u % OUTCAST ESSAYS AXD VERSE TEAjN^SLATIOXS. LONDON ; rvOBSO:^ AND SO^'S, PKINTERS, TANCRAS KOAD, X.W. OUTCAST ESSAYS VEKSlv TliANSLATIONS, * • I • ^r.v ■» SHADWOETH H. HODGSON, Hon. LL.D. Edin. AUTHOR OF 'TIMS AND SPACE,' 'THE THEORY OF rRACTICE,' * THE PHILOSOPHY OF REFLECTION,' ETC. LONDON: LOXGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1881. [i4U ritjlds rjport J.'J OUTCAST ESSAYS. ^Vhy outcast .^— The first was rejected by one peri- odical, the second by three. For the rest I ceased to solicit, judging that they would prove still more inadmissible. All were written because I had some- thing I wished to say, whether or not it were in •all points what any large number of the public might be counted on to read. Unsuited, then, for periodicals, they may perhaps be tolerated as a volume. The Verse Translations may interest those who are accustomed to amuse themselves by a similar exercise. January ISSl, 921-315 CONTENTS. ESSAYS. 1. The Genius of IJe Quixcey .... i 2. De Quixcey as Political Economist, or De QUINCEY AND MiLL OX SuPPLY AND DeMAND 67 3. The SuPERXATURAL IX ExGLisii Poetry: Siiak- SPERE ; Milton ; Wordsworth ; Texnysox 99 4. XoTE. Ox the True Symbol of Christiax Uxiox jSi .'). ExGLiSH Verse 207 VEPuSE TEANSLATIO^^S. I. Lucretius. The Exordium, Book I. 1—43 364-7 II. Horace. Odes III. 9, Donec gratus . 368-71 HI. Horace. Odes I. 10, Mater s.eva Cupi- DINUM ... ■Z'j'y ■* IV. Lucretius. The Sacpjfice of Ipiiigenia, Book L 80—101 . . -7. - V. Lucretius. II. 1— IG, Suave mari magno 376, 7 VL Catullus. XXXL P.ene ixsularum, Sir- Mio. A Paraphrase . . . 378, 9 vii. Iliad. Book YIIL 541— oGi, The Bivouac 380, i VIII. Latin Inscription. Lines on a Pet Dog. 382, 3 Yin CONTENTS. PAGE- IX. Horace. Odes III. 30, Exegi moxumentum 384, 5 X. Horace. Odes I. 7, Laudabuxt alii . 386-9 XI. Horace. Odes II. 13, Ille et nefasto . 390-3 XII. Horace. Odes I. 28, Te maris et terr.e . 394-7 XIII. AxTiiOLOGiA Palatina. X. 123, Uu-; ri; aviu Oamro'j ..... 398, 9 XIV. Horace. Odes III. 13, Fons Bandusle 400, i XV. Horace. Odes III. 2G, Vixi puellis . 402, 3 XVI. From the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Lines 41:7 — 455, Apollo to Hermes . 404, 5, XYii. Odyssey. Book VII. 185 — 218, Alcinoos AND Ulysses 406-9- xviii. Iliad. Book XXIA^. 598—620, Achilles TO Priam 410,11 XIX. Hadrian's Animula, vagula, blandula . 412,13^ THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. Eighteen years had passed since De Quincey's death, when the summer of 1877 brought the day so much to be dreaded for some, so much to be desired for others, when concerning him also the truth was at last to be told to the world. The admirable Life then published by Mr. Page* gives as full and adequate an account of him, in all essential particulars, as in all probability ever will or can be given; and from that account De Quincey can be only a gainer. It is now obvious that the various events related by himself in his Confessions, Auto- biographic Sketches, and other papers, which might have seemed to wear iha colouring of romance, partly from the discontinuity of the narrative, but more, perhaps, from the embellishing style of the narrator, are not themselves romance but strict and sober fact. At least they ^ofit In with the rest of his sur- roundings, and with other events of his life now * Thomas de Quincey. His Life and Writings. With un- published Con-cspondcnce. By H. A. Page. 2 vols. Hogg and Co., 1877. 4 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. made known to us, as to obtain an additional guaran- tee of authenticity. This, however, is a small matter. What will justly be of far greater importance to the general reader is, that here at last De Quincey stands before us in the light of common day, is at last rendered intelligible, a human and not a mythical being, rescued from the atmosphere of legend, which had not only hidden but grievously distorted his image, by making him a mark for thoughtless exaggeration, unsubstantial and sometimes even apocryphal anec- dote. Thus it is now made clear, that to describe him as " dreaming always," *^ his existence a series of dreams," " large in promises, helpless in failure of performance," to speak of him as " for once exerting himself to write," and to say that " the human mind" was the " one thing he knew anything about," is to give a picture which is the very reverse of the truth. These things may to some seem trifles. Still, how they could ever have been said, in the face of the fourteen published volumes, revised by himself before his death, since increased to sixteen, and even then not including his Logic of Political Economy, surpasses my comprehension. Again, the imputa- tion that the '^ credit of being ux> in German Meta- THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. & pliysicians, Latin Schoolmen, Thaumaturgic Platon- ists, Keligious Mystics, &c.," was a motive with De Quincey, or in the least degree led him to speak with a pretension of knowledge where he possessed none, becomes incredible from the true delineation of De Quincey's character now given by Mr. Page, and supported by the facts of his life. My present purpose is solely with De Quincey as a writer ; what the leading traits of his intellectual character are, what his rank, what his functions and achievements in literature ; in one word with his genius. But for this purpose how great, I would almost say how indispensable, is a true picture of the man. It would not be so in every case, or at least not to the same extent ; some men's writings are of plain and easy interpretation ; but in De Quincey's case we have already seen how a mistaken appreciation of the writings may flow from a false imagination of the person. Mr. Stirling's theory of the cause of De Quincey's error concerning Kanfc {Fortnightly Ilevieiv, Oct. 18G7), for from this it was that my last quotation came, will not hold water in presence of the true account of De Quincey's cha- racter now at last made public ; some other explana- tion of that error (if error it be) must be sought ; and I shall return to this point in its proper place, seeing 6 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCE Y. that it touches an important feature in De Quincey's literary reputation. For my own part I may say, that I needed not to wait for Mr. Page's book to form a truer estimate of De Quincey's character than the current legends afforded. Not only as a relative of the family w^as I acquainted with the outlines of his life, hut it was my privilege in the summer of 1853 to pass several days as a guest under his roof. His writings, those that I was then acquainted with, had been to me a source of the most valuable instruction ; not of delight only, but of instruction and insight into regions which would else have remained closed to me. No one touches and lays bare the inmost heart of a subject like De Quincey. You are not kept at the surface or delayed wdth commonplaces, nor are you told the " thing to say" about it, as from a well-informed tutor getting up his pupils for the examination room. But you are taken by the hand and led into the centre of the subject by a direct though flowery path, the path probably by which the teacher himself had entered ; and while you are think- ing only of the flowers that strew, and the music that accompanies your route, suddenly the region is illuminated, and a panoramic view disclosed of its branching recesses. THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 7 The independence, the originality, the proprio martc (to use a phrase often used by himself) of his •exposition, is in every case the most remarkable feature of it. You have the subject treated at first hand. What struck me most when I saw him was the precise resemblance of his uttered to his written speech. The sentences flowed forth on the air, in manner and form just the same as they flowed along the printed page. They came spontaneously forth, embodying the associative act of thought as that action itself proceeded, and adapted, like that act itself, to the remarks of the interlocutors, in the ■ordinary course of give and take conversation. It was thought made visible ; the verification and exemplification of the dictum — the style is the man. He was, besides, the very soul of courtesy in con- Tersation, studious not only to listen but respond to every remark, and make it bear its full fruit. I remember particularly his jubilant applause when an afternoon visitor reported a supposed epitaph on a great talker, beginning Hie tacet — . His fancy was captivated by the effect which the change of a single letter produced, the sudden heightening of the gar- rulousness which nothing but death could check, making it leap, as it were, to infinity, and at the ^ame moment contrasting it with an infinite silence. 8 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. But after all, his 0"svn quiet flow of talk was tlie jireatest charm. Pldlomelus was the name which afterwards in my own mind I gave him. For no description that I have read of him seems to me to surpass in truth and vividness the lines in which Thomson describes the bard Philomelus in the second canto of the Castle of Indolence : " a little druid wight, Of withered aspect ; but his eye was keen. With sweetness mixed. In russet brown bedight, He crept along, unpromising of mien. Gross he who judges so. His soul was fair, Bright as the children of yon azure sheen !" There you have De Quincey ; at least in his later days. And few as are the touches, the portrait which they compose is that of a living and breathing mortal. The key to the comprehension of De Quincey's place in literature may be given in few words. Two circumstances combined. First, he was by natural constitution of an intellectual turn, interested in the "things of the mind" genuinely and for their own sake ; " intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days," he tells us in the Preface to the first edition of the Confessions (1822) ; and this claim is fully- THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 9< borue out b}^ the picture now presented in the Life. He sat down as it were in a theatre, to study and enjoy the spectacle of existence, past as well as present, with keen and eager curiosity, needing no alien stimulus derived either from the wish for applause or from the necessity of bread-getting ; and resolved to see it with his own and not with others' eyes. His love for learning was self-originated, his judgment self-guided, his mind self-educated, at least if by self-education is meant, not an impos- sible independence of instructors, but the active use and choice of instruction by whomsoever offered, as contrasted with passive submission to a teacher's guidance. But secondly, this aptitude and the knowledge which it had led him to acquire, he was afterwards compelled by circumstances, not led by choice, to turn to account in the way of bread-getting for him- self and his family. He had to make the best of his acquirements, whatever they were, in that direc- tion. He had therefore to write what would bring in immediate returns. He was a private student sud- denly called upon to become a professional writer. The outward shape and form which his activity should take was thus determined for him ; its pecu- liar independence and originality remaining what 10 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. tliey were, and would have been, had he never pub- lished a single magazine article. What then was the value, what was the charac- ter, of that mental independence and originality ? To answer this, we must see what that epoch was at which his career commenced. Now he v/as just fifteen at the commencement of the present century. The nineteenth century was dawning when his intel- lect was approaching its early maturity. Two great tendencies seem to divide between them the history of human mental development, though their ulti- mate causes are still a mystery ; periods of criticism and demolition alternate with periods of creation and reconstruction. The nineteenth century has been a period of the latter class. Speaking only of England, — for to discuss the connection of English with Continental thought, or the causes of develop- ment which are special to the latter, would carry us too far afield, — speaking only of England, the nine- teenth century was created, was made what it was, so far as the two vast fields of Literature and Phi- losophy are concerned, by a constellation of poets. They are the fathers of that reaction, that recon- struction, that revival of the heart as the unifying principle against the dispersing, criticising, under- standing j as the end or rikog of all action and of all THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 11 thought, — which we call the nineteenth century. A constellation of six stars, of primary magnitude though variously coloured light, — Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge ; Byron, Shelley, Keats. Of these, two at least, and those the two of keen- est radiance, shed their light over the total surface of human interests, and are philosophers as well and iis much as they are poets, — Wordsworth and Cole- ridge. Of these it may be truly said, that the Englishman who has not entered through them into the nineteenth century has not fully and thoroughly •entered therein. They are the Door of the century. For just as there are two great tendencies which give rise to alternating epochs of dissolution and recon- struction in the mental history of mankind, so also, and perhaps as a condition of its being so, are there two orders of individual minds ; minds genial, flex- ible, and imaginative, on the one side, minds un- genial, inflexible, ratiocinative, on the other ; minds that seem to be Nature's offspring and inherit her ispontaneity, and minds that seem to be her handi- work and perform her tasks. Foremost among the purely intellectual charac- teristics which distinguish these two orders of minds, are those of intellectual subtilty and intellectual -acuteness. Subtilty is a perfection of the perceptive 12 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. powers, acuteness of the ratiocinative. A subtiJ mind is one that perceives minute differences and similarities, and minute shades of total character, in objects which it pictures ; an acute mind perceives the remote logical consequences of given facts, whe- ther traced backwards to causes or forwards ta effects. The genial order of mind, when powerful, is subtil ; the ungenial, when pow^erful, is acute. And according to the predominance of either order of minds, the period is stamped to which they be- long ; or rather, since the bulk of mankind consists- always and everywhere of minds of the latter order, the greatest talent being but the highest grade of ordinary common sense, and there being always- fifty minds that are acute for one that is subtil, — whenever minds of imaginative genius and subtilty appear in conjunction, their epoch is marked, and their influence is manifested, by the occurrence of a period of reconstruction. The eighteenth century was, intellectually, the reign of acuteness ; the nine- teenth the reaction of subtilty. Through the door of Wordsworth and Coleridge, De Quincey entered, and then became one of the main channels by which their influence was diffused and made operative in moulding the thoughts of other men after the image of theirs. There is no- THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 13 tiling more remarkable than the way in which De Quincey himself recurs to this, as one of his chief titles to consideration, thus voluntarily and joyfully making it his pride to claim a secondary place, and shine by a reflected light. The first publication of the Lyrical Ballads (1798), including, as he expressly mentions, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, he calls "the greatest event in the unfolding of my own mind." (Works, vol. ii. p. 142, Hogg's edition.) And in the revised and enlarged Confessions, in 1856, we read : '' Was I then, in July, 1802, really quoting from Wordsworth ? Yes, reader ; and I only in all Europe." (Confessions, Hogg's edition, p. 98.) But there are ranks in the order of genius, as there are ranks in that of talent. De Quincey, by vir- tue of his combining great emotional sensibility with great intellectual subtilty, belongs to the order of genius ; but he does not belong to the first rank in it. He has genius, but it is not creative ; originahty and independence, but they are employed in analys- ing, interpreting, and expounding. There is such a thing as an original and independent expositor. The insight which such an one brings is drawn from his own sympathetic intelligence, and is proportioned to its keenness and closeness ; it is the insight of subtilty, not of acuteness. That is the shape De 14 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. Quincey's genius takes ; not creative, but illumina- tive ; widely different in method and results from that of merely talented expounders, however con- scientious and well-informed, who are acute without being subtil. He precedes you with a torch. And presently, or perhaps even at the first sentence, the subject glows and the reader kindles ; as for instance in the Joan of Arc : " What is to be thought of Iter ? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of liorraine, that— like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Juda3a — rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious in- spiration, rooted in deep j^astoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings T De Quincey had a theory of his own about genius, which, if good things will bear repeating, well de- serves to recur, as it does, more than once in his works : "Genius is intellectual power impregnated with the moral nature, and expresses a synthesis of the active in man with his original organic capacity of pleasure and pain. Hence the very word genius, because the genial nature in its whole organisation is expressed and involved in it. Hence, also, arises the reason that genius is always peculiar and individual ; one man's genius never exactly THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 15 repeats another man's. Eut talent is tlie same in all men ; and that which is effected hy talent, can never serve to identify or indicate its author. Hence, too, that, although talent is the object of respect, it never conciliates love ; you love a man of talent perhaps in concreto, hut not talent, whereas genius, even for itself, is idolized." Mrs. Browning's fine saying about Napoleon iu Croivnccl and Buried irresistibly occurs to one. The man, she says, was flawed ; — "but since he had The genius to he loved, why let him have The justice to be honoured in his grave." De Quincey's analysis, in my opinion, exactly hits the mark, and I am not aware that it can be claimed by any one before him. His own genius, as we have seen, takes the shape of insight employed in exposition. A clear, subtil, and penetrating intelligence is employed, not with- out humour, in exhibiting and unfolding the essential characters of whatever subject he takes in hand. He has enjoyed and comprehended the spectacle himself, and he is resolved that you also shall enjoy and com- prehend it. His own consciousness of this is the cause of that didactic tone which is often noticeable, as well as of that digressiveness and introduction of anecdote, which some critics seem to have found somewhat wearisome. If you want, as so many do 16 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. want, a brief handbook of any subject, De Quincey's are not the pages to go to. If, again, you want pure amusement and entertainment, without effort of your own, without any previous interest in the subject- matter, this, too, is not to be expected of De Quincey. He is neither a schoolmaster nor a show- man. But if you want any of those subjects which he has treated shown to you as in a magician's glass, its core laid bare, its relations to kindred subjects, and its bearing on human interests unfolded, and that in a manner which kindles and sustains the interest, while it calls out your own energies of mind to make the subject your own, — if this is what you want, and if, at the same time, you will not grudge a little time and some slight effort of atten- tion, — then take up a volume of De Quincey, say for example one of those containing the articles on Parr or Bentley, Pope or Goldsmith, or the Last Days of Kant, or in history the Ccesars, Cicero, Herodotus, Secret Societies, Homer and the Homer- idffi, the Casuistry of Eoman Meals, or— last not least — the genial and penetrative sketch of Shake- spere, and I venture to promise that you will rise from the reading of it charmed, invigorated, and instructed. Often, indeed, you will stumble on some • saying or aperc^n, or on some piece of information, THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. 17 "whicli has since become common property, or been followed up by others. Chance will have led you to its original quarrying and purveyorship, to the first candle of which j'our own knowledge is possibly a distant reverberation. Nor is it a meagre list of subjects to which De Quincey can introduce you. His sixteen volumes are filled with essays in every direction of history, biography, scholarship, criticism, literature. They are a perfect mine of instruction for any one who is willing, not to take his information and his opinions ready made from his author, but to have subjects opened up for him, questions concerning them broached, foundations for future reading laid. In this way it is that De Quincey, more truly than per- haps any author that can be named, is a iwimlar writer ; he writes to and for the people ; and for the people it is that his writings are most valuable. To quote from a little essay of his. On the Scriptural Expression for Eternity^ written so late as 1852, " As the reading public and the thlnJcing public is every year outgrowing more and more notoriously the mere learned public, it becomes every year more and more the right of the former public to give the law preferably to the latter public, upon all points which concern its own separate interests;" which is c 18 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. as fine a democratic sentiment as need be expected from a liigli professing Tory. He aims at interest- ing a wide and universal, not merely a select lite- rary, audience, notwithstanding the solidity of the information he has to convey. And this very aim it is, or rather the stjde adopted in consequence of it, which sets the seal of permanence upon his writings, promising them more than that ephemeral existence which is the inevitable fate of most magazine articles, even when they are more fully abreast of the latest information. And here, at the risk of possibly seeming tedious, I must interpose a remark which, as will shortly appear, is most important for a true appreciation of our author. It is that he belongs not to science but to literature. He is an original expositor and inter- preter, but, except in one single case, he is a literary and not a scientific expositor. His subjects for the most part are recognised as literary subjects, and he does not attempt to transcend that mode of treat- ment. He has no scientific theory of History, or of Politics, to propound; no science of criticism; no system of metaphysic, or of ethic. Not that he was unacquainted, indeed very much the reverse, v/ith the best of what had been written on these subjects; but he comes forward v/ith no speculations of a sys- THE GEXIU3 OF DE QUINCE Y. 19 "tematic kind, of his own. Every subject is open to a literary, as well as to a scientific, treatment, and a literary treatment is that which it receives at De Quincey's hand. The sole exception is Political Economj^, to which he devotes a separate work, the Logic of Political Economy, published in 1844, in 'v\'hich he appears as the expositor of Pticardo. The English edition of his works excludes this admirable book, though admitting the Templars' Dialof/ucs on the same subject, probably on account of its more literary form. I shall recur to this book presently.* It is, then, as a literary writer that De Quincey must in the first instance be judged. And here we are again met by a distinction which is his property; again we have to judge him as it were out of his own mouth, simply because he it is who has laid down the fundamental distinctions of the matter. Do his works take rank under the Literature of Power, or mevelj undeY the Literature of Knowledge'? Do they aim at moving the heart as well as teaching the understanding, or are they confined to the latter function alone? The distinction vdil be found in * Since the above was written, which was in 1877, just after the appearance of the Life, this omission has been happily recti- fied, and the Logic of Political Economy included in a supple- mentary volume, paged so as to be continuous with vol, xiii. of Messrs. Black's edition of the Works. The supplementary volume was published in 1878. 20 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. the essay on Pope (vol. ix. p. 5, Hogg's edition). The passage is far too long for transcription in its entirety ; a word or two from it must suffice : *' 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 disuse, all such sensibilities would gradually droop and dwindle. It is in relation to these great moral 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 liighest in manj for the Scriptures themselves never condescended to deal by suggestion or co-operation with the mere dis- cursive understanding : when speaking of man in his intellectual capacity, the Scriptures 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 infinite." There is a certain class of works, then, which by their aim alone proclaim themselves as belonging to the Literature of Power. They may be good, bad, or indifferent, in that class ; they may hit or they may miss their aim ; but the class to which they belong is marked out by their aim and scope- alone. Their scope proclaims their class, be their success in attaining it what it may. The poem^ THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. 21 the drama, the romance, the novel, the sermon, for instance, all belong clearl}^ and inevitably to the jwicer literature ; history, biography, travels, criti- cism, philosophy, belong prima facie at least to the knoicledge literature. Their avowed and obvious aim is to instruct by communicating or interpreting facts. And it is under one or other of these latter heads that most of De Quincey's writings fall, except the Political Economy which is scientific. But observe the limitation. I said their avoiccd and obvious aim would mark them as belonging to the knowledge literature. Is there, then, any other consideration which can entitle them to a place in the literature of power ? There certainly is. The two classes are not finallij distinguished by the avowed and obvious aim, or even by the title of the works which are to be ranged under them. Wherever the subject, being capable of an imaginative and emotional treatment, is so handled as to be made the vehicle of moving the sympathies as well as instructing the understanding, then the work rises, in virtue of this handling alone, into the power literature, and that without any formal claim being put forward in the preface. But then see what follows ; so far from the scope, irrespective of the .success, determining its class, the reverse becomes 22 THE GENIUS OF DE QL'INCEY. the law, and the success of the work in rousing and enlisting our sj^mpathies ensures our ranking it as a "work oi iioicer, irrespective of the avowed and obvious scope indicated by its title. Even subjects which already belong to science, much more those which belong to literature, may be so treated as to raise the work that treats them into a work of power. The great didactic poems ofYirgil and Lucretius, and (in prose) Edgar Poe's Eureka, are instances. Criticism, especially art-criticism, is closely allied to the power literature. Mr. Euskin's greater works for instance, — who can mistake their claim to this rank? And Mr. Carlyle's French Revolution is an instance of the same thing in the domain of history. There are such things, then, as Avorks which belong to the Literature of Power, by virtue of the way in which the subjects are handled, the mode and manner of their treatment, the key in which they are composed, the style in which they are embodied. The manner and the style create in them a soul under the ribs of death. To this class of writings the w^orks of De Quincey belong. They are militant for a place in the Litera- ture of Power. Not militant in the sense in which he himself applies that term to the knowledge litera- ture, but in the sense that only success in moving THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 23 our svmpatliies, the recoguition of wliich lies in opinion not in proof, makes good the rank and dig- nity of the work. If they rank ^Yith povrer literature, they do so not by reason of the subjects treated of, but by virtue of the method and manner of treat- ment, in one comprehensive word, by their Style. Of what, then, do De Quincey's works consist ? His own ''rude general classification" of them, in the Preface to the first volume of the collected Eng- lish edition revised by himself, and written therefore when the revision was only just begun, is as follows. He makes three classes, (1) papers which propose primarily to amuse the reader, but which may hap- pen occasionally to reach a higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned interest ; — instance, the Autohiographic Sketches; (2) what he calls simply Essays, which address themselves purely to the understanding ; e.g. the Essencs, the Ccesars, and Cicero ; (3) "a far higher class of com- positions, the Confessions of an Opium-Eater, and also (but more emphatically) the Siispiria de Pro fundis,'" This classification dates back to the begin- ning of the English revised edition, that is, to 1853, at which time also the American edition, referred to in the Preface, numbered not more than seven vol- umes, if even so many. At present, with the six- 24 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. teen volumes of the English edition before us, a somewhat more detailed classification may be of service. The English edition, even though for the most part revised by the author, is, in some important respects, a chaos. It does not, as a rule, inform us either of the date at which the papers were written, or of the magazine or periodical in which they ap- peared. Its omissions are not unimportant, exclud- ing, for instance, both the tale of KlosterJtcim and the Logic of Political Economy. The latter is a serious defect, bearing, as the edition now does, the ambitious title of Works. The original title adopted by De Quincey was Selections, Grave and Gay, from Writings imhlislied and unpuhlisJied ; a title admir- ably expressing the nature and purpose of the con- tents. I suppose it was thought that Works would be more generally attractive, as promising more; while at the same time the public would not care to be bored with so unpromising a subject as poli- tical economy, let alone its Logic, or drouth upon drouth.* Be it as it may, let us take stock of the most * I let this passage stand as it was written in 1877 ; and why ? Because the publication of the supplementary volume con- taining the Logic of Political Econonnj has now changed the hlame it expresses into a deserved compliment. THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 25 important items of its contents. And suppose we classify as follows. First let us place those works which are more predominantly creative, and belong the most clearly to the literature of power ; in the second group, those in which this is less markedly the case, owing to the claims of the matter pre- dominating, in them, over those of the manner. I •say less markedly, for in almost all there is some touch, and in many the touches are frequent and brilliant, of the creative spirit of genius and the •spontaneous eloquence which embodies it. I. {Literature of Power.) The Confessions and Sus- piria. The English Mail Coach; with its adjuncts, The Glory of Motion, The Vision of Sudden Death, The Dream Fugue. The Auto- biographic Sketches in vols. i. and ii. to the end of Early Memorials of Grasmere. The two papers on Murder. Joan of Arc. These are the writings which, in my opinion, are the chief pillars of Dc Quincey's fame, his surest title to a lasting place, secure from chance and ■change, among the immortals of his epoch. An original genius, individual and therefore inimitable, 'has invested these works with a perennial charm, disparate but not inferior to that which breathes 26 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. from the choicest among the Essays of Ella, or the Imaginary Conversations of Landor. 11. {Literature of Knoiulcdge.) This, which is the most numerous class, I would roughl}^ suh- divide as follows : 1. Historical and Political. The Cresars. Cicero. The Essenes. Judas Iscariot. The Philosoph}^ of Herodotus. Plato's Repuhlic. The Pievolution of Greece. Greece under the Eomans. Modern Greece. Charlemagne. On War. Secret Societies. A Tory's Account of Toryism. Political Parties of Modern England. Falsification of English History. The Eevolt of the Tartars. Ceylon. Memorial Chrono- logy. &c. &c. 2. Social and Etl deal. The Templars' Dialogues on Political Economy. The Casuistry of Eoman Meals. French and English Manners. National Temperance Movements. Modern Superstition. Pro- testantism. Casuistry. The Pagan Oracles. The Theban Sphinx. Miracles as Subjects of Testimony. Christianity as an Organ of Political Movement. System of the Heavens as revealed by Lord Eosse's Telescope. Glance at the Works of Mackintosh. Presence of Mind. The Spanish Military Nun. (which in form is a tale). &c. &c. THE GEXIUS OF DE QUI^'CEY. 27 3. General Literature. Homer and the Homeridae.. Theory of Greek Tragedy. The Antigone of Sopho- cles. The Knocking at the Gate in Machctli. Schlosser's Literary History of the 18th Century. Milton. Alexander Pope. On Wordsworth's Poetry. Language. PJietoric. Style. Milton versus Southey and Landor. Letters to a Young Man, &c. Ortho- graphic Mutineers. Conversation. /Elius Lamia. &c. &c. 4. Personal Criticism and Biographi/. Life of Shakespere. The Sketches of Coleridge, "Words- worth, and Southey. The Last Days of Kant. Whiggism in its relations to Literature (Dr. Parr). Oliver Goldsmith. Pilchard Bentley. Shelley. Keats. Charles Lamb. Notes on Walter Savage Landor. Lord Carlisle on Pope. Life of Pope. Life of Mil- ton. Sortilege and Astrology. Numerous minor biographical notices, criticisms, and translations, among them of Lessing's Laocoon, of Kant's Idea of an Universal History ; &c. Sec. It would take me far beyond the limits of a single paper, as it would be also far beyond my own powers, to follow De Quincey through this varied list, en- deavouring to appraise the value of the several essays, as contributions to the knowledge of the *28 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. subjects treated. Notwithstanding, it would be re- quisite in this place to make some remarks on the ■only important work not included in it, the Logic of Political Economy, did it not appear a better plan to give that subject a separate treatment. For this is the only work in which De Quincey appears as a distinctly scientific expositor, and therefore is of peculiar importance in estimating his mental powers. It has also been the subject of a disparaging remark by John Stuart Mill, who is justly considered a high authority on economical questions. It is necessary, therefore, on De Quincey's behalf, that this matter should be examined, if his claim to be considered a sound reasoner on a scientific subject is to be vin- -dicated. This it will be my endeavour to do in the following essay. To keep, then, to literary ground. The list of Essays is long and miscellaneous. The "once" that De Quincey exerted himself to write must have been a once that often happened. The reader will find traces, too, of knowledge, power, and skill in treating other subjects besides that of " the human mind." The basis of whatever power he showed as an essayist w^as laid in a large range of philosophic reading, and a habit of deep and genuine philosophic .thought. It is in vain for any man to rely on mere THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 2D' acquaintance with the subject which he treats, even when combined with great readiness and skill in writing, if the result is to be in any measure an acquisition to futurity. The subtil links that con- nect it with the general fears and hopes and efforts of mankind will be inevitably wanting. The rela- tions which bind it to the other parts of human his- tory, not being perceived by the writer, will not be suggested by tacit pervadure or explicit announce- ment to the reader. There will be a charm wanting which alone can preserve it in perennial freshness. Writings to live must be impregnated with philo- sophy. De Quincey's reputation among his contempo- raries both for depth and range of philosophic know- ledge stood very high. It was just the kind of repu- tation we should expect from the character of the man ; the reputation not of a professor of any of the different branches of philosophy, but of one who had studied at first hand from love of the subject, and with a view to satisfy the obstinate questionings of his own mind. His philosophic reading has left indeed but little direct trace in his essays ; and some of what there is he has not cared to include among his republished works. ]jut of his genuine delight in philosophical literature there can be no- 30 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. ■doubt. It is a mere straw, but it sbows the way of the wind, to mention that I have seen his copy of Giordano Bruno's De Monade Numcro ct Figura. Item de Inniuncrahilihus Lihrl Octo, 12mo, 1591 ; and on the fly-leaf at the end, there is written in De Quincey's clear hand, ''Bought this day, Wednesday, May 31st, 1809; — brought home this evening be- tween 8 and 9 o'clock." And I am told by one who knew him well that, in later years, this same little volume was his frequent companion, that he would pace up and down the room with it in his hand, re- |Deating from it and referring to it. His copy of Spinoza's Ethic also, the Opera PostJmma of 1G77, bears on its fly-leaf, in the same hand, " Paid Mr. Webber 25s. for this book, — this morning, Thurs- day, July 2Gth, 1810." Possibly the very same vol- ume spoken of in an amusing note to the essay on Bentley. These things bear witness to something more than a mere book-hunter's enthusiasm. In ethical matters too De Quincey was a master. Years ago I remember extracting from one of the earlier published volumes of the American edition {Life and Manners, vol. i. p. 309, 1851) a passage in v/hicli Paley is criticised. The passage is not re- produced in the English edition, but may be found in TaiVs Edinhurgli Magazine for August, 1835 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 31 '(vol. ii., New Series, p. 549). I hold it to have been the best piece of instruction in Ethic I ever received; it led me right into the heart of the theor}^ and be- came a foundation for future thought to build on. The scope of the passage was to distinguish tv/o great questions in Ethic, one concerning the ratio ■cognosccndi, the other the ratio csscndi, of virtue, and then to point out how the two are by Paley con- fused with each other, and his ansvrer to the latter (and that according to De Quincey a wrong answer, namely, Utility) offered as if it were an answer to the former, which is the real question which Ethic has to answer. De Quincey thus takes strong anti-utilitarian ground in Ethic. He is disposed also by natural temperament to take anti-determinist views in the question of free-will; but in this case, such is his logical clearness that, in stating this question for decision, he shows himself necessarian (as it was then generally called) in fact^ though contesting the propriety of the name. De Quincey was thus what we should now call a Free-will Determinist. I have found a note in his well-known hand on the cover of ^ copy of Crombie on Philosoj^hical Necessity, 1793, which from its clearness and brevity is well worth transcribing. 82 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. "Any reason, which has reference to action, we call a motive. To act without a motive — i. e. without a rea- son — is (otherwise expressed) to act irrationally. ]^ow all action in obedience to a motive the ISTecessarians call Qiecessitij : and to establish liberty, as against them^ it would be required of us to establish a case of action with- out (or against) motives. The true liberty however — the true self-determination — lies in this, that we by our own internal acts create our own motives : those con- siderations, whicli to you or me are motives, to another are not so : and why 1 Because my reflexions upon the tendency of particular acts, or because my feelings con- nected with them, have given to certain considerations a weight which raises them into the strength and power of motives. Here lies our liberty. And to an obedience to motives thus created it is an easy artifice to give the name of necessity : but that creates no real necessity. The autonomy of Man is still secure. "The answer to the IS'ecessarians therefore — is to grant all they urge, — but to deny their consequence or rather the propriety of their denomination." Yes, the autonomy, the self-determination, of the conscious agent is the fact which once appeared imperilled by the doctrine of necessity; and De Quincey's words depict the state of mind of one who, being in the first place fully alive to the truth and value of the autonomy, is then awakened to the fact that it is not endangered by a truth which is its com- plement, this namely, that ''nothing is that swerves from law;" liberty itself being obedience to law, but THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. 33 to law imposed from within, not from without ; or in other words, that liberty is one of the modes of necessity, and the human will, in all its freedom, one of the works of nature. The foundations of De Quincey's success as critic and essayist were thus laid in wide philosophic read- ing, deep and accurate philosophic thinking. But these foundations were for the most part kept out of sight. He wrote but little on philosophy, and even that little he did not see fit to include in the revision of his works. Indeed, it seems as if, in later years, having achieved nothing in philosophy, he would obliterate whatever claims he may once have had to rank as a philosopher, and bury in oblivion the hopes which as a young man he had cherished in that direc- tion. " My proper vocation, as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic understanding. Now, for the most part, analytic studies are continuous, and not to be pursued by fits and starts, or fragmentary efforts," — he writes in the first edition of the Con- fessions (1822), p. 148. But these words are omitted from the second edition of 185G. Still it remains true, that his real vocation icas what he says, and the power and faculty of mind remained the same, although one part of the career was missed, which might have been opened by it. D 34 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. He did exercise the arxalytic understanding, but it was upon non-philosophical subjects. It is a rare combination of faculties that distinguishes him ; the triple combination of analytic subtilty and grasp of thought with (1) memory for and interest in all kinds of details relating however remotely to life and man- ners, and (2) a profound power of appreciating and enjoying the most imaginative poetry. Any two of these are rare in combination ; how much rarer the three. One result of this suppression of what he had thought or written on philosophy, seeing that it was not and could not be comiilete, has been unfortunate. It has caused him to be judged by the fragmentary utterancss which remain, and by these read in con- nection with the high admiration for his philosophic powers entertained by his contemporaries. I have a special instance of this in view, Mr. J. H. Stirling's demolition of a passage of De Quincey on Kant {Fortnightly Review, Oct. 1867). I say demolition because I think that in the main Mr. Stirling's criti- cism of that passage is correct. It is so because the point of view from which it is pronounced is more commanding and comprehensive. What De Quin- cey' s point of view was I will presently show ; but first I must say that it strikes me as somewhat THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 6i) Tingeuerous, to use no stronger term, wlien one of a generation far better versed in German philosophi- cal literature, than was De Quincey's, is extreme to tax the shortcomings of a writer who not only lacked the advantages which wo enjoy, but who was himself among the foremost of those to whom our own gene- ration mainly owes its enjoyment of them. The deadness of those times to those matters was far greater than the deadness of the present time, great as that is ; and in England at least I do not know of any one who did more than De Quincey to kindle a genuine interest in them. Passing over points of secondary importance, the main drift of the passage in question is briefly this, that Do Quincey represents Kant's mind as essen- tially a destructive one, whereas Mr. Stirling says it was constructive essentially, and construction his great ruling purpose. And Mr. Stirling's view is, in my opinion at least, clearly right; De Quincey's -clearly wrong. But I would urge that it is only fair to take De Quincey's point of view into account. The passage in question occurs in connection with the subject of Christianity and Coleridge's Unitarian- ism. It is in fact a waif and stray from a larger body ; and if read in connection with the rest, the point of view occupied by De Quincey in regard to 36 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. Kaut will become manifest; and his expressions: from that point of view, if not justified, will at any rate be shown to demand an explanation very different from the charlatanism which (to sum it up in a word of my own) is Mr. Stirling's hypothesis. It is one thing to read philosophy with a view to make a systematic study of the subject for its own sake ; it is another to read it for the purpose of throwing light on questions and views Avith which the reader's mind is already pre-occupied ; and it is yet another to read it for the sake of being able to display one's reading afterwards. Mr. Stirling sup- poses that, because De Quincey was not in the first case, therefore he was in the third. The second case, which is the real one, escaped him. De Quincey approached Kant with the pre-occu - pation of theology ; the philosophy, or rather what did duty for one, with which he started was that of a thoughtful disciple of the Church of England ; the question with him was, what light was thrown by the originator of the Transcendental Theory upon tliis world of thought and belief. From that point of view it was that Kant appeared to him, as he did to many others, utterly destructive, leaving no basis which was at once positive and speculative, for a theological creed at all. Kant's theory sweeps Vv-holly THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. 37 •away the old speculative foundations of theology, replaces them hy proving that we can neither affirm nor yet deny any speculative doctrine in their place, and then relies, not on the speculative but on the practical reason, for supplying a positive foundation for religion. This could not but appear utterly unsatisfactory to one in De Quincey's position, who ivas not studying the philosophy for its own sake, but for the sake of its bearing on the questions sug- gested by his creed. Whoever will take the trouble to look into a paper of De Quincey's contributed to Tait's Edin- burgh Magazine for June 1836 (vol. iii.. New Series, p. 350), will find there not only a very good, though brief, sketch of the main points in the Critic of Pare Reason, but also ample confirmation of what I have said about De Quincey's point of view. ''Let .a man," he says, " meditate but a little on this" [the transcendental theory of the idea of Cause] '' or other aspects of this transcendental philosophy, and he will find the steadfast earth itself rocking as it were beneath his feet ; a world about him, which is in some sense a world of deception ; and a world before him, which seems to promise a world of con- fusion, or a ' icorld not realised: " (p. 357.) And iijrain: "As often as I looked into his works, I ex- 38" THE GEXIUS OF DE QUINCE Y. claimed iu my heart, with the widowed queen of Carthage, using her words in an altered application — ' Qmesivit lucem — ingemuitque repertd.'' " For from the same paper we find that, in spite of its apparent unprofitableness and negation, the Transcendental theory had in the main commanded his assent. " These are the two primary' merits of the transcendental theory — 1st, Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical evidence ; 2ndly, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine of the categories, the great hiatus in all schemes of the human understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve as to the part which concerns the j^^'^^i^ctical reason (or will), is of more questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I contend that, h£id trans- cendentalism done no other service than that of lay- a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to mo- ^ c.; j.w^.x^v..cv^xwxx, -^..j^ the human understanding — namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain large and indispensable ideas — it would have claimed the gratitude of all ^ profound inquirers." (p. 359.) De Quincey's position, then, is that of a man forced to give an unwilling assent to the main con- ceptions of a system which he regards with dismay^ THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 39 as destroying, or at least endangering, the Lest hopes and aspirations of humanity. Observe, however, his expressly excepting the doctrine of the practical reason from what is douLtful, and placing it with what is sound and valuable, in Kant's system. The exception is significant, especially when read in the light of some words on the same subject, written nearly four years later. I refer to one of the most interesting of all the personal sketches which ever came from De Quincey's pen, that on the highly gifted Charles Lloyd, a sketch which I suppose there were valid reasons for omitting from his republished writings. At the end of this touching memoir there is a passage of singular beauty on the voices of nature which speak to us of hopes of immortality beyoncl the grave; a passage which concludes as follows : " But on that theme — Beware, reader ! Listen to no intellectual argument. One argument there is, one only there is, of philosophic value : an argument drawn from the moral nature of man : an argument of Immanuel Kant's. The rest are dust and ashes." Now there is no law, I suppose, either human or divine, against any man's reading Kant, and even letting the world know what he for his part finds there, if any one is interested in hearing it. Nor is 40 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. it, I believe, necessary, first to produce a certificate from a college of authors, stating that you are ena- moured of Metaphysic for her own sake, and intend to lecture on her sublime perfections. De Quincey made no such announcement ; but there were hun- dreds who were glad to hear his report of Kant, having themselves much the same questions to put to that oracle as De Quincey had. It is beside the mark to contrast, as Mr. Stirling does, the sound and genuine work which Kant did in philosophy wdth the hollow and windy work which is all that De Quincey gets credit for. Kant was a man of science, De Quincey a man of letters. True, we might pos- sibly have had a man of science in De Quincey ; but then we should hardly have had the man of letters also. It is unjust to represent his powers as wasted and thrown away, merely because they were not turned into scientific channels. More might be said in reply to Mr. Stirling's strictures on De Quincey ; for instance, as to his criticism of Kant's style, and as to the "limited circle" within which '' none durst tread but he," which clearly refers to the little group of conceptions which are the core of the Transcendental theory. But to go into detail on minor points would require a separate paper. Judgment once amended on the THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 41 main i^oint, the rest must be left to rule themselves as best they may, in accordance therewith. One word, however, before parting with Mr. Stirling, on a purely literary matter. Possibly he may be pleased (in his next edition) to alter his remark, twice re- peated, that tumultuosissimcnto is a word used by De Quincey. I remember, on one occasion, he uses the word tumultiiosissimamentc. But the former word I find neither in De Quincey nor yet in the dictionary. After all, then, it is very questionable whether any part of De Quincey's vocation was really missed, whether in declining studies of a scientific character he was yielding to a stress of circumstances which another might have eluded, wdiether he was not really obeying the instincts of character with which nature had endowed him. His real turn of mind, subtil and acute as it was, inclined strongly to the concrete and the personal, to the pomps and glories of the world and the interests of living human beings. He loved imaginations more than thoughts, and thoughts for the sake of imaginations. Had he given himself to philosophy, it is easy to predict his affinities ; his name would have been one of that numerous list, in which those of Plato and Giordano Eruno are the most illustrious. 42 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. This is clear from many passages ; for instance^ one in wliicli, speaking of the Lucretian Primus in orhe Dcos fecit timor, he says, No, not timor, say rather scnsns hifiniti {Modern Superstition, vol. iii.. p. 290). In this he puts his finger on the charac- terising differentia of religion. It is not fear, no, nor yet love, which hy themselves are the source of religion ; these by themselves are terrestrial ; it is the vujstenj that accompanies them that makes them celestial, by giving them a celestial object, and giving- man a sense of belonging, through them, to the in- finite and unseen world. The remark here made by De Quincey has yet a great part to play, a part too often unsuspected, in the theory of the origin of religions and early stages of civilisation. But this, of course, by no means implies that every theory must be true, which professes to base itself upon that idea. Or again, take the concluding sen- tence of the Dream Vision, in the System of the Heavens, embodying an image which he tells us is. taken from Jean Paul Pdchter : " Then the angel threw up his glorious hands to the heaven of heavens, saying, 'End is there none to the universe of God ? Lo ! also there is no beginning.' " There is a winged as well as a wingless genius in philosophy ; and those that are endowed with it. THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 43 "belong irrevocabk to literature, whether they pur- sue philosophy or not us their employment in chief. Humour and pathos, — these in literature are the wings of genius, being two chief modes of ima- gination. Whatever ministers occasion for mirth becomes humorous when it is illumined by imagina- tion, and whatever ministers to sorrow, under the same magic touch, becomes pathetic. As v/it is the fun of talent, so is humour the fun of genius. Now both with humour and with pathos De Quincey abounds. They spring up spontaneously under his pen. And much of the beauty of his style consists, when the burden is pathetic, in its quietness and simplicity, in what it withholds rather than in what it expresses, so that, owing to this unexpressed background, we are made to feel the special case as part and parcel of the universal lot. Many are the passages of exquisite and tender beauty scattered up and down his writings, free from ambitious ornament and turgid phrase, passages in which we are swiftly but gently lifted into a serener region, or in which sometimes "the tender grace of a day that is dead" is brought home to the heart, as by the placid spectacle of a clear autumn sunsets Take, for instance, the following : 44 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. " At present, and for many a year, I am myself the sole relic from that household sanctuary— sweet, solemn, profound — that concealed, as in some ark floating on solitary seas, eight persons, since called away, all except myself, one after one, to that rest which only could be ■deeper than ours was then." (Confessions, p. 30, Hogg's -edition.) Or this from the essay on Goldsmith : " Their names ascend in songs of thankful commemo- ration, but seldom until the ears are deaf that would have thrilled to the music." •Or this in another key, a crime being in question, the massacre of prisoners at Jafta in 1799 : " The fugitives did so ; they came back — some trust- ing, some doubting. But strictly impartial was their welcome on shore. To the trusting there was no special -favour; to the doubting no separate severity. All were massacred alike ; and in one brief half-hour a loose scat- tering of soil rose as a winding-sheet over the forty-two hundred corpses, that heaved convulsively here and there for a moment, and then all was still." {Casuidr//, vol. viii. p. 265.) Or if we would have a passage where the writer plainly intends putting forth his strength, let us take this, from the conclusion of the Joan of Arc : " Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But ibr the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the fare- well crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 4o the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep ; together both, sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gather- ing fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl, — when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you— let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions." Humour is confessedly a much-vexed question. Those that have it not are tempted to deny the dis- tinction between wit and humour, just as those who lack imagination persist in identifying it with fancy, and too many of those who lack genius are incapable of distinguishing it from talent. The essence of humour I take to be the same everywhere, but the ground on which it springs is different; there is the humour of inventive, and there is the humour of analytic, minds. There is the humour of Shakespere or of Swift, which not only clothes the characters which they create, but is one of the precedent motives and ingredients in their creation. And there is the humour which is shown in the presentation of given and pre-existing characters and situations, bringing out whatever humorous quality is already latent in them ; a kind of humour, be it noted, which is in- cluded in the former as the less in the greater, so that he who has the first has both, but not vice versa. One thing, however, is clear; there is no humour 46 THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. "without subtiltjf , as there is no wit without acuteness. It is natural that the non-creative humour shoukl move by antithesis, by inversion of relations, and generally by imagining some critical circumstance the reverse of what it actually is. It depends upon subtilty as its condition. This is the usual way in which De Quincey's humour moves ; he imagines the contrary, the con- trast, of what he is describing, thinks what it might appear to spectators with different interests, or from an opposite point of view ; as, for instance, when he talks of '^ the general fate of travellers that intrude upon the solitude of robbers," or when he professes to palliate his obscurity of style by assuring you that, though rather obscure, he will be '' not at all more so than Marinus in his Life of Proclus." This at least is the logical or intellectual machinery which becomes the vehicle of that shade of playfulness and fun which is the chief characteristic of De Quincey's humour, as it is also of Charles Lamb's. The Murder papers are instances of this kind of humour sustained from beginning to end, and their central idea of treating murder as a fine art is an instance of it. The charm of these papers consists far more in the number and variety of the faces under which this central idea is constantly peeping THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. 47 out, and the unflagging vivacity with which the stream of fun flows on, than in the separate quot- •ability of absurd incident or witty antithesis. Or again, take the description of the state-coach in China, where " it was resolved by acclamation that ihe box was the imperial throne, and for the scoun- drel who drove, he might sit where he could find a perch ;" and who was accordingly kicked into the inside, where "he had all the inside places to him- self." Or again, the fishing up the duns from the l)ath, in the paper entitled Sort'de steadily contemplated through it. Whatever was original-, whatever was peculiar, in De Quincey's^ organisation, we may be sure was greatly developed and intensified by his escape from school, his four months of lonely wandering over the Welsh hills^ and that wandering, perhaps more lonely still, along the ''never-ending terraces of Oxford Street." What- ever he wrote was sure to bear the impress of him- self, not the impress of the ci;irrent mode. Eight or wrong, feeble or powerful, it was sure to be genuine, an outcome of the writer, not a reflex of the public. Yet De Quincey was no seeker of solitude in order to escape from society, as a cynic or a misan- thrope. Perhaps there never was a nature that more imperatively needed society. His interests were all of the qidcquid agiint homines type, from " grandeurs, that measured themselves against centuries," or tho majesty of the " Consul Romamis,'' down to the most trivial anecdote, the nursery rhyme, or the nursery superstition. He was a born Conservative, if I may use the expression, a Conservative by natu- ral constitution, just such a conservative as Pindar the Greek Lyrist was, having eyes to see and admire- THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. 61 i\'hatever of great or good was already achieved, birth, wealth, courage, culture, nobility in all its •shapes ; but without that sense, which is the key- note of Liberalism, of a burden and a task imposed on all men of striving for a common far-off goal, of aiding in an arduous development, of realising a hardly to be gained ideal, in the elevation of man- kind as a whole. History was to him a series of -scenes, not a continuous progress in which the pre- •sent generation has a practical part to play. His own mind, too, is stationary; there is no growth, no enlargement, of his intellectual basis, as lie advances in life. He speaks in his later essays from the same platform of ideas as in his earlier ones ; it is only the occasion, the application, that is different. He has acquired much, but he has learnt little. His style on the other hand, when he applies himself in good earnest, becomes more per- fect, and possibly, too, his artistic power of exposi- tion. At least both are at their best in the enlarged •edition of the Confessions, published three 3-ears before his death. Comparing this, either in single passages or as a whole, with the brief and rapidly written first edition, its superiority is unmistakable. He lived to make a perfect work of art out of that sketch, with which his literary career may be said to 62 THE GENIUS OF DE QUIXCEY. have begun, and in which the basis of his reputation was laid. These are points which it is essential to remark,. in endeavouring to form a just estimate of De Quincey as a man of letters. Here is the weak side of his. mind, here the darkness and narrowness, so at least it seems to me, of the otherwise large and luminous grasp of his intellect. Fragmentary indeed it was not ; but it seems as if one whole aspect of human affairs, all that is summed up in the idea of Progress subject to laws which science can discover, was to him a blank. The nexus of individuals with one another, of class with class, and the secret but pro- found relations which connect man with an unseen world, — these were familiar ideas to him ; but the nexus between earlier and later generations, between earlier and later races, in order of time, was an idea which he had not grasped, or at least the full signi- iicance of which he had not realised. Nor would I be thought blind to the defects wdiich sometimes disfigure his style, the instances here and there of misplaced colloquialism, jokes not worth making, repetitions of himself, repetitions of favourite quotations, which are obvious on the surface. In fact, the necessity of writing on the spur of the moment, and for different audiences, tempted him to THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCEY. G^ ride with too loose a, rein, and to repeat too often what, being no more than the groove of his thought, the househokl furniture of his mind, shoukl strictly have been said but once, if even that. All this comes out but too conspicuousl}-, when scattered essays are assembled in republication. But why do I bring forward all these deficiencies ? To mention them is necessary, in order to a just estimation of his powers; but it would be superfluous to dwell on them, so long as justice is not done to his peculiar merits. Men, and therefore their works when taken as a whole, which is equivalent, are to be judged primarily, not like chains of argument by their weakest parts, but like poems or pictures by their strongest. Appreciate these first; ^V/? count and weigh the defects. The defects can only be un- derstood by first knowing the aim of the writer and the methods which he takes to realise it. The rule is different for separate works, when these belong to the literature of knowledge ; for there, the aim and method being known, a standard for the defects is at hand. But in judging men, in judging their works as a whole, and in judging works of the power lite- rature even separately, to judge by the weakest parts is not only an injustice, it is a fatal blunder in cri- ticism. Gi THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCE Y. Apart from some brilliant exceptions, sacli for instance as the admirable critique in the Xew Quar- terly Mafjazhic for July 1875, the want of apprecia- tion shown towards De Quincey by his literary coun- trymen is remarkable. It seems as if we sometimes do our thinking by deputy, wilfully put our eyes in ■our pockets and try spectacles instead. A man of great originality necessarily stands much more alone than men of more ordinary powers ; he has to dis- pense with one whole stratum, so to speak, from which the water-supply of genial appreciation should be derived. Critics in the mass naturally, and quite •excusably, praise ability and success in doing that which they themselves are attempting to do. Not only do they understand it better, not only do they find it easier to explain to the public, but they have this direct, though unconsciously operating, interest in doing so, that they are enforcing principles of criticism which, in case of their own success, will redound to their benefit. They praise what they admire, what they would like to imitate. The origi- nal writer, differing much from his critics, is apt to get scant justice from them, unless his merits lie very much on the surface, and his faults be tolerably -withdrawn from observation. Where the reverse is the case, merits, however great, will pass unnoticed, THE GENIUS OF DE QUINCE Y. 65 for it is no one's business to uneartli them. That De Quincey's writings should, in spite of this, have won and hitherto kept a high place in popular esti- mation is a circumstance which augurs well for their obtaining in the end a more solid and lasting re- nown. DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST : DE QUINCEY AND MILL ON SUPPLY AND DEMAND. DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. Thomas de Quincey is popularly known as a brilliant essayist, and as the author of Confessions of an Eng- lish Opium Eater. To few 'is he known as a subtil and accomplished logician, and to still fewer as one of the fathers of Political Economy. True, the Templar's Dialogues were included in the first col- lected edition of his ^vorks ; but these, though nothing can be more accurate in reasoning or more racy in style, yet deal with a portion only of the sub- ject, and moreover their form is purely literary, not scientific. The Logic of Political Economy, pub- lished in 1844, is the substantive work, on which, supplemented however by the Dialogues, De Quin- cey's reputation as an economist depends. This has only lately been republished, in a Supplement to Works, vol. xiii., 1878. The references in the pre- sent article are to this volume. In judging the powers of a literary man, who has left but one scientific work, that work naturally becomes of peculiar importance ; and with this view 70 DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. I was led to re-examine De Quincey's Logic, with particular reference to a certain disparaging remark concerning it thrown out by J. S. Mill in his Prin- elplcs of Political Economy, when discussing the doctrine of Supply and Demand. Considerable light may, I believe, be thrown on that question, and in- cidentally on a case of it which at present* is much debated, I mean the Wages-fund theory, by an exam- ination of the differences between these two dis- tinguished writers. J. S. Mill, in the third Book of his Principles, after quoting largely from De Quincey's exposition of some phenomena of value, to which he accords high praise, proceeds in his Chapter on Demand and Supply to state some difficulties relating to that sub- ject, and then gives his own solution, a solution which, he says, must have been frequently given, though he can call to mind no one who has done so before himself, except J. B. Say. He then adds, '' I should have imagined, however, that it must be familiar to all political economists, if the writings of several did not give evidence of some want of clear- ness on the point, and if the instance of Mr. De Quincey did not prove that the complete non-recog- * At present, i.e. in 1879, when this article was thrown into its present form, separate from the preceding Essay. DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 71 iiitiou and implied denial of it are compatible with great intellectual ingenuity, and close intimacy with the subject-matter." {Principles, iOc, Book III. ch. ii. § 3.) Strange spectacle, a Mill rebuking a De Quincey for deficiency in logical acumen ! Mill has* long reigned over us ; and not in poli- tical economy only, but in many departments of thought, there is no one to whom a higher debt of gratitude is due. But his reign more resembles a despotism based on iiUhlscltes than a constitutional sovereignty. I for one dislike being governed by dicta ; and this dictum of his, if it were well founded, would show a very grave defect in De Quincey's work ; for which purpose it has been unhesitatingly accepted {after the nature of dicta) by Mr. Leslie Stephen, in his energetic attack on De Quincey's literary merits {Fortnifjhtly Review, March 1871). Now on those merits Mr. LesHe Stephen has a right to his opinions, like every one else; nay more, — he has a right to them and welcome. But political economy is the only scientific subject of which De Quincey has come forward as an expositor. The point on which Mill taxes him with blindness is a cardinal one. Mill's authority is very generally appealed to. And the * Three years ago when this was written, the perfect tense 'was still approiiriate. Wiiting now, I shoakl oiuit the has. 72 DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. consequence would be, supposing Mill to be correct, that De Quincey's ^YO^k, already little known to the public, would cease to be regarded even by students- as the sound and thorough exposition which it is, and would rank merely as one of high illustrative ability and "great intellectual ingenuity;" ingenuity being perhaps the word of most damning praise in the whole vocabulary of adverse criticism. What then is the truth of this dictum of Mill's which Mr. Leslie Stephen so confidingly echoes ? Just nil. It is a complete misconception on Mill's part. And this I proceed to show. Mill, it must be remarked, is speaking of those exchanges where the commodities are not capable of indefinite repro- duction at pleasure. As to the case where the com- modities are so reproducible, there is no difference between him and De Quincey ; both are good Eicar- dians on this point, and hold that market value, or price, is a value or a price which oscillates about the point of natural or cost value of the commodities. And in these cases Mill holds that their value does not depend, in the long run, upon demand and sup- ply; "on the contrary demand and supply depend upon it." {Ihicl. ch. iii. § 2.) This is just the same doctrine as De Quincey's, and about this there is no dispute. DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL EC0N0:MIST. t O But with regard to the class of commodities the reproduction of which is Hmited, Mill holds very differeut language, and here it is that he thinks De Quincey hlind. " Demand and supply," he says, *' govern the value of all things which cannot be indefinitely increased; except that, even for them, when produced by industry, there is a minimum value determined by the cost of production." {Ihld.) Mill adopts the notion that, in this class of cases, demand and supply are the real regulator, and not merely a concomitant of changes in value. But here arise the difficulties of which, as we have seen. Mill comes forward with his solution. These difficulties are two ; first a gratuitous one arising from the habit of speaking of a ratio between the demand and the supply, the true notion being that of an equation between them; secondly the apparent paradox of demand partly depending on value, and yet value reciprocally depending on de- mand. {Ihld. ch. ii. § 3.) These difficulties, it may be observed, so far as they are difficulties at all, attach equally to both cases of exchange, though Mill sees them only in the case where the commodi- ties are of limited reproducibility, the reason of which will appear as we proceed. It is to the solution of these difficulties that he says De Quincey is blind. 74 DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECOXO:\IIST. But tlic question is, are they difficulties for De Quincey ? Are they not rather difficulties Vv^hich Mill has created for himself unnecessarily, and the solution of which is therefore incumbent solely on himself? I shall make it evident that this is the real state of the case, and farther, that Mill's " solu- tion" consists in nothing else than knocking down the phantom, supply and demand, which he first sets up as the real regulator of values, and in this way returns to the same doctrine which De Quincey holds from the first, without that devious process ; and then, proud of his escape, charges De Quincey with being still involved in errors into which he never once fell. He wrongly imagines that De Quincey must hold the doctrine of supply and demand really governing prices, and therefore must want a solu- tion of the difficulties which that supposition entails. But in the first place De Quincey never speaks of a ratio between supply and demand at all, still less of values depending on such a ratio. On the con- trar}^, in speaking of scarcity and monopoly, he expressly shows that scarcity is a merely negative condition, allowing the 'positive cause of an increase in value, namely, the desire of the purchaser, to come into fuller play ; and thus that the degree to which the value rises does not depend on the degree of the DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 75 scarcity. {Logic of Political Economy, Suppl. Vol. p. 281, 284 note.) In bis chapter On Market Value again, there is a still stronger passage, but it might be objected that here he is speaking only of com- modities reproducible at pleasure. It is clear to me that his meaning is not so restricted ; but be it as it may, the passage is so highly characteristic that I vvill quote it : "A crazy maxim has got possession of the whole world j viz. that price is, or can be, determined by the relation between supply and demand. The man who uses this maxim does not himself mean it. He cannot say, 'I tliink thus; you think otherwise.' He does not think thus. Try to extract price for wheat from the simple relation of the supply to the demand. Suppose the sup- ply to be by one tenth part beyond the demand, what price will that indicate for eight imperial bushels of the best red wheat, weighing sixty-four pounds a bushel? Will the price be a shilling, or will it be a thousand pounds?" {Ihid. p. 343.) So much as to his freedom from Mill's first diffi- culty. As to the second, the apparent paradox of demand and value reciprocally depending on each other, De Quincey shows that the true agencies, in these cases, are the affirmative and the negative values, as he calls them ; the affirmative value being that set upon the commodity by the desire of the purchaser, and the negative value being that set 76 DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. upon it by its cost, or difficulty of production, oper- ating tlirougli the reluctance of tlie seller to part with it below a certain price ; — or, as he also puts it, "what the buyer can afford to give," and ''what the seller can afford to take." [Ihid. p. 297. And see the whole of the section entitled On the Tiro Modes of Exchange Value, — Affirmative and Nega- tive.) Applying this general doctrine to the case where there are several purchasers and several sellers of the same commodity, and where merchants are distin- guished from producers, in order to bring it into contact with Mill's difficulty, we may state it is as follows. According as the commodities become limited in quantity, either by nature or by the sel- lers withdrawing them, the affirmative value becomes operative in fixing the upper limit of price, the highest price which purchasers can afford to ^ive ; throughout which operation, sellers are trading on the desire of purchasers for the commodities. And again, according as the commodities become plentiful, either by nature or by sellers bringing them into the market, the negative value becomes operative in fixing the lower limit of price, the low- est which sellers can afford to take ; and here it is. the purchasers who are trading on the desire of the DE QUINCE Y AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 77 sellers for the purchase mone}'. Thus value iu one sense depends upon demand, namely, when demand means effectual desire of purchasers for commodities, and of sellers for purchase money ; and demand depends upon value in the sense that a lower price asked tends to bring in, and a higher price to ex- clude, purchasers for any commodity. Such is De Quincey's doctrine. Now vv'hat is Mill's ? Supply and demand, he holds, govern the changes in value. Well, but how does that account of the matter differ from De Quincey's ? In this way. With De Quincey, supply and demand are the instrument, the means, the mode, by which effect is given to the desires of men ; with Mill they are the operative agents, of which the desires of men are the instruments. They are forces, subject to a mysterious law of tending to an equality with each other ; a tendency which is effectuated by competi- tion. Having remarked that the idea of a ratio is misplaced, the proper mathematical analogy being an equation, Mill thus proceeds : " Demand and supply, the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied, will be made equal. If unequal at any moment, competition equalises them, and the man- ner in which this is done is by an adjustment of the value. If the demand increases, the value rises ; if 78 DE QUIXCEY AS TOLITICAL ECONOMIST. the demand diminishes, the value falls : again, if the supply falls off, the value rises ;. and falls if the supply is increased. {Principles, cOc, Book III. ch. ii. § 4.) It is a self-working machinery, in which **the quantity demanded" and ''the quantity sup- plied" vary of themselves, subject only to the law of equating themselves. The quantity demanded and the quantity sup- plied are thus supposed to balance themselves as if they were physical agents, like water finding its own level. But here Mill overlooks one obscure but de- cisive fact. The quantity demanded and the quan- tity supplied, at the moment of equation, are not only equal, they are identical. For instance, late on a Saturday evening I go to the butcher's to get a leg of mutton ; he has just one remaining, which he sells me and then closes his shop. The quantity demanded and the quantity supplied are indeed ex- actly equal ; for each consists in the same leg of mutton. The article is identical as well as the quantity equal. But the identity of things with themselves cannot alone be the basis of a law of exchange value. Several things are included in the phrases "quan- tity demanded" and " quantity supplied." First the articles, then their quantities, then the demand for DE QUINCEY AS TOLITICAL ECONOMIST. / 9 tliem, then the supply of them. Of these four things, the demand and the supply, that is, the action of the buyer and the action of the seller, are the im- portant items. It is only as contemplated by the buyer and as contemplated by the seller, that the quantities offered and taken can be regarded as equal without being also identical. Farther, when we look at the actions of the buyer and seller as the import- ant circumstances of the case, another striking fea- ture discloses itself, which is this. The supply on the part of the seller is as much a demand as the demand of the purchaser, and this again is as much a supply as the supply of the seller. The supply of the seller is an effectual demand for the purchase money, and the purchase money of the buyer is a supply for that demand of the seller. In all ex- changes, by the mere fact that they are effected, these mutual demands satisfy each other; and therefore the desire of men to effect exchanges is the reason of supply and demand equating themselves, this being a necessary feature and concomitant of exchange. The tendency to an equation is not the mainspring of the movement, but the tendency to an exchanric. It may be thought, perhaps, that I am forgetting the part which Mill attributes to competition, where he says, '' if unequal at any moment, comjietitiou "80 DE QUINCE Y AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. equalizes tliem ;" of wliicli lie tlien gives a full and striking picture. I am far from forgetting it ; it is tlic very point I am about to insist on as essential. Mill replaces the tendency to equation, which is not manageable, by competition^ which is ; in other words, he returns to the real agencies, namely, human desires, for a real explanation of the law^ of value. But this explanation coincides with De Quincey's, since the process which Mill describes as competition is a process which falls under De Quin- cey's analysis into affirmative and negative values. Not that Mill's '' competition" is an adequate ex- planation, but that it is a process explicable by an analysis which is. It is inadequate as an explana- tion, because it is a mere collateral, and not the main, circumstance in exchanges. It means the contention between sellers, icIlo shall sell to the purchasers, and the contention between purchasers, iclio shall buy of the sellers ; the reasons why they want to buy or to sell at all, which govern their con- tention, being left entirely unnoticed. The conten- tion between the sellers and that between the buyers have their common root in a further contention be- tween sellers and buyers, and to this contention the analysis must be pushed. Here perhaps Mill would fall back on what is to DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 81 liim the real agency, for lie thinks, as we have seen, that supply and demand are the real agents ; — no, perhaps I am again wrong, ''' he does not think thus," he only thinks he thinks so; it is only when eftectuated by competition that the tendency of supply and demand to equality is imagined by him to he an explanation. But then, in that case, his " competition" makes him, as we have seen, De -Quincey's liegeman, in spite of his formula. While if he chooses after all to stand on supply and demand alone, he has no explanation at all. For how will he then account for further changes in value, when supply and demand have once been equated (as in the illustration given), and in the teeth of their tendency to a dead level ? Supply and demand once equated, what makes them ever unequal again ? It is plain that we must seek our explanation, not in formulas, but in the facts and phenomena of human xlesires. The force or efficacy supposed to be inherent in supply and demand, meaning as we have seen the quantities supplied and demanded, is really nothing else than the mutual desire of buyers and sellers to effect exchanges. The equating of supply and de- mand is but another term for the efectinrj those exchanges. The varying prices at which these are G 82 DE QUINCEY AS TOLITICAL ECONOMIST. effected represent the varying strength of tlic desires of piirciiasers for commodities and sellers for the IDurchase mone}-. Finally comiietltlon is the name of the whole process of adjusting prices and effecting exchanges. And since competition is a process which takes place between men, Mill's explanation, which makes supply and demand operate only through competition, is just the same as De Quincey's, only (and this is the important point) De Quincey's is an analysis of the process, Mill's a mere naming and description of it, and that by a collateral feature. Supply and demand are no more the real regulator of value in this case, than they are in the case of indefinitely reproducible commodities. Competition governs in their name, and competition is a case of De Quincey's law. Mill indeed makes an effort to show that supply and demand are not otiose, but really operative, by insisting that a real and actual limitation of the supply, not merely an anticipated or threatened one, is requisite to support the enhanced price of a mo- nopolised article ; and instances the Dutch East In- dia Company destroying their spices, to enhance the value of the remainder. This, I imagine, De Quincey Avould readily admit. In fact, that very instance is given and dwelt on by him. {Lor/lc, (Cc, p. 283 note.) DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 83 Mill evidently supposes that De Quinccy must deny it, for lie says, " Even on Lake Superior Mr. De Quincey's huckster could not have sold his box for sixty guineas, if ho had possessed two musical boxes and desired to sell them both." Very true ; lie could not have sold them for sixty guineas each ; nor does De Quincey suppose that he could ; for that would militate against his own law of utility or affirma.tive value operating to raise the price when there is a scarcity. The great utility of the musical box in the case supposed fastened entirely on its being the only one to be had. Not to forego the pleasure of a musical box when settling for ever in the solitudes of the far west, — this was the desire which the '* huckster" is supposed to trade on. The utility or affirmative value of tv/o musical boxes is not double the utility of one, in the case supposed. Greater it is, as guarding against accidents. And therefore, as Mill very sensibly suggests, the man who asked sixty guineas for the one would probably have taken seventy for the two. Cases of absolute scarcity or monopoly, like this of the musical box, are distinguished only in degree from cases where the producibility of commodities in a market is limited by the quantity in store, or by the quantity expected to be in existence by or up 84 DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. to a given time. The difficulty of attainment by purchasers consists, in all such cases alike, in the reluctance of sellers to part with their goods under a certain price. This kind of difficulty of attainment, or as De Quincey also calls it of negative value, of commodities is a very different thing from the diffi- culty which consists in reproducing commodities by expenditure of labour and capital. The obstacle in the one case is the reluctance of sellers, in the other case the stubbornness of nature. But these two obstacles exhaust the whole difficulty of attainment, or negative value of commodities in De Quincey's sense. In consequence of these two kinds of difficulty there are two and only two ultimate cases of exchange value ; one where the values oscillate heticeen two extremes, which is De Qaincey's "general case," the other where they oscillate about a central point, wdiich is natural or cost value ; the resulting value in this case being, to use De Quincey's term, a hinomial value. The following remark will set this distinction in a yet clearer light. Mill fancies that commodities fall of themselves under different laws of exchange value, owing to differences affecting their production. He makes three classes of com- modities, each governed by a different law of value ; DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 85 first, commodities which are not reproducible at pleasure ; these, he holds, are really governed chiefly by supply and demand, as we have seen. Secondly come commodities which are reproducible at plea- sure, in equal amounts b}' equal expenditure of labour and capital, which commodities are governed by the laws of natural and market value. And thirdl}", commodities which are reproducible, but only in decreasing additional amounts by equal addi- tional amounts of labour and capital ; and these " form an intermediate class partaking of the cha- racter of both the others." {Principles, cOc, Book III. Cb. V. § 1.) One inconvenience of this classification (to say nothing of graver defects) is, that the important class of agricultural produce is considered as belong- ing both to the first and to the third head. {Ibid. ch. ii. § 4, compared with ch. v. § 1.) In fact, without introducing commodities which are to some extent reproducible. Mill would have found himself reduced to a class of comparatively unimportant cases, from which to draw instances of supply and demand appearing to govern variations in value. Another inconvenience is, that the difterences aff'ect- ing the production of commodities of the second and third classes afiect primarily only one element of 8G DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL EC0N0:\1IST. tlieir value, namel}^ the element of natural value whicli reflects the cost of production. They cannot, then, serve as a basis of distinction between cases of value one of which consists of natural and market value in combination ; though they may give rise to subordinate distinctions within that single case. Now the remark I would make is tliis, that the differences of commodities arising from laws of their production, and the classification founded on them, have nothing whatever to do, as Mill fancies, with the ultimately different laws of exchange value under which they fall. There are two and only two ulti- mately different cases or laws of exchange value ; and even Mill's third case is only a mixture of his first and second. These two ultimate cases are : (1) oscillation of values heUceen extreme limits, and (2) oscillation of values about a central point. And all commodities, of whatever kind, fall now under the one case, now under the other, according as cir- cumstances (which may be temporary or may bo permanent) either keep the natural or cost value operative in determining the price, or else suspend its operation. Among the circumstances which temporarily sus- pend its operation are overproduction, which means a possible supply for the market exceeding a possible DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 87 tlemaucl ; and destruction or scarcity of products, which means a possible supply falling short of a possible demand ; both of which are cases showing the connection between crises of depression or activity in trade and the ordinary laws of value. The safe and •steady condition of prosperity is when the natural value is kept fully operative in determining the price. Another most important case is that of labour :and wages. This belongs always to the first head, that of oscillation between extremes. Labour, which is work or service, is not strictly a commodity ; it has no cost of production, and therefore no natural value ; for the minimum of sustenance (and keeping up the number) of labourers is not cost of produc- tion of labour ; it is a minimum estimated by the labourers themselves. Similarly, that part of capital sometimes called the wages-fund has no cost of production ; it lies in estimation of the capitalists. The labour market therefore consists of exchanges following the law of oscillation between extremes ; ■or, if we choose to consider labour as a commodltn, then it is a commodity in determining the value of which the operation of cost of production must also be considered as permanently suspended. Or again, the suspension of its operation may arise from circumstances extraneous to industry, as 88 DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. in the musical box case, or old Avorks of art, or wherever the limitations are fixed by nature, as in desirable sites for building purposes; or partially extraneous, as in a great haul of fish, rendering them for a time extraordinarily cheap. All alike are instances of the same relation between the twa kinds of oscillation, which relation may accordingly be expressed as follows : the oscillation between extremes is a case of the oscillation about a centre iL'itJi its central ijolnt liuocked out. Or thus, w^hich is perhaps preferable : the case of oscillation between extremes is a case of market value alone, without natural value to steady it ; market value alone mean- ing nothing else than this, the desire of purchasers for commodities interacting with the desire of sellers for the purchase money. Unity of principle is thus introduced into the whole subject of exchange values, and it is introduced on the basis of De Quincey's analysis. The analysis of the general case of exchanges, oscillation between extremes, into the elements of affirmative and negative value is claimed by De Quincey as his own ; he gives it in his own right and not as an expositor of Eicardo {Logic, dc.,. p. 300-10) ; and it is one of his titles to rank as a discoverer in political economy. Still, as it stands. DE QUINCEY AS TOLITICAL ECONOMIST. 89 ill De Quincey, it is not perfectly complete. He does not, I think, see why there are two and only two ultimate cases of value, namely, because there are two and only two sources of difficulty of attain- ment, or negative value ; at least he nowhere ex- plicitly contra-distinguishes these two kinds of diffi- culty in connection with the two cases. But on the other hand his analysis not only perfectly harmonises wdth the fact when perceived, but without his analy- sis, which leads directly up to it, its perception would have been impossible, and the logical unity of the whole subject of exchange value consequently unattainable. Let us now see, on the other side, to what Mill's conception of supply and demand as the regulator of value leads. It leads among other things to the wages-fund theory, which, along with it, has cost his disciple Mr. Thornton so much trouble to demolish. The following passage not only shows one of the chief features of the wages-fund theory, its doctrine of the uselessness of combination, even if extended to all the labourers in a country, to raise wages, but also shows that Mill was perfectly serious in main- taining supply and demand, as distinguished from their agent competition, to be the operative agency in determining value : 90 DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL ECOXO:\riST. " If it were possiljle for the working classes, by com- bining among tliemselves, to raise or keep up the general rate of wages, it needs hardly be said that this would be a thing not to be punished, but to be welcomed and rejoiced at. Unfortunately the effect is quite beyond attainment by such means. The multitudes who com- pose the working class are too numerous and too widely scattered to combine at all, much more to combine effec- tually. If they could do so, they might doubtless succeed in diminishing the hours of labour, and obtaining the same wages for less work. But if they aimed at obtain- ing actually higher wages than the rate fixed by demand ^nd supply — the rate which distributes the whole circu- lating capital of the country among the entire working population— this could only be accomplished by keeping ^ part of their number permanently out of employment." {Principles, cjr., Book Y. ch. x. § 5.) Observe that demand and supply are here severed from, and do not work through, competition. The proportion between the whole number of labourers and the whole circulating capital of the country fixes the general rate of wages. It is only within this general rate that partial differences can be deter- mined by competition or combination. It does not occur to Mill, that a combination on the part of the whole number of labourers is a change in the supi^ly of labour. And yet " reserving a price," as Mill says in another place, namely, in his reply to Mr. Thornton (Dissertations and Discussions, vol. iv. DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 91 p. 38), " is, to all intents and purposes, Avithdrawing a supply." Mill's theory combines two disparate things, his Jormula, supply and demand, and his agent, com- petition, and he names the combination by the name of the formula. By which means he attributes, now to the formula the explanatory power due only to the agent, and now to the agent the rigidity belonging to the formula. Mr. Thornton devotes an admirable chapter in his work On Lahour to demolish Mill's supply and ilemand theory, with a special eye to the case of w^ages. His method of disproof consists in tearing asunder Mill's formula from Mill's agent, and then showing that under certain conditions competition governs, but that supply and demand never govern, value. All the instances by which he shows the latter point, the Dutch auction, the two horses and three purchasers at 50?., and so on, are admirable and forcible illustrations of De Quincey's analysis. So also when he comes to the positive part of his proof, and shows how competition operates, his theory and De Quincey's harmonise to the letter: "Divesting ourselves, then, of preconceived notions, xind commencing the enquiry anew, we have in the first place to observe that there arc two opposite extremes — 92 DE QUINCEY AS TOLITICAL ECONOMIST. one aLovc wliicli tlie price of a commodity cannot rise^ the other below which it cannot fall. The upper of these limits is marked by the utility, real or supposed, of the- commodity to the customer; the lower by its utility to the dealer." (On Labour, p. 58.) Mr. Thornton does not name De Quincey, of whose book he had probably never heard except as an instance of " intellectual ingenuity." But that does not destroy the fact that De Quincey had previously seen and stated the same law. Nor on the other hand does De Quincey's priority diminish in the least Mr. Thornton's merit. Comparatively it enhances it, for De Quincey had not the same obstacles to over- come ; never having sat at the feet of Mr. Thornton's Gamaliel (Ibid. p. 52), he had not so much to unlearn.. It is only fair to say that this doctrine of the wages-fund in its objectionable form was frankly and honourably avowed and surrendered by Mill, in whom equity was one of many noble characteristics, in his reply to Mr. Thornton just quoted (p. 47). " The doctrine hitherto taught by all or most econo- mists (including myself) which denied it to be possible tliat trade combinations can raise wages, or Avhich limited their operation in that respect to the somewhat earlier attainment of a rise which the competition of the market would have produced Avithout them, — this doctrine is deprived of its scientific foundation, and must be thrown, aside." DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. 93 But he makes mucli smaller concession to Mr. Thornton on the general question of supply and •demand. By the ''scientific foundation" of which the wages-fund theory is deprived, he means, not the supply and demand doctrine, hut mainly the concep- tion of the wages-fund heing inelastic. On the other question, admitting that Mr. Thornton has shown the law of supply and demand to he incomplete, inas- much as variations are shown icitldn it which require further accounting for, he firmly denies that he has shown it to he erroneous. And I much douht whether more than this is possible by Mr. Thornton's method. On the whole I think it may he said, that the ■difference between De Quincey's treatment of supply and demand and that of his critic turns out entirely to De Quincey's advantage. He does not first make an idol of a formula, then explain it away, then re- introduce it to explain the rate of wages. He looks the phenomena of exchange fiiirly in the face, and sees in them a creature of human wants and wishes. It is undeniable that exchanges take place at all only because men find it to their mutual advantage to make them ; and therefore it is natural that changes in men's desires should govern the phenomena in the last resort. To explain them on quasi-physical 94 DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL ECONOMIST. principles, simple as it seems to the empiricist, is really a far-fetched explanation, travelling into alien matter, and bringing hack conceptions not germane to the phenomena. While, if it he said that it is physical analogies only that are employed, still their relevancy in that character must first be proved by an independent examination of the matter they are applied to. If, then, exchanges are to be under- stood, it is into a balance of human desires that they Aust be analysed. Supply and demand, as well as their vicegerent, competition, are compendious ex- pressions for the play of certain motives, certain volitions, in human conduct. Mill treats them as formulas to bo invoked, De Quincey as phenomena to be analysed. But devotees never understand, and invariably resent, analysis of their idols. I have spoken above of the special doctrine which De Quincey contributed to the science of Political Economy. But there is another more general ser- vice which he has rendered it, and which in my opinion is of even greater importance. This consists in his treating it by the method of analysis, not of deduction, and accordingly entitling his book a Logic of the subject. The attempt to treat the science deductively is to say the least premature, and has brought it into great discredit. DE QUIXCEY AS POLITICAL ECOXOIMIST. 95 It would seem that in all sciences whose subject matter is heterogeneous like that of political eco- nomy, I mean where human actions are mixed up with a certain group of objects like those which con- stitute wealth, the first thing to be done is to get a clear view of the relations which these two compo- nent parts bear to each other, and from which of the two points of view they can best be treated. In the present case the first question is, whether the sci- ence is primarily one of wealth, or of the action of exchange, a physical or a moral science. The objection to considering it as primarily a physical science of wealth, and only subordinately a moral science of exchange, is this, that the mass and intricacy of human motives and human rela- tions, which must be covered by it, are so great as to overwhelm the nucleus of truths which may be established by the physical part of it. I mean such truths as the advantage of division of labour, the diminishing returns from land, the Malthusian laws of population, and so on, to which Mill would have added the mechanical action of supply and demand. It is impossible to treat the science as deductive from facts like these combined with the principle of abstracting from all motives but the motive of acqui- sition, and from all relations but that of buyer and 06 DE QUINCEY AS POLITICAL EC0X0:\[IST. seller. Unlaiown forces are constantly operating to disturb the results wliicli might be reached on that basis, and even to alter the force of the motive of acquisition itself. This fact drives us to take the only alternative course, that of analysis. But here again we are met by the same complex mass of motives and relations as before. Conse- quently, our first requisite is a Logic of the subject, in order to ascertain what are the constant and per- manent laws or conditions among the vast mass of phenomena to be analysed. In looking at it thus, we soon find the chaos reducing itself to something like order. True, the motive of acquisition is but one motive among thousands, but the act of acqui- sition is the one sole act which combines in itself both the wealth element and the human-motive element of the science, and combines them in every instance of the act. The action of acquisition, then, is the central fact of the science ; and the elements which compose it, the circumstances which attend it, in other words its conditions, are the object of its analysis, while its constant and invariable conditions are the object of its Logic. The Logic of Political Economy, then, means the analysis of the constant conditions of acts of acqui- sition or, what is the same thing, of exchanges. DE QUIXCEY AS rOLITICAL ECONOMIST. 97 That is the first division of the whole science. Next comes the application of this logic, not deductively, so as to oppose to newly discovered or newly arisen facts the dictum of the so-called "inexorable laws" of the science, but tentatively, by welcoming and collecting from all quarters new and old phenomena, statistics of price, of population, of different indus- tries, &c. &c., and then attempting to harmonise them with, and bring them as cases under, the already established constant relations of the Logic. A prac- tical part of the science can then in the third place be founded, not directly on the Logic, but on what- ever body of truths may have become established by being brought under the Logic, having first been observed and verified, which is the task of the second or experiential, hypothetical, inductive, and pre- dictive part of the science. The widest scope is thus given for the observation of new facts, and the entertainment of new questions, in the economical field. There is danger lest the strong re-action against the so-called deductive method, and its mathematical way of abstracting from all motives but that of buy- ing cheap and selling dear, and then often mistaking its abstract conclusions for " inexorable laws" of human action, — there is danger lest the strong and H 98 DE QUINCFA- AS POLITICAL ECOXOr.IIST. just rc-action against this " dismal" method should lead ns, being Englishmen, to indulge our favourite unbridled empiricism, and dream that Political Economy can consist of facts without theory. The true substitute for the deductive method is not the unguided empirical, but the analytic method. The constant relations between men in exchanging com- modities for commodities, or commodities for labour, the constant conditions of exchanges among their conditions generally, are the object of the analytic part of the science ; and this must now take the place of the deductive method, which professed to be, not like the analytic a part, but the whole of the science. We shall then have the Logic of the science on the one side, and its application to concrete facts on the other. That this method of dealing with the science w^as inaugurated by De Quincey's Logic of Political Economy, is in my opinion his best, though, as we have seen, by no means his only claim to be ranked anion*]: its founders. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY SHAKSPERE; MILTON; -WORDSWORTH; TENNYSON. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY : «HAKSPEKE ; MILTON ; WORDSWORTH ; TENNYSON. I. -"'When (but ^Yatcll what an emphasis of thunder dwells upon that word ' when') — ' When shall we three meet again — In thunder, lightning, or in rain V What an orchestral crash bursts upon the ear in that all-shattering question !" It is thus that De <3uincey, in one of those brief remarks of his which are worth pages of duller criticism, describes the Tivid impression made upon him, when a child, by the sudden plunge in mcd'ias res with which Macbeth commences.* And true it is, that this effect is really produced and may be consciously experienced, though perhaps less vividly, by older persons, when attention has once been drawn to it. But this is far from being the only or even the chief effect of those open- ing lines. Other features are noticeable in them * Infant Literature. Works, vol. i. p. 120. Hogg's edition. 102 IflE SLrERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. besides the "orchestral crash" of the first question. They are so framed, and they are so placed, as to- produce the impression of the reality of the "witches as supernatural heings, or rather as beings endo^ved with supernatural powers, and holding converse Avith a supernatural world. There is another emphasis in the first line besides the strong emphasis on the word when ; there is a secondary and weaker emphasis on the word meet ; " AVhen shall we three meet again V The weird sisters have already been holding a con- clave during the storm and the battle, and are arranging their next meeting before they part. There is a dreadful purpose in their thoughts ; they are meditating the temptation and ruin of a noble soul, and watching their opportunity for the assault. The most emphatic word of all, the key-note to the jjlot of the drama, is not the first word of their brief dialogue, but the last : ^^ First Witch. When shall we three meet agahi, In thunder, lightning, or in rain ? Second Witch. "When the hurly-burly 's done, When the battle's lost and won. TZ/iVcZ JVitch. That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch. Where the i)lace? Second Witch. Upon the heath. Third Witch. There to meet with Macbeth." THE SUPERNATURAL IX ENGLISH rOETP.Y. 103 The ellect, the power, of this opening is twofold ; it fixes the whole force of our attention upon Mac- beth, as the object of the as yet unrevealed designs of the witches, and it is an appeal to the imagination of the audience to accept as real the supernatural machinery by which he is about to be drawn on to his perdition. For the purposes of the play we are to believe in the real existence of the witches and their queen Hecate, and in the supernatural powers of incantation and foretelling which they possess. We are to have nothing to do with the doubts which our reason may suggest as to the possibility of such creatures. If the supernatural is imaginable, it is real enough for poetry. And the art of the poet is shown by interweaving it with the natural in such a way as to keep the natural character of the natural inviolate. It is perfectly natural that Macbeth should believe in the witches, when once he has had proof of their prophetic power; he is not afiected with our doubts on that subject, and 2ce in our cha- racter of spectators pin our faith upon his. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the witches are merely the visible personification of Macbeth's own thoughts, hopes, and wishes, merely the poet's way of expressing a soul's dallying with temptation till the temptation becomes invested with 104: THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH TOETRY. a reality as great as if we heard it from another's mouth. Banquo as well as Macbeth sees and ques- tions the witches ; being innocent at heart he treats them lightl}^ and puts the subject away, without seeking to theorise on their reality. ''AVould they had stayed," says Macbeth. Full of his diml}^ enter- tained projects, unquiet, and circumspect, he is for further enquiry into their nature and that of their predictions. The air- drawn dagger and the appearance of Banquo's ghost at the supper might possibly be understood as hallucinations ; but the reality of the witches is necessary to the plot. To make us feel this is the first thing the poet has to do, and there- fore it is that we have the witches' dialogue in the opening scene. They are creations of the poet, made out of the elements of the current popular mythology, middle things between humanity and the spirit world, having intercourse with men on one side, with Hecate on the other; but they are re- alities ; indeed the chief purpose of Hecate's intro- duction seems to be to give reality to the witches, by supplying them with the background of a w^orld peopled with supernatural beings, of whom they are the earthly ministers. So also in TJie Tcmi)cst, if we may compare noble things with vile, Prospero's THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 105 magic is a reality. By it lie raises and allays the •storm, by it creates phantoms, deals with and com- mands spirits. And there also the reaHty of the power is impressed in a similar way ; for we are shown first of all its effect, the storm and the ship- wreck, and then, immediately afterwards, the cause •of both, in Prospero's magic art. The whole plot of The Tempest requires the supposition of the reality of the magic, and could not take place without it. Prospero, the noble, wise, gentle, all -human Prospero, whose magic art is the counterpart of Shakspere's poetry, and in whose humanity the poet mirrors and recalls his own, is the opposite pole to the witches in Macheth. But opposite poles belong necessarily to the same sphere ; which, in this case, is the world of magic. Human are the witches after their kind, and human after his kind is Prospero. All his dreams of ambition are centred upon earth ; upon his dukedom, his home, his daughter. What- ever delight he may take in his magic lore, and the power u'hi«h it gives to command and to create, it is all subordinate to his delight in those realities of ^arth, and is abandoned when their enjoyment is ■secured. The anti-pole to Prospero in the sphere of humanity (as the witches are in that of magic) is €aliban. Like the witches, Caliban is a creature of lOG THE SUPERXATUriAL IN ENGLISH POEIT.Y. this world, l)ut of a far lower rank than the}'; his: (.lam Sycorax was of their sort, hut he, heing steeped in the additional brutishness of ignorance, is desti- tute of the power to injure which they derive from their dealings with the supernatural. Hecate in Macbeth belongs wholly to the super- natural world, the region of Fairyland, which we must suppose to be inhabited by bad as well as b}^ beneficent spirits. Ariel in TJic Temyest belongs to- Fairyland also ; and these two plays give us the dealings of men, by means of magic, with the people and the powers of that world. In Ariel we get a vision of the people and powers themselves. Ariel is Shakspere's most glorious creature in that world, his last day's work, the Adam and Eve in one, of a Lost Paradise, and his manumission by Prospero, at the conclusion of The Tcmj^est, is his Paradise Eegained. The play in which Shakspere first created the Folk of Fairyland is the Midsummer NUjhVs Dream. No magic in this play but what is exerted by the fairies themselves. But the fairies, their characters, their functions, their doings, are realities. The whole play turns upon their interference with the designs and doings of men. And they are led to interfere in the first instance bv the interest v.hicli THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 107 tliey take in the cliief personages, Oberon in Hippo- lyta, Titania in Theseus, at whose nuptials each wishes to be present. This brings them to Athens in the nick of time to set straight, though after pre- viously embroiling, the cross purposes of the ill- assorted pairs of lovers, and to play tricks with the amateur performers of the play to be presented on the wedding night. The art that is here required is not to prove to the spectators the reality of these supernatural per- sonages, for we see their whole powers displayed visibly before us. No need to bring in proof at the earliest possible point, as in the two former plays. The art required here is of a very different kind. It is to let all this real interference take place without making the human actors aware of the interference to which they are subjected. If the actors were set reasoning and questioning about the mode in which the marvels were effected, the faith of the spectators w^ould be destroyed. Accordingly, the fairies keep themselves invisible throughout, except in one only instance, loon Bottom with the ass's pate clapped on him and his wooing by Titania ; and loon Bottom quickly acquiesces in puzzle-headedness as an im- mutable ordinance of nature. This wooing of Ti- tania's, moreover, is a necessary part of the scheme 108 THE SUPERNATURAL IX ENGLISH ROETRY. framed by Obcron to punisli her, belonging to the fairyland part of the whole action, upon which the denouement depends. How Theseus and Hippolyta take the matter may be seen in act v. so. 1. " Hipp. 'lis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of. Tltes. ]\Iore strange than true." t^^c. But the spectators now know better. And the rationalism of Theseus, introduced where it is, and involving the admission of something that requires explanation, serves but to heighten the impression of reality already made on the audience. The fairy folk of Shakspere are men and women "transposed into another key; just as the Homeric deities are, in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Were they not human in essence, w^e should neither take interest in them, nor could they have that kind or degree of reality which poetry requires. The w^hole skill of these great poets, in the article of gods and fairies, consists in the harmony of the transposition, the harmony of the changes wrought in human nature when, in consequence of changes in its con- ditions internal and external, in the beincfs them- selves and in their environment, they become gods .and fairies from men. Of course the change in con- ditions is a fiction, the change of nature is a fiction, THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. lOll and therefore the being of gods and fairies is a fiction also. It is frank poetic fiction ; but its har- mony and consistency render it also a poetic reality ; for poetic realities arc those which poetry creates, not which it finds ; or if, in some cases, those which it finds, yet these become poetical only so far as the poet remoulds and re-creates them. But there is this enormous difference between Homer's case and Shakspere's, that the Gods of Homer's poetry are also the Gods of the Hellenic religion ; as the one they were necessarily true, as the other they were necessarily ^fictitious. The bearing of this remark will bo developed as we proceed. There is yet a third branch of the supernatural represented by Shakspere, apparitions of the de- parted from beyond the grave. This Ave have most fully in Hamlet. And here again we find him adopt- ing similar means of impressing the reality as in Macbeth and The Tempest, but with much fuller wealth of resource. The whole of the first Scene, and indeed the greater part of the first Act, is de- voted to the apparitions of the Ghost. Every cir- cumstance is insisted on which can vouch for its reality, consistently with the admitted and expected mysteriousness of such manifestations ; and the character of the Ghost is, if I may say so, completely 110 THE SLTERNATUITAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. ilrumatiscd. He is a real personality. This is be- cause the reality of the Ghost is necessary to the plot : that is, it is necessary that Hamlet should be convinced that he really sees and converses with his father's spirit, and not either (as Shakspere's con- temporaries might be tempted to imagine) with a phantom emissary of Satan, or (as moderns might speculate) with an hallucination of his own.* The art required in Hamlet, which treads upon supernatural ground far more difficult for poetry than either magic or fairyland, is different from, or rather a development of, that required in the former plays where the supernatural comes in. The illu- sion of the audience is to be maintained, not as in the Midsummer NigJtfs Dream by withdrawing it from the observation of the actors, but more nearly as in Machethy but under greater difficulties, that is, in spite of the perpetual questioning and reasoning of Hamlet and the other witnesses of the apparition. This is effected chiefly by the thorough dramatisa- tion of the Ghost, by which the spectators are kept attentive to what is going on, and not allowed to fall into a state of speculation on the possibility or mode of production of such occurrences; not allowed to • As to the alternative theories ojien to Shakspere's contem- poraries, sec Mr. Spalding's Elizabethan Dcmonology, p, 55-60. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. Ill •share, though they sj^mpathise with, the speculations which torment Hamlet himself. The audience is kept in what Coleridge calls a state of illusion^ dis- tinguished from delusion, a state which he illus- "trates by comparing it to our state of mind when dreaming. ''In both cases," he says, ''we simply do not judge the imagery to be unreal ; there is a negative reality and no more. Whatever therefore tends to prevent the mind from placing itself, or being placed, gradually in that state in which the images have such negative reality for the auditor, ■destroys this illusion, and is dramatically impro- bable."* But why is it that the danger is so great of the spectators falling into the speculative state, instead of being placed in the state of illusion, in the present case ? It is because the theme is one which has a deep personal interest for all men, the state of the dead, the life or death beyond the grave ; a theme vvliich borders on religion ; from which we have seen already how clear Shakspere keeps himself in the two former cases of the supernatural. For the supernatural, Vvhen it is also real, becomes the ob- ject of a very different class of poetry from that of which the frankly impossible supernatural is the * Literary Eemalns, vol. ii. p. 37-8, and again p. 92. 112 THE SUPERNATUR.VL IN ENGLISH TOETRY. object. In poetic theory tliere is no more important distinction than that between inventive poetry, which consists in invention of persons and things similar or analogous to the real, and interpretative poetry, which consists in interpretation of persons and things which are real. Fiction is indifferent to poetry of the first kind, but fatal to that of the second. Now Hamlet has a theme which borders on both ; therefore it is that it is difficult ground for poetry; and therefore also Shakspere taxes his powers to the utmost, in the opening scenes of the play and throughout, to place and keep his auditor s- in that state of '' illusion" which is the indispens- able requisite for enjoying it. The drama is that kind of poetry which is best able to exhibit pure invention, ^i^jy/iaig in the fullest sense of the term, in which the interest is drawn not from what the persons, events, and situations are believed to be or have been in reality, but from what the poet makes them or creates them to be. Hence Shakspere's Histories, and historical plays generally, are not the drama developed to its full capacity, or putting forth all its powers. There is a certain interpretative interest involved. Hence too it comes that Shakspere never introduces in his dramas any O'eal supernatural persons or events ; for that would THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 113 destroy tlieir inventive character, and prevent their rising to the full height of their function ; and so much the more, the greater the dignity or import- <{ince of the persons introduced, and the greater the interest attaching to their reality. Hamlet is the only play in which he touches even on the border- land of the supernatural considered as real. I speak, of course, only of the drama as such, that is, of the persons, plot, situations, and events ; for that allu- -sions to and dealings with the real supernatural are found in the mouths and actions of the personages of the drama,— this belongs to them in their per- sonal capacity, and not to the drama as such. For instance, Hamlet's soliloquy " To be or not to be," &c., and the prayer of the King, are part of the cha- racters and not part of the framework of the play. The spectators are not required either to adopt or to reject their truth. There is then, we may say, one kind of super- natural in which Shakspere revels, another into which with the utmost caution he ventures, and a third w^hich he completely avoids. There is first the supernatural of fairyland and magic ; secondly the supernatural of the world beyond the grave ; thirdly the supernatural of the Divine. How dia- metrically opposite to the practice of the Greek 114 THE SUPEKNATURAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. tragedians ; nay, if we think of it, to the Greek drama, comic as well as tragic, and to Greek poetiy generally. The supernatural of the world beyond the grave they have in common with Shakspere ; hut the extremes are reversed ; they have and he has not the supernatural of the Divine ; they have not and he has the supernatural of faiiyland and magic. But stay. What, it will he said, is the meaning' of this monstrous assertion, that Greek poetry has nothing corresponding to magic, nothing to fairy- land? Has it, then, no Gorgons, no Furies, no Harpies, no Chimreras, no Centaurs, no Cyclopes, no dragons, no Hydras, no Cerberus, no Circes, na Medeas, no Cassandras, no Teiresiases, no oracles, no Nek3^omanteias ? — and the list might be pro- longed indefinitely. Yes indeed it has ; but then, — and here is the point, — these and such as these belong to, and shade off by inseparable gradations into the Blvine properly so called in Greek mytho- logy. They arc appurtenances of the Gods of Olympus or of Hades. And then, too, the greater Gods are connected with men by a chain of lesser deities, of demigods, and of heroes whose origin is partly divine, partly human ; and it is in attendance on the society consisting of Gods, demigods, heroes. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 115 and men together, and as playing a part in the his- tories by them enacted in common, that the other miraculous and monstrous creatures of the mytho- logy have their being and their function. Thus they belong, one and all, not to the first division of Shakspere's supernatural, but to the last. In point of reality, reality not depending solely on the creation of poets, but partly on popular belief prior to it, they and the Divine in Greek poetry stand or fall together. Shakspere by scru- pulously abstaining from introducing the Divine, while he revels in the creations of fairyland and magic, draws a broad distinction, sets a deep gulf, between the two domains ; and this separation it is which is absent in Grreek poetry. True, Greek poetry has an abundant creation of beings analogous to those which people Shakspere's domain of fairy- land and magic, but not as distinguished from the domain of the divine, not as a supernatural which is fictitious, distinguished from a supernatural which is real. The absence of the divine from Shakspere's dra- ma, as compared with the Greek, entails therefore a narrowing of its field, by the exclusion of one whole section of human relations, and that the one from which the greater part of the motives of the Greek 116 THE SUrERXATURAL IX EXGLISH POETRY. drama was taken. Poetry in the drama of Shak- spere, like philosophy in the teaching of Socrates, is recalled from heaven to earth, from the relations of man with God to the relations of man with man. At the same time there is a deepening of the nar- rowed stream ; greater subjectivity ; a minuter pic- turing and a more studied development of emotion ; character becoming more important than situation ; and, of the two inseparable elements, action on the one hand, emotion and character on the other, the former plainly subordinate to the latter, not vice versa as in Greek practice, and in direct reversal of a famous dictum of Aristotle's. The mind of man in its nature and its action is the real subject of Shakspere's art, and not merely certain situations in which man may be placed, calculated to move pity and fear, and by the dramatic treatment of which the inordinate and painful energy of those affections may be moderated and allayed.* Consider the con- trast, for instance, between the sublimest of Greek dramas, the Arjamemnon, its action concentrated on a single day, a group of living sculpture rather than an action, and the development of character in Shakspere's Macbeth, or his Lear, or more striking * See for this interpretation of Aristotle's -well-known defini- tion of trap[cdy, J. Bernaj's' Zwei Ahhandluvgen iibcr die Aris- totclischc Theorie des Drama. Berlin, 1880. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 117 still, owing to tlie shortness of the time occupied, his OtJu'llo, And as to the other point noticed, the absence of the divine in Shakspere, where can we find in him a parallel to the Prometheus of the same great Greek master ; where to the Bacchce of Euri- j)ides; where to the Fror/s of Aristophanes ? The Greeks kept the divine as a subject of dramatic poetry, but at the same time, and as a necessary consequence, subordinated it to the conditions of fiction, along with those parts of the supernatural which were avowedly fabulous. Between these two salient characteristics of Shak- spere's dramas, the exclusion of the divine and the subjectivity in the development of character, between what I have called the narroicing and the deepening of the stream, — what connection ? Or is there any connection between them other than accidental ? A connection there certainly is, a motive so natural and so weighty that we may easily suppose a mind like Shakspere's would have at once perceived and eagerly acted on it, even had he stood alone and apart from the historical conditions which deter- mined the course of the English Drama as a whole. The entire drama of modern Europe grew up under the pressure of a dogmatic religious creed. 118 THE SUPEENATUItAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. The relations of man ^vitll the Divine belonged therefore to ground which was, and was universally considered to be, the domain of tnitli ; and for that reason these relations must have seemed to one who was bent on giving full rein to his inventive and imaginative powers peculiarly unfitted to bo the subjects of a freely fictive or inventive art, as in Greece they were, and that not in tragedy only but in comedy also. But in fact the adoption of this course, the ex- clusion of religious subjects from the drama, was not Shakspere's or any single individual's doing. It was determined by circumstances which acted on the nation at large. In saying that the modern drama grew up under the pressure of a religious creed, I have said far too little. It not only did so, but it was in its origin an acted representation of the creed itself and of its adjuncts. Scripture and sacred legendary history were the original subjects of it, acted by and under the direction of the clergy, both in the churches and elsewhere. It was out of the Mysteries, Miracle Plays, and Moralities, that, in England, the secular drama was developed ; out of these it was born, and these it left behind it, as an immortal spirit m.ight leave its earthly body, at the epoch when England awoke to conscious energetic THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 119 national life, under Elizabetli as the champion of the Protestant Reformation.* This state of things Shakspere made not, but found. A. secular drama was the condition of the putting forth of his powers, and mediately of the full development of the drama itself. Steps of this Idnd are never retraced. Wherever the drama is developed to its full height as a freely fictive and inventive art, the creations of which are human characters in action, there the relations of man to the Divine are excluded from the drama. How in fact can religion be brought upon the stage, which represents the spoken intercourse of man with man, when in real life the rehgious feelings are never made the subject of debate or conversation ? But they still remain, and remain as of right, the proper and in- deed the highest subject of interpretative poetry, as they are, for instance, in Dante's Divinci Commcdia. At the same time, the dogmatic religious creed was not without influence on the drama, as on all departments of art, even where it called out a hostile anti-religious or non-religious re-action. The whole train of human thoughts became more serious, more reflective, more introspective, in consequence. Man's * See tlie full account of this in Professor Ward's admirable Ilistorij of English Dramatic Literature, vol. i. chapters i.-iii. 120 THE SUPErtNATUKAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. relations -with the Divine, ^Yith the unseen world, "svere made the object of continual meditation, en- quiiy, doubt, speculation. There was a whole definite code of divine and moral truth, continually present, and continually asserting its rightful supremacy over conduct, and what is more over belief. The creed was the embodiment of an intimately spiritual religion. This forced men to reflect on what they were, and how their minds and souls were constituted. In considering the causes which influenced the development of the Elizabethan drama, much, I think, must be held to be due to the deeply seated and hereditary character of the nation, as well as to the circumstances of its history. The point in which the English, in common with other Teutonic races, difi"ers most fundamentally from the Greek seems to have been this, that where the Greeks had the mimetic tendency in great strength, that is, the tendency to imitate by inventing or constructing something, they on the other hand had in corre- sponding strength the tendency to utter and express something, not for the sake of the thing to be uttered, whatever it might be, but for relief to themselves by giving vent to something which until uttered was a burden. It was the very same ten- dency and disposition which in social and political THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 121 matters appeared as the love of individual independ- ence and freedom. On this nature it was that the dogmatic creed was brought to bear. The Greek drama on the other hand developed under no such pressure. Out of the common ground of the rich popular mythology, of foreign as well as native origin, Greek literature developed in two different directions, that of poetry by an exercise of imagination in search of beauty, and that of philo- sophy by an exercise of reason in search of truth. Their poetry was the product of that spontaneous, delight in imitation, ^//y.^yc/j, which is natural to all men, and which was peculiarly powerful in the Greeks. The whole of their mythology was sub- mitted to the freely inventive treatment in which the tendency to imitation displays itself. There is no more subtil or profound truth in Aristotle than his apparently obvious remark that the tendency to imitate is the root of poetry, joined as it is with the fact that he made of that truth the basis of his whole theory of poetry. He dared to build his theory on what might appear to many a trivial commonplace ; for he saw not the fact only, but its connections and its import. Such remarks as these it is, found every- where in Aristotle's works and relating to all depart- ments of thought, such remarks as these it is which 122 THE SUrEnXATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. stamp liim as the greatest of philosophers, for their significance is of that kind which time alone can full}' hring to light. The remark that poetry is imitation is found in Plato, and that frequently. But in what sense does Plato understand it, and what use does he make of it ? He uses it to show that the hest poet, he who can imitate hest, must he the man who hest under- stands the things and persons imitated, as if imita- tion meant copying, and the poet was in pursuit of truth. Hence he maintains that poets ought to be tutored by the state as to what they ought to imitate and how, so as to produce the hest effect on the young ; and thus he subordinates poetry to educa- tional purposes. But is that Aristotle's meaning of imitation ? No. The deep-seated tendency, and the deep-seated delight in the exercise of the tendency, to prodncc creations similar to those of nature, that is Aristotle's imitation ; and this is a tendency which, in his view, cannot be subordinated to educational j)urposcs alone, but is a poKcr which must be reckoned with, cultivated, and made the most of. Now we can understand Plato's objection to the poets of his own country. They did not represent the Gods conformably to the truth of the divine nature. They invented Gods by their free fictive THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH TOETRY. 123 lianclling of the mythology ; tliey invented when they ought to copy. But copy what ? Copy, replies Plato, the Idea of the Divine, the truth of the divine nature ; produce, in images, a system of moral and religious philosophy. That was what Plato wanted, and that ^vas just what Greek poetry never did and never ■could supply ; though to force it to do so, to wring from the mythology, essentially inventive, a deep religious significance, if not through, then inde- pendently of the poets, was the main purpose of the Neo-platonic philosophy in later times, which was, in intention, at once a mythology, a religion, and a philosophy. Nevertheless the appearance of Plato, basing him- self as he did on the Socratic intuitions which aimed •at bringing down philosophy to practice, and were the origin of Ethic as the science of practice, marks fin epoch, a stage of development, in the mental history of Greece which is of the highest interest and importance. It v^'as the beginning of a moral xind religious dogma for Greece. It extricated reli- gion from the mythology, and in lieu thereof em- bodied it in a philosophy. It was just because Plato ■saw more clearly and felt more deeply than his fellow -countrymen what religion luas, that he was dissatis- fied with its mythological embodiment. He attached 124 THE SUPEFiNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. it therefore to a creed, or pliilosopheme, of pure Monotheism. He provided a new body for it, and attempted to effect its metempsychosis. Religion was to animate monotheism. Contrast this development of the Greek with that of the Hebrew mental history ; for both alike are in- tegrations, organic developments towards increasing complexity and greater interdependence of parts ; and both alike have a large fund of mythological and popular tradition, both self-sown and extraneous, at their origin. Why is it that their several courses, starting from sources so similar, are so widely di- vergent ; why is it that the Hebrew race produces no Drama and no Philosophy comparable to those of Greece, but in lieu thereof produces two religions in succession, a mother and a daughter, Judaism and Christianity ? It is impossible to pretend to assign the ultimate, the absolutely first and deepest, cause or causes of national character and national destiny. But so far as we are enabled to penetrate, so far as we can assign the determining circumstances or traits in the history of nations, upon which other traits and cir- cumstances depend, — this we may attempt. Let us then take that retrospective speech in which, at the birth of the younger religion, its first martyr reviewed THE SUPERNATURAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. 125 the history of the old, and connected it with that of the new gospel. It has a ring very different from the Greek : ^' ]\ren, brethren, and fathers, hearken : The God of ■glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said unto him. Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. Then ■came he out of the land of the Chald?eans, and dwelt in €harran : and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell."'-' And add to this the comment by another writer : "By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inherit- ance, obeyed : and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the laad of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac •and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise : for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."t Kow whatever may be legendary in this or other parts of Hebrew history, two things are clear, first, that there was through all their known history a suc- cession of men who acted on this principle of faith in God, as Abraham is here represented to have done ; and secondly, that this characteristic was consciously reflected on and adopted, with appeal to the history * Acts vii. 2-4. t Hebrews xi. 8-10. 12G THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. of the past, by the best and noblest of the Hebrews themselves. They lived as children of a heavenly father, and this supernatural relation was to them not a fiction, not a mythological legend, but a fact and a truth. Had they made dramas or Iliads, had they made even philosophemes, out of that, it would have shown that they did not believe it. The very same circumstance and trait of character, which gave them a religion, denied them a drama and denied them a philosophy. Not that either drama or philo- sophy is incompatible with religion, but that, if a nation is mentally and morally endowed with capa- cities for all, it can only harmoniously develop them on the condition of keeping distinct and separate their several domains, objects, and methods of pur- suing them. The Hebrews had that which Plato longed for ; they had the religion, they had the soul, ■which he wished, and wished in vain, to create for the Greeks under the ribs of his philosophical mono- theism. It will perhaps be worth while to cast a brief glance at the general corresponding development of modern Europe. The Greek and Hebrew develop- ments are integrations ; what is in them they deve- lop into fuller organisation ; the Greeks, as we have seen, into a drama and a philosophy, the Hebrews THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETEY. 127 into an elaborate code of law, and, partly owing to their contact with other nations, into a creed about the soul and a future life. But the nations of modern Europe grew up from childhood under instruction ; I mean under the instruction of the Church, which consisted of certain Jewish and Christian legends, adopted as authentic historj^ and made the basis of a theory of the world, which in the shape of creed or catechism was universally taught. It was a theory as well as a religion, it was a religion and a philo- sophy in one. The Church itself, though claiming to have its creeds founded solely on faith guaranteed by authority, yet, by the mere fact of having creeds at all, necessarily appealed to reason. Philosophy w\as thus, for the disciples of the Church, a necessity, and that philosophy was necessarily a disintegrating one. It disintegrated the very instruction of the Church, out of which it sprang. But under the ribs of that instruction, unlike Plato's, there was a living soul, a spiritual religion, the same spiritual religion in essence as that which animated and sup- ported the Hebrew nation. There was a real and true supernatural, the Divine, to be kept sacred from poetic fiction. There was a philosophy to be recon- structed in harmony with that sacred truth. And there was the abundant energy and delight in poetic 128 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. •creation, which was not denied to the people of northern any more than to those of southern Europe, ov to the inhabitants of southern Europe who were brought by Eoman conquest and government under the influence of Greek thought, any more than to the Greeks themselves. " For the same climate and many of the same circumstances were acting on them," says Coleridge,* speaking of the early Romance and Italian writers, ''which had acted on the great classics, whom they were endeavouring to imitate. But the love of the marvellous, the deeper sensibility, the higher reverence for womanhood, the characteristic spirit of sentiment and courtesy, — these were the heir-looms of nature, which still regained the ascendant, whenever the use of the living mother- language enabled the inspired poet to appear instead of the toilsome scholar." Thus the nations of modern Europe, northern ^cud southern alike, begin as it were with national characters and tendencies of their own, with their own traditions, religious rites, and social customs ; and upon these supervene, first, the religion of Christianity ; secondly the dogmatic theories in philosophy and history taught by the Church ; .thirdly the knowledge of classical thought and * Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 80. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 129 literature ; aud lastly the great discoveries in sci- ence, both theoretical and practical. All these ele- ments had to he harmonised and organised when modern Europe rose, at the time of the renaissance, from the childhood of the middle ages; and each nation took a course of its own in harmonising and organising them, according to the difference of its own particular character, and to the different inci- dence of its condition and circumstances. Greece ■and Judnea were integrations; we moderns are an integration and a disintegration together; that is, we are a re-integration into fuller, more complex, more distinct, yet at the same time more interdependent modes of moral, intellectual, and imaginative life. II. And now with the foregoing remarks as our clue, let us turn to Milton, the next poet on our list, and to his paramount work, the Paradise Lost. In the first place, it is to he observed of this poem, that as an Epic it belongs to the class of interpretative poetry. In all Epic poetry some great and well- known event is taken as the theme, something E 130 THE SUPEPtNATUrtAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. which is ah-eady in i^ossession of the popular mindj, and which is the centre of a whole cluster of varied interests. To picture this great central event vividly, to make the actors in it live before the mental vision, to adorn and set it forth with subordinate details and episodes, to magnify its grandeur and enhance its beauty, in one word to interpret the theme proposed, is the aim of the Epic poet. It is obvious that invention is not excluded, but it is in- cluded as a means to the end of interpretation. Just as a great landscape painter both modifies the actual features and invents others in the scene he paints ; just as a sculptor exhibits an ideal statue of a Plato or a Demosthenes ; so the epic poet gives us an ideal picture of the wars of Achilles or of Charle- magne. But the theme must have been a real one; it must already be in possession, at least by means of its name, of the public mind; the chief characters must be at once historical and important ; it is not any group of characters that will serve the turn. No epic poem could have been made of King Lear ,- for even though a king and a kingdom are involved, they are of no significance in the vrorld's or a nation's history, and the whole story is " of private interpretation." Interpretative poetry is the second of the three THE SUPERXATUriAL IX ENGLISH POETr.Y. 131 great diyisions into wliicli poetry falls when it is classified by its aims. In all practical sciences, that is, those that have action or practice as their subject-matter, of which literary criticism is one, the purpose aimed at is the proper basis of classifi- cation. Poetry so considered falls into the three great kinds of inventive, interpretative, and efi'usive, that is to say, expressive of feeling ; and to these kinds belong respectively dramatic, narrative (of which epic is a branch), and lyric poetry. In the present paper I shall have no need to touch upon poetry of the efi'usive or lyric kind. The story of Paradise Lost is taken from that legendary history which was part of the dogmatic teaching of the Church. The transgression of a divine command by the tv\-o parents of mankind, when tempted by the serpent, entails their expul- sion from Paradise, and introduces death into the world. The relations between the divine and human are therefore everywhere involved; and Milton avows that it is his main purpose to *' assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to Men." Milton's poem therefore is something more than an Epic ; its theme is something more than a story of well-known historical though legendary import- lo'l THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH ROETRY. ance and interest, such as the story of Troy or of Eoncesvallcs. It has a didactic, or rather say a theoretical, purpose also. It is an epic poem and a theological treatise in one. It is the Protestant Divina Commedia. But whereas Dante, writing at the close of the middle ages, as the mouthpiece of Scholasticism triumphant, and guided only by the example of Latin literature, felt it to be his task to exhibit the relations between God and man in a cosmology, Milton on the other hand, writing under the full influence of Greek models, and when Luther's re-proclamation of the great doctrine of justification by faith had made the question of free-will a vital question with every reflecting man, was irresistibly impelled to make that question the turning-point of his theology. Dante endeavours to show how man cai: be justified before God ; Milton, how God can be justified before man. This is an advance in sub- jectivity. The human conscience is felt to be the supreme tribunal, and to contain the ultimate cri- terion, in all the judgments which man has to pass for his own guidance, on all subjects whether in heaven or on earth. Milton ! Titan that thou art, strong, pure, faith- ful, dauntless Titan, didst even thou fully contem- plate, at the moment of decision, the magnitude THE SUPERNATURAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. 13B of thy self-elected task? Canst thou indeed be theologian and poet in one, and that in an age not of faith but of reason, nor yet at a moment when reason, having nm full circuit, is returning as by an ascending spiral into the atmosphere of a purer faith, but at the moment when that circuit is but beginning, and a long period of doubt and darkness intervenes between thee and thy promised resting place ? Imperial soul, may I and all who may be called to form a judgment, to the extent of our ability, upon thy transcendent work, seeing the defeatures writ there by the ambiguous character of its scope, reflect how great and glorious that work must be, which even these defeatures are not suffi- cient to obscure ! Milton has recently been criticised, with regard to his pictures of the supernatural and man's rela- tion to it, from two opposite points of view. First from the moral, or perhaps we may say theological, point of view, by Mr. Ruskin.* Both Dante and Milton, he says, were men who tried '•' to discover and set forth, as far as by human intellect is possible, the facts of the other world." He then says that '' Milton's account of the most important event in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the * Sesavie and Lilies, pp. 138, 139. 134 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. angels, is evidently uiil)elievable to himself/' and fartlier that ''the rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed ; not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any living faith." A similar account is given of Dante, and then he proceeds thus : " I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to play with the most precious truths, (or the most deadly untruths,) by which the whole human race listening to them could be informed, or deceived ; — all the world their audiences for ever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart ; — and yet, to this submissive infinitude of souls, and evermore succeed- ing and succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of hell ; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns ; and fill the openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal love." This lofty, pure, and impassioned criticism amounts, on its logical side, to neither more nor less than insisting that Milton ought to have dropped out of view and made no account of the THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 135 poetic element in his own aim, retaining only tlie tlieoretkal, wliicli in this case is the theological, ele- ment in it, and ceasing entirely to be a poet. To Mr. Ruskin, the poetry spoils the theology. It is precisely the same principle of criticism as we found above in Plato : that poets are to ''imitate" nothing but truth ; and that, so far as poets are inventors, they are only bad philosophers, and ought to learn their business better. If Milton speaks of theology at all, so I understand Mr. Euskin to mean, he ought to speak seriously of it, and tell us only what he really believes, not what he obviously invents. Mr. Euskin's views are criticised from an oppo- site point of view by Mr. Mark Pattison, in his recent Life ofMiltoii. Quoting from passages which imme- diately precede the above long citation, Mr. Pattison insists that "Milton felt himself to be standing on the sure ground of fact and reality."* And I think it is undeniable that Milton believed firmly in a defi- nite basis of fact underlying his whole poem, under- lying his picture of the Deity, of the celestial and the rebel angels, of the powers exerted by both the latter on man, of the garden, of the first created pair, of the temptation, fall, and exile. What he incented v/as the particular mode in which a human * English Meu of Letters. Milton, p. 18G. 136 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. mind could best picture to itself the realisation of these supernatural truths. As Professor Masson says, in his invaluable work r " In the cosmology of Paradise Lost, and indeed in the whole matter and tenor of the epic, Milton, it is inter- esting to know, was true, as far as a poet could be true,, to his personal beHefs. What appears as grand song and free imagination in the poem may be seen reduced to the dry bones of corresponding theological proposition in his Latin Treatise of Christian Doctrine." And again : " Milton is careful to explain that all that he says of Heaven is said symbolically, and in order to make con- ceivable by the human imagination what in its own nature is inconceivable ; but this being explained, he is bold enough in his use of terrestrial analogies, "t If I have rightly understood Mr. Ruskin's criti- cism, then Mr. Pattison's reply, that " Milton felt himself to be standing on the sure ground of fact and reality," is true, but does not meet the objec- tion. For the objection is that, whether he felt him- self on sure ground or not, he ought not to have used poetic invention to expound it ; that the solem- nity and deep importance of the subject ought to have exempted it from a fictive treatment. In this * The Life of John Milton, vol. vi. p. 536. t Ihid. p. 538. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 187 lie seems to me to Platon'ise incleecl, but not to mis- take Milton's real relation to liis theme. But Mr. Pattison lias a further objection of his own against Milton, namely, that he selected a theme which he wrongly thought could never lose its hold over the imagination, whereas it has lost much and is day by day losing more of that hold, and is in danger of becoming in the end wholly uninterest- ing: " Strange to say, this failure of vital power in the constitution of the poem is due to the very selection of subject by which Milton sought to secure perpetuity. Not content with being the poet of men, and with de- scribing human passions and ordinary events, he aspired to present the destiny of the whole race of mankind, to tell the story of creation, and to reveal the councils of heaven and hell. And he would raise this structure upon no unstable base, but upon the sure foundation of the written word. It would have been a thing incredible to Milton that the hold of the Jewish Scriptures over the imagination of English men and women could ever be weakened. This process, however, has already com- menced. The demonology of the poem has already, with educated readers, passed from the region of fact into that of fiction. Not so universally, but with a large number of readers, the angelology can be no more than what the critics call machinery. And it requires a violent effort from any of our day to accommodate our conceptions tO' the anthropomorphic theology of Paradise Lost. Were the sapping process to continue at the same rate for two 138 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. more centuries, the possibility of epic illusion would be lost to the Avholc scheme and economy of the poem.""' Let me reply to this criticism in the first place, that the poem is chiefly one that describes "human passions and ordinary events." The interest gathers round the incidents of the temptation and the fall. Everything is subordinate to that central moment of faithfulness, tenderness, and despair, when Adam takes his resolution of conscious disobedience : " Should God create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart ! no, no ! I feel The link of nature draw me : flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone, thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe l"! Such is Milton's picture of Adam's transgres- sion ; on which we feel Milton's own comment to be unfair, when he says that Adam was "not deceiv'd, But fondly overcome with female charm. ":1: It is nobility not weakness of nature, chivalrous affection not female charm, that inspire his resolu- tion. That little history of " human passions and ordi- nary events," of which this is the central and deci- * English Men of Letters. Milton, p. 199-200. I Book IX. V. 911. t ^^'^d. Y. 998. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 139 sive incident, that little history it is, to which the whole universe, its divine and angelic inhabitants, their politics and their wars, are designed as the setting. That is the jewelled boss of the sculptured orbicular shield. That is where our interests are engaged, however inferior in magnitude to its gor- geous surroundings. It is the necessary pre-suppo- sition of the cosmology and angelology; they are necessary if we are to have a poem on the fall of man; but we might easily have had a cosmology or a rebel- lion of angels, without making the fall of man a pro- minent feature or even introducing it at all. Satan, it has been often said, is the real " hero" of the poem. But not so, I would reply; Satan may be the hero of the '' setting," but Adam is the chief iictor in the whole. A defeated and disgraced actor it is true ; but that does not interfere with Milton's conception of " heroic" action : " Sad task, yet argument Not less but more heroic than the wrath Of stern Achilles on his foe pursu'd Thrice fugitive about Troy wall ; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd, Or Neptune's ire or Juno's, that so long Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's son."* In fact, whatever vastness of scale, whatever gran- * Book IX. V. 13. 140 THE SUrEEXATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. dour or magnificence of action and character, is in- troduced into the setting, really and in truth re- dounds to magnify the moral and spiritual signifi- cance of the centre, — the puny action on the tiny planet, — of which that grandeur is the setting merely. But the part of Mr. Pattison's criticism to which I wish particularly to call attention is the position, that " were the sapping process to continue at the same rate for two more centuries, the possibility of epic illusion Vv'ould he lost to the whole scheme and economy of the poem," for this is the point which touches the functions and hearing of the super- natural in interpretative poetry. To me it seems, that the effect of the sapping, supposing it completed^ would be the very reverse. We should then stand to the Paradise Lost precisely as we stand to the Iliad or to the J^neid. We should then frankly accept the supernatural machinery, and the ^^epic illusion" (not delusion) would be comparatively easy. As it is, many readers are in that fatal middle state of speculation concerning the supernatural ma- chinery, wishing and wishing in vain for illusion, because they think that delusion is still possible. When we can frankly dismiss the claim of the super- natural machinery to be truth, and not till then, we THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH TOETRY. 141 •shall be able frankly to accept it as a poetic reality. Till then, Mr. Pattison's '^violent effort" is really required. My own objection, for I have one, is of a very different kind. It is founded on the distinction drawn above, between the real and the unreal super- natural. There is a real supernatural in the Para- dise Lost, and Milton has treated it precisely as he has treated the unreal. This real supernatural can never be sapped, and consequently the illusion can never be perfect. The illusion is endangered, not, •as Mr. Pattison supposes, because we do not believe in the good and bad angels and other similar parts of the supernatural machinery, but because they and it :are employed to embody, and render comprehensible, spiritual mysteries which we do earnestly believe, namely, the existence of God and his relation to man as the God of conscience. Milton in Paradise Lost is in fact disintegrating the Christian mythology, just as Homer disin- tegrated the Greek, namely, by imagining it and constructing it. God cannot be embodied in ima- gery, but transcends it. He is therefore secure from any disintegration by poets. Milton's representa- tion dwarfs him, indeed; makes him a finite and particular being; makes him a "magnified man," 142 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH TOETRY. to use Mr. Matthew Arnold's phrase, present in one part of space and absent from another, and issuing commands which may be and are disobeyed. Yet, since God himself transcends all such imagery, since the trutli of the theology cannot be spoilt by this idolising process, but remains secure beyond it, therefore I say (what is the exact converse of Mr. Ruskin's objection, as I understand it), not that the poetry in Milton spoils the theology, but that the theology spoils, or tends to spoil, the poetry. The poetry, the disintegrating and dwarfing poetry, is the means of extricating it from its swaddling clothes, and is itself endangered in the attempt. Observe how thoroughly and truly poetical are all those parts of the poem, where the angels debate and act, compared to those scenes in heaven, where God himself is introduced declaring his counsels. Those parts which involve belief are not poetical; those which do not involve it are. The angels really are magnified and fictitious men; but Divinity trans- cends the model. Now, in Homer's case, the disin- tegrating process found no truth, behind the mytho- logy, to be extricated. But in Milton's we have the conscience of man disengaged, and that carries with it the Divine Law and the Divine Existence to which it refers. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 143^ Milton seems to liave imagined that poetry was commensurate with rehgion, that the highest ima- gery of poetry, which according to his own defini- tion of it must be '' simple, sensuous, passionate," could give something like an idea of the infinite object of religion ; whereas in truth that object ex- ceeds it by as much as the infinite exceeds the fur- thest step we can take, the furthest ground we can win, or any concept or image we can frame, in an indefinite approach towards it. This also shows how it is that the free-will ques- tion is not solved in the poem. Anything imagined less than, or within, the infinite is part of the chain of cause and effect. God therefore, imagined as Milton imagines him, is a caused being, and there- fore cannot be the source of freedom to the universe, or to man. But man stands in relation to that excess of the infinite over the highest step in the above-mentioned indefinite approach towards it, and therefore his free-will can be proved only by showing that it comes from that source, that is, belongs to man from eternity, having a source as deep as that of necessity itself. Now a problem raised by and involved in the intimate structure and plot of a poem is dangerous if not fatal to its poetry, unless it is solved and de- 1 14 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. problcmatiscd, so to speak, from the first. It is a ''foreign body" in the poem. And in Milton it is phiin that the problem is not only not solved at first, but not at all ; the " ways of God to men" are not justified therein. Indeed the difficulty is made worse, for it is transferred to the fallen angels, to Satan, and thereby mixed up with a different and harder problem still, one which is, I imagine, for .ever insoluble, the origin of evil. But here, the dwarfing of God tends to justify Satan, by preventing us from feeling his pride and self-sufficiency as an enormity. The same fatal contradiction, of picturing God as a finite being, prevents the solution of the free-will problem not on the human plane only, but filso on the world plane, in the angelic instance. We can now perhaps form some idea of the sur- passing grandeur and beauty of that poem which faults like these are unable to ruin. As I would say to the poets themselves with reference to theo- logy, — Do your worst ; dwarf, disintegrate, disillu- sion ; you cannot destroy the Divine : so I would say to critics who carp and cavil, — Do your worst, you cannot destroy Paradise Lost. So long as there lives a spark of poetic imagination in the world of readers, it will be kindled into flame by this glorious poem. THE SUPEEXATUnAL IX EXGLI3H POETKY. 145 Sucli, tlien, aiKl so great is Milton's Faradisc Lost considered as a poem, considered hj itself. But now the question occurs, what is its place and that of its author in comparison with other poems and other poets, what is its relation and what is its significance in the history of poetry ? Shakspere, w^e have seen, as a dramatic poet, excluded the real supernatural from his dramas; Milton as an epic poet brings it into his Paradise Lost, hut makes no difference in his treatment of it and his treatment of the fictitious supernatural. The question is, what is the real supernatural, and can it be treated by poetry at all ? The term supernatural has two widely different meanings. First it designates whatever interferes, as from a higher region, with the order of nature, and in this sense it includes the miraculous and the beings who produce miraculous effects. Secondly it designates whatever belongs to the unseen world, that is, the world which is beyond human ken, but which w^e conceive as connected with the seen world, which it surrounds, by one and the same order of nature. What I have called the real supernatural belongs to this unseen world, and is supernatural in the second sense ; while the fictitious supernatural L 140 TITE SUrEr.NATURAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. belongs to the miraculous, and is snpcriiatiiral in the first sense of the term. Milton, by bis subjective and interpretative treat- ment of tne problem of free-will, helped to disen- tangle for ethers the real supernatural, and dis- tinguish it deeply from the tlctitious supernatural in point of figurability by poetic imagery. It was sho^Yn by Milton's failure to be radically incapable of being so figured, to be transcendent of all possible poetic imagery. But was it therefore to be excluded from all manner of treatment by interpretative poetry ? At first sight it might seem so, for vrhat other means, it might be asked, but the means of imagery, could poetry possess, whereby it might be reached and secured? And the long torpor into which the poetic imagination fell, in England, in the grovelling period which began with the Eestora- tion, and continued down to near the close of the eighteenth century, might seem to set the seal upon its grave. But an awakening w\as at hand. At a time when the human faculties seemed to be completely mapped and marshalled, and the various existences of the world to be definitely apportioned and appropriated as the objects <.)f those faculties each to each, so that no place was kft for the Divine ; for, if it could not TKE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 147 "he figured hj poetiy, a fortiori it could not be con- strued by science ; and if it could not be construed by science, then it seemed to follow tliat it was not the object of any human faculty ; — ^just at a time like this, a deep but silent change was imminent. Let me not be thought unmindful, in saying this, of the merits of the Christian Church, as a de- positary and upholder of divine truth. Deep is the debt of Gfratitude owino; to the Cliurcli on this score. But at the time I speak of, the Church's influence rested on custom, institution, endowment, long pos- session of authority, habitual rule over education, and other forces of a similarly external, material, or more strictly a tcmj^oral as opposed to a sj)iritical kind. It saw no more than did the rest of the world w^hat that divine truth, pure and simple, icas, of which it was the depositary. Its creeds were in exactl}' the same predicament as the mythology of Paradise Lost. They iccre not the truth, but they contained it, and contained it unsifted and undis- tinguished. The doctors of the Churcli were like doctors of medicine who, to make sure of the patient swallowing his potion, should insist on his sw^allow- ing the bottle also. What even the Church now needed was, not a dogged insistance that the creeds contained the truth, but a revival of life in the vrorld 148 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. aiul the Church together, enabling individual souls to adopt and assimilate the truth, whether expressed in the old formulas or not. Nor was any other ex- trication from the dilemma possible. The world could not swallow the formulas. But the change was at hand. It was a change spontaneous, organic, vital. It was a vernal awakening of that very imaginative power by which Milton had introduced the Divine into poetry, and had fixed it as the ineradicable though insoluble kernel of the Paradise Lost. He had imagined the Divine as the correlative of the human conscience, and the reality of the Divine for thought vras guaranteed by the reality of conscience and the reality of its laws. This now became the avenue by which the Divine could be approached by poetry; by poetry not fictive bat interpretative of truth. The mind of man in its deeper recesses be- came, as it were, the mirror in which wo might see the Divine reflected, when we had once convinced ourselves that a direct vision was impossible. We might approach and gaze into the mirror, and in doing so make one more advance in the path of sub- jectivity and introspection. Henceforward the rela- tions of the human mind to God, the mental powers, thoughts, and emotions observable while the mind THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 149 -entertains and encleavoni-s to realise the idea of God, and the changed aspect of humanity and of nature Avhile it is in that attitude, — these were the topics vdiich were now to take the place of any attempt to realise the Divine directly. The man who first and most of all wrought this change, or rather in whose mind the change was first v/rought, was Wordsworth ; and these were the thoughts and feelings which his fervent imagina- tion summoned out of nothingness and clothed with a glorious shape. The task hefore him, the task which we novv', at the distance of three quarters of a century, can see that he accomplished, which we can now formulate and describe, but which he at that time, and looking forward only, could neither formulate nor describe as a task before him, was this : To ascend from the lovv'er end of the golden chain of revelation, in the heart and mind of man, to its upper end in the Divine Being, and ascertain the upper end by means of the lower. Previous^, in the Creeds as in Para- dise Lost, the upper end had been assumed, and the task had been to descend the chain and ascertain the lower by the supposed knowledge of the upper end. Eevelatiou had meant a miraculously attested mess- age from a well-known Beinsf, whose messac^e but 150 THE SUPEr.NATUEAL IN ENGLISH POEXrA'. not whose existence required attestiition. But, as; Ave have seen, the existence of that Being was now called in question. Wordsvvorth had to prove that the mind of man contained a recelation of that Being's nature and existence. Yrordswortli was singularly endowed for such a mission. His type of imagination was singular, lie had no dramatic, no epic gift, and but small lyric power. But he possessed in a pre-eminent degree a meditative and contemplative imagination, which gave him insight into the significance of nature and of man, and enabled him to interpret them to others. '' His characters," says Principal Sliairp, ''are meditative representations, not dra- matic exhibitions of men. For these last no poet ever had less gift."* His poems are full of stanzas, lines, phrases, epithets, cadences, harmonies, which carry home to the heart and understanding the moral value and power of natural scenes or human des- tinies, their glory or their sadness, and make us see them and feel them as v/e never could have seen or felt them for ourselves, and thus create out of them, as it were, a new heaven and a new earth, which yet are the old heaven and earth of all of us. * Studies in Poetry and Philosojylnj. Preface to second editioii, \}. xiii. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 151 That is WorLlsworth's gift ; and, as Mr. Arnold lias well insisted in the Preface to those poems which he has chosen and edited for the Golden Treasury Series, there is an ample body of work in which this power is displayed. Which whole ample body of poetry, together with the quality and power of the imagination displayed therein, is that by which the poet's rank and fame must be determined. But with this I have not here to do. My present busi- ness is with one point only, hovv' he deals with the real supernatural, and that not with a view of deter- mining whether the passages in which he deals with it are more or less truly poetical than others, but what that dealing in itself is. For this purpose I pass over a number of poems which contain what I may call the outworks of the subject, passages more or less philosophical in im- port, such as are to be found, for instance, in the Lines on revisiting the Wye above Tintevn ; in the Ode to Duty ; in the Ilapj^y Warrior ; in the Ode on Intimations of hnniortality. And I cite a passage in vrhich, if anywhere, his deepest convictions and clearest insight into the nature of God, from the side of man's relation to him, are expressed. I mean the passage in the Fourth Book of Tlie Excursion (De- spondency Corrected) containing the first half of the 1 52 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH TOETRY. Wanderer's repl}^ to the Solitary, a passage of some 230 lines, from the beginning of the Book down to " rejoicing secretly In the sublime attractions of the grave." The opening lines contain the foundation of the v\'hole, lines which, I think, may without impropriety be characterised as a philosopher's creed: " One adefjuate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists— one only ; an assured belief That the procession of our fate, howe'er Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power ; Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good. — The darts of anguish /.r not where the seat Of suffering hath been thoroughly fortified By acquiescence in the Will supreme • For time and for eternity ; by faith, Faitb absolute in God, including hope, And the defence that lies in boundless love Of his perfections ; with habitual dread Of aught unworthily conceived, endured Impatiently, ill-done, or left undone, To the dishonour of his holy name. Soul of our Souls, and safeguard of the world 1 Sustain, thoa only canst, the sick of heart ; Restore their languid spirits, and recal Their lost affections unto thee and thine !" THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 153 Mr. Arnold says, quoting the first eight lines of this passage, in the Preface which I have spoken of, that they are " doctrine such as we hear in church too, religious and philosophic doctrine;" hut he does not mention, what to my mind makes an enor- mous difference, that in church the doctrine is an- nounced from a wholly opposite point of view, is announced as coming from what I have called the upper end of the chain of revelation, and not as being discerned in the lower end of it, the mind of man. It is the re'discovery of truths like these, by man for himself, which, for us at the present day, is the im- portant circumstance about them. It is their nature to be perpetually re-discovered. They were re-dis- covered 1880 years ago in Jud^a, after centuries of burial. They were then formulated to suit the wants of that and the next generations, and their formulas became their sepulchre. They have now been dis- covered again. They are the true phoenix. We are now aware of this circumstance ; whereby, let us hope, their next re -discovery may be both facilitated and accelerated, and that in the end, their periodic burial being dispensed with, they may become in very deed " truths that wake To perish never ; Which neither hstlessness, nor mad endeavour, 154 THE suPL:nxATUHAL ix English toetry. ISTor Mail nor Boy, ^Nor all tliat is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy !" Wordsworth himself even, in my opinion, con- tributed something to their re-burial, by adopting in some cases the Kantian phraseology, and I suppose to some extent the Kantian philosophy also, as for instance in a later part of the very passage I have cited, ^Yhe^c he speaks of " the measures and the forms Which an abstract intelligence supplies. Whose kingdom is where time and space are not."' But I am by no means concerned to defend Words- ^YO^th's system of philosophy, if he had one ; all I wish to do, and it is all^ I think, that can be done pro- fitably, is to point out Y/here he discerns and exhibits those facts in human nature which lead us inevitably to infer a divine guidance. And towards the end of the passage cited there is one such fact noted, and noted as a simple fact of nature, where, speaking of prayer used to strengthen resolve, he calls it "■ A stream, which, from the fountain of the heart Issuing, however feebly, nowhere flows Without access of unexpected strength." Or, to take another point from the same passage ; how true and yet recondite is the confession, THE SUPEKNATUEAL IN ENGLISH POETILY. 155 '• That 'tis a tiling impossible to frame Conceptions eqnal to the soul's desires ; And the most ditficult of tasks to keep Heights Yv'hich the soul is competent to gain." Of Kanfs three great problems of philosophy', freedom, immortality, and God, freedom is treated incidentally Loth in the two last-quoted passages, and also partially in the first, inasmuch as the fore- knowledge and providence of God stand in close con- nection with it. And as to immortality, it is im- portant to notice, that Wordsworth in this cardinal passage, though making one brief allusion to the *' shadowy recollections" of infancy, suspends the belief in it entirely upon our conception of God and our faith in him : " Hope, below this, consists not with belief In mercy, carried infinite degrees Beyond the tenderness of human hearts : Hope, below this, consists not with belief In perfect wisdom, guiding mightiest power, That finds no limits but her own pure will." And when we ask what, in plain prose, is the out- come of the whole, the answer, I take it, must be something to this efiect : Wordsworth shows, that a man can believe, is happy if he does believe, and finds it more and more credible the more he reflects upon it, that this visible world is part and parcel of 15G THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. infinity, and that infinity is f^'overned, in ways we cannot comprehend, by a Being of infinite wisdom, power, and benevolence. Didactic this must be freely admitted to be ; and didactic poetry is certainly not the kind which is most poetical. But if it should be contended not only that this is didactic poetry, but that no didactic poetry, so called, is poetry at all, and therefore that this is sermonising and nothing more, then I enter a decided protest. It is true that metre alone does not constitute poetr}^, but it contributes much to poetical impression, so that, but for the conciseness and point of the form, the imaginative power of the matter would often be lost. And in this whole passage there is not a word we could wish altered or omitted. It is full of impassioned imagination. And I find that it stands what is perhaps the best practical test of poetry, namely, that it can be read over and over again with increased pleasure, notwith- standing that we know it well in substance. Few sermons, few novels, and indeed but little of any kind of prose literature, will bear this test. We do not want to re-read prose literature, unless we have either quite forgotten it, or unless some necessity requires us to see exactly what it contains. But the pleasure of poetry comes from the composition itself, from the THE SUPEIIXATURAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. 157 form and matter together, and to read it again is to have the original pleasure renewed. Even prose, if it stands this test, is poetry. The present passage, then, notwithstanding its didactic purpose, is true poetry ; and the same applies to a great deal besides, which Mr. Arnold has, no doubt rightly for his pur- poses, not taken up into his little Yolume of selec- tions from AYordsvrorth. III. WoEDS^voETH, who devoted himself to poetry, and trained himself consciously for that end, was the philosophic poet jxrr excellence of that brilHant constellation of six,— Scott, Wordsworth, Coleridge ; Byron, Shelley, Keats,— whom I spoke of in the first paper of this volume, as inaugurating the nineteenth century in this country, and dominating its literary development. A group of what varied powers, and operating to what divergent ends ! Scott, the patron saint of chivalry, the conservative poet, the Pindar of the group ; Wordsworth the philosophic poet ; Cole- ridge the imaginative philosopher; Byron (at least if judged by what was peculiarly inimitable in him) its comic poet, its Aristophanes ; Shelley its poetic 158 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. r.ncl, so to say, romantic Neo-platonist ; Keats its romantic artist, a Greek in sensitiveness to physical Ijeauty. It is too early yet to estimate the period, of which this constellation of genius marked the open- ing, or to trace the results which may be due to its members severally. The period is not yst closed; the infiUencGS which inspired it are not yet exhausted. But one step farther I would take in pursuit of the Divine in English poetry, vvhich is my present theme, and follow it in one more instance, I mean the way in which it is handled by our present Lau- reate. A difficult and delicate task I feel it, to lay the finger of criticism, to whatever issue, upon works, to the earlier among which I, in common with hundreds of others, ov;e more as a living forma- tive influence on the mind, than I should find it •easy to analyse or describe ; so early and so deep was the hold they took upon me, so thankfully u'ere they received, so repeatedly vrere they pondered. The absence, or comparative absence, of the didactic element made their entrance at once easier and more unobserved ; and once in possession of the mind, it seemed as if they had been always there, and were a necessary part of its constitution. Were it not for some small uncomfortable hitches in an otherwise comfortable theory, such as rcmcm- THE SUrEFcNATUEAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. 159 boring the circumstances of an actual first reading, or of some critical contention v.dth a friend v/ho hap- pened to be a poetical non-conductor, one might imagine oneself tempted to doubt their real objective origin and attribute it to oneself. Suppose one had read, say at 16, The Miller's Daughter, and for- gotten the actual first reading of it, how easily might one imagine it an innate idea, or ante-natal reminis- cence. What but the evidence of the printed book would be against it ? For my part, I am always most readily convinced when I remember a certain amicable debate I once had over the line *' The light cloud smoulders on the summer crag." My friend, vrho was acute, maintained that smoulder r, was only applicable to things that were Imrnt out ; I on the contrary, that as iioctry it was only applicable to things that were not burnt out, but were ana- logous thereto. I am. sure, if I had been the author of the line, he vrould have said something disagree- able. As he did not, I am convinced the author- ship was different ; and then external evidence conies in and connects it with Mr. Tennyson. But to dally no longer with cur task, I would begin by noting the poet's strongly marked indi- viduality and originality. If any man ever created IGO THE SUrELXATLTtAL IX ENGLISH POETEY. 11 new style, it is lie ; if any man's style was ever the ''incarnation" of his thought, his style is so. Observe the stamp which he has set on that metre which he adopted for In Mcmoriam. It is a new instrument in his hands. If any man, again, has variety in treatment of subject, it is Mr. Tennyson. Witness the monologue method in which Maud is composed, a poem which is, perhaps, the culmination of his power of uniting Milton's three essentials of poetry, that it should be " simple, sensuous, pas- sionate." Yet how different is it from that other great work, the Idylls of the K'lnrj, and again from, the exquisite Princess ; and how totally different from all is In Mcmoriam, wdiich as an imaginative expression of tenderly devoted friendship has na analogue that I knovr of, different though they are in other most obvious respects, but the Sonnets of Shakspere. These poems, as well as several of the minor ones, stand each alone in its kind, — a new thing ; whatever their worth besides, be they silver or be they gold, they are each in its kind original, not imitable, nihil simile ant secundum. Then, again, as an artist, how high Mr. Tenny- son stands, both in the proportion of parts and mode of presenting the whole subject, and also as a master of versification, its harmonies and its melodies. Nor THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 161 •do I mean only his tours deforce^ either in "experi- ments" as he calls them with classical metres, or even in his splcndicl adaptations of classical metres, as in the Boadicea ; I mean especially his versifica- tion in ordinary metres, such as in that glorious poem from which I am shortly to quote, The Palace of Art, or in the limpid smoothness of The Talldng Oak. How great again he is as an humourist, in Will Waterproof, for instance, and Walking to the Mail, .and above all in the Northern Farmer. Then again how complete^ he accepts the scientific results of the time, and what is more, the fact of scientific progress. "Wordsworth takes his stand frankly on human nature, hut Tennyson has, besides, access to later and fuller physical knowledge, and rejoices in its possession. He is full of the idea of new achieve- ment, of man's capabilities for the future, as well as his acquirements in the past ; and, in the case of individuals, the quid sumus et quid victuri gignimur is ever present to him. Lastly as a moralist, the ideal which he everywhere holds up, and holds up in the truly poetical way, that is, not didactically but by picture, by dramatic narrative, in idyll, ode, and tender or Tvrttean sonq* — the ideal is of the noblest strain ; an ideal which, perhaps, can best be charac- terised by selecting, as distinctive instances, the 102 THE SUrEnXATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. Idyll 0^ Guinevere, and the noble Fourtli (or Cvanmer) Act of Queen Mary. To wliicli I would now add, before tins paper goes to press, the tvro companion pieces, Sir Jolin Oldcastle, and Columbus, and also the Voyafje of Macldune, with its lesson of forgive- ness and peace, so different from what was intended apparently, though perhaps apparently only, to he practically inculcated in the so-called " v>'ar passages" o? Maud. And novr, too, I hail the success of TJie Cup, as a proof that the special art of the dramatist has been acquired by its author, and venture to anti- cipate therefrom a lasting benefit to the English stage. Broad outlines these and most imperfect, most inadequate, if taken as in any sense a complete ac- count of the subject of them. But it was necessary to frame some general idea of the poet and his vrorks, in order to set in its true light the passages in vrliich he treats directly of man's relation to the Divine. Directly I say, because the thought is one vrhich is everywhere implied, and which frequently occurs in- directly, especially in the earlier poems, as for in- stance in The Two Voices ; The May Queen ; St. Simeon StyUtes ; St. Agnes' Eve ; The Vision of Sin; and again in his latest poem* of all, Dc P;'o- '■■ I.e. up to July ISSO. THE SUPERNATUnAL IN ENGLISH POETKY. 163 fundis. It v:as necessary to show what vre are, aucT what Vv^e arc not, to expect from him in the treatment of this subject. Yv"e are not to expect disquisition or abstraction ; Y\-e arc to expect concrete pictures, and pleadings that approach the lyrical. It is from The Palace of Art that I shall first cite. In the Prologue to that poem he says : " I send you here a sort of allegory, (For you will understand it), of a soul, A sinful soul possess'd of many gifts, A spacious garden fall of flowering weeds, A glorious Devil, large in heart and brain. That did love Beauty only, (Beauty seen In all varieties of mould and mind) And Knowledge for its beauty ; or if Good, Good only for its beauty, seeing not That Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters That doat upon each other, friends to man, Living together under the same roof. And never can be sundered without tears. And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be 8hut out from Love, and on her threshold lie Howling in outer darkness. liot for this Was common clay ta'en from the common earth. Moulded by God, and tempered with the tears Of angels, to the perfect shape of man." That is not the passage I mean ; but it is the best introduction to it. The poem then begins, and describes in vivid and beautifal imagery the life of 1G4 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. tlie soul ''that shuts Love out." Then comes the l^assage in which the rehation of man to God is made clear by a singular means, namely, by showing what man is icitJiout God : " And so she throve and prospei'd : so three years She x^rosper'd : on the fourth she fell, Like Herod, when the shout was in his ears, Struck thro' with pangs of HelL *' Lest she should fail and perish utterly God, before whom ever lie bare The abysmal deeps of Personality, Plagued her with sore despau\ -;:- * -K- ** A spot of dull stagnation, without light Or power of movement, seem'd my soul, 'Mid onward-sloping motions infinite Making for one sure goal. ^' A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, Left on the shore ; that liears all night The plunging seas draw backward from the land Their moon-led v/aters white. ^' A star that with the choral starry dance Join'd not, but stood, and standing saw The hollow orb of moving Circumstance Ptoll'd round by one fix'd law. " Back on herself her serpent pride had curl'd. ' jSTo voice,' she shriek'd in that lone hall, ' No voice breaks thro' the stillness of this world : One deep, deep silence all !' " THE SUPERXATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 1G5 The passage is too long for full quotation. But I would urge tliosc to wliom it may not be familiar to read the whole, indeed the whole poem in its en- tirety. If it be turned to and read, it needs no com- ment; if it is not read, comment would be injurious. In fact the Prologue is the comment ; and that is why I quoted it at length. Secondly we come to a passage in InMcmoriam, That is a poem in which the present subject, the Divine, is also approached from the human side, but this time from the question of life, death, and im- mortality. Many places of this glorious poem might be cited, but one is sufficient. AVe are here on ground where the interest comes home to individuals us their own ; and consequently where we are no longer to expect mere pictures, however true, of things which can be hung on the wall, as it were, in the house of the Interpreter, to be contemplated and so learnt from. AVe are to expect the expression, from within, of "obstinate questionings," of ''blank misgivings," of the actual mortal struggle of doubt and faith and its issue. In this light let us read cxxiv. " That which we dare invoke to bless ; Our dearest faith ; our ghastliest doubt ; He, They, One, All ; within, without ; The Power in darkness whom we guess ; 16G THE SUrEr.XATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. " I found Him not in world or sun, Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye , Nor thro' the questions men may try, The petty cobwebs we have spun. " If e'er when faith had Ml'n asleep, I heard a voice * believe no more,' And heard an ever-breaking sliore That tumbled in a Godless deep; " A warmth w^ithin the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answered ' I have felt.' " No, like a child in doubt and fear : But that blind clamour made me wise ; Then was I as a child that cries, But, crying, knows his father near. *' And what I am beheld again What is, and no man understands ; And out of darkness came the hands That reach thro* nature, moulding men." Tvro ways of treating the relations of man to God we have novv' seen ; we have seen the evidence of the emotional life in two ways ; first the despair w^hich comes of proud self-sufficiency, in The Palace of Art, and secondly the glad repose -vvliicli comes cf faith, humble because subsisting in spite of the fail- ure of argumentative proof, in In Mcmoriam. And if humility is an essential attribute of faith in God, THE SUPERNATUEAL IN ENGLISH POET.UY. 1G7 if tlie req^uirement of argumentatiye proof before we believe in liim is a demand which springs from pride, involving as it does the conception that man's intel- lect can grasp the divine nature, — then the failure of argumentative proof of the existence of God must be an essential condition of our having faith in him. A God that could be either proved or disproved vv'ould be no God, if by the term God we mean the object, not of belief merely, but of faith. Has, then, the intellect nothing to say in this question ? Are we limited to the evidence of the emotional life '? If the argumentative proof, whe- ther it be the '^ argument from design" as it is called, or any other mode of logical proof, fails to give us positive intellectual certainty, is that all that the intellect can do for us, and are we consecjuently left to the evidence of the feelings alons ? The idea is frequently entertained that we are. Nothing is more common than to hear it said, that, onwards from the point where knowledge abandons us, pious souls may if they like take their emotions as their guide, but must remember that these can guide them to dreamland only. But it is evident in the first place, from this very concession, that the intellect has at least the povrer of proving that disproof of the divine is im- 108 THE SUPERNATURAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. possible. And in the second place, even to dream^ beyond the point Avhere knowledge abandons us, to fill that unknown region even with dreams, requires intellect; which therefore has a function of somo sort beyond the point of failure of positive proof. What is the real existence beyond that point, since existence there must be ; what is the object of faith bej^ond knowledge; or rather Jiow can iccftgure it to ourselves, so as to sJiow its iwssihiUty in itself, ami its iwssihlc relation to ourselves ? We have seen how Wordsworth figures the ob- jective divine existence, in the passage from TJie Excursion. Let us now see how Tennyson figures it, in a passage which is, it may be said, the objec- tive intellectual completion of the thought in the two passages already quoted from him. The passage which I mean is the whole of that little poem en- titled TJio ITirjlier Pantheism : *' The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — Are not these, Soul, the Yision of Him who reigns % Is not the Yision He? tho' He be not that -which He seems? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams ? Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him V THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. IGD Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why ;. For is He not all but thoii, that hast power to feel ' I am I V Glory about thee, without thee ; and thou fulfillest thy doom Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom. Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet — Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. God is law, say the wise ; Soul, and let us rejoice, For if He thunder by law the thunder is yet His voice. Law is God, say some : no God at all, says the fool; For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool j And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see ; But if we could see and hear, this Vision — were it not Her ^' A Pantheist then V And in reply I ask, What is Pantheism ? I am glad this word PantJieisni has been boldly spoken out and adopted b}' Mr. Tennyson. It is one of those vague bugbears of a phrase which serves to cloak maliciousness, and give an apparent justification to unreasoning anti- pathies. It has three meanings, and rarely if ever do those who disparagingly use it specify in which, or 170 THE SUPErvNATUilAL IX ENGLISH rOETRY. in v.-bat other, sense tliey intend it to be understood. Sometimes it means imiicrsonalitii of tbe Divine Being ; sometimes immanence of the Divine Being in tbe visible vrcrld ; and sometimes bis immanence in tbe infinite universe. It is in tbis last sense tliat I apprebend it to be used in tbis poem. It is obviously not used in tbe first sense, and almost as obviously it is not limited to tbe second. And if taken in tbe tbird and last sense, as tbe immanence of God in tbe infinite universe, Pantbeism is, if I may venture to say so, not only a necessity of reli- gious tbougbt, but Cbristianity itself is pantbeistic ; and tbat very tbing is tbe speculative and logical title of Cbristianity to everlasting permanence as a form of religion. o But wbat is Cbristianity, it will be asked ; and wbat do you intend by tbat name, almost as am- biguous as Pantbeism ? True it is ambiguous, not- witbstandino: tbat tbe Cbristian Cburcb bas been engaged for some 1800 years in defining it. It will, bowever, be enougb for my present purpose if I make my meaning clear as to wdiat Cbristianity is not. It is not any dogma or dogmas of tbe Cbris- tian Creed, nor any dogma tbat stands on tbe same plane with tbem, made absolute. And by being made absolute I mean being made necessary as a THE SUPERXATUllAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 171 symbol of Christian communion. There is a dogma, so to call it, which stands on a higher plane than these, the dogma of the Fatherhood of God, as Jesus Christ understood it ; and that dogma may he made absolute, for it Vvill include all mankind, whatever form of religion they may profess, provided the form professed is not made absolute. There is an uni- versal communion, of which the dogma of the higher plane is the symbol ; and there are narrower com- munions, one of Yviiich is that now called Christian, the symbols of which are dogmas of the lower plane. That men belong to one or other of these narrower communions is matter of race, of education, and other forms of accident and circumstance. That they belong to the vaster communion is matter of the grace of God accepted and held fast by the indi- vidual. It is in no wise necessary that, in order to enter into the vaster communion, a man should shake of? or cease to believe the dogmas of the nar- rower communion to which he may happen to belong, whether by birth, or education, or free choice, or any other reason. All that is necessary is, that he should not hold those narrower dogmas as absolute, that is, as excluding others from belonging to the same vast, universal, and spiritual communion with himself. A man may be a Christian both in the wide and in the narrow, the including and the in- cluded, sense. All within that larger circle have one faith, one hope, one purpose.* Thus we may apply to all mankind the prophetic words of one of the hest and truest teachers of the present age, words which, from the connection in which they were spoken, were intended primarily of the various sections then within the Christian Church : " Like travellers across a mountain region to a distant city, some have taken as their guides those who seemed authorized to the office, or who set their own claims the hi^'-hest; some have surrendered themselves to those whom accident first threw hefore them ; some to the most clamorous and boastful; some to those who pro- mised the smoothest and easiest way : others have yielded to the temptation of being conducted by passes known only to the few. But when once the toils of the journey are engaged in, it is for the most part too late to re-exa- mine the credentials and qualifications of their guides, or to endeavour to correct an erroneous selection and choice : in the main, the reaching of their final resting-place will depend on each one's constancy and perseverance; few Avill be led so far astray, that their own energy and sense will not enable them to recover a true path ; none will be so well-guided, that they can delay without risk, or indulge themselves in seductive halting-places. At last as they approach the city of their rest, the tracks which * See Note at the end of this Essay, On the true Symbol of Christian Union. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 173 seemed so devious and wide asunder are seen to converge, and the wayfarers, emerging from their toils, meet one another, not without surprise, which is soon swallowed up in cordial greeting, at the table of their common. Lord."* Thus have I endeavoured to trace, in four of our master poets, first the separation of the real super- natural from the fictitious, and then the successive stages of its development. That, when so separated, it should have been made a distinct subject of poetry in the manner I have shown, seems to me some- thing singular and important, something character- istic of modern Europe. I know not whether any- thing parallel to it can be found elsewhere. I think not in Greek or Eoman antiquity. It seems to be one effect of the greater variety of elements which have gone to make up the mental and moral charac- ter of modern civilisation, of the fact that several new and fresh nations were brought into contact, from the J3reaking up of the Eoman Empire down- wards, with tlie best results of Greek, Eoman, and Hebrew civilisation, and were enabled to enter step by step into that inheritance, while at the same time * The Communion of Saints : the Bampton Lecture, 1851. By Henry Bristow Wilsou, B.D. Lecture VIII. p. 276. 174 THE SUPEEXATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. new fields were opened for their mental activity in science, invention, and geographical discovery, wliicli again brought within their lien, not only numbers of tribes and nations existing in early or degenerate stages of civilisation, but also the languages, the religions, the literature, and the institutions of races which had reached a high degree of civilisation in antiquity. The recently developed sciences of com- parative philology, mythology, and law in the wide sense, are fully comparable, in the importance of their effect on our mental range, to the opening up of Greek antiquity which ushered in the Eenais- sance. But this entire development took place, as was remarked above, under the superincumbent pressure of a dogmatic system of belief, extending to all branches of knowledge and speculation, which was accepted as revealed and therefore as absolute truth. True this dogmatic system was in great measure the work of the young and fresh nations which received Christianity, which like everything else vras received ad moduvi recipientis, that is to say, as moulded by the receivers' own capacities and dispositions. Thus the northern races, at a low stage of development, made absolute for themselves vrhat I may call the historical miraculous of biblical antiquity, such as THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 175- the stories of the creation and the deluge ; and those of the south, at a simihirly low stage, seized with avidity on angels, saints, and martyrs, and peopled heaven vdth a whole hierarchy of glorified beings; while, at the same time, they both alike gave a definite and material turn to the central dogmas of the Church, such as the Incarnation, the Atonement, Heaven and Hell, and the Day of Judg- ment. At the present day, persons who are enlightened in other respects, but who are subject to the mental obtuseness or myopia which we euphemistically call being ''matter-of-fact" people, and who represent, and are as it were survivals of, the lower stage of development just mentioned, are perfectly aware that all such dogmas are fictions. But at the same time, being " matter-of-fact" persons, that is, their men- tal development having been arrested at a stage re- presentative of an early period of civilisation, they do not perceive the facts which have pushed up from within, have displaced, and occupied the room of the old ''matter-of-fact" dogmas, but, denying these, they are either content to leave a blank nega- tion in their stead, or else they try to replace them by some equally " matter-of-fact" invention of their own. 176 THE SUrERNATURAL IX ENGLISH rOETRY. But what are these new facts, which spring from the same root, so to speak, as the old dogmas, dis- place the dead last jeav's wood, and send up living shoots in its place ? What are these new facts which the '' matter-of-fact" people do not see ? And who -are the people who see them ? The foregoing paper is the answer to these questions. The people who see these facts are the imaginative poets ; the facts which they see are the facts of the real superna- tural, which they describe from the mirror of their own minds. Only by being seen in the mirror of the mind can any facts, can even " matter-of-fact" facts be seen. And the one fatal and fontal blindness, which is the source and parent of every kind of "matter-of-fact" blindness, is this, the inability to see that '' matter-of-fact" facts are not absolute but relative, that is, stand in relation to the mirror of the mind, are known only as so mirrored, and are consequently affected by the laws not only of the constitution of the mirror, but also by those of its rjroirth. There has been and is still going on, in modern civilisation, a vital organic development. The con- temporary minds at any time composing the societ}^, besides standing in relation to one another, stand also in relation to their own past and future, and to THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. 177 tlieir own ancestors and descendants, the societies wliicli liave preceded tbem and whicli will follow them. This latter relation is the relation of vital organic development of which I speak. Individuals, however specifically different, belong to one and the same kind, their characters or mental structures are formed on the same generic plan. They may he consi- dered in a rough diagrammatic way as so many urains — for I am now speaking of the organic development itself, and not of the question whether the brain is or is not worked by a soul seated within it ; I am speak- ing of the hoiu, not of the hy lukom or by what. To these brains, then, are brought in, so to speak, all the multifarious acquisitions of knowledge. The work of discovering, appropriating, and communicating these acquisitions goes to increase the power and vitality of the brains themselves. They assimilate and mould the knowledge, arrange it and organise it into systems of science, art, or poetry. For the purpose of naming and describing what we are and where we stand in civilisation, we make use of the knowledges we have acquired, or the works of art we have produced. But neither the acquired knowledges nor the produc- tions of art are the vital powers by which they have been produced or acquired. They are not ourselrcs. They serve to explain us to ourselves, like so many N 178 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. signs, or counters, or names. The actually produc- ing, acquiring, and enjoying tliem is tlie vital tiling. That is the thing which has determined what they mean for us now, and which will determine what they will mean for us in the future. It is this vital and organic mental process upon which the great imaginative and philosophic poets have fastened ; it is the movement, the steps, of the process itself which they are describing to us, when they describe the Divine. We can tell when they are inventing and when they are describing. We can distinguish the adventurous voyage into mytho- logy and fairyland from the serious and earnest gaze into the mirror that reflects the world. The poets themselves, too, know well the diflerence. It was not because he disbelieved but because he believed in the Divine, that Shakspere abstained from weaving it into his drama. He believed in it too profoundly to admit of mixing it up with the fictitious characters, the invented but ''matter-of-fact" circumstances, of IDlays that represented the real world of men and women. It stood not on their level, and therefore it entered not into his scope. If for him it had become a myth, he would have treated it as he treated the witches and the fairies. We have seen the effect of its introduction by THE SUPERNATURAL IX ENGLISH POETRY. 179 Milton, who, profoundly believing in it, endeavoured to image it forth in poetry as he imaged the first created pair, the celestial and the rebel hierarchies. But God cannot be imaged as poetry images, because so to image is to limit ; and this was no doubt one reason of the Mosaic prohibition of images. Milton erred against this fact or law of the mind, and the result was that the strong vital force, which he had imprisoned in his poem, shattered his poetry and remained transcendant. Then poets approached from another side. In- stead of attempting to image God, they took the lowlier course of imaging how man is affected in his presence, the presence of an Infinite Being. Words- worth laid hold, so to speak, of the force which had shattered Milton's poem, the force of the divine idea as it was in the mind, and described that force itself. In this way it admitted of description. And not only of description in the measured and contempla- tive Wordsworthian language, but also in the rich and glowing imagery of Tennyson, which is proof and confirmation of the true method having been found. For, though poetry is the child of individual genius more than any other offspring of the mind, yet it has its history and its conditions of develop- ment. There is a progress in poetry as in every- 180 THE SUPERNATURAL IN ENGLISH POETRY. tiling tliat belongs to man ; a right course and a wrong to choose between at every moment ; and much to be learnt from the examples of the past. From these the true poet gathers lessons which he embodies in his art ; and his genius, which cannot be learnt, gives him the privilege of deciphering and applying them. NOTE. ON THE TRUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. ON THE TEUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. [Being tlie Note referred to at p. 172.] The present critical position of things iu our own established Church, and also more or less in all sections of Christendom, will I hope exonerate me from the charge of presumption, if I set down some thoughts which have occurred to me on the above subject, though without any sort of authority or indeed any special claim to be heard. The matter is one of deep public interest, and may well engage the attention of any one, whether he stands within the Christian pale or without. It will moreover be seen that many of the remarks which follow could hardly come from the pen of an ordained minister, at least of the English Church. It appears to me, then, that there is one thing, and only one, which can save the Christian Church from certain though possibly gradual dissolution, or from decay more fatal still, and that is the recogni- tion and actual adoption in practice of the true out- 184 ON THE TRUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. ward bond of Christian union, I mean the symbol by which members of the society are known and recognised as such. I speak of the outward bond or symbol only, for if the inward bond which knits Christians together needed renewal, the case would be beyond remedy. The true outward bond or symbol of Christian membership is not of an intellectual but of a i^rac- tical character. It is not a common creed, but a common allegiance. It is not a belief about Christ, but a profession of obedience to him. The question decisive of membership is not — Do you believe that Jesus Christ is God ? or Do you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? but— Do you accept Jesus Christ as your master and your pattern ? No Church comprehension based on the principle of minimising the creed will be of the slightest avail, so long as the principle of having a creed at all as the symbol of union is retained. You may strike out the resurrection, the incarnation, the atonement ; you may strike out the miraculous altogether ; and 3^et you will have done nothing but fall back on a Theism, more or less pure, and will have simply de- Christianised the Church, instead of extending it. Instead of a rel'ujion you will then have, or at any rate be in danger of having, only a p^iUosophjj. Miser- ON THE TRUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 185 able exchange. It is not enough to believe in God in the abstract, or as He ma}' be represented by philosoph}'. Christians differ from Theists by be- lieving in that God in whom Jesus Christ believed, and whom, by his own belief, he revealed to others. To believe in Christ is, not to believe that he is God, but that he has the words of eternal life. The first disciples were bound to him and to one another by this belief. That is the bond of union still. A disciple is one who has the same feelings towards God and towards men as the Master has, the same duties for the present world, the same hopes for eternity. To realise this, we must go back to that time in the history of the primitive church when it was confounded and scattered by the event of the Crucifixion. We must liken ourselves to those who said, "We trusted that it had been he, which should have redeemed Israel : and beside all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done ;" — that is, before the belief in the Resurrection had arisen in the church. Do we still believe in Jesus Christ ; do we still acknowledge that he has the words of eternal life ; do we share his love and obedience towards God, his charity towards men, his duties for the present world, his hopes for eternity ; and that, whether he rose from the dead the third day or not ? 186 ox THE TRUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. If ^Ye do, then there is no hindrance to our adopting the principle of professed allegiance to Jesus Christ as the true symbol of Christian membership. And -also we can comprehend in that membership, so far as we are concerned, those who add to their allegi- ance a belief either in the resurrection, or the incar- nation, or any other articles of the ancient creed. The condition of membership is shifted from the pro- fession of a belief to a profession of obedience and discipleship. The centre of union remains, as be- fore, Christ himself; the attitude of the members towards him is changed, and changed in such a way as both to enlarge their numbers and increase their sincerity. While at the same time those who adopt the new symbol are relieved from the painful and often dubious task of negative criticism directed against tenets which may be, and often are, the very life-blood of a brother's faith. For the moment when such tenets cease to be regarded as the symbols of union, the moment they cease to exclude from membership those who do not and cannot believe them, that same moment all motive for attacking them ceases likewise. Why should A object to B's believing in the incarnation or the resurrection, when B no longer denies A the name of Christian for disbelieving it '? He will rather rejoice that B ON THE TRUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 187 slioulcl still be able to support himself on beliefs, of which he believes himself with sorrow to have seen the hollo wness. The idea that the true symbol of Christian union is a profession of ^allegiance to Christ, irrespective of creed, properly so called, is nothing more than a development of the conclusion reached by Mr. H. B. Wilson in his Bampton Lectures on The Communion of Saints, from which I quoted in the foregoing Essay. He has himself developed it in another direction, namely, the applicabiHty in practice of the principle which he advocates. His conclusion is this, to take one passage among several : *' And much more than in any other imaginary or real association, are we justified in considering the moral pur- pose which Christians have manifested, as the essential bond of their union ; that moral purpose being, that men should be conformed to the image of Christ ; that they should work together with Him, in that portion of His work wliich admits of it, namely, in counteracting the power of sin over the human race. ' For this cause was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.' "* If that moral purpose is the " essential bond," then I argue, that the profession of it, which is the profession of allegiance to Christ, will naturally be * TJie Communion of Saints, Lect. VIII. p. 252. 188 ox THE TRUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. the outward bond, or symbol of it. And it is obvi- ous that there is nothing in these ideas which im- pugns either the possibility or the fact of miracles. It is possible to be a firm believer in the creed, and yet hold that a belief in it is not to be required as a condition of church-membership. To put the nature of Mr. Wilson's view in a still clearer light, it may be w^ell to contrast it with the view of the Church and Keligion given by another great and honoured teacher, writing some ten years earlier, Arnold of Rugby, in his Fragment on the Church. Having distinguished the religion from the church of Christ, he proceeds : " By Christian religion I mean that knowledge of God and of Christ, and that communion of the Holy Spirit, by which an individual is led through life in all holiness, and dies wdth the confident hope of rising again through Christ at the last day. " But, by the Christian Church, I mean that provision for the communicating, maintaining, and enforcing of this knowledge by which it was to be made influential, not on individuals, but on masses of men. -'f * * " Christianity, then, contains on the one hand a divine philosophy, which we may call its rehgion, and a divine polity, which is its Church."* * Arnold. Fragment on the Church, p. 3-5, second edition. ON THE TRUE SYMBOL OF CHRISTIAN UNION. 189 The conceptions of both teachers agree in regard- ing the Church as defined and held together by its religion ; but they differ in this, that, whereas Arnold separates the two by making the church sub- sidiary to the religion, Mr. Wilson simply distin- guishes the two, by identifying the religion with the moral purpose of the church. The religion is, with him, the church's life, the vital action of the society, the purpose which animates it from within, and not merely a something, not itself, wiiich it was insti- tuted to achieve or to promote. Hence Mr. Wilson's definition of the church and his definition of the religion essentially coincide. They are two aspects of the same thing. The same "moral purpose" defines them both at once. But Arnold, after defin- ing the church, has still to look for a definition of the religion ; which he cannot take from the moral action of the church, because the purpose of pro- moting the religion is the very thing by which the y'iori speculation than of observation or indue- tion. The logic, therefore, which is properl}" applicable- to poetry, so far from consisting of the conceptions of laws and license, consists of those of end and means ; and means again breaks up into parts, (!)• the material, or subject-matter, in and of which poetry consists, namety, articulate language, and (2) the conditions, belonging to articulate language, which either enable, or hinder, or assist, poetry in attaining her end. End, subject-matter, and con- ditions, such are the logical conceptions in accord- ance with which the theory of poetry must be- treated. In framing a working theory to begin with, we need not attend to the conditions ; the end proposed, limited by the subject-matter, will be sufficient. In this view the following definition may be found prac- tically serviceable : Poctrjj is the erpression of thought ENGLISH VERSE. 213 ■and fedliir/ hy hinr/nage In such a way as to give Imayuiativc jilcasure. The word lanrjaage distin- guishes poetry from music, the sounds of which are not articulate;* and hy the omission of metre, which is a condition hut not an indispensable one, prose hecomes in certain cases admissible into poetrj^, as indisputably it not unfrequently is. It is the glory of poetry, that, being based upon what is lov/est and commonest, it attains what is highest and noblest ; based, I mean, upon the uni- Tersal gift of language, so that it is accessible to all mankind, without requiring any special faculty or training, it attains to the expression and exhibition of the noblest and subtlest emotion and of the larg- est and truest thought. Of all the fine arts, poetry alone walks in the broad main highway of human aspiration and development. The others, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, stand upon some one or more special and singular facult}", gifts of eye, or ear, or interpretation of sight, touch, and muscu- lar sensibility ; and though all of these issue as it were in poetry, and have the same purposed end, namely, the production of imaginative pleasure, yet in the special sense of the term poetry, in which it * Coleridge. Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 219. The whole of Lect. XIII. deserves repeated perusal. 214 ENGLISH VERSE. means, not imaginative power or imaginative i^lea- sure, but the art by wbicb that pleasure is attained,, tliey are broadly distinguished from it, and occupy a. less catholic position. Poetry is distinguished from painting by appealing immediately to the mental eye, not mediately through the eye of sense; and from music, first, by appealing to thought as well as feehng, and secondly by consisting of sounds none of which are wholly musical, since the consonantal sounds, which are necessary in language to the ar- ticulation of the vowels, furnish an ever-present non- musical element. Locking again at that side of poetry on which it includes or may include prose composition, we see that, on the one hand, metre is not necessary to poetry, while poetry is always necessary to metre, being the purpose wdiich governs it. In considering metre we can never wholly abstract from the poetical purpose which it serves ; it looks to an end beyond itself. Even in the earliest verse, it is probable that aesthetic pleasure w^as as much the guiding mo- tive in making it, as its use in retaining, recalling,, and communicating thought ; and that the pleasure was from the first as inseparable from the use, as in dress, to take a parallel instance, purposes of orna- ment or concealment v.ere inseparable from purposes ENGLISH VERSE. 215 of protection. On tlie other hand, prose, when it rises into poetry, becomes as nearly musical as lan- guage without metre can be ; it becomes rhythmical. Rhythm is common ground to verso and prose ; metre distinguishes them. Metre enables a further glory to be added to the most rhythmical prose poetry, but then it must be metre in the hands of a master. The border line is touched and made evident when we compare such prose as this : "x\re not Abana and Pharphar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel ? May I not wash in them and be clean f with the illuminating gleam diffused over those rivers by one imaginative touch of Milton's : " Of Abana and Pharphar, lucid streams." AYe have, then, in verse three steps or stages, related to each other as means to ends, language, metre, poetry. The properties of language are con- ditions to which metre must conform, and which it has to make the most of. Those of metre perform precisely the same office for poetry. The character of the pronunciation in the ordinary speech of any people is what mainly determines the character of its metres ; and the character of its metres that of 216 ENGLISH YEKSE. its poetry, so far as its clothing of sounds is con- cerned. Conversely, it is the character, or as it is called the genius of a people, which, contributing largely to mould all three, is the unifying bond and connection between them. In English, as we shall presently see, we have three different kinds of stress, each belonging to one of these stages ; the word- stress, which falls upon a syllable or syllables of w^ords; the metrical stress, which falls upon sjdlables which either have or may receive a word- stress, when the metre requires it ; and the emphasis or rhetorical stress, which is superadded to the metri- cal, and employs it freely as a co-operating instru- ment in the production of poetical expression. In distinguishing these three kinds of stress, I am, I believe, at one with Dr. Abbott,* and unable to agree with his critic. Professor Mayor,! who does not see his way to the distinction between the two first kinds of stress, but only between stress gener- ally, or accent as they both call it, and emphasis. For instance in Shelley's line, ** 0, weep for Adonais ! — The quick Dreams," * See English Lessons for English People, by Messrs. E. A. Abbott and J. R. Seeley, p. 152-3. t Dr. Guest and Dr. Abbott on English Metre. Transactions of the Philological Society, 1873-1, p. 637. ENGLISH VERSE. 217 iic thinks that, since the metrical stress ought to fall on the word the and does not, there being no stress on that word at all, metrical stress is a fiction. This is like denying the existence of a component force in a resultant, because it does not for itself appear in the resultant. If metrical stress did not -exist, wdiere would be the verse itself, which Shelley's distribution of emphasis so beautifully moulds, over- riding and employing the ictus ? There are, to my •ear, three strongly emphatic syllables : 0, wi'ep for Adonais ! — The quick Dreams. Nor can I think for a moment, with Professor Mayor, that the unimportant the "is intentionally prefixed to the important word quick to give it addi- tional emphasis." All language is a creation of human effort and volition; but there are certain physical conditions upon which that creation depends, namely, the cha- racter and range of the sounds, breathings, pauses, <&c., which the human voice can utter, or can utter most readily. These sounds, along with the pecu- liarities which they derive from nature, we employ for a purpose, the purpose, namely, of fixing, recall- ing, moulding, and interchanging thought and feel- ing. That is the first stage in the volitional pro- 218 ENGLISH VEr.SE. cess 'wliicli ends in poetry. Language so formed then becomes the material, in and out of which metre is framed. That is a second effort of volition. Whether metre and langunge were formed concur- rentl}', or language first and metre afterwards, it is at any rate convenient logically to consider language- as the first, because we can more readily abstract from metre in considering language, than from lan- guage in considering metre. The peculiarities of pronunciation imposed by nature are more com- pletely beyond our j)ower to alter than are even the forms of articulate language, and far more than the forms of metrical language. An involuntary, not chosen but imposed set of conditions, then, more or less modifiable, is the standing ground or point of departure for volition at three several stages. First when we make language out of unformed vocal utterances ; secondly vvdien we make metre out of language ; thirdly when we make poetry out of metre. And at every stage we have to ask, when we go back in thought over the whole process, — at every one of these three stages we have to ask, — what were the conditions which human volition found, and what were the changes which it made,. in the material of sounds with which it dealt. And now, standing, as it were, on the level top- ENGLISH YEnSE. 211) of the third and highest of the three stages ^Yhich have been described, the broad table-land of poetry, we can discern a neighbouring height of somewhat lower elevation, rising from the same basis of lan- guage, but separated from us by a cleft or gully in the second stage, I mean the difference between metrical and non-metrical composition. Those lower heights are the field of prose literature. I represent them as loicer, because prose literature is not so wholly free to seek imaginative pleasure as poetry in the stricter sense is ; its beauties of com- position, its rhetoric, its rhythm, in one word the pleasure at which it aims, are all subordinate to some use which is its first and principal purpose. It stands to poetry somewhat as architecture stands- to the other fine arts. Useful purposes must first be served ; and then beauty and aesthetic enjoyment may lawfully be combined with the satisfaction of them. But the purposes of prose and metrical literature are too nearly the same, and the conditions which determine and limit them are too closely allied, to permit the separation of their theories. They are two branches of one and the same theory, the theory of literature in general, a theory which is in turn a branch of the larger theory of language, and rises out of the latter at the point where language begins ■220 ENGLISH VERSE. to be consciousl}' employed for the purpose (conceived €0 noDunc or in general terms) of expressing thought and feeling, and having that conscious employment for its subject-matter. In other words, that general theory of literature, which springs out of philology, and has both prose and verse for its objects, each forming a distinct branch, is that to which, owing to the inadequate way in which it is usually con- ceived, the name of criticism or literary criticism is applied. Its true name is the Theory of Style. The mode of handling language for a purpose, whatever the purpose may be, under whatever conditions of time, place, or circumstances, and whatever the natural characteristics of the language handled, — this it is which is known as style, and precisely this is the subject-matter of the theory in question. Some may perhaps be surprised to find poetry classed as a branch of the theory of Style, and Style as a branch of Philology, or the theory of Language. But this admits of a very simple explanation. If we approach poetry from the technical side, or as an art with a given and fixed end, what we then have to consider is the matter in which it works, and the conditions imposed by the matter. Poetry is then subordinate to style, and style to language, as I have just represented. But if we approach poetry from ENGLISH VERSE. 221. the psychological side, which after all is the more comprehensive one, and ask what mental powers are employed and appealed to by poets, we find ourselves launched at once upon the question, what moral, aesthetic, or intellectual effect they aim at producing, what is the end or final cause of their procedure. This end governs both their style and their language ; and though poetry is subordinate to style and lan- guage as its means, they in turn are subordinate to poetry as one of their ends, while poetry itself is subordinate to no other end but its own. It is the same with all the other fine arts. The emotional and imaginative effects at which they aim are poetry, just as much as poetry in language is. But considered as arts we must consider them from the point of view of their material, their means, and their instruments. We must consider the painter as a worker in colours, the sculptor as a worker in bronze or marble, and so on. Versification belongs to the technical side of poetry, and therefore, when we consider the poet as a verse-maker, notwithstand- ing that his aim is imaginative and emotional, or in one word poetical, pleasure, we consider him as working in a special mateiial, and his art as subor- dinated to the general laws of style and of Ian- 222 ENGTJSII VERSE. Larguage, style, and poetry form a series of nmtnally subordinate members ; of which the third gives hiw to the second, and the second to the first, in the sense in which ];)nrpose is said to govern action ; and the first gives law to the second, and the second to the third, in the sense in which con- dttions are said to govern action. Wherever, in the employment of an acquired faculty or method, a new and further imrpose dawns upon the mind as attainable by a new employment of the former means, there a new art, or a new branch of an old art, begins ; and thus it is that the art of style grows out of language, and the art of poetry out of style. As each new art is developed, the prior art, out of which it grew, tends to become fixed and rigid, limited as it were to its end, which has now become more definite, being taken as the starting point of the new art which is its offspring. The older arts are then no longer free, as having no ends but their own; they have become means to a further end, that of the new art to which they have given birth. All their powers are at the disposal of their latest descendant, which having no purpose to serve but its own is free and creative. The older arts, so far as they are still subordinate to it, have now taken rank as its technical branches, or rather ENGLISH VERSE. 223 :as the technical conditions and instruments of an iirchitectonic art. And such is the relation which Tersification, which in itself is a part of style, holds to poetry, when poetry is defined, hy a reference to the larger and psychological sense of the term, as the art hy which mental activity aims at the produc- tion of imaginative and emotional pleasure. II. It is plain, then, that in order to understand English Metres, Ave must hegin with the peculiarities of English language and pronunciation. We must see what courses are open to it, and how it differs from other languages, in the course which it has actually taken. In every articulate sound four elements are to he distinguished, the duration of time which it occupies, its pitch or accent, its colour or tone, and its loud- ness or force.* These four elements are inseparahle, hut always distinguishahle from each other by thought, if not always by the ear, in every sound. * See on this and kindred points a valuable paper by Mr, Alex. J. Ellis, On the Physical Constituents of Accent and Em- j)hasis. Transactions of tlie Philological Society, 1873-4, p. 113. 224 ENGLISH VERSE. But for the most part they are distinguishable by the ear also, and they are those properties of sound,. selection from among which by the speakers differeu - tiates the character of their pronunciation. The first element, duration of time, I shall call the formal or quantitative , and the three others,, pitch, colour, loudness, the material or qualitative ele- ments of sounds. By this nomenclature I bring them under the general law of phenomena of con- sciousness, all of which are ultimately analysable into formal and material elements."'" It is of importance to hold fast this analysis of articulate sound into four distinct elements. It is the basis of the whole theory of verse. And it is just at this point, that is, in his corresponding analy> sis of sound, that Mitford's masterly workf is chiefly defective. That work is fully abreast of the know- ledge of its time, and I suspect made valuable addi- tions to it, so as to become the principal source of those ideas about versification which are now the received ones. But two sources of knowledge at least have since then been more fully explored, the * See the analysis of sounds, which is based upon that of Pro- fessor Helmholtz, in my Theory of Practice, vol. i. § 11. ^ An Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Layigvorje and of the Mechanism of Verse, Modern and Ancient. By William Mitford. 8vo, second edition, 1804. ENGLISH VERSE. 225 first being the physical conditions and meclianism of speech, and the second the history of Okl English Literature, in which arc contained the origins of English versification. Mitford practically recognises only two distinct elements of sound as the basis of his theory, time being: one, and tone or accent the other. It is true he gives a further distinction of tone or accent into pitch and loudness or force ; and also that, basing himself on Plutarch, he reckons '' syllable or letter," which he explains to mean articulation, as a third element by the side of time and tone.* But articu- lation, syllable, or letter, cannot be held really to be an element of sound ; it is the sound itself clearly enunciated, it is that which we are analysing into its elements. It cannot be an element of itself; and therefore it cannot be taken as the equivalent of what is now called colour. And as to his distinction of tone or accent into pitch and loudness, which is a real analysis into elements, and would make his list of elements three, namely, time, pitch, and loudness, instead of time and tone only, — this distinction he practically annuls by maintaining, first, that in English, as spoken in the English or southern part of the island, high pitch * Work cited, p. 55-5G. 226 ENGLISH VERSE. and great loudness always coincide ;* and secondh', that accent meant the same thino: both in ancient Greek and Latin and in the languages of modeiii Europe, except the French;! that is, he refuses to go behind tone, unanah'sed, for his account of what accent consists in. Here I would remark in the first place, that it is hj no means certain that pitch and loudness ahvays coincide in English pronunciation. If they did, natural pronunciation would make nearly every line in Pope end with a high pitch, since his lines usually end with a stressed syllable. But this would often be intolerable. Take, for instance, the opening of the Essay on Man : " Awake, ni}^ St. John ! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of Kings. Let us (since Life can little mere supply Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate free," &c. How bad would be the effect here, if, follovvdng the supposed natural law of pronunciation, we raised the pitch of the last syllables in the second couplet. But even if it were granted that pitch and loudness coincide in English pronunciation, still the question remains, which of the two is the operative element ; that is to say, whether we raise the pitch because wo * Vrork cited, pp. 57-58, 62. t Work cited, pp. 207, 208, 235. ENGLISH VERSE. 227 speak syllables loud, or speak them loud because we raise the pitch. It is a consequence of this defective analysis, that Mitford's theory of verse is the very simple and insufficient one, that while ancient Greek and Latin verse was governed by quantity, that of modern lan- guages, French excepted but modern Greek included, is governed by accent ; accent meaning the same thing in all cases, that is, either pitch, or loudness, or both combined.* And this theory I apprehend is the one now generally held or acquiesced in. Now there is to my mind a far greater difference between time, the quantitative element, and the three qualitative elements of sound than there is between these three among themselves. The first is a great generic difference, the second merely specific ; and accordingly that first distinction is the one we have first to take account of. Some nations appear to have been most struck with the quantitative element in sounds, the length of time which difi'erent sounds required for their utterance, or occupied to the hear- ing. Such nations based their pronunciation and afterwards their metres on quantity. Languages of this kind were the Greek, the Latin, and I believe I am correct in adding the Sanskrit. Others were * Work cited, p. 235 et sqq. 228 ENGLISH VERSE. more struck with similraities and dissimilarities of quality in sounds, and of these were the Gothic races both in the Teutonic and Scandinavian branches. The Old English or Anglo-Saxon, and its descend- ants, Middle and Modern English, are languages of this kind. Their pronunciation is based upon quality ; and consequently we find that qualitative similarities of sound are the basis of their versifica- tion. The repetition either of vowel sounds, or of the same consonantal sounds, in forcibly pronounced s^dlables, constitutes the aUttcration which is em- ployed in the earliest known shape or law of English verse. For our present purpose this characteristic of the English language, with its significance brought out by contrast wdth quantitative languages, is an ultimate fact beyond which we need not go. But it is a most interesting question, and one upon which much light may possibly yet be thrown by philology, whether the selection of quantity, or of quality, is dependent primarily upon the physical constitution of the organs of voice, or of the ear, or upon some more centrally seated constitution of the brain which determines the springs of mental and moral character. The choice itself, whether originally springing from differences seated in the central, or from dif- ENGLISH VERSE. 229 ferences seated in the periplieral organs, lias at any rate an important influence upon national character, and becomes an harmonious constituent and factor in its total development. Quantity cannot be selected as the basis of pronunciation without harmonising with a musical and rhythmical speech, and accustom- ing the ear to seek gratification in the form of speech for its own sake, apart from the meaning conveyed by it. And again, on the other hand, since difference in the quahty of sounds is that which most readily and markedly conveys difference of meaning, the choice of quality as the guiding element in speech tends to fix attention on the meaning conveyed, in preference to the form which clothes it. Impatience of form is a characteristic of the English race ; de- light in it of the Greek. The predominance of the material element, as I have called it, in speech is in this way closely allied to the predominance of the material element in thought, its matter or meaning as distinguished from its logical framework. And this difference between the Greek race and the English in point of pronunciation agrees with a sug- tion thrown out in the foregoing Essay, as to the fundamental character of those two races in literary matters ; the Greek, it was said, being led on by the pleasure of imitation and reproduction of objects ex- 230 ENGLISH YERSE. lerual to liiiu, and tlie Englisliman spurrecl b}^ a need to express some thought or feeHng of his own which unexpressed woukl be a burden to him. It is an- other instance of the difference between the artistic and playful temperament of the Greek, and the seri- ous but none the less impassioned temperament of the English race. The one is allured by the plalsir (Vallcr, in Kousseau's phrase, the other goaded by the hesoiii cVar river. Quantity alone, it is true, is not sufficient as a law of pronunciation, which would be monotonous in the extreme if varied only by the different dura- tions of the successive sounds. Accordingly there w^as combined with it, in Greek pronunciation, one of the qualities of sound ; and this quality is, I be- lieve, generally held by scholars to have been that of 2ntch, giving rise to high and low accent. Quantity and accent together governed Greek pronunciation. Was that the selection made by the English ? No. It has been already said that they did not select quantity. But which of the three qualities of sound did they choose to speak by ? It was that of colour or tone as their basis, differentiated by loudness or force. What length differentiated by pitch was to Greek pronunciation, colour differentiated by loud- ness Vv'as to Encflish. Colour was the basis and loud- ENGLISH TERSE. 231 ncss the principle of variety in English, jnst as du- ration was the basis and pitch the principle of variety in Greek. But colour and loudness were both united in stress, and this served instead of the length and pitch together of the Greeks, though at the same time it is evident that stress and long quantity would for the most part coincide. Stress therefore is the characteristic of the pronunciation of languages like the English ; stress meaning the added force or loud- ness with which certain colours of sound are uttered, and thereby distinguished from others. And this stress was in the first instance what has been called above the word-stress. Monosyllables in English have no word-stress of their own ; whatever stress they have comes from their importance, that is, from the meaning they bear, as members of a sentence. For instance, in " 'Tis true, I am that spirit unfortunate," — the first five words of this line have no word-stress of their own, but some of them receive a sentence- stress, as Dr. Guest aptly calls it, from their signifi- cance in the sentence to which they belong. Very different is the case with Greek monosyllables. They have or have not an accent, that is, they have a pecu- liar ij'itcli, of their own, which adheres to them in 232 ENGLISH VERSE. whatever part of a sentence tlicy ma}^ stand. They are thus fitted to bear a part in a musically formed system of sounds, irrespective of the part they play in determining the meaning of the whole. Words of two or more syllables in English take one word-stress at least, and sometimes more ; one primary, and one or sometimes two secondary, if the word is a long one.* As a rule the primary word- stress falls on the root or main syllable of the word ; t on this syllable meaning and stress coincide, and that previously to any sentence-stress being laid on it. The Englishman thus seems to rush, as it were, at the meaning, and hasten to express it ; he is at- tracted by the colours of sound to which the mean- ing is attached, and to these he gives increased force, sinking the rest of the word into comparative ob- scurity. There is hardly a limit to the number of syllables, or to the amount of crowded consonantal sound, which the English ear and tongue will endure, nay even delight in. And this character of rushing at the meaning is still farther shown by the habit we have of throwing the word-stress as far back as possible, in all words of foreign origin, and of which the origin is either unknown or forgotten. Only the * Guest. Jlistonj of English Rhythms, vol. i. p. 78-9. t Ibid. p. 99. ENGLISH VERSE. 233 other day I heard a comparatively cultured person speak of a train rushing down an incline, with the stress on the first syllable ; and also laying the stress on the second syllable in Mausoleum, not apparently from any knowledge that this syllable was long in the Greek name, but rather from not knowing that the penultimate syllable was so too. How different all this is from tlie accentuation of Greek and Latin needs not to be pointed out. This peculiarity of English, however, is the foun- dation of some of its greatest beauties in poetry. It has been seized by Mr. Tennyson in that splendid piece of declamation, his Boddicea. The idea of the metre there employed seems to have been suggested by the rhythmical flow of the Galliambic as used by Catullus in his Attis : " Super cdta vectus Attis celeri rate maria^^ — not directly by its metre, but by the effect of the metre as read, replacing accents by stresses. Even this is not copied, but by true poetic instinct adapted to the English language, and an equivalent, indeed to my English ear far more than an equivalent, to the effect of the Latin line is produced : " Hear Icenian, Catieuchlanian, hear Coritanian, Tri- nobant ! While I roved about the forest, long and bitterly meditating, 234 ENGLISH TERSE. There I lieard tliom in tlic darkness, at tlic mystical cere- mony, Loosely roLed in Hying raiment, sang the terrible pro- phetesses : * Fear not isle of blowing woodlands, isle of silvery parapets ! Tho' the Eoman eagle shadow thee,' " &c. In the closing words of the second, third, and fourth of these lines, advantage is taken of the pro- perty of English which has been mentioned ; the stressed syllable has three unstressed syllables fol- lowing it. But lines of this exceptional fulness and rapidity are only interspersed; the usual metre stands nearer to the Latin, as in the first and fifth lines, ■where the closing word has only two unstressed syl- lables following the stressed one. Sometimes, too, the line ends with a stressed syllable, recalling the cases where a long syllable ends the line in Latin ; as in *' Thine the Xorth and thine the South and thine the battle-thunder of God." It may be doubted whether such is not the only true way of turning classical metres to advantage ; but of this I shall have more to say presently. ENGLISH VERSE. 23 i III. The Engiisli language having the characteristics which have been mentioned, it will be seen at once how natural and almost inevitable it was, that its earliest metres should be alliterative. Metre is a volitional selection and enforcement on a larger scale, that is, in sentences or periods, of the same elements of sound which were attractive in word pronuncia- tion ; a conscious adoption of those elements as the principle of a metliod used for a purpose additional to that of the mere recalling and communication of thought. On this larger scale the rudiments of quantity begin to appear ; for it is requisite, in order to give metrical pleasure, not indeed to mea- sure length against length in phrases or in syllables^ but to have a response of phrase to phrase, in which sounds of similar quality are repeated. In fact, as Mr. Coventry Patmore, himself a poet, most logically insists, in his instructive Pre- fatory Study of Engiisli Metrical Law/^' "time mea- sured implies something that measures, and is therefore itself unmeasured.'' Only I do not say, as Mr. Patmore does, that time is the thing mea- sured ; it is rather the concrete flow of words and * Prefixed to Ms Amelia. Loudon, 1878, p. 25. 236 ENGLISH YEHSE. plirases ^vliicli occupy the time. This distinction is important, as being the very point at which the two cLasses of theories diverge from one another, those which base English metre on quantity, and those which base it upon stress. English metres do not aim, as it seems to me, at dividing time into equal or proportionate lengths ; they aim at a response of phrase to phrase, and sound to sound. Mr. Pat- more holds rightly, that stress, or accent as he calls it, is the sole source of Enghsh metre ; but he em- ploys it, illogically in my opinion, to divide time into isochronous bars.* Why isochronous ? For if its purpose is to divide time into isochronous bars, then surely the pleasure taken in equaHty of time- lengths must be not only another source but the chief source of the metre, stress becoming merely the means of marking the lengths and attaining the pleasure.! Quantity used in the large sense I have given it, * Work cited, p. 24, 25, 34. t This criticism leaves unaffected, I believe, Mr. Patmore's " gi-eat general law," stated at p. 44, " that the elementary measure or integer of English verse is double the measure of ordinary prose, —that is to say, it is the space which is hounded by alternate accents;" — which means, if I understand it rightly, that two stresses (which would make what I call a response) are the unit of versification. This does not necessarily involve isochronous in- tervals. ENGLISH VERSE. 'JdY namely, lengths of concrete speech marked off h}" stresses, is ohviousl}^ very different from quantity in the sense of equal lengths of the time which speech occupies, and still more from the measured quantity of syllables, as in Greek, giving rise to feet measured and defined by the length and number of the syllables they consist of. There is in English verse correspondence of phrase to phrase, containing similar qualities of sound in some of their stressed syllables, but there is little if any counting of s^d- lables, no measuring of lengths of time, and conse- quently no correspondence of measured feet. " Our Anglo-Saxon poems," says Dr. Guest, " consist of certain versicles, or, as we have hitherto termed them, sections, bound together in pairs by the laws of allitera- tion. * * * For the most part these sections contain two or three accents" [stresses in my nomenclature], " but some are found containing four or even five. The greater number of these longer sections may be divided into two parts, which generally fulfil all the conditions of an allit- erative couplet ; and in some manuscripts are actually found so divided.""^ Speaking farther of the elementary versicle or section. Dr. Guest gives the following as the rules of its accentuation : "1. Each couple of adjacent accents" [read always stresses in my nomenclature] " must be separated by one * History, dx. vol. i. p. 163. f238 KNGLISH VERSE. ■cr tAvo syllables which are unaccented, but not by more than two. 2. No section can have more than three, or less than, two accents. 3. JSTo section can begin or end with more than two unaccented syllables.""^ Now since the number of stresses and syllables txdmissible into an alliterative couplet was at any rate not closely fixed, and since there was no final rhyme to hold the sections together, but their bond was an internal one, namely, alliteration, it is plain that the point of division between the two sections, marked by the middle pause, was the important cha- Tacteristic and, so to speak, the centre of gravity of the whole metre. For there was nothing to mark v/liere one couplet ended and another began, but the passing into the sphere of a difierent alliteration ; -and since there was no final rhyme, the change to a new alliteration could not be perceived till the second couplet had reached its middle pause. The use of alliteration thus involved the middle pause as its exponent ; and the middle pause performed two dis- tinct offices, that of a division between the sections of a couplet united by alliteration, and that of a con- nection between the couplets themselves ; this latter function moreover being one, of which final rhyme is * Ibid. p. 16-1, and p. S17, Note E. ENGLISH YERSE. 239 incapable. The middle pause tlius gave unity to the sections by enforcing attention to their simi- larity, and unity to the couplets by compelling the reader to go on to the second as a condition of understanding the first. And still more, in conse- quence of this, it gave unity to the poem as a whole by being chosen as the favourite place at which to end periods ; whereby one period ended and an- other began in the middle of a verse, just as in well constructed blank verse of modern times. As an ounce of exemplification is worth pounds of explanation, I will take the liberty to quote the opening passage of the poem on the Creation, usually attributed to Casdmon, from Dr. Guest's pages,* along with his scanning and translation. The middle pause is shown by a colon (:), but I replace Dr. Guest's upright lines by the more familiar marks of accentuation : "^TJs is riht micel: thoat we rodera weard Wereda wiUdor-cining : wordum hcrigen Modum liifien : he is mtegna sped Heafod ealra : heah-gesceiifta Frea ailmilitig : nass him. fruma ajfre Or geworden: ne nn eride cymtli Ecean drihtnes : ae' he bi'th a rice Ofer heofen-stolas : heaguni thry'mmum Soth-fcGst and swith-ferom : * Ibid. vol. ii. p. 26. 240 ENGLISH VERSE. IMickle right it is, that we heaven's guard (Glory-king of hosts !) with words should hery [honour],. With hearts should love. He is of pow'rs the efficacy, Head of all high creations. Lord Almighty ! In him beginning never Or origin hath been, nor end cometh now To the eternal Lord ; but he is aye supreme Over heaven-thrones, with high majesty, Eighteous and mighty." As an instance of a longer rhythm, take the fol- lowing from the same source :* " Is'thes a^nga sty'de. ungelic swithe : tham othruni the we ser cuthon Hean on heofon-rice : the me min hearra onlag Theah we bine for tham alwaldan : agan ne moston Eomigan ures rices : nfefth he theah riht gedon Tha}'t he us htefth befi^lled : fyre to botme Helle thaire hatan : heofon-rice benumen Hafath hit gemearcod : mid mon-cynne To gesettane : This narrow stead is much unlike to that other, whicli erst we knew. High in heaven's realm, which on me my Lord bestow'd; Though, for the All-wielder, it we may not have — Must quit us of our realm ! Yet hath he not right y-done. In that he us hath fell'd, to the fiery bottom Of this hot hell ; hath heaven's realm bereft us, And it hath destin'd by mankind To be peopled !" The general type of metre, of which these arc ' I6u?. p. 38-9. ENGLISH VERSE. 241 instances, prevailed down to the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century, when it was over- taken by what Dr. Guest calls a revolution, which deeply affected its character. This change, he says, plo3'ed it in his long and noble poem The Vision of Piers Plongliman, in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Like the two languages, English and Norman, so the two forms of verse, alliteration and rhyme, exist concur- rently ; and few English cars can even now, I think, resist the charm of the alliterative metre, handled as Xangland handles it : *' In a somer sesun • whon softe was the sonne, I scliop me in-to a schroiid • A scheep as I were ; ENGLISH VERSE. 251 In Habite of an Hermite • vnholy of werkes, Wende I wydene in this world * wondres to Iier3. Bote in a ^layes T^Iorwnynge * on ^laluerne Indies Me bi-fel a ferly • A Feyrie me thoulite ; T was weori of wandringe • and wente me to reste Vndur a brod banke • bi a Bourne syde, And as I lay and leonede * and lokede on the watres, I slumberde in A slepyng * hit sownede so murie."* The ultimate victory of final rhyme over alliter- :ation, as the ruling metrical principle of verse, seems to have been assured by this, that it gave a fuller :and more definite satisfaction to that craving of the English ear for qualitative similarities, which alliter- •ation itself, as a metrical principle, was instituted to satisfy. The elements of sameness in rhyming :SOunds were more numerous than in alliteration, and forced the ear to a more complete analysis of them. Alliteration was a sameness in the initial sound of the stressed syllable in words, the other sounds in -the words being different and less attended to. Rhyme was a difference solely in the initial sound of -the stressed syllable, with complete sameness of all the following sounds, — [loocl stood, shivering quiver- ing. Both difference and sameness had to be dis- tinctly noticed in rhyme, for the whole of the rhym- * The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman. Part I. "The " Vernon" Text. Edited by the Rev. \V. W. Skeat. Early English Text Society : No. 28. 252 ENGLISH VERSE. ing words, after the stressed syllables, must be the same, aud only the initial sounds different. Eliyma therefore was more complex aud subtil as a metrical instrument. And being a satisfaction of the same craving of the ear for similarities of quality in sound, it may be said to have conquered alliteration at its- own weapons. At the same time it was by drawing attention to the ciiduKj of words, and by the necessary conse- quence of this, in order to make metrical use of it, I mean the placing those words at the end and not in the body of the verse, that the introduction of final rhyme effected the greatest change in the character of English metre. Ehyme was restricted, no less than alliteration, to fall either on syllables that had the vrord-stress, or on monosyllables that from their logical importance might have a sentence-stress upoa them. The last word in a line thus became both logically and metrically an important one. Verses, became groups of sounds leading up to rhyming syllables, from being groups of sounds appended to alliterating syllables. Thus the change harmonised completely with the subordination of the middle to the final pause, to which Dr. Guest rightly attributes such great importance. Moreover, since rhyme by itself, that is, as. ENGLISH VERGE. 253 •exhibited in a single couplet, could furnish, as we have seen, no bond of connection to a whole system of verses, as alliteration with its middle pause did, therefore the adoption of rhyme led necessarily to the framing of staves or stanzas, either connected together by the recurrence of the same rhyme at various intervals, or else rounded off into unity by a single couplet at the end, as a sort of metrical full stop. Eliyme in fact, from its very incompleteness, tis compared with alliteration and middle pause, was but a part of the more complex system of versifica- tion which grew out of it, and which was necessarily developed by rhyme being made to serve the further purpose of a bond of unity between groups or periods of rhyming lines. The change from alliteration to final rhyme as the main rule of metre, with the concurrent change of pause, leading to the construction of verses on the principle of a definite number of metrical stresses, and with the chief or rhyming stress thrown to the end of each verse, is the great feature which arises in some of the verse of Middle English, and distinguishes it from that of Old, or Anglo-Saxon. And this feature and principle of verse survived the next great change in the language, the next boiling down, so to speak, of Middle English into Modern 254 ENGLISH VERSE. English, with further loss of inflexion, the loss of" the final c, ^Yhich took place in the course of the fifteenth century.* Middle and Modern English, by having one and the same literary language, and one and the same principle of verse, are compacted into a single language much more completely than are Old and Middle English, notwithstanding that the changes in language, at each period of transition, were changes of similar kind and the same general direction, the direction, namely, of rendering mor& prominent the stressed syllables in comparison with the non-stressed, of packing the consonantal sounds- more closely together in non-stressed syllables by rapidity of utterance, and of obscuring the differ- ences of vowel sounds in those syllables, in con- sequence of their loss of importance for purposes of inflexion. In result it may be said, I think, that we have in England a system of verse depending on the recur- rence of stress as its main principle, and that this principle is of native English origin. Khyme which ousted alliteration as the vehicle of this principle, though owing its development to foreign influences, was probably even from the first not wholly foreign to * On the distinction of Old, Middle, and Modern English, see Mr. Sweet's Histonj of English Sounds, in the Transactions of the Philological Socictj-, 1873-1, \\ G20. ENGLISH VERSE. 255 English verse.* But the tendency to regularity, whether shown in counting syllables or in measuring feet, vras a tendency purely foreign, and chiefly due to Norman French literature. The versification which combines these various elements subordinates them to the one element of stress ; for the native ear and voice are the prime source of rhythms, and what- ever they learn from a foreign source they re-cast in a native mould. English verse and English poetry would not be the hardy and vigorous creations which they are, if not this law but its converse were true. The English language is no tripping, dancing, tip-toe language, like the French. Neither is it a mouthful of hot potatoes, like the German. It is neither a gag, nor an Agag. It plants its foot firmly down on a stressed syllable as near the beginning of the word as possible, and leaves the other syllables to shift for themselves. When a balance of quantity in syllables, or a cadence in their tone, is introduced, these are adornments which are beautiful in their place, but can never go so far as to oust the stress on the main syllables, without denaturalising the native flow of the pronunciation, which will always, recalcitrate, and give those more recondite beauties, * See Herr ten Brink. Geschichte, dx. vol. i. p. 28, 108-9. 256 ENGLISH VERSE. ■when used as the main principle of construction, an :air of tinsel and affectation. Greek and Latin, I imagine, were not tripping, but more properly sing-song languages, and state- lier than the French. I do not of course suppose that they had no difference of stress or loudness, in their pronunciation, any more than I suppose that English had no difference of quantity ; but that the ruling principle in it was, first, quantity, ^nd secondly, to distinguish quantity, not stress but accent. In pronunciation they noted the duration, and they noted the pitch. The 'place of the high pitch, or acute accent, was much more varied in Greek than in Latin ; in those cases where its place in a word was governed in Greek by the quantity of the last syllable, there in Latin it was governed by that of the penultimate ; and the last syllable is open lo more change than the last but one. Thus the accent on av^^co-xog varies its place in the genitive and dative, avQ^ooTTOV and av^^oj'TTco. But if it were a Latin word, the accent would not change its place ; it would fall on the penultimate in all cases, this syllable being long ; though some, I believe, have held that it would be a circumflex in the nominative, the last syllable being short.* * See a paper by Mr. H. A. J. Munro, On a Metrical Laiiii ENGLISH VERSE. 257 Accent and quantity, two tilings, corresponded to stress, one thing, in English. I mean in point of function y both in prose and verse. And upon the harmonious combination and contrast of the two the beauty of Greek and Latin verse depended. In the well known Saturnian verse " Dabunt malum Metelli — Nceoio poetce^^ the ictus falls on the long syllables ; that is, quantity determines the place of the ictus. But by the rules of accentuation the first syllables of the two first words, and the second syllable of the third, are accented, so that we have clahmit and malum pronounced with a high pitch on their first syllables, and a long dura- tion given to their second. The long duration and high pitch coincide on the middle syllable of Metelli. In the three last feet, length and accent twice coin- cide, but there is one syllable, the last in Ncevio, which has length without accent.* When Englishmen read Latin they naturally and spontaneously replace the Latin accents by stresses ; and in reading Greek, owing I suppose partly to the more difficult rules of position in Greek, and partly to their previous acquaintance with Latin, they Inscription, in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Societ.y, vol. x. Part II. 1860. * See again Mr. Munro's paper just cited, S 258 ENGLISH VERSE. replace the Greek accents by stresses laid where the accents would fall in Latin, not in Greek. Now this spontaneous habit of Englishmen in read- inf^ Greek and Latin, however little light it may- throw on the nature of Greek and Latin, throws a strong one on the nature of English pronunciation. In reading Greek and Latin verses we either recite them or scan them, that is, read them either as marked by their accents or as marked by their quan- tity ; always, however, replacing by a stress, accent in the one case, quantity in the other. But can we for a moment imagine that the Romans (say) had these two several ways of reading verse ? Certainly not. They had no more two ways of reading verse than they had of reading prose. They read prose by quantity and pitch, and verse by quantity and pitch in metrical arrangement. If they had read either verse or prose by stress, it would have interfered either with the pitch or with the quantity, and so would have necessitated two ways of reading, accord- ing as the stress was substituted for the one or for the other. Pitch and quantity can be used together without interfering ; but replace either of them by stress and the other is ruined. Stress laid on a short acute syllable makes it long, as in cano in the first line of the yEneld, so interfering with quantity. ENGLISH VERSE. 259 Stress laid on the long syllables of a verse deprives the short syllables of their acute accent if they have one, so interfering with pitch. There is thus a vital difference between English pronunciation and metre, which proceed solely by stress, and Greek and Latin, which proceed by quantity and accent. These lan- guages use the length and the pitch of sounds, English uses the logically significant syllables, to make metre. In English, therefore, the metre and the logic necessarily coincide. And this is the very basis of English versification. But in Greek and Latin verse, that coincidence must be purposely :S ought. Now a versification which proceeds by quantity ■and accent necessarily involves the distribution of the verse into feet ; and this involves counting sylla- bles, for the number and quantity of their syllables are what metrical feet are defined by. But it is clifficult to see how a versification which proceeds by stress should come to count syllables ; for on what principle would this or that number of syllables be told ofi", as it were, for a foot, when no feet were used or required for the metre ? True, the unstressed syllables between the stresses naturally fall into de- •pendence on the stressed syllables ; but there is iiothiuGf in the metre to show whether these un- 2G0 ENGLISH VERSE. stressed syllables belong to the stressed syllable- before them or to that after them ; nor again how many unstressed syllables ought to come before or after a stressed one. The space between stress and stress is really what answers to the foot of clas- sical metres; and the various number and different importance of the unstressed syllables, in depend- ence on a stressed one, give rise to those differences of measure which are known as common and triple time. The distinction into feet, therefore, founded on the counting of syllables, is a thing which has nO" natural connection with metres based on stress. There are no such things as dactyls, spondees, tro- chees, iambs, anapaests, and the rest, in English metre ; and however convenient it may seem to call certain groups of unstressed syllables depending on a stressed one by names of this kind, the practice is misleading, and obliterates the true principle of our natural and native prosody. It is a classification not founded on the real growth and development of the thing classified ; not a natural but an artificial classification. And though many of those who adopt it may admit, as they frequently do, that it is only a makeshift, and the names inappropriate, yet they do not give up the theory out of which it springs,. ENGLISH VERSE. 261 namely, that counting syllables stressed or unstressed is the principle of English versification. They may give up the symptom, but they retain the disease. True, it is possible that, at the time of first adopting or imitating foreign metres, we may have made our verses by counting sjdlables ; if so, it was a practice which the native genius of the lan- :guage did not long adhere to. But the further step of making feet, or constructing verses out of them, was I believe never taken, except in avowed imita- tion of classical models. The theory asserting the principle came in natur- ally enough in consequence of the Eenaissance, when •classical scholars were tempted to imagine that Greek and Latin ideas furnished the complete and final explanation of everything. We may see the process in that most unequal and indeed avowedly self-contradictory work, the Arte of English Poesle, 1589, attributed to George Puttenham,* where the author (or authors), after maintaining at p. 22 that the nature of our language and words does not per- mit us to frame classical feet, yet proceeds at p. 126 to show not only how '' one may easily and com- modiously lead all those feete of the auncients into * See the Work in Mr. Arber's valuable series of English Reprints, vol. vii. 262 ENGLISH VERSE. our vulgar languaj^-e," but also liov/ they may be applied to construct not classical but ordinary Eng- lish metres. The explanation of which inconsist- ency, apart from accidental circumstances peculiar to the writer, is that he starts from the theory that counting syllables and making rhymes are the prin- ciples of English versification.* And the conclusion to which he finally comes is the lame one, that our old manner of poesie is to be scanned by sjdlables rather than by feet, but still using the words iamhlc and trochaic (" which ye shall discerne by their accents"), and now and then a dactyl. f Thus this theory flattered and fell in with that tendency to take pleasure in regularity, which we have seen is the foreign strain in the constitution of our English poetry. Now it is to be expected that, in a language like ours, verse will easily fall for the most part into forms in which the number of un- stressed syllables between the stresses will be regu- lar, so as to give the semblance of regular feet ; and this regularity will be even aimed at as a beauty by many writers, for the reasons alleged. Nevertheless the counting of syllables, upon which feet-making depends, though enabled by the general regularity of the language, is not on that account a principle- * Work cited, p. 22, 81-2, 84. t Ibid. p. 141. ENGLISH VERSE. 263 of its metre ; for the regularity itself is a concurrent effect, not a cause, of its mode of versification. Poets like Pope, — and be it said without a thought of disparaging even for a moment his great and admirable genius, — and critics like Johnson, love regularity for its own sake, just as poets like Shakspere, Milton, and Shelley, love a rhythm varied by emphasis in tone and cadence, in which the metrical structure of the verse is used as an instru- ment on which to play, not as being itself the melody played. Eegularity sought in this way is not a principle of the metre, but a beauty sought for hy means of the metre ; just as variety is, when sought for by writers with an ear for harmony. It is illogical to set down regularity of this kind as an essential principle of the structure of the verse. It is no doubt extremely effective for many pur- poses, and most of all when there is perfect regu- larity in the metrical stresses of the verse, and per- fect coincidence between the metrical stresses and the emphatic stresses demanded by the meaning, as for instance in Wordsworth's lines At Vallombrosa : " For he and he only with wisdom is blest Who, gathering true pleasures wherever they grow, Looks up in all places, for joy or for rest. To the Fountain whence Time and Eternity flow." 2G4 ENGLISH VERSE. Or again, and still more perfectly, in Scott's famous ballad The Fire-King : " For down came the Templars, like C^dron in fl6od, And dyed tlieir long lances in Saracen bl6od." Some other points about this couplet will be noted present^. Meantime I would ask, are these lines composed on the principle of eleven syllables to the line, or three syllables to the foot, 2^lus one to start with and another to end with, or are they composed on the principle of four stresses in each line, re- sponding to each other two and two, so that the two lines respond to each other, and each line consists of two members likewise responding, but less mark- edly than the lines ? IV. Adopting, then, the hypothesis that stress, laid always on logically significant syllables, is the great guiding principle of the native and spontaneous versification of English, let us see how this principle will furnish a rationale of our various metres, first rhymed, afterwards unrhymed, but apart from the particular circumstances of their development in order of history. The manner of applying the prin- ENGLISH VERSE. 265 <;iple for this purpose is exceedingly simple. The number of metrical stresses in a line is either even •or odd. If it is even, and the line has more than two stresses, then the line divides (by a break falling between words) in the middle, into two members which respond to each other. If the number of stresses is odd, and the line has more than three of them, then the line divides in a similar way into two unequal members; in lines of five stresses, usually into members of three and of two stresses, either of which may come first ; and in lines of seven stresses, usually into members of four and of three •stresses respectively, the longer member usually coming first ; but this division may be overriden for purposes of poetic emphasis, when the metre is used in order to get further poetical harmony out of it. Originally, I imagine, in lines of seven stresses, the middle break fell immediately after a stressed syl- lable. But as the metre became more famiHar, and •different rhythms were introduced into it, this was perceived to be by no means indispensable, and the break was sometimes allowed to fall after an un- stressed syllable. Still the beauty of the verse de- manded that the break into two members should be made distinctly perceptible, and that as well in lines •of five as in lines of seven stresses ; otherwise the 2G6 ENGLISH VERSE. principle of response would have been sacrificed.. Couplets, staves, and stanzas may be constructed in almost unlimited variety by different arrangements, of such lines as I have described. Into these sys- tems lines of three and of two stresses may also be introduced ; or again these shorter lines may be built up into systems by themselves. To take Hnes of an uneven number of stresses first, we find the heroic rhyming couplet consisting of lines of five stresses ; while the metre in which Chapman translated the Iliad, and that which is common in old ballads, and is used by Macaulay, are instances of lines of seven. For instance, the Battle of Otterhournc, in Percy's Reliques : " Yt felle abowght the Lamasse tyde, When husbonds wynn ther haye, The dowghtye Dowglasse bowynd him to ride, In Ynglond to take a praye." In Lord Macaulay' s Armada we have : " Night sank upon the dusky beach, and on the purple- sea, Such night in England ne'er had been, nor e'er again shall be." In some stanzas of the Lays the syllable on which the fourth stress would naturally fall is replaced hj a pause, and consequently we have the stress thrown back upon the unstressed syllable before it; a pro- ENGLISH VEESE. 267 ceeding marked by printing- the line as if it made two verses, as in the following stanza from the Pro- ]}hccy of Capys : " Thou shalt not drink from amber ; Thou shalt not rest on down ; Arabia shall not steep thy locks, Nor Sidon tinge thy gown." Here there is a half-stress on the last syllable of amber as well as a full stress on the first ; and also a pause after the word, so as to make a marked divi- sion between the members of the verse. The line of seven stresses, owing to its greater length, requires the middle break to be more strongly marked, as a rule, than the line of five stresses does. It is too long to be written for many lines together with the break falling after an unstressed syllable. And this being so, then also it v/ill appear that the first member will usually be the long one, since otherwise the ear would be drawn on to expect either an uninterrupted line, which would be unwieldy, or else a second member of three stresses, correspond- ing to the three marked stresses of the first mem- ber. Thus we find that Chapman usually divides his lines after the fourth stress ; and where he divides them after the third, the effect is not always admir- able. For instance in Iliad, Book XIX. : •2G8 ENGLISH VERSE. ■"And terribly thus charged his steeds, 'Xanthus and EaUus, Seed of the Harpy, in the charge ye undertake of us, Discharge it not as xolien Patroclus ye left dead infield, Hut -when ^vith blood, for this day's fast observed, Ee- venge shall yield Our hearts satiety, bring us off.* " — And again : •'' Thus XantJius spake, 'Ablest Achilles, now at least our care Shall bring thee off ; but not far hence the fatal minutes are Of thy grave ruin,' " &c. The italicised lines seem almost like attempts to ■obliterate the division between the two members, and make one unbroken line of them, for the sake of variety. But the effect is the very reverse. Owing to the place of the break not being distinctly percep- tible, the lines, so far from running on continuously, break up into three portions, " Discharge it not as when | Patroclus ye | left dead in field." and " Thus Xanthus spake, | Ablest Achilles, | now at least our care." In the first of these two lines a single transposition ■of words would effect a great change, Discharge it not as when Patroclus dead in field ye left. ENGLISH VEKSE. 2Q9 The stress on dead being more marked than on ye distinctly throws the break in the line immediately after the third stress, making it divide at when. And that this effect is due, not directly to the greater stress on dead, but indirectly, by the more distinct marking of the break in consequence of it, is seen from the second line, where the corresponding word noiv is strongly stressed, and yet the line halts ; — why, but because there is no perceptible division into two members ? The five-stressed lines in rhyming metres, though derived, as I apprehend, from Norman French verse, in which, I believe I am right in saying, the break always fell immediately after the second stress, or after the unstressed feminine termination of the word containing it, yet made no rule of this prac- tice. The lines divide either after a stressed or an unstressed syllable indifferently; and almost as frequently after the third as after the second stress. Thus it is in the Prologue to the Canierhimj Tales : " Whan that Aprille with his schowres swoote The drought of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathud every veyne in swich licour, Of which virtue engendred is the flour ; Whan Zephirns eek with his swete breeth Enspirud hath in everie holte and heeth 15<0 ENGLISH VERSE. The tendre cropper, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfo cours i-ronne, And sraale fowles maken melodie That t^lepen al the night with open yhe, So priketh hem nature in here corages ; — Thanne longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seeken straunge strondes, To feme halwes, kouthe in sondry londes ; And specially from every schires ende Of Engelond, to Canturbnrye they wende, The holy blisful martir for to seeke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke." The existence of the break is indispensable, as otherwise there would be no response of part to part ; but owing to the shortness of the line, the division into two members is not so prominent as in seven - stressed lines. In fact the line of five stresses admits cf being treated as one continuous line organically divided into two members, and not as if it were composed of two members which were originally separate. The greater or less prominence of the break is one of the chief marks which distinguish regularists, such as Pope and his school, from harmonists, among whom we may count Chaucer. Still, however little prominence may be given to it, the break itself is always tlicre ; and its effect is felt even when it is most obliterated and overridden by the melody ENGLISH VERSE. 271 played upon the metre which it contributes to con- struct ; as for instance, in this beautiful couplet of Shelley's : " Seeking among those untaught foresters If I could find one form resembling hers." The break, which is most faintly perceptible, comes in the first line after the v/ord seeking, and in the second after the word find ; at least to my ear. The word one is emphatic, and there is a short pause hefore it. Observe, too, the beautiful effect of soft- ening the rhyme by throwing it on an unstressed syllable in foresters. The break is more strongly but still not obtrusively marked in Gray's elegiac metre, where it is beautifully varied : " For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind ?" The break comes, to my ear, after the words clmib, being, precincts, and longing. But now compare some lines of Dryden's, and see how much more obvious the break is,— those beautiful lines which may fairly be taken as characteristic of his style, at the begin- ning of the Hind and Panther : " A milk-white hind, immortal and unchang'd. Fed on the lawns, and in the forest rang'd ; 272 ENGLISH VERSE. Without unspotted, innocent within, She fecar'd no danger, for she knew no sin. Yet had she oft been chas'd with horns and hounds^ And Scythian shafts ; and many winged wounds Aim'd at her heart ; was often forc'd to fly, And doom'd to death, though fated not to die." The verse of five stresses may be handled in the most various ways, some of which have no historical connection whatever with that variety of it to which the foregoing instances belong. The metre of Mr. Browning's Saul is a line of five stresses in rhyming- couplets, and with these peculiarities, namely, that the stresses are usually preceded by two unstressed syllables, and very frequently fall on the end of a word; so that the middle break, though a strong one, is almost obliterated, as a division, by other breaks in the line. Accordingly the effect produced is that of a movement consisting of five separate and powerful strides. It is a metre admirably adapted for expressing at once strong feeling and clear thought r one which we may easily imagine likely to occur to a great metrist, logically, incisively, and dramatically minded, like Mr. Browning. The poem opens thus : *' Said Abner, ' At last thou art come ! Ere I tell, ere thou speak, Iviss my cheek, wish me well !' Then I wished it, and did kiss his cheek." ENGLISH VERSE. 273 The first line divides after tlie third stress, the second after the second. The stresses are five in each line, and fall markedly and frequently upon the last syl- lables of words. The power of the metre as a vehicle of strong emotion may be judged perhaps from some lines taken farther on : " Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held up as men sung The low song of the nearly-departed, and hear her faint tongue Joining in while it could to the witness, ' Let one more attest, I have lived, seen God's hand thro' a life-time, and all was for best !' Then they sung thro' their tears in strong triumph, not much — but the rest." The line of five stresses again, rhyming, but not in couplets, is used with singularly beautiful effect by a recent writer to exemplify what he some- what ambitiously calls " the new prosody," that is to say, in contravention of "the notion that all accents" [stresses] "in poetry are alternate with unaccented syllables," and of " the almost universal prejudice that when two or more unaccented syllables inter- vene between two accented syllables the former must suffer and be slurred over." It is true that unstressed syllables do suffer and are slurred over in common T 274 ENGLISH TERSE. conversation ; but it is the very task of poets to make full use of them by attention to their ''natural quantity and accent," a task which has never been neglected by the harmonists. It is, for instance, one of the great charms of Chaucer's versification, as was pointed out originally, I believe, by Mr. R. H. Home, the distinguished author of Orion ; at least he is quoted to that effect both by Edgar Poe in his Rationale of Verse, and by Mr. A. W. Ward in his Chaucer J^ The poem to which I have just referred is entitled London Snoiv,\ and begins thus : *' When men were all asleep the snow came flying, In large white flakes falling on the city brown, Stealthily and perpetually settUng and loosely lying, Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town ; Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing ; Lazily and incessantly floating down and down : Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing; Hiding difference, making unevenness even, Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing." The descriptive effect of that is to me most happy and powerful. The lines are plainly lines of five * In tlic Euglisli Men of Letters series. Note to p. 170-1. The " slurring over" spoken of in this passage is very different from the "slurring over" objected to by the New-Prosodists, — in fact its very opposite. t In Poems hy the Author of The Growth of Love. Third Series. E. Bumpup, Holboru Bars, London, 1880. ENGLISH VERSE. 275 stresses, and tlie middle break is apparent in them all. The author makes use of "natural quantity and accent" not merely to give harmony and supple- ness to a metre already familiar, but to build up what has almost the effect of a new metrical structure. But these principles are not now introduced for the first time into English verse. While, then, I find little that is new, theoretically, in the "new pro- sody," still I anticipate from it a very important and salutary effect upon practice; in what particular way will be best seen when we come to lines of two •stresses. Another instance of lines of five stresses, used in conjunction with lines of four and of three, is afforded by Miss Ingelow's. beautiful poem A Dead Year, which begins thus : •^' I took a year out of my life and story — A dead year, and said, * I will hew thee a tomb ! " All the kings of the nations lie in glory ;" Cased in cedar, and shut in a sacred gloom ; Swathed in linen, and precious unguents old ; Painted with cinnabar, and rich with gold. ' Silent they rest, in solemn salvatory, •Sealed from the moth and the owl and the flittermouse — Each with his name on his brow. '' All the kings of the nations lie in glory, Every one in his own house :" Then why not thou T " 276 ENGLISH VERSE. The first, fifth, and sixth lines of the first stanza are- lines of five stresses ; the second, third, and fourth are lines of four* In the second stanza, all but the- third and sixth are lines of four stresses ; the third and sixth are lines of three. But note that the first line of this stanza would be a line of five stresses,. were it not that the fifth stress, which would fall on. the penultimate syllable of salvatory, is abolished ;• apparently to prepare the way for the rhythm of the second line of the stanza ; which again by the stress- on the beginning of the ivisyllMeflittermoKse pre- pares the transition to the line of three stresses. which follows it. Here again the art of the versifi- cation consists in varying the collocation of stressed. with unstressed syllables. I pause for a moment to confess, that I feel guilty of something like temerity in thus appear- ing to pronounce upon poets' modes of versification,, especially when the poets themselves are living. What if they should indignantly declare that no- such rubbish ever entered their heads ? But I warn them to be careful what they say, as they will cer- tainly be taken at their word. For my own benefit I enter a caveat of another sort, by requesting my readers once for all to preface my opinions for m& with an " as it seems to me," or '' till better advised ;"" ENGLISH YERSE. 277 •30 as to understand tliem as suggestions, which they really are, and not as judgments. The Alexandrine is an instance of a line of an even number of. stresses, namely, six, and with its middle break immediately after the third stress, as in Drayton's Polyolhion, Take the address of the river Witham in Song XXV. : ■^' Ye easy ambling streams, which way soe'er ye run. Or towards the pleasant rise, or towards the mid-day sun, * * * Ee what you are, or can, I not your beauties fear. When Neptune shall command the Xaiades t' appear. In river what is found, in me that is not rare : Yet for my well-fed pikes, I am without compare." The Alexandrine is often deprived of its strict middle break, falling immediately after a stressed syllable, for purposes of poetry, sometimes appar- ently for the mere sake of variety, but sometimes also for an additional reason, as for instance in Spenser's Ejnthalamion : '* That all the woods may answer, and your eccho ring," a refrain, which is used throughout with slight variations, and of which more will be said farther on. Again, we find Alexandrines without the strict middle break, interspersed with others that have it, in that elegy on Sidney called The Mourning Muse of Thestylis, printed in Spenser's works, e.g.: 278 ENGLISH VERSE. " Help me to tune my doleful! notes to warbling sound,"' where it is employed, in conjunction with an elabo- rate rhyme structure, to give variety to the other\Yise monotonous succession of lines so long and so mark- edly regular as the Alexandrine. If that metre could have become naturalised in England as the staple of long compositions, it would assuredly have been so by a metrist so accomplished as "L. B.," the author of this poem. Of all our metres, the unrhymed Alexandrine, written without the strict middle break, comes near- est to the Greek tragic senarius, and thus serves best to bring out the inherent difference in the genius of the two systems of versification. Compare for the metre, and contrast for the effect, the two^ lines : and " Up from his tomb the mighty Corineus rose," from the Elegy on Sidney just quoted. Although the division of words in this latter line does not con- travene the law of ccesura, which is the unifying principle of the Greek metre, yet how different is the effect. Even when we read the Greek line with English stress, the difference is striking. Probably * Eur. 2Icdea, v. 20. ENGLISH VERSE. 279 this is chiefly due to the logically important mono- syllables tomb and rose ; and especially to the last, being in the last place. The rhythm would be brought in some degree nearer to the Greek, if we transposed the first and last words in the line : Rose from his tomb the mighty Corineus up. But this would obviously depart from the ordinary flow of an English sentence. We approach still nearer to the rhythm, if we make the line run : The mighty Corineus from the sepulchre. But this is obviously not an English metre at all. It requires the habituation of the ear to a balance of measured syllables, before it is even recognised as metre, and not rhythmical prose. I now come to two remarkable cases of lines of even stresses, in which the influence of the rhetorical or poetical stress is seen in moulding the metrical structure itself. These are Edgar Allan Poe's Raven, and Mr. Tennyson's Locksley Hall. The historical basis or theme of the metre, in both cases, I imagine to be the trochaic tetrameter acatalectic, just as the iambic tetrameter was the basis of the ballad metre. But it would be, in my opinion, a great mistake to suppose that this is the actual metre of those two poems. No one can read either : 280 ENGLISH VERSE. *' All, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak Decem- ber," or: *' Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn," in the way iudicated by the stress-marks. No. Thes3 lines are not lines of eigJit stresses ; they are lines oifour : "Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak Decem- ber." and: *' Comrades, leave me here a little, while as yet 'tis early morn." To consider the metre as actually formed by eight stresses makes it the merest jingle. The actually existing metre is a metre of four emphatic stresses to the line. Another remarkable instance of modification, parallel to this, is furnished by two strikingly beauti- ful little poems by Principal Shairp, his Paul Jones and The Bush ahoon Traquair, in the volume en- titled Kilmahoe and otJier Poems. The former, which is part of Kilmahoe, begins, (and I venture to mark the stresses as I should read them :) " The time was wild, there did come o'er the sea a trou- bled hiim Of the marshalling of armies and of ships ; ENGLISH VERSE. 281 Kings from their thrones were dashed, and peoples, madly clashed Together, met in grim death grips." The basis of this metre is formed by lines of six stresses alternating with lines of three. But thiii structure is modified in the long lines by two stresses being overridden and four made emphatic, so that the result is as I have written it. This treatment of the long lines brings them into harmony with the short lines of three stresses, the long lines forming a single line each, notwithstanding the rhyming of their two members. The fundamental structure is the same in the other poem. The Bush ahoon Traquair ; but it is not so much modified, and consequently the long lines are written as couplets, though even here the same two stresses are weakened in some degree : " Will ye gang wi' me and fare To the biish aboon Traquair 1 Owre the high Minchmiiir we'll up and awa', This bonny summer noon. While the siin shines fair aboon. And the licht sklents saftly doun on holm and ha'." The irregularity in the introduction of unstressed syllables, joined to the modification of the metre by the emphatic stress which becomes a metrical one, is what gives these verses their special and, to my ear. 282 ENGLISH VERSE. beautiful character. The rhythm of the long four- stressed lines in the first poem, and of the three- stressed lines in both, may possibly have been sug-^ gested, historically speaking, by Campbell's Ye Mari- ners of England and Battle of the Baltic, where the same rhythm is found, but used with greater regu- larity, e.rj, : " ' Hearts of oak !' our captain cried ; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse Of the sun." Lines like these must be a real embarrassment to prosodists who scan English verse by counting feet of measured syllables. What will they make of groups of syllables like The time was icilcl, and Kings from their thrones 1 If they would preserve any connection between the metre and the emphatic rhythm, and yet scan by feet, they must call these groups Pceon quartus and Pceon ])rimiis ; unless they adopt Mr. Ruskin's new importations (whether in- ventions of his or not I cannot say) and christen them Trine-anapcest and Trine-dactyl. Mr. Euskin has lately dashed off some dogmas on this subject, and called them Elements of English. Prosody, in which, applying an old, perhaps I might ENGLISH YERSE. 283> say the current theory, he scans English verse by Greek feet, or metres as he calls them, spondees, dactyls, trochees, &c., ending with the two I have just named. Let us see where this doctrine leads him. He tells us that Mr. Tennyson's well known line, '' Come into the garden, Maud," is anapaestic; and he lays the metrical stresses on the first syllables of into and garden, and on the monosyllable Maud* (I omit the musical notation which he gives.) To my mind this is atrocious. The whole stanza runs as follows : *' Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown. Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone ; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad. And the musk of the roses blown." I should read the first and third lines with a strong stress on Come, and on the first syllable of ffardcn, leaving everything else more or less un- stressed. The lover is eager for her to come; he is waiting at the gate ; she is in the house. He wants her to come to him where he is waiting. Come ; — - don't delay. Emphasizing into contrasts his wish, not with delay, but with get out of the garden. Now * Elements, <£c. -p. 17-18. 284 ENGLISH VERSE. Eiiglisli metre, as I have tried to show, is framed hy means of the logically significant words. Not, however, that I take logical here to mean discursive or formal reasoning, opposed to imagina- tive, hut in the large sense of containing a rational meaning. Perceptive and imaginative logic is the logic of poetry ; and this must never be lost sight of. I suspect that it is Mr. Ruskin's bad prosody which leads him to fall into this very error, in criti- cising another passage from Mr. Tennyson. He quotes the following stanza from In Memoriam : " Or that the past will always wdn A glory from its being far, And orb into the perfect star We saw not, when we moved therein." Then he says, " If the reader has intelligence enough to put the accent on the or, and he of being, the verse comes right;" &c. My intelligence is not enough, I confess, to make me put the accent on the he of being, though it is adequate to the or. To put a stress on the he of being is to make logic of the verse, and bad logic into the bargain. The true stress is omfar. That gives an imaginative picture of the receding past. Whereas to lay stress on being is to give an argument for the past win- ning a glory, and a bad argument to boot, because ENGLISH VERSE. 285 much of the past is very near, yesterday for in- stance. Coming to lines of four stresses, we have, for instance, from Clough's Qua cursum ventus : " At dead of night their sails were filled, And onward each rejoicing steered — Ah, neither blame, for neither willed, Or wist, what first with morn appeared !" From Wordsworth's Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle : " He hath flung aside his crook. And hath buried deep his book ; Armour rusting in his halls On the blood of Clifford calls." In Scott's Lord of the Isles we have lines of four stresses mixed with lines of three : " Merrily, merrily bounds the bark, She bounds before the gale, The mountain breeze from Een-na-darch Is joyous in her sail." Systems of lines of four stresses, rhyming in coup- lets for the most part, but with many variations on this form, are the metre so often used by Scott and Byron, and recently by Conington in his noble ver- sion of the jEneid, and with distinct consciousness of the princii^le of stress by Coleridge in his Chr'is- tahel : •286 ENGLISH VERSE. " 'Tis the middle of night hj the castle clock, And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock, Tu-whit ! Tu-whoo ! And hark, again ! tlie crowing cock. How drowsily it crew." Lines of three stresses do not fall into two mem- bers, nor yet, strictly speaking, do lines of two; though even in these we see the principle of response still preserved. Lines of three and of two stresses are more properly members of lines, than fall lines themselves, though even in the members the struc- tural principle of a complete verse is discernible. Stress and response are the principles of both. Mr. Browning's Misconceptions is an instance of stanzas of three-stressed lines, ending with couplets of four-stressed lines : " This is a spray the Bird clung to. Making it blossom with pleasure, Ere the high tree-top she sprung to, Fit for her nest and her treasure. Oh, what a hope beyond measure Was the poor spray's, which the flying feet hung to, — So to be singled out, built in, and sung to !" Instances of lines of two stresses are the (7oro;tac7i in Scott's Lady of the Lake : " He is gone on the mountain. He is lost to the forest. Like a summer- dried fountain, When our need was the sorest." e^c. ENGLISH VERSE. 287 Or the Pibroch of Donald Dhu : " Come as the winds come, when Forests are rended ; Come as the waves come, when IS^avies are stranded:" &c. •Or Mr. Matthew Arnokl's swiftly moving verses at the end of his Empecloclcs,— Sind beautiful verses .they are : '• Xot here, Apollo ! Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea, Where the moon-silver'd inlets Send far their light voice Up the still vale of Thisbe, speed, and regoice." Usage of a totally different character is met with in Mr. Browning's After, where lines of two stresses ■are found alternating with lines of three : " Take the cloak from his face, and at first Let the corpse do its worst." &c. This is in fact the same metre as in the Saul, only with each line broken up into two, as indeed the Saul was originally printed, in Bells and Pomegra- nates. The second member taken by itself is a line of two stresses. Another instance, the rhythm of which again is 288 ENGLISH VERSE. quite different in character, is found in some exqui- site verses by Mr. Rossetti, translated from Italian of liis own, on the rhythm of which their rhythm is moulded. They are a song inserted in his poem Tlie Last Confession^ and begin thus : " La hella donna Piangendo disse : * Come son fisse Le stelle in cielo I Quel fiato anelo Dello stanco sole, Quant o m' assonna ! E la luna, macchiata Come uno specclrio LogoTO e vecchio, — Faccia q.ffa?mata, Che cosa vuole T " " She wept, sweet lady, And said in weeping : ' What spell is keeping The stars so steady % Why does the power Of the sun's noon-hour To sleep so move me % And the moon in heaven, Stained where she passes As a worn-out glass is, — Wearily driven, Why walks she above me ?' " It is in metres of this kind, and in what are ENGLISH VERSE. 289 called lyric metres generally, that the practical influ- ence of the "new prosody" will be felt, and that by reason of the new attention paid to ''natural quan- tity and accent." In these particulars it is, I think, undeniable that there is room for great improvement, that the ear of even the best rnetrists permits itself to be satisfied too easily. Take for instance the third line of Scott's Coronach, ''Like a summer-dried fountain." Dried is both a word of naturally long quantity, and as used here has a certain necessary logical stress, and yet it is used as an unstressed syllable. Accord- ingly the line does not wholly satisfy the ear ; there is felt to be a hitch somewhere ; and this is no doubt owing to the word dried, for what reason we must try to make out. Again in the two stanzas quoted from Mr. Mat- thew Arnold, there is a perceptible difference in smoothness between the two, particularly if we take the lines (as I, however, do not) to consist of a fixed number of stresses or feet formed by stresses. The w'ord meet in the second line, and the word down at the end of the third, in the first stanza, are hitches in the smoothness. Both words, it will be observed, are not only long in quantity, but have, as here used, a certain logical stress also. Yet they are used u 200 ENGLISH VEPvSE. where wlioll^y unstressed sj^lables ^vould be better. In the second stanza tlie word ligJit, in the second line, is the only word upon which even a shadow of uncertainty hangs. The second stanza, then, is far smoother than the first. The hitch, as I have called it, in both these cases was pointed out to me and accounted for as above by the writer of London Snoiv in the new prosody, on my quoting the verses to him. And at this point it is, that the new atten- tion to *' natural quantity and accent" will make its influence practically felt, in my opinion, by sharpen- ing our ear, refining its sensibility, and thus setting up a higher standard of attainment. There is nevertheless a great difference between the two things to which attention is thus newly directed, I mean, natural quantity and natural accent or stress, inasmuch as English verse is founded on the one and is not founded on the other. Saying that English verse is founded on stress is of course totally different from saying that it consists of feet founded on stress. Neither does it consist (as I maintain) of feet founded on stress, nor is the num- ber or the weight of the stresses fi,rcd in any Eng- lish verse ; but their normal number and weight are always liable to be overridden for the purpose of poetical expression, so as to destroy the regularity ENGLISH VERSE. 291 ivhicli would be rigorously necessary if the lines were taken to consist of feet. To show this, take the following stanzas from. Mr. Matthew Arnold's lines called Parting : " Blow, ye winds ! lift me with you ! I come to the wild. Fold closely, i^ature ! Thine arms round thy child. To thee only God granted A heart ever new : To all always open ; To all always true." The normal number of stresses to a line is here two. But are we to say that the first line in each stanza is faulty because it has four, though not equally weighty, stresses ? Are we to say, that the poet is •composing in English anapassts, two to the line, and require him to keep closely to that form and number of feet, except where the laws of inversion and sub- stitution (whatever they may be) permit him to de- viate? Is the first line faulty because Blow, yc iclncls ! is not an anapaest, nor a legitimate substitute for one ? I at least cannot believe it. On the other hand, what is rigorousl}^ necessary in these lines is this, — a stressed syllable at the end of the second ■and fourth lines in each stanza, and an unstressed 292 ENGLISH YERSE. syllable at the end of the first and third. That is- necessar}^ to realise the character of the rhythm. Now apply this criticism to the lines before- quoted. It will, I think, justify the line, " Are haunts meet for thee," because meet will then fairly receive a half-stress, wuth additional clearness to the meaning, and with- out injury to the rhythm ; this half-stress being- invited to be laid on it by the long quantity of the- word. On the other hand, the same criticism will not,. I think, justify *' But where Helicon breaks down," because down, which is not only long in quantity but has a half-stress, which, as the essential supple- ment to breaks, completing the image, it cannot shake off, interrupts the flow of the rhythm at the yery point where it is absolutely required to be swifts Again, it will not, I think, justify Scott's *'Like a summer-dried fountain," because to place a half-stress on dried (unlike that on meet) adds nothing to the poetic meaning; the full stress on summer is quite sufficient, snmnier- dried being a single word, just as cannot is a single' •word, Avhich, even when the negation in it is in- ENGLISH VERSE. 293 tended to be emphasized, still has the stress on the iirst syllable. Yet the long quantity of dried invites us to lay a half-stress on it; we find ourselves em- barrassed; asking ourselves whether summer-dry ■would not do as well ; a hesitation fatal to the en- joyment of the verse. We see, then, from these three cases, that it is not the length of doivn and dried, but the stress which their length invites us to lay on them, that makes them faulty; length, however, not being the only reason for our laying the stress. Quantity, therefore, though not the foundation, is a condition which must be reckoned with in English versifica- tion. It is so in virtue of its being a natural cha- racteristic inherent in uttered speech. Let us see some more of its relations to stress. Stress falling on a naturally short syllable gives it either length or weight, which is equivalent to length ; falling on a naturally long syllable gives it weight in addition ; and to abstain from laying stress on a long syllable is to make it more or less equiva- lent to a short one. But natural quantity has dis- tinctions of its own also, which are always present. These are of tv/o kinds, quantity of the vowel sounds, -as in like and lick ; and quantity by position of vowels before, or say rather either before or after. 294 ENGLISH VEnSE. cousonauts. A Towel sound mixed up with mucb consonantal sound requires a comparative!}^ long time to utter; and so also, though for a different reason, namely habitual usage, does a long vowel sound, as the ec sound in jeet, compared to the I sound mfit. Take for instance, to show the result of this, the word I'lhe in the second and third stanzas of Shelley's Sensitive Plant : " And the Spring arose on the garden fair. Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere ; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast Eose from the dreams of its wintry rest. But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness. Like a doe in the noon-tide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant." What I wish to remark is, that Wee in both places is naturally long, but absence of stress permits it to be used as short. Still the effect is not so good as if it were naturally a short syllable. And that quantity is really the reason of this is evident, because there is a difference in length between the two cases. In the first stanza it is longer than in the second. AYhy ? Because in the first stanza it has length hy j)osition as well as by its own vowel sound. It ends ENGLISH TERSE. 295 Tvitli a consonant itself, and stands before another word which begins with one. I argue therefore that close attention to natural quantity is an indispensable condition of good metrical writing, notwithstanding that quantity is not the principle on which it is con- structed. In a language so full of consonantal sound as the Enghsh, however, it is impossible to carry this attention so far as to fulfil the rules of Greek and Latin, in quantity by position. The little word and, even when standing before a vovrel, the words of and if, when coming as they so often must before conso- nants, and many similar cases, show the impractic- ability of carrying attention to quantity to that length. But in theory there is no objection whatever to carrying it to the greatest extent possible; the principle of the versihcation remains thereby intact, and the farther it can be carried the more stable and comprehensive will that principle be shown to be. Attention to the natural quantity of vowel sounds is always within our reach, and is a distinguishing mark of good versification. Take Mr. Tennyson's verses In the Valley of Cauteretz. The normal structure is of six stresses to the line, but this is overridden . in three cases, lines 2, 8, and 10. At the same time not a syllable is " slurred ;" indeed 296 ENGLISH YERSE. the distinct way in which short unstressed syllables contribute to the rhythm, e.g. icas as in line 8, con- stitutes one of its marked beauties : *' All along the valley, stream that flashest white, Deepening thy voice with the deepening of the night, All along the valley, where thy waters flow, I walk'd with one I loved two and thirty years ago. All along the valley while I walk'd to-day. The two and thirty years were a mist that rolls away ; For all along the valley, down thy rocky bed Thy living voice to me was as the voice of the dead, And all along the valley, by rock and cave and tree. The voice of the dead was a living voice to me." In all the various metres which we have now examined, it will be evident, I think, that the im- mense variety of effect produced is derived solely from the different ways of handling one and the same principle, that of responsive or recurring stress, which is the animating principle of English verse ; though it also permits and even, as it were, engrafts on itself, the further purpose of satisfying the sense of quantity, as a counsel of perfection. In doing this, however, it does not make or introduce /ce^ into the verse ; if it did it could only be to unmake them again. Feet can be used in scanning English mea- sures, only on the theory that quantity and not stress is the vital principle of the verse. Then we should ENGLISH VERSE. 297 liave a set of rigid metres, to wliicli a language 'which moves by stress woukl have to conform. Metre '^voulcl then give law to poetry, instead of poetry to jmetre. It is in vain to say that the laws of quantified metre may be so expounded as not to fetter the movements of the language. The movements of the heavenly bodies may, I believe, be expressed by •cycles and epicycles and other terms of the Ptolemaic astronomy ; but this cannot prove the Ptolemaic astronomy to be the true one. So in verse, the ■quantifying critics may enlarge, as it were, their boundaries, and even go the length of dividing, with Edgar Allan Poe,* the duration of one '^ long" sylla- ble into no less than six parts, so as to make " short" syllables of five diflferent degrees of shortness, the longest less than a " long" syllable. Yet this does not and cannot show that quantity is the principle of JEnglish verse. It shows only that the quantifying theory finds some real principle efficiently at work in English verse, to the results of which it must accom- modate itself, as the Ptolemaic system to those of the real principle of gravitation. This has always been the case from the beginning. James L, who is -a most strict regularist, in his Essaycs of a Prcntisc * In his Essay on The Rationale of Verse. 298 ENGLISH YEHSE. in the Divine Art of Poesijr kno^\^ notliing of ana- jytests. Metres wliicli employ what were afterwards called anapiBsts lie calls timhUng metres, and admits onl}' alternate long and short syllables into metro proper. Even Poo is satisfied with six, — spondee, trochee, iambus, anapaest, dactyl, and caesura (or long- syllable). Mr. Euskin we have seen has trine-ana- piest and trine-dactyl, probably because he remem- bered lines like Campbell's in the Battle of the Baltic, *" Hearts of oak 1' our captain cried ; when each gun," &c. which he would be called upon to scan. So he add& his epicycle and scans them accordingly. t Of course I am not saying that Englishmen can- not compose in metres based on quantity. No doubt they can, just as they can write in a foreign lan- guage. What I maintain is, that such metres are alien to English versification, in the same sense as foreign grammar is to English speech. Adopting them prevents the art being w^hat all art ought to be, a conscious and voluntary movement upon the same lines as the artist's nature moves upon spontaneously and instinctively. * rublislicd ill 158(5. He iimst liavo Leen at llie time a young mail of twenty. See tlic work in Mr. Arler's English llcprinU,. vol. viii. t Elements, dc. p. 19. ENGLISH VERSE. 299' The law of stress is thus an organic law, such a law as we should expect a living organism to work by, a law of movement inherent in the movement itself, and accounting, not only for the normal forms which it assumes, but also for the exceptional devia- tions in which it transcends and overrides them. Not as in the quantifying theory of verse, which lays down a rule and imposes a form from without, and then has recourse to the fiction of "poetic license,"' which cannot be explained itself, to explain the deviations ; a license or lawlessness, causeless and irrational, like the notion which some Scholastics have of free-will. Assuming, then, henceforward that the lav/ of stress is the vital and ruling principle of English verse, we have next to see how the guiding takes l^lace, and what dictates the difference of handling, which results, as we have seen, in difference of metres. In two cases, indeed, Lochdey Hall and The Raven, we have already seen that it is the rhe- torical or poetical emphasis wdiich lays hold of the metrical stress, and thereby contributes to frame a. new metrical structure. We are now to see it not only helping to frame the metrical structure in a more marked and important manner than before, but also giving to that structure a new character, invest- 500 ENGLISH VERSE. ing it with an imaginative and poetical atmosphere, over and above the final metrical change. Not that this may not also be learnt from the instances already quoted, but that I have abstained from drawing that lesson from them. Quoting them for one purpose does not imply, that they might not have been •quoted equally well for another. V. It is emphasis that is the soul of verse, and breathes life into the metrical structure. In order to see what means are at its command for this pur- pose, we must go back to the analysis of the elements of spoken sound with which we began. These are duration, pitch, colour, loudness. All these may 'prlma facie be used for the purposes of emphasis or •expression ; but it must be remembered, that they are the less available for those purposes, the more they have been drawn upon for the mere construction of the metro. In English we shall find that duration, which as a natural element is far more fixed than pitch, in all articulate speech, and a particular .modification of colour, which I shall henceforward ENGLISH YERSE. 301 exclusively call tone, are the principal sources of expression. The term expression may he taken as including both a high and low degree of emphasis ; in poetry it is the use of heightened and lowered emphasis to convey emotional and imaginative meaning. This emphasis is a new mode of stress ; and stress we have seen is the combination of colour and loudness. The new mode of stress therefore is a particular modification of the colour which is natural and pecu- liar to the sounds themselves ; it is that added colour or tone given to any sound by emotion. Hitherto the terms colour and tone have been used synony- mously. But now I introduce a distinction by noticing this peculiarity due to emotion ; and the native colour of any sound I shall now call its colour simply; the added or emotional colour I shall call its tone. It is clear that tone is a great source of expres- sion. It is clear also that duration is. It is not only a natural and comparatively fixed attribute of the words in a language, prior to versification, but it is modifiable at pleasure, and like colour it is of two kinds. Duration includes both pause and quantity ; that is to say, we may lengthen or shorten, first, the intervals between syllables or words, and secondly,. S02 ENGLISH VERSE. the time taken hj the syllahles and words themselves. And it is clear that doing so contributes to purposes of emphasis. It remains to consider pitch. This is not avail- .ahle in English for purposes of poetical expression. If it were available in English verse at all, it would have been employed in metrical construction as the modifier of quantity, and would have had a distinct notation of its own, so that each syllable would have had its own pitch, either fixed, or varying according to some law ; and then raising or lowering the pitch beyond its usual limits would have been emphatic. But in English it cannot be used for emphasis, because it has no fixed home in English words.* Where words of a high or low pitch are emphatic in English, they are so not because of this, but because they have a new tone in their sound. In the same way, changes in loudness may be emphatic, as in emphatic whispers ; but here, too, it is rather as a different tone, than as a different degree of loudness, that the sound has its emphatic quality. So that we may fairly conclude, that tone and duration are the two chief, if not the only, sources of expression * "Laconically, English accent may he defined as fixed force ■and free pitch.'" Mr. Alex. J. Ellis, in Lis paper On the Physical Constituents of Accent and Emphasis. Trans, of Philolog. Soc. for 1873-4, p. 128. ENGLISH VERSE. 303 in Englisli poetry, over and above the simple stress which issues in metrical modifications in the way we have already seen. But between tone and duration there are important differences to be noted. In fact, colour (as distinct from tone) and dura- tion in both its modes, pause and quantity, may be used by skilful artists to enhance the beauty and "harmony of the verse, without in any degree calling in the aid of emotional expression. This latter can only be done by modifying the tone. Here is the really vital point at which poetic imagination, and that conjunction of emotional fire with intellectual 3)ower, which we call fjenlus, make themselves felt. Then we hear Mr. Arnold's "lyrical cry;" which two words, I take it, are the most considerable contribu- tion to the Theory of Style of late years in this country. And at this point, too, it is, that an •analogous power in the reader, capable of being kindled by the poet's imagination, is requisite, and for want of which the higher poetry is a fountain sealed to so many ; a power creative in the poet, but merely appreciative in the reader. The use of pause and quantity has often been insisted on and developed by critics. So also, though not so full}-, has that of colour. Dr. Guest ^ives a large space to the subject in the first Book of 304 ENGLISH VERSE. bis History of English Rhythms. And I nowhere remember to have seen more clearly stated, than by bim, the rationale of the pleasure we derive from the sound being made, as it is called, an echo to the sense, which depends chiefly on the colour of sounds : " If, as is often the case, besides the idea which the usage of language has connected with certain words, there are others which are naturally associated with the sounds- or with the peculiarities of their formation, it is obvious, that the impression on the mind must be the most vivid, when the natural associations can be made to coincide' ■with such as are merely artificial and conventional."'* The importance of colour, again, in the sounds of poetry is insisted on by Professor Sylvester, in his striking little work The Laws of Verse, and is there made the foundation of a sub-branch of poetic theory, to which he gives the name of Chromatic, distin- guishing it from Metric on one side, and from Synectic on the other. And at one place he writes : " There is quite as much room for the exposition of a method of distributing sound as of laying on colour" [in painting], " and indeed the analogy between the two- arts of Versification and Coloring may be demonstrated to exist down to some very minute technical details."f This, though strongly stated, may for aught I * Work cited, vol. i. p. 11. t The Lau's of Verse, p. 41. ENGLISH VERSE. 305 know be strictly correct. At any rate it is difficult to exaggerate the extreme importance of the effect of colour in sounds, and of the affinities and associa- tions connecting them. But it must be remarked, tbat it not only goes no farther than the technical branch of the subject, but does not show how that technical branch, in its colour department, is con- nected with the higher art of poetry as distinct from the art of verse. It does not give the man- ner or point of their connection, does not indicate how the two are organically moulded into one. It does not touch the heart of the subject, any more than the laws of metre, or of pause and quantity, t )uch it. The emotional colour, the tone, is that which, even supposing the perfection of art to have been attained, is not and cannot be given but by the magic touch of that inborn imaginative power, in virtue of which nascitur non Jit is true of poets. Over and above art in all its forms, over and above the varied phases of power known as dramatic, lyric, descriptive, and so on, over and above insight and knowledge, loftiness of conception, and nobility of aim ; over and above all other gifts, yet combining with all and interfused with all, is found this imagi- native power (where it is found at all), giving life X 306 ENGLISH TERSE. and light and unity, and transforming the true into the ideal. The question is, how and at what point is the organic fusion between verse and poetry effected ; how and by using what elements does the imagination of the poet take up, incorporate, and wield, the acquired skill of the artist. In part the answer is that which I have given ; it is by introducing tone. And it is as much the chief business of the appreciative reader to watch for and divine the presence of poetic tone, as it is that of the poet to indicate, by the structure of his verse, where and in what intensity it is pre- sent. Not that it is the whole or anything like the whole of imagination, nor even that it sums up its various ways of working; but it is the point at which imaginative working and technical working coincide, and in which they both have a part ; that point at which the secret mental working of imagination comes, as it were, to the surface, and is embodied in words which can be fixed on by the reader, and dwelt on again and again, and thus afford the inef- faceable evidence of its presence. That is why it is the highest point attainable in a study of verse, which is the technical part of poetry. The imaginative words or sounds conveying emo- tion are indicated, so far as I can see, in one way ENGLISH VERSE. 307 • only, tliough it is a way susceptible of great variety. It is by selecting one or more among the words which have the metrical stress, and making the rhetorical or emphatic stress fall on them, choosing for that purpose v/ords the colour of which is modi- fiable by emphasis into an emotional tone ; as for instance, the deep tone on the word icar in these lines from Coleridge's Kuhla Khan : '' And 'mid that tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war." By this imaginative use of the sound 2car, in con- junction with the other circumstances of the pro- phecy, the mysterious infinity of its foreboded terrors is brought home to the mind. There it is that the emotional element comes in, which interprets the significance of all the rest. The metre requires the verse to be read in a certain way, variable within certain limits ; the rhetorical (which includes the logical) emphasis re- quires the sentence, written in the verse, to be read in a certain way ; and these two conditions, foreseen and combined by one who has a dominant feeling to express, result in the moulding of a verse which has a higher than rhythmical or harmonic beauty alone, a higher than rhetorical beauty alone, being a com- bination of metre, harmony, emotion, and imagery. 308 ENGLISH TERSE. Thus, for instance, in Lear's magnificent out- burst : " I tax not yon, yon elements, with nnkindness ; I never gave you kingdom, called you children, You owe me no subscription. -;:- * -X- But yet I call you servile mini.>3ters, That have with two pernicious daughters join'd Your high engendr'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this." It would be a great mistake, in my opinion, to read this passage with the emphasis, say, on elements in the first line, or on you and you in the second line. On the contrary, the whole efficacy of the first you; and of unkindness in the first line, of kingdom, chil- dren, and suhscription in the second and third, are drawn upon to express Lear's impassioned indigna- tion at his daughter's ingratitude. The emotion, the logic, the rhetoric, the metre, coincide in emphasizing the words indicated. Sometimes repetition is the means employed to fix the emphasis, as in Dante's " Guardami hen : hen so)?, hen son Beairice," though the precise force of the repetition is appa- rently missed by Mr. Rossetti when he translates, "Beliold, even I, even I am Beatrice.""" * Poerns by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, p. 84. ENGLISH VERSE. 309 The point spoken to is not whether the person pre- sent or some one else, hut whether the person pre- sent is or is not Beatrice. Compare Cordelia's jpassionate affirmation, "And so I am, I am."* The necessity of attending to hoth metrical and rhetorical stress, and to their combination, is shown by the hopeless confusion wrought by neglecting it, as in one of the few bad lines in Pope, the famous " Man never is, but always to be blest." The rhythm of this line is desperate, and why ? Because the words which in order to support the antithesis ought to be emphatic, to he, are words which cannot receive the emphatic stress. To, being a mere part of the infinitive mood, cannot have it. Neither can he have it, though it might have it, so far as metre alone goes ; because that would either attribute to to he the meaning of a verb substantive, not an auxiliary, and then the antithesis is exhausted before we come to the word hiest, and when we do come to it we find that the antithesis exhausted is not the antithesis intended by the poet ; or else we go on without pause to the word hlest, reading together to hf hlest, and then we find that a reality in the blessings is suggested, though future, and * King Lear, act iv. sc. 7. 310 ENGLISH TERSE. that is the very thing intended to he denied. To remedy this it would have heeu necessary to insert the word hlcst after is ; — man never Is hiest hut always is to he hlcst ; — which alone hrings out the antithesis hetween heing hlest actually and hlest prospectively. The epigram, so far from satisfying the mind, leaves it struggling in a lahyrinth of confusion. Of course it must not he imagined for a moment, that poets, when writing, use and apply hy ivay of rule the rule of comhining the emotional with the rhetorical and the metrical stress. They use it not as rule hut as a principle. Their proceeding is, I imagine, something of this kind ; they dwell on their suhject-matter, the content of imagery which the}^ want to express, and allow it to fall into rhythmical phrases which the hahit of composing causes to pre- sent themselves spontaneously, according to the laws, of association. These phrases they control and select from, hy reference to their more or less com- plete harmonising with the content of images and the emotions pervading them, and with the musical flow of the verse. They do not say, "Where shall I put the emotional stress ? But they keep rejecting spontaneously offered metrical phrases, until one arises which has the emotional stress rightly placed to their ear and sensihility. The result is positive,. ENGLISH YEESE. 311 but the metliocl in wliicli the emotional stress ope- rates in attaining it is negative, by rejecting the less satisfactory metrical phrases. From this comes the impossibility in many, or rather in most, cases, of pointing out single words upon which the emotional stress falls. For, though emotion and the purpose of expressing it have governed and moulded the structure of the verse, yet their influence is, as it were, distributed over the whole, not concentrated in particular words. Every part must harmonise with the emotion to be expressed, and there must be no stress wrongly laid, that is, in such a way as to inter- fere with that desired expression. As an instance of what I mean, none perhaps can better serve than Coleridge's lines entitled Constancy to an Ideal Object. They are one of the most music- ally rhythmical poems in the language, and the dominant emotion expressed is unmistakable through- out, a brooding and resigned despair ; yet there are few single w^ords or phrases of which we can say, here is where the emotional stress comes in. The lines are few and may be cited in their entirety : " Since all that beat about in Z^ature's range Or veer or vanish, why shouldst thou remain The only constant in a world of change, yearning thought ! that liv'st but in the brain ? 812 FNGLisn versp:. Call to the hours, that in the distance play, The faery people of the future day — Fond thought ! — not one of all that shining swarm Will breathe on thee with life- enkindling breath, Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm, Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death ! Yet still thou haunt'st me ; and though well I see, She is not thou, and only thou art she. Still, still as though some dear embodied good. Some living leve before my eyes there stood, With answering look a ready ear to lend, I mourn to thee and say — ' Ah ! loveliest friend I That this the meed of all my toils might be. To have a home, an English home, and thee !* Vain repetition ! Home and Thou are one. The peacefull'st cot the moon shall shine upon, LuU'd by the thrush and waken'd by the lark. Without thee were but a becalmed bark. Whose helmsman on an ocean waste and wide Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside. And art thou nothing 1 Such thou art, as when The woodman winding westw^ard up the glen At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze. Sees full before him, gliding without tread, An image with a glory round its head ; The enamour'd rustic worships its fair hues, Kor knows he makes the shadow he pursues !" Now what I mean to observe is, that, although we can frequently here trace many an emphatic word, — emotionally emphatic, — yet the stress on these is not so strongly marked in comparison with ENGLISH VERSE. 313 the rest, as to justify us in saying, there is tlie Lome :and seat of the poetry. Every word, every phrase, every transition, is informed and animated by it .also ; and so are the flow and music of the lines one ^nd ail. There is but one expression in the v.diole which is not thus transfigured ; it is one little ex- pression in the first line, before the poetic fire had fully kindled. This is to me, though I may be wrong, the one blemish in this otherwise faultless gem of profoundly imaginative poetry. It is interesting and instructive to compare with this Shelley's well known lines on a kindred inotive, entitled Stan.ms, with the date April 1814, beginning *' Away ! the moor is dark beneath the moon." Here, the emotion w^orks changes in the metrical structure, by var^dng the number, position, and im- portance of the stresses, as in some of the cases examined under the head of metre. The skeleton of the metre is formed by lines of six stresses, fall- ing into two members, and disposed in quatrains, the lines rhyming alternately. The first line varies this structure by having only two stresses in its first member. And the most remarkable of the other variations are, that two other lines have four stresses in the first member ; these lines being the last of 314 ENGLISH VERSE. the fourth and the last of the fifth quatrain, lines which have matter of reflection and comparison to- express, and therefore move with a slower and lengthier tread. In all the rest, the number of the metrical stresses is not altered, but many of them are partially overridden, I need hardly remark with what signal beauty in the result, by the guiding principle of poetic emotion. The frequent use of alliteration, too, both in these lines and those of Coleridge, should not pass unobserved. Alliteration did not cease to be pleasing to the English ear by ceasing to be the structural principle of English metre. But by all good stylists it is used as it ought to be, not indeed sparingly, but unobtrusively, and as an aid to the distribution of the emotional stress. To use it to enforce the metrical stress, or even the logical stress, alone, is an abuse, and tends to make the verse a jingle. So also in tliat portion of Mr. Tennyson's Maud, Avhich may be called the poetical climax of the whole,. I mean that portion which begins : " that 'twere possible After long grief and pain To find the arms of my true love Eound me once again 1" The structural law of the metre changes, in these- ENGLISH VERSE. 315' lines, under the influence of the emotion ; tlie rhythm changes under the poetry. The first line is to he read slowly, with every syllable plainly ex- pressed, but with a strong stress and long duration on the first syllable oi posslUe. The ss sound in that word is itself a sigh. The second line also slowly, with all the words but and emphatic. This leads up to the third line of four distinct stresses separated by single unstressed syllables, showing the vividness of the desired imagery. And the fourth line, of three distinct stresses, is expressive of com- pletion, as if nothing after that were needed. Yet one more instance before quitting this part of the subject, poetic emphasis modifying and mould- ing the metre. It is from Mr. Morris's noble poem of Sigurd. Historically, I imagine, the metre of this poem is a descendant of the Iambic Tetrameter,, and the so-called ballad metre ; formed from it by dropping the fourth stress, which we may see can easily be done from such lines as the first and second (taken together) of the stanza quoted above from The Prophecy of Capys. It thus assumes in Mr. Morris's hands a structure of quite distinct cha- racter, even in his ordinary use of it. It becomes a rhyming couplet of six metrical stresses to the- line : 316 ENGLISH VERSE. •^' Know thou, most mighty of men, that the N'oms shall order all. And yet without thy helping shall no whit of their will befdU."' That is the ordinary structure, the skeleton of the metre, so to speak. It is itself the creature of poetic emphasis. But what I want particularly to notice is a further modification of it, by the same ngency, in the more impassioned passages, where •deep emotion is to be expressed. The six stresses •of the line are now changed to four : ^' Sigurd, my Sigurd, what now shall give me back One w(')rd of thy loving-kindness from the tangle and the wrack V Nothing, I think, can show more clearly than -this the sameness of the principle which runs through the whole structure of English verse and the whole history of its development. Essentially the present case is identical with Milton's change of rhythm by •dropping a syllable, in : " Oft on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off Curfew sound, Over some loide-v'ctter'd sJwre, Swinginrj sloiv loitli sullen roary And with Shelley's dropping not a syllable only, but a stress, in : ENGLISH VERSE. 317 " What, if there no friends will greet ; What, if there no heart will meet His with love's impatient beat ; Wander wheresoe'er he may, Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress In friendship's smile, in love's caress V I know not by what laws of inversion or license- regularists can satisfactorily account for such changes as these. What is the structure to which the poets are supposed to be conforming by these changes, and what is their motive for so conforming to it? ^Yhiii dictated to Shelley to put three stresses only into the line italicised ? VI. But perhaps after all, the glory of English, as a language subservient to the purposes of poetical ima- gination, is not where it employs but where it trans- cends the use of rhyme, in the metre known as Blank Verse, the skeleton of which consists of lines of five stresses. As a vehicle of poetry this metre is un- surpassed, and almost unrivalled; but it is shown to be so only because it has been handled and made "318 ENGLISH VERSE. Avliat it is by writers of consummate genius. With- out Marlowe, without Shakspere, and most of all without Milton, the capacity of English as a poetic medium would never have been displayed. Mar- lowe, not the first to use it, holds in respect to it an analogous position to that which Catullus holds in Latin, with respect to the Latin Hexameter. The full volume and torrent of his verse prepared the way, and exhibited the force, which were afterwards to be followed and applied in the varied dramatic usage of Shakspere, and the majestic harmonies of Milton ; just as Virgil's sonorous and stately flow was preluded and prepared by the impetuous volume of Catullus : " nimis optato sceclorum tempore nati Heroes, salcete, Dcum genus ! lona mater ! Vos ego scepe meo vos carmine compellaho." -X- * ■"- And as to Marlowe, take that famous passage on the power of Beauty,* of which I transcribe the be- ling : <' — What is beauty, saitli my sufferings, then 1 If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts, Their minds and muses on admired themes ; If all the heavenly quintessence they still * First Part of Tainhurlainc, act v. sc. 2. ENGLISH VERSE. 310 From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit ; If these had made one poem's period, And all combin'd in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads, One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest." * * * It was almost inevitable, as we can now see after the event, that the line of five stresses, that is, a line not so long as to be necessarily broken up into two lines, and yet not too short to admit of serious and weighty matter being expressed in it ; a line, too, of an uneven number of stresses, so that the position of its dividing break was easily variable ; should be that in which the fetters of rhyme were thrown aside, the lines put together in paragraphs whose length depended not on the metre but on the meaning, and the whole trust placed, for beauty and poetic empha- sis, not on the metre as defined by rule, but on the variations of pause and quantity, and on the intro- duction of emotional tone governing those varia- tions. These are the characteristics of blank verse ; and it is clear that in some sort it is a return to the sys- tem of Old English versification, like Ciedmon's, as Dr. Guest points out ; but it is on a far higher level, 320 ENGLISH YEr.SE. having rliyme, and all that was to be learnt from its use, no longer ahead of it but behind it, as a ful- crum and foundation. The use of quantity, so far as it was compatible with the genius of English, now replaced the definite metrical beats, which rhyme had been employed to accentuate. The stressed S3^1- lables, upon which the tone was to fall, were now in- dicated by pause and quantity, and by the position of the dividing break in each line. Rhyme was a guide no longer. But that which is the glory of blank verse, as a vehicle of poetry, is also its danger and its difficulty. Its freedom from the fetters of rhyme, the infinite variability of the metrical structure of its lines, the absence of couplets and stanzas, — all assimilate it to prose. It is the easiest of all conceivable metres to write ; it is the hardest to write well. Its metrical requirements are next to nothing; its poetical re- quirements are infinite. It was Byron, I believe, who remarked, that it differed from other metres in this, that whereas they required a certain proportion of lines, some more, some less, to be good, in blank verse every line must be good. Now in what does this goodness consist ? Or, in other words, how is poetry in blank verse distinguished from poetry in rhythmical prose ? ENGLISH VERSE. 321 The answer depeuds on what has been ah-eady ■said. The introduction of the emotional tone, in this case in combination with the middle break, with pause, with quantity, is that which gives its metrical •character to blank verse ; I mean, is that which makes it metre and not merely measured prose. It is something not so much superinduced upon an underlying metre, as a prior condition of its being metre at all. It makes and does not merely employ the verse. There is indeed a skeleton of metre below it; there are the five stresses and middle break which go to a line ; but these without the poetic tone make lines which are not '' good" in Byron's phrase ; in fact, they make measured bits of prose. Thus blank verse, the glory of English, is not so much the in- strument as the creature of poetry. If this be so, it is futile to talk of rules for the construction of blank verse, such rules, I mean, as to the position of the middle break, the places of the stress, the places where an " iambus" may be re- placed by a "trochee" or a " tribrach," an "anapaBst" or a "dactyl," how many unstressed syllables are admissible between the stressed ones, or whether two stressed syllables may come together. Of course they may, if the meaning and the ear demand it. How else are we to scan the well known line, Y 822 ENGLISH VERSE. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;" or was Shakspere not writing blank verse here ? Yet what are the feet in it ? Is Friends a foot ? Is Bomans a foot? Or is Friends Ro one foot, and' mans conn another ? Is there a metrical stress on vien and me ? And if not, is it because a " trochee" is admissible in the fourth place, and a " pyrrhic"' (shall we call it) in the third ? But let us take an instance from Milton : " Eegions they pass'd, the mighty regencies Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones In their triple degrees ; regions to which All thy dominion, Adam, is no more Than what this garden is to all the earth," S:c. Paradise Lud, Y. 748. The line which in this passage threatens to approach prose is *' In their triple degrees ; regions to which." Why is this, and what saves it ? My account of it is this. The first member of the line is intended to be read slowly, and with a pause after degrees, to make up in quantity for its diminished weight. It should be read with syllables of equal but slight, stress, the stress being distributed equally over all. The intention of the poet, I apprehend, is to mark the words as an explanation, thrown in by the way. ENGLISH VERSE. 323 of tlie previous magnificent and emphatic lines to which it serves as a foil, — " the mighty regencies Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones." Slightly different is the motive of the rhythm in another case, which is otherwise somewhat similar : " Po hoth ascend In the visions of God : It was a hill Of Paradise the highest," &c. Paradise Lost, XI. 376. Pause after God. But there is a stress on the first syllable of visions and on God ; not an equal distri- hution as in the former instance ; but still not such a stress as to shorten either I)i or the last syllable of visions. In both cases there is slow reading of the first member of the line, and a pause after it. The two emphatic stresses in the present case convey, as it was no doubt intended they should, the impression of mystery and solemnity. Again, to take a case where repetition is em- ployed : " In his own image he Created thee, in the image of God Express, and thou becam'st a living soul." Paradise Lost, YII. 526. Pause after tJiee, where the line divides. Pause 324 ENGLISH VERSE. again after tJic. Then emphatic stress and long quantity on the first syllable of imarie. There is a passage beautiful and famous, and containing a line the scanning of which has been much discussed : " 'Tis true, I am that Spirit unfortunate Who, leagu'd with millions more in rash revolt. Kept not my happy station, but was driv'n With them from bliss to the bottomless Deep." Paradise Regained, I. 358. The pause and emphasis in the first line need not here be pointed out. It is the last line that is the metrical cnkv. We have a similar ending again in " Eternal wrath Burn'd after them to the bottomless pit." Paradise Lost, YI. 865. Pause in both cases after the division of the line. Then another shorter pause after the. Then strong and emphatic stress on the first syllable oi bottomless, and a slight one on Deejh ov int. The first pause calls attention to what follows. The second, slighter, pause keeps us hovering on the brink ; the emphatic stress gives the infinity of the fall. Now my contention is, that in these cases the poetry makes the metre, and does not find it ready made. It finds a skeleton which it clothes and ani- mates ; and not till that is done is there metre at all, ENGLISH VERSE. 325 but only prose. Those who scan blank verse by feet must conceive it to be made metrical by its own laws of structure, previous to its use by the poet, just as most rhyming metres practically are. But then they are hard put to it to show how such lines as those cited conform to the metrical laws which they lay down. This view is nothing more than the development of principles learnt from Coleridge and more particu- larly, in application to Milton's verse, from De Quin- cey. And though those two critics are not much acknowledged in unmethodical England (though I suspect they are often plundered without acknow- ledgment), all the more is the need that some one should endeavour, however feebly, to hand on their torch, and say who lighted it. It was Milton's classically trained ear and famili- arity with Greek and Latin poetry that enabled him, though it would not have enabled any one not en- dowed with Milton's sensibility, to make the glorious poetical and metrical use which he did, in his great poem, of quantity and pause. This use he carried still farther in his Paradise Regained, a poem of marvellous ease, smoothness, and regularity in the ordinary flow of its verse, and in which the skill of the artist seems to have reached its acme. But there 326 ENGLISH VERSE. are lines occasionally (not frequently) interspersed, in which the poet seems to be delighting in his skill as a metrist for its own sake, using his fine percep- tion of quantity to frame lines, the irregularity of which is not justified by the emotional tone, and thus overstepping the limits within which the use made of pause and quantity is recommended to an English ear. I refer to such lines as : " Whom thus answer'd the Arch- Fiend, now undisguis'd" Book I. 357. *' Little suspicious to any King ; but now" Book II. 82. " After forty days fasting had remain' d" Book 11. 243. " And with these words his temptation pursu'd" Book 11. 405. In lines like these Milton seems to me to bo taking pleasure in playing upon the newly discovered capacities of his instrument, and making that artistic pleasure his principal end. Which may go far to explain, what seems otherwise almost inexplicable, the higher admiration which Milton himself is said to have entertained for the later compared with the earlier of hie two great poems. And certainly, if we look at the language alone, apart from the poetical value of the meaning conveyed, no verse can be more perfect. It is a medium of utter lucidity and trans- ENGLISH VERSE. 327 iparency, conveying the minutest flexions of the thought, without distorting or for an instant arrest- ing them ; so that, except for such lines as those I have mentioned, it is for the moment self-effaced in performing the office of a vehicle, and we perceive that it is beautiful only on recurring to it and reflect- ing on it. Partly, too, I imagine, Milton's preference may be explained by his satisfaction with the logical neatness of the conception which Paradise Regained embodies, namely, that as ''by the disobedience of one" Paradise was lost, so precisely " by the obe- dience of one," under a similar temptation, it was (virtually) regained. It is not the amount of liberties or poetic license, so called, which may be taken with the metre, that determines our judgment as to the beauty of the verse. It is rather the purpose sought and attained, by a free metrical handling, that is decisive. Justi- fied by poetic purpose, hardly any so-called license is inadmissible, either in dealing with stresses, or in dealing with the middle break. As to stresses, we have a line of four equally emphatic stresses, over- riding the five of the " skeleton," with the happiest -effect, in " Passion and apathy, and glory and shame." Paradise Lost, II. 564. 328 ENGLISH VERSE. We have a line of six lialf-stresses and tv/O' emphatic ones, in the famous line of monosjdlables, " Eocks, caves, lakes, fens, hogs, dens, and shades of death." Paradise Lost, II. 621. The six half-stresses are on the six first words ; the two emphatic ones on shades and death. Again, in the matter of the middle break. All but invariably we trace, in every line, a point up to which the line seems to rise, and after which it falls, with an undulating motion like a wave, inseparable from the ocean on which it heaves and swells. The second member corresponds to and satisfies the expectation roused by the first. The place where this break occurs varies, in Milton, with the meaning conveyed by the verse. The usual places are either after the word containing the second, or after that containing the third stress, as for instance, after the word containing the second stress, in the majestic line, *' Warring in Heaven against Heaven's matchless King." Paradise Lost, 1\. 41. But these places are not invariable. We have it after the word containing the first stress in the line, *' Father ! gracious was that word which clos'd" Paradise Lost, III. 144. ENGLISH VERSE. 82^ We have it again in the same Book after the word containing the fourth stress, in " Found out for mankind under wrath ! Thou" Paradise Lost, III. 275. and, " Xo sooner had the Ahnighty ceas'd, but all" Paradise Lost, III. 344. And sometimes we find it obliterated altogether, as in the transcendent words " Immutable, Immortal, Infinite," Paradise Lost, III. 373. a line in which the middle break is gone, and instead of it the line falls into three portions depending on three emphatic stresses, yet loses not its unity, but moves forward, as it were, with one irresistible and level sweep. VII. It will possibly be worth while, now that our brief survey of English verse rhymed and unrhymed is completed, to see whether we can get any light from the principles employed in it, upon what have been called experiments, or the reproduction of Greek and Latin metres in English. This is at any rate an attempt to enrich and enlarge the field of English S30 ENGLISH VERSE. verse, and from the use made of the principle of halanced quantity by Milton and others might seem to promise much success. Now there are various ways in which Greek and Latin metres may be made the foundation of English verse, which verse ma}" therefore in various degrees deserve the title of a reproduction of them. First, they may be used to take hints from, as regards rhythm and flow, so as to introduce new forms into English verse, which nevertheless remains unmis- takably English, so that it would seem as natural and native a growth of English organisms as any in the language, to people unacquainted with its foreign source. Secondly, the rhythm in which an Englishman reads, not that in which he scans, Greek and Latin metres may be directly imitated, substituting stress not for quantity but for accent, as in Southej's Sap- phics : " Swift through the sky the vessel of the Suras Sails up the fields of ether like an Angel. Eicli is the freight, Vessel, that thou bearest, Beauty and virtue." (^'c. Thirdly, the rhythm in which Greek and Latin ■metres are scanned may be reproduced, but without attending to the laws of Greek and Latin quantity by ENGLISH VERSE. 331 position, and substituting stress for long quantity. This is the way in -wlncli so-called English Hexam- eters and other forms of verse, such as Sapphics and Hendecasyllahics, are commonly written, as by Coleridge, by Charles Lamb in his Hendecasyllahics, by Longfellow in his Evangeline, by Clough in his Botlde nwdi Amours de Voyage, and by Mr. Swinburne in his Sapphics and Hendecasyllahics, though Mr. Swinburne's come very closely indeed to the strict metre of the next class. Fourthly, a close observance of the laws of Greek and Latin quantity by position may be added to the imitations belonging to the third head, whereby both English stress and Greek and Latin quantity by posi- tion are preserved, with the result of producing the '2 EXGLISI-I VERSE. souantal sounds, liquid and rolling, or close and hard. Consider, for instance, the variety of tone which may be introduced by preachers into the word Lord, chiefly by varying the number of o's in it, according to the degree of culture which they sup- pose in their audience. A cultured audience will be satisfied with two at the utmost ; few are so un- cultured as to endure six. The short i sound conjoined with t and k sounds is imitative of smallness. Thus in Mr. Tennyson's lines, to indicate the smallness of the beginnings of a ruin afterwards to spread : '^ The little rift within the lover's lute, Or little pitted speck in garner'd fruit." S sounds are usually soft, and in conjunction with liquids, that is, with I, m, n, r sounds, lend them- selves to imitations of musical smoothness. As in Mr. Matthew Arnold's exquisite couplet, describing a liquid voice : " Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn ?" We have already seen the metrical character of Scott's couplet : " For down came the Templars, like Cedron in flood, And dyed their long lances in Saracen blood." ENGLISH VERSE. 353 It is also an instance of d alliteration ; and besides this, the d which closes each line is imitative of grim resolution, when sounded with the tongue pressed hard against the teeth. The softness and stillness of s sounds is shown in Pope's famous couplet : " Lo ! where Maeotis sleeps, and hardly flows The freezing Tanais thro' a waste of snows." The Dunciad, Book YIII. 8. If it is permissible to take instances from Latin, we may find in Catullus two of the softest lines ever written, and the effect principally owing to the use of s ; " Ut flos in sejjtis secretus nascitur liortls" Carm. LXII. v. 30. and: *' Orannonisqtie domos ac mmnia Larisscea" Carm, LXIV. v. 36. There is a beautiful little poem contributed to the Dublin University Kottahos, vol. i. No. 4, under the signature B., entitled Sustinet CEnonen desemissc Paris. It is a translation from the English of the late Professor Aytoun. Great use is made both of colour and tone in this little poem; for instance, the sighing sound of the emphatic antepenultimate syllable of inhospita, in the stanza : AA '3hi ENGLISH YERSE. *' Ilhtm linquef precoVy navis, inhospUa Terra ; llnque, precor, nullus tibi vinhn Pes signarit arenas Flavas, fiuctihus uvidasP In the stanza before tliis, Avliicli is the opening one, ■sve have a similar use made of the melancholy sound of iifj in certain combinations : '' Navis, Priamidem pjer freta qum vol as Nobis ahripiens perjida perjidum, Qua sola Oiquora plcinguiit, Ulum dcsere in insula /" Plangunt is imitative of the melancholy sound of Avaves. Again we have this same combination, only vdth g soft, in a similar connection, in Mr. Tenny- son's stanza : "A still salt pool, lock'd in with bar.5 of sand, Left on the shore ; that hears all night The plunging seas draw backward from tLe land Their moon-led waters white." N sounds readily lend themselves to melancholy eiTects, whether alone or in combination. Greek is full of them, occurring frequently with long vowels, as in plural genitives. "\Yc may thus often discover such effects in Greek verse, though we cannot be sure that they were sought or consciously retained by the poet for the sake of the effect. For instance, ENGLISH VERSE. 355 in the Odyssey, Book XIII. v. 187-9, where Ulysses awakes on the coast of Ithaca : 7)071 ^'h^ aTTiOJV. Or again, in Pindar, Isthmian IV. 50 sqq., where the n sound seems to dominate the whole of an epode, heing prepared by the concluding line of the preceding antistrophe : ruv aitsipurc/jv ydp ayvojffroi ciojitai. Ep. S6riv a:p