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 DREAMTHORP 
 
 A BOOK OF ESSAYS WRITTEN IN 
 THE COUNTRY 
 
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 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER SMITH 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BOSTON 
 JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 (Kniticrsitg $rrss: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
 • • •.
 
 - 43 JL 
 
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 1 1 _ — 
 
 Page 
 
 Dreamthorp I 
 
 On the Writing of Essays 25 
 
 Of Death and the Fear of Dying . . 55 
 
 William Dunbar 79 
 
 A Lark's Flight m 
 
 Christmas '35 
 
 Men of Letters 163 
 
 On the Importance of a Man to Himself 199 
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase 223 
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer 251 
 
 Books and Gardens 2 93 
 
 On Vagabonds 3 X 9
 
 i? T matters not to relate how or 
 when I became a denizen of 
 Dreamthorp ; it will be sufficient 
 to say that I am not a born 
 native, but that I came to reside in it a good 
 while ago now. The several towns and vil- 
 lages in which, in my time, I have pitched a 
 tent did not please, for one obscure reason 
 or another : this one was too large, t'other 
 too small; but when, on a summer even- 
 ing about the hour of eight, I first beheld 
 Dreamthorp, with its westward-looking win- 
 dows painted by sunset, its children playing 
 in the single straggling street, the mothers 
 knitting at the open doors, the fathers 
 standing about in long white blouses, chat- 
 ting or smoking; the great tower of the 
 ruined castle rising high into the rosy air, 
 with a whole troop of swallows — by distance 
 made as small as gnats — skimming about its 
 rents and fissures ; — when I first beheld all
 
 2 Dreamthorp. 
 
 this, I felt instinctively that my knapsack 
 might be taken off my shouiders, that my 
 tired feet might wander no more, that at 
 last, on the planet, I had found a home. 
 From that evening I have dwelt here, and 
 the only journey I am like now to make, is 
 the very inconsiderable one, so far at least 
 as distance is concerned, from the house in 
 which I live to the graveyard beside the 
 ruined castle. There, with the former in- 
 habitants of the place, I trust to sleep 
 quietly enough, and nature will draw over 
 our heads her coverlet of green sod, and 
 tenderly tuck us in, as a mother her sleep- 
 ing ones, so that no sound from the world 
 shall ever reach us, and no sorrow trouble 
 us any more. 
 
 The village stands far inland ; and the 
 streams that trot through the soft green 
 valleys all about have as little knowledge 
 of the sea as the three-years' child of the 
 storms and passions of manhood. The sur- 
 rounding country is smooth and green, full 
 of undulations ; and pleasant country roads 
 strike through it in every direction, bound 
 for distant towns and villages, yet in no 
 hurry to reach them. On these roads the 
 lark in summer is continually heard ; nests 
 are plentiful in the hedges and dry ditches ;
 
 Dreamthorp. 3 
 
 and on the grassy banks, and at the feet of 
 the bowed dikes, the blue-eyed speedwell 
 smiles its benison on the passing wayfarer. 
 On these roads you may walk for a year 
 and encounter nothing more remarkable 
 than the country cart, troops of tawny 
 children from the woods, laden with prim- 
 roses, and at long intervals — for people in 
 this district live to a ripe age — a black 
 funeral creeping in from some remote ham- 
 let ; and to this last the people reverently 
 doff their hats and stand aside. Death does 
 not walk about here often, but when he 
 does, he receives as much respect as the 
 squire himself. P>erything round one is 
 unhurried, quiet, moss-grown, and orderly. 
 Season follows in the track of season, and 
 one year can hardly be distinguished from 
 another. Time should be measured here by 
 the silent dial, rather than by the ticking 
 clock, or by the chimes of the church. 
 Dreamthorp can boast of a respectable an- 
 tiquity, and in it the trade of the builder is 
 unknown. Ever since I remember, not a 
 single stone has been laid on the top of 
 another. The castle, inhabited now by jack- 
 daws and starlings, is old ; the chapel which 
 adjoins it is older still ; and the lake behind 
 both, and in which their shadows sleep, is, I
 
 4 Dreamthorp. 
 
 suppose, as old as Adam. A fountain in the 
 market-place, all mouths and faces and 
 curious arabesques, — as dry, however, as 
 the castle moat, — has a tradition connected 
 with it ; and a great noble riding through 
 the street one day several hundred years 
 ago, was shot from a window by a man 
 whom he had injured. The death of this 
 noble is the chief link which connects the 
 place with authentic history. The houses 
 are old, and remote dates may yet be deci- 
 phered on the stones above the doors ; the 
 apple-trees are mossed and ancient ; count- 
 less generations of sparrows have bred 
 in the thatched roofs, and thereon have 
 chirped out their lives. In every room of 
 the place men have been born, men have 
 died. On Dreamthorp centuries have fallen, 
 and have left no more trace than have last 
 winter's snowflakes. This commonplace 
 sequence and flowing on of life is immeas- 
 urably affecting. That winter morning when 
 Charles lost his head in front of the banquet- 
 ing-hall of his own palace, the icicles hung 
 from the eaves of the houses here, and the 
 clown kicked the snowballs from his clouted 
 shoon, and thought but of his supper when, 
 at three o'clock, the red sun set in the purple 
 mist. On that Sunday in June while ^Vaterloo
 
 Dreamthorp. 5 
 
 was going on, the gossips, after morning ser- 
 vice, stood on the country roads discussing 
 agricultural prospects, without the slightest 
 suspicion that the day passing over their 
 heads would be a famous one in the calendar. 
 Battles have been fought, kings have died, his- 
 tory has transacted itself; but, all unheeding 
 and untouched, Dreamthorp has watched 
 apple-trees redden, and wheat ripen, and 
 smoked its pipe, and quaffed its mug of beer, 
 and rejoiced over its new-born children, and 
 with proper solemnity carried its dead to the 
 churchyard. As I gaze on the village of my 
 adoption I think of many things very far re- 
 moved, and seem to get closer to them. The 
 last setting sun that Shakspeare saw reddened 
 the windows here, and struck warmly on the 
 faces of the hinds coming home from the 
 fields. The mighty storm that raged while 
 Cromwell lay a-dying made all the oak- 
 woods groan round about here, and tore 
 the thatch from the very roofs I gaze upon. 
 When I think of this, I can almost, so to 
 speak, lay my hand on Shakspeare and on 
 Cromwell. These poor walls were contem- 
 poraries of both, and I find something affect- 
 ing in the thought. The mere soil is, of 
 course, far older than either, but it does not 
 touch one in the same way. A wall is the 
 creation of a human hand, the soil is not.
 
 6 Dreamthorp. 
 
 This place suits my whim, and I like it 
 better year after year. As with everything 
 else, since I began to love it I find it gradu- 
 ally growing beautiful. Dreamthorp — a 
 castle, a chapel, a lake, a straggling strip of 
 gray houses, with a blue film of smoke over 
 all — lies embosomed in emerald. Summer, 
 with its daisies, runs up to every cottage 
 door. From the little height where I am 
 now sitting, I see it beneath me. Nothing 
 could be more peaceful. The wind and the 
 birds fly over it. A passing sunbeam makes 
 brilliant a white gable-end, and brings out the 
 colours of the blossomed apple-tree beyond, 
 and disappears. I see figures in the street, 
 but hear them not. The hands on the 
 church clock seem always pointing to one 
 hour. Time has fallen asleep in the after- 
 noon sunshine. I make a frame of my 
 fingers, and look at my picture. On the 
 walls of the next Academy's Exhibition will 
 hang nothing half so beautiful ! 
 
 My village is, I think, a special favourite 
 of summer's. Every window-sill in it she 
 touches with colour and fragrance ; every- 
 where she wakens the drowsy murmurs of 
 the hives ; every place she scents with apple- 
 blossom. Traces of her hand are to be seen 
 on the weir beside the ruined mill : and
 
 Dreamthorp. 7 
 
 even the canal, along which the barges come 
 and go, has a great white water-lily asleep 
 on its olive-coloured face. Never was velvet 
 on a monarch's robe so gorgeous as the 
 green mosses that be-ruff the roofs of farm 
 and cottage, when the sunbeam slants on 
 them and goes. The old road out towards 
 the common, and the hoary dikes that might 
 have been built in the reign of Alfred, have 
 not been forgotten by the generous adorning 
 season ; for every fissure has its mossy cushion, 
 and the old blocks themselves are washed by 
 the loveliest gray-green lichens in the world, 
 and the large loose stones lying on the 
 ground have gathered to themselves the 
 peacefulest mossy coverings. Some of these 
 have not been disturbed for a century. 
 Summer has adorned my village as gaily, and 
 taken as much pleasure in the task, as the 
 people of old, when Elizabeth was queen, 
 took in the adornment of the May-pole 
 against a summer festival. And, just think, 
 not only Dreamthorp, but every English 
 village she has made beautiful after one 
 fashion or another — making vivid green the 
 hill slope on which straggling white Welsh 
 hamlets hang right opposite the sea ; drown- 
 ing in apple-blossom the red Sussex ones in 
 the fat valley. And think, once more, every
 
 8 Dream thorp. 
 
 spear of grass in England she has touched 
 with a livelier green ; the crest of every bird 
 she has burnished ; every old wall between 
 the four seas has received her mossy and 
 licheny attentions ; every nook in every 
 forest she has sown with pale flowers, every 
 marsh she has dashed with the fires of the 
 marigold. And in the wonderful night the 
 moon knows, she hangs — the planet on 
 which so many millions of us fight, and sin, 
 and agonise, and die — a sphere of glow- 
 worm light. 
 
 Having discoursed so long about Dream - 
 thorp, it is but fair that I should now intro- 
 duce you to her lions. These are, for the 
 most part, of a commonplace kind ; and I 
 am afraid that, if you wish to find romance 
 in them, you must bring it with you. I 
 might speak of the old church-tower, or of 
 the church-yard beneath it, in which the 
 village holds its dead, each resting-place 
 
 irked by a simple stone, on which is in- 
 scribed the name and age of the sleeper, 
 and a Scripture text beneath, in which live 
 our hopes of immortality. But, on the whole, 
 perhaps it will be better to begin with the 
 canal, which wears on its olive-coloured face 
 the big white water-lily already chronicled. 
 Such a secluded place is Dreamthorp that
 
 Dream thorp. g 
 
 the railway does not come near, and the 
 canal is the only thing that connects it with 
 the world. It stands high, and from it the 
 undulating country may be seen stretching 
 away into the gray of distance, with hills 
 and woods, and stains of smoke which mark 
 the sites of villages. Every now and then a 
 horse comes staggering along the towing- 
 path, trailing a sleepy barge filled with 
 merchandise. A quiet, indolent life these 
 bargemen lead in the summer days. One 
 lies stretched at his length on the sun-heated 
 plank ; his comrade sits smoking in the little 
 dog-hutch, which I suppose he calls a cabin. 
 Silently they come and go ; silently the 
 wooden bridge lifts to let them through. 
 The horse stops at the bridge-house for a 
 drink, and there I like to talk a little with 
 the men. They serve instead of a news- 
 paper, and retail with great willingness the 
 news they have picked up in their progress 
 from town to town. I am told they some- 
 times marvel who the old gentleman is who 
 accosts them from beneath a huge umbrella 
 in the sun, and that they think him either 
 very wise or very foolish. Not in the least 
 unnatural! We are great friends, I believe 
 — evidence of which they occasionally ex- 
 hibit by requesting me to disburse a trifle
 
 io Dreamthorp. 
 
 for drink- money. This canal is a great haunt 
 of mine of an evening. The water hardly 
 invites one to bathe in it, and a delicate 
 stomach might suspect the flavour of the eels 
 caught therein ; yet, to my thinking, it is not 
 in the least destitute of beauty. A barge 
 trailing up through it in the sunset is a 
 pretty sight ; and the heavenly crimsons 
 and purples sleep quite lovingly upon its 
 glossy ripples. Nor does the evening star 
 disdain it, for as I walk along I see it mir- 
 rored therein as clearly as in the waters of 
 the Mediterranean itself. 
 
 The old castle and chapel already alluded 
 to are, perhaps, to a stranger, the points of 
 attraction in Dreamthorp. Back from the 
 houses is the lake, on the green sloping 
 banks of which, with broken windows and 
 tombs, the ruins stand. As it is noon, and 
 the weather is warm, let us go and sit on a 
 turret. Here, on these very steps, as old 
 ballads tell, a queen sat once, day after day, 
 looking southward for the light of returning 
 spears. I bethink me that yesterday, no 
 further gone, I went to visit a consumptive 
 shoemaker ; seated here I can single out his 
 very house, nay, the very window of the 
 room in which he is lying. On that straw 
 roof might the raven alight, and flap his
 
 Dreamthorp. 1 1 
 
 sable wings. There, at this moment, is the 
 supreme tragedy being enacted. A woman 
 is weeping there, and little children are look- 
 ing on with a sore bewilderment. Before 
 nightfall the poor peaked face of the bowed 
 artisan will have gathered its ineffable peace, 
 and the widow will be led away from the 
 bedside by the tenderness of neighbours, and 
 the cries of the orphan brood will be stilled. 
 And yet this present indubitable suffering 
 and loss does not touch me like the sorrow of 
 the woman of the ballad, the phantom prob- 
 ably of a minstrel's brain. The shoemaker 
 will be forgotten — I shall be forgotten ; and 
 long after, visitors will sit here and look out 
 on the landscape and murmur the simple 
 lines. But why do death and dying obtrude 
 themselves at the present moment ? On the 
 turret opposite, about the distance of a gun- 
 shot, is as pretty a sight as eye could wish 
 to see. Two young people, strangers appar- 
 ently, have come to visit the ruin. Neither 
 the ballad queen, nor the shoemaker 
 down yonder, whose respirations are getting 
 shorter and shorter, touches them in the least. 
 They are merry and happy, and the gray- 
 beard turret has not the heart to thrust a 
 foolish moral upon them. They would not 
 thank him if he did, I dare say. Perhaps they
 
 1 2 Dreamthorp. 
 
 could not understand him. Time enough ! 
 Twenty years hence they will be able to sit 
 down at his feet, and count griefs with him, 
 and tell him tale for tale. Human hearts 
 get ruinous in so much less time than stone 
 walls and towers. See, the young man has 
 thrown himself down at the girl's feet on a 
 little space of grass. In her scarlet cloak 
 she looks like a blossom springing out of a 
 crevice on the ruined steps. He gives her 
 a flower, and she bows her face down over 
 it almost to her knees. What did the flower 
 say? Is it to hide a blush? He looks 
 delighted ; and I almost fancy I see a proud 
 colour on his brow. As I gaze, these young 
 people make for me a perfect idyl. The 
 generous, ungrudging sun, the melancholy 
 ruin, decked, like mad Lear, with the flowers 
 ;ind ivies of forgetfulness and grief, and be- 
 tween them, sweet and evanescent, human 
 truth and love ! 
 
 Love ! — does it yet walk the world, or is it 
 imprisoned in poems and romances? Has 
 not the circulating library become the sole 
 home of the passion? Is love not become 
 the exclusive property of novelists and play- 
 wrights, to be used by them only for pro- 
 fessional purposes? Surely, if the men I 
 see are lovers, or ever have been lovers,
 
 P rra m thorp. j_-$ 
 
 they would be nobler than they are. The 
 knowledge that he is beloved should — must 
 make a man tender, gentle, upright, pure. 
 While yet a youngster in a jacket, I can 
 remember falling desperately in love with a 
 young lady several years my senior, — after 
 the fashion of youngsters in jackets. Could 
 I have fibbed in these days? Could I have 
 betrayed a comrade ? Could I have stolen 
 eggs or callow young from the nest ? Could 
 I have stood quietly by and seen the weak 
 or the maimed bullied? Nay, verily! In 
 these absurd days she lighted up the whole 
 world for me. To sit in the same room with 
 her was like the happiness of perpetual 
 holiday ; when she asked me to run a mes- 
 sage for her, or to do any, the slightest, 
 service for her, I felt as if a patent of 
 nobility were conferred on me. I kept my 
 passion to myself, like a cake, and nibbled it 
 in private. Juliet was several years my 
 senior, and had a lover — was, in point of 
 fact, actually engaged ; and, in looking back, 
 I can remember I was too much in love 
 to feel the slightest twinge of jealousy. I 
 remember also seeing Romeo for the first 
 time, and thinking him a greater man than 
 Caesar or Napoleon. The worth I credited 
 him with, the cleverness, the goodness, the
 
 14 Drcamthorp. 
 
 everything ! He awed me by his manner 
 and bearing. He accepted that girl's love 
 coolly and as a matter of course : it put him 
 no more about than a crown and sceptre puts 
 about a king. What I would have given my 
 life to possess — being only fourteen, it was 
 not much to part with after all — he wore 
 lightly, as he wore his gloves or his cane. 
 It did not seem a bit too good for him. His 
 self-possession appalled me. If I had seen 
 him take the sun out of the sky, and put it 
 into his breeches' pocket, I don't think I 
 should have been in the least degree sur- 
 prised. Well, years after, when I had dis- 
 carded my passion with my jacket, I have 
 assisted this middle-aged Romeo home from 
 a roystering wine-party, and heard him 
 hiccup out his marital annoyances, with the 
 strangest remembrances of old times, and 
 the strangest deductions therefrom. Did 
 that man with the idiotic laugh and the 
 blurred utterance ever love ? Was he ever 
 capable of loving? I protest I have my 
 doubts. But where are my young people? 
 Gone ! So it is always. We begin to mora- 
 lise and look wise, and Beauty, who is some- 
 thing of a coquette, and of an exacting turn 
 of mind, and likes attentions, gets disgusted 
 with our wisdom or our stupidity, and goes 
 off in a huff. Let the baggage go !
 
 Drcamthorp. 1 5 
 
 The ruined chapel adjoins the ruined 
 castle on which I am now sitting, and is 
 evidently a building of much older date. It 
 is a mere shell now. It is quite roofless, 
 ivy covers it in part ; the stone tracery of 
 the great western window is yet intact, 
 but the coloured glass is gone with the 
 splendid vestments of the abbot, the fum- 
 ing incense, the chanting choirs, and the 
 patient, sad-eyed monks, who muttered Aves, 
 shrived guilt, and illuminated missals. Time 
 was when this place breathed actual bene- 
 dictions, and was a home of active peace. 
 At present it is visited only by the stranger, 
 and delights but the antiquary. The village 
 people have so little respect for it, that they 
 do not even consider it haunted. There 
 are several tombs in the interior bearing 
 knights' escutcheons, which time has sadly 
 defaced. The dust you stand upon is noble. 
 Earls have been brought here in dinted mail 
 from battle, and earls' wives from the pangs 
 of child-bearing. The last trumpet will 
 break the slumber of a right honourable 
 company. One of the tombs — the most 
 perfect of all in point of preservation — I 
 look at often, and try to conjecture what 
 it commemorates. With all my fancies, I 
 can get no further than the old story of
 
 1 6 Dream thorp. 
 
 love and death. There, on the slab, the 
 white figures sleep ; marble hands, folded 
 in prayer, on marble breasts. And I like to 
 think that he was brave, she beautiful \ 
 that although the monument is worn by 
 time, and sullied by the stains of the weather, 
 the qualities which it commemorates — hus- 
 bandly and wifely affection, courtesy, courage, 
 knightly scorn of wrong and falsehood, meek- 
 ness, penitence, charity — are existing yet 
 somewhere, recognisable by each other. 
 The man who in this world can keep the 
 whiteness of his soul, is not likely to lose it 
 in any other. 
 
 In summer I spend a good deal of time 
 floating about the lake. The landing-place 
 to which my boat is tethered is ruinous, like 
 the chapel and palace, and my embarkation 
 causes quite a stir in the sleepy little village. 
 Small buys leave their games and mud-pies, 
 and gather round in silence ; they have seen 
 me get off a hundred times, but their in- 
 terest in the matter seems always new. Not 
 (infrequently an idle cobbler, in red night- 
 cap and leathern apron, leans on a broken 
 stile, and honours my proceedings with his 
 attention. I shoot off, and the human knot 
 dissolves. The lake contains three islands, 
 each with a solitary tree, and on these
 
 Dreamthorp. 1 7 
 
 islands the swans breed. I feed the birds 
 daily with bits of bread. See, one comes 
 gliding towards me, with superbly arched 
 neck, to receive its customary alms ! How 
 wildly beautiful its motions ! How haugh- 
 tily it begs ! The green pasture lands run 
 down to the edge of the water, and into it in 
 the afternoons the red kine wade and stand 
 knee-deep in their shadows, surrounded by 
 troops of flies. Patiently the honest crea- 
 tures abide the attacks of their tormentors. 
 Now one swishes itself with its tail, — now its 
 neighbour flaps a huge ear. I draw my oars 
 alongside, and let my boat float at its own 
 will. The soft blue heavenly abysses, the 
 wandering streams of vapour, the long 
 beaches of rippled clouds, are glassed and 
 repeated in the lake. Dreamthorp is silent 
 as a picture, the voices of the children are 
 mute ; and the smoke from the houses, 
 the blue pillars all sloping in one angle, 
 float upward as if in sleep. Grave and stern 
 the old castle rises from its emerald banks, 
 which long ago came down to the lake in 
 terrace on terrace, gay with fruits and 
 flowers, and with stone nymph and satyrs 
 hid in every nook. Silent and empty 
 enough to-day ! A flock of daws suddenly 
 bursts out from a turret, and round and
 
 1 8 Dreamthorp. 
 
 round they wheel, as if in panic. Has some 
 great scandal exploded ? Has a conspiracy 
 been discovered? Has a revolution broken 
 out? The excitement has subsided, and one 
 of them, perched on the old banner-staff, 
 chatters confidentially to himself as he, side- 
 ways, eyes the world beneath him. Floating 
 about thus, time passes swiftly, for, before I 
 know where I am, the kine have withdrawn 
 from the lake to couch on the herbage, 
 while one on a little height is lowing for 
 the milkmaid and her pails. Along the road 
 I see the labourers coming home for supper, 
 while the sun setting behind me makes the 
 village windows blaze ; and so I take out 
 my oars, and pull leisurely through waters 
 faintly flushed with evening colours. 
 
 I do not think that Mr. Buckle could have 
 written his " History of Civilization " in 
 Dreamthorp, because in it books, conversa- 
 tion, and the other appurtenances of intel- 
 lectual life, are not to be procured. I am 
 acquainted with birds, and the building of 
 nests — with wild-flowers, and the seasons in 
 which they blow, — but with the big world 
 far away, with what men and women are 
 thinking, and doing, and saying, 1 am ac- 
 quainted only through the Times, and the 
 occasional magazine or review, sent by
 
 Dreamthorp. i q 
 
 friends whom I have not looked upon for 
 years, but by whom, it seems, I am not yet 
 forgotten. The village has but few intellec- 
 tual wants, and the intellectual supply is 
 strictly measured by the demand. Still there 
 is something. Down in the village, and 
 opposite the curiously-carved fountain, is a 
 schoolroom -which can accommodate a couple 
 of hundred people on a pinch. There are 
 our public meetings held. Musical entertain- 
 ments have been given there by a single per- 
 former. In that schoolroom last winter an 
 American biologist terrified the villagers, and, 
 to their simple understandings, mingled up 
 the next world with this. Now and again 
 some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers 
 dead walls with posters, yellow and blue, 
 and to that schoolroom we nock to hear him. 
 His rounded periods the eloquent gentleman 
 devolves amidst a respectful silence. His 
 audience do not understand him, but they see 
 that the clergyman does, and the doctor does ; 
 and so they are content, and look as atten- 
 tive and wise as possible. Then, in con- 
 nexion with the schoolroom, there is a 
 public library, where books are exchanged 
 once a month. This library is a kind of 
 Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels and 
 romances. Each of these books has been in
 
 20 Drcamthorp. 
 
 the wars ; some are unquestionable antiques. 
 The tears of three generations have fallen 
 upon their dusky pages. The heroes and 
 the heroines are of another age than ours. 
 Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his 
 hat under his arm. Tom Jones plops from 
 the tree into the water, to the infinite dis- 
 tress of Sophia. Moses comes home from 
 market with his stock of shagreen specta- 
 cles. Lovers, warriors, and villains, — as 
 dead to the present generation of readers 
 as Cambyses, — are weeping, fighting, and in- 
 triguing. These books, tattered and torn as 
 they are, are read with delight to-day. The 
 viands are celestial if set forth on a dingy 
 table-cloth. The gaps and chasms which 
 occur in pathetic or perilous chapters are 
 felt to be personal calamities. It is with a 
 certain feeling of tenderness that I look 
 upon these books ; I think of the dead 
 fingers that have turned over the leaves, of 
 the dead eyes that have travelled along the 
 lines. An old novel has a history of its 
 own. When fresh and new, and before it 
 had breathed its secret, it lay on my lady's 
 table. She killed the weary day with it, 
 and when night came it was placed beneath 
 her pillow. At the seaside a couple of 
 foolish heads have bent over it, hands have
 
 Dreamthorp. 2 1 
 
 touched and tingled, and it has heard vows 
 and protestations as passionate as any its 
 pages contained. Coming down in the 
 world, Cinderella in the kitchen has blub- 
 bered over it by the light of a surreptitious 
 candle, conceiving herself the while the 
 magnificent Georgiana, and Lord Mordaunt, 
 Georgiana's lover, the pot-boy round the 
 corner. Tied up with many a dingy brother, 
 the auctioneer knocks the bundle down to 
 the bidder of a few pence, and it finds its 
 way to the quiet cove of some village 
 library, where with some difficulty — as if 
 from want of teeth — and with numerous in- 
 terruptions — as if from lack of memory — 
 it tells its old stories, and wakes tears, and 
 blushes, and laughter as of yore. Thus it 
 spends its age, and in a few years it will be- 
 come unintelligible, and then, in the dust- 
 bin, like poor human mortals in the grave, 
 it will rest from all its labours. It is impos- 
 sible to estimate the benefit which such 
 books have conferred. How often have 
 they loosed the chain of circumstance ! 
 What unfamiliar tears — what unfamiliar 
 laughter they have caused ! What chivalry 
 and tenderness they have infused into 
 rustic loves ! Of what weary hours they 
 have cheated and beguiled their readers !
 
 22 Dreamthorp. 
 
 The big, solemn history-books are in ex- 
 cellent preservation ; the story-books are 
 defaced and frayed, and their out-of-elbows, 
 condition is their pride, and the best justifi- 
 cation of their existence. They are tashed, 
 as roses are, by being eagerly handled and 
 smelt. I observe, too, that the most ancient 
 romances are not in every case the most 
 severely worn. It is the pace that tells in 
 horses, men, and books. There are Nestors 
 wonderfully hale ; there are juveniles in a 
 state of dilapidation. One of the youngest 
 books, " The Old Curiosity Shop," is abso- 
 lutely falling to pieces. That book, like 
 Italy, is possessor of the fatal gift ; but 
 happily, in its case, every thing can be 
 rectified by a new edition. We have buried 
 warriors and poets, princes and queens, but 
 no one of these was followed to the grave 
 by sincerer mourners than was Little Nell. 
 
 Besides the itinerant lecturer, and the 
 permanent library, we have the Sunday 
 sermon. These sum up the intellectual aids 
 and furtherances of the whole place. We 
 have a church and a chapel, and I attend 
 both. The Dreamthorp people are Dis- 
 senters, for the most part ; why, I never 
 could understand; because dissent implies 
 a certain intellectual effort. But Dissenters
 
 Dreamthorp. 23 
 
 they are, and Dissenters they are likely to 
 remain. In an ungainly building, filled with 
 hard gaunt pews, without an organ, without 
 a touch of colour in the windows, with noth- 
 ing to stir the imagination or the devotional 
 sense, the simple people worship. On Sun- 
 day, they are put upon a diet of spiritual 
 bread and water. Personally, I should de- 
 sire more generous food. But the labour- 
 ing people listen attentively, till once they 
 fall asleep, and they wake up to receive the 
 benediction with a feeling of having done 
 their duty. They know they ought to go to 
 chapel, and they go. I go likewise, from 
 habit, although I have long ago lost the power 
 of following a discourse. In my pew, and 
 whilst the clergyman is going on, I think of 
 the strangest things — of the tree at the 
 window, of the congregation of the dead 
 outside, of the wheat-fields and the corn- 
 fields beyond and all around. And the odd 
 thing is, that it is during sermon only that my 
 mind flies off at a tangent and busies itself 
 with things removed from the place and the 
 circumstances. Whenever it is finished 
 fancy returns from her wanderings, and I 
 am alive to the objects around me. The 
 clergyman knows my humour, and is good 
 Christian enough to forgive me ; and he
 
 24 Dreamthorp. 
 
 smiles good-humouredly when I ask him to 
 let me have the chapel keys, that I may 
 enter, when in the mood, and preach a 
 sermon to myself. To my mind, an empty 
 chapel is impressive ; a crowded one, com- 
 paratively a commonplace affair. Alone, I 
 could choose my own text, and my silent 
 discourse would not be without its practical 
 applications. 
 
 An idle life I live in this place, as the 
 world counts it ; but then I have the satis- 
 faction of differing from the world as to the 
 meaning of idleness. A windmill twirling 
 its arms all day is admirable only when 
 there is corn to grind. Twirling its arms 
 for the mere barren pleasure of twirling 
 them, or for the sake of looking busy, does 
 not deserve any rapturous paean of praise. 
 I must be made happy after my own fashion, 
 not after the fashion of other people. Here 
 I can live as I please, here I can throw the 
 reins on the neck of my whim. Here I play 
 with my own thoughts ; here I ripen for the 
 grave.
 
 DhJ
 
 ^ 
 
 
 WRITING of E|5AY^ J 
 
 HAVE already described my en- 
 vironments and my mode of life, 
 and out of both I contrive to 
 extract a very tolerable amount 
 of satisfaction. Love in a cottage, with 
 a broken window to let in the rain, is not 
 my idea of comfort ; no more is Dignity, 
 walking forth richly clad, to whom every 
 head uncovers, every knee grows supple. 
 Bruin in winter- time fondly sucking his own 
 paws, loses flesh ; and love, feeding upon 
 itself, dies of inanition. Take the candle of 
 death in your hand, and walk through the 
 stately galleries of the world, and their 
 splendid furniture and array are as the tinsel 
 armour and pasteboard goblets of a penny 
 theatre ; fame is but an inscription on a 
 grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on 
 a coffin lid. We argue fiercely about happi- 
 ness. One insists that she is found in
 
 26 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 the cottage which the hawthorn shades. 
 Another that she is a lady of fashion, and 
 treads on cloth of gold. Wisdom, listening 
 to both, shakes a white head, and considers 
 that " a good deal may be said on both 
 sides.'' 
 
 There is a wise saying to the effect that 
 "a man can eat no more than he can hold." 
 Every man °;ets about the same satisfaction 
 out of life. Mr. Suddlechops, the barber of 
 Seven Dials, is as happy as Alexander at the 
 head of his legions. The business of the 
 one is to depopulate kingdoms, the business 
 of the other to reap beards seven days old ; 
 but their relative positions do not affect the 
 question. The one works with razors and 
 soap-lather, the other with battle-cries and 
 well-greaved Greeks. The one of a Saturday 
 night counts up his shabby gains and grum- 
 bles ; the other on his Saturday night sits 
 down and weeps for other worlds to conquer. 
 The pence to Mr. Suddlechops are as impor- 
 tant as are the worlds to Alexander. Every 
 condition of life has its peculiar advantages, 
 and wisdom points these out and is contented 
 with them. The varlet who sang — 
 
 " \ king cannot swagger 
 Or get drunk like a beggar, 
 Nor be half so happy as I " —
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 27 
 
 had the soul of a philosopher in him. The 
 harshjiess of the parlour is revenged at night 
 in the servants' hall. The coarse rich man 
 rates his domestic, but there is a thought in 
 the domestic's brain, docile and respectful 
 as he looks, which makes the matter equal, 
 which would madden the rich man if he 
 knew it — make him wince as with a shrewd- 
 est twinge of hereditary gout. For insult and 
 degradation are not without their peculiar 
 solaces. You may spit upon Shylock's gaber- 
 dine, but the day comes when he demands his 
 pound of flesh ; every blow, every insult, not 
 without a certain satisfaction, he adds to the 
 account running up against you in the day- 
 book and ledger of his hate — which at the 
 proper time he will ask you to discharge. 
 Every way we look we see even-handed na- 
 ture administering her laws of compensation. 
 Grandeur has a heavy tax to pay. The usur- 
 per rolls along like a god, surrounded by his 
 guards. He dazzles the crowd — all very 
 fine ; but look beneath his splendid trap- 
 pings and you see a shirt of mail, and be- 
 neath that a heart cowering in terror of an 
 air-drawn dagger. Whom did the memory of 
 Austerlitz most keenly sting? The beaten 
 emperor? or the mighty Napoleon, dying like 
 an untended watch-fire on St. Helena?
 
 28 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 Giddy people may think the life I lead 
 here staid and humdrum, but they are mis- 
 taken. It is true, I hear no concerts, save. 
 those in which the thrushes are performers 
 in the spring mornings. I see no pictures, 
 save those painted on the wide sky-canvas 
 with the colours of sunrise and sunset. I 
 attend neither rout nor ball ; I have no 
 deeper dissipation than the tea-table ; I hear 
 no more exciting scandal than quiet village 
 gossip. Yet I enjoy my concerts more than 
 I would the great London ones. I like the 
 pictures I see, and think them better painted, 
 too, than those which adorn the walls of the 
 Royal Academy ; and the village gossip is 
 more after my turn of mind than the scan- 
 dals that convulse the clubs. It is wonder- 
 ful how the whole world reflects itself in 
 the simple village life. The people around 
 me are full of their own affairs and interests ; 
 were they of imperial magnitude, they could 
 not be excited more strongly. Farmer Wor- 
 thy is anxious about the next market ; the 
 likelihood of a fall in the price of butter and 
 eggs hardly allows him to sleep o' nights. 
 The village doctor — happily we have only 
 one — skirrs hither and thither in his gig, 
 as if man could neither die nor be born 
 without his assistance. He is continually
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 29 
 
 standing on the confines of existence, wel- 
 coming the new-comer, bidding farewell to 
 the goer-away. And the robustious fellow 
 who sits at the head of the table when the 
 Jolly Swillers meet at the Blue Lion on 
 Wednesday evenings is a great politician, 
 sound of lung metal, and wields the village 
 in the taproom, as my Lord Palmerston 
 wields the nation in the House. His listen- 
 ers think him a wiser personage than the 
 Premier, and he is inclined to lean to that 
 opinion himself. I find everything here 
 that other men find in the big world. Lon- 
 don is but a magnified Dreamthorp. 
 
 And just as the Rev. Mr. White took note 
 of the ongoings of the seasons in and around 
 Hampshire Selborne, watched the colonies 
 of the rooks in the tall elms, looked after 
 the swallows in the cottage and rectory 
 eaves, played the affectionate spy on the 
 private lives of chaffinch and hedge-sparrow, 
 was eaves-dropper to the solitary cuckoo ; 
 so here I keep eye and ear open ; take note 
 of man. woman, and child ; find many a 
 pregnant text imbedded in the common- 
 place of village life ; and, out of what I see 
 and hear, weave in my own room my essays 
 as solitary as the spider weaves his web in 
 the darkened corner. The essay, as a literary
 
 30 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 form, resembles the lyric, in so far as it is 
 moulded by some central mood — whimsical, 
 serious, or satirical. Give the mood , and the 
 essay, from the first sentence" to the last, 
 grows around it as the cocoon grows around 
 the silkworm. The essay-writer is a char- 
 tered libertine, and a law unto himself. A 
 quick ear and eye, an ability to discern the 
 infinite suggestiveness of common things, a 
 brooding meditative spirit, are all that the 
 essayist requires to start business with. 
 Jacques, in "As You Like It," had the mak- 
 ings of a charming essayist. It is not the 
 essayist's duty to inform, to build pathways 
 through metaphysical morasses, to cancel 
 abuses, any more than it is the duty of the 
 poet to do these things. Incidentally he 
 may do something in that way, just as the 
 poet may, but it is not his duty, and should 
 not be expected of him. Skylarks are prima- 
 rily created to sing, although a whole choir 
 of them may be baked in pies and brought 
 to table ; they were born to make music, 
 although they may incidentally stay the pangs 
 of vulgar hunger. The essayist is a kind of 
 poet in prose, and if questioned harshly as 
 to his uses, he might be unable to render a 
 better apology for his existence than a 
 flower might. The essay should be pure
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 31 
 
 literature as the poem is pure literature. 
 The, essayist wears a lance, but he cares 
 more for the sharpness of its point than for 
 the pennon that flutters on it, than for the 
 burner of the captain under whom he serves. 
 He plays with death as Hamlet plays with 
 Yorick's skull, and he reads the morals — 
 strangely stern, often, for such fragrant 
 lodging — which are folded up in the bosoms 
 of roses. He has no pride, and is deficient 
 in a sense of the congruity and fitness of 
 things. He lifts a pebble from the ground, 
 and puts it aside more carefully than any 
 gem ; and on a nail in a cottage- door he 
 will hang the mantle of his thought, heavily 
 brocaded with the gold of rhetoric. He 
 finds his way into the Elysian' fields through 
 portals the most shabby and commonplace. 
 
 The essayist plays with his subject, now 
 whimsical, now in grave, now in melancholy 
 mood. He lies upon the idle grassy bank, 
 like Jacques, letting the world flow past him, 
 and from this thing and the other he extracts 
 his mirth and his moralities. His main 
 gift is an eye to discover the suggestiveness 
 of co mmon things ; to find a sermon in the 
 most unpromising texts. Beyond the vital 
 hint, the first step, his discourses are not 
 beholden to their titles. Let him take up
 
 32 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 the most trivial subject, and it will lead him 
 away to the great_j]uestions over which the 
 serious imagination loves to brood, — fortune, 
 mutability, death, — just as inevitably as the 
 runnel, trickling among the summer hills. 
 on which sheep are bleating, leads you to 
 the sea ; or as, turning down the first street 
 you come to in the city, you are led finally, 
 albeit by many an intricacy, out into the 
 open country, with its waste places and its 
 woods, where you are lost in a sense of 
 strangeness and solitariness. The world is 
 to the meditative man what the mulberry 
 plant is to the silkworm. The essay- writer 
 has no lack of subject-matter. He has the 
 day that is passing over his head ; and, if 
 unsatisfied with that, he has the world's six 
 thousand years to depasture his gay or 
 serious humour upon. I idle away my time 
 here, and I am finding new subjects every 
 hour. Everything I see or hear is an essay 
 in bud. The world is everywhere whisper- 
 ing essays, and one need only be the world's 
 amanuensis. The proverbial expression 
 which last evening the clown dropped as he 
 trudged homeward to supper, the "light of 
 the setting sun on his face, expands before 
 me to a dozen pages. The coffin of the 
 pauper, which to-day I saw carried carelessly
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 7>Z 
 
 along, is as good a subject as the funeral 
 procession of an emperor. Craped drum 
 and banner add nothing to death ; penury 
 and disrespect take nothing away. Incon- 
 tinently my thought moves like a slow-paced 
 hearse with sable nodding plumes. Two 
 rustic lovers, whispering between the darken- 
 ing hedges, is as potent to project my mind 
 into the tender passion as if I had seen 
 Romeo touch the cheek of Juliet in the 
 moon-light garden. Seeing a curly-headed 
 child asleep in the sunshine before a cottage 
 door is sufficient excuse for a discourse on 
 childhood ; quite as good as if I had seen 
 infant Cain asleep in the lap of Eve with 
 Adam looking on. A lark cannot rise to 
 heaven without raising as many thoughts as 
 there are notes in its song. Dawn cannot 
 pour its white light on my village without 
 starting from their dim lair a hundred remi- 
 niscences ; nor can sunset burn above yon- 
 der trees in the west without attracting to 
 itself the melancholy of a lifetime. When 
 spring unfolds her green leaves I would be 
 provoked to indite an essay on hope and 
 youth, were it not that it is already writ in 
 the carols of the birds ; and I might be 
 tempted in autumn to improve the occa- 
 sion, were it not for the rustle of the with-
 
 34 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 ered leaves as I walk through the woods. 
 Compared with that simple music, the 
 saddest-cadenced words have but a shallow 
 meaning. 
 
 The essayist who feeds his thoughts upon 
 the segment of the world which surrounds 
 him cannot avoid being an_egotist ; but then 
 his egotism is not unpleasingl "If he be with- 
 out taint of boastfulness, of self-sufficiency, 
 of hungry vanity, the world will not press 
 the charge home. If a man discourses con- 
 tinually of his wines, his plate, his titled 
 acquaintances, the number and quality of his 
 horses, his men-servants and maid- servants, 
 he must discourse very skilfully indeed if he 
 escapes being called a coxcomb. If a man 
 speaks of death — tells you that the idea of 
 it continually haunts him, that he has the 
 most insatiable curiosity as to death and 
 dying, that his thought mines in church- 
 yards like a "demon-mole" — no one is 
 specially offended, and that this is a dull 
 fellow is the hardest thing likely to be said 
 of him. Only, the egotism that over- 
 crows you is offensive, that exalts trifles 
 and takes pleasure in them, that suggests 
 superiority in matters of equipage and 
 furniture ; and the egotism is offensive, 
 because it runs counter to and jostles your
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 35 
 
 self-complacency. The egotism which rises 
 no higher than the grave is of a solitary and 
 a hermit kind — it crosses no man's path, it 
 disturbs no man's amour propre. You may 
 offend a man if you say you are as rich as 
 he, as wise as he, as handsome as he. You 
 offend no man if you tell him that, like him, 
 you have to die. The king, in his crown and 
 coronation robes, will allow the beggar to 
 claim that relationship with him. To have to 
 die is a distinction of which no man is proud. 
 The speaking about one's self is not neces- 
 sarily offensive. A modest, truthful man 
 speaks better about himself than about any- 
 thing else, and on that subject his speech is 
 likely to be most profitable to his hearers. 
 Certainly, there is no subject with which he 
 is better acquainted, and on which he has a 
 better title to be heard. And it is this 
 egotism, this perpetual reference to self, in 
 which the charm of the essayist resides. If 
 a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth 
 knowing well. The essayist gives you his 
 thoughts, and lets you know, in addition, 
 how he came by them. He has nothing to 
 conceal ; he throws open his doors and 
 windows, and lets him enter who will. You 
 like to walk round peculiar or important 
 men as you like to walk round a building,
 
 36 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 to view it from different points, and in differ- 
 ent lights. Of the essayist, when his mood 
 is communicative, you obtain a full picture. 
 You are made his contemporary and familiar 
 friend. You enter into his humours and his 
 seriousness. You are made heir of his 
 whims, prejudices, and playfulness. You 
 walk through the whole nature of him, as 
 you walk through the streets of Pompeii, 
 looking into the interior of stately man- 
 sions, reading the satirical scribblings on 
 the walls. And the essayist's habit of not 
 only giving you his thoughts, but telling 
 you how he came by them, is interesting, 
 because it shows you by what alchemy the 
 ruder world becomes transmuted into the 
 finer. We like to know the lineage of ideas, 
 just as we like to know the lineage of great 
 earls and swift race- horses. We like to 
 know that the discovery of the law of gravi- 
 tation was born of the fall of an apple in an 
 English garden on a summer afternoon. 
 Essays written after this fashion are racy of 
 the soil in which they grow, as you taste 
 the larva in the vines grown on the slopes of 
 Etna, they say. There is a healthy Gascon 
 flavour in Montaigne's Essays ; and Charles 
 Lamb's are scented with the primroses of 
 Covent Garden.
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 37 
 
 The essayist does not usually appear early 
 in the literary history of a country : he 
 comes naturally after the poet and the 
 chronicler. His habit of mind is leisurely ; 
 he does not write from any special stress of 
 passionate impulse ; he does not create 
 material so much as he comments upon 
 material already existing. It is essential for 
 him that books should have been written, 
 and that they should, at least to some 
 extent, have been read and digested. He is 
 usually full of allusions and references, and 
 these his reader must be able to follow and 
 understand. And in this literary walk, as in 
 most others, the giants came first : Mon- 
 taigne and Lord Bacon were our earliest 
 essayists, and, as yet, they are our best. In 
 point of style, these essays are different 
 from anything that could now be produced. 
 Not only is the thinking different — the 
 manner of setting forth the thinking is 
 different also. We despair of reaching the 
 thought, we despair equally of reaching the 
 language. We can no more bring back 
 their turns of sentence than we can bring 
 back their tournaments. Montaigne, in his 
 serious moods, has a curiously rich and 
 intricate eloquence ; and Bacon's sentence 
 bends beneath the weight of his thought,
 
 $S On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 like a branch beneath the weight of its 
 fruit. Bacon seems to have written his 
 essays with Shakspeare's pen. There is a 
 certain want of ease about the old writers 
 which has an irresistible charm. The lan- 
 guage flows like a stream over a pebbled bed, 
 with propulsion, eddy, and sweet recoil — 
 the pebbles, if retarding movement, giving 
 ring and dimple to the surface, and breaking 
 the whole into babbling music. There is a 
 ceremoniousness in the mental habits of 
 these ancients. Their intellectual garniture 
 is picturesque, like the garniture of their 
 bodies. Their thoughts are courtly and high 
 mannered. A singular analogy exists be- 
 tween the personal attire of a period and 
 its written style. The peaked beard, the 
 starched collar, the quilted doublet, have 
 their correspondences in the high sentence 
 and elaborate ornament (worked upon the 
 thought like figures upon tapestry) of Sid- 
 ney and Spenser. In Pope's day men wore 
 rapiers, and their weapons they carried with 
 them into literature, and frequently un- 
 sheathed them too. They knew how to stab 
 to the heart with an epigram. Style went 
 out with the men who wore knee-breeches 
 and buckles in their shoes. We write more 
 easily now ; but in our easy writing there is
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 39 
 
 ever a taint of flippancy : our writing is to 
 theirs, what shooting-coat and wide-awake 
 are to doublet and plumed hat. 
 
 Montaigne and Bacon are our earliest and 
 greatest essayists, and likeness and unlike- 
 ness exist between the men. Bacon was 
 constitutionally the graver nature. He 
 writes like one on whom presses the weight 
 of affairs, and he approaches a subject 
 always on its serious side. He does not 
 play with it fantastically. He lives amongst 
 great ideas, as with great nobles, with whom 
 he dare not be too familiar. In the tone of 
 his mind there is ever something imperial. 
 When he writes on building, he speaks of a 
 palace with spacious entrances, and courts, 
 and banqueting-halls ; when he writes on 
 gardens, he speaks of alleys and mounts, 
 waste places and fountains, of a garden 
 "which is indeed prince-like." To read over 
 his table of contents, is like reading over a 
 roll of peers' names. We have, taking them 
 as they stand, essays treating Of Great Place, 
 Of Boldness, Oj Goodness, and Goodness of 
 Nature, Of Nobility, Of Seditions and Trou- 
 bles, Of Atheism, Of Superstition, Of Travel, 
 Of Empire, Of Counsel, — a book plainly to 
 lie in the closets of statesmen and princes, 
 and designed to nurture the noblest natures.
 
 40 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 Bacon always seems to write with his ermine 
 on. Montaigne was different from all this. 
 His table of contents reads, in comparison, 
 like a medley, or a catalogue of an auction. 
 He was quite as wise as Bacon ; he could 
 look through men quite as clearly, and 
 search them quite as narrowly ; certain of 
 his moods were quite as serious, and in one 
 corner of his heart he kept a yet profounder 
 melancholy ; but he was volatile, a humourist, 
 and a gossip. He could be dignified enough 
 on great occasions, but dignity and great 
 occasions bored him. He could stand in the 
 presence with propriety enough, but then he 
 got out of the presence as rapidly as pos- 
 sible. When, in the thirty-eighth year of 
 his age, he — somewhat world-weary, and 
 with more scars on his heart than he cared 
 to discover — retired to his chateau, he 
 placed his library " in the great tower over- 
 looking the entrance to the court," and over 
 the central rafter he inscribed in large letters 
 the device — "I do not understand; I 
 pause; I examine." When he began to 
 write his Essays he had no great desire to 
 shine as an author ; he wrote simply to re- 
 lieve teeming heart and brain. The best 
 method to lay the spectres of the mind is to 
 commit them to paper. Speaking of the
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 41 
 
 Essays, he says, " This book has a domestic 
 and private object. It is intended for the 
 use of my relations and friends ; so that, 
 when they have lost me, which they will 
 soon do, they may find in it some features 
 of my condition and humours ; and by this 
 means keep up more completely, and in a 
 more lively manner, the knowledge they 
 have of me." In his Essays he meant to 
 portray himself, his habits, his modes of 
 thought, his opinions, what fruit of wisdom 
 he had gathered from experience sweet and 
 bitter; and the task he has executed with 
 wonderful fidelity. He does not make him- 
 self a hero. Cromwell would have his warts 
 painted ; and Montaigne paints his, and 
 paints them too with a certain fondness. 
 He is perfectly tolerant of himself and of 
 everybody else. Whatever be the subject, 
 the writing flows on easy, equable, self- 
 satisfied, almost always with a personal 
 anecdote floating on the surface. Each 
 event of his past life he considers a fact of 
 nature ; creditable or the reverse, there it 
 is ; sometimes to be speculated upon, not in 
 the least to be regretted. If it is worth 
 nothing else, it may be made the subject of 
 an essay, or, at least, be useful as an illustra- 
 tion. We have not only his thoughts, we
 
 42 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 see also how and from what they arose. 
 When he presents you with a bouquet, you 
 notice that the flowers have been plucked 
 up by the roots, and to the roots a portion 
 of the soil still adheres. On his daily life his 
 Essays grew like lichens upon rocks. If a 
 thing is useful to him, he is not squeamish 
 as to where he picks it up. In his eye there 
 is nothing common or unclean ; and he 
 accepts a favour as willingly from a beggar as 
 from a prince. When it serves his purpose, 
 he quotes a tavern catch, or the smart say- 
 ing of a kitchen wench, with as much relish 
 as the fine sentiment of a classical poet, or 
 the gallant don mot of a king. Everything 
 is important which relates to himself. That 
 his mustache, if stroked with his perfumed 
 glove, or handkerchief, will retain the odour 
 a whole day, is related with as much gravity 
 as the loss of a battle, or the march of a 
 desolating plague. Montaigne, in his grave 
 passages, reaches an eloquence intricate and 
 highly wrought ; but then his moods are 
 Protean, and he is constantly alternating 
 his stateliness with familiarity, anecdote, 
 humour, coarseness. His Essays are like a 
 mythological landscape — you hear the pipe 
 of Pan in the distance, the naked goddess 
 moves past, the satyr leers from the thicket.
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 43 
 
 At the core of him profoundly melancholy, 
 and consumed by a hunger for truth, he 
 stands like Prospero in the enchanted 
 island, and he has Ariel and Caliban to do 
 his behests and run his errands. Sudden 
 alternations are very characteristic of him. 
 Whatever he says suggests its opposite. 
 He laughs at himself and his reader. He 
 builds his castle of cards for the mere pleas- 
 ure of knocking it down again. He is ever 
 unexpected and surprising. And with this 
 curious mental activity, this play and linked 
 dance of discordant elements, his page is 
 alive and restless, like the constant flicker 
 of light and shadow in a mass of foliage 
 which the wind is stirring. 
 
 Montaigne is avowedly an egotist ; and by 
 those who are inclined to make this a matter 
 of reproach, it should be remembered that 
 the value of egotism depends entirely on 
 the egotist. If the egotist is weak, his 
 egotism is worthless. If the egotist is 
 strong, acute, full of distinctive character, 
 his egotism is precious, and remains a pos- 
 session of the race. If Shakspeare had left 
 personal revelations, how we should value 
 them ; if, indeed, he has not in some sense 
 left them — if the tragedies and comedies 
 are not personal revelations altogether — the
 
 44 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 multiform nature of the man rushing 
 towards the sun at once in Falstaff, Hamlet, 
 and Romeo. But calling Montaigne an 
 egotist does not go a great way to decipher 
 him. No writer takes the reader so much 
 into his confidence, and no one so entirely 
 escapes the penalty of confidence. He tells 
 us everything about himself, we think ; and 
 when all is told, it is astonishing how little 
 we really know. The esplanades of Mon- 
 taigne's palace are thoroughfares, men from 
 every European country rub clothes there, 
 but somewhere in the building there is a 
 secret room in which the master sits, of 
 which no one but himself wears the key. 
 We read in the Essays about his wife, his 
 daughter, his daughter's governess, of his 
 cook, of his page, "who was never found 
 guilty of telling the truth," of his library, 
 the Gascon harvest outside his chateau, his 
 habits of composition, his favourite specula- 
 tions ; but somehow the man himself is 
 constantly eluding us. His daughter's gov- 
 erness, his page, the ripening Gascon fields, 
 are never introduced for their own sakes ; 
 they are employed to illustrate and set off 
 the subject on which he happens to be 
 writing. A brawl in his own kitchen he 
 does not consider worthy of being specially
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 45 
 
 set down, but he has seen and heard every- 
 thing : it comes in his way when travelling 
 in some remote region, and accordingly it 
 finds a place. He is the frankest, most out- 
 spoken of writers ; and that very frankness 
 and outspokenness puts the reader off his 
 guard. If you wish to preserve your secret, 
 wrap it up in frankness. The Essays are 
 full of this trick. The frankness is as well 
 simulated as the grape-branches of the 
 Grecian artist which the birds flew towards 
 and pecked. When Montaigne retreats, he 
 does so like a skilful general, leaving his 
 fires burning. In other ways, too, he is an 
 adept in putting his reader out. He dis- 
 courses with the utmost gravity, but you 
 suspect mockery or banter in his tones. He 
 is serious with the most trifling subjects, 
 and he trifles with the most serious. " He 
 broods eternally over his own thought," 
 but who can tell what his thought may be 
 for the nonce? He is of all writers the most 
 vagrant, surprising, and, to many minds, 
 illogical. His sequences are not the se- 
 quences of other men. His writings are as 
 full of transformations as a pantomime or a 
 fairy tale. His arid wastes lead up to glitter- 
 ing palaces, his banqueting-halls end in a 
 dog-hutch. He begins an essay about trivial-
 
 46 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 ities, and the conclusion is in the other world. 
 And the peculiar character of his writing, 
 like the peculiar character of all writing 
 which is worth anything, arises from con- 
 stitutional turn of mind. He is constantly 
 playing at fast and loose with himself and 
 his reader. He mocks and scorns his deeper 
 nature ; and, like Shakspeare in Hamlet, 
 says his deepest things in a jesting way. 
 When he is gayest, be sure there is a serious 
 design in his gaiety. Singularly shrewd and 
 penetrating — sad, not only from sensibility 
 of exquisite nerve and tissue, but from medi- 
 tation, and an eye that pierced the surfaces 
 of things — fond of pleasure, yet strangely 
 fascinated by death — sceptical, yet clinging 
 to what the Church taught and believed — 
 lazily possessed by a high ideal of life, yet 
 unable to reach it, careless perhaps often 
 to strive after it, and with no very high 
 opinion of his own goodness, or of the 
 goodness of his fellows — and with all these 
 serious elements, an element of humour 
 mobile as flame, which assumed a variety of 
 forms, now pure fun, now mischievous ban- 
 ter, now blistering scorn — humour in all its 
 shapes, carelessly exercised on himself and 
 his readers — with all this variety, complex- 
 ity, riot, and contradiction almost of intel-
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 47 
 
 lectual forces within, Montaigne wrote his 
 bewildering Essays — with the exception of 
 Rabelais, the greatest Modern Frenchman — 
 the creator of a distinct literary form, and to 
 whom, down even to our own day, even in 
 point of subject-matter, every essayist has 
 been more or less indebted. 
 
 Bacon is the greatest of the serious and 
 stately essayists, — Montaigne the greatest of 
 the garrulous and communicative. The 
 one gives you his thoughts on Death, 
 Travel, Government, and the like, and lets 
 you make the best of them ; the other gives 
 you his on the same subjects, but he wraps 
 them up in personal gossip and reminis- 
 cence. With the last it is never Death or 
 Travel alone : it is always Death one-fourth, 
 and Montaigne three-fourths ; or Travel one- 
 fourth, and Montaigne three-fourths. He 
 pours his thought into the water of gossip, 
 and gives you to drink. He gilds his pill 
 always, and he always gilds it with himself. 
 The general characteristics of his Essays 
 have been indicated, and it is worth while 
 inquiring what they teach, what positive 
 good they have done, and why for three 
 centuries they have charmed, and still con- 
 tinue to charm. 
 
 The Essays contain a philosophy of life,
 
 48 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 which is not specially high, yet which is 
 certain to find acceptance more or less 
 with men who have passed out beyond 
 the glow of youth, and who have made 
 trial of the actual world. The essence of 
 his philosophy is a kind of cynical com- 
 mon-sense. He will risk nothing in life ; 
 he will keep to the beaten track ; he will 
 not let passion blind or enslave him ; he will 
 gather round him what good he can, and 
 will therewith endeavour to be content. He 
 will be, as far as possible, self- sustained ; 
 he will not risk his happiness in the hands 
 of man, or of woman either. He is shy of 
 friendship, he fears love, for he knows that 
 both are dangerous. He knows that life is 
 full of bitters, and he holds it wisdom that a 
 man should console himself, as far as pos- 
 sible, with its sweets, the principal of which 
 are peace, travel, leisure, and the writing of 
 essays. He values obtainable Gascon bread 
 and cheese more than the unobtainable stars. 
 He thinks crying for the moon the foolish - 
 est thing in the world. He will remain 
 where he is. He will not deny that a new- 
 world may exist beyond the sunset, but he 
 knows that to reach the new world there is 
 a troublesome Atlantic to cross ; and he is 
 not in the least certain that, putting aside
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 49 
 
 the chance of being drowned on the way, he 
 will be one whit happier in the new world 
 than he is in the old. For his part he will 
 embark with no Columbus. He feels that 
 life is but a sad thing at best ; but as he has 
 little hope of making it better, he accepts it, 
 and will not make it worse by murmuring. 
 When the chain galls him, he can at least 
 revenge himself by making jests on it. He 
 will temper the despotism of nature by 
 epigrams. He has read .Flop's fable, and is 
 the last man in the world to relinquish the 
 shabbiest substance to grasp at the finest 
 shadow. 
 
 Of nothing under the sun was Montaigne 
 quite certain, except that every man — what- 
 ever his station — might travel farther and 
 fare worse ; and that the playing with his 
 own thoughts, in the shape of essay-writing, 
 was the most harmless of amusements. His 
 practical acquiescence in things does not 
 promise much fruit, save to himself; yet in 
 virtue of it he became one of the forces of 
 the world — a very visible agent in bringing 
 about the Europe which surrounds us to- 
 day. He lived in the midst of the French 
 religious wars. The rulers of his country 
 were execrable Christians, but most ortho- 
 dox Catholics. The burning of heretics was
 
 50 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 a public amusement, and the court ladies sat 
 out the play. On the queen-mother and on 
 her miserable son lay. all the blood of the 
 St. Bartholomew. The country was torn 
 asunder ; everywhere was battle, murder, 
 pillage, and such woeful partings as Mr. 
 Millais has represented in his incomparable 
 picture. To the solitary humourous essayist 
 this state of things was hateful. He was a 
 good Catholic in his easy way ; he attended 
 divine service regularly ; he crossed himself 
 when he yawned. He conformed in practice 
 to every rule of the Church ; but if orthodox 
 in these matters, he was daring in specula- 
 tion. There was nothing he was not bold 
 enough to question. He waged war after 
 his peculiar fashion with every form of 
 superstition. He worked under the founda- 
 tions of priestcraft. But while serving the 
 Reformed cause, he had no sympathy with 
 Reformers. If they would but remain quiet, 
 but keep their peculiar notions to them- 
 selves, France would rest ! That a man 
 should go to the stake for an opinion, was 
 as incomprehensible to him as that a priest 
 or king should send him there for an opin- 
 ion. He thought the persecuted and the 
 persecutors fools about equally matched. 
 He was easy-tempered and humane — in the
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 5 1 
 
 hunting-field he could not bear the cry of a 
 dying hare with composure — martyr-burn- 
 ing had consequently no attraction for such 
 a man. His scepticism came into play, his 
 melancholy humour, his sense of the inimit- 
 able which surrounds man's life, and which 
 mocks, defeats, flings back his thought 
 upon himself. Man is here, he said, with 
 bounded powers, with limited knowledge, 
 with an unknown behind, an unknown in 
 front, assured of nothing but that he was 
 born, and that he must die ; why, then, in 
 Heaven's name should he burn his fellow 
 for a difference of opinion in the matter of 
 surplices, or as to the proper fashion of con- 
 ducting devotion? Out of his scepticism 
 and his merciful disposition grew, in that 
 fiercely intolerant age, the idea of toleration, 
 of which he was the apostle. Widely read, 
 charming every one by his wit and wisdom, 
 his influence spread from mind to mind, and 
 assisted in bringing about the change which 
 has taken place in European thought. His 
 ideas, perhaps, did not spring from the 
 highest sources. He was no ascetic, he 
 loved pleasure, he was tolerant of every- 
 thing except cruelty; but on that account 
 we should not grudge him his meed. It is 
 in this indirect way that great writers take
 
 52 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 their place among the forces of the world. 
 In the long run, genius and wit side with 
 the right cause. And the man fighting 
 against wrong to-day is assisted, in a greater 
 degree than perhaps he is himself aware, by 
 the sarcasm of this writer, the metaphor of 
 that, the song of the other, although the 
 writers themselves professed indifference, 
 or were even counted as belonging to the 
 enemy. 
 
 Montaigne's hold on his readers arises 
 from many causes. There is his frank and 
 curious self-delineation ; that interests, be- • 
 cause it is the revelation of a very peculiar 
 nature. Then there is the positive value of 
 separate thoughts imbedded in his strange 
 whimsicality and humour. Lastly, there is 
 the perennial charm of style, which is never 
 a separate quality, but rather the amalgam 
 and issue of all the mental and moral 
 qualities in a man's possession, and which 
 bears the same relation to these that light 
 bears to the mingled elements that make up 
 the orb of the sun. And style, after all, 
 rather than thought, is the immortal thing 
 in literature. In literature, the charm of 
 style is indefinable, yet all-subduing, just as 
 fine manners are in social life. In reality, it 
 is not of so much consequence what you
 
 On the Writing of Essays. 53 
 
 say, as how you say it. Memorable sen- 
 tences are memorable on account of some 
 single irradiating word. " But Shadwell 
 never deviates into sense," for instance. 
 Young Roscius, in his provincial barn, will 
 repeat you the great soliloquy of Hamlet, 
 and although every word may be given with 
 tolerable correctness, you find it just as 
 commonplace as himself; the great actor 
 speaks it, and you " read Shakspeare as by 
 a flash of lightning." And it is in Mon- 
 taigne's style, in the strange freaks and 
 turnings of his thought, his constant sur- 
 prises, his curious alternations of humour 
 and melancholy, his careless, familiar form 
 of address, and the grace with which every- 
 thing is done, that his charm lies, and which 
 makes the hundredth perusal of him as 
 pleasant as the first. 
 
 And on style depends the success of the 
 essayist. Montaigne said the most familiar 
 things in the finest way. Goldsmith could 
 not be termed a thinker ; but everything he 
 touched he brightened, as after a month of 
 dry weather, the shower brightens the dusty 
 shrubbery of a suburban villa. The world 
 is not so much in need of new thoughts as 
 that when thought grows old and worn with 
 usage it should, like current coin, be called
 
 54 On the Writing of Essays. 
 
 in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued 
 fresh and new. Love is an old story enough, 
 but in every generation it is re-born, in the 
 downcast eyes and blushes of young maid- 
 ens. And so, although he fluttered in Eden, 
 Cupid is young to-day. If Montaigne had 
 lived in Dreamthorp, as I am now living, 
 had he written essays as I am now writing 
 them, his English Essays would have been 
 as good as his Gascon ones. Looking on, 
 the country cart would not for nothing have 
 passed him on the road to market, the set- 
 ting sun would be arrested in its splendid 
 colours, the idle chimes of the church would 
 be translated into a thoughtful music. As it 
 is, the village life goes on, and there is no 
 result. My sentences are not much more 
 brilliant than the speeches of the clowns ; 
 in my book there is little more life than 
 there is in the market-place on the days 
 when there is no market.
 
 OFDe-ATH AND THE F6AR OF DYING wM 
 
 [ET me curiously analyse eternal 
 farewells, and the last pressures 
 of loving hands. Let me smile 
 at faces bewept, and the nodding 
 plumes and slow paces of funerals. Let me 
 write down brave heroical sentences — sen- 
 tences that defy death, as brazen Goliath the 
 hosts of Israel. 
 
 " When death waits for us is uncertain ; 
 let us everywhere look for him. The pre- 
 meditation of death is the premeditation of 
 liberty ; who has learnt to die, has forgot to 
 serve. There is nothing of evil in life for 
 him who rightly comprehends that death is 
 no evil ; to know how to die delivers us 
 from all subjection and constraint. Paulas 
 ^Emilius answered him whom the miserable 
 king of Mace Jon, his prisoner, sent to entreat 
 him that he would not lead him in his tri- 
 umph, ' Let him make that request to himself' 
 In truth, in all things, if nature do not help
 
 56 Death and Dying. 
 
 a little, it is very hard for art and industry to 
 perform anything to purpose. I am, in my 
 own nature, not melancholy, but thoughtful ; 
 and there is nothing I have more continually 
 entertained myself withal than the imagina- 
 tions of death, even in the gayest and most 
 wanton time of my age. In the company of 
 ladies, and in the height of mirth, some have 
 perhaps thought me possessed of some jeal- 
 ousy, or meditating upon the uncertainty of 
 some imagined hope, whilst I was entertain- 
 ing myself with the remembrance of some 
 one surprised a few days before with a burn- 
 ing fever, of which he died, returning from 
 an entertainment like this, with his head 
 full of idle fancies of love and jollity, as 
 mine was then ; and for aught I knew, the 
 same destiny was attending me. Yet did 
 not this thought wrinkle my forehead any 
 more than any other." . . . . " Why dost 
 thou fear this last day? It contributes no 
 more to thy destruction than every one of 
 the rest. The last step is not the cause of 
 lassitude, it does but confer it. Every day 
 travels toward death ; the last only arrives at 
 it. These are the good lessons our mother 
 nature teaches. I have often considered 
 with myself whence it should proceed, that 
 in war the image of death — whether we
 
 Death and Dying. 57 
 
 look upon it as to our own particular 
 danger, or that of another — should, without 
 comparison, appear less dreadful than at 
 home in our own houses, (for if it were 
 not so, it would be an army of whining milk- 
 sops,) and that being still in all places the 
 same, there should be, notwithstanding, much 
 more assurance in peasants and the meaner 
 sort of people, than others of better quality 
 and education ; and I do verily believe, that 
 it is those terrible ceremonies and prepara- 
 tions wherewith we set it out, that more 
 terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite 
 contrary way of living, the cries of mothers, 
 wives and children, the visits of astonished 
 and affected friends, the attendance of pale 
 and blubbered servants, a dark room set 
 round with burning tapers, our beds envi- 
 roned with physicians and divines ; in fine, 
 nothing but ghostliness and horror round 
 about us, render it so formidable, that a man 
 almost fancies himself dead and buried al- 
 ready. Children are afraid even of those 
 they love best, and are best acquainted with, 
 when disguised in a vizor, and so are we ; 
 the vizor must be removed as well from 
 things as persons ; which being taken away, 
 we shall find nothing underneath but the 
 very same death that a mean servant, or 
 
 V
 
 
 5<S Death and Dying. 
 
 a poor chambermaid, died a day or two 
 ago, without any manner of apprehension or 
 concern." * 
 
 '• Men feare death as children feare to goe 
 in the darke ; and as that natural feare in 
 children is increased with tales, so in the 
 other. Certainly the contemplation of death 
 as the wages of sinne, and passage to another 
 world, is holy and religious ; but the feare 
 of it as a tribute unto nature, is weake. Yet 
 in religious meditations there is sometimes 
 mixture of vanitie and of superstition. You 
 shal reade in some of the friars' books of 
 mortification, that a man should thinke unto 
 himself what the paine is if he have but his 
 finger-end pressed or tortured ; and thereby 
 imagine what the pains of death are when 
 the whole body is corrupted and dissolved ; 
 when many times death passeth with lesse 
 
 ine than the torture of a Lemme. For 
 the most vitall parts are not the quickest of 
 sense. Groanes and convulsions, and a dis- 
 coloured face, and friends weeping, and 
 blackes and obsequies, and the like, shew 
 death terrible. It is worthy the observing, 
 that there is no passion in the minde of man 
 so weake but it mates and masters the feare 
 of death ; and therefore death is no such 
 
 * Montaigne.
 
 Death and Dying. 59 
 
 terrible enemy when a man hath so many 
 attendants about him that can winne the 
 combat of him. Revenge triumphs over 
 death, love subjects it, honour aspireth to it, 
 %riefe fleeth to it, feare pre-occupieth it ; 
 nay, we read, after Otho the emperour had 
 slaine himselfe, fiitly, (which is the tenderest 
 of affections,) provoked many to die, out of 
 meer compassion to their soveraigne, and as 
 
 the truest sort of followers It is as 
 
 naturall to die as to be born ; and to a little 
 infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the 
 other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit is 
 like one that is wounded in hot blood, who 
 for the time scarce feels the hurt ; and, 
 therefore, a minde mixt and bent upon 
 somewhat that is good, doth avert the sad- 
 ness of death. But above all, believe it, the 
 sweetest canticle is Nunc Dimittis, when a 
 man hath obtained worthy ends and expecta- 
 tions. Death hath this also ; that it openeth 
 the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth 
 envie." * 
 
 These sentences of the great essayists are 
 brave and ineffectual as Leonidas and his 
 Greeks. Death cares very little for sarcasm 
 or trope ; hurl at him a javelin or a rose, it 
 is all one. We build around ourselves ram- 
 
 * Bacon.
 
 6o Death and Dying. 
 
 parts of stoical maxims, edifying to witness, 
 out when the terror comes these yield as 
 the knots of river flags to the shoulder of 
 Behemoth. 
 
 Death is terrible only in presence. When 
 distant, or supposed to be distant, we can 
 call him hard or tender names, nay, even 
 poke our poor fun at him. Air. Punch, on 
 one occasion, when he wished to ridicule 
 the useful- information leanings of a certain 
 periodical publication, quoted from its pages 
 the sentence, " Man is mortal," and people 
 were found to grin broadly over the exqui- 
 site stroke of humour. Certainly the words, 
 and the fact they contain, are trite enough. 
 Utter the sentence gravely in any company, 
 and you are certain to provoke laughter. 
 And yet some subtile recognition of the fact 
 of death runs constantly through the warp 
 and woof of the most ordinary human ex- 
 istence. And this recognition does not 
 always terrify. The spectre has the most 
 cunning disguises, and often when near us 
 we are unaware of the fact of proximity. 
 Unsuspected, this idea of death lurks in the 
 sweetness of music ; it has something to do 
 with the pleasures with which we behold 
 the vapours of morning ; it comes between 
 the passionate lips of lovers ; it lives in the
 
 Death and Dying. f>r 
 
 thrill of kisses. " An inch deeper, and you 
 will find the emperor." Probe joy to its 
 last fibre, and you will find death. And it 
 is the most merciful of all the merciful pro- 
 visions of nature, that a haunting sense of 
 insecurity should deepen the enjoyment of 
 what we have secured ; that the pleasure 
 of our warm human day and its activities 
 should to some extent arise from a vague 
 consciousness of the waste night which en- 
 virons it, in which no arm is raised, in which 
 no voice is ever heard. Death is the ugly 
 fact which nature has to hide, and she hides 
 it well. Human life were otherwise an im- 
 possibility. The pantomime runs on merrily 
 enough ; but when once Harlequin lifts his 
 vizor, Columbine disappears, the jest is 
 frozen on the Clown's lips, and the hand of 
 the filching Pantaloon is arrested in the act. 
 Wherever death looks, there is silence and 
 trembling. But although on every man he 
 will one day or another look, he is coy of re- 
 vealing himself till the appointed time. He 
 makes his approaches like an Indian warrior, 
 under covers and ambushes. We have our 
 parts to play, and he remains hooded till 
 they are played out. We are agitated by 
 our passions, we busily pursue our ambitions, 
 we are acquiring money or reputation, and
 
 62 Deatli and Dying. 
 
 all at once, in the centre of our desires, we 
 discover the "Shadow feared of man." And 
 so nature fools the poor human mortal ever- 
 more. When she means to be deadly, she 
 dresses her face in smiles ; when she selects 
 a victim, she sends him a poisoned rose. 
 There is no pleasure, no shape of good for- 
 tune, no form of glory in which death has 
 not hid himself, and waited silently for his 
 prey. 
 
 And death is the most ordinary thing in 
 the world. It is as common as births ; it is 
 of more frequent occurrence than marriages 
 and the attainment of majorities. But the 
 difference between death and other forms of 
 human experience lies in this, that we can 
 gain no information about it. The dead 
 man is wise, but he is silent. We cannot 
 wring his secret from him. We cannot in- 
 terpret the ineffable calm which gathers on 
 the rigid face. As a consequence, when our 
 thought rests on death we are smitten with 
 isolation and loneliness. We are without 
 company on the dark road ; and we have 
 advanced so far upon it that we cannot hear 
 the voices of our friends. It is in this sense 
 of loneliness, this consciousness of identity 
 and nothing more, that the terror of dying 
 consists. And yet, compared to that road,
 
 Death and Dying. 63 
 
 the most populous thoroughfare of London 
 or Pekin is a desert. What enumerator will 
 take for us the census of dead? And this 
 matter of death and dying, like most things 
 else in the world, may be exaggerated by 
 our own fears and hopes. Death, terrible to 
 look forward to, may be pleasant even to 
 look back at. Could we be admitted to the 
 happy fields, and hear the conversations 
 which blessed spirits hold, one might dis- 
 cover that to conquer death a man has but to 
 die ; that by that act terror is softened into 
 familiarity, and that the remembrance of 
 death becomes but as the remembrance of 
 yesterday. To these fortunate ones death 
 may be but a date, and dying a subject fruit- 
 ful in comparisons, a matter on which expe- 
 riences may be serenely compared. Mean- 
 time, however, we have not yet reached 
 that measureless content, and death scares, 
 piques, tantalises, as mind and nerve are 
 built. Situated as we are, knowing that it 
 is inevitable, we cannot keep our thoughts 
 from resting on it curiously, at times. Noth- 
 ing interests us so much. The Highland 
 seer pretended that he could see the wind- 
 ing-sheet high upon the breast of the man 
 for whom death was waiting. Could we be- 
 hold any such visible sign, the man who
 
 64 Death and Dying. 
 
 bore it, no matter where he stood — even if 
 he were a slave watching Caesar pass — would 
 usurp every eye. At the coronation of a 
 king, the wearing of that order would dim 
 royal robe, quench the sparkle of the dia- 
 dem, and turn to vanity the herald's cry. 
 Death makes the meanest beggar august, 
 and that augustness would assert itself in 
 the presence of a king. And it is this curi- 
 osity with regard to everything related to 
 death and dying which makes us treasure up 
 the last sayings of great men, and attempt 
 to wring out of them tangible meanings. 
 Was Goethe's "Light — light, more light ! " 
 a prayer, or a statement of spiritual experi- 
 ence, or simply an utterance of the fact that 
 the room in which he lay was filling with the 
 last twilight? In consonance with our own 
 natures, we interpret it the one way or 
 the other — he is beyond our questioning. 
 For the same reason it is that men take 
 interest in executions — from Charles I. on 
 the scaffold at Whitehall, to Porteous in 
 the Grassmarket execrated by the mob. 
 These men are not dulled by disease, they 
 arc not delirious with fever ; they look death 
 in the face, and what in these circumstances 
 they say and do has the strangest fascination 
 for us.
 
 Death and Dyi?ig. 65 
 
 What does the murderer think when his 
 eyes are forever blinded by the accursed 
 nightcap? In what form did thought con- 
 dense itself between the gleam of the lifted 
 axe and the rolling of King Charles's head 
 in the saw-dust? This kind of speculation 
 may be morbid, but it is not necessarily so. 
 All extremes of human experience touch us ; 
 and we have all the deepest personal inter- 
 est in the experience of death. Out of all 
 we know about dying we strive to clutch 
 something which may break its solitariness, 
 and relieve us by a touch of companionship. 
 
 To denude death of its terrible associa- 
 tions were a vain attempt. The atmosphere 
 is always cold around an iceberg. In the 
 contemplation of dying the spirit may not 
 flinch, but pulse and heart, colour and articu- 
 lation, are always cowards. No philosophy 
 will teach them bravery in the stern pres- 
 ence. And yet there are considerations 
 which rob death of its ghastliness, and help 
 to reconcile us to it. The thoughtful happi- 
 ness of a human being is complex, and in 
 certain moved moments, which, after they 
 have gone, we can recognise to have been 
 our happiest, some subtle thought of death 
 has been curiously intermixed. And this 
 subtle intermixture it is which gives the 
 
 5
 
 66 Death and Dying. 
 
 happy moment its character — which makes 
 the difference between the gladness of a 
 child, resident in mere animal health and 
 impulse, and too volatile to be remembered, 
 and the serious joy of a man, which looks 
 before and after, and takes in both this 
 world and the next. Speaking broadly, it 
 may be said that it is from some obscure rec- 
 ognition of the fact of death that life draws 
 its final sweetness. An obscure, haunting 
 recognition, of course ; for if more than that, 
 if the thought becomes palpable, defined, 
 and present, it swallows up everything. The 
 howling of the winter wind outside increases 
 the warm satisfaction of a man in bed ; 
 but this satisfaction is succeeded by quite 
 another feeling when the wind grows into a 
 tempest, and threatens to blow the house 
 down. And this remote recognition of death 
 may exist almost constantly in a man's mind, 
 and give to his life keener zest and relish. 
 His lights may burn the brighter for it, and 
 his wines taste sweeter. For it is on the 
 tapestry of a dim ground that the figures 
 come out in the boldest relief and the bright- 
 est colour. 
 
 If we were to live here always, with no 
 other care than how to feed, clothe, and 
 house ourselves, life would be a very sorry
 
 Death and Dying. 67 
 
 business. It is immeasurably heightened 
 by the solemnity of death. The brutes die 
 even as we ; but it is our knowledge that we 
 have to die that makes us human. If nature 
 cunningly hides death, and so permits us to 
 play out our little games, it is easily seen 
 that our knowing it to be inevitable, that to 
 every one of us it will come one day or 
 another, is a wonderful spur to action. We 
 really do work while it is called to-day, be- 
 cause the night cometh when no man can 
 work. We may not expect it soon — it may 
 not have sent us a single avant-courier — yet 
 we all know that every day brings it nearer. 
 On the supposition that we were to live 
 here always, there would be little induce- 
 ment to exertion. But, having some work 
 at heart, the knowledge that we may be, any 
 day, finally interrupted, is an incentive to 
 diligence. We naturally desire to have it 
 completed, or at least far advanced toward 
 completion, before that final interruption 
 takes place. And knowing that his exist- 
 ence here is limited, a man's workings have 
 reference to others rather than to himself, 
 and thereby into his nature comes a new in- 
 flux of nobility. If a man plants a tree, he 
 knows that other hands than his will gather 
 the fruit ; and when he plants it, he thinks
 
 68 Death and Dying. 
 
 quite as much of those other hands as of his 
 own. Thus to the poet there is the dearer 
 life after life ; and posterity's single laurel 
 leaf is valued more than a multitude of con- 
 temporary bays. Even the man immersed 
 in money- making does not make money 
 so much for himself as for those who may 
 come after him. Riches in noble natures 
 have a double sweetness. The possessor 
 enjoys his wealth, and he heightens that en- 
 joyment by the imaginative entrance into 
 the pleasure which his son or his nephew 
 may derive from it when he is away, or the 
 high uses to which he may turn it. Seeing 
 that we have no perpetual lease of life and 
 its adjuncts, we do not live for ourselves. 
 And thus it is that death, which we are ac- 
 customed to consider an evil, really acts for 
 us the friendliest part, and takes away the 
 commonplace of existence. My life, and 
 your life, flowing on thus day by day, is a 
 vapid enough piece of business ; but when 
 we think that it must close, a multitude of 
 considerations, not connected with ourselves 
 but with others, rush in, and vapidity van- 
 ishes at once. Life, if it were to flow on for- 
 ever and thus, would stagnate and rot. The 
 hopes, and fears, and regrets, which move 
 and trouble it, keep it fresh and healthy, as
 
 Death and Dying. 69 
 
 the sea is kept alive by the trouble of its 
 tides. In a tolerably comfortable world, 
 where death is not, it is difficult to see from 
 what quarter these healthful fears, regrets, 
 and hopes could come. As it is, there are 
 agitations and sufferings in our lots enough ; 
 but we must remember that it is on account 
 of these sufferings and agitations that we be- 
 come creatures breathing thoughtful breath. 
 As has already been said, death takes away 
 the commonplace of life. And positively, 
 when one looks on the thousand and one 
 poor, foolish, ignoble faces of this world, and 
 listens to the chatter as poor and foolish as 
 the faces, one, in order to have any proper 
 respect for them, is forced to remember that 
 solemnity of death, which is silently waiting. 
 The foolishest person will look grand enough 
 one day. The features are poor now, but 
 the hottest tears and the most passionate 
 embraces will not seem out of place then. 
 If you wish to make a man look noble, your 
 best course is to kill him. What superiority 
 he may have inherited from his race, what 
 superiority nature may have personally 
 gifted him with, comes out in death. The 
 passions which agitate, distort, and change, 
 are gone away forever, and the features 
 settle back into a marble calm, which is the
 
 ye Death and Dying. 
 
 man's truest image. Then the most affected 
 look sincere, the most volatile, serious — all 
 noble, more or less. And nature will not 
 be surprised into disclosures. The man 
 stretched out there may have been voluble 
 as a swallow, but now — when he could 
 speak to some purpose — neither pyramid 
 nor sphinx holds a secret more tenaciously. 
 
 Consider, then, how the sense of imper- 
 manence brightens beauty and elevates hap- 
 piness. Melancholy is always attendant on 
 beauty, and that melancholy brings out its 
 keenness as the dark green corrugated leaf 
 brings out the wan loveliness of the prim- 
 rose. The spectator enjoys the beauty, but 
 his knowledge that it is fleeting, and that he 
 fleeting, adds a pathetic something to it ; and 
 by that something the beautiful object and 
 the gazer are alike raised. 
 
 Everything is sweetened by risk. The 
 pleasant emotion is mixed and deepened by 
 a sense of mortality. Those lovers who have 
 never encountered the possibility of last em- 
 braces and farewells are novices in the pas- 
 sion. Sunset affects us more powerfully 
 than sunrise, simply because it is a setting 
 sun, and suggests a thousand analogies. A 
 mother is never happier than when her eyes 
 fill over her sleeping child, never does she
 
 Death and Dying. 71 
 
 kiss it more fondly, never does she pray for 
 it more fervently ; and yet there is more in 
 her heart than visible red cheek and yel- 
 low curl ; possession and bereavement are 
 strangely mingled in the exquisite maternal 
 mood, the one heightening the other. All 
 great joys are serious ; and emotion must be 
 measured by its complexity and the deep- 
 ness of its reach. A musician may draw 
 pretty notes enough from a single key, but 
 the richest music is that in which the whole 
 force of the instrument is employed, in the 
 production of which every key is vibrating ; 
 and, although full of solemn touches and 
 majestic tones, the final effect may be exu- 
 berant and gay. Pleasures which rise be- 
 yond the mere gratification of the senses are 
 dependant for their exquisiteness on the 
 number and variety of the thoughts which 
 they evoke. And that joy is the greatest 
 which, while felt to be joy, can include the 
 thought of death and clothe itself with that 
 crowning pathos. And in the minds of 
 thoughtful persons every joy does, more or 
 less, with the crowning pathos clothe itself. 
 In life there is nothing more unexpected 
 and surprising than the arrivals and depar- 
 tures of pleasure. If we find it in one place 
 to-day, it is vain to seek it there to-morrow. 
 
 \^
 
 72 Death and Dying. 
 
 You cannot lay a trap for it. It will fall into 
 no ambuscade, concert it ever so cunningly. 
 Pleasure has no logic ; it never treads in its 
 own footsteps. Into our commonplace exist- 
 ence it comes with a surprise, like a pure 
 white swan from the airy void into the ordi- 
 nary village lake ; and just as the swan, for 
 no reason that can be discovered, lifts itself 
 on its wings and betakes itself to the void 
 again, it leaves us, and our sole possession 
 is its memory. And it is characteristic of 
 pleasure that we can never recognise it to 
 be pleasure till after it is gone. Happiness 
 never lays its finger on its pulse. If we at- 
 tempt to steal a glimpse of its features it 
 disappears. It is a gleam of unreckoned 
 gold. From the nature of the case, our hap- 
 piness, such as in its degree it has been, 
 lives in memory. We have not the voice 
 itself; we have only its echo. We are never 
 happy ; we can only remember that we were 
 so once. And while in the very heart and 
 structure of the happy moment there lurked 
 an obscure consciousness of death, the mem- 
 ory in which past happiness dwells is always a 
 regretful memory. This is why the tritest ut- 
 terance about the past, youth, early love, and 
 the like, has always about it an indefinable 
 flavour of poetry, which pleases and affects.
 
 Death and Dying. 73 
 
 In the wake of a ship there is always a melan- 
 choly splendour. The finest set of verses of 
 our modern time describes how the poet gazed 
 on the " happy autumn fields," and remem- 
 bered the " days that were no more." After 
 all, a man's real possession is his memory. 
 In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is 
 he poor. 
 
 In our warm imaginative youth, death is 
 far removed from us, and attains thereby a 
 certain picturesqueness. The grim thought 
 stands in the ideal world as a ruin stands in 
 a blooming landscape. The thought of death 
 sheds a pathetic charm over everything then. 
 The young man cools himself with a thought 
 of the winding-sheet and the charnel, as the 
 heated dancer cools himself on the balcony 
 with the night-air. The young imagination 
 plays with the idea of death, makes a toy of 
 it, just as a child plays with edge-tools till 
 once it cuts its fingers. The most lugu- 
 brious poetry is written by very young and 
 tolerably comfortable persons. When a 
 man's mood becomes really serious he has 
 little taste for such foolery. The man who 
 has a grave or two in his heart, does not 
 need to haunt churchyards. The young poet 
 uses death as an antithesis ; and when he 
 shocks his reader by some flippant use of
 
 74 Death and Dying. 
 
 it in that way, he considers he has written 
 something mightily fine. In his gloomiest 
 mood he is most insincere, most egotistical, 
 most pretentious. The older and wiser poet 
 avoids the subject as he does the memory of 
 pain ; or when he does refer to it, he does 
 so in a reverential manner, and with some 
 sense of its solemnity and of the magnitude 
 of its issues. It was in that year of revelry, 
 1 814, and while undressing from balls, that 
 Lord Byron wrote his " Lara," as he informs 
 us. Disrobing, and haunted, in all probabil- 
 ity, by eyes in whose light he was happy 
 enough, the spoiled young man, who then 
 affected death- pallors, and wished the world 
 to believe that he felt his richest wines pow- 
 dered with the dust of graves, — of which 
 wine, notwithstanding, he frequently took 
 more than was good for him, — wrote, 
 
 " That sleep the loveliest, since it dreams the 
 
 least." 
 
 The sleep referred to being death. This was 
 meant to take away the reader's breath ; and 
 after performing the feat, Byron betook him- 
 self to his pillow with a sense of supreme 
 cleverness. Contrast with this Shakspeare's 
 far out-looking and thought- heavy lines — 
 lines which, under the same image, represent 
 death —
 
 Death and Dying. 75 
 
 " To die — to sleep ; — 
 To sleep ! perchance to dream ; — ay, there 's the rub ; 
 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come ! " 
 
 And you see at once how a man's notions of 
 death and dying are deepened by a wider ex- 
 perience. Middle age may fear death quite 
 as little as youth fears it ; but it has learned 
 seriousness, and it has no heart to poke fun 
 at the lean ribs, or to call it fond names like 
 a lover, or to stick a primrose in its grinning 
 chaps, and draw a strange pleasure from the 
 irrelevancy. 
 
 The man who has reached thirty, feels at 
 times as if he had come out of a great battle. 
 Comrade after comrade has fallen ; his own 
 life seems to have been charmed. And know- 
 ing how it fared with his friends — perfect 
 health one day, a catarrh the next, blinds 
 drawn down, silence in the house, blubbered 
 faces of widow and orphans, intimation of 
 the event in the newspapers, with a request 
 that friends will accept of it, the day after — 
 a man, as he draws near middle age, begins 
 to suspect every transient indisposition ; to 
 be careful of being caught in a shower, to 
 shudder at sitting in wet shoes ; he feels his 
 pulse, he anxiously peruses his face in a 
 mirror, he becomes critical as to the colour 
 of his tongue. In early life illness is a lux-
 
 76 Death and Dying. 
 
 ury, and draws out toward the sufferer curi- 
 ous and delicious tendernesses, which are 
 felt to be a full over-payment of pain and 
 weakness ; then there is the pleasant period 
 of convalescence, when one tastes a core and 
 marrow of delight in meats, drinks, sleep, 
 silence ; the bunch of newly-plucked flowers 
 on the table, the sedulous attentions and 
 patient forbearance of nurses and friends. 
 Later in life, when one occupies a post, and 
 is in discharge of duties which are accumu- 
 lating against recovery, illness and convales- 
 cence cease to be luxuries. Illness is felt 
 to be a cruel interruption of the ordinary 
 course of things, and the sick person is har- 
 assed by a sense of the loss of time and the 
 loss of strength. He is placed hors de com- 
 bat ; all the while he is conscious that the 
 battle is going on around him, and he feels 
 his temporary withdrawal a misfortune. Of 
 course, unless a man is very unhappily cir- 
 cumstanced, he has in his later illnesses all 
 the love, patience, and attention which sweet- 
 ened his earlier ones ; but then he cannot 
 rest in them, and accept them as before as 
 compensation in full. The world is ever 
 with him ; through his interests and his af- 
 fections he has meshed himself in an intri- 
 cate net-work of relationships and other
 
 Death and Dying. 77 
 
 dependences, and a fatal issue — which in 
 such cases is ever on the cards — would de- 
 stroy all these, and bring about more serious 
 matters than the shedding of tears. In a 
 man's earlier illnesses, too, he had not only 
 no such definite future to work out, he had 
 a stronger spring of life and hope ; he was 
 rich in time, and could wait ; and lying in his 
 chamber now, he cannot help remembering 
 that, as Mr. Thackeray expresses it, there 
 comes at last an illness to which there may 
 be no convalescence. What if that illness 
 be already come? And so there is nothing 
 left for him, but to bear the rod with pa- 
 tience, and to exercise a humble faith in the 
 Ruler of all. If he recovers, some half-dozen 
 people will be made happy ; if he does not 
 recover, the same number of people will be 
 made miserable for a little while, and, dur- 
 ing the next two or three days, acquain- 
 tances will meet in the street — " You 've 
 heard of poor So-and-so ? Very sudden ! 
 Who would have thought it? Expect to 
 
 meet you at 's on Thursday. Good-bye." 
 
 And so to the end. Your death and my 
 death are mainly of importance to ourselves. 
 The black plumes will be stripped off our 
 hearses within the hour ; tears will dry, hurt 
 hearts close again, our graves grow level 
 with the church-yard, and although we are
 
 78 Death and Dying. 
 
 away, the world wags on. It does not miss 
 us ; and those who are near us, when the 
 first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will 
 not miss us much either. 
 
 We are curious as to death-beds and death- 
 bed sayings ; we wish to know how the mat- 
 ter stands ; how the whole thing looks to 
 the dying. Unhappily — perhaps, on the 
 whole, happily — we can gather no informa- 
 tion from these. The dying are nearly as 
 reticent as the dead. The inferences we draw 
 from the circumstances of death, the pallor, 
 the sob, the glazing eye, are just as likely to 
 mislead us as not. Manfred exclaims, " Old 
 man, 't is not so difficult to die ! " Sterling 
 wrote Carlyle " that it was all very strange, 
 yet not so strange as it seemed to the look- 
 ers on." And so, perhaps, on the whole it is. 
 The world has lasted six thousand years now, 
 and, with the exception of those at pres- 
 ent alive, the millions who have breathed 
 upon it — splendid emperors, horny-fisted 
 clowns, little children, in whom thought has 
 never stirred — have died, and what they have 
 done, we also shall be able to do. It may 
 not be so difficult, may not be so terrible, as 
 our fears whisper. The dead keep their 
 secrets, and in a little while we shall be as 
 wise as they — and as taciturn.
 
 F it be assumed that the North 
 Briton is, to an appreciable ex- 
 tent, a different creature from 
 the Englishman, the assumption 
 is not likely to provoke dispute. No one 
 will deny us the prominence of our cheek- 
 bones, and our pride in the same. How far 
 the difference extends, whether it involves 
 merit or demerit, are questions not now 
 sought to be settled. Nor is it important to 
 discover how the difference arose ; how far 
 chiller climate and sourer soil, centuries of 
 unequal yet not inglorious conflict, a sepa- 
 rate race of kings, a body of separate tradi- 
 tions, and a peculiar crisis of reformation 
 issuing in peculiar forms of religious worship, 
 confirmed and strengthened the national 
 idiosyncrasy. If a difference between the 
 races be allowed, it is sufficient for the pres- 
 ent purpose. That allowed, and Scot and 
 Southern being fecund in literary genius, it
 
 80 Dunbar. 
 
 becomes an interesting inquiry to what ex- 
 tent the great literary men of the one race 
 have influenced the great literary men of 
 the other. On the whole, perhaps, the two 
 races may fairly cry quits. Not unfre- 
 quently, indeed, have literary influences 
 arisen in the north and travelled southwards. 
 There were the Scottish ballads, for instance, 
 there was Burns, there was Sir Walter Scott, 
 there is Mr. Carlyle. The literary influence 
 represented by each of these arose in Scot- 
 land, and has either passed or is passing " in 
 music out of sight " in England. The energy 
 of the northern wave has rolled into the 
 southern waters. On the other hand, we 
 can mark the literary influences travelling 
 from the south northward. The English 
 Chaucer rises, and the current of his influ- 
 ence is long afterwards visible in the Scot- 
 tish King James, and the Scottish poet 
 Dunbar. That which was Prior and Gay in 
 London, became Allan Ramsay when it 
 reached Edinburgh. Inspiration, not unfre- 
 quently, has travelled, like summer, from 
 the south northwards ; just as, when the day 
 is over, and the lamps are lighted in London, 
 the radiance of the setting sun is lingering 
 on the splintered peaks and rosy friths of 
 the Hebrides. All this, however, is a matter
 
 Dunbar. 81 
 
 of the past ; literary influence can no longer 
 be expected to travel leisurely from south 
 to north, or from north to south. In times 
 of literary activity, as at the beginning of 
 the present century, the atmosphere of 
 passion or speculation envelop the entire 
 island, and Scottish and English writers si- 
 multaneously draw from it what their pecu- 
 liar natures prompt — just as in the same 
 garden the rose drinks crimson and the con- 
 volvulus azure from the superincumbent 
 air. 
 
 Chaucer must always remain a name in 
 British literary history. He appeared at a 
 time when the Saxon and Norman races had 
 become fused, and when ancient bitternesses 
 were lost in the proud title of Englishman. 
 He was the first great poet the island pro- 
 duced ; and he wrote for the most part in 
 the language of the people, with just the 
 slightest infusion of the courtlier Norman 
 element, which gives to his writings some- 
 thing of the high-bred air that the short 
 upper- lip gives to the human countenance. 
 In his earlier poems he was under the influ- 
 ence of the Provencal Troubadours, and in 
 his " Flower and the Leaf," and other works 
 of a similar class, he riots in allegory ; he rep- 
 resents the cardinal virtues walking about
 
 82 Dunbar. 
 
 in human shape ; his forests are full of beau- 
 tiful ladies with coronals on their heads ; 
 courts of love are held beneath the spread- 
 ing elm, and metaphysical goldfinches and 
 nightingales, perched among the branches 
 green, wrangle melodiously about the tender 
 passion. In these poems he is fresh, charm- 
 ing, fanciful as the spring-time itself: ever 
 picturesque, ever musical, and with a homely 
 touch and stroke of irony here and there, 
 suggesting a depth of serious matter in him 
 which it needed years only to develop. He 
 lived in a brilliant and stirring time ; he 
 was connected with the court ; he served in 
 armies ; he visited the Continent ; and, 
 although a silent man, he carried with him, 
 wherever he went, and into whatever com- 
 pany he was thrown, the most observant 
 eyes perhaps that ever looked curiously out 
 upon the world. There was nothing too 
 mean or too trivial for his regard. After 
 parting with a man, one fancies that he 
 knew every line and wrinkle of his face, had 
 marked the travel-stains on his boots, and 
 had counted the slashes of his doublet. And 
 so it was that, after mixing in kings' courts, 
 and sitting with friars in taverns, and talking 
 with people on country roads, and travelling 
 in France and Italy, and making himself
 
 Dunbar. 83 
 
 master of the literature, science, and theol- 
 ogy of his time, and when perhaps touched 
 with misfortune and sorrow, he came to see 
 the depth of interest that resides in actual 
 life, — that the rudest clown even, with his 
 sordid humours and coarse speech, is intrin- 
 sically more valuable than a whole forest 
 full of goddesses, or innumerable processions 
 of cardinal virtues, however well mounted 
 and splendidly attired. It was in some such 
 mood of mind that Chaucer penned those 
 unparalleled pictures of contemporary life 
 that delight yet, after five centuries have 
 come and gone. It is difficult to define 
 Chaucer's charm. He does not indulge in 
 fine sentiment ; he has no bravura pas- 
 sages ; he is ever master of himself and of his 
 subject. The light upon his page is the light 
 of common day. Although powerful deline- 
 ations of passion may be found in his " Tales," 
 and wonderful descriptions of nature, and 
 although certain of the passages relating to 
 Constance and Griselda in their deep dis- 
 tresses are unrivalled in tenderness, neither 
 passion, nor natural description, nor pathos, 
 are his striking characteristics. It is his 
 shrewdness, his conciseness, his ever-present 
 humour, his frequent irony, and his short, 
 homely line — effective as the play of the
 
 84 Dunbar. 
 
 short Roman sword — which strikes the 
 reader most. In the "Prologue to the Can- 
 terbury Tales " — by far the ripest thing he 
 has done — he seems to be writing the easiest, 
 most idiomatic prose, but it is poetry all the 
 while. He is a poet of natural manner, deal- 
 ing with out-door life. Perhaps, on the 
 whole, the writer who most resembles him 
 — superficial differences apart — is Fielding. 
 In both there is constant shrewdness and 
 common- sense, a constant feeling of the 
 comic side of things, a moral instinct which 
 escapes in irony, never in denunciation or 
 fanaticism ; no remarkable spirituality of feel- 
 ing, an acceptance of the world as a pleasant 
 enough place, provided good dinners and a 
 sufficiency of cash are to be had, and that 
 healthy relish for fact and reality, and scorn 
 of humbug of all kinds, especially of that 
 particular phase of it which makes one ap- 
 pear better than one is, which — for want of 
 a better term — we are accustomed to call 
 English. Chaucer was a Conservative in all 
 his feelings ; he liked to poke his fun at the 
 clergy, but he was not of the stuff of which 
 martyrs are made. He loved good eating and 
 drinking, and studious leisure and peace ; and 
 although in his ordinary moods shrewd, 
 and observant, and satirical, his higher genius
 
 Dunbar. 85 
 
 would now and then splendidly assert itself 
 — and behold the tournament at Athens, 
 where kings are combatants and Emily the 
 prize ; or the little boat, containing the 
 brain-bewildered Constance and her child, 
 wandering hither and thither on the friendly 
 sea. 
 
 Chaucer was born about 1328, and died 
 about 1380; and although he had, both in 
 Scotland and England, contemporaries and 
 immediate successors, no one of them can 
 be compared with him for a moment. The 
 " Moral (lower " was his friend, and inherited 
 his tediousness and pedantry without a 
 sparkle of his fancy, passion, humour, wis- 
 dom, and good spirits. Occleve and Lydgate 
 followed in the next generation ; and al- 
 though their names are retained in literary 
 histories, no line or sentence of theirs has 
 found a place in human memory. The Scot- 
 tish contemporary of Chaucer was Barbour, 
 who although deficient in tenderness and 
 imagination, deserves praise for his sinewy 
 and occasionally picturesque verse. " The 
 Bruce " is really a fine poem. The hero is 
 noble, resolute, and wise. Sir James Doug- 
 las is a very perfect, gentle knight. The 
 old Churchman had the true poetic fire in 
 him. He rises into eloquence in an apos-
 
 86 Dunbar. 
 
 trophe to Freedom, and he rights the battle 
 of Bannockburn over again with great valour, 
 shouting, and flapping of standards. In 
 England, nature seemed to have exhausted 
 herself in Chaucer, and she lay quiescent 
 till Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt came, 
 the immediate precursors of Spenser, Shaks- 
 peare, and their companions. 
 
 While in England the note of the nightin- 
 gale suddenly ceased, to be succeeded by the 
 mere chirping of the barn-door sparrows, 
 the divine and melancholy voice began to 
 be heard further north. It was during that 
 most barren period of English poetry — ex- 
 tending from Chaucer's death till the be- 
 ginning of Elizabeth's reign — that Scottish 
 poetry arose, suddenly, splendidly — to be 
 matched only by that other uprising nearer 
 our own time, equally unexpected and splen- 
 did, of Burns and Scott. And it is curious 
 to notice in this brilliant outburst of north- 
 ern genius how much is owing to Chaucer ; 
 the cast of language is identical, the literary 
 form is the same, there is the same way of 
 looking at nature, the same allegorical for- 
 ests, the troops of ladies, the same proces- 
 sions of cardinal virtues. James 1., whose 
 long captivity in England made him ac- 
 quainted with Chaucer's works was the
 
 Dunbar. 87 
 
 leader of the poetic movement which cul- 
 minated in Dunbar, and died away in Sir 
 David Lindsay just before the noise and 
 turmoil of the Reformation set in. In the 
 concluding stanza of the " Quair," James 
 records his obligation to those — 
 
 " Masters dear, 
 Gower and Chaucer, that on the steppes sate 
 
 Of retorick, while they were livand here, 
 Superlative as poets laureate 
 Of morality and eloquence ornate." 
 
 But while, during the reigns of the Jameses, 
 Scottish genius was being acted upon by the 
 broader and deeper genius of England, Scot- 
 land, quite unconsciously to herself, was 
 preparing a liquidation in full of all spiritual 
 obligations. For even then, in obscure 
 nooks and corners, the Scottish ballads were 
 growing up, quite uncontrolled by critical 
 rules, rude in structure and expression, yet, 
 at the same time, full of vitality, retaining in 
 all their keenness the mirth of rustic festi- 
 vals, and the piteousness of domestic trage- 
 dies. The stormy feudal time out of which 
 they arose crumbled by process of gradual 
 decay, but they remained, made brighter by 
 each succeeding summer, like the wild- 
 flowers that blow in the chinks of ruins. 
 And when English poetry had become arti-
 
 88 Dunbar. 
 
 ficial and cold, the lucubrations of forgotten 
 Scottish minstrels, full of the touches that 
 make the whole world kin, brought new life 
 with them. Scotland had invaded England 
 more than once, but the blue bonnets never 
 went over the border so triumphantly as 
 when they did so in the shape of songs and 
 ballads. 
 
 James IV., if not the wisest, was certainly 
 the most brilliant monarch of his name ; and 
 he was fortunate beyond the later Stuarts in 
 this, that during his lifetime no new popular 
 tide had set in which it behooved him to 
 oppose or to float upon. For him in all its 
 
 cntials to-day had flowed quietly out of 
 yesterday, and he lived unperplexed by fear 
 of change. With something of a Southern 
 gaiety of spirit, he was a merrier monarch 
 
 in his dark- featured and saturnine descen- 
 dant who bore the appellation. He was fond 
 of martial sports, he loved to glitter at tour- 
 naments, his court was crowded with singing 
 men and singing women. Yet he had his 
 gloomy moods and superstitious desponden- 
 cies. He could not forget that he had ap- 
 peared in arms against his father; even 
 while he whispered in the ear of beauty the 
 iron belt of penance was fretting his side, 
 and he alternated the splendid revel with
 
 Dunbar. 89 
 
 the cell of the monk. In these days, and 
 for long after, the Borders were disturbed, 
 and the Highland clans, setting royal author- 
 ity at defiance, were throttling each other in 
 their mists. The Catholic religion was yet 
 unsapped, and the wealth of the country 
 resided in the hands of the nobles and the 
 churchmen. Edinburgh towered high on 
 the ridge between Holyrood and the Cas- 
 tle, its streets reddened with feud at inter- 
 vals, and its merchants clustering round the 
 Cathedral of St. Giles like bees in a honey- 
 comb ; and the king, when he looked across 
 the faint azure of the Forth, beheld the long 
 coast of Fife dotted with little towns, where 
 ships were moored that traded with France 
 and Holland, and brought with them cargoes 
 of silk and wines. James was a popular 
 monarch ; he was beloved by the nobles and 
 by the people. He loved justice, he culti- 
 vated his marine, and he built the Great 
 Michael — the Great Eastern of that day. 
 He had valiant seamen, and more than once 
 Barton sailed into Leith with a string of Eng- 
 lish prizes. When he fell with all his nobility 
 at Flodden, there came upon Scotland the 
 woe with which she was so familiar — 
 
 " Woe to that realme that haith an ower young 
 king."
 
 9° 
 
 Dunbar. 
 
 A long regency followed ; disturbing ele- 
 ments of religion entered into the life of the 
 nation, and the historical stream which had 
 flowed smoothly for a series of years became 
 all at once convulsed and turbulent, as if it 
 had entered upon a gorge of rapids. It was 
 in this pleasant interregnum of the reign of 
 the fourth James, when ancient disorders 
 had to a certain extent been repressed, and 
 when religious difficulties ahead were yet 
 undreamed of, that the poet Dunbar flour- 
 ished — a nightingale singing in a sunny lull 
 of the Scottish historical storm. 
 
 Modern readers are acquainted with Dun- 
 bar chiefly through the medium of Mr. David 
 Laing's beautiful edition of his works pub- 
 lished in 1834, and by good Dr. Irving's 
 intelligent and admirable compacted " His- 
 tory of Scottish Poetry," published the other 
 day. Irving's work, if deficient somewhat in 
 fluency and grace of style, is characterised 
 by conscientiousness of statement and by 
 the ripest knowledge. Yet, despite the re- 
 searches of these competent writers, of the 
 events of the poet's life not much is known. 
 He was born about 1460, and from an un- 
 quotable allusion in one of his poems, he is 
 supposed to have been a native of the Loth- 
 ians. His name occurs in the register of the
 
 Dunbar. 9 1 
 
 University of St. Andrews as a Bachelor of 
 Arts. With the exception of these entries 
 in the college register, there is nothing au- 
 thentically known of his early life. We have 
 no portrait of him, and cannot by that means 
 decipher him. We do not know with cer- 
 tainty from what family he sprang. Beyond 
 what light his poems may throw on them, 
 we have no knowledge of his habits and per- 
 sonal tastes. He exists for the most part in 
 rumour, and the vague shadows of things. 
 It appears that in early life he became a friar 
 of the order of St. Francis ; and in the capa- 
 city of a travelling priest tells us that " he 
 preached in Derntown kirk and in Canter- 
 bury ; " that he " passed at Dover across the 
 Channel, and went through Picardy teach- 
 ing the people." He does not seem to have 
 taken kindly to his profession. His works 
 are full of sarcastic allusions to the clergy, 
 and in no measured terms he denounces 
 their luxury, their worldly- mindedness, and 
 their desire for high place and fat livings. 
 Yet these denunciations have no very spirit- 
 ual origin. His rage is the rage of a disap- 
 pointed candidate, rather than of a prophet ; 
 and, to the last, he seems to have expected 
 preferment in the Church. Not without a 
 certain pathos he writes, when he had be-
 
 92 Dunbar. 
 
 come familiar with disappointment, and the 
 sickness of hope deferred — 
 
 •' i wes in youth an nureiss knee, 
 Dandely ! bischop, dandely ! 
 And quhen that age now dois me greif, 
 Ane sempill vicar I can nocht be." 
 
 It is not known when he entered the ser- 
 vice of King James. From his poems it 
 appears that he was employed as a clerk 
 or secretary in several of the missions de- 
 spatched to foreign courts. It is difficult 
 to guess in what capacity Dunbar served at 
 Holyrood. He was all his life a priest, and 
 expected preferment from his royal patron. 
 We know that he performed mass in the 
 presence. Yet when the king in one of his 
 dark moods had withdrawn from the gaieties 
 of the capital to the religious gloom of the 
 convent of Franciscans at Stirling, we find 
 the poet inditing a parody on the machinery 
 of the Church, calling on Father, Son, and 
 Holy Spirit, and on all the saints of the cal- 
 endar, to transport the princely penitent 
 from Stirling, " where ale is thin and small," 
 to Edinburgh, where there is abundance of 
 swans, cranes, and plovers, and the fragrant 
 clarets of France. And in another of his 
 poems, he describes himself as dancing in 
 the queen's chamber so zealously that he
 
 Dunbar. 93 
 
 lost one of his slippers, a mishap which pro- 
 voked her Majesty to great mirth. Probably, 
 as the king was possessed of considerable 
 literary taste, and could appreciate Dunbar's 
 fancy and satire, he kept him attached to his 
 person, with the intention of conferring a 
 benefice on him when one fell vacant ; and 
 when a benefice did fall vacant, felt com- 
 pelled to bestow it on the cadet of some 
 powerful family in the state, — for it was 
 always the policy of James to stand well with 
 his nobles. He remembered too well the 
 deaths of his father and great-grandfather to 
 give unnecessary offense to his great barons. 
 From his connexion with the court, the 
 poet's life may be briefly epitomised. In 
 August, 1500, his royal master granted Dun- 
 bar an annual pension of ^10 for life, or till 
 such time as he should be promoted to a 
 benefice of the annual value of ^40. In 
 1 50 1, he visited England in the train of the 
 ambassadors sent thither to negotiate the 
 king's marriage. The marriage took place 
 in May, 1503, on which occasion the high- 
 piled capital wore holiday attire, balconies 
 blazed with scarlet cloth, and the loyal multi- 
 tude shouted as bride and bridegroom rode 
 past, with the chivalry of two kingdoms in 
 their train. Marly in May, Dunbar composed
 
 94 Dunbar. 
 
 his most celebrated poem in honour of the 
 event. Next year he said mass in the king's 
 presence for the first time, and received a 
 liberal reward. In 1505, he received a sum 
 in addition to his stated pension, and two 
 years thereafter his pension was doubled. In 
 August, 15 10, his pension was increased to 
 ^80 per annum, until he became possessed 
 of a benefice of the annual value of ^100 or 
 upwards. In 15 13, Flodden was fought, and 
 in the confusion consequent on the king's 
 death, Dunbar and his slowly-increasing pen- 
 sions disappear from the records of things. 
 We do not know whether he received his 
 benefice ; we do not know the date of his 
 death, and to this day his grave is secret as 
 the grave of Moses. 
 
 Knowing but little of Dunbar's life, our 
 interest is naturally concentrated on what 
 of his writings remain to us. And to mod- 
 ern eyes the old poet is a singular spectacle. 
 His language is different than ours ; his 
 mental structure and modes of thought are 
 unfamiliar ; in his intellectual world, as we 
 map it out to ourselves, it is difficult to con- 
 ceive how a comfortable existence could be 
 attained. Times, manners, and ideas have 
 changed, and we look upon Dunbar with a 
 certain reverential wonder and curiosity as
 
 UJ 
 
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 h- 
 
 U 
 
 P 
 
 _l 
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 h- 
 
 <

 
 Dunbar. 95 
 
 we look upon 'tantallon, standing up, grim 
 and gray, in the midst of the modern land- 
 scape. The grand old fortress is a remnant 
 of a state of things which have utterly passed 
 away. Curiously, as we walk beside it, we 
 think of the actual human life its walls con- 
 tained. In those great fire-places logs ac- 
 tually burned once, and in winter nights 
 men-at-arms spread out big palms against 
 the grateful heat. In those empty apart- 
 ments was laughter, and feasting, and serious 
 talk enough in troublous times, and births, 
 and deaths, and the bringing home of brides 
 in their blushes. This empty moat was 
 filled with water, to keep at bay long-for- 
 gotten enemies, and yonder loop-hole was 
 made narrow, as a protection from long- 
 moulded arrows. In Tantallon we know 
 the Douglasses lived in state, and bearded 
 kings, and hung out banners to the breeze ; 
 but a sense of wonder is mingled with our 
 knowledge, for the bothy of the Lothian 
 farmer is even more in accordance with 
 our methods of conducting life. Dunbar 
 affects us similarly. We know that he pos- 
 sessed a keen intellect, a blossoming fancy, 
 a satiric touch that blistered, a melody that 
 enchanted Northern ears ; but then we have 
 lost the story of his life, and from his poems,
 
 q6 Dunbar. 
 
 with their wonderful contrasts, the delicacy 
 and spring-like flush of feeling, the piety, 
 the freedom of speech, the irreverent use 
 of the sacredest names, the " Flyting " and 
 the " Lament for the Makars," there is diffi- 
 culty in making one's ideas of him cohere. 
 He is present to the imagination, and yet 
 remote. Like Tantallon, he is a portion of 
 the past. We are separated from him by 
 centuries, and that chasm we are unable to 
 bridge properly. 
 
 The first thing that strikes the reader of 
 these poems is their variety and intellectual 
 range. It may be said that — partly from 
 constitutional turn of thought, partly from 
 the turbulent and chaotic time in which he 
 lived, when families rose to splendour and as 
 suddenly collapsed, when the steed that bore 
 his rider at morning to the hunting-field re- 
 turned at evening masterless to the castle- 
 gate — Dunbar's prevailing mood of mind is 
 melancholy ; that he, with a certain fondness 
 for the subject, as if it gave him actual re- 
 lief, moralised over the sandy foundations of 
 mortal prosperity, the advance of age put- 
 ting out the lights of youth, and cancelling 
 the rapture of the lover, and the certainty 
 of death. This is a favourite path of contem- 
 plation with him, and he pursues it with a
 
 Dunbar. g 7 
 
 gloomy sedateness of acquiescence, which is 
 more affecting than if he raved and foamed 
 against the inevitable. But he has the mo- 
 bility of the poetic nature, and the sad 
 ground-tone is often drowned in the ecstasy 
 of lighter notes. All at once the " bare 
 ruined choirs " are covered with the glad 
 light-green of spring. His genius combined 
 the excellencies of many masters. His 
 "Golden Targe" and "The Thistle and the 
 Rose" are allegorical poems, full of colour, 
 fancy, and music. His "Two Married Wo- 
 men and the Widow " has a good deal of 
 Chaucer's slyness and humour. " The Dance 
 of the Deadly Sins," with its fiery bursts of 
 imaginative energy, its pictures finished at a 
 stroke, is a prophecy of Spenser and Collins, 
 and as fine as anything they have accom- 
 plished ; while his " Flytings " are torrents 
 of the coarsest vituperation. And there are 
 whole flights of occasional poems, many of 
 them sombre-coloured enough, with an ever- 
 recurring mournful refrain, others satirical, 
 but all flung off, one can see, at a sitting ; in 
 the few verses the mood is exhausted, and 
 while the result remains, the cause is for- 
 gotten even by himself. Several of these 
 short poems are almost perfect in feeling 
 and execution. The melancholy ones are 
 
 7
 
 98 Dunbar. 
 
 full of a serious grace, while in the satirical 
 a laughing devil of glee and malice sparkles 
 in every line. Some of these latter are dan- 
 gerous to touch as a thistle — all bristling 
 and angry with the spikes of satiric scorn. 
 
 In his allegorical poems — "The Golden 
 Targe," "The Merle and the Nightingale," 
 " The Thistle and the Rose " — Dunbar's 
 fancy has full scope. As allegories, they 
 are, perhaps, not worth much ; at all events, 
 modern readers do not care for the adven- 
 tures of " Quaking Dread and Humble 
 Obedience " ; nor are they affected by des- 
 criptions of Beauty, attended by her fair 
 damsels, Fair Having, Fine Portraiture, 
 Pleasance, and Lusty Cheer. The whole 
 conduct and machinery of such things are 
 too artificial and stilted for modern tastes. 
 Stately masques are no longer performed in 
 earls' mansions ; and when a sovereign 
 enters a city, a fair lady, with wings, repre- 
 senting Loyalty, does not burst out of a 
 p .isteboard cloud and recite a poetical ad- 
 dress to Majesty. In our theatres the pan- 
 tomime, which was originally an adumbration 
 of human life, has become degraded. Sym- 
 bolism has departed from the boards, and 
 burlesque reigns in its stead. The Lord 
 Mayor's Show, the last remnant of the an-
 
 Dunbar. 
 
 99 
 
 tique spectacular taste, does not move us 
 now ; it is held a public nuisance ; it pro- 
 vokes the rude " chaff " of the streets. Our 
 very mobs have become critical. Gog and 
 Magog are dethroned. The knight feels the 
 satiric comments through his armour. The 
 very steeds are uneasy, as if ashamed. But 
 in Dunbar the allegorical machinery is saved 
 from contempt by colour, poetry, and music. 
 Quick surprises of beauty, and a rapid 
 succession of pictures, keep the attention 
 awake. Now it is — 
 
 " May, of mirthful monethis queen, 
 Betwixt April and June, her sisters sheen, 
 Within the garden walking up and down." 
 
 Now — 
 
 " The god of windis, Eolus, 
 With variand look, richt like a lord unstable." 
 
 Now the nightingale — 
 
 " Never sweeter noise was heard with livin' man, 
 Nor made this merry, gentle nightingale; 
 Her sound went with the river as it ran 
 Out throw the fresh and flourished lusty vale." 
 
 And now a spring morning — 
 
 " Ere Phcebus was in purple cape revest, 
 Up raise the lark, the heaven's minstrel fine 
 In May, in till a morrow mirthfullest.
 
 xoo Dunbar. 
 
 " Full angel-like thir birdis sang their hours 
 Within their curtains green, in to their hours 
 Apparelled white and red with bloomes sweet; 
 Enamelled was the field with all colours, 
 The pearly droppis shook in silver shours ; 
 While all in balm did branch and leavis fleet. 
 To part fra Phoebus did Aurora greet, 
 Her crystal tears I saw hing on the flours, 
 Whilk he for love all drank up with his heat. 
 
 "For mirth of May, with skippis and with hops, 
 The birdis sang upon the tender crops, 
 With curious notes, as Venus' chapel clerks; 
 The roses young, new spreading of their knops, 
 Were powderit bricht with heavenly beriall drops, 
 Through beams red, burning as ruby sparks ; 
 The skies rang for shouting of the larks, 
 The purple heaven once scal't in silver slops, 
 Oure gilt the trees, branches, leaves, and barks." 
 
 The finest of Dunbar's poems in this style 
 is " The Thistle and the Rose." It was writ- 
 ten in celebration of the marriage of James 
 with the Princess Margaret of England, and 
 the royal pair are happily represented as the 
 national emblems. It, of course, opens with 
 a description of a spring morning. Dame 
 Nature resolves that every bird, beast, and 
 flower should compeer before her highness ; 
 the roe is commanded to summon the ani- 
 mals, the restless swallow the birds, and the 
 "conjured" yarrow the herbs and flowers. 
 In the twinkling of an eye they stand before 
 the queen. The lion and the eagle are
 
 Dunbar. 101 
 
 crowned, and are instructed to be humble 
 and just, and to exercise their powers merci- 
 fully : — 
 
 " Then callit she all flouris that grew in field, 
 Discerning all their seasons and effeirs, 
 Upon the awful thistle she beheld 
 
 And saw him keepit with a bush of spears : 
 Consid'ring him so able for the weirs, 
 A radius crown of rubies she him gave, 
 And said, ' In field, go forth and fend the lave.' " 
 
 The rose, also, is crowned, and the poet gives 
 utterance to the universal joy on occasion 
 of the marriage — type of peace between 
 two kingdoms. Listen to the rich music of 
 according voices : — 
 
 " Then all the birds sang with voice on hicht, 
 
 Whose mirthful soun' was marvellous to hear ; 
 
 The mavis sang, Hail Rose, most rich and richt, 
 That does up flourish under Phcebus' sphere, 
 Hail, plant of youth, hail Princess, dochter dear ; 
 
 Hail blosom breaking out of the bluid royal, 
 
 Whose precious virtue is imperial. 
 
 " The merle she sang, Hail, Rose of most delight, 
 Hail, of all floris queen an' sovereign ! 
 The lark she sang, Hail, Rose both red and white ; 
 Most pleasant flower, of michty colours twane : 
 The nichtingale sang, Hail, Nature's suffragane, 
 In beauty, nurture, and every nobleness, 
 In rich array, renown, and gentleness. 
 
 " The common voice up raise of birdes small, 
 Upon this wise, Oh, blessit be the hour 
 That thou was chosen to be our principal !
 
 102 Dunbar. 
 
 Welcome to be our Princess of honour, 
 
 ( )ur pearl, our pleasance, and our paramour, 
 
 ( >ur peace, our play, our plain felicity ; 
 
 Christ thee comfort from all adversity." 
 
 But beautiful as these poems are, it is as a 
 satirist that Dunbar has performed his great- 
 est feats. He was by nature " dowered with 
 the scorn of scorn," and its edge was whetted 
 by life-long disappointment. Like Spenser, 
 he knew — 
 
 " What Hell it is in suing long to bide." 
 
 And even in poems where the mood is 
 melancholy, where the burden is the short- 
 ness of life and the unpermanence of felicity, 
 his satiric rage breaks out in single lines of 
 fire. And although his satire is often almost 
 inconceivably coarse, the prompting instinct 
 is healthy at bottom. He hates Vice, al- 
 though his hand is too often in the kennel 
 to pelt her withal. He lays his grasp on the 
 bridle-rein of the sleek prelate, and upbraids 
 him with his secret sins in language unsuited 
 to modern ears. His greater satires have a 
 wild sheen of imagination about them. They 
 are far from being cold, moral homilies. His 
 wrath or his contempt breaks through the 
 bounds of time and space, and brings the 
 spiritual world on the stage. He wishes to
 
 Dunbar. 103 
 
 rebuke the citizens of Edinburgh for their 
 habits of profane swearing, and the result is 
 a poem, which probably gave Coleridge the 
 hint of his " Devil's Walk." Dunbar's satire 
 is entitled the " Devil's Inquest." He repre- 
 sents the Fiend passing up through the 
 market, and chuckling as he listens to the 
 strange oaths of cobbler, maltman, tailor, 
 courtier, and minstrel. He comments on 
 what he hears and sees with great pleasantry 
 and satisfaction. Here is the conclusion of 
 the piece : — 
 
 " Ane thief said, God that ever I chaip, 
 Nor ane stark widdy gar me gaip, 
 
 But I in hell for geir wald be. 
 The Devil said, ' Welcome in a raip : 
 Renounce thy God, and cum to me.' 
 
 " The fishwives flet and swore with granes, 
 And to the Fiend saul flesh and banes ; 
 
 They gave them, with ane shout on hie. 
 The Devil said, ' Welcome all at anes ; 
 Renounce your God, and cum to me.' 
 
 " The rest of craftis great aiths swair, 
 Their wark and craft had nae compair, 
 
 Ilk ane unto their qualitie. 
 The Devil said then, withouten mair, 
 
 ' Renounce your God, and cum to me.' ' 
 
 Hut the greatest of Dunbar's satires — in 
 fact, the greatest of all his poems — is that 
 entitled " The Dance of the Seven Deadly
 
 104 Dunbar. 
 
 Sins." It is short, but within its compass 
 most swift, vivid, and weird. The pictures 
 rise on the reader's eye, and fade at once. 
 It is a singular compound of farce and earn- 
 est. It is Spenser and Hogarth combined 
 — the wildest grotesquerie wrought on a 
 background of penal flame. The poet con- 
 ceives himself in a dream, on the evening 
 preceding Lent, and in his vision he heard 
 Mahoun command that the wretched who 
 "had ne'er been shriven" should dance be- 
 fore him. Immediately a hideous rout pre- 
 sent themselves ; " holy harlots " appear in 
 their finery, and never a smile wrinkles the 
 faces of the onlookers ; but when a string of 
 " priests with their shaven necks" come in, 
 the arches of the unnameable place shakes 
 with the laughter of all the fiends. Then 
 " The Seven Deadly Sins " begin to leap at 
 once : — 
 
 " And first of all the dance was Pride, 
 With hair wyld back and bonnet on side." 
 
 He, with all his train, came skipping through 
 the fire. 
 
 " Then Ire came in with sturt and strife ; 
 I lis hand was aye upon his knife; " 
 
 and with him came armed boasters and 
 braggarts, smiting each other with swords,
 
 Dunbar. 1 05 
 
 jagging each other with knives. Then 
 Envy, trembling with secret hatred, accom- 
 panied by his court of flatterers, backbiters, 
 calumniators and all the human serpentry 
 that lurk in the palaces of kings. Then came 
 Covetousness, with his hoarders and misers, 
 and these the fiends gave to drink of newly- 
 molten gold. 
 
 " Syne Swearness, at the second bidding, 
 Came like a sow out of a midding : " 
 
 and with him danced a sleepy crew, and Be- 
 lial lashed them with a bridle-rein, and the 
 fiends gave them a turn in the fire to make 
 them nimbler. Then came Lechery, led by 
 Idleness, with a host of evil companions, 
 " full strange of countenance, like torches 
 burning bright." Then came Gluttony, so 
 unwieldy that he could hardly move : — 
 
 " Him followed mony foul drunkart 
 With can and callop, cup and quart, 
 In surfeit and excess." 
 
 " Drink, aye they cried," with their parched 
 lips; and the fiends gave them hot lead to 
 lap. Minstrels, it appears, are not to be 
 found in that dismal place : — 
 
 " Nae minstrels played to them but doubt, 
 For gleemen there were halden out 
 
 By day and eik by nicht : 
 Except a minstrel that slew a man, 
 So to his heritage he wan. 
 
 And entered by brieve of richt."
 
 io6 Dunbar. 
 
 And to the music of the solitary poet in 
 hell, the strange shapes pass. The con- 
 clusion of this singular poem is entirely far- 
 cical. The devil is resolved to make high 
 holiday : 
 
 "Then cried Mahoun for a Ilielan Padyane, 
 Syne ran a fiend to fetch Makfadyane, 
 
 Far north-wast in a neuck ; 
 He he the coronach had done shout, 
 Ersche men so gatherit him about, 
 
 In hell great room they took. 
 Thae tarmigants, with tag and tatter, 
 Full loud in Ersche begoud to clatter, 
 
 And roup like raven and rook. 
 The Devil sae cleaved was with their yell, 
 That in the deepest pot of hell 
 
 He smorit them with smook." 
 
 There is one other poem of Dunbar's 
 which may be quoted as a contrast to what 
 has been already given. It is remarkable as 
 being the only one in which he assumes the 
 character of a lover. The style of thought 
 is quite modern ; bereave it of its uncouth 
 orthography, and it might have been written 
 to-day. It is turned with much skill and 
 grace. The constitutional melancholy of the 
 man comes out in it ; as, indeed, it always 
 does when he finds a serious topic. It pos- 
 sesses more tenderness and sentiment than 
 is his usual. It is the night-flower among his 
 poems, breathing a mournful fragrance : —
 
 Dunbar. 107 
 
 " Sweit rose of vertew and of gentilnes, 
 Delytsum lyllie of everie lustynes, 
 Richest in bontie, and in beutie cleir, 
 And every vertew that to hevin is dear, 
 Except onlie that ye ar mercyles, 
 
 " Into your garthe this day I did persew: 
 Thair saw I flowris that fresche wer of dew, 
 Baith quhyte and reid most lustye wer to seyne, 
 And halsum herbis upone stalkis grene : 
 Yet leif nor flour fynd could I nane of rew. 
 
 " I doute that March, with his cauld blastis keyne, 
 Hes slane this gentill herbe, that I of mene ; 
 Quhois pitewous deithe dois to my hart sic pane, 
 That I wald mak to plant his rute agane, 
 So comfortand his levis unto me bene." 
 
 The extracts already given will enable the 
 reader to form some idea of the old poet's 
 general power — his music, his picturesque 
 faculty, his colour, his satire. Yet it is diffi- 
 cult from what he has left to form any very 
 definite image of the man. Although his 
 poems are for the most part occasional, 
 founded upon actual circumstances, or writ- 
 ten to relieve him from the over-pressure of 
 angry or melancholy moods, and although 
 the writer is by no means, shy or indisposed 
 to speak of himself, his personality is not 
 made clear to us. There is great gap of time 
 between him and the modern reader ; and 
 the mixture of gold and clay in the products 
 of his genius, the discrepancy of elements,
 
 io8 Dunbar. 
 
 beauty and coarseness, Apollo's cheek, and 
 the satyr's shaggy limbs, are explainable 
 partly from a want of harmony and com- 
 pleteness in himself, and partly from the 
 pressure of the half- barbaric time. His 
 rudeness offends, his narrowness astonishes. 
 But then we must remember that our ad- 
 vantages in these respects do not necessarily 
 arise from our being of a purer and nobler 
 essence. We have these things by inherit- 
 ance ; they have been transmitted to us 
 along a line of ancestors. Five centuries 
 share with us the merit of the result. Mod- 
 ern delicacy of taste and intellectual purity 
 — although we hold them in possession, and 
 may add to their sheen before we hand them 
 on to our children — are no more to be placed 
 to our personal credits than Dryden's satire, 
 Pope's epigram, Marlborough's battles, 
 Burke's speeches, and the victories of Traf- 
 algar and Waterloo. Intellectual delicacy 
 has grown like our political constitution. 
 The English duke is not the creator of his 
 own wealth, although in his keeping it 
 makes the earth around him a garden, and 
 the walls of his house bright with pictures. 
 Hut our inability to conceive satisfactorily 
 of Dunbar does not arise from this alone. 
 We have his works, but then they are not
 
 Dunbar. 1 09 
 
 supplemented by personal anecdote and let- 
 ters, and the reminiscences of contempo- 
 raries. Burns, for instance, — if limited to 
 his works for our knowledge of him, — would 
 be a puzzling phenomenon. He was in his 
 poems quite as spoken as Dunbar, but 
 then they describe so wide an area, they 
 appear so contradictory, they seem often to 
 lead in opposite directions. It is, to a large 
 extent, through his letters that Burns is 
 known, through his short, careless, pithy 
 sayings, which imbedded themselves in the 
 memories of his hearers, from the recol- 
 lections of his contemporaries and their 
 expressed judgments, and the multiform 
 reverberations of fame lingering around 
 such a man — these fill up interstices be- 
 tween works, bring apparent opposition 
 iuto intimate relationship, and make whole- 
 ness out of confusion. Not on the stage 
 alone, in the world also, a man's real charac- 
 ter comes out best in his asides. With 
 Dunbar there is nothing of this. He is a 
 name, and little more. He exists in a region 
 to which rumour and conjecture have never 
 penetrated. He was long neglected by his 
 countrymen, and was brought to light as if 
 by accident. He is the Pompeii of British 
 poetry. We have his works, but they are
 
 no Dunbar. 
 
 like the circumvallations of a Roman camp 
 on the Scottish hillside. We see lines 
 stretching hither and thither, but we cannot 
 make out the plan, or divine what purposes 
 were served. We only know that every 
 crumpled rampart was once a defence ; that 
 every half-obliterated fosse once swarmed 
 with men ; that it was once a station and 
 abiding-place of human life, although for 
 centuries now remitted to silence and blank 
 summer sunshine.
 
 RIGHTLY or wrongly, during the 
 m> last twenty or thirty years a strong 
 ^d feeling has grown up in the public 
 mind against the principle, and a 
 still stronger feeling against the practice, 
 of capital punishments. Many people who 
 will admit that the execution of the mur- 
 derer may be, abstractly considered, just 
 enough, sincerely doubt whether such execu- 
 tion be expedient, and are in their own minds 
 perfectly certain that it cannot fail to demor- 
 alise the spectators. In consequence of this, 
 executions have become rare ; and it is quite 
 clear that many scoundrels, well worthy of 
 the noose, contrive to escape it. When, on 
 the occasion of a wretch being turned off, 
 the spectators are few, it is remarked by the 
 newspapers that the mob is beginning to 
 lose its proverbial cruelty, and to be stirred 
 by humane pulses ; when they are numerous, 
 and especially when girls and women form a
 
 ii2 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 majority, the circumstance is noticed and 
 deplored. It is plain enough that, if the 
 newspaper considered such an exhibition 
 beneficial, it would not lament over a few 
 thousand eager witnesses : if the sermon be 
 edifying, you cannot have too large a con- 
 gregation ; if you teach a moral lesson in a 
 grand, impressive way, it is difficult to see 
 how you can have too many pupils. Of 
 course, neither the justice nor the expedi- 
 ency of capital punishments falls to be dis- 
 cussed here. This, however, may be said, 
 that the popular feeling against them may 
 not be so admirable a proof of enlighten- 
 ment as many believe. It is true that the 
 spectacle is painful, horrible ; but in pain 
 and horror there is often hidden a certain 
 salutariness, and the repulsion of which we 
 are conscious is as likely to arise from debil- 
 itation of public nerve, as from a higher 
 reach of public feeling. To my own think- 
 ing, it is out of this pain and hatefulness 
 that an execution becomes invested with an 
 ideal grandeur. It is sheer horror to all 
 concerned — sheriffs, halbertmen, chaplain, 
 spectators, Jack Ketch, and culprit; but out 
 of all this, and towering behind the vulgar 
 and hideous accessories of the scaffold, 
 gleams the majesty of implacable law. When
 
 A Lark's Flight. 1 1 
 
 o 
 
 every other fine morning a dozen cut-purses 
 were hanged at Tyburn, and when such 
 sights did not run very strongly against the 
 popular current, the spectacle was vulgar, 
 and could be of use only to the possible cut- 
 purses congregated around the foot of the 
 scaffold. Now, when the law has become so 
 far merciful ; when the punishment of death 
 is reserved for the murderer ; when he can 
 be condemned only on the clearest evi- 
 dence ; when, as the days draw slowly on 
 to doom, the frightful event impending over 
 one stricken wretch throws its shadow over 
 the heart of every man, woman, and child in 
 the great city ; and when the official persons 
 whose duty it is to see the letter of the law 
 carried out perform that duty at the expense 
 of personal pain, — a public execution is not 
 vulgar, it becomes positively sublime. It is 
 dreadful, of course ; but its dreadfulness 
 melts into pure awfulness. The attention 
 is taken off the criminal, and is lost in a 
 sense of the grandeur of justice ; and the 
 spectator who beholds an execution, solely 
 as it appears to the eye, without recognition 
 of the idea which towers behind it, must be 
 a very unspiritual and unimaginative specta- 
 tor indeed. 
 
 It is taken for granted that the spectators 
 8
 
 ii4 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 of public executions — the artisans and coun- 
 try people who take up their stations over- 
 night as close to the barriers as possible, 
 and the wealthier classes who occupy hired 
 windows and employ opera-glasses — are 
 merely drawn together by a morbid relish 
 for horrible sights. He is a bold man who 
 will stand forward as the advocate of such 
 persons — so completely is the popular mind 
 made up as to their tastes and motives. It 
 is not disputed that the large body of the 
 mob, and of the occupants at windows, have 
 been drawn together by an appetite for ex- 
 citement ; but it is quite possible that many 
 come there from an impulse altogether dif- 
 ferent. Just consider the nature of the ex- 
 pected sight, — a man in tolerable health 
 probably, in possession of all his faculties, 
 perfectly able to realise his position, con- 
 scious that for him this world and the next 
 are so near that only a few seconds divide 
 them — such a man stands in the seeing of 
 several thousand eyes. He is so peculiarly 
 circumstanced, so utterly lonely, — hearing 
 the tolling of his own death-bell, yet living, 
 wearing the mourning clothes for his own 
 funeral, — that he holds the multitude to- 
 gether by a shuddering fascination. The 
 sight is a peculiar one, you must admit, and
 
 A Lark's Flight. 115 
 
 every peculiarity has its attractions. Your 
 volcano is more attractive than your ordinary 
 mountain. Then consider the unappeasable 
 curiosity as to death which haunts every hu- 
 man being, and how pathetic that curiosity 
 is, in so far as it suggests our own ignorance 
 and helplessness, and we see at once that 
 people may flock to public executions for 
 other purposes than the gratification of mor- 
 bid tastes : that they would pluck if they 
 could some little knowledge of what death 
 is ; that imaginatively they attempt to reach 
 to it, to touch and handle it through an ex- 
 perience which is not their own. It is some 
 obscure desire of this kind, a movement of 
 curiosity not altogether ignoble, but in some 
 degree pathetic ; some rude attempt of the 
 imagination to wrest from the death of the 
 criminal information as to the great secret in 
 which each is profoundly interested, which 
 draws around the scaffold people from the 
 country harvest- fields, and from the streets 
 and alleys of the town. Nothing interests 
 men so much as death. Age cannot wither 
 it, nor custom stale it. '•' A greater crowd 
 would come to see me hanged," Cromwell is 
 reported to have said when the populace 
 came forth on a public occasion. The Lord 
 Protector was right in a sense of which,
 
 1 1 6 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 perhaps, at the moment he was not aware. 
 I )eath is greater than official position. When 
 a man has to die, he may safely dispense with 
 stars and ribbands. He is invested with a 
 greater dignity than is held in the gift of 
 kings. A greater crowd would have gathered 
 to see Cromwell hanged, but the compliment 
 would have been paid to death rather than 
 to Cromwell. Never were the motions of 
 Charles I. so scrutinised as when he stood 
 for a few moments on the scaffold that 
 winter morning at Whitehall. King Louis 
 was no great orator usually, but when on 
 the 2d January, 1793, he attempted to speak 
 a few words in the Place De la Revolution, 
 it was found necessary to drown his voice 
 in a harsh roll of soldiers' drums. Not 
 without a meaning do people come forth 
 to see men die. We stand in the valley, 
 they on the hill-top, and on their faces 
 strikes the light of the other world, and 
 from some sign or signal of theirs we at- 
 tempt to discover or extract a hint of what 
 it is all like. 
 
 To be publicly put to death, for what- 
 ever reason, must ever be a serious matter. 
 It is always bitter, but there are degrees in 
 its bitterness. It is easy to die like Stephen 
 with an opened heaven above you, crowded
 
 A Lark's Flight. 1 1 7 
 
 with angel faces. It is easy to die like Bal- 
 raerinp with a chivalrous sigh for the White 
 Rose, and an audible " God bless King 
 James." Such men die for a cause in which 
 they glory, and are supported thereby ; they 
 are conducted to the portals of the next 
 world by the angels, Faith, Pity, Admiration. 
 But it is not easy to die in expiation of a 
 crime like murder, which engirdles you with 
 trembling and horror even in the loneliest 
 places, which cuts you off from the sympa- 
 thies of your kind, which reduces the uni- 
 verse to two elements — a sense of personal 
 identity, and a memory of guilt. In so dying, 
 there must be inconceivable bitterness ; a 
 man can have no other support than what 
 strength he may pluck from despair, or from 
 the iron with which nature may have origi- 
 nally braced heart and nerve. Yet, taken as 
 a whole, criminals on the scaffold comport 
 themselves creditably. They look Death in 
 the face when he wears his crudest aspect, 
 and if they flinch somewhat, they can at 
 least bear to look. I believe that, for the 
 criminal, execution within the prison walls, 
 with no witnesses save some half-dozen 
 official persons, would be infinitely more 
 terrible than execution in the presence of a 
 curious, glaring mob. The daylight and the
 
 i iS A Lark's Flight. 
 
 5' 
 
 publicity are alien elements, which wean the 
 man a little from himself. He steadies his 
 dizzy brain on the crowd beneath and 
 around him. He has his last part to play, 
 and his manhood rallies to play it well. Nay, 
 so subtly is vanity intertwined with our 
 motives, the noblest and the most ignoble, 
 that I can fancy a poor wretch with the 
 noose dangling at his ear, and with barely 
 five minutes to live, soothed somewhat 
 with the idea that his firmness and com- 
 posure will earn him the approbation, per- 
 haps the pity, of the spectators. He would 
 take with him, if he could, the good opinion 
 of his fellows. This composure of criminals 
 puzzles one. Have they looked at death so 
 long and closely, that familiarity has robbed 
 it of terror? Has life treated them so 
 harshly, that they are tolerably well pleased 
 to be quit of it on any terms? Or is the 
 whole thing mere blind stupor and delirium, 
 in which thought is paralysed, and the man 
 an automaton? Speculation is useless. The 
 fact remains that criminals for the most part 
 die well and bravely. It is said that the 
 championship of England was to be decided 
 at some little distance from London on the 
 morning of the day on which Thurtell was 
 executed, and that, when he came out on
 
 A Lark's Flight 119 
 
 the scaffold, he inquired privily of the exe- 
 cutioner if the result had yet become known. 
 Jack Ketch was not aware, and Thurtell 
 expressed his regret that the ceremony in 
 which he was chief actor should take place 
 so inconveniently early in the day. Think 
 of a poor Thurtell forced to take his long 
 journey an hour, perhaps, before the arrival 
 of intelligence so important ! 
 
 More than twenty years ago I saw two men 
 executed, and the impression then made re- 
 mains fresh to this day. For this there were 
 many reasons. The deed for which the men 
 suffered created an immense sensation. 
 They were hanged on the spot where the 
 murder was committed — on a rising ground, 
 some four miles north-east of the city; and 
 as an attempt at rescue was apprehended, 
 there was a considerable display of military 
 force on the occasion. And when, in the 
 dead silence of thousands, the criminals 
 stood beneath the halters, an incident oc- 
 curred, quite natural and slight in itself, but 
 when taken in connection with the business 
 then proceeding, so unutterably tragic, so 
 overwhelming in its pathetic suggestion of 
 contrast, that the feeling of it has never de- 
 parted, and never will. At the time, too, I 
 speak of, I was very young ; the world was
 
 i20 A Lark's Flight 
 
 s' 
 
 like a die newly cut. whose ev r ery impression 
 is fresh and vivid. 
 
 While the railway which connects two 
 northern capitals was being built, two 
 brothers from Ireland, named Doolan, were 
 engaged upon it in the capacity of navvies. 
 For some fault or negligence, one of the 
 brothers was dismissed by the overseer — a 
 Mr. Green — of that particular portion of the 
 line on which they were employed. The 
 dismissed brother went off in search of work, 
 and the brother who remained — Dennis was 
 the Christian name of him — brooded over 
 this supposed wrong, and in his dull, twi- 
 lighted brain revolved projects of vengeance. 
 He did not absolutely mean to take Green's 
 life, but he meant to thrash him within an 
 inch of it. Dennis, anxious to thrash Green, 
 but not quite seeing his way to it, opened 
 his mind one afternoon, when work was 
 over, to his friends — fellow-Irishmen and nav- 
 vies — Messrs. Redding and Hickie. These 
 took up Doolan's wrong as their own, and 
 that evening, by the dull light of a bothy 
 fire, they held a rude parliament, discussing 
 ways and means of revenge. It was arranged 
 that Green should be thrashed — the amount 
 of thrashing left an open question, to be de- 
 rided, unhappily, when the blood was up
 
 A Lark's Flight. 121 
 
 "6 
 
 and the cinder of rage blown into a flame 
 Hickie's spirit was found not to be a mount- 
 ing one, and it was arranged that the active 
 partners in the game should be Doolan and 
 Redding. Doolan, as the aggrieved party, 
 was to strike the first blow, and Redding, 
 as the aggrieved party's particular friend, 
 asked and obtained permission to strike 
 the second. The main conspirators, with 
 a fine regard for the feelings of the weaker 
 Hickie, allowed him to provide the weapons 
 of assault, — so that by some slight filament 
 of aid he might connect himself with the good 
 cause. The unambitious Hickie at once ap- 
 plied himself to his duty. He went out, and 
 in due time returned with two sufficient iron 
 pokers. The weapons were examined, ap- 
 proved of, and carefully laid aside. Doolan, 
 Redding, and Hickie ate their suppers, and 
 retired to their several couches to sleep, 
 peacefully enough no doubt. About the 
 same time, too, Green, the English overseer, 
 threw down his weary limbs, and entered 
 on his last sleep — little dreaming what the 
 morning had in store for him. 
 
 Uprose the sun, and uprose Doolan and 
 Redding, and dressed, and thrust each his 
 sufficient iron poker up the sleeve of his 
 blouse, and went forth. They took up their
 
 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 6 
 
 station on a temporary wooden bridge 
 which spanned the line, and waited there. 
 Across the bridge, as was expected, did 
 Green ultimately come. He gave them good 
 morning ; asked, " why they were loafing 
 about?" received no very pertinent answer, 
 perhaps did not care to receive one ; whis- 
 tled — the unsuspecting man ! — thrust his 
 hands into his breeches pockets, turned his 
 back on them, and leaned over the railing 
 of the bridge, inspecting the progress of the 
 works beneath. The temptation was really 
 too great. What could wild Irish flesh and 
 blood do? In a moment out from the sleeve 
 of Doolan's blouse came the hidden poker, 
 and the first blow was struck, bringing 
 ( ireen to the ground. The friendly Redding, 
 who had bargained for the second, and who, 
 naturally enough, was in fear of being cut 
 out altogether, jumped on the prostrate man, 
 and fulfilled his share of the bargain with a 
 will. It was Redding it was supposed who 
 sped the unhappy Green. They overdid 
 their work — like young authors — giving 
 many more blows than were sufficient, and 
 then fled. The works, of course, were that 
 morning in consternation. Redding and 
 Hickie were, if I remember rightly, appre- 
 hended in the course of the day. Doolan
 
 A Lark's Flight. 123 
 
 got off, leaving no trace of his where- 
 abouts. 
 
 These particulars were all learned subse- 
 quently. The first intimation which we 
 schoolboys received of anything unusual 
 having occurred, was the sight of a detach- 
 ment of soldiers with fixed bayonets, trou- 
 sers rolled up over muddy boots, marching 
 past the front of the Cathedral hurriedly 
 home to barracks. This was a circumstance 
 somewhat unusual. We had, of course, fre- 
 quently seen a couple of soldiers trudging 
 along with sloped muskets, and that cruel 
 glitter of steel which no one of us could 
 look upon quite unmoved ; but in such 
 cases, the deserter walking between them in 
 his shirt-sleeves, his pinioned hands covered 
 from public gaze by the loose folds of his 
 great-coat, explained everything. But from 
 the hurried march of these mud- splashed 
 men, nothing could be gathered, and we 
 were left to speculate upon its meaning. 
 Gradually, however, before the evening fell, 
 the rumour of a murder having been com- 
 mitted spread through the city, and with 
 that I instinctively connected the apparition 
 of the file of muddy soldiers. Next day, 
 murder was in every mouth. My school- 
 fellows talked of it to the detriment of their
 
 124 d Lark's Flight. 
 
 lessons ; it flavoured the tobacco of the fus- 
 tian artisan as he smoked to work after 
 breakfast ; it walked on 'Change amongst 
 the merchants. It was known that two of 
 the persons implicated had been captured, 
 but that the other, and guiltiest, was still at 
 large ; and in a few days out on every piece 
 of boarding and blank wall came the " Hue 
 and cry" — describing Doolan like a photo- 
 graph, to the colour and cut of his whiskers, 
 and offering ^ioo as reward for his appre- 
 hension, or for such information as would 
 lead to his apprehension — like a silent, im- 
 placable bloodhound following close on the 
 track of the murderer. This terrible broad- 
 sheet I read, was certain that he had read it 
 also, and fancy ran riot over the ghastly 
 fact. For him no hope, no rest, no peace, 
 no touch of hands gentler than the hang- 
 man's ; all the world is after him like a 
 roaring prairie of flame ! I thought of 
 Doolan, weary, foot-sore, heart-sore, enter- 
 ing some quiet village of an evening ; and 
 to quench his thirst, going up to the public 
 well, around which the gossips are talking, 
 and hearing that they were talking of him ; 
 and seeing from the well itself it glaring 
 upon him, as if conscious of his presence, 
 with a hundred eyes of vengeance. I thought
 
 A Lark's Flight. 125 
 
 of him asleep in out-houses, and starting up 
 in wild dreams of the policeman's hand upon 
 his shoulder fifty times ere morning. He 
 had committed the crime of Cain, and the 
 weird of Cain he had to endure. But yes- 
 terday innocent, how unimportant ; to-day 
 bloody-handed, the whole world is talking of 
 him, and everything he touches, the very bed 
 he sleeps on, steals from him his secret, and 
 is eager to betray ! 
 
 Doolan was finally captured in Liverpool, 
 and in the Spring Assize the three men were 
 brought to trial. The jury found them 
 guilty, but recommended Hickie to mercy 
 on account of some supposed weakness of 
 mind on his part. Sentence was, of course, 
 pronounced with the usual solemnities. They 
 were set apart to die ; and when snug abed 
 o' nights — for imagination is most mightily 
 moved by contrast — I crept into their deso- 
 late hearts, and tasted a misery which was 
 not my own. As already said, Hickie was 
 recommended to mercy, and the recommen- 
 dation was ultimately in the proper quarter 
 given effect to. 
 
 The evening before the execution has 
 arrived, and the reader has now to imagine 
 the early May sunset falling pleasantly on 
 the outskirts of the city. The houses look-
 
 126 A Lark's FligJit. 
 
 ing out upon an open square or space, have 
 little plots of garden-ground in their fronts, 
 in which mahogany-coloured wall-flowers and 
 mealy auriculas are growing. The side of 
 this square, along which the City Road 
 stretches northward, is occupied by a blind- 
 asylum, a brick building, the bricks painted 
 red and picked out with white, after the tidy 
 English fashion, and a high white cemetery 
 wall, over which peers the spire of the 
 Gothic Cathedral ; and beyond that, on the 
 other side of the ravine, rising out of the 
 populous city of the dead, a stone John 
 Knox looks down on the Cathedral, a Bible 
 clutched in his outstretched and menacing 
 hand. On all this the May sunset is strik- 
 ing, dressing everything in its warm, pleas- 
 ant pink, lingering in the tufts of foliage 
 that nestle around the asylum, and dipping 
 the building itself one half in light, one 
 half in tender shade. This open space or 
 square is an excellent place for the games 
 of us boys, and " Prisoner's Base " is being 
 carried out with as much earnestness as the 
 business of life now by those of us who are 
 left. The girls, too, have their games of a 
 quiet kind, which we held in huge scorn and 
 contempt. In two files, linked arm-in-arm, 
 they alternately dance towards each other
 
 A Lark's Flight. 127 
 
 and then retire, singing the while, in their 
 clear, girlish treble, verses, the meaning and 
 pertinence of which time has worn away — 
 
 "The Campsie Uuke 's a-riding, a-riding, a-riding," 
 
 being the oft-recurring " owercome," or re- 
 frain. All this is going on in the pleasant 
 sunset light, when by the apparition of 
 certain waggons coming up from the city, 
 piled high with blocks and beams, and 
 guarded by a dozen dragoons, on whose 
 brazen helmets the sunset danced, every 
 game is dismembered, and we are in a mo- 
 ment a mere mixed mob of boys and girls, 
 flocking around to stare and wonder. Just 
 at this place something went wrong with 
 one of the waggon wheels, and the proces- 
 sion came to a stop. A crowd collected, 
 and we heard some of the grown-up people 
 say, that the scaffold was being carried out 
 for the ceremony of to-morrow. Then, more 
 intensely than ever, one realised the condi- 
 tion of the doomed men. We were at our 
 happy games in the sunset, they were enter- 
 ing on their last night on earth. After 
 hammering and delay the wheel was put to 
 rights, the sunset died out, waggons and 
 dragoons got into motion and disappeared ; 
 and all the night through, whether awake or
 
 128 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 <v 
 
 asleep, I saw the torches burning, and heard 
 the hammers clinking, and witnessed as 
 clearly as if I had been an onlooker, the 
 horrid structure rising, till it stood com- 
 plete, with a huge cross-beam from which 
 two empty halters hung, in the early morning 
 light. 
 
 Next morning the whole city was in com- 
 motion. Whether the authorities were ap- 
 prehensive that a rescue would be attempted, 
 or were anxious merely to strike terror into 
 the hundreds of wild Irishry engaged on the 
 railway, I cannot say : in any case, there was 
 a display of military force quite unusual. 
 The carriage in which the criminals — Catho- 
 lics both — and their attendant priests were 
 seated, was guarded by soldiers with fixed 
 bayonets ; indeed, the whole regiment then 
 lying in the city was massed in front and 
 behind, with a cold, frightful glitter of steel. 
 Besides the foot soldiers, there were dra- 
 goons, and two pieces of cannon ; a whole 
 little army, in fact. With a slenderer force 
 battles have been won which have made a 
 mark in history. What did the prisoners 
 think of their strange importance, and of the 
 tramp and hurly-burly all around? When 
 the procession moved out of the city, it 
 seemed to draw with it almost the entire
 
 A Lark's Flight. 129 
 
 "&' 
 
 population ; and when once the country 
 roads were reached, the crowds spread over 
 the fields on either side, ruthlessly treading 
 down the tender wheat braird. I got a 
 glimpse of the doomed, blanched faces 
 which had haunted me so long, at the turn 
 of the road, where, for the first time, the 
 black cross-beam with its empty halters first 
 became visible to them. Both turned and 
 regarded it with a long, steady look ; that 
 done, they again bent their heads attentively 
 to the words of the clergyman. I suppose 
 in that long, eager, fascinated gaze they 
 practically died — that for them death had no 
 additional bitterness. When the mound was 
 reached on which the scaffold stood, there 
 was immense confusion. Around it a wide 
 space was kept clear by the military ; the 
 cannon were placed in position ; out flashed 
 the swords of the dragoons ; beneath and 
 around on every side was the crowd. Be- 
 tween two brass helmets I could see the 
 scaffold clearly enough, and when in a little 
 while the men, bareheaded and with their 
 attendants, appeared upon it, the surg- 
 ing crowd became stiffened with fear and 
 awe. And now it was that the incident so 
 simple, so natural, so much in the ordinary 
 course of things, and yet so frightful in its 
 
 9
 
 130 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 tragic suggestions, took place. Be it remem- 
 bered that the season was early May, that the 
 day was fine, that the wheat-fields were cloth- 
 ing themselves in the green of the young 
 crop, and that around the scaffold, standing 
 on a sunny mound, a wide space was kept 
 clean When the men appeared beneath the 
 beam, each under his proper halter, there was 
 a dead silence, — every one was gazing too 
 intently to whisper to his neighbour even. 
 Just then, out of the grassy space at the 
 foot of the scaffold, in the dead silence aud- 
 ible to all, a lark rose from the side of its 
 nest, and went singing upward in its happy 
 flight. O heaven ! how did that song trans- 
 late itself into dying ears? Did it bring, 
 in one wild burning moment, father and 
 mother, and poor Irish cabin, and prayers 
 said at bed-time, and the smell of turf fires, 
 and innocent sweethearting, and rising and 
 setting suns? Did it — but the dragoon's 
 horse has become restive, and his brass hel- 
 met bobs up and down and blots every- 
 thing ; and there is a sharp sound, and I feel 
 the great crowd heave and swing, and hear 
 it torn by a sharp shiver of pity, and the 
 men whom I saw so near but a moment ago 
 are at immeasurable distance, and have 
 solved the great enigma, — and the lark has
 
 A Lark's F/ight. 131 
 
 not yet finished his flight : you can see and 
 hear him yonder in the fringe of a white May 
 cloud. 
 
 This ghastly lark's flight, when the cir- 
 cumstances are taken in consideration, is, I 
 am inclined to think, more terrible than any- 
 thing of the same kind which I have en- 
 countered in books. The artistic uses of 
 contrast as background and accompaniment, 
 are well known to nature and the poets. 
 Joy is continually worked on sorrow, sorrow 
 on joy; riot is framed in peace, peace in 
 riot. (Lear and the Fool always go together. 
 Trafalgar is being fought while Napoleon is 
 sitting on horseback watching the Austrian 
 army laying down its arms at Ulm. In Hood's 
 poem, it is when looking on the released 
 schoolboys at their games that Eugene Aram 
 remembers he is a murderer. And these 
 two poor Irish labourers could not die with- 
 out hearing a lark singing in their ears. It 
 is nature's fashion. She never quite goes 
 along with us. She is sombre at weddings, 
 sunny at funerals, and she frowns on ninety- 
 nine out of a hundred picnics. 
 
 There is a stronger element of terror in 
 this incident of the lark than in any story 
 of a similar kind I can remember. 
 
 A good story is told of an Irish gentleman
 
 132 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 — still known in London society — who in- 
 herited the family estates and the family 
 banshee. The estates he lost — no uncom- 
 mon circumstance in the history of Irish 
 gentlemen, — but the banshee, who expected 
 no favours, stuck to him in his adversity, and 
 crossed the channel with him, making her- 
 self known only on occasions of death-beds 
 and sharp family misfortunes. This gentle- 
 man had an ear, and, seated one night at the 
 opera, the keen — heard once or twice before 
 on memorable occasions — thrilled through 
 the din of the orchestra and the passion of 
 the singers. He hurried home, of course, 
 found his immediate family well, but on the 
 morrow a telegram arrived with the an- 
 nouncement of a brother's death. Surely of 
 all superstitions that is the most imposing 
 which makes the other world interested in 
 the events which befall our mortal lot. For 
 the mere pomp and pride of it, your ghost 
 is worth a dozen retainers, and it is entirely 
 inexpensive. The peculiarity and supernatu- 
 ral worth of this story lies in the idea of 
 the old wail piercing through the sweet en- 
 tanglement of stringed instruments and ex- 
 tinguishing Orisi. Modern circumstances 
 and luxury crack, as it were, and reveal for 
 a moment misty and aboriginal time big with
 
 A Lark's Flight. 133 
 
 portent. There is a ridiculous Scotch story 
 in which one gruesome touch lives. A 
 clergyman's female servant was seated in 
 the kitchen one Saturday night reading the 
 Scriptures, when she was somewhat startled 
 by hearing at the door the tap and voice of 
 her sweetheart. Not expecting him, and 
 the hour being somewhate late, she opened 
 it in astonishment, and was still more aston- 
 ished to hear him on entering abuse Scrip- 
 ture-reading. He behaved altogether in an 
 unprecedented manner, and in many ways 
 terrified the poor girl. Ultimately he knelt 
 before her, and laid his head on her lap. 
 You can fancy her consternation when glanc- 
 ing down she discovered that, instead of hair, 
 the head was covered with the moss of the 
 moor/and. By a sacred name she adjured 
 him to tell who he was, and in a moment 
 the figure was gone. It was the Fiend, of 
 course — diminished sadly since Milton saw 
 him bridge chaos — fallen from worlds to 
 kitchen-wenches. But just think how in the 
 story, in half-pity, in half-terror, the popular 
 feeling of homelessness, of being outcast, of 
 being unsheltered as waste and desert places, 
 has incarnated itself in that strange covering 
 of the head. It is a true supernatural touch. 
 One other story I have heard in the misty
 
 134 A Lark's Flight. 
 
 Hebrides : A Skye gentleman was riding 
 along an empty moorland road. All at once, 
 as if it had sprung from the ground, the 
 empty road was crowded by a funeral pro- 
 cession. Instinctively he drew his horse to 
 a side to let it pass, which it did without 
 sound of voice, without tread of foot. Then 
 he knew it was an apparition. Staring on 
 it, he knew every person who either bore 
 the corpse or walked behind as mourners. 
 There were the neighbouring proprietors at 
 whose houses he dined, there were the mem- 
 bers of his own kirk-session, there were the 
 men to whom he was wont to give good- 
 morning when he met them on the road or 
 at market. Unable to discover his own im- 
 age in the throng, he was inwardly marvel- 
 ling whose funeral it could be, when the 
 troop of spectres vanished, and the road 
 was empty as before. Then, remembering 
 that the coffin had an invisible occupant, he 
 cried out, " It is my funeral ! " and, with all 
 his strength taken out of him, rode home to 
 die. All these stories have their own touches 
 of terror ; yet I am inclined to think that 
 my lark rising from the scaffold foot, and 
 singing to two such auditors, is more terrible 
 than any one of them.
 
 in 
 <C 
 
 Y — 
 
 P. 
 
 u
 
 JVER the dial-face of the year, on 
 which the hours are months, the 
 apex resting in sunshine, the 
 base in withered leaves and 
 snows, the finger of time does not travel 
 with the same rapidity. Slowly it creeps 
 up from snow to sunshine ; when it has 
 gained the summit it seems almost to rest 
 for a little ; rapidly it rushes down from 
 sunshine to the snow. Judging from my 
 own feelings, the distance from January to 
 June is greater than from June to January 
 — the period from Christmas to Midsummer 
 seems longer than the period from Mid- 
 summer to Christmas. This feeling arises, 
 I should fancy, from the preponderance of 
 light on that half of the dial on which the 
 finger seems to be travelling upwards, com- 
 pared with the half on which it seems to be 
 travelling downwards. This light to the 
 eye, the mind translates into time. Sum-
 
 136 Christmas. 
 
 mer days are long, often wearisomely so. 
 The long-lighted days are bracketed to- 
 gether by a little bar of twilight, in which 
 but a star or two find time to twinkle. 
 Usually one has less occupation in summer 
 than in winter, and the surplusage of sum- 
 mer light, a stage too large for the play, 
 wearies, oppresses, sometimes appalls. From 
 the sense of time we can only shelter our- 
 selves by occupation ; and when occupation 
 ceases while yet some three or four hours of 
 light remain, the burden falls down, and is 
 often greater than we can bear. Personally, 
 I have a certain morbid fear of those endless 
 summer twilights. A space of light stretch- 
 ing from half-past 2 a.m. to 1 1 p.m. affects 
 me with a sense of infinity, of horrid same- 
 ness, just as the sea or the desert would do. 
 I feel that for too long a period I am under 
 the eye of the taskmaster. Twilight is al- 
 ways in itself, or at least in its suggestions, 
 melancholy ; and these midsummer twilights 
 are so long, they pass through such series 
 of lovely change, they are throughout so 
 mournfully beautiful, that in the brain they 
 beget strange thoughts, and in the heart 
 strange feelings. We see too much of the 
 sky, and the long, lovely, pathetic, lingering 
 evening light, with its suggestions of etern-
 
 Christmas. 137 
 
 ity and death, which one cannot for the soul 
 of one put into words, is somewhat too much 
 for the comfort of a sensitive human mortal. 
 The day dies, and makes no apology for 
 being such an unconscionable time in dying ; 
 and all the while it colours our thoughts 
 with its own solemnity. There is no relief 
 from this kind of thing at midsummer. You 
 cannot close your shutters and light your 
 candles ; that in the tone of mind which cir- 
 cumstances superinduce would be brutality. 
 You cannot take Pickwick to the window 
 and read it by the dying light ; that is prof- 
 anation. If you have a friend with you, 
 you can't talk ; the hour makes you silent. 
 You are driven in on your self-consciousness. 
 The long light wearies the eye, a sense of 
 time disturbs and saddens the spirit ; and 
 that is the reason, I think, -that one half of 
 the year seems so much longer than the 
 other half; that on the dial-plate whose 
 hours are months, the restless finger seems 
 to move more slowly when travelling up- 
 ward from autumn leaves and snow to light, 
 than when it is travelling downward from 
 light to snow and withered leaves. 
 
 Of all the seasons of the year, I like win- 
 ter best. That peculiar burden of time I 
 have been speaking of, does not affect me
 
 13S Christmas. 
 
 now. The day is short, and I can fill it with 
 work ; when evening comes, I have my 
 lighted room and my books. Should black 
 care haunt me, I throw it off the scent in 
 Spenser's forests, or seek refuge from it 
 among Shakspeare's men and women, who 
 are by far the best company I have met 
 with, or am like to meet with, on earth. I 
 am sitting at this present moment with my 
 curtains drawn ; the cheerful fire is winking 
 at all the furniture in the room, and from 
 every leg and arm the furniture is winking 
 to the fire in return. I put off the outer 
 world with my great- coat and boots, and put 
 on contentment and idleness with my slip- 
 pers. On the hearth-rug, Pepper, coiled in a 
 shaggy ball, is asleep in the ruddy light and 
 heat. An imaginative sense of the cold out- 
 side increases my present comfort — just as 
 one never hugs one's own good luck so 
 affectionately as when listening to the rela- 
 tion of some horrible misfortune which has 
 overtaken others. Winter has fallen on 
 Drcamthorp, and it looks as pretty when 
 covered with snow as when covered with 
 apple blossom. Outside, the ground is hard 
 as iron ; and over the low dark hill, lo ! the 
 tender radiance that precedes the morn. 
 Every window in the little village has its
 
 Christmas. 139 
 
 Sight, and to the traveller coming on, envel- 
 oped in his breath, the whole place shines 
 like a congregation of glow-worms. A 
 pleasant enough sight to him if his home be 
 there ! At this present season, the canal is 
 not such a pleasant promenade as it was in 
 summer. The barges come and go as usual, 
 but at this time I do not envy the bargemen 
 quite so much. The horse comes smoking 
 along ; the tarpaulin which covers the mer- 
 chandise is sprinkled with hoar-frost ; and 
 the helmsman, smoking his short pipe for the 
 mere heat of it, cowers over a few red cin- 
 ders contained in a framework of iron. The 
 labour of the poor fellows will soon be over 
 for a time ; for if this frost continues, the 
 canal will be sheathed in a night, and next 
 day stones will be thrown upon it, and a 
 daring urchin venturing upon it will go 
 souse head over heels, and run home with 
 his teeth in a chatter; and the day after, the 
 lake beneath the old castle will be sheeted, 
 and the next, the villagers will be sliding on 
 its gleaming face from ruddy dawn at nine 
 to ruddy eve at three ; and hours later, 
 skaters yet unsatisfied will be moving ghost- 
 like in the gloom — now one, now another, 
 shooting on sounding irons into a clear 
 space of frosty light, chasing the moon, or
 
 140 Christmas. 
 
 the flying image of a star ! Happy youths 
 leaning against the frosty wind ! 
 
 I am a Christian, I hope, although far 
 from a muscular one — consequently I cannot 
 join the skaters on the lake. The floor of ice, 
 with the people upon it, will be but a picture 
 to me. And, in truth, it is in its pictorial 
 aspect that I chiefly love the bleak season. 
 As an artist, winter can match summer any 
 day. The heavy, feathery flakes have been 
 falling all the night through, we shall sup- 
 pose, and when you get up in the morning 
 the world is draped in white. What a sight 
 it is ! It is the world you knew, but yet a 
 different one. The familiar look has gone, 
 and another has taken its place ; and a not 
 unpleasant puzzlement arises in your mind, 
 born of the patent and the remembered as- 
 pect. It reminds you of a friend who has 
 been suddenly placed in new circumstances, 
 in whom there is much that you recognise, 
 and much that is entirely strange. How 
 purely, divinely white when the last snow- 
 flake has just fallen ! How exquisite and 
 virginal the repose ! It touches you like 
 some perfection of music. And winter does 
 not work only on a broad scale ; he is care- 
 ful in trifles. Pluck a single ivy leaf from 
 the old wall, and see what a jeweller he is !
 
 Christmas. 141 
 
 How he has silvered over the dark-green 
 reticulations with his frosts ! The faggot 
 which the Tramp gathers for his fire is 
 thicklier incrusted with gems than ever was 
 sceptre of the Moguls. Go into the woods, 
 and behold on the black boughs his glories 
 of pearl and diamond — pendant splendours 
 that, smitten by the noon-ray, melt into 
 tears and fall but to congeal into splendours 
 again. Nor does he work in black and 
 white alone. He has on his palette more 
 gorgeous colours than those in which swim 
 the summer setting suns ; and with these, 
 about three o'clock, he begins to adorn his 
 west, sticking his red hot ball of a sun in the 
 very midst ; and a couple of hours later, 
 when the orb has fallen, and the flaming 
 crimson has mellowed into liquid orange, you 
 can see the black skeletons of trees scribbled 
 upon the melancholy glory. Nor need I 
 speak of the magnificence of a winter mid- 
 night, when space, sombre blue, crowded 
 with star and planet, " burnished by the 
 frost," is glittering like the harness of an 
 archangel full panoplied against a battle 
 day. 
 
 For years and years now I have watched 
 the seasons come and go around Dream- 
 thorp, and each in its turn interests me as if
 
 142 Christinas. 
 
 I saw it for the first time. But the other 
 week it seems that 1 saw the grain ripen ; 
 then by day a motley crew of reapers were 
 in the fields, and at night a big red moon 
 looked down upon the stooks of oats and 
 barley ; then in mighty wains the plenteous 
 harvest came swaying home, leaving a lar- 
 gess on the roads for every bird ; then the 
 round, yellow, comfortable-looking stacks 
 stood around the farm-houses, hiding them 
 to the chimneys ; then the woods reddened, 
 the beech hedges became russet, and 
 every puff of wind made rustle the withered 
 leaves ; then the sunset came before the 
 early dark, and in the east lay banks of bleak 
 pink vapour, which are ever a prophecy of 
 cold ; then out of a low dingy heaven came 
 all day, thick and silent, the whirling snow ; — 
 and so by exquisite succession of sight and 
 sound have I been taken from the top of the 
 year to the bottom of it, from midsummer, 
 with its unreaped harvests, to the night on 
 which I am sitting here — Christmas, 1862. 
 
 Sitting here, I incontinently find myself 
 holding a levee of departed Christmas nights. 
 Silently, and without special call, into my 
 study of imagination come these apparitions, 
 clad in snowy mantles, brooched and gem- 
 med with frosts. Their numbers I do not
 
 Christinas. 143 
 
 care to count, for I know they are the num- 
 bers of my years. The visages of two or 
 three are sad enough, but on the whole 'tis 
 a congregation of jolly ghosts. The nostrils 
 of my memory are assailed by a faint odour 
 of plum-pudding and burnt brandy. I hear 
 a sound as of light music, a whisk of women's 
 dresses whirled round in dance, a click as of 
 glasses pledged by friends. Before one of 
 these apparitions is a mound, as of a new- 
 made grave, on which the snow is lying. I 
 know, I know ! Drape thyself not in white 
 like the others, but in mourning stole of 
 crape ; and instead of dance music, let there 
 haunt around thee the service for the dead ! 
 I know that sprig of Mistletoe, O Spirit in 
 the midst ! Under it I swung the girl I loved 
 — girl no more now than I am a boy — and 
 kissed her spite of blush and pretty shriek. 
 And thee, too, with fragrant trencher in 
 hand, over which blue tongues of flame are 
 playing, do I know — most ancient apparition 
 of them all. I remember thy reigning night. 
 Back to very days of childhood am I taken 
 by the ghostly raisins simmering in a 
 ghostly brandy flame. Where now the 
 merry boys and girls that thrust their fin- 
 gers in thy blaze? And now, when I think 
 of it, thee also would I drape in black rai-
 
 1 44 Christmas. 
 
 ment, around thee also would I make the 
 burial service murmur. 
 
 Men hold the anniversaries of their birth, 
 of their marriage, of the birth of their first- 
 born, and they hold — although they spread 
 no feast, and ask no friends to assist — many 
 another anniversary besides. On many a 
 day in every year does a man remember 
 what took place on that self-same day in 
 some former year, and chews the sweet or 
 bitter herb of memory, as the case may be. 
 Could I ever hope to write a decent Essay, 
 I should like to write one "On the Revisit- 
 ing of Places." It is strange how important 
 the poorest human being is to himself ! how 
 he likes to double back on his experiences, 
 to stand on the place he has stood on before, 
 to meet himself face to face, as it were ! I 
 go to the great city in which my early life 
 was spent, and I love to indulge myself in 
 this whim. The only thing I care about is 
 that portion of the city which is connected 
 with myself. I don't think this passion of 
 reminiscence is debased by the slightest 
 taint of vanity. The lamp-post, under the 
 light of which in the winter rain there was 
 a parting so many years ago, I contemplate 
 with the most curious interest. I stare on 
 the windows of the houses in which I once
 
 Christinas. 145 
 
 lived, with a feeling which I should find diffi- 
 cult to express in words. I think of the life 
 I led there, of the good and the bad news 
 that came, of the sister who died, of the 
 brother who was burn ; and were it at all 
 possible, I should like to knock at the once 
 familiar door, and look at the old walls — 
 which could speak to me so strangely — once 
 again. To revisit that city is like walking 
 away back into my yesterdays. I startle 
 myself with myself at the corners of streets, 
 I confront forgotten bits of myself at the 
 entrance to houses. In windows which to 
 another man would seem blank and mean- 
 ingless, I find personal poems too deep to 
 be ever turned into rhymes — more pathetic, 
 mayhap, than I have ever found on printed 
 page. The spot of ground on which a man 
 has stood is for ever interesting to him. 
 Every experience is an anchor holding him 
 the more firmly to existence. It is for this 
 reason that we hold our sacred days, silent 
 and solitary anniversaries of joy and bitter- 
 ness, renewing ourselves thereby, going back 
 upon ourselves, living over again the mem- 
 orable experience. The full yellow moon of 
 next September will gather into itself the 
 light of the full yellow moons of Septembers 
 long ago. In this Christmas night all the 
 
 10
 
 146 Christinas. 
 
 other Christmas nights of my life live. How 
 warm, breathing, full of myself is the year 
 1862, now almost gone ! How bare, cheer- 
 less, unknown, the year 1863, about to come 
 in ! It stretches before me in imagination 
 like some great, gaunt untenanted ruin 
 of a Colosseum, in which no footstep 
 falls, no voice is heard; and by this night 
 year its naked chambers and windows, three 
 hundred and sixty-five in number, will be 
 clothed all over, and hidden by myself as if 
 with covering ivies. Looking forward into 
 an empty year strikes one with a certain awe, 
 because one finds therein no recognition. 
 The years behind have a friendly aspect, and 
 they are warmed by the fires we have 
 kindled, and all their echoes are the echoes 
 of our own voices. 
 
 This, then, is Christmas, 1862. Everything 
 is silent in Dreamthorp. The smith's ham- 
 mer reposes beside the anvil. The weaver's 
 flying shuttle is at rest. Through the clear 
 wintry sunshine the bells this morning rang 
 from the gray church tower amid the leafless 
 elms, and up the walk the villagers trooped 
 in their best dresses and their best faces — 
 the latter a little reddened by the sharp wind : 
 mere redness in the middle aged ; in the 
 maids, wonderful bloom to the eyes of their
 
 Christmas. 147 
 
 lovers — and took their places decently in 
 the ancient pews. The clerk read the beau- 
 tiful prayers of our Church, which stem 
 more beautiful at Christmas than at any 
 other period. For that very feeling which 
 breaks down at this time the barriers which 
 custom, birth, or wealth have erected be- 
 tween man and man, strikes down the bar- 
 rier of time which intervenes between the 
 worshipper of to-day and the great body of 
 worshippers who are at rest in their graves. 
 On such a day as this, hearing these prayers, 
 we feel a kinship with the devout generations 
 who heard them long ago. The devout lips 
 of the Christian dead murmured the re- 
 sponses which we now murmur ; along this 
 road of prayer did their thoughts of our in- 
 numerable dead, our brothers and sisters in 
 faith and hope, approach the Maker, even as 
 ours at present approach Him. Prayers over, 
 the clergyman — who is no Boanerges, or 
 Chrysostom, golden-mouthed, but a loving, 
 genial-hearted, pious man, the whole extent 
 of his life from boyhood until now, full of 
 charity and kindly deeds, as autumn fields 
 with heavy wheaten ears ; the clergyman, I 
 say — for the sentence is becoming unwieldy 
 on my hands, and one must double back to 
 secure connexion — read out in that silvery
 
 148 Christmas. 
 
 voice of his, which is sweeter than any music 
 to my ear, those chapters of the New Testa- 
 ment that deal with the birth of the Saviour. 
 And the red- faced rustic congregation hung 
 on the good man's voice as he spoke of the 
 Infant brought forth in a manger, of the shin- 
 ing angels that appeared in mid -air to the 
 shepherds, of the miraculous star that took 
 its station in the sky, and of the wise men 
 who came from afar and laid their gifts of 
 frankincense and myrrh at the feet of the 
 child. With the story every one was famil- 
 iar, but on that day, and backed by the per- 
 suasive melody of the reader's voice, it 
 seemed to all quite new — at least, they 
 listened attentively as if it were. The dis- 
 course that followed possessed no remark- 
 able thoughts ; it dealt simply with the 
 goodness of the Maker of heaven and earth, 
 and the shortness of time, with the duties of 
 thankfulness and charity to the poor ; and 
 I am persuaded that every one who heard 
 returned to his house in a better frame of 
 mind. And so the service remitted us all to 
 our own homes, to what roast-beef and plum- 
 pudding slender means permitted, to gather- 
 ings around cheerful fires, to half-pleasant, 
 half-sad remembrances of the dead and the 
 absent.
 
 Christinas. 149 
 
 From sermon I have returned like the 
 others, and it is my purpose to hold Christ- 
 mas alone. I have no one with me at table, 
 and my own thoughts must be my Christmas 
 guests. Sitting here, it is pleasant to think 
 how much kindly feeling exists this present 
 night in England. By imagination I can 
 taste of every table, pledge every toast, 
 silently join in every roar of merriment. I 
 become a sort of universal guest. With what 
 propriety is this jovial season, placed amid 
 dismal December rains and snows ! How 
 one pities the unhappy Australians, with 
 whom everything is turned topsy-turvy, and 
 who hold Christmas at midsummer ! The 
 face of Christmas glows all the brighter for 
 the cold. The heart warms as the frost 
 increases. Estrangements which have em- 
 bittered the whole year, melt in to-night's 
 hospitable smile. There are warmer hand- 
 shakings on this night than during the by- 
 past twelve months. Friend lives in the 
 mind of friend. There is more charity at 
 this time than at any other. You get up at 
 midnight and toss your spare coppers to the 
 half-benumbed musicians whiffling beneath 
 your windows, although at any other time 
 you would consider their performance a 
 nuisance, and call angrily for the police.
 
 150 Christmas. 
 
 Poverty, and scanty clothing, and fireless 
 grates, come home at this season to the 
 bosoms of the rich, and they give of their 
 abundance. The very red-breast of the 
 woods enjoys his Christmas feast. Good 
 feeling incarnates itself in plum-pudding. 
 The Master's words, "The poor ye have 
 always with you," wear at this time a deep 
 significance. For at least one night on each 
 year over all Christendom there is brother- 
 hood. And good men, sitting amongst their 
 families, or by a solitary fire like me, when 
 they remember the light that shone over the 
 poor clowns huddling on the Bethlehem 
 plains eighteen hundred years ago, the ap- 
 parition of shining angels overhead, the 
 song " Peace on earth and good-will toward 
 men," which for the first time hallowed the 
 midnight air, — pray for that strain's fulfil- 
 ment, that battle and strife may vex the 
 nations no more, that not only on Christmas- 
 eve, but the whole year round, men shall be 
 brethren owning one Father in heaven. 
 
 Although suggested by the season, and by 
 a solitary dinner, it is not my purpose to 
 indulge in personal reminiscence and talk. 
 Let all that pass. This is Christmas-day, 
 the anniversary of the world's greatest event. 
 To one day all the early world looked for-
 
 Christmas. 151 
 
 ward ; to the same day the later world looks 
 back. That day holds time together. Isaiah, 
 standing on the peaks of prophecy, looked 
 across ruined empires and the desolations 
 of many centuries, and saw on the horizon 
 the new star arise, and was glad. On this 
 night eighteen hundred years ago, Jove was 
 discrowned, the Pagan heaven emptied of 
 its divinities, and Olympus left to the soli- 
 tude of its snows. On this night, so many 
 hundred years bygone, the despairing voice 
 was heard shrieking on the ^Egean, " Pan 
 is dead, great Pan is dead ! " On this night, 
 according to the fine reverence of the poets, 
 all things that blast and blight are powerless, 
 disarmed by sweet influence : — 
 
 " Some say that ever 'gainst the season comes 
 Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated 
 The bird of dawning singeth all night long; 
 And then they say no spirit dares stir abroad ; 
 The nights are wholesome ; then no planets strike ; 
 Xo fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm : 
 So hallowed and so gracious is the time." 
 
 The flight of the Pagan mythology before 
 the new faith has been a favourite subject 
 with the poets ; and it has been my custom 
 for many seasons to read Milton's " Hymn 
 to the Nativity " on the evening of Christ- 
 mas-day. The bass of heaven's deep organ 
 seems to blow in the lines, and slowly and
 
 152 Christmas. 
 
 with many echoes the strain melts into 
 silence. To my ear the lines sound like the 
 full -voiced choir and the rolling organ of a 
 cathedral, when the afternoon light stream- 
 ing through the painted windows fills the 
 place with solemn colours and masses of 
 gorgeous gloom. To-night I shall float my 
 lonely hours away on music : — 
 
 " The oracles are dumb, 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving : 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can no more divine 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 No nightly trance or breathed spell 
 Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. 
 
 " The lonely mountains o'er, 
 And the resounding shore, 
 A voice of weeping heard and loud lament : 
 From haunted spring, and dale 
 Edged with poplars pale, 
 The parting genius is with sighing sent : 
 With flower-enwoven tresses torn 
 The nymphs in twilight shades of tangled thickets 
 mourn. 
 
 " Peor and Baalim 
 Forsake their temples dim 
 With that twice-battered god of Palestine; 
 And mooned Ashtaroth, 
 Heaven's queen and mother both, 
 Now sits not girt with tapers' holy shine ! 
 
 The Lybic Ilammon shrinks his horn, 
 In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz 
 mourn.
 
 Christinas. 153 
 
 "And sullen Moloch, fled, 
 I lath left in shadows dread 
 I lis burning idol, all of blackest hue: 
 In vain with cymbals' ring 
 They call the grisly king 
 In dismal dance about the furnace blue : 
 The Brutish gods of Nile as fast, 
 Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis haste. 
 
 " He feels from Juda's land 
 The dreaded Infant's hand, 
 The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyne : 
 Nor all the gods beside 
 I >are longer there abide, 
 Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine. 
 Our Uabe to shew His Godhead true 
 Can in His swaddling bands control the damned 
 crew." 
 
 These verses, as if loath to die, linger with 
 a certain persistence in mind and ear. This 
 is the " mighty line " which critics talk 
 about ! And just as in an infant's face you 
 may discern the rudiments of the future man, 
 so in the glorious hymn may be traced the 
 more majestic lineaments of the " Paradise 
 Lost." 
 
 Strangely enough, the next noblest dirge 
 for the unrealmed divinities which I can call 
 to remembrance, and at the same time the 
 most eloquent celebration of the new power 
 and prophecy of its triumph, has been ut- 
 tered by Shelley, who cannot in any sense 
 be termed a Christian poet. It is one of the
 
 154 Christmas. 
 
 choruses in " Hellas," and perhaps had he 
 lived longer amongst us, it would have been 
 the prelude to higher strains. Of this I am 
 certain, that before his death the mind of that 
 brilliant genius was rapidly changing, — that 
 for him the cross was gathering attractions 
 round it, — that the wall which he com- 
 plained had been built up between his heart 
 and his intellect was being broken down, and 
 that rays of a strange splendour were already 
 streaming upon him through the interstices. 
 What a contrast between the darkened 
 glory of "Queen Mab" — of which in after- 
 life he was ashamed, both as a literary work 
 and as an expression of opinion — and the 
 intense, clear, lyrical light of this triumphant 
 poem ! — 
 
 "A power from the unknown God, 
 A Promethean conqueror came : 
 Like a triumphal path he trod 
 The thorns of death and shame. 
 
 A mortal shape to him 
 
 Was like the vapour dim 
 Which the orient planet animates with light. 
 
 Hell, sin, and slavery came 
 
 Like bloodhounds mild and tame, 
 Nor prey'd until their lord had taken flight. 
 
 The moon of Mahomet 
 
 Arose, and it shall set; 
 While Mazon'd, as on heaven's immortal noon, 
 The Cross leads generations on.
 
 Christmas. 155 
 
 •' Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep, 
 From one whose dreams are paradise, 
 Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, 
 And day peers forth with her blank eyes : 
 
 So fleet, so faint, so fair, 
 
 The powers of earth and air 
 Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem. 
 
 Apollo, Pan, and Love, 
 
 And even Olympian Jove, 
 Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them. 
 
 Our hills, and seas, and streams, 
 
 Dispeopled of their dreams, 
 Their water turned to blood, their dew to tears, 
 Wailed for the golden years." 
 
 For my own part, I cannot read these lines 
 without emotion — not so much for their 
 beauty as for the change in the writer's 
 mind which they suggest. The self-sacrifice 
 which lies at the centre of Christianity 
 should have touched this man more deeply 
 than almost any other. That it was begin- 
 ning to touch and mould him, I verily be- 
 lieve. He died and made that sign. Of 
 what music did that storm in Spezia Bay 
 rob the world ! 
 
 "The Cross leads generations on." Be- 
 lieving as I do that my own personal decease 
 is not more certain than that our religion 
 will subdue the world, 1 own that it is with 
 a somewhat saddened heart that I pass my 
 thoughts around the globe, and consider 
 how distant is yet that triumph. There are
 
 156 Christmas. 
 
 the realms on which the crescent beams, the 
 monstrous many-headed gods of India, the 
 Chinaman's heathenism, the African's devil- 
 rites. These are, to a large extent, princi- 
 palities and powers of darkness with which 
 our religion has never been brought into 
 collision, save at trivial and far separated 
 points, and in these cases the attack has 
 never been made in strength. But what of 
 our own Europe — the home of philosophy, 
 of poetry, and painting? Europe, which has 
 produced Greece, and Rome, and England's 
 centuries of glory ; which has been illumined 
 by the fires of martyrdom ; which has heard 
 a Luther preach ; which has listened to 
 Dante's "mystic unfathomable song"; to 
 which Milton has opened the door of heaven 
 — what of it? And what, too, of that youn- 
 ger America, starting in its career with all 
 our good things, and enfranchised of many 
 of our evils? Did not the December sun 
 now shining look down on thousands slaugh- 
 tered at Fredericksburg, in a most mad, 
 most incomprehensible quarrel? And is 
 not the public air which European nations 
 breathe at this moment, as it has been for 
 several years back, charged with thunder? 
 Despots are plotting, ships are building, 
 man's ingenuity is bent, as it never was bent
 
 Christinas. 157 
 
 before, on the invention and improvement 
 of instruments of death ; Europe is bristling 
 with five millions of bayonets : and this is 
 the condition of a world for which the Son 
 of God died eighteen hundred and sixty-two 
 years ago ! There is no mystery of Provi- 
 dence so inscrutable as this ; and yet, is not 
 the very sense of its mournfulness a proof 
 that the spirit of Christianity is living in the 
 minds of men? For, of a verity, military 
 glory is becoming in our best thoughts a 
 bloody rag, and conquest the first in the 
 catalogue of mighty crimes, and a throned 
 tyrant, with armies, and treasures, and the 
 cheers of millions rising up like a cloud of 
 incense around him, but a mark for the 
 thunderbolt of Almighty God — in reality 
 poorer than Lazarus stretched at the gate of 
 Dives. Besides, all these things are getting 
 themselves to some extent mitigated. Flor- 
 ence Nightingale — for the first time in the 
 history of the world — walks through the 
 Scutari hospitals, and " poor, noble, wounded 
 and sick men," to use her Majesty's tender 
 phrases, kiss her shadow as it falls on them. 
 The Emperor Napoleon does not make war 
 to employ his armies, or to consolidate his 
 power ; he does so for the sake of an " idea," 
 more or less generous and disinterested.
 
 15S Christmas. 
 
 The soul of mankind would revolt at the 
 blunt, naked truth ; and the taciturn em- 
 peror knows this, as he knows most things. 
 This imperial hypocrisy, like every other 
 hypocrisy, is a homage which vice pays to 
 virtue. There cannot be a doubt that when 
 the political crimes of kings and govern- 
 ments, the sores that fester in the heart of 
 society, and all '-the burden of the unin- 
 telligible world," weigh heaviest on the 
 mind, we have to thank Christianity for it. 
 That pure light makes visible the darkness. 
 The Sermon on the Mount makes the mor- 
 ality of the nations ghastly. The Divine 
 love makes human hate stand out in dark 
 relief. This sadness, in the essence of it 
 nobler than any joy, is the heritage of the 
 Christian. An ancient Roman could not 
 have felt so. Everything runs on smoothly 
 enough so long as Jove wields the thunder. 
 But Venus, Mars, and Minerva are far behind 
 us now ; the Cross is before us ; and self- 
 denial and sorrow for sin, and the remem- 
 brance of the poor, and the cleansing of our 
 own hearts, are duties incumbent upon 
 ry one of us. If the Christian is less 
 happy than the Pagan, and at times I think 
 he is so, it arises from the reproach of the 
 Christian's unreached ideal, and from the
 
 Christmas. 
 
 r 59 
 
 stings of his finer and more scrupulous con- 
 science. His whole moral organisation is 
 finer, and he must pay the noble penalty of 
 finer organisations. 
 
 Once again, for the purpose of taking 
 away all solitariness of feeling, and of con- 
 necting myself, albeit only in fancy, with the 
 proper gladness of the time, let me think of 
 the comfortable family dinners now being 
 drawn to a close, of the good wishes uttered, 
 and the presents made,, quite valueless in 
 themselves, yet felt to be invaluable from 
 the feelings from which they spring ; of the 
 little children, by sweetmeats lapped in Ely- 
 sium ; and of the pantomime, pleasantest 
 Christmas sight of all, with the pit a sea of 
 grinning delight, the boxes a tier of beam- 
 ing juvenility, the galleries, piled up to the 
 far-receding roof, a mass of happy laughter 
 which a clown's joke brings down in mighty 
 avalanches. In the pit, sober people relax 
 themselves, and suck oranges, and quaff 
 ginger-pop ; in the boxes, Miss, gazing 
 through her curls, thinks the Fairy Prince 
 the prettiest creature she ever beheld, and 
 Master, that to be a clown must be the pin- 
 nacle of human happiness : while up in the 
 galleries the hard literal world is for an hour 
 sponged out and obliterated ; the chimney-
 
 160 Christmas. 
 
 sweep forgets, in his delight when the po- 
 liceman comes to grief, the harsh call of his 
 master, and Cinderella, when the demons 
 are foiled, and the long parted lovers meet 
 and embrace in a paradise of light and pink 
 gauze, the grates that must be scrubbed to- 
 morrow. All bands and trappings of toil 
 are for one hour loosened by the hands of 
 imaginative sympathy. What happiness a 
 single theatre can contain ! And those of 
 maturer years, or of more meditative tem- 
 perament, sitting at the pantomime, can ex- 
 tract out of the shifting scenes meanings 
 suitable to themselves ; for the pantomime 
 is a symbol or adumbration of human life. 
 Have we not all known Harlequin, who 
 rules the roast, and has the pretty Colum- 
 bine to himself? Do we not all know that 
 rogue of a clown with his peculating fingers, 
 who brazens out of every scrape, and who 
 conquers the world by good humour and 
 ready wit? And have we not seen Panta- 
 loons not a few, whose fate it is to get all 
 the kicks and lose all the halfpence, to fall 
 through all the trap doors, break their shins 
 over all the barrows, and be forever cap- 
 tured by the policeman, while the true pil- 
 ferer, the clown, makes his escape with the 
 booty in his possession? Methinks I know
 
 Christmas. 161 
 
 the realities of which these things are but 
 the shadows ; have met with them in busi- 
 ness, have sat with them at dinner. But 
 to-night no such notions as these intrude; 
 and when the torrent of fun, and transfor- 
 mation, and practical joking which rushed 
 out of the beautiful fairy world gathered up 
 again, the high- heaped happiness of the 
 theatre will disperse itself, and the Christmas 
 pantomime will be a pleasant memory the 
 whole year through. Thousands on thou- 
 sands of people are having their midriffs 
 tickled at this moment ; in fancy I see their 
 lighted faces, in memory I hear their mirth. 
 By this time I should think every Christ- 
 mas dinner at Dreamthorp or elsewhere has 
 come to an end. Even now in the great 
 cities the theatres will be dispersing. The 
 clown has wiped the paint off his face. 
 Harlequin has laid aside his wand, and 
 divested himself of his glittering raiment ; 
 Pantaloon, after refreshing himself with a 
 pint of porter, is rubbing his aching joints ; 
 and Columbine, wrapped up in a shawl, and 
 with sleepy eyelids, has gone home in a cab. 
 Soon, in the great theatre, the lights will be 
 put out, and the empty stage will be left to 
 ghosts. Hark ! midnight from the church 
 tower vibrates through the frosty air. I 
 
 ii
 
 1 62 Christmas. 
 
 look out on the brilliant heaven, and see a 
 milky way of powder} 7 splendour wandering 
 through it, and clusters and knots of stars 
 and planets shining serenely in the blue 
 frosty spaces : and the armed apparition of 
 Orion, his spear pointing away into im- 
 measurable space, gleaming overhead ; and 
 the familiar constellation of the Plough dip- 
 ping down into the west ; and I think when 
 I go in again that there is one Christmas the 
 less between me and my grave.
 
 William hl^zuyy.
 
 :R. HAZLITT has written many 
 pleasant essays, but none pleas- 
 anter than that entitled " My 
 First Acquaintance with Poets," 
 which, in the edition edited by his son, opens 
 the Wintersloe series. It relates almost en- 
 tirely to Coleridge ; containing sketches of 
 his personal appearance, fragments of his 
 conversation, and is filled with a young man's 
 generous enthusiasm, belief, admiration, as 
 with sunrise. He had met Coleridge, walked 
 with him, talked with him, and the high in- 
 tellectual experience not only made him 
 better acquainted with his own spirit and its 
 folded powers, but — as is ever the case with 
 such spiritual encounters — it touched and 
 illuminated the dead outer world. The road 
 between Wem and Shrewsbury was familiar 
 enough to Hazlitt, but as the twain passed 
 along it on that winter day, it became ethere- 
 alised, poetic — wonderful, as if leading across
 
 164 Men 0/ Letters. 
 
 the Delectable Mountains to the Golden 
 City, whose gleam is discernible on the ho- 
 rizon. The milestones were mute with atten- 
 tion, the pines upon the hill had ears for the 
 stranger as he passed. Eloquence made 
 the red leaves rustle on the oak ; made the 
 depth of heaven seem as if swept by a breath 
 of spring ; and when the evening star ap- 
 peared, Hazlitt saw it as Adam did while in 
 Paradise and but one day old. " As we 
 passed along," writes the essayist, " between 
 Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed the blue 
 hill tops seen through the wintry branches, 
 or the red, rustling leaves of the sturdy oak- 
 trees by the wayside, a sound was in my ears 
 as of a siren's song. I was stunned, startled 
 with it as from deep sleep ; but I had no 
 notion that I should ever be able to express 
 my admiration to others in motley imagery 
 or quaint allusion, till the light of his genius 
 shone into my soul, like the sun's rays 
 glittering in the puddles of the road. I was 
 at that time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, 
 like a worm by the wayside, crushed, bleed- 
 ing, lifeless ; but now, bursting from the 
 deadly bands that bound them, my ideas 
 float on winged words, and as they expand 
 their plumes, catch the golden light of other 
 years. My soul has indeed remained in its
 
 Men of Letters. 165 
 
 original bondage, dark, obscure, with long- 
 ings infinite and unsatisfied ; my heart, shut 
 up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has 
 never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to 
 speak to ; but that my understanding also 
 did not remain dumb and brutish, or at length 
 found a language to express itself, I owe to 
 Coleridge." Time and sorrow, personal am- 
 bition thwarted and fruitlessly driven back 
 on itself, hopes for the world defeated and 
 unrealised, changed the enthusiastic youth 
 into a petulant, unsocial man ; yet ever as 
 he remembered that meeting and his wintry 
 walk from Wem to Shrewsbury, the early 
 glow came back, and a " sound was in his 
 ears as of a siren's song." 
 
 We are not all hero-worshippers like Haz- 
 litt, but most of us are so to a large extent. 
 A large proportion of mankind feel a quite 
 peculiar interest in famous writers. They 
 like to read about them, to know what they 
 said on this or the other occasion, what sort 
 of house they inhabited, what fashion of 
 dress they wore, if they liked any particular 
 dish for dinner, what kind of women they 
 fell in love with, and whether their domestic 
 atmosphere was stormy or the reverse. Con- 
 cerning such men no bit of information is 
 too trifling ; everything helps to make out 
 the mental image we have dimly formed for
 
 1 66 Men of Letters. 
 
 ourselves. And this kind of interest is 
 heightened by the artistic way in which time 
 occasionally groups them. The race is gre- 
 garious, they are visible to us in clumps like 
 primroses, they are brought into neighbour- 
 hood and flash light on each other like gems 
 in a diadem. We think of the wild geniuses 
 who came up from the universities to I .ondon 
 in the dawn of the English drama. Greene, 
 Nash, Marlowe — our first professional men 
 of letters — how they cracked their satirical 
 whips, how they brawled in taverns, how 
 pinched they were at times, how, when they 
 possessed money, they flung it from them 
 as if it were poison, with what fierce speed 
 they wrote, how they shook the stage. Then 
 we think of the " Mermaid " in session, with 
 Shakspeare's bland, oval face, the light of 
 a smile spread over it, and Ben Jonson's 
 truculent visage, and Beaumont and Fletcher 
 sitting together in their beautiful friendship, 
 and fancy as best we can the drollery, the 
 repartee, the sage sentences, the lightning 
 gleams of wit, the thunder-peals of laughter. 
 
 " What things have we seen 
 I )one at the Mermaid ? Heard words that hath been 
 
 nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
 As if that every one from whence they came 
 Had meant to put his whole soul in a jest, 
 And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
 Of his dull life."
 
 Men of Letters. 167 
 
 Then there is the " Literary Club," with 
 Johnson, and Garrick, and Burke, and Rey- 
 nolds, and Goldsmith sitting in perpetuity 
 in Boswell. The Doctor has been talking 
 there for a hundred years, and there will he 
 talk for many a hundred more. And we of 
 another generation, and with other things 
 to think about, can enter any night we 
 please, and hear what is going on. Then 
 we have the swarthy ploughman from Ayr- 
 shire sitting at Lord Monboddo's with Dr. 
 Blair, Dugald Stewart, Henry Mackenzie, 
 and the rest. These went into the presence 
 of the wonderful rustic thoughtlessly 
 enough, and now they cannot return even if 
 they would. They are defrauded of oblivion. 
 Not yet have they tasted forgetfulness and 
 the grave. The day may come when Burns 
 will be forgotten, but till that day arrives 
 — and the eastern sky as yet gives no token 
 of its approach — him they must attend as 
 satellites the sun, as courtiers their king. 
 Then there are the Lakers, — Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Southey, De Quincey burdened 
 with his tremendous dream, Wilson in his 
 splendid youth. What talk, what argument, 
 what readings of lyrical and other ballads, 
 what contempt of critics, what a hail of fine 
 things ! Then there is Charles Lamb's room
 
 1 68 Men of Letters. 
 
 in Inner Temple Lane, the hush of a whist 
 table in one corner, the host stuttering puns 
 as he deals the cards ; and sitting round 
 about, Hunt, whose every sentence is fla- 
 voured with the hawthorn and the primrose, 
 and Hazlitt maddened by Waterloo and St. 
 Helena, and Godwin with his wild theories, 
 and Kemble with his Roman look. And 
 before the morning comes, and Lamb stut- 
 ters yet more thickly — for there is a slight 
 flavour of punch in the apartment — what 
 talk there has been of Hogarth's prints, of 
 Izaak Walton, of the old dramatists, of Sir 
 Thomas Browne's " Urn Burial," with Elia's 
 quaint humour breaking through every in- 
 terstice, and flowering in every fissure and 
 cranny of the conversation ! One likes to 
 think of these social gatherings of wit and 
 geniuses ; they are more interesting than 
 conclaves of kings or convocations of bish- 
 ops. One would like to have been the 
 waiter at the " Mermaid," and to have stood 
 behind Shakspeare's chair. What was that 
 functionary's opinion of his guests? Did 
 he listen and become witty by infection ? or 
 did he, when his task was over, retire un- 
 concernedly to chalk up the tavern score? 
 ( >ne envies somewhat the damsel who 
 brought Lamb the spirit-case and the hot
 
 Men of Letters. 169 
 
 water. I think of these meetings, and, in 
 lack of companionship, frame for myself 
 imaginary conversations — not so brilliant, 
 of course, as Mr. Landor's, but yet sufficient 
 to make pleasant for me the twilight hour 
 while the lamp is yet unlit, and my solitary 
 room is filled with ruddy lights and shadows 
 of the fire. 
 
 Of human notabilities men of letters are 
 the most interesting, and this arises mainly 
 from their outspokenness as a class. The 
 writer makes himself known in a way that 
 no other man makes himself known. The 
 distinguished engineer may be as great a 
 man as the distinguished writer, but as a 
 rule we know little about him. We see him 
 invent a locomotive, or bridge a strait, but 
 there our knowledge stops ; we look at the 
 engine, we walk across the bridge, we ad- 
 mire the ingenuity of the one, we are grate- 
 ful for the conveniency of the other, but 
 to our apprehensions the engineer is unde- 
 ciphered all the while. Doubtless he reveals 
 himself in his work as the poet reveals him- 
 self in his song, but then this revelation is 
 made in a tongue unknown to the majority. 
 After all, we do not feel that we get nearer 
 him. The man of letters, on the other hand, 
 is outspoken, he takes you into his confi-
 
 1 70 Men of Letters. 
 
 dence, he keeps no secret from you. Be 
 you beggar, be you king, you are welcome. 
 He is no respecter of persons. He gives 
 without reserve his fancies, his wit, his wis- 
 dom ; he makes you a present of all that the 
 painful or the happy years have brought 
 him. The writer makes his reader heir in 
 full. Men of letters are a peculiar class. 
 They are never commonplace or prosaic — 
 at least those of them that mankind care for. 
 They are airy, wise, gloomy, melodious 
 spirits. They give us the language we 
 speak, they furnish the subjects of our best 
 talk. They are full of generous impulses 
 and sentiments, and keep the world young. 
 They have said fine things on every phase 
 of human experience. The air is full of 
 their voices. Their books are the world's 
 holiday and playground, and into these 
 neither care, nor the dun, nor despondency 
 can follow the enfranchised man. Men of 
 letters forerun science as the morning star 
 the dawn. Nothing has been invented, 
 nothing lias been achieved, but has gleamed 
 a bright- coloured Utopia in the eyes of one 
 or the other of these men. Several cen- 
 turies before the Great Exhibition of 1851 
 rose in Hyde Park, a wondrous hall of glass 
 stood, radiant in sunlight, in the verse of
 
 Men of Letters. 171 
 
 Chaucer. The electric telegraph is not so 
 swift as the flight of Puck. We have not 
 yet realised the hippogriff of Ariosto. Just 
 consider what a world this would be if ruled 
 by the best thoughts of men of letters ! Ig- 
 norance would die at once, war would cease, 
 taxation would be lightened, not only every 
 Frenchman, but every man in the world, 
 would have his hen in the pot. May would 
 not marry January. The race of lawyers and 
 physicians would be extinct. Fancy a world 
 the affairs of which are directed by Goethe's 
 wisdom and Goldsmith's heart ! In such a 
 case, methinks the millennium were already 
 come. Books are a finer world within the 
 world. With books are connected all my 
 desires and aspirations. When I go to my 
 long sleep, on a book will my head be pil- 
 lowed. I care for no other fashion of great- 
 ness. I'd as lief not be remembered at all 
 as remembered in connection with anything 
 else. I would rather be Charles Lamb than 
 Charles XII. I would rather be remem- 
 bered by a song than by a victory. I would 
 rather build a fine sonnet than have built St. 
 Paul's. I would rather be the discoverer of 
 a new image than the discoverer of a new 
 planet. Fine phrases I value more than 
 bank notes. I have ear for no other har-
 
 172 Men of Letters. 
 
 mony than the harmony of words. To be 
 occasionally quoted is the onlv fame I care 
 for. 
 
 But what of the literary life? How fares 
 it with the men whose days and nights 
 are devoted to the writing of books? We 
 know the famous men of letters ; we give 
 them the highest place in our regards; we 
 crown them with laurels so thickly that we 
 hide the furrows on their foreheads. Yet 
 we must remember that there are men of 
 letters who have been equally sanguine, 
 equally ardent, who have pursued perfection 
 equally unselfishly, but who have failed to 
 make themselves famous. We know the 
 ships that come with streaming pennons 
 into the immortal ports; we know but little 
 of the ships that have gone on fire on the 
 way thither, — that have gone down at sea. 
 Even with successful men we cannot know 
 precisely how matters have gone. We read 
 Erie fine raptures of the poet, but we do not 
 know into what kind of being he relapses 
 when the inspiration is over, any more than, 
 seeing and hearing tine lark shrilling at the 
 
 te of heaven, we know with what effort 
 it has climbed thither, or into what kind of 
 nest it must descend. The lark is not always 
 singing ; no more is the poet. The lark is
 
 Men of Le tiers. 173 
 
 only interesting while singing ; at other 
 times it is but a plain brown bird. We may 
 not be able to recognise the poet when he 
 doffs his singing robes ; he may then sink to 
 the level of his admirers. We laugh at the 
 fancies of the humourists, but he may have 
 written his brilliant things in a dismal 
 enough mood. The writer is not continually 
 dwelling amongst the roses and lilies of life, 
 he is not continually uttering generous sen- 
 timents, and saying fine things. On him, as 
 on his brethren, the world presses with its 
 prosaic needs. He has to make love and 
 marry, and run the usual matrimonial risks. 
 The income-tax collector visits him as well 
 as others. Around his head at Christmas- 
 times drives a snow-storm of bills. He must 
 keep the wolf from the door, and he has 
 only his goose-quills to confront it with. 
 And here it is, having to deal with alien 
 powers, that his special temperament comes 
 into play, and may work him evil. Wit is 
 not worldly wisdom. A man gazing on the 
 stars is proverbially at the mercy of the 
 puddles on the road. A man may be able to 
 disentangle intricate problems, be able to 
 recall the past, and yet be cozened by an or- 
 dinary knave. The finest expression will 
 not liquidate a butcher's account. If Apollo
 
 174 Men of Letters. 
 
 puts his name to a bill, he must meet it when 
 it becomes due, or go into the gazette. Ar- 
 mies are not always cheering on the heights 
 which they have won ; there are forced 
 marches, occasional shortness of provisions, 
 bivouacs on muddy plains, driving in of 
 pickets, and the like, although these inglo- 
 rious items are forgotten when we read the 
 roll of victories inscribed on their banners. 
 The books of the great writer are only por- 
 tions of the great writer. His life acts on 
 his writings ; his writings react on his life. 
 His life may impoverish his books ; his 
 books may impoverish his life. 
 
 " Apollo's branch that might have grown full 
 
 straight," 
 
 may have the worm of a vulgar misery gnaw- 
 ing at its roots. The heat of inspiration may 
 be subtracted from the household fire ; and 
 those who sit by it may be the colder in con- 
 sequence. A man may put all his good things 
 in his books, and leave none for his life, just 
 as a man may expend his fortune on a splen- 
 did dress, and carry a pang of hunger be- 
 neath it. 
 
 There are few less exhilarating books than 
 the biographies of men of letters, and of 
 artists generally ; and this arises from the 
 pictures of comparative defeat which, in
 
 Men of Letters. 175 
 
 almost every instance, such books contain. 
 In these books we see failure more or less, 
 — seldom clear, victorious effort. If the art 
 is exquisite, the marble is flawed ; if the 
 marble is pure, there is defect in art. There 
 is always something lacking in the poem ; 
 there is always irremediable defect in the 
 picture. In the biography we see persistent, 
 passionate effort, and almost constant re- 
 pulse. If, on the whole, victory is gained, 
 one wing of the army has been thrown into 
 confusion. In the life of a successful farmer, 
 for instance, one feels nothing of this kind ; 
 his year flows on harmoniously, fortunately ; 
 through ploughing, seed-time, growth of 
 grain, the yellowing of it beneath meek 
 autumn suns and big autumn moons, the 
 cutting of it down, riotous harvest-home, 
 final sale, and large balanqe at the banker's. 
 From the point of view of almost unvarying 
 success the farmer's life becomes beautiful, 
 poetic. Everything is an aid and help to him. 
 Nature puts her shoulder to his wheel. He 
 takes the winds, the clouds, the sunbeams, 
 the rolling stars into partnership, and, ask- 
 ing no dividend, they let him retain the en- 
 tire profits. As a rule, the lives of men of 
 letters do not flow on in this successful way. 
 In their case there is always either defect in
 
 176 Men of Letters. 
 
 the soil or defect in the husbandry. Like 
 the Old Guard at Waterloo, they are fighting 
 bravely on a lost field. In literary biography 
 there is always an element of tragedy, and 
 the love we bear the dead is mingled with 
 pity. Of course the life of a man of letters 
 is more perilous than the life of a farmer; 
 more perilous than almost any other kind of 
 life which it is given a human being to con- 
 duct. It is more difficult to obtain the 
 mastery over spiritual ways and means than 
 over material ones, and he must command 
 both. Properly to conduct his life he must 
 not only take large crops off his fields, he 
 must also leave in his fields the capacity of 
 producing large crops. It is easy to drive 
 in your chariot two horses of one breed; 
 not so easy when the one is of terrestrial 
 stock, the other of celestial ; in every respect 
 different — in colour, temper, and pace. 
 
 At the outset of his career, the man of 
 letters is confronted by the fact that he must 
 live. The obtaining of a livelihood is pre- 
 liminary to everything else. Poets and cob- 
 blers are placed on the same level so far. If 
 the writer can barter MSS. for sufficient coin, 
 he may proceed to develop himself; if he 
 cannot so barter it, there is a speedy end of 
 himself, and of his development also. Lit-
 
 Men of Letters. 177 
 
 erature has become a profession ; but it is 
 in several respects different from the pro- 
 fessions by which other human beings earn 
 their bread. The man of letters, unlike the 
 clergyman, the physician, or the lawyer, has 
 to undergo no special preliminary training 
 for his work, and while engaged in it, unlike 
 the professional persons named, he has no 
 accredited status. Of course, to earn any 
 success, he must start with as much special 
 knowledge, with as much dexterity in his 
 craft, as your ordinary physician; but then 
 he is not recognised till once he is successful. 
 When a man takes a physician's degree, he 
 has done something ; when a man betakes 
 himself to literary pursuits, he has done 
 nothing — till once he is lucky enough to 
 make his mark. There is no special prelim- 
 inary training for men of letters, and as a 
 consequence, their ranks are recruited from 
 the vagrant talent of the world. Men that 
 break loose from the professions, who stray 
 from the beaten tracks of life, take refuge 
 in literature. In it are to be found doctors, 
 lawyers, clergymen, and the motley nation 
 of Bohemians. Any one possessed of a nim- 
 ble brain, a quire of paper, a steel-pen and 
 ink-bottle, can start business. Any one who 
 chooses may enter the lists, and no questions 
 
 12
 
 178 Men of Letters. 
 
 are asked concerning his antecedents. The 
 battle is won by sheer strength of brain. 
 From all this it comes that the man of letters 
 has usually a history of his own : his individ- 
 uality is more pronounced than the individ- 
 uality of other men ; he has been knocked 
 about by passion and circumstance. All his 
 life he has had a dislike for iron rules and 
 common-place maxims. There is something 
 of the gipsy in his nature. He is to some 
 extent eccentric, and he indulges his eccen- 
 tricity. And the misfortunes of men of let- 
 ters — the vulgar and patent misfortunes, I 
 mean — arise mainly from the want of har- 
 mony between their impulsiveness and vol- 
 atility, and the staid unmercurial world with 
 which they are brought into conflict. They 
 are unconventional in a world of conven- 
 tions ; they are fanciful, and are constantly 
 misunderstood in prosaic relations. They 
 are wise enough in their books, for there 
 they are sovereigns, and can shape every- 
 thing to their own likings ; out of their 
 books, they are not unfrequently extremely 
 foolish, for they exist then in the territory 
 of an alien power, and are constantly knock- 
 ing their heads against existing orders of 
 things. Men of letters take prosaic men out 
 of themselves ; but they are weak where the
 
 Men of Letters. 179 
 
 prosaic men are strong. They have their 
 own way in the world of ideas, prosaic men 
 in the world of facts. From his practical 
 errors the writer learns something, if not 
 always humility and amendment. A memo- 
 rial flower grows on every spot where he 
 has come to grief; and the chasm he cannot 
 overdeap he bridges with a rainbow. 
 
 But the man of letters has not only to live, 
 he has to develop himself; and his earning 
 of money and his intellectual development 
 should proceed simultaneously and in pro- 
 portionate degrees. Herein lies the main 
 difficulty of the literary life. Out of his 
 thought the man must bring fire, food, cloth- 
 ing ; and fire, food, clothing must in their 
 turns subserve thought. It is necessary, 
 for the proper conduct of such a life, that 
 while the balance at the banker's increases, 
 intellectual resource should increase at the 
 same ratio. Progress should not be made in 
 the faculty of expression alone, — progress 
 at the same time should be made in thought ; 
 for thought is the material on which expres- 
 sion feeds. Should sufficient advance not be 
 made in this last direction, in a short time 
 the man feels that he has expressed himself, 
 — that now he can only more or less dexter- 
 ously repeat himself, — more or less prettily
 
 i So Men of Letters. 
 
 become his own echo. It is comparatively 
 easy to acquire facility in writing ; but it is 
 an evil thing for the man of letters when 
 such facility is the only thing he has ac- 
 quired, — when it has been, perhaps, the only 
 thing he has striven to acquire. Such mis- 
 calculation of ways and means suggests 
 vulgarity of aspiration, and a fatal material 
 taint. In the life in which this error has 
 been committed there can be no proper 
 harmony, no satisfaction, no spontaneous 
 delight in effort. The man does not create, 
 — he is only desperately keeping up appear- 
 ances. He has at once become " a base 
 mechanical," and his successes are not much 
 higher than the successes of the acrobat or 
 the rope-dancer. This want of proper rela- 
 tionship between resources of expression and 
 resources of thought, or subject-matter for 
 expression, is common enough, and some 
 slight suspicion of it flashes across the mind 
 at times in reading even the best authors. 
 It lies at the bottom of every catastrophe in 
 the literary life. Frequently a man's first 
 book is good, and all his after productions 
 but faint and yet fainter reverberations of 
 the first. The men who act thus are in the 
 long run deserted like worked-out mines. A 
 man reaches his limits as to thought long
 
 Men of Letters. 181 
 
 before he reaches his limits as to expression ; 
 and a haunting suspicion of this is one of 
 the peculiar bitters of the literary life. Haz- 
 litt tells us that, after one of his early inter- 
 views with Coleridge, he sat down to his 
 Essay on the Natural Disinterestedness of 
 the Human Mind. " I sat down to the task 
 shortly afterwards for the twentieth time, 
 got new pens and paper, determined to make 
 clean work of it, wrote a few sentences in 
 the skeleton style of a mathematical demon- 
 stration, stopped half-way down the second 
 page, and, after trying in vain to pump up 
 any words, images, notions, apprehensions, 
 facts, or observations, from that gulf of ab- 
 straction in which I had plunged myself for 
 four, or five years preceding, gave up the 
 attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of 
 hopeless despondency on the blank unfin- 
 ished paper. I can write fast enough now. 
 Am I better than I was then? oh, no ! One 
 truth discovered, one pang of regret at not 
 being able to express it, is worth all the 
 fluency and flippancy in the world." This 
 regretful looking back to the past, when 
 emotions were keen and sharp, and when 
 thought wore the novel dress of a stranger, 
 and this dissatisfaction with the acquire- 
 ments of the present, is common enough
 
 1 82 Men of Letters. 
 
 with the man of letters. The years have 
 come and gone, and he is conscious that he 
 is not intrinsically richer, — he has only 
 learned to assort and display his riches to 
 advantage. His wares have neither increased 
 in quantity nor improved in quality, — he has 
 only procured a window in a leading thor- 
 oughfare. He can catch his butterflies more 
 cunningly, he can pin them on his cards more 
 skilfully, but their wings are fingered and 
 tawdry compared with the time when they 
 winnowed before him in the sunshine over 
 the meadows of youth. This species of 
 regret is peculiar to the class of which I am 
 speaking, and they often discern failure in 
 what the world counts success. The veteran 
 does not look back to the time when he 
 was in the awkward squad ; the accountant 
 does not sigh over the time when he was 
 bewildered by the mysteries of double-entry. 
 And the reason is obvious. The dexterity 
 which time and practice have brought to the 
 soldier and the accountant is pure gain : the 
 dexterity of expression which time and prac- 
 tice have brought to the writer is gain too, 
 in its way, but not quite so pure. It may 
 have been cultivated and brought to its de- 
 gree of excellence at the expense of higher 
 things. The man of letters lives by thought
 
 Men of Letters. 183 
 
 and expression, and his two powers may not 
 be perfectly balanced. And, putting aside 
 its effect on the reader, and through that, 
 on the writer's pecuniary prosperity, the 
 tragedy of want of equipoise lies in this. 
 When the writer expresses his thought, it is 
 immediately dead to him, however life-giving 
 it may be to others ; he pauses midway in 
 his career, he looks back over his uttered 
 past — brown desert to him, in which there 
 is no sustenance — he looks forward to the 
 green zmuttered future, and beholding its 
 narrow limits, knows it is all that he can call 
 his own, — on that vivid strip he must pas- 
 ture his intellectual life. 
 
 Is the literary life, on the whole, a happy 
 one? Granted that the writer is productive, 
 that he possesses abundance of material, 
 that he has secured the ear of the world, 
 one is inclined to fancy that no life could 
 be happier. Such a man seems to live on 
 the finest of the wheat. If a poet, he is 
 continually singing; if a novelist, he is 
 supreme in his ideal world ; if a humourist, 
 everything smiles back upon his smile ; if 
 an essayist, he is continually saying the 
 wisest, most memorable things. He breathes 
 habitually the serener air which ordinary 
 mortals can only at intervals respire, and in
 
 184 Men of Letters. 
 
 their happiest moments. Such concep- 
 tions of great writers are to some extent 
 erroneous. Through the medium of their 
 books we know them only in their active 
 mental states, — in their triumphs ; we do 
 not see them when sluggishness has suc- 
 ceeded the effort which was delight. The 
 statue does not come to her white limbs all 
 at once. It is the bronze wrestler, not the 
 flesh and blood one, that stands forever over 
 a fallen adversary with pride of victory on 
 his face. Of the labour, the weariness, the 
 self-distrust, the utter despondency of the 
 great writer, we know nothing. Then, for 
 the attainment of mere happiness or content- 
 ment, any high faculty of imagination is a 
 questionable help. Of course imagination 
 lights the torch of joy, it deepens the car- 
 mine on the sleek cheek of the girl, it makes 
 wine sparkle, makes music speak, gives rays 
 to the rising sun. But in all its supreme 
 sweetnesses there is a perilous admixture 
 of deceit, which is suspected even at the 
 moment when the senses tingle keenliest. 
 And it must be remembered that this potent 
 faculty can darken as well as brighten. It 
 is the very soul of pain. While the trumpets 
 are blowing in Ambition's ear, it whispers 
 of the grave. It drapes Death in austere
 
 Men of Letters. 185 
 
 solemnities, and surrounds him with a 
 gloomy court of terrors. The life of the 
 imaginative man is never a commonplace 
 one : his lights are brighter, his glooms are 
 darker, than the lights and gloom of the 
 vulgar. His ecstasies are as restless as his 
 pains. The great writer has this perilous 
 faculty in excess ; and through it he will, as 
 a matter of course, draw out of the atmos- 
 phere of circumstance surrounding him the 
 keenness of pleasure and pain. To my own 
 notion, the best gifts of the gods are neither 
 the most glittering nor the most admired. 
 These gifts I take to be, a moderate am- 
 bition, a taste for repose with circumstances 
 favourable thereto, a certain mildness of pas- 
 sion, an even-beating pulse, an even-beating 
 heart. I do not consider heroes and cele- 
 brated persons the happiest of mankind. I 
 do not envy Alexander the shouting of his 
 armies, nor Dante his laurel wreath. Even 
 were I able, I would not purchase these at 
 the prices the poet and the warrior paid. 
 So far, then, as great writers — great poets, 
 especially — are of imagination all compact 
 — a peculiarity of mental constitution which 
 makes a man go shares with every one he 
 is brought into contact with ; which makes 
 him enter into Romeo's rapture when he
 
 1 86 Men of Letters. 
 
 touches Juliet's cheek among cypresses 
 silvered by the Verona moonlight, and the 
 stupor of the blinded and pinioned wretch 
 on the scaffold before the bolt is drawn — 
 so far as this special gift goes, I do not 
 think the great poet, — and by virtue of 
 it he is a poet, — is likely to be happier than 
 your more ordinary mortal. On the whole, 
 perhaps, it is the great readers rather than 
 the great writers who are entirely to be en- 
 vied. They pluck the fruits, and are spared 
 the trouble of rearing them. Prometheus 
 filched fire from heaven, and had for reward 
 the crag of Caucasus, the chain, the vulture ; 
 while they for whom he stole it cook their 
 suppers upon it, stretch out benumbed hands 
 towards it, and see its light reflected in their 
 children's faces. They are comfortable : he, 
 roofed by the keen crystals of the stars, 
 groans above. 
 
 Trifles make up the happiness or the 
 misery of mortal life. The majority of men 
 slip into their graves without having en- 
 countered on their way thither any signal 
 catastrophe or exaltation of fortune or feel- 
 ing. Collect a thousand ignited sticks into 
 a heap, and you have a bonfire which may 
 be seen over three counties. If, during 
 thirty years, the annoyances connected with
 
 Men of Letters. 187 
 
 shirt- buttons found missing when you are 
 hurriedly dressing for dinner, were gathered 
 into a mass and endured at once, it would be 
 misery equal to a public execution. If, from 
 the same space of time, all the little titilla- 
 tions of a man's vanity were gathered into 
 one lump of honey and enjoyed at once, the 
 pleasure of being crowned would not per- 
 haps be much greater. If the equanimity 
 of an ordinary man be at the mercy of trifles, 
 how much more will the equanimity of the 
 nun of letters, who is usually the most sen- 
 sitive of the race, and whose peculiar avoca- 
 tion makes sad work with the fine tissues of 
 the nerves. Literary composition is, I take 
 it, with the exception of the crank, in which 
 there is neither hope nor result, the most 
 exhausting to which a human being can 
 apply himself. Just consider the situation. 
 Here is your man of letters, tender-hearted 
 as Cowper, who would not count upon his 
 list of friends the man who tramples heed- 
 lessly upon a worm ; as light of sleep and 
 abhorrent of noise as Beattie, who denounces 
 chanticleer for his lusty proclamation of 
 morning to his own and the neighbouring 
 farmyards in terms that would be unmeas- 
 ured if applied to Nero ; as alive to blame as 
 Byron, who declared that the praise of the
 
 1 88 Men of Letters. 
 
 greatest of the race could not take the sting 
 from the censure of the meanest. Fancy 
 the sufferings of a creature so built and 
 strung in a world which creaks so vilely on 
 its hinges as this ! Will such a man con- 
 front a dun with an imperturbable coun- 
 tenance? Will he throw himself back in 
 his chair and smile blandly when his cham- 
 ber is lanced through and through by the 
 notes of a street bagpiper? When his 
 harrassed brain should be solaced by music, 
 will he listen patiently to stupid remarks? 
 1 fear not. The man of letters suffers keen- 
 lier than people suspect from sharp, cruel 
 noises, from witless observations, from social 
 misconceptions of him of every kind, from 
 hard utilitarian wisdom, and from his own 
 good things going to the grave unrecognised 
 and unhonoured. And, forced to live by his 
 pen, to extract from his brain bread and 
 beer, clothing, lodging, and income-tax, I 
 am not surprised that he is oftentimes ner- 
 vous, querulous, impatient. I\ Thinking of 
 these things, I do not wonder at Hazlitt's 
 spleen, at Charles Lamb's punch, at Cole- 
 ridge's opium. I think of the days spent in 
 writing, and of the nights which repeat the 
 day in dream, and in which there is no re- 
 freshment. I think of the brain which must
 
 Men of Letters. 189 
 
 be worked out at length ; of Scott, when the 
 wand of the enchanter was broken, writing 
 poor romances ; of Southey sitting vacantly 
 in his library, and drawing a feeble satisfac- 
 tion from the faces of his books. I' And for 
 the man of letters there is more than the 
 mere labour : he writes his book, and has 
 frequently the mortification of seeing it neg- 
 lected or torn to pieces. Above all men, he 
 longs for sympathy, recognition, applause. 
 He respects his fellow-creatures, because he 
 beholds in him a possible reader. To write 
 a book, to send it forth to the world and the 
 critics, is to a sensitive person like-plunging 
 mother-naked into tropic waters where 
 sharks abound. It is true that, like death, 
 the terror of criticism lives most in appre- 
 hension ; still, to have been frequently 
 criticised, and to be constantly liable to it, 
 are disagreeable items in a man's life. Most 
 men endure criticism with commendable 
 fortitude, just as most criminals when under 
 the drop conduct themselves with calmness. 
 They bleed, but they bleed inwardly. To be 
 flayed in the Saturday Review, for instance, 
 — a whole amused public looking on, — is far 
 from pleasant ; and, after the operation, the 
 ordinary annoyances of life probably mag- 
 nify themselves into tortures. The grass-
 
 190 Men of Letters. 
 
 hopper becomes a burden. Touch a flayed 
 man ever so lightly, and with ever so kindly 
 an intention, and he is sure to wince. The 
 skin of the man of letters is peculiarly sensi- 
 tive to the bite of the critical mosquito ; and 
 he lives in a climate in which such mosqui- 
 toes swarm. He is seldom stabbed to the 
 heart — he is often killed by pin-pricks. 
 
 But, to leave palisade and outwork, and 
 come to the interior of the citadel, it may be 
 said that great writers, although they must 
 ever remain shining objects of regard to us, 
 are not exempted from ordinary limitations 
 and conditions. They are cabined, cribbed, 
 confined, even as their more prosaic breth- 
 ren. It is in the nature of every man to be 
 endued with that he works in. Thus, in 
 course of time, the merchant becomes bound 
 up in his ventures and his ledger; an indefi- 
 nable flavour of the pharmacopoeia lingers 
 about the physician; the bombasine and 
 horse-hair of the lawyer eat into his soul — 
 his experiences are docketed in a clerkly 
 hand, bound together with red tape, and put 
 away in professional pigeon-holes. A man 
 naturally becomes leavened by the profes- 
 sion which he has adopted. He thinks, 
 speaks, and dreams " shop," as the colloquial 
 phrase has it. Men of letters are affected
 
 Men of Letters. 191 
 
 by their profession just as merchants, physi- 
 cians, and lawyers are. In course of time 
 the inner man becomes stained with ink, 
 like blotting-paper. The agriculturist talks 
 constantly of bullocks — the man of letters 
 constantly of books. The printing-press 
 seems constantly in his immediate neighbour- 
 hood. He is stretched on the rack of an 
 unfavourable review, — he is lapped in the 
 Elysium of a new edition. The narrowing 
 effect of a profession is in every man a defect, 
 albeit an inevitable one. Byron, who had a 
 larger amount of common sense than any 
 poet of his day, tells us, in " Beppo," 
 
 "One hates an author that's all author ; fellows 
 In foolscap uniforms tum'd up with ink." 
 
 And his lordship's " hate " in the matter is 
 understandable enough. In his own day, 
 Scott and himself were almost the only dis- 
 tinguished authors who were not "all au- 
 thors," just as Mr. Helps and Sir Edward 
 Bulwer Lytton are almost the only repre- 
 sentatives of the class in ours. This pro- 
 fessional taint not only resides in the writer, 
 impairing his fulness and completion; it 
 flows out of him into his work, and impairs 
 it also. It is the professional character 
 which authorship has assumed which has 
 taken individuality and personal flavour
 
 1 9 2 Men of Letters. 
 
 from so much of our writing, and prevented 
 to a large extent the production of enduring 
 book-,. Our writing is done too hurriedly, 
 and to serve a purpose too immediate. Lit- 
 erature is not so much an art as a manufac- 
 ture. There is a demand, and too many crops 
 are taken off the soil ; it is never allowed to 
 lie fallow, and to nourish itself in peaceful- 
 ness and silence. "When so many cups are 
 to be filled, too much water is certain to be 
 put into the teapot. Letters have become a 
 profession, and probably of all professions 
 it is, in the long run, the least conducive to 
 personal happiness. It is the most preca- 
 rious. In it, above all others, to be weak is 
 to be miserable. It is the least mechanical, 
 consequently the most exhausting ; and in 
 its higher walks it deals with a man's most 
 vital material — utilises his emotions, trades 
 on his faculties of love and imagination, uses 
 for its own purposes the human heart by 
 which he lives. These things a man requires 
 for himself; and when they are in a large 
 proportion transported to an ideal world, 
 they make the ideal world all the more bril- 
 liant and furnished, and leave his ordinary 
 existence all the more arid and common- 
 place. You cannot spend money and have 
 it : you cannot use emotion and possess it.
 
 Men of Letters. 193 
 
 The poet who sings loudly of love and love's 
 delights, may in the ordinary intercourse of 
 life be all the colder for his singing. The 
 man who has been moved while describing 
 an imaginary death- bed to-day, is all the 
 more likely to be unmoved while stand- 
 ing by his friend's grave to-morrow. Shak- 
 speare, after emerging from the moonlight 
 in the Verona orchard, and Romeo and 
 Juliet's silvery interchange of vows, was, I 
 fear me, not marvellously enamoured of the 
 autumn on Ann Hathaway's cheek. It is in 
 some such way as this that a man's books 
 may impoverish his life ; that the fire and 
 heat of his genius may make his hearth all 
 the colder. From considerations like these, 
 one can explain satisfactorily enough to 
 one's self the domestic misadventures of 
 men of letters — of poets especially. We 
 know the poets only in their books ; their 
 wives know them out of them. Their wives 
 see the other side of the moon ; and we 
 have been made pretty well aware how 
 they have appreciated that. 
 
 The man engaged in the writing of books 
 is tempted to make such writing the be-all 
 and end-all of his existence — to grow his 
 literature out of his history, experience, or 
 observation, as the gardener grows out of 
 
 13
 
 194 Men of Letters. 
 
 soils brought from a distance the plants 
 which he intends to exhibit. The cup of life 
 foams fiercely over into first books ; materials 
 for the second, third, and fourth must be 
 carefully sought for. The man of letters, as 
 time passes on, and the professional impulse 
 works deeper, ceases to regard the world 
 with a single eye. The man slowly merges 
 into the artist. He values new emotions 
 and experiences, because he can turn^ these 
 into artistic shapes. He plucks " copy " 
 from rising and setting suns. He sees 
 marketable pathos in his friend's death-bed. 
 He carries the peal of his daughter's mar- 
 riage-bells into his sentences or his rhymes ; 
 and in these the music sounds sweeter to 
 him than in the sunshine and the wind. If 
 originally of a meditative, introspective mood, 
 his profession can hardly fail to confirm and 
 deepen his peculiar temperament. He be- 
 gins to feel his own pulse curiously, and for 
 a purpose. As a spy in the service of litera- 
 ture, he lives in the world and its concerns. 
 Out of everything he seeks thoughts and 
 images, as out of everything the bee seeks 
 wax and honey. A curious instance of this 
 mode of looking at things occurs in Goethe's 
 " Letters from Italy," with whom, indeed, it 
 was fashion, and who helped himself out of
 
 Men of Letters. 195 
 
 the teeming world to more effect than any 
 man of Ins time : — 
 
 " From Botzen to Trent the stage is nine 
 leagues, and runs through a valley which 
 constantly increases in fertility. All that 
 merely struggles into vegetation on the 
 higher mountains has here more strength 
 and vitality. The sun shines with warmth, 
 and there is once more belief in a Deity. 
 
 " A poor woman cried out to me to take 
 her child into my vehicle, as the soil was 
 burning its feet. I did her this service out 
 of honour to the strong light of Heaven. 
 The child was strangely decked out, but I 
 could get nothing from it in any way." 
 
 It is clear that out of all this the reader 
 gains ; but I cannot help thinking that for 
 the writer it tends to destroy entire and 
 simple living — all hearty and final enjoy- 
 ment in life. Joy and sorrow, death and 
 marriage, the comic circumstance and the 
 tragic, what befalls him, what he observes, 
 what he is brought into contact with, do not 
 affect him as they affect other men ; they are 
 secrets to be rifled, stones to be built with, 
 clays to be moulded into artistic shape. In 
 giving emotional material artistic form, there 
 is indisputably a certain noble pleasure ; but 
 it is of a solitary and severe complexion, and
 
 196 Men of Letters. 
 
 takes a man out of the circle and sympathies 
 of his fellows. I do not say that this kind of 
 life makes a man selfish, but it often makes 
 him seem so ; and the results of this seeming, 
 on friendship and the domestic relationships, 
 for instance, are as baleful as if selfishness 
 really existed. The peculiar temptation 
 which besets men of letters, the curious 
 playing with thought and emotion, the ten- 
 dency to analyse and take everything to 
 pieces, has two results, and neither aids his 
 happiness nor even his literary success. On 
 the one hand, and in relation to the social 
 relations, it gives him somewhat of an icy 
 aspect, and so breaks the spring and eager- 
 ness of affectionate response. For the best 
 affection is shy, reticent, undemonstrative, 
 and needs to be drawn out by its like. If 
 unrecognised, like an acquaintance on the 
 street, it passes by, making no sign, and is 
 for the time being a stranger. On the other 
 hand, the desire to say a fine thing about a 
 phenomenon, whether natural or moral, pre- 
 vents a man from reaching the inmost core 
 of the phenomenon. Entrance into these 
 matters will never be obtained by the most 
 sedulous seeking. The man who has found 
 an entrance cannot tell how he came there, 
 and he will never find his way back again
 
 Men of Letters. 197 
 
 by the same road. From this law arises all 
 the dreary conceits and artifices of the poets ; 
 it is through the operation of the same law 
 that many of our simple songs and ballads 
 are inexpressibly affecting, because in them 
 there is no consciousness of authorship ; 
 emotion and utterance are twin born, con- 
 sentaneous — like sorrow and tears, a blow 
 and its pain, a kiss and its thrill. When a 
 man is happy, every effort to express his 
 happiness mars its completeness. I am not 
 happy at all unless I am happier than I 
 know. When the tide is full there is silence 
 in channel and creek. The silence of the 
 lover when he clasps the maid is better than 
 the passionate murmur of the song which 
 celebrates her charms. If to be near the 
 rose makes the nightingale tipsy with delight, 
 what must it be to be the rose herself? One 
 feeling of the "wild joys of living — the 
 leaping from rock to rock," is better than 
 the "muscular-Christianity" literature which 
 our time has produced. I am afraid that the 
 profession of letters interferes with the ele- 
 mental feelings of life ; and I am afraid, too, 
 that in the majority of cases this interference 
 is not justified by its results. The entireness 
 and simplicity of life is flawed by the intru- 
 sion of an inquisitive element, and this in-
 
 198 Men of Letters. 
 
 quisitive element never yet found anything 
 which was much worth the finding. Men 
 live by the primal energies of love, faith, 
 imagination ; and happily it is not given to 
 every one to live, in the pecuniary sense, by 
 the artistic utilisation and sale of these. 
 You cannot make ideas ; they must come 
 unsought if they come at all. 
 
 " From pastoral graves extracting thoughts divine " 
 
 is a profitable occupation enough, if you 
 stumble on the little churchyard covered 
 over with silence, and folded among the hills. 
 If you go to the churchyard with intent to 
 procure thought, as you go into the woods 
 to gather anemones, you are wasting your 
 time. Thoughts must come naturally, like 
 wild flowers ; they cannot be forced in a 
 hot-bed — even although aided by the leaf- 
 mould of your past — like exotics. And it 
 is the misfortune of men of letters of our 
 day that they cannot afford to wait for this 
 natural flowering of thought, but are driven 
 to the forcing process, with the results which 
 were to be expected.
 
 '/ 
 
 ,,■ ) 
 
 /\LELX,\MdE1^ 5 IV) ITI-1.
 
 %JG<)fZ?& HE present writer remembers to 
 .fcfSljjiyi' have been visited once by a 
 <^£j strange feeling of puzzlement ; 
 *!>§£x^de and the puzzled feeling arose 
 out of the following circumstance : — He 
 was seated in a railway-carriage, five min- 
 utes or so before starting, and had time to 
 contemplate certain waggons or trucks filled 
 with cattle, drawn up on a parallel line, and 
 quite close to the window at which he sat. 
 The cattle wore a much-enduring aspect ; 
 and, as he looked into their large, patient, 
 melancholy eyes, — for, as before mentioned, 
 there was no space to speak of intervening, 
 — the feeling of puzzlement alluded to arose 
 in his mind. And it consisted in an attempt 
 to solve the existence before him, to enter 
 into it, to understand it, and his inability to 
 accomplish it, or indeed to make any way 
 toward the accomplishment of it. The 
 much-enduring animals in the trucks oppo-
 
 2O0 On the Importance of 
 
 site had unquestionably some rude twilight 
 of a notion of a world ; of objects they had 
 some unknown cognisance; but he could 
 get behind the melancholy eye within a yard 
 of him, and look through it. How, from 
 that window, the world shaped itself, he 
 could not discover, could not even fancy ; 
 and yet, staring on the animals, he was con- 
 scious of a certain fascination in which there 
 lurked an element of terror. These wild, 
 unkempt brutes, with slavering muzzles, 
 penned together, lived, could choose be- 
 tween this thing and the other, could be 
 frightened, could be enraged, could even 
 love or hate ; and gazing into a placid, 
 heavy countenance, and the depths of a 
 patient eye, not a yard away, he was con- 
 scious of an obscure and shuddering recog- 
 nition, of a life akin so far with his own. 
 Hut to enter into that life imaginatively, and 
 to conceive it, he found impossible. Eye 
 looked upon eye, but the one could not flash 
 recognition on the other ; and, thinking of 
 this, he remembers, with what a sense of 
 ludicrous horror, the idea came, — what, if 
 looking on one another thus, some spark of 
 recognition could be elicited ; if some rudi- 
 iii nt of thought could be detected ; if there 
 were indeed a point at which man and ox
 
 a Man to Himself. 201 
 
 could not compare notes? Suppose some 
 gleam or scintillation of humour had lighted 
 up the unwinking, amber eye ? Heavens, 
 the bellow of the weaning calf would be 
 pathetic, shoe-leather would be forsworn, 
 the eating of roast meat, hot or cold, would 
 be cannibalism, the terrified world would 
 make a sudden dash into vegetarianism ! 
 Happily before fancy had time to play 
 another vagary, with a snort and pull the 
 train moved on, and my truckful of horned 
 friends were left gazing into empty space, 
 with the same wistful, patient, and melan- 
 choly expression with which, for the space of 
 five minutes or so, they had surveyed and be- 
 wildered me. 
 
 A similar feeling of puzzlement to that 
 which I have indicated, besets one not un- 
 frequently in the contemplation of men and 
 women. You are brought in contact with a 
 person, you attempt to comprehend him, to 
 enter into him, in a word to be him, and, if 
 you are utterly foiled in the attempt, you 
 cannot flatter yourself that you have been 
 successful to the measure of your desire. A 
 person interests, or piques, or tantalises you, 
 you do your best to make him out ; yet strive 
 as you will, you cannot read the riddle of 
 his personality. From the invulnerable
 
 202 On the Importance of 
 
 fortress of his own nature he smiles con- 
 temptuously on the beleaguering armies of 
 your curiosity and analysis. And it is not 
 only the stranger that thus defeats you ; it 
 may be the brother brought up by the same 
 fireside with you, the best friend whom you 
 have known from early school and college 
 days, the very child, perhaps, that bears your 
 name, and with whose moral and mental ap- 
 paratus you think you are as familiar as with 
 your own. In the midst of the most ami- 
 cable relationships and the best understand- 
 ings, human beings are, at times, conscious 
 of a cold feeling of strangeness — the friend 
 is actuated by a feeling which never could 
 actuate you, some hitherto unknown part of 
 his character becomes visible, and while at 
 one moment you stood in such close neigh- 
 bourhood, that you could feel his arm touch 
 your own, in the next there is a feeling of 
 removal, of distance, of empty space betwixt 
 him and you in which the wind is blowing. 
 You and he become separate entities. He is 
 related to you as Border peel is related to 
 Border peel on Tweedside, or as ship is re- 
 lated to ship on the sea. It is not meant 
 that any quarrel or direct misunderstanding 
 should have taken place, simply that feeling 
 of foreignness is meant to be indicated which
 
 a Man to Himself. 203 
 
 occurs now and then in the intercourse of 
 the most affectionate ; which comes as a 
 harsh reminder to friends and lovers that 
 with whatsoever flowery bands they may be 
 linked, they are separated persons, who un- 
 derstand, and can only understand, each 
 other partially. It is annoying to be put out 
 in our notions of men and women thus, and 
 to be forced to rearrange them. It is a mis- 
 fortune to have to manoeuvre one's heart as 
 a general has to manoeuvre his army. The 
 globe has been circumnavigated, but no 
 man ever yet has ; you may survey a king- 
 dom and note the result in maps, but all the 
 servants in the world could not produce a re- 
 liable map of the poorest human personality. 
 And the worst of all this is, that love and 
 friendship may be the outcome of a certain 
 condition of knowledge ; increase the knowl- 
 edge, and love and friendship beat their 
 wings and go. Every man's road in life is 
 marked by the graves of his personal likings. 
 Intimacy is frequently the road to indiffer- 
 ence, and marriage a parricide. From these 
 accidents to the affections, and from the 
 efforts to repair them, life has in many a 
 patched and tinkered look. 
 
 Love and friendship are the discoveries of 
 ourselves in others, and our delight in the
 
 
 204 On the Importance of 
 
 recognition ; and in men, as in books, we 
 only know that, the parallel of which we 
 have in ourselves. We know only that por- 
 tion of the world which we have travelled 
 over : and we are never a whit wiser than 
 our own experiences. Imagination, the fal- 
 con, sits on the wrist of Experience, the 
 falconer ; she can never soar beyond the 
 reach of his whistle, and when tired she 
 must return to her perch. Our knowledge 
 is limited by ourselves, and so also are our 
 imaginations. And so it comes about, that 
 a man measures everything by his own foot- 
 rule ; that if he is ignoble, all the ignoble- 
 ness that is in the world looks out upon him, 
 and claims kindred with him ; if noble, all 
 the nobleness in the world does the like. 
 Shakspeare is always the same height with 
 his reader; and when a thousand Christian- 
 subscribe to one Confession of Faith, hardly 
 to two of them does it mean the same 
 thing. The world is a great warehouse of 
 raiment, to which every one has access 
 and is allowed free use ; and the remark- 
 able thing is, what coarse stuffs are often 
 chosen, and how scantily some people are 
 attired. 
 
 We never get quit of ourselves While I 
 am writing, the spring is outside, and this
 
 a Man to Himself. 205 
 
 season of the year touches my spirit always 
 with a sense of newness, of strangeness, of 
 resurrection. It shoots boyhood again into 
 the blood of middle age. That tender green- 
 ing of the black bough and the red field, — 
 that coming again of the new-old flowers, 
 — that re-birth of love in all the family of 
 birds, with cooings, and caressings, and 
 building of nests in wood and brake, — that 
 strange glory of sunshine in the air, — that 
 stirring of life in the green mould, making 
 even churchyards beautiful, — seems like the 
 creation of a new world. And yet — and yet, 
 even with the lamb in the sunny field, the 
 lark mile-high in the blue, Spring has her 
 melancholy side, and bears a sadder burden 
 to the heart than Autumn, preaching of de- 
 cay with all his painted woods. For the 
 flowers that make sweet the moist places in 
 the forest are not the same that bloomed the 
 year before. Another lark sings above the 
 furrowed field. Nature rolls on in her eternal 
 course, repeating her tale of spring, summer, 
 autumn, winter : but life in man and beast is 
 transitory, and other living creatures take 
 their places. It is quite certain that one or 
 other of the next twenty springs will come 
 unseen by me, will awake no throb of trans- 
 port in my veins. But will it be less bright
 
 206 On the Importance of 
 
 on that account? Will the lamb be saddened 
 in the field? Will the lark be less happy in 
 the air? The sunshine will draw the daisy 
 from the mound under which I sleep, as 
 carelessly as she draws the cowslip from the 
 meadow by the riverside. The seasons have 
 no ruth, no compunction. They care not 
 for our petty lives. The light falls sweetly 
 on graveyards, and on brown labourers 
 among the hay-swaths. Were the world 
 depopulated to-morrow, next spring would 
 break pitilessly bright, flowers would bloom, 
 fruit-tree boughs wear pink and white ; and 
 although there would be no eye to witness, 
 Summer would not adorn herself with one 
 blossom the less. It is curious to think 
 how important a creature a man is to him- 
 self. We cannot help thinking that all 
 things exist for our particular selves. The 
 sun, in whose light a system lives, warms 
 me ; makes the trees grow for me ; paints 
 the evening sky in gorgeous colours for me. 
 The mould I till, produced from the beds of 
 extinct oceans and the grating of rock and 
 mountain during countless centuries, exists 
 that I may have muffins to breakfast. Ani- 
 mal life, with its strange instincts and affec- 
 tions, is to be recognised and cherished, — 
 for does it not draw my burdens for me, and
 
 a Man to Himself. 207 
 
 carry me from place to place, and yield me 
 comfortable broadcloth, and succulent joints 
 to dinner? I think it matter of complaint 
 that Nature, like a personal friend to whom 
 I have done kind services, will not wear 
 crape at my funeral. I think it cruel that 
 the sun should shine, and birds sing, and I 
 lying in my grave. People talk of the age 
 of the world ! So far as I am concerned, it 
 began with my consciousness, and will end 
 with my decease. 
 
 And yet, this self-consciousness, which so 
 continually besets us, is in itself a misery 
 and a galling chain. We are never happy 
 till by imagination we are taken out of the 
 pales and limits of self. We receive happi- 
 ness at second hand : the spring of it may 
 be in ourselves, but we do not know it to be 
 happiness, till, like the sun's light from the 
 moon, it is reflected on us from an object 
 outside. The admixture of a foreign element 
 sweetens and unfamiliarises it. Sheridan 
 prepared his good things in solitude, but 
 he tasted for the first time his jest's pros- 
 perity when it came back to him in illumined 
 faces and a roar of applause. Your oldest 
 story becomes new when you have a new 
 auditor. A young man is truth-loving and 
 amiable ; but it is only when these fair
 
 208 On the Importance of 
 
 qualities shine upon him from a girl's face 
 that he is smitten by transport — only then 
 is he truly happy. In that junction of hearts, 
 in that ecstasy of mutual admiration and 
 delight, the finest epithalamium ever writ by 
 poet is hardly worthy of the occasion. The 
 countryman purchases oranges at a fair for 
 his little ones ; and when he brings them 
 home in the evening, and watches his chubby 
 urchins, sitting up among the bed-clothes, 
 peel and devour the fruit, he is for the time 
 being richer than if he drew the rental of the 
 orange-groves of Seville. To eat an orange 
 himself is nothing ; to see them eat it is a 
 pleasure worth the price of the fruit a thou- 
 sand times over. There is no happiness in 
 the world in which love does not enter ; and 
 love is but the discovery of ourselves in 
 others, and the delight in the recognition. 
 Apart from others no man can make his 
 happiness ; just as, apart from a mirror of 
 one kind or another, no man can become 
 acquainted with his own lineaments. 
 
 The accomplishment of a man is the light 
 by which we are enabled to discover the 
 limits of his personality. Every man brings 
 into the world with him a certain amount of 
 pith and force, and to that pith or force his 
 amount of accomplishment is exactly pro-
 
 a Man to Himself. 209 
 
 portioned. It is in this way that every 
 spoken word, every action of a man, be- 
 comes biographical. Everything a man says 
 or does is in consistency with himself; and 
 it is by looking back on his sayings and 
 doings that we arrive at the truth concern- 
 ing him. A man is one; and every outcome 
 of him has a family resemblance. Gold- 
 smith did not " write like an angel and talk 
 like poor Poll," as we may in part discern 
 fronvBoswell's " Johnson." Strange, indeed, 
 if a man talked continually the sheerest 
 nonsense, and wrote continually the grace- 
 fulest humours ; if a man was lame on the 
 street, and the finest dancer in the ball-room. 
 To describe a character by antithesis is like 
 painting a portrait in black and white — all 
 the curious intermixtures and gradations of 
 colour are lost. The accomplishment of a 
 human being is measured by his strength, 
 or by his nice tact in using his strength. 
 The distance to which your gun, whether 
 rifled or smooth-bored, will carry its shot, 
 depends upon the force of its charge. A 
 runner's speed and endurance depends upon 
 his depth of chest and elasticity of limb. 
 If a poet's lines lack harmony, it instructs 
 us that there is a certain lack of harmony in 
 himself. We see why Haydon failed as an 
 
 14
 
 210 On the Importance of 
 
 artist when we read his life. No one can 
 dip into the " Excursion " without discover- 
 ing that Wordsworth was devoid of humour, 
 and that he cared more for the narrow Cum- 
 berland vale than he did for the big world. 
 The flavour of opium can be detected in the 
 "Ancient Mariner" and " Christabel." A 
 man's word or deed takes us back to him- 
 self, as the sunbeam takes us back to the 
 sun. It is the sternest philosophy, but on 
 the whole the truest, that, in the wide arena 
 of the world, failure and success are not 
 accidents as we so frequently suppose, but 
 the strictest justice. If you do your fair 
 day's work, you are certain to get your fair 
 day's wage — in praise or pudding, which- 
 ever happens to suit your taste. You may 
 have seen at country fairs a machine by 
 which the rustics test their strength of arm. 
 A country fellow strikes vigorously a buffer, 
 which recoils, and the amount of the recoil 
 — dependent, of course, on the force with 
 which it is struck — is represented by a series 
 of notches or marks. The world is such a 
 buffer. A man strikes it with all his might : 
 his mark may be ,£40,000, a peerage, and 
 Westminster Abbey, a name in literature or 
 art; but in every case his mark is nicely 
 determined by the force or the art with
 
 a Man to Himself. 2 1 1 
 
 which the buffer is struck. Into the world 
 a man brings his personality, and his biog- 
 raphy is simply a catalogue of its results. 
 
 There are some men who have no individ- 
 uality, just as there are some men who have 
 no face. These are to be described by gen- 
 erals, not by particulars. They are thin, 
 vapid, inconclusive. They are important 
 solely on account of their numbers. For 
 them the census enumerator labours ; they 
 form majorities ; they crowd voting booths ; 
 they make the money ; they do the ordinary 
 work of the world. They are valuable when 
 well officered. They are plastic matter to 
 be shaped by a workman's hand ; and are 
 built with as bricks are built with. In the 
 aggregate, they form public opinion ; but 
 then, in every age, public opinion is the 
 disseminated thoughts of some half a dozen 
 men, who are in all probability sleeping 
 quietly in their graves. They retain dead 
 men's ideas, just as the atmosphere retains 
 the light and heat of the set sun. They are 
 not light — they are twilight. To know how 
 to deal with such men — to know how to 
 use them — is the problem which ambitious 
 force is called upon to solve. Personality, 
 individuality, force of character, or by 
 whatever name we choose to designate
 
 212 On /he Importance of 
 
 original and vigourous manhood, is the best 
 thing which nature has in her gift. The 
 forceful man is a prophecy of the future. 
 The wind blows here, but long after it is 
 spent the big wave which is its creature, 
 breaks on a shore a thousand miles away. 
 It is curious how swiftly influences travel 
 from centre to circumference. A certain 
 empress invents a gracefully pendulous 
 crinoline, and immediately, from Paris to 
 the pole, the female world is behooped ; and 
 neither objurgation of brother, lover, or 
 husband, deaths by burning or machinery, 
 nor all the wit of the satirists, are likely to 
 affect its vitality. Never did an idea go 
 round civilisation so rapidly. Crinoline has 
 already a heavier martyrology than many 
 a creed. The world is used easily, if one can 
 only hit on the proper method ; and force of 
 character, originality, of whatever kind, is 
 always certain to make its mark. It is a 
 diamond, and the world is its pane of glass. 
 In a world so commonplace as this, the 
 peculiar man even should be considered a 
 blessing. I lumorousness, eccentricity, the 
 habit of looking at men and things from an 
 odd angle, are valuable, because they break 
 the dead level of society and take away its 
 sameness. It is well that a man should be
 
 a Man to Himself. 213 
 
 known by something else than his name ; 
 there are few of us who can be known by 
 anything else, and Brown, Jones, and Rob- 
 inson are the names of the majority. 
 
 In literature and art, this personal out- 
 come is of the highest value ; in fact, it is 
 the only thing truly valuable. The great- 
 ness of an artist or a writer does not depend 
 on what he has in common with other ar- 
 tists and writers, but on what he has peculiar 
 to himself. The great man is the man who 
 does a thing for the first time. It was a 
 difficult thing to discover America ; since it 
 has been discovered, it has been found an 
 easy enough task to sail thither. It is this 
 peculiar something resident in a poem or a 
 painting which is its final test, — at all events, 
 possessing it, it has the elements of endur- 
 ance. Apart from its other values, it has, 
 in virtue of that, a biographical one ; it be- 
 comes a study of character ; it is a window 
 through which you can look into a human 
 interior. There is a cleverness in the world 
 which seems to have neither father nor 
 mother. It exists, but it is impossible to 
 tell from whence it comes, — just as it is im- 
 possible to lift the shed apple-blossom of an 
 orchard, and to discover, from its bloom and 
 odour, to what branch it belonged. Such
 
 2 1 4 On the Importance of 
 
 cleverness illustrates nothing : it is an 
 anonymous letter. Look at it ever so long, 
 and you cannot tell its lineage. It lives in 
 the catalogue of waifs and strays. On the 
 other hand, there are men whose every ex- 
 pression is characteristic, whose every idea 
 seems to come out of a mould. In the 
 short sentence, or curt, careless saying of 
 such when laid bare, you can read their 
 histories so far, as in the smallest segment 
 of a tree you can trace the markings of its 
 rings. The first dies, because it is shallow - 
 rooted, and has no vitality beyond its own ; 
 the second lives, because it is related to and 
 fed by something higher than itself. The 
 famous axiom of Mrs. Glass, that in order 
 to make hare-soup you " must first catch 
 your hare," has a wide significance. In art, 
 literature, social life, morals even, you must 
 first catch your man : that done, everything 
 else follows as a matter of course. A man 
 may Learn much; but for the most impor- 
 tant thing of all he can find neither teachers 
 nor schools. 
 
 Each man is the most important thing in 
 the world to himself; but why is he to him- 
 self so important? Simply because he is a 
 personality with capacities of pleasure, of 
 pain, who can be hurt, who can be pleased,
 
 a Man to Himself. 215 
 
 who can be disappointed, who labours and 
 expects his hire, in whose consciousness, in 
 fact, for the time being, the whole universe 
 lives. He is, and everything else is relative. 
 Confined to his own personality, making it 
 his tower of outlook, from which only he 
 can survey the outer world, he naturally 
 enough forms a rather high estimate of its 
 value, of its dignity, of its intrinsic worth. 
 This high estimate is useful in so far as it 
 makes his condition pleasant, and it — or 
 rather our proneness to form it — we are ac- 
 customed to call vanity. Vanity — which 
 really helps to keep the race alive — has been 
 treated harshly by the moralists and satir- 
 ists. It does not quite deserve the hard 
 names it has been called. It interpenetrates 
 everything a man says or does, but it inter- 
 penetrates for a useful purpose. If it is 
 always an alloy in the pure gold of virtue, it 
 at least does the service of an alloy — making 
 the precious metal workable. Nature gave 
 man his powers, appetites, aspirations, and 
 along with these a pan of incense, which 
 fumes from the birth of consciousness to its 
 decease, making the best part of life rapture, 
 and the worst part endurable. But for 
 vanity the race would have died out long 
 ago. There are some men whose lives seem
 
 216 On the Importance of 
 
 to us as undesirable as the lives of toads or 
 serpents ; yet these men breathe in tolerable 
 content and satisfaction. If a man could hear 
 all that his fellows say of him — that he is 
 stupid, that he is henpecked, that he will be 
 in the Gazette in a week, that his brain is 
 softening, that he has said all his best things 
 — and if he could believe that these pleasant 
 things are true, he would be in his grave 
 before the month was out. Happily no man 
 does hear these things ; and if he did, they 
 would only provoke inextinguishable wrath 
 or inextinguishable laughter. A man receives 
 the shocks of life on the buffer of his vanity. 
 Vanity acts as his second and bottleholder 
 in the world's prize-ring, and it fights him 
 well, bringing him smilingly up to time after 
 the fiercest knock-down blows. Vanity is to 
 a man what the oily secretion is to a bird, 
 with which it sleeks and adjusts the plumage 
 ruffled by whatever causes. Vanity is not 
 only instrumental in keeping a man alive 
 and in heart, but, in its lighter manifesta- 
 tions, it is the great sweetener of social exis- 
 tence. It is the creator of dress and fashion ; 
 it is the inventor of forms and ceremonies ; 
 to it we are indebted for all our traditions of 
 civility. For vanity in its idler moments is 
 benevolent, is as willing to give pleasure as
 
 a Man to Himself. 2 1 7 
 
 to take, it, and accepts as sufficient reward 
 for its services a kind word or an approving 
 smile. It delights to bask in the sunshine 
 of approbation. Out of man vanity makes 
 gentleman. The proud man is cold, the 
 selfish man hard and griping — the vain m_an 
 desires to shine, to please, to make himself 
 agreeable ; and this amiable feeling works 
 to the outside of suavity and charm of man- 
 ner. The French are the vainest people in 
 Europe, and the most polite. 
 
 As each man is to himself the most impor- 
 tant thing in the world, each man is an 
 egotist in his thinkings, in his desires, in his 
 fears. It does not, however, follow that 
 each man must be an egotist — as the word 
 is popularly understood — in his speech. 
 But even although this were the case, the 
 world would be divided into egotists, likable 
 and unlikable. There are two kinds of 
 egotism, a trifling vainglorious kind, a mere 
 burning of personal incense, in which the 
 man is at once altar, priest, censer, and 
 divinity ; a kind which deals with the acci- 
 dents and wrappages of the speaker, his 
 equipage, his riches, his family, his servants, 
 his furniture and array. The other kind has 
 no taint of self-aggrandisement, but is rooted 
 in the faculties of love and humour ; and this
 
 2 r 8 On the Importance of 
 
 latter kind is never offensive, because it in- 
 cludes others, and knows no scorn or ex- 
 clusiveness. The one is the offspring of a 
 narrow and unimaginative personality ; the 
 other of a large and genial one. There are 
 persons who are the terrors of society. 
 Perfectly innocent of evil intention, they 
 are yet, with a certain brutal unconscious- 
 ness, continually trampling on other people's 
 corns. They touch you every now and 
 again like a red-hot iron. You wince, ac- 
 quit them of any desire to wound, but find 
 forgiveness a hard task. These persons 
 remember everything about themselves, 
 and forget everything about you. They 
 have the instinct of a flesh-fly for a raw. 
 Should your great-grandfather have had the 
 misfortune to be hanged, such a person is 
 certain, on some public occasion, to make 
 allusion to your pedigree. He will probably 
 insist on your furnishing him with a sketch 
 of your family tree. If your daughter has 
 made a runaway marriage — on which subject 
 yourself and friends maintain a judicious 
 silence — he is certain to stumble upon it, 
 and make the old sore smart again. In all 
 this there is no malice, no desire to wound ; 
 it arises simply from want of imagination, 
 from profound immersion in self. An im-
 
 a Man to Himself. 219 
 
 aginative man recognises at once a portion 
 of himself in his fellow, and speaks to that. 
 To hurt you is to hurt himself. Much of the 
 rudeness we encounter in life cannot be 
 properly set down to cruelty or badness of 
 heart. The unimaginative man is callous, 
 and although he hurts easily, he cannot be 
 easily hurt in return. The imaginative man 
 is sensitive, and merciful to others, out of 
 the merest mercy to himself. 
 
 In literature, as in social life, the attractive- 
 ness of egotism depends entirely upon the 
 egotist. If he be a conceited man, full of 
 self-admirations and vainglories, his egotism 
 will disgust and repel. W 'hen he sings his 
 own praises, his reader feels that reflections 
 are being thrown on himself, and in a natural 
 revenge he calls the writer a coxcomb. If, 
 on the other hand, he be loving, genial, 
 humourous, with a sympathy for others, his 
 garrulousness and his personal allusions are 
 forgiven, because while revealing himself, he 
 is revealing his reader as well. A man may 
 write about himself during his whole life 
 without once tiring or offending ; but to ac- 
 complish this, he must be interesting in 
 himself-- be a man of curious and vagrant 
 moods, gifted with the cunningest tact and 
 humour; and the experience which he re-
 
 220 On the Importance of 
 
 lates must at a thousand points touch the 
 experiences of his readers, so that they, as 
 it were, become partners in his game. When 
 X. tells me, with an evident swell of pride, 
 that he dines constantly with half-a-dozen 
 men-servants in attendance, or that he never 
 drives abroad save in a coach-and-six, I am 
 not conscious of any special gratitude to X. 
 for the information. Possibly, if my estab- 
 lishments boast only of Cinderella, and if a 
 cab is the only vehicle in which I can afford 
 to ride, and all the more if I can indulge in 
 that only on occasions of solemnity, I fly 
 into a rage, pitch the book to the other end 
 of the room, and may never afterwards be 
 brought to admit that X. is possessor of a 
 solitary ounce of brains. If, on the other 
 hand, Z. informs me that every February he 
 goes out to the leafless woods to hunt early 
 snowdrops, and brings home bunches of 
 them in his hat ; or that he prefers in woman 
 a brown eye to a blue, and explains by early 
 love passages his reasons for the preference, 
 I do not get angry; on the contrary, I feel 
 quite pleased ; perhaps, if the matter is re- 
 lated with unusual grace and tenderness, it is 
 read with a certain moisture and dimness of 
 eye. And the reason is obvious. The ego- 
 tistical X. is barren, and suggests nothing
 
 a Man to Himself. 221 
 
 beyond himself, save that he is a good deal 
 better off than I am — a reflection much 
 pleasanter to him than it is to me ; whereas 
 the equally egotistical Z., with a single sen- 
 tence about his snowdrops, or his liking for 
 brown eyes rather than for blue, sends my 
 thoughts wandering away back among my 
 dead spring-times, or wafts me the odours of 
 the roses of those summers when the colour 
 of an eye was of more importance than it 
 now is. X.'s men-servants and coach-and- 
 six do not fit into the life of his reader, be- 
 cause in all probability his reader knows as 
 much about these things as he knows about 
 Pharaoh ; Z.'s snowdrops and preferences 
 of colour do, because every one knows what 
 the spring thirst is, and every one in his 
 time has been enslaved by eyes whose colour 
 he could not tell for his life, but which he 
 knew were the tenderest that ever looked 
 love, the brightest that ever flashed sun- 
 light. Montaigne and Charles Lamb are 
 egotists of the Z. class, and the world never 
 wearies reading them : nor are egotists of 
 the X. school absolutely without entertain- 
 ment. Several of these the world reads as- 
 siduously too, although for another reason. 
 The avid vanity of Mr. Pepys would be 
 gratified if made aware of the success of his
 
 222 On the Importance of, etc. 
 
 diary ; but curiously to inquire into the 
 reason of that success, why his diary has 
 been found so amusing, would not conduce 
 to his comfort. 
 
 _ After all, the only thing a man knows is 
 himself. The world- outside he can know 
 only by hearsay. His shred of personality 
 is all he has ; than that, he is nothing richer 
 nothing poorer. Everything else is mere 
 accident and appendage. Alexander must 
 not be measured by the shoutings of his 
 armies, nor Lazarus at Dives' gates by his 
 sores. And a man knows himself only in 
 part. In every nature, as in Australia, there 
 is an unexplored territory — green, well- 
 watered regions or mere sandy deserts ; and 
 into that territory experience is making 
 progress day by day. We can remember 
 when we knew only the outer childish rim — 
 and from the crescent guessed the sphere ; 
 whether, as we advanced, these have been 
 realised, each knows for himself.
 
 I HEN a man glances critically 
 through the circle of his intimate 
 friends, he is obliged to confess 
 that they are far from being per- 
 fect. They possess neither the beauty of 
 Apollo, nor the wisdom of Solon, nor the wit 
 of Mercutio, nor the reticence of Napoleon 
 III. If pushed hard he will be constrained 
 to admit that he has known each and all get 
 angry without sufficient occasion, make at 
 times the foolishest remarks, and act as if 
 personal comfort were the highest thing in 
 their estimation. Yet, driven thus to the 
 wall, forced to make such uncomfortable 
 confessions, our supposed man does not like 
 his friends one whit the less ; nay, more, he 
 is aware that if they were very superior and 
 faultless persons he would not be conscious 
 of so much kindly feeling towards them. 
 The tide of friendship does not rise high on 
 the bank of perfection. Amiable weaknesses
 
 224 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 and shortcomings are the food of love. It is 
 from the roughnesses and imperfect breaks 
 in a man that you are able to lay hold of 
 him. If a man be an entire and perfect 
 chrysolite, you slide off him and fall back 
 into ignorance. My friends are not perfect 
 
 — no more am I — and so we suit each other 
 admirably. Their weaknesses keep mine in 
 countenance, and so save me from humilia- 
 tion and shame. We give and take, bear 
 and forbear; the stupidity they utter to-day 
 salves the recollection of the stupidity I 
 uttered yesterday ; in their want of wit I see 
 my own, and so feel satisfied and kindly dis- 
 posed. It is one of the charitable dispensa- 
 tions of Providence that perfection is not 
 essential to friendship. If I had to seek my 
 perfect man, I should wander the world a 
 good while, and when I found him, and was 
 down on my knees before him, he would, to 
 a certainty, turn the cold shoulder on me 
 
 — and so life would be an eternal search, 
 broken by the coldness of repulse and loneli- 
 ness. Only to the perfect being in an im- 
 perfect world, or the imperfect being in a 
 perfect world, is everything irretrievably out 
 <A joint. 
 
 ( )u a certain shelf in the bookcase which 
 stands in the room in which I am at present
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 225 
 
 sitting— bookcase surmounted by a white 
 Dante, looking out with blind, majestic eyes 
 — are collected a number of volumes which 
 look somewhat the worse for wear. Those 
 of them which originally possessed gilding 
 have had it fingered off, each of them has 
 leaves turned down, and they open of them- 
 selves at places wherein I have been happy, 
 and with whose every word I am familiar as 
 with the furniture of the room in which I 
 nightly slumber, each of them has remarks 
 relevant and irrelevant scribbled on their 
 margins. These favourite volumes cannot be 
 called peculiar glories of literature ; but out 
 of the world of books have I singled them, 
 as I have singled my intimates out of the 
 world of men. I am on easy terms with 
 them, and feel that they are no higher than 
 my heart. Milton is not there, neither is 
 Wordsworth ; Shakspeare, if he had written 
 comedies only, would have been there to a 
 certainty, but the presence of the five great 
 tragedies, — Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Lear, 
 Antony and Cleopatra — for this last should 
 be always included among his supreme ef- 
 forts — has made me place him on the shelf 
 where the mighty men repose, himself the 
 mightiest of all. Reading Milton is like 
 dining off gold plate in a company of kings ; 
 
 >5
 
 226 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 very splendid, very ceremonious, and not a 
 little appalling. Him I read but seldom, 
 and only on high days and festivals of 
 the spirit. Him I never lay down without 
 feeling my appreciation increased for lesser 
 men — never without the same kind of com- 
 fort that one returning from the presence 
 feels when he doffs respectful attitude and 
 dress of ceremony, and subsides into old coat, 
 familiar arm-chair, and slippers. After long- 
 continued organ-music, the jangle of the 
 jews- harp is felt as an exquisite relief. With 
 the volumes on the special shelf I have 
 spoken of, I am quite at home, and I feel 
 somehow as if they were at home with me. 
 And as to-day the trees bend to the blast, 
 and the rain comes in dashes against my win- 
 dow, and as I have nothing to do and can- 
 not get out, and wish to kill the hours in 
 as pleasant a manner as I can, I shall even 
 talk about them, as in sheer liking a man 
 talks about the trees in his garden, or the 
 pictures on his wall. I can't expect to say 
 anything very new or striking, but I can 
 give utterance to sincere affection, and that 
 is always pleasant to one's self and generally 
 not ungrateful to others. 
 
 First, then, on this special shelf stands Na- 
 thaniel Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales."
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 227 
 
 It is difficult to explain why I like these 
 short sketches and essays, written in the au- 
 thor's early youth, better than his later, more 
 finished, and better- known novels and ro- 
 mances. The world sets greater store by 
 " The Scarlet Letter " and " Transformation " 
 than by this little book— and, in such matters 
 of liking against the judgment of the world, 
 there is no appeal. I think the reason of 
 my liking consists in this — that the novels 
 were written for the world, while the tales 
 seem written for the author ; in these he is 
 actor and audience in one. Consequently, 
 one gets nearer him, just as one gets nearer 
 an artist in his first sketch than in his fin- 
 ished picture. And after all, one takes the 
 greatest pleasure in those books in which a 
 peculiar personality is most clearly revealed. 
 A thought may be very commendable as a 
 thought, but I value it chiefly as a window 
 through which I can obtain insight on the 
 thinker ; and Mr. Hawthorne's personality 
 is peculiar, and specially peculiar in a new 
 country like America. He is quiet, fanciful, 
 quaint, and his humour is shaded by a medi- 
 tativeness of spirit. Although a Yankee, he 
 partakes of none of the characteristics of a 
 Yankee. His thinking and his style have an 
 antique air. His roots strike down through
 
 228 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 the visible mould of the present, and draw- 
 sustenance from the generations under 
 ground. The ghosts that haunt the cham- 
 ber of his mind are the ghosts of dead men 
 and women. He has a strong smack of the 
 Puritan ; he wears around him, in the New- 
 England town, something of the darkness 
 and mystery of the aboriginal forest. He is 
 a shy, silent, sensitive, much ruminating 
 man, with no special overflow of animal 
 spirits. He loves solitude, and the things 
 which age has made reverent. There is 
 nothing modern about him. Emerson's writ- 
 ing has a cold cheerless glitter, like the new 
 furniture in a warehouse, which will come of 
 use by and by; Hawthorne's, the rich, sub- 
 dued colour of furniture in a Tudor mansion- 
 house — which has winked to long-extin- 
 guished fires, which has been toned by the 
 usage of departed generations. In many of 
 the "Twice-Told Tales" this peculiar per- 
 sonality is charmingly exhibited. He writes 
 of the street or the sea-shore, his eye takes 
 in every object, however trifling, and on 
 these he hangs comments, melancholy and 
 humourous. He does not require to go far 
 for a subject; he will stare on the puddle in 
 the street of a New England village, and im- 
 mediately it becomes a Mediterranean Sea
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 229 
 
 with empires lying on its muddy shores. If 
 the sermon be written out fully in your 
 heart, almost any text will be suitable — if 
 you have to find your sermon in your text, 
 you may search the Testament, New and 
 Old, and be as poor at the close of Revela- 
 tion as when you started at the first book of 
 Genesis. Several of the papers which I like 
 best are monologues, fanciful, humourous, or 
 melancholy ; and of these, my chief favourites 
 are " Sunday at Home," " Night Sketches," 
 "Footprints on the Seashore," and "The 
 Seven Vagabonds." This last seems to 
 me almost the most exquisite thing which 
 has flowed from its author's pen — a perfect 
 little drama, the place, a showman's waggon, 
 the time, the falling of a summer shower, 
 full of subtle suggestions which, if followed, 
 will lead the reader away out of the story 
 altogether ; and illuminated by a grave, wist- 
 ful kind of humour, which plays in turns upon 
 the author's companions and upon the 
 author himself. Of all Mr. Hawthorne's 
 gifts, this gift of humour — which would light 
 up the skull and cross-bones of a village 
 churchyard, which would be silent at a din- 
 ner-table — is to me the most delightful. 
 
 Then this writer has a strangely weird 
 power. He loves ruins like the ivy, he skims
 
 230 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 the twilight like the bat, he makes himself a 
 familiar of the phantoms of the heart and 
 brain. He is fascinated by the jarred brain 
 and the ruined heart. Other men collect 
 china, books, pictures, jewels ; this writer 
 collects singular human experiences, ancient 
 wrongs and agonies, murders done on unfre- 
 quented roads, crimes that seem to have no 
 motive, and all the dreary mysteries of the 
 world of will. To his chamber of horrors 
 Madame Tussaud's is nothing. With proud, 
 prosperous, healthy men, Mr. Hawthorne 
 has little sympathy; he prefers a cracked 
 piano to a new one ; he likes cobwebs in the 
 corners of his rooms. All this peculiar taste 
 comes out strongly in the little book in 
 whose praise I am writing. I read " The 
 Minister's Black Veil," and find it the first 
 sketch of " The Scarlet Letter." In " Wake- ' 
 field," — the story of the man who left his 
 wife, remaining away twenty years, but who 
 yet looked upon her every day to appease 
 his burning curiosity as to her manner of 
 enduring his absence — I find the keenest 
 analysis of an almost incomprehensible act. 
 
 And then Mr. Hawthorne has a skill in 
 constructing allegories which no one of his 
 contemporaries, either English or American, 
 possesses. These allegorical papers may be
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 231 
 
 read with pleasure for their ingenuity, their 
 grace, their poetical feeling ; but just as, gaz- 
 ing on the surface of a stream, admiring the 
 ripples and eddies, and the widening rings 
 made by the butterfly falling into it, you be- 
 gin to be conscious that there is something 
 at the bottom, and gradually a dead face 
 wavers upwards from the oozy weeds, be- 
 coming every moment more clearly defined, - 
 so through Mr. Hawthorne's graceful sen- 
 tences, if read attentively, begins to flash the 
 hidden meaning, a meaning, perhaps, the 
 writer did not care to express formally and in 
 set terms, and which he merely suggests and 
 leaves the reader to make out for himself. 
 If you have the book I am writing about, 
 turn up " David Swan," "The Great Carbun- 
 cle," " The Fancy Show-box," and after you 
 have read these, you will understand what I 
 mean. 
 
 The next two books on my shelf — books 
 at this moment leaning on the " Twice-Told 
 Tales " — are Professor Aytoun's " Ballads of 
 Scotland," and the "Lyra Germanica." 
 These books I keep side by side with a 
 purpose. The forms of existence with which 
 they deal seem widely separated ; but a 
 strong kinship exists between them, for 
 all that. I open Professor Aytoun's book,
 
 232 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 and all this modern life — with its railways, 
 its newspapers, its crowded cities, its Lanca- 
 shire distresses, its debates in Parliament — 
 fades into nothingness and silence. Scot- 
 land, from Edinburgh rock to the Tweed, 
 stretches away in rude spaces of moor and 
 forest. The wind blows across it, unpolluted 
 by the smoke of towns. That which lives 
 how has not yet come into existence ; what 
 are to-day crumbling and ivied ruins, are 
 warm with household fires, and filled with 
 human activities, livery Border keep is a 
 home : brides are taken there in their 
 blushes ; children are born there ; gray men, 
 the crucifix held over them, die there. The 
 moon dances on a plump of spears, as the 
 moss-troopers, by secret and desert paths, 
 ride over into England to lift a prey, and the 
 bale-fire on the hill gives the alarm to Cum- 
 berland. Men live and marry, and support 
 wife and little ones by steel-jacket and 
 spear ; and the Flower of Yarrow, when her 
 larder is empty, claps a pair of spurs in her 
 husband's platter. A time of strife and 
 foray, of plundering and burning, of stealing 
 and reaving; when hate waits half a lifetime 
 fur revenge, and where difficulties are solved 
 by the slash of a sword-blade. I open the 
 German book, and find a warfare conducted
 
 A She!/ in My Bookcase. 233 
 
 in a different manner. Here the Devil rides 
 about wasting and destroying. Here temp- 
 tations lie in wait for the soul ; here pleas- 
 ures, like glittering meteors, lure it into 
 marshes and abysses. Watch and ward are 
 kept here, and to sleep at the post is death. 
 Fortresses are built on the rock of God's 
 promises — inaccessible to the arrows of the 
 wicked, — and therein dwell many trembling 
 souls. Conflict rages around, not conducted 
 by Border spear on barren moorland, but by 
 weapons of faith and prayer in the devout 
 German heart ; — a strife earnest as the other, 
 with issues of life and death. And the re- 
 semblance between the books lies in this, 
 that when we open them these past expe- 
 riences and conditions of life gleam visibly 
 to us far down like submerged cities — all 
 empty and hollow now, though once filled 
 with life as real as our own — through trans- 
 parent waters. 
 
 In glancing over these German hymns, one 
 is struck by their adaptation to the seasons 
 and occurrences of ordinary life. Obviously, 
 too, the writer's religion was not a Sunday 
 matter only, it had its place in week-days as 
 well. In these hymns there is little gloom, 
 a healthy human cheerfulness pervades many 
 of them ; and this is surely as it ought
 
 234 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 to be. These hymns, as I have said, are 
 adapted to the occasions of ordinary life ; and 
 this speaks favourably of the piety which 
 produced them. I do not suppose that we 
 English are less religious than other nations, 
 but we are undemonstrative in this, as in 
 most things. We have the sincerest horror 
 of over-dressing ourselves in fine sentiments. 
 We are a little shy of religion. We give it 
 a day entirely to itself, and make it a 
 stranger to the other six. We confine it in 
 churches, or in the closet at home, and 
 never think of taking it with us to the 
 street, or into our business, or with us to the 
 festival, or the gathering of friends. Dr. 
 Arnold used to complain that he could 
 get religious subjects treated in a masterly 
 way, but could not get common subjects 
 treated in a religious spirit. The Germans 
 have done better ; they have melted down 
 the Sunday into the week. They have 
 hymns embodying confessions of sin, hymns 
 in the near prospect of death : and they 
 have — what is more important — spiritual 
 songs that may be sung by soldiers on the 
 march, by the artisan at the loom, by the 
 peasant following his team, by the mother 
 among her children, and by the maiden sit- 
 ting at her wheel listening for the step of
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 235 
 
 her lover. Religion is thus brought in to 
 refine and hallow the sweet necessities and 
 emotions of life, to cheer its weariness, and 
 to exalt its sordidness. The German life re- 
 volves like the village festival with the pas- 
 tor in the midst —joy and laughter and 
 merry games do not fear the holy man, for 
 he wears no unkindness in his eye, but his 
 presence checks everything boisterous or 
 unseemly, — the rude word, the petulant act, 
 — and when it has run its course, he uplifts 
 his hands and leaves his benediction on his 
 children. 
 
 The " Lyra Germanica " contains the ut- 
 terances of pious German souls in all condi- 
 tions of life during many centuries. In it 
 hymns are to be found written not only by 
 poor clergymen, and still poorer precentors, 
 by ribbon- manufacturers and shoemakers, 
 who, amid rude environments, had a touch 
 of celestial melody in their hearts, but by 
 noble ladies and gentlemen, and crowned 
 kings. The oldest in the collection is one 
 written by King Robert of France about the 
 year 1000. It is beautifully simple and 
 pathetic. State is laid aside with the crown, 
 pride with the royal robe, and Lazarus at 
 Dives' gate could not have written out of a 
 lowlier heart. The kingly brow may bear
 
 236 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 itself high enough before men, the voice 
 may be commanding and imperious enough, 
 cutting through contradiction as with a 
 sword ; but before the Highest all is humble- 
 ness and bended knees. Other compositions 
 there are, scattered through the volume, by 
 great personages, several by Louisa Hen- 
 rietta, Electress of Brandenburg, and Anton 
 ririch, Duke of Brunswick, — all written two 
 hundred years ago. These are genuine 
 poems, full of faith and charity, and calm 
 trust in God. They are all dead now, these 
 noble gentlemen and gentlewomen ; their 
 warfare, successful or adverse, has been long 
 closed ; but they gleam yet in my fancy, like 
 the white effigies on tombs in dim cathe- 
 drals, the marble palms pressed together on 
 the marble breast, the sword by the side of 
 the knight, the psalter by the side of the 
 lady, and flowing around them the scrolls 
 on which are inscribed the texts of resur- 
 rection. 
 
 This book contains surely one of the most 
 touching of human compositions, — a song of 
 Luther's. The great Reformer's music re- 
 sounds to this day in our churches; and one 
 of the rude hymns he wrote has such a step 
 of thunder in it that the father of Fred- 
 < rick the Great, Mr. Carlyle tells us, used to
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 237 
 
 call it " God Almighty's Grenadier March." 
 This one I speak of is of another mood, and 
 is soft as tears. To appreciate it thoroughly, 
 one must think of the burly, resolute, 
 humourous, and withal tender-hearted man, 
 and of the work he accomplished. He it 
 was, the Franklin's kite, led by the highest 
 hand, that went up into the papal thunder- 
 cloud hanging black over Europe ; and the 
 angry fire that broke upon it burned it not, 
 and in roars of boltless thunder the appari- 
 tion collapsed, and the sun of truth broke 
 through the inky fragments on the nations 
 once again. He it was who, when advised 
 not to trust himself in Worms, declared, 
 "Although there be as many devils in 
 Worms as there are tiles on the house-tops, 
 I will go." He it was who, when brought to 
 bay in the splendid assemblage, said, " It is 
 neither safe nor prudent to do aught against 
 conscience. Here stand I — I cannot do 
 otherwise. God help me. Amen." The 
 rock cannot move — the lightnings may 
 splinter it. Think of these things, and then 
 read Luther's " Christmas Carol," with its 
 tender inscription, "Luther — written for his 
 little son Hans, 1546." Coming from an- 
 other pen, the stanzas were perhaps not 
 much ; coming from his, they move one like
 
 238 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 the finest eloquence. This song sunk deep 
 into the hearts of the common people, and 
 is still sung from the dome of the Kreuz 
 Kirche in Dresden before daybreak on 
 Christmas morning. 
 
 There is no more delightful reading in the 
 world than these Scottish ballads. The 
 mailed knight, the Border peel, the moon- 
 light raid, the lady at her bower window 
 — all these have disappeared from the 
 actual world, and lead existence now as 
 songs. Verses and snatches of these ballads 
 are continually haunting and twittering 
 about my memory, as in summer the swal- 
 lows haunt and twitter about the eaves of 
 my dwelling. I know them so well, and they 
 meet a mortal man's experience so fully, 
 that I am sure — with, perhaps, a little help 
 from Shakspeare — I could conduct the 
 whole of my business by quotation, — do all 
 its love-making, pay all its tavern- scores, 
 quarrel and make friends again, in their 
 words, far better than I could in my own. 
 If you know these ballads, you will find that 
 they mirror perfectly your every mood. If 
 you are weary and down-hearted, behold, a 
 verse starts to your memory trembling with 
 the very sigh you have heaved. If you are 
 merry, a stanza is dancing to the tune of
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 239 
 
 your own mirth. If you love, be you ever 
 so much a Romeo, here is the finest lan- 
 guage for your using. If you hate, here are 
 words which are daggers. If you like bat- 
 tle, here for two hundred years have trum- 
 pets been blowing and banners flapping. If 
 you are dying, plentiful are the broken 
 words here which have hovered on failing 
 lips. Turn where you will, some fragment 
 of a ballad is sure to meet you. Go into the 
 loneliest places of experience and passion, 
 and you discover that you are walking in 
 human footprints. If you should happen to 
 lift the first volume of Professor Aytoun's 
 " Ballads of Scotland," the book of its own 
 accord will open at " Clerk Saunders," and 
 by that token you will guess that the ballad 
 has been read and re-read a thousand times. 
 And what a ballad it is ! The story in parts 
 is somewhat perilous to deal with, but with 
 what instinctive delicacy the whole matter 
 is managed ! Then what tragic pictures, 
 what pathos, what manly and womanly love ! 
 Just fancy how the sleeping lovers, the 
 raised torches, and the faces of the seven 
 brothers looking on, would gleam on the 
 canvas of Mr. Millais ! — 
 
 " ' For in may come my seven bauld brothers, 
 Wi' torches burning bright.'
 
 240 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 " It was about the midnight hour, 
 And they were fa'en asleep, 
 When in and came her seven brothers, 
 And stood at her bed feet. 
 
 " Then out and spake the first o' them, 
 ' We '11 awa' and let them be.' 
 Then out and spake the second o' them, 
 ' I lis father has nae mair than he.' 
 
 " Then out and spake the third o' them, 
 ' I wot they are lovers dear.' 
 Then out and spake the fourth o' them, 
 ' They ha'e lo'ed for mony a year.' 
 
 " Then out and spake the fifth o' them, 
 ' It were sin true love to twain.' 
 ' 'Twere .shame,' out spake the sixth o' them, 
 ' To slay a sleeping man ! ' 
 
 " Then up and gat the seventh o' them, 
 And never word spake he, 
 lint he has striped his bright-brown brand 
 Through Saunders's fair bodie. 
 
 rk Saunders he started, and Margaret she tum'd 
 Into his arms as aslei p she lay, 
 And sad and silent was the night 
 1 hat was atween thir twae." 
 
 Could a word be added or taken from these 
 verses without spoiling the effect? You 
 never think of the language, so vividly is 
 the picture impressed on the imagination. 
 I see at this moment the sleeping pair, the 
 bright burning torches, the lowering faces 
 of the brethren, and the one fiercer and 
 darker than the others.
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 241 
 
 Pass we now to the Second Part — 
 
 " Sae painfully she clam' the \va', 
 She clam' the wa' up after him ; 
 Hosen nor shoon upon her feet 
 She had na time to put them on. 
 
 '" Is their ony room at your head, Saunders ? 
 Is there ony room at your feet ? 
 Or ony room at your side, Saunders, 
 Where fain, fain 1 wad sleep?'" 
 
 In that last line the very heart-strings 
 crack. She is to be pitied far more than Clerk 
 Saunders, lying stark with the cruel wound 
 beneath his side, the love-kisses hardly cold 
 yet upon his lips. 
 
 It may be said that the books of which I 
 have been speaking attain to the highest 
 literary excellence by favour of simplicity 
 and unconsciousness. Neither the German 
 nor the Scotsman considered himself an 
 artist. The Scot sings a successful foray, in 
 which perhaps he was engaged, and he sings 
 as he fought. In combat he did not dream 
 of putting himself in a heroic position, or of 
 flourishing his blade in a manner to be ad- 
 mired. A thrust of a lance would soon have 
 finished him if he had. The pious German is 
 over-laden with grief, or touched by some 
 blessing into sudden thankfulness, and he 
 breaks into song as he laughs from gladness 
 or groans from pain. This directness and 
 
 16
 
 242 A She// in My Bookcase. 
 
 naturalness give Scottish ballad and German 
 hymn their highest charm. The poetic gold, 
 if rough and unpolished, and with no elabo- 
 rate devices carved upon it, is free at least 
 from the alloy of conceit and simulation. 
 Modern writers might, with benefit to them- 
 selves, barter something of their finish and 
 dexterity for that pure innocence of nature, 
 and child-like simplicity and fearlessness, 
 full of its own emotion, and unthinking of 
 others or of their opinions, which characterise 
 these old writings. 
 
 The eighteenth century must ever remain 
 the most brilliant and interesting period of 
 English literary history. It is interesting 
 not only on account of its splendour, but 
 because it is so well known. We are familiar 
 with the faces of its great men by portraits, 
 and with the events of their lives by innumer- 
 able biographies. Every reader is acquainted 
 with Pope's restless jealousy, Goldsmith's 
 pitted countenance and plum-coloured coat, 
 Johnson's surly manners and countless ec- 
 < entricities, and with the tribe of poets who 
 lived for months ignorant of clean linen, who 
 were hunted by bailiffs, who smelt of stale 
 punch, and who wrote descriptions of the 
 feasts of the gods in twopenny cook-shops. 
 Manners and modes of thought had greatly
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 243 
 
 changed since the century before. Mac- 
 beth, in silk stockings and scarlet coat, slew- 
 King Duncan, and the pit admired the wild; 
 force occasionally exhibited by the barbarian 
 Shakspeare. In those days the Muse wore 
 patches, and sat in a sumptuous boudoir, 
 and her worshippers surrounded her in high- 
 heeled shoes, ruffles, and powdered wigs. 
 When the poets wished to paint nature, they 
 described Chloe sitting on a green bank 
 watching her sheep, or sighing when Stre- 
 phon confessed his flame. And yet, with all 
 this apparent shallowness, the age was earn- 
 est enough in its way. It was a good hater. 
 It was filled with relentless literary feuds. 
 Just recall the lawless state of things on the 
 Scottish Border in the olden time, — the 
 cattle-lifting, the house-burning, the mid- 
 night murders, the powerful marauders, who, 
 safe in numerous retainers and moated keep, 
 bade defiance to law ; recall this state of 
 things, and imagine the quarrels and raids 
 literary, the weapons satire and wit, and you 
 have a good idea of the darker aspect of the 
 time. There were literary reavers, who laid 
 desolate at a foray a whole generation of 
 wits. There were literary duels, fought out 
 in grim hate to the very death. It was dan- 
 gerous to interfere in the literary melee.
 
 244 -A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 Every now and then a fine gentleman was 
 run through with a jest, or a foolish Mae- 
 cenas stabbed to the heart with an epigram, 
 and his foolishness settled for ever. 
 
 As a matter of course, on this special shelf 
 of books will be found Boswell's " Life of 
 Johnson" — a work in our literature unique, 
 priceless. That altogether unvenerable yet 
 profoundly venerating Scottish gentleman, 
 — that queerest mixture of qualities, of force 
 and weakness, blindness and insight, vanity 
 and solid worth, — has written the finest 
 book of its kind which our nation possesses. 
 It is quite impossible to over-state its worth. 
 You lift it, and immediately the intervening 
 years disappear, and you are in the presence 
 of the Doctor. You are made free of the 
 last century, as you are free of the present. 
 You double your existence. The book is a 
 letter of introduction to a whole knot of de- 
 parted English worthies. In virtue of Bos- 
 well's labours, we know Johnson — the central 
 man of his time — better than Burke did, or 
 Reynolds, — far better even than Boswell 
 did. We know how he expressed himself, 
 in what grooves his thoughts ran, how he 
 ate, drank, and slept. Boswell's unconscious 
 art is wonderful, and so is the result attained. 
 This book has arrested, as never book did
 
 A S/u 1 // in My Bookcase. 245 
 
 before, time and decay. Bozzy is really a 
 wizard : he makes the sun stand still. Till 
 his work is done, the future stands respect- 
 fully aloof. Out of ever-shifting time he has 
 made fixed and permanent certain years, and 
 in these Johnson talks and argues, while 
 Burke listens, and Reynolds takes snuff, and 
 Goldsmith, with hollowed hand, whispers a 
 sly remark to his neighbour. There have 
 they sat, these ghosts, for seventy years 
 now, looked at and listened to by the passing 
 generations ; and there they still sit, the 
 one voice going on ! Smile at Boswell as 
 we may, he was a spiritual phenomenon 
 quite as rare as Johnson. More than most 
 he deserves our gratitude. Let us hope that 
 when next Heaven sends England a man 
 like Johnson, a companion and listener like 
 Boswell will be provided. The Literary 
 Club sits forever. What if the Mermaid 
 were in like eternal session, with Shaks- 
 peare's laughter ringing through the fire 
 and hail of wit ! 
 
 By the strangest freak of chance or liking, 
 the next book on my shelf contains the 
 poems of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-law 
 Rhymer. This volume, adorned by a hideous 
 portrait of the author, I can well remember 
 picking up at a bookstall for a few pence
 
 246 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 many years ago. It seems curious to me 
 that this man is not in these days better 
 known. A more singular man has seldom 
 existed, — seldom a more genuine. His first 
 business speculation failed, but when about 
 forty he commenced again, and this time 
 fortune made amends for her former ill- 
 treatment. His warehouse was a small, 
 dingy place, filled with bars of iron, with a 
 bust of Shakspeare looking down on the 
 whole. His country-house contained busts 
 of Achilles, Ajax, and Napoleon. Here is a 
 poet who earned a competence as an iron- 
 merchant ; here is a monomaniac on the 
 Corn-laws, who loved nature as intensely as 
 ever did Burns or Wordsworth. Here is a 
 John Bright uttering himself in fiery and 
 melodious verse, — Apollo with iron dust 
 on his face, wandering among the Sheffield 
 knife-grinders ! If you wish to form some 
 idea of the fierce discontent which thirty 
 years ago existed amongst the working men 
 of England, you should read the Corn -law 
 Rhymes. The Corn-laws are to him the 
 twelve plagues of Egypt rolled together. 
 On account of them he denounces his coun- 
 try as the Hebrew prophets were wont to 
 denounce Tyre and Si<lon. His rage breaks 
 out into curses, which are not forgiveness.
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 247 
 
 He is maddened by the memory of Peterloo. 
 Never, perhaps, was a sane human being so 
 tyrannised over by a single idea. A skeleton 
 was found on one of the Derbyshire hills. 
 Had the man been crossed in love? had he 
 crept up there to die in the presence of the 
 stars? " Not at all," cries Elliott ; " he was a 
 victim of the Corn-laws, who preferred dying 
 on the mountain-top to receiving parish 
 pay." In his wild poem all the evil kings in 
 Hades descend from their thrones when 
 King George enters. They only let slip the 
 dogs of war ; he taxed the people's bread. 
 "Sleep on, proud Britoness ! " he exclaims 
 over a woman at rest in the grave she had 
 purchased. In one of his articles in Tail's 
 Magazine, he seriously proposed that trage- 
 dies should be written showing the evils of 
 the Corn-laws, and that on a given night 
 they should be performed in every theatre 
 of the kingdom, so that the nation might, by 
 the speediest possible process, be converted 
 to the gospel of Free-trade. In his eyes the 
 Corn-laws had gathered into their black 
 bosoms every human wrong : repeal them, 
 and lo ! the new heavens and the new earth ! 
 A poor and shallow theory of the universe, 
 you will say ; but it is astonishing what 
 poetry he contrives to extract out of it. It
 
 2 4$ A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 is hardly possible, without quotation, to give 
 an idea of the rage and fury which pervade 
 these poems. He curses his political oppo- 
 nents with his whole heart and soul. He 
 pillories them, and pelts them with dead cats 
 and rotten eggs. The earnestness of his 
 mood has a certain terror in it for meek and 
 quiet people. His poems are of the angri- 
 est, but their anger is not altogether undi- 
 vine. His scorn blisters and scalds, his 
 sarcasm flays ; but then outside nature is 
 constantly touching him with a summer 
 breeze or a branch of pink and white apple- 
 blossom, and his mood becomes tenderness 
 itself. He is far from being lachrymose ; 
 and when he is pathetic, he affects one as 
 when a strong man sobs. His anger is not 
 nearly so frightful as his tears. I cannot 
 understand why Elliott is so little read. 
 Other names not particularly remarkable I 
 meet in the current reviews — his never. 
 His book stands on my shelf, but on no 
 other have I seen it. This I think strange, 
 because, apart from the intrinsic value of his 
 verse as verse, it has an historical value. 
 Evil times and embittered feelings, now hap- 
 pily passed away, are preserved in his books, 
 like Pompeii and Herculaneum in Vesuvian 
 lava. He was a poet of the poor, but in a
 
 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 249 
 
 quite peculiar sense. Burns, Crabbe, Words- 
 worth, were poets of the poor, but mainly of 
 the peasant poor. Elliott is the poet of the 
 English artisans, — men who read newspapers 
 and books, who are members of mechanics' 
 institutes, who attend debating societies, 
 who discuss political measures and political 
 men, who are tormented by ideas, — a very 
 different kind of persons altogether. It is 
 easier to find poetry beneath the blowing 
 hawthorn than beneath the plumes of factory 
 or furnace smoke. In such uninviting at- 
 mospheres Ebenezer Elliott found his ; and 
 I am amazed that the world does not hold it 
 in greater regard, if for nothing else than 
 for its singularity. 
 
 There is many another book on my shelf 
 on which I might dilate, but this gossiping 
 must be drawn to a close. When I began, 
 the wind was bending the trees, and the rain 
 came against the window in quick, petulant 
 dashes. For hours now, wind and rain have 
 ceased, the trees are motionless, the garden 
 walk is dry. The early light of wintry sunset 
 is falling across my paper, and, as I look up, 
 the white Dante opposite is dipped in tender 
 rose. Less stern he looks, but not less sad, 
 than he did in the morning. The sky is
 
 250 A Shelf in My Bookcase. 
 
 clear, and an arm of bleak pink vapour 
 stretches up into its depths. The air is cold 
 with frost, and the rain which those dark 
 clouds in the east hold will fall during the 
 night in silent, feathery flakes. When I 
 wake to-morrow, the world will be changed, 
 frosty forests will cover my bedroom panes, 
 the tree branches will be furred with snows ; 
 and to the crumbs which it is my daily cus- 
 tom to sprinkle on the shrubbery walk will 
 come the lineal descendant of the charitable 
 redbreast that covered up with leaves the 
 sleeping children in the wood.
 
 c\Ap
 
 HAUCER is admitted on all 
 hands to be a great poet, but, by 
 the general public at least, he is 
 not frequently read. He is like 
 a cardinal virtue, a good deal talked about, 
 a good deal praised, honoured by a vast 
 amount of distant admiration, but with little 
 practical acquaintance. And for this there 
 are many and obvious reasons. He is an 
 ancient, and the rich old mahogany is neg- 
 lected for the new and glittering veneer. 
 He is occasionally gross ; often tedious and 
 obscure ; he frequently leaves a couple of 
 lovers, to cite the opinions of Greek and 
 Roman authors; and practice and patience 
 are required to melt the frost of his orthog- 
 raphy, and let his music flow freely. In 
 the conduct of his stories he is garrulous, 
 homely, and slow-paced. He wrote in a 
 leisurely world, when there was plenty of 
 time for writing and reading, long before
 
 o- 
 
 2 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 the advent of the printer's devil or of 
 Mr. Mudie. There is little of the lyrical 
 element in him. He does not dazzle by 
 sentences. He is not quotable. He does 
 not shine in extracts so much as in entire 
 poems. There is a pleasant equality about 
 his writing ; he advances through a story at 
 an even pace, glancing round him on every- 
 thing with curious, humourous eyes, and 
 having his say about everything. He is the 
 prince of story-tellers, and however much 
 he may move others, he is not moved him- 
 self. His mood is so kindly that he seems 
 always to have written after dinner, or after 
 hearing good news, — that he had received 
 from the king another grant of wine, for 
 instance, — and he discourses of love and 
 lovers' raptures, and the disappointments of 
 life, half sportively, half sadly, like one who 
 has passed through all, felt the sweetness 
 and the bitterness of it, and been able to 
 strike a balance. He had his share of 
 crosses and misfortune, but his was a nature 
 which time and sorrow could only mellow 
 and sweeten ; and for all that had come and 
 gone, he loved his " books clothed in black 
 1 red," to sit at good men's feasts ; and if 
 silent at table, as the Countess of Pembroke 
 reported, the " stain upon his lip was wine."
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 253 
 
 Chaucer's face is to his writings the best 
 preface and commentary ; it is contented- 
 looking, like one familiar with pleasant 
 thoughts, shy and self-contained somewhat, 
 as if he preferred his own company to the 
 noisy and rude companionship of his fellows ; 
 and the outlines are bland, fleshy, voluptu- 
 ous, as of one who had a keen relish for the 
 pleasures that leave no bitter traces. Tears 
 and mental trouble, and the agonies of 
 doubt, you cannot think of in connexion 
 with it ; laughter is sheathed in it, the light 
 of a smile is diffused over it. In face and 
 turn of genius he differs in every respect 
 from his successor, Spenser; and in truth, 
 in Chaucer and Spenser we see the foun- 
 tains of the two main streams of British 
 song : the one flowing through the drama 
 and the humourous narrative, the other 
 through the epic and the didactic poem. 
 Chaucer rooted himself firmly in fact, and 
 looked out upon the world in a half-humour- 
 ous, half-melancholy mood. Spenser had 
 but little knowledge of men as men ; the 
 cardinal virtues were the personages he was 
 acquainted with ; in everything he was " high 
 fantastical," and, as a consequence, he 
 exhibits neither humour nor pathos. Chau- 
 cer was thoroughly national ; his characters,
 
 254 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 place them where he may, — in Thebes or 
 J'artarw — arc natives of one or other of 
 the English shires. Spenser's genius was 
 country-less as Ariel ; search ever so dili- 
 
 Qtly, you will not find an English daisy in 
 all his enchanted forests. Chaucer was tol- 
 erant of everything, the vices not excepted ; 
 morally speaking, an easy-going man, he 
 took the world as it came, and did not 
 fancy himself a whit better than his fellows. 
 Spenser was a Platonist, and fed his grave 
 spirit on high speculations and moralities 
 Severe and chivalrous, dreaming of things 
 to come, unsuppled by luxury, unensla\e<l 
 by passion, somewhat scornful and self- 
 sustained, it needed but a tyrannous king, an 
 electrical political atmosphere, and a deeper 
 interest in theology to make a Puritan of 
 hiin. as these things made a Puritan of 
 Milton. The differences between Chaucer 
 
 I Spenser are seen at a glance in their 
 portrait-. Chaucer's face is round, good- 
 humoured, constitutionally pensive, and 
 thoughtful. You see in it that he has often 
 been amused, and that he may easily be 
 amused again. Spenser's is of sharper and 
 keener feature, disdainful, and breathing that 
 severity which appertains to so many of 
 the Elizabethan men. A fourteenth-century
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 255 
 
 child, with delicate prescience, would have 
 asked Chaucer to assist her in a strait, and 
 would not have been disappointed. A six- 
 teenth-century child in like circumstances 
 would have shrunk from drawing on herself 
 the regards of the sternerdooking man. We 
 can trace the descent of the Chaucerian face 
 and genius in Shakspeare and Scott, of the 
 Spenserian in Milton and Wordsworth. In 
 our day, Mr. Browning takes after Chaucer, 
 Mr. Tennyson takes after Spenser. 
 
 Hazlitt, writing of the four great English 
 poets, tells us, Chaucer's characteristic is 
 intensity, Spenser's remoteness, Milton's sub- 
 limity, and Shakspeare's everything. The 
 sentence is epigrammatic and memorable 
 enough ; but so far as Chaucer is concerned, 
 it requires a little explanation. He is not 
 intense, for instance, as Byron is intense, or 
 as Wordsworth is intense. He does not see 
 man like the one, nor nature like the other. 
 He would not have cared much for either of 
 these poets. And yet, so far as straightfor- 
 wardness in dealing with a subject, and com- 
 plete though quiet realisation of it goes to 
 make up intensity of poetic mood, Chaucer 
 amply justifies his critic. There is no 
 wastefulness or explosiveness about the old 
 writer. He does his work silently, and with
 
 256 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 no appearance of effort. His poetry shines 
 upon us like a May morning ; but the streak 
 over the eastern hill, the dew on the grass, 
 the wind that bathes the brows of the way- 
 farer, are not there by haphazard : they are 
 the results of occult forces, a whole solar 
 system has had a hand in their production. 
 From the apparent ease with which an artist 
 works, one does not readily give him credit 
 for the mental force he is continuously 
 putting forth. To many people, a chaotic 
 " Festus" is more wonderful than a rounded, 
 melodious " Princess." The load which a 
 strong man bears gracefully does not seem so 
 heavy as the load which the weaker man stag- 
 gers under. Incompletion is force fighting; 
 completion is force quiescent, its work done. 
 Nature's forces are patent enough in some 
 scarred volcanic moon in which no creature 
 can breathe; only the sage, in some soft 
 green earth, can discover the same forces 
 reft of fierceness and terror, and translated 
 into sunshine, and falling dew, and the rain- 
 bow gleaming on the shower. It is somewhat 
 in this way that the propriety of Hazlitt's 
 criticism is to be vindicated. Chaucer is 
 the most simple, natural, and homely of 
 our poets, and whatever he attempts he 
 1 Iocs thoroughly. The Wife of Bath is so
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 257 
 
 distinctly limned that she could sit for her 
 portrait. You can count the embroidered 
 sprigs in the jerkin of the squire. You hear 
 the pilgrims laugh as they ride to Canter- 
 bury. The whole thing is admirably life-like 
 and seems easy, and in the seeming easiness 
 we are apt to forget the imaginative sympa- 
 thy which bodies forth the characters, and 
 the joy and sorrow from which that sympathy 
 has drawn nurture. Unseen by us, the ore 
 has been dug, and smelted in secret furnaces, 
 and when it is poured into perfect moulds, we 
 are apt to forget by what potency the whole 
 thing has been brought about. 
 
 And, with his noticing eyes, into what a 
 brilliant, many tinted world was Chaucer 
 born ! In his day life had a certain breadth, 
 colour, and picturesqueness which it does not 
 possess now. Jt wore a braver dress, and 
 daunted more in the sun. Five centuries 
 effect a great change on manners. A man 
 may nowadays, and without the slightest 
 suspicion of the fact, brush clothes with 
 half the English peerage on a sunny after- 
 noon in Pall Mall. Then it was quite different. 
 The fourteenth century loved magnificence 
 and show. Great lords kept princely state in 
 the country; and when they came abroad, 
 tvhat a retinue, what waving of plumes, and 
 
 '7
 
 258 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 shaking of banners, and glittering of rich 
 dresses ! Religion was picturesque, with dig- 
 nitaries, and cathedrals, and fuming incense, 
 and the Host carried through the streets. 
 The franklin kept open house, the city mer- 
 chant feasted kings, the outlaw roasted his 
 venison beneath the greenwood tree. There 
 was a gallant monarch and a gallant court. 
 The eyes of the Countess of Salisbury shed 
 influence ; Maid Marian laughed in Sher- 
 wood. London is already a considerable 
 place, numbering, perhaps, two hundred 
 thousand inhabitants, the houses clustering 
 close and high along the river banks ; and 
 on the beautiful April nights the nightin- 
 gales are singing round the suburban vil- 
 lages of Strand, Holborn, and Charing. It 
 is rich withal ; for after the battle of Poi- 
 tiers, Harry Picard, wine-merchant and Lord 
 Mayor, entertained in the city four kings, — 
 to wit, Edward, king of England, John, king 
 of France, David, king of Scotland, and the 
 king of Cyprus; and the last-named po- 
 tentate, slightly heated with Harry's wine, 
 engaged him at dice, and being nearly ruined 
 tlvreby, the honest wine-merchant returned 
 the poor king his money, which was received 
 with all thankfulness. There is great stir 
 on a summer's morning in that Warwick-
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 259 
 
 shire castle, — pawing of horses, tossing of 
 bridles, clanking of spurs. The old lord 
 climbs at last into his saddle and rides off 
 to court, his favourite falcon on his wrist, four 
 squires in immediate attendance carrying his 
 arms; and behind these stretches a merry 
 cavalcade, on which the chestnuts shed their 
 milky blossoms. In the absence of the old 
 peer, young Hopeful spends his time as befits 
 his rank and expectations. He grooms his 
 steed, plays with his hawks, feeds his hounds, 
 and labours diligently to acquire grace and 
 dexterity in the use of arms. At noon the 
 portcullis is lowered, and out shoots a bril- 
 liant array of ladies and gentlemen, and fal- 
 coners with hawks. They bend their course 
 to the river, over which a rainbow is rising 
 from a shower. Yonder young lady is laugh- 
 ing at our stripling squire, who seems half 
 angry, half pleased : they are lovers, depend 
 upon it. A few years, and the merry beauty 
 will have become a noble, gracious woman, 
 and the young fellow, sitting by a watch-fire 
 on the eve of Cressy, will wonder if she is 
 thinking of him. But the river is already 
 reached. Up flies the alarmed heron, his 
 long blue legs trailing behind him ; a hawk 
 is let loose ; the young lady's laugh has 
 ceased as, with gloved hand shading fair
 
 260 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 forehead and sweet gray eye, she watches 
 hawk and heron lessening in heaven. The 
 Crusades are now over, but the religious 
 fervour which inspired them lingered behind ; 
 so that, even in Chaucer's day, Christian 
 kings, when their consciences were op- 
 pressed by a crime more than usually 
 weighty, talked of making an effort before 
 they died to wrest Jerusalem and the sepul- 
 chre of Christ from the grasp of the infidel. 
 England had at this time several holy 
 shrines, the most famous being that of 
 Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, which at- 
 tracted crowds of pilgrims. The devout 
 travelled in large companies ; and, in the 
 May mornings, a merry sight it was as, 
 with infinite clatter and merriment, with 
 bells, minstrels, and buffoons, they passed 
 through thorp and village, bound for the 
 tomb of St. Thomas. The pageant of events, 
 which seems enchantment when chronicled 
 by Froissart's splendid pen. was to Chaucer 
 contemporaneous incident ; the chivalric 
 richness was the familiar and every-dav drr-s 
 of his time. Into this princely element he 
 was endued, and he saw every side of it, — 
 the frieze as well as the cloth of gold. In 
 the "Canterbury Tales" the fourteenth 
 century murmurs, as the sea murmurs in
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 261 
 
 the pink-mouthed shells upon our mantel- 
 pieces. 
 
 Of his life we do not know much. In his 
 youth he studied law and disliked it, — a cir- 
 cumstance common enough in the lives of 
 men of letters, from his time to that of Shir- 
 ley Brooks. How he lived, what he did 
 when he was a student, we are unable to 
 discover. Only for a moment is the curtain 
 lifted, and we behold, in the old quaint 
 peaked and gabled Fleet Street of that day, 
 Chaucer thrashing a Franciscan friar (friar's 
 offence unknown), for which amusement he 
 was next morning fined two shillings. His- 
 tory has preserved this for us, but has for- 
 gotten all the rest of his early life, and the 
 chronology of all his poems. What curious 
 flies are sometimes found in the historic 
 amber ! On Chaucer's own authority, we 
 know that he served under Edward III. in 
 his French campaign, and that he for some 
 time lay in a French prison. On his return 
 from captivity he married ; he was valet 
 in the king's household ; he was sent on 
 an embassy to Genoa, and is supposed to 
 have visited Petrarch, then resident at Padua, 
 and to have heard from his lips the story of 
 " Griselda," — a tradition which one would 
 like to believe. He had his share of the
 
 262 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 sweets and the bitters of life. He enjoyed 
 offices and gifts of wine, and he felt the 
 pangs of poverty and the sickness of hope 
 deferred. He was comptroller of the cus- 
 toms for wools ; from which post he was dis- 
 missed, — why, we know not ; although one 
 cannot help remembering that Edward made 
 the writing out of the accounts in Chaucer's 
 own hand the condition of his holding office, 
 and having one's surmises. Foreign coun- 
 tries, strange manners, meetings with cele- 
 br.it "d men, love of wife and children, and 
 their deaths, freedom and captivity, the 
 light of a king's smile and its withdrawal, 
 furnished ample matter of meditation to his 
 humane and thoughtful spirit. In his youth 
 he wrote allegories full of ladies and knights 
 dwelling in impossible forests and nursing 
 impossible passions ; but in his declining 
 years, when fortune had done all it could 
 for him and all it could against him, he dis- 
 carded these dreams, and betook himself to 
 the actual stuff of human nature. Instead 
 of the " Romance of the Rose," we have the 
 " Canterbury Tales " and the first great Eng- 
 lish poet. One likes to fancy Chaucer in 
 his declining days living at Woodstock, with 
 his books about him, and where he could 
 watch the daisies opening themselves at
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 263 
 
 sunrise, shutting themselves at sunset, and 
 composing his wonderful stories, in which 
 the fourteenth century lives, — riding to bat- 
 tle in iron gear, hawking in embroidered 
 jerkin and waving plume, sitting in rich and 
 solemn feast, the monarch on the dais. 
 
 Chaucer's early poems have music and 
 fancy, they are full of a natural delight in 
 sunshine and the greenness of foliage ; but 
 thev have little human interest. They are 
 allegories for the most part, more or less 
 satisfactorily wrought out. The allegorical 
 turn of thought, the delight in pageantry, 
 the "clothing upon" of abstractions with 
 human forms, flowered originally out of 
 chivalry and the feudal times. Chaucer im- 
 ported it from the French, and was proud of 
 it in his early poems, as a young fellow of 
 that day might be proud of his horse furni- 
 ture, his attire, his waving plume. And the 
 poetic fashion thus set retained its vitality 
 for a long while, — indeed, it was only thor- 
 oughly made an end of by the French Revo- 
 lution, which made an end of so much else. 
 About the last trace of its influence is to be 
 found in Burns' sentimental correspondence 
 with Mrs. M'Lehose, in which the lady is 
 addressed as Clarinda, and the poet signs 
 himself Sylvander. It was at best a mere
 
 264 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 beautiful gauze screen drawn between the 
 poet and nature ; and passion put his foot 
 through it at once. After Chaucer's youth 
 was over, he discarded somewhat scornfully 
 these abstractions and shows of things. The 
 " Flower and the Leaf" is a beautiful-tinted 
 dream ; the " Canterbury Tales" are as real 
 as anything in Shakspeare or Burns. The 
 ladies in the earlier poems dwell in forests, 
 and wear coronals on their heads ; the people 
 in the " Tales " are engaged in the actual 
 concerns of life, and you can see the splashes 
 of mire upon their clothes. The separate 
 poems which make up the " Canterbury 
 Tales " were probably written at different 
 periods, after youth was gone, and when he 
 had fallen out of love with florid imagery 
 and allegorical conceits ; and we can fancy 
 him, perhaps fallen on evil days and in re- 
 tirement, anxious to gather up these loose 
 efforts into one consummate whole. If of 
 his flowers he would make a bouquet for 
 posterity, it was of course necessary to pro- 
 cure a string to tie them together. These 
 necessities, which ruin other men, are the 
 fortunate chances of great poets. Then it 
 was that the idea arose of a meeting of pil- 
 grims at the Tabard in Southwark, of their 
 riding to Canterbury, and of the different
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 265 
 
 personages relating stories to beguile the 
 tedium of the journey. The notion was a 
 happy one, and the execution is superb. In 
 those days, as we know, pilgrimages were 
 of frequent occurrence ; and in the motley 
 group that congregated on such occasions, 
 the painter of character had full scope. All 
 conditions of people are comprised in the 
 noisy band issuing from the courtyard of 
 the Southwark inn on that May morning in 
 the fourteenth century. Let us go nearer, 
 and have a look at them. 
 
 There is a grave and gentle Knight, who 
 has fought in many wars, and who has many 
 a time hurled his adversary down in tourna- 
 ment before the eyes of all the ladies there, 
 and who has taken the place of honour at 
 many a mighty feast. There, riding beside 
 him, is a blooming Squire, his son, fresh as 
 the month of May, singing day and night 
 from very gladness of heart, — an impetuous 
 young fellow, who is looking forward to 
 the time when he will flesh his maiden 
 sword, and shout his first war-cry in a 
 stricken field. There is an Abbot, mounted 
 on a brown steed. He is middle-aged ; his 
 bald crown shines like glass, and his face 
 looks as if it were anointed with oil. He 
 has been a valiant trencher-man at many a
 
 266 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 well-furnished feast. Above all things, he 
 loves hunting ; and when he rides, men can 
 hear his bridle ringing in the whistling wind 
 loud and clear as a chapel bell. There is a 
 thin, ill-conditioned Clerk, perched peril- 
 ously on a steed as thin and ill-conditioned 
 as himself. He will never be rich, I fear. 
 He is a great student, and would rather have 
 a few books bound in black and red hanging 
 above his bed than be sheriff of the county. 
 There is a Prioress, so gentle and tender- 
 hearted that she weeps if she hears the 
 whimper of a beaten hound, or sees a mouse 
 caught in a trap. There rides the laughing 
 Wife of Bath, bold-faced and fair. She is 
 an adept in love-matters. Five husbands 
 already "she has fried in their own grease" 
 till they were glad to get into their graves 
 to escape the scourge of her tongue. 
 Heaven rest their souls, and swiftly send a 
 sixth ! She wears a hat large as a targe or 
 buckler, brings the artillery of her eyes to 
 bear on the young Squire, and jokes him 
 about his sweetheart. Beside her is a 
 worthy Parson, who delivers faithfully the 
 message of his Master. Although he is 
 poor, he gives away the half of his tithes in 
 charity. His parish is waste and wide, yet 
 if sickness or misfortune should befall one
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 267 
 
 of his flock, he rides, in spite of wind, or 
 rain, or thunder, to administer consolation. 
 Among the crowd rides a rich Franklin, who 
 sits in the Guildhall on the dais. He is 
 profuse and hospitable as summer. All clay 
 his table stands in the hall covered with 
 meats and drinks, and every one who enters 
 is welcome. There is a Ship-man, whose 
 beard has been shaken by many a tempest, 
 whose cheek knows the kiss of the salt sea 
 spray; a Merchant, with a grave look, clean 
 and neat in his attire, and with plenty of 
 gold in his purse. There is a Doctor of 
 Physic, who has killed more men than the 
 Knight, talking to a Clerk of Laws. There is 
 a merry Friar, a lover of good cheer; and 
 when seated in a tavern among his com- 
 panions, singing songs it would be scarcely 
 decorous to repeat, you may see his eyes 
 twinkling in his head for joy, like stars on 
 a frosty night. Beside him is a ruby-faced 
 Sompnour, whose breath stinks of garlic and 
 onions, who is ever roaring for wine, — strong 
 wine, wine red as blood ; and when drunk, 
 he disdains English, — nothing but Latin will 
 serve his turn. In front of all is a Miller, 
 who has been drinking over-night, and is 
 now but indifferently sober. There is not a 
 door in the country that he cannot break
 
 2 68 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 by running at it with his head. The pil- 
 grims are all ready, the host gives the 
 word, and they defile through the arch. 
 The Miller blows his bagpipes as they issue 
 from the town ; and away they ride to Can- 
 terbury, through the boon sunshine, and 
 between the white hedges of the English 
 May. 
 
 Had Chaucer spent his whole life in 
 seeking, he could not have selected a bet- 
 ter contemporary circumstance for securing 
 variety of character than a pilgrimage to 
 Canterbury. It comprises, as we see, all 
 kinds and conditions of people. It is the 
 fourteenth-century England in little. In 
 our time, the only thing that could match it 
 in this respect is Epsom down on the great 
 race-day. Hut then Epsom down is too 
 unwieldy ; the crowd is too great, and it 
 does not cohere, save for the few seconds 
 when gay jackets are streaming towards the 
 winning-post. The Prologue to the "Can- 
 terbury Tales," in which we make the 
 acquaintance of the pilgrims, is the ripest, 
 most genial and humourous, altogether the 
 most masterly thing which Chaucer has left 
 us. In its own way, and within its own 
 limits, it is the most wonderful thing in the 
 language. The people we read about are as
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 269 
 
 real as the people we brush clothes with in 
 the street, — nay, much more real ; for we not 
 only see their faces, and the fashion and 
 texture of their garments, we know also 
 what they think, how they express them- 
 selves, and with what eyes they look out on 
 the world. Chaucer's art in this Prologue is 
 simple perfection. He indulges in no irrele- 
 vant description, he airs no fine sentiments, 
 he takes no special pains as to style or 
 poetic ornament ; but every careless touch 
 tells, every sly line reveals character ; the 
 description of each man's horse-furniture 
 and array reads like a memoir. The Nun's 
 pretty oath bewrays her. We see the bold, 
 well-favoured countenance of the Wife of 
 Bath beneath her hat, as " broad as a buck- 
 ler or a targe " ; and the horse of the Clerk, 
 "as lean as is a rake," tells tales of his mas- 
 ter's cheer. Our modern dress is worthless 
 as an indication of the character, or even of 
 the social rank, of the wearer ; in the olden 
 time it was significant of personal tastes and 
 appetites, of profession, and condition of 
 life generally. See how Chaucer brings 
 out a character by touching merely on 
 a few points of attire and personal appear- 
 ance : —
 
 270 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 " I saw his sleeves were purfiled at the hand 
 With fur, and that the finest of the land ; 
 And for to fasten his hood under his chin 
 He had of gold ywrought a curious pin. 
 A love-knot in the greater end there was ; 
 His head was bald, and shone as any glass, 
 And eke his face as if it was anoint." 
 
 What more would you have? You could 
 not have known the monk better if you had 
 lived all your life in the monastery with 
 him. The sleeves daintly purfiled with fur 
 give one side of him, the curious pin with 
 the love-knot another, and the shining 
 crown and face complete the character and 
 the picture. The sun itself could not photo- 
 graph more truly. 
 
 On their way the pilgrims tell tales, 
 and these are as various as their relaters ; 
 in fact, the Prologue is the soil out of 
 which they all grow. Dramatic propriety is 
 everywhere instinctively preserved. "The 
 Knight's Tale" is noble, splendid, and 
 chivalric as his own nature; the tale told by 
 the Wife of Bath is exactly what one would 
 expect. With what good-humour the rosy 
 sinner confesses her sins ! how hilarious she 
 is in her repentance ! "The Miller's Tale " 
 is coarse and full-flavoured, — just the kind of 
 thing to be told by a rough, humourous fellow 
 who is hardly yet sober. And here it may
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 271 
 
 be said that although there is a good deal 
 of coarseness in the " Canterbury Tales," 
 there is not the slightest tinge of pruriency. 
 There is such a single-heartedness and inno- 
 cence in Chaucer's vulgarest and broadest 
 stories, such a keen eye for humour, and 
 such a hearty enjoyment of it, and at the 
 same time such an absence of any delight in 
 impurity for impurity's sake, that but little 
 danger can arise from their perusal. He is 
 so fond of fun that he will drink it out of 
 a cup that is only indifferently clean. He 
 writes often like Fielding, he never writes 
 as Smollett sometimes does. These stories, 
 ranging from the noble romance of Palamon 
 and Arcite to the rude intrigues of Clerk 
 Nicholas, — the one fitted to draw tears down 
 the cheeks of noble ladies and gentlemen ; 
 the other to convulse with laughter the 
 midriffs of illiterate clowns, — give one an 
 idea of the astonishing range of Chaucer's 
 powers. He can suit himself to every com- 
 pany, make himself at home in every circum- 
 stance of life ; can mingle in tournaments 
 where beauty is leaning from balconies, and 
 the knights, with spear in rest, wait for the 
 blast of the trumpet ; and he can with equal 
 ease sit with a couple of drunken friars in a 
 tavern laughing over the confessions they
 
 272 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 hear, and singing questionable catches be- 
 tween whiles. Chaucer's range is wide as 
 that of Shakspeare, — if we omit that side of 
 Shakspeare's mind which confronts the other 
 world, and out of which Hamlet sprang, — and 
 his men and women are even more real, and 
 more easily matched in the living and breath- 
 ing world. For in Shakspeare's characters, 
 as in his language, there is surplusage, 
 superabundance ; the measure is heaped and 
 running over. From his sheer wealth, he is 
 often the most ////dramatic of writers. He 
 is so frequently greater than his occasion, 
 he has no small change to suit emergencies, 
 and we have guineas in place of groats. 
 Romeo is more than a mortal lover, and 
 Mercutio more than a mortal wit ; the kings 
 in the Shakspearian world are more kingly 
 than earthly sovereigns ; Rosalind's laughter 
 was never heard save in the Forest of Arden. 
 His madmen seem to have eaten of some 
 " strange root." No such boon companion 
 as Falstaff ever heard chimes at midnight. 
 His very clowns are transcendental, with 
 scraps of wisdom springing out of their fool- 
 ishest speech. Chaucer, lacking Shaks 
 peare's excess and prodigality of genius, 
 could not so gloriously err, and his creations 
 have a harder, drier, more realistic look ;
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 273 
 
 are more like the people we hear uttering 
 ordinary English speech, and see on ordinary 
 country roads against an ordinary English 
 sky. If need were, any one of them could 
 drive pigs to market. Chaucer's characters 
 are individual enough, their idiosyncrasies 
 are sharply enough defined, but they are to 
 some extent literal and prosaic ; they are of 
 the " earth, earthy ; " out of his imagination 
 no Ariel ever sprang, no half-human, halt- 
 brutish Caliban ever crept. He does not 
 effloresce in illustrations and images, the 
 flowers do not hide the grass ; his pictures 
 are masterpieces, but they are portraits, and 
 the man is brought out by a multiplicity of 
 short touches, — caustic, satirical, and matter 
 of fact. His poetry maybe said to resemble 
 an English country road, on which passen- 
 gers of different degrees of rank are contin- 
 ually passing, — now knight, now boor, now 
 abbot : Spenser's, for instance, and all the 
 more fanciful styles, to a tapestry on which 
 a whole Olympus has been wrought. The 
 figures on the tapestry are much the more 
 noble-looking, it is true ; but then they are 
 dreams and phantoms, whereas the people 
 on the country road actually exist. 
 
 The " Knight's Tale " — which is the first 
 told on the way to Canterbury — is a chival- 
 
 18
 
 274 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 rous legend, full of hunting, battle, and 
 tournament. Into it, although the scene is 
 laid in Greece, Chaucer has, with a fine scorn 
 of anachronism, poured all the splendour, 
 colour, pomp, and circumstance of the four- 
 teenth century. It is brilliant as a banner 
 displayed to the sunlight. It is real cloth of 
 gold. Compared with it, " Ivanhoe " is a 
 spectacle at Astley's. The style is every- 
 where more adorned than is usual, although 
 even here, and in the richest parts, the short, 
 homely, caustic Chaucerian line is largely 
 employed. The " Man of Law's Tale," again, 
 is distinguished by quite a different merit. 
 It relates the sorrows and patience of Con- 
 stance, and is filled with the beauty of holi- 
 ness. Constance might have been sister to 
 Cordelia ; she is one of the white lilies of 
 womanhood. Her story is almost the tender- 
 est in our literature. And Chaucer's art 
 comes out in this, that although she would 
 spread her hair, nay, put her very heart be- 
 neath the feet of those who wrong her, we 
 do not cease for one moment to respect her. 
 This is a feat which has but seldom been 
 achieved. It has long been a matter of re- 
 proach to Mr. Thackeray, for instance, that 
 the only faculty with which he gifts his good 
 women is a supreme faculty of tears. To
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 275 
 
 draw any very high degree of female patience 
 is one of the most difficult of tasks. If vou 
 represent a woman bearing wrong with a 
 continuous unmurmuring meekness, pre- 
 senting to blows, come from what quarter 
 they may, nothing but a bent neck, and eye- 
 lids humbly drooped, you are in nine cases 
 out of ten painting elaborately the portrait 
 of a fool ; and if you miss making her a fool, 
 you are certain to make her a bore. Your 
 patient woman, in books and in life, does 
 not draw on our gratitude. When her good- 
 ness is not stupidity, — which it frequently is, 
 — it is insulting. She walks about an in- 
 carnate rebuke. Her silence is an incessant 
 complaint. A teacup thrown at your head 
 is not half so alarming as her meek, much- 
 wronged, unretorting face. You begin to 
 suspect that she consoles herself with the 
 thought that there is another world, where 
 brutal brothers and husbands are settled 
 with for their behaviour to their angelic wives 
 and sisters in this. Chaucer's Constance is 
 neither fool nor bore, although in the hands 
 of anybody else she would have been one 
 or the other, or both. Like the holy religion 
 which she symbolises, her sweet face draws 
 blessing and love wherever it goes ; it heals 
 old wounds with its beauty, it carries peace
 
 276 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 into the heart of discord, it touches murder 
 itself into soft and penitential tears. In 
 reading the old tender-hearted poet, we feel 
 that there is something in a woman's sweet- 
 ness and forgiveness that the masculine mind 
 cannot fathom ; and we adore the hushed 
 step and still countenance of Constance 
 almost as if an angel passed. 
 
 Chaucer's orthography is unquestionably 
 uncouth at first sight ; but it is not difficult 
 to read if you keep a good glossary beside 
 you for occasional reference, and are willing 
 to undergo a little trouble. The language 
 is antique, but it is full of antique flavour. 
 Wine of excellent vintage originally, it 
 has improved through all the years it has 
 been kept. A very little trouble on the 
 reader's part, in the reign of Anne, would 
 have made him as intelligible as Addi- 
 son ; a very little more, in the reign of 
 Queen Victoria, will make him more in- 
 telligible than Mr. Browning. Yet somehow 
 it has been a favourite idea with many poets 
 that he required modernisation, and that 
 they were the men to do it. Dryden, Pope, 
 and Wordsworth have tried their hands on 
 him. Wordsworth performed his work in a 
 reverential enough spirit ; but it may be 
 doubted whether his efforts have brought
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 277 
 
 the old poet a single new reader. Dryden 
 and Pope did not translate or modernise 
 Chaucer, they committed assault and bat- 
 tery upon him. They turned his exquisitely 
 naive humour into their own coarseness, they 
 put doubles entendre into his mouth, they 
 blurred his female faces, — as a picture is 
 blurred when the hand of a Vandal is drawn 
 over its yet wet colours, — and they turned 
 his natural descriptions into the natural 
 descriptions of "Windsor Forest" and the 
 " Fables." The grand old writer does not 
 need translation or modernisation ; but per- 
 haps, if it be done at all, it had better be 
 reached in that way. For the benefit of 
 younger readers, I subjoin short prose ver- 
 sions of two of the " Canterbury Tales," — a 
 story-book than which the world does not 
 possess a better. Listen, then, to the tale 
 the Knight told as the pilgrims rode to 
 Canterbury : — 
 
 " There was once, as old stories tell, a 
 certain Duke Theseus, lord and governor of 
 Athens. The same was a great warrior and 
 conqueror of realms. He defeated the Ama- 
 zons, and wedded the queen of that country, 
 Hypolita. After his marriage, the duke, his 
 wife, and his sister Emily, with all their 
 host, were riding towards Athens, when they
 
 278 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 were aware that a company of ladies, clad 
 in black, were kneeling two by two on the 
 highway, wringing their hands and filling the 
 air with lamentations. The duke, beholding 
 this piteous sight, reined in his steed and 
 inquired the reason of their grief. Whereat 
 one of the ladies, queen to the slain King 
 Capeneus, told him that at the siege of 
 Thebes (of which town they were), Creon, 
 the conqueror, had thrown the bodies of 
 their husbands in a heap, and would on no 
 account allow them to be buried, so that 
 their limbs were mangled by vultures and 
 wild beasts. At the hearing of this great 
 wrong, the duke started down from his horse, 
 took the ladies one by one in his arms and 
 comforted them, sent Hypolita and Emily 
 home, displayed his great white banner, and 
 immediately rode towards Thebes with his 
 bust. Arriving at the city, he attacked 
 boldly, slew the tyrant Creon with his own 
 hand, tore down the houses, — wall, roof, 
 and rafter, — and then gave the bodies to 
 the weeping ladies that they might be hon- 
 ourably interred. While searching amongst 
 the slain Thebans, two young knights were 
 found grievously wounded, and by the rich- 
 ness of their armour they were known to be 
 of the blood royal. These young knights,
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 279 
 
 Palamon and Arcite by name, the duke 
 carried to Athens and flung into perpetual 
 prison. Here they lived year by year in 
 mourning and woe. It happened one May 
 morning that Palamon, who by the clemency 
 of his keeper was roaming about in an upper 
 chamber, looked out and beheld Emily 
 singing in the garden and gathering flowers. 
 At the sight of the beautiful apparition he 
 started and cried, ' Ha ! ' Arcite rose up, 
 crying, 'Dear cousin, what is the matter?' 
 when he too was stricken to the heart by the 
 shaft of her beauty. Then the prisoners 
 began to dispute as to which had the better 
 right to love her. Palamon said he had seen 
 her first ; Arcite said that in love each man 
 fought for himself; and so they disputed day 
 by day. Now, it so happened that at this 
 time the Duke Perotheus came to visit his 
 old playfellow and friend Theseus, and at his 
 intercession Arcite was liberated, on the con- 
 dition that on pain of death he should never 
 again be found in the Athenian dominions. 
 Then the two knights grieved in their hearts. 
 < What matters liberty?' said Arcite, — 'I 
 am a banished man ! Palamon in his 
 dungeon is happier than I. He can see 
 Emily and be gladdened by her beauty ! ' 
 ' Woe is me ! ' said Palamon ; ' here must I
 
 280 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 remain in durance. Arcite is abroad ; he 
 may make sharp war on the Athenian bor- 
 der, and win Emily by the sword.' When 
 Arcite returned to his native city he became 
 so thin and pale with sorrow that his friends 
 scarcely knew him. One night the god 
 Mercury appeared to him in a dream and 
 told him to return to Athens, for in that city 
 destiny had shaped an end of his woes. He 
 arose next morning and went. He entered 
 as a menial into the service of the Duke 
 Theseus, and in a short time was promoted 
 to be page of the chamber to Emily the 
 bright. Meanwhile, by the help of a friend, 
 Palamon, who had drugged his jailer with 
 spiced wine, made his escape, and, as morn- 
 ing began to dawn, he hid himself in a 
 grove. That very morning Arcite had rid- 
 den from Athens to gather some green 
 branches to do honour to the month of May, 
 and entered the grove in which Palamon was 
 concealed. When he had gathered his green 
 branches he sat down, and, after the manner 
 of lovers (who have no constancy of spirits), 
 he began to pour forth his sorrows to the 
 empty air. I'alamon, knowing his voice, 
 started up with a white face : ' False traitor 
 Arcite ! now I have found thee. Thou hast 
 deceived the Duke Theseus ! I am the lover of
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 281 
 
 Emily, and thy mortal foe ! Had I a weapon, 
 one of us should never leave this grove 
 alive ! ' 'By God, whq sitteth above ! ' cried 
 the fierce Arcite, ' were it not that thou art 
 sick and mad for love, I would slay thee 
 here with my own hand ! Meats, and drinks, 
 and bedding I shall bring thee to-night, to- 
 morrow swords and two suits of armour: 
 take thou the better, leave me the worse, 
 and then let us see who can win the lady.' 
 'Agreed,' said Palamon ; and Arcite rode 
 away in great fierce joy of heart. Next 
 morning, at the crowing of the cock, Arcite 
 placed two suits of armour before him on his 
 horse, and rode towards the grove. When 
 they met, the colour of their faces changed. 
 Each thought, ' Here comes my mortal 
 enemy; one of us must be dead.' Then, 
 friend-like, as if they had been brothers, 
 they assisted each the other to rivet on the 
 armour ; that done, the great bright swords 
 went to and fro, and they were soon stand- 
 ing ankle-deep in blood. That same morn- 
 ing the Duke Theseus, his wife, and 
 Emily went forth to hunt the hart with 
 hound and horn, and, as destiny ordered it, 
 the chase led them to the very grove in 
 which the knights were fighting. Theseus, 
 shading his eyes from the sunlight with his
 
 282 Geoffrey < Ch a it cer. 
 
 hand, saw them, and, spurring his horse 
 between them, cried, ' What manner of men 
 are ye, fighting here without judge or officer? ' 
 Whereupon Palamon said, ' I am that Pala- 
 mon who has broken your prison ; this is 
 Arcite the banished man, who, by returning 
 to Athens, has forfeited his head. Do with 
 us as you list. I have no more to say.' 
 ' You have condemned yourselves ! ' cried 
 the duke ; ' by mighty Mars the red, both 
 of you shall die ! ' Then Emily and the 
 queen fell at his feet, and, with prayers and 
 tears and white hands lifted up, besought the 
 lives of the young knights, which was soon 
 granted. Theseus began to laugh when he 
 thought of his own young days. ' What a 
 mighty god is Love ! ' quoth he. ' Here are 
 Palamon and Arcite fighting for my sister, 
 while they know she can only marry one. 
 Fight they ever so much, she cannot marry 
 both. I therefore ordain that both of you 
 go away, and return this day year, each 
 bringing with him a hundred knights ; and 
 let the victor in solemn tournament have 
 Emily for wife.' Who was glad now but 
 Palamon ! who sprang up for joy but Arcite ! 
 " When the twelve months had nearly 
 passed away, there was in Athens a great 
 noise of workmen and hammers. The duke
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 283 
 
 was busy with preparations. He built a 
 large amphitheatre, seated, round and 
 round, to hold thousands of people. He 
 erected also three temples, — one for Diana, 
 one for Mars, one for Venus : how rich 
 these were, how full of paintings and images, 
 the tongue cannot tell ! Never was such 
 preparation made in the world. At last the 
 day arrived in which the knights were to 
 make their entrance into the city. A noise 
 of trumpets was heard, and through the city 
 rode Palamon and his train. With him came 
 Lycurgus, the king of Thrace. He stood in 
 a great car of gold, drawn by four white 
 bulls, and his face was like a griffin when he 
 looked about. Twenty or more hounds 
 used for hunting the lion and the bear ran 
 about the wheels of his car; at his back 
 rode a hundred lords, stern and stout. 
 Another burst of trumpets, and Arcite en- 
 tered with his troop. By his side rode 
 Emetrius, the king of India, on a bay steed 
 covered with cloth of gold. His hair was 
 yellow, and glittered like the sun ; when he 
 looked upon the people, they thought his 
 face was like the face of a lion ; his voice 
 was like the thunder of a trumpet. He bore 
 a white eagle on his wrist, and tame lions 
 and leopards ran among the horses of his
 
 2 84 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 train. They came to the city on a Sunday 
 morning, and the jousts were to begin on 
 Monday. What pricking of squires back- 
 wards and forwards, what clanking of ham- 
 mers, what baying of hounds, that day ! At 
 last it was noon of Monday. Theseus de- 
 clared from his throne that no blood was to 
 be shed, that they should take prisoners 
 only, and that he who was once taken pris- 
 oner should on no account again mingle in 
 the fray. Then the duke, the queen, 
 Emily, and the rest, rode to the lists with 
 trumpets and melody. They had no sooner 
 taken their places than through the gate of 
 Mars rode Arcite and his hundred, display- 
 ing a red banner. At the self-same moment 
 Palamon and his company entered by the 
 gate of Venus, with a banner white as milk. 
 They were then arranged in two ranks, 
 their names were called over, the gates were 
 shut, the herald gave his cry, loud and clear 
 rang the trumpet, and crash went the spears, 
 
 if made of glass, when the knights met in 
 battle shock. There might you see a knight 
 unhorsed, a second crushing his way 
 through the press, armed with a mighty 
 
 ice, a third hurt and taken prisoner. 
 Many a time that day in the swaying battle 
 did the two Thebans meet, and thrice were
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer, 285 
 
 they unhorsed. At last, near the setting of 
 the sun, when Palamon was righting with 
 Arcite, he was wounded by Emetrius, and 
 the battle thickened at the place. Emetrius 
 is thrown out of his saddle a spear's length. 
 Lycurgus is overthrown, and rolls on the 
 ground, horse and man ; and Palamon is 
 dragged by main force to the stake. Then 
 Theseus rose up where he sat, and cried, 
 1 Ho ! no more ; Arcite of Thebes hath won 
 Emily ! ' at which the people shouted so 
 loudly that it almost seemed the mighty 
 lists would fall. Arcite now put up his hel- 
 met, and, curveting his horse through the 
 open space, smiled to Emily, when a fire 
 from Pluto started out of the earth ; the 
 horse shied, and his rider was thrown on his 
 head on the ground. When he was lifted, 
 his breast was broken, and his face was as 
 black as coal. Then there was grief in 
 Athens ; every one wept. Soon after, Arcite, 
 feeling the cold death creeping up from his 
 feet and darkening his face and eyes, called 
 Palamon and Emily to his bedside, when he 
 joined their hands, and died. The dead body 
 was laid on a pile, dressed in splendid war 
 gear ; his naked sword was placed by his side ; 
 the pile was heaped with gums, frankincense, 
 and odours ; a torch was applied ; and when
 
 286 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 the flames rose up, and the smoky fragrance 
 rolled to heaven, the Greeks galloped round 
 three times, with a great shouting and 
 clashing of shields." 
 
 The Man of Law's tale runs in this wise : 
 " There dwelt in Syria once a company of 
 merchants, who scented every land with 
 their spices. They dealt in jewels, and cloth 
 of gold, and sheeny satins. It so happened 
 that while some of them were dwelling in 
 Rome for traffic, the people talked of noth- 
 ing save the wonderful beauty of Con- 
 stance, the daughter of the emperor. She 
 was so fair that every one who looked upon 
 her face fell in love with her. In a short 
 time the ships of the merchants, laden with 
 rich wares, were furrowing the green sea, 
 going home. When they came to their na- 
 tive city they could talk of nothing but the 
 marvellous beauty of Constance. Their 
 words being reported to the Sultan, he de- 
 ter nined that none other should be his wife; 
 an 1 for this purpose he abandoned the reli- 
 gion of the false prophet, and was baptised 
 in the Christian faith. Ambassadors passed 
 between the courts, and the day came at 
 length when Constance was to leave Rome 
 f>r her husband's palace in Syria. What 
 kisses and. tears and lingering embraces 1
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 287 
 
 What blessings on the little golden head 
 which was so soon to lie in the bosom of a 
 stranger ! What state and solemnity in the 
 procession which wound down from the 
 shore to the ship ! At last it was Syria. 
 Crowds of people were standing on the 
 beach. The mother of the Sultan was there ; 
 and when Constance stepped ashore, she 
 took her in her arms and kissed her as if she 
 had been her own child. Soon after, with 
 trumpets and melody and the trampling of in- 
 numerable horses, the Sultan came. Every- 
 thing was joy and happiness. But the smiling 
 demoness, his mother, could not forgive him 
 for changing his faith, and she resolved to 
 slay him that very night, and seize the gov- 
 ernment of the kingdom. He and all his 
 lords were stabbed in the rich hall while 
 they were sitting at their wine. Constance 
 alone escaped. She was then put into a 
 ship alone, with food and clothes, and told 
 that she might find her way back to Italy. 
 She sailed away, and was never seen by that 
 people. For five years she wandered to and 
 fro upon the sea. Do you ask who pre- 
 served her? The same God who fed Elijah 
 with ravens, and saved Daniel in the horri- 
 ble den. At last she floated into the English 
 seas, and was thrown by the waves on the
 
 288 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 Northumberland shore, near which stood a 
 great castle. The constable of the castle 
 came down in the morning to see the woful 
 woman. She spoke a kind of corrupt Latin, 
 and could neither tell her name nor the 
 name of the country of which she was a na- 
 tive. She said she was so bewildered in the 
 sea that she remembered nothing. The man 
 could not help loving her, and so took her 
 home to live with himself and his wife. Now, 
 through the example and teaching of Con- 
 stance, Dame Hermigild was converted to 
 Christianity. It happened also that three 
 aged Christian Britons were living near that 
 place in great fear of their pagan neigh- 
 bours, and one of these men was blind. 
 ( )ne day, as the constable, his wife, and Con- 
 stance were walking along the sea-shore, 
 they were met by the blind man, who called 
 out, ' In the name of Christ, give me my 
 sight, Dame Hermigild ! ' At this, on ac- 
 count of her husband, she was sore afraid ; 
 but, encouraged by Constance, she wrought 
 a ,u r reat miracle, and gave the blind man his 
 sight. But Satan, the enemy of all, wanted 
 to destroy Constance, and he employed a 
 young knight for that purpose. This knight 
 had loved her with a foul affection, to which 
 she could give no return. At last, wild for
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 289 
 
 revenge, he crept at night into Hermigild's 
 chamber, slew her, and laid the bloody knife 
 on the innocent pillow of Constance. The 
 next morning there was woe and dolour in 
 the house. She was brought before Alia, 
 the king, charged with the murder. The 
 people could not believe that she had done 
 this thing ; they knew she loved Hermigild 
 so. Constance fell down on her knees and 
 prayed to God for succour. Have you ever 
 been in a crowd in which a man is being led 
 to death, and, seeing a wild, pale face, know 
 by that sign that you are looking upon the 
 doomed creature? — so wild, so pale looked 
 Constance when she stood before the king 
 and people. The tears ran down Alla's face. 
 'Go fetch a book/ cried he; 'and if this 
 knight swears that the woman is guilty, she 
 shall surely die.' The book was brought, 
 the knight took the oath, and that moment 
 an unseen hand smote him on the neck, so 
 that he fell down on the floor, his eyes 
 bursting out of his head. Then a celestial 
 voice was heard in the midst, crying, ' Thou 
 hast slandered a daughter of Holy Church 
 in high presence, and yet I hold my peace.' 
 A great awe fell on all who heard, and the 
 king and multitudes of his people were con- 
 verted. Shortly after this, Alia wedded 
 
 19
 
 290 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 Constance with great richness and solem- 
 nity. At length he was called to defend his 
 border against the predatory Scots, and in 
 his absence a man-child was born. A mes- 
 senger was sent with the blissful tidings to 
 the king's camp ; but, on his way, the mes- 
 senger turned aside to the dwelling of Don- 
 egild, the king's mother, and said, ' Be blithe, 
 madam ; the queen has given birth to a son, 
 and joy is in the land. Here is the letter 
 I bear to the king.' The wicked Donegild 
 said, ' You must be already tired ; here are 
 refreshments.' And while the simple man 
 drank ale and wine, she forged a letter, say- 
 ing that the queen had been delivered of a 
 creature so fiendish and horrible that no one 
 in the castle could bear to look upon it. 
 This letter the messenger gave to the king ; 
 and who can tell his grief ! But he wrote in 
 reply, ' Welcome be the child that Christ 
 sends ! Welcome, O Lord, be thy pleasure ! 
 Be careful of my wife and child till my re- 
 turn.' The messenger on his return slept at 
 Donegild' s court, with the letter under his 
 girdle. It was stolen while in his drunken 
 sleep, and another put in its place, charging 
 the constable not to let Constance remain 
 three days in the kingdom, but to send her 
 and her child away in the same ship in
 
 Geoffrey Chaucer. 291 
 
 which she had come. The constable could 
 not help himself. Thousands are gathered 
 on the shore. With a face wild and pale as 
 when she came from the sea, and bearing her 
 crying infant in her arms, she comes through 
 the crowd, which shrinks back, leaving a 
 lane for her sorrow. She takes her seat in 
 the little boat ; and while the cruel people 
 gaze hour by hour from the shore, she passes 
 into the sunset, and away out into the night 
 under the stars. When Alia returned from 
 the war, and found how he had been de- 
 ceived, he slew his mother, in the bitterness 
 of his heart. 
 
 " News had come to Rome of the cruelty 
 of the Sultan's mother to Constance, and an 
 army was sent to waste her country. After 
 the land had been burned and desolated, the 
 commander was crossing the seas in triumph, 
 when he met the ship sailing in which sat 
 Constance and her little boy. They were 
 both brought to Rome, and although the 
 commander's wife and Constance were cou- 
 sins, the one did not know the other. By 
 this time, remorse for the slaying of his 
 mother had seized Alla's mind, and he could 
 find no rest. He resolved to make a pil- 
 grimage to Rome in search of peace. He 
 crossed the Alps with his train, and entered
 
 29 2 Geoffrey Chaucer. 
 
 the city with great glory and magnificence. 
 One day he feasted at the commander's 
 house, at which Constance dwelt ; and 
 at her request her little son was admitted, 
 and during the progress of the feast the 
 child went and stood looking in the king's 
 face. ' What fair child is that standing yon- 
 der?' said the king. 'By St. John,. I know 
 not ! ' quoth the commander ; ' he has a 
 mother, but no father that I know of.' And 
 then he told the king — who seemed all the 
 while like a man stunned — how he had 
 found the mother and child floating about 
 on the sea. The king rose from the table 
 and sent for Constance ; and when he saw 
 her, and thought on all her wrongs, he could 
 not refrain from tears. ' This is your little 
 son, Maurice,' she said, as she led him in by 
 the hand. Next day she met the emperor 
 her father in the street, and, falling down on 
 her knees before him, said, ' Father, has the 
 remembrance of your young child Constance 
 gone out of your mind? I am that Con- 
 stance whom you sent to Syria, and who 
 was thought to be lost in the sea.' That 
 day there was great joy in Rome; and soon 
 afterwards Alia, with his wife and child, re- 
 turned to England, where they lived in great 
 prosperity till he died."
 
 > 
 
 a 
 a 
 
 f 
 
 a
 
 ,..,.....»>- .,**.... ,.j* 
 
 \OST men seek solitude from 
 wounded vanity, from disap- 
 pointed ambition, from a miscar- 
 riage in the passions; but some 
 others from native instinct, as a duckling 
 seeks water. I have taken to my solitude, 
 such as it is, from an indolent turn of mind ; 
 and this solitude I sweeten by an imagina- 
 tive sympathy which re-creates the past for 
 me> — the past of the world, as well as the 
 past which belongs to me as an individual, — 
 and which makes me independent of the 
 passing moment. I see every one struggling 
 after the unattainable, but I struggle not, 
 and so spare myself the pangs of disap- 
 pointment and disgust. I have no ventures 
 at sea, and, consequently, do not fear the 
 arrival of evil tidings. I have no desire to 
 act any prominent part in the world, but I 
 am devoured by an unappeasable curiosity 
 as to the men who do act. I am not an
 
 294 Books and Gardens. 
 
 actor, I am a spectator only. My sole occu- 
 pation is sight-seeing. In a certain imperial 
 idleness, I amuse myself with the world. 
 Ambition ! What do I care for ambition ? 
 The oyster with much pain produces its 
 pearl. I take the pearl. Why should I pro- 
 duce one after this miserable, painful fash- 
 ion? It would be but a flawed one, at best. 
 These pearls I can pick up by the dozen. 
 The production of them is going on all 
 around me, and there will be a nice crop for 
 the solitary man of the next century. Look 
 at a certain silent emperor, for instance : a 
 hundred years hence his pearl will be handed 
 about from hand to hand ; will be curiously 
 scrutinised and valued ; will be set in its 
 place in the world's cabinet. I confess I 
 should like to see the completion of that 
 filmy orb. Will it be pure in colour? Will 
 its purity be marred by an ominous bloody 
 streak? Of this I am certain, that in the 
 cabinet in which the world keeps these pe- 
 culiar treasures, no one will be looked at 
 more frequently, or will provoke a greater 
 variety of opinions as to its intrinsic worth. 
 Why should I be ambitious? Shall I write 
 verses? I am not likely to surpass Mr. Ten- 
 nyson or Mr. Browning in that walk. Shall 
 I be a musician? The blackbird singing
 
 Books and Gardens. 295 
 
 this moment somewhere in my garden 
 shrubbery puts me to instant shame. Shall 
 I paint? The intensest scarlet on an artist's 
 palette is but ochre to that I saw this morn- 
 ing at sunrise. No, no ; let me enjoy Mr. 
 Tennyson's verse, and the blackbird's song, 
 and the colours of sunrise, but do not let me 
 emulate them. I am happier as it is. I do 
 not need to make history, — there are plenty 
 of people willing to save me trouble on that 
 score. The cook makes the dinner, the 
 guest eats it ; and the last, not without rea- 
 son, is considered the happier man. 
 
 In my garden I spend my days ; in my 
 library I spend my nights. My interests are 
 divided between my geraniums and my 
 books. With the flower I am in the present ; 
 with the book I am in the past. I go into 
 my library, and all history unrolls before 
 me. I breathe the morning air of the world 
 while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered 
 in it, while it vibrated only to the world's 
 first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh 
 of Eve. I see the Pyramids building ; I hear 
 the shoutings of the armies of Alexander ; I 
 feel the ground shake beneath the march of 
 Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre, — the stage 
 is time, the play is the play of the world. 
 What a spectacle it is ! What kingly pomp,
 
 296 Books and Gardens. 
 
 what processions file past, what cities burn 
 to heaven, what crowds of captives are 
 dragged at the chariot-wheels of conquerors ! 
 I hiss, or cry " Bravo," when the great actors 
 come on the shaking stage. I am a Roman 
 emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I 
 lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the 
 trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syr- 
 ian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of 
 the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac 
 in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the 
 well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by 
 desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral 
 procession, — all these things I find within 
 the boards of my Old Testament. What a 
 silence in those old books as of a half-peo- 
 pled world ; what bleating of flocks; what 
 green pastoral rest; what indubitable hu- 
 man existence ! Across brawling centuries 
 of blood and war I hear the bleating of 
 Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells 
 of Rebekah's camels. O men and women so 
 fir separated yet so near, so strange yet 
 so well known, by what miraculous power 
 do I know ye all ! Books are the true Elys- 
 ian fields, where the spirits of the dead con- 
 verse ; and into these fields a mortal may 
 venture unappalled. What king's court can 
 boast such company? What school of phi-
 
 Books and Gardens. 297 
 
 losophy such wisdom ? The wit of the an- 
 cient world is glancing and flashing there. 
 There is Pan's pipe, there are the songs of 
 Apollo. Seated in my library at night, and 
 looking on the silent faces of my books, I 
 am occasionally visited by a strange sense 
 of the supernatural. They are not collec- 
 tions of printed pages, they are ghosts. I 
 take one down, and it speaks with me in a 
 tongue not now heard on earth, and of men 
 and things of which it alone possesses 
 knowledge. I call myself a solitary, but 
 sometimes I think I misapply the term. No 
 man sees more company than I do. I travel 
 with mightier cohorts around me than ever 
 did Timour or Genghis Khan on their fiery 
 marches. I am a sovereign in my library, 
 but it is the dead, not the living, that attend 
 my levees. 
 
 The house I dwell in stands apart from 
 the little town, and relates itself to the 
 houses as I do to the inhabitants. It sees 
 everything, but is itself unseen, or, at all 
 events, unregarded. My study-window looks 
 down upon Dreamthorp like a meditative 
 eve. Without meaning it, I feel I am a spy 
 on the on-goings of the quiet place. Around 
 my house there is an old-fashioned rambling 
 garden, with close-shaven grassy plots, and
 
 298 Books and Gardens. 
 
 fantastically clipped yews which have gath- 
 ered their darkness from a hundred sum- 
 mers and winters ; and sun-dials in which 
 the sun is constantly telling his age ; and 
 statues green with neglect and the stains of 
 the weather. The garden I love more than 
 any place on earth ; it is a better study than 
 the room inside the house which is dignified 
 by that name. I like to pace its gravelled 
 walks, to sit in the moss-house, which is 
 warm and cosey as a bird's nest, and wherein 
 twilight dwells at noonday ; to enjoy the 
 feast of colour spread for me in the curiously 
 shaped floral spaces. My garden, with its 
 silence and the pulses of fragrance that 
 come and go on the airy undulations, affects 
 me like sweet music. Care stops at the 
 gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the 
 bars. Among my flowers and trees Nature 
 takes me into her own hands, and I breathe 
 freely as the first man. It is curious, pa- 
 thetic almost, I sometimes think, how deeply 
 seated in the human heart is the liking for 
 gardens and gardening. The sickly seam- 
 stress in the narrow city lane tends her box 
 of sicklier mignonette. The retired mer- 
 chant is as fond of tulips as ever was Dutch- 
 man during the famous mania. The author 
 finds a garden the best place to think out
 
 Books and Gardens. 299 
 
 his thought. In the disabled statesman 
 every restless throb of regret or ambition is 
 stilled when he looks upon his blossomed 
 apple-trees. Is the fancy too far brought 
 that this love for gardens is a reminiscence 
 haunting the race of that remote time in the 
 world's dawn when but two persons existed, 
 — a gardener named Adam, and a gardener's 
 wife called Eve? 
 
 When I walk out of my house into my 
 garden I walk out of my habitual self, my 
 every- day thoughts, my customariness of 
 joy or sorrow by which I recognise and as- 
 sure myself of my own identity. These 
 I leave behind me for a time, as the bather 
 leaves his garments on the beach. This 
 piece of garden-ground, in extent barely a 
 square acre, is a kingdom with its own inter- 
 ests, annals, and incidents. Something is 
 always happening in it. To-day is always dif- 
 ferent from yesterday. This spring a chaf- 
 finch built a nest in one of my yew-trees. 
 The particular yew which the bird did me 
 the honour to select had been clipped long 
 ago into a similitude of Adam, and, in fact, 
 went by his name. The resemblance to a 
 human figure was, of course, remote, but the 
 intention was evident. In the black shock 
 head of our first parent did the birds estab-
 
 300 Books and Gardens. 
 
 lish their habitation. A prettier, rounder, 
 more comfortable nest I never saw, and 
 many a wild swing it got when Adam bent 
 his back, and bobbed and shook his head 
 when the bitter east wind was blowing. The 
 nest interested me, and I visited it every 
 day from the time the first stained turquoise 
 sphere was laid in the warm lining of moss 
 and horse-hair, till, when I chirped, four red 
 hungry throats, eager for worm or slug, 
 opened out of a confused mass of feathery 
 down. What a hungry brood it was, to be 
 sure, and how often father and mother were 
 put to it to provide them sustenance ! I 
 went but the other day to have a peep, and, 
 behold ! brood and parent-birds were gone, 
 the nest was empty, Adam's visitors had de- 
 parted. In the corners of my bedroom win- 
 dow I have a couple of swallows' nests, and 
 nothing can be pleasanter in these summer 
 mornings than to lie in a kind of half-dream, 
 conscious all the time of the chatterings and 
 endearments of the man-loving creatures. 
 They are beautifully restless, and are con- 
 tinually darting around their nests in the 
 window-corners. All at once there is a great 
 twittering and noise; something of moment 
 has been witnessed, something of importance 
 has occurred in the swallow-world, — perhaps
 
 Books and Gardens. 301 
 
 a fly of unusual size or savour has been 
 bolted. Clinging with their feet, and with 
 heads turned charmingly aside, they chatter 
 away with voluble sweetness, then with a 
 gleam of silver they are gone, and in a trice 
 one is poising itself in the wind above my 
 tree-tops, while the other dips her wing as 
 she darts after a fly through the arches of 
 the bridge which lets the slow stream down 
 to the sea. I go to the southern wall, against 
 which I have trained my fruit-trees, and find 
 it a sheet of white and vermeil blossom ; and 
 as I know it by heart, I can notice what 
 changes take place on it day by day, what 
 later clumps of buds have burst into colour 
 and odour. What beauty in that blooming 
 wall ! the wedding-presents of a princess 
 ranged for admiration would not please me 
 half so much ; what delicate colouring ! what 
 fragrance the thievish winds steal from it, 
 without making it one odour the poorer ! with 
 what a complacent hum the bee goes past ! 
 My chaffinch's nest, my swallows, — twittering 
 but a few months ago around the kraal of 
 the Hottentot, or chasing flies around the six 
 solitary pillars of Baalbec, — with their nests 
 in the corners of my bed-room windows, 
 my long-armed fruit-trees flowering against 
 my sunny wall, are not mighty pleasures, but
 
 302 Books and Gardens. 
 
 then they are my own, and I have not to go 
 in search of them. And so, like a wise man, 
 I am content with what I have, and make it 
 richer by my fancy, which is as cheap as 
 sunlight, and gilds objects quite as prettily. 
 It is the coins in my own pocket, not the 
 coins in the pockets of my neighbour, that 
 are of use to me. Discontent has never a 
 doit in her purse, and envy is the most 
 poverty stricken of the passions. 
 
 His own children, and the children he 
 happens to meet on the country road, a man 
 regards with quite different eyes. The 
 strange, sunburnt brats returning from a 
 primrose-hunt and laden with floral spoils, 
 may be as healthy looking, as pretty, as 
 well-behaved, as sweet-tempered, as neatly 
 dressed as those that bear his name, — may 
 be in every respect as worthy of love and 
 admiration \ but then they have the misfor- 
 tune not to belong to him. That little fact 
 makes a great difference. He knows noth- 
 ing about them ; his acquaintance with them 
 is born and dead in a moment. I like my 
 garden better than any other garden, for the 
 same reason. It is my own. And owner- 
 ship in such a matter implies a great deal. 
 When I first settled here, the ground around 
 the house was sour moorland. I made the
 
 Books and Gardens 303 
 
 walk, planted the trees, built the moss-house, 
 erected the sun-dial, brought home the rho- 
 dodendrons and fed them with the mould 
 which they love so well. I am the creator 
 of every blossom, of every odour that comes 
 and goes in the wind. The rustle of my 
 trees is to my ear what his child's voice is to 
 my friends the village doctor or the village 
 clergyman. I know the genealogy of every 
 tree and plant in my garden. I watch their 
 growth as a father watches the growth of his 
 children. It is curious enough, as showing 
 from what sources objects derive their impor- 
 tance, that if you have once planted a tree for 
 other than commercial purposes, — and in 
 that case it is usually done by your orders and 
 by the hands of hirelings, — you have always 
 in it a peculiar interest. You care more for 
 it than you care for all the forests of Nor- 
 way or America. You have planted it, and 
 that is sufficient to make it peculiar amongst 
 the trees of the world. This personal interest 
 I take in every inmate of my garden, and this 
 interest I have increased by sedulous watch- 
 ing. But, really, trees and plants resemble 
 human beings in many ways. You shake a 
 packet of seed into your forcing- frame ; and 
 while some grow, others pine and die, or 
 struggle on under hereditary defect, show-
 
 304 Books and Gardens. 
 
 ing indifferent blossoms late in the season, 
 and succumb at length. So far as one could 
 discover, the seeds were originally alike, — 
 they received the same care, they were fed 
 by the same moisture and sunlight ; but of no 
 two of them are the issues the same. Do I 
 not see something of this kind in the world 
 of men, and can I not please myself with 
 quaint analogies? These plants and trees 
 have their seasons of illness and their sud- 
 den deaths. Your best rose-tree, whose 
 fame has spread for twenty miles, is smitten 
 by some fell disease ; its leaves take an un- 
 healthy hue, and in a day or so it is sapless, — 
 dead. A tree of mine, the first last spring 
 to put out its leaves, and which wore them 
 till November, made this spring no green 
 response to the call of the sunshine. Mar- 
 velling what ailed it, I went to examine, and 
 found it had been dead for months ; and yet 
 during the winter there had been no frost to 
 speak of, and more than its brothers and 
 sisters it was in no way exposed. These are 
 the tragedies of the garden, and they shadow 
 forth other tragedies nearer us. In every- 
 thing we find a kind of dim mirror of our- 
 selves. Sterne, if placed in a desert, said he 
 would love a tree; and I can fancy such a 
 love would not be altogether unsatisfying.
 
 Books and Gardens. 305 
 
 Love of trees and plants is safe. You do not 
 run risk in your affections. They are my 
 children, silent and beautiful, untouched by 
 any passion, unpolluted by evil tempers ; 
 for me they leaf and flower themselves. In 
 autumn they put off their rich apparel, but 
 next year they are back again, with dresses 
 fair as ever ; and — one can extract a kind of 
 fanciful bitterness from the thought — should 
 I be laid in my grave in winter, they would 
 all in spring be back again, with faces as 
 bright and with breaths as sweet, missing 
 me not at all. Ungrateful, the one I am 
 fondest of would blossom very prettily if 
 planted on the soil that covers me, — where 
 my dog would die, where my best friend 
 would perhaps raise an inscription ! 
 
 I like flowering plants, but I like trees 
 more, — for the reason, I suppose, that they 
 are slower in coming to maturity, are longer 
 lived, that you can become better acquainted 
 with them, and that in the course of years 
 memories and associations hang as thickly 
 on their boughs as do leaves in summer or 
 fruits in autumn. I do not wonder that 
 great earls value their trees, and never, save 
 in direst extremity, lift upon them the axe. 
 Ancient descent and glory are made audible 
 in the proud murmur of immemorial woods. 
 
 20
 
 306 Books ci7id Gardens. 
 
 There are forests in England whose leafy 
 noises may be shaped into Agincourt and 
 the names of the battle-fields of the Roses ; 
 oaks that dropped their acorns in the year 
 that Henry VIII. held his Field of the Cloth 
 of Gold, and beeches that gave shelter to the 
 deer when Shakspeare was a boy. There 
 they stand, in sun and shower, the broad- 
 armed witnesses of perished centuries ; and 
 sore must his need be who commands a 
 woodland massacre. A great English tree, the 
 rings of a century in its boll, is one of the 
 noblest of natural objects ; and it touches 
 the imagination no less than the eye, for it 
 grows out of tradition and a past order of 
 things, and is pathetic with the suggestions 
 of dead generations. Trees waving a colony 
 of rooks in the wind to-day, are older than 
 historic lines. Trees are your best antiques. 
 There are cedars on Lebanon which the 
 axes of Solomon spared, they say, when he 
 was busy with his Temple ; there are olives 
 on Olivet that might have rustled in the ears 
 of the Master and the Twelve ; there are 
 oaks in Sherwood which have tingled to the 
 horn of Robin Hood, and have listened to 
 Maid Marian's laugh. Think of an existing 
 Syrian cedar which is nearly as old as his- 
 tory, which was middle-aged before the wolf
 
 Books and Gardens. 307 
 
 suckled Romulus ! Think of an existing 
 English elm in whose branches the heron 
 was reared which the hawks of Saxon Harold 
 killed ! If you are a notable, and wish 
 to be remembered, better plant a tree than 
 build a city or strike a medal ; it will outlast 
 both. 
 
 My trees are young enough, and if they 
 do not take me away into the past, they 
 project me into the future. When I planted 
 them, I knew I was performing an act, the 
 issues of which would outlast me long. My 
 oaks are but saplings ; but what undreamed- 
 of English kings will they not outlive ! I 
 pluck my apples, my pears, my plums ; and 
 I know that from the same branches other 
 hands will pluck apples, pears, and plums 
 when this body of mine will have shrunk 
 into a pinch of dust. I cannot dream with 
 what year these hands will date their letters. 
 A man does not plant a tree for himself, he 
 plants it for posterity. And, sitting idly in 
 the sunshine, I think at times of the unborn 
 people who will, to some small extent, be 
 indebted to me. Remember me kindly, ye 
 future men and women ! When I am dead, 
 the juice of my apples will foam and spurt in 
 your cider-presses, my plums will gather for 
 you their misty bloom ; and that any of your
 
 308 Books and Gardens. 
 
 youngsters should be choked by one of my 
 cherry-stones, merciful Heaven forfend ! 
 
 In this pleasant summer weather I hold 
 my audience in my garden rather than in my 
 house. In all my interviews the sun is a 
 third party. Every village has its Fool, and, 
 of course, Dreamthorp is not without one. 
 Him I get to run my messages for me, and 
 he occasionally turns my garden borders 
 with a neat hand enough. He and I hold 
 frequent converse, and people here, I have 
 been told, think we have certain points of 
 sympathy. Although this is not meant for 
 a compliment, I take it for one. The poor 
 faithful creature's brain has strange visitors ; 
 now 't is fun, now wisdom, and now something 
 which seems in the queerest way a compound 
 of both. He lives in a kind of twilight 
 which obscures objects, and his remarks 
 seem to come from another world than that 
 in which ordinary people live. He is the 
 only original person of my acquaintance ; his 
 views of life are his own, and form a singular 
 commentary on those generally accepted. 
 He is dull enough at times, poor fellow ; but 
 anon he startles you with something, and 
 you think he must have wandered out of 
 Shakspeare's plays into this out-of-the-way 
 place. Up from the village now and then
 
 Books and Gardens. 309 
 
 comes to visit me the tall, gaunt, atrabilious 
 confectioner, who has a hankering after Red- 
 republicanism, and the destruction of Queen, 
 Lords, and Commons. Guy Fawkes is, I 
 believe, the only martyr in his calendar. The 
 sourest-tempered man, I think, that ever 
 engaged in the manufacture of sweetmeats. 
 I wonder that the oddity of the thing never 
 strikes himself. To be at all consistent, he 
 should put poison in his lozenges, and be- 
 come the Herod of the village innocents. 
 One of his many eccentricities is a love for 
 flowers, and he visits me often to have a look 
 at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen 
 to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, 
 and take my revenge by sending the gloomy 
 egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and 
 a gay-coloured flower stuck in a button hole. 
 He goes quite unconscious of my floral satire. 
 The village clergyman and the village 
 doctor are great friends of mine ; they come 
 to visit me often, and smoke a pipe with me 
 in my garden. The twain love and respect 
 each other, but they regard the world from 
 different points of view, and I am now and 
 again made witness of a good-humoured 
 passage of arms. The clergyman is old, 
 unmarried, and a humourist. His sallies 
 and his gentle eccentricities seldom provoke
 
 310 Books and Gardens. 
 
 laughter, but they are continually awakening 
 the pleasantest smiles. Perhaps what he 
 has seen of the world, its sins, its sorrows, 
 its death-beds, its widows and orphans, has 
 tamed his spirit and put a tenderness into 
 his wit. I do not think I have ever encoun- 
 tered a man who so adorns his sacred pro- 
 fession. His pious, devout nature produces 
 sermons just as naturally as my apple-trees 
 produce apples. He is a tree that flowers 
 every Sunday. Very beautiful in his rever- 
 ence for the Book, his trust in it ; through 
 long acquaintance, its ideas have come to 
 colour his entire thought, and you come 
 upon its phrases in his ordinary speech. He 
 is more himself in the pulpit than anywhere 
 else, and you get nearer him in his sermons 
 than you do sitting with him at his tea-table, 
 or walking with him on the country roads. 
 He does not feel confined in his orthodoxy ; 
 in it he is free as a bird in the air. The 
 doctor is, I conceive, as good a Christian as 
 the clergyman, but he is impatient of pale 
 or limit ; he never comes to a fence without 
 feeling a desire to get over it. He is a great 
 hunter of insects, and he thinks that the 
 wings of his butterflies might yield very 
 excellent texts ; he is fond of geology, and 
 cannot, especially when he is in the company
 
 Books and Gardens. 311 
 
 of the clergyman, resist the temptation of 
 hurling a fossil at Moses. He wears his 
 scepticism as a coquette wears her ribbons, 
 — to annoy if he cannot subdue ; and when 
 his purpose is served, he puts his scepticism 
 aside, — as the coquette puts her ribbons. 
 C.reat arguments arise between them, and 
 the doctor loses his field through his loss of 
 temper, — which, however, he regains before 
 any harm is done ; for the worthy man is 
 irascible withal, and opposition draws fire 
 from him. 
 
 After an outburst, there is a truce between 
 the friends for a while, till it is broken by 
 theological battle over the age of the world, 
 or some other the like remote matter, which 
 seems important to me only in so far as 
 it affords ground for disputation. These 
 truces are broken sometimes by the doctor, 
 sometimes by the clergyman. T'other eve- 
 ning the doctor and myself were sitting in 
 the garden, smoking each a meditative pipe. 
 Dreamthorp lay below, with its old castle 
 and its lake, and its hundred wreaths 01 
 smoke floating upward into the sunset. 
 Where we sat, the voices of children playing 
 in the street could hardly reach us. Sud- 
 denly a step was heard on the gravel, and 
 the next moment the clergyman appeared, as
 
 o 
 
 i 2 Books and Gardens. 
 
 it seemed to me, with a peculiar airiness of 
 aspect, and the light of a humourous satisfac- 
 tion in his eye. After the usual salutations, 
 he took his seat beside us, lifted a pipe of 
 the kind called "churchwarden" from the 
 box on the ground, filled and lighted it, and 
 for a little while we were silent all three. The 
 clergyman then drew an old magazine from 
 his side pocket, opened it at a place where 
 the leaf had been carefully turned down, and 
 drew my attention to a short poem which 
 had for its title, "Vanity Fair," imprinted in 
 German text. This poem he desired me to 
 read aloud. Laying down my pipe carefully 
 beside me, I complied with his request. It 
 ran thus ; for as after my friends went it was 
 left behind, I have written it down word for 
 word : — 
 
 " The world-old Fair of Vanity 
 
 Since Bunyan's day has grown discreeter 
 No more it flocks in crowds to see 
 A blazing Paul or Peter. 
 
 " Not that a single inch it swerves 
 
 From hate of saint or love of sinner; 
 But martyrs shock aesthetic nerves, 
 And spoil the go&t of dinner. 
 
 " Raise but a shout, or flaunt a scarf, — 
 Its mobs are all agog and flying ; 
 They'll cram tin- levee of a dwarf, 
 And leave a llaydon dying.
 
 Books and Gardens. 313 
 
 " They live upon each newest thing, 
 They fill their idle days with seeing; 
 Fresh news of courtier and of king 
 Sustains their empty being. 
 
 " The statelier, from year to year, 
 
 Maintain their comfortable stations 
 At the wide windows that o'erpeer 
 The public square of nations ; 
 
 " While through it heaves, with cheers and groans, 
 Harsh drums of battle in the distance, 
 Frightful with gallows, ropes, and thrones, 
 The medley of existence ; 
 
 " Amongst them tongues are wagging much: 
 Hark to the philosophic sisters ! 
 To his, whose keen satiric touch, 
 Like the Medusa, blisters ! 
 
 " All things are made for talk, — St. Paul; 
 The pattern of an altar cushion ; 
 A Paris wild with carnival, 
 Or red with revolution. 
 
 " And much they knew, that sneering crew, 
 Of things above the world and under: 
 They search'd the hoary deep ; they knew 
 The secret of the thunder; 
 
 " The pure white arrow of the light 
 They split into its colours seven ; 
 They weighed the sun ; they dwelt, like night, 
 Among the stars of heaven ; 
 
 " They 've found out life and death, — the first 
 Is known but to the upper classes; 
 The second, pooh ! 't is at the worst 
 A dissolution into gases.
 
 314 Books and Gardens. 
 
 " And vice and virtue are akin, 
 
 As black and white from Adam issue, — 
 One flesh, one blood, though sheeted in 
 A different coloured tissue. 
 
 " Their science groped from star to star ; — 
 But then herself found nothing greater. 
 What wonder? — in a Leyden jar 
 They bottled the Creator. 
 
 " Fires fluttered on their lightning-rod; 
 
 They cleared the human mind from error; 
 They emptied heaven of its God, 
 And Tophet of its terror. 
 
 " Better the savage in his dance 
 
 Than these acute and syllogistic ! 
 [letter a reverent ignorance 
 Than knowledge atheistic ! 
 
 " Have they dispelled one cloud that lowers 
 So darkly on the human creature? 
 They with their irreligious powers 
 Have subjugated nature. 
 
 •• Hut, as a satyr wins the charms 
 Of maiden in a forest hearted, 
 He finds, when clasped within his arms, 
 The outraged soul departed." 
 
 When I had done reading these verses, 
 the clergyman glanced slyly along to see the 
 effect of his shot. The doctor drew two or 
 three hurried whiffs, gave a huge grunt of 
 scorn, then, turning sharply, asked, " What is 
 ' a reverent ignorance ' ? What is ' a knowl- 
 edge atheistic ' ? " The clergyman, skewered 
 by the sudden question, wriggled a little,
 
 Books and Gardens. 315 
 
 and then began to explain, — with no great 
 heart, however, for he had had his little joke 
 out, and did not care to carry it further. 
 The doctor listened for a little, and then, 
 laying down his pipe, said, with some heat, 
 " It won't do. ' Reverent ignorance ' and 
 such trash is a mere jingle of words ; that 
 you know as well as I. You stumbled on 
 these verses, and brought them up here to 
 throw them at me. They don't harm me in 
 the least, I can assure you. There is no use," 
 continued the doctor, mollifying at the sight 
 of his friend's countenance, and seeing how 
 the land lay, — " there is no use speaking to 
 our incurious, solitary friend here, who could 
 bask comfortably in sunshine for a century, 
 without once inquiring whence came the 
 light and heat. But let me tell you," lifting 
 his pipe and shaking it across me at the 
 clergyman, " that science has done services 
 to your cloth which have not always received 
 the most grateful acknowledgments. Why, 
 man," here he began to fill his pipe slowly, 
 " the theologian and the man of science, 
 although they seem to diverge and lose sight 
 of each other, are all the while working to 
 one end. Two exploring parties in Australia 
 set out from one point ; the one goes east, 
 and the other west. They lose sight of each
 
 3 1 6 Books and Gardens. 
 
 other, they know nothing of one another's 
 whereabouts ; but they are all steering to 
 one point," — the sharp spirt of a fusee on 
 the garden-seat came in here, followed by 
 an aromatic flavour in the air, — " and when 
 they do meet, which they are certain to do 
 in the long run," — here the doctor put the 
 pipe in his mouth, and finished his speech 
 with it there, — " the figure of the continent 
 has become known, and may be set down in 
 maps. The exploring parties have started 
 long ago. What folly in the one to pooh- 
 pooh or be suspicious of the exertions of 
 the other. That party deserves the greatest 
 credit which meets the other more than half 
 way." — " Bravo ! " cried the clergyman, 
 when the doctor had finished his oration ; 
 " I don't know that I could fill your place at 
 the bedside, but I am quite sure that you 
 could fill mine in the pulpit." — "I am not 
 sure that the congregation would approve of 
 the change, — I might disturb their slum- 
 bers ; " and, pleased with his retort, his cheery 
 laugh rose through a cloud of smoke into 
 the sunset. 
 
 Heigho ! mine is a dull life, I fear, when 
 this little affair of the doctor and the clergy- 
 man takes the dignity of an incident, and 
 seems worthy of being recorded.
 
 Books and Gardens. 317 
 
 The doctor was anxious that, during the 
 following winter, a short course of lectures 
 should be delivered in the village school- 
 room, and in my garden he held several con- 
 ferences on the matter with the clergyman 
 and myself. It was arranged finally that the 
 lectures should be delivered, and that one 
 of them should be delivered by me. I need 
 not say how pleasant was the writing out of 
 my discourse, and how the pleasure was 
 heightened by the slightest thrill of alarm at 
 my own temerity. My lecture I copied out 
 in my most careful hand, and, as I had it by 
 heart, I used to declaim passages of it en- 
 sconced in my moss-house, or concealed 
 behind my shrubbery trees. In these places 
 I tried it all over, sentence by sentence. 
 The evening came at last which had been 
 looked forward to for a couple of months or 
 more. The small schoolroom was filled by 
 forms on which the people sat, and a small 
 reading-desk, with a tumbler of water on it, 
 at the further end, waited for me. When I 
 took my seat, the couple of hundred eyes 
 struck into me a certain awe. I discovered 
 in a moment why the orator of the hustings 
 is so deferential to the mob. You may de- 
 spise every individual member of your audi- 
 ence, but these despised individuals, in their
 
 3 1 8 Books and Gardens. 
 
 rapacity of a collective body, overpower 
 you. I addressed the people with the most 
 unfeigned respect. When I began, too, I 
 found what a dreadful thing it is to hear 
 your own voice inhabiting the silence. You 
 are related to your voice, and yet divorced 
 from it. It is you, and yet a thing apart. 
 All the time it is going on, you can be criti- 
 cal as to its tone, volume, cadence, and other 
 qualities, as if it was the voice of a stranger. 
 Gradually, however, I got accustomed to my 
 voice, and the respect which I entertained 
 for my hearers so far relaxed that I was at 
 last able to look them in the face. I saw 
 the doctor and the clergyman smile encour- 
 agingly, and my half-witted gardener looking 
 up at me with open mouth, and the atra- 
 bilious confectioner clap his hands, which 
 made me take refuge in my paper again. I 
 got to the end of my task without any 
 remarkable incident, if I except the doctor's 
 once calling out "hear" loudly, which 
 brought the heart into my mouth, and 
 blurred half a sentence. When I sat down, 
 there were the usual sounds of approbation, 
 and the confectioner returned thanks, in the 
 name of the audience.
 
 jALL it oddity, eccentricity, hu- 
 I raour, or what you please, it is 
 ifi evident that the special flavour of 
 ^S?3^^.; mind or manner which, indepen- 
 dently of fortune, station, or profession, sets 
 a man apart and makes him distinguishable 
 from his fellows, and which gives the charm of 
 picturesqueness to society, is fast disappear- 
 ing from amongst us. A man may count the 
 odd people of his acquaintance on his fin- 
 gers ; and it is observable that these odd 
 people are generally well stricken in years. 
 They belong more to the past generation 
 than to the present. Our young men are 
 terribly alike. For these many years back, 
 the young gentlemen I have had the fortune 
 to encounter are clever, knowing, selfish, 
 disagreeable ; the young ladies are of one 
 pattern, like minted sovereigns of the same 
 reign, — excellent gold, I have no doubt, but 
 each bearing the same awfully proper image
 
 2,2 o On Vagabonds. 
 
 and superscription. There are no blanks in 
 the matrimonial lottery nowadays, but the 
 prizes are all of a value, and there is but one 
 kind of article given for the ticket. Court- 
 ship is an absurdity and a sheer waste of 
 time. If a man could but close his eyes in a 
 ball-room, dash into a bevy of muslin beau- 
 ties, carry off the fair one that accident gives 
 to his arms, his raid would be as reasonable 
 and as likely to produce happiness as the 
 more ordinary methods of procuring a 
 spouse. If a man has to choose one guinea 
 out of a bag containing one hundred and 
 fifty, what can he do? What wonderful 
 wisdom can he display in his choice? 
 There is no appreciable difference of value 
 in the golden pieces. The latest coined are 
 a little fresher, that 's all. An act of unifor- 
 mity, with heavy penalties for recusants, seems 
 to have been passed upon the English race. 
 That we can quite well account for this state 
 of things, does not make the matter better, 
 does not make it the less our duty to fight 
 against it. We are apt to be told that men 
 are too busy and women too accomplished for 
 humour of speech or originality of character 
 or manner. In the truth of this lies the pity 
 of it. If, with the exceptions of hedges that 
 divide fields, and streams that run as marches
 
 On Vagabonds. 321 
 
 between farms, every inch of soil were 
 drained, ploughed, manured, and under that 
 improved cultivation rushing up into aston- 
 ishing wheaten and oaten crops, enriching 
 tenant and proprietor, the aspect of the 
 country would be decidedly uninteresting, 
 and would present scant attraction to the 
 man riding or walking through it. In such 
 a world the tourists would be few. Person- 
 ally, I should detest a world all red and ruled 
 with the ploughshare in spring, all covered 
 with harvest in autumn. I wish a little vari- 
 ety. I desiderate moors and barren places : 
 the copse where you can flush the wood- 
 cock ; the warren where, when you approach, 
 you can see the twinkle of innumerable rab- 
 bit tails ; and, to tell the truth, would not 
 feel sorry although Reynard himself had a 
 hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the 
 demands of his rising family cost Farmer 
 Yellowleas a fat capon or two in the season. 
 The fresh, rough, heathery parts of human 
 nature, where the air is freshest, and where 
 the linnets sing, is getting encroached upon 
 by cultivated fields. Every one is making 
 himself and herself useful. Every one is 
 producing something. Everybody is clever. 
 Everybody is a philanthropist. I don't like 
 it. I love a little eccentricity. I respect 
 
 21
 
 322 On Vagabonds. 
 
 honest prejudices. I admire foolish enthu- 
 siasm in a young head better than a wise 
 scepticism. It is high time, it seems to me, 
 that a moral game-law were passed for the 
 preservation of the wild and vagrant feelings 
 of human nature. 
 
 I have advertised myself to speak of vaga- 
 bonds, and I must explain what I mean by 
 the term. We all know what was the doom 
 of the first child born of man, and it is need- 
 less for me to say that I do not wish the 
 spirit of Cain more widely diffused amongst 
 my fellow-creatures. By vagabonds, I do 
 not mean a tramp or a gipsy, or a thimble- 
 rigger, or a brawler who is brought up with 
 a black eye before a magistrate in the morn- 
 ing. The vagabond as I have him in my 
 mind's eye, and whom I dearly love, comes 
 out of quite a different mould. The man I 
 speak of, seldom, it is true, attains to the 
 dignity of a churchwarden ; he is never 
 found sitting at a reformed town-council 
 board ; he has a horror of public platforms ; 
 he never by any chance heads a subscription 
 list with a donation of fifty pounds. On 
 the other hand, he is very far from being a 
 " ne'er-do-weel," as the Scotch phrase it, or 
 an imprudent person. He does not play at 
 "Aunt Sally" on a public race-course; he
 
 On Vagabonds. 323 
 
 does not wrench knockers from the doors 
 of slumbering citizens ; he has never seen 
 the interior of a police-cell. It is quite true, 
 he has a peculiar way of looking at many 
 things. If, for instance, he is brought up 
 with cousin Milly, and loves her dearly, and 
 the childish affection grows up and strength- 
 ens in the woman's heart, and there is a fair 
 chance for them fighting the world side by 
 side, he marries her without too curiously 
 considering whether his income will permit 
 him to give dinner-parties, and otherwise 
 fashionably see his friends. Very imprudent, 
 no doubt. But you cannot convince my 
 vagabond. With the strangest logical twist, 
 which seems natural to him, he conceives 
 that he marries for his own sake, and not 
 for the sake of his acquaintances, and that 
 the possession of a loving heart and a con- 
 science void of reproach is worth, at any 
 time an odd sovereign in his pocket. The 
 vagabond is not a favourite with the respec- 
 table classes. He is particularly feared by 
 mammas who have daughters to dispose of, 
 — not that he is a bad son, or likely to prove 
 a bad husband or a treacherous friend ; but 
 somehow gold does not stick to his fingers 
 as it does to the fingers of some men. He 
 is regardless of appearances. He chooses
 
 324 On Vagabonds. 
 
 his friends neither for their fine houses nor 
 their rare wines, but for their humours, their 
 goodness of heart, their capacities of making 
 a joke and of seeing one, and for their abili- 
 ties, unknown often as the woodland violet, 
 but not the less sweet for obscurity. As a 
 consequence, his acquaintance is miscella- 
 neous, and he is often seen at other places 
 than rich men's feasts. I do believe he is a 
 gainer by reason of his vagrant ways. He 
 comes in contact with the queer corners and 
 the out-of-the-way places of human life. He 
 knows more of our common nature, just as 
 the man who walks through a country, and 
 who strikes off the main road now and then 
 to visit a ruin, or a legendary cairn of stones, 
 who drops into village inns, and talks with 
 the people he meets on the road, becomes 
 better acquainted with it than the man who 
 rolls haughtily along the turnpike in a car- 
 riage and four. We lose a great deal by 
 foolish hauteur. No man is worth much 
 who has not a touch of the vagabond in him. 
 Could I have visited London thirty years 
 >, I would rather have spent an hour with 
 Charles Lamb than with any other of its 
 residents. He was a fine specimen of the 
 vagabond, as I conceive him. His mind was 
 as full of queer nooks and tortuous passages
 
 
 
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 On Vagabonds. 325 
 
 as any mansion-house of Elizabeth's day or 
 earlier, where the rooms are cosey, albeit a 
 little low in the roof; where dusty stained 
 lights are falling on old oaken panellings; 
 where every bit of furniture has a reverent 
 flavour of ancientness ; where portraits of 
 noble men and women, all dead long ago, 
 are hanging on the walls ; and where a black- 
 letter Chaucer with silver clasps is lying 
 open on a seat in the window. There was 
 nothing modern about him. The garden of 
 his mind did not flaunt in gay parterres ; it 
 resembled those that Cowley and Evelyn 
 delighted in, with clipped trees, and shaven 
 lawns, and stone satyrs, and dark, shadow- 
 ing yews, and a sun-dial, with a Latin motto 
 sculptured on it, standing at the farther end. 
 Lamb was the slave of quip and whimsey ; he 
 stuttered out puns to the detriment of all 
 serious and improving conversation, and 
 twice or so in the year he was overtaken in 
 liquor. Well, in spite of these things, per- 
 haps on account of these things, I love 
 his memory. For love and charity ripened 
 in that nature as peaches ripen on the wall 
 that fronts the sun. Although he did not 
 blow his trumpet in the corners of the 
 streets, he was tried as few men are, and 
 fell not. He jested, that he might not weep.
 
 J 
 
 26 On Vagabonds. 
 
 He wore a martyr's heart beneath his suit 
 of motley. And only years after his death, 
 when to admiration or censure he was alike 
 insensible, did the world know his story and 
 that of his sister Mary. 
 
 All, me ! what a world this was to live in 
 two or three centuries ago, when it was get- 
 ting itself discovered — when the sunset gave 
 up America, when a steel hand had the spoil- 
 ing of Mexico and Peru ! Then were the 
 '• Arabian Nights " commonplace, enchant- 
 ments a matter of course, and romance the 
 most ordinary thing in the world. Then 
 man was courting Nature ; now he has mar- 
 ried her. Every mystery is dissipated. The 
 planet is familiar as the trodden pathway 
 running between towns. We no longer gaze 
 wistfully to the west, dreaming of the For- 
 tunate Isles. We seek our wonders now on 
 the ebbed sea-shore ; we discover our new 
 worlds with the microscope. Yet, for all 
 that time has brought and taken away, I am 
 glad to know that the vagabond sleeps in 
 our blood, and awakes now and then. Over- 
 lay human nature as you please, here and 
 there some bit of rock, or mound of aborigi- 
 nal soil, will crop out with the wild- flowers 
 growing upon it, sweetening the air. When 
 the boy throws his Delectus or his Euclid
 
 On Vagabonds. 327 
 
 aside, and takes passionately to the reading 
 of ■' Robinson Crusoe " or Bruce's " African 
 Travels," do not shake your head despond- 
 ingly over him and prophesy evil issues. 
 Let the wild hawk try its wings. It will be 
 hooded, and will sit quietly enough on the 
 falconer's perch ere long. Let the wild 
 horse career over its boundless pampas ; 
 the jerk of the lasso will bring it down soon 
 enough. Soon enough will the snaffle in 
 the mouth and the spur of the tamer subdue 
 the high spirit to the bridle, or the carriage- 
 trace. Perhaps not ; and, if so, the better for 
 all parties. Once more there will be a new 
 man and new deeds in the world. For 
 Genius is a vagabond, Art is a vagabond, 
 Enterprise is a vagabond. Vagabonds have 
 moulded the world into its present shape ; 
 they have made the houses in which we 
 dwell, the roads on which we ride and drive, 
 the very laws that govern us. Respectable 
 people swarm in the track of the vagabond as 
 rooks in the track of the ploughshare. Re- 
 spectable people do little in the world except 
 storing wine-cellars and amassing fortunes 
 for the benefit of spendthrift heirs. Respec- 
 table well-to-do Grecians shook their heads 
 over Leonidas and his three hundred when 
 they went down to Thermopylae. Respec-
 
 328 On Vagabonds. 
 
 table Spanish churchmen with shaven crowns 
 scouted the dream of Columbus. Respec- 
 table German folks attempted to dissuade 
 Luther from appearing before Charles and 
 the princes and electors of the Empire, and 
 were scandalised when he declared that 
 " Were there as many devils in Worms as 
 there were tiles on the house-tops, still 
 would he on." Nature makes us vagabonds, 
 the world makes us respectable. 
 
 In the fine sense in which I take the word, 
 the English are the greatest vagabonds on 
 the earth, and it is the healthiest trait in 
 their national character. The first fine day 
 in spring awakes the gipsy in the blood of 
 the English workman, and incontinently he 
 " babbles of green fields." On the English 
 gentleman lapped in the most luxurious 
 civilisation, and with the thousand powers 
 and resources of wealth at his command, 
 descends oftentimes a fierce unrest, a 
 Bedouin-like horror of cities and the cry of 
 the money-changer, and in a month the fiery 
 dust rises in the track of his desert steed, 
 or in the six months' polar midnight he 
 hears the big wave clashing on the icy shore. 
 The close presence of the sea feeds the 
 Englishman's restlessness. She takes pos- 
 session of his heart like some fair capricious
 
 On Vagabonds. 329 
 
 mistress. Before the boy awakes to the 
 beauty of cousin Mary, he is crazed by the 
 fascinations of ocean. With her voices of 
 ebb and flow she weaves her siren song 
 round the Englishman's coasts day and 
 night. Nothing that dwells on land can 
 keep from her embrace the boy who has 
 gazed upon her dangerous beauty, and who 
 has heard her singing songs of foreign 
 shores at the foot of the summer crag. It is 
 well that in the modern gentleman the fierce 
 heart of the Berserker lives yet. The En- 
 glish are eminently a nation of vagabonds. 
 The sun paints English faces with all the 
 colours of his climes. The Englishman is 
 ubiquitous. He shakes with fever and ague 
 in the swampy valley of the Mississippi ; he 
 is drowned in the sand pillars as they waltz 
 across the desert on the purple breath of 
 the simoom ; he stands on the icy scalp of 
 Mont Blanc ; his fly falls in the sullen Nor- 
 wegian fiords ; he invades the solitude of 
 the Cape lion \ he rides on his donkey 
 through the uncausewayed Cairo streets. 
 That wealthy people, under a despotism, 
 should be travellers seems a natural thing 
 enough. It is a way of escape from the 
 rigours of their condition. But that England 
 — where activity rages so keenly and en-
 
 330 On Vagabonds. 
 
 grosses every class ; where the prizes of 
 Parliament, literature, commerce, the bar, 
 the church, are hungered and thirsted after; 
 where the stress and intensity of life ages a 
 man before his time ; where so many of the 
 noblest break down in harness hardly half- 
 way to the goal — should, year after year, 
 send off swarms of men to roam the world, 
 and to seek out danger for the mere thrill 
 and enjoyment of it, is significant of the 
 indomitable pluck and spirit of the race. 
 There is scant danger that the rust of sloth 
 will eat into the virtue of English steel. The 
 English do the hard work and the travel- 
 ling of the world. The least revolutionary 
 nation of Europe, the one with the greatest 
 temptations to stay at home, with the greatest 
 faculty for work, with perhaps the sincerest 
 regard for wealth, is also the most nomadic. 
 How is this? It is because they are a nation 
 of vagabonds ; they have the " hungry heart " 
 that one of their poets speaks about. 
 
 There is an amiability about the genuine 
 vagabond which takes captive the heart. 
 We do not love a man for his respectability, 
 his prudence and foresight in business, his 
 capacity of living within his income, or his 
 balance at his banker's. We all admit that 
 prudence is an admirable virtue, and oc< 1
 
 On Vagabonds. 331 
 
 sionally lament, about Christmas, when bills 
 fall in, that we do not inherit it in a greater 
 degree. But we speak about it in quite a 
 cool way. It does not touch us with enthu- 
 siasm. If a calculating-machine had a hand 
 to wring, it would find few to wring it 
 warmly. The things that really move liking 
 in human beings are the gnarled nodosities 
 of character, vagrant humours, freaks of gen- 
 erosity, some little unextinguishable spark 
 of the aboriginal savage, some little sweet 
 savour of the old Adam. It, is quite wonder- 
 ful how far simple generosity and kindliness 
 of heart go in securing affection ; and, when 
 these exist, what a host of apologists spring 
 up for faults and vices even. A country 
 squire goes recklessly to the dogs; yet if he 
 has a kind word for his tenant when he 
 meets him, a frank greeting for the rustic 
 beauty when she drops a courtesy to him on 
 the highway, he lives for a whole generation 
 in an odour of sanctity. If he had been a 
 disdainful, hook-nosed prime minister who 
 had carried his country triumphantly through 
 some frightful crisis of war, these people 
 would, perhaps, never have been aware of 
 the fact ; and most certainly never would 
 have tendered him a word of thanks, even if 
 they had. When that important question,
 
 332 On Vagabonds. 
 
 "Which is the greatest foe to the public 
 weal — the miser or the spendthrift ? " is dis- 
 cussed at the artisans' debating club, the 
 spendthrift has all the eloquence on his side 
 — the miser all the votes. The miser's advo- 
 cate is nowhere, and he pleads the cause of 
 his client with only half his heart. In the 
 theatre, Charles Surface is applauded, and 
 Joseph Surface is hissed. The novel-reader's 
 affection goes out to Tom Jones, his hatred 
 to Blifil. Joseph Surface and Blifil are 
 scoundrels, it is true ; but deduct the scoun- 
 drelism, let Joseph be but a stale proverb- 
 monger and Blifil a conceited prig, and the 
 issue remains the same. Good humour and 
 generosity carry the day with the popular 
 heart all the world over. Tom Jones and 
 Charles Surface are not vagabonds to my 
 taste. They were shabby fellows both, and 
 were treated a great deal too well. But 
 there are other vagabonds whom I love, 
 and whom I do well to love. With what 
 affection do I follow little Ishmael and his 
 broken-hearted mother out into the great 
 and terrible wilderness, and see them faint 
 beneath the ardours of the sunlight ! And 
 we feel it to be strict poetic justice and com- 
 pensation that the lad so driven forth from 
 human tents should become the father of
 
 On Vagabonds. -^ZZ 
 
 wild Arabian men, to whom the air of cities 
 is poison, who work without any tool, and 
 on whose limbs no conqueror has ever yet 
 been able to rivet shackle or chain. Then 
 there are Abraham's grandchildren, Jacob 
 and Esau — the former, I confess, no favourite 
 of mine. His, up at least to his closing 
 years, when parental affection and strong 
 sorrow softened him, was a character not 
 amiable. He lacked generosity, and had too 
 keen an eye on his own advancement. He 
 did not inherit the noble strain of his ances- 
 tors. He was a prosperous man ; yet in 
 spite of his increase in flocks and herds, — 
 in spite of his vision of the ladder, with the 
 angels ascending and descending upon it, — 
 in spite of the success of his beloved son, — 
 in spite of the weeping and lamentation of 
 the Egyptians at his death, — in spite of his 
 splendid funeral, winding from the city by 
 the pyramid and the sphinx, — in spite of all 
 these things, I would rather have been the 
 hunter Esau, with birthright filched away, 
 bankrupt in the promise, rich only in fleet 
 foot and keen spear ; for he carried into the 
 wilds with him an essentially noble nature 
 — no brother with his mess of pottage could 
 mulct him of that. And he had a fine re- 
 venge ; for when Jacob, on his journey,
 
 334 On Vagabonds. 
 
 heard that his brother was near with four 
 hundred men, and made divison of his flocks 
 and her. Is, his man-servants and maid-ser- 
 vants, impetuous as a swollen hill-torrent, 
 the fierce son of the desert, baked red with 
 Syrian light, leaped down upon him, and fell 
 on his neck and wept. And Esau said, 
 " What meanest thou by all this drove which 
 I met? " and Jacob said, " These are to find 
 grace in the sight of my lord ; " then Esau 
 said, "I have enough, my brother ; keep that 
 thou hast unto thyself." O mighty prince, 
 didst thou remember thy mother's guile, the 
 skins upon thy hands and neck, and the lie 
 put upon the patriarch, as, blind with years, 
 he sat up in his bed snuffing the savory meat? 
 An ugly memory, I should fancy ! 
 
 Commend me to Shakspeare's vagabonds, 
 the most delighful in the world ! His sweet- 
 blooded and liberal nature blossomed into 
 all fine generosities as naturally as an apple- 
 bough into pink blossoms and odours. lis- 
 ten to Gonsalvo talking to the shipwrecked 
 Milan nobles camped for the night in Pros- 
 pero's isle, full of sweet voices, with Ariel 
 shooting through the enchanted air like a 
 falling star : —
 
 On Vagabonds. 335 
 
 " Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord, 
 I' the commonwealth I would by contraries 
 Execute all things ; for no kind of traffic 
 Would I admit; no name of magistrate; 
 Letters should not be known ; riches, poverty, 
 And use of service none ; contract, succession, 
 Bourne, bound of land, tilth, title, vineyard none ; 
 No use of metal coin, or wine, or oil ; 
 No occupation — all men idle — all ! 
 And women too, but innocent and pure ; 
 No sovereignty ; 
 
 All things in common nature should produce, 
 Without sweat or endurance; treason, felony, 
 Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine 
 Would I not have ; but nature would bring forth 
 < )f its own kind all foison, all abundance, 
 To feed my innocent people. 
 I would with such perfection govern, sir, 
 To excel the golden age." 
 
 What think you of a world after that pat- 
 tern? "As You Like it" is a vagabond 
 play, and, verily, if there waved in any wind 
 that blows a forest peopled like Arden's, with 
 an exiled king drawing the sweetest, human- 
 est lessons from misfortune ; a melancholy 
 Jacques, stretched by the river bank, moral- 
 ising on the bleeding deer ; a fair Rosalind, 
 chanting her saucy cuckoo-song ; fools like 
 Touchstone — not like those of our acquaint- 
 ance, my friends ; and the whole place, from 
 centre to circumference, filled with mighty 
 oak bolls, all carven with lovers' names, — 
 if such a forest waved in wind, I say, I would,
 
 336 On Vagabonds. 
 
 be my worldly prospects what they might, 
 pack up at once, and cast in my lot with that 
 vagabond company. For there I should find 
 more gallant courtesies, finer sentiments, 
 completer innocence and happiness, more 
 wit and wisdom, than I am like to do here 
 even, though I search for them from shep- 
 herd's cot to king's palace. Just to think 
 how those people lived ! Carelessly as the 
 blossoming trees, happily as the singing 
 birds, time measured only by the patter of 
 the acorn on the fruitful soil ! A world with- 
 out debtor or creditor, passing rich, yet with 
 never a doit in its purse, with no sordid care, 
 no regard for appearances ; nothing to oc- 
 cupy the young but love-making, nothing 
 to occupy the old but perusing the " sermons 
 in stones " and the musical wisdom which 
 dwells in "running brooks"! But Arden 
 forest draws its sustenance from a poet's 
 brain : the light that sleeps on its leafy pil- 
 lows is " the light that never was on sea or 
 shore." We but please and tantalise our- 
 selves with beautiful dreams. 
 
 The children of the brain become to us 
 actual existences, more actual, indeed, than 
 the people who impinge upon us in the 
 street, or who live next door. We are more 
 intimate with Shakspeare's men and women
 
 On Vagabonds. 337 
 
 than we are with our contemporaries, and 
 they are, on the whole, better company. 
 They are more beautiful in form and feature, 
 and they express themselves in a way that 
 the most gifted strive after in vain. What if 
 Shakspeare's people could walk out of the 
 play-books and settle down upon some spot 
 of earth and conduct life there? There 
 would be found humanity's whitest wheat, 
 the world's unalloyed gold. The very winds 
 could not visit the place roughly. No king's 
 court could present you such an array. 
 Where else could we find a philosopher like 
 Hamlet? a friend like Antonio? a witty 
 fellow like Mercutio? where else Imogen's 
 piquant's face ? Portia's gravity and womanly 
 sweetness? Rosalind's true heart and silvery 
 laughter? Cordelia's beauty of holiness? 
 These would form the centre of the court, 
 but the purlieus, how many-coloured ! Mal- 
 volio would walk mincingly in the sunshine 
 there ; Autolycus would filch purses. Sir 
 Andrew Aguecheek and Sir Toby Belch 
 would be eternal boon companions. And 
 as Falstaff sets out homeward from the 
 tavern, the portly knight leading the revel- 
 lers like a three-decker a line of frigates, 
 they are encountered by Dogberry, who 
 summons them to stand and answer to the
 
 33 8 On Vagabonds. 
 
 watch as they are honest men. If Mr. Dick- 
 ens's characters were gathered together, they 
 would constitute a town populous enough 
 to send a representative to Parliament. Let 
 us enter. The style of architecture is un- 
 paralleled. There is an individuality about 
 the buildings. In some obscure way they 
 remind one of human faces. There are 
 houses sly-looking, houses wicked-looking, 
 houses pompous-looking. Heaven bless us ! 
 what a rakish pump ! what a self-important 
 town-hall ! what a hard-hearted prison ! The 
 dead walls are covered with advertisements 
 of Mr. Sleary's circus. Newman Noggs 
 comes shambling along. Mr. and the Misses 
 Pecksniff come sailing down the sunny side 
 of the street. Miss Mercy's parasol is gay; 
 papa's neck-cloth is white, and terribly 
 starched. Dick Swiveller leans against a 
 wall, his hands in his pockets, a primrose 
 held between his teeth, contemplating the 
 opera of Punch and Judy, which is being 
 conducted under the management of Messrs. 
 Codlings and Short. You turn a corner and 
 you meet the coffin of little Paul Dombey 
 lx)rne along. Who would have thought of 
 encountering a funeral in this place? In the 
 afternoon you hear the rich tones of the 
 organ from Miss La Creevy's first floor, for
 
 On Vagabonds. 339 
 
 Tom Pinch has gone to live there now ; and 
 as you know all the people as you know your 
 own brothers and sisters, and consequently 
 require no letters of introduction, you go up 
 and talk with the dear old fellow about all 
 his friends and your friends, and towards 
 evening he takes your arm, and you walk out 
 to see poor Nelly's grave — a place which 
 he visits often, and which he dresses with 
 flowers with his own hands. I know this is 
 the idlest dreaming, but all of us have a 
 sympathy with the creatures of the drama 
 and the novel. Around the hardest cark and 
 toil lies the imaginative world of the poets 
 and romancists, and thither we sometimes 
 escape to snatch a mouthful of serener air. 
 There our best lost feelings have taken a 
 human shape. We suppose that boyhood 
 with its impulses and enthusiasms has sub- 
 sided with the gray cynical man whom we 
 have known these many years. Not a bit of 
 it. It has escaped into the world of the poet, 
 and walks a love-flushed Romeo in immortal 
 youth. We suppose that the Mary of fifty 
 years since, the rose-bud of a girl that crazed 
 our hearts, blossomed into the spouse of 
 Jenkins, the stockbroker, and is now a 
 grandmother. Not at all. She is Juliet lean- 
 ing from the balcony, or Portia talking on
 
 340 On Vagabonds. 
 
 the moonlight lawns at Belmont. There 
 walk the shadows of our former selves. All 
 that Time steals he takes thither ; and to 
 live in that world is to live in our lost youth, 
 our lost generosities, illusions, and romances. 
 In middle-class life, and in the professions, 
 when a standard or ideal is tacitly set up, to ' 
 which every member is expected to conform 
 on pain of having himself talked about, and 
 wise heads shaken over him, the quick feel- 
 ings of the vagabond are not frequently 
 found. Yet, thanks to Nature, who sends 
 her leafage and flowerage up through all 
 kinds of debris, and who takes a blossomy 
 possession of ruined walls and desert places, 
 it is never altogether dead ! And of vaga- 
 bonds, not the least delightful is he who re- 
 tains poetry and boyish spirits beneath the 
 crust of a profession. Mr. Carlyle commends 
 " central fire," and very properly commends 
 it most when " well covered in." In the 
 case of a professional man, this " central 
 fire " does not manifest itself in wasteful ex- 
 plosiveness, but in secret genial heat, visible 
 in fruits of charity and pleasant humour. The 
 physician who is a humourist commends him- 
 self doubly to a sick-bed. His patients are 
 Cs much indebted for their cure to his smile, 
 his voice, and a certain irresistible healthful-
 
 On Vagabonds. 34 1 
 
 ness that surrounds him, as they are to his 
 skill and his prescriptions. The lawyer who is 
 a humourist is a man of ten thousand. How 
 easily the worldly-wise face, puckered over a 
 Stiff brief, relaxes into the lines of laughter. 
 He sees many an evil side of human nature, 
 he is familiar with slanders and injustice, all 
 kinds of human bitterness and falsity ; but 
 neither his hand nor his heart becomes 
 "imbued with that it works in;" and the 
 little admixture of acid, inevitable from his 
 circumstances and mode of life, but height- 
 ens the flavour of his humour. But of all 
 humourists of the professional class, I prefer 
 the clergyman, especially if he is well stricken 
 in years, and has been anchored all his life 
 in a country charge. He is none of your 
 loud wits. There is a lady-like delicacy in 
 his mind, a constant sense of his holy office, 
 which warn him off dangerous subjects. 
 This reserve, however, does but improve the 
 quality of his mirth. What his humour loses 
 in boldness, it gains in depth and slyness. 
 \nd as the good man has seldom the oppor- 
 tunity of making a joke, or of procuring an 
 auditor who can understand one, the dewy 
 glitter of his eyes, as you sit opposite him, 
 and his heartfelt enjoyment of the matter in 
 hand, are worth going a considerable way to
 
 342 On Vagabonds. 
 
 witness. It is not, however, in the profes- 
 sions that the vagabond is commonly found. 
 Over these that awful and ubiquitous female, 
 Mrs. Grundy — at once Fate, Nemesis, and 
 Fury — presides. The glare of her eye is 
 professional danger, the pointing of her finger 
 is professional death. When she utters a 
 man's name, he is lost. The true vagabond is 
 to be met with in other walks of life, — among 
 actors, poets, painters. These may grow in 
 any way their nature directs. They are not 
 required to conform to any traditional pat- 
 tern. With regard to the respectabilities 
 and the " minor morals," the world permits 
 them to be libertines. Besides, it is a tem- 
 perament peculiarly sensitive, or generous, 
 or enjoying, which at the beginning impels 
 these to their special pursuits ; and that 
 temperament, like everything else in the 
 world, strengthens with use, and grows with 
 what it feeds on. We look upon an actor, 
 sitting amongst ordinary men and women, 
 with a certain curiosity, — we regard him as 
 a creature from another planet, almost. His 
 life and his world are quite different from 
 ours. The orchestra, the foot-lights, and 
 the green baize curtain, divide us. He is a 
 monarch half his time — his entrance and his 
 exit proclaimed by flourish of trumpet. He
 
 On Vagabonds. 343 
 
 speaks in blank verse, is wont to take his 
 scat at gilded banquets, to drink nothing out 
 of a pasteboard goblet. The actor's world 
 has a history amusing to read, and lines of 
 noble and splendid traditions, stretching 
 back to charming Nelly's time, and earlier. 
 The actor has strange experiences. He sees 
 the other side of the moon. We roar at 
 Grimaldi's funny face : he sees the lines of 
 pain in it. We hear Romeo wish to be " a 
 glove upon that hand that he might touch 
 that cheek : " three minutes afterwards he 
 beholds Romeo refresh himself with a pot of 
 porter. We see the Moor, who " loved not 
 wisely, but too well," smother Desdemona 
 with the nuptial bolster : he sees them sit 
 down to a hot supper. We always think of 
 the actor as on the stage : he always thinks 
 of us as in the boxes. " In justice to the poets 
 of the present day, it may be noticed that 
 they have improved on their brethren in 
 Johnson's time, who were, according to Lord 
 Macaulay, hunted by bailiffs and familiar with 
 sponging- houses, and who, when hospitably 
 entertained, were wont to disturb the house- 
 hold of the entertainer by roaring for hot 
 punch at four o'clock in the morning. Since 
 that periix 1 the poets have improved in the 
 ncies of life : they wear broadcloth, and
 
 344 On Vagabonds. 
 
 settle their tailors' accounts even as other 
 men. At this present moment Her Majesty's 
 poets are perhaps the most respectable of 
 Her Majesty's subjects. They are all teeto- 
 tallers ; if they sin, it is in rhyme, and then 
 only to point a moral.'' In past days the 
 poet flew from flower to flower, gathering 
 his honey ; but he bore a sting, too, as the 
 rude hand that touched him could testify. 
 He freely gathers his honey as of old, but 
 the satiric sting has been taken away. He 
 lives at peace with all men — his brethren 
 excepted. About the true poet still there is 
 something of the ancient spirit, — the old 
 "flash and outbreak of the fiery mind," — 
 the old enthusiasm and dash of humourous 
 eccentricity. But he is fast disappearing from 
 the catalogue of vagabonds — fast getting 
 commonplace, I fear. Many people suspect 
 him of dulness. Besides, such a crowd of 
 well-meaning, amiable, most respectable men 
 have broken down of late years the pales of 
 Parnassus, and become squatters on the sa- 
 cred mount, that the claim of poets to be a 
 peculiar people is getting disallowed. Never 
 in this world's history were they so numer- 
 ous ; and although some people deny that 
 they are poets, few arc cantankerous enough 
 or intrepid enough to assert that they are
 
 On Vagabonds. 345 
 
 vagabonds. The painter is the most agree- 
 able of vagabonds. His art is a pleasant 
 one : it demands some little manual exer- 
 tion, and it takes him at times into the open 
 air. It is pleasant, too, in this, that lines 
 and colours are so much more palpable than 
 words, and the appeal of his work to his 
 practised eye has some satisfaction in it. He 
 knows what he is about. He does not alto- 
 gether lose his critical sense, as the poet 
 does, when familiarity stales his subject, and 
 takes the splendour out of his images. More- 
 over, his work is more profitable than the 
 poet's. I suppose there are just as few 
 great painters at the present day as there 
 are great poets ; yet the yearly receipts of 
 the artists of England far exceed the receipts 
 of the singers. A picture can usually be 
 painted in less time than a poem can be 
 written. A second-rate picture has a certain 
 market value, — its frame is at least some- 
 thing. A second-rate poem is utterly worth- 
 less, and no one will buy it on account of its 
 binding. A picture is your own exclusive 
 property : it is a costly article of furniture. 
 You hang it on your walls, to be admired by 
 all the world. Pictures represent wealth : 
 the possession of them is a luxury. The 
 portrait-painter is of all men the most be-
 
 346 On Vagabonds. 
 
 loved. You sit to him willingly, and put on 
 your best looks. You are inclined to be 
 pleased with his work, on account of the 
 strong prepossession you entertain for his 
 subject. To sit for one's portrait is like 
 being present at one's own creation. It 
 is an admirable excuse for egotism. You 
 would not discourse on the falcon-like curve 
 which distinguishes your nose, or the sweet 
 serenity of your reposing lips, or the mild- 
 ness of the eye that spreads a light over 
 your countenance, in the presence of a fellow- 
 creature for the whole world ; yet you do not 
 hesitate to express the most favourable opin- 
 ion of the features starting out on you from 
 the wet canvas. The interest the painter 
 takes in his task flatters you. And when 
 the sittings are over, and you behold your- 
 self hanging on your own wall, looking as if 
 you could direct kingdoms or lead armies, 
 you feel grateful to the artist. He ministers 
 to your self-love, and you pay him his hire 
 without wincing. Your heart warms towards 
 him as it would towards a poet who ad- 
 dresses you in an ode of panegyric, the 
 kindling terms of which — a little astonishing 
 to your friends — you believe in your heart 
 of hearts to be the simple truth, and, in the 
 matter of expression, not over-coloured in
 
 On Vagabonds. 34 7 
 
 the very least. The portrait- painter has a 
 shrewd eye for character, and is usually the 
 best anecdote-monger in the world. His craft 
 brings him into contact with many faces, 
 and he learns to compare them curiously, 
 and to extract their meanings. He can in- 
 terpret wrinkles ; he can look through the 
 eyes into the man ; he can read a whole fore- 
 gone history in the lines about the mouth. 
 Besides, from the good understanding which 
 usually exists between the artist and his 
 sitter, the latter is inclined somewhat to un- 
 bosom himself; little things leak out in con- 
 versation, not much in themselves, but 
 pregnant enough to the painter's sense, who 
 pieces them together, and constitutes a tol- 
 erably definite image. The man who paints 
 your face knows you better than your inti- 
 mate friends do, and has a clearer knowledge 
 of your amiable weaknesses, and of the se- 
 cret motives which influence your conduct, 
 than you oftentimes have yourself. A good 
 portrait is a kind of biography, and neither 
 painter nor biographer can carry out his 
 task satisfactorily unless he be admitted be- 
 hind the scenes. I think that the landscape 
 painter, who has acquired sufficient mastery 
 in his art to satisfy his own critical sense, 
 and who is appreciated enough to find pur-
 
 3 4 * On J \ iga b o n ds . 
 
 chasers, and thereby to keep the wolf from 
 the door, must be of all mankind the happiest. 
 Other men live in cities, bound down to 
 some settled task and order of life ; but he is 
 a nomad, and wherever he goes " Beauty 
 pitches her tents before him." He is smit- 
 ten by a passionate love for Nature, and is 
 privileged to follow her into her solitary 
 haunts and recesses. Nature is his mistress, 
 and he is continually making declarations' 
 of his love. When one thinks of ordinary 
 occupations, how one envies him, necking 
 his oak-tree boll with sunlight, tinging with 
 rose the cloud of the morning in which the 
 lark is hid, making the sea's swift fringe of 
 foaming lace outspread itself on the level 
 sands, in which the pebbles gleam forever 
 wet. The landscape painter's memory is in- 
 habited by the fairest visions, — dawn burn- 
 ing on the splintered peaks that the eagles 
 know, while the valleys beneath are yet filled 
 with uncertain light ; the bright blue morn 
 stretching over miles of moor and mountain ; 
 the slow up-gathering of the bellied thun- 
 'ier-cloud; summer lakes, and cattle knee- 
 deep in them ; rustic bridges forever crossed 
 by obi women in scarlet cloaks ; old-fash- 
 ioned waggons resting on the scrubby com- 
 mon, the waggoner lazy and wayworn, the
 
 On Vagabonds. 349 
 
 ■ 
 
 dog couched on the ground, its tongue hang- 
 ing out in the heat ; boats drawn up on the 
 shore at sunset ; the fisher's children look- 
 ing seawards, the red light full on their 
 dresses and faces ; farther back, a clump of 
 cottages, with bait-baskets about the door, 
 and the smoke of the evening meal coiling 
 up into the coloured air. These things are 
 forever with him. Beauty, which is a luxury 
 to other men, is his daily food. Happy vaga- 
 bond, who lives the whole summer through 
 in the light of his mistress's face, and who 
 i nothing the whole winter except recall 
 the splendour of her smiles ! 
 
 The vagabond, as I have explained and 
 sketched him, is not a man to tremble at, or 
 avoid as if he wore contagion in his touch. 
 He is upright, generous, innocent, is con- 
 scientious in the performance of his duties ; 
 and if a little eccentric and fond of the open 
 air, he is full of good nature and mirthful 
 charity. He may not make money so 
 rapidly as you do, but I cannot help think- 
 ing that he enjoys life a great deal more. 
 The quick feeling of life, the exuberance of 
 animal spirits which break out in the 
 traveller, the sportsman, the poet, the 
 painter, should be more generally diffused. 
 We should be all the better and all the
 
 35 o On Vagabonds. 
 
 happier for it. Life ought to be freer, 
 heartier, more enjoyable than it is at present. 
 If the professional fetter must be worn, let 
 it be worn as lightly as possible. It should 
 never be permitted to canker the limbs. 
 We are a free people, — we have an un- 
 shackled press, — we have an open platform, 
 and can say our say upon it, no king or 
 despot making us afraid. We send repre- 
 sentatives to Parliament ; the franchise is 
 always going to be extended. All this is 
 very fine, and we do well to glory in our 
 privileges as Britons. But, although we en- 
 joy greater political freedom than any other 
 people, we are the victims of a petty social 
 tyranny. We are our own despots, — we 
 tremble at a neighbour's whisper. A man 
 may say what he likes on a public platform, 
 — he may publish whatever opinion he 
 chooses, — but he dare not wear a peculiar 
 fashion of hat on the street. Eccentricity 
 is an outlaw. Public opinion blows like 
 the east wind, blighting bud and blossom 
 on the human bough. As a consequence of 
 all this, society is losing picturesqueness and 
 variety, — we are all growing up after one 
 pattern. In other matters than architecture 
 past time may be represented by the won- 
 derful ridge of the Old Town of Edinburgh,
 
 On Vagabonds. 35 1 
 
 where everything is individual and charac- 
 teristic : the present time by the streets and 
 squares of the New Town, where every- 
 thing is gray, cold, and respectable ; where 
 every house is the other's alter ego. It is 
 true that life is healthier in the formal 
 square than in the piled-up picturesqueness 
 of the Canongate, — quite true that sanitary 
 conditions are better observed, — that pure 
 water flows through every tenement like 
 blood through a human body, — that day- 
 light has free access, and that the apart- 
 ments are larger and higher in the roof. 
 But every gain is purchased at the expense of 
 some loss ; and it is best to combine, if pos- 
 sible, the excellences of the old and the new. 
 By all means retain the modern breadth of 
 light, and range of space ; by all means have 
 water plentiful, and bed-chambers ventilated, 
 — but at the same time have some little 
 freak of fancy without, — some ornament 
 about the door, some device about the win- 
 dow, — something to break the cold, gray, 
 stony uniformity ; or, to leave metaphor, 
 which is always dangerous ground, — for 1 
 really don't wish to advocate Ruskinism and 
 the Gothic, — it would be better to have, 
 along with our modern enlightenment, our 
 higher tastes and purer habits, a greater indi-
 
 352 On Vagabonds. 
 
 viduality of thought and manner; better, 
 while retaining all that we have gained, that 
 harmless eccentricity should be respected, — 
 that every man should be allowed to grow 
 in his own way, so long as he does not in- 
 fringe on the rights of his neighbour, or in- 
 solently thrust himself between him and the 
 sun. A little more air and light should be 
 let in upon life. I should think the world 
 has stood long enough under the drill of 
 Adjutant Fashion. It is hard work; the 
 posture is wearisome, and Fashion is an aw- 
 ful martinet, and has a quick eye, and comes 
 down mercilessly on the unfortunate wight 
 who cannot square his toes to the approved 
 pattern, or who appears upon parade with 
 a darn in his coat, or with a shoulder-belt 
 insufficiently pipe-clayed. It is killing work. 
 Suppose we try " standing at ease " for a 
 little !

 
 
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