods oj Literary Criticism. 
 
 If the view held in the following introduction be correct, that 
 literary criticism is a corpus of opinion about literature deriving 
 its ultimate sanction from personality and the general and lasting 
 acceptation of its dicta — it would follow that any collection of 
 good critical essays would form a suitable and desirable subject 
 for rhetorical study. Such valuable collections as Professor Saints- 
 bury's Loci Critici, Mr. Vaughan's English Literary Criticism, 
 and Mr. Payne's American Literary Criticism, despite a trifling 
 emphasis on national rather than critical issues, are well fitted for 
 such analytical study as I have here indicated, and I have profited 
 greatly by them. With them, however, the historical point of 
 view, the desire to show criticism as something of a growth, com- 
 plicates the question, and this, in my opinion, serves to darken the 
 counsel that is of prime importance for students at the outset of the 
 study of literary criticism. Soundly and surely to trace the real 
 hist()ry of any body of literary opinion is a delicate and complicated 
 task, too hard, unquestionably, for most college students. What is 
 of fundamental importance, I repeat, is for the student first to 
 understand what the critic is saying and then to discern the sanc- 
 tion for the faith that is in him. These questions, at the outset, 
 are best kept clear of theories about development and generaliza- 
 tions about the history of the art. The present book may be 
 termed, in short, an introduction to the study and practice of literary 
 criticism. W. T. B. 
 
 Columbia University, 
 July 12, 1907.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Essays 
 
 1. Leslie Stephen : IVood^s Halfpence 
 
 2. David Masson : De Quinceys IVritiags : Classification and 
 
 Review ....... 
 
 3. Samuel Johnson : The Metaphysical Poets 
 
 4. Thomas Babington Macaulay : Air. Robert Montgomery 
 
 Poems ...... 
 
 5. Walter Bagehot: Charles Dickens 
 
 6. Walter Pater : Wordsworth . 
 
 7. John Mackinnon Robertson : Poe 
 
 8. John Dryden: Preface to the Fables 
 
 9. Frederic Harrison : Ruskin as a Master of Prose . 
 
 10. Charles Lamb: On the Tragedies of Shakespeare . 
 
 11. Henry James: The A^-t of Fiction .... 
 
 12. Edgar Allan Poe: The Philosophy of Composition 
 
 13. Matthew Arnold: The Study of Poetry 
 
 14. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: On Poetry and Poetic Power 
 
 15. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Defence of Poetry 
 Notes and Questions on the Preceding Selections 
 List of Books referred to in the Introduction and the Notes 
 Index 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ix 
 I 
 I 
 
 16 
 
 45 
 
 60 
 80 
 III 
 126 
 181 
 202 
 220 
 
 237 
 
 257 
 269 
 
 294 
 307 
 337 
 356 
 361
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The once common and popular notion that criticism is fault- 
 finding, more or less direct and pointed, more or less elaborate, 
 is so far passing out of use that it may be dismissed with a word. 
 A less easily disposed of matter remains. It confronts alike the 
 serious student and the trustful seeker for authority. No one who 
 has read treatises on art and literature or essays and reviews 
 of authors and plays and books from the hand of eminent masters 
 of the theory and practice of criticism, can fail to be struck with 
 the fact that critics, like other doctors, frequently disagree in their 
 judgments. The result is confusing. A prospective theatre- 
 goer, for example, sees in reviews of the first night very divergent 
 opinions about a particular play, and he may "shudder, and 
 know not how to think " — or where to go. Or a modest seeker 
 for finality, disdaining all forms of criticism that, like the foregoing 
 example, hold a taint of commercialism, and seeking the repose 
 of certitude in the words of high-minded masters of the critical 
 essay and the acknowledged arbiters of literary taste, will be struck 
 by the fact that whereas Arnold,^ for example, assigns to Byron a 
 place second only to Wordsworth, among the poets of the last 
 century, Mr. Swinburne" regards Byron as no more than low 
 second rate and wholly inferior to Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, 
 Coleridge, and others. Who shall guard the guardians of htera- 
 ture? 
 
 To make clearer the fact of this discrepancy a few pregnant re- 
 marks as to the nature, the function, and the value of criticism may 
 be quoted, "Criticism," says Mr. Collins,^ "is to literature what 
 legislation and government are to states. If they are in able and 
 
 ' Essays in Criticism, Second Series. Wordsworth. 
 ^ Miscellanies. Wordsworth and Byron. 
 ^ Ephemera Critica p. 26. 
 
 IX
 
 X INTRODUCTION 
 
 honest bands, all goes well; if they are in weak and dishonest 
 hands, all is anarchy and mischief." Arnold, in a frequently 
 quoted passage, says,' "I am bound by my own definition of 
 criticism: a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the 
 best that is known and thought in the world." Pater's theory is 
 summed up in these words,^ "What is important, then, is not that 
 the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty 
 for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of 
 being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects." Mr, 
 Robertson's method is somewhat more argumentative:^ "It is 
 the getting behind spontaneous judgment, the ascertaining of 
 how and why we differ in our judgments, that the critics so-called 
 have left mostly unattempted." All these men, though at odds over 
 method, evidently regard criticism as a high function. On the 
 other hand, listen to Mr. Howells,* "Every literary movement 
 has been violently opposed at the start, and yet never stayed in the 
 least, or arrested, by criticism: every author has been condemned 
 for his virtues, but in nowise changed by it." And again,^ "Criti- 
 cism has condemned whatever was, from time to time, fresh and 
 vital in literature; it has always fought the new good thing in 
 behalf of the old good thing; it has invariably fostered the tame, 
 the trite, the negative that survived." Leslie Stephen, out of sorts 
 with his life-long profession, wrote to Mr. Thomas Hardy (May 
 i6, 1876):" "My remark about modern lectures was, of course, 
 'wrote sarcastic,' as Artemus Ward says, and intended for a passing 
 dig in the ribs of some modern critics, who think that they can lay 
 down laws in art like the Pope in religion, e.g., the whole Rossetti- 
 Swinburne school. But if you mean seriously to ask me what criti- 
 cal books I recommend, I can only say that I recommend none. 
 I think that as a critic the less authors read of criticism, the better. 
 You, e.g., have a perfectly fresh and original view, and I think 
 that the less you bother yourself about critical canons, the less 
 chance there is of your becoming self-conscious and cramped. I 
 should, indeed, advise the great writers — • Shakespeare, Goethe, 
 Scott, etc., etc., who give ideas and don't prescribe rules. Sainte- 
 Beuve and Mat. Arnold (in a smaller way) are the only modern 
 critics who seem to me worth reading — perhaps, too, Lowell. 
 We are generally a poor lot, horribly afraid of not being in the 
 
 ' Essays in Criticism, p. 38. - The Renaissance, p. xii. 
 
 ' New Essays Cowards a Critical Method, p. 4. ■• Criticism and Fiction, p. 39. 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 46. 8 F. W. Maitland, Life 0/ Leslie Stephen, p. 290.
 
 INTRODUCTION XI 
 
 fashion, and disposed to give ourselves airs on very small grounds." 
 Stephen's father was even more contemptuous. Writing to John 
 Venn (August 25, 1838), he said:^ "Reviewing is an employment 
 which I have never held in great esteem. It is generally a self- 
 sufficient, insolent, superficial, and unedifying style of writing, and 
 I fully persuaded myself that I should never be enlisted among 
 the craft." The most scornful opinion is that of one of the 
 "Rossetti-Swinburne school," William Morris i^ "To think of a 
 beggar making a living by selling his opinion about other people ! 
 And fancy any one paying him for it !" 
 
 In short, criticism is one thing to Arnold and quite another 
 thing to Mr. Howells and Morris, and their views are perhaps no 
 more opposite than those of Pater and Mr. Robertson. What to 
 Arnold is noble and elevating, at least ideally, is to Mr. Howells, 
 in practice at least, impotent, and to Morris an affair of commercial 
 convenience. Whereas Pater holds faith in the sensitive individual 
 judgment, Mr. Robertson deems such judgments merely data for 
 further analysis. In the face of so great a divergence of opinion 
 as to the function and the potency of criticism it is well to inquire 
 what such views have in common and how criticism may be 
 defined. 
 
 II 
 
 The most obvious answer to the foregoing query is that each of 
 these writers is expressing what is for him a reality, or truth, or 
 fact, with regard to the theory of criticism or, in its application, 
 to a particular author or book. Furthermore, for every one of the 
 opinions quoted above there is abundant historical evidence, and 
 it remains true that criticism should be "disinterested," that it 
 should be "in able and honest hands," that it should "endeavour 
 to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the 
 world," that "the critic should possess ... a certain kind of 
 temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence 
 of beautiful objects," that it should "get behind spontaneous 
 judgment," that it is as a whole impotent in the presence of genius, 
 and that many critics are merely commercial. 
 
 All this means that criticism is, in the first instance, merely the 
 
 1 Maitland, Life of Leslie Stephen, p. 14. 
 
 2 J. W. Mackail, The Life and Letters of William Morris, Vol. I, p. 134.
 
 XU INTRODUCTION 
 
 expression of opinion about authors, books, and theories of art 
 generally. The opinion is usually expressed dogmatically; that 
 is, it is expressed as if it were a fact, a reality. It is a reality in so 
 far as it has existence in the mind of the critic who utters it; it 
 is a fact of what has been happily called the "existential" sort.^ 
 In this sense, any chance saying about an author or a book is 
 criticism : it states a fact, a reality, a truth present in the mind of 
 the speaker. That opinion may be modified by further reading 
 and by the clash of opinion with opinion, but the resulting judg- 
 ment, if sincerely held, will be true, as an "existential" fact. 
 This primary conception of criticism as an expression of personal 
 opinion is admirably phrased by Professor Saintsbury in his His- 
 tory of Criticism, when, speaking of the object of his work, he says, 
 "In the following pages it is proposed to set forth . . . what Plato, 
 Aristotle, Dionysius, Longinus, what Cicero and Quinctilian, 
 what Dante and Dryden, what Corneille and Coleridge, with many 
 a lesser man besides, have said about literature." ^ These words 
 supply a handy definition of literary criticism; it is talk about the 
 things of literature, haply with a view to stating what seems to the 
 critic to be true. This definition is, of course, very vague; it does 
 not distinguish good criticism from bad criticism, except in respect 
 to sincerity. One must, therefore, inquire further into the matter. 
 Before taking up that task one or two general observations may 
 be made by way of clearing the ground. The most evident cause 
 for the discrepancies noted in the foregoing paragraphs lies in the 
 diversity of the human temperament. No two men will be struck 
 by precisely the same thing, by the same body of facts, in precisely 
 the same way. Just as no two critics write about the same set of 
 objects or authors, so no two critics would hold identical views with 
 regard to a book that they happen to be treating in common. The 
 principle is a very obvious one, but it is so often lost sight of that it 
 seems necessary to exploit it once more; for people are prone to 
 cling to the word of distinguished critics and catchpenny reviewers 
 as if it contained final, universal, and unexpugnable truth. Such 
 things the opinion of any critic does not and never can contain; 
 indeed the moment a dictum becomes a dogma, the moment an 
 opinion, though uttered with, is found really to contain, finality, 
 it ceases to be interesting; for the history of literary criticism shows 
 
 ' William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 4. 
 'Vol. I, p. 5.
 
 • •• 
 
 INTRODUCTION XUl 
 
 that method of human expression to have thriven on variousness 
 of belief. 
 
 Since, then, no two men's interests or ideas of value are just the 
 same, it is a good practice in studying critics, to see on what ideas 
 they lay stress. It is always the proper method of procedure in 
 observing people to note what things they love, hate, fear, and 
 cherish. It will be seen that the opinions heretofore quoted have 
 body and existence as reality of different sorts : some concern them- 
 selves with what is loosely called impression, as with Pater; others, 
 like those of Arnold, relate to moral value and significance; for 
 Mr. Ho wells good criticism is, by implication, that which lends the 
 helping hand to the next generation of writers ; bad, that which is 
 practically impotent. 
 
 Another very obvious reason for the discrepancy under discus- 
 sion Hes in the pleasing vagueness of some of the major terms; 
 vagueness is often a source of disagreement as well as of peace. 
 What, for example, are "beautiful objects"? What is "the best 
 that is known and thought in the world"? What, so to speak, 
 are the finger-marks of the "able and honest hand"? What is 
 the "spontaneous judgment" and by what subtle by-path may 
 one "get behind it"? Over such questions much discussion 
 naturally arises. Mr. Chesterton ^ would undoubtedly say that 
 they are part and parcel of the common sense, and are therefore 
 understood by everybody, without thinking. They are hke our 
 own names, which seem the most familiar and appropriate things 
 in the world — until we begin repeating them and revolving them 
 in our minds, when they lose all semblance of rime and reason. 
 The moment one begins to ponder these terms they become vague. 
 It is the task of each critic to illustrate his conception of these 
 terms by his essays: but the fact remains that no two critics 
 would agree in their illustrations of the general idea or in their 
 special examples of beauty and the best. 
 
 For these and other reasons too numerous to mention a deal of 
 disagreement and conflict is the by-product of literary opinion. 
 We are all, let us repeat, literary critics whenever we express an 
 opinion about general or specific literary things. Some of us are 
 ready and proud to abide by our opinion in the face of the whole 
 world, nay, even more, are eager to air our differences; others are 
 keen to cover ourselves with the cloak of authority and to take 
 
 ^ As in Heretics.
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 refuge in an ex cathedra personality. A study of the origins of 
 criticism would be very interesting, but this is not the place for 
 so pregnant a piece of illustration. Suffice it to say that there has 
 in all probability been in criticism, as in all human afifairs, a con- 
 flict b etwe en_li berty and authority.^ The timid must always 
 have~sought refuge in the dicta of some more expressive and 
 powerful personality; others, more independent, have been the 
 iconoclasts and heretics of literary opinion, have claimed the right 
 to say plainly what they felt. In the nature of things, a body 
 of opinion about literary matters would arise, this tradition would 
 be perpetuated by men who found in that a profitable way to gain 
 their livelihood or who had real zeal for the cause, and in time the 
 class of professional critic would emerge from chaos — of the tribe 
 held in disesteem by the author of The Earthly Paradise. 
 
 Aside from this tradition, best expressed in such a phrase as the 
 history of taste, there have been many attempts, from before the 
 days of Aristotle down, to rationalize the whole matter, to show 
 what laws, what principles, what common human motive, underhe 
 our critical ideas and are the sanction for authority. Not only 
 have rules been given "for not writing and judging ill," but the 
 problem of the fundamental law which shall enable us to know the 
 truth has been, somewhat unsuccessfully, the object of search to 
 many philosophical critics.^ Abandoning as futile for our present 
 purposes, though interesting, any effort to theorize along that line, 
 let us turn to criticism as a body of specific actual fact, and illus- 
 trating the matter by a pretty wide variety of specimens from 
 well-known English criticism of high quality, let us see what, in 
 general, criticism means, what are the sanctions of critical opinion, 
 what objective reality means in criticism, and what are some of 
 the categories actually employed in this pleasing science. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Criticism is both a matter of process and a matter of form. As 
 to the first of these, if the foregoing analysis be sound, criticism 
 may be said, broadly, t _o aim at establishing fact: it is a method 
 of demonstration. Viewed in this light, criticism may be applied 
 
 * For an able statement of the essence and merits of this conflict, see W. P. 
 Trent, The A tUhority of Criticism. 
 
 ^ See, for example, C. T. Winchester, Some Principles of Literary Criticism, 
 and W. J. Courthorpe, Lije in Poetry, Law in Taste.
 
 INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 to any bra nch of h uman th ougtiLQr-actmtjL; any idea or process 
 may be "subject tcT it ; one may criticise the latest iindings of 
 astronomy or the making of armor-plate and automobiles, may 
 criticise oatmeal as a food or Ossian as an oasis in an alleged age 
 of prose. The object of the process is to approximate some reality 
 underlying these institutions. Truth, that is what criticism is 
 seeking. Criticis m, then, like trut h, may be classified acco rding 
 to the materia l with whichTTTclea ls. Literary criticism is^ne~of 
 these classes ; it enjoys the distinction of being at once the most 
 conspicuous entity among the various branches of criticism and 
 the most inaccurate and indefinite in the application of its tests. 
 Literary criticism stumbles at the starting line in its attempt to 
 define literature, and its tests are evidently not so precise as may 
 be applied in a matter of natural or chemical science. For some 
 expounders of literature will have it that the ideas are the main 
 thing, others, that the expression of personality is what counts, 
 still others, that one must seize the "inner" meaning and the 
 spiritual significance. In the main, however, literary criticism, 
 like other forms of criticism, seeks (i) to establish the facts of 
 literature and (2) to pass judgment on the value and significance 
 of those facts. Since passing judgment on the worth or value of 
 a fact or body of facts is really nothing but establishing another 
 fact, though in a different category, the aim of literary criticism 
 may be defined as, broadly, that which we stated at the beginning 
 of this paragraph — the establishing of facts, of whatever sort, so 
 they be facts — that is, truths, realities — about literature. Like 
 any intellectual process, literary criticism may therefore be defined 
 by (i) the material with which it deals and (2) the methods which 
 it used to establish its conclusions, the cogency of which varies 
 greatly with the material. 
 
 Under the head of material, a large number of classes may be 
 recognized and commonly are recognized. TextuaLcrilicisilU 
 for example, aims to establish the correctness of the text of an 
 author; it employs, very usefully, much human energy. Bio- 
 graphical criticismj tries to establish the facts of the life of an 
 author and to show how they are related to his writing; Stephen's 
 account of Swift's work in behalf of Ireland in this volume is an 
 illustration of this sort of essay, and it shows the relation of criti- 
 cism to biography. Akin to this are facts of personality, of 
 temperament and the like. Facts of vogue are a source of material 
 not to be neglected ; indeed, these facts, like those of the life of the
 
 XVI INTRODUCTION 
 
 author, may almost be said to be the starting point for any good 
 criticism whatsoever. Facts of vogu e^jjf contemporary o pinion, 
 of what people have said , are, of course, the basis of all good 
 historical cnticisn T In passing, however, it may be said thai 
 what has been called the "collective" estimate of books and 
 authors receives, on the whole, too little attention from critics. 
 Critics usually prefer theorizing and airing their own views to 
 looking up the facts. It is one of Coleridge's claims to distinc- 
 tion as a critic that he makes the vogue of Wordsworth the starting 
 point for his account, though he quickly becomes transcendental. 
 Mr. Robertson's critique of Poe is largely an analysis of the col- 
 lective estimate of Poe, with comments of his own. It is one of 
 the best specimens of that type that we have. An even more 
 matter of fact example is in Mr. Sidney Lee's Lije 0} William 
 Shakespeare, a chapter (20) entitled Shakespeare's Posthumous 
 Reputation. Questions of influence, when treated as matters of 
 fact, and other such topics come under this head. But one who 
 looks into the matter will be amazed to see how little critical 
 writing, comparatively, there is of this sort. Careful literary histo- 
 rians are usually much more concerned with their own views 
 and those of their fellow-critics than with strictly contemporary 
 opinion. Even modern critics, dealing with modern authors, go 
 into the rationale, the aesthetics, the personality, or what not, to 
 the exclusion of this important source of material.* This is a 
 field in which an enormous amount of literary work remains to 
 be done. 
 
 Facts relating to the class or type of writer to which an author 
 belongs are another well-recognized kind of material. Johnson's 
 exposition of the metaphysical poets is an example of this interest. 
 Many of the great classes or types have become more or less set, 
 and we have the commonly accepted categories of epic, dramatic, 
 
 ' See, for example, Mr. A. C. Benson's Life of Pater in the English Men of 
 Letters series. Mr. Benson devotes much time to summarizing Pater's works 
 (a totally unnecessary thing for one who has read them and not very inspiriting 
 for one who has not) and much time to comment on Pater's style, personality, etc. 
 Perhaps Mr. Benson did not mean to give us more, and his attitude is surely 
 worshipful and decorous, but one would welcome a word about Pater's actual 
 influence. In contrast are to be named Professor Lounsbury's studies in the vogue 
 of Shakespeare {Shakesperian Wars). A conscientious endeavour to state a 
 method which shall account for all possible sources and hence be a "collective" 
 criticism is to be found in E. Henncquin's La Critique .Scicntifique. This is sum- 
 marized by Mr. Robertson in New Essays towards a Critical Method {The Theory 
 and Practice of Criticism).
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 elegiac, lyric poetry, etc., and, in prose, such things as the essay 
 and the novel. It is the aim of much modern criticism to study 
 these types, and criticism characteristically goes beyond mere study 
 of the form and tries to ascertain the further fact of the comparative 
 value of each class, with a view to confining judicial comment to 
 intra-, rather than inter-, class comparisons. Why attempt to 
 compare a lyric and a novel ? They are in different media and are 
 not susceptible of real comparison except as representatives of 
 alleged higher and lower classes. Facts of treatment, of method 
 of art, of form, occupy a very conspicuous place in the history of 
 criticism Modern rhetorical study, for example, is merely a prac- 
 tical application of some of the critical results obtained in the 
 study of this medium. Of the essays in this volume those of Poe, 
 Mr. Harrison, and Air. Robertson will be found to contain material 
 of this sort. 
 
 An exceedingly prolific source of actual critical commentary lies 
 in the interpretation of an author's meaning. The love of literary 
 interpretation seems to be deep seated in the human heart; the 
 hidden meaning, the underlying mystery, is always a charming 
 thing to conjure with, and it offers possibilities of interest and fur- 
 ther mystification that no accurate scientific study can ever hope to 
 equal. "Whole rivulets of ink," as Swift would say, have been 
 expended in the yet unsettled question of what Shakespeare meant 
 Hamlet to mean ; and an equally prolific study could be made of 
 the different interpretations that have been put on Dante's Divina 
 Commedia. Lowell's essay on Dante,^ for example, is mainly one 
 of interpretation, designed to convey to the then somewhat untu- 
 tored American audience a proper conception of Dante's meaning 
 and to correct some of the mistakes of interpretation of a preceding 
 volume by Maria Francesca Rossetti.^ A good example of not too 
 solemn interpretation is Mr. Bernard Shaw's The Perfect Wag- 
 nerite, and it is a good subject for study in that the author gives 
 evidence of an apparently dcfisiite sort for his interpretations. 
 In general, the li terarv interpreter, like the critic who neglects _the 
 collective view , does no Ljnudl trouble himself with a historical, 
 aspect of the subject, but reads his own meanings into it. Brown- 
 ing, perhaps, more than any modern Engfishman has been the 
 prey of interpreters, scientific, philosophical, theosophical, neo- 
 platonic, symbolistic. The truth of the matter is that interpreta- 
 
 ' Prose Works, Vol. IV. 2^ Shadow of Dante.
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 tion is much more a matter of creation than of argumentative 
 science, and hence it is one of the most winning forms that the 
 critical process can follow. 
 
 Al-in fn infprpr i?±a.tinn ic; mnrh nf the_ Criticism that Seeks JtS 
 
 material in moral value s and in signi ficance. It is, of cour se, 
 about this^ attitud e that theHe fce discussion s of art for art's sake 
 have ariseru To some critics a writer like PoeTs msignlfirant and 
 meretricious because he did not in the least care to inculcate a moral 
 and "significant" view of the universe, but preferred to work as 
 skilfully from any premises that he chose to assume to a perfect 
 conclusion from those premises. The comparative admiration that 
 the French have for Poe, the scorn which those of us who are more 
 used to Emerson and Hawthorne feel for him, is both an illustra- 
 tion and a proof of the fact that such differences of opinion are tem- 
 peramental and racial rather than demonstrable and rational. 
 Arnold, of the writers in this volume, most sternly held to the moral 
 view of literature ; Poe to the artistic. Shelley, of course, is a critic 
 who attempts to ground the morality of his position in the innate 
 yearning of humanity for the ideal. 
 
 There are other sources of material, but the matter need be no 
 further illustrated. Besides the material and the point of view 
 from which it is approached, there are naturally a great many 
 questions connected with the personality, the predilection, and the 
 training of the critic. These all modify the result, so that, as a 
 matter of fact, of the categories of material named above, not one 
 can be found, actually, to exist in a pure state. A critic pre- 
 sumably writes what he feels, what he deems it good for people to 
 know, and does not think of the categories. The combination of 
 the elements just spoken of — the m aterial, the personality, the 
 Epint of view, the anim us, the trainuig, et c ., of the cr itic — result, 
 for purposes of convenience, in several classes or types of criticism. 
 They should be called tendencies rather than types, since the 
 line of separation between any two classes cannot be surely drawn. 
 Though the classifications are not very satisfactory, some of the 
 main types may be briefly indicated. 
 
 The primary, the most elementary, and by all means the safest, 
 is impressionism. It is elementary because it is concerned merely 
 with what the critic happens to think at the moment, and because 
 the critic's reaction, though often expressed with much charm, 
 is never other than a variably personal one. It is safe, for a critic 
 may always take refuge in the phrase which there is no gainsaying,
 
 INTRODUCTION XIX 
 
 "So it seems to me," and may, if he be impolite and a Capulet, 
 bite his thumb at other critics. It is not wholly a matter of regret 
 that from the writings of an impressionistic critic it usually is 
 impossible to make out a consistent theory of the universe or of 
 criticism. A case in point is the brilliant contemporary English 
 critic, Mr. Chesterton, who seems occasionally to contradict his 
 premises in his conclusions or in succeeding premises. To differ, / 
 eternally to differ, from previous opinion, to have intuitions and to ' 
 express them with a vigorous air of finality, is the one principle 
 that lends coherence and form to his stimulating and often admir- 
 able suggestions. Probably M. Jules Lemaitre, the distinguished 
 French critic, is the classic exponent of this type of criticism. In 
 this volume Lamb is perhaps the best example. 
 
 The type has many opposites. The one nearest to it is probably 
 the so-called "interpretative" or "appreciative" frame of mind. 
 As these names imply, criticism of this sort strives to throw light 
 on the real meaning or character of the author or to weigh and 
 measure him at his just value. Like any criticism, it may deal with 
 different kinds of material — personality, work, style, etc. — but 
 its essence is an attempt justly to appreciate the subject, to weigh it 
 at its proper worth. It is the opposite of the impressionistic type 
 in that it aims to take into consideration the author and his work 
 from his point of view and not merely from that of the personal 
 reaction of the critic. Pater is perhaps the most systematic ex- 
 ponent of the appreciative tendency in English literature, but such 
 critics as Bagehot, Arnold, and Coleridge often deal with appre- 
 ciative categories. 
 
 An opposite of both of these is the so-called judicial type, now 
 happily, in its extreme forms, tending to pass out of existence. 
 Characteristically it consists in setting up or strongly implying a 
 standard — philosophical, political, religious, commercial, socio- 
 logical, or what not — and rating literature by it. Alleged "canons 
 of criticism" derived from the practice of "Tully, Lord Kames, 
 and other elegant writers," are examples of a fashion that has been 
 persistent since the days of Aristotle. AH criticism, in some way, . 
 imphes a standard, but in criticism of the judicial tvpe. the stan d^_ 
 
 ard is found, not in the critic's likes and dislikes, as with im^ 
 
 pressionism, nor in the author's own purpose, as jn appreciation^ 
 
 b ut nTsomelhing e xternal to both . The best example of judicial 
 criticism that we have, alike ot its manner and of its final im- 
 potence, is to be found in the work of Francis Jeffrey, whose stand-
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 ards, derived from the canons of the eighteenth century and the 
 Whiggism of the time, proved inadequate to cope with the outburst 
 of imaginative hterature at the opening of the nineteenth century.^ 
 It is critics of this type whom Mr. Howells has in mind, and their 
 name is legion. Every critic in this volume is to some degree an 
 example of it. Most conspicuous is Arnold, whose standard is 
 a literary-moral one. The aesthetic critic who, like Hazlitt or Mr. 
 Harrison, showers adjectives of characterization upon us, may be- 
 long to this class. Or he may be an impressionist or an appre 
 ciator. 
 
 There is also a type known as the scientific, the opposite of 
 all those that have preceded, but most strikingly opposed to im- 
 pressionism. This operates by collecting, comparing, and weigh- 
 ing of all possible data, with a view to arriving at a stricter and 
 less personal and prejudiced view of the subject than the other 
 methods furnish. The tests are argumentative, but there can never 
 be hope of reaching so accurate results as are obtained in more 
 strictly scientific work. Good inductive criticism of literature is 
 scarce. The data are too complicated, the personal equation too 
 much in the way, to make possible any fixed result. Mr. Robert- 
 son's valuable work is a good instance of this type, and the essay 
 on Poe is, in his own opinion, the best example of his method. 
 To a certain degree, of course, writers like Bagehot are "scientific" 
 in that they expound facts which in a large measure are not open 
 to question. 
 
 A distinction frequently drawn is that between destructive and 
 constructive criticism. Destructive criticism is, as its name im- 
 plies, that which aims to overthrow what has been regarded as 
 established and accepted, a theory, a set of ideas, a fair reputation, 
 without any palpable substitution. Macaulay's essay on Mont- 
 gomery does this and does it very effectively, much more so than 
 the destructive criticism of Jeffrey, whose work, as a matter of 
 historical fact, in the long run failed of its purpose. What gives 
 destructive criticism its effect is an interesting jjroblem for study; 
 it will probably be found to reside, like most of the sanctions for 
 critical opinion, in the consensus of opinion — of which more later 
 on. Destructive criticism will be found usually on the side of 
 conservatism, and, like satire, it gains its force from being sub- 
 stantially in accord with some sort of prevailing sentiment. Much 
 
 ' See L. E. Gates, Selections from the Essays of Francis Jeffrey, Introduction.
 
 INTRODUCTION XXI 
 
 destructive criticism is, of course, of an iconoclastic kind; a 
 good example of vigorous attacks on reputations of great currency 
 will be found in Mr. Robertson's Modern Humanists. As to con- 
 structive criticism, it aims to establish new ideas and principles, 
 to ascertain what may underlie the obvious and the ordinary 
 that is really of more importance, and it aims to infer the unknown 
 from the known. To its inductions and generalizations we owe 
 whatever literary principles we have. 
 
 As has been said these types are merely tendencies, and others 
 may be recognized. Viewed with regard to any group of con- 
 temporary authors they do not seem, unless the critics are openly 
 hostile to each other, to amount to much. It is when one over- 
 looks the whole field of criticism that they assume larger propor- 
 tions and stand for different fashions and different vogues. 
 
 IV 
 
 As a matter of form, criticism may be defined as a body of more 
 or less substantial and complete theses. If actual critical books 
 and essays are looked at, criticism will appear to be no more than 
 a great many separate essays and books each of which presents a 
 pretty complete or a pretty scattering set of ideas, of which the 
 latter type is the more moribund. The truth of this characteriza- 
 tion will be borne out by an cursory glance at the contents of this 
 volume. Here are fifteen essays, varying in length from five thou- 
 sand to twenty-five thousand words. Nearly every one is a wxll- 
 known example of literary criticism, but practically all that can be 
 said, truthfully, of them in common is that each presents the sincere 
 views of the author, that each presents a pretty complete thesis, or 
 central idea, and that each has been more or less widely read and 
 accepted. Yet each, as the footnotes witness, is capable of exten- 
 sion and elaboration. Were they articles, treatises, and books 
 instead of being essays, or were they short reviews and notes they 
 would still be amenable to this description, to wit, — that a critical 
 article, essay, or book, is a piece of writing that aims to -present a 
 body of fact or theory about some author or book, —   about litera- 
 ture, in short, — to a reader or an audience. Criticism, then, may 
 be judged on purely rhetorical grounds. Aside from the value or 
 the currency of its ideas, it is good criticism in so far as it presents 
 a clear thesis or a coherent body of facts. Like any other piece
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 of writing it is amenable to sound rhetorical principles. Its clear- 
 ness is of prime importance. 
 
 Any occasion may serve for the display of criticism and any 
 motive may serve for its expression. Desire to explain the vogue 
 of an author ; a zeal, as in Ruskin's Modern Painters, to see justice 
 done ; a personal interest and a wish to share a pleasure ; a desire, 
 as with Arnold, to keep people from dying in their literary sins ; 
 the need of money — all these are adequate motives for the pro- 
 duction of critical work. Hence criticism may also take any form 
 it pleases. Here, again, we recognize conventional types. The 
 most frequent and most perishable is the book notice, a little shorter 
 lived than the formal book-review ; there is the introductory essay, 
 preface, or prologue ; there is the independent essay, the lecture 
 or address, the critical biography, the literary history. These are 
 matters of more or less formal occasion. They are not essentially 
 different from any forms of discourse or public address, and good- 
 ness and badness, from this point of view, has been abundantly 
 treated in books on formal rhetoric or the art of discourse.^ 
 
 From the rhetorical point of view, criticism is sometimes spoken 
 of as if it were a separate form or method of discourse, distinct, 
 that is, from description, narration, exposition, and argumenta- 
 tion. Specific critical essays, however, are, like almost any actual 
 writing, combinations of these forms. Criticism certainly employs 
 description and narration, chiefly by way of illustration, and it is, 
 as has been shown in the present section, in form, a matter of 
 good exposition ; in substance it is often largely argumentative. 
 
 The relation of criticism to argumentation naturally leads to the 
 important question of the proof of which critical opinion is sus- 
 ceptible. Clearly this is a very vital question, and no one should 
 shirk it; for the reason that people are prone to accept the word of 
 critics as final, as fact, whereas the word of critics is, in the first 
 instance, fact only in the sense that it exists in the mind of the 
 critics. What, so to speak, is the objective proof for such opin- 
 ions, what is the demonstration, what the sanctions for any 
 critical opinion whatsoever? How can critical opinion about 
 books be verified, be accepted as of wider than merely personal 
 intuition and truth? 
 
 'As, for example, R. C. Ringwalt's Modern American Oratory.
 
 INTRODUCTION XXlil 
 
 These questions are capable of no one answer. It would be 
 a far easier matter for Leslie Stephen to prove the truth of his 
 conclusions 'about Swift's work for Ireland, than for Matthew 
 Arnold to demonstrate the ultimate value of his touchstones, or 
 for Shelley to substantiate the conception underlying his famous 
 essay. Church records, histories of Ireland, some well-deduced 
 conclusions from well-known facts would furnish Stephen with the 
 proof that he needed. No such facts exist for the establishment 
 of the presumption that a few selected lines of poetry may serve as 
 a gauge for all literary production whatsoever, and most people, 
 even if they grant the truth of Arnold's thesis, are put to it when 
 they try to make a practical application thereof ; one can find the 
 "great note" in many things, if one has an ear for great notes or 
 is willing to put up with a little self-deception. The proof for 
 Shelley's position is as general as that which divides into opposing 
 camps the philosophers of the origin of ideas and the reasons why 
 there is such a thing as conscience. The demonstration of much 
 of an essay like Bagehot's is a series of axiomatic (and brilliantly 
 phrased) divisions; if you have a large number of the hoops and 
 have arranged them well, and can shoot tolerably straight through 
 them, you are sure, if you can draw Bagehot's bow of Odysseus, 
 to make some palpable hit. Johnson arrives at his conclusions 
 about the metaphysical poets largely by process of illustration. In 
 a sense one may prove anything by illustration; it is very easy 
 to find some sort of illustration for any thesis that one may wish; 
 Shakespeare has been written down an ass by analysis and illus- 
 tration; and the charge brought against the fairness and the 
 finality of Johnson is that he failed to give examples of the really 
 admirable side of the poets whom he happens almost immortally 
 to have characterized. 
 
 Speaking, in general, there are two chief classes of proof for 
 critical opinion in literary matters. These classes may be shown 
 by an analysis of actual critical essays and books. The first and 
 by far the most common sanction for critical opinion lies in per- 
 sonality, broadly regarded. The ability to express one's opinion 
 tends to create believers in that opinion, and, though opposition 
 may also be aroused, it is in this way that cults are formed and 
 opinion becomes crystallized. Such opinions will be more or less 
 widely held in proportion as they are useful and valuable to the 
 people whom they chance to affect; what seems to be good will 
 hold, what is not useful will perish or be regarded as a curious and
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 casual expression of by-gone taste. Agreement of opinion on a 
 small scale constitutes a cult or school ; on a large scale, held rather 
 subconsciously, agreement goes to make taste, the most potent, 
 though not a fixed, arbiter in matters literary. Personal opinion, 
 then, expanded and diffused till it becomes an affair of wide-spread 
 conviction, of pleasing certitude, finally of common-sense, is really 
 the main sanction and source of support for all critical opinion 
 whatsoever. 
 
 That this is so may be shown by two examples, which, though 
 open to the charge of being illustrations, are nevertheless reason- 
 ably true. That Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and others 
 are "classics" can be demonstrated only by this method of uni- 
 versal consent, by this broad argument from personality. We do 
 not necessarily read these classics, but we hold them dear, because 
 there are in them elements of permanent value (as it seems) for 
 mankind. It would, perhaps, be more strictly truthful to say that 
 the word "classic" is a term of endearment that we have agreed 
 to apply to books of a certain type, fulfilling certain requirements 
 that we have agreed to like. However that may be, the point 
 is that the place of such books exists in, receives its sanction through, 
 is demonstrable by, popular favour, through a large number of 
 years, over a wide extent of country. Like the American Con- 
 stitution or the Declaration of Independence, a literary opinion is 
 a human institution, and will be held so long as it is useful and no 
 longer. The demonstration of its truth lies in its utility, just as 
 tastes change and literary taste is modified, when they cease to 
 be agreeable, pleasing, and satisfying. 
 
 Lest this should seem too pragmatic a view of criticism to hold, 
 the other illustration may be cited. Just as a plain matter of fact 
 most criticism, as actually written, never trespasses on funda- 
 mental ground. Nine-tenths of the actual criticism is in perfect 
 accord with the popular and traditional taste, with popular and 
 traditional morality and ethics. Certain critics, to be sure, thrive 
 and batten on dissent and paradox: but for the most part it is the 
 role of the critic to receive as correct the current "collective" 
 opinion — which he is doing something to help form and crystallize. 
 His task is then to find reasons for its correctness. These reasons 
 naturally differ according to the temperament and taste of the 
 critic, as in the variety of reasons found by the distinguished Eng- 
 lish critics of the first quarter of the nineteenth century for the 
 assumption that Shakespeare is of unparalleled genius. Indeed,
 
 INTRODUCTION XXV 
 
 the critics who make us see things in a different hght are com- 
 paratively few and far between. Dryden, Johnson, Coleridge, 
 Arnold, Pater, to name a few mentioned in this volume, have given 
 new facts and have more or less widely inculcated new ways of 
 looking at things. 
 
 The other method of demonstration is of a more scientific sort. 
 What scientific checks, what argumentative methods of the con- 
 vincing, rather than the persuasive, sort can be applied to critical 
 opinion? Clearly the facts of any established branch of know- 
 ledge might be applied to opinions. Thus, modern philology 
 undoubtedly teaches us that Dryden's view of Chaucer's verse is 
 wrong, and a flitting acquaintance with the life of Shakespeare, 
 the history of the stage, or the most common motive for human 
 endeavour, would dispose of the Lamb's paradox that Shake- 
 speare's plays are unfit for stage representation. The facts of 
 philology, of literary history, and even the course of traditional 
 authority are checks to opinion. This matter, of course, requires 
 a very full exposition for satisfactory treatment. 
 
 Tests such as are to be used in a legal proceeding may be em^- 
 ployed with some result. A critic, who is capable of contradicting 
 himself, is, despite Emerson's famous dictum, not to be taken as a 
 guide to ultimate truth. It is, naturally, reasonable to avoid any 
 such guide to the kingdom of right in literary matters. A prevail- 
 ing love of paradox, a scorn of common opinion, a contempt for 
 authority, are often entertaining in a critic — where they do not 
 do much real harm — but they do not contribute to one's certitude 
 and peace of mind, if one is in quest of verity. Inaccuracy with 
 regard to facts may, under some circumstances, tend to make a 
 reader hesitate about accepting an opinion as really very authori- 
 tative, and yet some of our most charming literary critics are not 
 always exact. Vagueness as to the main thesis may possibly 
 cause one to doubt the minor dicta. It is, for example, a substan- 
 tial charge to be made against much of Arnold's social criticism, 
 and to some degree against his literary criticism, that after caution- 
 ing us against our besetting sins, he tells that we must have 
 something "real." Now, "the real thing" is something that the 
 shortcomings are not, but we never get any nearer to it than that ; 
 positively, it remains undefined, and causes beginners in Arnold to 
 scratch their heads and chew their pencils, forgetting that Arnold 
 is a very valuable critic by reason of bringing in new material and 
 new points of view to the attention of his fellow-islarders. "Per-
 
 XXvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 sonal characteristics that are likely to interfere with the success " 
 — as an intelligence office or a teacher's agency would say — of 
 the critic, as rancour, malice, a desire for revenge, a prevailing 
 flippancy, a slovenly style of address, are in the way of the per- 
 manent acceptability of critical opinion. The basis of Mr. Rob- 
 ertson's well-taken attack on Griswold's criticism of Poe is that 
 Griswold stultified himself by harbouring motives of revenge 
 against his dead author. Such a view is coming to be the common 
 verdict with regard to all the Griswoldian criticism. The common 
 view, the commonly accepted opinion — that is the ultimate court 
 of appeal in criticism — that is, like usage in language, what gives 
 even the critic his final place. Argumentative and other tests are 
 but methods of hastening or retarding the process. All induction, 
 so called, in literary criticism must ultimately be based on data 
 supplied by diverse and fallible minds. 
 
 In sum, if the preceding analyses are correct, literary criticism 
 is opinion about books, authors, and literary art, with a view, so 
 far as possible, to establishing acceptable fact. Actually, it consists 
 of a corpus of opinion, theory, and fact, in the form of reviews, 
 essays, addresses, treatises, casual sayings, and dicta generally. 
 It may deal with personality, with ideas, with style, — in short, with 
 any aspect of literature that it please, and still be criticism. It will 
 be good criticism in so far as it utters ideas that it is good for 
 mankind to know, or that contain in themselves substantial demon- 
 stration of their truth. It will also be good in proportion as it is 
 orderly, clear, and definite in exposition. It would follow that 
 the essentials of good criticism are, as personal qualities, sincerity, 
 fairness, and candour; as intellectual characteristics, knowledge of 
 the facts, and an ability to use the ordinary rules of logic and 
 common sense; as expression, clear and orderly statement. 
 
 VI 
 
 Let us pursue the matter into the region of practice. Criticism 
 is a very interesting field for both amusing and disciplinary 
 study, and the writing of critiques is pleasing diversion as well 
 as an occasionally irksome part of the rhetorical curriculum in 
 colleges. 
 
 The analysis of criticism and critical essays may be briefly ex- 
 plained. The most important element is surely the material that 
 the critic has to expound and the ideas that he sets forth; his
 
 INTRODUCTION XXVll 
 
 substance, in short, is, as in any prose work, the first thing to be 
 taken into consideration by the student. The point of view of the 
 writer, that is to say, the kind of proof that he uses in support 
 of his conclusions, is another important element. In short, 
 the essential process is (i) to note the critic's conclusions, and 
 (2) then see the steps by which he reached them. After these may 
 properly come (3) a study of the occasion as effecting the treatment, 
 and (4)' an analysis of the structure and style. The actual fact, 
 the soundness of the opinion, the quality and kind of proof, the 
 standards explicit and implicit — these are the important things. 
 For convenience in this analysis, a student should have in mind 
 the extreme types of criticism : impressionism, where an author 
 gives simply and solely his own feeling or opinion without regard 
 to external and objective fact, and a matter-of-fact statement of the 
 collective fact. No writer in this volume quite reaches either 
 extreme. Lamb is nearest to impressionism; Mr. Robertson to 
 collectivism. 
 
 The selections in this book will furnish abundant material for 
 analysis. They represent considerable variety of taste and opinion 
 and they are arranged in order from the simplest and most easily 
 demonstrable positions, dealing with particular men, up to the 
 more general and abstract positions, deaUng with general theories 
 and points of view. Any body of criticism which the student may 
 pick up will, however, serve as well for the purposes of analytical 
 and disciplinary study. Lowell, Hazlitt, DeQuincey, Carlyle, Rus- 
 kin, Mill, Thackeray, Addison, Ben Jonson, Sidney, George 
 Eliot, Hunt, Jeffrey, F. W. H. Myers, R. W. Church, Mark Patti- 
 son, G. H. Lewes, and among living critics, Mr. Collins, Mr. 
 Stedman, Mr. Morley, Mr. Courthorpe, Mr. Chesterton, Mr. 
 Archer, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Colvin, Professor Gosse, Professor 
 Saintsbury, Professor Ward, Professor Woodberry, and many 
 others are among the best-known and substantial critics. It 
 must not be forgotten that criticism, to revert to Professor Saints- 
 bury's dictum, is what these men and many others have said about 
 books, and that they have their accepted position because they say 
 things that we gladly hear, though often with reservation and 
 disagreement. Nor must it be forgotten that the aim in reading 
 any critic is not only to find out his opinions but to ascertain 
 how he arrived at them. It is an admirable study, so long as 
 the student does not make many demands on the Real and 
 the Absolute.
 
 XXviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 VII 
 
 To turn to the writing of criticism. In the preface to one of the 
 most handy, compact, complete, and sensible of the many modern 
 text-books on rhetoric, the author ^ says, "In attempts at hterary 
 criticism or anything resembhng it the average student produces 
 rubbish." And the author adds, with a competence that no one 
 can question, that very few men in any large newspaper office 
 have adequate intellectual equipment for producing respectable 
 criticism. Those of us who have had much experience with the 
 literary production of students will readily admit the truth of the 
 remark; students' criticisms are far too often jejune, attenuated, 
 vague. Young writers are prone to glut their themes with such 
 phrases, to cite actual examples, as "real life," "rare imaginative 
 power and beauty," "a personality of singular charm," "a certain 
 unique style" (of the late General Lew Wallace), "natural," "spon- 
 taneous," "deep thought," "appreciation of nature," "striking at 
 the root of things," "underlying thought," "the book itself," "in 
 harmony with its theme," "singular suggestiveness and beauty," 
 "characteristic tone," "distinctly reflective trend" (of, say, J. S. 
 Mill), a "certain something" (there or wanting, as the case may 
 be). Wordsworth's ballads, we are told, "lack charm, power, 
 grace, sympathy, fine sentiment, effectiveness." Sir Thomas 
 Browne's style "is a complete expression of the author's person- 
 ality." Or, again, "his style is not sustained." Or, referring 
 to the same eminent mystic, "The man himself chiefly interests 
 us — a man of distinctly intellectual quality, and of great rich- 
 ness of imagination and intensity of feeling." George Eliot 
 "understands human nature, "but "many of her characters are 
 not universal." "If she does not give us all the truth about life, 
 she touches some of its deeper realities — She loves the deeper 
 problems." "She has a perfectly marvellous insight into human 
 nature. Few, if any, of her characters are overdrawn." Keats 
 "left a poetic heritage rich in classical themes, cloaked in imagery 
 both tropical and delicate, sensuous, breathing an intense love 
 of beauty as beauty." His "Eve oj St. Agnes holds one under 
 a spell in its romantic loveliness, almost as strong as the weird 
 charm of the Ancient Mariner. Such suggestiveness, such exquisite 
 
 * H. Laraont, English Composition.
 
 INTRODUCTION Xxix 
 
 colouring, such delicate characterization, of youthful Madeline 
 and Porphyro contrasted with the ancient dame and beadsman." 
 "To a Grecian Urn is a unique treatment of an unusual idea. 
 With a classic breath he vitalizes the pictorial decorations of the 
 urn, and warms them with the atmosphere of ancient Greece." 
 
 Such phrases and dicta, the list of which might be indefinitely 
 prolonged, have repeatedly come under the eye of the reader of 
 themes. To condemn them and, by inference, all student criti- 
 cism is an easy task, and it is still easier, as probably every teacher 
 has been inclined to do, to laugh at them. But one must plead for 
 a distinction, as Arnold would say. Courses in criticism, the writ- 
 ing of criticism, have assumed a pretty definite place, just as a 
 matter of fact, in many colleges; they are found to be a profitable 
 source of discipline, and students are interested in the subject. 
 The dicta quoted, to be sure, are not interesting; for the most 
 part they stand for genuine impressions that young readers have; 
 but they are either very vague and so obvious that one could guess 
 at them with his eyes shut, or they are very exclamatory, and in 
 either case half a dozen pages of such talk is not good. They 
 are nearly as low as the "red blood" or the "vital, absorbing 
 interest" of the stories that "grip" you, like the influenza, in a 
 newspaper review or its twin brother, the publisher's advertise- 
 ment of the latest novel. The remedy is largely a rhetorical one, 
 and is more easily stated than applied ; for the application of any 
 precept usually calls for much fasting and prayer. Stated, it is 
 simply that students should be required to say fewer things and 
 to say each more definitely. 
 
 General faults of most frequent occurrence will be found to lie 
 in the region of the intellectual conscience and in the manner of 
 expression. As to the first of these, students are prone to say too 
 many things and to say more than they really know. They deal, 
 perhaps, too largely with personal "appeal," yet, if their expo- 
 sition of their own impressionswas clear and forcible, much could be 
 said for such limitation. But the danger is that they will look at 
 an author in terms of a naturally narrow experience, instead of tak 
 ing him in his own terms, merely, so to speak, as a matter of fact. 
 A student will sometimes assert, with undoubted truth, surely, that 
 he doesn't see how Thoreau, say, could have lived alone in the 
 woods and cooked his own meals as he did, because, forsooth, 
 modern city houses, with good plumbing and a bevy of cooks, are 
 good enough for the critic. Doubtless this attitude is more
 
 XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 wholesome than the sentimental one would be, but it does not con- 
 duce to an understanding of Thoreau. Nor is it possible to agree 
 with the earnest conviction of a conscientious young woman that 
 Boswell gives a wholly wrong impression of Johnson, for as a matter 
 of fact nearly everything that we know of Johnson comes from 
 Boswell. A common attitude is for students to apologize for their 
 authors — for Franklin, say, or Poe — a thing that seems to be 
 quite irrelevant. Students will gravely discuss the question as to 
 whether Emma is a better character than Romola, wholly for- 
 getting to discriminate between the artistic problem involved and 
 the personal reaction, and assuming too blithely that the two are 
 really comparable. Again, a young critic will be disappointed 
 because Maggie TuUiver "is different from what we expected." 
 Strictly a reader has no business to expect anything different from 
 what the writer chooses to give him ; the reader is not bound to like 
 the feast, but that is his fault for having his expectations too keen. 
 Or rather it is the fault of the teacher from too much preliminary 
 praise. The main point is that young writers, when they commit 
 any such typical faults as have been mentioned, when they fall into 
 vagueness, or when they make sweeping assertions, err in that they 
 do not canvass the ground to see what is really possible and legiti- 
 mate, logical and honest, for them to know. As an eradicator of 
 such intellectual sins, a course in criticism is very valuable. "What 
 does it mean?" is the great question to ask. 
 
 As to the rhetorical side of the matter, the chief trouble seems 
 to be that young writers try to say too many things, not only with 
 resulting vagueness, but a generally scattering eft'ect. Too many 
 points — that is a thing to be avoided and shunned. One small 
 train of thought is about all that anybody can manage in the course 
 of five hundred or one thousand words, the usual length for college 
 exercises. Against the desirable centrality of effect, there operates 
 the patchwork si)irit. It is typical, widely so, for students to begin 
 with an introduction — "a kind of an introduction" is the term that 
 usually describes it. This, however, seldom introduces : the idea 
 comes to a close, an impasse is formed, into the head wall of which 
 the writer butts; he has to fall back to a new subject in paragraph 
 two. This is often a summary of the work under discussion, and 
 in itself it may be a good one ; the trouble is that it has no necessary 
 connection with the comment to follow. A summary is really 
 nothing but the necessary exposition of what is under discussion, 
 and should accordingly be written with that in view. It is not a
 
 INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 mere appanage, but an integral part of the whole composition. 
 Bagehot's well-known summary of Enoch Arden ^ is an excellent 
 example of how a summary may be subordinated to the central 
 idea. Another common way to produce a scattering effect is 
 to use the term "some" as a qualifying adjective to the title: 
 out of a complete and possible ten, say, topics connected with the 
 subject, you may use at random numbers, 5, 3, and 8 — a thing 
 which happens in many themes. 
 
 The only possible motive for mentioning these and other typical 
 faults which will occur to every experienced teacher, is to aid in the 
 avoidance of them, to help the student to think more clearly. 
 The only safe assumption in the teaching of composition is that 
 the young writer has something to say which he wishes to say to 
 somebody. To train him to express his idea and to express it in 
 a way that somebody else will understand and be interested in is, 
 of course, the only end of instruction in composition, — that is, 
 after the most elementary training is done. 
 
 A word, therefore, of a more positive kind may be added. In 
 single themes of a critical sort, it is well to pin the student down to 
 definite answers to the three immemorial questions of Coleridge : 
 What has the author tried to do? How has he done it? Is it 
 worth doing? The answers will involve a good deal of thinking, 
 and considerable additional skill will have to be employed to make 
 them compose into a fluent and solid piece of work. They ad- 
 mirably serve to put a writer into leading strings and to give him 
 his structure. They are also sound, in that they take into account 
 the author's point of view in criticising his work. 
 
 A more extended program may be offered to advanced students. 
 It is not a bad plan — subject, of course, to many modifications 
 of detail — to make the study of one author for each student 
 the basis of a term's writing. The author should naturally be 
 one for whom the student has some previous liking, and he should 
 be of medium size. Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, are altogether 
 too large and too much has been said about them. On the other 
 hand it is doubtful if luminaries of the magnitude of Mrs. Hemans, 
 "Barry Cornwall," Allan Ramsay, Eugene Field, E. R. Sill, even 
 Holmes, are sufficiently bright to lighten the way of most students 
 over the trackless path of a term of months. DeQuincey, Lowell, 
 
 ^Literary Studies, Vol. II; Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or Pure, 
 Ornate, and Grotesque Art in Poetry. Cf. G. R. Carpenter and W. T. Brewster, 
 Modern English Prose.
 
 XXxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 George Eliot, and such writers, where they are not too much 
 talked about, are more ponderable. It is a wholesome practice, 
 by way of introduction, to ask each student, without referring to 
 any book of comment, to set down, in a preliminary theme, what 
 he knows or deems it essential to say about the author he has 
 chosen. There should properly follow a compact biography of the 
 author, a plain matter of ascertainable fact, well arranged and 
 divided, without criticism. This is no easy task ; for biographies 
 by young writers are likely to be top-heavy and lumpy. A third 
 essay might properly be a classification of the author's works, with 
 a view to bringing out the forms that he uses, their relative impor- 
 tance, and the range of his ideas. It may be remarked in passing 
 that literary classification is a stumbling-block to many writers. 
 It seems easy, but to find, in practice, some fit scheme for bringing 
 out the ideas and forms of an author is no such matter. To name 
 a type, properly to characterize and illustrate it, and to list the 
 specific writings that fall under the class — the essentials of good 
 classification in literature — is often very baffling. Such classi- 
 fication may be based on the author's life, as with Lamb and 
 Addison, whose careers were experiments in various literary forms, 
 of which one was eminently successful; it may be based on the 
 occasion of his writing, as with Swift, who was very nearly uniformly 
 successful in all that he did after he was once started on his literary 
 way ; it may be a matter of substance, as with the somewhat 
 elaborate classification of DeQuincey's writings in this volume. 
 There are other appropriate ways. 
 
 With a good classification as a basis, a variety of possibilities 
 offers itself. A fourth theme may be written on a man's ideas, 
 if the intellectual side is the stronger, or on his quality if it 
 is his literary feeling that predominates. That which distin- 
 guishes him from other writers of his class, intellectually and 
 spiritually, is surely a thing worth exposition. Another impor- 
 tant source of material for a theme is found in the author's literary 
 art, his method of approaching his task, his style, considered 
 as a combination of phenomena. What things are characteristic 
 and constant in the writings of Arnold, or Keats, or Landor? 
 Naturally discussion of these points tends to run off into questions 
 of quality, but the two may approximately be kept apart. Any 
 criticism that the student has to offer, either by way of personal 
 impression or impersonal discussion, is a good subject for another 
 essay. Here, experience shows, students are likely to forget what
 
 INTRODUCTION Xxxiii 
 
 they have been talking about in their preceding themes : in biog- 
 raphy, classification, and account of quality, a student may have 
 shown George Eliot, say, to be a great moralist; and yet the criti- 
 cism may have nothing to do with the ethics of George Eliot but may 
 deal with the irrelevant question of the mechanics of her verse. In 
 short, one should criticise along the lines indicated by the classi- 
 fication and not abjure all preceding labour and knowledge. With 
 regard to another theme, it is most important of all that a student 
 should learn to state, just as a plain matter of fact, what is the vogue; 
 the estimation, the place, etc., in which his author is held. Such 
 "collective" criticism requires considerable research, but is a 
 most necessary check to one's own judgment. 
 
 Any special program is, of course, merely by way of illustra- 
 tion and suggestion ; the main point is that young writers will 
 avoid the production of rubbish in criticism, only by following 
 sound expository and argumentative methods. The good critic, 
 like other good men, is doubtless more born than made; but 
 there is no real reason why any painstaking student may not learn 
 clearly, adequately, and in an interesting way, to express the faith 
 that is in him. If the foregoing argument is sound, the fact 
 that criticism is largely nothing more than the expression of 
 personal, often temperamental, opinion, — checked, for the better 
 part, by historical and rational tests, — this fact should make the 
 young critic more confident of his own views and, at the same 
 time, more willing to modify them and to test them.
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 (1832-1904) 
 
 wood's halfpence 
 
 [Chapter VII. of the Life of Swift in the English Men of Letters Series] 
 
 In one of Scott's finest novels the old Cameronian preacher, who 
 had been left for dead by Claverhouse's troopers, suddenly rises 
 to confront his conquerors, and spends his last breath in denounc- 
 ing the oppressors of the saints. Even such an apparition was 
 Jonathan Swift to comfortable Whigs who were flourishing in the 
 l^lace of Harley and St. John, when, after ten years' quiescence, 
 he suddenly stepped into the political arena. After the first 
 crushing fall he had abandoned partial hope, and contented him- 
 self with establishing supremacy in his chapter. But undying 
 wrath smouldered in his breast till time came for an outburst. 
 
 No man had ever learnt more thoroughly the lesson, "Put not 
 your faith in princes;" or had been impressed with a lower esti- 
 mate of the wisdom displayed by the rulers of the world. He had 
 been behind the scenes, and knew that the wisdom of great min- 
 isters meant just enough cunning to court the ruin which a little 
 common sense would have avoided. Corruption was at the prow 
 and folly at the helm. The selfish ring which he had denounced 
 so fiercely had triumphed. It had triumphed, as he held, by 
 flattering the new dynasty, hoodwinking the nation, and maligning 
 its antagonists. The cynical theory of politics was not for him, 
 as for some comfortable cynics, an abstract proposition, which 
 mattered very little to a sensible man, but was embodied in the 
 bitter wrath with which he regarded his triumphant adversaries. 
 Pessimism is perfectly compatible with bland enjoyment of the 
 good things in a bad world; but Swift's pessimism was not of this
 
 2 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 type. It meant energetic hatred of definite things and people who 
 were always before him. 
 
 With this feeling he had come to Ireland; and Ireland — I am 
 speaking of a century and a half ago — was the opprobrium of 
 English statesmanship. There Swift had (or thought he had) 
 always before him a concrete example of the basest form of tyranny. 
 By Ireland, I have said, Swift meant, in the first place, the Eng- 
 lish in Ireland. In the last years of his sanity he protested indig- 
 nantly against the confusion between the "savage old Irish" and 
 the English gentry, who, he said, were much better bred, spoke 
 better English, and were more civilized than the inhabitants of 
 many English counties.^ He retained to the end of his life his 
 antipathy to the Scotch colonists. He opposed their demand for 
 political equality as fiercely in the last as in his first political utter- 
 ances. He contrasted them unfavourably ^ with the Catholics, 
 who had, indeed, been driven to revolt by massacre and confisca- 
 tion under Puritan rule, but who were now, he declared, "true 
 Whigs, in the best and most proper sense of the word," and 
 thoroughly loyal to the house of Hanover. Had there been a 
 danger of a Catholic revolt, Swift's feelings might have been differ- 
 ent; but he always held that they were "as inconsiderable as 
 the women and children," mere "hewers of wood and drawers of 
 water," "out of all capacity of doing any mischief, if they were 
 ever so well inclined." ^ Looking at them in this way, he felt 
 a sincere compassion for their misery and a bitter resentment 
 against their oppressors. The English, he said in a remarkable 
 letter,^ should be ashamed of their reproaches of Irish dulness, 
 ignorance, and cowardice. Those defects were the products of 
 slavery. He declared that the poor cottagers had "a much better 
 natural taste for good sense, humour, and raillery than ever I 
 observed among people of the like sort in England. But the mil- 
 lions of oppressions they lie under, the tyranny of their landlords, 
 the ridiculous zeal of their priests, and the misery of the whole 
 nation, have been enough to damp the best spirits under the sun." 
 Such a view is now commonplace enough. It was then a heresy to 
 English statesmen, who thought that nobody but a Papist or a 
 Jacobite could object to the tyranny of Whigs. 
 
 Swift's diagnosis of the chronic Irish disease was thoroughly 
 political. He considered that Irish misery sprang from the sub- 
 
 ' Letter to Pope, July 13, 1737. ^ Letters on Sacramental Test in 1738. 
 
 - Catholic Reasons for Repealing the Test. * To Sir Charles Wigan, July, 1732.
 
 WOOD'S HALFPENCE 3 
 
 jection to a government not intentionally cruel, but absolutely 
 selfish; to which the Irish revenue meant so much convenient 
 political plunder, and which acted on the principle quoted from 
 Cowley, that the happiness of Ireland should not weigh against 
 the " least conveniency" of England. He summed up his views 
 in a remarkable letter,* to be presently mentioned, the substance 
 of which had been orally communicated to Walpole. He said to 
 Walpole, as he said in every published utterance: first, that the 
 colonists were still Englishmen, and entitled to English rights; 
 secondly, that their trade was deliberately crushed, purely for the 
 benefit of the English of England ; thirdly, that all valuable pre- 
 ferments were bestowed upon men born in England, as a matter of 
 course ; and, finally, that in consequence of this the upper classes, 
 deprived of all other openings, were forced to rack-rent their 
 tenants to such a degree that not one farmer in the kingdom out 
 of a hundred "could afford shoes or stockings to his children, or 
 to eat flesh or drink anything better than sour milk and water 
 twice in a year; so that the whole country, except the Scotch 
 plantation in the north, is a scene of misery and desolation hardly 
 to be matched on this side Lapland." A modern reformer would 
 give the first and chief place to this social misery. It is charac- 
 teristic that Swift comes to it as a consequence from the injustice 
 to his own class: as, again, that he appeals to Walpole, not on the 
 simple ground that the people are wretched, but on the ground that 
 they will be soon unable to pay the tribute to England, which he 
 reckons at a million a year. But his conclusion might be accepted 
 by any Irish patriot. Whatever, he says, can make a country poor 
 and despicable concurs in the case of Ireland. The nation is con- 
 trolled by laws to which it does not consent ; disowned by its breth- 
 ren and countrymen; refused the liberty of trading even in its 
 natural commodities; forced to seek for justice many hundred 
 miles by sea and land; rendered in a manner incapable of serv- 
 ing the King and country in any place of honour, trust, or profit ; 
 whilst the governors have no sympathy with the governed, except 
 what may occasionally arise from the sense of justice and philan- 
 thropy. 
 
 I am not to ask how far Swift was right in his judgments. 
 Every line which he wrote shows that he was thoroughly sincere 
 and profoundly stirred by his convictions. A remarkable pam- 
 phlet, published in 1720, contained his first utterance upon the 
 
 * To Lord Peterborough, April 21, 1726.
 
 4 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 subject. It is an exhortation to the Irish to use only Irish manu- 
 factures. He applies to Ireland the fable of Arachne and Pallas. 
 The goddess, indignant at being equalled in spinning, turned her 
 rival into a spider, to spin forever out of her own bowels in a 
 narrow compass. He always, he says, pitied poor Arachne for so 
 cruel and unjust a sentence, "which, however, is fully executed 
 upon us by England with further additions of rigour and severity; 
 for the greatest part of our bowels and vitals is extracted, without 
 allowing us the liberty of spinning and weaving them." Swift 
 of course accepts the economic fallacy equally taken for granted 
 by his opponents, and fails to see that England and Ireland in- 
 jured themselves as well as each other by refusing to interchange 
 their productions. But he utters forcibly his righteous indig- 
 nation against the contemptuous injustice of the English rulers, 
 in consequence of which the "miserable people" are being re- 
 duced "to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the 
 vassals in Germany and Poland." Slaves, he says, have a natural 
 disposition to be tyrants; and he himself, when his betters give 
 him a kick, is apt to revenge it with six upon his footman. That 
 is how the landlords treat their tenantry. 
 
 The printer of this pamphlet was prosecuted. The chief 
 justice (Whitshed) sent back the jury nine times and kept them 
 eleven hours before they would consent to bring in a "special 
 verdict." The unpopularity of the prosecution became so great 
 that it was at last dropped. Four years afterwards a more violent 
 agitation broke out. A patent had been given to a certain William 
 Wood for supplying Ireland with a copper coinage. Many com- 
 plaints had been made, and in September, 1723, addresses were 
 voted by the Irish Houses of Parliament, declaring that the patent 
 had been obtained by clandestine and false representations; 
 that it was mischievous to the country ; and that Wood had been 
 guilty of frauds in his coinage. They were pacified by vague 
 promises; but Walpole went on with the scheme on the strength 
 of a favourable report of a committee of the Privy Council; and 
 the excitement was already serious when (in 1724) Swift published 
 the Drapier's Letters, which give him his chief title to eminence 
 as a patriotic agitator. 
 
 Swift either shared or took advantage of the general belief that 
 the mysteries of the currency are unfathomable to the human 
 intelligence. They have to do with that world of financial magic 
 in which wealth may be made out of paper, and all ordinary
 
 WOOD'S HALFPENCE 5 
 
 relations of cause and effect are suspended. There is, however, 
 no real mystery about the halfpence. The small coins which 
 do not form part of the legal tender may be considered primarily 
 as counters. A penny is a penny, so long as twei\e are change 
 for a shilling. It is not in the least necessary for this purpose 
 that the copper contained in the twelve penny pieces should be 
 worth or nearly worth a shilling. A sovereign can never be worth 
 much more than the gold of which it is made. But at the present 
 day bronze worth only twopence is coined into twelve penny pieces.* 
 The coined bronze is worth six times as much as the uncoined. 
 The small coins must have some intrinsic value to deter forgery, 
 and must be made of good materials to stand wear and tear. If 
 these conditions be observed, and a proper number be issued, the 
 value of the penny will be no more affected by the value of the 
 copper than the value of the banknote by that of the paper on 
 which it is WTitten. This opinion assumes that the copper coins 
 cannot be offered or demanded in payment of any but trifling 
 debts. The halfpence coined by Wood seem to have fulfilled 
 these conditions, and as copper worth twopence (on the lowest 
 computation) was coined into ten halfpence, worth fivepence, 
 their intrinsic value was more than double that of modern half- 
 pence. 
 
 The halfpence, then, were not objectionable upon this ground. 
 Nay, it would have been wasteful to make them more valuable. 
 It would have been as foolish to use more copper for the pence 
 as to make the works of a watch of gold if brass is equally dur- 
 able and convenient. But another consequence is equally clear. 
 The effect of Wood's patent was that a mass of copper worth 
 about 60,000/.^ became worth 100,800/. in the shape of halfpenny 
 pieces. There was, therefore, a balance of about 40,000/. to pay 
 for the expenses of coinage. It would have been waste to get 
 rid of this by putting more copper in the coins; but, if so large a 
 profit arose from the transaction, it would go to somebody. At 
 the present day it would be brought into the national treasury. 
 This was not the way in which business was done in Ireland. 
 
 * The ton of bronze, I am informed, is coined into 108,000 pence; that is, 450/. 
 The metal is worth about 74/. 
 
 2 Simon, in his work on the Irish coinage, makes the profit 60,000/. ; but he 
 reckons the copper at 15. a pound, whereas from the Report of the Privy Council 
 it would seem to be properly is. 6d. a pound. Swift and most later writers say 
 108,000/., but the right sum is 100,800/. — 360 tons coined into 2s. 6i. a pound.
 
 6 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 Wood was to pay looo/. a year for fourteen years to the Crown.* 
 But 14,000/. still leaves a large margin for profit. What was to 
 become of it? According to the admiring biographer of Sir R. 
 Walpole the patent had been originally given by Lord Sunderland 
 to the Duchess of Kendal, a lady whom the King delighted to 
 honour. She already received 3000/. a year in pensions upon 
 the Irish Establishment, and she sold this patent to Wood for 
 10,000/. Enough was still left to give Wood a handsome profit; 
 as in transactions of this kind every accomplice in a dirty business 
 e.xpects to be well paid. So handsome, indeed, was the profit 
 that Wood received ultimately a pension of 3000/. for eight years — 
 24,000/., that is — in consideration of abandoning the patent. 
 It was right and proper that a profit should be made on the trans- 
 action, but shameful that it should be divided between the King's 
 mistress and William Wood, and that the bargain should be struck 
 without consulting the Irish representatives, and maintained in 
 spite of their protests. The Duchess of Kendal was to be allowed 
 to take a share of the wretched halfpence in the pocket of every 
 Irish beggar. A more disgraceful transaction could hardly be 
 imagined, or one more calculated to justify Swift's view of the 
 selfishness and corruption of the English rulers. 
 
 Swift saw his chance, and went to work in characteristic fashion, 
 with unscrupulous audacity of statement, guided by the keenest 
 strategical instinct. He struck at the heart as vigorously as he 
 had done in the Examiner, but with resentment sharpened by 
 ten years of exile. It was not safe to speak of the Duchess of 
 Kendal's share in the transaction, though the story, as poor Arch- 
 deacon Coxe pathetically declares, was industriously propagated. 
 But the case against Wood was all the stronger. Is he so wicked, 
 asks Swift, as to suppose that a nation is to be ruined that he may 
 gain three or four score thousand pounds? Hampden went to 
 prison, he says, rather than pay a few shillings wrongfully; I, says 
 Swift, would rather be hanged than have all my "j)ropcrty ta.xed 
 at seventeen shillings in the pound at the arbitrary will and pleasure 
 of the venerable Mr. Wood." A simple constitutional precedent 
 might rouse a Hampden; but to stir a popular agitation it is as 
 well to show that the evil actually inflicted is gigantic, indepen- 
 dently of possible results. It reciuires, indeed, some audacity 
 to prove that debasement of the copper currency can amount to 
 
 ' Monck Mason says only 300/. a year, but this is the sum mentioned in the 
 Report and by Swift.
 
 WOOD'S HALFPENCE 7 
 
 a tax of seventeen shillings in the pound on all property. Here, 
 however, Swift might simply throw the reins upon the neck of 
 his fancy. Anybody may make any inferences he pleases in the 
 mysterious regions of currency; and no inferences, it seems, were 
 too audacious for his hearers, though we are left to doubt how 
 far Swift's wrath had generated delusions in his own mind, and 
 how far he perceived that other minds were ready to be deluded. 
 He revels in prophesying the most extravagant consequences. 
 The country will be undone; the tenants will not be able to pay 
 their rents; "the farmers must rob, or beg, or leave the country; 
 the shopkeepers in this and every other town must break or starve; 
 the squire will hoard up all his good money to send to England 
 and keep some poor tailor or weaver in his house, who will be 
 glad to get bread at any rate." * Concrete facts are given to help 
 the imagination. Squire Connolly must have 250 horses to bring 
 his half-yearly rents to town ; and the poor man will have to pay 
 thirty-six of Wood's halfpence to get a quart of twopenny ale. 
 
 How is this proved? One argument is a sufficient specimen. 
 Nobody, according to the patent, was to be forced to take Wood's 
 halfpence; nor could any one be obliged to receive more than 
 fivepence halfpenny in any one payment. This, of course, meant 
 that the halfpence could only be used as change, and a man must 
 pay his debts in silver or gold whenever it was possible to use a 
 sixpence. It upsets Swift's statement about Squire Connolly's 
 rents. But Swift is equal to the emergency. The rule means, 
 he says, that every man must take fivepence halfpenny in every 
 payment, if it be offered; which, on the next page, becomes simply 
 in every payment; therefore, making an easy assumption or two, 
 he reckons that you will receive 160/. a year in these halfpence; 
 and therefore (by other assumptions) lose 140/. a year.^ It might 
 have occurred to Swift, one would think, that both parties to the 
 transaction could not possibly be losers. But he calmly assumes 
 that the man who pays will lose in proportion to the increased 
 number of coins ; and the man who receives, in proportion to the 
 depreciated value of each coin. He does not see, or think it worth 
 notice, that the two losses obviously counterbalance each other; 
 and he has an easy road to prophesying absolute ruin for every- 
 body. It would be almost as great a compliment to call this 
 sophistry as to dignify with the name of satire a round assertion 
 that an honest man is a cheat or a rogue. 
 
 1 Letter I. 2 Letter II.
 
 8 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 The real grievance, however, shows through the sham argument. 
 "It is no loss of honour," thought Swift, "to submit to the Hon; 
 but who, with the figure of a man, can think with patience of being 
 devoured aUve by a rat?" Why should Wood have this profit 
 (even if more reasonably estimated) in defiance of the wishes of 
 the nation? It is, says Swift, because he is an Englishman and 
 has great friends. He proposes to meet the attemj)t by a general 
 agreement not to take the halfpence. Briefly, the halfpence were 
 to be "Boycotted." 
 
 Before this second letter was written the English ministers had 
 become alarmed. A report of the Privy Council (July 24, 1724) 
 defended the patent, but ended by recommending that the amount 
 to be coined should be reduced to 40,000/. Carteret was sent out 
 as Lord Lieutenant to get this compromise accepted. Swift 
 replied by a third letter, arguing the question of the patent, which 
 he can "never suppose," or, in other words, which everybody knew, 
 to have been granted as a "job for the interest of some particular 
 person." He vigorously asserts that the patent can never make 
 it obligatory to accept the halfpence, and tells a story much to 
 the purpose from old Leicester experience. The justices had 
 reduced the price of ale to three-halfpence a quart. One of them, 
 therefore, requested that they would make another order to appoint 
 who should drink it, "for, by God," said he, "I will not." 
 
 The argument thus naturally led to a further and more impor- 
 tant question. The discussion as to the patent brought forward 
 the question of right. Wood and his friends, according to Swift, 
 had begun to declare that the resistance meant Jacobitism and 
 rebellion; they asserted that the Irish were ready to shake off 
 their dependence upon the Crown of England. Swift took up 
 the challenge and answered resolutely and eloquently. He took 
 up the broadest ground. Ireland, he declared, depended upon 
 England in no other sense than that in which England depended 
 upon Ireland. Whoever thinks otherwise, he said, "I, M. B. 
 Drapier, desire to be excepted ; for I declare, next under God, I 
 depend only on the King my sovereign, and the laws of my own 
 country. I am so far," he added, "from depending upon the 
 people of England, that, if they should rebel, I would take arms 
 and lose every drop of my blood to hinder the Pretender from 
 being King of Ireland." 
 
 It had been reported that somebody (Walpole presumably) 
 had ?wf)rn to thrust the halfpence down the throats of the Irish.
 
 WOOD'S HALFPENCE 9 
 
 The remedy, replied Swift, is totally in your own hands, "and 
 therefore I have digressed a little ... to let you see that by 
 the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your own country, 
 you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in Eng- 
 land." As Swift had already said in the third letter, no one could 
 believe that any English patent would stand half an hour after an 
 address from the English Houses of Parliament such as that 
 which had been passed against Wood's by the Irish Parliament. 
 Whatever constitutional doubts might be raised, it was, therefore, 
 come to be the plain question whether or not the English ministers 
 should simply override the wishes of the Irish nation. 
 
 Carteret, upon landing, began by trying to suppress his adver- 
 sary. A reward of 300/. was offered for the discovery of the author 
 of the fourth letter. A prosecution was ordered against the 
 printer. Swift went to the levee of the Lord Lieutenant, and 
 reproached him bitterly for his severity against a poor tradesman 
 who had published papers for the good of his country. Carteret 
 answered in a happy quotation from Virgil, a feat which always 
 seems to have brought consolation to the statesman of that 
 day: — 
 
 "Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt 
 Moliri." ' 
 
 Another story is more characteristic. Swift's butler had acted as 
 his amanuensis, and absented himself one night whilst the proc- 
 lamation was running. Swift thought that the butler was either 
 treacherous or presuming upon his knowledge of the secret. As 
 soon as the man returned he ordered him to strip off his livery 
 and begone. "I am in your power," he said, "and for that very 
 reason I will not stand your insolence. ' ' The poor butler departed , 
 but preserved his fidelity; and Swift, when the tempest had 
 blown over, rewarded him by appointing him verger in the cathe- 
 dral. The grand jury threw out the bill against the printer in 
 spite of all Whitshed's efforts; they were discharged; and the 
 next grand jury presented Wood's halfpence as a nuisance. Car- 
 teret gave way, the patent was surrendered, and Swift might 
 congratulate himself upon a complete victory. 
 
 The conclusion is in one respect rather absurd. The Irish 
 succeeded in rejecting a real benefit at the cost of paying Wood 
 
 » [The savage state of affairs and the rawness of the realm compel me to do 
 such things.]
 
 lO LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 the profit which he would have made, had he been allowed to 
 confer it. Another point must be admitted. Swift's audacious 
 misstatements were successful for the time in rousing the spirit 
 of the people. They have led, however, to a very erroneous 
 estimate of the whole case. English statesmen and historians ' 
 have found it so easy to expose his errors that they have thought 
 his whole case absurd. The grievance was not what it was repre- 
 sented; therefore it is argued that there was no grievance. The 
 very essence of the case was that the Irish people were to be plun- 
 dered by the German mistress; and such plunder was possible 
 because the English people, as Swift says, never thought of Ire- 
 land except when there was nothing else to be talked of in the 
 coffee-houses.^ Owing to the conditions of the controversy this 
 grievance only came out gradually, and could never be fully 
 stated. Swift could never do more than hint at the transaction. 
 His letters (including three which appeared after the last men- 
 tioned, enforcing the same case) have often been cited as models 
 of eloquence, and compared to Demosthenes. We must make 
 some deduction from this, as in the case of his former political 
 pamphlets. The intensity of his absorption in the immediate end 
 deprives them of some literary merits ; and we, to whom the soph- 
 istries are palpable enough, are apt to resent them. Anybody 
 can be effective in a way, if he chooses to lie boldly. Yet, in 
 another sense, it is hard to over-praise the letters. They have 
 in a high degree the peculiar stamp of Swift's genius: the vein 
 of the most nervous common-sense and pithy assertion, with an 
 undercurrent of intense passion, the more impressive because it 
 is never allowed to exhale in mere rhetoric. 
 
 Swift's success, the dauntless front which he had shown to 
 the oppressor, made him the idol of his countrymen. A Drapier's 
 Club was formed in his honour, which collected the letters and 
 drank toasts and sang songs to celebrate their hero. In a sad 
 letter to Pope, in 1737, he complains that none of his equals care 
 for him; but adds that as he walks the streets he has "a thousand 
 hats and blessings upon old scores which those we call the gentry 
 have forgot." The people received him as their champion. When 
 he returned from England, in 1726, bells were rung, bonfires 
 lighted, and a guard of honour escorted him to the deanery. 
 
 ' See, for example, I.ord Stanhope's account. For the other view see Mr. 
 Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century and Mr. Froude's English in Ireland. 
 =" Letter IV.
 
 WOOD'S HALFPENCE 11 
 
 Towns voted him their freedom and received him like a prince. 
 When Walpole spoke of arresting him a prudent friend told the 
 minister that the messenger would require a guard of ten thou- 
 sand soldiers. Corporations asked his advice in elections, and 
 the weavers appealed to him on questions about their trade. In 
 one of his satires ^ Swift had attacked a certain Sergeant Bettes- 
 
 worth : — 
 
 "Thus at the bar the booby Bettesworth, 
 Though half-a-crown o'erpays his sweat's worth." 
 
 Bettesworth called upon him with, as Swift reports, a knife in 
 his pocket, and complained in such terms as to imply some inten- 
 tion of personal violence. The neighbours instantly sent a deputa- 
 tion to the Dean, proposing to take vengeance upon Bettesworth ; 
 and though he induced them to disperse peaceably, they formed 
 a guard to watch the house; and Bettesworth complained that 
 his attack upon the Dean had lowered his professional income 
 by 1200/. a year. A quaint example of his popularity is given 
 by Sheridan. A great crowd had collected to see an eclipse. 
 Swift thereupon sent out the bellman to give notice that the eclipse 
 had been postponed by the Dean's orders, and the crowd dis- 
 persed. 
 
 Influence with the people, however, could not bring Swift 
 back to power. At one time there seemed to be a gleam of hope. 
 Swift visited England twice in 1726 and 1727. He paid long 
 visits to his old friend Pope, and again met Bolingbroke, now 
 returned from e.xile, and trying to make a place in English politics. 
 Peterborough introduced the Dean to Walpole, to whom Swift 
 detailed his views upon Irish politics. Walpole was the last 
 man to set about a great reform from mere considerations of 
 justice and philanthropy, and was not likely to trust a confidant 
 of Bolingbroke. He was civil but indifferent. Swift, however, 
 was introduced by his friends to Mrs. Howard, the mistress of 
 the Prince of Wales, soon to become George II. The Princess, 
 afterwards Queen Caroline, ordered Swift to come and see her, 
 and he complied, as he says, after nine commands. He told her 
 that she had lately seen a wild boy from Germany, and now he 
 supposed she wanted to see a wild Dean from Ireland. Some 
 civilities passed; Swift offered some plaids of Irish manufacture, 
 and the Princess promised some medals in return. When, in 
 
 >"On the words Brother Protestants, &c."
 
 12 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 the next year, George I. died, the Opposition hoped great things 
 from the change. PuUeney had tried to get Swift's powerful 
 help for the Craftsman, the Opposition organ; and the Opposi- 
 tion hoped to upset Walpole. Swift, who had thought of going 
 to France for his health, asked Mrs. Howard's advice. She recom- 
 mended him to stay; and he took the recommendation as amount- 
 ing to a promise of support. He had some hopes of obtaining 
 English preferment in exchange for his deanery in what he calls 
 (in the date to one of his letters *) "wretched Dublin in miserable 
 Ireland." It soon appeared, however, that the mistress w^as 
 powerless ; and that Walpole was to be as firm as ever in his seat. 
 Swift returned to Ireland, never again to leave it: to lose soon 
 afterwards his beloved Stella, and nurse an additional grudge 
 against courts and favourites. 
 
 The bitterness with which he resented Mrs. Howard's supposed 
 faithlessness is painfully illustrative, in truth, of the morbid state 
 of mind which was growing upon him. "You think," he says 
 to Bolingbroke in 1729, "as I ought to think, that it is time for me 
 to have done with the world; and so I would, if I could get into 
 a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a 
 rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." That terrible phrase ex- 
 presses but too vividly the state of mind which was now becoming 
 familiar to him. Separated by death and absence from his best 
 friends, and tormented by increasing illness, he looked out upon 
 a state of things in which he could see no ground for hope. The 
 resistance to Wood's halfpence had staved off immediate ruin, 
 but had not cured the fundamental evil. Some tracts upon Irish 
 affairs, written after the Drapier^s Letters, sufficiently indicate 
 his despairing vein. "I am," he says in 1737, when proposing 
 some remedy for the swarms of beggars in Dublin, "a desponder 
 by nature ; " and he has found out that the people will never stir 
 themselves to remove a single grievance. His old prejudices 
 were as keen as ever, and could dictate personal outbursts. He 
 attacked the bishops bitterly for offering certain measures which 
 in his view sacrificed the permanent interests of the Church to 
 that of the actual occupants. He showed his own sincerity by 
 refusing to take fines for leases which would have benefited him- 
 self at the expense of his successors. With equal earnestness 
 he still clung to the Test Acts, and assailed the Protestant Dis- 
 senters with all his old bitterness, and ridiculed their claims to 
 
 ' To Lord Stafford, November 26, 1725.
 
 WOOD'S HALFPENCE 13 
 
 brotherhood with Churchmen. To the end he was a Churchman 
 before everything. One of the last of his poetical performances 
 was prompted by the sanction given by the Irish Parhament to 
 an opposition to certain "titles of ejectment." He had defended 
 the right of the Irish Parliament against English rulers; but 
 when it attacked the interests of his Church his fury showed itself 
 in the most savage satire that he ever wrote, the Legion Club. It 
 is an explosion of wrath tinged with madness : — 
 
 "Could I from the building's top 
 Hear the ratthng thunder drop, 
 While the devil upon the roof 
 (If the devil be thunder-proof) 
 Should with poker fiery red 
 Crack the stones and melt the lead. 
 Drive them down on every skull 
 When the den of thieves is full; 
 Quite destroy the harpies' nest, 
 How might this our isle be blest!" 
 
 What follows fully keeps up to this level. Swift flings filth like 
 a maniac, plunges into ferocious personalities, and ends fitly with 
 the execration — 
 
 "May their God, the devil, confound them!" 
 
 He was seized with one of his fits whilst writing the poem, and was 
 never afterwards capable of sustained composition. 
 
 Some further pamphlets — especially one on the State of Ireland 
 — repeat and enforce his views. One of them requires special 
 mention. The Modest Proposal (written in 1729) for Preventing 
 the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their 
 Parents or Country — the proposal being that they should be turned 
 into articles of food — gives the very essence of Swift's feeling, 
 and is one of the most tremendous pieces of satire in existence. It 
 shows the quality already noticed. Swift is burning with a passion 
 the glow of which makes other passions look cold, as it is said that 
 some bright lights cause other illuminating objects to cast a shadow. 
 Yet his face is absolutely grave, and he details his plan as calmly as 
 a modern projector suggesting the importation of Australian meat. 
 The superficial coolness may be revolting to tender-hearted people, 
 and has, indeed, led to condemnation of the supposed ferocity of 
 the author almost as surprising as the criticisms which can see 
 in it nothing but an exquisite piece of humour. It is, in truth,
 
 14 
 
 LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 fearful to read even now. Yet we can forgive and even sympathize 
 when we take it for what it really is — the most complete expression 
 of burning indignation against intolerable wrongs. It utters, in- 
 deed, a serious conviction. "I confess myself," says Swift in a 
 remarkable paper,^ "to be touched with a very sensible pleasure 
 when I hear of a mortality in any country parish or village, where 
 the wretches are forced to pay for a filthy cabin and two ridges 
 of potatoes treble the worth ; brought up to steal and beg for want 
 of work; to whom death would be the best thing to be wished for, 
 on account both of themselves and the public." He remarks in 
 the same place on the lamentable contradiction presented in Ire- 
 land to the maxim that the "people are the riches of a nation," 
 and the Modest Proposal is the fullest comment on this melancholy 
 reflection. After many visionary proposals he has at last hit upon 
 the plan, which has at least the advantage that by adopting it "we 
 can incur no danger of disobliging England. For this kind of 
 commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender 
 a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although, per- 
 haps, I could name a country which would be glad to eat up a whole 
 nation without it." 
 
 Swift once asked Delany ^ whether the "corruptions and villanies 
 of men in power did not eat his flesh and exhaust his spirits?" 
 "No," said Delany. "Why, how can you help it?" said Swift. 
 "Because," replied Delany, "I am commanded to the contrary — 
 jret not thyselj because oj the ungodly. ^^ That, like other wise max- 
 ims, is capable of an ambiguous application. As Delany took it, 
 Swift might perhaj)S have replied that it was a very comfortable 
 maxim — for the ungodly. His own application of Scripture is 
 different. It tells us, he says, in his proposal for using Irish manu- 
 factures, that "oppression makes a wise man mad." If, therefore, 
 some men are not mad, it must be because they are not wise. In 
 truth, it is characteristic of Swift that he could never learn the great 
 lesson of submission even to the inevitable. He could not, like 
 an easy-going Delany, submit to oppression which might possibly 
 be resisted with success; but as little could he submit when all 
 resistance was hopeless. His rage, which could find no better 
 outlet, burnt inwardly and drove him mad. It is very interesting 
 to compare Swift's wrathful denunciations with Berkeley's treat- 
 ment of the same before in the Querist (i73S-'37)- Berkeley is 
 
 > Maxims Contrrllei in Irclinl. * Delany, p. 148.
 
 WOOD'S HALFPENCE 
 
 IS 
 
 full of luminous suggestions upon economical questions which are 
 entirely beyond Swift's mark. He is in a region quite above the 
 sophistries of the Dra pier's Letters. He sees equally the terrible 
 grievance that no people in the world is so beggarly, wretched, 
 and destitute as the common Irish. But he thinks all complaints 
 against the English rule useless, and therefore foolish. If the Eng- 
 lish restrain our trade ill-advisedly, is it not, he asks, plainly our 
 interest to accommodate ourselves to them? (No. 136.) Have 
 we not the advantage of English protection without sharing Eng- 
 lish responsibilities? He asks "whether England doth not really 
 love us and wish well to us as bone of her bone and flesh of her 
 flesh ? and whether it be not our part to cultivate this love and 
 affection all manner of ways?" (Nos. 322, 323.) One can fancy 
 how Swift must have received this characteristic suggestion of the 
 admirable Berkeley, who could not bring himself to think ill of 
 any one. Berkeley's main contention is, no doubt, sound in itself, 
 namely, that the welfare of the country really depended on the 
 industry and economy of its inhabitants, and that such quahties 
 would have made the Irish comfortable in spite of all English 
 restrictions and Government abuses. But, then, Swift might well 
 have answered that such general maxims are idle. It is all very 
 well for divines to tell people to become good, and to find out that 
 then they will be happy. But how are they to be made good? 
 Are the Irish intrinsically worse than other men, or is their laziness 
 and restlessness due to special and removable circumstances? 
 In the latter case is there not more real value in attacking tangible 
 evils than in propounding general maxims and calling upon all men 
 to submit to oppression, and even to believe in the oppressor's 
 good-will, in the name of Christian charity? To answer those 
 questions would be to plunge into interminable and hopeless con- 
 troversies. Meanwhile, Swift's fierce indignation against English 
 oppression might almost as well have been directed against a law 
 of nature for any immediate result. Whether the rousing of the 
 national spirit was any benefit is a question which I must leave to 
 others. In any case, the work, however darkened by personal 
 feeling or love of class-privilege, expressed as hearty a hatred of 
 oppression as ever animated a human being.
 
 II 
 
 DAVID MASSON 
 (1822) 
 
 DE QUINCEY'S writings : CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW 
 
 [Chapter XII. of the Life of De Quincey in the English Men of Letters] 
 
 How are De Quincey's writings to be classified ? His own classi- 
 fication, propounded in the General Preface to the edition of his 
 Collected Works, was to the effect that they might be distributed 
 roughly into three sorts, — first, those papers of fact and reminis- 
 cence the object of which was primarily to amuse the reader, though 
 they might reach to a higher interest, e.g. the Autobiographic 
 Sketches; secondly, essays proper, or papers addressing themselves 
 purely or primarily to "the understanding as an insulated faculty," 
 e.g. The Essenes, The Cccsars, and Cicero; and, thirdly, that "far 
 higher class of compositions" which might be considered as exam- 
 ples of a very rare kind of "impassioned prose," e.g. large portions 
 of The Confessions of an Opinm-Eater and the supplementary 
 Suspiria de Projiindis. This classification, though not c[uite the 
 same as Bacon's division of the "parts of learning" (by which 
 he meant "kinds of literature") into History or the Literature 
 of Memory, Philosophy or the Literature of Reason, and Poetry 
 or the Literature of Imagination, is practically equivalent. 
 Hence, as Bacon's classification is the more scientific and 
 searching, and also the most familiar and popular, we shall be 
 pretty safe in adopting it, and dividing De Quincey's writings into : 
 — (I.) Writings of Reminiscence, or Descriptive, Biographical, 
 and Historical Writings; (II.) Speculative, Didactic, and Critical 
 Writings; (HI.) Imaginative Writings and Prose-Poetry. It is 
 necessary, above all things, to premise that in De Quincey the three 
 sorts of writing shade continually into each other. Where this 
 
 16
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 1 7 
 
 difficulty of the constant blending of kinds in one and the same 
 paper is not met by the obvious preponderance of one of the kinds, 
 it may be obviated by naming some papers in more divisions than 
 one. With that understanding, we proceed to a classified synopsis 
 of De Quincey's literary remains : — 
 
 I. DESCRIPTIVE, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND HISTORICAL 
 
 The writings of this class may be enumerated and subdivided 
 as follows : — 
 
 I. Autobiographic : — Specially of this kind are The Confessions of an 
 English O pium-Eater and the Autobiographic Sketches; but autobiographic 
 matter is dispersed through other papers. 
 
 II. Biographic Sketches of Persons known to the Author: — 
 Some such are included in the autobiographic writings; but distinct papers 
 of the kind are Recollections of the Lake Poets, or Sketches of Coleridge, Words- 
 worth, and Southey, and the articles entitled Coleridge and Opium-Eating, 
 Charles Lamb, Professor Wilson, Sir William Hamilton, Walking Stewart, 
 Note on Hazlitt, and Dr. Parr, or Whiggism in its Relations to Literature. 
 All these papers are partly critical. Several papers of the same sort that 
 appeared in magazines have not been reprinted in the Collective British 
 Edition. 
 
 III. Other Biographic Sketches: — Shakespeare (in Vol. XV.), 
 Milton (in Vol. X.), Pope (in Vol. XV.), Richard Bentley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
 The Marquis Weliesley, Last Days of Immanuel Kant (a digest from the Ger- 
 man), Lessing, Herder, Goethe (in Vol. XY.), Schiller. These also include 
 criticism with biography. 
 
 IV. Historical Sketches and Descriptions : — Homer and the 
 Homeridce, Philosophy of Herodotus, Toilette of the Hebrew Lady (archaeo- 
 logical), The Ccesars (in six chapters, forming the greater part of Vol IX.), 
 Charlemagne, Revolt of the Tartars, The Revolution of Greece, Moderti Greece, 
 Ceylon, China (a little essay on the Chinese character, with illustrations), 
 Modern Superstition, Anecdotage, French and English Maimers, Account of 
 the Williams Murders (the postscript to " Murder considered as one of the Fine 
 Arts"). In the same sub-class we would include the two important papers 
 entitled Rhetoric and Style; for, though to a considerable extent critical and 
 didactic, they are, despite their titles, chiefly surveys of Literary History. 
 
 V. Historical Speculations and Researches : — In this class may be 
 included Cicero, The Casuistry of Roman Meals, Greece under the Romans, 
 Judas Iscariot, The Essenes, The Pagan Oracles, Secret Societies, Historico- 
 Critical Inquiry into the Origin of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons, .iElius 
 Lamia. 
 
 The two Autobiographic volumes and the volume of Reminis- 
 cences of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, are among the 
 best known of De Quincey's writings. Among the other bio-
 
 1 8 DAVID MASSON 
 
 graphic sketches of persons known to him Charles Lamb, Walking 
 Stewart, and Dr. Parr are those of the highest merit, — the last 
 very severe and satirical, hut full of interest and of marked ability. 
 Of the other biographic sketches the ablest and most interesting 
 by far is Richard Bentley, a really splendid specimen of biography 
 in miniature. The Encyclopiedia article on Shakespeare, though 
 somewhat thin, deserves notice for the perfection of its propor- 
 tions as a summary of what is essential in our information respect- 
 ing Shakespeare's life. It is not yet superannuated. The similar 
 article on Pope is interesting as an expression of De Quincey's 
 generous admiration all in all of a poet whom he treats very severely 
 in detail in some of his critical papers; and it is rare to meet so neat 
 and workmanlike a little curiosity as the paper on The Marquis 
 Wellesley. Of the personal sketches of eminent Germans, that 
 entitled The Last Days of Immannel Kant, though it is only a trans- 
 lated digest from a German original, bears the palm for delicious 
 richness of anecdote and vividness of portraiture. De Quincey's 
 credit in it, except in so far as he shaped and changed and infused 
 life while translating (which was a practice of his), rests on the fact 
 that he was drawn to the subject by his powerful interest in Kant's 
 philosophy, and conceived the happy idea of such a mode of 
 creating among his countrymen a personal affection for the great 
 abstract thinker. Some of the other German sketches, especially 
 Lessing and Herder, have the same special merit of being early 
 and useful attempts to introduce some knowledge of German 
 thought and literature into England; but the Goethe, on all ac- 
 counts, is discreditable. It exhibits De Quincey at about his very 
 worst; for, though raising the estimate of Goethe's genius that 
 had been announced in the earlier critical paper on his "Wilhelm 
 Meister," it retains something of the malice of that paper. 
 
 When we ])ass to the papers of historical description, it is 
 hardly a surprise to find that it is De Quincey's tendency in such 
 papers to run to disputed or momentous "points" and concentrate 
 the attention on those. A magazine paper did not afford breadth 
 of canvas enough for complete historical representation under 
 such titles as he generally chose. No exception of the kind, indeed, 
 can be taken to his Revolt of the Tartars, which is a noble effort 
 of historical painting, done with a sweep and breadth of poetic 
 imagination entitling it, though a history, to rank also among his 
 prose-phantasies. Nor does the remark apply to the Account of 
 the Williams Murders, which beats for ghastly power anything else
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 19 
 
 known in Newgate Calendar literature. But the tendency to 
 "points" is shown in most of the other papers in the same sub- 
 class. Among these The Philosophy oj Herodotus may be men- 
 tioned for its singularly fine appreciation of the Grecian father of 
 History, and Modern Greece for its amusing and humorous in- 
 structiveness. Rhetoric and Style are among De Quincey's greatest 
 performances; and, though in them too, considered as sketches 
 of Literary History, the strength runs towards points and speciali- 
 ties, the titles declare that beforehand and indicate what the 
 specialities are. The CcBsars is, undoubtedly, his most ambitious 
 attempt, all in all, in the historical department; and he*set great 
 store by it himself; but it cannot, I think, take rank among his 
 highest productions. There are striking passages and suggestions 
 in it; but the general effect is too hazy, many of the parts are hur- 
 ried, and none of the characters of the Emperors stands out with 
 convincing distinctness after that of Julius Cc-esar. 
 
 Few authors are so difficult to represent by mere extracts as De 
 Quincey, so seldom does he complete a matter within a short space. 
 The following, however, may pass as specimens of him in the 
 descriptive and historical department. The second is excellent 
 and memorable : — 
 
 First Sight of Dr. Parr 
 
 Nobody announced him; and we were left to collect his name from his 
 dress and his conversation. Hence it happened that for some time I was 
 disposed to question with myself whether this might not be Mr. Bobus even 
 (little as it could be supposed to resemble him), rather than Dr. Parr, so much 
 did he contradict all my rational preconceptions. "A man," said I, "who 
 has insulted people so outrageously ought not to have done this in single re- 
 liance upon his professional protections: a brave man, and a man of honour, 
 would here have carried about with him, in his manner and deportment, 
 some such language as this, — ' Do not think that I shelter myself under my 
 gown from the natural consequences of the affronts I offer : mortal combats 
 I am forbidden, sir, as a Christian minister, to engage in; but, as I find it 
 impossible to refrain from occasional license of tongue, I am very willing to 
 fight a few rounds in a ring with any gentleman who fancies himself ill-used.'" 
 Let me not be misunderstood; I do not contend that Dr. Parr should often, 
 or regularly, have offered this species of satisfaction. But I do insist upon it, 
 — that no man should have given the very highest sort of provocation so wan- 
 tonly as Dr. Parr is recorded to have done, unless conscious that, in a last 
 e.xtremity, he was ready, like a brave man, to undertake a short turn-up, in a 
 private room, with any person whatsoever whom he had insulted past endur- 
 ance. A doctor who had so often tempted (which is a kind wav of saving 
 had merited) a cudgelling ought himself to have had some ability to cudgel. 
 Dr. Johnson assuredly would have acted on that principle. Had volume
 
 20 DAVID MASSON 
 
 the second of that same folio with which he floored Osburn happened to lie 
 ready to the prostrate man's grasp, nobody can suppose that Johnson would 
 have' disputed Osburn's right to retaliate; in which case a regular succession 
 of rounds would have been established. Considerations such as these, and 
 Dr. Parr's undeniable reputation (granted even by his most admiring biog- 
 raphers) as a sanguinary flagellator through his long career of pedagogue, 
 had prepared me, — nay, entitled me, — to e.xpect in Dr. Parr a huge carcase 
 of a man, fourteen stone at the least. Hence, then, my surprise, and the per- 
 plexity I have recorded, when the door opened, and a little man, in a most 
 plebeian wig, . . . cut his way through the company, and made for a /a7</e«// 
 standing opposite the fire. Into this he hinged; and then forthwith, without 
 preface or apology, began to open his talk upon the room. Here arose a new 
 marvel, and a greater. If I had been scandalized at Dr. Parr's want of thews 
 and bulk, conditions so indispensable for enacting the part of Sam Johnson, 
 much more, and with better reason, was I now petrified with his voice, utter- 
 ance, gestures, demeanour. Conceive, reader, by way of counterpoise to the 
 fine classical pronunciation of Dr. Johnson, an infantine lisp, —   the worst 
 I ever heard, — from the lips of a man above sixty, and accompanied with all 
 sorts of ridiculous grimaces and little stage gesticulations. As he sat in 
 his chair, turning alternately to the right and to the left, that he might dis- 
 tribute his edification in equal proportions amongst us, he seemed the very 
 image of a little French gossiping abbe. Yet all that I have mentioned was, 
 and seemed to be, a trifle by comparison with the infinite pettiness of his 
 matter. Nothing did he utter but little shreds of calumnious tattle, the most 
 ineffably silly and frivolous of all that was then circulating in the Whig salons 
 of London against the Regent. ... He began precisely in these words: 
 " Oh ! I shall tell you " (laying a stress upon the word shall, which still further 
 aided the resemblance to a Frenchman) "a sto-hee" (lispingly for st()ry) 
 "about the Pince Wegent" (such was his nearest approximation to Prince 
 Regent). "Oh, the Pince Wegent ! — the Pince Wegent! — what a sad 
 Pince Wegent !" And so the old babbler went on, sometimes wringing his 
 hands in lamentation, sometimes flourishing them with French grimaces and 
 shrugs of shoulders, sometimes expanding and contracting his fingers like a 
 fan. After an hour's twaddle of this scandalous description, suddenly he 
 rose, and hopped out of the room, exclaiming all the way "Oh, what a Pince! 
 — Oh, "what a Wegent! Is it a Wegent, is it a Pince, that you call this man ? 
 Oh, what a sad Pince ! Did anybody ever hear of such a sad Pince ! — such a 
 sad Wegent — such a sad, sad Pince Wegent? Oh, what a Pince!'' &c., 
 da capo. Not without indignation did I exclaim to myself, on this winding up 
 of the scene, "And so this, then, this lithping slander-monger, and retailer of 
 gossip fit rather for washerwomen over their tea than for scholars and states- 
 men, is the champion whom his party would propound as the adequate antag- 
 onist of Samuel Johnson ! Faugh!" . . . Such was my first interview with 
 Dr. Parr; such "its issue. And now let me explain my drift in thus detailing 
 its circumstances. Some people will say the drift was doubtless to exhibit 
 Dr. Parr in a disadvantageous light, — as a p.Htv gOssiper and a man of mean 
 personal appearance. No, by no means. Far from it. I, that write this 
 paper, have myself a mean personal appearance; and I love men of mean 
 appearance. ... Dr. Parr, therefore, lost nothing in 7ny esteem by showing 
 a meanish exterior. Yet even this was worth mentioning, and had a value in 
 reference to my present purpose. I like Dr. Parr; I may say even that I
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 21 
 
 love him, for some noble qualities of heart that really did belong to him, and 
 were continually breaking out in the midst of his singular infirmities. But this, 
 or a far nobler moral character than Dr. Parr's, can offer no excuse for giving 
 a false elevation to his intellectual pretensions, and raising him to a level which 
 he will be found incapable of keeping when the props of partial friendship 
 are withdrawn. — Works, V. 36-43. 
 
 Summary View of the History of Greek Literature 
 
 There were two groups or clusters of Grecian wits, two deposits or stratifi- 
 cations of the national genius; and these were about a century apart. What 
 makes them specially rememberable is the fact that each of these brilliant 
 clusters had gathered separately about that man as their central pivot who 
 even apart from this relation to the literature, was otherwise the leading spirit 
 of his age. . . . Who were they? The one was Pericles, the other was 
 Alexander of Macedon. E.xcept Themistocles, who may be ranked 
 as senior to Pericles by one generation (or thirty-three years), in the whole 
 deduction of Grecian annals no other public man, statesman, captain-general, 
 administrator of the national resources, can be mentioned as approaching to 
 these two men in splendour of reputation, or even in real merit. Pisistratus 
 was too far back ; Alcibiades, who might (chronologically speaking) have been 
 the son of Pericles, was too unsteady and (according to Mr. Coleridge's 
 coinage) "unreliable," or perhaps, in more correct English, too "tmrely- 
 uponable." Thus far our purpose prospers. No man can pretend to forget 
 two such centres as Pericles for the elder group, or Alexander of Macedon 
 (the "strong he-goat" of Jewish prophecy) for the junior. Round these two 
 foci, in two different but adjacent centuries, gathered the total starry heavens, 
 the galaxy, the Pantheon of Grecian intellect . . . That we may still 
 more severely search the relations in all points between the two systems, let 
 us assign the chronological locus of each, because that will furnish another 
 element towards the exact distribution of the chart representing the motion 
 and the oscillations of human genius. Pericles had a very long adminis- 
 tration. He was Prime Minister of Athens for upwards of one entire genera- 
 tion. He died in the year 429 before Christ, and in a very early stage of that 
 great Peloponnesian war which was the one sole intestine war for Greece, 
 affecting every nook and angle in the land. Now, in this long public life of 
 Pericles, we are at liberty to fix on any year as his chronological locus. On 
 good reasons, not called for in this place, we fix on the year 444 before 
 Christ. This is too remarkable to be forgotten. Four, Jour, Jour, what in 
 some games of cards is called a " prial" (we presume, by an elision of the first 
 vowel, for parial) forms an era which no man can forget. It was the fif- 
 teenth year before the death of Pericles, and not far from the bisecting year 
 of his political life. Now, passing to the other system, the locus of Alexander 
 is quite as remarkable, as little liable to be forgotten when once indicated, 
 and more easily determined, because selected from a narrower range of choice. 
 The exact chronological locus of Alexander is t,t,t, years before Christ. Every- 
 body knows how brief was the career of this great man : it terminated in the 
 year 323 before Christ. But the annus mirabilis ' of his public life, the most 
 effective and productive year throughout his oriental anabasis, was the year 
 
 * [Year of marvels.]
 
 22 DAVID MASSON 
 
 ;}^;^ before Christ. Here we have another " prial,'^ a prial of threes, for the 
 locus of Alexander, if properly corrected. Thus far the elements are settled, 
 the chronological longitude and latitude of the two great planetary systems 
 into which the Greek literature breaks up and distributes itself: 444 and t^t,^, 
 are the two central years for the two systems; allowing, therefore, an inter- 
 space of III years between the joci of each. . . . Passing onwards from 
 Pericles, you find that all the rest in his system were men in the highest 
 sense creative, absolutely setting the very first example, each in his particular 
 walk of composition; themselves without previous models, and yet destined 
 everv man of them to become models for all after-generations; themselves 
 without fathers or mothers, and yet having all posterity for their children. 
 First come the three men divini spiritus,^ under a heavenly afflatus, ^schy- 
 lus, Sophocles, Euripides, the creators of Tragedy out of a village mummery; 
 next comes Aristophanes, who breathed the breath of life into Comedy; 
 then comes the great philosopher, Anaxagoras, who first theorized success- 
 fully on man and the world. Next come, whether great or not, the still more 
 famous philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon; then comes, leaning upon 
 Pericles, as sometimes Pericles leaned upon him, the divine artist, Phidias; 
 and behind this immortal man walk Herodotus and Thucydides. What a 
 procession to Eleusis would these men have formed ! what a frieze, if some 
 great artist could arrange it as dramatically as Chaucer has arranged the 
 Pilgrimage to Canterbury ! . . . Now, let us step on a hundred years for- 
 ward. We are now within hail of Alexander, and a brilliant consistory of 
 Grecian men that is by which he is surrounded. There are now exquisite 
 masters of the more refined comedy; there are, again, great philosophers, for 
 all the great schools are represented by able successors; and, above all others, 
 there is the one philosopher who played with men's minds (according to 
 Lord Bacon's comparison) as freely as ever his princely pupil with their 
 persons, — there is Ar stotle. There are great orators; and, above all 
 others, there is that orator whom succeeding generations (wisely or not) have 
 adopted as the representative name for what is conceivable as oratorical per- 
 fection, — there is Demosthenes. Aristotle and Demosthenes are in them- 
 selves bulwarks of power; many hosts lie in those two names. For artists, 
 again, to range against Phidias, there is Lysippus the sculptor, and there is 
 Apelles the painter; for great captains and masters of strategic art, there is 
 Alexander himself, with a glittering cortci^e of general officers, well qualified 
 to wear the crowns which they will win, and to head the dynasties which they 
 will found. Historians there are now, as in that former age; and, upon the 
 whole, it cannot be denied that the "turnout" is showy and imposing. . . . 
 Before comparing the second "deposit" (geologically speaking) of Grecian 
 genius with the first, let us consider what it was (if anything) that connected 
 them. Here, reader, we would wish to put a question. Saving your pres- 
 ence. Did you ever see what is called a dumb-bell? We have; and know it 
 by more painful evidence than that of sight. You, therefore, O reader! 
 if personally cognizant of dumb-bells, we will remind, if not, we will inform, 
 that it is a cylindrical bar of iron or lead, issuing at each end in a globe of 
 the same metal, and usually it is sheathed in green baize. . . . Now, 
 reader, it is under this image of the dumb-bell that we couch our allegory. 
 Those globes at each end are the two systems or separate clusters of Greek 
 
 ' [Of godlike mind. ]
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 23 
 
 literature; and that cylinder which connects them is the long man that ran 
 into each system, binding the two together. Who was that ? It was Isocrates. 
 Great we cannot call him in conscience; and therefore, by way of compromise, 
 we call him long, which, in one sense, he certainly was; for he lived through 
 four-and-twenty Olympiads, each containing four solar years. He narrowly 
 escaped being a hundred years old; and, though that did not carry him from 
 centre to centre, yet, as each system might be supposed to protend a radius 
 each way of twenty years, he had, in fact, a full personal cognizance (and 
 pretty equally) of the two systems, remote as they were, which composed 
 the total world of Grecian genius. . . . Now then, reader, you have ar- 
 rived at that station from which you overlook the whole of Greek literature, 
 as a few explanations will soon convince you. Where is Homer? where is 
 Hesiod? you ask; where is Pindar? Homer and Hesiod lived 1000 years 
 B.C., or, by the lowest computation, near 900. For anything that we know, 
 thev may have lived with Tubal Cain. At all events, they belong to no power 
 or agency that set in motion the age of Pericles, or that operated on that age. 
 Pindar, again, was a solitary emanation of some unknown influences, at 
 Thebes, more than five hundred years before Christ. He may be referred 
 to the same age as Pythagoras. These are all that can be cited before Pericles. 
 Next, for the ages after Alexander, it is certain that Greece Proper was so 
 much broken in spirit by the loss of her autonomy, dating from that era, as 
 never again to have rallied sufficiently to produce a single man of genius, — 
 not one solitary writer who acted as a power upon the national mind. Calli- 
 machus was nobody, and not decidedly Grecian. Theocritus, a man of real 
 genius in a limited way, is a Grecian in that sense only according to which an 
 Anglo-American is an Englishman. Besides that, one swallow does not make 
 a summer. Of any other writers, above all others of Menander, apparently 
 a man of divine genius, we possess only a few wrecks; and of Anacreon, who 
 must have been a poet of original power, we do not certainly know that we 
 have even any wrecks. Of those which pass under his name not merely the 
 authorship, but the era, is very questionable indeed. Plutarch and Lucian, 
 the unlearned reader must understand, both belong to post-Christian ages. 
 And, for all the Greek emigrants who may have written histories, such as we 
 now value for their matter more than for their execution, one and all, they 
 belong too much to Roman civilization that we should ever think of connecting 
 them with native Greek literature. Polybius in the days of the second Scipio, 
 Dion Cassius and Appian in the acme of Roman civility, are no more Gre- 
 cian authors because they wrote in Greek than the Emperors Marcus Antoninus 
 and Julian were other than Romans because, from monstrous coxcombry, 
 they chose to write in Greek their barren memoranda. — Works, X. 242-255. 
 
 It would be hopeless to seek to represent by extracts, even in this 
 inadequate fashion, that very characteristic portion of De Quincey's 
 writings of the generally historical kind which we have called his 
 Historical Speculations and Researches. They must be read in 
 their integrity. The Casuistry of Roman Meals, Cicero, Judas 
 Iscariot, The Essenes, and The Pagan Oracles, may be especially 
 recommended. They are admirable specimens of his boldness 
 and acuteness in questioning received historical beliefs, and of his
 
 24 DAVID MASSON 
 
 ingenuity in working out novelties or paradoxes. The drift of 
 The Casuistry of Roman Meals is that the Romans, and indeed 
 the ancients generally, had no such regular meal early in the day 
 as our modern breakfast, and that a whole coil of important social 
 consequences depended on that one fact. In his Cicero he pro- 
 pounds a view of his own as to the character of the famous Roman 
 orator and wit and his function in the struggle between Cssar and 
 Pompey. The paradox in Judas Iscariot is that Judas was not the 
 vulgar traitor of the popular conception, but a headstrong fanatic, 
 who, having missed the true spiritual purport of Christ's mission, 
 and attached himself to Christ in the expectation of a political 
 revolution to be effected by Christ's assumption of a temporal 
 kingship or championship of the Jewish race, had determined 
 to precipitate matters by leaving Christ no room for hesitation or 
 delay. In The Essenes the attempt is to show that there was no 
 real or independent sect of that name among the Jews, all the con- 
 fusion to the contrary having originated in a rascally invention 
 of the historian Josephus. In The Pagan Oracles there is a contra- 
 diction of the tradition of a sudden paralysis of the Pagan ritual 
 on the first appearance of Christianity, and a castigation of the 
 early Christian writers for having invented the pious lie. 
 
 II. SPECULATIVE, DIDACTIC, AND CRITICAL 
 
 While a speculative and critical element is discernible in almost 
 all the papers now dismissed as in the main biographical or his- 
 torical, and while some of the historical papers were regarded by 
 De Quincey himself as typical examples of the speculative essay, 
 it is of a different set of his papers that our classification obliges 
 us to take account under the present heading. They also fall into 
 subdivisions : — 
 
 I. Metaphysical, Psychological, and Ethical: — In this subdivi- 
 sion, itself composite, but answering to what passes under the name of Phi- 
 losophy in a general sense, may be included the following: — System of the 
 Heavens as revealed by Lord Rosse's Telescopes ; various papers or portions 
 of papers relating to Kant, e.g. part of the Letters to a Young Man whose 
 Education has been neglected, the paper entitled Kant in his Miscellaneous 
 Essays, and the translation of Kant's Llea oj a Universal History on a Cos- 
 mopoliticiil Plan; the scraps entitled Dreaming and The Palimpsest oj the 
 Human Brain, in the "Sequel to the Confessions of an English Opium- I-^ater " 
 (Vol. XVI.); some of the scraps in the "Notes from the Pocket-Book of a 
 Late Opium-Eater," e.g. On Suicide; and the articles entitled Platans
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 25 
 
 Republic, Glance at the Works of Machintosh, Casuistry, On War, National 
 Temperance Movements, Presence of Mind, and The Juggernaut of Social Life. 
 
 II. Theological: — Protestantism, Miracles as Subjects of Testimony, 
 On Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement, and Memorial Chro- 
 nology on a new and more apprehensible system. This last, included in Vol 
 XVI., is an unfinished paper, posthumously published from the author's 
 manuscript; and it contains little more than a clever and humorous intro- 
 duction, in the form of an address to a young lady, with the beginning of what 
 was intended to be a piece of Biblical Criticism. 
 
 III. English Politics: — A Torys Account of Toryism, Whiggism, 
 and Radicalism; O71 the Political Parties of Modern England; Falsifica- 
 tion of English History. 
 
 IV. Political Economy: — Logic of Political Economy; Dialogues of 
 Three Templars on Political Economy; the scraps entitled Malthus and 
 Measure of Value in the "Notes from the Pocket-Book of a Late Opium- 
 Eater"; and the article entitled California. 
 
 V. Literary Theory and Criticism : — The large essays entitled 
 Rhetoric and Style may be here noted again; and there may be associated 
 with them, as expositions of general literary theory, the Letters to a Young 
 Man whose Education has been neglected, and the article entitled Language 
 (which, despite the title, is really on Style). The more special articles of the 
 same sort form a numerous series. Arranged in the chronological order of 
 their subjects, they are as follows: — Theory of Greek Tragedy, The Antigone 
 of Sophocles, and The Theban Sphinx; On the Knocking at the Gate in Mac- 
 beth; the short critical paper entitled Milton (in Vol. VI.), and the other en- 
 titled Milton versus Southey and Landor (in Vol. XL); the review entitled 
 Schlosser's Literary History of the Eighteenth Century; the two critical ar- 
 ticles on Pope, entitled Alexander Pope (in Vol. VIII.) and Lord Carlisle on 
 Pope (in Vol. XII.); the article Oliver Goldsmith (slightly biographical, but 
 chiefly critical) ; the paper on Carlyle's Translation of Wilhelm Meister, re- 
 printed under the title Goethe Reflected in his Novel of Wilhelm Meister, with 
 omission of the remarks on the translator (in Vol. XII.) ; the sketch Johyi 
 Paul Frederick Richter, prefixed to the translated "Analects from Richter" 
 (in Vol. XIII.); the essay On Wordsworth's Poetry; the Notes on Godwin 
 and Foster, the slight little paper entitled John Keats, and the Notes on 
 Walter Savage Landor. To these may be added Orthographic Mutineers, 
 The .irt of Conversation, the scrap Walladmor, and one or two of the scraps 
 called "Notes from the Pocket-Book of a Late Opium-Eater." 
 
 To the harder varieties of speculative Philosophy, it will be 
 observed, De Quincey has contributed less of an original kind than 
 might have been expected from his known private passion for meta- 
 physical studies. If we except his System of the Heavens, which 
 hints metaphysical ideas in the form of a splendid cosmological 
 vision, and his Palimpsest oj the Human Brain, which is full of 
 psychological suggestion, he seems to have satisfied himself in this 
 department by reports from Kant and recommendations of Kant to 
 English attention. The accuracy of some of his statements about 
 Kant, and indeed of his knowledge of Kant, has been called in
 
 26 DAVID MASSON 
 
 question of late ; but it remains to his credit that, in a singularly 
 bleak and vapid period of the native British philosophizing, he had 
 contracted such an admiration, all in all, for the great German 
 transcendentalist. His translation of Kant's Idea oj a Universal 
 History was a feat in itself. That essay remains to this day the 
 clearest argument for the possibility of a Science of History since 
 Vico propounded the Scienza Niiova; and to have perceived the 
 importance of such an essay in the year 1824 was to be in possession 
 of a philosophical notion of great value long before it was popular 
 in Britain. That De Quincey contented himself so much with mere 
 accounts of Kant personally, and literary glimpses of the nature of 
 his speculations, may have been due to the fact that original phi- 
 losophizing of the metaphysical and psychological kinds was not 
 wanted in magazines and would not pay. He made amends, how- 
 ever, as our list will have shown, by a considerable quantity of 
 writing on subjects of Speculative Ethics. His best essay of this 
 kind is that entitled Casuistry. It was a favourite idea of De Quin- 
 cey's that Moral Philosophy in recent times, especially in Protes- 
 tant countries, has run too much upon generalities, avoiding too 
 much those very cases of constant recurrence in life about which 
 difficulties are likely to arise in practical conduct. Accordingly, 
 in this essay, there is a discussion of duelling and the laws of 
 honour, the legitimacy of suicide, proper behaviour to servants, the 
 limits of the rule of veracity, &c., &c., all with lively historical illus- 
 trations. In the paper On War the necessary permanence of that 
 agency in the world is asserted strongly, and a certain character of 
 nobleness and beneficence claimed for it. There is less of dissent 
 from current philanthropy in the article on Temperance Move- 
 ments; but it will not give entire satisfaction. The article on 
 Plato's Republic is a virulent attack upon a philosopher towards 
 whom we should have expected to see De Quincey standing in an 
 attitude of discipleship and veneration. This is owing chiefly 
 to De Quincey's disgust with the moral heresies, in the matter of 
 marriage and the like, on which Plato so coolly professes to found 
 his imaginary commonwealth; and it is possible that, had he been 
 treating Plato in respect of the sum-total of his philosophic and 
 literary merits, we should have had a much more admiring estimate. 
 As it is, one has to pity De Quincey rather than Plato in this unfor- 
 tunate interview. He looks as petulant and small in his attack 
 on Plato as he did in his attack on Goethe. 
 
 The expressly theological papers of De Quincey, with passages
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 2 J 
 
 innumerable through his other writings, show that he took his 
 stand on established Christian orthodoxy. He avowed his belief 
 in a miraculous revelation from God to mankind, begun and 
 continued in the history of the Jewish race, and consummated 
 in the life of Christ and in the diffusion of Christianity by the 
 Apostles. As a reasoned piece of Christian apologetics his answer 
 to Hume's argument, entitled Miracles as Subjects of Testimony, 
 does not seem to have won much regard from theologians, and, 
 'though very subtle, is certainly deficient in the homely quality 
 which Hobbes called bite. His own religious faith, indeed, appears 
 to have been very much of the nature of an inherited sentiment, 
 independent of reasoning, and which he would not let reasoning 
 disturb. In one respect, too, his theology was of what many 
 theologians now would call a narrow and old-fashioned kind. 
 There is no trace in him of that notion of a universal religious 
 inspiration among the nations, and so of a certain respectability, 
 greater or less, in all mythologies, which has been fostered by 
 the modern science of religions. On the contrary, Christianity 
 is with him the single divine revelation in the world, and he thinks 
 and speaks of the Pagan religions, in the style of the old-fashioned 
 theology, as simply false religions, horrid religions, inventions 
 of the spirit of evil. How this is to be reconciled with his wide 
 range of historical sympathy, and especially with his admiration 
 of the achievements of the Greek intellect and the grandeur of 
 the Roman character, it might be difficult to say. Probably it 
 was because he distinguished between those noble and admirable 
 developments which human nature could work out for itself, 
 and which therefore belong to humanity as such, and the more 
 rare and spiritual possibilities which he believed actual revelation 
 had woven into the web of humanity, and which were to be re- 
 garded as gifts from the supernatural. At all events, the matter 
 stands as has been stated. In the same way, Mahometanism 
 figures in his regard as of little worth, monotheistic certainly and 
 therefore superior to the Pagan creeds, but a spurious religion and 
 partly stolen. Further, De Quincey's Christianity declares itself 
 as deliberately of the Protestant species. With much respect 
 for Roman Catholicism, he yet repudiates it as in great measure 
 a corruption of the original system, which original system he finds 
 reproduced in the Protestantism of the sixteenth century. His 
 article entitled Protestantism is an exposition of his views in that 
 matter, and is altogether a very able and important paper. If
 
 28 DAVID MASSON 
 
 he has seemed narrow hitherto in his philosophy of religion, here, 
 once within the bounds of his Protestantism, and engaged in 
 defining Protestantism, he becomes broad enough. "The self- 
 sufficingness of the Bible and the right of private judgment" are, 
 he maintains, "the two great characters in which Protestantism 
 commences," and the doctrines by which it distinguishes itself 
 from the Church of Rome. Bound up in these cloctrines, he 
 maintains, is the duty of absolute religious toleration; and by 
 this principle of absolute religious toleration, the right of the 
 individual to think, print, and publish what he pleases, he abides 
 with exemplary fidelity through all his writings, even while in 
 skirmish with the free-thinkers for whom he has the strongest 
 personal disgust. But this is not all. He abjures Bibliolatry, or 
 that kind of respect for the letter of the Bible which is founded 
 on the notion of verbal inspiration, denying it to be a necessary 
 tenet of Protestantism, or to be possible indeed for any scholarly 
 understanding. It is not only, he maintains, that the notion of 
 literal or verbal inspiration is broken down at once by recollection 
 of the corruptions of the original text of the Scriptures, their 
 various readings, and the fact that it is only in translations that 
 the Scriptures exist for the masses of mankind in all countries. 
 He addresses himself more emphatically to the alleged palpable 
 errors in the substance and teachings of the Bible, its violations 
 of history and chronology, its inconsistencies with modern science. 
 Here he refuses at once that method of reconciling science with 
 Scripture which proceeds by torture of texts into meanings differ- 
 ent from those which they bore to the Hebrews or the Greeks who 
 first read them. His bold principle is that Science and the Bible 
 cannot be reconciled in such matters, and that the desire to recon- 
 cile them indicates a most gross and carnal misconception of the 
 very idea of a divine revelation. The principle may be given in 
 his own words : — 
 
 It is an obligation resting upon the Bible, if it is to be consistent with itself, 
 that it should refuse to teach science; and, if the Bible ever had taught any 
 one art, science, or process of life, it would have been asked, Is a divine mission 
 abandoned suddenly for a human mission ? By what caprice is this one 
 science taught, and others not ? Or these two, suppose, and not all ? But 
 an objection even deadlier would have followed. It is clear as is the purpose 
 of daylight that the whole body of the arts and sciences comprises one vast 
 machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect. For 
 this end they exist. To see God, therefore, descending into the arena of 
 science, and contending, as it were, for his own prizes, by teaching science
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 29 
 
 in the Bible, would be to see him intercepting from their self-evident destina- 
 tion (viz., man's intellectual benefit) his own problems by solving them him- 
 self. No spectacle could more dishonour the divine idea, could more injure 
 man under the mask of aiding him. The Bible must not teach anything that 
 man can teach himself. 
 
 The revelation of the Old and New Testaments is to be regarded, 
 then, according to De Quincey, as a leaven of truths purely moral 
 and spiritual, sent into the world by miracle precisely because 
 man could never have found them out for himself, with a careful 
 abstinence from any mixture of matter of ordinary knowledge 
 in advance of what was already existent, and therefore with an 
 adoption of all existing historical and scientific phrases and tradi- 
 tions. Hence Bibliolatry, in the sense of a belief in the immacu- 
 late correctness of the language and statements of the Bible on 
 all subjects whatsoever, was no tenet of genuine Christianity, 
 secure as every Christian ought to be that, whatever changes of 
 conception on such subjects as the antiquity of the human race, 
 or the system of the physical universe, might come with the progress 
 of the human intelligence, the supernatural leaven would impreg- 
 nate them as they came, and go on working. In this doctrine, 
 of which De Quincey seems to have meditated a particular appli- 
 cation in his unfinished papers entitled ''Memorial Chronology," 
 he was substantially at one with Coleridge and Wordsworth. He 
 was at one with them, too, in his affection for Church-Establish- 
 ments. In remarkable difference from his favourite Milton, 
 who regarded the incorporation of Church and State as the cause 
 of the vitiation of the supernatural leaven in the world, and scowled 
 back with hatred on the Emperor Constantine as the beginner 
 of that mischief, De Quincey confessed to a special kindness for 
 Constantine, precisely because that Emperor had conceived the 
 idea of converting Christianity into a political agency. It was 
 Constantine who had carried Christian teaching into effect in 
 such institutions as hospitals and public provision for the poor; 
 and the prospects of the world for the future were bound up with 
 the possible extensions of the political influence of Christianity in 
 similar directions. That is the subject of the essay entitled On 
 Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement. In short, De 
 Quincey is to be remembered, in his rehgious relations, as a 
 staunch Church-of-England man of the broad school, not given 
 to High-Church sacerdotalism, though with an aesthetic liking in 
 his own case for a comely ritual.
 
 30 DAVID MASSON 
 
 In politics De Quincey was an English Tory. In the two papers 
 entitled .4 Tory's Account of Toryism, IVhiggism, and Radicalism, 
 and On the Political Parties of Modern England, he avows his 
 partisanship. Toryism asserts itself also in the article on Dr. 
 Parr, and tinges some of the other papers. It is interesting, 
 indeed, to observe how much of the "John Bull element," as 
 Mr. Page calls it, there was, all in all, in the feeble little man. 
 His patriotism was of the old type of the days of Pitt and Nelson. 
 He exulted in the historic glories of England and her imperial 
 ascendency in so many parts of the globe, and would have had 
 her do battle for any punctilio of honour, as readily as for any 
 more visible interest, in her dealings with foreigners. He had 
 a good deal of the old English anti-Gallican prejudice; and, 
 though he has done justice, over and over again, to some of the 
 finer characteristics of the French, the total effect of his remarks 
 on the French, politically and intellectually, is irritating to the 
 admirers of that great nation. He knew them only through books 
 or by casual observation of stray Frenchmen he met ; for he was 
 never out of the British Islands, and never experienced that sudden 
 awakening of a positive affection for the French which comes 
 infallibly from even a single visit to their lightsome capital. On 
 the other hand, though Scotland was his home for so large a part 
 of his life, he seems never to have contracted the least sympathy 
 with anything distinctively Scottish. Even his Toryism was 
 specially English or South-British. But, like all other parts of 
 his creed, his Toryism was of a highly intellectual kind, with 
 features of its own. In such questions, for example, as that of 
 the continuance of flogging and other brutal forms of punishment 
 in the army and navy and elsewhere, he parted company with 
 the ordinary mass of Tories, leaving his curse with them in that 
 particular, and went with the current of Radical sentiment and 
 opinion. How far he was carried, by his candour of intellect and 
 depth and accuracy of scholarship, from the ordinary rut of party 
 commonplace, may be judged also from his little paper entitled 
 Falsification of English History. It is a gallant little paper, and 
 one of the best rebukes in our language to that systematic vilifica- 
 tion of the Puritan Revolution, the English Commonwealth, and 
 the Reign of Cromwell, which has come down in the Anglican 
 mind as an inheritance from the Restoration, and still vulgarizes 
 so much of our scholarshiy) and our literature. 
 
 The Dialogues of the Three Templars and the Logic of Political
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 3 1 
 
 Economy are De Quincey's chief contributions to the literature 
 of Economic Science. As to the Uterary deftness of the essay 
 and the treatise there is no doubt. For cutting lucidity of exposi- 
 tion and beauty of style they are to be envied by most writers on 
 Political Economy. This seems to have been felt by Mr. John 
 Stuart Mill, who mentions De Qaincey with respect, and uses 
 quotations from him thankfully, in parts of his standard work. 
 The question rather is whether De Quincey has any title, such as 
 he himself seemed to claim, to the character of an original thinker 
 in the matter of the science. Mr. Mill's language in one place 
 appears to negative this claim, though very gently ; and the ques- 
 tion has been reopened, in De Quincey's interest, by Mr. Shad- 
 worth Hodgson in an essay entitled "De Quincey as Political 
 Economist." Enough here on that matter. 
 
 If De Quincey surpasses himself anywhere in his didactic 
 papers, it is in those that concern Literary Theory and Criticism. 
 No English writer has left a finer body of disquisition on the science 
 and principles of Literature than will be found in De Quincey's 
 general papers entitled Rhetoric, Style, and Language, and his 
 Letters to a Young Man, together with his more particular articles 
 entitled Theory of Greek Tragedy, The Antigone of Sophocles, 
 Milton, Milton versus Southey and Landor, Alexander Pope, Lord 
 Carlisle on Pope, Schlosser's Literary History of the Eighteenth 
 Century, and On Wordsworth's Poetry. There, or elsewhere, in 
 De Quincey, will be found the last word, so far as there can be a 
 last word, on some of the most important questions of style or 
 literary art, and a treatment of literary questions throwing back 
 into mere obsolete ineptitude the literary theories of such masters 
 of the eighteenth century as Addison and Johnson, and of such of 
 their successors as the acute Jeffrey and the robust but coarse- 
 grained Whately. Goethe, the greatest literary critic that ever 
 lived, was more comprehensive and universally tolerant; but 
 De Quincey was facile princeps,^ to the extent of his touch, among 
 the English critics of his generation. He acknowledged that he 
 had received some of his leading ideas in literary art from Words- 
 worth originally; but whatever he derived from Wordsworth 
 was matured by so much independent reflection, and so modified 
 by the peculiarities of his own temperament, that the result was 
 a system of precepts differing from Wordsworth's in not a few 
 points. 
 
 ' [Easily t±ie chief.]
 
 22 DAVID MASSON 
 
 One of the best known of De Quincey's critical maxims is his 
 distinction, after Wordsworth, between the Literature of Know- 
 ledge, which he would call Literature only by courtesy, and the 
 Literature of Power, which alone he regarded as Literature proper. 
 My belief is that the distinction has been overworked in the form 
 in which De Quincey put it forth, and that it would recjuire a 
 great deal of reexplication and modification to bring it into defen- 
 sible and permanent shape. As it would be unpardonable, how- 
 ever, to omit this De Quinceyism in a sketch of De Quincey's 
 opinions, here is one of the passages in which he expounds it : — 
 
 The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power 
 
 In that great social organ which, collectively, we call Literature, there may 
 be distinguished two separate offices that may blend and often do so, but 
 capable, severally, of a severe insulation, and naturally fitted for reciprocal re- 
 pulsion. There is, first, the literature of knowledge, and, secondly, the litera- 
 ture of power. The function of the first is to teach ; the function of the sec- 
 ond is to move: the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first 
 speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, 
 it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through 
 affections of pleasure and sympathy. Remotely, it may travel towards an 
 object seated in what Lord Bacon calls dry light; but, pro.ximately, it does 
 and must operate, else it ceases to be a literature of power, in and through 
 that humid light which clothes itself in the mists and glittering iris of human 
 passions, desires, and genial emotions. Men have so little reflected on 
 the higher functions of literature as to find it a paradox if one should describe 
 it as a mean or subordinate purpose of books to give information. But this 
 is a paradox only in the sense which makes it honourable to be parado.xical. 
 Whenever we talk in ordinary language of seeking information or gaining 
 knowledge, we understand the words as connected with something of absolute 
 novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very high place 
 in human interests that it is never absolutely novel to the meanest of minds : it 
 exists eternally by way of germ or latent principle in the lowest as in the high- 
 est, needing to be developed, but never to be planted. To be capable of 
 transplantation is the immediate criterion of a truth that ranges on a lower 
 scale. Besides which, there is a rarer thing than truth, — namely, power, 
 or deep sympathy with truth. . . . Were it not that human sensibilities are 
 ventilated and continually called out into exercise by the great phenomena of 
 infancy, or of real life as it moves through chance and change, or of literature 
 as it recombines these elements in the mimicries of poetry, romance, &c., 
 it is certain that, like any animal power or muscular energy falling into dis- 
 use, all such sensibilities would gradually drop and dwindle. It is in relation 
 to these great mora! capacities of man that the literature of power, as contra- 
 distinguished from that of knowledge, lives and has its field of action. It is 
 concerned with what is highest in man; for the Scriptures themselves never 
 condescended to deal, by suggestion or cooperation, with the mere discursive 
 understanding: when speaking of man in his intelhctual capacity, the Scrip-
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 33 
 
 tures speak not of the understanding, but of "the understanding heart,'' — 
 making the heart, i.e. the great intuitive (or non-discursive) organ, to be the 
 interchangeable formula for man in his highest state of capacity for the in- 
 finite. Tragedy, romance, fairy tale, or epopee, all alike restore to man's 
 mind the ideals of justice, of hope, of truth, of mercy, of retribution, which 
 else (left to the support of daily life in its realities) would languish for want of 
 sufficient illustration. . . . Hence the preeminency over all authors that 
 merely teach of the meanest that moves, or that teaches, if at all, indirectly by 
 moving. The very highest work that has ever existed in the literature of 
 knowledge is but a provisional work, a book upon trial and sufferance, and 
 quamdiu bene se gesserit} Let its teaching be even partially revised, let it be 
 but expanded, nay, let its teaching be but placed in a better order, and in- 
 stantly it is superseded. Whereas the feeblest works in the literature of 
 power, surviving at all, survive as finished and unalterable amongst men. 
 For instance, the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton was a book militant on earth 
 from the first. In all stages of its progress it would have to fight for its 
 existence, — first, as regards absolute truth; secondly, when that combat was 
 over, as regards its form or mode of presenting the truth. And, as soon as a 
 La Place, or anybody else, builds higher upon the foundations laid by this 
 book, effectually he throws it out of the sunshine into decay and darkness; 
 by weapons even from this book he superannuates and destroys this book, 
 so that soon the name of Newton remains as a mere nominis umbra,'^ but his 
 book, as a living power, has transmigrated into other forms. Now, on the 
 contrary, the Iliad, the Prometheus of ^schylus, the Othello or King Lear, 
 the Hamlet or Macbeth, or the Paradise Lost, are not militant, but triumphant 
 forever, as long as the languages exist in which they speak or can be taught 
 to speak. They never can transmigrate into new incarnations. To repro- 
 duce them in new forms or variations, even if in some things they should be 
 improved, would be to plagiarize. A good steam-engine is properly super- 
 seded by a better. But one lovely pastoral valley is not superseded by an- 
 other, nor a statue of Praxiteles by a statue of Michael Angelo. — Works, 
 viii. 5-9- 
 
 III. IMAGINATIVE WRITINGS AND PROSE POETRY 
 
 In this class may be reckoned the following : — 
 
 I. Humorous Extravaganzas : — The paragon in this kind is, of course, 
 Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts. There are, however, occasional 
 passages of frolicsome invention through the other papers; and the entire 
 paper Sortilege and Astrology may be taken as a jeu d' esprit of the same sort. 
 
 II. Incidents of Real Life and Passages of History treated imagi- 
 natively: — In addition to the poetic versions of incidents from real life 
 that are interwrought with the expressly autobiographic writings, there 
 ought to be mentioned specially the paper entitled Early Memorials of Gras- 
 mere. It is the story of the loss of two peasants, a husband and his wife, 
 among the hills, during a snowstorm in the Lake District, in the year 1807. 
 In the same group, on grounds of literary principle, may be reckoned the 
 
 * [During good behaviour, — as long as it shall conduct itself well.] 
 ^ [The shadow of a name.]
 
 34 
 
 DAVID MASSON 
 
 story called The Spa)usJi Military Nun and the paper entitled Joan of Arc. 
 As has been already hinted, Tlie Revolt o) the Tartars might rank in the same 
 high company. 
 
 III. Novelettes and Romances : — Chief among these is De Quin- 
 cey's one-volume novel or romance, Klosterheim, published in 1832, and un- 
 fortunately not included in the edition of his collected works, nor accessible 
 at present in any form, to any of her Majesty's subjects, except by importation 
 of an .American reprint. In connection with this independent attempt in 
 prose-lrction, we may remember the short story or novelette called The 
 Avenger (reprinted in Vol. XVI. from Blackwood' s Magazine of 1838) and 
 Walladmor, the pseudo-Waverley Novel of 1824, which De Quincey trans- 
 lated from the German. There are, besides, some novelettes from the Ger- 
 man, reprinted in the collective edition. 
 
 IV. Prose Phantasies and Lyrics : — Although De Quincey ranked 
 the whole of his Confessions as properly an example of that "mode of im- 
 passioned prose" in which he thought there had been few or no precedents in 
 English, it is enough here to remember those parts of the Confessions which 
 may be distinguished as "dream phantasies." To be added, under our pres- 
 ent heading (besides passages in the Autobiographic Sketches), are The 
 Daughter of Lebanon, the extraordinary paper in three parts called The 
 English Mail Coach, and the little cluster of fragments called Suspiria de 
 Profundis {i.e. "Sighs from the Depths"), being a Sequel to the Confessions 
 of an English Opium-Eater. In fact, however, only three of the six fragments 
 there gathered under the common name of "Suspiria" are either "lyrics" or 
 "phantasies," the rest being critical or psychological. The three entitled 
 to a place here are those entitled Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow, Savannah- 
 la-Mar, and Memorial Suspiria. 
 
 The celebrity of the essay On Murder considered as one of the 
 Fine Arts is not surprising. The ghastly originality of the con- 
 ception, the humorous irony with which it is sustained by stroke 
 after stroke, and the mad frenzy of the closing scene, where the 
 assembled club of amateurs in murder, with Toad-in-the-hole 
 leading them, drink their toasts, and sing their chorus in honour 
 of certain superlative specimens of their favourite art, leave an 
 impression altogether exceptional, as of pleasure mixed illegiti- 
 mately with the forbidden and horrible. For a lighter and more 
 genial specimen of De Quincey in his whimsical vein, Sortilege 
 and Astrology may be cordially recommended. To pass from 
 such papers to Early Memorials of Grasmere, The Spanish Mili- 
 tary Nun, and Joan of Arc, gives one a fresh idea of the versa- 
 tility of his powers. The first, descril^ng winter among the English 
 Lakes, and telling the tragic story of George and Sarah Green, 
 and of the bravery of their little girl left in charge of the cottage 
 to which they were never to return alive, has all the mournful 
 beauty of a commemorative prose-poem. The second, which
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 35 
 
 is a narrative, from historical materials, of the adventures of a 
 daring Spanish girl, in man's disguise, first in Spain and then in 
 the Spanish parts of the new world, in the beginning of the seven- 
 teenth century, is in De Quincey's most characteristic style of 
 mingled humour and earnestness, and has all the fascination of 
 one of the best of the Spanish picaresque romances. The paper 
 on Joan of Arc, though brief, is nobly perfect. "What is to be 
 thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd 
 girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that, like the Hebrew 
 shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea, rose suddenlv 
 out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, 
 rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, 
 and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings?" 
 Opening in this strain of poetic solemnity, the paper maintains 
 the same high tone throughout; and, if it does not leave the ques- 
 tion answered by enshrining the image of the Maid of Orleans 
 in a sufficient vision of glory, there is no such answer in the English 
 language. 
 
 De Quincey included in his collected works two short tales of 
 clever humour, called The Incognito, or Count Fitzhum, and The 
 King of Hayti, and a third, called The Dice, a short story of 
 devilry and black art, describing the first as "translated from 
 the German of Dr. Schultze," and the other two merely as "from 
 the German." Passing these and a fourth tale, called The Fatal 
 Marksman, which is somewhat in the style of the third, and seems 
 also to be from the German (though that is not stated), we have, 
 as the single original novelette of De Quincey among the collected 
 works, the strange piece called The Avenger. It is a story, wholly 
 fantastic and sensational, but quite in De Quincey's vein, of a 
 series of appalling and mysterious murders supposed to happen 
 in a German town in the year 181 6, and of the astounding 
 discovery at last that they have all been the work of a certain 
 magnificent youth, Maximilian Wyndham, of mixed English and 
 Jewish descent, and of immense wealth, who had come to reside 
 in the town, in the house of one of the University professors, with 
 high Russian credentials and universal acceptance among the 
 citizens. He had come thither nominally to complete his studies 
 but really in pursuit of a secret scheme of vengeance upon those 
 of the inhabitants who had been concerned in certain deadly in- 
 juries and dishonours done to his family, and especially to his 
 Jewish mother. The story does not appear to have been much
 
 36 DAVID MASSON 
 
 read; and admirers of De Quincey may judge from this descrip- 
 tion of it whether it is worth looking up. It may be even more 
 necessary to give some account of Klosterheim, or the Masque. 
 
 As originally published by Blackwood in 1832, it was a small 
 prettily-printed volume of 305 pages, without De Quincey's name 
 after the title, but only the words "By the English Opium-Eater." 
 It would make about half a volume in the collective edition of the 
 works, were it included there. 
 
 The scene of the story is an imaginary German city, Kloster- 
 heim, with its forest-neighbourhood; and the time is the winter 
 of 1633, with part of the year 1634, or just at that point of the 
 great Thirty Years' War when, after the death of Gustavus- 
 Adolphus, his Swedish generals are maintaining the war against 
 the Imperialists, and all Germany is in confusion and misery with 
 the marchings and counter-marchings, the ravagings and counter- 
 ravagings, of the opposed armies. The Klosterheimers, as good 
 Catholics, are mainly in sympathy with the Imperialists, but are 
 in the peculiar predicament of being subject to a gloomy and 
 tyrannical Landgrave, who, though a bigoted Roman Catholic, 
 has reasons of his own for cultivating the Swedish alliance, and 
 is in fact in correspondence with the Swedes. A leading spirit 
 among them, and especially among the University students, is a 
 certain splendid soldier-youth, Maximilian, a stranger from a 
 distance. So, when the Klosterheimers are in excitement over 
 the approach to their city, through the forest, of a travelling mass 
 of pilgrims, under Imperialist convoy, all the way from Vienna, 
 and over the chances that the poor pilgrims may be attacked and 
 cut to pieces by a certain brutal Holkerstein, the head of a host 
 of marauders who prowl through the forest, who but this Maximil- 
 ian is the man to execute the general desire of Klosterheim by 
 evading the orders of the cruel Landgrave and carrying armed 
 aid to the pilgrims ? Well that he has done so; for in the midst of 
 the pilgrim-cavalcade, and the chief personage in it, is his own 
 lady-love, the noble Paulina, a relative of the Emperor, and 
 intrusted by him with despatches. The lovers meet; and, save 
 for a night-alarm, in the course of which the portmanteau of 
 secret despatches is abstracted by robbers from Lady Paulina's 
 carriage, there is no accident till the pilgrims are close to Kloster- 
 heim. There, in the night-time, Holkerstein and his host of 
 marauders do fall u[)on them. There is a dreadful night-battle; 
 and, though the marauding host is beaten off, chiefly by the heroic
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 37 
 
 valour of Maximilian, it is but a wreck of the pilgrim-army that 
 enters Klosterheim on the morrow, — and then alas ! without 
 Maximilian among them. He has been carried away by the 
 marauders, a wounded prisoner. The residue of the poor pil- 
 grims are dispersed through the city somehow for hospitality, 
 and the doleful Lady Paulina takes up her abode in the great 
 abbey, close to the Landgrave's palace. Then, for a while, we 
 are among the Klosterheimers, and called upon to pity them. 
 For the gloomy Landgrave, always a tyrant, now revels in acts 
 of tyranny and cruelty utterly indiscriminate and capricious, 
 maddened by the goad of some new motive, which is not explained, 
 but which we connect with intelligence he has obtained from the 
 abstracted imperial despatches. There are arrests of students 
 and citizens; all are in consternation; no one knows what will 
 happen next. Suddenly, however, a counter-agency is at work 
 in Klosterheim, baffling and bewildering the Landgrave and his 
 wily Italian minister Aclorni. This is a certain mysterious being, 
 whether human or supernatural no one can tell, who calls himself 
 "The Masque," and seems omnipresent and resistless. He 
 appears when and where he likes, passes through bolts and bars, 
 leaves messages to the Landgrave nailed up in public places, and 
 defies his police. Houses are entered; citizens disappear, some- 
 times with signs of scuffle and bloodshed left in their rooms; and, 
 as these victims of "The Masque" are not exclusively from the 
 ranks of the Landgrave's partisans, it becomes doubtful whether 
 the mysterious being has any political purpose, or is a mere demon 
 of general malignity. But, evidently, the Landgrave is his main 
 mark; and it is in the palace of the Landgrave that he makes 
 his presence and his power most daringly felt. How, for example, 
 he appeared there at a great masked ball, to which exactly twelve 
 hundred persons had been invited by numbered tickets; how, 
 when the twelve hundred had been, by arrangement, counted off 
 in the hall, and aggregated apart, he was seen in majestic and 
 solitary composure, leaning against a marble column, and it seemed 
 as if the Landgrave and Adorni had but to give the word to their 
 myrmidons to clutch him; but how there was nothing of that 
 expected catastrophe, but only a scornful disappearance of the 
 awful figure, as if in cloud or smoke, after some words from his 
 hollow voice which left the Landgrave trembling : — for all this, 
 and much more, there must be application inside the little volume 
 itself. In reading it, you are as if in the heart of one of Mrs. 
 
 46783
 
 38 DAVID MASSON 
 
 Radclifife's novels, with the usual paraphernalia of cloaks, nodding 
 plumes, ghostly sounds, labyrinthine corridors and secret passages, 
 pictures of ancestors on the walls, and the rest of it; and you long 
 to be out of such a curiosity shop of jumbled incredibilities, and 
 to know the denouement. That does not come till after new epi- 
 sodes of danger to Lady Paulina, new coils of marvel round the 
 mysterious "Masque," and a second great assembly in the palace, 
 with a vast mechanism of new preparations by the infuriated 
 Landgrave for the discomfiture of his adversary. Let these be 
 supposed; and let it be supposed that the 6th of September, 1634, 
 has passed, and that the Swedes have been routed and the Im- 
 perialists triumphant in the great battle of Nordlingen. What 
 need then for further mystery? The hour has come for that 
 revolution in Klosterheim which the Emperor himself had de- 
 vised from Vienna, and manipulated in the secret despatches he 
 had sent by the Lady Paulina. All is revealed in a crash. Maxi- 
 milian is the true Landgrave, the hitherto undivulged son of the 
 last good Landgrave; and the present usurper had come to his 
 power by the murder of Maximilian's father, and maintained it 
 by other crimes. In the crash of this revelation the gloomy 
 usurper sinks, the last blow to the wretched man being the death 
 of his daughter by a mistake of his own murderous order for the 
 execution of the Lady Paulina. Maximilian marries Paulina; 
 there are other more minute solutions and surprises; and the 
 Klosterheimers, under their new Landgrave, are again a happy 
 people. But who was the mysterious "Masque"? Who but 
 Maximilian himself? TraD-doors and subterranean passages, 
 his own dexterity, and collusion with the requisite number of 
 citizens and students, and with an old seneschal of the tyrant, had 
 done the whole business; and the only blood really shed in the 
 course of it had been that of the poor seneschal, betrayed by 
 accident, and stabbed by his master. 
 
 Such is De Quincey's one-volume romance, a poor performance, 
 doubtless for the sake of a little money, about the time when he 
 settled in Edinburgh. Was he ashamed of it afterwards, that 
 he did not reprint it ? There was no necessitv for that ; for, though 
 the story does not show the craft of a Sir Walter Scott, it is by no 
 means bad of its preposterous kind. The style, at all events, is 
 remarkably careful, with a marble beauty of sentence that makes 
 one linger as one reads. 
 
 There remains to be noticed, in the last place, that very special
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 39 
 
 portion of De Quincey's writings of the imaginative order for 
 which he claimed distinction above the rest, as illustrating "a 
 mode of impassioned prose" but slightly represented before in 
 English Literature. It may be questioned, however, whether 
 the pieces for which he claimed this distinction are described most 
 exactly by the phrase "impassioned prose." Their peculiarity 
 is not so much that they are impassioned in any ordinary sense 
 as that they are imaginative or poetical after a very definite and 
 rather rare sort. It was one of the distinctions of De Quincey's 
 intellect that it could pass from that ordinary or discursive exer- 
 cise of itself which consists in expounding, reasoning, or investi- 
 gating, to that poetic exercise of itself which consists in the for- 
 mation of visions or phantasies; and it did, in fact, so pass on 
 those occasions more particularly when it was moved by pathos 
 or by the feeling of the mysterious and awful. What is most 
 observable, therefore, in the pieces under notice is that they 
 exhibit the operation of those two constitutional kinds of emotion 
 upon De Quincey's intellectual activity, transmuting it from the 
 common or discursive mode to that called poetic imagination. 
 Inasmuch as it is the implicated feeling or sentiment that moves 
 the intellectual process, and inasmuch as there are marks of this 
 in the rhythmical or lyrical character of the result, there is no 
 great harm in calling that result impassioned prose, especially if 
 we keep to the limitation stipulated by De Quincey's own phrase, 
 "a mode of impassioned prose"; but it is better, all in all, to 
 define the writings under consideration as examples of a peculiar 
 "mode of imaginative prose," and, if further definition is wanted 
 of this peculiar mode of prose poetry, to call it Prose Phantasy 
 and Lyric, or Lyrical Prose Phantasy. De Quincey was con- 
 sciously and deliberately an artist in this form of prose-poetry, and 
 has left specimens of it that have very few parallels in English. 
 One ought to remember, however, how much he must have been 
 influenced by the previous example of Jean Paul Richter. Of his 
 admiration of the famous German before he had himself begun 
 his career of literature there is proof in his article on Richter pub- 
 lished in the London Magazine in December, 182 1, just after the 
 appearance of his Confessions in their first form in the same 
 Magazine; and one observes that among the translated "analects" 
 from Richter which accompanied or followed that article, and 
 were intended to introduce Richter to the English public, were 
 The Happy Life of a Parish Priest in Sweden and the Dream,
 
 40 
 
 DAVID MASSON 
 
 upon the Universe, both of them specimens of Richter's peculiar 
 art of prose-phantasy. There can be no doubt that Richter's 
 example in such pieces influenced De Quincey permanently. 
 But, thou<fh he may have learnt something from Richter, he was 
 an original master in the same art. 
 
 One might go back here on his Joan of Arc, and some of the 
 other writings of which account has been already taken, and 
 claim for them, or for parts of them, fresh recognition in our present 
 connection. But let us confine ourselves to the writings to which 
 De Quincey seems to have pointed more especially, and which 
 have been already enumerated. 
 
 To the famous passages of "dream-phantasy" in the Opium 
 Confessions we need not readvert farther than to say that, extraor- 
 dinary as they are as a whole, one may fairly object to parts of 
 them, as to some of the similar dream-phantasies in Richter, that 
 they fail by too much obtrusion of artistic self-consciousness in 
 their construction, and sometimes also by a swooning of the power 
 of clear and consecutive vision in a mere piling and excess of 
 imagery and sound. The stroke on the mind at the time is not 
 always equal to the look of the apparatus for inflicting it; and 
 the memory does not retain a sufficient scar. No such objection 
 can be urged against The Daughter of Lebanon, a fine visionary 
 lyric of seven pages, figuring an early and miraculous conversion 
 to Christianity in the person of an ideal girl of Damascus. Nor 
 could any of De Quincey's readers give up the first two sections 
 of The English Mail Coach, subtitled "The Glory of Motion" and 
 "The Vision of Sudden Death." There is nothing in Jean Paul 
 quite like these. 
 
 In the first we are back in the old days between Trafalgar and 
 Waterloo. Drawn up at the General Post Office in Lombard 
 Street, and waiting for the hour to start, we see His Majesty's 
 mails, — carriages, harness, horses, lamps, the dresses of driver 
 and guard, all in the perfection of English equipment, and, if 
 there has been news that day of a great victory, then the laurels, 
 the oak leaves, the flowers, the ribbons, in addition. Seating 
 ourselves beside the driver on one of the mails, we begin our jour- 
 ney of three hundred miles along one of the great roads, north or 
 west, leaving Lombard Street at a quarter past eight in the even- 
 ing. How, once out into the country, we shoot along, horses at 
 gallop, the breeze in our faces, hedges and trees and fields and 
 homesteads rushing past us in the darkness which we and our
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 41 
 
 lamps are cleaving like a fiery arrow ! How, at every stopping- 
 station, there are the lights and bustle at the inn-door, and the 
 laurels and other bedizenments we carry are seen ere we have 
 well stopped, and we shout "Badajoz" or "Salamanca" in ex- 
 planation, or whatever else may have been the last victory, and 
 the hostlers and other inn-folk take up the huzza, and it is one 
 round of congratulation and hand-shaking while we stay ! But, 
 punctually to the minute, having changed horses, and left the 
 news palpitating in that neighbourhood, we are on again, 
 horses at gallop, coach-lamps burning, and we beside the driver 
 on the front seat, conscious that we are carrying the same news 
 with us to neighbourhoods still ahead ! On, on, stage after stage, 
 in the same fashion, still cleaving the darkness, the horse-hoofs 
 always audible and the coach-lamps always burning, till the 
 darkness yields to a silver glimmer and the glimmer to the glare 
 of day ! — Such is the series of sensations De Quincey has con- 
 trived to give us in his prose-poem called "The Glory of Motion." 
 In the sequel, entitled "The Vision of Sudden Death," we are 
 still on the same night journey by coach, or rather on one later 
 night journey on the northern road between sixty and seventy 
 years ago, with the difference that the glory of motion is now 
 turned into horror. Prosaically described, the paper is a recol- 
 lection of a fatal accident by collision of the mail, in a very dark 
 part of the road, with a solitary vehicle containing two persons, one 
 of them a woman ; but it is for the paper itself to show what the 
 incident becomes in De Quincey's hands. — It passes into a third 
 paper, still under the same general title of The English Mail 
 Coach; which third paper indeed, bears the extraordinary subtitle 
 of "Dream-Fugue, founded on the preceding theme of Sudden 
 Death." I cannot say that this "dream-fugue," which is offered 
 as a lyrical finale to the little series, in visionary coherence with 
 the preceding pieces, accomplishes its purpose very successfully. 
 It is liable to the objection which may be urged, as we have 
 said, against other specimens of De Quincey in the peculiar art 
 of dream-phantasy. The artifice is too apparent, and the mean- 
 ing is all but lost in a mere vague of music. 
 
 Of the three scraps of the Suspiria that are entitled to rank 
 among the lyrical prose-phantasies, viz., Levana and Our Ladies 
 of Sorrow, Savannah-la- Mar, and Memorial Suspiria, only the 
 first is of much importance. But that scrap, written in De Quin- 
 cey's later life, is of as high importance as anything he ever wrote.
 
 42 DAVID MASSON 
 
 It is perhaps the highest and finest thing, and also the most 
 constitutionally significant, in all De Quincey. Fortunately, the 
 essential core of it can be quoted entire. All that it is necessary 
 to premise is that "Levana" was the Roman Goddess of Educa- 
 tion, the divinity who was supposed to "lift up" every newly- 
 born human being from the earth in token that it should live, and 
 to rule the influences to which it should be subject thenceforth 
 till its character should be fully formed : — 
 
 The Three Ladies of Sorrow 
 
 I know them thoroughly, and have walked in all their kingdoms. Three 
 sisters they are, of one mysterious household ; and their paths are wide apart ; 
 but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with 
 Levana, and sometimes about myself . Do they talk, then? O, no! Mighty 
 phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter 
 voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts, but 
 amongst themselves there is no voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in 
 their kingdoms. They spoke not, as they talked with Levana; they whis- 
 pered not ; they sang not ; though oftentimes methought they might have 
 sung: for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by 
 harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they 
 are, they utter their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, or by words that go 
 astray, but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, 
 heraldries painted in darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the 
 brain. 7^/zey wheeled in mazes ; 7 spelled the steps. T'/zey telegraphed from 
 afar; I read the signals. They conspired together; and on the mirrors of 
 darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols; mine are the 
 words. 
 
 What is it the sisters are ? What is it that they do ? Let me describe their 
 form and their presence : ifformitwere that still fluctuated in its outline, 
 or presence it were that forever advanced to the front or forever receded 
 amongst shades. 
 
 The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears. 
 She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. 
 She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation, — Rachel 
 weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted. She it was that 
 stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of 
 innocents, and the little feet were stilTened forever, which, heard at times as 
 they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hi'arts 
 that were not unmarked in heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and 
 sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the 
 heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish 
 memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard the 
 sobbing of litanies or the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the 
 mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the eldest, it is that carries keys 
 more than papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. 
 She, to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar,
 
 DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS 43 
 
 him that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight 
 years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and 
 village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afHicted father. 
 For this did God send her a' great reward. In the spring time of the year, 
 and whilst her own spring was budding, he recalled her to himself. But her 
 blind father mourns forever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the 
 little guiding hand is locked within his own; and still he awakens to a dark- 
 ness that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. This Mater Lachry- 
 mariim also has been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber 
 of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter, not less pious, that vanished 
 to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. 
 Bv the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides, a ghostly in- 
 truder, into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless chil- 
 dren, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because 
 she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honour with 
 the title of Madonna. 
 
 The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs. She 
 never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no 
 diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor 
 subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perish- 
 ing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her 
 eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops forever, forever 
 fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs in- 
 audibly at intervals. Her sister. Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and frantic, 
 raging in the highest against heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But 
 Our Lady of Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious 
 aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs 
 to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, 
 but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary 
 places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun 
 has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, 
 of the bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galleys; of the English 
 criminal in Norfolk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in 
 sweet far-off England ; of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes forever upon 
 a solitary grave, which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and 
 bloody sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be availing, whether 
 towards pardon that he might implore, or towards reparation that he might 
 attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid 
 reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for 
 /n'w a stepmother, — as he points with the other hand to the Bible, our 
 general teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered; every woman 
 sitting in darkness, without love to shelter her head, or hope to illu- 
 mine her solitude, because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature 
 germs of holy affections, which God implanted in her womanly bosom, hav- 
 ing been stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral 
 lamps amongst the ancients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning May- 
 time by wicked kinsmen, whom God will judge; all that are betrayed, and 
 all that are rejected ; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary 
 disgrace: — all these walk with'Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key, 
 but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, 
 and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest walks of
 
 44 DAVID MASSON 
 
 man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are 
 some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet 
 secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads. 
 
 But the third sister, who is also the youngest — ! Hush ! whisper whilst 
 we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but 
 within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, 
 rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes, rising 
 so high, might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot 
 be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light 
 of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day 
 or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very 
 ground. She is the defier of God. She is also the mother of lunacies and 
 the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power, but narrow is the 
 nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound 
 nature has been upheaved by central convulsions, in whom the heart trembles 
 and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest 
 from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still 
 with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this 
 youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with tiger's 
 leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she 
 storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is 
 Mater Tenehrariim, Our Lady of Darkness. 
 
 This is prose-poetry; but it is more. It is a permanent addi- 
 tion to the mythology of the human race. As the Graces are 
 three, as the Fates are three, as the Furies are three, as the Muses 
 were originally three, so may the varieties and degrees of misery 
 that there are in the world, and the proportions of their distribu- 
 tion among mankind, be represented to the human imagination 
 forever by De Quincey's Three Ladies of Sorrow and his sketch 
 of their figures and kingdoms.
 
 Ill 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 ( I 709-1 784) 
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 
 [From the Life of Cowley (1780) in the Lives of the Poets] 
 
 Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow 
 views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural 
 sources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary preju- 
 dices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neg- 
 lected at another. 
 
 Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice 
 of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes 
 different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century 
 appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical 
 poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not 
 improper to give some account. 
 
 The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show 
 their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolved 
 to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote 
 verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger 
 better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that 
 they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables. 
 
 If the father of criticism has rightly denominated poetry 
 rixv-q fj.if/.rp-LKr], an imitative art, these writers will, without great 
 wrong, lose their right to the name of poets; for they cannot be 
 said to have imitated anything; they neither copied nature nor 
 life; neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the 
 operations of intellect. 
 
 Those, however, who deny them to be poets, allow them to be 
 wits. Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries that 
 
 45
 
 46 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass 
 him in poetry. 
 
 If wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has 
 been often thought, but was never before so well expressed," 
 they certainly never attained, nor ever sought it; for they en- 
 deavourcd^-taJic singular 4ii their thoughts, and were careless of 
 their diction. But Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erro- 
 neous : he depresses it below its natural dignity, and reduces it 
 from strength of thought to happiness of language. 
 
 If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be con- 
 sidered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though 
 not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be 
 just; if it be that which he that never found it wonders how he 
 missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom 
 risen. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they 
 are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader, far 
 from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently 
 by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. 
 
 But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, may be 
 more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of dis- 
 cordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery 
 of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus 
 defined, they have more than enough. The most heterogeneous 
 ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ran- 
 sacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning 
 instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly 
 thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes 
 admires, is seldom pleased. 
 
 From this account of their compositions it will be readily in- 
 ferred that they were not successful in representing or moving 
 the affections. As they were wholly employed on something 
 unexpected and surjjrising, they had no regard to that uniformity 
 of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to excite the pains 
 and the pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on 
 any occasion, they should have said or done; but wrote rather 
 as beholders than partakers of human nature; as Beings looking 
 upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure; as Epicurean deities 
 making remarks on the actions of men and the vicissitudes of 
 life without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was 
 void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish 
 was only to say what they hoped had never been said before.
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 47 
 
 Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic ; 
 for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of 
 thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first 
 effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. 
 Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. 
 Great thoughts are always general, and consist in positions not 
 limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to mi- 
 nuteness. It is with great propriety that subtlety, which in its 
 original import means exility of particles, is taken in its meta- 
 phorical meaning for nicety of distinction. Those writers who 
 lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness; 
 for great things cannot have escaped former observation. Their 
 attempts were always analytic ; they broke every image into frag- 
 ments: and could no more represent, by their slender conceits 
 and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature or the scenes 
 of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit 
 the wide effulgence of a summer noon. 
 
 What they wanted, however, of the sublime, they endeavoured 
 to supply by hyperbole; their amplification had no limits; they 
 left not only reason but fancy behind them; and produced com- 
 binations of confused magnificence that not only could not be 
 credited, but could not be imagined. 
 
 Yet great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly 
 lost: if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, 
 they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth : if their con- 
 ceits were far-fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write 
 on their plan, it was at least necessary to read and think. No 
 man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor assume the dignity 
 of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imita- 
 tions borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and heredi- 
 tary similes, by readiness of rhyme and volubility of syllables. 
 
 In perusing the works of this race of authors, the mind is exer- 
 cised either by recollection or inquiry; either something already 
 learned is to be retrieved, or something new is to be examined. 
 If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often surprises ; 
 if the imagination is not always gratified, at least the powers of 
 reflection and comparison are employed; and in the mass of 
 materials which ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine 
 wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found, buried per- 
 haps in grossness of expression, but useful to those who know 
 their value; and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity
 
 48 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 and polished to elegance, may give lustre to works which have 
 more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment. 
 
 This kind of writing, which was, I believe, borrowed from 
 Marino and his followers, had been recommended by the example 
 of Donne, a man of very extensive and various knowledge; and 
 by Jonson, whose manner resembled that of Donne more in the 
 ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of his sentiments. 
 
 When their reputation was high, they had undoubtedly more 
 imitators than time has left behind. Their immediate successors, 
 of whom any remembrance can be said to remain, were Suckling, 
 Waller, Denham, Cowley, Cleveland, and Milton. Denham 
 and Waller sought another way to fame, by improving the harmony 
 of our numbers. Milton tried the metaphysic style only in his 
 lines upon Hobson the Carrier. Cowley adopted it, and excelled 
 his predecessors, having as much sentiment and more music. 
 Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in conceits. 
 The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling 
 could not reach it, and Milton disdained it. 
 
 Critical remarks are not easily understood without examples, 
 and I have therefore collected instances of the modes of writing 
 by which this species of poets, for poets they were called by them- 
 selves and their admirers, was eminently distinguished. 
 
 As the authors of this race were perhaps more desirous of being 
 admired than understood, they sometimes drew their conceits 
 from recesses of learning not very much frequented by common 
 readers of poetry. Thus Cowley on Knowledge: — • 
 
 The sacred tree midst the fair orchard grew; 
 
 The phoenix Truth did on it rest, 
 
 And built his pcrfuni'd nest, 
 That right Porphyrian tree wliich did true logick shew. 
 
 Each leaf did learned notions give, 
 
 And th' apples were demonstrative: 
 
 So clear their colour and divine, 
 
 The very shade they cast did other lights outshine. 
 
 On Anacreon continuing a lover in his old age : — 
 
 Love was with thy life entwin'd, 
 
 Close as heat with fire is join'd, 
 
 A powerful brand prescrib'd the date 
 
 Of thine, like Meleager's fate. 
 
 The antipcristasis of age 
 
 More enflam'd thy amorous rage.
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 49 
 
 In the following verses we have an allusion to a Rabbinical 
 opinion concerning Manna : — 
 
 Variety I ask not : give me one 
 To live perpetually upon. 
 The person Love does to us fit, 
 Like manna, has the taste of all in it. 
 
 Thus Donne shows his medicinal knowledge in some encomi- 
 astic verses: — 
 
 In everything there naturally grows 
 
 A Balsamum to keep it fresh and new, 
 If 'twere not injur'd by extrinsique blows; 
 
 Your youth and beauty are this balm in you. 
 But you, of learning and religion, 
 
 And virtue and such ingredients, have made 
 A mithridate, whose operation 
 
 Keeps off, or cures what can be done or said. 
 
 Though the following lines of Donne, on the last night of the year, 
 have something in them too scholastic, they are not inelegant: — 
 
 This twilight of two years, not past nor next, 
 Some emblem is of me, or I of this, 
 
 Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext. 
 Whose what and where, in disputation is, 
 If I should call me any thing, should miss. 
 
 I sum the years and me, and find me not 
 Debtor to th' old, nor creditor to th' new. 
 
 That cannot say, my thanks I have forgot. 
 
 Nor trust I this with hopes: and yet scarce true 
 This bravery is, since these times shew'd me you. 
 
 — Donne. 
 
 Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne's reflection upon 
 Man as a Microcosm : — 
 
 If men be worlds, there is in every one 
 Something to answer in some proportion 
 All the world's riches: and in good men, this 
 Virtue, our form's form, and our soul's soul is. 
 
 Of thoughts so far-fetched as to be not only unexpected but 
 unnatural, all their books are full.
 
 50 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 TO A LADY WHO WROTE POESIES FOR RINGS 
 
 They, who above do various circles find, 
 
 Say, like a ring th' equator heaven does bind. 
 
 When heaven shall be adorn'd by thee, 
 
 (Which then more heaven than 'tis, will be) 
 
 'Tis thou must write the poesy there, 
 
 For it wanteth one as yet, 
 
 Though the sun pass through 't twice a year, 
 
 The sun, which is esteem'd the god of wit. — Cowley. 
 
 The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philoso- 
 phy are by Cowley, with still more perplexity, applied to Love : — 
 
 Five years ago (says story) I lov'd you. 
 For which you call me most inconstant now; 
 Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man; 
 For I am not the same that I was then; 
 No flesh is now the same 'twas then in me, 
 And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see. 
 
 The same thoughts to retain still, and intents. 
 
 Were more inconstant far; for accidents 
 
 Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove, 
 
 If from one subject they t' another move : 
 
 My members then, the father members were 
 
 From whence these take their birth, which now are here. 
 
 If then this body love what th' other did, 
 
 'Twere incest, which by nature is forbid. 
 
 The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, com- 
 pared to travels, through different countries : — 
 
 Hast thou not found each woman's breast 
 
 (The land where thou hast travelled) 
 Either by savages possest, 
 
 Or wild, and uninhabited ? 
 
 What joy could'st take, or what repose, 
 I In countries so unciviliz'd as those? 
 
 Lust, the scorching dog-star, here 
 
 Rages with immoderate heat; 
 Whilst Pride, the rugged Northern Bear, 
 
 In others makes the cold too great. 
 And when these are temperate known, 
 The soil's all barren sand, or rocky stone. — Cowley.
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 51 
 
 A lover, burnt up by his affections, is compared to Egypt : — 
 
 The fate of Egypt I sustain, 
 And never feel the dew of rain. 
 From clouds which in the head appear; 
 But all my too much moisture owe 
 To overflowings of the heart below. — Cowley. 
 
 The lover supposes his lady acquainted with the ancient laws 
 of augury and rites of sacrifice : — 
 
 And yet this death of mine, I fear, 
 Will ominous to her appear: 
 
 When found in every other part, 
 Her sacrifice is found without an heart. 
 
 For the last tempest of my death 
 Shall sigh out that too, with my breath. 
 
 That the chaos was harmonized, has been recited of old; but 
 whence the different sounds arose remained for a modern to 
 
 discover : — 
 
 Th' ungovern'd parts no correspondence knew, 
 
 And artless war from thwarting motions grew; 
 
 Till they to number and fixt rules were brought. 
 
 Water and air he for the Tenor chose. 
 
 Earth made the Base, the Treble flame arose. — Cowley. 
 
 The tears of lovers are always of great poetical account, but 
 Donne has extended them into worlds. If the lines are not easily 
 understood, they may be read again : — 
 
 On a round ball 
 A workman, that hath copies by, can lay 
 An Europe, Afric, and an Asia, 
 And quickly make that, which was nothing, all. 
 
 So doth each tear. 
 
 Which thee doth wear, 
 A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, 
 Till thy tears mixt with mine do overflow 
 This world, by waters sent from thee my heaven dissolved so. 
 
 On reading the following lines, the reader may perhaps cry out, 
 "Confusion worse confounded": — 
 
 Here lies a she sun, and a he moon here, 
 
 She gives the best light to his sphere, 
 
 Or each is both, and all, and so 
 They unto one another nothing owe. — Donne.
 
 52 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 Who but Donne would have thought that a good man is a 
 telescope ? 
 
 Though God be our true glass, through which we see 
 All, since the being of all things is He, 
 Yet are the trunks, which do to us derive 
 Things, in proportion fit, by perspective 
 Deeds of good men; for by their living here, 
 Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near. 
 
 Who would imagine it possible that in a very few lines so many 
 remote ideas could be brought together ? 
 
 Since 'tis my doom, Love's undershrieve, 
 
 Why this reprieve? 
 Why doth my She Advowson fly 
 
 Incumbency? 
 To sell thyself dost thou intend 
 
 By candle's end, 
 And hold the contrast thus in doubt, 
 
 Life's taper out ? 
 Think but how soon the market fails, 
 Your sex lives faster than the males; 
 As if to measure age's span. 
 The sober Julian were th' account of man. 
 Whilst you live by the fleet Gregorian. — Cleveland. 
 
 Of enormous and disgusting hyperboles, these may be exam- 
 ples : — 
 
 By every wind, that comes this way. 
 Send me at least a sigh or two, 
 Such and so many I'll repay 
 As shall themselves make winds to get to you. — Cowley. 
 
 In tears I'll waste these eyes, 
 By Love so vainly fed; 
 So lust of old the Deluge punished. — Cowley. 
 
 All arm'd in brass the richest dress of war, 
 (A dismal glorious sight) he shone afar. 
 The sun himself started with sudden fright, 
 I To see his beams return so dismal bright. — Cowley. 
 
 An universal consternation : — 
 
 His bloody eyes he hurls round, his sharp paws 
 Tear up the ground; then runs he wild about, 
 Lashing his angry tail and roaring out.
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 53 
 
 Beasts creep into their dens, and tremble there; 
 Trees, though no wind is stirring, shake with fear; 
 Silence and horror fill the place around : 
 Echo itself dares scarce repeat the sound. — Cowley. 
 
 Their fictions were often violent and unnatural. 
 
 OF HIS MISTRESS BATHING 
 
 The fish around her crowded, as they do 
 
 To the false light that treacherous fishers shew, 
 
 And all with as much ease might taken be, 
 
 As she at first took me : 
 
 For ne'er did light so clear 
 
 Among the waves appear, 
 Though every night the sun himself set there. — Cowley. 
 
 The poetical effect of a lover's name upon glass : — 
 
 My name engrav'd herein 
 Doth contribute my firmness to this glass; 
 Which, ever since that charm, hath been 
 As hard as that which grav'd it was. — Donne. 
 
 Their conceits were sometimes slight and trifling. 
 
 ON AN INCONSTANT WOMAN 
 
 He enjoys thy calmly sunshine now, 
 
 And no breath stirring hears. 
 In the clear heaven of thy brow, 
 
 No smallest cloud appears. 
 
 He sees thee gentle, fair and gay, 
 And trusts the faithless April of thy May. — Cowley. 
 
 Upon a paper written with the juice of lemon, and read by 
 the fire : — 
 
 Nothing yet in thee is seen : 
 But when a genial heat warms thee within, 
 A new-born wood of various lines there grows; 
 Here buds an L, and there a B, 
 Here sprouts a V, and there a T, 
 And all the flourishing letters stand in rows. — Cowley. 
 
 As they sought only for novelty, they did not much inquire 
 whether their allusions were to things high or low, elegant or gross ; 
 whether they compared the little to the great, or the great to the 
 little.
 
 54 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 PHYSICK AND CHIRURGERY FOR A LOVER 
 
 Gently, ah gently, madam, touch 
 
 The wound, which you yourself have made; 
 That pain must needs be very much, 
 
 Which makes me of your hand afraid. 
 Cordials of pity give me now. 
 For I too weak for purgings grow. — Cowley. 
 
 THE WORLD AND A CLOCK 
 
 Mahol, th' inferior world's fantastic face, 
 Through all the turns of matter's maze did trace; 
 Great Nature's well-set clock in pieces took; 
 On all the springs and smallest wheels did look 
 Of life and motion; and with equal art 
 Made up again the whole of every part. — Cowley. 
 
 A coal-pit has not often found its poet; but, that it may not 
 want its due honour, Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun : — 
 
 The moderate value of our guiltless ore 
 Makes no man atheist, and no woman whore; 
 Yet why should hallow'd vestals' sacred shrine 
 Deserve more honour than a flaming mine? 
 These pregnant wombs of heat would fitter be 
 Than a few embers, for a deity. 
 
 Had he our pits, the Persian would admire 
 No sun, but warm's devotion at our fire: 
 He'd leave the trotting whipster, and prefer 
 Our profound Vulcan 'hove that waggoner. 
 For wants he heat or light ? or would have store 
 Of both? 'tis here: and what can suns give more? 
 Nay, what's the sun but, in a different name, 
 A coal-pit rampant, or a mine on flame ! 
 Then let this truth reciprocally run 
 The sun's heaven's coalery, and coals our sun. 
 
 DEATH, A VOYAGE 
 
 No family 
 E'er rigg'd a soul for heaven's discovery, 
 With whom more venturers might boldly dare 
 Venture their stakes, with him in joy to share. — Dotme.
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 55 
 
 Their thoughts and expressions were sometimes grossly absurd, 
 and such as no figures or hcense can reconcile to the understanding. 
 
 A LOVER NEITHER DEAD NOR ALIVE 
 
 Then down I laid my head, 
 
 Down on cold earth ; and for a while was dead, 
 
 And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled: 
 
 Ah, sottish soul, said I, 
 
 When back to its cage again I saw it fly : 
 
 Fool to resume her broken chain ! 
 
 And row her galley here again ! 
 
 Fool, to that body to return 
 Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn ! 
 
 Once dead, how can it be. 
 Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee. 
 That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me ? — Cowley. 
 
 A lover's HEART A HAND GRENADO 
 
 Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come 
 
 Into the self-same room, 
 
 'Twill tear and blow up all within, 
 Like a grenado shot into a magazin. 
 Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts. 
 
 Of both our broken hearts: 
 
 Shall out of both one new one make; 
 From hers th' allay ; from mine, the metal take. — Cowley. 
 
 THE POETICAL PROPAGATION OF LIGHT 
 
 The Prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all. 
 
 From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall; 
 
 Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride's bright eyes, 
 
 At every glance a constellation flies. 
 And sows the court with stars, and doth prevent 
 
 In light and power, the all-ey'd firmament: 
 First her eye kindles other ladies' eyes, 
 
 Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise; 
 And from their jewels torches do take fire, 
 And all is warmth, and light, and good desire. — Donne. 
 
 They were in very Httle care to clothe their notions with ele- 
 gance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which 
 are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to 
 adorn their thoughts.
 
 56 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality is by 
 Cowley thus expressed : — 
 
 Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand, 
 Than woman can be plac'd by Nature's hand; 
 And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be. 
 To change thee, as thou'rt there, for very thee. 
 
 That prayer and labour should cooperate are thus taught by 
 Donne : — 
 
 In none but us, are such mixt engines found. 
 As hands of double office : for the ground 
 We till with them; and them to heaven we raise; 
 Who prayerless labours, or without this, prays, 
 Doth but one half, that's none. 
 
 By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procras- 
 tination, is thus illustrated : — 
 
 — That which I should have begun 
 
 In my youth's morning, now late must be done; 
 
 And I, as giddy travellers must do, 
 
 Which stray or sleep all day, and having lost 
 
 Light and strength, dark and tir'd must then ride post. 
 
 All that Man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity 
 is comprehended by Donne in the following lines : — 
 
 Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie; 
 
 After, enabled but to suck and cry. 
 
 Think, when 'twas grown to most, 'twas a poor inn, 
 
 A province pack'd up in two yards of skin, 
 
 And that usurp'd, or thrcatcn'd with a rage 
 
 Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age. 
 
 But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee; 
 
 Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty; 
 
 Think, that a rusty piece discharg'd is flown 
 
 In pieces, and the bullet is his own, 
 
 And freely flies; this to thy soul allow. 
 
 Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatched but now. 
 
 They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus 
 apostrophizes beauty : — 
 
 — Thou tyrant, which leav'st no man free ! 
 
 Thou subtle thief, from whom nought safe can be 1 
 
 Thou murtherer, which hast kill'd, and devil, which would'st damn me.
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 57 
 
 Thus he addresses his mistress : — 
 
 Thou who, in many a propriety, 
 
 So truly art the sun to me. 
 
 Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can, 
 
 And let me and my sun beget a man. 
 
 Thus he represents the meditations of a lover : — 
 
 Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been 
 
 So much as of original sin, 
 Such charms thy beauty wears as might 
 Desires in dying confest saints excite. 
 
 Thou with strange adultery 
 Dost in each breast a brothel keep; 
 
 Awake, all men do lust for thee, 
 And some enjoy thee when they sleep. 
 
 The true taste of tears : — 
 
 Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come, 
 
 And take my tears, which are Love's wine. 
 And try your mistress' tears at home; 
 
 For all are false, that taste not just like mine. — Donne. 
 
 This is yet more indelicate : — 
 
 As the sweet sweat of roses in a still 
 
 As that which from chaf'd musk-cat's pores doth trill. 
 
 As th' almighty balm of th' early East, 
 
 Such are the sweet drops of my mistress' breast. 
 
 And on her neck her skin such lustre sets. 
 
 They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets : 
 
 Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles. — Donne. 
 
 Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend 
 perhaps to be pathetic : — 
 
 As men in hell are from diseases free, 
 
 So from all other ills am I. 
 
 Free from their known formality: 
 But all pains eminently lie in thee. — Coiiiey. 
 
 They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions 
 from which they drew their illustrations were true ; it was enough 
 that they were popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods 
 are continued by tradition, because they supply commodious 
 allusions.
 
 58 SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke; 
 In vain it something would have spoke: 
 The love within too strong for 'twas, 
 Like poison put into a Venice-glass. — Cowley. 
 
 In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but 
 for conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets 
 have contended to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's 
 is as follows : — 
 
 Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest: 
 Time's dead low- water; when all minds divest 
 To-morrow's business, when the labourers have 
 Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave, 
 Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this; 
 Now when the client, whose last hearing is 
 To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man. 
 Who when he opes his eyes, must shut them then 
 Again by death, although sad watch he keep, 
 Doth practise dying by a little sleep, 
 Thou at this midnight seest me. 
 
 It must be, however, confessed of these writers that if thev are 
 upon common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoeticallv 
 subtle, yet where scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, 
 their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What 
 Cowley has written upon Hope shows an unequalled fertility of 
 invention : — 
 
 Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is. 
 
 Alike if it succeed, and if it miss; 
 Whom good or ill does equally confound, 
 And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound. 
 
 Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite, 
 
 Both at full noon and perfect night ! 
 
 The stars have not a possibility 
 
 Of blessing thee; 
 If things then from their end we happy call, 
 'Tis hope is the most hopeless thing of all. 
 
 Hope, thou bold taster of delight, 
 
 Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour'st it quite ! 
 
 Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor, 
 
 By clogging it with legacies before ! 
 
 The joys, which we entire should wed. 
 
 Come deflower'd virgins to our bed; 
 Good fortune without gain imported be. 
 
 Such mighty customs paid to thee: 
 For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste; 
 If it take air before, its spirits waste.
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 59 
 
 To the following comparison of a man that travels and his 
 wife that stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted 
 whether absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim : — 
 
 Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
 
 Though I must go, endure not yet 
 A breach, but an expansion, 
 
 Like gold to airy thinness beat. 
 
 If they be two, they are two so 
 
 As stiff twin-compasses are two, 
 Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show 
 
 To move, but doth, if th' other do. 
 
 And though it in the centre sit. 
 
 Yet when the other far doth roam, 
 It leans, and hearkens after it. 
 
 And grows erect, as that comes home. 
 
 Such wilt thou be to me, who must 
 
 Like th' other foot, obliquely run. 
 Thy firmness makes my circle just. 
 
 And makes me end where I begun. — Donne. 
 
 In all these examples it is apparent that whatever is improper 
 or vicious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in 
 pursuit of something new and strange, and that the writers fail 
 to give delight by their desire of exciting admiration.
 
 IV 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 
 (1800-1859) 
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 
 
 [Appeared in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1830, as a criticism of the follow- 
 ing books: 
 
 1. The Omnipresence oj the Deity: a Poem. By Robert Montgomery. Eleventh 
 
 Edition. London: 1830. 
 
 2. Satan: a Poem. By Robert Montgomery. Second Edition. London: 1830.] 
 
 The wise men of antiquity loved to convey instruction under 
 the covering of apologue; and though this practice is generally 
 thought childish, w^e shall make no apology for adopting it on 
 the present occasion. A generation which has bought eleven 
 editions of a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery may well con- 
 descend to listen to a fable of Pilpay. 
 
 A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow that on a certain 
 day he would sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed morning he 
 went forth to buy one. There lived in his neighbourhood three 
 rogues who knew of his vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. 
 The first met him and said, " Oh Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep ? 
 I have one fit for sacrifice." "It is for that very purpose," said 
 the holy man, "that I came forth this day." Then the impostor 
 opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly 
 dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, "Wretch, 
 who touchcst things impure, and utterest things untrue; callest 
 thou that cur a sheep?" "Truly," answered the other, "it is a 
 sheep of the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Oh Brahmin, 
 it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods." "Friend," 
 said the Brahmin, "either thou or I must be blind." 
 
 Just then one of the accomplices came up. "Praised be the 
 gods," said the second rogue, "that I have been saved the trouble 
 of going to the market for a sheep ! This is such a sheep as I 
 
 60
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 6l 
 
 wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it ? " When the Brahmin 
 heard this, his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the 
 air at a holy festival. "Sir," said he to the newcomer, "take 
 heed what thou dost ; this is no sheep, but an unclean cur." " Oh 
 Brahmin," said the newcomer, "thou art drunk or mad!" 
 
 At this time the third confederate drew near. "Let us ask this 
 man," said the Brahmin, "what the creature is, and I will stand 
 by what he shall say." To this the others agreed; and the 
 Brahmin called out, " Oh stranger, what dost thou call this beast ?" 
 "Surely, oh Brahmin," said the knave, "it is a fine sheep." Then 
 the Brahmin said, "Surely the gods have taken away my senses;" 
 and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it 
 for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the 
 gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with 
 a sore disease in all his joints. 
 
 Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story 
 of the Sanscrit /Esop. The moral, like the moral of every fable 
 that is worth the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently 
 means to caution us against the practices of puffers, a class of 
 people who have more than once talked the public into the most 
 absurd errors, but who surely never played a more curious or a 
 more difficult trick than when they passed Mr. Robert Mont- 
 goniery off upon the world as a great poet. 
 
 In an age in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot 
 subsist on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man 
 who has not an independent fortune can devote himself to literary 
 pursuits, unless he is assisted by patronage. In such an age, 
 accordingly, men of letters too often pass their lives in danghng 
 at the heels of the wealthy and powerful ; and all the faults which 
 dependence tends to produce, pass into their character. They 
 become the parasites and slaves of the great. It is melancholy 
 to think how many of the highest and most exquisitely formed of 
 human intellects have been condemned to the ignominious labour 
 of disposing the commonplaces of adulation in new forms and 
 brightening them into new splendour. Horace invoking Augustus 
 in the most enthusiastic language of religious veneration; Statius 
 flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of 
 bread; Ariosto versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly 
 patron ; Tasso extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched creature 
 who locked him up in a madhouse: these are but a few of the 
 instances which might easily be given of the degradation to which
 
 62 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 
 
 those must submit who, not possessing a competent fortune, are 
 resolved to write when there are scarcely any who read. 
 
 This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As 
 a taste for books becomes more and more common, the patronage of 
 individuals becomes less and less necessary. In the middle of the 
 last century a marked change took place. The tone of literary 
 men, both in this country and in France, became higher and 
 more independent. Pope boasted that he was the "one poet" 
 who had "pleased by manly ways"; he derided the soft dedica- 
 tions with which Halifax had been fed, asserted his own superi- 
 ority over the pensioned Boileau, and gloried in being not the 
 follower, but the friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation 
 of all this is very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, 
 by the mere sale of his writings, realized a sum which enabled him 
 to live in comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols 
 him for the magnanimity which he showed in inscribing his Iliad, 
 not to a minister or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time this would 
 scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr. 
 Moore pays a compliment of this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or 
 Sir Walter Scott to Mr. Moore. The idea of either of those gentle- 
 men looking out for some lord who would be likely to give him 
 a few guineas in return for a fulsome dedication seems laughably 
 incongruous. Yet this is exactly what Dryden or Otway would 
 have done; and it would be hard to blame them for it. Otway 
 is said to have been choked with a piece of bread which he de- 
 voured in the rage of hunger; and, whether this story be true or 
 false, he was beyond all question miserably poor. Dryden, at 
 near seventy, when at the head of the literary men of England, 
 without equal or second, received three hundred pounds for his 
 Fables, a collection of ten thousand verses, and of such verses as 
 no man then living, except himself, could have produced. Pope, 
 at thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand pounds, 
 the fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had 
 a higher spirit or a more scrupulous conscience than his prede- 
 cessors, but because he had a larger income, that he kept up the 
 dignity of the literary character so much better than they had 
 done. 
 
 From the time of Pope to the present day the readers have been 
 constantly becoming more and more numerous, and the writers, 
 consequently, more and more independent. It is assuredly a 
 great evil that men, fitted by their talents and acquirements to
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 63 
 
 enlighten and charm the world, should be reduced to the necessity 
 of flattering wicked and foolish patrons in return for the suste- 
 nance of life. But, though we heartily rejoice that this evil is 
 removed, we cannot but see with concern that another evil has 
 succeeded to it. The public is now the patron, and a most liberal 
 patron. All that the rich and powerful bestowed on authors 
 from the time of Maecenas to that of Harley would not, we appre- 
 hend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid by English 
 booksellers to authors during the last fifty years. Men of letters 
 have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have begun to 
 court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use 
 puffing. 
 
 Whether the old or the new vice be the worse, whether those 
 who formerly lavished insincere praise on others, or those who 
 now contrive by every art of beggary and bribery to stun the public 
 with praises of themselves, disgrace their vocation the more deeply, 
 we shall not attempt to decide. But of this we are sure, that it is 
 high time to make a stand against the new trickery. The puff- 
 ing of books is now so shamefully and so successfully carried on 
 that it is the duty of all who are anxious for the purity of the national 
 taste, or for the honour of the literary character, to join in dis- 
 countenancing the practice. All the pens that ever were employed 
 in magnifying Bish's lucky oifice, Romanis's fleecy hosiery, Pack- 
 wood's razor strops, and Rowland's Kalydor, all the placard- 
 bearers of Dr. Eady, all the wall-chalkers of Day and Martin, 
 seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists of this 
 generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as 
 disreputable are adopted without scruple, and improved upon 
 with a despicable ingenuity, by people engaged in a pursuit which 
 never was and never will be considered as a mere trade by any 
 man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains 
 to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed 
 to hang up papers in his window inviting the passers-by to look 
 at the stock of a bankrupt, all of the first quality, and going for 
 half the value. We expect some reserve, some decent pride, in 
 our hatter and our bootmaker. But no artifice by which notoriety 
 can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters. 
 
 It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publica- 
 tions which have had a run during the last few years. The pub- 
 lisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this 
 periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The
 
 64 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 
 
 peal is then echoed and reechoed by all the other periodical 
 works over which the publisher, or the author, or the author's 
 coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a 
 fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which Sheridan 
 enumerated, direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise 
 is laid on thick for simple-minded [)eopIe. "Pathetic," "sub- 
 lime," "splendid," "graceful," "brilliant wit," "exquisite hu- 
 mour," and other phrases equally flattering, fall in a shower as 
 thick and as sweet as the sugar-plums at a Roman carnival. 
 Sometimes greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to 
 the writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even 
 soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished 
 military and political character has challenged the inimitable 
 satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to learn 
 that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace. Some- 
 times it is thought expedient that the puffer should put on a grave 
 face, and utter his panegyric in the form of admonition. "Such 
 attacks on private character cannot be too much condemned. 
 Even the exuberant wit of our author, and the irresistible power 
 of his withering sarcasm, are no excuses for that utter disregard 
 which he manifests for the feelings of others. We cannot but 
 wonder that a writer of such transcendent talents, a writer who 
 is evidently no stranger to the kindly charities and sensibilities 
 of our nature, should show so little tenderness to the foibles of 
 noble and distinguished individuals, with whom it is clear, from 
 every page of his work, that he must have been constantly mingling 
 in society." These are but tame and feeble imitations of the 
 paragraphs with which the daily papers are filled whenever an 
 attorney's clerk or an apothecary's assistant undertakes to tell 
 the public in bad English and worse French, how people tie their 
 neckcloths and eat their dinners in Grosvenor Square. The 
 editors of the higher and more respectable newspapers usually 
 prefix the words "Advertisement," or "From a Correspondent," 
 to such paragraphs. But this makes little difference. The 
 panegyric is extracted, and the significant heading omitted. The 
 fulsome eulogy makes its appearance on the covers of all the Re- 
 views and Magazines, with Times or Globe afiixed, though the 
 editors of the Times and the Globe have no more to do with it 
 than with Mr. Goss's way of making old rakes young again. 
 
 That people who live by personal slander should practise these 
 arts is not surjjrising. Those who stoop to write calumnious
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 65 
 
 books may well stoop to puff them; and that the basest of all 
 trades should be carried on in the basest of all manners is quite 
 proper and as it should be. But how any man who has the least 
 self-respect, the least regard for his own personal dignity, can con- 
 descend to persecute the public with this Rag-fair importunity, 
 we do not understand. Extreme poverty may, indeed, in some 
 degree, be an excuse for employing these shifts, as it may be an 
 excuse for stealing a leg of mutton. But we really think that a 
 man of spirit and delicacy would quite as soon satisfy his wants 
 in the one way as in the other. 
 
 It is no excuse for an author that the praises of journalists are 
 procured by the money or influence of his publishers, and not 
 by his own. It is his business to take such precautions as may 
 prevent others from doing what must degrade him. It is for his 
 honour as a gentleman, and, if he is really a man of talents, it will 
 eventually be for his honour and interest as a writer, that his 
 works should come before the public recommended by their own 
 merits alone, and should be discussed with perfect freedom. If 
 his objects be really such as he may own without shame, he will 
 find that they will, in the long-run, be better attained by suffering 
 the voice of criticism to be fairly heard. At present, we too often 
 see a writer attempting to obtain literary fame as Shakespeare's 
 usurper obtains sovereignty. The publisher plays Buckingham 
 to the author's Richard. Some few creatures of the conspiracy 
 are dexterously disposed here and there in the crowd. It is the 
 business of these hirelings to throw up their caps, and clap their 
 hands, and utter their vivas. The rabble at first stare and wonder, 
 and at last join in shouting for shouting's sake ; and thus a crown 
 is placed on a head which has no right to it, by the huzzas of a 
 few servile dependants. 
 
 The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very 
 materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those 
 who assume a right to criticise. Nor is the public altogether to 
 blame on this account. Most even of those who have really a 
 great enjoyment in reading are in the same state, with respect to 
 a book, in which a man who has never given particular attention 
 to the art of painting is with respect to a picture. Every man 
 who has the least sensibility or imagination derives a certain 
 pleasure from pictures. Yet a man of the highest and finest 
 intellect might, unless he had formed his taste by contemplating 
 the best pictures, be easily persuaded by a knot of connoisseurs 
 
 F
 
 66 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 
 
 that the worst daub in Somerset House was a miracle of art If 
 he deserves to be laughed at, it is not for his ignorance of pictures, 
 but for his ignorance of men. He knows that there is a dehcacy 
 of taste in painting which he does not possess, that he cannot dis- 
 tinguish hands, as practised judges distinguish them, that he is 
 not familiar with the finest models, that he has never looked at them 
 with close attention, and that, when the general effect of a piece 
 has pleased him or displeased him, he has never troubled himself 
 to ascertain why. When, therefore, people, whom he thinks 
 more competent to judge than himself, and of whose sincerity he 
 entertains no doubt, assure him that a particular work is exqui- 
 sitely beautiful, he takes it for granted that they must be in the 
 right. He returns to the examination, resolved to find or imagine 
 beauties; and, if he can work himself up into something like 
 admiration, he exults in his own proficiency. 
 
 Just such is the manner in which nine readers out of ten judge 
 of a book. They are ashamed to dislike what men who speak 
 as having authority declare to be good. At present, however 
 contemptible a poem or a novel may be, there is not the least diffi- 
 culty in procuring favourable notices of it from all sorts of pub- 
 lications, daily, weekly, and monthly. In the meantime, little 
 or nothing is said on the other side. The author and the publisher 
 are interested in crying up the book. Nobody has any very strong 
 interest in crying it down. Those who are best fitted to guide 
 the public opinion think it beneath them to expose mere nonsense, 
 and comfort themselves by reflecting that such popularity cannot 
 last. This contemptuous lenity has been carried too far. It is 
 perfectly true that reputations which have been forced into an 
 unnatural bloom fade almost as soon as they have expanded; 
 nor have we any apprehensions that puffing will ever raise any 
 scribbler to the rank of a classic. It is indeed amusing to turn 
 over some late volumes of periodical works, and to see how many 
 immortal productions have, within a few months, been gathered 
 to the Poems of Jilackmore and the novels of Mrs. Behn; how 
 many "profound views of human nature," and "exquisite delinea- 
 tions of fashionable manners," and "vernal, and sunny, and 
 refreshing thoughts," and "high imaginings," and "young breath- 
 ings," and "embodyings," and "pinings," and "minglings with 
 the beauty of the universe," and "harmonies which dissolve the 
 soul in a passionate sense of loveliness and divinity," the world 
 has contrived to forget. The names of the books and of the
 
 MR. LOBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 67 
 
 writers are buried in as deep an oblivion as the name of the builder 
 of Stonehenge. Some of the wcll-puffcd fashionable novels of 
 eighteen hundred and twenty-nine hold the pastry of eighteen 
 hundred and thirty; and others, which are now exlclied in lan- 
 guage almost too high-flown for the merits of Don Quixote, will, 
 we have no doubt, line the trunks of eighteen hundred and thirty- 
 one. But, though we have no apprehensions that puffing will 
 ever confer permanent reputation on the undeserving, we still 
 think its influence most pernicious. Men of real merit will, if 
 they persevere, at last reach the station to which they are entitled, 
 and intruders will be ejected with contempt and derision. But 
 it is no small evil that the avenues to fame should be blocked up 
 by a swarm of noisy, pushing, elbowing pretenders, who, though 
 they will not ultimately be able to make good their own entrance, 
 hinder, in the meantime, those who have a right to enter. All 
 who will not disgrace themselves by joining in the unseemly 
 scuffle must expect to be at first hustled and shouldered back. 
 Some men of talents, accordingly, turn away in dejection from 
 pursuits in which success appears to bear no proportion to desert. 
 Others employ in self-defence the means by which competitors, 
 far inferior to themselves, appear for a time to obtain a decided 
 advantage. There are few who have sufficient confidence in 
 their own powers and sufficient elevation of mind, to wait with 
 secure and contemptuous patience, while dunce after dunce presses 
 before them. Those who will not stoop to the baseness of the 
 modern fashion are too often discouraged. Those who do stoop 
 to it are always degraded. 
 
 We have of late observed wnth great pleasure some symptoms 
 which lead us to hope that respectable literary men of all parties 
 are beginning to be impatient of this insufferable nuisance. And 
 we purpose to do what in us lies for the abating of it. We do not 
 think that we can more usefully assist in this good work than by 
 showing our honest countrymen what that sort of poetry is which 
 puffing can drive through eleven editions, and how easily any 
 bellman might, if a bellman would stoop to the necessary degree 
 of meanness, become a "master-spirit of the age." We have no 
 enmity to Mr. Robert Montgomery. We know nothing whatever 
 about him, except what we have learned from his books, and 
 from the portrait prefixed to one of them, in which he appears to 
 be doing his very best to look like a man of genius and sensibility, 
 though with less success than his strenuous exertions deserve.
 
 68 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 
 
 We select him, because his works have received more enthusiastic 
 praise, and have deserved more unmixed contempt, than any 
 which, as far as our knowledge extends, have appeared within the 
 last three or four years. His writing bears the same relation to 
 poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are 
 colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. 
 There are words in Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when dis- 
 posed in certain orders and combinations, have made, and will 
 again make, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be 
 put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of 
 anything "in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the 
 waters under the earth." 
 
 The poem on the Omnipresence of the Deity commences with 
 a description of the creation, in which we can find only one thought 
 which has the least pretension to ingenuity, and that one thought 
 is stolen from Dryden, and marred in the stealing : — 
 
 "Last, softly beautiful, as music's close, 
 Angelic woman into being rose." 
 
 The all-pervading influence of the Supreme Being is then described 
 in a few tolerable lines borrowed from Pope, and a great many 
 intolerable lines of Mr. Robert Montgomery's own. The follow- 
 ing may stand as a specimen : — 
 
 " But who could trace Thine unrestricted course, 
 Though Fancy followed with immortal force ? 
 There's not a blossom fondled by the breeze, 
 There's not a fruit that beautifies the trees, 
 There's not a particle in sea or air, 
 But nature owns thy plastic influence there ! 
 With fearful gaze, still be it mine to see 
 How all is fill'd and vivified by Thee; 
 Upon thy mirror, earth's majestic view, 
 To paint Thy Presence, and to feel it too." 
 
 The last two lines contain an excellent specimen of Mr. Robert 
 Montgomery's Turkey carpet style of writing. The majestic 
 view of earth is the mirror of God's presence; and on this mirror 
 Mr. Robert Montgomery paints God's presence. The use of a 
 mirror, we submit, is not to be painted upon. 
 
 A few more lines, as bad as those which we have quoted, bring 
 us to one of the most amusing instances of literary pilfering which 
 we remember. It might be of use to plagiarists to know, as a
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 69 
 
 general rule, that what they steal is, to employ a phrase common 
 in advertisements, of no use to any but the right owner. We never 
 fell in, however, with any plunderer who so little understood how 
 to turn his booty to good account as Mr. Montgomery. Lord 
 Byron, in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said,, 
 addressing the sea, 
 
 "Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow." 
 
 Mr. Robert Montgomery very coolly appropriates the image and 
 reproduces the stolen goods in the following form : — 
 
 "And thou, vast Ocean, on whose awful face 
 Time's iron feet can print no ruin -trace." 
 
 So may such ill-got gains ever prosper ! 
 
 The effect which the Ocean has on Atheists is then described 
 in the following lofty lines : — 
 
 " Oh ! never did the dark-soul'd Atheist stand, 
 And watch the breakers boiling on the strand, 
 And, while Creation stagger'd at his nod, 
 Mock the dread presence of the mighty God ! 
 We hear Him in the wind-heaved ocean's roar, 
 Hurling her billowy crags upon the shore; 
 We hear Him in the riot of the blast. 
 And shake, while rush the raving whirlwinds past !" 
 
 If Mr. Robert Montgomery's genius were not far too free and 
 aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax, we should suppose 
 that it "is at the nod of the Atheist that creation staggers. But 
 Mr. Robert Montgomery's readers must take such grammar as 
 they can get, and be thankful. 
 
 A few more lines bring us to another instance of unprofitable 
 theft. Sir Walter Scott has these lines in the Lord of the Isles: — 
 
 "The dew that on the violet lies, 
 Mocks the dark lustre of thine eyes." 
 
 This is pretty taken separately, and, as is always the case with the 
 good things of good writers, much prettier in its place than can 
 even be conceived by those who see it only detached from the 
 context. Now for Mr. Montgomery : — 
 
 "And the bright dew-bead on the bramble lies, 
 Like liquid rapture upon beauty's eyes."
 
 7o THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 
 
 The comparison of a violet, bright with the dew, to a woman's eyes, 
 is as perfect as a comparison can be. Sir Walter's lines are part 
 of a song addressed to a woman at daybreak, when the violets are 
 bathed in dew; and the comparison is therefore peculiarly natural 
 and graceful. Dew on a bramble is no more like a woman's 
 eyes than dew anywhere else. There is a very pretty Eastern 
 tale of which the fate of plagiarists often reminds us. The slave 
 of a magician saw his master wave his wand, and heard him give 
 orders to the spirits who arose at the summons. The slave stole 
 the wand, and waved it himself in the air ; but he had not observed 
 that his master used the left hand for that purpose. The spirits 
 thus irregularly summoned tore the thief to pieces instead of 
 obeying his orders. There are very few who can safely venture 
 to conjure with the rod of Sir Walter; and Mr. Robert Mont- 
 gomery is not one of them. 
 
 Mr. Campbell, in one of his most pleasing pieces, has this line, 
 
 "The sentinel stars set their watch in the sky." 
 
 The thought is good, and has a very striking propriety where Mr. 
 Campbell has placed it, in the mouth of a soldier telling his dream. 
 But, though Shakespeare assures us that "every true man's apparel 
 fits your thief," it is by no means the case, as we have already 
 seen, that every true poet's similitude fits your plagiarist. Let 
 us see how Mr. Robert Montgomery uses the image : — 
 
 "Ye quenchless stars! so eloquently bright, 
 Untroubled sentries of the shadowy night, 
 While half the world is lapp'd in downy dreams, 
 And round the lattice creep your midnight beams. 
 How sweet to gaze upon your placid eyes, 
 In lambent beauty looking from the skies." 
 
 Certainly the ideas of eloquence, of untroubled repose, of placid 
 eyes, of the lambent beauty on which it is sweet to gaze, harmo- 
 nize admirably with the idea of a sentry. 
 
 We would not be understood, however, to .say, that Mr. Robert 
 Montgomery cannot make similitudes for himself. A very few 
 lines further on, we find one which has every mark of originality, 
 and on which, we will be bound, none of the poets whom he has 
 plundered will ever think of making reprisals: — 
 
 "The soul, aspiring, pants its source to mount, 
 As streams meander level with their fount."
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 71 
 
 We take this to be, on the whole, the worst similitude in the 
 world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly 
 meander, level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did 
 meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like 
 each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting 
 upwards. 
 
 We have then an apostrophe to the Deity, couched in terms 
 which, in any writer who dealt in meanings, we should call pro- 
 fane, but to which we suppose Mr. Robert Montgomery attaches 
 no idea whatever : — 
 
 " Yes ! pause and think, within one fleeting hour, 
 How vast a universe obeys Thy power; 
 Unseen, but felt. Thine interfused control 
 Works in each atom, and pervades the whole; 
 Expands the blossom, and erects the tree, 
 Conducts each vapour, and commands each sea, 
 Beams in each ray, bids whirlwinds be unfurl'd, 
 Unrols the thunder, and upheaves a world!" 
 
 No field-preacher surely ever carried his irreverent familiarity 
 so far as to bid the Supreme Being stop and think on the impor- 
 tance of the interests which are under His care. The grotesque 
 indecency of such an address throws into shade the subordinate 
 absurdities of the passage, the unfurling of whirlwinds, the unroll- 
 ing of thunder, and the upheaving of worlds. 
 
 Then comes a curious specimen of our poet's English : — 
 
 "Yet not alone created realms engage 
 Thy faultless wisdom, grand, primeval sage ! 
 For all the thronging woes to life allied 
 Thy mercy tempers, and thy cares provide." 
 
 We should be glad to know what the word "For" means here. 
 If it is a preposition, it makes nonsense of the words, "Thy 
 mercy tempers." If it is an adverb, it makes nonsense of the 
 words, "Thy cares provide." These beauties we have taken, 
 almost at random, from the first part of the poem. The 
 second part is a series of descriptions of various events, a 
 battle, a murder, an execution, a marriage, a funeral, and so forth. 
 Mr. Robert Montgomery terminates each of these descriptions 
 by assuring us that the Deity was present at the battle, murder, 
 execution, marriage or funeral in question. And this proposition 
 which might be safely predicated of every event that ever happened
 
 72 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 
 or ever will happen, forms the only link which connects these 
 descriptions with the subject or with each other. 
 
 How the descriptions are executed our readers are probably 
 by this time able to conjecture. The battle is made up of the 
 battles of all ages and nations: "red-mouthed cannons, up- 
 roaring to the clouds," and "hands grasping firm the glittering 
 shield." The only military operations of which this part of the 
 poem reminds us, are those which reduced the Abbey of Qued- 
 linburgh to submission, the Templar with his cross, the Austrian 
 and Prussian grenadiers in full uniform, and Curtius and Dentatus 
 with their battering-ram. We ought not to pass unnoticed the 
 slain war-horse, who will no more 
 
 "Roll his red eye, and rally for the fight;" 
 
 or the slain warrior who, while "lying on his bleeding breast," 
 contrives to "stare ghastly and grimly on the skies." As to this 
 last exploit, we can only say, as Dante did on a similar occasion, 
 
 "Forse per forza gia di' parlasia 
 Si stravolse cosi alcun del tutto: 
 Ma io nol vidi, ne credo che sia." ^ 
 
 The tempest is thus described : — 
 
 "But lo ! around the marsh'lling clouds unite, 
 Like thick battalions halting for the fight; 
 The sun sinks back, the tempest spirits sweep 
 Fierce through the air and flutter on the deep. 
 Till from their caverns rush the maniac blasts, 
 Tear the loose sails, and split the creaking masts, 
 And the lash'd billows, rolling in a train, 
 Rear their white heads, and race along the main!" 
 
 What, we should like to know, is the difference between the 
 two operations which Mr. Robert Montgomery so accurately dis- 
 tinguishes from each other, the fierce sweeping of the tempest- 
 spirits through the air, and the rushing of the maniac blasts from 
 their caverns? And why does the former operation end exactly 
 when the latter commences? 
 
 1 ["Perchance indeed by violence of palsy 
 
 Some one has been thus wholly turned awry; 
 But I ne'er saw it, nor believe it can be." — Longfellow's 
 translation of Inferno, XX., 16-18.]
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 73 
 
 We cannot stop over each of Mr. Robert Montgomery's descrip- 
 tions. We have a shipwrecked sailor, who "visions a viewless 
 temple in the air"; a murderer who stands on a heath, "with 
 ashy lips, in cold convulsion spread"; a pious man, to whom, 
 as he lies in bed at night, 
 
 "The panorama of past life appears, 
 Warms his pure mind, and melts it into tears;" 
 
 a traveller, who loses his way, owing to the thickness of the "cloud 
 battalion," and the want of "heaven-lamps, to beam their holy 
 light." We have a description of a convicted felon, stolen from 
 that incomparable passage in Crabbe's Borough, which has made 
 many a rough and cynical reader cry like a child. We can, how- 
 ever, conscientiously declare that persons of the most excitable 
 sensibility may safely venture upon Mr. Robert Montgomery's 
 version. Then we have the "poor, mindless, pale-faced maniac 
 
 boy," who 
 
 " Rolls his vacant eye, 
 To greet the glowing fancies of the sky." 
 
 What are the glowing fancies of the sky? And what is the 
 meaning of the two lines which almost immediately follow ? 
 
 "A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods, 
 He loves to commune with the fields and floods." 
 
 How can a soulless thing be a spirit ? Then comes a panegyric 
 on the Sunday. A baptism follows ; after that a marriage : and 
 we then proceed, in due course, to the visitation of the sick, and 
 the burial of the dead. 
 
 Often as Death has been personified, Mr. Montgomery has 
 found something new to say about him : — 
 
 " O Death ! thou dreadless vanquisher of earth, 
 The Elements shrank blasted at thy birth ! 
 Careering round the world like tempest wind, 
 Martyrs before, and victims strew'd behind; 
 Ages on ages cannot grapple thee, 
 Dragging the world into eternity !" 
 
 If there be any one line in this passage about which we are more 
 in the dark than about the rest, it is the fourth. What the differ- 
 ence may be between the victims and the martyrs, and why the
 
 74 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 
 
 martyrs are to lie before Death, and the victims behind him, are 
 to us great mysteries. 
 
 We now come to the third part, of which we may say with honest 
 Cassio, "Why, this is a more excellent song than the other." Mr. 
 Robert Montgomery is very severe on the infidels, and undertakes 
 to prove, that, as he elegantly expresses it, 
 
 "One great Enchanter helm'd the harmonious whole." 
 
 What an enchanter has to do with helming, or what a helm has 
 to do with harmony, he does not explain. He proceeds with his 
 argument thus : — 
 
 "And dare men dream that dismal Chance has framed 
 All that the eye perceives, or tongue has named; 
 The spacious world, and all its wonders, born 
 Designless, self-created, and forlorn; 
 Like to the flashing bubbles on a stream, 
 Fire from the cloud, or phantom in a dream?" 
 
 We should be sorry to stake our faith in a higher Power on Mr. 
 Robert Montgomery's logic. He informs us that lightning is 
 designless and self-created. If he can believe this, we cannot 
 conceive why he may not believe that the whole universe is design- 
 less and self-created. A few lines before, he tells us that it is the 
 Deity who bids "thunder rattle from the skiey deep." His theory 
 is therefore this, that God made the thunder, but that the light- 
 ning made itself. 
 
 But Mr. Robert Montgomery's metaphysics are not at present 
 our game. He proceeds to set forth the fearful effects of Athe- 
 ism: — 
 
 "Then, blood-stain'd Murder, bare thy hideous arm, 
 
 And thou, Rebellion, welter in thy storm: 
 
 Awake, ye spirits of avenging crime; 
 
 Burst from your bonds, and battle with the time!" 
 
 Mr. Robert Montgomery is fond of personification, and belongs, 
 we need not say, to that school of poets who hold that nothing 
 more is necessary to a personification in poetry than to begin a 
 word with a capital letter. Murder may, without impropriety, 
 bare her arm, as she did long ago, in Mr. Campbell's Pleasures 
 of Hope. But what possible motive Rebellion can have for welter- 
 ing in her storm, what avenging crime may be, who its spirits
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 75 
 
 mav be, whv thev should be burst from their bonds, what their 
 bonds may be, why they should battle with the lime, what the 
 time may be, and what a battle between the time and the spirits 
 of avenging crime would resemble, we must confess ourselves 
 quite unable to understand. 
 
 "And here let Memory turn her tearful glance 
 On the dark horrors of tumultuous France, 
 When blood and blasphemy defiled her land, 
 And fierce Rebellion shook her savage hand." 
 
 Whether Rebellion shakes her own hand, shakes the hand of 
 Memory, or shakes the hand of France, or what any one of these 
 three metaphors would mean^ we know no more than we know 
 what is the sense of the following passage : — 
 
 " Let the foul orgies of infuriate crime 
 Picture the raging havoc of that time, 
 When leagued Rebellion march'd to kindle man, 
 Fright in her rear, and Murder in her van. 
 And thou, sweet flower of Austria, slaughter'd Queen, 
 Who dropp'd no tear upon the dreadful scene. 
 When gush'd the life-blood from thine angel form, 
 And martyr'd beauty perish'd in the storm, 
 Once worshipp'd paragon of all who saw. 
 Thy look obedience, and thy smile a law." 
 
 What is the distinction between the foul orgies and the raging 
 havoc which the foul orgies are to picture ? Why does Fright go 
 behind Rebellion, and Murder before? Why should not Mur- 
 der fall behind Fright ? Or why should not all the three walk 
 abreast ? We have read of a hero who had 
 
 " Amazement in his van, with flight combined, 
 And Sorrow's faded form, and Solitude behind." 
 
 Gray, we suspect, could have given a reason for disposing the 
 allegorical attendants of Edward thus. But to proceed, " Flower 
 of Austria " is stolen from Byron. " Dropp'd " is false English. 
 "Perish'd in the storm" means nothing at all; and "thy look 
 obedience " means the very reverse of what Mr. Robert Mont- 
 gomery intends to say. 
 
 Our poet then proceeds to demonstrate the immortality of the 
 soul r —
 
 76 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAY 
 
 " And shall the soul, the fount of reason, die, 
 When dust and darkness round its temple lie? 
 Did God breathe in it no ethereal tire, 
 Dimless and ciuenchless, though the breath expire? " 
 
 The soul is a fountain; and therefore it is not to die, though 
 dust and darkness He round its temple, because an ethereal fire 
 has been breathed into it, which cannot be quenched though its 
 breath expire. Is it the fountain, or the temple, that breathes, 
 and has fire breathed into it ? 
 
 Mr. Montgomery apostrophizes the 
 
 " Immortal beacons, — spirits of the just," — 
 
 and describes their employments in another world, which are to 
 be, it seems, bathing in light, hearing fiery streams flow, and 
 riding on living cars of lightning. The death-bed of the sceptic 
 is described with what we suppose is meant for energy. We 
 then have the death-bed of a Christian made as ridiculous as 
 false imagery and false English can make it. But this is not 
 enough. The Day of Judgment is to be described, and a roar- 
 ing cataract of nonsense is poured forth upon this tremendous 
 subject. Earth, we are told, is dashed into Eternity. Furnace 
 blazes wheel round the horizon, and burst into bright wizard 
 phantoms. Racing hurricanes unroll and whirl quivering fire- 
 clouds. The white waves gallop. Shadowy worlds career 
 around. The red and raging eye of Imagination is then for- 
 bidden to pry further. But further Mr. Robert Montgomery 
 persists in prying. The stars bound through the airy roar. The 
 unbosomed deep yawns on the ruin. The billows of Eternity 
 then begin to advance. The world glares in fiery slumber. A 
 car comes forward driven by living thunder, 
 
 " Creation shudders with sublime dismay, 
 And in a blazing tempest whirls away." 
 
 And this is fine poetry ! This is what ranks its writer with the 
 master-spirits of the age! This is what has been described, 
 over and over again, in terms which would require some qualifica- 
 tion if used respecting Paradise Lost! It is too much that this 
 patchwork, made by stitching together old odds and ends of what, 
 when new, was but tawdry frippery, is to be picked off the dung- 
 hill on which it ought to rot, and to be held up to admiration as 
 an inestimable specimen of art. And what must we think of a
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 77 
 
 system by means of which verses like those which we have quoted, 
 verses fit only for the poet's corner of the Morning Post, can pro- 
 duce emolument and fame? The circulation of this writer's 
 poetry has been greater than that of Southey's Roderick, and 
 beyond all comparison greater than that of Gary's Dante or of 
 the best works of Coleridge. Thus encouraged, Mr. Robert 
 Montgomery has favoured the public with volume after volume. 
 We have given so much space to the examination of his first and 
 most popular performance that we have none to spare for his 
 Universal Prayer, and his smaller poems, which, as the puffing 
 journals tell us, would alone constitute a sufficient title to literary 
 immortality. We shall pass at once to his last publication, en- 
 titled Satan. 
 
 This poem was ushered into the world with the usual roar of 
 acclamation. But the thing was now past a joke. Pretensions 
 so unfounded, so impudent, and so successful, had aroused a 
 spirit of resistance. In several magazines and reviews, accord- 
 ingly, Satan has been handled somewhat roughly, and the arts 
 of the puffers have been exposed with good sense and spirit. We 
 shall, therefore, be very concise. 
 
 Of the two poems we rather prefer that on the Omnipresence 
 of the Deity, for the same reason which induced Sir Thomas More 
 to rank one bad book above another. "Marry, this is somewhat. 
 This is rhyme. But the other is neither rhyme nor reason." 
 Satan is a long soliloquy, which the Devil pronounces in five or 
 six thousand lines of bad blank verse, concerning geography, 
 politics, newspapers, fashionable society, theatrical amusements, 
 Sir Walter Scott's novels. Lord Byron's poetry, and Mr. Martin's 
 pictures. The new designs for Milton have, as was natural, 
 particularly attracted the attention of a personage who occupies 
 so conspicuous a place in them. Mr. Martin must be pleased 
 to learn that, whatever may be thought of those performances on 
 earth, they give full satisfaction in Pandaemonium, and that he 
 is there thought to have hit off the likenesses of the various Thrones 
 and Dominations very happily. 
 
 The motto to the poem of Satan is taken from the Book of Job : 
 "Whence comest thou? From going to and fro in the earth, and 
 walking up and down in it." And certainly Mr. Robert Mont- 
 gomery has not failed to make his hero go to and fro, and walk 
 up and down. With the exception, however, of this propensity 
 to locomotion, Satan has not one Satanic quality. Mad Tom had
 
 78 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAU LAV 
 
 told us that "the prince of darkness is a gentleman" ; but we had 
 yet to learn that he is a respectable and pious gentleman, whose 
 principal fault is that he is something of a twaddle and far too 
 liberal of his good advice. That happy change in his character 
 which Origen anticipated, and of which Tillotson did not despair, 
 seems to be rapidly taking place. Bad habits are not eradicated 
 in a moment. It is not strange, therefore, that so old an offender 
 should now and then relapse for a short time into wrong disposi- 
 tions. But to give him his due, as the proverb recommends, we 
 must say that he always returns, after two or three lines of impiety, 
 to his preaching style. We would seriously advise Mr. Mont- 
 gomery to omit or alter about a hundred lines in different parts of 
 this large volume, and to republish it under the name of Gabriel. 
 The reflections of which it consists would come less absurdly, as 
 far as there is a more and a less in extreme absurdity, from a good 
 than from a bad angel. 
 
 We can aft'ord room only for a single quotation. We give one 
 taken at random, neither worse nor better, as far as we can per- 
 ceive, than any other equal number of lines in the book. The 
 Devil goes to the play, and moralizes thereon as follows : — 
 
 "Music and Pomp their mingling spirit shed 
 Around me : beauties in their cloud-like robes 
 Shine forth, — a scenic paradise, it glares 
 Intoxication through the reeling sense 
 Of fiush'd enjoyment. In the motley host 
 Three prime gradations may be rank'd: the first, 
 To mount upon the wings of Shakespeare's mind, 
 And win a flash of his Promethean thought, — 
 To smile and weep, to shudder, and achieve 
 A round of passionate omnipotence, 
 Attend: the second, are a sensual tribe. 
 Convened to hear romantic harlots sing, 
 On forms to banquet a lascivious gaze, 
 While the bright perfidy of wanton eyes 
 Through brain and spirit darts delicious fire: 
 The last, a throng most pitiful ! who seem, 
 With their corroded figures, rayless glance, 
 And death-like struggle of decaying age, 
 Like painted skeletons in charncl pomp 
 Set forth to satirize the human kind ! — 
 ' How fine a prospect for demoniac view ! 
 
 'Creatures whose souls outbalance worlds awake!* 
 Methinks I hear a pitying angel cry." 
 
 Here we conclude. If our remarks give pain to Mr. Robert 
 Montgomery, we are sorry for it. But, at whatever cost of pain
 
 MR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY'S POEMS 79 
 
 to individuals, literature must be purified from this taint. And, 
 to show that we are not actuated by any feeling of personal enmity 
 towards him, we hereby give notice that, as soon as any book shall, 
 by means of puffing, reach a second edition, our intention is to 
 do unto the writer of it as we have done unto Mr. Robert Mont- 
 gomery.
 
 V 
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 (1826-1877) 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS* 
 [First published in 1858. From Literary Studies, Volume 2] 
 
 It must give Mr. Dickens much pleasure to look at the collected 
 series of his writings. He has told us of the beginnings of Pick- 
 wick. 
 
 "I was," he relates in what is now the preface to that work, "a young man 
 of three and twenty, when the present publishers, attracted by some pieces 
 I was at that time writing in the Morning Chronicle newspaper (of which 
 one series had lately been collected and published in two volumes, illustrated 
 by my esteemed friend Mr. George Cruikshank), waited upon me to propose 
 a something that should be published in shilling numbers — then only known 
 to me, or I believe to anybody else, by a dim recollection of certain intermi- 
 nable novels in that form, which used, some five and twenty years ago, to be 
 carried about the country by pedlars, and over some of which I remember to 
 have shed innumerable tears, before I served my apprenticeship to Life. 
 When I opened my door in Furnival's Inn to the managing partner who rep- 
 resented the firm, I recognized in him the person from whose hands I had 
 bought, two or three years previously, and whom I had never seen before or 
 since, my first copy of the magazine in which my first effusion — dropped 
 stealthily one evening at twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter- 
 box, in a dark oilfice, up a dark court in Fleet Street — appeared in all the 
 glory of print; on which occasion, by-thc-bye, — how well I recollect it! — 
 I walked down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, be- 
 cause my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride, that they could not bear 
 the street, and were not fit to be seen there. I told my visitor of the coinci- 
 dence, which we both hailed as a good omen; and so fell to business." 
 
   Cheap Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers, 
 Nicholas Nickleby, etc. London, 1857-8. Chapman and Hall. 
 
 80
 
 CHARLES DICKENS Si 
 
 After such a beginning, there must be great enjoyment in look- 
 ing at the long series of closely printed green volumes, in remem- 
 bering their marvellous popularity, in knowing that they are a 
 familiar literature wherever the English language is spoken, — 
 that they are read with admiring appreciation by persons of the 
 highest culture at the centre of civilization, — that they amuse, 
 and are fit to amuse, the roughest settler in Vancouver's Island. 
 
 The penetrating power of this remarkable genius among all 
 classes at home is not inferior to its diffusive energy abroad. The 
 phrase "household book" has, when applied to the works of 
 Mr. Dickens, a pecuhar propriety. There is no contemporary 
 English writer, whose works are read so generally through the 
 whole house, who can give pleasure to the servants as well as to 
 the mistress, to the children as well as to the master. Mr. Thack- 
 eray without doubt exercises a more potent and plastic fascination 
 within his sphere, but that sphere is limited. It is restricted to 
 that part of the middle class which gazes inquisitively at the 
 "Vanity Fair" world. The delicate touches of our great satirist 
 have, for such readers, not only the charm of wit, but likewise 
 the interest of valuable information; he tells them of the topics 
 which they want to know. But below this class there is another 
 and far larger, which is incapable of comprehending the idling 
 world, or of appreciating the accuracy of delineations drawn from 
 it, — which would not know the difference between a picture of 
 Grosvenor Square by Mr. Thackeray and the picture of it in a 
 Minerva-Press novel, — which only cares for or knows of its 
 own multifarious, industrial, fig-selling world, — and over these 
 also Mr. Dickens has power. 
 
 It cannot be amiss to take this opportunity of investigating, 
 even slightly, the causes of so great a popularity. And if, in the 
 course of our article, we may seem to be ready with over-refining 
 criticism, or to be unduly captious with theoretical objections, 
 we hope not to forget that so great and so diffused an influence 
 is a datum for literary investigation, — that books which have 
 been thus tried upon mankind and have thus succeeded, must be 
 books of immense genius, — and that it is our duty as critics to 
 explain, as far as we can, the nature and the limits of that genius, 
 but never for one moment to deny or question its existence. 
 
 Men of genius may be divided into regular and irregular. Cer- 
 tain minds, the moment we think of them, suggest to us the ideas 
 of symmetry and proportion. Plato's name, for example, calls
 
 82 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 up at once the impression of something ordered, measured, and 
 settled : it is the exact contrary of everything eccentric, immature, 
 or undeveloped. The opinions of such a mind are often erroneous, 
 and some of them may, from change of time, of intellectual data, 
 or from chance, seem not to be quite worthy of it; but the mode 
 in which those opinions are expressed, and (as far as we can make 
 it out) the mode in which they are framed, affect us, as we have 
 said, with a sensation of symmetricalness. It is not very easy to 
 define exactly to what peculiar internal characteristic this external 
 effect is due: the feeling is distinct, but the cause is obscure; it 
 lies hid in the peculiar constitution of great minds, and we should 
 not wonder that it is not very easy either to conceive or to describe. 
 On the whole, however, the effect seems to be produced by a 
 peculiar proportionateness, in each instance, of the mind to the 
 tasks which it undertakes, amid which we see it, and by which 
 we measure it. Thus we feel that the powers and tendencies of 
 Plato's mind and nature were more fit than those of any other 
 philosopher for the due consideration and exposition of the highest 
 problems of philosophy, of the doubts and difficulties which con- 
 cern man as man. His genius was adapted to its element; and 
 change would mar the delicacy of the thought, or the polished 
 accuracy of the expression. The weapon was fitted to its aim. 
 Every instance of proportionateness does not, however, lead us 
 to attribute this peculiar symmetry to the whole mind w'e are 
 observing. The powers must not only be suited to the task under- 
 taken, but the task itself must also be suited to a human being, 
 and employ all the marvellous faculties with which he is endowed. 
 The neat perfection of such a mind as Talleyrand's is the antith- 
 esis to the symmetry of genius ; the niceties neither of diplomacy 
 nor of conversation give scope to the entire powers of a great 
 nature. We may lay down as the condition of a regular or sym- 
 metrical genius, that it should have the exact combination of 
 powers suited to graceful and easy success in an exercise of mind 
 great enough to task the whole intellectual nature. 
 
 On the other hand, men of irregular or unsymmetrical genius 
 are eminent either for some one or some few peculiarities of mind, 
 have possibly special defects on other sides of their intellectual 
 nature, at any rate want what the scientific men of the present 
 day would call the definite proportion of faculties and qualities 
 suited to the exact work they have in hand. The foundation of 
 many criticisms of Shakespeare is, that he is deficient in this
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 83 
 
 peculiar proportion. His overteeming imagination gives at times, 
 and not unfrequently, a great feeling of irregularity; there seems 
 to be confusion. We have the tall trees of the forest, the majestic 
 creations of the highest genius; but we have, besides, a bushy 
 second growth, an obtrusion of secondary images and fancies, 
 which prevent our taking an exact measure of such grandeur. We 
 have not the sensation of intense simplicity, which must probably 
 accompany the highest conceivable greatness. Such is also the 
 basis of Mr. Hallam's criticism on Shakespeare's language,' 
 which Mr. Arnold has lately revived.^ "His expression is often 
 faulty," because his illustrative imagination, somewhat predomi- 
 nating over his other faculties, diffuses about the main expression 
 a supplement of minor metaphors which sometimes distract the 
 comprehension, and almost always deprive his style of the charm 
 that arises from undeviating directness. Doubtless this is an 
 instance of the very highest kind of irregular genius, in which 
 all the powers exist in the mind in a very high, and almost all of 
 them in the very highest measure, but in which from a slight 
 excess in a single one, the charm of proportion is lessened. The 
 most ordinary cases of irregular genius are those in which single 
 faculties are abnormally developed, and call off the attention from 
 all the rest of the mind by their prominence and activity. Litera- 
 ture, as the "fragment of fragments," is so full of the fragments 
 of such minds that it is needless to specify instances. 
 
 Possibly it may be laid down that one of two elements is essen- 
 tial to a symmetrical mind. It is evident that such a mind must 
 either apply itself to that which is theoretical or that which is 
 practical, to the world of abstraction or to the world of objects 
 and realities. In the former case the deductive understanding, 
 which masters first principles, and makes deductions from them, 
 the thin ether of the intellect, — the "mind itself by itself," — 
 must evidently assume a great prominence. To attempt to com- 
 prehend principles without it, is to try to swim without arms, or 
 to fly without wings. Accordingly, in the mind of Plato, and in 
 others like him, the abstract and deducing understanding fills 
 a great place; the imagination seems a kind of eye to descry its 
 data; the artistic instinct an arranging impulse, which sets in 
 order its inferences and conclusions. On the other hand, if a 
 symmetrical mind busy itself with the active side of human life, 
 
 1 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Vol. II, Chapter VT. 
 
 2 Preface to Matthew Arnold's Poems.
 
 84 WALTER BACEHOT 
 
 with the world of concrete men and real things, its principal quality 
 will be a practical sagacity, which forms with ease a distinct view 
 and just appreciation of all the mingled objects that the world 
 presents, — which allots to each its own place, and its intrinsic 
 and appropriate rank. Possibly no mind gives such an idea of 
 this sort of symmetry as Chaucer's. Everything in it seems in its 
 place. A healthy sagacious man of the world has gone through 
 the world; he loves it, and knows it; he dwells on it with fond 
 appreciation; every object of the old life of "merry England" 
 seems to fall into its precise niche in his ordered and symmetrical 
 comprehension. The prologue to the Canterbury Tales is in 
 itself a series of memorial tablets to mediaeval society; each class 
 has its tomb, and each its apt inscription. A man without such an 
 apprehensive and broad sagacity must fail in every extensive 
 delineation of various life; he might attempt to describe what he 
 did not penetrate, or if by a rare discretion he avoided that mis- 
 take, his works would want the binding element; he would be 
 deficient in that distinct sense of relation and combination which 
 is necessary for the depiction of the whole of life, which gives to it 
 unity at first, and imparts to it a mass in the memory ever after- 
 wards. And eminence in one or other of these marking facul- 
 ties — either in the deductive abstract intellect, or the practical 
 seeing sagacity — seems essential to the mental constitution of a 
 symmetrical genius, at least in man. There are, after all, but 
 two principal all-important spheres in human life — thought 
 and action; and we can hardly conceive of a masculine mind 
 symmetrically developed, which did not evince its symmetry by 
 an evident perfection in one or other of those pursuits, which did 
 not leave the trace of its distinct reflection upon the one, or of 
 its large insight upon the other of them. Possibly it may be 
 thought that in the sphere of pure art there may be room for a 
 symmetrical development different from these; but it will perhaps 
 be found, on examination of such cases, either that under peculiar 
 and appropriate disguises one of these great qualities is present, 
 or that the apparent symmetry is the narrow perfection of a 
 limited nature, which may be most excellent in itself, as in the 
 stricter form of sacred art, but which, as we explained, is quite 
 opposed to that broad perfection of the thinking being, to which 
 we have applied the name of the symmetry of genius. 
 
 If this classification of men of genius be admitted, there can be no 
 hesitation in assigning to Mr. Dickens his place in it. His genius
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 85 
 
 is essentially irregular and unsymmetrical. Hardly any English 
 writer perhaps is much more so. His style is an example of it. 
 It is descriptive, racy, and flowing; it is instinct with new imagery 
 and singular illustration; but it does not indicate that due pro- 
 portion of the faculties to one another which is a beauty in itself, 
 and which cannot help diffusing beauty over every happy word 
 and moulded clause. We may choose an illustration at random. 
 The following graphic description will do : — 
 
 " If Lord George Gordon had appeared in the eyes of Mr. Willet, over- 
 night, a nobleman of somewhat quaint and odd exterior, the impression was 
 confirmed this morning, and increased a hundred-fold. Sitting bolt upright 
 upon his bony steed, with his long, straight hair dangling about his face and 
 fluttering in the wind ; his limbs all angular and rigid, his elbows stuck out 
 on either side ungracefullv, and his whole frame jogged and shaken at 
 every motion of his horse's feet; a more grotesque or more ungainly figure 
 can hardly be conceived. In lieu of whip, he carried in his hand a great gold- 
 headed cane, as large as any footman carries in these days; and his various 
 modes of holding this unwieldy weapon — now upright before his face like 
 the sabre of a horse-soldier, now over his shoulder like a musket, now between 
 his finger and thumb, but always in some uncouth and awkward fashion — 
 contributed in no small degree to the absurdity of his appearance. Stiff, 
 lank, and solemn, dressed in an unusual manner, and ostentatiously exhibit- 
 ing — whether by design or accident — all his peculiarities of carriage, 
 gesture, and conduct, all the qualities, natural and artificial, in which he 
 differed from other men, he might have moved the sternest looker-on to laugh- 
 ter, and fully provoked the smiles and whispered jests which greeted his de- 
 parture from the Maypole Inn. 
 
 "Quite unconscious, however, of the effect he produced, he trotted on be- 
 side his secretary, talking to himself nearly all the way, until they came within 
 a mile or two of London, when now and then some passenger went by who 
 knew him by sight, and pointed him out to some one else, and perhaps stood 
 looking after him, or cried in jest or earnest as it might be, ' Hurrah, Geordie ! 
 No Popery ! ' At which he would gravely pull off his hat and bow. When 
 they reached the town and rode along the streets, these notices became more 
 frequent; some laughed, some hissed, some turned their heads and smiled, 
 some wondered who he was, some ran along the pavement by his side and 
 cheered. When this happened in a crush of carts and chairs and coaches, he 
 would make a dead stop, and pulling off his hat, cry, ' Gentlemen, No Pop- 
 ery ! ' to which the gentlemen would respond with lusty voices, and with 
 three times three; and then on he would go again with a score or so of the 
 raggedest following at his horse's heels, and shouting till their throats were 
 parched. 
 
 "The old ladies too — there were a great many old ladies in the streets, 
 and these all knew him. Some of them — not those of the highest rank, 
 but such as sold fruit from baskets and carried burdens — clapped their 
 shrivelled hands, and raised a weazen, piping, shrill 'Hurrah, my lord.' 
 Others waved their hands or handkerchiefs, or shook their fans or parasols, 
 or threw up windows, and called in haste to those within to come and see.
 
 86 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 All these marks of popular esteem he received with profound gravity and 
 respect ; bowing very low, and so frequently that his hat was more off his head 
 than on; and looking up at the houses as he passed along, with the air of one 
 who was making a public entry, and yet was not puffcd-up or proud." ' 
 
 No one would think of citing such a passage as this, as exempli- 
 fying the proportioned beauty of finished writing; it is not the 
 writing of an evenly developed or of a highly cultured mind; it 
 abounds in jolts and odd turns; it is full of singular twists and 
 needless complexities: but, on the other hand, no one can deny 
 its great and peculiar merit. It is an odd style, and it is very odd 
 how much you read it. It is the overflow of a copious mind, 
 though not the chastened expression of a harmonious one. 
 
 The same quality characterizes the matter of his works. His 
 range is very varied. He has attempted to describe every kind 
 of scene in English life, from quite the lowest to almost the highest. 
 He has not endeavoured to secure success by confining himself 
 to a single path, nor wearied the public with repetitions of the 
 subjects by the delineation of which he originally obtained fame. 
 In his earlier works he never writes long without saying something 
 well; something which no other man would have said; but even 
 in them it is the characteristic of his power that it is apt to fail 
 him at once; from masterly strength we pass without interval to 
 almost infantine weakness, — something like disgust succeeds in 
 a moment to an extreme admiration. Such is the natural fate of 
 an unequal mind employing itself on a vast and variegated sub- 
 ject. In writing on the Waverley Novels, we ventured to make 
 a division of novels into the ubiquitous — it would have been 
 perhaps better to say the miscellaneous — and the sentimental: 
 the first, as its name implies, busying itself with the whole of 
 human life, the second restricting itself within a peculiar and 
 limited theme. Mr. Dickens's novels are all of the former class. 
 They aim to delineate nearly all that part of our national life 
 which can be delineated, — at least, within the limits which social 
 morality prescribes to social art ; but you cannot read his deline- 
 ation of any part without being struck with its singular inccm- 
 plcteness. An artist once said of the best work of another artist: 
 " Yes, it is a pretty patch." If we might venture on the phrase, 
 we should say that Mr. Dickens's pictures are graphic scraps; 
 his best books are compilations of them. 
 
 The truth is, that Mr. Dickens wholly wants the two elements 
 
 ' Barnaby Rudge, Chapter XXXVII.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS Sj 
 
 which we have spoken of, as one or other requisite for a symmet- 
 rical genius. He is utterly deficient in the faculty of reasoning. 
 "Mamma, what shall I think about?" said the small girl. "My 
 dear, don't think," was the old-fashioned reply. We do not 
 allege that in the strict theory of education this was a correct reply; 
 modern writers think otherwise; but we wish some one would 
 say it to Mr. Dickens. He is often troubled with the idea that he 
 must reflect, and his reflections are perhaps the worst reading 
 in the world. There is a sentimental confusion about them; we 
 never find the consecutive precision of mature theory, or the cold 
 distinctness of clear thought. Vivid facts stand out in his imagi- 
 nation; and a fresh illustrative style brings them home to the 
 imagination of his readers ; but his continuous philosophy utterly 
 fails in the attempt to harmonize them, — to educe a theory or 
 elaborate a precept from them. Of his social thinking we shall 
 have a few words to say in detail; his didactic humour is very 
 unfortunate : no writer is less fitted for an excursion to the impera- 
 tive mood. At present, we only say, what is so obvious as scarcely 
 to need saying, that his abstract understanding is so far inferior 
 to his picturesque imagination as to give even to his best works 
 the sense of jar and incompleteness, and to deprive them alto- 
 gether of the crystalline finish which is characteristic of the clear 
 and cultured understanding. 
 
 Nor has Mr. Dickens the easy and various sagacity which, as 
 has been said, gives a unity to all which it touches. He has, 
 indeed, a quality which is near allied to it in appearance. His 
 shrewdness in some things, especially in traits and small things, 
 is wonderful. His works are full of acute remarks on petty doings, 
 and weU exemplify the telling power of minute circumstantiality. 
 But the minor species of perceptive sharpness is so different from 
 diiJused sagacity, that the two scarcely ever are to be found in 
 the same mind. There is nothing less like the great lawyer, 
 acquainted with broad principles and applying them with dis- 
 tinct deduction, than the attorney's clerk who catches at small 
 points like a dog biting at flies. " Over-sharpness" in the student 
 is the most unpromising symptom of the logical jurist. You must 
 not ask a horse in blinkers for a large view of a landscape. In the 
 same way, a detective ingenuity in microscopic detail is of all 
 mental qualities most unlike the broad sagacity by which the 
 great painters of human affairs have unintentionally stamped 
 the mark of unity on their productions. They show by their
 
 88 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 treatment of each case that they understand the whole of life; 
 the special delineator of fragments and points shows that he 
 understands them only. In one respect the defect is more striking 
 in Mr. Dickens than in any other novelist of the present day. The 
 most remarkable deficiency in modern tiction is its omission of 
 the business of life, of all those countless occupations, pursuits, 
 and callings in which most men live and move, and by which they 
 have their being. In most novels money grows. You have no 
 idea of the toil, the patience, and the wearing anxiety by which 
 men of action provide for the day, and lay up for the future, and 
 support those that are given into their care. Mr. Dickens is not 
 chargeable with this omission. He perpetually deals with the 
 pecuniary part of life. Almost all his characters have deter- 
 mined occupations, of which he is apt to talk even at too much 
 length. When he rises from the toiling to the luxurious classes, 
 his genius in most cases deserts him. The delicate refinement 
 and discriminating taste of the idling orders are not in his way; 
 he knows the dry arches of London Bridge better than Belgravia. 
 He excels in inventories of poor furniture, and is learned in pawn- 
 brokers' tickets. But, although his creative power lives and 
 works among the middle class and industrial section of English 
 society, he has never painted the highest part of their daily intel- 
 lectual life. He made, indeed, an attempt to paint specimens of 
 the apt and able man of business in Nicholas Nickleby; but the 
 Messrs. Cheeryble are among the stupidest of his characters. 
 He forgot that breadth of platitude is rather dilTerent from breadth 
 of sagacity. His delineations of middle-class Hfe have in conse- 
 quence a harshness and meanness which do not belong to that 
 life in reality. He omits the relieving element. He describes 
 the figs which are sold, but not the talent which sells figs well. 
 And it is the same want of diffused sagacity in his own nature 
 which has made his pictures of life so odd and disjointed, and 
 which has deprived them of symmetry and unity. 
 
 The bizarrerie of Mr. Dickens's genius is rendered more re- 
 markable by the inordinate measure of his special excellences. 
 The first of these is his power of observation in detail. W'c have 
 heard, — we do not know whether correctly or incorrectly, — 
 that he can go down a crowded street, and tell you all that is in 
 it, what each shop was, what the grocer's name was, how many 
 scraps of orange-peel there were on the pavement. His works 
 give you exactly the same idea. The amount of detail which
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 89 
 
 there is in them is something amazing, — to an ordinary writer 
 something incredible. There are single pages containing telling 
 miniiticF, which other people would have thought enough for a 
 volume. Nor is his sensibility to external objects, though omnivo- 
 rous, insensible to the artistic effect of each. There are scarcely 
 anywhere such pictures of London as he draws. No writer has 
 equally comprehended the artistic material which is given by 
 its extent, its aggregation of different elements, its mouldiness, 
 its brilliancy. 
 
 Nor does his genius — though, from some idiosyncrasy of 
 mind or accident of external situation, it is more especially 
 directed to city life — at all stop at the city wall. He is especially 
 at home in the picturesque and obvious parts of country life, 
 particularly in the comfortable and (so to say) mouldering portion 
 of it. The following is an instance; if not the best that could 
 be cited, still one of the best : — 
 
 "They arranged to proceed upon their journey next evening, as a stage- 
 waggon, which travelled for some distance on the same road as they must take, 
 would stop at the inn to change horses, and the driver for a small gratuity 
 would give Nell a place inside. A bargain was soon struck when the waggon 
 came; and in due time it rolled away; with the child comfortably bestowed 
 among the softer packages, her grandfather and the schoolmaster walking 
 on beside the driver, and the landlady and all the good folks of the inn 
 screaming out their good wishes and farewells. 
 
 "What a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of travelling, to lie inside that 
 slowly-moving mountain, listening to the tinkling of the horses' bells, the 
 occasional smacking of the carter's whip, the smooth rolling of the great broad 
 wheels, the rattle of the harness, the cheery good-nights of passing travellers 
 jogging past on little short-stepped horses — all made pleasantly indistinct 
 by the thick awning, which seemed made for lazy listening under, till one fell 
 asleep ! The very going to sleep, still with an indistinct idea, as the head 
 jogged to and fro upon the pillow, of moving onward with no trouble or fatigue, 
 and hearing all these sounds like dreamy music, lulling to the senses — and 
 the slow waking up, and finding one's self staring out through the breezy 
 curtain half-opened in the front, far up into the cold bright sky with its 
 countless stars, and downwards at the driver's lantern dancing on like its 
 namesake Jack of the swamps and marshes, and sideways at the dark grim 
 trees, and forward at the long bare road rising up, up, up, until it stopped 
 abruptly at a sharp high ridge as if there were no more road, and all beyond 
 was sky — and the stopping at the inn to bait, and being helped out, and going 
 into a room with fire and candles, and winking very much, and being agree- 
 ably reminded that the night was cold, and anxious for very comfort's sake 
 to think it colder than it was ! What a delicious journey was that journey 
 in the waggon ! 
 
 "Then the going on again — so fresh at first, and shortly afterwards so 
 sleepy. The waking from a sound nap as the mail came dashing past like a
 
 90 
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 highway comet, with gleaming lamps and rattling hoofs, and visions of a 
 guard behind, standing up to keep his feet warm, and of a gentleman in a 
 fur cap opening his eyes and looking wild and stupefied — the stopping at 
 the turnpike, where the man has gone to bed, and knocking at the door 
 until he answered with a smothered shout from under the bed-clothes in the 
 little room above, where the faint light was burning, and presently came down, 
 night-capped and shivering, to throw the gate wide open, and wish all wag- 
 gons off the road except by day. The cold sharp interval between night and 
 morning — the distant streak of light widening and spreading, and turning 
 from grey to white, and from white to yellow, and from yellow to burning red 
 • — the presence of day, with all its cheerfulness and life — men and horses at 
 the plough — birds in the trees and hedges, and boys in solitary fields frighten- 
 ing them away with rattles. The coming to a town — people busy in the 
 market; light carts and chaises round the tavern yard; tradesmen standing 
 at their doors; men running horses up and down the street for sale; pigs 
 plunging and grunting in the dirty distance, getting off with long strings at 
 their legs, running into clean chemists' shops and being dislodged with brooms 
 by 'prentices; the night-coach changing horses — the passengers cheerless, 
 cold, ugly, and discontented, with three months' growth of hair in one night 
 
 — the coachman fresh as from a bandbo.x, and exquisitely beautiful by con- 
 trast : — so much bustle, so many things in motion, such a variety of incidents 
 
 — when was there a journey with so many delights as that journey in the 
 waggon 1" ' 
 
 Or, as a relief from a very painful series of accompanying 
 characters, it is pleasant to read and remember the description 
 of the fine morning on which Mr. Jonas Chuzzlewitdoes not reflect. 
 Mr. Dickens has, however, no feeling analogous to the nature- 
 worship of some other recent writers. There is nothing Words- 
 worthian in his bent; the interpreting inspiration (as that school 
 speak) is not his. Nor has he the erudition in difficult names 
 which has filled some pages in late novelists with mineralogy 
 and botany. His descriptions of Nature are fresh and superficial; 
 they are not sermonic or scientific. 
 
 Nevertheless, it may be said that Mr. Dickens's genius is espe- 
 cially suited to the delineation of city life. London is like a news- 
 paper. Everything is there, and everything is disconnected. 
 There is every kind of person in some houses; but there is no 
 more connection between the houses than between the neighbours 
 in the lists of "births, marriages, and deaths." As we change 
 from the broad leader to the squalid police report, we pass a 
 corner and we are in a changed world. This is advantageous to 
 Mr. Dickens's genius. His memory is full of instances of old 
 buildings and curious pe()j)le, and he does not care to piece them 
 
 > Old Curiosity Shop, Chapter XLVI.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 91 
 
 together. On the contrary, each scene, to his mind, is a separate 
 scene, — each street a separate street. He has, too, the pecuHar 
 alertness of observation that is observable in those who live by it. 
 He describes London like a special correspondent for posterity. 
 
 A second most wonderful special faculty which Mr. Dickens 
 possesses is what we may call his vivification of character, or 
 rather of characteristics. His marvellous power of observation 
 has been exercised upon men and women even more than upon 
 town or country; and the store of human detail, so to speak, in 
 his books is endless and enormous. The boots at the inn, the 
 pickpockets in the street, the undertaker, the Mrs. Gamp, are 
 all of them at his disposal; he knows each trait and incident, 
 and he invests them with a kind of perfection in detail which in 
 reality they do not possess. He has a very peculiar power of 
 taking hold of some particular traits, and making a character 
 out of them. He is especially apt to incarnate particular pro- 
 fessions in this way. Many of his people never speak without 
 some allusion to their occupation. You cannot separate them 
 from it. Nor does the writer ever separate them. What would 
 Mr. Mould ^ be if not an undertaker ? or Mrs. Gamp ^ if not a 
 nurse ? or Charley Bates ^ if not a pickpocket ? Not only is 
 human nature in them subdued to what it works in, but there 
 seems to be no nature to subdue; the whole character is the 
 idealization of a trade, and is not in fancy or thought distinguish- 
 able from it. Accordingly, of necessity, such delineations become 
 caricatures. We do not in general contrast them with reality; 
 but as soon as we do, we are struck with the monstrous exaggera- 
 tions which they present. You could no more fancy Sam Weller, 
 or Mark Tapley, or the Artful Dodger * really existing, walking 
 about among common ordinary men and women, than you can 
 fancy a talking duck or a writing bear. They are utterly beyond 
 the pale of ordinary social intercourse. We suspect, indeed, that 
 Mr. Dickens does not conceive his characters to himself as mixing 
 in the society he mixes in. He sees people in the street, doing cer- 
 tain things, talking in a certain way, and his fancy petrifies them 
 in the act. He goes on fancying hundreds of reduplications of 
 that act and that speech; he frames an existence in which there 
 is nothing else but that aspect which attracted his attention. 
 Sam Weller is an example. He is a man-servant, who makes a 
 
 ' In Martin Chuzzlewit. ^ Ibid. ' In Oliver Twist. 
 
 * In the Pickwick Papers, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Oliver Twist.
 
 92 
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 peculiar kind of jokes, and is wonderfully felicitous in certain 
 similes. You see him at his first introduction: — 
 
 " 'My friend,' said the thin gentleman. 
 
 "'You're one o' the adwice gratis order,' thought Sam, 'or you wouldn't 
 be so werry fond o' me all at once.' But he only said — 'Well, sir?' 
 
 '"My friend,' said the thin gentleman, with a conciliatory hem — 'have 
 you got many people stopping here, now? Pretty busy? Eh?' 
 
 "Sam stole a look at the inquirer. He was a little high-dried man, with 
 a dark squeezed-up face, and small restless black eyes, that kept winking and 
 twinkling on each side of his little inquisitive nose, as if they were playing 
 a perpetual game of peep-bo with that feature. He was dressed all in black, 
 with boots as shiny as his eyes, a low white neckcloth, and a clean shirt with 
 a frill to it. A gold watch-chain and seals depended from his fob. He car- 
 ried his black kid gloves in his hands, not on them; and, as he spoke, thrust 
 his wrists beneath his coat-tails, with the air of a man who was in the habit of 
 propounding some regular posers. 
 
 "'Pretty busy, eh?' said the little man. 
 
 "'Oh, werry well, sir,' replied Sam, 'we shan't be bankrupts, and we 
 shan't make our fort'ns. We eat our biled mutton without capers, and don't 
 care for horse-radish wen ve can get beef.' 
 
 "'Ah,' said the little man, 'you're a wag, ain't you?' 
 
 '"My eldest brother was troubled with that complaint,' said Sam, 'it 
 may be catching — I used to sleep with him.' 
 
 '"This is a curious old house of yours,' said the little man, looking round 
 him. 
 
 "'If you'd sent word you was a-coming, we'd ha' had it repaired,' replied 
 the imperturbable Sam. 
 
 "The little man seemed rather baffled by these several repulses, and a 
 short consultation took place between him and the two plump gentlemen. 
 At its conclusion, the little man took a pinch of snuff from an oblong silver 
 box, and was apparently on the point of renewing the conversation, when one 
 of the plump gentlemen, who, in addition to a benevolent countenance, pos- 
 sessed a pair of spectacles and a pair of black gaiters, interfered — 
 
 "'The fact of the matter is,' said the benevolent gentleman, 'that my friend 
 here ' (pointing to the other plump gentleman) ' will give you half a guinea, if 
 you'll answer one or two ' 
 
 "'Now, my dear sir — my dear sir,' said the little man, 'pray allow me — 
 my dear sir, the very first principle to be observed in these cases is this: if 
 you place a matter in the hands of a professional man, you must in no way 
 interfere in the progress of the business; you must repose implicit confidence 
 in him. Really, Mr.' (he turned to the other plump gentleman, and said) — 
 'I forget your friend's name.' 
 
 "'Pickwick,' said Mr. Wardle, for it was no other than that jolly person- 
 age. 
 
 '"Ah, Pickwick — really Mr. Pickwick, my dear sir, excuse me — I 
 shall be happy to receive any private suggestions of yours, as amicus curia, 
 but you must see the impropriety of your interfering with my conduct in this 
 case, with such an ad captandum argument as the offer of half a guinea. 
 Really, my dear sir, really,' and the little man took an argumentative oinch of 
 snuff, and looked very profound.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 93 
 
 "'My only wish, sir,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'was to bring this very unpleas- 
 ant matter to as speedy a close as possible.' 
 
 '"Quite right — quite right,' said the little man. 
 
 '"With which view,' continued Mr. Pickwick, 'I made use of the argu- 
 ment which my experience of men has taught me is the most likely to succeed 
 in any case.' 
 
 "'Ay, av,' said the little man, 'very good, very good indeed; but you 
 should have suggested it to V2e. My dear sir, I'm quite certain you cannot be 
 ignorant of the e.xtent of confidence which must be placed in professional men. 
 If any authority can be necessary on such a point, my dear sir, let me refer you 
 to the well-known case in Barnwell and ' 
 
 "'Never mind George Barnwell,' interrupted Sam, who had remained a 
 wondering listener during this short colloquy; 'everybody knows vat sort of 
 a case his was, tho' it's always been my opinion, mind you, that the young 
 'ooman deserved scragging a precious sight more than he did. Hows'ever, 
 that's neither here nor there. You want me to except of half a guinea. 
 Werry well, I'm agreeable: I can't say no fairer than that, can I, sir?' (Mr. 
 Pickwick smiled.) 'Then the next question is, what the devil do you want 
 with me? as the man said wen he see the ghost.' 
 
 '"We want to know ' said Mr. Wardle. 
 
 "'Now, my dear sir — my dear sir,' interposed the busy little man. 
 
 "Mr. Wardle shrugged his shoulders and was silent. 
 
 "'We want to know,' said the little man solemnly; 'and we ask the ques- 
 tion of you, in order that we may not awaken apprehensions inside — we want 
 to know who you've got in this house at present.' 
 
 '"Who there is in the house 1" said Sam, in whose mind the inmates were 
 always represented by that particular article of their costume which came un- 
 der his immediate superintendence. 'There's a wooden leg in number six; 
 there's a pair of Hessians in thirteen; there's two pair of halves in the com- 
 mercial; there's these here painted tops in the snuggery inside the bar; and 
 five more tops in the coffee-room.' 
 
 "'Nothing more?' said the little man. 
 
 "'Stop a bit,' replied Sam, suddenly recollecting himself. 'Yes; there's 
 a pair of Wellingtons a good deal worn, and a pair o' ladv's shoes, in number 
 five.' 
 
 '"What sort of shoes?' hastily inquired Wardle, who, together with Mr. 
 Pickwick, had been lost in bewilderment at the singular catalogue of visitors. 
 
 "'Country make,' replied Sam. 
 
 '"Anv maker's name?' 
 
 "'Brown.' 
 '"Where of?' 
 
 , " 'Muggleton.' 
 
 "'It is them,' exclaimed Wardle. 'By Heavens, we've found them.' 
 
 "'Hush 1' said Sam. 'The Wellingtons has gone to Doctors Commons.' 
 
 "'No,' said the little man. 
 
 "'Yes, for a license.' 
 
 "'We're in time,' exclaimed Wardle. 'Show us the room; not a moment 
 is to be lost.' 
 
 "'Pray, my dear sir — pray,' said the little man; 'caution, caution.' 
 He drew from his pocket a red silk purse, and looked very hard at Sam as he 
 drew out a sovereign.
 
 94 
 
 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 "Sam grinned expressively. 
 
 "'Show us into the room at once, without announcing us,' said the little 
 man, 'and it's yours.'" '■ 
 
 One can fancy Mr. Dickens hearing a dialogue of this sort, — • 
 not nearly so good, but something like it, — and immediately setting 
 to work to make it better and put it in a book; then changing a 
 little the situation, putting the boots one step up in the scale of 
 service, engaging him as footman to a stout gentleman (but without 
 for a moment losing sight of the peculiar kind of professional 
 conversation and humour which his first dialogue presents), and 
 astonishing all his readers by the marvellous fertility and magical 
 humour with which he maintains that style. Sam Weller's father 
 is even a stronger and simpler instance. He is simply nothing 
 but an old coachman of the stout and extinct sort : you cannot 
 separate him from the idea of that occupation. But how amusing 
 he is ! We dare not quote a single word of his talk ; because we 
 should go on quoting so long, and every one knows it so well. Some 
 persons mav think that this is not a very high species of delineative 
 art. The idea of personifying traits and trades may seem to them 
 poor and meagre. Anybody, they may fancy, can do that. But 
 how would they do it? Whose fancy would not break down in 
 a page — in five lines? Who can carry on the vivification with 
 zest and energy and humour for volume after volume ? Endless 
 fertility in laughter-causing detail is Mr. Dickens's most aston- 
 ishing peculiarity. It requires a continuous and careful reading 
 of his works to be aware of his enormous wealth. Writers have 
 attained the greatest reputation for wit and humour, whose whole 
 works do not contain so much of either as are to be found in a very 
 few pages of his. 
 
 Mr. Dickens's humour is indeed very much a result of the two 
 peculiarities of which we have been speaking. His power of 
 detailed observation and his power of idealizing individual traits 
 of character — sometimes of one or other of them, sometimes of 
 both of them together. His similes on matters of e.xternal obser- 
 vation are so admirable that everybody appreciates them, and 
 it would be absurd to quote specimens of them ; nor is it the sort 
 of excellence which best bears to be paraded for the purposes of 
 critical example. Its off-hand air and natural connection with 
 the adjacent circumstances are inherent parts of its peculiar merit. 
 
 ' Pickwick Papers, Chapter IX.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 95 
 
 Every reader of Mr. Dickens's works knows well what we mean. 
 And who is not a reader of them ? 
 
 But his peculiar humour is even more indebted to his habit of 
 vivifying external traits, than to his power of external observation. 
 He, as we have explained, expands traits into people; and it is 
 a source of true humour to place these, when so expanded, in 
 circumstances in which only people — that is complete human 
 beings — can appropriately act. The humour of Mr. Pickwick's 
 character is entirely of this kind. He is a kind of incarnation of 
 simple-mindedness and what we may call obvious-mindedness. 
 The conclusion which each occurrence or position in life most 
 immediately presents to the unsophisticated mind is that which 
 Mr. Pickwick is sure to accept. The proper accompaniments 
 are given to him. He is a stout gentleman in easy circumstances, 
 who is irritated into originality by no impulse from within, and 
 by no stimulus from without. He is stated to have "retired from 
 business." But no one can fancy what he was in business. Such 
 guileless simplicity of heart and easy impressibility of disposition 
 would soon have induced a painful failure amid the harsh struggles 
 and the tempting speculations of pecuniary life. As he is repre- 
 sented in the narrative, however, nobody dreams of such ante- 
 cedents. Mr. Pickwick moves easily over all the surface of Eng- 
 lish life from Goswell Street to Dingley Dell, from Dingley Dell 
 to the Ipswich elections, from drinking milk-punch in a wheel- 
 barrow to sleeping in the approximate pound, and no one ever 
 thinks of applying ta him the ordinary maxims which we should 
 apply to any common person in life, or to any common personage 
 in a fiction. Nobody thinks it is wrong in Mr. Pickwick to drink 
 too much milk-punch in a wheelbarrow, to introduce worthless 
 people of whom he knows nothing to the families of people for 
 whom he really cares ; nobody holds him responsible for the con- 
 sequences; nobody thinks there is anything wrong in his taking 
 Mr. Bob Sawyer and Mr. Benjamin Allen to visit Mr. Winkle, 
 senior, and thereby almost irretrievably offending him with his 
 son's marriage. We do not reject moral remarks such as these, 
 but they never occur to us. Indeed, the indistinct consciousness 
 that such observations are possible, and that they are hovering 
 about our minds, enhances the humour of the narrative. We 
 are in a conventional world, where the mere maxims of common 
 life do not apply, and yet which has all the amusing detail, and 
 picturesque elements, and singular eccentricities of common
 
 96 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 life. Mr. Pickwick is a personified ideal; a kind of amateur in 
 life, whose course we watch through all the circumstances of ordi- 
 nary existence, and at whose follies we are amused just as really 
 skilled people are at the mistakes of an amateur in their art. His 
 being in the pound is not wrong; his being the victim of Messrs. 
 Dodson is not foolish. "Always shout with the mob," said Mr. 
 Pickwick. " But suppose there are two mobs," said Mr. Snodgrass. 
 "Then shout with the loudest," said Mr. Pickwick. This is not 
 in him weakness or time-serving, or want of principle, as in most 
 even of fictitious people it would be. It is his way. Mr. Pick- 
 wick was expected to say something, so he said "Ah !" in a grave 
 voice. This is not pompous as we might fancy, or clever as it 
 might be, if intentionally devised; it is simply his way. Mr. 
 Pickwick gets late at night over the wall behind the back-door of 
 a young-ladies' school, is found in that sequestered place by the 
 schoolmistress and the boarders and the cook, and there is a 
 dialogue between them.^ There is nothing out of possibility in 
 this; it is his way. The humour essentially consists in treating 
 as a moral agent a being who really is not a moral agent. We 
 treat a vivified accident as a man, and we are surprised at the 
 absurd results. We are reading about an acting thing, and we 
 wonder at its scrapes, and laugh at them as if they were those of 
 the man. There is something of this humour in every sort of 
 farce. Everybody knows these are not real beings acting in real 
 life, though they talk as if they were, and want us to believe that 
 they are. Here, as in Mr. Dickens's books, we have exaggerations 
 pretending to comport themselves as ordinary beings, caricatures 
 acting as if they were characters. 
 
 At the same time it is essential to remember, that however great 
 may be and is the charm of such exaggerated personifications, 
 the best specimens of them are immensely less excellent, belong to 
 an altogether lower range of intellectual achievements, than the real 
 depiction of actual living men. It is amusing to read of beings 
 out of the laws of morality, but it is more profoundly interesting, 
 as well as more instructive, to read of those whose life in its moral 
 conditions resembles our own. We see this most distinctly when 
 both representations are given by the genius of one and the same 
 writer. Falstaff is a sort of sack-holding paunch, an exaggerated 
 overdevelopment which no one thinks of holding down to the 
 commonplace rules of the ten commandments and the statute- 
 
 ' Chapter XVI.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 97 
 
 law. We do not think of them in connection with him. They 
 belong to a world apart. Accordingly, we are vexed when the 
 king discards him and reproves him. Such a fate was a necessary 
 adherence on Shakespeare's part to the historical tradition; he 
 never probably thought of departing from it, nor would his audi- 
 ence have perhaps endured his doing so. But to those who look 
 at the historical plays as pure works of imaginative art, it seems 
 certainly an artistic misconception to have developed so mar- 
 vellous an 7/7?moral impersonation, and then to have subjected 
 it to an ethical and punitive judgment. Still, notwithstanding 
 this error, which was very likely inevitable, Falstaff is probably 
 the most remarkable specimen of caricature-representation to 
 be found in literature. And its very excellence of execution only 
 shows how inferior is the kind of art which creates only such 
 representations. Who could compare the genius, marvellous 
 as must be its fertility, which was needful to create a FalstafT, 
 with that shown in the higher productions of the same mind in 
 Hamlet, Ophelia, and Lear? We feel instantaneously the differ- 
 ence between the aggregating accident which rakes up from the 
 externalities of life other accidents analogous to itself, and the 
 central ideal of a real character which cannot show itself wholly 
 in any accidents, but which exemplifies itself partially in many, 
 which unfolds itself gradually in wide spheres of action, and yet, 
 as with those we know best in life, leaves something hardly to be 
 understood, and after years of familiarity is a problem and a 
 difficulty to the last. In the same way, the embodied character- 
 istics and grotesque exaggerations of Mr. Dickens, notwithstanding 
 all their humour and all their marvellous abundance, can never 
 be for a moment compared with the great works of the real painters 
 of essential human nature. 
 
 There is one class of Mr. Dickens's pictures which may seem 
 to form an exception to this criticism. It is the delineation of 
 the outlaw, we might say the anti-law, world in Oliver TivisL 
 In one or two instances Mr. Dickens has been so fortunate as to 
 hit on characteristics which, by his system of idealization and con- 
 tinual repetition, might really be brought to look like a character. 
 A man's trade or profession in regular life can only exhaust a 
 very small portion of his nature; no approach is made to the 
 essence of humanity by the exaggeration of the traits which typify 
 a beadle or an undertaker. With the outlaw world it is somewhat 
 different. The bare fact of a man belonging to the world is so 
 
 H
 
 98 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 important to his nature, that if it is artistically developed with 
 coherent accessories, some approximation to a distinctly natural 
 character will be almost inevitably made. In the characters of 
 Bill Sykes and Nancy this is so. The former is the skulkin^f 
 ruffian who may be seen any day at the police-courts, and whom 
 any one may fancy he sees by walking through St. Giles's. You 
 cannot attempt to figure to your imagination the existence of such 
 a person without being thrown into the region of the passions, 
 the will, and the conscience; the mere fact of his maintaining, 
 as a condition of life and by settled profession, a struggle with 
 regular society, necessarily brings these deep parts of his nature 
 into prominence; great crime usually proceeds from abnormal 
 impulses or strange effort. Accordingly, Mr. Sykes is the char- 
 acter most approaching to a coherent man who is to be found in 
 Mr. Dickens's works. We do not say that even here there is not 
 some undue heightening admixture of caricature, — but this 
 defect is scarcely thought of amid the general coherence of the 
 picture, the painful subject, and the wonderful command of 
 strange accessories. Miss Nancy is a still more delicate artistic 
 effort. She is an idealization of the girl who may also be seen at 
 the police-courts and St. Giles's; as bad, according to occupation 
 and common character, as a woman can be, yet retaining a tinge 
 of womanhood, and a certain compassion for interesting suffering, 
 which under favouring circumstances might be the germ of a 
 regenerating influence. We need not stay to prove how much 
 the imaginative development of such a personage must concern 
 itself with our deeper humanity; how strongly, if excellent, it 
 must be contrasted with everything conventional or casual or 
 superficial. Mr. Dickens's delineation is in the highest degree 
 excellent. It possesses not only the more obvious merits belonging 
 to the subject, but also that of a singular delicacy of expression 
 and idea. Nobody fancies for a moment that they are reading 
 about anything beyond the pale of ordinary propriety. We read 
 the account of the life which Miss Nancy leads with Bill Sykes 
 without such an idea occurring to us: yet when we reflect upon 
 it, few things in literary painting are more wonderful than the 
 depiction of a professional life of sin and sorrow, so as not even 
 to startle those to whom the deeper forms of either are but names 
 and shadows. Other writers would have given as vivid a picture : 
 Defoe would have poured out even a more copious measure of 
 telling circumstantiality, but he would have narrated his story
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 99 
 
 with an inhuman distinctness, which if not impure is impure; 
 French writers, whom we need not name, would have enhanced 
 the interest of their narrative by trading on the excitement of 
 stimulating scenes. It would be injustice to Mr. Dickens to say 
 that he has surmounted these temptations; the unconscious 
 evidence of innumerable details proves that, from a certain deli- 
 cacy of imagination and purity of spirit, he has not even experi- 
 enced them. Criticism is the more bound to dwell at length on 
 the merits of these delineations, because no artistic merit can 
 make Oliver Twist a pleasing work. The squalid detail of crime 
 and misery oppresses us too much. If it is to be read at all, it 
 should be read in the first hardness of the youthful imagination, 
 which no touch can move too deeply, and which is never stirred 
 with tremulous suffering at the "still sad music of humanity." ^ 
 The coldest critic in later life may never hope to have again the 
 apathy of his boyhood. 
 
 It perhaps follows from what has been said of the character- 
 istics of Mr. Dickens's genius, that it would be little skilled in 
 planning plots for his novels. He certainly is not so skilled. He 
 says in his preface to the Pickwick Papers "that they were designed 
 for the introduction of diverting characters and incidents; that 
 no ingenuity of plot was attempted, or even at that time considered 
 feasible by the author in connection with the desultory plan of 
 publication adopted;" and he adds an e.xpression of regret that 
 "these chapters had not been strung together on a thread of more 
 general interest." It is extremely fortunate that no such attempt 
 was made. In the cases in which Mr. Dickens has attempted 
 to make a long connected story, or to develop into scenes or inci- 
 dents a plan in any degree elaborate, the result has been a complete 
 failure. A certain consistency of genius seems necessary for the 
 construction of a consecutive plot. An irregular mind naturally 
 shows itself in incoherency of incident and aberration of character. 
 The method in which Mr. Dickens's mind works, if we are correct 
 in our criticism upon it, tends naturally to these blemishes. Cari- 
 catures are necessarily isolated; they are produced by the exag- 
 geration of certain conspicuous traits and features; each being 
 is enlarged on its greatest side; and we laugh at the grotesque 
 grouping and the startling contrast. But that connection between 
 human beings on which a plot depends is rather severed than 
 elucidated by the enhancement of their diversities. Interesting 
 
 1 Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey."
 
 lOO WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 stories are founded on the intimate relations of men and women. 
 These intimate relations are based not on their superficial traits, 
 or common occupations, or most visible externalities, but on the 
 inner life of heart and feeling. You simply divert attention from 
 that secret life by enhancing the perceptible diversities of common 
 human nature, and the strange anomalies into which it may be 
 distorted. The original germ of Pickwick was a "Club of Oddi- 
 ties." The idea was professedly abandoned; but traces of it are 
 to be found in all Mr. Dickens's books. It illustrates the pro- 
 fessed grotesqueness of the characters as well as their slender con- 
 nection. 
 
 The defect of plot is heightened by Mr. Dickens's great, we 
 might say complete, inability to make a love-story. A pair of 
 lovers is by custom a necessity of narrative fiction, and writers 
 who possess a great general range of mundane knowledge, and 
 but little knowledge of the special sentimental subject, are often 
 in amusing difficulties. The watchful reader observes the transi- 
 tion from the hearty description of well-known scenes, of pro- 
 saic streets, or journeys by wood and river, to the pale colours of 
 ill-attempted poetry, to such sights as the novelist evidently wishes 
 that he need not try to see. But few writers exhibit the difficulty 
 in so aggravated a form as Mr. Dickens. Most men by taking 
 thought can make a lay figure to look not so very unlike a young 
 gentleman, and can compose a telling schedule of ladylike charms. 
 Mr. Dickens has no power of doing either. The heroic character 
 — we do not mean the form of character so called in life and action, 
 but that which is hereditary in the heroes of novels — is not 
 suited to his style of art. Hazlitt wrote an essay to inquire "Why 
 the heroes of romances are insipid;" and without going that 
 length it may safely be said that the character of the agreeable 
 young gentleman who loves and is loved should not l)e of the most 
 marked sort. Flirtation ought not to be an exaggerated pursuit. 
 Young ladies and their admirers should not exj^ress themselves 
 in the heightened and imaginative phraseology suited to Charley 
 Bates and the Dodger. Humour is of no use, for no one makes 
 love in jokes : a tinge of insidious satire may perhaps be per- 
 mitted as a rare and occasional relief, but it will not be thought 
 "a pretty book," if so malicious an element be at all habitually 
 perceptible. The broad farce in which Mr. Dickens indulges 
 is thoroughly out of place. If you caricature a pair of lovers ever 
 so little, by the necessity of their calling you make them ridicu-
 
 CHARLES DICKENS lOI 
 
 lous. One of Sheridan's best comedies ' is remarkable for havinj:; 
 no scene in which the hero and heroine are on the stage together; 
 and Mr. Moore suggests ^ that the shrewd wit distrusted his skill 
 in the light, dropping love-talk which would have been necessary. 
 Mr. Dickens would have done well to imitate so astute a policy; 
 but he has none of the managing shrewdness which those who 
 look at Sheridan's career attentively will probably think not the 
 least remarkable feature in his singular character. Mr. Dickens, 
 on the contrary, pours out painful sentiments as if he wished the 
 abundance should make up for the inferior quality. The excru- 
 ciating writing which is expended on Miss Ruth Pinch ^ passes 
 belief. Mr. Dickens is not only unable to make lovers talk, but 
 to describe heroines in mere narrative. As has been said, most 
 men can make a jumble of blue eyes and fair hair and pearly teeth, 
 that does very well for a young lady, at least for a good while; 
 but Mr. Dickens will not, probably cannot, attain even to this 
 humble measure of descriptive art. He vitiates the repose by 
 broad humour, or disenchants the delicacy by an unctuous admira- 
 tion. 
 
 This deficiency is probably nearly connected with one of Mr. 
 Dickens's most remarkable excellences. No one can read Mr. 
 Thackeray's writings without feeling that he is perpetually tread- 
 ing as close as he dare to the border-line that separates the world 
 which may be described in books from the world which it is pro- 
 hibited so to describe. No one knows better than this accomplished 
 artist where that line is, and how curious are its windings and turns. 
 The charge against him is that he knows it but too well ; that with 
 an anxious care and a wistful eye he is ever approximating to its 
 edge, and hinting with subtle art how thoroughly he is familiar 
 with, and how interesting he could make, the interdicted region on 
 the other side. He never violates a single conventional rule; but 
 at the same time the shadow of the immorality that is not seen is 
 scarcely ever wanting to his delineation of the society that is seen. 
 Every one may perceive what is passing in his fancy. Mr. Dickens 
 is chargeable with no such defect : he does not seem to feel the temp- 
 tation. By what we may fairly call an instinctive purity of genius, 
 he not only observes the conventional rules, but makes excursions 
 into topics which no other novelist could safely handle, and, by a 
 felicitous instinct, deprives them of all impropriety. No other 
 
 » " School for Scandal." 2 Life of Sheridan, Vol. I, Chapter V. 
 
 ^ In Martin Chuzzlewit.
 
 I02 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 writer could have managed the humour of Mrs. Gamp without 
 becoming unendurable. At the same time it is difBcult not to be- 
 lieve that this singular insensibility to the temptations to which 
 many of the greatest novelists have succumbed is in some measure 
 connected with his utter inaptitude for delineating the portion of 
 life to which their art is specially inclined. He delineates neither 
 the love-affairs which ought to be, nor those which ought not to 
 be. 
 
 Mr. Dickens's indisposition to "make capital" out of the most 
 commonly tempting part of human sentiment is the more remark- 
 able because he certainly does not show the same indisposition in 
 other cases. He has naturally great powers of pathos ; his imagi- 
 nation is familiar with the common sort of human suffering; 
 and his marvellous conversancy with the detail of existence enables 
 him to describe sick-beds and death-beds with an excellence very 
 rarely seen in literature. A nature far more sympathetic than that 
 of most authors has familiarized him with such subjects. In 
 general, a certain apathy is characteristic of book-writers, and 
 dulls the efhcacy of their pathos. Mr. Dickens is quite exempt 
 from this defect ; but, on the other hand, is exceedingly prone to a 
 very ostentatious exhibition of the opposite excellence. He dwells 
 on dismal scenes with a kind of fawning fondness; and he seems 
 unwilHng to leave them, long after his readers have had more than 
 enough of them. He describes Mr. Dennis the hangman ^ as 
 having a professional fondness for his occupation : he has the same 
 sort of fondness apparently for the profession of death-painter. 
 The painful details he accumulates are a very serious drawback 
 from the agreeableness of his writings. Dismal "light hterature" 
 is the dismalest of reading. The reality of the police reports is 
 sufhciently bad, but a fictitious police report would be the most 
 disagreeable of conceival)le compositions. Some portions of Mr. 
 Dickens's books are hable to a good many of the same objections. 
 They are squalid from noisome trivialities, and horrid with terrify- 
 ing crime. In his earlier books this is commonly relieved at fre- 
 quent intervals by a graphic and original mirth. As, we will not 
 say age, but maturity, has passed over his powers, this counterac- 
 tive clement has been lessened; the humour is not so happy as it 
 was, but the wonderful fertility in painful minitt'uc still remains. 
 
 Mr. Dickens's political opinions have subjected him to a good 
 deal of criticism, and to some ridicule. He has shown, on many 
 
 ' In Barnahy Rudge.
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 103 
 
 occasions, the desire — which we see so frequent among able and 
 influential men — to start as a political reformer. Mr. Spurgeon 
 said, with an application to himself: "If you've got the ear of the 
 public, of course you must begin to tell it its faults." Mr. Dickens 
 has been quite disposed to make this use of his popular influence. 
 Even in Pickwick there are many traces of this tendency; and the 
 way in which it shows itself in that book and in others is very char- 
 acteristic of the time at which they appeared. The most instruc- 
 tive political characteristic of the years 1825 to 1845 is the growth 
 and influence of the scheme of opinion which we call Radicalism. 
 There are several species of creeds which are comprehended under 
 this generic name, but they all evince a marked reaction against the 
 worship of the English constitution and the affection for the Eng- 
 lish status quo, which were then the established creed and senti- 
 ment. Ah Radicals are Anti-Eldonites. This is equally true of 
 the Benthamite or philosophical radicalism of the early period, 
 and the Manchester, or "definite-grievance radicalism," among the 
 last vestiges of which we are now living. Mr. Dickens represents 
 a species different from either. His is what we may call the "sen- 
 timental radicalism"; and if we recur to the history of the time, 
 we shall find that there would not originally have been any oppro- 
 brium attaching to such a name. The whole course of the legis- 
 lation, and still more of the administration, of the first twenty 
 years of the nineteenth century was marked by a harsh unfeeling- 
 ness which is of all faults the most contrary to any with which we 
 are chargeable now. The world of the "Six Acts," ^ of the fre- 
 quent executions, of the Draconic criminal law, is so far removed 
 from us that we cannot comprehend its having ever existed. It 
 is more easy to understand the recoil which has followed. All 
 the social speculation, and much of the social action of the few years 
 succeeding the Reform Bill, bear the most marked traces of the 
 reaction. The spirit which animates Mr. Dickens's political 
 reasonings and observations expresses it exactly. The vice of the 
 then existing social authorities, and of the then existing public, 
 had been the forgetfulness of the pain which their own acts evi- 
 dently produced, — an unrealizing habit which adhered to official 
 rules and established maxims, and which would not be shocked 
 by the evident consequences, by proximate human suffering. 
 
 1 Of 23d November, 3d December, and 17th December, i8iq; introduced by 
 Eldon, Sidmouth, and Castlereagh, to put down sedition, just after the Manchester 
 massacre and the Cato Street conspiracy. (Forrest Morgan.)
 
 I04 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 The sure result of this habit was the excitement of the habit pre- 
 cisely opposed to it. Mr. Carlyle, in his Chartism, we think, 
 observes of the poor-law reform: "It was then, above all things, 
 necessary that outdoor relief should cease. But how? What 
 means did great Nature take for accomplishing that most desirable 
 end ? She created a race of men who believed the cessation of out- 
 door relief to be the one thing needful." In the same way, and 
 by the same propensity to exaggerated opposition which is inherent 
 in human nature, the unfeeling obtuseness of the early part of this 
 century was to be corrected by an extreme, perhaps an excessive, 
 sensibility to human suffering in the years which have followed. 
 There was most adequate reason for the sentiment in its origin, 
 and it had a great task to perform in ameliorating harsh customs 
 and repealing dreadful penalties ; but it has continued to repine at 
 such evils long after they ceased to exist, and when the only facts 
 that at all resemble them are the necessary painfulness of due 
 punishment and the necessary rigidity of established law. Mr. 
 Dickens is an example both of the proper use and of the abuse of the 
 sentiment. His earlier works have many excellent descriptions 
 of the abuses which had descended to the present generation from 
 others whose sympathy with pain was less tender. Nothing can be 
 better than the description of the poor debtors' gaol in Pickwick, 
 or of the old parochial authorities in Oliver Twist. No doubt these 
 descriptions are caricatures, all his delineations are so; but the 
 beneficial use of such art can hardly be better exemplified. Hu- 
 man nature endures the aggravation of vices and foibles in written 
 description better than that of excellences. We cannot bear to 
 hear even the hero of a book forever called "just"; we detest 
 the recurring praise even of beauty, much more of virtue. The 
 moment you begin to exaggerate a character of true excellence, 
 you spoil it ; the traits are too delicate not to be injured by heighten- 
 ing, or marred by overemphasis. But a beadle is made for cari- 
 cature. The slight measure of pomposity that humanizes his 
 unfeelingness introduces the requisite comic element; even the 
 turnkeys of a debtors' prison may by skilful hands be similarly used. 
 The contrast between the destitute condition of Job Trotter and 
 Mr. Jingle and their former swindling triumph is made comic by 
 a rarer touch of unconscious art. Jvlr. Pickwick's warm heart 
 takes so eager an interest in the misery of his old enemies, that our 
 colder nature is tempted to smile. We endure the over-intensity, 
 at any rate the unnecessary aggravation, of the surrounding misery;
 
 CHARLES DICKENS 1 05 
 
 and we endure it willingly, because it brings out better than any- 
 thing else could have done the half-comic intensity of a sympathetic 
 nature. 
 
 It is painful to pass from these happy instances of well-used 
 power to the glaring abuses of the same faculty in Mr. Dickens's 
 later books. He began by describing really removable evils in a 
 style which would induce all persons, however insensible, to remove 
 them if they could; he has ended by describing the natural evils 
 and inevitable pains of the present state of being, in such a manner 
 as must tend to excite discontent and repining. The result is 
 aggravated, because Mr. Dickens never ceases to hint that these 
 evils are removable, though he does not say by what means. 
 Nothing is easier than to show the evils of anything. ISIr. Dickens 
 has not unfrequently spoken, and, what is worse, he has taught a 
 great number of parrot-like imitators to speak, in what really is, 
 if they knew it, a tone of objection to the necessary constitution of 
 human society. If you will only write a description of it, any form 
 of government will seem ridiculous. What is more absurd than a 
 despotism, even at its best ? A king of ability or an able minister 
 sits in an orderly room filled with memorials, and returns, and 
 documents, and memoranda. These are his world ; among these 
 he of necessity lives and moves. Yet how little of the real life of 
 the nation he governs can be represented in an official form ! How 
 much of real suffering is there that statistics can never tell ! how 
 much of obvious good is there that no memorandum to a minister 
 will ever mention ! how much deception is there in what such 
 documents contain ! how monstrous must be the ignorance of the 
 closet statesman, after all his life of labour, of much that a plough- 
 man could tell him of ! A free government is almost worse, as it 
 must read in a written delineation. Instead of the real attention 
 of a laborious and anxious statesman, we have now the shifting 
 caprices of a popular assembly — elected for one object, deciding 
 on another; changing with the turn of debate; shifting in its very 
 composition; one set of men coming down to vote to-day, to- 
 morrow another and often unlike set, most of them eager for the 
 dinner-hour, actuated by unseen influences, by a respect for their 
 constituents, by the dread of an attorney in a far-off borough. 
 What people are these to control a nation's destinies, and wield 
 the power of an empire, and regulate the happiness of millions ! 
 Either way we are at fault. Free government seems an absurdity, 
 and despotism is so too. Again, every form of law has a distinct
 
 Io6 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 expression, a rigid procedure, customary rules and forms. It is 
 administered by human beings liable to mistake, confusion, and 
 forgetfulncss, and in the long run, and on the average, is sure to be 
 tainted with vice and fraud. Nothing can be easier than to make 
 a case, as we may say, against any particular system, by pointing 
 out with emphatic caricature its inevitable miscarriages, and by 
 pointing out nothing else. Those who so address us may assume 
 a tone of philanthropy, and forever exult that they are not so unfeel- 
 ing as other men are; but the real tendency of their exhortations 
 is to make men dissatisfied with their inevitable condition, and, 
 what is worse, to make them fancy that its irremediable evils can 
 be remedied, and indulge in a succession of vague strivings and 
 restless changes. Such, however — though in a style of expres- 
 sion somewhat different — is very much the tone with which Mr. 
 Dickens and his followers have in later years made us familiar. 
 To the second-hand repeaters of a cry so feeble, we can have noth- 
 ing to say; if silly people cry because they think the world is silly, 
 let them cry; but the founder of the school cannot, we are per- 
 suaded, peruse without mirth the lachrymose eloquence which his 
 disciples have perpetrated. The soft moisture of irrelevant senti- 
 ment cannot have entirely entered into his soul. A truthful 
 genius must have forbidden it. Let us hope that his pernicious 
 example may incite some one of equal genius to preach with equal 
 efiEiciency a sterner and a wiser gospel; but there is no need just 
 now for us to preach it w-ithout genius. 
 
 There has been much controversy about Mr. Dickens's taste. 
 A great many cultivated people will scarcely concede that he has 
 any taste at all; a still larger number of fervent admirers point, 
 on the other hand, to a hundred felicitous descriptions and delinea- 
 tions w^hich abound in apt expressions and skilful turns and happy 
 images, — in which it would be impossible to alter a single word 
 without altering for the worse ; and naturally inquire whether such 
 excellences in what is written do not indicate good taste in the 
 writer. The truth is, that Mr. Dickens has what we may call 
 creative taste; that is to say, the habit or faculty, whichever 
 w^e may choose to call it, which at the critical instant of artistic 
 production offers to the mind the right word, and the right word 
 only. If he is engaged on a good subject for caricature, there will 
 be no defect of taste to preclude the caricature from being excel- 
 lent. But it is only in moments of imaginative production that he 
 has any taste at all. His works nowhere indicate that he possesses
 
 CHARLES DICKENS I07 
 
 in any degree the passive taste which decides what is good in the 
 writings of other people, and what is not, and which performs the 
 same critical duty upon a writer's own efforts when the confusing 
 mists of productive imagination have passed away. Nor has Mr. 
 Dickens the gentlemanly instinct which in many minds supplies 
 the place of purely critical discernment, and which, by constant 
 association with those who know what is best, acquires a second- 
 hand perception of that which is best. He has no tendency to con- 
 ventionalism for good or for evil ; his merits are far removed from 
 the ordinary path of writers, and it was not probably so much 
 effort to him as to other men to step so far out of that path : he 
 scarcely knew how far it was. For the same reason, he cannot 
 tell how faulty his writing will often be thought, for he cannot 
 tell what people will think. 
 
 A few pedantic critics have regretted that Mr. Dickens had not 
 received what they call a regular education. And if we under- 
 stand their meaning, we believe they mean to regret that he had not 
 received a course of discipline which would probably have impaired 
 his powers. A regular education should mean that ordinary 
 system of regulation and instruction which experience has shown to 
 fiit men best for the ordinary pursuits of life. It applies the requi- 
 site discipline to each faculty in the exact proportion in which 
 that faculty is wanted in the pursuits of life; it develops under- 
 standing, and memory, and imagination, each in accordance with 
 the scale prescribed. To men of ordinary faculties this is nearly 
 essential; it is the only mode in which they can be fitted for the 
 inevitable competition of existence. To men of regular and sym- 
 metrical genius also, such a training will often be beneficial. The 
 world knows pretty well what are the great tasks of the human mind, 
 and has learned in the course of ages with some accuracy what is 
 the kind of culture likely to promote their exact performance. A 
 man of abilities extraordinary in degree but harmonious in pro- 
 portion will be the better for having submitted to the kind of dis- 
 cipline which has been ascertained to fit a man for the work to 
 which powers in that proportion are best fitted; he will do what 
 he has to do better and more gracefully ; culture will add a touch 
 to the finish of nature. But the case is very dift"erent with men of 
 irregular and anomalous genius, whose excellences consist in the 
 aggravation of some special faculty, or at the most one or two. 
 The discipline which will fit such a man for the production of great 
 literary works is that which will most develop the peculiar powers
 
 Io8 WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 in which he excels; the rest of the mind will be far less important; 
 it will not be likely that the culture which is adapted to promote this 
 special development will also be that which is most fitted for ex- 
 panding the powers of common men in common directions. The 
 precise problem is to develop the powers of a strange man in a 
 strange direction. In the case of Mr. Dickens, it would have 
 been absurd to have shut up his observant youth within the walls 
 of a college. They would have taught him nothing about Mrs. 
 Gamp there; Sam Weller took no degree. The kind of early 
 life fitted to develop the power of apprehensive observation is a 
 brooding life in stirring scenes; the idler in the streets of life knows 
 the streets; the bystander knows the picturesque effect of life 
 better than the player; and the meditative idler amid the hum of 
 existence is much more likely to know its sound and to take in and 
 comprehend its depths and meanings than the scholastic student 
 intent on books, which, if they represent any world, represent one 
 which has long passed away, — which commonly try rather to 
 develop the reasoning understanding than the seeing observation, 
 — which are written in languages that have long been dead. 
 You will not train by such discipline a caricaturist of obvious 
 manners. 
 
 Perhaps, too, a regular instruction and daily experience of the 
 searching ridicule of critical associates would have detracted 
 from the pluck which Mr. Dickens shows in all his writings. It 
 requires a great deal of courage to be a humorous writer; you are 
 always afraid that people will laugh at you instead of with you: 
 undoubtedly there is a certain eccentricity about it. You take up 
 the esteemed writers, Thucydides and the Saturday Review; 
 after all, they do not make you laugh. It is not the function of 
 really artistic productions to contribute to the mirth of human 
 beings. All sensible men are afraid of it, and it is only with an 
 extreme effort that a printed joke attains to the perusal of the pub- 
 lic : the chances are many to one that the anxious producer loses 
 heart in the correction of the press, and that the world never 
 laughs at all. Mr. Dickens is quite exempt from this weakness. 
 He has what a Frenchman might call the courage of his faculty. 
 The real daring which is shown in the Pickwick Papers, in the whole 
 character of Mr. Weller senior, as well as in that of his son, is 
 immense, far surpassing any which has been shown by any other 
 contemporary writer. The brooding irregular mind is in its first 
 stage prone to this sort of courage. It perhaps knows that its
 
 CHARLES DICKENS lOQ 
 
 ideas are "out of the way"; but with the infantine simplicity of 
 youth, it supposes that originaHty is an advantage. Persons 'nore 
 familiar with the ridicule of their equals in station (and this is to 
 most men the great instructress of the college time) well know 
 that of all qualities this one most requires to be clipped and pared 
 and measured. Posterity, we doubt not, will be entirely perfect 
 in every conceivable element of judgment ; but the existing genera- 
 tion like what they have heard before — it is much easier. It re- 
 quired great courage in Mr. Dickens to write what his genius has 
 compelled them to appreciate. 
 
 We have throughout spoken of Mr. Dickens as he was, rather 
 than as he is ; or, to use a less discourteous phrase, and we hope a 
 truer, of his early works rather than of those which are more 
 recent. We could not do otherwise consistently with the true code 
 of criticism. A man of great genius, who has written great and 
 enduring works, must be judged mainly by them; and not by the 
 inferior productions which, from the necessities of personal posi- 
 tion, a fatal facility of composition, or other cause, he may pour forth 
 at moments less favourable to his powers. Those who are called 
 on to review these inferior productions themselves, must speak 
 of them in the terms they may deserve ; but those who have the more 
 pleasant task of estimating as a whole the genius of the writer, 
 may confine their attention almost wholly to those happier efforts 
 which illustrate that genius. We should not like to have to speak 
 in detail of Mr. Dickens's later works, and we have not done so. 
 There are, indeed, peculiar reasons why a genius constituted as his 
 is (at least if we are correct in the view which we have taken of it) 
 would not endure without injury during a long life the applause 
 of the many, the temptations of composition, and the general ex- 
 citement of existence. Even in his earlier works it was impossible 
 not to fancy that there was a weakness of fibre unfavourable to the 
 longevity of excellence. This was the effect of his deficiency in 
 those masculine faculties of which we have said so much, — the 
 reasoning understanding and firm far-seeing sagacity. It is these 
 two component elements which stiffen the mind, and give a con- 
 sistency to the creed and a coherence to its effects, — which enable 
 it to protect itself from the rush of circumstances. If to a deficiency 
 in these we add an extreme sensibility to circumstances, — a 
 mobility, as Lord Byron used to call it, of emotion, which is easily 
 impressed, and stifl more easily carried away by impression, — 
 we have the idea of a character peculiarly unfitted to bear the flux
 
 no WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 of time and chance. A man of very great determination could 
 hardly bear up against them with such slight aids from within and 
 with such peculiar sensibility to temptation. A man of merely, 
 ordinary determination would succumb to it; and Mr. Dickens 
 has succumbed. His position was certainly unfavourable. He 
 has told us that the works of his later years, inferior as all good 
 critics have deemed them, have yet been more read than those of 
 his earlier and healthier years. The most characteristic part of his 
 audience, the lower middle-class, were ready to receive with de- 
 light the least favourable productions of genius. Human nature 
 cannot endure this ; it is too much to have to endure a coincident 
 temptation both from within and from without. Mr. Dickens was 
 too much inclined by natural disposition to lachrymose eloquence 
 and exaggerated caricature. Such was the kind of writing which 
 he wrote most easily. He found likewise that such was the kind 
 of writing that was read most readily ; and of course he wrote that 
 kind. Who would have done otherwise? No critic is entitled 
 to speak very harshly of such degeneracy, if he is not sure that he 
 could have coped with difficulties so peculiar. If that rule is to 
 be observed, who is there that will not be silent? No other Eng- 
 lishman has attained such a hold on the vast populace ; it is little, 
 therefore, to say that no other has surmounted its attendant temp- 
 tations.
 
 VI 
 
 WALTER PATER 
 
 (1839-1894) 
 
 WORDSWORTH 
 
 [From Appreciations, 1889. First published in the Fortnightly Review 
 for April, 1874.] 
 
 Some English critics at the beginning of the present century- 
 had a great deal to say concerning a distinction, of much impor- 
 tance, as they thought, in the true estimate of poetry, between the 
 Fancy, and another more powerful faculty — the Imagination. 
 This metaphysical distinction, borrowed originally from the 
 writings of German philosophers, and perhaps not always clearly 
 apprehended by those who talked of it, involved a far deeper and 
 more vital distinction, with which indeed all true criticism more or 
 less directly has to do, the distinction, namely, between higher 
 and lower degrees of intensity in the poet's perception of his subject, 
 and in his concentration of himself upon his work. Of those who 
 dwelt upon the metaphysical distinction between the Fancy and the 
 Imagination, it was Wordsworth who made the most of it, assum- 
 ing it as the basis for the final classification of his poetical writings; 
 and it is in these writings that the deeper and more vital distinc- 
 tion, which, as I have said, underlies the metaphysical distinction, 
 is most needed, and may best be illustrated. 
 
 For nowhere is there so perplexed a mixture as in Wordsworth's 
 own poetry, of work touched with intense and individual power, 
 with work of almost no character at all. He has much conven- 
 tional sentiment, and some of that insincere poetic diction, against 
 which his most serious critical efforts were directed : the reaction 
 in his political ideas, consequent on the excesses of 1795, makes 
 him, at times, a mere declaimer on moral and social topics; and 
 he seems, sometimes, to force an unwilling pen, and write by rule. 
 By making the most of these blemishes it is possible to obscure the 
 
 III
 
 112 WALTER PATER 
 
 true aesthetic value of his work, just as his life also, a life of much 
 quiet delicacy and independence, might easily be placed in a false 
 focus, and made to appear a somewhat tame theme in illustration 
 of the more obvious parochial virtues. And those who wish to 
 understand his influence, and experience his peculiar savour, must 
 bear with patience the presence of an alien element in Words- 
 worth's work, which never coalesced with what is really delightful 
 in it, nor underwent his special power. Who that values his writ- 
 ings most has not felt the intrusion there, from time to time, of 
 something tedious and prosaic? Of all poets equally great, he 
 would gain most by a skilfully made anthology. Such a selection 
 would show, in truth, not so much what he was, or to himself or 
 others seemed to be, as what, by the more energetic and fertile 
 quality in his writings, he was ever tending to become. And the 
 mixture in his work, as it actually stands, is so perplexed, that one 
 fears to miss the least promising composition even, lest some pre- 
 cious morsel should be lying hidden within — the few perfect lines, 
 the phrase, the single word perhaps, to which he often works up 
 mechanically through a poem, almost the whole of which may be 
 tame enough. He who thought that in all creative work the larger 
 part was given passively, to the recipient mind, who waited so duti- 
 fully upon the gift, to whom so large a measure was sometimes 
 given, had his times also of desertion and relapse; and he has per- 
 mitted the impress of these too to remain in his work. And this 
 duality there — the fitfulness with which the higher qualities mani- 
 fest themselves in it, gives the effect in his poetry of a power not 
 ahogether his own, or under his control, which comes and goes 
 when it will, lifting or lowering a matter, poor in itself; so that that 
 old fancy which made the poet's art an enthusiasm, a form of divine 
 possession, seems almost literally true of him. 
 
 This constant suggestion of an absolute duality between higher 
 and lower moods, and the work done in them, stimulating one 
 always to look below the surface, makes the reading of Wordsworth 
 an excellent sort of training towards the things of art and poetry. 
 It begets in those, who, coming across him in youth, can bear him 
 at all, a habit of reading between the lines, a faith in the effect of 
 concentration and coUectedness of mind in the right appreciation 
 of poetry, an expectation of things, in this order, coming to one by 
 means of a right discipline of the temper as well as of the intellect. 
 He meets us with the promise that he has much, and something 
 very peculiar, to give us, if we will follow a certain difhcult way,
 
 WORDSWORTH II3 
 
 and seems to have the secret of a special and privileged state of 
 mind. And those who have undergone his influence, and followed 
 this difficul: way, are like people who have passed through some 
 initiation, a disciplina arcani,^ by submitting to which they become 
 able constantly to distinguish in art, speech, feeling, manners, that 
 which is organic, animated, expressive, from that which is only con- 
 ventional, derivative, inexpressive. 
 
 But although the necessity of selecting these precious morsels 
 for one's self is an opportunity for the exercise of Wordsworth's 
 peculiar influence, and induces a kind of just criticism and true 
 estimate of it, yet the purely literary product would have been 
 more excellent, had the writer himself purged away that alien ele- 
 ment. How perfect would have been the little treasury, shut be- 
 tween the covers of how thin a book ! Let us suppose the desired 
 separation made, the electric thread untwined, the golden pieces, 
 great and small, lying apart together.^ What are the peculiarities 
 of this residue? What special sense does Wordsworth exercise, 
 and what instincts does he satisfy? What are the subjects and 
 the motives which in him excite the imaginative faculty? What 
 are the qualities in things and persons which he values, the impres- 
 sion and sense of which he can convey to others, in an extra- 
 ordinary way ? 
 
 An intimate consciousness of the expression of natural things, 
 which weighs, listens, penetrates, where the earlier mind passed 
 roughly by, is a large element in the complexion of modern pbetry. 
 It has been remarked as a fact in mental history again and again. 
 It reveals itself in many forms; but is strongest and most attrac- 
 tive in what is strongest and most attractive in modern literature. 
 It is exemplified, almost equally, by writers as unlike each other as 
 Senancour and Theophile Gautier: as a singular chapter in the 
 history of the human mind, its growth might be traced from Rous- 
 seau to Chateaubriand, from Chateaubriand to Victor Hugo: it 
 has doubtless some latent connection with those pantheistic theories 
 which locate an intelligent soul in material things, and have largely 
 exercised men's minds in some modern systems of philosophy: 
 it is traceable even in the graver writings of historians : it makes 
 as much difference between ancient and modern landscape art, 
 
 ' [A training in solving mystery.] 
 
 ^ Since this essay was written, such selections have been made, with excellent 
 taste, by Matthew Arnold and Professor Knight. 
 
 I
 
 114 WALTER PATER 
 
 as there is between the rough masks of an early mosaic and a por- 
 trait by Reynolds or Gainsborough. Of this new sense, the writ- 
 ings of Wordsworth are the central and elementary expression: 
 he is more simply and entirely occupied with it than any other poet, 
 though there are fine expressions of precisely the same thing in so 
 different a poet as Shelley. There was in his own character a 
 certain contentment, a sort of inborn religious placidity, seldom 
 found united with a sensibility so mobile as his, which was favour- 
 able to the quiet, habitual observation of inanimate, or imperfectly 
 animate, existence. His life of eighty years is divided by no very 
 profoundly felt incidents: its changes are almost wholly inward, 
 and it falls into broad, untroubled, perhaps somewhat monotonous 
 spaces. What it most resembles is the life of one of those early 
 Italian or Flemish painters, who, just because their minds were 
 full of heavenly visions, passed, some of them, the better part of 
 sixty years in quiet, systematic industry. This placid life matured 
 a quite unusual sensibility, really innate in him, to the sights and 
 sounds of the natural world — the flower and its shadow on the 
 stone, the cuckoo and its echo. The poem of Resolution and Inde- 
 pendence is a storehouse of such records : for its fulness of imagery 
 it may be compared to Keats's Saint Agnes' Eve. To read one of 
 his longer pastoral poems for the first time, is like a day spent in a 
 new country : the memory is crowded for a while with its precise 
 and vivid incidents : — 
 
 " The pliant harebell swinging in the breeze 
 On some grey roclc" ; — 
 
 " The single sheep and the one blasted tree 
 And the bleak, music from that old stone wall" ; 
 
 "And in the meadows and the lower grounds 
 Was all the sweetness of a common dawn" ; — 
 
 " And that green corn all day is rustling in thine ears." 
 
 Clear and delicate at once, as he is in the outlining of visible 
 imagery, he is more clear and delicate still, and finely scrupulous, 
 in the noting of sounds ; so that he conceives of noble sound as even 
 moulding the human countenance to nobler types, and as something 
 actually "profaned " by colour, by visible form, or image. He has 
 a power likewise of realizing, and conveying to the consciousness of 
 the reader, abstract and elementary impressions — silence, dark- 
 ness, absolute motionlessness : or, again, the whole complex sen-
 
 WORDSWORTH II5 
 
 timent of a particular place, the abstract expression of desolation 
 in the long white road, of peacefulness in a particular folding of the 
 hills. In the airy building of the brain, a special day or hour even, 
 comes to have for him a sort of personal identity, a spirit or angel 
 given to it, by which, for its exceptional insight, or the happy light 
 upon it, it has a presence in one's history, and acts there, as a sepa- 
 rate power or accomplishment ; and he has celebrated in many of 
 his poems the "efficacious spirit," which, as he says, resides in 
 these "particular spots" of time. 
 
 It is to such a world, and to a world of congruous meditation 
 thereon, that we see him retiring in his but lately published poem 
 of The Recluse — taking leave, without much count of costs, of the 
 world of business, of action and ambition, as also of all that for 
 the majority of mankind counts as sensuous enjoyment.^ 
 
 ' In Wordsworth's prefatory advertisement to the first edition of The Prelude, 
 pubUshed in 1850, it is stated that the work was intended to be introductory to The 
 Recluse; and that The Recluse, if completed, would have consisted of three parts. 
 The second part is The Excursion. The third part was only planned; but the 
 first book of the first part was left in manuscript by Wordsworth — though in 
 manuscript, it is said, in no great condition of forwardness for the printers. This 
 book, now for the first time printed in exlenso (a very noble passage from it found 
 place in that prose advertisement to The Excursion), is included in the latest edi- 
 tion of Wordsworth by Mr. John Morley. It was well worth adding to the poet's 
 great bequest to English literature. A true student of his work, who has formu- 
 lated for himself what he supposes to be the leading characteristics of Wordsworth's 
 genius, will feel, we think, lively interest in testing them by the various fine pas- 
 sages in what is here presented for the first time. Let the following serve for a 
 sample : — 
 
 Thickets full of songsters, and the voice 
 
 Of lordly birds, an unexpected sound 
 
 Heard now and then from morn to latest eve, 
 
 Admonishing the man who walks below 
 
 Of solitude and silence in the sky: — 
 
 These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth 
 
 Have also these, but nowhere else is found, 
 
 Nowhere (or is it fancy?) can be found 
 
 The one sensation that is here; 'tis here, 
 
 Here as it found its way into my heart 
 
 In childhood, here as it abides by day, 
 
 By night, here only; or in chosen minds 
 
 That take it with them hence, where'er they go. 
 
 — 'Tis, but I cannot name it, 'tis the sense 
 
 Of majesty, and beauty, and repose, 
 
 A blended holiness of earth and sky, 
 
 Something that makes this individual spot 
 
 This small abiding-place of many men, 
 
 A termination, and a last retreat, 
 
 A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will, 
 
 A whole without dependence or defect, 
 
 Made for itself, and happy in itself. 
 
 Perfect contentment, Unity entire.
 
 Il6 WALTER PATER 
 
 And so it came about that this sense of a life in natural objects, 
 which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, is with Wordsworth 
 the assertion of what for him is almost literal fact. To him every 
 natural object seemed to possess more or less of a moral or spiritual 
 life, to be capable of a companionship with man, full of expression, 
 of inexplicable afl&nities and delicacies of intercourse. An emana- 
 tion, a particular spirit, belonged, not to the moving leaves or water 
 only, but to the distant peak of the hills arising suddenly, by some 
 change of perspective, above the nearer horizon, to the passing space 
 of light across the plain, to the lichened Druidic stone even, for a 
 certain weird fellowship in it with the moods of men. It was like 
 a "survival," in the peculiar intellectual temperament of a man of 
 letters at the end of the eighteenth century, of that primitive condi- 
 tion, which some philosophers have traced in the general history 
 of human culture, wherein all outward objects alike, including even 
 the works of men's hands, were believed to be endowed with ani- 
 mation, and the world was "full of souls" — that mood in which 
 the old Greek gods were first begotten, and which had many strange 
 aftergrowths. 
 
 In the early ages, this belief, delightful as its effects on poetry 
 often are, was but the result of a crude intelligence. But, in Words- 
 worth, such power of seeing life, such perception of a soul, in inani- 
 mate things, came of an exceptional susceptibility to the impres- 
 sions of eye and ear, and was, in its essence, a kind of sensuousness. 
 At least, it is only in a temperament exceptionally susceptible on 
 the sensuous side, that this sense of the expressiveness of outward 
 things comes to be so large a part of life. That he awakened "a 
 sort of thought in sense," is Shelley's just estimate of this element 
 in Wordsworth's poetry. 
 
 And it was through nature, thus ennobled by a semblance of 
 passion and thought, that he approached the spectacle of human 
 life. Human life, indeed, is for him, at first, only an additional, 
 accidental grace on an expressive landscape. When he thought 
 of man, it was of man as in the presence and under the influence of 
 these effective natural objects, and linked to them by many asso- 
 ciations. The close connection of man with natural objects, the 
 habitual association of his thoughts and feelings with a particular 
 spot of earth, has sometimes seemed to degrade those who are sub- 
 ject to its influence, as if it did but reenforce that physical connection 
 of our nature with the actual lime and clay of the soil, which is 
 always drawing us nearer to our end. But for Wordsworth, these
 
 WORDSWORTH 1 1 7 
 
 influences tended to the dignity of human nature, because they 
 tended to tranquillize it. By raising nature to the level of human 
 thought he gives it power and expression : he subdues man to the 
 level of nature, and gives him thereby a certain breadth and cool- 
 ness and solemnity. The leech-gatherer on the moor, the woman 
 "stepping westward," are for him natural objects, almost in the 
 same sense as the aged thorn, or the lichened rock on the heath. 
 In this sense the leader of the " Lake School," in spite of an earnest 
 preoccupation with man, his thoughts, his destiny, is the poet of 
 nature. And of nature, after all, in its modesty. The English 
 lake country has, of course, its grandeurs. But the peculiar func- 
 tion of Wordsworth's genius, as carrying in it a power to open out 
 the soul of apparently little or familiar things, would have found its 
 true test had he become the poet of Surrey, say ! and the prophet 
 of its life. The glories of Italy and Switzerland, though he did 
 write a little about them, had too potent a material life of their own 
 to serve greatly his poetic purpose. 
 
 Religious sentiment, consecrating the affections and natural 
 regrets of the human heart, above all, that pitiful awe and care for 
 the perishing human clay, of which relic- worship is but the corrup- 
 tion, has always had much to do with localities, with the thoughts 
 which attach themselves to actual scenes and places. Now what 
 is true of it everywhere, is truest of it in those secluded valleys 
 where one generation after another maintains the same abiding- 
 place; and it was on this side, that Wordsworth apprehended 
 religion most strongly. Consisting, as it did so much, in the recog- 
 nition of local sanctities, in the habit of connecting the stones and 
 trees of a particular spot of earth with the great events of life, till 
 the low walls, the green mounds, the half-obliterated epitaphs 
 seemed full of voices, and a sort of natural oracles, the very religion 
 of these people of the dales appeared but as another link between 
 them and the earth, and was literally a religion of nature. It 
 tranquillized them by bringing them under the placid rule of tra- 
 ditional and narrowly localized observances. "Grave livers," 
 they seemed to him, under this aspect, with stately speech, and 
 something of that natural dignity of manners, which underlies 
 the highest courtesy. 
 
 And, seeing man thus as a part of nature, elevated and solem- 
 nized in proportion as his daily life and occupations brought him 
 into companionship with permanent natural objects, his very 
 religion forming new links for him with the narrow limits of the
 
 Il8 WALTER PATER 
 
 valley, the low vaults of his church, the rough stones of his home, 
 made intense for him now with profound sentiment, Wordsworth 
 was able to appreciate passion in the lowly. He chooses to depict 
 people from humble life, because, being nearer to nature than 
 others, they are on the whole more impassioned, certainly more 
 direct in their expression of passion, than other men : it is for this 
 direct expression of passion, that he values their humble words. 
 In much that he said in exaltation of rural life, he was but pleading 
 indirectly for that sincerity, that perfect fidelity to one's own 
 inward presentations, to the precise features of the picture within, 
 without which any profound poetry is impossible. It was not for 
 their tameness, but for this passionate sincerity, that he chose inci- 
 dents and situations from common life, "related in a selection of 
 language really used by men." He constantly endeavours to 
 bring his language near to the real language of men : to the real 
 language of men, however, not on the dead level of their ordinary 
 intercourse, but in select moments of vivid sensation, when this 
 language is winnowed and ennobled by excitement. There are 
 poets who have chosen rural life as their subject, for the sake of its 
 passionless repose, and times when Wordsworth himself extols 
 the mere calm and dispassionate survey of things as the highest 
 aim of poetical culture. But it was not for such passionless calm 
 that he preferred the scenes of pastoral life; and the meditative 
 poet, sheltering himself, as it might seem, from the agitations of 
 the outward world, is in reality only clearing the scene for the great 
 exhibitions of emotion, and what he values most is the almost ele- 
 mentary expression of elementary feelings. 
 
 And so he has much for those who value highly the concentrated 
 presentment of passion, who appraise men and women by their 
 susceptibility to it, and art and poetry as they afford the spectacle 
 of it. Breaking from time to time into the pensive spectacle of thei   
 daily toil, their occupations near to nature, come those great ele- 
 mentary feelings, lifting and solemnizing their language and giving 
 it a natural music. The great, distinguishing passion came to 
 Michael by the sheepfold, to Ruth by the wayside, adding these 
 humble children of the furrow to the true aristocracy of passionate 
 souls. In this respect, Wordsworth's work resembles most that of 
 George Sand, in those of her novels which depict country life. 
 With a penetrative pathos, which puts him in the same rank with 
 the masters of the sentiment of pity in literature, with Mcinhold 
 and Victor Hugo, he collects all the traces of vivid excitement
 
 WORDSWORTH lig 
 
 which were to be found in that pastoral world — the girl who rung 
 her father's knell ; the unborn infant feeling about its mother's heart; 
 the instinctive touches of children; the sorrows of the wild crea- 
 tures, even — their homesickness, their strange yearnings ; the 
 tales of passionate regret that hang by a ruined farm-building, a 
 heap of stones, a deserted sheepfold; that gay, false, adventurous, 
 outer world, which breaks in from time to time to bewilder and de- 
 flower these quiet homes; not "passionate sorrow" only, for the 
 overthrow of the soul's beauty, but the loss of, or carelessness for 
 personal beauty even, in those whom men have wronged — their 
 pathetic wanness; the sailor "who, in his heart, was half a shep- 
 herd on the stormy seas"; the wild woman teaching her child to 
 pray for her betrayer ; incidents like the making of the shepherd's 
 staff, or that of the young boy laying the first stone of the sheep- 
 fold ; — all the pathetic episodes of their humble existence, their 
 longing, their wonder at fortune, their poor pathetic pleasures, 
 like the pleasures of children, won so hardly in the struggle for bare 
 existence; their yearning towards each other, in their darkened 
 houses, or at their early toil. A sort of biblical depth and solem- 
 nity hangs over this strange, new, passionate, pastoral world, of 
 which he first raised the image, and the reflection of which some 
 of our best modern fiction has caught from him. 
 
 He pondered much over the philosophy of his poetry, and read- 
 ing deeply in the history of his own mind, seems at times to have 
 passed the borders of a world of strange speculations, inconsistent 
 enough, had he cared to note such inconsistencies, with those tra- 
 ditional beliefs, which were otherwise the object of his devout accept- 
 ance. Thinking of the high value he set upon customariness, 
 upon all that is habitual, local, rooted in the ground, in matters of 
 religious sentiment, you might sometimes regard him as one teth- 
 ered down to a world, refined and peaceful indeed, but with no broad 
 outlook, a world protected, but somewhat narrowed, by the influ- 
 ence of received ideas. But he is at times also something very 
 different from this, and something much bolder. A chance ex- 
 pression is overheard and placed in a new connection, the sudden 
 memory of a thing long past occurs to him, a distant object is re- 
 lieved for a while by a random gleam of light — accidents turning 
 up for a moment what lies below the surface of our immediate 
 experience — and he passes from the humble graves and lowly 
 arches of "the little rock-like pile" of a Westmoreland church,
 
 I20 WALTER PATER 
 
 on bold trains of speculative thought, and comes, from point to 
 point, into strange contact with thoughts which have visited, 
 from time to time, far more venturesome, perhaps errant, spirits. 
 
 He had pondered deeply, for instance, on those strange reminis- 
 cences and forebodings, which seem to make our lives stretch 
 before and behind us, beyond where we can see or touch anything, 
 or trace the lines of connection. Following the soul, backwards 
 and forwards, on these endless ways, his sense of man's dim, poten- 
 tial powers became a pledge to him, indeed, of a future life, but 
 carried him back also to that mysterious notion of an earlier 
 state of existence — the fancy of the Platonists — the old heresy 
 of Origen. It was in this mood that he conceived those oft- 
 reiterated regrets for a half-ideal childhood, when the relics of 
 Paradise still clung about the soul — a childhood, as it seemed, full 
 of the fruits of old age, lost for all, in a degree, in the passing away 
 of the youth of the world, lost for each one, over again, in the 
 passing away of actual youth. It is this ideal childhood which he 
 celebrates in his famous Ode on tlie Recollections oj Childhood, 
 and some other poems which may be grouped around it, such as 
 the lines on Tintern Abbey, and something like what he describes 
 was actually truer of himself than he seems to have understood; 
 for his own most delightful poems were really the instinctive pro- 
 ductions of earlier life, and most surely for him, "the first diviner 
 influence of this world" passed away, more and more completely, 
 in his contact with experience. 
 
 Sometimes as he dwelt upon those moments of profound, im- 
 aginative power, in which the outward object appears to take colour 
 and expression, a new nature almost, from the prompting of the 
 observant mind, the actual world would, as it were, dissolve and 
 detach itself, flake by flake, and he himself seemed to be the 
 creator, and when he would the destroyer, of the world in which he 
 lived — that old isolating thought of many a brain-sick mystic of 
 ancient and modern times. 
 
 At other times, again, in those periods of intense susceptibility, 
 in which he appeared to himself as but the passive recipient of ex- 
 ternal influences, he was attracted by the thought of a spirit of life 
 in outward things, a single, all-pervading mind in them, of which 
 man, and even the poet's imaginative energy, are but moments 
 — that old dream of the anima mundi, the mother of all things and 
 their grave, in which some had desired to lose themselves, and 
 others had become indift'erent to the distinctions of good and evil.
 
 WORDSWORTH 121 
 
 It would come, sometimes, like the sign of the macrocosm to Faust 
 in his cell: the network of man and nature was seen to be per- 
 vaded by a common, universal life: a new, bold thought lifted 
 him above the furrow, above the green turf of the Westmoreland 
 churchyard, to a world altogether different in its vagueness and 
 vastness, and the narrow glen was full of the brooding power of one 
 universal spirit. 
 
 And so he has something, also, for those who fee;l the fascina- 
 tion of bold speculative ideas, who are really capable of rising upon 
 them to conditions of poetical thought. He uses them, indeed, 
 always with a very fine apprehension of the Umits within which 
 alone philosophical imaginings have any place in true poetry; 
 and using them only for poetical purposes, is not too careful even 
 to make them consistent with each other. To him, theories which 
 for other men bring a world of technical diction, brought perfect 
 form and expression, as in those two lofty books of the Prelude, 
 which describe the decay and the restoration of Imagination and 
 Taste. Skirting the borders of this world of bewildering heights 
 and depths, he got but the first exciting influence of it, that joyful 
 enthusiasm which great imaginative theories prompt, when the 
 mind first comes to have an understanding of them ; and it is not 
 under the influence of these thoughts that his poetry becomes 
 tedious or loses its blitheness. He keeps them, too, always within 
 certain ethical bounds, so that no word of his could offend the sim- 
 plest of those simple souls which are always the largest portion 
 of mankind. But it is, nevertheless, the contact of these thoughts, 
 the speculative boldness in them, which constitutes, at least for 
 some minds, the secret attraction of much of his best poetry —   
 the sudden passage from lowly thoughts and places to the majestic 
 forms of philosophical imagination, the play of these forms over a 
 world so different, enlarging so strangely the bounds of its humble 
 churchyards, and breaking such a wild light on the graves of chris- 
 tened children. 
 
 And these moods always brought with them faultless expression. 
 In regard to expression, as with feeling and thought, the duality of 
 the higher and lower moods was absolute. It belonged to the 
 higher, the imaginative mood, and was the pledge of its reality, 
 to bring the appropriate language with it. In him, when the really 
 poetical motive worked at all, it united, with absolute justice, the 
 word and the idea; each, in the imaginative flame, becoming in-
 
 122 WALTER PATER 
 
 separably one with the other, by that fusion of matter and form, 
 which is the characteristic of the highest poetical expression. His 
 words are themselves thought and feeling; not eloquent, or musical 
 words merely, but that sort of creative language which carries 
 the reality of what it depicts, directly, to the consciousness. 
 
 The music of mfere metre performs but a limited, yet a very 
 peculiar and subtly ascertained function, in Wordsworth's poetry. 
 With him, metre is but an additional grace, accessory to that 
 deeper music of words and sounds, that moving power, which they 
 exercise in the nobler prose no less than in formal poetry. It is 
 a sedative to that excitement, an excitement sometimes almost 
 painful, under which the language, alike of poetry and prose, at- 
 tains a rhythmical power, independent of metrical combination, 
 and dependent rather on some subtle adjustment of the elementary 
 sounds of words themselves to the image or feeling they convey. 
 Yet some of his pieces, pieces prompted by a sort of half-playful 
 mysticism, like the Dafjodils and The Two April Mornings, are 
 distinguished by a certain quaint gayety of metre, and rival by their 
 perfect execution, in this respect, similar pieces among our own 
 Elizabethan, or contemporary French poetry. And those who 
 take up these poems after an interval of months, or years perhaps, 
 may be surprised at finding how well old favourites wear, how their 
 strange, inventive turns of diction or thought still send through 
 them the old feeling of surprise. Those who lived about Words- 
 worth were all great lovers of the older English literature, and often- 
 times there came out in him a noticeable likeness to our earlier 
 poets. He quotes unconsciously, but with new power of meaning, 
 a clause from one of Shakespeare's sonnets; and, as with some 
 other men's most famous work, the Ode on the Reeollcrlions of 
 CliildJwod had its anticipator.^ He drew something too from the 
 unconscious mysticism of the old English language itself, drawing 
 out the inward significance of its racy idiom, and the not wholly 
 unconscious poetry of the language used by the simplest people 
 under strong excitement — language, therefore, at its origin. 
 
 The office of the poet is not that of the moralist, and the first aim 
 of Wordsworth's poetry is to give the reader a peculiar kind of 
 pleasure. But through his poetry, and through this pleasure in 
 it, he does actually convey to the reader an extraordinary wisdom 
 in the things of practice. One lesson, if men must have lessons, 
 
 ' Henry Vaughan, in The Retreat.
 
 WORDSWORTH 1 23 
 
 he conveys more clearly than all, the supreme importance of con- 
 templation in the conduct of life. 
 
 Contemplation — impassioned contemplation — that is with 
 Wordsworth the end-in-itself, the perfect end. We see the ma- 
 jority of mankind going most often to definite ends, lower or 
 higher ends, as their own instincts may determine ; but the end 
 may never be attained, and the means not be quite the right means, 
 great ends and little ones alike being, for the most part, distant, 
 and the ways to them, in this dim world, somewhat vague. Mean- 
 time, to higher or lower ends, they move too often with something 
 of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, 
 unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear 
 grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great 
 ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and 
 temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its 
 very sources. We understand this when it is a question of mean, 
 or of intensely selfish ends — of Grandet, or Javert. We think 
 it bad moraUty to say that the end justifies the means, and we know 
 how false to all higher conceptions of the religious life is the type 
 of one who is ready to do evil that good may come. We contrast 
 with such dark, mistaken eagerness, a type like that of Saint Cather- 
 ine of Siena, who made the means to her ends so attractive, that 
 she has won for herself an undying place in the House Beautiful, 
 not by her rectitude of soul only, but by its "fairness " — by those 
 quite different qualities which commend themselves to the poet 
 and the artist. 
 
 Yet, for most of us, the conception of means and ends covers 
 the whole of life, and is the exclusive type or figure under which 
 we represent our lives to ourselves. Such a figure, reducing all 
 things to machinery, though it has on its side the authority of that 
 old Greek moralist who has fixed for succeeding generations the 
 outline of the theory of right living, is too like a mere picture or 
 description of men's lives as we actually find them, to be the basis 
 of the higher ethics. It covers the meanness of men's daily lives, 
 and much of the dexterity and the vigour with which they pursue 
 what may seem to them the good of themselves or of others; but 
 not the intangible perfection of those whose ideal is rather in bemg 
 than in doing — not those manners which are, in the deepest as in 
 the simplest sense, morals, and without which one cannot so 
 much as offer a cup of water to a poor man without offence — not 
 the part of "antique Rachel," sitting in the company of Beatrice;
 
 124 WALTER PATER 
 
 and even the moralist might well endeavour rather to withdraw 
 men from the too exclusive consideration of means and ends, in 
 hfe. 
 
 Against this predominance of machinery in our existence, Words- 
 worth's poetry, Uke all great art and poetry, is a continual protest. 
 Justify rather the end by the means, it seems to say: whatever 
 may become of the fruit, make sure of the flowers and the 
 leaves. It was justly said, therefore, by one who had meditated 
 very profoundly on the true relation of means to ends in life, and 
 on the distinction between what is desirable in itself and what is 
 desirable only as machinery, that when the battle which he and his 
 friends were waging had been won, the world would need more than 
 ever those qualities which Wordsworth was keeping alive and 
 nourishing.^ 
 
 That the end of life is not action but contemplation — being 
 as distinct from doing — a certain disposition of the mind : is, 
 in some shape or other, the principle of all the higher morality. 
 In poetry, in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch 
 this principle, in a measure: these, by their very sterility, are a 
 type of beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat life 
 in the spirit of art, is to make life a thing in which means and ends 
 are identified: to encourage such treatment, the true moral sig- 
 nificance of art and poetry. Wordsworth, and other poets who 
 have been like him in ancient or more recent times, are the masters, 
 the experts, in this art of impassioned contemplation. Their 
 work is, not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even to stimulate 
 us to noble ends; but to withdraw the thoughts for a little while 
 from the mere machinery of life, to fix them, with appropriate emo- 
 tions, on the spectacle of those great facts in man's existence which 
 no machinery affects, "on the great and universal passions of men, 
 the most general and interesting of their occupations, and the 
 entire world of nature," — on "the operations of the elements 
 and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sun- 
 shine, on the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss 
 of friends and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude 
 and hope, on fear and sorrow." To witness this spectacle with 
 appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture ; and of these emo- 
 tions poetry like Wordsworth's is a great nourisher and stimulant. 
 He sees nature full of sentiment and excitement ; he sees men and 
 
 * See an interestiriR paper by Mr. John Morley, on "The Death of Mr. Mill," 
 Fortnightly Review, June, 1873.
 
 WORDSWORTH 12 5 
 
 women as parts of nature, passionate, excited, in strange grouping 
 and connection with the grandeur and beauty of the natural world : 
 — images, in his own words, "of man suffering, amid awful 
 forms and powers." 
 
 Such is the figure of the more powerful and original poet, hidden 
 away, in part, under those weaker elements in Wordsworth's 
 poetry, which for some minds determine their entire character; 
 a poet somewhat bolder and more passionate than might at first 
 sight be supposed, but not too bold for true poetical taste; an un- 
 impassioned writer, you might sometimes fancy, yet thinking the 
 chief aim, in life and art alike, to be a certain deep emotion; 
 seeking most often the great elementary passions in lowly places; 
 having at least this condition of all impassioned work, that he aims 
 always at an absolute sincerity of feeling and diction, so that he is 
 the true forerunner of the deepest and most passionate poetry of 
 our own day; yet going back also, with something of a protest 
 against the conventional fervour of much of the poetry popular in 
 his own time, to those older English poets, whose unconscious like- 
 ness often comes out in him.
 
 VII 
 
 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 (1856) 
 
 POE 
 
 [First published in Our Corner in 1885. Reprinted in New Essays towards 
 a Critical Method, John Lane, The Bodley Head, London and New York, 
 i8q7. Here printed with the [)ermission and through the courtesy of the 
 John Lane Company. The footnotes, for the most part, belong to the later 
 edition.] • 
 
 Since all literary cases must be periodically rejudged, each gen- 
 eration's opinions on any phase of the past being part of its special 
 relation to things, it is strictly as needless to justify the plea for a 
 fresh trial in any one case as it is vain to deny it. Demurrers have 
 been too often made to leave any difficulty about their rebuttal. 
 Evolution is become a name potent to put down the most obstreper- 
 ous conservative in criticism. It is involved in that law, however, 
 that we shall all of us continue to have our particular leanings, 
 and that some problems will peculiarly appeal to the general mind 
 at given junctures. And while it is part of the here-ensuing argu- 
 ment that less than due hearing as well as less than justice has been 
 granted in the case of Edgar Allan Poe, it is probably true that to- 
 day even more than ever men feel the fascination of the general 
 problem falling under his name. 
 
 Just because of its fascination, indeed, the Poe problem has been 
 less methodically handled than most. Its aspects are so bizarre 
 that critics have been more concerned to declare as much than to 
 sum them up with scientific exactitude. First the ear of the world 
 was won with a biography uny)aralleled in literature for its calcu- 
 lated calumny, a slander so comprehensive and so circumstantial 
 
 126
 
 POE 127 
 
 that to this day perhaps most people who have heard of Poe regard 
 him as what he himself called "that monstriim hurrenditm,^ an 
 unprincipled man of genius," with almost no moral virtue and lack- 
 ing almost no vice. It was an ex-clergyman, Griswold, who 
 launched the legend; and another clergyman, Gilfillan, improved 
 on it to the extent of suggesting that the poet broke his wife's 
 heart so as to be able to write a poem about her. The average 
 mind being, however, a little less ready than the clerical to believe 
 and utter evil, there at length grew up a body of vindication which 
 for instructed readers has displaced the sinister myth of the early 
 records. Vindication, as it happened, began immediately on the 
 publication of Griswold's memoir; only, the slander had the pres- 
 tige of book form, and of the copyright edition of Poe's works, 
 while the defence was at first confined to newspapers; hence an 
 immense start for the former : but at length generous zeal triumphed 
 to the extent of creating an almost stainless effigy of the poet — 
 stainless save for the constitutional flaw which was confessed only 
 to claim for it a human pity, and the faults of tone and temper 
 which came of nervous malady and undue toil. Then there came 
 a reaction, the facts were more closely studied and more unsym- 
 pathetically pronounced upon; the unsleeping ill-will towards the 
 poet's name in his own country still had the literary field and fa- 
 vour, and the last and most ambitious edition of his works is super- 
 vised by a none too friendly critic.^ Good and temperate criticism 
 has been forthcoming between whiles ; but there is still room, one 
 fancies, for an impartial re-statement of the facts. 
 
 "It w^ould seem," writes Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, the Ameri- 
 can poetess, sometime ihe fiancee of Poe, and one of the vindicators 
 of his memory, "it would seem that the true point of view from 
 which his genius should be regarded has yet to be sought." ^ The 
 full force of that observation, perhaps, cannot be felt unless it be 
 read in context with some of the sentences in which Mrs. Whit- 
 man sets forth her own point of view : — 
 
 "Wanting in that supreme central force or faculty of the mind, whose func- 
 tion is a God-conscious and God-adoring faith, Edgar Poe sought earnestly 
 and conscientiously for such solution of the great problems of thought as 
 were alone attainable to an intellect hurled from its balance by the abnormal 
 preponderance of the analytical and imaginative faculties." 
 
 ' [Horrible monster.] 
 
 - This holds true, unfortunately, of the still later complete edition, by Messrs. 
 Stedman and Woodberry. 
 
 ^ Edgar Poe and his Critics, p. 59.
 
 128 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 "These far-wandering comets, not less than 'the regular, calm stars,' 
 obey a law and follow a pathway that has been marked out for them by in- 
 finite Wisdom and essential Love." ^ 
 
 The theism exemplified in these passages appears to be the 
 reigning religion in the United States, and is doubtless common 
 enough everywhere else; and it certainly seems sufficiently clear 
 that for people whose minds oscillate between conceptions of Poe's 
 intellect as hurled from its balance and as wisely guided by a 
 loving God who deprived it of the faculty of God-consciousness — 
 for such people the "true point of view from which his genius should 
 be regarded " must indeed be far to seek. That point of view can 
 hardly be one from which you explain the infinite while perplexed 
 by the finite; it is to be attained not a priori but a posteriori; that 
 is to say, Poe's life and his works have to be studied with an eye, 
 not to discovering a scheme of infinite wisdom, or even to finding a 
 "point of view," but simply to the noting of the facts and the ar- 
 ranging of them. The true point of view is surely that from which 
 you see things. 
 
 Much, of course, depends on methods of observation. At the 
 outset, we are confronted by the facts that Poe's father married 
 imprudently at eighteen, and that the lady was an actress. That is 
 either a mere romantic detail or a very important fact, according 
 as Poe is regarded as an organism or as an immortal soul. Here 
 indeed, the point of view means the seeing or the not seeing of 
 certain facts; but as most people to-day have some little faith in 
 the operation of heredity, it may be assumed that the significance 
 of Poe's parentage is admitted when it is mentioned. Recent inves- 
 tigators have come to the conclusion that David Poe was not merely 
 romantic and reckless, but given to the hard drinking which was so 
 common in the Southern States in his time; and thus, coming of 
 a father of intemperate habits and headlong impulses, and of a 
 mother whose very profession meant excitement and shaken nerves, 
 Poe had before him tremendous probabilities of an erratic career. 
 As fate would have it, the man who adopted the little Edgar on 
 the death of the young parents (they both died of consumption) 
 did everything to aggravate and nothing to counteract the tempera- 
 mental flaws of the life he took in charge, ^^'e know that Edgar's 
 brother, William Henry, who may or may not have been equally 
 ill-managed by the friend who adopted him, turned out a clever 
 scapegrace and died young; but certain it is that Mr. Allan was 
 
 ' Edgar Poe and his Critics, pp. 33-34, 60.
 
 POE 129 
 
 no wise guardian to Edgar. The habits of the house were Southern 
 and convivial; the clever child was petted, flattered, and spoiled; 
 and it seems that Poe might have been made a toper by his sur- 
 roundings even if he had no bias that way. Again, Mr. Allan 
 was rich, and Poe had no prospective necessities of labour, no 
 sense of obligation to be methodical; which makes it the more 
 natural that his later life should be a failure financially, and the 
 more remarkable that he should exhibit unusual powers of close 
 and orderly thought. Finally, the boy's shifting life; his four 
 years' schooling in England (where in the opinion of his teacher, 
 his guardian did him serious harm by giving him too much pocket- 
 money), and later at Richmond; his brief military cadetship at 
 West Point, his headlong trip to Europe, and his year's stay there, 
 of which nothing seems to be now known, and his studentship at 
 the Virginia University — all tended to deprive him of the benefits 
 of habit, which might conceivably have been some safeguard against 
 his hereditary instability ; and at the same time his training tended 
 to develop, though inadequately and at random, his purely intel- 
 lectual powers, while supplying him with no moral guidance worth 
 mentioning. Such a character required the very wisest manage- 
 ment : it had either bad management or none. It was therefore 
 only too natural that the youth should be self-willed and insubor- 
 dinate at West Point, and much given to gambling at college. 
 
 The other side of the picture, however, must be kept in view. 
 While apparently loosely related to life in respect of the normal 
 affections (he seems to have had little communication with his 
 brother, no very strong attachment to his sister, and no attachment 
 to Mr. Allan), he was very far from being the unfeeling and love- 
 less creature he was so long believed to be. He seems to have 
 described himself accurately when he wrote of his uncommon and 
 invariable tenderness to animals ; and the intensity of his affections 
 where they were really called out is revealed by the story of his 
 passionate grief on the death of the lady, the mother of one of his 
 comrades, who befriended him in schoolboyhood. Abnormal in 
 his grief as in the play of all his faculties, and blindly bent even then 
 on piercing the mystery of the sepulchre, the boy passed long night 
 vigils on her grave, clinging, beyond death, to the first being he had 
 learned utterly to love. And an important statement is made as to 
 the manner of his marriage by a lady who knew him and his con- 
 nections well.^ The majority of respectable readers, probably, 
 
 ' Art. "Last Days of E. A. Poe," in Scrihner's Magazine, March, 1878. 
 K
 
 130 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 have regarded Poe's marriage to his beautiful and penniless young 
 cousin as one of his acts of culpable recklessness; but according to 
 the account in question, it was rather a deed of generous devotion. 
 He had acted as a boy tutor to Virginia Clemm in her early child- 
 hood, and when, after his final rupture with Mr. Allan, he went to 
 reside with his aunt,^ the young girl acquired a worship for him. 
 According to this story it was on Mrs. Clemm 's impressing on him, 
 when he contemplated leaving her house after being an inmate for 
 two years, the absolute absorption of the girl in his existence, that 
 he proposed the marriage. She was hardly fourteen, poor child, 
 but she was of the precocious Southern blood, and her youth seems 
 to have made her mother only the more fearful of the effect of 
 separation from her adored cousin. Poe's marriage was on this 
 view an act not of free choice but of prompt generosity. Whatever 
 the truth may be, he was a very good husband. Devoted as she 
 was up to her death, Virginia never gave him the full intellectual 
 companionship he would have sought in a wife; but there is now 
 no pretence that he ever showed her the shadow of unkindness, 
 and it is admitted that in her last days he was tenderness itself. 
 All which is a fair certificate of good domestic disposition, as men 
 and poets go. 
 
 What then was there in Poe's life as a whole to justify detraction ? 
 When the testimony is fully sifted the discreditable charges are 
 found to be : first and chiefly, that he repeatedly gave way to his 
 hereditary vice of alcoholism; secondly, that he committed one 
 lapse from literary integrity; thirdly, that he was often splenetic 
 and sometimes unjust as a critic ; fourthly, that he showed ingrati- 
 tude and enmity to some who befriended him. Setting aside his 
 youthful passionateness and prodigality, that is now the whole 
 serious moral indictment against him. The insinuations and asser- 
 tions of Griswold, to the effect that he committed more than one 
 gross outrage, are found to be either proven false or wholly without 
 proof; and many of the biographer's aspersions on his disposition 
 have been indignantly repudiated by those who knew him well — 
 as Mr. G. R. Graham and Mr. N. P. Willis, both of whom em- 
 ployed him. As for the alleged ingratitude to unnamed friends, 
 it seems only fair to ask whether any such faults, if real, may not 
 
 ' Mr. Ingram says {Life, I, 106-7) that Mrs. Clemm "never did know" where 
 Poe went after the rupture (1831); and that "extant correspondence proves" 
 that Poe did not hve with her in 1831-2, "and, apparently, that he never lived with 
 her until after his marriage."
 
 FOE 131 
 
 be attributed to the havoc ultimately wrought in Poe's delicately 
 balanced temperament by fits of drinking.' Mr. R. H. Stoddard ^ 
 has given an account of some very singular ill-treatment he re- 
 ceived from Poe while the latter edited the Broadway Journal — 
 treatment which at once suggests some degree of cerebral derange- 
 ment on Poe's part; and a story told of his resenting a home- 
 thrust of criticism by a torrent of curses, goes to create the same 
 impression. This was in his latter years, at a time when a thimble- 
 ful of sherry could excite him almost to frenzy, and when, accord- 
 ing to one hostile writer, he had developed incurable cerebral dis- 
 ease. Setting aside the question of his fairness as a critic, which 
 will be discussed further on, there remains to be considered his one 
 alleged deflection from literary honesty. He did publish under his 
 own name a manual of Conchology which apparently incorporated, 
 without acknowledgment, passages from a work by Captain Brown 
 published in Glasgow; and it is alleged by Griswold, and imphed 
 by Mr. Stoddard, that the American book is substantially based on 
 Brown's. But there is really no proof of anything like important 
 plagiarism, and the slightness of the evidence is very suggestive 
 of a weak case. Mr. Stoddard, who exhibits a distinct and not 
 altogether unnatural bias against his subject, prints parallel pas- 
 sages which do seemingly amount to "conveyance " ; but he unjus- 
 tifiably omits to answer the statement on the other side, that the 
 Manual of Conchology was compiled under the supervision of Pro- 
 fessor Wyatt; that Poe contributed largely to it; that the pub- 
 lishers accordingly wished to use his popular name on the title-page; 
 and that, finally, the book, though corresponding in part to Brown's 
 because avowedly based, like that, on the system of Lamarck, 
 is essentially an independent compilation. Such is the statement 
 of Professor Wyatt, and the matter ought to be easily settled.^ 
 What Mr. Stoddard does is to convey the impression that Poe 
 copied wholesale, though only a few appropriations are cited. 
 Now, whereas naked appropriation of another man's ideas in his 
 own wording, in a work of ostensibly original reasoning or imagina- 
 tion, must be pronounced a serious act of literary dishonesty, the 
 
 ' In the memoir prefixed to the last edition of Poe's works, it is stated that he 
 resorted at times to opium as well as to alcohol; and this seems likely enough. In 
 that case there would be all the more risk of bad effects on character. 
 
 2 In his memoir in Widdleton's ed. of Poe, 1880. 
 
 ^ See, on this and all other matters concerning Poe, the Life by John H. Ingram, 
 a work of painstaking vindication which earns the gratitude of every one interested 
 in Poe. The American Life, by W. Gill, is mainly compiled from it.
 
 132 
 
 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 incorporation of some one else's paragraphs or sentences is so com- 
 mon a practice among scientific and other compilers, that it may 
 reasonably be classed as a conventionally innocent proceeding, 
 not even to be likened to those innumerable acts of lax morality 
 in commerce for which it is almost idle to denounce any offender 
 singly. In any case, Poe never pretended to be doing anything 
 more than a compilation, and he had a colleague in the work. For 
 the rest, there is ample evidence as to his scrupulous honesty 
 and fidelity in his relations with his literary employers; and it is 
 not recorded that he ever inflicted loss on any man, any more than 
 unkindness on those about him. We sum up, then, that Poe's 
 mental and moral balance, delicate by inheritance, was injured by 
 the drinking habits into which he repeatedly relapsed ; but that his 
 constitution was such that what was to others extremely moderate 
 indulgence could be for him disastrous excess. 
 
 Now, it might be argued with almost irresistible force that such 
 a case as this is one for pity and not for blame — that a man of 
 Poe's heredity and obvious predisposition to brain disease is to be 
 looked on in the same spirit as is one who suffers from downright 
 hereditary insanity. But, seeing it may be replied that all vices 
 are similarly the result of hereditary and brain conditions, and that 
 we should either blame all offenders to whom we allow freedom of 
 action, or none, I am inclined to rest the defence of Poe on a some- 
 what different basis ; and to substitute for a deprecatory account 
 of his moral disadvantages the assertion that morally he compares 
 favourably with the majority of his fellow-creatures. Whether 
 that is either a vain paradox or a piece of cynicism let the reader 
 judge. 
 
 It is, one sees, the habit of most people, in judging of any char- 
 acter in favour of which they are not prejudiced, to try it by the 
 standard of an imaginary personage who is without any serious 
 fault. The strength of this disposition can be seen at any per- 
 formance of a melodrama in a theatre, the great body of the au- 
 dience being obviously in strong sympathy with virtues of which 
 there is reason to doubt their own general possession ; and strongly 
 hostile even to vices which they may fairly be presumed in many 
 cases to share. In the phrase of Montesquieu, "mankind, although 
 reprobates in detail, are always moralists in gross." As for the 
 general disposition to condemn the vices we are not inclined to, 
 that may be dismissed as a commonplace. And yet it is one of the 
 rarest things to find these facts recognized in conduct. A rational
 
 POE 133 
 
 moral code is hardly ever to be met with. Intemperance — to 
 bring the question to the concrete — may be reduced in common 
 with most other vices to an admitted lack of self-control ; but it is 
 clearly blamed for some other reason than that it evidences such 
 a defect. If a man or woman falls hopelessly in love, however 
 abject be the loss of self-command, the average outsider never 
 thinks of calling the enamoured one vicious merely on account of 
 the extremity of the passion. That, on the contrary, is regarded 
 by many people as rather a fine thing. If, again, a man is either 
 extremely selfish or extremely prodigal, while he may be censured 
 for his fault, he is still held to be less blamable than the mere in- 
 temperate drinker. Sometimes the censure passed on the latter is 
 justified on the score that his vice impoverishes others ; but this is 
 not always so ; and in any case the selfish or ill-natured man and the 
 spendthrift may do equal injury to the happiness of others. The 
 truth is that the revulsion against the drunkard's vice arises from a 
 keen sense of the physical degradation it works in its subject ; and 
 how strong and how instinctive this is can be told by many men 
 who have contemplated in helpless fury the excesses of relatives 
 or dear friends. In these cases severe blame may be justified by 
 the feeling that the keenest reprobation is necessary to sting the 
 drunkard into moral reaction; but it would be difficult to show 
 that when a man is dead it is equitable or reasonable to apply the 
 same degree of blame to him in reckoning his relation to his fellows. 
 All criticism of dead celebrities should be regulated by two con- 
 siderations: first, the risk or absence of risk that omission to cen- 
 sure for certain faults may encourage the living to repeat them; 
 second, the need or otherwise for resisting any tendency to blame 
 certain faults unduly. I confess I can see no other safe or rational 
 principle on which to apply, in moral criticism of the dead, the 
 general law that men's actions are the outcome of their antecedents 
 and environment. If so much be conceded, it must be allowed 
 that there is no more need to-day to denounce Poe for his unhappy 
 vice than to asperse Charles Lamb — which Carlyle, however, 
 has done with the self-righteousness of the chief of Pharisees. No- 
 body is likely to be encouraged in tippling by the fact that we speak 
 with tender pity of Lamb's failing. The query — 
 
 Who wouldn't take to drink if drink'U 
 Make a man like Rip Van Winkle ? 
 
 is not serious.
 
 134 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 No one in these days, indeed, does think it necessary to pass 
 damnatory sentence on Lamb ; ' and the difference between the 
 ordinary judgments on Lamb and Poe is a striking sample of the 
 capriciousness of average morahty. Lamb's weakness for gin is 
 regarded as morally on a level with his poor sister's chronic homi- 
 cidal mania; and of course, strictly speaking, his misfortune was 
 as much a matter of cerebral constitution as hers. But surely if 
 Mary Lamb is to be spoken of with pure pity for that during a fit 
 of madness she caused the death of her beloved mother, and cer- 
 tainly if Charles is to be similarly pitied, we are committed to speak- 
 ing gently of such a case as Poe's. Yet people whose feeling for 
 Lamb is entirely affectionate speak of Poe with austere disapproval ; 
 and I cannot but think that the explanation of this and much other 
 asperity towards Poe's memory is the singular quality of his literary 
 work, especially of his tales. It has been remarked a hundred 
 times that these are unique in literature in their almost complete 
 destitution in the moral element, commonly so-called. They are 
 one and all studies either of peculiar incident, intellectual processes, 
 or strange idiosyncrasy; and the ordinary reader, accustomed in 
 fiction to a congenial atmosphere of moral feeling, and to judicial 
 contrasts of character such as he sees and makes in actual life, 
 becomes chilled and daunted in the eerie regions to which Poe car- 
 ries him. The common result seems to be the conclusion that the 
 story-teller was lacking in moral feeling; and though every one 
 does not give effect to his conclusion as the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan did, 
 such a conviction is of course not compatible with sympathy. How 
 crudely and cruelly people can act on such semi-instinctive and 
 unreasoned judgments is shown in the correspondence between 
 Mrs. Whitman and Poe during the period of their engagement. 
 "You do not love me," writes Poe passionately, "or you would 
 have felt too thorough a sympathy with the sensitiveness of my 
 nature to have so wounded me as you have done with this terrible 
 passage of your letter —   ' How often I have heard it said of you. He 
 has great intellectual power, but no principle — no moral sense.'" 
 One is disposed to echo the first clause; but the blow which Poe 
 feels so acutely is only one of those moral stupidities of which 
 naturally tender-hearted women are capable precisely because 
 their moral and afifectional sensibilities at times overbalance their 
 
 ' Mr. Birrcll, in his essay on Charles Lamb (Obiter Dicta, 2d series, p. 22q), 
 generously exclaims against some who do bestow on Lamb an odious pity. Save 
 in the case of Carlyle, I had not before seen any trace of this.
 
 FOE 135 
 
 common sense. Nothing could be more witlessly and inexcusably 
 cruel, and at the same time nothing could be more absurd ; for if 
 Poe really were without principle any protests of his to the contrary 
 could be worth nothing; and if the accusation were false he had 
 been ruthlessly insulted to no purpose; but the cruelty was prob- 
 ably unconscious, or nearly so. Poor Mrs. Whitman wrote, as 
 lovers will, to extract an assurance which could have no value in 
 the eye of reason, but which emotion craved; for the moment 
 half believing what she said, but wishing to be disabused of her 
 suspicion by a passionate denial. That she obtained. The most 
 fortunate thing for a man so impeached would be the pos- 
 session of a strong sense of humour, though that might involve 
 a coolness of head which would jeopardize the amour. But 
 poor Poe, wounded as he was, took God to witness that "With 
 the exception of some follies and excesses, which I bitterly la- 
 ment, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, and 
 which are hourly committed by others without attracting any no- 
 tice whatever, I can call to mind no act of my life which would 
 bring a blush to my cheek — or to yours." And after alluding 
 to the malignant attacks that had been made on him, for one of 
 which he brought a successful libel action, and the enmity he had 
 set up by his uncompromising criticisms, he cries : "And you know 
 all this — you ask ivhy I have enemies. . . . Forgive me if there 
 be bitterness in my tone." On which Mr. Ingram warmly com- 
 ments that the man who wrote so must have been sincere. It is 
 hardly necessary to urge it. Mrs. Whitman did but echo the idle 
 verdict of conventional minds on an abnormal nature. With 
 fuller knowledge she wrote after his death that, "so far from being 
 selfish or heartless, his devotional fidelity to the memory of those 
 he loved would by the world be regarded as fanatical ; " ^ and all 
 the evidence goes to show that, whatever were his faults of taste 
 as a critic, his moral attitude to his fellow-creatures was that of 
 one who was, as he claims for himself, quixotically high-minded. 
 The truth is, an extensive fallacy underlies the aversion which 
 many people have for Poe — the fallacy, namely, of assuming 
 that a large share of what is vaguely called moral or human senti- 
 ment, in an author or in any one else, implies a security for right 
 feeling or conduct; and that the absence of such sentiment from 
 an author's fiction, or from any one's talk, implies a tendency to 
 wrong-doing. And the same fallacy, I think, lurks under the ob- 
 
 • Edgar Poe and his Critics, p. 48.
 
 136 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 servation that Poe's mind, if not immoral, was non-moral. The 
 assumption in question is a sentimentality that is discredited by 
 accurate observation of life. We know, as a matter of fact, that 
 Poe's attachments, once fprmed, were deep and intensely faithful; 
 nothing, for instance, could be closer or lovelier than the tie 
 between him and Mrs. Clemm : and his sensitiveness was extreme 
 where his affections were concerned, though his friendly employer 
 Willis speaks of him as a man who in his business life "never 
 smiled or spoke a propitiatory or deprecating word." In fact, 
 if Poe's private life be compared with that of Hawthorne before the 
 latter's marriage, Poe will seem the man of domestic and sociable 
 tendencies, and the other a loveless egoist. His son-in-law tells 
 us that Hawthorne had very little intercourse with his mother and 
 sisters while living in the same house with them, and that he fre- 
 quently had his meals left for him at his locked door.^ Southey, 
 too, saw little of his family. Yet no one shivers over Hawthorne 
 and Southey as minds without hearts. 
 
 To return, in a perfectly dispassionate spirit, to Lamb, we see 
 that his wealth of kindly sympathy did not save him from alcohol- 
 ism; and it could easily be shown that a great many moralists 
 have been either gravely immoral characters or unamiable and 
 variously objectionable. Many of us have never been able to re- 
 gard Dante as a satisfactory personality, with his irrational and 
 capriciously cruel code and his general inhumanity; and a good 
 many will agree that Carlyle, who was always moralizing, was prone 
 to gross injustice, and presents a rather mixed moral spectacle 
 in his own life. The slight on Poe's moral nature was first pub- 
 lished by the sentimental Griswold, who is proved to have been a 
 peculiarly mean and malignant slanderer;^ and the moral Mr. 
 Gilfillan invented a gross calumny. Run down the list of men of 
 genius of modern times who have discussed conduct and human 
 nature, and you will find an extremely large proportion against 
 whom could be charged blemishes of character and conduct from 
 
 ' Mr. Henry James's Hawthorne, p. 38, citing Mr. Lathrop. 
 
 ^ Of Griswold Mr. Ingram writes {Academy, October 13, 1883) that he "bore 
 too unsavoury a character for public examination ; but those interested in the sub- 
 ject may be referred to his own account (in the British Museum) why he repudiated 
 his second wife. Thackeray, having proved him a liar, told him so publicly, 
 and would not touch his proffered hand; while Dickens convicted him of fraud, 
 and made his employers pay for it." Poe's review of Griswold's Poets and Poetry 
 of America shows (imprudently enough) the small esteem in which he held his fu- 
 ture biographer, who seems to have made or kept up his acquaintance in order 
 to retaliate for the critique in question.
 
 POE ' 137 
 
 which Poe was free. The ferocity and fanaticism of Dante, the 
 grossness of Chaucer, the hard marital selfishness of Milton, 
 the brutality of Luther, the boorishness of Johnson, the ripe self- 
 love of Wordsworth, the malice of Pope, the egoism of Goethe, 
 the murky and selfish spleen of Carlyle, the bigotry of Southey 
 
 — all these are repellent and anti-social qualities which cannot be 
 charged against Edgar Poe. In short, the ideal man of lively 
 moral feeling and entirely beneficent conduct, by contrast with 
 whom Poe is seen to be an incomplete human being, has never 
 existed in flesh and blood; and if we take the rational course of 
 striking an average of poor humanity we shall find, as before sub- 
 mitted, that our subject does not fall below it. We may even go 
 further. In regard to the widespread and false notion that Poe 
 was a libertine, we may indorse the assertion of Mr. Stedman 
 "that professional men and artists, in spite of a vulgar belief to the 
 contrary, are purity itself compared with men engaged in business, 
 and idle men of the world." ^ Let us in fairness confess that the 
 average man or woman is likely to be one or other of these things 
 
 — narrow, or bigoted, or cowardly, or fickle, or mean, or gross, 
 or faithless, or coldly selfish, or disingenuous, or hard, or slander- 
 ous, or recklessly unjust; though one or other of these qualities 
 may coexist with generosity, or philanthropy, or probity. If we 
 recognize so much, we shall cease to sermonize on Poe's failings; 
 and proceed rather to consider how rare and how fine his work was. 
 
 Yet another fallacy, however — to call it by no worse name — 
 blocks for some the way to a sound appreciation. One American 
 critic,^ appealing to the prevailing dislike of Poe in the States, has 
 grounded a sweeping depreciation of his work on the proposition 
 that he was subject to brain epilepsy. On that head, clearly, there 
 is no need for friendlier people to wish to make out a negative. 
 To begin with, there is independent and unprejudiced testimony 
 that Poe suffered from a brain trouble ; and whether or not that 
 trouble was cerebral epilepsy is a question of detail chiefly impor- 
 tant to thoughtful speciaUsts. During the serious illness which fell 
 on Poe after his wife's death, Mrs. Clemm's nursing labours were 
 shared by a true and valued friend of the little family, Mrs. Marie 
 Louise Shew, who was a doctor's only daughter, and had received 
 a medical education ; and this lady has written as follows : — 
 
 * Edgar Allan Poe, p. 92. 
 • 2 Writing in Scribner's Magazine, Vol. X, 1875.
 
 138 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 "I made my diagnosis, and went to the great Dr. Mott with it. I told him 
 that at best, when Mr. Poe was well, his pulse beat only ten regular beats, 
 after which it suspended, or intermitted (as doctors say). I decided that in his 
 best health he had lesion of one side of the brain, and as he could not bear 
 stimulants or tonics, without producing insanity, I did not feel much hope that 
 he could be raised up from brain fever brought on by extreme suffering of 
 mind and body — actual want and hunger and cold having been borne by 
 this heroic husband in order to supply food, medicine, and comforts to his 
 dying wife — until exhaustion and lifelessness were so near at every reaction 
 of the fever that even sedatives had to be administered withextreme caution.'" ' 
 
 The latter details may be noted as telling us something of Poe's 
 moral nature ; the diagnosis as a fairly decisive deliverance on the 
 brain question, especially when taken in connection with other 
 medical evidence, and testimonies as to the startling effect of a 
 mouthful of sherry or even a glass of beer on Poe at times. There 
 is altogether good reason to hold that his brain was diseased. But 
 what then ? To say nothing of the well-worn saw that great wits 
 have their place near the region of madness, biologists ^ have told 
 us that cerebral and other disease may intelligibly be and has 
 actually been a cause of exceptional intellectual capacity.^ What 
 of Cuvier's hydrocephalus and Keats's precocious maturity ? Even 
 scrofula, and worse affections than that, have been maintained or 
 surmised to promote cerebration: the formula being that certain 
 conditions which are pathologically classed as morbid are psycho- 
 logically important though impermanent variations. Cromwell's 
 inner life has phenomena in some points analogous to Poe's ; and 
 if it comes to epilepsy, we have to reckon with a confident classifica- 
 tion of Mahomet among that order of sufferers. Lamb was for 
 a time in his youth actually insane. But why multiply cases? In 
 what other instance has it been proposed to make light of a man's 
 mental achievements because his brain is known to have been 
 flawed? I am not aware that any deliberate attempt was ever 
 made to belittle what merits Cowper has, because of his affliction; 
 or that Comte's serious antagonists have ever given countenance to 
 a condemnation of his philosophy as a whole on the strength of his 
 fit of alienation, even though mad enough passages can easily be 
 
 j * Ingram's Lije oj Poe, II, 115. 
 
 ^ This was written before the thesis of "the insanity of genius" had become 
 popular. 
 
 ^ The assailant knows as much, for he cites Dr. Maudsley as "very positive in 
 his opinion that the world is indebted for a great part of its originality, and for 
 certain special forms of intellect, to individuals who . . . have sprung from fami- 
 lies in which there is some predisposition to epileptic insanity." But the attack 
 is as destitute of coherence as of justice and fitness of tone.
 
 POE 139 
 
 cited from his works. It has been left for an American, writing 
 almost unchallenged by the literary class in Poe's native land, to 
 proceed from an argument that Poe was an epileptic to a monstrous 
 corollary of unmeasured detraction from almost every species of 
 credit he has ever received.' Baudelaire, discussing Griswold's 
 biography, asked whether in America they have no law against 
 letting curs into the cemeteries: and it is hardly going too far to say 
 that this latest attack on a great memory would never have had 
 even a hearing in a well-ordered literary republic. To discuss 
 it in detail would be to concede too much ; but I have thought it 
 well to cite the attack with the note that not only has no adequate 
 recognition been given in America to Poe's intellectual eminence 
 (I exclude the friendly memoirs and vindications), but this ex- 
 travagantly wrong-headed denial of it secures the vogue due to a 
 true estimate. 
 
 The ill-meant aspersion, let us hope, will after all make for a 
 kindlier feeling, among those at least whose good-will a man of 
 letters need wish to have for his memory. In any case, it is in- 
 credible that any literary reputation should be forever measured 
 on such principles as those above glanced at. Whatever be the 
 whole explanation of the treatment Poe has received in his own 
 country, whether it be his small affinity to the national life or the 
 abundance of the ill-will he aroused by pitiless criticism of small 
 celebrities, criticism in the States must needs come in time to the 
 temperate study of his work and his endowment on their merits. 
 What follows is an attempt in that direction. 
 
 1 To show how far malice may go astray in reasoning from misfortune to de- 
 merit, it may be worth while to point to the absolute failure of this writer's attempt 
 to make Poe's brain trouble a means of discrediting his work. Poe, he tells us, 
 passed through three psychological periods: the first, one in which he "seems to 
 depend for artistic effect on minuteness of detail," as in the Descent into the Mael- 
 strom, The Gold Bug, the Case of Monsieur Valdeniar, and Hans Pfaall ("imitated," 
 says the writer, with his usual culpable inaccuracy, "from the Moon Hoax"); 
 the second, a time of predilection for minute analysis, such as is shown in The 
 Mystery of Marie Roget ; and the third, a spell of morbid introspection, producing 
 such tales as The Fall of the House of Usher. Now, what are the facts ? The last- 
 mentioned story was published in 1839; Ligeia — a story in the same "morbid" 
 taste — in 1838; Berenice, Morella, ancl Shadow, all productions of the weird order, 
 in 1835; Silence in 1838; and the eminently introspective tale of William Wilson 
 in 1839; while The Facts in the Case of M. Vaidcmar appeared in 1845; The 
 Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841, and Marie Roget in 1842. Thus we have the 
 works of "morbid introspection" before the specifically cited studies in minute de- 
 tail and minute analysis — the Usher story before the Marie Roget and the Valde- 
 mar; and such a production as Morella almost contemporary with Hans Pfaall. 
 The theor\' of development breaks down at every point.
 
 I40 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 II 
 
 It is worthy of note that fully nine-tenths of the criticism passed 
 on Poe, appreciative and otherwise, has been directed to his small 
 body of poetry. The fact serves at once to prove the one-sidedness 
 of the average literary man and the range of Poe's power. He had 
 a working knowledge of astronomy, of navigation, of mechanics, 
 and of physics; he certainly compiled a manual of conchology, 
 and had at least dipped into entomology; he could work out 
 ciphers in half a dozen languages ; he delighted in progressions of 
 close and sustained reasoning; he had a decided capacity for logic 
 and philosophy; he eagerly followed and easily assimilated, or 
 even in part anticipated, the modern physical theories of the uni- 
 verse ; he was a keen and scientific literary critic ; and in addition 
 to all this he produced some of the most remarkable imaginative 
 writing and some of the finest poetry of the century. But his 
 critics have been, with very few exceptions, men of purely literary 
 equipment; verse-writers and bellettrists and story-tellers, who 
 judge only verse and prose and character. Sharing their depriva- 
 tions, I have gone through most of their writings on the watch for 
 an estimate of the scientific and constructive capacity shown in 
 certain of the Tales, and have found an almost unanimous and 
 doubtless judicious silence on the subject. An occasional non- 
 committal phrase about the Eureka, and a few generalities on the 
 scientific element in the Tales, represent the critical commentary 
 on the ratiocinative side of Poe's intellect. Now, to treat his verse 
 as his most significant product is to ignore half his remarkableness, 
 and to miss those kinds of strength and eminence in his mind which 
 most effectively outweigh the flaws of his character and the occa- 
 sional exorbitances of his judgment. Save in his own country, 
 indeed, the Tales have had popular recognition enough. Poe's 
 countrymen never bought up Griswold's edition of his works, and 
 have till quite recently been without a complete collection of them; 
 but Mr. Gill has calculated that while the poems are five-fold 
 more popular in England than in America, the stories are even 
 more widely admired among us ; and they have been thoroughly 
 naturalized in France in a complete and admirable translation, 
 chiefly by Baudelaire; besides being reproduced to a greater or 
 less extent in nearly every other European language. Seeing that 
 they were eagerly read on their first appearance in America, it
 
 POE 141 
 
 must be assumed that, as Mr. Gill suggests, the public there 
 were scared ofif by Griswold's slanders and the consequent myth. 
 But if, with all this European vogue for the Tales, critics continue 
 to descant chiefly on the poetry, the inference as to its impressive 
 quality is irresistible. 
 
 Perhaps by reason of the sub-rational tendency to disparage 
 specially an author of one's own country who is loudly praised by 
 foreigners, some living American writers have spoken with absolute 
 contempt of Poe's poetry. Mr. Henry James, for instance, has a 
 strange phrase about his "very valueless verses";^ and Mr. 
 Stoddard's strongest feeling in the matter appears to be an aversion 
 to the refrains — perhaps not an unnatural attitude towards Poe 
 on the part of a critic who believes a poet may have too much art. 
 In these circumstances it may still be expedient to follow Mr. 
 Stedman in bearing witness to the quality of Poe's poetry. It is 
 perhaps true, as has been said by Oliver Wendell Holmes, that 
 there is almost no poet between whose best and worst verse there 
 is a wider disparity; but that is rather by reason of the fineness of 
 the good than of the badness of the bad ; and the latter, in any case, 
 consists simply of the long poems of Poe's youth — Al Aaraaf, 
 Tamerlane, and the Scenes from Politian. Mr. Lang, in editing 
 the whole, has not scrupled to indicate his feeling that these are 
 hardly worth reading; and while one feels that in that view per- 
 haps the proper course were not to edit them, so much may be 
 conceded. In regard to some of the successful poems, again, 
 there is to be reckoned with the disenchanting effect of extreme 
 popularity; an influence of the most baffling sort, often blurring 
 one's critical impression in a way for which there is hardly any 
 remedy. The choicest air, as it had once seemed, may be made to 
 acquire associations of the barrel organ; and it may ultimately 
 become a fine question whether it was not a vice in it to be so asso- 
 ciate. One may brazen out one's early attachment, as, I fancy, 
 Mr. Arnold did when he lately insisted that Lucy Gray was a 
 "beautiful success " ; but when loyalty to an old opinion is justified 
 merely by its survival, criticism is turned out of doors. So that, 
 lest we are insidiously led into committing the unpardonable 
 
 1 In the essay on Baudelaire in the volume French Poets and Novelists, ed. 1878, 
 p. 76. Since this essay was first printed I find that in the Tauchnitz edition of his 
 book Mr. James has altered "valueless" to "superficial." I let my criticism 
 {infra) stand as it was written, only pointing out that the change of epithet is sig- 
 nificant of weakness of ground, and that the second form is even worse than the 
 first. When was verse so aspersed before?
 
 142 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 critical sin of certificating popular poetry by its popularity, it will 
 be well to consider brielly in the concrete the merits of Tlie Raven. 
 Many of us, I suspect, have at one time developed a suspicion 
 that that much-recited work is not poetry of the first order ; and the 
 suspicion is deepened when we reflect that the distinction of learn- 
 ing it by heart in our youth was conferred on it in common with 
 other works as to which there can now be no critical dubiety. 
 It is difficult to gainsay ISIr. Lang when he impugns its right, and 
 that of Lenore, to the highest poetical honours: both poems, like 
 The Bells, have a certain smell of the lamp, an air of compilation, 
 a suspicion of the inorganic. And yet a studious rereading of 
 The Raven may awaken some remorse for such detractions. Not 
 only has it that impressiveness of central conception which is 
 never lacking in Poe's serious work, but it is really a memorable 
 piece of technique. It is hardly possible to say where inspiration 
 lacks and mechanism intervenes: the poem is an effective unity. 
 Some hold that the touches of plagiarism — the "uncertain " sound 
 of the "purple curtain," and the collocation of "desolate" and 
 "desert land," both echoes from Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine^ 
 — serve to discredit the whole ; but that is surely false criticism. 
 The problem is, whether the appropriations are assimilated; and 
 they clearly are. Mrs. Browning herself expressed the com- 
 manding individuality of the work in the phrase "this power 
 which is felt." The poem has that distinctive attribute of most of 
 Poe's writing, the pregnancy of idea, the compulsive imagination 
 which fascinates and dominates the reader. One feels behind it 
 a creative and sustaining power, a power as of absolute intellect. 
 To feel specifically the impact of this influence, let the reader com- 
 pare the poem as a whole with Lady Gcraldine's Courtship, and 
 note how, ample as is the poetess's gift of speech, choice as are 
 her harmonies, and fortunate as are many of her lines, there is 
 yet a something spasmodic and convulsive pervading the whole, 
 a tone of passionate weakness, in full keeping with the hysterical 
 character of the girlish hero, which gives a quite fatal emphasis to 
 the frequent lapses of expression, these seeming to belong to weak- 
 ness and slovenliness; while in reading The Raven there is hardly 
 for a moment room for a disrespectful sensation. The imperious 
 
 1 One of the disputed points as to which there should never have been any 
 dispute is the question of priority in these passages. One critic, who imputes 
 phigiarisms to Poe, brusquely asserts that Mrs. Browning was the imitator. The 
 plain facts are that her poem was published in 1844, and Poe's in 1845, 'i"^ that 
 Poe admired her poetry greatly.
 
 POE 143 
 
 brain of the "maker," as the old vernacular would straightfor- 
 wardly name him, stamps its authority on every line; and the 
 subtle sense of the artist's puissance remains unaffected by the 
 despairing avowal of the conclusion. The speaker may sink 
 prostrate, but the poem is never shaken in its serene movement 
 and marble firmness of front. It has "cette extraordinaire eleva- 
 tion, cette exquise delicatesse, cet accent d'immortaUte qu' Edgar 
 Poe exige de la Muse," ^ remarked on by Baudelaire ; and nothing 
 in the poem is more remarkable than the Apollonian impunity 
 with which the poet is able to relax and coUoquialize his phraseol- 
 ogy. Mrs. Browning could not venture without disaster on such 
 an infusion of realism into idealism as the "Sir, said I, or Madam," 
 and "the fact is, I was napping:" her Pegasus, in view of his 
 habitual weakness of knee, would be felt to have stumbled in such 
 a line as : — 
 
 " Though its answer Httle meaning, little relevancy bore" — 
 
 where Poe sweeps us over by his sheer unswerving intentness on his 
 theme. The explanation seems to be that the writer himself is 
 without apparent consciousness of artistic fallibility — that he is 
 pure intellect addressing an abstract reader; and that, as he never 
 seems to strain after words, he has a regal air of having said pre- 
 cisely what should be said; so that when we read of "a stately 
 raven of the saintly days of yore," we hesitate to impugn the fitness 
 of the term. What, then, is it in The Raven that takes it out of 
 the first rank of poetry ? Well, then, first, the admixture of simple 
 oddity, which is disallowed by Poe's own law that poetry is the 
 "rhythmical creation of beauty"; and, second, the decomposa- 
 bilit'y of the structure at two points, namely, the factitious rustling 
 of the curtains, which have no business to rustle, and the falhng 
 of the shadow, which has no right to fall.^ These touches are 
 "willed"; and, on reflection, have the effect of obtruding their 
 art upon us ; whereas the perfect poem must seem homogeneous 
 and inevitably what it is. It is sometimes argued that the 
 very continuity and clearness of the tale in themselves vitiate 
 the work, as dispelling true glamour; and assuredly, though 
 
 1 [That extraordinan' elevation, that exquisite delicacy, that accent of immor- 
 talitv which Edgar Poe demands of the Muse.] 
 
 2'Poe, in a letter given by Mr. Ingram (Life, I, 275), says his idea about the 
 light was "the bracket candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the 
 door and bust, as is often seen in the English palaces ( !), and even in some of 
 the better houses of New York." It will not do.
 
 144 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 it is made apparently certain by Poe's own avowal that The 
 Genesis of the Raven was a hoax/ there can be little doubt that 
 the poem was most carefully put together. But to depreciate a 
 work of art on such a ground as that is a quite illicit proceeding. 
 Results must be judged on their merits. And, indeed, the mere 
 flaws in the rationale of the piece, scarcely perceptible as they are, 
 would not in themselves suffice to invalidate it, any more than the 
 clear flaw in the logic of the second-last stanza of Keats's Ode to 
 the Nightingale discredits that : they do but accentuate the force 
 of the objection to the un-elevated though still dignified tone of the 
 stanzas and the consequent narrative stamp on the whole. But 
 even in making these admissions, the lover of verse must insist 
 on the singular power of the composition; which remains more 
 extraordinary than much other work that is more strictly success- 
 ful. Poe's second-best verse has a distinction of its own. 
 
 If, then. The Raven is thus dismissed ; and if, as must needs be, 
 Lenore is pronounced a piece of brilliant mosaic, and The Bells 
 is classed as a fine piece of literary architecture rather than a poetic 
 creation, we shall have left but a small body of work from which 
 to choose our specimens of Poe's fine poetry. But what remains 
 will serve. Poe never professed to make poetry his main aim, or 
 even an aim at all: it was his "passion"; and what is here con- 
 tended is that, many-sided as he was, he had a poetic faculty of the 
 highest kind, among other powers which few or no other poets have 
 possessed. The decisive credentials of perfect poetry are an or- 
 ganic oneness of substance, that substance being of a purer essence 
 than ordinary speech; a quality of meaning which pierces to the 
 sense without the methodic specification of prose; and a charm of 
 rhythm and phrase which is a boon in itself, permanently recog- 
 nizable as such apart from any truth enclosed. These, broadly 
 speaking, are the "values" of poetry; and he who says Poe's 
 verse is valueless must, I think, be adjudged to be without the poetic 
 sense. Mr. James must presumably have meant one of two things : 
 either that Poe's poetry conveys no moral teachings or descriptions 
 of life and scenery — these constituting the "valuable" element in 
 poetry for those to whom its special qualities do not appeal — or 
 that its art is commonplace. The first objection need only be con- 
 ceived to be dismissed ; the second, supposing it to have been 
 that intended, which I doubt, would need no answer beyond a few 
 quotations. Among Poe's early poems is one To Helen, which he is 
 ' Professor Minto, however, declined to believe that it really was so.
 
 POE 145 
 
 said to have represented as being composed when he was fourteen, 
 the Helen, on that view, being supposed to be the lady, mother of 
 his school friend, who was kind to the boy, and whose death he so 
 passionately mourned. In view at once of Poe's habit of mysti- 
 fication and of the nature of the poem, I cannot believe that is the 
 true account of the matter. The verses are not those of a boy of 
 fourteen. But they were undoubtedly written in Poe's teens, and 
 I cite them as constituting one of the most ripely perfect and spir- 
 itually charming poems ever written at that or any age : — 
 
 "Helen, thy beauty is to me 
 
 Like those Niccean barks of yore 
 Which gently, o'er a perfumed sea, 
 The weary, way-worn wanderer bore 
 To his own native shore. 
 
 " On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
 
 Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 
 Thy Naiad airs have brought me home, 
 
 To the glory that was Greece, 
 And ' the grandeur that was Rome. 
 
 " Lo ! in yon brilliant window niche, 
 How statue -like I see thee stand. 
 Thy agate lamp within thy hand — 
 Ah, Psyche ! from the regions which 
 Are Holy Land!" 
 
 Merely to credit these verses with "Horatian elegance," as some 
 admiring critics have done, is to render them scant justice. They 
 have not only Horace's fastidiousness of touch (with perhaps the 
 single reservation of the unluckily hackneyed "classic face") but 
 the transfiguring aerial charm of pure poetry, which is not in 
 Horace's line. The two closing lines of the middle stanza have 
 passed into the body of choice distillations of language reserved for 
 immortality; and there is assuredly nothing more exquisite in its 
 kind in English literature than the last stanza. To have written 
 such verses is to have done a perfect thing. Turn next to The 
 Haunted Palace, an experiment in the perilous field of poetic 
 
 > Some editions read "To the grandeur." I simply follow that reading which 
 best pleases me. It is interesting to know, by the way, that these famous lines, in 
 the edition of 1831, ran thus: — 
 
 "To the beauty of fair Greece 
 And the grandeur of old Rome." 
 
 What a transmutation 1 
 L
 
 146 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 allegory. What poet had before essayed that with perfect success ? 
 I will not venture to say that no one has; but I can call to mind no 
 instance. According to Griswold, The Haunted Palace is a pla- 
 giarism from Longfellow's Beleaguered City,^ a futile imputation, 
 which only serves to help us to a fuller recognition of Poe's success. 
 Personally, I have a certain tenderness for The Beleaguered City 
 as being one of the first imaginative poems that impressed my 
 boyhood; but no prejudice of that sort can hinder any one from 
 seeing that the poem is vitiated by its nugatory didacticism — 
 the fatal snare of the allegorist. Mr. James, in his Hawthorne, 
 appears to think (though this is not clear) that he has caught Poe 
 condemning himself in a critical declaration against allegory; 
 but I suspect the inconsistency is more apparent than real. Poe 
 almost never, so far as I can see, uses allegory for the purpose of 
 sustaining a thesis, which is the thing he objects to. The generic 
 difference between the allegory of The Haunted Palace and that of 
 The Beleaguered City is that the latter is a kind of confused ser- 
 mon, while the other is a pure artistic creation — a changing vision 
 projected for its own sake and yoked to no "moral." Didactic 
 poetry there may be, in a happy imposition of poetic quality on a 
 moral truth, which ordinarily gravitates towards prose; but to 
 make allegory pointedly didactic is deliberately to impose prose on 
 the poetic, and this Poe never does in his poetry proper. He simply 
 limns his image and leaves it, a thing of uncontaminated art. The 
 Haunted Palace is the allegory of a brain once of royal power, 
 shrined in noble features, but at length become a haunt of mad- 
 ness — a half-conscious allusion, perhaps, to the poet's own dark 
 destiny; but there is no precept, not even a hint of the ethical: 
 the strange imagination is unrolled in its terrible beauty, and that 
 is all. The singer is a "maker," not a commentator. And then 
 the melody and surprise of the verse ! 
 
 "Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 
 
 On its roof did float and flow, 
 (This — all this — was in the olden 
 
 Time, long ago) ; 
 And every gentle air that dallied, 
 In that sweet day, 
 
 Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 
 A winged Odour went away." 
 
 * The Palace appeared first, April, 1839; the City in November (Ingram's 
 Life, I, 160). And Poe accused Longfellow of imitating him!
 
 POE 147 
 
 Longfellow could do some things in rhyme and rhythm, but his 
 genial talent did not accomplish such singing as this, and as little 
 could he compass the serene height of strain which Poe maintains 
 with such certainty. 
 
 Every charge of poetic plagiarism against Poe does but estab- 
 lish more clearly his utter originality of method.^ Mrs. Browning 
 and Longfellow, whom he is charged with imitating, are themselves 
 facile imitators, who, somehow, do not contrive to improve on 
 their originals ; but Poe, in the one or two cases in which he really 
 copied in his adult period, lent a new value to what he took. Where 
 he seems to have adopted ideas from others the transmutation 
 is still more striking. A writer already referred to, who is as far 
 astray in laying as in denying charges of plagiarism against Poe, 
 declares that his Dreamland "palpably paraphrases Lucian's 
 Island of Sleep'' — meaning, I suppose, the description of the 
 Island of Dreams in the True History; and the statement is so far 
 true that in Lucian there is a Temple of Night in the Island, and 
 that the categories of the dreams include visions of old friends ; but 
 to call the poem a paraphrase is absurd. There is all the difference 
 of seventeen hundred years of art between the Greek's semi-serious 
 fantasy and the profound and magical note of Poe's poem : — 
 
 " By a route obscure and lonely, 
 Haunted by ill angels only, 
 Where an Eidolon, named Night, 
 On a black throne reigns upright, 
 I have reached these lands but newly 
 From an ultimate dim Thule — 
 From a wild, weird clime that lieth sublime, 
 Out of Space — out of Time." 
 
 Genius, Mr. Arnold has well said, is mainly an affair of energy; 
 and the definition would hold for all the work of Poe, whose crea- 
 tions, in the last analysis, are found to draw their power from the 
 extraordinary intensity which belonged to his every mental opera- 
 
 1 There is a certain air of Nemesis in these charges against Poe, who was apt 
 tT be fanatical in imputing plagiarism to others. But it is remarkable that no one 
 has ever pointed out that Poe's own excellent definition of poetry, "the rhythmical 
 creation of beauty" (Essay on The Poetic Principle), is a condensation of a sen- 
 tence by (of all men) Griswold. See Poe's notice of Griswold's Poets and Poetry of 
 America (Ingram's ed. of Works, IV, 315). It may be noted that Poe's treatment 
 of Griswold in this notice is remarkably friendly; and whatever of offence he may 
 have given his future biographer in his lecture on the same subject, the latter must 
 have been a malignant soul indeed to seek for it, in the face of such amends, the 
 vile revenge he subsequently took.
 
 148 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 tion — an intensity perfectly frefe of violence. Be his fancy ever 
 so shadowy in its inception, he informs it with the impalpable force 
 of intellect till it becomes a vision more enduring than brass. There 
 is no poet who can so "give to aery nothing a local habitation and 
 a name." It was perhaps not so wonderful after all that common- 
 place people should shun, as hardly belonging to human clay, the 
 personality which brooded out such visions as these : ^ — 
 
 " Lo ! Death has reared himself a throne 
 In a strange city, lying alone 
 Far down within the dim West . . . 
 
 "No rays from the Holy Heaven xome down 
 On the long night-time of that town ; 
 But light from out the lurid sea 
 Streams up the turrets silently — 
 Gleams up the pinnacles far and free — 
 Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — 
 Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls — 
 Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers 
 Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers — 
 Up many and many a marvellous shrine 
 Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 
 The viol, the violet, and the vine. 
 
 " Resignedly beneath the sky 
 The melancholy waters lie. 
 So blend the turrets and shadows there 
 That all seems pendulous in air, 
 While, from a proud tower in the town, 
 Death looks gigantically down . . . 
 
 " No swellings tell that winds may be 
 Upon some far-off happier sea — 
 No heavings hint that winds have been 
 On seas less hideously serene." 
 
 With unwaning vividness the unearthly vision burns itself tremor- 
 less upon the void, till it is almost with a shudder of relief that the 
 spellbound reader cons the close : — 
 
 i " And when, amid no earthly moans, 
 
 Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
 Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 
 Shall do it reverence." 
 
 • In such poems, and in some of the Tales, it may very well be that opium has 
 had some part, as it so clearly had in the happiest inspirations of Coleridge.
 
 FOE 149 
 
 Perhaps such terrific imaginings can never be taken into common 
 favour with healthy dwellers in the sunlit world ; but it is hard to 
 understand how any, having studied them, can find them forget- 
 able. It cannot for a moment be pretended of these verses, even 
 by the sciolists of criticism, that they lack "inspiration" and spon- 
 taneity of movement; detraction must seek other ground. We 
 find, consequently, that the stress of the hostile attack is turned 
 mainly on one poem, in which the poet's customary intension of 
 idea appears to lose itself more or less in a dilettantist ringing of 
 changes on sound. I have no desire to seem in the least degree to 
 stake Poe's reputation on Ulalume, which trenches too far on pure 
 mysticism for entire artistic success, and at the same time is marked 
 by an undue subordination of meaning to music; but I cannot 
 help thinking that the dead set made at that piece is unjustifiable. 
 Mr. R. H. Stoddard is exceptionally acrid on the subject. 
 
 "I can perceive," he writes, in a memoir of Poe, "no touch of grief in 
 Ulalume, no intellectual sincerity, but a diseased determination to create the 
 strange, the remote, and the terrible, and to exhaust ingenuity in order to do 
 so. No healthy mind was ever impressed by Ulalume, and no musical sense 
 was ever gratified with its measure, which is little beyond a jingle ; and with 
 its repetitions, which add to its length without increasing its general effect, 
 and which show more conclusively than anything else in the language the 
 absurdity of the refrain when it is allowed to run riot, as it does here." ^ 
 
 Now, this censure is fatally overdone. Mr. Stoddard had on the 
 very page before admitted that Ulalume was, "all things consid- 
 ered, the most singular poem that [Poe] ever produced, if not, in- 
 deed, the most singular poem that anybody ever produced, in com- 
 memoration of a dead woman." A critic should know his own 
 mind before he begins to write out a judgment. Here we have 
 an explicit admission of the extreme remarkableness of a given 
 poem; then a denial that it ever "impressed a healthy mind"; 
 then an unmeasured allegation that "no musical sense was ever 
 gratified " with its musical elements. Let one stanza answer — 
 the praise of the star Astarte : — 
 
 " And I said : ' She is warmer than Dian : 
 She rolls through an ether of sighs — 
 She revels in a region of sighs: 
 She has seen that the tears are not dry on 
 
 Those cheeks, where the worm never dies, 
 And has come past the stars of the Lion 
 To point us the path to the skies — 
 To the Lethean peace of the skies — 
 
 ^ Memoir in Widdleton's ed. of Poe, p. 130.
 
 150 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 Come up, in despite of the Lion, 
 
 To shine on us with her bright eyes — 
 Come up through the lair of the Lion, 
 
 With love in her luminous eyes.'" 
 
 Mr. Stoddard must be told that there are some of us who do not 
 wish any of these repetitions away, and who think the culminating 
 music is closely analogous to effects produced a hundred times by 
 Mozart and Schubert and Beethoven, who had all some little gift 
 of melody, and were considerably given to the "repetend," as Mr. 
 Stedman happily re-christens the so-called refrain. The above- 
 quoted stanza is the best, no doubt, and there is one flaw in it, 
 namely, the "dry on," which is truly an exhaustion of ingenuity; 
 but even here one is struck by the imperial way in which Poe but- 
 tresses his lapse with the whole serene muster of his stanza — so 
 curiously different a procedure from the fashion in which Mr. 
 Swinburne, for instance, or even Mr. Browning, scoops a rhyme- 
 borne figure into his verse and, consciously hurrying on, leaves it, 
 in its glaring irrelevance, to put the whole out of countenance. 
 Poe's few deflections from purity of style are dominated by his 
 habitual severity of form. As for the charge of insincerity, it is 
 enough to say that it has been brought against every poet who has 
 artistically expressed a grief; it being impossible for some people 
 to realize that art feeds on deep feelings, not at the moment of their 
 first freshness, but when revived in memory. A more reasonable ob- 
 jection is brought against Ulaliime on the score of its obscurity ; but 
 that too is exaggerated; and the announcement of one critic that 
 it is a "vagary of mere words," of an "elaborate emptiness," is an 
 avowal of defective intelligence. The meaning of the poem is this : 
 the poet has fallen into a revery in the darkness; and his brain — 
 the critic says it was then a tottering brain — is carrying on a kind 
 of dual consciov.f;ness, compounded of a perception of the blessed 
 peace of the night and a vague, heavy sense of his abiding grief, 
 which has for the moment drifted into the background. In this 
 condition he does what probably most of us have done in connection 
 with a minor trouble — dreamily asks himself, "What was the 
 shadow that was brooding on my mind, just a little while ago?" 
 and then muses, "If I have forgotten it, why should I wilfully re- 
 vive my pain, instead of inhaling peace while I may?" This, I 
 maintain, is a not uncommon experience in fatigued states of the 
 brain; the specialty in Poe's case being that the temporarily sus- 
 pended ache is the woe of a bereavement — a kind of woe which,
 
 FOE 151 
 
 after a certain time, however sincere, ceases to be constant, and 
 begins to be intermittent. The Psyche is the obscure whisper of 
 the tired heart, the suspended memory, that will not be wholly 
 appeased with the beauty of the night and the stars; and the poet 
 has but cast into a mystical dialogue the interplay of the waking 
 and the half-sleeping sense, which goes on till some cypress, some 
 symbol of the grave, flashes its deadly message on the shrinking 
 soul, and grief leaps into full supremacy. Supposing Poe's brain 
 to have been undergoing a worsening disease in his later days, 
 this its last melody has even a more deeply pathetic interest than 
 belongs to the theme. 
 
 Take finally, as still further test of Poe's poetic gift, the poems 
 El Dorado, Annabel Lee, and For Annie. The first is a brief alle- 
 gory, with something of a moral, but a moral too pessimistic to 
 have any ethically utilitarian quality; the second a lovely ballad 
 enshrining the memory of his married life; the third a strange 
 song, impersonally addressed to one of the women to whom he 
 transiently turned in his lonesome latter years — a wonderful 
 lullaby in which a dead man is made placidly to exult in his release 
 from life and pain, and in the single remaining thought of the 
 presence of his beloved. In these poems we have the final proof 
 of the inborn singing faculty of Poe. Some of his pieces, as has 
 been already admitted, are works of constructive skill rather than 
 outpourings of lyric fulness ; and such a musical stanza as this : — 
 
 "And all my days are trances, 
 
 And all my nightly dreams 
 Are where thy dark eye glances, 
 
 And where thy footstep gleams — 
 In what ethereal dances ! 
 
 By what eternal streams !" — 
 
 has perhaps a certain stamp of compilation. But no unprejudiced 
 reader, I think, will fail to discern in the three poems last named 
 a quite unsurpassable limpidity of expression. They evolve as if 
 of their own accord. In El Dorado the one central rhyme is reiter- 
 ated with a perfect simplicity; Annabel Lee is almost careless in its 
 childlike directness of phrase; and For Annie is almost bald in its 
 beginning. But I know little in the way of easeful word music 
 that will compare with this : — 
 
 " And oh ! of all tortures 
 That torture the worst 
 Has abated — the terrible 
 Torture of thirst,
 
 152 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 For the napthaline river 
 
 Of Passion accurst : 
 I have drunk of a water 
 
 That quenches all thirst : 
 
 " Of a water that flows, 
 
 With a lullaln' sound, 
 From a spring but a very fev^r 
 
 Feet under ground — 
 From a cavern not very far 
 
 Down under ground. 
 
 " And ah ! let it never 
 
 Be fooHshly said 
 That my room it is gloomy, 
 
 And narrow my bed; 
 For man never slept 
 
 In a different bed ; 
 And to sleep, you must slumber 
 
 In just such a bed. 
 
 " My tantaHzed spirit 
 
 Here blandly reposes 
 Forgetting, or never 
 
 Regretting its roses — 
 Its old agitations 
 
 Of myrtles and roses: 
 
 "For now, while so quietly 
 
 Lying, it fancies 
 A holier odour 
 
 About it, of pansies — 
 A rosemary odour 
 
 Commingled with pansies — 
 With nie and the beautiful 
 
 Puritan pansies." 
 
 Is there not here that crowning quality of emotional plenitude 
 which, with perfection of form, makes great poetry as distinguished 
 from fine verse: are there not here, in another guise, the urgent 
 throb and brooding pregnancy which give to an andante of Bee- 
 thoven its deep constraining power ? We have all certain passional 
 or sub-judicial preferences in our favourite poetry, setting one 
 masterpiece above others for some subtle magnetism it works on 
 us, we do not quite know how or why. "Huysmans," says a 
 writer of ardently eclectic taste, "goes to my soul like a gold orna- 
 ment of Byzantine workmanship." ^ Somewhat so might one ex- 
 
 ' Mr. George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, p. 299.
 
 POE 153 
 
 press the mastering charm of those incomparably simple yet flaw- 
 lessly rhythmical lines. 
 
 Ill 
 
 These few extracts are enough to show that as a poet Poe has a 
 commanding distinction; but if we find him remarkable in that 
 regard, what shall we say of the range and calibre of the mind 
 which produced the manifold achievement of his prose ? The more 
 one wanders through that, out of all comparison the more extensive 
 part of his work, the more singular appear those estimates of the 
 man which treat him merely as a poet of unhappy life and morbid 
 imagination. Perhaps it is that in all seriousness the literary 
 world inclines to Mr. Swinburne's conviction that poets as such are 
 the guardian angels of mankind, and all other mind-workers their 
 mere satellites; perhaps that, despite Goethe's services to biology, 
 it has a hereditary difficulty in conceiving a poet as an effective 
 intelligence in any other walk than that of his art, and accordingly 
 excludes instinctively from view whatever tends to raise the point. 
 Or is it that the sense of the abnormality of feeling in Poe's verse, 
 and in his best-known stories, gives rise to a vague notion that his 
 performances in the line of normal thought can be of no serious 
 account ? It is difficult to decide; but certain it is that most of his 
 critics have either by restrictedness of view or positive misjudg- 
 ment done him serious wrong. 
 
 It is Mr. Henry James who, in a passage already quoted from, 
 makes the remark: "With all due respect to the very original 
 genius of the author of the Tales of Mystery, it seems to me that 
 to take him with more than a certain degree of seriousness is to 
 lack seriousness oneself. An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of 
 a decidedly primitive stage of reflection." One cannot guess 
 with any confidence as to the precise "degree of seriousness" 
 which Mr. James would concede; or how much seriousness he 
 brings to bear on any of his own attachments ; or what the stage 
 of reflection was at which he cultivated an enthusiasm for, say, 
 Theophile Gautier. One therefore hesitates to put oneself in 
 competition with Mr. James in the matter of seriousness of char- 
 9,cter. But one may venture to suggest that the above passage 
 throws some light on the rather puzzUng habit of depreciation 
 of Poe among American men of letters. Themselves given 
 mainly to the study of modern fiction, they seem to measure Poe
 
 154 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 only as a fictionist; and, even then, instead of fairly weighing 
 his work on its merits, they test it by the calibre of the people who 
 prefer the Tales 0} Mystery to novels of character. Remembering 
 that as boys they enjoyed Poe when they did not enjoy the novel 
 of character, they decide that the writer who thus appeals to 
 boyish minds can be of no great intellectual account. This is a 
 very fallacious line of reasoning. It would make out Defoe to 
 be an artist of the smallest account, though Mr. James has a way 
 of connecting intellectual triviality with "very original genius," 
 which somewhat confuses the process of inference. It would 
 relegate Swift to a rather low standing, because boys notoriously 
 enjoy Giillivefs Travels. That result would surely not do. It 
 surely does not follow that Mr. Stevenson is intellectually inferior 
 to Mr. Howells because the former wrote Treasure Island, beloved 
 of boys, while Mr. Howells's books appeal only to people who 
 know something of life. The fair, not to say the scientific method, 
 surely, is to take an author's total performance, and estimate 
 from that his total powers. This, Mr. James has not done, I 
 think, as regards Poe, or he would not have written as he has 
 done about "seriousness"; and, if one may say such a thing 
 without impertinence, the kind of culture specially affected by 
 Mr. James is too much in the ascendant among the very intelligent 
 reading public of the States. These white-handed students of 
 the modern novel are not exactly the people to estimate an endow- 
 ment such as Poe's.' 
 
 If one critical impression can be said to be predominant for 
 an attentive reader of Poe's prose, it is perhaps a wondering sense 
 of the perfection which may belong to what Lamb called "the 
 sanity of true genius," even where the genius borders on the form- 
 less clime we name insanity. This is no idle paradox. What 
 I say is that while Poe's work again and again gives evidence of 
 a mind tending to alienation, it yet includes a hundred triumphs 
 of impeccable reason ; and that for the most part his intellectual 
 faculty is sanity itself. It opens up a curious view of things to 
 compare the opaque, lethargic, chaotic state of mind which in 
 respectable society so securely passes for sanity, with the pure 
 electric light, the cloudless clearness, of Poe's intelligence in its 
 
 ' Mr. Howells, it may be remembered, has followed Mr. James in speaking 
 slightinRly of Poe; and, indeed, the general current of American criticism is still 
 in that direction. In face of these judgments, which dispose not only of perform- 
 ance but of calibre, one is driven to wonder how the writers estimate their own total 
 powers, as against Poe's.
 
 POE 15s 
 
 normal state; and to reflect that he has been called mad, and is 
 sometimes described as a charlatan. How would his detractors, 
 for instance, have compared with Poe in thinking power if they 
 had had to deal with such a problem as that of the prima facie 
 credibility of the "Moon Hoax," which Poe is falsely accused of 
 imitating? The Moon Hoax was a celebrated narrative, the 
 work of Mr. Richard Adams Locke, which appeared in the New 
 York Sun some three weeks ajter Poe's Hans Pfaall had been 
 published in the Southern Literary Messenger, and which made a 
 great sensation at the time. The Moon Story gravely professed 
 to describe the inhabitants, animals, vegetation, and scenery of 
 the moon, as having been lately made out by Sir John Herschel 
 with a new telescope ; while Poe gave a minute narrative, touched 
 at points with banter, of a balloon journey to the same orb; but 
 there was little detailed resemblance in the narratives, and Poe 
 accepted Mr. Locke's declaration that he had not seen the Adven- 
 ture when he concocted his hoax. The point of interest for us 
 here is that the hoax was very widely successful; and that Poe 
 found it worth while afterwards to show in detail how obvious 
 was the imposition, and how easily it should have been seen 
 through by intelligent readers. "Not one person in ten," he 
 records, "discredited it, and the doubters were chiefly those who 
 doubted without being able to say why — the ignorant, those 
 uninformed in astronomy — people who would not believe because 
 the thing was so novel, so entirely 'out of the usual way.' A grave 
 professor of mathematics in a Virginian college told me seriously 
 that he had no doubt of the truth of the whole affair ! " Accord- 
 ingly, Poe appended to his Hans Pfaall story, on republishing it, 
 an analysis of the other story, than which there could not be 
 a more luminous exercise of psychological logic. His scientific 
 and other knowledge, and his power of scrutiny, enabled him to 
 detect a dozen blunders and clumsinesses ; but perhaps the most 
 characteristic touch is his remark on the entire absence from the 
 narrative of any expression of surprise at a phenomenon which, 
 on the assumptions made, must have been part of the discoverer's 
 vision — namely, the curious appearance presented by the moon's 
 alleged inhabitants, in that their heads would be towards the 
 terrestrial gazer, and that they would appear to hang to the moon 
 by their feet. The demand for an expression of astonishment 
 at this was that of an intelligence which had carried the action 
 of imagination to a high pitch of methodic perfection. The pro-
 
 156 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 cesses of sub-conscious inference which initiate conviction, the 
 polarity of average thinking, the elements of evidence, all had 
 been pondered and perceived by Poe with an acumen that is as 
 singular as most forms of genius. And the result of the demon- 
 stration was no mere protraction of subtle introspection, but the 
 masterly solution of an abstruse concrete problem. His facility in 
 the explication of cypher- writing was astounding: witness his 
 triumph over all challengers when he dealt with the subject in a 
 Philadelphia journal and in Graham's Magazine; his unravelling 
 of a cryptograph in which were employed seven alphabets, with- 
 out intervals between the words or even between the lines; and 
 his crowning conquest of a cypher so elaborate that no outsider 
 succeeded in solving it with the key when Poe offered a reward 
 as an inducement. Take, again, the essay on "Maelzel's Chess 
 Player," in which he bends his mind on the question whether that 
 v^^as or was not an automaton ; examines with an eye like a micro- 
 scope the features of the object ; passes in review previous attempts 
 at explanation; and evolves with rigorous logic an irresistible 
 demonstration that the machine was worked by a man, and of 
 the manner of the working. The power to work such a demon- 
 stration is as rare, as remarkable, as almost any species of faculty 
 that can be named. It is sanity raised to a higher power. Such 
 performances, to say nothing of his prediction of the plot of Bar- 
 naby Rudge from the opening chapters, should give pause to those 
 who incline to the view, indorsed by some respectable critics, 
 that there was nothing extraordinary in Poe's feats of analytic 
 fiction, seeing that he himself tied the knots he untied. But that 
 criticism is invalid on the face of it. Why is Poe so unrivalled 
 in his peculiar line if it is so easy to tie and untie complex knots of 
 incident, and to forge chains of causation in narrative ? Does 
 any one ever dream of denying skill in plot-construction to Scribe 
 and Sardou because they deliberately lead up to their denouements ? 
 Is it the tyro who propounds deep problems in chess, or the school- 
 boy who imagines new theorems in geometry? The matter is 
 hardly worth discussing. That the author of The Murders in 
 the Rue Morgue, The Adventure of Hans Pjaall, and The Mystery 
 of Marie Rogct could be a mere intellectual charlatan, differing 
 only from his fellows in power of make-believe, is what De Quin- 
 cey would call a "fierce impossibility." 
 
 As a narrator and as a thinker Poe has half a dozen excellences 
 any one of which would entitle him to fame. The general mind
 
 POE 
 
 157 
 
 of Europe has been fascinated by his tales; but how far has it 
 realized the quality of the work in them? It has for the most 
 part read Poe as it has read Alexandre Dumas. Poe, indeed, 
 wrote to interest the reading pulDlic, and he was far too capable 
 an artist not to manage what he wanted; but it was not in his 
 nature to produce work merely adequate to the popular demand. 
 Hundreds of popular stories are produced and are forgotten, for 
 the plain reason that while the writer has somehow succeeded 
 in interesting a number of his contemporaries, his work lacks the 
 intellectual salt necessary for its preservation to future times. 
 Posterity reads it and finds nothing to respect; neither mastery 
 of style nor subtlety nor closeness of thought. But Poe's best 
 stories have a quality of pure mind, an intensity of intelligized 
 imagination, that seems likely to impress men centuries hence 
 as much as it did his more competent readers in his own day. 
 Even at the present moment, when his genre is almost entirely 
 uncultivated, such a hard-headed critic as Professor Minto sums 
 up that "there are few English writers of this century whose 
 fame is likely to be more enduring. The feelings to which he 
 appeals are simple but universal, and he appeals to them with 
 a force that has never been surpassed." To that generously 
 just verdict I am disposed, however, to offer a partial demurrer, 
 in the shape of a suggestion that it is not so much in the univer- 
 sality of the "feelings" to which he appeals as in the manifest 
 and consummate faculty with which he is seen to frame his appeal, 
 that Poe's security of renown really lies. Doubtless many readers 
 will, as hitherto, see the narrative and that only; just as Poe 
 himself points out that "not one person in ten — nay, not one 
 person in five hundred — has, during the perusal of Robinson 
 Crusoe, the most remote conception that any particle of genius, 
 or even of common talent, has been employed in its creation. 
 Men do not look upon it in the light of a literary performance." 
 But one fancies that the age of critical reading is evolving, in which, 
 notwithstanding a random saying of Poe's own to the contrary, 
 men will combine delight in the artist's skill with due suscepti- 
 bility to the result. 
 
 Even among those who perceive the immense importance of 
 naturalism in fiction, there are, it is to be feared, some who are 
 so narrow as to see no value in any work of which the naturalism 
 is not that species of absolute realism that, selection apart, is 
 substantially contended for by M. Zola, and is variously exempli-
 
 158 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 fied in his and other modern novels of different countries and 
 correspondingly different flavours. Now, the effective vindication 
 of Poe, to my mind, is that, weird and bizarre and abnormal as 
 are the themes he affected, he is essentially a realist in his method. 
 Granted that he turns away from experience, ordinary or other- 
 wise, for his subjects, what could be more perfect than the cir- 
 cumspection with which he uses every device of arrangement 
 and tone, of omission and suggestion, to give his fiction the air 
 of actuality? Take his Hans Pjaall. Hardly any critic, save 
 Dr. Landa in his preface to his Spanish translation of some of 
 the tales, has done justice to the exactitude and verisimilitude 
 with which Poe has there touched in his astronomical, physical, 
 and physiological details; and employed them to the point of 
 carrying illusion to its possible limit even while he has artistically 
 guarded himself from the downright pretence by the fantastic 
 fashion of his introduction. There is realism and reaUsm. It 
 was Poe's idiosyncrasy as a fictionist to examine, not the inter- 
 play of the primary human and social emotions either in the open 
 or in half lights, not to be either a Thackeray or a Hawthorne, 
 but to trace the sequences and action of the thinking faculty in 
 its relation to the leading instincts and feelings of the individual; 
 and this he does partly by studying himself and partly by com- 
 paring himself with others — precisely the method of ordinary 
 humanist fiction. He is always an observer in this direction. 
 His objection to the "Moon Hoax" was that it not merely showed 
 ignorant blundering in its details but was wanting in proper calcu- 
 lation of the attitude of good observers; so in his paper on "Mael- 
 zel's Chess Player" he unhesitatingly rejects one of Brewster's 
 explanations as assuming too commonplace a stratagem ; so, in 
 easily unravelling a friend's cypher, he laughs at the "shallow 
 artifice" he sees in it; and so in his Parisian stories he derides, 
 in the police officer, the cunning which he finds so inferior to 
 true sagacity. 
 
 Even the story of The Black Cat is realistic — realistic in the 
 very wildness of its action. Any one in reading Poe can see how 
 he consciously constructed tales by letting his creative faculty 
 follow the line of one of those morbid fancies that probably in 
 some degree occur at times to all of us, and of which, alas ! he must 
 have had a tremendous share; giving the recapitulation a grue- 
 some lifclikcness by vigilant embodiment of the details he had 
 noted in following the track of the sinister caprice. And so The
 
 ?0R 159 
 
 Tell-Tale Heart, and William Wilson, and The Cask 0} Amon- 
 tillado are realistic — realistic in the sense that they have had a 
 psychologic basis in the perversities of a disturbed imagination: 
 hence the uncanny fascination of these and other stories of his in 
 a similar taste. ^ Whether that particular species of fiction will 
 retain a hold on men is a matter on which it would be rash to 
 prophesy; and indeed it may be that not only this but another 
 class of Poe's productions — that which includes The Fall 0} the 
 House of Usher, Ligeia, The Masque of the Red Death, The As- 
 signation, and Berenice — may, as mankind progresses in rational 
 culture, lose that peculiar impressiveness they have for so many 
 readers to-day. These strange creations, whelmed in shade, 
 seem to belong to some wild region, out of the main road of human 
 evolution. To my own taste, I confess, they are less decisively 
 and permanently impressive than such feats of daylight imagina- 
 tion, so to speak, as Arthur Gordon Pym, Hans Pjaall, The Pit 
 and the Pendulum, or even The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and 
 The Purloined Letter; but there is no overlooking the element 
 of power, the intension of idea, which makes itself felt in the twi- 
 light studies as in the others. Like every man who has to live 
 by steady pen-work, Poe produced some inferior stuff and some 
 downright trash ; but wherever his faculty comes at all fully into 
 play it puts a unique stamp of intellect on its product, a stamp 
 not consisting in mere force of beauty or style, though these are 
 involved, but in a steady, unfaltering pressure of the writer's 
 thought on the attention of his reader. And when we recognize 
 this pregnancy and intensity, and take note that such a critic as 
 Mr. Lowell was so impressed by the "serene and sombre beauty" 
 of The Fall 0} the House of Usher as to pronounce it sufficient 
 by itself to prove Poe a man of genius and the master of a classic 
 style, we shall see cause to doubt whether any considerable portion 
 of Poe's imaginative work belongs to the perishable order of 
 literature. 
 
 As for the group of tales of the saner type, with their blazing 
 vividness and tense compactness of substance — beyond insisting 
 on the importance of the capacity imphed in these results, and 
 the essential realism of the stories within the Umits of their species, 
 there can be little need to claim for them either attention or praise. 
 
 > See the Saturday Review of November 28, 1885, for a well-expressed critirism 
 to the same effect, published a few weeks after the foregoing, but doubtless by a 
 writer who had never seen that. Cp. Hennequin, Ecrivains Francises, pp. 120-130.
 
 l6o JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 Their fascination as narratives is felt by all: the only drawback 
 is the tendency to argue that, because the non-realistic novel is 
 potentially inferior to the realistic, this class of story is inferior 
 to the realistic novel or story of ordinary life. To reason so is 
 to confuse types. Lytton is a worse novelist than Thackeray 
 because, professing both explicitly and implicitly to portray char- 
 acter and society, he is less true in every respect ; and the idealistic 
 element in George Eliot is of less value than her work of observa- 
 tion because it claims acceptance on the same footing while its 
 title is, in the terms of the case, awanting. Here we are dealing 
 with comparable things, with performances to be judged in rela- 
 tion to each other. But in Poe we deal with quite a different 
 species of art. That familiar objection to his tales on the score 
 of their lack of human or moral colour, expressed by Mr. Lowell, 
 in his Fahle for Critics, in the phrase "somehow the heart seems 
 squeezed out by the mind," is the extension of the confusion into 
 downright injustice. It lies on the face of his work that Poe 
 never aims at reproducing every-day life and society, with its 
 multitude of minute character-phenomena forming wholes for 
 artistic contemplation, but — to put it formally — at working 
 out certain applications and phases of the faculties of reflection 
 and volition, as conditioning and conditioned by abnormal ten- 
 dencies and incidents. He does not seek or profess to draw 
 "character" in the sense in which Dickens or Balzac does; he 
 has almost nothing to do with local colour or sub-divisions of 
 type; his fisherman in The Descent into the Maelstrom is an un- 
 specialized intelligent person; Arthur Gordon Pym similarly is 
 simply an observing, reasoning, and energizing individual who 
 goes through and notes certain experiences: in short, these person- 
 ages are abstractions of one aspect of Poe.* On the other hand. 
 Usher and the speakers in The Black Cat and The hup of the 
 Perverse merely represent a reversal of the formula; peculiar 
 idiosyncrasy in their case being made the basis of incident, whereas 
 in the others pure incident or mystery was made the motive. No 
 matter which element predominates, normal character study is 
 e.xcluded; Poe's bias, as we said, being toward analysis or syn- 
 thesis of processes of applied reason and psychal idiosyncrasy, 
 not to reproduction of the light and shade of life pitched on the 
 
 > The unfinished Journal of Julius Rodman (pul)Hshed in Mr. Ingram's edition 
 de luxe of the talcs and poems) presents us with a somewhat more individuali^ed 
 type, but there too the interest centres in the incidents.
 
 FOE l6l 
 
 everyday plane. It was not that he was without eye for that. 
 On the contrary, his criticisms show he had a sound taste in the 
 novel proper; and we find him rather critically alert than other- 
 wise in his social relation to the personalities about him. It was 
 that his artistic bent lay in another direction. 
 
 As a tale-teller, then, he is to be summed up as having worked in 
 his special line with the same extraordinary creative energy and 
 intellectual mastery as distinguish his verse ; giving us narratives 
 "of imagination all compact," yet instinct with life in every detail 
 and particle, no matter how strange, how aloof from common 
 things, may be the theme. As Dr. Landa remarks, he has been 
 the first story-writer to exploit the field of science in the depart- 
 ment of the marvellous ; and he has further been the first to exploit 
 the marvellous in morbid psychology with scientific art. These 
 are achievements as commanding, as significant of genius, as the 
 most distinguished success in any of the commoner walks of fiction ; 
 and a contrary view is reasonably to be described as a fanatical 
 development of an artistic doctrine perfectly sound and of vital 
 importance in its right application, but liable, like other cults, 
 to incur reaction when carried to extremes. After The Idiot 
 Boy and The Prelude came The Lady of Shalott and the Idylls 
 of the King; after Trollope came King Romance again; and 
 even if Poe were eclipsed for a time, posterity would still be to 
 reckon with. 
 
 IV 
 
 There is still to be considered, if we would measure Poe com- 
 pletely, his work in the fields of abstract aesthetics, criticism, and 
 philosophy; and to some of us that aspect of him is not less re- 
 markable than his artistic expression of himself in verse and 
 fiction. Even among his admirers, however, this is not the pre- 
 vailing attitude. Thus Mr. Ingram, to whose untiring and devoted 
 labour is mainly due the vindication of Poe's memory, considers 
 that criticism was "hardly his forte"; and Dr. William Hand 
 Browne, who, in his article in the Baltimore New Eclectic Maga- 
 zine on "Poe's Eureka and Recent Scientific Speculations," has 
 been the first bearer of testimony to the poet's capacity as a thinker 
 — even this independent eulogist thinks it necessary to declare 
 that in Poe's Rationale oj Verse, "in connection with just and 
 original remarks on English versification, of which he was a 
 
 M
 
 l62 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 master, we find a tissue of the merest absurdity about the classical 
 measures, of which he knew nothing." I cannot agree to the 
 implications of Mr. Ingram's phrase, and I cannot but think 
 that Dr. Browne has spoken recklessly as to Poe's knowledge 
 and criticism of the so-called "classical measures," treating that 
 question very much as other critics have treated the Eureka. 
 That Poe in his school days was a good Latinist we know from 
 one of his schoolfellows, who dwells especially on the delight with 
 which he used to listen to Poe's conning of his favourite pieces in 
 Horace. 
 
 The school in question was strong on the Latin side, and it is 
 hardly possible that Poe, whatever he might do in Greek, could be 
 otherwise than familiar with the orthodox scansions of the classic 
 poets, ranking, as he did, as joint dux of the school.^ In point of 
 fact, he won distinctions in both Latin and French at the Univer- 
 sity of Virginia, which must surely count for something. 
 
 It requires, indeed, little scholarship to gather from the ordinary 
 editions the received metres of Horace and the established scansions 
 of the hexameter, which are what Poe puts in evidence in so far as 
 he challenges the academic theory of classic verse. These are 
 given with strict accuracy. The whole question raised is whether 
 they stand by a scientific or by a merely traditional authority; and 
 it is surely a device worthy of a mediaeval schoolman to evade the 
 inquiry by a sweeping charge of ignorance.^ 
 
 In just this supercilious fashion have avowedly unfriendly critics 
 
 1 That Poe's general culture was wide and efifective it seems unnecessan- to con- 
 tend here, though some of his critics deny him such credit. His works must speak, 
 for themselves. It has indeed been pointed out by one critic that the nature of his 
 reference to Cresset's Ver- Vert, in The Fall of the House of Usher, shows him to 
 have used the title without knowing the poem; and Mrs. Whitman's merely 
 forensic rejoinder only shows that she had not read it either. I fancy he may have 
 dipped into the poeni and noticed such a phrase as "le saint oiseau" or the con- 
 cluding lines, and so entirely missed the nature of the narrative. His ".stately 
 raven of the saintly days of yore" suggests the same chance. But one such mis- 
 carriage, whatever be the e.xplanation, cannot destroy the general testimony of 
 his so various writings. 
 
 2 The late Sidnev Lanier wrote that "the trouble with Poe was, he did not know 
 enough. He needed to know a good many more things in order to be a great poet." 
 Alas, that is the trouble with all of us, small and great; and in more ways than one, 
 in the subtler sense rather than in the simpler, it holds true of Lanier himself, to 
 the point of the statement that he fell ever further short of being a great poet in the 
 ratio of the growth of his conviction that he was one, and that his poetry was an 
 e.xpression of knowledge. Man of genius as he was, he did not finally succeed 
 even in fulfilling his own law of severance between Art and Cleverness. Poe re- 
 mains the greater poet because he knew better the function of poetry and its relation 
 to truth.
 
 FOE 163 
 
 disparaged Poe on other grounds, passing judgment without 
 offering a jot of evidence. One is led to suspect that, while think- 
 ing for himself on science. Dr. Browne treated questions of classic 
 metre with the unquestioning faith which other people give to the 
 propositions of religion. Those who have looked with independent 
 interest into the dogmas of classic prosody know that, whether 
 right or wrong, Poe was dealing with a subject on which even re- 
 putedly "orthodox" opinion is hopelessly confused; and that the 
 off-hand language of Dr. Browne pretends a certainty of expert 
 authority which does not exist. Certain rules for scanning Greek 
 and Latin verse pass current ; but save in respect of nominal ad- 
 herence to the arbitrary rules of a given text-book, there is no agree- 
 ment among scholars ; and it is safe to say that the traditional lore 
 of the schools is a mass of uncomprehended shibboleths, framed 
 without understanding and accepted on the same basis. Poe must 
 have heard at school and university the ordinary directions for the 
 scanning of classic verse. He was singular enough to think them 
 out for his own satisfaction, and he thus found there was no satis- 
 faction to be had from them. 
 
 What Poe urged on that head is, I venture to think, broadly 
 just and well-timed. As he truly said, "there is something in 
 'scholarship' which seduces us into bhnd worship of Bacon's Idol 
 of the Theatre — into irrational deference to antiquity; " ^ and as a 
 matter of fact the prosody of the schools had never any better 
 basis than one of Talmudic deduction from verse never scientifically 
 studied. The Iliad, as Poe again says, "being taken as a starting- 
 point, was made to stand instead of Nature and common sense. 
 Upon this poem, in place of facts and deduction from fact, or from 
 natural law, were built systems of feet, metres, rhythms, rules — 
 rules that contradict each other every five minutes, and for nearly 
 all of which there may be found nearly twice as many exceptions 
 as examples." The notorious want of hearty enjoyment of ancient 
 verse, qiid verse, among those who study it, and the naked and 
 unashamed unnaturalness of our own enunciation of it, are suffi- 
 cient to support Poe's protest against any mere dogmatic retort 
 from the pedants; and I apprehend that no open-minded reader 
 of his essay will have any difficulty in deciding whether the analytic 
 poet or the ordinary scholastic is the better fitted to arrive at what 
 
 ' In this connection note the recent challenge to the traditionist grammarians 
 by Mr. Gavin Hamilton in his treatise on the Subjunctive. Edinburgh: Oliver 
 and Boyd, 1889.
 
 l64 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 the principles of rhythm really are. Poe seems to have had the 
 eccentric taste to try to enjoy his Horace as he enjoyed his Tenny- 
 son. But to say this is to say that he undertook an almost hope- 
 lessly difficult task, and it would be going too far to say that he has 
 succeeded as he thought he did. A full examination of the matter 
 must be left to an appendix; but it may here be said that in the 
 very act of coming to the conclusion that Poe's simplified system of 
 feet in turn breaks down like the old and complex one as an 
 anatomy of verse, we are led to acknowledge anew the singular 
 originality and energy of his mind. It is no extravagance to say 
 that in this matter it is better to err with Poe than to be "right" 
 with Dr. Browne, for Poe's error is a brilliant effort to make a new 
 system out of the wreck of one which he has rightly discarded, and 
 he offers vivid argumentative exposition where academic ortho- 
 doxy offers inert and unreasoned rules. In every respect save the 
 crowning point of scientific rightness it is a masterly critical per- 
 formance.^ 
 
 The close of the Rationale raises a question which has been 
 generally decided against Poe — that as to whether he had any 
 humour. Humour of the kind in which American literature is 
 specially rich he clearly had not. Such attempts as his X-ing 
 a Paragrab have none of the hilarious fun of those grotesque 
 exaggerations which form one of the two main features of Ameri- 
 can humour; and of its other constituent of subtle, kindly drollery, 
 unembittered jesting at the incongruous in morals or in incidents, 
 he can offer us almost as little. The explanation is that in respect 
 of temperament he was too unhappily related to American society 
 to have any cordial satisfaction in studying it ; and that his sense 
 of the comic had the warmthlessness and colourlessness of un- 
 mitigated reason. One sometimes finds him even pungently 
 
 * Mr. Stedman, in editino; the recent complete edition of Poe's works, has seen 
 fit to say that "the Ralionale of Verse, is a curious discussion of mechanics now well 
 enough understood" (Introd. to Vol. VI., p. xiv). As very few of us are conscious 
 of Mr. Stedman's sense of mastery, which he does not give us the means of sharing, 
 I leave my Appcndi.\on Accent, Quantity, and Feel toc.xhit)it other people's difficul- 
 ties. And when Mr. Stedman further pronounces (p. xv) that "one can rarelv 
 draw a better contrast between the faulty and the masterly treatment of a literary 
 topic than by citing The Ralionale of Verse and [Arnold's] three lectures On Trans- 
 lating Homer," I must take leave to say that he does but give us an uncritical in- 
 dorsement of a prestige. Arnold's book is really a failure as a technical treatise.
 
 FOE 165 
 
 humorous, but it is always in a generalization, or in derision of 
 a fallacy or a fatuity; always in a flash of the reason, never in a 
 twinkle of the temperament; and only those who are capable of 
 what George Eliot once delightedly spoke of as the laughter which 
 comes of a satisfaction of the understanding, will perceive that he 
 possesses humour at all. His satire, indeed, is strictly in keeping 
 with his criticism in general! The peculiar quality of that, which 
 for some readers makes it unsuccessful, lies in this absolute su- 
 premacy of judgment. The apparent or rather the virtual ruth- 
 lessness of much of his critical writing is the outcome of the two 
 facts that he had an extremelv keen critical sense and that, in 
 applying it, save when his emotional side was stimulated, as it 
 generally was when he was criticising women, ^ he was sheer, im- 
 placable intellect. To him the discrimination of good and bad in 
 literature was a matter of the intensest seriousness : of the faculty 
 for doing mere "notices" of the mechanically inept and insincere 
 sort turned out by so many of the criticasters who moralize about 
 his lack of the moral sense — of that convenient aptitude he was 
 quite destitute. To represent him, however, in the way Mr. 
 Stoddard does, as a kind of literary Red Indian, delighting in the 
 use of the tomahawk for its own sake, is but to add to the darkening 
 of critical counsel about Poe. The prejudiced critic in question 
 speaks as follows : — 
 
 "Like lago, he was nothing if not critical, and the motto of his self- 
 sufficient spirit was Nil admirari. ... It is a weakness incident to youth 
 and ambition. ... I do not think that Poe ever outgrew it, or sought to 
 outgrow it. He believed that his readers loved havoc; Mr. Burton, on the 
 contrary, believed that they loved justice. And he was right, as the criti- 
 cisms of Poe have proved, for they have failed to commend themselves to the 
 good sense of his countrymen. His narrow but acute mind enabled him to 
 detect the verbal faults of those whom he criticised, but it disqualified him 
 from perceiving their mental qualities. He mastered the letter, but the 
 spirit escaped him. He advanced no critical principle which he established; 
 he attacked no critical principle which he overthrew. He broke a few 
 butterflies on his wheel ; but he destroyed no reputation. He was a powerless 
 iconoclast." ' 
 
 I quote this as the most close-packed, comprehensive, and con- 
 sistent piece of aggressively bad criticism by a not incompetent 
 
 * See Mr. Stoddard's memoir in Widdleton's edition of Poe, p. 165. "I cannot 
 point an arrow against any woman," was one of Poe's private avowals. Still, he 
 wrote contemptuously of Margaret Fuller, whom he disliked on both personal and 
 literary grounds, as did Mr. Lowell. 
 
 ^ Memoir in Widdleton's ed., p. 89.
 
 1 66 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 critic that I remember to have seen. From the mahcious, not to say 
 malignant, "Like lago" to the overstrained depreciation of the 
 "powerless iconoclast," all is unfair and untrue. The remark 
 about "havoc" and Mr. Burton refers to a jesting answer made by 
 Mr. Poe to one of his employers who deprecated his severity; an 
 answer which to take as an e.xpression of Poe's critical creed is 
 discreditably unjust. He thought the severity complained of was 
 deserved, and he merely made the light answer by way of soothing 
 the uneasiness or silencing the objections of an employer for whose 
 judgment he had no respect. To take seriously a phrase so uttered 
 is to show either moral pedantry or prejudice. As to the view taken 
 of Poe as a critic by the "good sense" of his countrymen, that must 
 be left to the decision of the tribunal in question, if it can be got at; 
 and the proposition that Poe's mind was narrow may be profitably 
 left alone ; while the other dicta may be best disposed of by laying 
 down truer ones. 
 
 What may fairly be said against Poe's criticisms is that they have 
 not the absolute artistic balance and completeness, the perfection 
 of "form" which belongs to his tales and best poems. Criticism 
 was not with him, as it has been said to be with Mr. Lowell and 
 Mr. Arnold, a ' ' fine art " ; it was rather a science ; and his critiques 
 accordingly are processes of scientific analysis and summing-up, 
 almost always restricted in a businesslike manner to the subject in 
 hand. What he might have done if he had had the opportunities 
 of the two writers named, if he had had academic leisure and good 
 media, is a matter for speculation ; but what we do know is that he 
 has left a body of widely various criticism which, as such, will better 
 stand critical examination to-day than any similar work produced 
 in England or America in his time. Mr. James, half-sharing the 
 normal American hostility to Poe, thinks that his critical product 
 "is probably the most complete specimen of provincialism ever 
 prepared for the edification of men"; though he admits that there 
 is mixed in it a great deal of sense and discrimination; and that 
 "here and there, sometimes at frequent intervals {sic), we find a 
 phrase of happy insight embedded in a patch of the most fatuous 
 pedantry."^ Well, provincialism is a very incalculable thing: 
 so Protean and subtle that some people find some of the essence of 
 it actually in the very full-blown cosmopolitanism of Mr. James, 
 whose delicate narrative art is so much occupied with the delinea- 
 tion of aspects of the life of idle Americans in Europe and idle 
 
 ' Hau'tfwrne, p. 64.
 
 POE 167 
 
 Europeans in America, and so admirably detached from all grosser 
 things. Putting that out of the question, and assuming that Mr. 
 James is as qualified a critic of criticism in general as he has un- 
 doubtedly proved himself to be of the novel, we must in any case 
 hold that he did not sufficiently consider the general conditions of 
 criticism in Poe's day when he penned his aspersion. When we 
 remember how matters stood in England, with Christopher North 
 and the youthful Thackeray and Macaulay and the Quarterlies 
 representing the critical spirit ; ^ when we note how Carlyle, study- 
 ing Blackwood and Frazer in those days, decides that "the grand 
 requisite seems to be impudence, and a fearless committing of your- 
 self to talk in your drink " ; and when we try to reckon up what of 
 insight and real breadth of view there was in all these, we shall 
 find it difficult to accept Mr. James's standard. Provincialism is 
 a matter of comparison. If it be decided that to deal as minutely 
 as Poe did with the contemporary literature and waiters of one's 
 own country is unwise, the provincialism of the proceeding will 
 still be to prove; and in the end a number of things in Poe's 
 critical remains go some way to explode the detractions we have 
 been considering. Particular judgments apart, there is a general 
 pressure of reasoning power in his critical writing which is really 
 not to be found in the works of later men, English and American, 
 whose title is taken for granted by some of those who make light 
 of Poe on this side. The reasoning of Mr. Lowell, outside of the 
 field of pure literature or literary art, is always precarious and not 
 seldom quite puerile : that of Mr. Arnold, even on points of literary 
 effect, is too often trivially and cheaply fallacious; but in Poe, 
 though we m:iy find critical caprice and extravagance, the standard 
 of ratiocination, the ruling quality of the logic, is always high and 
 masculine. And against a few extravagances of praise and dis- 
 praise, there are a hundred sure and true verdicts, given long in 
 advance of general appreciation. When we look to see what line 
 he takes as a critic, we find him delightedly extolling Tennyson as 
 a great poet when men were still worshipping devoutly at the shrine 
 of Wordsworth ; insisting from the first that the obscure Hawthorne 
 was a genius of a far higher order than Longfellow; welcoming 
 Dickens as a great artist in the humours of character, but warning 
 him that he had no gift of construction ; heartily eulogizing Hood ; 
 
 1 "Macaulay and Dilke and one or two others excepted," writes Poe {Mar- 
 ginalia, vii.), "there is not in Great Britain a critic who can fairly be considered 
 worthy the name."
 
 l68 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 giving generous praise to Mr. Home's Orion; denying merit to 
 the popular Lever; pointing out that the still more popular Valen- 
 tine Vox was not literature; standing up for fair play to Moore; 
 keenly scrutinizing Macaulay; doing homage to Mrs. Browning; 
 paying the fullest admiring tribute to the memory of Lamb; 
 coolly and impartially analyzing Cooper — always quick to give 
 honour where honour was due, and to protest against critical in- 
 justice; never once pandering to commercialism or tolerating the 
 puffery of the undeserving; never weighting his scales for the 
 benefit of any, save perhaps when his idiosyncrasy made him exag- 
 gerate the merits of some women-poets. As for the pedantry, one 
 may suggest that there are departments of criticism to which Mr. 
 James, admirable critic as he is, may be a stranger; and that it is 
 yet not pedantry to be at home in these. 
 
 Let us glose nothing: let us admit that in discussing the com- 
 monplace quality of Lever, Poe becomes so extravagant in his 
 esteem of the kind of fiction to which his own faculty pointed as to 
 say that "for one Fouque there are fifty Molieres," and to declare 
 that "Mr. Dickens has no more business with the rabble than a 
 seraph with a chapcaii de bras " — here stultifying a previous utter- 
 ance. There is nothing to be said for such deliration as that, of 
 course: we can but set it down to the brain-flaw. Nor can it be 
 denied that the temper of his writing is often faulty; that he shows 
 "bad form" enough to justify M. Hennequin's use of the word 
 "littlenesses." The note, in fact, is often sharply neurotic. But 
 at the risk of being charged with neck-or-nothing partisanship, I 
 venture hereanent to indorse the phrase of the friendly reviewer 
 who pronounced Poe "potentially" one of the greatest of critics. 
 It is a perfectly fair distinction. One finds that Poe's critical judg- 
 ment was generally unerring; and that he invariably knew and 
 told how and why he reached his verdict; and one finds in an 
 utterly preposterous misjudgment on his part only a sign of mo- 
 mentary distraction. For the comparative bareness of the critical 
 part of his work is no argument against his being a great critic. 
 Indeed the very faults that are most flagrant in his critical work, the 
 stress of temper over small matters and small writers, and the 
 pedantic-looking persistence in theoretic analysis, clearly come of 
 the spontaneous play of his critical faculty through the medium 
 of a flawed nervous system, without check from the other faculties 
 of character. Hence the air of "littleness," even of moral defect. 
 It was not that, as the wiseacres said, he was without character;
 
 POE 169 
 
 but that in him certain intellectual faculties were so developed 
 as to go to work without control from the character, at least in his 
 excited moods. And it was his hard fate that, as a hack journalist, 
 he had to write in all moods, and on matters of journalistic attrac- 
 tion — a simple economic fact which is strangely disregarded by his 
 gainsayers.^ When he was not nervously excited, again, the very 
 strength of his critical faculty tended to make him pronounce 
 rigorously technical and unadorned decisions where other men 
 would turn out polished and charming essays; but in the terms of 
 the case his work is more truly critical than theirs. The truth is 
 that in our literature pure criticism is very scarce. Some of our 
 most popular and charming critics, so-called, are rather essayists 
 than methodical judges of literature : they write a propos of books 
 and authors, giving us in so doing a finished expression of their 
 own sentiments and their own philosophy, often laying down sound 
 Hterary opinions and displaying a fine taste; but leaving us rather 
 to echo their conclusions out of esteem for their authority than guid- 
 ing us to any science of discrimination on our own account. Writ- 
 ing as critics, they are adding to literature rather than effectively 
 analyzing it. With Poe it is altogether different. We read his 
 criticisms not for their own literary quality but for their judicial 
 value and their service to critical science; and though it follows 
 that they can never be widely known, it is not unsafe to predict for 
 them recognition and interest at a time when a great deal of the 
 more "readable" products of modern critics are forgotten. Cer- 
 tainly Poe was in advance of his time in the rigour of his critical 
 principles. The unrealized ambition of his literary life, the foun- 
 dation of a critical journal which should be absolutely honest and 
 be written by none but competent critics, giving the reasons for 
 all their judgments, was utterly Utopian. Neither the required 
 critics nor fit readers then existed or yet exist in America, or for 
 that matter in England. Now, as in Poe's day, it may be that the 
 qualified craftsmen in the States have to waste their strength in 
 miscellaneity ; but however that may be it is certain that American 
 criticism, like English, makes but a poor show beside the critical 
 
 > We have his own anxious avowal in his masterly critique of Barnahy Rudge: 
 "From what we have here said, and perhaps said without due deliberation (for, 
 alas ! the hurried duties of the journalist preclude it). . . ." The same explana- 
 tion will account for the inconsistencies of phrase in the critique on Hawthorne. 
 And some of the worst exhibitions in the Broadtvay Journal are to be set down 
 to the fact, noted by Mr. Ingram, that Poe had at times to manufacture most of 
 the matter for an issue, this when his physique was rapidly running down.
 
 170 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 literature of France. For illustration, it must suffice here to sug- 
 gest a comparison of the graceful and genial essay of Mr. Stedman, 
 the best American estimate of Poe, with the article by M. Emile 
 Hennequin in the Revue Contemporaine; ^ an analytical study 
 which, reading it as I do when my own essay is as good as written, 
 makes me feel as if my labour were mostly thrown away. M. 
 Hennequin, perhaps, would not resent ^ the inference that he has 
 learned some lessons of analysis from Poe ; who, by the way, per- 
 formed as remarkable a feat of analysis in his criticism of Barnahv 
 Rudge as in any of his other productions. The decomposition of 
 that story, the revelation of the writer's mental processes, and the 
 deduction of the plot from the opening chapters, drawing as they 
 did from Dickens an inquiry whether his critic had dealings with 
 the devil, are things to be remembered in the history of literature. 
 But if there were no such achievement to Poe's credit, and if he 
 had not written his essay on the American Drama, one of the ablest 
 dramatic criticisms ever penned, that body of multifold criticism 
 which stands in his works under the title Marginalia would alone 
 suffice, to my thinking, to prove him a born critic. Barring some 
 follies, some pretentiousness, some intended nonsense, and some 
 inexplicable contradictions, which suggest either deliberate mysti- 
 fication or mixed authorship, that miscellany of paragraphs and 
 essaylets is a perpetual sparkle of clear thought, into which one 
 dives time after time, always finding stimulus, even if it be of 
 provocation, always buoyantly upborne by the masterful mind. 
 
 But while we find Poe even in his college days making curious 
 attempts to "divide his mind" by doing two things at once, and in 
 later life musing intently on "the power of words," his thinking 
 faculty was not limited to analysis and criticism. It so happens 
 that he has given us, in addition to all his artistic and critical work, 
 one of the most extraordinary productions of imaginative philo- 
 sophic synthesis in literature. The Eureka has, indeed, no socio- 
 logical bearing, save in so far as it incidentally throws out the 
 suggestion that as "the importance of the development of the ter- 
 restrial vitality proceeds equally with the terrestrial condensation," 
 we may surmise the stages of the evolution of life to be in terms of 
 the variations of the solar influence on the earth, and that the dis- 
 charge of a new planet, inferior to Mercury, might freshly modify 
 the terrestrial surface so as to produce "a race both materially and 
 
 1 Januarj', 1885; reprinted in the volume Rcrivains Francises. 
 
 2 M. Hennequin, alas! died suddenly in the summer of 1888, in his prime.
 
 POE 171 
 
 spiritually superior to Man." The speculation is interesting, but 
 remote from everyday interests. A remarkable detail in Poe's 
 life and character is that he rarely touches on things political; 
 whence, perhaps, an impression that he had no sympathy with 
 social movement and aspiration in general. On the strength, pre- 
 sumably, of the allusion to mob rule in Some Words with a Mummy, 
 and of some sentences in the Colloquy of Monos and Una, Mr. 
 Lang ^ confusedly decides that "If democratic ecstasies are a tissue 
 of historical errors and self-complacent content with the common- 
 place, no one saw that more clearly than Poe." But the school of 
 languid anti-democrats cannot rightfully claim Poe as being on 
 their side. If they will read chap. vii. of the Marginalia they will 
 find him expressing democratic sentiments in his own person ; and 
 in his Fifty Suggestions (not a very satisfactory compilation) they 
 will find a remarkable prophetic judgment as to the revolutionary 
 spirit in Europe. If further proof is wanted of Poe's essential 
 democratism, I would cite the circumstance, not generally known, 
 that in the Broadway Journal there appeared, while he was sole 
 editor, an article entitled "Art Singing and Heart Singing," signed 
 "Walter Whitman," in which are suggested for apparently the first 
 time those doctrines as to democratic culture which have since be- 
 come so familiar; and that there is the editorial note "It is scarcely 
 necessary to add that we agree with our correspondent through- 
 out." The fact remains, however, that Poe made no attempt at a 
 sociological synthesis. Setting aside the constructive element in 
 his tales, it is in his cosmogonic philosophy that we must look for 
 the synthetic side of his mind. 
 
 VI 
 
 It resulted from the insistence of the "reasoning reason" in Poe 
 that the train of thought which evolved the Eureka found expres- 
 sion also in his artistic work, while at the same time the growing 
 insurgence of temperament gave an emotional cast to his phi- 
 losophy. To say nothing of his psychological tales, we have the 
 Colloquy of Monos and Una (as to the alleged plagiarizing in which 
 there is not a shadow of evidence) where two souls in heaven look 
 back on the finished course of humanity; the Conversation of Eiros 
 and Charmian, in which similarly one spirit tells another of how 
 
 ' In the preface to the "Parchment" edition of Poe's poems.
 
 172 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 the race was destroyed ; and The Power of Words, in which yet 
 again two immortals talk of transcendental things. In this last 
 dialogue there is a touch which for vastitude of imagination is per- 
 haps unmatchable. "Come," says the spirit Agathos to Oinos, 
 who is "new-fiedged with immortality" — "Come ! we will leave 
 to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and sweep outward 
 from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for 
 pansies and violets and heart's-ease, are the beds of the triplicate 
 and triple-tinted suns." In the way of "brave translunary things " 
 it will not be easy to beat that. This is indeed pole sis ; and it was 
 perhaps with a true instinct that Poe, flatly contradicting his own 
 rule that a poem must be short to be truly poetic, recorded his desire 
 that the Eureka, with all its logic and criticism, should be regarded 
 as a poem. It is a great, impassioned, imaginative projection, 
 beginning in just some such elemental swell of ideal emotion as 
 gives birth to poetry. But there could be no greater mistake than 
 to regard the Eureka, with its vast cosmogonic sweep, as a mere 
 rhapsody. Dr. William Hand Browne, who has made it the sub- 
 ject of a sufhciently practical article, finds that its author possessed, 
 "in remarkable excellence, the scientific mind." ^ Recognizing 
 this. Dr. Browne remarks that it has been Poe's peculiarly hard 
 fortune to be not only persistently maligned by his enemies but 
 imperfectly estimated by his friends; a truth which Dr. Browne 
 goes on unconsciously to illustrate by denying Poe credit for The 
 Gold Bug and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and, as we have 
 seen, by charging him with writing absurdly and ignorantly on 
 the classical measures. These injustices, however, perhaps give 
 only the more weight to Dr. Browne's eulogy when he attributes to 
 Poe "the power of expressing his thoughts, however involved, 
 subtle, or profound, with such precision, such lucidity, and withal 
 with such simplicity of style, that we hardly know where to look 
 for his equal : certainly nowhere among American writers." That 
 seems to me quite true; and there could be no better evidence in 
 support than the Eureka, which only needs to be separately re- 
 printed without its worrying dashes and without italics to rank 
 as the most luminous and the most original theistic treatise in the 
 language. This verdict may perhaps incur the more suspicion 
 
 * It is one of the mistakes of Dr. Nordau to exclaim vociferously at M. Morice 
 for naming Poe in the same group with Spencer and Claude Bernard (Degeneresence 
 French trans, i. 242). Dr. Nordau evidently knows very little about Poe's per- 
 formance.
 
 POE 173 
 
 when I avow that I pass it in the conviction that Poe's reasoning 
 breaks down, hke all other theistic reasoning, when its conclusion 
 is applied to the primary problem. It is the way in which he rea- 
 sons up to a conclusion subversive of itself and of all other theisms, 
 that makes this treatise unique in philosophy. It is plain, indeed, 
 that Poe on his way reasoned himself out of his primary theism 
 into an entirely new poly-pantheism ; and of course it is a plain 
 proof of mental disturbance thus to wander on the path of an 
 inquiry.^ But let the mental overpoise be taken for granted, and 
 the intellectual interest of the performance remains. 
 
 At the outset he decides with the most absolute arbitrariness that 
 there is a finite "universe of stars," and an infinite "universe of 
 space" — a proposition which certainly testifies to his failure to get 
 behind the common illusion of space as the antithesis of existence. 
 No less arbitrarily does he assume Deity, making none of the popu- 
 lar pretences to reach that hypothesis by way of elimination. "As 
 our starting-point, then," he writes, "let us adopt the Godhead. 
 Of this Godhead in itself, he alone is not imbecile, he alone is not 
 impious, who propounds — nothing." ^ But, following the fa- 
 miliar, the fatal path of all theology, he will not admit that the in- 
 conceivable will be forever unconceived, and, having to begin with 
 affirmed its volition, he immediately after affirms that he has some- 
 thing else to propound concerning it : ^ 
 
 "An intuition altogether irresistible, althousfh inexpressible, forces me 
 to the conclusion that what God originally created — that that Matter, which, 
 by dint of his Volition, he first made from his spirit, or from Nihility ( ! ) 
 could have been nothing but matter in its utmost conceivable state of — 
 what ? — of Simplicity. This will be found the sole absolute assumption of 
 my Discourse." '^ 
 
 In other words, "Oneness is all that I predicate of the originally 
 created Matter." But "the assumotion of absolute Unity in the 
 primordial Particle includes that of infinite divisibility," so that we 
 yet further assume attraction and repulsion as primal character- 
 istics of the universe, the first being its material and the second its 
 spiritual principle." "I feel, in a word, that here the God has 
 interposed, and here only, because here and here only the knot 
 
 * It would seem indeed that only in his last years did he begin to pay much at- 
 tention to religious problems. His previous attitude seems to have been conven- 
 tionally, sometimes even vulgarly, orthodox — a surprising thing in the case of 
 such a critical intelligence. 2 Works, Ingram's ed., III. 107. 
 
 3 P. 108. *V. 114.
 
 174 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 demanded the interposition of the God." ' "Attraction and repul- 
 sion are matter." Then comes many passes of impassioned brood- 
 ing on the conceptions thus set out with, and of quasi-mathematical 
 extension of the premises, all leading up anew to the thing assumed 
 at the outset — the tinitude of the " universe of stars." " Gravity 
 exists on account of Matter's having been irradiated, at its origin, 
 atomically, into a limited sphere of space, from one, individual, 
 unconditional, irrelative and absolute Particle Proper. . . ." ^ 
 Thus we get rid of "the impossible conception of an infinite exten- 
 sion of Matter," and set up the other conception of an "illimitable 
 Universe of Vacancy beyond."^ 
 
 But here the poet flinches, as well he might, and we have this 
 confession : — 
 
 " Let me declare only that, as an individual, I myself feel impelled to fancy, 
 without daring to call it more — that there does exist a limitless succession of 
 Universes, more or less similar to that of which we have cognizance — to 
 that of which alone we shall ever have cognizance — - at the very least until the 
 return of our own particular Universe into Unity. // such clusters of clus- 
 ters exist, however — and they do —   it is abundantly clear that having no part 
 in our origin, they have no portion in our laws. They neither attract us, 
 nor we them. Their material, their snirit is not ours, is not that which ob- 
 tains in any part of our Universe. They could not impress our senses or 
 our souls. . . . Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its 
 proper and particular God." * 
 
 And in the end the proposition is, on the one hand: — 
 
 " That each soul is, in part, its own God, its own Creator ; in a word, that 
 God — now exists solelv in the difused matter and Spirit of the Universe; 
 and that the regathering of this diffused Matter and Spirit will be but the re- 
 constitution of the purely Spiritual and Individual God;" 
 
 while, on the other hand, this God is "one of an absolutely infinite 
 number of similar Beings that people the absolutely infinite domains 
 of the absolutely infinite snace." ^ And yet he had earlier insisted, 
 in the spirit of modern Monism, on "the condensation of laivs into 
 law," and the conclusion that "each law of Nature is dependent 
 at all points upon all other laws," ' a maxim which quashes his 
 infinity of irrelated universes and Gods; and again he insisted: 
 "That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, no thinking 
 
 ^Works, Vol. III. p. 113. 2p_ J37_ 
 
 * p. 163. •• p. 164; italics Poe's. 
 
 «P. 194. 6 P. 147.
 
 POE 
 
 175 
 
 being can doubt " ^ — a doctrine which quashes his unitary Pan- 
 theism. Thus, on his own principle that "a perfect consistency 
 can be nothing but an absolute truth," - he has definitely missed 
 truth. It is the fate of all theosophies. And still his failure, in 
 virtue of the mere energy and sustained imaginativeness of its rea- 
 soning, is a permanently notable philosophical document — this 
 though his neurosis was visibly worsening at the time of the com- 
 position to the point of affecting its whole tone, and much of the 
 reasoning. Capacity in this kind must be measured comparatively ; 
 and it needs neither dissent nor agreement, but simply acquaintance 
 with the average run of theistic and cosmological reasoning, to 
 come to the opinion that Poe is in these matters as abnormal, as 
 intensely intellectual, as he is in everything else.^ The book — 
 
 ' Works, Vol. in. p. 147. 2 p. 100. 
 
 ^ The very hostile critique of the Eureka by Professor Irving Stringham, re- 
 printed in the notes to Vol. IX. of Messrs. Stedman and Woodberry's edition, really 
 concedes all that is above claimed for the treatise as an exhibition of intellectual 
 power, though denying it all scientific originality and pronouncing the philosophical 
 argument the "degrading self-delusion of an arrogant and fatuous mind." This 
 is a sample of the language constantly used by American writers towards a man in 
 whom brain disease can be diagnosed with moral certainty. Everything Poe 
 wrote, in his final and swiftly failing years, is discussed by most of his detractors 
 without a suggestion that it comes from a shaken reason. The note of malice is 
 normal. Professor Stringham takes as absolutely certain the story that Poe once 
 said: "My whole nature utterly revolts at the idea that there is any Being in the 
 universe superior to mvself." Now, that story (see it in Ingram's Life, Chap. 
 XVIII.) has a most dubious aspect, coming as it does from a rather fanatical theist ; 
 and I confess I have always doubted its truth. If it were true, it would to a candid 
 critic su-rgest incipient mania. On the other hand, it is essentially unjust so to 
 discuss P'oe's essav as to convey the idea that it ranks low among similar treatises. 
 Professor Strin"ham calls it worthless, and a waste of time. If the same thing 
 be said of the philosophies of Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel — as it might just as well 
 be — the disparagement of Poe would be somewhat discounted. But the can- 
 dour of the current American criticism of Poe mav be gathered from a comparison 
 of the language held towards his fallacies with that used in regard to the merely 
 childish theism of Mr. Lowell and Mr. Lanier, and the random pantheism of Emer- 
 son. On this head it may be added that Professor Stringham's criticism of Poe 
 breaks down even on some scientific issues. He affirms of Poe's doctrine that the 
 universe is in a state of ever-swifter collapse: "than this, nothing could be more 
 at variance with the great law of the conservation of energy." There is no such 
 contradiction in the case; and if there were it would be equally chargeable against 
 Mr. Spencer's theory of rhythmal disintegration and reintegration. Again, Pro- 
 fessor Stringham charges Poe with showing" fundamental ignorance of astronomy" 
 in saying that " the planets rotate (on their own axes) in elliptical orbits," without 
 noting the need for a source of attraction at the foci of the ellipse. Yet Poe had 
 expressly said in his Addendu to the Eureka (printed before Professor Stringham's 
 critique in the new edition) that the sun's axis of rotation was " not the centre of 
 his figure," and in the main treatise he had cited Lagrange's doctrine as to a varia- 
 tion of the orbits of the spheroids from circle to ellipse, and back again, by reason 
 of variation in their axes. I do not undertake to say that Poe's conception is 
 sound; but I do say that Professor Stringham has misrepresented him.
 
 176 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 for it is a book in itself — has, indeed, some bad passages, where he 
 essays to be humorous ; but as against this, it exhibits a competence 
 in matters of abstract science, and a hold of scientific cosmic theory, 
 that no English man of letters of that day possessed. Much sub- 
 sequent scientific thinking is anticipated here; Mr. Spencer, in 
 particular, might have drawn from it his fundamental principle of 
 the correlation of progress and heterogeneity; and the poet is here 
 found triumphantly and independently defending the Nebular 
 Hypothesis at a time when former exponents of it had wavered and 
 proposed to abandon it. 
 
 To Dr. Browne's important commentary it might be added that 
 in the preliminary section Poe emphatically forestalls some of the 
 strongest recent declarations against the absolute Baconian theory 
 of discovery,' that with two sweeps of his blade he demolishes a 
 position which Mr. Balfour has only been able to take by laborious 
 assault in his Defence of Philosophic Doubt; that he estimates 
 Laplace with the confident discrimination of an expert; and that 
 he speaks with intelligence on questions of astronomy which all 
 but experts shun. Such is his measure of success, of impressive- 
 ness, in an undertaking in which he finally fails. 
 
 VII 
 
 When, after thus discursively scanning the achievement of Poe, 
 we return to the contemplation of him as a personality, there arises 
 a feeling of absorbing wonderment at the strange paradox of his 
 being; the extraordinary union of this regnant intellect with that 
 ill-starred temperament; the weakness of the man foiling the 
 strength of the mind. The facts are plain. While he was writing 
 his most rigorous criticisms, and building up his cosmogony in the 
 white light and dry air of the altitudes of his reasoning imagination, 
 the man was not merely stumbling under the burden of his constitu- 
 tional vice as if smitten by sorcery, but was living an emotional 
 life of passionate yearnings and rending griefs. It was a lament- 
 able life. After his stormy youth, in the latter part of which we 
 find him attacked by the most crushing hypochondria, there came 
 the cruel train of pangs represented by the illness of his wife, who 
 seems to have truly "died a hundred deaths" before the release 
 
 » Compare Mill, System of Logic, B. VI. Chap. V. § 5; Jevons, Principles of 
 Science, p. 576; Tyndall, Scientific Use of the Imagination and Other l-'.ssays, 3d 
 ed. pp. 4, 8-9, 42-3; and Bagehot, Postulates oj knglish Political Economy, Stu- 
 dent's ed., pp. 17-19.
 
 POE 177 
 
 came; and in this period it was, on his own account, that in a state 
 of absolute frenzy between his woe and his bitter poverty,^ which 
 seemed to league itself with disease against the young victim, he 
 first gave way to delirious alcoholism. His wife's death left him 
 heart-shaken, the long agony of her decline having deepened his 
 feehng for her into a passion of pitying worship. As years passed 
 on, the unstrung emotionalism of the man made him turn first to 
 one and then to another woman for sympathy and love — this 
 while he maintained to the outside world, save in his lapses, his 
 grave, lofty, high-bred calm of manner; and bated no jot of skill 
 or thoroughness in his artistic work. While he makes distracted 
 love to Mrs. Whitman, he never slackens in his keen derision of the 
 transcendentalists, whose cloudy philosophy he could not abide. 
 He writes his story of Hop Frog with his old impassable artistic 
 aloofness, and writes about it to "Annie" in a letter touched with 
 hysteria. "Forced, unnatural, false," "strained, exaggerated, 
 and unnatural," are the terms Mr. Stoddard applies to these love- 
 letters and letters of ecstatic friendship; and we cannot gainsay 
 him here, save in so far as he imputes falsity. The case is one 
 which Mr. Stoddard's primitive scalpel cannot dissect : what seems 
 to him bad acting is neurosis. On the side of the affections Poe's 
 sensitiveness becomes absolute disease; till the man who was 
 accused of having no heart is wrecked by his heart's vibrations. 
 But the intellect is never really subjected : it is shaken and de- 
 throned at times by the breaking temperament; but it is uncon- 
 quered to the last. He becomes almost insane when his engage- 
 ment with Mrs. Whitman is broken ; but he again collects himself, 
 and he goes his way in silence. It is eminently significant that, as 
 Mr. Ingram notes, he shows no resentment at being charged with 
 aspiring to be a "glorious devil," all mind and no heart,^ as he 
 
 'In an article in Harper's Magazine for May, 1887, entitled "The Recent 
 Alovement in Southern Literature," the writer, Mr. Charles W. Coleman, jun., 
 says he has before him a series of letters written by Poe's employer on the Rich- 
 mond Literary Messenger, in which it is complained that Poe "is continually after 
 me for money. I am as sick of his writings as 1 am of him, and am rather more than 
 half inclined to send him up another dozen dollars, and along with them all his 
 unpubhshed MSS.," most of which are called "stuff." For his Pym story Poe 
 asks three dollars a page. "In reality," says the employer, "it has cost me twenty 
 dollars per page" — a statement which is not explained. At la^t comes this: 
 "Highly as I really think of Mr. Poe's talents, I shall be forced to give him notice 
 in a week or so at the furthest, that I can no longer recognize him as editor of the 
 Messenger." One is not highly impressed by the tone of the writer; but Poe's 
 neediness seems clear. 
 
 ^ Mr. Stedman in his latest criticism of Poe (Introd. to vol. vi. of new ed. of 
 Works, p. 24) says of him, more in the manner of Griswold than in that of Mr. 
 N
 
 178 
 
 JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 was by some of the Brook Farm transcendentalists. The explana- 
 tion, I think, clearly is that while he was conscious of his tendency 
 to turn emotions into reasonings, he also knew his danger from his 
 malady, and was eager to have it overlooked. "In the strange 
 anomaly of my existence," says the narrator in Berenice — a story 
 which offers abundant data for the "epilepsy" theory — "feelings 
 with me had never been of the heart, and my passions always were 
 of the mind;" and here there is a certain touch of self-study; 
 but we must not be misled by the phrase. Passionately quick, 
 on the one hand, to resent moral aspersions, and extravagant in his 
 emotional outbursts, he had the pride of intellect in a sufiicient de- 
 gree to wish, in his normal condition, to be regarded as above 
 emotional weakness. One who knew him in his latter days thought 
 there was to be detected in him a constant effort for self-control. 
 
 Looking back on his hapless career, and contrasting his deserts 
 with his lot, and with his reputation, one realizes with new cer- 
 tainty the worthlessness of most contemporary judgments. There 
 are stories of his scrupulous conscientiousness and of his social 
 considerateness such as could be told of few of his detractors; 
 and yet we find one of his women friends resorting to inaccurate 
 phrenology to account for the defects she inferred in his moral 
 nature. Absolutely innocent in his relations with women, though 
 his unworldly romanticism in their regard carried him into some 
 
 Stedman's earlier essaj': "A speck of reservation spoiled for him the fullest cup 
 of esteem, even when tendered by the most knightly and authoritative hands. 
 Lowell's A Fable for Critics, declaring 'three-fifths of him genius,' gave him an 
 award which ought to content even an unreasonable man. As it was, the good- 
 natured thrusts of one whose scholarship was unassailable, at his metrical and other 
 hobbies, drew from him a somewhat coarse and vindictive review of the whole 
 satire." It is true that Poe's review is bad in tone; but that does not put Mr. Sted- 
 man in the right, or bear out his zealous panegyric of Mr. Lowell. He oddly omits 
 to cite the "two-fifths sheer fudge," though he seems to think that Poe ought to have 
 welcomed Mr. Lowell's kicks for the sake of his sixpences. As against this addi- 
 tion to the countless one-sided verdicts on Poe, I must point out, (i) that Poe in his 
 critique exhibits anger only over Mr. Lowell's very coarse attack on Southern 
 slaveholders in general; (2) that though Mr. Lowell's lines on Poe were suffi- 
 ciently impertinent he makes no protest on that head; (3) that Mr. Lowell's versi- 
 fication, on which Poe spends most of his blame, was really excessively bad, 
 whatever his "scholarship" may have been, and cried aloud for a retort from the 
 assailed metricist; and (4) that Poe's show of vindictivcness is as nothing com- 
 pared with the passionate resentment exhibited in one of Mr. Lowell's letters, 
 recently published (Vol. L p. ioq), on the score of Poe's having charged him with a 
 plagiarism. An obvious blunder in Poe's citation of the passage imitated, he 
 actually declares to have been a wilful perversion, though the easy exposure of it 
 would at once tend to discredit Poe's charge. For the rest, Mr. Lowell's critical 
 treatment of Thoreau makes it difficult for some of us to see in him the "knightly 
 and authoritative " critical paragon of Mr. Stedman's worship.
 
 FOE 179 
 
 miserable embroilments, he came to be reputed an extreme liber- 
 tine; and his one fatal failing lost him some of the friendships he 
 most needed;, virtue and goodness being not always as merciful 
 as might be — not to say a trifle stupid. One of the most intensely 
 concentrative and painstaking of writers, he has been stigmatized 
 as indolent and spendthrift. To quote once more from the judg- 
 ment of Professor Minto in the Encydopcedia Bntannica, a vin- 
 dication which, it is to be hoped, will set the current ^ of a true ap- 
 preciation of the man : — "Poe failed to make a living by literature, 
 not because he was an irregular profligate in the vulgar sense, but 
 because he did ten times as much work as he was paid to do — a 
 species of profligacy perhaps, but not quite the same in kind as that 
 with which he was charged by his biographer." Pity and praise, 
 we repeat finally, are far more his due than blame. Morally he 
 lives for us as the high-strung, birth-stricken, suffering man, 
 "whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster," 
 till, instead of the proud, noble countenance of the earlier days, we 
 see in his latest portrait, as M. Hennequin describes it in his vivid 
 French way, a "face as of an old woman, white and haggard, hol- 
 lowed, relaxed, ploughed with all the lines of grief and of the shaken 
 reason; where over the sunken eyes, dimmed and dolorous and far- 
 gazing, there is throned the one feature unblemished stfll, the 
 superb forehead, high and firm, behind which his soul is expiring." 
 The pity of it all, and of the inexpressibly tragic conclusion, is too 
 profound to be outweighed by the remembrance that the "delicate 
 and splendid cerebral mechanism" remained, for its ratiocinative 
 purposes, almost intact to the end. But it is by that magnificent 
 endowment that the world is bound to remember him. Among the 
 crowd of men of one or of a few capacities, winning distinction by 
 giving their whole strength to this pursuit or that, and living with 
 hardly any other intellectual interest, he stands forth as an intelli- 
 gence of singularly various equipment and faculty. Science was 
 not too dry for him ; the analysis of style not too subtle or frivolous : 
 he could frame exquisite verse and stringent logic with equal mas- 
 tery and equal zeal. As a boy he had a turn for swimming such 
 as would have led many men into a career of sheer athletics ; in a 
 paper on The Philosophy of Furniture he embodies a passion for 
 
 1 In the dearth of adequate estimates of Poe, it is much to be able to add to Mr. 
 Minto's that of Lord Tennyson, published after this essay was first written. Ac- 
 cordine; to the newspaper report, the Laureate in conversation or correspondence 
 ranked Poe highest among American mea of letters, describing some more popular 
 writers as "pygmies" beside him.
 
 l8o JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 minor aesthetics such as can serve some men for a Hfe's mission. 
 For him there were no parochial boundaries in the world of the in- 
 tellect : he was free of all provinces ; overproud of his range, per- 
 haps, but with an unusual title to be proud. And thus it is that we 
 are fain to think of him as more than a poet, more than a critic, 
 more than an aesthete, more than a tale-teller, more than a scientific 
 thinker ; a strange combination not seen in every age, and lastingly 
 remarkable as such. He was a great brain.
 
 VIII 
 
 JOHN DRYDEN 
 
 (1631-1700) 
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 
 (1700) 
 
 'Tis with a poet, as with a man who designs to build, and is 
 very exact, as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand; 
 but, generally speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons 
 short in the expense he first intended. He alters his mind as the 
 work proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of 
 which he had not thought when he began. So has it happened 
 to me. I have built a house, where I intended but a lodge; yet 
 with better success than a certain nobleman, who, beginning 
 with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he had con- 
 trived. 
 
 From translating the first of Homer's Iliads (which I intended 
 as an essay to the whole work) I proceeded to the translation of 
 the twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, because it contains, 
 among other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of 
 the Trojan war. Here I ought in reason to have stopped; but 
 the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses lying next in my way, I could 
 not balk them. When I had compassed them, I was so taken 
 with the former part of the fifteenth book (which is the master- 
 piece of the whole Metamorphoses), that I enjoined myself the 
 pleasing task of rendering it into English. And now I found, 
 by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into a little 
 volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on 
 some beauties of my author, in his former books : there occurred 
 to me the Hunting of the Boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good- 
 natured story of Baucis and Philemon, with the rest, which I hope 
 
 181
 
 1 82 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn 
 of verse which they had in the original ; and this, I may say with- 
 out vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arrived 
 the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best 
 versifier of the former age ; if I may properly call it by that name, 
 which was the former part of this concluding century. For 
 Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
 beth; great masters in our language, and who saw much farther 
 into the beauties of our numbers than those who immediately 
 followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and 
 Mr. Waller of Fairfax, for we have our lineal descents and clans 
 as w^ell as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates 
 that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that 
 he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. 
 Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original; 
 and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that 
 he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Biil- 
 loign, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax. 
 
 But to return. Having done with Ovid for this time, it came 
 into my mind that our old English poet, Chaucer, in many things 
 resembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the side of the 
 modern author, as I shall endeavour to prove when I compare 
 them; and as I am, and always have been, studious to promote 
 the honour of my native country, so I soon resolved to put their 
 merits to the trial, by turning some of the Canterhiiry Talcs into 
 our language, as it is now refined; for by this means, both the 
 poets being set in the same light, and dressed in the same English 
 habit, story to be compared with story, a certain judgment may 
 be made betwixt them by the reader, without obtruding my opin- 
 ion on him. Or if I seem partial to my countryman and predeces- 
 sor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few; and besides 
 many of the learned, Ovid has almost all the beaux, and the whole 
 fair sex, his declared patrons. Perhaps I have assumed some- 
 what more to mvself than thev allow me, because I have adven- 
 tured to sum up the evidence; but the readers are the jury, and 
 their privilege remains entire, to decide according to the merits 
 of the cause, or, if they please, to bring it to another hearing before 
 some other court. In the meantime, to follow the thread of my 
 discourse (as thoughts, according to Mr. Hobbes, have always 
 some connection), so from Chaucer I was led to think on Boccace, 
 who was not only his contemporary, but also pursued the same
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 1 83 
 
 studies; wrote novels in prose, and many works in verse; par- 
 ticularly is said to have invented the octave rhyme, or stanza of 
 eight lines, which ever since has been maintained by the practice 
 of all Italian writers, who are, or at least assume the title of heroic 
 poets. He and Chaucer, among other things, had this in cc^mmon, 
 that they refined their mother tongue; but with this difference, 
 that Dante had begun to file their language, at least in verse, before 
 the time of Boccace, who likewise received no little help from his 
 master Petrarch. But the reformation of their prose was wholly 
 owing to Boccace himself, who is yet the standard of purity in 
 the Italian tongue, though many of his phrases are become obso- 
 lete, as in process of time it must needs happen. Chaucer (as 
 you have formerly been told by our learned jMr. Rymer) first 
 adorned and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencal, 
 which was then the most polished of all the modern languages; 
 but this subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, 
 who deserves no little commendation from us his countrymen. 
 For these reasons of time, and resemblance of genius, in Chaucer 
 and Boccace, I resolved to join them in my present work, to which 
 I have added some original papers of my own, which, whether 
 they are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author is the most 
 improper judge; and therefore I leave them wholly to the mercy 
 of the reader. I will hope the best, that they will not be con- 
 demned; but if they should, I have the excuse of an old gentle- 
 man, who, mounting on horseback before some ladies, when I 
 was present, got up somewhat heavily, but desired of the fair 
 spectators that they would count four-score-and-eight before they 
 judged him. By the mercy of God, I am already come within 
 twenty years of his number, a cripple in my limbs ; but what decays 
 are in my mind, the reader must determine. I think myself as 
 vigorous as ever in the faculties of my soul, excepting only my 
 memory, which is not impaired to any great degree ; and if I lose 
 not more of it, I have no great reason to complain. What judg- 
 ment I had, increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, 
 such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only 
 difficulty is to choose or to reject; to run them into verse, or to 
 give them the other harmony of prose. I have so long studied 
 and practised both, that they are grown into a habit, and become 
 familiar to me. In short, though I may lawfully plead some part 
 of the old gentleman's excuse, yet I will reserve it till I think I 
 have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults
 
 1 84 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 of this my present work, but those which are given of course to 
 human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness 
 of time in which I writ it, or the several intervals of sickness. 
 They who think too well of their own performances, are apt to 
 boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, 
 and what other business of more importance interfered; but the 
 reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a 
 longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they 
 had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their 
 indigested stuff upon them, as if they deserved no better ? 
 
 With this account of my present undertaking, I conclude the 
 first part of this discourse: in the second part, as at a second 
 sitting, though I alter not the draught, I must touch the same 
 features over again, and change the dead colouring of the whole. 
 In general, I will only say, that I have written nothing which 
 savours of immorality or profaneness; at least, I am not con- 
 scious to myself of any such intention. If there happen to be 
 found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton, they are 
 crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the searchers 
 find any in the cargo, let them be staved or forfeited, like con- 
 trabanded goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for 
 them, as being but imported merchandise, and not of my own 
 manufacture. On the other side, I have endeavoured to choose 
 such fables, both ancient and modern, as contain in each of them 
 some instructive moral, which I could prove by induction, but 
 the way is tedious; and they leap foremost into sight, without 
 the reader's trouble of looking after them. I wish I could affirm, 
 with a safe conscience, that I had taken the same care in all my 
 former writings; for it must be owned, that supposing verses 
 are never so beautiful or pleasing, yet if they contain anything 
 which shocks religion, or good manners, they are at best what 
 Horace says of good numbers without good sense. Versus inopes 
 rerum, nugccque canorce} Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, 
 without renouncing my other right of self-defence, where I have 
 been wrongfully accused, and my sense wire-drawn into blas- 
 phemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious lawyer, in 
 a late pleading against the stage; in which he mixes truth with 
 falsehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating 
 strongly, that something may remain. 
 
 1 [Verses barren of ideas, and songs of no account.]
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 185 
 
 I resume the thrid of my discourse with the first of my transla- 
 tions, which was the first Iliad of Homer. If it shall please God 
 to give me longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to 
 translate the whole Ilias ; provided still that I meet with those 
 encouragements from the public, which may enable me to proceed 
 in my undertaking with some cheerfulness. And this I dare 
 assure the world beforehand, that I have found, by trial, Homer 
 a more pleasing task than Virgil, though I say not the translation 
 will be less laborious; for the Grecian is more according to my 
 genius than the Latin poet. In the works of the two authors 
 we may read their manners and inclinations, which are wholly 
 different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was 
 violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil 
 was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was 
 rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers 
 and of expressions, which his language, and the age in which he 
 lived, allowed him. Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's 
 more confined ; so that if Homer had not led the way, it was not 
 in Virgil to have begun heroic poetry; for nothing can be more 
 evident, than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the 
 Ilias ; a continuation of the same story, and the persons already 
 formed. The manners of /Eneas are those of Hector superadded 
 to those which Homer gave him. The adventures of Ulysses 
 in the Odysseis are imitated in the first six books of Virgil's Mneis; 
 and though the accidents are not the same (which would have 
 argued him of a servile copying, and total barrenness of invention), 
 yet the seas were the same in which both the heroes wandered; 
 and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of Calypso. 
 The six latter books of Virgil's poem are the four and twenty 
 Iliads contracted ; a quarrel occasioned by a lady, a single combat, 
 battles fought, and a town besieged. I say not this in derogation 
 to Virgil, neither do I contradict anything which I have formerly 
 said in his just praise : for his episodes are almost wholly of his own 
 invention ; and the form which he has given to the telling, makes 
 the tale his own, even though the original story had been the 
 same. But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to 
 design; and if invention be the first virtue of an epic poet, then 
 the Latin poem can only be allowed the second place. Mr. 
 Hobbes, in the preface to his own bald translation of the Ilias 
 (studying poetry as he did mathematics, when it was too late), 
 Mr. Hobbes, I say, begins the praise of Homer where he should
 
 l86 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 have ended it. He tells us that the first beauty of an epic poem 
 consists in diction, that is, in the choice of words, and harmony 
 of numbers. Now the words are the colouring of the work, which 
 in the order of nature is the last to be considered. The design, 
 the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts are all before it: 
 where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or 
 is imperfect in the imitation of human life; which is in the very 
 definition of a poem. Words, indeed, like glaring colours, are 
 the first beauties that arise and strike the sight : but if the draught 
 be false or lame, the figures ill-disposed, the manners obscure 
 or inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colours 
 are but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monster at the best. 
 Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former 
 beauties; but in this last, which is expression, the Roman poet 
 is at least equal to the Grecian, as I have said elsewhere; supply- 
 ing the poverty of his language by his musical ear, and by his 
 dihgence. 
 
 But to return: our two great poets, being so different in their 
 tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and 
 melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways 
 is, that each of them has followed his own natural inclination, 
 as well in forming the design, as in the execution of it. The 
 very heroes show their authors: Achilles is hot, impatient, re- 
 vengeful, etc., Impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis , acer, eic} /Eneas 
 patient, considerate, careful of his people, and merciful to his 
 enemies; ever submissive to the will of heaven — quo fata trahnnt, 
 retrahuntque, sequamur? I could please myself with enlarging 
 on this subject, but am forced to defer it to a fitter time. From 
 all I have said I will only draw this inference, that the action 
 of Homer being more full of vigour than that of Virgil, according 
 to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to 
 the reader. One warms you by degrees; the other sets you on 
 fire all at once, and never intermits its heat. 'Tis the same 
 difference which Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence 
 in Demosthenes and Tully; one persuades, the other commands. 
 You never cool while you read Homer, even not in the second 
 book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen); but he hastens 
 from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has made you 
 
 ' [Energetic, choleric, inexorable, violent.] 
 
 2 [Wherever the fates lead us back and forth, let us follow.]
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 187 
 
 an amends by the violent playing of a new machine. From 
 thence he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends 
 it in less compass than two months. This vehemence of his, 
 I confess, is more suitable to my temper; and therefore I have 
 translated his first book with greater pleasure than any part of 
 Virgil; but it was not a pleasure without pains. The continual 
 agitations of the spirits must needs be a weakening of any consti- 
 tution, especially in age; and many pauses are required for re- 
 freshment betwixt the heats ; the Iliad of itself being a third part 
 longer than all Virgil's works together. 
 
 This is what I thought needful in this place to say of Homer. 
 I proceed to Ovid and Chaucer, considering the former only in 
 relation to the latter. With Ovid ended the golden age of the 
 Roman tongue; from Chaucer the purity of the English tongue 
 began. The manners of the poets were not unlike : both of them 
 were well-bred, well-natured, amorous, and libertine, at least in 
 their writings, it may be also in their lives. Their studies were 
 the same, philosophy and philology. Both of them were known 
 in astronomy, of which Ovid's books of the Roman Feasts, and 
 Chaucer's Treatise of the Astrolabe, are sufficient witnesses. But 
 Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, 
 Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and 
 clearness; neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied 
 the Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken 
 from his Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors. Boccace 
 his Decameron was first published, and from thence our English- 
 man has borrowed many of his Canterbury Tales; yet that of 
 Palamon and Arcite was written in all probability by some Italian 
 wit in a former age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of Grizild 
 was the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace, from 
 whom it came to Chaucer. Troilus and Cressida was also written 
 by a Lombard author, but much amplified by our English trans- 
 lator, as well as beautified; the genius of our countrymen in 
 general being rather to improve an invention than to invent them- 
 selves, as is evident not only in our poetry, but in many of our 
 manufactures. I find I have anticipated already, and taken up 
 from Boccace before I come to him; but there is so much less 
 behind ; and I am of the temper of most kings, who love to be in 
 debt, are all for present money, no matter how they pay it after- 
 wards ; besides, the nature of a preface is rambling, never wholly 
 out of the way, nor in it. This I have learned from the practice
 
 1 88 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 of honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to Ovid and 
 Chaucer, of whom I have httle more to say. 
 
 Both of them buik on the inventions of other men; yet since 
 Chaucer had something of his own, as the Wife of Bath's Tale, 
 The Cock and the Fox, which I have translated, and some others, 
 I may justly give our countryman the precedence in that part, since 
 I can remember nothing of Ovid which was wholly his. Both 
 of them understood the manners ; under which name I compre- 
 hend the passions, and, in a larger sense, the descriptions of 
 persons, and their very habits. For an example, I see Baucis 
 and Philemon as perfectly before me, as if some ancient painter 
 had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, 
 their humours, their features, and the very dress, as distinctly 
 as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark. Yet 
 even there too the figures in Chaucer are much more lively, and 
 set in a better light; which though I have not time to prove, yet 
 I appeal to the reader, and am sure he will clear me from partiality. 
 The thoughts and words remain to be considered in the compari- 
 son of the two poets; and I have saved myself one half of that 
 labour, by owning that Ovid lived when the Roman tongue was 
 in its meridian, Chaucer in the dawning of our language; there- 
 fore that part of the comparison stands not on an equal foot, 
 any more than the diction of Ennius and Ovid, or of Chaucer 
 and our present English. The words are given up as a post not 
 to be defended in our poet, because he wanted the modern art 
 of fortifying. The thoughts remain to be considered; and they 
 are to be measured only by their propriety, that is, as they flow 
 more or less naturally from the persons described, on such and 
 such occasions. The vulgar judges, which are nine parts in ten 
 of all nations, who call conceits and jingles wit, who see Ovid full 
 of them, and Chaucer altogether without them, will think me 
 little less than mad, for preferring the Englishman to the Roman; 
 yet, with their leave, I must presume to say, that the things they 
 admire are only glittering trifles, and so far from being witty, 
 that in a serious poem they are nauseous, because they are un- 
 natural. Would any man, who is ready to die for love, describe 
 his passion like Narcissus ? Would he think of inopcm me copia 
 fecit,^ and a dozen more of such expressions, poured on the neck 
 of one another, and signifying all the same thing? If this were 
 wit, was this a time to be witty, when the poor wretch was in the 
 
 ' [Abundance has made me poor.]
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 189 
 
 agony of death? This is just John Littlewit in Bartholomeiv 
 Fair, who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; 
 a miserable conceit. On these occasions the poet should endeav- 
 our to raise pity ; but instead of this, Ovid is tickling you to laugh. 
 Virgil never made use of such machines, when he was moving 
 you to commiserate the death of Dido : he would not destroy 
 what he was building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, 
 and unjust in the pursuit of it ; yet when he came to die, he made 
 him think more reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that 
 had altered his character, but acknowledges the injustice of his 
 proceedings, and resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid 
 have done on this occasion ? He would certainly have made 
 Arcite witty on his death-bed. He had complained he was farther 
 off from possession by being so near, and a thousand such boyisms, 
 which Chaucer rejected as below the dignity of the subject. They, 
 who think otherwise, would by the same reason prefer Lucan 
 and Ovid to Homer and Virgil, and Martial to all four of them. 
 As for the turn of words, in which Ovid particularly excels all 
 poets, they are sometimes a fault, and sometimes a beauty, as they 
 are used properly or improperly; but in strong passions always 
 to be shunned, because passions are serious, and will admit no 
 playing. The French have a high value for them ; and, I confess, 
 they are often what they call delicate, when they are introduced 
 with judgment; but Chaucer writ with more simplicity, and 
 followed nature more closely, than to use them. I have thus 
 far, to the best of my knowledge, been an upright judge betwixt 
 the parties in competition, not meddling with the design nor the 
 disposition of it, because the design was not their own, and in the 
 disposing of it they were equal. It remains that I say somewhat 
 of Chaucer in particular. 
 
 In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold 
 him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer 
 or the Romans Virgil: he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, 
 learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all sub- 
 jects; as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave 
 off, a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely 
 by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our 
 late great poets is sunk in his reputation, because he could never 
 forgive any conceit which came in his way, but swept like a drag- 
 net great and small. There was plenty enough, but the dishes 
 were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and
 
 IQO JOHN DRV DEN 
 
 women, but little of solid meat for men: all this proceeded not 
 from any want of knowledge, but of judgment; neither did he 
 want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets, 
 but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing, and per- 
 haps knew it was a fault, but hoped the reader would not find 
 it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a 
 great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and 
 for ten impressions, which his works have had in so many 
 successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely 
 purchased once a twelve-month; for as my last Lord Roch- 
 ester said, though somewhat profanely, "Not being of God, 
 he could not stand." 
 
 Chaucer followed nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go 
 beyond her; and there is a great difference of being poeta and 
 nimis poeta,^ if we believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest 
 behaviour and affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not 
 harmonious to us, but 'tis like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus 
 commends, it was aiiribus istius temporis accommodata:~ they 
 who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical ; 
 and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the 
 numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries ; there is the 
 rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, 
 though not perfect. 'Tis true I cannot go so far as he who pub- 
 lished the last edition of him ; for he would make us believe the 
 fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse 
 where we find but nine, but this opinion is not worth confuting, 
 it is so gross and obvious an error that common sense (which is a 
 rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation) must con- 
 vince the reader that equality of numbers in every verse, which we 
 call heroic, was either not known, or not always practised, in Chau- 
 cer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of 
 his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes 
 a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. 
 We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that 
 nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be children 
 before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in process of 
 time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even 
 after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before 
 Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in 
 
 ' [Too much of a poet.] ^ [Tempered to the ear of the very times.]
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES I9I 
 
 their nonage till these last appeared. I need say little of his 
 parentage, life, and fortunes: they are to be found at large in all 
 the editions of his works. He was employed abroad, and favoured 
 by Edward the Third, Richard the Second, and Henry the Fourth, 
 and was poet, as I suppose, to all three of them. In Richard's 
 time, I doubt, he was a little dipt in the rebellion of the Commons, 
 and being brother-in-law to John of Gaunt, it was no wonder if he 
 followed the fortunes of that family, and was well with Henry the 
 Fourth when he had deposed his predecessor. Neither is it to be 
 admired that Henry, who was a wise as well as a valiant prince, 
 who claimed by succession, and was sensible that his title was not 
 sound, but was rightfully in Mortimer, who had married the heir 
 of York; it was not to be admired, I say, if that great politician 
 should be pleased to have the greatest wit of those times in his 
 interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises. Augustus had given 
 him the example, by the advice of Mascenas, who recommended 
 Virgil and Horace to him, whose praises helped to make him popu- 
 lar while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious 
 to posterity. As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some 
 little bias towards the opinions of Wickliff, after John of Gaunt his 
 patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of Piers Plowman: 
 yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices 
 of the clergy in his age; their pride, their ambition, their pomp, 
 their avarice, their worldly interest deserved the lashes which he 
 gave them, both in that and in most of his Canterbury Tales: 
 neither has his contemporary Boccace spared them. Yet both 
 these poets lived in much esteem with good and holy men in orders ; 
 for the scandal which is given by particular priests, reflects not 
 on the sacred function. Chaucer's Monk, his Canon, and his Friar 
 took not from the character of his Good Parson. A satirical poet 
 is the check of the laymen on bad priests. We are only to take care 
 that we involve not the innocent with the guilty in the same con- 
 demnation. The good cannot be too much honoured, nor the bad 
 too coarsely used ; for the corruption of the best becomes the worst. 
 When a clergyman is whipped his gown is first taken off, by which 
 the dignity of his order is secured ; if he be wrongfully accused, he 
 has his action of slander ; and it is at the poet's peril if he transgress 
 the law. But they will tell us that all kind of satire, though never 
 so well-deserved by particular priests, yet brings the whole order 
 into contempt. Is, then, the peerage of England anything dis- 
 honoured when a peer suffers for his treason ? If he be libelled,
 
 192 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 or any way defamed, he has his Scandalum Magnatnm ^ to punish 
 the offender. They who use this kind of argument seem to be 
 conscious to themselves of somewhat which has deserved the poet's 
 lash, and are less concerned for their public capacity than for their 
 private; at least there is pride at the bottom of their reasoning. 
 If the faults of men in orders are only to be judged among them- 
 selves, they are all in some sort parties; for, since they say the 
 honour of their order is concerned in every member of it, how can 
 we be sure that they will be impartial judges ? How far I may be 
 allowed to speak my opinion in this case I know not, but I am sure 
 a dispute of this nature caused mischief in abundance betwixt 
 a King of England and an Archbishop of Canterbury; one stand- 
 ing up for the laws of his land, and the other for the honour (as he 
 called it) of God's Church; which ended in the murder of the 
 prelate, and in the whipping of his majesty from post to pillar for 
 his penance. The learned and ingenious Dr. Drake has saved 
 me the labour of inquiring into the esteem and reverence which the 
 priests have had of old ; and I would rather extend than diminish 
 any part of it : yet I must needs say, that when a priest provokes 
 me without any occasion given him, I have no reason, unless it be 
 the charity of a Christian, to forgive him. Prior laesit ^ is justifica- 
 tion sufficient in the civil law. If I answer him in his own language, 
 self-defence, I am sure, must be allowed me; and if I carry it 
 farther, even to a sharp recrimination, somewhat may be indulged 
 to human frailty. Yet my resentment has not wrought so far, but 
 that I have followed Chaucer, in his character of a holy man, and 
 have enlarged on that subject with some pleasure, reserving to 
 myself the right, if I shall think fit hereafter, to describe another sort 
 of priests, such as are more easily to be found than the Good Par- 
 son ; such as have given the last blow to Christianity in this age, 
 by a practice so contrary to their doctrine. But this will keep cold 
 till another time. In the meanwhile, I take up Chaucer where I 
 left him. 
 
 He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive 
 nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken 
 into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and 
 humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his 
 age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims 
 
 * f'ln law, the offense of speaking slanderously or in defamation of high 
 personacjes (magnates) of the realm, as temporal and spiritual peers, judges, and 
 other high officers." — Century Dictionary.] 
 
 - [He did tlie llrst injury.]
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES I93 
 
 are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their 
 inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. Bap- 
 tista Porta could not have described their natures better than by 
 the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of 
 their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different edu- 
 cations, humours, and callings that each of them would be improper 
 in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are 
 distinguished by their several sorts of gravity : their discourses are 
 such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such 
 as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons 
 are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chau- 
 cer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry 
 of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the 
 Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much 
 as the mincing Lady-Prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed 
 Wife of Bath. But enough of this : there is such a variety of game 
 springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and 
 know not which to follow. 'Tis sufficient to say, according to the 
 proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and 
 great-grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days ; 
 their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even 
 in England, though they are called by other names than those of 
 Monks, and Friars, and Canons, and Lady Abbesses, and Nuns; 
 for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though 
 everything is altered. May I have leave to do myself the justice 
 (since my enemies will do me none, and are so far from granting 
 me to be a good poet that they will not allow me so much as to be 
 a Christian, or a moral man), may I have leave, I say, to inform 
 my reader that I have confined my choice to such tales of Chaucer 
 as savour nothing of immodesty ? If I had desired more to please 
 than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, 
 the Summoner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath, in the prologue 
 to her tale, would have procured me as many friends and readers 
 as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I will 
 no more offend against good manners : I am sensible, as I ought to 
 be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings, and make 
 what reparation I am able by this public acknowledgment. If 
 anything of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these 
 poems, I am so far from defending it that I disown it. Totiini 
 hoc indictiim volo} Chaucer makes another manner of apology 
 
 ^ [All this I wish unsaid.]
 
 194 JOHN DRYDEN 
 
 for his broad speaking, and Boccace makes the like; but I will 
 follow neither or them. Our countryman, in the end of his Char- 
 acters, before the Canterbury Tales, thus excuses the ribaldry, 
 which is very gross in many of his novels. 
 
 But firste, I pray you of your courtesy, 
 That ye ne arrete it not my villany, 
 Though that I plainly speak in this mattere 
 To tcllen you her words, and eke her chere : 
 Ne though I speak her words properly, 
 For this ye knowen as well as I, 
 Who shall tellen a tale after a man. 
 He mote rehearse as nye as ever he can 
 Everich word of it be in his charge. 
 All speke he, never so rudely, ne large. 
 
 Or else he mote tellen his tale untrue, 
 
 Or feine things, or find words new: 
 
 He may not spare, altho he were his brother, 
 
 He mote as well say o word as another. 
 
 Christ spake himself ful broad in holy writ, 
 
 And well I wot no villany is it. 
 
 Eke Plato saith, who so can him rede. 
 
 The words mote been cousin to the dede. 
 
 Yet if a man should have inquired of Boccace or of Chaucer, 
 what need they had of introducing such characters where obscene 
 words were proper in their mouths, but very indecent to be heard; 
 I know not what answer they could have made; for that reason, 
 such tales shall be left untold by me. You have here a specimen 
 of Chaucer's language, which is so obsolete, that his sense is scarce 
 to be understood; and you have likewise more than one example 
 of his unequal numbers, which were mentioned before. Yet many 
 of his verses consist of ten syllables, and the words not much be- 
 hind our present English : as, for example, these two lines, in the 
 description of the Carpenter's young wife : — 
 
 Wincing she was, as is a jolly colt. 
 Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt. 
 
 I have almost done with Chaucer, when I have answered some 
 objections relating to my present work. I find some people are 
 offended that I have turned these tales into modern English; be- 
 cause they think them unworthy of my pains, and look on Chaucer 
 as a dry, old-fashioned wit, not worth reviving. I have often heard 
 the late Earl of Leicester say, that Mr. Cowley himself was of that
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 195 
 
 opinion; who, having read him over at my lord's request, declared 
 he had no taste of him. I dare not advance my opinion against the 
 judgment of so great an author : but I think it fair, however, to 
 leave the decision to the public. Mr. Cowley was too modest to 
 set up for a dictator; and being shocked perhaps with his old style, 
 never examined into the depth of his good sense. Chaucer, I con- 
 fess, is a rough diamond, and must first be polished, ere he shines. 
 I deny not, hkewise, that, living in our early times he writes not 
 always of a piece, but sometimes mingles trivial things with those 
 of greater moment. Sometimes also, though not often, he runs 
 riot, like Ovid, and knows not when he has said enough. But there 
 are more great wits besides Chaucer, whose fault is their excess of 
 conceits, and those ill sorted. An author is not to write all he can, 
 but only all he ought. Having observed this redundancy in Chau- 
 cer (as it is an easy matter for a man of ordinary parts to find a 
 fault in one of greater), I have not tied myself to a literal translation ; 
 but have often omitted what I judged unnecessary, or not of dig- 
 nity enough to appear in the company of better thoughts. I have 
 presumed farther, in some places, and added somewhat of my own 
 where I thought my author was deficient, and had not given his 
 thoughts their true lustre, for want of words in the beginning of our 
 language. And to this I was the more emboldened, because (if I 
 may be permitted to say it of myself) I found I had a soul congenial 
 to his, and that I had been conversant in the same studies. An- 
 other poet, in another age, may take the same liberty with my writ- 
 ings ; if at least they live long enough to deserve correction. It was 
 also necessary sometimes to restore the sense of Chaucer, which was 
 lost or mangled in the errors of the press : let this example suffice 
 at present; in the story of Palamon and Arcite, where the temple 
 of Diana is described, you find these verses, in all the editions of our 
 author : — 
 
 There saw I Dane turned into a tree, 
 
 I mean not the goddess Diane, 
 
 But Venus daughter, which that hight Dane: 
 
 Which, after a little consideration, I knew was to be reformed into 
 this sense, that Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was turned into 
 a tree. I durst not make thus bold with Ovid, lest some future 
 Milbourn should arise, and say, I varied from my author, because 
 I understood him not. 
 
 But there are other judges who think I ought not to have trans- 
 lated Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion: they
 
 196 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language; 
 and that it is a little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. 
 They are farther of opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will 
 suffer in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts 
 will infallibly be lost, which appear with more grace in their old 
 habit. Of this opinion was that excellent person, whom I men- 
 tioned, the late Earl of Leicester, who valued Chaucer as much as 
 Mr. Cowley despised him. My lord dissuaded me from this at- 
 tempt (for I was thinking of it some years before his death), and 
 his authority prevailed so far with me, as to defer my undertaking 
 while he lived, in deference to him: yet my reason was not con- 
 vinced with what he urged against it. If the first end of a writer 
 be to be understood, then as his language grows obsolete, his 
 thoughts must grow obscure : — 
 
 Multa renascentur quae nunc cecidere; cadentque, 
 Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula si volet usus 
 Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.' 
 
 WTien an ancient word for its sound and significancy deserves to be 
 revived, I have that reasonable veneration for antiquity, to restore 
 it. All beyond this is superstition. Words are not like landmarks, 
 so sacred as never to be removed; customs are changed, and even 
 statutes are silently repealed, when the reason ceases for which they 
 were enacted. As for the other part of the argument, that his 
 thoughts will lose of their original beauty, by the innovation of 
 words; in the first place, not only their beauty but their being is 
 lost, where they are no longer understood, which is the present case. 
 I grant that something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in 
 all translations ; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise 
 be lost, or at least be maimed, when it is scarce intelligible; and 
 that but to a few. How few are there who can read Chaucer, so 
 as to understand him perfectly ! And if perfectly, then with less 
 profit and no pleasure. 'Tis not for the use of some old Saxon 
 friends that I have taken these pains with him: let them neglect 
 my version because they have no need of it. I made it for their 
 sakes who understand sense and poetry as well as they, when that 
 poetry and sense is put into words which they understand. I will 
 go farther, and dare to add, that what beauties I lose in some places, 
 
 ' [Many words will be restored which now have fallen out of use, and many 
 words will pass which are now in honor — if custom so decrees, in whose power 
 is the rule and the law and the pattern of speaking.]
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES I97 
 
 I give to others which had them not originally ; but in this I may be 
 partial to myself; let the reader judge, and I submit to his decision. 
 Yet I think I have just occasion to complain of them, who, because 
 they understand Chaucer, would deprive the greater part of their 
 countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up, as misers 
 do their grahdam gold, only to look on it themselves, and hinder 
 others from making use of it. In sum, I seriously protest, that no 
 man ever had, or can have, a greater veneration for Chaucer 
 than myself. I have translated some part of his works, only that 
 I might perpetuate his memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my 
 countrymen. If I have altered him anyw^here for the better, I 
 must at the same time acknowledge that I could have done nothing 
 without him : Facile est inventis addere,^ is no great commendation ; 
 and I am not so vain to think I have deserved a greater. I will 
 conclude what I have to say of him singly, with this one remark : 
 a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence 
 with some authors of the fair sex in France, has been informed 
 by them that Mademoiselle de Scudery, who is as old as Sibyl, 
 and inspired like her by the same god of poetry, is at this time trans- 
 lating Chaucer into modern French. From which I gather that 
 he has been formerly translated into the old Provenf al ; for how she 
 should come to understand old English I know not. But the matter 
 of fact being true, it makes me think that there is something in if like 
 fatality; that, after certain periods of time, the fame and memory 
 of great wits should be renewed, as Chaucer is both in France and 
 England. If this be wholly chance, 'tis extraordinary, and I dare 
 not call it more for fear of being taxed with superstition. 
 
 Boccace comes last to be considered, who, living in the same age 
 with Chaucer, had the same genius, and followed the same studies. 
 Both writ novels, and each of them cultivated his mother tongue. 
 But the greatest resemblance of our two modern authors being in 
 their familiar style, and pleasing way of relating comical adven- 
 tures, I may pass it over, because I have translated nothing from 
 Boccace of that nature. In the serious part of poetry, the advan- 
 tage is wholly on Chaucer's side ; for though the Englishman has 
 borrowed many tales from the Italian, yet it appears that those of 
 Boccace were not generally of his own making, but taken from 
 authors of former ages, and by him only modelled; so that what 
 there was of invention in either of them may be judged equal. But 
 Chaucer has refined on Boccace, and has mended the stories, which 
 
 * [It is easy to add to what is already there.]
 
 198 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 he has borrowed, in his way of telling; though prose allows more 
 liberty of thought, and the expression is more easy when unconfined 
 by numbers. Our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the 
 race at disadvantage. I desire not the reader should take my word, 
 and therefore I will set two of their discourses on the same subject, 
 in the same Hght, for every man to judge betwixt them. I trans- 
 lated Chaucer first, and amongst the rest pitched on The Wife of 
 Bathes Tale — not daring, as I have said, to adventure on her Pro- 
 logue, because it is too licentious. There Chaucer introduces an 
 old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful knight of noble 
 blood was forced to marry, and consequently loathed her. The 
 crone being in bed with him on the wedding-night, and finding his 
 aversion, endeavours to win his affection by reason, and speaks a 
 good word for herself (as who could blame her ?) in hope to mollify 
 the sullen bridegroom. She takes her topics from the benefits of 
 poverty, the advantages of old'age and ugliness, the vanity of youth, 
 and the silly pride of ancestry and titles without inherent virtue, 
 which is the true nobility. When I had closed Chaucer I returned 
 to Ovid, and translated some more of his fables; and by this time 
 had so far forgotten The Wife of Balh's Tale that, when I took up 
 Boccace, unawares I fell on the same argument of preferring virtue 
 to nobility of blood, and titles, in the story of Sigismunda, which I 
 had certainly avoided for the resemblance of the two discourses, 
 if my memory had not failed me. Let the reader weigh them both, 
 and if he thinks me partial to Chaucer, 'tis in him to right Boccace. 
 I prefer, in our countryman, far above all his other stories, the 
 noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, which is of the epic kind, and 
 perhaps not much inferior to the Ilias or the Aineis. The story 
 is more pleasing than either of them, the manners as perfect, the 
 diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and the dis- 
 position full as artful; only it includes a greater length of time, 
 as taking up seven years at least; but Aristotle has left undecided 
 the duration of the action, which yet is easily reduced into the com- 
 pass of a year by a narration of what preceded the return of Pala- 
 mon to Athens. I had thought for the honour of our nation, and 
 more particularly for his whose laurel, though unworthy, I have 
 worn after him, that this story was of English growth and Chau- 
 cer's own; but I was undeceived by Boccace, for casually looking 
 on the end of his seventh Giornata, I found Dioneo (under which 
 name he shadows himself) and Fiametta (who represents his mis- 
 tress, the natural daughter of Robert, King of Naples), of whom
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 199 
 
 these words are spoken, Dloneo e Fiametta gran pezza contarono 
 insieme d'Arcita, e di Palamone;^ by which it appears that this 
 story was written before the time of Boccace ; but the name of its 
 author being wholly lost, Chaucer is now become an original, and 
 I question not but the poem has received many beauties by passing 
 through his noble hands. Besides this tale, there is another of his 
 own invention, after the manner of the Provencals, called The 
 Flower and the Leaf, with which I was so particularly pleased, both 
 for the invention and the moral, that I cannot hinder myself from 
 recommending it to the reader. 
 
 As a corollary to this preface, in which I have done justice to 
 others, I owe somewhat to myself ; not that I think it worth my time 
 to enter the lists with one Milbourn and one Blackmore, but barely 
 to take notice that such men there are who have written scurrilously 
 against me without any provocation. Milbourn, who is in orders, 
 pretends, amongst the rest, this quarrel to me, that I have fallen 
 foul on priesthood; if I have, I am only to ask pardon of good 
 priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little. 
 Let him be satisfied that he shall not be able to force himself upon 
 me for an adversary. I contemn him too much to enter into com- 
 petition with him. His own translations of Virgil have answered 
 his criticisms on mine. If (as they say, he has declared in print) 
 he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world has made him the 
 same compliment, for 'tis agreed, on all hands, that he writes even 
 below Ogilby. That, you will say, is not easily to be done; but 
 what cannot Milbourn bring about ? I am satisfied, however, that 
 while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet 
 of the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write 
 so ill against me; but upon my honest word, I have not bribed him 
 to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. 
 'Tis true, I should be glad if I could persuade him to continue his 
 good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine; 
 for I find by experience he has a great stroke with the reader, 
 when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a 
 better opinion of them. He has taken some pains with my poetry, 
 but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his. If I 
 had taken to the church, as he affirms, but which was never in my 
 thoughts, I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to 
 have turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my 
 parishioners. But his account of my manners and my principles 
 
 1 [Dioneo and Fiametta together told a long tale of Arcite and of Palamon.]
 
 200 JOHN DRY DEN 
 
 are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry ; and so I have done vi^ith 
 him forever. 
 
 As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to 
 me is, that I was the author of Absalom and Achitophel, which he 
 thinks was a little hard on his fanatic patrons in London. 
 
 But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because noth- 
 ing ill is to be spoken of the dead, and therefore peace be to the 
 Manes of his Arthurs. I will only say that it was not for this noble 
 knight that I drew the plan of an epic poem on King Arthur in 
 my preface to the translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of 
 kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and 
 therefore he rejected them, as Dares did the whirlbats of Eryx, 
 when they were thrown before him by Entellus. Yet from that 
 preface he plainly took his hint ; for he began immediately upon his 
 story, though he had the baseness not to acknowledge his bene- 
 factor; but instead of it, to traduce me in a libel. 
 
 I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has 
 taxed me justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and ex- 
 pressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profane- 
 ness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let 
 him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal 
 occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. It be- 
 comes me not to draw my pen in the defence of a bad cause when I 
 have so often drawn it for a good one. Yet it were not difficult 
 to prove that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his 
 glosses, and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry, 
 of which they were not guilty. Besides that he is too much given 
 to horse-play in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from 
 the plough. I will not say the zeal of God's house has eaten him 
 up, but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners 
 and civility. It might also be doubted whether it were altogether 
 zeal which prompted him to this rough manner of proceeding; per- 
 haps it became not one of his function to rake into the rubbish of 
 ancient and modern plays. A divine might have employed his 
 pains to better purpose than in the nastiness of Plautus and Aris- 
 tophanes, whose examples, as they excuse not me, so it might be 
 possibly supposed that he read them not without some pleasure. 
 They who have written commentaries on those poets, or on Horace, 
 Juvenal, and Martial, have explained some vices which, without their 
 interpretation, had been unknown to modern tirnes. Neither has he 
 judged imj)artially betwixt the former age and us. There is more
 
 PREFACE TO THE FABLES 20I 
 
 bawdry in one play of Fletcher's, called The Custom of the Coun- 
 try, than in all ours together. Yet this has been often acted on the 
 stage in my remembrance. Are the times so much more reformed 
 now than they were five and twenty years ago ? If they are, I con- 
 gratulate the amendment of our morals. But I am not to preju- 
 dice the cause of my fellow-poets, though I abandon my own 
 defence: they have some of them answered for themselves, and 
 neither they nor I can think Mr. Collier so formidable an enemy 
 that we should shun him. He has lost ground at the latter end of 
 the day by pursuing his point too far, like the Prince of Conde at 
 the battle of Senneffe : from immoral plays to no plays, ab abusu 
 ad usum, non valet consequentia} But being a party, I am not to 
 erect myself into a judge. As for the rest of those who have 
 written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve 
 not the least notice to be taken of them. Blackmor^ and Milbourn 
 are only distinguished from the crowd by being remembered to 
 their infamy : — 
 
 — Demetri teque, Tigelli, 
 
 Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.^ 
 
 1 [To argue from the abuse of a thing against the use of that thing is inconse- 
 quential.] 
 
 2 [You, Demetrius, and you, Tigellus, I bid howl among the seats of the 
 learners.]
 
 IX 
 
 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 (1831) 
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 
 
 [Chapter II. of Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Esti- 
 mates, 1900.] 
 
 Is it indeed beyond hope that our generation should at last do 
 entire justice to our brightest living genius, the most inspiring soul 
 still extant amongst us, whilst he may yet be seen and heard in the 
 flesh? 
 
 The world has long been of one mind as to the great charm in the 
 writings of John Ruskin; it feels his subtle insight into all forms 
 of beauty; and it has made familiar truisms of his central lessons in 
 Art. But it has hardly yet understood that he stands forth now, 
 alone and inimitable, as a supreme master of our English tongue; 
 that as preacher, prophet (nay, some amongst us do not hesitate 
 to say as saint), he has done more than as master of Art; that his 
 moral and social influence on our time, more than his aesthetic im- 
 pulse, will be the chief memory for which our descendants will 
 hold him in honour. 
 
 Such genius, such zeal, such self-devotion, should have imposed 
 itself upon the age without a dissentient voice; but the reputation 
 of John Ruskin has been exposed to some singular difficulties. 
 Above all, he is, to use an Italian phrase, uomo antico: a survival 
 of a past age : a man of the thirteenth century pouring out sermons, 
 denunciations, rhapsodies to the nineteenth century; and if Saint 
 Bernard himself, in his garb of frieze and girdle of hemp, were to 
 preach amongst us in Hyde Park to-day, too many of us would 
 listen awhile, and then straightway go about our business with a 
 smile. But John Ruskin is not simply a man of the thirteenth cen- 
 
 2D2
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 203 
 
 tury: he is a poet, a mystic, a missionary of the thirteenth century 
 
 — romantic as was the vouno; Dante in the davs of his love and 
 his chivalrous youth, and his Florentine rapture in all beautiful 
 things, or as was the young Petrarch in the lifetime of his Laura, 
 or the young Francis beginning to dream of a regeneration of Chris- 
 tendom through the teaching of his barefoot Friars. 
 
 Now John Ruskin not only is in his soul a thirteenth-century 
 poet and mystic : but, being this, he would literally have the 
 nineteenth century go back to the thirteenth : he means what he 
 says: he acts on what he means. And he defies fact, the set of 
 many ages, the actual generation around him, and still calls on them, 
 alone and in spite of neglect and rebuffs, to go back to the Golden 
 Ages of the Past. He would not reject this description of him- 
 self: he would proudly accept it. But this being so, it is inevitable 
 that much of his teaching — all the teaching for which he cares 
 most in his heart — must be in our day the voice of one preaching 
 in the wilderness. 
 
 He claims to be not merely poet of the beautiful, but missionary 
 of the truth; not so much judge in Art as master in Philosophy. 
 And as such he repudiates modern science, modern machinery, 
 modern politics — in a sense modern civilization as we know it 
 and make it. Not merely is it his ideal to get rid of these ; but in his 
 own way he sets himself manfully to extirpate these things in prac- 
 tice from the visible life of himself and of those who surround him. 
 Such heroic impossibilities recoil on his own head. The nineteenth 
 century has been too strong for him. Iron, steam, science, democ- 
 racy — have thrust him aside, and have left him in his old age little 
 but a solitary and most pathetic Prophet, such as a John the Bap- 
 tist by Mantegna, unbending, undismayed, still crying out to a 
 scanty band around him — "Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven 
 is at hand ! " 
 
 I am one who believes most devoutly in the need of repentance, 
 and in the ultimate, if not early, advent of a kingdom of the Beau- 
 tiful and the Good. But like the world around me, I hold by 
 the nineteenth century and not by the thirteenth : — or rather I 
 trust that some Century to come may find means of reconciling the 
 ages of Steam and the ages of Faith, of combining the best of all 
 ages in one. Unluckily, as do other prophets, as do most mystics, 
 John Ruskin will have undivided allegiance. With him, it is ever 
 
 — all or none. Accept him and his lesson — wholly, absolutely, 
 without murmur or doubt — or he will have none of your homage.
 
 204 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 And the consequence is that his devotees have been neither many, 
 nor impressive. His genius, as most men admit, will carry him 
 at times into fabulous extravagances, and his exquisite tenderness 
 of soul will ofttimes seem to be but a second childhood in the eyes 
 of the world. Thus it has come to pass that the grotesque side of 
 this noble Evangel of his has been perpetually thrust into the fore- 
 front of the fight; and those who have professed to expound the 
 Gospel of Ruskin have been for the most part such lads and lasses 
 as the world in its grossness regards with impatience, and turns 
 from with a smile. 
 
 As one of the oldest and most fervent believers in his genius and 
 the noble uses to which he has devoted it, I long to say a word or 
 two in support of my belief : not that I have the shadow of a claim 
 to speak as his disciple, to defend his utterances, or to represent his 
 thoughts. In one sense, no doubt, I stand at an opposite pole of 
 ideas, and in literal and direct words, I could hardly adopt any 
 one of the leading doctrines of his creed. As to mine, he probably 
 rejects everything I hold sacred and true with violent indignation 
 and scorn. Morally, spiritually, as seen through a glass darkly, 
 I believe that his teachers and my teachers are essentially one, 
 and may yet be combined in the greater harmony that is to be. 
 But to all this I should despair of inducing him to agree, or even 
 to listen with patience. He regards me, I fear, as an utterly lost 
 soul, destined to nothing but evil in this world and the next. And 
 did he not once long ago, in private communication and in public 
 excommunication, consign me to outer darkness, and cover with 
 indignant scorn every man and everything in which I have put my 
 trust ? 
 
 The world has long been of one mind, I have said, as to the 
 beauty of Ruskin's writing; but I venture to think that even yet 
 full justice has not been rendered to his consummate mastery over 
 our English tongue : that it has not been put high enough, and some 
 of its unique qualities have not been perceived. Now I hold that 
 in certain qualities, in given ways, and in some rarer passages of 
 his, Ruskin not only surpasses every contemporary writer of prose 
 (which indeed is obvious enough), but he calls out of our glorious 
 English tongue notes more strangely beautiful and inspiring than 
 any ever yet issued from that instrument. No writer of prose 
 before or since has ever rolled forth such mighty fantasias, or 
 reached such pathetic melodies in words, or composed long books 
 in one sustained strain of limpid grace.
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 205 
 
 It is indeed very far from a perfect style : much less is it in any 
 sense a model style, or one to be cultivated, studied, or followed. 
 If any young aspirant were to think it could be imitated, better 
 were a millstone hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea. 
 No man can bend the bow of Ulysses : and if he dared to take down 
 from its long rest the terrible weapon, such an one might give him- 
 self an ugly wound. Ulysses himself has shot with it wildly, 
 madly, with preposterous overflying of the mark, and blind aiming 
 at the wrong target. Ruskin, be it said in sorrow, has too often 
 played unseemly pranks on his great instrument: is too often 
 "in excess," as the Ethics put it, indeed he is usually "in excess"; 
 he has used his mastery in mere exultation in his own mastery; 
 and, as he now knows himself, he has used it out of wantonness — 
 rarely, but very rarely, as in The Seven Lamps, in a spirit of display, 
 or with reckless defiance of sense, good taste, reserve of strength — 
 yet never with affectation, never as a tradesman, as a hack. 
 
 We need not enter here on the interminable debate about what 
 is called " poetic prose," whether poetic prose be a legitimate form 
 of expressing ideas. A good deal of nonsense has been talked about 
 it; and the whole matter seems too much a dispute about terms. 
 If prose be ornate with flowers of speech inappropriate to the idea 
 expressed, or studiously affected, or obtrusively luscious — it is 
 bad prose. If the language be proper to verse but improper to 
 prose — it is bad prose. If the cadences begin to be obvious, 
 if they tend to be actually scanned as verses, if the images are re- 
 mote, lyrical, piled over one another, needlessly complicated' if 
 the passage has to be read twice before we grasp its meanings — 
 then it is bad prose. On the other hand, all ideas are capable of 
 being expressed in prose, as well as in verse. They may be clothed 
 with as much grace as is consistent with precision. If the sense 
 be absolutely clear, the flow of words perfectly easy, the language 
 in complete harmony with the thought, then no beauty in the 
 phraseology can be misplaced — provided that this beauty is held 
 in reserve, is to be unconsciously felt, not obviously thrust forward, 
 and is always the beauty of prose, and not the beauty of verse. 
 
 It cannot be denied that Ruskin, especially in his earlier works, 
 is too often obtrusively luscious, that his images are often lyrical, 
 set in too profuse and gorgeous a mosaic. Be it so. But he is 
 always perfectly, transparently clear, absolutely free from affected 
 euphuism, never laboriously "precious," never grotesque, never 
 eccentric. His besetting sins as a master of speech may be summed
 
 2o6 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 up in his passion for profuse imagery, and delight in an almost 
 audible melody of words. But how different is this from the 
 laborious affectation of what is justly condemned as the "poetic 
 prose" of a writer who tries to be fine, seeking to perform feats of 
 composition, who flogs himself into a bastard sort of poetry, not 
 because he enjoys it, but to impose upon an ignorant reader ! 
 This Ruskin never does. When he bursts the bounds of line taste, 
 and pelts us with perfumed flowers till we almost faint under their 
 odour and their blaze of colour, it is because he is himself intoxi- 
 cated with the joy of his blossoming thoughts, and would force 
 some of his divine afHatus into our souls. The priestess of the 
 Delphic god never spoke without inspiration, and then did not use 
 the flat speech of daily life. Would that none ever spoke in books, 
 until they felt the god working in their heart. 
 
 To be just, we should remember that a very large part of all that 
 Ruskin treats concerns some scene of beauty, some work of fine 
 art, some earnest moral exhortation, some indignant rebuke to 
 meanness, — wherein passionate delight and passionate appeal are 
 not merely lawful, but are of the essence of the lesson. Ruskin 
 is almost always in an ecstasy of admiration, or in a fervour of 
 sympathy, or in a grand burst of prophetic warning. It is his mis- 
 sion, his nature, his happiness so to be. And it is inevitable that 
 such passion and eagerness should be clothed in language more re- 
 mote from the language of conversation than is that of Swift or 
 Hume. The language of the preacher is not, nor ought it to be, 
 the language of the critic, the philosopher, the historian. Ruskin 
 is a preacher : right or wrong he has to deliver his message, whether 
 men will stay to hear it or not ; and we can no more require him 
 to limit his pace to the plain foot-plodding of unimpassioned prose 
 than we can ask this of Saint Bernard, or of Bossuet, of Jeremy 
 Taylor or Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Besides all this, Ruskin has shown that, where the business in 
 hand is simjjle instruction, philosophical argument, or mechanical 
 exposition, he is master of an English style of faultless ease, sim- 
 plicity, and point. When he wants to describe a plain thing, a 
 particular instrument for drawing, a habit of Turner's work, the 
 exact form of a boat, or a tower, or a shell, no one can surpass him, 
 or ecjual him, in the clearness and precision of his words. His 
 little book on the Elements of Drawing is a masterpiece in lucid 
 explanation of simple mechanical rules and practices. PrcBterita, 
 Fors Clavigera, and the recent notes to reprinted works, contain
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 20j 
 
 easy bits of narration, of banter, of personal humour, that Swift, 
 Defoe, Goldsmith, and Lamb might envy. Turn to that much- 
 abused book. Unto this Last — the central book of his life, as it is 
 the turning-point of his career — it is almost wholly free from 
 every fault of excess with which he has been charged. Men may 
 differ as to the argument. But no capable critic will doubt that 
 as a type of philosophical discussion, its form is as fine and as 
 pure as the form of Berkeley or of Hume. 
 
 But when, his whole soul aglow with some scene of beauty, 
 transfigured by a profound moral emotion, he breaks forth into 
 one of those typical descants of his, our judgment may still doubt if 
 the colouring be not overcharged and the composition too crowded 
 for perfect art, but we are carried away by its beauty, its rhythm, 
 its pathos. We know that the sentence is too long, preposterously, 
 impossibly sustained — 200 words and more — 250, nay, 280 
 words without a single pause — each sentence with 40, 50, 60 
 commas, colons, and semicolons — and yet the whole symphony 
 Hows on with such just modulation, the images melt so naturally 
 into each other, the harmony of tone and the ease of words are 
 so complete, that we hasten through the passage in a rapture of 
 admiration. Milton often began, and once or twice completed, 
 such a resounding voluntary on his glorious organ. But neither 
 Milton, nor Browne, nor Jeremy Taylor, was yet quite master of 
 the mighty instrument. Ruskin, who comes after two centuries 
 of further and continuous progress in this art, is master of the subtle 
 instrument of prose. And though it be true that too often, in 
 wanton defiance of calm judgment, he will fling to the winds his 
 self-control, he has achieved in this rare and perilous art some 
 amazing triumphs of mastery over language, such as the whole 
 history of our literature cannot match. 
 
 Lovers of Ruskin (that is all who read good English books) can 
 recall, and many of them can repeat, hundreds of such passages, 
 and they wiU grumble at an attempt to select any passage at all. 
 But to make my meaning clear, I will turn to one or two very 
 famous bits, not at all asserting that they are the most truly noble 
 passages that Ruskin ever wrote, but as specimens of his more 
 lyrical mood. He has himself spoken with slight of much of his 
 earlier writing — often perhaps with undeserved humility. He 
 especially regrets the purpurei panni,^ as he calls them, of The 
 Seven Lamps and cognate pieces. I v/ill not quote any of these 
 
 1 [Purple rags.]
 
 2o8 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 piirpuret panni, though I think that as rhetorical prose, as apodeictic 
 perorations, English hterature has nothing to compare with them. 
 But they are rhetorical, somewhat artificial, manifest displays of 
 eloquence — and we shall all agree that eloquent displays of rhet- 
 oric are not the best specimens of prose composition. 
 
 I take first a well-known piece of an early book {Modern Painters, 
 Vol. IV. c. i., 1856), the old Tower of Calais Church, a piece which 
 has haunted my memory for nearly forty years : — 
 
 " The large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it ; the record of its years 
 written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay ; its stern wasteness 
 and gloom, eaten away by the Channel winds, and overgrown with the bitter 
 sea grasses; its slates and tiles all shaken and rent, and yet not falling; its 
 desert of brickwork, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly fissures, and yet strong, 
 like a bare brown rock; its carelessness of what any one thinks or feels 
 about it ; putting forth no claim, having no beauty, nor desirableness, pride, 
 nor grace ; yet neither asking for pity ; not, as ruins are, useless and piteous, 
 feebly or fondly garrulous of better days; but useful still, going through its 
 own daily work, — as some old fisherman, beaten gray by storm, yet draw- 
 ing his daily nets: so it stands, with no complaint about its past youth, in 
 blanched and meagre massiveness and serviceableness, gathering human 
 souls together underneath it ; the sound of its bells for prayer still rolling 
 through its rents ; and the gray peak of it seen far across the sea, principal of 
 the three that rise above the waste of surfy sand and hillocked shore, — the 
 lighthouse for life, and the belfry for labour, and this — for patience and 
 praise." 
 
 This passage I take to be one of the most magnificent examples of 
 the "pathetic fallacy " in our language. Perhaps the "pathetic fal- 
 lacy " is second-rate art ; the passage is too long — 211 words alas ! 
 without one full stop, and more than forty commas and other marks 
 of punctuation —   it has trop de clioses — it has redundancies, 
 tautologies, and artifices, if we are strictly severe — but what a 
 picture, what pathos, what subtlety of observation, what nobility 
 of association — and withal how complete is the unity of impres- 
 sion ! How mournful, how stately is the cadence, most harmonious 
 and yet peaceful is the phraseology, and how wonderfully do 
 thought, the antique history, the picture, the musical bars of the 
 whole y:)iece combine in beauty ! What fine and just images — 
 "the large neglect," the "noble unsightliness." The tower is 
 "eaten away by the Channel winds," "overgrown with bitter sea 
 grasses." It is "careless," "puts forth no claim," has "no pride," 
 does not "ask for pity," is not "fondly garrulous," as other ruins 
 are, but still goes through its work, "like some old fisherman." 
 It stands blanched, meagre, massive, but still serviceable, making
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 209 
 
 no complaint about its past youth. A wonderful bit of word-paint- 
 ing — and, perhaps, word-painting, at least on a big canvas, is 
 not strictly lawful — but such a picture as few poets and no prose- 
 writer has surpassed ! Byron would have painted it in deeper, 
 fiercer strokes. Shelley and Wordsworth would have been less 
 definite. Coleridge would not have driven home the moral so 
 earnestly; though Tennyson might have embodied it in the 
 stanzas of In Memoriam. 
 
 I should like to take this passage as a text to point to a quality 
 of Ruskin's prose in which, I believe, he has surpassed all other 
 writers. It is the quality of musical assonance. There is plenty 
 of alliteration in Ruskin, as there is in all fine writers: but the 
 musical harmony of sound in Ruskin's happiest efforts is some- 
 thing very different from alliteration, and much more subtle. 
 Coarse, obtrusive, artificial alliteration, i.e. the recurrence of words 
 with the same initial letter, becomes, when crudely treated or over- 
 done, a gross and irritating form of affectation. But the prejudice 
 against alliteration may be carried too far. Alliteration is the 
 natural expression of earnest feeling in every form — it is a physio- 
 logical result of passion and impetuosity : — it becomes a defect 
 when it is repeated too often, or in an obtrusive way, or when it 
 becomes artificial, and studied. Whilst alliteration is spontane- 
 ous, implicit not explicit, felt not seen, the natural working of a 
 fine ear, it is not only a legitimate expedient both of prose and of 
 verse, but is an indispensable accessory of the higher harmonies, 
 whether of verse or prose. 
 
 Ruskin uses alliteration much (it must be admitted, in profu- 
 sion), but he relies on a far subtler resource of harmony — that is 
 assonance, or as I should prefer to name it, consonance. I have 
 never seen this quality treated at all systematically, but I am con- 
 vinced that it is at the basis of all fine cadences both in verse and 
 in prose. By consonance I mean the recurrence of the same, or of 
 cognate, sounds, not merely in the first letter of words, but where 
 the stress comes, in any part of a word, and that in sounds whether 
 vowel or consonant. Grimm's law of interchangeable consonants 
 applies; and all the well-known groupings of consonants may be 
 noted. The liquids connote the sweeter, the gutturals the sterner 
 ideas; the sibilants connect and organize the words. Of poets 
 perhaps Milton, Shelley, and Tennyson make the fullest use of this 
 resource. We need not suppose that it is consciously sought, or in 
 any sense studied, or even observed by the poet. But consonance.
 
 2IO FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 i.e. recurrence of the same or kindred sounds, is very visible when 
 we look for it in a beautiful cadence. Take Tennyson's — 
 
 Old Yew, which graspest at the stones 
 
 That name the under-lying dead, 
 
 Thy fibres net the dreamless head, 
 Thy roots are wrapt about the bones. 
 
 How much does the music, nay the impressiveness, of this stanza 
 depend on consonance! The great booming O with which it 
 opens, is repeated in the last word of the first, and also of the last 
 line. The cruel word "graspest" is repeated in part in the harsh 
 word "stones." Three lines, and six words in all, begin with the 
 soft "th": "name" is echoed by "net," "under-lying" by 
 "dreamless"; the "r" of "roots" is heard again in "wrapt," 
 the "b" in "fibres," in "about," and "bones." These are not 
 at all accidental cases of consonance. 
 
 This musical consonance is quite present in fine prose, although 
 many powerful writers seem to have had but little ear for its 
 effects. Such men as Swift, Defoe, Gibbon, Macaulay, seldom 
 advance beyond alliteration in the ordinary sense. But true 
 consonance, or musical correspondence of note, is very perceptible 
 in the prose of Milton, of Sir Thomas Browne, of Burke, of Cole- 
 ridge, of De Quincey. Above all, it is especially marked in our 
 English Bible, and in the Collects and grander canticles of the 
 Prayer Book ; and is the source of much of their power over us. 
 Of all the masters of prose literature, John Ruskin has made 
 the finest use of this resource, and with the most delicate and 
 mysterious power. And this is no doubt due to his mind being 
 saturated from childhood with the harmonies of our English 
 Bible, and to his speaking to us with religious solemnity and in 
 Biblical tones. 
 
 This piece about the tower of Calais Church is full of this 
 beautiful and subtle form of alliteration or colliteration — "the 
 large neglect, the noble unsightliness of it" — "the record of its 
 years written so visibly, yet without sign of weakness or decay" 
 — "thesound of its bells for prayer still rolling through its rents." 
 Here in a single line are three liquid double "11"; there are six 
 "s"; there are are five "r" in seven words — "sound rolling 
 through rents" is finely expressive of a peal of be'ls. And the 
 passage ends with a triple alliteration — the second of the three 
 being inverted: "bel" echoing to "lab" — "the lighthouse for
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 211 
 
 life, and the belfry for labour, and this — for patience and 
 
 praise." 
 
 Turn to another famous passage (Modern Painters, Vol. IV. 
 cap. 19), a somewhat overwrought, possibly unjust picture, 
 stained as usual with the original sin of Calvinism, but a wonderful 
 piece of imaginative description. It is the account of the peasant 
 of the Valais, in the grand chapter on "Mountain Gloom." 
 
 "They do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. 
 They understand dimly that of virtue. Love, patience, hospitality, faith, — 
 these things they know. To glean their meadows side by side, so happier; 
 to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank unmurmuringly; to 
 bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk ; to see at the foot of their low 
 death-beds a pale figure upon a cross, dying, also patiently ; — in this they 
 are different from the cattle and from the stones ; but, in all this, unrewarded, 
 so far as concerns the present life. For them, there is neither hope nor pas- 
 sion of spirit; for them, neither advance nor exultation. Black bread, rude 
 roof, dark night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset ; and life ebbs away. 
 No books, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest, — except only sometimes a 
 little sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the bell tolls thin and far 
 in the mountain air ; a pattering of a few prayers, not understood, by the altar- 
 rails of the dimly gilded chapel, — and so, back to the sombre home, with the 
 cloud upon them still unbroken — that cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the 
 wild torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened even in their religion, ex- 
 cept by the vague promise of some better things unknown, mingled with 
 threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror — a smoke, as it were, 
 of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense ; and amidst the images of tortured 
 bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed 
 more deeply than for others with gouts of blood." 
 
 The piece is over-wrought as well as unjust, with somewhat 
 false emphasis, but how splendid in colour and majestic in lan- 
 guage ! "To bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank 
 unmurmuringly" — ^ is fine in spite of its obvious scansion and 
 its profuse alliteration. "At their low death-beds a pale figure 
 upon a cross, dying, also patiently" — will not scan, and it is 
 charged with solemnity by soft "1,". "d," and "p" repeated. 
 How beautifully imitative is the line, "as the bell tolls thin and 
 far in the mountain air " — a, e, i, o, u — with ten monosyllables 
 and one dissyllable! "The cross dashed more deeply with gouts 
 of blood. ^^ No one who has ever read that passage can pass along the 
 Catholic valleys of the Swiss Alps without having it in his mind. 
 Overcharged, and somewhat consciously and designedly pictorial 
 as it is, it is a truly wonderful example of mastery over language 
 and sympathetic insight. 
 
 We may turn now to a passage or two, in which perhaps Ruskin
 
 212 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 is quite at his best. He has written few things finer, and indeed 
 more exactly truthful, than his picture of the Campagna of Rome. 
 This is in the Preface to the second edition of Modern Painters, 
 1843. 
 
 "Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the soHtary 
 extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening Hght. Let the reader im- 
 agine himself for the moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of the 
 Hving world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. The earth 
 yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly, for its sub- 
 stance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of the bones of 
 men. The long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, 
 and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that 
 lift themselves to the sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around 
 him, as if the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep. Scattered blocks 
 of black stone, four-square remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon 
 another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple poisonous haze 
 stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, 
 on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled altars; the blue 
 ridge of the Alban Mount Hf ts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet 
 sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories 
 of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, 
 pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of 
 funeral mourners, passing from a nation's grave." 
 
 Here is a piece of pure description without passion or moraliz- 
 ing; the passage is broken, as we find in all good modern prose, 
 into sentences of forty or fifty words. It is absolutely clear, 
 literally true, an imaginative picture of one of the most impres- 
 sive scenes in the world. All who know it, remember "the white, 
 hollow, carious earth," like bone dust, "the long knotted grass," 
 the " banks of ruin " and " hillocks of mouldering earth," the "dull 
 purple poisonous haze," "the shattered aqueducts," like shadowy 
 mourners at a nation's grave. The whole piece may be set beside 
 Shelley's poem from the "Euganean Hills," and it produces a 
 kindred impression. In Ruskin's prose, perhaps for the first 
 time in literature, there are met the eye of the landscape painter 
 and the voice of the lyric poet — and both are blended in per- 
 fection. It seems to me idle to debate, whether or not it is legiti- 
 mate to describe in prose a magnificent scene, whether it be lawful 
 to set down in prose the ideas which this scene kindles in an imagi- 
 native soul, whether it be permitted to such an artist to resort 
 to any resource of grace or power which the English language 
 can present. 
 
 This magnificent piece of word-painting is hardly surpassed by
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 213 
 
 anything in our literature. It cannot be said to carry allitera- 
 tion to the point of affectation. But the reader may easily per- 
 ceive by analysis how greatly its musical effect depends on pro- 
 fusion of subtle consonance. The "liquids" give grace: the 
 broad o and a, and their diphthong sounds, give solemnity: the 
 gutturals and double consonants give strength. "A dull purple 
 poisonous haze stretches level along the desert" — "on whose 
 rents the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars." Here 
 in thirteen words are — five r, four t, four d, three 1, — "Dark 
 clouds stand steadfastly" — " the promontories of the Apennines." 
 The last clause is a favourite cadence of Ruskin's: its beautiful 
 melody depends on a very subtle and complex scheme of conso- 
 nance. "From the plain to the mountains, the shattered aque- 
 ducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like shadowy 
 and countless troops of funeral mourners, passing from a nation's 
 grave." It is impossible to suppose that the harmonies of this 
 "coda" are wholly accidental. They are the effect of a wonderful 
 ear for tonality in speech, certainly unconscious, arising from 
 passionate feehng more than from reflection. And Mr. Ruskin 
 himself would no doubt be the first to deny that such a thought 
 had ever crossed his mind ; — perhaps he would himself denounce 
 with characteristic vehemence any such vivisection applied to his 
 living and palpitating words. 
 
 I turn now to a little book of his written in the middle of his 
 life, at the height of his power, just before he entered on his second 
 career of social philosopher and new evangelist. The Harhoiirs 
 of England was published nearly forty years ago in 1856 {cetat. 37), 
 and it has now been happily reprinted in a cheap and smaller 
 form, 1895. It is, I believe, as an education in art, as true, and 
 as masterly as anything Ruskin ever wrote. But I wish now to 
 treat it only from the point of view of English literature. And I 
 make bold to say that no book in our language shows more varied 
 resources over prose-writing, or an English more pure, more 
 vigorous, more enchanting. It contains hardly any of those 
 tirades with which the preacher loves to drench his hearers — 
 torrents from the fountains of his ecstasy, or his indignation. The 
 book is full of enthusiasm and of poetry : but it also contains a 
 body of critical and expository matter — simple, lucid, graceful, 
 incisive as anything ever set down by the hand of John Ruskin, 
 or indeed of any other master of our English prose. 
 
 Every one remembers the striking sentence with which it opens
 
 214 • FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 — a sentence, it may be, exaggerated in meaning, but how melo- 
 diou'--, how impressive — "Of all things, living or lifeless [note 
 the five 1, the four i, in the first six words], upon this strange earth, 
 there is but one which, having reached the mid-term of appointed 
 human endurance on it, I still regard with unmitigated amaze- 
 ment." This object is the bow of a Boat, — "the blunt head 
 of a common, bluff, undecked sea-boat lying aside in its furrow 
 of beach sand. . . ." ^ 
 
 " The sum of Navigation is in that. You may magnify it or decorate it as 
 vou will : you will not add to the wonder of it. Lengthen it into hatchet-like 
 edge of iron, — strengthen it with complex tracery of ribs of oak, — carve it 
 and gild it till a column of light moves beneath it on the sea, — you have 
 made no more of it than it was at first. That rude simplicity of bent plank, 
 that [? should he 'which'] can breast its way through the death that is in the 
 deep sea, has in it the soul of shipping. Beyond this, we may have more 
 work, more men, more money; we cannot have more miracle." 
 
 The whole passage is loaded with imagery, with fancy, but 
 hardly with conceits; it is wonderfully ingenious, impressive, 
 suggestive, so that a boat is never quite the same thing to any one 
 who has read this passage in early life. The ever-changing 
 curves of the boat recall "the image of a sea-shell." "Every 
 plank is a Fate, and has men's lives wreathed in the knots of it." 
 This bow of the boat is "the gift of another world." Without it, 
 we should be "chained to our rocks." The very nails that fasten 
 the planks are "the rivets of the fellowship of the world." "Their 
 iron does more than draw lightning out of heaven, it leads love 
 round the earth." It is possible to call this fantastic, over- 
 wrought, lyrical: it is not possible to dispute its beauty, charm, 
 and enthusiasm. It seems to me to carry imaginative prose ex- 
 actly to that limit which to pass would cease to be fitting in prose; 
 to carry fancy to the very verge of that which, if less sincere, less 
 true, less pathetic, would justly be regarded as Euphuistic conceit. 
 
 And so this splendid hymn to the sea-boit rolls on to that 
 piece which I take to be as fine and as true as anything ever said 
 about the sea, even by our sea poets, Byrofl or Shelley: — 
 
 "Then, also, it is wonderful on account of the greatness of the enemy 
 that it does battle with. To lift dead weight; to overcome length of languid 
 space ; to multiply or systematize a p;iven force ; this we may sec done by the 
 bar, or beam, or wheel, without wonder. But to war w ith that living fury of 
 waters, to bare its breast, moment after moment, against the unwearied enmity 
 of ocean, — the subtle, fitful, implacable smiting of the black waves, provok-
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 215 
 
 ing each other on, endlessly, all the infinite march of the Atlantic rolling on 
 behind them to their help, and still to strike them back into a wreath of smoke 
 and futile foam, and win its way against them, and keep its charge of life from 
 them; — does any other soulless thing do as much as this?" 
 
 This noble paragraph has truth, originaHty, music, majesty, 
 with that imitative power of sound which is usually thought to 
 be possible only in poetry, and is very rarely successful even in 
 poetry. Homer has often caught echoes of the sea in his majestic 
 hexameters; Byron and Shelley occasionally recall it; as does 
 Tennyson in its milder moods and calm rest. But I know no 
 other English prose but this which, literally and nobly describing 
 the look of a wild sea, suggests in the very rhythm of its cadence, 
 and in the music of its roar, the tumultuous surging of the surf — 
 "To war with that living fury of waters" — -"the subtle, fitful, 
 implacable smiting of the black waves," — "still to strike them 
 back into a wreath of smoke and futile foam, and win its way 
 against them." Here we seem not only to see before our eyes, 
 but to hear with our ears, the crash of a stout boat plunging 
 through a choppy sea off our southern coasts. 
 
 I would take this paragraph as the high-water mark of Ruskin's 
 prose method. But there are scores and hundreds of passages 
 in his books of equal power and perfection. This book on The 
 Harbours of England is full of them. O si sic omnia /^ Alas! 
 a few pages further on, even of this admirable book which is so 
 free from them, comes one of those ungovernable, over-laden, 
 hypertrophied outbursts of his, which so much deform his earlier 
 books. It is a splendid piece of conception : each phrase, each 
 sentence, is beautiful; the images are appropriate and cognate; 
 they flow naturally out of each other; and the whole has a most 
 harmonious glow. But alas ! as English prose, it is impossible. 
 It has 255 words without a pause, and 26 intermediate signs of 
 punctuation. No human breath could utter such a sentence: 
 even the eye is bewildered; and, at last, the most docile and 
 attentive reader sinks back, stunned and puzzled by such a torrent 
 of phrases and such a wilderness of thoughts.^ 
 
 He is speaking of the fisher-boat as the most venerable kind 
 
 » [Oh, if all were thus !] 
 
 ^ In the second volume of Modern Painters, p. 132, may be found a mammoth 
 sentence, I suppose the most gigantic sentence in English prose. It has 6iq words 
 without a full stop, and 80 intermediate signs of punctuation, together with four 
 clauses in brackets. It has been reprinted in the revised two volumes edition of 
 1883, where it fills four whole pages, i. 347-351.
 
 2l6 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 of ship. He stands musing on the shingle between the black 
 sides of two stranded fishing-boats. He watches "the clear heavy 
 water-edge of ocean rising and falling close to their bows." And 
 then he turns to the boats. 
 
 " And the dark flanks of the fishing-boats all aslope above, in their shining 
 quietness, hot in the morning sun, rusty and seamed, with scjuare patches of 
 plank nailed over their rents; just rough enough to let the little flat-footed 
 fisher-children haul or tvi^ist themselves up to the gunwales, and drop back 
 again along some stray rope ; just round enough to remind us, in their broad 
 and gradual curves, of the sweep of the green surges they know so well, and 
 of the hours when those old sides of seared timber, all ashine with the sea, 
 plunge and dip into the deep green purity of the mounded waves more joyfully 
 than a deer lies down among the grass of Spring, the soft white cloud of foam 
 opening momentarily at the bows, and fading or flying high into the breeze 
 where the sea-gulls toss and shriek, — the joy and beauty of it, all the while, 
 so mingled with the sense of unfathomable danger, and the human effort and 
 sorrow going on perpetually from age to age, waves rolling forever, and 
 winds moaning forever, and faithful hearts trusting and sickening forever, 
 and brave lives dashed away about the rattling beach like weeds forever ; and 
 still at the helm of every lonely boat, through starless night and hopeless 
 dawn. His hand, who spread the fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian 
 palaces, and gave into the fisher's hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 It is a grand passage, ruined, I think, by excess of eagerness 
 and sympathetic passion. Neither Shelley nor Keats ever flung 
 his soul more keenly into an inert object and made it live to us, 
 or rather, lived in it, felt its heart beat in his, and made his own 
 its sorrows, its battles, its pride. So Tennyson gazing on the 
 Yew which covers the loved grave cries out — 
 
 " I seem to fail from out my blood 
 And grow incorporate into thee." 
 
 So the poet sees the ship that brings his lost Arthur home, hears 
 the noise about the keel, and the bell struck in the night. Thus 
 Ruskin, watching the fisherman's boat upon the beach, sees in 
 his mind's eye the past and the future of the boat, the swell of the 
 green billows, and the roar of the ocean, and still at the helm, 
 unseen but of him, an Almighty Hand guiding it in hfe and in 
 death. 
 
 Had this noble vision been rehearsed with less passion, and in 
 sober intervals of breathing, we could have borne it. The first 
 twelve or fourteen lines, ending with "the deep green purity of 
 the mounded waves," form a full picture. But, like a runaway 
 horse, our poet plunges on where no human lungs and no ordinary
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 21 7 
 
 brain can keep up the giddy pace; and for seven or eight h"nes 
 more we are peked with new images till we feel like landsmen 
 caught in a sudden squall. And then how grand are the last ten 
 lines — "the human effort and sorrow going on perpetually from 
 age to age " — ! down to that daring antithesis of the fishermen 
 of Tyre and the fisherman of St. Peter's ! I cannot call it a con- 
 ceit: but it would have been a conceit in the hands of any one 
 less sincere, less passionate, not so perfectly saturated with Biblical 
 imagery and language. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this passage as a typical example of Ruskin's 
 magnificent power over the literary instrument, of his intense 
 sympathy, of his vivid imagination, and alas ! also of his ungov- 
 ernable flux of ideas and of words. It is by reason of this wilful 
 megalomania and plethoric habit, that we must hesitate to pro- 
 nounce him the greatest master of English prose in our whole 
 literature: but it is such mastery over language, such power to 
 triumph over almost impossible conditions and difficulties, that 
 compel us to regard him as one who could have become the noblest 
 master of prose ever recorded, if he would only have set himself 
 to curb his Pegasus from the first, and systematically to think of 
 his reader's capacity for taking in, as well as of his own capacity 
 for pouring forth, a torrent of glowing thoughts. 
 
 As a matter of fact, John Ruskin himself undertook to curb 
 his Pegasus, and, like Turner or Beethoven, distinctly formed 
 and practised "a second manner." That second manner coin- 
 cides with the great change in his career, when he passed from 
 critic of art to be social reformer and moral philosopher. The 
 change was of course not absolute; but whereas, in the earlier 
 half of his life, he had been a writer about Beauty and Art, who 
 wove into his teaching lessons on social, moral, and religious 
 problems, so he became, in the later part of his life, a worker about 
 Society and Ethics, who filled his practical teaching with judg- 
 ments about the beautiful in Nature and in Art. That second 
 career dates from about the year i860, when he began to write 
 Unto this Last, which was finally published in 1862. 
 
 I myself judge that book to be not only the most original and 
 creative work of John Ruskin, but the most original and creative 
 work in pure literature since Sartor Resartus. But I am now 
 concerning myself with form : and, as a matter of form, I would 
 point to it as a work containing almost all that is noble in Ruskin's 
 written prose, with hardly any, or very few, of his excesses and
 
 2l8 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 mannerisms. It is true, that, pp. 147-8, we have a single sentence 
 of 242 words and 52 intermediate stops before we come to the 
 pause. But this is occasional; and the book as a whole is a 
 masterpiece of pure, incisive, imaginative, lucid English. If one 
 had to plead the cause of Ruskin before the Supreme Court in 
 the Republic of Letters, one would rely on that book as a type 
 of clearness, wit, eloquence, versatility, passion. 
 
 From the publication of Unto this Last, in 1862, John Ruskin 
 distinctly adopted his later manner. Two volumes of selections 
 from Ruskin's works were published in 1893 ^y George Allen, 
 the compilation of some anonymous editor. They are of nearly 
 equal size and of periods of equal length. The first series consists 
 of extracts between 1843 ^^^ i860 from Modern Painters, Seven 
 Lamps, Stones of Venice, and minor lectures, articles, and letters 
 anterior to i860. The second series, 1 860-1 888, contains selec- 
 tions from Unto this Last, Fors, Prczterita, and the lectures and 
 treatises subsequent to i860. Now, it will be seen that in the 
 second series the style is more measured, more mature, more 
 practical, more simple. It is rare to find the piirpiirei panni 
 which abound in the first series, or the sentences of 200 words, or 
 the ostentatious piling up of luscious imagery, and tumultuous 
 fugues in oral symphony. The "first state" of a plate by Ruskin 
 has far richer effects and more vivid light and shade than any 
 example of his "second state." 
 
 Alas ! the change came too late — too late in his life, too late 
 in his career. When Unto this Last was finally published, John 
 Ruskin was forty-three : he had already written the most elaborate 
 and systematic of all his books — those on which his world-wide 
 fame still rests. He had long past // mezzo del cammin di nostra 
 vita * — and even the middle of his own long life : his energy, 
 his health, his hopes, were not what they had been in his glorious 
 youth and early manhood : his mission became consciously to 
 raise men's moral standard in life, not to raise their sense of the 
 beautiful in Art. The old mariner still held us with his glistening 
 eye, and forced us to listen to his wondrous tale, but he spoke like a 
 man whose voice shook with the memory of all that he had seen 
 and known, over whom the deep waters had passed. I am one 
 of those who know that John Ruskin has told us in his second 
 life things more true and more important even than he told us 
 in his first life. But yet I cannot bring myself to hold that, as 
 
 ' [The middle of the highway of our life.]
 
 RUSKIN AS MASTER OF PROSE 219 
 
 magician of words, his la,ter teaching has the mystery and the 
 glory which hung round the honeyed Hps of the " Oxford graduate." 
 If, then, John Ruskin be not in actual achievement the greatest 
 master who ever wrote in English prose, it is only because he 
 refused to chasten his passion and his imagination until the prime 
 of life was past. A graceful poet and a great moralist said : — 
 
 "Prune thou thy words; the thoughts control 
 That o'er thee swell and throng : — 
 They will condense within thy soul, 
 And change to purpose strong." 
 
 This lesson Ruskin never learned until he was growing gray, and 
 even now he only observes it so long as the spirit moves him, or 
 rather does not move him too keenly. He has rarely suffered 
 his thoughts to condense within his soul. Far from controlling 
 them, he has spurred and lashed them into fury, so that they swell 
 and throng over him and his readers, too often changing into 
 satiety and impotence. Every other faculty of a great master 
 of speech, except reserve, husbanding of resources, and patience, 
 he possesses in measure most abundant — lucidity, purity, bril- 
 Hance, elasticity, wit, fire, passion, imagination, majesty, with a 
 mastery over all the melody of cadence that has tio rival in the 
 whole range of English literature.
 
 X 
 
 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 (1775-1834) 
 
 ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 
 Considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage Representation. 
 
 [Published in 181 1 in Hunt's Reflector. '\ 
 
 Taking a turn the other day in the Abbey, I was struck with the 
 affected attitude of a figure, which I do not remember to have 
 seen before, and which upon examination proved to be a whole- 
 length of the celebrated Mr. Garrick. Though I would not go so 
 far with some good Catholics abroad as to shut players altogether 
 out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized 
 at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set 
 apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found 
 inscribed under this harlequin figure the following lines : — 
 
 To paint fair Nature, by divine command, 
 Her magic pencil in his glowing hand, 
 A Shakespeare rose ; then, to expand his fame 
 Wide o'er this breathing world, a Garrick came. 
 Though sunk in death the forms the Poet drew, 
 The Actor's genius made them breathe anew ; 
 Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay, 
 Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day: 
 And till Eternity with power sublime 
 Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time, 
 Shakespeare and Garrick like twin-stars shall shine, 
 I And earth irradiate with a beam divine. 
 
 It would be an insult to my readers' understandings to attempt 
 anything like a criticism on this farrago of false thoughts and non- 
 sense. But the reflection it led me into was a kind of wonder, how 
 from the days of the actor here celebrated to our own, it should have 
 
 220
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 221 
 
 been the fashion to compliment every performer in his turn, that 
 has had the luck to please the town in any of the great characters 
 of Shakespeare, with the notion of possessing a mind congenial 
 with the poefs: how people should come thus unaccountably 
 to confound the power of originating poetical images and concep- 
 tions with the faculty of being able to read or recite the same when 
 put into words ; ^ or what connection that absolute mastery over the 
 heart and soul of man, which a great dramatic poet possesses, has 
 with those low tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player by ob- 
 serving a few general effects, which some common passion, as grief, 
 anger, &c., usually has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily 
 compass. To know the internal workings and movements of a 
 great mind, of an Othello or a Hamlet for instance, the when and 
 the why and the how far they should be moved; to what pitch a 
 passion is becoming; to give the reins and to pull in the curb ex- 
 actly at the moment when the drawing in or the slacking is most 
 graceful ; seems to demand a reach of intellect of a vastly different 
 extent from that which is employed upon the bare imitation of the 
 signs of these passions in the countenance or gesture, which signs 
 are usually observed to be most lively and emphatic in the weaker 
 sort of minds, and which signs can after all but indicate some pas- 
 sion, as I said before, anger, or grief, generally ; but of the motives 
 and grounds of the passion, wherein it differs from the same passion 
 in low and vulgar natures, of these the actor can give no more idea 
 by his face or gesture than the eye (without a metaphor) can s^eak, 
 or the muscles utter intelligible sounds. But such is the instantane- 
 ous nature of the impressions which we take in at the eye and ear 
 at a playhouse, compared with the slow apprehension oftentimes 
 of the understanding in reading, that we are apt not only to sink 
 the play-writer in the consideration which we pay to the actor, but 
 even to identify in our minds in a perverse manner, the actor with 
 the character which he represents. It is difficult for a frequent 
 play-goer to disembarrass the idea of Hamlet from the person 
 and voice of Mr. K. We speak of Lady Macbeth, while we are in 
 reality thinking of Mrs. S. Nor is this confusion incidental alone 
 
 ' It is observable that we fall into this confusion only in dramatic recitations. 
 We never dream that the gentleman who reads Lucretius in public with great ap- 
 plause, is therefore a great poet and philosopher; nor do we find that Tom Davies, 
 the bookseller, who is recorded to have recited the Paradise Lost better than any 
 man in England in his day (though I cannot help thinking there must be some 
 mistake in this tradition) was therefore, by his intimate friends, set upon a level 
 with Milton.
 
 222 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 to unlettered persons, who, not possessing the advantage of read- 
 ing, are necessarily dependent upon the stage-player for all the 
 pleasure which they can receive from the drama, and to whom the 
 very idea of what an author is cannot be made comprehensible 
 without some pain and perplexity of mind : the error is one from 
 which persons otherwise not meanly lettered, find it almost impos- 
 sible to extricate themselves. 
 
 Never let me be so ungrateful as to forget the very high degree of 
 satisfaction which I received some years back from seeing for the 
 first time a tragedy of Shakespeare performed, in which those two 
 great performers sustained the principal parts. It seemed to em- 
 body and realize conceptions which had hitherto assumed no dis- 
 tinct shape. But dearly do we pay all our life after for this juvenile 
 pleasure, this sense of distinctness. When the novelty is past, we 
 find to our cost that, instead of realizing an idea, we have only 
 materialized and brought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh 
 and blood. We have let go a dream, in quest of an unattainable 
 substance. 
 
 How cruelly this operates upon the mind, to have its free con- 
 ceptions thus cramped and pressed down to the measure of a strait- 
 lacing actuality, may be judged from that delightful sensation of 
 freshness, with which we turn to those plays of Shakespeare which 
 have escaped being performed, and to those passages in the acting 
 plays of the same writer which have happily been left out in the per- 
 form'ance. How far the very custom of hearing anything spouted, 
 withers and blows upon a fine passage, may be seen in those 
 speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c., which are current in the mouths 
 of school-boys from their being to be found in Enfield Speakers, 
 and such kind of books. I confess myself utterly unable to appre- 
 ciate that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning "To be or not 
 to be," or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it has been 
 so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and 
 torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity 
 in the play, till it is become to me a perfect dead member. 
 
 It may seem a paradox, but I cannot help being of opinion that 
 the plays of Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a 
 stage, than those of almost any other dramatist whatever. Their 
 distinguishing excellence is a reason that they should be so. There 
 is so much in them, which comes not under the province of acting, 
 with which eye, and tone, and gesture, have nothing to do. 
 
 The glory of the scenic art is to personate passion, and the turns
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 223 
 
 of passion; and the more coarse and palpable the passion is, the 
 more hold upon the eyes and ears of the spectators the performer 
 obviously possesses. For this reason, scolding scenes, scenes where 
 two persons talk themselves into a fit of fury, and then in a surpris- 
 ing manner talk themselves out of it again, have always been the 
 most popular upon our stage. And the reason is plain, because the 
 spectators are here most palpably appealed to, they are the proper 
 judges in this war of words, they are the legitimate ring that should 
 be formed round such "intellectual prize-fighters." Talking is the 
 direct object of the imitation here. But in all the best dramas, and 
 in Shakespeare above all, how obvious it is, that the form of speak- 
 ing, whether it be in soliloquy or dialogue, is only a medium, and 
 often a highly artificial one, for putting the reader or spectator into 
 possession of that knowledge of the inner structure and workings of 
 mind in a character, which he could otherwise never have arrived 
 at in that form of cow position by any gift short of intuition. We do 
 here as we do with novels written in the epistolary form. How 
 many improprieties, perfect solecisms in letter-writing, do we put 
 up with in Clarissa and other books, for the sake of the delight 
 which that form upon the whole gives us. 
 
 But the practice of stage representation reduces everything to a 
 controversy of elocution. Every character, from the boisterous 
 blasphemings of Bajazet to the shrinking timidity of womanhood, 
 must play the orator. The love-dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, 
 those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night; the more 
 intimate and sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an 
 Othello or a Posthumus with their married wives, all those delica- 
 cies which are so delightful in the reading, as w^hen we read of those 
 youthful dalliances in Paradise — 
 
 As beseem'd 
 
 Fair couple link'd in happy nuptial league, 
 Alone : 
 
 by the inherent fault of stage representation, how are these things 
 sullied and turned from their very nature by being exposed to a 
 large assembly; when such speeches as Imogen addresses to her 
 lord, come drawling out of the mouth of a hired actress, whose 
 courtship, though nominally addressed to the personated Posthu- 
 mus, is manifestly aimed at the spectators, who are to judge of her 
 endearments and her returns of love. 
 
 The character of Hamlet is perhaps that by which, since the days 
 of Betterton, a succession of popular performers have had the
 
 224 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 greatest ambition to distinguish themselves. The length of the 
 part may be one of their reasons. But for the character itself, we 
 find it in a play, and therefore we judge it a fit subject of dramatic 
 representation. The play itself abounds in maxims and reflections 
 beyond any other, and therefore we consider it as a proper vehicle 
 for conveying moral instruction. But Hamlet himself — what 
 does he suffer meanwhile by being dragged forth as a public school- 
 master, to give lectures to the crowd ! Why, nine parts in ten of 
 what Hamlet does, are transactions between himself and his moral 
 sense, they are the effusions of his solitary musings, which he retires 
 to holes and corners and the most sequestered parts of the palace 
 to pour forth; or rather, they are the silent meditations with which 
 his bosom is bursting, reduced to words for the sake of the reader, 
 who must else remain ignorant of what is passing there. These 
 profound sorrows, these light-and-noise-abhorring ruminations, 
 which the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf walls and chambers, 
 how can they be represented by a gesticulating actor, who comes 
 and mouths them out before an audience, making four hundred 
 people his confidants at once ? I say not that it is the fault of the 
 actor so to do ; he must pronounce them ore rotundo,^ he must ac- 
 company them with his eye, he must insinuate them into his audi- 
 tory by some trick of eye, tone, or gesture, or he fails. He must 
 be thinking all the while of his appearance, because he knows that 
 all the while the spectators are judging of it. And this is the way 
 to represent the shy, negligent, retiring Hamlet. 
 
 It is true that there is no other mode of conveying a vast quantity 
 of thought and feeling to a great portion of the audience, who other- 
 wise would never learn it for themselves by reading, and the intel- 
 lectual acquisition gained this way may, for aught I know, be in- 
 estimable ; but I am not arguing that Hamlet should not be acted, 
 but how much Hamlet is made another thing by being acted. I 
 have heard much of the wonders which Garrick performed in this 
 part; but as I never saw him, I must have leave to doubt whether 
 the representation of such a character came within the province of 
 his art. Those who tell me of him, speak of his eye, of the magic 
 of his eye, and of his commanding voice: physical properties, 
 vastly desirable in an actor, and without which he can never insinu- 
 ate meaning into an auditory, — but what have they to do with 
 Hamlet ? what have they to do with intellect ? In fact, the things 
 aimed at in theatrical representation, are to arrest the spectator's eye 
 
 * [With full voice.]
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 225 
 
 upon the form and the gesture, and so to gain a more favourable 
 hearing to what is spoken : it is not what the character is, but how 
 he loolvs; not what he says, but how he speaks it. I see no rea- 
 son to think that if the play of Hamlet were written over again by 
 some such writer as Banks or Lillo, retaining the process of the story, 
 but totally omitting all the poetry of it, all the divine features of 
 Shakespeare, his stupendous intellect; and only taking care to give 
 us enough of passionate dialogue, which Banks or Lillo were never 
 at a loss to furnish ; I see not how the effect could be much differ- 
 ent upon an audience, nor how the actor has it in his power to 
 represent Shakespeare to us differently from his representation of 
 Banks or Lillo. Hamlet would still be a youthful accomplished 
 prince, and must be gracefully personated; he might be puzzled 
 in his mind, wavering in his conduct, seemingly cruel to Ophelia, 
 he might see a ghost, and start at it, and address it kindly when he 
 found it to be his father; all this in the poorest and most homely 
 language of the servilest creeper after nature that ever consulted 
 the palate of an audience; without troubling Shakespeare for the 
 matter : and I see not but there would be room for all the power 
 which an actor has, to display itself. All the passions and changes 
 of passion might remain ; for those are much less difficult to write 
 or act than is thought ; it is a trick easy to be attained , it is but rising 
 or falling a note or two in the voice, a whisper with a significant 
 foreboding look to announce its approach, and so contagious the 
 counterfeit appearance of any emotion is, that let the words be 
 what they will, the look and tone shall carry it off and make it pass 
 for deep skill in the passions. 
 
 It is common for people to talk of Shakespeare's plays being so 
 natural, that everybody can understand him. They are natural 
 indeed, they are grounded deep in nature, so deep that the depth 
 of them lies out of the reach of most of us. You shall hear the 
 same persons say that George Barnwell is very natural, and Othello 
 is very natural, that they are both very deep; and to them they 
 are the same kind of thing. At the one they sit and shed tears, 
 because a good sort of young man is tempted by a naughty woman 
 to commit a trifling peccadillo, the murder of an uncle or so,^ 
 
 > If this note could hope to meet the eye of any of the Managers, I would entreat 
 and beg of them, in the name of both the Galleries, that this insult upon the morality 
 of the common people of London should cease to be eternally repeated in the holi- 
 day weeks. Why are the 'Prentices of this famous and well-governed city, instead 
 of an amusement, to be treated over and over a'^'ain with a nauseous sermon of 
 George Barnwell? Why at the end of their vistas are we to place the gallows? 
 
 Q
 
 226 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 that is all, and so comes to an untimely end, which is so moving; 
 and at the other, because a blackamoor in a fit of jealousy kills 
 his innocent white wife : and the odds are that ninety-nine out of a 
 hundred would willingly behold the same catastrophe happen to 
 both the heroes, and have thought the rope more due to Othello 
 than to Barnwell. For of the texture of Othello's mind, the inward 
 construction marvellously laid open with all its strengths and 
 weaknesses, its heroic confidences and its human misgivings, its 
 agonies of hate springing from the depths of love, they see no more 
 than the spectators at a cheaper rate, who pay their pennies apiece 
 to look through the man's telescope in Leicester Fields, see into 
 the inward plot and topography of the moon. Some dim thing or 
 other they see, they see an actor personating a passion, of grief, 
 or anger, for instance, and they recognize it as a copy of the usual 
 external effects of such passions; or at least as being true to that 
 symbol of the emotion which passes current at the theatre for it, 
 for it is often no more than that : but of the grounds of the passion, 
 its correspondence to a great or heroic nature, which is the only 
 worthy object of tragedy, — that common auditors know anything 
 of this, or can have any such notions dinned into them by the mere 
 strength of an actor's lungs, — that apprehensions foreign to them 
 should be thus infused into them by storm, I can neither believe, 
 nor understand how it can be possible. 
 
 We talk of Shakespeare's admirable observation of life, when we 
 should feel, that not from a petty inquisition into those cheap and 
 everyday characters which surrounded him, as they surround us, 
 but from his own mind, which was, to borrow a phrase of Ben 
 Jonson's, the very "sphere of humanity," he fetched those images 
 of virtue and of knowledge, of which every one of us recognizing 
 a part, think we comprehend in our natures the whole ; and often- 
 times mistake the powers which he positively creates in us, for 
 nothing more than indigenous faculties of our own minds, which 
 only waited the application of corresponding virtues in him to re- 
 turn a full and clear echo of the same. 
 
 To return to Hamlet. — Among the distinguishing features of 
 that wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet painful) 
 
 Were I an uncle, I should not much like a nephew of mine to have such an example 
 placed before his eyes. It is really making uncle-murder too trivial to exhibit it 
 as done upon such slight motives; — it is attributing too much to such charac- 
 ters as Millwood; it is jjutting things into the heads of good young men, which they 
 would never otherwise have dreamed of. Uncles that think anything of their lives, 
 should fairly petition the Chamberlain against it.
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 227 
 
 is that soreness of mind which makes him treat the intrusions of 
 Polonius with harshness, and that asperity which he puts on in his 
 interviews with Opheha. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if 
 they be not mixed in the latter case with a profound artifice of love, 
 to alienate Ophelia by affected discourtesies, so to prepare her mind 
 for the breaking off of that loving intercourse, which can no longer 
 find a place amidst business so serious as that which he has to do) 
 are parts of his character, which to reconcile with our admiration 
 of Hamlet, the most patient consideration of his situation is no more 
 than necessary ; they are what we forgive afterwards, and explain 
 by the whole of his character, but at the time they are harsh and 
 unpleasant. Yet such is the actor's necessity of giving strong blows 
 to the audience, that I have never seen a player in this character, 
 who did not exaggerate and strain to the utmost these ambiguous 
 features, — these temporary deformities in the character. They 
 make him express a vulgar scorn at Polonius which utterly de- 
 grades his gentility, and which no explanation can render palatable; 
 they make him show contempt, and curl up the nose at Ophelia's 
 father, — contempt in its very grossest and most hateful form ; 
 but they get applause by it: it is natural, people say; that is, the 
 words are scornful, and the actor expresses scorn, and that they can 
 judge of : but why so much scorn, and of that sort, they never think 
 of asking. 
 
 So to Ophelia. — All the Hamlets that I have ever seen, rant and 
 rave at her as if she had committed some great crime, and the audi- 
 ence are highly pleased, because the words of the part are satirical, 
 and they are enforced by the strongest expression of satirical indig- 
 nation of which the face and voice are capable. But then, whether 
 Hamlet is likely to have put on such brutal appearances to a lady 
 whom he loved so dearly, is never thought on. The truth is, that 
 in all such deep affections as had subsisted between Hamlet and 
 Ophelia, there is a stock of supererogatory love (if I may venture to 
 use the expression), which in any great grief of heart, especially 
 where that which preys upon the mind cannot be communicated, 
 confers a kind of indulgence upon the grieved party to express 
 itself, even to its heart's dearest object, in the language of a tem- 
 porary alienation; but it is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, 
 and so it always makes itself to be felt by that object : it is not an- 
 ger, but grief assuming the appearance 6f anger, — love awkwardly 
 counterfeiting hate, as sweet countenances when they try to frown : 
 but such sternness and fierce disgust as Hamlet is made to show, is
 
 228 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 no counterfeit, but the real face of absolute aversion, — of irrecon- 
 cilable alienation. It may be said he puts on the madman; but 
 then he should only so far put on this counterfeit lunacy as his own 
 real distraction will give him leave; that is, incompletely, imper- 
 fectly; not in that confirmed, practised way, like a master of his 
 art, or as Dame Quickly would say, "like one of those harlotry 
 players." 
 
 I mean no disrespect to any actor, but the sort of pleasure which 
 Shakespeare's plays give in the acting seems to me not at all to 
 differ from that which the audience receive from those of other 
 writers; and, they being in themselves essentially so different from 
 all others, I must conclude that there is something in the nature of 
 acting which levels all distinctions. And in fact, who does not 
 speak indifferently of the Gamester and of Macbeth as fine stage 
 performances, and praise the Mrs. Beverley in the same way 
 as the Lady Macbeth of Mrs. S. ? Belvidera, and Calista, and 
 Isabella, and Euphrasia, are they less liked than Imogen, or than 
 Juliet, or than Desdemona? Are they not spoken of and remem- 
 bered in the same way ? Is not the female performer as great (as 
 they call it) in one as in the other? Did not Garrick shine, and 
 was he not ambitious of shining in every drawding tragedy that his 
 wretched day produced, — the productions of the Hills and the 
 Murphys and the Browns, — and shall he have that honour to 
 dwell in our minds forever as an inseparable concomitant with 
 Shakespeare ? A kindred mind ! O who can read that affecting 
 sonnet of Shakespeare which alludes to his profession as a player: — 
 
 Oh for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
 
 The guiUy goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 
 Than public means which ])ublic manners breeds — 
 
 Thence comes it that my name receives a brand; 
 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 
 To what it works in, like the dyer's hand 
 
 Or that other confession : — 
 
 Alas ! 'tis true, I have gone here and there, 
 
 And made myself a motley to the view, 
 
 Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear — 
 
 Who can read these instances of jealous self-watchfulness in our 
 sweet Shakespeare, and dream of any congeniality between him 
 and one that, by every tradition of him, appears to have been as 
 mere a player as ever existed ; to have had his mind tainted with the
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 229 
 
 lowest players' vices, — envy and jealousy, and miserable cravincr^ 
 after applause; one who in th^ exercise of his profession was 
 jealous even of the women-performers that stood in his way; a 
 manager full of managerial tricks and stratage.nj and finesse: 
 that any resemblance shoa.J be dreamed of between him and 
 Shakesoeare, — Shakespeare who, in the plenitude and conscious- 
 ness of his own powers, could with that noble modesty, which we 
 can neither imitate nor appreciate, express himself thus of his own 
 sense of his own defects : — 
 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 Featured Hke him, like him with friends possess'd; 
 Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope. 
 
 I am almost disposed to deny to Garrick the merit of being an 
 admirer of Shakespeare. A true lover of his excellencies he cer- 
 tainly was not; for would any true lover of them have admitted 
 into his matchless scenes such ribald trash as Tate and Gibber, 
 and the rest of them, that 
 
 With their darkness durst affront his light, 
 
 have foisted into the acting plays of Shakespeare? I believe it 
 impossible that he could have had a proper reverence for Shake- 
 speare, and have condescended to go through that interpolated scene 
 in Richard the Third, in which Richard tries to break his wife's 
 heart by telling her he loves another woman, and says, "if she sur- 
 vives this she is immortal." Yet I doubt not he delivered this vul- 
 gar stuff with as much anxiety of emphasis as any of the genuine 
 parts : and for acting, it is as well calculated as any. But we have 
 seen the part of Richard lately produce great fame to an actor by 
 his manner of playing it, and it lets us into the secret of acting, and 
 of popular judgments of Shakespeare derived from acting. Not one 
 of the spectators who have witnessed Mr. G.'s exertions in that 
 part, but has come away with a proper conviction that Richard 
 is a very wicked man, and kills little children in their beds, with 
 something like the pleasure which the giants and ogres in children's 
 books are represented to have taken in that practice; moreover, 
 that he is very close and shrewd and devilish cunning, for you could 
 see that by his eye. 
 
 But is in fact this the impression we have in reading the Richard 
 of Shakespeare ? Do we feel anything like disgust, as we do at 
 that butcher-like representation of him that passes for him on the 
 stage ? A horror at his crimes blends with the effect which we feel,
 
 230 
 
 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 but how is it qualified, how is it carried off, by the rich intellect 
 which he displays, his resources, his wit, his buoyant spirits, his 
 vast knowledge and insight into characters, the poetry of his part 
 — not an atom of all which is made perceivable in Mr. C.'s way of 
 acting it. Nothing but his crimes, his actions, is visible; they are 
 prominent and staring; the murderer stands out, but where is the 
 lofty genius, the man of vast capacity, — the profound, the witty, 
 accomplished Richard ? 
 
 The truth is, the Characters of Shakespeare are so much the 
 objects of meditation rather than of interest or curiosity as to their 
 actions, that while we are reading any of his great criminal char- 
 acters, — Macbeth, Richard, even lago, — we think not so much 
 of the crimes which they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring 
 spirit, the intellectual activity, which prompts them to overleap 
 those moral fences. Barnwell is a wretched murderer; there is 
 a certain fitness between his neck and the rope ; he is the legitimate 
 heir to the gallows; nobody who thinks at all can think of any 
 alleviating circumstances in his case to make him a fit object of 
 mercy. Or to take an instance from the higher tragedy, what else 
 but a mere assassin is Glenalvon ! Do we think of anything but 
 of the crime which he commits, and the rack which he deserves? 
 That is all which we really think about him. Whereas in corre- 
 sponding characters in Shakespeare so little do the actions com- 
 paratively affect us, that while the impulses, the inner mind in all 
 its perverted greatness, solely seems real and is exclusively attended 
 to, the crime is comparatively nothing. But when we see these 
 things represented, the acts which they do are comparatively every- 
 thing, their impulses nothing. The state of sublime emotion into 
 which we are elevated by those images of night and horror which 
 Macbeth is made to utter, that solemn prelude with which he enter- 
 tains the time till the bell shall strike which is to call him to murder 
 Duncan, — when we no longer read it in a book, when we have 
 given up that vantage-ground of abstraction which reading pos- 
 sesses over seeing, and come to see a man in his bodily shape before 
 our eyes actually prc])aring to commit a murder, if the acting be true 
 and impressive, as I have witnessed it in Mr. K.'s performance of 
 that part, the yxiinful anxiety about the act, the natural longing to 
 prevent it while it yet seems unperpetrated, the too close pressing 
 semblance of reality, give a pain and an uneasiness which totally 
 destroy all the delight which the words in the book convey, where 
 the deed doing never presses upon us with the painful sense of pres-
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 
 
 231 
 
 ence : it rather seems to belong to history, — to something past 
 and inevitable, if it has anything to do with time at all. The sub- 
 lime images, the poetry alone, is that which is present to our minds 
 in the reading. 
 
 So to see Lear acted, — to see an old man tottering about the 
 stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters 
 in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and dis- 
 gusting. We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. 
 That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in 
 me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The con- 
 temptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes 
 out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real 
 elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might 
 more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a 
 stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness 
 of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual: the 
 explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano : they are storms 
 turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea his mind, with 
 all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case 
 of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on ; even 
 as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but cor- 
 poral infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage; while we 
 read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear, — we are in his mind, 
 we are sustained by a grandeur which bafilies the malice of daugh- 
 ters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a 
 mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the 
 ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind 
 blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses 
 of mankind. What have looks, or tones, to do with that sub- 
 lime identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves, 
 when in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of 
 his children, he reminds them that "they themselves are old"? 
 What gesture shall we appropriate to this ? What has the voice 
 or the eye to do with such things ? But the. play is beyond all 
 art, as the tamperings with it show: it is too hard and stony; 
 it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It is not enough 
 that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover too. Tate 
 has put his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for Garrick 
 and his followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw the mighty 
 beast about more easily. A happy ending ! — as if the living 
 martyrdom that Lear had gone through, — the flaying of his
 
 232 
 
 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life 
 the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be happy 
 after, if he could sustain this world's burden after, why all this 
 putter and preparation, — why torment us with all this unneces- 
 sary sympathy? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt 
 robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his 
 misused station, — as if at his years, and with his experience, 
 anything was left but to die. 
 
 Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage. 
 But how many dramatic personages are there in Shakespeare, 
 which though more tractable and feasible (if I may so speak) 
 than Lear, yet from some circumstance, some adjunct to their 
 character, are improper to be shown to our bodily eye. Othello, 
 for instance. Nothing can be more soothing, more flattering to 
 the nobler parts of our natures, than to read of a young Venetian 
 lady of highest extraction, through the force of love and from a 
 sense of merit in him whom she loved, laying aside every con- 
 sideration of kindred, and country, and colour, and wedding 
 with a coal-black Moor — (for such he is represented, in the im- 
 perfect state of knowledge respecting foreign countries in those 
 days, compared with our own, or in compliance with popular 
 notions, though the Moors are now well enough known to be 
 by many shades less unworthy of a white woman's fancy) — it is 
 the perfect triumph of virtue over accidents, of the imagination 
 over the senses. She sees Othello's colour in his mind. But 
 upon the stage, when the imagination is no longer the ruling 
 faculty, but we are left to our poor unassisted senses, I appeal to 
 every one that has seen Othello played, whether he did not, on 
 the contrary, sink Othello's mind in his colour; whether he did 
 not tind something extremely revolting in the courtship and 
 wedded caresses of Othello and Desdemona; and whether the 
 actual sight of the thing did not overweigh all that beautiful 
 compromise which we make in reading; — and the reason it 
 should do so is obvious, because there is just so much reality 
 presented to our senses as to give a perception of disagreement, 
 with not enough of belief in the internal motives, — all that which 
 is unseen, — to overpower and reconcile the first and obvious 
 prejudices.' What we see upon a stage is body and bodily action; 
 
 ' The error of supposinp; that because Othello's colour does not offend us in 
 the reading, it should also not offend us in the scein'^. is just such a fallacy as sup- 
 posing that an Adam and Eve in a picture shall affect us just as they do in the
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 233 
 
 what we are conscious of in reading is almost exclusively the 
 mind, and its movements : and this I think may sufficiently account 
 for the very different sort of delight with which the same play 
 so often affects us in the reading and the seeing. 
 
 It requires little reflection to perceive, that if those characters 
 in Shakespeare which are within the precincts of nature, have 
 yet something in them which appeals too exclusively to the imagi- 
 nation, to admit of their being made objects to the senses with- 
 out suffering a change and a diminution, — that still stronger the 
 objection must lie against representing another line of characters, 
 which Shakespeare has introduced to give a wildness and a super- 
 natural elevation to his scenes, as if to remove them still farther 
 from that assimilation to common life in which their excellence 
 is vulgarly supposed to consist. When we read the incantations 
 of those terrible beings the Witches in Macbeth, though some 
 of the ingredients of their hellish composition savour of the gro- 
 tesque, yet is the effect upon us other than the most serious and 
 appalling that can be imagined ? Do we not feel spell-bound 
 as Macbeth was ? Can any mirth accompany a sense of their 
 presence ? We might as well laugh under a consciousness of the 
 principle of Evil himself being truly and really present with us. 
 But attempt to bring these beings on to a stage, and you turn 
 them instantly into so many old women, that men and children 
 are to laugh at. Contrary to the old saying, that "seeing is 
 believing," the sight actually destroys the faith: and the mirth 
 in which we indulge at their expense, when we see these creatures 
 upon a stage, seems to be a sort of indemnification which we 
 make to ourselves for the terror which they put us in when read- 
 ing made them an object of belief, — when we surrendered up 
 our reason to the poet, as children to their nurses and their elders; 
 and we laugh at our fears, as children who thought they saw some- 
 thing in the dark, triumph when the bringing in of a candle dis- 
 covers the vanity of their fears. For this exposure of super- 
 natural agents upon a stage is truly bringing in a candle to expose 
 their own delusiveness. It is the solitary taper and the book 
 that generates a faith in these terrors: a ghost by chandeher 
 
 poem. But in the poem we for a while have Paradisaical senses given us, which 
 vanish when we see a man and his wife without clothes in the picture. The paint- 
 ers themselves feel this, as is apparent by the awkward shifts they have recourse to, 
 to make them look not quite naked; by a sort of prophetic anachronism antedating 
 the invention of fig-leaves. So in the reading of the play, we see with Desdemona's 
 eyes; in the seeing of it, we are forced to look with our own.
 
 234 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 light, and in good company, deceives no spectators, — a ghost 
 that can be measured by the eye, and his human dimensions 
 made out at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and a 
 well-dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous child against 
 any apprehensions: as Tom Brown says of the impenetrable 
 skin of Achilles with his impenetrable armour over it, "Bully 
 Dawson would have fought the devil with such advantages." 
 
 Much has been said, and deservedly, in reprobation of the vile 
 mixture which Dryden has thrown into the Tempest: doubtless 
 without some such vicious alloy, the impure ears of that age would 
 never have sate out to hear so much innocence of love as is con- 
 tained in the sweet courtship of Ferdinand and Miranda. But 
 is the Tempest of Shakespeare at all a subject for stage repre- 
 sentation ? It is one thing to read of an enchanter, and to believe 
 the wondrous tale while we are reading it; but to have a con- 
 jurer brought before us in his conjuring-gown, with his spirits 
 about him, which none but himself and some hundred of favoured 
 spectators before the curtain are supposed to see, involves such 
 a quantity of the hateful incredible, that all our reverence for the 
 author cannot hinder us from perceiving such gross attempts 
 upon the senses to be in the highest degree childish and inefficient. 
 Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be 
 painted, — they can only be believed. But the elaborate and 
 anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands, 
 in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. 
 That which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, adds so much 
 to the life of the imitation, in plays which appeal to the higher 
 faculties, positively destroys the illusion which it is introduced 
 to aid. A parlour or a drawing-room, — a library opening into 
 a garden, — a garden with an alcove in it, — a street, or the 
 piazza of Covent Garden, does well enough in a scene; we are 
 content to give as much credit to it as it demands ; or rather, we 
 think little about it, — it is little more than reading at the top 
 of a page, "Scene, a Garden ; " we do not imagine ourselves there, 
 but we readily admit the imitation of familiar objects. Jkit to 
 think by the helj^ of painted trees and caverns, which we know 
 to be painted, to transport our minds to Prospero, and his island 
 and his lonely cell; ' or by the aid of a fiddle dexterously thrown 
 
 • It will be said these things are done in pictures. But pictures and scenes are 
 very diflerent things. Painting is a world of itself, but in scene-painting there is 
 the attempt to deceive; and there is the discordancy, never to be got over, between 
 painted scenes and real people.
 
 TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE 235 
 
 in, in an interval of speaking, to make us believe that we hear 
 those supernatural noises of which the isle was full : — the Orrery 
 Lecturer at the Haymarket might as well hope, by his musical 
 glasses cleverly stationed out of sight behind his apparatus, to 
 make us believe that we do indeed hear the crystal spheres ring 
 out that chime, which if it were to inwrap our fancy long, Milton 
 thinks, 
 
 Time would run back and fetch the age of gold, 
 
 And speckled vanity 
 
 Would sicken soon and die, 
 
 And leprous Sin would melt from earthly mould; 
 
 Yea Hell itself would pass away, 
 
 And leave its dolorous mansions to the peering day. 
 
 The Garden of Eden, with our first parents in it, is not more 
 impossible to be shown on a stage, than the Enchanted Isle, 
 with its no less interesting and innocent first settlers. 
 
 The subject of Scenery is closely connected with that of the 
 Dresses, which are so anxiously attended to on our stage. I remem- 
 ber the last time I saw Macbeth played, the discrepancy I felt at 
 the changes of garment which he varied, — the shiftings and 
 re-shiftings, like a Romish priest at mass. The luxury of stage- 
 improvements, and the importunity of the public eye, require 
 this. The coronation robe of the Scottish monarch was fairly 
 a counterpart to that which our King wears when he goes to the 
 Parliament-house, — just so full and cumbersome, and set out 
 with ermine and pearls. And if things must be represented, I see 
 not what to find fault with in this. But in reading, what robe 
 are we conscious of ? Some dim images of royalty — a crown 
 and sceptre, may float before our eyes, but who shall describe 
 the fashion of it? Do we see in our mind's eye what Webb or 
 any other robe-maker could pattern? This is the inevitable 
 consequence of imitating everything, to make all things natural. 
 Whereas the reading of a tragedy is a fine abstraction. It pre- 
 sents to the fancy just so much of external appearances as to make 
 us feel that we are among flesh and blood, while by far the greater 
 and better part of our imagination is employed upon the thoughts 
 and internal machinery of the character. But in acting, scenery, 
 dress, the most contemptible things, call upon us to judge of 
 their naturalness. 
 
 Perhaps it would be no bad similitude, to liken the pleasure 
 which we take in seeing one of these fine plays acted, compared
 
 236 CHARLES LAMB 
 
 with that quiet deh'ght which we find in the reading of it, to the 
 different feeUngs with which a reviewer, and a man that is not a 
 reviewer, reads a fine poem. The accursed critical habit, — 
 the being called upon to judge and pronounce, must make it 
 quite a different thing to the former. In seeing these plays acted, 
 we are affected just as judges. When Hamlet compares the 
 two pictures of Gertrude's first and second husband, who wants 
 to see the pictures ? But in the acting, a miniature must be lugged 
 out ; which we know not to be the picture, but only to show how 
 finely a miniature may be represented. This showing of every- 
 thing, levels all things: it makes tricks, bows, and curtseys, of 
 importance. Mrs. S. never got more fame by anything than 
 by the manner in which she dismisses the guests in the banquet- 
 scene in Macbeth : it is as much remembered as any of her thrill- 
 ing tones or impressive looks. But does such a trifle as this enter 
 into the imaginations of the reader of that wild and wonderful 
 scene? Does not the mind dismiss the feasters as rapidly as it 
 can? Does it care about the gracefulness of the doing it? But 
 by acting, and judging of acting, all these non-essentials are 
 raised into an importance, injurious to the main interest of the 
 play. 
 
 I have confined my observations to the tragic parts of Shake- 
 speare. It would be no very difficult task to extend the inquiry 
 to his comedies; and to show why Falstaff, Shallow, Sir Hugh 
 Evans, and the rest are equally incompatible with stage represen- 
 tation. The length to which this Essay has run, will make it, 
 I am afraid, sufficiently distasteful to the Amateurs of the Theatre, 
 without going any deeper into the subject at present.
 
 XI 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 (1843) 
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 
 
 [Published in 1884, in Longmans' Magazine. Reprinted in 1888 in Partial 
 Portraits.] 
 
 I SHOULD not have affixed so comprehensive a title to these few 
 remarks, necessarily wanting in any completeness upon a subject 
 the full consideration of which would carry us far, did I not seem 
 to discover a pretext for my temerity in the interesting pamphlet 
 lately published under this name by Mr. Walter Besant. Mr. 
 Besant's lecture at the Royal Institution — the original form of 
 his pamphlet — appears to indicate that many persons are inter- 
 ested in the art of fiction, and are not indifferent to such remarks, 
 as those who practise it may attempt to make about it. I am 
 therefore anxious not to lose the benefit of this favourable asso- 
 ciation, and to edge in a few words under cover of the attention 
 which Mr. Besant is sure to have excited. There is something 
 very encouraging in his having put into form certain of his ideas 
 on the mystery of story-telling. 
 
 It is a proof of life and curiosity — curiosity on the part of 
 the brotherhood of novelists as well as on the part of their readers. 
 Only a short time ago it might have been supposed that the Eng- 
 lish novel was not what the French call disciitable. It had no 
 air of having a theory, a conviction, a consciousness of itself 
 behind it — of being the expression of an artistic faith, the result 
 of choice and comparison. I do not say it was necessarily the 
 worse for that : it would take much more courage than I possess 
 to intimate that the form of the novel as Dickens and Thackeray 
 (for instance^ saw it had any taint of incompleteness. It was, 
 
 237
 
 238 HENRY JAMES 
 
 however, naif (if I may help myself out with another French 
 word) ; and evidently if it be destined to suffer in any way for 
 having lost its naivete it has now an idea of making sure of the 
 corresponding advantages. During the period I have alluded 
 to there was a comfortable, good-humoured feeling abroad that 
 a novel is a novel, as a pudding is a pudding, and that our only 
 business with it could be to swallow it. But within a year or two, 
 for some reason or other, there have been signs of returning ani- 
 mation — the era of discussion would appear to have been to a 
 certain extent opened. Art lives upon discussion, upon experi- 
 ment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange 
 of views and the comparison of standpoints; and there is a pre- 
 sumption that those times when no one has anything particular 
 to say about it, and has no reason to give for practice or preference, 
 though they may be times of honour, are not times of develop- 
 ment — are times, possibly even, a little of dulness. The suc- 
 cessful application of any art is a delightful spectacle, but the 
 theory too is interesting; and though there is a great deal of the 
 latter without the former I suspect there has never been a genuine 
 success that has not had a latent core of conviction. Discussion, 
 suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they 
 are frank and sincere. Mr. Besant has set an excellent example 
 in saying what he thinks, for his part, about the way in which 
 fiction should be written, as well as about the way in which it 
 should be published; for his view of the "art," carried on into 
 an appendix, covers that too. Other labourers in the same field 
 will doubtless take up the argument, they will give it the light 
 of their experience, and the effect will surely be to make our interest 
 in the novel a little more what it had for some time threatened 
 to fail to be — a serious, active, inquiring interest, under protec- 
 tion of which this delightful study may, in moments of confidence, 
 venture to say a little more what it thinks of itself. 
 
 It must take itself seriously for the public to take it so. The 
 old superstition about fiction being "wicked" has doubtless died 
 out in England; but the spirit of it lingers in a certain oblique 
 regard directed toward any story which does not more or less 
 admit that it is only a joke. Even the most jocular novel feels 
 in some degree the weight of the proscription that was formerly 
 directed against literary levity: the jocularity does not always 
 succeed in passing for orthodoxy. It is still expected, though 
 perhaps people are ashamed to say it, that a production which
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 239 
 
 is after all only a "make-believe" (for what else is a "story?") 
 shall be in some degree apologetic — shall renounce the preten- 
 sion of attempting really to represent life. This, of course, any 
 sensible, wide-awake story declines to do, for it quickly perceives 
 that the tolerance granted to it on such a condition is only an 
 attempt to stifle it disguised in the form of generosity. The old 
 evangelical hostility to the novel, which was as explicit as it was 
 narrow, and which regarded it as little less favourable to our 
 immortal part than a stage-play, was in reality far less insulting. 
 The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt 
 to represent life. When it relinquishes this attempt, the same 
 attempt that we see on the canvas of the painter, it will have 
 arrived at a very strange pass. It is not expected of the picture 
 that it will make itself humble in order to be forgiven; and the 
 analogy between the art of the painter and the art of the novelist 
 is, so far as I am able to see, complete. Their inspiration is the 
 same, their process (allowing for the different quality of the 
 vehicle), is the same, their success is the same. They may learn 
 from each other, they may explain and sustain each other. Their 
 cause is the same, and the honour of one is the honour of another. 
 The Mahometans think a picture an unholy thing, but it is a 
 long time since any Christian did, and it is therefore the more 
 odd that in the Christian mind the traces (dissimulated though 
 they may be) of a suspicion of the sister art should linger to this 
 day. The only effectual way to lay it to rest is to emphasize the 
 analogy to which I just alluded — to insist on the fact that as the 
 picture is reality, so the novel is history. That is the only general 
 description (which does it justice) that we may give of the novel. 
 But history also is allowed to represent life ; it is not, any more than 
 painting, expected to apologize. The subject-matter of fiction 
 is stored up likewise in documents and records, and if it will not 
 give itself away, as they say in California, it must speak with 
 assurance, with the tone of the historian. Certain accomplished 
 novelists have a habit of giving themselves away which must often 
 bring tears to the eyes of people who take their fiction seriously. 
 I was lately struck, in reading over many pages of Anthony Trol- 
 lope, with his want of discretion in this particular. In a digres- 
 sion, a parenthesis or an aside, he concedes to the reader that he 
 and this trusting friend are only "making believe." He admits 
 that the events he narrates have not really happened, and that he 
 can give his narrative any turn the reader may like best. Such
 
 240 HENRY JAMES. 
 
 a betrayal of a sacred office seems to me, I confess, a terrible 
 crime; it is what I mean by the attitude of apology, and it shocks 
 me every whit as much in TroUope as it would have shocked me 
 in Gibbon or Macaulay. It implies that the novelist is less occu- 
 pied in looking for the truth (the truth, of course I mean, that he 
 assumes, the premises that we must grant him, whatever they 
 may be), than the historian, and in doing so it deprives him at a 
 stroke of all his standing-room. To represent and illustrate the 
 past, the actions of men, is the task of either writer, and the only 
 difference that I can see is, in proportion as he succeeds, to the 
 honour of the novelist, consisting as it does in his having more 
 difficulty in collecting his evidence, which is so far from being 
 purely literary. It seems to me to give him a great character, 
 the fact that he has at once so much in common with the philoso- 
 pher and the painter ; this double analogy is a magnificent heritage. 
 It is of all this evidently that Mr. Besant is full when he insists 
 upon the fact that fiction is one of the fine arts, deserving in its turn 
 of all the honours and emoluments that have hitherto been reserved 
 for the successful profession of music, poetry, painting, architec- 
 ture. It is impossible to insist too much on so important a truth, 
 and the place that Mr. Besant demands for the work of the novel- 
 ist may be represented, a trifle less abstractly, by saying that he 
 demands not only that it shall be reputed artistic, but that it shall 
 be reputed very artistic indeed. It is excellent that he should have 
 struck this note, for his doing so indicates that there was need of it, 
 that his proposition may be to many people a novelty. One rubs 
 one's eyes at the thought ; but the rest of Mr. Besant's essay con- 
 firms the revelation. I suspect in truth that it would be possible 
 to confirm it still further, and that one would not be far wrong in 
 saying that in addition to the people to whom it has never occurred 
 that a novel ought to be artistic, there are a great many others who, 
 if this principle were urged upon them, would be filled with an 
 indefinable mistrust. They would find it difficult to ex[)lain their 
 repugnance, but it would operate strongly to put them on their 
 guard. "Art," in our Protestant communities, where so many 
 things have got so strangely twisted about, is supposed in certain 
 circles to have some vaguely injurious effect upon those who make 
 it an important consideration, who let it weigh in the balance. It 
 is assumed to be opposed in some mysterious manner to morality, 
 to amusement, to instruction. When it is embodied in the work 
 of the painter (the sculptor is another affair !) you know what it is:
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 24I 
 
 it stands there before you, in tlie honesty of pink and green and a 
 gilt frame ; you can see the worst of it at a glance, and you can be 
 on your guard. But when it is introduced into literature it becomes 
 more insidious — there is danger of its hurting you before you know 
 it. Literature should be either instructive or amusing, and there 
 is in many minds an impression that these artistic preoccupations, 
 the search for form, contribute to neither end, interfere indeed with 
 both. They are too frivolous to be edifying, and too serious to be 
 diveirting; and they are moreover priggish and paradoxical and 
 superfluous. That, I think, represents the manner in which the 
 latent thought of many people who read novels as an exercise in 
 skipping w^ould explain itself if it were to become articulate. They 
 would argue, of course, that a novel ought to be "good," but they 
 would interpret this term in a fashion of their own, which indeed 
 would vary considerably from one critic to another. One would 
 say that being good means representing virtuous and aspiring char- 
 acters, placed in prominent positions; another would say that it 
 depends on a "happy ending," on a distribution at the last of prizes, 
 pensions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs, 
 and cheerful remarks. Another still would say that it means being 
 full of incident and movement, so that we shall wish to jump ahead, 
 to see who was the mysterious stranger, and if the stolen will was 
 ever found, and shall not be distracted from this pleasure by any 
 tiresome analysis or "description." But they would all agree that 
 the "artistic" idea would spoil some of their fun. One would 
 hold it accountable for all the description, another would see it 
 revealed in the absence of sympathy. Its hostility to a happy 
 ending would be evident, and it might even in some cases render 
 any ending at all impossible. The "ending" of a novel is, for 
 many persons, like that of a good dinner, a course of dessert and 
 ices, and the artist in fiction is regarded as a sort of meddlesome 
 doctor who forbids agreeable aftertastes. It is therefore true that 
 this conception of Mr. Besant's of the novel as a superior form en- 
 counters not only a negative but a positive indifference. It matters 
 little that as a work of art it should really be as little or as much of 
 its essence to supply happy endings, sympathetic characters, and 
 an objective tone, as if it were a work of mechanics : the associa- 
 tion of ideas, however incongruous, might easily be too much for it 
 if an eloquent voice were not sometimes raised to call attention to 
 the fact that it is at once as free and as serious a branch of litera- 
 ture as any other. 
 
 R
 
 242 HENRY JAMES 
 
 Certainly this might sometimes be doubted in presence of the 
 enormous number of works of fiction that appeal to the credulity 
 of our generation, for it might easily seem that there could be no 
 great character in a commodity so quickly and easily produced. 
 It must be admitted that good novels are much compromised by 
 bad ones, and that the field at large suffers discredit from over- 
 crowding. I think, however, that this injury is only superficial, 
 and that the superabundance of written fiction proves nothing 
 against the principle itself. It has been vulgarized, like all other 
 kinds of literature, like everything else to-day, and it has proved 
 more than some kinds accessible to vulgarization. But there is as 
 much difference as there ever was between a good novel and a bad 
 one: the bad is swept with all the daubed canvases and spoiled 
 marble into some unvisited limbo, or infinite rubbish-yard beneath 
 the back-windows of the world, and the good subsists and emits 
 its light and stimulates our desire for perfection. As I shall take 
 the liberty of making but a single criticism of Mr. Besant, whose 
 tone is so full of the love of his art, I may as well have done with it 
 at once. He seems to me to mistake in attempting to say so defi- 
 nitely beforehand what sort of an .affair the good novel will be. 
 To indicate the danger of such an error as that has been the purpose 
 of these few pages; to suggest that certain traditions on the sub- 
 ject, applied a priori, have already had much to answer for, and 
 that the good health of an art which undertakes so immediately 
 to reproduce life must demand that it be perfectly free. It lives 
 upon exercise, and the very meaning of exercise is freedom. The 
 only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without 
 incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. 
 That general responsibility rests upon it, but it is the only one I 
 can think of. The ways in which it is at liberty to accomplish this 
 result (of interesting us) strike me as innumerable, and such as 
 can only suffer from being marked out or fenced in by prescription. 
 They are as various as the temperament of man, and they are suc- 
 cessful in proportion as they reveal a particular mind, different 
 from others. A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a 
 direct impression of life : that, to begin with, constitutes its value, 
 which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. 
 But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless 
 there is freedom to feel and say. The tracing of a line to be fol- 
 lowed, of a tone to be taken, of a form to be filled out, is a limitation 
 of that freedom and a suppression of the very thing that we are most
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 243 
 
 curious about. The form, it seems to me, is to be appreciated 
 after the fact : then the author's choice has been made, his stand- 
 ard has been indicated; then we can follow lines and directions 
 and compare tones and resemblances. Then in a word we can en- 
 joy one of the most charming of pleasures, we can estimate quality, 
 we can apply the test of execution. The execution belongs to the 
 author alone; it is what is most personal to him, and we measure 
 him by that. The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment 
 and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what 
 he may attempt as an executant — no limit to his possible experi- 
 ments, efforts, discoveries, successes. Here it is especially that 
 he works, step by step, like his brother of the brush, of whom we 
 may always say that he has painted his picture in a manner best 
 known to himself. His manner is his secret, not necessarily a 
 jealous one. He cannot disclose it as a general thing if he would; 
 he would be at a loss to teach it to others. I say this with a due 
 recollection of having insisted on the community of method of the 
 artist who paints a picture and the artist who writes a novel. The 
 painter is able to teach the rudiments of his practice, and it is 
 possible, from the study of good work (granted the aptitude), both 
 to learn how to paint and to learn how to write. Yet it remains 
 true, without injury to the rapprochement, that the literary artist 
 would be obliged to say to his pupil much more than the other, 
 "Ah, well, you must do it as you can ! " It is a question of degree, 
 a matter of delicacy. If there are exact sciences, there are also 
 exact arts, and the grammar of painting is so much more definite 
 that it makes the difference. 
 
 I ought to add, however, that if Mr. Besant says at the beginning 
 of his essay that the "laws of fiction may be laid down and taught 
 with as much precision and exactness as the laws of harmony, 
 perspective, and proportion," he mitigates what might appear to 
 be an extravagance by applying his remark to "general" laws, and 
 by expressing most of these rules in a manner with which it would 
 certainly be unaccommodating to disagree. That the novelist 
 must write from his experience, that his "characters must be real 
 and such as might be met with in actual life;" that "a young 
 lady brought up in a quiet country village should avoid descrip- 
 tions of garrison life," and "a writer whose friends and personal 
 experiences belong to the lower middle-class should carefully avoid 
 introducing his characters into society;" that one should enter 
 one's notes in a common-place book; that one's figures should be
 
 244 HENRY JAMES 
 
 clear in outline; that making them clear by some trick of speech 
 or of carriage is a bad method, and "describing them at length" 
 is a worse one; that English Fiction should have a "conscious 
 moral purpose;" that "it is almost impossible to estimate too 
 highly the value of careful workmanship — that is, of style;" 
 that "the most important point of all is the story," that "the story 
 is everything" : these are principles with most of which it is surely 
 impossible not to sympathize. That remark about the lower mid- 
 dle-class writer and his knowing his place is perhaps rather chilling ; 
 but for the rest I should find it difficult to dissent from any one of 
 these recommendations. At the same time, I should find it difficult 
 positively to assent to them, with the exception, perhaps, of the 
 injunction as to entering one's notes in a common-place book. 
 They scarcely seem to me to have the quality that Mr. Besant at- 
 tributes to the rules of the novelist — the ' ' precision and exactness " 
 of "the laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion." They 
 are suggestive, they are even inspiring, but they are not exact, 
 though they are doubtless as much so as the case admits of: which 
 is a proof of that liberty of interpretation for which I just contended. 
 For the value of these different injunctions — so beautiful and so 
 vague — is wholly in the meaning one attaches to them. The 
 characters, the situation, which strike one as real will be those that 
 touch and interest one most, but the measure of reality is very 
 difficult to fix. The reality of Don Quixote or of Mr. Micawber 
 is a very delicate shade; it is a reality so coloured by the author's 
 vision that, vivid as it may be, one would hesitate to propose it as 
 a model: one would expose one's self to some very embarrassing 
 questions on the part of a pupil. It goes without saying that you 
 will not write a good novel unless you possess the sense of reality; 
 but it will be difficult to give you a recipe for calling that sense 
 into being. Humanity is immense, and reality has a myriad 
 forms; the most one can affirm is that some of the flowers of fic- 
 tion have the odour of it, and others have not; as for telling you in 
 advance how your nosegay should be composed, that is another 
 affair. It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one 
 must write from experience; to our supposititious aspirant such a 
 declaration might savour of mockery. What kind of experience 
 is intended, and where does it begin and end? Experience is 
 never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, 
 a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in 
 the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 245 
 
 in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind ; and when the 
 mind is imaginative — much more when it happens to be that of a 
 man of genius — it takes to itself the faintest hints of hfe, it con- 
 verts the very pulses of the air into revelations. The young lady 
 living in a village has only to be a damsel upon whom nothing is 
 lost to make it quite unfair (as it seems to me) to declare to her 
 that she shall have nothing to say about the military. Greater 
 miracles have been seen than that, imagination assisting, she should 
 speak the truth about some of these gentlemen. I remember an 
 English novelist, a woman of genius, telling me that she was much 
 commended for the impression she had managed to give in one of 
 her tales of the nature and way of life of the French Protestant 
 youth. She had been asked where she learned so much about 
 this recondite being, she had been congratulated on her peculiar 
 opportunities. These opportunities consisted in her having once, 
 in Paris, as she ascended a staircase, passed an open door where, 
 in the household of a pasteur, some of the young Protestants were 
 seated at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a pic- 
 ture; it lasted only a moment, but that moment was experience. 
 She had got her direct personal impression, and she turned out her 
 type. She knew what youth was, and what Protestantism; she 
 also had the advantage of having seen what it was to be French, 
 so that she converted these ideas into a concrete image and pro- 
 duced a reality. xA.bove all, however, she was blessed with the 
 faculty which when you give it an inch takes an ell, and which for 
 the artist is a much greater source of strength than any accident of 
 residence or of place in the social scale. The power to guess th(^ 
 unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge 
 the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in gen- 
 eral so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any 
 particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to 
 constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and 
 in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of 
 impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just 
 as (have we not seen it ?) they are the very air we breathe. There- 
 fore, if I should certainly say to a novice, "Write from experience 
 and experience only," I should feel that this was rather a tantaliz- 
 ing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, "Try to 
 be one of the people on whom nothing is lost ! " 
 
 I am far from intending by this to minimize the importance of 
 exactness — of truth of detail. One can speak best from one's
 
 246 HENRY JAMES 
 
 own taste, and I may therefore venture to say that the air of reality 
 (soHdity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of 
 a novel — the merit on which all its other merits (including that 
 conscious moral purpose of which Mr. Besant speaks) helplessly 
 and submissively depend. If it be not there they are all as noth- 
 ing, and if these be there, they owe their effect to the success with 
 which the author has produced the illusion of life. The cultiva- 
 tion of this success, the study of this exquisite process, form, to 
 my taste, the beginning and the end of the art of the novelist. They 
 are his inspiration, his despair, his reward, his torment, his delight. 
 It is here in very truth that he competes with life ; it is here that he 
 competes with his brother the painter in his attempt to render the 
 look of things, the look that conveys their meaning, to catch the 
 colour, the relief, the expression, the surface, the substance of the 
 human spectacle. It is in regard to this that Mr. Besant is well 
 inspired when he bids him take notes. He cannot possiblv take 
 too many, he cannot possibly take enough. All life solicits him, 
 and to "render" the simplest surface, to produce the most momen- 
 tary illusion, is a very complicated business. His case would be 
 easier, and the rule would be more exact, if Mr. Besant had been 
 able to tell him what notes to take. But this, I fear, he can never 
 learn in any manual ; it is the business of his life. He has to take 
 a great many in order to select a few, he has to work them up as he 
 can, and even the guides and philosophers who might have most 
 to say to him must leave him alone when it comes to the applica- 
 tion of precepts, as we leave the painter in communion with his 
 palette. That his characters "must be clear in outline," as Mr. 
 Besant says — he feels that down to his boots ; but how he shall 
 make them so is a secret between his good angel and himself. It 
 would be absurdly simple if he could be taught that a great deal 
 of "description" would make them so, or that on (he contrary the 
 absence of description and the cultivation of dialogue, or the 
 absence of dialogue and the multiplication of "incident," would 
 rescue him from his difficulties. Nothing, for instance, is more pos- 
 sible than that he be of a turn of mind for which this odd, literal 
 opposition of description and dialogue, incident and description, 
 has little meaning and light. People often talk of these things as 
 if they had a kind of internecine distinctness, instead of melting 
 into each other at every breath, and being intimately associated 
 parts of one general effort of e.xpression. I cannot imagine com- 
 position existing in a series of blocks, nor conceive, in any novel
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 247 
 
 worth discussing at all, of a passage of description that is not in 
 its intention narrative, a passage of dialogue that is not in its 
 intention descriptive, a touch of truth of any sort that does not par- 
 take of the nature of incident, or an incident that derives its interest 
 from any other source than the general and only source of the suc- 
 cess of a work of art — that of being illustrative. A novel is a 
 living thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism, and in 
 proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the 
 parts there is something of each of the other parts. The critic 
 who over the close texture of a finished work shall pretend to trace 
 a geography of items will mark some frontiers as artificial, I fear, 
 as any that have been known to history. There is an old-fashioned 
 distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident 
 which must have cost many a smile to the intending fabulist who 
 was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as 
 the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the ro- 
 mance — to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels 
 and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures ; but 
 that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can 
 as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can 
 imagine speaking of a picture of character. When one says 
 picture one says of character, when one says novel one says of inci- 
 dent, and the terms may be transposed at will. What is character 
 but the determination of incident ? What is incident but the 
 illustration of character ? What is either a picture or a novel that 
 is not of character? What else do we seek in it and find in it? 
 It is an incident for a woman to stand up with her hand resting on 
 a table and look out at you in a certain way; or if it be not an 
 incident I think it will be hard to sav what it is. At the same time 
 it is an expression of character. If you say you don't see it (char- 
 acter in that — aUons done !), this is exactly what the artist who has 
 reasons of his own for thinking he does see it undertakes to show 
 you. When a young man makes up his mind that he has not faith 
 enough after all to enter the church as he intended, that is an inci- 
 dent, though you may not hurry to the end of the chapter to see 
 whether perhaps he doesn't change once more. I do not say that 
 these are extraordinary or starthng incidents. I do not pretend to 
 estimate the degree of interest proceeding from them, for this will 
 depend upon the skill of the painter. It sounds almost puerile to 
 say that some incidents are intrinsically much more important than 
 others, and I need not take this precaution after having professed
 
 248 HENRY JAMES 
 
 my sympathy for the major ones in remarking that the only classi- 
 fication of the novel that I can understand is into that which has 
 life and that which has it not. 
 
 The novel and the romance, the novel of incident and that of 
 character — these clumsy separations appear to me to have been 
 made by critics and readers for their own convenience, and to help 
 them out of some of their occasional queer predicaments, but to 
 have little reality or interest for the producer, from whose point 
 of view it is of course that we are attempting to consider the art of 
 fiction. The case is the same with another shadowy category 
 which Mr. Besant apparently is disposed to set up — that of the 
 ''modern English novel"; unless indeed it be that in this matter 
 he has fallen into an accidental confusion of standpoints. It is 
 not quite clear whether he intends the remarks in which he alludes 
 to it to be didactic or historical. It is as difficult to suppose a per- 
 son intending to write a modern English as to suppose him writing 
 an ancient English novel : that is a label which begs the question. 
 One writes the novel, one paints the picture, of one's language and 
 of one's time, and calhng it modern English v/ill not, alas ! make 
 the difficult task any easier. No more, unfortunately, will calling 
 this or that work of one's fellow-artist a romance —   unless it be, 
 of course, simply for the pleasantness of the thing, as for instance 
 when Hawthorne gave this heading to his story of Blithedale. 
 The French, who have brought the theory of fiction to remarkable 
 completeness, have but one name for the novel, and have not at- 
 tempted smaller things in it, that I can see, for that. I can think 
 of no obligation to which the "romancer " would not be held equally 
 with the novelist; the standard of execution is equally high for 
 each. Of course it is of execution that we are talking — that 
 being the only point of a novel that is open to contention. This is 
 perhaps too often lost sight of, only to produce interminable 
 confusions and cross-purposes. We must grant the artist his sub- 
 ject, his idea, his donnee: our criticism is applied only to what he 
 makes of it. Naturally I do not mean that we are bound to like it 
 or find it interesting: in case we do not, our course is perfectly 
 simple — to let it alone. We may believe that of a certain idea 
 even the most sincere novelist can make nothing at all, and the 
 event may perfectly justify our belief; but the failure will have 
 been a failure to execute, and it is in the execution that the fatal 
 weakness is recorded. If we pretend to respect the artist at all, 
 we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 
 
 249 
 
 cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fruc- 
 tify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from 
 flying in the face of presumptions, and some of the most interesting 
 experiments of which it is capable are hidden in the bosom of com- 
 mon things. Gustave Flaubert has written a story about the de- 
 votion of a servant-girl to a parrot, and the production, highly fin- 
 ished as it is, cannot on the whole be called a success. We are 
 perfectly free to find it flat, but I think it might have been in- 
 teresting; and I, for my part, am extremely glad he should have 
 written it; it is a contribution to our knowledge of what can be 
 done — or what cannot. Ivan Turgenieff has written a tale about 
 a deaf and dumb serf and a lap-dog, and the thing is touching, lov- 
 ing, a little masterpiece. He struck the note of life where Gustave 
 Flaubert missed it — he flew in the face of a presumption and 
 achieved a victory. 
 
 Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion 
 of "liking " a work of art or not liking it : the most improved criti- 
 cism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate test. I mention 
 this to guard myself from the accusation of intimating that the 
 idea, the subject, of a novel or a picture, does not matter. It 
 matters, to my sense, in the highest degree, and if I might put up 
 a prayer it would be that artists should select none but the richest. 
 Some, as I have already hastened to admit, are much more re- 
 munerative than others, and it would be a world happily arranged 
 in which persons intending to treat them should be exempt frohi 
 confusions and mistakes. This fortunate condition will arrive 
 only, I fear, on the same day that critics become purged from error. 
 Meanwhile, I repeat, we do not judge the artist with fairness unless 
 we say to him, "Oh, I grant you your starting-point, because if I 
 did not I should seem to prescribe to you, and heaven forbid I should 
 take that responsibility. If I pretend to tell you what you must not 
 take, you will call upon me to tell you then what you must take; 
 in which case I shall be prettily caught. Moreover, it isn't till I 
 have accepted your data that I can begin to measure you. I have 
 the standard, the pitch; I have no right to tamper with your flute 
 and then criticise your music. Of course I may not care for your 
 idea at all ; I may think it silly, or stale, or unclean ; in which case 
 I wash my hands of you altogether. I may content myself with be- 
 lieving that you will not have succeeded in being interesting, but I 
 shall, of course, not attempt to demonstrate it, and you will be 
 as indifferent to me as I am to you. I needn't remind you that there
 
 250 HENRY JAMES 
 
 are all sorts of tastes : who can know it better ? Some people, for 
 excellent reasons, don't like to read about carpenters; others, 
 for reasons even better, don't like to read about courtesans. Many 
 object to Americans. Others (I believe they are mainly editors 
 and publishers) won't look at Italians. Some readers don't like 
 quiet subjects; others don't like bustling ones. Some enjoy a 
 complete illusion, others the consciousness of large concessions. 
 They choose their novels accordingly, and if they don't care about 
 your idea they won't, a fortiori, care about your treatment." 
 
 So that it comes back very quickly, as I have said, to the liking: 
 in spite of M. Zola, who reasons less powerfully than he represents, 
 .and who will not reconcile himself to this absoluteness of taste, 
 thinking that there are certain things that people ought to like, 
 and that they can be made to like. I am quite at a loss to imagine 
 anything (at any rate in this matter of fiction) that people ought 
 to like or to dislike. Selection will be sure to take care of itself, 
 for it has a constant motive behind it. That motive is simply ex- 
 perience. As people feel life, so they will feel the art that is most 
 closely related to it. This closeness of relation is what we should 
 never forget in talking of the effort of the novel. Many people 
 speak of it as a factitious, artificial form, a product of ingenuity, 
 the business of which is to alter and arrange the things that sur- 
 round us, to translate them into conventional, traditional moulds. 
 This, however, is a view of the matter which carries us but a very 
 short way, condemns the art to an eternal repetition of a few fa- 
 miliar cliches,^ cuts short its development, and leads us straight 
 up to a dead wall. Catching the very note and trick, the strange 
 irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous force 
 keeps Fiction upon her feet. In proportion as in what she offers 
 us we see life without rearrangement do we feel that we are touch- 
 ing the truth ; in proportion as we see it with rearrangement do we 
 feel that we are being put off with a substitute, a compromise and 
 convention. It is not uncommon to hear an extraordinary assur- 
 ance of remark in regard to this matter of rearranging, which is 
 often spoken of as if it were the last word of art. Mr. Besant seems 
 to me in danger of falling into the great error with his rather un- 
 guarded talk about "selection." Art is essentially selection, but 
 it is a selection whose main care is to be typical, to be inclusive. 
 For many people art means rose-coloured window-panes, and selec- 
 tion means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell 
 
 ' [Stereotype plates; negatives.]
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 251 
 
 you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the 
 disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow common- 
 places about the province of art and the limits of art till you are 
 moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits 
 of ignorance. It appears to me that no one can ever have made a 
 seriously artistic attempt without becoming conscious of an im- 
 mense increase — a kind of revelation — of freedom. One per- 
 ceives in that case — by the light of a heavenly ray — that the prov- 
 ince of art is all life, all feeling, all observation, all vision. As Mr. 
 Besant so justly intimates, it is all experience. That is a sufficient 
 answer to those who maintain that it must not touch the sad things 
 of life, who stick into its divine unconscious bosom little prohibi- 
 tory inscriptions on the end of sticks, such as we see in public gar- 
 dens — "It is forbidden to walk on the grass; it is forbidden to 
 touch the flowers ; it is not allowed to introduce dogs or to remain 
 after dark; it is requested to keep to the right." The young as- 
 pirant in the line of fiction whom we continue to imagine will do 
 nothing without taste, for in that case his freedom would be of 
 little use to him ; but the first advantage of his taste will be to reveal 
 to him the absurdity of the little sticks and tickets. If he have 
 taste, I must add, of course he will have ingenuity, and my dis- 
 respectful reference to that quality just now was not meant to imply 
 that it is useless in fiction. But it is only a secondary aid ; the first 
 is a capacity for receiving straight impressions. 
 
 Mr. Besant has some remarks on the question of "the story" 
 which I shall not attempt to criticise, though they seem to me to con- 
 tain a singular ambiguity, because I do not think I understand them. 
 I cannot see what is meant by talking as if there were a part of a 
 novel which is the story and part of it which for mystical reasons 
 is not — unless indeed the distinction be made in a sense in which 
 it is difficult to suppose that any one should attempt to convey any- 
 thing. "The story," if it represents anything, represents the sub- 
 ject, the idea, the donnee of the novel; and there is surely no 
 "school" — Mr. Besant speaks of a school — which urges that 
 a novel should be all treatment and no subject. There must 
 assuredly be something to treat; every school is intimately con- 
 scious of that. This sense of the story being the idea, the starting- 
 point, of the novel, is the only one that I see in which it can be 
 spoken of as something different from its organic whole; and since 
 in proportion as the work is successful the idea permeates and pene- 
 trates it, informs and animates it, so that every word and every
 
 252 HENRY JAMES 
 
 punctuation-point contribute directly to the expression, in that pro- 
 portion do we lose our sense of the story being a blade which may 
 Ije drawn more or less out of its sheath. The story and the novel, 
 the idea and the form, are the needle and thread, and I never heard 
 of a guild of tailors who recommended the use of the thread with- 
 out the needle, or the needle without the thread. Mr. Besant is 
 not the only critic who may be observed to have spoken as if there 
 were certain things in life which constitute stories, and certain 
 others which do not. I find the same odd implication in an enter- 
 taining article in the Pall Mall Gazette, devoted, as it happens, to 
 Mr. Besant's lecture. "The story is the thing ! " says this graceful 
 writer, as if with a tone of opposition to some other idea. I should 
 think it was, as every painter who, as the time for "sending in" 
 his picture looms in the distance, finds himself still in quest of a 
 subject — as every belated artist not fixed about his theme will 
 heartily agree. There are some subjects which speak to us and 
 others which do not, but he would be a clever man who should 
 undertake to give a rule — an index expurgatorius — by which 
 the story and the no-story should be known apart. It is impossible 
 (to me at least) to imagine any such rule which shall not be alto- 
 gether arbitrary. The writer in the Pall Mall opposes the delight- 
 ful (as I suppose) novel of Margot la Balafree to certain tales in 
 which "Bostonian nymphs" appear to have "rejected English 
 dukes for psychological reasons." I am not acquainted with the 
 romance just designated, and can scarcely forgive the Pall Mall 
 critic for not mentioning the name of the author, but the title 
 appears to refer to a lady who may have received a scar in some 
 heroic adventure. I am inconsolable at not being acquainted 
 with this episode, but am utterly at a loss to see why it is a story 
 when the rejection (or acceptance) of a duke is not, and why a 
 reason, psychological or other, is not a subject when a cicatrix is. 
 They are all particles of the multitudinous life with which the novel 
 deals, and surely no dogma which pretends to make it kiwful to touch 
 the one and unlawful to touch the other will stand for a moment on 
 its feet. It is the special picture that must stand or fall, according 
 as it seem to possess truth or to lack it. Mr. Besant does not, 
 to my sense, light up the subject by intimating that a story must, 
 under penalty of not being a story, consist of "adventures." Why 
 of adventures more than of green spectacles ? He mentions a cate- 
 gory of impossible things, and among them he places "fiction with- 
 out adventure." Why without adventure, more than without
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 253 
 
 matrimony, or celibacy, or parturition, or cholera, or hydropathy, 
 or Jansenism? This seems to me to bring the novel back to the 
 hapless little role of being an artificial, ingenious thing — bring it 
 down from its large, free character of an immense and exquisite 
 correspondence with life. And what is adventure, when it comes 
 to that, and by what sign is the listening pupil to recognize it ? 
 It is an adventure — an immense one — for me to write this 
 little article ; and for a Bostonian nymph to reject an English duke 
 is an adventure only less stirring, I should say, than for an English 
 duke to be rejected by a Bostonian nymph. I see dramas within 
 dramas in that, and innumerable points of view. A psychological 
 reason is, to my imagination, an object adorably pictorial ; to catch 
 the tint of its complexion — I feel as if that idea might inspire one 
 to Titianesque efforts. There are few things more exciting to me, 
 in short, than a psychological reason, and yet, I protest, the novel 
 seems to me the most magnificent form of art. I have just been 
 reading, at the same time, the delightful story of Treasure Island, 
 by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson and, in a manner less consecutive, 
 the last tale from M. Edmond de Goncourt, which is entitled 
 Cherie. One of these works treats of murders, mysteries, islands 
 of dreadful renown, hairbreadth escapes, miraculous coincidences 
 and buried doubloons. The other treats of a little French girl who 
 lived in a fine house in Paris, and died of wounded sensibility be- 
 cause no one would marry her. I call Treasure Island delightful, 
 because it appears to me to have succeeded wonderfully in what it 
 attempts ; and I venture to bestow no epithet upon Cherie, which 
 strikes me as having failed deplorably in what it attempts — that 
 is in tracing the development of the moral consciousness of a child. 
 But one of these productions strikes me as exactly as much of a 
 novel as the other, and as having a "story" quite as much. The 
 moral consciousness of a child is as much a part of life as the islands 
 of the Spanish Main, and the one sort of geography seems to me 
 to have those "surprises" of which Mr. Besant speaks quite as 
 much as the other. For myself (since it comes back in the last re- 
 sort, as I say, to the preference of the individual), the picture of the 
 child's experience has the advantage that I can at successive steps 
 (an immense luxury, near to the "sensual pleasure" of which Mr. 
 Besant's critic in the Pall Mall speaks) say Yes or No, as it may be, 
 to what the artist puts before me. I have been a child in fact, but 
 I have been on a quest for a buried treasure only in supposition, and 
 it is a simple accident that with M. de Goncourt I should have for
 
 254 HENRY JAMES 
 
 the most part to say No. With George Eliot, when she painted 
 that country with a far other inteUigence, I always said Yes. 
 
 The most interesting part of Mr. Besant's lecture is unfortunately 
 the briefest passage — his very cursory allusion to the "conscious 
 moral purpose" of the novel. Here again it is not very clear 
 whether he be recording a fact or laying down a principle; it is 
 a great pity that in the latter case he should not have developed his 
 idea. This branch of the subject is of immense importance, and 
 Mr. Besant's few words point to considerations of the widest reach, 
 not to be lightly disposed of. He will have treated the art of 
 fiction but superficially who is not prepared to go every inch of the 
 way that these considerations will carry him. It is for this reason 
 that at the beginning of these remarks I was careful to notify the 
 reader that my reflections on so large a theme have no pretension 
 to be exhaustive. Like Mr. Besant, I have left the question of the 
 morality of the novel till the last, and at the last I find I have used 
 up my space. It is a question surrounded with difficulties, as wit- 
 ness the very first that meets us, in the form of a definite question, 
 on the threshold. Vagueness, in such a discussion, is fatal, and 
 what is the meaning of your morality and your conscious moral 
 purpose? Will you not define your terms and explain how (a 
 novel being a picture) a picture can be either moral or immoral ? 
 You wish to paint a moral picture or carve a moral statue : will you 
 not tell us how you would set about it ? We are discussing the Art 
 of Fiction; questions of art are questions (in the widest sense) of 
 execution ; questions of morality are quite another affair, and will 
 you not let us see how it is that you find it so easy to mix them up ? 
 These things are so clear to Mr. Besant that he has deduced from 
 them a law which he sees embodied in English Fiction, and which 
 is "a truly admirable thing and a great cause for congratulation." 
 It is a great cause for congratulation indeed when such thorny prob- 
 lems become as smooth as silk. I may add that in so far as Mr. 
 Besant i)erceives that in point of fact English Fiction has addressed 
 itself preponderantly to these delicate questions he will appear to 
 many people to have made a vain discovery. They will have been 
 positively struck, on the contrary, with the moral timidity of the 
 usual English novelist ; with his (or with her) aversion to face the 
 difficulties with which on every side the treatment of reality 
 bristles. He is apt to be e.xtremely shy (whereas the picture that 
 Mr. Besant draws is a picture of boldness), and the sign of his 
 work, for the most part, is a cautious silence on certain subjects.
 
 THE ART OF FICTION 255 
 
 »In the English novel (by which of course I mean the American as 
 well), more than in any other, there is a traditional difference be- 
 tween that which people know and that which they agree to admit 
 that they know, that which they see and that which they speak of, 
 that which they feel to be a part of life and that which they allow 
 to enter into literature. There is the great difference, in short, 
 between what they talk of in conversation and what they talk of in 
 print. The essence of moral energy is to survey the whole field, 
 and I should directly reverse Mr. Besant's remark and say not that 
 the English novel has a purpose, but that it has a difhdence. To 
 what degree a purpose in a work of art is a source of corruption 
 I shall not attempt to inquire; the one that seems to me least 
 dangerous is the purpose of making a perfect work. As for our 
 novel, I may say lastly on this score that as we find it in England 
 to-day it strikes me as addressed in a large degree to "young peo- 
 ple," and that this in itself constitutes a presumption that it will be 
 rather shy. There are certain things which it is generally agreed 
 not to discuss, not even to mention, before young people. That is 
 very well, but the absence of discussion is not a symptom of the 
 moral passion. The purpose of the English novel — "a truly 
 admirable thing, and a great cause for congratulation " — strikes 
 me therefore as rather negative. 
 
 There is one point at which the moral sense and the artistic sense 
 lie very near together ; that is in the light of the very obvious truth 
 that the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality 
 of the mind of the producer. In proportion as that intelligence is 
 fine will the novel, the picture, the statue partake of the substance 
 of beauty and truth. To be constituted of such elements is, to my 
 vision, to have purpose enough. No good novel will ever proceed 
 from a superficial mind; that seems to me an axiom which, for the 
 artist in fiction, will cover all needful moral ground : if the youthful 
 aspirant take it to heart it will illuminate for him many of the mys- 
 teries of "purpose." There are many other useful things that 
 might be said to him, but I have come to the end of my article, and 
 can only touch them as I pass. The critic in the Pall Mall Ga- 
 zette, whom I have already quoted, draws attention to the danger, 
 in speaking of the art of fiction, of generalizing. The danger that 
 he has in mind is rather, I imagine, that of particularizing, for 
 there are some comprehensive remarks which, in addition to those 
 embodied in Mr. Besant's suggestive lecture, might without fear 
 of misleading him be addressed to the ingenuous student. I should
 
 256 HENRY JAMES 
 
 remind him first of the magnificence of the form that is open to him, 
 which offers to sight so few restrictions and such innumerable 
 opportunities. The other arts, in comparison, appear confined 
 and hampqred ; the various conditions under which they are exer- 
 cised are so rigid and definite. But the only condition that I can 
 think of attaching to the composition of the novel is, as I have al- 
 ready said, that it be sincere. This freedom is a splendid privilege, 
 and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it. 
 "Enjoy it as it deserves," I should say to him; "take possession- 
 of it, explore it to its utmost extent, publish it, rejoice in it. All 
 life belongs to you, and do not listen either to those who would shut 
 you up into corners of it and tell you that it is only here and there 
 that art inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that this 
 heavenly messenger wings her way outside of life altogether, 
 breathing a superfine air, and turning away her head from the 
 truth of things. There is no impression of life, no manner of seeing 
 it and feeling it, to which the plan of the novelist may not offer 
 a place; you have only to remember that talents so dissimilar as 
 those of Alexandre Dumas and Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and 
 Gustave Flaubert have worked in this field with equal glory. 
 Do not think too much about optimism and pessimism; try and 
 catch the colour of life itself. In France to-day we see a prodigious 
 effort (that of Emile Zola, to whose solid and serious work no ex- 
 plorer of the capacity of the novel can allude without respect), we 
 see an extraordinary effort vitiated by a spirit of pessimism on a 
 narrow basis. M. Zola is magnificent, but he strikes an English 
 reader as ignorant; he has an air of working in the dark; if he 
 had as much light as energy, his results would be of the highest 
 value. As for the aberrations of a shallow optimism, the ground 
 (of English fiction especially) is strewn with their brittle particles 
 as with broken glass. If you must indulge in conclusions, let them 
 have the taste of a wide knowledge. Remember that your first 
 duty is to be as complete as possible — to make as perfect a work. 
 Be generous and delicate and pursue the prize."
 
 XII 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 (1809-1849) 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 
 
 (1846) 
 
 Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding 
 to an examination I once made of the mechanism of Barnaby 
 Rudge, says — "By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote 
 his Caleb Williams backwards? He first involved his hero in 
 a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for 
 the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what 
 had been done." 
 
 I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part 
 of Godwin — and indeed what he himself acknowledges is not 
 altogether in accordance with Mr. Dickens's idea — but the 
 author of Caleb Williams was too good an artist not to perceive 
 the advantage derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. 
 Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, 
 must be elaborated to its denouetnent before anything be attempted 
 with the pen. It is only with the denouement constantly in view 
 that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or 
 causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all 
 points, tend to the development of the intention. 
 
 There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of con- 
 structing a story. Either history affords a thesis — or one is 
 suggested by an incident of the day — or, at best, the author 
 sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form 
 merely the basis of his narrative — designing, generally, to fill 
 in with description, dialogue, or authorial comment, whatever 
 s 257
 
 258 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 crevices of fact or action may, from page to page, render them- 
 selves apparent. 
 
 I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keep- 
 ing originaHty always in view — for he is false to himself who 
 ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a 
 source of interest — I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the 
 innumerable effects or impressions of which the heart, the intellect, 
 or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on 
 the present occasion, select?" Having chosen a novel first, and 
 secondly, a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought 
 by incident or tone — whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar 
 tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone 
 
 — afterwards looking about me (or rather within) for such com- 
 binations of event or tone as shall best aid me in the construction 
 of the effect. 
 
 I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might 
 be written by any author who would — that is to say, who could 
 
 — detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his com- 
 positions attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such 
 a paper has never been given to the world I am much at a loss to 
 say — but perhaps the authorial vanity has had more to do with 
 the omission than any one other cause. Most writers — poets 
 in especial — prefer having it understood that they compose 
 by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — and would 
 positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the 
 scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at 
 the true purposes seized only at the last moment — at the innu- 
 merable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full 
 view — at the fully-matured fancies discarded in despair as un- 
 manageable — at the cautious selections and rejections — at the 
 painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the wheels 
 and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting — the step-ladders 
 and demon-traps — the cock's feathers, the red paint and the 
 black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, 
 constitute the properties of the literary histrio. 
 
 I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means 
 common in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the 
 steps by which his conclusions have been attained. In general, 
 suggestions, having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten 
 in a similar manner. 
 
 For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 259 
 
 alluded to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to 
 mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions ; and, since 
 the, interest of an analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have con- 
 sidered a desideratum, is quite independent of any real or fancied 
 interest in the thing analyzed, it will not be regarded as a breach 
 of decorum on my part to show the modus operandi by which 
 some one of my own works was put together. I select The 
 Raven as most generally known. It is my design to render it 
 manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either 
 to accident or intuition — that the work proceeded step by step 
 to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a 
 mathematical problem. 
 
 Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, the circum- 
 stance — or say the necessity — which, in the first place, gave 
 rise to the intention of composing a poem that should suit at once 
 the popular and the critical taste. 
 
 We commence, then, with this intention. 
 
 The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary 
 work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to 
 dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from 
 unity of impression — for, if two sittings be required, the affairs 
 of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once 
 destroyed. But since, ceteris paribus,^ no poet can afford to 
 dispense with anything that may advance his design, it but remains 
 to be seen whether there is, in extent, any advantage to counter- 
 balance the loss of unity which attends it. Here I say no at once. 
 What we term a long poem is, in fact, merely a succession of brief 
 ones — that is to say, of brief poetical effects. It is needless to 
 demonstrate that a poem is such only inasmuch as it intensely 
 excites, by elevating the soul; and all intense excitements are, 
 through a psychal necessity, brief. For this reason at least one- 
 half of the Paradise Lost is essentially prose — a succession of 
 poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with corresponding 
 depressions — the whole being de])rived, through the extreme- 
 ness of its length, of the vastly important artistic element, totality, 
 or unity of effect. 
 
 It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards 
 length, to all works of literary art — the limit of a single sitting — 
 and that, although in certain classes of pure composition, such as 
 Robinson Crusoe (demanding no unity), this limit may be advan- 
 
 ' [Other things being equal.]
 
 26o EDGAR ALLAN FOE 
 
 tageously overpassed, it can never properly be overpassed in a 
 poem. Within this limit the extent of a poem may be made to 
 bear mathematical relation to its merit — in other words, to the 
 excitement or elevation — again, in other words, to the degree of 
 the true poetical effect which it is capable of inducing; for it is 
 clear that the brevity must be in direct ratio of the intensity of 
 the intended effect — this, with one proviso — that a certain 
 degree of duration is absolutely requisite for the production of 
 any effect at all. 
 
 Holding in view these considerations, as well as that degree 
 of excitement which I deemed not above the popular, while not 
 below the critical taste, I reached at once what I conceived the 
 proper length for my intended poem — a length of about one 
 hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and eight. 
 
 My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or 
 effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, 
 throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design 
 of rendering the work universally appreciable. I should be carried 
 too far out of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point 
 upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, 
 stands not in the slightest need of demonstration — the point, 
 I mean, that Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. 
 A few words, however, in elucidation of my real meaning, which 
 some of my friends have evinced a disposition to misrepresent. 
 That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, 
 and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation of 
 the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, 
 precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect — they refer, 
 in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul — not of 
 intellect, or of heart — upon which I have commented, and which 
 is experienced in consequence of contemplating "the beautiful." 
 Now I designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely 
 because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made 
 to spring from direct causes — that objects should be attained 
 through means best adapted for their attainment — no one as 
 yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation 
 alluded to, is most readily attained in the poem. Now, the object 
 Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, 
 or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable to a certain 
 extent in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, 
 in fact, demands a precision, and Passion a homeliness (the truly
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 26 1 
 
 passionate will comprehend me) which are absolutely antagonistic 
 to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the excitement, or pleasurable 
 elevation, of the soul. It by no means follows from anything 
 here said that passion, or even truth, may not be introduced, and 
 even profitably introduced, into a poem — for they may serve 
 in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do discords in music, 
 by contrast — but the true artist will always contrive, first, to 
 tone them into proper subservience to the predominant aim, and, 
 secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, in that Beauty which 
 is the atmosphere and the essence of the poem. 
 
 Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question 
 referred to the tone of its highest manifestation — and all experi- 
 ence has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of what- 
 ever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the 
 sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of 
 all the poetical tones. 
 
 The length, the province, and the tone, being thus determined, 
 I betook myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining 
 some artistic piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in 
 the construction of the poem — some pivot upon which the whole 
 structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all the usual 
 artistic effects — or more properly points, in the theatrical sense 
 — I did not fail to perceive immediately that no one had been 
 so universally employed as that of the refrain. The universality 
 of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic value, and 
 spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I considered 
 it, however, with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and 
 soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used, 
 the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but de- 
 pends for its impression upon the force of monotone — both in 
 sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the 
 sense of identity — of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and 
 so heighten the effect, by adhering in general to the monotone of 
 sound, while I continually varied that of thought : that is to say, 
 I determined to produce continuously novel effects, by the varia- 
 tion of the application — of the refrain — the refrain itself remain- 
 ing, for the most part, unvaried. 
 
 These points being settled, I next bethought me of the nature 
 of my refrain. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied, 
 it was clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would 
 have been an insurmountable dilficulty in frequent variations
 
 262 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 of application in any sentence of length. In proportion to the 
 brevity of the sentence would, of course, be the facility of the 
 variation. This led me at once to a single word as the best refrain. 
 
 The question now arose as to the character of the word. Having 
 made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into 
 stanzas was, of course, a corollary, the refrain forming the close 
 of each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sono- 
 rous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, 
 and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the 
 most sonorous vowel in connection with r as the most producible 
 consonant. 
 
 The sound of the refrain being thus determined, it became 
 necessary to select a word embodying this sound, and at the same 
 time in the fullest possible keeping with that melancholy which 
 I had predetermined as the tone of the poem. In such a search 
 it would have been absolutely impossible to overlook the word 
 "Nevermore." In fact, it was the very first which presented 
 itself. 
 
 The next desideratum was a pretext for the continuous use of 
 the one word "nevermore." In observing the difficulty which 
 I at once found in inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its 
 continuous repetition, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty 
 arose solely from the preassumption that the word was to be so 
 continuously or monotonously spoken by a human b&ing — I did 
 not fail to perceive, in short, that the difficulty lay in the recon- 
 ciliation of this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part 
 of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, immediately 
 arose the idea of a «o»-reasoning creature capable of speech, and 
 very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but 
 was superseded forthwith by a Raven as equally capable of speech, 
 and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone. 
 
 I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven, the bird 
 of ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word "Nevermore" 
 at the conclusion of each stanza in the poem of melancholy tone, 
 and in length about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight 
 of the object — supremeness or perfection at all points, I asked 
 myself — "Of all melancholy topics what, according to the uni- 
 versal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?" 
 Death, was the obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is this 
 most melancholy of to[)ics most poetical?" From what I have 
 already explained at some length the answer here also is obvious
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 263 
 
 — "When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, 
 of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic 
 in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited 
 for such topic are those of a bereaved lover." 
 
 I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his 
 deceased mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word 
 "Nevermore." I had to combine these, bearing in mind my 
 design of varying at every turn the application of the word repeated, 
 but the only intelligible mode of such combination is that of imagin- 
 ing the Raven employing the word in answer to the queries of the 
 lover. And here it was that I saw at once the opportunity afforded 
 for the effect on which I had been depending, that is to say, the 
 effect of the variation of application. I saw that I could make 
 the first query propounded by the lover — the first query to which 
 the Raven should reply "Nevermore" — that I could make this 
 first query a commonplace one, the second less so, the third still 
 less, and so on, until at length the lover, startled from his original 
 nonchalance by the melancholy character of the word itself, by 
 its frequent repetition, and by a consideration of the ominous 
 reputation of the fowl that uttered it, is at length excited to super- 
 stition, and wildly propounds queries of a far different character 
 
 — queries whose solution he has passionately at heart — pro- 
 pounds them half in superstition and half in that species of despair 
 which delights in self-torture — propounds them not altogether 
 because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac character of 
 the bird (which reason assures him is merely repeating a lesson 
 learned by rote), but because he experiences a frenzied pleasure 
 in so modelling his questions as to receive from the expected 
 "Nevermore" the most delicious because the most intolerable 
 of sorrows. Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, 
 more strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of construction, 
 I first established in my mind the climax or concluding query — 
 that query to which "Nevermore" should be in the last place an 
 answer — that query in reply to which this word "Nevermore" 
 should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and 
 despair. 
 
 Here, then, the poem may be said to have had its beginning, 
 at the end where all works of art should begin, for it was here at 
 this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in 
 the composition of the stanza : —
 
 264 EDGAR ALLAN FOE 
 
 " Prophet ! " said I, " thing of evil ! prophet still if bird or devil ! 
 By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore, 
 Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, 
 It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore — 
 Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." 
 Quoth the Raven — "Nevermore." 
 
 I composed this stanza, at this point, first, that, by estabhshing 
 the climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seri- 
 ousness and importance, the preceding queries of the lover, and 
 secondly, that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, 
 and the length and general arrangement of the stanza, as well as 
 graduate the stanzas which were to precede, so that none of them 
 might surpass this in rhythmical effect. Had I been able in the 
 subsequent composition to construct more vigorous stanzas I 
 should without scruple have purposely enfeebled them so as not 
 to interfere with the climacteric effect. 
 
 And here I may as well say a few words of the versification. 
 My first object (as usual) was originality. The extent to which 
 this has been neglected in versification is one of the most unac- 
 countable things in the world. Admitting that there is little 
 possibility of variety in mere rliytJim, it is still clear that the possible 
 varieties of metre and stanza are absolutely infinite, and yet, foy 
 centuries, no man, in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think 
 of doing, an original thing. The fact is that originality (unless 
 in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some 
 suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it 
 must be elaborately sought, and although a positive merit of the 
 highest class, demands in its attainment less of invention than 
 negation. 
 
 Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or 
 metre of the Raven. The former is trochaic — the latter is 
 octametre acatalectic, alternating with heptametre catalectic 
 repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with 
 tetrametre catalectic. Less pedantically — the feet employed 
 throughout (trochees) consist of a long syllable followed by a short ; 
 the first line of the stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second 
 of seven and a half (in effect two-thirds), the third of eight, the 
 fourth of seven and a half, the fifth the same, the sixth three and 
 a half. Now, each of these lines taken individually has been 
 employed before, and what originality the Raven has, is in 
 their combination into stanza, nothing even remotely approaching
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 265 
 
 this combination has ever been attempted. The effect of this 
 originahty of combination is aided by other unusual and some 
 ahogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the applica- 
 tion of the principles of rhyme and alliteration. 
 
 The next point to be considered was the mode of bringing 
 together the lover and the Raven — and the first branch of this 
 consideration was the locale. For this the most natural suggestion 
 might seem to be a forest, or the fields — but it has always ap- 
 peared to me that a close circumscription of space is absolutely 
 necessary to the effect of insulated incident — it has the force of 
 a frame to a picture. It has an indisputable moral power in 
 keeping concentrated the attention, and, of course, must not be 
 confounded with mere unity of place. 
 
 I determined, then, to place the lover in his chamber — in a 
 chamber rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had 
 frequented it. The room is represented as richly furnished — 
 this in mere pursuance of the ideas I have already explained on 
 the subject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis. 
 
 The locale being thus determined, I had now to introduce the 
 bird — and the thought of introducing him through the window 
 was inevitable. The idea of making the lover suppose, in the 
 first instance, that the flapping of the wings of the bird against 
 the shutter is a "tapping" at the door, originated in a wish to 
 increase, by prolonging the reader's curiosity, and in a desire to 
 admit the incidental effect arising from the lover's throwing open 
 the door, finding all dark, and thence adopting the half-fancy 
 that it was the spirit of his mistress that knocked. 
 
 I made the night tempestuous, first to account for the Raven's 
 seeking admission, and secondly, for the effect of contrast with 
 the (physical) serenity within the chamber. 
 
 I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect 
 of contrast between the marble and the plumage — it being under- 
 stood that the bust was absolutely suggested by the bird — the 
 bust of Pallas being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the 
 scholarship of the lover, and, secondly, for the sonorousness of 
 the word, Pallas, itself. 
 
 About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed myself of 
 the force of contrast, with a view of deepening the ultimate impres- 
 sion. For example, an air of the fantastic — approaching as 
 nearly to the ludicrous as was admissible — is given to the Raven's 
 entrance. He comes in "with many a flirt and flutter."
 
 266 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Not the least obeisance made he — not a moment stopped or stayed he, 
 But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door. 
 
 In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more obviously 
 carried out : — 
 
 Then this ebony bird, beguiling my sad fancy into smiHng 
 By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
 "Though thv crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, 
 Ghastly grirn and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore — 
 Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore?" 
 Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." 
 
 Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, 
 Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore ; 
 For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 
 Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door — 
 Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, 
 With such name as "Nevermore." 
 
 The effect of the denouement being thus provided for, I imme- 
 diately drop the fantastic for a tone of the most profound serious- 
 ness — this tone commencing in the stanza directly following 
 the one last quoted, with the line — 
 
 But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only, etc. 
 
 From this epoch the lover no longer jests — no longer sees 
 anything even of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanour. He 
 speaks of him as a "grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous 
 bird of yore," and feels the "fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's 
 core." This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, 
 is intended to induce a similar one on the part of the reader — 
 to bring the mind into a proper frame for their denouement — 
 which is now brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible. 
 
 With the denouement proper — with the Raven's reply, "Never- 
 more," to the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in 
 another world — the poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple 
 narrative, may be said to have its completion. So far, everything 
 is within the limits of the accountable — of the real. A raven, hav- 
 ing learned by rote the single word "Nevermore," and having 
 escaped from the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through 
 the violence of a storm, to seek admission at a window from which 
 a light still gleams — the chamber-window of a student, occupied 
 half in poring over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mis-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION 267 
 
 tress deceased. The casement being thrown open at the fluttering 
 of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches on the most convenient 
 seat out of the immediate reach of the student, who, amused by the 
 incident and the oddity of the visitor's demeanour, demands of it, 
 in jest and without looking for a reply, its name. The raven ad- 
 dressed, answers with its customary word, "Nevermore" — a 
 word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the 
 student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts suggested 
 by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl's repetition of "Never- 
 more." The student now guesses the state of the case, but is 
 impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for self- 
 torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to 
 the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of 
 sorrow, through the anticipated answer "Nevermore." With the 
 indulgence, to the extreme, of this self-torture, the narration, in 
 what I have termed its first or obvious phase, has a natural termi- 
 nation, and so far there has been no overstepping of the limits of 
 the real. 
 
 But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or with however 
 vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or 
 nakedness which repels the artistical eye. Two things are in- 
 variably required — first, some amount of complexity, or more 
 properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestive- 
 ness — some undercurrent, however indefinite, of meaning. It 
 is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art so much 
 of that richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which 
 we are too fond of confounding with the ideal. It is the excess of 
 the suggested meaning — it is the rendering this the upper instead 
 of the undercurrent of the theme — which turns into prose (and 
 that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called 
 transcendentalists. 
 
 Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of 
 the poem — their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all 
 the narrative which has preceded them. The undercurrent of 
 meaning is rendered first apparent in the lines : — 
 
 "Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door !" 
 Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore ! " 
 
 It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve 
 the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the 
 answer, "Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all
 
 268 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 that has been previously narrated. The reader begins now to 
 regard the Raven as emblematical — but it is not until the very 
 last line of the very last stanza that the intention of making him 
 emblematical of Mournful and never-ending Remembrance is per- 
 mitted distinctly to be seen : — 
 
 And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
 On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; 
 And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, 
 And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor ; 
 And my soul Jro7n out that shadow that lies floating on the floor 
 Shall be lifted — nevermore.
 
 XIII 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 (1822-1888) 
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 
 
 [Published in 1880 as the General Introduction to The English Poets, 
 edited by T. H. Ward. Printed in Essays in Criticism, Second Series^ 
 
 "The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it 
 is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find 
 an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not 
 shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be question- 
 able, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. 
 Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed 
 fact ; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is 
 failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything ; the rest is a world 
 of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the 
 idea ; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day 
 is its unconscious poetry." 
 
 Let me be permitted to quote these words of my own, as uttering 
 the thought which should, in my opinion, go with us and govern 
 us in all our study of poetry. In the present work it is the course 
 of one great contributory stream to the world-river of poetry that 
 we are invited to follow. We are here invited to trace the stream 
 of English poetry. But whether we set ourselves, as here, to fol- 
 low only one of the several streams that make the mighty river of 
 poetry, or whether we seek to know them all, our governing thought 
 should be the same. We should conceive of poetry worthily, and 
 more highly than it has been the custom to conceive of it. We 
 should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and called to higher 
 destinies, than those which in general men have assigned to it 
 hitherto. More and more mankind will discover that we have to 
 
 269
 
 270 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. 
 Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete ; and most of 
 what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced 
 by poetry. Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it. For 
 finely and truly does Wordsworth call poetry "the impassioned 
 expression which is in the countenance of all science"; and what 
 is a countenance without its expression? Again, Wordsworth 
 finely and truly calls poetry "the breath and liner spirit of all 
 knowledge": our religion, parading evidences such as those on 
 which the popular mind relies now ; our philosophy, pluming itself 
 on its reasonings about causation and finite and infinite being; 
 what are they but the shadows and dreams and false shows of 
 knowledge? The day will come when we shall wonder at our- 
 selves for having trusted to them, for having taken them seriously; 
 and the more we perceive their hollowness, the more we shall prize 
 "the breath and finer spirit of knowledge" offered to us by poetry. 
 But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must 
 also set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, to be capable of 
 fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry of a high order of ex- 
 cellence. We must accustom ourselves to a high standard and to a 
 strict judgment. Sainte-Beuve relates that Napoleon one day said, 
 when somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan: 
 "Charlatan as much as you please; but where is there not charla- 
 tanism?" — "Yes," answers Sainte-Beuve, "in politics, in the art 
 of governing mankind, that is perhaps true. But in the order of 
 thought, in art, the glory, the eternal honour is that charlatanism 
 shall find no entrance ; herein lies the inviolableness of that noble 
 portion of man's being." It is admirably said, and let us hold 
 fast to it. In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, 
 the eternal honour, that charlatanism shall find no entrance ; that 
 this noble sphere be kept inviolate and inviolable. Charlatanism 
 is for confusing or obliterating the distinctions between excellent 
 and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and un- 
 true or only half-true. It is charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, 
 whenever we confuse or obliterate these. And in poetry, more than 
 anywhere else, it is unpermissible to confuse or obliterate them. 
 For in poetry the distinction between excellent and inferior, sound 
 and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true, 
 is of paramount importance. It is of paramount importance be- 
 cause of the high destinies of poetry. In poetry, as a criticism of 
 life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 271 
 
 poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find, we 
 have said, as time goes on and as other helps fail, its consolation 
 and stay. But the consolation and stay will be of power in pro- 
 portion to the power of the criticism of life. And the criticism of 
 life will be of power in proportion as the poetry conveying it is ex- 
 cellent rather than inferior, sound rather than unsound or half- 
 sound, true rather than untrue or half-true. 
 
 The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found 
 to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as noth- 
 ing else can. A clearer, deeper sense of the best in poetry, and of 
 the strength and joy to be drawn from it, is the most precious 
 benefit which we can gather from a poetical collection such as the 
 present. And yet in the very nature and conduct of such a collec- 
 tion there is inevitably something which tends to obscure in us the 
 consciousness of what our benefit should be, and to distract us 
 from the pursuit of it. We should therefore steadily set it before 
 our minds at the outset, and should compel ourselves to revert con- 
 stantly to the thought of it as we proceed. 
 
 Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really 
 excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should 
 be present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what 
 we read. But this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be 
 superseded, if we are not watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, 
 the historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which are 
 fallacious. A poet or a poem may count to us historically, they 
 may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves, and they may 
 count to us really. They may count to us historically. The 
 course of development of a nation's language, thought, and poetry, 
 is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet's work as a 
 stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves 
 to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, 
 we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in 
 criticising it ; in short, to overrate it. So arises in our poetic judg- 
 ments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call his- 
 toric. Then, again, a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds 
 personal to ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings, and circum- 
 stances, have great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet's 
 work, and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than 
 in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high 
 importance. Here also we overrate the object of our interest, and 
 apply to it a language of praise which is quite exaggerated. And
 
 272 MATTHEW, ARNOLD 
 
 thus we get the source of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments 
 — the fallacy caused by an estimate which we may call personal. 
 
 Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally the study 
 of the history and development of a poetry may incline a man to 
 pause over reputations and works once conspicuous but now ob- 
 scure, and to quarrel with a careless public for skipping, in obedi- 
 ence to mere tradition and habit, from one famous name or work 
 in its national poetry to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of 
 the reason for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole process of 
 growth in its poe'ry. The French have become diligent students 
 of their own early poetry, which they long neglected; the study 
 makes many of them dissatisfied with their so-called classical poetry, 
 the court-tragedy of the seventeenth century, a poetry which Pellis- 
 son long ago reproached with its want of the true poetic stamp, 
 with its politesse sterile et rampante,^ but which nevertheless has 
 reigned in France as absolutely as if it had been the perfection of 
 classical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is natural ; yet a lively 
 and accomplished critic, M. Charles d'Hericault, the editor of 
 Clement Marot, goes too far when he says that "the cloud of glory 
 playing round a classic is a mist as dangerous to the future of a 
 literature as it is intolerable for the purposes of history." "It 
 hinders," he goes on, "it hinders us from seeing more than one sin- 
 gle point, the culminating and exceptional point; the summary, 
 fictitious and arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It substitutes 
 a halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue where there was once a 
 man, and hiding from us all trace of the labour, the attempts, the 
 weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study but veneration; it 
 does not show us how the thing is done, it imposes upon us a model. 
 Above all, for the historian this creation of classic personages is 
 inadmissible; for it withdraws the poet from his time, from his 
 proper life, it breaks historical relationships, it blinds criticism 
 by conventional admiration, and renders the investigation of liter- 
 ary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human personage no 
 longer, but a God seated immovable amidst His perfect work, like 
 Jupiter on Olympus; and hardly will it be possible for the young 
 student, to whom such work is exhibited at such a distance from 
 him, to believe that it did not issue ready made from that divine 
 head." 
 
 All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a 
 distinction. Everything depends on the reality of a poet's classic 
 
 ' [With its unfertile and obtrusive polish.]
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 273 
 
 character. If he is a dubious classic, let us sift him ; if he is a false 
 classic, let us explode him. But if he is a real classic, if his 
 work belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and 
 right meaning of the word classic, classical), then the great thing 
 for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to 
 appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has 
 not the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what 
 is formative ; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of 
 poetry. Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, 
 is injurious. True, we must read our classic with open eyes, and 
 not with eyes blinded with superstition; we must perceive when his 
 work comes short, when it drops out of the class of the very best, 
 and we must rate it, in such cases, at its proper value. But the use 
 of this negative criticism is not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling 
 us to have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly 
 excellent. To trace the labour, the attempts, the weaknesses, the 
 failures of a genuine classic, to acquaint one's self with his time 
 and his life and his historical relationships, is mere literary dilet- 
 tantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its 
 end. It may be said that the more we know about a classic the 
 better we shall enjoy him ; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah 
 and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect 
 steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. 
 But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and 
 Latin studies of our schoolboys. The elaborate philological ground- 
 work which we require them to lay is in theory an admirable prep- 
 aration for appreciating the Greek and Latin authors worthily, 
 The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall 
 be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time were 
 not so short, and schoolboys' wits not so soon tired and their power 
 of attention exhausted; only, as it is, the elaborate philological 
 preparation goes on, but the authors are little known and less 
 enjoyed. So with the investigator of "historic origins" in poetry. 
 He ought to enjoy the true classic all the better for his investiga- 
 tions; he often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and 
 with the less good he overbusies himself, and is prone to overrate 
 it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him. 
 
 The idea of tracing historic origins and historical relationships 
 cannot be absent from a compilation like the present. And natu- 
 rally the poets to be exhibited in it will be assigned to those persons 
 for exhibition who are known to prize them highly, rather than to
 
 274 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 those who have no special inclination towards them. Moreover 
 the very occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting 
 him, disposes us to affirm and amplify his importance. In the 
 present work, therefore, we are sure of frequent temj)tation to adopt 
 the historic estimate, or the personal estimate, and to forget the real 
 estimate; which latter, nevertheless, we must employ if we are to 
 make poetry yield us its full benefit. So high is that benefit, the 
 benefit of clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent, 
 the truly classic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to set it fixedly 
 before our minds as our object in studying poets and poetry, and 
 to make the desire of attaining it the one principle to which, as the 
 Imitation says, whatever we may read or come to know, we always 
 return. Cum multa legeris et cognoveris, ad uniim semper oportet 
 redire principiiim.. 
 
 The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment 
 and our language when we are dealing with ancient poets ; the per- 
 sonal estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, 
 or at any rate modern. The exaggerations due to the historic 
 estimate are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. 
 Their report hardly enters the general ear; probably they do not 
 always impose even on the literary men who adopt them. But 
 they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So we hear Caedmon, 
 amongst our own poets, compared to Milton. I have already 
 noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French critic for 
 "historic origins." Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet, 
 comments upon that famous document of the early poetry of his 
 nation, the Chanson de Roland. It is indeed a most interesting 
 document. The jocidator or jongleur Taillefer, who was with 
 William the Conquerer's army at Hastings, marched before the 
 Norman troops, so said the tradition, singing "of Charlemagne and 
 of Roland and of Oliver, and of the vassals who died at Ronce- 
 vaux " ; and it is suggested that in the Chanson de Roland by one 
 Turoldus or Theroulde, a poem preserved in a manuscript of the 
 twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we have cer- 
 tainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant 
 which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigour and freshness ; it is 
 not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it 
 a document of some poetic value, and of very high historic and lin- 
 guistic value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monu- 
 ment of epic genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose 
 conception, in its details he finds the constant union of simplicity
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 275 
 
 with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine 
 epic, and distinguish it from the artificial epic of literary ages. One 
 thinks of Homer ; this is the sort of praise which is given to Homer, 
 and justly given. Higher praise there cannot well be, and it is 
 the praise due to epic poetry of the highest order only, and to no 
 other. Let us try, then, the Chanson de Roland, at its best. Ro- 
 land, mortally wounded, lays himself down under a pine-tree, 
 with his face turned towards Spain and the enemy — 
 
 "De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist, 
 De tantes teres cume libers cunquist, 
 De duke France, des humes de sun lign, 
 De Carlemagne sun seignor ki I'nurrit." * 
 
 That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality 
 of its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise is sufficient 
 for it. But now turn to Homer — 
 
 *fis (pcLTO : Tovs 5 TJdy] Kar^x^" 0»'c^foos ala 
 €v AaKeSaifjiovL aidi, 0tX7j ev waTplSi. yaly.^ 
 
 We are here in another world, another order of poetrv altogether; 
 here is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives 
 to the Chanson de Roland. If our words are to have any meaning, 
 if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that 
 supreme praise upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior. 
 
 Indeed there can be no more useful help for disco\'ering what 
 poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can therefore 
 do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and ex- 
 pressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone 
 to other poetry. Of course we are not to require this other poetry 
 to resemble them ; it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any 
 tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our 
 minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or ab- 
 sence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in 
 all other poetry which we may place beside them. Short passages, 
 even single lines, will serve our turn quite sufficiently. Take the 
 
 ' "Then began he to call many things to remembrance, — all the lands which 
 his valour conquered, and pleasant France, and the men of his lineage, and Charle- 
 magne his liege lord who nourished him." — Chanson dc Roland, III. 939-942. 
 2 "So said she; they long since in Earth's soft arms were reposing, 
 There, in their own dear land, their fatherland, Lacedaemon." 
 
 Iliad, III. 243, 244 (translated by Dr. Hawtrey).
 
 276 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 two lines which I have just quoted from Homer, the poet's comment 
 on Helen's mention of her brothers ; — or take his 
 
 'A SetXw, Tt <T(t)0}C dSfiev IlijX^i' dca/crt 
 6vi)Tq.; Vfxeis d' icrrbv dyrjpii) t' aOavdru) re. 
 Tj 'iva 8vffT7]uoicn /xer dv5pd(Xtv dXye' extjtoc; ^ 
 
 the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus ; — or take finally his 
 
 Kai (7^, yipov, rb irplv fxtv dKovofxev 6\pi.ov elvai • ^ 
 
 the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that 
 incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino's tremendous 
 words — 
 
 " lo no piangeva ; si dentro impietrai. 
 Piangevan clli . . ." ^ 
 
 Take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil — 
 
 " lo son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, 
 Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, 
 Ne fiarama d'esto incendio non m'assale ..." * 
 
 Take the simple, but perfect, single line — 
 
 "In la sua volontade e nostra pace." * 
 
 Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's expostula- 
 tion with sleep — 
 
 "Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
 Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
 In cradle of the rude imperious surge . . ." 
 
 and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio — 
 
 " If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, 
 Absent thee from felicity awhile, 
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain 
 To tell my story . . ." 
 
 * "Ah, unhappy pair, why gave we you to King Peleus, to a mortal? but ye are 
 without old age, and immortal. Was it that with men born to misery ye might 
 have sorrow?" — Iliad, XVI. 443-445. 
 
 2 "Nav, and thou too, old man, in former days wast, as we hear, happy." — 
 IlMd, XXIV. 543- 
 
 * "I wailed not, so of stone grew I within; — they wailed." — Inferno, XXXIII. 
 
 39. 40- 
 
 * "Of such sort hath God, thanked be His mercy, made me, that your misery 
 toucheth me not, neither doth the flame of this fire strike me." — Inferno, II. 91-93. 
 
 * "In His will is our peace." —   Faradiso, III. 85.
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 277 
 
 Take of Milton that Miltonic passage — 
 
 "Darken'd so, yet shone 
 Above them all the archangel ; but his face 
 Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care 
 Sat on his faded cheek ..." 
 
 add two such hnes as — 
 
 " And courage never to submit or yield 
 And what is else not to be overcome . . ." 
 
 and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, the 
 
 loss 
 
 "... which cost Ceres all that pain 
 To seek her through the world." 
 
 These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even 
 of themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, 
 to save us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real 
 estimate. 
 
 The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one another, 
 but they have in common this : the possession of the very highest 
 poetical quality. If we are thoroughly penetrated by their power, 
 we shall find that we have acquired a sense enabling us, whatever 
 poetry may be laid before us, to feel the degree in which a high 
 poetical quality is present or wanting there. Critics give them- 
 selves great labour to draw out what in the abstract constitutes the 
 characters of a high quality of poetry. It is much better simply to 
 have recourse to concrete examples ; — to take specimens of poetry 
 of the high, the very highest quality, and to say : The characters 
 of a high quality of poetry are what is expressed there. They are 
 far better recognized by being felt in the verse of the master, than 
 by being perused in the prose of the critic. Nevertheless if we are 
 urgently pressed to give some critical account of them, we may 
 safely, perhaps, venture on laying down, not indeed how and why 
 the characters arise, but where and in what they arise. They are 
 in the matter and substance of the poetry, and they are in its man- 
 ner and style. Both of these, the substance and matter on the 
 one hand, the style and manner on the other, have a mark, an ac- 
 cent, of high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are asked to 
 define this mark and accent in the abstract, our answer must be: 
 No, for we should thereby be darkening the question, not clearing
 
 278 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 it. The mark and accent are as given by the substance and matter 
 of that poetry, by the style and manner of that poetry, and of all 
 other poetry which is akin to it in quality. 
 
 Only one thing we may add as to the substance and matter of poe- 
 try, guiding ourselves by Aristotle's profound observation that the 
 superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher 
 truth and a higher seriousness ((^iAoo-o^wtc/ooi/ koL airovSaLOTepov). 
 Let us add, therefore, to what we have said, this : that the substance 
 and matter of the best poetry acquire their special character from 
 possessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness. We may 
 add yet further, what is in itself evident, that to the style and man- 
 ner of the best poetry their special character, their accent, is given 
 by their diction, and, even yet more, by their movement. And 
 though we distinguish between the two characters, the two accents, 
 of superiority, yet they are nevertheless vitally connected one with 
 the other. The superior character of truth and seriousness, in the 
 matter and substance of the best poetry, is inseparable from the 
 superiority of diction and movement marking its style and manner. 
 The two superiorities are closely related, and are in steadfast pro- 
 portion one to the other. So far as high poetic truth and serious- 
 ness are wanting to a poet's matter and substance, so far also, we 
 may be sure, will a high poetic stamp of diction and movement be 
 wanting to his style and manner. In proportion as this high 
 stamp of diction and movement, again, is absent from a poet's 
 style and manner, we shall find, also, that high poetic truth and 
 seriousness are absent from his substance and matter. 
 
 So stated, these are but dry general ties; their whole force lies 
 in their application. And I could wish every student of poetry to 
 make the application of them for himself. Made by himself, the 
 application would impress itself upon his mind far more deeply 
 than made by m^. Neither will my limits allow me to make any 
 full application of the generalities above propounded; but in the 
 hope of bringing out, at any rate, some significance in them, and of 
 establishing an important principle more firmly by their means, 
 I will, in the space which remains to me, follow rapidly from the 
 commencement the course of our English poetry with them in my 
 view. 
 
 Once more I return to the early poetry of France, with which 
 our own poetry, in its origins, is indissolubly connected. In the 
 twelfth anfl thirteenth centuries, that seed-time of all modern lan- 
 guage and literature, the poetry of France had a clear predominance
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 279 
 
 in Europe. Of the two divisions of that poetry, its productions in 
 the langne d'oil and its productions in the langiie d'oc, the poetry 
 of the langiie d'oc, of southern France, or the troubadours, is of 
 importance because of its effect on Italian hterature ; — the first 
 literature of modern Europe to strike the true and grand note, and 
 to bring forth, as in Dante and Petrarch it brought forth, classics. 
 But the predominance of French poetry in Europe, during the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is due to its poetry of the langue 
 d'oil, the poetry of northern France and of the tongue which is 
 now the French language. In the twelfth century the bloom of 
 this romance-poetry was earlier and stronger in England, at the 
 court of our Anglo-Norman kings, than in France itself. But it 
 was a bloom of French poetry; and as our native poetry formed 
 itself, it formed itself out of this. The romance-poems which took 
 possession of the heart and imagination of Europe in the twelfth 
 and thirteenth centuries are French; "they are," as Southey justly 
 says, "the pride of French literature, nor have we anything which 
 can be placed in competition with them." Themes were supplied 
 from all quarters ; but the romance-setting which was common to 
 them all, and which gained the ear of Europe, was French. This 
 constituted for the French poetry, literature, and language, at the 
 height of the Middle Age, an unchallenged predominance. The 
 Italian Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, wrote his Treasure 
 in French because, he says, "la parleure en est plus delitable et 
 plus commune a toutes gens." ' In the same century, the thir- 
 teenth, the French romance-writer. Christian of Troyes, formulates 
 the claims, in chivalry and letters, of France, his native country, 
 as follows : — 
 
 "Or vous ert par ce livre apris, 
 Que Gresse ot de chevalerie 
 Le premier los et de clergie ; 
 Puis vint chevalerie a Rome, 
 Et de la clergie la some, 
 Qui ore est en France venue. 
 Diex doinst qu'ele i soit retenue, 
 Et que li lius li abelisse 
 Tant que de France n'isse 
 L'onor qui s'i est arestee !" 
 
 "Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had the re- 
 nown for chivalry and letters: then chivalry and the primacy in 
 
 * [Converse in it is more pleasing to everybody and also more usual.]
 
 28o MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 letters passed to Rome, and now it is come to France. God grant 
 it may be kept there; and that the place may please it so well, that 
 the honour which has come to make stay in France may never 
 depart thence ! " 
 
 Yet it is now all gone, this French romance-poetry, of which the 
 weight of substance and the power of style are not unfairly repre- 
 sented by this extract from Christian of Troyes. Only by means 
 of the historic estimate can we persuade ourselves now to think 
 that any of it is of poetical importance. 
 
 But in the fourteenth century there comes an Englishman nour- 
 ished on this poetry, taught his trade by this poetry, getting words, 
 rhyme, metre from this poetry; for even of that stanza which the 
 Italians used, and which Chaucer derived immediately from the 
 Italians, the basis and suggestion was probably given in France. 
 Chaucer (I have already named him) fascinated his contemporaries, 
 but so too did Christian of Troyes and Wolfram of Eschenbach. 
 Chaucer's power of fascination, however, is enduring ; his poetical 
 importance does not need the assistance of the historic estimate; 
 it is real. He is a genuine source of joy and strength, which is 
 flowing still for us and will flow always. He will be read, as time 
 goes on, far more generally than he is read now. His language is 
 a cause of difficulty for us; but so also, and I think in quite as 
 great a degree, is the language of Burns. In Chaucer's case, as in 
 that of Burns, it is a difficulty to be unhesitatingly accepted and 
 overcome. 
 
 If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense superiority of 
 Chaucer's poetry over the romance-poetry — why it is that in pass- 
 ing from this to Chaucer we suddenly feel ourselves to be in another 
 world, we shall find that his superiority is both in the substance of 
 his poetry and in the style of his poetry. His superiority in sub- 
 stance is given by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of 
 human life, — so unlike the total want, in the romance-poets, 
 of all intelligent command of it. Chaucer has not their helpless- 
 ness ; he has gained the power to survey the world from a central, 
 a truly human point of view. We have only to call to mind the 
 Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. The right comment upon it is 
 Dryden's: " It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that 
 here is God's plenty. " And again : " He is a perpetual fountain of 
 good sense." It is by a large, free, sound representation of things, 
 that poetry, this high criticism of life, has truth of substance; and 
 Chaucer's poetry has truth of substance.
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 281 
 
 Of his style and manner, if we think first of the romance-poetry 
 and then of Chaucer's divine Hquidness of diction, his divine flu- 
 idity of movement, it is difficuk to speak temperately. They are 
 irresistible, and justify all the rapture with which his successors 
 speak of his "gold dewdrops of speech." Johnson misses the point 
 entirely when he finds fault with Dryden for ascribing to Chaucer 
 the first refinement of our numbers, and says that Gower also can 
 show smooth numbers and easy rhymes. The refinement of our 
 numbers means something far more than this. A nation may have 
 versifiers with smooth numbers and easy rhymes, and yet may 
 have no real poetry at all. Chaucer is the father of our splendid 
 English poetry; he is our "well of English undefiled," because 
 by the lovely charm of his diction, the lovely charm of his move- 
 ment, he makes an epoch and founds a tradition. In Spenser, 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid 
 diction, the fluid movement, of Chaucer; at one time it is his liquid 
 diction of which in these poets we feel the virtue, and at another 
 time it is his fluid movement. And the virtue is irresistible. 
 
 Bounded as is my space, I must yet find room for an example of 
 Chaucer's virtue, as I have given examples to show the virtue of the 
 great classics. I feel disposed to say that a single line is enough 
 to show the charm of Chaucer's verse; that merely one line like 
 
 this — 
 
 "O martyr souded ' in virginitee !" 
 
 has a virtue of manner and movement such as we shall not find in 
 all the verse of romance-poetry ; — but this is saying nothing. The 
 virtue is such as we shall not find, perhaps, in all English poetry, 
 outside the poets whom I have named as the special inheritors of 
 Chaucer's tradition. A single line, however, is too little if we have 
 not the strain of Chaucer's verse well in our memory ; let us take 
 a stanza. It is from The Prioress's Tale, the story of the Chris- 
 tian child murdered in a Jewry — 
 
 " My throte is cut unto my nekke-bone 
 Saide this child, and as by way of kinde 
 I should have deyd, yea, longe time agone ; 
 But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookes finde, 
 Will that his glory last and be in minde, 
 And for the worship of his mother dere 
 Yet may I sing O Alma loud and clere." 
 
 •The French sonde; soldered, Sxed fast.
 
 282 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 Wordsworth has modernized this Tale, and to feel how delicate and 
 evanescent is the charm of verse, we have only to read Words- 
 worth's first three lines of this stanza after Chaucer's — 
 
 " My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow 
 Said this young child, and by the law of kind 
 I should have died, yea, many hours ago." 
 
 The charm is departed. It is often said that the power of liquid- 
 ness and fluidity in Chaucer's verse was dependent upon a free, 
 a licentious dealing with language, such as is now impossible; upon 
 a liberty, such as Burns too enjoyed, of making words like neck, 
 bird, into a dissyllable by adding to them, and words like cause, 
 rhyme, into a dissyllable by sounding the e mute. It is true that 
 Chaucer's fluidity is conjoined with this liberty, and is admirably 
 served by it ; but we ought not to say that it was dependent upon it. 
 It was dependent upon his talent. Other poets with a like liberty 
 do not attain to the fluidity of Chaucer; Burns himself does not 
 attain to it. Poets, again, who have a talent akin to Chaucer's, 
 such as Shakespeare or Keats, have known how to attain to his 
 fluidity without the like liberty. 
 
 And yet Chaucer is not one of the great classics. His poetry 
 transcends and effaces, easily and without effort, all the romance- 
 poetry of Catholic Christendom; it transcends and effaces all the 
 English poetry contemporary with it, it transcends and effaces all 
 the English poetry subsequent to it down to the age of Elizabeth. 
 Of such avail is poetic truth of substance, in its natural and neces- 
 sary union with poetic truth of style. And yet, I say, Chaucer is 
 not one of the great classics. He has not their accent. What is 
 wanting to him is suggested by the mere mention of the name of the 
 first great classic of Christendom, the immortal poet who died 
 eighty years before Chaucer, — Dante. The accent of such verse as 
 
 "In la sua volontade e nostra pace . . ." 
 
 is altogether beyond Chaucer's reach; we praise him, but we feel 
 that this accent is out of the question for him. It may be said 
 that it was necessarily out of the reach of any poet in the England 
 of that stage of growth. Possibly; but we are to adopt a real, not 
 a historic, estimate of poetry. However we may account for its 
 absence, something is wanting, then, to the poetryof Chaucer, whic h 
 poetry must have before it can be placed in the glorious class of the 
 best. And there is no doubt what that something is. It is the
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 283 
 
 cTTrovSaidri^s, the high and excellent seriousness, which Aristotle 
 assigns as one of the grand virtues of poetry. The substance 
 of Chaucer's poetry, his view of things and his criticism of life, has 
 largeness, freedom, shrewdness, benignity; but it has not this high 
 seriousness. Homer's criticism of life has it, Dante's has it, Shake- 
 speare's has it. It is this chiefly which gives to our spirits what they 
 can rest upon; and with the increasing demands of our modern 
 ages upon poetry, this virtue of giving us what we can rest upon will 
 be more and more highly esteemed. A voice from the slums of 
 Paris, fifty or sixty years after Chaucer, the voice of poor Villon 
 out of his life of riot and crime, has at its happy moments (as, for 
 instance, in the last stanza of La Belle Heaidmiere ^) more of this 
 important poetic virtue of seriousness than all the productions of 
 Chaucer. But its apparition in Villon, and in men like Villon, 
 is fitful ; the greatness of the great poets, the power of their criti- 
 cism of hfe, is that their virtue is sustained. 
 
 To our praise, therefore, of Chaucer as a poet there must be 
 this limitation; he lacks the high seriousness of the great classics, 
 and therewith an important part of their virtue. Still, the main 
 fact for us to bear in mind about Chaucer is his sterling value 
 according to that real estimate which we firmly adopt for all 
 poets. He has poetic truth of substance, though he has not high 
 poetic seriousness, and corresponding to his truth of substance 
 he has an exquisite virtue of style and manner. With him is 
 born our real poetry. 
 
 For my present purpose I need not dwell on our Elizabethan 
 poetry, or on the continuation and close of this poetry in Milton. 
 We all of us profess to be agreed in the estimate of this poetry; 
 we all of us recognize it as great poetry, our greatest, and Shake- 
 
 * The name Heaiilimi'ere is said to be derived from a headdress (helm) worn as 
 a mark by courtesans. In Villon's ballad, a poor old creature of this class laments 
 her days of youth and beauty. The last stanza of the ballad runs thus : — 
 
 "Ainsi le bon temps regretons 
 Entre nous, pauvres vieilles sottes, 
 Assises bas, a croppetons, 
 Tout en ung tas comme pelottes; 
 A petit feu de chenevottes 
 Tost allumees, to§t estainctes. 
 Et jadis fusmes si mignottes ! 
 Ainsi en prend a maintz et maintes." 
 
 "Thus amongst ourselves we regret the good time, poor silly old things, low- 
 seated on our heels, all in a heap like so many balls; by a little fire of hemp- 
 stalks, soon lighted, soon spent. And once we were such darlings ! So fares it 
 with many and many a one."
 
 284 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 speare and Milton as our poetical classics. The real estimate, 
 here, has universal currency. With the next age of our poetry 
 divergency and difficulty begin. An historic estimate of that 
 poetry has established itself; and the question is, whether it will 
 be found to coincide with the real estimate. 
 
 The age of Dryden, together with our whole eighteenth cen- 
 tury which followed it, sincerely believed itself to have produced 
 poetical classics of its own, and even to have made advance, in 
 poetry, beyond all its predecessors. Dryden regards as not 
 seriously disputable the opinion "that the sweetness of English 
 verse was never understood or practised by our fathers." Cowley 
 could see nothing at all in Chaucer's poetry. Dryden heartily 
 admired it, and, as we have seen, praised its matter admirably; 
 but of its exquisite manner and movement all he can find to say 
 is that "there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which 
 is natural and pleasing, though not perfect." Addison, wishing 
 to praise Chaucer's numbers, compares them with Dryden's 
 own. And all through the eighteenth century, and down even 
 into our own times, the stereotyped phrase of approbation for 
 good verse found in our early poetry has been, that it even ap- 
 proached the verse of Dryden, Addison, Pope, and Johnson. 
 
 Are Dryden and Pope poetical classics? Is the historic esti- 
 mate, which represents them as such, and which has been so 
 long established that it cannot easily give way, the real estimate ? 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge, as is well known, denied it; but the 
 authority of Wordsworth and Coleridge does not weigh much 
 with the young generation, and there are many signs to show 
 that the eighteenth century and its judgments are coming into 
 favour again. Are the favourite poets of the eighteenth century 
 classics ? 
 
 It is impossible within my present limits to discuss the question 
 fully. And what man of letters would not shrink from seeming 
 to dispose dictatorially of the claims of two men who are, at any 
 rate, such masters in letters as Dryden and Pope; two men of 
 such admirable talent, both of them, and one of them, Dryden, 
 a man, on all sides, of such energetic and genial power? And 
 yet, if we are to gain the full benefit from poetry, we must have 
 "the real estimate of it. I cast about for some mode of arriving, 
 in the present case, at such an estimate without offence. And 
 perhaps the best way is to begin, as it is easy to begin, with cordial 
 praise.
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 285 
 
 When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of Homer, 
 expressing himself in his preface thus: "Though truth in her very 
 nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and 
 Ganges few eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here will so 
 discover and confirm that, the date being out of her darkness 
 in this morning of our poet, he shall now gird his temples with 
 the sun," — we pronounce that such a prose is intolerable. When 
 we find Milton writing: "And long it was not after, when I was 
 confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate 
 of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought him- 
 self to be a true poem," — we pronounce that such a prose has 
 its own grandeur, but that it is obsolete and inconvenient. But 
 when we find Dryden telling us : "What Virgil wrote in the vigour 
 of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate 
 in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed with 
 sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I 
 write," — then we exclaim that here at last we have the true 
 English prose, a prose such as we would all gladly use if we only 
 knew how. Yet Dryden was Alilton's contemporary. 
 
 But after the Restoration the time had come when our nation 
 felt the imperious need of a fit prose. So, too, the time had like- 
 wise come when our nation felt the imperious need of freeing 
 itself from the absorbing preoccupation which religion in the 
 Puritan age had exercised. It was impossible that this freedom 
 should be brought about without some negative excess, without 
 some neglect and impairment of the religious life of the soul; and 
 the spiritual history of the eighteenth century shows us that the 
 freedom was not achieved without them. Still, the freedom was 
 achieved; the preoccupation, an undoubtedly baneful and retard- 
 ing one if it had continued, was got rid of. And as with religion 
 amongst us at that period, so it was also with letters. A fit prose 
 was a necessity; but it was impossible that a fit prose should 
 establish itself amongst us without some touch of frost to the 
 imaginative life of the soul. The needful qualities for a fit prose 
 are regularity, uniformity, precision, balance. The men of letters, 
 whose destiny it may be to bring their nation to the attainment 
 of a fit prosej must of necessity, whether they work in prose or in 
 verse, give a predominating, an almost exclusive attention to the 
 qualities of regularity, uniformity, precision, balance. But an 
 almost exclusive attention to these qualities involves some repres- 
 sion and silencing of poetry.
 
 286 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious founder, 
 Pope as the splendid high priest, of our age of prose and reason, 
 of our excellent and indispensable eighteenth century. For the 
 purposes of their mission and destiny their poetry, like their prose, 
 is admirable. Do you ask me whether Dryden's verse, take it 
 almost where you will, is not good ? 
 
 " A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged, 
 Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged." 
 
 I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the inaugurator of an 
 age of prose and reason. Do you ask me whether Pope's verse, 
 take it almost where you will, is not good? 
 
 " To Hounslow Heath I point, and Banstead Down ; 
 Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own." 
 
 I answer: Admirable for the purposes of the high priest of an 
 age of prose and reason. But do you ask me whether such verse 
 proceeds from men with an adequate poetic criticism of life, from 
 men whose criticism of life has a high seriousness, or even, with- 
 out that high seriousness, has poetic largeness, freedom, insight, 
 benignity? Do you ask me whether the application of ideas 
 to life in the verse of these men, often a powerful application, no 
 doubt, is a powerful poetic application ? Do you ask me whether 
 the poetry of these men has either the matter or the inseparable 
 manner of such an adequate poetic criticism; whether it has the 
 accent of 
 
 "Absent thee from felicity awhile . . ." 
 or of 
 
 or of 
 
 " And what is else not to be overcome 
 "O martyr souded in virginitee!" 
 
 I answer: It has not and cannot have them; it is the poetry of 
 the builders of an age of prose and reason. Though they may 
 write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be masters of 
 the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our 
 poetry, they are classics of our prose. 
 
 Gray is our poetical classic of that literature and age; the 
 position of (iray is singular, and demands a word of notice here. 
 He has not the volume or the power of poets who, coming in times
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 287 
 
 more favourable, have attained to an independent criticism of 
 life. But he lived with great poets, he lived, above all, with the 
 Greeks, through perpetually studying and enjoying them; and 
 he caught their poetic point of view for regarding life, caught 
 their poetic manner. The point of view and the manner are not 
 self-sprung in him, he caught them of others ; and he had not the 
 free and abundant use of them. But whereas Addison and Pope 
 never had the use of them, Gray had the use of them at times. 
 He is the scantiest and frailest of classics in our poetry, but he 
 is a classic. 
 
 And now, after Gray, we are met, as we draw towards the end 
 of the eighteenth century, we are met by the great name of Burns. 
 We enter now on times where the personal estimate of poets begins 
 to be rife, and where the real estimate of them is not reached 
 without difficulty. But in spite of the disturbing pressure of 
 personal partiality, of national partiality, let us try to reach a 
 real estimate of the poetry of Burns. 
 
 By his English poetry Burns in general belongs to the eighteenth 
 century, and has little importance for us. 
 
 "Mark ruffian Violence, distain'd with crimes, 
 Rousing elate in these degenerate times; 
 View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, 
 As guileful Fraud points out the erring way; 
 While subtile Litigation's pliant tongue 
 The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong!" 
 
 Evidently this is not the real Burns, or his name and fame would 
 have disappeared long ago. Nor is Clarinda's love-poet, Syl- 
 vander, the real Burns either. But he tells us himself: "These 
 English songs gravel me to death. I have not the command of 
 the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think 
 that my ideas are more barren in English than in Scotch. I have 
 been at Duncan Gray to dress it in English, but all I can do is 
 desperately stupid." We English turn naturally, in Burns, to 
 the poems in our own language, because we can read them easily; 
 but in those poems we have not the real Burns. 
 
 The real Burns is of course in his Scotch poems. Let us boldly 
 say that of much of this poetry, a poetry dealing perpetually with 
 Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners, a Scotch- 
 man's estimate is apt to be personal. A Scotchman is used to 
 this world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners;
 
 288 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 he has a tenderness for it; he meets its poet halfway. In this 
 tender mood he reads pieces like the Holy Fair or Halloween. 
 But this world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and Scotch manners 
 is against a poet, not for him, when it is not a partial countryman 
 who reads him; for in itself it is not a beautiful world, and no 
 one can deny that it is of advantage to a poet to deal with a beauti- 
 ful world. Burns's world of Scotch drink, Scotch religion, and 
 Scotch manners, is often a harsh, a sordid, a repulsive world; 
 even the world of his Cotter's Saturday Night is not a beautiful 
 world. No doubt a poet's criticism of life may have such truth 
 and power that it triumphs over its world and delights us. Burns 
 may triumph over his world, often he does triumph over his world, 
 but let us observe how and where. Burns is the first case we 
 have had where the bias of the personal estimate tends to mislead; 
 let us look at him closely, he can bear it. 
 
 Many of his admirers will tell us that we have Burns, convivial, 
 genuine, delightful, here — 
 
 " Leeze me on drink ! it gies us mair 
 Than either school or college ; 
 It kindles wit, it waukens lair, 
 
 It pangs us fou o' knowledge. 
 Be't whisky gill or penny wheep 
 
 Or ony stronger potion, 
 It never fails, on drinking deep, 
 To kittle up our notion 
 
 By night or day." 
 
 There is a great deal of that sort of thing in Burns, and it is un- 
 satisfactory, not because it is bacchanalian poetry, but because 
 it has not that accent of sincerity which bacchanalian poetry, 
 to do it justice, very often has. There is something in it of bra- 
 vado, something which makes us feel that we have not the man 
 speaking to us with his real voice ; something, therefore, poetically 
 unsound. 
 
 With still more confidence will his admirers tell us that we have 
 the genuine Burns, the great poet, when his strain asserts the 
 independence, equality, dignity, of men, as in the famous song 
 For a' that and a' that — 
 
 "A prince can mak' a belted knight, 
 A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
 But an honest man's ahoon his might, 
 Guid faith he mauna fa' that !
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 289 
 
 For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 Their dignities, and a' that, 
 The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, 
 
 Are higher rank than a' that." 
 
 Here they find his grand, genuine touches; and still more, when 
 this puissant genius, who so often set morality at defiance, falls 
 moralizing — 
 
 "The sacred lowe o' weel-placed love 
 
 Luxuriantly indulge it; 
 But never tempt th' illicit rove, 
 
 Tho' naething should divulge it. 
 I waive the quantum o' the sin, 
 
 The hazard o' concealing, 
 But och ! it hardens a' within, 
 
 And petrifies the feeling." 
 
 or in a higher strain — 
 
 "Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us ; 
 He knows each chord, its various tone; 
 
 Each spring, its various bias. 
 Then at the balance let's be mute. 
 
 We never can adjust it; 
 What's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted." 
 
 Or in a better strain yet, a strain, his admirers will say, unsur- 
 passable — 
 
 "To make a happy fire-side clime 
 To weans and wife. 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life." 
 
 There is criticism of life for you, the admirers of Burns will say 
 to us ; there is the application of ideas to life ! There is, un- 
 doubtedly. The doctrine of the last quoted lines coincides almost 
 exactly with what was the aim and end, Xenophon tells us, of all 
 the teaching of Socrates. And the application is a powerful one; 
 made by a man of vigorous understanding, and (need I say?) a 
 master of language. 
 
 But for supreme poetical success more is required than the 
 powerful application of ideas to life; it must be an application 
 under the conditions fixed by the laws of poetic truth and poetic 
 u
 
 290 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 beauty. Those laws fix as an essential condition, in the poet's 
 treatment of such matters as are here in question, high seriousness; 
 — the high seriousness which comes from absolute sincerity. 
 The accent of high seriousness, born of absolute sincerity, is 
 what gives to such verse as 
 
 "In la sua volontade h nostra pace . . ." 
 
 to such criticism of life as Dante's, its power. Is this accent felt 
 in the passages which I have been quoting from Burns? Surely 
 not; surely, if our sense is quick, we must perceive that we have 
 not in those passages a voice from the very inmost soul of the 
 genuine Burns; he is not speaking to us from these depths, he 
 is more or less preaching. And the compensation for admiring 
 such passages less, from missing the perfect poetic accent in them, 
 will be that we shall admire more the poetry where that accent 
 is found. 
 
 No; Burns, like Chaucer, comes short of the high seriousness 
 of the great classics, and the virtue of matter and manner which 
 goes with that high seriousness is wanting to his work. At mo- 
 ments he touches it in a profound and passionate melancholy, 
 as in those four immortal lines taken by Byron as a motto for 
 The Bride of Abydos, but which have in them a depth of poetic 
 quality such as resides in no verse of Byron's own — 
 
 "Had we never loved sae kindly, 
 Had we never loved sae blindly, 
 Never met, or never parted, 
 We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 
 
 But a whole poem of that quality Burns cannot make; the rest, 
 in the Farewell to Nancy, is verbiage. 
 
 We arrive best at the real estimate of Burns, I think, by con- 
 ceiving his work as having truth of matter and truth of manner, 
 but not the accent or the poetic virtue of the highest masters. 
 His genuine criticism of life, when the sheer poet in him speaks, 
 is ironic; it is not — 
 
 "Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme 
 These woes of mine fulfil, 
 Here firm I rest, they must be best 
 Because they are Thy will !" 
 
 It is far rather: Whistle owre the lave oHl Yet we may say of 
 him as of Chaucer, that of life and the world, as they come before
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 
 
 291 
 
 him, his view is large, free, shrewd, benignant, — truly poetic, 
 therefore; and his manner of rendering what he sees is to match. 
 But we must note, at the same time, his great difference from 
 Chaucer. The freedom of Chaucer is heightened, in Burns, 
 by a fiery, reckless energy; the benignity of Chaucer deepens, 
 in Burns, into an overwhelming sense of the pathos of things; — 
 of the pathos of human nature, the pathos, also, of non-human 
 nature. Instead of the fluidity of Chaucer's manner, the manner 
 of Burns has spring, bounding swiftness. Burns is by far the 
 greater force, though he has perhaps less charm. The world of 
 Chaucer is fairer, richer, more significant than that of Burns; 
 but when the largeness and freedom of Burns get full sweep, as 
 in Tarn 0' Shanter, or still more in that puissant and splendid 
 production. The Jolly Beggars, his world may be what it will, 
 his poetic genius triumphs over it. In the world of The Jolly 
 Beggars there is more than hideousness and squalor, there is 
 bestiality; yet the piece is a superb poetic success. It has a 
 breadth, truth, and power which make the famous scene in Auer- 
 bach's Cellar, of Goethe's Faust, seem artificial and tame be- 
 side it, and which are only matched by Shakespeare and Aris- 
 tophanes. 
 
 Here, where his largeness and freedom serve him so admirably, 
 and also in those poems and songs where to shrewdness he adds 
 infinite archness and wit, and to benignity infinite pathos, where 
 his manner is flawless, and a perfect poetic whole is the result, — 
 in things like the address to the mouse whose home he had ruined, 
 in things like Duncan Gray, Tarn Glen, Whistle and Pll come to 
 you my Lad, Auld Lang Syne (this list might be made much 
 longer), — here we have the genuine Burns, of whom the real 
 estimate must be high indeed. Not a classic, nor with the excel- 
 lent cnrovhaioTrj^ of the great classics, nor with a verse rising to a 
 criticism of life and a virtue like theirs ; but a poet with thorough 
 truth of substance and an answering truth of style, giving us a 
 poetry sound to the core. We all of us have a leaning towards 
 the pathetic, and may be inclined perhaps to prize Burns most 
 for his touches of piercing, sometimes almost intolerable, pathos; 
 for verse like — 
 
 " We twa hae paidl't i' the burn 
 From mornin' sun till dine ; 
 But seas between us braid hae roar'd 
 Sin auld lang syne ..."
 
 292 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 where he is as lovely as he is sound. But perhaps it is by the 
 perfection of soundness of his lighter and archer masterpieces 
 that he is poetically most wholesome for us. For the votary 
 misled by a personal estimate of Shelley, as so many of us have 
 been, are, and will be, — of that beautiful spirit building his 
 many-coloured haze of words and images 
 
 " Pinnacled dim in the intense inane " — 
 
 no contact can be wholesomer than the contact with Burns at 
 his archest and soundest. Side by side with the 
 
 " On the brink of the night and the morning 
 My coursers are wont to respire, 
 But the Earth has just whispered a warning 
 
 That their flight must be swifter than fire ..." 
 
 of Prometheus Unbound, how salutary, how very salutary, to place 
 this from Tarn Glen — 
 
 "My minnie does constantly deave me 
 And bids me beware o' young men; 
 They flatter, she says, to deceive me ; 
 But wha can think sae o' Tam Glen?" 
 
 But we enter on burning ground as we approach the poetry of 
 times so near to us — poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and 
 Wordsworth — of which the estimates are so often not only per- 
 sonal, but personal with passion. For my purpose, it is enough 
 to have taken the single case of Burns, the first poet we come to of 
 whose work the estimate formed is evidently apt to be personal, 
 and to have suggested how we may proceed, using the poetry of 
 the great classics as a sort of touchstone, to correct this estimate, 
 as we had previously corrected by the same means the historic 
 estimate where we met with it. A collection like the present, with 
 its succession of celebrated names and celebrated poems, offers 
 a good opportunity to us for resolutely endeavouring to make our 
 estimates of poetry real. I have sought to point out a method 
 which will help us in making them so, and to exhibit it in use so 
 far as to put any one who likes in a way of applying it for himself. 
 
 At any rate the end to which the method and the estimate are 
 designed to lead, and from leading to which; if they do lead to it, 
 they get their whole value, — the benefit of being able clearly 
 to feel and deeply to enjoy the best, the truly classic, in poetry, — 
 is an end, let me say it once more at parting, of supreme imj)or-
 
 THE STUDY OF POETRY 293 
 
 tance. We are often told that an era is opening in which we are 
 to see multitudes of a common sort of readers, and masses of a 
 common sort of literature ; that such readers do not want and 
 could not relish anything better than such literature, and that to 
 provide it is becoming a vast and profitable industry. Even if 
 good literature entirely lost currency with the world, it would 
 still be abundantly worth while to continue to enjoy it by oneself. 
 But it never will lose currency with the world, in spite of momen- 
 tary appearances; it never will lose supremacy. Currency and 
 supremacy are insured to it, not indeed by the world's deliberate 
 and conscious choice, but by something far deeper, — by the 
 instinct of self-preservation in humanity.
 
 XIV 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 (i 772-1834) 
 
 ON POETRY AND POETIC POWER 
 [Chapters XIV. and XV. of Biographia Literaria, 1817.] 
 
 During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neigh- 
 bours, our conversation turned frequently on the two cardinal points 
 of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a 
 faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving 
 the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. 
 The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which 
 moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, 
 appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These 
 are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which 
 of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed 
 of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were to be, 
 in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was 
 to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth 
 of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations, 
 supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to 
 every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has 
 at any time believed himself under supernatural agency. For the 
 second class, subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the 
 characters and incidents were to be such as will be found in every 
 village and its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind 
 to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves. 
 
 In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which 
 it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons 
 and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to 
 transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance 
 of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that 
 
 294
 
 ON POETRY AND POETIC POWER 295 
 
 willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes 
 poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose 
 to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of 
 every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, 
 by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, 
 and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before 
 us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the 
 film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, 
 ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand. 
 
 With this view I wrote the Ancient Mariner, and was preparing, 
 among other poems, the Dark Ladie, and the Christahel, in which 
 I should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my 
 first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so 
 much more successful, and the number of his poems so much 
 greater, that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, ap- 
 peared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter. Mr. 
 Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own char- 
 acter, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is 
 characteristic of his genius. In this form the Lyrical Ballads 
 were published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, 
 whether subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual orna- 
 ments and extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be 
 so managed in the language of ordinary life as to produce the pleas- 
 urable interest which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. 
 To the second edition he added a preface of considerable length; 
 in which, notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary 
 import, he was understood to contend for the extension of this 
 style to poetry of all kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible 
 all phrases and forms of style that were not included in what he 
 (unfortunately, I think, adopting an equivocal expression) called 
 the language of real life. From this preface, prefixed to poems in 
 which it was impossible to deny the presence of original genius, 
 however mistaken its direction might be deemed, arose the whole 
 long-continued controversy. For from the conjunction of perceived 
 power with supposed heresy I explain the inveteracy, and in some 
 instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious passions, with which the 
 controversy has been conducted by the assailants. 
 
 Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things 
 which they were for a long time described as being ; had they been 
 really distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely 
 by meanness of language and inanity of thought ; had they indeed
 
 296 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 contained nothing more than what is found in the parodies and pre- 
 tended imitations of them; they must have sunk at once, a dead 
 weight, into the slough of oblivion, and have dragged the preface 
 along with them. But year after year increased the number of 
 Mr. Wordsworth's admirers. They were found, too, not in the 
 lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly among young men of 
 strong sensibility and meditative minds; and their admiration (in- 
 flamed perhaps in some degree by opposition) was distinguished 
 by its intensity, I might almost say, by its religious fervour. These 
 facts, and the intellectual energy of the author, which was more or 
 less consciously felt, where it was outwardly and even boisterously 
 denied, meeting with sentiments of aversion to his opinions, and of 
 alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of criticism, which 
 would of itself have borne up the poems by the violence with which 
 it whirled them round and round. With many parts of this pref- 
 ace, in the sense attributed to them, and which the words un- 
 doubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred; but, on the 
 contrary, objected to them as erroneous in principle, and as con- 
 tradictory (in appearance at least) both to other parts of the same 
 preface and to the author's own practice in the greater number 
 of the poems themselves. Mr. Wordsworth, in his recent collec- 
 tion, has, I find, degraded this prefatory disquisition to the end of 
 his second volume, to be read or not at the reader's choice. But 
 he has not, as far as I can discover, announced any change in his 
 poetic creed. At all events, considering it as the source of a con- 
 troversy, in which I have been honoured more than I deserve by 
 the frequent conjunction of my name with his, I think it expedient 
 to declare, once for all, in what points I coincide with his opinions, 
 and in what points I altogether differ. But in order to render my- 
 self intelligible, I must previously, in as few words as possible, ex- 
 plain my ideas, first, of a poem; and secondly, of poetry itself, in 
 kind and in essence. 
 
 The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinc- 
 tion ; while it is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself 
 constantly aware that distinction is not division. In order to ob- 
 tain adequate notions of any truth, we must intellectually separate 
 its distinguishable parts ; and this is the technical process of philoso- 
 phy. But having so done, we must then restore them in our con- 
 ceptions to the unity in which they actually coexist; and this is 
 the-result of philosophy. 
 
 A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition;
 
 ON POETRY AND POETIC POWER 297 
 
 the difference, therefore, must consist in a different combination of 
 them, in consequence of a diiferent object proposed. According 
 to the difference of the object will be the difference of the combina- 
 tion. It is possible that the object may be merely to facilitate the 
 recollection of any given facts or observations by artificial arrange- 
 ment; and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is 
 distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both con- 
 jointly. In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name 
 of a poem to the well-known enumeration of the days in the several 
 months — 
 
 Thirty days hath September, 
 April, June, and November, etc. 
 
 and others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular 
 pleasure is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and 
 quantities, all compositions that have this charm superadded, 
 whatever be their contents, may be entitled poems. 
 
 So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and 
 contents supplies an additional ground of distinction. The imme- 
 diate purpose may be the communication of truths ; either of truth 
 absolute and demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts 
 experienced and recorded, as in history. Pleasure, and that of the 
 highest and most permanent kind, may result from the attainment 
 of the end ; but it is not itself the immediate end. In other works 
 the communication of pleasure may be the immediate purpose; 
 and though truth, either moral or intellectual, ought to be the ulti- 
 mate end, yet this will distinguish the character of the author, not 
 the class to which the work belongs. Blest indeed is that state of 
 society, in which the immediate purpose would be baf]fled by the 
 perversion of the proper ultimate end ; in which no charm of diction 
 or imagery could exempt the Bathyllus even of an Anacreon, or 
 the Alexis of Virgil, from disgust and aversion ! 
 
 But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate ob- 
 ject of a work not metrically composed ; and that object may have 
 been in a high degree attained, as in novels and romances. Would 
 then the mere superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme, 
 entitle these to the name of poems ? The answer is, that nothing 
 can permanently please which does not contain in itself the reason 
 why it is so, and not otherwise. If metre be superadded, all other 
 parts must be made consonant with it. They must be such as to 
 justify the perpetual and distinct attention to each part, which an
 
 298 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound are calculated 
 to excite. The final definition then, so deduced, may be thus 
 worded. A poem is that species of composition which is opposed 
 to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, 
 not truth; and from all other species (having this object in com- 
 mon with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight 
 from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification from 
 each component part. 
 
 Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the dispu- 
 tants attaching each a different meaning to the same word; and 
 in few instances has this been more striking than in disputes con- 
 cerning the present subject. If a man chooses to call every com- 
 position a poem which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave 
 his opinion uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent 
 to characterize the writer's intention. If it were subjoined that 
 the whole is likewise entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a 
 series of interesting reflections, I of course admit this as another fit 
 ingredient of a poem, and an additional merit. But if the defini- 
 tion sought for be that of a legitimate poem, I answer, it must be 
 one the parts of which mutually support and explain each other; 
 all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the pur- 
 pose and known influences of metrical arrangement. The philo- 
 sophic critics of all ages coincide with the ultimate judgment of all 
 countries, in equally denying the praises of a just poem, on the one 
 hand to a series of striking lines or distichs, each of which, absorb- 
 ing the whole attention of the reader to itself, disjoins it from its 
 context, and makes it a separate whole, instead of a harmonizing 
 part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained composition, from 
 which the reader collects rapidly the general result unattracted by 
 the component parts. The reader should be carried forward, not 
 merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a 
 restless desire to arrive at the final solution ; but by the pleasurable 
 activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself. 
 Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the em- 
 blem of intellectual power; or like the path of sound through the 
 air, at every step he pauses and half recedes, and froni the retro- 
 gressive movement collects the force which again carries him on- 
 ward. PrcEcipitandiis est liber spirilus,^ says Petronius Arbiter 
 most happily. The epithet, liber, here balances the preceding verb, 
 
 ' [The unrestrained spirit must go headlong.]
 
 ON POETRY AND POETIC POWER 299 
 
 and it is not easy to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer 
 words. 
 
 But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a 
 poem, we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings 
 of Plato and Bishop Taylor, and the Theoria Sacra of Burnet, fur- 
 nish undeniable proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist 
 without metre, and even without the contradistinguishing objects 
 of a poem. The first chapter of Isaiah (indeed a very large propor- 
 tion of the whole book) is poetry in the most emphatic sense ; yet 
 it would be not less irrational than strange to assert that pleasure, 
 and not truth, was the immediate object of the prophet. In short, 
 whatever specific import we attach to the word poetry, there will 
 be found involved in it, as a necessary consequence, that a poem of 
 any length neither can be, nor ought to be, all poetry. Yet if a 
 harmonious whole is to be produced, the remaining parts must be 
 preserved in keeping with the poetry; and this can be no otherwise 
 effected than by such a studied selection and artificial arrangement 
 as will partake of one, though not a peculiar, property of poetry. 
 And this again can be no other than the property of exciting a more 
 continuous and equal attention than the language of prose aims at, 
 whether colloquial or written. 
 
 My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use 
 of the word, have been in part anticipated in the preceding disqui- 
 sition on the fancy and imagination. What is poetry ? is so nearly 
 the same question with, what is a poet ? that the answer to the one 
 is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction re- 
 sulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies 
 the images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet's own mind. The 
 poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man 
 into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, 
 according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone 
 and spirit of unity that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, 
 by that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively 
 appropriated the name of imagination. This power, first put in 
 action by the will and understanding, and retained under their 
 irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control {laxis effertur 
 hahenis),^ reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite 
 or discordant qualities : of sameness, with difference; of the gen- 
 eral, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, 
 
 * [He holds the reins lightly.]
 
 300 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with 
 old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with 
 more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self- 
 possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; 
 and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, 
 still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our 
 admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry. Doubt- 
 less, as Sir John Davies observes of the soul (and his words may 
 with slight alteration be applied, and even more appropriately, 
 to the poetic imagination) — 
 
 Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns 
 Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange, 
 As fire converts to fire the things it burns, 
 As we our food into our nature change. 
 
 From their gross matter she abstracts their forms, 
 And draws a kind of quintessence from things; 
 Which to her proper nature she transforms 
 To bear them Hght on her celestial wings. 
 
 Thus does she, when from individual states 
 She doth abstract the universal kinds ; 
 Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates 
 Steal access through our senses to our minds. 
 
 Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its dra- 
 pery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere, 
 and in each ; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole. 
 
 In the application of these principles to purposes of practical 
 criticism as employed in the appraisal of works more or less im- 
 perfect, I have endeavoured to discover what the qualities in a 
 poem are, which may be deemed promises and specific symptoms 
 of poetic power, as distinguished from general talent determined 
 to poetic composition by accidental motives, by an act of the will, 
 rather than by the inspiration of a genial and productive nature. 
 In this investigation, I could not, I thought, do better than keep 
 before me the earliest work of the greatest genius that perhaps hu- 
 man nature has yet produced, our myriad-minded Shakespeare. 
 I mean the Venus and Adonis, and the Lncrece; works which give 
 at once strong promises of the strength, and yet obvious proofs of 
 the immaturity, of his genius. From these I abstracted the follow- 
 ing marks, as characteristics of original y^oetic genius in general.
 
 ON POETRY AND POETIC POWER 30I 
 
 1. In the Venus and Adonis the first and obvious excellence is 
 the perfect sweetness of the versification, its adaptation to the sub- 
 ject, and the power displayed in varying the march of the words 
 without passing into a loftier and more majestic rhythm than was 
 demanded by the thoughts, or permitted by the propriety of pre- 
 serving a sense of melody predominant. The delight in richness 
 and sweetness of sound, even to a faulty excess, if it be evidently 
 original, and not the result of an easily imitable mechanism, I re- 
 gard as a highly favourable promise in the compositions of a young 
 man. "The man that hath not music in his soul" can indeed 
 never be a genuine poet. Imagery (even taken from nature, much 
 more when transplanted from books, as travels, voyages, and works 
 of natural history), affecting incidents, just thoughts, interesting 
 personal or domestic feelings, and with these the art of their 
 combination or intertexture in the form of a poem, may all by 
 incessant effort be acquired as a trade, by a man of talents and much 
 reading, who, as I once before observed, has mistaken an intense 
 desire of poetic reputation for a natural poetic genius ; the love of 
 the arbitrary end for a possession of the peculiar means. But the 
 sense of musical delight, with the power of producing it, is a gift 
 of imagination ; and this, together with the power of reducing mul- 
 titude into unity of effect, and modifying a series of thoughts by 
 some one predominant thought or feeling, may be cultivated and 
 improved, but can never be learnt. It is in these that Poeta nasci- 
 tur nonfit} 
 
 2. A second promise of genius is the choice of subjects very re- 
 mote from the private interests and circumstances of the writer him- 
 self. At least I have found that where the subject is taken imme- 
 diately from the author's personal sensations and experiences, the 
 excellence of a particular poem is but an equivocal mark, and 
 often a fallacious pledge, of genuine poetic power. We may per- 
 haps remember the tale of the statuary, who had acquired consider- 
 able reputation for the legs of his goddesses, though the rest of the 
 statue accorded but indifferently with ideal beauty; till his wife, 
 elated by her husband's praises, modestly acknowledged that she 
 herself had been his constant model. In the Venus and Adonis 
 this proof of poetic power exists even to excess. It is throughout 
 as if a superior spirit, more intuitive, more intimately conscious 
 even than the characters themselves, not only of every outward 
 look and act, but of the flux and reflux of the mind in all its subtlest 
 
 1 [The poet is born, not made.]
 
 302 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 thoughts and feelings, were placing the whole before our view; 
 himself meanwhile unparticipating in the passions, and actuated 
 only by that pleasurable excitement which had resulted from the 
 energetic fervour of his own spirit, in so vividly exhibiting what it 
 had so accurately and profoundly contemplated. I think I should 
 have conjectured from these poems that even then the great in- 
 stinct which impelled the poet to the drama was secretly working 
 in him, prompting him by a series and never-broken chain of im- 
 agery, always vivid, and because unbroken, often minute; by the 
 highest effort of the picturesque in words, of which words are 
 capable, higher perhaps than was ever realized by any other poet, 
 even Dante not excepted; to provide a substitute for that visual 
 language, that constant intervention and running comment by 
 tone, look, and gesture, which, in his dramatic works, he was 
 entitled to expect from the players. His Venus and Adonis seem 
 at once the characters themselves, and the whole representation of 
 those characters by the most consummate actors. You seem to be 
 told nothing, but to see and hear everything. Hence it is that from 
 the perpetual activity of attention required on the part of the reader; 
 from the rapid flow, the quick change, and the playful nature of 
 the thoughts and images; and, above all, from the alienation, and, 
 if I may hazard such an expression, the utter aloofness of the poet's 
 own feelings from those of which he is at once the painter and the 
 analyst; that, though the very subject cannot but detract from the 
 pleasure of a delicate mind, yet never was poem less dangerous on 
 a moral account. Instead of doing as Ariosto, and as, still more 
 offensively, Wieland has done ; instead of degrading and deform- 
 ing passion into appetite, the trials of love into the struggles of con- 
 cupiscence, Shakespeare has here represented the animal impulse 
 itself so as to preclude all sympathy with it, by dissipating the read- 
 er's notice among the thousand outward images, and now beautiful, 
 now fanciful circumstances, which form its dresses and its scenery; 
 or by diverting our attention from the main subject by those fre- 
 quent witty or profound reflections which the poet's ever active 
 mind has deduced from, or connected with, the imagery and the 
 incidents. The reader is forced into too much action to sym- 
 pathize with the merely passive of our nature. As little can a mind 
 thus roused and awakened be brooded on by mean and instinct 
 emotion, as the low, lazy mist can creep upon the surface of a lake 
 while a strong gale is driving it onward in waves and billows. 
 3. It has been before observed that images, however beautiful,
 
 ON POETRY AND POETIC POWER 303 
 
 though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented 
 in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. They be- 
 come proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a 
 predominant passion ; or by associated thoughts or images awak- 
 ened by that passion; or when they have the effect of reducing 
 multitude to unity, or succession to an instant ; or, lastly, when a 
 human and intellectual life is transferred to them from the poet's 
 own spirit, 
 
 Which shoots its being through earth, sea, and air. 
 
 In the two following lines, for instance, there is nothing objec- 
 tionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in their 
 proper place, part of a descriptive poem : — 
 
 Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd 
 Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twiHght eve. 
 
 But with the small alteration of rhythm, the same words would be 
 equally in their place in a book of topography, or in a descriptive 
 tour. The same image will rise into a semblance of poetry if thus 
 conveyed : — 
 
 Yon row of bleak and visionary pines, 
 By twilight-glimpse discerned, mark ! how they flee 
 From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild 
 Streaming before them. 
 
 I have given this as an illustration, by no means as an instance, 
 of that particular excellence which I had in view, and in which 
 Shakespeare, even in his earliest as in his latest works, surpasses 
 all other poets. It is by this that he still gives a dignity and a pas- 
 sion to the objects which he presents. Unaided by any previous 
 excitement, they burst upon us at once in life and in power. 
 
 Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
 
 Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye. — Sojinet i^. 
 
 Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
 Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, 
 Can yet the lease of my true love control, 
 Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. 
 The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, 
 And the sad augurs mock their own presage : 
 Incertainties now crown themselves assured, 
 And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
 
 304 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 Now with the drops of this most balmy time 
 My love looks fresh: and Death to me subscribes, 
 Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, 
 While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes. 
 And thou in this shalt find thy monument. 
 When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent. 
 
 — Sonnet 107. 
 
 As of higher worth, so doubtless still more characteristic of poetic 
 genius does the imagery become, when it moulds and colours itself 
 to the circumstances, passion, or character, present and foremost 
 in the mind. For unrivalled instances of this excellence the reader's 
 own memory will refer him to the Lear, Othello, in short, to which 
 not of the ' ' great, ever living, dead man's" dramatic works ? Inopem 
 me copia fecit} How true it is to nature, he has himself finely 
 expressed in the instance of love in Sonnet g8 : — 
 
 From you have I been absent in the spring, 
 When proud-pied April drest in all his trim 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing, 
 That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him. 
 
 Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
 
 Of dilTerent flowers in odour and in hue, 
 
 Could make me any summer's story tell. 
 
 Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew; 
 
 Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, 
 
 Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; 
 
 They were, but sweet, but figures of delight. 
 
 Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. 
 
 Yet seem'd it winter still and, you away, 
 
 As with your shadow I with these did play I 
 
 Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, not less indispensable 
 mark 
 
 VoVLfJLOV fliV IloLrjTOV 
 
 • oo-Tis p'J/Aa yevvalov Xdnot,' 
 
 will the imagery supply when, with more than the power of the 
 painter, the poet gives us the liveliest image of succession with the 
 feeling of simultaneousness ! 
 
 • [Abundance has made me poor.] 
 
 * [There's not one hearty Poet amongst them all 
 
 That's fit to risque an adventurous valiant phrase. 
 
 — Frere's translation of Aristophanes's Frogs.]
 
 ON POETRY AND POETIC POWER 305 
 
 With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace 
 
 Of those fair arms, that bound him to her breast, 
 
 And homeward through the dark laund runs apace : 
 
 Look how a bright star shooteth from the sky! 
 
 So glides he in the night jrom Venus' eye. — Venus and Adonis, 1. 811. 
 
 4. The last character I shall mention, which would prove indeed 
 but little, except as taken conjointly with the former; yet without 
 which the former could scarce exist in a high degree, and (even if 
 this were possible) would give promises only of transitory flashes 
 and a meteoric power ; — its depth and energy of thought. No 
 man was ever yet a great poet without being at the same time a pro- 
 found philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy 
 of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emo- 
 tions, language. In Shakespeare's Poems the creative power and 
 the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its 
 excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At 
 length, in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its 
 shield before the breast of the other. Or like two rapid streams 
 that, at their first meeting within narrow and rocky banks, mutually 
 strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly and in tumult, 
 but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, blend 
 and dilate, and flow on in one current and with one voice. The 
 Venus and Adonis did not perhaps allow the display of the deeper 
 passions. But the story of Lucretia seems to favour, and even 
 demand, their intensest workings. And yet we find in Shake- 
 speare's management of the tale neither pathos nor any other dra- 
 matic quality. There is the same minute and faithful imagery 
 as in the former poem, in the same vivid colours, inspirited by the 
 same impetuous vigour of thought, and diverging and contracting 
 with the same activity of the assimilative and of the modifying 
 faculties; and with a yet larger display, a yet wider range of 
 knowledge and reflection; and lastly, with the same perfect do- 
 minion, often domination, over the whole world of language. 
 What, then, shall we say? even this, that Shakespeare, no mere 
 child of nature; no automaton of genius; no passive vehicle of 
 inspiration possessed by the spirit, not possessing it; first studied 
 patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge, 
 become habitual and intuitive, wedded itself to his habitual feel- 
 ings, and at length gave birth to that stupendous power, by which 
 he stands alone, with no equal or second in his own class ; to that 
 power which seated him on one of the two glory-smitten summits of
 
 3o6 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 the poetic mountain, with Milton as his compeer, not rival. While 
 the former darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of hu- 
 man character and passion, the one Proteus of the fire and the 
 flood; the other attracts all forms and things to himself, into the 
 unity of his own ideal. All things and modes of action shape 
 themselves anew in the being of Milton; while Shakespeare be- 
 comes all things, yet forever remaining himself. O what great 
 men hast thou not produced, England, my country ! Truly, indeed, 
 
 Must we be free or die, who speak the tongue, 
 Which Shakespeare spake ; the faith and morals hold, 
 Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung 
 Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.
 
 XV 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 (i 792-1822) 
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 
 
 [An answer written in 1821, to Peacock's lively essay, The Four Ages of 
 Poetry (Oilier' s Literary Magazine, 1820) and intended for the Liberal, but 
 first published by Mrs. Shelley in the Essays, 1840.] 
 
 According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental 
 action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may 
 be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one 
 thought to another, however produced; and the latter, as mind 
 acting upon those thoughts so as to colour them with its own 
 light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, 
 each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity. 
 The one is the t6 Troteiv, or the principle of synthesis, and has for its 
 objects those forms which are common to universal nature and 
 existence itself; the other is the to Xoyt'feiv, or principle of analysis, 
 and its action regards the relations of things simply as relations; 
 considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the alge- 
 braical representations which conduct to certain general results. 
 Reason is the enumeration of qualities already known; imagina- 
 tion is the perception of the value of those quantities, both sepa- 
 rately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences, and 
 imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to imagination 
 as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the 
 shadow to the substance. 
 
 Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be "the expression 
 of the imagination " : and poetry is connate with the origin of man. 
 Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal 
 impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing 
 
 307
 
 3o8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 wind over an i^olian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever- 
 changing melody. But there is a principle within the human 
 being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts other- 
 wise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, 
 by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited 
 to the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could 
 accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, 
 in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can 
 accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play 
 by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and 
 every inflection of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation 
 to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which 
 awakened it; it will be the reflected image of that impression; 
 and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away, 
 so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the dura- 
 tion of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. 
 In relation to the objects which delight a child, these expressions 
 are what poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage 
 is to ages what the child is to years) expresses the emotions pro- 
 duced in him by surrounding objects in a similar manner; and 
 language and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial imitation, 
 become the image of the combined effect of those objects, and of 
 his apprehension of them. Man in society, with all his passions 
 and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and 
 pleasures of man; an additional class of emotions produces an 
 augmented treasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and 
 the imitative arts become at once the representation and the me- 
 dium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statue, the 
 chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws 
 from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop 
 themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; 
 the future is contained within the present, as the plant within the 
 seed : and equality, diversity, unity, contrast, mutual dependence, 
 become the principles alone capable of affording the motives 
 according to which the will of a social being is determined to action, 
 inasmuch as he is social; and constitute pleasure in sensation, 
 virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love 
 in the intercourse of kind. Hence men, even in the infancy of 
 society, observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct 
 from that of the objects and the impressions represented by 
 them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 309 
 
 which it proceeds. But let us dismiss those more general 
 considerations which might involve an inquiry into the prin- 
 ciples of society itself, and restrict our view to the manner in 
 which the imagination is expressed upon its forms. 
 
 In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate 
 natural objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a 
 certain rhythm or order. And, although all men observe a similar, 
 they observe not the same order, in the motions of the dance, in the 
 melody of the song, in the combinations of language, in the series 
 of their imitations of natural objects. For there is a certain 
 order or rhythm belonging to each of these classes of mimetic 
 representation, from which the hearer and the spectator receive 
 an intenser and purer pleasure than from any other : the sense of 
 an approximation to this order has been called taste by modern 
 writers. Every man in the infancy of art observes an order which 
 approximates more or less closely to that from which this highest 
 delight results; but the diversity is not sufficiently marked, as 
 that its gradations should be sensible, except in those instances 
 where the predominance of this faculty of approximation to the 
 beautiful (for so we may be permitted to name the relation between 
 this highest pleasure and its cause) is very great. Those in whom 
 it exists in excess are poets, in the most universal sense of the 
 word; and the pleasure resulting from the manner in which they 
 express the influence of society or nature upon their own minds, 
 communicates itself to others, and gathers a sort of reduplication 
 from that community. Their language is vitally metaphorical; 
 that is; it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and 
 perpetuates their apprehension, until the words which represent 
 them, become, through time, signs for portions or classes of 
 thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts ; and then, if no 
 new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which 
 have been thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler 
 purposes of human intercourse. These similitudes or relations 
 are finely said by Lord Bacon to be "the same footsteps of nature 
 impressed upon the various subjects of the world"* — and he 
 considers the faculty which perceives them as the storehouse of 
 axioms common to all knowledge. In the infancy of society 
 every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; 
 and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful; in a 
 word, the good which exists in the relation subsisting, first be- 
 
 '^ De Augment. Scient., cap. i, lib. iii.
 
 3IO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 tween existence and perception, and secondly between perception 
 and expression. Every original language near to its source is 
 in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem : the copiousness of lexicog- 
 raphy and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later 
 age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations 
 of poetry. 
 
 But poets, or those who imagine and express this indestructible 
 order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the 
 dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting: they are 
 the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the 
 inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a 
 certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial 
 apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called 
 religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or suscep- 
 tible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and 
 true. Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation 
 in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the 
 world, legislators, or prophets : a poet essentially comprises and 
 unites both these characters. For he not only beholds intensely 
 the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which 
 present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in 
 the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the 
 fruit of latest time. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in 
 the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as 
 surely as they foreknow the spirit of events : such is the pretence 
 of superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy 
 rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates 
 in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his 
 conceptions, time and place and number are not. The gram- 
 matical forms which express the moods of time, and the difference 
 of persons, and the distinction of place, are convertible with respect 
 to the highest poetry without injuring it as poetry; and the cho-. 
 ruses of .-Eschylus, and the book of Job, and Dante's Paradise, 
 would afford, more than any other writings, examples of this fact, 
 it the limits of this essay did not forbid citation. The creations 
 of sculpture, painting, and music are illustrations still more de- 
 cisive. 
 
 Language, colour, form, and religious and civil habits of action 
 are all the instruments and materials of poetry; they may be 
 called poetry by that figure of speech which considers the effect 
 as a synonym of th^ cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY. JII 
 
 expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical 
 language, which are created by that imperial faculty, whose 
 throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man. And 
 this springs from the nature itself of language, which is a more 
 direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal 
 being, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combina- 
 tions than colour, form, or motion, and is more plastic and obedient 
 to the control of that faculty of which it is the creation. For 
 language is arbitrarily produced by the imagination, and has 
 relation to thoughts alone; but all other materials, instruments, 
 and conditions of art have relations among each other, which 
 limit and interpose between conception and expression. The 
 former is as a mirror which reflects, the latter as a cloud which 
 enfeebles, the light of which both are mediums of communica- 
 tion. Hence the fame of sculptors, painters, and musicians, 
 although the intrinsic powers of the great masters of these arts may 
 yield in no degree to that of those who have employed language 
 as the hieroglyphic of their thoughts, has never equalled that of 
 poets in the restricted sense of the term; as two performers of 
 equal skill will produce unequal effects from a guitar and a harp. 
 The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their 
 institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the restricted 
 sense; but it can scarcely be a question whether, if we deduct the 
 celebrity which their flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar 
 usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them in 
 their higher character of poets, any excess will remain. 
 
 We have thus circumscribed the word poetry within the limits 
 of that art which is the most familiar and the most perfect expres- 
 sion of the faculty itself. It is necessary, however, to make the 
 circle still narrower, and to determine the distinction between 
 measured and unmeasured language; for the popular division 
 into prose and verse is inadmissible in accurate philosophy. 
 
 Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each 
 other and towards that which they represent, and a perception 
 of the order of those relations has always been found connected 
 with a perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence 
 the language of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and 
 harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, 
 and which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication 
 of its influence than the words themselves, without reference to 
 that peculiar order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were
 
 312 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover 
 the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse 
 from one language into another the creations of a poet. The 
 plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower — 
 and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel. 
 
 An observation of the regular mode of the recurrence of har- 
 mony in the language of poetical minds, together with its relation 
 to music, produced metre, or a certain system of traditional forms 
 of harmony and language. Yet it is by no means essential that 
 a poet should accommodate his language to this traditional form, 
 so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be observed. The prac- 
 tice is indeed convenient and popular, and to be preferred, es- 
 pecially in such composition as includes much action : but every 
 great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his 
 predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. 
 The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. 
 The distinction between philosophers and poets has been antici- 
 pated. Plato was essentially a poet — the truth and splendour 
 of his imagery, and the melody of his language, are the most 
 intense that it is possible to conceive. He rejected the measure 
 of the epic, dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to 
 kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and 
 he forbore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would 
 include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. 
 Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods, but with little 
 success. Lord Bacon was a poet.^ His language has a sweet and 
 majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost 
 superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect; it 
 is a strain which distends, and then bursts the circumference of 
 the reader's mind, and pours itself forth together with it into the 
 universal element with which it has perpetual sympathy. All 
 the authors of revolutions in opinion are not only necessarily 
 poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words unveil the 
 permanent analogy of things by images which participate in 
 the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhyth- 
 mical, and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being 
 the echo of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, 
 who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on account of 
 the form and action of their subjects, less capable of perceiving 
 and teaching the truth of things, than those who have omitted 
 
 * See the Filum Labyrinlhi, and the Essay on Death particularly.
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 313 
 
 that form. Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton (to confine our- 
 selves to modern writers) are philosophers of the very loftiest 
 power. 
 
 A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. 
 There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story 
 is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connection 
 than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the 
 creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human 
 nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the 
 image of all other minds. The one is partial, and applies only 
 to a definite period of time, and a certain combination of events 
 which can never again recur ; the other is universal, and contains 
 within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions 
 have place in the possible varieties of human nature. Time, 
 which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular 
 facts, stripped of the poetry which should invest them, augments 
 that of poetry, and forever develops new and wonderful applica- 
 tions of the eternal truth which it contains. Hence epitomes 
 have been called the moths of just history; they eat out the poetry 
 of it. A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures 
 and distorts that which should be beautiful : poetry is a mirror 
 which makes beautiful that which is distorted. 
 
 The parts of a composition may be poetical, without the com- 
 position as a whole being a poem. A single sentence may be 
 considered as a whole, though it may be found in the midst of a 
 series of unassimilated portions ; a single word even may be a spark 
 of inextinguishable thought. And thus all the great historians, 
 Herodotus, Plutarch, Livy, were poets; and although the plan 
 of these writers, especially that of Livy, restrained them from 
 developing this faculty in its highest degree, they made copious 
 and ample amends for their subjection by filling all the interstices 
 of their subjects with living images. 
 
 Having determined what is poetry, and who are poets, let us 
 proceed to estimate its effects upon society. 
 
 Poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure : all spirits on which 
 it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled 
 with its delight. In the infancy of the world, neither poets them- 
 selves nor their auditors are fully aware of the excellence of poetry : 
 for it acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and 
 above consciousness; and it is reserved for future generations 
 to contemplate and measure the mighty cause and effect in all the
 
 314 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 strength and splendour of their union. Even in modern times, 
 no Hving poet ever arrived at the fulness of his fame; the jury 
 which sits in judgment upon a poet, belonging as he does to all 
 time, must be composed of his peers: it must be impanelled by 
 Time from the selectest of the wise of many generations. A poet 
 is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own 
 solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced 
 by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved 
 and softened, yet know not whence or why. The poems of Homer 
 and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they 
 were the elements of that social system which is the column upon 
 which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied 
 the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we 
 doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambi- 
 tion of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses : the truth 
 and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to 
 an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations: 
 the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged 
 by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until 
 from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified 
 themselves with the objects of their admiration. Nor let it be 
 objected that these characters are remote from moral perfection, 
 and that they can by no means be considered as edifying patterns 
 for general imitation. Every epoch, under names more or less 
 specious, has deified its peculiar errors; Revenge is the naked 
 idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age; and Self-deceit is 
 the veiled image of unknown evil, before which luxury and satiety 
 lie prostrate. But a poet considers the vices of his contemporaries 
 as the temporary dress in which his creations must be arrayed, and 
 which cover without concealing the eternal proportions of their 
 beauty. An epic or dramatic personage is understood to wear 
 them around his soul, as he may the ancient armour or the modern 
 uniform around his body; whilst it is easy to conceive a dress 
 more graceful than either. The beauty of the internal nature 
 cannot be so far concealed by its accidental vesture but that the 
 spirit of its form shall communicate itself to the very disguise, 
 and indicate the shape it hides from the manner in which it is 
 worn. A majestic form and graceful motions will express them- 
 selves through the most barbarous and tasteless costume. Few 
 poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their 
 conceptions in its naked truth and splendour; and it is doubtful
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 315 
 
 whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary to 
 temper this planetary music for mortal ears. 
 
 The whole objection, however, of the immorality of poetry 
 rests upon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts 
 to produce the moral improvement of man. Ethical science 
 arranges the elements which poetry has created, and propounds 
 schemes and proposes examples of civil and domestic life: nor 
 is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate, and despise, 
 and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another. But poetry 
 acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the 
 mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unappre- 
 hended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the 
 hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if 
 they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and 
 the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward 
 in the minds of those who have once contemplated them as memo- 
 rials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over 
 all thoughts and actions with which it coexists. The great secret 
 of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identifica- 
 tion of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, 
 or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine 
 intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place 
 of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his 
 species must become his own. The great instrument of moral 
 good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by 
 acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the 
 imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, 
 which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own 
 nature all other thoughts, and which form new intervals and inter- 
 stices whose void forever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens 
 the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the 
 same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. A poet therefore 
 would do ill to embody his own conceptions of right and wrong, 
 which are usually those of his place and time, in his poetical crea- 
 tions, which participate in neither. By this assumption of the 
 inferior office of interpreting the effect, in which perhaps after all 
 he might acquit himself but imperfectly, he would resign a glory 
 in a participation in the cause. There was little danger that 
 Homer, or any of the eternal poets, should have so far misunder- 
 stood themselves as to have abdicated this throne of their widest 
 dominion. Those in whom the poetical faculty, though great.
 
 3l6 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 is less intense, as Euripides, Lucan, Tasso, Spenser, have fre- 
 quently affected a moral aim, and the effect of their poetry is 
 diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel 
 us to advert to this purpose. 
 
 Homer and the cyclic poets were followed at a certain interval 
 by the dramatic and lyrical poets of Athens, who flourished con- 
 temporaneously with all that is most perfect in the kindred expres- 
 sions of the poetical faculty; architecture, painting, music, the 
 dance, sculpture, philosophy, and we may add, the forms of civil 
 life. For although the scheme of Athenian society was deformed 
 by many imperfections which the poetry existing in chivalry and 
 Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions of modern 
 Europe ; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty, 
 and virtue been developed ; never was blind strength and stubborn 
 form so disciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or 
 that will less repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the true, 
 as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. Of 
 no other epoch in the history of our species have we records and 
 fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity in 
 man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language, 
 which has rendered this epoch memorable above all others, and 
 the storehouse of examples to everlasting time. For written 
 poetry existed at that epoch simultaneously with the other arts, 
 and it is an idle inquiry to demand which gave and which received 
 the light, which all, as from a common focus, have scattered over 
 the darkest periods of succeeding time. We know no more of 
 cause and effect than a constant conjunction of events : poetry 
 is ever found to coexist with whatever other arts contribute to 
 the happiness and perfection of man. I appeal to what has already 
 been established to distinguish between the cause and the effect. 
 
 It was at the period here adverted to that the drama had its 
 birth; and however a succeeding writer may have equalled or 
 surpassed those few great specimens of the Athenian drama which 
 have been preserved to us, it is inchsj^utable that the art itself 
 never was understood or practised according to the true philosophy 
 of it, as at Athens. For the Athenians employed language, action, 
 music, painting, the dance, and religious institutions to produce 
 a common effect in the representation of the highest idealisms 
 of passion and of power; each division in the art was made perfect 
 in its kind by artists of the most consummate skill, and was dis- 
 ciplined into a beautiful proportion and unity one towards the
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 317 
 
 other. On the modern stage a few only of the elements capable 
 of expressing the image of the poet's conception are employed at 
 once. We have tragedy without music and dancing; and music 
 and dancing without the highest impersonations of which they 
 are the fit accompaniment, and both without religion and solem- 
 nity. Religious institution has indeed been usually banished 
 from the stage. Our system of divesting the actor's face of a 
 mask, on which the many expressions appropriate to his dramatic 
 character might be moulded into one permanent and unchanging 
 expression, is favourable only to a partial and inharmonious 
 effect; it is fit for nothing but a monologue, where all the atten- 
 tion may be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The 
 modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable 
 to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension 
 of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be, as in King 
 Lear, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the interven- 
 tion of this principle which determines the balance in favour of 
 King Lear against the Qidipus Tyrannus or the Agamemnon, or, 
 if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected; unless 
 the intense power of the choral poetry, especially that of the latter, 
 should be considered as restoring the equilibrium. King Lear, 
 if it can sustain this comparison, may be judged to be the most 
 perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world; in 
 spite of the narrow conditions to which the poet was subjected 
 by the ignorance of the philosophy of the drama which has pre- 
 vailed in modern Europe. Calderon, in his religious Autos, has 
 attempted to fulfil some of the high conditions of dramatic repre- 
 sentation neglected by Shakespeare; such as the establishing a 
 relation between the drama and religion, and the accommodating 
 them to music and dancing; but he omits the observation of 
 conditions still more important, and more is lost than gained by 
 the substitution of the rigidly-defined and ever-repeated idealisms 
 of a distorted superstition for the living impersonations of the 
 truth of human passion. 
 
 But I digress. — The connection of scenic exhibitions with the 
 improvement or corruption of the manners of men has been uni- 
 versally recognized; in other words, the presence or absence of 
 poetry in its most perfect and universal form has been found to 
 be connected with good and evil in conduct or habit. The cor- 
 ruption which has been imputed to the drama as an effect, begins 
 when the poetry employed in its constitution ends: I appeal to
 
 3i8 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 the history of manners whether the periods of the growth of the 
 one and the decHne of the other have not corresponded with an 
 exactness equal to any example of moral cause and effect. 
 
 The drama at Athens, or wheresoever else it may have ap- 
 proached to its perfection, ever coexisted with the moral and 
 intellectual greatness of the age. The tragedies of the Athenian 
 poets are as mirrors in which the spectator beholds himself, under 
 a thin disguise of circumstance, stript of all but that ideal perfec- 
 tion and energy which every one feels to be the internal type of 
 all that he loves, admires, and would become. The imagination 
 is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and passions so mighty 
 that they distend in their conception the capacity of that by which 
 they are conceived; the good affections are strengthened by 
 pity, indignation, terror, and sorrow; and an exalted calm is 
 prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the 
 tumult of familiar life: even crime is disarmed of half its horror 
 and all its contagion by being represented as the fatal consequence 
 of the unfathomable agencies of nature; error is thus divested of 
 its wilfulness; men can no longer cherish it as the creation of 
 their choice. In a drama of the highest order there is little food 
 for censure or hatred; it teaches rather self-knowledge and self- 
 respect. Neither the eye nor the mind can see itself, unless 
 reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, so long as it 
 continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided 
 mirror, which collects the brightest rays of human nature and 
 divides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elemen- 
 tary forms, and touches them with majesty and beauty, and 
 multiplies all that it reflects, and endows it with the power of 
 propagating its like wherever it may fall. 
 
 But in ])eriods of the decay of social life, the drama sympa- 
 thizes with that decay. Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the 
 form of the great masterpieces of antiquity, divested of all har- 
 monious accompaniment of the kindred arts; and often the very 
 form misunderstood, or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, 
 which the writer considers as moral truths ; and which are usually 
 no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness 
 with which the author, in common with his auditors, are infected. 
 Hence what has been called the classical and domestic drama. 
 Addison's Cato is a specimen of the one; and would it were not 
 superfluous to cite examples of the other! To such purposes 
 poetry cannot bs mrle subservient. Poetry is a sword of light-
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 319 
 
 ning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would 
 contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of 
 this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect 
 sentiment and passion, which, divested of imagination, are other 
 names for caprice and appetite. The period in our own history 
 of the grossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles II., 
 when all forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be ex- 
 pressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly power over liberty 
 and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating an age unworthy 
 of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades all 
 the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed 
 upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds 
 to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, in- 
 stead of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to 
 sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Ob- 
 scenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in 
 life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active 
 if less disgusting: it is a monster for which the corruption of 
 society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret. 
 
 The drama being that form under which a greater number of 
 modes of expression of poetry are susceptible of being combined 
 than any other, the connection of poetry and social good is more 
 observable in the drama than in whatever other form. And it is 
 indisputable that the highest perfection of human society has 
 ever corresponded with the highest dramatic excellence ; and that 
 the corruption or the extinction of the drama in a nation where 
 it has once flourished, is a mark of a corruption of manners, and 
 an extinction of the energies which sustain the soul of social life. 
 But, as Machiavelli says of poHtical institutions, that life may 
 be preserved and renewed, if men should arise capable of bring- 
 ing back the drama to its principles. And this is true with respect 
 to poetry in its most extended sense : all language, institution and 
 form, require not only to be produced, but to be sustained: the 
 office and character of a poet participates in the divine nature as 
 regards providence, no less than as regards creation. 
 
 Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance, first 
 of the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many 
 symbols of the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in 
 Greece. The bucolic writers, who found patronage under the 
 lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representa- 
 tives of its most glorious reign. Their poetry is intensely melo-
 
 320 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 dious; like the odour of the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens 
 the spirit with excess of sweetness; whilst the poetry of the pre- 
 ceding age was as a meadow-gale of June, which mingles the 
 fragrance of all the flowers of the field, and adds a quickening 
 and harmonizing spirit of its own which endows the sense with 
 a power of sustaining its extreme delight. The bucolic and 
 erotic delicacy in written poetry is correlative with that softness 
 in statuary, music, and the kindred arts, and even in manners 
 and institutions, which distinguished the epoch to which I now 
 refer. Nor is it the poetical faculty itself, or any misapplication 
 of it, to which this want of harmony is to be imputed. An equal 
 sensibility to the influence of the senses and the affections is to 
 be found in the writings of Homer and Sophocles: the former, 
 especially, has clothed sensual and pathetic images with irresisti- 
 ble attractions. Their superiority over these succeeding writers 
 consists in the presence of those thoughts which belong to the 
 inner faculties of our nature, not in the absence of those which 
 are connected with the external : their incomparable perfection 
 consists in a harmony of the union of all. It is not what the 
 erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their imper- 
 fection consists. It is not inasmuch as they were poets, but 
 inasmuch as they were not poets, that they can be considered 
 with any plausibility as connected with the corruption of their 
 age. Had that corruption availed so as to extinguish in them 
 the sensibility to pleasure, passion, and natural scenery, which 
 is imputed to them as an imperfection, the last triumph of evil 
 would have been achieved. For the end of social corruption is 
 to destroy all sensibility to pleasure; and, therefore, it is corrup- 
 tion. It begins at the imagination and the intellect as at the 
 core, and distributes itself thence as a paralyzing venom, through 
 the affections into the very appetites, until all become a torpid 
 mass in which hardly sense survives. At the approach of such 
 a period, poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which are 
 the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps 
 of Astra^a, departing from the world. Poetr}'^ ever communicates 
 all the pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever 
 still the light of life; the source of whatever of beautiful or gener- 
 ous or true can have place in an evil time. It will readily be con- 
 fessed that those among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and 
 Alexandria, who were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, 
 were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe.
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 32 1 
 
 But corruption must utterly have destroyed the fabric of human 
 society before poetry can ever cease. The sacred Hnks of that 
 chain have never been entirely disjointed, which descending 
 through the minds of many men is attached to those great minds, 
 whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is sent forth, 
 which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life of all. 
 It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at once of 
 its own and of social renovation. And let us not circumscribe 
 the effects of the bucolic and erotic poetry within the limits of the 
 sensibility of those to whom it was addressed. They may have 
 perceived the beauty of those immortal compositions, simply as 
 fragments and isolated portions : those who are more finely organ- 
 ized, or, born in a happier age, may recognize them as episodes 
 to that great poem, which all poets, like the cooperating thoughts 
 of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world. 
 The same revolutions within a narrower sphere had place in 
 ancient Rome; but the actions and forms of its social life never 
 seem to have been perfectly saturated with the poetical element. 
 The Romans appear to have considered the Greeks as the selectest 
 treasuries of the selectest forms of manners and of nature, and 
 to have abstained from creating in measured language, sculpture, 
 music, or architecture anything which might bear a particular 
 relation to their own condition, whilst it should bear a general 
 one to the universal constitution of the world. But we judge from 
 partial evidence, and we judge perhaps partially. Ennius, Varro, 
 Pacuvius, and Accius, all great poets, have been lost. Lucretius 
 is in the highest, and Virgil in a very high sense, a creator. The 
 chosen delicacy of expressions of the latter are as a mist of light 
 which conceal from us the intense and exceeding truth of his 
 conceptions of nature. Livy is instinct with poetry. Yet Horace, 
 Catullus, Ovid, and generally the other great writers of the Vir- 
 gilian age, saw man and nature in the mirror of Greece. The 
 institutions also, and the religion of Rome, were less poetical than 
 those of Greece, as the shadow is less vivid than the substance. 
 Hence poetry in Rome seemed to follow, rather than accompany, 
 the perfection of political and domestic society. The true poetry 
 of Rome lived in its institutions; for whatever of beautiful, true, 
 and majestic they contained, could have sprung only from the 
 faculty which creates the order in which they consist. The life 
 of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, 
 in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the
 
 322 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 republic to make peace with Hannibal after the battle of Cannag, 
 were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable 
 personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in 
 the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the act- 
 ors of these immortal dramas. The imagination, beholding the 
 beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own 
 idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward ever-living 
 fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia carent vate 
 sacro} They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by 
 Time upon the memories of men. The Past, like an inspired 
 rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with their 
 harmony. 
 
 At length the ancient system of religion and manners had 
 fulfilled the circle of its revolutions. And the world would have 
 fallen into utter anarchy and darkness, but that there were found 
 poets among the authors of the Christian and chivalric systems 
 of manners and religion, who created forms of opinion and action 
 never before conceived; which, copied into the imaginations of 
 men, became as generals to the bewildered armies of their thoughts. 
 It is foreign to the present purpose to touch upon the evil produced 
 by these systems : except that we protest, on the ground of the 
 principles already established, that no portion of it can be attri- 
 buted to the poetry they contain. 
 
 It is probable that the poetry of Moses, Job, David, Solomon, 
 and Isaiah had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus 
 and his disciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by 
 the biographers of this extraordinary person are all instinct with 
 the most vivid poetry. But his doctrines seem to have been 
 quickly distorted. At a certain period after the prevalence of a 
 system of opinions founded upon those promulgated by him, 
 the three forms into which Plato had distributed the faculties 
 of mind underwent a sort of apotheosis, and became the object 
 of the worship of the civilized world. Here it is to be confessed 
 that "Light seems to thicken," 
 
 " And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood, 
 Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, 
 And night's black agents to their preys do rouse." 
 
 But mark how beautiful an order has s])rung from the dust and 
 blood of this fierce chaos ! how the world, as from a resurrection, 
 
 1 [Though they need the holy prophet to express them.]
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 323 
 
 balancing itself on the golden wings of knowledge and of hope, has 
 reassumed its yet unwearied flight into the heaven of time. Listen 
 to the music, unheard by outward ears, which is as a ceaseless and 
 invisible wind, nourishing its everlasting course with strength 
 and swiftness. 
 
 The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology 
 and institutions of the Celtic conquerors of the Roman empire, 
 Gudived the darkness and the convulsions connected with their 
 growth and victory, and blended themselves in a new fabric of 
 manners and opinion. It is an error to impute the ignorance of 
 the dark ages to the Christian doctrines or the predominance 
 of the Cehic nations. Whatever of evil their agencies may have 
 contained sprang from the extinction of the poetical principle, con- 
 nected with the progress of despotism and superstition. Men, 
 from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insen- 
 sible and selfish : their own will had become feeble, and yet they 
 were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others : lust, 
 fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud characterized a race amongst 
 whom no one was to be found capable of creating in form, lan- 
 guage, or institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of 
 society are not justly to be charged upon any class of events imme- 
 diately connected with them, and those events are most entided 
 to our approbation which could dissolve it most expeditiously. 
 It is unfortunate for those who cannot distinguish words from 
 thoughts, that many of these anomalies have been incorporated 
 into our popular religion. 
 
 It was not until the eleventh century that the effects of the 
 poetry of the Christian and chivalric systems began to manifest 
 themselves. The principle of equality had been discovered and 
 applied by Plato in his Republic, as the theoretical rule of the 
 mode in which the materials of pleasure and of power produced 
 by the common skill and labour of human beings ought to be 
 distributed among them. The limitations of this rule were 
 asserted by him to be determined only by the sensibility of each, 
 or the utility to result to all. Plato, following the doctrines of 
 Timaeus and Pythagoras, taught also a moral and intellectual 
 system of doctrine, comprehending at once the past, the present, 
 and the future condition of man. Jesus Christ divulged the 
 sacred and eternal truths contained in these views to mankind, 
 and Christianity, in its abstract purity, became the exoteric expres- 
 sion of the esoteric doctrines of the poetry and wisdom of antiq-
 
 324 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 uity. The incorporation of the Celtic nations with the exhausted 
 population of the south, impressed upon it the figure of the poetry 
 existing in their mythology and institutions. The result was a 
 suni of the action and reaction of all the causes included in it; 
 for it may be assumed as a maxim that no nation or religion can 
 supersede any other without incorporating into itself a portion 
 of that which it supersedes. The abolition of personal and do- 
 mestic slavery, and the emancipation of women from a great part 
 of the degrading restraints of antiquity, were among the conse- 
 quences of these events. 
 
 The abolition of personal slavery is the basis of the highest 
 political hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive. 
 The freedom of women produced the poetry of sexual love. Love 
 became a religion, the idols of whose worship were ever present. 
 It was as if the statues of Apollo and the Muses had been endowed 
 with life and motion, and had walked forth among their worship- 
 pers ; so that earth became peopled by the inhabitants of a diviner 
 world. The familiar appearance and proceedings of life became 
 wonderful and heavenly, and a paradise was created as out of the 
 wrecks of Eden. And as this creation itself is poetry, so its crea- 
 tors were poets; and language was the instrument of their art: 
 Galeotto fii il libro, e chi lo scrisse} The Provencal Trouveurs, 
 or inventors, preceded Petrarch, whose verses are as spells, which 
 unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is in 
 the grief of love. It is impossible to feel them without becoming 
 a portion of that beauty which we contemplate: it were super- 
 fluous to explain how the gentleness and the elevation of mind 
 connected with these sacred emotions can render men more ami- 
 able, more generous and wise, and lift them out of the dull vapours 
 of the little world of self. Dante understood the secret things 
 of love even more than Petrarch. His Vita Nuova is an inex- 
 haustible fountain of purity of sentiment and language : it is the 
 idealized history of that period, and those intervals of his life 
 which were dedicated to love. His apotheosis of Beatrice in 
 Paradise, and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness, 
 by which as by steps he feigns himself to have ascended to the 
 throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination 
 of modern poetry. The acutest critics have justly reversed the 
 judgment of the vulgar, and the order of the great acts of the 
 Divine Drama, in the measure of the admiration which they accord 
 
 ' [Galeotto was the name of the book, and he who wrote it.]
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 325 
 
 to the Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The latter is a perpetual 
 hymn of everlasting love. Love, which found a worthy poet in 
 Plato alone of all the ancients, has been celebrated by a chorus 
 of the greatest writers of the renovated world; and the music 
 has penetrated the caverns of society, and its echoes still drown 
 the dissonance of arms and superstition. At successive intervals, 
 Ariosto, Tasso, Shakespeare, Spenser, Calderon, Rousseau, and 
 the great writers of our own age, have celebrated the dominion of 
 love, planting, as it were, trophies in the human mind of that 
 sublimest victory over sensuality and force. The true relation 
 borne to each other by the sexes into which human kind is dis- 
 tributed has become less misunderstood; and if the error which 
 confounded diversity with inequality of the powers of the two 
 sexes has been partially recognized in the opinions and institu- 
 tions of modern Europe, we owe this great benefit to the worship 
 of which chivalry was the law, and poets the prophets. 
 
 The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown 
 over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient 
 world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante 
 and his rival Milton have idealized are merely the mask and the 
 mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped 
 and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far 
 they were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted 
 in their minds between their own creeds and that of the people. 
 Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by 
 placing Rhipasus, whom Virgil calls justissimus iinus,^ in Paradise, 
 and observing a most heretical caprice in his distribution of rewards 
 and punishments. And Milton's poem contains within itself 
 a philosophical refutation of that system, of which, by a strange 
 and natural antithesis, it has been a chief popular support. Noth- 
 ing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of 
 Satan as expressed in Paradise Lost. It is a mistake to suppose 
 that he could ever have been intended for the popular personi- 
 fication of evil. Implacable hate, patient cunning, and a sleepless 
 refinement of device to inflict the extremest anguish on an enemy, 
 these things are evil; and, although venial in a slave, are not to 
 be forgiven in a tyrant ; although redeemed by much that ennobles 
 his defeat in one subdued, are marked by all that dishonours his 
 conquest in the victor. Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far 
 superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose which 
 
 ' [A mr.n most Just.]
 
 326 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, 
 is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts 
 the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken 
 notion of inducing him to repent, of a perseverance in enmity, 
 but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new 
 torments. Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this 
 shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority 
 of moral virtue to his God over his Devil. And this bold neglect 
 of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the su- 
 premacy of Milton's genius. He mingled, as it were, the elements 
 of human nature as colours upon a single pallet, and arranged 
 them in the composition of his great picture according to the laws 
 of epic truth; that is, according to the laws of that principle by 
 which a series of actions of the external universe and of intelligent 
 and ethical beings is calculated to excite the sympathy of succeed- 
 ing generations of mankind. The Divina Commedia and Para- 
 dise Lost have conferred upon modern mythology a systematic 
 form; and when change and time shall have added one more 
 superstition to the mass of those which have arisen and decayed 
 upon the earth, commentators will be learnedly employed in 
 elucidating the religion of ancestral Europe, only not utterly 
 forgotten because it will have been stamped with the eternity of 
 genius. 
 
 Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet: that is, 
 the second poet, the series of whose creations bore a defined and 
 intelligible relation to the knowledge and sentiment and religion 
 of the age in which he lived, and of the ages which followed it, 
 developing itself in correspondence with their development. For 
 Lucretius had limed the wings of his swift spirit in the dregs of 
 the sensible world; and Virgil, with a modesty that ill became 
 his genius, had affected the fame of an imitator, even whilst he 
 created anew all that he copied; and none among the flock of 
 mock-birds, though their notes were sweet, Apollonius Rhodius, 
 Quintus Calaber, Nonnus, Lucan, Statius, or Claudian, have 
 sought even to fulfil a single condition of epic truth. Milton 
 was the third epic poet. For if the title of epic in its highest sense 
 be refused to the jEncid, still less can it be conceded to the Orlando 
 Furioso, the Gerusalemme Liberata, the Liisiad, or the Fairy 
 Queen. 
 
 Dante and ]Milton were both deeply penetrated with the ancient 
 religion of the civilized world; and its spirit exists in their poetry
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 327 
 
 probably in the same proportion as its forms survived in the unre- 
 formed worship of modern Europe. The one preceded and the 
 other followed the Reformation at almost equal intervals. Dante 
 was the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather 
 in the rudeness and acrimony than in the boldness of his censures 
 of papal usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced 
 Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, 
 out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. He was the congre- 
 gator of those great spirits who presided over the resurrection of 
 learning; the Lucifer of that starry flock which in the thirteenth 
 century shone forth from republican Italy, as from a heaven, into 
 the darkness of the benighted world. His very words are instinct 
 with spirit; each is as a spark, a burning atom of inextinguishable 
 thought; and many yet lie covered in the ashes of their birth, 
 and pregnant with the lightning which has yet found no con- 
 ductor. All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which 
 contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, 
 and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A 
 great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of 
 wisdom and delight; and after one person and one age has ex- 
 hausted all its divine eiSuence which their peculiar relations 
 enable them to share, another and yet another succeeds, and 
 new relations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and 
 an unconceived delight. 
 
 The age immediately succeeding to that of Dante, Petrarch, 
 and Boccaccio was characterized by a revival of painting, sculp- 
 ture, and architecture. Chaucer caught the sacred inspiration, 
 and the superstructure of English literature is based upon the 
 materials of Italian invention. 
 
 But let us not be betrayed from a defence into a critical history 
 of poetry and its influence on society. Be it enough to have 
 pointed out the effects of poets, in the large and true sense of the 
 word, upon their own and all succeeding times. 
 
 But poets have been challenged to resign the civic crown to 
 reasoners and mechanists on another plea. It is admitted that 
 the exercise of the imagination is most delightful, but it is alleged 
 that that of reason is more useful. Let us examine, as the grounds 
 of this distinction, what is here meant by utility. Pleasure or 
 good, in a general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sen- 
 sitive and intelligent being seeks, and in which, when found, it 
 acquiesces. There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, uni-
 
 328 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 versal, and permanent ; the other transitory and particular. 
 UtiHty may either express the means of producing the former or 
 the latter. In the former sense, whatever strengthens and puri- 
 fies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to 
 sense, is useful. But a narrower meaning may be assigned to the 
 word utility, confining it to express that which banishes the impor- 
 tunity of the wants of our animal nature, the surrounding men 
 with security of life, the dispersing the grosser delusions of super- 
 stition, and the conciliating such a degree of mutual forbearance 
 among men as may consist with the motives of personal advan- 
 tage. 
 
 Undoubtedly the promoters of utility, in this limited sense, 
 have their appointed ofSce in society. They follow the footsteps 
 of poets, and copy the sketches of their creations into the book 
 of common life. They make space, and give time. Their exer- 
 tions are of the highest value, so long as they confine their adminis- 
 tration of the concerns of the inferior powers of our nature within 
 the limits due to the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys 
 gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French 
 writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the 
 imaginations of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the 
 political economist combines labour, let them beware that their 
 speculations, for want of correspondence with those first prin- 
 ciples which belong to the imagination, do not tend, as they have 
 in modern England, to exasperate at once the extremes of luxury 
 and want. They have exemplified the saying, "To him that 
 hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little 
 that he hath shall be taken away." The rich have become richer, 
 and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is 
 driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and des- 
 potism. Such are the effects which must ever flow from an un- 
 mitigated exercise of the calculating faculty. 
 
 It is difficult to define pleasure in its highest sense; the defini- 
 tion involving a number of apparent paradoxes. For, from an 
 inexplicable defect of harmony in the constitution of human nature, 
 the pain of the inferior is frequently connected with the pleasures 
 of the superior portions of our being. Sorrow, terror, anguish, 
 despair itself, are often the chosen expressions of an approxima- 
 tion to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends 
 on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the 
 pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 329 
 
 melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The 
 pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure 
 itself. And hence the saying, "It is better to go to the house of 
 mourning than to the house of mirth." Not that this highest 
 species of pleasure is necessarily linked with pain. The delight 
 of love and friendship, the ecstasy of the admiration of nature, 
 the joy of the perception, and still more of the creation of poetry, 
 is often wholly unalloyed. 
 
 The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense 
 is true utility. Those who produce and preserve this pleasure 
 are poets or poetical philosophers. 
 
 The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau,^ 
 and their disciples, in favour of oppressed and deluded humanity, 
 are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it is easy to calcu- 
 late the degree of moral and intellectual improvement which the 
 world would have exhibited had they never lived. A little more 
 nonsense would have been talked for a century or two; and 
 perhaps a few more men, women, and children burnt as heretics. 
 We might not at this moment have been congratulating each other 
 on the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain. But it exceeds all 
 imagination to conceive what would have been the moral condi- 
 tion of the world if neither Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, 
 Shakespeare, Calderon, Lord Bacon, nor Milton had ever existed; 
 if Raphael and Michael Angelo had never been born; if the 
 Hebrew poetry had never been translated ; if a revival of the study 
 of Greek literature had never taken place; if no monuments of 
 ancient sculpture had been handed down to us; and if the poetry 
 of the religion of the ancient world had been extinguished together 
 with its belief. The human mind could never, except by the 
 intervention of these excitements, have been awakened to the 
 invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical 
 reasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now attempted 
 to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and creative 
 faculty itself. 
 
 We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom than we 
 know how to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and 
 economical knowledge than can be accommodated to the just dis- 
 tribution of the produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these 
 systems of thought is concealed by the accumulation of facts and 
 
 ' Although Rousseau has been thus classed, he was essentially a poet. The 
 others, even Voltaire, were mere reasoners.
 
 330 PERCY BY S SHE SHELLEY 
 
 calculating processes. There is no want of knowledge respect- 
 ing what is wisest and best in morals, government, and political 
 economy, or, at least, what is wiser and better than what men now 
 practise and endure. But we let "/ dare not wait upon / would, 
 like the poor cat in the adage." We want the creative faculty to 
 imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse 
 to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life: our 
 calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than 
 we can digest. The cultivation of those sciences which have en- 
 larged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, 
 has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed 
 those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the ele- 
 ments, remains himself a slave. To what but a cultivation of the 
 mechanical arts in a degree disproportioned to the presence of the 
 creative faculty, which is the basis of all knowledge, is to be 
 attributed the abuse of all invention for abridging and combining 
 labour, to the exasperation of the inequality of mankind ? From 
 what other cause has it arisen that the discoveries which should 
 have lightened have added a weight to the curse imposed on Adam ? 
 Poetry, and the principle of Self, of which money is the visible 
 incarnation, are the God and Mammon of the world. 
 
 The functions of the poetical faculty are twofold : by one it 
 creates new materials of knowledge, and power, and pleasure; 
 by the other it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and 
 arrange them according to a certain rhythm and order which 
 may be called the beautiful and the good. The cultivation of 
 poetry is never more to be desired than at periods when, from 
 an excess of the selfish and calculating principle, the accumulation 
 of the materials of external life exceeds the quantity of the power 
 of assimilating them to the internal laws of human nature. The 
 body has then become too unwieldy for that which animates 
 it. 
 
 Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and 
 circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all 
 science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is 
 at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of 
 thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns 
 all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and 
 withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the suc- 
 cession of the scions of the tree of life. It is the perfect and con- 
 summate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odour and
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 331 
 
 the colour of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose 
 it, as the form and splendour of unfaded beauty to the secrets of 
 anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, 
 friendship — what were the scenery of this beautiful universe 
 which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the 
 grave — and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did 
 not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where 
 the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar ? Poetry 
 is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the deter- 
 mination of the will. A man cannot say, "I will compose poetry." 
 The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation 
 is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an incon- 
 stant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises 
 from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes 
 as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are 
 unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this 
 influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is impossible 
 to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition 
 begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glo- 
 rious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is 
 probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. 
 I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day whether it is not 
 an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced 
 by labour and study. The toil and the delay recommended by 
 critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful 
 observation of the inspired moments, and an artificial connection 
 of the spaces between their suggestions by the intermixture of 
 conventional expressions ; a necessity only imposed by the limited- 
 ness of the poetical faculty itself : for Milton conceived the Para- 
 dise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions. We have 
 his own authority also for the muse having "dictated" to him the 
 "unpremeditated song." And let this be an answer to those who 
 would allege the fifty-six various readings of the first line of the 
 Orlando Fiirioso. Compositions so produced are to poetry what 
 mosaic is to painting. This instinct and intuition of the poetical 
 faculty is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts; 
 a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as 
 a child in the mother's womb ; and the very mind which directs 
 the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the 
 origin, the gradations, or the media of the process. 
 
 Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the
 
 332 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations 
 of thought and feeling sometimes associated with place or person, 
 sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising 
 unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful 
 beyond all expression : so that even in the desire and the regret 
 they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does 
 in the nature of its object. It is, as it were, the interpenetration 
 of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like 
 those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and 
 whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sands which paves 
 it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced 
 principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most 
 enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them 
 is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, 
 patriotism, and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions; 
 and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a uni- 
 verse. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits 
 of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they 
 combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world ; a word, 
 a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion -will touch the 
 enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experi- 
 enced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image 
 of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and 
 most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions 
 which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in 
 language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing 
 sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide — 
 abide, because there is no portal of exi)rcssion from the caverns 
 of the spirit which they inhajjit into the universe of things. Poetry 
 redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man. 
 
 Poetry turns all things to loveliness ; it exalts the beauty of that 
 which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most 
 deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, 
 eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke 
 all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and 
 every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed 
 by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it 
 breathes : its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous 
 waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of 
 familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping 
 beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY T,;^^ 
 
 All things exist as they are perceived : at least in relation to the 
 percipient. 
 
 " The mind is in its own place, and of itself 
 Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Hcav'n." 
 
 But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to 
 the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads 
 its own figured curtain, or withdraws life's dark veil from before 
 the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our 
 being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the famil- 
 iar world is a chaos. It reproduces the common universe of which 
 we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward 
 sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder 
 of our being. It compels us to feel that which we perceive, and 
 to imagine that which we know. It creates anew the universe, 
 after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of 
 impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and 
 true words of Tasso : Non merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio 
 ed il Poeta} 
 
 A poet, as he is the author to others of the highest wisdom, 
 pleasure, virtue, and glory, so he ought personally to be the hap- 
 piest, the best, the wisest, and the most illustrious of men. As to 
 his glory, let time be challenged to declare whether the fame of 
 any other institutor of human life be comparable to that of a poet. 
 That he is the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he 
 is a poet, is equally incontrovertible : the greatest poets have been 
 men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, 
 and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most 
 fortunate of men: and the exceptions, as they regard those who 
 possessed the poetic faculty in a high yet inferior degree, will be 
 found on consideration to confine rather than destroy the rule. 
 Let us for a moment stoop to the arbitration of popular breath, 
 and usurping and uniting in our own persons the incompatible 
 characters of accuser, witness, judge, and executioner, let us 
 decide, without trial, testimony, or form, that certain motives 
 of those who are "there sitting where we dare not soar," are repre- 
 hensible. Let us assume that Homer was a drunkard, that Virgil 
 was a flatterer, that Horace was a coward, that Tasso was a mad- 
 man, that Lord Bacon was a peculator, that Raphael was a liber- 
 tine, that Spenser was a poet-laureate. It is inconsistent with 
 
 1 [No one deserves the name of creator, except God and the Poet.]
 
 334 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 this division of our subject to cite living poets, but posterity has 
 done ample justice to the great names now referred to. Their 
 errors have been v^^eighed and found to have been dust in the 
 balance; if their sins "were as scarlet, they are now white as 
 snow"; they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and 
 redeemer, Time. Observe in what a ludicrous chaos the impu- 
 tations of real or fictitious crime have been confused in the con- 
 temporary calumnies against poetry and poets; consider how 
 little is, as it appears — or appears, as it is; look to your own 
 motives, and judge not, lest ye be judged. 
 
 Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that 
 it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, 
 and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connection 
 with the consciousness or will. It is presumptuous to determine 
 that these are the necessary conditions of all mental causation, 
 when mental effects are experienced unsusceptible of being referred 
 to them. The frequent recurrence of the poetical power, it is 
 obvious to suppose, may produce in the mind a habit of order 
 and harmony correlative with its. own nature and with its effects 
 upon other minds. But in the intervals of inspiration, and they 
 may be frequent without being durable, a poet becomes a man, 
 and is abandoned to the sudden reflux of the influences under 
 which others habitually live. But as he is more delicately organ- 
 ized than other men, and sensible to pain and pleasure, both his 
 own and that of others, in a degree unknown to them, he will 
 avoid the one and pursue the other with an ardour proportioned 
 to this difference. And he renders himself obnoxious to calumny 
 when he neglects to observe the circumstances under which these 
 objects of universal pursuit and flight have disguised themselves 
 in one another's garments. 
 
 But there is nothing necessarily evil in this error, and thus 
 cruelty, envy, revenge, avarice, and the passions purely evil have 
 never formed any portion of the popular imputations on the lives 
 of poets. 
 
 I have thought it most favourable to the cause of truth to set 
 down these remarks according to the order in which they were 
 suggested to my mind by a consideration of the subject itself, 
 instead of observing the formality of a polemical reply; but if the 
 view which they contain be just, they will be found to involve a 
 refutation of the arguers against poetry, so far at least as regards 
 the first division of the subject. I can readily conjecture what
 
 A DEFENCE OF POETRY 335 
 
 should have moved the gall of some learned and intelligent writers 
 who quarrel with certain versifiers; I confess myself, like them, 
 unwilling to be stunned by the Theseids of the hoarse Codri of 
 the day. Bavius and Maevius undoubtedly are, as they ever 
 were, insufferable persons. But it belongs to a philosophical 
 critic to distinguish rather than confound. 
 
 The first part of these remarks has related to poetry in its ele- 
 ments and principles ; and it has been shown, as well as the narrow 
 limits assigned them would permit, that what is called poetry, 
 in a restricted sense, has a common source with all other forms 
 of order and of beauty, according to which the materials of human 
 life are susceptible of being arranged, and which is poetry in an 
 universal sense. 
 
 The second part will have for its object an application of these 
 principles to the present state of the cultivation of poetry, and a 
 defence of the attempt to idealize the modern forms of manners 
 and opinions, and compel them into a subordination to the imagi- 
 native and creative faculty. For the literature of England, an 
 energetic development of which has ever preceded or accompanied 
 a great and free development of the national will, has arisen, as 
 it were, from a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy 
 which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will be a 
 memorable age in intellectual achievements, and we live among 
 such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any 
 who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and 
 religious liberty. The most unfailing herald, companion, and 
 follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial 
 change in opinion or institution is poetry. At such periods there 
 is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving 
 intense and impassioned conceptions respecting men and nature. 
 The persons in whom this power resides may often, as far as 
 regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent corre- 
 spondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. 
 But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to 
 serve, the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. 
 It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated 
 writers of the present day without being startled with the electric 
 life which burns within their words. They measure the circum- 
 ference and sound the depths of human nature with a compre- 
 hensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves per- 
 haps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it
 
 336 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hiero- 
 phants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the 
 gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present ; the words 
 which express what they understand not; the trumpets which 
 sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which 
 is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legis- 
 lators of the world.
 
 NOTES 
 
 The following notes and questions aim to aid the student in the analysis 
 of the foregoing selections. No attempt is made to supply data of historical 
 or explanatory sort other than may be needed in the understanding of what 
 the writers are driving at. The material that a critic uses, his point of view, 
 and the sanctions for his views or the positive demonstration of their truth 
 are what, in the opinion of the editor, are of prime importance for the student 
 to comprehend. In so extensive, varied, and, in the last analysis, so personal 
 a thing as literary criticism, no notes and questions can hope to be exhaustive. 
 Accordingly, in the following pages, only main points are indicated, and these 
 in a suggestive rather than a dogmatic way. Countless other questions will 
 occur to every student and teacher, but a careful study of what is here sup- 
 plied should furnish a pretty comprehensive idea of the chief sources of inter- 
 est in literary criticism, of the more typical methods that it employs, and the 
 types of demonstration of which critical opinion is susceptible. 
 
 I. LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 Stephen's account of the work which Swift did in behalf of Ireland is an 
 example of what may be termed biographical criticism, the criticism, that is, 
 which interprets a man's writings in relation to his life. More particularly, 
 this chapter is (i) a statement of Swift's position immediately after his leav- 
 ing England on the fall of the Tory ministry, (2) a view of the political situa- 
 tion in Ireland at that time, (3) a narrative of how Swift acted during the en- 
 suing score of years with regard to that situation, and (4) the comments of 
 the biographer on Swift's acts and writings. Of these items the iarst three 
 are narration and exposition of known fact, and criticism enters only in so far 
 as Stephen interprets these acts in one way or another. The fourth item is 
 the strictly critical part of the chapter ; the critical issue regards the value of 
 Swift's work. The critical questions that Stephen raises have to do with 
 (i) the justice of Swift's position, (2) the practical effectiveness of his writing, 
 and (3) the general worthiness of his championship of the oppressed. These 
 questions are economical, political, and ethical, rather than strictly literary, 
 and the evidence in support of Stephen's judgment is from ethical and 
 economic standards, historical events, and a comparison with Berkeley. 
 Hence the conclusions are less personal and more susceptible of proof than 
 would be the conclusions of an impressionistic method. 
 
 For that reason, the present essay is a good one from which to approach 
 the study of criticism. The best way to begin such study is with pieces 
 wherein the conclusions can be shown to be based on more or less tangible 
 and acceptable evidence, rather than on predilection or personal impression. 
 M i^: philological criticism (of necessity excluded from this volume) has this 
 
 z 337
 
 338 
 
 NOTES 
 
 same advantage — that its standards can be more exactly applied. The per- 
 sonal question does not so largely enter. 
 
 Other examples of criticism of the same biographical sort will be found 
 in such volumes as the English Men of Letters Series, especially those on 
 Pope and Johnson by the same author, the Great Writers Series, the Beacon 
 Biographies, particularly Professor Carpenter's Longfellow, a nice instance 
 of the method, the longer articles in the Dictionary of National Biography — 
 and others. Good critical essays by Stephen — many of them of a philo- 
 sophical rather than a biographical character — are those of Hours in a 
 Library and Studies of a Biographer. For other lives of Swift, consult 
 Scott, Forster, Craiii, and Collins. 
 
 1. Analyze the selection with a view to showing the points which Stephen 
 brings out. What parts are concerned with Swift's personality, character, 
 and motives? What with the situation in which he found himself and the 
 condition of Ireland ? What conclusion does Stephen arrive at with regard 
 to the value of Swift's work? Is the value of a literary, or of some other, 
 kind? What is the evidence on which Stephen bases his conclusions? 
 
 2. Compare the chapter with that on Uulliver's Travels from the same 
 book; do you note any differences in the kind of critical evidence or in the 
 kind of values? Write a commentaiy on some portion of the work of an 
 author's life. 
 
 II. DAVID MASSON 
 
 The review of De Quincey's writings is a good example of formal literary 
 classification. Like any thorough classification, it (i) gives the basis or 
 principle on which the divisions are made, (2) enumerates the individuals 
 in the classes and sub-classes, and (3) illustrates each class by typical exam- 
 ples. It further attempts to bring out the variety and range of De Quincey's 
 work and to show the relative significance and value of the different classes 
 and of individual pieces. It will be noted that the basis of classification is 
 mainly the ideas that are to be found in De Quincey's work, but other de- 
 scriptive categories are also used. Some of these, according to the character 
 of the work under discussion, are a;sthetic, some have to do with the occasion 
 of the work, some with structure, and some, as the description of Plato's 
 Republic, with De Quincey's temperamental reactions. It will also be 
 observed that the descriptions of .some of the works, as Klnsterheim and The 
 English Mail Coach, are pretty full; these are good examples of descriptive 
 summary. There is also a good deal of illustrative quotation. 
 
 So formal a classification as this is not very common in criticism, but 
 classification of some sort may be said to be implied in any good literary 
 discussion whatsoever. The account of Wood's Halfpence, the preceding 
 selection, for example, is rcallv a .sub-class of all Swift's writings, embracing 
 those in behalf of Ireland. Again, literary classification may be made on 
 dilTerent bases. A "polyhistor" like De Quincey, whose works bear singu- 
 larly little relation to the course of his life, may best be approached with 
 reference to his ideas, but a classification on the basis of his manner would also 
 be possible. The writings of a man like Swift, on the contrary, whose life 
 was passed in practical activity and who contributed little to our stock of ideas, 
 though much to our amusement, were better classed by the occasion; and 
 such is the scheme adopted by Stephen in his life of Swift. A classification
 
 NOTES 
 
 339 
 
 of Swift's works into controversial articles, satires, etc., would also be pos- 
 sible. With Lamb, again, a classification largely by forms, into stories, 
 dramas, criticism, and essays, etc., would be convenient and would have 
 the additional aptness of following pretty closely the various successive 
 interests of Lamb's literary development. An example of formal literary 
 classification, not so thorough as Masson's, will be found in Nichol's Carlyle 
 in the English Men of Letters. 
 
 1. Point out the parts of the present essay which (i) explain the principles 
 of the classification used, (2) name the individuals, and (3) characterize the 
 types and individuals. In what different ways does the critic characterize 
 the work of the author ? What does Masson say of the relative value of the 
 different writings of De Quincey? What of De Quincey's claim to compara- 
 tive greatness? 
 
 2. How many of these characterizations state fact, and what ones merely 
 express opinion ? Do you see any reason for Masson's opinion that De Quin- 
 cey's biographical sketch of Shakespeare is "the perfection of proportion" 
 (p. 18) ? Does Masson demonstrate his opinion of De Quincey as a critic 
 (p. 31) ? What of the estimate of Levana ? 
 
 _ 3. Point out the principle and scheme of classification in other essays in 
 this volume. Make a classification of the works of some writer with whom 
 you are tolerably familiar, with a view to showing his range, variety, and chief 
 points of excellence. 
 
 III. SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 
 Johnson's famous piece of criticism is an example of that kind which 
 attempts to characterize the type or genre to which a man belongs. Cowley 
 is treated as the representative of a class, a fashion, or a cast of mind. John- 
 son's exposition is excellent: he, following his usually systematic and simple 
 intellectual methods, first characterizes his type and then illustrates it. The 
 critical question at issue would, therefore, be how fairly Johnson has repre- 
 sented the men he is dealing with; how far, in short, his characterization is 
 a matter of fact. His judgment concerning the passages quoted is presumably 
 solid and authoritative ; but more modern students differ with him in holding 
 that he has not fairly represented the better side of Donne, Cowley, and 
 others. 
 
 In recent years a good deal of heed has been paid to the study of form or 
 genre in literature, on the principle that individual pieces of writing may 
 properly be compared only with like kinds, but that the different genres^ 
 the epic, the lyric, the novel, etc. — have different degrees of value, and on 
 the ground, too, that the proper study of literature can best proceed by pro- 
 cess of isolating and tracing the origin and development of various forms. An 
 important book of this type is the late F. Brunetiere's V Evolution des genres 
 dans Vhistoire de la litteratiire, and various special books, such as Professor 
 W. L. Cross's The Development of the English Novel, and Professor John 
 Erskine's Elizabethan Lyric, are examples of the study. 
 
 I. What, according to Johnson, are the chief characteristics of the 
 " metaphysical poets " ? What is meant, in this essay, by " wit " ? By " art " ? 
 By to " copy nature or life " ? By " singular in their tho{ights" ? By "just" ? 
 By "conceits"? By "inelegant" ? By the various figures of speech in the 
 quotations? By such phrases, in the opening paragraph, as "Tracing 
 intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind of men," etc.?
 
 340 NOTES 
 
 2. In general, by what sanctions does Johnson seek to establish his posi- 
 tions, in this essay? What are his standards for critical judgment? Com- 
 pare these with the evidence that he uses in others of The Lives of the Poets, 
 in, for example, his famous characterization of Pope's personality, character, 
 and attainment. Test the truth of such phrases as " Sublimity is produced by 
 aggregation and littleness of dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, 
 and consist in positions not Hmited by exceptions, and in descriptions not 
 descending to minuteness" (p. 47). 
 
 IV. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 
 The present selection is an example of what is frequently called destructive 
 criticism, in that it assails a received tradition arid a current vogue. Macau- 
 lay's point is not so much to establish principles for guidance in criticism 
 as to test a given product by certain standards. What these standards are 
 may be gathered from the sins of which Montgomery has been guilty, as, for 
 example, to mention the chief in order of appearance : stealing of other men's 
 ideas, mutilation of them, the indiscriminate use of figures, stupidity, false 
 syntax, lack of harmony, gross bad taste and even blasphemy, incoherence, 
 lack of sense of situation, tautology, tasteless descriptions, the presentation 
 of disjointed and silly physics, metaphysics, and theology, meaningless 
 phrases, etc. The standards, it is evident, are of different kinds; some are 
 merely rhetorical, others have to do with philosophy, religion, the writer's 
 power of observation, and good use generally. 
 
 The critical issue of this essay, aside from the opening anathema against 
 puffing, is with regard (i) to the specific fairness with which the points against 
 Montgomery are made, and (2) granting their specific fairness, whether or not 
 they are representative of Montgomery. It is the same question that came 
 up regarding Johnson's discourse on the metaphysical poets. Another inter- 
 esting point would be the actual effect of such a piece of criticism as the 
 present. 
 
 The incomplete outlines given above of the topics treated in the essay re- 
 veals the fact that Macaulay approached his victim without much system. 
 Structurally, the essay is a scries of brilliant points, or examples, of diverse 
 character, rather than a sustained thesis. Possibly this method of attack is 
 better than a more formal one would be in dealing with so weak an opponent 
 as Montgomery; the rapid-fire of Macaulay's style is very brisk and vigorous. 
 Certainly there are few more lively and energetic pieces of criticism in the 
 language than this. 
 
 1. Show in each detail what Macaulay's standards of judgment are. 
 Can these be classified under one general head? If so, compare that general 
 standard with those im])lied in the essays of Johnson, Arnold, Paler, and 
 others. Compare the standards of Macaulay with those of other critics of the 
 judicial type, as Johnson {Lives oj the Poets) or Jeffrey. (See L. E.Gates's 
 Selections from Jeffrey.) Compare the present essay with such essays as 
 those of Mr. J. M. Robertson on Arnold, Ruskin, Carlyle, Emerson, and 
 others in Modern Humanists, to note any difference in standards. 
 
 2. Are the points made by Macaulay well taken ? Are they of equal im- 
 portance? Does he really prove that Montgomery was a plagiarist? Are 
 these points representative of Montgomery? Is Montgomery assailed as a 
 person or as a typically bad example ?
 
 NOTES 341 
 
 3. Look into the history of the effect of this essay and see if you can deter- 
 mine why it may have accomphshed its end, an 1 why Jeffrey's equally vehe- 
 ment onslaughts on Wordsworth are looked upon as failures. 
 
 V. WALTER BAGEHOT 
 
 Bagehot's essay on Dickens's novels is an attempt to make one of those 
 estimates of an author which is called a review, for the convenience and 
 enlightenment of actual and prospective readers. This issue is stated clearly 
 in the third paragraph. Admitting the greatness and the vogue of Dickens, 
 Bagehot's aim is to classify Dickens's genius and to show the characteristic 
 excellences and defects which emanate from it, and of which it is illustrative. 
 This aim Bagehot carries out by his very broad division of men of genius into 
 the regular and the irregular, with the accompanying illustrations of each 
 type and the orderly analysis of Dickens's qualities which illustrate the type 
 to which he belongs. 
 
 Throughout the essay Bagehot deals with these large opposing types, 
 best illustrated by the fundamental dichotomy of "regular" and "irregular." 
 His classification of novels into the "ubiquitous" and the "sentimental" is 
 another f-ase in point. The same trait is to be observed in other essays by 
 the same hand: for example, in Shakespeare The Man (1853), Bagehot, by 
 a series of contrasted general types — as the "experiencing mind" (illustrated 
 by Shakespeare), the mind that grows by contact with new experience, and 
 that which is, as it were, " cast" from the start — he arrives at a tolerably full 
 characterization of the poet. It is obvious that the soundness of Bagehot's 
 criticism must in a large measure depend on the common sense of these fun- 
 damental distinctions. They are not at all distinctions of impression, subtle 
 phrasings — as with Pater, in the following essay — of the critic's own feeling 
 for the object, but are so broad and obvious as to be as self-evident as axioms 
 in mathematics. Some, of course, are pretty obvious. These distinctions are 
 evidently the chief standard of judgment by which Bagehot measures his 
 subjects, and they possess to a high degree the quality that is called " insight." 
 
 It is evident, also, that Bagehot here, as in other essays, like those of 
 Hartley Coleridge, Bishop Butler, Wordsworth, and others, is interested in 
 his subject chiefly as a type of mind or of art. In Wordsworth, Tennyson, and 
 Browning; on Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in Poetry (1864), for example, 
 Bagehot cares for the poets primarily as illustrations of a type of art; Tenny- 
 son, say, represents the kind of writing which gains its effects from accumu- 
 lation of details rather than by repression. The truth or falsity of such views 
 can be ascertained by an examination of the data supplied by Tennyson's 
 poetry. Only it must be remembered that Bagehot's distinctions are always 
 broad, and might be unsound when applied to a few minute matters. Nor 
 should it be forgotten that an entirely different set of data might strike another 
 critic. The proof of the matter, then, besides being axiomatic, depends on 
 the aptness of illustration, and that is of a very high order in Bagehot's work. 
 
 Types of critical writing which, like the present essay, attempt to place 
 before the reader critical data for judgment are to be found in such essays 
 (inferior to this in point of soundness of proof and material) as Arnold's 
 Wordsworth (Essays in Criticism, Second Series), an attempt to show the 
 causes which have kept that poet from his just due, and Mr. Morlcy's Macau-
 
 342 NOTES 
 
 lay (Miscellanies, Vol. I.), a preparatory lecture for the reading of Trevelyan's 
 Life of Macaiday. A classic essay dealing with a broad distinction is Ruskin's 
 chapter on the Pathetic Fallacy {Modern Painters, Vol. III.), or Arnold's 
 distinction between the "grand style simple" and the "grand style severe" 
 {On Translating Homer). 
 
 One cannot dismiss Bagehot without some mention of the brilliance and 
 vigor of his style. Occasionally unorthodox in syntactic relation, it is probably 
 unsurpassed by that of any English critic in happiness of phrasing. "He 
 describes London like a special correspondent for posterity" is a case in 
 point, as are his larger characterizations of novels (p. 88) and his analysis 
 of the way Dickens saw things (pp. 90-94). 
 
 I. Point out the special question at issue in this essay. Show how the 
 two types of genius are fundamental to the discussion which follows. Show 
 in detail what topics Bagehot speaks of in the successive paragraphs. 
 
 _ 2. E.xplain in detail the standards that Bagehot uses in characterizing 
 Dickens. What standards are employed or implied in the comparison, for 
 example, of unusual people, like Pickwick and Falstaff, with "real" people 
 (pp. 96-97)? What is the standard in Bagehot's discussion of Dickens's 
 politics (pp. 102-104) and his education (pp. 107-109)? 
 
 VI. WALTER PATER 
 
 The very graceful essay on Wordsworth belongs to that type of criticism 
 broadly called appreciation — which attempts not so much to try an author 
 by a priori reasoning as to state his valuable qualities. Pater's own defi- 
 nition of the term occurs in the preface to the Renaissance (p. xi) : "The 
 function of the aesthetic critic is to distinguish, analyze, and separate from 
 its adjuncts the virtue by which a picture, a landscape, a fair personality in 
 life or in a book, produces this special impression of beauty or pleasure, to 
 indicate what the source of that impression is and under what condition it 
 is experienced." Following this formula. Pater's aim is, therefore, to find 
 the peculiar virtue of Wordsworth; the issue is expressed in the latter half of 
 the fourth paragraph (p. 113). The essay then expounds the peculiar virtue 
 of Wordsworth from several points of view — his character and material, 
 his beliefs and philosophy, his manner, the constant trend of his thinking 
 toward contemplation; and the essay ends with a short summary of his 
 quality and value. 
 
 The essay is, broadly speaking, an impression of Wordsworth. It does 
 not, however, confine itself to a statement of likes and dislikes, but rather 
 deals with generalizations which Pater makes from facts which, from various 
 points of view, he has observed of Wordsworth's best work. The sanctions 
 for Pater's views arc, therefore, observation of phenomena of spiritual im- 
 port and, secondarily, the agreement which these views might have with other 
 writers on the same subject, together with the response and agreement which 
 the criticism might arouse in the mind of a reader. As information or fact, 
 the essay is merely an exposition of what Pater himself saw and felt, and in 
 this .sense it merely carries out the sentence quoted in the introduction to this 
 book : " What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct 
 abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of tempera- 
 ment, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects."
 
 NOTES 343 
 
 In thus making criticism simply a matter of sensuous perception, Pater is, 
 within these limits, on wholly safe ground, and is "scientific" in so far as he 
 expounds merely this fact that appears to him. Where it lacks complete- 
 ness would be in its failure to take into consideration facts of vogue and agree- 
 ment, and such rational tests as might be applied for the ascertaining of the 
 "real" value of Wordsworth. 
 
 Criticism of this type abounds in Pater's work; indeed he is the best rep- 
 resentative of this school in English. Appreciations and The Renaissance 
 are the most valuable books for study. An interesting excursion into criticism 
 can be made by comparing the point of view, the material, and the proof of 
 several essays on Wordsworth (or any other notable writer) ; for example, 
 those by Jeffrey on The Excursion and The White Doe of Rhyl stone, Coleridge 
 in Biographia Literaria, Hazlitt in The Spirit of the Age and elsewhere, De 
 Quincey in Literary Reminiscences, F. W. Robertson in Lectures and Addresses, 
 Bagehot in Literary Studies, Vol. II., Lowell in Prose Works, Vol. IV., Arnold 
 in Essays in Criticism, Second Series, Mr. Swinburne in Miscellanies, Mr. 
 Morley in Studies in Literature, Stephen in Hours in a Library, Vol. II., 
 Professor Woodberry in Makers of Literature, and others. 
 
 1. State the main classes of material that Pater uses in this essay. Show 
 in detail what he brings out under each general head. To what degree does 
 Pater deal with Wordsworth's personahty, character, hfe, ideas, and manner? 
 
 2. What are Pater's standards of judgment? How does he demonstrate 
 the truth of his propositions? To what extent is he in agreement with other 
 writers on the subject ? What are the main differences between his method 
 and treatment and that of other critics of Wordsworth. 
 
 VII. JOHN MACKINNON ROBERTSON 
 
 The essay on Poe, says Mr. Robertson, in the preface to New Essays 
 towards a Critical Method, is the only one in that volume which, perhaps, 
 "comes near applying all the tests mentioned in the preliminary essay on 
 The Theory and Practice of Criticism as proper to a critical inquiry." The 
 gist of that excellent essay, with which all students of criticism should be 
 familiar, is that in the formation of literary judgments all possible points of 
 view and all the material furnished by an author should be considered, and 
 that in this consideration all possible tests, literary, logical, argumentative, 
 scientific, comparative, etc., should be employed. Discussion of these various 
 points would occupy a larger space than may here be given. 
 
 For present purposes the essay on Poe is a new type of criticism. It may 
 be called "scientific" in so far as it attempts to take a complete view of the 
 facts and in so far as it attempts to establish facts by reasoning rather than pre- 
 dilection. In one sense, it may be called "collective," in that it states from 
 time to time, as points of departure, enough opinions about Poe to arrive at 
 some notion of the general consensus. It is historical in that it gives a good 
 idea of the growth of Poe's reputation; though this part is incidental and not 
 consecutive. 
 
 As "collective criticism" it is important to note that Mr. Robertson takes 
 more completely into consideration than any other writer of this volume the 
 facts of the vogue of his author and antecedent critical opinion. His cita- 
 tion of other critics is not, as with many writers, merely for the sake of a text
 
 344 NOTES 
 
 for his own views, but serves also as material for controversy and an attempt 
 to arrive at the truth on demonstrable grounds. The critique is therefore 
 more than a summary of historical facts or statement of vogue (things, indeed, 
 too often neglected in criticism!), such as Professor Nichol's statement of 
 Carlyle's influence {Carlyle in the English Men oj Letters) or Mr. Sidney Lee's 
 chapter on Shakespeare's Posthumous Reputation {Life of Shakespeare). 
 
 1. What points regarding Poe does Mr. Robertson cite as material for 
 criticism? (Compare Science in Criticism in Essays towards a Critical 
 Method.) What classification of material does he make ? Compare the 
 method and purpose of his classification with that of Professor Masson's 
 classification of De Quincey's writings? What points are made in each of 
 the separate sections? Make a summary of the essay. 
 
 2. What is Mr. Robertson's answer to the "theory of development" 
 (p. 139) ? Why is it "expedient " to follow Mr. Stedman, on p. 141, and not 
 on p. 1 78 ? What are the canons by which Mr. Robertson criticises The Raven, 
 Lenore, and The Bells (pp. 142-144)? What is Mr. Robertson's idea of 
 "total performance" (p. 154)? of realism (pp. 157-159)? of Poe's type as a 
 realistic prose writer (pp. 1 57-159)? of much contemporary criticism (passim)? 
 
 3. What sort of critical inquiry does Mr. Robertson employ at different 
 points of his essay? On what grounds are his views demonstrable? How far do 
 taste and liking enter into his conclusions? Answer these questions in detail. 
 
 4. Try to find other examples of "collective" criticism in books of essays 
 and biographies. 
 
 VIII. JOHN DRYDEN 
 
 The celebrated Preface to the Fables, commonly regarded as one of the 
 masterpieces of English criticism, appeared a few months before Dryden's 
 death. This was prefi.xed to a volume of translations and adaptations, which 
 bore the title Fables, Ancient and Modern, translated into Verse from Homer, 
 Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer : with Original Poems. The Preface as it stands 
 is chiefly a criticism of Chaucer, renowned for its cathoHcity of taste, but it 
 contains also comparisons of the different poets named in the title, and a de- 
 fence of his own conduct from charges made against him by Blackmore, Mil- 
 bourn, and, particularly, Jeremy Collier, whose Short View of the Profane- 
 ness of the English Stage (1698) had attacked the plays of Drydcn, among 
 others. 
 
 The Preface illustrates the general character of Dryden's criticism; like 
 all his other pieces, it is occasional, and seems to indicate the things that he 
 was interested in and the principles that he devised and employed. It is a 
 very interesting study to trace the change in material and the critical prin- 
 ciples which these prefaces show, and for this study Mr. W. P. Ker's Essays 
 of John Drydcn is a valuable book. 
 
 In this particular essay are to be noted the pleasure that Dryden evi- 
 dently has in literature, his desire to show the letters of his country in the best 
 light, his catholicity of temper, and the gentlemanly discursiveness of his 
 style. The princii)les which he enunciates in passing are interesting: 
 the favor of the reader, common-sense, and moderation, arc evidently the 
 chief court of appeal, but he also recognized ideas of growth in language and 
 the necessity of moral standards. Once only, and then in a vague way 
 (p. 198) he cites authority — that of Aristotle.
 
 NOTES 345 
 
 Dryden employs a method of comparison, balancing Homer and Virgil, 
 Chaucer and Ovid, Chaucer and Boccaccio, Chaucer and Horace and Virgil. 
 The material comprises facts of life, of personality, of time and place, of char- 
 acter, of learning, of style, of invention, of imagination, of structural design 
 (which Dryden regards as very important in the determination of the result), 
 of understanding of the subject, of verisimilitude, of dramatic naturalness 
 and taste, of good sense and judgment, the "following of nature," of style 
 and verse and harmony, and such things. Under some of these heads his 
 facts are wrong, as in his attributing of Piers Ploughman to Chaucer, and his 
 strictures on Chaucer's verse, and, in general, his knowledge does not, in all 
 ways, correspond to our own (cf. Lounsbury's Studies in Chancer, for a more 
 modern view of the facts), but wherein he fails is because of deficient know- 
 ledge rather than by reason of unsound judgment on the evidence; in both 
 knowledge and taste he was, as we are fond of thinking, far in advance of 
 his age. 
 
 1. Make an analysis of the topics of Dryden's essay. Point out any 
 other principles besides those enumerated that you have noticed, and also 
 show the points of comparison on which the critical findings rest. What 
 does Dryden say with regard to the relative value of these points of interest ? 
 What does he say of "conceits," and how sound are his reasons? 
 
 2. Compare the present essay with the Epistle Dedicatory to the Rival 
 Ladies (1664, Ker, Vol. I., p. i) with a view to showing the difference of mate- 
 rial in each. With the preface to Annus Mirabilis (1666, Ker, Vol. I., p. 10). 
 With the essay on Heroic Plays (1672, Ker, Vol. I., p. 148), and others. 
 Compare it, in point of material, critical principles, appeal to authority, 
 method of arriving at judgments, and form, with the celebrated Essay of 
 Dramatic Poesy, 1668. 
 
 Compare Dryden from these points of view with preceding and succeed- 
 ing critics, such as Sidney, Ben Jonson, Addison, and Samuel Johnson. 
 
 IX. FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 The essay on Ruskin illustrates a not uncommon type of critical writing, 
 in that it aims primarily to take neither a general survey of a man's work nor 
 to present a theory of art, but to expound and estimate specific excellences. 
 This purpose the author states in paragraph 2 (p. 202) and again in para- 
 graph 8 (p. 204). It is carried out in two chief ways, after some discussion 
 of the more general aspects of Ruskin's character and teaching: (i) by 
 various adjectives characterizing Ruskin's prose and (2) by some analysis 
 of the "consonance" of his sentences. There is also a division of a not un- 
 common type, especially in art criticism, into "earlier" and "later" manner, 
 with some explanation of each. 
 
 Of neither of these points, the general characteristics and the " consonance," 
 is Mr. Harrison's analysis very definite. With regard to the first, he uses 
 with great frequency such categories as "precious," "grotesque," "noble," 
 "eccentric," "obtrusively luscious," which are somewhat in the air, but with 
 regard to the actual length of some of Ruskin's periods he is more exact, if not 
 more luminous. The terms quoted evidently imply some standard of perfect 
 prose, — like Arnold's phrase, "regularity, uniformity, precision, balance" 
 {The Study of Poetry), — but what this standard is probably no critics agree. 
 Indeed it is probably impossible of determination. Attempts have been
 
 346 
 
 NOTES 
 
 made to limit and define good English prose In an arbitrary, a priori way by 
 saying that it should contain a fixed proportion of Latin words to Anglo- 
 Saxon words, and some authors have found hope in the word-length of 
 sentences; but these attempts merely supply more or less interesting and in- 
 structive data. Such data Mr. Harrison recognizes merely as illustrative of 
 something extraordinary in Ruskin's periods. He also recognizes the patent 
 fact of relativity in prose, or of types of style, as that of the preacher or the 
 philosopher (p. 206). 
 
 The second point, that of "consonance," is one that has been more thor- 
 oughly studied, along with other things, in connection with verse rather than 
 as an adjunct to prose. There are probably no such good analyses of prose 
 as of verse, for e.xample, Professor Gummere's Handbook of Poetics, or 
 Professor Alden's English Verse. Mr. Harrison's remark that he knew no 
 systematic study of the subject is undoubtedly true, but Stevenson's analysis 
 of this element in On Style in Literature (cf. my Representative Essays on 
 the Theory of Style) antedates this essay by ten years, and is also more 
 thorough. (Cf. also my Studies in Structure and Style in relation to Ruskin.) 
 
 Mr. Harrison is wrong when he says (p. 215, n.) that Ruskin's sentence of 
 619 words is possibly "the most gigantic sentence in English prose." There 
 is one in Hazlitt's sketch of Coleridge in The Spirit oj the Age of 848 words, 
 which, however, could, like most prize sentences, have been broken by slight 
 changes of punctuation. It is so interesting in its effect and in its rhythm 
 that it may be quoted : — 
 
 "Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, 'etherial braid, 
 thought-woven,' — and he busied himself for a year or two with vibrations 
 and vibratiuncles, and the great law of association that binds all things in 
 mystic chain, and the doctrine of Necessity (the mild teacher of Charity) 
 and the Millennium, anticipative of a life to come — and he plunged deep into 
 the controversy on Matter and Spirit, and, as an escape from Dr. Priestly's 
 Materialism, where he felt himself imprisoned by the logician's spell, like 
 Ariel in the cloven pine-tree, he became suddenly enamoured of Bishop 
 Berkeley's fairy-world,' and used in all companies to build the universe, like 
 a brave poetical fiction, of fine words — and he was deep-read in Malebranche 
 and in Cudworth's Intellectual System (a huge pile of learning, unwieldy, 
 enormous) and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic theories, and in Bishop Butler's 
 Sermons, and in the Duchess of Newcastle's fantastic folios, and in Clarke 
 and South and Tillotson, and all the fine thinkers and masculine rcasoners 
 of that age — and Leibnitz's Pre-Established Harmony reared its arch above 
 his head, like the rainbow in the cloud, covenanting with the hopes of man 
 — and then he fell plump, ten thousand fathoms down (but his wings saved 
 him harmless) into the hortus siccus of Dissent, where he pared religion down 
 to the standard of reason, and stripped faith of mystery, and preached Christ 
 crucified and the Unity of the Godhead, and so dwelt for a while in the spirit 
 
 ' Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful Sonnets) 
 after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third was called Derwent, 
 after the river of that name. Nothing ran he more characteristic of his mind 
 than this circumstance. All his ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on forever, 
 and still murmuring as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished — 
 
 ' And so by many winding nooks it strays, 
 With willing sport to the wild ocean ! '
 
 NOTES , 347 
 
 with John Huss and Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John Zisca, and 
 ran through Neal's history of the Puritans and Calamy's Non-Conformists' 
 Memorial, having like thoughts and passions with them — but then Spinoza 
 became his God, and he took up the vast chain of being in his hand, and the 
 round world became the centre and the soul of things in some shadowy 
 sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him he beheld the living traces and the 
 sky-pointing proportions of the mighty Pan —   but poetry redeemed him from 
 this spectral philosophy, and he bathed his heart in beauty, and gazed at the 
 golden light of heaven, and drank of the spirit of the universe, and wandered 
 at eve by fairy-stream or fountain, 
 
 ' — When he saw nought but beauty, 
 When he heard the voice of that Almighty One 
 In every breeze that blew or wave that murmured ' — 
 
 and wedded with truth in Plato's shade, and in the writings of Proclus 
 and Plotinus saw the ideas of things in the eternal mind, and unfolded all 
 mysteries with the Schoolmen and fathomed the depths of Duns Scotus and 
 Thomas Aquinas, and entered the third heaven with Jacob Behmen, and 
 walked hand in hand with Swedenborg through the pavilions of the New 
 Jerusalem, and sung his faith in the promise and in the word in his Reli- 
 gious Musings — and lowering himself from that dizzy height, poised himself 
 on Milton's wings, and spread out his thoughts in charity with the glad prose 
 of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's Sonnets, and studied Cowper's 
 blank verse, and betook himself to Thomson's Castle of Indolence, and sported 
 with the wits of Charles the Second's days and of Queen Anne, and relished 
 Swift's style and that of the John Bull (Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. 
 Croker's), and dallied with the British Essayists and Novelists, and knew all 
 qualities of more modern writers with a learned spirit, Johnson, and Gold- 
 smith, and Junius, and Burke, and Godwin, and the Sorrows of Werter, 
 and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire, and Marivaux, and Crebillon, 
 and thousands more — now 'laughed with Rabelais in his easy chair' or 
 pointed to Hogarth, or afterwards dwelt on Claude's classic scenes, or spoke 
 with rapture of Raphael, and compared the women at Rome to figures that 
 had walked out of his pictures, or visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described 
 the works of Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral of 
 the picture of the Triumph of Death, where the beggars and the wretched 
 invoke his dreadful dart, but the rich and mighty of the earth quail and 
 shrink before it; and in that land of siren sights and sounds, saw a dance of 
 peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes and gondolas, — or wandered into 
 Germany and lost himself in the labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and of the 
 Kantean philosophy, and amongst the cabalistic names of Fichte and Schel- 
 ling and Lessing, and God knows who — this was long after, but all the for- 
 mer while he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes with tears, as he hailed 
 the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in darkness and in blood, and had 
 kindled his affections at the blaze of the French Revolution, and sang for joy 
 when the towers of the Bastile and the proud places of the insolent and the 
 oppressor fell, and would have floated his bark, freighted with fondest fancies, 
 across the Atlantic wave with Southey and others to seek for peace and free- 
 dom: — 
 
 ' In Philarmonia's undivided dale ! '
 
 348 NOTES 
 
 In general, Mr. Harrison's essay is somewhat loose in structure. As has 
 been said, he states his point at issue a couple of times at least, frequently 
 digresses from this to discuss Ruskin's ideas and his own likes and dislikes, 
 and is obsessed with the length of Ruskin's sentences. 
 
 1. Point out the main topics of Mr. Harrison's essay and show what he 
 is treating in each paragraph. What is the special topic, or critical issue, of 
 his essay ? Show how he brings this out and where he diverges from it. 
 
 2. Does Mr. Harrison use largely categories of demonstrable fact, or does 
 he frequently deal with terms equivalent, in general, to "good" or "bad"? 
 What, with regard to the preceding question, is implied in such a sentence as 
 this (p. 21 1): "The piece is overwrought as well as unjust, with some- 
 what false emphasis, but how splendid in colour and majestic in language" ? 
 Or this (p. 2iq): "Every other faculty of a great master of speech, except 
 reserve, husbanding of resources, and patience, he possesses in a measure 
 most abundant — lucidity, purity, brilliance, elasticity, wit, fire, passion, 
 imagination, majesty, with a mastery over all the melody of cadence that has 
 no rival in the whole range of English literature"? Or this (p. 211): 
 "Stained as usual with the original sin of Calvinism" ? Or by the "perfect 
 style" (p. 205)? Compare On English Prose in the same volume from 
 which this essay is taken (or Represoitatwe Essays on the Theory of Style). 
 Make a catalogue of the categories which Mr. Harrison employs, with a view 
 to ascertaining his standards and the sanctions or proofs for them. 
 
 3. State Mr. Harrison's theory of "Consonance." Compare it with 
 Stevenson's in On Style in Literature. Do you notice any defects in the 
 theory? Test by this theory any passage that seems to you to be good. 
 
 4. Point out other English critics, such as Hazlitt, who have made large 
 use of aesthetic categories in their criticism. 
 
 X. CHARLES LAMB 
 
 Lamb's famous essay on Shakespeare, perhaps his most conspicuous piece 
 of criticism, is as good an example as can be found of that paradoxical type 
 which rests on personality and a wholly a priori premise. That premise 
 is expressed in these words: "They [Shakespeare's plays] being in themselves 
 essentially so different from all others" (p. 228). Following from this, the 
 critical proposition is: "I cannot help being of opinion that the plays of 
 Shakespeare are less calculated for performance on a stage than those of 
 almost any other dramatist whatever" (p. 222). This position Lamb main- 
 tains in a series of very brilliantly phrased reasons, of which that about Lear 
 (p. 231) is classic in its eloquence and an excellent example of the dominance 
 of taste in criticism. 
 
 The chief positions of the essay are these : ( i) The inner life which Shake- 
 speare represents is unfitted to the capacity of audiences which can appre- 
 ciate only a story, action, or vociferous talk; (2) acting, even of a great sort, 
 like that of Mrs. Siddons, tends to level, or to raise to the same level, both 
 bad and good sentiments; (3) the tragedy of the mind, of I>ear and Othello, 
 for example, may not be represented except to the imagination; (4) stage 
 mechanism is inadequate to picture the beauty of Shakespeare's scenes, as 
 those of The Tempest. 
 
 It is evident that many fallacies are rampant in Lamb's argument. His- 
 torically, for example, it is a fact that the plays were, despite Lamb's interpre-
 
 NOTES 349 
 
 tation, written to be acted. Again Lamb confuses the distinction between 
 good and bad acting. P'urthermore, there is no reason why any play may not 
 be acted, since we learn of tragic or spiritual happenings only by words and 
 acts, media, that is, at the command of the actor, and it is doubtful, for psycho- 
 logical reasons, whether the reading of plays, which Lamb approves, may not 
 be objected to on much the same grounds as the seeing of the stage presenta- 
 tion. Such phrases, too, as "I am not arguing that Hamlet should not be 
 acted, but how much Hamlet is made another thing by being acted" (p. 224), 
 contain fallacies; for that sentence implies an absolute Hamlet, which is 
 impossible. Lamb's objection would apply to awy interpretation or reading, 
 and yet Lamb, with charming inconsistence, practically allows us to im- 
 agine any Hamlet we like; for he says (p. 222) that in seeing a Shakespearian 
 play, "We have let go a dream, in quest of an unattainable substance." 
 Otlier paradoxes will appear to the reader. 
 
 "The truth is," to use a phrase of Lamb's since widely employed by 
 many impressionists, that Lamb's criticism is hardly more than the expres- 
 sion of his personal predilection, put in an eloquent form. The fundamental 
 premise quoted in the first paragraph of this note is strictly undemonstrable. 
 It is one of the curiosities of criticism, both historically and psychologically, 
 to note how different this premise is from that which a century and more ear- 
 lier assumed Shakespeare to be a barbarian. No more really rational 
 grounds can be assigned for one than for the other; but the change in taste 
 is extreme. It is a matter of curiosity, in like manner, to note the reasons 
 which Lamb's great contemporaries, Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and 
 others, gave for holding a premise akin to that of Lamb. Shakespeare was 
 to all these men, in the words of De Quincey, "the glory of the human intel- 
 lect" (Shakespeare, 1838), yet the reasons why he was so great differ with 
 their authors. His imaginative height is what strikes Lamb; with Coleridge, 
 for example, it is some six or eight qualities of his mind (Lectures on Shake- 
 speare), whereas De Quincey lays especial stress on what might be called 
 Shakespeare's intellectual contribution. These dicta are, of course, quite 
 as illuminating with regard to the personality of the authors as with regard to 
 Shakespeare, and they very well illustrate the role played by temperament 
 and predilection in criticism. They are really a very dignified expression of 
 likes and dislikes. Their strength lies in the earnest and brilliant expression 
 of the authors, and they may be regarded as literature rather than as science. 
 
 1. State Lamb's thesis and show the points that he makes in support of it. 
 What is the demonstration or evidence for his various positions? What is 
 meant by such phrases as "a proper reverence for Shakespeare"? (p. 229.) 
 
 2. Analyze such dicta as "The love-dialogues of Romeo and Juliet, those 
 silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night; the more intimate sacred 
 sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus with their 
 married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading — 
 by the inherent fault of stage representation," etc. (p. 223), with a view to 
 testing its universal soundness and to showing how much truth it contains. 
 How does the passage containing the words " torn so inhumanly from its living 
 place and principle of continuity in the play" (p. 222) square with Lamb's 
 own procedure in his Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets? 
 
 3. Compare the thesis held by Lamb and his method with the theses and 
 the method of contemporary paradoxical critics, such as Tolstoy in What is 
 Art ? or Mr. Bernard Shaw in the introductions to his various volumes of
 
 350 NOTES 
 
 plays, or Mr. G. K. Chesterton in Varied Types, Heretics, and his biographies 
 of Browning and Dickens. What are the sanctions for the opinions held by 
 these critics? 
 
 4. Trace the growth of critical tests regarding Shakespeare from the time 
 of Dryden to Lamb, with a view to showing the steps by which the change 
 took place. Ascertain the influence of Lamb's position on contemporary and 
 subsequent criticism. These are very large topics, too large for most college 
 students to handle. One should have recourse to Professor Saintsbury's 
 History of Criticism, Professor Lounsbury's The Text of Shakespeare, and 
 many other books, besides the periodicals of the time and the work of critics 
 such as Johnson, Coleridge, and Hazlitt. 
 
 XL HENRY JAMES 
 
 As is said in the opening paragraph, Mr. James's essay on The Art of 
 Fiction is a discussion of the address of the same name by the late Sir Walter 
 Besant, delivered at the Royal Institution, April 25, 1884. The present 
 essay provoked a lively answer from Robert Louis Stevenson entitled A 
 Humble Rejnonstrance, originally published in Longmans' Magazine (v. p. 139) 
 and since reprinted in Memories and Portraits. The purport of Besant's 
 address is to be gathered from Mr. James's pages; but it would be an illu- 
 minating study in criticism for the reader to examine the material, the point 
 of view, and the sanctions of other essays and books on the subject. (See 
 Gayley and Scott, Introduction, and my Specimens of Narration for more 
 or less complete bibliography.) 
 
 The present discussion, as Mr. James is fond of reiterating, assumes the 
 point of view of the producer. All that the latter is really obliged to do is to 
 make his treatment of whatever subject he may choose an interesting one. 
 He should be bound by no canons and by no rules, except the artistic obliga- 
 tion of getting the best possible execution for his material. Unlike Besant, 
 Mr. James gives no directions for the writing of novels and no counsel to the 
 reader for judging their worth, except such as are implied in such words as 
 "treatment" and "interesting." The vagueness of these terms Mr. James 
 admits when he says that no two readers will be interested in or impressed 
 by the same thing. Thus it will be seen that Mr. James's criteria have noth- 
 ing at all absolute in them; the treatment and the question of excellence is 
 related, not to an ideal of novel writing, but to the material and the artistic 
 impulse of the writer. In practically denying the ideal and the absolutely 
 good, of which actual novels would be, as it were, more or less ine.xact repli- 
 cas, he is, philosophically, quite at variance with the fundamental assump- 
 tions of the four essays on poetry which follow this. 
 
 Like these essays, Mr. James's work might be called constructive as op- 
 posed to destructive in that it tries to establish a principle for the understand- 
 ing of an art. Mr. James would doubtless repudiate the term constructive, 
 on the same grounds which make such terms as romantic and the novel of 
 character appear to him to be clumsy and inexact, and he would strictly be 
 right. No vigorous piece of destructive criticism such, for example, as Macau- 
 lay's essay on Montgomery, fails to imply some constructive principle; and, 
 on the other hand, a piece of so-called constructive criticism by implication 
 is damaging to works which do not accord with the principle which it is estab- 
 lishing. It is impossible, actually, with the same exactness which would
 
 NOTES 351 
 
 characterize a building contractor, to say in literature where destructiveness 
 ends and constructiveness begins. However, the critical question here at 
 issue regards the proof of Mr. James's skilfully wrought and brilliantly 
 phrased exposition. 
 
 1. Explain the thesis of the essay. What sort of counsel has Besant 
 offered to writers? What is Mr. James's answer to these points? What is 
 meant in this essay by such terms as the "novel of incident," the "novel of 
 character," the "romance," "the good novel and the bad novel," "life," 
 " taste," " morality," " interesting," etc. ? Why, of the novels cited, does Mr. 
 James call some failures and some successes? What is Mr. James's test for 
 a novel? Explain and test such sentences as "Catching the very note and 
 trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life, that is the attempt whose strenuous 
 force keeps Fiction upon her feet" (p. 250). 
 
 2. On what grounds can Mr. James's position be supported or be over- 
 thrown ? Are his views rational or are they personal ? What light is afforded 
 by the fact that the distinctions which Mr. James denies are actually in com- 
 mon use? Consult Bliss Perry: A Study of Prose Fiction; W. L. Cross: 
 The Development of the English Novel; W. D. Howells's Criticism and 
 Fiction, etc. 
 
 XII. EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 Poe's very brief exposition of the way in which he wrote The Raven is, 
 whether strictly serious or not, an admirable piece of literary analysis. It is 
 so clear that it needs httle further comment, but one may remark that it is 
 in general an exposition, first, of the theory of poetry and, next, of the ap- 
 plication of the principles laid down to a particular situation. If Poe's prem- 
 ises are sound, — that a poem, depending as it does on conditions of limited 
 duration, must be short in length, that beauty must be its object, that the 
 most beautiful matter is the idea of death, etc., — then it would follow that 
 The Raven must be the most beautiful poem in existence, unless possibly sur- 
 passed by poems of a like character and better execution. With this extreme 
 judgment criticism would hardly be in accord, and the divergence would re- 
 late either to the theory or to its working out in metre, refrain, machinery, 
 and the like. As a matter of fact, poetry has never been successfully defined 
 to square with all theories; the essays of Arnold, Coleridge, and Shelley in 
 this volume are based on other fundamental conceptions as difficult to demon- 
 strate as this. Poe is consistent in his theory; it is the same as that enun- 
 ciated in his well-known Poetic Principle. 
 
 1. State Poe's theory of poetry, showing what, in his view, are the char- 
 acteristics of a poem. Show how these are applied in the composition of The 
 Raven. What does he mean by "incident," "tone," "effect," "universality," 
 etc.? Apply these principles to such poems as Ulalume and Annabel Lee. 
 Do they apply to typical lyrics of Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, 
 and others? On what proof do they rest ? 
 
 2. What of the title of this essay as related to the matter under discus- 
 sion? 
 
 XIII. MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 The structure of Arnold's essay, like that of Poe's, is clear and simple. 
 The essav consists of two parts, a statement of the principles of procedure and 
 the application of them to typical examples. The principles of procedure
 
 352 NOTES 
 
 are the recognition of poetry as a thing of supreme value and importance, the 
 consequent necessity of holding fast to the best poetry, the avoidance of the 
 fallacies of the historical estimate and the personal estimate, and the em- 
 ployment of touchstones as the best means of determining what real poetry 
 is. If this theory is right and if it can be applied fairly, it is evident, as with 
 Poe's essay, that Arnold's particular judgments must be sound. The main 
 critical question at issue, then, regards Arnold's theory. 
 
 With regard to his theory, two facts are evident. Unlike Poc's idea of 
 poetry, which was restricted to beauty, this is substantially restricted to moral 
 values: poetry is the rounder-out of all human activities; it is "the breath 
 and finer spirit of all knowledge"; at its best it "will be found to have a power 
 of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can." Again 
 there is, under this mainly moral view, the implication and assumption that 
 there is a perfect "accent" or ideal of poetry which finds its nearest approxi- 
 mation in the quotations of the celebrated " touchstones." It is in the light of 
 this ideal, of course, that these quoted passages become touchstones. The 
 main question of the value of Arnold's essay, aside from its being merely an 
 expression of personal opinion, would relate to the substantiation of this ideal, 
 of these touchstones, and the minor questions would relate to the testing of 
 particular poets according to them. 
 
 Whatever one's findings might be on such a question as this, when applied 
 also to other essays of Arnold, — and on this point such critics as Mr. J. M. 
 Robertson (Modern Humanists) and Mr. Swinburne (Miscellanies) have 
 spoken in no uncertain terms, — there remains the historical question of the 
 value of Arnold's criticism with regard to the awakening of interest in litera- 
 ture, to the increasing of our knowledge of foreign literature, to the eternally 
 necessary plea for greater breadth and catholicity of judgment and taste. 
 In these respects, at least, he is an important critic. 
 
 One thing has tended to obscure critical issues, of whatever sort, with 
 Arnold. He is the master of a style of great order and luciditv, but of such 
 pervasive assumption of superiority and finality of judgment that he either 
 immensely attracts or very much repels readers, according to their tempera- 
 ment. His constant laying down of the law is very good for the sustaining 
 of those who need the sustaining that the law supplies, but it sometimes annoys 
 people who themselves prefer to enunciate the dogma, just as such severely 
 final criticism finds little acceptance among people of an easier temperament. 
 "Moriemini in peccatis vestris, — ye shall die in your sins," if you don't 
 believe as I do about morals and style, is hardly fair as a final argument about 
 disputed points. 
 
 1. What is the occasion of Arnold's essay? Make an analvsis of tne 
 main points of this essay with a view to showing the text or thesis and the 
 illustration. 
 
 2. What does Arnold mean by such phrases as " conceive of poetry worth- 
 ily," "the high destinies of poetry," "a criticism of life." (Cf. the essay on 
 Wordsworth in Essays in Criticism: Second Series), "the best," "the really 
 excellent," a "real estimate," the "historical estimate," "the personal esti- 
 mate," "high poetic truth and seriousness," a "classic" and " cla.5.si- 
 cal," "liquid" and "fluid," "accent," "the real Burns," "laws of poetic 
 truth and poetic beauty," "the sound and unsound, or only half sound," 
 "the true and untrue, or only half true"? What is implied in all these 
 phrases with regard to Arnold's standards of criticism? What is implied in
 
 NOTES 353 
 
 such a sentence as this (p. 273): "To trace the labour, the attempts, the 
 weaknesses, the failures of a genuine classic, to acquaint one's self with his 
 time and his Hfe and his historical relationships, is mere literary dilettantism 
 unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end?" 
 
 3. What demonstration is there for the implied principles in the foregoing 
 quotation, either in history, in common consent, or in ethical and artistic 
 theory? To what degree can estimates be other than "personal"? How 
 far do Arnold's seem to you to be personal? Consult his hfe, with a view to 
 seeing how far his temperament and training influenced his judgments and 
 was responsible for his taste. On what principle does he choose his tests 
 and "touchstones"? In these tests does he recognize different genres of 
 literature, or is it clear that the epic and dramatic genres, from which all his 
 "touchstones" are taken, were to him the highest type? Compare his say- 
 ing, with regard to Burns's bacchanalian poetry (p. 288): "There is some- 
 thing in it of bravado, something that makes us feel that we have not the 
 man speaking to us in his real voice : something, therefore, poetically un- 
 sound." Do Arnold's quotations seem to be predominantly grave ? Why are 
 such grave subjects necessarily of the highest quality ? Compare Poe on The 
 Philosophy of Composition. Is the following a fair equation? "If we are 
 thoroughly penetrated by their power, we shall find that we have acquired 
 a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be laid before us, to feel the degree 
 in which a high poetical quality is present or wanting there " (p. 277) = If 
 we immerse ourselves in one sort of poetry, we shall be immersed in it, and 
 shall be impervious to poetry of a different kind. If not fair, why? 
 
 4. Test by your own impressions of Ward's English Poets the truth of 
 Arnold's assertions in the paragraph beginning "The idea of tracing historic 
 origins," etc. (p. 273). On the face of the lines quoted on p. 275, is it fair to 
 say that "we are in another world" ? Are the lines quoted from Dryden and 
 Pope, on p. 286, fair examples of the work of those poets ? Compare Arnold's 
 use of illustrative quotation in On Translating Homer. 
 
 5. What should you say of the justness and value of many of Arnold's 
 cautions, such as, against one's being too much engrossed in the understand- 
 ing and analysis of machinery to get the more important ideas? Or this: 
 " Moreover the very occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting 
 him, disposes us to afhrm and amplify his importance" (p. 274) ? In what 
 respects does Arnold's criticism in this essay seem to you to be valuable? 
 In what ways defective? 
 
 6. Analyze the body of Arnold's critical work with a view to showing the 
 material, the principles, and the sanctions which he expounded. Compare 
 it in these respects with previous and contemporary criticism. 
 
 XIV. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 
 
 The Biographia Literaria, from which the present selection is taken, the 
 Lectures on Shakespeare (1811), and the Lectures on Literature and Literary 
 Subjects (181&) contain what is most valuable of Coleridge's critical ideas. In 
 general, in these works Coleridge made an appeal to a body of phenomena 
 and used a critical method much in advance of his more dogmatic contem- 
 poraries, such as Jeffrey. The main principles on which he based his criti- 
 cism were (i) a theory of poetry, deduced, not from authority, but from phi- 
 losophy and, what were to him, the facts of language, logic, and psychology 
 
 2A
 
 354 NOTES 
 
 (as he understood these matters) ; (2) a consideration of the actual phenomena 
 as represented in the current vogue of an author, a complete, rather than a 
 partial, view of an author's production, the purpose of the author as stated or 
 revealed in an interpretation of his work, and an analysis of the qualities of 
 his style; and (3) a feeling for what is good in poetry — perhaps his ultimate 
 test, and certainly a personal one. 
 
 The present selection well illustrates at least two of these principles. The 
 desire to find a definition of poetry and to illustrate that definition by specific 
 reference to Shakespeare's poems is habitual and characteristic of Coleridge's 
 desire to find a satisfactory deiinition of poetry, not in verse, or in authority, 
 or in history, but in terms of the innate nature of the medium. "Nothing," 
 he says (p. 297), " can permanently please which does not contain in itself the 
 reason why it is so; and not otherwise." In the illustrations from Venus 
 and Adonis of the nature of poetical power, he deals, as it were, with the 
 spiritual content of the poems as e.xpressing itself in the sweetness of verse, 
 the imagery, etc. The same method of criticism is to be observed in the 
 famous enumeration of the characteristic defects and excellencies of Words- 
 worth {Biographia Literaria, XXII.) and the admirable qualities (there are 
 no defects) of Shakespeare. Thus, again, using Venus and Adonis (Lectures 
 of 1818; Collected Works, Vol. IV. pp. 46-50) as illustration, — this time 
 of Shakespeare's consummate power as a poet, — he made him out to be 
 possessed of the following characteristics: deep feeling and exquisite sense 
 for beauty, entire command of his feelings, impersonality of expression, 
 affectionate love for natural objects, fancy, "the indwelling power of the 
 imagination," "endlessactivity of thought," and "a most profound, energetic, 
 and philosophic mind." Evidently all these are spiritual categories; they 
 are not, like De Quincey's catalogue of Shakespeare's values, matters of ob- 
 jective contribution, or, as in Poe, a matter of mechanically harmonious rela- 
 tion of parts to a subject of given beauty. 
 
 The other point is clearer. It has to do with the palpable fact of an author's 
 vogue. In stating (p. 295) the fact of Wordsworth's popularity, Coleridge 
 evidently makes use of an important, and too often neglected, sort of phe- 
 nomena. (Cf. Bagehot on Dickens.) His subsequent criticism of Words- 
 worth is an attempt to find out why the fact should be so by reason of the 
 nature of Wordsworth's poems. 
 
 It has been thought advisable to dwell at this length on the nature of Cole- 
 ridge's criticism because his principles have become pervasive of much later 
 criticism (cf. Mill: Coleridge in Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. II.). 
 Compared with his contemporary Jeffrey, they indicate a wholly different 
 tenor of mind and a far more enduring influence. They are alive to-day; 
 whereas Jeffrey's method is usually sterile, brilliant though it be. Whether 
 Coleridge borrowed his ideas or not need not be elaborated here (cf. J. M. 
 Robertson : Coleridge in New Essays toward a Critical Method) ; we are sim- 
 ply dealing with the phenomena presented in his prose. Comjjared with his 
 great predecessors he attached more importance to facts of the vogue and pur- 
 pose of an author and to jjhilosophy, analysis, and feeling. Thus there is 
 with him greater relativity of treatment, a more flexible method, and, though 
 he aimed at elaborate and ultimate truth, more impressionism. 
 
 The circumstances of the present selection so well explain themselves that 
 little further comment is necessary. Wordsworth's important essay, which 
 is the point of departure for Coleridge's criticism in this and the following
 
 NOTES 355 
 
 chapters of Biographia Literaria, was prefixed to the second edition of the 
 Lyrical Ballads, and should be read. It is to be had in any good edition of 
 Wordsworth's complete works. 
 
 1. State Coleridge's fundamental idea of poetry, and show how this is 
 borne out in the examination of Venus and Adonis. What are the "two car- 
 dinal points" of poetry according to Coleridge ? Compare this idea of poetry 
 with that of Poe, Arnold, and Shelley. What is the evidence in favor of it 
 and of them ? 
 
 2. Expound any critical principles or bases of judgment that you note in 
 Coleridge's work. 
 
 XV. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
 
 The justly celebrated Defence oj Poetry was originally written, as its title 
 suggests, in a polemic vein, as an answer to Peacock's The Four Ages oj 
 Poetry. In its published form, much of the controversial matter was cast 
 out, and only one or two indications remain of its controversial nature. The 
 essay as it stands is among the most elocjuent expositions that exist of the ideal 
 nature and essential value of poetry. Its chief distinction lies in the sincerity 
 and enthusiasm of the author. 
 
 Like several other essays in this volume, as those of Bagehot and Pater, 
 it is based on one of those fundamental distinctions — here that between 
 reason and imagination — which Coleridge so frequently expounded, and 
 which here serves as a point of departure. There are two main parts: (i) 
 the nature of poetry, as something connate with man, and poetical expres- 
 sion; and (2) the effect of poetry upon mankind. This latter part, though 
 even more eloquent than the former, is more rambling. The critical question 
 at issue in both is a very fundamental one, and is practically the same as that 
 which has been debated for many years between two opposed schools of ethics 
 and philosophy, the intuitional and the titilitarian, and is to-day rife betwixt 
 rationalists and pragmatists. Of the truth of Shelley's main thesis there is 
 occasion for much discussion, but of his own vigour and sincerity there can 
 be no question. 
 
 1. State Shelley's thesis in this essay. Show in detail the topics which he 
 treats. What is his criterion of the worth of various poets whom he mentions ? 
 What is his criterion for the determining good and bad poetry? What does 
 he mean by such terms as "reason," "imagination," "taste," "the inde- 
 structible order," "universal," "wit and humour," "a story," "utility," 
 "a single condition of epic truth," "the poet," "poetry " in its broad and 
 in its restricted sense ? What are the reasons for the superiority of poetry in 
 its restricted sense over other forms of art? Why is Lear to be preferred to 
 Agamemnon or CEdipus Tyrannus ? Why were choruses in Greek drama of 
 great poetical importance? 
 
 2. What are the sanctions for Shelley's view of the idea and value of 
 poetry? How is his generalization supported? 
 
 3. Compare Shelley's idea of poetry, his method and his proofs, with those 
 of Poe, Arnold, and Coleridge.
 
 356 NOTES 
 
 List of Books referred to in the Introduction and the Notes. 
 
 Alden, R. M. English Verse. New York. 1903. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. New York. 1883. 
 
 Essays in Criticism, Second Series. London and New York. 1888, 
 On Translating Homer. New York. 1883. 
 Bagehot, Walter. Literary Studies. 2 vols. London and New York. 
 
 1891. 
 Benson, A. C. Walter Pater. In the English Men of Letters. London 
 
 and New York. 1906. 
 Besant, Walter. The Art of Fiction. Boston. 1884. 
 Brewster, W. T. Representative Essays on the Theory of Style. New 
 York. 1905. 
 Specimens of Narration. New York. 1895. 
 Studies in Structure and Style. New York. 1896. 
 Brunetifere, F. Uevolution des genres dans I'histoire de la litterature. 
 
 Paris. 1890. 
 Carpenter, G. R. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In the Beacon 
 Biographies. Boston. 1901. 
 Modern English Prose (with W. T. Brewster). New York. 1904. 
 Chesterton, G. K. Robert Browning. In the English Men of Letters. 
 London. 1903. 
 Charles Dickens, a Critical Study. New York. 1906. 
 Heretics. New York. 1905. 
 Varied Types. New York. 1905. 
 Coleridge, S. T. Complete Works. 7 vols. New York. 1853. Vol. 
 III., Biographia Literaria. Vol. IV., Lectures on Shakespeare. 
 Collins, J. C. Ephemera Critica. New York. 1902. 
 
 Jonathan Swift. London. 1893. 
 Courthope, W. J. Life in Poetry, Law in Taste. 2 vols. London. 
 
 1901. 
 Craik, H. The Life of Jonathan Swift. London. 1882. 
 Cross, W. L. The Development of the English Novel. New York. 
 
 1899. 
 De Quincey, T. Collected Works, ed. by David Masson. 14 vols. 
 1889, 1890. Vol. II., Literary Reminiscences. Vol. IV., Shake- 
 speare. 
 Dryden, see Ker. 
 
 Erskine, J. The Elizabethan Lyric. New York. 1904. 
 Forster, J. The Life of Jonathan Swift. London. 1875. 
 Gates, L. E. Selections from the Essays of Francis Jeffrey. Boston. 
 
 1894. 
 Gayley, C. M., and Scott, F. N. An Introduction to the Materials and 
 Methods of Literary Criticism. Vol. I. Boston. 1897.
 
 NOTES SSI 
 
 Gummere, F. B. A Handbook of Poetics for Students of English Verse. 
 
 Boston. 1885. 
 Harrison, Frederic. Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Esti- 
 mates. New York. 1900. 
 Hazlitt, W. See Waller. 
 
 Hennequin, E. La Critique scientijique. Paris. 1888. 
 Howells, W. D. Criticism and Fiction. New York. 1891. 
 James, H. Partial Portraits. London and New York. 1888. 
 James, W. The Varieties of Religious E.xperience. New York. 1902. 
 Jeffrey, F. See Gates. 
 
 Johnson, S. The Lives of the Poets, ed. by G. B. Hill. 3 vols. Ox- 
 ford. 1905. 
 Ker, W. P. The Essays of John Dryden. 2 vols. Oxford. 1900. 
 Lamb, C. The Poems, Plays, and Miscellaneous Essays of Charles 
 
 Lamb, in Collected Works, ed. by Alfred Ainger. 6 vols. New 
 
 York. 1885. 
 Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of 
 
 Shakespeare. London. 1901. (Bohn.) 
 Lamont, H. English Composition. New York. 1906. 
 Lee, S. A Life of William Shakespeare. New York and London. 
 
 1898. 
 Lounsbury, T. R. Studies in Chaucer. 3 vols. New York. 1892. 
 The Text of Shakespeare. Vol. III. of Shakespearian Wars. New 
 
 York. 1901-1906. 
 Lowell, J. R. The Writings of — . 10 vols. Boston. 1892. Vol. IV., 
 
 Wordsworth, Dante. 
 Mackail, J. W. The Life of William Morris. 2 vols. London. 1899. 
 Maitland, F. W. The Life and Letters of Leslie Step hen. London. 1906. 
 ISIasson, D. De Quincey. In the English Men of Letters. London. 
 
 1881. See also De Quincey. 
 Morley, J. Miscellanies. 3 vols. London. 1886. 
 Studies in Literature. London. 189 1. 
 (Editor). English Men of Letters. 
 Nichol, J. Carlyle. In the English Men of Letters. 
 Pater, W. Appreciations, with an Essay on Style. London and New 
 
 York. 1890. 
 The Renaissance. London and New York. 1890. 
 Payne, W. M. American Literary Criticism. New York and London. 
 
 1904. 
 Peacock, T. L. The Four Ages of Poetry. Appendix. Vol. VII. of the 
 
 complete works of Shelley (whom see). 
 Perry, B. A Study of Prose Fiction. Boston. 1903. 
 Poe, E. A. The Fall of the House of Usher, and Other Tales and Prose 
 
 Writings of Edgar Poe. Ed. by Ernest Rhys. London. 
 The Poetic Principle. The Philosophy of Composition.
 
 358 NOTES 
 
 Ringwalt, R. C. Modern American Oratory. New York. 1898. 
 
 Robertson, E. S. (editor). Great Writers Series. 
 
 Robertson, F. W. Lectures and Addresses on Literary and Social 
 
 Topics. Boston. 1859. 
 Robertson, J. M. Essays towards a Critical Method. London. 1889. 
 New Essays towards a Critical Method. London and New York. 
 1897. 
 Modern Humanists, Sociological Studies of Carlyle, Mill, Emerson, 
 Arnold, Ruskin, and Spencer. London. 1891. 
 Rossetti, M. F. A Shadow of Dante. 
 Ruskin, J. Modern Painters. 5 vols. New York, n. d. Vol. III., 
 
 Chapter XIL, The Pathetic Fallacy. 
 Saintsbury, G. A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe. 
 3 vols. New York, Edinburgh, and London. 1900-1904. 
 Loci Critici. Boston and London. 1903. 
 Scott, W. Memoirs of Jonathan Swift, D.D. Vol. I. of the Works of 
 
 Swift. 19 vols. 2d ed. Edinburgh 1824. 
 Shaw, G. B. Introductions to: — 
 
 Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant. 2 vols. Chicago and New York. 
 
 1898. 
 Three Plays for Puritans. Chicago and New York. 1901. 
 Man and Superman. New York. 1904. 
 The Quintessence of Ibsenism. Boston. 1891. 
 The Perfect Wagnerite. Chicago. 1899. 
 Shelley, P. B. Works in Prose and Verse. Ed. by H. B. Forman. 
 
 8 vols. London. 1880. 
 Stephen, L. Hours in a Library. 3 vols. London and New York. 
 1894. 
 Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift, in the Eng- 
 lish Men of Letters. 
 Studies of a Biographer. 4 vols. New York. 1898-1902. 
 The Dictionary of National Biography (with Sidney Lee). London. 
 I 885- I 900. 
 Stevenson, R. L. Memories and Portraits. New York. 1894. A 
 Humble Remonstrance. 
 On Style in Literature: Its Technical Elements. Contemporary 
 Review: Vol. XLVII. p. 548. (April. 1885). 
 Swinburne, -■\. C. Miscellanies. London. 1886. 
 Tolstoy, Count L. F. Wliat is Art ? Translated by Aylmer Maude. 
 
 New York, n. d. 
 Trent, W. P. Tlie Authority of Criticism and Other Essays. New 
 York. 1899. 
 
 Greatness in Literature, and Other Papers. New York. 1905. 
 Trevelyan, G. O. The Life and Letters of Macaulay. 2 vols. New 
 York. 1876.
 
 NOTES 359 
 
 Vaughan, C. E. English Literary Criticism. London. 1903. 
 Waller, A. R., and Glover, A. The Collected Works of William Hazlitt. 
 
 12 vols. London and Nevir York. 1902-1904. Vol. IV., 
 
 The Spirit of the Age. 
 Ward, T. H. The English Poets. 4 vols. 3d ed. London. 1885. 
 Winchester, C. T. Some Principles of Literary Criticism. New York. 
 
 1899. 
 Woodberry, G. E. The Makers of Literature. New York. 1900. 
 Wordsworth, W. The Complete Poetical Works of, with an introduction 
 
 by John Morley. New York and London. 1889. Essays in 
 
 the appendix.
 
 INDEX 
 
 In this index proper names appear in small capitals, titles in italics, and topics (including 
 fictitious characters) in small type. 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel, 200. 
 
 Academy, 136. 
 
 Accent, Quantity, and Feet, 164. 
 
 Accius, 321. 
 
 Account of the Williams Murders, 17, 
 18. 
 
 Achilles, 186, 234, 276, 314. 
 
 Acting, Elocution in, 223-225, fashion 
 for acting Shakespeare, 221, identi- 
 fication of actors and parts, 221-222, 
 impossibility of acting Lear, 231-232, 
 its deadening effect, 222-223, scenes 
 suitable to, 223, tendency to level 
 distinctions, 228-229, vulgar esti- 
 mates of, 229. 
 
 Actor, see Acting. 
 
 Addison, xxvii, xxxii, 31, 284, 287, 318, 
 
 345- 
 Adonis, 302. 
 Adorni, 37. 
 ^lius Lamia, 17. 
 ^neas, 185, 186. 
 jEneid, 185, 198, 326. 
 ^scHYLus, 22, 310. 
 ^sop, 61. 
 
 Agamemnon, 317, 355. 
 Ajax, 181. 
 Al Aaraaf, 141. 
 Alcibiades, 21. 
 Alden, 346, 356. 
 Alexander, the Great, 21, 22. 
 Alexander Pope, quoted, 32-33; 25, 31 ; 
 
 (Stephen's), 338, 358. 
 Alexis, 297. 
 Allan, 128, 129, 130. 
 Allen, Benjamin, 95. 
 Allen, George, 218. 
 Alliteration, 209. 
 American humor, 164-165. 
 American Literary Criticism, vi, 357. 
 
 Anacreon, 23, 48, 297. 
 
 Analects from Richter, 25. 
 
 Analysis of composition, 258-259. 
 
 Analysis of the Raven, 260-268. 
 
 Anaxagoras, 22. 
 
 Ancient Mariner, xxviii, 295. 
 
 Anecdotage, 17. 
 
 Annabel Lee, 151, 351. 
 
 Annus Mirabilis, 345. 
 
 Antigone of Sophocles, 25, 31. 
 
 Apollonius Rhodius, 326. 
 
 ApPELLES, 22. 
 
 Appian, 23. 
 
 Appreciations, in, 343, 357. 
 
 Appreciative criticism, xix. 
 
 Arachne and Pallas, 4. 
 
 Archer, xxvii. 
 
 Arcite, 189, 199. 
 
 Ariosto, 61, 302, 325. 
 
 Aristophanes, quoted, 304; 22, 200, 
 291. 
 
 Aristotle, on seriousness, 278; xii, 
 xiv, xix, 22, 45, 198, 283, 344. 
 
 Arnold, definition of criticism, x; On 
 the study of poetry, 269-293 : 
 classics, true and false, 272-273, 282- 
 284, fallacies in the estimating of 
 poetry, 271-275, importance of 
 poetry, 269-270, methods of study, 
 273-275, need of high standards, 
 270-271, seriousness in, 278; sur- 
 vey of English poetry, 279-293, 
 "touchstones," 275-278; 
 
 Notes on Arnold, 3SI-3S3; 
 
 Quoted, X, 269, 345, 352. 353; __ 
 
 ix, xi, xviii, xix, xx, xxii, xxiii, 
 
 XXV, xxix, xxxii, 83, 113, 141, 147, 
 
 164, 166, 167, 340, 341, 342, 343, 
 
 355. 356. 
 Art in fiction, 240-241. 
 
 361
 
 362 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Art 0} Conversation, 25. 
 
 Art of Fiction, 237-256, 350, 356. 
 
 Art Singing and Heart Singing, 171. 
 
 "Artemus Ward," x. 
 
 Artful Dodger, 91, 100. 
 
 Arthur Gordon Pym, 159. 
 
 Arthur Gordon Pym, 160. 
 
 Arthurs, 200. 
 
 Assonance, 209. 
 
 Atheist, 69. 
 
 Augustus, 61, 191. 
 
 Auld Lang Syne, 291. 
 
 Austen, 256. 
 
 Authority oj Criticism, xiv, 358. 
 
 Autobiographic Sketches, 16, 17, 34. 
 
 Autos, 317. 
 
 Avenger, 34, 35. 
 
 Bacon, 16, 22, 32, 57, 163, 309, 312, 
 
 329. 333- 
 Bagehot, review of the collected works 
 
 of Dickens, 8o-iio; notes on, 341- 
 
 342; quoted, 342; xvii, xx, xxiii, 
 
 xxxi, 176, 343, 354, 355. 356. 
 
 Bajazet, 223. 
 
 Balfour, 176. 
 
 Balzac, 160. 
 
 Banks, 225. 
 
 Barnaby Rudge, quoted, 85-86; 102, 
 156, 169, 170, 257. 
 
 Barnwell, 93, 225, 226, 230. 
 
 "Barry Cornwall," xxxi. 
 
 BartJwlomew Fair, 189. 
 
 Bates, Charley, 91, 100. 
 
 Bathyllus, 297. 
 
 Baucis, 188. 
 
 Baucis and Philemon, 181. 
 
 Baudelaire, 139, 140, 141, 143. 
 
 Bavius, 335. 
 
 Beacon Biographies, 338. 
 
 Beatrice, 123, 276, 324. 
 
 Beauty, 260-261. 
 
 Beethoven, 150, 152, 217. 
 
 Behn, 66. 
 
 Beleaguered City, 146. 
 
 Bells, 142, 144, 344- 
 
 Belvidera, 228. 
 
 Benson, xvi, 356. 
 
 Berenice, 139, 159, 178. 
 
 Berkeley, 14, 15, 175, 207, 337. 
 
 Bernard, 172. 
 
 Besant, Lecture on the art rf fiction, 
 237: his frankness, 238, idea of iic- 
 tion as a fine art, 240-241, on moral- 
 ity in fiction, 254-255, on selection, 
 250-251, on the "story," 151-154; 
 wrong view of "laws," 244-245, 
 and distinctions, 246-249; 
 
 Quoted,243-244,25i; 350,351,356. 
 
 Betterton, 223. 
 
 BeTTESWORTH, II. 
 
 Beverley, Mrs., 228. 
 
 Bible, 210. 
 
 Biographia Lileraria, 294, 343, 353, 354, 
 
 355. 356- 
 Biographical criticism, xv. 
 Birrell, xxvii, 134. 
 Black Cat, 158, 160. 
 Blackmore, 66, 199, 201, 344. 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 34, 167. 
 Blilhcdalc, 248. 
 Boccaccio, compared with Chaucer, 
 
 183, 197-198; influence on the Italian 
 
 tongue, 183; 187, 191, 194, 198, 199, 
 
 327. 329. 345- 
 
 BOILEAU, 62. 
 BOLINGBROKE, I, II, 12. 
 
 Borough, 73. 
 
 Bossuet, 206. 
 
 boswell, xxx. 
 
 Brahmin, story of the, 60-61. 
 
 Brewster, Sir David, 158. 
 
 Brewster, W. T., x.xxi, 350, 356. 
 
 Bride oj Abydos, 290. 
 
 Broadway Journal, 131, i6g, 171. 
 
 Brown, 131, 228, 234. 
 
 Browne, Sir T., xxviii, 207, 210. 
 
 Browne, W. H., 161, 162, 163, 164, 172, 
 176. 
 
 Browning, E. B., 142, 143, 147, 168. 
 
 Browning, R., xvii, 150, 351. 
 
 Brunetiere, 339, 356. 
 
 Brunetto Latini, 279, 
 
 Burke, 210. 
 
 Burnet, 299. 
 
 Burns, admirers of, 288-290, great 
 achievements of, 291, place in Eng- 
 lish literature, 287, "real" Burns, 
 287-288, shortcomings, 288-290, 
 particularly his lack of "high serious- 
 ness," 290; quoted, 287, 288, 289, 290, 
 291, 292; 280, 352.
 
 INDEX 
 
 363 
 
 Burton, 165, 166. 
 Butler, 341. 
 
 Byron, quoted, 69; ix, 69, 77, 109, 209, 
 214, 215, 290, 292. 
 
 C^DMON, 274. 
 
 C^SAR, 19, 24. 
 
 CcBsars, 16, 17, 19. 
 
 Calderon, 317, 325, 329. 
 
 Caleb Williams, 257. 
 
 California, 25. 
 
 Calista, 228. 
 
 Callimachus, 23. 
 
 Calypso, 185. 
 
 Camillus, 321. 
 
 Campbell, quoted, 70; 74. 
 
 Canon, The, 191. 
 
 Canterbury Talcs, 84, 182, 188, 191, 192, 
 
 194, 280. 
 Caricature, 99-100. 
 Carlyle, vi, xxvii, 104, 133, 134, 136, 
 
 137, 167, 206, 340, 344. 
 Carlyle, 339, 344, 357- 
 Caroline, Queen, ii. 
 Carpenter, xxxi, 338, 356. 
 Carpenter's young wife, 194. 
 Carteret, 8, 9. 
 Cary, 77. 
 
 Case of Monsieur Valdemar, 139. 
 Cask of Amontillado, 159. 
 Cassio, 74. 
 Casuistry, 25, 26. 
 
 Casuistry of Roman Meals, 17, 23, 24. 
 Catholic Reasons for Repealing the Test, 
 
 2. 
 Cato, 318. 
 
 Catullus, quoted, 190; 321. 
 Ceylon, 17. 
 
 Chanson de Roland, quoted, 275; 274. 
 Chapman, 285. 
 Charlemagne, 274, 275. 
 Charlemagne, 17. 
 Charles II., 319. 
 Charles Dickens, a Critical Study, 350, 
 
 356. 
 
 Charles Lamb, 17, 18. 
 
 CJmrtism, 104. 
 
 Chateaubriand, 113. 
 
 Chaucer, charm of, 281-282, as clas- 
 sic, 282-283, compared with Boc- 
 caccio, 183, 197-198, with Ovid, 187- 
 
 189, effect on English, 183, in English 
 poetry, 189, genius, 192, good 
 sense, 189-190, lack of "high seri- 
 ousness," 28^, language, 194-197, 
 life and opinions, 1 91-192, liquid- 
 ness, 282, morals, 193-19 , need 
 of a translation of, 196-197, natural- 
 ness, 190, originality, 197, Palamon 
 and Arcite, his best work, 198-199, 
 seventeenth-century view of, 284, 
 superiority to the romance poets, 
 280, variety, 193; verse, 190; quoted, 
 194, 195. 281, 282; XXV, 22, 84, 137, 
 
 327. 329. 344, 345- 
 Cheeryble, 88. 
 Cherie, 253. 
 
 CHESTEiRTON, xiii, xix, xxvii, 349, 356. 
 China, 17. 
 Christabel, 295. 
 Christian of Troyes, quoted, 279; 
 
 280. 
 "Christopher North," 167. 
 Church, xxvii. 
 Chuzzlewit, Jonas, 90. 
 ClBBER, 229. 
 
 Cicero, xii, 186, 312, see Tully. 
 Cicero, 16, 17, 23, 24. 
 Cinyras and Myrrha, 181. 
 Clarissa, 223. 
 Classic, xxiv. 
 
 Classic poetry, 272-274, 282. 
 Classification of literature, xxxii, 338, 
 
 341. 
 Claudian, 326. 
 Claverhouse, i. 
 Clemm, Mrs., 130, 136, 137. 
 Clemm, Virginia, 130. 
 Cleveland, quoted, 52, 54; 48. 
 Cock and the Fox, 188. 
 Coleman, 177. 
 Coleridge, 354. 
 Coleridge, H., 341. 
 Coleridge, S. T., On Poetry and the 
 
 Poetic Power, 294-306 (see Poetry); 
 
 notes on, 353-355; quoted, 351; 
 
 i.x, xii, xvi, xix, xxv, xxxi, 17, 21, 29, 
 
 77, 148, 209, 210, 284, 343, 346, 349. 
 
 350, 355. 356. 
 Coleridge, 354. 
 
 Coleridge and Opium-Eating, Tj. 
 Coleridge's Complete Works, 354, 356.
 
 364 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Collective criticism, xv-xvi. 
 
 Collier, 200, 201, 344. 
 
 Collins, quoted, ix; xxvii, 338, 356. 
 
 Colloquy of Monos and Una, 171. 
 
 COLViN, xxvii. 
 
 Composition, James on, 240-245; 
 Poe on, 257-268. 
 
 COMTE, 1 38. 
 
 Conceits, 47. 
 
 Confessions of an English Opium- 
 Eater, 16, 17, 34, 39, 40. 
 
 Confessions of a Young Man, 152. 
 
 CONGREVE, 62. 
 
 Consonance, 209-213. 
 
 CONSTANTINE, 29. 
 
 Constructive criticism, xxi. 
 
 Convcrsati n of Eiros and Cltarmian, 
 171. 
 
 Cook, the, 193. 
 
 Cooper, i68. 
 
 Cordelia, 231. 
 
 Corn ILLE, xii. 
 
 Costume, effect on the acting of Shake- 
 speare, 23 -236. 
 
 Colter's Saturday Night, 288. 
 
 CouRTHORPE, xiv, xxvii, 356. 
 
 Cowley, quoted, 48-58 passim; 3, 
 45. 194, 195. 196, 284, 339. 
 
 COVVPER, 138. 
 
 COXE, 6. 
 
 Crabbe, 73. 
 
 Craftsman, 12. 
 
 Craik, 338, 356. 
 
 Criticism {see, chiefly, Literary Criti- 
 cism), classification of, xv. 
 
 Criticism and Fiction, x, 351, 3 7. 
 
 Cromwell, 138. 
 
 Cross, 339, 351, 356. 
 
 Cruikshank, 80. 
 
 Custom of the Country, 201. 
 
 CuviER, 138. 
 
 Daffodils, 122. 
 
 Dame Quickly, 228. 
 
 Dante, his. loftiness, 282-283, 290; 
 quoted, 72, 276, 282, 290, 324; xii, 
 xvii, xxxi, 72, 136, 137, 203, 279, 310, 
 313. 324, 325. 326, 327, 329. 
 
 Dante, Cary's trans., 77. 
 
 Dante, Lowell's, xvii, 357. 
 
 Daphne, 195. 
 
 Dark Ladie, 295. 
 
 Daughter of Lebanon, 34, 40. 
 
 David, 322. 
 
 Davies, Sir John, quoted, 300. 
 
 Death, a Voyage, 54. 
 
 Death of Mr. Mill, 124. 
 
 Decameron, 187. 
 
 Defence of Philosophic Doubt, 176. 
 
 Defence of Poetry, 307-336, 355. 
 
 Defoe, 154, 207, 210. 
 
 Degeneresence, 172. 
 
 Delany, 14. 
 
 Demosthenes, 10, 22, 186. 
 
 Denham, 48, 190. 
 
 Dennis, 102. 
 
 De Quincey, revievv.of his work, 16-44: 
 as critic, 31-32, historian, 18, 19, 
 humorist, 34-35, imaginative stylist, 
 38-44, " impassioned" prose, in- 
 tellectual quality, 39, as novelist, 
 35-38, originality, 23-24, politics, 
 30-31, as portrayer of contemporary 
 life, 17-18, student of economics, 
 31, his sublimity, 34-3S. theology, 
 26-29, works, — classification of, 16- 
 44, his own classific -tion, 16; princi- 
 ples of classification, 16-17, — classes: 
 descriptive, biographical, and his- 
 torical writings, 17-24, imaginative, 
 33-44, speculative, didactic, and 
 critical, 24-33. 
 
 Notes on, 338-339; 
 Quoted, 19-23, 28-29, 32-33. 
 42-44, 156, 349; 
 
 vi, xxvii, xxxi, xxxii, 156, 210, 
 
 343, 344, 354. 3S6- 
 De Quincey's Collected Works, 16, 21, 23, 
 
 33, 356- 
 De Q linrcy's Writings: Classification 
 
 an I Review, 16-44. 
 Descent into the Maelstrom, 139, 160. 
 Desdemona, 228, 232. 
 Destructive criticism, xx. 
 Development of the English Novel, 339, 
 
 351, 356. 
 Dialogues of Three Templars on Political 
 
 Economy, 25, 30. 
 Diana, 195. 
 Dice, 35. 
 Dickens, review of collected works by 
 
 Bagehot, 80-110: faUing off of his
 
 INDEX 
 
 365 
 
 later work, 105-106, 109-110, his 
 humor, 94-99, as illustration of the 
 "unsymmetrical" genius, 84-110, 
 in manner, 85-86, in matter, 80-87, 
 inability to give unity to stories, 87- 
 88, to make a love story, loo-ioi, 
 to make a plot, 99-100, to reflect, 87, 
 his individuality, 107-109, knowl- 
 edge, 88-91, politics and philosophy, 
 103-105, popularity, 80-91, power 
 of improving scenes, 91-94, of ob- 
 servation, 88-8g, purity, 101-102; 
 his sentiment, 102-103, taste, 106- 
 107; unmorality of some of his crea- 
 tions, 95-99; 
 
 Notes on, 341-342; 
 
 Quoted, 80, 85-86, 89-90, 92-94, 
 96; 
 
 136, 160, 167, 168, 170, 237, 
 256, 257, 354- 
 Dickens, 80-110. 
 Dictionary 0} National Biography, 338, 
 
 358- 
 Dido, 185. 
 DiLKE, 167. 
 
 Dion Cassius, 23. 
 
 Dioneo, 198, 199. 
 
 DiONYSius, xii. 
 
 Dissertations and Discussions, 354. 
 
 Divina Commedia, xvii, 324, 326. 
 
 Dr. Parr, or Whiggism in its Relation to 
 
 Literature, quoted, 19-21; 17, 18. 
 Dodson, 96. 
 Donne, quoted, 49, 51-59 passim; 46, 
 
 48, 339- 
 
 Don Quixote, 244. 
 
 Drapier's Letters, 4-12, 15; see Swift. 
 
 Dream upon the Universe, 39. 
 
 Dream-Fugue, 41. 
 
 Dreaming, 24. 
 
 Dreamland, quoted, 147, 148. 
 
 Dryden, Preface to the Fables, 181- 
 201, apology for his writings, 199-201, 
 on Boccaccio, 197, Chaucer, 189-196, 
 — largeness, 192-194, naturalness, 
 190-192, originality, 197, reasons for 
 translating him, 194-196, his verse, 
 190, 195-196, — comparison of Chau- 
 cer and Boccaccio, 182-184, 187-188, 
 193-194, 197, of Chaucer and Ovid, 
 187-189, of Virgil and Homer, 185- 
 
 187, on epic poetry, 186, occasion of 
 translation, 1 81-184, purpose of trans- 
 lation, 184, views on translation, 181- 
 182; Ai-nold on Dryden as poet, 284- 
 286, as prose-writer, 285, Macaulay's 
 opinion of the Fables, 62. 
 Notes on, 344-345. 
 Quoted, 280, 286. 
 vi, xii, XXV, 45, 58, 62, 68, 234, 
 281, 350, 353. 356. 
 Dumas, 256. 
 Duncan, 230. 
 Duncan Gray, 287, 291. 
 
 Early Memorials of Grasmere, ^^, 34. 
 
 Earthly Paradise, xiv. 
 
 Ecrivains Francises, 159, 170. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe, 137. 
 
 Edgar Poe and His Critics, 127, 128, 135. 
 
 Edward III., 191. 
 
 Effect in composition, 258. 
 
 El Dorado, 151. 
 
 Elements of Drawing, 206. 
 
 Elements of epic poetry, 186. 
 
 Elements of literary criticism, xviii. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 182. 
 
 Elizabctltan Lyric, 339, 356. 
 
 Elocution, 223-225. 
 
 Emerson, xviii, xxv, 340. 
 
 Emiha, 189. 
 
 Emma, xxx. 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica, 179. 
 
 Enfield Speakers, 222. 
 
 English Composition, xxviii, 357. 
 
 English in Ireland, 10. 
 
 English Literary Criticism, vi, 359. 
 
 English Mail Coach, 34, 40-41, 338. 
 
 EnglishMenof Letters, 338,339,356,^57. 
 
 English Poets, 269, 353, 359. 
 
 English Verse, 346, 356. 
 
 Ennius, 188, 190, 321. 
 
 Ephemera Critica, ix, 356. 
 
 Epistle Dedicatory to the Rival Ladies, 
 
 345- 
 Epitaph, quoted, 220. 
 Erskine, 339, 356. 
 Essay on Death, 312. 
 Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 345. 
 Essays in Criticism, x, 356. 
 Essays in Criticism, second series, ix, 
 
 269, 341, 343. 352, 356-
 
 366 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Essays of John Dryden, 344, 357. 
 
 Essays of Shelley, 307. 
 
 Essays towards a Critical Metlwd, 344, 
 
 358- 
 Essenes, 16, 17, 23, 24. 
 Ethics, 205. 
 Euganean Hills, 212. 
 Euphrasia, 228. 
 
 Eureka, 140, i6r, 162, 170, 175. 
 Euripides, 22, 316. 
 Evans, 236. 
 
 Eve of St. Agnes, xxviii, 1 14. 
 Examiner, 6. 
 Excursion, 115, 343. 
 
 Fable for Critics, 160, 178. 
 
 Fables, 62, 344. 
 
 Fairfax, 182, 190. 
 
 Fairy Queen, 326. 
 
 Fall of the House of Usher, 139, 159, 
 162. 
 
 Fall of the House of Usher and Other 
 Tales and Prose Writings, 357. 
 
 Fallacies in the estimate of poetry, 
 271-275. 
 
 Falsification of English History, 25, 30. 
 
 Falstaff, 96, 97, 236, 342. 
 
 Fancy, iii. 
 
 Farewell to Nancy, 290. 
 
 Fatal Marksman, 35. 
 
 Faust, 291. 
 
 Ferdinand, 234. 
 
 Fiametta, 198, 199. 
 
 Fiction, naturab'sm in, 157-158; quali- 
 ties of enduring, 157; realism in, 158- 
 161 {see James, Henry). 
 
 Field, xxxi. 
 
 Fifty Suggestions, 171. 
 
 Filitim Labyrinthi, 312. 
 
 Flaubert, 249, 256. 
 
 Fletcher, 201. 
 
 For Annie, 151. 
 
 For a' tliat, and a' that, 288. 
 
 Fors Clavigera, 206, 218. 
 
 Forster, 338, 356. 
 
 Fortnightly Review, iii, 124. 
 
 FOUQUE, 168. 
 
 Four Ages of Poetry, 307, 355, 357. 
 
 Franklin, xxx. 
 
 Eraser, 167. 
 
 French and English Manners, 17. 
 
 French Poets and Novelists, 141. 
 Friar, 191. 
 Froude, 10. 
 Fuller, 165. 
 
 Gabriel, 78. 
 
 Gainsborough, 114. 
 
 Galeotto, 324. 
 
 Gamester, 228. 
 
 Gamp, Mrs., 91, 102, 108. 
 
 Garrick, 220, 224, 228, 229, 231. 
 
 Gates, 340, 356. 
 
 Gautier, 113, 153. 
 
 Gayley, vi, 356, 350. 
 
 Genesis of the Raven, 144. 
 
 Genius, classification of men of, 81-84. 
 
 Genre criticism, xvi-xvii, 339. 
 
 George Eliot, xxvii, xxviii, xxxii, 
 
 xxxiii, 160, 165, 254. 
 George Sand, 118. 
 George I., 12. 
 George II., 11. 
 Gertrude, 236. 
 Gerusalemme Liberata, 326 
 Gibbon, 210, 240, 329. 
 Gilfillan, 127, 134, 136. 
 Gill, 131, 140, 141. 
 Glance at the Works of Mackintosh, 25. 
 Glenalvon, 230. 
 Globe, 64. 
 
 Glory of Motion, 40, 41. 
 Glover, 359. 
 Godfrey of Bulloign, 182. 
 Godwin, 257. 
 
 Goethe, x, 18, 137, 153, 291, 
 Goethe, 17, 18. 
 Goethe Reflected in his Novel of Wilhelm 
 
 Meister, 25. 
 Gold Bug, 139, 172. 
 Goldsmith, 207. 
 De Goncourt, 253. 
 Good Parson, the, 191, 192. 
 Gordon, 85, 86. 
 Gosse, xxvii. 
 Gower, 190. 
 Graham, 130. 
 Graliam's Magazine, 156. 
 Gray, 75, 286, 287. 
 Greatness in Literature, 358. 
 Great Writers, 338, 357. 
 Greece under the Romans, 17.
 
 INDEX 
 
 367 
 
 Greek Literature, classification of, 21- 
 
 23- 
 Green, 34. 
 
 Gresset, 162. 
 
 Grimm, 209. 
 
 Griswold, quoted, 139; xxvi, 127, 130, 
 
 136, 139, 140, 141, 146, 147. 177- 
 Grizild, 187. 
 
 Gulliver's Travels, 154, 338. 
 Gummere, 346, 357. 
 G usTAVus- Adolphus, 36. 
 
 Hack work, bad effect of, 168, 169. 
 
 Halifax, 62. 
 
 Hallam, 83. 
 
 Hallowe'en, 288. 
 
 Hamilton, 163. 
 
 Hamlet, popularity with actors, 223- 
 225, ruined by acting, 224, vul- 
 garized by actors, 226-228; 97, 221, 
 236, 276, 349. 
 
 Hamlet, xvii, 222. 
 
 Hampden, 6. 
 
 Handbook 0} Poetics, 346, 357. 
 
 Hannibal, 322. 
 
 Hans Pjaall, 139, 155, 156. 
 
 Hajjpy Life of a Parish Priest, 39. 
 
 Harbours of England, 213, 215. 
 
 Harley, I, 63. 
 
 Harper's Magazine, 177. 
 
 Harrington, 190. 
 
 Harrison, on Ruskin as a Master of 
 Prose, 202-219 {see Ruskin); notes 
 on, 345-348; quoted, 34S; xvii, xx, 
 
 357- 
 Haunted Palace, 145, 146. 
 Hawthorne, xviii, 136, 158, 167, 169, 
 
 248. 
 Hawthorne, 136, 146, 166. 
 Hawtrey, translation quoted, 275. 
 Hazlitt, quoted, 346-347; vi, xx, 
 
 xxvii, 343, 348, 349, 350, 357; 
 
 Collected Works of, 359. 
 Hector, 185, 314. 
 Hegel, 175. 
 Helen, 276. 
 Hemans, xxxi. 
 Hennequin, xvi, 159, 168, 170, 179, 
 
 357- 
 Henry IV., 191. 
 Henry IV., 276. 
 
 Henry V., 222. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 338, 356. 
 
 Herder, 17, 18. 
 
 Heretics, xiii, 350, 356. 
 
 d'HERiCAULT, quoted, 272. 
 
 Herodotus, 22, 313. 
 
 Heroic Plays, 345. 
 
 Herschel, 155. 
 
 Hesiod, 23. 
 
 Hill, 228. 
 
 Historic estimate, 271-275. 
 
 Historico-Crilical Inquiry into the 
 
 Origin of the Rosicrucians and 
 
 Freemasons, 17. 
 History of Criticism, xii, 350, 358. 
 History of the Eighteenth Century, 10. 
 Hobbes, 27, 182, 185. 
 Hodgson, 31. 
 Holkerstein, 36. 
 Holmes, xxxi, 141. 
 Holy Fair, 288. 
 Homer, compared with Virgil, 185- 
 
 187; quoted, 275, 276; 23, 189, 215, 
 
 276, 285, 314, 315, 316, 320, 326, 333, 
 
 345- 
 Homer and the Homerida, 17. 
 Hood, 167. 
 Hop Frog, 177. 
 Horace, quoted, 184, 196; 61, 145, 
 
 162, 164, 187, 189, 190, 191, 200, 
 
 321, 32,3, 345- 
 Horatio, 276. 
 Horne, 168. 
 
 Hours in a Library, i, ° 343, 358. 
 House Beautiful, 123. 
 Howard, ii, 12. 
 Howells, quoted, x; xi, xx, 154, 351, 
 
 357- 
 Hugo, 113, 118. 
 
 Humble Retnonstrance, 350, 358. 
 Hume, 27, 206, 207, 329. 
 Humour, 164-165. 
 Hunt, xxvii. 
 Hunting the Boar, 181. 
 
 HUYSMANS, 152. 
 
 lago, 165, 166, 230. 
 Idea of a Universal History on a Cos- 
 mopolitan Plan, 24, 26. 
 Idiot Boy, 161. 
 Idol of the Tliealre, 163.
 
 368 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Idylls of the King, i6i. 
 
 Iliad, 62, 163, 181, 185, ig8, 275, 276. 
 
 Imagery in Shakespeare's poetry, 302- 
 
 305- 
 Imagination, in; compared with 
 
 fancy, in; with reason, 307. 
 Imilation, quoted, 274. 
 Imogen, 228. 
 Imj) of the Perverse, 160. 
 Impressionism, xviii-xix, 342-343. 
 Incognito, or Count Fitzhum, 35. 
 Inductive criticism, xx. 
 Inferno, 72, 276. 
 Ingram, quoted, 130, 136; 131, 135, 
 
 136, 138, 146, 160, 161, 169, 173, 17s, 
 177. 
 
 In M emoriam, 209. 
 
 Interpretation of literature, xvii-xviii. 
 
 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 
 
 83- 
 Introduction to the Materials and 
 
 Methods of Literary Criticism, vi, 350, 
 
 356. 
 Irish Coinage, 5. 
 Isabella, 228. 
 Isaiah, 322. 
 Isaiah, 299. 
 Island of Sleep, 147. 
 
 ISOCRATES, 23. 
 
 James, Henry, on The Art of Fiction, 
 237-256: Besant's view of the novel, 
 
 137. 138, definition of the novel, 
 242-243, fiction essentially serious, 
 238-240, a fine art, 240-241, futility 
 of "laws" and distinctions, 243-249, 
 lack of theory in English fiction, 237- 
 238, morality in fiction, 254-255, 
 need for freedom, 242, 256, popular 
 view of fiction, 241, purpose in fic- 
 tion, 255, "romance" and "novel," 
 248-249, the "story," 251-254, 
 ultimate test of, 249-251, vulgariza- 
 tion of fiction, 242; 
 
 Notes on, 350-351; 
 
 Quoted, 141, 153, 351; 
 
 136. 141, 144, 146, 153, 154, 166, 
 
 167, 357- 
 James, William, xii, 357. 
 Jeffrey, xix, xx, xxvii, 31, 340, 343, 
 
 354, 357- 
 
 Jesus, 322, 323. 
 
 Jevons, 176. 
 
 Jingle, Alfred, 104. 
 
 Joan of Arc, 34, 35, 40. 
 
 Job, 77, 310, 322. 
 
 John Keats, 25. 
 
 John of Gaunt, 191. 
 
 John Paul Frederick Richler, 25. 
 
 Johnson, Esther, 12 {see Stella). 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, on Tlie Metaphysi- 
 cal Poets, 45-59 : characterization of 
 the genre, 45-48, illustrated, 48-59; 
 Notes on, 339-340; 
 Quoted, 339, 340 ; 
 vi, xvi, xxiii, xxv, 19, 20, 31, 62, 
 137, 281, 284, 345, 350, 357. 
 
 Jolly Beggars, 291. 
 
 JoNSON, xxvii, 48, 226, 345. 
 
 JOSEPHUS, 24. 
 
 Journal of Julius Rodman, 160. 
 
 Judas, 24. 
 
 Judas Iscariot, 17, 23, 24. 
 
 Judicial Criticism, xix-xx. 
 
 Juggernaut of Social Life, 25. 
 
 Julian, 23. 
 
 Juliet, 223, 228, 349. 
 
 Julius Cassar, 19. 
 
 Juvenal, 200. 
 
 Kames, xix. 
 
 Kant, 24, 25, 26, 175. 
 
 Kant in his Miscellaneous Essays, 24. 
 
 Keats, ix, xxviii, xxxii, 114, 138, 144, 
 
 216, 281, 282. 
 Kemble, 221, 230. 
 Kendal, 6, 10 
 Ker, 344, 345, 357. 
 King Arthur, 200. 
 King Lear, 317. 
 King of Hayti, 35. 
 
 Klosterheim, summarized, 36-38; 338. 
 Knight, 113. 
 Knowledge, quoted, 48. 
 
 La Belle Heaulmiere, 283. 
 
 La Critique Scientifique, xvi, 357. 
 
 Lady Gcraldine^s Courtship, 142. 
 
 Lady of Shalott, 161. 
 
 Lady- Prioress, 193. 
 
 Lagrange, 175. 
 
 Lamarck, 131.
 
 INDEX 
 
 369 
 
 Lamb, Charles, On the Tragedies of 
 Sliakespeare, 220-236 {see Shake- 
 speare) ; 
 
 Notes on, 348-350; 
 Quoted, 348, 349; 
 xix, XXV, xxvii, xxxii, 133, 134, 
 136, 138, 154, 168, 207, 339, 357; 
 
 Poems, Plays, and Miscellaneous 
 Essays of, 357. 
 
 Lamb, Mary, 134. 
 
 Lamont, quoted, xxviii; 357. 
 
 Landa, 158, 161. 
 
 Landgrave, 36, 37, 38. 
 
 Landor, xxxii. 
 
 Lang, 141, 142, 171. 
 
 Language, 25, 31. 
 
 Langue d'oc, 279. 
 
 Langue d'oil, 279. 
 
 Lanier, 162, 175. 
 
 La Place, 33, 176. 
 
 Last Days of E. A. Poe, 129. 
 
 Last Days of Immanuel Kant, 17, 18. 
 
 Laura, 203. 
 
 Laws of fiction, 243-245. 
 
 Lear, impossibility of acting, 231-232; 
 97. 348. 
 
 Lear, 304, 355. 
 
 Lecky, 10. 
 
 Lectures and Addresses, 343, 358. 
 
 Lectures on Literature and Literary 
 Subjects, 353. 
 
 Lectures on Shakespeare, 349, 353, 356. 
 
 Lee, xvi, 344, 357. 
 
 Legion Club, 13. 
 
 Leicester, 194, 196. 
 
 Lemaitre, xix. 
 
 Lenore, 142, 144, 344. 
 
 Lessing, 17, 18. 
 
 Letter on the Sacramental Test, 2. 
 
 Letters to a Young Man whose Educa- 
 tion has been neglected, 24, 25, 31. 
 
 Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, 
 quoted, 42-44; 34, 4i- 
 
 Lever, 16S. 
 
 L' evolution des genres dans Vhisloire de 
 la litterature, 339, 356. 
 
 Lewes, xxvii. 
 
 Liberal, 307. 
 
 Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen, x, xi, 
 
 357- 
 Life and Letters of Macaulay, 342, 358. 
 
 2 B 
 
 Life in Poetry, Law in Taste, xiv, 356. 
 
 Life of De Quincey, 16, 357. 
 
 Life of Poe: Gill's, 131; Ingram's, 
 130, 131, 138, 143, 146, 17s; Stod- 
 dard's, 131, 149, 165. 
 
 Life of Sheridan, loi. 
 
 Life of Swift, 1 ; also, for various lives, 
 338, 356, 358. 
 
 Life of William Morris, xi, 357. 
 
 Life of W ill iamSltakespeare,xvi, 244, 357- 
 Ligeia, 139, 159. 
 
 LiLLO, 225. 
 
 Literary classification {see Literary 
 Criticism, and Literature). 
 
 Literary criticism {see also Criticism, 
 Fiction, Poetry, etc.); accord with 
 common taste, xxiv; as affected by 
 temperament, xii, xiii, xiv, aim of, 
 XV, analysis of, xxvi, xxvii, appeal of, 
 183, authors quoted on, ix-xi, 
 classes of, xv-xviii, commercial, 
 66-67, common method of, 132, 
 comparative poverty of English, 169- 
 170, conflict between liberty and 
 authority, xiv, conventional types of, 
 xxii, corroborative effort of, xxiv, 
 as a cult-idea, xxiv, defined, xv, 
 xxvi, defined by form, xxi, as 
 demonstration, xiv, different points 
 of view, xiii, different types of, 168- 
 170, discrepancies in, ix, xi, ele- 
 ments of, xviii, as essay writing, 169, 
 essential lack of precision in, xv, 
 excellence of French, 169-170, 
 examples of student, xxviii-xxix, as 
 existential fact, xii, as expression of 
 personal opinion, xi— xii, fallacies 
 in, — the confusion of types, 160, of 
 depreciation, 153-154, of "heart and 
 head," 160, of local dishke, 141, of 
 argument from mental weakness, 
 137-139, of published sentiment, 
 135, of "seriousness," 154, — ^ as a 
 fine art, 166, as form, xiv, as a form 
 of discourse, xxii, impossibility of 
 final judgments, xii, influence of, 
 63-67, kinds of proof in, xxiii, law 
 in, xiv, methods of, 63-67, need of 
 biographical facts in, 127-139, of a 
 general survey of the facts, 1 40-1 41, 
 of periodical rejudgments, 126, occa-
 
 370 
 
 INDEX 
 
 sion of, xxii, as a process, xiv, pro- 
 gram for writing, xxxi-xxxiii, proof of 
 opinion, xxii-xxvi, provincialism in, 
 1 66, reading of, xxvi-xxvii, reason- 
 ing in, 167, 169, relation to narra- 
 tion, exposition, description, and 
 argumentation, xxii, to rhetoric, xxi, 
 xxii, sanction of opinion in popular 
 acceptance, xxiv, as science, 169, 
 scientific checks on opinion, xxv- 
 xxvi, special issues in, 337-355 
 (passim), student, xxviii, xxix, as 
 taste, xxiv, types of, xviii-xxi. 
 typical faults of student, xxix-xxxi, 
 vagueness in terminolog}', xiii, vari- 
 ous masters of, xxvii, various opin- 
 ions of, ix, X, xi, variousness of 
 demonstration in, xxiii, the writing 
 of, xxviii-xxxiii. 
 
 Literary interpretation, xvii-xviii. 
 
 Literary Messenger, 177. 
 
 Literary opinion, growth of, 65-66. 
 
 Literary Reminiscences, 343, 356. 
 
 Literary Studies, xxxi, 80, 343, 356. 
 
 Literature, classification of, 32-33, 338, 
 341, inadequacy of definitions of, xv; 
 its permanence, 329, its transitoriness, 
 66, 67. 
 
 Littlewit, i8g. 
 
 Lives of the Poets, 45, 340, 357. 
 
 LiVY, 313, 321. 
 
 Loci Crilici, vi, 358. 
 
 Locke, John, 329. 
 
 Locke, R. A., 155. 
 
 Logic oj Political Economy, 25, 30. 
 
 London Magazine, 39. 
 
 Longfellow, translation quoted, 72; 
 146, 147, 167. 
 
 LONGINUS, xii, 186. 
 
 Longmans' Magazine, 237. 
 
 Lord Carlisle on Pope, 25, 31. 
 
 Lord oj the Isles, quoted, 69. 
 
 LouNSBURY, xvi, 345, 350, 357. 
 
 Love stories, nature of, 1 00-101. 
 
 Lover neither Dead nor Alive, 55. 
 
 Lover's Heart a Hand Grenada, 55. 
 
 Lowell, vi, xvii, xxvii, xx.xi, 159, 160, 
 165, 166, 167, 175, 178, 343. 357; 
 The Writings oj, 357; 
 Prose Works, xvii, 343. 
 
 LUCAN, 189, 316, 326. 
 
 LucHN, 23, 147. 
 
 LuciLius, 190. 
 
 Lucrece, 300. 
 
 Lucretia, 305. 
 
 Lucretius, 190, 221, 321, 326. 
 
 Lucy Gray, 141. 
 
 Lusiad, 326. 
 
 Luther, 137, 327. 
 
 Lydgate, 190. 
 
 Lyrical Ballads, origin of the, 294-295 ; 
 
 preface to, 295; 355. 
 Lyrical Prose Phantasy, 39. 
 Lysippus, 22. 
 Lytton, 160. 
 
 Macaulay, Mr. Robert Montgomery's 
 Poems, 60-79 i^^^ Montgomery); 
 notes on, 340-341; xx, 167, 168, 210, 
 
 240, 341. 350- 
 Macbeth, 230, 233. 
 Macbeth, Lady, 221, 228. 
 Macbeth, 228, 233, 235, 236. 
 Machiavelli, 319. 
 Mackail, xi, 357. 
 Madeline, xxix. 
 M^cenas, 63, 191. 
 Maelzel's Chess Player, 156, 158. 
 M^vius, 335. 
 Mahomet, 138. 
 Maitland, X, xi, 357. 
 Makers of Literature, 343, 359. 
 Malthus, 25. 
 Man and Superman, 358. 
 Manilius, 187. 
 Mantegna, 203. 
 Manual of Conchology, 131. 
 Marcus Antoninus, 23. 
 Marginalia, 167, 170, 171. 
 Mar got la Bala free, 252. 
 Marino, 48. 
 Marot, 272. 
 
 Marquis Wellesley, 17, 18. 
 Martial, 189, 200. 
 Martin, 77. 
 
 Martin Chuzzlewit, 91, loi. 
 Mason, 6. 
 "Masque," 37, 38. 
 Masque of the Red Death, 1 59. 
 MassON, De Quincey's Writings, 17-44 
 
 (see De Quincey); notes on, 338- 
 
 339. 344, 357-
 
 INDEX 
 
 371 
 
 Mater Lachrymarum, 42, 43, 44. 
 
 Mater Suspiriorum, 43, 44. 
 
 Mater Tenebrarum, 44. 
 
 Maudsley, 138. 
 
 Maximilian, 36, 37, 38. 
 
 Measure of Value, 25. 
 
 Meinhold, 118. 
 
 Memorial Chronology on a new and 
 
 more apprehensible system, 25, 29. 
 Memorial Suspiria, 34, 41. 
 Memories and Portraits, 350, 358. 
 Menander, 23. 
 Merchant, the, 193. 
 Metamorphoses, 181. 
 Metaphysical poetry, characteristics, 
 
 45-48; illustrated, 48-59- 
 Metaphysical Poets, 45-59- 
 Micawber, 244. 
 Michael, 118. 
 
 Michael Angelo, 33, 231, 329. 
 MiLBOURN, 195, 199, 201, 344. 
 Mill, xxvii, xxviii, 31, 124, 176, 354. 
 Miller, the, 193. 
 Millwood, 226. 
 MiLtON, quoted, 223, 235, 277, 285, 
 
 333; xxiv, xxxi, 29, 48, 137, 182, 207, 
 
 209, 210, 221, 274, 281, 283, 284, 285, 
 
 306, 313, 319. 325. 326, 329. 
 Milton, 17, 25, 31. 
 
 Milton vs. Soidhey and Landor, 25, 31. 
 MiNTO, quoted, 179; 144. 15 7- 
 Miracles as Subjects 0/ Testimony, 25, 27. 
 Miranda, 234. 
 
 Miscellanies, ix, 342, 343. 352. 357, 358. 
 Mr. Robert Montgomery's Poems, 60- 
 
 79 (see Montgomery). 
 Modern American Oratory, xxii, 358. 
 Modern English Prose, xxxi, 356. 
 Modern Greece, 17, 19. 
 Modern Hutnanists, xxi, 340, 352, 358. 
 Modern Painters, xxii, 208, 211, 212, 
 
 215. 218, 342, 358. 
 Modern Superstition, 17. 
 Modest Proposal for Preventing the 
 
 Children of Poor People in Ireland 
 
 from being a Burden to llieir Parents 
 
 or Country, 13-14. 
 Moliere, 168. 
 Monk, the, 191. 
 Montaigne, 188. 
 Montesquieu, 132. 
 
 Montgomery, Criticism by Macaulay. 
 his absurdity, 70, anachronisms, 72, 
 artificiaUty, 73, bad anatomy, 72, 
 bad characterization, 77-78, bad 
 English, 74, 75, 76, bad logic, 74, 
 bad observation, 72, bad syntax, 
 69, 71, clumsiness, 69-70, flat- 
 ness, 68, 69, faults illustrated by 
 the Omnipresence of the Deity, 68- 
 77, by Satan, 77-78, an illustration 
 of what can be done by puffing, 67-68, 
 looseness of structure, 71, 72, 77, 
 obscurity, 73, 74, plagiarism, 68, 
 69, profanity, 71, redundancy, 72, 
 silly metaphysics, 74; quoted, 68-76, 
 78; XX, 340, 350. 
 
 Moon Hoax, 155, 158. 
 
 Moon Story, 155. 
 
 Moore, George, 152. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, 62, 168. 
 
 Moral criticism of literature, xviii. 
 
 Morality in characterization, Bagehot 
 on, 95-99. 
 
 Morality in fiction, 254-256. 
 
 Morality in literature, 184. 
 
 Morality in poetry, 301-302, 315-316. 
 
 More, Sir T., quoted, 77. 
 
 Morel la, 139. 
 
 Morice, 172. 
 
 MoRLEY, xxvii, 115, 124, 341, 343, 357- 
 
 Morning Chronicle, 80. 
 
 Morning Post, 77. 
 
 Morris, quoted, xi. 
 
 Moses, 322. 
 
 MOTT, 138. 
 
 Mould, Mr., 91. 
 
 Mozart, 150. 
 
 Mucklewrath, i. 
 
 Murder considered as One of the Fine 
 Arts, 33, 34. 
 
 Murders in the Rue Morgue, 139, 156, 
 
 159, 172. 
 Murphy, 228. 
 Myers, xxvii. 
 Mystery of Marie Roget, 139, 156. 
 
 Nancy, 98. 
 
 Napoleon, quoted, 270. 
 
 Narcissus, 188. 
 
 National Temperance Movements, 25, 26. 
 
 Naturalism in fiction, 157-158.
 
 372 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Nature in poetn', 294. 
 
 Nelson, 30. 
 
 New Eclectic Magazine, 161. 
 
 New Essays toward a Critical Method, 
 X, xvi, 126, 343. 354, 358. 
 
 Newgate calendar, 19. 
 
 Nkwton, ^i^i- 
 
 Nc^i' York Sun, 155. 
 
 NiCHOL, 339, 344, 357- 
 
 Nicholas Nickleby, 80, 88. 
 
 NONNUS, 326. 
 
 NoRDAU, 172. 
 
 Note on Hazlitt, 17. 
 
 Note-taking in fiction, 246-247. 
 
 Notes from tJte Pocket-Book oj a Late 
 Opium-Eater, 24, 25. 
 
 Notes on Godwin and Foster, 25. 
 
 Notes on Walter Savage Landor, 25. 
 
 Novel (see Besant, Fiction, James) as 
 an artistic thing, 240-241 ; dis- 
 tinguished from the Romance, 248- 
 249; essence of, 242-243; "laws" 
 of, 243-245; liking the test of, 24Q- 
 251; material of, 251-254; morality 
 in, 254-256; need of a theory of, 
 237-238; seriousness of, 238-240; 
 vulgarization of, 242. 
 
 Obiter Dicta, 134. 
 
 Ode on the Recollections of Early Child- 
 
 Jtood, 120, 122. 
 Ode to the Nightingale, 144. 
 Odyssey, 185. 
 
 QLdipus Tyrannus, 317, 355. 
 Of his Mistress Bathing, 53. 
 Ogilby, 199. 
 
 Old Curiosity Slwp, quoted, 89-90. 
 Oliver, 274. 
 Oliver Goldsmith, 25. 
 Oliver Twist, 91, 97-99, 104. 
 Ollier's Literary Magazine, 307. 
 Omnipresence of the Deity, quoted, 
 
 68-77 passim; 60. 
 On an Inconstant Woman, 53. 
 On Christianity as an Organ of Political 
 
 Movement, 25, 29. 
 On English Prose, 348. 
 On Poetry and Poetic Power, 294-306 
 
 (see Poetry). 
 On Style in Literature, 346, 348, 358. 
 On Suicide, 24. 
 
 On the Knock ingattheGate in Macbeth, 25. 
 On the Political Parties of Modern 
 
 England, 25, 30. 
 On the Tragedies of SJiakespeare, 220- 
 
 236 (see Lamb). 
 On the Words of Brother Protestants, 11. 
 On Translating Homer, 164, 342, 353, 
 
 356- 
 On War, 25, 26. 
 On Wordsworth's Poetry, 25, 31. 
 Ophelia, 97, 225, 227. 
 Origen, 78, 120. 
 Originality, x, 107-109. 
 Orion, 168. 
 
 Orlando Furioso, 326, 331. 
 Ortliographic Mutineers, 25. 
 OSBURN, 20. 
 OSSIAN, XV. 
 
 Othello, 221, 223, 225, 226, 232, 348, 
 
 349- 
 Othello, 304. 
 Otway, 62. 
 Our Corner, 126. 
 Ovid, compared with Chaucer, 187- 
 
 189; quoted, 188; 181, 182, 195, 
 
 198, 321, 345- 
 
 Pacuvius, 321. 
 Pagan Oracles, 17, 23, 24. 
 Page, 30. 
 
 Palamon, 189, 198, 199. 
 Palamon and Arcite, 187, 195, 198. 
 Palimpsest of the Human Brain, 24, 25. 
 Pallas, 265. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette, 252, 253, 255. 
 Pamphlet on the Use of Irish Manu- 
 factures, 3-4. 
 Paradise Lost, 76, 221, 259, 325, 326, 
 
 331- 
 Paradise, 276. 
 Parr, 19-21, 30. 
 Partial Portraits, 237, 357. 
 Pater, on Wordsworth, 111-125 (see 
 
 Wordsworth); notes on, 342-343; 
 
 quoted, x, 342; xi, xix, xxv, 340, 341, 
 
 355. 357- 
 
 Pathetic Fallacy, 208. 
 
 Pathetic Fallacy, 342, 358. 
 
 Patronage, evils of, 61-62; emancipa- 
 tion of authors from, 62-63. 
 
 Pattison, xxvii.
 
 INDEX 
 
 373 
 
 Paulina, 36, ^^7, 38. 
 
 Payne, vi, 357. 
 
 Peacock, 307, 355, 357. 
 
 Peleus, 276. 
 
 Peneus, 195. 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, 17. 
 
 Perjed Wagnerite, xvii, 358. 
 
 Pericles, 21, 22, 23. 
 
 Perry, 351, 357. 
 
 Persius, 187. 
 
 Personal estimate in criticism, 271, 288. 
 
 Peterborough, ii. 
 
 Petrarch, 187, 203, 279, 324, 327, 329. 
 
 Petronius, quoted, 298. 
 
 Phidias, 22. 
 
 Philemon, 188. 
 
 Philosophy of Composition, 257-268 
 {see Poe), 353, 357. 
 
 Philosophy oj Furniture, 179. 
 
 Philosophy oj Herodotus, 17, 19. 
 
 Physick and Chirurgcry for a Lover, 54. 
 
 Pickwick, Mr., 92, 93, 95, 96, 104, 342. 
 
 Pickwick Papers, quoted, 92-94; 80, 
 91, 95-96, 99, 100, 103, 104, 108. 
 
 Piers Plowman, 191, 345. 
 
 Pilpay, 60. 
 
 Pinch, Ruth, loi. 
 
 Pindar, 23. 
 
 Pisistratus, 21. 
 
 Pit and the Pendulum, 159. 
 
 Pitt, 30. 
 
 Plato, xii, 22, 26, 81, 82, 83, 299, 312, 
 322, 323, 325. 
 
 Plato's Republic, 24, 26, 338. 
 
 Plautus, 200. 
 
 Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, 358. 
 
 Pleasures of Hope, 74. 
 
 Plutarch, 23, 313. 
 
 Poe, David, 128. 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, The Philosophy 
 of Composition, 257-268: composi- 
 tion, effect in, 258, need of analysis 
 of the processes of, 258-259, order 
 in, 257, popular errors in regard to, 
 257-258, composition illustrated by 
 the Raven: climax, 263-264, de- 
 velopment, 266-268, intention, 259, 
 length, 259-260, mood, beautiful 
 and universal, 260-261, originality, 
 
 264, refrain, 261-262, rhythm, 264- 
 
 265, situation, 265-266, tone, 261 ; 
 
 Robertson on Poe, 126-180: — 
 Introduction, necessity of rejudging 
 the case of Poe, 126, because of 
 injustice done him, 127; Life and 
 Character, 128-139: compared 
 with Lamb, 133-134, 136, and other 
 writers, 136-137, disposition, 129- 
 130, heredity and training, 128-129, 
 morality in literary matters, 130-132, 
 in personal matters, 132-137, nature of 
 his disease, 137-139, and malevolence 
 of critics regarding it, 139; Per- 
 sonality, 176-180, essential great- 
 ness, 179-180; Poetry, 140-153: 
 critical disparagement of Poe, 141- 
 142, disposition of his censors, 140, 
 disproportionate amount of atten- 
 tion given to his poetry, 140, 
 essenti al quality of his verse, 143-153: 
 inferior work, 143-144, his valuable 
 work, 144-153, — its art, 146, lyric 
 power, 151-153, originality, 147- 
 148, sense for allegory, 1 50-1 51, 
 spirituality, 145, variety, 151-153, 
 vividness and power, 148-149; 
 Prose, 153-176, comparative neg- 
 lect of it, 153 : his Literary Criticism, 
 1 64-1 71, freedom from politics, etc., 
 1 70-1 71, his humour essential to the 
 understanding of the criticism, 164- 
 165, its intellectual power, 169, 
 reasoning skill, 167-168, scientific 
 nature, 166-167, superiority to con- 
 temporary work, 167, its weaknesses, 
 168; Philosophic Writings, 171-176: 
 hampered by orthodoxy, 173-174, 
 and some bad logic, 174-175, imagi- 
 native and poetical quality, 171- 
 173, reasoning power, 172-173, 
 superiority of £Mrf^o, 176; Scientific 
 Writings, 1 61 -1 64: expert opinion 
 on the scholarship of Poe, 161-163, 
 refuted, 162-164; Tales, 153-161: 
 critical views of them, 153-154, 
 their many excellences, 156-157, 
 intellectual fibre, 154-156, 157, 160- 
 161, originality, 161, psychologic 
 realism, 158-159, verisimilitude, 157- 
 158, vividness and compactness of 
 structure, 159-160; 
 
 Notes on, 343-344, 351;
 
 374 
 
 INDEX 
 
 PoE, continued. 
 
 :■ Quoted, 134, 13S1 143. 145. 146, 
 147, 148, 149-150, 151-152, 155, 162, 
 163, 167, 168, 169, 173, 174, 175. 264, 
 266, 267, 268; 
 
 xvi, xvii, xviii, xx, xxvi, xxx, 352, 
 
 353. 354, 355. 357- 
 Foe, 126-180. 
 PoE, W. H., 128. 
 Poem, limit of length in, 259-260. 
 Poems, by M. Arnold, 83. 
 Poe's Eureka and Recent Scientific 
 
 ' Speculations, 161. 
 Poe's Works, 127, 131, 147, 160, 171, 
 
 173, 174,175. 177- 
 
 Poet, his mission, 299-300 {see Poetry). 
 
 Poetical Propagation 0} Light, 55. 
 
 Poetic Principle, 147, 351, 357. 
 
 Poetic prose, 39, 205. 
 
 Poetry: authority over language, art, 
 and social relations, 310, cardinal 
 points of, 294, Christian poetrj', 
 322-324, classes of, 294, connate 
 with the origin of man, 307-308, 
 course of English, 280-293, Dante 
 in the stream of poetry, 325-327, 
 decline of, in Greece, 319-322, de- 
 fined, 298, distinguished from other 
 literature, 297-298, from science, 
 297, difference between it and nar- 
 ration, 313, effect of, 313-315. ele- 
 ments of a poem, 296-306, essential 
 poets, 312, excellence of Athenian, 
 316-317, examples of unmetrical, 
 299, expression of the eternal order of 
 beautj', 309-310, fallacies in the 
 judgment of, 271-275, greatness, 
 331-336, illustrated by Venus and 
 Adonis, 300-306, idea of love in, 
 324-325, inevitableness, 311-312, 
 as an imitative art, 45, inspiration, 
 330-331. material of, 310-31 1, 
 methods of the study of, 273-275, 
 Milton in the stream of, 325-327, 
 metre and harmony in, 312, 
 most perfect expression of the in- 
 visible. 311, need of poetry, 270, 293, 
 330, need of a high standard, 270- 
 271, the offspring of the imagination, 
 307-308, parallel between intel- 
 lectual greatness and poetic excel- 
 
 lence, 318-319, partial poets, 313, 
 purpose of, 297-298, quahties of, 
 143-144. 3°o. in Rome, 321-322, 
 seriousness in, 278, superficial form, 
 296-297, superiority to reason, 327- 
 329, "touchstones" for judging 
 poetry, 275-278, ultimate good of, 
 293, utihty of, 328-330. 
 
 Poets and Poetry oj America, 136, 147. 
 
 Polonius, 227. 
 
 POLYBIUS, 23. 
 POMPEY, 24. 
 
 Pope, as poetical classic, 284, 286, 287; 
 quoted, 286; 10, 62, 68, 137, 338, 340, 
 
 353- 
 Pope, 17, 18. 
 
 Popular judgments, 66-67. 
 
 Porphyro, xxix. 
 
 Posthumus, 223, 349. 
 
 Postulates of Political Economy, 176. 
 
 PffiL'er oj Words, 172. 
 
 Prater ita, 206, 218. 
 
 Praxiteles, 2^. 
 
 Preface to the Fables, 1 81-201, 344. 
 
 Prelude, 115, 121, 161. 
 
 Presence of Mind, 25. 
 
 Priam, 276. 
 
 Principles of Science, 176. 
 
 Prioress's Tale, 281. 
 
 Professor Wilson, 17. 
 
 Promelhetis Unbound, 202. 
 
 Prose, requisites of, 285 {see Poetry). 
 
 Prose phantasy, 39. 
 
 Prospero, 234. 
 
 Protestantism, quoted, 28-29; 25, 27. 
 
 Puffing, its decadence, 67; effect on 
 
 the public, 65-66; illustrated by Mr. 
 
 Montgomery, 67-6S; meanness of, 
 
 63, 65; methods and tricks, 63-65; 
 
 superceding of patronage, 63. 
 
 PULTENEY, 12. 
 
 Purloined Letter, 159. 
 Pythagoras, 23, 323. 
 
 Querist, 14. 
 
 QUINXTILIAN, xii. 
 
 Quintessence of Ibsenism, 358. 
 QuiNTUS Calaber, 326. 
 
 Rachel, 123. 
 Radcliffe, 38.
 
 INDEX 
 
 375 
 
 Ramsay, xxxi. 
 
 Raphael, 329, 333. 
 Rationale oj Verse, 161, 164. 
 Raven, composition of the, 259-268; 
 quoted, 264, 266, 267, 268; 142, 144, 
 
 344, SSI- 
 Realism, see Fiction, James, Besant, 
 
 Novel, etc. 
 Reason, compared with imagination, 307. 
 Recluse, 115. 
 
 Recollections of the Lake Poets, 17. 
 Reeve, the, 193. 
 Reflector, 220. 
 
 Refrain, 261-262, 263-264. 
 Regulus, 321. 
 Renaissance, x, 342, 343. 
 Representative Essays on the Theory 
 
 0} Style, 346. 348, 356. 
 Resolution and Independence, 114. 
 Restoration poetry and prose, 284-286. 
 Retreat, 122. 
 
 Revolt of a Tartar Tribe, 17, 18, 34. 
 Revolution in Greece, 17. 
 Revice Content poraine, 170. 
 Reynolds, 114. 
 Rhetoric, 17, 19, 25, 31. 
 Rhipaeus, 325. 
 Rhythm, 264-265. 
 Riclmrd Bentley, 17, 18. 
 Richard II., 191. 
 Richard III., 229, 230. 
 RiCHTER, 39, 40. 
 RiNGWALT, xxii, 358. 
 Rip Van Winkle, 133. 
 Robert, King of Naples, 198. 
 Robert Browning, 350, 356. 
 Robertson, E. S., 358. 
 Robertson, F. W., 343, 358. 
 Robertson, J. M., on Foe, 126-180 (see 
 
 Poe); on the need of criticism, x; 
 
 notes on, 343-344; quoted, x; 
 
 xvii, XX, xxi, xxvi, xxvii, 340, 343, 
 
 344, 352, 3S4, 358- 
 Robinson Crusoe, 157, 259. 
 Rochester, 190. 
 Roderick, 77. 
 Roland, 274. 
 Roman Feasts, 187. 
 Romance, 248-249. 
 Romance Poetry, 278-280. 
 Romeo, 223, 349. 
 
 Romola, xxx. 
 
 Rossetti, D. G., x, xi. 
 
 Rossetti, M. F., xvii, 358. 
 
 Rousseau, 113, 325, 329. 
 
 RusKiN, Harrison on, 202-219: his 
 alliteration, 209, change of manner, 
 217-218, consonance, 209-213, draw- 
 backs, 205-206, genius, 202, great- 
 ness, 218-219, ideas, 203-204, 
 imagination, 213-217, lack of re- 
 straint, 215-217, length of sen- 
 tences, 207, 215, lucidity, 206-207, 
 mastery of English, 202, originaUty, 
 217, power over epithets, 208, pro- 
 fusion, 205-206, qualities, 204, 
 temperament, 202-203, 206; 
 Notes on, 345-348; 
 Quoted, 208, 211, 212,214-215, 216; 
 x.xii, xxvii, 340, 342, 358. 
 
 Ruskin as a Master of Frose, 202-219. 
 
 Ruth, 118. 
 
 Saint Agnes' Eve, xxviii, 114. 
 
 St. Bernard, 206. 
 
 St. Catharine of Siena, 123. 
 
 St. Francis, 203. 
 
 St. John (see Bolingbroke). 
 
 Sainte-beuve, x; quoted, 270. 
 
 Saintsbury, quoted, xii; vi, xxvii, 350, 
 
 3S8. 
 Samuel Johnson, 338, 358. 
 Sandys, 182. 
 Sartor Resartus, 217. 
 Satan, 77, 78, 23c, 325. 
 Satan, quoted, 78; 60, 77. 
 Saturday Review, 108, 159. 
 Savannah-la- Alar, 34, 41. 
 Sawyer, Bob, 95. 
 Scenery, stage, 235-236. 
 Scenes from Polilian, 141. 
 Schiller, 17. 
 Schlosser's Literary History of the 
 
 Eighteenth Century, 25, 31. 
 School for Scandal, loi. 
 Schubert, 150. 
 schultze, 35. 
 Science in Criticism, 344. 
 Scientific criticism, xx. 
 Scientific Use of the Imagination and 
 
 Other Essays, ij6. 
 Scienza Nuova, 26.
 
 376 
 
 INDEX 
 
 SciPio, 23. 
 
 Scott, F. N., vi, 350. 
 
 Scott, Sir W., quoted, 69; x, i, 38, 
 
 62, 69, 70, 77, 338, 358. 
 Scrihner's Magazine, 129, 137. 
 
 SCUDERY, Ml.LE. DE, 197. 
 
 Secret Societies, 17. 
 
 Selections from the Essays of Francis 
 Jeffrey, xx, 340, 356. 
 
 Senancour, 113. 
 
 Sentences, 207-208, 215. 
 
 Seriousness in fiction, 238-239; in 
 poetry, 278. 
 
 Seven Lamps of Architectures, 205, 207, 
 218. 
 
 SJtadow, 139. 
 
 Shadow oj Dante, xvii, 358. 
 
 Shakespeare, Lamb on the Tragedies 
 of, 220-236: deadening effect of see- 
 ing him acted, 222, essential nature of 
 his characters, 223, fashion for act- 
 ing, 221, imaginative quality, 233, im- 
 possibility of his being acted, 222, 
 especially Hamlet, 223-225, and 
 Lear, 231-232, mutilated by fol- 
 lowers, 229, 231, 234, his natural- 
 ness, 225, observation of life, 226, 
 results of seeing him acted, 222, 
 spiritual quality, 223, vulgarization 
 by actors, 226-227; 
 Notes on, 348-350; 
 Quoted, 70, 74, 228, 229, 276, 286, 
 
 3°3, 304, 305. 322; 
 
 X, xvi, xvii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, 65, 70, 
 78, 82, 83, 97, 122, 276, 282, 283, 
 291, 300, 302, 306, 325, 329, 341, 348, 
 
 349. 350. 354- 
 Shakespeare, 17, 18, 349, 356. 
 Shakespeare the Man, 341. 
 Sliakespeare's Posthumous Reputation, 
 
 xvi, 344. 
 Shakesperian Wars, xvi, 357. 
 Shallow, 236. 
 Shaw, xvii, 349, 358. 
 Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 307-336 
 (see Poetry); 
 Notes on, 355; 
 Quoted, 116, 292, 355; 
 ix, xviii, xxiii, 114, 116, 209, 212, 
 214, 215, 216, 292, 351, 358; 
 
 Works of, in prose and verse, 358. 
 
 Sheridan, R. B., ioi. 
 
 Sheridan, T., ii. 
 
 Shew, quoted, 138; 137. 
 
 Shipman, the, 193. 
 
 Short View of the Profaneness of the 
 
 English Stage, 344. 
 SiDDONS, 221, 228, 348. 
 Sidney, xxvii, 345. 
 Silence, 139. 
 Sill, xxxi. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton, 17. 
 Snodgrass, Mr., 96. 
 Socrates, 22, 289. 
 Solomon, 322. 
 Some Principles of Literary Criticism, 
 
 xiv, 359. 
 Some Words with a Mummy, 171. 
 Sonnet, quoted, 303, 304. 
 Sophocles, 22, 320. 
 Sortilege and Astrology, 2^, 34. 
 Southern Literary Messenger, 155. 
 Southey, 17, 77, 136, 137, 279. 
 Spanish Military Nun, 34. 
 Specimens of Narration, 350, 356. 
 Specimens of the English Dramatic 
 
 Poets, 349, 357. 
 Spencer, 172, 175, 176. 
 Spenser, 182, 190, 281, 316, 325, t,:^^. 
 Spirit of the Age, 343, 346, 359. 
 Spurgeon, 103. 
 Stage machinery.hurtful to Shakespeare, 
 
 234-235- 
 Stanhope, 10. 
 Statius, 61, 326. 
 Stedman, quoted, 137, 164, 178; 
 
 xxvii, 127, 141, 150, 164, 175, 177, 
 
 178. 344- 
 Stephen, Sir J., quoted, xi. 
 Stephen, L., on Wood's Halfpence, 
 
 1-15 {see Swift); notes on, 337-338; 
 
 quoted, x; xv, xxiii, 343, 358- 
 Stevenson, 154, 253, 346, 348, 350, 358. 
 Stoddard, quoted, 149, 165, 177; 131, 
 
 141, 150. 165. 
 Stones of Venice, 218. 
 Stringham, quoted, 175. 
 Structure in Verse, 264-268. 
 Student criticism, quoted, xxvii, xxix. 
 Studies of a Biographer, 338, 358. 
 Studies in Chaucer, 345, 357. 
 Studies in Literature, 343, 357.
 
 INDEX 
 
 377 
 
 Studies in Structure and Style, 346, 356. 
 
 Study 0} Poetry, 269-293 {see Arnold and 
 poetry); 345- 
 
 Study of Prose Fiction, 351, 357. 
 
 Style, quoted, 21-23; 17, 19, 25, 31. 
 
 Subjunctive, treatise on, 163. 
 
 Suckling, 48. 
 
 Summoner, the, 193. 
 
 Sunderland, 6. 
 
 Supernatural in poetry, 294. 
 
 Suspiria de Profundis, 16, 34, 41. 
 
 Swift, Work for Ireland {Wood^s 
 Halfpence), 1-15: Swift's arguments 
 against Wood's coinage, 4-8, at- 
 tempt to reenter English politics, 
 11-12, compared with Berkeley, 15, 
 criticism of his position, 14-15, 
 effect of his victory, 9-1 1, hatred of 
 oppression, 1-2, literary skill, 6, 7, 
 13, 14, main issue of the Drapier's 
 Letters, 8, origin of the Drapier's 
 Letters, 4, policy for the Irish, 7-8, 
 popularity, lo-ii, temperament, 
 temper, and sincerity, 2, 12, 13, 14, 
 view of the Irish, 2-3, work subse- 
 quent to the Drapier's Letters, 12-14, 
 writings, Drapier's Letters, 4-10, 15, 
 Legion Club, 13, Modest Proposal, 
 13-14, Pamphlet of 1720, 3-4, 
 various tracts, 12-13; 
 Notes on, 337-338; 
 Quoted, 2, 3, 4, II, 12, 13, 14; 
 XV, xvii, xxiii, xxxii, 154, 206, 
 207, 210, 339. 
 
 Swift's Letters, 2, 3, 7, 12; 
 Lives of, 356-358. 
 
 Swift's Works, i, 338, 358. 
 
 Swinburne, ix, x, xi, 150, 153, 343, 
 
 352. 358. 
 Sykes, 98. 
 
 System of Logic, 1 76. 
 System of the Heavens as revealed by 
 
 Lord Posse's Telescope, 24, 25. 
 
 Tacitus, quoted, 190. 
 
 Taillefer, 274. 
 
 Tales of Mystery, 153, 154. 
 
 Talleyrand, 82. 
 
 Tamerlane, 141. 
 
 Tarn Glen, 291, 292. 
 
 Tam o'Slianter, 291. 
 
 Taplcy, Mark, 91. 
 
 Tasso, quoted, ^^s; 61, 316, 325. 
 
 Taste, defined, xxiv; history of, xiv. 
 
 Taste of Dickens, 106-107. 
 
 Tate, 229. 
 
 Taylor, 206, 207, 299. 
 
 Tell-Tale Heart, 159. 
 
 Tempest, 234, 348. 
 
 Tendencies in criticism, xv-xxi. 
 
 Tennyson, quoted, 210, 2x6; 164, 167, 
 
 179, 209, 215, 341, 351. 
 Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other 
 
 Literary Estimates, 202, 357. 
 Text of SJiakespeare, 350, 357. 
 Textual criticism, xv. 
 Thackeray, xxvii, 81, loi, 136, 158, 
 
 160, 167, 237. 
 Thcban Sphinx, 25. 
 Themistocles, 21. 
 Theocritus, 23, 320. 
 Theoria Sacra, 299. 
 
 Theory and Pract ice of Criticism, xvi, 343 . 
 Theory of Greek Tragedy, 25, 31. 
 These id, 335. 
 
 Thoreau, xxix, XXX, 178. 
 Three Ladies of Sorrow, 42. 
 Three Plays for Puritans, 358. 
 Thucydides, 22, 108. 
 Tillotson, 78. 
 TiMi^us, 323. 
 Times, 64. 
 
 T intern Abbey, 99, 120. 
 Toad-in-the-hole, 34. 
 To a Grecian Urn, xxix. 
 To a Lady who wrote Poesies for Rings, 
 
 quoted, 50. 
 To Helen, quoted, 144; 145. 
 Toilette of a Hebrew Lady, 17. 
 Tolstoy, 349, 358. 
 Tone, 261-262. 
 
 Tory's Account of Toryism, 25, 30. 
 Touchstones, 275-278. 
 Translation, 181-182, 194-197. 
 Treasure, 279. 
 Treasure Island, 154. 
 Treatise of the Astrolabe, 187. 
 Trent, xiv, 358. 
 Trevelyan, 342, 358. 
 Troilus and Cressida, 187. 
 Trollope, 161, 239, 240. 
 Trotter, Job, 104.
 
 378 
 
 INDEX 
 
 True History, 147. 
 Tubal Cain, 23. 
 Tulliver, Maggie, xxx. 
 Tully (see Cicero), xix. 
 turgenieff, 249. 
 Turner, 206, 217. 
 TuROLDUS, 274. 
 Two April Mornings, 122. 
 Tyndall, 176. 
 
 Ulalume, quoted, 149-150; 351. 
 Uh'sses, 181, 185, 205, 314. 
 Universal Prayer, 77. 
 Unto this Last, 207, 217, 218. 
 
 Valentine Vox, 168. 
 
 Varied Types, 350, 356. 
 
 Varieties oj Religious Experience, xii, 
 
 357- 
 
 Varro, 321. 
 
 Vaughn, C. E., vi, 359. 
 
 Vaughan, H., 122. 
 
 Venn, x. 
 
 Venus, 302. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, illustrative of choice 
 of subjects, 301-302; of depth and 
 energy of thought, 305-306; of ex- 
 cellence of versification, 301 ; of 
 imagery, 302-305; of poetic power, 
 300-306; 354, 355- 
 
 Versification, 296-297, 301. 
 
 Ver-Vert, 162. 
 
 Vico, 26. 
 
 Villon, quoted, 283. 
 
 Virgil, compared with Homer, 185- 
 187, imitation of Homer, 185-187; 
 quoted, 9; 189, 190, 191, 199, 285, 
 297, 321. 325. 326, zZi^ 345- 
 
 Vision of Sudden Death, 40, 41. 
 
 Vita Nuova, 324. 
 
 VlTET, 274, 275. 
 
 Voltaire, 329. 
 
 Walking Stewart, 17, 18. 
 Wallace, xxviii. 
 Walladmor, 25, 34. 
 Waller, 48, 182, 190, 359. 
 Walpole, 3, 4, 6, 8, II, 12. 
 Walter Pater, xvi, 356. 
 Ward, A. W., xxvii. 
 Ward, T. H., 269, 353, 359. 
 
 Wardle, Mr., 92, 93. 
 
 Waverley Novels, 86. 
 
 Weller, Mr., 108. 
 
 Weller, Sam, 91, 92, 93, 108. 
 
 Whately, 31. 
 
 What is Art? 349, 358. 
 
 Whistle and Fll come to you, 291. 
 
 Whistle ffwre the lave o't, 290. 
 
 White Doe of Rhylstone, 343. 
 
 Whitman, Mrs., quoted, 127; 134, 
 
 135. 162, 177. 
 Whitman, W., 171. 
 Whitshed, 4, 9. 
 Wickliff, 191. 
 Wieland, 302. 
 Wife of Bath, 193. 
 Wife of Bath's Tale, 188. 
 WiUet, 85. 
 
 William the Conqueror, 274. 
 William Wilson, 139, 159. 
 Willis, quoted, 136; 130. 
 Winchester, xiv, 359. 
 Wit, 45- 
 Wits, 45. 46. 
 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 280. 
 Wood, nature of his patent, 4-6; 7, 8, 
 
 9- 
 Woodberry, xxvii, 127, 175, 343, 358. 
 
 Wood's Halfpence, 1-16 {see Swift), 
 
 338. 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge on, 294-296: 
 notion of the language of real Ufe, 
 295, permanent excellence of his 
 poetry, 295-296, vogue, 295-296. 
 Pater on, 111-125, basis of his un- 
 evenness, 111-1x2, distinction be- 
 tween Fancy and Imagination, iii, 
 his duality of moods, 112, excellence 
 as a training in poetrj', 11 2-1 13, in- 
 dividuality in his work, iii, necessity 
 of separating the good from the bad, 
 113, the residue, 11 3-1 24: — abil- 
 ity to appreciate passion in the lowly, 
 1x8, expression, 121-122, imagina- 
 tive moods, 1 21-122, meditation on 
 nature, 116, "pan-psychism," 116, 
 philosophy, 1 20-1 21, sense of ex- 
 pression in natural things, 113-114, 
 sentiment, 116-117, sincerity, 116, 
 solemnity, 11 7-1 18, his unevenness, 
 1 1 2-1 1 3, his value, 122-125;
 
 INDEX 
 
 379 
 
 Wordsworth, continued. 
 
 Notes on, 342-343; 
 
 Essays on, 343; 
 
 Quoted, 114, 115; 
 
 ix. xvi, xxiv, xxvii, 17, 29, 31, 32, 
 90, 99, 137, 167, 209, 270, 282, 284, 
 294, 29s. 341. 351. 352, 354, 355. 
 
 359- 
 Wordsworth, ix, in, 341, 357. 
 Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, 
 
 or Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art 
 
 in Poetry, xxxi, 341. 
 Wordsworth and Byron, ix. 
 
 Wordsworth's Complete Poetical Works, 
 
 359- 
 World and a Clock, 54. 
 Wyatt, 131. 
 Wyndham, Maximilian, 35. 
 
 Xenophon, 22, 289. 
 X-ing a Paragrab, 164. 
 
 Zeus, 276. 
 
 Zola, 157, 250, 256.
 
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