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ESSAYS AND PHANTASIES.
T:r)iNBi'K(iH: printed by
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO., PAUL'S WORK
AND CHANDOS STREET. LONDON
ESSAYS
PHANTASIES
TAMES THOMSON,
AUTHOR OF
THK CITY OF URFAinUL NIGHT, AND OTHKR POEMS
".vanf's storv, weddah and OM-EL-BONAIN,
AND OTHER POEMS."
L O N D O N :
REEVES AND TURNER,
196 STKANU.
1S81.
CONTENTS.
A Lady of Sorrow :
Introductory Note
I. The Angel
II. The Siren
III. The Shadow
Proposals for the Speedy Extinction of
Misery
Bumble, Bumbledom, Bumbleism
Per Contra: The Poet, High Art, Genius
Indolence : A Moral Essay
A National Reformer in the Dog-Days
An Evening with Spenser
Open Secret Societies
Sayings of Sigvat
A Word for Xantippe
Sympathy
Liberty and Necessity
A Walk Abroad .
The Fair of St. Sylvester
A Note on Forster's Life of Swift
A Note on George Meredith .
On the Worth of Metaphysical Systems
A Few Words on the System of Spinoza
In our Forest of the Past
Evil
I
4
lo
i6
51
104
124
142
166
177 \
190
213 J
220
228~\
250
251^
269
281
2S9
296
303^
A LADY OF SORROW.
1S62, 1S64.
/f
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
About three years before his death I received from my
friend Vane certain manuscripts with the somewhat fierce
Efivoy : —
From the midst of the fire I fling
These arrows of fire to you :
If they sing, and burn, and sting,
You feel how I burn too ;
But if they reach you there
Speed-spent, charred black and cold,
The fire burns out in the air.
The Passion will not be told.
From these papers I have selected and now edit the fol-
lowing piece, which embodies the ideas then supreme in his
mind with relation to the question of the immortality of the
human soul. He was at that time wont to declare that he
believed in the soul's immortality as a ^Materialist believes
in the immortality of matter : he believed that the universal
soul subsists for ever, just as a Materialist believes that uni-
2 /. LADY or SORROW.
versal matter subsists for ever, without increase or decrease,
growth or decay ; he no more believed in the immortality
of any particular soul than the Materialist believes in the
immortality of any particular body. The one substance is
eternal, the various forms are ever varying.
That this composition is true in relation to the author,
that it is genuine, I have no doubt ; for the poor fellow
had large gifts for being unhappy. But is it true in rela-
tion to the world and general Hfe? I think true, but not
the whole truth. There is truth of winter and black night,
there is truth of summer and dazzling noonday. On the
one side of the great medal are stamped the glory and
triumph of life, on the other side are stamped the glory and
trium.ph of death ; but which is the obverse and which the
reverse none of us surely knows. It is certain that both
are inseparably united in every coin doled out to us from
the universal mintage. The night-side of nature has been
the theme of literature more often than the day-side, simply
because literature, as a rule, is the refuge of the miserable ;
I mean genuine, thoughtful, and earnest literature ; litera-
ture as an end in and for itself, not merely as a weapon to
fight with, a ware to sell, a luxury to enjoy. The happy
seldom write for writing's sake ; they are fully employed in
living. " Were a God asked to recite his life, he would
do so in two words," is a grand truth in Le Centaure of
Maurice de Guerin. For health is simple, always one and
the same, while the forms and variations of disease are
innumerable and complex.
He lives full life who never thinks of life ;
He is half dead who ponders life and death.
A LADY OF SORROW. 3
Mystery is but misery dissolved in thought, the intolerable
concrete rendered abstract and vague.
The triune Lady of Sorrow must have derived from De
Quincey, whose influence is obvious in other respects.
But why did the author take such a roundabout way of
expressing his ideas ? Some men see truth and express
truth best in imagery and symbol, others in syllogism and
formula. Both modes are good done well, both bad done
ill. And they are constitutional. The artist will adhere
to his pencil, the anatomist to his scalpel, remonstrate and
exhort we ever so much.
( 4 )
PART L — THE ANGEL.
" Come as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A visitant from radiant climes,
And smooth my hair and kiss my brow,
And ask : My love, why sufferest thou? "
" Come down for a moment, O come ! come serious and mild
And pale, as thou wert on this earth, thou adorable child !
Or come as thou art, with thy sanctitude, triumph and bliss
For a garment of glory about thee ; and give me one kiss,
One tender and pitying look of those pure loving eyes,
One word of solemn assurance and truth that the soul vvith its
love never dies ! "
I LIVED in London, and alone. For although I had many
work-fellow acquaintances, and of these a few were very
friendly, I had no intimate relatives near me and no bosom
friend. No bosom friend, were it not one whom I scarcely
knew whether to call friend or enemy ; she who came
suddenly (though indeed her advent had been long before
announced) in the brilliant morning of a joyous summer
holiday, to dwell with me and possess me ; permitting no
rivals nor any approach to rivalry, absorbing every thought
and feeling to her devotion, and compelling even the dreams
and visions of both day and night to worship her ; the
darkly beautiful Queen, the disinherited Titaness, the Pythia
of an abandoned and ruined shrine, the wild, passionate,
tender-hearted, desolate, sorcery-smitten Sorceress ; Sorrow,
the daughter of Love and Death. I call her queen, for
queen in truth at first she was, royal as Persephone herself,
and not one of the many ladies of her court. For Death is
A LADY OF SORROW. 5
a great rival, magnanimous in the instant of his crudest
triumph ; sending ever to companion those whom he has
bereaved of their darUngs no menial, but this his own
beloved daughter. She is mournful, she is desolate, she is
stern, she is often insane ; in her queenliest beauty she is
terrible, "as an army w^ith "banners" defeated, as a noonday in
eclipse ; but she is always great-hearted, always high-minded :
pique, malice, querulousness, perversity, and all the meaner
emotions of loss, are far beneath Aer. And now with her I
was to live alone ; in the heart of London, yet mysteriously
alone with her who is " Grief wound up to a mysterious-
ness." She annihilated from me the huge city and all its
inhabitants; they, with their thoughts, passions, labours,
struggles, victories, defeats, were nothing to me; I was
nothing to them. As I passed daily through the streets, my
eyes must have pictured the buildings and the people, my
ears must have vibrated to the roar of the vehicles ; but my
inward vision was fixed the while on her, my inward ear was
attentive to her voice alone. Scarcely at night, when I went
up with her to the solitude of my room, or wandered with
her through deserted thoroughfares and environs, were we
more perfectly alone than amidst the noise and glare of the
populous day. Indeed we were often by day the most
inviolably alone, when the besieging armies of the percep-
tions of the outward world had driven us to take refuge in
the far security of the innermost citadel of my soul. She
annihilated so utterly from me the mighty metropoHs, whose
citizens are counted by millions, that the whole did not even
form a dark background for the spiritual scenes and person-
ages her spells continually evoked.
She is a mighty enchantress, herself the victim of enchant-
ments mightier than her own ; and, in obedience to subtle
inward impulses, or perhaps to imperious agencies from with-
out, which she can neither resist nor control, is perpetually
6 A LADY OF SORROW.
suffering transformation. Usually, vague and slight changes
affect her every moment, decided and obvious changes —
in form, and feature, and expression — almost every hour.
These I attempt not to describe ; as who, for instance, would
attempt to describe the momentary or even the hourly
changes affecting any landscape in the course of one diurnal
revolution of the earth ? But as we speak of morning and
noon and evening in the day ; of the four seasons in the
year ; of childhood, youth, maturity, and old age in life ; of
a few tones and semitones in sound, and a few colours in
the reflection of light ; among the infinitely fine gradations
of all seizing certain* points definitively different even to
perceptions and judgments so gross as are ours ; so I, from
her multitudinous and still evolving variations, catch at
three which are conspicuously distinct and representative,
and try to give them expression.
I speak not of her, I cannot speak of her, as she came at
first ; when my spirit was stunned and lay as dead in the
body mechanically alive ; lay in swoon with but the dimmest
consciousness of her presence, sitting down black-veiled
beside me many days and nights, speaking not a word, as
the friends of Job sat silent at first, for they saw that his
grief was very great.
In the next period of our intimacy, when I was again
aroused, there was but one phase of her being to which she
could be constant for hours together, to which she persis-
tently recurred day after day, week after week, month after
month ; and that phase was the most sublime and beauti-
ful in the whole series of her metamorphoses ; it was her
Transfiguration.
When she blessed me by assuming this glorious mask,
whether by day or night, whether in storm or calm, whether
in solitude or amidst many people, instantly I beheld deep
midnight tranced in perfect summer peace ; the full moon
A LADY OF SORROW. 7
was shining, the heavens were crowded with stars : we were
alone. And always the earth was at least so far away under
us that I saw it, when I saw it at all, with catholic vision
comprehending in one glance a vast concave of mountains,
woods, fields, cities and rivers and seas. Yet she, my com-
panion, was by no means new or strange to me in this
new and strange relation, nor would she have appeared
strange to many thousands now alive. For she was simply
the image in beatitude of her who died so young. The pure
girl was become the angel ; the sheathed wings had unfolded
in the favourable clime, the vesture was radiantly white with
the whiteness of her soul, the long hair was a dazzling golden
glory round the ever-young head, the blue eyes had absorbed
celestial light in the cloudless empyrean : but still, thus
developed and beatified, she was only the more intensely
and supremely herself ; more perfectly revealed to me, more
intimately known and more passionately loved by me,
than when she had walked the earth in the guise of a
mortal. She would take me by the hand, sometimes
impressing a kiss, which was an ample anodyne, upon my
world-weary brow, and lead me away floating calmly through
the infinite highth and depth and breadth, from galaxy to
galaxy, from silver star to star. We ever floated in still
peace, our flight never stirring against itself a rush of the
surrounding aether; yet I could remark how swiftly
worlds strewn broad behind us gathered themselves into
constellations, and constellations crowded before us dis-
persed into unrelated stars. Our approach never divested
the worlds of their pure spheric beauty, never discovered
them rugged with mountains, blotted with storms, vari-
coloured with day and night, and land and sea; they
remained always to us bright throbbing stars, that grew in
size and glory as we neared them. Choirs of bright seraphs
floated vague in their ambient brightness. And though the
8 A LADY OF SORROW.
life-roar of tlieir mortal or immortal habitants was unheard
by us, they ever rolled enveloped with music which was
divine. And as we thus wandered, like two children, sister
and brother, straying in delight solemnised by awe through
the palace and the measureless domains of Our Father, our
beings were ever in most intimate communion. " Our lips
scarcely moved, our hands never gestured save in startled
rapture, our eyes rarely expressed aught save reverence and
gratitude and love of Him and to Him through whose
realms we were thus enfranchised to wander as in our own
heritage ; yet spirit into spirit, and specially (as I felt) her
spirit into mine, poured itself fully without any material or
symbolic medium : then first was I taught beyond all after
forgetting that there is a perfect interfusion of soul with
soul, when the pure fire of love has utterly consumed matter
and space and time.
With what, then, was my spirit overfilled from hers ?
With love too infinite for language, faith too solemn for the
world, hope too glorious for mortality. I who have fallen
and still grovel in the dust, with wine-lees clotting my gar-
ments and wild-rose thorns tormenting my brow, how should
/dare to usurp the office of expounding the mysteries of
holiness and love ? I have forgotten the wordless language
she spake ; I remember only that I would have listened for
ever. I cannot recall the music's tune ; I am only certain
that it ravished my soul. I cannot even, alas ! retrace her
features and form ; I know only that her beauty was divine.
One sentence of that language I seem to remember ; then
it meant eternal union, now it interprets into everlasting
farewell. One cadence of that music I seem to recall ; then
it chanted, Gloria m excelsis Deo, now it knells a De Pro-
fu7idis. One spark of that radiant beauty seems still to
burn within me; then it lamped my spirit as a star of heaven,
now it tortures me with fire of hell. For she revealed to
A LADY OF SORROW. ' 9
me (if in this, also, I do not dream, as mainly in my life I
have dreamed) that she was resting in a sphere divine and
tranquil ; she and many, many others who, like her, could
not continue their infinite ascension until rejoined by the
twin-souls left beneath them on earth, and who also like her
were permitted to visit their twin-souls with heavenly con-
solations until death's consummate beatitude should remo\e
all need and possibility of consolation. The sphere was so
glorious that in its light and heat all their earth-stains were
washed and consumed away, and so inviolably calm that in its
constant perfect summer their souls developed all the poten-
tial beauty and virtue of this life-phase — as in our brief
and troubled earthly summer one generation of roses out-
bloom to their prime, then the rose-tree endures patiently
through the winter and the spring, growing strong and
broad for a richer efflorescence when the succeeding summer
arrives. Their Hves were praise and thanksgiving to God,
intercommunion of the holy mysteries of love, and angelic
visits to the dear ones bereaved of their mortal presence.
And therefore, month by month and year by year, until also
released by beneficent death from the prison-house of this
lower world, I was to grow wiser, purer, braver, in faith and
hope and love, unto the Supreme Sacrament of our union
in Heaven.
Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte
Ingenero la sorte.
Cose quaggiu si belle
Altre il mondo non ha, non han le stelle.
( lo )
JL — THE SIREN.
" All the wide world beside us
Show like multitudinous
Puppets passing from a scene :
What but mockery can they mean
Where / arn — where thou hast been 1 "
" Draining the wine of that voluptuous sin,
Which heaven and earth seem both well lost to win,"
The earth's time passed over me unperceived, unregarded ;
but the true time, which is change, wrought within me.
The natural world refused to be wholly shut out ; and its
countless objects, besieging persistently the gateways of the
senses, began gradually to penetrate into my soul. But still
I perceived them merely as phantasmagoria, fleeting bubbles
and cloud-shadows on the hurrying river of time. The un-
utterable want, wretchedness, ignorance, folly, the unfathom-
able crime and sin of the awful metropolis would have
intolerably crushed my spirit with the oppression of their
substantial reality — my spirit already faint to the verge of
death in its own dearth of love-sustenance ; but the fever
of its famine transmuted them all, with the shapes in which
they were embodied, into fantastic delirious dreams. The
world was a great theatre ; life but a carnival masquerade
and drama, with irony for the secret of its plot ; the passions
were all mimetic, none of the personages were what they
appeared, all was illusion and mockery. And the irony cul-
minated in the grand fact that the masquers went about
their masquerading, the actors went through their parts.
A LADY OF SORROW. ii
soberly, seriously, and often with tragic earnestness ; not
one in ten thousand being permitted to suspect that he and
all his fellows were indeed only playing mad mime-tricks
for the inextinguishable laughter of that supreme Fate,
beneath whom in secret they cowered with awe and terror ;
beholding deep down in the dark abysses of contemplation
an enormous stone idol, dumb, blind, dead, pitiless, passion-
less, eternal ; and beside it the laws of doom and destiny
graven on tables of stone ; as if the God and His ordinances
had been petrified into immutability in the instant of cosmic
creation.
Such was the enchantment now wrought upon me by my
spell-bound Enchantress. For she was always with me,
though she assumed now rarely, and ever more rarely until
never, the holy guise of an angel. When fresh from the
consecration of bereavement, I was found worthy to be com-
forted with angelic communion ; but as in the course of time
the virtue of that consecration from without was exhausted,
while yet I had not by its blessing attained inward self-
consecration, my ignoble heart found ignobler companion-
ship. When the mouthful of Eucharistic wine inspires us
no more, we may gulp down the wine of the tavern ; when
the temple-incense is mystical no more, we may drug our-
selves with opium and hasheesh. Thus Sorrow, my intimate,
now chiefly swayed me in her character of Siren. And
this Siren Sorrow was the saddest I have ever known ; for
she affected — nay, frantically endeavoured — to renounce, to
defy, to ignore her own essential sorrowfulness, expressing
a wine of mad intoxication from the berries of her deadly
nightshade.
In the workshop, in the streets, in my room, she would
suddenly gesture to me with gesture imperiously alluring ;
and instantly we were away, down, down, down, through
serene solitudes of water. Sometimes the sun was burning
12 A LADY OF SORROW.
in the far heavens, sometimes it was moonless and star-
less night ; generally the season was of fervid summer, and
a drowsy dreamy warmth and tempered unsparkling light
pervaded the abysses wherein we wandered ; the hour and
the season being seldom the same as those of the world
whence we fled. And there were occasions when it was
polar winter ; when the moon shone sharp, bitter, naked,
Uke an intense icy crystal, radiating positive arrowy cold as
the sun radiates heat ; when the waters cut my limbs like
steel, and the stars gUttered down barbed and piercing frost-
points, and the sky hung like a petrified sea or the stony
vault of a sepulchral world. She would lead me adown the
beds of great rivers and over the desert floors of the ocean,
amidst the unstartled shoals of their strange inhabitants,
amidst the wrecks and remnants of ships and the drowned
crews of ships. Ever and anon, at the suggestions of a
wild caprice, she broke out into fragmentary singing, terrible
yet sweet, magical with weird phantasy and mocking mirth.
But t\vo or three times she abandoned herself to a melody
of such overwhelming sorrow and desolate despair, that I
knew Love, her mother, was dying.
In the vast sea-crystal above us she would make flit be-
fore me in carnival processions all the scenes and peoples
of the upper earth, flinging jeers of gesture and voice,
irony, sarcasm, scornful pity, irresistible laughter, against
them as they went by. The churches dwindled before her
into whitened sepulchres, the palaces were seen as dungeons
populous with vermin ; she showed the fire raging under the
earth's thin vesture of green grass broidered with flowers,
and the skeleton padded with raw flesh beneath the skin of
the beautiful ; her finger-point seared the hidden folly of
the wise and the secret terror of the brave ; her glance trans-
fixed the foul lust in the lover, and the core of subHmated
selfishness in the holy ones ; all the noble and mighty and
A LADY OF SORROW. 13
reverend of the kingdoms she transformed into gibbering
apes. She laughed back the world into chaos.
Then she would lead me into labyrinthic caverns, shut in
from the waters with marble doors, tapestried with mossy
growths and long slender sea-blooms purple and crimson
and amber ; floored with golden sand and iridescent shells,
walled with emerald, roofed with crystal, lit with gleaming
pearls and flashing precious stones. In the innermost
chambers couches of soft and fragrant weeds were strewn
around low tables of coral and jasper, on which were heaped
sumptuous banquets. When King Harald first touched the
hand of the Lapland witch-girl Snsefrid, "immediately it
was as if a hot fire ran through his body ; " and this same
hot fire ran through me as we reclined to the banquet.
Then the walls waved like green waters, the sands quivered
as through flowing streams, the gems shot out fiery sparkles,
the cavern-chamber was all athrob and full of murmurous
sounds like the throbbing and the murmuring of the sea.
She clothed herself with a fiercer beauty, haughty, passionate,
intoxicating, irresistible. Lithe as a panther, she arose and
moved restlessly ; her green hair wreathed in snaky fasci-
nations, her eyes burned with humid fires, her moods varied
incalculably. From beakers that perchance were the spoils
of imperial argosies sea-entombed for millenniums, she
poured forth wines more imperial, fragrant as morning,
glowing as sunset, fervent as noontide. Her restless move-
ments harmonised into miraculous dancing, in the pauses
and whirls of which her voice rang forth a music growing
wilder and ever wilder, the phantasy more astounding, the
melody more ravishing, the mirth more riant, the mockery
more terrible, the passion more overwhelming ; until
drunken, dazed, electrified, frenzied, I reciprocated upon her
the spell ; and we two masquers in the universal carnival,
14 A LADY OF SORROW.
the maddest and most lawless in a world all mad and law-
less, revelled for a while with triumphant delirium in the
recesses of our ocean-guarded solitude.
The Siren, even more terrible than beautiful ! From the
voluptuous swoon I started suddenly and lo ! the feast was
vanished ; the coral and emerald and jasper were no more,
the wine was black blood, and its jewelled golden beakers
were human skulls ; the gleaming sand was a loathsome
slime whereon and wherein crawled shapes of clammy
hideousness. Then amorphous monsters of the unfathomed
sea came heaving in by thousands, by myriads ; and the
flat was a Golgotha of human bones, the bones of men and
women and children devoured by the insatiate sea ; with
inexpressible loathing and agony, I was compelled to " see
things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable,
and secrets that are unutterable." And worst of all, the
most beautiful was become the most hideous, the Siren
was a foul wrinkled hag, who kissed me with intolerable
kisses, and pointed out bone by bone the huddled wrecks
of my kind, and embraced me with her withered arms,
as if taking me into everlasting possession ; so that the
conviction was seared into me, that I, though still breath-
ing, was drowned as utterly as the skeletons, separated for
ever to this death-in-life by the whole impassable ocean-
firmament, from God in heaven and from man on earth.
And when I wrenched myself loose and fled awa}^, not with
any definite hope, but simply rapt by an ecstasy of abhor-
rence, she pursued me with her train of hungry monsters,
and clung to me with mocking endearments ; and I again
escaped, again to be pursued and overtaken ; and so again
and again ; and hours were prolonged into immeasurable
ages ; and thoughts of horror and feelings of putrefaction
crawled writhing in my brain and heart like the swarm-
A LADY OF SORROW. 15
ing of palpable worms ; while weary with an unimaginable
weariness I implored and imprecated rest, unconsciousness,
annihilation ; until at length, exhausted, sick, trembling, I
awoke into the blessed natural world and found myself once
more a man among men, and vowed — alas, how vainly ! —
never to harbour /ler more.
( i6 )
III.— THE SHADOW.
" Yes, dark, dark is my secret bower,
And lown the midnicht may be ;
For there is none waking in a' this tower,
But you my truelove and me."
" The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres ;
And mouldering as they sleep : a thrilling sound,
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around ;
And mingling with the still night and mute sky
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly."
" Victors or vanquished from the fearful strife,
What matters? — Ah, within our Mother's breast,
From toil and tumult, sin and sorrow free,
Sphered beyond hope and dread, divinely calm,
They lie all gathered into perfect rest :
And o'er the trance of their Eternity
The cypress waves, more holy than the palm."
Still the earth's time passed over me, unperceived, unre-
garded : but the true time, which is change, wrought within
me. Besieging persistently the gateways of my senses,
gradually the whole outer world — the innumerable armies
of woes, sins, fears, despairs, — the dreadful legions of all the
realities — poured in upon and overwhelmed my spirit. The
earth was become massy, substantial, intolerably oppressive,
a waking Nightmare ; its inhabitants were no shadows ; their
lives were woven into no fantastic mime, but into a vast
trtigedy ruthlessly real; their passions were how far from
merely scenic ! With awe and secret shuddering terror, I
felt crushing me down the omnipotence of Fate ; Fate the
A LADY OF SORROW. 17
Sphynx in the desert of Life, whose enigma is destruction
to all who cannot interpret, and a doom more horrible before
destruction to him who does interpret ; Fate which weaves
lives only too real in the loom of destiny so mysterious,
uncompassionate of their agonies in the process ; Fate, God
petrified; the dumb, blind, soulless deification of Matter.
And still I felt myself no nearer to a union of sympathy
and common thought with my fellow-men.
And I wandered about the City, the vast ]\[etropolis which
was become as a vast Necropolis, desolate as a Pariah ;
burdened in all places and at all times with the vision of
wrath and hatred that might dye the green earth blood-red,
lust that might pollute all the seas, ignorance and guilt and
despair that might shroud the noonday sun with eclipse.
Desolate indeed I was, although ever and anon, here and
there, in wan haggard faces, in wrinkled brows, in thin com-
pressed lips, in drooping frames, in tremulous gestures, in
glassy hopeless eyes, I detected the tokens of brotherhood, I
recognised my brethren in the great Freemasonry of Sorrow.
And she, the sombre patroness of our unassociative frater-
nity, the veiled goddess of our lonely midnight mysteries, the
dreadful Baphomet in whose worship we all alike perished, —
she never left me ; nay, if so it could be, she interwrought
herself yet more completely with my being. Never more an
Angel, seldom more a Siren ; but now a formless Shadow,
pervading my soul as the darkness of night pervades the
air. I do well to write 7io7c>, for still she is with me, and
still this is her dominant metamorphosis ; and whether it
will be the last, lasting until death, or will have successor or
successors, I cannot pretend to judge. But as she is now
thus with me — be it for ever, be it only for a time — I will
speak of the Shadow in the present tense. Ah^ how well I
know her ! yet my affection toward her I cannot define : it
may be awe, fear, love, distrust, almost hate and contempt ;
B
i8 A LADY OF SORROW.
but whichever of these, or whatsoever strange compound
of them, it is of mystical potency, and I am thoroughly the
slave of her enchantments.
At first she used to lead me, and still she often leads me,
hour after hour of dusk and night through the interminable
streets of this great and terrible city. The ever-streaming
multitudes of men and women and children, mysterious
fellow-creatures of whom I know only that they are my
fellow-creatures — and even this knowledge is sometimes
darkened and dubious — overtake and pass me, meet and
pass me ; the inexhaustible processions of vehicles rattle
and roar in the midst : lamp beyond lamp and far clusters
of lamps burn yellow above the paler cross shimmer from
brilliant shops, or funereally measure the long vistas of still
streets, or portentously surround the black gulphs of squares
and graveyards silent ; lofty churches uplift themselves,
blank, soulless, sepulchral, the pyramids of this mournful
desert, each conserving the Mummy of a Great King in its
heart ; the sky overhead lowers vague and obscure ; the
moon and stars when visible shine with alien coldness, or
are as wan earthly spectres, not radiant rejoicing spheres
whose home is in the heavens beyond the firmament.
The continuous thunders, swelling, subsiding, resurgent,
the innumerable processions, confound and overwhelm my
spirit, until as of old I cannot believe myself walking awake
in a substantial city amongst real persons. Then she, the
Shadow, interweaves herself more wonderfully about me and
within me ; so that seeing I may see not and hearing I may
hear not, so that not seeing I may see and not hearing I
may hear. As my eyes fix and dilate into vision more
entranced of the supreme and awful mystery, the browbram
upon my eyes expands and protends into a vast shadowy
theatre for processions more multitudinous and solemn. The
lamps withdraw and ascend, and become wayward meteors
A LADY OF SORROW. 19
of the night ; the night itself grows very dark, yet wherever I
gaze I can discern, seeing by darkness as commonly we see
by light ; the houses recede and swell into black rock- walls
and shapeless mounds of gloom ; the long street is a broad
road levelled forthright from world's end to world's end.
All of human kind that have ever lived, with all that are now
living and all that are being born into life, all the members
of the seon of humanity, compose the solemn procession.
Far, far in advance gleam stately figures in ample Oriental
robes, "dusk faces with white silken turbans wreathed," from
whose midst sway the long necks of high-backed camels ;
then follow medioeval knights on noble horses splendidly
caparisoned ; kings dark-bearded and queens most lovely
trailing brilliant retinues; hooded monks in sombre gowns ;
barbarians fantastically arrayed or unarrayed, the limbs and
features weirdly tattooed ; nomad tribes moving with their
flocks as they move in the deserts of Central Asia ; legions
on legions countless of all history's soldiery, from the heroes
who fought around Troy to the warriors of Waterloo ; the
chariots and the spoils of a Capitolian triumph; "elephants
endorsed with towers ; " the silent flash of Maenads who run
as they ran upon the Thracian mountains ; dim crowds in
the garb of our own time and country : and, as upon an
unseen river flowing down the mid-stream of the swollen
river of the peoples, gUde forward galleys and galleons
and ships of all seas and centuries : all come sweeping
by, thronged and intermingled yet unconfused, in ghostly
silence ; and their trampling does not shake the earth
beneath their feet : not more silent is the procession of the
stars. I introvert my vision yet more intensely, and see
the great flood far, far behind, emerging from the under-
world, heaving up steadily wave on wave, each billow a
mass of countless human lives, dark against the background
of a serenest golden dawn. Oh, what an affluent dayspring !
20 A LADY OF SORROW.
how it floods there the world with light ! But where I stand
reviewing the spectral march — so incalculable is the length
of the procession — it is not daybreak, it is not morning; the
noontide may be thousands of leagues remote, the twulight
and the evening are immemorially overpassed ; it is deep
perfect night. Where I stand, absorbed, astonied, dismayed,
overwhelmed, the legions are traversing a vast desert moor-
land, above which hover gross yellow meteors, upon w^hich
swell endless ranges of rock-wall and immense gloomy
mounds, athwart which the broad road protends straight
and level from world's end to world's end.
I have said that there is no sound or stir from the multi-
tudinous trampling ; but is there no music at all to time the
spectral march ? Music there is, or the vague echo of music
from some sphere remote ; music like the rhythm of a tide
beating upon far-off shores ; music which now interprets
into that Dead March heard by Handel, full of pomp and
majestic lamentation ; now into that Dead March to which
Beethoven listened, with its fitful bursts of desolate keening ;
now into that Russian Hymn March of Life-in-Death, with
its sublimity of yearning pathos : such and so vague is the
music to which the armies march. But are the symphonies
all orchestral ? is there no vocal psalm or anthem, no p^ean
or dirge articulate? One anthem there is, though I had
again and again watched the multitudes defile as it seemed
through the hours of many ages, before I apprehended its
language. But at length, suddenly, on an autumn night
very dark and still, in an huddled dimness of sad autumn
night, it was given me both to see and to hear. Right
opposite to where I stood, a league beyond the farther bank
of the silent everflowing river of the peoples, towered a
vast black shape dwarfing the Cyclopean rock-wall behind
it; an image colossal, like to that which the king of
Babylon set up in the plain of Dura, that all men might
A LADY OF SORROW. 21
bow down and worship it ; a colossal image of black
marble, the Image and the concentration of the whole
blackness of Night, as of a Woman seated, veiled from head
to foot ; and the ranks as they pass it bow down all with
one impulse, like ranks of corn before a steady blowing
wind. And from where this statue sits throned, a voice of
innumerable voices, like the voice of a sea which is the
voice of innumerable waves, or rather like the voice of a
forest in calm which is the murmur of innumerable leaves,
but dim and faint to extremity, is for ever intoning with
unwearied monotony of recurrence certain simple childish
words, a chant such as may be sadly chanted among dusky
aboriginal tribes : —
" All must move to live, and their moving
Moves on and on to Death ;
Wherever they pause in their moving,
There awaiteth them Death ;
Let them move as they will, their moving
Soon brings them unto Death ;
Let them move where they will, their moving
So surely leads to Death :
All Life's continual moving
Moveth only for Death."
No Other chant than this have I ever heard while watch-
ing the procession. No war-song from the soldiery, no
psalm from the monks, no love-lay from the gallant knights ;
and never has the faintest whisper reached me from the
newly-emerged pilgrims whose background is the golden
dawn, — the daybeams which struck music from the marble
Memnon thrill no sounding chords in these. A vague
pulsing of slow march-music full of the solemn sadness of
death, a vague breathing of choral singing full of the sombre
triumph of death ; save for these, unearthly silence while the
infinite march sweeps on.
Whence do the countless armies emerge ? From the
22 A LADY OF SORROW.
unknown chasm between the earth and the golden dawn.
Where do they march ? Along the broad road level through
a vast wilderness of rock-strewn billowy moorland, above
which hover vaporous yellow meteors. Whither do they
immerge ? Into the unknown chasm between the earth and
the illimitable black night. Into an unknown chasm which
may be a sea, for the rhythm of the vague march-music is
like the rhythm of w^aters moaning upon the far, far forward
shore. The broad road sweeps straight to this chasm, but
also detaches narrow defiles and tortuous ravines thereto.
And a bewildering mist as well as the great darkness broods
over the horizon ; and the moon there hangs spectral and
beamless, and the stars there are as unclosed eyes of the
dead.
Into that chasm all immerge. But do not all or some
re-emerge on the side of the golden dawn ? The dull
meteor-gleams on the misty gloom unshroud none of its
secrets, are altogether ineffectual save for half-revealing
weird suggestions of ghostly imagery in the mist itself; and
the moon hangs spectral and beamless, and the stars are
blind as the unshut eyes of the dead. The chasm may be
a bottomless void, or a desert ocean without farther shore,
or a sea whereon hidden barks await the pilgrims, or a
narrow Lethe-stream. Singly or by thousands they plunge ;
none is from the hither side ever seen again ; no voice or
sound is ever heard from them after the plunging. x\nd
not all the torches and lamps of the earth gathered together,
not the sun and the moon and the stars of heaven con-
joined into one glory, not the whole world itself burning in
clear conflagration, could light up and disinter the secrets
of that aboriginal gloom.
But often when I have been gazing through timeless
hours upon the innumerable legions marching, marching
marching, in unintermitted march, to the rhythm of a far-
A LADY OF SORROW. 23
booming tide ; bowing down with one impulse before the
colossal Image, which is as the concentration of the whole
blackness of Night, to the monotonous breathing of a slow
sad wind ; disappearing into the black mist-shrouded gulph,
while ever-new multitudes appeared emergent on the back-
ground of the golden dawn ; often then have I pondered : —
Are not these who now ascend the same who there de-
scencied ? Is not the appearance a reappearance ? May
not tie whole circle be fulfilled in the under world ; above
here in the day a march from dawn to dark, below there in
the night a march through dark to dawn ? Are not the
innuma-able multitudes now visible, together with equal
multitudes now invisible, adequate for the continuous,
never-pausing procession, without constant destruction and
constant creation ? If the sun which arises in the east is
the same sun that set in the west ; if the moon which is
seen crescent is the same moon that dwindled down from
the full until, for a time, her place in heaven was void ; if
the armies of the stars which circle the heavens are ever
almost all the same stars ; if the populations which arouse in
the morning are, with very few exceptions, those that sank
to sleep at night; — are not also these legions of human
beings phantasmal, these millions on millions numberless
commencing their march, the same who aforetime, and,
perchance, many hundreds of times, traversed the earth-
wilderness and disappeared ?
And then She, the Shadow, beholding me that I am
utterly aweary and forworn with the burthen of the vigil and
the vision she has imposed, will murmur to me ere she
suffers me to sleep — " Peradventure the new are also the
old, but never shall any mortal be sure. The resources of
Nature are infinite ; the mysteries of Destiny are eternally
unrevealed. It is as easy to bring forth new as to repro-
duce the old, and the thrift of the universe may be human
24 . A LADY OF SORROW.
lavishness and waste. Stars fall through the night ; the
affluent heavens are not careful of their stars. Every pro-
digal seon squanders broadcast myriads of its lives, and the
hours of every cycle are squandered by myriads ; yet not
one monad, not one moment, to the universe has ever been
lost. Know this only, that you can never know ; of this
only be assured, that you shall never be assured; coubt
not that you must doubt to the end — if ever end there
be. . . . But hearken yet again to the iterations and re-
iterations of the triumphant threnody, streaming evermore
from where the veiled Image is enthroned : to that lulling
you also shall soon sink in sleep, O my poor, desolate,
weary child ! "
" All must move to live, and their moving
Moves on and on to Death ;
Wherever they pause in their moving,
There awaiteth them Death ;
Let them move as they will, their moving;
Soon brings them unto Death ;
Let them move where they will, their moving
So surely leads to Death :
All Life's continual moving /
Moveth only for Death."
So I knew her chiefly at first, but thus I chiefly know her
now. In the workshop, in the streets, in my own room,
she suddenly envelopes me ; and forthwith, be it day or
night with the outer world, it is for me dense night, moon-
less and starless, infinite, amorphous, solitary, silent. I
have said that she pervades my soul as night's darkness fills
the air; yet also I am conscious of her projected by my
side, a vague womanly shadow, as it were the dark sun
whence is radiated the darkness. We float not through the
ethereal abysses, we glide not to the floors of the sea ; we
wander slowly yet unobstructed a little beneath the surface
A LADY OF SORROW. 2$
of the earth, passing as only spirits and spectral shades can
pass through the solid ground. The Angel spake not with
sounding speech — her soul immediately informed mine ; the
Siren articulated no earthly language — pure melody sufficed
her for consummate enthraUing expression ; but the Shadow
speaks to me in a terrene tongue, though in unworldly
tones. Her words are the words of men and nature, but
her voice is preterhuman and preternatural ; murmurous,
yet thin, never hurried, scarcely modulated, as it- were the
phantom of a living voice ; and it gives to her simplest words
weird significance. She leads me just beneath the surface
of the earth, through sepulchral vaults, catacombs, ceme-
teries, graveyards, through the confusion of cities buried by
time and sea and earthquake and volcanic bombardment,
through all mortuary relics from the primaeval fossil to the
corpse inhumed yesterday. And ever as we wander she
murmurs to me; and I have long since discovered that
much of the dust wherewith she is cloudily enveloped, and
which tempers to my spiritual vision the intensity of her
innate gloom, has been gathered from mouldered and moul-
dering libraries. Solemn and even appalling is her low
thin voice in the utter obscurity and silence, in the untra-
velled labyrinthic vastitude of these " camps and cities of
the ancient dead." — " Cycle after cycle hath given me count-
less votaries," she murmurs; "age after age hath added
liberally to my empire ; year by year the world with its
children bows to the sway of Oblivion. All must move to
live, and their moving moves on and on to death ; all life's
continual moving moveth only for death. For Love, my
own mother, is she not long since dead ? But my father,
who is Death himself, still exists, and shall exist for aeons
beyond number before he sinks exhausted, for lack of prey,
upon my bosom, and is shrouded and sepulchred for ever with
all the already sepulchred world by my loving hands. Until
26 A LADY OF SORROW.
then, I to him — who is now my sole parent — and he to
me — his eldest and dearest and mightiest daughter — must
we be mutually devoted. . . . Surely all things by their
nature, and all thoughtful beings by their nature and their
reason, join with him who in his epitaph ' implora pace.'"'
Sometimes in speaking of this her dead mother, but never
on any subject else, she loses her wonderful calmness, and
expresses herself with a wild lyrical fervour of passion ; her
voice grows hurried and agitated, and swells sealike with
the ominous mutter and roar of echoes from other worlds,
and rings with every resonant note, and thrills w^ith every
modulation of love and grief and despair ; and she herself,
the Shadow, is swollen and agitated tempestuously, and lurid
lightning-flashes leap from the heart of her gloom. But
now only at long intervals and for briefest periods is she
swayed by this impassioned mood.
Commonly after some short prelude she commences what
I may call the rites of her self-worship. The liturgy and
the hymns are from men, the homily is her own. As for
her theme, it is in fact always the same, one which includes
all themes possible to man ; a subject by us variously named
as it is contemplated in various relations and moods, and
which she with her mystic insight seems to call indifferently
by any one or more of the names we have thus bestowed —
World, Life, Birth, Death, Time, Eternity, Oblivion, Cosmos,
Chaos, Heaven, Hell, Tvlatter, Spirit, Happiness, Misery,
Health, Disease, Growth, Decay, Vanity, Reality, Illusion,
Truth, God, Fate, All, Nothing ; for under all these tides
she sees the sole Substance itself always essentially one and
the same, " itself by itself, solely, one everlastingly, and
single." But as one of these names is supreme in the
poetry of solemn suggestiveness, is itself for us mortals
(who are dazed from clear vision of Life) the profoundest
poem ever written, and is very grand in our English mother-
A LADY OF SORROW. 27
tongue, I choose this name to entitle her theme, and say
that the text of all her homilies is Death.
But before the sermon and during its intermissions come
the reading and the chanting. And for reading, besides all
human scriptures, she has two mighty Books of Chronicles ;
the one azure and black-purple leaved, with white and
golden and crimson illustrations, the commas and period-
points in whose vast-flowing sentences are planets and
comets and suns 3 the other an autobiography in this Uni-
versal History, wherein the generations of the earth have
written down their own lives, so that every stratum-leaf
holds the fragmentary archives of an aeon of innumerable
thousands of years. Volumes too vast for piecemeal citation
or epitome, even if one had conquered their lore. But a few
of the briefer human anthem-words and collects which she
adopts in her burial service for all death — adopts for the sake
of me, her human auditor — a very few of these I will cite ;
for these mournful echoes from hearts vacant of all hope,
these suspiria de profundis of world-weary spirits, these
perpetual moans and murmurs of the restless waters of
Time beating against the barren shores of the World, ever
exercise upon me a strangely powerful fascination. They
sigh forth timid and tremulous, they leap forth like swift
arrows of fire piercing and burning with passionate anguish,
from hearts that have mouldered for centuries, from hearts
that have not yet reached the grave toward which they
yearn. Hush ! for her voice is very faint and low and
slender, as she chants and recites these melancholy spells.
And deth, alias ! ne wil not have my lif,
Thus walk I lik a resteless caytif,
And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
I knokke wiih my staf, erly and late,
And saye, ' Leeve moder, let me in.
Lo, how I wane, fleisch, and blood, and skyn.
28 A LADY OF SORROW.
Alias ! whan schuln my boones ben at rest ?
Moder with yow wil I chaunge my chest,
That in my chamber longe tyme hath be,
Ye, for an haine clout to wrap in me.'
But yet to me sche wol not do that grace,
For which ful pale and welkid is my face."
" lie there does now enjoy eternal rest,
And happy ease, which thou dost want and crave,
And farther from it daily wanderest.
What if some little pain the passage have.
Which makes frail flesh to fear the bitter wave ?
Is not short pain well borne that brings long ease.
And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave?
Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas.
Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please."
" To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.
To the last syllable of recorded time :
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle !
Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more : it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing."
" We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded by a sleep."
" Nothing is heard.
Nor nothing is, but all oblivion.
Dust, and an endless darkness."
*' Come ye ! who still the cumbrous load of life
Push hard up hill ; but as the farthest steep
You trust to gain, and put an end to strife,
Down thunders back the stone with mighty sweep,
And hurls your labours to the valley deep.
For ever vain ; come, and withouten fee,
I in oblivion will your sorrows steep.
Your cares, your toils ; will steep you in a sea
Of full delight ; O come, ye weary wights ! to me."
A LADY OF SORROW. 29
"Were I quiet earth,
That were no evil : would I ne'er had been
Aught else but dust ! "
" Hasten to the bridal bed —
Underneath the grave 'tis spread ;
In darkness shall our love be hid,
Oblivion be our coverlid :
We may rest and none forbid."
" Quick and dark
The grave is yawning : as its roof shall cover
My limbs with dust and worms under and over,
So let oblivion hide my grief. . . . The air
Closes upon my accents, as despair
Upon my heart : — let death upon my care ! "
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou amongst the leaves hast never known ;
The weariness, the fever, and the fret,
Here where men sit and hear each other groan ;
Where palsy shakes a few sad last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies,
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs ;
WHiere beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes.
Nor new love pine for them beyond to-morrow."
•' Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity ;
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me !
Oh, let me die — that power and will
Their cruel strife may close ;
And conquered good and conquering ill
Be lost in one repose ! "
" To thy dark chamber, mother earth, I come ;
Prepare my dreamless bed for my last home ;
Shut down the marble door.
And leave me — let me sleep ;
But deep, deep.
Never to waken more."
30 A LADY OF SORROW.
" The past rolls forward on the sun
And makes all night. O dreams begun,
Not to be ended ! Ended bliss,
And life that will not end in this !
My days go on, my days go on.
" Breath freezes on my lips to moan :
As one alone, once not alone,
I sit and knock at Nature's door,
Heart-bare, heart-hungry, very poor,
Whose desolated days go on . . .
" Only to lift the turf unmown
From out the earth where it has grown,
Some cubit-space, and say, ' Behold,
Creep in, poor heart, beneath that fold,
Forgetting how the days go on.' "
" Strew on her roses, roses.
And never a spray of yew ;
In quiet she reposes —
I would that I did too."
" I give the fight up ! let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me :
I want to be forgotten even by God ! "
" Now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should
have slept ; then had I been at rest. With kings and
counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for
themselves ; or with princes that had gold, who filled their
houses with silver. There the wicked cease from troubHng,
there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest to-
gether ; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The
small and great are there ; and the servant is free from his
master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in miser}^,
and light unto the bitter in soul? Which long for death,
and it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures.
Which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find
A LADY OF SORROW. 31
the grave ? . . . Before I go whence I shall not return, even to
the land of darkness and the shadow of death. A land of
darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death ;
without any order, and where the light is as darkness. . . .
I have said to corruption, Thou art my Father, and to the
worm, Thou art my Mother and my Sister."
" Therefore I hated Hfe : because the work which is
wrought under the sun is grievous unto me : for all is vanity
and vexation of spirit. . . . For that which befalleth the
sons of men, befalleth beasts ; even one thing befalleth
them : as the one dieth, so dieth the other ; yea, they have
all one breath ; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above
a beast : for all is vanity. All go unto one place ; all are
of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the
spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast
that goeth downward upon the earth? . . . Wherefore I
praised the dead which are already dead more that the living
which are yet alive. . . . For there is no work, nor device,
nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou
o-oest. . . . Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is
vanity."
" Cursed be the day wherein I was born : let not the day
wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the
man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man-child
is born unto thee : making him very glad. And let that
man be as the cities which the Lord overthrew and repented
not; and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shout-
ing at noontide : because he slew me not from the womb ;
or that my mother might have been my grave, and her
womb to be always great with me. Wherefore came I forth
out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days
should be consumed with shame ? "
" For to fear death, O Athenians, is nothing else than to
appear to be wise, without being so : for it is to appear to
32 A LADY OF SORROW.
know what one does not know. For no one knows but
that death is the greatest of all goods to man ; but men
fear it as if they well knew that it is the greatest of evils. . . .
And if it is a privation of all sensation, as it were a sleep in
which the sleeper has no dream, death will be a wonderful
gain. For I think that if any one, having selected a night
in which he slept so soundly as not to have had a dream,
and having compared this night with all the other nights
and days of his life, should be required on consideration to
say how many days and nights he had passed better and
more pleasantly than this night throughout his life ; I think
that not only a private person, but even the great king
himself, would find them easy to number in comparison
with other days and nights."
" O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could
advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, thou
hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou
only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast
drawn together all the far-fetched greatness, all the pride,
cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered all over with
these two narrow words, Hie jacet'^
" It seems to me strange, and a thing much to be mar-
veilled, that the laborer to repose himself hasteneth as it
were the course of the sun ; that the mariner rowes with all
force to attaine the port, and with a joyfuU crie salutes the
descried land ; that the traveller is never quiet nor content
till he be at the end of his voyage ; and that we in the
meanewhile, tied in this world to a perpetuall taske,
tossed with continuall tempest, tyred with a rough and cum-
bersome way \ yet cannot see the end of our labour but
with griefe, nor behold our port but with teares, nor
approach our home and quiet abode but with horrour and
trembling."
" I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least
'A LADY OF SORROW. 33
of all evils. All that which is past is a dream ; and he that
hopes or depends upon time coming, dreams waking. . .
Physicians in the name of death include all sorrow, anguish,
disease, calamity, or whatsoever can fall in this life of man
either grievous or unwelcome ; but these things are familiar
unto us, and we suffer them every hour, therefore we die
daily. I know many wise men that fear to die; for the
change is bitter, and flesh would refuse to prove it : besides,
the expectation brings terror, and that exceeds the evil.
Bti^ I do not believe that a?iy man fears to he dead, but only
the stroke of deaili^
" Death has its consideration but in terror ; and what is
assumed from that is Hke the imagination of children in
the dark, a mere fancy and opinion. ... It has been
slandered, most untruly, most unjustly slandered. For
either happiness it contains, or it repels calamity, or gives
satiety and weariness an end, or does prevent the hardness
of old age. . . . Death only is the haven to receive us, where
there is calmness and tranquiUity, where there is rest from
all these storms and tempests. In that port all fluctuations
of our life are quieted and composed ; nor winds nor seas
have power upon us there ; fortune and time are excluded
from that road ; there we anchor in security, without the
distractions of new troubles ; there without danger or hazard
do we ride."
" If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a
prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition ; we live
with death, and die not in a moment. . . . Time sadly over-
cometh all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon
a sphynx, and looketh to Memphis and old Thebes ; while
his sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous on a pyramid,
making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories
into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The
traveller as he paceth amazedly through these deserts, asketh
C
34 A LADY OF SORROW. •
of her who builded them, and she mumbleth something, but
what it is he heareth not."
" Through me did he become idolatrous ; and through me
it was by languishing desires that he worshipped the worm,
and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to
him ; lovely was its darkness ; saintly its corruption."
"After acute agony, death isUke sleep after toil. After long
decay, it is as natural as sunset. . . . Nature adorns death,
even sets in smiles the face that shall smile no more. But
you group around it hideous associations, and of the pale
phantom make an appalling apparition. . , . Why should
you not conspire with Nature to keep death beautiful ? "
" Sovereigns die and sovereignties: how all dies, and is
for a time only, is a 'Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real ! '
. . . They are all gone, sunk, down, down, with the
tumult they made: and the rolling and the trampling of ever
new generations passes over them ; and they hear it not any
more for ever. . . . O poor mortals, how ye make this earth
bitter for each other, this fearful and wonderful Life fearful
and horrible ; and Satan has his place in all hearts ! Such
agonies and ragings and wailings ye have, and have had, in
all times : to be buried all in so deep a silence ; and the salt
sea is not swoln with your tears."
These, and such as these, are the anthem-words and
hymns, the lessons and litanies and ejaculations, which she
intones and recites in her wonderful self-worship : these and
such as these are the incantations of the spell wherewith she
so utterly subdues me. Whatever faith in immortality or
hope of resurrection their context may avow, she ignores
with solemn disdain. She murmurs them at intervals, rhyth-
mically, she croons them over and over again, in her weird
remote voice, while leading me on and on, through "the
wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb." And between
them, around them, past them, lapses slowly the full dark
A LADY OF SORROW: 35
flood of her own monotonous eloquence ; as Lethe may lapse
for ever unrippledand unhurried, between its banks of pallid
poppies, beneath the broad still leaves of its black lotus, past
the crumbling islet grave-mounds which are as stepping-stones
for sad Imagination when she would explore to the dimmest
end, where the stream so nearly stagnant is swallowed in
Chaos and aboriginal Night.
" Am I not kind ? " she asks me, " am I not kinder far
than all the gaudy Patronesses of Life ? They bring agitation,
I give rest ; they bring the hopes which ever deceive, I give
consummate fruition ; they bring Memory, the sad, the
grievous, the remorseful, I give Lethean absolution from the
Past ; they bring Time, I give timeless Eternity. All their
woes, wants, sins, despairs, I translate into the beatitude of
unconsciousness. This bone moulders forgetful that it slew
a brother man ; this skull decays unremembering that it har-
boured schemes of monstrous wickedness ; these lips wither
untormented by the cruel lies they have framed ; these
empty sockets crumble unaware of what hell-fire once burned
in them. The limbs are weary no more ; the heart-throb
and the brain-throb are quiet for ever. Better the worms
fretting that heart than the lusts and passions which fretted
it of old ; better the worms winding through that brain than
the thoughts which used to possess it. I admit that the evil
once conceived or done is indeed everlastingly existent (as
it was indeed everlastingly pre-existent), still pulsing on
apparent or unapparent, poison circulating with the life-blood
of the world, until the world itself shall be exhausted ; but
the evil-doer is no more ; the poison glass is shattered with
the glass that held the wine ; his personality is dissolved, his
responsibility is diffused throughout the whole world ; he
is safe in the sanctuary of Oblivion. His crimes and sins
(which you brand with harshest emphasis, in your unfraternal
cruelty and injustice to each other), are indeed recorded as
36 A LADY OF SORROW.
debts in the great Account Book, the infallible Ledger of the
Universe : but in vain would the debtor be cited, for he is
not ; his very name will in a few brief years be illegible.
For myriads and myriads and myriads of talents lost or mis-
applied, Nature seems continually pleading against an un-
known number of debtors unknown ; for they are all surely
shielded and hidden by Nature herself, by Me the divine
Oblivion, in the depths of the inviolable grave. For She,
who is the sole head of the house, alone knows the profit and
the loss of all the intricate commerce ; and takes upon her-
self the liabilities as she takes to herself the acquisitions of
all her agent children — salaried so poorly with golden joy
and paper hope for their hard life-service.
"But you murmur that if the evil thus elude the punishment
of their evil, the good must be defrauded of the recompense
of their good. For those who have in this life been afflicted
with the worst of all afflictions, an evil nature, ought to be
punished after death for that supreme misery of their life !
and those who in this life have been blessed with the richest
of all blessings, a virtuous nature, ought to be rewarded after
death for that supreme happiness of their life ! And if the
evil have no resurrection, the good can have no resur-
rection : though evil is the essence of nothingness and
death, and good is the essence of being and life ! It is
hard indeed to teach aught of natural and simple truth to
the children of men. The vulture, the tiger, the serpent,
the lamb, the dove, the butterfly, have life's lesson perfectly
by instinct ; but man, weaving and ravelling it through the
convolutions of his superior brain, still spells it for the most
part backwards, and distorts the prayer of thanksgiving into
a blasphemous curse.
" You complain, my poor child, on account of the good ;
but the good themselves, be assured, complain ;/^/. It is
true that the evil suffer in' life, and are blessed when here in
A LADY OF SORROW. 37
their mother's bosom they are safe from life's suffering ; but
it is not true that the good rejoice in life, and are injured
here by privation of life's joy. Unconsciousness, which is
the sole perfect anodyne, can never be a harmful poison.
Nor are the good on earth the happy any more than the
evil, though these are truly cursed and those are truly blessed.
The only men and women happy in life are such as not even
you can imagine in a glorious life hereafter. Very sad, over-
whelmingly sad, ' with great heaviness and continual sorrow-
in his heart,' lives a holy loving man. Look abroad over
your sin-ulcered earth, and say how shall such a one dare to
rejoice ! Jesus must be a man of sorrows and acquainted
wdth grief; and tradition shall record of him that he was
known to weep but never known to laugh : how could he
laugh, while his brethren throughout the whole world were
in horrible bondage of ignorance, wretchedness and sin ?
I say unto you that your God Himself, the God whom
your seers have beheld in vision, throned omnipotent and
eternal in the Heaven of Heavens, veiled with burning
glory, amidst countless legions of quiring seraphim and
adoring saints, He could not be what you call happy while
one cry of suffering ascended from His earth or one spark
of evil glowed in His hell.
" Sin ought to be punished and virtue rewarded ! And
the sins of your race are so voluntary and Satanic, that no
limited time can contain their retributions ; the virtues of
your race are so inherent and divine, that no period less than
Evermore has capacity for their recompense ! When will
you be persuaded and possessed by the truth which you heard
chanted long ago, the truth that there is no punishment and
no reward, that every being by its own nature weaves every
thread of the web of relations connecting it with the world
around ?
" You cannot but trust that the pure, and the brave, and
38 A LADY OF SORROW.
the wise,, really merit an after-death recompense, that their
noble faculties really claim after-death spheres of exercise
and continual growth. Whomsoever Fate hath dowered
•with purity, valour, or wisdom, to him in that one gift Fate
hath been unusually bountiful ; and he may well be con-
tent, how^ever adverse seem the circumstances of his lot.
Let the impure have high rank, and the coward lavish
wealth, and the fool princely sway : the rank and the wealth
and the sway are even to human judgments miserably
inadequate compensations for inherent vileness, are gener-
ally even to human judgments miserable aggravations of
the inherent vileness. But, after death ? Oh, believe me,
there is not one among you whom his fellows justly
account saint, or sage, or hero (being really an Excelsior,
like the monarch of Lilliput, some nailbreadth taller than
those around him, striking awe into the beholders), who
would if it were permitted him go alone to the great
Demiurgos to whom is intrusted the management of this
mysterious World-Drama, and plead : I have performed the
part allotted to me in this short life-scene so magnificently
well, and have enjoyed it so thoroughly, that I must be
allotted another and a higher part in the scene which is to
follow. Still less would or could he plead : I must be
allotted parts ever higher and higher in all the successive
scenes until the Farce-Tragedy shall end with Time ; and
when the Drama and Time are ended, I must be glorified
with apotheosis and be a little god for ever with the one
great God in Eternity.
" Were Fate ever thus tender of individuals, thus dotingly
fond of the rare beings in the world that seem perfect in
their kind, very few men and women in comparison with
what men and women call the inferior creatures and lifeless
things would be found worthy of enduring existence. Some
rose might proffer a valid claim ; some rose which has blushed
A LADY OF SORROW. 39
beauty and exhaled perfume to the uttermost sweetness of
its nature ; some rose which is as the microcosm of golden
dawns and crimson sunsets ; the rose by which Sharon is
divine and Schiraz dream-lovely ; the rose on whose petals
Dante in fire-dew enamelled the names and marshalled the
hierarchies of your supreme Heaven :^ or a lamb without
spot or blemish, type of Him who is there worshipped
for ever and ever : or a dove, in whose form the Paraclete
descended on the only Son of your only God. But a man !
In the whole long masquerade of History, how many men,
how many women, can be found whom even you would
think white enough for the candidature ? In the abundant
treasures of your language, many, many names appear which
are in themselves poems, and which therefore participate in
the lasting life of beauty, but few of these class human kind.
Gold, wine, lily, rose, dove, eagle, lion, panther, moon, star,
dawn, dusk, river, meadow, each of these is in itself idyl, or
lyric, or ode ; but not man, not woman, not child, not infant,
perhaps of all the terms that class humanity. only youth and
maiden, mother and babe.
" Ah, I catch your murmur : God a-eated fnan m his own
image, in the image of God C7'eaied he him ! Yes ; and the
whole world is the image of God ; for every creature and
thing and circumstance in it is an uttered thought, a deve-
loped volition, of the universal life you term God. But
when I led you so long through the streets of the great city,
that vast crowded encampment of what you call Life, whose
gloom is more appalling than the gloom of these subterranean
sepulchres of Death ; when you gazed into the eyes of all
who passed, myriads on myriads innumerable ; in how many
* " In forma dunque di Candida rosa
Mi si mostrava la milizia santa,
Che nel suo sangue Cristo fece sposa."
— Del Pamdiso : Canto xxxi.
40 A LADY OF SORROW.
among them did you recognise the image of God ? Oh, the
mean stupid faces, the mean dull eyes, the mean puckered
foreheads, the mean formless eyebrows, the mean loose or
pinched lips, the mean gross or withered bodies, the mean
slouching gait, of the mass of them ! And what were the
chief variations from the prevalent meanness ? Despair,
ferocity, life-weariness, cunning, starved misery, immense
greed or lust. If ever anything of divine began incarnation
in those forms, it must have long ago shrunk away from the
pollutions. So far are they now from any trace of the
divine, that the very manhood and womanhood have long
been crushed out of them. If one in a thousand was comely
to the first glance, he was coarse or imbecile to the second ;
if one in ten thousand was lovely to the first glance, she was
mindless or soulless to the second. The haughty capital out
of its thousands of thousands can scarcely show a hundred
men and women. What used to startle you into common
life when the periods of the visions I gave you power to see
were fulfilled? Some painted girl soliciting to impurity,
■ some child in colourless rags begging for bread, some reel-
ing drunkard hoarsely singing or blaspheming. For such
goodness and comfort as you have among you never accost
strangers, but go about carefully shut up in themselves. If
one whom you know not ventures to address you, your first
feeling is of distrust and defiance : this is your instinctive
judgment of each other. Poor men, and women more
wretched ! I could weep for you bitter tears, even I the
Shadow, were I not consoled by the knowledge that so soon
ye shall all sink into my bosom, so soon be gathered ten-
derly from loathsome, shameful, miserable life into the
beautiful and innocent sleep of death : and the sleep shall
be everlasting.
" Still you urge that it is not because of perfection here,
but of imperfection here, that Man claims a developing
A LADY OF SORROW. 41
Hereafter : his aspirations announce their own fulfilment ;
his life should be a continuous indefinite ascension toward
the unapproached Highest, ascending evermore because
never attaining. Why his life alone, and not that of the
worm, of the oyster ? And do your aspirations, whose result
you know, your aspirations limited to the things of this life, do
you find that these generally announce their own fulfilment,
or do you find that in fact they are never really fulfilled ?
And, if the development should prove a development of
decay and corruption, not of healthy growth ? If the ten-
dency already in the little lifetime has curved round from
upwards to dow^nwards ? Shall man ascend for ever and
ever, and the poor toad and sponge never climb a grade ?
And what of the roses that are bfighted in the bud, the
lambs that are never sheep, the little unfledged things that
never have their bird-life, the saplings, the acorns, that never
grow into trees, the number-confounding spawn-germs that
never attain definite individual existence ? Shall all these,
likewise, be granted a compensatory resurrection, that they
may live up to the maturity of which here they were
defrauded, and then grow more strong and beautiful for
ever? For all these have certainly not much less capacity
for indefinite ascension than has man. I have studied him
now for many ages, and I find that his capacity is very
limited ; his cou/d 3.nd might are scarcely larger than his can.
He always gets drunken already on much strong truth ; he
always gets insane with much pure holiness.
" Why are you so unwilling to acknowledge your relation-
ship with all the rest of the world and its creatures ? Being
so W'Cak, and therefore so miserable, why would you disown
the great family alliance? Succumbing inevitably to the
least weighty strokes of Doom, you will yet rather bear them
yourselves than be solaced and tended by the kindly earth
that bore you. So yox^glut your perversity at the expense
42 A LADY OF SORROW.
of your liappiness like so many sulking children : — and,
after all, the denial of kindred destroys not the fact of kin-
ship. Of what use to sneer : This is not, this shall not be
my brother ! when you both issued from the same womb ?
Let no atom in the world be proud ; it is now in the heart
of a hero, it may soon be in a serpent's fang. Let no atom
in the world be ashamed ; it is now in the refuse of a dung-
hill, it may soon be in the loveliest leaf of a rose. Each
monad in its time plays many parts, and perhaps in the
course of the world's existence plays all ; and in spite of
yourselves your being is expanded beyond its own miserable
limits into fellowship and affiance and mysterious identity
with the being of all the universe.
"When will you freely and gladly own the truth that
whatever is born in Time must decay and perish in Time ?
As your race studies fossil relics of plant and shell and
gigantic animal, so shall future existences (to you in their
kind inconceivable) study fossil relics of your race. For
every kind has its own aeon, and when its seon is fulfilled
becomes extinct : while your earth is by many signs so
young in its ceon; and you by your pruriency, your unbounded
self-esteem, your pugnacity, your brutality, your ignorance,
your weakness, are so plainly among the less noble thoughts
and imaginations of its youth (closely succeeding the wild
childish extravagances of mammoth, pterodactyl, ichthyo-
saurus, and the convulsive infant rages of flood and fire) ;
that many much higher races than yours must surely be
brought forth ere it reaches its prime and commences to
decay. The races flourish and die out, and Demiurgos has
no care for individuals. The coral insects swarm in the
sea, of which they know a fraction more than equivalent to
that which man knows of this visible universe ; and they
are distinct in their individualities and generations as are
the children of men ; and each dies having wrought its
A LADY OF SORROW. 43
cell ; and one cell is so much vaster (even to the thousandth
of a line) than any of those around it, that it may well be
long famed amongst them far and wide as a stupendous
work ; so the coral-reef grows by imperceptible increments
until it almost reaches the surface of the sea ; then the seon
of the brood is finished, the life-period is fulfilled with the
life-task, they cannot exist in the upper air ; and the reef
which is their stupendous self-wrought catacomb and mauso-
leum becomes an island, nourishing and sheltering quite
new forms of Ufe. The ancient Egyptians have left a few
tombs, columns, pyramids ; these insects leave behind them
hundreds of leagues of reef well-founded from the floors of
the deep sea : which, Egyptians or insects, are more service-
able to the after-world ? You have visited a great library,
which is a species of human coral-reef; and you have
beheld thousands upon thousands of volumes closely ranged
around : these are the painfully elaborated sepulchral exuvice
of once living human intellects ; and each contributed in
some infinitesimal manner to the growth of knowledge ;
but how few of all do even you insects of the same race
now distinguish and examine, though many were accounted
great and wonderful works in their time ; and those which
to you are still great and wonderful, what are they to any
other race ? What are they even to such of you as dwell in
another spot of this earth-grain and babble in a different
tongue ? They advanced a little what you pleasantly call
science, they carried up the intellect to reach beyond them-
selves into new levels of thought ; their work was then
done; they are but names, the Library is a myriad-coffined
sepulchre of dead minds.
"Nature has no care for individuals; and races and
times are but individuals in broader genera and longer times,
and these again in yet broader and longer ; and Oblivion
must cover all. Yet you poor mortals agonise for fame, and
44 A LADY OF SORROW.
lavish much of your really finest bombast concerning " im-
mortal renown," while the greatest and the noblest, together
with the worst and the meanest, can but last as names for a
few generations among a very few of their own kind, on a
speck of this mottled dust-grain in the universe of space
and time, which itself may be a dust-grain invisible amidst
universes ?iof of space and time, known by senses more and
infinitely more vivid than yours, cognised by intellects whose
laws and powers are indefinitely grander than those with
which you are endowed. Ah, you endeavour to persuade
yourselves that your minute glowworm soul-sparks lamp
Infinity and Eternity ; you have been generous enough to
create a God who certainly never created you ; you dissect
him, every bone, nerve, and tissue ; chemically analyse him
into ultimate substances or substance ; you exhibit him set
up as an anatomical specimen, or elaborated into algebrai-
cal formulae, and designed in geometrical diagrams, in your
metaphysical and theological discourses, your Athanasian
creeds and the like : and yet you cannot say why the grass
grows ; you cannot prove whether the world and your own
selves do or do not really exist ; and the few of you who
have reflected a little are conscious that
' The deep enormous Night unfurls
Its bannered darkness left and right
In solemn mockery of such light.'
"I am just, though you conceive me so unscrupulous : I
the sexton of the whole world-graveyard, the architect of
the all-housing tomb, the weaver of the all-enveloping
shroud, the planter of the all-shading cypress, the voice of
the everlasting Requiescant — that dirge which is indeed a
solemn triumphal hymn ; I am just as Fate, impartial as
Destiny ; and the laws of my dealings are strict as that
covenant in accordance with which the earth wheels round
A LADY OF SORROW. 45
the sun. Here a fire smoulders out under the oppression
of its fuel, there one expires for lack of fuel ; here a fire
burns steadfastly in calm, there one flares fiercely in storm ;
but all alike in subjection to the same universal laws ; and
all ahke must at length be extinct, when all the fuel of each
is devoured. There is one glory of the sun, and another of
the moon, and another of the stars, and yet another of the
household lamp ; and for each its own lustre and its own
peon is meted out by itself, by what itself is ; its own nature
gives its own vitality and destiny. No being can receive
more than its capacity will hold ; a finite being can no more
receive eternal life than a desert- well-shaft can hold the
ocean.
'• Fire the pure, the spiritual, the absolute, fire whose
heat is love, and light is truth, f/iis indeed subsists for ever
in eternity ; but all the material atoms and bulks upon which
it feeds (and some of which account themselves living beings
and immortal spirits during the process of the burning)
must be sooner or later consumed. None lives in itself; its
life is that without itself, though penetrating and informing
it, which consumes it away ; its being is the being dissolved
into nothingness. For apart from the infinite eternal empy-
rean there is no self-subsisting fire. Go in to your chamber
and seal up all its outlets, so that the air which it contains
be quite cut off and shut in from the world's universal
atmosphere ; and very soon you will not respire but expire
therein ; it will be for you not the breath of life, but the
miasma of death. Even so must what you call your indi-
vidual spirit perish could it be cut off from the universal
spirit ; and the nearest approach you can make to this,
intense and long-continued self-absorption, is recognised
among yourselves as madness.
" I am just, as I am indeed gracious. As cold comes not,
but heat departs ; as darkness grows not, but light fades ; so
46 A LADY OF SORRO]V.
the black pall and the wan shroud ^Yith which I cover up the
dead, are but the smoke and the ashes of their own burnt,
out fires. The burning of the fire, the writhing of the
flames, are torture and restless longing ; I am the eventual
coolness and repose. That which you call the World with
its creatures — this gross multiform mass of matter consum-
ing in the fervency of the one spirit — shall indeed at last
be utterly annihilated. The law flames before your eyes in
material analogies, the doom stamps itself into your con-
sciousness by material symbols. Behold how the nebulous
continuity of your sun-system has parted and congealed into
separate calcined orbs hollow and centrally candent ; and
all are dwindling in the millennial cycles, and shall dwindle
until the last fire-sustaining atom is exhausted, and rem-
nant there is none of the w^orlds opaque in the infinite un-
adulterate empyrean. But now ' in the midst of life you are
in death : ' not merely /ial^le to death, as so shallowly you
are wont to interpret the great truth into a truism ; but
m death ; you and your transitory phantasmal Universe of
matter floating in the midst of the eternal Divine Life which
alone is Reality. The life surrounds you, clasps you, supports
you, penetrates you, informs you, consumes you ; but you
are not the life any more than the submerged sponge is
the ocean or the vanishing cloud is the air. The more
intense your so-called life, the more of ecstatic and swiftly
consuming torture do you suffer ; the pure fire pierces you
through and through ; when the pure fire pervades and pos-
sesses you wholly, you are no more ; in the instant of your
attaining the perfect, the only true life, you are utterly
annihilated. Of two men only is this divine consummation
recorded in your very astonishing Holy Writings ; and it is
certain that you are w^ont to die now not by utter consump-
tion of your materiality, but for want of the informing fire ;
so you perish from separate organisation, leaving abundant
A LADY OF SORROIV. 47
carcass to swell the earth's general stock and be worked up
and consumed in other forms.
" I am generous, as I am indeed just. With me you shall
sleep perfect sleep, dreamless shall be your slumber : the
darkness is infinite, the repose is ineffable, the silence is
divine. You dream that they who have sunken wearily into
my arms, and have been hushed to sleep on my bosom, and
have been laid away and covered up in the bed which 1 pre-
pare for all, often arise from the rapturous rest, and steal
out of the undisturbed dormitory, and wander the upper
earth tortured and goaded by evil memories ; and you affright
yourselves with visions of them thus restlessly wandering.
Most strange and calamitous delusion ! The bed is too soft,
the embrace too maternally dear, the trance is too profound,
the oblivion too beatifically perfect for them ever to dream
(if dream they could) of arising and revisiting that cold
naked storm-beaten upper world of the ' Life which is a
disease.' Could any who now lie here, quietly resolving into
quiet earth, which again is dissolving and surely perishing
into nothingness ; could any of these awake for a moment,
and remember, and have power to contrast their perfect
sleep in my bosom under the folds of my vesture (whose
shadow is holy and blessed as the shadow where Sheckinah
dw^elt, under the wings of the cherubim over the mercy-seat),
with their ever-troubled wakefulness on earth, with the
' Famine, and bloodless Fear, and bloody War,
Want, and the want of knowledge how to use
Abundance '
how would they shrink with horror from the suggestion of
returning, how would they smile triumphantly compas-
sionate at your fearful hints of evil memories, how would
they nestle back into the slumber-place athirst for the
suckling nepenthe !
48 A LADY OF SORROW.
'•■ If you really lived ; knowing, and gladly accepting, and
bravely working out your little part in the sublime economy
of the universe ; ever conscious of your insignificance as
an isolated creature, but no less conscious of your lofty
and even divine significance as one flame of the universal
fire, one note in the infinite harmony ; without arrogance,
selfishness, delusion, disdain ; without hope, or fear, or self-
contradictory longing, yet burning with pure aspiration ;
then I would not preach to you thus, then not the Shadow
but the Splendour would instruct you : for dying more and
more daily by intensity of life into the impersonal and in-
finite and unconditioned, by supreme consuming domination
and dominion of the spirit over matter, you would love death
as the crowning glory of life, and reverence life as the 7mi
sacra of the triumph of death. But you have no hope,
scarcely a dream, of thus living and dying. Yet you cling
to your death-in-life, which you call life, while you never
dare to really live ; you, children afraid to go into the dark,
although therein is your sole bed of rest. You dare not
live up to even your own low thoughts of life : the mass of
your works, ceremonies, laws, pleasures, are houses built to
keep out the natural air, and blinds woven to temper the
universal light. The sage studies a new science to escape
an overwhelming sorrow^ ' or haply by abstruse research to
steal from his own nature all the natural man ; ' the soldier
plunges into battle-blood-drunkenness to forget an unavailing
love ; the statesman weaves his mind into subtle webs of
policy that so he may stifle some fierce passion ; the poet
chants victories he cannot fight to win, and beautiful happi-
ness that can never be his lot ; those most lavishly endowed
by nature and by fortune are exactly those who suffer most
from life-weariness. Who lives, who exercises and develops
his whole nature joyously in his career? There is the cup
of the wine of life ; and scarcely one dares a deep draught
A LADY OF SORROW. 49
of its fiery intoxication, though scarcely one is willing to
have the unemptied and not-to-be-emptied cup withdrawn.
One short, trembling, rapturous sip in the flushed fervour
of youth ; then you draw back, frightened at your own rash
hardihood, and seek stupid safety in soulless business and
pleasureless pleasure. Again and again you wish to be
dead for a time, to sleep unconscious until some wished-
for moment, to be relieved from the tedious burthen of un-
eventful hours and days ; and when the wished-for moment
has come and gone, and you are once more disappointed,
you would die again for another period ; and so again and
again ; wishing for sleep and unconsciousness for a limited
time, that is, wishing for short and imperfect death ; and yet
with the miraculous and incredible inconsistency of man,
abhorring with wild fear the one true and perfect death.
And you complain of the narrowness and poverty of life,
though it lavishes upon you such wealth of hours and oppor-
tunities more than you can use or enjoy ! And this in
youth and health; but you would even rather cling to old age,
weak and sick, without the power while y^t with the desire
to enjoy, than sink into death, which takes away the desire
in removing the power : you would rather be Tantalus with
his thirst, than without it.
" O my poor homeless weary children, return at least un-
affrighted, since return is inevitable, unto the embrace of me,
your mother ! Have at least the courage and the candour
to own that you dare not live true life, that you infinitely
prefer dreamless rest to this weary wandering without a
goal. Leave your alien wretchedness, and the famine which
is fain to devour the husks that the swine do eat, and come
home to the banquet of joyous rest, ye poor helpless prodi-
gals ; be not ashamed to acknowledge your yearning to have
part in the glorious promise, ' He giveth his beloved sleep ; '
and fear not to come unto me for this beatitude of sinless
D
50 A LADY OF SORROW.
sleep ; unto me the divine Oblivion dwelling ever throned
in the realm whence you shall not return, even in the
land of darkness and the shadow of death ; a land of
darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death :
without any order, and where the light is as darkness ;
where, O ye weary, sinful, desolate, orphan ones, where
the wicked cease from troubling, where the weary be at
rest ! "
And the thin weird voice of the Shadow dies away remote
in the dense blackness subterranean, as a star-speck dwindles
in the formless night ; and the gloom, so deep and crushing
in the revelation of her voice, grows deeper still and yet
more awful in the following utter silence.
( 51 )
PROPOSALS
FOR
THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION OF EVIL
AND MISERY.
1868, 1 87 1.
The following Proposals were forwarded to us by our
esteemed contributor, with a letter, from which we extract our
justification for producing them in these columns : —
" Most of your readers would certainly not understand
this magnificent essay, but would regard it as mere mad
raving ; and the majority of the few who could understand
it would feel outraged and enraged because its plans of
reform are so immensely vaster than their own, for you are
merely national reformers, while my reforms are for all man-
kind and the universal world. I therefore advise you for
your own sake not to print the piece at all, but to send back
the MS. endorsed 'Returned with thanks.'
'' But if you decide to print it, I counsel you to introduce
it to your public with a note to the following effect :
"As we allow all parties to express their views in this
periodical, and as moreover B. V. is an old contributor, we
insert the following ; but we are bound to remark that, in our
52 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
opinion, it would have been more fitly sent to the Colncy-
Haich Journal ox the Bedlam limes, than to us.
" Or : We insert the following as a frightful example of
the extremes to which human aberration can go, trusting
that it may prove- an effectual warning to such of our readers
as have turned aside from the pathway of reason.
" Or : We must distinctly beg our readers to understand
that we agree with about nothing in the following essay, so
far as we can make out any sense at all in it. If the matter
were not so thoroughly unimportant, it would be rather in-
teresting to know whether the author himself has the least
notion of what he means, always supposing that he means
anything.
" Or : In so far as this miserable essay mocks rational
national reformers, its impudence is only equalled by its
impotence. In so far as it is serious, it is as mad as hydro-
phobia.
" A mild disclaimer on your part, such as one of the
above, would not at all hurt my feelings, or disturb my
equanimity, while it w^ould tend to vindicate you in the
judgment of your readers."
I.
"Your promised Reformation is so indispensable ; yet it comes not :
who will begin it — with himself?" — Carlyle : French Revolution,
vol i. book 2, chap. 8.
" l]ut the lofty spirits of my century discovered a new, and as it were
divine counsel : for not being able to make happy on earth any one
person,' they ignored the indivi(]ual, and gave themselves to seek
universal felicity ; and having easily found this, of a multitude singly
sad and wretched they make a joyous and happy people." — Leopardi :
Palinodia.
" Whether the human race is progressing is a strange unanswerable
philosophical question. Why is it not asked. Does the human race
alter? This question is higher. Only from alteration can we draw any
inference as to improvement or the opposite." — NovALis: vol.ii. p. 268.
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 53
In the old young years, when I could still wonder at things
which are human, I now and then wondered how it came to
pass that while so many learned and subtle treatises had been
written to solve the question of the origin of evil ; treatises
doubtless of great value if only the question would kindly
condescend to be soluble ; there had yet been so few essays
towards the extinction of the said evil. It seemed to me
that the doctors were letting the sick man perish before
their eyes, while they discussed at length the remote origin
of his maladies, instead of the present condition and the
treatment instantly required. And it seemed to me that
even those who did concern themselves with the present
condition of the patient, the charitable associations and
philanthropists generally, acted not as doctors who hoped
to cure, but were rather as kind nurses who tried to soothe
the sufferer and lessen the pangs of his certain perishing ;
they moistened his parched lips and wiped his damp brow,
smoothed his pillow, tidied up his room, gave him narcotics
and anodynes, humoured his sick caprices, spoke cheering
words, and smiled vain hopes ; but with the horrible, devour-
ing, mortal cancer they did not even try to contend. I
have since heard that in recent times, say within the last
hundred years, projects for the universal reform and beatifi-
cation of mankind have begun to abound ; but as none of
these (to the best of my knowledge) has been thoroughly
realised, it follows that even if any of them are theoretically
perfect they still remain practically imperfect, and that, there-
fore, the spacious ground is still to-let for system-building
purposes. And I may modestly add that the said projects, in
so far as I know anything of them, appear to derive from what
I cannot but think a wrong principle ; so that in my own
poor judgment (which naturally is for me the one best judg-
ment in the world) I am bound to prefer my own proposals,
which derive from what I must esteem the true principle.
54 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
But here I bethink me that some one may deny the need
or use of any such project ; affirming (for what is there that
some people will not affirm ?) that mankind and the condi-
tion of mankind are as near perfection now as they ever will
or can be, and that for the extinction of what we call evil
and misery the human race and the world in which it dwells
must be extinguished. To such a one I will only repl}',
before entering tranquilly on the exposition of my proposals,
that he is far in the rear of our most advanced thinkers, and
has but small share in the present glorious aspirations of
Humanity ; that if he does not take heed to himself he is in
danger of becoming a cynic, an odious, yelping, snappish
animal that lives in a tub, and pulls to pieces even this house,
in order to fling the staves at decent people and trip up
passers-by with the hoops ; that if he feels no necessity, or
has no hope, of becoming much better himself, the majority
of us feel such want for ourselves, and have good hope that
it shall be satisfied, if not in ourselves, yet in our more
or less distant posterity, in which hope we find great and
reasonable comfort ; and lastly, that it is quite plain Lhat
myself and others would never weave projects and build
systems for catching and caging the said evil and misery, if
these did not actually exist, and were not to be caught and
caged, just as there would never have been bird-traps and
fishing-nets were there not birds and fish not only in being
but liable to capture.
To me it seems clear that there are two radical universal
reforms essential to the real triumph of any and every
reform ever attempted or proposed, and that these two
reforms once accomplished, all others will be found included
in them ; and I therefore consider them as solely entitled to
our study and exertions. For who wishing to fell a tree,
would bring it down leaf by leaf and chip by chip, if it could
be effectually axed from the ground? and who, wanting to
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 55
purify a river, would filter it by bucketsful, if he could dam
off the polluting drain higher up ? The two reforms, to
which I have reduced this vast problem, are simply a uni-
versal change to perfection of nature and human nature :
of which I think that we as men should enterprise the latter
first. The radical reform of human nature consists merely
in this, that every human being shall put off the seven car-
dinal with all the minor sins, follies and defects, and shall
at once in lieu thereof put on the seven cardinal with all
the minor virtues, wisdoms and graces ; or, in other words,
that each shall annihilate in self the imperfect human
nature, and create in self a perfect divine nature. When
every human being has performed this easy double opera-
tion (of which the second part follows as naturally on the
first as a step of the right foot one of the left), I am
inclined to believe that the great work of the extinction of
evil and misery, and the establishment of universal good and
fehcity, will be more than half accompUshed. The radical
reform of nature consists merely in this, that the universe
shall be made altogether and exactly such as the perfect men
shall require. With this second reform, I am further in-
clined to believe that the pilgrimage of man from hell on
earth to heaven on earth will be completed ; that evil and
misery, both as suffering and vice, will be extinct beyond
resurrection ; that everybody will be good and happy ever}'-
where evermore.
Some people, who have not bestowed upon this problem
such long and painful thought as the writer, may at first
sight deem that the radical universal reform of human nature,
though of the utmost simplicity (being, indeed, but as putting
off one suit of clothes and putting on another), will not be
very easy to effect. But a little candid thought will prove
to them that it must certainly be much less difficult than
any of the merely partial and superficial reforms which
56 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
have been and arc now being attempted ; all of which
this supersedes amicably by inclusion. For hitherto nearly
all plans of reform have been trying to get plentiful fruit
from a barren tree, and clean water from a foul stream ;
while this would first make the tree fruitful and the fountain
pure. And hitherto nearly every reformer, whether social
or political, moral or religious, has endeavoured to make a
large number of men and women (not to speak of children),
and has usually hoped to make in the course of time all
other men and women (of whom no two can be quite like
each other and no one quite like the reformer ; and of whose
various characters and temperaments, minds, bodies and
circumstances he could know little or nothing), think and
believe and act in precisely the same way as himself. But
in the scheme I venture to propose, every man will modestly
limit himself to the reform of one person only ; which
person he knows and loves infinitely better than any one
else ; and which person is of exactly the same character,
temperament, mind and body, and always situated in
exactly the same circumstances, as himself, the reformer.
IL
As this point is of capital importance, I think it well to
bring to my assistance against all previous and other re-
formers (for whom, however, my feelings are of the most
benevolent nature), two or three passages from writers of
authority. And first I will quote from one of the most solid
and useful sections of one of the greatest works of perhaps
the greatest of our divines ; Section ix. of "A Tale of a Tub :"
being " A dissertation concerning the original, the use, and
improvement of Madness in a Common wealtli." And I
may remark that this subject has been strangely neglected
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 57
by other philosophers, considering how much every Common-
wealth, whatever its form of government, has been and still
is indebted to this noble condition of mind. " For what
man, in the natural state or course of thinking, did ever
conceive it in his power to reduce the notions of all man-
kind exactly to the same length and breadth and height of
his own ? Yet this is the first humble and civil design
of all innovators in the empire of reason. . . . Now I
would gladly be informed how it is possible to account for
such imaginations as these in particular men, without
recourse to my phenomenon of vapours ascending from the
lower faculties to overshadow the brain, and there distilling
into conceptions for which the narrowness of our mother-
tongue has not yet assigned any other name besides that of
madness or phrenzy." Montaigne also, who is usually so
temperate in his language, cries out in a great passion of
contemptuous indignation (book ii. chap. 32, " Defence of
Seneca and Plutarch" ) : "It appears to each that the model
form of human nature is in him ; all others should be regu-
lated in accordance wdth him : the ways which are not as
his ways are feigned or wrong. What beastly stupidity !
. . . Oh, the dangerous and insupportable donkeyishness!
Qiielle bestial e stupid ite/ . . . O Vasnerie danger euse et iiisup-
portable!'' And the great Italian writer already quoted,
Leopardi, says (" Dialogue between Tristan and a Friend ") :
" The individuals have given way to the masses^ say elegantly
the modern thinkers. . . . Let the masses do all ; though
what they are to do without the individuals, being com-
posed of individuals, I desire and hope to have explained
to me by some of those now illuminating the w^orid who
understand individuals and masses." The careful reader
will remark that the sarcasm here hinted does not touch me,
while it wounds nearly all other reformers ; they would
reform by masses, I would reform by individuals ; and my
58 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
plan, in brief, is the flourishing modern plan of division of
labour carried to its utmost perfection in the moral world.
To make the distinction yet more clear, if possible, and
more clear the inestimable superiority of my principle over
any other, let me call attention to the very peculiar and
almost incredible fashion in which great practical problems
are worked out by the reforms and reformers still in vogue.
As a very fair type of the reforms I will take the recent
Electoral Reform Bill, whose logical outcome is universal
suffrage, for greater stake in the country can no one have
than dear life. The problem is : Given a vast number of
timbers, nearly all more or less rotten, it is required to
build a seaworthy ship. To which our Reform Bill answers
in triumph : Let us use the whole lot indiscriminately ! Or
in other terms : Given a foul and deformed body politic,
full of all manner of diseases, required to make it pure,
handsome and healthy. To which our Reform Bill answers
cheerfully : Let us clothe it in fine new constitutional gar-
ments, with splints, bandages, padding, a good wig, a glass
eye, a few false teeth, and so forth, and a complete cure
will doubtless be effected ! Now I beg the candid reader
to lay his hand upon his heart, and declare upon his honour
whether he really can consider these enterprises very hope-
ful. The ship may turn out a very Great Eastern for huge-
ness, but she will be at least as unseaworthy as her timbers
are rotten, however deftly put together ; and the more
timbers the less cohesion. The diseased monster may be
dressed out to look tolerably well as a dummy, but there
will be even less life and health in him than before when
he is strangled with ligaments and smothered with pad-
ding. The idea of working such stupendous marvels
dwelleth not in me. My proposal modestly says : Let us
get some sound timbers, and it will not be very hard to
build with them a sound ship ; let us get the pure, hand-
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 59
some, healthy body, and the question of clothes will not
give us much trouble.
Not many readers will, I think, deny that when every
human being has become perfect, the whole human race or
society will be perfect also. But even with such perfection
attained, there would probably still exist among mankind a
large amount of suffering if the universe remained as it is.
For not only man, but also the world in which man lives
(or supposes himself to live), is at present very imperfect.
I do not inquire into the origin of this mundane imperfec-
tion, any more than I inquired into the origin of human
evil ; I am content to propound a certain cure for both.
How natural theologians manage to survey the world and
find it all alive with divinity, find everywhere clear marks of
a Creator infinite in goodness, wisdom and power, would
certainly surprise me, if I were now capable of being sur-
prised by any enormity of human folly or frenzy. For while
in order to explain man's evil condition they have the ex-
cellent absurdities of Freewill and the Fall, even they do
not pretend that the world has freewill, that it sinned and
thus grew corrupt ; yet surely the world is about as badly
off, as far from perfection, as man. Let me note a few of
its maladies and defects. This poor earth of ours suffers
dreadfully with colics, heartburns, violent vomitings, con-
vulsions, paroxysms ; she has burning fire in her belly and
heart ; and some of us always suffer directly or indirectly
from the throes of her suffering. She has but one moon,
while Jupiter has four, Uranus six, Saturn seven ; and her
domains are much smaller than those of the majority of the
other planets. She has been roughly crushed in at top and
bottom, and these extremities are paralysed with cold ; and
uncouthly swollen about the middle, where she burns with
a fierce inflammation. Her beauty has been thus seriously
damaged, and she is moreover blotched with nasty boils and
6o THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
ulcers of geysers and volcanos. Her axis has been shame-
fully jarred from rectitude ; and her land and water are so
unequally and irregularly arranged that she looks altogether
lop-sided. Heat and light, with all things flowing from
them, are very unfairly distributed over her body, and
therefore among us who live upon her body. For such Uuht
and heat as she gets, she has to keep whirling and spinning
round the sun in the most undignified and wearisome
manner. The animals she brings forth (not to speak of the
plants and the minerals) are in many cases ugly, unamiable,
ferocious, and tormented with monstrous appetites, which
can only be satisfied by devouring their fellow-creatures;
nearly all of them are quite selfish and immoral ; and the
few of them that are philanthropic (such as surly old lions,
tigers, wolves, sharks, vultures and other sweet carrion fowl ;
all genuine lovers of man) are almost as disagreeably so as
our human philanthropists themselves. She has no moral
character at all, and her moods are most capricious and
violent. In her dealings with man she is seldom fair, and
the unfairness is nearly always against man : thus she hardly
ever grants him w^hat he has not worked for, while she very
often withholds from him what he has worked for. The
ignorant creature knows nothing of the wise doctrines of
Malthus, but spawns forth as many children of all sorts as
ever she can, without the least prudential restraint. She
has consequently far more than she can properly feed and
rear ; so that a large part perishes in infancy (and we are
told that none of these except the human sucklings will rise
to another Hfe ; poor bereaved monkey and donkey mothers,
for instance, being altogether without the precious consola-
tions of immortality) ; a considerable part is eaten up by
mankind and other hungry animals, and the remainder can
seldom get food enough. And with regard to man in par-
ticular ; as the human race grows ever more numerous,
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 6i
■while the means of Mother Earth do not increase in pro-
portion, she must age after age starve and half-starve more
and more of us ; and thus in a few thousand years, if she and
we exist so long (and unless, of course, these my beneficent
proposals be carried out), slie will prove to us the stingiest
old hag ever known. And looking beyond our own frigate
the earth (of whose tender, the moon, I could say a good
deal), and regarding our little fleet of the Solar System, we
find that there is an absurd and perilous want of communi-
cation between the various vessels ; that w^e not only cannot
pass or signal to any of the others, but in fact know next to
nothing of them, and absolutely nothing of their crews ; so
that in case of a threatened attack by corsair comet or
shooting star we could concert no plan of common defence
or evasion. Moreover, it is very doubtful whether the fleet
is in a good position in the Sea of Space ; and whether our
flag-ship the Sun, who leads us cruising whithersoever he
likes, is taking a judicious course for a prosperous voyage,
or is but hurrying on recklessly, and likely to lead us to
" eternal smash " among breakers ; for not only are we never
consulted as to the course, but we are never told anything
about it when it has been settled, and so go drifting on for
ever in a most ignominiously blindfolded fashion. And I
might go farther still, and note many things in the universe
beyond our system which probably need improvement or
abolition ; but I really have not spare time just now. I can
only add a few short notes on things requiring amendment
in the relation of Nature to Man. She treats our intelligence
with profound disdain, never giving us the slightest trust-
worthy hint of her origin, character, business, processes,
objects, and final causes, if indeed she really has any final
causes or cause. She manifestly carries on her large busi-
ness (whatever it really is) without any special care for our
convenience or profit, being wont to ignore us with our
62 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
plans and wishes in the most exasperating way. She turns
us out into the world without giving us any choice in the
matter ; though all other suffrages and freedoms are per-
fectly insignificant in comparison with that of which we are
thus deprived, an effective and enlightened vote on the
question : Shall I, or shall I not, be born ? She only keeps
us alive by a complicated system of the most shameful
illusions, falsifying beyond rectification life, death, and
after-death. Having made us take part in this poor puzzling
game of life, she has taken care that all the rules shall be
unfavourable to us : the cards are marked, the dice are
loaded, we are always swindled. Thus years of hard work
and self-denial are frequently lost by a slip or chance, but
seldom or never saved by a chance. Our health may be
ruined by a pin-prick, but never doubled by an accident.
We fall seriously ill in a moment, and take weeks or months
to recover ; lose a limb by some sudden mishap, but never
by a good hap regain it. We cannot reach even a low
degree of wisdom or knowledge without long hard study,
while to be ignorant and foolish is the easiest and most
natural thing in the world for us. Our sorrows are real and
enduring; our joys deceptive and transient; our prizes of
victory are not to be compared with our forfeits of defeat.
And so I might go on through an indefinite number of
items in which we are unfairly dealt with ; but these scanty
hints must suffice for the present. Scanty as they are, I
think they show conclusively that nature needs improving
and perfecting no less than does human nature ; and, in
particular, that nature will have to be radically reformed in
order to suit precisely our new perfect men.
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 63
III.
\_NoTE ; personal., and therefore very interesting. — With that
dreadful perversity of malice which, as all long-suffering
contributors know, characterises editors in general, the
editor of this National Refor7ner hath played me an evil
trick. For whereas, knowing well that the more our dear
public needs redemption, the more is it disgusted with him
who tries to redeem it ; and knowing moreover that an
editor's existence as editor strictly depends on the favour of
this dear stupid public (the stoppage of the circulation of
his periodical being quite as fatal to him as the stoppage of
the circulation of his blood) ; I did with infinite generosity
and self-sacrifice spontaneously and gratuitously furnish him
with ample private and confidential notes for a public dis-
claimer on his part of any compHcity in this my celestial
scheme of universal reform, so that the full reprobation of
its transcendent merits should weigh upon myself alone : he
thereupon, in spite of my solemn written protest, did print
and publish the said confidential notes in my name, thus
making me seem to damnify my own invaluable essay, and
bringing into doubt my intense seriousness, that quality of
my character which, as a great moral reformer, I esteem
more than almost any other of the lofty and shining virtues
which keep me in profound obscurity.
Having thus vindicated myself at the editor's expense, I
hasten to add that I will forgive him this atrocious breach of
confidence (whatever injury it may do myself and the good
cause to which I am devoted) as soon as I have made myself
divinely perfect ; but that in the meanwhile I am much
tempted to exclude editors altogether from my scheme of
salvation, as a class of men absolutely incorrigible. As the
pious preacher pathetically exclaimed when he had been
64 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
cruelly mauled by the newspapers : " Ah, my dear brethren,
and beloved sweet sisters, do any of you still hope that a
journalist, and even an editor, can be saved ? Verily, I say
unto you, that if Jesus Christ Himself tried to haul up an
editor into Heaven, the odds are more then ten to one that
the editor would drag Him down into the Other Place ;
more than twenty to one, if the editor had edited an atheistic
or a religious periodical." Amen.]
Having thus stated as clearly as I can what the tw^o indis-
pensable radical reforms are, I will go on to sketch my plan
for speedily effecting them. But I must beg the reader to
remark that I by no means lay so much stress on my parti-
cular process for bringing these about, as I do on my demon-
stration of the fact that these, and no others or other, are the
reforms which must be brought about in order to extinguish
evil and misery. In my diagnosis of the disease I have abso-
lute confidence : the two (perhaps twin) maladies we must
cure, to get a healthy and sane world, are imperfection in
nature and imperfection in human nature. But thus much
established, I do not pretend to assert that the physic and
regimen I propose are the best that can be adopted ; and,
indeed, I am wtII aware that the treatment will be infinitely
improved as soon as the process of cure has commenced.
For it is manifest that immediately the first man has reformed
himself to divine perfection, he will know infinitely better
than I, and than all the present foolish wisdom of the world,
how to set about persuading every other living human being
to follow his happy example. I am here simply concerned to
show to our present imperfect intelligence that the work is
quite practicable, even with such means as we can now dis-
cern ; and not only practicable, but a work which may be
speedily and without much difficulty effected ; trusting that
when I have shown all this, one or more persons ^vill be en-
couraged to take without delay the initial step (initial to the
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 6$
universal enterprise, complete journey for himself or them-
selves), and straightway proceed to carry out the faultless
process which his or their perfect wisdom and goodness will
dictate.
It is obvious that if every human being now alive should
forthwith read this my humble essay, and be persuaded by
its evident reasonableness, and without loss of time make
himself or herself perfect, then no other machinery would be
required to accomplish the universal reform of human nature
here proposed. Such immediate consummation is devoutly
to be wished ; but if I professed any hope of it I might be
accused of an over-sanguine temperament ; an imputation 1
am extremely anxious to avoid, knowing how it has retarded
the triumph of every zealous reformer. I am therefore led
to consider the best commonplace practical means, such as
we are all familiar with in our daily life, of quickly attaining
the end in view.
Let us suppose that there are three persons virtuous
and intelligent among those who peruse this paper. I am
aware that the estimate is very high, and would be quite
extravagant in the case of almost any other periodical ; and
I certainly, for instance, would not venture to suppose such
a great number among the readers of London's D. T. (which
initials are commonly used to denote Delirium Tremens)^
although it assures us that it has the largest circulation
in the world (it and our circumambient air, I presume ; and
which is the more windy let the great God of Flatulence
judge).* But I have been assured by various disinterested
people connected with the National Reformer, such as the
editor, the sub-editors, the publisher, the printer, and more
* Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. I remember, ere too
late, that Heine sings somewhere somewhat as follows : —
Der Wind ist iinmer windig,
Sei's Sturm, sei's Westhauch lind ;
66 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
than one of the contributors, that its subscribers and regular
readers are a very choice set indeed. I will therefore hazard
the estimate that there are among them three virtuous and
intelligent individuals who can appreciate my proposals,
and will forthwith set about realising the same. This trio
will form the nucleus of a provisional committee, the sole
qualification demanded in whose members shall at first be the
fact that they have each thoroughly performed upon self the
simple operation above-mentioned ; each abolished in self
the imperfect human nature, and substituted for it a perfect
divine nature. I call this committee provisional, because I
conceive that the members would not consent to its long
existence, for fear of ruining their recently obtained moral
and intellectual sanity. For our present wisest men (who,
however, are mere idiots in comparison with the regenerate
persons of whom I write) are unanimously of opinion that
the being a member of any board or committee whatsoever
utterly destroys the intellectual and moral nature of even
the best and wisest, in all counsel and action connected with
the said committee or board : so that it has been held that
even the seven archangels, if constituted a special committee
to further the glory of God (which surely is in sad need of
furtherance), would without doubt make the Devil their
managing director or secretary, and be wholly guided by
him in all their corporate proceedings.
The work of the said provisional committee will simply
consist in establishing and starting the Universal Perfection
Es fragt sich nur, wer wind'ger
1st, er Oder du, mein Kind?
The air is always airy,
Be it storm, be it zephyr mild ;
The doubt is, which is airier,
The air, or you, my child?
This for the damsel ; for the journal translate wind, windy, windier.
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 67
Company, Unlimited, whose noble object the title clearly
indicates. No promotion money whatever will be paid in
any form ; and (for positively the first time in the history of
joint-stock enterprise) tke whole of the profits will accrue to
each of the Shareholders. This company will at once proceed
to make known to all the world my two essential reforms,
and to persuade all the world to carry them out, persuading
every human being as the first step to make himself or her-
self perfect. It will print this sublime essay, or an improved
version thereof (for these perfect gentlemen and ladies will
write even better than myself), in all languages of the globe,
and send missionaries to spread the glad tidings by word
of mouth. As expenses for travelling, printing, postage,
stationery, etc., etc., wall thus arise, it is probable that some
small contribution in money, as well as the regenerate per-
sonal perfection, will be required for a time to qualify for
membership. Suppose we fix the minimum of monetary
contribution at twopence-ha'penny : and the rule w^ill be
that any one shall be registered a member on forwarding to
the committee a certificate of perfection signed by a member,
together with full name, address and occupation, if any, and
subscribing if able the sum of twopence-ha'penny, or any
integral multiple thereof not exceeding ninety-six thousand
times the said unit of contribution, being a maximum of
;£"iooo sterling, lawful money of Great Britain and Ireland,
or its equivalent in any other currency ; every subscriber
being bound to declare that he retains at least as much pro-
perty for his own support as he gives for the support of the
company.
It is written, Thou shalt not steal ; and I therefore grate-
fully acknowledge that I have borrowed this twopence-ha'-
penny and its multiples (not the cash, but the more precious
notion) from the International Congress of Peace summoned
to meet at Geneva on the 9th September, 1867, in whose
68 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
circular were these noble words, which should be set up
conspicuous in letters of gold, or rather of bronze, in every
bourse of Europe, for the confusion of a Mammon-worship-
ping age : That any one may become a member of the Con-
gress by giving in his name and paying one or more sub-
scriptions of twopence-ha'penny ; " Qu'i/ suffira^ pour /aire
partie du Congrh, de s'inscrire ei de verser une ou plusieurs
cotisations de 2^ centimes'^
This twopenny-ha'penny Congress (I of course use this epi-
thet in reverence, not in vulgar worldly depreciation) has, I am
delighted to learn, solidified into a permanent International
League of Peace and Liberty, holding an annual congress ;
and the next is to open on the twenty-fifth day of this happy
month of September, 1871, at Lausanne. Fellow-citizens
are invited to attend from every part of Europe, and from
every quarter of the globe ; and no doubt they will attend in
millions, each bringing his or her name, and one or more
contributions of twopence-ha'penny ; unless, indeed, the
millions consider it better economy to have congresses in
their own districts, and contribute the amount of travelling
expenses thus saved to the funds of the League. The recent
glorious march of events on the Continent, the reign of un-
perturbed peace, and the triumph of unsullied liberty, amply
testify to the beneficent and potent influence of this Liter-
national League ; so that I can veraciously avow, that were
I not the unique universal reformer, I would zealously devote
myself to saving up twopence-ha'penny, in order to become an
exemplary passive member thereof. Only twopence-ha'penny
and your name wanted to ensure the peace and liberty of
the world ! Never was a great reform less costly. He must
be a mean or misanthropical wretch, if not quite indigent,
who will not take part in the good work on such cheap and
easy terms.
It will be found in the sequel of the text that I anticipate
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 69
the liberal assistance of this august League towards carrying
out my own proposals, for the which assistance I here humbly
thank it in advance : and I hereby solemnly and publicly
pledge myself to remit to the said League, as a poor token
of my rich gratitude for past and future favours, contributions
of twopence-ha'penny to the number of one dozen, on re-
ceiving from the Central Committee an application for the
same, accompanied by an authentic declaration that they are
urgently needed in order to finish pacifying and liberating
Europe, and the other four or five quarters of the globe ;
always supposing that, at the time of such application and
declaration reaching me, my whole estate real and personal
(all other liabilities satisfied) shall be of the required value
of half-a-crown.
The maximum of contribution is my own property (I mean
as idea ; not, alas, in cash), as is also the rule that no one
shall contribute more than half of his possessions ; and I
have fixed these conditions in order to prevent wealthy and
liberal friends from excluding others from the privilege
of subscribing in aid of the good work, and liberal friends
who are not wealthy from subscribing their all, and thus hav-
ing nothing left to live upon during the interval which must
elapse ere the first of the two reforms be thoroughly effected ;
when money will be spurned with mild disdain by humanity
(and even by womanity), when buying and selling and bar-
tering will cease for ever, when everything shall belong equally
to everybody, and everybody will desire less than his fair
share. Oh, the splendid day that is now about to dawn !
IV.
A PROVISIONAL committee of three persons, even though
each of them is perfect, may appear but a small instrument
with which to set about the rather large job of perfecting
70 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
mankind and the universe ; particularly when we consider
in what a disastrous and horrible mess a similar committee
of three perfect divine persons has now left us all, after
working for upwards of eighteen centuries at the very same
job. But a little thought shows us that this divine trio
failed so utterly to improve man and the world, precisely
because its members were gods and not men, were of heaven
and not of earth : for astronomy has already resolved heaven
into mere star-strewn space, illimitable, without local above
or beneath ; and philosophy has already resolved gods into
delusive dreams and imaginations. And even if these poor
deities, these vanishing phantasms of phantasms, had pos-
sessed any power, how could they have improved us ? In
their gospel of good tidings, our world and our flesh are
classed with the Devil, as an infernal trio opposed to the trio
of gods, as vile and abominable and desperately wicked, fit
only for eternal chastisement or annihilation : the Father,
the Son and the Holy Ghost could only have improved us
and our world out of existence. And, again, even if each
of them separately had possessed some power, jointly as a
committee they must have been utterly impotent ; for in
order to bring them into a spurious sort of unity, certain
cunning theologians without bowels of compassion did bind
these three wretched persons together, napes, armpits,
elbows, wrists, thumbs, fingers, chests, loins, thighs, knees,
ankles, heels, toes, with endless coils on coils of subtile iron
wire, intertwisted and knotted beyond human conception and
unravelling. Could their three bodies have been seen, they
must have appeared as one amorphous lump of black and
bursting flesh, swelling over furrows and gashes cut narrow
and deep by the strained network ; a red glare of agony, a
spout of thick blood, indicating eye, mouth, or nostril in the
featureless mass. Fortunately for the victims, it is pretty
certain that any life they had when the process began, must
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 71
have been very soon strangled out of them. Specimens of
the infernal instruments of torture, the meshes in which
these divine persons were involved together so as to look
like one abortion, may still be seen not without horror and
compassion, in the creed called Athanasian, and in count-
less unreadable books explaining the inexplicable mystery
of the Holy Trinity.
Now, my three perfect persons will be a very different trio
from this Holy Trinity ; they will be human beings made
perfect, not gods ; born of the earth, they will live and
work on the earth, with solid bodies and a full equipment of
carnal senses ; and so far from being indissolubly bound
together, the committee of which they are members will be
only provisional, and each of them will be free to act just
as he likes. There is thus nothing to dishearten me in the
enormous failure of that committee of the three gods.
On the other hand, it is very encouraging to remember
how each of the four or five great religious systems which
now divide nearly all humanity between them, had its origin
in the efforts of one or two poor men, who w^re themselves
far from perfect. Thus Christianity was founded by the
poor Jew Jesus (not at all the same person as our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, with whom he has been commonly
and stupidly confounded, but indeed an immensely better
character than the said Lord and Saviour), assisted by
about a dozen poor men who were in no sense perfect,
except as writers of Greek and speakers of all earth's
languages, they being very ignorant Jews of the lower
classes. These men and their human followers really
built up the enormous Christian Church, though the whole
credit (and discredit) of the achievement was monopolised by
that inert and helpless committee of the gods. And if im-
perfect men could achieve so much, a work so great however
misdirected, a work the more laborious because it was so
72 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
misdirected, think what perfect men will accomplish working
always in the right direction. For here I must earnestly beg
the reader (in case I still have one, besides him of the print-
ing-office, who does not count) to meditate as thoroughly as
he can the infinite advantages which cannot but result from
the perfection in wisdom and virtue of every member of our
proposed committee and company. Hitherto the men who
have taken a leading part in working out any reform, or in
diffusing any doctrine, have been imperfect like the rest of
mankind, and all their converts have been ditto ; and their
personal defects and vices, their self-seeking, pride, cowar-
dice, jealousy, ambition, their impatience, dishonesty, un-
wisdom, hypocrisy, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitinn^ have greatly
impeded the progress and corrupted the purity of the cause
they championed. The originator and leader has probably
been an enthusiast of strong will or strong brain, or both ;
and of course very imperfect. Of his immediate and most
sincere disciples, some have been intoxicated with his
thought, too strong for their weaker heads, and in many
cases too strong for his own ; some have been mesmerically
enslaved by his strong wdll, which in most instances has en-
slaved himself; some have been crazed by his enthusiasm,
which has always more or less crazed himself. As the
doctrine spreads more and more (for enthusiasm, however
crazy, is the most successful of missionaries), thousands are
impelled to profess it by mean and adulterate motives,
perverting it to subserve w^hat they think their self-interest ;
it is tempered to become the pliant tool of ambition, greed,
vanity ; and every convert, whether stupid or intelligent,
modifies it as much as it modifies him. Thus exactly in
proportion as the doctrine flourishes and triumphs as a
worldly system does its original essential spirit fade away
from it ; so that the real life and teaching of a wealthy and
powerful National Church can have little or nothing in
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 73
common with the life and inspiration of its remote founder.
Try to fancy poor Jesus, for example, coming to life again
(actually, not doctrinally), and learning that he was the
founder, the teacher, the exemplar, the very God of
Christendom ; fancy him searching for some trait of his
own life and ruling principles in the lives and ruling
principles of the millions who call themselves Christians ;
fancy him in spiritual communion with the Pope, the
cardinals, the bishops (though their lackeys would never
admit him to the presence of any of these), the most promi-
nent ministers of the various Christian sects. He would
find himself an outcast in his nominal kingdom, denounced
and reviled as a madman, an idiot, an impostor ; the moral
and intellectual hfe of Christendom would be as alien and
bewildering to him as its steamboats and railways and
telegraphs. Paul and the other early apostles, the ancient
heathenisms of Greece and Rome, of the East and the West,
old philosophies and older superstitions, national charac-
teristics, physical and other circumstances, the growth of
science, the ever-varying conditions of life and modes of
thought ; everything, in brief, affecting the character of the
converts, has affected the religion. By the time a doctrine
gets embodied in a Church or other institution, its original
spirit has nearly vanished. Its progress may be well
compared to the course of a great river, rivers being re-
markably convenient things for all such analogies. Some
remotest mountain - rill or rocky well-spring has the
honour of being termed its source ; and the name of this
tiny trickling is borne triumphant down a thousand broad-
ening leagues to the sea. The rill is soon joined by
others, each very like itself. As it flows onward, ever
descending (for this is the universal law), it is joined by
streamlets and rivers more and more unlike itself, they
having flowed through unHke soils and regions ; and more
74 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
than one may be greater than itself, as the Missouri is greater
than the Mississippi ; and its own original waters are more
and more modified by the new and various districts they
traverse. As it proceeds, growing deeper and wider, villages
and towns arise on its banks, and it receives copious tribute
not merely of natural streams, but likewise of sewage and
the pestilent refuse abominations of manifold factories and
w^harves. When it is become a mighty river, crowded with
ships and bordered by some wealthy and populous capital, it
may be a mere open doaca maxuna ; and at any rate it must
be as dissimilar in the quality of its waters as in their quan-
tity and surroundings from the pure rill of the mountain
solitudes, from the pure brook of the woodland shadows and
pastoral peace. The waters actually from the fountain-head
are but an insignificant drop in the vast and composite
volumes of the thick bronze or yellow flood which finally
disembogues through fat flat lowlands, in several devious
channels with broad stretches of marsh and lagoon, into the
immense purifying laboratory of the untainted salt sea. The
remote rill-source is Christ or Mohammed, the mighty
river is the Christian or Mohammedan Church ; the sea in
all cases is the encompassing ocean of death and oblivion,
which makes life possible by preserving the earth from
putrefaction.
Such has been the progress of even the best doctrines
whose preachers and converts have been imperfect men.
The doctrines may have been quite celestial in the abstract,
but the propounders committed the fatal error of not provid-
ing for the elimination of human nature, or of providing for
it in most impracticable ways. As I have often had occasion
to remark, a religious or philosophical or any other system,
is not merely a code of doctrines ; it is the outcome of these
doctrines combining in myriadfold action and reaction with
human nature and earthly conditions. The doctrines may
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 75
be perfect on paper ; but if they cannot work to good with
or in spite of these bad coefficients, they are perfectly useless.
Urging men to fly seems much loftier doctrine than coun-
selling them how to walk ; but the men have legs, and if the
teacher don't give them wings — ? Either nat^ire and human
nature must be raised to the sublimity of the doctrine, or
the doctrine must be lowered to them, if good practical
results are to be obtained. My worthy predecessor Solon,
recognising this truth, adopted the latter alternative in
legislating for the Athenians, giving them laws not the best
he could conceive, but the best they could receive. I adopt
the bolder but infinitely preferable plan of levelling up
instead of levelling down ; providing that nature and human
nature shall be made perfect to accord with my doctrine,
and not my doctrine made imperfect to accord with them.
In the Universal Perfection Company, Unlimited, there will
be a constantly increasing potency and volume of perfection,
unadulterated and undiluted by the least admixture of aught
less pure and powerful. All the members being equally
perfect will always be of one mind, so that the scandal of
dissensions and schisms will be unknown. The wisdom and
virtue of the members will be the best possible persuaders
of the unregenerate who witness them. In short, if the
studious reader will only go carefully and seriatim through
all the errors and defects which are recorded in universal
history as having vitiated earth's dead and dying religions
and philosophies, he will find to his joyous astonishment
that the Company I have the pleasure of promoting gratis,
must by its essential constitution be perfectly free from
every one of them.
I AM, moreover, exceedingly encouraged by the well-
grounded assurance that when our provisional committee of
76 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
duly-qualified persons has established the Universal Per-
fection Company, Unlimited, and well advertised the pros-
pectus thereof, this Company will be at once joined by a vast
number of rich and powerful, enthusiastic and disciplined
members. For all societies of reformers, and all isolated
reformers, as well as the most earnest and intelligent people
of all religions and sects, will be obliged to discern that the
said Company embraces in its plan all the reforms they seek.
I will give a few leading instances ; and I ask particular
attention to them, as showing that the first of my two great
reforms will in all likelihood be speedily effected.
All honest Christians and genuine Christian societies
(supposing any such still extant) must be assured that the
new perfect man will spontaneously reject all superstition,
idolatry, error, all the wickedness of the world, the flesh and
the Devil ; and spontaneously accept the only true and in-
fallible creed. Nor can these Christians fail to recognise in
our first reform the capital requirement of Christianity.
Jesus declares in the latest Gospel (John iii. 31) : " Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he can-
not see the kingdom of God." And Paul, in his deepest
epistle (Ephesians iv. 13, 22-24) : "Till we all come in the
unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ. . . . That ye put off concerning the
former conversation the old man, which is corrupt accord-
ing to the deceitful lusts ; and be renewed in the spirit of
your mind ; and that ye put on the new man, which after
God is created in righteousness and true holiness." In
fact, my scheme is merely an improved Christianity. I
abolish the gods and their correlative the Devil, who have
always proved utterly inefficient, in whom no one has any
longer a real living belief, and who will never be missed
outside prayers and sermons ; and I thus get rid of all the
OF EVIL AND MISERY. yy
dreary absurdities of dogmatic theology, all the damnable
controversies of the sects ; while at the same time I redeem
salvation from its abject dependence on the impossible faith
that an uncertain poor Jew, who did or did not live nearly
nineteen centuries ago, was and is the Lord Christ. I
make each man perfect himself instead of cringing for the
grace of God, which never helped mortal : Help yourself,
and heaven will help you, says the pious proverb ; which
means, that when man has done all the work, God is willing
to appropriate the credit. I do away with heaven and hell,
in which also no one out of Sunday school really believes ;
and I effect a vast saving of material by making a very
heaven of this present world, instead of destroying it all as
rubbish, and going to the ridiculous expense of building a
new heaven and a new earth, and above all a new Jerusalem
(as if one wasn't enough ! ). But such slight erasures and
corrections as these are perhaps not worth mention, and will
not hinder good Christians from seeing that the modern
essay is essentially their own old Gospel; and I therefore
count on their cordial co-operation.
The National Secular Society, with all Atheists, Theists,
Deists, Pantheists, Pottheists, Necessitarians, Utilitarians,
Positivists, etc., etc., must feel assured that the new perfect
man will naturally always believe only what is in accordance
with the purest and most enlightened reason ; and will most
zealously work for the greatest good of the greatest number,
making as favourable as possible (and, as I trust to show,
perfectly favourable) those circumstances which make and
are made by men."^
* It may be worth while to note here, as I do not remember to have seen it
noted elsewhere, that Necessitarians, being for the most part perfect reasoners
(in so far as our present imperfection allows), naturally love to argue in that
most perfect of figures, the circle. Their abstract doctrine runs : Man is
the creature of circumstances. Their practical corollary is : Let us improve
circumstances, and man will be proportionately improved. So circumstances
78 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
The International League of Peace and Liberty, together
with all other Peace Societies and Liberal Associations,
Socialists, Communists, Internationalists, must feel assured
that the new perfect man will not fight with his brother, for
it will not be his "nature to," nor will he seek to oppress
his brother, nor will it be possible to oppress himself; and
they must also feel assured that when all mankind and
womankind are perfect, all will be absolutely equal in every
respect, that everybody will be delighted to share everything
with everybody else, and that the earth wisely worked will
produce far more than enough for the wants of her human
children. Nor is it likely that this perfect man will rest
content with merely making all human beings free and
equal : his delicate moral sense will probably perceive that
other animals have their inalienable rights no less than the
human animal ; that it is wicked to enslave horses, dogs,
camels, elephants, reindeer, etc., for his pleasure and service ;
that it is criminal to rob the cow of her milk and the hen
of her egg, thus defrauding the calf and preventing the life
of the chick ; that it is a shameful abuse of superior power
to interfere in any way with that mode of life to which the
nature of each animal impels it.
All philosophic heathens will recognise that my plan is
make man (for theory), and man makes circumstances (for practice). Or,
man is tlie creature of circumstance, and circumstance is the creature of
man. Thus the perfect circle is complete, to spin merrily (with my impulse
and guidance) along the railroad of progress unto the not very distant ter-
minus of Heaven-upon-Earth. I may add that this circular form of doctrine
(which is by no means uncommon) has the great advantage of being refutation-
tight against ordinary opponents, who in attacking either clause, confirm the
other. It can only be attacked wholesale from the position (whether tenable
or untenable it concerns us not here to inquire) that circumstances and
man do not act at all on each other. I strongly advise every young dispu-
tant to take special care, and make sure, that one half of his speech or
essay thoroughly contradicts the other ; so that when his adversaries over-
whelm either wing, he can bring up its fellow with the triumphant retort,
You are only stealing my own arguments.
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 79
consonant with the great heathen precept, Know thyself;
for this precept, Hke most others which are really valuable,
is not great in its literal rudimentary self, but in its legitimate
organic development. As our cool friend Goethe well re-
marks (Maxi'meM und Refiexionen^ Section 6), it is not to be
taken in an ascetic sense, it has nothing to do with the mor-
bid self-introspection of our modern hypochondriacs and
valetudinarians, it is quite simple and practical. There is
but poor comfort in knowing one's self as one is now, weak,
unclean, foolish, generally imperfect, on very bad terms with
nature and his fellows : the oracle meant that such know-
ledge should sting one into improving and perfecting him-
self; and when one has become perfect, to know himself
will be sublime self-satisfaction. And as in our scheme all
are to become perfect, each will enjoy this self-satisfaction
not egotistically, but in heartiest sympathy with all others.
Know thyself, how imperfect ; hence, perfect thyself; finally,
know thyself, how perfect, and the conscious perfection
shall be thy beatitude.
The various Temperance Societies (as have strangely
christened themselves the various Abstinence Societies,
which very discreetly, in order to make sure of exterminating
Intemperance, not only kill it but castrate the Temperance
that might engender it) will be sure that the new perfect
man will never abuse either alcoholic liquors or anything
else in the world, and will not use at all what he had better
refrain from altogether. For it is really too absurd to
imagine a being with the human nature improved out of him,
and a divine nature improved into him, getting drunk and
disorderly, starving his children, beating his wife, fighting
the poUce ; and it is, in fact, absurd to imagine that any
police would be required in a community of such beings.
The Vegetarians may confidently reckon that the new
perfect man will not kill and devour other animals, nay, will
8o THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
not kill and devour vegetables, if it is cruel and wrong to do
so. Should he after serious moral reflection conclude that
vegetable life is as sacred as animal, he will doubtless be
clever enough to derive plenty of wholesome food from the
mineral kingdom ; and should he deem it wrong to ravage
even this for so vulgar a purpose as filling his belly, he will
doubtless be able to nourish himself without devouring any-
thing at all.
All sincere politicians, radicals, republicans, conserva-
tives, royalists, may be sure that the new perfect man will
destroy in polity all that ought to be destroyed, will con-
serve and establish all that ought to be conserved and
established.
The worshippers of Mumbo Jumbo, ultramontanes,
ritualists, spiritualists, can have no doubt that the new per-
fect man will adore and believe whoever and whatever ought
to be adored and believed.
In fine, every one who has faith that his own doctrine is
true and his own plan of life good, must have faith that the
better and wiser men become, the more will they believe his
doctrine and adopt his plan of life.
Thus we are justified in assuming that all the best men
of all creeds and parties, the very flower of humanity, wdll
certainly join the Universal Perfection Company, Unlimited,
as soon as they have had the opportunity of studying and
mastering its veracious and modest prospectus.
VI.
Strengthened in the very beginning of its career by acces-
sions so numerous and powerful, and wielding irresistible
might by the perfection of each of its members in contrast
with the enormous imperfection of unregenerate men, the
Universal Perfection Company, Unlimited, will certainly in
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 8i
the course of a very few years predominate in all the regions
of the earth, not only among the tribes termed barbarous,
but also among the nations we pleasantly call civilised.
When it is thus become more potent in itself than all the
rest of mankind, it will probably feel bound to decide at
once which of two courses of conduct it ought to adopt as
the better for the true interests of the world and the human
race : whether the Company shall bear with the stolid and
stubborn imperfect men, hoping to win them and their
children gradually to self-perfection, or at worst leaving
them to die out gradually as an inferior race ; or whether
the Company shall promptly exterminate them. If this
latter course be chosen, we may anticipate that a plain and
kindly warning to the following effect, will be brought to the
notice of all the recusants : — " Whereas, in despite of the
example and counsel of the members of this Company, certain
obdurate human creatures persist in their imperfection ; and
whereas the existence of such creatures is necessarily a misery
to themselves and others, and those of them who do not feel
this misery must be the most wretched of all, as debased to
the level of their actual lot ; and whereas such diseased and
foul creatures cannot but poison our atmosphere, polluting
our young purity and infecting our scarcely established
health; and whereas, moreover, the existence of such creatures
doth not only afflict with sore affliction and shame the souls
of the perfect who must witness their obscene vileness, but
doth degrade Humanity now first rising and in part risen to
its due eminence : We the members of this Company, both
jointly and severally, being overfilled with love and com-
passion for these poor worthless creatures who were lately
our fellowmen, and yearning continually with fraternal
yearnings for their salvation, do hereby most tenderly and
earnestly entreat them to leave forthwith their loathsome
sin and misery, and unite with us in the beatitude of per-
82 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
fection : And furthermore, notice is hereby given unto all
whom it may concern, that this Company, moved by pro-
found pity for such of these creatures as are incurable, and
constrained by its solemn duty to the Universe and Human-
ity, hath resolved and will with unfailing exactitude execute
the resolution (and therefore all those to whom it shall
apply) ; That whoever of human kind hath not ere the
expiration of (say) one year from this date performed upon
himself either the simple perfecting process, which is incom-
parably the best hari-kari or happy despatch, or else that
other happy despatch known as honourable suicide, which
is incomparably better than continuance of base life, shall
be then happily despatched by this Company, in order that
the world in general and himself in particular may be
promptly and thoroughly delivered from his evil and
misery.' One would fain trust that a pleading and warn-
ing conceived in a spirit so affectionate, and embodied in
the consummate eloquence which will characterise every-
thing spoken or written in the name of the Company, must
persuade even the most obdurate to self-reform : as it would
certainly persuade all those who in pure modesty shrank
from becoming perfect, to depart uncompelled from a world
in which their life was shown to be noxious. And one can
safely affirm beforehand that it would indeed be a good
riddance of bad rubbish to put speedily out of existence all
wretches to whom such an appeal proved ineffectual. It is
moreover quite clear that a minority composed of similar
wretches, or even a large majorit)^, could only offer the
most puny resistance to a majority, or even a very small
minority, of men all perfect. It is to be remarked that I
do not venture to suggest that the Company is likely to
choose the one course rather than the other, to exterminate
rather than tolerate, or tolerate rather than exterminate the
incorrigible. If it has to make the choice, it will doubtless
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 83
select that which is really preferable, and which will the
sooner secure the universal perfection of humanity.
When every human being on the earth is thus perfect,
evil in the senses of vice, sin, crime, error, folly, impurity,
disease, deformity, ugliness, will be extinguished or nearly
extinguished from among mankind ; and with evil a large
part of misery in the sense of pain or suffering will no doubt
disappear. The immaculate goodness and infallible wisdom
of the new men will likewise, beyond doubt, remedy or avoid
many of the sufferings to which nature now subjects us, and
which we account inevitable and incurable. But, so far as
we can see, so long as the present laws and constitution of
nature continue there must still remain a vast amount of
really inevitable suffering for mankind, without reckoning
beastkind, birdkind, fishkind, insectkind, reptilekind, plant-
kind, and leaving quite out of discussion stonekind. Storm
and earthquake, landslip and flood, lightning and volcanic
eruption will probably injure or slay these perfect men,
though not so frequently as us. Their exquisite sense of
justice will be keenly outraged, I fancy, by those iniquitous
inequalities in the universe which I have touched upon in
the second section of this wonderful treatise. Child-bearing
may continue painful to mothers and discommodious to
fathers ; teething may still be a troublesome process alike
to infants and parents. These new men, naturally enjoying
life much more than we can, may demand either to live for
ever or to live at any rate as long as they please ; for it is
ignominious to be pushed forcibly out of the world at an
uncertain moment, whether one would like to stay longer or
not. I think, too, that the decay from the grand climacteric
into old age, with its weakness, torpor, senility, and general
Struldbrugism, will by no means suit them, and that they
will prefer to live out their life to the last minute (in case
they are content to have a last minute) in full vigour of
84 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
mind and body. They will scarcely brook confinement to
this petty earth of ours, but will want to roam at pleasure
through the limitless universe. I think that their generous
souls will be wrought to indignation by the condition and
prospects of the inferior creatures. In the complex rela-
tions between nature and human nature, there are innumer-
able other matters with regard to which the perfect men will
probably require more or less important change, as the
meditative reader wuU easily discover for himself.
Let me here touch upon but one more point, which is
rather interesting at the present time. When all social,
political, religious, moral, intellectual, and other distinctions
have been done away with, is it probable that these perfect
human beings will allow nature to violate decency and
thorough equality by perpetuating the gross distinctions of
sex ? Imperfect as we still are, our most advanced thinkers
have already arrived at the doctrine of the absolute equality
of man and woman, tempered perhaps by some vague supe-
riority on the female side ; and already our cultivated moral
delicacy, our refined spirituality, our exquisite modesty, cur
ethereal chastity, are ashamed of things so coarse and carnal
and obscene as these sexual distinctions. We dare not
allude to them publicly, except in the most distant and
evasive fashion; society placidly ignores them, men and
women alike being supposed utterly ignorant of each other's
bodily form, and extremely unwilling to learn anything on
the subject ; legislation puts a triple bandage on the eyes of
justice (completely blindfolded, if not blind, already) when-
ever they are in question ; religion fears and hates them as
the chief organs of the filthy and damnable lusts of the flesh.
As in the meanwliile, under all this veiling and ignoring
in the world of pretences, the said distinctions are as vigor-
ous and influential as ever in the world of facts (nature with
reckless immodesty continuing to produce them now just as
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 85
she did in the old hcentious times, ere nude statues were
made decent with figleaves and the naked truth presentable
with cant), the actual results may be summed up in that
great sad word of William Blake, which sums up so much
of our actual life : " Prisons are built with stones of law ;
brothels with bricks of religion." In order to ensure abso-
lute equality (which perchance cannot co-exist with essential
distinctions) the new race may demand either that sex be
abolished, or that every human being be of both sexes.
Perhaps the very perfecting process will either unsex or
androgynise its subject, so that all alike shall be regenerated
either neutral or epicene. But if in their new birth they
remain and consent to continue respectively male and
female, they will doubtless openly and honourably recognise
these distinctions of sex ; so that what is now in public
ignored, and in private spoken of basely and obscenely,
shall be then both in pubUc and private spoken of with
joyous and noble frankness ; and what is now in great part
prostituted to ignoble emotions and degrading companion-
ship, shall be then hallowed by the ardent chastity of free
and natural love.
VII.
But will change of the laws and constitution of the world
be feasible? Can even perfect men persuade or compel
nature to improve and perfect herself into thorough unison
with their requirements ? I am not only convinced that
they can, but I am able to show that the change is quite
practicable even to our poor understandings ; and everybody
will surely allow that what is proved practicable to us must
be mere child's play to the new men.
The first question is, To whom or what should reformed
Humanity address the summons for the instant reformation
86 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
of the universe ? to Fate, Law, Chance, the Gods, or Nature
herself?
Not to Fate, for it is blind, dumb, deaf, inexorable ; and
moreover all our modern philosophy ignores or contemns it,
and the palatial edifice of this my system is built upon the
foundation of its tomb.
Not to Law, for it is impotent, being the mere creature
of the things that seem to obey it. Nor can it change, for
it perishes in mutation ; and change of it must come from
what is above or beyond it. And yet though it cannot alter,
it always manages to range itself on the side which has
proved victorious, graciously sanctioning all that has been
done, and which by the leagued universe cannot be undone.
It may be disregarded altogether with perfect safety.
Not to Chance, for it cannot be relied upon ; its caprices
confound all the mathematics of probabilities and baffle the
wildest hazards of guess. It is altogether too frivolous for
the serious consideration of wise men who deal with cause
and effect or steady-going unphilosophical sequence, and
march firmly through logical premises booted with because
and therefore.
Not to the Gods, though at first one might think there
would be hope in them, for their devotees assure us that
they are all-good and all-powerful, and that they love to
grant the prayers of the righteous. But there are so many
of them and so diverse, and they hate each other so in-
tensely, that no plan of world-reformation could ever be
agreed upon, much less carried out, by them. And, be-
sides, it is possible, and perchance even probable, that the
new perfect men will have no Gods or God at all.
It seems likely, therefore, that the momentous appeal
will have to be made direct to Nature herself, still known
to a few as the mighty mother, but to more as the cruel
and stingy stepmother, while the vast majority see in her
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 87
but the lowly fostermother or menial nurse of our royal
selves the glorious children of mankind ; conceited and
thankless little brats, who defame the womb which bore us
and the breasts which gave us suck. The new men will
krow well in what character to regard her. To Her the
living reality, and not to the gods or other shadowy supreme
powers, will the summons be addressed ; for as the sage
poet chants ("Faerie Queene;" Mutabilitie, vii. 5) : —
"Then forth issew'd (great goddess) great Dame Nature,
With goodly port and gracious majesty,
Being far greater and more tall of stature
Than any of the gods or powers on high."
If she accords at once with a good grace all that the
perfect men demand, all will at once be well both for them
and for herself. But if she resolves to continue in her old
ways, and will not be persuaded by their filial pleadings,
they can resort to affectionate constraint, as in the case of
their incorrigible human brothers, deUcately discussed in
Section VI. And as these perfect men will be perfect in
unanimity and resolution, there can be no rational doubt of
their speedy triumph, as I will now triumphantly prove.
Uncertain as are most things about which we freely dog-
madse, it is quite certain, and indeed an axiomatic truth
well known and understood by all civilised people, that man
(including of course woman and the children) is the very
crcwn and head of nature ; that he is so at present, whether
or not destined so to continue for ever. I need not dwell
on a proposition so obvious to the clear and impartial
human intelligence. Buzzard and ass may be unaware of
it, each fondly fancying itself the supreme model form of
life, the true final cause and object of the world's existence ;
but we men know better. AVe know that all the other off-
spring of nature aspire and point to man, and are in him
88 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
alone fully developed; though it is true that he cannot
swim like frog or grampus, nor fly like midge or wildgoose.
We know that all her other works are consecrated with the
celestial stamp of use solely in relation to him and his
flourishing life ; the chief end of sun, moon, stars, air,
ocean, and earth, being to serve man and glorify him,
perhaps for ever. Without him, nature would be a fruitless
stem, an arch wanting its key-stone, a palace untenanted
(we don't count as tenants the rats and mice and such
small deer), a discrowned queen, a headless trunk. All
this is well known to civilised people, but the most impor-
tant inferences to be drawn from it are very little known,
for man has been hitherto, and still remains, an animal timid
and inconsequent in ratiocination.
In the first place, it is clear that since man is the head of
nature, to cut off him would be to decapitate her. It may
be true that she is a sort of hydra, having had several snc-
cessive heads ; and that unless man perfects himself, as I
here urge and implore him, he will be eventually superseded
by a better, or at least a stronger head : but the one head
has not fallen off suddenly, and the next suddenly sprung
up in its place ; each change has occupied a vast period of
time, the one head slowly giving way while the other as
slowly came to the front, as in the case of children's first
and second' teeth, as in the sloughing of snakes and the
moulting of birds. On the other hand, it may be true, as
nearly all of us modestly assume, that man is the last if not
the only head of nature, so that in losing him she would be
as an adult losing a tooth, who finds no other grow to re-
place it. The adult, indeed, may procure an artificial tooth ;
but who ever heard of an artificial head effectively fulfil-
ling the functions of a natural one ? And, moreover, the
essential character of nature renders it impossible for her
to be in anything artificial. We are therefore entitled to
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 89
conclude that cutting off the human race suddenly would
kill nature by beheading her ; for either she would have
absolutely no other head, even in germ, or the head meant
to supply its place would as yet exist only in embryo and
be quite unfit for duty ; and we cannot conceive a being so
highly organised as nature continuing to live without a head,
either for ever or during a period of interregnum between
the premature fall of the one and the arrival at maturity of
the other.
But the one ruHng passion and principle of nature is
surely her love of life ; as the true proverb runs, Self-pre-
servation is the first law of nature. Supreme is she in
philoprogenitiveness, that is to say, in the love not so much
of progeny as of generating. She spawns perpetually, and
by millions and billions, producing unscrupulously myriads
of imperfect types for one that is perfect, devouring indif-
ferently and wholesale the perfect and the imperfect in order
to produce faster and more abundantly ; all that we term
death being but her swift process of securing material to be
worked up into ever fresh forms of life. So limitless and,
from our point of view, improvident is her lust of procrea-
tion, that we may well deem it rather a fierce monomania
than a ruhng principle. The one thing, therefore, which
she most abhors and shrinks from must be death absolute,
the death of herself, the termination of the continually
active quasi-birth and quasi-death which constitute her
continually active life, her eternal being which is eternal
becoming.
Seeing, therefore, that the sudden destruction of mankind
would kill nature, and that she intensely and monomaniacally
loves her own life, the conclusion is manifest that she would
do anything and everything short of self murder, in order
to avoid the premature extinction of our species. And from
this inexpugnable proposition I draw the fateful practical
90 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
corollary, T/iaf the Jiuvian race, so long as no otJiei' is ready
to supersede it, ca?i cojnpel nature to do what it pleases, by
resolving on instant universal suicide in case of her refusal.
In all modesty, and without the slightest disrespect for
preceding and contemporary sages (who if they have taught
us but little, have at anyrate taught all they knew, and in
fact a good deal more), I believe myself justified in affirming
that this is beyond measure the most important law of
nature discoverable by man ; and that its discovery, Avhich
gives him the simplest and easiest of formulas for working
instantaneously the perfection of the universe, must ever
remain unique in eternal and infinite beneficence. And I
must not omit to add that this formula is not only unique,
by the unlimited good results of its (infallibly) successful
application, but is characterised by such prodigal superabun-
dance of goodness, that even in case of failure (which our
sovereign human intelligence declares impossible) its appli-
cation would benefit mankind immensely more than they
ever have been or are ever likely to be benefited by anything
else. It is a medicine which if it could fail in working the
perfect cure, must yet do more good to the patient than all
the rest of the pharmacopoeia. For suppose that we resolve
on instant wholesale suicide if nature refuses to perfect
herself, and (the impossible case) that nature does refuse,
and we have forthwith to carry out our resolution : can any
thoughtful and conscientious man, candidly considering our
state and that of the world (perfection being supposed un-
attainable), doubt that such universal suicide would be the
one best and most beatific action we could perform for our-
selves and our (potential) posterity and our world in general ?
Lest the fascinated reader should make away with himself
hurriedly and for inappropriate reasons (while appropriate
ones too surely abound), as Cleombrotus in a fine frenzy
threw himself to death in the sea after studying the Phcedo^
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 91
I call special attention to the fact that it is only our -universal
suicide which would prove a panacea for all the ills our
flesh is heir to ; individual suicides can do little or no good,
save to the individuals themselves. Thus true philosophers
may rationally and generously deny themselves the luxury
of self-murder, because their death must leave the human
average still worse than it is ; and, besides, death's coming
is so certain and (at farthest) so near, that it is scarcely
worth while to put one's self out of breath hastening to
meet him.
Men have been hitherto so imperfect in intelligence,
that they have not been fully aware of this, their immense
reserve of compelling power ; and so imperfect in will, that
even if fully aware thereof, they could not unanimously have
carried and carried out the requisite resolution. Yet there
seems always to have existed some obscure and confused
consciousness of such really miraculous power over nature ;
while (in the blessed order of Providence) it was reserved
for the present luminous writer, in the present illustrious
age, to discover and formulate with comprehensive precision
the sublime law of this power. All the old traditions of
supernatural magic and miracles ; the loftiest rhapsodies of
mysticism in all climes and ages, the trances of seers, the
ecstasies of philosophers, the rapturous influxes and effluxes
of saints ; the nirvana of Buddhism, the faith of Jesus which
could move mountains, and to which nothing was impos-
sible (faith being the favourite abracadabra of Jesus, just as
perfection is mine) ; the celibacy, self-mortification, self-
mutilation, rage for martyrdom, common to Brahminism,
Buddhism, and Christianity, and probably to all religions ;
the austere Stoicism of Greece and Rome ; the much-
decried bloodthirstiness of famous conquerors, who magna-
nimously took upon themselves the useful and onerous task
of extinguishing by myriads their ignoble fellow-men ; all
92 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
these point to some dim intuition of the supreme truth I
have just demonstrated, as in all the mode of subduing
nature is by suppression and destruction of humanity.
But nature could not and cannot ever be constrained into
self-improvement by sporadic or even endemic or epidemic
cases of slow or swift suicide and slaughter, so long as the
premature extinction of the whole human race was not and
is not seriously threatened. Threaten this seriously, and
she will forthwith become our most obedient humble
servant. This is the forcible plan of " strikes " by labour
against capital, applied in its utmost extension by man
against nature; as you have already mere trades'-unions,
organise a universal Man-union, and threaten, if all your
demands are not immediately granted, to "strike" living, to
" turn out" of human existence, and you will at once bring
the everlasting employer to reason.
And if man even in his present state is the very crown
and head of nature, think what a crown and head he will
be when perfect, when divine ! I can scarcely imagine
that she will then have the heart to refuse him anything.
Should she, however, prove obdurate to the first courteous
and affectionate appeal of the new men, they can deliver to
her the dreadful ultimatwn : Immediate compliance with
all we ask (which we ask for your good no less than for our
own), or we immediately all kill ourselves, thus beheading
you. And she, knowing their inexorable resolution, must
straightway yield, and perfect herself as they require ; and
in the maternal and general feminine fashion love them all
the more for thus absolutely dominating her.
And thus in the course of not many years (let us make
a liberal allowance for mischances and unforeseen obstacles,
and say by the beginning of the twentieth century, which is
nearly thirty years hence),- evil will be extinct by the perfec-
tion of man, and misery by the perfection of nature, and
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 93
everybody will be thoroughly good and happy everywhere
for evermore. Q.E.D.
VIII.
I CANNOT conclude this essay, which contains the quint-
essential results of my most earnest and profound meditations
through a long series of years, without apologising to man-
kind in case its extreme brevity renders it in any respect
obscure. Being obliged to compress into a few of these
pages a mass of inestimable matter which would have very
well filled two or three bulky volumes, I have done my best
to put the main principles in the clearest light ; but I am
only too well aware that many considerations of interest
and importance, which might have greatly facilitated the
study and comprehension of the whole scheme, exemplifying
its harmonious rational beauty and obviating specious objec-
tions, have been altogether omitted for lack of space. For
one such consideration I must make room here.
Coleridge says somewhere that in his experience the most
pregnant of proverbs is the well-known paradoxical one,
Extremes meet ; and on this point my experience decidedly
confirms that of Coleridge. Thus in ending my treatise I
naturally revert to its beginning, where I seemed to speak
somewhat lightly of those deep philosophers who go down
mining and burrowing through the bottom of the bottom-
less pit in search of the origin of evil. For it may be very
plausibly urged on their behalf, that it is impossible to ex-
tinguish evil until the origin thereof has been discovered and
destroyed. This great river of human Time (rivers were
expressly created to feed metaphors, allegories, and navigable
canals) which comes flowing down thick with filth and blood
from the immemorial past, surely cannot be thoroughly
cleansed by any purifying process apphed to it here in the
94 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
present ; for the pollution, if not in its very source (sup-
posing it has a source), or deriving from unimaginable re-
motenesses of eternity indefinitely beyond its source, at any
rate interfused with it countless ages back, and is perennial
as the river itself. This immense poison-tree of Life, with its
leaves of illusion, blossoms of delirium, apples of destruction,
surely cannot be made wholesome and sweet by anything we
may do to the branchlets and twigs on which, poor insects, we
find ourselves crawling, or to the leaves and fruit on which
we must fain feed ; for the venom is drawn up in the sap by
the taproots plunged in abysmal depths of the past. This
toppling and sinking house wherein we dwell cannot be
firmly re-estabHshed, save by re-establishing from its lowest
foundation upwards. In fine, To thoroughly reforin the pre-
sent and thefutu?'e, we must thoroughly 7'eform the past. Far
be it from me to deny this essential truth, which I have so
long recognised as one of the first laws of practical and
speculative moral philosophy. But the fallacy in the argu-
ment of these origin of evil explorers consists in the assump-
tion, that in order to root out evil we must necessarily first
discover the root ; and, generally, that in order to destroy
anything we must know where and what is its origin. Now,
there is no absolute necessity for such knowledge in such cases,
though it is as a rule very helpful and much to be desired.
Do we not every day destroy myriads of animalcukx without
being aware of it, or knowing anything of the nature and
origin of the poor creatures destroyed? And it is plain
that without knowing the precise position and character of
the root of a plant, but befieving it to be at the foot of the
stem, and judging that there is no solution of continuity
from top to bottom, one may extirpate the plant by pulling
at the stem ; and thus the discovery of the root will be the
consequence, and not the antecedent, of the eradication.
And thus will it be in this case. For I can deliberately and
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 95
fearlessly affirm that T/ie dual perfecting process herein pro-
posed wi/l, in fact, in its insta?ita?ieousplenipotentiality, reform
and perfect the whole past as thoroughly as the whole future.
The house wherein we dwell will be re-edified from its
lowest foundation ; the tree of Life will be made sweet and
wholesome to and from the utmost extremities of the roots
that strike deepest into antiquity ; the river of human Time
will be purified throughout its whole length to and from its
immemorial source. This assertion may at first seem rather
mysterious and paradoxical, but its truth will become com-
prehensible when it has been strictly meditated, and grow
fulgently obvious in the light of the experience of the
perfect men in the perfect world. To this experience, now
so close at hand, I confidently appeal.
As a metaphysician, I would naturally prefer to exhaust
this subject (and the reader) by an elaborate dissertation ;
but as a practical moral reformer, anxious to get the weight
of the whole wicked world off my mind, I dare not Hnger
to indulge in this intellectual luxury. I will merely observe
that mysteries and paradoxes abound in life and nature : we
are suckled on incomprehensibilities, and irreconcilable con-
tradictions are our daily food. Nay, they abound even in
the exact sciences, though these are all made out of man's
own head, as the children say. In common arithmetic he
rules that decimal one repeating is equal to one-ninth, while
he knows that however far produced it must still remain less
than this vulgar fraction. In geometry he starts with the
self-contradictory definition that a point is position without
magnitude ; and only arrives at important truths concerning
parallel lines, by assuming as an axiom that certain lines will
converge, while the best geometers have vainly puzzled them-
selves in attempts to demonstrate the fact. In algebra and
the higher mathematics he works with negative signs, surds,
imaginary roots, with infinite series and infinitesimals, which
96 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
metaphysically baffle human comprehension. In all these
cases, as in ordinary life, the useful and practically trust-
worthy results are the real and sufficient justification and
verification of the paradox and mystery ; for antinomy is
the deepest law of the universe, in so far as we can at
present discern. And such verification, as I have already
pointed out, my statement will have in the experience of
those who have performed the perfecting process. So much
for philosophers : as for the Christians and other religionists,
they who have banqueted on contradictions and revelled
in mysteries, which never have been or can be practically
verified or made useful, will no doubt be enraptured to
find a little sweet puzzlement, a slight savour and relish of
apparent imi^ossibility, a gentle exhilaration of provisional
faith, amidst the austere feast of reason and sober flow of
soul of this perfect system of universal reform.
IX.
And now should any admiring reader ask why I, the
present writer, have not already performed upon myself the
simple perfecting process so lucidly expounded, and thus
made myself the unique germ in practice as well as theory
of the universal reformations herein proposed, I beg to
inform him or her that I am by nature exceedingly quiet
and modest ; that I shrink from engrossing all the honour
and glory to myself, as well as transgressing the great
modern rule of the division of labour, by both planning and
working out the plan ; that I am at present quite weak and
ill, having (as will be readily believed) exhausted and in fact
nearly killed myself with intense meditation in the stupend-
ous task of elaborating these Proposals ; that by commer-
cial usage or etiquette (for which I have extreme reverence)
the promoter of a company always keeps himself with
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 97
touching self-abnegation in the background, giving unto
others the glorification of seeing their names in print as
directors and miscellaneous officials, and unto others leaving
the felicity of being registered as subscribing shareholders,
and taking his own shares (issued as fully paid up) and
other remuneration in the most modest and retiring manner,
so modestly indeed that he usually consents to have his
own name quite suppressed in the transactions, and allows
the name of some one else to be flourished in its stead.
And furthermore I confess that the tortures and indigni-
ties to which in these days celebrated men are subject,
both w^hile living and when dead, have so horrified me, that
I immensely prefer the most ignoble obscurity to the most
noble reputation. For while alive the famous man has
neither peace nor privacy, being the common property of
all the idle busybodies and malicious or foolish newsmongers
who may care to seize on him, destroying his comfort and
devastating his time. And when dead his case is even
worse. The repose of the tomb is no repose for him.
Lecturers lecture on him, preachers preach on him ; bio-
graphers serve him up in butter and treacle, or in acrid
vinegar, to a lickerous and palled public, exposing all his
weaknesses, follies, misfortunes, errors, and defects. Punch
has ready waiting for him the framework of a lot of long
verses, like a row of very dismal coffins ; and if by dint of
tugging, thrusting, wTenching, knotting, mutilating, squeez-
ing, jamming, and heavy hard hammering, his virtues and
achievements can be possibly crushed into the said coffins
and nailed down fast, the implacable Punch will so crush
and nail them. The Telegraph incontinently gushes over
him a eulogy so rancidly unctuous, that in several cases (as
w^e have been credibly assured) the corpse of the victim thus
lubricated has turned and vomited its heart up in the grave.
His bust may be set up sleekly fatuous in some hall j his
G
98 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
statue be cast forth into the open air, a lump of ugliness
ever growing grimier in fellowship with King Georges and
royal dukes. And worst of all, his spirit is at the beck of
the mediums. Sludge (Browning so thoroughly vivisected
this animal that it ought to be dead, but your low
organisms are very tenacious of life, and it lives and growls
fat as before), with Budge, Drudge, Grudge, Scrudge,
Smudge, thereto one Judge and whole tribes of Rudge and
Fudge, all and any of the males and females of the sweet
sect, may make him come to them when they list, to play
imbecile antics and utter idiotic lies. Ah, better be a mortal
baboon or skunk, toad or cuttle-fish, any mortal thing how-
ever base and obscene, than a famous immortal human
soul on these terms ! Poor Shakespeare dreaded that his
dust might be digged, and cursed the man who should move
his bones ; but his soul he thought secure from outrage,
commending it into the hands of God, to be made partaker
of life everlasting, as we read in the first clause of his will.
And now his soul, instead of being in the hands of God,
is in the hands of Sludge ; and has to spend a large portion
of its existence in making a greater fool of itself than it
ever made of Dogberry or Shallow, a greater liar of itself
than it ever made of Pistol or ParoUes, all for the profit
of Fudge and the hysterical wonder of Rudge ; and as the
seances are so numerous, and are now held in all degrees of
latitude and longitude, and its name is so popular, it is never
safe at any hour from being summoned to these vile buf-
fooneries, and no doubt is often enacting them in a dozen
different places at the same time. It was well worth while
to live fifty years, to write Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Macbeth,
in order to earn this sublime posthumous doom ! May the
Lord in his infinite mercy keep me from becoming a cele-
brity ! The additional terrors of death for men of renown
are grown so appalling, that soon only brazen impudence,
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 99
stolid obtuseness, rabid vanity will dare to face them.
Men really great will stifle their energies, rusting and
perishing unknown and unuseful, rather than run the risk
of glory, and the world will have none but little men active,
if this state of things be not shortly put an end to ; and
herein appears yet another powerful argument for the in-
stant acceptance of these proposals. But as these proposals
(as I have shown) can certainly, and will probably, be effec-
tuated in about thirty years, it may be considered that these
tortures and degradations of the famous should not be so
much dreaded by me, for they will undoubtedly be extin-
guished in the universal extinction of evil and misery. And
this consideration is indeed reasonable, but my loathing and
horror are as yet too intense to be soothed by the calm
voice of reason ; and therefore, even if I had just now
the requisite health, energy and ambition, I could not put
myself personally in evidence by announcing myself with
full name, address and occupation, as the prototype of
human perfection, the first member of the provisional com-
mittee for the establishment of the Universal Perfection
Company, Unlimited.
But I hereby cheerfully promise and pledge myself that
as soon as I am informed and convinced that the aforesaid
provisional committee is duly constituted and at work, I
will qualify myself for membership ; and, having forwarded
my contribution with name, address and occupation (should
I be then fortunate enough to have the last two), will do
my utmost for the furtherance of the good cause ; only for
ever carefully concealing my identity with the author of these
proposals, and leaving the whole glory thereof to the pair of
impersonal and interchangeable capital letters hereunto sub-
scribed ["B. V."]. And with the prospect of such member-
ship, I do now put by as a sacred deposit the amount of the
unit of contribution (while hoping that when the good time
loo THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
comes I may be able to contribute more), that is to say, two-
pence ha'penny, in good and lawful money of this realm as I
verily believe ; and the twopence ha'penny hallowed to this
purpose, is now and henceforth until that purpose is ful-
filled, to be a first lien upon my estate, having priority even
over the half-a-crown hereinbefore alienated in certain con-
tingencies, as specified in Section III. ; and I do most
devoutly pray that I may never by extreme need be con-
strained to part with the said sacrosanct deposit or any
portion thereof until the aforesaid committee of perfect
men be ready to receive me.
And now from my inmost soul, and with that intensely
earnest anxiety which springs from intense love and com-
passion for my kind, do I admonish the whole Human Race
that if it will not in good time carry out the two simple
reforms I have explained, and thus constitute itself the
everlasting consummation of the perfect cosmic life, it wall
assuredly in process of time become extinct, having fulfilled
its seon ; for every species and genus of imperfect creatures
has its limited period no less than every imperfect individual,
the perfect only being eternal ; and thus either Nature will
perish with it, as imperfect herself, or she surviving, another
and superior race will supersede it, and grow indestructible
by growing perfect, or in turn yield to yet another and still
superior race.
i]ut I cannot think so badly of my species and so tragi-
cally of its doom, as to believe that it will persistently reject
beatification, and prefer ignoble extinction to eternal supre-
macy ; and I have therefore little or no doubt that ere this
glorious nineteenth century be finished, these proposals will
have been wholly or in great part realised, and the imper-
sonal initials appended to them by their unknown author
honoured far beyond my wish. I am well aware, however,
that it is in the highest degree probable that the present
1 , J
OF EVIL AND MISERY. ' '" ' ' ' loi
world of imperfect men will at first either totally neglect
them, or only vouchsafe notice in obloquy and ribald
mockery. For I have learnt from my very small reading in
history (I generally prefer my fiction pure, as vended in
novels and romances, without the adulteration of misunder-
stood facts and ridiculous pretensions to veracity), that
when any one proposes something exceedingly injurious to
a nation, as for instance an unjust war with another people,
a Mississippi Scheme or a South Sea Bubble, he and his
proposals are greeted with instant rapture by the very nation
to be injured by them, and are not cursed until some time
afterwards when the loss and damage they have caused are
partially realised. And on the other hand, that when any
one proposes something exceedingly beneficial to a country,
such as a sorely needed reformation in religion or govern-
ment, he is treated with the utmost contumely and derision,
and perhaps even persecuted to death, and is not honoured
and idolised until many years afterwards, when he is senile
or dead, and when perhaps the tree he planted is already
growing barren and an encumbrance to the ground. And
if ordinary reformers are usually treated very badly at first,
a reformer so extraordinary as myself must expect atrociously
bad treatment indeed. Well might our tender-hearted sage
exclaim, " O beloved brother blockheads of Mankind ! " *
And what I have just noted is perhaps one of the principal
verities couched in that deep proverb, which has puzzled
not a few good brains : Truth is at the bottom of a well.
One of the chief meanings, no doubt, as well as one of the
most obvious, must be, as the simple sage opined, that if
not drowned dead she is ready to kick the bucket. But
every wise proverb or emblem involves countless good
meanings for him who knows how to evolve them. And
* Carlyle : French Revolution ; Vol. III. Book I. Chap vii. " O shrieking
beloved brother blockheads of mankind, (S:c. — "
I02 THE SPEEDY EXTINCTION
this one, if I err not grossly in my interpretation, would
express the encouraging fact that he who dares to evoke
and try to assist the said Truth out of the said well, is sure
to get thoroughly drenched with very cold water, and may
reckon himself uncommonly lucky if not dragged in and
drowned.
Yet I with unperturbed fortitude and rooted confidence
await the morning when I shall read in the Ti?nes, rechristened
the Eternities (for Truth may lie at the bottom of the ink-well
of the journalist, though he very rarely dips deep enough to
fish her up if she does) the authentic announcement that
the provisional committee of one or more perfect persons
has commenced operations. In the meanwhile I often
wonder who will commence the reformation with himself,
who is to be the happy man that will first make himself
divine. As poor Alfred de Musset cried (" Rolla " L),
Who of us. Who of us is about to become a God ?
Qui de 710US, qui de nous va devenir un Dieu ?
But if no one will take this initiative, if (as I cannot
believe) mankind and the world persist to the end in their
wretched and evil imperfection, I at least am free from
blame ; I have meditated, expounded, demonstrated, im-
plored and exhorted, until my strength is worn out and my
health perhaps ruined ; the responsibility of the damnation
of jMan and Nature will not rest on me. I can wash the
hands of brave endeavour in the water of absolution, and
smoke the pipe of tranquilHty on the cushion of a good
conscience : for as our brave German kinsmen say (especially
when, after beating the enemy, they have requisitioned a
jolly dinner and are billeted to a luxurious bed), A good
conscience is a soft pillow — Ein gutes Gewisse7i ist ein sa?iftes
Kissen. And remaining thus in a sublime minority of one
(as remaineth eternally the most dread Lord God of
OF EVIL AND MISERY. 103
monotheism), I can administer unto myself the consolation
of that blessed truth which Cacciaguida in Paradise ad-
ministered to Dante (to Dante Durante, the long-enduring
Giver), the supreme stoical truth for the honest and inde-
pendent thinker : Well shall it be for thee, to have made
thyself a party by thyself :
Si ch'a te fia bello
Averti fatta parte per te stesso.
( 104 )
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM,
BUMBLEISM.
i86s.
We were all, I think, very much pleased when ^Mr. Matthew
Arnold, not long ago, in his Essay on " Heinrich Heine,"
in the Conihill Magazine^ took occasion to tell us that we
English are the most inaccessible to ideas of any people in
Christendom. We were so pleased, not because of any
novelty in the information, but because it was charming to
be spoken to with such frankness by a scholar, a poet, a
gentleman, and above all, an Oxford Professor, and because
we all in our hearts detest and chafe at our universal
submission to routine, just as we all hate the chimney-pot
hat which yet we all wear. This essay of Mr. Arnold's,
though admirable in spirit, does not render complete justice
to Heine (and still less does another by the same author
in the same Magazi?ie, in which Heine is served up along
with Theocritus and Saint Francis) ; but it certainly renders
complete justice to our abjectness under the yoke of the
commonplace. The essence of this inert commonplace and
monotonous routine, Mr. Arnold recommends us to call by
its German name, Pliilistinisui^ and its slaves Philistines.^
* By the by, Will Watch, the bold smuggler, in the song which is now
well up in years, cries "The Philistines are down on us ! " and Hogg, in
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 105
He remarks, fairly enough, that respectable is too valuable a
word to be perverted into the scornful meaning with which
Mr. Carlyle uses it ; and that the common French term,
epicier^ is less apt and expressive than PJiilisiine, while it
also casts a slur upon a respectable class composed of
living and susceptible members. I may add that the words
Snob and Snobbery, which Thackeray pushed out into such
broad significance, have too much of a sneer in them, imply
too much of conscious hypocrisy, subserviency, and mean-
ness ; and that Mrs. Grwidy is not general enough, being
too closely related with the tea-table and mere scandal.
But Mr. Arnold seems to have quite forgotten that we
have already denominations of our own — concrete singular
and general, as well as abstract — better for us than the
French, the Carlylese, or the German. These denomina-
tions head this paper : Bumble^ Bumbledom, Bumbleism.
In the first place, their very sound (and sound is of immense
importance in a nickname), heavy, obese, rotund, a genuine
John Bull mouthful of awkwardness, is far more consonant
with their meaning than the sound of respectable, epicier,
sjiob, or Philistine ; (the German word Philister is in this
respect superior to Philistine) : and Bumble, moreover, is
intimately allied with those most respectable and ancient
English words, gritmble, stumble, mumble, jumble, fumble,
rumble, cj'umble, tumble, all heads of families of the very
choicest middle-class blood in the language.
Secondly, and this consideration is decisive ; we do not
want the same word as the Germans, because we have not
the same thing. Essentially " the humdrum people, slaves
to routine, enemies to the light, stupid and oppressive, but
at the same time very strong," are of the same nature in all
his "Life of Shelley" (Vol. I. p. xxviii.), quotes a letter written in 1824,
wherein Sir Timothy is branded as the old Philist'me. So Mr. Arnold is not
correct in stating that we have not the term in English.
io6 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLE ISM.
countries ; but circumstances materially alter existence and
character — above all, humdrum existence and character —
so that their weapons, their modes of warfare, the things
for which they fight, the objects of their devotion and
detestation, their watchwords and battle-cries, are not the
same in any two countries, and are very different indeed
in England and on the continent. (I mean the continent
generally, as represented by France, Prussia, Austria,
Russia, and until lately Italy : the term continent is con-
venient, and quite accurate enough, for broad contrast with
England.) There is as great unlikeness between a Philister
and a Bumble, as between a continental viouchard and one
of our detectives.
The Philistines, well so named on the continent, uphold
the despotism of absolute governments, oppress the children
of the light by brute force of armies and the yet more
merciless machinery of bureaucracy and espionnage^ imprison
them in fortresses which disgrace our century, thrust them
out into hfe-long exile, shoot or bayonet or strangle them in
critical emergencies. I say that the Philistines do all these
things, although many of them may be disapproved of by
thousands of decent Philistines ; but without the Philistines
these things could not be done ; the Philistines, by their
selfish and stupid and cowardly passivity, empower the
immediate agents to perpetrate these atrocities ; the Philis-
tines are the great dull block without which for a fulcrum
the devil's lever could not act, the coiled worm by which
the screw bites. Opposed to these, the continental children
of the light, the men of ideas and aspirations, playing
desperately for an enormous stake, — for liberty of speech,
liberty of the press, and civil freedom, with imprisonment
or exile or death as the forfeit if they lose — work by con-
spiracies, secret societies, insurrections, bloody revolutions,
sometimes even by assassinations.
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 107
But here in Britain the warfare is not the same, the
positions of the opponents and the stakes they contest being
so different. Our enemies of the light no longer withhold
from us the extreme necessaries, they withhold merely some
of the comforts and many of the luxuries of intellectual and
moral freedom. Liberty of speech, Hberty of the press,
and civic independence, we have. The great men who
fronted Charles I. with the sword, and at last beheaded him
with the axe, the small men who got William of Orange
to shoulder James II. out of his palace, and then finessed
his flight into an abdication ; these fought and won for us
the last really desperate and dangerous national battles with
Philistinism, abased the strength of Goliath, broke his spear
and shattered his armour, and left but a Bumble to bother
us ; Bumble who is by no means terrible, except as a
" terrible bore." Our children of the hght triumph by a
Reform Bill (such triumph as it is ! but the smaller the
stakes the better for the players) or a repeal of the Corn
Laws, not by a bloody Revolution. When they wish to
rouse the people, they don't think of barricades, but write
to and in the journals, have public dinners or public meet-
ings without dinners, where they spout away to their hearts'
content, get up petitions — to which, let us hope, the
majority of the signatures are genuine, and, at length, push
a Bill through Parliament. They are liable to the calumnies
and contempt of " good society," but need have no fear of
the fortress, the bullet, or the scaffold : and the hatred or
contempt of society in general does not hurt them much,
the fear of it is far worse than the reaHty ; for their own
particular society, the people among whom they live day
and night, are full of admiration and enthusiasm."* Our
* A man's world consists simply of those people in whose society he
spends most of his time. Very few feel acutely the opinions of classes out-
side these. One is apt to think that a Mout-avieff sho\x\d sink overwhelmed
io8 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM.
carbonari are Freemasons who chiefly meet to eat and think
to drink, or Benefit Society Odd Fellows and Foresters.
Our ge?idar?nerie are the county constabulary. Omx pretrailk
and ultramoiitains are rural clergy who vote against Jowett
and Gladstone, Sabbatarians who shut up the Crystal Palace
and the Museum on Sundays, Archdeacons who attack
Colenso in Convocation, Oratorians with a mania for luring
pretty girls to confession. The commonplace is really an
immense burden on our backs in ordinary social and
domestic life, and a heavier burden still in the more elevated
intellectual and moral life ; but it is not terrible, nor malig-
nant, nor sanguinary ; it is simply a very great bother and
bore, and each man knows quite well that he can throw off
its yoke whenever he has the necessary courage. In brief,
it is Bumble and not Goliath who oppresses us. It would
be easy to pursue the contrast through a multitude of details,
but I think that these are sufficient for a clear understanding.
One is surprised that it never seems to have occurred to a
writer so thoughtful and careful as Mr. Matthew Arnold.
In his public official capacity we all know Bumble, with
the great gold-laced hat, the ample scarlet cloak, the wand
of awful power. He is portly and of good stature ; a little
weazened Bumble is an abomination, an imposture. His
fat face is dignified by the repose of a solemn disdain of
under the execrations of Christendom : not at all ; he is naturally surrounded
by a staff of officials likeminded with himself, and their talk is for him the
expression of public opinion. I once saw two poor women enter a public-
house, clad in those thin colourless bits of stuff that our poor elderly women
wear, and with such flowers in their shapeless bonnets as showed that even
flowers can be unlovely. The one had agreed to "stand" a quartern or
half-quartern of gin, but had to borrow a penny from the other for the
accomplishment of this generous act. In their talk they happened to dis-
cuss the plans and prospects of a son of the liberal lady, and I heard her
answer some suggestion of her companion with an "Ah, it 7night be better:
but then what would the zuorld say ! " Poor old dame, with thy world of a
back-court ! to thee of more account (nor to the Universe of less) than court
of greatest king or kaiser.
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 109
thought, though the ruddiness of his complexion and the
likeness of his nose to an over-mature strawberry reveal that
he can be jolly in private life. He hath an immense genius
of inertia (quite the most useful genius in this troubled
world) ; so that the weariness of the immeasurable hours,
by which so many weaklings are driven desperate into all
sorts of dissipation and mischief, cannot prevail over him ;
stolidly patient and firm as a pyramid — whose head is so
narrow and whose base is so broad — he endureth and
repulseth the long assaults of time. His carriage is erect,
and he moves with slow pomp, for well he knoweth that he
is a chief pillar of the state, and that there is not an insti-
tution in the realm more ancient and honourable than he.
For he is more truly essential to the sanctity of the cathe-
dral than the Dean himself, more necessary to the stability
of the bank than are the chairman and all the other direc-
tors. His reverence for the rich and powerful is in exact
ratio to his scorn for the poor and mean. His low bows
and elaborate subservience to the Alderman are gracefully
rounded off by the smart tap which he letteth fall upon the
head of the charity urchin ; in the former, he signeth him-
self in large letters " Bumble," in the latter he putteth a
fair flourish to this signature. He reverences the rich be-
cause they are rich ; and because people get rich by leading
model lives, by being through many years frugal, indus-
trious, sober, discreet, and orthodox. He scorns the poor
because they are poor, because poverty is odious in itself ;
and because, if indeed it is not a crime in itself, it is at
any rate the fruit and symbol of vice, the outward and
visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace ; for people
get poor by being reckless, improvident, lazy, dissolute,
enthusiastic, heterodox, and generally by flying in the face
of the world.
Bumble as Beadle is Bumble in his most perfect ofiicial
no BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM.
manifestation, but he is by no means limited to this office
so ancient and honourable and useful. He has filled, and
he now fills, and for years and generations to come he will
fill, a large proportion of the highest and best-paid offices
in the State, the Army, the Navy, and a large majority of
those in the Court, the Press, and the Church. What,
indeed, is the union of Church and State — glorious and
happy union, on which we can never enough felicitate our
noble selves I — but a grand national homage and tribute to
Bumbleism ? a wise provision of cosy stalls, lawn sleeves,
shovel-hats, gaiters, benefices, pluraUties, princely sees, for
multitudes of deserving little Bumbles ?
And while Bumble is pre-eminently Beadle in his public
incapacity ; in private life he is more richly developed and
more easily studied when of the standing of a Churchwarden
(the French Marguillier). It is the same Bumble, one and
indivisible, with the same plenary inspiration of Bumbleism,
in both aspects ; and the discrimination is but a matter of
convenience, furnishing us with two consummate types, the
one for social, the other for political study. The Imitation
of Christ is supposed to have wrought some good in Europe :
he will be England's chief saint and sage who can give
us a masterly Imitation of Bumble. In the meantime we
cannot do better than read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest,
out of doors the ensample of Bumble the Beadle, at home
the ensample of Bumble the Churchwarden. This Bumble
at home can be most jolly and hospitable, can display the
most excellent common-sense, is often what we term well-
educated, and is in the enjoyment of an easy competence if
not absolutely wealthy. For Bumble at home is at home
with the middle classes. " The nobles have their tradi-
tions, the poor have their aspirations, the middle classes
have nothing but their money." The nobles look backward
to their Creator, the poor look forward to their Redeemer,
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. in
the middle classes look neither to the past nor to the future,
but enjoy the present whose Holy Ghost is Bumbleism.
And the middle classes, as everybody knows, now rule Eng-
land ; and their Bible is the Tivies, of late, like other Bibles,
losing much of its authority, and over which may soon be
written the epitaph : " Here still lies the 21f/ies, once a great
power ; singular among despots and demagogues for this,
that it never, during many years of supreme sway, had one
moment of magnanimity."
Holy is the spirit of Bumbleism, glorious is the constitu-
tion of Bumbledom, great in rank and wealth and power is
Bumble, in this our happy Island of the Free ! We have
not a King Stork, as so many continental miserables have ;
Bumble is our King Log, a good quiet king, though he
beareth somewhat heavily upon our shoulders. He ruleth
England far more than do Queen, Lords, and Commons,
with the noble Fourth Estate into the bargain. Little hin-
dereth that his sway be carried out into its ideal perfection ;
as Dryden hath pictured it with rapture in Macfleck?ioe, and
Pope with ecstasy in the Dimciad. These men, who were
rhymers, clever, but vagabonds of restless, unstable, and
foolishly excitable temperament, could not appreciate the
worth of the character whose lineaments they saw clearly
and drew well : this profound and godlike tranquiUity,
this equally godlike subsistence without need of thought
and speculation, without possibility of development, this
magnificent eupepsy of the world and life, they termed
JDidness, and used this grand word (which involves the
loftiest sublimities of immutable inertia) in a base sense of
stupidity or duncehood — just as the lovely w'ord simple has
been perverted to convey the meaning of silly. However,
as the word Duhiess is now by usage established, we may as
well boldly adopt it (using it reverentially, not with the
evil intention of those who sit in the seats of the scornful),
112 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM,
and admit that the essence of the potency of Bumbleism is
Dulness ; dulness placid and content, dulness of the highest
respectability, dulness infallible and impeccable ; dulness
which preacheth and heareth sermons, — the force of dulness
can no further go. The abysses of this dulness no plummet
can ever fathom ; philosophy may be very profound, yet
remain but a shallow pool when compared with these divine
depths ; the noblest alacrity in sinking will not enable the
deepest philosopher to arrive at the " floor of the bottom-
less." Peter Bell may give some faint idea of this dulness;
and by Feter Bell, I mean either the poem itself of Words-
worth or the hero of the poem of Shelley ; for Peter Bell,
like Bumble, is duplicate — nay, the best authority says that
he is triplicate, and so is Bumble, but we are not concerned
with Bumble in his beatitude of Bumbleism beyond the
tomb : —
His sister, wife, and children yawned
With a long slow and drear ennui
All human patience far beyond ;
Their hopes of Heaven they would have pawned
Anywhere else to be.
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness was
Concentered and compressed so close,
'Twould have made Guatimozin doze
Upon his red gridiron of brass.
(And what better service, I should like to know, could have
been rendered to Guatimozin in his exceedingly uncom-
fortable predicament than this of making him doze ?)
These two stanzas — by a vagabond yet more restless and
unstable and foolishly excitable than those two other vaga-
bonds I have mentioned — relate to the dulness of Peiei-
Bell ; were their intensity exalted to the hundredth power,
they would relate equally well (with reverence be it written)
to the dulness of Bumble.
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 113
Bumble is not malignant ; be is King Log. But one
thing he does hate — if an ecstasy of blind wrath and terror
can be called hatred : this thing is a new idea, or even the
semblance of a new idea such as a novel opinion. He
abhors it as a bull or a quaker abhors scarlet, or a Cal-
vinist the Scarlet Lady. And I hold that he is thoroughly
justified in his abhorrence. Every new idea is a reproach
and insult cast upon our old doctrines and institutions ; and
the sacred spirit of our old doctrines is Bumbleism ; the
most venerable of our old institutions is Bumbledom.
Bumble is the very bull's-eye of the target against which
new ideas rain bullets : and would you expect a living bull's-
eye to love marksmen? If things as they immemorially
have been and as they now are — our holy Church and noble
State, as by law and the wisdom of our ancestors established
— be worthy of the most reverent conservation ; what pre-
tence can there be for changing them by the application of
new ideas ? If you want variety (and were you a regular,
consistent, well-principled character, you would not want
variety), content yourself with dressing up the old ideas
in new fashions, as you are fain to content yourself with
dressing your own old body in occasionally new garments ;
do not sap the foundations of our prosperity and undermine
the constitution of Bumbledom with new-fangled ideas.
For ideas are most perilous things to handle; suddenly
explosive as gunpowder and gun-cotton, no one is safe
from being blown up by them, and Bumble is safe to be
blown up by them : Guy Fawkes 7?iay go in fragments
through the air, the Parliament Houses with king, bishops
and nobles are sure to, if once the confounded train
catches.
H
114 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM.
II.
I HAVE said that the Fourth Estate itself is not nearly
so powerful as Bumble ; and as much ludicrous misunder-
standing appears to prevail regarding the subject, it may be
as well to amplify the assertion. We know that the Press is
continually boasting that it leads public opinion, and we
are pleasantly called upon to pretend or even endeavour to
think that this leading is away from Bumbleism into the
Promised Land of New Ideas. It is a good joke ; and
Bumble can afford to buy the journals in thousands and tens
of thousands, and chuckle over it with happy equanimity.
What fun that the journalists, of whom about ninety-nine
of every hundred are born Bumbles, but weakly and afflicted
with incontinency of their dulness, and of whom about ten
times ten of every hundred mainly or wholly depend for
their livelihood upon the favour of their stronger brother
Bumbles, should affect freedom from and enmity to Bum-
bleism ! The joke is enormously useful to Bumbledom. We
poor people, for instance, are getting more and more dis-
satisfied with things as they are, and resolve to emigrate
for the Promised Land of New Ideas : forthwith half the
Bumble trumpeters of the Press open their throats of brass,
and put themselves in our van, blaring : " We, and we only,
can and will lead you out of this stupid old Bumbledom into
the Canaan flowing with milk and honey ! " And in case
we should doubt these fair promises, the opposition moiety
of the trumpeters open //lei'r throats of brass, screaming
dolorous, wrathful, desperate : " The poor dear ignorant
people are being led away from the venerable sanctuary of
Bumbleism, from the paternal care of Bumbledom, to perish
in the Wilderness of Sin and New Ideas ! " This testi-
mony, wrung from the rage of the antagonists, kills our last
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 115
doubt, and we throng multitudinously after those first
trumpeters, who straining their throats of brass lead us forth
gallantly, round, and round, and round, through intermin-
able dreary tracts, and at last bring us, all bewildered and
exhausted, to the old flesh-pots again, to the cucumbers,
and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the
garlic, and, with a joyous final flourish, proclaim : " Lo,
the true Promised Land ! lo, the real milk and honey ! — the
only milk and honey in this life attainable ! " Wearied and
disheartened, we perforce rest discontentedly contented for
another period. Now, were there none of these clever
leaders of public opinion, we poor stupid people might
really emigrate by marching stupidly right forward ; and so
Bumbleism and Bumbledom get actually abandoned.
Of course, the Press, while thus continually boasting of
its freedom, knows quite well, and has a comfortable un-
derstanding with Bumbledom, that it is, in fact, only free
to glorify Bumble. It truckles to him more abjectly than
does any commonplace man in private life. For this
commonplace man makes boots or hats or coats, sells
bread or meat or beer, things which Bumble cannot help
liking and must have ; while the journalist manufactures
and sells only opinions, which are things that Bumble
can do very well without, and won't buy if they are not
manufactured to please him. A journalist could no more
live by producing opinions too large for Bumble, than a
tailor by making coats to the size of Daniel Lambert, or a
bootmaker by proportioning boots from the ground plan of
Adam's foot in Ceylon. Journalist, tailor, and bootmaker,
must all manufacture their articles to the size of their cus-
tomers : luckily for tailor and bootmaker, it is not ignomi-
nious and demoralising to manufacture ^/lei'r articles thus.
The Press truckles to Bumble, and beslavers him with
flattery, and when it ventures to rally him, it does so in
ii6 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM.
the self-same spirit with which a Court-jester used now and
then to rally his royal master ; and it always apologises to
him for any chance glimmer of new light that may manage
to penetrate its close columns, by immediately proving that
the said glimmer must have come from Bumble's own
j)arlour-fn-e or one of his church-tapers.
And not only the Press but the mass of our contemporary
literature is thus slavishly subservient to Bumble. He
cares little for abstract politics, and less for science and
art : therefore on politics, science and art, bookmakers
may almost express what they please. But Bumble is the
virtuous husband of one virtuous wife, and the father of
a thriving legitimate family, and as " church-going " as
Cowper's bell (when did // go to church, I wonder, after
the visit in which it was hung ?) ; and woe be to any one
who shall have the audacity to shock his cherished, his
sacred convictions, on any social or moral or religious
matter !
Freedom (that is to say, practical freedom) of the Press
and of publication generally, is greater in England than on
the continent only in certain respects ; it is far less in other
respects, which certainly are not so important to comfort-
able animal life, but which are very much more important
to the higher intellectual and moral life. We can write
freely of the acts of our government and of the public acts
of our public men, we can freely discuss our political ques-
tions (or, more precisely, questions in the sphere of political
expediency), as no writers in Germany or France dare to
discuss and write about their home-politics and statesmen.
But, on the other hand, a writer in France or Germany
can freely discuss questions of religion, of casuistry in
morals, of sociology, as no English writer who lives by his
writings dare discuss. If the French paper or book ven-
tures beyond the bounds of governmental restrictions in
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 117
politics, it is warned or suppressed by the Government. If
the Enghsh paper or book ventures beyond the bounds of
Bumbledom's restrictions in religion or morals, it is effec-
tually suppressed by Bumble, — he won't buy it, however
brilliant and thoughtful and honest it may be. Impe-
rialism imposes fines, imprisonment, banishment ; Bumble
simply imposes death by starvation. For the one man-in-
black who visits the editors of Paris, we have ten thousand
men-in-black. We are free to print what we will ; but we
must be very rich in courage and money, or independence
of money, to afford the free exercise of our freedom. We
are also free to become candidates for Parliament, "to
enter the London Tavern," to seek equity in the Court of
Chancery, to attempt arson and murder and suicide.
Our present literature is so devotedly subservient to
Bumble, that I think it may be safely asserted that there
are not half-a-dozen thoughtful and powerful writers now
in England, writers able to earn a good livelihood with
the pen, who have ever attempted since they were mature
frankly to publish their thoughts and feelings on subjects
interdicted by Bumble ; that is to say, on precisely the most
important and urgent problems in religion and sociology.
For all thought bearing on the future of our race, and not
physico-scientific or artistic, we are nearly in a state of
sterile impotence. Pick up a popular French or German
book, and note how many problems in morality and religion
are touched upon, how much free and healthy scepticism
is carelessly implied or explicitly stated ; problems with
which no English writer whose book is meant to sell would
dare to grapple, scepticism which he dare not avow any
more than a Gallic writer dare openly attack the Empire.
And then ponder what warm interest in these questions,
what freedom in their discussion, what wholesome love of
originality, what toleration of honest doubt, what devotion
ii8 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM.
to the pursuit of truth, must have existed for long years
among the French and Germans, ere Hght popular litera-
ture could make good use of such problems and flourish
on such scepticism. How many English writers of repute,
earning good incomes by their writings, would have the
courage, however pure and lofty their intent, to treat with
the same freedom the same subjects we find treated in a
work of Balzac or Heine ? Bumble scareth from such
"^ssays : our professional bookmakers suppress their own
most vigorous and honest thoughts ; and the vast majority
do much worse, lubricating Bumbledom with oily cant
inexpressibly and revoltingly nauseous. For Bumble is
pitiless in his rage. Quiet as King Log when undisturbed,
patient, slow, and mighty of digestion for all the " good
things " of this life, as Carlyle's Oxen of the Gods (each of
which, indeed, is a very Apis of the Bumble-worship of John
Bull) ; he is furious when roused ; Hke the Enceladus of
Keats —
Once tame and mild
As grazing ox unworried in the meads ;
Now tiger-passioned, lion-thouglited, wroth.
Bumble will permit no one in England to write against the
sanctities of Bumbleism or the decorums of Bumbledom,
under penalty of being an outcast, despised of men and re-
jected of women, who must starve if he has learnt no better
trade than bookmaking. But in the matter of reading.
Bumble is more tolerant. The continental languages are
very useful, and to keep up one's knowledge of those lan-
guages, one must occasionally read in their books. For-
tunately for Bumble, it happeneth that, as a rule, the very
people who know continental languages and can afford to
purchase their literature, are the rich and powerful, are
Society with a capital S ; Society, which Bumble holds
in equal reverence with the Golden Calf, and with whose
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 119
pleasures and privileges he would never willingly interfere ;
for in his private churchwarden capacity, the chief object of
his ambition is to become part and parcel of this Society.
Hence, while good Mrs. Bumble and the angelic Miss
Bumbles distribute and recommend pious tracts to the
poor as the only profitable reading in addition to the Bible
and the Book of Common Prayer, they never dream of
thrusting these tracts into the hands of the rich : the rich
may import any number of books in all the colours of the
rainbow full of /wres and lechery from France, any weight
of slab-like tomes ponderous with Rationalism and erudite
Infidelity from Germany. One condition, however, is per-
fectly understood : in any review of these books, all the
narrative pieces which specially tickled and enthralled must
be overwhelmed with the fiercest of virtuous indignation ;
all the argumentative passages which really threw light
upon vexed questions, must be sternly denounced, the illu-
mination being clearly traced to the Nether Fire. This
condition faithfully observed, the poor and uneducated
scared from corruption. Society may read without stint.
Thou dear respectable Churchwarden-Bumble, it is pleasant
to think how thy Vicar and Archdeacon and Bishop have
laughed with inextinguishable laughter over Aristophanes
and Lucian and Rabelais and Heine ; how all thy decorous
sons would get full marks in a competitive examination
based on Paul de Kock ; how thy daughters Angelina and
Seraphina, who distribute the tracts, have thrilled over the
pages of Soulie and epicene Sand.
Nay, Bumble in his adoration of Society, will even allow
the wealthy and noble to laugh and sneer at his most
cherished convictions, so long as the laugh and the sneer
circulate exclusively in the higher circles, and are not put
into books for the perdition of the lower classes, of the
ignorant rabble, who, massed and levelled, make such a
I20 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM.
broad firm floor for his feet, that he may walk through Hfe
eminent and unsoiled. And now and then he goes further
yet, half awaking to the perception that he himself, and
many of his dearest brother Bumbles, of the glorious
dynasty of Bumbledom, have secret doubts as to the infalli-
bility of Bumbleism, and venture at whiles to fancy that
their heads would be more light and comfortable if relieved
from the enormous cocked hats, and their limbs more free
were the ample scarlet cloaks thrown off. Yet he and they
continue to wear the old garments solemnly, keeping each
other in countenance and overawing the vulgar. For good
habits are the ideal of Bumble's morality ; never mind from
what motives and for what purposes they are worn.
Yet, let no one accuse Bumble of conscious insincerity ;
dissimulation he detests, though a discreet simulation he
may patronise. When he seems to the irreverent observer
to be playing the hypocrite in concert with his brother
Bumbles, be assured that he is doing what he is doing with
the very best intentions, and the saintliest anxiety for the
continuation of the stability and prosperity of that Bumble-
dom which he honestly loves and venerates.
Bumble is not thus mightiest of the mighty altogether by
his own innate strength, supernal as is the power of inertia
and masterly inactivity, unconquerable as is that aboriginal
dulness, " against which the gods themselves fight in vain."
He is permanently strengthened by nearly the whole dead-
weight of the men who arc not Bumbles, but who lavish all
their living momentum to push the progress each of his
particular art, science, or profession, and in all matters
beyond passively side with Bumble. By a tribute of nine-
tenths to Bumble, they obtain permission to devote one-
tenth to individuality. Thus eminent sailors, soldiers,
engineers, painters, bankers, merchants, whose work is their
worship, use all their vital energy in their work, and thus,
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 121
as a rule, can care very little, and do very little, for anything
else, except, perhaps, some harmless hobby. So, for the
most part, they are ready to acquiesce quietly in whatever
creed they find predominant about them : to take up with
a heresy would injure their special work in two ways — by
lowering them in public opinion, and by making large
demands upon the energy which can scarcely in the present
age be more than adequate for their special work. And the
creed predominant around them is naturally always the
creed of Bumbleism ; so that, although they contribute to
Bumbledom none of the thought and ability which have
made them eminent, they add to it the whole power of
their general reputation ; and if any audacious wight, who
has bestowed thought upon the creed, ventures to impugn
it, he is at once overwhelmed by the authority of these
certainly distinguished men. In other words, Bumbleism
is the bed in which great activities and intelligences sleep ;
when they awake, they leave it for the bank, the ship, the
railroad, the factory, the studio : yet Bumble complacently
brags of them as if all their great works had been wrought
w^hile in the bed of Bumbleism they reposed. Very few
men indeed have enough individuality to animate the whole
circle of their being.
The irreverent, and the giddy, and the vagabond, have
laughed much at Bumble as beadle ; they do not find it so
easy to laugh at him in domestic life as the churchwarden.
These irreverent scholars and thinkers are very bold and
scornful creatures in their libraries ; Aristophanes, Lucian,
Rabelais, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Swift, Voltaire, Lessing,
Gothe, Leopardi, Heine, Burns, Shelley, Carlyle, and the Hke
pestilent authors ranged around them ; but when in the
dining-room, or the railway carriage, they meet a respect-
able churchwarden Bumble, rich, self-complacent with
health and prosperity, clear-headed for all ordinary busi-
122 BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM.
ness, conspicuously excellent in all the common relations
of life, self-reliant (that is to say, reliant on the whole of
Bumbledom which backs him) ; where then is the coura-
geous and scornful criticism of the scholars and thinkers ?
The thinker feels as if he had no firm standing-ground ;
" sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," he seems to
himself thin and unsubstantial ; his ideas of the study have
kept in the study and won't come at his command, or if
they do come, sneak in with an air of Utopian silliness : he is
crushed by the broad firm-planted weight, by the flourishing
suave and rotund completeness, of this excellent, cheerful,
comfortable, prosperous, moral Bumble ; and is far more
inclined to envy than disdain. Is this, the poor thinker
asks himself, one of those dead barren rock-cliffs against
which the restless and luminous waves of the living sea,
tide after tide, year after year, century after century, fling
themselves so gallantly and so vainly, ever flung back
in ragged foam? Why, this is a fat and smiling river
valley, rich in corn and wine and oil, full of all manner
of pleasantness, the sheltered abode of prosperity and
peace ; and the sea itself is barrenness and desolation and
everlasting unrest. Thus, the law of compensation works :
abstract thought triumpheth throughout the millenniums
over abstract Bumbleism ; but the concrete Bumble tri-
umpheth in his generation over the concrete thinker.
Here should follow a rhapsody on the primordial genera-
tion and the final cause of the sacred existence of universal
Bumbledom, including Bumble proper, and Epicicr and
Philister, and all other species of the sublime genus.
What magnificent themes for dithyrambic ! but lack of
space, not to speak of the writer's modesty, forbids the
attempt to do justice- to them. There is room, however,
for one little confession. Were I a well-known author,
flourishing on authorship, and writing for a respectable
BUMBLE, BUMBLEDOM, BUMBLEISM. 123
periodical, I should never dream of exposing, even so
slightly as I have here exposed, the solemn mysteries of
Bumbleism. Luckily I am an author thoroughly unknown,
and writing for a periodical of the deepest disrepute. One
is very free, with no name to lose ; and one is freer still,
with such a name that it cannot possibly be lost for a worse ;
and, between us, we possess both these happy freedoms.
It is really remarkable that authors and periodicals can
bear to be cabined, cribbed, confined, within the gilded bars
of a good reputation ! Bumble is generally attacked, as re-
volutions are stirred up, by young fellow^s and old fellows
not yet arrived at years of discretion, who have little or
nothing to lose, save their heads, which (as in my own
case) being of quite inconsiderable value, they quite
inconsiderately venture. In revolutions there are always
two or three wealthy nobles, who, transported by an
insanely generous enthusiasm, fight for the people more
valiantly than the people fight for themselves. And just
so in Uterature, there are always two or three really great
writers living, who fling assured wealth and reputation to
the winds, and dash their heads against Bumbledom.
But these exceptions are so rare, and especially so rare in
England, that, though very important in themselves, they
are hardly worth reckoning as a limitation to the broad
rule that he who attacks Bumbledom is he who has not
the power and ability to thrive in the world as it is. Thus
have I written my own condemnation, immolating myself,
as well it behoves me, beneath the irresistible Triumphal
Car of our great, our divine Juggernauth— Bumble.
( 124 )
PER CONTRA: THE POET, HIGH
ART, GENIUS.
i86s.
I.
Glendower. I framed to the harp
Many an English ditty lovely well,
And gave the tongue an helpful ornament,
A virtue that was never seen in you.
Hotspur. Marry,
And I am glad of it with all my heart :
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew,
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers.
—First Part of Henry IV.
What are the best names to oppose in extreme opposition
to the Bumble, Bumbledom, Bumbleism, which are so
good and expressive? Even Mr. Matthew Arnold would
not, I am sure, recommend us to term the natural enemies
of his Philistines, the Jews, the Hebrews, or the Israelites.
Children of the light, chosen people, idealists, ideologues,
are too vaporous and vague : a name is wanted that will
stick. The German high-flyers is very good. Bohemians,
the favourite denomination just now, is too much associated
with loose-living and poverty for my special purpose; nor
PER CONTRA : THE POET, ETC. 125
is it limited to the artist-tribe : Balzac's Prince de la Bohenie
would have quite agreed with Hotspur, although the glorious
quaternion of Henry Miirger {Scenes de la Vie de Bo/ieme)
are a musician, a painter, a poet, and 2i philosophe. Poet
and High Art and Genius are terms of serious value, although
ludicrous enough now-o'-days from the mouths and pens of
so many simpletons drunk with the noble wine of Emerson
and Shelley. However, until better denominations are
discovered or invented, one must use these, admitting that
they are not the very words he should use : Poet standing
for the Priest of P^eauty in general, whatever material he
consecrates to its service (isn't this the correct sort of
phrase ?) ; High Art for the loftiest Expression of the
Beautiful, in which more or less latent are involved the
Good and the True (could our humbug-in-chief, Pinchbeck-
Bulwer-Lytton, put it more neatly ?) ; and Genius for the
divine (never forget the divine) Inspiration of the Poet and
Spirit of High Art.
A hundred years ago a good writer was the ingenious Mr.
Blank, and a hundred years before that great wit. In this
present year of grace, if we referred to the ingenious Mr.
Blank, it would be thought that he had patented a new
washing-machine or something of the kind ; and if we spoke
of a man as that great wit, it would be understood that he
punned Uke Theodore Hook or versified like the author of
the Ingoldsby Legends. Nothing will do now as an attribute
of praise but Genius. Never before was " the divine right
of Genius " so much lectured and written about : '•' the divine
right of Kings " was just such a favourite theme in the reigns
of James I., who was despised; of Charles L, who was
beheaded ; of Charles II., that angel of the Blessed Restora-
tion ; and of James II., 'who was kicked out of the kingdom.
Talent itself has become a word of scorn rather than praise :
scarcely a week passes but periodicals of the Lo7idon Journal
126 PER CONTRA :
type have paragraphs of subtle and detailed contrast between
Talent and Genius, all odiously to the disadvantage of the
former. Were Gubbins, or Gigadibs, or any other of the
writers of these profound and sublime paragraphs, to hear
your opinion that though certainly a man of very astonish-
ing talents he is not quite a genius, he would detest and
despise you ever after. What ! he Gubbins, he Gigadibs,
merely a man of talent, not a child of genius ! Gubbins,
who knows perfectly every shade of difference between
Genius and Talent ! Gigadibs, who can write you out
recipes for Shakespeares and Raphaels and Beethovens as
readily as Monsieur Soyer could write recipes for puddings and
soups ! The possession of this or the other special talent you
are at liberty to deny to Gubbins or Gigadibs; the possession
,of indefmite Genius, with a capital G, I warn you to concede.
In the midst of this universal adoration of creative genius,
what creative genius have we exerting sublime energies for
us ? What living artistic genius have we, exercising influence
and commanding homage of w^hich a lofty-minded and
strong-minded man could justly be proud? We have, I
believe, one such poet in verse, whose name is Robert
Browning. We have, I believe, not one such poet in music
or sculpture. As to architecture I cannot pretend to judge ;
but the least tepid praises one meets with scarcely point to
such a master. In history and philosophy we have Carlyle
and Garth Wilkinson. Of the Fine Arts, proper, only in
painting and in the prose fiction which has superseded the
old English drama, can three or four of these commanding
geniuses be found. Half-a-dozen novels, Carlyle's Frenck
Revolution^ Holman Hunt's LigJit of the Worlds Ruskin's
great works, have probably had more effect on the heart
and mind and soul of England than has been wrought by
all the music and verse and sculpture and architecture to
which this generation has sriven birth.
THE POET, HIGH ART, GENIUS. 127
Perhaps the briefest and clearest answer to our exuberant
dithyrambs on the divine mission and prerogatives of
genius, will be drawn out by the simple question : With
what expectations do we ordinary people commence the
study of a new " work of genius " ? Whereto the honest
reply is : A\"e look to these grand and glorious and im-
mortal works, which have enraptured the thoughtful critics
of journalism, generally for pleasure and amusement,
scarcely ever for real delight and education ; while as for
ecstasy and inspiration, we have not by experience any idea
of what these words may mean. Yet History proves
beyond a doubt that in old times great works of Art have
in the fullest sense of the term inspired their students, and
have wrought the hearers or spectators to ecstasy. The
same works w^ould not wield the same influence now ; and
the works that are produced now wield influence of how'
different a kind. Thus, try to fancy a student sitting down
to read a new volume of poems, with the hope of finding
therein some breath of a really divine afflatus ! Something
that will rock the walls and rend the foundations of his old
prison-house of habit as wdth an earthquake, something
that will daze and blind his earthly vision as with a great
light from Heaven, something that will melt and consume
away his old commonplace existence with the fervent heat
of enthusiasm ! The fancy is too extravagant to be enter-
tained for a moment. Experience has taught us to expect
so little ; we condescend, and know that we condescend, to
be amused. Some pretty and graceful verses, some amiable
sentiments, thoughts not too far below^ the standard of the
best current thought; let us find these, and we deign to
approve. Can the critics, I wonder, look each other in the
face without laughing, when their rapturous eulogies have
appeared in print ? Set apart some half-dozen works of our
generation, and try seriously and thoughtfully to fit the very
128 PER CONTRA :
choicest of the remainder Avith the choicest epithets; epithets
with which the great old works are naturaUy invested, and
with which our periodical critics freely invest scores of works
as they appear ; epithets such as grand, noble, magnificent,
consummate ; and you discover that the robes are far too
ample and rich, the forms far too petty and mean, for
befitting investiture ; you must leave the old royal garments
sacred to the old regal forms ; and for these new forms find
garments of another size and fashion, fitting them with
pretty, graceful, clever, lively, sparkling, and so forth. In
brief, I think it is clear that High Art and Creative Genius
exercise now (and, such as they are at present, deservedly
exercise) as little influence on the broad world as they ever
did. They are resorted to for amusement, not earnestly;
and the pleasure derived from them is of scarcely a loftier
kind, and is assuredly not greater in degree, than that
enjoyed in a game of cards or billiards, or with a pipe and a
glass in a Music Hall.
I have not mentioned the Drama among the present
Fine Arts, simply because we have no drama now worthy
of the name. In the best Novels we have much of the
gold that was of yore lavished in Plays ; but as a rule the
workmanship in the novels is far less vigorous and masterly,
and the alloy of a much lower standard. The drama de-
mands more thought and wisdom, more insight and con-
centrated passion, more power and energy, than the novel.
The genuine drama involved in a novel (I mean an English
novel) is usually padded out with easy and thoughtless
pages of trite reflection, inventory description, and multi-
tudinous insignificant detail. The drama is eminently
masculine, the novel eminently feminine. The substitution
of the latter for the former has doubtless contributed to the
further emasculation of our literature, of which it was
primarily a symptom and effect. It is astonishing what a
THE POET. HIGH ART, GENIUS. 129
large part of even a good modern book has been written
without any exercise of the faculty of thought. Without
going back to Shakespeare and Bacon, we may select works
from a literary epoch upon which we affect to look down,
works such as Pope's Essay on Man or Swift's Tale of a
Tiib, wherein nearly every sentence has required a distinct
intellectual effort, and which thus, whatever their faults,
shame by their powerful virility our effeminate modern
books.
But if the divine mission of genius, like many another
mission, effects little or nothing upon the commonplace
mass of us ; surely the divine prerogatives of genius are of
inestimable value to the geniuses themselves ? This is a
question deserving consideration.
Supposing the vitality equal in two men, that which has
the more spontaneous and immediate expression — or, to
speak grammatically, that which more nearly approaches
spontaneity and immediateness in its expression — is un-
doubtedly to be preferred to the other. Thus the man
whose common gestures and words and actions in the
ordinary course of life are easy and appropriate and beauti-
ful, are real fugitive poems naturally rhythmic with time
and place and circumstance, is much more to be envied
than he who can only express himself adequately, that is,
with an approximation to adequacy, by painting or sculp-
ture or music or verse, with long and exhausting labour,
with frequent heavy disappointments, with unsightly gaps
in his career of heartsick languor and dismal stupidity and
desolate despair, — all of which he feels most painfully,
though the men who come after him are apt to overlook
them, seeing only the brilliant crests of his loftiest moments.
A poem is praised above all else for this, that it is the
expression of eternal truth and beauty, not of transitory
accidents. Yet the perfect expression of anything must
I
130 PER CONTRA :
conspicuously express just those transitory accidents which
differentiate it from all similar precedent and subsequent
things. What would be the portrait of a man, neither tall
nor middle-sized nor short, with eyes and hair of no par-
ticular accidental colour, bearing no transitory expression,
clothed but clothed in no transitory fashion, and so forth ?
And the law which applies to the perfect expression of
anything, applies equally to the perfect enjoyment. Life is
mainly made up of transitory accidents, and he who cannot
enjoy these cannot enjoy life. Make a coat to fit every man
tolerably well, and it will fit no one man thoroughly w^ll.
The rose from which a lasting perfume is distilled has not
been allowed to live out its natural and most beautiful life
on the tree. Browning gives the whole philosophy of this
matter in one pregnant verse : " Sing, ' Riding's a joy ! ' —
for me, I ride." And Mrs. Browning pathetically expresses
the same philosophy in her poem of T/ie Great God Pan
and in Aurora Leigh. The Geniuses who nourish our spirits,
like the cattle and sheep and pigs which nourish our bodies,
must be mulcted of the free existence of their kind, and not
spared to die natural deaths.
Let an artist on some great holiday be amongst the
multitudes witnessing some procession or pageant. He
finds full exercise for his extraordinary faculties of percep-
tion and observation ; he studies with keen interest countless
effects of colour and light and shade, innumerable faces and
forms with innumerable expressions and characteristics ;
but does he thoroughly enjoy the holiday pageant itself?
No ; for he uses it but as the mean to an end, and not the
poorest thing in the world will suffer itself thus used to be
perfectly enjoyed. The inmost charm of the pageant, the
finest essence of the holiday, are enjoyed by the Httle
ragged boy getting dirtier and more ragged as he writhes
eager through the mob ; not by the artist who shall give
THE POET, HIGH ART, GENIUS. 131
us so magnificent a picture of the scene. Let a poet be of
the party in some merry picnic. Do you think he enjoys
it as thoroughly as it is enjoyed by the simple youths and
thoughtless girls, or even by the stout matrons and old
fogies, around him? The probability is, that he proves
about the dullest person in the party. He is reflecting and
observing while the others are enjoying ; he is so used to
reflect and observe that he cannot throw off these staid
habits and plunge into the glittering stream of the revelry.
Yet some days or weeks afterwards, musing upon the
elements of delight which existed in the company and the
excursion, he distils them into a poem exquisitely delightful,
a poem overbrimming with the pure joyousness which he
ought to have felt but did not feel, and which the common-
place people about him really did feel ; though they could
give it only fugitive expression in chatter and laughter and
dancing and romping, while he can give it quasi-enduring
expression in lovely verse.
A pageant and a picnic are not the most lofty of instances ;
I might have used as effectively the most solemn or heroic
or useful action. The man we call a Poet would be absent-
minded, would not enjoy full presence of mind, that is to
say, would not fully and intensely live in any one. He
sings of that which he cannot enjoy, cannot achieve ; if at
any time he can enjoy it, can achieve it, be sure that he is
not then pondering or singing it. Where and when rich
life is present, it lives, and does not content itself with
shadowing forth and celebrating life. When and where
rich life is not present, the shadowing forth and celebration
of life may partially console for its absence, or may even
partially illude into the belief in its presence. Yet Hfe
remains and ever is as superior to art as a man to the pic-
ture of a man. Men abounding and pictures being rare, a
picture will often be valued by us far more than would the
132 PER CONTRA :
original ; similarly, life being abundant and art rare, we
often value a fraction of art more than the fraction of liie
of which it is the shadow or symbol : but our valuations do
not affect the absolute and relative worth of the things in
themselves.
IL
My opinion is that artistry accuses weakness and lack of
vitality in the artist, when not pursued simply as a relaxation
or as the least irksome mode of earning the daily bread.
If a man, being poor, can earn more and earn it more easily
and pleasantly by painting pictures than by ploughing and
reaping, let him paint. But in this case he paints to live,
he does not live to paint ; his art is purely a trade, not a
divine mission and holy vocation, as so many of us in these
years regard it. If a man, being rich, finds happy filling up
of idle hours in making verses, let him make verses : but
let us clearly understand that his art is simply a hobby and
a pastime. If the poor man and the rich man were endowed
with keener intelligence and more puissant vitality, they
would prefer a trade and a hobby bringing them into closer
and warmer relations with the living world and their fellow-
men, demanding more courage and energy and sympathy
and fortitude and wisdom. Still, the necessities of the outer
life absolve from the extreme accusation of weakness
and poverty in the inner life. But when a man devotes
himself body and soul to art, becomes willingly the slave
of it and glories in the slavery, it is another thing. What
should we think of a fellow who, having money to live
independently, made himself a flunkey, through admiration
of the grand house and the carriage, through pure delight
in the plush and powder? What should we think of a
wealthy creature who preferred fiddling in the orchestra to
THE POET, HIGH ART, GENIUS. 133
dancing and making love with a pretty girl at the ball ?
What should we think of a noble lord who, rather than feast
wuth the feasters, set himself among the press-gang, enthusi-
astic to give a glowing report of the feast ? or who elected
to assist in the cooking rather than the eating of the dinner?
The real flunkey and fiddler and reporter and cook may be
acquitted on the plea of necessity j they would severally
much rather order than serve, dance than fiddle, feast than
describe, enjoy than prepare ; if in these instances they
exercise certain arts of life for the pleasure of others instead
of living for the pleasure of themselves, it is because they
are obliged to work in order to live. And they do such
work as their characters and abiUties and opportunities
enable them to get and to do. Their work is not their real
life, but it earns the means of nourishing such individual
life as they have. We admit their plea of necessity, and
are only sorry for them that they are not able to do nobler
kinds of work. But for the others who, not driven by ex-
ternal need, but led by internal inclination, toiled for the
sake of the toil itself, we should have simply compassion
and contempt. Yet wise people have not yet ceased to
wonder how Shakespeare in the maturity of his faculties, as
soon as he had made a comfortable fortune, could renounce
the sublime work of producing comedies and tragedies to
settle down as a jolly burgess in his native place !
It appears to me that the very greatest geniuses, those
whom we really reverence in their complete manhood, have
worked at their art with a distinct consciousness that it was
but a trade, an apology for better work from which they
were shut out by hostile circumstances ; or a pleasant re-
laxation, a hobby to carry them at a canter through dull
hours. Dante's work was heart and soul in " the petty and
transitory interests " of his native town, until defeat and
exile drove him into bitter immortality. Milton threw him-
134 PER CONTRA :
self heart and soul into " the petty and transitory interests "
of his age and country : his first poems were the refined
amusements of youth, his last great poems the consolations
of a defeated partisan, old and blind, and cut off from the
active life to which the maturity of his powers had been
passionately devoted. Shakespeare wrote no more when
he could afford to live without writing ; and, in his Sonnets
ex. and cxi., especially the latter, we may read how he con-
temned the art which has made him the crowning glory of
our literature. Shelley yearned for the direct action .of
political life, and was disabled and outcast into the mere
life of poetry. Novalis expresses himself with the utmost
vigour : " Authorship is but a secondary thing ; you judge
me more justly by the chief thing, by practical life. I only
write for self-education." Leopardi devoted himself in
despair to scholarship and poetry, because physical infirmity
excluded him from active life. Sir Thomas More, Raleigh,
Bacon, Selden, Vane, the two Sidneys, Bunyan, Swift, De
Foe, Johnson, Scott, and, in fact, nearly all our greatest
writers, ever held their authorship as thoroughly subser-
vient to other ends of life. So in a great measure did the
truly magnificent masters of Italy with their Art : and I
doubt not that they would have done so thoroughly had not
Art itself been then one of the most active of careers, bring-
ing its professors into most energetic collision with the most
vigorous vitality of the age, as witness the autobiography of
Benvenuto Cellini. As it was, consider wliat Da Vinci,
Oiotto, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the rest, did beyond
the pale of mere Art. These men drove a flourishing trade
in Art, and, at the same time, made the most vigorous
career possible of it, and they were universally felt to be
greater in themselves than in their works. But the works
of the Artist, as he is conceived and worshipped in our days,
are greater than himself; he is the slave of a subfime mis-
THE POET, HIGH ART, GENIUS. 135
sion, the instrument of a divine inspiration, " the word which
expresses what it understands not, the trumpet w^hich sings
to battle and feels not what it inspires." As such, I think
that he is considerably less than a man ; weak, diseased,
mutilated, and more or less silly. A man of opulent
vitality may be a lyrist, uttering himself now and then in
brief snatches of song ; but never while healthy and happy,
and provided with cash, committing himself to the imprison-
ment with hard labour of a great work. If he be imprisoned
in the common sense of the term, then his energies in the
lack of fitter outlets may overflow into such a work : thus
Raleigh wrote his " History of the World," Cervantes his
" Don Quijote," Bunyan his " Pilgrim's Progress," in cap-
tivity ; they dreamed grand dreams in their dungeons
because they could not live realities in the free open air.
Wine-songs are not written during the wane-intoxication,
love-songs are not sung by kissing lips, war-songs are not
chanted by the soldier battling breathless and dry-throated :
often enough they are WTitten and sung by those who never
drink wine, who have no sweetheart, and who never were
in battle. Analogies and illustrations crowed in from all
quarters, and their abundance is in itself a strong argument
for my thesis ; for a truth finds brothers and sisters every-
where in the world, but an error can scarcely find anything
in Nature to pass off as kith and kin.
Here the questions may be put : But does not every-
thing consummate itself in expression ? and is not Art
pre-eminently expression ? Yes ; everything in the world
consummates itself {as the object of our knoivledge) in expres-
sion, and Art is pre-eminently expression — but of a peculiar
kind. It is slow, mediate, studied, complicate, laborious
expression ; while the best expression of any being is
spontaneous, immediate, instinctive, simple, unlaborious.
Ascending into the regions of philosophy, we might discover
136 PER CONTRA :
that, although the world consummaLes itself to our senses
and intellect by expression, the innermost and purest and
loftiest soul or essence of all things is supremely inexpressive ;
and that its expression in the sensible universe, in suns and
planets, in trees and animals, is a degeneration ; regeneration
being only possible (as the wise Hindoos and others have
taught) by the gradual extinction of all expression, the
restoration to sole and infinite dominion of the primordial
spiritual silence, perfect, immutable, eternal, self-involved,
self-contemplating. But since it so has been that the Spirit
has become the Word, and the Word has been made Flesh,
we must admit that the law of our universe is that all things
sliall " wreak themselves on expression," that " the whole
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now, and not
only it but ourselves also," striving for perfect utterance of
the unutterable. Perfect utterance cannot, of course, be
attained ; but the approach to perfection is in direct ratio
to the spontaneous intuitiveness, and inverse ratio to the
slow elaborateness. A remarkable instance is afforded by
the Gejiesis account of God uttering himself in Creation.
His first instinctive expression, "Let there be the hght,"
is the very sublimity of jubilant power ; and the morning
stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
But day after day as the utterance grows more complex
and elaborate, the rhetorical imagery more multitudinously
profuse, he utters himself worse and worse ; until on the
sixth day, his figures of speech are cattle, and creeping
things, and beasts of the earth, and finally, man and woman.
Light in itself, pure, ever-joyous, hfe-giving, is so magni-
ficent an expression of Deity that the most thoughtful races
have worshipped it ; but where is divinity in the cow and
the viper and the polecat? And when one considers Man
as the image of God, as the representative of perfect power
and holiness and wisdom and love, as the earthly formula
THE POET, HIGH ART, GENIUS. 137
of heavenly law, the temporal instrument of eternal Pro-
vidence, one is constrained to the verdict that if a mere
man made a machine for any purpose, so complex and
fantastic, so easily disordered and destroyed, and, at the
best, wasting so enormous a ratio of power by friction, that
machine would not pay, the stupidest men would see that
it was a thorough failure; it would be good only to cast
into the fire, — and it is not wonderful that Christians in
general, believing that man was intended for the image of
God, have also believed that mankind on the whole is
ultimately good for nothing else.
Artistry, then, as the absolute devotion to Art in and
for itself, is, I repeat, a symptom of weakness ; amiable
weakness, if you like, but none the less privation of power.
Coleridge finely said of the great poets, whose character is
always superior to their works, that they are feminine not
effeminate : of the mass of artists, the swarms of little
poets, we may fairly say the reverse, — they are not feminine
but effeminate.
To be weak is in itself to be miserable ; and for the
artist-nature, there is an additional misery in this, that in
its spasms of strength, in its highest moments, it is solitary,
unsympathising with the world and unsympathised with by
the world. Fasting forty days upon the mountain, alone
with its God, it descends to find all the people dancing and
feasting and worshipping the golden calf ; they are all happy
and thoroughly understand one another, and have forgotten
the poet whose fasting and soUtude have been dedicated to
their service : so he, the meekest of men, loses his serenity
and storms in iconoclastic fury. The poethngs, indeed,
may be invulnerable in a brazen armour of vanity and self-
conceit, and may glory in their isolation from the vulgar
mass as an incontestable proof of superiority ; but the really
great poet, who is great-hearted, must feel this isolation
138 PER CONTRA :
\vith terrible pangs and yearnings which he knows are vain,
and may starve in this dearth of sympathy Uke a sailor on
a wreck in a shipless sea. And as for the superiority, he
knows its true value. He knows into what magnificent
thought and imagination an extra ounce of brain w^ll beat
out, for what grand creations an inch more breadth in the
curve of the skull will make room. He knows that he is
great only in comparison, and in a comparison whose
standard of measurement is small as small can be ; he
knows that he is a giant like the king of Liliput, almost a
nail's breadth taller than any of his subjects, striking awe
into the beholder.
But is there not an ample compensation for all the dis-
advantages extrinsic and intrinsic of the poet ? Is there
not fame ? One who is unambitious, and cares not a whit
for fame which is renown and notoriety, caring only for some
" love disguised " it may contain (an ear of wheat in a
bushel of chaff), and for its accidental virtue of making the
productions of its minions bring in plenty of cash ; such a
one is hardly competent to estimate fairly its value. The
devotion to it must be deeply set in most species of human
nature ; for even an actor, who has been for 3^ears before
the public, who is quite well known as Mr. A. in private
life, whose worth as an actor has long been strictly
appraised, and whose salary is invariable w^hatever parts
be allotted to him, even he will be wrathful as Achilles if
made to appear in a ro/e which does not suffer him to shine
during the two or three hours occupied by the play. An
orator will swell with pride and delight when cheered by
a lot of people, even if he knows them to be stupid and
ignorant. A painter or poet or musician is intensely grati-
fied by the applause of persons who, as he is thoroughly
aware, are dunces in painting or poetry or music. Very
great men (uncommonly tall pigmies) have been abject
THE POET, HIGH ART, GENIUS. 139
suppliants to fame, and have yearned and toiled and
suffered for genuine and wide and enduring renown; yet
the most genuine is so full of illusion and mockery, the
most wide is so narrow and superficial, the most enduring
is so infinitesimally brief, that for my own part I am quite
unable to understand how any intelligent person can set a
high value upon it. Everything, however, as an element
of happiness, is relative in its worth ; and if a string ot
glass- beads gives more joy to a savage than would a volume
of Shakespeare, the string of beads is undoubtedly of more
worth to him ; only he judges himself in judging the two
objects, and with his preference obtains also our noble con-
tempt for his barbarism. With such measure as ye mete
it shall be meted to you again, is a truth of the widest
application. Thus the tribe of artists, the poetlings, who in
all respects get so much life-happiness from their vanity and
conceit, get an immense amount of real happiness 0/ tfs kijid
from their assurance of posthumous fame. If Sir Richard
Blackmore believed that he would go down to remote
posterity in a triumph of glory and honour, he was very
much mistaken in himself and posterity ; but the delusion
was none the less genuine happiness to him alive. Therefore,
while considering the absolute devotion to fame as the
capital symptom of imbecility and weakness in the poets, I
consider it also as the only advantage over common men in
actual enjoyment with which they can fairly be credited.
Common men live in the present, live while they are alive ;
these poets live in the future {i.e., they believe they do, and
happiness is but a bundle of pleasant beliefs— for the most
part illusions), live when they are dead. "Will you have
your life living or dead ? " Nature asks us all ; and these
reply, " Dead." Ordinary hearty men live from day to day
upon a competence of the current gold of the present ; the
votaries of fame (that last infirmity of noble minds, in
I40 PER CONTRA :
another sense than Milton's) exist on the paper money of
heavy bills drawn on posterity. Posterity will ruthlessly
dishonour nearly all these bills, quite all indeed which are
drawn at very long dates ; but luckily for the poor devils
drawing them, they cannot be protested until after the
drawer's death, and can always during his life be converted
(negotiated by Vanity, discounted by the millionnaire
Conceit) into large sums of real enjoyment. In these trans-
actions the poet has the same advantage as a prophet
flourishing on predictions to be fulfilled in a century or
two ; if they should not be fulfilled then, Httle matters to the
prophet : what can have possessed Dr. Gumming when he
brought forth prophecies which arrive at maturity in his
own generation ? How many poets would find a draft on
the house of Fame negotiable if it fell due in their own life-
time ? We may affirm that the superstition of fame, with
the conceit of being superiorly gifted, is a crutch that
supports the weakness of which it is an outward and visible
sign ; the crutch of the lame poets, all the poor beggars of
ballad-mongers and painters and sculptors and musicians
and philosophers, who, like so many santons, dervishes,
fakeers, and mendicant friars, are held in such holy repute
at present.
In order to complete the antithesis to Bumble, a few words
should be added on the poets as the men of new ideas,
the men always in advance of their age. I have only space
left to refer to Browning's Bishop Bloiigram's Apology,
wherein these men are sketched with a few masterly lines.
I refer specially to the passage wherein the saintly bishop
compareih these men unto travellers leaving arctic regions
for the equator, who never wear the garb suited to the zone
they are actually traversing, but always such garb as would
suit the zone towards which they journey, and which they
may never reach.
THE POET, HIGH ART, GENIUS. 141
Byron writes in the Prophecy of Dante —
Many are poets who have never penned
Their inspuation — and perchance the best.
And, if poets are they who most intensely live, rejoicing
supremely in the harmony and beauty of the world ; if the
very poets of poets are they who realise in flesh and spirit
the loftiest dreams in marble and verse and sound and
colour of the men we commonly call poets ; then I heartily
agree with Byron. But the extremely Byronic reasons why
they did not pen their inspiration — that they would not lend
their thoughts to meaner beings, and repressed the deity
within, and so forth — I humbly opine to be stuff and non-
sense. They do not pen their inspiration simply because
they are able throughout and equably to live it ; so far from
repressing the deity within, they express it every day and
hour and moment in their most ordinary words and deeds,
an infinitely better kind of expression than that which is
found in spasmodic poems of a dozen or two astonishing
fyttes.
( 142 )
INDOLENCE: A MORAL ESSAY
{Calculated J or a icmferahire of about 90° /;/ the shade.)
1867.
I.
" This began with me from childhood, being a kind of voice which,
when present, always diverts me from what I am about to do, but never
urges me on." — Socrates oi his gooia, which means abundance !
Lo ! our Editor strideth stalwart in the van of the Army
of Progress, brandishing his pen as a keen lance, sharpening
his tongue as a trenchant sword, waving on high as the
banner of the hopes of Humanity the last broadsheet of
this noble periodical, brave words azure on a field argent.
Verily, warlike and splendid as the array of Duke Theseus
by Chaucer besung : —
The red statue of Mars with spere and targe
So shineth in his white banner large
That all the feldes gliteren up and doun.
And poor I, who now droop and collapse, am a fraction of
i68 A NATIONAL REFORMER
the staff of that magnificent banner. How he shouteth
insistant and threatful as thunder, summoning all the con-
tributors to send in their copy, their separate long thin
streamers which, joined together, form the one broad standard.
Copy ! My body is boiled and my brain is baked, and you
might knock me down with a thunderbolt ; I have not an
idea in my head (except iced claret-cup), and if I had, I
couldn't take the trouble to find words for its expression ;
and if I could, I should not have enough physical strength
to wield the pen.
With the courage of despair I defy the Editor. I do not
refuse to contribute, for why exert one's self in a refusal ?
I simply refrain and keep quiet. O implacable one ! did
you ever read how a certain Federal officer in the great
American War (who most Ukely had no business in the rear
himself) discovered a poor devil prostrate far behind while
battle was raging in front, and called out, Hallo there ! are
you dead ? And the warrior faintly moaned, No. Are you
wounded? No. What the hell is the matter with you,
then ? I am utterly demoraUsed. Deeply do I sympathise
with that poor devil of a warrior, for indeed I am myself in
precisely the like case.
Or did you never, O implacable one ! read the wise
words of the poet ? —
Who but a fool of his free will
Would write mere prose, or well or ill,
Of his free will would write mere prose
During the season of the rose ?
None but a fool would thus write prose ) . . v
During the season of the rose, )
Although I would make an exception in favour of any one
who could write prose like Garth Wilkinson or Ruskin,
George Eliot or George Meredith. And these rosy rhymes
remind me of a certain noble weaver of Bagdad, who
7.V THE DOG-DAYS. 169
flourished soon after the time of Haroon-el-Rasheed. Mr.
Lane, in the notes to the "Arabian Nights," tells us of
him : — '' He was constantly employed at his loom every day
in the year, even during the congregational prayers of Friday,
excepting in the rose-season, when he abandoned his work,
and gave himself up to the enjoyment of wine, early in the
morning and late in the evening, loudly proclaiming his
revels by singing —
' The season has become pleasant ! The time of roses is come !
Take your morning potations as long as the rose has blossoms and
flowers ! '
When he resumed his work, he made it known by singing
aloud —
' If my Lord prolong my life until the rose-season I will take again
my morning potations ; but if I die before it, alas, for the loss of the
rose and wine !
' I implore the God of the supreme throne, whose glory be extolled ;
that my heart may continually enjoy the evening potations to the day
of resurrection.'
The Khaleefeh (El-Ma-moon) was so amused with the
humour of this man, that he granted him an annual pension
of fen thousand dirlmns, to enable him to enjoy himself
amply on these occasions." "^ Mr. Lane takes this from
Halbet-el-Kumeyt, a most choice and jolly book in Arabic
concerning wine and wine-drinkers, which I cordially recom-
mend to yourself and all your readers.
O excellent weaver ! whom I will venture to name Mes-
roor, which meaneth Happy ! (Although he thus named in
the " Arabian Nights " could not have been wholly blest.)
In my Httle reading of history I have come across many
saints and sages, many poets and heroes ; but few indeed
whom I love and esteem as I love and esteem you. Not a
* Now ^^250 (Lane) ; then much more ! E. S. Poole reckons dirhem
equal to franc instead of sixpence.
I70 A NATIONAL REFORMER
hundred years ago we had a young fellow up in Ayrshire
who could have dressed the flax for your weaving, who
would have drunk with you and sung with you early in the
morning and late in the night during all the rich rose-season.
But I fear me he met with more thistles than roses ; and I
cannot call him J^Iesroor or Happy whose name was Robert
Burns. He would have been a comrade after your own
heart ; a large sweet nature full of generous vitality and
joyous humour. Our Khaleefeh Jee-orj did not give him
a pension of ten thousand dirhems to enable him to enjoy
himself amply ; he was made a ganger to repress the distilla-
tion of the liquor he loved so well, and he died haunted
with terrors of the jail. So much is our Christian civilisation
superior to your Mohammedan barbarism of a thousand
years ago.
But I digress. O urgent and ferocious Editor ! the march
of progress is a noble march, but dreadfully toilsome in
summer ; the pathway of progress is a noble path, but stifling
with dust in the dog-days ; the army of progress is a noble
army, but it panteth and sweateth in July. For awhile I
must suspend my march, stray out of the path, straggle from
the army. It appears to me that we are on a green bluff
overlooking a wide bay and wider offing. The march winds
down to the shore and round the curve of the bay. If I
rest here in the moist blue shadow of these noble trees, I
shall command a fine view of the progress, a fine view of
the swaying sea, that slanted plane of liquid light ; and
surely the cool sea-air will refresh me a Httle.
Beloved comrades and brothers of the army of progress,
how gallant you look as you march farther and farther from
my resting-place ! While I toiled among you it required
vigorous reflection on the grandeur of our enterprise to
make the march endurable. I was panting and sweating,
you were panting and sweating ; some were treading on
IN THE DOG-DAYS. 171
others' heels ; we were jostHng, straggling, drooping, Hmping,
grumbling, cursing; mouths full of gritty dust uttered
hoarse sighs for beer: the army was always heroic and
noble, yet we the units seemed weak and ignoble. But
now, O beloved brothers ! getting more and more remote ye
show more and more magnificent ; all the petty ignominious
details are lost, the sweating and panting personalities are
merged in the integral grandeur of the column, a long dark
line of valiant manhood marching on to fight and to conquer
all that is evil, a serried band of sacred brotherhood, the
Forlorn Hope unforlorn of Humanity ; and when a trum.pet-
swell circles faintly to my ear, with its utmost audible
circlings, it is chivalric as that fabled blast of Roland at
Roncesvalles, it stirs my heart to indomitable resolution,
my pulse leaps with valour and enthusiasm, and I cry with
rapture : March on, march on, O beloved comrades and
brothers, charge the ranks of the foe, storm his fortresses,
shrink not from heat and fatigue, reck not for hunger and
thirst ; while I repose here admiring and applauding you, in
the cool blue shadow, upon the bladed glass, under the
rustling branch-borne foliage : my heart is Avith you, O my
brothers, my soul is plumed with swift love to pursue you
when vision falls short; I will rest here that I may the
better meditate and realise and acclaim your daring and
devotion.
So I dreamingly rest by the seashore while our army
winds out of sight. Were it not well to plunge in the green
wash of the bay, and get the black dust out of one's throat
and eyes and nostrils, the plaster of sweat and dust off one's
face ? Surely it were well. Sweet is the sharp brine ; cool,
strong and buoyant the earth-embracing sea. I will shout
unto the waves with Walt Whitman, the hearty sea-bather,
Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse ;
Dash me with amorous wet.
1/2 A NATIONAL REFORMER
II.
Suddenly I bethink me that the poor flax-dressing peasant-
lad above-mentioned did write out the rules of a certain
Tarbolton Bachelors' Club, composed of lads poor as him-
self, and that the last of those rules began thus : " Every
man proper for a member of this Society must have a frank,
honest, open heart, above anything dirty or mean ; and must
be a professed lover of one or more of the female sex." See
the generous genius in that " one or more " ! Who can
wonder that such a Bachelors' Club lived for years, to the
great intellectual and moral improvement of its members ?
Oh ! for a damsel gentle and joyous to share with me this
pleasant shade ; that I might impart unto her the histories
of our warfare ; tell her of the glorious enterprises on which
you, my brothers, are disappearing from ken ; fill her with
the enthusiasm of Humanity, the sacred love of INIankind.
What says Milton in that eloquent jumble of heady grief,
which perhaps, however, had some heart in it, — the dirge of
Lycidas ? —
Alas ! what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neosra's hair ?
Were it not better done ? O Milton, could you really
hesitate a moment as to the answer? Was the Puritanic
ossification already so far advanced in you ? Were it
not better done, indeed ! Surely it were a thousand times
better done, a myriad times better done. For, as another
poet sings —
7iV THE DOG-DAYS. 173
Better the love of a woman you love,
Better a myriad times,
Than all the fame that ever came
From grandest prose or rhymes.
Of the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade, I know next to
nothing ; which is perhaps nearly as much as the author of
" Lycidas " knew ; but if it is at all like any other common
trade, out upon it ! The Muse I have in my time strictly
meditated ; and have certainly found her much more thank-
less than ever did John Milton -, — except when he made
God and the Son of God, not to speak of an archangel or
two, prose in the blankest of verse the most wretched and
incongruous theological sophistries, like a dreary and bitter
pair of cantankerous old Calvinistics. And for the rest, if
Amaryllis be altogether too deep in the shade, and the
tangles of Nesera's hair have long since curled off in vapour
or mouldered entangled in the dust, there are plenty of
girls as good as ever they were to replace them. Some
Irish darling, with great black eyes, and thick black shining
locks " crisped like a war-steed's encolure," and strong white
teeth flashing between liberal laughing lips ; some yellow-
haired lassie, with eyes of limpid heavenly blue, and bosom
swelUng from its boddice like a lovely white bud from its
sheath ; some English maiden with rich brown hair and soft
brown eyes, and mouth as sweet as a dewy rose : who can
sigh for Amaryllis or Nesera, while all or one of these may
be met?
But the rearmost of the band of my brothers are vanish-
ing in the blue distance. Is it not sad to be left alone ?
How shall I, the demoralised, ever overtake them ? Were
it not well simply to let them overtake me ? they marching
on, and I valiantly resting, until again we can em.brace.
For whether they march to the rising or setting sun, to the
Southern Cross or the Great Northern Bear, it is certain
174 ^ NATIONAL REFORMER
that if they march on long enough unswerving they will at
length come round to this very same pleasant spot again.
Extremes always meet ; and the farther I linger behind
them, the nearer are they to overtaking me. Was it a
blunder or oversight of Providence ? was it a deep design
of Nature ? surely it is beneficent for us weaklings that all
our progress must move in a circle, or other curve ever
returning into itself, not onward in a right line. For,
perpend. If from the beginning human progress had been
straight forward, instead of circular on this apple-shaped
earth ; the most energetic getting far in advance, and there-
fore only mingling and marrying with the most energetic
like themselves, and thus by the laws of selection and
inheritance having offspring ever more and more energetic
and go-ahead ; and, similarly, the most sluggish lagging far
behind with their like, and breeding children ever more and
more sluggish and slow; it is clear that in the course of
some millenniums the poor human race would have been
represented by a thin, forlorn, often broken line, with knots
here and there, stretching for billions and quadrillions of miles
through the homeless immensities of space. For instance,
try to conceive the vastitudes w^iich, on these conditions,
in the course of one poor thousand years, would divide
Quarterly Reviewers and Westminster Reviewers, Saturday
Reviewers and National Reformers, each set breeding in
and in ! Infinity itself would scarcely give scope enough
for the unbridled protension of our career. But, as it is,
the most advanced are kept amongst the most backward,
and our whole species is snugly packed and housed on this
pleasant and homely little orb. Thus the human race may
be fitly compared to a ten-mile race, which, for the conve-
nience of spectators and umpires and referee, and for the
greater profit of the knowing landlord who gets it up, is run
round a course of a third of a mile ; thirty times round, the
IN THE DOG-DAYS. 175
tenth mile just as fully in sight as the first. You see two
men pushing on abreast, but the one is really a long lap in
front of the other ; a man leading a second by some yards,
the fact being that the leader is a whole lap less those yards
behind the led ; a third half-way between other two, he being
actually the rest of the course in advance of the one in front,
and the rest of the course in rear of the one behind ; and
so on through other apparent contradictions, as the ingeni-
ous will easily imagine. Thus are we of the human race all
kept together on our cosy spherule, thus the energetic are
kept commingled with the slothful, each tempering the other;
and thus, which is the most important consideration, are
all the reforming natures kept among all the poor creatures
who need reform.
Therefore, my beloved and admirable comrades, I will
not grieve that you have progressed beyond my vision ; our
separation is but for a brief period; you will come up
behind me from the underworld, even as you just now dis-
appeared before me into it. Perhaps by the time you rejoin
me, I shall have recovered the strength and vigour which
will enable me to accompany you, to march in your ranks
even in the dog-days. And assuredly I will use the interval
of rest to chant the praises of your valour and fortitude ;
panegyrics and high paeans which I had not the leisure to
compose, or the voice to sing, while marching and fighting
myself It is a fair division of labour and fortune. Yours
shall be the noble action, and mine the hymn that celebrates
it ; yours the deed, and mine the emotion which the deed
inspires in a serene looker-on who has leisure to indulge in
sentiment. For surely the courage and endurance of the
warrior merit the proud praises of the bard; yea, even
though the warfare can do no good to the warrior himself
or„to. any one else. Nor shall I envy you, my brothers, for
that when you rejoin me you will be a whole lap, or great
176 A NATIONAL REFORMER IN THE DOG-DAYS.
earth-circle, before me in the race. I am meek and modest,
and never was ambitious ; and shall be quite content so
long as I can march in your company, and enjoy your sweet
society, to know that you are all in reality too far advanced
for me ever to overtake you.
So I rest and dream, and imagine my leal and valiant
comrades marching and fighting far ahead, and wait placidly
until they shall show themselves here again ; and in the
meanwhile the dog-days, the vast, slow, sultry and burning
hours flow over me ; and I get what refreshment and shadow
I can from the sea and in the sea, and on green grass under
green leafage, and in the unperturbed depths of coolest con-
templation. And if only lass or lassie or maiden will soon
come by and bear me company, so much the better. And
as for the ferocious and insatiable Editor roaring and howl-
ing for copy, let me blandly remind him yet again of the
sage words of the poet :
Who but a fool of his free will
Would write mere prose, or well or ill,
Of his free will would write mere prose
During the season of the rose ?
None but a fool would thus write prose
During the season of the rose.
Whereof the concluding distich is to be repeated with re-
doubled damnatory emphasis.
( 177 )
AN EVENING WITH SPENSER.
In the tenth canto of the first Book of the " Faerie Queene,"
we have the description of the House of Hohness. The
Redcross Knight has been snared in the toils of Duessa,
and has endured long captivity in a deep dungeon of the
castle of Orgoglio ; and is so weak and wasted that in the
ninth canto he would have slain himself with the dagger
put into his hand by Despair (the most eloquent despair, I
think, that has ever spoken in our language) had not Una
interfered to save him. Seeing that he is altogether too
feeble and faint for the combat with the dragon, Una brings
him to this House of Holiness to be cheered and cherished
and restored. The description of the ladies of the house,
Coelia, Fidelia, Speranza, Charissa, of their attendants and
servitors, and of the discipline whereby a diseased soul is
gradually cured and stabHshed in godly health, is so beau-
tiful and so true to the most catholic spirituality — rather
Theistic than Christian — that even an undevout reader, an
"infidel," must study it with delight and hold it in reverence.
In no portion of his great work, not excepting the narratives
of knightly combats or the pictures of lovely ladies and
ornate artificial landscapes so comparatively easy to accom-
I7S AN EVENING WITH SPENSER.
plish, does Spenser show a more thorough mastery of the
subject in hand. Here as everywhere else there is no inde-
cision, no panting or straining for effect, no hurry or slurring ;
no sign, in short, that the strength and knowledge and
wisdom of the mighty master are not abundant and super-
abundant for the enterprise he has undertaken : he royally
dominates his theme ; a magnificent equable composure
reigns throughout. Mr. Ruskin (and no man better loves
and appreciates Spenser) has found fault with the Anchor of
Hope ; and I think Mr. Ruskin's objection to the emblem
is reasonable ; but Spenser did not invent it ; he was surely
right in adopting the universally received symbol of this
virtue, in an age when all the virtues and all the legions of
the saints were severally distinguished by certain symbols
and accessories in Art, as clearly and constantly as noble
families by their escutcheons in heraldry.* And it may
be remarked that in using the inevitable anchor, Spenser
makes it as light and unreal as possible ; for Speranza
carries the anchor whereon, or rather whereover, she leans :
Upon her arme a silver anchor lay,
Whereon she leaned ever, as befell.
How different is this attitude of Hope, how slight is the
weight of the anchor in the characterisation, as compared
with the ordinary delineation, with the common pictures
and statues of which Keats was thinking when he wrote
massively of Asia in Hyperion :
* See Hebrews vi. 19, whence the symbol : " Which hope we have as an
anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that
within the veil." The marginal reference here is exceedingly good : if you
are puzzled by an anchor entering into that within the veil, look to Lev.
xvi. 15, and you will learn that within the veil was the blood of a goat and
of a bullock sprinkled upon the mercy-seat. This blood was the sea into
which the anchor was cast, the mercy-seat was the bottom it grappled,
and the soul of man was a ship sailing on a surface considerably above the
temple.
AN EVENING WITH SPENSER. 179
Even as Hope upon her anchor leans,
So leant she, not so fair, upon a tusk
Shed from the broadest of her elephants.
Minute criticism might more fairly object to the twenty-
sixth stanza, that such regimen, such dieting with fasting
every day, although undoubtedly proper in most cases,
could scarcely be required in the case of the Redcross
Knight, who was so weak and ill chiefly because he had
dieted with fasting all the days of his captivity : and, in fact,
the second stanza tells us that Una's purpose was to cherish
him with diets daint.
For my purpose in this little paper, however, I need only
call attention to stanzas 53 and 54, wherein the hill from
which Heavenly Contemplation showed the Knight the
New Hierusalem, is compared to Mount Sinai, to the
Mount of Olives, and to Parnassus ; Moses and Jesus and
the nine Muses being mentioned as all alike really existing :
to stanzas 57 to 59, wherein the City of the Great King, the
New Hierusalem, and Cleopolis the capital of the Faerie
Queene, and Panthea that bright tower, are compared as
if also all alike really existing : and, finally, to stanzas 60
to 76 wherein Heavenly Contemplation quite naturally and
seriously turns from pointing out the celestial glories to
inform the Knight that he is indeed of sound English blood,
although having been stolen when an infant by a faery, he
has been brought up in Faerie Land and is accounted a
faery's son ; and predicts that he shall become a saint,
and be known to aftertimes as Saint George, the patron
saint of merry England.^
* The last line of Stanza 42 is noteworthy :
Ah, dearest God, me graunt, I dead be not defould !
Here is the very prayer of Shakespeare's epitaph, and expressed with the
like remarkable impassioned intensity. How has this Oriental reverence for
the corpse, while still strong in the poor and ignorant, become so weak m
I So AX EVEXL\G WITH SPENSER.
In the sixth canto of the third Book, the birth of the
twins Belphoebe and Amoretta having been related, we enter
the Garden of Adonis wherein the latter was brought up
under the care of Psyche ; Psyche for ever reconciled with
Cupid, and by him the mother of Pleasure. The poetry here
is as divinely beautiful as the myths of Venus and Adonis,
of Cupid and Psyche. Especially, the first two lines of
stanza 42, as marking the transition from the more philo-
sophic to the more romantic aspect of the garden, are lovely
beyond appraisal and praise :
There is contimiall spring, and harvest there
Continual), both meeting at one time.
But I chiefly wish to call attention to the bold Platonism of
the first or more philosophic part of the description (stanzas
30 to ^S). I use the word Platonism, not in the now ordi-
nary vague sense with w^hich it is applied to any doctrines
of an idealistic (modern idealism as opposed to materialism
is Platonic realism as opposed to nominalism) or spiritual
tendency, but in its full meaning of the actual philosophy of
the great heathen, as we have it in the Phcedo and the
Phcedrus and the Timceus. This Garden of Adonis is the
seminary of all earthly creatures ; in it naked souls {babes,
Spenser calls them) await their investiture in fleshly weeds,
and are invested as eternal fate ordains ; having lived a life
upon the earth, they return and are planted in the garden
once more, and are kept there some thousands of years ;
they are then " clad with other hue, or sent into the change-
the educated — even educated Christians ? Is it that, in fact, these do not
now believe in the resurrection of the body? See also George Herbert
[Faith, 20) :—
What though my body run to dust ?
Faith cleaves unto it, counting every grain
With an exact a7id most particular trusty
Rescj-ving allforjlcsh again.
AN EVENING WITH SPENSER. i8i
ful world again," to return as before when this fresh lifetime
is over ; " so, like a wheel, around they run from old to
new." Their substance, the one substance of all alike, men,
beasts, birds, fish, reptiles, is eternal, implying in itself its
own eternal sustenance, and is never changed or altered,
only the forms and outward fashions being variable and
subject to decay and death. Yet in the very midst of this
heathenism of the transmigration of souls (" whose changes
ever run into themselves," and are not the circlings of an
ever-ascending spiral such as the most ancient Hindoos and
some of the most modern Europeans have conceived) and
the immutable eternity of the one universal substance and
the supremacy of eternal Fate, Spenser, as if to throw out
into more striking relief the ethnic lineaments, speaks of
— the mighty word
Which first was spoken by th' Ahiiiglity Lord,
That bad them to incirase and mutiply.
The poet sage was, of course, quite as well aware as can be
his most subtle critic of the startling incongruity, the abrupt
contradiction ; but he attempted no reconciliation, any
more than Nature attempts to reconcile her serpents and
tigers with her doves and lambs : wisdom is justified of her
children; in the exuberance of intense and fecund Ufe,
every form is vindicated solely by its own vitality; like the
baron of old, more legal than the pedantry of law, " By the
sword I won, with the sword I'll keep."
It was the opinion of Macaulay (Essay on Bunyan) that
very few readers of the Faerie Qiieene ever continue unex-
hausted, so as to be in at the death of the Blatant Beast ;
and this opinion was certainly not overbold, for there is no
death of the Blatant Beast in the book. Any particular
slander may be muzzled, but slander and false rumour in
general cannot be done away from the earth, so long as men
l82 AN EVENING WITH SPENSER.
and women, with two ears and one tongue each, continue
to exist upon it. (Macaulay, however, may have used the
phrase " in at the death " in the proverbial figurative sense
of " persevere to the end : " but even thus he was wrong to
use a phrase which must lead to misunderstanding when
the subject is the chase of a beast.) But whether the mass
of readers do or do not go fairly through to the end of the
sixth Book, where the Beast is left free in the world again,
barking and biting and raging sore, they surely read the
two cantos and two stanzas which follow this Book, and are
supposed to be a fragment of the Legend of Constancy. It
is difficult to conceive readers weary and exhausted, when
the author is so far from betraying any symptoms of ex-
haustion or weariness, that nobler and more vigorous writ-
ing cannot be selected from the noblest passages of the
six complete Books.
Proud Change (not pleased in mortal! things
Beneath the moone to raigne)
Pretends, as well as of gods as men,
To be the soveraine.
For she is the daughter
Of her that is grandmother magnifide
Of all the gods, great Earth, great Chaos' child :
And by the father's side she is greater in blood than all
the gods, being descended from Titan the elder brother
of Saturn. Jove * naturally will not cede her claim ;
* We have lost much by our disuse of the name ^ove for the sovereign
of the world, ruler of heaven and earth. With our older writers this Jove
was /e bo)i Dieu of the French, der Hebe Gott of the Germans ; God with
his solemn state thrown off, in a jolly after-dinner mood, ready for the give
and take of free chat. Under cover of this title they dared discuss many
things and express many thoughts which they could not have done with the
use of the words God, and Lord, and Jehovah. And there is often a happy
ambiguity as to whether their hits are given in jest or in earnest, whether
they are indeed striking at the jovial or the serious Deity. A writer has
AN EVENING WITH SPENSER. 183
For we by conquest of our scveraine might,
And by eternall doome of Fate s decree,
Have wonne the empire of the heavens bright.
But the Titaness will not accept Jove's judgment on his
own case :
But to the highest him that is behight
Father of gods and men by equall might,
To weet, the god of Nature, I appeale.
Jove was wroth and inly grudged, but could not refuse the
appeal ; and all, both heavenly powers and earthly wights,
were summoned to appear before Nature on Arlo Hill.
Spenser invents and tells the legend of Molanna and
Faunus, and assembles all the gods on Arlo Hill, with the
calm unhesitating assurance of an ancient Greek addressing
a Greek audience of the Heroic Age, ready and eager to
accept the utmost profusion of local mythology.
Canto seven gives us the arbitration. Note the descrip-
tion of Nature in stanzas 5, 6, and 7, and how the poet can
find nothing with which to compare the brightness of Her
vesture, but is dazed as were the three disciples who saw the
Transfiguration of their glorious Lord on iMount Thabor ;
and how She is far greater and more tall of stature than any
of the gods or powers on high. Note also in the first stanza
the seriousness with which he speaks of Jove, " heaven's king
(thy sovereign sire), his fortunate success," as if he were
thinking rather of our God than of Jove, celebrating some
triumph of Ormuzd over Ahriman.
Change then commences before the throne of Nature,
her magnificent pleading ; with its wonderful illustrations of
the Seasons, the Months, Day and Night, Life and Death,
sweeping past in ordered procession, full of bold and vigo-
not this convenient mask now, and must either cant demurely or ' ' outrage
pious sensibihties " — confound tliem ! — sensibiHties that do not shrink from
damning the vast mass of us to all eternity.
i84 AN EVENING WITH SPENSER.
rous life as a painting of I'itian or Paul Veronese. She is
unabashed by heaven and the gods, addressing herself with
reverence to Nature only :
For heaven and earth I both alike do deeme,
Sith heaven and earth are both alike to thee ;
And Gods no more than men thou dost esteeme :
For even the gods to thee, as men to Gods, do seeme.
And she disposes of men with disdainful brevity in six lines ;
Ne doe tlieir bodies only flit and fly ;
But eeke their minds {which they immortall call)
Still change and vary thoughts, as new occasions fall.
Mark how Christianity and Heathenism are mixed in the
description of December, stanza 41, whose mind is so glad
because of his Saviour's birth, and who rides upon a shaggy-
bearded goat — the same, they say, which suckled Dan Jove.
Ponder the four lines, stanza 46, about Death :
Death with most grim and griesly visage seene,
Yet is he naught but parting of the breath ;
Ne aught to see, but like a shade to weene.
Unbodied, tinsozded, Jinheaj'd, unseen.
And, above all, consider the summing up of Nature, stanza
58, in vindication of Her verdict against Change :
I well consider all that ye have sayd ;
And find that all things stedfastnesse doe hate.
And changed be ; yet being rightly wayd,
They are not changed from their first estate ;
But by their change their being doe dilate ;
And, turning to themselves at length againe,
Doe worke their own perfection so by fate :
Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne
But they raigne over Change, and doe their states maintaine.
How would the fundamental Christian doctrines of Ori-
ginal Sin, of Election, of the Atonement, of Eternal
' AN EVENING WITH SPENSER. 185
Punishment and Reward, fare in collision with this subUme
jDhilosophy ?
Nature goes on to predict, and the prediction harmonises
about equally well with every religion and philosophy not
based on materialism which has ever ruled among mankind :
But time shall come when all shall changed bee,
And from iheaceforih none no more change shall see !
And immediately after, in the only stanzas that are left of
canto viii., we have the impassioned Theistic prayer, the
noble ending (though the consummate end should have
been so far off) of the noble work :
Then gin I think on that which Nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more change shall bee,
But stedfast rest of all things, firmly stayd
Upon the pillours of Eternity,
That is contrayr to Mutabiliiie :
For all that moveth doth in change deliglit :
But thenceforth all shall i-esl eternally
With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight ;
O ! that great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabbaths sight !
What a leap is this away from
So was the Titanesse put downe and whist,
And Jove confirmed in his imperiall see.
In selecting these examples I have confined myself to
three favourite portions of the Faerie Qiieeiie : students of
Spenser (and it is to be hoped that their number is legion)
can judge whether similar examples do or do not abound in
the other portions. My object in gathering them is by no
means that of reflecting doubt upon the sincerity of the
Christianity of Spenser. The great men of his age and of
the two succeeding generations were profoundly religious,
at any rate in their behef ; they were Christians, but above
all (and this is the fact upon which I would dwell) they
i86 ^.V EVENING WITH SPENSER.
were Men. Saintliest purity and fervour of religious faith ;
boldest and most vigorous manhood in thought and action ;
intense heavenliness in the study, intense earthliness and
worldliness out of the study ; each phase developed with the
most puissant freedom, without care for consistency and
symmetry : these are concise formulae of their complex-
simple nature. Consistency and symmetry were there : the
most antagonistic tendencies of any one nature are con-
sistent in that nature, the wildest outgrowths from any one
nature are symmetrical to a view of the whole : but these
men did not cramp and trim themselves into a consistency
leading-article-proof, into that symmetry which a tea-party
praises as nice and good and respectable, as the most of us
do now. They trimmed and polled their trees into absurd
and fantastic uniformity, but let their own characters grow
with the most lusty and savage and majestic freedom : we
have given over mutilating plantations into artificial uni-
formity, and direct the absurdity to ourselves.
What an age was theirs ! The Bible newly set free from
its monastic prison-house, and the veil of the temple rent
in twain from the top to the bottom by the earthquakes of
the Reformation ; the languages and literatures of Greece
and Rome just become universal scholarship, physical
science just beginning to awake from its long swoon, and a
New World of marvels half discovered in the West. The
thirst and the capacity of these men were equal to the
most profuse outpourings from all these fountains. Moses
and Isaiah, Jesus and Paul, Plato and Aristotle, Homer
and Virgil, Plutarch and Livy, El Dorado and the Spanish
Main ; they would and could absorb and assimilate all ;
each new acquisition but made them more eager to acquire.
They received all and believed all; devoured all and digested
all ; the richer the feast, and the longer it lasted, the further
were they from satiety. They were not critical and fasti-
AN EVENING WITH SPENSER. 187
dious, because their stomachs were not queasy, because their
free active life never let them suffer dyspepsia. If Siloa's
brook and Jordan stream flowed sacred through their spirit ;
none the less did Hippocrene and Amazon pour with
power through their imaginations : Sinai and the Mount of
Olives could not shut out from their view Parnassus and
Olympus : ulterior designs on the New Jerusalem did not
hinder prompt search for El Dorado. Nearly every great
man was great integrally, in character and talents and genius,
in body and mind and soul, so that he was equal to all occa-
sions and circumstances ; a finished gentleman, a brilliant
courtier, a wise statesman, an astute negotiator, a learned
scholar, a weighty writer, a profound philosopher, a subtle
theologian, an accomplished soldier, a dauntless sailor. Our
most eminent persons appear poor thin fragments of great
men compared with a Raleigh, a Sidney, a Herbert of Cher-
bury, a Vane, a Hampden, a Kenelm Digby, a Montrose, a
Pym, an Eliot. As writers, these men pressed fearlessly all
that they knew and loved into their works. Drayton put all
England in the most minute detail into one vast poem, the
Polyolbio7i. The dramatists put all our history and great part
of ancient history, battles, genealogies, conspiracies, sects,
schisms, factions, into plays. In like spirit Spenser crushes
the whole Chronicle of Briton kings from Brute to Uthefs
reign into a canto ; and all the rivers of England, together
with the most famous of the rest of the world, into another,
enumerating the fifty Nereids (nearly every name with a
distinguishing epithet) in four stanzas. He did not first
timidly inquire whether a thing was poetical : he knew it
and cared for it, and therefore used it in his poem ; and
everything he used was poeticised. Fires so great and in-
tense could make fuel of any and every material they met.
We have decorous little fires in pretty grates, fed daintily
with chips of perfumed wood ; fires to be trusted as in-
1 88 AN EVENING WITH SPENSER.
"'■ nocuous in a drawing-room. Tennyson gleaming softly
through his gilded wires wouldn't set a muslin robe aflame.
We have armies of assiduous fuel gatherers ; and only two
or three fires with an undomestic Plutonic energy in them
to make fervent heat and broad light of the fuel.
Spenser and his fellows, peers of the noblest men that
have existed since the human race w\as born, in their lives
and works explicitly or implicitly avow and maintain that
whatever exists has the right in having the might to exist ;
that intense and fecund vitality is mysteriously identical
with the purest morality and the profoundest truth, and
that when and where they appear to clash, it is all the worse
for the morality and the truth, not for the vitalit5^ What-
ever their religious faith, they, in thought and action, re-
fused to be bound by its narrow limitations, and were for
ever bursting through their own creeds and systems, as
Samson through the ropes and the withes with which he
had let himself be bound. A creed or system is a strait-
Avaistcoat for Nature ; and if you will persist in trying to
force it upon Her, you will soon experience that the great
Titaness not only flings it off with wrathful disdain, but
makes yourself fit for a strait-w^aistcoat in recompense for
your trouble. These men manufactured the strait-waistcoats
with the laborious ingenuity man has ever displayed in that
useful work, but they were far too naturally and instinctively
wise to dement themselves by constant efforts to compel
Nature to wear them when manufactured. And the great
Mother laughed at their pretty doll-dresses, and took these
her robust and passionate children to the embrace of her
naked love. How she serves us now may be learnt in
J^cicr Bell the Thirds that long wild laugh of a young Greek
god at the vision of a highly respectable English Sunday-
school teacher, toiling up Parnassus with a heavy bundle
of sermons and hymn-books and moral old clothes on his
AN EVENING WITH SPENSER. 189
back, resolved to convert and civilise those poor shameless
heathen Muses : Peter, that is to say Wordsworth, being
praised of all the wise people at present as the wisest and
purest of poets, and incomparably the most intimate with
Nature : —
But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
To be a sort of moral eunuch :
He touched the hem of Nature's shift —
Grew faint — and never dared uplift
The closest all-concealing tunic.
She smiled the while with an arch smile,
»■ ';• And kissed him with a sister's kiss ;
And said, "My best Diogenes,
I love you well ; but, if you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.
" 'Tis you are cold ; for I not coy
Give love for love frank, warm, and true ;
And Burns, a Scottish peasant-boy —
His errors prove it — knew my joy
More, learned friend, than you."
( 190 )
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
1S65,
Inscribed upon the banners of the grandest Secret Societies
recorded in history, as at once their motto and their vin-
dication, we read the great words, Love, Truth, Justice,
Lovc^ when the Society has professed to disciphne its mem-
bers in fraternity, expanding and attuning their hearts to its
cosmic laws, and thus gradually preparing an Age of Gold
for the iron-bound earth. Truths when the Society has
professed to cherish for secure development some priceless
germ of doctrine, too weak and tender as yet to bear the
rougli storms of the open air. The truth may be purely
scientific, without any direct relation to the existing polity ;
in which case it is fostered in secret because the vulgar
mind cannot comprehend it, and its cultivators fear per-
secution as professors of the black art. Or it may be
religious, having a direct relation to the existing polity;
in which case its votaries are secretly undermining a super-
stition or spiritual tyranny as yet too strong to be openly
attacked. Justice^ when the end of the Society is political
or social, in immediate relation to active life; in which
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 191
case its adherents are secretly undermining some temporal
tyranny whose conquest it would as yet be hopeless to
attempt by open assault. These appear to be the very
best ends which Secret Societies have ever acknowledged
or professed as justifying and demanding their institution.
Of such as have sprung from meaner or lighter motives,
and have intentionally worked for selfish or fantastic or
obstructive purposes, it is not here necessary to speak.
Judging them a priori, by deduction from their own first
principles without induction of historical facts and fancies,
my opinion is that even the best of such Secret Societies,
formed and carried on for these best objects, always must
have been and always must be failures ; that at the best
the results cannot pay the expense of the elaborate
machinery, that the business must be carried on at a heavy
and continually-increasing ratio of loss. But I have had
no experience in any such Society, and I am well aware
that deductions from first principles are often in reality as
foolishly wrong as they appear logically right ; the reader
will therefore please to bear in mind that my statements
state mere inferences, and are liable to be dispersed to the
four wands by statements of facts from some member of a
noble brotherhood. It would be tiresome to begin nearly
every sentence with " I should judge," or some similar
phrase; let it, then, be understood once for all that the
following are mere fancy portraits, and may be very vile
caricatures of the originals.
A Secret Society must come into being with a glow of
enthusiasm and a vigorous activity; but the enthusiasm
becomes a narrow fanaticism or dies out altogether, the
activity degenerates into busybodyism or sets into an
unprogressive routine like that of a squirrel in its cage.
The spirit of fraternity either discovers that it cannot
harmonise the little world of the Society, and gradually
192 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
perishes of atrophy, or in its hunger grasps at husks and
straw in the absence of grain ; or it narrows into the exclu-
siveness of a clique or coterie, cherishing rather a pharisaical
contempt than a yearning love for the mass of uninitiate
mankind.
If the object of the Society be the hidden conservation
and secret culture of some truth, it probably appears, in the
course of a not long time, that instead of the truth expand-
ing the intellects of its votaries to its breadth and greatness,
they are contracting it to the measure of their own narrow
littleness. The first warm intoxication is soon followed by
a very cold sobriety, if not by shuddering nausea. And
the truth adopted and professed by the Society will be even
narrower than the intellect of almost any one of its mem-
bers ; for all will assent only to some proposition shorn of
everything very offensive to one or the other; hence the
result is a maimed, mutilated, semi-vital compromise ; it
will not soar with the birds, it will not walk with the beasts,
so it flits about bat-like in the dusk lower air. For a meet-
ing is always less wise than a man. The branches lopped
off from their tree of knowledge will be precisely the most
vigorous individual offshoots. Thus the sublime and
fruitful doctrine withers into an abstract formula, the
sacred watchwords become jargon and cant ; the conserva-
tion which was enterprised in the spirit of progress is con-
tinued in the spirit of obstructiveness. In the meantime
the outward air has become milder, the temperature of the
human zone has ameliorated ; and while this tree of know-
ledge has been cut and trimmed lest it should shatter the
glass walls of its conservatory, and has languished in the
lack of natural warmth and light, not all the similar germs
left to the rough nursing of open nature have perished;
some have thriven, deep-rooted and strong-boughed from
their warfare with tempests, and contrast in their robust
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 193
integral majesty with this sickly mutilated dwarf. It
remains then for the Society simply to enfranchise its mem-
bers by abolishing itself, or (the course it will probably
pursue for many years) to take refuge in pretence and
deceit, asserting peculiar and mysterious virtues for its
specimen, which is only uncommon by stunted deformity,
and claiming for it heavenly powers in the absence of earthly
fruits.
Secret Societies whose aim is direct action, as the over-
throw of political tyranny, are likely to fail yet more con-
spicuously. The energy and skill which should be employed
in pressing onward are mainly absorbed in the endless work
of keeping the complex machine and its intricate gear in
order. If the Society be swayed by a council, it will go to
wreck by internal incoherences ; and, at any rate, with the
utmost possible harmony, a council of war never equals the
inspired daring of a general. If it be wielded by one man,
it may hold together and prove a most formidable engine ;
but will probably prove yet more formidable to the enemies
than to the friends of the tyranny it was constructed to
overthrow. Every member in the moment of suffering
initiation abdicates his personal freedom, loses the very
essence of his manhood, is no longer a living will, but the
blind and dumb slave of some other unknown will, and
must exist thenceforth under a despotism far more absolute
than the worst which can grow up publicly to oppress man-
kind. And the secresy in which all the members are in-
volved intensifies and raises to higher powers the evil of'
mutual distrust, which is the deepest foundation of all
tyrannies in the world. Try to conceive the state of a
member in social converse, when the subject of talk is the
Government or the Society as rumour with its thousand
tongues describes it. The man who speaks most loudly
against the Government may be a brother member, may be
N
194 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
a spy of the Government ; the man who speaks most loudly
against the Society may be a member in the confidence of
some of the chiefs, if not of ^/le Chief, and may be a genuine
supporter of the Government. The man who communicates
some sign of fraternity and wishes to converse intimately on
the Society, may be a real devoted member, may be one who
without taking on the vows of initiation has discovered this
sign, may be a Government spy who has been charged to
get initiated in order to thoroughly betray, may be a double
Judas who sells Government secrets to the Chief, and Society
secrets to the Government. As a double Judas, he may be
at bottom more the friend of the Chief than of the Govern-
ment, or more the friend of the Government than of the
Chief: he may have the connivance of the Chief in de-
nouncing unimportant members and mysteries to the Govern-
ment ; he may have the connivance of the Government in
revealing unimportant or quasi-important State secrets to
the Society ; and except the Chief himself no member can
be sure that his own sacrifice may not be considered expe-
dient in the interests of the Society. There are thus wheels
within wheels whirling and intervolving to make the soundest
head dizzy. Where all move in darkness you cannot discern
whether your companions wear a single or a sevenfold veil.
All the members must breathe that frenzying atmosphere of
preternatural suspicion, which was the miasma of the Reign
of Terror : I suspect, thou suspectest, he suspects ; we, you,
and they suspect, and are suspected ; and we suspect that
we are suspected, and are suspected that we suspect. Why
should not the Chief himself be a super-subtle minion of the
State ? How can the Chief himself know whether large
numbers of the affiliated are or are not subtle minions of the
State ? Why should not the Chief himself, even if sincere,
have ends beyond ends in view which the mass of the Society
have no knowledge of, and can but set their brains whirling by
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 195
guessing at ? Why — as the Society is a state within the
State — may there not be a society within the Society, ready
to overthrow it in the moment it overthrows the State ? And
after all, should the Society succeed and become the ruling
power, what a tenfold more terrible tryanny would this un-
known phantom Chief exercise than any known Czar, Sultan,
Emperor, King, Oligarchy, Timocracy, or Ochlocracy.
Thus it appears to me that the best Secret Societies
(earnest and not sportive in their ends) must inherently
be bad. They are based on the erroneous assumption that
the thoughts and sentiments of mankind, that human
nature, can be improved by machinery ; that the Spirit of
the Ages, the Zeitgeist, can be hurried forw^ard by cun-
ningly devised wheels and pistons. The wind that bloweth
where it listeth will work windmills well-planted to catch
its breath, the stream flowing ever unhasting, unresting,
w411 work w^atermills well-placed to meet its current ; but
mill-sails cannot direct the wind, nor mill-wheels engender
rivers.
In contrast to such Chinese ingenuities, so clever and
so futile, there always have been and always will be in the
world countless genuine Secret Societies of the most open,
while of the most hidden, character. Continuous and un-
adulterate these have flowed, separate streams through the
Sea of Time, from an antiquity which makes all nobilities
and castes unreverend ; holding in solution secrets and
mysteries so august, so ineffable, that those of lUuminati
and Rosicrucians, and even the Eleusinian and the Orphean
and the Osirean, are jejune and puerile compared with
them.
Their members are affiliated for life and death in the
instant of being born ; without ceremonies of initiation,
without sponsorial oaths of fidelity. Their bond of union
is a natural affinity, quite mysterious in its principles and
196 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
elements, precise and assured in its results as the combina-
tion and proportions of oxygen and hydrogen in water, or
oxygen and nitrogen in air. No spy or traitor, no un-
worthy or uncongenial brother, can obtain entrance among
them, any more than a hemlock or a lily can be adopted
into the family of the roses, any more than an ape or
a tiger can pass as one of a herd of elephants. Their
esoteric doctrines are the most spontaneous and indepen-
dent thoughts of each and every of their members ; their
secret watchwords are the most free and public expressions
of their members ; their mysterious signals are telegraphed
in the most careless gestures which all eyes may see. The
watchwords and symbols change from generation to genera-
tion, the supreme secrets are immutable from the beginning
to the end of Time. Exactly what they cherish and adore
as the inmost mystery of their being, their whole being
ever strives to utter most clearly abroad to the senses and
hearts and intellects of the whole world ; thus the mystery
still inviolate must for ever be inviolable, for there can be
no new or better means of expression and interpretation :
only the initiated ever truly hear and read it, to all others
it is sound without meaning and letters without signi-
ficance. They are without machinery to regulate and pro-
pagate themselves ; yet the rank of each brother is fixed
with more than heraldic precision, and no one who should
be of the confraternity ever fails to be gathered into it ;
and it endures aggregating throughout the centuries and
the millenniums, while creeds and systems collecting mil-
lions of money and scattering thousands of missionaries
languish and die away. They have not consciously signs
of fraternity ; yet a brother shall recognise a brother im-
mediately by a glance, a gesture, a casual word, and the
two shall be straightway as if they had been intimate from
childhood. They have no set councils or lodges : yet the
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 197
experience of the senators is their shield, and the daring of
the young members their sword ; and they are thus, though
dispersed throughout all the countries and cycles, ever
ready in battle-array to repel or to assault. They are of
all characters and professions ; and each human being,
while belonging supremely to one, belongs in lower degrees
to many of them, for every point in the circle of his nature
touches a point in the circle of some other nature.
In the noblest of these confraternities, very rarely in the
lifetime of any one member does he come into personal
contact with another of the same rank, almost never into
personal contact with more than two or three others of
the same rank ; yet their spirit of fraternity is perfect, and
with the dead of his brotherhood each may hold frequent
and solemn communion. These rare meetings of the living
seldom occur in the bustling streets and busy marts ; but
in places and times of extreme seclusion and tranquillity, or
extreme agitation and strife. In the stillness of the library,
the oratory, the studio ; in the tumult and terror of the
battle, the plague, the revolution, the shipwreck ; brothers
meet unforebodingly by twos and threes. The still meetings
are their eucharistic love-feasts, the others are their Ther-
mopyte banquets : and the rapture of the agony in these
transcends the rapture of the joy in those. In the moment
of their coming together the whole past life of the one is
revealed to the other ; infinite mutual love and reverence
consecrate their meeting and their parting. From drinking
together the glorious wine of communion, they go their
ways to live yet more nobly or to die more grandly, rejoicing
in the death as in the life.
But it must be admitted that these loftiest of the Open
Secret Societies, which exist everywhere and endure with
the 3eon of our race, are parodied and counterfeited and
traduced by ingenious Societies of the artificial kind, and
198 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
that many simple people confuse the parody with the ori-
ginal, the artificial with the natural. I shall have to speak
of the respective parodies in speaking of a few of the ori-
ginals ; for one must come to the concrete in order to
be plain and intelligible. In the concrete, however, I care
only to describe somewhat in detail a few of the best and
most generally distinguished. It is bad work dwelling
on the bad ; and it would be endless work trying to men-
tion all the orders, genera, species, sub-species, and so on,
throuiih an infinitude of divisions and subdivisions.
II.
There is the Open Secret Society of the Heroes. Their
mystery has been published in books, in songs, in world-
famous deeds of life and death, to all men of all nations
and languages ; yet only the heroic brotherhood really com-
prehend it, and are fully possessed by its inspiration. Other
men may have transient glimpses of its meaning, and may
thrill with its divine enthusiasm in rare moments ; but soon
the great door shuts, and they are cowering again in the
darkness and the cold ; nor can they even truly remember
these rare moments in other hours and days, though they
remember well enough the words of the chant or the details
of the action with which the inspiration happened to be
connected. But one of the brotherhood understands and
feels always. The mystery which he understands so
thoroughly and feels so triumphantly is simply this : That
in the whole range of the universe, from highest heaven to
deepest hell, there is no thing or circumstance, creature or
being, dreadful to a man; that out of himself there is nothing
which a man need fear ; that no nature can be born into a
realm unconquerable by that nature ; and, moreover, that the
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 199
most dazzling lightning of ecstasy leaps from the blackest
storm of danger. But neither he who writes nor he who
reads is any nearer to the heart of the mystery through this
interpretation : if he is of the brotherhood his pulse beat in
unison with the throbs of this heart before ; if he is not of the
brotherhood his pulse will never beat in unison with these
throbs, save at intervals and for moments similar to those
in which the hands of a clock that does not go accurately may
agree with the hands of another which is keeping true time.
The ingenious parodies of this natural Society of the
Heroes are the armies of the nations, those elaborate arti-
ficial organisations or aggregations whose spirit and tradition
are popularly supposed to be heroism. Yet any one who
is acquainted with an army or with portions of an army
has learned that genuine heroes are nearly as rare in the
military as in any other trade. The battle blood-drunken-
ness and Schwd7'merei of congregated thousands by no means
imply true heroism. I have known pretty well some of the
men who rode and rode well in the Balaclava Light
Cavalry Charge ; some brave fellows, and some good fellows
not specially brave ; but I do not remember a hero amongst
them."^ How many soldiers cringe to their officers, how
* One of the most miserable humbugs of these years is the humbug of
certain popular writers (the two Kingsleys, Tennyson, Tom Browii, Guy
Livingsto7ie, together with a solemn swarm of female novelists) anent the
Crimean War. It has been a perfect godsend of profitable and blasphemous
cant to them. That war was by no means heroic— a mere selfish haggle for
the adjustment of the balance of power, badly begun and meanly finished ;
and five soldiers out of six who took part in it will tell you that they would
much rather have pitched into the Turks than the Russians. Yet these
pious scribes (for most of them are extra-earnest Christians, notable brawlers
for the Gospel of Peace) invoke God and the seven heavens to attest its
heroic sanctity.
Again, was English manhood really in so rotten a state ten years ago
that these people are justified in soaring into ecstasies of admiration because
an English army with its officers did not act like a drove of cowards (thougli
in many instances exceedingly like a set of fools) during a rather severe and
200 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
many sneak and spy to get promotion, how many would
swear falsely to any extent to escape a punishment, how
few in the smallest matter dare act against the ordinary
opinion of their comrades. And perhaps as a rule the
officers are even less heroic than the men. A few of the
brotherhood are in the army, a number not so small in the
navy ; the others are scattered through all trades and pro-
fessions, are of all ages and of both sexes ; you shall find
them not in camps nor in men-of-war, but in garrets and
lighthouses, in huts and cottages, in hospitals and schools,
in wild forests and sober manses. And they abound rather
among the poor and ignorant who wrestle naked with the
fierce myrmidons of destiny, than among the rich and
learned who fight within golden armour and shoot scientific
missiles from afar.
There is the Open Secret Society of the Saints. In how
many books, in how many lovely lives, have their mysteries
longish siege ? These bookwrights are as ready to bestow plenary absolution
on every soldier who fairly did his duty there, as was Pope Urban on the first
crusaders, "What shall I do to be saved? " asks the scamp or debauchee or
desperado of a novel ; " Go to the Crimea and thou shalt be saved, " exclaims
the enraptured novelist.
[Since the above was written, the general acclamation and worship of
that vilest Blatant Beast, Jingoism, the most dastardly as it is the most
vauntful and rapacious and bloodthirsty of big Bullies, have revealed an
immeasurably deeper degradation of our English manhood than could have
been foreboded sixteen years ago. The Court, the Senate, Pall-Malldom,
the majority of the nobles and clergy and middle classes, have vied with the
slums, the music halls, the hirelings of the Press, and the cosmopolitan
gamblers of the Exchange, in despicable glorification of this hideous Idol,
whose front is of brass and the rest of it clay tempered with blood. We
have crouched at the feet of the sons of Levi for discipline in English
honour and patriotism ; our Queen has hailed our fitting Tyrtseus in a bard
of vulgar comic songs. Soldiers successful— or even unsuccessful ! — in
brutally iniquitous battue-wars against tribes of ill-armed savages, have
been bepraised and honoured and dowered as if they were the heroes of
another Waterloo. All signs point to a thoroughly disastrous and dis-
graceful collapse of our whole military system should we find ourselves
involved in a European war. — March, 1881.]
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 201
been published ! yet how dark and unintehigible is their
simplest vernacular to the learned as to the ignorant, to the
learned even more than to the ignorant, who are not of the
Society ! These are they who know, and live up to the
knowledge, that love is the one supreme duty and good,
that love is wisdom and purity and valour and peace, and
that its infinite sorrow is infinitely better than the world's
richest joy.
The solemn artificial burlesques of this Open Secret
Society are the Churches, the caricatures of its mysteries
are the theologies, the parodies of its sacred watchwords
and symbols are the creeds and the rituals and the cere-
monies. These Churches have been elaborated and organ-
ised by man as patent reservoirs and cisterns (with a parson-
tap for nearly every street) of the Waters of Life ; and,
behold, these waters scarcely flow into them at all, but turn
away and make for themselves truly secret and mysterious
channels ; and stream in pure perennial rills through the
souls of humble men and women whom the great chartered
companies (strictly limited) for the exploitation of religion
despise and perhaps detest ; through the souls of poor
servants and bondsmen who can barely read or read not at
all, of barbarians and idolaters who never heard of the
Atonement or the Trinity, of heresiarchs and infidels who
never enter kirk or chapel or mosque or cathedral or temple,
and whom all the sects furiously revile and persecute and
condemn to the abomination of desolation.
Do not be surprised or disappointed if you find very few
of this holy sisterhood and brotherhood in the hierarchy of
canonised saints, of pontiffs and patriarchs, cardinals, arch-
bishops, bishops, brahmans, imans, lamas ; very few of them
in the great universities and colleges among the learned
divines and subtle theologians, very few of them in
monasteries and nunneries, very few of them among the
202 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
priests and the presbyters, scarcely any of them in the most
devout circles of the " religious world." Sometimes when
one, being full of scorn and indignation, seeks relief in riant
mockery of this Established State Church of ours, this
clever church which manages so well to serve at once both
God and Mammon, this spiritual church whose real Trinity
is an abstract God the Creator, and a fictitious Christ the
Redeemer, and a very substantial Holy Ghost of Bumbleism
the Conservator ; sometimes then a keen pang pierces one's
breast, and the gloom of past time is filled with reproachful
eyes as the gloom of night with pale stars. Full of sad
reproach, and of love whose sweetness is the worst gall and
wormwood of reproach, they gaze down upon him, these
eyes of holy bliss and sorrow, these faces worn with suffering
and fasting and self-renunciation, yet shining with ineffable
beatitude ; the eyes and the lineaments of true brothers
and sisters of this Sacred Order, who being Christians were
yet also indeed Saints. And in every pale regard one reads
the sad question : Did I, O my friend, live and die thus and
thus that you should laugh and fleer ? And at first one is
smitten with shame and remorse, but when he has reflected
a little he replies humbly : Beloved and pure and beautiful
souls, these whom I was mocking are not of you, though
indeed they assume your name ; they are of the fraternities
of those who in your lifetimes mocked and hated and per-
secuted and killed you ; they have caught up your solemn
passwords because these are now passwords to wealth and
worldly honour, which for you were passwords to the prison
and the scaffold and the stake ; they have clothed themselves
with your sheep's clothing because wolves have long been
extinct in our England, and sheep browse securely in the
fattest pastures by the sweetest rivers ; but they hate with
a bitter hatred and fear all who are possessed by the spirit
which possessed you ; they are behind their age as you
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 203
were in the forefront of yours ; they desecrate your holy
mysteries, they stereotype your rapturous prayers into jargon
and cant ; for your eucharistic wine they have publican's
gin-and-water, and your eucharistic bread they butter on
both sides and flavour with slander at tea. Even I, poor
heathen and cynic, am nearer to you, ye holy ones, than
are ninety-nine in a hundred of these.
There is the Open Secret Society of the Philosophers.
Many of them have endeavoured to utter their mystery, and
their writings are in all languages ; but none save the
initiated can read them. These are they who know that the
world is but a poor expression of thought, that action is but
a rude hieroglyph of soul ; that silent and pure and eternal,
above the fleeting noisy world with its agitation of action
and passion, rests the sphere of intellect, the realm of ideas.
These are they of whom Emerson has written worthily :
" But I cannot recite, even thus rudely, laws of the intellect,
without remembering that lofty and sequestered class of
men who have been its prophets and oracles, the high-
priesthood of the pure reason, the Trisme^zsh] the ex-
pounders of the principles of thought from age to age.
When, at long intervals, we turn over their abstruse pages,
wonderful seems the calm and grand air of these few, these
great spiritual lords, who have walked in the world — these
of the old religion — dwelling in a worship which makes the
sanctities of Christianity look parvenues and popular ; for
* persuasion is in soul, but necessity is in intellect.' This
band of grandees, Hermes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato,
Plotinus, Olympiodorus, Proclus, Synesius, and the rest,
have somewhat so vast in their logic, so primary in their
thinking, that it seems antecedent to all the ordinary dis-
tinctions of rhetoric and literature, and to be at once poetry
and music and dancing and astronomy and mathematics.
I am present at the sowing of the seed of the world. With
204 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
a geometry of sunbeams the soul lays the foundations of
nature. The truth and grandeur of their thought is proved
by its scope and applicabiUty, for it commands the entire
schedule and inventory of things for its illustrations. But
what marks its elevation, and has even a comic look to us,
is the innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters
sit in their clouds, and from age to age prattle to each
other and to no contemporary. Well assured that their
speech is intelligible, and the most natural thing in the
world, they add thesis to thesis, without a moment's heed
of the universal astonishment of the human race below, who
do not comprehend their plainest argument ; nor do they
ever relent so much as to insert a popular or explaining
sentence ; nor testify the least displeasure or petulance at
the dulness of their amazed auditory."
Very ponderous burlesques of this Open Secret Society
are exhibited in the universities and colleges and schools.
Professors build up complicated systems with the lumber
they have gathered into their uninhabited upper storeys,
and these systems pass for philosophy. Other erudite pro-
fessors are salaried to expound Plato and the rest ; brilliant
and acute scholars win reputation by writing brilliantly
about ideas, archetypes, dialectics, realism, nominalism, and
so forth ; but where among the professors and the scholars
are the Platonists ? Some quiet modest man, who has
never read a work on metaphysics and knows nothing of
the systems, shall meet with a golden sentence of Plato
or Spinoza, Bacon or Berkeley, Fichte or Schelling, and at
once feel : This is what I have known so long, yet could
never thus express. But he has expressed it in his life,
which is utterance far superior to the most eloquent
rhetoric.
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 205
III.
There is the Open Secret Society of the Poets. These are
they who feel that the universe is one mighty harmony of
beauty and joy; and who are continually listening to the
rhythms and cadences of this eternal music whose orchestra
comprises all things from the shells to the stars, all beings
from the worm to man, all sounds from the voice of the
little bird to the voice of the great ocean ; and who are able
partially to reproduce these rhythms and cadences in the
language of men. In all these imitative songs of theirs is a
latent undertone, in which the whole infinite harmony of
the whole lies furled ; and the fine ears catch this under-
tone and convey it to the soul, wherein the furled music
unfurls to its primordial infinity, expanding with rapturous
pulses and agitating with awful thunders this soul which
has been skull-bound, so that it is dissolved and borne away
beyond consciousness, and becomes as a living wave in a
shoreless ocean. If, however, these their poems be read
silently in books, instead of being heard chanted by the
human voice, then for the eye which has vision an under-
light stirs and quickens among the letters, which grow trans-
lucent and throb with life ; and this mysterious splendour
entering by the eyes into the soul fills it with spheric
illumination, and like the mysterious music swells to infinity,
consuming with quick fire all the bonds and dungeon-walls
of the soul, dazing it out of consciousness and dissolving it
in a shoreless ocean of light. I have called these entrance-
ments of beauty and joy, but there is intense sadness in the
joy and a supernatural awe in the beauty: "Who is she
that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear
as the sun, and terrible as an ari?iy with banners ? " sings the
magnificent poet of the Canticles ; and Plato writes in the
2o6 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
Fhczdrus, "He who has been recently initiated, when he
sees a godUke countenance, or some bodily form that pre-
sents a good imitation of beauty, at first shudders, afid some
of the old terrors come over him.''
The educated, the intelligent, the clever, by thousands,
hear these songs sung, and read them in books, and think
that they perfectly enjoy and comprehend ; and they can
discourse very profoundly about metres and diction and
canons of art ; but they never hear the undertone, and never
have vision of the interior illumination, and are never rapt
away in the ecstasy : thus the very soul of the poetry must,
in truth, ever remain for them a music unheard, a light
unseen, a language unknown embodied in their familiar
mother-tongue.
Serious parodies of these divine songs abound in every
age, and are welcomed by the uninitiate (who are usually
what we call persons of liberal culture, for the poor and
the ignorant remain grandly indifferent to all such attempts)
as the most beautiful utterance of the inmost mysteries of
this veritable Secret Society ; and the authors thereof win
during their lifetime wealth and honour and renown. For
many of them can copy with marvellous adroitness the
rhythms and rhymes and melodious phrases which are
much loved by the true brotherhood, so that not only by
others but also by themselves they are believed to be
genuine bards. But when one who is initiate hears or reads
their productions, he discerns that they are as fair bodies
without souls ; for the music and the splendour of infinity
are not within them, and they are utterly unrelated to
eternity.
IMany, however, who are not learned and who are quite
without profitable talents, shepherd youths and farm
maidens, men in great cities who will never get on in the
world, rude mountaineers familiar with sounding storms,
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 207
sailors with the rhythm of the ocean-tides in their blood,
can hear this undertone of the cosmic harmony, and see
this light transfiguring the world, and enter with these true
Poets into the mysterious trance ; and are thus, even though
they know it not, real members of this high confraternity.
For the best interpretation of its mysteries in our language,
let me refer the reader to Shelley's Defe?ice of Poetry.
Lastly (for this brief essay), there is the Open Secret
Society of the Mystics. These are the very flower and
crown of the four already touched upon. Saints of Saints,
Heroes of Heroes, Philosophers of Philosophers, Poets of
Poets ; the identity of the mascuHne ideal of Hero and
Philosopher and the feminine ideal of Poet and Saint.
Their mysteries have been pubHshed to all the world in
the choicest visions and actions, thoughts and strophes,
of the choicest members of these other fraternities; yet
not only do they remain utterly obscure and illegible to
the common world of men, they are dark to all of even
those fraternities who have not been initiated to the
supreme degree.
This Society has been less parodied than any of the others;
firstly, because (as I have heard) its mysteries are so awful
that whoever long strives to parody them becomes insane ;
secondly, because its most common and public passwords
and signs are incredibly difficult for the vulgar to distin-
guish. Its members may be unfolding the profoundest
secrets in talking of dogs and cats, pans and kettles ; they
may be transmitting the most pregnant signals in doing the
most ordinary daily work. As George Herbert has written
{The Elixir) : —
A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye ;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.
208 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine :
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.
But it is probable that we must go to the East for the
purest fountain and the most copious river of the element
which bathes the souls of this brotherhood. In Sir William
Jones's Disse7'tation on the Mystical Poetry of the Persians and
Hindus,"^ he translates an ode by a sufi of Bokhara, who
assumed the poetical name of Ismat, which is so transcen-
dent an expression of the spirit of this fraternity, that I
must cite it in its completeness.
"Yesterday, half-inebriated, I passed by the quarter
* Asiatic Rcseafchcs, vol. iii. In the same dissertation, Sir William
Jones gives examples of the occult meanings which many zealous admirers
insist upon attributing to the most common words in these mystical poems.
Thus zvifie means devotion ; idolaters, if/Jidels, and libertines are men of the
purest religion ; a tavern is a retired oratory ; kisses and embraces are the
raptures of piety, &c. &c. I do not doubt that orthodox Mussulmans are
satisfied with such interpretations ; nor would I argue that such interpreta-
tions are not in any sense right, for occult or spiritual meanings certainly
abound in these poems. But had the poets meant the same kind of religion,
devotion, &c., as the orthodox, they would have used the orthodox terms.
No serious writer, and especially no poet, casts away venerable words rich
in solemn and tender associations, until. he finds that they are altogether
inadequate to convey his thought. Had the religion of Ismat been nothing
more or higher than the best religion of those around him, would he have
spoken with such contempt of the glass of piety, the square temple, the
mosque, the cloak of a dervise ? would he have celebrated with enthusiasm
wine and paganism, the two things most abhorred by the devout among his
people ? The fact is, that mysticism, being intimate with the soul of the
world in its own right, knows that it is beyond the law, proves its preroga-
tive by dignifying the most despised objects (as a Sultan who makes a slave
his Vizier), and cannot help now and then riotously shocking the formalists.
For mysticism is the identity of the purest faith and the purest scepticism ;
the extremes not only meet, they intermingle and grow veritably one.
There are in Christianity germs of this spirit which few Christians have
ever dared to cultivate, and which few of those who have dared have been
fit to cultivate : see the Epistle to the Romans, passim. The Anabaptists,
Antinomians, kc. Sec, made a miserable mess of it.
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 209
where the vintners dwell, to seek the daughter of an infidel
who sells wine.
"At the end of the street there advanced before me a
damsel, with a fairy's cheeks, who, in the manner of a
pagan, wore her tresses dishevelled over her shoulders like
the sacerdotal thread. I said : ' O thou, to the arch of
whose eyebrow the new moon is a slave, what quarter is
this, and where is thy mansion ? '
" She answered : ' Cast thy rosary on the ground ; bind
on thy shoulder the thread of paganism ; throw stones at
the glass of piety ; and quaff wine from a full goblet :
" ' After that come before me, that I may whisper a word
in thine ear ; thou wilt accomplish thy journey, if thou
listen to my discourse.'
" Abandoning my heart, and rapt in ecstasy, I ran after
her, till I came to a place, in which religion and reason
forsook me.
" At a distance I beheld a company, all insane and ine-
briated, who came boiling and roaring with ardour from
the wine of love.
" Without cymbals, or lutes, or viols, yet all full of mirth
and melody ; without wine, or goblet, or flask, yet all
incessantly drinking.
" When the cord of restraint sHpped from my hand,
I desired to ask her one question, but she said : ' Silence !
" ' This is no square temple, to the gate of which thou
canst arrive precipitately ; this is no mosque to which thou
canst come with tumult, but without knowledge. This is
the banquet-house of infidels, and within it all are intoxi-
cated ; all from the dawn of eternity to the day of resurrec-
tion, lost in astonishment.
" ' Depart then from the cloister, and take the way to
the tavern ; cast off the cloak of a dervise and wear the robe
of a libertine.'
O
2 TO OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
" I obeyed ; and, if thou dcsirest the same strain and
colour with Ismat, imitate him, and sell this world and the
next for one drop of pure wine."
Similar passages, I believe, abound in Hafiz : —
" Stain with wine thy prayer-carpet if the old man of the
tavern commands thee : for the traveller is not ignorant of
tlie ways and customs of the inn."
" Build np thy heart with wine ; for this ruined world
Is resolved when we are dead to make only bricks of our clay."
And Sir William Jones cites a fine sentence from the
Bustan ; wherein, characteristically, thorough sameness of
the spirit is couched in contradiction of the letter : '' Through
remembrance of God they shun all mankind ; they are so
enamoured of the cup-bearer, that they spill the wine from
the cup."
In our own poetry sublime expression of some of their
subtlest mysteries may be read by who can read in the
Epipsycliidioii of Shelley.
But there are those informed by this spirit who cannot
read its letter. For it is to be remarked that every talent
and ability, and all scientific and other " useful " knowledge,
are apt to be hindrances and veils to the purest manifesta-
tions of this mystery in humanity. " He has hidden these
things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto
babes." — " Suffer little children to come unto me, for of
such is the kingdom of heaven." — "To the Jews a
stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." A man
of great talents and acquirements may have also this
celestial genius ; but such a one, be sure, employs his talents
and acquirements simply as hewers of wood and drawers of
water in the menial household service thereof. Every one
who elevates them to be his ambassadors and ministers in
OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES. 211
the high and solemn businesses of life does so in destitution
of this genius plenipotential.
The loftiest member of this Open Secret Society familiar
to us, familiar to us if we can read the story of his actions
and his words aright, was a poor carpenter's son who seems
to have had no other learning than such knowledge of the
sacred books of his people as any frequenter of the syna-
gogues of his people might easily have acquired, who we
are told could read (Luke iv. 16, 20), but who perhaps
could not write. When the theological scaffolding which
has been reared around the image of this man shall have
altogether fallen away, and the lineaments can be seen in
broad daylight, we shall discover that he reigns over us by
the power and prerogative of his divine mysticism.
Such are a few of the loftiest Open Secret Societies, these
organisations of Nature so perfect and enduring, so superior
to the most subtle organisations elaborated by man. And
in all of them, I think, we find that the poor and the mean
and the ignorant and the simple have their part no less —
nay, have their part even more — than the rich and the
great and the learned and the clever. Let us praise the
impartiality of our Mother Nature, the most venerable, the
ever young, the fountain of true democracy, the generous
annunciator of true liberty and equality and fraternity ; who
bestoweth on all her children alike all things most necessary
to true health and wealth, the sunshine, the air, the water,
the fruits of the earth ; and opens to rich and poor alike
the golden doors of enfranchisement and initiation into the
mysteries of heroism, purity, wisdom, beauty, and infinite
love.
Were I required to draw a practical moral, I should say
that all proselytism is useless and absurd. Every human
being belongs naturally, organically, unalterably, to a
certain species or society ; and by no amount of repeating
212 OPEN SECRET SOCIETIES.
strange formulas, ejaculations, or syllogisms, can he really
apostatise from himself so as to become a genuine member
of a society to which these are not strange but natural. A
penny whistle doesn't become a cathedral organ by being
made to whistle the Old Hundredth ; a church mouse doesn't
grow a lion by straying into a Secular Hall.
SAYINGS OF SIGVAT.
These sayings I heard from the mouth of Sigvat Bragason,
who thought after this manner, and thus was he wont to
express himself when he took the trouble to speak.
He once said : If the religious had strong faith, I might
respect them for their religion ; if the infidels had strong
disbeUef, I might respect them for their infidelity. But
the religious do not believe in God the Father, for they
never keep his commandments ; they do not believe in the
Holy Ghost, for they fear and detest all living inspiration,
and worship the lifeless letters of a book ; they do not
believe in Christ the Lord, else would they love one
another; they do not believe in Heaven and eternal life,
for they cling desperately to this earth and life ; they do
not believe in Hell, for if they really did they would all go
mad. On the other hand, infidels superabound with belief:
they believe that empiricism can discover all the world's
veiled mysteries, that logic can resolve all the world's pro-
blems ; they beHeve that human nature can be improved
out of man, and that every one can lift himself some fine
day higher than heaven, sitting in his own basket ; they
believe that many an existence depends absolutely upon
2 14 SAYIXGS OF SIGVAT.
man's belief in its existence ; and they all, above all, believe
in themselves — which is the very anti-climax of credulity.
He also said : I do not see that mankind in general can
ever manage to exist without a religion of some kind ; and
I do not see that it matters much what kind of religion
they have. For dogmas are but empty bottles and barrels
into which each believer pours as much spirit as he has, and
of such kind and quality as he has ; so that you shall find
two bottles of exactly the same pattern, the one full of
vitriol-gin and the other full of purest nectar. Very few
men have enough spirit to overfill or even to half-fill the
holy vessels ; and these very few men usually keep on
pouring contentedly, though their bottles have been long
overflowing.
He also said : The discipline and rites of a religion are
far more important and influential than the dogmas.
It was he who asked : Can you convert another man to
your own height, figure, complexion, constitution, tempera-
ment ?— if you can, you may also convert him really and
truly to your own faith. No one sentence ever means
exactly the same from any two mouths or in any two pairs
of ears ; nor even from any one mouth or in any one pair
of ears at different times. And when it was inquired of
him : Wherefore, since you are persuaded of the vanity of
all attempts at proselytising, do you now and then write
and talk as if to teach and persuade ? he answered : First
and foremost, because " it is my nature to." But also,
though no word of mine will ever convert any one from
being himself into being another Me, my word may bring
cheer and comfort and self-knowledge to others who are
more or less like myself, and who may have thought them-
selves peculiar and outcast ; it may be to them a friendly
voice revealing that they have a brother in the world, and
may thus hearten them to put trust in themselves and keep
SAYINGS OF SIGVAT. 215
true to themselves, nor succumb to the amiable cowardice
of seeking to pretend to believe otherwise than they really
do beheve, for the sake of fellowship and communion. For
the real brothers on this earth are seldom gathered around
one family hearth, but are in general widely scattered
throughout the kingdoms and nations, and yet more widely
scattered throughout the centuries.
He went on : That man was but too correct who exclaimed,
" In this wide world of ours there is no creature who has
either the will or the powxr to help another." And it being
objected to him : Why then do you, having no faith in the
improvability of man by man, sometimes work hard as if
to help and improve your fellows ? he answered equally :
First and foremost, because " it is my nature to." And
he added : One works, one cannot but work, as his being
ordains, exercising the faculties and attempting to gratify
the desires thereof, whether he thinks that such exercise
will produce what other people call good or ill, that such
gratification implies what other people call happiness or
misery. If one is a musket, he will shoot, and is right to
shoot ; if one is a dirk, he will stab, and is right to stab.
When the antelope complained against the tiger's ferocity,
the tiger answered : Why have I claws but to seize and
rend ? why have I teeth but to bite ? why have I hunger
but to eat? why do you suit me and why do I meet you
but that I should eat you ? You are right to complain, my
poor swift-footed dinner, for the case is very hard for you ;
I am equally right to devour, else the case would be very
hard for me. — So much for Bentham and Alill, for the
greatest happiness theory, for universal philanthropy and
sublime utilitarianism, added Sigvat cheerfully.
I remember that it was once asked of him: If you saw
one drowning whom you knew to be a rogue, a fool, a pest,
would you risk your own life in the attempt to save him ?
2i6 SAYINGS OF SIGVAT.
And he answered : If not, the refraining would be througli
lack of nerve or courage, never through any thought that
my life was more valuable than his. My life could be by
no means valuable if it would not attempt this very thing,
if it had not the courage to risk itself whenever destiny
offered a fair stake against it. The issues of all action are
quite beyond human calculation; the instincts prompting
to action each one can judge for himself. The doctor who
has prolonged the lives of many patients would be very
hard bestead to prove that it would not have been quite as
well, or even better, for the world in general and the patients
themselves had their lives not been prolonged. No worker
of what are called good works can be sure that in the long
run he does more good than harm. He fulfils his own
nature, as it is right for him he should.
He also said : The sage hath it somewhat thus, " The
people are many millions, and the most of them are fools."
But were the most foolish as wise as the most wise are now,
and were the wisest proportionately wiser, the saying would
be none the less stinging. Some men stand but five feet,
others stand six and even seven feet, and the difference is
large in ratio to the average height of the race : but what
is the height of seven feet to the diameter of the earth, to
the distance of the moon, of the sun, of the nearest star?
Supposing we stood from fifty to seventy feet, would any of
us be absolutely great ? Therefore, he added, let my son
be a commonplace wight, and not a genius or a sage ; for
the little wisdom he will thus have less is so incalculably
small in comparison with any really great standard, that
the lack thereof will be compensated a thousandfold by the
social comfort of always living among creatures whose
thoughts and feelings are very similar to his own.
He once remarked : Certain so-called Spiritualists and
Materialists, usually accounted most opposite in their
SAYINGS OF SIGVAT: 217
opinions, appear to me like persons working out the same
algebraic puzzle in the same manner, but using different
symbols for the unknown quantity. The process of the one
bristles with X's (say spirit), that of the other bristles with
Y's (say matter) ; yet their solutions in the end are identical.
It was a saying of his : Absolute life is indefinitely supe-
rior to the highest art ; yet life as we see it in the men living
actively around us is so poor and mean, that he who takes
refuge in art must be impuissant indeed if he cannot amply
vindicate his choice.
Once when it was told him that a certain sage had
written to the effect that " perchance man, when he hath
tamed all the other inferior animals, may begin to tame
and civilise woman," Sigvat said : This I am happy to
believe quite impossible. Women are tamest where the
men are most savage, and show wilder and wilder as the
men grow less rude : the squaw is the slave of Indian and
Kaffir ; John Bull, rich, respectable and educated, is the very
humble and obedient servant of his wife. As for the civili-
sation of women, I ardently love and admire the sex, but
I am bound to say that I never yet knew a woman with
even the most elementary idea of truth and justice. They
are all born deceivers ; the only difference being that the
good ones are always deceiving us for what they think our
good, while the bad ones are always deceiving us for what
they think their own good. The best woman would over-
throw the equiUbrium of the universe for the sake of her
lover, her child, or her husband. And as for the taming of
civilisation in general, I want to know how long we could
exist on the earth were we all thoroughly tame and good.
Very well-meaning and stupid people nowo'days are doing
their best (a poor little ludicrous best it is) to get us civi-
lised off the face of the earth ; they don't see that we need
some very tough and rough savagery to keep a firm hold
2i8 SAYINGS OF SI G VAT.
upon it. Nature is savage enough, and is likely to con-
tinue so; I don't think that she has made her arrangements
specially for our placid and inane comfort, nor do I find
that the saints and the goody philosophers are her darlings.
We must have teeth, and strong and sharp ones, to crack
the hard nuts she throws to us. To think that there are
grown men always talking treacle and pap ! men who have
seen and heard a thunderstorm, and are not ignorant of
the existence of shark and crocodile and tiger !
Very often to the optimist philosophers or sophs who
pestered him, he w-ould give no other answer than that sen-
tence of the great sage which he hugely relished : "Alan is
not what one calls a happy animal ; his appetite for sweet
victual is so enormous."
To some of the sect of the Christians he once remarked :
In the old Jewish book of your idolatry I find one very
good text, though read as I read it in English, it means
not quite the same it meant in the original. Perchance
because it is so excellent, I do not remember to have heard
or seen a sermon upon it. " PVoe unto them that draw
iniquity with cords of vanity^ and sin as it were with a cart-
rope'^ The iniquity which a man draws and tugs painfully
to him, that is the abomination; not the iniquity which
itself draws him. The so-called sin which glows with hot
fire of passion, one does not detest even when it is such sin
as one's self is not inclined to. But they who violate their
own nature, who force themselves to sin for which they have
no liking but which happens to be fashionable, who sacrifice
themselves to show and tickling vanity, these are the poor
dupes and fools one finds it hard to keep temper w^ith. Yet
what an immense portion of the world's iniquity is drawn
with cords of vanity ! what a great share of the w'orld's sin is
dragged onerously as it were with a cart-rope ! How many
men take more trouble against their own inclinations to be
SAYINGS OF SIGVAT. 219
reputed fashionable sinners, than the stiffest of respectable
people take to be reputed religious ! Pagan as I am, said
Sigvat, I think I could preach you a rousing sermon on
this text of the prophet.
Being once questioned with a certain whining solemnity
as to his immortal soul, he laughed long in uncontrollable
laughter : — A very sublime being truly is this Sigvat, to
expect and claim immortality ! But I fear that the uni-
verse can do without me, as 7ne, though my being is part
of its being. When I die. Nature seizes on my effects,
administers my estate, duly distributing the property. I
who am dead as this Sigvat still continue my interest in
the general life by every particle of my being thus distri-
buted, and by the enduring existence of all that I have
ever rayed forth — from attraction of gravity, attraction
and repulsion electrical, to thought and emotion of hu-
manity. Nothing is lost, though the walls of the jEgo have
given w^ay and let in the floods of the universe. It is quite
right to call death dissolution ; it may be also solution, re-
solution, evolution. Immortality ! why the most of us don't
know what to do with this one little personal life, and might
well w^onder how we came to be promoted to the dignity
thereof : the claim to immortality is the claim to be trusted
with millions of pounds because one has shown himself
unfit to be trusted with sixpence. Leave me, O comical
little men, with your talk about eternity ; go and try to live
a single happy and rational day !
( 220 )
A WORD FOR XANTIPPE.
iS66.
" To make a happy fireside clime
For weans and wife,
Is the true pathos and subhme
Of human hfe." — Burns.
For a couple of thousand years or so poor Xantippe has
been infamous among men as the most acrid example
of a shrewish wife. Is this, her evil reputation, just? or is
it in great measure a bubble blown by the malice of learned
bookworms? I know little or nothing of any of these
gentry or their works, but one's mere instinct flashes con-
siderable light upon the nature of the species. Ironical
Destiny will generally have it that Dryasdust be married ;
when married, he is of course henpecked, for women (like
Henry VIII.) love a man, and therefore despise a book-
worm. Bookworm, feeling himself too weak for open and
honourable warfare, betakes himself to a characteristic
revenge, safe, cowardly, professional, honey-sweet ; in
the most scurrilous Latin he can command (and Latin
is said to be rather rich in scurrility) he libels women and
marriage, and retails from the inexhaustible stores of his
anecdotage how Xantippe emptied the vessels of her wTath
upon the sacred head of Socrates. Xantippe is the lay-
A WORD FOR XANTIPPE. 221
figure which he kicks and punches in lieu of Mrs. Dryasdust,
of whom he is very properly afraid ; he conceits himself,
Dryasdust, to be a fair counterpart of Socrates, the sublime
imperturbable philosopher ; and all the Dryasdust mummies
throughout Europe, whose wives do not understand Latin,
can mumble and chuckle over the tidbit of recondite
ribaldry. The withered old wretches ! Their blood gets
reddish and lukewarm, their wrinkles interwrinkle and their
dead eyes twinkle, when they come across a Phryne, a
Lais, a Rhodopis, a Helen, or any other lady of 7wf doubtful
character; but they can find no words vile enough for a
decent and respectable married woman, who did her best
to bring up a lawful family honestly, who stood up for her
own and the children's rights, and who used her woman's
weapon with the most feminine sharpness and determination.
I do not want to say a word against Socrates. I am ready
to cry with as much devotion as anybody, Saiide Socrates^
ora pro nobis I — but surely he will be all the more likely to
pray for us if we venture to say a good w^ord for his much-
injured wife.
In his Apology (as taken down by Plato, the well-known
reporter for the Times, and Ages) Socrates himself says,
section 9 — " Still therefore I go about and search and
inquire into these things, in obedience to the god, both
among citizens and strangers, if I think any one of them
is wise ; and when he appears to me not to be so, I take
the part of the god, and show that he is not wise. And in
consequence of this occupation I have no leisure to attend
in any considerable degree to the affairs of the State or my
ow^n ; but I am in the greatest poverty through my devotion
to the service of the god."
Again, section 18 — "But that I am a person who has
been given by the Deity to this city, you may discern from
hence ; for it is not like the ordinary conduct of men that
222 A WORD FOR XANTIPPE.
I should liave neglected all my own affairs and suffered my
private interest to be neglected for so many years, and that
I should constantly attend to your concerns, addressing
myself to each of you separately, like a father or elder
brother, persuading you to the pursuit of virtue. And if I
had derived any profit from this course, and had received
pay for my exhortations, there would have been some reason
for my conduct ; but now you see yourselves that my accusers,
who have so shamelessly calumniated me in everything
else, have not had the impudence to charge me with this,
and to bring witnesses to prove that I ever either exacted
or demanded any reward. And I think that I produce
a sufficient proof that I speak the truth — namely, my
poverty."
In the first section he states that he is more than seventy
years old ; and in section 23 that he has three sons, one
grown up, and two boys : so Xantippe must have been con-
siderably younger than himself.*
At the conclusion of T/ie Banquet we read : '' Aristo-
phanes, Agathon, and Socrates had alone stood it out, and
were still drinking out of a great goblet which they passed
round and round. . . . Aristophanes first awoke, and
then, it being broad daylight, Agathon. Socrates having
put them to sleep, went away, Aristodemus following him,
and coming to the Lyceum he washed himself as he would
have done anywhere else, and after having spent the day
there in his accustomed manner, went home in the evening."
One scarcely need add that his accustomed manner of
spending the day was lounging about discussing anything
and everything with anybody and everybody whom he
could seduce into discussion.
In the Phcedo^ section 9, the narrator, whose name has
* He had two sons by his first wife, Myrtone ; the third, of course one
of the boys, was by Xantippe.
A WORD FOR XANTIPPE. 223
become the title of the piece, says : " When we entered, we
found Socrates just freed from his bonds, and Xantippe,
you know her, holding his little boy and sitting by him. As
soon as Xantippe saw us, she wept aloud, and said such
things as women usually do on such occasions — as, ' Socrates,
your friends will now converse with you for the last time,
and you with them.' But Socrates, looking towards Crito,
said, ' Crito, let some one take her home.' Upon which some
of Crito's attendants led her away, wailing and beating herself.
But Socrates, sitting up in bed, drew up his leg, and rubbed
it with his hand, and as he rubbed it, said : ' What an un-
accountable thing, my friends, that seems to be which men
call pleasure; eU., etc.^ etc.''^^ A wonderfully cold-blooded
touch, this, in the divine Phcedo.
Socrates, engaged in sublime discourse about the im-
mortality of the human soul, cannot concern himself about
mundane wife and children, but after he has drunk the
poison, we read in the last section that the friends about
him began weeping and lamenting, and he said : " What
are you doing, my admirable friends ? I indeed, for this
reason chiefly, sent away the women, that they might not
commit any folly of this kind." His last words were,
"Crito, we owe a cock to ^sculapius ; pay it, therefore,
and do not neglect it."
Now, how stood the case as between Socrates and
Xantippe, husband and wife ? This is the sole point for us
here, and the pubUc relations of Socrates, the sage and
martyr, to the world in general are quite beside the ques-
tion. An unfortunate woman (would that she had left her
own statement of the case !) who appears to have been no
less warm-hearted than hot-tempered, has the foolish good-
ness to marry a man who is not only much older than her-
self and absurdly ugly, but who is also a public character
and a philosopher. As he was well up in years when he
224 ^ WORD FOR XANTIPPE.
married her, and had been preach nig in season and out of
season ever since he could attract a Hstener, on the fine text,
Know Thyself, he ought then to have known himself quite
well enough to know that he had no right to go and get
married again, to know that his undomestic habits were past
cure. He had a decent trade in the stone-cutting line ; and
though his statuary work was not much more like that of
Phidias than his own features and form were like those of
Lysis or Alcibiades, it appears that with industry he might
have chiselled out a comfortable livelihood if he could not
have carved out a fortune. But, by his own confession, he
scarcely ever worked at his trade. He was an incorrigible
idler, always lounging about Athens, arguing, questioning,
exhorting ; chaffing and ruffling the big-wigs in the midst
of groups of young swells, for whom the fun was almost as
good as that of quail-fighting.
He boasted that he never took payment for his lessons.
But if the Sophists, for teaching what he considered to be
useless or noxious, took the highest prices they could get,
why should not he, who neglected his trade to teach what
he considered the most important truths, have taken at
least enough payment to keep his home comfortable ? He
himself was constitutionally indifferent to all the common
circumstances of life ; did not care what he ate or what he
drank, was almost insensible to heat and cold, without an
effort could remain teetotaller for months, and then without
an effort drink the most seasoned toper blind drunk, and
walk off to spend a sober day as if nothing had happened ;
but were his wife and children of the same constitution ?
Was it fair, was it kind, to make them endure the same
hardship as himself, although they felt it keenly and he
scarcely felt it at all ? Nor, with all his indifference to the
good things of this life, does he seem to have fared so badly
on the whole. Some of the best houses in Athens were
A WORD FOR XANTIPPE. 225
open to him when he chose to share in their festivities.;
young fellows of fortune were delighted to have the company
of the amusing old vagabond at their wicked little suppers.
These fellows were rich enough and liberal enough to coin
their gratitude and admiration into cash that would have
gladdened the heart of Xantippe and filled the bellies of
those two boys.
Let any respectable English matron try to conceive the
case of Mrs. Socrates, when Mr. Socrates came home one
evening after an absence of two days and a night. Be sure
that he had done no work and brought home no money for
a long time, be sure that she had not a decent gown to her
back, be sure that if the children had dined scantily on
bread and olives, the dinner had been procured with the
greatest difficulty. Remember that she was never invited
to the fine parties he frequented, and that every day of her
life she must have heard her gossips cry shame on this dis-
reputable husband of hers, and hint with awe and horror at
the queer tales told about some of the women and young
men with whom he was most intimate. Where has my
lord been these two days ? Roasting Gorgias, " selling "
Protagoras, cutting up Euthyphron into mincemeat. And
the night ? Having the jolliest supper at Agathon's, with
the most terrible wits and the superbest swells in Athens.
x\nd with music, and girls lasciviously dancing ? No ; they
sent away the female flute-player, and had a quiet evening
delivering orations in honour of Love ; until Alcibiades
came in nobly intoxicated, and they all drank hard as long
as they could, Socrates drinking hard until broad daylight.
Delivering orations in honour of Love, with his lawful wife
at home in her lonely bed, hungry and wretched, and
horribly anxious ! One admits the charm of the symposium ;
never since has there been such talk from such company
save at the Old Mermaid ; our finest swells are but boors
P
226 A WORD FOR XANTIPPE.
and blockheads to these wonderful Athenian gentlemen ;
what, however, hindered Socrates from going home to wash
in the morning ?
Let the respectable English matron judge whether
Xantippe had or had not the right to scold and rage, and
even to pour out vessels of wrath. It is very well for us,
enchanted with the fruits of his interminable talking, to
admire him ; it is better for us, spirit-stirred by the story
of his martyrdom, to venerate and love him ; but " follow
him home " — what woman would be in the place of his
wife ?
Should the reader, however, assert that in this respect, as
in so many others, Socrates approached closely to the ideal
character of a Christian man, I think it would be rash to
dispute the assertion. For one cannot but remember the
texts : — " Then one said unto him. Behold thy mother and
thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is
my mother ? and who are my brethren ? And he stretched
forth his hand toward his disciples, and said. Behold my
mother and my brethren ! " And again, " If any man come
to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife and
children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life
also, he cannot be my disciple." And again, "Verily I
say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or
parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom
of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this
present time, and in the world to come life everlasting."
We reverence Socrates and we adore Jesus. In our age
and country, however, Xantippe would be obliged to go to
the workhouse, and the parish authorities would prosecute
her husband for not supporting her and his family ; as for
Jesus, he would be brought before the magistrates as a
vagrant, and assuredly on examination be forwarded to a
A WORD FOR XANTIPPE. 227
lunatic asylum. Those heathen Greeks put Socrates to
death soon after he was seventy : those unbelieving Jews,
sharper than the Greeks, got Jesus crucified when he was
only thirty-three : we Christian English are too enlightened
and tolerant to make such men glorious martyrs ; a parish
prosecution and a doctor's certificate would extinguish
them much more effectually; and no heroic fortitude, no
sublime enthusiasm, could elevate the victims and cover the
prosecutors with infamy.
We have perhaps one living writer with genius and
learning and wisdom and fairness enough to picture truly
the conjugal life of Saint Socrates and shrew Xantippe :
need I say that this writer is George Eliot ? One would
give something for the picture.
( 228 )
SYMPATHY.
1865.
I. WITH OTHERS.
In the uncompleted essay entitled A Defence of Poetry,
which, with the enthusiasm and ornate beauty of an ode,
preserves throughout the logical precision and directness
of an elegant mathematical demonstration, Shelley writes :
" A man to he greatly good must imagine i?itensely and cotJi-
prehensively ; he must put himself in the place of another and
of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his species must
become his own'' I do not intend to discuss here the ques-
tion in chief with which Shelley is concerned in the passage
from which the above sentence is cited — namely, whether
imagination is or is not " the great instrument of moral
good ; " my business is with the obvious corollary, that
intense and comprehensive sympathy must be as rare as
intense and comprehensive imagination, if the latter is
indeed of the essence of the former. This corollary, so
obvious to the first glance as to seem a truism, is soon found
to be a strangely unpleasant bit of wisdom to carry about
with one. Who likes to believe that it is altogether vain to
look for the blessing of deep sympathy in any of his friends
or acquaintances, save such as are endowed with intense
and comprehensive imagination }
SYMPATHY. 229
We all know how Thackeray delighted to dally with this
theme : but he never attempted seriously and exhaustively
to grapple with it — nor, indeed, with any other problem in
whose intricacies our actual social system is heavily in-
volved. None more sharply than he could rally the host
and the guests after dinner, over the wine ; yet the thought
seems never to have entered his head (at least in the latter
and more famous portion of his career) that he was not
at all compelled to be present, a humbug in a gathering of
humbugs, that he was quite free to abstain from the dinner
and the wine, and that he could have taken up a more
honourable and commanding position of attack oi/^side the
mansion. In his after-dinner fashion, however, he was
always ready to remind a husband that his faithful spouse,
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, could sleep by his
side in the most comfortable unconsciousness of the tooth-
ache racking him through the interminable hours of the
night ; and to hint to the youthful lover that the angel of
his adoration, while appearing to listen with delight so bash-
ful and sweet to all his fervid nonsense, was presumably
wondering whether that trinket was chosen by himself,
hoping that he would go before the dressmaker arrived,
doubting whether she looked fresh after so much dissipation,
perchance even comparing him, not at all to his advantage,
with Captain A , that dear delightful handsome younger
son. And when we had enjoyed the half-pleasant, half-
bitter banter, the cheering reflection was left : If one cannot
hope for genuine sympathy even in the wife of his bosom
or the maid of his heart, how fatuous to expect it in mere
friends and acquaintances. Vanity of vanities ! all is
vanity !
Is genuine sympathy really so rare ? Let us try to test it
in the richest ores. If it is to be found anywhere in large
quantities, it surely should be in works of beneficence.
230 SYMPATHY.
in what we call charities as if they were full of the virtue.
Yet immediately we analyse any charitable action of our
own, however pure it may have been from common alliage
of ostentation and subtle self-interest, we find that it was
much less sympathetic than it at first appeared. It was
not the result of a fee/ing with its object ; but was rather
the result of a process strictly analogous to the process
used in solving an algebraic equation, almost as purely
intellectual and non-cordial; dealing not with the very
things in question, but with familiar abstract symbols that,
until the solution is obtained, are scarcely in our thought
connected, much less are identified, with those things
themselves. Thus we see a blind beggar, and pity him,
and give him alms. Does our pity deserve to be called
sympathy? Can we, without the grossest exaggeration,
pretend that \NQfeel with him the miseries of his blindness?
Assuredly not ; but we have heard and read much of these
miseries, and, therefore, blindness represents to us (almost
as abstractedly as x and y represent the horses and fniles or
whatever else may be the subject-matter of an algebraic
problem) inability for common work, privation of common
pleasures and comforts ; and, so, just claims on our pity
and help. A boy, with a nature quite as good as our own,
or even much better than our own, but who has not had
our experience, who cannot translate and expand the
symbol blijidness into all the dolorous facts of life which
it represents, would not improbably show his sympathy
by an attempt to trip or trick the blind man, and if the
attempt succeeded, would certainly approve it as a jolly
lark.
If our feeling of the blind beggar's misery approached in
intensity his own, it is plain that, instead of giving him
pence and passing on, we should do our utmost to ensure
him subsistence for life and lavish on him daily the ten-
SYMPATHY. 231
derest cares. So far is sympathy from abounding in the
works called "charitable," that the people who are most
energetic in such works are usually very unsympathetic.
Methodical, not imaginative, not excitable, often narrow-
minded and dull, they appear to have devoted themselves to
the relief of the suffering of others, not because feeling it
acutely, but because the rigorous algebraic process has
forced them to adopt charitable endeavours as the sole true
solution of the problem of Hfe. Like surgeons, they operate
the better for being somewhat callous. They act from the
head more than from the heart, on principle, not on senti-
ment ; and shame the common sentimentalists. As for the
" charity " of those who in giving to the poor lend to the
Lord, and carefully reckon for compound interest in good
repute here and celestial happiness hereafter, we need not
analyse for sympathy in t/iaf.
But even if general beneficence may contain, and does,
in fact, usually contain, very little sympathy, it surely must
be sympathy of a high standard which constitutes the surpass-
ing value of true friendship? Yet, suppose that a heavy
calamity falls upon one of our dearest friends, one of the two
or three whom we think we love and trust with our whole
heart and mind (the case of one supreme perfect friend, a
case of the highest interest in many respects, I pass over
here because it is so rare ; one might more easily discover
two other such writers as Montaigne and Etienne de la
Boetie than two other such friends). The intelligence of
this calamity shocks us ; the thought of it saddens us per-
sistently for a short time, intermittently for several weeks
and even months ; if we can do anything to lighten the
burden or to replace the loss, we will not only do it, but we
will do it in despite of obstacles that perhaps would alto-
gether dishearten us from exertion if the case of our friend
were our own. Yet our passion of suffering and sorrow is
232 SYMPATHY.
humiliatingly mild and brief compared with that which
affects our friend. Our purest and most precious friendship
is found to contain so httle of the fine gold of sympathy,
that we inwardly blush for the poverty of our own nature ;
and our words of overstrained tenderness and often of con-
scious unwisdom, our exertions desperately resolute and
often in conscious violation of justice, owe their excess to a
fierce desire (which is not less haughty wuth self-esteem
than generous with kindness) to make up for the lack of
feeling. By word and deed we may announce the true
solution of the problem, but we have won this solution by
the aid of the algebraic process, using familiar abstract
symbols intellectually ; word and. deed have not been the
immediate outcome of the heart filled with a passion in
itself sufficient to produce them.
It may be worth noting here that a woman consoles so
well a sorrow with w^hose circumstances she is personally
acquainted, because of her w^ealth of cordial sympathy ; and
that she can, at the same time, remain so indifferent to the
greatest remote calamities, calamities afflicting nations,
because she is not expert in this algebra which the heart
borrows from the head, and by which a man will arrive at
correct results more or less generally applicable to events,
without being much concerned wath the facts themselves
of which the events are the aggregates. Women have the
intense, and not the comprehensive imagination. Both
together would, of course, be more powerful than either
alone ; but when they are separated, as usually in life we
find them, the former is more vigorously operative than the
latter. If every one sympathised deeply with the few people
always immediately around him, the w^orld would be full of
intense and experienced and ever-accessible sympathy; if
every one sympathised wath all humanity in general, the
world might be full of ignorant and lukewarm sympathy
SYMPA THY. 233
never within reach when most wanted : thus Jesus enjoins.
Love fAy neighbour as thyself.
Returning to the mainroad from this byeway, we remark
that if we ourselves have been recently stricken by a
calamity very like that which makes desolate our friend,
what we term our symj^athy with him will be much more
intense and enduring. That is to say, we show him all the
fine gold which even absolute friendship could claim, and
tell him that it is his \ and then quietly use three-fourths
of it for our own need. And this brings us to the considera-
tion of what may be called autopathic sy?npathy, a contra-
diction in terms precisely suited to a contradiction in ideas.
Thus it is true that " sympathy " of a very low standard
(so low that the alHage rather than the precious metal has
the right to give its name to the compound), but not too
low to give a slight extra value to the common currency, is
to be found circulating everywhere in the ordinary business
and other relations of life. For such sympathy, however,
we scarcely need to go out of ourselves in order to feel with
another ; the feeling is habitual in ourselves and for our-
selves. It is such sympathy as does not demand self- for-
getting, much less self-abnegation. Thus it is easy for a
man absorbed in commerce to sympathise in an apparently
considerable degree with another who has become bank-
rupt, or who has netted thousands by a fortunate specula-
tion •* for a matron to sympathise with another whose
husband or child is ill; for a young man to sympathise
with another wounded in battle and decorated for valour ;
for a nubile maiden to sympathise with a bride. For those
* The term netted is very happy as appHed to the results of a modern
fortunate speculation ; the speculator being at once fisherman and retiarius.
Often, in fact, as many human beings as hundreds of pounds sterling have
been caught in the meshes of the operation.
As for speculation, it cannot be too often repeated that this word, which
once meant lofty philosophic contemplation, now means legalised gambling.
234 SYMPATHY.
severally fancy themselves in the positions of these, with
the vividness of a fancy which may easily and quickly be-
come fact. And cheap as is such autopathic sympathy, its
value is still further diminished by its precariousness, in
that it is always liable to be changed by fortune into
'jealousy or contempt.
What is our first reception of some sudden intelligence
rising far out of the ordinary level of life into horror or
rapture ? We grin or laugh, and ejaculate wondering in-
credulity. We do not laugh because really incredulous,
but affect disbelief in prompt apology for our laughter ;
and the laugh or grin (for this latter unpleasant word is
the more accurate) is the first silly trick of distraction
from the humiliating consciousness that we are quite bank-
rupt in the instant sympathy demanded by the story. W^e
grin with just the awkward mixture of shame and hypocrisy
with which one laughs who w^ould fain turn his serious pro-
mise into a jest, when he finds that he would rather not
fulfil it.
And here an interesting bye-question occurs : — How is it
that people who have so little sympathy to bestow upon the
tragedy of real life, can afford so much for the tragedy of
plays and novels? The sneer, that they have a comfortable
feeling all the while they read or stare that sympathy with
the imaginary woes of imaginary personages w411 not entail
corresponding generous action, does not fairly answer the
question ; for, as I have remarked above, generous action
is much more common than generous and cordial sym-
pathy ; we are nearly always ready to do more for friends
or strangers overtaken by calamity than we can bring our-
selves to feel for them. The main reason may be that, in
the drama or the romance, we have the tragedy of long
years separated from all the commonplace circumstances
that would envelop and confuse it in real life, concentrated
SYMPATHY, 235
so as to be witnessed or read in a few hours, and yet
evolved through multitudinous phases to the supreme catas-
trophe, which catastrophe is left always absolute by the
fall of the curtain or the conclusion of the book. Add also
that the reader or spectator is at leisure and passively
expectant, open to receive and avid to drink in emotion
when book in hand or at the theatre ; while in the shop or
street of actual life, he is busy with mind shut on some
purpose and often worried.
The sudden intelligence, which we have supposed our-
selves to hear, gave us the catastrophe without the previous
gradual exaltation which should lead our mood to the high
level thereof. Ordinary life-experience offers us the gradual
leading-up, but through such long and obscure and bewil-
dering paths, and with so many intermissions, that when
we have reached the summit, we are no more in a condition
to care for the prospect. Had the true intelligence been
conveyed to us in a story long enough for ordered evolution
while brief enough for intensity, we should doubtless have
been affected by it as by the most highly-wrought fiction —
were we at leisure in repose to attend to it adequately. But
in this case, the sympathy at the end is not simple and
pure ; we have been working at the intellectual algebra
during the careful development ; the pity and terror with
which we are purged is a compound drug prepared with
science and exhibited with art.
Without desiring to be cynical (although my temperament
is prone enough to cynicism), I am forced by these reflec-
tions, and others of a Hke nature which may easily be found
in their company, to the conclusion that intense and com-
prehensive sympathy is really as rare among mankind as
intense and comprehensive imagination. Like gold, it is
common enough in small pieces (not altogether unalloyed)
for the petty emergencies of life ; but if you want to draw
236 SYMPATHY.
for a large sum, you receive it, if you receive it at all, in
paper, not in the genuine metal — in representative, and not
in fact.
In thus analysing sympathy itself, I do not pretend to
estimate its worth in the world, or to estimate its worth
were it pure universally. I know that it may be urged,
and has been urged, that if every one were always truly
sympathising with every one about him, he could lead no
life of his own, could lead no coherent life at all ; and that
all men being similarly affected, the world would be incon-
ceivably madder than it is ; somewhat like that world
without vice seen by Asem the Man-hater, as Goldsmith
tells us. I know also that if we were every one as Midas,
digestible food would be scarce among men. Yet gold as
it exists in the world, has a certain considerable value, and
one may test actual coinage or jewellery, and fix the pro-
portion of pure metal therein, without considering the
question whether it is desirable that all currency were gold
unalloyed, or the wilder question whether (as most things
are inferior in value to gold) the world would not be im-
proved in value were it all golden through and through.
In speaking of the practically beneficent people, who are
so commonly slow and dull in feeling, I said that they
shame the common sentimentalists. This is true ; it is
true likewise, however, that the uncommon sentimentalists,
the men and women supremely sympathetic, are the very
flower and crown of our race ; they are the poets who are
more than great wits, the heroes who are greater than con-
querors, the mystics who are wiser than sages, the saints
who are purer than theologians, the martyrs more sublime
than any church or creed ; they are Pascal and Leighton,
Joan of Arc and Charlotte Corday, Shelley and Jesus. So
rare and priceless is genuine sympathy in and for itself,
whether effectuated in action or not ; so much purer and
■ SYMPATHY. 237
higher must be the nature which can fulfil the precept,
" Zove thy neighbour as thyself.'' than that which may obey
the commandment, " Do unto others that which ye would they
should do unto you ; " so true is it that " Her sins^ which are
via?iy, are forgiven ; for she loved much ; " that there are
Sentimentalists whom we cherish for their sentiments alone
more dearly than the great working philanthropists, whom
history orders us to love, but whom we only manage to
esteem. To a prisoner who knew the life and works of
Goldsmith, this poet was probably more dear than was ^
Howard himself, though Howard had ameliorated that
prisoner's doom. Despite her austere Calvinism and his
free Paganism, Scotland cherishes Burns as the very idol ^
of her inmost heart, because his sympathy was so broad and
deep. And we love and reverence Shelley above all other -^
famous men of his generation, because these lines m Julian
and Maddalo are true to himself above all those other
men : —
But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear
As water-drops the sandy fountain stone ;
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
For woes which others feel not, and could see
The absent in the glass of phantasy,
And near the poor and trampled sit and weep,
Following the captive to his dungeon deep ;
Me, who am as a nerve der which do creep
The else-iinfelt ofpressiojts of this earth.
II. WITH PAST SELF.
It will not, perhaps, appear to us so strange that a common
man can feel but little sympathy with others, when we have
reflected upon the fact that at any one time he can feel but
little sympathy with himself as he was at innumerable other
times ; that is, in general, with his past self For intense
238 SYMPATHY.
and enduring self-sympathy is really as rare as intense
and enduring sympathy with others. All of us, or nearly
all of us who are mature, look back upon our own childhood
not with much real sympathy, but with a certain compassion
partly contemptuous and partly tender ; the proportions of
the contempt and the tenderness varying with the various
situations we recall, but the former being seldom altogether
absent. If in the decline of life the contempt may be sur-
charged with envy, yet the sympathy with our young selves
remains as unreal. In our maturity successive years seem
to sympathise deeply with each other ; but not days, and
still less hours. And when we thoughtfully consider two
consecutive lustrums or decades, we find that the sympathy
between them is far from intense. As Cowley puts it with
such awkward ingenuity in his apology for the imaginary
desertion of an imaginary mistress :
Five years ago (says story) I loved you,
For which you call me most inconstant now ;
Pardon me, Madame, you mistake tlie man ;
For I am not the same that I was then : '
No flesh is now the same 'twas then in me.
And that my mind is changed yourself may see.
The same thoughts to retain still, and intents,
Were more inconstant far : for accidents
Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,
If from one subject they t' another move :
My members then, the father members were
From whence these take their birth that now are here ;
If, then, this body love what th' other did,
'Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.
(Pretty rhyme, rhythm and construction, for a poet who
w^as scholar and gentleman, half-a-century after Spenser
and Shakespeare !)
First let us consider the hours and the days. Suppose
that I am engaged on the same piece of work (a little essay,
SYMPATHY. 239
for instance) two evenings in succession ; it is probable
enough that during the one I feel bright and cheerful, and
during the other dull and cynical. In the one mood I have
no sympathy with myself as in the other mood. I may
write on in much the same strain both evenings, if I have
set myself a certain thesis to maintain, and noted down
beforehand the leading points and illustrations ; but if I
were not working taskwork on a fixed piece, I might com-
pose some joyous verses the one evening and a melancholy
palinode the other. And not only is the second evening
unable to sympathise with the first, it is absolutely unable
to understand the first. It may read what was then written
(supposing each to have written from its mood), and in a
sense it understands the words ; but the animating spirit,
the essence of the composition, it cannot seize, it cannot
realise. If two opposite moods could thoroughly compre-
hend each other, they might discuss the difference between
them, and a man might reasonably hope to arrive at some
stable conviction : the two, however, are mutually unin-
telligible as if they were a couple of workmen on the Tower
of Babel after the confusion of tongues ; each is despotically
absolute in its own hour, and neither will nor can then hear
what the other w^ould plead, and the other itself is then a
mute slave : w^e are governed by a succession in mysterious
permutation of unlike-minded tyrants, all alike deaf in the
hours of their supremacy, all alike dumb in the hours of
their subjection.
Take the case of religious faith. Foolish persons put
themselves to much trouble and anxiety in efforts to con-
vert others to their own belief or disbelief A superficial
uniformity may be adopted by a large number together ;
but among those who are thoughtful and really examine the
dogmas and themselves, not only is it certain that no two
men can have thoroughly the same faith, it is also certain
240 SYMPATHY.
that no two thoughtful hours of any one man's Hfe can have
this. You can get a thousand men to wear all the same
kind of dress, to have all the same number on caps and
shoulder-straps, to bear all rifles and bayonets of the same
pattern, to go through the same motions at the same time,
to rush all together into collision with a mass of foreign
men exceedingly like themselves, killing who can and
getting killed who can't help it ; but you can never make
these thousand become all of the same stature, figure,
countenance, temperament, thought, and feeling. You can
make of men a machine militant, but not a machine human
through and through ; just so you can make of men a Church
militant, but not a Church human through and through.
You may drill the minds of a people into the superficial
uniformity of a Church or sect, and practically you seem to
have succeeded in the propagation of your creed : here,
however, analogy between Army and Church terminates
fatally for the latter ; the practical end of an army is force,
and as banded force your army fulfils its end ; but for the
Church, the force of practical success has nothing to do
with religious success, is rather the ruin thereof, in that it,
the mean, usurps the throne of the end ; the essence of a
man's religion is the relation of his being to God (if he has
a God), mankind, and the universe, and the more profound
the spiritual and intellectual experience the more are these
relations discovered to vary not only in different men but in
different moods of the same man. Fifty-two Sundays in
the year a good man may recite the same creed and con-
fession, and preach from the same theory and axioms, and
yet no two of these Sundays feel and comprehend in pre-
cisely the same spirit.
We are wont to speak lightly of these variations and
antagonisms of mood, because we have found in the course
of years that no one mood sways us persistently for a
SYMPATHY. 241
long period ; each comes and goes, goes and comes, while
the hfe with its consciousness of personaHty continues.
Generally speaking, not universally, no one's life is settled
by a mood. Similarly, because it is not fatal, we make
hght of toothache, however terrible be the agony of its
paroxysms. There are nevertheless cases in which a dark
mood has dominated a whole Hfe, just as there are cases in
which toothache is neuralgia : Za Grande Chartreuse is the
temple-prison of hypochondria. But the character of any
one mood, however impressive and awful, is not here my
theme ; it is the irreconcileable and essential antagonism
between different moods, confounding all philosophy, making
each of us a bundle of antinomies miraculously coherent.
When Emerson (in his fine essay on JNIontaigne)^ says
that he is not troubled by this, that we must reckon one
mood with another and take the average, he is speaking
practically, he is recommending us to do what we ordinarily
practise in our daily and yearly life. It gives us a rough
and ready balance-sheet, accurate enough for most social
purposes ; but philosophically it is altogether beside the
investigation, its philosophical value in the summation of
life equals exactly naught. Nor even practically is it quite
sufficient for our rude appraisals of one another : the worth
of a poet, for instance, to the mass of us is not at all the
average worth of him in his mature hours ; it is, on the
contrary, the worth and the mood of him in a very few
hours of what w^e call inspiration, and we totally ignore in
our estimate nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand
of his hours with the moods that swayed them : consider,
* One may remark that this notion of Emerson's is sheer vulgar Yankee-
republican, though he is usually a cosmopolite. It amounts to this : Give
every hour a vote, white and black, and let the majority decide ! But, as I
urge in the sequel of the paragraph (and as no one knows better than does
Emerson), the vote of one fateful hour may outweigh the votes of all the
other hours in the Ufe put togetlier.
Q
!42
SYMPA THY.
also, how many hours and moods are taken count of in our
estimate of the hves of Mutius Sc^evola, Codrus, Leonidas,
Stephen the proto-martyr.
I wish to draw into clear light the facts that, in two moods
of two several hours not a day asunder, a man's relations
to the most serious problems of life, may be and often aren
essentially opposite ; that the one may burn with hope and
faith, and the other lour black with doubt and despair ; and
that there is no possibility of conciliating (philosophically)
this antagonism, since the two are mutually unintelligible.
IV As George Herbert exclaims (Giddiness, 99) : —
O what a thing is man ! how far from power,
From settled peace and rest !
He is some twenty several men at least
Each several hour.
It is only in rare moments of meditation that we can dis-
cern how black and profound are these abysses yawning
between the successive hours of our life, and how impotent
is our reason to overleap or overbridge them. In some
manner or other, mysteriously, our being continues across
them, and, contemning reason, advances alike through philo-
sophic voids and over the firm ground of common sense,
wingless treading solidly the air as the land, until, at length,
it plunges into the abyss of death, not more profound and
not more mysterious than hundreds of abysses it has
traversed triumphing, not more wonderful than that gulf of
sleep through which it has passed from every night to every
morn. From this abyss of death we cannot avert our eyes,
its darkness inscrutable we cannot ignore ; but the abysses
which precede it, and which our existence manages to
overpass, we are glad not to look steadily down into,
lest we should feel dizzy and terrified and overwhelmed ;
and thus we commonly conceive a lifetime as a continuous
SYMPA THY. 243
career over a continuous road ; while, in fact, the Vision of
Mirza is true not only physically but mentally and spiritually,
and a life-course is but a series of stepping-stones, frag-
mentary piers and broken arches, projecting from the midst
of a shoreless flood ever dark and unfathomed around our
feet. If every hour of a life sympathised perfectly with
every other, the life would be in eternity, not in time.
Now for a longer period, suppose a decade. Every one
wall admit that Smith now, being thirty, may sympathise
much more with the present Brown, with the cardinal
thoughts and ruling sentiments of Brown, than with his past-
self Smith as he was at twenty. What, then, is this strong
and tyrannical interest which Smith undoubtedly cherishes
in his own peculiar individuality, as one from childhood to
the present day, and which is so immeasurably stronger than
the interest he can take in the personality of Brown ? The
question is very subtle ; the subject-matter, whether really
simple or really compound, seems to defy analysis ; yet the
patient analyser may discover that it is not absolutely
insoluble, although he cannot master and define its ele-
ments. And first, to render the tribute due to the title, I
think that we may safely affirm that sympathy, a feeling
wath, or identical feeUng, is not by any means a main
element in this self-love and self-assertion which make the
Smith of to-day retrotend his subhme Ego to birth and
protend it until death, "itself, by itself, solely, one ever-
lastingly, and single ; " which make thousands and milhons
of Smiths protend said Ego after death for ever and ever ;
and which make certain Platonic Smiths retrotend the
same at least a few myriads of years, if not for ever and
ever, before birth in this poor little planet. Smith, aged
thirty, takes under his wing and absorbs into his noble being
the Smith aged twenty, although he does not feel very
much sympathy with that remote young fellow. Smith in
244 SYMPATHY.
this present hour is the head of the multitudinous procession
of Smiths, the temporary chief of the clan Smith, compris-
ing every Smith of every past hour since birth, and destined
to comprise every Smith of every future hour until death ;
each hour in its turn assuming the chieftainship, and then
sinking into the ranks when its successor emerges : the
chief of the clan always admits all the inferior members to
be his blood-relations in precisely graduated degrees of
consanguinity, because their united fealty and homage con-
stitute his power and lordship.
Smith holds as a necessary truth that through all
changes of development and distortion and mutilation (and
decay, if his grand climacteric be past) he, Smith, has been
in this world one and the same individual. This convic-
tion he considers axiomatic, intuitive; all endeavours at
demonstration only trouble and obscure its clearness : any
one who mistakes or even seriously doubts his own per-
sistent identity must be insane. Smith, however, does not
pretend to know exactly how and why the Smith of ten,
acting upon and being acted upon by the circumstances of
twenty years, has become the Smith of thirty rather than
the Brown of thirty ; nor how and why the Brown of ten
in the same twenty years has not become the Smith rather
than the Brown of thirty : he believes that the peculiarities
of each maturity were severally in germ in each infancy,
without professing to discriminate and define the germs,
and without any but the most vague and unscientific
notions as to the respective processes of development.
Why should he identify his present self with the Smith of
ten rather than with the Brown of ten, even when he
happens to have more sympathy (such as it is) with the
latter than with the former boy ?
Here let me note, before proceeding, that the difference
is much greater between childhood and maturity than
SYMPATHY. 243
between the ship of Theseus first and last, or between the
original knife and the knife with a new blade and a new
handle. For in the ship the schematism has obviously not
altered, the first plan or idea has obtained steadily and
visibly through all the successive replacements of parts : we
term it one and the same ship throughout, because merely
the matter has changed, the form conspicuously enduring.
But in the case of from childhood to manhood, the original
idea is not thus conspicuously and definitely preserved ; we
can only believe that in some mysterious manner it actually
is preserved : here change of matter is complicated with
change of form, with what we term organic development.
Even as to the body, there are many cases in which, for all
we know and see, Smith might as naturally in accordance
with his childish constitution have grown up tall, broad, and
stout, as small, slender, and lean ; while as to the mind,
nine biographies out of ten (in despite of too enthusiastic
biographers) prove that sharpest human vision cannot dis-
cern the elements of relation between infancy and child-
hood and maturity, and that even were these elements
given, the most puissant human science w^ould be utterly
impotent to calculate approximately the life-orbit.
Of course, Smith's assurance of his Hfelong identity is
based upon his own memory and upon the memory of those
with whom he has come into most frequent contact. Smith
might be the Smith of to-day, without remembering any-
thing of his past self, as the rose is none the less beautiful
and fragrant for having no memory of its youth in the bud.
But the lifelong Smith is the creature of memory. He
remembers innumerable events, thoughts, sensations, per-
ceptions, emotions, words, actions, all strung like beads
upon a long-drawn line called Smith. He also remembers
numerous events, words, actions, emotions, strung upon
another line called Brown, but these he does not remember
246 SYMP/iTHY.
so clearly. (Yet, in looking back twenty years, he will
undoubtedly be confused as to the line, whether Smith or
Brown, on which some of these beads were actually strung :
he will not, perhaps, give any of his own beads to Brown,
but he will adopt some of Brown's beads as his own ; and
thus these which 7ci^re not his own, now are his own.) This
personal memory of Smith's is day by day and hour by
hour supported, corrected, strengthened, intensified, by the
memories of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, who are continu-
ally making him responsible for past events in this past
Smith's life, often when he would gladly enough forget or
renounce them. Where this external corrective cannot be
applied (as in the case of passions, aspirations, unwritten
and unspoken thoughts). Smith's personal memory is apt to
make the oddest mistakes, beautifying and ennobling, and
in general exaggerating, for the aggrandisement of the
present Smith, or forcing unconsciously into, obvious har-
mony with the present Smith : thus all subjective auto-
biographies are full of deception and self-deception, of
illusion and delusion ; as Goethe's Dichtiing iind Wahrheit,
Rousseau's Confessions^ De Quincey's Opium Eater and
Suspiria de Profiuidis.
This memory and deeply ploughed experience of his
responsibility for past Smith is perhaps more essentially than
even his own personal interior memory the strength and
stay of Smith's conviction that he is one and the same
individual throughout life. From his childhood all the
people about him have been continually saying to him and
acting towards him in the sense of, "You promised this,
now you must perform it ; you did so and so, now you
must bear the consequences ; you had such a thing, now
you must pay for it." And he has long since learnt that it
is quite useless and worse than useless for him to endeavour
denial or evasion of this responsibility, although Smith of
SYMPATHY. 247
to-day often heartily curses that scoundrelly or reckless
Smith of yesterday for bringing him into such scrapes, and
wishes that he had been Brown yesterday instead of Smith.
Smith of to-day is a very cool, self-possessed, practical man :
why should he be called upon to ruin his prospects in life
because a fellow, with whom he has just now next to
nothing in common, a hot, excited, sentimental blockhead,
swore infinite love last evening to humid eyes and a soft
little hand in that confounded moonlight? Smith to-day is
a boy sickish and with the heartburn, whom the mere sight
of sweetstufif nauseates ; wherefore should he be compelled
to deliver up his money (which would purchase a paintbox
or the Arabian Nights) because a greedy fellow with an
imbecile fondness for sweetstuff gorged himself disgustingly
yesterday ? But so it is : day after day, and year after year,
poor Smith of the present learns more and more thoroughly
that he must answer for the deeds of every detestable
Smith of every hour of the past ; and so he is fain to adopt
these shadows into himself (the worst and most annoying
of all poor relations), and make the best he can of the whole
lot. Tiie thousands of Smiths of the thousands of past
hours are a heavy retinue to support, but at any rate they
enormously swell the dignity of The Smithy who is always
the Smith of the present hour.
It is true that the interior personal memory is not con-
tinually continuous. \\. one time, when we look along the
line, many of the beads are out of sight ; there seem great
gaps. At another time these gaps are glittering with jewels,
and there are gaps where before gleamed beads. Hence
we all feel that the seeming gaps are but loops and festoons ;
and that if the line be drawn tense enough, every one of
the thick-strung beads will be ranged visible on its straight-
ness. Just so we feel that the moods and phases of our
being for which we do not care at the present moment, will
248 SYMPATHY,
have their turn of domination as they have had many turns
before, will be really ourselves in their time. x\s our so-
called sympathy with others is mainly not a feeling 7vith
them, but the result of an intellectual algebraic process ;
so our sympathy with our past selves is mainly not an
identical /6'^//;/i,^ with the various past phases of our being,
but a result of complicated personal experience and memory,
the most striking fact in the domain of the association of
ideas. As for our sympathy with our future selves, it
derives from a pure illusion : when we imagine ourselves
in the future, we always imagine our very present selves
projected in time.
Readers of the Arabian Alights and The Tamitig of the
Shrew must have been struck by the ease and readiness
with which Abou Hassan and Christopher Sly are persuaded
that their real past lives were delusive dreams, and that
the present delusions are realities. The wise story-teller and
the wise poet seem both to have considered the conviction
of personal identity, the conviction of whose mysteriousness
and intuitiveness and necessary truth we have heard so
much, as being very much at the mercy of those around
us ! Can we contrive to fancy a Smith, who, for one whole
week, has not been by anybody held responsible for Smith-
past ; a Smith at whom everybody looks with astonishment
when he comes to fulfil a promise, and with more astonish-
ment when he comes to claim the fulfilment of one made
to him ; a Smith whom all the people he meets persist in
making responsible for Brown, paying him ^^hat they owe
Brown and demanding from him payment of Brown's debts;
this exchange of the personalities being brought to bear
upon him thoroughly in every relation of life ? At the
end of the week would this poor Smith be sure of his
identity? would he believe himself now insane, or that
he had been insane heretofore ? or would he seek refuge
SYMPATHY. 249
in the comprehensive truth that it is "a mad world, my
masters " ?
So httle do we know ourselves that when we begin a
train of thought we never have any idea of where we shall
end. Thus a sentence of Shelley's about sympathy and
imagination has led to a series of reflections tending toward
the doctrine that the conviction of personality is not a so-
called " Necessary Truth," intuitive, axiomatic, above and
inaccessible to logic, anterior to experience ; that it is not
simple but compound; and that a more extended and
subtle analysis may reduce it to the rank into which the
analysis of Hume reduced the idea of causation, the analysis
of Berkeley the belief in the independent exterior existence
of matter, the analysis of Kant the belief in the universal
existence of space and time.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
( -~So )
LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
Mav 1866.
" Others apart sat on a hill retired
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
— Paradise Lost, Book II.
It is noteworthy, but I do not remember that any one of
the many who have cited these verses has remarked the
fact, that while these philosophic devils found no end
(although they were rather clever fellows), Milton thought
that he had found an end himself; and made Raphael
and even God Almighty (Books V. and III.) the mouth-
pieces of his conclusion. But I fear that the readers of
the National Reformer will not fare better than the devils.
Perhaps, however, the mind gets some wholesome exercise
by being occasionally lost in wandering mazes, though such
excursions always end at their starting-point, and though
it is not desirable that the occasions should be frequent.
In the present discussion, as in most others of the kind
which I have heard or read, it appears to me that the
Necessitarian (whom we wall call N.) has had decidedly the
better of the argument over the Libertarian (whom we will
call L.). But I cannot help suspecting that N. has owed
LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 251
this advantage, if not altogether yet in very large measure,
to the fact that he has confined himself to the fortification
and defence of a single redoubt, and that L. has had the
complaisance to confine hnnself to attempts to storm said
redoubt in front. Hence the questions arise : first, whether
this fortification really covers the whole field in dispute ;
and secondly, supposing it does not, whether L. could not
do better by taking possession of the remainder of the
battle-ground, either leaving N. shut up within his own
parapets or starving him out.
Let us suppose a discussion of the ordinary kind to have
taken place : L. has very gallantly come up to attack N.
on the very spot, and in the very manner in which N.
would choose to be attacked; the fortress has proved
impregnable to the storming parties ; L. has retired beaten,
and disi irited. He now^ resolves to abandon the direct
attack, and to try the effects of a blockade. The following
seem to me about the best and strongest positions L.
could take up. Whether they are so strong and well-
placed as to starve N. into terms of surrender or com-
promise ; whether N., in spite of them, could provision
himself and remain impregnable ; or whether he could
assault and capture them, and become master of the
whole field, your readers experienced in the controversy
may decide.
L. says — (i.) Your necessity which is non-moral, which
abolishes moral responsibility, is also (though you scarcely
seem aware of this fact) non-intellectual, abolishes intel-
lectual certainty. Necessity has no morality and no intel-
ligence. Our contradictory opinions, mine the result of the
organisation of circumstances called Me, yours the result
of the organisation of circumstances called Vou, are equally
products of necessity, equally necessitated : therefore, the
one is as deeply founded and vaUd as the other. You
252 LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
naturally and necessarily prefer yours, I naturally and
necessarily prefer mine ; each is relatively true, that is to
say, the genuine outcome of its own organisation. But what
possible standard of absolute truth can you allege whereby
an impartial judge could authoritatively prefer one to the
other? what presumption can either of us appeal to in
favour of the claim that his opinion, which is personally
true (i.e., real), is true in the abstract and universally?
Two contradictories, each based on eternal necessity, front
each other ; each is primordial, for the law and substance
of the world from the very beginning are involved in each
present organisation ; each is invincible, for it is a fact : the
conflict can never be philosophically decided, for philo-
sophy has no standard by which to decide. Logic traces
non-logic to necessity ; and thus tracing it, is compelled to
endow it with prerogatives as absolute as those which logic
claims for itself, and thus virtually abdicates in favour of
the anarchy of everlasting incertitude.
Such is the metaphysical antinomy in which your victory
culminates. Practically, you seem to escape from it by
certain paths of common-sense, whose right of way I may
yet dispute with you. But your Necessitarianism is abso-
lute and metaphysical in its claims; you are, therefore,
bound to solve the metaphysical problem, reconcile the
antinomy, transform the surd into a rational quantity ; or
to acknowledge that the metaphysical claims of your system
are null ; that, in fact, you do not possess an exact philo-
sophy, but only an empirical instrument more or less useful,
and less or more inaccurate.
But (2.) I must complain that even as ordinary "Chris-
tians" are continually playing fast and loose with faith
and common-sense, so are you with absolute logic and
empiricism. Were you arguing as to the necessary exist-
ence of God, you would triumphantly apply Hume's Analysis
LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 253
of Causation ; arguing as to the existence of Free Will, you
find it comfortable wholly to ignore that analysis, manning
your battlements with an imposing array of the corpses of
syllogisms which that analysis slew, manoeuvring as if on
firm ground in country which that analysis flooded a hun-
dred fathoms deep. Hume (anticipated by Berkeley and
others) has consummately demonstrated, by a logic which
is in the same plane as that wherein your chief arguments
move, that we have no experience of causation, that we per-
ceive only sequence of events, that (so far as we know) there
never is necessity in the sequence of any two events, that
we never can be entitled to assert that the former is the
eflicient cause of the latter, or that the former has the
power to produce the latter ; in brief, that the words m?tst
and ?ieccssity, as applied to any of the phenomena of the
universe, have for us no philosophic validity. If this logic
cannot be resisted in its own sphere ; if in this same sphere
is situated the realm which Necessitarianism claims for its
empire ; if, as a matter of fact, every cultivated N. has read
and confirmed the verdict of Hume ; how inconsistent (how
astonishingly inconsistent, were not human inconsistency
so universal that it has ceased to astonish) are you when
importing ?iecessity into the connexion between the events
of human determination and precedent events, between
motives and volitions.
Note that your favourite assertion, that the stronger
motive always prevails, moves in a vicious circle like a
squirrel in its cage : why does this motive prevail ? because
it is stronger ; why is it stronger ? because it prevails : it
is stronger because it prevails, it prevails because it is
stronger.
The result so far philosophically is exactly zero: I, L.,
am no more victorious than you, N. ; we have arrived only
at the dead-lock of an antinomy; our logic has demon-
254 LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
strated only the utter impuissance of logic, impuissance
winch disables, of course, the logic of the demonstration, —
as Hume saw and stated with perfect clearness.
But if you surrender the absolute claims of your system,
admit that it is not a philosophy, and assert for it only the
humble merits of a useful empiricism, do not forget that
we are now in quite a different sphere.
Your arguments will be somewhat to the following effect :
— "Practically, we observe that certain events are always
followed by certain others, though we cannot prove any
necessity in the sequence; practically, we observe that
such and such results accrue from certain connexions
between circumstances and organisation : with improvement
of the circumstances, we find improvement of the organisa-
tion;" &c., &c. This, one must admit, is good common-
sense as to its claims and objects ; Christian missions and
Secular propaganda alike start from it : whether the innu-
merable facts of the world do or do not, on the whole, bear
it out, is a question for the humble collector of facts to
gather materials for deciding. But as an instrument of
good, it is very inaccurate, very weak, very easily disordered,
very hard to use well ; the facts are innumerable, the rela-
tions between them so complex and mysterious, each
obvious improvement develops so much latent deterioration.
Still, as the Sociology of Positivism, it is well-meaning and
well worthy of earnest study.
(3.) But now that we are in the practical sphere, I, L.,
in my turn, assert that, practically, you believe in Free Will
as thoroughly as I do; for the actual conduct of life is
the precise measure of practical belief. A mans life is his
organised belief; that which is not assimilated and organ-
ised into life, but left in the raw unnourishing state of mere
logic and dialectic, being practically no belief at all. Just
as truly as Christendom has no living faith in Christianity,
LIBERTY AND NECESSITY. 255
Necessitarians have no living faith in Necessitarianism. A
religion is not a dogma (or series of dogmas) ; it is the pro-
duct of two factors, the dogma and human nature : every
N. sees this clearly and scourges the fine pretensions of
religionists with the lash, " By their fruits ye shall know
them." Just so, an ethical system is not a maxim (or series
of maxims) ; it is the product of two factors, the maxim
and human nature : and your Necessitarianism is cruelly
scourged with the lash, " By their fruits ye shall know
them." For hfe is the supreme fact ; not any theory, creed,
system, philosophy, or (in general) strait-waistcoat for life.
And understand clearly that a system of religion or philo-
sophy or ethics, fails just as thoroughly by being what you
think too high, as by being what you think too low for
actual human nature : my coat is a misfit if too large as if
too small, though the too large has the advantage that it
may be cut down or taken in to fit. Systems, unfortunatel}',
always misfit by being too small.
Will you please to point me out a single N. who, for a
single day of active life, has lived a Necessitarian ; not
irritated with the negligent servant, not indignant against
the man who cheats him, not angry with the man who libels
him, not grateful to the friend who helps him, &c., &c.
When you can point me out one such, I may begin to think
that, practically, your system is worth a moment's notice.
The National Reformer is read and written by persons of
whom probably a larger proportion are Necessitarians than
the readers and writers of any other periodical in England.
Why these fierce attacks on the hypocrisy of the clergy,
the selfishness of the aristocracy, the unfairness of Christian
advocates, and so forth? Are they not necessary results
of circumstance, if Necessitarianism means anything ? Has
the king any more moral responsibility for his tyranny than
the peasant for his ignorance ? Is it philosophical to vitu-
256 LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
perate necessity ? Does any philosopher call the lightning
a heartless devastator, the storm a ferocious murderer, the
plague an atrocious poisoner, the tiger a bloodthirsty bandit,
the ass a culpably stupid brute, the fox a base villain ? Yet
the lectures and writings of Necessitarians are, at least, as
fierce and violent in denunciation of immorality (while
there is no moral responsibility), at least as fervent in praise
of morality (while there is no moral merit) as the sermons
and writings of Libertarians. You, Necessitarian, must
begin your reform in language by expurgating from the
dictionary all words implying moral praise and blame. The
pretence that you use them as affording stronger motives
for good, is utterly unphilosophical ; implies that you con-
sciously delude the weak-minded ; implies also, that you,
the slave of necessity, can choose or exercise free-will ; and
implies also the gross contradiction that Necessitarianism,
which abolishes moral responsibility, can retain a moral
standard.
It is so seldom, except in special discussion, that one sees
even a sentence written by any N. as if he believed his Gv\'n
doctrine, that the following written by John Ashburner,
M.D., in the preface to his translation of Reichenbach, is
well worth quoting. Dr. Ashburner is, or was, an exceed-
ingly able man ; mark the ludicrous effect of his attempt at
consistent words : — " No one can entertain a deeper venera-
tion for large cerebral organisations than I do." Venerate
a large cerebral organisation ! What an object for rever-
ence 1 Why not venerate a large visceral, renal, caudal,
or any other organisation, as much as the cerebral ?
( 257 )
A WALK ABROAD.
{A RELATION OF THINGS HEARD AND SEEN.)
lS66.
It was the night of Saint Sylvester. I had been spending
some golden hours with a friend philosophic and genial,
drinking punch of a certain Irish whisky many years in the
sherry-wood, a whisky that makes Fenianism preposterous,
and the wrongs of Ireland incomprehensible ; except, in-
deed, the brutal Sassenachs drink so much of it that the
natives cannot get a fair share. In the words of the
rhymer,
It is amber as the western skies
When the sunset glows serenest ;
It is mellow as the mild moonrise
^Yhen the shamrock-leaves fold greenest.
With this we had been smoking a certain tobacco, tobacco
of before the American War, " a weed of glorious feature,"
golden-leaved, honey-dew Virginian ; surely the very weed
whereof the sage Spenser sagely sang,
And whether it divine tobacco were,
Or panacea, or polygony —
Of this my friend had given me half a dozen noble cakes,
R
258 A WALK ABROAD.
each about a quarter of a pound, as I left him with " Peace
be upon this house ! " and verily if he that giveth a cup of
cold ^Yater to one of the little ones shall not go without his
reward, can any reward be rich enough for him who to one
of the little ones giveth, not a cup of cold water, but several
glasses of hot punch, and thereto much tobacco exquisite
as hasheesh ?
The night was clear, still, and cold ; the freshness of the
air was delicious, and I resolved to take a ramble before
going home. In my elevated spiritualised condition I
managed quite easily and naturally to stray off this little
earth of ours ; and finding that the gas lamps of London
had disappeared, I was attracted by those other lights, the
" street lamps of the City of God." I may note for the
benefit of any future wayfarers who take the same route,
that the clouds are apt to put out one's pipe, and that a full
flask in the pocket is desirable as medicine against their
dampness ; but when one has passed through the low cloud-
strata and the few miles of earth-atmosphere, he enters into
an cether wonderfully calm, pure, and exhilarating, wherein
the pipe burns clearly yet not too quickly, and the respira-
tion in itself is better than drinking from any flask. The
following are my brief notes of what I saw and heard at the
spots where I paused in my ramblings.
A wide marshy moor, black scarred with yellow and
brown. The time seemed afternoon. No sun was visible,
it was raining heavily; cobweb clouds were brushing fast
over tlie dirty white-washed ceiling of sky. Across the
moor lay a canal all livid from the long and violent lashing
of the rain. A dingy barge came creeping down, drawn by
the skeleton of Apocalyptic Death's white horse ; and at
the tiller of the barge sat a thin young man in shabby-
genteel black frock-coat and other gear such as decent men
wear in cities, on his head an old-fashioned cylindrical hat ! —
A WALK ABROAD. 259
Ho ! gallant sailor, what country is this ? — This is Mart^?y,
my lord. Could your lordship vouchsafe me a pipe of to-
bacco and a couple of lights ? — Most assuredly, your grace.
Rather dull, eh ? — Dull ! I got this position by special
favour. This is the best boat, the fastest horse, on the
canal. We are all very honest and poor here, my lord ; and
the most of us are somewhat sluggish and dreamy. But I
am of daring and adventurous spirit ; I rejoice in this rapid
motion, I love the swift variations of the landscape, I have
even a stern pleasure in confronting the perils of the locks !
My mother and father weep for me, but the heroic impulse
drives me on. — What cargo ? — Only ballast this return trip ;
the barge that follows me has a freight of wood in barter for
the freight of peat I delivered, and will take back my ballast
when it returns to its own place. — Truly an admirable ar-
rangement, my friend ! yet with so much skill and enterprise
you are not wealthy ? — Oh, I am better off than most, your
worship ; we are a poor people, very poor, but at any rate
we are all honest and truthful. — I gave him a piece of to-
bacco, and having several silver coins in my pocket (a fact
far more astounding than my presence in Mercury), I gave
him eke half-a-crown. He was calling down the most beau-
tiful benedictions upon my head as I strolled away.
I next came to a rocky realm dim in twilight, where was
heard all around and about a tumult as of the rushing and
roaring of seas. I discerned a large number of lean little
fellows all very busily employed, dressed in ragged quaker
costume ; but that sleekness of sensual spirituaUsm well-to-
do in the world, which is the common expression of quakers
in our time, was absent from these faces, and in its stead
gaunt earnestness. They were ploughing the rocky ground
with painful industry, the men tugging, the women driving ;
their ploughs were rough broken branches, the shares were
rude blades awkwardly attached with strips of barL From
26o A WALK ABROAD.
my inmost soul I compassionated them. — O man of red
A/ars, do you reap fat harvests from these fields ? — Alack,
no, your honour ; we are sore beset with famine, yet this is
one of our richest districts. Fortunately we are a tranquil
folk, and when we can't get food, just lie down and perish
placidly. — Will you have some tobacco, my friend? — We
account it wicked to smoke, sire ; but if your majesty
could spare a few pence to buy a poor man a little
bread ? — I gave him a half-a-crown, and went off feeling
less jolly.
I next called at an immense village of miserable huts and
hovels, a village in four-mooned Jupite7\ I saw great gaps
of charred ruins where fire had raged, and saw many of the
hovels marked with great red crosses ; all about me was
very still. Then a murmur and a rattling came, and I saw
a large body of tall men, very gaunt and livid, with a number
of low donke3'-trucks. The men entered the hovels that
bore the stigma, and emerged carrying corpses more livid
than themselves, dark blue corpses of the plague-smitten ;
and side by side on each donkey-truck stretched a pair, and
went on toward some burial-pit. I spoke to the last of
them. How many has the plague killed, my poor friend ?
— Nearly one in six already, my lord ; and it is to be hoped
that it will kill at least half of us, for better to die quickly
of pest than slow^ly of hunger. — I am burning a sacred in-
cense of disinfection : will you have some ? He went down
on his knees in reverential rapture. — Most gracious Sove-
reign, I will give it to my wife that she may bury me ! — I
gave him some tobacco and half-a-crown, and went away
feeling still less jolly.
I then arrived at Saturn^ of whose belts and moons I
shall say nothing, in mercy to the astronomers : why should
they be deprived of the dear pleasure of speculating and
guessing a few centuries more ? I came plumb upon a
A WALK ABROAD. 261
channel of the sea, wherein I might have been drowned had
not the natural antipathy of good whisky to overmuch w^ater
kept the very soles of my feet unwet. I saw two ranks of
large rough boats, in each of which was one enormous naked
man, in each of whom was one enormous eye. They were
engaged in barter, the one set having things edible in wicker
baskets, the other set things drinkable in gourds. They
all looked very healthy, very strong, thoroughly good-tem-
pered and perfectly stupid. I held up half-a-crown and
asked who would have it ; every big eye regarded me wnth
cunning senile disdain. I held up a piece of tobacco and
asked who would have it ; big noses came surging against
my hand and snored with deep delight, then the creatures
all roared together like good-natured thunder. Me, me, me !
So I organised a race for it on the sublime principles of true
donkey racing ; every one to shift into another's boat, and
the owner (not the paddler) of the last boat to win. After
about an hour of eloquent and lucid exposition, I succeeded
in persuading them that they comprehended the plan. Then
I cried Start ! but not one moved ; every one was watching
his own boat to make sure that it did not get ahead, and
feeling very triumphant as he saw that it did not even stir.
About another hour of demonstration, exhortation, execra-
tion, w^inding up with a modest but very effective threat to
thwack them all round if they did not row as hard as ever
they could ; then I cried Start again. Row hard they did,
and every one dashed to cannon against his own boat in
order to put it out of the running and thus secure its vic-
tory. The result was a general smash and upset ; and they
all swam about grinning and snorting and shouting, every
one claiming "the nice stuff to flavour sweet drink." I
placed the piece on the round back of the nearest boat ; a
grand scrambling swimming match ensued ; and I departed
feeling much more jolly.
262 A WALK ABROAD.
I next stopped at Uranus, which was ahiiost termed
Georgium Sidus : the poor Olympians must lament the lost
honour of a Guelph King of England among them ! Moi,
je Vaiirais plutot nommc Pluton, a friend suggests, seeing
that it is associated with Saturn, and Jupiter, and Neptune ;
but my profound knowledge of science and its history
enables me to inform him sternly that Neptune was not
born or even thought of in the astronomic womb, when the
big last baby Uranus needed christening. I found myself in
a realm like the China pictured on porcelain, whereof the
poet saith, " In this realm nature and man cannot look
each other in the face without laughing. They do not
laugh out loud, both are too polished and civilised, but
holding-in the laugh they make the queerest grimaces.
There one finds neither shadow nor perspective ; and upon
the houses of a thousand colours rise one above the other
roofs, stretched like umbrellas, hung with bells of jingling
metal, so that the very wind produces a comical noise and
becomes ridiculous in passing over this land." I saw quaint
little men whose pigtail knobs kept bobbing on the ground
behind them ; I saw quaint little women moving in jerky
pitter-patter as puppets move, their oblique eyes flush with
the face. All looked withered and poor, yet all were
solemnly grimacing. Peeping under verandahs I saw
families at dinner, supping messes in which floated snails
and beetles and cockroaches, picking daintily the bones
(which they afterwards crunched like barley-sugar) of " rats
and mice and such small deer." The populace themselves
swarmed like cockroaches, and their talk was in quick
mouselike squeaks. On the table of one family I put half-
a-crown and a piece of tobacco ; the patriarch extemporised
an astonishingly eloquent oration of the most panegyrical
character in squeaks now staccato and now slurred by
twenties ; a wrinkled child cried with rapture, " We'll have a
A WALK ABROAD. 263
big dog for dinner to-morrow ! " and the whole family fell
down and worshipped me as I departed.
And then I came to Neptune, and saw a vast stretch of
brown land heaved up into a cirque of large molehills around
a dull lake. Very rough draughts of fair humanity, both
male and female, were swimming and diving in the water
like so many otters, then came waddling up the shore with
fish in their mouths, and burrowed hastily, for the large
molehills were their dens. They seemed a very stupid race,
with the mind in a permanent state of hibernation ; but
very soft and mild except to the poor fish. They seemed,
too, always hungry, for scarcely had they disappeared into
their dens than they emerged again for more fishing. I
tendered one of them half-a-crown. He took it as if it
were a thing of course, and gazed on it long with stohd
attention in his protuberant goggle eyes ; at length dawned
a certain gleam of thought ; he wrapped the coin in a piece
of fish-skin, and hung it round his neck, doubtless as a
talisman or sacred charm, for he showed pride and exulta-
tion. I gave another a bit of tobacco ; he threw it at once
into his mouth and swallowed it with very little chewing,
I hope without bad results. I went away bemused, and
hurried homewards.
But I did not like to return without calling at Vetiiis.
There I found myself in a large, silent city, full of tall
gloomy buildings like convents or barracks, all enclosed by
high blank walls. I saw a long procession of macerated old
virgins, shrouded somewhat like sisters of mercy, defihng
through the wicket in the gates into one of these convents.
How plain, not to say hideous, the poor creatures were !
They were all muttering in unmusical dolorous monotony a
litany for deliverance from the world, the flesh, and the devil :
their world they might well wish to be delivered from, the
flesh they were almost delivered from already, and the devil
264 A WALK ABROAD.
is too busy with the pretty girls to meddle with such withered
old maidens. The dark serge cloaks in which they were
muffled had each a hood or head-bag hanging behind. Into
that of the last I dropt half-a-crown and a piece of tobacco,
and whispered, Where are the men? — The men, O bold
stranger, are in their own city on the other side of the river.
— Why don't you mingle with them? — Can it be that
you know not we are Malthusians? It was found that
we were outgrowing the food of our world. Only one-half
our people are permitted to marry, and but one child is
permitted to each family ; such families, however, as are
childless may give or sell their right of production to others,
and we have heard of one terrible pair who have used up a
large fortune in purchasing the privilege of having twenty-
three children besides their first. — I departed in a state of
mind not to be described.
My last visit I paid to the Moo/i, not to the side of it
turned toward us, for I have ever felt a remarkable interest
in the other which we never see. It happened to be deep
night there, and I saw many people squatted around fires of
forest wood, while others were continually coming in with
fresh fuel. The teeth were chattering, the bodies cowering,
and the catlike eyes glared green phosphorescence in the
darkness. A careworn man, bilious and nervous, an ardent
mind in a frozen body, took me aside mysteriously and
descanted on the wretched condition of himself and his
compatriots. He said that the forests were nearly used up,
that brushwood was getting scarce, that they had frightful
alternations of intense cold and intense heat, that they were
always half-starved. But the moral injustice of their doom was
what hurt them most. Was it fair that one side of the moon
should be always turned away from the earth, and the other
always turned toward it ? He had heard that a benevolent
earth-lord wanted to give both sides turn and turn, but the
A WALK ABROAD. 265
other astronomical earth-lords wouldn't agree. Would I
present his petition and advocate his claims of justice and
equality ? Look at the monstrous monopolies of the other
side ! It is to the earth as the whole moon, it is honoured
with beautiful names, and sacred to the proudest goddesses;
it enjoys an immense revenue of odes and sonnets and songs,
has a magnificent royalty in all eloquence of similes and
metaphors, a tender interest and deUcious part in all love-
affairs. — I was afflicted by his complaint, and promised to
use my great influence on the right side. — Truly unjust is
your treatment, O other-side-of-the-moon-man, I said ; and
I have noticed many other cases of injustice in my visits
during this night, for I am not an official inspector.
What inequalities in the distances of the planets from the
sun, and by consequence in their orbits and periods of revo-
lution ; what flagrant inequalities of size and mass among
them ; what an unequal distribution of moons throughout
the solar system ! What right has Saturn to his monopoly
of the belts ? Why are the stars so irregularly scattered in
space ? Even on our earth, which is your mother-country,
we suffer similar wrongs. Heat and light, palm-trees and
elephants, whales and walrusses, mountains and rivers,
islands and lakes, land and water, white and black and
tawny complexions, and many other things, are most un-
equally distributed throughout it; its very axis is iniquitously
obHque. And even among ourselves, among us the earth-
lords, the same lawless law obtains. Large limbs and broad
backs, aquiline noses and brilliant eyes, clear brains and
warm hearts, are shamefully confined to a few. But cheer
up, let us both cheer up, O other-side-of-the-moon-man, this
state of things cannot last much longer. For we have now
societies numerous and powerful for the extinction of all
wrongs, real and imaginary : Missionary Societies, Bible
Societies, Religious Tract Societies ; Societies for the Pro-
266 A WALK ABROAD.
rogation of the Gospel, the Confusion of Useful Knowledge,
the Perversion of the Jews ; a Temperance League, a Reform
League, a National Secular Society, an International Society :
and the least of these stupendous and glorious associations
intends to accomplish things much more difficult than this
slight alteration in your mode of revolution which you have
done me the honour to put under my especial patronage.
Courage, then, my friend. Here is half-a-crown, and there
is a piece of tobacco ; employ yourself in getting up a
monster petition, and don't let any one sign it more than
twenty times, and if you can keep the fictitious names in the
minority do so. Couldn't you make a demonstration from
our side of the moon ? A sudden irruption might put it in
your possession for one night? Let your cry be, Jellinger
Symons to the rescue ! — So I departed fervent with lofty
zeal, as he pronounced me Lord of the Lord-earth most
enlightened and illustrious !
I found myself in London, not far from my habitation. It
was considerably past midnight. We were in the new year.
A poor woman offered me a box of matches ; as I didn't
want any, she begged a penny, which I gave. A girl well
dressed asked for sixpence or a drop of gin, as she was
perished with cold, &c. I gave her sixpence, but told her
that in my humble opinion such hours and habits were
scarcely conducive to health and morality. A whining
man asked for twopence to get a bed, and a penny to get
a roll ; I gave him threepence. A ragged boy, thin-faced
and large-eyed, asked for twopence to get some coffee and
toke ; I gave the twopence. A cabby asked me to get in ;
I gave him a polite refusal.
When I got home I fell into a fit of profound and melan-
choly musing over my pipe and a glass of grog. I found
that I had but four shillings and tenpence and a cake of
the tobacco left. How veritable, I thought, are the words
A WALK ABROAD. 267
of the great poet (is it Shakespeare or ^Ir. Tupper, is it
Shelley or Dr. Isaac Watts ?)
Whene'er I take my walks abroad
How many poor I see !
But never before in my walks abroad did I see so many
poor as I have seen in my walk abroad to-night. Indigence
everywhere, and I have nearly emptied my pockets without
relieving the millionth part of a millionth part of it. When
all the planets hold out their hands in beggary, what can a
man do with a pound and a quarter of tobacco and about
as much in loose silver? And then our poor old earth !
Cattle disease, cholera, Overend and Gurney, flourishing
banks through which flowed rivers of wealth, the London,
Chatham, and Dover, Austria, the Pope, the dear little
German Kingikins, Turkey, the Reform Bill, and the Liberal
^Ministry ! The solar system is clearly insolvent, and I sup-
pose the rest of the universe is in like case. I shouldn't
wonder if it turns out that the sun has been blazing away
out of his capital for the last few hundred years. Is the
end of the world really at hand ? The only resource I can
think of is that the great private firm which owns and
works it should sell the whole concern at about three times
its value, and the goodwill for about double what it would be
worth were the business immensely profitable ; and dissolve
into a Limited Liability Company. And I do not know
that they could get a more active and able managing
director than their old rival Satan. He is the fellow to keep
its shares from falling into the "realms of gloomy Dis.," for
he always keeps himself out of them in spite of doom and
predestination, and goes up and down on the earth like a
roaring Joint Stock Company seeking whom he may devour.
And his interest in the world is so much larger than any one
else's, that he would do his best to keep it going. Anyhow,
268 A WALK ABROAD.
something decisive must be done, and that very soon. And
I fell asleep into wild dreams, murmuring those words of the
illustrious poet {/s it Shelley or Mr. Tupper, is it Shakespeare
or Dr. Isaac Watts ?)
Whene'er I take my walks abroad
How many poor I see !
( =69 )
THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER.
December iSyj.
It was the last evening of the year, and I was alone in my
room. The curtains were drawn, the fire was burning
brightly, I had just taken my tea, and was having the de-
licious after-smoke; for no smoke is more delicious than
that immediately following tea, when one's mind is lucid
and active again after the afternoon sluggishness, with a
long evening before it for intellectual enjoyment, whether
of reading or writing or simple meditation. On this occa-
sion I had purposed to do some writing ; but I felt so warm
and cosy and nobly indolent, leaning back in the easy-chair,
with my feet towards the fire on another chair, and gazing
with half-shut eyes into the ruddy glow and dancing flames,
that, when the one pipe was finished, and by previous cove-
nant with myself I was bound to set to work, I calmly refilled
the beloved pipe and set myself to deliberate enjoyment
thereof, while my mind was borne slowly hither and thither
through the serene twilight of remembrance and reverie.
For the milestones of life are for each of us so few, and its
miles, which are years, to each of us so long, that when we
have travelled yet another, and find ourselves at the term
* Reprinted, with consent of the proprietors, from CoJ>es Tobacco Plafit,
January 1876.
270 THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER.
which marks a new departure, we can scarcely refrain from
pausing to look back on all we have passed, and reflect on
the strange things that have occurred in them, and dream
of w^hat the future may bring forth. Sad I was not, too
tranquil for sadness ; yet not untender w^ere the memories,
nor quite void of yearning the dreams. For the old friends
came back who have sunk to rest for ever; and the old
familiar places perhaps never to be seen again, certainly
never to be seen again the same as they were seen of yore ;
and the old thoughts and desires, now strange as the
thoughts and desires of an alien ; and the old actions w^hich
cannot be undone, which it boots not to repent or regret,
since the gods themselves have no power upon the past.
Nay, whatever be the present (which is infinitesimal), and
whatever be the future (which to us is indefinite) ; the past,
the sure past, whose records are wTitten eternal and immut-
able in the book of destiny, even were its character, when
present, dark and terrible and abominable, gleams ever
serene and sacred in the moonlit dusk of memory, whose
very tears are shining stars : it is dear and holy with the
dearest holiness of the dead.
And while I thus thought and dreamed on the confines of
trance and sleeping and waking, for the red fire made me
vaguely drowsy, so that I barely kept my good pipe burn-
ing, I was suddenly stirred by a light tap on my shoulder
and the sweetest of voices in my ear : " Ah, lazy one ! must
I always find you smoking and dreaming?" I cannot say
that I was surprised, though the tap and the voice and the
waft of chill air had caught me without my hearing footstep
or opening of the door; for I knew well at once who was
the most welcome intruder, seeing that she had thus visited
me, unexpected and unannounced, many a time before.
]kit inasmuch as she rarely comes twice in exactly the same
guise, I did, for a luxurious moment ere lifting my eyes.
THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER. 271
indulge in wonder how she would appear to me then. In
that moment she took the pipe from my hand and mouth,
giving me a kiss in generous compensation, and shook me
from my drowsy repose with a sprinkle of coldest thaw-drops
on my indolent warmth. I stood abashed yet delighted to
greet her, the beautiful, the ever-young, who is so gracious
and loving when it pleases her to visit me, who is so capri-
cious and cruel in keeping away altogether for weeks and
months, however sorely I need and earnestly supplicate her
presence. Eyes could not open upon vision more joyous
and charming. Mantled in rich green, with linings and
borders of ermine, through which shone a red skirt and
white furry boots wherein petulant little feet nestled, she
was bright as berried holly half-muffled in snow. And from
the hood of her mantle, bordered also with ermine, shone
out a lovely and riant face ; the cheeks glowing, and the
tips of the fairy ears glowing redder yet, as if translucent with
fire within ; the abundant brown curls escaping everywhere,
the wantons ; the brown eyes glittering with ineffable lights
and darks ; while her fresh breath panted out, visible in the
frosty atmosphere she had brought with her. From head
to foot she was pulsing and dancing with swift buoyant life.
"So!" she exclaimed, with scorn curling in nostrils and
lips, and mischief laughing in her eyes ; " this is what you
think manly enjoyment ; dozing like an old cat by the fire,
and dreaming like a decrepit grandfather of the days that
are no more ! As for your smoking, I have nothing to say
against that ; but the incense would be far more fresh and
fragrant in the healthy open air. Oh, I am stifled here !
Quick, sir; you must come with me, and I'll show you
something better than this half-alive sluggishness." I
answered sheepishly, yet fervently enough : " Dearest Lady,
I would come with jou were it to a pious tea-meeting; my
chief prayer is that I might be always with you, or,, if so
72
THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER.
you prefer it, that you might be always with me.'"' — " Tut,
child!" said my impatient visitor, and pushed me out of
the room.
In an instant we were down in the open air. There
attended us a sleigh, curved like a sea-shell for grace, poised
like a butterfly for lightness, heaped with thick skins barred
and starred, the robes of the hot fierce life of the tropics to
envelop us in the frigid north ; with two small fleet horses,
full of fire, whose champing kept their multitude of bells in
continual silver chime. Mounting, we sank and mufifled
ourselves in the furs ; my Lady took the reins, and we sped
away ringing through the night. I have not the least notion
where we went, and cheerfully bear witness to the truth that
a man never proceeds so well as when he knows not whither
he is going ; I can but tell something of what I saw, hoping
that, from my indications, the Royal Geographical Society
will be able to identify both our route and our goal. At
first I shrank chilled, but soon my blood began to glow and
dance with the excitement of our swift career, and the rap-
ture of being thus borne away side by side with her. Ere-
long I found that we were racing down the broad clear aisle
of a pine-forest, the firm snow crunching under us, and the
keen stars racing with us over the back-rushing trees, whose
snows freely powdered us as we passed. Nor were we alone.
To right and left, behind and before, sleigh-bells were
merrily ringing, down all the parallel glades these cars of
the snow were gliding ; we outstripped hundreds on either
hand, we outstripped scores on our own pathway: none
could keep up with us, so gallantly we flew. Coming to
the broad arm of a lake, we skimmed across it, one of
many ; and the stars, which had been flying with us, glimpsed
through the vanishing hair of the pine-trees, now fell back
from us ; rolled rearward with their deep blue immensity of
sky. Then again we ran among the pines, all resonant with
THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER. 273
bells as other woods are resonant with birds in June ; and
sweetlier resonant with clear young voices and laughters, so
that never were Woods so vocal even in leafy June.
We had thus careered for I know not how long, when a
great glow and space opened before us ; and the stars paled
and the hollow sky darkened over this ruddy earth-glow.
Nearing it, I grew aware of multitudinous life and move-
ment, whose voices were blent into a multitudinous mur-
mur, as of the sea ; and scarcely had I remarked this when
we were on the border of this living lake, into which all the
sleighs streamed down their forest glades. " Out ! " said
my Lady; "we are going to stroll through this Fair of St.
Sylvester." We were at the door of a sort of booth-stable,
into which she led the panting and steaming horses, and
left them, with the sleigh, to the care of an ostler who looked
as if he had been expecting her arrival. Then she took my
arm, and we turned towards the centre of the space. All
was brilHance and noise and undisorderly confusion. So
bright was the lustre of the innumerable lamps and lanterns,
that although the trees all around the clearing had lost
their snow, their dark-green looked as white as the whiteness
of their snow-muffled brethren beyond. Booths overflow-
ing with all the toys and trinkets of Yule-tide, as well as all
imaginable rich and gaudy wares, made every path a street ;
and every such street was crowded with happy people —
strolling, chatting, laughing, singing, inspecting, bargaining
— from almost every nation under heaven, as it seemed to
me. Picturesque national costumes abounded, bright with
the positive colours loved by all who are not civilised into
timid tameness. Masks and disguises were many and
various ; but I am bound to say that I did not see a single
personage disguised as a respectable Enghshman in evening
dress and crush hat, or as a respectable Englishwoman in
fashionable array of either morning or evening : it would
S
274 ^^^ F^IR OF ST. SYLVESTER.
seem that the wildest phantasy of these revellers could not
reach the wild extravagance of such travesties. A few of our
soldiers and sailors I saw ; and a few merry fellow^s got up
as lawyers with gowns and wigs, as freemasons with all the
paraphernalia, and as flunkeys gorgeous in powder and
plush; all of whom caused immense fun wherever they
appeared. Many of the booths were devoted, not to mer-
chandise, but to refreshments and music and dancing.
Looking beyond the bars of these, you saw (or, rather, /
saw, reader, whom I pity for not being there) the people of
all the countries dancing their own dances to their own
music. Such a shuffling and leaping and winding and
whirling, with snapping of fingers and wild sharp cries !
such a strumming and droning and shrilling and booming
and blaring ! — each such booth was as a bewildering kaleido-
scope twirled rapidly in gusts of stormy sound. And there
was singing almost as frequent as the dancing. Oh, the
wild popular airs of the dances and the songs ! Airs
reminiscent of the roaring of torrents and the weird wdnd-
shrieks of mountain gorges ; airs born from the melancholy
solitude of wide Campagna plains ; airs attuned to the
voices of the pine-forests; airs inspired by the voices of
the inimitable sea. And, oh, the wuld popular words of the
songs ! Music and words abrupt and uncouth ; but pro-
foundly sincere and heartfelt in their passion, their tender-
ness, and their wayward humours of mirth.
So we strolled and lingered along, with many digressions,
into the side-lanes, looking little at the baubles and wares,
much at the people, until we drew near to the centre of the
fair, where we found, islanded in a circle of dark quietude,
a huge double image, either a Janus bifrons or two figures
seated back to back ; for the forms were as carved in high
relief out of the rock obelisk which rose between them.
First, fronting eastward down the main avenue by w^hich we
THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER. 275
had approached, a great cahii Oriental figure serenely
smoking an enormous pipe, the clouds from its lips flowing
forth grey and dim against the surrounding light. "He burns
anything and everything in that pipe of his," said my Lady in
a soft voice ; " nothing comes amiss to him, he finds all of
good odour and sweet savour ; the fashions of the day and
the follies of the years, books and music, pictures and statues,
stout ships and strong towers, empires and religions, races
and species, rivers and mountains, wdth the grass and flowers
of the field, planets and systems themselves, all sooner or
later are consumed in that Pipe- Bowl and vanish in those
dim wreaths, the smoke of the sacrifice of Change, the in-
cense of the altar of Fate." Moving slowly round the rock,
we saw the other figure fronting westward down the main
avenue of the unvisited half of the fair ; and it was a great
serene child thoughtfully blowing bubbles from such another
pipe, and they floated off" large and splendid as luminous
balloons against the surrounding light. And my Lady said
quietly, "All that is puffed away in the smoke seems to
reappear in the bubbles ; not quite the same, yet so similar
that only between far-distant ages can important variance
be discerned." And, pondering, I murmured, " Oh 1 dear
Lady, the bubbles seem as fleeting and unsubstantial as the
smoke ! " And she merely responded, " Is it even so ? "
While we lingered about these figures I was startled by
a sudden peremptory clangour of trumpets, and from the
east a great sad voice cried, "The Old Year is dead!"
whereto immediately, from the \vest, a great glad voice
responded, " The Near Year is born ! " And my Lady
murmured, as in dream,
For thus it is with every thing :
The king is dead ! Long live the king !
At the foot-stone of the supreme Smoker was gathered a
276 THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER.
funeral procession : twelve hooded figures muffled in trail-
ing black over sombre red, bearing^ a black-palled bier,
preceded by trumpeters and followed by mourners, set forth
marching slowly to the east, the mourners chanting a
solemn dirge, whose notes were at intervals caught up by
the trumpets and swelled and prolonged into rending
clamours. And at the foot-stone of the supreme Blower
of Bubbles was gathered a festal procession : twelve figures
with floating white veils, white-robed over bright green,
bearing a white-curtained litter, preceded by flutes and
trumpets, and followed by revellers, set forth marching
briskly to the west, the revellers chanting a joyous chant,
whose notes the flutes shrilled and trilled bird-like, or the
trumpets caught up and swelled with triumphant exultation.
And as the funeral procession passed away down the eastern
avenue the lights dwindled and were quenched, the music
and the songs were hushed, and the people as in a panic
poured hurrying along through the central still space to the
other side ; but as the festal procession passed away down
the western avenue fresh lights kindled and flashed, fresh
music and songs arose, revellers swarmed, and the fair was
more gay and brilliant and noisy than before under the
sailing bubbles ; while he of the pipe, which is the alcahest-
crucible, gazed unmoved, ever contentedly smoking, athwart
a black gulph over the snow-laden ranked and serried pines.
And when I had watched and meditated all this from
the central ring, my Lady said to me, " Come ; we will visit
the other half of the fair," And as we lingered among the
booths, yet richer and more abounding as it seemed to me
than those we had seen before, she said to me archly,
" Have you any money in your pocket, O my poet, to buy
me a fairing ? " I must avow that I shuddered instinctively
and glanced furtively around, terrified lest any of my
countrymen or countrywomen had heard me addressed by
THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER. 277
that opprobrious title ; but fortunately none was near, and
I could give myself freely to the delight of answering,
" Really, by some rare miracle, I have. Never before
would you, who give so much, suffer me to give you any
smallest thing ; what may I get you now ? " And she
said, " Nay, but you must choose it yourself; and if I care
not for it, it is but a trinket of the fair ; but if it pleases
me, I will keep it long for your sake." Wherefore I
lingered on with her, arm-in-arm, in anxious trepidation ;
and I prayed earnestly with my heart and brain, " O
Delian and Delphic Apollo, inspire me, that I may choose
aright, for of myself I have no skill, and it is thou who hast
breathed into me the madness which makes me a poor
witless poet ! " But she, as to hearten and divert me,
began calling my attention to the wares and gewgaws
exposed for sale, remarking, " Since you are to buy me a
fairing, it is but right that I should get one for you." And
I said, " Wisest Lady, choose you then for me, as I must
choose for you." But she answered, " Nay, this time you
must choose for yourself also ; another time I may choose
for you again, even as I chose in bygone years the gift
which you neglected." I knew not what precisely she
meant ; but I had a consciousness of folly and ingratitude, so
that my heart was heavy, and my head sank, and my body
drooped as failing beneath a burden. But she grew yet
blither, and her smile and her speech were so enchanting
that mortal sadness could not resist them ; and soon I was
again all delight in communion with her. Stopping at a
very gorgeous show, she said, " Here is a crown of gold,
whose jewels are fair provinces ; would you like it ? " And
I answered, "I could not endure it, for even a tall hat gives
me the headache." Then she said, " Here is a full-bottomed
vrig ; will it not please you ? " And I answered, " Have
mercy upon me, dear Lady ; I can never split as many hairs
278 THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER.
as go to make it." Then she said, " Here is a mitre ; surely
you will snatch at // ? " And I answered hastily, " Heaven
forbid ! From a forked hat and a forked tongue, good Lord,
deliver us ! " Many other things she offered me, with com-
mendations sincere or feigned ; rank and honours, power
and authority, fame and notoriety, and many more ; but for
none of them was I willing that she should pay a farthing.
At length she said, " Of all children, you are the most
difficult to please ; I shall never make anything of you, you
will never reflect any credit on me. 'i Poor you shall be
always, and obscure, unvalued and without value ; better
had it been for me if, many years ago, I had taken interest
in some one else." This bitter speech, in truth, was not
very bitter to me, nor did I feel at all discouraged by it ;
and in a few paces I stopped decisively before a large
booth, pungently fragrant with " divine Tobacco ;" stored,
as it appeared, with enough of the rich herb to feed for a
twelvemonth even the abysmal insatiable pipe of that
supreme Smoker, who can puff away kingdoms as we a
box of Regalias, and with whom the exhalation of golden
worlds is facile as with us the exhalation of golden
honey-dew. In this booth of bounteousness were not only
all good sorts of Tobacco, snuff, and cigars, but also all
sorts of pipes ; so that it is not wonderful that I stood still
enraptured. And, after profoundest contemplation, I said,
" Kindest Lady, if you will give me a good gift, give me the
Pipe of Peace ! " And she bought for me the Pipe of
Peace, and therewith great store of the Tobacco of Content,
such as is never found in earthly jars ; and she said, " Now,
you must be happy and good till I see you again;
not troublesome and querulous, as I hear you have been
of late." And I faithfully promised to try to be good and
happy, as she ordained.
We reached the western border of the fair, and I took a
THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER. 279
long last look at the joyous crowds weaving ever-shifting gay
patterns under the innumerable lamps and flickering lights,
and listened long to the sea-like murmur of its multitu-
dinous speech and laughter and music and song. When I
turned, there was our sleigh attending us ; the horses fresh
and impatient, arching their necks and jingling their bells.
We darted away through the forest, now all still and silent
around us, for we were alone. And while we flew down a
broad glade, and the stars in the sky flew with us over the
back-vanishing colonnades of the pines, black on the one
hand with an iron gloom, white on the other with the driven
snow, suddenly my Lady asked me, " But what have you
bought me for a fairing, O my foolish poet, who for once
had money in your purse ? " Whereon I drew forth what I
had bought when she reafly was, or appeared to be, obser-
vant otherwhere, and answered, " Only this ; " and handed it
to her. It was but a golden bracelet, a Serpent of Eternity,
with carbuncle eyes, and a certain Name enamelled within.
And she kissed me and was well pleased ; so that I returned
devout thanks for his inspiration to our heavenly father, the
Delphic Apollo.
I know not how long we thus travelled, racing down inter-
minable aisles of the forest ; and at length I must have
fallen asleep, nestling up to her side under the skins of the
tropics ; and slept long, dreaming all the while of snow-
covered trees and starlit sky above, and hard snow beneath,
and straight pillars as of black and white marble around,
and the continuous silver ringing of bells, ringing ever with
the tireless swift rushing of our horses. And so she must
have led me, sleeping like a tired-out child whom the
mother fears to waken, back into my room, and then left
me with a kiss which I felt through my slumber, and whose
sweetness is not gone now I wake. Waking I find the fire
still faintly red, and all else as it was just after tea ; but my
28o THE FAIR OF ST. SYLVESTER.
watch marks midnight over. And that the visit of my Lady
and our travel and the fair were not a dream, I have proofs
positive; for here on the table is the Pipe of Peace she
gave me, together with the sweet Tobacco of Content, even
such as is never found in earthly jars ; while it is clear that
I bought for her the bracelet, since of the money I had by
a rare miracle in my pocket, there are but a few shillings
left.
( 2Si )
A NOTE ON FORSTER'S LIFE
OF SWIFT.
May 1S76.
It is much to be regretted that Mr. Forster did not Uve
to complete this work, which he meant to occupy three
volumes ; it is much to be desired that the materials he
gathered during many years of preparation should be
entrusted to some competent literary man, so that we may
have a full and accurate biography not quite unworthy of
the subject. As to this first volume, which is all that Mr.
Forster accomplished, it merits the highest praise for its
elaborate carefulness. We miss, indeed, the energy of the
Lives of the Statesmen of the Commomvealth^ and intense
energy is demanded for the Life of Swift ; we miss, also,
some of the finer qualities that make the Life of Oliver
Goldsmith such charming reading : the central figure and
the central interest are here and there obscured by the
multitude of subsidiary details; the contours are not
always firm, nor the colours always clear ; and we lament
that the artist was not in a position to attempt this great
picture in his prime, ere his hand grew somewhat tremu-
lous, and his sight somewhat dim, and his natural strength
was abated. But it is evident that what honest and earnest
282 A NOTE ON FORSTER\S SWIFT.
labour could effect he has effected, sparing no trouble to
master and state the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth ; and this thoroughness of patient workman-
ship is so rare and precious in our current literature, that
we might well for its sake condone far miOre serious defici-
encies than we find here. With the work finished in the
style of this volume, we should have, if not the classic Life
of Swift, at any rate abundant and well-tested materials for
such a Life, stored up and arranged with workmanlike skill
and care. I must not omit to mention two things for
which students will be grateful ; a full index, and marginal
notes of all the leading matters in the text.
In his Preface Mr. Forster states : —
" The rule of measuring what is knowable of a famous
man by the inverse ratio of what has been said about him,
is applicable to Swift in a marked degree. Few men who
have been talked about so much are known so little. . . .
Swift's later time, when he was governing Ireland as well
as his deanery, and the world was filled with the fame of
Gulliver^ is broadly and intelligibly written. But as to all
the rest, his life is a work unfinished, to which no one has
brought the minute examination indispensably required,
where the whole of a career has to be considered to get at
the proper comprehension of single parts of it. The writers
accepted as authorities for the obscurer portion are found
to be practically worthless, and the defect is not supplied
by the later and greater biographers. Johnson did him no
kind of justice because of his too little liking for him ;
and Scott, with much hearty liking as well as a generous
admiration, had too much other work to do. Thus, not-
withstanding noble passages in both memoirs, and Scott's
pervading tone of healthy, manly wisdom, it is left to an
inferior hand to attempt to complete the tribute begun by
those distinguished men."
A NOTE ON FORSTER'S SWIFT. 283
Mr. Forster tells us that more than a hundred and fifty
new letters had been placed at his disposal. He obtained
additions to the fragment of autobiography first printed by
Mr. Deane Swift ; and questions raised by that autobio-
graphy in connexion with Swift's university career are
settled by one of the Rolls of Trinity College which fell
into his hands. " Two original letters written from Moor
Park clear up that story of the Kilroot living which has
been the theme of extravagant misstatement. Unpublished
letters in the palace at Armagh . . . show clearly Swift's
course as to questions which led to his separation from the
Whigs." Mr. Forster also secured Swift's note books and
books of account ; a large number of unpublished pieces
in prose and verse interchanged between himself and
Sheridan ; the copy of the Life by Hawkesworth enriched
with MS. notes by Dr. Lyon, who had charge of Swift's
person in his last illness ; letters relating to Gtdliver^ some
to Stopford, and some to Arbuthnot of peculiar value j an
unpublished journal in Swift's handwriting, singular in its
character, and of extraordinary interest, written on his way
back to Dublin, amid grave anxiety for Esther Johnson
(Stella), then dangerously ill ; a copy of the first edition of
Gulliver^ interleaved for alterations and additions by the
author, and containing several interesting passages, mostly
in the Voyage to Laputa, which have never yet been given
to the world ; a copy of Swift's correspondence with his
friend Knightley Chetwode during the seventeen years
(i 7 14-173 1 ) which followed his appointment to the Deanery
of St. Patrick's, " the richest addition to the correspondence
of this most masterly of English letter-writers since it was
first collected." To my mind the most interesting novelty in
this first volume is contained in the Sixth Book (Appendix),
under the heading of "Unprinted and Misprinted Journals " ;
being the restoration, by collation with the originals in the
284 ^ NOTE ON FORSTER'S SWIFT.
British Museum, of the genuine and. complete text of the
first one and the last t\Yenty-four of the letters which make
up what is called the Journal to Stella. Here for the first
time we read, just as they were written, the "little language "
and the caressing diminutives and abbreviations Swift used
with his darling ; the delightful, fantastic, secret, childish,
infinitely tender babblement, never weary of repeating itself,
welling up amidst and around the records of the ruggedest
affairs of State, like perennial springs of pure sweet water
in a region of savage rocks. He was fighting Titanically a
Titanic batde ; and night and morning, in bed before he
rose, in bed before he slept, he found refreshment and
peace in these infantine outpourings of innocent love. The
sternest cynics have such soft places in their heart of hearts !
incomparably softer than the softness of unctuous sentimen-
talists ; liquid with living fountains where these are boggy
with ooze.
I have quoted Mr. Forster's very fair judgment on the
biographies by Dr. Johnson and Sir Walter Scott. It must
be added that of the two writers of most authority who
have since dealt with the fife and character of Swift,
Macaulay does him even less justice than did Johnson,
and Thackeray not much more. Both, and Thackeray in
particular, were impressed by the supremacy of his genius ;
but both were essentially out of sympathy with the man.
Thackeray, although vulgarly charged with cynicism, was
less a cynic than a worldling of genius who had cynical
moods. He had a great deal of genuine respect for the
established, the customary, the common-place, and was
altogether more ironical in tone than in fact w^ien he
classed himself among the Snobs he satirised so keenly,
though he was certainly a very superior specimen of the
class. One of the common threads interwoven with
the finer and richer threads of his fabric, was a very soft
A NOTE ON FORSTER'S SWIFT. 285
sentimental " religious " nerve connecting his heart and
brain, and this was terribly shocked by Swift's daring and
strenuous handling of the most formidable problems pre-
sented by our religions, our life, and our world. More-
over, Thackeray's thoroughly English domestic sentiments,
his English worship of home and the ordinary public strict
relations of husband and wife and family, were revolted by
the mysterious duplex relations of Swift with Stella and
Vanessa ; relations, I may observe, whose full tragic develop-
ment does not come within the scope of this volume, and
which in their worst entanglement it does not appear that
Mr. Forster could have done much to unravel.
Macaulay, historiographer in chief to the Whigs, and
the great prophet of Whiggery which never had or will
have a prophet, vehemently judged that a man who could
pass over from the celestial Whigs to the infernal Tories
must be a traitor false as Judas, an apostate black as the
Devil. In truth, Swift was never an extreme partizan of
either faction, and tried to moderate both ; being Whiggish
in his acceptance of the Revolution, and Toryish in his
Church views. However, Macaulay, who has always
exquisite pleasure and conscientious satisfaction in show-
ing that our great writers who were not steadfast Whigs
were just as ignoble morally as they were noble intellectu-
ally, paints him in the most lurid colours, and gives us a
very terrific portrait indeed, which has merely the disad-
vantage of being altogether unlike the original, or any
other man known to sober history. This, by the way, is
a disadvantage pretty common to Macaulay's portraits,
which are not developed organically hke Carlyle's, but put
together in mosaic work, and on glass for the love of
brilliancy ; he having a fine eye for the dazzle and contrast
of colours, if none for their temperance and harmony. He
diligently gathers all the pieces required for his purpose,
286 A NOTE ON FORSTER'S SWIFT.
shows them to us one by one, and announces triumphantly :
All the materials are here, as you see for yourselves, gentle-
men, each duly numbered and authenticated ; and we
expect to behold a likeness, though a glaring and com-
posite one. But at the last moment he puts them in the
kaleidoscope (or kakeidoscope) of his idiosyncrasy, gives
some rapid twirls and flourishes, and no mortal can guess
what strange shape they shall have taken when finally
settled for exhibition. In contemplating, not without
bewilderment, his portrait of Swift, one cannot help mut-
tering : This is really very fine in the way of the dreadful,
my rhetorical lord ; but if we could only have, to hang
beside it. Swift's portrait of you I
Though, his parents being thoroughly English, Swift was
in no sense Irish save by accident of birth-place and the
mockery of fortune which banished him to Ireland for the
last thirty years of his life, the warm-hearted Irish have
never ceased to love and revere the memory of the Dean,
who was not only a model of sagacious private charity, but
who championed the cause of their then oppressed and
outraged country with a courage and constancy equalled
by few, with a power and effect equalled by none, for no
one else has approached him in massiveness and energy of
genius. The English generally, like Dr. Johnson, have
done him no kind of justice because of too little liking for
him. It is doubtful whether they even read him. The
children, of course, delight in the fabulous marvels of
Gulliver^ but the grown-up people care not to study its
lessons. At first I was tempted to blame Mr. Forster
for occupying space in a book like this, not intended for
the uneducated vulgar, with accounts of such classics as
the Battle of the Books and the Tale of a Tub. But on
reflection it seemed highly probable that Mr. Forster was
much better acquainted than myself with the public of
A NOTE ON FORSTER'S SWIFT. 287
Mudie and Smith, and that the information he furnished
was accurately gauged to their ignorance. It is queer to
think of our so-called educated classes needing formal intro-
ductions to these works, and then read how a gardener's
lad of eleven, trudging in blue smock frock, with red
garters tied under his knees, from Farnham to Kew, spent
his last threepence at Richmond on the Ta/e of a Tub,
and records : " It delighted me beyond description, and
produced what I have always considered a sort of birth of
intellect. I read on until it was dark without any thought
of supper or bed." He slept where he had been reading,
in a field by a haystack, and goes on to say of his won-
derful threepenny book : " I carried it about with me
wherever I went, and when I — at about twenty years old —
lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy in'
North America, the loss gave me greater pain than I have
since felt at losing thousands of pounds." But this rustic
was William Cobbett, the only man since Swift who has
known how to write in prose for the masses with some-
thing of the same irresistible directness and vigour.
Too strong and terrible for Thackeray and Macaulay,
Swift is much more so for the average middle-class John
Bull, who, while among the bravest of the brave in many
respects, is one of the most timorous of mortals face to
face with disagreeable truths, truths that perturb his
eupeptic comfort, truths hostile to his easy . old-fashioned
way of thinking without thought, especially if these truths
affront his fat inertia in religious, moral, or social questions.*
* Elsewhere I had written on the same occasion : "To our mind, for
sheer strength and veracity of intellect, Swift is unsurpassed, and scarcely-
equalled, in the whole range of English writers, rich as the greatest of these
are in energy and sincerity. He was much too strong and veracious even for
such men as Johnson, Macaulay, and Thackeray ; Scott alone of his bio-
graphers was genial and large-minded enough to appreciate him, and Scott
had not the time to hunt out and sift the necessary documents. As for the
288 A NOTE ON FORSTER'S SWIFT.
This middle-class John Bull, well-fed, well-clothed, well-
housed, with a snug balance at his banker's, is the most
self-satisfied of optimists, and is simply disgusted and
alarmed by a fellow, who as a Dean ought surely to have
been contented and sleekly jolly, who never omitted when
his birthday came round to read the words of Job : " Let
the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which
it was said, There is a man child conceived ; " who asked
a friend, " Do not the corruptions and villanies of men eat
your flesh and exhaust your spirits ? " and who wrote of
himself in his epitaph : " Uh' scBva iJidignatio nlteriiis cor
lace rare nequit.''''
general English public, with its soft-hearted and soft-headed sentimental
optimism, a genius of such stern and unblenching insight is damned at once
and for ever by being denounced as a cynic. It loves to blubber till tear-dry
over its Dickens and Farjeon." — Cope s Tobacco Plant, April 1876,
( 289 )
A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH.
[OiY THE OCCASION OF '' BEAUCHAMFS CAREER.")
Ma V 1876.
George Meredith stands among our living novelists
much as Robert Browning until of late years stood
among our living poets, quite unappreciated by the general
public, ranked with the very highest by a select few. One
exception must be made to this comparison, an exception
decidedly in favour of the novelists and novel-readers ; for
whereas Tennyson, the public's greatest poet, is immeasur-
ably inferior to Browning in depth and scope and power
and subtlety of intellect, George EHot, the public's greatest
novelist, is equal in all these qualities, save, I think, the
last, to her unplaced rival, while having the advantage
in some deservedly popular qualities, and the clear disad-
vantage in but one, the faculty of conceiving and describ-
ing vigorous or agonistic action, — in the fateful crises her
leading characters are apt to merely drift. The thoughtful
few have succeeded in so far imposing their judgment of
Browning upon the thoughtless many, that these and their
periodical organs now treat him with great respect, and try
hard to assume the appearance of understanding and
enjoying him, though doubtless their awkward admiration
T
290 A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH.
is more genuine in the old sense of wonder or astonishment
than in the modern of esteem or love. But the thoughtful
few are still far from succeeding to this extent in the case
of George Meredith. Even literary men are unfamiliar
with him. For having in some freak of fun or irony
specified only two of his other books, and these among the
earliest, on his title-page ; leaving etcs. to represent Farina,
Evan Harrington, Rhoda Fleming, the Adventures of Harry
Richmond, Modern Love and other Poems, with his great
masterpieces, Emilia in England, and its sequel Vittoria ;
he has reaped the satisfaction of learning that many of his
well-informed reviewers manifestly know nothing of these
obscure writings. For the rest, the causes of his unpopu-
larity are obvious enough, and he himself, as he more than
once lets us know, is thoroughly aware of them. Thus he
interjects in the present work (III. 218-9) : —
" We will make no mystery about it. I would I could.
Those happy tales of mystery are as much my envy as the
popular narratives of the deeds of bread and cheese people,
for they both create a tide way in the attentive mind ; the
mysterious pricking our credulous flesh to creep, the
familiar urging our obese imagination to continual exercise.
And oh, the refreshment there is in dealing with characters
either contemptibly beneath us or supernaturally above !
]\Iy way is like a Rhone island in the summer drought,
stony, unattractive and difficult between the two forceful
streams of the unreal and the over-real, which delight
mankind — honour to the conjurors ! My people conquer
nothing, win none : tJiey are actual, yet uncommon. It is
the clockwork of the brain that they are directed to set ijt
motion, and— poor troop of actors to vacant benches ! — the
conscience residittg in thoughtfuhiess which they would appeal
to ; and if you are there impervious to them, we are lost :
back I go to my wilderness, where, as you perceive, I have
A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH. 291
contracted the habit of Hstening to my own voice more
than is good."
Not only does he appeal to the conscience residing in
thoughtfulness ; he makes heavy and frequent demands on
the active imagination, — monstrous attempts at extortion
which both the languid and the sentimental novel-reader
bitterly resent, and which indeed if they grew common
with authors (luckily there is not the slightest fear of that !)
would soon plunge the circulating libraries into bankruptcy.
The late Charles Dickens, who coincided at all points with
the vulgar taste as exactly as the two triangles of the fourth
proposition of the first book of Euclid with one another,
carried to perfection the Low-Dutch or exhaustive style of
description, which may be termed artistic painting reduced
to artful padding ; minutely cataloguing all the details, with
some exaggeration or distortion, humorous or pathetic, of
each to make them more memorable ; so that every item
can be checked and verified as in an auctioneers inven-
tory, which is satisfactory to a business-like people. George
Eliot with incomparably higher art paints rich and solid
pictures that fill the eye and dwell in the mind. But
George Meredith seldom does this, either in the realm of
Nature or in that of Humanity, though the achievement is
well within his power, as none of our readers can doubt
who studied, being fit to study, those magnificent selections
from his "Vittoria" in the Secularist (No. 10, March 4),
entitled Portrait of Mazzini and Alazzini a?id Italy. He
loves to suggest by flying touches rather than slowly
elaborate. To those who are quick to follow his sug-
gestions he gives in a few winged words the very spirit of
a scene, the inmost secret of a mood or passion, as no
other living writer I am acquainted with can. His name
and various passages in his works reveal Welsh blood, more
swift and fiery and imaginative than the English. And he
292 A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH.
says in the Emilia, with fair pride of race : "All subtle
feelings are discerned by Welsh eyes when untroubled
by any mental agitation. Brother and sister were Welsh,
and I may observe that there is human nature and Welsh
nature." If his personages are not portrayed at full
length, they are clear and living in his mind's eye, as
we discern by the exquisitely appropriate gesture or atti-
tude or look in vivid moments : and they are charac-
terised by an image or a phrase,, as when we are told
that the profile of Beauchamp " suggested an arrow-head
in the up-flight ; " and of Renee : " her features had the
soft irregularities which run to rarities of beauty, as the
ripple rocks the light ; mouth, eyes, brows, nostrils, and
bloomy cheeks played into one another liquidly ; thought
flew, tongue followed, and the flash of meaning quivered
over them like night-lightning. Or oftener, to speak truth,
tongue flew, thought followed : her age was but newly
seventeen, and she was French." And as with the outward
so with the interior nature of his personages. Marvellous
flashes of insight reveal some of their profoundest secrets,
detect the mainsprings and trace the movements of their
most complex workings, and from such data you must
complete the characters, as from certain leading points a
mathematician defines a curve. So with his conversations.
The speeches do not follow one another mechanically
adjusted like a smooth pavement for easy walking: they
leap and break, resilient and resurgent, like running foam-
crested sea-waves, impelled and repelled and crossed by
under-currents and great tides and broad breezes ; in their
restless agitations you must divine the immense life abound-
ing beneath and around and above them ; and the Mudie
novice accustomed to saunter the level pavements, finds
that the heaving and falling are sea-sickness to a queasy
stomach. Moreover be delights in the elaborate analysis
A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH. 293
of abstruse problems, whose solutions when reached are
scarcely less difficult to ordinary apprehension than are
the problems themselves ; discriminating countless shades
where the common eye sees but one gloom or glare, pur-
suing countless distinct movements where the common eye
sees only a whirling perplexity. As if all these heavy dis-
qualifications were not enough, as if he were not sufficiently
offensive in being original, he dares also to be wayward
and wilful, not theatrically or overweeningly like Charles
Reade, but freakishly and humoristically, to the open-
eyed disgust of our prim public. Lastly, his plots are too
carelessly spun to catch our summer flies, showing here
great gaps and there a pendent entanglement ; while his
catastrophes are wont to outrage that most facile justice
of romance which condemns all rogues to poverty and
wretchedness, and rewards the virtuous with wealth and
long life and flourishing large families.
In exposing his defects for the many, I have discovered
some of his finest qualities for the thoughtful and imagi-
native few, and need now only summarise. He has a
wonderful eye for form and colour, especially the latter;
a wonderful ear for music and all sounds ; a masterly per-
ception of character, a most subtle sense for spiritual
mysteries. His dialogue is full of life and reality, flexile
and rich in the genuine unexpected, marked with the
keenest distinctions, more like the bright-witted French
than the slow and clumsy English. He can use brogue
and baragouinage with rare accuracy and humorous effect ;
witness the Irish ]\Irs. Chump and the Greek Pericles in
Emilia. Though he seldom gives way to it, he is great in
the fiery record of fiery action ; thus the duel in the Stelvio
Pass, in Vittoria^ has been scarcely equalled by any living
novelist save by Charles Reade in that heroic fight with
the pirates in Hard Cash. He has this sure mark of lofty
^94
A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH.
genius, that he always rises with his theme, growing more
strenuous, more self-contained, more magistral, as the
demands on his thought and imagination increase. His
style is very various and flexible, flowing freely in whatever
measures the subject and the mood may dictate. At its
best it is so beautiful in simplest Saxon, so majestic in
rhythm, so noble with noble imagery, so pregnant with
meaning, so vital and intense, that it must be ranked
among the supreme achievements of our literature. A
dear friend said well when reading Vittoria : Here truly
are words that if you pricked them would bleed. For
integral grandeur and originality of conception, and for
perfectness of execution, the heroine of his Emilia appears
to me the sovereign character of our modern fiction : in
her he has discovered a new great nature, w^hom he has
endowed with a new great language. In fine, I am aware
of no other Uving English writer so gloriously gifted and so
little known and appreciated except Garth Wilkinson :
and Garth Wilkinson has squandered his superb genius in
most futile efforts to cultivate the spectral Sahara of Sweden-
borgianism, and, infinitely worse, the Will-o'-the-wisp Slough
of Despond of Spiritism ; while George Meredith has con-
stantly devoted himself to the ever-fruitful fields of real
living Nature and Human Nature.*
* Elsewhere I have written, on the occasion of the one vohime edition
of "Richard Feverel " :— " He may be termed, accurately enough for
a brief indication, the Robert Browning of our novelists ; and his day
is bound to come, as Browning's at length has come. The flaccid
and feeble folk, who want literature and art that can be inhaled as idly as
the perfume of a flower, must naturally shrink from two such earnestly
strenuous spirits, swifter than eagles, stronger than lions, in whom, to use
the magnificent and true language of Coleridge concerning Shakspeare,
' The intellectual power and the creative energy wrestle as in a war-
embrace.' But men who have lived and observed and pondered, who love
intellect and genius and genuine passion, who have eyes and ears ever open
to the mysterious miracles of nature and art, who flinch not from keenest
A NOTE ON GEORGE MEREDITH. 295
insight into the world and life, who are wont to probe and analyse with
patient subtlety the intricate social and personal problems of our complex
quasi-civilisation, who look not to mere plot as the be-all and end-all of a
novel reflecting human character and life, who willingly dispense with the
childish sugar-plums of so-called poetical justice which they never find
dispensed in the grown-up work-o'-day world, who can respond with thought
to thought, and passion to passion, and imagination to imagination ; and,
lastly, who can appreciate a style vital and plastic as the ever-evolving living
world it depicts, equal to all emergencies, which can revel with clowns and
fence with fine ladies and gentlemen, yet rise to all grandeurs of Nature and
Destiny and the human soul in fieriest passion and action : such men, who
cannot abound anywhere, but who should be less rare among meditative
smokers than in the rest of the community, will find a royal treasure-house
of delight and instruction and suggestion in the works of George
Meredith."— C^/ 6'" J Tobacco Plant, May 1879.
( 296 )
ON THE WORTH OF METAPHYSICAL
SYSTEMS.
May 1S76.
A FRIVOLOUS poet observes : "If it is hard to refrain from
flippancy when writing mere prose, it is almost impossible
when the subject is that broad burlesque, a system of
philosophy or theology. Yet we are in general so imposed
upon by weight of character and intellect as to regard such a
system with serious respect if not adoration. Any despotic
absolutism always finds abundant slavishness among men
to respond to it, just as the rich always find parasites,
mad prophets always daft believers, knaves always natural
dupes."
In preaching a short sermon on this flippant text,
let me begin by remarking that I throughout adhere to the
sense in which the word system seems to be used by the
said frivolous poet ; meaning a system general and absolute,
whether in philosophy or theology ; a system which professes
to expound the universe in its genesis or its eternity, its
development, its final causes or want of the same, its essen-
tial relations to the human soul (whose essence is equally
expounded), its essential relations to God if the system
includes a God (when his essence is indicated if not
expounded). Such a system is included in each of the great
WORTH OF METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 297
religions, and in nearly every great philosophy ; the latest
systems of the latter, those of the great Germans, Kant,
Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, being among
the most elaborate and absolute ever constructed. There
are other systems, rightly called philosophical, of a very
different kind, being founded on experience not intuition,
following Nature instead of trying to transcend her, con-
sciously limited amidst the inimitable. There is nothing
metaphysical in the greater part of what is called the
Ideahsm of Berkeley; the metaphysic comes when he
brings in the Eternal and Infinite Mind to give permanence
to the ideal world. There is nothing metaphysical in
Kant's demonstration that time and space are but constant
forms of our sensibility ; the metaphysic comes in when
beyond the phenomena of our perceptions he predicates
noumena or things in themselves of which we know nothing.
There is nothing metaphysical (save by lapse or oversight)
in the great modern psychological systems, for these con-
tinually appeal to the test of experience, and are in general
but working theories more or less comprehensive, always
open to modification by new discoveries and to inclusion in
wider formulas. And here we have the essential difference
between the natural and the extra-natural or supernatural,
between the relative and the absolute systems ; the former
as empirical are ever open to improvement and susceptible
of transformations, the latter as imperious and uncon-
ditional cannot suffer change without being destroyed.
Hence the former are continually advancing and ex-
tending, the latter are still where they commenced ; the
former have established much that is practically certain in
their limits, the latter in their deepest depths are each and
all as uncertain as ever.
What, then, is the worth of these absolute systems which
have fascinated some of the profoundest intellects and
298 ON THE WORTH OF
noblest spirits among mankind ? The fascination itself is
not to be wondered at, for no fascination can be stronger
to such intellects and such spirits than the hope of securing
certitude beneath the transitory and illusive shows of this
world and life. So intense, indeed, is this fascination that
it has bewitched exceedingly able and good men, who de-
spaired of attaining such certitude by rational inquiry, into
abjuring their reason, strangling their doubts, and seeking
peace in blind faith and abject submission to authority,
mutilating their minds as Origen mutilated his body, as in
the deplorable instance of J. H. Newman. But the builders
of systems do not, or will not, despair. The subtlest of them
recognise quite clearly the practical trustworthiness of what
the natural or relative sciences have established within their
limits ; but they cannot endure the utter blank immeasur-
able beyond those strait limits, the formless void unfathom-
able beneath their thin surface. They see plainly what
many of the triumphant and triumphing natural philosophers
do not see at all, that even the most obvious and common-
place so-called facts are undermined by deepest metaphysical
doubts. Admitting the relative truth, they must seek the
absolute basis ; acknowledging the limited fact, they hunger
for the universal law. They will build out of pure thought
a faithful counterpart of the world, a microcosm the pefect
image of the macrocosm ; believing that the laws and
processes of the human mind correspond with those of the
universe. With gigantic self-sufficiency each labours at his
task, in no wise daunted by the manifold and manifest
failures of all who have hitherto made the same attempt, in
no wise doubting that his mind is a true mirror of the world,
though he sees that its reflections are more or less different
from those of all other minds. Century after century,
sometimes generation after generation, sees the selfsame
attempt renewed, the building of a tower whose top shall
METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 299
reach unto heaven. When such a tower has been reared,
many of the bystanders beUeve that its top does reach to
heaven, for it is generally lost in the clouds, and, as Carlyle
observes, what we cannot see over is infinite to us. But
as men are removed from it in time, they perceive that its
summit gradually sinks beneath the horizon, and they who
visit it perceive that the structure announced everlasting is
mouldering away and falling to ruin like the vulgarest
building man erects for his sojourn. Then a new architect
sets to work with the same sublime aspirations, the same
indomitable self-sufficiency ; a fresh metaphysical tower with
a brand-new terminology loses its head in the clouds, to be
regarded with awe and reverence by its bystanders, to
crumble away and fall to ruin in its turn ; for the legend of
Babel and the confusion of tongues is the legend of system-
building in all ages.
And now that we have seen in history so many such
systems arise and disappear, all with the same assurance of
plan, all with the same instability of structure, it is natural
that we should ask the question I have put, What is their
worth ? To myself it appears that as systems their worth
is, and always has been, little or nothing. The building
and study of them has had a great educational worth in
developing powers and skill which could scarcely have been
called forth in their utmost energy by a hope less immense
and sublime ; and the study of them may be of great edu-
cational worth still. But examining any one of the great
systems as a system, we seem to discern that its value con-
sisted altogether in the value of some great thoughts or
noble sentiments embodied in it, and that these were not
improved but injured by the incorporation. When the
structure into which they were built is a ruin, they remain as
precious marbles, goodly for use in edifices less vast but less
imperfect, more humble but more habitable ; only to suit
300 ON THE WORTH OF
them to his purpose the ancient builder hacked and chipped
them into forms inconvenient for anything else, and per-
chance kept them obscure for ages in sombre crypt or lofty
dome. A man discovering some new truth or some new
aspect of an old one, will probably only strain and distort
it in trying to expand it into a complete system. For to
liim such truths are not as splendid jewels which he may
cut and polish, and set in star or cross or circlet, as his
taste may prefer ; this is the work of the poet ; the philo-
sopher undertakes to cut and set them in the sole best form
and order, harmonious with the form and order of sun and
moon and stars, and failing in this he damages them for
other use. Or, to vary the illustration, if from the depths
of a forest we glimpse a fragment of the remote horizon, and
mentally complete the circle in accordance with that arc,
our ring will not even be the ring of the meeting of earth
and sky encompassing our standpoint; ours will be all
shipless sea or green valley-bottom, while the true horizon
would be sea and shore, vale and river, wood and hill,
abounding with various life.
But it is strange that we have to appeal to history to show
the worthlessness of absolute systems. How can man, an
infinitesimal atom in the infinite universe, embrace that
infinity ? How can man, whose life is an inappreciable
moment in eternal time, comprehend the laws of that eter-
nity ? A critic may be very small, and a philosopher or
theologian very great (according to our petty human stan-
dards), yet the former in relation to the latter must be
immeasurably greater than the latter in relation to the uni-
verse he has the audacity to expound. Therefore even the
most stupid of men is quite justified in rejecting decisively
and without examination any universal system whether of
theology or philosophy, for beyond doubt it is ludicrously
inadequate. During many millenniums some of the best
METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS. 301
and wisest of our race have devoted themselves to teaching
us all about God and our immortal souls, the origin and
final causes of the world, and so forth ; yet when one comes
to reflect on the matter it is overwhelmingly certain that
not one of these men has ever really known anything about
any of these things, or whether they really exist or not. By
studying the signs of the times and commonly recurring
sequences, men may learn how (with due adroitness and
agility) to pick up a living for their microscopical selves in
this shoreless and fathomless ocean of being, of whose main
currents they are perforce perfectly ignorant. Let us ima-
gine a small colony of mice in a great cathedral, getting a
poor livelihood out of Communion crumbs and taper-
droppings. Could any of them by much deep speculation
comprehend the origin, the plan, the purpose of the cathe-
dral, the meaning of the altar, the significance of the
ritual, the clashing of the bells, the ringing of the chants,
the thunderous trepidations of the organ? Yet a mouse
explaining the final causes of all these things would be
incomparably less absurd than is a divine or sage expound-
ing the mysteries of Nature or God. The discreeter mice
would limit themselves to noticing and remembering that
certain periods and ceremonies were marked by more
numerous tapers burning, whence came more grease on the
floor, and by noting the spots where grease did more
abound. These would be the practical philosophers among
the mice, positivists or utilitarians ; and if while grease was
to be had, other mice lost their time in demonstrating that
the final cause of a great Church festival was to increase
the harvest of taper-droppings for their species, these
shrewder mice would not stay to dispute the point with
them, but would be off to their jolly feast of Candlemas.
I have said that the absolute systems have fascinated
some of the profoundest intellects and noblest spirits among
302 WORTH OF METAPHYSICAL SYSTEMS.
mankind. On the other hand, they have equally repelled
intellects not less profound and spirits not less noble. And
these, it must be added, have been more sane than those,
for there is always more or less of insanity in the fascina-
tion. As I have elsewhere had occasion to express it, such
a creed or system is a little strait-w^aistcoat wrought by some
little man, and in which he w^ould fain confine Titanic
Nature : she laughs with immense good-nature at the puny
fellow at first, but if he seriously persists in attempting to
force it on her, she inevitably makes him fit for a strait-
waistcoat himself.
( 303 )
A FEW WORDS ON THE SYSTEM OF
SPINOZA.
June iSyd.
Having recently hazarded some remarks On the Worth of
Metaphysical Systems, I proceed to illustrate my general
thesis by the example of a particular system, choosing for this
purpose the most profound, the most rigorously enunciated,
and the most influential of all modern philosophies, that of
Spinoza as expounded in his Ethics. I term it the most
influential, not only because all the great German positive
systems (Kant's important work was critical) have been
really based upon it, but also because of the power with
which it has wrought on great minds otherwise disaffected
to metaphysics. Lessing, Gothe, and Heine are leading
and well-known instances of the latter mode of influence ;
while of the former there is a remarkable testimony quoted
from Hegel's History of Philosophy : " Thought must ab-
solutely raise itself to the level of Spinozism ere mounting
yet higher. Would you be philosophers ? commence by
being Spinozists, else you can accomplish nothing. We
must first of all bathe ourselves in the sublime ether of the
unique, universal, and impersonal Substance, wherein the
soul purifies itself from all particularity and rejects all that it
304 A FEW WORDS ON THE
has heretofore believed true, all — absolutely all. We must
have arrived at this negation, which is the enfranchisement
of the spirit." Even in England the influence of Spinoza
among men of thought is much greater than is commonly
avowed or supposed ; and his leading terms have been so
far popularised by Mr. Lewes, that the most shallow of
sciolists can set himself up as a philosopher with no more
stock-in-trade than perpetual glib and senseless gabble about
the one Substance and its attributes and modes, while
evidently without even the dimmest idea of the real
meanings and relations of these terms as used by Spinoza.
No one unprejudiced can have studied the life of
Spinoza, as told by the good-hearted, narrow-minded
Lutheran minister, Colerus, and sketched by the free-
thinking doctor, Lucas, without reverencing the man, so
brave, so simple, so disinterested. No one impartial
and capable can have studied the Ethics without reverence
for his intellect, so subtle, so profound, so patient, so
sincere. Under the solemn twofold fascination of his
character and his genius, it is not easy to urge the callous
question, What is the sheer worth of his system as a system ?
Yet in order to honest appraisal this question must be urged,
and he of all men would have desired that it should be urged
persistently and thoroughly. I am not about to be guilty
of the presumption of pretending in a brief article to
review a philosophy revolved and elaborated during twenty
years of a secluded life, ''which was a long idea," by one
of the subtlest of men ; I merely try to examine its founda-
tion. The system fronts us, a master-work of metaphysical
construction and cohesion in itself. Acute critics have
scrutinised and tested it throughout, and have been con-
strained to admit that they could find no flaw of structure,
no unsoundness of material, in the edifice from basement
to roof But does it truly correspond in plan and elevation
SYSTEM OF SPINOZA, 305
with the living world ? Is it really the universe in miniature
and essence, a veritable microcosm, as the master-builder
undoubtedly believed ? And are its foundations solid and
stable, or is it but a castle in the air ? These are questions
for whose answers we must look beyond the building itself.
Let us first see what is the Substance which forms his
world. In Definition 6. of Part I. we read in the version
of Mr. Lewes : " By God I understand the Being absolutely
infinite, i.e., the Substance consisting of infinite Attributes,
each of which expresses an infinite and eternal essence."
Here the rendering of M. Emile Saisset seems more exact :
" By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, t'.e., a
substance consisting of an infinitude of attributes, of which
each expresses an eternal and infinite essence." The
eleventh Proposition declares that this God exists neces-
sarily ; and the fourteenth that no other Substance than
God can exist or be conceived. In the Introduction to
Part IV. we find the significant words : " This eternal and
infinite Being that we call God or Nature." Now, surely
this Substance is a purely metaphysical or subjective con-
ception, of whose objective reality we have not the shadow
of a proof We know something of perceptions which we
call matter ; we know something of thought and extension,
which in Part IL, Propositions i and 2, are declared to be
two of the infinite attributes of this unique absolutely infinite
Substance ; but we know nothing at all of the rest of the
infinitude of infinite attributes, and it is just as presump-
tuous and unprofitable to affirm them as to deny them.
And as this Substance is merely conceptional, so its expan-
sion into the infinity of infinite series of modes, "the
infinity of things infinitely modified," which by Part L,
Proposition 16, must flow from the necessity of the divine
nature, is purely logical or formal, and we have no ground at
all for believing that it runs parallel with the actual develop-
U
3o6 A FEW WORDS ON THE
mcnt of the real world. In making this assertion, and
challenging any proof to the contrary, I am not overlooking
such demonstrations as that of Proposition 7, Part II., " The
order and connexion of ideas is the same as the order and
connexion of things;" and its Corollary : "All that follows
objectively from the infinite nature of God, follows subjec-
tively from the idea of God in the same order and with
the same connexion." I simply contend that, however
true this may be in the system, and subject to its defini-
tions, there is a complete lack of demonstration and even
of presumptive evidence that it is true beyond the system
in the universe of life. If this fundamental objection
cannot be overcome, and I am unable to conceive how it
can be overcome, the whole system as a system falls to the
ground, it is a baseless, castle in the air, a speculative
figment, a matter of blind faith as certainly as any grossest
superstition. And therefore until this objection is removed,
or, to express it more appropriately, until this fathomless
abyss between logic and the mysteries of life is filled up,
it is needless to search out and adduce any other. With
regard, however, to the genesis and expansion of the series
of modes, I must refer to an important passage in one of
the most important sections of the Ethics^ the Appendix to
Part I. : "It results from Propositions 21, 22, and 23, that
the most perfect effect is that which is produced immediately
by God, and that an effect becomes more and more imper-
fect in proportion as its production involves a greater
number of intermediate causes." Not only is this doctrine
of emanation purely metaphysical, and as such without
probable correspondence in the development of Nature,
and indeed in direct antagonism to what we know of that
development ; it is also, if I understand aright, irrecon-
cilable with the root-ideas of Spinozism itself, the absolute
unity of the infinite Substance, and the identity of reality
SYSTEM OF SPINOZA. 307
and perfection. If All is the manifestation of one divine Sub-
stance, the necessary production of one divine energy, how
can intermediate causes intervene, and how can deteriora-
tion be possible? It is but fair to add that the argument
founded on this passage might be omitted without weaken-
ing the confutation of the doctrine of final causes : but it
must also be remarked that this doctrine of emanation
infects the subsequent parts, so that we have evil and
imperfection resulting from infinite and eternal perfection,
a contradiction even more glaring than in the Christian
scheme, where the fictions of creation and free-will shroud
it in comparative obscurity.
But assuredly if I must consider the system, as a system,
a failure, though so stupendous an achievement of human
genius and audacity, I do not consider Spinoza's life-work
wasted. In the former article I said : " But examining any
one of the great systems as a system, we seem to discern
that its value consisted altogether in the value of some great
thoughts or noble sentiments embodied in it, and that these
were not improved but injured by the incorporation." And
in such great thoughts and noble sentiments the system of
Spinoza abounds perhaps more than any other that has
been erected in Christendom. Let us look through the
Ethics^ choosing such as lend themselves to short quotation,
and reading them liberally, not as those in bondage to the
system and the letter, but as minds open to the spirit and
free truth, which live and endure while the fashions of
dogma and expression are ever changing. And first let us
recognise the sublimity of his intense, constant, dominating
conception of the unity of Substance, apart from the meta-
physical attributes, of which we can know nothing, where-
with he invested it ; a conception that in no narrow sense
amply merits the high eulogy of Hegel already quoted.
In my extracts I follow the French version of Emile
3o8 A FEW WORDS ON THE
Saisset, Mr. Lewes having translated only the opening
of Part I.
"This eternal and infinite Being that we call God or
Nature acts as it exists with an equal necessity. The
necessity that makes it exist is the same that makes it act."
— Introduction, Part IV.
" Neither intelligence nor volition belongs to the nature
of God." — Part I., Proposition 17, Scholium.
" There is nothing contingent in the nature of things ; all
things on the contrary are determined by thenecessity of the
Divine nature to exist and to act in a certain manner." — I., 29.
" The will cannot be termed a free cause, but only a
necessary or constrained cause. God does not act in virtue
of a free will." — I., 32, and Corollary.
" Nature proposes to herself no aim in her operations,
and all final causes are nothing but pure fictions imagined
by men." — L, Appendix.
" And thus they cease not to demand of you the cause
of the cause, until you take refuge in the will of God, that
is to say, in the asylum of ignorance." — Ik'd.
" For the perfection of things must be measured solely
by their own nature and power, and things are neither more
nor less perfect because they attract or repel the desires of
man, because they are useful or hurtful to the nature of
man." — Ih'd.
" Reality and perfection are to me the same thing." — II.,
Definition 6.
" Thought is an attribute of God ; in other words, God
is a thinking existence. Extension is an attribute of God ;
in other words, God is an extended existence. The think-
ing substance and the extended substance are one and the
same substance, which is conceived now under one .of its
attributes, and now under the other." — II., i, 2, and 7,
Scholium.
SYSTEM OF SPINOZA. 309
"The human soul is a part of the infinite mind of God.'
— II., II, Corollary.
" All Nature is one sole individual, of which the parts,
ie. all bodies, vary in an infinitude of manners without the
individual itself, in its totality, undergoing any change."
II., 13, Lemma 7, Scholium.
" Men deceive themselves in this, that they think them-
selves free. Now, in what consists such an opinion ?
Solely in this, that they are conscious of their actions, and
ignore the causes that determine them. The idea that men
have of their liberty comes, then, from this, that they know
not the cause of their actions, for to say that these depend
on the will is to use words to which no meaning is attached."
— II., 35, Scholium.
"When one reads most of the philosophers who have
discussed the passions and the conduct of mankind, one
would say that with them it has not been a question of
natural things, regulated by the general laws of the world,
but of things placed beyond the domain of Nature. They
seem to consider man in Nature as an empire within another
empire. According to them man disturbs the order of the
universe much more than he makes part of it ; he has an
absolute power over his actions, and his determinations
depend upon himself alone." — III., Introduction.
"As I think, nothing occurs in the universe that can be
attributed to a fault of Nature. For Nature is always the
same ; everywhere she is one, everywhere she has the same
virtue and the same power ; in other words, the laws and
rules of Nature, according to which all things are produced
and transformed, are everywhere and always the same, and
consequently we ought to explain all things whatsoever by
one sole and same method, I mean by the universal laws
of Nature."— /^/^.
" Joy is the passage from a less to a greater perfection.
3IO A FEW WORDS ON THE
Sorrow is the passage from a greater to a less perfection."
— III., Appendix; Definitions 2 and 3.
" Good and evil mark nothing positive in things con-
sidered in themselves, and are nothing but fashions of
thinking, or notions that we form by comparison of things.
In fact one and the same thing may be at the same time
good and bad, and even indifferent." — IV., Introduction.
" The supreme good of the soul is knowledge of God ;
and the supreme virtue of the soul is to know God." — IV.,
Proposition 28.
" Humility is not a virtue ; in other words, it does not
spring from reason." — IV., 53.
" Repentance is not a virtue, or in other words, it does
not spring from reason ; on the contrary, he \vho repents of
an action is twice miserable or impotent." — IV., 54.
" The one thing in the world of which a free man thinks
the least is death, and his wisdom is not the meditation of
death but of life." — IV., 67.
" He who loves God cannot try to make God love him
in return." — V., 19.
" The intellectual love of the soul for God is the very
love God feels for himself ... in other words, the intel-
lectual love of the soul for God is a part of the infinite love
of God for himself "—v., 36.
" Even if we knew not that our soul is eternal, we
would not cease to consider as the first objects of life,
piety, religion, in a word, all that corresponds with courage
and generosity of soul. . . . We diverge here, it seems,
from the vulgar opinion. For most men think that they
are not free save in so far as they are permitted to obey
their passions, and that they cede out of their right all that
they yield to the commandments of the divine law. Piety,
religion, and all the virtues that are related to energy of soul,
are therefore in their view burdens from which they hope
SYSTEM OF SPINOZA. 311
to disencumber themselves at death, in receiving the reward
of their bondage, t'.e., of their submission to reHgion and
piety. And it is not only this hope that leads them ; the
fear of the terrible sufferings with which they are menaced C/. ^
in the other world is likewise a powerful motive determining
them to live, in so far as their weakness and their impotent
soul allow, according to the commandments of the divine
law. If this hope and this fear were withdrawn from men,
if these persuaded themselves that the souls perish with the
bodies, and that there is not a second life for the miserable
who have borne the crushing weight of piety, it is certain
that they would return to their primitive character, regulat-
ing their life according to their passions, and choosing to
obey fortune rather than themselves. A conduct as absurd,
in my opinion, as that of a man who should fill his body
with poisons and deadly food, for the fine reason that he had
no hope to enjoy wholesome nourishment for all eternity,
or who, seeing that the soul is not eternal or immortal, should
renounce his reason, and wish to become insane ; things so
preposterous that they are scarcely worth mention." — V., 41,
and SchoHum.
" Beatitude is not the reward of virtue, it is virtue
itself; and not because we restrain our evil passions do
we possess it, but because we possess it we are capable of
restraining our evil passions." — V., 42 (the last).
These, and such as these, are the great thoughts and
noble sentiments that give such inestimable value to the
system which adds no worth to them, but rather detracts
from their intrinsic value. When the elaborate geometrical
construction, with all its intricate framework of Definitions,
Axioms, Postulates, Propositions, Corollaries, Scholiums,
and Lemmas, shall be regarded as a mere curiosity, a
Chinese puzzle of miraculous patience and ingenuity, these
thoughts and sentiments will still be an inspiration for
312 THE SYSTEM OF SPINOZA.
earnest and sincere and meditative men. I cannot reflect
without deep awe on the sustained grandeur, the divine
energy of the intellect and soul which could clearly discern,
persistently feel and calmly announce such doctrines in an
age and clime whose noblest spirits were still, with very
few exceptions, dominated by Christianity, the religion of
humility, of repentance, of sorrow, of Heaven and Hell, of
miracles and special Providence, of vilified Matter, of a God
alien from the Universe. The sublime sentences of this
most subtle Oriental genius recluse in the Occident, whose
life was a long trance and ecstasy of contemplation, are as
superhuman spells disclosing immense and serene horizons
beyond the huddled and sordid tumult of our common life,
clouded with low creeds, bounded by narrow thoughts,
turbid with selfish passions.
( 3^3 )
IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST.
January iSyy.
A MILD pleasant day after weeks of wind and rain, a
clear moonlit night heralding storm and flood ; the last
day of the Old Year and the eve of the New. About
ten the bells began ringing for the " watch-night " services,
wherein the few still faithful and the many merely curious
solemnise the annual death and birth with confessions and
litanies and chanting. And while the air rang with the
bells, I thought : I have seen so many old years die, so
many new years born ; but when has the new proved better
than the old ? and where is omen or hope that the year yet
unborn shall prove better than the year now dying ? Have
I any tender grief for the departure ? Have I any joyous
welcome for the advent ? Let me pass in sleep that nar-
rowest moment of midnight wherein ere a man can cry Now !
the one has given place to the other. So I lay down and
slept. But though St. Sylvester rules no more, and the
weird ghostly masquerades are abolished, the night which
was his remains for us mortals potent with sleeping visions
as with waking reveries ; a night that looks back to the
past and forward to the future, a night pregnant with
phantasy. Wherefore though I slept, my mind was not at
peace, but carried me in sad dream to a forest immense
314 /A' OUR FOREST OF THE PAST.
and obscure, even the forest of the past which is dead ; and
it was full of moanings and waiHngs, vague yet more
articulate than the moaning of winds or waters ; and One
moved beside me who was tall and stately and muffled in
darkness. And when we had walked long, silent, under
the thick leafage, among the massy boles, the wailings grew
keener and more piteous; and we came upon an open
space where was gathered a vast multitude of infants and
young children, whose desolate cries and pining faces made
my heart sore. And he my companion and leader mur-
mured softly : Scarcely had they blossomed into the world
of life than they withered away out of it ; and for too early
death they have no rest: they wail their frustrate lives.
We left the poor little ones and walked on silent ; and as
their wailing sank, a sound of saddest moaning grew upon
our ears ; and in a broad glade we discerned a multitude
of youths and maidens, wan or fever-flushed ; all restless,
though drooping with weakness and languor ; and their
tears were as tears of the very heart's blood, and all hope
of comfort expired in their sighs. And when we had gazed
long, my companion murmured : Young Love tendered
them the apple of his Mother, golden and rose-red from
her divine warm hand, but it turned to dust and ashes on
their lips ; for the bitterness of death they can never find
peace : they moan their frustrate lives. We went onward
through the gloom from moaning unto moaning; and
beheld a multitude of men and women, halt, maimed,
twisted, bent, blind, dumb, convulsed, leprous; hoarsely
groaning or gesturing anguish ; dreadful to hear and to see.
And my guide murmured: The wine of existence was
brought to them in goblets broken or leaking ; for the full
sweet draught they had but a scanty sip : they lament their
frustrate lives. And as we walked on we heard wild shrieks
and dbberinc: lauirhter ; and we came to a rugged ravine,
IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST. 315
on whose banks clustered cowering idiots, many with a large
tumour at the throat, and whose floor was full of a restless
multitude, haggard and dishevelled, swift and abrupt in
movement, furious in gesticulation ; horrible to hearing and
to sight. And my companion murmured as I turned away
shuddering : The wine of existence passed to them was
drugged or poisoned, and they drank stupor or madness ;
death has no nepenthe for these whose wine of love was as
a philter of hate : they curse and mock their frustrate lives.
Then we crossed a space of upland heath, and I saw the
stars shining, cold and supreme in the deep dark heavens,
and I said to him at my side : Nature is very cruel to
man. And he answered calmly : But how kind to all other
creatures ! and how kind is man to his brother, and to
himself! Then we plunged again into the thick forest, as
into a moaning midnight sea, and came upon an immense
multitude, many shivering in thin rags, many nearly naked,
all gaunt and haggard, with hollow eyes and famished
faces ; and some huddled together as for warmth, and some
moved restlessly hither and thither, and in their moaning
was eternal hunger. And my leader said : Rich men grew
richer with their toil ; kings and priests and great lords
were fed fat with the flesh that fell away from their bones ;
they starved in body and in mind ; their existence was a
long need : they moan their frustrate lives. And we went
forward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we
came upon a multitude of whom some were chained together
in long files, some were fettered or manacled singly ; many
nearly naked were scored livid or blood-red with the lash ;
others lay helpless or writhing on the ground as broken on
the wheel or dislocated by the rack ; others were clothed
in garments of flames as ready for their own burning ;
others glared wildly bewildered through tangled locks as
stupefied or maddened by years of the dungeon ; and their
3i6 IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST.
moanings were lamentable with the bitterness or suUenness
of despair. And my guide said : They were imprisoned
and chained and lashed for their crimes by the rich who
had kept them wretched and ignorant and vile ; they were
dungeoned or tortured by kings because they dared try to
be free ; they were tortured and burned alive by priests
because they dared to think for themselves : they moan
their frustrate lives. And we went onward continually from
moaning unto moaning. And we reached an enormous
multitude, the soldiery of all nations, and many w^re
mangled and mutilated, gashed and bleeding, torn and
shattered ; others lay as starving, others as in fever, others
as devoured by frost ; and those who seemed unhurt
paced erect with a stolid misery in the forthright regard.
And my leader said : They were torn from their kindred,
they were cut off from the sweet life of home; for love
they were given lust, for the ploughshare that produces,
the sword that destroys ; from men they were drilled into
machines : for the pride of kings and nobles, for the
enmities of priests, they went forth to kill or be killed
by their fellows whom they knew not, against whom they
had no cause of hatred, who had no cause of hatred
against them ; to ravage and burn and massacre ; the cries
of the homeless, the widows, the fatherless, are ever in
their ears: they moan their worse than frustrate lives.
And we went onward continually from moaning unto moan-
ing. And we came to a vast multitude ; cowled monks
and veiled nuns moaning for ever a hopeless Miserere;
cadaverous ascetics, self-starved, self-lashed, self-tortured,
grovelling on the earth, staring spell-bound on skulls,
sobbing and weeping, supplicating with desperate despair-
ing supplications the image of a wretched human figure
nailed to a cross. And my guide said : For religion they
renounced the sweetness of home, the healthful brother-
IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST. 317
hood and sisterhood of humanity, freedom and self-
reliance ; they renounced all the goodness and sweetness
of the world, to gain the Heaven in which you see them
here : they moan their frustrate lives. And we went on-
ward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we
came to a multitude, of whom some frail and languid
were reclining on the earth, and others paced to and fro,
while all were in profound dejection. And my guide said :
Here are the dreamers who made no earnest effort to
realise their dreams of goodness, or beauty, or truth ; and
here are the strong and strenuous minds baffled and
vanquished by feeble bodies or adverse fate : they moan
their frustrate Uves. And we went onward continually
from moaning unto moaning. And we came to an
innumerable multitude of men and women, dull-eyed,
bloated, sluggish, bewildered, moaning uneasily in their
semi-torpor. And my guide said : Their lives were nar-
rowed to their homes, they worshipped wealth, they cringed
to the dust before rank, they aspired but to comfort and
good repute, they were shut in and walled up from Nature
and art and thought : they moan their frustrate lives. And
we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning.
And we came upon a multitude ; great lords in rich furred
robes, great prelates in purple and crimson ; and they were
drooping and broken and crushed down as if robed with
lead, and coronet and mitre seemed of lead on their brain.
And my guide said : They lived superb and luxurious as a
race apart and above their kind, trampling on the necks
of their fellows ; they were fat with the insolence of un-
earned wealth ; their choice wines were the blood of the
poor, their choice meats were the flesh of those who toiled
for them ; they scorned and denied human brotherhood :
they moan their worse than frustrate lives. And we went
onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And in
3i8 IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST.
the deepest depth of gloom of the forest we passed among
figures each wandering alone, and they were crowned
monarchs, and the crowns seemed of fire burning ever
through the brain ; and in the regard of each I read the
anguish and despair of a horrible isolation, and each
pressed his right hand to his heart as if it were bursting
with agony. And my guide said : They counted them-
selves as gods, looking down upon their kind, contemptuous,
impassible, unbeneficent ; moving them hither and thither
at will, sacrificing thousands to a lust or a caprice, sending
them forth by myriads to slay and be slain ; before them
was terror, and behind them death and desolation ; for
their glory and their sumptuousness millions toiled in want
and misery : they moan their worse than frustrate lives.
Then I paused and spoke to my leader : My heart is sick
and sorrowful to death with this vision of the past of my
kind ; have all human lives, then, been frustrate, and not
any fulfilled ? And he answered : Come and see. And
we turned to the right and went down through the wood,
leaving the moanings behind us ; and we came to a broad
valley through which a calm stream rippled toward the
moon, now risen on our left hand large and golden in a
dim emerald sky, dim with transfusion of splendour ; and
her light fell and overflowed a level underledge of softest
yellow cloud, and filled all the valley with a luminous mist
warm as mild sunshine, and quivered golden on the far
river-reaches ; and elsewhere above us the immense sweep
of pale azure sky throbbed with golden stars ; and a won-
derful mystical peace as of trance and enchantment
possessed all the place. And in the meadows of deep
grass where the perfume of violets mingled with the-
magical moonlight, by the river whose slow sway and lapse
might lull their repose, we found tranquil sleepers, all with a
light on their faces, all with a smile on their lips. And my
IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST. 319
leader said : Their wine ^Yas pure, and the goblet full ; they
drank it and were content : their day was serene,* every hour
filled with work that was pleasure, or with equable pleasure
itself ; so when night came they lay down content : they
had health and strength, they were simple, truthful and
just, they were free-hearted and could give bountifully, they
were free-minded and lived free, they were warm-hearted
and had many friends, they loved and were beloved, they
had no fear of life or death ; wherefore when life was ful-
filled they died content : and therefore they now sleep
placidly the sleep that is eternal ; and the smile upon their
lips, and the light in shadow from beneath their eyelids,
tell that they dream for ever some calm happy dream : they
enjoy unremembering the fruit of their perfect lives. And
as we lingered along the valley, side by side with the river,
and the moon from above the southern wooded slope gazed
down as in trance on that entranced Elysium, the thought
of the sombre and baleful forest through which we had come
weighed heavily upon my heart, and I said : How few are
these in their quiet bliss to all the countless moaning mul-
titudes w^e have seen on our way ! And my companion
answered : They are very few. And I sighed : Must it be
always so ? And he responded : Did Nature destroy all
those infants ? did Nature breed all those defects and
deformities ? did Nature bring forth all those idiocies and
lunacies ? or, was not rather their chief destroyer and pro-
ducer the ignorance of Man outraging Nature ? And the
poor, the prisoners, the soldiery, the ascetics, the priests,
the nobles, the kings ; were these the work of Nature, or
of the perversity of Man ? And I asked : ^Vere not the
very ignorance and perversity of Man also from Nature?
* "A happy soul, that all the way
To Heaven rides in a summer's day." — Cras/iaw.
320 IN OUR FOREST OF THE PAST.
And he replied : Yea ; yet perchance, putting himself child-
like to school, he may gradually learn from Nature herself
to enlighten the one and control the other. — Then the
dolorous moanings again filled my ears, even in the moon-
lit valley of peace; and I awoke in the moonlight and,
heard the moaning of the gale swelling to a storm.
THE END.
PRINTED UV BALLANTYNE, HANSON, AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
332 tfj0 same ^[utfjor.
THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT,
AND OTHER POEMS.
London : REEVES & TURNER, 196 Strand.
Price 5 J-. ; large paper copies, \os.
OPINIONS OP THE PRESS.
" George Eliot" to the unknown author of " The City of
Dreadful A'ight " ;
"The Priory, 21 North Bank, Regent's Park,
May^o, 1874.
"Dear Poet, — I cannot rest satisfied without telling you that
my mind responds with admiration to the distinct vision and grand
utterance in the poem which you have been so good as to send me.
"Also, I trust that an intellect informed by so much passionate
energy as yours will soon give us more heroic strains with a wider
embrace of human fellowship in them — such as will be to tlie
labourers of the world what the odes of Tyrtseus were to the
Spartans, thrilling them with the sublimity of the social order and
the courage of resistance to all that would dissolve it. . . . —
Yours sincerely, M. E. LevvES,"
" It is at least ten years since a real unmistakable poet has revealed
himself in England. Mr. Swinburne's ' Atalanta ' was published in
1865, Mr. Morris's * Jason ' in 1868, Mr. Rossetti's poems were pub-
lished for the world in 1870, and even then the most precious of
them were not exactly new. A year ago one might have said, with-
out any disrespect to many accomplished writers whose work is
often praiseworthy and sometimes enjoyable, that one lost little
or nothing in neglecting any living English poet except the three
already named and Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning, whose fame
has been safe and sealed these twenty years.
I
"A pessimist might think it of evil omen that we should have had
to wait so long for a new poet ; of worse omen that he should be a
]iessimist himself, who dedicates his work 'to Giacomo Leopardi,
the younger brother of Dante ; ' of worse omen still that he should
be a relapsed pessimist who has struggled into daylight and gone
back into the darkness. . . . Even Lamariine hardly imagined that
he was ' Raphael,' and Mr. Thomson, a manlier and simpler writer,
knows that he never reigned in the 'Castle of Indolence' ; but after
all, nothing tells us so much of the young Lamartine as ' Raphael,'
and we pity the denizen of the ' City of Dreadful Night ' more
when we recognise the gracious traits of what he must have been
^ iiella sua vita nuova'' in the 'Lord of the Castle of Indolence,'
written in 1859. . . . Entire originality of invention is not exactly
INIr. Thomson's forte. But this does not matter much ; the splendid
symbolism with which he invests what he borrows is all his own.
" One can trace the influence of what is sweetest and simplest in
Browning, of what is richest in ' Maud,' as well as the influence of
Heine, in two veiy fresh idyls of Cockaigne called ' Sunday at
Hampstead ' and ' Sunday up the River.' They date from 1863 to
1865, and open the series of the author's brightest, sanest, and most
varied work. What strikes one first, perhaps, is the writer's
absolute and courageous content with circumstances which have a
sordid side to them. . . . There is the same touch of cynicism in
.<-ome distichs on Art, written in 1865. . . . The quatrains under
the same heading which come before on the thesis that passion
leaves no room for prettiness or skill, have more of Heine's charm
and subtlety than most translations of Heine, including Mr. Thom-
son's. . . . 'The City of Dreadful Kight' is not a poem, nor a
series of poems ; it seems as if the writer had intended at one time
to compose a continuous poem in stanzas of seven lines, like those
of ' Our Ladies of Death ' (except that the fifth and sixth lines are
always written upon double rhymes, managed with rare and
admirable ease), and at another had contemplated a series of poems
on his own experience and observations there, in which the narrative
should be written in stanzas of six lines, a quatrain followed by a
distich, while the words of other speakers are thrown into simpler
and more emphatic metres. The fragments of each scheme are
exquisitely finished ; there is no redundancy or weakness in any
single poem ; but the attempt to fuse two incomplete schemes is not
a complete success. . . . " — G. A. Simcox, in I-'ortjiightly J\evieu>,
July 1880.
"In the course of last year a good-natured scliolarly gentleman
announced in a contempoiary his discovery of a literary pheno-
menon. Our readers w ill remember the enthusiasm of the immortal
Mr. Pickwick when, in the course of his peregrinations, he pottered
upon the famous 'antique inscription,' which an irreverent member
of the club averred to be no ancient inscription at all, but simply
the honest English words — 'Bill Stubbs his Mark.' Much in the
same way Mr. G. A. Simcox, himself known as the author of some
very fine verses, made his discovery of what he called ' a new poet,'
and announced it to the world with that fiery zeal which is the
characteristic always of the true Pickwickian. The poet so dis-
covered was a namesake of the author of the 'Seasons,' and his
book was entitled 'The City of Dreadful Night.' . . . Prosaic
outsiders, however, were a little incredulous. Nor did a perusal of
Mr. Thomson's not too original verses increase their faith. Not
without smiles, therefore, they waited for a little more evidence of
authenticity, which has been promptly offered in the shape of a
second volume, ' Vane's Story, and other Poems ' (Reeves & Turner).
Unfortunately for our good-natured enthusiast, this volume quite
destroys the theory of true poetic talent, and makes the ' Bill
Stubbs ' hypothesis at least tenable. For if ever the mark of ' Bill
Stubbs' was written upon a book, it is imprinted upon this
one. . . ." — Nameless, in Contemporary Revieiv, February iSSi.
"There can, we think, be no doubt that 'The City of Dreadful
Night ' contains many passages of great beauty. The impress of
real genius is upon it, but genius which is only likely to be appre- '
ciated by a few. . . . He is both a scholar and a thinker. In
short, he writes above the heads of the multitude. In these days,
in proportion to the depth of his thoughts is a poet unpopular. The
most popular poet of the day is Longfellow. He numbers probably
thousands of readers, where a man like Matthew Arnold has only
one ; but that one, let us remember, is worth all the thousands.
Mr. Thomson must console himself with some such reflection. . . .
One of the fine>i of Mr. Thomson's poems after 'The City,' is an
allegory of * The Naked Goddess.' The poem is not merely
marked by great beauty both of thought and felicity of language,
but by a quaint, subtle humour, which is a characteristic of many of
Mr. Thomson's pieces. The most beautiful part, however, of the
allegory, is the incident of two little children, a boy and a girl, who
come to the goddes?, and beg to live with her in the wood. . . .
"Another equally beautiful allegory is 'Hebe.' It tells how nature
offers to us all a cup of nectar to drink, buthow we all of us adulterate
it with poison, and are never content to drink it pure. Amongst
the satirical poems, let us call especial attention to ' Virtue and
Vice.' It might have taken for its motto Thackeray's saying, 'The
bad do much harm, but no one knows how much evil the good do.'
Lastly, the volume closes with some admirable translations of Heine,
with whose genius Mr. Thomson has so much in common. Let us
strongly recommend ' Tlie City' to all who are interested in the
great problems of existence. Our quotations will show how much
beauty it contains. Mr. Thomson, however, cannot well be judged
by quotations. His muse takes a very wide and bold sweep." —
Westminster Reviezv.
" It is worth while, I think, to chronicle the appearance of a new
poet. Such I have little hesitation in pronouncing Mr. James
Thomson, the author of ' The City of Dreadful Night, and Other
Toems.' In the case of the new singer, the world has been in no
hurry to listen, and the worlion impossible. The words ai^ "7"
not built or driven together, but come in their places as if it were
the most natural thing for them to do, and they could not help it.
This quality of Mr. Thomson's work reminds us now and then of
Wordsworth, we mean in his happier vein, when he is naturally
and truly simple, not in the pieces where he affects a forced and
bald rusticity. Mr. Thomson includes in his volume some modestly
entitled ' Attempts at Translation from Heine.' They are very
good, but their interest is rather dimmed by the company in which
they appear. . . . We hope that we may one day expect from Mr.
Thomson, not more finished work, for that we could hardly desire,
but something framed on a scale and with a continuity of design
which shall give his powers ampler scope." — Pall Mall Gazette.
'' The author has high gifts. . . . These are mainly a directness,
brilliance, and vigour, such as we see in Ebenezer Elliott, without
his ill temper, and with a native melody, and a sense of beauty,
such as the Corn-Law Rhymer never showed. . . . This makes us
look forward with no small interest to Mr. Thomson's next volume."'
— A then (Sum.
"The present volume of verse is an unusually interesting one,
testifying, indeed, to a certain lack of range in the author's thought,
and to a concentration of his ideas upon certain riddles which the
wise indifference of the wise is apt to leave unattempted, but singu-
larly melodious in expression, dignified and full of_ meaning, and
bearing witness to reading as well as to meditation. . . . The
[leading] poem ends witTr two descriptively allegorical passages of
extreme beauty. The one is a vision of a sphinx and an angel, who
face each other, undergoing metamorphoses as the spectator gazes,
so that the angel, at first armed and winged, loses his wings, then
his sword, and then falls prostrate at the feet of the unchanging
sphinx. The other is a description of the 'Melencolia' not unworthy
to be inscribed as a legend under the print itself. But it is exceed-
ingly rare to find a volume, in which so large a number of the pieces
contained have a distinct and individual poetic attractiveness. . . .
That he has what somebody once called a fine gloomy imagination is
not contestable, and, fortunately, he is not always given up to it. His
book, if it were ever possible to induce Englishmen to buy poetry
except as they buy wine— not because of its goodness, but because
of the name of the seller— ought to be widely read. ... On the
whole, the interest and attraction of the volume are of the most
considerable, though we cannot help wishing that Mr. Thomson
had read Shakespeare more, and Leopardi less." — George Saints-
bury, in the Academy.
" ' In the Room,' a dialogue between the articles of furniture in
a darkened and unopened room, leading at last to the disclosure that
the occupant is lying dead upon the bed, having died by his own
hand, has a fine gradual horror, which is masterly in its wav ; while
tiie poems, entitled ' Sunday at Hanipstead ' and 'Sunday up the
River,' strike us as being as fresh and original as anything we have
read for a considerable time. 'V . . Such songs as 'Drink ! Drink !
Open your Mouth,' and ' As we Rush, as we Rush in the Train,' have
the best singing quality, and do no small credit to their author."
Notes arid Queries.
''It is a certainty that Mr. Thomson is a poet. He is not a
writer of verses merely. Whoever has read this strangely powerful
volume must feel that it is not to be dealt with with that ever-risino-
flood of recent verse. He is no imitator, no writer of polished lines \
inspired by Wordsworth, or INIr. Tennyson, or Mr. Swinburne, who
has so much sham poetry to answer for. Here we have the note of
genuine poetic feeling, and the medium of communication in the J
most exquisitely^ skilful and vigorous verse. Not since the days
when Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Morris startled the reading world has
any volume called forth more decided and sterling praise than this
one before us. Each piece in it is dated, and it is curious to observe
that many of the finest poems were written before the Mr. Swinburne
and Mr. Morris aforesaid were known. . . . Mr. Thomson is a poet
of despair, a pessimist of the most determined character ; and he
has appropriately dedicated his volume to the Italian Leopardi (B.
V.'s translations of Leopardi's fine prose were a striking feature in
the democratic journal above mentioned), who somewhere says that
' all is a mystery except our grief.' The longest piece in the book,
'The City of Dreadful Night,' is nothing but an allegorical repre-
sentation of the misery and hopelessness of human life. It is frag-
mentary, and far from perfect as a whole ; but its constituent parts
are of singular beauty, and some passages need fear no comparison.
. . . 'The Naked Goddess' is a fine allegory, showing how
they drive off the Goddess of Nature who seek to clothe "her in
the garments of our city life. . . . One of the most beautiful for
wealth of imagery and symbolism, and ease of construction, is 'The
Lord of the Castle of Indolence.' . . . The two idylls, ' Sunday up
the River' and ' Sunday at Hampstead,' are grotesque and inten-
tionally vulgar, and at times abounding in passages of great beauty,
. . . Mr. Thomson is a thorough democrat and proud of his class,
yet his true sphere is a high one, and he returns naturally to a lofty
8
tone of keen poetic insight. The two idylls contain some of the
finest pieces in the volume. He has also a touching, tender little ■ \.\^
poem to Mrs. Browning, which is matchless. . . . He appends to
his own verse what he modestly calls 'Attempts at Translation from
Heine.' Certainly no poem is translatable exactly from one language
into another ; but we think Mr. Thomson has succeeded extraor-
dinarily well Those who cannot read German will never get a better
notion of one of Heine's little gems than from this translation. . . .
It is impossible to lose less of the magic of Heine's verse than
Mr. Thomson has. But we must now leave him. It is long since
M'e have met with such a poetic talent as his. Our only regret is
that it should be married to what we cannot help considering an
erroneous view of life. But it is ungrateful to quarrel with a writer
who has provided us with such an artistic treat as is afforded to us
by this splendid volume."— Z/^j^'.? IVee^/y London Nen'spaper.
" Occasionally, as in 'Virtue and Vice,' Mr. Thomson is bitterly
defiant of conventional piety and conventional propriety ; and in
this mood his verse is always vigorous, though perhaps unnecessarily
morbid. The two finest poems in the volume — equal throughout in
the perfection of their workmanship and structure, and noble in the
ideas they embodv— are the ' Naked Goddess,' a splendid allegory,
and ' L'Ancien Regime,' which is a scathing denunciation of the
old Continental Monarchical system." — Scotsman.
" Some years ago extracts appeared in various newspapers from
a poem entitled 'The City of Dreadful Night,' which had been
published under the signature of ' B. V.' in a periodical devoted
to ' advanced ' opinions of various kinds. . . . ' The City of Dread-
ful Night ' contains passages which for command of imagery and ^
language few living poets need refuse to sign. The ' everlasting no ' ^
has'^nof often been pictured in words of more skilfully arranged hues
and style, and the only thing perhaps that the poem lacks is a cer-
tain simplicity and spontaneity which are too often absent in con-
temporary verse, as well as the directness and breadth of theme
which are also among the crying wants of modern poetry. At the
same time no critic can afford to slight such evidence of power over
words and thought as the closing stanzas of ' The City of Dreadful
Night ' afford in the allegorical pictures of the sphinx and the angel,
who face each other till the latter is transformed and passes away
wholly, and in the transcript into words of ' the melencholia that
tran.-cends all wit.' The latter in especial is a iour deforce of word-
ing which in verse will fairly support comparison with Mr. PaterX__^
halidling of the same subject in Y)vose."--Manc/ies/er Guardian.
J3g t])t same ^[utljor.
VANE'S STORY,
WEDDAH AND M-E L-BO N A I N,
AND OTHER POEMS.
London: REEVES & TURNER, 196 Strand.
Price <)S.; large ^aper copies, \os.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
" iNlR. Thomson in his ' City of Dreadful NiglU ' sliowed but few
elements of popularity. In his present volume there are still le>?.
Probably Mr. Thomson has eschewed them with a set purpose. In
fact Mr. Thomson appears to us to at times hold the ordinary reader
in contempt. This frame of mind, however, may be carried to
excess. For instance, many persons will be repelled by certain
passages in 'Vane's Story,' and will not give themselves the trouble
to read further. This would be a grievous mistake. The volume
contains one of the finest narrative poems which has been written
in modern times; full of beauty, and wrought together with manly
powerful verse. Of ' Weddah and Om-El-Bonain ' it may be truly
said, to quo:e from one of its opening stanzas, —
' Perfect beauty is its own sole end;
It is ripe flower and fruit, not bud and leaf.'
Here, in short, we meet Mr. Thomson at his very best. Then,
too, there are a quantity of minor poems which all show Mr. Tliom-
son's rare qualities of quaintness, humour, and melody. . . . Such
an exquisite little poem, so pregnant with meaning, ought to send
many a reader to Mr. Thomson's new volume." — Westuiinster Rez'iczo.
'• The tone of * The City of Dreadful Night ' was so pessimistic
that great credit was due to Mr. Thomson for consenting to live at
all. And he has been rewarded : his despair has attracted so much
attention that his publishers have, even in such times as these,
taken courage to publish another volume, in which the poet
2
4-
( 2 )
despairs no lonc:er, Init is, on the contrar}', very cheerful. Indeed,
the great fault of ' Vane's Story ' is that its tone is much too lively
for poetry. . . .
"It is a pity that 'Vane's Story ' stands first in Mr. Tliom-
son's volume. We have only to turn to ' Weddah and Om-El-
Bonain ' to see what a true poet he is after all. As a piece of
solid, vigorous, and masculine narrative, it would be difficult to find
Tfs superior among the writings of contemporary poets. That it is a
rendering of an anecdote the writer found in ' De Stendhal ' is true ;
but it is when the poem is compared with that original that Mr.
Thomson's t:ifts are most apparent. In every form of literary art it
may be said that the faculty of selection is at once the rarest and
ihe'most iirecious. The vitality of any narrative depends not upon
how much is said, but upon what is said. . . . Now it is in this
gift of selection that Mr. Thomson excels. He by instinct selects
and amplifies the right points ; he says enough— he never says too
much. Moreover, there is a dignity of style in this poem which is
remarkable if we remember ' Vane's Story.' " — Alhemzum.
" It is not surprising that ]\Ir. Thomson should have been tempted
by the favourable reception of his ' City of Dreadful Night ' to issue
another volume. As its contents are exclusively old work, no
reproach can be addressed to him on the score of haste. The
poems in this volume are scrupulously dated, and, unless we mistake,
there is not a single one which is more modern than the sixties.
The book, therefore, adds its testimony to the fact of its author's
lon^ and patient apprenticeship to the art of poetry in the spirit of
a famous sentence of Goethe's. Mr. Thomson's work, however, is
not merely the work of the scholar der sich iibt ; it is fully vollendet.
. . . None the less does ' Vane's Story ' complete the proof of Mr.
Thomson's poetical adeptness. We could indeed wish that the
crude VoltairianTsm of certain notes on the principal poem w^ere
absent. But nowhere is there imitation that is merely imitation.
Everywhere there are proofs of powers which only required a more
favourable atmosphere to produce, not something really remarkable
— for everything that Mr. Thomson has yet published deserves that
phrase— but something that a critic can confidently pronounce to
be substantive and likely to outlast the tests of time. . . . That Mr.
Thomson has the poetical diffc-rentia lias been sufficiently asserted
already in these columns. But we are inclined to think that he feels
perhaps a little too much — paradox as the expression may seem —
the form and pressure of the time. . . . The real excellence of Mr.
Thomson's work is to be found in the fact that his handling of cur-
rent fancies and crotchets has not grown obsolete in twenty years,
and that in the midst of it much that is better emerges clearly.
Still, philosophical, theological, and political theories seem to have
always had an undue attraction for him."— George Saintsbury, in
the Academy.
"The author of 'The City of Dreadful Night' has brought
( 3 )
together another volume of pieces composed, and some at least of
them published, at various times in past years. Those which were
published obtained, apparently, but little notice ; why, it is difficult
to understand. Having said not many months ago what we think
of Mr. Thomson's poetical power>, we need not say much now to
explain what welcome we think due from lovers of poetry to work
of his hands which — being only now rescued from undeserved
neglect— is practically new. But our satisfaction is not unmixed
with disappointment. For this republication of poems bearing\
date, most of them, from fifteen to twenty years back or more is 1
accompanied with no promise or hint of anything fresh to come. ,'
We are loth to think of Mr. Thomson's contributions to English
song as remaining in the place of splendid promises never quite
fulfilled. Such will be their fate, however, if Mr. Thomson does
nothing more. From these pieces even more than from ' The City
of Dreadful Night ' we rise with a feeling that there ought to be
something in reserve of which these are the prelude and foretaste.
. . . There is room for him to gain both positively and negatively.
His style is direct, vigorous, and lucid, but not faultless. ... On
a larger scale the da>Li of eccentricity would probably disappear, or
become barely sensible. Meanwhile, we must be content with what
we have.
" ' Vane's Story,' the first piece in the volume, is a half-pathetic,
half-fantastic vision ; and it is noticeable, like the ' Sunday up
the River' and ' Sunday at Hampstead ' of the former collection,
for the daring with which it applies a thoroughly poetical treatment
to common and even vulgar materials. . . .
" ' Weddah and Om-el-Bonain ' is an Arabian tale of love, despair,
and vengeance, refined by the Oriental point of honour, and now
told again, at two or three removes from its original, with a re-
markable command of powerful and rich yet not unduly ornate or
lingering narrative verse. Of this, too, we may say that it is such as
any one who has once made acquaintance with Mr, Thomson will
expect his work to be. It will not very well bear quoting, depend-
ing, as it does, on its total effect of motion and volume."— /i?// Mall
Gazette,
"As to ' Vane's Story ' it is one of mystery, vagueness, and vision.
We have read it with interest, and here and there with admiration :
that we have altogether understood it we will not venture to say.
Some things, however, we do feel sure of, and make bold to mention ,
them. For example, cohonn and solemn do not rhyme, and did
not in 1864; yet Mr. Thomson is so persuaded they do that he
twice at least invites us to believe it. War and more also are
treated as rhymes ; and twice within six lines orice and snvis \sic :
read siuis : and this rhyme occurs, not twice within six lines, but
once in a piece of about twelve hundred] are also assumed to rhyme.
Mr. Thomson has found — and never lets us forget — that truth has '
a rhyme in ruth. This last rhyme is a great favourite with Mr.
Thomsom in almost all his poems. The world may be as bad as
( 4 )
Mr. Thomson would have us believe, but he does nothing to make
it better who affects such faults as these, and in addition commits
the atrocity of writing 'Gem so lucenter than morning dew.'" — St.
James's Gazette.
"This volume is what it professes to be, a book o^ poems ; poems
in which the writer has something to say, and says it in melodious
language. An unmistakable ring shows they come straight from
the heart ; more than that, from the heart of a man stirred with
"emoiions of our own day, unknown in their present complexity
before the present age ; they therefore appeal to us the stronger.
The author is no youth ; most of the poems were written fifteen or
twenty years ago ; we see he has battled hard with life, has felt
the crash of creeds, has struggled hard for love and duty, and has
at last succumbed, come forth a pessimist.
" Many of the poems are dated, a fact which suggests that some
idea of the progress of the poet's mind is intended to be conveyed.
Reading them in the order in which they were written, we find a
decided though vaguely drawn mental growth, we can hardly say
progress, unless in power of expression. ... In 1858 a theme
appears, the keynote of the book, and in a poem styled ' Mater
Tenebrarum,' written in 1859, finds passionate utterance. Like a
true poet, he loves ; as a man in this transition period staggering
l)efore the terriHe mysteries of the unknowable, and leaning for
help on human sympathy, he loves intensely, with life-absorbing
passion. The dear one dies — in the following beautiful stanza he
gives vent to his grief, . . . ' Vane's Story ' is a curious imaginative
^ancy into which an element of the supernatural is introduced. . . .
Tliere are two other poems in the book of great merit. The poet
finds themes for his passion and his cosmic reflections in two
Arabian love tales. The first one, 'Weddah and Om-El-Bonain.'
is as long as ' Vane's Story ; ' it is worked out in a way which
shows the poet to have fully realised the situations, and the language
has a luxurious rhythm suited to an Eastern tale. . . .
" The central idea of the other shorter, but none less lovely, tale
i"? similar though not identical. Here it is Religion, which man has
himself erected to be his master, that scourges him. The piece is
entitled 'Two Lover?.' A Moslem falls in love with a Christian
girl ; but
' Each sternly true to the immortal soul,
Crushed down the passion of the mortal heart.'
lie goes off to a distant town, where he sickens and dies, but before
his death, reaching the sublimest height of love, determines to go
to hell rather than look down on her from heaven, so is bajHized a
Christian. A friend travels with the news to her, hut arrives just
too late, for she, actuated by the same motive, has turned Moham-
medan and died." — llie Cambridge Revircv.
" Mr. Thomson is not a pleasant person to read : he is obtrusively
( 5 )
pessimistic and quite gorgeously sentimental by turns. . . . Still,
he is a true poet. He has imagination, he has feeling ; and he can
make verses — verses of the right stamp, and with the right ring in
them. Much of 'Vane's Story' is very veil written indeed. Here
is a single couplet in proof : —
' As if the rushing air were cloven
Ey all the legions of Beethoven ;'
and there are scores of others, as good or better. Among the other
numbers included in the volume, which (as the Spectator would sav)
is 'one that will amply repay perusal,' I may note a capital transla-
tion of the ' Prometheus ' of Goethe." — Truth.
"In Mr. James Thomson's last volume of poems, entitled
'Vane's Story and other Poems,' there is an exquisite Eastern
poem, full of power and pathos, and of the grace and' fascination
that are characteristic of Oriental life and scenes. It will be re-
membered that Mr. Thomson burst upon the world of letters as a new
poet not many months ago, and his first volume, 'The City of
Dreadfid Night,' created so great a sensation that the demand for
a second volume from the same poet was general ; and it is in
this second volume that we find 'Weddah and Om-el-Bonain,' one of
the happiest Oriental pictures we remember. . . . The poem is
full of exquisite passages of poetic description, and there are
strangely beautiful lines, embodying ideas and thoughts of rare
quality on eveiy page. And Mr. Thomson's genius 'is such that
the true lover of poetry can return to his verses again and "again,
and yet not get all the sweetness from the poet's "^lines. We are
convinced that those who read 'Weddah and Om-el-Bonain' will
return to it more than once, and will be as anxious as we ourselves
have been and are to have Mr. Thomson's great poetical gifts
widely appreciated by a discriminating public." — The East.
"'The City of Dreadful Night' appeared some seven years
ago in a fragmentary form ; and as it contained passages which for
command of imagery and strange weird power of describing the
'everlasting no' were almost unique, it is not surprising if^ Mr,
Thomson has been tempted to put forth a second volume. It is
pitched in the same minor key, and as it has passed unscathed
through the fire of criticism, we suppose it must be regarded as true
metal. _ Happily, we may say that at times Mr. Thomson is splendidly
inconsistent with his own theory, that naught is everything and every-
thing is naught. . . . Pessimism is, Ave are persuaded, onTy a passing
fashion. Still, while it lasts it will have its poets, as well as its
philosophers. Mr. Thomson is one of these 'broken lights,' and
as his powers are undeniable, we can only hope that he may live
down this stage of passionate denial, and see that a poet who only
chants dirges over his dead self is like the philosopher who doubts
that he doubts. Pessimism, like Pyrrhonism, is a self-contradic-
tion." — Literary World. ~ ^ ^
( 6 )
" Out of a pair of pages in Stendhal's * De 1' Amour ' he has con-
structed a singularly powerful and pathetic tale, culminating in a
situation of really tragic grandeur. He says that the original
deserves a better version than he has given it, but his modesty is
needless, for it may be fairly said that none but the rashest hands
will attempt to render it after him. Another piece called ' Two
Lovers ' is good. ... Of the remaining pieces of the volume some
of the shorter ones strike us most. ' Shameless ' is a pleasant little
essay in familiar verse, and there is more than one pretty song,
notably that beginning 'The fire that filled my heart of old.'" —
Azotes and Queries.
" ' Vane's Story ' is a book which leaves on the mind a conception
of singular power with singular want of judgment. . . . The Eastern
tale which comes next is a terrible one of infidelity and revenge,
told in ottava rivia almost worthy of Keats." — Graphic.
"We have not been deceived in our anticipations as to the con-
tinued excellence of Mr. Thomson's works: 'Vane's Story' and
the other poems included in the welcome volume just issued, have
the strange and powerful characteristics that made 'The City of
Dreadful Night ' a feature in our modern literature, and we are
more than ever justified in congratulating the age on the appearance
of a new poet, a writer whose every line displays the true poetic
feeling, whose every thought reveals the philosophic spirit, whose
every allusion shows how vast is his range of study and reading.
There is an infinite amount of reflection, of sober, saddened thought
in 'Vane's Story.' . . .
"No poet, perhaps, ever dawned upon the reading world with
greater claims to originality. Mr. Thomson's muse has followed in
no footsteps, and to those persons who have not scrupled to
attribute to him plagiarism of Swinburne. and of Morris, he can throw
back the answer that the poems he has now put before the public
were written before Swinburne and Morris had made their first
appearance in the great world of letters. It would be unfair and
incorrect to say that Mr. Thomson was indebted to any master-
spirit of poetry for either thought, tone, or style ; there is a ring in
his poems, however, that reminds us of Shelley, to whose memory,
as ' poet of poets and purest of men,' Mr. Thomson has, with
' gratitude and love and reverence,' inscribed his book. The
strange, impassioned beauty of the 'Fadeless Bower,' the weird y
hnesto^^ Night,' remind us by .an undefined somethiiig in their tone
of the greatest poet of a bygone day." — Lloyd's Weekly London
Newspaper.
"Mr. Thomson inscribes his new volume to the memory of
Shelley, whom he calls 'the poet of poets and the purest of men.'
The influence of Shelley is especially marked in ' Vane^s _Story.' u
No one can read that story through a few pages and not be reminded
of Shelley. His influence is everywhere traceable, and there are
many stanzas so graceful and beautiful, of such delicious cadence
( 7 )
and sweetness, that we turn to the title-page to see whether we are
not readinfT Shelley after all. . . . 'Weddah and Om-el-Bonain ' is
a love poeni, and, in many respects, a very beautiful one. It is an
Eastern story. The lovers are of the tribe of Azra, ' who perish
when they love.' The poem occasionally reminds us of the old
pathetic love idyl of the East, 'Leila and Mejnoon,' which Hatifi,
the Persian poet, has embalmed in immortal verse. The poems,
'Bertram to the Most Noble and Beautiful Lady, Geraldine,' and
• The Fadeless Bower,' are to our mind two of the most pleasing in
the collection. We have read them again and again. Tliey are
instinct with noble feelings and generous thoughts, ' in lofty utter-
ance drest.' " — Dr. J. Kaines, in The Secular RevirM.
"In speaking of Paris just now I called it 'this wicked city.'
One or two friends — enthusiastic admirers of Paris itself, and of
Paris life and manners — have often reproached me for using terms
derogatory to the great town's dignity and reputation, and I have
always replied that I was not alone in degrading Paris. In reading,
the other day, an admirable book of poetry by James Thomson,
entitled 'Vane's Story' (his first volume, 'The City of Dreadful
Night,' made a sensation in the London world of letters only to be '
compared to the issue of Swinburne's ' Atalanta in Calydon ') I '
came across a passage in which the poet, who is a splendid scholar
as well as a poet, spoke of Paris as a delightful city, and translated
Heine's curt description of the town —
' The devils' paradise, the hell
Of angels
' Die Holla der Engel ; der Teufel Paradies.'
In a footnote, Mr. Thomson mentions Beranger, who said of Paris —
* Ces murs dont le diable
A fait son Paradis ';
and Balzac, who calls Paris * Cette succursale de I'enfer' — 'anti-
chambre de Tenfer ' — and in the ' Histoire des Treize ' says, ' Paris
a ete nomme un enfer. Tenez ce mot pour vrai.' It may be seen,
therefore, that in calling Paris a wicked city I am in good company."
— Paris Letter, in the Liverpool Daily Courier.
"The interest which attended Mr. Thomson's new volume,
'Vane's Story and other Poems' (Reeves & Turner), is amply
justified. Any work from the author of ' The City of Dreadful
Night ' will now be a literary event of considerable moment. But
there are arrears of fame to be paid before work new and fresh
from the poet's forge can be either expected or critically enjoyed.
' Vane's Story ' is dated 1864, and 'Weddah and Om-el-Bonain'
is, we believe, at least a decade old, and other poems of great merit
in the present volume are dated 1857 and 1858. In ' Vane's Story '
we meet again with the spirit of those remarkable Idylls of the -^ —
Suburban Londoner — ' Sunday at Ilampstead ' and ' Sunday up the
( 8 )
River.' But ' Vane's Story ' is pitchedin a different key. . . . Tiie
poem is as thoroughly characteristic as any writing could be. It
j^artakes in a strange manner of the gloomy despair of * The City of
Dreadful Night,' and of the audacious, almost commonplace,
humour of the ' Hampstead ' and ' River ' idylls. It is no dispar-
agement of Mr. Thomson's great powers to say that much of ' Vane's
Story ' is more like Browning than Browning himself. Tiiere is no
sort of weak imitation, yet there is a most striking similarity in form
and turn of thought constantly visible, which recalls J\Ir. Brown-
ing's ' Waring,' ' Youth and Art,' and in many places, ' Christmas
Eve and Easter Day.' . . . ' Weddah and Om-el-Bonain ' is a very
beautiful poem of the love and fate of an Arab youth and maiden.
The story is told in eight-lined stanzas, of almost faultless clearness
and beauty. With the constant temptation to dio;ress which a teem-
ing creative faculty and a splendid command of language must pre-
sent, INIr. Thomson has yet carried the story on with a directness
which is almost severe, but which has still left no part of the story
unadorned. . . . It becomes now an interesting question, how much
more poetic treasure Mr. Thomson may have still in reserve, not
only for its own sake, but that we may know when to expect some
productions of his later muse." — Life..
"Our conviction in regard to 'The City of Dreadful Night' is
that, distinguished though it be for very rare qualities of workman-
sliip, and even of temperament, it is a decided \yaste of power. . . .
But in none of the poems at which we have thus far glanced, do we
find a sufficiently rare combination of qualities to inspire confidence
as to the high place which some critics have made bold to promise
Mr. Thomson on behalf of posterity. ... In what we have so far
spoken of, and indeed throughout his two volumes, he is never fiat,
seldom uninteresting, sometimes flippiant and vulgar, more often
.powerful and striking. . . . Only in * Weddah and Oni-El-Bonain ' do
we discern a chance of perennial fame. That is a romantic story
from the East, — a tale of the Arabian tribe called the Azra, of whom
it is recorded that ' they die when they love.' The story of two
lovers, true to the tradition of their race, is set forth in ottava rivia,
in the most simple, forcible, direct, and graphic way ; no incident
is brought in that has not a value in developing the tragedy, and
nothing is omitted that should be told : in the course of the whole
fifty-three pages the interest never once flags ; the characters are all
drawn with unerring skill ; and the metrical excellence is such and
so simple that there are perhaps hardly half-a-dozen verses on which
one pauses at a second reading to consider whether they might not
be improved. At the first reading no one would dream of pausing
at all. . . . As a piece of narrative verse, we have met with nothing
so good since Mr. Morris ceased to give^us romantic poems, dealing
with Old world facts and fictions." — London Quarterly Review,
April i88l.
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